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Posted -  17/05/2004  :  16:31
VERBATIM TRANSCRIPTION OF LESLIE GRAHAM MACDONALD TAPES
Recorded and transcribed by Stanley Graham. Strictly copyright. No part of this manuscript may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language without the written permission of Stanley Graham.

Tape identification File Number

Tape 1. Red. Track 3. 024\lgstory.008



We made camp on the outskirts of the town [Gilgandra] and Father said he was going away and he’d be back in a day or two. He didn’t tell us where he was going or what he was going for. We didn’t know whether he was going home or what was in his mind. We didn’t like to ask him and he didn’t tell us he just said “So long, I’ll see you in a day or two.”

Well, time went by, he didn’t return and we were getting short of food and we had no money. Well I got looking around the town and eventually got in touch with a teamster who was carting sawn timber from a sawmill about thirty mile out of Gilgandra. He wanted a horse boy so I took the job. I went back to camp and told Stan about it and he said “Well it’s alright for you, you’re alright for grub but what about me?” I said “Well I don’t know. You’ll have to do the best you can for yourself but somebody’s got to stay and mind the camp and I’ve got a job.” So he said he would do the best he could. There was a butcher in Gilgandra who we knew fairly well and I suggested to Stan that he went to see him. I said “You go and see Mr Higson and borrow a pound or so off him to keep you going until the Old Man gets back, anyhow he might be back any day.” Anyhow he didn’t come back. We went out and picked up a load of timber and brought it in and he still hadn’t returned but Stan was getting on alright so we went off for another load.

Well I was enjoying myself because this feller let me drive the team. I think, if I remember right it was a team of about twelve or fourteen horses on this wagon and they were driven entirely by word of mouth, there was no reins or anything like that used on them. He used to go off to places on his saddle horse and leave me to drive the team. It was great sport for me because it was the first time I’d ever driven a team, I’d seen them driven but I’d never actually driven a team myself. The method of driving was you had words of command for the horses. If you wanted them to go away from you you’d shout wee hiddle hod gee (?) if you want them to come back to you that is to come to the nearside, you shout wee whoa back wahoo. To the shafters and the pinners, if you wanted them to move over or come to you to miss a gate post or some object that was in the road you just shout git over to go away and come here for them to come to you. If they’re properly trained horses, as soon as you speak they’ll answer to your command. Anyway, we got back into Gilgandra with the second load and while we were unloading at the railway station Stan came to tell me that Father had come back. I had to come back to camp.

There was one interesting thing which I heard whilst I was with this old teamster, it turned out that he knew my uncle Arthur, that was Father’s eldest brother. He’d seen a fight between uncle Arthur and George Goddard, the Barrier Slugger. This fight lasted about thirty rounds. Off course you don’t know how long thirty rounds would last in those days because the end of a round was a fall. Around might only last about ten seconds, it might last four or five minutes. He’d seen this fight and was always talking about what a great fighter Arthur MacDonald was and he said that if he’d taken it up professionally he’d have done very well out of it.

Anyhow, we went back to camp, into Gilgandra and stocked up and set off for the Warrambungle Mountains. Father had got a job of fencing there for a man called Mr Lowden . Whilst we were loading up, one of the items was a five gallon tin of kerosene which we used for the lamps. Either Stan or I, I don’t know who it was, had put this kerosene on top of a bag of flour. Nothing was said about it until we got to camp. We got out to the site where the fence was to be erected, it was an old homestead, it was deserted, in ruins when we went there but we were told that it had been the home of a dummy squatter. Now a dummy squatter is a man who takes up a selection for a big squatter. He complies with the law in that he’s got to live on it for five years and he’s got to do a certain amount. If at the end of five years he wants to leave then he can sell out the improvements that he has done. He can’t get anything for the land because that’s on a ninety nine year lease from the government but he can sell his improvements. It was a racket that was worked to a very large extent in the early days. A squatter would get men to “dummy” for him in a block. They wouldn’t bother about the land and the fences, they’d just take up the land all round the outside perimeter of the block that he wanted and if it was in river country they’d take up the land on each side of the river say for ten or fifteen miles. He paid ‘em wages while they were dummying for him and at the end of five years the dummy cleared out and he supposedly bought the land from them.

Anyhow, that was the site that we’d camped on and we’d been warned before we went there that there was a lot of deaf adders in this country and that as they looked very much like a lizard we had to be careful not to pick one up or go too close to them.

Whilst we were unloading the rig, Stan said to me “This bloody kerosene’s been leaking on the flour bag.” Anyhow, we had a look and about a quarter of the kerosene had gone. So we never said anything to the Old Man about it, we just unloaded it. We never realised what we were in for, we just unloaded it and said nowt. We turned the tin upside down so it wouldn’t leak any more. It broke on us when we had our first bread that was baked out of this flour. It tasted just like kerosene. We complained to the Old Man about it and he said “You thought I didn’t know anything about it. If you are careless when loading foodstuffs up you have to pay for the consequences and you either eat this bread or you get nothing at all to eat until its all gone.” This was a two hundred pound bag of flour. We had to eat it. As we got further down the barrel it didn’t taste quite so bad, as a matter of fact when we got well down the barrel it didn’t taste at all. But for the first few weeks it was bloody awful having to eat this bread tasting of kerosene. We tried all sorts with it, tried putting honey and jam and treacle on it, frying it in all sorts of things but you couldn’t get rid of the kerosene taste.

One day, Stan and I were coming home from the job and we saw a lizard, we thought it was a lizard, and Stan said “Wait a minute, it might be a deaf adder.” I said “Well, a deaf adder has got a sting in its tail and when you touch it with a stick its tail goes up in the air.” So we said right we’ll try it. He got a stick and just touched this thing, it jumped about two feet in the air when he touched it and its tail did go up in the air. So we killed it and we carried it on a forked stick down to the camp. The Old Man had a look at it and he said “That’s a deaf adder alright. The best thing you can do is take it over there somewhere and burn it.” Well, we’d heard a tale about deaf adders and they reckoned that if you skinned a deaf adder, on the inside of the skin there was a rhyme. It said “If I could hear as well as I can see, no man on earth could conquer me.” So we thought if we cut its head off and cut its tail off it can’t do us very much harm then and we’ll skin it and see if this legend is on the inside of this skin. Anyhow, we did this and we pegged the skin out to dry. There was a lot of marks on the underside of the back skin but there was nothing that we could make out - we couldn’t make any writing out so we told the old Man what we’d done and asked him if he’d come and have a look at it and see whether he could make anything out about it. He had a sly grin on his face when he come to have a look at it and he said “Aye, of course, he said it’s there.” We said we couldn’t see it and he said “No, of course, because you can’t read Latin!”

I don’t know whether it was because we had been playing around with this deaf adder and it had got on me mind or not but that night I couldn’t help thinking about it. We went to bed about seven o’clock, we used to go to bed early because it was dark about sundown and that was about six o’clock. There was only the few of us in the camp and there wasn’t much to keep us out of bed so the usual thing used to be to go to bed and read wild west stories by the light of a slush lamp. Father wouldn’t allow us to burn kerosene for reading because he said it was a waste of kerosene. We used to make a slush lamp. We used to get a jam tin and put some earth in the bottom of it, get a piece of old blanket and wrap it round a stick, put it in the centre for a wick and then melt some tallow down and fill the tin up with tallow and set fire to it. It made quite a good light. This night, I don’t know how long I’d been asleep, but I woke up and what was a dream, although I didn’t realise it at the time, was that I had been bitten by a deaf adder. I felt at the back of me head where this pain was coming from to see if I could feel any punctures where he’d bit me. I felt something rough there and when I struck a match there was blood. I didn’t know what to do, whether to wake Stan up and tell him I’d been bitten by this thing or what to do, I was scared stiff. Anyhow, I thought I won’t waken them up, there’s nothing they can do, it’s about fifty or sixty miles to the nearest doctor and I’d be dead long before he got there. So I went outside and lit the fire up, made a roaring fire and I sat in front of this fire for about an hour and I kept getting drowsy. Well, that was the first effect you get from a venomous bite, you want to go to sleep. Well, I got up and walked around trying to keep meself awake and when I sat down again and was drowsing off I thought to myself my God, what if the bloody thing bites Stan. So I thought I’ll go in and kill that bugger if it’s the last thing I ever do. I went into this tent and I grabbed all these blankets back and there was an old coat I was using for a pillow, I dragged that away and as I was dragging it away it got caught. First I thought this bloody thing was still there and it had got hold of the coat. I struck a match and I could see what it was, we’d got some old weatherboards and put them on the ground because it was damp and we’d made our bed on top of these weatherboards. There was a couple of bloody nails sticking through this board and I’d put it down with the nails upwards and rolling about in me sleep I’d rolled on to these nails and they’d stuck in the back of me neck. My God, I’ve never felt such wonderful relief in me life. I woke Stan up and told him about it and he said “You bloody fool, go back to bed again.” Of course, next morning we told Father about it and there was a good laugh all round.

We had some pretty happy times in the Warrambungles because there was plenty to do, apart from our work I mean. We could go prospecting, it was said there was gold there, although we never found any, and some people said there was diamonds there, we never found any of them, we found a few topaz. The place was lousy with rock wallaby, kangaroos and birds of all descriptions. All our spare time we could fill in very nicely by wandering about in the hills shooting wallabies and looking for bird’s nests etc.

I had another terrifying experience whilst we were on this camp, we had an out-camp where we had a lot of tackle stored and the Old Man got it into his head, I don’t know whether he’d had some information from someone or not, but he thought that this tackle might be stolen so it was decided that we could take it in turns and one of us sleep at this site. So we went out and rigged up a tent. There was no necessity for cooking utensils because we could have our meals at the main camp. After a bit of discussion it was decided that I could take first night and after that Stan and I could sleep with the tackle every other night. Before they left me they said watch out you don’t get eaten by a dingo or something like that and the Old Man said “It’s reported that there’s some wolves here but you don’t want to take any notice of them, if you throw a firestick at them they’ll run away. Of course there’s no bloody wolves there, never had been I think, but I didn’t know this.

So it wasn’t long before I got into bed. It was a bright moonlight night and I hadn’t been in bed very long before I heard a strange noise, it was something like Coohoo, coohoo, and this bloody noise kept getting closer and closer and I thought I wonder what that is then all of a sudden there was a howl from the other side and this howling went on all round the camp. I don’t know whether it was dingoes or it may only have been foxes, I’m not sure but to me they were man-eating monsters that were out there and I was terribly frightened. I daren’t get out of the tent although I’d a twenty two rifle with me and perhaps if I’d fired a shot they’d have gone but I was too scared to open the front of the tent. This went on for about half an hour and there was all kinds of noises. All of a sudden, what appeared to me to be about five yards outside the tent I heard this long howl go up. I didn’t wait for any more, I got out me knife and slit the back of the tent because if I’d gone out of the front of the tent I’d have been going towards the noise, and I hopped out and I never stopped running until I got to the camp. I didn’t let them know I was there, I sneaked in with some gear that was under the tarpaulin and I slept under this tarpaulin until morning. I got up before they did and they were never any the wiser about it because I knew that they’d laugh their bloody heads off if they knew what a fright I’d had. So I thought I’d see how Stan got on. Well, he was a bit more experienced than me and I had a talk with him after he’d spent the night there and asked him if he’d heard any noises. “Aye” he said “There’s a few foxes and a few dingoes round and about and a few old mokos [Bell-birds] too, that was the bird I’d heard making the coohoo noise. Anyhow, I was alright after that, I wasn’t afraid of it but it’s a job to explain how frightened a young boy can get when he’s on his own and he doesn’t know what he’s up against. I think that’s the most terrifying thing, is not to know what you’re up against.

Anyhow the job here finished eventually and we moved back to the Lowden homestead to do a job there. It was like being back in town again because there was about eight or nine men employed on the station as boundary riders, roustabouts and that sort of thing and there was one feller there who was a professional boxer and he’d got out there to get some heavy work and train for a fight he had coming off in Dubbo in about a month or two months time. This chap’s name was Jimmy Logue, he was never a very high class boxer but he was a reasonably good knockabout welterweight and Stan and I agreed to act as his sparring partners. He had permission from Mr Lowden to train in the wool shed. It made an ideal boxing ring, in this wool shed on the shearing board there’s plenty of room and good floor conditions. We spent many a happy night there taking it in turns boxing around with old Jimmy, sometimes boxing each other although when Stan and I boxed each other it always ended up in a fight because after a while one or the other would land a heavy punch and there’d be a case of loss of tempers and before we knew where we were we were at it hammer and tongs. Well, I could always beat Stan even though I was younger than him I was a better boxer or I could punch harder, I don’t know which it was but I could always beat him.

One night, Father turned up. He never showed much interest in these things but he showed up. I suppose he thought that he’d have a bit of company and some of the lads were saying come on Alec, you put ‘em on. See how you can shape, I’ll bet you can do a bit and that sort of thing and the Old Man he didn’t seem inclined to bother. Anyhow they kept at him and got his dander up a bit and he said “Alright, I’ll put ‘em on with anybody that wants to have a bit of a do.” and they did. The chap that got in the ring with him was a big bloke, about thirteen or fourteen stone, the old man would be about twelve stone. But my God, when the Old Fellow got cracking on him he blinded him with science. He used to hop in and clout him with a left and right and then out again before the other feller realised he was coming. This went on for about a couple of rounds and the feller said “I think the best thing for me to do is pack in, I’ve had enough unless somebody else wants to have a go.” Anyhow there was no takers.

I don’t know what had got into Stan, or at least, I didn’t know then, I think I do now but he got very discontented and got talking about a man spending all his life out in the back blocks and he wanted to get working for himself where he could earn some money of his own to spend and all that sort of thing. But in the finish he said to me that he was going to make a break for it. Well, I never said anything, I wasn’t against it. We talked it over, I asked him where he was going and he said he didn’t know. He said he’d make off somewhere and try and pick up a job. Anyhow he got his things together and we talked it over for a while and we went to bed. Sometime during the night he woke me up and he said he was off. We just said so long and away he went. [See Uncle Stan’s letter of 16/3/64]

Next morning, when we got up I didn’t give Father a chance to ask where he was, I told him that he’d blown. He said “Do you know where he’s gone?” I said “No. He didn’t tell me. I don’t think he had any idea where he was going. He was just going away.” So he said “Oh well, if that’s what he wants that’s alright. Let him go.” Same as he said when Jim went. He said to me “I suppose you’ll be the next?” I said “I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it but when I do decide to go I’ll tell you.” He said “That’s alright, you do, and then I’ll find a way of stopping you.” So we let it go at that, I said no more about it. We just carried on with the job and eventually we finished with the help of Jimmy Logue who rolled in in Stan’s place and helped us to finish the job off. We packed up and went back to Gilgandra.

Just at that time the sanitary arrangements in Gilgandra had been changed over from the ordinary soil closet to what they called the night soil system which was that the pans or containers were emptied from the lavatory by contractor and the night soil disposed of. Father got a job, or at least he set up as a contractor, converting lavatories. I don’t know how much he charged, I think it was somewhere about two pound a time. I know he used to do about three a day so he wasn’t doing too bad out of it. My job was to clean out the old closet and fill it in and then cement it over. There was plenty of sand quite near the town, there was a big sand hill there. I used to go and cart the sand, mix the concrete and put it in and he’d come along and level it off. We had an arrangement that we could do every second house and whilst we were doing this the people who lived where we were working could use the convenience next door and so on. We went on like this until we had worked our way through the street. Well, this was a back breaking job, I thought I was doing all the donkey-work. Father was doing all the joinery, rebuilding the lavatory seats and putting trap-doors in the back for the pans to be withdrawn from. I was doing all the concreting and it didn’t go down very well with me I can assure you because it was very hard work to get through three of these lavatories in a day. In fact, the Old Man talked about trying to do four and I said I can’t do it I’m doing all I can now. The Old Man said “You’ll do more if I want you to.” Anyhow we let it go at that but he never tried to shove it up from three to four.

After he’d been on the job for about three months, other people started horning in and cutting the price. The Old Man decided that if they wanted it at a cheaper price they could have it, he didn’t. We’d had the cream of it anyhow and we’d get out. So the first time people got at us to work for a lower price, the Old Man said I’m not going to do it, you can get somebody else to do it. We’ll leave it to them, if they can do it any cheaper than I can, well, let them have it. I don’t want any more of it. So we gave up.

About that time there was a farm to be sold in the Gilgandra district and this farm belonged to a relation of a man called Mr Webb who had a very good farm in the Dubbo area. It was through Mr Webb that this man asked Father to organise the sale for him. There were all sorts of things to be sold, the farm including the farm deadstock and livestock, horses, ploughs, pigs, cattle and all these things that go with a general farm. Well, we took over and he organised a stockyard where the animals were to be sold and he arranged a caterer to come and cater for the buyers because we weren’t near any place where they could go for a meal so it was decided by the auctioneers and I believe at Father’s suggestion, that we should supply them with a meal free of charge, I should say that the Farmer would supply them with a meal free of charge.

Everything was got ready and the day of the sale came along. We went over about nine o’clock in the morning. Father said to me “Now this is your job today. There’s beer and whisky and wines and everything there and I want you, as the prospective buyers arrive, to meet them and greet them and offer them a drink. When you’ve offered ‘em one drink that’s the end of it as far as you’re concerned. You’re just there to receive them and to give them any information that they want. Here’s all the information they’re likely to require and he gave me a sheet of paper saying times and whereabouts the various items were offered for sale.

Well, they started coming in. I started meeting them and every time I offered them a drink I had one with them. So you can imagine how long that would go on with a lad that wasn’t used to drinking. I don’t know how many I had too many. I don’t remember where I stopped. The next thing I remembered was that I was in the lavatory and I was trying to be sick at the same time and I can remember clearly seeing Father’s face look in at the door and then the door slammed and I was left there. I didn’t come conscious until sometime in the middle of the night but I saw nothing of the sale and when I woke up I went outside and got a drink of water and I thought “They must have all gone home.” I had no watch, I couldn’t say what time it was. I reckoned it was getting on towards morning.

Anyhow, I walked back to Gilgandra to where we were camped. I didn’t bother getting into bed, I just lay down on the bed because it was just coming daylight and it was Sunday morning so there was no work to do. So I lay there until I heard Father knocking about and I got up. He just took a look at me, I expected to get a tongue banging from him, but he never said anything but he said “You’ll not be needing any breakfast will you?” I said “Why?” He said “Oh I thought you might have had enough yesterday to last you a day or two.” I said “No. I want me breakfast.” Anyhow he cooked breakfast for me and we had it and I was surprised that I didn’t feel ill. I’d heard them say that after a night out, they always felt very ill but I didn’t feel bad at all.

Anyhow, with the farm sale over and I suppose Father had drawn his commission, we set off to Dubbo and this time he put his bike on the cart and we had all our camp tackle and that on and we set off to go to a place called Coonabarabran Now this was a bit off the main route to Dubbo, it was like making a bit of a detour and I wondered what he was going round this way for. Anyhow, I didn’t get to know, I was asking but he didn’t seem to think it was worthwhile telling me but we went that way home. He must have known people there, well, I know he did know people there because people spoke to him as if he’d knocked about there a good bit. But I never knew of him being there before or what he used to do there.

He told me one interesting story while we were there, he said he was in Coonabarabran at one time when a horse thief was caught and brought in by a trooper. They had him in the gaol and this feller said that he wanted to go to the lavatory. The lavatory was outside and it was one of these night soil lavatories. This bloke took his boots off while he was in the lavatory and put them down near the door. There was a gap of about six inches from the door to the floor, like anyone stood out in front of the lavatory could see the boots on the floor. Somehow he got the night soil pan out of the road, went down through the opening and got out the back way and escaped. The Old Feller said he thought the story was worth telling because it showed the feller was a very ingenious sort of a bloke.





5,150 words.



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