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Doc
Keeper of the Scrolls
2010 Posts
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 Posted -
17/05/2004
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16:30
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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 leader. Track 3. 024\lgstory.009
Well, we eventually arrived back in Dubbo,[1907] and as far as I could see, for the time being at any rate, there was no attempt or prospect of a move and Father told me that the best thing I could do for a while would be to look round for a job. So I got a job at an engineering works as an apprentice fitter and I hadn’t been there very long before I started to get itchy feet. So one day I decided that I’d had enough. I went in to see the boss and told him that I was packing it in. Anyhow, he wouldn’t pay me, he said he’d have to see me Father because arrangements had been made through him and I was supposed to stay with him until I was 21 years of age and therefore he wasn’t going to give me any money so I just left without it. I went home, I didn’t tell Mother and Father was away and I went to see a feller that I knew called Bert Lathom. Bert was one of the chaff-cutter gang and I asked him if he could get me a job. “Well, as a matter of fact I think I can because we are short handed but whether they’ll take you on or not I don’t know. You’re a bit young.” So I said “ I can hold me end up.” He said “I’ve no doubt you can but anyhow we’ll see about it.” Now he had a brother called Tugger and he was a big strapping bloke. Anyhow they went to see the feller that owned this machine and after a bit of argy-bargy he decided to give me a trial and they said that if I couldn’t pull me weight they’d help me along.
This was a contract job, you weren’t paid so much a day, you were paid so much a ton and if a feller couldn’t pull his weight he was letting the rest of the gang down. So I made a start and they set me on feeding the steamer. The hay, before it’s cut is put through a tube and steamed so that when it goes through the rollers it’s not broken up too fine and it cuts cleaner and makes a better looking chaff. So my job was feeding this steamer, well, I could do it on me head, there was nothing to it. After a while I asked for a shift and I got shifted round to other jobs. I learned to feed the machine and I learned to sew the bags and that sort of thing. That was a pretty slippy sort of a job because the bags were coming off at the rate of about 60 bags an hour, that’s a bag a minute and to sew them up and stack them, because there was only one man behind the machine, it really kept you going. For a start, I couldn’t do it. I kept getting behind and either Bert or Tugger or one of the other lads would hop in and help me to catch up. Eventually I got the top side of it and I could keep them going. Well, we used to do round about 60 bags an hour that’s an 8 hour day, that’s about 24 or 25 ton a day we’d get through and if we could average 20 ton a day we were making about ,5 a week which is pretty good wages. Course we didn’t always average 20 ton a day because you weren’t paid anything for your trips from one farm to another or if it was raining you couldn’t work so you didn’t get paid for that either. I suppose on an average we were on about ,4 a week.
We had a chap came to us there, he was an Irish immigrant who had only just arrived in the country and he’d never even seen a snake. We used to sleep round the haystacks at night, we didn’t sleep in tents we used to bed down anywhere and if the weather was bad we’d throw a tarpaulin over the steamer and sleep under that. There was always a lot of sparrows in the haystacks and this Irishman one night heard these things rustling and he said to this chap named Dubber Parker “Dubber, what’s that? What’s that making that noise?” and Dubber said “Oh, go to sleep Pat it’s only snakes”. “Snakes! says the Irishmen and he jumped out of bed and off he went down the field and made his bed up about a hundred yards off in the field. He wouldn’t sleep where there was snakes he was absolutely terrified of them. So the next night we thought we’d have a bit of fun with Paddy so we went and caught a lot of these sparrows and tied them on a string, a string of them. We waited until he had gone to sleep and we lifted his blanket up and threw the sparrows in on top of him. He naturally thought it was the snakes he had in his bed and he got up and made a run for it out into the bush and wouldn’t come back. So when the foreman of the plant got to know about it he played merry hell with us and made us go out and find him and fetch him back and show him what we had done to him. When he got to know what we had done he wanted to fight everybody but there was nobody looking for a fight that night.
I soon got fed up with chaff-cutting and I went back to the engineering works and they decided they’d take me back if I promised to behave meself in future. Course, I gave the promise and everything went alright for a month or so when I got fed up again. I didn’t bother to tell them I wasn’t going into work I just went off onto a farm which I knew wanted some ploughmen and it was this man Mr Wade that I mentioned earlier on. I told him who I was and asked him if he could give me a job and he never thought to ask me whether I could plough or not, he just took it for granted that being the Old Man’s son that I would be able to so he gave me an eight horse team with a six furrow disc plough and sent me into a hundred acre field to plough it. I ploughed it alright, I had no trouble at all and he was very pleased with the job. So then, he started to give me other bits of odd jobs around the place. One day he asked me to harness his buggy and pair, he was going into Dubbo. I went to harness them and was in the process of harnessing them when he came along. He saw me lead these horses out, I set ‘em together and put the reins on them, coupled the reins up and put them back over the buggy before I coupled them to the pole and traces and he said “Oh, I see you do know how to harness a buggy and four.” I said “What gave you the idea that I couldn’t?” “Oh” he said,” nothing but not many lads your age know anything about that. I was only just mentioning that I could see you know how to do it.” For no reason at all, I was entirely in the wrong, I lost me temper and swore and played hell with him and told him he could stick his job where Paddy stuck the nuts and would he give me me time and I’d walk out. He paid me up and when I was going out he said “If you feel like coming back when you’ve cooled down it’ll be alright, you can have your job back.” I said “I don’t think I’ll cool down for while and anyhow, I’m not coming back.” So that was that, my ploughing days were over.
I went back home and I think it was because I knew that I was in the wrong with Mr Wade, I think that upset me more than anything else because when I come to think it over he’d said nothing that I should have taken any offence at, I don’t know what it was but I was just fed-up with myself. So all of a sudden I made up me mind, I’m off. Doris was away somewhere at the time and I couldn’t talk to her but I talked to Molly about it and told her what I was going to do and she said she thought I was very foolish to run away, I should wait ‘til I was a bit older. I’d be about 16 now [1910] and I thought I was big enough to take care of myself. She said “What are you going to do?” I said “I’m going first to Gilgandra.” I’d decided on Gilgandra because it was the only place I knew, I had no idea of where else a man could go and I said I’ll see what I can do when I get there. So she said “Have you got any money to pay your fare?” I said “I’m not going to pay me fare, I’m going to jump the train.” She said “Have you got any money at all?” I said “No I haven’t got any money at all.” I’d given Mother what Mr Wade had paid me. So she got a few bob together from somewhere and gave it to me. I waited until Mother wasn’t about and I packed me clothes, pinched a blanket and made it up into a swag and then I went off down to the railway station or at least, I went to the loco shed. There was a lad there called Heeny who was a fireman on the Dubbo to Coonamble mixed goods and passenger train. I told him what I wanted to do and he said well, I don’t know, I’ll have to see the driver. So he had a word with the driver and the driver said it would be alright and he would give me a lift providing there was no one of authority on the train. He said that if there was no one on, he’d slow down at the crossing and I could jump on the best way that I could, but if there was anyone on the train then he wouldn’t slow down and I’d have to wait until the next day. Anyhow, the train came along, he slowed down to about 5 or 6 mile an hour. I got on quite easy and made meself as comfortable as I could on the footplate and they took me out to Gilgandra.
I got off the train, I went over to the hotel near the station and walked in and asked for a beer. The bloke looked at me and gave me a bit of a queasy look, anyway he served me with the beer and I said “You know who I am?” and he said “Yes, I know who you are.” I said “Well, Father told me to come here. He’s coming out in a few days time and he said that you’d put me up and he’d settle up with you when he got here.” So he said that was alright and they showed me to a room where I settled in. Then I started looking round for something to do. I didn’t want it to get known at the hotel that I was looking for a job because I thought that would make him suspicious.
Well, after a while I bumped into a feller called Gypsy Waugh. Gypsy had a breaker’s yard about a mile out of town and he used to come there every so often and the farmers living round about who only had a few horses to break used to bring them in to Gypsy and he’d break them for them. I asked him if there was anything doing round the yard and he said “No, I’m not wanting anyone but if you want to make a bob or two you can come out and you might give us a bit of a hand roping or mouthing a horse or two and it’ll keep you going until your Dad gets here.” So I said “Right, I’ll go. So I went out and he gave me all sorts of odd jobs to do, cleaning a bit of harness, repairing harness and mouthing a colt or two. He let me have a ride or two on horses that were partly broke, I didn’t get put on anything that was absolutely raw . I kept getting thrown. Although I could ride fairly well there’s a lot of difference between riding a spirited horse and riding a buck-jumper. Anyhow I kept having a go at them and kept asking to have a go and one day he said to me, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you, I’ve got a colt here and you can put a saddle and bridle on him and take him down into that ploughed field and stay with him until you ride him.” So I said “Alright, I’ll have a bash at that.”
I took this colt down, I don’t know how many times he threw me, I lost count. I was black and blue all over but I still kept getting back on him and he kept throwing me and I kept getting on again and eventually after a couple of hours of this battle he give in. I rode him up to the yard and got all kinds of praise from old Gypsy, he said “Well, you’ll make a buck-jump rider in the end if you keep at it.” Anyhow, he said to me “Your Dad’s a long time getting here isn’t he?” I said “Aye” He said “ Is this a true story about you waiting for your Father or have you made a break for it?” I told him the truth. He said “What are you going to do?” I said “I don’t know, I’m going to look for a job.” He says “There’s nobody going to give you a job at your age. You’re too young to be knocking about on your own, they don’t want the responsibility of you.” I said “Well, I’m not going back home again, I’m going to look for a job.” He says “I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you. I got a lad in town that’s looking for a job and he’s a man, he’s a chap about 22 or 23. If you like to team up with him I’ll grubstake you and I’ll fix you up with a camp and all the tackle that’s necessary and put you out poisoning rabbits and then when you’ve made a catch and you bring the cash in you can pay me back what I’ve laid out on you plus a bit of profit for me and you can have the rest. You can buy the tackle off me and then you’re on your own.” So I said I’d have a go at it and he’d arrange for me to meet him.
So we went into town. He brought this lad down and we had a talk and we took to one another straight away. I think I took to him because he was a Sydney lad and he knew all the Sydney slang and all that sort of thing and that appealed to me being a young boy. Anyhow we decided that we’d have a go at it. [The partner’s name was Mick Duggan]
So Gypsy got the tackle together for us, harnessed a horse into the buggy and took us out to this place and we set up our camp near a waterhole and mixed our first batch of poison. The technique was that we mixed strychnine with quince jam, the jam used to come in big 7lb. tins and we mixed it well with strychnine and then you went out to the hole, made a mark on the ground to attract the rabbit’s attention and put the jam and strychnine down on this disturbed ground. Well we did this and we run a trail about ten mile long on the first day and we went round and we only got about seven or eight rabbits. Well we had a pow-wow about this because nearly all the bait had gone. We decided that we must have made some mistake in our mixing so we was more careful next time. The next day we did better, we got about eighty or ninety. We thought this was alright, we started to reckon up, if we got 100 a day that’d be about 12lbs. a day of skins, they used to run about eight to the pound. 12lbs. of skins a day at tenpence a pound, well that wasn’t so very much. It was only about three and odd a day. This was no good we wanted to get at least 200 to 250 a day to make it worth while at all. Anyhow we went on but we couldn’t get more than round about a hundred and we both got fed up with it.
At this time we had about a thousand skins or something like that. I said to him “I don’t know what you’re going to do but I’m hopping it.” He said “Where are you going?” I said “I don’t know, but I was thinking about heading towards Longridge.” That’s up on the New South Wales/Queensland border. He said “Right, well I’m with you.” So I said “What are we going to do about this camp?” He said “What can we do about it? We’ll just make it secure and leave it and leave a letter for Gypsy and tell him that we’ve gone. He can have the skins, that’ll pay him for his trouble. When he comes out to see how we are going on as he said he would do he’ll find the letter and the skins and the camp and he can have all the gear back and the skins’ll pay him for his trouble. So we’ll just take what we want and we’ll go.” So we did do. We set off first to go to Coonamble and then we were going on to Longridge. What we hoped to find at Longridge I don’t know. It was just one of those things, a name came into my mind ad that was all there was to it.
It was our idea to strike across and hit the Castlereagh River and follow that out to Coonamble and carry on from there to Longridge. Anyhow, we got on to the River, there was no water in it, it’s a dry river is the Castlereagh, and if you want water you’ve to dig down about three or four feet in the sand. You can usually strike seepage water about three or four feet down. We came across a camp about the third night out I think it was. There was a sundowner camped on the riverbank and he was in pretty poor shape. We asked him what was the matter with him and he said it was stomach trouble. He felt that he couldn’t go on any further and he’d just made camp and was staying there hoping to get a bit better. Well we talked it over and decided that we couldn’t leave him there, we’d have to get him somehow to where he could get a doctor. There was a shanty about a mile away and I went up to this and I asked them where the nearest doctor was. They said there was a doctor in Coonamble and one in Gilgandra but there’s none any nearer than that. So I asked him where the nearest troopers headquarters was. He said there’s a trooper stationed at Gulargumbone but he’s not there all the time, he spends most of his time out on the runs. So I asked how far is it to Gulargumbone? He said not far, about ten or twelve miles. So I thought I’d go and see if I could find this trooper. I went back to the camp and told me mate what I was going to do and he said right, I’ll stay here with him and you see if you can find a trooper. I went into Gulargumbone and fortunately for me the trooper was home. I told him about this chap that was ill and asked him whether he could make some arrangements to have him picked up. He said they’d have him picked up if I showed them where he was. He got the tracker to hook up a buckboard and they came out to fetch him.
Anyhow, we went out. I showed them the way out and had a ride on the buckboard and we told this chap that we were going to see him into a hospital. He was very grateful to us for what we’d done and he said that he knew he was going to die, he’d never get over this lot and there was something he wanted us to have in appreciation for our kindness. We said we didn’t want anything but he said he was going to give us this because it was no good to him, he would never be able to use it. He pulled a dirty piece of paper out of his pocket. I said “What’s that?” He said “This is a map and it’ll show you where there’s an opal patch. There’s opal there, there’s slabs as big as your hand. If you can find this place you’ll make a fortune.” So we had a look at the map and he showed us where we was on the map and we had to follow the river along until we came to, I think it was the third or fourth creek running in from the East, and we had to follow this creek along and follow the directions on the map and we’d find these workings. He said we’d be able to find them because he had been digging there and we would be able to see where he had been working.
Sop off we went. Course, we only had a few days grub and we didn’t know how we were going to get any more but anyhow we went to this shanty and we bought what we could pay for there and he gave us a bit extra and we told him where we were going. We were damn fools for telling him because if the mine had been worth anything they might have got there before us and got the lot. Anyhow, we got fixed up and off we went.
We came to this creek that we were supposed to follow up and we followed it along until we came to the spot that was indicated. We looked round and found these workings. We were that bloody eager we had to start digging straight away! We weren’t digging long, because opal’s only, at the most, about five or six feet under the ground, it’s not in mines, it’s generally always close to the surface, and we came across this big lump of opal. Oh, there was loads of it there. In about three hours digging we filled a soujee bag, that’s a 28lbs. sugar bag. We filled this sugar bag with this stuff and we covered the workings up again, threw branches over it so nobody would be attracted to it and decided that we should take this stuff into Coonamble and sell it. Then we could get a camp together and go out and mine the job properly.
Anyhow, we set off lugging this stuff. He was taking a turn at it and I was taking a turn at it and we eventually get into Coonamble dead broke but with a fortune in the soujee bag.
We made enquiries around the town as to where we could sell opal. Well nobody knew nothing at all about opal there. There was no opal round about Coonamble and therefore there was no buyers there. They said that the nearest buyer that we could find was at Lightning Ridge. We didn’t fancy going all the way to Lightning Ridge so eventually the sergeant trooper suggested that we should send this stuff to Lightning Ridge and wait in Coonamble. If it was of any value they’d let us know. We thought that was a good idea so we packed it up, we got a packing case from one of the local stores and we packed this stuff up in it. From the land office we got the address of a local assay man in Lightning Ridge and we sent it off to him. We planned to wait until we heard from him.
As we had no money it meant looking round for something to do. I went down to the agents place on the main street, there was no such thing as labour exchanges in those days, there was employment agencies. It was run this way; if they found you a job you paid them so much out of your first weeks wages and your employer paid them so much for finding them the man. He said that he had quite a number of jobs on but there was only one that was anywhere local. This was about 15 miles away and he said they were wanting an engineer on a boring rig. The engineer had been taken ill and had been sent away to Dubbo for an operation and there was no one to look after the engine. So I said I’d take the job on. He said alright, you be here tomorrow morning at eight o’clock and we’ll have someone take you out.
I turned up next morning at eight o’clock and we went out to this boring rig. It was shut down when I got there because there was no one to run the engine, no one knew anything at all about it. I lit up and got steam up and we started boring. Well, it looked to me to be a pretty ramshackle sort of a place, the bits they were using had seen better days and I noticed a lot of the rope tackle was splintered and altogether I didn’t like the look of it much. I got talking to the lads on the job and I found out that they hadn’t been paid for a month and I thought well, this is no bloody use to me because I want me money on the nail. So I went to the foreman and I told him that I wanted to get a sub. He said I couldn’t have any money in advance. I didn’t call it a sub then, I told him I wanted some money in advance, I didn’t know that it was called a sub. He said “You can’t have any money in advance, in fact you can’t have any money at all until we strike water.” I said “To hell with that for a tale we might be here a month before we strike water and I’m not going to work a month for nothing.” So I packed in and went off to Coonamble. When I got back we had just received the letter from Lightning Ridge about our opal find.
The assay bloke started off by saying that he was interested in our find in that location because he had never heard of anybody finding anything like opal in that district. He said that as far as you’re concerned you’ve arrived on the job about 400 years too soon. The material that you’ve sent us is what we call potch opal. It’s opal in the early stages of development and looking at these samples I would say that they are about 400 years off being developed. He said if you mark the spot and record it, in 400 years time somebody might be able to get a nice find of opal there. So that was goodbye to our dreams of wealth and prosperity.
As we’d no prospect of fortune in the opal field we had to think about our bread and butter so we decided that we’d go and look for a job.
We went down to the labour agency and he said “yes, they could fix us up. There was a feller going stick-picking out on the Warren Road and he wanted some men and if we liked we could go along. I asked what the wage was and he said it was thirty bob a week and your keep. So we took it on.
Arrangements were made that we had to join the gang at the railway station at about ten o’clock at night and they were going to travel all night. So we got our swags together and we set off down to the railway station. I can remember we passed a roller-skating rink on the way down and the band was playing “This is the end of a Perfect Day.” It was the end of a perfect day for us - we were still feeling sore about the opal.
We eventually joined the gang and when we had a roll call and found out that we were all there he told us to put our swags on the wagon but we’d have to walk unless we got very tired and then it might be permissible to allow one or two to ride on the wagon but he said it was overloaded already. So we set off and walked into the night. About three o’clock in the morning we stopped at a dry camp and had a meal. He decided that as some of the fellers were complaining about us walking at night-time, that we’d camp until morning. So we got our rolls out and were soon into bed. I remember that particular night well because it was a bright moonlight night and as we were lying out in the open, just before we went to sleep somebody said tonight is the night we should be able to see Halley’s Comet. So we laid awake waiting for it. In about an hours time we saw the light in the sky and we lay there talking and watching this thing as it went over. (1910) It was only in our view for about ten or fifteen minutes and then it was gone. So we went off to sleep.
The next morning we packed up and set off. We got to the site where the job was late in the afternoon. It was too late and we were too tired to bother about rigging up a camp so we just slept out in the open that night. The boss decided that we could have the next day to set up our camp. Now this job was being done on a station belonging to a big sheep farmer by the name of Jacky Dowle and the name of the place was Cadooga.
Anyhow, we rigged up the camp and got settled in. We noticed straight away that the food was very rough. There was plenty of it but it was very roughly cooked and served. Anyhow the next day we set off to work.
Now stick-picking is an operation that’s carried out three or four years after the forest has been ring-barked. When the trees die the branches start to fall off them and the ground gets covered up by timber laying all over the place. There’s two ways of carrying out this job, one is to stack all the fallen timber round the dead trees and burn the trees down and then go round and cut them down and put them into heaps and burn all the dead timber on the ground. But on this job, we were not bothering about standing trees we were only picking up the fallen timber and burning that and leaving the trees standing.
On a job like this they generally set you out in a line across a field and you sort of worked within your own lane. The idea is that you all have to keep up with each other. Well, we went on alright the first day and at night time I was told off to help light the fires because you don’t set fire to the timber as you go along. If you did, and the wind was in the wrong direction or you got a change of wind you might find yourself working under very unpleasant conditions in the smoke from the fires. So the burning was left until night time and the technique was that when you were coming towards the end of a days run, two or three fires would be lighted just so that there’d be some hot coals. When you went round to light up you just took a shovel of coals and threw it into the heaps and they were soon afire and going well. Well, we did this and we got home a bit later than the others and we were told that next morning we could have half an hour spell, before we set out to work to compensate us for the bit of overtime that we’d worked. They didn’t pay overtime they only worked a set day.
Well, we went on like this for two or three days, I don’t know exactly but we were discontented about the food. On this particular morning the boss came along to me and told me that I’d have to work a bit faster, I wasn’t keeping up with the other fellers. I said “I’m not keeping up with the others because there’s more timber in this bit of ground that I’m on at the present time, that’s why I’m getting behind. Anyhow, I said I’m not going any faster.” Well, he said if you don’t keep up with the others you’re no use to me. So I said “You’re no bloody use to me either because if I’ve got to work for a slave driver I’ll do it somewhere else but I’m not going to do it here so you can stick your job where Paddy stuck the nuts and give me me time. I’m off.” So Mick saw us talking and he came over and asked “What’s the blur?” “Oh,” I said “I’m packing in, I’m not working for this bugger, he’s a bloody slave driver!” So Mick said “If you’re packing in I’m packing in too.” There were one or two other fellers packed in when they saw us doing it. This sort of thing always happens in a new camp. Fellers haven’t got settled down and got to know the conditions and the people they’re working for and the least little bit of a flare up and everyone wants to leave.
When I thought about it afterwards, well, I owned up to myself that I was in the wrong because this feller was regarding me as a lad, which I was, and he was only trying to jerk me up a little bit because he thought I was slacking and I probably was. But anyhow, I wouldn’t admit that to him so he gave us a note, I think it was three days pay. So we packed our swags and we set off for the homestead. We had to go to Cadooga homestead to draw our money. He just simply gave us a chit.
We set off and there was about fifteen miles to walk across this plain and it was the first time that I’d ever really seen a proper artesian water irrigation scheme. There was canals cut right across the plain and the water was flowing down a main canal which had branches running off it and flood gates which they could close or open at will and the whole plain was covered with grass, there was grass up to the sheeps bellies. It was quite different from the ordinary plains you’d come across in the outback when you’d see nothing but roly polies and saltbush. Well, we got about half way to the station when it started to rain. We knew it was the rainy season coming on, we expected it any time, anyhow it caught us flat out in the middle of this plain and it rained cats and dogs. We were wet through to the skin, all our blankets were wet, everything was wet. We were walking in mud up to our ankles. We couldn’t stop, there was no dry place to stop, we had to keep slogging on. Eventually we pulled up at the homestead. We went to see the storekeeper, nearly all these places the storekeeper acts as cashier. He’s like the purser aboard ship, he looks after all the financial matters and also looks after the food for the outlying stations and hand-outs to sundowners and all that sort of thing.
Anyhow, we drew our money and when I went to get mine he said to me “You’re a bit young aren’t you to be knocking about out here?” [17 years] I said, “Oh, I don’t know, I’m able to look after myself.” He said “Oh, I don’t doubt that at all but I’ve got some lads meself how old are you?” I said “That’s my bloody business.” He said “What are you going to do now?” I said “I don’t know, I’m going to look for a job somewhere.” He said “Well, I think I can put you onto a job.” I said “Is there a job for me mate as well?” He said “I think so, I’ve heard that Mr Fraser was wanting some men and you might do worse than go out to his place and see whether there’s any chance of anything.” So we asked him directions to the place and when the other fellers had gone we set off for Mr Fraser’s ranch.
We got out there late in the evening and the storekeeper took us for sundowners when we got there. He didn’t ask us what we wanted or anything. We just walked in and he said Hello and gave us a handout of grub and said that if we liked we could go and sleep in the bunkhouse. So I said to him, “We’ve come out here from Cadooga. We’re looking for a job. We’ve heard that you want some men here.” He said “Yes, we do want some men but the boss isn’t here at the moment. He’s away and he won’t be back until later tonight so the best thing you can do is to get into the bunkhouse and rig yourself up for the night and by the way, if there’s anything left in the cookhouse you see the cook he’ll give you your supper.” So we went over and the cook fixed us up with supper and we put our things in the bunkhouse, they were still damp, they weren’t properly dry then from the drenching we’d got.
When the riders came in we heard all about the background of station life. Mr Fraser was a man about 72 or 73 years old and he’d only lately been married to a barmaid from Mungindi who was only about 23 or 24 year old. He had the reputation for being a bit of a martinet but all in all they said he wasn’t a bad bloke to work for. Next morning, we went over to the store and asked the storekeeper whether we could see the boss and he said that we couldn’t see him just yet because he was having his breakfast. But he said if we just hung about he would let us know when he was free.
It wasn’t very long before he came along and said “you can go along and see him now.” and he pointed out the door on the veranda of the main house. He said “If you go and knock on that door he’ll be in his office.”
So we went over and knocked on the door and he shouted to come in so we went in. He said “Good morning.” We said “Good morning.” and he said “What do you want?” We said “We’re looking for work.” He said “What sort of work are you looking for?” I said “Any sort of work as far as I’m concerned. I think it’s the same for me mate but he can speak for himself.” He said “Can you ride?” I said “A bit.” He said “What else can you do?” Of course, being a bragger I said “I can do anything.” So he said “Well, we’ll see about that. I can use you but it’s only for a short time. Just for this mustering and when the mustering is over of course I won’t need the extra hands.” So I said “That’s alright with me if it’s only a week or a fortnight it’ll do.” So he said “Alright, you’re on. Go down to see the foreman and he’ll fit you up with tackle and horses and then he’ll put you with one of the station riders and you can go out mustering.”
Well, on the way down, Mick said to me “What the bloody hell am I supposed to be?” I said “I don’t know, you can ride a horse can’t you?” He said “I’ve never been on a bloody horse in me life. I wouldn’t know which way to get on him.” I said “Oh, that’s a bit of a problem.” Anyhow got down and the overseer came out. He said “Are you two lads signed on for riding?” and I said “I am but my mate’s a roustabout.” He said “Oh, I can find him a job, there’s plenty he can do.”
So that was a relief, he said to me “Come into the saddle room and I’ll give you your saddle bridle and whip.” We went in and he said to me “You can pick any of those saddles there you can see on the wall.” There was about a dozen there and I looked around and picked a likely looking saddle and bridle and a whip. He said “You can go out into the yard now and you can take anything that’s in that yard.” When I went out the horse toller was there and I said “What one would you pick if you was me?” He said “Well, if I was you I’d pick that big yellow bay, he’ll draw all day. I didn’t fancy the look of this horse much. He was a rawboned, wild-eyed sort of a gelding and I said “What about one of those walers?” [cavalry horse exported to India from NSW]) He said “Oh, they’re alright but that’s the best ride of the lot.”
So anyhow I put a rope on him, put a saddle on, led him outside and this bloke never says a word to me and I was no sooner aboard than he started to pitch like hell. I wasn’t long before I parted company with him and of course there was a general laugh about the place. I got up and rubbed meself down, and some of them in the meantime had caught the horse, and I turned around to this horse toller and said “You bastards can say what you like but I haven’t come here to give an exhibition of buck-jump riding. I’m going to get another one, I’m not getting on him again.” They said I’d have to get on him again but I told them to go to hell. I said “I’m not getting on him again and I’m not riding him. I can ride him and if you like, next Sunday I’ll bet a fiver with you that says I can ride him but I’m not riding him this morning.” Anyhow I let him go and I caught another one and she was alright, she was nice and quiet.
So we went off and we did our mustering for the day, next day was the same and the next day the Old Man told me that I could have a spell in the yards. He said “You’ll be a bit saddle sore. It’ll give you a chance to get over your soreness a bit.” Anyhow I went roping in the yards that day. We went back at night time and when we got up next morning the overseer said to me “They got a bit of work round the house today. They want some wood cutting and one or two other jobs to do. There’s a couple of wheels to do, the tyres want cutting and shutting and you can give the blacksmith a hand. We went to cut the wood first and when we got there there was nothing there but a cross-cut saw. I saw standing alongside a portable engine and a saw bench. I said to one of the chaps “What the bloody hell are we doing cutting wood with a cross-cut saw when there’s a saw bench here.” “Oh”he says, “It’s broke down.” I said “What’s the matter with it?” He said “The engine won’t go.” So I went off back to the overseer and said to him “Why can’t we cut this wood with the engine and saw bench?” He said “You can’t because the engine’s broke down and we’re waiting for someone to come out and repair it.” I said “What’s the matter with it.” He said “If I knew what’s the matter with it I wouldn’t have to send for someone to repair it. I might be able to repair it myself.” Anyhow I said “Can I find out what’s the matter with it?” He said “Yes.” So I said “Can you give me anything to go by?” He said “The only thing that I can give you to go by is that when we light it up there’s steam keeps coming out of the top and we can’t stop it. Therefore we can’t get up steam.” So I said “Alright, we’ll go to have a look at it.”
Anyhow I went and had a look and it was an old Ruston Proctor engine and the safety valve was a deadweight valve. It was an arm actuated the valve and it had a deadweight you could slide backwards and forwards to either increase or decrease the head of steam that you wanted. There was no weight on this thing, it was missing. So we had a look round and I told him what I was looking for, I told ‘em it was a circular block of cast iron with a rectangular hole through it and I thought it would be about five or six inches in diameter. Anyhow we looked around for a while and we eventually found this thing in the cook’s galley. He’d been using it to make pressed beef. He had it for a weight to put on the tin to weigh the beef down. So we took it back and shoved it on, lit the boiler up and away she went.
Well, that did me a lot of good with the old man and the overseer, they thought I was a wonderful bloke. They asked whether I had any experience with engines and I said “Yes, I got quite a lot of experience with them.” Anyhow, we cut the wood and we helped the blacksmith with his cutting and shutting of tyres and next morning I reported for riding again. The overseer told me to go over to the house and report to the missus, they wanted something doing. So I went over and told her that the overseer had sent me. She found me one or two jobs but they were something and nothing, she wanted a bit of gardening doing. I knew nothing at all about gardening and I said that if she showed me what to do I’d do it but I didn’t know anything about it. Anyhow we pottered about in the garden for a bit and then she invited me inside for a drink of tea when it come about ten o’clock. We went in to have a drink of tea and she didn’t seem anxious for me to go to work again and we sat there talking. Anyhow, to cut a long story short, I did nothing that day and she told me to come back next morning. So I went back next morning and Mr Fraser had gone away to some neighbouring station for the day and wouldn’t be home until late at night. At least, that was what they thought. He came back earlier than anyone thought and caught his wife and I in a very compromising situation and I was ordered off to the bunkhouse. I don’t know what went off with them but I thought well this is it. I wasn’t in the bunkhouse very long before the storekeeper came down and he said here’s your time. I said “What about me mate?” He said “Well I don’t know about him, he’s somewhere about the place.” So I said “I’ll go and see him.” I went and found Mick and told him what had happened and he said “What have you been fired for?” I said “You mind your own bloody business, I’ve not been fired for anything that’s any concern of yours but I’ve been fired.” He said “Well, I’ll pull out too.” I said “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” He said “If you’re going, I’m going too so I’ll go and get me time.”
Anyhow he went and got his money and just as we were getting ready to go, a feller with a wagonette and six horses pulled into the yard. We had a chat with him and he said that he come from Warren. He was a regular carrier on that route. He used to bring goods out from Warren for the stations and then on his return journey he used to buy skins and hides or any small merchandise that they had and take it back to Warren and sell it, doing a bit of dealing. So we said to him “Where are you heading to from here?” He said “Well I’m going from here over to Crawley’s place. That was a place about 20 or 25 miles away. He said that he had heard that they were wanting men so I said “Do you know what it’s doing?” He said “No, I don’t know what it’s doing. But if you like you can come over with me and if you’re lucky you might strike a job and if you don’t, I’ll be back this way in about a week’s time and you can come back to Warren with me if you like and you’ll easy pick up a job there.”
So we said we’d go over and have a look. We found out this place was run by a widow woman and her two sons. The name was Crawley. The job was crutching sheep. There’s always a lot of trouble just after the first rains with blow flies on the sheep when the green grass comes the sheep get very loose and with the dung sticking to the wool it gets fly blown and if it’s not cleared away the sheep are soon in a very sorry state. So we said “What are you paying for the job?” He said “Well, it just depends on how many you can do in a day.” I said “Well, I dunno how many I can do in a day, I’ve never crutched a sheep but I’ll be able to if I get shown how and I’m sure my mate here is in the same category as me, he knows nothing about it. So he said “You can have a start and I’ll pay you what you’re worth.” I said “That’s no bloody use to me, I want to know what wages I’m going to draw.” So he said “I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you. I’ll start you at thirty bob a week and if you are as good as the other fellers than you’ll go up to the two pound five a week which is the standard rate of wage round this area for the job.” So we said we’d take it on at that and when did we start. He said “It’s too late to start now, you can start tomorrow morning.”
So we got ourselves into the bunkhouse and got ourselves rigged up there and there were six other fellers in the gang. We were having our meals in the main house. They hadn’t opened up the cookhouse in the men’s quarters because there was only eight of us with my mate and I and the Mother and two sons so the cooking was being done by the old woman and a coloured girl in the main house.
Well, it seemed to me like the middle of the night when a feller came shouting that it was time to get up. It was pitch dark, anyhow we got up and I said to somebody “What time is it?2 They said it was five o’clock. I said It’s a bit early to be getting up. Anyhow we went in to breakfast and breakfast was ready for us and it was a good one two. We set off for the woolshed which was only about a quarter of a mile away. The sheep had been in all night and we started at this crutching. Well, I soon got into the knack of crutching, there was nothing to it. Before the first day was over young Crawley come to me and said “Well, you’re on two pound five a week, I can see you’ve got the hang of it. I don’t know about your mate, he’s not doing quite so well.” I said, “You want to give him a bit of time, he’s a city lad but he’ll soon pick it up.” Anyhow, it come about five o’clock in the afternoon and I thought it was time we were knocking off so I started straightening me back and looking around. I said to one of the blokes “What time do we knock off?” He said “When it’s too dark for us to see.” So I went on and it was six o’clock before we finished. By the time we had got home and had a wash and got ready for tea it was after seven o’clock. So I weighed this lot up from five in the morning until seven at night for two pounds five a week was a bit hot.
So next morning when he rattled the bed I didn’t get up. I said I’m getting up a bit later on. He said “Oh, you’re feeling a bit stiff are you.” I never answered him so I just lay there and me mate lay there too. They didn’t say anything to us and we got up about seven o’clock and went over to the house and asked if there was any breakfast. She said “Yes, we’ve saved some breakfast for you.” Then we went over to the shed and made a start. He come round after we’d been going for a while and he said to me “Well that’s five bob off your wages.” I said “What for? You’re paying us two pounds five a week and when we’re late you reckon us at half a crown an hour? It’s not on.” Anyhow, we got through that day alright so I said to Mick that night “When McKenna comes back with his team, I’m packing in.” He said “Right, we’ll both pack in because I’m fed up with the bloody job.” So we carried on until we thought he was due to be back and we went and saw Mrs Crawley and told her that we wanted our time. She tried to persuade us to stop on. She said there was only a few more days and we’d be finished. I said I wasn’t staying on, I’d had all I want. We were going to get out. She made our time up for us and paid us and I said to her “Do you mind us hanging on here for a while? McKenna will be coming back this way won’t he?” She said “Yes” So I said we wanted to wait for him and see if there was any chance of getting a lift into Warren with him. She said we could wait there as far as she was concerned but they couldn’t feed us. We said we didn’t expect feeding, we’d feed ourselves if they sold us the grub and wait in the bunkhouse. Anyhow, this was agreed on and we settled in in the bunkhouse. One of the young Crawleys came and tried to put us off the place but we wouldn’t go, we told him his Mother had given us permission to stay and we were going to stay whether he liked it or not. He didn’t push the matter any further so we were alright. Anyhow, McKenna turned up and we asked him whether the lift to Warren was still on and he said “Yes, if you want to go I’ll take you.” So we said “Right, we’ll be with you. You let us know when you are ready to go and we’ll be with you. He said he’d be ready to go first thing in the morning. So next morning, after he’d made his deal for what skins and hides they had to sell, we loaded up the wagon and we said goodbye to Wambie station and set off for Warren.
We were going along the road about ten or fifteen miles from Wambie and I saw a straw wrapper lying in the road so I said to Geoff McKenna “Pull up, I’m going to get down and see what that is.” I jumped down and had a look and it was a quart bottle of Wolf Schnapps. We were laughing at finding this bottle of schnapps and we said we’d have a go at it when we stopped for dinner and he said “We’ll be stopping for dinner, there’s a billabong just down the road here and we’ll stop there and have some water and a bit of grass for the horses.” Anyhow we got to this billabong, pulled off into the shade of a tree. We didn’t unhook the horses, he said it wasn’t worth unhooking them, we’d put nosebags on ‘em. We boiled a billy and had a feed and then we decided we’d sample the schnapps. So we boiled the billy of water and kept putting a bit of this schnapps into the pannikin and putting the boiling water on it and some sugar and it didn’t taste too bad at all. Well we went on having another and having another and eventually I passed out and I woke up somewhere about sundown. The other two were still flat out and the team with the wagonette was in the billabong. The horses must have got thirsty during the afternoon and went in the water to get a drink. They were all tangled up, still with their nosebags on soaked with water. So eventually I roused the other two up asked Geoff what he was going to do now. He said “The first thing we’ve got to do is get out of this flaming billabong because if we go any further in there we’re sure to get bogged down. Just leave it to me and I’ll try to get ‘em out.”
Well he got up and got them straightened out and he tried to turn very sharp to get out of the billabong. It was going in at an angle of about 45 degrees and he turned out too quickly. To make sure of getting out, when the horses were coming into line, he let go of his whip and started shouting. They slammed into the collar and the bloody pole broke. Well they went for a while, they was going one way and the wagonette was going the other way because it had nothing to guide it when the pole broke. He got ‘em stopped but they were further into the swamp than before they started. Then there was the question of the broken pole. We weighed it up to see whether we could take it out of the undercarriage where it was broken and shorten the pole. But we found out if we did that it was too short for the horses, their rumps would be rubbing against the front of the wagonette. So we thought the only thing we could do was go and look for a pole. We set off with an axe and we must have walked a couple of mile before we found a sapling that was suitable. We cut it down and then we had to carry it back on our shoulders and then shape it with the axe. We had no brace and bit to bore holes in it, that was our next trouble. So we got it in and we found a bit of iron on the wagon and we burnt hole through with the hot iron. Eventually, sometime during the night the pole was fixed in. I suggested to him that perhaps the best thing to do would be to hook the team on to the back of the wagonette and Mick and I would hold the pole and steer it and he could pull it out backwards. So he said “I think we’d better leave that operation until first thing in the morning”. Which we did.
Next morning we tried it. It worked and we got it out and we got on the road to Warren about ten o’clock. We camped that night a few miles outside Warren and next morning we went into town. We took up our abode in an empty house. McKenna said it’d be alright as nobody had lived in it for years. A lot of the tramps used it at odd times if the weather was bad. We settled in and made ourselves as comfortable as we possibly could.
We didn’t do anything for the first couple of days. We just went round looking the town over and having a good time. But funds were getting low. We had a bit of a pow-wow and decided that we’d have to look for job. We had a look round but there were no jobs about. Mick suggested that we should go into the paper flower trade. I said that would be alright but did he know anything about it. He said “I know all about it. I can make paper flowers, all sorts of flowers, tulips and roses and anything you like. So I said “Righto, it suits me.” He said “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, we’ll put so much money into it, buy the materials, providing they could be had in the town, and I’ll make the flowers and you can go round selling them.” I said “Right, that suits me.” So we went down town and bought a lot of rolls of coloured crimp paper and some wreath wire and went off back to the factory to make a start.
Well, I worked with him the first afternoon until we got a supply made. First we made buttonholes and small bouquets of flowers. Next morning I found an old cardboard box and pierced a lot of holes in it with a nail and stuck these flowers in and set off down the town to try and sell them. Well I got down on the street and I was mobbed. People were running after me. Things that he’d told me to charge sixpence for I was charging a bob and things that he said were half a crown I was asking three and six and four bob or as much as five bob for ‘em. Anyhow I was back again in about a couple of hours sold out. He had some more ready and I sold them, I came back again and I said “The best thing we can do, I’ll settle in and help you and we’ll get a good load for tomorrow because I believe there’s a gang of fellers coming in tomorrow and they’ll be buying flowers for all the girls around the place. So I said we wanted to get a lot of buttonholes and small bouquets ready which we did do.
The next day I set off again and the story was the same. I could sell the flowers quicker than we could make them. On this particular day I’d been going round these fellers that had come in from the job, I don’t know what sort of a job they’d been on, that doesn’t matter, but I was talking to them and they told me there was some fellers bedded down out in the stables and they might want to buy some. So I went off out into the stables and I went in. There was only one feller there and he was asleep, dead drunk and he had a black silk shirt on and in his shirt pocket there was a wad of notes as big as a blanket. I’ll bet if there was one note there was 150 or 200. I felt his other pockets and he had a little canvas bag and I don’t know how much was in that because I didn’t open it. I pulled that out of his pocket and I took his wad of notes and I shoved ‘em inside me shirt and went out into the street.
The police station was on the opposite side of the road and just a little bit further up than this pub that I’d been in. So I went up to the police station and asked to see the sergeant. They took me into a room and he said “What do you want?” I said “I’ve got these.” and I put me hand in me shirt and pulled out this roll of notes and this bag of silver money or whatever it was. He had a look at it and said “There’s getting on for a couple of hundred quid here. Where did you get it?” I said “I took it off a bloke down at the Commercial Hotel.” He said “You took it off him?” I said “Yes. He’s out in the stables dead drunk. I couldn’t wake him up and there’s sure to be a few deadlegs about, there always is when fellers come in from the station and I thought it would be better if I took it off him and brought it over to you.” He said, “You did the right thing.” He took my name and address, I told him where we were camped and he said that was alright. He’d send a trooper to find out who the feller was and when he was sober they’d give him his money back. Well, I was afterwards to be very glad that I did what I did in regards to this bloke. But I’ll tell you about that when we get to it.
I still went on with me flower selling job and I started to get orders for fire screens and great big bunches of flowers. The Royal Hotel told me that they’d take as many bunches as I could make up. They wanted them for decorations in the rooms. Anyhow, we had to come to a stop because we’d bought up all the crimped paper there was in the town. They said we’d have to wait for new stocks so that brought that little proceeding to an end. In the meantime we’d made quite a bit of money and this left us at a dead end again. So one morning I went down the town and was looking for a job. I hadn’t found anything and I stayed in town and had a meal in a little cafe in the town and I went home in the afternoon about four or five o’clock.
When I got to the house I saw a trooper there. I thought hello, they’re after us for selling these paper flowers without a licence, because you were supposed to have a hawker’s licence. I knew this and I suppose Mick knew it too but neither of us said anything to each other about it. Anyhow, when I went in the constable said to me “Do you know anything about this?” I said “Anything about what? This paper flower business?” He said “No.” I said “I don’t know anything about anything else ‘cause that’s all we’ve done since we come here.” He said “Do you know anything about this swag?” I said “No, I’ve never seen it before.” He said “Have you been with your mate all day?” I said “No. I haven’t been with him at all. He’s been here as far as I know.” He said “Was you with him yesterday?” I said “No, I wasn’t with him yesterday. I haven’t been with him at all since the first day we come here because he’s been working here and I’ve been hawking these flowers around the town.” Then he said “We suspect that either him or you has stolen this swag. It was reported lost to us yesterday and we found it under the floorboards here this morning.” Well these houses were built about two or three feet above the ground because Warren’s in a low-lying place and when the heavy rains come there’s likely to be floods and they’re built off the ground to prevent flooding. I said “Where’s me mate?” and he said “He’s down at the station.” So I said I’d go down and see him but they said I wouldn’t be able to even if I went down. The best thing I could do was stay here and if they wanted me they would come for me. Anyhow, they didn’t come for me, not that day at any rate.
The next day I went down to the station to see what had happened to Mick. I didn’t see the sergeant, I saw a trooper and he said to me “Well your mate is on his way to Sydney.” I said “Has he gone?” He said “He hasn’t gone, we’ve taken him. That’s what we were waiting for. We were waiting for a wire from Sydney yesterday when I was talking to you. He’s wanted in Sydney for robbery.” I said “I didn’t know anything at all about that.” He said “No, I don’t suppose that you did, but if you take my advice you’ll get yourself a job and you won’t bother yourself any more about Mr Duggan because when that case is over he’ll have to answer this one and for that reason you won’t be able to leave Warren.” I said “Well, that depends on how long it is before he gets tried for this case. I’m not staying here, I’ve got to make a living.” He said “Anyhow, you try to find yourself a job and wherever you go to let us know where you are and if you’re wanted we’ll come for you.”
I went back to the house where we were camped and I started thinking and I thought well, the best thing I can do is to get out of this place because there might be other tramps coming in and I might get mixed up with them. If I go and stay in a hotel I’ll have a lot better chance of getting a job. I wasn’t short of money then, I had forty or fifty quid in me pocket so I decided to go and stay at the Royal Hotel.
There was a groom at the Royal Hotel called Jimmy Greenoway. He was a half-caste lad. I, hadn’t been there very long before I found me way out to the stables. I told him I was looking for a job and he said “Where do you come from?” and I told him. He said “You’ll know a bit about farming won’t you?” I said “Aye.” He said “Well, there’s a man, he’s in Warren now, his horse is in the stable here and I know that he’s looking for some men to run a chaff-cutter. Do you know anything about chaff-cutting?” I said “Aye, I know something about it.” He said “He’s a Mr Grogan and he’s staying in the hotel. If you hang about I’ll either point him out to you or get one of the girls to point him out to you.” So anyhow, he saw one of the girls and told her that I was looking for him and when we went in for our meal at midday she came to me and said “Do you see that man sitting over in the corner, that’s the man you’re looking for, Mr Grogan.” I thought I’ll not bother him while he’s at his lunch. I’ll catch him when he comes out.
I hurried up and finished me dinner and I went out and sat on the veranda until he came out. So when he come out I got up and I said “Are you Mr Grogan?” He said “Yes.” I said “I hear you’re looking for some men.” He looked me up and down and said “Where do they get their boys from round about here?” I didn’t know what to say for a while but then I said “I’m looking for a man’s job and I can do a man’s job. I hear you’re wanting some fellers to run a chaff cutter.” He said “That’s right, I do. Do you know anything about chaff-cutting?” I said “I know a bit about it. What sort of a machine have you got?” He said “I’m not so sure.” I said to him “Is it a John Bunker or a Cliff and Bunting?” because I knew that these are the two makes most popular around the Western districts. He said “Now you come to mention it I think it’s a Cliff and Bunting.” I said “What sort of an engine have you got?” He said “It’s a stationary engine.” I said “It’s a stationary engine? Do you have to take the hay to the chaff-cutter and not the chaff-cutter to the hay?” He said “No, we take the chaff cutter to the hay.” So I said “Well you haven’t got a stationary engine, you got a portable engine.” He said “I don’t know whether it’s portable or stationary.” I said “Has it got shafts on it?” He said “Yes.” I said “Well, it’s a portable engine.” Well, my idea in talking this way to him was to give him the idea that I knew something about chaff-cutting. He said to me “What jobs can you do on a chaff-cutter.” I said “I can do any job at all. I can either pitch or go steaming or feed the chaff-cutter or attending to the bagging, anything that you like.” “Well,” he said, “You’re a cheeky young bugger. I’ll give you a job. Where are you staying?” I said “I’m staying here at the hotel.” He said “I’m not going until tomorrow.” I said “Well, that suits me.” He said “You be here tomorrow morning, I’ll tell you at breakfast time what time we’re leaving.” So I said “Right you are, you’ve got yourself a man.” and he went away laughing.
When we got out to his place it was getting on for teatime and I took me swag off the buckboard and by this time his wife had come out. I said to him “ Where’s the bunkhouse?” He just started to point to the stables and his wife said to him “No you don’t Jim Grogan, you’re not sending that child over there.” He looked at her and said nothing. She said “He’s coming in the house with us.” So anyroad he says “if that’s what you want. You’d better go with the wife and she’ll show you where you’re going.” So I went inside and she asked me me name and she showed me to a little bedroom on the veranda of the house. It wasn’t actually in the house it was a sort of an annexe to the house. She said “You can make yourself comfortable in there for as long as you’re here and I’ll give you a shout when tea’s ready.” I said “Oh, it’s alright, I’ll go over to the bunkhouse and have me tea with the men.” and she said “No you won’t you’ll have your tea with us.” Well I had me tea and it was the first time I’d ever seen pumpkin pie. We had our meat course and then she said to me “Would you like some pie?” and I said “Yes please.” and she brought this out and it was the loveliest dish I’d tasted for a long time and I said to her when I’d finished it “What was that?” She said “That was pumpkin pie.” I said “I didn’t know that you could make sweet pies out of pumpkin.” “Oh yes you can,” she said, “You can make anything out of a pumpkin.” She was perfectly right as far as the pie was concerned, it was lovely.
So next morning he got the gang together and we went and set the chaff-cutter up against the stack. I said to him “Is this all you’ve got to cut?” He said “That’s enough isn’t it?” I said “This isn’t going to last us long. There’s only two stacks here. We’ll be lucky if there’s more than sixty tons.” He says “You’re right, I’m told there’s about sixty tons there.” I said “Well that’s not going to last us long.” He said “Why, how much can you do a day?” I said “Well, if you’re working an eight hour day, we should get through an average of twenty tons a day so we’ll be out of a job in three days.” He said “You’ll never get through that in three days. It’ll take you a week or a fortnight.” I said “Well, if these blokes can get it to me I’ll get it through the machine. How many men have you got on the bagger?” He said “We’ve got two.” I said “Have they ever done this job before?” He said “They can sew bags.” I said “They might be able to sew bags have they ever been at the end of a chaff-cutter before?” He said “Best thing to do is go and have a talk with them. You seem to know more about this machine than I do. If you’re not careful I’ll be making you the boss in a bit.” So I said “I’m only trying to help.” So he called these blokes out and he said to ‘em “This feller wants to have a talk to you.” So I said “How many bags an hour can you sew?” Oh he says “I dunno. I reckon I can do a bag every five minutes.” I said “That’s no bloody good you want to be able to do a bag every minute.” He said “I can’t do a bag a minute and I’m not going to try.” I said “get your tackle ready and let’s see how you’re shaping.
So they went and got their tackle ready. Got their bags and put them down. I said “That’s no good, you want two heaps of bags, one on either side of the machine so all you’ve got to do is bend down and pick a bag up.” Well we got the bags lined up for ‘em alright and then they got the string. Well, they got a hank of twine and they just cut it and hung it up. I said “That’s no good either, you want to wet it.” We got this twine wetted and I said “Show me your needles.” Well, they were ordinary packing needles, the one with the big curved end on it. I said “ that’s no good either.” Grogan said “It looks to me as if there’s nothing right about this place. The best thing you can do is take over the manager’s job and I can go in the gang.” I said “Well, it isn’t. That needle’s no good.” He said “What are we going to do about it?” I said “I’ll make ‘em right. Give me a couple of needles and we’ll go over to the blacksmith’s shop and we’ll soon put ‘em right.” So we took these needles and I cut the ends of them, got ‘em hot and drew them out into a straight needle about four inches long. We ground ‘em up on the grindstone, got them in shipshape order and Grogan said to me “Well, that doesn’t look anything like a packing needle now!” Anyhow I said “I’ll show you how to use ‘em when we get started.”
We got them lined up and we got the bloke feeding the steamer lined up alright, told him what he had to do, and the pitchers on the stack, all they had to do was to throw the sheaves down. There was a feller looking after the engine. He’d never looked after an engine before but with a bit of tuition we got him doing the right thing. Well, we couldn’t average the three ton an hour because they had nobody to sharpen the blades and you had to sharpen them every hour. S every hour I had to spend about twenty minutes sharpening blades. When we got started I took it easy for a while to get these lads at the backside a chance. They got into a hell of a mess and we used to run for so long then I’d go down and give them a hand to catch up. But they were catching on at this bagging pretty good. If we’d have had much to do it wouldn’t have been long before a couple of them would have handled sixty bags an hour. Anyhow we kept ploughing on and it took us about a week and we cut out.
So I said to Mr Grogan “I suppose that’s that. What’s the best way to get back to Warren?” He said “I shouldn’t bother going back to Warren if I was you if you’re still looking for work. There’s a man called Mr Wingate who owns Warraby station and I was talking to him out on the run yesterday and I was telling him about you. He’s looking for a man for chaff-cutting. They got their hay still to make. They’re going to make the hay and take it straight to the chaff-cutter and cut it without stacking it.” So I said “How do I get in touch with him?” He said “I think if you leave it and you just hang round for a day he’ll be turning up because he said he’d very likely come over and have a word with you. So anyhow, he did turn up and he asked me if I was interested in going to work for him and I said yes. So I said “What sort of machine you got?” He said “It’s only a small machine ours. It’s not as big as this one. It’s only got one of those drums at the back.” This was a single bagging machine. Well, you’d be lucky if you did twenty five hundredweight an hour on it. Anyhow I said I’d go. He said “If you get your swag I’ll take you back with me on the buckboard. So we set off, got back to Warraby and he showed me where I was to sleep, showed me where the dining room was. This station was built with the main house and the crews quarters in a long building There was a long main building and a wing down one side where the wash-house, outhouses and all that down one wing and the crews quarters down the other side. Then it run off, there was an “L” shaped wing, there was a butcher’s shop and a small bedroom at the end that they put me in. I wasn’t sleeping actually in the big dormitory where the rest of the crew were sleeping and I think they’d done this because they thought I looked a bit young. Anyhow I got settled in and the first thing was to start making hay.
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LESLIE GRAHAM MACDONALD TAPE (09)
