The Farm

The farm is the centre of the boys world for the first 16 years.

The farm was as I have said a small mixed farm.  It had a small orchard, not enough for a commercial crop, but plenty for the boy's mother, aunt and grandmother, all of whom lived on the farm, to spend weeks preparing and bottling their preserves.  The orchard was adjacent to the milking shed.  Eight bails were available but usually only six were used as it was easier to handle.  The pens for the milking shed backed onto a large hay shed.  

The hay shed was the boy's favourite place to play, he would spend hundreds of hours playing cowboys and indians or pirates or some other childhood fantasy.  It was enormous, standing some 40 feet high and 200 feet by 100 feet in dimension.  It was often half filled with baled lucern hay, which the boy would climb, build with and hide among.

Across the driveway from the shed stood 2 farm houses.  The largest was a "Queenslander" style home, surrounded by a wide veranda, open on three sides with the rear veranda being closed in.  The rear veranda was divided into two bedrooms and a sitting room.  One bedroom belonged to the grandfather (Fardie) and grandmother (Nanna), the other to the boy's older cousin.  The boy's uncle and aunt lived in the front bedroom of the large house.

I was intrigued by "Fardies" house, the smell of cigars, tobacco and old papers filled his bedroom.  It was a scary place for me, but intriguing.  The kitchen was always abuzz, Nanna would be cooking or cleaning or sitting at the table sipping tea.  Nanna would bake bread, churn butter made from cream separated from the milk.  I used to love sitting up at the table with Fardie, he would slice home backed bread thickly, give it to Nanna to toast, then smother it with freshly made butter.  He always crushed the crusts and buttered right to the edge.

When Nanna wasn't in the kitchen or laundry she would be sitting on the side veranda shelling peas or peeling potatoes in the sun.  Nanna had been a seamstress and sewed the most beautiful clothes on an old Treadle Singer Sewing Machine on the back verandah.

A smaller, workers cottage was at the rear, it had had two rooms added so that it was large enough for he boy, his father, mother and sister.  It was definitely a workers cottage.  The kitchen was about 10 feet by 12 feet, and one end was walled off with a partition to divide off the bathroom and laundry.  This left an area about 10 x 8 to contain the kitchen table, 4 chairs, a side board, a refrigerator, a sink, an electric range and a built in wood burning oven.

From the kitchen a door led to a small veranda that was added on later.  The veranda was fully enclosed and contained a single bed that at night served as my younger sister's bed, during the day it was a lounge.  There also was a small sewing table where my mother would create all or most of our clothes.  There was a door from the veranda to the back yard.

The partitioned off bathroom/laundry was very crowded.  It contained a twin tub washing machine, a twin concrete laundry tub, a large electric copper a bath and an overhead cupboard.  All crammed into a 10 x 4 foot space.

The boy remembers fondly the many times he and his little sister were bathed by their mother in the concrete twin tubs, his sister in one tub and he in another.

His mother was the most wonderful woman he had ever met, she raised the two children under the most primitive of circumstances and never once complained, well not so the boy could hear.

The kitchen was as crowded as the bathroom, but to the boy it was just another kitchen.  He would come home from school to find his mother always fussing around the kitchen.  Looking back he finds it hard to believe that she accomplished all the wonderful cooking and baking in such a small confined space.

But it wasn't only a kitchen, it was a sewing room, an entertaining room and for many years the family room. There was a dinning room, or more correctly a dinning/lounge room but the radio sat on a shelf in the kitchen over the stove, so that is where the family congregated.  They had no television, television was new and had not yet reached there part of the country, but the boy had sen it, in Sydney.

Dad steered the car to the front of the small house.  I raced inside to change my clothes, and went to the kitchen to watch Mum unpack the shopping.  I loved to see what they had bought, something that Mum would later turn into something mouth watering.  

His mother shooed the boy outside telling him to go play until tea time.  They were country folk, dinner time was called tea time, and lunch was referred to as dinner.

The boy went out to see what his father was doing.  He wore what he usually wore, a pair of pants, no shoes, no shirt, just his shorts.  His father had put the car in the garage and was heading towards the hay shed. He sang out to the boy, "Do you want to drive the tractor of me while I feed the cows" he said.

I loved driving the tractor, or the ute, but the tractor was better.  I raced ahead of Dad and climbed up onto the tractor.  Stretching down with one leg I stood on the clutch, checked it wasn't in gear,then adjusted the throttle and turned the key.

The engine bust into life sending up a puff of white smoke.  Dad climbed up along side me and perched himself at my side, resting against the rear mudguard.  I pushed the gear into first, and slowly eased of the clutch.  The tractor jerked a little, then slowly crept out of the shed, behind it followed a small trailer loaded with six bales of lucern hay.  I pulled back on the throttle lever and the engine responded jerking Dad a little.  

The boy drove the tractor around the shed and headed off up the track to where the cows were put for the night. The track as it was known stretched from the house and hay shed, all the length of the farm.  It followed the fence line that divided the gully from the main farm.  The gully, was a dry creek bed that bisected the farm, it had a fence along both sides and it ran the length of the farm.  The furthermost end was fenced off 'forming a paddock that was used to keep the "dry" cows in, the ones that were calving who had no milk or were suckling calves.

The end of the gully closest to the house and shed too was fenced off to form a small paddock, this was accessed from the dairy yards and used to raise the young cows after they were weaned off their mothers.  These were known as "poddy calves" due to their fat bellies from milk.

The tractor bumped and bounced up the track as I steered it along the narrow track.  As we usually did I pulled up at the troughs where the cows come for water.  Dad climbed down and went to unplug the pipe which filled the troughs from a well.  I ran down a small path to the well and waited for the signal from Dad.  He signaled so I threw the switch and the electric motor whirred to life some 40 feet below on a small platform just above water level in the well.

I ran back to the troughs, trying in vain to beat the water but I saw it come gushing from the pipe over the trough as I arrived.  When the large trough had filled, Dad hooked a long pipe over the other to divert the flow to a second smaller trough.  I raced back to the pump house to switch it off when Dad gave me the signal.

I loved playing around the troughs, there was frogs and tadpoles and the cows would be sniffing around for a drink.  In the hot summer months I used the large trough as a swimming pool, my little sister however wouldn't come near it.  Like I said, it had frogs.

After the troughs were filled the father climbed onto the trailer and cut the strings holding the baled hay together, then the boy would put the tractor in low gear and slowly crawl along the fence adjoining the gully.  The cows who camped in the gully overnight followed us along, fighting over the latest piece of hay, after all, it must be the tastiest.

After the cows had been fed, the troughs filled, it was time to head back home for tea, the boy swung the tractor around, the trailer following faithfully behind, his father now sitting at the back of the trailer, his legs hanging over the edge.

The boy drove the entire ensemble into the shed.  Stopped the tractor, dismounted and ran to join his father as he headed into the house.