City or The Bush

For quite a few years, I’ve been under considerable pressure, from various areas to write something down about my life ,in North West Queensland, where I have lived for 70 years, on a property called Glenbede,which in 1924,was thrown open for selection, off country, owned by a company called, Collins White. The name of the property Glenedede came off, was called Eulolo, but more about this later.
I was born on 17th June 1930 in Winton in north-west Queensland, son of Peter Bede Tighe and Florence Maud (nee Olive). I am the only one of their 4 children who chose this “outback” life style. My older brother Noel Bede Tighe, was born 2 years earlier on 4th April 1928 and my 2 sisters, Mary and Carmel, came along 10 years after me in 1940 and 1942.
My father,who was born in Winton, and was the son of a famous stockman and buckjump writer, Mick Tighe. My father was one of 5 children ,3 boys and 2 girls. My father’s first job was working for a Blacksmith in Winton, and then he was a wool presser, working in the Winton Scour, as a wool presser, works a machine, which compresses wool into a big bag, which is then sewn up and trucked away to market. It was very hard work then, but nowadays an engine has taken place of manpower. Other work he did was work to do with sheep, mustering and lamb marking and anything else to do with sheep and wool. Quite often on a Saturday, he would travel to a country race meeting to ride in the races as he was a jockey and I still have whip he was presented with, for being the most successful jockey at the Race Meeting at Oorindi small town and Railway Station on The Townsville-Mt Isa line. So he did these kind of jobs until he acquired Glenbede in partnership with his sister Kate Tighe, who would have filled in all the paperwork attached to acquiring the property, as she was good with figures, as when QANTAS started in Winton about 1924. She was their book-keeper at this time, QANTAS were only carrying 1 or 2 passengers between towns like Charleville Longreach, McKinlay and Cloncurry. They only operated in North West Queensland in the early days.
My mother’s maiden name was Olive, she being one of ,4 girls and a boy, and he owned a property called Olive Grove which he drew maybe about 1910. He came out from France at an early, and married Annie Rooney, who came out from Ireland. This was a family who always seemed to be well off financially, which was unusual, as really the properties, were too small to make a good living from growing wool, but the answer was that he was also a bookmaker, taking bets on horses at all the country race meetings, who usually held one Race Meeting a year.
Now this is the history of my grandparents and parents, but as for me, I don’t remember a lot about my real early days, but Noel and I started our life at Glenbede, and more or less had pet animals like lambs and joey kangaroos to feed and play with, not many toys, although I can remember a toy car which we used to peddle about in. There wasn’t a lot of time to play with toys anyway, as we had our chores to do - like me helping Mum to milk the 3 cows, early mornings, when I was about 6 or 7, and then we had a pony each which we learnt to ride, and go with Dad to help muster sheep, at such times, as shearing, and lamb-marking and crutching, and after big rain, would ride along the creeks and gullies, looking for sheep to pull out of bog holes, as often when big monsoon rain came early in the year the sheep would get their feet stuck in the mud and would die there, unless some one found them and pulled them on to higher ground, as most of Glenbede was black soil country, and got very boggy after rain.
There was a hut on Glenbede when Dad first acquired it, a boundary riders hut, a boundary rider being a man who lived in this hut, which had a stove, bed cooking utensils, bathroom etc. The boundary rider looked after an area of land far away from the main station. This man was almost always single, and mostly in the 50 to 60 age group. Much younger men or women stayed in quarters at the main station and did work closer to the main station.
So when Dad first drew Glenbede, as he named it, he lived in this hut. When he got married to mum, he added some extensions to it, then more extensions after Mary and Carmel arrived, not that the extensions were very flash -- just corrugated iron roof with exposed beams, and they weren’t sealed or lined so was very hot in summer and cold in winter, but it was a house. I added further extensions just before I got married and also had the rooms in the house sealed and lined, eventually, and put on another verandah on, and the house remained like this until a fridge blew up and the house was burnt to the ground, on Good Friday, in 1980, and it is Good Friday 2001 today, the day I started writing this book!!! It was a bad day for it to get burnt down, as having lost everything in the fire clothes food cooking utensils and a 1000 other things, I wasn’t able, to buy any replacements, until after the Easter holidays, but all my friends from other properties, rallied together next day and brought all these kind of things down. Sid Batt even flew some stuff in his plane.
But to get back to the original house that dad and mum lived in 1924 there was no power, only carbide and Tilly lights, no refrigeration, so all the mutton (meat) which we butchered ourselves, had to be dry salted, so as it would keep, no telephone, and we had to go 8 kms to get mail that we only got once a week, and which we could get bread and stores out in later years. They had to come 50 miles from the railway siding called Gilliat, but the stores you got were limited because we had no refrigeration. So we got mostly tinned veges and potatoes and pumpkin which if kept in a cool place would nearly keep a week. Our main diet though was meat and bread, or damper. Everyone in those days could make bread and on wood stoves too, Also made yeast out of potato skin -- the yeast being to make the bread rise.
Of course all the roads at this time were dirt roads, and not even built up so as the water would run off, so if it rained much the mailman couldn’t’ travel so every one in this era usually had a store room well stocked with tinned veges ,and flour to make bread with, because if the wet season came, it could rain for a couple of weeks or more, so you had to have enough stores for this length of time. You could always get meat by killing a sheep and butchering it, but this wasn’t easy in the mud either.
When we were old enough to go to school, mum arranged with the Post Master and his wife to board Noel with them, and attend the State School in McKinlay where there about 20 kids going, and you could get educated up to 7th Grade there. On the other hand she decided to teach me by Correspondence which means I would get book of work to do one week, complete it and send it back the following week, when another one would come, which was the original way of teaching kids in the outback. The next method was for the teacher from a centre in big town to talk to the kids by 2 way radio and instruct them. Now I guess its all done by computers. Mum had trouble teaching me as I always wanted to be out with Dad mustering on my pony. If he let me do this on some days he would bring along some spellings and arithmetic tables to ask me as we rode along.
All this worked for a while, but then Mum and Dad decided to send us to boarding school to a Convent run by Catholic nuns at a place called Halifax 800 kms away. They took us down when we first went on the train, but for the next 2 years, we travelled by ourselves .Only came home in June for 2 weeks and Christmas 6 weeks. This was to be the first of 4 boarding school I went to, the others being a 3 day and 2 night away on the train. Went to Downlands in Toowoomba, and then Gatton college an agricultural school. These long trips were done during the 39 -45 war years ,and we could seldom get a seat let alone a sleeper, as the trains were full of army personal, both Aussie and Yanks. A lot of the time we slept in the corridors of the train, or in the luggage racks, above the seats .These trains were all steam, trains using coal for fuel, so the soot that came out of the chimneys flowed back along the carriages of the train. As you had to leave the carriage doors open for coolness, the soot went inside where the passengers were sitting, so you got a bit black looking by the time you finished your journey. There was no air conditioning in those days. You did have a water fountain at the end of each carriage, when you needed a drink, but the water was only at room temperature.
We couldn’t wait for the holidays to come, and Dad couldn’t either, for he used to try and arrange, mustering sheep jobs, until Noel and I arrived home, as he didn’t have anyone working for him most of the time, and by this time we were just as good as any man, in doing jobs that involved riding horses. We dreaded getting on the ponies, when we came back from school, because they hadn’t been ridden for a long time, and were very fresh, and would usually buck when we got on them, and throw us, but we always go on again, and after giving them plenty of work, after we successfully rode them on, they didn’t play up for the rest of the holidays.
By the time we left Halifax we acquired 2 baby sisters, Mary and Carmel. Mary was born in Townsville in 1940 and Carmel in Julia Creek in 1942, by which time we had gone to another boarding school, called Mt Carmel, but we only spent 3 or 4 months there as the Army took it over, and used it for barracks for the Army. Never really gt to know many of the boarders there, as we were only there about 3 months when the army took over. The school did move to other premises but in 3 or 4 different buildings around town, but Mum and Dad decided to send us to Downlands in Toowoomba, which turned out to be a really good school.
Noel and I were right into any kind of sports, and Downlands was right into sport too, and could hold its own, with all the big boarding schools in Brisbane, which we played cricket and football against often, but our biggest rival was Toowoomba Grammar school, and we were always out to beat them in all sports. Noel was a good scholar as well, and just flew through all his exams, that is Junior and Senior exams, whereas school work was a bit of a struggle for me, but I did pass the 2 exams I did there, but with the lowest possible marks - 51% in Scholarship and 5 Cs in Junior. Meanwhile Noel got good passes in everything and done dentistry, and went straight through the University in the allotted time. We both played in the first 11 in cricket, in our years and Noel played in the first 15 Rugby Union team, and I got as far as the thirds in football. In the final game of the season against Toowoomba Grammar School, I broke my leg in 3 places, and ended up in hospital for a month, and was in plaster for the next 9 months as the leg would not knit. That was the last game of football I ever played. I did go to Gatton college the following year, and did make the first 11 Cricket team, but it was the end of my football career.
My mother and father sent me to Gatton college for a year and I did learn a bit about wool classing, shearing animal husbandry, and a few other things, but the college mainly concentrated on farming -- growing crops and the like, which I wasn’t interested in, so 1 year was enough at Gatton. One thing Gatton taught me was smoking. Out of class we were allowed to smoke, and even could order your weekly smoking requirements from the Tuck Shop -- I smoked for the next 43 years, until 1990, but have never had a puff in the last 19 years, and no one could persuade me to.