Overseas Travel (1)

                                            OVERSEAS   TRAVEL

Many people travel overseas these days at a very early age.  I mean as soon as they　finish their schooling, they are thinking of travelling overseas and seeing the rest of the world or part of it. Or should I say as soon as they have enough money, their one ambition is to get on a plane, and travel overseas.

I left school in 1947, and I never thought of going out of Australia until a couple of fellows from McKinlay district decided to go overseas. This was Frank Banning and Graham McKerrow. They did a trip to Europe and U.S.A in 1958, and in 1959, Brian Fegan and I decided to make some enquiries about taking a trip, after hearing all about it from them. Arranging a overseas trip from of all places McKinlay was not easy as we didn’t have computers in those days, where you can just jump on line and book a trip to anywhere. The nearest Travel Agent to McKinlay would have been in Mt Isa which was a long way in those days, and an absolute rotten road .No one went to Mt Isa in those days but now it’s only  a bit over 2 hours away .From  what I can remember the Bank of N.S.W, in Julia Creek , where Brian banked I think, made all the bookings. My bank in Winton the NA B may have done some of the bookings on my behalf.

I was working at Glenbede for my father at this time, and on a pretty  low wage, and I wasn’t too flushed with money. But a month or two before deciding to go on this trip, I was in having a drink  in the McKinlay Hotel ,with Graham Fysh of Answer Downs, and he said he had a mob of old ewes (sheep) for sale. I asked him how much he wanted for them and he said 20 cents, and as there was 1700 in the mob it made the whole mob worth only $340, which was nothing. He made one condition that I if I took them, he wanted them shifted the following morning. I had a talk with my Dad, and he said I could put them on Glenbede, even though there wasn’t grass for them there either but it could still rain. I sprang into action got Blondy Hall, to help me  to drove them ,which would take 2 weeks, and picked up Mick Allen to drive the truck ,and do the cooking, and rig the “break” (yard) every night, and I was there the following morning to count them, take delivery and then we set off with them. After 2 weeks, we were getting near Glenbede, and  I could see all this cloud coming up, so I said to “Blondy” “We better push this mob along a bit quicker today ,as it looks like rain coming ”

We got them home that day, the rain did come, and the whole district got about 6 ins of rain which then made these sheep, valuable ,and I was able to sell them for $2.40 a month or two later which resulted  in me making $3500 after droving expenses and this was the money I used  to go on my first overseas trip!!!!!!!! No one ever travelled by plane in those days ,and anyone that travelled overseas went by boat, so we were booked on the Australia which was of the Lloyd Trestino Line, an Italian Company, and we booked a 2 berth cabin ,which was a bit extravagant ???

We flew to Sydney, and eventually the departure date arrived and any of my relatives and Brian’s relatives that were in Sydney at the time, came to see us off, and by the time we left we were drunk and all our relatives also. No “booze  buses” in those days. As soon as we got going, the first place we went to was the bar and have a bit more grog, as we couldn’t believe how cheap it was on the boat, so for the next month we spent a fair bit of time in the bar and met a few guys there, that we went on trips with at the various ports we called at along the way, which were many.
We called at Melbourne and saw our Uncle and Aunt and Joan and Anne who were 1^st. cousins to both Brian and I.  The next stop was Perth where we had a couple of days then we headed for  Ceylon ,which is now Sri Lanka, where I remember ,we were dining out and  I ordered Curry and, I said  I like hot curries .It was that hot I could hardly eat it ??  The next stop was Cochin in India where we weren’t allowed off the boat, but watched about 50 women unloading gravel from Railway trucks with baskets they carried on their heads. All unbelievable to us ????

The crew on the boat were most Italians, and I think on this boat, was where we learnt to drink wine, as you  were served wine  with lunch and dinner at night, and we used to con the waiter, to get wine off the tables where people didn’t drink it and bring it to our table, so we were half drunk by the time we finished our meals .The signs on the boat were written in Italian,  and we used to see signs saying Senora  and Signore, all over the place, and didn’t know that they were  Men and Ladies Toilets, until we were a week out from Sydney as we had a Toilet in our Cabin ,and used to go back down all these stairs ,every time we felt the urge.

After India the next place was Suez, but we didn’t go through the Suez Canal but went on a trip to the Pyramids, which was fantastic to see. The bus dropped you at a point, about 2 or 3 kms .from the Pyramids and the method of transport to get up to them was to ride a horse or a camel ? I remember I chose a horse but what a horse!!! I kicked it in the ribs, but it wouldn’t move, but then an Arab kid got behind it and  hit it with a whip, all the way up to the Pyramids .I knew a fair bit about horses ,but his one was the laziest I’d ever ridden. We went inside one pyramid but not much to see only a tomb I think, but what a feat in building them just by manpower ,no mechanical aids or even horses.
Next stop was Messina in Sicily ,and what I remember most about Messina, it was the first stop we came to near Italy .Now most of the passengers on the boat ,were Italians and even though, as I have said before, we got plenty of wine on the boat, the Italians thought it was rubbish ,as it was Australian  made, so all the Italians went ashore and came back with 3 or 4 bottles of good Italian wine. As far as wine went we didn’t know the difference, as we never drank  wine before we got on this boat---no one drank wine in McKinlay---- only beer or rum!!!!!

We went from here to Genoa, and here we got off the boat, after being on it for a month. We had become friendly with a guy called Rolly on the boat trip, as well as a few other drinkers we met at the bar every day and night, and he  wanted to go to Stockholm in Sweden where his parents lived. He’d driven trucks in both Aust. and all over Europe.

Brian and I decided to buy a car ,make our way up through Europe  and take Rolly with us, to help us with the driving, or rather teach us a bit about driving in Europe, which to us was something very  new  as we’d only driven in places like McKinlay and Julia Creek, and now we even had to drive on the wrong side of the road, and try to read signs written in foreign language ,and we couldn’t  read a word of any foreign language ,only English or should I say, Aussie slang, which was mostly spoken around McKinlay. And so the journey began!!! I can’t remember all the places we stayed at in Europe.

In Holland

We headed for Venice and left the car outside somewhere, and it was strange to see a city on the water, and we had a ride on a Gondola. Of course Rolly was driving at this stage but slowly both Brian and I took a turn at driving. We had to, as we only had Rolly, until we got to Stockholm, as his parents live there, and that was to be the end of the trip for him, but we had a while to go before this happened.

From here we went into Switzerland and I remember we stayed a night there. We stayed at Hotels all the time we were over there and could always find someone in the office that could speak English, but mostly only one person. We went from here to Berlin, and the wall between East and West Berlin was still up then, and the only way we could get into the East side was to go by taxi but we weren’t allowed to get out of the taxi and walk about, but it was noticeable that you could still see the results of the war on the East side, and the whole city was very drab and not many trees, whereas the West side was all modern, and had all been rebuilt, since the war.

From here we headed over to the other side of Germany to Hamburg, and the first place we visited was the Reeperbahn , which we had been  told about, by the two bush fellows that went before us. Was unbelievable to see all these girls all dressed up and sitting behind glass windows looking like models. Of course they were all prostitutes, or “hookers “and there must have been 100 of them all waiting for business. There were also nightclubs in this area and we met and talked to guy that was outside one of these clubs trying to persuade people to go in to the club. As people came up to him on the street he could pick  which country they came from and talk to them in their particular language, and was seldom wrong ,and could speak many languages.

From here we went into Denmark, and I think we had a short ferry ride over to Sweden and I remember on our way up to Stockholm, 2 things happened?? Firstly we were pulled up by the police, and they put the breathalyzer on whoever was driving. We were amazed, as nothing like this ever happened in Australia in those years and I remember on trips to Townsville, we used to stop at every pub and have a session. The second thing that happened was that the Fiat car broke down. We done a cylinder head gasket  and after maybe a day loss, we got it fixed, thanks to Rolly, as he could speak the language. We would have had a lot more trouble had Rolly not been with us, as Brian or I couldn’t speak a word of any other language.

We eventually arrived in Stockholm, and met Rolly’s parents who were very nice, and apparently a lot of people in Stockholm live in Units or Flats, in the city,  and they have these holiday houses out in the country where they spend weekends, and Rolly’s parents had one of these, which they kindly let  Brian and I stay at, and also Rolly with us  for the two weeks we stayed  in Sweden. We had a good time there and had lots of parties .One of the strange things about this holiday house is that they had an outside shower and it was supposed to be healthy to strip off and have a shower out in the snow. I remember I tried it once but once only? I didn’t want to be healthy any more!! Rolly gathered  up a few girls and brought them out to some of the parties They were good fun and could speak  good English, but we never found Sweden to be “the land of free love” that  everyone had told  us it was? We were introduced to  a drink there called Ackrovit, and it was a lot more powerful than OP Rum. It was clear in colour but boy was she powerful.

Out of our trip around Europe, I think the time we spent in Sweden was the best time we had but we had to move on, and we were on our own from here on, and Brian and I took turns in driving, which we handled alright. We knew we had to change to the other side of the road when we got into Norway, but what we didn’t know was where Norway started, and when to change sides, but Brian was driving, and suddenly I saw a bloke wheeling  a wheel barrow, by the side of the road. As we went passed him he dropped the wheel barrow, and looked  at our car in amazement and scratched his head, and I said to Brian “we must be driving on the wrong side of the road by the actions of this bloke with wheelbarrow” so we pulled over to the side of the road, until a car passed, and sure enough we were driving on the wrong side of the road .It was hilly country and winding roads, so we could have had a “head on” had I not seen the man with the wheelbarrow.

We continued down through Denmark, and then into the north of France, where we put the car on a ferry across to Southampton, drove up to London, where we stayed for a couple of weeks. We liked London and found it easy to drive around the city mainly because we were driving on the right side of the road for us. We saw all the sights in London, that every other tourist sees there, in the two weeks we were there, and one strange thing happened? We went to a pub one night where they sold Aussie beer, and blow me down, if I didn’t meet a guy called Shane Ryan who, not only went to Downlands Boarding school with me for four years, but was in the same class. This was 13 years after we both had left school? One of Noel’s mates, Henry Laurence, who went through dentistry with him, was in London at the time too so we visited him and his “pommy” wife, Pam a few times. They were good fun.

From London we went up through the north of England up through Scotland, then put the car on a ferry ,over to Ireland. We saw the place where our grandmother came from Armagh. We went from there down to the south of Ireland .We put the car on  a ferry back to England down to Southampton ,on the ferry again back to France , down to Paris where we spent some time going to all the “girlie places, such as the “Follies Bergier” and the  Moulin Rougue. We had some trouble reading the signs from the policemen on point duty in the traffic—they seemed to have hands and arms going everywhere, none of which we could follow, so we didn’t drive much around Paris, and went everywhere  in taxis.

Travelled down to Madrid in Spain and the big event there was going to the Bullfights, as we’d never seen anything like that in Australia, and it was pretty cruel to watch, but spectacular. From here we went to the French Riviera, where all the film stars went but we weren’t impressed with the beaches there, and couldn’t be compared with the beaches at the Gold Coast  or Sydney Beaches ,and we didn’t see many film stars either, and Brian was disappointed .Went up to Marseilles where our Grand-father “Frenchie “ Olive came from and came to Aust. and became a shearer, and later ,had a Cordial Factory, in Kynuna, and eventually 2 sheep properties. Olive Grove and Mayfield near McKinlay. We went on to Genoa from here sold the car back to the bloke we bought it off for $100 which was half what we paid for it which wasn’t too bad seeing we had been travelling in it for 6 months.

We travelled from here to Rome by train, and visited the Vatican and any other tourist places, then got a train back to England, caught a boat - the Mauretania to New York in USA. We stayed there a week and saw all the sights, and then we went on buses, from one side of USA to San Francisco. We stayed at various places enroute, the best being Las Vegas where we done a bit of gambling at the Casinos. We never saw a silver dollar in all our travels across USA until we got here, only paper dollars, but there were millions of them here to play the “pokies” with. There were no Casinos in Aust. at this time, so all this was new to us, and what an “eye-opener” Las Vegas was. The other impressive place on our travels across USA was the Grand Canyon .and we saw a Rodeo there at Flagstaff and was very impressed. It was an all Indian Rodeo, and these Indians were very good at roping.

From here we went to Los Angeles, and saw Hollywood and the sets where all the films were made .Even saw a film being made. .After having a couple of weeks around San Francisco and Los Angeles, we got aboard the Orinsay, and sailed back to Australia via Hawaii, having a couple of days there, and here we did think the beaches compared favorably with  Australian Beaches, but this was the only place in the world they did compare?? From here we continued on stopping at Fiji, and then back to Sydney, and then back to McKinlay and the “bush.”

What I have neglected to mention was that Brian suffered from terrible back pain for the whole time we were on this trip, and some mornings he couldn’t put his socks on .He had been to specialists in Sydney, and I recall he spent something like 3 months in plaster in hospital in a Townsville Hospital. He was diagnosed as having “spondolitis” which meant the cartilage between a few of his vertebrae was being eaten away. He took the opportunity of this trip to go to a specialist in Stockholm in Sweden and another in New York, and they confirmed the diagnosis of the Sydney doctors that at this time there was no cure for it and he put up with it for the rest of his life, and wore corsets most of the time. I must say though, that this complaint didn’t stop him from doing anything, as he could ride a rough horse, play a good game of tennis, and he had 9 kids as well   !!!!!                             

We’d been away 7 months from the time we left Sydney, and had plenty of stories to tell in the pub once we got back to McKinlay. Lance McDermott was the publican at the time and he enjoyed all these stories. Dad and a guy called Tom Bennett, looked after Glenbede while I was away, but by the time I got back I don’t think Dad and Tom were getting on too well, so Dad was pleased to see me back home. I have been for many trips to different countries since, but this was the “TRIP OF A LIFETIME “ 

 

THE SIGN WRITER

THE SIGN WRITER During the latter years of my time at Glenbede,I had plenty of visitors , as having 12 nieces   and nephews ,and a brother and 2 sisters in Sydney, there was always some of them out visiting me, at one time or another, and quite often they would bring friends along, as well. I would have to say,that my brother Noel was the most regular visitor, as he used Glenbede ,as his holiday destination nearly every year between the years say 1970 to 2001. He used to take his holiday from Dentistry, to coincide with the Annual Branding of the calves at Glenbede, which is a pretty big event, on a cattle property, as nearly every beast on the place, has to be mustered. Also in early days before 1974, I never had a decent cattle yard on Glenbede ,but John Fegan let me use the Eulolo cattle yards which meant it took extra time, by the time you drove them there branded them, and then drove them back to their paddock on Glenbede. There was no branding cradle on Eulolo at this time which meant                         you had to head rope every calf, pull them up to a yard post then put a leg rope on a front leg and a back leg on the same side of the beast, pull them down and brand them all, and castrate the male portion of them. Sometimes the branding job would take 3 days, so we would drive back to Gleneden a distance of 20 klms., cook a feed, stay the night and cut lunches for the next day, and come back to finish the job. Nearly every year that Noel would come up, he would bring a couple of his friends with him ,or at times 3 or 4, guys with city professions, and even though they knew little about cattle, or mustering, they filled in doing some jobs, such as driving a Toyota behind a mob of cattle , and keeping the tail of the mob up, and it later years I had a 2 way radio, on my quad bike, and one in the Toyota, so could give them instructions as we went along. In earlier years when Noel and I were on horses, and no radios, everything was much harder, and by the time they went home, I had usually lost my voice ,from shouting instructions, above the noise of the cattle bellowing. One particular year, Noel brought up 3 guys that he had met at the Bankstown Sports Club, which is a big club in Sydney, and one of these guys, Harold Neville,I think was the President of this Club and the others were on the Committee of the Club, Harold was also Noel’s Dental                         Mechanic,so Noel had been to the Club and had met these guys, and had a few drinks with them an invited them out to Glenbede for the branding. One of the other guy was "wrinkles"   ( forgotten his real name) who was a diamond dealer, and the other guy was Norm Barkle, whose nickname was “Dobsy” and was an electrican, for the City                         Sydney Council, and one of the first jobs he undertook at Glenbede was to see the frig. was full of beer, and he made sure, he got his quota at the end of every days work. We all did of course ????? Dobsy took over my Honda 100 motor bike, and had a camera slung over his shoulder ,and rode along at the tail of the mob of cattle,or at other times drove the Toyota behind them, if some other person wanted the bike. In these early days Noel and I were on horses all the time at branding time. Anyway we got the branding done, and Dobsy proved to be very handy around the place. Only had an engine driven 32volt power plant at this time,and he fixed up a few electrical problems ,around the place, and he was handy with a hammer and nails and did a few jobs down at the Shearing Shed--made all new boxes for the Shearers to put their combs and cutters in. He would just see things that would want doing, and find the material around the place, and the tools to do it with, and in time, would do it. Anyway after the branding was finished, and they all booked their plane tickets back to Sydney, and as I was seeing them off at Mt Isa. I said to Dobsy ,“you better come back next year for the branding “ .He said “I wouldn’t be able to come back next year ,as I had to borrow money from a finance company to pay my fare up this year ,and I’ll have to pay that all back” I was talking to Noel on the phone a few months later and he said “did you hear about Dobsy” I said “no-- what happened to him” Noel said “he won the Lottery” I think he shared it with another bloke but Dobsy ended up with half a million dollars  ???? He was back next year ,with his wife Gwen, in a Caravan, which he parked beside the front steps of the house and was back every year for the following 10 years,usually in July, so when he would tell me he was coming, I would make sure there were plenty of “Stubbies” in the frig, as I found the first year back that Gwen could drink as many “Stubbies” as he could !!!!! But this was the start of a long friendship with Dobsy and Gwen. They had frequent visits to the Pub in McKinlay,and they got to know almost as many people that I knew around McKinlay, but on many occasions they got lost coming back to Glenbede at night, so the next thing Dobsy started doing was making signs.He had signs to everywhere, signs to the Cattle Yard, signs to the Mailbox, signs to Keloshiel which was an adjoining property to Glenbede, also made signs showing where there was a sharp bend in the road going to McKinlay ,and put reflector lights on this one, so as he could see this bend coming up at night time. One night we went to the McKinlay Pub in different cars, and he and Gwen left just after me late at night, after quite a few “stubbies” I arrived at Glenbede, and after looking up the road to look for his car lights I couldn’t see them. I waited and waited, and eventually I saw his light coming from the Julia Creek road which was the opposite direction to what he should have been coming from. There are 2 turn offs into Glenbede, coming from McKinlay,and he had by-passed both of them, and eventually got to McAllisters crossing, which was 25 klms. past the Glenbede turnoff , before he realised he’d gone too far ,and turned back and this time found the right road to Glenbede. Next day there was another sign made, so as he wouldn’t get lost again. His most famous sign was one where there were 2 roads forked, one leading to McKinlay,and the other leading to the Mail box, where he used to quite often go and get the mail, which was 10 klms from the house. He made up a simple sign which said Pub to the left and Mail to the Right, with a drawing on it showing the roads to take to these                         2 destinations? ?  This sign was noticed by someone and they took a photo of it ,and put it in the R.M.Williams Outback Magazine, This sign and all the others he made was still there when I sold Glenbede. I put in 3 grids on the road McKinlay ,during the time he was there                         instead of opening gates, which he didn’t like to do, so he made grid s igns to put beside each grid also. If you live in that country you have to know where you are going ,as it is notoriously famous for having no road signs to any where but thanks to Dobsy, and his many visits to Glenbede,it was the best signposted property, of any other in N.W.Q’LD. He made most of these signs, on his visits to Glenbede, but sometimes, he’d make up a sign, at his home that he thought was necessary ,and bring it back at his visit the following year. The other thing about how good their visits were, was that when they were there, Gwen did most of the cooking during their 2 weeks stay (and always only 2 weeks),which was a luxury for me, for my visitors most of the time, were men visitors, and I didn’t find too many that could cook a feed !!!!  They had wives at home that did all that for them? During these years that Dobsy and Gwen visited me once a year ,they actually lived at Wamberal near Gosford, and in my retirement I live 20 mins. from there now, at The Entrance. They had a lovely house there, and on my holidays, I always visited them and had a meal with them. The first time I went there I had as much trouble finding their place , as they did finding there away around Glenbede ,but I am a “bushie”,a nd couldn’t read the signs, even though there were plenty there, as there is now at Glenbede, thanks to DOBSY.

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.

My First Job

My mother didn’t want me to work on Glenbede. I think she wanted me to have some trade, as she didn’t think there was any future on the land, as Dad and her had done it pretty tough during the time they had spent on Glenbede, up to that time, and didn’t want me to have the same kind of tough times that they had. By the time I was ready to go into the work force ,she had bought a house in McKinlay, in order to send Mary and Carmel to the State School there, not wanting to teach them correspondence herself. Because of the age gap between Noel and I ,and Mary and Carmel. They were more or less starting school when we were finishing.
Anyway the year I left school there were a team of builders, building a new police house in McKinlay, and they were looking for a labourer to build a new fence around the house. So on Mum’s persuasion, I applied for the job, as I already had a lot of fencing experience helping Dad repair fences during school holidays, and these were the days when you didn’t have any mechanised ways of digging post holes, so it was all done with a crowbar and shovel, which is hard work. Anyway I got the job, and completed the new fence, and got paid, and that was probably the only work, other than working on Glenbede I done for the next 53 years - I thought bugger getting a trade!!! My ambition was to work with sheep and cattle, and ride horses, which I’d had been doing since I was 5 year old, and even though I didn’t know it at this time I had the best teacher you could find. You have to grow up with cattle and sheep or any animal really, to be able to handle them successfully, in any of their different moods, and their moods change a lot, depending on the condition of the animal. There is a hell of a difference between handling a fat animal and a poor one, and where I have spent most of my life, they were poor just as many times as they were fat, outback Queensland being a low rainfall area most of the time. Other things that affect the handling cattle and sheep on bigger areas, are climate conditions -- heat and wind in particular. For instance it is better, if possible to drive cattle during the cool of the night, than the heat of the day if travelling if you want to travel a long way in a short time. With sheep, they always walk into the wind, so the direction the wind is blowing comes under consideration when you are planning to do a muster, in bigger paddocks, such as 4 or 5 thousand acres, and of course the earlier you start mustering the better.
In the city, most people are not interested in which direction the wind is blowing from. Their main concern as far as the weather goes is if its hot or cold wet or dry, whereas at Glenbede, it mattered a lot. If you had no wind to work your windmill you had no water. A north wind indicated there might be a chance of rain. A south wind usually indicated there was no chance of rain. If you had rain you got up as soon as you could see to measure the rain, to see if it would be beneficial to growing grass, and as soon as the roads around your farm were trafficable, you would go round the many rain gauges you had to see if there was more or less rain in different parts of the property, because when you have 40,000 acres, you can have rain in one portion and not the other, just as in Sydney for instance you could have a lot of rain in Hornsby, but none in Redfern.
In these days, the late 1940’s, the first job you did was to walk down the horse paddock, and run the horses up into the horse yard, so you could catch a horse, saddle him up, then you might ride him around the property checking fences, checking the watering places, to see if the stock were alright. You carried fencing pliers, and quartpot, to use for making tea in for lunch, and you had a saddlebag attached to your saddle, in which you carried sandwiches. If the blowflies were bad in your sheep, you carried a pair of blade shears to cut the affected wool of the sheep ,making it bare, so as the blowfly had no wool to lay its eggs in. On some days you might 20 or 30 kms before you got home. The only drink you would have is when you boiled your quartpot at lunch time, that is on some of your day rides. On these long rides, towards the end of the year, all the waterholes dried up, and you might find only a few places where you could find water, to have a drink, and by the time you found that place, you were perishing.Most good bushman would train themselves to only have one drink a day and that was when he boiled the quart at lunch time. I often think that the best thing I ever bought during my horse riding days was a set of neck water bags ,which fitted over the wither of the horse, and were attached to the saddle. I would never do long rides without taking them, after I bought them. You could have a drink any time!!!
In these early days we only had one car, and it was only used when it was absolutely necessary. During the war years we couldn’t use it much anyhow, as petrol was rationed, and our was 80 litres a month, which is about one tank full of the car I have now. Everything was rationed during the 1939 to 1945 war years, and for some time after the war ended as well, and everyone had “ration tickets” for a lot of different things, such as flour sugar and numerous other things. We would only use the car during the war years to go to town, maybe once a month, for Mum to go to the CWA meetings, and Dad to the Graziers meeting, and Noel and I would play with other kids on these occasions. The only other time we would use the car was when we had to take fencing material out to repair fences after a flood, or to go to a bush fire to try to put it out ,and other important and necessary jobs. All the rest of the work was done with horses, so the horse was a very important animal during these times, whereas in the present times trucks, and motorbikes and quad bikes are use all the time ,and in some areas helicopters are used to muster ,but I never found it necessary to use one on Glenbede.One way to overcome the lack of petrol during the war was to have what was called a “Gas Producer” fitted to your utility car.This gas producer was run on coal,and the coal was lit up ,and it produced gas ,and the car was run on the gas produced by this gas producer.The ‘oversear” at “Eulolo” had one fitted to his utility,and I remember he visited us at Glenbede once and he was leading a horse beside the car.Dad asked him why he was leading a horse,and he said “these bloody gas producers,break down that bloody often,I lead a horse,so as I can ride home on,if it breaks down”The other thing ,it used to start bush fires,as sparks used to fly out of the chimney.
Even though most properties in the McKinlay area had a telephone, we had none. Dad drew Glenbede in 1924, and we had no telephone until 1951, when Tommy Porter and I put up 400 poles, 3 feet in the ground and 12 feet out .We put this line up in 14 days total time, and celebrated in the McKinlay pub on completion of the job. Before we put up this line, any urgent messages we wanted to send we went down to Cairo ,6 kms away and rang up or sent a telegram. The Cairo telephone line was connected to Gilliat Post Office, and we could have connected to this line by just putting up 6 kms of posts and wire, but there was about 8 other parties on this line, and the line itself was in bad repair, and you have no privacy, with all these other parties on the same line ,as everyone can listen in if they want to, just by lifting the receiver, so Dad waited until he got enough money to build his own line, and we were the only party on it ,and only the exchange girl could listen to our conversation, which she did, as many stories got around McKinlay, which could only be spread by the exchange girl. It was a big job for Tommy Porter and I, and we were very proud of ourselves both in the quick time we erected the line, and the straightness of the line, and when we celebrated in the pub on the last day someone said to him “is it straight Tommy?”. “Straight? he said “If someone fired a 303 over the top of those posts it would hit the exchange girl fair between the eyes!” Tommy Porter was a real wag and a lot of the sayings I have I got from him. He was a prisoner of war during the 2nd World War for 4 years, and spent most of the time in Kobi, working in the shipyards, and his one ambition when he got out was to have a good time, and his way of having a good time was to work for 6 months, then hit the Gilliat Hotel, and drink and drink until the money ran out, which usually was about 2 weeks, so he worked for 6 months to have 2 weeks fun! But he was a real good guy and worked hard fencing all the time at Glenbede, done a lot of the cooking, grew a vegetable garden, while he was there, and used to water it before he went to work, and after he came home, because of the intense heat at Glenbede. I watered it a lot of times if I had time and wasn’t out doing other jobs on the property.
We lived on mutton at Glenbede, which we liked ,but was always anxious to get some beef for a change, and one day I said to Tommy “I’d kill a bullock if I knew how to cut it up, and Tommy said if you shoot it and skin it I’ll soon cut it up.” So we killed this bullock and brought it in, in quarters, hung it up it the butchers shop to set overnight, and he must have cut it up in 1 hour flat, 600 kgs of meat. What I didn’t know was that he had worked in the meatworks for 3 or 4 years before he joined the army, and knew every cut in the book. So after this first episode we often killed a bullock, and I learnt how to cut them up myself, trained by Tommy. Other ways of getting some beef was to get some from drovers ,when they camped at the 49 waterhole, on the Stock Route, on their way to Gilliat, from where they trucked cattle on the train to send to the meatworks, to Townsville or Brisbane. In these days all cattle were walked to the railhead, the trucked on the train. There were no road-trains in those days. I was mates with the Malone boys, who done a lot of droving for Eulolo and Strathfield, and if they were coming down the stock route, that passed Glenbede, with a mob of 5 or 600 bullocks for sale they would usually kill a bullock when they got to the 49 waterhole, and they would let me know they were going to kill, and give me some beef. There was always a price to pay, and they would say, “You had better come and do a watch for us” and they would give me some meat. A “watch” meant you had to ride around the cattle for 2 or 3 hours during the night to make sure they stayed in the same place for the night-usually in the corner of a paddock. The night would be divided up into the number of drovers in the camp e.g. If there was 4 men in the camp they would do 2 hour shifts, but if I came and done a watch for them they would only have to do 1 ½ shifts therefore each of the drovers would get an extra ½ hour sleep, which meant a lot of them.
Talking about droving, in 1951 we had a drought year around McKinlay, and most of Julia Creek was drought stricken also, and 1000’s of sheep and cattle went out into the Boulia area on adjistment, but as there was no feed on the Stock Route, between Julia Creek and McKinlay, and as truck transport had just come in ,a lot of people going on adjistment, would truck their stock to 80 odd miles on the south side of McKinlay, the walk them the extra !00 miles, and further to their adjistment paddocks in the Boulia area.
Dad and I found some adjustment a lot closer than Boulia at a place called Nulgra ,which was owned by Des Collings, which was about 50miles from Glenbede,w here there was plenty of grass, so we put 5000 sheep together, and decided to drove them. We had just bought a new truck so we used it as the cook’s wagon. We got Mick Allen from McKinlay to drive the truck and do the cooking, and rig the “break” to put the sheep in overnight, and Dad and I another bloke ,who was looking for a job set off with the sheep. This was to be my first droving trip after leaving school. The second day after leaving Glenbede. It became very cloudy, and rainy looking. We made Moonamara Boundary Riders hut, that night, and put the sheep in the sheep yard there which saved us rigging a break, a “break” being a rope fence you put up to hold the sheep overnight. Anyway during the night it started to rain, and Dad and I thought the wet season had set in ,so we decided to let the sheep out of the yard into one of Eulolo paddocks, as there was nothing else we could do ,as we thought it would rain for a week or more. We went back to sleep in our swags thinking that this rain was going to solve all our problems!!! We woke next morning to a clear day with the sun shining brightly, so our problems weren’t solved. So we had to muster the sheep again to continue our droving trip. The trouble was that we had let the sheep go into a 30,000 acre paddock, and the fence was down into an adjoining paddock of 20,,000 acres, so it took us 3 days mustering to get the sheep back to Moonamara Hut yards, as the sheep were very weak, and couldn’t travel very far in a day, but eventually we got them back to the yard, and continued on our droving trip. It took us another 7 or 8 days to get the sheep to Nulgra, and let them go into 2 paddocks there, but the next job was to do up the fences, as a lot of the fences were flood damaged. Penola joined our paddocks on the East side and Broadlands on the West side, and Milgery on the north side, so we had some help from these neighbours.
There was a 2 roomed hut at Nulgra,one room being the kitchen and the other the bed room with 2 shearers beds in it.The other room had a table 2 chairs but no stove, but it had a stove recess, so we did all our cooking with camp ovens in the stove recess, so this is where I leaned to cook with camp ovens, and there’s nothing you can’t cook with a camp oven, and we had good wood at Nulgra-Gidyea, which made beautiful coals which are necessary, when cooking with a camp oven, as cooking with camp ovens ,you use coals both in a hole under the camp oven, and also on the lid of the oven to control the heat when you are baking a leg of mutton, for instance or a damper which we lived on at Nulgra. The only lights we had was a carbide light, and a Tilly light.
This was where we lived for the next 10 months. Most of my time was spent looking after the sheep and checking fences, all done on horseback, and this was to be my introduction into catching “dingoes’. Up to this there was never dingoes at Glenbede”, but now we were in hilly country where dingoes breed, so they were a big pest in this area ,and unless you could catch the ones that came into your country they would kill and maim a lot of sheep in just one visit to your paddock with the sheep in.
Teddy Young was managing Penola at the time, and my Uncle Jack Fegan owned it. Ted used to go around the foot of Penola hills every Sunday to check his dingo traps, which were outside the “dog netting “fence ,which was a fence put up by the Government to keep dingoes from getting into sheep country, as it was all sheep country north of this fence at this time. Ted used to get extra money ,both from the Council, and also there was a dingo bonus in some areas where a group of graziers got together, and put in extra money for any dingoes that were caught in a certain area, so Ted was very interested in catching dingoes, and he invited me along to show me how to set a trap. I used to meet hi at a prearranged spot, on the netting fence, and we would ride 30 or so miles every Sunday checking his traps and setting new ones if he found a new dingo track. During this time he taught me the art of setting traps, but wouldn’t tell me the contents of his decoy. “Decoy” is the substance you put on a piece of grass or a log or something, near where you put the trap, so the dingo is attracted by the smell of the decoy, and goes to smell it and at the same time he puts his foot in the trap and is caught. The “decoy” is put in such a place that the dingo must put hisfoot in the trap in order to smell the decoy. The main ingredient in any decoy is dog piss, which you catch from your domestic dogs, and then some blokes find other things to mix with it. I know my Uncle Max used to use aniseed with it ,and would swear it was the best decoy. Teddy Young would tell me about the dog piss but wouldn’t tell me what else was mixed with it, but I caught quite a few dogs with just dogs piss later on after getting these lessons from Ted Young. I have forgotten to mention that a dingo trap is set underground, and a dingo cannot see any part of the trap-the surface of the ground after the trap is set just looks the same as if you had never dug a hole to set the trap. The other thing is that the jaws of the trap is wrapped with light rag soaked in arsenic, so that when a dingo is caught he bites at the jaws trying to get free, and is poisoned by the arsenic ,and so has a quick death.
During the time I spent at Glenbede, there were a lot of droughts through the years, and we took the sheep and cattle ,to many parts of QLD, the furthest was near Clermont where I got adjistment for 500 cows for a 10 month period, so was a long way from Glenbede to go and see how they were going. Other places we took sheep on adjistment were Gilliat Plains, Cornwell Maxwelton. There were all different prices for adjistment, so much per beast per week and by the time ,you transported the stock to the adjistment country, and back home again after you got some rain at home. It worked out fairly expensive, but not as expensive as feeding. Feeding is very expensive, as the feed you buy as to come at least 1000 klm, usually more. Also you might feed a lot of stock, and the get a big downpour of rain in a short time and your sheep or cattle will die ,as even though you have fed them for 10 months or so they can’t survive a lot of rain and bog, and you can’t get the feed out to them when it rains a lot, so they starve.