An Aussie Character

When I first went out to Western Australia

in 1968 to view the 12000-acre property that I was to manage in the wheat belt, we met the previous owner, Winnie Vincent. As we were looking round the property she appeared in a battered old Ute. She was less than 5 foot tall, with an enormous bosom. She was dressed as she almost

always was in very short men’s football shorts, high shoes and a ragged blouse; round her neck was usually a pair of old drawers which contained ice blocks. All

topped with a battered straw hat. “Would you like some tea boys? I will bring a billie”. She appeared shortly after with the billie, but we could not see any cups; she dived her filthy hands and arms into the tea and pulled out the cups! We should have realised that lunch was to

be avoided but went along. The old homestead had been built by Italian POWs in the First World War and was a solid

stone house. As we got to the door we were met by a sow and piglets that rushed out of the door through the remains of a fly wire door. Inside chooks (hens) perched on the TV. On the veranda a side of kangaroo hung black with flies. The milk jug had a layer of flies, which she swept off with her hand before pouring the tea. I lost my appetite! “John doesn’t look too good”- I said that I was still suffering from air sickness!! The surrounds of the house were a

disgusting mess with corrugated iron sheds and animal bones lying around. She employed aborigines which, typical of the time, were treated like animals. The film “Rabbit proof fence” was made at about the time we were there. The rabbit proof fence formed the eastern boundary of the property. There was a fire in one of the sheds in which two aborigines were burnt to death. Her comment reputedly was “glad it did not kill any pigs”! Her husband Clarrie, she described as her skivvy. They had bought a drum of silver paint which he sprayed everywhere, including their bedroom walls, spraying around two tractor tyres which they kept there. The vet, one of the two other Englishmen in the area the other being the doctor, called round one afternoon and was called into the house where he found them

in bed with their boots on!!

The old rogue broke every rule and law. To sell wheat for cash she mixed 10%

barley seed in with wheat so that the produce would get rejected by the wheat board. This meant when wheat quotas came in as soon as we arrived there was

very little production history on which the quotas were based. If a cow calved or a pig farrowed on the road, she would put a fence round them, which the school bus had to negotiate. When she was

prosecuted, she took a calf into the courtroom on a hot day and burst into tears which she was good at, to gain sympathy. After a few hours, the smell from the calf can only be imagined! It was reputed that her old father died a year before the 7 years needed to avoid inheritance tax, so she kept him in the deep freeze for a year!! After the farm was sold, she bought a convalescent home in Perth. She had a

sheep station 350 miles from Perth, where again illegally she kept pigs. She bought a Ford Galaxy limousine which had been the Premier of Western Australia official car.

She brought the waste food from the convalescent home up to the station and the pork, mutton and beef to feed the patients. With temperatures over 40 degrees C, we all knew when she stopped off at our little town. Like a wild west

film, the street suddenly cleared. The home was shut down by the authorities after a couple of years on hygiene grounds, not surprisingly! At a livestock sale where I was buying sheep, someone shouted out” Some of those steers look a bit riggy Winnie” “If they have got balls so have I” On a coach trip with the CWA (like our WI) somewhere miles from anywhere in the outback the coach got bogged. She was rewarded for saving them by cutting down tree branches and getting the coach out. On one occasion her car broke down and was

towed into the garage on a Friday evening. She did not tell them that in the boot were

dead sheep which she would have been taking home to give to the pigs. When they went to work after the weekend they were met by a ghastly smell. On another occasion she drove into a flash flood and

was found sitting on the roof of the car in tears because a ram was drowned in the

car.

We built 3 houses, a machinery shed and fertilise store a mile away from the old homestead. We bulldozed the old huts etc

down and tried to clean the old homestead

up for shearers’ quarters. We found that in the kitchen she had put new lino down with a layer of newspapers between every year. Think we found 15 layers. When we moved in, she used to arrive to give us meat, which we certainly did not want. She would hang the ice filled drawers on the fence, which on one occasion my Labrador pup rushed off with spraying ice cubes everywhere.

John Pawlyn NDA 60/62