The Way Things Were

By Ian & Normajean Gasking with Colin Lewis, Dugandan, Qld.

We now think of ourselves as environmentally conscious; recycling, growing and preserving our own vegies and fruit, and generally being earth conscious. But in reality, we are just getting back to the way things were. As the saying goes, ‘Yesterday’s luxuries are today’s necessities.’ In the 1950s manufacturers were advertising the luxury of ‘labour saving devices’; washing machines, electric and gas stoves, refrigerators, benchtop appliances like mixers, electric frypans and toasters, plus rotary clotheslines and motor mowers. Luxuries then, now necessities!

Col Lewis recently bought a copy of my book, Australia’s Skills of the Past . In his letter of appreciation and our subsequent correspondence, he shared that it reminded him of memories from his past. As this was largely in note form, I have fleshed out some details, which I have added in brackets, but not altered the essence of his memories. Even Col’s address speaks of times past; Shanks Pony Lane. For younger readers, to travel by shanks’ pony means to walk when one can’t afford to travel by horse, car or bike.

c o L ’s story

When I was a boy my grandfather told me stories of his life. He was a bullocky, carting logs to the railway. Well watered and grazed overnight, his team, 48 strong, was fresh and worked with a will. It was a long haul with a fully laden jinker of logs to the top of a hill. There was fierce competition at the time with the newfangled motor lorries competing for logging business. The bullock team appreciated the rest break at the top and emptied forth their full bowels and bladders. The road, freshly churned by hard hooves and iron-bound wheels, was immediately turned to a steamy quagmire impossible for motor vehicles with wooden-spoked wheels and smooth solid rubber tyres.

My grandfather, the bullock driver on my father’s side, was wounded in France and badly affected by the horrors he witnessed in the war. He was given a selection of land upon his return, but the family had to pretty much fend for themselves as he was isolated and became an alcoholic. He was tough and lived a long life considering how he treated himself.

He had a camp on Coochin Creek, Qld, and almost came to an end several times while in his cups. He was in a dinghy one moonlight night and seeing the shadow of a tree on the water, thought it was the bank and jumped overboard with the anchor. He went to the bottom and almost drowned.

Another night, he was badly burned when he staggered in to camp with an enormous log for the fire on his shoulder and finished up in the fire with the log on top of him. He blew himself up when he shimmied out on a tree branch to get over the top of a school of mullet and dropped half a plug of gelignite, which caught in the lower branches.

My father and Uncle Alf travelled during the Depression years looking for work. Dad would reminisce about ‘humping his bluey’ (swag) and ‘jumping the rattler’ (illicit rides on trains). They had one pair of socks between them. If they went to a dance they would wear one each and sit cross legged with the foot with the sock up.

As a young bloke, I would often come across groves of fruit and nut trees in the bush seemingly growing wild. Dad said they were old campsites of swagmen from the Depression days. Sometimes the local council planted them to help out with food. There were guava, persimmon, mango, citrus and macadamia trees and different berries. I guess they would all have been removed in later years as they would have been a disease threat to local orchards.

Uncle Alf was captured at Singapore during World War II and died on the Burma-Siam railway along with many of his mates.

Dad remained in the timber industry and bought a sawmill at Landsborough. It had been converted from steam to electricity, still had lots of long flat belts run- ning everywhere, and was a fairly dangerous place. Over time he built a new modern mill beside it.

On my 14th birthday, instead of going to school, I fronted up at the mill to start my working life. The old man handed me a tin of Log Cabin tobacco and said, ‘There you go, you no longer have to pinch mine and go behind my back to smoke it.’ Mum thought I was at school and had a fit when I arrived home for lunch covered in sawdust with a fag hanging out of my mouth.

Queensland Forestry was strict on conservation even back then in the 1960s. The old man and forestry ranger would walk the block to be felled, pick a tree and chop a blaze with the axe on the direction it was to fall to minimise damage to younger trees around it.

If the contractor falling the trees was doing too much damage, we were told to get rid of him. The same with the dozer driver, if he was knocking over too much young stuff we were told to remove the blade and to rely on the winch only.

My grandfather on Mum’s side was known as Stro. He was a farmer, but had to retire due to a crook heart and did part time work at the post office. He had an enormous garden on a block beside his house in Caloundra. His ancient tools were kept like new, sharpened, painted with linseed oil and wrapped in a hessian bag before being stored away. It was my job to turn the handle on his big grindstone when he was sharpening tools. He was always barefooted, and had enormous gnarled flat feet with nails the didn’t look human. Being a farmer, he stayed home during the war, but was in the Reserves and had several framed photos of himself in uniform on the walls of the house.

My father would scoff and say, ‘All Stro ever done for the war effort was to sell French letters to the Yanks at the brothel door.’ Stro was constantly looking for his cigarette holder that was usually in his mouth or behind his ear.

We would bag ash that the steam trains had dumped between the tracks on the siding into our sawmill. Sometimes it was still hot and the bag would start smouldering. He would use the coal ash in the garden and for compacted pathways.

Christmas was a huge event with chooks losing their heads and cooking in progress for days before. The dirty nappies would be boiling in the copper one day and the Christmas ham the next. (Copper is toxic. So the boiled bacteria probably did no more harm than the copper-infused ham!)

He had invented a urinal because the pan in the thunderbox would fill before the dunny truck had done its weekly pickup. He dug a hole and filled it with rocks and coal ash, then stuck a length of four inch (10cm) earthenware pipe into it, and put a privacy wall around it and a block of wood for us male kids to stand on to reach it. It was eye-watering in there on a hot day.

Stro said that the dunny cart was the fastest truck in the world because it has 40 piss tins (pistons) and flies. His last car was an EK Holden that he bought new and would spend hours removing screws, dipping them in Vaseline and then putting them back again.

I just thought of another gelignite and fish incident. I was working on the main roads in Port Hedland and the boss had one eye and one hand. He had a device on his stump that he could screw different tools to, but mainly had a hook so he was called Hooky.

The story goes that he was on the grog and out on a log in the water with a plug of gelly in one hand and a stubby in the other. He lights the fuse from his fag and then throws the stubby into the water. That was how he lost his hand and eye.

Col Lewis.

A Unique Read

Enjoy Ian’s book which highlights pioneer ways. Australia’s Skills of the Past is available from normajean54@gmail.com $50 including postage. Payment for this article will be donated to a charitable cause. T