The Jacksons

Mary’s Memories

I was born in Harmby, a little village near Leyburn. My mother was Anne Pearson, and my father was Ralph Jackson. I was born in a tiny little cottage which had calico ceilings [?]. It was a Friday, and there was a snowstorm. My mother was home by herself, as my father was at the Kings Head pub in Leyburn. He was drinking with his friends. Mother had a good friend called Mrs. Barnett, and maybe she came and helped with the delivery. Arthur was born there too, and maybe Ralph.

When I was two we moved to a house in Barden [Prospect House], that my grandparents (Pearson) vacated to go to Australia. All the rest of the children were born there.

We had endless songs in our house. Mother and Dad both loved singing. One song I remember goes back to the Boer War Campfires agleaming all shot and shell, I will be dreaming of my own Bluebell. Dad was 36 when he married Mother, and he had probably had a good time around the pubs and music halls all his life. By the time the Second World War came there where lots of war songs like There’s a long long trail awinding.

The whole house centred around the fireplace in the kitchen. I think we had two couches in our kitchen, with the ends pointing in towards the fireplace. We sat there and there was a low chair that by the time I was four years old I was nursing the latest baby in. I remember sharing a secret with Arthur one night. There were six of us in the bed and I whispered to him “Don’t go to sleep until the other kids have”. I then spelt out to him “our Mother is going to have another baby”.

She was lucky to get two years between babies, more than likely only twenty months. One day I went to school and when I came home mother had twins – a boy and girl. The strange thing is I had no idea she was pregnant and sad to say the little girl called Ivy died when she was six weeks old. The boy, Robert, did well.

I remember when my Great Grandmother died my mother looking for a clean hanky to take to the funeral. When Ivy died mother wouldn’t look at her and said she wanted to remember her as she was when she was alive. It was dad who had to take people upstairs to see her. One time he came down and I heard him say “She’ll make a lovely Angel that one”. She is buried in the churchyard in Hauxwell.

The only accident I remember was my brother Charlie who was riding on a boy’s back in the schoolyard when he fell off getting a fractured femur. The Schoolmaster had to hire a horse and trap and because there was no road between the school and our house. He had to be taken the long way around to get him home.

We must have had a doctor, surely. Anyway he was taken by horse and flat cart to Darlington, twelve miles away. He was there for six weeks and for a special surprise we sent him two great tins of cigarette cards. These cards came to Australia and were out at the farm at the Double Bridges. I don’t know what happened to them.

Dad would have been the one to do all the running about because Mother was always busy with the babies and the one she was expecting. Dad had relations in Darlington. Of course you never sent for the doctor unless there was something terrible wrong.

I remember when we all had the dreadful flu after the First World War. It went all over the world, we were all upstairs in a bedroom with the fire going, and we could hardly eat anything, we all had nosebleeds, and all sorts of horrible things. Dad fed us all what we called crackers and you call Sao biscuits, it was all we could keep down. He used to get us all out of bed, put a blanket around each of us, and took us all downstairs and made us all stand around the front door and take deep breaths of fresh air – and we all survived.

I also had dreadful whooping cough. One day I was coughing when mother went out of the village to where we had a couple of fields, and where she milked the cows and fed the chooks [chickens] and gathered the eggs. When she came back I was still coughing dreadfully.

We had mumps. I’m sure I had mumps twice even though you are supposed to only get mumps once. I had a cloth tied around my chin and up over the top of my head. Also we not only got ordinary measles but German ones as well! I always seemed to get them last after I had helped looked after the other kids.

One time, after walking a long way in the snow, found my legs wouldn’t move. I met a friend and stopped talking to her and that’s when I found I couldn’t move. I’d walked to school which was one mile from home, then after school I walked to another village called Hunton for my music lesson. Then I walked to another village called Garriston where I met my friend and stopped talking to her. I did finally get home and my legs broke out in a rash. But after a good night’s warm sleep I was all right the next morning.

Religion was a part of the whole village life. We had a Wesleyan chapel in the village and all the farmers around were Wesleyan. My mother belonged to the Church of England and by the time I was ten, I went to the Church of England one mile away at Hauxwell, in the morning, and went to Sunday school about twelve o’clock in the Wesleyan chapel in the village, and then stayed for the Wesleyan service around two o’clock. Then in the evening set of for the Church of England one mile away for the evening service because I sang in the choir. I sang in the choir from when I was ten until I left to come to Australia when I was nearly fifteen.

I said my prayers when I went into Chapel and Church but when I was a kid going into Sunday School, I used to bob down real quick and say “God bless me and make me a good child for Jesus Christ sake amen” – just as naughty as when I knelt down. My favourite hymn is “How sweet the name of Jesus is to a Believer’s Ears”. I’ve got lots of hymns I like. I used to like one we sang at school but which was considered a bit too complicated for the choir at church. It’s called “All Gladdening Light of this pure glory who is the immortal father heavenly blessed”. Our school teacher played the organ at church.

Both my mother and father had a very good sense of humour. I think when people are from big families and they get together, and they are not Wesleyan farmers like most of the neighbours, they’re a bit inclined to have a laugh about that. The neighbours probably had their own ideas about us.

Dad used to get himself drunk and come home with his horse and cart, singing all the way. He’d sing out “Wake up! Wake up! this is Ralph Jackson, you don’t know if Will Robinson (one of our neighbours) is your friend or your enemy”.

I don’t think it paid my Mother to have a bad temper while dad was around.

I loved our house [Prospect House in Barden]. It was a two storey house made out of cobble stone on the outside and inside it was plastered in the backrooms, like the laundry, and the dairy (pantry). All the other living rooms were papered with beautiful designed wall paper and, yes, it was a very nice house. It had a date on it, but I can’t recall what it was. I might say it looks just the same today as it did all those years ago.

I loved it. It had an enormous big kitchen and living room with of course the stove in the middle [of the east wall] with ovens on either side of the stove. My mother used to get a big dish like a washing up dish and put the porridge and water in it each night, and it would gently cook all night and be ready for the following morning. Of course the fire was lit early in the morning and went until late at night. There were always a few red cinders left the following day ready to be lit up again.

It was an iron stove, black and silver, and it burned coal and wood. We went to a village [Spennithorne] where there was a railway station to get our coal. I don’t know where the coal came from – the nearest mines were in Durham. In fact one of my uncles (George) was a coalminer. We never passed a branch of a tree that had fallen off that we didn’t drag it home. We never had any bought [fire] wood.

The house inside had a very big living room, laundry, dairy, and kitchen downstairs. You went up a flight of stairs and came to a small landing which had two little flights of stairs going in opposite directions and came out on to another landing. One side had two bedrooms and the other side had three. We had couches around the fires because there were a lot of us to get seats. Somewhere I remember a small round table being near the fireplace and my mother would put a lovely starched white tablecloth on it and set the table for my father’s evening meal.

I think there was a much larger table further back in the room. In later years there was a piano there. Then there was the parlour, and because my father was a great one for going around sales, we had some good furniture. He bought home a real plush green lounge suite and a fancy little table that had two layers that was bought from us before we came to Australia by a lady looking for old furniture.

Upstairs there were great double beds, maybe they were left by my grandparents when they came to Australia in 1912. The kids all slept in shared bedrooms but as I got older, being the only girl for so long, I got a room of my own. That was until Aunt Alice came to live with us while she learnt confectionery in Leyburn, and we then shared a double bed.

We had no electricity all the time we were in that house, I remember washing the light globes, and lighting the kerosene lamps. During the First World War we had another family living with us.

I remember that the little back bedrooms were sometimes used for storage, and the floor would be covered with apples we kept for winter. We had taken them from the trees. There were various things we had to store, like potatoes and onions. One thing I must say about my dad – he was a good gardener. There were things that were always there like apple trees, plum, pear, and a big cooking apple tree. We had tall canes that grew raspberries, and right down one side of the garden there were blackcurrant bushes, which made jam.

Around the two apple trees in the centre there was a little square lawn with redcurrant bushes and we had gooseberries which are not like the ones you have here [in Australia where is account was written]. There was apple, blackcurrant, redcurrant, raspberry, and plum jam in the cupboard upstairs and mother would buy figs and make fig and rhubarb jam.

I often marvel at how they kept nine of us because there was very little money. We had chooks and cows, so we had eggs and milk, and I must tell you that the butter from the cream was sold at Richmond markets six miles away. One of our neighbours (Mr Robinson) used to take ours along with his. We had a churn to make the cream into butter and then it was made into pats, and then there was a roller thing that rolled along the top and made a design on it. I don’t think it was wrapped and I don’t have any idea how much we got for it. We never got to have butter – we always had margarine which wasn’t fashionable like it is today.

We always had a couple of pigs and they were fed the skim milk left after we had taken the cream off to make the butter. Each autumn we killed two of them. We’d lay them in a tub of salt water for a while to salt them, then they were hung on a rack in the kitchen above the stove and they got a smoky flavour. I have something in my mind about a little house where you put things to smoke them.

We had very little fish. Rarely someone would come around selling cod, rare because we were in the middle of the country. The fish that was eaten at breakfast was kippers. They were a sort of smoked and oiled fish. Very tasty.

We were never hungry but there was a lot of the time I wasn’t sure my dad was working. There was no such thing as the dole. We had all the basic things but you had to have a bit of money for things like shoes.

My mother was a dressmaker, that was her trade. She did her apprenticeship in Leyburn before she got married. Later she started a laundry where she did the washing for the officers at Catterick Army Camp four miles away. Beautifully done, she got a lovely reference from one of the colonel’s wives when she left to come to Australia. She said how beautiful and sweet the laundry was each week when she got it back.

My dad would deliver it with his horse and flat cart with the baskets on the back. Of course in those days the old irons would have to be put in front of the stove to get hot, later on mother did get a petrol [!] one. My job was to mind the kids while she did the washing.

Mother also did dressmaking at home. She used a treadle machine that came to Australia with us.

We didn’t have a bathroom, the zinc tub was bought out and put in front of the fireplace. The laundry was inside the house, with the old rollers, we even put the folded sheets through them. We used to make our own soap. The toilet was outside.

I had pet mice and I remember getting my finger bitten. We also had a white rabbit that died, we also had cats. I don’t remember ever having a dog in England. My father always had a horse and, because we had fields outside the village, I was often the one to go and catch it and ride it home ready for him to yoke it up for wherever he was going.

Once we put together bits of an old bike and I know the back axle was an enormous nail. We’d go up the top of a slope and ride down to the bottom – and fall off! That’s how we learnt to ride a bike.

Our village was a few houses around the village green and there were a few farm buildings too. My word, we kids loved to play on the village green and there was a horse always feeding there. Its name was Daisy Bell, it was white. I once let my brother Robert crawl under the horse’s legs, I bet he still has the mark on his forehead. The horse didn’t actually kick him, it pushed him away.

I worked all one summer in Barden, pulling out dandelions. I got seven shillings and sixpence, and went into Leyburn to buy myself something nice but ended up buying a little wheelbarrow for my brothers.

Every fifth of November we had Bonfire Night. We gathered up all the branches and made a great big fire, and had a few crackers and whizzers of one sort and another. It was called Guy Fawkes Night.

There were two cars in Barden by the time we left to come to Australia. One was a van which we put our things in and he took us to the station to catch the train to London and Tilbury docks. The other was a farm car. You can imagine all us kids laughing, because the man tried to drive through the gate into our yard, and he drove into the gateposts.

I was never friendly with my Pearson grandparents – and I was a impudent thing. When my grandfather came back from Australia he bought a horse, and because my father was knowledgeable about horses, he said the horse had a Roman nose. My grandfather was doing some fencing and I was on my way home from school and I stood there, cheeky thing that I was, and said “Old Tom Pearson bought an old nag”. He picked up a fencing stake and ran after me but luckily he didn’t catch me.

My mother and my Grandmother Pearson never got on very well. Because my mother was a dressmaker, her mother got her to make three dresses all at once. My mother said, “Why do you need three dresses?” and grandma Pearson said, “To keep your father’s eyes at home – that’s why!” I never got close to her and she never bothered with me.

Grandmother Dickenson [née Jackson, mother of Ralph Jackson senior] was wonderful. She sent up parcel after parcel of things to us when we were little. I remember she once sent up two dollies and everything they ever needed. They had beds and all kinds of furniture and as always all the boys got playing with my things and they all got broken. Being the only girl for so long I could never have anything I could keep for myself.

Once she sent us a great big old fashioned biscuit tin full of brooches and badges. She was a nice lady and my father adored her. He called her “My sweetheart”. I might have been able to visit her as I got older except you had to get on at one of our little railway stations, we had lots, Spennithorne, Constable Burton, Bedale, Northallerton, and so on. But you had to go to York and change trains for Leeds. So I never got to visit her.

The only Great Grandmother was at Hauxwell – she was Anne Ingram-Pearson [Ingram was her maiden name]. She had her leg taken off and they mustn’t have made artificial limbs in those days because what she had was like a bit of a brass bedstead, like a brass rod attached somehow to her knee. She was very frail and old when I knew her.

Great Grandfather Pearson was supposed to be a bit of a wild man. A big red headed man he somehow got caught up with an 18 year old schoolteacher and I think he spent a bit of time in prison because of it. Great grandmother said that after he died she saw him standing at the end of the bed one night and she was quite sure he had been saved from his sin and she would meet up with him in heaven.

Uncle George Pearson, who was a coal miner, used to come and visit us. He had two dear little girls who died in the flu epidemic at the end of the First World War. Once they left the boy who had survived the flu with us while they went on holidays. Needless to say we gave him a hell of a bad time. I believe he came to Australia once but he never came near us!

The only contact I had with my other uncles, who had gone to Australia and joined the Australian forces, was when they came over to England on leave. So we had these Australian soldiers coming to visit with their slouch hats on. We saw most of Uncle Fred because Uncle Steve was bought home wounded and was put in hospital down in the south of England and there he met the lady who was to become my Aunty May.

Aunt Dora came home from Australia and married and had a baby that died, and then she had no more children until she went to live in Canada.

Two or three families had to come through our front garden to get to the village pump. One day mother was having a quiet gossip to some of them when she looked up and saw the Parson coming so she said “Parsons coming, come on we’ll make out were as thrang [busy] as Thrope’s wife”. Thrope was someone out of the bible.

Mother was always there – she was the one who kept the house going. Once I went and did my own thing, when I should have been minding the babies. It was a Saturday morning and it was the time of the year when the hazel nuts were ripe. I went off to where I knew the hazel bushes were and when I got back my mother was so mad at me, she was upstairs, and she had a bucket of water, she must have been washing the floors, she was so mad she took that bucket of water and threw it all over me. God knows where the water ended up, probably soaked through the ceilings!

We had no radio, just a piano, and we all sang around that. You never miss what you don’t have. We never celebrated birthdays, the only thing special was maybe at Christmas we cooked a ham, and had a roast and Yorkshire pudding. One year when I was four, the carol singers from Barden chapel came around. I was upstairs singing along and they realized I could sing, so they took me along. From then on I went around at Christmas time each night singing at each door, getting a bit of money for the church. We went as far as Hauxwell and we went down to where the big nob who owned all the places, Colonel Wade-Dalton, lived at Hauxwell Hall. We used to have to curtsey to him. I remember mother making me a blue velvet dress one year for it, I had blue ribbons in my hair. My hair was all long curls, made by putting lengths of rags in it, and curling the hair around it.

The christenings were done when the Parson came around. Mother and the Parson would kneel on the hearthrug in front of the fire and christen the baby. Mother never had time for church with all her kids.

I started school when I was four because Arthur, my elder brother, was a very nervous child. So I, being the bold little one, started with him. We walked to school about one mile away at Hauxwell. We had boots to wear. When the snow was on the ground you wore a pair of thick knitted socks over your boots to keep the snow out of the inside of your boots. My mother used to make us pasties for our lunch, she’d roll out a circle of pastry, and put slices of potatoes, or apple, or even jam, double it over, and prick our initials in the top with a fork, and then cook them.

My best friend was always Kathleen Robinson who lived at the other end of the green. I kept in touch with her all her life. Kathleen was a girl who took epileptic fits and one day we were walking to school and she said, “I don’t feel well” and suddenly she fell on her back and her arms and legs all started twitching. Her dinner bag was tight around her neck and I pulled it away and a man who lived nearby came and took her home. She never went back to school after that.

I left school at 14, I always went to East Hauxwell school. By the time I left school mother would have been expecting Barbara, who was born in the September, and we left for Australia in the October when she was six weeks old. (Mother had all her teeth extracted at a dentist in Richmond during that six weeks).

The big idea of coming to Australia was to get a farm for each of the boys. Mother and dad had heard so much about the place from her parents. Aunt Alice and Aunt Dora, and two different family friends of ours had all immigrated to Canada, but because the Pearsons had been in Australia for about eight years farming, and because we were farming people, it was Australia for us. I wasn’t unhappy about coming here. I was of the age wherever the family went I would have gone. We left Barden in a van owned by the Pounders, he took us to Spennithorne station. Dad wasn’t with us. He’d been having his last afternoon with his mates at a Leyburn pub. He joined us at Spennithorne and we travelled during the night to Kings Cross station in London. We spent the rest of the night on the station. Dad went out and had a look around the city.

We had to go to Charing Cross and then down to Tilbury docks. What struck me was the miles upon miles of small cottages, all the same, little grey cottages. I don’t know what it’s like now, but for a little girl from Barden and the green fields of Yorkshire, it was a shock.

It took us six weeks to get to Australia – we arrived on the 27th December 1926. We went through the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans (10 days). I saw Gibraltar and other places like through the Suez Canal. I saw a man walking along with a camel there, then through the Red sea and down around South Africa. I always had to stay on board when we came to port to mind the little ones. Mother, Dad, Arthur and Barbara, because she was the baby, always went ashore and had a look around. One day when we were in the port of Bombay, a young fella about 17 or 18 came down from First Class to where we were playing on deck and started talking to me. Someone said he was a prince waiting for his luggage to go ashore. Later at night I’m looking over the side of the ship, watching him go ashore in a boat, when he stopped and came back and asked me if I’d like to go with him. I said “Mother’s in bed and I can’t ask her permission”. Later it was said that if I’d gone, I would have ended up in a Prince’s Harem and never made it to Australia.

So I’ve seen a bit of the world, not like today when you get in a plane. The first port of call in Australia was Freemantle which seemed to be just surrounded by dead grass. I got to go ashore in Melbourne and was impressed by the wide streets, very different to England. They bought me a Panama hat there – it was white.

We came ashore at Sydney and we got all our stuff off the ship. There were big boxes with things like the sewing machine in them. The Harbour bridge wasn’t built then. So we hired a lorry and piled all the kids and all our goods and chattels, and went around to Manly, where the Rev George Ingram-Pearson met us. He was mother’s uncle. The second Mrs. Ingram-Pearson was rich and they owned holiday homes there. We stayed in one and it had a gas ring sticking out of the wall for the cooking. Because we had been on a long sea trip we had a pack of cards and we were sat there on some rocks playing Euka. We didn’t know what to do when Rev. Pearson, a goody goody Methodist parson, came and caught us playing cards.

However I got a job right away at the fruit shop on the comer. Manly at that time was just a rocky, hilly place. Also, the very first day, Rev. Pearson got us a farm to work so I never got to start my job.

We set off by train to Wingham on the North Coast and arrived there about 3 o’clock in the morning. We went out to the farm and were stuck there for a year, hardly anyone ever went to town. If anyone did it was Dad. I only went once and that was with the neighbours, and it was to Taree.

After a while mother was pregnant again and had a baby girl called Lavinia who died and is buried in Wingham. We left that farm at Wherrel Flat and moved to one at Morrel Creek and got straight into the milking. Our greatest wish was to get up to the Richmond River, at Uralba, which is where the Pearson family was when they where in Australia.

So, after three years we came up here, we came to Lismore which was in flood, and we were there for six weeks before we got a farm to work at Cumberlum. We brought a dog with us on the train, and Arthur came on a later train with a couple of horses.

I got a job as a housemaid in High Street in Lismore, anyone who could afford it had a housemaid in those days. We got a fellow called Hennersy to take us to Cumberlum in his truck and when we rolled into Ballina we passed where they were building the Ballina Railway station, which was never a success, and was later pulled down.

We stayed there three years on a farm owned by Curtis Hughes and, sad to say, while we were there our brother Charlie died. He had rheumatic fever and he was in Ballina hospital a long time. Anyway they said he could come home and mother went to town to get him, and when they sat him up his heart was floating in fluid. If it happened now they would be able to fix him up.

We had talked so much about Charlie coming home to an Indian neighbour that he brought up his gramophone and some Indian records and we were sat there playing his records when the news came through that Charlie had died in the night. Mother had stayed the night there with him.

These memories are still too sad to talk about after 63 years so we will move on to Ballina.

After three years we left Cumberlum and we moved into a nice house in Kerr Street between River and Tamar Street. It was a beautiful house all lined with timber. Mother had another baby while we there, and it died and she nearly did too. We stayed in town about a month and, as usual, Dad met a man in the pub called Owen Cawley from Alstonville. He arranged for us to move on to the farm at the Double Bridges which we rented for a while and then finally bought it.

After a couple of years I got married and left the Jackson home. By this time Barbara, the youngest, was going to school at Uralba.

During the time we lived at Cumberlum the family was earning 36 pound a month. Saving 20 pound and living on 16 pound. We lived mainly on butter made from the dairy and custard made from the skim milk. Arthur came up from the dairy one day and he had a stone in his hand. I’d been making the butter and he threw the stone into the bowl of butter and said “Bread and bloody butter again!” Needless to say, butter went everywhere.

I could cry myself to sleep over some of those hard times. To me it seems a whole lot of wasted effort, because what did they do with all the dairy products? England dumped us and decided to trade with New Zealand. Everywhere you go in England you see products made in New Zealand. I went to work up at Back Channel for a family called Meannies and I had been going out with Lei for a couple of years before we got married.

It’s no use looking for my records in the Anglican church. The Church of England minister used to have his meals at the Stoker home when he took the service at Uralba. Lei was a bit of a rebel, so we got married in the Presbyterian manse. One of Lei’s best friends was Charlie Gough and he was a Presbyterian. Maybe he was the second witness. My brother Ralph was the other one.

I made my own wedding dress, it was blue and had a white yoke right down to the waist. Of course seeing my mother was a dressmaker I wasn’t too bad on the sewing machine myself. We didn’t have a wedding reception – we spent one night in a boarding house in Ballina.

Lei was cutting cane which meant he was living on the cane fields, not many cars about on those days. So he went back to the cane, and I went back home and lived. When Charlie was born I came into town and lived with Arthur and Ella Jackson and old grandfather Greenhaigh, in Greenhaigh Street. Charlie didn’t walk until he was 16 months old and he used to crawl around as fast as his legs would go. Grandfather Greenhaigh used to call him Charlie Bob.

Lei camped on the cane fields from Sunday night until probably Saturday lunch time. He rode his bike to work and back.

I came to town from the Double Bridges in a sulky to have Charlie, Lei was in the cane fields, and Ralph brought me in. During the afternoon the water broke and I was quite innocent and new nothing about birth so of course the water ran gently all over everything all the way to town. Mother said “Don’t worry it won’t come that early, you’ll be all right, just take it gently on the way into town”. He was born in Claremont Private hospital about 9 o’clock that night.

It seems so helpless these days, you’d have thought Mother would have told me something about it. All she said was “The best of times is bad enough”. I went home then until December when Lei finished cutting cane.

After Greenhaigh Street, we moved into a little house in River Street, opposite where the Oriental Pearl restaurant is now. That’s where we lived when Norma was born. I can’t remember who owned it. He lived over the road in a garden with a hut in it. River Street wasn’t the main road then, it just went down to Bagot’s mill.

I went to hospital by taxi to have Norma. There was a lady called Mrs Ware who you could book up and she would come and take you to the hospital. Norma was born in half an hour, there was a visiting doctor called Dr. Punch, he only just made it for the birth. She was born in Ballina District Hospital, I really enjoyed being there.

Then we moved into a house in Tamar Street, down towards Bagots mill. Then my father bought me a house at 15 Brunswick Street. He liked to come to town and spend a couple of days while he had a boozing session. It was on the comer of Brunswick and Tamar Street. It was an old house and I can’t remember how much he paid for it (92 pounds?) It was nice there with a little park on the end of the street on the river bank. The house had two bedrooms which led into a large dining, lounge, and separate kitchen. It’s still there but very much altered.

So we sold there and moved here to 148 Tamar Street especially to start a bait shop. I got pregnant with Rodney the very minute we moved here. So we didn’t start the shop right away. Lei worked at Bagots mill and the Ballina Council. We started the shop before Sue was born, I was working it very pregnant, but we had boys to help us.

They went out with Lei to get Pippies and he got beach worms, usually with Kevin Moss. Sometimes I left a parcel of bait on the counter for good customers at night, and sometimes I had to get up and serve customers because it was a day and night shop. Lei thought his job was done once he had caught the bait. He also caught whitebait and mullet.

Going back a few years, there was no dole, they had to work for it. The Ballina council kept them employed, they used to make grids for the gutters around the streets. They were made out of iron, now they are made out of cement. He also worked on a rock and cement wall going from Missingham bridge to the kiosk at East Ballina, it had a steel railing around it. I have never found a time when things were not hard, but they were a lot harder then, especially because Lei like to have a drink.

On the 3rd January 1942 Lei went to the war and just before he left, Norma had clambered up on a cupboard and fell and had broken her arm, so he was upset at having to go at that time. I’ll tell you what we were into at that time – and they were greyhounds. It was a healthy lifestyle, taking them for walks every morning and night and brushing them each morning. I remember walking along one morning with four dogs on the leash when they spied a cat, and took off after it and I went flat on the ground. Our first dog was called Norma’s Pet, and she won race after race, and we only ever got the prize money. We never had a bet on her. We had another dog called Montagus who won a lot of races too.

The greyhound track was in Swift Street opposite Saunders Oval. Fred Stoker had the loud speakers and he used to play a few tunes in the afternoon to see if everything worked.

I’ve still got rationing books here. Butter, sugar, tea, and clothing are some of the things I remember being rationed. It seems strange because we had the dairy farms and sugar cane, but it was due to conditions in other parts of the world. I can’t remember much about clothing ration because I was a dressmaker and able to make do.

When Lei joined up I went to Tammworth with him. I left the two kids home with mother. Some other Ballina wives were there with their husbands, Floe Flanagan, and Iris Phipps. I was only there a day and the army was moved to Newcastle, so I went too. I took Norma and Charlie there with me, they went to school there. Norma started school at Charlestown in Newcastle.

I don’t know how long we were there. I went to work at the Newcastle hospital. My sister Barbara, came down with me and minded the kids. She was about fifteen at the time.

We came back to Ballina when he had finished his training. We had blackout at Ballina during the war, you couldn’t let any light be seen. So we had brown paper over the glass in the windows and then blinds over that. We had to do this because we are right on the coast and the Japanese were going up and down the coast in ships and submarines.

Anyway I had Charlie, and Norma, and Lei was away for about four years. The first place he went to was, and I think he enjoyed it, was Cape York, right on the top of Queensland. You see Lei was a sapper with the engineers and they built a great big jetty there, so the ships hanging around New Guinea, could come in and be repaired.

He loved Cape York, and from there he went to what was called Dutch New Guinea. He spent some years there. When the war ended there was singing and dancing in the streets of Ballina.

All the time Lei was away in the war, I was dressmaking. I spent a lot of time sewing for the ladies of Ballina. Because everyone got their dresses made, not like today, when you go to the shops, and buy them ready made.

We only had radio and if you wanted to see the news of the world you had to go to the picture theatre. TV has brought the world a lot closer. Politics was nothing like it is these days when you can hear it day and night. We knew who the prime minister was and we had the country party here. One time at the polling place at Uralba there was one vote for the labour party. Who do you think it was? Lei Stoker! My mother once said to me. “If you vote for them, you’re not one of us”.

Another thing Lei used to do when he was young was to go to the top of Uralba hill and fill his mouth up with kerosene and blow it out on to a lighted match. It would explode in flames. Well! He had everyone in Uralba frightened to death – they had no idea what it was.

I had violin lessons while we lived at Cumberlum. I rode there on a horse called Toby. I learnt from Professor Wall. They stopped once we went to live at the Double Bridges. However I kept playing until many years later. We had a parrot in a cage who would jig around madly as I played. I was starting the lawn mower one Christmas and I broke my left hand so I wasn’t able to move my fingers to play anymore. I gave my violin to Robert Magnay and he lovingly restored it, and he put it out in the sun to dry the last coat of lacquer, and he promptly backed his car over it, so that was the end of the violin.

When we were first married we had bicycles to get about on. I was known to get along with two kids on the back of my bike. We used to ride to the farm at the Double Bridges, it was a long ride of five miles, especially for little people, so we would have a rest on the river bank at Wavely. One time I had Norma on the back of my bike and she got her foot caught in the back wheel and took all the skin of her ankle.

We had two house cows, I had them when I was in River Street and one of them used to lick the sheets on the clothes line then eat them. One day Norma came in and said “Mummy’s moo moo num num Norma’s ninny” which meant, mummy cow ate Norma’s Linny which was her rag doll. Anyway when we lived in Brunswick Street I kept the cows in the Railway paddock which is now Saunders Oval. I used to take them home in the evening, milk them, and keep them overnight in our backyard, then milk them in the morning, and take them back to the paddock to feed all day. Cows were allowed to wander the streets in those days. We used to have to take them out and dip them regularly. The dip was where the sports club near the R.S.L. bowling club is.

The canal road was the main road to Lismore in those days and it became quite a job to get the cows across the road as the traffic increased, so the cows finally went back to the farm. I remember one cow we had – we called her Aunt Violet because she had a turned up nose like our Aunt Violet in England.

Rodney was born in Ballina District Hospital. We had a car of our own by then. I remember one time when he was a little fella Lei and he had been away in the car, and Lei let him out in front of the house, and unbeknown to him Rodney had fallen over and he ran right over his leg. Didn’t break anything but the marks of the tyre stayed on him for hours.

When the main road changed from Tamar Street to River Street, we closed the bait shop and Lei started work on the Burns Point Ferry. He started as a deck hand and when the ferry changed to diesel he was able to do his exams and become a driver. After a few years the bridge at Wardell was built, and the ferry changed from the Main Roads department and came under Ballina Council, so Lei was transferred to Woodburn ferry.

Still on Rodney, I remember when he started school. I used to take him to school and I would come home and he would be behind me – and I’d have to take him back again. He settled down after a couple of weeks. Strangely after a break of 13 years I found myself with two more children. Suzanne came along and was born in Ballina District Hospital. It was lovely when I had Sue because my sister Barbara was in hospital at the same time. She had Janet. There was two days difference between the babies’ births. There is 15 years between Barbara and me so it was rather wonderful. I was 42 at the time.

There was a tremendous flood at the time (1954) the biggest I had ever seen. Saunders oval was covered and it was all over the roads. We had deep gutters at that time and they were all filled. The strangest thing about that time was that the first two had finished school before the second two started.

The thing with Lei working on the ferry was shift work. So the house had to be quiet so he could sleep. Sometimes he started work at midnight so the afternoons after school had to be quiet. Sometimes he finished at midnight so the mornings had to be quiet. So this made family life with small children difficult. He had retired before the bridge at Woodburn was built.

He worked as a cleaner at the R.S.L. club after he retired from the ferry and one of his jobs was to take the food scraps to the dump and he’d keep some of the scraps and he started feeding the seagulls on Saunders oval. It got that way there was hundreds of them. They used to follow the truck sometimes all the way to the dump and back again. Anyway someone complained to the council about the bird droppings and he had to stop it.

I suppose he kept that job until he got too old. As Lei got older we were lucky to get lots of help. Because he was a ex-serviceman, the nurses came twice a day to bath him, and look after his needs. Sometimes they even stayed all night if he wasn’t well. He died at home with us on the 10 July 1992 and is buried at the Alstonville Lawn cemetery.

One special memory I have is of Melanie, and how she won Lei’s heart when she was a baby. Her brown eyes used to follow him around, and he grew to love her dearly as he did all his grandchildren. She was the first one around after he retired and he used to take her to pre-school and pick her up. Anyway my special memory is when he was dying, she was the one that held his hand and kissed him as he slipped away.

My advice to young people today is keep off the dope and the alcohol, it’s no good for you. Get yourselves married, and stick together! We did through good times and bad times, and look after each other as you get older.

Arthur’s Memories

My first recollection was seeing our father’s mother, Mrs Dickenson, [née Susannah Jackson] when I went to Leeds Infirmary. I remember a large lady standing in her doorway as father took me home in 1914–15 [aged 4–5].

I, with my sister Mary and brother Ralph, was born in a village called Harmby. I was baptised in Spennithorne, an 11th century church. I do not know about Mary and Ralph. They may have been baptised in Barden by the Rev Wade Dalton, the Rector of Hauxwell, as all my younger brothers and sisters were.

Both villages are near Leyburn in North Yorkshire. To the best of my knowledge the Jacksons originated in the Pickering and Darlington areas of Yorkshire. Darlington is in County Durham now. The Jacksons were butchers in Skinnergate in Darlington for three generations at least. Very hard men – made their girls cut up meat and generally served behind the counter long before others did, as Aunty Mary of Hurworth will tell you. Their young ones didn’t carry on [butchering]. One son has had children and I must enquire what they are up to.

For generations this family has followed their own inclinations – all have been rather independent. Our father, after serving his seven years apprenticeship on a farm seems to have learned many things including using the short handle shovel with ease – he was proud of it. He learned to stoke ….boilers and also tramped the countryside begging his way from houses around telling women that next door had given him some bread and would she give him a little butter. He finally ended up working in the limestone quarries at Harmby and Leyburn where he met and married Annie Pearson, a dressmaker of Barden.

During the 1914–18 war my father received his call up papers and mother locked us in a small back bedroom while she walked to where he was working. It was worthwhile because father was exempted from war service and mother was happy when she got back. Later he worked at Catterick Camp close to home as a boiler attendant or stoker. Those times we lived fairly well even though we were rationed. We also had 5 acres of ground and cows and calves, fowls, and a large garden. Later we had different ponies – even they were extraordinary. Our first was a grey mare and bay foal, or was it the first?

Our grandparents and families came home from Australia and he bought an old horse who played ‘God save the King’ as he went along [that is, the horse farted as he went along!]. His name was Richmond Tom and he wore his back shoes out too quickly dragging his hind legs along. Later the bay filly foal grew up and she was broke in to do all jobs. We had a flat cart – very useful – it was our transport. Before that it was Shank’s pony. Also we brought the hay from the field into the stack [yard] on it. If we hadn’t a pony our father was in the shafts and we pushed. Our father chewed tobacco and didn’t get as hungry as we did and so during haytime we missed a few dinners.

We got a tradesman called Joe Kendray (he was also an undertaker – he [carried] Bob’s twin sister [Ivy] all the way to Hauxwell Church... to make new wheels for our cart and later Uncle Fred (mother’s brother) married his [Joe Kendray] daughter Mary. Her name locally was Polly which made her husband cross. They had five children who now appreciate the sing songs they used to have at home around the piano and fire.

We prodded our own floor rugs from fairly thick material that our clothes were made of – cut into 2 inch or 2 ½ inch strips and poked through oblong pieces of strong hessian. They were good to lie on in front of the fire – coal [fires], often wood fires in winter. That was a job I had when I was 12–14 – to go the three miles to [Spennithorne] station to get coal.

We left from that station [Spennithorne] in 1926.

Our father’s father is not known but he had a saying – he often asked “I bet thou has never seen a dead donkey or been to a policeman’s funeral or been a mile away from a shit house?” [Steve thinks this was a smart comment to start a conversation].

It is thought his father [William Jackson] was a policeman. There we’ll leave the Jacksons for a while.

We built two stables, one in the field adjoining the cowhouses, another in the corner of the garden and the wall of the house next door. (Oh, our “field” was about a mile down the road across another field). The roof and the walls were made of tar felt and we painted tar on them later.

Also I remember our landlord felling some trees for sale and we were allowed to get the big branches for firewood which we stood up on end against this stable. We and in particular our mother always picked up any sticks or small branches of trees she came across and brought them home. She couldn’t help picking some up at Port Adelaide while the ship was there and couldn’t throw them down until she was nearly back at the ship’s side.

Now mother’s side:

She was Annie Pearson. Her grandfather was George Pearson a farmer of Hudswell, Yorkshire, his wife, her grandmother, was Ann Ingram of Tunstall. They married 15 August 1864 and had 6 children, 4 boys and 2 girls. Mother’s father was Thomas Pearson who married Elizabeth Hannah Woodward. They had 9 children, 6 boys and 3 girls. This family, except George and Annie, migrated to Australia about 1914 after Stephen and Fred had left [for Australia] in about 1912. [The family, Stephen and Fred] stayed there until 1921 or 1922 and then came home to Barden to live with and among us. I seem to think they came shortly after our Bob and his twin sister (who died later) was born. Aunt Mary had a girl called Rita while they stayed there [in Barden?]. They moved on to Pateley Bridge taking a mob of sheep with them. Must have been strange to English farmers and towns they passed through because I can’t recall any other large – I mean 60 or so sheep – being driven so far.

One boy of Tom Pearson is still alive in Pateley Bridge. He is Edward Ingram Pearson [died 2004] who well remembers the long walk. I think his mother, my grandmother drove the old Richmond Tom [the old horse] in a sort of sulky [horse drawn cart] and picked up lame or hurt sheep. One brother of grandfather Tom Pearson was George Pearson. He changed his name to Rev George Ingram Pearson and became a missionary in New Guinea and after many years in New Ireland and other islands was ordained by the Methodist church in Australia. His first wife died in New Ireland and after re-marrying he returned leaving his children in Australia. They were not happy and don’t have happy memories of that time.

Alice Pearson, after marrying Len Metcalfe, went to Canada, so also did her sister Dora after wedding Bob Craddock. These last two were still there and both are a good age. They have been married 65 years. Alice came back to Australia from Canada just before the 1930–40 depression and had a hard time ending in divorce and re-marrying Eddie Cigana. After that she seems to have had a fairly contented life.

The Tom Pearson family, himself and his wife, are buried in Pateley Bridge cemetery – [there is] a very beautiful view of the Nidd valley from there. So also [buried in Pateley Bridge] is Stephen , his wife and daughter who was shot in a jealous rage by a European they did not want her to marry.

Stephen and Aunt Mary has 13 children, 9 girls and 4 boys. One boy Walter died and the girl Nellie who was shot. The rest, except for Eric who lives in the Casino area, all live around Pateley Bridge in the North Yorkshire National Park. The area around them is not allowed to change and they have not changed despite the BBC, wireless and TV and they are multiplying and their children mostly have grown up keeping the old traditions alive unconsciously.

Before I leave the Pearson family, my mother, Annie Jackson’s grandmother Ann Ingram that was, lived at the last [house?] in Hauxwell with her son William Edward. She had a wooden leg – how she lost it and who made the leg like Long John Silver’s I don’t know. I only remember going to her house with a parcel once and seeing her then. Mother said she used to use the back of a chair to help her to get around the kitchen.

It seems that all of us went to Hauxwell C of E school. All of Thomas and Elizabeth Hannah’s children and descendents got their education there. It was sufficient to help them all be useful citizens all their life whatever circumstances they found themselves in. Also it seems that the Landlord (Colonel Wade Dalton) of the Hauxwell Estates seems to have provided a living or a farm to all the Pearsons who needed it. He even provided the living plus the Glebe land and house for his brother the Priest. He was ex-Army and had a footman. My mother whispered that he [the footman?] was RC and the only one in the area.

The Colonel used to look down his nose if we didn’t give him a salute or some such recognition. He had a chestnut mare for riding and a brown retriever dog [with] very curly hair – now you ‘Jackos’, what was the dog’s name, was it Trudy? [?] There was one at Double Bridges [farm in NSW] who came to a sorry end. I think the Parson’s name [from Hauxwell] was Frederick. He had an overcoat so old that the back of it was green. I can remember seeing him going home with a strong wind behind him and he was almost running – he had no transport of any kind.

I myself was born in 1910. I had a mug from King George V. I went to Hauxwell School about 2 miles across country [from Barden]. I had to keep my eyes open and note any changes or new growth or flower, animal or bird, bee or wasp.

Before we left Harmby for Barden I put my sister in the horse drinking trough. It was just outside our front gate. The house was called Gladstone and only small looking. We moved into grandfather’s house when he left for Australia in 1914. [seeing silly war almost started?]

We had no electricity or cars in our area. Paraffin and candles were used for lighting. We had no washing machine for clothes or dishes. We baked our own bread, made butter for sale and if not butter then cheese. Every farmer’s wife did all these things and took a pride in them. Father threw cream into the curds before straining all the whey out to make Gorganzola cheese – spots of a kind of blue mould in the white cheese. Wensleydale cheese is still famous, a kind of crumbly cheese though what we made was the normal round ones. When our cow was newly calved and had a lot of milk, that’s how we used it. We also kept two pigs to eat all the scraps and other slops – they got the whey but we liked the butter milk when fresh. We had to eat horrible smelly margarine made from tallow and other fats.

There was a man with a horse and flat cart sometimes got to Barden if he had fish left like herons [herrings?] and bloaters. We could buy kippered herrings from shops. Cheap fish [was] apprecia[ted]. Meat was generally bullock hearts, liver, pigs heads, sheep heads – we never had tripe, thank goodness.

The pigs were killed late October or early November as soon as the frosts came because we had no freezers. They were cut up in the normal way – full side cut down the back bone, laid down on the stone floor in the pantry and salted down one side [on?] the other. I think it took 6 weeks – some were smoked in the house chimney. Ours wasn’t – they were hung on the ceiling of the living room and while we had plenty we all had reasonably thick slices when it got down we only had the swaths as they called it – skin in other words. Toldman [that is , his father] had [the] meat – he had to work on it. The pigs were hung up in the back kitchen and it [were] not [a] nice sight first thing next morning for kids. Father always put a tatie [potato?] in its mouth for drainage – to hold it open.

We had no shop in our village or post office – only a post box in a wall. We had a Methodist Chapel and it is still there reasonably well attended because there is no where else to go and Yorkshire local preachers are usually interesting in what they say and do while on the job.

We had to go to the next village across country but always stayed on the footpaths. A few times while passing a turnip crop I’d see a nice well grown young one and went and collared it. Next time the farmer said “see if thou can go passed them turnips without pinching one”. But mainly for generations the children of Bellerby chased our kids into the shop and out of the village after we got what we had to – when we or I got home mother said “come on, every penny of it” (the change) and only once do I remember getting a packet of 5 Woodbine cigarettes.

While young we went to the Methodist Sunday School and on yearly trips to Redcar and other seaside places. My mother, I should say our mother, went there as a girl too. She told the tale of one man, a bit more than middle aged, standing on the cliff and looking out to sea and said “Man! what watter!”. One of the old farmers in mother’s day helped to haul the bricks for the chapel. He told mother “Money got funny goes funny” and I believe him. We made good use of the daylight hours, were seldom in mischief and slept well, like pigs all together to keep warm. I remember waking up one morning and the next kid’s hair was grey or white with frost from my breath. Looking at the window the snow was on it around the edges so we looked out to see a lovely scene – all pure white trees, bushes, garden mounds and all. Of course it wasn’t as pretty when we went out in it and mucked it up with our tracks all through it.

As we grew older, the eldest of us five kids from higher up on the moor (the Sayers and the Browns – the Sayer [children] all died before they were 21, I think where they lived was too damp) went to church, Hauxwell church, a Doomsday one like Spennithorne. The church and churchyard where our people are buried is about 1½ miles away down past the Landlord’s Hall. It has been restored lately so it will be there for centuries yet. It is by itself – I wonder why? Someone said it was thought the Black Plague of London came up there so they all moved and built stone houses up on the hill. It is still good to go home and wander quietly through the churchyard and be reminded of old acquaintances by names on the tombstones. One in particular was the gamekeeper who looked after all the big birds, hares, foxes, all wild life generally, even fish, as my brother George and his friend Sparra [’Sparrow’, George Mileham’s nickname] well know. They would have all their attention on tickling the small fish and he would cop them – generally they’d see him his head and his gun bobbing along over the stone walls and they’d hide – once in a sycamore tree and he spotted them. The kids called him Bouncing Fred [Fred Bailey]. I think he really enjoyed catching them – he only threatened to pepper their behinds for them.

A lovely place to grow up in – after that, you can live any where on earth except in a city. About two months after I was 14 I left home to work on a farm past Catterick. It was a long way to walk so I didn’t get home often. I was there only a couple of days when I was woke up at daylight or just after by the old lady. She sent me to a cow house where a cow was calving. I’d just got in there when the door was shut and barred. It was my first calving and I helped the cow and rubbed the calf down with straw. Then I looked for a way out and had to climb over the cow muck heap outside the other door – good job it was dry and hard. I lived as part of the family. During my stay there for a year Uncle Tom and his wife had a daughter Marjorie who now writes to me in Australia. I saw Uncle Tom and Louie the evening before.

What took most time was the turnips, mangles, potatoes. One man congratulated little Jimmy and I on how the turnips in particular looked. During the winter before I had carted all the cow, horse and other manures out of the gate into the paddock where they were to grow. It was hard work but it was mid winter and the heaps were hot and the straw strong. Here again you try to get the last that was put on the heap all the way down. Later in the Spring at planting time I reloaded the manure but the straw was all broke up. Then I had to start the horse down the row and get in the muck and throw shovelfuls down in the rows. Later spread it along then it was covered with a double mould board plough like the drain plough we use here only a lot smaller so the turnip seed was drilled into the soil on top of the hill and pressed down with rollers.

One day we dipped the sheep in a smaller dip than we have, same kind, and the policeman came to see the stuff was put in the water. My cousin has a different kind of dip – it is small, holds maybe 2 sheep and they have to be put in backside first then pulled out. Good job all his sheep are horned or they’d be heavy and awkward when wet but these sheep went through one at a time and their heads were pushed down making sure the got all wet. Oh, while I was hoeing turnips, father came and asked me for my wages to put the rent and I’d to ask the farmer for them and the poor fellow thought there was something wrong with me letting my money go like that.

I was confirmed in the church at Middleham. Towd parson had made arrangements with Mother and I was told to get there on time. I was standing or maybe leaning at the foot of the bell tower when all of a sudden the bells went off Bang! We could hear them at home 7 miles away so I won’t forget my Confirmation. I had had no training or lessons but Parson reckoned I knew enough and learnt as I went along. Funny, I don’t know where our Mary was confirmed – there or here. Before I went to work my Uncle Dave who was a year older than me took me standing on the axle of his bike to Middleham to see the silent pictures about 3 times. It wasn’t too comfortable for me and it was hard work for him. But still I saw pictures and heard the BBC before we left England in October 1926.

Our grocery man came from Tennants in Middleham and he, the order man, helped at a school concert once and he was good. Oh, George [Formby?] was a jockey at Middleham stables. There is an old castle there too. Our grey mare and foal were bought on the common at Middleham so when I was there in ’79 I had memories but I would have liked to wander round on my own for a while. Well, things went on as usual. I’d told the farmer we were off to Australia and he told me the next farmer who’d been there and I think he said I’d do alright because I was at that time ploughing the headland and I was among a lot of stones and the horses were getting excited but as usual it got done – maybe not as quietly as it should be but there would have been no bad language because the Cockey [Cockfield] was a Baptist and I had been to a Wowser’s Sunday School.

I used to walk home from there too about the second last time I got home to find a neighbour, with Mother in bed with a new baby daughter that grew up to be Barbara Carr. I was asked to kiss her and she was as red as a lobster and Yorkshire boys don’t go around kissing.

We had one man, Edmund Cockfield, who was shell shocked in the 14 – 18 war. His missus, don’t know where she came from or how he found her, used to kiss him goodbye before he left for work at his father’s farm. Once I know they had visitors and he didn’t want to do it in front of them so she came out of the front door and they did it in front of us kids. Then I remember someone asking where Edmund was and his sister called out “he’s having a shit in the barn”. Last time I saw that place the cattle were on the young grass after it had been cut for hay, so whoever it was, was sweeping [skitter?] that they couldn’t pick up on a shovel and it stunk. Edmund has a beautiful black headstone with gold lettering in the churchyard.

Our village had some houses with red tile roofs and I could see it on the opposite hill – must have been a good 7 miles away – but the air was clear then as it mostly is now. Well, next time I came home it was the last, the girl and the wife gave me a present each. One was a silver cigarette case. I’ve forgotten what the other was. Anyway Mother had all her teeth out after Barbara was born and in 6 weeks she had false teeth in and on the boat but I had to go twice to a dentist in Richmond. I was supposed to look after Barbara in those days. I hadn’t learnt to hold babies and she yelled all the time, even the dentist’s office girl could not quieten her. Anyway when she got her falsies in she tried to spew all the way up the street.

Came the day when we selled up everything we didn’t bring out here with us. Father had bought some pine cases that had held sides of bacon and he made a lid out of the top. M W Darwin was the [Auctioneer Towd man Picket]. Oh, them pine boxes had come from Australia and we brought them back again and after we got to Wherrol Flat, I know I slept on one or two of them. Oh, there was a light covering of snow on our selling up day. I think we had a good sale. We never had ought special. By this time, Kit Pounder had a Ford van – he’d started selling milk and every day he took it somewhere in the van. We were moved from our house to Spennithorne railway station in that van and I don’t remember smelling any spilt milk in it. It was a worrying time because Towd man had gone to Leyburn to say Goodbye to his cronies and he sent word by Old Cockfield that he’d catch us up at the railway station and wonder of wonders – he did – he got on in Leyburn station further up the line and Kit Pounder thought we all ought to be crying cos we were going a long way to live among the Blackies. I wonder what he’d say to us now? He copped us getting a rabbit out from under a haystack in his 40 acre paddock. Even our Geo remembers that, we copped it and he took it off us and carried it to his place. Anyway, it was a relief when we sighted Towd man. Mother was saying “What’ll we do if he’s not there” I don’t think it worried more than Mary and I as well as mother. Well, after a change of trains at York, which is a bad station for that, we eventually arrived at Kings Cross, London. From there we went in a four wheeled carriage to St Pancras and on the way we passed under a long bridge or tunnel with a road coated with rubber and I think most of the kids remember that cos they couldn’t hear the horses hooves or the wheels on the road. Well it was a nice trip from St Pancras to Tilbury. Very good [ground] and I seem to remember some thatched roofs on houses.

Well, going through, all the checks even one woman ran her thumb up one of the lads heads looking for nits but she said there was no need to look at the lot – we looked clean. Well all we did was stay together and follow the Leader who was Towd man. We got ourselves on to the RMS Royal Mail Steamer “Osterley” of the Orient Line. I don’t think we ever hear RMS today. The ship was our home for 6 weeks and we were sorry to leave it. I think it was Christmas Day and I remember asking the steward if we could have Dinner before we left and I got a definite “No” It was an interesting trip out and I could fill my time in doing nothing in those days and after we knew our way round the ship, where our cabin was and how to get there where and when to go for meals, where not to go, where we were not wanted. That was when school lessons came alive, seeing Gibraltar, Toulon, France, Naples Italy, a lovely harbour and Vesuvius volcanic mountain on the harbour shore, all the big potholes full of water and the roads made with slabs of stone and soldiers marching. Then Port Said in Egypt, Suez Canal and Brown men cleavering on and hot. Didn’t go ashore in France or Egypt – not very tempting from the ship. We went straight on to Colombo in Sri Lanka where I went ashore before the rest and got a few oranges off a dark woman who wasn’t covered up and Towd man seen me and I believe it tickled him no end, but it all seemed OK to me. The oranges were sweet too. One port we got oranges and they were so thick skinned that the orange was nearly all skin and we felt robbed. Colombo was where the kids dived for small or large silver, “Me no farda, me no mudder, give me one penny”. I think even our George will remember that. Next we sailed close to the Cocos Islands where we dropped reading matter. They looked nice after a week looking at the sea and I’m sure would be nice to live there if you weren’t a slave. Then on to Fremantle where we learnt that the Eastern States of Australia were no good. I wonder if our George would remember the horses at work on the wharfs, to see them getting a big loaded rail truck moving with no help almost like a long rake of cane trucks. They had to be started slowly or the last truck jumped off the line.

Then it was on to Adelaide. Port Adelaide was then only a few sheds in a desert where our mother picked up her armful of sticks. Next Melbourne and a boiling hot day or two. We went to the zoo – that was alright – but the streets and footpaths were hot and tiring. Now I think of our life in England – that never changed. School, work, and in the morning work school got homework again. Yet I think the trip out to Australia never affected us at all. We accepted everything that came along and fitted in with it. I remember sleeping on deck in the hottest part of the trip and the ship’s Policemen had to wake me to get out of the road of the sailors scrubbing the deck. The Cop said I hadn’t woke up all night. I slept in two deck chairs facing one another. I think other fellas brought out their mattresses from the cabins. Our cabin was down near the water line and the water washed over the porthole often but some days when the sea was really calm and it was very hot we could put a scoop out of the porthole to bring some air in. Sometimes at night sailors would have to come in and close the porthole if the weather changed. It was also pulled in quick when the sailors sprayed water over the side while scrubbing the deck.

So after two days in Melbourne we set sail on the last leg to Sydney and arrived at the Heads at sunrise and had a very special look at the Harbour at the very best time. The Harbour Bridge wasn’t joined at the top I think we passed under it and got to Woolamaloo Wharf and one of the first things I noticed was a fella going along blowing a whistle calling men out. Don’t think it lasted cos we weren’t held up. Though I remember having pity on some wharfies carrying out trunks – pretty big ones – they wouldn’t do it today. Our big boxes were in the hold so the cranes lifted them out. Here we met grandfather Tom’s brother, mother, Uncle George who was living in Sydney. He got us a job 15 miles out of Wingham on the Manning River and a house to sleep the night in on Queenscliff on the edge of the main Sydney beach on top of the hill and overlooking the sea and Manley. Couldn’t get there today for nowt. Then it must have been all day next day in Sydney perhaps picking up all our gear, then on the train for Wingham. Must have got there about 2am because that’s when I left to go to Lismore with the 2 ponies Silver and Old Toby. They went by goods train and I followed as passenger. Anyway the family arrived at Wingham and must have had to wait till afternoon for the cream truck to take us to Wherrol Flat. Travelling in the back along gravel roads wasn’t a very nice welcome to country Australia and not much to see except ring barked trees and a dead […?] and here and there a patch of what Town man called Indicorn which of course was maize – only a few patches. This must have been 27 or 28 Dec 1926. Well, Wherrol Flat was OK. About our only laugh was the bosses lad coming every morning for a billycan of milk – two thirds please he’d say. I wonder who remembers much of the school there, nothing extraordinary what I remember except Walshe’s oranges or lemons. They grew on the side of the road and we thought they belonged to the public. We were told otherwise. We were on the edge of the forest and there was a family living across the creek who had a boy and a girl who came visiting and couldn’t understand a word we said. Their mother came later to tell us about it. I remember this farm because those same people saw me riding the first horse out here and were looking forward to me coming a cropper. As soon as they saw I was riding normally they knew we were not Towny Poms. Anyway the boss let me ride into a stinging tree so that I would know what it was and later after he thought I wouldn’t get lost in the forest he tricked me by crossing the creek and riding a little was up it until we couldn’t see paddock or anything – then asked me which way to go home. I hadn’t been taking much notice and after a second or two I noticed the creek was running the other way so I told him that was it. He let me go on my own looking for calved cows after that. I was told to go to burn the bladey grass off over the hill and not thinking I dropped matches as I went and couldn’t get back so the horse and I stopped in a gully under some bushes. Haven’t made that mistake again.

Here too we lived on rabbits cos the butcher wouldn’t give us credit for 6 weeks. Thank the Lord the baker did. Mother wanted me to ride to town on one of the bosses old chestnut ponies with no shoes on – 30 mile round trip – to get some money out of the bank and buy a change of food but I refused so we went on still with the rabbits for 6 weeks when the first cream cheque came through. I wonder if any of the kids remember the heavy white frosts and running from one hot cow pat or bed where the cow had lain in their bare feet – also all the Sep milk they drank. The kids had the job of mustering all the cows who were missed in the early muster. We always got the close cows and started milking, that is the eldest of us we had to because we were among the first 3 cans the lorry picked up. I got on well with the Boss, a man named Johnson. We were on 3rd share that meant he got 1/3 his parent or part owner got 1/3 and we got the other.

Our George can put in what he remembers, I can’t tell where them first ferrets came from maybe he knows.

Well somehow we left there it was poor country, the flats were good but small. Also I’ve forgotten what breed of cows they were but there were good Jerseys at Wherrol Flat there or the next farm. So next stop was Bill Bett’s at Mooral Creek an old bullocky sort of fella – he had a good house and we had an old one in 2 parts where our Norman stood up at a party or some family meal with guests and said “Our mother said we can have one of them and one of something else and all we can eat of the sandwiches”. It upset mother a bit but all the rest laughed. I saw the first [Duroc?] Jersey boar and killed and skinned hundreds of calves and threw most of them straight into the boar and sows. We were on wages here. Betts had 2 farms and Aunt Alice came from Canada and worked the other with Lennie Metcalfe and were most unhappy there. We had five creek crossings there and in flood time we couldn’t get bread etc and the heads rolled until I could ride a draught horse and she rolled when she lost her foothold. Had to start crossing higher up so if we got pushed down we would still be on the road area. Sometimes there would be a big hole scoured out and that’s when her foothold went. Anyhow we got some bread. Generally in these areas ag of flour but the stoves weren’t much good for bread baking only damper or “flat” cake and that didn’t fill you if it was fresh. Mother was good at cutting and buttering thick lumps of flat cake. She even shoved one at Lennie Metcalfe before he married Aunt Alice and he ate it. I don’t know what he was good at – never seen much of him after Aunt Alice’s divorce came through but heard he got married again and had a lot of kids. Hope he was happy cos he was only a big kid himself. Anyway he came to our place at Betts’s and said “Am going to Lismore [Ann?] and they came ahead of us. The family came to Lismore first but I must have stayed at Morrall Creek 3 months more because they had one month’s holiday on top of a little hill, Gerrards Hill, then went to Curtis Hughes place in Cumbalum. He offered the family £30 a month if I would join them so of course I caught the train in Wingham, don’t know which horse I rode , Toby or Silver, but arrived in plenty of time. Don’t remember if I ordered the cattle truck or if they did but that’s where they were put and I went to the pub and arranged my bed and to be woken up next morning by taxi. Well I arrived in Lismore and found out the horses wouldn’t be there till next day so Ralph took me to the house on the hill where they had stopped and we laid down on the bare veranda boards and slept well. Got the ponies next day and rode them 24 miles to Cumbalum. I’m sure I had a saddle don’t know about Ralph. I remember we went down Moon St and where the park is there was a sale yard. I wonder if there’s any long rides like that today.

Well we settled in at Cumbalum until 1931. The great depression was on and mother or we all lost brother Charlie. He died of rheumatic fever and we had nothing in those days to cure it. Before he died he woke up and told mother he’d seen paddocks of beautiful horses. He died happy. Don’t think he knew he was going but they say children face death much better than adults. He was around 14 – 15 years old and is buried at Ballina Cemetery. A rough cross was made by father and laid into the concrete slab later. He was like Mary and Norman dark haired. It was many years later that father, mother and Ralph passed on. All are buried in East Bellina. I was going to say from early 27 to 31 we had worked on very small wages and shares but besides feeding, clothing and the rest mother saved enough to put a good enough deposit on a dairy going concern of 80 cows, pigs and 2 draught horses, ploughs harrows etc. – at reasonable rent of £20 a month. I think that was enough once or twice more than enough in winter we were able to agist [rent] some cows from Alstonville and make some extra money like that. At this time I was married and in the worst of the depression I got about 3 lots of dole food which helped. Later I got some work at about 2 day a week – it all helped. The family having a farm every one reckoned I didn’t need dole – well being on the farm we could get and grow food others couldn’t. My first son was born on the 24 Apr 1932. He was named Frederick Ralph after his 2 grandparents. We carried on like that till about 1934 when I helped the wife’s father to catch fish in the …

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