Welcome to my podcast, Therese Makes History.
My name is Therese Sweeney. I've been facilitating,
writing and producing histories for communities,
regions, industry, families, for 30 years. This
project is called the Derry Lane Project. This
episode is part supported by Turf Co, owned by
Gavin Rogers. who is located off the highway
in Jaspers Brush. They're the biggest agricultural
employer in the region and have been operating
for 40 years. Gavin is helping me realise the
production and I'm grateful. Episode 3, Boxall's
Lane. I've undertaken a series of recordings
with Richard Boxall recently. Boxall's Lane in
Maroo Meadow. named after his early daring farming
family. I'm going to talk about Richard's heritage
and position where his family were farming because
there are many boxels in the region and beyond.
Richard's a descendant of emigrant Thomas Boxhill
who came on the boat Neptune from Sussex, England
in 1839 with his wife Mary. They had 10 children,
one of which was Richard who was 10 years old.
Thomas Boxhill later died in Geringong in 1875.
Ten -year -old Richard is the great -grandfather
to our Richard Boxhill. Great -grandfather Richard
settled on Kangaroo Mountain after marrying Catherine
Nelson in 1863. They had ten children. Unfortunately,
Richard died young at age 49 in 1878. Catherine,
his wife, lived till 1909 up at Bellawonga, raising
those 10 children. Think about her life. Slab
hut, bush, no water at hand, all power, isolation,
wind, heat, growing food, cooking, wood chopping,
and additionally milking a small herd, making
cream to deliver by foot. or slide down the treacherous
mountain to a creamery depot. Richard's brother,
great -uncle John Boxall, around the mid -19th
century, owned 160 acres in Broughton Vale and
was president of the reorganised Broughton Creek
Show Society in 1888 and 1890. He died in Bury
in 1895. One of ten siblings, grandfather Richard
Boxall, was born in 1865 on Kangaroo Mountain.
The brothers up on the mountain had quite a reputation,
mixing rum with boxing. Grandfather Richard lived
at Forest Lodge, Maroo, up till 1892 with his
wife, Miniana Graham. They had married at Bellawonga
in 1888. Minnie was born in 1866 at Maroo. She
was the daughter of William Graham and Isabella
Emery, who resided at Woodside, Maroo, on 90
acres from 1865, the year they married. They
eventually accumulated a further 76 acres. William
only lived till age 40. Richard and Minnie moved
to Myrtlebank, Maroo, from 1892, on 220 acres,
hand -milking eight cows. A terrible tragedy
took Minnie early. She died in 1920. They had
eight children. Richard's two siblings, Maude
and Clyde, also married a Graham in Maroo. I'm
going to read to you passages of a publication
where the Boxall brothers are referenced. The
book is The History of Illawarra and its Pioneers,
published originally in 1922. written by Frank
McGaffrey. The original copy sits in Cornell
University Library in New York. It's readily
available as a download and I strongly recommend
the book, especially for those interested in
breeding. I'm quoting, At Myrtle Bank, the Boxall
family have been long and favourably known as
dairy farmers and dairy cattle breeders, first
at Omega, then Kiama, and afterwards at Berry
in the Illawarra district, covering easily a
period of 70 years. The writer, Frank, saw John
Berry's dairy cows in the Berry district. They
were of the longhorn Durham type, dairy cows
of great merit. Once the low -bred bull, a mudgy
-bred shorthorn, went into the boxall herd, the
old longhorn Durham type gradually disappeared.
The Boxall Brothers Myrtlebank stud of dairy
cattle at Maroo Meadow was established in 1893.
The Boxall Brothers, all through, have looked
ahead and used their eyes before buying a sire.
They are moving forward. End of quotes. Two of
those dairy cows from the property later feature
in the publication from Myrtlebank. Two cows,
Pigeon of Myrtlebank and the bull, Chalmers Warbond.
which you can view later, I'll let you know where.
William Victor, known as Bill and Jock, and Clyde
Nelson Boxall, stayed on Myrtle Bank when their
father could no longer run the farm. Their sister
Kate stayed too, cooking and assisting. Their
father Richard later died in 1936. Richard had
eight children with Minnie Anna. One of those
happens to be... the current Richard Boxall's
father, Lindsay Charlton Boxall. He was born
in 1909 at Myrtlebank. He married Catherine Ann
Allen, also known as Kitty. They married in 1945.
Today I'm presenting the interview with Richard
Boxall. I call him Richard III, who was born
at Myrtlebank and later moved to Woodside up
the road at age one. Richard and his wife Laurie
reside on a small portion of the Woodside property
on Grahams Road and I present to you his story.
So what year were you born Richard and what is
your full name? 1954 I was born, Richard Lindsay
Boxall, born at Myrtle Bank which was the old
original my grandfather's farm. And how big was
that farm and where was that located from here?
East direction, just straight down over the hill
from where we are now. It would have been a big
farm. It would have been 220 acres, maybe more,
I don't know. But I'm thinking because it was
the people that own it now, or did own it, they
cut off two blocks. And the only way you could
do that for council regulation to get a building
permit was 100 acre lots. It's 200 acres plus,
yeah. So you were born there. Yes. Who were your
siblings? I had an older sister, Marie. She was
born in 1946. And then my brother, Alan William,
he was born in 1948. So you were the youngest.
Yeah. Who owned Myrtle Bank? Richard, my grandfather,
Richard Boxall. What has been told to you about
your grandfather, Richard? Because there's the
photograph where he's got his Salvation Army
uniform on, I noticed. Yeah, I believe from what
I was told, he and his brothers had... I presume
farmed or up on what they call the Berry Mountain.
They were pretty wild lads. They liked to scrap,
as in a boxing, and they liked their rum. But
I'm not sure what stage. A cousin of mine, she
was visiting, she told me that the story about
him had been pretty rough. But he took up a vision.
at some stage, and that's when he joined the
Salvation Army and stopped drinking, smoking,
dedicated the rest of his life with Minnie Hanna,
his wife, in the Salvation Army. What was his
stature? Do you know how big he was physically?
Yeah, he was a big man, six foot six, solid,
yeah. So you didn't get his genes? No, I didn't.
My dad didn't. My dad got it from, as they called
her, Granny Graham, Isabella. She was about four
foot six. So he was six foot six, Scottish Protestant?
Yeah, Scottish English, Cornwall. Their water
supply, where was that sourced? Yeah, it started
up in the spring up in the top of the mountain
in Woodside. I believe it was pipe, gale pipe
was put in after the war to feed water down to
the dairy. Prior to that, it would have been
just water holes. There was wells where the house
is now, the original house. Dad said over the
house going west, there was a well where his
grandmother used to draw water from for the house.
Which is probably the main source for them to
carry the water. Yes, yeah, it was carried, yeah.
When you talk about pipes coming down with the
dairy, when your dad was... working the dairy.
What sort of pipes? What were they made of? It
was inch galvanised pipe, which withstood the
time for rusting and eventually it corroded inside.
It was there until probably 1991, 1992 we replaced
it with polythene. That would have been a bit
of an effort to install that piping. Yeah, it
took a lot. The people that had brought mum and
dad part of the farm. back in 1977. What was
their name? Ganderdons, Bob and Mary Ganderdon.
He was a butcher from Wollongong. So they had
beef cattle on here. They'd come down probably
weekends and that sort of thing. Did your parents
subdivide the land? They sold it off in one chunk,
which was 100, and Dad and them kept about 25
acres, part of where we are. At the moment, Laurie
and I. And how much would have been sold? Probably
140 acres. It's been sold probably twice since
then. When you're talking about them sharing
food with the killing of a beast, who would they
be? What were the neighbours then? Do you recall
any of the names? So Mum, main one, would have
been up on Browns Mountain. So you would have
had, obviously, the Brown family. Foresights.
with the other family up there. Do you recall
how your mother washed? Here in the laundry,
they had a copper boiler in the corner. She did
have a washing machine with the ringer up the
top. Okay, so you had the dairy. What type of
dairy was it? The one up here where we are was
a six stand, six bale, so six cows at a time,
two, two, two. A lot of them, when you look at
them, there were only four stand. So how would
you store feed? You couldn't make hay up here,
it was too steep. There was no frost. The mainstay
was kaiquia, paspalum, so it was all just natural
grass. Your subterranean clover, which was a
native. Later on during the farming, Dad and
them, they would introduce some ryegrass for
the winter. And then later, probably in his last
six years of dairying, They started to grow corn,
paddocks of corn, and they'd hem a mill that
through the winter for winter feed for the cows
to feed them up in the dairy as they were being
milked. They didn't store it? No, it was picked
by hand, stored in bags, and then it was put
through a hem a mill and back into bags, and
then it was taken up to the dairy and dished
out, ladled out into the feed bins while the
cows were being milked. Where was the corn stored,
the bags? It was an old cream separating room.
They had a cream dairy just down below where
we live at the moment. Beside that, there was
a hand -mixed... There's still a bit of the concrete
remaining there. That was a separating room.
So later on then, when we farmed up here, my
dad and my brother, who worked on the farm, they
enclosed it with... post cut from trees over
the back with corrugated iron. And that was where
the hemer mill was. The hemer mill was driven
by the PTO of my brother's tractor. How did they
heat the water? Explain the system for the milk
to pass from the cow. Was it hand milked? I know
they had the vacuum machines, so the teat cups.
The heater. As a kid, it was pretty modern. It
was an electric heater. Later on, it wore out
and they replaced it with a copper chip heater.
Milking machines, you had two pipes running through
the full length of the dairy. One was your air
vacuum compressor and the other one was the big
milk line that went through to the vat. The pressure,
from memory, worked on about 15 pounds per square
inch. had a gauge there which had to be a safety
gauge. Yeah, and there was a compressor, a milk
compressor, which drove the air, the suction,
that worked the teat cups. So you had your air
line, your milk lines, coming down into the teat
cup. The cups had to be pretty clean, didn't
they? Because you didn't want to get bacteria
or the teats had to be... Yeah, the morning,
the first thing in the afternoon, you run sterilised
water through the... Teat cups. Then at the end
of the dairy, they were the same thing. They
were flushed through to the vat. Then they were
hot water sterilised, flushed again. Then the
main milk line, it was like a coarse brush, probably
about six, eight inches long, and that was fed
through. It was a trick. You'd take the plug
out of the end of the milk pipe. and you'd feed
the brush into that. It was on a long string.
You'd hold your hand over the milk line until
you felt that suction come and pulling your hand
in, and it was a trick. You let go all of a sudden,
and it was just like a pull -through. It just
went like a rocket straight through to the vat.
It pulled the brush. So you do that probably
about three times to clean out your milk lines.
Alpha Larval. was the pipeline, the milking lines,
dengue G, the vacuum pump. What were the teats
made of? It's hard to say what sort of rubber.
They were very pliable but strong but not harmful.
So durable. Durable, yeah, if that's a word.
Do you know how long they'd last? Did you have
to replace them? Yeah, they'd perish. You'd hear
them sucking air because of the action of them
in and out. sort of to create the suction for
the teats. I can remember Dad, Sunday was his
day where he didn't work, but after breakfast
he'd spend a couple of hours up in the dairy
and he'd pull all the teat cups to bits, replace
the rubbers that were worn, scrub everything
inside with a small brush, sterilise them, put
them all back together. That was an art. He had
a special tool because of the rubber teat cups,
the way they fitted over the metal moulding.
They were... It was like fitting a tyre to a
rim on a car. It was very hard. Who supplied
the dairy mechanisation? I'm thinking it would
have come through the dairy co -op somewhere,
but you also had an agent. He was a representative
for the alpha larval vacuum pump, compressor
pump. And how would the agent appear? If Dad
had a problem, ring him up, or in some cases
it was all done around the bombardier pub. You'd
mention it and they'd say, yeah, I'll come up
and have a look. So he'd drive up in his car.
The agent was a local person? Yes. Yeah, Colin
McCoy is the one I remember. So how many cows
were they milking then? Probably 58 to 60, 62,
65. They'd increase through the winter. Why would
you increase the herd in winter? Well, with the
weather and that cold. Wet, miserable weather,
the cattle, the milk production, they suffer,
yeah, so they don't let down or produce as much
milk. What's the weather like in winter up high,
up here? Windy, wintertime, the South Wesley
winds, they were savage. Look, you took it in
your stride. You look out now when some of those
big rain squalls and hail hit. You took it in
your stride, you were up there milking, so you
just looked out and, oh yeah, it's pretty wild,
it's cold, I'll put a coat on, walk out, bring
some cows in. Winter time, you'd rug up, you'd
have singlet, flannelette shirt, overalls, possibly
another jumper on that, but by the time you got
it working in amongst the cows, the heat coming
off them, by the end of the milking and the sun
starting to come up, you'd be... down to just
the short sleeves. Roll your sleeves up. The
milkers, what type of cows were they at this
point in your dad's era? Was it the same as your
grandfather's era? Yeah, yeah. They stuck with
the Illawarra shorthorn. They were deemed to
be a... Dad said they were a tougher breed. They'd
handle the elements a bit better than the Holstein
and the Jerseys, but mixed in amongst the herd.
They would have some Guernsey and a couple of
Jerseys just to build up the butterfat content.
So when they initially had a smaller herd for
cream and butter, what type of cows were they
using then? They would have had a lot more of
the Jersey breed mixed in them. It's hard to
say when they were first at Myrtle Bank. I don't
know. They may have had Jerseys and Guernseys.
And it might have been after that where Dad's
two brothers figured in breeding of the Illawarra
Sugarhorn. So can you talk a bit more about that?
Because I noticed sort of around 1912 they looked
like they'd won some of the shows. Yeah, that's
all I know. They figured up and down the coast,
winning a lot of prizes with their breeds. So
what shows were important to the family? Do you
know what people attended generally? Yeah, the
local shows. all from Kiama down. Dad's oldest
brother, Richard, Uncle Dick, he judged a lot
of the fruit at the shows. Friday was the main
judging, so that's what Dad's two brothers would
feel, Laura Shorthorn and all the others. It
was the main parade day, judging and parade day
was Friday. And then you had the local exhibits
in the pavilion in Nauru, which was cakes all
the way from the women down. Who could grow the
biggest corn, highest corn, watermelons, all
your vegetables, pumpkins, the whole range. Big
exhibits, big. How would you take the animals
to the show? There were cattle trucks in my area
from memory. There was some contractors and that
that had cattle trucks. Calligans out here at
Jasper's Brush. Les Turner, they were small ones.
Then you had Austin Henry. um in narrow he was
one of the bigger contractors nelson's from the
valley so they've transported in cattle trucks
yeah can you recall some of your dad's biggest
challenges that he had and events like fire do
you recall i think you said there was a bad fire
in the 60s and maybe talk about how that was
fought and how what sort of equipment they had
and why it was successful yeah um i think Prior
to the fires, he never... Him and Mum would talk,
but he never really let on that he was stressed,
but he would have been, because we went through
a really... It was about a three-, four -year
drought, and it got that bad. That's the first
time ever we had to buy... They were S trucks,
so trucks of hay picked up from the Berry Railway
station, and that's the only time they had to
buy feed here on the farm, so that would have
been pretty... Pretty bad times for them, I reckon.
Then at the end of that drought in 1968, October,
the bushfires had been burning down in the Morayla
State Forest west of Kangaroo Valley probably
a month before they actually hit here. And the
firefighters, they were trying to stop it as
they could. The fire spotting, the winds and
the westerly winds were horrific, were beating
them, but they only had... Well, they would have
had a small fire truck, which was limited, but
most of it would have been knapsacks, 15 -litre
knapsacks. There was a hoe specially designed
for digging and knocking over a burning stump
or raking the leaves. wet hessian bag, green
tree limb. It was pretty basic, but they were
able to access it. What helped them a lot to
get in was, back in the day, the logging industry
was really, you know, booming. And those logging,
that was their livelihood in the bush. So those
logging tracks were maintained by them all the
time, their own expense. That allowed, and plus
they had bulldozers. So they, along with the
firefighters, they'd be there and they'd push
in containment lines to try and stop the fire.
It came over the mountain? Yeah, eventually the
embers, about a week before it hit, the embers
were coming over in the westerly wind, the leaves.
You could still see a spark on them. I can remember
my mum and dad, they blocked up the gutters,
down pipes around the house, and my mum... She
would fill the gutters with water. And then eventually
the Wesleyan, it jumped, it beat them in Kangaroo
Valley and it jumped the top of the Kambora Mountain
here above us. And hence it just spent three
days and come down around the bush, out into
the paddock on the farm. So they were three days
fighting that. It eventually ended up in the
bush just around below mum and our house, mum
and dad's house. And the only thing that saved
Maroo, if the Wesley wind had kept it going,
it would have kept going straight through Maroo
out Jasper's brush. But the southerly, a southerly
buster come in and blew it back into itself and
helped put it out. I don't know, Dad would have
been remembering. He was about three days in
bed. He was exhausted. I think there was a story
about Kitty in the fires. Mum was a pretty reasonable
frame woman, but... Albert Muller was the captain
of the fire brigade down here, Muller's Farm.
They had a small truck with, I don't know how
many gallons, a tank on the back and a little
pump. But there was something like 20. So I was
only 14. I probably thought it was pretty good
at the time. I had three days off high school.
But Mum and I did the milking. I'd take the milk
down on the tractor when I'd come back. We'd
clean up, load the milk cans up with fresh water
and put it on the back of the Carriola tractor.
We'd drive as far as we could and then she'd
get on one side of the can with me and we'd carry
it across the gullies for them to have a drink
or replenish the knapsack. Can I just move to
the logging industry? What wood were they logging?
What's natural to this area and what were they
logging? In the early days, and they stopped
it not long after, I can remember, a lot of it
was the cedar. Then it turned to the hardwood,
your grey gum, iron bark, box. They were the
main timber milling. Where was the mill? You
had one at Williams' at Bury, the one out at
Beach Road, I'm not quite sure who owned that.
There was Bombaderry, where Bombaderry Bowling
Club is. That was Hoffman's Mill, run by Tetley's.
And then down where Do It Yourself in Bombaderry
is now, Mitre 10, that was Reed and Hearn. Yeah,
Artie Hearn and Jack Reed. Can we just go back
to Derry and your grandfather Boxall's time?
The water came from what creek? Tullian Creek.
That runs under the highway down here now near
Muller's Farm. So how would they keep the milk
cool before it went to the factory? They would
have had to carry it around to the creek up here
where the grains were. But down Myrtle Bank where
the boxels were, they had a water hole that they
kept after a flood. They would get in and work.
They'd take out all the big boulders. So down
in the creek, in the shade, they'd put the cream
cans in there. I'm not sure how often they went
in. But it was cool enough. Oh, yeah, cold. Was
there a relative that made some jelly or something?
Yeah, Aunty Kate. I'm not quite sure what order
she'd come in, but she was still left on the
farm. done a lot of the cooking and what have
you for her two older brothers, Jock and Clyde.
She'd make a jelly and she'd take the jelly down
and set in the Coal Creek. The jelly she made,
when she went to get it, it had tadpoles that
set in the middle of the jelly. They would have
just picked them out and they would have ate
the jelly. I mean, somebody now looked at it.
Like Dad's oldest brother, he had a dairy farm.
When he'd come back from the war, he... settled
on a dairy farm out of Broughton Vale. Whenever
I'd go out there, he had magnificent mandarin,
orange, fig. He and Dad would walk around talking.
They'd never pick anything off a tree. It was
picked up off the ground. Like Mum preserved
a lot of peaches and that sort of thing. Maroo
had its own... Did it to collect the milk? Yes,
yeah. It started, the one that I can remember
as a kid was Jack Atfield from Bombardier. The
run started about the silos, Turner's Lane silos,
going into Jasper's Brush and continued all the
way around through Maroo to Bell's Lane. Later
on, probably the late 60s, he finished up and
Bill Schofield took over. until then when bulk
milk came in. And obviously then he went out
of business. How many dairies were in the Maroo
area? And do you want to talk about the run,
the pick -up run? Yeah, I can do that. From memory,
I can pretty well get through. So starting at
where the Siloes winery is now, that was Wiley's
Farm. That was on the north side of the highway.
On the southern side, and you had to go over
the railway line with Davis. You come along then
into Turner's Lane. You had Walsh's, which is
still there now, run by Frank Walsh, his grandson
at the moment. Turner's in that lane. Then you
come out of there along Turn Right, which headed
north again, into Devitt's Lane. The ones I can
remember up there is Waters, West Waters, and
Radford's. Come back out of there. And straight
opposite was Morshall's Lane, which run down
over the railway line. So down there you had
two brothers, Len and George Morshall, and another
chap called Warby. You come out of there then
back onto the highway. So then the first one
along there was Martins on your left. Further
down then you had what was originally was called
Aberneffy's Farm. It was run by Alec and Enid
Rutledge. Then you come out of there, further
along past the Maroos School to your left was
Albert Muller, Muller's Farm. Come along then
a short hop and you got into Boxers Lane. So
on the corner then of the old post office were
the Marshall sisters. Ada run the exchange and
the mail. The other two sisters, they run the
dairy and it was only small. I think they had
a two can quota, probably about maybe 30. 30
acres, if that. From there you come along then,
which was Barron's farm, run by his daughter
then, Jean and Fred Bennett. Out of there you
come along to Elliot's Lane, and hence the farm
at the end of that was Arthur and Grace Elliot,
which was the old Richard Boxall myrtle mean.
Coming out of there, up on top of the hill to
your right was Estridge's, Ivan Estridge. Along
then to the intersection of Boxall and Pestles
and Grahams Road, you had the first one was Kerry's
Farm, but it was farmed then by the ones I remember.
I can remember Frank Kerry. By then he was living
in Bury, but the farm was leased out to Bob and
Jean Kellett. Later after them was Phil and Margaret
Birch. And then later on, Kerry's daughter and
son -in -law, Grahame Hutton, they come back
to... took over, run the farm. Further up from
that, at the base of the hill, was Frank and
Norma Bell, and then at the top of the mountain,
E .L. Graham and L .C. Voxel. So then you went
back out down Pestles Lane. You had Pestles Farm,
and dairying there at the time was Byron's. Opposite
them were more Marshalls, Oz and Cora Marshall.
Keep going out Pestles Lane back onto the highway.
So I'm hopping back then north to, on your left,
if you're heading north, was Hearn's Farm, which
was run by his son -in -law, daughter and son
-in -law, Reg and Lorna Keft. Opposite them,
Patrick Muller will be able to tell you, I think
that was originally another one of the old Mullers
that settled in the area. But the people I can
remember there were Macaulays. Come back out
of there and head south to the corner of Maroo
Road. You had Feeney's, Eric and Rita Feeney.
Further down then to Fletcher's Lane, you had
Vaughan's, Limerie's, and then down over the
railway line were Shepard's. Further down the
road, coming down to Fletcher's, Ernie, Henry,
they had a farm there, and I think Jack Atfield
and them, they picked the milk up from there.
Back out onto the highway, you had on your left
Abernethy's Farm, Jack and Eileen Abernethy.
Watts's Farm is where the tanker... milk tankers
and that, they use that now as a depot. Pretty
sure that was still active. So then you went
around in to the Mossvale Road, so you went through
there then to Bell's Lane. So you had Bell's
Farm, Joe and Florey. Up further you had Bill
and Judy Erkwood. And then at the end of that
lane was Clive and Adele and Marshall. That's
pretty well. my memory of the milk run that Jack
Atfield and Bill Schofield did. The reason you
have such good memory of the dairy families is
because it was a smaller community. Yeah, and
most of them went to the school down here, Maroo
Public School. Marie and Alan were that age where
they, yeah, they didn't so much, they'd rather
do something here, but I just... Jumping the
Land Rover with my dad, I was only five, six,
seven. But he was president of the PNC. So, for
instance, when the Red Cross collection was on,
he'd go and do all that. And that's, I think,
stuck in my memory, all the places he'd visit
to collect. So I think that helped. Those who
could give, it was just you knock on the door,
I'm collecting. And you respected people. Some
of them didn't have the money. That's how we
got... to know by driving around. I should mention,
with the school, they're all the dairy farms,
but you've got, there was other ones living down
in Turner's Lane, Millers. Then near the Maroos
School, there was a family there from way back,
Duncans, and they're still there today. So they
were non -farming, but they were in the area.
All I know is Keith Duncan, he was a taxi driver.
The Millers, I think their dad worked on the
council. So you haven't mentioned Berry much
because you were separate from Berry. Yeah, there
was a different... And Jasper's Brush. Yeah,
Jasper's Brush, that was another... It was collected
by Bert Mitchell that owned the contract. He
had the contract for picking milk up there. So
Nara was small, but we figured more with Nara
than Berry. Even the school at Jasper's Brush.
It was a rare occasion. Out of the blue, they'd
just have an interacting sport day or something
like that. It didn't happen often. So you didn't
really venture out much of your own areas? No,
no. It was all contained. The Maroo Hall down
here, that was the anatome. Probably a lot of
people come from Jasper's Brush. Obviously Jasper's
Brush in for the dances. But you could get the
radio here. Yeah, we had the radio. There was
Biggles, Smokey Dawson. There was a comedy one,
Green Bottle. Those sort of things. There was
a sort of get -together in Nara, though, called
Shake Hand Tuesday. Oh, that was from before
I went to school, so what would be my memory,
two -year -old, three -year -old, going into
town. Yeah, they called it Shake Hand's Day.
Everybody knew everybody. 90 % of them would
be farmers. Yeah, the car park then, where Jelly
Bean Park is, all down the back where Woolie's
car park is, that was all bush. Over where Woolworths
are now, that was Harrison's Bus Depot garage,
where you walk up through Morrison's Arcade,
where Darrell Lee, all that up there was Morrison's
Butcher, Henry Morrison. Further up the main
street, you had Bash's, Ted's Milk Bar, Clemmie
Holland's Butcher. Right up the very top, that's
a government building now, that was West's Picture
Theatre. So there was two picture theatres in
town. And further along Berry Street, you had
the Roxy. Come back down on the other side, you
had the Red Rose Cafe, the Bank. You had the
New York Cafe in the middle of the town, near
Davies Newsagent. Was that owned by a Greek person?
Yeah, Theo Napolopoulos or something. It was
a big cafe. Handshake Tuesday, what was the purpose?
You'd go in. If they owed money at bashes. like
paying off a monthly thing, put in the butcher
order if they needed new shoes. Pat McGuire,
he was the shoe man down there, not far from
the New York cafe. There was a dentist on the
corner of Rodway Arcade called Phil Lusk. There
was a chemist, the Morrises. Anybody had a problem
with their kids or anything and you couldn't
get to the doctor, she was probably better than
a doctor or Mrs Morris. Did you go to particular
places? Yeah, I can remember. I'd go with Dad
to start with. Mum must have went her own way.
Put the order into Henry Morrison, up to Bash's.
It was a real treat. But Ted's Milk Bar, a little
narrow place, as in Ted Hewlett, which was later
moved down the bottom where Rockman's are, Hewlett's
Sports and Record Bar. But he had a machine there,
then it was new, it was a soft dairy delight,
ice cream. We'd go and then probably by then
meet back up with Mum. So I'd be handed back
over. Dad would go down to the sales, cattle
sales, which was down near the entrance to the
Stocklands now. Dad would come back up from the
sales with a few of the other farmers. They'd
probably slip into the Prince of Wales Hotel
out in the back garden and have a beer. Then
it was in the Land Rover back home for milking
time. Did you dress up? Yeah, I had a denim type
of pair of shorts. Grey shorts, braces, little
braces, buttons on the fly. My claim to fame
is that I've actually done a wee in the main
street of Nowra. Mum said, your father taught
you how to wee like a man. This day I thought,
I've got to go to the toilet. And while mum was
talking, I walked out into the gutter and undone
the fly and I had a wee. How old were you then?
Probably about three, four. Obviously, I was
there with them, so I wasn't at school. Who were
your friends? Most of it was at school or picnic
days. We just made our own fun up here with my
brother. But we were all, the school was pretty
small in numbers, so, yeah, we just all knew
each other at school. Tell me about picnic days
and how often. Once a year was a Sunday school
picnic. And that was run on Muller's farm. It
was pretty flash. They had a cement cricket wicket
there. So that must have dated back to the early
days. Vonnie and Albert, they opened up their
farm there and we'd all gather down there, all
the denominations, hence the Catholic -Protestant.
There'd be all novelty race, egg and spoon race,
three -legged race, knapsack race, foot race,
game of cricket. But the men... Their main one
was the competition, who could nail a nail into
a tree stump, how many blows it would take. They'd
have a block there. By the end of the day, you
couldn't drive another nail into it. There was
that many nails. They'd step up and have a go.
And I think Frank Bell down, so it was all in
the eye and the power, what they call a four
-inch nail. And I think Frank Bell, it was something
like four hits. And that nail went straight in
without bending, obviously. How did you meet
your wife, and what is your wife's name, and
when did you get married? Yeah, well, Laurie,
or Laurie Kilner is her maiden name, she worked
at South Coast Register with my, well, she was
my sister -in -law at the time, but she worked
there at the South Coast Register, and there
was a cricket presentation night coming up, and
just out of the blue, something... Diane, she
just said, oh, she said, Laurie that works with
us in the South Coast Register is not going out
with anybody at the moment. And I thought about
it and thought about it. There was three of us,
my mate Trevor, Henry and Chris, and they were
saying, oh, yeah, we'll ask her out, we'll ask
her out. So nothing was done. So I rang her up
one day at work, while she was at work, and said,
do you want to come out? And the rest is history.
So we were engaged in 1975. probably the end
of 1972, beginning of 73 we went out, married
on 13th of March 1976. And where did you live
after you were married? We moved into a flat,
set of flats in Bombadour in Numrock Street.
We were there for probably about three, four
years. By then we had the block out here, we
brought the block off Mum and Dad. the acre and
a half, and it was a matter of teeing up a loan,
then a bank loan, where we could start, and we
ended up with a building company called A .V.
Jennings. So in 1980, we moved up here. Mark
was born when we were in Bombardier in the flats,
and then later in 1981, well, Mark was born on
the 5th of April, 1979. And Tanya was born up
here in the 14th of March, 1981. You didn't go
into dairying, though, did you? No. Why not?
There wasn't enough financially. My brother,
Alan, he was paid on the farm for a while. Later
on, he was here for a few years. He eventually
went out and worked on other farms, employment.
But no, there wasn't enough to keep me on the
farm. Dad would have liked it. So I ended up,
applied for three jobs. I ended up for apprenticeship,
greenkeeping apprenticeship at Berry Bowling
Club. All our growing up, we were in the dairy,
done our bit. Even when I started at Berry, I'd
be up early to help Dad. By then he was on his
own, his cousin had passed away. And then I'd
go to Berry Bowling, I had to be... Bury at 7
.30, come home in the afternoon and go up to
help them finish up washing up. So it just went
on, yeah, we all hooked in. Did you spend your
career as a greenkeeper for years? I did, I did,
not much variety in my life. I was seven years
at Bury Bowling Club and 40 years at Nowra Bowling
Club. Took over as head greenkeeper. in 1988
at the Narra Bowling Club and remained there
until 2018. You would have been impacted by some
weather events? Oh yeah, yeah, everything revolved.
I used to have my think tank at three o 'clock
in the morning, what program was going, what
bowls were on. When I get there, if it's raining,
this is what we're going to do. If it's not raining,
fine. Yeah, it was always a think tank. You never
had a moment to... What about major water events?
Yeah, Berry Bowling Club. My initiation, I started
in January at the Berry Bowling Club, 1971. By
the end of January, massive floods and the Greens
flooded three nights in a row. Thursday night
was 12 inches of rain. The Friday night was 10
inches of rain. And the Saturday night was 13
inches of rain. Three nights in a row. So it
would fine up, wake up that morning after the
rain, get out there. Greens would be covered
in mud, full water right to the top of the plinth.
The outriggering area, which we wouldn't worry
about for weeks after we concentrated on, it
would be all logs, debris. To do that three nights
in a row, three days in a row, all the volunteers
would show up, clean it off. I was there for
seven years. So there's three floods in that,
probably cleaned up five floods in those seven
years. It was devastating. Can I divert to not
many dairies left today? No, no. So all the milk
in the Maroo area was taken to the Bombardieri
Milk Factory? Yeah, Kangaroo Valley, Kamawara,
Jasper's Brush. It was the main, all the other
side of the river. Yeah, so the Nowra Dairy Co
-op was the major, it was the centre for producing.
All the milk was delivered to Nowra Dairy Co
-op? Yes, where Truck and Tractor is now, yeah.
But it was located in Bomaderry? Yes, located
in Bomaderry, right beside the railway, where
the railway finished. So what were some of the
key factors, just briefly, in your opinion? saw
the decline of dairying in your region? Yeah,
I think the small holdings, they couldn't etch
out enough living out of it. Age, where they
didn't, families weren't taking it on, hence
myself went groom keeping. A lot of the other
families, the sons didn't. Carry on. Impractical.
It was unaffordable to continue. Yeah, yeah.
And then your next stage was when bulk milk come
into it. So a lot of the farms like ours, they
were unaccessible for a big bulk milk tanker.
We were allowed then. The milk was accepted then
at the dairy co -op. We had to put in a cold
room and so did the others. It couldn't go without
bulk milk. The only way you could supply milk,
put in a cold room and it was every second day
with the cans. So we had to take the milk direct
to the co -op by truck, by our Land Rover. Other
farmers did the same from outlying areas. And
eventually then they squeezed and squeezed the
ones that were on cans who they said they would
never let down. and it got too much from the
big powers, and eventually they squeezed those,
like Dad and the small dairy farmers, got to
the stage where they said, well, yeah, we're
not going to accept your milk anymore. What time
frame are we talking about? Dad was still milking
surplus milk up to 1976, so I reckon we finished
in 1974. would have been pretty close to getting
out of the quota system. And then he milked,
he still supplied milk with surplus milk, which
was a lower price than obviously the quota milk.
But, yeah, it's hard to say. I might be a bit
harsh, but they squeezed a lot of farmers. Your
milk would get rejected, the ones with cans.
You'd get sediment tests. And that happened quite
regularly and I think they were given the message,
what they did, you'd pick the empty can, sorry,
when they come back and there'd be an envelope
with a letter to say your milk was rejected,
sediment test, failed sediment test. And they'd
have a little sample pad in there and you'd see
little specks of yellow butterfat and sometimes
some little tiny bits of light dust on it. But
I think... It got to a regular stage where I
think they were trying to give... Yeah, they
were phasing out. So you'd only get surplus milk
price. So they were breaking you down. I think
so. Yeah, when you look at it, they wanted it
all mechanised, bulk milk. They could cut down,
I presume. Well, they did. The labour at the
co -op would cut down because... When your milk
cans come in, you had two blokes. They were metal
rollers, so the truck drivers backed in. They
put them like a metal conveyor belt. They were
rollers, so your milk can went on that and followed
a chain around. You had two blokes, Roy Woods
and Ron Lee. They were the milk graders. So they
had a special thing that popped the lids off
the milk can. As they'd come past, they'd stick
their head in and smell the can, smell the milk,
and they were the milk graders. So they would
have went for a start. Further down the line,
you had the ones that tipped the milk. Yeah,
so they would have cut back on labour. You still
had your internal workers, like Ian Jorgensen
you were talking to, his dad and his uncle Bill.
His dad, Norman, they were retrained. They'd
done all the yogurts and skim milks and things
and tanker drivers. They did a bit of tanker
driving, that type of thing. So they were re
-skilled. Yeah, re -skilled. Think about your
dad's car, all the land, and you can describe
what model and how that was purchased. Yeah,
that was a 1961 Series 2. long -wheelbase Land
Rover. And they were having mechanical problems
with the old 1949 model. It was a long base.
And when they were at the pub, which is one afternoon
a week, Friday night, Dad would go down and gather
with his mates, other dairy farmers and some
of the ones from the co -op. You'd buy your lottery
tickets from behind the bar. I think they were
10 shillings or... something like that, equal
to what you buy now, the $2 jackpot. Him and
his cousin, Eric Leslie, Jack Graham, again,
I was only about three, four, and they used to
announce them at lunch, midday, the lottery winners,
name the names, everything, over the radio. And
I can remember my mum screaming, grabbed me by
the hand and out the door and off. and dragged
me over the gully where they were working to
tell them. So that was 2 ,500 pounds, so that's
1966. So that's the price of a Land Rover. So
they had to add, I think, another 200 or 300
pounds to that and were able to buy it brand
new. So they won the lottery. They won the lottery,
yeah. And where's that Land Rover today? Yeah,
when Mum's place was sold, I had big ideas of
restoring it, but never had the money. But Laurie's
brother, he's an avid car restorer, so it went
to a mate of his who's restoring it at the moment,
which is good. I wanted to ask you something
about, was it your grandmother that died walking
home? So when did Mindy Anna pass away? 1920.
I'm not quite sure. She was up here visiting.
A grandmother, or for some other medical reason,
I know she was a midwife, but she was up here
anyway, and walking back down the hill to Myrtlebank
in the dark, probably had a hurricane land, she
stepped into a hole and hurt herself really bad.
They got her into Bury Hospital, which would
have been a major thing to transport, probably
sulky, but apparently she'd done severe damage
to her kidneys, bruised. And she passed away.
She only lasted two, three days in Bury Hospital.
Dad was only 11 when she passed away. Because
it's quite high, the land here. Oh, look, it's
pretty treacherous even walking down there in
the daylight. For us to walk down there now,
it's that steep. Your parents married. Where
did they meet? Do you know? Yeah, Mum. Mum, when
they were on Browns Mountain, Mum had a... When
she'd come back from Sydney from her cousins...
OK, so let's slow that down. Can I call her Kitty?
Yes. Because she's known as Kitty. Yeah. So Kitty
went to the city. Yeah, she was... When they
moved to Browns Mountain, it was thought by her
mum and dad a better education for her and as
a teenager rather than grow up fully on the farm.
She went to live up in Sydney with her old aunties.
Where was that? In Bondi. And she went to school
and grew up with her three cousins. What was
she doing? The two aunties owned a big cafe,
restaurant in Bondi. So when she'd come back,
obviously it could be school holidays or whenever,
she had a job three days at the Kenwara lookout.
in the cafe cooking up there. So she'd ride a
horse from Browns Mountain up through, there
was a butter trail there that'd come up on the
point of the Kimora Escarpment. So she'd ride
through there. At the time, my dad was working
and living with his brother over at Beaumont.
And he was working around the side of the hill
up towards close to the road. And they started,
I suppose, saying g'day to each other. Then he
started courting her. So what year are we talking
about there? They were married in 1945. During
the war? During the war, yeah. So they're on
horses? Yes, yeah, it was all horseback, yeah.
What sort of rider was your dad? Yeah, good.
And what sort of horses? Stock horses, yeah.
Yeah, the ones from the farm here. They were
probably locally bred. Back in those days, horses
were everywhere. Mum only through talking to
her in the nursing home and that. Her horse,
Pony, was called Pixie, the one she'd ride to
the lookout. There was a black mare called Mabel
and then there was a pieball horse that Dad had
to the end was called Del. During the Second
World War, they formed a militia. The home...
the English would call a home guard. They were
probably ex -World War I, but the head of it
was Jim Sturges from up in Sassafras. Can I just
slow that down a minute? So the militia, it was
a locally formed group of men? Yeah, yeah. Ones
that were too old to go away, some of the ones.
My dad, he was recalled for essential services
after he trained and kitted out. So they trained.
um one afternoon a week along where Campbell's
sail yards are now apparently that was the um
shooting range so they what were they training
for um what was the point of well they they thought
if a Japanese landed at Jervis Bay and I don't
know what they were going to do but um they they
put a few strategic plans in place and one of
them was they had the Camberwara mountain and
the tourist road It was all dynamited, ready
for... Sorry, the charges were set ready to dynamite
the mountain if the word come through that the
Japanese had landed in Jervis Bay. They also
needed... They said if that happened, they wanted
somewhere to get off the mountain where they
could head for Kangaroo Valley and Bajong in
a hurry. So they came up to the mountain and
my mum's older brother... He took them around
and showed them to the point overlooking Budgeon
and he said, this is where you can get off. And
the story from Uncle Dud was that Jim Sturges
said, no way, man nor horse could never get down
there. And Uncle Dud says, well, I'll have you
know my sister rides down there and rides down
there bareback. So she must have been quite a
capable person, Kitty. Yeah. What do you remember
about Kitty as a young man? Yeah, she was a hard
worker beside Dad on the farm. Yeah, when you
look back now, doting Mum, just devoted her time,
life, to what she did with Dad and us kids and
never wanted for anything. She was a brilliant
cook. Thank you, Richard. To see photos relating
to this podcast, follow me on Instagram, Therese
Makes History, or go to my website, theresesweeney
.com .au. Give me 48 hours. Thank you. If you
heard ticking whilst listening to today's podcast,
it's just Richard's metal heart valves. He calls
them his chaff cutters. Tune in Tuesday fortnight
for episode 4, Lammons Lane, featuring Patrick
Muller, whose family lived on Lammons Lane for
six generations until recent years. This project
that I have initiated receives no government
funding. A donate button has been activated at
my host... podcast site rss .com. Simply google
the Dairy Lane Project should you want to listen.
All my podcasts will be hosted on my own website
as well. This project is my initiative and my
digital investment in the region, laying foundations
for future generations. At its completion it
will be archived at Nowra Library. through their
networks. I've just launched the business side
of my work. I also offer my services to the wider
community. Have a look at my business section
at my website, theresesweeney .com .au. Feel
free to get in touch with me. Thanks for listening
and tell your friends. Bye.