ChildHood

Childhood

I was born at Warnambool in Victoria on the 19th November 1932 to parents Frank and Eva Foster. At the time of my birth my parents were employed as dairymen for a Mr Hunt at Cudgee which is a district just outside Allansford which in turn is just outside Warnambool, Mum and Dad worked very hard milking up to 90 cows a day by hand and as Mum was pregnant at the time it was not an easy life.

When I was 12 months old we moved back to Burra where my parents and my older brother Bob lived before going to Warnambool, this was in the middle of The Great Depression of the 1930's and work was very hard to find but they managed to secure a position as a married couple on a farm just outside Burra, actually it was 2 ks on the Mt Bryan road north of Burra, the farm was owned by a chap named Mr Lindsay H Thomas, a unmarried farmer about 30 years of age, Mum's job was to keep the 13 room farmhouse clean and cook for Mr Thomas, Dad's job was as a farmhand, and all this for 30/- a week and their keep, by keep I mean their food etc was supplied but they had to buy their personal things and clothes .In today's money terms it is $3.00 a week.

When I was 5 years old I started school at Copperhouse which was a little settlement 3 ks from the farm and I rode a push bike to and from every day except when it was raining and then Dad would take us in the farm truck.                                                                                                          It was on one of these wet days in September 1939 when I nearly drowned, Dad took us to school with our pushbikes and while at school it really rained and when it was time to go home we had probably had 2 inches or in today's terms 50mm of rain and the Burra Creek which flowed through the middle of the farm was running a banker, Bob and I decided to walk up the creek until we were opposite the farm house and when we got there I in all my wisdom decided that as I knew there was a sheep track going down into the creek and out the other side I could follow it and reach the other side.

Well, this is what I did, my only excuse for doing this stupid thing was that I was only a bit over 6 years of age and obviously at that age you don't have many brains, I took off my boots tied them to the bike, wasn't going to leave that behind, and walked into the creek which would have been 6 metres deep and 15 metres wide, I don't know how this came about but the raging water picked me up and dumped me on the other side of the creek where I proceeded to howl like a banshee. As the farmhouse was only about 200 metres away Mum heard me and came running across the paddock I can still to this day see Mum splashing her way across the paddock and at the time of writing this it is nearly 60years ago. There was a flood fence across the creek at that point and Mum got Bob to climb along it from hisside and she went along the fence from her side and helped him over, my bike was found 2ks down the river when the water went down. Even though I was only six years of age and this happened 72 years ago I can still see Mum going out on that flood gate reaching out to grab hold of Bob ,must have been a terrifying experience for as she could not swim either.

01/02/2011. Have just edited this page and if you saw the flood tearing through Toowoomba recently well the water was just as terrifying as that but it did not deter me I just walked straight in. I can remember it oh so clearly.

My life on the farm was full of excitement and getting into trouble, I remember coming home from school one day and found that both Mum and Dad were not there, so I had to find myself something to do. I went down to the shed where Dad kept the seed wheat (this is the wheat that is used to sow next years crop) and the fowls feed, so I found a razor and put a cut in every bag I could see, well I don't know why but when Dad went down to feed the fowls that  night and seen the mess that was in the shed the first name he yelled for was COLIN but Colin was heading for the hills with Dad yelling "you'll have to come home to eat you little bugger and I'll get you then",well this is what had to happen and I copped a fair sort of flogging for that episode, I would have been about 8 years of age then a real little sod as Dad used to call me

In 1939 when war broke out the owner of the farm decided he was going to join up in the A.I.F, and he went away to Tobruk where he was wounded twice in action. He was discharged because of his wounds in 1942 and decided that he was going to get married

to a girl he had met at a concert where he was singing and she was playing the piano and as it was not going to work out too well with two families in the one house we had to leave the farm and move into Burra.

We moved into a little miners cottage called Darton Cottages and Dad got a job working for one of the local wood merchants and general carriers Mr Maurice Pritchard. By today's work standard this was very hard work, Dad and another chap would drive out in a truck 40ks cut 5 tonne of wood into 2.4 metre length's stack it into heaps then drive around to the heaps and load it onto the truck, bearing in mind that there was no chainsaw's in those day's it was all done with the axe. Even harvest time was very hard work they used to cart all the wheat into the railway yard wheat stacks in bags and they used to have to load the bags by hand 80 bags a load and all thrown up from the ground by hand (a bag of wheat weighs about 85kg),all this for 110.00 shillings(5 Pounds 10 shillings) or in today's money $11.00 a week.

I went to school  at Burra Primary  and after at Burra High School, and apart from being an average student nothing out of the ordinary happened

Xmas school holidays Dad always used to find me a job on a property, one year it was on Koonoona Station south  of the Burra milking the cows, another time helping a farmer at Mt Bryan (I got the sack from that job, I

left the cows in the bail all night, the cocky was not impressed)  I also used to earn my pocket money when I was going to school by milking two cows every morning and night for the local doctor's wife and when I needed a bit of extra cash I would go and do some gardening for her I used to get 6 pence an hour or in today's money 5 cents , of course you could go to the pictures for 5 cents, a pasty was 4 cents and a drink was 5 cents. I remember I used to ask Dad could I go to the pictures and he would say "have you got any money" of course I didn't have any so he would say" well you had better go down and see Mrs. Stevens". She was the lady I used to milk the cows for, so down I would go and when she opened the door and seen who it was she would always say"Ah Colin here to float a loan again are you?" When I told her I was and how much I wanted she used to always say "now you will be here to work this loan off tomorrow won't you" A great old lady

 I left school one week before the exams in 2nd year high school as I had a pretty good idea that I would fail the exams  and I secured a job at Bushell and West the local garage as a trainee mechanic so Dad said I could leave and take the job.

This did not work out I don't think I was cut out to be a mechanic so I got a job as the cowboy on Braemar Station a property owned by AJ&PA Mcbride 100ks east of Burra.