Married Working Life
Married Working Life
Married Working Life
It was while I was shearing at Quinns that I got married and Kym was born, when I met Gwenda she had been separated from her first husband for some 12 months but not divorced and when she became pregnant to me she had to get a divorce before we could get married, well these things take time and by the time the divorce went through the courts time was running out, ah well the first one comes any time the rest take 9 months!!.
After Mt Bryan Stan and I went down to my sheds at Naracoorte and shore them, from there we went to Kentish's at Mt Gambier which was a shed that Stan had been doing Stan and I split up here I went to Jack Spehr's at Furner and Stan went dairying at Apsley in Victoria for a chap called Colin Thomas it was a share farming setup more about this shortly.
Had been shearing at Spehr's only about a fortnight when I was called over to the homestead to answer the phone, it was Stan and he wanted to know if I would be interested in share farming on the block next to where he was well I didn't know what to say, this came out of the blue , I knew that Stan had to put in 1500 hundred pounds to buy half the cows and I didn't have 1500 pennies so how could I possibly take up a job like that, his answer was that the owner was prepared to take a chance on me on Stan's recommendation and when I started to make some money I could start paying off the cows, well if that was the situation how could I lose so I accepted to start when I finished at Spehr's. This was another disaster at Spehr's, by this time Kym had been born so I thought it would be great to hire a caravan and have Gwenda and Kym down with me so I went into Millicent and hired a caravan and we proceeded to have a great time all together, WRONG, what happened was Kym couldn't eat properly and spent all his time howling and Gwenda was doing the same, all night this was going on and nobody was getting any sleep and I had to shear next day so you can imagine the atmosphere, so, back to Gwenda's Mum with her and the boy and I could then get some sleep.
Late October see's us living at Apsley on the dairy, well this was the start of another disaster as I said 1956 was not a good year, I was milking 90 cows and by the time I paid for the feed and fuel, paid the house keeping there was no money left to pay the owner his lease payments or pay off some of the debt owing on the cows, Stan and I ended up going shearing after we had finished milking the cows each morning to make enough money to buy a beer and live a reasonable life style. Well this state of affairs went on until about April of 1957 and this particular day Colin Thomas the owner of the farm came down for his money and I told him the same old story "Colin there just isn't any left for you" to which his reply was 'Well we will just have to try something else this is no good for anybody" and he came up with another scheme where I would be a half owner of the stock and plant do all the work and it would be financed by the profits when they came in and I would get 75% of the profit he painted such a rosy picture he almost had me believing it all, he then had to go and see the bank and get it all set up and we would be in business. By this time I would have been quite happy to have left any way, the cows were starting to go dry and those that weren't had mastitis through my ignorance of the correct method of hygeine in the dairy And Gwenda certainly was not cut out to be a dairy hand , By this time I had got rid of the Ford V/8 and bought a 1955 International Utility this was my eighth car in 7 years, it got worse later on
Well next day Colin came back and said "the bank manager thinks it would be a better idea if I started up again somewhere else" so my dairying days were coming to an end fast ,we stayed on the dairy until Colin could get himself organized and I went and got myself a job on a farm as a farm hand at Stewarts Range working for Lindsay Vanstone.
I really thought I would like this job, a nice little house went with the job but the call of shearing was too strong so I rang Stockowners Shearing Co and they offered me a pen at Kokatha Station south of Kingoonya so away I went and Gwenda went back to her mother's to live. After Kokatha I went down to Thurlga near Bookaloo for Gil Mortimer and then back to Copley were I overseered a team of crutchers for about 2 months.
From there we went to the South East, we bought a new caravan and we were back as a family unit once more ! some people live and learn others just live, one would think that after the fiasco of the previous year in a caravan I wouldn't try that again but as I said ---some people live and LEARN---- we went to Englands at Kingston and then finished up at Murray Longmores shearing and helping with the flax harvest.
1958 we headed off to Copley to start a run of sheds with Gil Mortimer ,and the fun started again with our caravan life. We were due to start early in Feb and as you can imagine it is bloody hot in the far north of South Australia at that time of the year, well as we were going from Copley out to the first shed I was driving a bit too fast for towing a caravan in the bush, (it was and still is only a dirt road) and we went into a creek a bit too fast and found that the creek was washed out in the bottom ,there was quite a gutter in the bottom, and there was quite a bang as we hit the bottom. As we were only a couple of ks from the station we kept on going to the shearers quarters and when we got out of the ute we could see the damage that had been caused to the caravan. In those days caravans were not very well built the A frame at the front was only made out of 2 inch angle iron and it was bent upwards and had stove in the front of the caravan, Well Gwenda opened the door of the van looked inside and burst out crying, and really no one could blame her there was dust half an inch thick everywhere, so here we were in temperature well over the century, a 5 month old baby who never stopped grizzling and Gwenda who hated where she had been taken to, boy was it a great time!! On the weekend the contractor and I had to jack up the caravan, remove the chassis and wheels etc take it into Copley and get it straightened out and strengthened.
The shed we were at was called Leigh Creek Station and from there we went to Depot Springs, after Depot I had a falling out with a grazier who owned the next property on the run of sheds and consequently I didn't have a job so back to Adelaide we went to Gwenda's parents home, we had taken the caravan back to the dealer and told him we wanted no money just take it back, it was under hire purchase, which they did thank God Gwenda wasn't too happy about going back to her parent's home but anything was better than living in a caravan. -- on reflection Elsie must have been beginning to wonder if she was ever going to be rid of her daughter and her neer do well husband but I must admit that she was a great help in the early years of our marriage and always showed the greatest welcome even though she must have thought at times "oh no they are not coming back again"!! I got a job on the Adelaide City Council working on the road with a pick and shovel, what a come down for the Gun shearer, I was that embarrassed about what I had to do to earn a living that when we were working in Grote St whenever a bus went past I used to turn away so that nobody would see me who used to live on that bus route, I used to live down in that bus route's area and I knew a few people that lived in that area and I certainly did not want them to see me with a pick and shovel, ain't pride a wonderful thing!!!
This lasted a fortnight and I then got a job with Lovell's Bakery down at Forrestville delivering bread around the Glenelg area, but I always knew that when shearing started again in July I was gone !.It was while I was working at Lovells that I was involved in a very serious car accident on the intersection of South Road and Henley Beach Rd,, as Gwenda were crossing the intersection the lights turned from green to amber as I entered the intersection , when we about half way across a motorcycle coming on our right hit us in the side of the ute and the pillion passenger was thrown over the ute and was killed, well the end result was that I was charged with driving without due care and causing death by dangerous driving and they impounded my vehicle and kept it for nearly 3 months, it took about 5 months to get the case into court and when it finally did the case was dismissed because the judge did not believe the witnesses testifying against me I can tell you it was a very worrying time for 5 months. On the 3rd July I went to Mulyungarie Station out from Cockburn shearing for Stockowners Shearing Co, this was a big shed ie 40000 sheep were shorn here in 1958 there was 13 shearers employed here and the station staff was 40 permanent employees a far cry from today 1998, there are no sheep on Mulyungarie now only cattle, and the staff is now only about 10.
From Mulyungarie I went down to the West Coast shearing for Trevor Saunders a shearing contractor from Blackwood and we shore at a run of sheds around Pt Lincoln and Cummins namely McDonalds at Pt Lincoln, Haymans and Lornalue Station at Cummins then Kia-ora Stn owned by Percy Puckridge at Tumby Bay. It was while at Kia-ora that two things happened which was of some significance, the first was that I shore my first 200 sheep in one day, and the other was that my Mother died so I had to leave here and go home for the funeral, she had been in very poor health for years and we all knew that it was only a matter of time, but for all that it
was quite sad driving home realizing I would never see her again, and to make matters worse just out from Tumby Bay a car going past threw up a rock which busted my windscreen and I had to drive from there to Burra with no windscreen and it was raining to boot.
Trevor Saunders rang me from Pt Lincoln and asked me to come back to help them finish the shed so I caught the Karratha which used to sail from Pt Adelaide to Pt Lincoln and was that an experience, it was only a very small ship and it can get quite rough going over but it was another experience .I then went down to the South East again this time shearing for Laurie Saunders who was Trevor's brother and at that time was one of the biggest shearing contractors in South Aus I shore mostly down around Lucindale that year.
We now come to 1959 and I started off this year with Laurie Saunders at Cluain Station Lucindale on the first Monday in January and then went with Trevor early Feb to Boolcamatta out from Mingary and then to Wilkatana which is just out of Pt Augusta and then finished the early run as it is called in early May at Bon-Bon Station out of Kingoonya.
Joe Kerin a shearer I had met the previous year on the West Coast had been shearing in Western Australia in May 1958 and he managed to get us both work with the same shearing contractor again this year up around Pt Hedland so away we went the West. Gwenda was at this stage living in a flat at Clifton St Prospect with my Dad.
In those days the bitumen finished at Pt Augusta and it was quite an experience driving from Kingoonya to Pt Hedland in Joe's Consul Utility there was 4 of us and one used to have to take a turn sitting in the back on his own for a few hours but on reflection it was a great experience, it took us nearly three weeks to get there as we spent a few days in Perth taking in the HIGHLIGHTS!!!. The sheds I shore at in the West were De-Grey,Mulyie, and Shaw River all around Pt Hedland.
On my return from the West I went back to Mulyungarie again and from there back to the West Coast with Trevor Saunders. . I hired a caravan from Stan Graefe and took Gwenda and Kym to the West Coast with me and for a change there was no hassles I think Gwenda actually enjoyed our 2 months on the West Coast and she also came down to the South East for the shearing down there, in fact I think it would have been about 4 months in total that she was with me in a caravan. Dad had gone out to live with brother Bob so we had moved out of the flat at Prospect. While shearing at Tallagera Stn at Frances we applied for a Housing Trust home at either Naracoorte or Penola and while we were at a shed at Avenue Range Laurie Saunders came down to inform us that we had been allocated a house at Pavy Drive Naracoorte and the cost was 3100 pounds or in today's money $6200, were we excited or were we excited, and we moved into the house in early Dec, I remember the repayments were $30 a month, and I think we furnished the whole house with secondhand furniture for about 200 pounds
. Our first Xmas at Naracoorte. This was when I learnt how to use a chain -saw Don Day a chap from Lucindale was staying across the road and wanted somebody to help him cutting posts around Lucindale so I went with him and learnt a lot from Don about chainsaws which was a great help in the following years in helping me to earn money in the off season shearing by cutting posts and firewood, actually I had quite a clientele I used to supply wood to in the winter I remember I used to sell it for about $7.00 a ton today it is $130.00.
We are now into 1960. Started off the year at Cluain with Laurie Saunders and then to Broodlands at Lucindale, from there Stan and I went to Mulgathing Stn which is out from Malbooma which in turn is 40 ks on from Tarcoola on the East West railway line about 900 ks from home, this shed started the first Monday in March and from there we went to Beltana Stn and then to Minburra out from Orroroo. The shearers here were the fastest team I ever shore in I was a pretty fast shearer but I dragged the chain as the saying goes in that shed, I was shearing around the 180-200 a day and the gun Billy Blake was around the 250 and the others from 200 upwards. This took us through to the end of May and we then had a month's break before heading off to Mulyungarie the first Monday in July. After Mulyungarie Stan and I went down to Manunda. but this turned out to be a disaster, we arrived there late at night and the first thing that upset us was that the mattresses were only 2 inches thick and the beds only 2 feet wide , well the Shearers Accomadation Act said that the beds were to be at least 2foot 6 inches wide and the mattresses were to be 4 inches thick so we told the management that we wanted just that and their answer was -no way- so we struck and told them no way were we going to shear their sheep , anyway the end result was that we sat in the huts for nearly a week and we then left and went home to Naracoorte.
We then went to work for Laurie Saunders again and we shore for him right up until Xmas at sheds around Naracoorte, Frances and Lucindale. This year I traded the International Ute in and bought a Volkswagen car which I kept for all of a fortnight and took it back to the dealer who was Wortley Motors, the car had been in a rollover and I was not told so they swapped it for a 1957 FE Holden which had only done 13000 miles as it turned out that wasn't the best car in the world either ,as it had taken 4 years to do that mileage the motor was shot as I found out down the track.
1961 I started off at Cluain again and then Stan and I headed off to Lake Everard which was west of Kingoonya for Stockowners Shearing, this was on the first Monday in Feb from there we went to Beltana and then to Minburra at Orroroo. After Minburra Stan and I went shearing for the Austral Shearing Co of Mt Gambier at Wooltana Stn 200ks out of Copley and then to Wilgena Stn at Tarcoola, Wilgena was the biggest shed I ever shore in there were 14 shearers at that shed and we shore over 50000 sheep It was while we were at Wilgena that Tracy Lee was born on 10th July to be exact, after Wilgena we went back with Laurie Saunders shearing around Naracoorte until well into December
1962 I started off at Cluain and then shore at a few sheds around Lucindale before going back to Minburra in early May Had an accident at Minburra, was going up the neck of a sheep this day and drove the comb straight into the palm of my hand, well Jack Standford the manager drove me into the doctors at Orroroo to get it stitched but the doctor decided to put some clips into it instead and back to the shed I went shearing, well after about 15 minutes I could feel this wetness inside the glove that I was wearing and on taking the glove off I found that it was blood -the clips had come undone and the wound was all open again and bleeding quite badly so back to Orroroo we went to the quack, well he scratched around in a ash tray and found a needle and some thread and just sewed it up right there and then ,no anaesthetic or anything and as the wound was by then about 5 hours old it was quite painful. I remember that the needle was that blunt that he had to get a pair of pliers to push the needle through my skin. I traded in the Holden FE and bought a 1955 Dodge sedan.
In June Stan and I went back to Wooltana and Wilgena and finished the year with Laurie Saunders, shearing in the South East. Had my first serious car accident in the Dodge, was going home after tea from a shed out from Naracoorte and went around a corner a bit too fast and the car went into a slide, the back wheels went into a culvert and the car rolled over two times, was very extensively damaged and was a good reason to sell it later on although I don't think I needed a reason, selling my car seemed to be coming a habit.
1963 This year was the same as the previous in the early part of the year shearing for Saunders from Jan at Cluain and then around Lucindale, when we finished there Stan and I went to Wilcannia shearing at Duntroon Stn between Wilcannia and White Cliffs, then on down the Darling to Barraroo and Tintinology which were in between Wilcannia and Medindee, It was while we were at Tintinology that we decided to drive home to Naracoorte for the weekend so four of us left on Friday night went home and came back on the Sunday, well it would have been OK if it hadn't rained whilst we were in Naracoorte but there was over an inch of rain at the station and the road was very boggy, well we got to within 14 miles(19km's) of the
shearing shed when we got bogged and could not do anything else except walk which is what we did arriving back at the shed at 7 o'clock in the morning just in time to have a bit of breakfast and go to work and were we buggered, we could hardly walk let alone shear yet Stan and I shore 200 each that day and did we sleep that night!!!, finished these sheds early Sept and then back to Naracoorte to the same run of sheds as the previous year, all these sheds were with Laurie Saunders. Sold the Dodge and bought a I959 FC Holden Station Wagon. This was the year that Graham Dayman and I started up a business as Hay Carting Contractors, Laurie had sent Graham and I to Algy Shepherd's at Kybybolite to shear his wethers and I reckon they were the biggest wethers in Australia, anyway on the way home one night I said to Graham" There must be an easier way to make a quid than shearing these bloody sheep so we reckoned after a bit of thought we could make good money carting hay so we hunted around and found a truck a 1948 Austin bought a bale loader which was a dual loader and a stacker and then took a drive around the farmers we had shorn for and won some contracts to cart their hay Well it worked out pretty good we carted the hay bought another loader as the dual one was a pain in the butt, and made ourselves a good quid. Graham decided that carting hay was really not his scene, he thought he would go baling hay so at the end of the season he sold his half of the plant to Stan Graefe and we became partners and this was quite successful as Stan was quite happy for me to organize the show and only wanted to be involved in decisions of spending money so consequently we never ever had a disagreement or a row in our partnership, actually I don't think Stan and I have ever had a row in 42 years of friendship.
We now come to 1964, Stan and I had a shed to shear at Greenways in January and after that I went to Yudnapinna out from Pt Augusta with Stockowners and from there back to South Killanoola and then back up to Minburra at Orroroo, from there I went to Appin in between Wilcannia and Ivanhoe and from there to Lilydale south of Yunta, after we finished at Lilydale I went to Neds Corner just out of Mildura but we did not stay there very long, the sheep were in a very bad state, they had not been crutched and as it had been a very good year they were covered in dags and we asked the owners of the station for more money and they refused so we packed up and left. I then went back to Naracoorte and shore again for Laurie Saunders and it was while I was with Laurie at Williup Station which is near Hynam that I shore my best tally ever ,it was 231 and although I shore many 200's I never ever bettered that tally,I have shorn 62 sheep in one run and if I could have kept it up all day I would have shorn 248 but it was not to be, I did shear 4,625 sheep in 5 weeks at Wilgena in 1962 which was an average of 195 a day which I was quite proud of , nowadays they shear this and more but the shearers use wider combs now than we did then so it is not a fair comparison. Before we went to Appin I bought a new Holden EH sedan and was I proud of that.
Finished shearing about the end of Oct and started hay carting we bought another truck and loader and thought we were really big time. As the hay carting went through to January we did not start shearing until late January and had managed to work up a run of small sheds around Naracoorte and surrounding areas which meant that we no longer had to go up to the North of the state to shear, so 1965 was started in the sheds around Naracoorte.
In May I had a call from the local A.W.U organizer Don Strachan asking me if I would come down to his house as the Secretary of the A.W.U. Eric Oconnor would like to have a talk to me, so I went down and listened to what he had to say.
What transpired was that there was a faction fight in the organization and the Federal Executive had decided to move in to the South Australian Branch and had dismissed all the officials and he wanted to know if I would take the position of Branch President and Metropolitan Organizer, well you could have flattened me with a feather, even though I had been a very solid Union member I had no idea that my solidarity had been recognized by the heirachy of the Union, well I went back and talked about it with Gwenda and decided to give it a go.
In retrospect I was a little hasty in what I then did, I had been given to understand that if I accepted the position my future would be assured so I went ahead and sold our house in Naracoorte and bought a house in Grandview Grove, Reynella . a suburb of Adelaide, all this happened in a matter of weeks and on the 25th June 1965 I took up my position with the A.W.U in Flinders St Adelaide. Two of my shearing mates unknown to me had also been recruited Joe Kerin and Jim Harvey, Joe was to be the pastoral organizer and Jim was to be stationed at Pt Augusta and look after the Railways, Joe also was responsible for all the Councils in the country areas. My area was all the metropolitan area and I covered all the Councils, Brick Yards, Construction sites as in the Bolivar Treatment Plant , the pipeline from Clarendon to Darlington and like sites
Well as you can imagine we were like fish out of water we had little idea what we were doing and had to more or less learn as we went and, as the sacked organizers had a following of friends in the jobs that we went to there was a fair bit of resentment leveled at us which as time went on we managed to overcome. As the Branch President I was also a Federal Executive Councilor which meant I had to go to Sydney on Executive Council Meetings and this was a great eye opener to see the wheeling and dealing that goes on in the big Unions, at the time the A.W.U was the biggest union in Australia with some 200000 members and as such was a very powerful organization, these excursions to Sydney were more like a holiday than a business meeting and a good time was had after the days meeting was over.
All the sacked officials had appealed to the Industrial Court over their dismissal and even though Tom Dougherty the General Secretary of the Union had assured us that they did not have a dog's chance of succeeding in early Dec the Court brought down their decision which in effect said that the sacking of the officials was done for other than the reasons stated and ordered that the officials be reinstated which was what had to be done and we were then out of a job immediately. We received a nice letter from
Dougherty telling us how sorry he was that this was the outcome and gave us one months salary in leu of notice, well you can imagine we did not know what we were going to do then except go back shearing again so we rang Laurie Saunders and he promised us a job at Cluain in January. As I must have had a gut feeling about it I did not sell my half of the plant to Stan so I was able to go back hay carting with Stan. Fortunately we were able to sell the house at Reynella quickly and we bought a house at Memorial Drive Naracoorte.
1966 saw us back at Cluain in January and boy did we suffer, had put on a good two stone in weight and it was no fun shearing in Jan being overweight. From there we went to Mabel Creek and Ingomar out from Coober Pedy and finished up at Mt Eba which is east of Kingoonya. Dad died while I was at Ingomar and I had to go down to Adelaide to his funeral, the poor old chap had been in poor health since his hemorrhage of the brain in 1955 and had collapsed in Gilbert St and died there on the spot, he was a great guy my Dad and 32 years down the track I still think of him constantly and wish I had been a better son to him, unfortunately we tend to take our parents as people who are just there, it is not until they are gone and you get older yourself that you come to realize that there was a lot more that you could have done for your parents.
After Mt Eba the team went to Wilcannia and we did three sheds for Saunders and the last of them was where we were shearing when he decided to fly us home for the weekend (he obviously had a plane) the shed was Rosewood just out from Ivanhoe and he picked us up at 3.30 to fly us to Naracoorte now this was in August and there is not an awful lot of daylight at that time of the day, well we got down around Goroke and it is pouring with rain and it is getting really dark and we were not flying all that far off the ground, well we kept on heading in what we thought was the right direction ,I was sitting in the front with Laurie and I'm sure he never had a clue where we were when I happened to look across the front of him and I said "what are those lights way across there Laurie" he replied "o'h it must be Naracoorte "and just headed the plane in that direction. When we arrived it was too dark to see exactly where the drome was so he lined the drive in picture screen up with what he reckoned was the strip and when we landed there was that much water on the strip that you would have thought that we had a aquaplane, it was an experience I do not wish to have again.
Stan and I bought another truck before we went up to Wilcannia, a 1957 AS International with a 18 foot tray an ideal truck for carting hay, we reckoned we were going to really get into the job this year. Shore a few small sheds around Naracoorte and then back into the hay carting early November.
In 1967 Stan pulled out of the partnership and bought a dairy out at Stewarts Range so I decided that I would not have any more partners and I bought his half of the equipment and went on my own. I changed my car over again this year traded the Holden EH on a 1965 Valiant Sedan, also bought Gwenda 2 cars this year a 1956 Austin A40 which she cooked and a 1963 Morris Minor 1000, had to keep the little woman happy!!!! Had a fair sort of run of sheds put together so I did not head up North in the early part of the year I had enough work shearing, crutching, post cutting and cutting and delivering firewood to keep me going until early in June and then I went to Bulgunia Station out from Kingoonya for the Pastoral Shearing Co, and from there we went to Mt Clarence which was 80 Km's north of Coober Pedy 2 very good sheds at this time of the year. Finished them in the middle of August and headed back to my run of sheds around Naracoorte which took me in again to hay carting time.
It was in November of this year that I was invited to join the Lions Club of Naracoorte and it was one of the best things that happened to me , Naracoorte is a very class conscious town and as I was only a shearer and hay carter I was fairly well down the social ladder but as soon as I joined the Lions it opened up a lot of doors and my busness improved dramatically , It was a very good period all round we met a lot of people and our social life improved no end. Of course it was not all one way I did a lot of work for the town and supplied my trucks for carting stumps etc and the hours of work I donated I could not count.
Was a very bad drought in South Australia in 1967 and I done a lot of distance carting of hay this year as well as paddock carting ,over to Casterton up to the Adelaide Hills and even though there was less hay to cart I made more money. Of course when a drought is talked of in the South East anything less than 20 inches is a drought I think we had close on 14 inches which would be a good year in most areas. Bought another truck this year a 1956 Dodge.
It is now 1968 and with my usual run of sheds, shearing, crutching, firewood etc I did not leave Naracoorte at all this year and apart from changing houses to Aitchison Ave and changing my car to a 1966 Valiant
Regal (a beautiful car) I also bought a 1963 Holden ute for the hay carting period and to save the car from being knocked around.
1969 was also very much the same, stayed around Naracoorte for the whole of the year and became very involved with the Lions Club.
1970 I bought a new V F Valiant 2 door, was that a flash car or was it a flash car! Also another two utes were bought a 1965 Ford Falcon and I traded in the Holden E J ute on a 1968 Dodge Ute, as you can see I spent a lot of money on motor vehicles and this happened all through my life even up to today, but it will have to cease soon as the value of 2nd hand cars has crashed and it is quite common to lose $8000 in a year, and as I no longer work this is not on. This year I went up to Yunta in July shearing for Patrick Ryan from the Burra at Manunda Station and followed on to Melton finishing these sheds in August and then back home to the usual run of sheds and the hay carting.I had built the hay carting up into quite a big business employing 5 or 6 men each year and carting up to 300000 bales a year.
Something happened which dramatically changed my financial position, was shearing at a small shed at Kybybolite and the woolclasser there was talking at smoko time about a property which he was leasing a portion of at Apsley and said that there was still 400 acres left to lease so as soon as I finished shearing that day I went into Elders at Naracoorte and had a talk to the manager there about leasing this remaining 400 acres. The manager submitted my application to the owner and he approved it and I was then a big time grazier, fortunately I had had a good year on the hay and I had about $5000 saved so I was able to go over to Kingston where I bought 1000 ewes in lamb to a Border Leiscter ram, this combination was very popular and you then had 3 sources of income one from the wool, another from the ewe lambs as breeding stock, and the remainder of the lambs as fat lambs. I paid $4.00 a head for the ewes which was a ridiculous price but the pastoral industry was in a very bad shape at the time and that was all they were worth. As this was not my main source of income I did not have to make as much money from the property as somebody who had no other income for other sources. At the end of the spring I could see that the property would run 200 hundred wethers as well so I bought them at a low price as well, around the $4.50 mark as I recollect. I also purchased a International Tip Truck and put a driver on, as I could earn a lot more than his wages shearing, and as I really did not mind the hard work it seemed the best way to go.
Went back to Manunda again this year and after that finished I returned home to the usual run of sheds and the hay carting. Bought Gwenda a 1965 Mini Minor at the end of the year and traded in the Morris Minor.1000.
1972 saw the wool market improve dramatically and my investment of $5000 in sheep turn into a investment of around $25000 which believe me was a lot of money in 1972 so consequently I did not have to go away again this year shearing, as you can imagine as the price of sheep improved so did the return off them so with the return from hay carting, shearing, crutching, firewood sales the tip truck and the farm income I really had no need to head up North shearing, so this year was spent around Naracoorte and believe or not I did not buy any more cars this year!!!One piece of machinery I did buy this year was a self propelled bale wagon a terrific piece of equipment if all the bales were baled evenly and tightly, if they weren't there were many problems but after a lot of trial and error I finally mastered the bloody thing!! These machines were designed for paddock carting and for the bales to be stacked straight off the machine and not to be handled by manual labor, one day I carted and stacked 3,300 bales in about 10 hours ended up carting about 100,000 bales with this machine alone, the trucks carted another 200,000.The wagon cost $13,000 a pittance compared to what could be earnt with it.
Big changes to my life happened in 1973 I decided that as I had turned 40 years of age I would retire from shearing, I always said that I would give shearing away when I was 40, never really believing that I would be able to do it but as things turned out I was able to do just that. I put the truck driver off and drove the tip truck myself but very shortly after I started, the Naracoorte Council decided to put all the tippers off and employ a contractor with a scraper and then buy two of their own tippers so consequently we were out of a job. Another chap and myself managed to find work over at Ballarrat but this turned out to be a disaster as well, the contractor would not pay the ruling rates and we were not going to cart for any less so home again we came.
I had to then sit down and work out exactly where I was headed, there did not appear to be any future in the tip trucks I really thought I was getting too old for shearing and hay carting and there really was not enough in the farm alone so what was I going to do?
The chap who I had bought the house at Aitchison Ave from was a chap named Franz Hausman who went to Adelaide to live and he had bought a truck with Pioneer Concrete so I thought to myself "why not give them a ring" which I did and as had been my luck lately the State Manager of Pioneer told me that he was in the process of putting on some more trucks and to come down for an interview.
Went down and was successful in being allocated a position which was to be at the Reynella plant, well as you can imagine there was a lot to do to tidy up at Naracoorte house to sell, hay carting equipment to dispose of , the property at Apsley still had 2 years to run on the lease, a tip truck to sell and a house to buy in Adelaide.
Well once again everything worked out for me, one of the lads working for me, Bruce Staude bought the hay carting business which got rid of 3 trucks 4 Elevators and one utility. The Bale Wagon which had a lot of money owing on it ,like $7,500, a grazier from Binnum bought off of me for what was owing on it, which I was quite happy about as I did not want the worry of trying to sell it when I was living in Adelaide.
The house I sold to a chap in the Lions Club a week after I arrived back from Adelaide; the tipper went to a truck yard in the Adelaide Hills and the Dodge ute to the chap who told me about the property at Apsley. Just to top things off I traded the Valiant 2 door on a 1972 ZD Fairlane. The farm I decided I would try and run it from Adelaide, this turned out to be a disaster, impossible to look after 1200 sheep from 450 km's away so I took Graham Dayman in as a partner and later on in 1974 I sold all of my interest in the sheep to Graham, at the time he was leasing a property next door which did not have a shearing shed so it was very handy for him and I was glad to be able to tidy the whole thing up with the least amount of fuss, as I thought it was at the time. Unfortunately the owner of the property had an idea that I had sublet the property and I was making money out of the lease ,this of course was not true and we managed to convince him that this was not so and he dropped the whole thing..
Bought a very nice home in Acre Avenue Morphettvale with an extra block of land for $25000 today it would be worth at least $175000 and the day after we arrived with the furniture I started with Pioneer Concrete. The job itself was very good but at that time of the year which was June 25th and being in the middle of winter there was not a lot of work especially for the single axle agitators which was what I had bought .I used to become quite agitated when the big pours were on at the Flinders Medical Centre
and the bogie drive trucks were going in and out all day and the small trucks doing very little and resolved to buy a tandem drive truck as soon as one became available.
Relations with Gwenda had deteriorated to the extent that we just could not continue to live together so we came to an arrangement financially and Gwenda rented a unit down at Brighton and I stayed in the house until I could sell it. I do not blame Gwenda for the eventual collapse of our marriage , we used to fight like cat and dog and the final straw came when we both had an affair some twelve months prior to us finally parting. We were known as the Fighting Fosters in Naracoorte and although there was some tense moments up to us being divorced because of Gwenda not believing I would honour our agreement eventally it all came together, Gwenda remarried another chap which unfortunately ended fairly early and today she lives on her own at Goodwood , Adelaide.
After Gwenda moved out a chap who I worked with at Pioneer named Ray Maslin who had a tandem drive agitator left his wife and I let him move in with me until he could sort out his affairs, this continued until after I sold the house in January 1974 and had moved to Christie Downs. Managed to sell the house and not lose any money and as money was very short after paying out Gwenda her share I bought a cheap Housing Trust home at Christie Downs and moved in, in early March 74.
Shortly after Ray moved in with me he was forced to sell his truck as he had been caught stealing a welder from a building site that he had been delivering concrete to and I was in the position to be able to buy it from him and then I sold the single axle truck to a chap from Willunga. I was very fortunate to be able to get a tandem drive concrete truck so soon after starting in the business and in the same yard as I was working.
My second wife Coral moved in with me in August with her son Shaun and it seemed as though my marital problems were going to improve, we were very happy in the early years of our relationship but unfortunately it deteriorated down the track.
Changed the car over to a 1976 Torana SLR it was when petrol started to really get dear and I used it as an excuse to buy a smaller car and I also bought Coral a 1963 EJ Holden.
1975 saw us still living at Christie Downs and as my divorce to Gwenda was coming up I decided that I had better buy myself a new truck a 1975 D Series Ford with a 210 Cummins and put myself in debt as I did not want to give Gwenda the ability to try and extract heavy maintenance from me I had agreed to pay $50.00 a week in support for Tracy which Gwenda had agreed was fair( even today 24 years down the track there are a lot not paying that much)but I did not trust Gwenda to stick to her word and even though we had agreed to not hassle each other she did just that and through her actions the divorce cost a lot in lawyers which was totally unnecessary. 1976 I sold the house at Christie Downs and bought a house at Padget Place Morphettvale, had started to get back on my feet financially again and felt we should have a nicer home. Done a lot of alterations to the house knocking out walls and enclosing the carport to make the house bigger and also put a swimming pool in the backyard .We also bought a coffee shop in the Big Y shopping centre at Morphettvale and Coral was full time running that for 5 and a half days a week. We also changed both cars mine to a 1975 Statesman and Coral's to a 1967 HR Holden S/Wagon
The following year 1977 saw more changes, Daphne Schultz, Coral's mother offered to lend us $25000 to buy a block of land at Cherry Gdns, as Coral was mad on horses and the block was in fact 20 acres, we jumped at the chance and bought the property at Marshall Road Cherry Gardens. This then seen me really getting back into working hard, it was only boundary fenced and I had to cut it up into 4 paddocks get a dam built equip it with a pump, build a shed and fit it out as a shearing shed and machinery shed and help the builders with the new house. We started building the new house in June and moved in in early October The spot where we built the house has a beautiful view out over the paddocks and it was a pleasure to just sit and look over the valley. Still had this ongoing problem of buying cars so I traded the Statesman in on a 1977 Holden HX utility which I convinced myself that I needed. Really enjoyed this block of land, I had the sheep and a couple of steers for meat and as the concrete carting was a early to start and early to finish job I always had plenty of time to look after the stock. I also built myself up a little round of clients who had a few sheep to shear so I bought myself a portable shearing plant and I made very good money out of this little side line.
When we were building the house we put both the house at Padget Place and the coffee shop on the market and even though we only needed to sell one of them they both sold within a matter of a few days so Coral did not have to worry about having to drive to Morphettvale from Cherry Gdns every day.
Whilst I was building the house I had a very bad accident with my concrete truck, I was delivering a load of concrete to the Happy Valley Shopping Centre this particular morning and as I was going over the intersection of the old South Road and The Strand a bread delivery truck decided to come out on my left and go straight through and head towards Morphetvale, well as I came in to the intersection I glanced to the right and when I looked back there he was coming across in front of me ,well there was nothing I could do, I hit him fair and square amidships and pushed him across the
road on his side, the vehicle that is , the front of the my truck was all pushed in and his was a write off ,it had a twisted chassis, the driver was OK except for a bit of glass in one eye and I fortunately did not have a scratch, I was very lucky that it was not a tip truck weighing as much as I was if this had been the case I would not be here today.
Life was very good on the block I was generally home from work about one o'clock which gave me heaps of time to build up the block and look after my stock and also do a few jobs for my neighbor Ray Stokes , Ray was the manager of Wunderlich windows and was very helpful to me when I was building the house and also in getting me some jobs done in his workshop at the factory. I also had a very good friend a couple of kms away who had a bulldozer and had done a lot of work for me and would not take anything for it so I was able to repay the favors by shearing a few sheep for him.
1978 and 79 were all in the same vein as 77 nothing of any consequence happened except I traded in the ute and bought a 1977 Statesman, at the end of this story I will list all the cars just as a point of interest, if I had the money today that I have spent changing cars I would be a very well off person. The only thing that did happen was that Coral and I got married and that was the start of the finish of our marriage, it would serve no useful purpose to elaborate on the why's and wherefore's so I will just say that it did not workout and getting married certainly did not cement our relationship.
We went to Tasmania over the Xmas period for a 11 day trip with Alan and Mary Johnson from Naracoorte in 1979 and a very enjoyable trip it was too, we hired a car and drove around the coast road as far as was practical,, we did 1900kms and stayed at hotels and motels.
1980 was another uneventful year and there is nothing to add to this story about it.
1981 was another year that saw the eventual collapse of my marriage to Coral and in September we decided to separate, so we put the property on the market and in Dec it was sold and early in 1982 I drove away from my little piece of heaven, this was especially hard to take as I had visions of my retirement on my 20 acres but this is life no one knows what is around the corner. Bought another car a 1980 Celica hatchback a real sporty little car and moved out to Highbury and boarded with my brother Bob.
Saw a very nice house just down the road from Bob's house in the same street so I bought it and moved in in June 1982,back to batching again!!! Trevor passed away in April, he had cancer of the pancreas and only lived 12 months after he was diagnosed with it.Very sad to lose anybody but it was exceptionally sad to see Trev fade away, he was a big man over six foot and when he died he was just skin and bone, I don't think Trev had a nasty thought in his head he was such a nice guy and if he couldn't do you a good turn he never had it in his makeup to do a bad turn to anybody.
In August Edna, his widow moved down to Adelaide to live with me and apart from a couple of minor hiccups we have enjoyed a good relationship ever since, it is now 17 years and I was very lucky to have had her all these years. She sold her house in Maitland a few months after moving down to Adelaide.
Bought a new truck a 1982 Ford Louisville in Feb just before leaving Cherry Gdns as with a divorce coming up I thought I would have to show a few commitments but as it turned out Coral was not determined to try and extract the last dollar out of me and we came to an amiable settlement, she finished up with a freehold house towards which she contributed little but that is the way the law is in separations, whatever the assets have grown in value whilst you have been living together the woman is entitled to half, and I don't think you can really argue against that. I also bought a Morris Minor Panel Van for work, did not seem as tho it was right to put the spare tyre of the truck into the Celica!! I did have a valid reason for buying this.
Started to extend the house at Trafford Rd Highbury soon after Brodie moved in and a lot of parties we had in the extension which was a rumpus room. Bought a 1977 F100.
1983 saw Brodie and I take a trip up through the Northern Territory and around the top end of Western Australia and then around the coast to Esperance and back home across the Nullabour, We done 14500kms in 5 weeks so you can imagine we did not stay too long in one spot, it gave us a taste for travelling and each year we now go somewhere for a few months of the year when it is winter down south. We bought a 1977 Holden V/8 Tray Top 1 Tonner with a lazy axle and a slide on camper on the back, a nice unit for that type of trip but certainly not the ideal setup for a long period of time, had a couple of problems with the mechanics, about 50 kms North of Coober Pedy a wheel came off the lazy axle, a bearing had collapsed and the wheel ended up out in the mulga , well I was not unduly worried as I had bought a spare set of bearings in Adelaide before we left on the trip so I went to get them and would you believe it I had left them in the Morris back home so we had to rope the axle up to the tie rail and drove 250 kms to Marla where the mechanic had to cut the bearing cone off of the axle with a angle grinder before he could fit a new bearing
.Back on the road again and it was in the days of the Old South Rd before it was bitumised and the road was very rough, well we had not gone very far when the exhaust pipe broke away from the box and you could hardly hear yourself think but we kept going until we could find a spot to pull off the road to camp, we eventually found a spot and pulled over about 9 o'clock at night had a bite to eat and settled down to watch a video, we had brought the V.C.R. with us and we had a lighting plant for power, well I said to
Brodie do you want the heater lit she reckoned that would be a good idea so I got the gas bottle out set up the burner on it and lit it .Sitting there basking in the warmth when I decided to make sure the nut was done up tight and would you believe I undone the bloody nut instead of doing it up, well flames blew out everywhere and as I was sitting by the door I jumped outside the next thing I know is Brodie screaming her head off ,she had been burnt in a gas explosion about 5 years prior and she was frightened of gas at the best of times, I jumped back into the van grabbed the bottle and threw it out onto the road and would you believe the flame went out and the burner was not even damaged, we were very lucky, the van could easily have caught fire and we were probably 200 kms from anywhere.
We had pulled up by a cattle grid and all night we lay there listening to transports rattling there way along this apology of a road and rattling across the cattle grid, we sure did not get too much sleep that night . Next morning I repaired the exhaust and we headed off to Ayres Rock.
The lighting plant we had was a noisy bugger and we were asked at Ayres Rock to turn it off as our neighbours could not even think for the noise , we learnt then that generators are a no no when you are camped close to other people.
Apart from this minor hiccup, which at the time was not minor , we burnt a valve out and had to spend a week in Perth getting it repaired, but all in all it was a great trip.When we returned home I sold the Celica and bought a 1979 Holden Statesman SLE.
1984-5 nothing of any importance happened although I bought a new F100 Utility, but in 1986 we went on a trip with a workmate from Pioneer Concrete up through the centre and across to Queensland, the object was to go to Cape York but we had a lot of trouble with the Landrover that we had bought for the trip and we only went as far as Laura up Cape York Peninsula before turning back This was a great trip, apart from the Cape hiccup we went to Ayres Rock then up to Kings Canyon, back to and up through the Finke Gorge to Palm Valley and then into the Alice. The trip through the Finke Gorge was the highlight of the trip, we were pulling camper trailers and this caused us to get bogged quite a few times, real four wheel driving country and some magnificent scenery in the Gorge which a lot of people do not see.
From the Alice we went up to Katherine done the Gorge trip (beautiful) then on to Darwin, was not impressed with Darwin on our first trip but have grown to like it now, after Darwin we went out to the Victoria River and done a boat trip with Max on the River this was a terrific trip Max is a real Territorian and has a wealth of information to tell people. After this we went across to Mataranka and visited the thermal pools a fabulous spot developed by the troops during World War II for the officers. Class distinction in those days too.
Our trip then went across to Roper Bar and then we took a four wheel drive track across to Booraloora and then down another bush road to Normanton, it is a trip we done 12 years ago and I have not forgotten it, it was a real experience. From here it was across to Cairns and then down the coast to Port Macquarie up to Walcha down through to the South East ( Naracoorte) and then home the trip took 3 months and we done 14000kms.
The vehicle was a 1976 Landrover V/8 which had only done 70000kms and the trouble we had with it was one of the fuel tanks was rusted and kept on clogging up the carby , did not know this was the problem until we were nearly home . The only vehicle I have ever made money out of, paid $5000 and sold it after the trip for $7000.
1987 we took a trip to New Zealand and this is a beautiful country, I just could not believe it , we would go around a corner in the road and there was another vista before your eyes, we would say that we had filmed enough of some areas and then you would see something else and had to film a bit of that too so we finished up with about 6 hours of our visit to New Zealand on video. We hired a 4 berth Toyota Camper From Kirra Tours landed at Christchurch crisscrossed up to Mt Cook across to Duneedin then to
Milford Sound and Lake Teanu, an unreal area around here it is just awesome the trip on the Sound in a boat. We then went to Queenstown, words would not describe the beauty of this area, we went on a boat trip on the PS Earnslaw a steam driven boat, had a ride on The Shotover River in a jet boat, took a cable car ride up a mountain (hairy) and all in all loved Queenstown. From here we went over to the West Coast and up to the Franz Josef Glacier and took a helicopter flight over the Glacier, this would have to be the highlight of our trip to New Zealand, the pilot took us over the top of Mt Cook and the sight that met our eyes when we came over the top was out of this world, we then landed on the glacier and then flew down the length of it back to the town, will never forget that.
We then went to Nelson caught the boat to the North Island went up to Rotarua, Auckland, the Bay Of Islands back to Auckland and then home to Adelaide, was away 20 days and worth every cent we spent.
Early in the year we bought a caravan with the proceeds of the sale of the Landrover, so in the Xmas break we went for a trip up to Mildura down to Echuca and then back home , it was while we were in Echuca that I became very ill and ended up in the Royal Adelaide Hospital and after about 2 weeks the doctors finally diagnosed an abscess on the liver, they operated
and got a litre of puss out of my innards, when they cut me open it went every where. Took a long time to get over this , the doctors could not find
what caused the problem and did not know how to treat it eventually I recovered and 10 years down the track I have not had a recurrence.
This was in January 1988 and it would have been about May before I was fully recovered and apart from a problem I now have with a growth in my shoulder I enjoy very good health and have done all my life, so that is one thing to be thankful for.
Just after returning to work the management of Pioneer Concrete called us all together and told us that they were going to terminate our contracts to cart their concrete and if we wished they would buy our trucks from us and give us a job driving for them, this was not acceptable to me so I sold my truck to them and bought a truck carting furniture for Tubemasters at Magill. This job was the last job I had in my working life I stayed here until I retired in July 1991,and even though it was not the best job in the world it served its purpose.
Xmas 1988 saw us take a trip over to the Blue Mountains, down to Canberra and then through the Murray Valley to Albury then to Melbourne and back home again.
1989 was another uneventful year health was good and nothing happened to record in this biography, although we traded in the Windsor caravan that we had bought in 1986 and bought a 25 Foot 1988 Spaceline with a shower etc, we had in mind that when I retired we would travel a lot and would need something better than a 16 ft pop top to live in full time. Xmas saw us down on the Mornington Peninsula at Rosebud and then came back through the Western districts of Victoria and the South East of S.A.
1990 saw Brodie and I finally get married, we both thought that a 8 year trial was long enough so we tied the knot at our home in Highbury on the 20th October on Brodie's birthday and have honestly never regretted doing this, I won't say that we have not had our problems but we have been able to sort them out.