Lockhart, a nice little town in rural NSW

I spent a day and a night in the tiny town of Lockhart just recently. Just a town of around 800 people, but obviously a great council and an ample supply of artists. A notable feature were the sculptures that were seen all around the town. 

It's in NSW,  around a half hour's drive from Wagga Wagga, an hour from Albury.

http://visitlockhartshire.com.au/

It is an artistic town, with some wonderful street art. 

The best of them all

On the basis of our temporary stay and talking with a couple of the residents, the two big problems experienced by this little town are both caused by government.  

 The first is that they absolutely do not want their Council to be amalgamated with another.  This is a push from State Government, with the purported reason that small councils cannot survive into the future. Since their success up to date is disregarded, I wonder if the real reason is some State Government bureaucrat wanting more power.  In our travels we've seen signs in so many rural towns - 'NO FORCED AMALGAMATION.' 

The other is that the so-called NBN rollout has reached Lockhart. (National Broadband Network)   NBN was supposed to deliver much faster internet speeds, and was to have given preference to places remote from cities, the places that need it most.  Well, that was years ago, the plan has been repeatedly downgraded, and according to the locals we spoke to,  their recently acquired  'NBN' amounts to a WIFI hotspot from a tower.  If you are in 'line of sight,' you can get it, if not, forget it.  But worse, it has messed up all other avenues, and even TV.  They spoke of a 'shield' that stops TV signals from Albury, as they used to have.  I don't know about that, but what I do know is that it's the first place in Australia, that we had no TV at all.  (Caravan, small antenna.)  Many no longer have internet. Farmers have no hope.  So much for the talk of ensuring good internet access for country people so that they would no longer be disadvantaged. 

I liked Lockhart.  It's just a shame that the government is so inept in their interference.  Though maybe they've done good things in other aspects.  We were only there very briefly.

Post WW2 Soldier Settlement in Australia.

Soldier Settlement schemes in Australia, otherwise known as   Closer Settlement Schemes

 This book is a part of our history.  It is why it has been re-published.  Look for it at any online bookseller.

 

 
 

The original edition of 'On The Block'
was published by Merv McRae, 1987,
with proceeds being donated to Legacy.

It is now out of print.

 

 Publisher: The Sunnyland Press, Red Cliffs, Victoria.

National Library of Australia,  ISBN 0 7316 01327.

 

 

 

 

This is the new edition of the book. Some pictures have been reproduced, especially the maps of the estates that were divided for settlement, but the original photographs are no longer available. 

In the words of Merv McRae, the one who put this history together: 

The purpose of this book is to record the early memories of Soldier Settlement, and the good and not so good times we had. With this in view, who better to do it than the people who lived it?

Mortlake Shire has many soldier settlers, this book covers those in the Darlington area. I think the majority of the settlers were in a similar position to myself.

After getting out of the army in 1945-46 we were left to our own devices and were a bit lost. That was when the settlement scheme came into being. It gave us some direction, and we were ready and willing to take up the challenge. I think we would all vote it a resounding success, although you will see by this book it was no pushover. The women worked beside their men, and we felt a bit like pioneers. We were given a living allowance, until we had an income; after all we had to eat. Many of us milked cows to survive, nearly all the trees you see now on the soldier settlement were planted by the settlers, as well as the improved pastures; there was very little improved pasture on the earlier settlements.
 

These are the areas covered:

Mt. Fyans,

Stokies,

Terrinallum,

Barnie Bolac,

Jellalabad,

Myrngrong,

Geddes',

Morrison's,

Terrinallum West Estates

North Station.

 

These are the people who contributed to this book:

Austin, T.   Badham, Greta.   Badham, R.   Banks, J. & M.   Biggin, B.   Biggin, Marj.   Biggin, Rob.   Blain, Mick.   Blain, Marg. (nee Reichman.)   Brewer, Doris.   Buntine, L. & E.   Burgess, T.   Chambers, J.   Cumming, E. & L.   Creen, Ethel.   Edmunds, J.   Erwin, J.   George, D. (nee Watson)   Gill, Lena.   Gladman, Joyce.   Gleeson, W. & P.   Gleghorn, Mary.   Grant, L. & M.   Gray, B. & J.   Gray, D. & Y.   Gray, R. & P.   Grills, L.& L.   Guthrie, L. M.   Hamilton, A. & J.   Hannah, J.   Harding, Jean.   Harrison, J. & E.   Hebbard, E. & M.   Hill, Iris.   Inglis, Louise (nee McRae)   Jackson, Joanne.   Kennedy, F.   Kidman, J. & J.   Krepp, G. & A.   Lade, D. L. & W. L.   Lade, M.   Lawson, Pauline, (nee Piper)   Lavery, J.   Luckock, Jean.   Lyon, W. P.   Lyon, Molly.   Maconachie, G. R.   Menzies, J.   Monds, A. & M.   Moroney, Iris.   McRae, A. M.   McRae, M. A.   Muir, Freda.   Murray, G. & N.   Price, J.   Proctor, G. & M.   Rogash, Lorna.   Robertson, J.   Ritchie, N.   Schafer, A. & M.   Scott, T. & M.   Sullivan, Bonnie (now Kennedy)   Tonkin, A.   Turner, Elsie, (now Christie)   Walker, A. K. & L. J.   Wentworth, M. & I.   Wentworth, J. And Nance,   Whelan, Gary.   Williams (nee Rogash.)

The Western plains of Victoria are flat and almost featureless.  There are plantations (planted, not natural vegetation)  and the occasional small volcano rising its head from the flat landscape.

IN RETROSPECT....

Memory is selective; it tends to veil the bad times in a merciful mist, but depicts the good times in exaggerated glowing colours.

 

How did we cope in those early years

In a bare little hut with a baby son?
With a lot of laughs, and not many tears,
For we were young, and it seemed like fun!
And we shared with neighbours our hopes and fears,
And the many urgent jobs to be done.

We had no road, no phone, no power.

Money was scarce, and water was too.
But we filled kero. tins from each passing shower,
And lived very cheaply on rabbit stew.
And we made the most of each precious hour,
And worked like beavers the long day through.

Then the road went through, and our house was complete.

The mail-man and school-bus came to our gate.
The phone was connected and, that was a treat.
The power was switched on, and wasn’t it great?
We felt like lords in our country seat,
And sheep replaced rabbits upon our estate.

                  

 

                     Poem by Alison McRae

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN THIS HISTORY:

Maps of the estates as they were divided for closer settlement. I have reproduced them as big as the 'blog' setup allows. There may be researchers interested. The original documents may be available elsewhere, of course.

 

 

 

 

 

 





There was one measure of success that the scheme fulfilled very successfully - it provided a horde of Baby Boomer children with a great childhood.

Plucking chooks at the sawbench.
Typical Soldier Settlement house in background



Enjoying a bonfire.

Boy beaten for refusing to be confirmed into the Catholic Church.

Boy beaten for refusing to be confirmed into the Catholic Church.


Yes, it did happen. It was a nun who did the beating. It was around 1960.


She unbuckled her belt. I felt her iron grip on my upper arm. Then I felt the first stinging blow. My blood thawed, then boiled. I welded my teeth together and commanded my vocal chords to be still. I ordered the little voice in my head to repeat over and over, “You can’t hurt me, you stupid evil bitch . Enjoy this, because you will never beat me again.” She beat me more savagely than I had ever been beaten before. She commenced the beating in her office, but I tried to run and she followed me and beat me in the hallway . I ran to the asphalt quadrangle between the kitchen and the playground. She followed me there and made a ceremony of beating me in front of fifty-eight pairs of watching eyes, stopping all pretence of play. She beat me with the buckle end of her belt, and it cut my skin. She beat me until I fell to the ground, then she paused and ordered me to rise and beat me until I fell again. When, finally, I could not rise again, she thrashed and flogged, and when I curled up in a little ball to try to protect my tenderest parts from the blows, she kicked me again and again with that heavy black boot. All the while she shouted at me that I would take the Catholic faith, if she had to beat me to within an inch of my life to make me.

When she was done with me, a herculean six-foot-one-inch one-hundred-and-seventy-seven-pounds of black-robed, leather-booted crone collapsed against the kitchen door huffing and snorting, her face ashen, her wimple sweat-soaked, and her lips and chin sagging. The strap fell from her grip. While I lay consumed with an agony more terrible than I could ever have imagined suffering, and with a murderous rage more intense than I could ever have conceived it possible to feel, the Mother raised her hands to clutch her chest and closed her eyes.

The next day , I was called to the Mother Superior’s office to be advised I would be sent to an Anglican Boys’ Home in a small town about an hour away.

And that was very good. It meant that Paul did not go to St. Vincent’s , a boys' home in Westmead, run by priests.  Even then, the boys knew that the priests liked to rape those they were supposed to be looking after.

It is strange. I always  viewed the 1950s and 1960s as civilised times in Australia. It was an era of prosperity. Certainly there were poor - there are always poor for whatever reason. But most people of that time were enjoying a standard of living far better than their parents, and improving all the time. They were good times.  So to hear about a child being taken from his parents to an institution, and then treated very badly indeed - it is a shock. An eye-opener, and something that makes me furious even now.  For most of the culprits are still alive, and have never been punished.  They are even revered - nuns. Supposed to be so sweetly serenely devout.  The wicked women in this true book gives the lie to that fabrication.  

This book is truth - though names are changed to protect the guilty and occasionally the innocent who don't like their circumstances being made public. So truth, but somewhat fictionalised.  





A hit on the head with a pencil case began Paul Wilson's lifelong battle against the system and the pencil-pushers who tormented him... but nothing could break his indomitable spirit. Paul was a fifth generation, native-born white Australian, and a stolen child. Bureaucrats stole him twice. So-called ‘women of God’ and a misguided carer stole his identity, his heritage and his self-respect. Journey into the home and lives of a battling Aussie bush family and weep over cruel injustice that breaks a mother’s heart and kills a father’s soul. Witness child abuse and deprivation in an almost Dickensian world. Meet foster parents whose dedication and caring gives orphans and waifs hope for a future. Follow Paul’s struggle through adult life, sharing his and his family’s pains and joys. Celebrate his triumphs. Mourn his foolishness. Admire his strength and courage as he fights continuing injustice, haunted by demons from his past and nursing an insatiable thirst for revenge. A story that illustrates the beauty and strength of the human spirit and the power of family love.



A recent review.

By Books That Sow: Strength, Character & Diversity on April 3, 2013

Format: Kindle Edition

"The Pencil Case" a definite must read, is a spell-bounding, page turner based on a partially fiction, but well-told story about a young boy and his sister's unfortunate fate of life. This pair were removed from their parents who loved them more than life, and thrown to people who cared less, but why?

If parents are financially impoverished does it mean that they don't love their children and can't provide properly for them? How healthy could it have been to be placed into an orphan life full of cruel evil nuns who beat and tormented sweet little children, and emotionally scarred and ripped them of any chances of a wholesome and balanced life?

Follow author Lorraine Cobcroft, who is a skillful writer that told of a story that she has heard from her husband, and carried into her own adult married life in a very unique way. It takes an adept and proficient writer to weave a story on paper from another's perspective while allowing the reader to paint a strong vivid picture of past tragic accounts.

Because part of her husband's life spilled over into Lorraine's life, she had to feel the pain as she scripted her manuscript. I can only imagine her trickled emotions as she managed to write, revise and edit her book chapter after chapter.

As an African-American, I am happy that I had a chance to read this heartrending story. It definitely sanctioned me to gain a different cultural perspective as I embellished my understanding of how other races of people experienced prejudice and unfairness within our diverse society.

"The Pencil Case" should make its way as a very prominent and popular stage play one day. I hope to have the opportunity to be in the audience for its opening debut.

I cannot see this as a stage-play, but maybe a film. It is an important book, and should be a required read for any Australian.  These are things that should be known.  With the ongoing  Royal Commision into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, much of it by the Catholic Church, more people are talking of it, and more people are talking about the evil done by that once respected organisation known as the Catholic Church. There were priests whose crimes of child sex abuse lasted 40 and 50 years!  And all the time, the priest was not only protected, but allowed to continue abusing children - maybe transferred if the complaints became too loud.  

I hope that one day the wicked people who so abused a boy - many boys, many girls - will be made to pay. At the very least, they should face what they did. I do not believe in any sort of a heaven. If there was, these 'brides of Christ' would not make it. Did they believe?  Who knows?

The Pencil Case is  by Lorraine Cobcroft;

The book is available from most online sellers, including Amazon. 

http://www.amazon.com/Pencil-Case-Lorraine-Ann-Cobcroft/dp/0980571413/

http://www.bookdepository.com/Pencil-Case-Lorraine-Ann-Cobcroft/9780980571417

 https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/300714

                                         

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-pencil-case-lorraine-cobcroft/1114999259?ean=9780980571417

 

'Lionel's Wedding' is not yet available. Publication date, 17th October, 2014.

'In the Wet' by Nevil Shute

  Nevil Shute

 

Nevil Shute was an Australian author whose books I read when young - my mother's books. I've come across a few of them recently, and find that I enjoy them as much or more now than when I was fifteen. He was an exceptional author.  He wrote 'On the Beach,' an apocolyptic novel written a long time before they became fashionable. The world is slowly dying from the radiation spreading from World War 3 - the last war. It was made into a film, and so was at least one more of his books -  'A Town Like Alice.' Others of his books are 'The Far Country,' 'Requiem for a Wren,' and 'No Highway.' 

 'In the Wet' was first published 1953.

 

 

The wonderful thing about being an author is that your books have a life of their own. The author may die, but the book lives on. This copy was a battered paperback, published by Pan in 1969, once owned by Stanthorpe State High School, and with a sticker saying 30c on the front. I rather like books with a history. It's in my hands now, to be added to my small collection of Nevil Shute books.

'In the Wet' has an unusual plot. It is part set in the Australian Outback, 1950s, and written from the point of view of a Church of England priest.  A dying alcoholic tells him a story of his life - except that his life is in the future, maybe a future life. It is a story of involvement in high affairs, when England has become a socialist state, grey and dreary, and her queen finds her life plagued by hostile politicians. She decides that the thriving former colonies might be a better place to live.  She is Queen of Canada and Queen of Australia as well as Queen of England, something that is often forgotten.

One thing that Shute talks of that is worthy of some real thought - that the system of one man/one vote will not elect the best politicians, rather it is apt to elect the one who makes the most generous promises. He suggests a multiple vote system - that everyone has the one basic vote, but can earn an extra vote for higher education, another vote for living and earning money overseas for a certain period of time, another for a stable marriage and family, etc. Being a serving officer of the church also earned an extra vote. (this book was written before the scandals of the church and its coverups of child sexual abuse by its priests.)  The queen could also award a vote - 'the seventh vote.'  

He has a point about his 'multiple-vote' system - surely a person with some education and intelligence should be able to choose more wisely than a no-hoper who never did anything in his life but get drunk, sire illegitimate children and collect the dole.

*

There is an author's note at the end. I was impressed by it.

 

'In the Wet' speaks about things that 'happened' in the 1980s, and was written in the 1950s. The book I have recently completed was set in 2009 to start with, and concluded in 2047. So, like Nevil Shute, I range forward a few decades.

He wrote:

'No man can see into the future, but unless somebody makes a guess from time to time and publishes it to stimulate discussion, it seems to me that we are drifting in the dark, not knowing where we want to go or how to get there.'

and 'Fiction deals with people and their difficulties and, more than that, nobody takes a novelist too seriously. The puppets born of his imagination walk their little stage for our amusement, and if we find that their creator is impertinent, his errors of taste do not sway the world.'

 

 

 
I would have liked to borrow it and apply it to my own book. But I am not in the class of Nevil Shute. It would be just too impertinent.

It is a little eerie,  though. I wrote things in my book that are now happening. I'm not trying to update to take recent events into account - my story is that Shuki has some influence on world politics, and maybe the recent awful events in the Middle East could have been avoided if he'd been more than a fictional character.
Publication date for this book is set at 17th October this year.  

*

 

"But Sir" - some relevant photographs.

"But Sir"  The Autobiography of a Twentieth Century Australian

 

 

 

.

 
 
 


Most of the photographs that were in the original paperback have been lost. 

Others have survived and a few are shown below, along with excerpts from the book.


A family of 14 children -

Mum would have been a sweet girl, always one to get her "stubborn" up. Dad promised her she "would never have to soil her hands." She told Dad she wasn’t going to have any children; she had a sense of humour, and so did mother nature; it was she that landed Mum with fourteen healthy kids, and not one of them planned. I don’t think she ever regretted having any one of us after we were born. She used to say "babies bring their own love."

 

Dad used to have a theory that it was worthwhile to take his vast family on a holiday once a year, because it would save on doctor’s bills.

Leaving home for a farm of his own. 

 

  With Dad’s help we planned our assault on the Mallee. He gave us six draught horses, a hack, and a wagon load of chaff, as well as sundries such as beds and bedding. We had already bought a plough while we had been in Manangatang. The girls saw that we were stocked up with food.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Volunteering for the army.

 

I had always felt there would be a war when I reached the right age. The bigger nations had used Spain to try out their new equipment, and I believed Spain was just the training ground for the big stoush. We all remember how Hitler would hold forth about protecting German minority groups, then over-run the country in question. He even let the world know his intentions in his book, "Mein Kampf." One of his theories was that people are gullible, and if a point is hammered hard enough, and for long enough, people will eventually believe it. I have seen that tactic used successfully by political groups time and time again ever since.

 

 

At Albury, while in training

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

Curly Kirk was my mate from Ballarat. We were roughly the same build, and I wrestled him to a standstill at Olympic Park, Melbourne, raced with him on the ship and deadheated, and now in the pool we would see who could swim underwater and push an object furthest along the bottom. I suppose that was the beginning of something we all found to be our most valuable asset; mateship. It was just that support from a mate who was one hundred per cent trustworthy and loyal which got a lot of us through what was to come. I think everyone was able to get a mate, no matter how many times he was put in with strangers. It was a must to have a mate when the going got hard, as on the Burmese railway or other places. I have never had that sort of mate before the army, nor since, and after leaving the army the lack of such a mate left a big gap which took me some time to come to grips with.

 

 

 

One day after I returned to Albury the order was given for everyone who held a driver’s license to fall out. Nearly all the men who fell out were from the country, including Dunc and I, and some of our special mates who would be together with us until the finish. We were then transferred to Sturt St., Melbourne, where we formed a unit called the 2/2nd Motor Ambulance Convoy.

 

Not long later, the unit left on the Queen Mary, which was serving as a troopship, and wound up in Kajang, Malaya.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Prisoner of War

The Allied forces were ordered to surrender, and Singapore was defeated. The Japanese were now in charge.  Their culture was very different from that of those who were now their prisoners.


‘I will never forget the utter despair of the young men of F Force, nor the way they died quietly and without fuss. Neither will I ever forget the cruelty of the Japs, nor will I ever forgive them for their total disregard for the lives of the P.O.W.s and the dark races who also worked on the railway.’

One of the few letter-cards that made it home.  Any mention of what was really happening, of course, would have ensured that the card would never have been sent on.

 

 

The war is ending

 

We wondered how the actual change-over from the Japs to the Allies would take place, as it soon must. Finally, on 27th August 1945 British planes flew over Changi and dropped leaflets. I still have one of these, dropped that day from a plane flying low over the jail. The pamphlet contained (1) a warning to the guards to respect the prisoners and look after them, (2) part of a re-script issued by the Emperor on unconditional surrender of the Japanese, (3) a statement that soon an Allied staff officer would be dropped with a radio transmitter, that he would be in contact with, and under the guidance of the Occupation Forces, and was not to be interfered with, (4) supplies dropped (medical etc.) would be gathered and handed to the P.O.W.s and the guards were then to return to their quarters, after warning civilians not to loot these supplies. On 30th August four officers and two other ranks were dropped by parachute, with medical equipment and a transmitter. Other planes brought more medical gear.

 

 

 

 

Back to civilian life

 

 

 

 

 

I met the girl I was to marry, one day at tennis. She showed courage to take on a returned soldier eleven years older than herself. And so I became engaged to Alison Davies, whom I married six months later, and she has been my backstop ever since.

 

  

 

Conclusion:  

 

I was born in rural Victoria at a time when conditions had not really altered since the late nineteenth century, and now seventy years on we are almost in the final decade of the twentieth. In my lifetime I have fought in a major war, started two farms virtually from scratch, and travelled over much of my own country and the world. Alison and I have raised four children and given them all a good start, so I think I can say with all modesty I have lived a full and varied life. Now, although hopefully I have not reached the end of that life, I have reached the end of this book, a book in which I have tried to catalogue my life and times as I saw them.

 

 

 

 

Buy "But Sir" from online booksellers such as Smashwords and Amazon,

the paperback from The Book Depository (free delivery even to Australia)

or other sellers such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/449087

 

http://www.amazon.com/But-Sir-Autobiography-Twentieth-Australian/dp/1500196177/