Outback Floods

The recent floods through the outback of South Australia reminded me of several incidents back when we trapped rabbits in the 60s. This is one of those times.

The creeks through the outback are mostly dry unless spring fed but the lesson well learnt is never to pitch camp in a dry creek bed even if its the only source of shade available. One such time with no rain forecast my father decided for the comfort of the family and against his better judgement he did just that. We setup camp beneath several gum trees on a small raised patch of gravelly ground in the centre of an extremely wide dry creek bed. We camped there for several days, no rain, scorching hot days and shade … until.

One morning we crawled from our beds to find our little camp perched on an island in the middle of a fast rising creek. Luckily at this time the water wasn’t anymore than knee high and us kids and Mum waded through carrying camping gear while Dad and my brothers hitched the car to the caravan and drove it, the truck and our trapping vehicle across.

What to remember in that country is, there may be no rain where you are but don’t for a moment believe you are safe from flood. Those creaks come down fast and the storm the water came from could be miles away but it’ll be upon you in no time.

Christmas

When I was a child there were three important days at the end of the year and beginning of the next. Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day.
Christmas day was the highlight, presents wrapped under the tree not to be opened until after all chores and breakfast was finished. The youngest would have the honour of handing out the presents while everyone sat around.
The Christmas tree was always a pine Dad sourced, cut down and brought home, we’d decorate it with glass baubles, ornaments, tinsel, an angel for the top and these little birds with wire claws that we’d clamp to the branches. Tinsel garlands would stretch across our ceiling from corner to corner and along the walls.
Santa came early sometime through the night, we’d try to stay awake but unfortunately drop off to sleep before the big man arrived and left presents on the foot of our beds. He’d eat the slice of Christmas cake and drink the milk left out for him and be gone without us knowing.
My mother always baked the Christmas cake and iced it with white icing and green coloured icing piped around the edges. The words Merry Christmas piped using icing of either green or red colouring. There was a small nativity scene and pieces of holly for decorations.
She also made the Christmas pudding, boiled in a cloth in the old traditional way. She’d make this two or three months before the big day, I remember it hanging from the kitchen rafters wishing Christmas would come earlier so we didn’t have to wait. It contained sixpence and threepence which were considered good luck if you found one in your slice. Not so good for your teeth if you bit into one as my brother found out once.
Christmas dinner was always a big roast meal despite the summer heat in Australia. Duck or Chicken sometimes we’d have roast pork with crackling, accompanied by roast potatoes, roast pumpkin and green peas or beans.
Boxing day, we always referred to as picnic day because that’s what it was, Christmas leftovers, packed up and we’d trundle off in the car to some picturesque spot, spread out the blankets and enjoy a cold picnic lunch.
Come New Year it started again, another cake, another pudding in the cloth and the big roast meal.
After all this my mother would take a photo of us children around the tree as a memory before the decorations were removed and the tree taken away.
In later years, the old fashioned values of these days and the trimmings that went with them changed and my mother began serving salads although still with the roast meat. Boxing day became just another day the same as New Year without celebrations although Dad still insisted on sitting up to see the old year out and the new year in.

On that note.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or however you say it in your neck of the woods for 2025.
Also a happy and prosperous New Year for 2026.

The White Elephant Dam

Back many years ago when my family travelled Australia like gypsies or as my mother preferred wandering stars, we would often camp near a large dam west of Norseman in Western Australia.

During our many stops there crossing the Nullarbor this dam never held water. It was a laughing stock to us at the time, such a big waste in an area where rainfall was patchy and would soak into the dry parched soil long before there was any run off. We nicknamed this dam ‘The White Elephant’.

Back in 1975 on our way to W.A. to attend my sisters wedding we again stopped there. I climbed the bank as always and low and behold the dam was full.

I was reminiscing about this place with my sister only last night in chat and she commented it’s surprising the small details we remember later in life and the bigger things we forget. 

I have other memories of happening’s at ‘The White Elephant’ dam which I may share at a later time.

The Wild Colonial Boy

Back when I was a kid I loved nothing more than to sit beside my father and listen to the stories he told. Were they true or false? I still don’t know for sure, although some I know were true but still I enjoyed listening and from this I believe is where my inspiration to weave fiction and write came from.

Dad told one story of how he knew where the wild colonial boy Jack Doolan buried his gold beneath a large gumtree in the Beechworth Ranges in Victoria. Dad drove his horse and jinker in there one day carrying picks and shovels to dig up this treasure. He unharnessed his horse, picketing it where it could graze on a little grass. While he camped for the night, this wild, black brumby stallion came out of the scrub and attacked him. He climbed under the jinker to get away, this horses hooves hammered the timber cart as it tried to reach him, eventually it gave up and disappeared back into the scrub from which it came. Dad, climbed out from his hiding place, harnessed the horse, loaded his gear and headed back into town. Forgotten was the wild colonial boys gold, remembered was the huge black stallion that guarded it.

Truth be known John ‘Jack’ Doolan was nothing more than a petty thief. He did spend time in jail and after his release teamed up with horse thief Edward Donnelly and together they went bushranging. Not in the same realm as Ned Kelly, Ben Hall, Harry Power and the like. Eventually their petty thieving came to an end when they were caught in White Hills and sent back to prison. Jack Doolan got fourteen years for his part and after his release disappeared without a trace. No doubt changed his name, easy done back then and moved on in a new life.

The song, The Wild Colonial Boy although depicts Jack Doolan as the hero born in Castlemaine Victoria it’s more likely the bushranger referred to is Irish born Jack Donahue who at best of knowledge never ventured south of the New South Wales border.

Did John ‘Jack’ Doolan bury gold in the Beechworth ranges? Something we’ll never know, not in my lifetime anyway.

True or false? I don’t know, but it sure made an exciting story to keep Dad’s audience enthralled.

Harvest Time and Wheat Bags

Back when I was a child some farmers still harvested the wheat using a harvester towed behind a tractor. It had a bin into which the wheat grains would go as they trundled through the paddock. When this bin was full the farmer would drive over to the bagging area, usually near the boundary fence away from the crop and unload the wheat into bags. The machine had two chutes on the sides with hooks and a metal loop to hold the bags. Once full the bags would be stood side by side for someone to come along and sew the tops before they were again loaded onto a truck and taken to the railhead or stacked in the farmers shed.

Bag sewing was my mothers job, I was nothing more than a little tyke back then and I’d toddle along behind Mum as she went from bag to bag with a bagging needle and string.

After the bags were sewn my brother would bring the truck in and load the bags onto it. This was done by hand, manual using bag hooks and muscle strength. Not good for anyone’s back same as shearing, but that’s another story for another time.

These full bags weighed between 150 and 180lb each. That’s around 70 to 80kg in today’s metric weight.

It was 1965 or 66 when the farmer my family harvested for purchased a fuel driven bag loader. Of cause my brother challenged the machine to a bag loading race, winning by one or two bags but his back paid the price, never the same again after that day.

The good old days, hard old days, whatever you want to call them, the memories are more entertaining than the memories of this industrialised, technology driven world we live in today.

Mallee Stumps

Other than trapping rabbits and mining my father tried his hand at farming usually buying bush blocks that needed clearing. Dad was a timber cutter by trade and he’d turn his hand to this whenever things got difficult and money was short, clearing paddocks for farmers as well as his own block of land. We’d cut down the trees, pull the stumps with a tractor, those that could be pulled out and for those to big and to well rooted Dad would blow these with gelignite and gunpowder.

Of cause the result would be a paddock scattered with numerous mallee stumps or whatever kind of timber being cleared. My mother would drive the truck around the paddock while Dad and my brothers loaded the stumps. I was only a little tyke back then and rode in the truck with Mum. Once the load was full she’d drive the truck across the paddock where it would be unloaded near the fence line. The stumps heaped into a pile to be later burnt when dry, sometimes farmers would use them to build windbreaks or fences.

They weren’t only good at clearing the land but also good at creating fire breaks around their property. I can remember my father cutting a swathe around a 100 yards width inwards from the boundary fence and this would be maintained yearly to prevent fire from jumping across the fenceline. Something you don’t see around the farms of today.

Hard days but good days, you have to admire the old pioneers and how without the use of modern machinery they opened up this land into what we have today.