CHAPTER 12
“The mail’s in!” This shout from Rollo brought everyone to the verandah, as he came up the steps, staggering under the weight of parcels and supplies he had carried from the landing-stage, rather than waste time getting the horse and slide to bring them up the easy way.
Chief interest centred around the packet of letters he drew from his pocket and handed round. The fat one from Grandma being the most important to her, Mrs. Thomas sat down in her favourite chair to read it at once, a smile of anticipation on her face. She had never returned home since she came to the Richmond but she followed her parents’ lives, through their letters, with the greatest interest and affection.
Her sudden cry of distress brought Mr. Thomas and Rollo to her side at once with anxious questions.
“Dad’s ill,” she answered them, “he’s not expected to live. Perhaps already ….” she paused, unable to voice the thought that was in all their minds. “Oh, what can we do?”
“I’ll ride there at once,” cried Rollo. “If I can change horses at Woodburn and Harwood I’ll be there tomorrow night.”
He set off for the paddock to catch his fine black horse while Mrs. Thomas moved about automatically, packing his saddle-bags while her mind was far away with her mother in her hours of sadness.
While Rollo was away in the paddock, his father went to the stable for saddle and bridle. Half an hour after he had come so cheerfully up the steps with the mail, Rollo was on his way to Lawrence, taking with him Dilba, the once skinny child who had been so helpful on the first trip to the Clarence, now grown to a fine tall man and the proud position of chief stockman on the property. He was to ride back with news as soon as Rollo reached his grandfather’s farm so that Rollo could stay on with his grandmother if needed.
For Mrs. Thomas the next four days dragged by on endless hours. She chased the work she had to do and did twenty other tasks each day to make the time pass, but still it seemed weeks before she heard the dogs bark and saw Dilba riding Rollo’s black horse up the track. By his sad face as he handed her the letter, she knew it contained the worst news she could expect, and with tears pouring down her face she unwrapped the canvas cover and opened Rollo’s letter.
Her son had not wasted words. His deep sorrow they knew already, for he had always loved his grandfather more than the other children had.
‘Grandpa died the day after your letter was posted,’ Rollo wrote, ‘and Gran has been here alone most of the time since. The stockmen are looking after the cattle but she is quite unable to give any orders, so there is nothing for me to do but stay here to look after things. Gran seems stunned; I must warn you that I don’t think she will be with us long now that Grandpa has gone. They buried him in the cemetery near Lawrence, under a great weeping fig-tree, so like the ones he planted here forty years ago that I am sure he will rest in peace.’
Mr. Thomas came running in from the pasture, having seen the rider from a distance and guessing it must be Dilba. He read Rollo’s letter and silently comforted his wife.
“I’ll have to go to Mother. I can’t bear to think of her down there alone,” she said after a while.
“Rollo’s with her now,” replied Mr. Thomas. “It’s a terrible journey for anyone at present with the roads so boggy, let alone you who have just been ill.”
“All the same, I’ll have to go,” she replied desperately. “If I take the boat to Woodburn and ride from there in easy stages I should reach Mother in four days.”
Seeing that she had made up her mind, Mr. Thomas made arrangements for the journey south, though it meant leaving Mack alone on the farm. Next day they rowed to Woodburn, as she had suggested, and at dawn the next day they set off in a party accompanying the mailman, who, by good fortune, was leaving that day, arriving at Iluka, the village at the mouth of the Clarence, late the following night. Part of their journey had been along the beaches and, in spite of her anxiety and sorrow, Mrs. Thomas couldn’t help enjoying the fresh, clear air and beautiful scenery but, when they had to leave the beach of follow the track into a tunnel of trees, she found the going very hard. At one stage on the second day, Mr. Thomas insisted on a halt in the shade of a mighty tree on a headland, so that she might rest. Even so it was only her courageous spirit that kept her in the saddle for the last twenty miles of the journey.
Luck was with them when they reached Iluka for an up-river paddle steamer was leaving next morning, on which they could travel more quickly and easily than by riding. They went aboard and were able to spend the night in comfortable bunks in a tiny cabin where Mrs. Thomas stayed resting until they arrived at Lawrence. Here they had to stay another night as there were no horses available in the township. A runner was sent out to the farm to tell Rollo they had arrived and ask him to come in with horses for them. He arrived early next morning with a light cart in which Mrs. Thomas was very glad to travel, for she had never been fond of riding and, since her illness, found it tired her beyond endurance.
Rollo, although quite able to manage his grandmother’s affairs, was delighted to see both his father and mother had come to make the decisions. As they drove through the forest that still pressed close round Lawrence, he explained that his grandfather had been ill for a long time and the whole farm was run down and neglected.
Asked about his grandmother, he shook a pitying head. “Poor old darling, she always depended on Grandpa so greatly. Now he isn’t here she just wanders round like a shadow. Perhaps you will be able to stir her out of it, Mum. I feel, though she doesn’t even want to be stirred.”
The next five weeks were a great strain to Mrs. Thomas, for her mother was indeed almost childish and it seemed as if each day she slipped a little further from the world of everyday matters. Mr. Thomas had to return to his farm at the end of the first week. Rain had begun falling with a steady persistence that meant a flood was likely, and Mack could not be expected to manage on his own for long. The old days, when cedar-cutters were nearly always available to give a hand for a few weeks, were over. Now it was hard to find enough farmhands to fill casual labour needs. So Mr. Thomas left for home and Mrs. Thomas stayed behind to look after the housekeeping and try to sort out her father’s private papers.
Rollo was away from dawn to dark for there was so much to be done on the farm. After the bustle and companionship at her own home, Mrs. Thomas found the life very trying. She had little hope of stirring her mother from the lethargy that had taken hold of her and was, besides, very busy with the chores of the farm which fell to her to do.
One morning she missed her mother from her usual place in the rocking-chair on the verandah and, after searching and calling for nearly an hour, found her in the stable with her arms round the neck of her husband’s old horse. The patient beast was standing very still and did not turn its head when Mrs. Thomas spoke. She went to the old lady to lead her from the stable and discovered she was dead. She had died leaning against the old horse and he had stood faithfully steady so that she would not fall. Her lined old face, so sad and vacant since Grandpa died, had a look of happiness now that she was at rest, and Mrs. Thomas, as she carried the frail little body into the house, could only feel a lightening of her spirit because her mother was released from the world she had ceased to live in when her partner of nearly sixty years’ happy married life had gone.
Far into that night she and Rollo discussed what should be done. Her father’s farm was now hers and the most ordinary course would have been to sell it but, with the discovery of gold in the south of the State, there was so many farms up for sale that there was little chance of a quick sale. Finally, they decided that Rollo should stay and manage the farm for a time at least. The deciding factor was Rollo’s love for Peggy, the daughter of their nearest neighbour. He had met her at various times during visits to his grandparents; knowing her first as a scraggy girl to be teased and later as a tall young lady who expected to be helped over fences and who teased him, instead of the reverse. During the past six weeks the Marshalls had been a tower of strength to both Mrs. Thomas and her son and she was delighted when Rollo told her that evening that he was going to ask Peggy to marry him.
When the ‘great question’ had been satisfactorily answered by Peggy, Mr. Marshall suggested that the two farms could be worked as one property with great advantage, and as Peggy and Rollo thought the idea a good one Mrs. Thomas agreed. A fortnight later Peggy and Rollo were married in the beautiful little church in Grafton and returned to live in the old farm-house.
After seeing them settled Mrs. Thomas, longing to get back to her beloved house and garden, gladly boarded the boat for home.
CHAPTER 13 – 1883
Letters from Rollo and Peggy in the south and Sue and George in the north were the spice of life to Mrs. Thomas when she settled down again after the death of her parents. She wrote often and at length to both families and the days when their replies came were red-letter days. Then she stopped all her work and sat comfortably in the sun, or shade, depending on the time of year, and read her mail with deep interest, whether the letters told merely of everyday happenings and the state of her grandchildren or contained some rare adventure or important step in the progress of pioneering life on the rivers. The Clarence district, of course, was quite civilized now. Towns had sprung up, many mines were working in the upper reaches of the valley; words like copper, gold asphalt, chromium and many strange-sounding minerals, the use of which the elder Thomases could not guess, studded Rollo’s letters. Many men had left their farms to get rich in the mining field, wrote Rollo, but he was convinced there was more gold to be had from healthy cows, and stayed firmly and prosperously on his farm.
A modern meat-preserving works at Ramornie, on the Clarence, he told his mother, had aided progress in the district. This factory was already selling tinned meat to the navy and had won prizes with it in overseas exhibitions.
Sue’s life on the Tweed was more like that lived by the Thomases in the early days. There was still some cedar left in the valleys and the rich soil in the area led to the development of smaller, more concentrated, farms than were run on the two southern rivers. One letter from Sue was particularly exciting – not only had her new baby arrived safely, but she had been on a trip in a paddle-steamer all the way to Murwillumbah, the town twenty miles up-stream from the village of Tumbulgum near which the Mertons lived. Sue’s letter began by describing her new baby, Sally, and the kindness of the neighbours in minding her other daughters and looking after her.
George insisted on calling in the new doctor all the way from Murwillumbah, [wrote Sue] the silly thing! Just because it’s nearly nine years since Bee arrived. As if there were anything dangerous about having a baby! It was a good thing though, for this new doctor had some advanced ideas. He said that he wanted me to come and see him six weeks after the baby was born. So we were able to have a nice trip to town! George booked passages for all of us on the new paddle-steamer which has just started a service up the river and the trip was grand fun. The whole journey only took three hours, fancy! (In the old days it took George a whole day to row up and he had to spend the night there.)
As you may imagine, we had a most exciting day in Murwillumbah. The town is built where the hills come right down to the river, so that most of the streets are very steep, though the main street is near the river and people say it will be inundated if the river floods badly. There are two doctors already in the town and several shops selling general stores. There is even a butcher’s shop selling joints of meat. It would seen so funny to me to go into a shop and buy just enough meat for one day. George went in to see this butcher about his buying some vealers from us and he was there when a woman came in and asked for one pound of steak! I could hardly believe it. Why, I allow a pound of meat for each of us four big Mertons, for one meal. But, then, we kill every week and meat is almost the only thing we never run out of. There is a shop selling milk and dressed poultry, too. The milk question is on everyone’s mind. There is talk about building a factory to which we could send our milk to be separated and made into butter by machines. This notion sounds good to me – I hate turning that churn! It has also reminded me that I heard Father talking of a milk factory as much as twenty years ago. It really seems as if he was on the right track, though much in advance of the times.
When I had finished seeing the doctor (who said I was perfectly well and fit), we three females did all our shopping in a hurry and a whirl, George minding the baby for me. He nearly lost her, too! He stopped to talk to some men on a corner while we went into a store to buy some ribbons for Mattie. When we came out, there was George standing talking still, but with no baby in his arms. I opened my mouth to ask where she was, when he gave a yell and raced off after a sulky turn-out that had just set off up the street. The driver, alarmed by his shouts, pulled up and George ran up to the back of the vehicle, raised his hat politely to the driver and murmuring ‘My property, I believe,’ lifted poor Sally from the luggage-basket at the back. He had put her there, he told us, to rest his arm and had forgotten all about her until the sulky began to go up the street. I just cannot understand men! After this alarm, we were all so flustered that George decided we must be hungry, so he took us to the hotel where we ate a most sumptuous dinner. Then we went to the wharf and boarded the paddle-steamer for home. The two big girls were so tired by their exciting day and they slept soundly until we reached home.
The day the letter came was a busy one for Mrs. Thomas for, while she was deeply immersed in Sue’s account of the day in Murwillumbah, she looked up to see a whole group of visitors walking up the path to the house. There was nothing so very surprising about visitors these days for their farm was almost midway between the settlements of Ballina and Woodburn and many travellers called in to visit them. The thing about these visitors that made them remarkable was that none of them spoke English, except the leader of the party.
After the exchange of greetings this man explained that they were a group of Italian settlers on the way to the little colony called New Italy not far from Woodburn, which had been started four years before by the remnants of an ill-fated expedition which had originally set out for New Ireland.
That evening, after the new-comers had despatched the good dinner Mrs. Thomas set before them, she heard for the first time the story of New Italy and how it had come into being.
The originator of the idea, Mr. Cominetti, who had come down to meet the new settlers, told the story as the party sat round the fire:
“This Marquis Da Ree,” he said, “I don’t know if he is a great fool or a great rogue, but either way we came to no good. He promised to the Italian farmers a piece of land in New Ireland, with a house and rations, if they would work for him for six months, developing the island; or pay him £75. Oh, but this sounded grand to many of us, so we packed up our families and we travel to the ship. Here I begin to grow worried, for the India she is so small a ship and we are so many. Still, we say, what is a little discomfort, if at the end of our journey we reach this El Dorado the Marquis writes about? To own our land – that is worth any sea sickness! Well, we are all very, very glad to see the shores of New Ireland after our long voyage. What a terrible trip, ah – I could not tell of it!
“When we arrive, all is hurry and confusion. No one knows anything – gradually we realize that his piece of land, this fine house, those six months’ rations, are only ideas in the mind of His Excellency, the Marquis. They do not exist, they are not in New Ireland, they are not anywhere. We do not know what to do – there is no food, no work, no place for us. Some of us get a little work now and then, but, even so, there is no food to buy – even if a man has a little money. For twelve weeks we stay there; many die – they have nothing to live for. There is much sickness and much quarrelling.
“Then the captain of the India, who has let us use his ship to live in all this while, says he will take us away from there, perhaps to Australia. So, after many delays, we set out, only two hundred now, where there had been three hundred before. The ship, she is in a bad way and we meet many storms; so that we must call in to Noumea to save our lives and our ship. Here is more trouble: the French harbour authorities tell us we must not sail in the India, she is very unseaworthy. Now we despair again, but the French, they are very helpful. They offer to pay for our passage on another ship if we will leave the India as security. So we set out again. When we finally reach Sydney we are a most miserable band of immigrants – sick, poor, hopeless. There I have some luck – I talk to a man in a hotel and he tells, ‘You ask Sir Henry Parkes, the Premier, he believes in immigration, he will help you.’ So we go to Sir Henry Parkes and tell him our sad story and he does help us. Meanwhile I get a small bit of work on a schooner coming up here to the Richmond, I come up this lovely river to Coraki and then I walk into your Beeg Scrub, as you call it, while some repairs are being done to the ship at Mr. Yabsley’s ship-yard. I walk through this scrub and I come to the higher ground where the gum-trees grow so tall and I think ‘If we could have this land!’
“When I talk of this idea to people in Coraki, they laugh. ‘That land? they say, ‘that land is so poor it will not grow grass, it is worthless land, no one will select on that rubbish.’ ‘Could anyone get a grant of that land?’ I ask, and they laugh again. ‘That land is worthless,’ they all say. ‘Nobody would want it.’ But I do and when I return to Sydney I find that we only have to ask and the land is ours. We can have it and welcome, we are told. Again I hurry back to the Richmond and I take up forty acres. Two others who are with me also select forty acres each and the settlement of New Italy is born!
“By this time many of our fellow-voyagers are gone from Sydney. Some have found work or gone to the gold-diggings, but I manage to find thirty families and all come and select land at New Italy. We are so fortunate – we get a contract to cut sleepers from our fine, tall gum-trees, for work being done in Melbourne Harbour, far away in Victoria. That gives us money to start – and now you should see our land! Worthless land? Ha! We grow more on our land than many grow on their rich river-flats.”
Mr. Cominetti’s eager tongue could no longer keep to the slow shaping of a foreign language. He burst into a flow of Italian, describing the new land to the settlers he was bringing to this new country.
He turned at last to Mrs. Thomas. “Your pardon, Madam, for my rudeness – but if you could see our gardens – they are almost as fine as yours. We grow everything, silk, cotton, fruit-trees of all kinds, and we have built a church and a meeting-house. We have a wine shop at the junction where the bullock-teams call with supplies from Woodburn, ten miles away.
“Ah, but you should see our vines – such grapes! The wine we have made is young and raw yet but, in five or ten years, our wines will be famous. There are nearly three hundred people living on the land your people called ‘worthless’. It is really El Dorado to us.”
Grape-vines being one thing Mrs. Thomas had never tried to grow, she was immediately interested. Soon the talk became very technical and by the time they went to bed she had promised to make the journey to New Italy to see for herself.
She and her husband went a few months later and she saw that Mr. Cominetti had not exaggerated, nor was his enthusiasm unjustified. The little settlement thrived and had an air of gaiety that was quite different from anything she had ever seen. How she admired the Italian women! They seemed to do six times the work of ordinary people. Their little houses – some of them hardly more than humpies and yet – were spotless and each one had some gay treasure, shawl, china or statue of the Madonna, brought from Italy with no one knows how much difficulty, to keep alive memories of their homeland. The many children were fat and bursting with health and the gardens round the houses were all filled with vegetables and flowers. Used as she was to hardship and making do without proper utensils and materials, Mrs. Thomas was filled with amazement at the many contrivances she saw. These people had started with absolutely nothing but their willing spirit and their own strong hands: no money, no tools, hardly more than the clothes they wore. Yet they had built this centre of prosperity in four short years, on land that was considered worthless as compared with the rich valley soil. She saw that absolutely nothing was wasted. Every scrap of waste material was put back into the soil in trenches dug (often without even the help of spades in the early days, Mr. Cominetti told her) by hand through the stony soil the stones were used to build walls and windbreaks and walls of houses. Many of the houses were built of the red clay subsoil dug from the trenches. Where the Australian pioneers had burned the trash from the land, wasting the valuable humus, the Italians had made great compost heaps with which they enriched the poor soil. They had used hollowed logs for water-tanks until they could buy anything better; they had saved seen from their crops, even at the expense of going hungry. Now acres of waving maize, fruit orchards and the amazing vineyards bore witness to a spirit of hard work and community shearing that made even the Thomases feel they had a lot to learn.
CHAPTER 14 – 1890
Ever since the election to Parliament of the first Northern Rivers representative, not long after the separation of Queensland in 1859, people had been agitating for some improvement of the river-mouth, but the dreadful toll of lives and ships continued for twenty years after Mr. Clark Irving first sat in the House and tried to interest his fellow members, who were too preoccupied with the larger problems of starting a Government in a new State, where lack of communications and scanty population made people independent and inclined to make their own rules, to care for the needs of far-off communities.
Other members following Mr. Irving continued to keep the matter for the Government. Sir Thomas Ewing, Robert Pyers and John Perry all spoke for the district but it was not until 1882 that Sir John Coode, a famous engineer, was asked to prepare a report on what would be needed to make the Richmond bar safe for shipping. When his report was finally presented and his recommendations passed in Parliament, people hoped that at last something practical would be done. As a first measure the Government sent a dredge to try and deepen the river by blowing up the hard-packed sand which formed the backbone of the bar.
For two years this was tried in various ways, without success. Divers dug holes and placed dynamite to blow the sand up so that the outgoing tide would wash it away. However, the incoming tide brought the loose sand back again and it soon packed down as hard as before. Finally it was decided to build the huge retaining walls suggested by Sir John Coode, to channel the river to one course which would be kept scoured out by the free flow of water.
An outcrop of suitable rock was discovered at a place called Riley’s Hill, some miles up-river, and Government tugs were sent from Sydney to carry it to the river-mouth.
The men who came to build the walls, bringing their families with them, swelled the population of Ballina until it became quite a big town. Saw-mills were rushed up to saw timber for the builders who flocked to the town to share in the building boom, men came to work the quarry, carry the stone, run the tugs; and, most of all, tradesmen were needed to feed this army of workers.
Captain Fenwick’s tugs were busier than ever, his boats not only working to bring ships over the bar but carrying supplies up the river and often working on the actual carrying of stone to supplement the Government tugs.
A locomotive, trucks and rails were brought by steamer from Sydney. Tracks were laid on the wall itself, reaching out into the river as the wall grew. Blocks of stone weighing twenty tons or more, were laid down and overlaid by smaller and smaller stones until the top of the wall was covered with road gravel. This great porous barrier was built out into the ocean, forcing the river to stay in one channel instead of spreading out in a series of shallow leads.
Tugs and dredges worked day and night bringing the stone, and the mighty walls were finished by the turn of the century. Since then there have been only two wrecks on the bar that used to claim as many as eight vessels a year.
Charlie had been working on one of the tugs carrying stone for about six weeks when Captain Fenwick asked him if he would like a break from this work while he went up to the Tweed to take in tow a wrecked hulk which the Captain had bought. He was to take one of the tugs and repair the hulk before towing her back to Ballina.
Charlie was delighted and, before leaving, he went home for a day or two to see his family. He had found his mother greatly excited. A letter had come from Sue and in it was the news that her daughter Bee was to be married.
“Why not come up with me and go to the wedding?” suggested Charlie. Mrs. Thomas was thrilled with the idea and immediately set about making arrangements for the trip.
They set out three days later and reached Byron Bay, half-way up the coast, in record time. Charlie said she must have brought him luck and suggested she sign on as a member of the crew. She laughed at the idea as she walked down the jetty to the beach at Byron Bay and said she was firmly in favour of dry land. “Little boats toss about too much,” she said, “they’re almost as bad as horses.”
The size of the town of Byron Bay surprised her, for none of it was visible from the jetty. It was as big as Ballina had been before the wall-building boom. There was talk of building a butter factory here if the proposed railway from Murwillumbah to Lismore ever became a fact. With such a railway collecting the cream from the farms and the new boat the Steamship Company had promised to put on, a butter factory would soon build Byron Bay into a thriving town.
The boat, they said, was refrigerated, and would carry the butter to Sydney harbour to be loaded direct into overseas vessels. It would give a wonderful boost to the dairying industry if this were done.
Next morning their tug made such good time to the Tweed that they had to wait outside for the water on the bar to become deep enough for them to cross. Finally, the pilot signalled them in and they made a safe crossing, steaming gladly into the quiet waters of the river.
With the tide flowing in they made good time up the river, which was wide and shallow, its banks hidden by thick tropical growth with many palm-trees showing their tossing heads above the tangled jungle. Though they were only fifty miles north of the Richmond the closeness of the mountains to the coast made the climate much hotter.
“What a place for cane and bananas!” exclaimed Charlie, as they passed a clearing where great green rows of cane grew close to the river and the blue-green sheets of banana-leaves glistened on a nearby steep knoll.
“What a place for insects!” retorted his mother, thrashing at the cloud of sand-flies that descended on them whenever the vessel went close to the bank.
The sun was just setting when they rounded a bend and saw the whole Merton family crowding on to their little jetty, having heard the throb of the ship’s engines long before they sighted her.
There was a yell of excitement from all of them when they saw Mrs. Thomas, for they had not, received the letter she have given to some travelling blacks to deliver for her.
Sue had not seen her mother since she had visited her parents, when Sally was not quite two, and stayed to have her fourth baby, who was now a boy of nearly six. Matti and Bee had not come with her and it was so long since she had seen them that Mrs. Thomas could not restrain herself from saying, “My! How you’ve both grown!” The girls giggled. They were both engaged to be married and their grandmother’s remark made them feel like little girls again.
Sally and her brother visited on board with Charlie while the rest of the group walked up to the house, which was built on a little hill that rose sharply two hundred feet into the air out of the surrounding river-flat.
When she went over George’s farm next day, Mrs. Thomas noticed with admiration that, in spite of his early ignorance of farming, there were a lot of improvements on his farm now that she would do well to tell her husband about. There was a neatness about his property that was lacking in many of the farms that grew up higgledy-piggledy in the early days and stayed that way in spite of later prosperity.
Charlie left the following afternoon to start work on the vessel Captain Fenwick had purchased. He found her nearly silted over with sand and it took a lot of hard work to get her clear. She had been badly damaged: both her masts were gone, cracked off by the force with which she hit the sand, and she was badly sprung along the keel.
However, the near-by scrub provided timber for temporary repairs and in three weeks they had her seaworthy again. Then the shovelling had to begin once more to fill the hold with sand to ballast her. Then, though looking forlorn without her tall masts and sails, the little ship was ready once more to go to sea at the end of a tow-rope.
Charlie took two days off for Bee’s wedding, which took place in the little village of Condong. Bee was marrying the son of the sugar-mill manager. After the ceremony her new father-in-law, who had no taste for social gatherings, took Charlie over the mill recently built by the Colonial Sugar Refining Company. He showed Charlie the fine white crystals the refining process made, and remembering the yellowish sticky stuff produced by the small local mills, it seemed to Charlie that most farmers would prefer to send their cane to such a fine plant for processing. The little mills would go.
Leaving Bee in her fine house by the mill, Charlie and his mother, taking Sally and Peter with them for a holiday at their grandparent’s farm on the Richmond, set off, towing the mended ship behind them, over two river-bars – a feat which earned Charlie much praise from fellow mariners on the coast.
CHAPTER 15 – 1904
Peter came racing into the kitchen, where Mrs. Thomas was churning butter.
“A letter, a letter! Came by a horseman who rode along the beaches. He says there’s been an awful fire in Murwillumbah and half the town burned down. Open it quickly, Grannie, and see if Bee and Matti and Sal are all right.”
“Tumbulgum’s a long way from Murwillumbah town – but what an awful thing! Go out and tell Grandpa while I read the letter.”
Mrs. Thomas put the churn on the table and sat back in her rocker, unwrapping the paper that protected the letter.
Dearest Gran. [it began] – I hurry to tell you the dreadful happenings in case you should hear some garbled account and be worse upset than you need to be, though God knows it is bad enough. Nearly the whole town burned down in one night. I’d better start at the beginning though. Last Sunday we went to Murwillumbah for the Special Service to have the four babies christened – the twins, Matti’s Richard and my own tiny Bessie. We took five hours to go by launch in the morning and spent the day visiting friends and attending Service in the evening with the Smiths, who had invited all of us to spend the night at their large house just outside town.
All went as planned until we came out of the church to find, to our horror, that a fire had started in the centre of the town and was apparently already out of control. Our men left us by the church, which is on a hill, you remember, and went racing down to try and help. By the time they arrived near the blaze it seemed as if the whole street was alight. Stacks of goods, put out in the street from the burning buildings, caught fire from the awful heat and house after house seemed to burst into flames as we watched.
Feeling shaky and frightened, I climbed into the Smith’s waggon and was holding the three babies when, suddenly, the horse took fright and, rearing up, set off at a gallop along Byangum Road away from the fire. There were no sides to the waggon and I was quite helpless as I could not put the babies down for fear they bounced off. We tore up the dark, rough road and I had given myself up for lost when deliverance, as I thought, came in the form of a large man who flung himself from the scrub and hung on to the horse’s head until it stopped. However, I was out of the frying-pan into the fire, because the man took no notice whatever of me or the yelling babies, but climbed into the seat before I could speak and drove back to where he had left his companions and their loot. Those unspeakable ruffians had been stealing from the burning shops and had what they called ‘a fine haul’.
After one protest I dared not even move, for I could see they would as soon kill me as not. I stayed crouching on the waggon while they loaded boxes and crates all round me, leaving scarcely room for me to sit. Finally the infamous cargo was loaded and the men whipped up the horse and bounced and jolted along the road for what seemed like an age. Presently we turned off into a boggy track which was easier for me, though I heard the men on the waggon-seat cursing in a manner that distracted my mind from physical hurts to burn with shame that such creatures should have a hand in developing this lovely country.
Finally we stopped, and still without a word to me, the waggon was unloaded and after some muffled discussion, the horse was turned and driven along more pitch-dark, boggy tracks until we reached an up-grade where the driver gave the floundering horse a cruel lashing with the whip and, leaping over the wheel, vanished into the bush.
At no time did I get a sight of the thieves or hear more than a muffled curse, and I had no idea of where I was or what to do. The poor horse soon slowed down to an exhausted plod and finally stopped and just stood still. I was so worn and bruised that I could do nothing in the pitch blackness but lie still and pray. The two bigger babies fell asleep as soon as we stopped moving; the poor darlings were exhausted, but apparently unhurt, but my tiny Bessie kept crying and I felt her all over to try and find if she was injured. However, I must have fainted, for suddenly I felt a jolt and realized that we were moving. The track was very narrow and wet branches trailed across my face, seeming to my frightened imagination to be a mass of leeches and crawling things. I sat up and managed to lie the big babies between myself and the back of the seat with Bessie on my legs. You cannot imagine the darkness of that jungle. No stars were visible and an almost tangible moisture pervaded everything
How long we travelled I cannot say, but I was afraid to move and bent over the babies to protect them as best I could from jolts and wet branches. Presently we emerged into a little clearing on a hill-top and there the horse stopped and began grazing in the most casual manner, just as if he was in his home paddock. How I wished he was!
I watched the sun rise from that hill-top and never have I seen a more welcome sight. As soon as I could see, I climbed down and gathered armsful of cold wet grass with which I packed the seat of the waggon to make a nest for the babies so that I could drive the horse, though where to I had no idea; and neither, apparently, did he for he simply stood and waited for me to give the orders. Then I felt my prayers had been answered, for faintly I heard the sound of church bells and so got a lead as to which direction to go.
It would be hard to say which of us was in the worst shape. The twins were cold and bruised and wet but otherwise hunger seemed to be their only woe, but Bessie had a black eye and at the sight of it I cried and cried, so that the poor old horse turned his head to look at me and nicker his sympathy. He and I shared honours, as it were, for being injured. Both of us had cuts and scratches and he was very lame, while I had a most painfully bruised ankle and my foot so swelled I couldn’t get my shoe off.
We hobbled slowly along the track that seemed to go in the right direction, and presently got back on the road where the horse took charge, plodding along until midday, when he staggered into his home yard with the babies yelling like fiends.
I fainted at the sight of safety and added yet another bruise to my collection, for I hit my head on the wheel as I fell out of the waggon. When I came to I was in bed, with Mother crying over my hands, which were badly cut from the nails in some of the cases which threatened to fall on us during the awful ride.
She and Mrs. Smith were alone in the house as everyone else was out searching for me or helping sort out the poor stricken town. Once fed and bathed, the twins went off to sleep, but Bessie’s eye pained her and she was sickly for two or three days. She is all right again now.
My misfortunes, bad as they seemed at the time, are really trivial compared with the terrible damage done by the fire. The whole main street of the town has been gutted and the band of scoundrels who abducted me were not, I am ashamed to say, the only ones to take advantage of the fire to feather their nests. Still, everyone seems to be taking things in good heart. Both our husbands and Dad are still in Murwillumbah helping to build it up again and Matti goes up in the launch with provisions every day so that she is sure they get a good hot meal. I’m still pretty useless and Mother is working very hard to keep the farm going and all the animals fed, but I hope to be about very soon, so don’t you worry, Grannie.
Our fondest love. Mother will write to you next time she sits down, she says!
CHAPTER 16 – 1904
After the death of Captain Fenwick, Charlie left the tugboat service and spent some years travelling about New South Wales. He went south to the gold-fields to learn about mining and prospecting, for he felt, as many others did, that the gold which was washed up on the beaches, particularly near Ballina, must have come from some lode or reef in the highlands. The rough life on the gold-fields did not appeal to him so he bought a good riding-horse and a pack-horse and made his way through the highlands to Tenterfield, down the newly opened road through Kyogle and Casino to Lismore, then along the coach road to Ballina. He arrived home after six years of wandering while the district was still stunned by the disastrous fire at Murwillumbah. As he was free of any obligations, he went to help rebuild the town. There he worked for six months on jobs in the town, and then went out to help George Merton plant another acre of sugar-cane on his land. True to the mill manager’s opinion, expressed at Bee’s wedding, the mill had boosted the sugar industry and, as the overstocking of pastures, practised by nearly all the farmers, caused milk yields to drop, more and more of them were planting cane.
In his travels Charlie had heard talk of a new grass, paspalum, which had already been introduced on some farms and was said to be restoring pastures. While he was staying with the Mertons, Charlie persuaded George to plant a small paddock of this wonder grass. Then he went home, satisfied in his own mind that farming was the best life of all. He kept thinking of the farms in the hill country he had ridden through – farms safe from floods and free of the steamy heat of the coast. One day, he told himself, he would have such a farm himself.
Not long after he had settled into the routine of farm-work at home, he met a family on their way to Sydney, who were waiting for the boat at Ballina. As they were staying very uncomfortably at the hotel, Charlie invited them to come home with him for the week-end.
These people, Johnson by name, told him that they were fed up with country life and planned to return to the city. The only thing stopping them was that they could not sell their isolated farm in the back-country beyond Casino. In these days of coaches and fast motor-boats, the Johnsons found, people did not want to live so far out of reach of such transport.
A farm in this back-country was exactly what Charlie had been dreaming about. So, before the week-end was over, it had been arranged that he and Mr. Johnson should travel back to Casino by coach to visit the farm.
To Charlie that first glimpse of the Johnson’s home, set in a circle of hills, was like seeing his dream come true. He had a hard time pretending to be a tough business man bargaining about the price. By the time they reached the river again the deal was closed, and a month later Charlie left home once again.
Compared with his parents’ land in the early days on the Richmond, the hill farm was not isolated at all, being only five miles from the main Tenterfield-Casino road. As there were five farms within ten miles of his, Charlie felt he was in a very central position indeed. The farmers who made up this little group of holdings were friendly and well-organized, and they soon included Charlie in their community labours.
He had only been at the farm two weeks when a horseman rode in from a near-by holding. They greeted each other and exchanged names, talking of their farms for a while. “We like to share each other’s work,” explained Tom Peterson, the farmer. “For instance, we don’t all go to town each week to take in our supplies and do our shopping. One of us goes and does the selling and buying for all of us, see? Do you want to join in, too?” Charlie said he would be glad to, and next morning rode down the track to greet the waggon on its way to town. Round the bend it came, drawn by two sturdy horses, their harness glinting in the early sun, a fine plume of feathers nodding from each forelock to keep off the flies. He saw that the waggon was piled high with produce and people. There seemed to be children all over it. The driver, he noticed with surprise, was a tall dark woman about his own age.
“Hallo.” She called when she saw him. “I’m Nella Morgan, the widow you’ve probably heard all about. These are the community children – not all mine! I teach them school on ordinary days and when it is my turn to go shopping they all come, too, and learn about the gentle art of bargaining. I’m good at it. What errands can we do for you?”
Charlie gave her a small list and loaded some pumpkins on to the waggon for her to sell for him in Casino.
“Excuse my ignorance,” he said hesitantly, “but please tell me if I should pay you freight on the pumpkins, or how I do my share of the community work.”
Mrs. Morgan laughed. “No, you don’t need to pay anyone anything here – we use the time-honoured barter system. For instance, I teach all the children, because that is what I can do best, and the five men near me do my ploughing and heavy work. Each one, you see, does what he or she is best fitted to do. When we find out your special skill, we’ll set you to work, never fear. Oh, that reminds me; would you like to come to the corn-husking bee next Saturday? We make fun of what used to be the most tedious chore on the farm. Each farmer in turn holds a corn-husking bee and everyone comes along and the whole season’s crop is husked in one evening.”
“I should like to come very much,” said Charlie. “And you’ll find I can pull my weight at corn-husking, too. One year at home, when I was about fourteen, I broke my leg and had to sit about for six weeks. The family ‘kindly’ brought me all the corn and I did the whole crop myself!”
The following Saturday Charlie, dressed in his best and with his horse groomed to shine like a show beast, rode over to Mrs. Morgan’s farm. He was feeling rather nervous and decided to find an isolated corner and work hard so that he would not be involved in any social chatter, which he had always dreaded. However, as soon as he neared the brightly lighted barn he began to feel the warmth, not only of the bonfire that burned before the wide-open doors, but of the friendliness and goodwill that came from the group already busily at work on the huge pile of corn-ears that filled the middle of the barn. The bigger children, he saw, were pulling the husks from the ears and handing them to a strong-handed man who, with a twist and a pull, took most of the grains from the ear. He then tossed the stripped ear onto a pile, where the less strong-handed were pulling off the small seeds he had missed. This second-grade corn was kept for stock and fowl feed. The ears then went to feed the fire, while the husks were carefully tied into bundles or put into sacks to make bedding for cattle or mattresses for the family. In these days, when a hostess often found herself entertaining ten or twelve guests unexpectedly, corn-husk mattresses were kept stacked handy on every farm verandah. At bed-time each guest shouldered his own blanket and mattress, chose a free corner, and put them down and slept.
Charlie, being strong-handed, was soon the centre of the group, stripping corn as if he had been attending corn-husking bees for years. In an amazingly short time, the mountain of ears was gone and in its place lay a honey-coloured hill of valuable corn-grains. The fire, having consumed all the ears, was a great pile of pulsing coals over which, as soon as the last ear was finished, everyone began to grill the steaks. Mrs. Morgan handed round, each man holding his piece over the fire on a stick until the air was full of the appetizing smell of roasting meat. On a table, near by, Mrs. Morgan placed a great pile of scones while, near the fire, a huge pot of milk and another of rum-punch completed the feast.
When everyone had eaten more than they would have thought possible, one of the men produced a mouth-organ, another a Jew’s-harp and a third an accordion. Before long, the barn, which had been so filled with industry before supper, rang to the caller’s cadence as the group danced all the square dances they knew. At first Charlie stood in the background but he was soon pulled forward, and under Mrs. Morgan’s guidance, he discovered to his amazement that dancing was quite easy and that he enjoyed it immensely.
He found all the other community activities pleasant – ploughing the new land, where two teams of horses were needed, clearing fresh scrubland, burning the fallen trash, harvesting corn or building a house, all were shared by groups of neighbours. His being the closest farm, Charlie often went to help Mrs. Morgan who, in turn, baked for him and washed and mended his good clothes, making life easier for him as he did for her. When they had known one another for a year they decided to marry. Their two farms united into one big holding, Charlie found himself, at forty-two, a prosperous farmer with a wife and three stepchildren.
CHAPTER 17 – 1904
Mr. Thomas was getting ready to go to the Clarence to visit Rollo. It had been his habit over the past ten years to ride down the coast every other year to spend a few months with Rollo and his family. Some of the times Mrs. Thomas went with him, but she still preferred to be in her own home and could never easily agree that Mack could manage everything if left by himself. So, mostly, Mr. Thomas took his favourite horse and dog and rode at a leisurely pace along the track, staying overnight with friends at Woodburn, New Italy, and Ulmarra, further along the track. His latest trip was not undertaken so easily for his beloved horse, Nugget, had died and, after sixteen years of close friendship with his horse, Mr. Thomas could not seem to enjoy riding any of the other horses. He was eighty-six years old now and both Mack and his wife were urging him to go by steamer this trip. He didn’t want to do this for it meant not seeing his friends as he was accustomed. They argued round and round the subject for several weeks before Mr. Thomas agreed to go by the Tomki, which was due to sail from Ballina in a few days’ time. She was a fine vessel, one of the best in the North Coast, but what finally decided Mr. Thomas to travel in her was the arrival from the scrub of one of his bantam hens (descendant of the original family of bantams that Grandpa had sent Rollo over fifty years before), with a brood of tiny yellow chickens. Mr. Thomas, now a great-grandfather himself, decided to take the hen and chickens as a present to his great-grandson Rollo, who was almost the same age the first Rollo had been when the crate of hens came overland by bullock-waggon.
Carrying the crate and leaving Mack to manage the box of presents Mrs. Thomas was sending with him, and his own venerable carpet-bag of clothes, he set out by tugboat one morning to board the Tomki at Ballina, the day was rough and windy and Mack was relieved to see the ‘all clear’ signal on the flagstaff at the lighthouse on North Head.
“All the same, Dad, I don’t like the look of the bar,” he said. “Just see how high the surges behind the waves lift the water-level.”
“Poor boy, you’re getting soft in your old age,” replied his father, rubbing a hand through Mack’s greying hair. The two men went on board. Mack, after settling his father and the bantam hen comfortably, returned ashore to walk along the retaining wall to where the great breakers tossed curling crests against the confining rock.
The Tomki came steaming down the channel, close to the north wall where the water was deepest, and Mack saw his father standing at the stern-rail looking back up the river. Then Mack’s attention was riveted by the sea where a huge wave, far higher than the rest, came charging up the channel, causing a swirl of shallow, tossing waves to rush across the set of the current. Just as the vessel swerved further towards the north wall, to gain room for the rush over the bar, another of these big waves came leaping over the sand-bank that blocked a good part of the river-mouth and, crashing into the vessel, pushed her stern on to the jagged grey rocks at the base of the wall, with a rending crash.
Everything loose on the ship’s deck was jarred out of place by the collision and, as the steamer bellowed her distress with three loud hoots of her steam whistle, Mack saw his father lying flat on deck, where the jar had thrown him.
For some time the vessel kept steaming out over the bar while people raced about on her deck. The pilot’s launch, which was in the channel ahead, turned back to find out the cause of the distress signal. Mack thought for a moment that the Tomki was undamaged and was going out to sea, but then he realized that her captain was trying to beach his ship on a sandy strip of beach on the northern side of the wall. At once he raced back to the settlement as fast as he could, for ropes and rescue-gear.
By the time the rescue-gang arrived at the end of the wall, the vessel was hard aground in about eight feet of water, surf beating all over her and the sea covered with swimming animals and fowls which the sailors had freed by smashing their crates.
Mack had time to notice a fine black rooster, perched on the rail, flapping his wings and crowing like mad. Two pigs where hurled ashore almost at his feet, and reminded him suddenly of the rescue many years ago, when the Eclipse had gone ashore not far from this very spot.
Now, however, Mack was too old to be in the forefront with the rope, and another young man swam and floundered out to the vessel with a light line to which a stronger rope carrying a breeches-buoy was rigged; and the long business of getting the passengers and crew ashore began. To Mack’s relief his father was one of the first to make the journey in the canvas bucket, carried high over the waves and on to the sand. Willing hands helped him ashore, but he buckled over as he tried to stand and the crate with the bantam hen and her brood, which he had held aloft throughout the journey, fell and broke, scattering the furious little hen and her frightened chickens all over the sand where they dodged frantically among the feet of the onlookers who were streaming along the wall and on to the beach, as the news spread to the town that the Tomki had gone aground.
“You and your nice safe steamers,” spluttered Mr. Thomas to Mack from the stretcher on which they had laid him.
“How do you feel, Dad? Is your leg broken?” asked Mack.
“No, son, I don’t think so,” replied his father, “A crate or something fell on me and knocked me over when the crash came. I guess I’m all right, but I’m very cold.”
Someone thrust a bottle of rum into Mack’s hand and he held his father’s head up so that he could drink some of the warming liquid. An enormous priest, who had just landed from the breeches-buoy, came over to speak to Mr. Thomas and Mack handed him the rum bottle in an absent-minded fashion as he bent over his father to tuck his own coat over his wet clothes. Several volunteers, called by the priest, lifted the stretcher and climbed back with their burden on to the wall where the old railway track allowed fairly smooth walking. Before they were half-way along the wall, Mr. Thomas sat up suddenly.
“Here’s the Sally,” he cried in a fresh, strong voice, “Do hurry, dear, with the children. Mack, Mack?”
Before the middle-aged Mack could answer this call into the past to the boy he had been, Mr. Thomas fell back dead in his arms, his long life as a pioneer ending not fifty yards from the spot on which he landed more than half a century before.
Sadly they carried the stretcher to the landing-stage, and Mack, accompanied by old Granny Shaw and two of her grandsons, rowed the ten miles back to the farm they had left so cheerfully that morning.
Mrs. Thomas took the blow as she had taken blows all her long hard life, bravely and with resignation.
“He had a good life, Mack dear. He did what he set out to do, we mustn’t grieve – he wouldn’t want that,” she said as they walked down to the boat from the Cemetery at East Ballina, where they had seen him buried near his lifelong friends and within a few yards of the first home he had built for them in the wilderness.
Mack and his mother lived on for some months at the farm, but she was not strong and Mack felt she should not be doing all the work in the house.
“How would you like to go back to your old home on the Clarence?” he asked her one evening as they sat by the fire reading the mail that had been delivered just after their evening meal.
“Peggy suggests the same thing,” said Mrs. Thomas, surprised, looking up from her letter.
“Yes, I think she would like it very much,” said Mack. “And her sons would be much better off running this property than working for Mr. Ogilvie, as they are at present. I could come down for a while, too, and then come back here and keep an eye on things for you.
“I never expected to make another journey away from here, but I think I should like to see the Clarence and the old home once more. Yes, Mack,” said the old lady with something like her old liveliness, “make the arrangements as soon as you can and we will set off on our travels. That’s a very good idea.”
