The Coraki Kid

Lou Benaud – Reminiscences

Louis Richard Benaud was born in Coraki on 28 February 1904. His father was Richard Grainger Benaud and his uncle was Louis Ferdinand Benaud, proprietor of the Richmond River Herald. Family background.
Lou lived in Coraki for 14 years and has bequeathed a detailed and comprehensive narrative of many aspects of life in a small country town at the turn of the century. Lou left Coraki in 1918 and completed his schooling in Grafton, returning to the Casino district as a teacher in 1925. He and his brother Jack both enjoyed cricketing careers and later, both his sons Ritchie and John were also involved in the sport.
This unique insight into Lou’s early childhood has been lovingly edited by his son John who used it as the basis of his book The Kid From Coraki.

Here is a picture of some aspects of conditions under which people lived during my boyhood days at Coraki. In those times our way of life differed very considerably from the way of life of people today. What may seem old fashioned today was quite normal to me in Coraki during my boyhood days.

For most of the period to which I refer the horse was the main means of land transport but, towards the end of that period, there were a few motor cars in the district and also some motor bikes and push bikes. People walked a great deal in those days, but when the distance to be travelled was considerable or the load heavy, people rode on horseback, in sulkies, buggies, coaches, waggons, drays and carts. Timber getters transported their logs by bullock waggons. We found horse transport quite satisfactory as it was the only alternative to walking. In the town the shop awnings were supported by posts that stood near the kerb and horses were hitched to those posts. There were drinking troughs for horses in certain parts of the town.

The first motor car I saw in Coraki was owned by the newsagent who lived next door to us. It was a heavy looking vehicle that often broke down and its owner, who was quite a small man, seemed to spend considerable time turning the cranking handle. One day he took Gordon and me for a spin out past the school and we found it quite pleasant to ride in the car. There was considerable backfiring as we moved along and any horses we passed shied away pretty smartly.

My next experience with motor vehicles was a startling one. We were sitting down to lunch one day when a deafening noise, which we could not identify, assailed our ears. At once we raced to the door and saw that the noise was being made by a strange looking vehicle that was moving down the lane between our home and the home of the newsagent. Sitting at the wheel of the vehicle and looking very pleased with himself was the local chemist. He had bought himself a motor buggy and was bringing it along to show us and also to ask us to allow him to garage it in a shed at the back of our place. It had thin, high wheels like those to be found on a horse drawn buggy. It was terribly rough to ride in.

Before I left Coraki two motor companies started a mail and passenger motor car service from Lismore through Coraki and on to Ballina. It was the writing on the wall that faster and better transport was on its way.

There were no tarred or concrete roads in those times. The roads were dirt or dirt reinforced with blue metal. Workers used picks, shovels and carts in their roadmaking and road maintenance efforts. When weight was needed to complete any roadwork, a traction engine was used. In the immediate vicinity of a town roads were usually in very fair order but the same could not be said about roads in outlying districts, especially after periods of heavy rain. It was even possible to get bogged when driving a sulky over some roads and one had to possess super driving powers to miss deep gutters and potholes that existed in plague proportions. Some outlying roads were so boggy that people in those areas, in order to be able to drive along such roads, laid tree branches across the boggy surfaces thus building what we called a corduroy road. When we travelled in a sulky over corduroy sections of road we thought that they must be the roughest roads in the world.

The first motor bike I saw was ridden from Ballina to Coraki by two young men. One man sat on the seat while the other man sat behind him. How anyone could have survived, without being shaken to pieces, a trip from Ballina to Coraki on an improvised seat on a motor bike amazed me especially as the return trip was made at night. Perhaps the rider possessed a magical method of avoiding gutters and potholes.

I learned to ride my brother’s push bike and I spent many enjoyable hours riding along some lovely, flat, narrow tracks on the footpaths in various parts away from the main town.

Lighting and heating were far less sophisticated than the lighting and heating of today. In public places what light we had was obtained from a gas which was generated when water was added slowly to lumps of carbide.

There were lamp posts in the town and light was provided from carbide gas. During the afternoon the council’s lamplighter used to visit each lamp post in order to empty the used carbide from the container in the bottom section of the lamp post. When he had placed new carbide in the container he filled a small container with water. The water wet the carbide and the gas passed up through the interior hollow section and reached a burner in the glassed in part at the top of the lamp post. The lamplighter lit a taper that was attached to a long stick and he applied the lighted taper to the burner at the top of the lamp post in order to light the street lamp which kept burning till the carbide ceased to produce more gas. The use of mantles provided quite a bright light when other forms of gas were used. Later, some councils provided electric lighting.

In the majority of private homes kerosene lamps and candles were used to provide illumination. There were fancy glass lamps for tables and coloured tin ones that could be hung on walls. Also there were hurricane lamps that could be carried in the open.
They were constructed in such a way that it required an extremely strong wind to affect the flame. Provided lamp wicks were trimmed occasionally and lamp globes kept bright and clean a good light was obtained.
Candles were placed in various types of candlesticks but the light provided by candles was not nearly as good as that given out by the kerosene lamps. There was also more risk of starting fires when candles, with their naked light, were carried around the house.

A short time before I left Coraki the chemist introduced a new type of lighting at his shop. It was costly to install but cost didn’t deter the chemist from having the new system of lighting. We called it air gas. A cylinder was installed at the back of the chemist’s shop and pipes ran from the cylinder into the shop and under the shop awning. Lamps were suspended from the pipes. The gas was in the cylinder and it was put under pressure by someone using a hand pump like a motor car tyre pump. In each lamp there was a mantle that covered the end of a thin pipe. The gas passed along the pipes to each lamp where the gas was lit. In a short time the heat of the burning gas caused each mantle to glow with a bright, white light. Air gas certainly provided a better illumination than carbide gas, kerosene lights or candles.

Fuel stoves were used for cooking. Grilled steak, cooked in a light hand griller over a firebox of glowing coals, had a delicious taste. Often, I used to sit in front of the fuel stove, lower the grate at the front of the firebox and I’d toast bread that I suspended on the prongs of a long toasting fork. Toast made in that manner was food for the gods for it was perfectly browned. Not even one crumb of the slice was burned. A cob of corn, roasted in the same manner, and whole potatoes, in their jackets, cooked in the ashes under the firebox were something special. Any food cooked in the oven seemed to be cooked perfectly – cakes, scones, pies, roasts, poultry, custards and other foods looked just as delicious as they tasted. I can still recall the wonderful taste of the wild ducks that my mother roasted in the oven of our fuel stove.

There was no fire brigade in Coraki. I can only remember one outbreak of fire and it was a disastrous one. It started at night in the hotel at the northern end of Richmond Terrace and the fire spread rapidly south among the buildings in Richmond Terrace until every building in the block, except the chemist’s shop, was devoured by the raging flames. Only a stroke of luck saved the chemist’s shop from destruction.

About midnight I was awakened by unusual noises – there were crackling sounds and shouting. An eerie glow lit up the walls of my bedroom. I found that my mother, my sister and my brother were all out of bed so I joined them. My father was outside the house and he came in and told us that a fire was raging in the northern section of Richmond Terrace. He said the fire was out of control and it seemed probable that all buildings in Richmond Terrace would be destroyed. He advised us to dress ourselves and to vacate the house. When we dressed ourselves my sister stayed with mother and father while my brother and I decided to walk along the river bank to see what was happening in the fire area. We reached the part between Richmond Terrace and the Government Wharf and we saw the burnt out ruins of all the buildings except the last three buildings in the block. The building, third from the end of the block, was blazing fiercely while firefighters strove in vain to put out the flames. As there was no fire engine the firefighting was conducted by a bucket brigade.

Two parallel lines of men stretched from Richmond Terrace to the river bank near the Government Wharf. Buckets were dipped in the river and filled with water. Those buckets were passed up one line of men and, as each bucket reached the scene of the burning building, water from that bucket was emptied onto the flames. Empty buckets were passed down the other line of firefighters until those empty buckets reached the river bank where they were filled again. It was a long, tiring and fruitless task but those firefighters stuck to it and some of them climbed onto the roof of the second last building in the block and poured buckets of water into the leaping flames.

With two buildings still standing in the path of the fire it seemed that nothing could save them from destruction, but just as the second last building in the block caught fire a North Coraki Steam Navigation Company’s ship the Canonbar arrived at the Government Wharf. A great length of large hose was stretched from the ship to the scene of the fire and an engine on the ship was used to pump river water at high pressure through the hose. It was too late to save much of the second last building in the block but no fire reached the chemist’s shop. I’m sure if there had been a strong northerly wind blowing that night nothing could have saved all buildings along Richmond Terrace from destruction.

The stores in those days stocked a variety of goods. In addition to groceries, clothing, materials, and ironmongery, a variety of other goods could be purchased in each store. Groceries such as butter, sugar and flour were not packaged as they are today. The butter was in cube-shaped boxes each of which contained fifty-six pounds of butter. When we ordered a pound of butter, the shop assistant made it up for us and wrapped it in a kind of greaseproof paper. It was fascinating to watch one shop assistant, named Jack, put the butter into shape with two flat, rectangular shaped pieces of wood for he was an expert at his job and far ahead of any other shop assistant in Coraki. How neat and efficient he was in scooping sugar and flour from its box under the counter, pouring each into bags he had previously opened and then weighing each bag on the scales. Then he folded the top of each bag and tied the bag securely with string. He didn’t trouble to cut the string but half hitched it round one of his fingers and with a sharp pull broke the string. I admired him tremendously for the efficiency he displayed in his work and for the courteous manner in which he treated children and adults.

The store where Jack worked had a large covered waggon. A short man, named Billy, used to drive the waggon. He loaded it with goods and sold them to farmers in the district. On each Monday he started his tour and returned to the store on the following Friday.

When I went to the store to purchase groceries or other goods the shop assistant wrote the items and their prices on a docket. He always inserted a piece of carbon paper between the docket and its duplicate. After the shop assistant had totalled the cost of all items I passed him some money to pay for the goods. What happened after that was certainly different from what takes place in the shops of today.

All stores in Coraki were built at ground level. In the centre of the shop there was a small room with no ceiling or roof. The cashier sat in that open room. Above each counter in the shop there was a metal cage with rectangular sides. Each metal cage was connected to the cashier’s room by a metal track which ran from the top of each metal cage. Another metal track ran from the cashier’s room to the bottom of the metal cage at each counter. When money was paid to the shop assistant he rolled it in a docket and its duplicate. Then he selected a hollow wooden ball, about the size of a large orange, and he opened the wooden ball. He placed the dockets containing the money in one half of the wooden ball and then he pressed the halves of the wooden ball together and gave them a twist in order to lock them. There was a small metal cage near the bottom of the bigger metal cage and the wooden ball was placed in the smaller metal cage. That smaller metal cage was pulled up to the metal track by means of a cord and when the wooden ball reached the end metal track the cord was pulled in such a way that the smaller metal cage tipped and the wooden ball was propelled along the metal track to the cashier’s room. There change was placed in the docket, the duplicate was retained and the wooden ball sent back to the shop assistant by way of the metal track. The ball fell into the metal cage above the counter, the shop assistant opened the ball and gave me my docket and my change.

Some customers had monthly accounts at the stores. When those customers paid their accounts they were always given a bag of lollies or a bag of biscuits. At Christmas time regular customers were given more valuable presents such as a tin of lollies or a tin of biscuits. At the baker’s shop bars were sold by a baker’s dozen – thirteen instead of twelve to the dozen.

On Christmas Eve shops stayed open to a much later hour than usual. Adults and children thronged the main street and patronised the shops. My brother and I spent the hard earned money that we’d accumulated as a result of our bottle selling activities. Christmas Eve was always a wonderful night in Coraki.

Sometimes during the year a travelling salesman of potent medicines would arrive in a waggon. At night he would set up shop at his waggon and by clever salesmanship, he would induce people to buy medicines which he assured us were a cure for all complaints.

A highland gathering was held each year in Coraki. A raised platform was erected on the river bank and Scotyish families turned out in national costumes, played their bagpipes and danced on the raised platform. There was also a programme of sporting events. It was a great day for the Scots and a great night for my father, two Scottish friends of his and a retired ship’s captain for the four of them used to gather in our refreshment room for a couple of hours, drink a few Scotch whiskies and sing Scottish songs.

We had a town band which, at certain times, gathered in the rotunda on the bank a little south of the building where the pink paper was printed. I loved listening to the band playing for the tunes seemed to inspire me. We found it rather amusing to watch the faces of some bandsmen as they played their instruments – some players puffed their cheeks, some tightened their lips, while others squinted their eyes.

Somebody told us that if anyone stood near a cornet player and sucked a lemon the cornet player’s mouth would water and he would have to stop playing his cornet. We tried it but the cornet player just kept on playing.

The band used to be hired to play outside the hall in Bridge Street. I remember one night when we were running around as the band was playing outside the hall my brother got his new suit caught on some barbed wire that was protruding from a tree guard. It was bad luck plus a badly torn suit as far as my brother was concerned.

There were no refrigerators in Coraki and we used ice chests as a means of cooling food and keeping it fresh. Canvas water bags were used extensively and water kept in those canvas water bags was refreshingly cool. People in outlying areas used special meat safes in which they cooled meat and kept it fresh. Such methods were a little crude but they were the best we had and, although they were not in the same class as a modern refrigerator, they served a useful purpose.

The first soda fountain I saw was installed in the chemist’s shop. In the soda fountain section of his shop the chemist had jars of delicious fruit syrups. When a customer ordered a certain soda drink, the chemist poured some fruit syrup in a glass and held the glass under the tap of the fountain. Then he moved a lever and the soda water filled the glass. If he pushed the lever one way the soda water gurgled out of the tap but, if he pushed the lever in the opposite direction, a thin stream of soda water hissed from the tap. The thin jet of soda water was used first as it acted as a kind of spoon in mixing the fruit juice with the soda water. When the glass was fairly full the gurgling stream of soda water was used to top off the mixture in the glass. It was something new in fizzy drinks and, as some of the syrups were new flavours, we patronised the soda fountain bar more frequently than we bought bottles of cordials at the fruit shop.