

My Story

Published by Les Shipp on Smashwords

First published by Les Shipp in 2014. Copyright © Les Shipp. Published and printing rights held by Les Shipp. The author takes no responsibility for how the reader might apply the ideas contained in this book.

It remains the copyright property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoy this book, please encourage your friends to purchase their own copy.

This is the story of my life as told from memory without the advantage of any form of records and notes. If anything I've written is disputed then I apologise but it is as close to reality as I can make it. I have only used first names to minimise any offence and if anyone recognises themselves in the story I hope it is with their approval.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sue Bagust not only set up my front and back cover but also edited my whole story. A mammoth job believe me. I felt guilty that she has given me so much of her time when she herself is an author.

I would also like to thank my mentor and friend Pat Ritter from the Pomona Writers Group who has helped me the whole way with encouragement and advice and never let me give up when I was having so much difficulties with my computer with its dreaded windows 8. I would not have reached this stage without him. Noela Flack, a fine artist and littary critic has also given me very positive feedback and advice on how to make my story more readable. I also have to thank my wife Alice for putting up with me through the many hours I spent sitting at the computer getting a square bum as she puts it.
CHAPTER 1

In the 1920's Roy lived in Carlingford, an outer suburb of Sydney. There he rented an acre of land where he grew vegetables for sale. He also had a job on a bread run each day with a horse drawn cart. Between the two he was kept very busy but the nineteen year old was ambitious. He was well educated and an accomplished violinist and singer but with the land to till he put his talents behind him. He was five foot ten inches tall and had a very athletic build. He had very blue eyes that would turn a steely grey if he was cross.

Up the road from him was a large orchard and a big stone house where a pretty girl lived. This girl was called Birdie because she was only five foot tall and was very trim. She had a head of very thick dark brown curls with soft brown eyes with a peaches and cream complexion. Her real name was Bertha but she didn't like that name much and it didn't match her image.

Birdie noticed Roy working in his vegetable patch and rather liked the look of him so she decided to stop and chat one day. They became good friends and a short time later they were married. Birdie wasn't all that suited to be a farmer's wife as she was the youngest of sixteen children and her older siblings doted on her and waited on her hand and foot. However Roy was able to teach her the fundamentals of running a house.

In the 1930's they had five children so Roy decided they needed a larger farm. In spite of the great depression he was able to purchase twenty acres of land at Castle Hill. How he managed this with a wife and five children through the depression is a tribute to his hard work and good management.

On the twenty acres Roy built a large substantial shed to be used as their home and lined it with tar paper and hessian and then divided the rooms off with the same material. The shed was later to become a packing shed for the vegetables.

I was the youngest of the children and named Les. I was one year old when we moved into the shed, and we lived there until I was five. Understandably presents were few and far between but at the age of four I was given a little fluffy long haired retriever pup which I was able to cuddle and carry around and it became my constant companion for many years. The pup, Flossy, was more inclined to follow Roy around the farm when she grew to be a handsome dog and not the troublesome young boy. This didn't bother me too much as there were always lots of little pink piglets to play with and cuddle. I would pick up a little bundle and sit there stroking it and it would be quite content and drift off to sleep, and probably I would too.

`When I was five years old Roy built a three bedroom substantial fibro house on the farm. He was very proud of his workmanship and wasn't very pleased to find when he made his final inspection before moving in that a vandal had drawn faces on the fresh paint. It wasn't hard to work out who the vandal was and fearing great retribution I took refuge under the new house. As I was so small none of the others could reach me and I stayed in my hidey hole until well after dark. It was very late when a deputation of my older siblings came to coax me out with a promise from Roy that I wouldn't receive the said punishment. The family lived happily in the new house until I was ten years old. Very little was expected of me as I was much younger and smaller than my siblings. I had three sisters and a brother who mainly regarded me as a nuisance. Roy had been an only boy in his family and felt he missed out on the companionship of a brother so hence the arrival of myself. The problem was the two boys were of a completely different mould. Ted was always big and boisterous and very capable on the farm, even down to driving the five ton truck to the Sydney markets when he was just fourteen. I on the other hand was small, much younger and a little anxious about the big wide world. There were lots of things in life that I found hard to fathom, like why Roy hated his father so much that none of the children were allowed to speak to him.

Ted was devoted to Roy and would go into a rage if he wasn't allowed to go to the markets with him. This always led to big trouble that frightened the life out of me because when Roy came home and was informed of Ted's wrong doing he would get the most fearsome thrashing. Still Ted loved him and I would retreat into my own safe world. Roy worked seven days a week with hardly any time off. Birdie sought romance in romantic novels and wondered why real life wasn't like that.

There was very little free time on the farm but occasionally they would decide to go off for a picnic and pick wild flowers, or a day at the beach. Birdie didn't like these activities so she would decide to stay at home and of course she didn't want to be on her own, so I being too young and small to enjoy the day out, would be left to keep her company.

Because I wasn't much use on the farm I was given the task of putting the milk through the separator and then turning the cream into butter, which I became very good at. During this time I had to deal with another troublesome matter, and that was starting school. I walked the two and a half miles bare foot to school and enrolled myself. As I entered the classroom the teacher called me over and wanted a few details. I was confident about my birthday and age and then the hard part came. What is your father's name? She demanded, I knew this as I had heard the two workmen on the farm called him Roy, What is your mother's name? Again she demanded. Mum I replied. The teacher said I know that, but what's her real name? I had heard my Aunts call her Birdie so I thought this must be it. You stupid child, the teacher retorted, go to your desk. This is how school life started and ended for me.

As my body attended school most of the time my spirit never did. Luckily I was a natural reader and could read before I went to school. I was further upset when at the beginning of the next year I was told I hadn't progressed enough to join the others in the next grade. This reinforced my idea that school just wasn't for me and although I had to attend, in my mind I was able to be somewhere else in my own safe world. I guessed I was just plain stupid and that was the end of the matter. There were other excitements to and from school that I enjoyed. It was in the war years and there was the thrill of being marched into the air raid shelters now and then where you could pretend to be doing battle with the enemy. All the windows in the school had wire mesh over them to stop the glass shattering over the pupils if there were to be a bomb go off. The trip to and from school was also an adventure. As I was always bare foot, I loved to burst the tar bubbles with my bare toes that had formed in the tarred road from the heat. They would go plop and this would amuse me. Also there was the battle of the attacking magpies which made me pick up pace on the way home. One magpie actually struck me on the head and I arrived home covered in blood.

One day on the way home I came across a black man walking down the road. I had never seen a black person before and in fright I ran all the way home. After all I knew from what I had read that black people ate you.

I was really out of my depth in the class room and if I was embarrassed by a teacher my defence was to smile which inevitably enraged the teacher to the extent of me frequently getting the cane or on one occasion being knocked to the ground by a backhander across the face for my impudence by a male teacher with fiery red hair.

Because of the war there was a large army barracks two miles up the road from the farm. This intrigued me and I frequently rode my three wheeler bike up to the camp and watched what I thought were the soldiers playing. In reality they were marching around the parade ground and crawling under barbed wire fences.

Birdie loved to cook and after some time, put on home cooked meals for some of the soldiers who were far from home. Two of the soldiers started going out with the two older sisters, Edna and Lynda. I was curious about what they talked about as they sat on the settee after they came home from the pictures or a dance. I decided I would plant myself under the settee and find out. I hadn't bargained for the fact that when they sat on the settee the springs would yield to their weight. The result was that they were actually sitting on top of me. What a dilemma and after a while I couldn't stand their weight any longer and let out a yell. I was unceremoniously pulled out from my hidey hole by the ear and carted off to bed. I decided not to try any of those antics again.

As the war escalated, the soldiers were to be sent off on a ship to fight in New Guinea. This sounded very exciting to me, having no concept of what war was. So when the transport truck pulled up outside our house so the soldiers could say goodbye to the girls, I stowed away under cover in the back of the truck. By the time the convoy reached Parramatta it slowed down because of the heavy traffic. I wanted to know where I was and why they were going so slow. I poked my head out to have a look around. Unfortunately the driver of the following truck spied me and everything came to a halt. The soldiers all thought the stowaway was a great joke and I had pride of place in the front seat of an army jeep as I was returned home.

I was not always trustworthy when given a task to do, like when the next door neighbour asked me if I would collect the half loaf of bread out of their mail box and deliver it up to their house. This job I actually completed but by the time I reached the house my mind had wondered off the job and without thinking I peeled off a small segment of the lovely fresh bread as I walked. By the time I reached their house only just the outer crust was left.

The farm at Castle Hill was an exciting place to play. Apart from the horses, cows, pigs and hens, there were bandicoots and rabbits and in the little stream that ran through the property there were very large fresh water crayfish. These I would tease by dangling my toes in the water. There was also a small scrub of wattle trees that I could conjure up all sorts of exciting games.

When I was ten years old Roy sold the Castle Hill farm and bought a larger farm on the Nepean River near Richmond. There he built another house but not as big as the last one because the two eldest girls had left home. Edna was married and Lynda had started to train as a nurse. The house had two bedrooms, a kitchen and a veranda. One end of the veranda was partly closed in and that was where Ted and I slept.

The river at the bottom of the farm was a source of intrigue for me. I loved the idea of all that water but was forbidden to go anywhere near it. Roy told me I wasn't to go anywhere near the water until I learnt to swim. My adventurous spirit could not be denied and I made several forays down to the river unseen. This resulted in me coming very close to drowning several times. I made a lot of progress when I managed to find an army cork life jacket. I paddled around wearing the life jacket in the river really enjoying myself. I became so good I decided to upgrade my swimming endeavours. To accomplish this I took the life jacket off and threw it a little way out into the water and then paddled out to it. This worked well until one day I threw it out a little too far and the current caught it as I was nearly out to it. I didn't panic and kept paddling until I eventually caught up with it. From that day on I could swim and became a very strong swimmer.

There were two heavy horses on the farm which I loved to ride whenever the opportunity arose. They were my friends along with my dog Flossy. It was a very bad day for me when a neighbour decided to set out a bait of crushed glass in a piece of meat because she reckoned it must be Flossy who was stealing her eggs from the fowl house. Flossy died in agony some days later and I was distraught at having lost such a friend.

I had my own transport at this time in the form of a pushbike which I rode the five miles to and from school. The only bright spot at the school was the introduction of ballroom dancing during the lunch break. I was popular during these sessions as I quickly became a competent dancer. I also found I could sing better than most and used to sing to myself and whistle. This annoyed the family no end but it just came out. At school we often sang patriotic war songs and had plays with us great Australians handing out food parcels to the unfortunate Brits.

Ted was sixteen and a very strapping fellow who looked more like a man than a youth. He became friendly with a women much older who lived across the road. I was often used as an excuse to go for a bike ride so he could meet up with this woman. He eventually ran off with her and Roy had to find and retrieve him. The woman and her husband wanted a divorce so they worked out between them that they would use Ted as a reason. Their plan failed when they found out that Ted was a minor.
CHAPTER 2

It was during this time that I started to worry about my mother. She was acting strangely and would often be found talking to herself. I didn't know why but I was more and more delegated to taking care of her. Roy was working harder than ever and really wasn't able to cope with Birdie's moods. To give her an outing I would take her on the bus each Saturday evening to the pictures. This was fine except getting her off the bus when we reached home was quite difficult because Birdie didn't want to leave her new found friends on the bus. This required me to become quite obnoxious to get a result. With the other passengers commenting," What a horrible rude boy".

To my dismay Birdie's arguments with the voices in her head became more and more angry. I couldn't work out what was happening. Roy eventually took Birdie off to the hospital where she was to have a series of electric shocks to her brain to cure her. It was a monstrous cruel method which stopped Birdie from fighting with her tormentors. She now had new tormentors, the doctors. The result of this treatment changed Birdie's thought process and in her mind she was a young girl again and Roy was her beau.

The doctor felt the only way to help her back to reality was to bring me in to visit. I didn't want to go and said so. Not only was I anxious about what I might see but it also meant a journey in the car which made me very car sick. Roy was often sarcastic when speaking to me and his retort was, "I'll have to tell her you don't want to see her".I couldn't bear this to happen so I agreed to go.

When we reached the Mental Hospital at Parramatta it was very foreboding structure with high stone walls around a very large prison type building with heavy iron bars on the windows. Roy and I were ushered into Birdie's ward and to my horror I saw it wasn't a ward like any other I had seen. It was actually a windowless padded cell with very little furniture in it. Birdie greeted Roy affectionately and then noticed me. She was delighted to see him and then asked Roy if I was the little boy who lived down the road at Carlingford. I was hurt beyond belief and retreated into my own safe place I had created away from fear and hurt.

Eventually Birdie was able to return home but she was much the same as before. I accepted the fact that she would go into these violent rages with her voices. The content of the arguments were a worry to me as they contained much of the things I couldn't understand. Like she knew what priests and nuns got up to and how hard and cruel men were to women. None of this made any sense and at one stage I considered running away but I didn't know where to run to. Perhaps I had a problem of my own as I had no friends and wasn't able to interact with the other children at school, and certainly not with the teachers. It didn't bother me that much as I had my own safe world to retreat into.

At twelve years of age I was not too bothered when Roy sold the farm at Richmond. Before we left the farm a land army girl of twenty-two and her mother came to work for the new owners. Her name was Lesley and her mother was known as Smithy. They lived in a tent down on the farm and I often spent time with them chatting and we became good friends, it was strange that two adults would talk to me like I had some sort of intelligence, which was a rare event for me. After we left the farm we corresponded for many years. Roy made a big mistake of letting the buyers take over the farm before they paid for it. They were able to make money out of the farm straight away so they strung out the payment for about a year. Roy had to make a living so he rented a thirty acre farm at Windsor on the Hawkesbury River. He couldn't buy another farm as he hadn't been paid for the Richmond farm.

This was another new experience for me as the house was right on the banks of the river. They called it a house but it really was just a very old slab hut. My sleeping quarters was on one end of an open veranda and in winter it was freezing cold. So cold in fact that one night I dreamt that I had set fire to it. It was a relief when I woke in the morning to find that I hadn't done so.A big worry came to me at this stage as I found my body was changing and I didn't have anyone to ask about it. The bits I had heard from the other teenage boys at school added to my confusion and I thought I must be a very bad person if my mind and body was taking this path. At Windsor Birdie's condition deteriorated and the ravings became worse until one day when the screams became more intense than usual, I ran around to where she was to see what her screams were about. I was just in time to see two Ambulance Officers bundle Birdie into the back of an ambulance with a straight jacket on her. I was petrified and didn't know what to do so I ran as fast as I could up the paddock to where Roy was working to tell him what had happened. Roy already knew, the doctor had advised him not to be there so that she wouldn't associate him with what was happening to her. She was placed in Parramatta Mental Hospital for many years. I accepted this as life was much quieter and less stressful. I wasn't asked to visit the mental hospital again and this gave me some peace of mind. The huge Hawkesbury River just down the bank from our house was my playground. I spent most of the summer days, hour after hour swimming and I became a very strong swimmer. I could swim the mile up river to the town of Windsor. I sometimes explored the town but I wasn't all that keen on all those people. They thought I was a Greek kid because I had very dark brown hair and eyes and had dark tan skin. Being a Greek wasn't very acceptable in those days. I did make one friend from the town and the friend and I would dare each other on how far we could swim, and we would swim for miles. I was offered a place on the school swim team but Roy put a stop to that. He didn't want me to be traveling all over the countryside in competitions.

During my time at school in Richmond the war was still on so it was a great celebration when it was announced that the war was over and we had won. Everyone went mad and all the children were given the rest of the day off. This happened in the morning and all the children left in great glee. I was happy about it but it did present me with a problem. As we were living at Windsor I used to catch a train the ten miles to Richmond and my train didn't leave for the return journey until late afternoon. Did I hang around town for several hours or did I walk home. The hanging around didn't appeal to me so I set off on foot, and not really knowing the way home I decided to walk along the railway line. This was fine for most of the way until I came to a very long and high viaduct. Would I be able to make it across before a train came along? I decided to give it a go and a train didn't come along but half way across I nearly froze with fright because I was a hundred or so feet above the ground and I was afraid of heights. I had no option but to grit my teeth and press on.

Sometime in 1946 there was a mighty flood in the river. As the river rose, Ted, Roy and I lifted everything we could up onto tables hoping they would be safe there. Later on in the night we all had to leave and move into a neighbour's high Queenslander house. The next day the water started to bubble over onto the higher level. A flood boat came then and we were all moved over to the town of Windsor. As I looked back at our house all I could see was the peak of the roof sticking out of the water. What a stinking smelly mess it was when we returned after the flood had subsided.

We never really lived there again as Roy, seeking peace and solitude bought a 300 acre farm in an extremely isolated part of Burragorang Valley in the Blue Mountains south of Camden. The farm was in the upper reaches of the valley close to Goulburn. I was thirteen by then and growing tall and skinny. The house on the farm was an old sandstone building with eighteen inch walls, built in the days of the convicts. It wasn't a very big house so once again I took up residence on the open veranda. I loved it there, especially as it came with several horses. They weren't very good horses but they were rideable even though they had several tricks up their sleeves. One horse worked out if he went head over heels when he came to a patch of sand he didn't hurt himself, too bad for the rider. There wasn't any bother about school there as it was too isolated. I started correspondence lessons with Blackfriars's Correspondence School but that didn't last long as it was too difficult to get to the post and I had no one to explain the lessons to me. I remember receiving an art project with my lessons and I was very proud of my endeavour and rushed off to show Roy as he worked down the paddock. His response was, "why are you bothering with that nonsense"? It all became too much.

I was still regarded as useless around the farm and no effort was made to change this. Ted was the master of the tractor and the truck and I wasn't allowed anywhere near them. I was only useful when sheep or cattle had to be mustered, both of which I loved to do. This was handy as I was the only member of the family who could ride a horse. It came naturally to me. I would have liked to have learnt to milk the house cow but Roy said I would only make the cow go dry, so that was the end of that.

Although I wasn't much use on the farm I became very resourceful in my own way. I acquired a couple of ferrets and some nets and with these I caught many rabbits which helped feed the family, and I dried the skins and sold them. I also went around the paddocks with a bag and collected up dead wool, which was wool from sheep that had died. This I also sold, resulting in me having a nest egg of 90 pounds by the time I was fifteen. Although the valley was very isolated it was also very beautiful with the Wollondilly River flowing through our farm. The river was mostly calm and beautiful but could become a raging torrent after rain, causing it to thunder over many dangerous rapids. The farm would become cut off from the outside world when the river was up, and during one period the farm was cut off completely for six weeks. During this time the family lived on the rabbits I caught and corn from the garden. We were mainly self-sufficient, baking our own bread, and making our own butter. There was always plenty of vegetables from the garden and fruit from the orchard. Also eggs from a large flock of hens and turkeys. With all this there was never any danger of the family going hungry. When we moved to the valley Ted brought with him a young wife and baby girl. The wife wasn't all that impressed with the isolation but put up with it. Roy made it more comfortable for them by building them a small cottage.

On one of my explorations up into the mountains I came across a deep cave that held a cache of ammunition. It must have been left there from the days of highway men. Being not too bright as I was, I emptied all the black gun powder out of their shells in a heap and set fire to it. It took ages for my eyebrows and fringe to grow back again.

With the money I earned from my rabbit and wool enterprise I was able to buy my own horse which I purchased from Edna's husband Harry. I loved her dearly and spent hours grooming her. It didn't matter to me that in her previous life she had pulled a milk cart around, Bessie and I went everywhere together. It took another stint of savings before I was able to buy a saddle. In the meantime I made do with a chaff bag across the horses back with an old stirrup iron tied on each side. This had one problem, if you leaned more on one side than the other you fell off. With this outfit I would ride the five miles to the Post Office-store to collect the mail. I sewed a pocket in either side of the bag to put the mail into or any other small items that needed collecting from the store. The Post Office store and church hall were the only buildings in the village of Upper Burragorang.

The road into the farm was in part along the side of a cliff that had a sheer drop of about 200 feet to the river below. The days that the truck was taken out on this road, everyone except the driver walked as the road was so narrow the outside dual wheel of the truck was part way over the edge. There was a bridge on part of the road and it had sunken badly over the years and was in danger of collapsing. All this didn't worry me because I hardly ever left the farm unless it was on horseback.

Television wasn't even thought about during those years and it wouldn't have worked at the farm anyway as there wasn't any electricity. We managed with kerosene lamps and candles for lighting and a kerosene fridge for cooling. There was also a Coolgardie safe in the laundry to keep things like milk cool. The safe was a square box made out of zinc and around the box was a frame about nine inches out from it. This was filled with charcoal and on top of the contraption was a tin box that held water. The water dripped down over the charcoal and the evaporation cooled the contents. We also had a butter cooler which was a ceramic dish with a lid and made very porous so when you poured water in the bottom it soaked up through the ceramic and the evaporation cooled the butter. The laundry was also the bathroom which only had a roof and three walls so you didn't hang around there for long in the winter time. I preferred to go down to the river with a cake of soap and have a swim as well as a wash. There was a big open fire in the main part of the house but it was hardly ever used, the family preferring to sit in the small kitchen with the wood stove giving out heat. The winds coming down from the snow-covered mountains were so strong and bitter it was hard to close the outside doors on the southern side. The house once had a shingle roof but over the years the shingles gave way to corrugated iron. Some rooms didn't have any ceiling, just large hand cut heavy oak beams across the rooms.
Chapter 3

I spent many happy hours exploring the mountains on my horse Bessie or charging across the hills pretending to be a caped crusader. I became well known in the area for my mad stunts on horseback. One day while swimming my horse across the flooded river, the horse and I were washed down stream and the force of the water trapped my horse up against a tree. I could easily have swum to the safety of the bank but the horse would have been lost. With pushing and pulling for half an hour I was able to free the horse. It was hard work as I was riding Roy's Clydesdale stallion, Major.

One afternoon I set out to find the milking cows on my horse. I thought they might be in a hidden valley and the only way into it from our side was down a very narrow track on a cliff with a twenty foot slope on the down side before a sheer drop into the river below. The day before I had read the story of the life of Adam Lindsey Gordon the writer. Gordon was a fine horseman and slightly mad. One of his favourite pastimes was to dare other horsemen to keep up with him in a game of follow the leader but none could, until one day a new rider took him up on the challenge. No matter what Gordon did he couldn't shake off the challenger. Gordon had one last trick up his sleeve and that was a wooden fence on top of a sheer cliff with just a five foot ledge on the other side. Gordon jumped the fence and his brave intelligent horse corkscrewed his body in mid-air and landed on the ledge. His challenger declined to follow. This impressed me no end at the age of fourteen and I imagined myself doing all kinds of daring feats. The cliff I was on this day didn't have a fence but to get down the track the horse had to jump from one ledge to another. The brave horse jumped but lost his footing on landing and both horse and rider went over the edge. We rolled over and over down the slope until we landed at the base of a tree on the edge of the sheer drop. The last thing I remembered about this episode was a large hoof coming straight for my face as the horse struggled to regain his feet. On my bed on the veranda I went in and out of consciousness for a week. The farm was too isolated to think of seeing a doctor or a trip to the hospital. The only broken bones were ribs so I was lucky. Coming out of the daze on one occasion there was a neighbour staring down at me and he said "he always knew I would come to a sticky end one day". All I could think of but wasn't able to say was, "Up yours too".

When I recovered I was back to my old tricks and for my next big feat I jumped my horse over a wire gate. Stupid idea as horses can't judge the height of a single wire and my horse caught his front feet on the top wire and summersaulted over the fence. This resulted in a greenstick fracture of my left arm and some damage to my back but this didn't slow me down for long either.

There were two other interests in my life apart from the valley and the horses and that was reading and music. I was able to sing a complicated aria from an opera that I had heard on the gramophone but this annoyed the family also as they were not into classical music. I loved my music and would disappear into it whenever I was stressed. I also read anything and everything I could get my hands on. Now and then a Sydney Morning Herald would turn up at the farm and I would read it from front to back, ads and all. Zane Grey books were also read several times over and comic books weren't to be sniffed at either. I would sit up well into the night reading by the light of a candle, or if I was lucky a kerosene lamp. My sister Lynda bought me a portable wind up gramophone and some records which gave me many hours of pleasure.

Sometimes I would go to the markets with Roy and be dropped off at my sister Edna and Harry's poultry farm at Pennant Hills. I loved working with Harry with his hens and at one time Harry asked Roy if I could stay with them for a couple of weeks to help him out and that he would pay me. It would have been better if I hadn't been around for that conversation, as Roy's reply was, "do you think he's worth paying". This put into my mind just how useless I was.

At fifteen years of age I was packed off to Sydney to become an apprentice carpenter. I was given a start with a builder on the North Shore building two story mansions, which wasn't a good idea as I was terrified of heights. I battled on for five months being paid three pounds and ten shillings a week and paying three pounds and ten shillings a week board. Knowing all along that I was no damn good anyway at the job, it came to an end. Another job was found for me as an apprentice to a firm making window frames. The owner was very good to me and did his best to motivate me but by this time I was pining for the great outdoors. Here I was getting three pounds and ten shillings a week but my board was now four pounds a week, so my savings were being depleted. After another five months this job came to an end also. I wasn't sorry as I hadn't fitted into life in Sydney one bit.

Roy must have been exasperated with me at this stage, so in desperation he took me off to a stock and station agent in Sydney. Yes the stock agent said, he had a client out at Coonamble who desperately needed an extra hand because the shearing was in full swing on the station. A few days later I was put on a night train to Coonamble, with a duffle bag containing two ex-army blankets and the few clothes I possessed. I took also my much loved windup gramophone that was like a small suitcase. I also had a battered old suitcase that held my treasures like books and records. It was rather an exciting time for me as I had written to several large cattle properties in the Northern Territory for a job but none of them had replied. I guessed they considered me to be too young. This was a start of a new life with many exciting adventures ahead. My sisters had given me a piece of advice before I left, and that was to be sure I wasn't to do anything to ruin a young girls life. There wasn't any explanation of what I might do to cause this problem and I was too slow on the uptake to work it out myself. This gave me reason to be extra cautious with the opposite sex. I knew about sex and how babies were born. I had seen it often enough with the farm animals but I didn't relate their activities to what I might be doing to cause a catastrophe. That had not entered my field of thoughts at this stage.

The train left Central railway station at 5-30 pm and it was the variety that ran on steam. As it chugged up through the Blue Mountains it became freezing cold as it was the month of June. The train had metal canisters on the floor filled with heated sand. This warmed up your feet but didn't do much for the rest of you.

As the train chugged on, heading ever westward a man in his thirties started up a conversation with me, I told the man I was on my way to a job on a property at Coonamble. The man said he was getting off at the next stop as he had a property there and if I liked I could get off to and come and work for him. I didn't think this would be the right thing to do so I declined the offer.

By midday the train reached Coonamble rail head which was the end of the line and as it was some distance out of town there wasn't any town to be seen. Nothing but flat open plains with not a tree in sight. I thought what a dismal place especially after living in the beautiful mountains. The grumpy old man who had come to pick me up was the father of the family I was going to work for. There were no niceties about the meeting as we sped out across the plains to the property.

The shearing was in full swing and I was expected to get straight into it even though I hadn't been told where I would be sleeping that night. The whole thing was confusing to me but I hopped in and did my best. The boss was 6:4" and built like a barn but otherwise quite friendly. I was given the job of operating the wool press. It had a long wooden lever that turned the cogs that pressed the wool into bales. I sprang into action having to jump up to reach the end of the lever. There I stayed swinging in mid-air unable to move the leaver. Joe, my boss came along and with one hand pushed the lever down. I was then given the job of loading the wool into the press and tramping it down. This I managed quite well along with hunting the sheep up into the shearer's pen.

That night I was given a bed in the shearer's quarters and I also ate with them while the shearing was on. Mostly they treated me like a young brother except a young roustabout who took a dislike to me, perhaps because he was no longer the youngest member of the team and wasn't getting the same amount of attention. The shearer's beds were made of iron and had very thin kapok mattress on them and nothing else unless you supplied it yourself. The rooms each had two beds and a small bedside cupboard. The worst feature of the rooms was the floor which was made of large wooden planks with two inch gaps between them. The bitter winds came blasting up through the cracks. The shearers made use of newspaper placed under the mattresses to deflect the wind. If you wanted a bath there was a copper out in the yard which you lit up to heat the water and then you carried the heated water to the bathroom. Once in the bathroom you had two choices, one of which was a shower. To use this you placed the end of the hose into the bucket of water you had carried in, then you manually worked the wooden handle to lift the water. Difficult in the fact that when you stopped working the handle the shower also stopped which left you with soap all over until you pumped again. The other facility was what was called a chair bath. It was like a large tin tub which you filled with water, then you gingerly sat down into it. This displaced a good amount of water and left you with very little to work with. As it was at ground level it wasn't that easy to get into but once in, you had some luxuries like at the low end your feet were over the side and the other end had a high back which you could lean back on to enjoy the experience.

Working on the property also was a man and his partner who also lived at the shearer's quarters. Part way through the shearing the men lodged a complaint about the cook who was a dirty old man, in his mind as well as his appearance. I made sure I was never alone with him. The cook was sacked and the station hand's partner took over the cooking. After the shearing was over the partner and her man went into town and came home very drunk. She stayed on a bender for a week and the man told them at the homestead that she had the 'flu. She was supposed to work at the homestead after the shearing. The woman screamed through the night for Frank, who was her partner, he had moved out into the shed. When he didn't answer she started screaming out for me. I found this all very frightening and unpleasant. The couple didn't stay there working after that for very long.

The old couple who actually owned the property were extremely religious to the point of being bigots. They were Methodist and so lived by the church that two of their grown children had committed suicide because of their oppressive lives. The two remaining sons who were in their late thirties and had been to war had to sneak up behind the shed to have a smoke. They did however teach me how to work hard and stick with it until the job was done. This gift was to help me through the rest of my life. I remember one morning up in the sheep yards we had eight hundred two year old sheep that had to be lifted one at a time up onto a rail for mulesing and I was to lift every one of them. Joe could see I was having difficulties getting my head around having to lift all those sheep up onto the rail. He said don't regard them as eight hundred, just think of them as one at a time. In my young mind it worked and I lifted the eight-hundred up on the rail. The old man taught me how to kill and butcher a sheep and from then on I was the butcher. The part I particularly didn't like was the offal which was fed to the dogs but before this happened I had to empty the guts which made mine give a heave for the first few times.

After the shearing I fitted into the life on the property and enjoyed working with Joe as he wasn't as staid as the parents. There were lots of horses to ride which made me very happy and I loved the mustering of the sheep and cattle. The God fearing old man told me right in the beginning that God's sunlight wasn't to be wasted which meant you started work before daylight and didn't stop until sundown and you worked five and a half days a week. There were several things the old man didn't agree with and they were, women didn't wear makeup, playing cards was a tool of the devil, dancing was off the list and if you played sport you didn't do it on a Sunday. I wasn't to swim in the lake by the homestead, I wasn't sure if he was afraid I might pollute the water or he was shocked at the sight of my undress.

As I fitted into this life I found diversity in the form of a small village about a mile away. In this village there was the compulsory two churches, a couple of houses, a church dance hall, a tennis club which was very active and a cricket club. The old people talked me into joining the Methodist church which was o.k. as I met a lot of friendly people there. I was never one to make friends easily but at least they included me in their activities. I also joined the tennis club and found I really enjoyed it and became a reasonable player. This was held on a Sunday which of course displeased the old people no end. I couldn't escape their displeasure so I decided they would just have to put up with it. When some of the tennis players invited me to dances, the old people didn't openly object but if I went to a dance on a Friday night Saturdays work load would be twice as much. Young single men were very scarce in this part of the country. Most of the graziers had produced daughters so I being presentable, able to dance and play tennis. I was very much in demand. This was a completely new set of events for me and I liked it. The loner young man was starting to thaw out.
Chapter 4

There was a grand ball once a month through the winter in Coonamble and some of them were so grand you had to have an invitation to attend them. Not only did I receive invitations but the young lady who I was to partner called for me in her car. Roy hearing of these events, in his usual sarcastic way commented, "So you're trying to root your way into money are you"? That comment made me feel very alienated from him.

When I turned eighteen I was called up into the National Service. Joe who had been through the war was very concerned for me but he couldn't realise that I was thrilled by the prospect of a new adventure. Off I went to the Holsworthy Army barracks where I fared better than most because I already had short back and sides and I walked very upright. After all the marching drill was over, the young men were put into sections. The camp wasn't very grand, just a set of large marquees with twenty men to each. I wasn't all that keen about crawling through mud and under barbed wire, so when I was asked if I wanted to join the athletic team as a distance runner I jumped at the chance. It meant that you had special food, no drill and the most you did was run around the oval all day. I was unlucky here because the week before the big race I had to go into the army hospital because of a spot on my lung. I was there for a week and they were unable to find out what the spot was. The day I went into hospital there was another soldier from my camp who wasn't staying. I asked him if he would take my keys back to the camp and lock up my gear. He must have had an awful grudge against me because when he locked up my gear he also bundled into the locker as much of other soldier's gear as he could fit. The result was when I returned to camp I was accused of stealing. I protested my innocence but very few believed me and shunned me from that day on. The week in hospital had weakened me so on the day of the big race I had lost my get up and go resulting in me coming in third last, but I did finish the race. I did however make some long term friends there which made me feel isolated when I returned to Coonamble.

When I returned to the property, Joe had employed another eighteen year old boy who was from the city. He was very street wise and disgruntled me with his constant complaints about the work conditions. I began to think perhaps working from daylight until dark wasn't such a good life and I was missing my time in the army. I didn't like the new chum very much as he was too smart and not a good worker, so I decided to get another job. As I was well liked around the area it wasn't long before an old couple offered me a job on their property. I didn't want the old couple to be blamed for taking one of their workers so I went to stay on a friend's property for two months before I took up his new position with them. The first property had made me into a strong person with great work ethics. My physical strength was nearly my undoing before I left. I liked showing off my strength and one day loading up large heavy fence posts onto a truck my legs collapsed from under me and it took the two months with my friends to recover, but my back remained a problem throughout my life. I was quite keen on the daughter of my friends as she was my main partner at dances. She was as tall as me and we made a great team on the dance floor or the tennis court. Our friendship never went any further than good friends as I was very aware of the financial difference between us.

Arriving at the new property I had a room in the house and was treated like a son. The old couple had married late in life and were like a couple of old maids. They were only on the property every second month, spending the alternate month in Sydney for the man to have treatment for crippling arthritis. That left me on the property on my own for half the time and it was very lonely for me, even though I had the use of the farm's model T Ford to visit friends and go to tennis matches. The telephone there was on a party line, a line that serviced several properties on the one line. I was able to talk for free to my neighbours on the 'phone at any time but this wasn't always a good thing as one neighbour who was the brother of Joe and he had trouble sleeping and it was quite common for him to ring me at 4am and ask if I was awake. It was a friendly enough gesture but a nuisance all the same. The neighbours used to joke about my bachelor ways, like eating off a plastic table cloth to save washing up plates and being a proficient cook with great knowledge of the working of a can opener.

When the old couple were there they played the card game of 500 every single night and listened to the ABC's dirge programs. I joined them for some time but tired of the sameness of the game, especially as the old man always won and the music really grated on me. I preferred to retreat to my room after dinner and listen on my newly acquired portable battery radio and a hoe-down programme that went all night with country and western music. It was the only radio station apart from the ABC you could get out there. My other entertainment was to play my gramophone and sing along with it in full voice.

The house on the property was just a very old run down settler's cottage. The property had been left to the old man by his mother who he had cared for her until she died. He was well into his fifties by then. He had to have a house keeper so he married a spinster from a neighbouring property. They decided to upgrade their living conditions and built an enormous house on another part of the property. It was far too big for the two old people and their worker but they loved it. From the early days of going to Coonamble I had subscribed to a magazine called The National Geographic. This was my escape out of the dreary life I lived. I called it a dreary life but really was a case of loneliness. I read every one from front to back, more than once at times. I was fascinated by how people lived around the world, the great sights to see and the difference of the people in other countries. I yearned to experience these people and places for myself and was determined to make it happen one day.

My wage was three pounds and ten shillings per week and keep, I saved nearly every penny of it into a bank account. I would send my money off to my sister Lynda and she would bank it for me so I wouldn't be tempted to spend it. The old lady from the first property helped me in this regard. Daily she would say, a penny saved is a penny made. Nothing was ever wasted there and she also taught me how to darn my socks and mend my clothes, also the correct way to iron clothes. These were valuable lessons for me through life. It wasn't hard to save as there really wasn't much to spend it on. Very few young men at that time had their own transport and I was no exception. If I was going to a ball I would drive the old open model T Ford over to whoever I was going to the ball with and travel in with them. It was always freezing cold on the drive back home in the early hours of the morning as the Ford didn't have a roof or windscreen. The old couple always encouraged me to attend these functions and I did so with flair buying myself a blue tuxedo, a dinner suit, bow tie and patent leather dancing shoes. At the time sing-alongs were popular at parties and I really enjoyed gathering around a piano and singing to the latest tunes and some of the old ones. I was always welcome at these events as my voice had become strong and clear.

Burr cutting was a constant job on the property and was quite tedious. One day as I was cutting burrs from around the turkey nest dam, which the sheep had been walking around in the wet leaving lots of spikey clay peaks that had dried out leaving them very sharp, I decided to go for a swim as it was very hot. So I stripped off and was having a beaut swim until I noticed there was a large brown snake also swimming a short distance away. I lost no time getting out of the water and grabbing my burr cutting hoe and heading to where the snake was also getting out of the water. I made a swipe at the snake and missed which stirred the snake up to the point it made a lunge for me. I sprang so high that I lost my footing on landing and landed on the spikey earth with my bare bottom. I didn't feel any pain, my mind was on the snake as I leapt up and away in case the snake was still after me. Of course it wasn't, as all it wanted was to escape.

One of the girls from the tennis club had just returned from a backpacking tour of Europe and was a great source of information and inspiration about the wonders of travel. I became more and more keen on my ambition to see the world and I bought her rucksack, camera and sleeping bag from her. She was very supportive of my desires to travel and helped me in any way she could. Even down to warning me about the ladies of the night in Soho London who would ruin me and my name.

With this extra motivation I went all out to make my plans happen. I contacted Cooks Travel agency in Sydney and booked a return passage to England on board the ship The Fair- Sea for the princely sum of three hundred and sixteen pounds. When I told the old couple I worked for what I planned to do in six months' time they were very displeased and made the last six months of my work there very unpleasant. It didn't help that all the neighbours were excited about my forthcoming trip. The Ferguson tractor I was filling up with petrol caught fire and exploded, this didn't help either.

One day when I was again cutting burrs, it became really hot and there was a mosquito plague on, so this meant you worked fully covered up even in the heat. This day the heat and mosquitos were getting to me and I felt very down. To escape the insects and find a stray breeze I climbed into a tree where I settled down for a break. I must have drifted off a little as I dreamed of my journey and was asking myself if I was doing the right thing and would I be able to manage. My friend from the tennis club was on a different level as she had a good education and a backup of wealthy parents. As these doubts were tumbling around in my head suddenly I heard a strong clear voice saying, "if you don't do this you will forever regret it". It gave me such a strong strange feeling and I never doubted again. Where the voice came from was a mystery as I was miles from any other person, but it was so clear.

Roy must have decided I wasn't such a waste of space after all and drove out to Coonamble to pick me up along with my gear. Roy wasn't all that keen on me setting off on such a journey and said it wasn't too late to change my mind. But that thought never entered my head.

On reaching Sydney I had all the inoculations done ready for the trip and passport in hand. I decided to make a quick trip to Frankston in Victoria to say goodbye to my sister Lynda who had encouraged me to save for the trip. Lynda was nursing at the hospital there and sneaked me into the nurse's home to stay the night. One of the nurses was on night duty and offered her bed saying the next day that she had spent some time trying to get a man into her bed, and wasn't it a pity she wasn't able to be there.

In early January 1958 Roy and the family drove me to the ship on the great day. It was wonderful to have such support on this big adventure. My land army friend, Lesley was also there to wave me off, one cousin had placed six bottles of dry ginger ale in my cabin to ward off sea sickness. There was much laughter, hugs and slaps on the back as I boarded the ship. There was a band playing and a myriad of streamers going from ship to shore. It was a very emotional moment as the mighty ship pulled out from the dock and sailed majestically out through Sydney Harbour on a glorious sunny day. I busied himself settling into my cabin, which was on the lowest deck and held seven passengers. There wasn't a lot of room in the cabin and the bunks were very narrow. If one person wanted to go in or out of the cabin the others would have to get up on their bunks. Our luggage was also kept in the cabin. My cabin mates were of a mixed bunch. There was an English family returning to England. The father was in my cabin and his wife and two daughters were in the cabin next door. The family had gone out to Australia to pick up his drowned son's ashes and he had them under his bunk. There was an Austrian boy my age named Franz who was madly in love with a girl on the ship who was disembarking when the ship reached Tahiti.

All the signs on the ship were written in Italian and I spent the first week showering in the ladies as I didn't know the difference between senor and senora. It all became clear when one day I met a lady going in as I was coming out.

I was slightly concerned about sea sickness as I always felt sick on the Manly ferry but luckily with a positive attitude I became a good sailor. There was just so much to learn and observe for me on the ship. There were 1500 passengers aboard and they were a very diverse crowd. A great number of them had been working in the mines at Mount Isa Queensland and with their big bundle of cash were returning to their homelands to retire. At the dining table, the other guests were all from Holland and there was a mum, dad and family. The eldest daughter was the only one who spoke English so I had a wonderful time learning to speak Dutch. They treated me as one of the family. The father often tried to have a conversation with me and I could never understand him. The daughter explained that he was really speaking Dutch but giving it an English sound hoping I would understand. The food was great and as I wasn't sea sick I was really able to enjoy myself.

The evenings were hard for me to join in as I didn't drink alcohol and wasn't used to breasting the bar. There were dances every night but I avoided these as they were nowhere near like the formal balls I was used to and I didn't have a partner.
Chapter 5

I looked on from the sidelines hoping I would become brave enough to join in. With these minor drawbacks, I was having a great time.

The first port of call was Auckland on the north island of New Zealand. As the ship sailed in the loud speaker said they were entering Auckland harbour, the land of the long white cloud. Looking at the shoreline that's exactly what it looked like with its miles of pristine white sand beaches. The ship was to be in the harbour for a full day and night so I caught a bus into the city and explored all I could. Visiting a Maori sacred village and a magnificent horse racetrack that had been beautifully landscaped. I caught a taxi back to the ship at the end of the day and found the driver had a sense of humour. When I told the driver I had to get back to the Fair Sea, the driver said, mate that ship left at lunchtime. Nearly panic stations until I realised the driver was pulling my leg. It was a Friday when the ship arrived in Auckland and as the ship sailed out next morning it was announced that it was also Friday because of the International Date Line. Good luck for one of the passengers as it was his twenty-first birthday and he got to have two. What a lasting celebration.

Between New Zealand and Tahiti the ship ran in to a tropical storm which made it pitch and rock and roll. It was the only time I came close to being seasick on the trip. The ship pitched so badly that it was necessary to hold onto the sides of the bunk to avoid being thrown out.

The ship arrived just off the coast of Tahiti at 4 am and as it waited to enter the harbour the sun rose behind the island giving it a magnificent glow. It was breathtakingly beautiful. When the ship docked and the passengers were allowed to go ashore I was taken aback by the heavily scented air. The humidity was something I had never encountered before as was the overpowering scents from the tropical flowers like frangipanies. What excitement exploring a truly foreign country. All the signs were written in French and the French-Polynesian young girls were very beautiful. I spent the day exploring the town of Papeete and other parts of the island I could get to. The shops were full of exotic goods and I bought a grass skirt to wear at the Tahitian celebrations that was coming up on the night after we left Tahiti.

The evening in town was an education for me. There were several night clubs and they all had Polynesian dances in full swing. Most of the clubs were alfresco affairs. There were several French naval ships in port and the sailors were making the most of their time on shore. The dances they were doing were very suggestive. It comprised the partners dancing around each other in a frenzy and when the couple had built up enough steam, the couple would dance themselves out into the palm groves and did not return. At the end of the evening I met up with a Dutch girl off the ship and we walked back hand in hand. I felt comfortable with this arrangement until the girl said, do we have to walk hand in hand like an old couple. I wasn't sure where to go to from there as I had no idea what the next step should be so we just walked back on board and said goodnight.

Before the ship sailed the next morning there was a commotion on the docks. It was the ship's doctor completely off his head with drink and the crew were trying to coax him back on board. They eventually did by offering him ice-cream and we were able to set sail.

The evening out from Tahiti was to be a Tahitian night theme. Every one dressed up in the Tahitian outfits that they had bought on the island. I wore the grass skirt I had purchased over my swimmers that evening. With the music swaying and a couple of Tahitian beers I got right into the festivities and had a great time dancing along with people I didn't even know. I didn't think much about the fact that I had very little on but a lady quite a bit older than me did. When the evening was over she asked me to escort her to her cabin. Being a gentleman I did so but when we reached the cabin she invited me in. This gave me a big jolt and I hastily bid the lady goodnight. The next day when I came across the lady she was very sour and told me she had never been so insulted in her life.

Franz, the Austrian boy from my cabin was devastated at having to part with his great love in Tahiti but he soon recovered and was without delay in hot pursuit of another love. He had plenty to choose from as the girls on board outnumbered the boys five to one. Whatever his method was it wasn't working as no romance came about.

The voyage from Tahiti to Panama Canal was a very long haul and I often stood on the bow of the ship wondering what was ahead for me as I watched the sail fish and dolphins go by. It wasn't boring as I filled my days with observing the other passengers and learning in some part how to interact with others. It was still a problem for me but I was getting there. The sixteen year old daughter of the Englishman in my cabin was very pretty but a bother to me as she shadowed me wherever I happened to be. The father encouraged the friendship and told me I must come and stay with them when I reached England. I thought of her as a boring pesky child and avoided her as much as possible.

The next port of call was Balboa on the western side of the Panama Canal. The ship only stayed there long enough to arrange the passage through the canal. It was interesting watching the intricate method of the canal journey. That afternoon the ship docked at Portobello on the eastern side of the canal. We were in port for the rest of the day and that night. Franz and I decided to go ashore and explore the town. It was so different from anything either of us had ever seen before. The population was mainly black Africans and the ship hadn't warned us of any dress code. As it was quite hot we both wore shorts. This caused a big problem. All the old biddies chased after us, yelling at us in their own language and if they got close enough would run their hands over our legs and pull the hair on them. We beat a hasty retreat back to the ship and changed into long pants.

That evening as we strolled around the town we came across a night club that had an interesting show on. We went in and bought a beer each and sat down. It was very pleasant sitting there watching the show and when we had finished our beers we sat on, neither of us being drinkers. This wasn't on as far as the club was concerned and we were asked to leave. We strolled around the town looking at the shops and at one point we were separated. It was then that a large black woman came up to me and asked me if I would like to go home with her. I was so taken aback that I gave a cough and splutter, this caused her to say that I wasn't well and she should take me home and make me better. I got my composure back and told her I was meeting a friend. When I eventually met up with Franz and told him about the lady, Franz said what a pity, if he had been there he would have gone with her.

The next morning the ship left Portobello and sailed to Curacao in the West Indies. We arrived there in the morning and were to be there all day. It wasn't a very interesting place so the two of us opted to go to the movies. It was decided that I would line up at the ticket box with the crowd of natives and buy the tickets. This was because Franz was fairly short and would be lost in the crowd. The ticket box didn't open for some time and when it did there was a mad rush to buy tickets. This caused a fight to break out with me right in the middle of the scrum. When I managed to fight my way out of the melee I hardly had a stich of clothes on, they had been torn off in the fight. That was the end of the movie as we hurried back to the ship.

That evening as the ship set sail across the Atlantic I felt unwell and missed dinner. It was like I had a mouthful of ashes. The next day I felt even worse so with misgivings off I went to visit the ship's doctor. The doctor admitted me to the hospital while he discovered what was wrong. There I stayed for the next two weeks vomiting constantly. I was too weak to get out of bed and with the care of the alcoholic German doctor who spoke limited English and an Italian nurse who spoke no English at all I went the two weeks without a shave or even a wash. I wasn't able to eat and water wouldn't stay down. After a few days they became concerned enough to inject me twice a day with a saline solution. The doctor said he thought I was suffering from homesickness and if I didn't pull myself together he would put me ashore when they reached Portugal. I was too sick to care one way or another. The Italian nurse decided to force feed me and her method was to pull my nose upward and try to force bread down my throat. They also made up a concoction of wine and raw egg which they tried to force me to drink. To add to my misery the ship broke down halfway across the Atlantic and wallowed for two days before it was fixed. The ship reached Portugal but I didn't see it as I wasn't far off unconsciousness. Luckily I wasn't put ashore either.

None of the passengers knew where I had disappeared too and only one bothered to find out. It was the Dutch girl I had met in Tahiti. She was a nurse and when she came to visit me, straight away she said, you've got yellow jaundice. It made me feel better that I wasn't going off my head.

When the ship docked in Southampton the Doctor told me that there was something very wrong with me but he didn't know what. He said he had contacted the port authorities and told them that there was a sick passenger on board. They were clever enough not to let the authorities know of my condition until after all the passengers had left the ship.

It was such a relief for me when a genuine English speaking doctor came on board to inspect me. I was taken off the ship and into a waiting ambulance. As the ambulance drove to the Southampton hospital I looked out the window and thought to myself, what a way to have the first glimpse of the country I had dreamed about for so long. When I was checked out at the hospital the doctor said I was only just in time, any more days at sea and I wouldn't have made it. My liver was very swollen and I was more yellow than a China-man.

I stayed in the hospital for six weeks and was only let out then because I told them I had somewhere to go and someone to look after me. I didn't have either of these things but was anxious to start my adventure. In the hospital I was in an infectious ward under constant supervision because I was so weak. The staff had not had an Australian in before and I was treated like royalty, even down to the cleaners. The radiologist was a pretty girl with bright red hair and when I was on the mend she took me on several drives out into the country in her red MG sports car. The other nurses told me not to set my cap for her as she was a radiologist and her job would probably make her barren.

I felt really well by this time and had no qualms about setting off for London by train. I didn't realise just how weak I was until I reached London. I just managed to find and get myself to a YMCA hostel where I planned to stay the night. When I reached the hostel I felt like death warmed up. The hostel warden interviewed me to see if I was suitable to stay in their illustrious hostel. I felt I better get it right when the warden asked me very seriously, do you love Jesus? Whether I did or not I planned on staying at the hostel that night so I brightly said, of course. I was shown to a barrack like room with about ten narrow beds in it. Overcome with weakness I went straight to bed. I didn't sleep very well as the mattress was of the old kapok type that had gone into lumps and there were very few blankets and I was cold through the night. I thought how lucky I had been to spend the last six weeks in a nice warm hospital, especially as Southern England had experienced the worst blizzard for forty years. Other dead beat types of men came in during the night to sleep but I didn't interact with them at all. I was quite relieved next morning to set off for the railway station to travel to York in northern England. It was a fascinating journey traveling through large expanses of open moors, lakes and mountains. The moors were covered in a great display of pink gorse bushes.

During my long lonely times out on the stations in Australia I started corresponding with a pen friend and we had formed a friendship over the time. Stan was a farmer from Selby in Yorkshire and had invited me to stay on his farm. Stan picked me up from the station when I reached York and drove me around the city to see the sights. The one spot that stuck in my memory was entering the York Cathedral. It was a magnificent ancient building and its enormous interior was breathtakingly beautiful.

When we reached the quaint village of Selby I was intrigued by the layout of the houses. All the farm houses were built around an open park in a circle. Stan's house was very substantial and must have felt very empty with just one person living in it. All the rooms had heaters going in them to ward off the damp as it was still winter. Stan explained that the rising damp would take over if he didn't use the heaters. Stan had a delightful old cook-housekeeper and her meals were something to remember, especially her shepherd's pie and Yorkshire pudding. She immediately set about to put a bit of fat on this skinny foreigner. She really did help me to recover some of my strength with her wonderful meals.

Stan gave me a tour of the farm. It wasn't like what I was used to. The cattle were all kept in a large barn for the winter and there were about ten of them, not the hundred or so I was used to. The main produce from the farm was cereal crops and potatoes. The potatoes that were going off to market were loaded into fairly large bags on a trailer and then taken into the farm yard and transferred on to a truck. To do this one man lowered the bags onto the shoulders of the workers and they then carried them across to the truck. Half the workers were women and as I watched them I thought I could help as it looked easy. Not so, as the bag was lowered onto my shoulders the weight flattened me and I ended up on the ground, much to the amusement of the workers.
Chapter 6

The bulk of the potatoes were kept in the field. After they were harvested they were placed in a heap in a long line built up like a triangle. Then they were covered in thick straw and the straw was then covered in a thick layer of earth to preserve them until they were ready to be sold. The workers were friendly enough to me but I had a hard time understanding what they were talking about as their accents were so broad. Stan was well educated and didn't have such an accent much to my relief. The female workers were very forward in flirting with me much to the annoyance of the men. As I couldn't understand what they were saying it was safe enough. Stan was a very good host and drove me over much of the moors with snow still in drifts. I was amazed at all the open space. At home in Australia I imagined that there would be very little open space left with such a huge population. We visited an Inn several times but I wasn't able to drink any alcohol because of my illness so I stuck to squash. I stayed at Stan's for two weeks and felt a sense of loss as I caught the train back to London. On my own again but excited for the adventure ahead.

In London I stayed at a small private hotel which turned out to be a home away from home. The rooms were clean, quiet and the meals were very good. There was an Australian boy my age staying there who had won a bursary to train under a famous German baritone in Munich Germany. He was staying a few days in London before completing his journey to Germany. We hit it off straight away, especially when John found that I was also a competent singer. We sang a few duets for the dinner guests at the hotel. One of our highlights of the stay was a visit to Covent Garden to hear the production of The Barber of Saville. I was enthralled with the performance, the first I had ever seen.

The hotel agreed to store my two suitcases for me while I packed everything I needed for my trip around the Continent in my rucksack. Sleeping bag, spare clothes, camera and a small supply of dried food. We both set off for Dover by train where we caught a ferry across the English Chanel to Calais. It was great excitement for both of us as neither of us had had this experience before. From Calais we caught a train to Cologne in Germany. There we booked into a hotel and set off to explore the city. It was in very bad shape having been extensively bombed during the war. The magnificent Cathedral while still standing tall and proud was badly damaged. It made us think about the futility of war and the massive losses with no gains for the day to day people. That evening we decided to have dinner at the hotel, both ordering roast pork. When the meal arrived we both thought it was strange that the desert arrived with the main meal. The pork was delicious and then we tucked into the desert. It tasted awful and when I asked the waiter about it I was told that it wasn't desert, it was the apple sauce to go with the pork. We both had a lot to learn about food as well as life in general.

The next morning we decided to catch a river boat down the Rhine to Koblenz. It was a most magical trip with the high mountains on either side of the river covered with apple trees that were out in full bloom. Just about on every peak stood a massive old world castle. I dreamed about the times long ago when these castles were the defence for Lords who had to keep their enemy's at bay and protect their lands. What a time they must have had, as the castles seemed impenetrable. We passed a bend in the river where the mythical Lorelai who was very beautiful was said to have sat on the rocks by the river and lured the sailors to their death. There is a beautiful song written about this lady and John and I burst into song in a duet as they passed the famed rocks. It went down well with the other passengers. Many of the passengers were American and I found myself defending Australia as one obnoxious lady asked who would want to go to Australia when they could come to Europe. This ignorant lady couldn't be persuaded otherwise so I gave her a wide berth for the rest of the trip. It was getting dark by the time we reached Koblenz and up in a castle far above the town a great display of fireworks was set off creating an amazing display.

We stayed that night in a hotel in Koblenz and the next morning caught a train to Munich. Several of John's opera friends from Australia were also studying there and they met him at the station. We all went off to a café for lunch. I was amused at the falseness of the group as each tried to beat his or her drum about their achievements. I decided they were a very shallow lot, not worth knowing so I bid farewell to John and his friends.

It did not bother me that now I was on my own in a strange country where little English was spoken. I had a map of where all the youth hostels were and was sure I could find my way. As I walked through a beautiful park with many huge fine statues an old man tried to have a conversation with me. I couldn't understand what the old man was saying but I did notice he frequently pointed to the genitals on the statues. I left him rather quickly and set off for the hostel.

Arriving at the hostel I didn't feel all that welcome until it was established that I was an Australian and not an Englishman. This happened in many German hostels at that time. During this period, young men wore hair oil on their hair, it was the fashion. I had a small bottle of Californian Poppy for my use in my rucksack. When I entered the dormitory at the hostel and started unpacking my rucksack there were several young men observing this foreigner. To their amusement and my embarrassment the bottle of Californian Poppy had broken and my belongings reeked of its perfume. That was the end of using that hair oil. I later found a much better hair dressing called Brill Cream which I used for a short time until I found it better not to use any. My hair was thick and wavy so I didn't really need anything. I stayed for two nights at the Munich hostel, not enjoying myself much after my unfortunate start with the hair oil.

Early on the second morning I set out by train for Zurich in Switzerland where I had been invited to stay with a family of a girl from the Fair Sea. I was made very welcome and stayed with them for two weeks. During that time I got off to a great start learning and understanding German, as the daughter of the house was the only one who spoke English. The family went on long hikes up through the forests and mountains gathering wild herbs with me. It was very interesting learning what was edible out in the wild. The houses were very interesting to see with their high pitched roofs to deflect the snow and their quaint window boxes. The window boxes mainly grew geraniums which had a glorious display of colour but these plants had to be taken indoors during the winter. It was now spring so they were at their best. Not like the geraniums that almost grew wild in Australia and never looked after.

I went shopping with the daughter Simone and her girlfriend. During the morning I heard the girlfriend say to Simone, "if you dye his temples grey on either side he would pass for our age". Simone said no, "he's just like a young brother to me". That was very comforting to me as I didn't want any complications right now. The Rumanian mother sang a very boisterous song to me. When I asked Simone what it was all about she said it was an old love song that meant if she could turn back time I wouldn't be safe with her. Quite a compliment I thought. Being a fresh air freak I would open the windows wide as I went to bed and in the morning I would find them firmly closed. This happened several times until I asked Simone why. She told me that the mother regarded the night air as poisonous and the windows must be tightly closed at night. The bedding was another thing that I hadn't seen before. It was made up with a bottom sheet and no top sheet, just a huge fluffy doona. However it kept me very snug. I had never seen a doona in Australia, just my thin ex-army blankets.

After two wonderful weeks I set off by train for the Liechtenstein border. There I decided to begin my next journey as a hitch-hiker and stay at youth hostels. It was very much the done thing at that time. I was a bit of a failure at hitching a ride to start with but I didn't mind walking through this beautiful country as it was a great joy to me. In the evening I found I had walked from the Swiss border to the Austrian border. Before crossing the border I decided to stay the night in a youth hostel in Liechtenstein. This was an experience as the dormitory beds were just raised platforms without any mattress. Luckily it was mandatory to have a sleeping bag which gave some comfort while sleeping on the hard planks. The hostel only cost one shilling and six pence per night and the adequate meals were the same price. I found as I travelled that this was the going rate in most hostels, except in some of the more fancy ones it might be three shillings and six pence.

The next morning I crossed into Austria and set off hitch-hiking with much better success. A lone person had a much better chance of getting a lift than two or more. I always kept myself neat and tidy and that also helped in hitching a ride. I headed for Innsbruck for my next stop. I never just stood by the side of the road looking for a lift, instead I set out walking along the road. The beauty of the snow-capped mountains overwhelmingly special and I drank in every moment. It was evening by the time I reached Innsbruck and settled into a youth hostel. I had a great evening there with lots of friendly hostellers, most of whom spoke English. That night in the dormitory wasn't so great though. The dormitory consisted of many double bunk beds and I had a top one. Two bunks over there was a much older man sleeping. I had never had to deal with someone snoring loudly before and this man kept waking me up with his loud snorts and grunts. It became extremely annoying and to combat this I threw items such as rolled up socks at him to wake him up. The next morning I decided I would move to another hostel. Unfortunately the old man had decided he had had enough of this young lout throwing things at him and also decided to move. Would you believe to the same hostel? On a lighter note couple of boys and I decided to go mountain climbing starting off early the next morning.

It deflated our egos somewhat when we were half way up the mountain feeling very proud of ourselves, we met an old lady on her way back down. She had already been to the top. Soon after a storm of sleety rain poured down on us. We climbed half way up a steep cliff to find refuge in a cave. We waited the storm out there and all was well until we tried to descend from the cave. The rain had turned to ice and the rock face was dangerously slippery. We did manage to descend without any breakages, slowly. That was the end of the mountain climb for the day. The next day I decided to catch a cable car to the top. A much better option than all that climbing. At the top there were two peaks joined by a ridge covered in snow. The furthest peak was much higher than the close one and I decided I would cross the ridge to the far one. Half way across with a leg each side of the ridge and a thousand foot drop on either side I froze and couldn't go forward or back. A young Austrian boy came to my rescue and said he would help me to the far peak but I had lost interest in the far peak by this time. The boy helped me back to safety. Back on safe ground and retreating to half way down the mountain, I and some of the hostel boys had great fun skying, or rather sliding down some of the less steep slopes. It was great in Innsbruck but time to move on.

The next morning I set out for Salzburg hitching a ride. It was a beautiful day and I didn't mind the few times I had to walk. I seldom had a lift that took me all the way. In Salzburg I booked into a Youth Hostel and then set about exploring the city. The parks were a mass of roses in full bloom and there were orchestras playing Mozart's music in them. I visited the house where Mozart grew up and that night I had great joy attending the Mozart opera, "The Magic Flute". I had decided to move on the next morning, heading for Vienna but it was raining so I reckoned another day in Salzburg would be a good idea.

A young American girl was staying at the hostel and she took a fancy to me. In her mind she had decided that I had travelled so far I must be wealthy. She talked non-stop all day and by afternoon I wished she was somewhere else. To escape her I announced I was off to a musical night at a local wine cellar. She said what a great idea, she would come along too. As we were about to leave the hostel two girls came in the front door. They were traveling through but because of the rain had decided to stop over for the night. I started chatting to them and asked where they were from and where they had been. They said they were from Ireland which I found hard to believe as there accents were more English, but from Ireland they did come. They asked me where I was off to next and I told them I was headed for Vienna to see the Spanish Riding School horses perform. Quite a coincidence as they had just come from there and were on their way home. I told them I was just heading out to have dinner at a wine cellar that had great music and would they like to join me. Safety in numbers. That would be grand they said and after they had booked into the hostel the four of us set off. The two Irish girls and I had a lot to talk about with their common interest in horses. We chatted well into the night. The American girl felt very left out and part way through the evening she got into a huff and left, I never saw her again. The two girls were Patsy and Alice, both great horse riders. From quite small they had been out fox hunting, over stone walls and ditches. Patsy worked on her father's farm and Alice was nursing at Saint Vincent's Hospital in Dublin. Alice had won a hundred pounds in the hospital art union and she decided to share it with Patsy and travel around Europe. We were all having such an enjoyable time at the wine cellar we didn't notice how late it was getting. By the time we returned to the hostel it was closed and to get in we had to pay a fine. I gallantly paid the fine for the three of us. The next morning we were heading off to our destinations, me to Vienna and Alice and Patsy heading home. We had breakfast together before leaving and the girls invited me to visit them when I reached Ireland.

As I set off for Vienna I decided to make a side trip and call in on Franz, the Austrian boy from the Fair Sea. Franz lived at Graz but by the time I reached the hostel there it was cold and miserable. The hostel was part of a University complex and very basic.
Chapter 7

As it was considered summer all the hot water for the showers was turned off, this was general procedure over most of Europe. The showers were all in an open space and the wash basin was a long trough with taps along it. The atmosphere here made me feel very flat and despondent especially after having such a great time in Salzburg. Whatever the reason I couldn't muster up enough enthusiasm to search out and visit Franz so the next day I continued my journey to Vienna.

Vienna was a wonderful old city with beautiful forested mountains around it which I explored over the next few days. I was particularly interested in seeing the Blue Danube River. It was a mighty river, very impressive but brown not blue. One of the tours around the city I met a wealthy Australian boy who was doing a world tour by 'plane. I asked him about his travels and was disappointed to learn the boy's idea of travel was not from one city to another but from one pub to another. He had seen very little outside of hotel bars. A wealthy American I met was also flying from one city to another and he asked me about my travels. He was most impressed with what I had seen and done and wished he could do the same. A trip to attend a performance at The Spanish Riding School in the Schonbrunn Palace was a highlight for me. The dancing snow white stallions with their rock steady riders really impressed me. I would have liked to have become part of the school but was told you had to qualify as a top rider before you could be accepted. I didn't think my western style of riding would get me very far. Strauss waltzes were being played for the horses to perform to and it was magical.

From Vienna I travelled to Linz where I had been invited to stay with a passenger off the Fair Sea. Josef had retired and had returned to stay with his family in a small mountain village north of Linz. I was made very welcome by Josef and his family. The two brothers would have been in their fifties and Josef's brother had a son Fritz, just a bit younger than me. Fritz stuck by me like a shadow as he had ambitions of becoming a pilot and was desperate to learn English. He also hungered for information about the world in general. I stayed with the family for two weeks and increased my German as well as helping Fritz with his English. One evening the men all went to an Inn where traditional Austrian Folk music was being played and also lots to eat and drink. I played it safe by only drinking cider, not realising it had a high alcohol content. I felt fine until I returned to where I was staying and confronted with the stairs to the house, I simply passed out. The family must have carried me off to bed. I felt very embarrassed when I went down for breakfast the next morning and there was an inquest as to what had happened. The meals with the family were very good except one when I was presented with a slab of pig fat partly cooked. I tried to eat it but had to admit in the end that I wasn't really hungry. I really enjoyed myself with the family and admired the simplicity of their lives. They had very little but were quite happy with what they had. I was sad at the end of the two weeks when I had to say goodbye to them. Fritz gave me his favourite fishing lure which I felt bad about taking but he insisted.

From Linz I set off for Nurnberg where I stayed the night at a youth hostel. Sightseeing around the city soon lost its appeal for me as my heart was still in the mountains so I decided to head off wherever the ride took me. Walking out of Nurnberg heading north I was hailed by five Australian boys who had hired a car in London to travel around Europe. As they were also going north they invited me to join them and share the expenses. I thought this was worth a try and set off north with them. Half way to Hannover they stopped for the night to camp by a stream. They had a couple of tents and some camping equipment. We cooked our dinner over an open fire and sat chatting around the fire keeping warm. We then retired to the tents, three to a tent. This was fine until I was drifting off to sleep and felt a strange feeling around my crutch area. Fully awake I found one of the boys was running his hand gently over my sleeping bag. The boy said, I hope you don't mind me making a nuisance of myself. I was shocked that he even thought I would be interested in such activities and firmly told him to keep his hands to himself and play with his own dick. There was no further trouble but next morning I felt dirtied so I stripped off and plunged into the ice cold creek to rid myself of this feeling. I decided not to continue traveling with the group and asked if they would drop me off in Hannover, which they did. As they drove away a passer-by pointed to a purse that he thought I had dropped as I alighted from the car. It turned out to be the group's small change purse. The wandering hand boy must have dropped it out as I was leaving the car in a vain attempt to continue the contact. There wasn't a lot of money in it but had the address of where the group was staying in London. I decided I would post it to them when I returned to England.

I really wanted to travel to Berlin but to do so by road I would have to travel through the Russian zone. My passport was marked not valid for East Germany. I tried to get a visa from the British Consul but they said no and if I went into East German territory they would not be able to help me in any way if I got into difficulties. I thought I hadn't needed any help up to this stage so why not give it a go.

It wasn't easy getting a lift on the East German boarder as all the drivers thought I was too much of a risk. Eventually a driver did give me a lift into Berlin. Half way there the car unfortunately had two flat tyres. The driver indicated that I had better make myself scarce so I headed into the woods. The Russian police came along and ordered the driver to drive on even if his tyres were flat. I hiked through the forest keeping out of sight of the highway until I reached the safety of the West Berlin boarder. I was able to get through the boarder by spinning a story that I was a student coming to study at the University. They bought my story and let me pass.

At the youth hostel in West Berlin there was a great mixture of races staying there. I got into an argument with a Lebanese student who stated that the USA was the cause of all the problems in Germany and should be driven out. He didn't like it one bit when I asked him why he was willing to study free at the American University. There was a young teacher staying at the hostel from Tennessee. He had the most comic strip accent of the Deep South and had trouble making himself understood with his German. His knowledge of German was much superior to mine but we discovered if he told me what he wanted in German and I repeated it in German they could understand it. Having learnt my German in the mountains of Austria and Switzerland, the Berlin Germans often broke into laughter at my pronunciations. To them I was speaking hillbilly German with an Australian accent. I spent some time at the University where I had made friends with some German students and I soaked up as much knowledge as I could. They warned me that it wasn't safe to travel into the Russian sector of Berlin but if I kept a watchful eye out I should be ok traveling as a foreign student. I decided one day to set off by a city train and travel to East Berlin. I was a little concerned when I read a sign written in German, which said, do not fall asleep on the train, you may not wake up. West Belin was very War damaged but East Berlin was far more so. I found as I walked around the city that it was very stark and foreboding. There were many armed guards around the few reconstructed buildings, which were more like cement bunkers. If you wanted to buy an item of food, even something as basic as an ice cream you had to join a queue for it and when you received the said ice-cream it was not very palatable. I was busy with my camera taking pictures of buildings and didn't realise some areas were out of bounds for photographers until I was bailed up by two armed guards with machine guns. They demanded my camera and to my relief they removed the film and handed the camera back to me. It was a relief to arrive back at the West Berlin hostel.

Leaving Berlin was much easier than my arrival as I was able to get a seat on a train. I arrived back in Hannover safe and sound, I stayed the night and then on to Hamburg. Hamburg was definitely an education for me. As I wondered around the town with a group of hostellers we came across a street that was blocked off from cars. All the shops in the street had large windows at the front and in the windows sat scantily dressed women gesturing for the passer-by to come inside. They were all big solid farm worker types who looked ridiculous in high heeled boots and very little else I viewed them as a comedy act instead of a come on. I didn't take any photos of this area as I had been warned if I did both I and the camera would be smashed.

From Hamburg I decided to head south to Italy. There was no real method in my wanderings. I travelled down to Frankfurt, getting a lift down the auto barn with a man driving a sports Mercedes. I had never travelled so fast and it was both exciting and frightening. I stayed a short time in Frankfurt and then on to Freiburg where I stayed for a few days. It was a lovely city on the edge of the Black Forest and some of the students from the University were staying at the hostel. They invited me along to the lectures which I enjoyed even though it was a struggle to understand it as it was in German.

Staying at the hostel was a giant of a young man from South Africa. He told me he planned to hike over the mountains in the Black Forest to just west of Munich and asked me if I would like to join him. Why not I said. Mario had camping gear and wore hiking boots, I only had shoes which were not very suitable but I managed. It was beautiful hiking through the forest with wild deer running across the path and wild raspberries to eat. We made it to a hostel in the mountains on the first night. It took us four days to cross the mountain and we slept in Mario's tent the other three nights. By the time we reached the other side of the mountain Mario was fit and ready to tackle another mountain and invited me to travel with him. I felt you could get too much of a good thing and was worn out after hiking for four days so I bid Mario farewell. Mario went north and I went south.

I was lucky enough to get a lift to just north of the Dolomites which was an extremely rugged mountain. It was hard to get a lift through the Dolomites and I waited for some time to get one. Eventually a man on a motor bike offered me a lift and with no better option I accepted. The road through the mountains was a series of hair pin bends with a sheer drop on one side. The Italian rider rode at an alarming pace, blowing his horn as he skated around the bends. To make matters more frightening he stopped at every little village on the way down for a glass of wine. I was very relieved to arrive at Verona in one piece. After staying at the hostel in Verona for a couple of days to recover from the trip down I set off for Venice.

Venice was unreal with no roads, just canals and waterways. There were many magnificent old churches and buildings to explore and a trip on the canal in a gondola. It was expensive as you were limited to where you could walk to and from there on you had to hire a boat. I wondered at the time how long it would be before the city sank in to the unstable soil. After three days I caught a train out of Venice back to Verona.

From Verona I hitched a ride to Bologna and then on to Florence. I stayed for several days in Florence as there were many magnificent churches and buildings to explore and one of the main attractions was the Uffizi Palace. It had forty rooms of great old works of art. The youth hostel was also intriguing as it was the former mansion that Mussolini lived in. It was up on a hill just out of Florence and was surrounded by very old olive trees. At the hostel I palled up with a boy from New Zealand and we explored the city together. His name was Peter and he was an artist just traveling around Europe. Peter had a bushy black beard which was unusual at the time. At dinner on my last night Peter and I were just sitting down when two American girls asked to join us. They were a lot of fun to talk to and embarrassed Peter no end when they asked him how his beard effected his love life. The next morning I again met with the American girls and they asked me where I was headed for and I told them Rome. They were also going to Rome and they had their own car and offered to give me a lift. They said they would feel safer with a man with them because they had had their bottoms pinched while walking in the city. The girls duly dropped me off at the youth hostel in Rome and said they were heading back north to Mannheim where they worked for the American army in four days and if I wanted to they would give me a lift back up to their base. I said ok but didn't think I would ever see them again. I explored the city and all the fascinating places I had read about in the Geographic magazine, like the Colosseum, Saint Peters, the Spanish Steps and the Fountain of Trevi. I found my way to the fountain by asking a policeman. As my Italian was non-existent it wasn't easy. The couple of words I knew were aqua pura and I mimed with my arms water gushing out. I got my message across. I had the movie, Holiday in Rome, in my mind and it all seemed so real to me.

I wanted to see the Isle of Capri and the Blue Grotto so I set off for Naples. This city wasn't as safe as it could be because on a bus someone tried to get into my rucksack while it was still on my back and walking down the street two men tried to hustle me into their car. I was later told that because I was so dark I would pass for an Italian and therefore my Australian passport would be worth stealing. I only stayed one night in Naples and then on my way to Sorrento I deviated and visited Pompeii. The old ruins there were a sight to see. Strangely one of the few buildings to survive with their paintings intact was a bordello. The paintings remain very clear and graphic. One was a man weighing his erection on a set of scales to see how much gold it would take to weigh the same. It must have been horrific for the inhabitants when the volcano, Mount Etna erupted covering their city with tons of ash.

Sorrento was very beautiful with the youth hostel on top of a cliff looking out to sea. The sunset there was glorious. After one night there I caught a ferry to the Isle of Capri and then onto a small boat to enter the Blue Grotto. The blue light in the grotto was a magical sight to see. One other thing I wanted to see was a villa where the author Axel Munta had lived and wrote about. The villa was built of white stone to catch the light which was so bright Axel went blind eventually.

Unbelievably back in Rome, I did meet up with the Americans again but there was only one of them and she had collected two Canadian girls to give them a lift up to Lausanne where they would then be heading back to Canada. The four of us camped one night high up in the mountains and it was very cold.
Chapter 8

Luckily we all had very efficient sleeping bags. Jokingly the girls thought it would be much warmer if one of them could get into the sleeping bag with me. Luckily that was ruled out as an impossibility. The next night they reached Milan and there was a great discussion about whether the car full of their luggage would be safe in the hotel car park. I offered to sleep in the car but the girls said no. There was a great deal of hilarity in the hotel bar that night. Apart from the three girls, the bar was full off Italian men. There was a bit of language barrier but the Italians eventually got through that they thought that three women with one man was a bit much and thought one girl must be my special girl and they would entertain the other two. They told the men that they were all my special girls. The Italians ordered drinks all round and proposed a toast for such a mighty stud. The next day we reached the drop off point for the Canadian girls. The remaining girl and I travelled on to Lake Lausanne and camped there the night by the Lake.

The next day was a long journey and we made it all the way to Mannheim where the American was working at the army base. She said she wouldn't be able to take me into the base as it wouldn't look good so she dropped me off a few miles from the base. I camped in the forest that night. She had told me to come to the base the next day and the soldiers would welcome me, which they did. I was amazed at all the different kinds of food they had. Nearly everything in tins from vegetables to deserts to cake. They told me they didn't trust foreign food, based on the fact that the German farmers used fertiliser out of septic systems.

From the army base I set off for Luxembourg and not far out I was given a lift by an American army Major who lived in Luxembourg with his wife and family. He asked me where I was from and when I said Australia he was full of questions. He had never met an Australian before and was amazed at how well I spoke English. The Major invited me to have dinner with his family that evening which I was only too happy to accept. The dinner was a huge steak and tasted so good, especially as I hadn't eaten meat on my journey through Europe, it was too expensive. I was invited to stay the night but I didn't want to impose so the Major drove me to the youth hostel. It was quite late and snowing and I knew the hostel would be closed by then but I didn't want the Major to know as it would mean a trip back to his house. I went around to the garden at the back of the hostel and rolled out my trusty sleeping bag under a tree. The next morning the hostel warden found me still asleep covered in snow. The warden woke me up and bustled me inside for a hot breakfast and was very upset that I hadn't woken him up the night before to let me in. I stayed at the hostel for a couple of days while I toured the city. There were many beautiful old buildings and in particular a massive stone Cathedral. Inside the Cathedral it seemed to exude piece and devotion and gave me the feeling that the Holy Spirit wasn't far away. It made a big impression on me.

From Luxembourg I set off north with a view of traveling to Denmark. I was given a lift by a German couple who were heading off on holidays. They invited me to come on holidays with them. I declined and asked them why they would be so generous. The answer was that I was a double for the man's younger brother who had tragically died a short time ago. I was honoured by the offer but said no, I must make my own way around.

I travelled up through Frankfurt to Hannover and then on to Hamburg, staying a day or two here and there. From Hamburg I travelled on to Copenhagen where I stayed at a youth hostel for several days. The dormitories there had double bunks alongside each other and one morning when I woke up I was surprised to find a girl asleep next to me. She had come in late the night before in the dark and just crashed into the first bed she came across. I was embarrassed and pretended to stay asleep until the girl vacated the room. I explored the city and was very taken by the statue of a mermaid on the water's edge. It was Hans Christian Anderson's town which I had read about and it fascinated me to be right there where it all happened. In Denmark there were many shops selling pastries that were delicious and I found them hard to pass by. These pastries are what the Danes ate for breakfast and I wasn't complaining. Because I was so darkly tanned from my travels and very fit I attracted a lot of attention from the blond Danish girls which I found gave my ego a boost.

As I left Copenhagen I made my way down to the wharf to catch a ferry across to Stockholm. On the ferry was another Australian boy so we had each other's company for the trip. At lunch time we ate our lunch at a table, and on the table was a large platter of Danish pastries. We both thought how nice to be supplied with these delicious treats on the journey. At the end of lunch it was disappointing when we were presented with a bill for the pastries we had eaten.

In Stockholm I found a most unique youth hostel in the form of an old sailing ship called the Cutty Sark, which had been in days gone by, a clipper ship traveling from Australia to Europe carrying wool. It was moored at a wharf and there were a number of Australian, New Zealand and South African young people staying there. One of the biggest treats there was a thing called a smorgasbord, something that I and most of the others hadn't come across before. You just paid an entry fee and as the food was set out in a long line you could eat as much as you liked. I thought the owners could never have imagined the extent of the appetite of the people from down under or they wouldn't have had such an idea. However it recharged all our batteries. At the hostel there were three Australian boys who had a hire car to travel around in and they were heading north up through Sweden as far as Ostersund and then across into Norway and down to Oslo. They were short on cash and needed another paying passenger for the trip. I agreed to join them and after a couple of days we set off. We were a happy bunch and we all got on well, camping here and there. It was in the middle of summer but still chilly when we camped by a lake in northern Sweden. So chilly in fact there was still a large section of ice in the middle of the lake.

Traveling down through Norway was magical with the magnificent fiords and the wild deer. I took many photographs to remind me of the beauty of the country. In the northern part of Norway we stopped off at a youth hostel which was run by a young Australian girl. She told us she was so taken by the beauty of the place she decided to make it her home. In Oslo we toured around the city and the one thing that stood out was the many magnificent statues.

On our way back down through Denmark we camped by a creek and there was a field of potatoes growing close by. We had very little food with us so we hopped over into the potato patch and bandicooted some for dinner. I did feel a little guilty about doing this but they were delicious. We travelled happily down through Denmark to Holland staying at a hostel here and there as the impulse took us. By this time I had decided to grow a beard because of the lack of hot water. It quickly grew into a bushy black affair and I was quite proud of it.

One of the first stops we had in Holland was at a place called Groningen. The reason for the stop there was for me to visit the Dutch nurse off the Fair Sea. She lived with her parents on a farm. She was very pleased to catch up with me but didn't think much of the beard. We had an afternoon there and then moved on south traveling across the Zuider Zee which was a massive levy bank to keep the sea out of the lowlands. The next stop was Edam where the famous cheese comes from. We let our hair down there and bought lots of souvenirs including a pair of Dutch wooden clogs each. We then put them on and had a race down the street in them. The Dutch people looked at us as if we had lost the plot.

From Edam we travelled on through Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Ostend, and Dunkirk ending up at Calais. At Calais one of the boys received the news that his father had died in New Zealand. He was shattered and caught a plane straight back home. The other two and I had missed the last ferry to Dover for the day and as money and accommodation was tight, the two boys slept in the car and I rolled out my trusty sleeping bag on the pavement. The next morning we caught the ferry across to Dover.

Back in London I parted with my traveling companions and stayed at a club called the Down Under Club. It was for young travellers from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. I rested there for a week to replenish my energies after traveling nonstop for four and a half months through Europe. One evening I decided to attend a film slide show. As I entered the room I noticed that the boy with the wandering hands from Germany was running the show. I quietly backed out of the room.

After a week's rest I hoisted my rucksack and headed for Southampton by train to call in at the hospital where they had saved my life and to thank them for getting me back to health. I stayed overnight there and took one of the nurses out to the pictures where Ben Hur was showing. The next day I caught a train to Salisbury to call on a friend of a friend back in Australia. After staying there overnight I caught a train the next day to Hollyhead in Wales. There was wonderful scenery to see on the way.

I caught the night ferry across to Dun Laoghaire arriving at 6 am. It was a cold foggy miserable morning and for some reason I felt a little lost. As I walked up from the wharf I asked a man if there would be a café open at that time of morning. The man said yes and as he was going that way he would take me there. The café was warm and cosy and I received a very friendly greeting. They hadn't had any Australian traveller there before and he was all on for a chat. Had I met Shaun Murphy who had emigrated to Australia after the war? Where did he emigrate to I asked? To Perth the man replied. After a hearty breakfast the café owner had enjoyed the chat so much he wouldn't allow me to pay for my meal. To top it off he sent one of his staff to escort me to the bus stop where I caught a bus to Dublin. Arriving in Dublin I had a whole day to settle into the youth hostel and there I met up with a brother and two sisters from England. We went on a tour of Dublin together and had a great time. In the evening we swapped addresses and the English siblings invited me to visit them in Cambridge.

I rang a phone number I had for the two Irish girls I had met in Salzburg. The number was for the nurse's quarters at Saint Vincent's hospital and eventually Alice was located and came on the phone. She sounded pleased to hear from me and said she had a week off and planned to hitch a ride down to Carlow the next day to stay with her family. Alice invited me to travel down with her and stay with her family for the week. We met up the next morning outside Saint Vincent's hospital and headed off south out of the city. We caught a bus to the outskirts and then hitch hiked the rest of the way. We were lucky with the rides and reached Alice's home, Little Moyle, mid-afternoon.

I was a little daunted as we walked up the avenue to a huge two storied farmhouse. The house looked like a grand old lady that had been there forever. I found my reckoning about the house was nearly true as they spoke of the new wing that was three hundred years old. The family had lived in the house for generations.

As we entered the house we were greeted by the mother and father who made me feel at ease. I was people, they were people so what's to worry about just because I felt I had just steeped into another era. The house was full of antique furniture and the walls of the entry hall were covered in heads of stuffed animals that Alice's grandfather had shot in Africa.

After I was shown to my room and dropped off my gear, Alice and I went off to explore the countryside. There were lots of little lanes and quaint cottages belonging to the workers. When we met the cottage people they all addressed Alice as Miss Alice and would always ask after the Master which I found quaint.

On our walk a large chauffeur driven Bentley pulled up beside us and we were greeted by the passenger, a Mrs Hall. She was the master of the hunt club that Alice belonged to and at eighty six years of age she still rode with the hounds after foxes over stone walls in a side-saddle. Mrs Hall later met up with one of Alice's sisters and told her she better get home quick and meet the dashing young man Alice had brought home. Hearing this later on I felt at least I was accepted.

I stayed a week with Alice's family and it was yet another learning experience. The father was a farmer but not like one I was used to. He always wore plus-fours, a tie and jacket when out on the farm which was five hundred acres of mainly crops. There was a lovely stream that ran through the farm and Alice's father used to catch trout in and he was also a good shot and would bring home pheasants, snipe and duck from his walk around the farm. He always had a couple of pointer dogs with him to flush out his quarry. One of the birds he shot was hanging by the neck in the scullery for several days and I was wondering if I should tell him it was going off. I didn't know anything about jugged birds. If it was in Australia it would be rotten by now. I was given the honour of having a trout for breakfast that the father had just caught and it was delicious. While I was staying with the family I was invited to play tennis at a neighbouring farm. I felt I would show a good account of myself playing tennis but was dismayed to find the tennis court was grass and so dead to play on I had trouble getting the ball over the net. I had always played on a court made out of ant bed which was a very fast court to play on.

Alice and I went to a horse event during the week and of course Alice knew everybody there. She introduced me as a top horseman from Australia. My luck held out and I wasn't asked to prove it. Alice had been sent to a Catholic boarding school in Dublin called Mount Anvil when she was only five years old, to keep her older sister company. All the time she was at the college she attended Ireland's top Equestrian Centre and during holiday times she went hunting at the hunt club in Carlow with her father near her home.
Chapter 9

When she left school she rode and studied full time at the Equestrian Centre for six years, and after the first year she was a paid member of the staff and as well as teaching she competed for the centre in Ireland as well as over many parts of Europe. She gained a British Horse Society Diploma in horsemanship which covered all aspects of the Equestrian world, including teaching and the care of horses. Her love of teaching and riding never left her.

Alice's grandfather had lived with them until he died a few years before at a hundred years of age. Alice had one younger brother, James and an older sister, Dympna and two younger sisters, Matilda and Sheelagh. They were all very friendly to me and were interested in where I came from. Alice's mother and I had a long chat about travel and languages. She could speak German and was impressed with my knowledge of the language. She was extremely well educated as her father Sir Joseph McGrath had been the Dean of Trinity College in Dublin. Alice's father was well educated too and had studied to become a priest but had opted out before he was ordained. The parents were very Catholic and were very much church goers. I went to mass on the Sunday while I was there and found it strange as it was all in Latin and all the pomp and ceremony that went with an Irish mass. The kneeling on the stone floors I found very painful and counterproductive with the praying.

At the end of the week Alice caught a train back to Saint Vincent's in Dublin and I caught a train to Enniscorthy to visit Alice's friend Patsy who had invited me to stay with her family on their farm. When I arrived there I found the farm house was more of a mansion than a house but the family were very down to earth. Patsy had a sister and a brother living on the farm and her Dad was a practical type of farmer. The three siblings and I were required to work on the farm in the mornings but were free during the afternoons. I had the same experience with the farm workers as I did in Yorkshire. Because I was staying in the big house I wasn't accepted as part of them. I fitted in as well as I could, observing what they were doing so when a distant bell started to ring and they all stopped work and stood in prayer, I did the same.

Patsy was a top show rider and they had some lovely horses there. They even had a trophy from one of their horses winning the Grand National. The siblings took me out for a ride and I was given a magnificent hunter as my mount. I felt a little out of my depth riding in a hunting saddle. I had been used to a deep seated western saddle. The hunting saddle had no knee pads or saddle depth to keep me in. I was not about to let Australia down and rode off with the others. We jumped over a railing fence which went ok and then they headed for a sod wall you couldn't see over. This is it I thought as my mighty horse leapt to the top of the wall, landed and then leapt down the other side. We had a bit of pace up by this time and the riders galloped around the field and then headed back to the sod wall. I thought this was getting a bit risky as I knew that on the other side of the sod wall was an asphalt road. I tried to slow the horse down but the hunter knew what he had to do and leapt back over the wall. It was just a case of a prayer in mid-air that I was still on top when the horse landed on the other side.

I had a wonderful week at Patsy's farm and by the time I left I felt part of the family. Patsy drove me to catch the train to Dublin and she encouraged me to look Alice up when I arrived there. Back in the hostel in Dublin I did contact Alice at Saint Vincent's and we decided to meet up whenever possible. This wasn't as easy as it sounds as the nuns didn't approve of men friends and the nurses were kept locked up in the nurse's quarters. This problem was solved by the other nurses helping Alice out through the window to meet me. Money was starting to become in short supply by this time so our outings consisted of sightseeing around the city or to the coffee shop. I was in Dublin for a month which seemed to fly by. At the end of the month I asked Alice to marry me and come back to Australia because I had my return passage booked for the end of January. Before we could announce our engagement we had to make another trip down to Carlow to see Alice's parents.

Alice spoke to her father first and his reply was that she should ask her mother and her reply was, she should ask her father. The next step was required for me to ask the father for Alice's hand in marriage. I wasn't very sure about the outcome as I knew Alice came from a very old family that was used to having servants in the house and workers in the field with a lot of family history behind them. Gerard, Alice's father first asked if I loved Alice which was a definite yes and then said marriage was forever and being Catholic any children would have to be brought up as Catholics. He asked what sort of things do you eat in Australia and I being off the land said a leg or some lamb chops. Gerard being a bit of a character asked, do you take the shoe off first? He also pointed out that in spite of the grand lifestyle and the farm etc. there wasn't much money to be handed out. This wasn't a consideration for me and I said so. Alice's mother asked if the wedding could be at a later date than the third of January. It was now the end of October. I told her it would be difficult as my passage was booked for the twenty-second of January. The real reason was that I was fast running out of money and I had to return home to earn some more but I didn't like to tell them that. Alice herself knew of my financial situation.

Alice's mother said for the engagement to be official there had to be an engagement ring. There wasn't much money for buying a diamond ring but between Alice and I we found one that was suitable. The family also checked out my background to make sure I wasn't already married. It was difficult for them as I didn't have a solid religious background like they did. While in Dublin I was invited to afternoon tea with Alice's wealthy aunt and cousin. I felt I was being checked out with the dainty cucumber sandwiches and tea in fine china. I must have passed the test as they were delighted with me and gave a good report.

The wedding being agreed to, I returned to London to find a job for the next two months. In London I was lucky enough to find a flat that I shared with five other boys. On the Friday I went to the labour exchange to find a job and on the following Monday I started working at Harrods Department store in Knightsbridge.

I was able to walk to work from my flat and my work mates were easy to get on with. I did wonder how they managed with a family on the wages they were getting as I barely managed to stay afloat with just myself to look after. London was an expensive place to live. At work another young Australian started work there and he and I became firm friends. Kevin had been in England for a while and he had been selling vacuum cleaners to pay for his travels, although he was a carpenter by trade. He said his conscience got the better of him while selling door to door. As he was six foot two and very handsome the housewives found it hard to say no to his sales pitch and he reckoned half of them didn't even need a vacuum cleaner. Kevin would often drop me off home after work on his vespa motor scooter. It was a bit scary in the London traffic but better than walking especially as winter was closing in.

During lunch breaks Kevin and I would entertain the staid English workers. Kevin would tell jokes and I would sing folk songs. One of the workers was getting married and he asked me if he would sing at his wedding. I thought it was a great honour for me to be asked but wouldn't have been able to as I would have left England by then.

Because Harrods was such an exclusive department store the workers were never allowed to enter by the front door and as they left by the tradesmen's entrance their bags were searched. It was very class conscious at Harrods as Royalty shopped there. Even the Jamaican lift drivers had their own pecking order. There were extraordinary items in the grocery department like sugared ants, glissade grasshoppers along with some very expensive types of sugar to name a few. Because Harrods was in Knightsbridge, an upmarket area, all the surrounding businesses were also expensive. I decided to get a haircut nearby one day and apart from being expensive the barber said to me, "I have had six Australians in here this morning and have only received a shilling and six pence in tips". That made seven Australians who left after a haircut, tipless.

There were parties on just about every night in Earls Court where I was staying, as the population in the area were mainly from down under. A young Rolf Harris was the entertainer at the Down Under Club singing Australian flavoured songs. After one night out I arrived back at my flat rather late and I had forgotten my key. My flatmates were not very forgiving of anybody arriving home late without their key. I decided it wasn't worth trying to rouse them so I climbed up the outside of the building to the second floor. As I reached my flat I was slightly out of balance and I leant against the window to steady myself. This would have been fine except the window was open causing me to flounder straight into the room over the top of a sleeping flatmate. I was not very popular and it took several days for me to be forgiven.

I received an invitation to a twenty first birthday party in Cambridge. It was for one of the siblings who I had met in the hostel in Dublin. It was to be a black tie affair and I didn't have my dinner suit with me but I was lucky enough for one of my flatmates to lend me theirs. I had put this family out of my mind until now but with the encouragement of my flatmates I decided to go. I would see another part of the country if nothing else. Dressed to the nines and looking like a man about town I arrived by train in Cambridge. To my surprise I was met at the station by a chauffeur driven car and whisked off to the party. When I reached the party I had another surprise. Instead of being a house as I expected, it was a huge mansion, close to being a castle. I was met and welcomed by the three siblings I had met in Dublin. As they sat down to dinner in the huge dining hall, I was surprised yet again to be seated next to the birthday girl. I had never experienced such a feast and the only way not to appear like a hillbilly was to carefully observe how the other guests were tackling their meal. It started off with soup which was easy enough and then fish which I had to work out what cutlery to use and then came a big puzzler. It appeared to be a very small whole chicken and as I carefully maneuvered my knife around where the bones should have been I discovered it was completely boneless. After that the rest of the meal was a pushover.

The siblings told me that their father had plantations out in the West Indies and in a few weeks they were going to sail the family yacht out to the islands and invited me to sail with them. I was astounded by this invitation but said no that wouldn't fit into my plans. The party with several dance bands went all night until breakfast was laid out next morning. After breakfast all the guests from London were driven back to the train station.

Back in London I had a very important job to do. To marry in Ireland I first had to become a Catholic and arranged with a young priest nearby to instruct me. The priest told me there was no way I could become a Catholic in such a short space of time. I immediately wrote to Alice's mother to give her the bad news. My next session with the priest showed me the power of Alice's family in the church. The young priest had received a phone call from the Bishop of Carlow stating that I would become a Catholic by the due date. The priest was a bit miffed about the rebuke from the Bishop but did his best to instruct me. There was a lot about any children we might have being brought up Catholic and that birth control except by natural rhythm was a sin. This was beyond my knowledge as I knew nothing about birth control, natural or otherwise. I was duly christened in the Catholic Church just before Christmas and one of the girls who lived in my building named Ellie came along as my Godmother.

I wrote home to Roy telling him about Alice and that I didn't have enough money to pay for her fare. I had never asked Roy for anything before and I didn't know what the result would be when I asked him to loan me the one hundred and fifty-eight pounds for Alice's fare. It was a great relief when Roy replied back and there was a cheque for the fare in the letter. Roy also said that married life was hard enough without starting off with a loan, so the money was his wedding present to us. I was almost overcome by my father's generosity as I knew that amount of money represented a big slice of his income.

At the end of the two months in London a huge party was held in my building to give me a send-off. I didn't realise how many friends I had. They were a rowdy bunch but good people one and all.

The next morning I caught a train to Hollyhead in Wales, arriving there in time to catch the night ferry across to Dun Laoghaire in Ireland. It was Christmas Eve and the ferry was full of Irish people going home for Christmas. Below deck was chaotic with everyone singing, getting drunk and vomiting all over the floor. I couldn't stand the racket so I carried my luggage up onto the deck and with a travelling rug I had been given by my family in Australia, settled down on a bench and dropped off to sleep. When I woke the next morning my hair and beard were crispy white with ice from the fog that had settled down on me during the night. When I reached Dun Laoghaire I now knew my way around and caught a bus to the railway station and then a train to Carlow. I was met at Carlow station by Alice's father and driven out to Little Moyle.

It was a warm feeling to be back with Alice and her family who I felt by now very much a part of. Alice's older sister Dympna was engaged to a doctor and they were there for the Christmas celebrations. It was warm in the house but everywhere outside was covered in snow and ice. Alice's two younger sisters were also there, Matilda a teenager and Sheelagh who was still a school girl. Alice's father had been busy catching trout and shooting pheasants to be given away as presents to the local clergy, the Bishop, doctors and anyone else of importance. Mrs Hall the leader of the hunt club paid a visit and went off with a trout. Christmas day was full of cheer after they had done their duty by going to early morning mass with people coming and going all day and the family going around to the cottage people delivering presents. I stayed at Little Moyle until the end of December when I was driven up to Alice's cousins at Trim north of Dublin. I was to stay with the cousins until the night before the wedding. The cousin, Ann and her husband Larry were both doctors and were a delightful couple along with their three small children.
Chapter 10

The eldest boy of about seven was sure that I must be a cowboy like in the movies and I had to pretend that is exactly what I was. The boy Larry Joe asked had I fought off Indians back home. One day the children's nanny said she was taking the children upstairs and would I bring up the tyres. I looked around but I couldn't find any tyres so I checked with Ann who was able to set me straight. The nanny wanted me to bring the toys.

The cousins drove me back to Carlow where I and a large number of Alice's relatives were staying at the Hotel. I had wanted my friend Kevin to be my best man but this was not on as Kevin was a protestant so one of Alice's cousins, David was to be best man. I had never met David before but he organised everything. My wedding outfit looked rather grand with a pale grey top hat with grey pencil stripped trousers, black tail coat and grey tie. David stayed close to me at the hotel during the evening like he was afraid I might take flight. There was nothing like a buck's party as David was on some kind religious retreat not allowing him to party.

The next morning David and I had a meeting with the Bishop at the Cathedral before the wedding. David instructed me on protocol along the way. When we met the Bishop he put his hands out towards me and David whispered, kiss his ring. Like hell I will thought I and shook the Bishops proffered hand instead. It didn't seem to faze the Bishop, he probably thought how gross these Colonials are.

On January the 3rd 1959 the wedding was celebrated at Carlow Cathedral with the Bishop officiating. Alice's Uncle Fergal, a Jesuit priest was also in attendance along with two parish priests. I figured by the end of it I would be well and truly married. As the Cathedral filled, Alice arrived just that bit late with her three sisters as bridesmaids. I had David and two others who I didn't know. Alice came down the aisle on her father's arm looking very beautiful in a flowing white dress. I was almost overcome by the moment but managed to keep my cool even down to the part of the ceremony I didn't hear and the Bishop had to repeat it. As I walked my new bride down the aisle I was relieved to see my friend Kevin and his girlfriend there. They were my only two guests. There was much photographing outside the Cathedral before we were ushered into a car and whisked off to the reception witch was at Little Moyle.

As we arrived up the driveway at Little Moyle and alighted from the car a bugle sounded from the end of the driveway. It was Mrs Hall arriving with the entire hunt club on horseback dressed in their red hunting jackets and Mrs Hall resplendid riding side-saddle. The only thing missing were the hounds. What a sight as the guests and the bridal party cheered the hunt club.

Little Moyle was very well set up for such an event with two very large rooms adjoining each other at the front of the house and as it was a beautiful sunny winters day the guests were able to spill out onto the driveway. Twelve nurses from Alice's year had hired a stretch limo to come down from Saint Vincent's in Dublin. They were all photographed with Alice and me and the photo was later daubed "blessed are thee amongst women". The reception was a grand affair with a three layer wedding cake built in the shape of a horseshoe, Alice's father demanding to know what happened to the piece of cake from the centre of the horse shoe. All the cottage people had come to help to make it a memorable event. There were 250 guests and I felt a little lost amongst so many strangers, and only having Kevin and his girlfriend that I knew.

The guests were very generous with their gifts, which included many sets of Waterford glass, silver tea services and fine Irish linen. Alice's sister, Matilda, a very practical girl was put in charge of having it all packed in tea chests and transported to the shipping company in Southampton. There was even a formal blessing from the Pope. As the day wore on we were ready to say our goodbyes. Alice's father gave me a glass of his favourite homemade spirit, poteen and then thought better of it and took it back. He had given us as part of his wedding present, a hire car for the two weeks we were to be in Ireland.

After we made our escape and were finally on our way, we drove to a town closer to the coast. It was a bad move as the hotel was full of Americans over for the hunt season and accommodation was scarce. The only room we could get was a freezing cold attic room with two single beds. It was so cold we had to take the bedding off one bed and put it on the other. The next day we drove to Arklow by the sea, which also had its difficulties as all the hotels were closed down for the winter. One hotel agreed to have us and we were the only guests in residence. Next day we drove to Gory to call on David, Alice's cousin and then on to Trim to stay with Ann and Larry.

The whole of the two weeks were taken up visiting Alice's relatives and friends to say goodbye. I felt at times that my driving was a bit of a challenge as everywhere we went we were offered a glass of sherry or port and the roads were icy. We ended our travels around Ireland at Little Moyle and spent a few days there before setting off to England. We visited the cottage people that Alice had known all her life and I was amused by the fact that now she was a Mrs the cottage people still called her Miss Alice. I could see they all loved her and I wasn't popular because I was taking her away.

While we were packing our last belongings, Alice's little Yorkshire terrier crawled into one of the trunks, as if to say I'm coming too. Unfortunately this wasn't possible.

With all our goodbyes behind us we set sail for England and on to London where we stayed for one day and two nights. While there I went around to my old flat to say goodbye. I wanted Alice to go with me but she was too shy to meet with all my old friends.

Early in the following morning we set off for Southampton by train to start our journey to Australia on the Fair Sky. It was very exciting for us as we set out on this great adventure together. I had tried to impress upon Alice of how different life would be for her in Australia. There wouldn't be any big house or servants to start with but we were very much in love and both knew in our hearts whatever came we would deal with it.

Arriving in Southampton we boarded the Fair Sky and after checking that all our tea chests and luggage had arrived we went to inspect our cabin. It was small but it had its own ensuite and two single bunk beds. The beds were about two foot wide and six foot long, one on top of the other. The top bunk was never used on the trip, luckily we were both thin. There were fifteen hundred passengers on board and only fourteen of them were paying passengers, the others were what were called at the time, ten pound Poms migrating to Australia. Indeed they travelled to Australia for ten pounds with everything paid for. The Fair Sky was a replica of the Fair Sea but because it was basically a migrant ship on this trip, the chintz covered lounge chairs were covered in cheap calico. The meals also turned out to be less than were the meals on the Fair Sea on the way to England. The passengers were a very ordinary lot and I thought to myself, God help Australia when this lot gets there. Alice and I mainly kept to ourselves except for a young Australian couple who had married just before the journey started. We really didn't need anyone else.

As the ship left Southampton it was nothing like the splendour of the departure in Sydney a little over a year ago. The day was dismal and wet and as Alice and I had no one to see us off we stayed inside in the warm. Sailing through the Bay of Biscay off Spain and Portugal the sea was extremely rough and for the first week I was seasick. Once the ship sailed pass Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean Sea, all became calm and we were able to enjoy ourselves.

I did my best to persuade Alice about the dangers of the sun out to sea. The burning capacity of the sun is multiplied out in the Ocean. Being headstrong she did sunbake and was badly sunburned. I reckoned because she had been cold for most of her life she couldn't resist the beautiful warmth of the sun. She went for a swim on her own one day and nearly drowned. The water was sloshing around and it picked up a rubber mat at the side of the pool and dropped it in the pool on top of her. She made sure I was always around after that.

The ship's first stop was at Port Said on the western end of the Suez Canal. There were many Arab sellers of all kinds of goods in their small boats crowding around the ship. Alice and I decided to go ashore and do a side trip to Cairo as we were to be in port all day. A shop keeper was most insistent that we come in and browse his wares. We told him we didn't have any money but he said that didn't matter, just come in and look. After looking through the shop we decided to leave. The shop keeper wanted to know why we hadn't bought anything and we said to him that we had already told him we didn't have any money. With that he became angry and shouted at us, get out you filthy English migrants. Alice couldn't help correcting him by saying we were from Ireland not England. His retort was, you're worse than the English, get out so we left. At another shop we purchased an Arab brass tea service which wasn't very expensive and quite quaint.

Sailing from Port Said through the Suez Canal the ship took on several Arab passengers who were kept on deck. It was interesting sailing through the canal with the desert on both sides except for the date palms. One of the Arab passengers had dates for sale in packages. We bought a package as they looked delicious but on opening it up we found the top layer was delicious but the rest was camel hair. The Arab passengers were dropped off at a small village half way through the canal. The next port of call was Aden on the eastern side of the canal. It was another Arab city with its usual beggars and sellers. As we walked through the city we came across what we thought was a fine statue on a stone slab in the street. As we bent over to have a closer look the statue opened his eyes. That was the end of viewing statues.

As the ship set out across the Indian Ocean it was announced that tonight there would be fresh Aden fish on the menu. It was nice except we had it for the next week, still being announced as fresh Aden fish. As we sailed through the equator there was a dance held that night and Alice wore a beautiful dress with a stiffened petticoat under it. With the heat of the tropics the unfortunate petticoat wilted and was never the same again. It seemed to take forever for the ship to cross the Indian Ocean to Freemantle. We were to be there for the day and Alice's mother had arranged for a family friend, who was a priest, from Perth, to pick us up from the ship and show us around Perth. He was a kindly man who did give us a grand tour of Perth with its beautiful river and King's Park. It also was good for us to get away from the confines of the ship for a while and give Alice her first view of Australia. The fact that the priest was an Irishman also helped.

After we sailed from Freemantle we didn't see anything of Australia until we docked in Melbourne. In Melbourne the ship took on a whole new look as most of the migrants were leaving the ship and paying passengers were boarding. Off came the calico covers and on went the chintz covers. The food improved also. On the journey out, the top layer of our wedding cake supplemented our diet and there wasn't much left of it at this stage. My sister Lynda, her husband Arthur and their children met us in Melbourne. Alice was nervous about meeting my family and there was a little tension in the air. Alice offered one of the children a piece of cake but the child didn't know what she was talking about. When Alice produced the cake to show them, the little one said, oh you mean kike. We only stayed in Melbourne for the day and then it was off to Sydney. For me it seemed like a lifetime ago since I left Sydney.

It was a beautiful summer day as we sailed up through Sydney harbour. I could sense the tension in Alice as the time grew nearer to meet my family and I hoped she would manage ok. The entire family were there to greet us and as we walked down the gangway Ted's wife Shirley called out, "hello Al". Alice could not help replying, "my name is Alice". Not a great start but at least they knew where they stood. As we put our goods through customs with the tea chests full of Waterford glass, silver and linen the customs officer seeing we were newly married tried to help us through and said to us that all the items we would have had for some time. Alice being proud of the items in the chests, said "of course not, there all wedding presents". The customs man tried again, "but there all second hand aren't they". I took Alice aside and explained what the customs man was trying to do and the goods were eventually put through without any duty having to be paid. It was lucky the family had come to pick us up as our entire fortune consisted of ten shillings.

Roy drove us back to the farm at Camden where we would be staying with my brother Ted and my sister-in-law Shirley and their three daughters. Roy offered me a job on the farm which I was only too pleased to accept. Roy had a kombi van so all the luggage was transported in it to the farm.

We didn't unpack all the boxes but just a few to display some of the things we had and to get out the gifts we had brought home for the family. Shirley's eyes glittered with envy as she saw what was in some of the chests.

I felt a bit nervous at first as Roy didn't like Catholics and didn't take kindly to foreigners. I needn't have worried as Roy took a genuine liking to Alice, especially when she hopped in and helped with the market garden. Alice's sense of humour and bubbly personality was a real winner with Roy, and not a bit like Shirley's grasping outlook that Roy detested.

Alice and I stayed on the farm for three months and Roy had plans to build us a small cottage but both could see it wasn't going to work. Both Shirley and Ted resented having us on the farm, especially as Alice was such a hit with Roy. I had a talk with Roy and explained that I didn't think I could stay on the farm. Roy understood and perhaps a little relieved as he could feel the unpleasant tension in the air.
Chapter 11

My sister Edna and husband Harry offered their sixteen foot caravan for us to stay in which was parked on their poultry farm at Pennant Hills in Sydney. It was an option until we could get ourselves sorted out. Luckily Edna and Alice got on very well. Harry was working at Coles supermarket in Pennant Hills as a storeman-cleaner but he wanted to have more time on his farm so he gave his job at Coles to me. It was ok as a temporary job and the storeman part was easy enough along with the odd days of serving behind the counter. The worst part was cleaning the staff toilets. I felt I was at rock bottom as I scrubbed out the urinals. At least it was money coming in. Alice got a job at a rehabilitation hospital so we were doing ok.

One day we were lucky enough to get tickets to a black tie evening at the Sydney Opera House. I wouldn't have had time to go home and change so I took my dinner suit to work with me. I had arranged to have an early mark that afternoon and had some curious stares from the Manager and staff as I tried unobtrusively to leave the store in my dinner suit.

Alice's family had a solicitor friend who lived in Sydney. They invited Alice and I to dinner a few times. I didn't like these visits as I felt I was being judged all the time. They were appalled that I was working as a storeman-cleaner and offered to help me up the ladder as they were friends with the CEO of Coles. They even had a private chat with Alice and told her they felt she had made a big mistake and offered to pay her way back to Ireland. Alice was very upset after this visit and we never went back again. The son of that family even went as far as to travel to Camden to check on my family. That is what any young couple doesn't need so we were well away from that family.

It was a joyous moment when we found out we were to become parents. It became imperative that we settle in a house sometime soon. I decided the best alternative was to move back to my old life out in the country where a house would be provided along with a job.

It wasn't as easy as it sounds because I had written to the old couple in Coonamble for a reference. They were so bitter about me leaving them they refused to give me one. So it was off to the Stock and Station agent to try and find a job for me in the country. There were many false starts and useless interviews as potential employers felt that because of my time overseas, I wouldn't be able to settle down working on a farm. At that time it was rare for young farm workers to travel overseas. Finally the agent rang and said he had a client who wanted a cattle stud groom. The agent advised he thought I might be better off waiting for another job to turn up as this employer was notorious for his staff turnover. I was desperate to get settled before the baby arrived so I accepted the job.

We had plenty of luxuries but no practical items such as furniture so we combed the pages of the local paper looking for second hand items. We were very lucky as we found an old English couple who were retiring back to England and wanted to sell everything. We ended up after our visit to the old couple with a whole houseful of furniture right down to the piano.

The property where I was to work was at Dandaloo, a village west of Trangie. I put all our new found goods on a freight train to Trangie and Roy offered to drive us there in his Kombi. Alice had many surprises on the trip. She had never travelled so far by road and we crossed several rivers that had no water in them. She remarked that all rivers in Ireland had water in them. They stopped for morning tea and Roy produced his blackened billy can to make the tea. That was an eye-opener for Alice along with the canvas water bag hanging on the front of the Kombi.

We arranged with the postman from the village of Dandaloo, who had a truck, to transport our furniture from Trangie railway station out to Dandaloo. The postman wasn't very encouraging when he said my boss should put in a ramp for all the people coming and going. I wasn't worried as I had signed a contract for twelve months. The house we were to live in was in the village which sounded rather nice but when we arrived there we found the village had died a slow death over the years and all that was left was an unused church, a graveyard and two old cottages right alongside each other and nothing else. One cottage was for Alice and I and the other was owned by the postman who ran a post office out of his house. The scenery was just as desolate as the village with flat open plains and not a tree in sight. Roy helped us set up house and then returned home.

The house was indeed very old and built flat on the black soil which meant the soil was always moving and so was the house. If that door was easy to open today it might not be so tomorrow or the other way around. The house had no electricity and not much of anything. There was a wood stove in the kitchen and an open fire in the lounge room. The bathroom was a filled in end of the back veranda and had a chip heater for hot water. To wash the clothes it was necessary to take them out into the back yard where there was an old 44 gallon drum with the top cut out and a copper placed in the opening. This was also heated by a wood fire.

After boiling the clothes you then removed them from the copper with a wooden broom handle and carried the scalding items back across the yard to the back veranda where there was a set of cement washing tubs to rinse them in. You were lucky if you got there without scalding yourself. After rinsing the clothes you put them through a hand operated mangle to squeeze the water out of them and then on to a clothes line made out of a length of fencing wire. All this was an enormous task for a girl out from Ireland, especially as she had never even had to wash clothes in the past. She was a real battler to stick with it. The bathroom chip heater was operated by burning chips of wood and paper in it with water running through the pipes heating up the bathwater. This item was to become a thing of fear for Alice because if you put too much fuel in at once it would become a ferocious machine almost jumping off its stand. There was a kerosene fridge which worked reasonably well and we bought enough candles and lamps to lighten up the house. A petrol operated iron was purchased but it also became a thing of fear as it frequently burst into flames and Alice would have to throw it out into the back yard. So we settled on two flat irons which were heated on top of the wood stove. The trouble with them was they didn't keep their heat for long and you had to be careful not to let black cinders get on your clothes. The house had gauze wire on the windows and doors but because of all the cracks in the house and the big open chimneys, the blow flies made it their home. I took the gauze off the kitchen window to let the blow flies back out. We were supplied with meat and milk from the homestead and the workers from another of the stud's properties down the road supplied the wood in long lengths. The only thing I had to cut the wood into usable lengths was an axe and as my work turned out to be seven days a week without any exceptions I often ran short of time to deal with the wood. When there were no short lengths of wood for the fuel stove, Alice managed brilliantly by putting one end of the wood in the firebox and sitting the other end on a chair and as the timber burnt she would move the chair closer to the stove.

The day after we moved in the owner came down from the homestead, which was about one and a half miles away, and took me up to where the stud cattle for show purposes were kept in a set of covered in stalls. There were about twenty head of show cattle in the stalls, most of them two year old bulls along with a couple of heifers. I would be responsible to groom and care for them and teach them to lead correctly for the show ring. I often took a pounding from reluctant bulls teaching them to lead. There were 300 head of stud breeders out in the paddocks and part of my job was to keep the records of them. They all had numbered ear tags for identification and I had to record all the births, deaths and copulations. It stretched my memory but after a few months I was able name the three hundred head off by heart. Apart from grain and hay for the show cattle, a small herd of milking cows were kept for the purpose of the two year old bulls suckling them. The bulls were twice the size of the unfortunate cows.

The owners name was Garna but most of the people around the area, as I found out called him Bull because of his blustery loud disposition. He was a coarse ignorant man but obviously very wealthy. I was the only worker on the stud property except for a groom-gardener at the homestead with his wife as housekeeper-cook. Ten couples came and went in the twelve months I was working there.

My day started before sunup and didn't finish until about 6 pm. My work was seven days a week without exception but at weekends and public holidays I was only required to feed and care for the bulls which gave me most of the day off. With all this free time, with Alice's help I started a vegetable patch and chicken run. Alice came running in to the house one day when I was home and said quickly there's a snake with legs eating the chickens. I rushed out to find a large goanna in the hen house. It took Alice awhile to work out the snake thing. As we were sitting in the lounge room one evening she said look there's an eel in the fire grate, not an eel just a big black snake. I knew it wouldn't be an eel so I grabbed a steel poker and dispensed with the snake. Another episode with a snake was when I was cutting wood out on the woodheap I spotted a snake coming out of the end of a hollow piece of fire wood. Alice had been sitting by the wood heap keeping me company so I instructed her to keep an eye on the snake while I went looking for a weapon. She became alarmed when I didn't return straight away and left her post to see why I was taking so long. She was not impressed when she found me around the side of the house where I had discovered that the apricots on the tree had become ripe and I had become distracted.

Alice used to bake our own bread in the oven of the fuel stove. One day I found a small kitten, starving and freezing cold in the hay shed. I took it home and put it in a box by the stove and left the oven door open so the heat would warm it. The next morning Alice came out early to bake the bread and got the stove up and running. She shut the oven door so it would build up heat. A little later she opened the oven door to put the bread in and there was the unfortunate kitten. It had climbed into the oven during the night for warmth and Alice hadn't noticed it. Alice gave a shriek and ran from the kitchen and as she went out the door my raincoat fell off the hook behind her. She thought all the banshees from Ireland were after her.

The couple from the other farm called in one weekend and gave us a jar of quince jelly they had just made. After they had gone I thought the quince jelly looked very nice so decided to have some on a slice of bread. I plunged the knife into the jelly and found it was stiff and unyielding. I found it difficult to extract the knife so I left it there to deal with it later. The couple came back the next weekend and I said how delicious the jelly was and then I noticed them looking at the sideboard with the jar of jelly sitting up in all its glory with the knife still implanted in it. We never received any more jars of jelly and we never had a visit from them again

We had no vehicle of our own and no use of the station's utility so for Alice to make her regular visits to the Doctor McLean in Trangie she had to pay the postman for the trip there and back. This was a long drawn out journey as he stopped at every mail box on the way there and on the way back. Luckily the doctor was a kindly old man that Alice was comfortable with. There wasn't a real hospital as such in Trangie but there was a house that was referred to as a cottage hospital manned by two nursing sisters. This is where Alice would go when the baby was due. My trips into town during the twelve months we were there were very rare as I also had to travel with the postman. During one such visit I found Alice in conflict with the store keeper. She had asked for a four gallon tin of paraffin oil. The storekeeper said he didn't have a four gallon tin of paraffin oil and why did she need such a large quantity. I could see where the problem was and explained to the storekeeper that she was really asking for four gallons of kerosene for the lamps. In Ireland they called kerosene paraffin. We all had a good laugh when the storekeeper said he thought there must be a big problem with constipation to want so much paraffin oil. That day, in a trip to the Trangie post office, the post master being a most efficacious man announced that Alice would have to register to vote now she was an Australian, which she duly did.

With all the comings and goings to the doctor with the postman, his wife thought there must be something going on between them and accused Alice of having an affair with him. The partner could have doubled for bug's bunny. The old lady had been in the post office cottage too long.

On the sixth of December Alice announced to me that she thought the baby wasn't far away and she needed to go in to the hospital. On my way up to the homestead to ask for a loan of the utility to take her into the hospital I was worried they would say no and what would I do then. However they did grudgingly allow me to borrow the utility and Alice was safely delivered into the hospital. The sister at the hospital after examining Alice said yes the baby was on its way but didn't know how long it would take. We had never been separated since we were married and I was equally anxious as Alice about leaving her at the hospital but the sister was a very kindly lady and assured me that Alice would be fine. Alice was the only patient in the hospital so she was getting full attention. I returned to the farm full of worry. The next morning on the seventh of December I got the news that mother and baby were both doing well and I was now the father of a bouncing baby boy. We had previously decided on the baby's name, if it was a boy he would be called Nigel James Fergal Shipp. When the sister presented the baby to Alice she simply said Nigel has arrived. Alice was bursting with pride and wanted to tell everyone of his arrival and how beautiful he was but there was no one. That afternoon to my great joy the storekeeper, who happened to be the husband of the sister at the hospital, arrived out to the property to take me into see my wife and son. I wasn't used to such kindness. At the hospital I was on cloud nine as I hugged Alice and held my baby son. As I gazed at my son I said a quiet prayer that I could give Nigel a better life with not so much hard work as I had done. With the baby's safe arrival and Alice looking radiant the storekeeper Bill Saseen drove me back to the farm.
Chapter 12

By the end of the week Alice and Nigel were ready to come home so in another act of kindness Bill drove them home along with a few items of baby furniture that Alice had managed to buy. It was wonderful to be all together again but we were both fearful in case this new precious arrival didn't receive the right attention. The temperature had been 100f for days and nights on end and to cool the baby down Alice wet the cribs mosquito net and placed him in a breezeway.

Alice cried a lot during our stay on the cattle stud, from massive loneliness and homesickness. If she had been in Ireland all and sundry would be clamouring to get a view and admire the new baby. Here she only had me and I was at work most of the time. Although she was lonely and homesick she never once complained about the harsh conditions she found herself in. Looking back I could see what a brave person she was and I wouldn't have blamed her if she said enough is enough but she didn't and we battled on together. We had no telephone so the families were notified by letter of Nigel's arrival which took weeks for them to get the news.

It was a full time job looking after Master Nigel as he quickly became a force to be reckoned with. He was so active from the start we never had a full night's sleep for the first three years of his life. In the evenings I would walk with him up and down the road and try and get him off to sleep and as I looked down on the supposedly sleeping infant I would see in the moonlight two contented black eyes looking up at me. Alice had bought a second hand wicker cane pram that she used to transport Nigel in during the day and would frequently push him the one and a half miles up to the station to be with me.

One day when Alice was visiting me, she volunteered to hop on a horse and bring the bulls in, who had been out grazing. I thought it was a great idea so off she went on the horse. She brought the bulls in at a thundering gallop and being observed by Garna, he had a word with me later saying that was just the way to make the bulls sterile. Garna didn't object to Alice being there with the baby and remarked one day what pathetic creatures human babies were, if it had been a calf it would be up and running around by now. Garna asked Alice to give him a hand one day with a young bull he had in the crush. She was to hold the bull steady by its halter while he put a ring in its nose. Alice wasn't prepared for what happened next. There was an awful crunching sound as the ring went through the cartilage of the bull's nose and then the bull gave an almighty bellow. It gave her a very big fright to say the least.

Garna's wife who was an alcoholic, smoked so continuously she had a permanent nicotine stain above her top lip. She rode her horse down to visit Alice one day, telling her that the old unused church was very interesting and had a wonderful history if you had a look through the cemetery. On parting she invited Alice up to the homestead where Alice would be welcome to talk to her through the gauze door. This invitation was never taken up. Garna's wife used to spy on me while I was working in the barn and I could hear her calling out, "Garna look what Les is doing now". I always knew where she was hiding behind a garden hedge because she had several little fox terrier dogs that would run in and out of the spot where she was hiding. She would also follow me at a distance when I went out to inspect the cattle in the paddock. As it was all open plains and she rode a grey horse with the little dogs trailing behind, she was easy to spot.

I never really had anything to do with or even meet most of the groom/gardeners that came, with the exception of one. He was a blond, white skinned Englishman with a German wife. To get the job he had told them he could ride a horse. When I saw him with the horse I could see poor George didn't know one end of the horse from the other. He didn't have much horse work to do, only bring in the station horses and the milking cows. Alice and I watched him as he rode out into the hundred acre paddock to bring the horses into the stock yards. He did this with aplomb and at a great pace. The mob of horses galloped into the stock yards along with George and unfortunately he had forgotten to shut the gate on the other side of the yards, so off went the mob plus George. Sometime later the mob came galloping back along with George's horse but no George. He had a long walk home but was otherwise unhurt.

Garna had several racehorses in Sydney and one stallion was barred from the track being deemed as unsafe. He was duly gelded and sent back out to Dandaloo where he was to become my mount. When the horse arrived and I took charge of him I liked what I saw as indeed he was a beautiful horse. I also found he was a monster to ride as he had some very nasty tricks up its sleeve. Bucking was the least of them, one of his better tricks was to try and scrape the rider off on a barbed wire fence. I had no option but to persevere with him and after several mishaps I eventually brought the animal under control and it became a pleasure to ride. While out inspecting cattle on him one day, on the way home I decided to find out just how fast this ex racehorse was and let him have his head over the flat open plains. The horse put his whole heart into it and we just flew over the paddock. It was a magical moment to experience and I became even fonder of him. The horse looked and acted like a million dollars, so much so Garna's wife decided she would take him for her own show horse. Not likely thought I, and the night before she was to give him a tryout I shut him in his stable and gave him a big feed of oats. The next morning the horse's disposition was the same as it was when he returned from the track. She decided he wasn't the horse she thought he was and I got my mount back.

The horse never lost all his tricks and one day as I grabbed a couple of biscuits for my morning tea and mounted the horse to muster in, George was just crossing the yard collecting eggs in a bucket. The horse must have thought my concentration wasn't fully on him so he ducked his head and went across the yard in leaps and bounds heading straight for George. When George saw the monster heading his way he swung wildly at him with the bucket of eggs. What a mess. In order to hang on better I jammed the biscuits into my mouth which gave George the impression that my teeth were falling out.

Christmas 1959 was a sad time for Alice, she was missing her family very much and with the temperature at 110% night and day it didn't feel like Christmas to her. However the two of us made the best of it and sat up together with baby Nigel for a full on Christmas dinner. Two days later was Alice's birthday and a week after that was our first wedding anniversary. As we didn't have anyone to celebrate with on these occasions they just passed us by.

Alice breastfed Nigel and he became big and strong while his mother became thin. It was a great moment when it came time to feed him farex, but Nigel didn't think so, he just refused to try it. I tried it and the verdict was, no wonder he wouldn't eat it. The farex was thrown out to the turkeys who also rejected it. Alice had purchased a hand whizzer gadget that pulverised the food and Nigel liked that.

We battled on through the long hot summer and soon enough it was Easter time. This was going to be a busy time for me as I was to take my team of five bulls and a heifer to the Sydney Royal Easter Show. They were to travel to Sydney by stock train and I was to travel with them. We would be away for ten days which neither Alice or I were looking forward to as we had never been separated except for the short time Alice was in hospital. The cattle and I were loaded onto the stock train heading for Sydney Royal. It was a cold miserable trip and I was glad to reach our destination, having been picked up from the railway and transported by truck along with the cattle to the showground. It was all go when I reached the showground to settle in my charges in the cattle pavilion. The cattle were so well trained by this time it was no bother to settle them in. My living quarters were in a loft above the cattle stalls so I was on hand twenty-four hours a day if there were any disturbances. Getting the cattle ready for the big day kept me busy but even busier still was the big judgement day. In the team of cattle I had taken down, they won one championship, two firsts and a third and a fifth. This was a very good result considering the quality of cattle they were up against. Garna urged me to enter the junior judging competition. He felt he had trained me well enough to give a good account of myself. I was given second place and narrowly beaten by a young man who was the son of one of the stud owners. Garna himself was a surprise when he turned up in Sydney. Out on the station he appeared to have a big gut but in his Sydney outfit he looked trim. I decided he must have worn a corset.

After the judging and sales were over I had a bit of time to myself so I decided I would make the trip out to Parramatta mental hospital to visit Birdie. She was moderately pleased to see me and we went for a pleasant walk through the hospital gardens. Birdie had a phobia about constipation amongst many other things and as a consequence she frequently ingested large amounts of laxatives. This she had done before my visit. Part way through our walk she said she had to go to the toilet urgently. Luckily there was a toilet in the grounds so I took her there and waited outside for her. Not long after she entered the toilet, I heard her in distress calling for me to help. I wasn't used to going into ladies toilets but I braved it in and went in to see how I could help. Poor Birdie was indeed in trouble, she hadn't quite made it to the toilet and had made a big mess of herself. There was nothing else for it as I gritted my teeth and grabbed a handful of paper towels and cleaned her up the best I could. I then delivered her back to the ward so the nurses could clean her up properly. On the way back to the showground I wondered how many 25 year olds were given the job of cleaning up their mother's bottom.

I had less cattle to take back to the stud as many of them had been sold. I knew the stock train on the way back would be unpleasantly cold and someone had suggested to me that what I needed was a bottle of whisky. I bought a hip flask of Australian whisky called Curio. It wasn't much use to me as it was disgusting.

It was wonderful to be back on the station with Alice and Nigel. During the ensuing months we both came to the conclusion that life on a stud farm wasn't for us. As my twelve months contract was coming to an end I knew I could stay on but I didn't want to so I asked the only other person around, the postman, if he knew of any other jobs going. The postman was very glad to help as he had a dislike for the stud owners. He inquired around and in a short time he came up with a job as overseer on a mixed farm outside Tottenham. It was a small town about fifty miles away from Dandaloo and the farm was seventeen miles west of Tottenham. The postman drove Alice, I and Nigel over there for an interview which went very well. The owner's name was Ted and he was a real gentleman, quite unlike Garna. He asked me where I had been working and I told him I had worked for Garna for twelve months but didn't have a reference and didn't think Garna was the kind of person who gave references. Ted knew of Garna and told me if I had stuck it out for a year with the stud that was reference enough for him. I got the job and would start as soon as my contract ran out.

I gave Garna notice that I would be leaving at the end of my contract and he was furious and wanted to know what stud had stolen me. He couldn't believe it when I told him I wasn't going to another stud but something quite different. Garna said, "what a waste". When it came time to tally up what was owing to me I was very disappointed. All the studs paid their grooms 5% of the sale of bulls sold but Garna was only willing to pay two and a half % and as I was on contract I wasn't entitled to holiday pay. With all that dishonesty I was glad to see the last of him.

The postman's truck loaded with all our furniture and us he transported the lot to our new job. It was just so different from our arrival at Dandaloo. Our home to be was a lovely old world large farmhouse on top of a hill with lots of trees around. The whole house was ours except one room that was Ted's when he stayed overnight. Ted met us when we arrived and had a cup of tea and biscuits ready. The electric fridge had milk and butter in it and the food cupboard was well stocked. The rest of 1960 was going to be a great year. With the job came the use of the farm utility for trips to town or to the neighbours when we got to know them and joy oh joy we had a telephone. It wasn't the greatest of services as it was a party line with sixteen other subscribers on the same line. Each person had a different ring tone but any of the party line could pick up the 'phone at any time and they often listened in on others conversation. With its drawbacks it was still communication to the outside world and we could now contact anyone we wanted. Overseas calls were a bit too much for our antiquated service.

Alice and I made a point of going to town every Saturday for shopping. It gave us a great sense of freedom and our boss encouraged us to get out and about. We soon got to know our neighbours and one often invited us over for dinner. Alice's father was always a good host and would keep a variety of drinks on hand for his guests, keeping this in mind Alice always kept drinks for the guests in the house even though the guests were few and far between and the money for replenishing drinks was even rarer. We braved it off to a ball one night. There were no such people as baby sitters so we put Nigel to sleep in the front of the utility and checked on him frequently during the night as did all the other parents with their children. During a visit to a flower show at the local hall a tall attractive woman, a little older than us introduced herself and asked what was the baby's name. When we told her it was Nigel she was delighted and said you must meet my parents, my father's name is also Nigel. So began a lifelong friendship with the family. Nigel and Cathella were a delightful old couple and Cathella decided as Alice didn't have any family in Australia she would adopt her and be the granny to little Nigel. This bond continued for many years until the death of the old couple and even then their two daughters remained friends with us. Alice and I would spend Christmas day with them on their farm for many years. Cathella would often ring Alice to make sure she was doing fine with the baby. It meant a great deal to Alice to now have such friends.

My job was a joy also with mainly sheep and a small herd of cattle and some wheat and oat crops.
Chapter 13

The machinery were all vintage models but going concerns. The harvester was a horse drawn affair modified to be operated from a tractor. The grain when harvested went into bags that had to be sewn up by hand. When the harvest was over a truck came and the bags were loaded onto it and transported to the town silo. One year it rained so much the truck couldn't get in to remove the grain and that year's crop was ruined. I was given a small share of the profits from the crop as I had to put in extra hours in the growing of it. With the rain that year the profits were nil. The sheep were difficult to muster as the property had several ridges of very thick scrub that the sheep liked to hide in. One of my jobs was to collect firewood for myself and a utility load now and then was taken into Ted's town house. I brought the wood in from the paddock on a large four wheeled trailer pulled by the tractor which I then cut into small blocks with a circular saw. Much different from cutting up the timber with an axe as I had done at Dandaloo. There were two ponies on the farm, neither very pleasant to ride. One was clumsy and fell down with me one day and I summersaulted off and landed flat on my bottom. Unfortunately at the time I smoked roll your own cigarettes and I had a round tobacco tin in my back pocket which left a definite round bruise on my backside afterwards. The second pony was just hard to get on with.

Now we had transport we decided to attend mass at the Tottenham Catholic Church. This went well until our second baby Cynthia arrived in 1961 and then it was a battle to get the babies ready and into town on time for mass. Their mass going days came to an end when we arrived late one day and the priest denounced us in front of the congregation for our lack of commitment. We never attended mass in Tottenham again which was a pity as Alice liked to attend and we were making some nice friends there.

When Cynthia arrived it was the same system as in Trangie. It was a cottage hospital in the town with two nursing sisters and a local doctor. The doctor was a big fat man from Hungary. I had settled Alice into hospital and then went down to the town to do some shopping with Nigel who was now eleven months old. While in one of the shops a lady came rushing in and said to the shopkeeper quick get the other nurse, there's a patient at the hospital haemorrhaging. I knew Alice was the only patient so I rushed back to the hospital. I wasn't allowed in to see her but I spotted the new baby who had hurriedly been placed in a bassinette. So hurriedly in fact her little head was jammed up against the wicker side and was pressing into her little head. I picked her up and placed her more gently back into the bassinette. For the rest of her life Cynthia had a little dent in her scalp where she had been dumped into the bassinette. Alice told me later that the doctor had said, "we don't want this to be going on into the night do we? How about we induce you." Alice didn't know the implications of this and agreed but Cynthia came far too fast and did quite a bit of damage. The actions of the fat lazy insensitive Doctor had given Alice the fear of giving birth forever by his misjudged actions.

I had taken the week off to look after Nigel while Alice was in hospital. Nigel was still in nappies, the old-fashioned cloth ones, and I had never changed a nappy before or had to wash them. I had watched Alice do it often enough so I reckoned I would manage ok. The washing of the dirty nappies was almost my undoing as I couldn't help chucking up for the first couple of days. Luckily there was a wonderful machine at the farm called a washing machine which was a great help, but the poo had to be washed out of the nappies first. There was a large peppercorn tree in the garden and Nigel liked to eat the seeds which gave him diarrhoea which wasn't a help.

I had a Border collie female sheep dog called Lucky and the dog adored Alice and baby Nigel and felt it was her duty to take care of them. Alice would put Nigel in the pram out on the veranda for fresh air and Lucky would guard him. One day a cheeky willy wagtail bird insisted on landing on top of the pram. This worried Lucky as she wasn't sure what the bird's intentions were so she solved the problem by getting up into the pram to further protect Nigel. When Alice went out to check on him all she could see was Nigel peering out from behind a large dog. Lucky was torn between two loves when I went out mustering the sheep. She didn't want to leave her family but knew her job was to muster. She always did what her breeding declared and went mustering. Lucky now had two babies to protect and it was a worry for her when she found she herself was expecting. On the night her pups were born and the first one arrived she came down to the house to get me to come and see what had arrived. This went on through the night five times.

Cynthia was a very different baby to Nigel. She would sleep through the night and was a very easy baby to look after. As the months passed and she reached the sitting up stage, she would get herself on her hands and knees and rock herself to sleep. With Nigel several methods were tried to get him off to sleep. One was to put him in a far off room in the big old house so he couldn't be heard but that didn't work because we would lay awake wondering if he was ok. The other method was to turn the radio up loud near his cot so he couldn't hear himself singing out. This had a measure of success and thankfully he eventually grew out of it. The cot that was Nigel's was called a meat safe cot. It was already at the farm and was designed to stop baby getting out which was handy in Nigel's case and it was completely gauzed in to stop mosquitoes getting in and it had a high domed top that was also guised in.

Nigel never crawled but at ten months we looked through the hatch into the lounge room where he was playing and he was walking, hanging on to the furniture as he went. By twelve months he was able to escape over the five foot netting fence that surrounded the house and garden. Gone were the days when he happily played with empty boxes that the groceries came in, pushing them around the house, hiding in them until he eventually would climb into one and fall asleep. He had no trouble falling asleep during the day after an exhausting round of play. Alice used to dress him in very bright cloths for when he escaped out of the garden and would be off down the paddock, she could spot him. As he grew he loved to be with me and one day when he had been left behind he decided he would take me out some morning tea as he had seen Alice do. He loaded up his stroller with a bottle of water and some biscuits and headed off pushing the stroller looking for me. He wasn't able to find me and became lost in the thick scrub. It was all hands on deck to find him. I spotted the stroller tracks and followed them to where Nigel was sitting on a log wondering what to do next. I often put him into the front of the utility and took him along as I worked. He wasn't a bother and was happy to stay in the front of the utility as long as he could see me. This evening I had him in front of the utility while I butchered a sheep for meat. Nigel being curious discovered the ignition key and turned it on. The utility was facing downhill and was in gear, so off went Nigel and I had to run very fast to catch up with him. After that I always took the keys with me.

My friend Kevin from Harrods came to visit by train. It must have been a long journey from his home in Melbourne to Tottenham in western New South Wales. He was pleased to see me but thought Tottenham was the pits and I was no longer the dashing person he had known in London. Just a boring farmer with nothing to think about but farm work and his family. At the end of the first day Kevin asked when the next train out was. I was so hurt by his attitude that when I received an invitation to Kevin's wedding in Melbourne some months later I didn't bother to reply to it.

When Cynthia arrived in October 1961 we decided to buy our own utility. We thought we had made it with our very own transport. My boss wasn't impressed as he couldn't see why we would waste money buying a vehicle when we had the use of the farm utility. He had a good point there but he didn't know it wasn't just a utility to Alice and I, it meant independence for us. The fact we should have bought a car didn't occur to us. I very proudly drove our very own utility into the Tottenham hospital to pick up Alice and baby Cynthia. The new baby was put into a bassinet at Alice's feet for the journey home with Nigel commanding all other available space. On the way home we were hit by a flying stone from a passing car which completely shattered our windscreen. The broken glass went all over us and Cynthia in her bassinette. We had to stop and clean the utility out but there was no other harm done.

We were proud of our utility and arriving home from town one day Alice said, you had better put it in the garage as there is a wild storm coming. I thought it was safe enough where it was but as Alice kept on insisting I eventually gave in. I just had time to run back to the house having parked the utility in the garage when I looked back and saw the garage being blown apart by the storm and beams falling all around and on top of the utility. It was just one of those things. Some weeks later as we arrived at the farm gate in a bad storm the engine went under water and was never the same afterwards. We traded it in for a Holden car which suited our purpose much better as Alice was pregnant with our third child. Some misinformed person had told us it wasn't likely to become pregnant while the mother was breast feeding. We found out this was not the case.

My father Roy came for a visit and he looked well but he said he had a pain in his chest. He was going to have it investigated when he returned home. I didn't think any more of it as he looked so well.

Baby Roy arrived just before Christmas in 1962 without the drama Cynthia had. It would have been a very joyous time except I had a call from my sister Lynda. She had come up to Roy's farm at Camden to look after him as he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Lynda thought he was going to die soon and if I wanted to see him I had better make it quick. I loaded up the family with two week old Roy and headed for Camden. Alice was suffering from the stress of having the baby and wasn't happy about the journey, but as usual didn't put her foot down.

At Camden the family settled down in Roy's cottage as Roy was being nursed by Lynda in the house Ted and his wife lived in. Roy didn't want to die in hospital so between Lynda and I we nursed him for the last two weeks of his life, Lynda being a nurse was able to administer strong pain killing drugs. I was torn between looking after my family, the new baby and my dying father. It was a hard time all round and I decided when my time came to go I wouldn't put that stress on my family. During one of Roy's lucid moments he said to me that Birdie had always said he didn't like me but assured me this wasn't the case. I knew this but was too overcome to respond.

Ted and his wife had a morbid fear of someone dying in their house so they were no help at all. Shirley started giving away Roy's things even before he died. When Roy had taken his last breath with Lynda and myself by his side, I was overcome with grief and fled from the room sobbing. This was a strange feeling for me as even as a child I never cried but Lynda came and said to me, let it all out. I had always wanted Roy's approval but never seemed to get it, or so I thought.

After the funeral Ted wanted me to stay on and help run the farm but I knew that was never going to work. We could have returned to Tottenham and did so only to pack and return to Sydney. Alice was devastated as she loved Tottenham and didn't want to leave her friends there. Unknown to Alice our boss there had given me a paddock to clear and I was to have the first couple of crops off it but when it came down to it he decided to give it to a share farmer with his own equipment. I felt very let down by this as I had spent a lot of my own time clearing the land and decided to try something else.

In Sydney I was able to get a job with a house, managing a poultry farm at Oxford Falls in the northern suburbs. The house wasn't much more than a converted chicken house and just had two rooms. Not ideal but it would have to do as the pay was reasonable and we had as many eggs and poultry as we could eat. When the hens reached the end of their egg laying life I would cull them out and process them into the freezer where they were then sold to customers who had ordered them or to customers who came directly to the farm to buy. There was a good sale for the frozen chickens (old hens) and an assortment of eggs, double yolkers, ordinary size and small ones at different prices plus cracked eggs were popular as they were cheap. The owner would come each day and collect up produce for his orders. Everything was sold privately. There was also a ready market for dried foul manure. I would dry this out in a large glass house and bag it up for sale. We made many good friends with the customers that came regularly.

Our two dogs, Wendy and Lucky were with us still plus an Alsatian called Pudden who belonged to the farm but took it upon himself to become the owner of me. If I left the farm he would anxiously stand guard at the front gate waiting for me to come home. Lucky had another litter of pups and Wendy was very envious because she really wanted to become a mother. One day while Lucky was doing a tour of the farm, Wendy took up residence with Lucky's pups. There was a hell of a blue when Lucky returned. It was such a pathetic sight we decided to let Wendy have her own pups which she managed very well.

Alice and I worked on the farm every day except Mondays. On that day we only had to collect the eggs and feed the hens which we could do quite quickly. Apart from shopping we would take the children to the beach at Dee Why which was only ten minutes away. It was also only a short bus ride into the city centre but we didn't do that very often as lugging the children plus Wendy around the city was a big job.

Roy had left my sister Dorothy and I a small amount in his will, enough to buy a block of land but Ted requested that our share stay with the farm as that was the only way he could keep it. I felt it was more Teds than it was mine as he had stayed with Roy on the farm, so I signed my share over to him.

We really wanted a place of our own so we put a deposit on a block of land intending to build on it one day. This didn't happen because Alice became very sick and with the medical expenses we lost our deposit and some payments on our block. Alice went to several doctors and none came up with an answer.
Chapter 14

She was in a lot of pain and all the doctors could come up with was stress from taking care of three babies. She couldn't eat or stand the smell of cooking so the rest of the family often had cold meat and salad. She became so ill in the end and was in so much pain I bundled her into the car and took her directly to the hospital. It was the best thing that could have happened because she was obviously in great distress and was admitted into the hospital. There she was seen by a young Indian Intern who diagnosed her immediately. She had gallstones so bad they were about to rupture the spleen. She was operated on straight away, just in time. The previous doctors had worked on the theory that you had to be fat, fair and forty to have gallstones but Alice was none of these. She was so ill and run down the doctor suggested she needed three months rest. Not easy when you have three small children.

Sister Edna and her husband Harry came to the rescue and cared for the three babies for three months. A mighty effort. Alice was packed off for the duration to Granny Wilson at Tottenham. It was the only way to get through the crisis.

In the meantime the poultry farm was sold and the new owner wanted me to stay on to show him the ropes as he was a city man. The new owner proved to be a not a nice person so I applied for a job as overseer on a larger poultry farm near Liverpool. My new boss was very taken with my abilities and asked me to move into the workman's cottage on the farm. There was one problem there as the owner wouldn't allow dogs on the property so when I told my boss I wasn't willing to get rid of the dogs the he offered me a house he owned in the town. This would have worked well as the pay was twice as much as the last job and it was a good place to work with several trips into town to deliver eggs to the shops. It was not to be as Alice decided she didn't want to return to Sydney area. Alice still being out with Granny Wilson was in a better position to line up another job out there.

The new job was at Narromine and was predominantly a sheep property. The owner had shares in a live transport company and sold his fat lambs in South America. Part of the property was under cultivation with cotton being grown. Looking after the cultivation was to be my job and there was a house for us to live in. The owner was supposed to arrange transport for our furniture from the Railway to the property but when I reached the farm I was told the owner was in Sydney. I looked around the farm and couldn't see a suitable truck but there was a large semitrailer in the yard so I hopped in it and went off to collect our goods. I had never driven something so large before and didn't have a licence to do so but I managed to complete my mission without mishap. The house we were to live in was nice enough but the overseer and his wife were a surly lot and didn't want us there. The overseer was supposed to help me with the irrigation pipes but he said he had a bad back and couldn't help. He was very cunning as the method of irrigation was very primitive. The line of irrigation pipes had to be set up by hand and they were very heavy as they had been designed to be pulled into place mechanically. The only way I found I could do it was bare foot as one minute you were floundering through deep mud and then carrying the heavy pipes onto the next spot on hard sun baked clods. The milking cow we were given for our use wasn't a milking cow but a beef cow who had lost her calf and she was a demented animal. The only way to milk her was to strap her into a crush. Alice came one day to help me get her into the yard and the crazy animal charged after her and I just managed to head her off in time.

The cheques I received for my pay was always difficult as it was never regular and none of the shopkeepers in Narromine would cash them so we would have to drive to the next town, Trangie to buy our groceries. The whole six months I was there was taken up with applying for another job. When I finally did get another job, Alice went up to the homestead to collect my final pay. The owner's wife said she didn't know how much was owing and her husband was in South America. Alice was getting savvier with dealing with these kind of people and said to the boss's wife that she knew exactly how much was owing and she wanted a cheque for that amount now. She was given the cheque and brought it home to where I was packing up. The cheque I discovered was for more than I was owed but decided, for the way we had been treated I wasn't going to complain.

Alice with the family and I had driven up for an interview for the new job which was for an overseer/ working manager on an 11,000 acre property, 87 miles south-west of Moree. I was successful at the interview and returned to Narromine to arrange with my friend, the postman from Dandaloo, to cart our furniture to my new job.

The new house was a small two bedroom cottage with an enclosed back veranda. It wasn't luxurious but quite adequate and had a slow combustion fuel stove. It had a pleasant garden around it but its biggest drawback was that it was almost in the backyard of the very large homestead. The property was on very heavy black soil which meant even with a small amount of rain you weren't able to drive anywhere.The property was fifteen miles out from the village of Rowena where there was a school which was important as Nigel and Cynthia were ready to start. There wasn't a school bus so all the parents drove their children to school.

As we settled into the area we realised how rigid the social order was in that part of the country. The wealthy graziers made no bones about the fact that there was an inner circle, being them, and an outer circle, being less wealthy property owners, business men, and property managers. Then there were those of no account. Those of no account were never invited to take part in anything to do with the inner circle unless it was to the latter's benefit. Alice and I didn't fit comfortably into any of the circles as we appeared to be well educated and had travelled more than most of the inner circle people had. They had a sneaky suspicion that Alice might come from a family that wouldn't have invited them through the front door. This was further enhanced when at a later date the boss's sister-in-law travelled to Ireland on a holiday and Alice's parents invited her to stay at Little Moyle. When the sister-in-law returned Alice was very hurt when the traveller didn't even bother to come over to tell her the latest.

We were grudgingly invited to private tennis parties and other functions but we were never allowed to forget that we were never part of the inner circle. There were times when Alice was very sought after by the inner circle and that was at pony camp time. Alice had a British Horse Society Diploma and had taught at Ireland's leading riding school for six years before we were married, she was indeed popular at pony camp time. This popularity always only lasted until the pony camp was over, except for a few more forward thinking parents who would engage Alice to give private lessons throughout the year. The boss's father had race horses and he would send the young freshly broken in ones for Alice to educate. When they eventually went to the racing stables the trainer said how easy they were to handle and ride. Most of the racehorses that he had sent to him didn't even have basic training. One big chestnut thoroughbred was exceptionally hard to handle and one day Alice was having trouble controlling him so she called out to me to open the gate into a large freshly ploughed paddock. As he galloped madly around the ploughed paddock he couldn't be stopped to begin with but as he tired Alice brought out the crop and kept him going. Surprisingly he was much easier to handle after that. He did get his own back on one occasion but Alice couldn't remember what he did but whatever it was she was knocked unconscious.

Alice always one to think up new ideas came up with the plan that the parents should get together and start a bus run into school instead of each parent taking their own each day. This was warmly welcomed but no one personally wanted to have anything to do with the running of it. Alice decided she would do it and arranged to get a contract with the department of education to fund the run. We traded in our Holden car for a Kombi van set up as a bus. This proved popular in the area and got off to a flying start. There was one exception and that was Alice had lost her status as a manager's wife and downgraded to that of a bus driver and the invitations to parties dried up. They didn't give her the title of bus proprietor, just bus driver which excluded her from visits to the inner circle. This didn't worry us because we were earning as much from the bus run as I was earning from working twelve hours a day plus on the property. With the increase of numbers to the school we bought a much larger bus and a four wheel drive Toyota Jeep. The Jeep was for rescuing the bus if there was a fall of rain on the black soil plains. It was the only vehicle that could handle the sticky black soil. The bus building company flew up from Sydney in a small aircraft and landed on the airstrip just behind our house. The company was very good to deal with and after a couple of months Alice and I caught the train to Sydney to pick up our new bus.

A manager from one of the very large properties loaned us a pony for Nigel to go to pony camp on and he had a great time having learnt to ride on a pony called Mrs Crank on the station. His only upset was that the other kids called him Nigel Shitt instead of Shipp. Mrs Crank wasn't suitable to take to pony camp as she became very unsettled when taken off the property. Roy and Cynthia also learned to ride on Mrs Crank but they were too young to go to camp. The camp was in May and the accommodation was in the woolshed on a property west of Collarenebri and it was freezing cold there. A friend looked after Cynthia and Roy for the week while Alice and I were off at the camp. I never felt part of it as the inner circle was very strong and only tolerated me because it suited their purpose. After the first pony camp was over there was a meeting and it was decided that Alice and I were not bona fide teachers as we didn't have a pony club certificate. They didn't want to lose our services so one weekend off Alice and I went to be tested for a certificate. The instructor was one of the big wigs of the movement and by lunch time the first day he said he could learn more from Alice than he could teach so we were both awarded our pony club certificates. We both taught at Collarenebri for several years and Alice gave lessons in dressage and jumping in an arena we had set up by the house on the property.

Alice was very efficient with running the school bus and Nigel, Cynthia and Roy travelled to and from the school in the bus. Roy was too young for school at that time so spent the day with his mother. Alice was always intrigued as she drove around her run because most of the properties were miles in off the road, the children would drive themselves to meet the bus and as they drove along some of them were so small they could hardly see over the steering wheel, giving the impression that the vehicle didn't have a driver.

The boss who was a Federal Minister of Parliament wasn't on the property a lot of the time being busy in Canberra but when he was there he didn't do any work on the farm. He was complaining to me one day how his wife couldn't manage on the dress allowance she received from Parliament. When he told me how little it was, I replied that it was greater than what I kept my whole family on. The boss didn't want to know about it. What he expected me to do on the farm was beyond a joke. The property carried 6,000 sheep, 300 head of cattle plus 400 acres of wheat and oats, this I managed most of the time on my own. When I started work there, three aboriginal stockmen were also employed. Being a Parliamentarian the boss thought this made him look good in the eyes of the indigenous people. However none of them were stayers and didn't last very long. As they left I didn't replace them as I found them more of a hindrance than a help. When they were clearing a paddock of dead timber, I had to work between them and their quarters, otherwise they would go missing. One asked if he could borrow the truck to go back to the quarters for lunch and I thought why not. I realised why not when I looked up the road to see the man returning to work and he drove straight through the closed gate. In a very short time he had become as drunk as a skunk. Alcohol wasn't allowed on the property but he must have sneaked a bottle of metholated spirits in. I was told it was my responsibility to make sure no alcohol came on the property but I drew the line of searching their bags when they arrived. There were a couple who were reasonable workers but I knew they wouldn't be there long. One had a partner who had been trained in domestic duties in Rose Bay Sydney and Alice employed her to help in the house. Then the boss's wife found out what she was missing she told the girl she wanted her at the homestead so that was the end of Alice's help.

One of the couples that worked there had a son of eight years. The father was a good worker but too keen on the grog. When he and his family returned to the settlement at Collarenebri the pair of them got roaring drunk and ended up in jail. The boy got a message to me, "please get a taxi for Mum and Dad so I can get them out of jail". The father eventually died from drinking Lysol that had been stored in a wine bottle on the settlement.

A very large horse was purchased for the aboriginal stockmen to ride but they wouldn't get on it until they had seen me ride it first. No problem thought I as I mounted the beast. The horse waited until we reached a hard bit of the road and then he flew as high as the sky and dumped me on the hard road and bucked out over the top of me. Alice saw this happen and came running over demanding to know what I was up to making such a fool of myself. The aborigines must have known something as they never did get to ride that horse.

Contrary to the belief that aborigines were masters of wild life, the ones that came to work on the station were terrified of reptiles. I drove over to the haystack to pick up some bales to feed out to the stock. The stockman I had with me was a big burly bloke and he was too tired to shift himself to help.
Chapter 15

As luck would have it I found a frill necked lizard by the haystack so I caught it up and let it go in the front of the truck. The man who had been too tired to move sprung out of the truck like the devil was after him. The pay system wasn't very fair, as I was the overseer/manager I wasn't entitled to any overtime. However the aboriginal stockmen were, which meant they would be paid more for their 7-30am to 5-30pm plus overtime than I received for working from daylight till dark. On one occasion during wheat sowing I started work early in the morning, worked through the day and that night my shift on the tractor was to be from 6pm till midnight and then I was to be relieved by one of the stockmen. No one turned up and after an hours sleep across the steering wheel of the tractor I ploughed on until morning.

There was one other white man employed on the station and he was the groom gardener. He was an old Scotsman and the boss was partial to people from Scotland because his mother was from there. Jock was an alcoholic but was cunning enough not to drink while he was on the station. He ingratiated himself further with the boss by talking to him in a very broad Scottish accent. He talked like anybody else at other times. Bit by bit he complained to the boss that his arthritis was playing up and couldn't Les get the cows in for him and milk them. I already had far too much to do but this was loaded onto me along with feeding the station sheep dogs. Jock used to go off to town now and then for a break and drink himself into a stupor. On returning to the property one time I was sent in to collect him from the railway. He alighted from the train in a belligerent mood and refused to get into the car. He said he would when he was good and ready and headed off to the grog shop. I had a pile of work waiting for me back on the station so left him there .I was in trouble with the boss who said I should have been able to collect Jock up and would have done if I had treated him with more respect. More respect, I would have liked to have given him a good kick up the tail.

In 1965 the drought years hit the area and by then all the station hands were gone, too much work to do. The sheep and cattle all had to be fed by hand with hay and grain. It wasn't possible for me to do this on my own and Alice used to drive the truck while I threw the hay off the back as we went along. On one occasion she put her foot on the accelerator to hard and I went upside down into the feed bin. On the days Alice couldn't help, I would set up Nigel aged six years on a box in front of the truck, put it in gear with the throttle slightly on, jump out and spring onto the back to feed out. Nigel loved to do this and became a competent driver.

In 1966 Alice became pregnant with our fourth baby. We thought we had completed our family but nature decided otherwise. It wasn't that the baby wasn't wanted but Alice didn't relish going through it all again. The baby wasn't due until April 1967 so we had time to prepare for the arrival. Each Christmas we would travel down to Tottenham to enjoy the festive season with Granny Wilson and Mr Wilson. It was the one bright spot of our year. The Wilsons two daughters, Margret and Barbara and their families would also be there and Christmas lunch would be held out on the lawn under a shady tree. It was always a happy occasion all round with a farm dam for the children to swim in. Granny Wilson always told the children that if they were in difficulties don't call for God, call for her and she would save them. They always had presents for everyone, none of them expensive and often handmade but much appreciated all the same. Granny Wilson had an extensive collections of books and put great store in reading as she had been a preschool teacher before she was married and if you got yourself into a good book you weren't asked to help with the chores. The Wilsons had taken up their property as a soldier settler's block when Mr Wilson came back from the war and between the two of them they built the rambling farm house themselves.

When we first arrived on the property near Rowena we joined the tennis club and given the inner and outer circles we were told we would be in the B grade competitions. This was fine until the first competition and Alice won the ladies singles, doubles and the mixed doubles and I did the same in my events which displeased the mighty ones no end. They didn't know that Alice had been the junior champion of Ireland at school and I had played many competitions. We were grudgingly elevated to A grade.

Soon after we arrived on the property the boss told us he wanted us to support the local grocery store in Rowena but we found that store was very expensive and on further investigation found the homestead did all their shopping in the next biggest town which was Moree. The boss suggested we book everything down at the local store and at the end of the month he would pay the bill and give us what was left over. A good way to make himself look good in the eyes of the locals but Alice and I didn't come down in the last shower and opted to travel to Moree once a month to buy what we wanted.

The boss also put an unfair responsibility on us by way of telling us that if he was away we weren't to leave the property for the weekend as his wife was afraid to be there on her own. The wife who was a solid person had been a ballerina before they were married according to the boss. She must have been unsuited to living in the country because all the time I worked there I never once saw her outside the house. She seldom travelled to Canberra with her husband. There really was only one time that Alice and I wanted to be away for the weekend and that was to travel to Tottenham to pick up a pony mare Granny Wilson wanted to give the children.

A message came through one day that a little school friend of Nigel's, Katie had been playing with other children and she had received a bump to the head which had caused an aneurysm resulting in her death. This had a massive effect on Nigel, who was aware of what death was, it happened to animals and old people but not to children his own age. He screamed and fled and Alice found him a little while later hiding under a table. It was some time before he was able to come to terms with her death.

It was ages arranging the trip as a tow bar had to be fitted to the Kombi and Alice had to persuade a neighbour to lend his horse float. The Kombi was a most unsuitable vehicle to pull a horse float but we managed. When we reached Tottenham the pony was running on a 40,000 acre property and she had produced a filly foal which was now one year old and had never come in contact with a human. The two of them were mustered into the stockyards and the pony mare, Donna was easy to handle but the yearling filly was a wild thing. As I tried to capture her she flung herself against the fence trying to escape. With quiet persistence I finally managed to load her on the float. Mr Wilson was very impressed with my quiet calm determination to load the filly. Arriving back home with the two ponies I opened the float and the yearling filly shot out and disappeared into the night. I thought I might never see her again but next morning there she was with her mother. The yearling was a beautiful chestnut with a flowing silver mane and tail and we named her Flicker. Donna turned out to be a great asset for the children and was a trustworthy mount for them. The two ponies were to be with the family for many years.

The large properties surrounding the one I was on all had managers of different levels. They were all either University trained or had been to an Agriculture College or at least gone to a private boarding school. I felt my lack of education when with them and hid the fact that I hadn't been to any of these places of learning. I had travelled and read much more than any of them and doing so I was able to hold my own when talking to them. It didn't make up for my lack of formal education in my mind and underneath I felt I had to hide the fact that I wasn't very bright. They didn't notice and treated me as one of them.

As the year 1967 came around it started with a heat wave that went on and on. In February I had the crutching of the sheep to deal with. The shearers were due on the Monday so after my usual cup of coffee and a cigarette for breakfast on the Sunday I set off before daylight on my horse to muster the sheep into a paddock close to the shearing shed. I had the sheep mustered together in the 1500 acre paddock just as the sun came up. By the time I had the mob halfway across the paddock the heat came down with a vengeance. It became impossible to drive the sheep, they would only mill around in a circle, the heat had got to them. The dogs also bailed up and refused to leave the shade of the trees. Try as I might the sheep wouldn't co-operate. I had a blinding headache which had been with me for the last week. As I did my best to drive the sheep on I started to feel light headed and had dancing lights in my eyes. Stopping under a shady tree, hoping it would all go away I started having difficulty breathing. My world was going dark and I felt so bad I thought this is it, I must get home to Alice before I pass out. Leaving the sheep in a huddle I headed my horse for home. The trip home became a blur and I only made it to the stables before collapsing in a heap with my breath coming out in gasps. Alice. saw me and came running over to see what was wrong, and sent the children back for some water. The boss arrived soon after and demanded to know where the sheep were. I gasped out their location and Alice announced she was taking me into the hospital. The boss was appalled by this and said, "what will the neighbours think" and stormed off.

At the hospital eighty miles away in Moree I was admitted and the doctor was called in from his game of golf. When the doctor was told I had a bad headache for a week, he was cross and wanted to know why I hadn't come to see him before this. I was in too much distress to care what the doctor thought, besides how could I come in to see him when I had so much work to do. I was given a strong sedative and put to bed. The next day when the doctor called, I told him I would have to get back to work as the shearers would be arriving. Examining me the doctor said I was suffering from physical and mental exhaustion and how dare my boss expect so much work from one man. The doctor told me that my predecessor had been a patient of his and had died of a heart attack out in the paddock. At least I had made it back home from my meltdown. The doctor told me I wasn't going anywhere for the rest of the week and prescribed a strong sedative to keep me calm and at peace.

At the end of the week I returned to work but still on a lighter sedative which didn't do much for me and a week later I went back to the doctor and was subscribed a drug called Valium. It worked very well and I was able to get back to some sort of normality. The experience had given me a fear of being a long way from home working in the far paddocks but it was something I had to conquer. The Valium dose I was on was five milligrams four times a day so it was remarkable that I was able to function at all. I was to be on this level of a dose for the next seven years. Mainly because I became addicted to the drug.

In April 1967 Alice arrived home from the school bus run and said to me I had better take her into the hospital as she felt the baby was on its way. After dropping the other three children off at a neighbours I drove as fast as I could the eighty miles into Moree hospital. The next day Joseph Patrick was with us. He was such a beautiful healthy boy and the whole family were delighted with him and loved playing with him. In May I was told I could have a week off to paint our cottage. I thought this was great as I could also look after Jodie while Alice was driving the bus. One day while I was outside painting I heard Jodie cry so I wiped the paint off my hands with turpentine and went in to change his nappy. He settled down and I went back to painting. The next morning Alice rose early to feed Jodie and thought what a good baby he was still sleeping. I was never to forget the anguished cry from Alice when she picked him up out of the cot and found he wasn't breathing. In a panic I rushed over to the homestead to get the boss's wife who had been a nurse. She came over and gave the little bundle C.P.R but it was no use. A neighbour looked after the three children while Alice and I drove frantically the eighty miles to Moree hospital with Alice clutching Jodie to her hoping the doctor would be able to make it all right. At the hospital Jodie was taken from us and that was the last we saw of him. There wasn't even time to say goodbye. We were both devastated and with no one to help us we drove home. There was an inquest into his death and the Police came and took away his cot to find a cause. Some of the cruel neighbours said he must have smothered. This was not so as the verdict was he died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. This wasn't known about much back then.

When we returned home I was so distraught I gathered up Jodie's dirty cloths and washed them and packed them away thinking this is the last thing I could do for him. I was haunted for years after wondering if it was something I did to cause Jodie's death, like having turpentine smell on my hands when I picked him up the day before. Granny Wilson was contacted and her daughter Barbara drove her up to Rowena where she stayed for ten days. It was a great comfort for Alice and helped us get through the trauma of it all.

When the police brought Jodie's cot and mattress back I took the lot out into a ploughed paddock and burnt them. I couldn't bear to look at them and Alice was too traumatised to care.

The Catholic priest that covered our area and frequently flew his small 'plane onto the airfield behind our cottage. He would then walk past our cottage to visit our boss who was a protestant but that was where the money was. He never once called in to see Alice and I, if he had done so it would have been a comfort to Alice.
Chapter 16

He wasn't considered for Jodie's funeral as his base was at Walget. The boss did one kind thing for the grieving parents, he did all the arrangements for Jodie's funeral which was held in Moree.

There was a problem with Moree, the Monseignor didn't want to burry Jodie because he didn't come from his diocese. The boss put him right there but it was certainly no help for the parents. Sadly Alice, the boss and I were the only mourners at the funeral. For ages after Alice avoided looking into prams with babies in them. All this made me even more anti-religious, for me it was all a hoax. After it was all over we both sought solace in working harder than ever.

A holiday was needed so later in the year off we went for a long weekend at Port Macquarie. I wanted to camp but Alice wasn't keen on the idea but when we reached our destination everywhere was booked out so camping we did. It was basic camping to say the least as we didn't have much camping equipment but we got by. I strung a rope around the opening of the Kombi and hung blankets up to give us privacy. Alice and the children slept inside the Kombi and I slept outside as I didn't fit inside. It was only a short break but so successful we decided to take two weeks off later on and go up through Southern Queensland. Next time we were better equipped. We had a twelve foot by twelve foot canvas fly and this gave us much better protection from the weather.

The family set off north through Moree, Goondiwindi, Miles and Taroom. Near Theadore we became lost and called into a property for help. It was getting on dark and the owner said we had better stay the night and set off again in the morning. It was a soldier settlement block and the farmer's house was very basic but the farmers were the kind that would give you their last crust of bread if you needed it. We were given dinner and everyone offered to move over so we could sleep in the house. I thanked them and said the Kombi was well set up for sleeping. The next morning we bid the farmers farewell and went on our way through Biloela and then turned south to Harvey Bay. It was dark by the time we reached Pialba caravan park so we quickly set up the van and went to bed with me sleeping outside. I didn't bother putting up the tent fly and during the night it rained. Luckily the card table was by my bed and on it was a plastic table cloth which I pulled over myself and was quite snug.

A week or two before we set off on our holiday the three children contracted chicken pox. Although they were no longer sick they did have red spots all over them. We didn't want to forgo our holiday so we decided if we were asked about the spots we would say the children had been bitten by mosquitoes. Mosquitoes were very much on our mind as Lucky had caught a fever from them and had unfortunately died.

The next morning when the children woke up they were in awe at the great expanse of water that was the ocean. Nigel ventured an opinion and said some bad person must have left a tap on overnight. The tent fly was erected and we set up our camp under it, cooking bacon and eggs for breakfast. A man from a nearby tent which was a deluxe model came over to say hullo and said how wonderful it was to see a family enjoying themselves out in the open. He said his wife hadn't stopped complaining about their tent and the rain since they arrived.

At the caravan park each evening a van came around playing music. Alice and I knew what it was but spending money was tight so we told the children the music said it was time for bed. This worked well for a while until Nigel made his big discovery and came running to tell us the music meant ice cream.

The ocean at Pialba was shallow and with three small children this was a blessing and we had a wonderful time there. Nigel floated around for hours on an inflated car tube but unfortunately we had forgotten about sun burn and Nigel was very fair. He even had sunburn blisters on his eyelids and I rushed him off to a chemist where we were able to buy an antiseptic spray called solar caine which relieved him greatly. We had our little dog Wendy with us and in between taking her for a walk we had to tie her up by the Kombi. She was good with children but when one came over and pulled her long hair she retaliated by reaching up and grabbing the child by the nose and hanging on. It did look funny and the child didn't bother her again. The two weeks gave us all a chance to recover from all the bad things that had happened to us.

Returning to Rowena it was back to the grind of bus driving and station work. The drought was still in progress and the homestead had a large garden. The water was pumped up from a large dam and this gave our cottage water for our small garden and water to wash the clothes and bodies, it also supplied the homestead garden. The only other water our cottage had was a 3,000 gallon rain water tank on the cottage. In his wisdom the boss decided his garden needed the water more than our family did and he shut off the tap to our cottage. This meant Alice had to use as little water as possible for the laundry and take the three small children across the yard in the middle of winter to shower them in a garage behind the homestead. This thoughtless action infuriated Alice and the next time she caught up with him she gave him a blast, telling him he had come down off his pedestal faster than Nelson had done in Dublin. The water was turned back on to our cottage. I was working down at the woolshed when this happened and the boss came down and said, "you had better go home and make your wife a cup of tea, I have enough trouble understanding my own wife without trying to understand yours".

During their time on the poultry farm at Oxford Falls we had met an English couple and their children, and we had gone to the couple's house for dinner. While there Alice found Cynthia crying and when asked what was the matter she said, "that dogs making faces at me". It was a pug nosed boxer. When Alice and I moved to Rowena the English couple asked if they could come and visit. When they arrived they were petrified because of the vast empty space and the quietness. Their two children were a handful and even set fire to a paddock. They were not an easy couple to have to stay and after they left Alice wrote to Edna telling her how awful the visit had been and at the same time she wrote to the English couple telling them how good it was to catch up with them. Unfortunately the wrong letter was put into the wrong envelope. The English man drove all the way back out to Rowena, handed the letter back and told us what he thought of us. We never heard from them again.

The school at Rowena was a one room affair with one teacher and because of the isolation the teachers that came only stayed for one year. The children from year one to year six were all in the one room, it must have been difficult to teach. Cynthia was at a disadvantage there because she was far ahead of the others in her year and had to constantly sit and wait for the others to catch up. Alice commented one day on what expression she put into reading out loud. Nigel who wasn't a keen reader retorted, "too much damn expression if you ask me". Nigel was a great help on the bus run as he was the official gate opener. The bus run ran through some properties which had gates to open. The school bus run gave us hope for a better future.

With the job I did many hours overtime that I wasn't paid for so I reasoned that now and then I could give Alice a break on the afternoon run and do the driving. It was a fair exchange of time I felt but when Jock reported the matter to the boss he wasn't impressed. He had a chat with me and said I would have to give up the bus run or be sacked. He felt the bus run was taking up too much of my concentration. There wasn't any contest as far as I was concerned and I told the boss I would be leaving at the end of the month.

At about this time the boss had arranged for a man to come and install a hot water heater in the slow combustion stove. The man was a religious crank and spent as much time praying as he did working. I was busy packing everything we owned into boxes and the boxes were then stacked up ready to be moved to the next house. I didn't want to work on another property around there and planned to find a house to rent and do odd jobs in between helping with the bus.

More drama was to come. Alice had left with the three children plus Wendy on the bus run and I had gone down to the woolshed to work. It was about ten thirty when a neighbour rushed down to me and told me that our cottage was on fire. I got back home as soon as I could but the cypress pine building with a strong wind blowing it couldn't be saved. All the ceiling and roof were ablaze and the heat was so intense the glass louvers on the back veranda were running down the wall like water. The praying stove man must have cracked the asbestos flue in the ceiling while he was working and the flames had exploded through the crack. Everything we owned was still in the cottage along with the children's saddles. All that was left was the family, Wendy, and the bus, which in truth was a lot to be thankful for. Alice arrived home just in time to see the whole structure collapse. Little Roy was with her and his biggest concern was that all his wheatie bickies were all burnt up. As we stood there loud explosions from gas bottles and the fridge and freezer went through us like a knife. The freezer had been full of dressed chickens that we had grown and you could smell them cooking.

A drover arrived but it was beyond help. The drover had seen the children's saddles burning inside the cottage and a few days later he arrived with a saddle and a bridle for the children.

As Alice and I stood dumbfounded the boss arrived and the first thing he said was, "I suppose you've moved all your furniture out before this happened". He had reason to feel bad when I told him that the lot had gone up in smoke. The family moved into the shearer's quarters with borrowed blankets from neighbours for the next couple of nights. We now had no goods to transport and the clothes we were wearing that day was all we had. We were too stunned to think clearly, but Nigel and the children were a great help. We had to make up their beds on the dining table because the quarters were infested with rats and mice. A neighbour took us home the first night and gave us dinner. After dinner the children were put to bed while the adults chatted. When we set off for home that night we were in such a stunned state we had forgotten the children were with us and as the neighbour had gone to open the garden gate for us she said what about the children. We were very embarrassed as we drove back to the house to pick up the sleeping children.

The drover when he called in with the child's saddle said he had an old caravan we could borrow until we were able to sort ourselves out. The neighbour we had dinner with offered to let us park the caravan next to their shearer's quarters, so this is what we did. We still had the bus to run. Roy started to stutter after all this and did so for several years. We went back to the burnt out cottage to see if we could salvage anything but there wasn't. The boss had hired a man called Hydraulic Jack to clean up the area and he had gone off with lumps of solid silver from some of the wedding presents. He was called Hydraulic Jack because he would lift anything that wasn't bolted down.

I found it difficult to get odd jobs because of my social standing on the property but I did manage to get a job here and there. We moved into a workman's cottage on a property close to Rowena where I was to be caretaker while the owners were away. Someone must have contacted the Smith Family in Tamworth about us being left with nothing and on the next train came a box of cutlery, plates, blankets, sheets and clothes. Unfortunately we were both so thin at the time none of the clothes fitted us but the children were luckier. The village of Rowena had a benefit dance to raise money for us. I didn't want this as although we had lost everything we were not destitute because we still had the bus.

The odd jobs were few and far between so when I was offered a job as a station hand on a local property I accepted. The best thing about the job was a cottage went with it and we were able to keep our two ponies there plus a couple of poddy calves we had reared. As it was on the end of the bus run it was ideal. The property was owned by a young man and his wife who were in their twenties and were o k to work for.

Alice had been given a lot of dresses after the fire and because she was so thin none of them fitted so the C.W.A ladies had a day with her to alter them to fit. One of the ladies from the area had given Alice two dresses and didn't know about the sewing bee. Six months later she turned up and said to Alice, "now your back on your feet I would like my dresses back as they were my best". Alice was mortified and said she didn't know which dresses they were, you will have to take your pick.

Nigel had a great time on the property with the pony Donna and he helped me break-in Flicker. Flicker was hard for me to stay on as she was only twelve hands high and my long legs kept getting tangled with hers. It was a long process but she turned out as useful as Donna. One day Nigel came running in to Alice in great excitement and announced that there was a little bit zackly the same as herself running with Donna. It was another pony filly and we named her Sherima. Donna must have conceived her before she left Tottenham. The property had a busy stock route running past with lots of stock being driven along. Nigel busied himself on Donna helping the drovers as they went past. One was so impressed with his help he posted a set of spurs back to Nigel who proudly put them on. Donna wasn't impressed and sent Nigel skywards. He announced that he was of the opinion that Donna needed more training.
Chapter 17

At this time my niece Kathie, Edna and Harry's daughter was to be married in Sydney and she wanted Nigel to be a page boy. Alice set about making him a delightful pageboy suit and he looked angelic in it.

The trip down for the wedding was a nightmare in the beginning as it had rained heavily and the Toyota struggled to get through, it did but covered in sticky black mud. By the time we reached Sydney the mud had dried and was dropping off in great clods. The city traffic must have thought it was a monster coming towards them. The wedding went off in great style, with Nigel sitting up in all his glory with the bride in a horse drawn carriage. The trip home was just as difficult as it was going and Alice and I were so tired we swapped drivers every half hour. Luckily the children were able to sleep in the back.

I had acquired four head of cattle which I was allowed to run on the property along with our three ponies. The work there was hard but as it was all flat and without much timber I could see the house from most parts of the paddocks so I felt safer and not so prone to anxiety unless I was running low on valium. The drug was so important to me I never once let myself run out of it. Still being on 5 milligrams four times a day, nothing much had changed.

During one of the pony camps Alice became friendly with a lady whose husband owned a large property north west of Moree on the edge of what was called the watercourse country. It was called the watercourse country because in flood times the river overflowed over thousands of acres. Alice told the lady we were not happy where we were and the lady said they were looking for another stockman and there was a nice house that went with the job. I had met the couple as we had been invited to their property for weekends and we had got on well. The job paid more than I was presently getting. The property was too far to run the bus from there so we worked out it could be done if we bought a caravan and parked it near Rowena and Alice and the children lived in the caravan during the week and drove over to the property on Friday afternoons and back on Monday mornings.

We both had to keep on working as we now had a caravan, a bus and a Toyota to pay off. It all worked out well and we spent the next couple of years on the property near Karrabooma.

At one stage we felt we needed a week off so we hitched up the caravan and drove to the caravan park alongside the Moree bore baths. We had a lovely relaxed week there sitting by the pool and the children swimming all day long in the hot bore baths. We were not sure if the hot pool was to blame but by the end of the week we had both Nigel and Roy in hospital to have their appendix out. Not long after this we had all three children in hospital again to have their tonsils out.

There was another couple working on the property, about the same age as us, and they had been there for some time. They had their nose out of joint when I turned up because I was on the same pay as he was and the fact that we were friends of the owner and they had never been invited to the homestead. They made it unpleasant for me whenever they could but because I didn't have to work with him I was able to ignore him most of the time. His job was to look after the stock and my job was with the cultivation. I did help him once to muster a mob of cattle and he loaned me one of his horses to ride. The horse was very fiery and a solid big horse that was hard to keep still. I enjoyed the day out on him mustering as he settled down and was pleasant to ride. At the end of the day the man I was working with said, "you had better buy that horse, he's turfed everyone else off who tried to ride him" I wasn't impressed with the mean way I was tricked into riding him but I did enjoy riding him and I did need a useable stockhorse so I agreed to buy him. The horse cost me two hundred dollars and as I didn't have the spare two hundred it was agreed that I pay him off at fifty dollars a month. The horse Blaze was my constant friend for twenty years and we travelled a good many miles together. He never did acccept other riders until in his old age he accepted Alice. I learned more about Blaze's past as time went on. He had started off his life as a buckjumper and then as a jumper but was hard to handle. His mother was a part draft horse and his father was a racehorse. Whatever his breed was if he started off after a beast you just had to hang on.

On the property was also an old alcoholic man who operated the bulldozer and lived in the shearer's quarters. He and the other stockman were great mates and had long drinking sessions together. The pair of them viewed me with suspicion because I wasn't a drinker.

On the western side of us an older man cared for his nephew's property and went to work most days with his nephew who lived on the eastern side of us and had to pass by our house on his way. He was a chronic alcoholic and would set off to work with a hot flagon of wine he had tipped all his other leftovers into. He would come down to me in tears because his horse was in a bad way and would I go up there and have a look at him. It was always the same procedure, I would go with him and when we arrived there would be nothing wrong with the horse, but he would get out a beer bottle filled with castor oil, the horse being used to the man would tilt his head up and the man would pour the oil down his throat. It didn't seem to do the horse any harm. One day he drove his Toyota utility over to his nephew's farm and to be safe he used to drive along in the table drain. While he was with his nephew the council came along and erected a sturdy guide post in the table drain. On his way home he didn't see the guidepost and slammed straight into it. I guess he was too drunk and relaxed but he came out of it better than the Toyota did. Someone gave me a dozen large bottles of different kinds of beer and as I didn't have a use for them straight away I stored them out on the veranda where they would have become hot. We were going to have a visitor so I thought I had better get a couple of the bottles in and put them in the fridge. To my surprise they were all empty and had their caps carefully put back on. It didn't take me long to work out that we had a visit from the man next door.

We were allowed to keep our small herd of cattle on the property plus the three ponies and now Blaze. Between Nigel and I we had broken Flicker in who Nigel rode, and Cynthia had Donna. Roy was the only one without a horse. Alice found a stud show pony that the owner's children had outgrown and as she was deemed barren she wasn't useful as a breeder. She was a beautiful taffy colour with a huge flowing silver mane and tail. Roy fell in love with her straight away but we weren't as sure as she had dumped him several times while on trial. We thought perhaps we would send her back but Roy was most upset and told us that she was very suitable. Jenny Wren stayed much to Roy's delight. The children had lots of fun riding around the property and Alice set up jumps and flag and bending pegs for them near the house. Nigel used to ride Flicker up to the homestead which was a couple of miles away to play with the boss's children and afterwards he would ride out to where I was working. He was caught in a hail storm one day while on this ride and he had trouble holding Flicker while he himself was receiving a battering from the hail stones.

For a break we went for a long weekend to Lightening Ridge in the Toyota and set up a cover at the back of it for eating and sleeping. The children and ourselves had fun fossicking for opals in the slag heaps. The children were better at finding colour in the stones than we were because they were closer to the ground. There was a large bore baths there that we enjoyed swimming in. The water was lovely and warm and helped Roy to learn to swim as it was also buoyant from the salt content. Joe and his family from Coonamble were holidaying there and we had a great chat catching up with what had happened in our lives.

Alice became ill again and with the same symptoms plus the same awful pain. The doctor said it couldn't be gallstones this time because she had her gallbladder removed but the pain persisted. The doctor in Moree was of no help as yet again he put it down to stress. In desperation Alice went to a doctor in Collarenebri whose main interest was in treating aborigines. Archy Kalakorenus was a Greek and a very caring man. He told Alice he thought there was something wrong but he didn't have the equipment needed to find out what. He gave her a referral to a specialist in Sydney. We had made friends with a young couple who owned a quarter horse stud nearby and they offered to look after the children while Alice went off to Sydney. Alice stayed at the C.W.A hostel in Potts Point in Sydney while she attended the specialist. He was an old man and had a lot of experience and could tell there was something physical wrong with her and sent her off for x-rays. The x-ray showed she had a large gallstone stuck in her bile duct from when she had the gallbladder problem. The stone was removed and she had no further problem in that area. She returned to driving the bus shortly afterwards and although very sore she persisted.

We really didn't have visitors but were surprised when Nellie and Peter the mother and father-in law of my niece Kathie called in on their way north and stayed for a week. They were fun to have except Nellie was a bit overpowering. They were both Dutch and Nellie wore the pants. They must have given us a new lease of life because a couple of months later Alice found she was pregnant with our fifth child. We were both delighted with the upcoming arrival but slightly afraid because of what had happened with Jodie.

To supplement our income we kept a few pigs and chickens for sale. With the first litter of piglets for sale we set off to market with the piglets in a borrowed trailer towed by the Toyota. With the three children in the back of the Toyota I instructed them to keep a lookout to make sure the piglets were traveling o k. Several times I asked them for a report and all was well but the last time I asked they said oh no Dad the trailer fell off miles back. They didn't equate the trailer falling off to the piglets not being o k. They were only little and I had given them such responsibility. There was nothing to do but turn around and look for them. The country was so open and flat that when the trailer become unhitched it simply sailed across the table drain and out into the open paddock. The piglets were all intact so we just hooked it up again and drove on. The chickens we used to sell to the local Indian community at Collarenebri, they liked them live so they could treat them according to their religion. Our chickens had an infestation of stick fast fleas. It's a flea that sets up its home on the roosts of the chicken pens and at night come out and covers the chickens head. To rid them of the flea Alice had been told to dip them in chemicals. She decided not to bother me with the problem and sent the children over to the sheep dip to get a bucket full of it. She set the children up, one catching the cockerels, one passing them out to her, and one taking them away after she had dipped them. The operation went extremely well until the end when Alice looked around to view her efforts and only one cockerel was still standing. The others had suffocated from the strength of the dip which was made for sheep not chickens. Nigel was sent across to the shearing shed to report the disaster to me.

I was still having trouble with my breathing even though I was still on valium so the doctor sent me off to the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney to have some investigations done. They started off with an angiogram, entering through a vein on the inside of my right elbow. I had several other tests but they couldn't find any problems. To add to the mystery my breathing improved while I was in hospital. I did have a problem however as an infection set up where the angiogram had entered. I was only to be in hospital a few days but it turned into two weeks. Alice became alarmed and between she and the boss's wife decided to travel down to the hospital to retrieve me. I was glad to get home as I wasn't getting anywhere at the hospital and the last doctor to see me was a physiatrist suggesting it was all in my mind. A male nurse who was also a patient in my ward knew of my struggle and said, of course I wasn't having any trouble breathing while I was in hospital because I felt safe there.

Life at Kurrabooma went on without any drama. I decided to give up smoking because I came to realise I wasn't smoking for pleasure, it had just become a powerful habit. I succeeded with the no smoking for six months and with the money I saved from not smoking I bought myself an electric shaver. It wasn't to last and I went back to smoking leaving the battle for another day.

In 1970 Alice announced she was ready to go into hospital, the baby was on its way. I had taken time off from work when the baby was due and drive the bus for the next couple of weeks. When we arrived at the hospital I wanted to stay with her but the sister in charge became angry with me and told me to leave as I wasn't needed. I had just come off the bus run the next day when I received the message to say that mother and baby daughter were doing well. Rebecca Consuella had arrived and was a great joy for us both but we were a little afraid. I was so concerned for her when we arrived home I would lay down with Rebecca sleeping on my chest. With the beating of my heart she was easy to put off to sleep. She didn't stay there all night, with baby and me fast asleep Alice would pick her up and put her in her bassinette. Cynthia asked one day, now we have our own baby can we look at babies in prams going along the street in town. Alice had never said they were not to but Cynthia must have picked up a vibe that Mum didn't look into other people's prams after Jodie died.

We had raised a pet kangaroo at Karrabooma and it lived around the house. Our toilet there was what was called a long drop, which is a deep hole in the ground with a dunny built over it. There are many of them out in the country but this one was unique.
Chapter 18

It had a large culvert pipe stuck in the hole but it was slightly too big, so when you sat on it your feet didn't touch the ground. Quite different to the long drop at Granny Wilson that had three seats alongside each other, one for Dad, one for Mum and one for the baby. These were quite comfortable but you couldn't call the Kurrabooma one comfortable. My brother Ted came to visit us there and in the dark one night he made the trek out to the far off toilet and must have stopped to admire the stars.

This was too good a chance for our pet kangaroo to miss, she crept up behind him and placed her two front paws around his leg. The bellow he let out could be heard for miles.

Coming up Christmas time with school over for the year, Nellie and Peter who lived in Melbourne, invited Nigel to have a holiday with them over Christmas so off he went. He was only supposed to be away for two weeks but he had to stay there for two months because the mother of all floods came to Moree covering thousands of square miles.

We were cut off from Moree three weeks before the flood waters reached us. The country out there being so flat, only dropping a foot in a mile, the water came slowly. When it reached us it was like a mini wall of water, about a foot high traveling so slow you could walk in front of it. A neighbour who lived about ten miles out in the watercourse country asked my boss if he could have some help to shift his sheep up onto higher ground. I volunteered as I would only be gone a day or so. My boss drove me over to the neighbour and then returned home. The sheep were hard to shift and it took longer than expected. By the time the job was completed the water had risen so high all the roads were cut and no way for me to get home. I was stuck there for over a week. A mosquito plague came with the flood and it was so severe the sheep dogs had to be shut in the gauzed in meat house or they would have died. Even though it was very hot we had to wear heavy cloths to avoid being bitten and ending up with a fever. The flood water itself was no relief either as the water was unpleasantly warm.

I lived with the family for the duration and although safe I was worried about Alice and the children. Alice had lost her backstop with Nigel being away. My only contact with Alice was at a designated time I would wade out in waist deep water, hook a wire with a telephone attached over the bare telephone wires and hopefully Alice would pick up the phone at the other end. It nearly always meant I would get a jolt of electricity from the bare wires as I stood in waist deep water. A helicopter came at one stage to bring supplies and I tried to talk him into taking me home but it was no go. In the end I decided I had enough and planned to swim for it. There was no land above the water for the ten miles home and it was a case of swimming from tree to tree. The trees weren't a safe refuge either as a multitude of creepy crawlies, including snakes had also taken refuge in them. I hoped my inbuilt radar would guide me home as all I could see was water and trees and no landmarks. The body of the river was itself a challenge but I finally arrived home a bit the worse for wear Alice and the children had survived with food drops from a plane. When the food was dropped out of the plane it didn't always land near the house so Cynthia and Roy would set off on their ponies to collect it. Alice couldn't go because she had baby Rebecca to look after. Before I arrived home Alice thought it would be nice if they had a bit of meat to eat so Roy, only being very small, volunteered to chop the head off one of our chickens. He had seen me do it enough times so he set up the chicken on the chopping block, closed his eyes and went whack with the axe. Luckily it was the chickens head and not his hand that got the chop.

We had brought the caravan to Karrabooma for the long school holidays and luckily it had been spared from the flood. Because of the continued flood there wasn't any work to do on the property so I was out of a job. I had enough of working on properties by this time and we decided as soon as the water went down enough we would tow the caravan back to Rowena and find a permanent place to park. It was some time before it was possible to make the journey and even when we did I looked in my rear vision mirror and saw the caravan was floating. After a hazardous trip we made it to Rowena village and couldn't move from there as many of the roads had been washed away, bridges had gone and even the railway had been washed away for several miles. The countryside was mostly still under water. There wasn't any work anywhere, even the bus couldn't run.

In the village of Rowena there were twenty men wandering about with no available work so it should have been a significant boost when the railway called for paid volunteers to reconstruct the railway line. Out of the twenty unemployed men only three turned up for the job. The first one there was me and then a property owner who couldn't work his water soaked land and a young son from another property. There were five other fettlers working on the railway, all aboriginal except one white man who was a chronic alcoholic who had an aboriginal partner and she only turned up on pay days. It was a bit like them and us. The head ganger was of an undetermined mixed breed. The permanent fettlers lived in railway huts by the railway station. The main living accommodation for them was well set up with single sleeping quarters, a wash house, showers and a reasonable kitchen. The ganger lived in a hut with his family down the railway line and his wife was a force to be reckoned with. She ruled his roust and everybody else's when she could get away with it. Fortunately she was a keen horse woman which put us on top of her list of V. I.P,s. I stayed in the caravan and the other two men were able to live at home. The three white men formed a great working team but were viewed with suspicion by the aborigines. As far as the aboriginal fettlers went they were ok on the job as long as it didn't get too hard for them. I remember a while back when I was driving the bus I saw a gang coming home from a day's work on a trike and as it passed over a bore drain I saw them hurl something into the water. On investigation after they had gone I found a very heavy hand forged crow bar, beautifully made but very heavy. They had decided to dump it so I gathered it up and used it for many years digging post holes. The train used to come to Rowena three times a week but with the floods and the line being washed away it hadn't been able to get past Burren Junction for a couple of months.

It was the Rowena's gang's job to repair the track at their end and it wasn't an easy task. Luckily there had been some bridge building material stored at Rowena station and we used this for repairs. The struts we were using were twenty foot long by two foot square. We carted them as close as they could get to the trouble spots on a couple of railway trikes and then we had to haul them the rest of the way by hand through waist deep water. We may have been paid a lot of money but with the difficulties, we were worth every penny. The struts were placed across the deep washouts under the line and then railway sleepers were used to build up a stable track underneath. It looked crude but it worked. The train would come from Burren Junction backwards and stop at the nearest washaway disgorging its load of blue metal. The fettlers would then finish the job by packing the metal under the rails until we had a firm track. This meant dozens of trips for the train and many hours of work for the fettlers packing the metal under the line until it was firm enough for the train to pass over to the next trouble spot. It was very hot work as it was summer and one day I decided to strip off and go for a swim in one of the deep washaways. I was enjoying myself cooling off and I was soon joined by the other two white men. The aborigines appeared to be shocked by this behaviour and sat huddled in a group looking on in amazement. As the line from Burren Junction became more accessible, the fettler gang from there joined the Rowena gang which helped to move the work along.

As flood waters started to reseed, the two graziers returned to their farms and as I wasn't keen to go back on the land I decided to become a permanent fettler. This worked in well for the family as I was now eligible to rent the vacant Station Masters residence in Rowena. We rented out the caravan to an old couple who were building a house. The Station Masters house wasn't anything fancy but it was big and solid and just on the outskirts of the village. The children could walk to school from there and with the flood water going down Alice was again able to run the bus. Life returned to some kind of normality. I had to go to Sydney for a medical to become permanent and while I was away Alice went to the store for some groceries late one evening. As she was putting the goods into the vehicle she must have trodden on a brown snake who retaliated by biting her on the toe. She had fish net stocking on and the snakes fangs became tangled in the mesh. With Alice running up the street screaming, "snake snake" everyone ran from her until a semitrailer driver went to her aid. In those days the method of treating snake bite was to deeply cut around the bite so she ended up with a mutilated toe.

The hospital at Collarenebri was then contacted and as there wasn't an ambulance in the area it was arranged that the doctor was to head for Rowena with his lights flashing and one of the townspeople set off with Alice heading for Collarenebri with their lights flashing. They met in the middle and Alice was transported to the hospital at Collarenebri. The doctor couldn't give her any anti venom as her toe was too mutilated and he couldn't tell if she had been bitten or not and had to wait until she showed signs of the snake's venom. She eventually did and was given the anti-venom injection. The next morning when she woke up she had to pinch herself to make sure she was still alive.

As a volunteer with the C.W.A ladies Alice used to serve tea, coffee and sandwiches to the drivers bringing in their loads of wheat to the silo and they would have this while they waited for their turn to unload. The toilet there was very primitive, just a toilet seat and pan out in the open with just a hessian wall around it. This was fine until one day a helicopter flew overhead and the downdraft lifted the hessian walls away leaving her in all her glory sitting on the throne out in the middle of nowhere.

There were stock yards at the railway station and Alice took on some horse training in her spare time. She was sent one horse to have the polish put on him. The owner said he had paid a lot of money for him and all the horse needed was a bit off finesse. He had bought him for his teenage son. I rode the horse in the enclosed yards and put him over a couple of jumps. I thought the horse would make a champion and asked Alice to open the gate for me so I could take the horse out along the stock route. Five miles down the track I was able to pull the horse up and head for home, he was a bolter. The owner was told the best thing to do was to get rid of the horse before he killed the child.

Our two poddy calves had grown into very handy milking cows that kept us in milk. We used to run them on the stock route near the village. One was a very fine milking cow and I had put our brand on her which was very clear as she had a sleek coat. When I went to collect them one afternoon, the best one was missing. I found out later that a drover had gone through with a mob of cattle and collected her up. I reported the matter to the police but they said they couldn't chase after every drover that went through even though I had given them the drover's name and destination.

We bought Nigel a new pony and when we went to inspect her there wasn't a saddle available so I rode her around bareback. She performed beautifully so we bought her along with six unbroken Shetland ponies. When we arrived home with the mare called April and put a saddle on her she was quite a different story. She objected to the saddle and was full of fire, too much for a child. I persisted with her and eventually she calmed down enough for Nigel to take over. The Shetlands were broken in one by one, mainly with Nigel riding them and were sold except for two which we kept for some time. Nigel had an accident on April but it wasn't her fault or his, it was the way I had built the jump. I had put up two solid rails and covered the space in-between with brush. April had thought it was just brush and galloped straight through it causing her to somersault when she hit the solid rails. Neither were badly hurt but it shook Nigel's confidence for a while. Taught me a good lesson too. We bought a piebald Shetland stallion called Jumbo for Rebecca to ride and it was her mount until she grew too big for him.

There was a raffle held in the village and the prize was a nine months old thoroughbred filly. I was the lucky winner of this long legged creature who we named Spider. She wasn't any use to us at the time as she had a lot of growing to do but we kept her in the hope she would grow into a fine hack one day.

It was in the village of Rowena that we lost our faithful little friend Wendy. With age she had gone deaf and didn't move very fast so she didn't see the car backing out. Hopefully it was a quick pain free death.

The village was mainly made up of two families and those who worked for them. One family was a real-estate agent who owned most of the houses and land and part of his family owned a general store and grog shop. The grogshop was supposed to only sell grog to be taken away but they did a roaring trade selling to thirsty drinkers out the back. The other family owned a trucking business and they had three sons, all with their own semitrailers as well as the father also having one. There were two daughters in the family, one did the books for the company and the other owned the second general store. There wasn't any grog sold in the second store and she was the most popular and efficient store keeper. One of the few outsiders living in the village was a couple who ran the post office. It wasn't a post office store like in most villages, just a post office.
Chapter 19

There wasn't a church in the village, just a church hall which was used for dances, C.W.A meetings and other functions. That was it for Rowena except for a one room school, a very small hut where the Masonic Lodge met, the tennis courts and about ten houses that the family's and their workers lived in. Although we lived in the station masters house in the village we never would have been considered part of it. I inquired about buying a vacant block of land but was told none were for sale.

Nellie and Peter came to visit one Christmas while we were in Rowena and stayed a week.

Christmas dinner was almost ready so I said I would quickly pop down to the stockyards and check that the horses had water. To my amazement and anger when I returned, Christmas dinner was almost over. Nellie had become hungry and bullied Alice into starting dinner without me. To me it was just an act of extreme selfishness on her part and I realised just how much I disliked her.

The house that backed onto the tennis courts was owned by a man of undefined breeding and he had married an unfortunate English girl who had gone to the district as a governess for one of the grazier families. They had many children who were feral. One day the tennis players had to rush around to their backyard to rescue a child who had been hung up by the neck. It was only a game but a tragic one if there had been no one around to rescue the child. Another day a teenage son had a fight with his father and became so angry he started up the chainsaw and chased after his father. As they disappeared into the distance no one seemed very concerned. The father was named Hydraulic Jack.

None of the roads were sealed in the village but had a lot of gravel on them because of the black soil. This made it possible to drive around the village in the wet times but as the roads out of the village were black soil, that's as far as you could go.

My mother Birdie had come out of hospital and was living permanently with my sister Lynda in Victoria. Lynda and her family came to visit us at Rowena on their way north for a holiday and left Birdie with us for a week. She was in a good place at the time and was easy to have to stay. She offered to take Rebecca for a walk around the village in her stroller. This was a good idea as it gave Alice a break and gave Birdie something to do. Poor Birdie came back with her face bright red and announced that the stroller was very hard to push in the gravel. When I checked the stroller I found that the poor darling had pushed the stroller around the village with the brakes on. When Lynda and her family returned to pick up Birdie, Nigel's education was discussed. He had finished sixth class and was ready for high school but there wasn't any high school available near Rowena. Lynda kindly offered to take him back to Victoria and live with them while attending school and he would be company for their son Peter who was six months younger than Nigel. I didn't want a repeat of my disastrous schooling and we couldn't afford to send him to boarding school so it did seem a reasonable alternative, so off he went with them.

We always dreamed of owning some land and now was a good time to do it. With four children to educate and no high school for them, we wanted out of Rowena to a more civilised place. I took some time off and set about finding somewhere suitable. I drove up through Southern Queensland and down the coast to Port Macquarie. Heading back home I stopped off in Tamworth. I decided with all the places I had seen and all the properties I had looked at, Tamworth had the most to offer. A prosperous town with several high schools, a base hospital and all the other facilities you could want. I wasn't able to find any land while I was there. I did look at fifty acres just outside town that had a huge derelict farm house on it, almost the same style as Little Moyle. It was for sale at twelve thousand dollars and I would have loved to have bought it but there wasn't any way I could have raised the money. I returned to Rowena telling Alice my decision was Tamworth, so from that time on we diligently searched through the Northern Daily Leader which was published in Tamworth, looking for land for sale. It appeared to be a difficult task with few if any properties for sale.

We were determined to make a change and to help find a place I applied to the department of railways for a transfer to Tamworth. The local rail inspector said "no way, you are needed here". He made one mistake, he sent me along with the rest of the gang to work out of Burren Junction where we were to live in fettler huts there. It was in the middle of winter and the huts only had three walls. I complained to the inspector who said, "just put up with it". I decided this wasn't good enough so I contacted the union. After the union inspected the huts they condemned them and a week after that I received my transfer to Tamworth. The inspector didn't want any trouble makers in his gang. None of the aboriginal workers would have given him any trouble. They were strange to work with. One evening we were to return to Rowena by trike, and before we left Burren Junction they all got very drunk. On the way home they all went to sleep and some of them were in danger of falling off, so being the only sober one there I held as many of them on as I could. The strange part was the next day when they regarded me with derision for being so soft as to bother looking after them.

Just before the move I spotted a small ad in the paper for a twenty-six acre property eleven kilometres out of Tamworth. With the family we all made a quick weekend trip down to view the property. It was lucky I saw the ad as it was only two lines. We all fell in love with it at first sight. It had huge granite boulders on it and lots of beautiful trees. There was a great spot to build a house in a private nook, up amongst the boulders and trees. I wasn't concerned that there wasn't any visible sign of water because anywhere I had worked over the years, all you had to do was sink a bore down to get water. There was waist high wire grass over the land and I had dreams of improving the pastures. Alice picked up a handful of soil and said," it's ours". It was a dream about to come true and nothing was going to stop us. We stopped for the weekend at a motel in Tamworth which made us feel very special.

Back in Rowena we made a trip to Moree to visit the bank manager to apply for a loan. We couldn't get a loan for the four thousand, five hundred dollars, which was the price of the land, because of the other loans we owed, but the bank manager was a kindly man and said he had a client who would loan us the amount at the rate of a personal loan. We suspected it was the bank manager himself who was offering us the loan.

With the twenty-six acres secured, plans were made for the move. There wasn't any buildings on the land so we decided I would go down ahead, and Alice and the children would stay in the rented station masters house until we were able to get our caravan back from the old couple who had rented it.

Early in 1972 then aged thirty-seven I was to leave my lifetime of working on properties behind me. Perhaps it wasn't a lifetime but it certainly felt like it to me. I wasn't sad, just excited about moving onto our own land in a new place. The biggest concern at the time was leaving Alice and the family behind in Rowena, but hopefully it wasn't going to be for long.

It was exciting for me arriving on the twenty-six acres at Tintinhull eleven kilometres north of Tamworth. I had bought a nine foot by six foot lean-to tent which I erected up against a boulder the size of a house, with the lean-to fly towards the boulder. That gave me one stone wall and an opening on either side, on which I hung bags, giving me an extra room. I had bought a picnic table and a gas cooker which I set up in the extra room, along with a gas light. It wasn't much but it felt like a castle to me. The camp was set up in a very secluded part of the property, surrounded by trees and rocks and I could have been virtually miles from anywhere.

It was June 1972 and being in the middle of winter it was freezing cold. The property in the past had been heavily timbered and when the trees were cut down it left dozens of knee high stumps. To combat the cold at night before I went to bed I would stack up a stump with dead timber and set fire to it. It was very pleasant sitting out by the fire at night eating my dinner which was mainly out of a tin. After dinner I couldn't forego getting cleaned up before going to bed so I heated water over the fire, put down a large plank of wood close to the fire, which I stood on, stripped off and poured part of the water over myself, then soaped all over and finish up pouring the rest of the water over myself rinsing off the soap. This was done very quickly because of the cold wind that usually blew through the night. It was always straight into bed after this performance before I froze.

There wasn't a supply of water on the property except for a small muddy dam so any water required for washing or cooking I used to collect from the local petrol station in a couple of large plastic containers. Some desperately cold nights I would drive to the servo and have a shower in luxury.

Shortly after arriving at Tintinhull I took up my position as a fettler on the railway, my base being at a siding called Limbri. There was a fettler's camp there but I preferred to travel home to my beloved acres which was about ten kilometres away. None of the fettlers lived at the camp because they mainly lived in the village of Kootingal. The fettler's day started at Kootingal as it had sheds for the trikes and the other equipment that was needed.

The section of the railway line we were responsible for was from Kootingal to Woolbrook which included a very steep whining section from Limbri as it wound its way up through the Moonbi Ranges. It was a dangerous section of line because of the deep cuttings and with all the bends it wasn't possible to see very far ahead of you. The rail lines would ice up overnight which made the journey up the mountain difficult. At times the gang would have to get off the trike and push and if you were unfortunate enough to put your bare hand on the rail line it would stick to it like it would if you put your hand in a freezer. The trike had to be off the line well ahead of the train coming because there wasn't a lot of off ramps for it and if you were caught in a cutting when the train came it would be curtains.

There was only one crash on the line while I worked there and that involved two trikes. The gang had been doing the yearly burn off along the rail line when a big wind came up and the fire escaped into the hills. We fought the fire all day and didn't have it under control until night time. The head ganger who was an old man decided when the fire became out of control to take the second trike back to Kootingal to report the matter. Having reported the fire he decided it wasn't any use rushing back so he went to the pub. When the gang hadn't returned by dusk he became concerned in his inebriated state and thought he had better head back out to see what the problem was. In the meantime the gang having put the fire out was heading home at high speed on their trike. I was sitting in the front of the trike and just managed to spot the other trike coming towards us in the dark. I let out a warning shout and the whole gang leapt off the trike. It was just a leap of faith because it was too dark to see where we were going to land. The next morning when I inspected my landing spot, I had landed in the middle of a low set of iron posts and wires. I didn't even get a scratch so someone must have been looking after me.

The gang were all related to each other one way or another. The head ganger, the old man retired after the crash and one of the other fettlers took over his job. Being such a close knit group I never was fully accepted. Most of the men were illiterate and they viewed the fact that I took a book to work to have something to read at lunch time with suspicion. They would all sit around the fire where the billy was boiling, eating their sandwiches and dropping the leftovers at their feet and then complain about the ants coming around. I would sit by myself a little way off reading. One day curiosity got the better of the gang and they asked me what I was reading. It just happened that I had picked up a book on Greek Mythology that day and when I told them about the lady with all the snakes in her hair I couldn't have timed it better. Down the banks of the cutting came two large brown snakes locked together. I was definitely on the outer after that as they viewed me as some kind of sorcerer.

I found a correspondence course the railway organised and it was called a plate laying course. It was for any fettlers who wanted to better themselves and would make them eligible to become a rail inspector. It was a two year course and I found it so simple I completed it in six months. It didn't get me anywhere as there wasn't any positions for an inspector. All it did was to make me more unpopular with the rest of the gang and particularly with the present inspector.

One day as the gang waited on the railway station at Kootingal for a train to go through, I was inside looking at posters when I heard the men get a cackle up about something. I went out onto the platform to see what they were on about. The men were always curious about what I might get up to in the evenings up on the block all by myself and they were always full of suggestions. This was their chance to give me a ribbing. One said," mate this is your lucky day" pointing down along the line. I looked down along the track to see what they were pointing at. She was too far away to see her features but up the track walked a shapely lady with long blond hair, wearing a very short white tennis dress. The men teased, "you've got it made now mate". She looked fine from the distance but as she reached the station and her features became visible, her long blond hair was a mat of long blond hair and by her face you could tell she had been around the block a few times.
Chapter 20

She was on her way to visit one of her men friends who owned the local garage. He was in his thirties, single and his mum was in charge of his office, mainly to protect her son from marauding females. Only Blondie could have loved him because day or night he would have been covered in oil and grease.

Blondie was never a part of my story but she was such a character I feel she deserves a mention. With the grease covered man from the garage she was able, according to gossip, get him out from under his mum's thumb on occasions.

She was a woman perhaps in her fifties and a well-known identity in the village of Kootingal. In the pub one night she was boasting about the extent of her boyfriend's sexual powers. She stated that he was the only man who had hurt her while making love. One of the brave characters in the pub piped up and said, "what did he do love, did he tread on your toe?"

She was often in trouble with the law and the police knew her well. The senior constables knew she wasn't easily put in her place, so if an arrest had to be done they would send their junior constables to do the job. As the junior constable dragged her off to the lockup, she would shout, "I know what you're after when you get me into the cell". Causing much embarrassment to the young officer. On one occasion the police chased her down the street and as Blondie wasn't easily beaten, she climbed up a tree and as the young officer reached the base of the tree calling for her to come down, she pulled down her nickers and peed on him.

Blondie had a unique method of advertising. She had an old Holden car and on the back window she had placed a large naked doll with her legs in the air. This outfit she used to park at the isolated truck stops. According to gossip she did a good trade with the truckies.

It turned out that Blondie and her husband lived in a derelict house in the scrub a few miles past our block. Our children knew her as she would pass our block on the way to work. Our youngest son, Roy came rushing home one day with some news. "You know Blondie, yes, well she wears a flower in her hair sometimes, so, do you know what that means, no, it means she is ready to mate". Education for the young ones.

Blondie's husband was another rough diamond. He was missing one leg and one eye. One day Alice received a call at her work from our daughter Cynthia saying there was a drunk man lying on the kitchen floor wanting Bex powders and he had only grown one leg and one eye. He was duly removed by one of the men from Alice's office who was working in the area. He had one trick that he caught me with. I was driving down the road when I spotted a man lying in the gutter. I pulled up and rushed around the front of the car to see if I could help him. By the time I reached the spot where he was he was gone, and not only gone, he was sitting in the passenger's seat of the car demanding to be taken into town. As he stank to high heaven and I was going that way I drove as fast as I could into town to unload this rough diamond.

Blondie had a beautiful daughter who was long gone from the family. I won't mention her name but at the time she was on top of the hit parade, a famous singer. She became a polished diamond where poor Blondie never did. Blondie died as she had lived and not a soul turned up to see her off. I hope she now has the polish she never received on this earth.

Contrary to what the fettlers thought I filled my evening with, I would drive into Tamworth. I joined an adult education group run by the University of New England. It wasn't a specific topic, but more a discussion group with many interesting subjects covered and I enjoyed that. I also joined a very active amateur musical society where I became part of the chorus. I was asked to audition for a part in their upcoming musical, Oklahoma, but I was too shy to get up in front of all those people and sing. I had lost my confidence over the years so the chorus suited me fine. I was one of the cowboys in that production which also required me to dance. The show was a great success and Alice and the children came down from Rowena to see me up on stage. Rebecca was very young at the time but walking and talking. I looked down from the stage and there was Rebecca rocking away in the orchestra pit. She often said to me afterwards,"sing homa Dad sing homa". At least in one child's eyes I was a success.

On the railway there was overtime where you could work Saturday and Sunday every second week. I took full advantage of this and on alternate weekends I would either drive out to Rowena on the Friday night and back on the Sunday night or Alice and the family would come down to the property we named Banyandah. Alice named it that because when we lived at Dandaloo, each day at one o'clock we would listen to a serial called Blue Hills. In this serial was a dear old Granny who lived on a farm called Banyandah. The name suited the property because it was a peaceful place just like in Blue Hills. During one of my trips out to Rowena I arranged with the transport company out there to take our five horses and four head of cattle down to Banyandah. They did a good job and the animals arrived safe and sound. Quite a feat as the semitrailer arrived in the dark with a sketchy plan of where the property was. There wasn't enough water on the property for the animals so I bought an old bath tub and put it on the boundary fence where I had arranged to get water from a neighbour who had a bore.

With the animals all around me I felt very much at home at Banyandah, and during the September-October school holidays the family came down to stay for the two weeks. Alice and the children had travelled down to Horsham Victoria to visit Nigel during the year and found he was most unhappy so during the school holidays Lynda and family came up bringing with them Nigel and Birdie who was also living with them. Lynda and family went on to the coast for their holiday leaving Nigel and Birdie with us. Birdie did enjoy her stay, just sitting under a tree relaxing. The accommodation was a bit primitive but better than my 9' by 6' lean to tent. I had made a trip out to Rowena just before the holidays and brought our 25' caravan down. The caravan had a shower in it but unfortunately the old couple who had leased it had removed the large water tanks from under it for whatever reason. We didn't notice this until we pulled up at the servo to fill the tanks and found them missing. Laundry meant trips to the Laundromat in town and to the servo for showers.

Before Lynda and family returned on their way back to Victoria we had decided that Nigel wasn't going with them. It was better all-around as he would be able to stay with me and attend high school in Tamworth. A school bus went right past our front gate. It worked well as Roy was to stay on after the holidays with me and attend school at Tintinhull which was within walking distance. It was all working out well, Alice loved the place and the children were happy about what was to be their future Nigel went off to the big Oxley High School and Roy to the one teacher school at Tintinhull, just down the road. We decided we would sell the bus at the end of 1972 and then Alice and the two girls would be able to move permanently to Banyandah. All we had to do now was to pay off the land and then try for a loan to build a house. I think it gave Alice heart when she returned to Rowena knowing it was soon to pass.

The two boys were great company for me and we managed very well. Nigel had some difficulties fitting into the big high school but he never complained. I think he was just so glad to be back home. The boys had their horses to ride when not engaged in other activities and I had my horse Blaze. Money was tight but I used to give the boys a dollar a week pocket money. If at the end of the week I was running so low I needed a hand to buy bread, Roy could always be counted on to still have the dollar which he handed over willingly. Roy had a thing about lighting fires and Neil, the teacher at his school took him in hand and put him in charge of lighting the incinerator. This seemed to satisfy his fascination with fire. Nigel made friends with a boy a couple of farms away and they were great mates going off to school together. I had sold the Toyota and bought a second hand Ford station wagon which was a bad move as the engine conked out on a trip out to Rowena causing no end of difficulties. It didn't affect me getting to work as I had bought a 175 Honda motor bike for going to work.

Alice was doing all right with the bus except she took it into Collarenebri for a service and the garage also did the brakes up. On the way home with the bus she found she had no brakes and it was a very hairy ride for her until she was able to pull it up. The garage had put the hydraulic cups in back to front.

The time between the October holidays and the December break seemed to go fairly quickly. Alice managed to sell the bus and I travelled out to Rowena one last time to pack everything into a railway carriage to be transported to Kootingal. Everything we owned fitted into that one carriage. Because I worked for the railway, they carted our goods free of charge. We had nowhere to put our goods when it reached Kootingal so I rented the railway storage shed. I didn't think of putting rat bait in with the stored furniture, with the result some of it was ruined by the time we were able to move it to Banyandah.

With the sale of the bus and not having to travel back and forth we were able to pay off the $4,500 dollars for the land so now it was really ours. With the entire family together again and our animals around us plus being on our own land we thought we were indeed fortunate people. Looking at our situation from an outsider's point of view, I guess it didn't look all that great. Just a caravan up amongst the rocks and trees on land that had no water, electricity or telephone but to us and even to the children it was the next thing to heaven. When we made our last trip down from Rowena we brought with us our cat called Lady Bexley. When we pulled up at our gate she must have escaped. The children looked for her everywhere and the next day they went to a neighbour and asked had they seen Lady Bexley. Sometime later Alice met the neighbour and she asked Alice if the children's grandmother had turned up. She thought the children were looking for a person.

With the boys help I set to building a shed twelve foot by fifteen foot alongside the caravan. My building ability has always been suspect and it was no different now. It wasn't exactly completely waterproof but it did allow us to store items and spread out a little. We kept items such as saddles, bridles and horse feed in there as well as the few tools we had.

Christmas 1972 we all travelled out to Tottenham to have Christmas with Granny Wilson and her family. It was always a happy time for us and the children knew they could get away with anything while we were there because Granny Wilson didn't agree with any kind of punishment especially if it was delivered by hand. To counteract the worst of this behaviour I would pull up at their road gate, get the children out of the car and give them a warning of what might happen if they played up. It never did much good but it gave me the feeling that I had at least tried. On returning home that Christmas we were amazed to find that my sister Dorothy, husband Stan and their three teenage children had arrived unannounced. It didn't worry them that the caravan was locked up. One of their boys had climbed in through a vent in the roof and opened it up. They were well settled in by the time we arrived, plus one of the teenage sons golf clubs were in pride of place in the caravan. They seemed quite put out when we didn't joyously greet them. Luckily they only stayed for a couple of days, having been removed to the shed. I guess we were not ready for visitors at that stage.

We had used up any spare cash we had paying off the land so when we approached the banks for a loan to build a house it was no go. Alice and Rebecca, who was still a toddler, did the rounds of the banks and after getting many knockbacks she approached the Inland Building Society run by a Joy Adelsback. At first the answer was again no as we only had the land as security but Alice persevered and the answer was again no because you are too old at thirty-seven to pay off a thirty-five year mortgage. This got Alice's dander up and she made it clear to the manageress that we could work harder and longer than any young person. Joy was so impressed with Alice's fire we were given the 100% thirty-five year loan. Joy remained a friend for many years.

We contacted a house building company called Davidson's Homes who had a standard house plan at the ready. It was like a whirlwind dream picking the design and all the bits and pieces that go into a new home such as taps, lighting, heating, tiles and even down to the door handles, plus the colour of the roof tiles. Never having done any of this before it was exciting with a little bit of fear mixed in of making a mistake. We chose a brick veneer house with a tiled roof and originally it had two double bedrooms and a single plus a garage. For very little extra we converted the garage into two extra bedrooms giving us five bedrooms in all plus an open plan kitchen, dining and lounge room with one bathroom and a decent sized laundry. It was hard for us to visualise the end result and all we could do was hope for the best. There were three large box trees growing on the house site and they had to be bulldozed out. The man who surveyed the house site said it was reasonably flat and we wouldn't have to pay extra for foundations. Unfortunately for the builders one end of the house turned out to be eight foot off the ground so they had to wear the extra expense of the added foundations. It seemed to take forever for the house to be built but we didn't mind, it was happening. We had to start paying off the loan as soon as we signed the contract with the builders which I was able to cover with my wages.
Chapter 21

Before we moved into the house the lending rate went up considerably which meant my wages no longer covered it, so Alice had to get a job to help out.

Alice's first job was collecting eggs on a poultry farm just down the road. There were several women working there and they all came from a public housing estate. Nothing wrong with public housing but they were all a rough lot.

One woman had Alice very upset every day by announcing that her husband raped her every night and when he came home drunk, he would toot the horn as he came down the street and she would have to rush out and open the garage door for him. She was a bit slow one night and didn't get the door open in time and he drove straight through it. Alice used to get so upset when being told this tale she had such a grip on the eggs she was collecting they would break and the yoke would run down through her fingers. One of the tricks the woman had was to collect all the eggs from the end of Alice's row. They were paid by the number of eggs they collected and the end ones were the quickest and easiest to collect. Alice's pay wasn't great but it certainly helped us through a rough spot.

The house was to cost $21,000 dollars when finished. An unheard of amount for us so we just concentrated on what amount we had to come up with each month. The brick laying contractor was a very religious man and one day when I was at home in the caravan during construction I heard a strange noise coming from the site. On investigating I found he had his three workers lined up and was giving them a sermon and the strange noise I heard was them responding with hallelujah hallelujah. Strange. The carpenter contractor on the other hand knew his bible backwards and used to bait the brickie by telling him the most outrageous tales. Should have sent him down to Alice's egg collectors. The fact that the chippie was in his forties and he had a live in girlfriend young enough to be his daughter didn't go down well with the brickie either. If given the choice between the brickie and the chippie for an honest man the chippie would win every time. A 3,000 gallon galvanised water tank came with the house which would be good to start with but with four children and two adults it wouldn't be good in the long run. The fact that we never had an abundance of water throughout our married life gave us a solid training in making a little water go a long way. The children were to share bath water as was Alice and I. Good thing we never became really dirty. One of the extra expenses we had was installing an electric heat bank which ran on off-peak electricity. It never really heated the house but it did take the chill off the entire house.

In the caravan while the house was being built we managed well as long as we kept the door closed. If we left it open possums would invade looking for a hand out. Not as bad as it was when I lived in the tent. There they would scamper over the top of me during the night having a brawl. There were so many of them they kicked up quite a racket when they were fighting at night.

The year 1973 heralded in some changes. Cynthia joined Roy at the Tintinhull School, she was in year six. They both walked to school along with the girl from next door, Wendy. It was a bit the same for Cynthia and Roy as they were used to being in a one teacher school. The difference here was they had swimming lessons conducted at a pool on a nearby farm. This wouldn't have been possible at Rowena. Here they also had a very nice end of year play in which Cynthia and Roy were involved. Alice found a babysitter for Rebecca named June who lived in Tamworth. Babysitters were few and far between at the time and it required a lot of effort to find one. Rebecca wasn't all that keen on June and often as Alice carried her up the drive to the babysitter, Rebecca would shout, "can't your ears hear me saying I hate June". Needing the money June chose to ignore the remark. With the harsh conditions out west we must have aged more than we thought because on trips into town with Rebecca people would remark. "Doting grandparents I see".

There was a big change that year for both Alice and I. Alice went for a job on a big poultry farm taking care of turkey poults. When she went for the interview she dressed up smartly, not knowing what the job entailed. The old ex-drover foreman interviewed her and said he didn't think she would be much good dressed like that but he would give her a go. She was to work for the company for the next couple of years. Her duties there was to care for thousands of baby turkeys in a huge big shed. Mike the foreman took her around and showed her what her duties would be. He demonstrated what to do when you came across a poult that was on the way out. You picked it up by the head and gave it a whirly whirly as he called it, breaking its neck ready for disposal. The first few times Alice did this, when she went back to collect the dead bodies they had all got up and walked away. She would have to get serious. The firm sold poults to farms all over the country.

I upgraded my motor bike that year and when the new one was about a month old I rode it into Tamworth where I was rehearsing for a new musical. Even though it was only a hundred yards from where I was, some scumbag stole it, leaving us with just one vehicle. This meant I would leave early in the morning and drop off Alice and Rebecca and collect them that evening. Alice would get a lift from one of her workmates to the highway and wait for me at the servo. When I arrived there to pick her up, I would often find her fast asleep in a comfy chair. She found the whole deal very tiring. Later Alice was promoted to an office job which was much more interesting and less tiring.

Mike the foreman became a good friend and we were often invited to his home in Tamworth to have dinner with his wife and two sons. The eldest son was a big strapping fellow who worked in real estate and the younger one had Down syndrome.

Mike had been a drover all his life out in Western Queensland and his wife had been a nurse. When he retired from droving they decided to move into town and find an easier job. He never did settle into a town block. The block he bought had no other houses around it but by the time they moved into their new house they were surrounded by houses and he found his back yard only extended for about ten feet. When he wasn't working he would amuse himself by sitting behind a bush in the front yard with a stock whip and he would wait there until a neighbour's dog came along to do its business on his lawn. The dog would then get a nasty shock as Mike let fly with his whip. Apart from this peculiarity he was a kindly man who never should have moved into town. The family used to enjoy the peace and quiet when they came out to Banyandah. His Down syndrome son who was a teenager went to a special school. We were given a piano we didn't want or have anywhere to put it so we offered it to the school where Chris went. They were glad to have it so we loaded it onto the horse float and met Mike and his two sons at the school. It was a weekend and the school looked locked up. Mike's eldest son and I went around the school looking for a way in. We were frustrated not finding a way when Chris said "why don't we go in the front door". "It's locked" retorted the brother and with that Chris walked up and opened it. So much for the brainy ones.

For me that year the change was dramatic. I really felt I couldn't tolerate my job as a fettler any longer and although it was steady money I had had enough. The old derelict house on the fifty acres I had originally looked at had been bought by an American company and completely restored to its original splendour. The company had erected massive barns and yards. It was now an artificial cattle breeding centre with Government approval. The Americans sold it to an Australian company and that's when I applied for the position as farm manager. I was thrilled to get the job but Alice wasn't as it was less money than I earned on the railway but it was something I felt I had to do. It was now five miles to work and five days a week. I loved it as it was a new experience with lots to learn. They taught me the art of inseminating cows and I went on to teach students who constantly came through. It was amusing to me that several of the students who came through were of the mighty inner circle from Rowena. Here they claimed me as a friend. I was completely in charge of the cattle with about twenty bulls in the stalls. Each morning I would gather up the bulls one at a time and attach a long chain through their nose rings and then take them out to a grazing patch and tether them there. This wasn't as easy as it sounds as some of them were quite dangerous. To get the chain through their nose ring in the morning I had a long piece of wire with a hook at the end. With this I would snare the bull by the ring and lead him to the side of the pen where I would thread the chain through while still safely outside the pen.

In the evenings when I brought them back in I would quickly go into their space and grab hold of the chain so I would have something to bargain with. Some of them were too dangerous to bring out of their pens. These had a yard attached to their pens. One of these was a huge grey Brahman with very long horns. He had a very big pen and was never to be taken out. His pen had a crush attached so we could capture him if he needed any work done on him, like collecting semen. This was never collected while I was there. Everyone had great respect for him and an American visitor offered one hundred dollars to anyone game enough to streak across his pen, there were no takers. There on my own he eventually tolerated me going into his pen but not if I had anyone with me. A couple of years later he was sold to a big cattle station out past Bourke. I felt when they let him out of the truck into an open paddock that would be the last they saw of him.

One of my jobs was to lead the required bull around to the technician who collected the semen from them. This was done by leading the bull up to a quiet Hereford steer who was in a special crush and when the bull mounted him the crush took the bulls weight. The technician would then grab hold of the bulls erection and guide it into a well lubricated tube. The bull having ejaculated into the tube, his semen would then be taken to the lab to be processed and then into a liquid nitrogen vat. The bulls knew the score and were quite willing to go along with it. The only other option they had was for an electrode to be placed in their rectum onto their g spot and an electric current would cause them to ejaculate.

There was a section of the centre that took in older bulls that were getting past their prime, from large properties and they would be there for several weeks having their sperm collected to be used when they passed on. They were the most dangerous as they hadn't had much handling. One Santa Gertrudus charged me and threw me clean over the fence. I was glad to end up on the other side of the fence. We also had an Aberdeen Angus in another section that wasn't very nice. He had come up from Tasmania and his owner didn't want a ring put in his nose. I jacked up and said no ring no handle so he had a ring put in. He still wasn't all that safe and when the big boss came up from Victoria with some clients he said he wanted the bull to be led out so he could be better viewed. I told him it wasn't safe but he insisted. Out we came in a flurry with the bull charging the visitors. I managed to swing on his chain and face him back towards me. He then charged me and I ran back into the pen and jumped over the back fence with the boss firmly slamming the gate shut. My word was never doubted again if I said it wasn't safe. Imagine the result if I hadn't insisted on the bull having a ring in his nose.

Some of the bulls were so quiet they would follow you around like a dog but I always kept my eye on them anyway. Working five days a week was great but I would often get an emergency call at the weekends because one of the bulls needed attention or worse still one had escaped. The rest of the staff wouldn't go near them, only to throw out their feed. The bulls were nearly all owned by private owners and I had to deal with their wants and seem to promote their animals above all others. When clients came to view the bulls it was my job to show them around the centre and give them a spiel on the breeding of the bulls. In the second year I was at the centre, two Canadian vets came to work there and I was their assistant on their work on overarm transplants. One month I was on the front page of the Dairyman's Journal for my work with the vets and the next month I was out of a job. Some of the big wigs in Victoria had been siphoning funds out of the company and it was closing down. At aged forty I was unemployed and devastated. Going in to Social Services looking for a job was a shameful experience for me. That happened in 1975.

After settling into Banyandah in 1973 we toyed with the idea of starting up a riding school. We had a few good horses and saddles and plenty of places to ride but we didn't know how to get it off the ground. Alice solved this problem by gathering us all up at the weekend and riding along the public road. We would have done this a few times and at last we were stopped by a lady in a car inquiring if there was a riding school in the area. Alice said yes and directed her to Banyandah. We all galloped home at a fast pace entering at a closer gate and we were waiting at the top of the hill when she arrived. She saw the humour in it and was a very gracious lady. We gave her a wonderful ride through the hills and afterwards she told us she had just retired and planned to try something new each year. She rode with us for quite a few years until she became too ill with cancer. Elizabeth, was our very first paying rider and we became very fond of her.

By 1974 we had moved in to our newly built house. It was a strange feeling for us all, moving from the confines of the caravan to what seemed to us a very large house. It was hard for all of us to get our heads around it. The first night we all started off in our own rooms, Cynthia and Rebecca in one and Nigel and Roy in another and Alice and I in the master bedroom.
Chapter 22

By nine thirty we were missing each other and the space was getting to us. All the children ended up sleeping in our room and this went on for a couple of nights until eventually we accepted that the house had a good feeling about it. It was such a luxury having a choice between a bath and a shower, a kitchen with everything we needed in it and all the room to relax in. It was quite some time before we had it fully furnished. The first year we were a bit cold as there wasn't any curtains on the windows and the floor was polished timber. By the second year we had curtains and carpet throughout which made it much more comfortable.

We were very careful with the 3,000 gallon rain water tank and we got by with just having to buy a load of water now and then. We would have to share bathwater which wasn't all that great but it did save on water.

That year Cynthia started high school. We thought we would do the best we could for her and enrolled her in the private Catholic girl's school. This was a mistake as the public school children on the bus shunned her because of her different uniform and being just a girl's school she was very unhappy. After the first term we sent her off to Oxley High where she fitted in very well. It relieved me of a lot of work as the nuns were always after me to repair some item around the school that was falling down with age.

The next year Roy also went to Oxley High so we had three children at the same school and Rebecca still being babysat by June while Alice was working. The turkey farm where Alice worked closed down so she found another job. This was going around the turkey farms inseminating the turkey hens. On this job the men would milk the gobblers of their semen, I never knew how, and put it into a container to be used the same day. The men would then present the turkey hens to Alice bottoms up and she would have to suck up a measure of semen into a tube and then blow it into the hen. It was new to her so she asked one of the men how it was done. The man said, "look Missus if you suck too hard you will get a mouthful of semen and if you don't blow hard enough into the hen she won't get any and if you blow too bloody hard you will blow her bloody head off". With this knowledge behind her she got on with the job. Strange that Alice was inseminating turkeys while I was inseminating cattle.

Alice's inseminating job didn't last very long and her next job was helping to catch and pen meat birds to be trucked off to market. This job also didn't last very long as it was just too hard. The company that owned the turkey farm that closed down also owned a large piggery and they offered her a job caring for the piglets. This job she kept for quite a while.

Nigel also got a part time job on a poultry farm just down the road where Alice used to collect eggs. He was very diligent at his work and too shy to ask to use their toilet, so he would ride his bike home to our toilet. He always deducted the time he was away and recorded it on his work sheet. He became too enthusiastic one day while delivering the feed to the hens. The machine would travel between the rows of cages and the machine had a metal arm that delivered the feed into the hen's trough. He decided to speed his job up one day and went so fast the hens didn't have time to get their heads out of the way and he decapitated several of them. This caused the whole shed to go into uproar and he wasn't asked back again.

His next part time job was on the turkey farm across the road, collecting eggs and writing the date on them in texta pen. He became bored and decided to draw funny faces on the eggs as well as on the backs of the white turkey hens. The owner wasn't amused so he was relieved of his position once again, but not before he had enough money to buy a present for the new house. It was a green beaded curtain that hung in the doorway to keep flies out. A treasured present as it was the first Nigel was able to buy with his own money.

At Oxley High Cynthia and three other girls formed a group of folk singers and guitar players. They were very popular and the school recorded them and had a tape made of their performances. They were to stay together throughout High school and remained lifelong friends after they left school.

There were often dances at the school in the evenings and we would drop them off there and go back to pick them up at the end. They were not easy to get out of the hall when we wanted them to even though they knew there was a time frame. We found a no fail method to get them out without a fuss and that was for us to enter the dance floor. They would be so embarrassed at having their parents on view they would leave immediately. Another embarrassment for these teenagers was when I sold the Ford station wagon and bought a Ford Fairlane v8, one of the American models with the big fish tails. If we drove the children into school in the Fairlane we were asked to drop them off a block before the school. They didn't want their school friends to see them in such a car. We didn't keep the Fairlane for long as it was too dear to run and the upkeep was costly. We traded it in on a Ford Fairmont. It wasn't a very sensible buy either as it was built like a sports car only longer. The little Volkswagen Beetle I bought to go to work in although ancient, was a much more practical car until the wheels started falling off. I sold it as a paddock basher and bought a little green Holden Gemini which was a very faithful car that I drove for many years. I was able to teach all the children to drive in it. Rebecca was a bit of a problem as she believed the only spot for the accelerator was flat to the boards. She used to practice driving around Banyandah and one day she came home crying and I asked what was the matter. She said"the car won't go" and I said "that's nothing to cry about lets go and see why it won't go". When we reached the unfortunate car the front wheel was well and truly off the ground with a stump under it. I asked if she had hurt herself when she had come to a sudden stop. She said she hadn't noticed the car being on a stump. It took me a whole day to remove the car off the stump but luckily it was unhurt as was Rebecca, even though banned from driving around the paddock.

We had a stroke of luck when a senior journalist from the Northern Dailey Leader came out to Banyandah for a ride. He was very impressed with our outfit and asked why he hadn't heard of us before. He must have really enjoyed his ride because he booked in the next week for a sunset ride and was bringing several of his friends. By this time our horse numbers had increased to twenty. We had a wonderful ride that evening with the journalist and his friends and he took many photos on the ride. We had ridden over the mountain to Walls Pub just outside Tamworth and after tying up our horses around the swimming pool we had a few drinks. Then back over the mountain and arriving home just on dark. We soon had a campfire going in the garden and the bar-b-que fired up plus a flagon or two of wine that someone had brought along. We had many evenings like this but we will always remember the first one. The next week there was a two page spread of photos and a mighty write up about Banyandah Riding School. It gave us such a boost to our endeavours to get the riding school up and running, we never looked back from that point. Because of the type of our business it was mainly conducted at weekends and after work. The children helped after school and at weekends and I did also. Alice mainly ran it by herself as I was working full time. We built a round yard to train the horses in and an enclosed dressage arena. People would often stop to ask what it was. The arena was the first in the district. During the week Alice gave private dressage, jumping and hacking lessons. One day a week she had students from a private Anglican girl's school and on another day had students from the Catholic boys high school. They gave us a great boost to our finances and we were able to have a tack room built and my pathetic efforts with the shed renovated to house the horse feed. Alice also had groups of bored ladies for riding lessons and one day a week children's play group. Many famous people came to ride at Banyandah including Jon English the singer. The first day he rode with us he had just finished his ride when the girls from the Anglican school arrived. We had a rain water tank at the tack room with cups there for the riders .The girls went into hysterics when they saw Jon and after he had drunk from a cup at the tank the girls fought over who was going to use the same cup. Up to this point Alice thought he was just another rider and had no idea about him being a pop star. Jon was practising his riding for his upcoming role in Against the Wind. We had his two eldest daughters to stay for the school holidays and they were a delight. Later Jon invited Alice and Rebecca for a visit to his home in Sydney. We also received complimentary tickets to his performances when he was in Tamworth.

There were many doctors in Tamworth in general practice and many young doctors at the Base Hospital. A large number of them rode at Banyandah. The young ones were a bit wild and when you tried to slow them down they would say we were not to worry as they had plenty of medical aid at hand. Nurses and other staff from the hospital also rode with us. They all found it very therapeutic after their stressful jobs. For most of the trail rides I would lead the ride and sometimes have someone on the lead and Alice would ride at the back to keep a check on them and also many times have one or two on the lead. One young doctor and his wife came regularly and she was pregnant. She was a rider you would say was too game and she would jump over logs and ride too fast. When she reached the eight months mark I decided I would have a chat with her and ask her not to come for a while. Luckily she decided this for herself before I had time to talk to her.

We also had children to stay for the school holidays. I put double bunk beds in some of the bedrooms and we had children who came singly and some whole families to stay for the two weeks. Often they were children from broken homes where Mum would send them to Dad for the holidays and Dad couldn't cope so he would send them out to us.

Many children came to ride with us aged five and they would be regulars until they turned seventeen. They became part of the family. For the local ones Alice would turn up at their parents' day at school because she would know that the parents would be working and wouldn't be able to go. The children loved this. Later on we would receive invitations to their wedding or to their graduation from University or a performance in an orchestra.

There were some unfortunate children that came to us for short term foster care. One little boy aged eight came to stay and he had been rejected in seven other foster homes. He was a very disturbed little boy and quite a handful. The first night he was with us I went in to tuck him in to bed and say goodnight as I did with all the children and he started to scream. We found out later that his mother was a prostitute and some of her clients had abused him. He wasn't toilet trained and would poo everywhere. He loved ice cream and this was always a great reward for him for good behaviour. His mother came to visit one day and when he saw her he screamed and ran and hid. We had a table and chairs out in the garden and Alice decided she would give her a cup of tea and cake out there. To Alice's amazement when she handed her the cake the lady removed her dentures and placed them on the table before eating the cake.

Just as he was becoming a manageable child the department decided he needed to go to a special school as we had some trouble with him at the local school. Perhaps the principal of the local school had complained about him. At the special school he was deemed unmanageable and sent home to the mother. The poor child never had a chance and as an adult he ended up in prison.

Some Legacy children spent their holidays with us and really enjoyed themselves. When the holiday was over they requested that their jeans not be washed so they could take them home smelling of horse to show their friends. Alice gave one morning a week for riding for the disabled and we had a pony broken into harness to pull a wagon we had built to carry those not able to ride a horse. Volunteers were needed for these events and it was hard to get suitable people. They would turn up in high heels and tight skirts and fingernails designed to do damage. The local Lions club built a platform and ramp for us to wheel the heavier riders up and lower them onto the horse. We had a few adult stroke victims who also needed the ramp to mount. One little boy who had spina bifida and was crippled from the waist down but otherwise had good balance, took a fancy to the biggest horse we had and the horse loved him too. The horse seemed to know that the boy couldn't handle the trot so he would go from a walk into a gentle canter. Imagine what it would have been like to have four strong legs under him. They were a joy to watch but unfortunately the dear little soul died a year later.

Alice also had a group of deaf riders which she soon learned that it wasn't a good idea to take them out into the open for a ride. They couldn't hear her instructions and just kept going. She soon herded them into the arena where they could be contained.

Each year on the first of August we would celebrate the horses' official birthday with a party. If it was during the day we would have a gathering of children and disabled riders. There was always lots of goodies to eat and the horses didn't miss out either with hay and carrots. We always had a cake of some sort with candles and one year a pony decided to enter into the humans treat and in doing so knocked the candles over into some hay. It was reported in the Northern Inland newspaper the next day that the horse's birthday party was a flaming great success.
Chapter 23

Through all this I was still battling with my addiction to valium. My body must have become immune to it as it didn't have any effect on me other than becoming anxious if I was running low on tablets. I asked the doctor I was seeing if he would help me kick the habit. His reply was, "if you feel like that you must need it", so that didn't get me anywhere. I was ashamed to be addicted to the drug but I couldn't talk to anyone about it. I had stopped taking the extra one at night so perhaps that was a start.

Having started to smoke while on my trip around the world I found I was no longer smoking for pleasure but because I couldn't do without it. I was smoking more and more and I finally decided this it, I'm no longer going to be a slave to nicotine, smoking at least two packets a day it wasn't an easy job and it took me two years to kick it but in the end I won the battle.

Through the adult learning group I attended I learnt that Lifeline needed volunteer telephone counsellors and were soon to run a volunteer training course. I decided to put my name down as I felt it would be interesting and a good way to give to the community that I had become fond of. The evening course went for many weeks and challenged a whole heap of concepts I had about myself. I had a long way to go from the loner I really was to the outgoing person I needed to be. At the end of the course I was told I had made great progress but wasn't ready to become a counsellor yet. One of the course instructors had a talk with me afterwards and said he thought I did have what it takes and to join the next course. I was a bit anxious about fronting up again, having been rejected the first time but I did front up. In the second course I felt much freer to join in and passed with flying colours. The first few weeks on the job I had an experienced counsellor sitting in with me before I was allowed to go solo. I found the work very challenging and rewarding. I was to give Lifeline approximately eight hours a week for the next seventeen years. After being with the team for two years I was invited to join the counsellor training team which I was involved in for the next fifteen years. I mainly did my shifts on the telephone after work or overnight that went from ten pm to seven am. For the after work shifts I would go straight from work and if I was rehearsing a musical I would go on from there. The overnight shifts were ok because you could clock up hours very quickly. In between calls there was a bed and you could have a sleep if you were lucky. Unfortunately some of the regular callers needed to talk to you at one am and if I had many of these in a night I felt wrecked at work the next day.

The counsellor training sessions were very rewarding and this would have been enough for me but you were not allowed to be a trainer if you didn't keep up your own skills on the phone. Often you would see a shy retiring person come in and by the end of the course they would be able to stand up in front of the group and say their piece. The trainers worked in twos, a man and a woman and the same two would work together through that course. The trainees would also stay the distance in the same group with the same trainers. Part of the evening all the groups and trainers would come together for an exercise that required everyone to join in. At times you would have an individual who didn't want to join in and that was ok for them but it disrupted the group and they usually didn't make it through.

When I first started with Lifeline I made it clear to the director that I wasn't a religious person and didn't attend any church. It was important for me to let them know this as some Lifeline centres required you to be a fully-fledged church goer. Some of the trainees that came through questioned my lack of religion but that was their problem not mine. I made some very good friends over the years with both the trainers and trainees. Alice wasn't all that keen on my involvement with Lifeline as she regarded it as too secret. At the time we were not allowed to make it public that we were counsellors. The reason for this was some clients might be hesitant to ring in if they thought there might be someone on the other end of the line who knew them.

The week I turned forty was the week the cattle centre closed down. I applied for many jobs and had interviews but they all came up with the same answer. "You are well qualified for the job but you are too old for what we want". One of Alice's dressage students was an engineer with Telecom and when she told him I was out of work he said there was two positions coming up with Telecom. He advised me to put my name down and he would make sure it came to the top. It wasn't the kind of job I was hoping for but beggars can't be choosers and I had been out of work for a week. I put my name down and the job was mine starting the next week. I wasn't very popular because there were dozens of men who thought they would get the job. My position was that of temporary labourer and my first job was on a stop go sign on the road up to the hospital. I thought this was the pits as I kept my head down hoping no one would recognise me. I knew the doctors who came out to Banyandah riding would be going past and see me. What a job, but it did pay more than my farm manager's position. I was to work for Telecom for the next twenty-one years. Telecom had changed its name the year I started there, it had previously been known as P.M G. Post Master General. When I started with Telecom I was rehearsing for the musical, Fiddler on the Roof and it stands to reason that when my work mates found out I was nicknamed Fiddler. Not a complimentary name but it was all in jest.

I had worked really hard to get a principles role in Fiddler on the Roof but when the auditions were being held singers came from far and wide, some of them professionals, so I didn't have a chance. I was the lead tenor in the chorus as Yousel the hat maker. I was also one of the Cossack dancers. When I was presented with the routine for the Cossack dance I thought this is going to wreck my forty year old body, but with perseverance and a lot of pain I mastered it. This show was a great success and really set me up for more roles in later musicals. Seventeen in total as well as many concerts and plays. What a wonderful time I would have had if I had started off when I was young but even as a late starter I was having a great time.

With Telecom they decided to make me a permanent labourer instead of a temporary one. This meant I would now be paying into a superannuation fund and a union member. It also meant I had to have a medical test which I passed easily except for one problem. Because I was taking valium the doctor marked my papers that I was not to be paid out if I went off on stress leave. I hadn't planned on doing so anyway and felt it didn't really matter. That doctor was the one I had asked to help me get off the drug.

I went from a stop go sign to a gang on a compressor laying cables along the street and into houses. The boss of the gang had been with P.M.G forever and was a typical, don't do more than you have to kind of man. He was also an alcoholic and used to disappear during the day for long periods. The drink eventually took it's toll on him and he was pensioned out. I guess you could say I was fortunate but that's debatable, I became the plant operator on the compressor. When you did the job properly it was hard, dirty and dusty work along with a loud noise. I was the operator on the machine for five years. I tried many times to move to a better job but there wasn't another soul who would take over from me. The compressor was mounted on a five ton truck and at one stage I drove it to Sydney to pick up a new model. One of my jobs was to go down into large cement pits and make holes in the concrete to bring cables through. There was no such thing as safety gear like goggles or earmuffs and it was hard to breathe with all the fine cement dust. The noise was horrific down there.

The council built a three story office block in the centre of town and it was my job to break up several hundred yards of cement footpath so the cables could be laid. When I turned my machine off on completion the whole three story half-finished office block erupted in clapping and cheers, so terrible was the noise. I didn't know that a few years later I would be working in that office block.

During my time on the compressor I was sent off to Sydney to get a shot firers ticket so I could use explosives. The compressor was used to drill holes in rocks so the dynamite could be placed in them and a trench blasted through to make way for the cables to go through. It was a very responsible job and to get your shot firers ticket you had to get a high mark. It was a dangerous job that required considerable care. The only time I ran into trouble with it was when I went back to the blasting site too early and breathed in a lung full of fumes. It gave me such a headache I thought my head was going to explode.

I had an interesting job blasting a trench across a river bed. I wasn't allowed to do the underwater work, divers were brought in to do this. My job was to operate the compressor to give the divers air. I did talk them into letting me go down once and it was very interesting, but it got me into trouble with the union. The two men who were the diver's offsiders had reported me.

With my work with Lifeline I met a whole new bunch of people and two of the trainers were a husband and wife team. I became good friends with them and they told me they were about to start a Graduate Diploma course at Hawkesbury College near Richmond, which commenced early in the next year. They said the course would help me with my counselling and encouraged me to apply also. What a dilemma, I knew I wasn't eligible as one of the requirements was that you had to have graduated from a tertiary college or University beforehand. I had the struggle of telling my friends, who were highly educated that my formal education was basically nil. When I told them they said my life had given me a great education and although it was a stumbling block in this case, they would recommend I be accepted.

Off I went with fragile confidence to apply for the course. The professor was very kind when I met him and explained to him my lack of education. He said he would accept me into the course on an experimental basis but there would be very little chance of me receiving the diploma. I had no expectations of getting the diploma in the first place and I was very excited about taking part in the two year external course.

On the journey home I was full of anxiety for what I was letting myself in for. I knew I would be paddling fast the whole way through. It would be beyond anything I had experienced before. I had a couple of months to gather my thoughts before the course started with a two weeks residential at the college in January 1978. I applied for and was granted paid leave from Telecom for any of the study time I needed to be away. This was indeed an unexpected bonus which I wouldn't have received if the union boss hadn't told me to apply for it.

With my job on the compressor I always had an offsider and recently a new one had started with me. He was a funny little man, a little older than me. He had just started with Telecom and was desperate to get ahead. He wanted me to teach him the working of the compressor and help him to get his driver's licence for the truck. The working of the compressor was straightforward but teaching him to drive the truck was a frightening experience. He was so short he could hardly see over the steering wheel and had the habit of placing his foot firmly on the accelerator. Many times as we sped through the main street of Tamworth in this large truck I thought this is it, but he had a charmed life and eventually after I shouted at him many times he slowed down and became a competent driver. The best part was he really wanted my job. I had been trying to con someone into taking it for years. To Tiny I was something of a Godlike creature.

When I told my foreman that Tiny wanted my job and I wanted him to have it the foreman agreed. He said now I was working towards higher education it wouldn't look good for me to be a labourer working a machine. I was now to be trained as a linesman installing telephones, cables and repairing faults on telephone lines. A big step up which would require me to make many journeys to Telecom schools at Greta and Sydney. I would be at these schools for either a few days or a couple of weeks. It was all coming together in a rush. Thankfully I had more energy than I had a right to and I was able to handle the extra pressure.

I passed the necessary exams and was given my own work van which gave me a lot of freedom as I was able to take the van home at night. I was mainly working on my own which suited me fine. While working out on an isolated road I heard a lady screaming. I wasn't sure what I should do but eventually I decided I should investigate the problem. As I reached the house I could see what the problem was. Her two little dogs had a large brown snake bailed up and it was getting very cross. I jumped out of my van grabbing a shovel as I went and dispensed with the snake. To the lady I was a hero and a couple of days later she spotted me working in the sun on another road, she pulled up and handed me two ice cold beers, they went down very well. Elsie, who was elderly and I were now lifelong friends.

Alice decided to give up her job at the piggery as it was full time and she needed to be with the riding school more. Because of her nursing experience she applied for a position at a retirement home in Tamworth called Nazareth House as a diversional therapist. This required her to coax the old people out of their rooms for activities she conducted. She loved working with the old people and they loved her. Many of them had Alzheimer's and were difficult to entertain. She had a big white board installed in the passageway to the dining room and on this she would draw cartoons.
Chapter 24

The old people on their way to the dining room would stop and have a laugh at it and on their way back they would stop again, not remembering it, have another laugh. She also drove a small bus and after making sandwiches with them would take them out for a drive and a picnic. She really should have had an offsider with her as twenty-two people with loss of memory was a bit much.

Alice was concerned about what she should do if one of her people died while out on the tour. The head nun of her department was a savage piece of work and told Alice not to ask such stupid questions, just prop them up against the window and drive back to the village. That nun was eventually removed for being unkind to her patients and sent to a convent in Western Australia.

They used to have functions and dances for the old people some nights and Alice and I would go in and help run it. That was all volunteer work.

The nuns weren't so good at giving back when Alice asked for a half hour off to attend a neighbour's funeral. She was given the time off ok but her pay was docked for the time. The nuns didn't seem to have good people skills. I drove there one day to buy a second hand bathtub they had for sale because I wanted it as a horse trough. I made the terrible error of driving in the wrong gate and a nun came charging at me shouting, "what do you want, you've come in the wrong gate". I said, "a bit of servility would be nice", and drove off without the bathtub.

When Rebecca started school we decided to send her in the bus with the older children and she would attend the Tamworth primary school. After primary school she then went on to Oxley High with Cynthia and Roy, Nigel had left school by then. While Rebecca was at Oxley High she worked after school as a helper at Nazareth House and would then come home with Alice.

Alice worked at Nazareth House for several years as the hours suited her not being full time. She had so many interesting stories the old people had told her it would take a separate book to cover them.

It was in 1975 when everything was happening that Alice decided she just had to go home to Ireland to see her parents. She had done well to last this long away from her people. We didn't have the money of course but I was able to get a personal loan to cover the trip from the Northern Inland Credit Union which I had joined when I first went to work for Telecom. I wasn't able to go with her so we decided that Nigel, aged sixteen would travel with her. I would need help at home as I still had three other children to look after, a full time job and the riding school to run.

Alice employed a housekeeper before she left, a formidable sergeant major type called Mrs Oaks. She had worked at a correctional centre and was a battle hardened woman, rather large and very bossy. My brother Ted thought he had better come and stay for the duration to keep an eye on things. Day one I arrived home and found Ted sulking up by the hen house. When I asked him what was the matter he said, "that bloody woman threw me out". He must have tried to tell her what to do. I don't think she ever did any work herself. She had the children organised into doing it for her.

We were all very pleased when Alice and Nigel returned. Alice was pleased to get home too as they had been caught in London airport for three days in heavy fog, with very little to eat and toilets that didn't work. Through all this they lugged a large painting that an old Irish lady had painted for me. They must have been tempted many times to dump it. The trip home was a hazard to as it wasn't a straight through run. At one stage it looked like they might have had to stop off in Malaya. If they had done this Nigel would have had his long hair cut off as males in that country were not permitted to have long hair.

Even Alice's Doberman dog was glad to see her but was trying not to show it as he was displeased with her going away in the first place. With this trip we learned that Alice was not an Australian Citizen. We always thought she was because of being married to me. When she applied for an Australian passport they rejected her application and told her not only would she have to renew her Irish passport but she would also need a re-entry permit to come back into Australia. This was a shock all round but no drama getting the Irish passport and re-entry permit. It made us think though, what would happen if she wasn't allowed back in.

In January 1978 I set off in the Gemini for Hawkesbury College. I was so nervous and I was to be there for two weeks. I dressed up in what I thought would make me look intelligent wishing I had father Roy's blue eyes instead of my own dark brown ones, and a business suit and tie. It was a surprise for me when I arrived mid-afternoon to find everyone dressed in the most casual manner. I immediately went to my room and changed into something more appropriate. The college was on beautiful lawned grounds with a large swimming pool. The accommodation was well appointed single rooms with a wash room down the hall. The rooms all had large floor to ceiling windows and I was told originally this part of the college had been run by priests and the idea of the large windows was so the priest could do their rounds at night outside to check that the boys weren't doing anything they shouldn't be doing. The college had been an all-boys affair in the beginning.

That evening we all met in the dining room and after a good meal we all sat around talking and getting to know each other. The question of my lack of education never came up at any stage during the next two years. I felt very much a part of the group and was ready to partake in whatever was put before me.

To achieve the diploma, the participant had to come up with a main project at the end of the course. It had to be large scale creativity, investigational, or action project arising out of the life of the course member. It had to be presented and documented at a professional level and required about one sixth of the total effort for the course. For this requirement I wrote my autobiography in the third person. I had it professionally printed and had it made into a hard backed book that took me two years to write. My only time I had to write was after the family had retired and I would sometimes write until one or two am. Along with the other study material I had to get through, it was a big task.

I worked on two other projects because I felt they were more appropriate to the course. One was a study of the homeless men in Tamworth. The woman and children were catered for with the women's refuge but nothing for men. I had difficulties with this project as the city's fathers refused to believe there was a problem but I knew there was because I would receive many calls through the winter from homeless men desperate for somewhere to sleep.

My other project was the study of the pollution given off by the biggest industrial company in Tamworth. I was warned off this project by the council as too politically sensitive. Having reached a stalemate with these projects I was discussing my dilemma with my tutor. I told him I wasn't getting anywhere except with my autobiography which I was writing as a sideline to keep track of where I was at. I handed him what I had written and he was delighted with it and said forget the other projects, just concentrate on this.

The tutor who took the most interest in my work was a clinical psychologist and he had spent many years as a priest until he decided to leave the order and enter into a private practice. He was a very interesting man who delved into hypnotherapy and thought transference and many other interesting aspects of the development of the human mind. I could see why he left the priesthood as he was a good looking man and the ladies flocked after him.

The courses we worked on were so many and varied but all with a common goal: to make you think outside the box. One exercise we had was to visit a mental hospital that my tutor worked at and talk with the patients and staff. I found this a challenge because of my previous experience with Birdie and mental hospitals. The other challenge I found was telling the patients and staff apart. Some of the patients were more with it and normal than I was.

The battle I was having with my addiction to valium became more important to me during the course as I became more aware of where I wanted to be. I set myself a programme to beat this problem and it worked, along with my newfound confidence. Over the next two years I broke my intake down from 5mg four times a day to two mg at night. A major achievement and I had done it all on my own, too ashamed to talk to anyone else about it. The last step was to take me quite a while to achieve. The work I was doing through the course gave me the strengths to beat the major part of my addiction. Not much of an achievement you might think but when you have been battling with something as personally significant as this for twelve years it certainly has an impact.

The study group attached to the college that was held in Tamworth was a great help as we were able to help and support each other with positive encouragement. I had a stroke of luck there as one of the ladies offered to type out my notes and correct my spelling in my hand written work. Usually one of the tutors came up from Hawkesbury College to conduct the sessions.

At the end of 1979 I received a letter from the College telling me I had well and truly surpassed all requirements for the course and I was to receive the diploma. The letter said my final project was amongst the best and if I agreed they would like to use it as a guideline for future courses. How proud I was in 1980, dressed in cap and gown marching up to receive my diploma. A little sad too because it was now all behind me and it had cost me a great deal of anxiety. My final project had to be reviewed by three tutors and one external reviewer. I received an extraordinary amount of praise from all four reviewers. Sadly when I had finished, it had taken so much out of me I never wanted to see it again. Just before the graduation I had to have an operation to repair a burst ear drum that I had received while diving in a lake. I was only just back on my feet in time for the ceremony.

Nigel didn't want to continue at school so aged sixteen he found himself an apprenticeship at a local car firm as a mechanic. He stayed with the firm until he completed his apprenticeship. He was bound to do something with machinery, with him starting off as a small child driving around the property and helping me with the ploughing on the tractor. We had bought him a small motor bike that he used to zip around Banyandah on when he was fourteen or fifteen. It was nearly the undoing of him as speed and tricks were the order of the day. There was a steep bank on the dam that he decided to leap off on the bike one evening. He didn't make it and we found him with a fractured skull and a badly broken arm. His big concern when he was taken off to hospital was, "how is the bike"? It didn't make us feel very good when we were met at the hospital by a big burly nursing sister saying "how dare we allow such a young boy to ride motor bikes". He recovered from this and went on to bigger and bigger bikes.

It is a wonder that Nigel and Roy survived long enough to become adults with all the scary pranks they got up to. They had some friends who were old enough to drive a car and they had a battered old vehicle they used to come to Banyandah in. Once there they had an old car bonnet turned upside down they would tow behind the car at speed with our two boys and sometime others sitting in the upturned bonnet. As they sped over the hills and around the corners the occupants would be spilled out.

Nigel and his bike was always a worry as you could hear him coming for miles. One morning at 1 am he came charging up to the house shouting,"Dad come quick Jonny has come off his bike and I think he is dead". Barefoot and in my pyjamas I raced out of the house and onto the back of his bike. We raced back down to where Johnny had crashed and he was in deep trouble. His helmet had come off in such a way it was chocking him. Relieving him of his helmet he recovered, unlike my bare foot I had placed on the red hot exhaust of Nigel's bike.

Like many young people he was dissatisfied with having to live by family rules so he decided to move out into his mate's flat. Alice was upset about the decision until she discovered he had taken all the furniture out of his room. Alice had given him an Onkaparinga blanket to keep him warm when he moved out only to find out later that he had found a better use for it as a cover for his brand new bike.

All the children were a great help with the riding school when they were at home. Roy used to act the clown when there was a nervous child on the ride who was soon laughing along with Roy. Cynthia was always a neat and tidy rider but wasn't all that keen on riding. She was however very efficient doing the bookings and taking care of everything at home.

Cynthia, Nigel and Roy joined the Pony Club at Moonbi and they were able to ride there by themselves. They had all left home by the time Rebecca was old enough for Pony Club. For some reason Rebecca joined the Bendemeer Pony Club which was a half hour trip away in the horse float. Cynthia gave us a fright one day when she rang and said she had entered into the six bar jumps, which are jumps that go to six feet high.
Chapter 25

Neither she nor her horse would be capable of such a feat so we rushed to the pony camp, but when we arrived we were relieved to find she had changed her mind.

We always mustered the horses into a large yard before the ride and there we would put their personal bridles on. Alice had them trained from that point when she opened the gate they would take themselves around to the tack room and wait for their saddles to be put on.

To promote the riding school Alice started competing in Dressage and hacking. There wasn't much happening at the time in Dressage for the level of Alice's ability so she did a lot of displays. She had many wonderful horses who she was able to train to a high level. The first one was a big bay thoroughbred gelding called Balalaika. She was to compete with him in the hack ring at Tamworth show. After struggling with him for about an hour we were unable to get him on the float. Eventually Alice lost patience, put the saddle on and headed for town at high speed. I set off after her with the horse float but wasn't able to catch up with her along the way. The horse was very willing to get on the float for the journey home.

We had one big thoroughbred gelding that a stud had given us. His name was Long John and he was a wonderful horse to ride. Not many people noticed why he was called Long John. One rider after mounting started to look pale and he said "Mrs this horse only has one eye". Alice said "that's right it's much more expensive to ride one with two". The rider never said another word. Another young man of about 6'8'' liked to ride Long John and asked how he had lost his eye. Alice told him that Long John had won a race at great speed and had pulled up so fast his eye just dropped out. The loss of an eye never hampered the horse in any way and he was part of our team for many years.

One of Alice's Dressage students used to come regularly with a large Omo white Arab gelding. Often as not Alice would ride the horse to demonstrate how to get results. Eventually the student told Alice she had decided to sell the horse as she hadn't done any good with him. Alice could see the horse had far more potential than the rider so she bought him. I had said we had far too many horses so Alice decided the best way to introduce yet another horse into the team was to present him to me for my birthday. I wasn't all that enthralled with another horse birthday or not but it was a good way of getting around my objection. His stud name was Sharla but because of his entry into Banyandah he was called Birthday.

With Alice's ability Birthday went on to become a champion many times over. She did a display on him to music at the Arab Championships as she did at many local shows. He became famous and when his favourite tune came over the loud speaker, which was The Music Box Dancer, people would head for the arena to watch him dance. The more the audience clapped the more show he would put on, he loved it.

She did a display at Muswellbrook showground at night and it was magic. With the Omo white horse in a darkened arena and a helicopter overhead with a spotlight shining down on him. Most horses would have freaked out with the helicopter overhead but he just went on to do his grand display. Alice did a tour of Western New South Wales giving displays at country shows. She always sat so still when giving a display in dressage, that a little boy at the Bourke show asked her if she was able to use her legs. I guess he was used to watching riders digging in their spurs and going off at a gallop. She was offered a lot of money for him and was tempted but I said "you can't sell him, he belongs to me".

She was to enjoy her champion for many years. In later life he suffered from very painful arthritis and although he looked in the peak of condition and was retired we had no other option but to have him put down. Before the vet came Alice shampooed him and did him up one last time as if he was going to do a display. When the vet gave him his injection and he went to sleep we sat there and cried and so did the vet.

The number of great horses we had and the love we had for them would be a substantial book on its own so I will only be able to cover some of them at the moment. Soon after Birthday's death I had to make a decision on my horse Blaze. I had him for twenty years and he was ten years old when I bought him. He had been retired for some time and had become deaf and almost blind. I kept him in a stable and yard and he became fearful if anyone else went near him. I knew he would be very fretful if I called the vet out as we had done with Birthday so as hard as it was there was only one way for me to give him a peaceful send off. I can't tell you how hard it was for me to lead my friend of twenty years down the paddock and shoot him. It was the kindest way for him and he died instantly.

Alice loved to go to the horse sales in Tamworth and mostly Rebecca would go with her. She had an extraordinary gift for seeing potential in a horse. I thought she had made a big mistake one time when she came home with a coal black eighteen months old unbroken filly. The filly certainly was a looker being coal black and she had very fluid movements. I really didn't have time to deal with an unbroken horse who obviously had never had a rope on her before. Alice had paid sixty dollars for her so there wasn't much to lose if she didn't turn out. Fortunately a neighbour who had a stock horse stud offered to break her in. Alice called her Ebony Rose and when she was two years old Alice rode her in a maiden hack event and won. This was unfortunate as she would now have to compete in open hack events and she was too young for that. She wasn't shown again for several years and spent her life with some of our better riders training on her. She was such a comfortable ride she was very popular and one of our top girl riders took her to pony camp. When the girl left to attend University Alice decided she would ride her and train her in Dressage. Alice did so well with her she now had another champion. She trained her up to Grand Prix. It was nothing for Ebony to do twenty six onetime changes across the diagonal of the dressage arena. Watching her you would think she was skipping and when she did the extended trot she appeared to be floating. Alice decided to become a student of a grade three German coach that came to Armidale four times a year. On her first day as she began her lesson, I was sitting with the coach when he asked me what Alice had done in the past. I told him she wouldn't have had a lesson in forty years and he replied, "She rides better than people who have had lessons for forty years". Alice and Ebony became his favourite pupils in Armidale. Edgar was a highly respected coach, giving classes in New Zealand and in America as well as his main Equestrian centre in Sydney. Alice competed with Ebony for many years until she broke a small bone in her foot which couldn't be repaired so we retired her.

After my success at Hawkesbury I fronted up early in 1980 at the University of New England in Armidale, intending to study for a Social Science Degree. I was unreasonably disappointed when told I was far too late to apply for 1980 and would have to wait until 1981. I was on a roll and wanted to keep going but there was nothing for it but to wait out the year.

I started to notice that my heart was doing funny things like racing and stopping for a beat. I took myself off to the doctor and explained what was happening. He treated it as a joke, saying I had a slight murmur but nothing to worry about. He said I was probably paranoid about it and lay awake at night imagining I had a problem. I thought afterwards, he was a keen theatre goer and had seen me prancing around the stage each night and reckoned there couldn't be anything wrong with me. He gave me a complex and I never mentioned it again to him or anyone else. Other than my heart I was very fit.

When Cynthia finished high school she was too young to follow her dream of becoming a nurse, so for a year she worked in a jewellers shop. The next year she started off as a trainee nurse at Tamworth Base Hospital. She made a wonderful nurse and did well up until the end of the year. We had to get special permission from the hospital for her to live at home instead of the nurse's quarters because she became homesick. In her final exam that year she had boyfriend problems and failed her exam. She didn't give up, just moved to Gunnedah hospital where she became a registered nurse. She made a very kind efficient nurse.

We bought a 470 acre property north west of Bendemeer, intending to run cattle on it as well as spelling our spare horses. It only had a shed on it along with an old tractor. The property cost us twelve thousand dollars and six head of cattle came with it. Unfortunately when we came to gather up the cattle the neighbours claimed a couple of them as theirs. The whole neighbourhood was a nest of thieves and all inbred. To get to our property which we called Bally De Hob we had to go through a small village just before our block. The natives would watch us come and go which wasn't all that often. As soon as we had gone they would herd their sheep onto our place. We caught them at it one time and Alice threatened to shoot the lot when we came up next time. The woman wasn't fazed and said her sheep had never been as wormy as they were after being on our place.

There was a bush block at the back of our property that the owners used to camp on in a hut they had built. They had right of way through us but it was all rock and dense trees so they used to drive right down the middle of Bally De Hob. The ground there was very dicey to drive on in the wet because if you drove on a soft patch the surface would collapse and you would sink down up to your axle. We were parked on our road through the property one day for safety when a property agent came through taking clients to view the block behind us. Full of self-importance he ordered us off the road so he could drive through. His bluster disappeared when I pointed out that I owned the road and if I was good enough to let him use it he could drive around me.

I was missing some horses one day when I went to check on them and following the boundary fence along I found where the fence was down and the horses had gone through to the back block. I set off on foot to find them. I didn't find the horses that day but I did find a marihuana plantation with two men standing guard with rifles. I quietly melted into the hills unobserved. When I returned home I drove into the Police station in Tamworth and reported the find. Police in a helicopter descended on the growers and that was the end of the crop.

We had many happy days up on Bally De Hob with friends. We would all take tents and erect them around a campfire as it was always cold there. With the old tractor I would lug a large log onto the campfire site and it would keep us warm for the time we were there. At times we had up to four families camping with us plus a distant relative of Alice's from Ireland. Liz came for a two week visit and stayed six months. She was a good rider so fitted in fairly well. We dug a big pit and lined it with rocks and that was our oven. A log cabin was on the agenda and we spent many nights around the log fire planning it and keeping warm with glasses of port, the port was great but the log cabin never got off the ground.

It was an exciting place for Rebecca to have her friends to stay as it was rumoured that a yowie lived in the hills. A stream ran through the property and the children had a swimming hole for when the days were warmer.

It wasn't all fun for when we had a long dry spell, the springs dried up and to keep the water up to the animals Alice and I dug down on the spring to find more water. This wasn't easy as we had both had accidents and we only had the use of one arm each. To get us over this bad spot we bought a three thousand gallon water tank and a two hundred and fifty gallon trough and bought in a load of water. This got us over the hump of the hill.

The battle with thieves and dry spells became too much so we sold Bally de Hob. I had decided we were never going to make any money out of it but I didn't reckon on the land value. The block of land we had bought for twelve thousand dollars we were able to sell fore fifty five thousand dollars. This gave our finances a tremendous boost.

Roy having left school which he didn't like very much, became an apprentice to a welding firm making outdoor furniture. He really wanted to become a cabinet maker as he was very good working with timber but there wasn't the openings. He had built a magnificent bar for our house and it was so big I had to take the front door off to get it into the house. We felt for him as the owners weren't very nice, a bit dodgy really, but he stuck it out. He lived at home and travelled to work on a small motor bike he had bought. He came to me one day and asked if I would go guarantor for him to get a much larger bike. I said no, the one he had was quite big enough. He didn't argue with my decision but a couple of days later he proudly rode his new bike up to the front door of the house. I was annoyed and refused to go out and inspect it much to his disappointment. How he got the finance I don't know and it was completely out of character for him to go against what I had told him. However we got over it.

In 1984 I decided we needed a change and after discussing it with Alice, who at the time seemed ok with it, I applied for a position with Telecom in Grafton. I was to go over there and while working look around for a suitable property.
Chapter 26

I got the position and Telecom paid my motel bill for the five months I was there. I had a long weekend every second week which I used to travel back to Banyandah on a Thursday night and return to Grafton on a Sunday night. The Gemini was getting a little old and sick by then so the journeys weren't all that pleasant. We had Banyandah on the market but it wasn't snapped up because of the water situation. In time I realised Alice really didn't want to move. My work in Grafton was substandard to what I had been doing in Tamworth and it didn't make for a happy work place. Even the young unqualified men were given the better jobs ahead of me because they were locals. The boss and I clashed often because of the substandard work I constantly came across and had to fix. After five months in Grafton I asked Tamworth if they would have me back and the answer was right away. Grafton however wasn't keen to release me so I said "ok I'll be going off on sick leave and when that runs out I will resign". They agreed to release me.

I was installed in time back in Tamworth ready for Cynthia's twenty first birthday party. It was a great affair on our front lawn.

We had put up our marquee tent with a gas B B Q and an esky full of ice and drinks. A heap of her friends came and we had a wonderful night.

We often had large parties in our garden, especially at Christmas time when we put on a show on our front deck that was high off the ground and acted like a stage. The riders would also put on their party hats and entertain everyone. Alice always made a production of handing out the trophies for the year. It was always a lot of fun and the riders took it all in as it was meant to be. One lady rider with a big behind won the trophy for the best seat on the horse. Another won the trophy for never having learnt anything in the past year. There were also the serious trophies that riders received for accomplishments. There were even perpetual trophies that went from year to year. Alice used to screen print her own trophy ribbons which were very popular. We had a sound system and some riders would get up and sing at these parties.

We had a party in the garden one evening for charity and many of the riders helped us make it a great success. I brought in a load of hay bales to act as seats and we had the gas B B Q and a wood burning B B Q going full steam to feed the three hundred people who turned up. For many of the parties the rider would bring a plate of whatever to help with the catering. One of the adult riders and myself manned the B B Qs on the big night and the ladies buttered the buns. Along with huge dishes of coleslaws and potato salad and many other concoctions, everyone was well fed.

I asked Alice to take a couple of passenger horses into the sale yard as we had too many. This she did but she came home with three pony mares and the biggest donkey stallion I had ever seen. As we unloaded the pony mares Alice remarked on how wide eyed they looked. Viewing the donkey I said, you would be wide eyed if you had been shut in a horse box with him. When we unloaded the donkey he started to bray, and with that all our horses took fright, some galloping through fences. One horse would never go back to the spot he first saw the donkey. We had to shut him in a stable out of sight.

The donkey was never going to be a success but after we had him gelded he did settle down and was rideable. We had a B B Q out in the garden one evening a short time later with some friends. One of the guests owned a cattle stud and had a lot of bulls they trained to lead ready for the sale ring. As a joke I rode the donkey out of the dark and around the camp fire. The cattle stud owners were so impressed with the donkey's size and good manners, they bought him. A little while later we visited the stud and there was donkey teaching the bulls to lead. Donkey was so strong that the bulls had no other option but to go where ever he wanted to go as they were firmly tied to each other.

One party we had was after a sunset ride over the mountains to the pub on the outskirts of Tamworth called the Oasis. On the way home we had a few riders who had tippled a little too much at the pub and tippled off their mounts on the way home. This was never an issue as the horses were trained to just stand there if the rider came off. When we reached Banyandah one of our regular riders called Uncle Col fell off and he was hard to get back up as his voluptuous partner was holding him firmly to her breast and he had no intentions of getting up.

The party just got started when we arrived home and everyone was in a jovial mood and they had all brought out eats and cartons of wine. The party went on until midnight and ended with everyone collecting up Uncle Col and carting him off down the hill to throw him in the muddy dam. He was too wirly for them, letting them think he was drunker than he actually was. As they reached the bank of the dam he sprang to life and shoved the lot of them in the dam instead. One young fellow wailed, "what will Dad say when we get home".

Rebecca who was only small at the time thought it was all great fun. The next day when she was in Tamworth with Alice, they came across one of our older more staid riders who certainly wasn't at the party. Rebecca ran up to him and told him in great excitement what Mummy and her friends were doing at midnight. He couldn't comprehend that Alice would do such a thing and patting Rebecca on the head said to Alice, "they have great imagination at this age don't they".

Uncle Col was always on the front line of any jokes going about. He was fond of one of our horses so he bought it but left it with us to care for. He was very much a skinflint so Alice played a joke on him one day. As he arrived for his ride his horse was bandaged on every leg, it looked a disaster. She told him the vet had been out several times and was worried about the horses condition and would send him the bill when he was satisfied the horse was ok. Uncle Col went quite pale, not because of the horse's condition but the thought of the vets bill. We had to sit him down and give him a cup of tea while one of us disappeared the horse and removed the bandages. He was always a good sport when caught out in a joke.

He was notorious for bringing out a different lady each time he came to ride. On one occasion he arrived with a lady we hadn't met before and off they went on the ride. Unfortunately the previous lady arrived soon after they had left. Not wanting to disappoint the lady and not giving any thought to the consequences, I saddled up a couple of horses and set off to catch up with the group. There was a definite chill in the air when I arrived with the unexpected lady. He was divorced and his wife had cleaned him out. To avoid this happening again he built his next house on his father's property with no land title. He eventually went to the Philippines and brought back a very cultured lady who knew her place in his scheme of things. Surprisingly it was to be a lasting relationship.

With Nigel and Roy off doing their own thing and Cynthia nursing, Alice and I decided to take a six weeks break and visit Ireland with Rebecca who was now sixteen years old. Alice's parents were still living in the huge old granite farm house. We had a wonderful time touring Ireland, visiting Alice's relatives and friends and doing all the touristy things like kissing the Blarney Stone. It was great for Rebecca meeting all her Irish cousins. One was a boy just a bit younger than her and she was keen to meet him until she discovered he still played cowboys and indians. Alice's nephew Stephen aged twenty-two was a great guide for many of our excursions.

Alice's eldest sister Dympna, with two failed engagements behind her had become a nun and held a very senior position at Saint Vincent's Hospital in Dublin. Her brother James Had retired from the Royal Air Force and was living with his wife and two sons in England and had taken up the position as Agricultural Advisor to farmers. Matilda was married with five children, all grown up except the cowboys and indians one. She and her husband had a real estate business in the south of Ireland and had several rented out holiday homes. Sheelagh, the youngest was married with an almost grown up family of four and her husband Ian was a lawyer.

We mainly stayed at bed and breakfasts for the month we were in Ireland except when we visited Matilda we stayed in a flat above their real estate office. She wasn't the kind of person to have people stay in her house, even though we had travelled twelve thousand miles to see her. When visiting Sheelagh we stayed in their grand old granite house as part of the family. The only thing that bothered me there was Ian's paranoia about security. At night the house was locked up tighter than Fort Knox and you couldn't get in or out.

The bed and breakfasts we stayed at were all nice enough except for the fact they were all keen on saving electricity and as a consequence hot water was always in short supply. We were considered different wanting to shower every day. I guess it was so cold there most of the time there was no need.

We had stayed with Alice's brother James and his wife in southern England for a week before going on to Ireland. It was lovely there with the weather just right and James being aware of jet lag allowed us to sleep it off. When we were recovered, he and his wife Sylvia drove us around quaint country roads sightseeing.

After the month in Ireland we headed back to London where we caught a Trafalgar Coach for a two weeks tour of Europe. Paris was our first stop and we visited many of the great sights, like the Louvre and we travelled to the top of the Eiffel Tower. We had dinner and saw a show at the Moulin Rouge. We walked down the Champs Elysee and visited the Brandenburg Gate. After Paris we travelled to Zurich in Switzerland. There we stayed in a quaint chalet, and there we learned to look after ourselves. If you were slow getting down for breakfast there would be nothing left and no staff to ask for more. We also learned to grab a couple of extra buns and something to go in them for lunch. We found when we stopped in the coach for lunch the crowd was so great it was more than difficult to get served in the time allowed. We would set ourselves up comfortably in the gutter outside and tuck into our buns. It wasn't far into the trip before we had a doctor and his family join us for lunch.

In the evenings when we reached our destinations, there was always a substantial dinner provided by the tour, any other excursions you had to pay for. We went on several extra excursions which cost us as much as the tour itself.

On the coach there were fifty-seven people of varied age and nationality, most of them delightful people. There were other Australians and some from New Zealand, South Africa, America, India and one Malaysian. The driver was Dutch and wouldn't speak unless he had to and the tour guide was English. The information we received from the guide was very comprehensive which made our journey much more pleasant. We were given a warning that if we were late back to the coach it would go without us and we would have to catch a train to the next stop-off to catch up with it. It kept everyone on their toes. The guide had a great seating plan for us which gave every one a fair view. Each day we entered the coach we would move two seats back from the day before. That way you did get to sit in the prime front seat at least once. The South African family were targeted at one border into Italy, because the guards objected to apartheid and they were forced to stand out by themselves for some time.

From Zurich we travelled to Verona where there wasn't much to do except relax by the beautiful lake. From there we drove on to Venice. It was strange for me visiting these places I had been to as a young man and I viewed it with different eyes. In Venice Alice, Rebecca and I caught a boat out to Murano Island which had a very fine glass blowing factory. There I couldn't help myself, I bought a glass tray inlaid with gold and six port glasses and a decanter, all with gold designs on them. The items there were very valuable and security was tight. After you entered the building the door was firmly deadlocked until you were ready to leave. I couldn't take my purchases with me as they were for display so they made a special set for me and had them shipped out to Australia. The three of us travelled around the canals in a gondola, through all the buildings with their feet in the water and under the old bridges.

While we were walking along the waterway an artist was painting a beautiful scene of Venice and I was intrigued with the beauty he was able to capture and I stayed watching him until he had completed it. I asked him if he would sell it to me but he tried to get me interested in ones he had previously done. He thought the one he had just finished would be too wet to take but that was the one I had my heart set on. It still hangs in our house many years later.

After Venice we travelled to Florence. I always liked that city and it was good to be back there. We did the rounds of the tourist spots and bought several souvenirs. We didn't do all the fine art galleries as I had done before as there wasn't time. We had dinner at a very upmarket restaurant with a wonderful meal and pleasant music. Not only did Alice get pinched on the bum there but so did I. Wonders will never cease. We went on a tour of the city sights in the coach which ended up on a mountain just outside the city. The panoramic views over the city was like a beautiful dream. We took many photos to treasure later on.
Chapter 27

From Florence it was a long drive to Rome. I was amazed at the atmosphere over Italy and indeed most of Europe, the air never looked clear just smoggy. In Rome we pulled up at a hotel that looked to me had seen better days but when we entered the inside was well appointed, clean and the meals were great. On appearance I never would have thought of us staying there. They had missed the plot when it came to the bathroom. Someone must have told them that tourist need a shower and a shower we got. They had installed a shower rose and taps out from the bathroom wall but no cubical to contain the water. Consequently when you showered the water ran all over the bathroom floor and out the door. The hotel had a beautiful garden courtyard, just right for relaxing in with a drink after a hard day of sightseeing.

When I was in Rome as a young man I hadn't noticed just how old the city was. Everywhere you looked there was history from way back. You could almost hear the Christians screaming in the Colosseum. The coach delivered us to Saint Peters where we had a tour of the Vatican.

It was fabulous viewing all those magnificent murals and trying to work out how they did them.

Our tour of the Vatican came to an abrupt halt when we discovered we had lost Rebecca. There were thousands of people surging through as we franticly searched for her. We were both in a panic as we searched everywhere and finally thinking to engage the help of our tour guide. As we staggered up to the coach to inform the guide of our dilemma, there was Rebecca with her Canadian friend Brandy. She crossly stated that she was not lost at any stage, she knew exactly where she was. If she hadn't been too old to smack I would have smacked her. All through Rome Rebecca and Brandy, both good looking girls, stirred the young Italian boys up by calling out to them from the coach. At one stage we had quite a contingent of oversexed teenage Italian boys chasing after the coach on bicycles.

From Rome we had a long haul up to Milan where we stayed the night. By this time I was becoming a bit weary of coach travel. From there we travelled on to Innsbruck where I had stayed as a young man, and then on to Munich. I enjoyed the German food as I had done the first time there. From there we stayed one night at a hotel half way between Munich and Calais, and then it was across the English Channel to London. We disembarked in London quite exhausted but after a good night's sleep we met up with one of Alice's nieces from Ireland who was working in London and we had a pleasant day with Sarah. The next day we boarded a 'plane heading for Sydney and on to Tamworth. The end of a six weeks full on trip.

It took a few days to recover but it was great to be home. I was due to start work the next day but I had to ring in sick, I was just too tired to get up and going. My sister Dorothy and her husband Stan had looked after Banyandah while we were away and they did a great job. On the way up to the house there was a large rock about the shape of a human and Stan in his wisdom had glued two eyes to the rock. He said that way the property would never be without someone looking over it. As far as I know the eyes are still on the rock.

We discovered a possum had taken up residence in the roof while we were away, so I had to get it out. I found where he was getting in under a tile in the roof and had plans to fix that once I had removed him. It wasn't easy to displace him but in the end I came up with the bright idea of placing a ladder up to the manhole inside the house and putting slices of apple down the rungs. It worked, sometime after midnight we heard him come down and I rushed to remove the ladder. The possum took off at high speed around the inside of the house. Alice and I tried to direct him out the open door but he wasn't having any of it. Around the kitchen, lounge room and hall we ran with Alice screaming every time he headed towards her. During the melee we noticed the bedroom door to Dot and Stan's room opened just a crack. They must have thought we were up to something strange, as indeed we were. Eventually we persuaded the animal to take off out the door which was firmly shut after him. I immediately climbed up on the roof and sealed off his entry. In the early hours of the morning we heard him trying to get back in but I had done too good a job. I think Dot and Stan were glad to be leaving our madhouse soon after.

One of our regular riders we had most weekends was a young solicitor named John who worked for the law firm that handled our legal matters. He came so often we became firm lifelong friends. He was always at our parties and when his fiancée came up to visit from Sydney he brought her out to. Pam and John became regulars when she came up to visit. One of her visits was to see John acting in a play which we both went to see with her. It was only fitting when he was leaving to take up a post in Sydney for us to give him a great send off in the form of a party in our garden. Pam was there and about a hundred friends came to wish him well. About a year after he left we travelled to Sydney to attend their wedding. We were to remain friends throughout and we often travelled down to Sydney and stayed with them and attended shows or Opera in the Park. Just as often they came up to us and had a quiet weekend riding horses.

Alice's cousin Ann and her niece Mercedes from Ireland decided to come out and visit us. We were delighted but didn't know any of the itinerary details. We received a 'phone call from Sydney and that was from Ann, they had arrived. They had made their hotel booking through an agent in Dublin without inquiring too much about the hotel they were booked into. Ann sounded a bit concerned about the hotel they were staying at in Kings Cross as there seemed to be a lot of coming and going in the hallways. We told them to hang tight, we would solve the problem. We rang John and Pam who immediately went into the city and collected up Ann and Mercedes from the hotel which turned out to be in the red light area. Ann and Mercedes stayed with Pam and John and we drove down to pick them up. We had a few days sightseeing with them and Pam and John before bringing them back to Banyandah.

Ann being a doctor and very Catholic was very staid when she first arrived but with the Australian way of life she soon loosened up. Rebecca, Alice and I took them on a tour out west where we used to live and we stayed at a motel at the Moree Bore Baths. They both loved swimming in the hot bore water. We also drove up to Armidale for a tour of the University City. On a picnic up to Nundle even they had to admit it was cold at the time. When they left us we put them on a 'plane for Cairns where they stayed with Nigel and his wife. Nigel gave them a tour of Cairns over several days and out to the islands. Then they flew out to Singapore where they stayed for a couple of days and then back to Ireland. We loved having them and wished it wasn't so far to travel. When they reached Singapore they rang us, I think they must have been missing us already.

Roy had shacked up with a very pretty girl he had met and they became engaged. They decided to have a party to celebrate which angered Alice when she found they had booked everything down to us. I was working at Grafton at the time so I wasn't even there. They seemed happy enough. We tried to help them when we could and eventually they presented us with a grandson. She wasn't the marrying kind and they parted company. Roy decided he needed a change and went off to Cairns to where Nigel had set up a swimming pool business and he worked for Nigel for a while.

Nigel was very successful with his swimming pool building and erected many fabulous pools for resorts in Cairns. One of his pools was shown on the television show, The Perfect Match. He had shacked up with a very nice girl early in the piece and after being together for seven years they decided to get married. They came down to Tamworth for the wedding as she was a Tamworth girl. The wedding ceremony was to be held in Anzac Park in town and it was a beautiful day. There were lots of family and friends and an old treasured rider that he and his wife were very much on the staid side. As we gathered around ready for the ceremony to start a loud noise of motor bikes started up at the other end of the park where we couldn't see. Our old friend Bill said to me, "do you think you should get them to stop the noise before the ceremony starts". I said I thought they would be gone soon, knowing it was the wedding party on Harley Davidsons that soon rode up in all their glory. The wedding went better than the marriage which was over in twelve months.

We had two other friends called Pam and John and Pam was a devoted student of Alice's. She would arrive every week without fail with her own horse and a lot of ambition to become a proficient rider. Unfortunately, as in the case of many riders she wasn't the right shape. She was only five foot tall and about the same across. Pam would go to every show with Alice and be her groom, taking care of her every need. She even went with Alice when she did the tour of Western New South Wales. She rode quite well but she did present a strange sight, like a round ball on top of her large horse. She and her husband were amongst our friends that went camping at Bally De Hob. They eventually adopted a baby boy and she ran out of time for riding. They remained friends for years until they moved to South Australia where we lost touch with them.

There were many people who came into our lives through horses, some more memorable than others. The owner of the saddler store in Tamworth had a high maintenance live in girl friend who he wanted to learn to ride and therefore promote his business. When she started with Alice she could rise to the trot but not much more and she had designs on becoming a top dressage rider. She was the right shape and dedicated to learn, which she did, right up to the point of Alice and herself giving displays together. She rode with Alice for several years and they planned to tour around New South Wales together. She had gone from wanting to know what a Grand Pricks was to at least knowing it was a Grand Prix even though she wasn't up to that stage yet. The tour proved to be the undoing of their partnership. Alice had everything set up as Banyandah Riding School. With the name on the horse float and saddle cloths and herself as the promoter. Her student had reached a point where she thought she was better than she was and wanted top billing with her boyfriend's name plastered over the horse float. "Not on" said Alice and they parted ways. The student spent the rest of her riding days badmouthing Alice but she faded out long before Alice did.

We had another young girl student who became a top rider. She used to ride fourteen kilometres out from town on her horse and the same going back. Alice rewarded her keenness by giving her a lot of time and she won many championships. Tracy went on to become a doctor so perhaps horses had to take second place. Her father was the Telecom engineer who helped me get the job with Telecom.

Amongst the young doctors who came out riding there was one that seemed to need extra care. When he came out to ride he would often stay for dinner and we came to know him very well. He was a loner and couldn't interact with his fellow doctors at the hospital. He told us his mother had a breakdown when he and his younger brother were quite small and couldn't cope with them so she put them in an orphanage. He and his brother must have been particularly intelligent because both of them went from the orphanage to University and both became doctors. The younger brother didn't cope with life in general and Bill had to look out for him until he lost the plot altogether and had to be put in a home. All this must have played on Bill's mind and many times when he came out to us he was in a deeply depressed state. As his condition worsened Alice called on his peers at the hospital and told them she was worried about his condition. None of them were concerned and said he was a brilliant doctor and would be ok. We knew this wasn't the case but couldn't think of what else to do. The strange thing was the horse he liked to ride became more and more jittery as Bill's condition worsened. I had a talk with him one day and said I was concerned for him and was there anything we could do to help, and he said the only way he could be helped was if someone was with him twenty-four hours a day. It didn't give me a good feeling for him. The last time he came out he said he needed a holiday and intended to travel to Adelaide. I think that was where he came from. We received a post card from him sent from Adelaide and all it said was, "thank you for caring" goodbye. A week later we heard from the hospital that he had killed himself. What a waste, but if he was that unhappy perhaps it was for the best.

We had other lost souls who came to us, we seemed to attract them. One young man from Western Australia came to stay with his uncle, aunt and cousins who lived in our area but they didn't want him so he spent a lot of time with us. He had a beautiful Alsatian dog that always came with him and he had trained this dog to be very obedient. His method of earning money was a bit suspect. He used to buy beat-up cars, renovate them and sell them on. We didn't know a lot about his personal life but he must have got himself into some kind of difficulties and he told us he would have to go back to Western Australia. He said he didn't have enough money to take or keep his dog Ruler with him and would we look after him until he got himself together and came back for him. Ruler was a beautiful dog and I got on well with him so I said yes.
Chapter 28

The day he left he took Ruler up onto our front veranda and told him to sit and stay. After he had gone the dog didn't budge from the front door for a week. After a week Ruler must have thought to himself, "my master didn't say I had to stay here forever" and he needed to find a new master. I was the chosen one, he would follow me like a shadow, which Alice wasn't happy about. She felt threatened by Ruler's constant presence. We had him for about eighteen months at which stage he developed an incurable skin disease that was very painful for him and we had to have him put down. Twenty years later Alice had a 'phone call from the young man in Western Australia thanking us for our kindness and helping him get back on track.

We had a freckled face, red haired boy of five years started with us and he became a regular every weekend. During school holidays he would stay with us for the entire time. He was always easy to have to stay as he was polite and a lot of fun. He became a strong intelligent rider and he was always given the privilege of taking one of our horses to pony camp. Later on we had a big strong horse that could jump anything and this boy became his pilot. He was one of the few of our riders that could handle him. Even I had trouble staying on him at times. Nickolas left us when he went off to work in Sydney but a few years later we had an invitation to his wedding in Bathurst.It was great to see him again and his new bride and during the reception his father gave a speech and much to Alice's amazement he gave Alice the credit for the boy turning out so well. Alice always drummed into him that practice wasn't good enough, it had to be perfect practice and to get this you needed discipline. He went on to be at the top of a large firm in Sydney. When his daughter was born he and his family came to visit us. After he stopped coming to ride we sold the horse as he was too flighty for general use.

In 1988 Rebecca, Alice and I travelled to Sydney to stay with Pam and John who lived in Willoughby. It was the Bicentenary year and the tall ships were coming out from England to recreate the first fleet and were to sail into Sydney harbour to celebrate. The evening we arrived down there we all went out to dinner in the city and then on to see the musical La Mise'rables. A neighbour of ours at Tintinhull had a main lead role. It was a magical beautiful show so well done and it stayed in our minds for a long time. I couldn't believe the scenes they were able to come up with in a theatre and all the singers were the best. After the show we all had to run to Circular Key to catch the last ferry across the harbour to get home. It was such a scramble and we only just made it. Pam who was used to city commuting ushered us to the far side of the ferry which was a good thing as the captain ordered many of the passengers off as it was overloaded.

The next morning we set off with food and drinks in an esky to find a spot on top of a cliff by the harbour to watch the tall ships enter the harbour. Several thousand others did the same thing so it was hard to get a perch on top of the cliff. We were there all day and it was wonderful as we had all our eats and drinks with us. The only drawback was the toilets which all had a very long queue. Our other alternative was to walk a mile back to where Pam's mother lived, so you hung on as long as you could. The tall ships coming up the harbour under sail, but obviously with the help of motors was a sight you could never forget. The entire harbour was a maze of ships all different shapes and sizes and makes swirling around each other. As the evening came so did the fireworks display. We had never seen anything so spectacular and being over the harbour made it that more special with the Opera house and Sydney harbour bridge in the background. The next day we all went to the harbour to have a closer look at the special tall ships and take 'photos. On the way back to Banyandah Rebecca cried and said she really wanted to live in Sydney. We pointed out that it wasn't always going to be like this weekend.

During 1988 to 1989 I really was battling with whatever was happening in my heart. By this time I had moved into my own room so as not to disturb Alice during the night with supposedly my snoring. I hadn't said anything to her about my heart as I felt it was something I had to deal with myself.

For two years I wasn't able to sleep lying down because whenever I did my heart would go into drum beating mode and I would have trouble breathing. I did mention it again to the doctor but he stuck by his view and said it was just a murmur. Luckily by this time I had been promoted to the position of cable assigner in the Telecom office. It was my job to process orders for telephone lines new and old and what cables were to be used to get the service to them, also working out when lines were breaking down or had to be upgraded for other reasons and helping linemen to know how to bypass faults if they weren't able to fix them. It was interesting work and all the records were kept in ledgers written in pencil so they could easily be amended. The good part of this was I no longer had to do physical work which just happened in time because I would have had difficulties with the work I had been doing

One day at work I popped out of the office to cross the street to Kmart to buy a couple of things I wanted. Standing in the queue with my purchases in one hand and money in the other I could feel I was about to faint and I slid to the ground in a crouching position. When I came to the queue had gone and I was still crouching on the ground. I suppose they all thought," he's drunk, let's get away from him". I left my purchases on the ground and wandered back to my office not feeling very well. I knew then there was something wrong and my first move was to find another doctor. Luckily he listened to what I was saying and sent me off to a specialist.

When I arrived at the specialist he asked what was wrong and I told him my heart had a slight murmur and at times it bounced around. On examining me he said the slight murmur was more like a scream to him and he didn't even need his stethoscope to listen to my heart it was so loud. He said mate you're in big trouble, why didn't you come to see me before this. I was too angry to have an answer to that having been told for years it was all in my mind.

He made arrangements for me to travel to Saint Vincent's hospital in Sydney for tests to find out exactly why my heart was doing what it was doing. The time had come when I had to tell Alice that I wasn't well, something I didn't want to do as I felt it was my problem to deal with and if I didn't I would be falling down on the job. She was surprised but otherwise calm about it. I had lost a lot of weight and my legs would swell but apart from my crazy heart I didn't feel sick. My work wanted me to go off on sick leave but I needed to feel useful for as long as I could.

I flew down to Sydney in October and was admitted to Saint Vincent's private hospital which was like a five star hotel. In my ward there were two others, one Australian and a man from Singapore. I felt sorry for the man from Singapore because when the surgeon came around to see him he told him he must hand over fifteen thousand Australian dollars before the operation. I was glad I had top health cover. The Singapore man had his nephew with him and the boy spent most of his time with me learning English. I had so many tubes going up here and down there. I was to be there for four days but it ended up being two weeks before they were satisfied they knew what the problem was. They found that my heart was very enlarged from the pressure that was building up inside it caused by a muscle blockage inside the heart. Also the blood vessels in my lungs feeding my heart were malformed. All caused by a genetic fault. One of Doctor Chan's surgeons came around to explain it all to me. He said the only way to fix the problem was to operate as the muscle between the two sections of the heart had grown too large and was preventing the main valve from opening and closing correctly. It had a name but I can't remember its full title but for short it was called H O C Ms disease. I was told it was something I always had and when I was younger my heart muscle was strong enough to deal with it but now it wasn't. To fix it they would have to open up the heart and remove part of the dividing muscle. He said it wasn't a completely safe procedure but it had a sixty percent chance of being ok. I wasn't much use the way I was as the doctor said I would continue to get thinner and weaker if nothing was done, so I agreed to the operation.

They weren't able to do it straight away so I went home rescheduled for November. One of our riders who had a heart operation at Saint Vincent's said why not book into the public section, he felt it was just as good and a lot cheaper, so that's what I did.

When the date came in November I received a 'phone call not long before I was due to go down to Saint Vincent's telling me they had too many heart transplants to do and my operation would now be in mid-December. Good job I was still working otherwise I would have gone around the bend waiting.

I was to ring them before I set off in mid-December to make sure they had a bed for me. I rang the day before I was due to go down and they said I would have to ring in the morning to make sure before I left home. They must have thought Tamworth was just around the corner instead of several hundred kilometres away. I couldn't ring them in the morning because my flight left too early.

Alice and I arrived at the hospital next morning and were ushered into a sitting room because they still wasn't sure if there was a bed available. At mid-day they eventually found a bed for me and as we were ushered into the ward Alice rushed ahead of me and pushed the curtains back. She didn't want me to see they had been sprayed with blood and it had been there for some time. So much for the public section being as good as the private wards. It was the difference between a mansion and a slum. I was supposedly being treated as a private patient as I had insurance but I don't think it improved matters. The only difference was I had a single room in which to give me plenty of time to ponder my future. My sister Lynda had asked me if I was worried about the operation, and I said "no" because if it went well it would be great and if it didn't I wouldn't know anything about it.

In the evening Alice went off to check out her accommodation in a hostel belonging to the hospital that was for relatives of the patients. Although it belonged to the hospital it was separate from it. To get to it in the evening Alice had to have a security guard go with her because of all the drug addicts that lived in the area. In the hostel there were two Samoan ladies staying and she found them friendly up until the stage they ate the fruit she had brought with her and put in the fridge.

The next morning was a blur for me and I knew nothing about it until I was taken to the recovery room. Something wasn't right as they couldn't stop the bleeding and I was rushed back down to theatre. I remember them asking me if I had a stomach ulcer, why they would ask me a question I don't know as I had a great tube stuck down my throat and it wouldn't have been possible for me to answer anyway.

I remember feeling extremely cold as they had lowered my temperature for the operation. I wasn't aware that Alice was there but she must have put her hand on me and I must have felt dead to her and I was as white as a sheet. She ran off in distress to get the Chinese nursing sister and when she got back to me she said to Alice, "he not dead look at the monitor it say he not dead".

There were two Chinese nursing sisters and an Australian male nurse with me as I came to. As they pulled the life support tubes out I was awake enough to say "I'm going to be sick". The sister said "you not sick, you not allowed to be sick". The male nurse had more compassion and sense and handed me a bowl while he wrapped his arms around me to hold me together while I was indeed sick. The two Chinese sisters then set about trying to shove a tube down my nose and into my stomach but it wouldn't go and I wasn't helping any. If I had been able to move I would have hit them. After that they gave me a shot of Pethidine which stopped the considerable pain I was in but sent me off into another world. I had hideous gargoyles racing around the ceiling leering down at me. It wasn't a nice experience.

Alice was feeling very stressed with me lying there looking like a white ghost so she rang a friend of ours who lived in Tamworth to get some support. Eve immediately drove to Sydney and stayed in the hostel with Alice for several days. It was a great relief for Alice to have her there. I wasn't allowed visitors for the first few days unless they were close family. I semi came around with Eve bending over me saying, 'Les it's your sister Eve". At that stage I couldn't have cared if it was the Queen herself.

Before I was shifted up to the general ward one of the Chinese sisters tried to sell Alice jewellery. Alice never was much into jewellery and certainly not at a time like that. Up in the general ward I started to get my senses back and became aware of my surrounds. There were about six patients in my ward, male and female and all the others had had bypass surgery. After the other patients had recovered from the initial shock of the operation they were really up and going. I complained to the doctor why I wasn't the same as I could hardly get out of bed. He explained that was because my heart had actually been cut into and would have to repair itself before I started to feel better.

I was weak and exhausted and I didn't like it. A nurse would take me for a walk along the corridors each day, saying to me all the time, "walk faster Mr Skip walk faster".
Chapter 29

I felt I was doing wonders just being on my feet. There was a plastic chair in the shower and I could manage by myself but I had to sit down.

Pam and John came to visit and with Pam's humour she looked around the ward and noticed there were also females, and said I hope you're not having any improper thoughts. I was too tired and week to even raise a laugh let alone anything else. My brother Ted and his three girls came to visit and I tried to brighten up for them. I also had a visit from an old friend from Tamworth who was one of our riders.

Pam and John took Alice for a drive one afternoon and they called in at a supermarket. While they were there Alice heard a loud speaker call for David Bolger. Alice went to the counter and asked if she could speak to David Bolger, she thought he might be her cousin's son from Ireland, and he was. He was delighted to meet her and promised to come up to Tamworth for a visit.

The walking up and down the hospital corridors became more intense and eventually I was on my own but with Alice keeping an eye out for me. Then came the big test, up and down stairs, which I could do but very slowly. My cousin and her husband came to see me and offered to transport me to the airport when I was ready to leave the hospital, which was good of them.

I was progressing in most ways except I had no interest in food. It actually made me feel sick when it was delivered, especially the toast. I wasn't able to look toast in the eye for many months after.

The cleaning staff there were a private company and they did set hours. If blood was spilled all over the place it stayed there until they came back on duty. For a ward that treated heart transplant patients it was a disgrace. There were cockroaches everywhere and the only place to keep something like fruit was on the table across your bed. I had a little machine with three small balls in it and I had to draw my breath in through it and lift the balls to the top. This was to expand my lungs which had been collapsed for the surgery. As I drew my breath in through it as hard as I could I drew up a cockroach and down it went with me harking and squawking. I kept my machine under my pillow after that. I was to take the machine home with me and keep up the exercises.

On the day of being discharged from hospital after being there for ten days I had to vacate my hospital bed by 7-30 am because my bed was urgently needed for another patient. My flight to Tamworth didn't leave until 7 pm so I had a long wait. I sat in the hospital sitting room with Alice because I was too weak and sick to go anywhere. It was hard for me to stay sitting up for that length of time.

Later in the afternoon my cousin and her husband collected us up and drove us to the airport. My cousin is someone who talks nonstop and I'm afraid I didn't respond very well. At the airport I was transferred to a wheel chair as I was too exhausted to walk very far. The journey to the airport in a car without air-conditioning was very hard as it was very hot and I found it hard to breathe. Cousin wanted to stay with us until our flight was due to leave but Alice managed to talk her out of it by saying I would have to sleep.

It was a very long wait as when the time came to fly out it was announced the flight would be delayed by one hour, until 8 pm. They promised Alice they would come and get me before the other passengers boarded but they forgot and I was wheeled out to the 'plane at the last moment. It was a struggle getting up the stairs because by this time I was almost in a collapsed state. The 'plane was to fly directly to Tamworth but it didn't, it flew to Armidale first and then back to Tamworth. I had to wait until all the other passengers disembarked and then a young man came on board to help me off. He approached me with arms outstretched planning to lift me under the arms. That would have been very painful so I quickly told him to get away. I struggled to my feet and he helped me off the 'plane. It had been a dreadful day for me and so hot, Cynthia picked us up in our Gemini and it was so good to arrive back at Banyandah.

As a surprise Alice had installed outside blinds on the western side of the house as we didn't have air conditioning and it made a wonderful difference. I had trouble breathing so I had a fan blowing on my face most of the time. Blinds had also been installed on the front veranda which gave me an outside space I could sit in. Alice had to return to work at Nazareth House soon after we returned and she would set me up with anything I needed before she went and at lunch time she would rush home during her lunch hour to check on me and try to get me to eat something. Eating was a disaster for me as I didn't want it and had trouble eating it if I did.

One day she set me up on the veranda near the front steps which was great as I could see out but it wasn't so good when a lady preacher came and stayed with me for about two hours telling me all about God. I was too weak to move into the house by myself so I just had to put up with it.

I needed to go into Tamworth for some x-rays so Alice took me into work with her and sat me up with her patients. I looked around and thought to myself, is this what I've come down to I fitted in so well. Cynthia picked me up from Alice's work and took me for my x-ray and then dropped me off at her house with her daughter Alissa who was about three years old. That dear little soul stayed with me the whole time, patting me every now and then. I felt very safe with her.

During my stay in hospital and several days after I had not thought about taking the two milligrams of valium at night, I didn't need it but close to Christmas my breathing became very raggy and doctors were in short supply at the time so I started taking the dreaded tablets again much to my disappointment.

At Christmas lunch I felt really bad because Alice had cooked up a beautiful roast turkey and we had two friends in. I tried but I couldn't manage more than a mouthful. That evening we went to Cynthia's in-laws for dinner and I sat unobtrusively with a plate of food in front of me sipping water.

After Christmas when I was able to have an appointment with the specialist I discovered I needn't have taken the valium again, my severe breathlessness was caused because by one of my lungs hadn't inflated. They had deflated them for the operation. I was told if I didn't do more exercises with my sucking machine I would have to have another operation to fix my lung so from then on I sucked like mad. He also told me the reason I felt so bad was first, the heart had to repair itself and secondly because I had been battling for so long, the main valve had been damaged and I might have to have a new one put in.

I was angry that I had been through so much pain for very little results and I promised myself I would do my best to improve the situation. In their eyes I was an invalid but that wasn't for me. I was determined to kill or cure, being an invalid wasn't an option for me. I set myself up with a walking program and in the beginning it was difficult for me to make it to the garden gate and back with Alice's help. She wouldn't let me go anywhere on my own in case I collapsed. Our house being on a hill you were either going uphill or downhill which made it that much harder.

It was always a bit by bit. At first I was anxious about going to the garden gate but very soon I was venturing part way down the hill. The trip back up the hill to the house was much harder. It was a great day when I made it all the way to the road gate. Alice gave up on me soon after that, she said if you're going to walk that fast I'm not coming with you anymore, and she didn't. I had walked myself back to health and when I went for a check-up the following year the Doctor said he couldn't believe it was the same heart.

I went back to work as soon as I could. My boss wanted me to come in for just two hours a day but I wanted to get straight back into it. It was hard staying alert during the afternoons but I did it. All my pencil records were to go into a computer and I was sent off to Sydney to learn how to do this. My first day back in the office with my new computer, and I was the only one in our section with one, I must have pressed the wrong key and the screen flashed up, you have made a fatal error get your supervisor. I knew there was no use in doing that because he wouldn't have had a clue so I turned the machine off and started again. It worked the second time. A butch woman came up from Sydney in the beginning to instruct us on what was going to happen. She said she didn't care how we proposed to do it, it was going to be done her way. We set ourselves up ready to hear what she had to say and then she announced she was going for coffee. When she came back some time later and said she was now ready we announced we were off for coffee. She made so many mistakes with our records it took us twelve months to correct them.

The plan was, I was supposed to teach the others in my section how to operate the records on the computer, but they were either thick as bricks or they just didn't want to learn. I mentioned my frustration to my boss, and he said you will have to give them time as they have a bit of age on them. They were all at least ten years younger than me.

It was about this time that Telecom started to fall to pieces with the C E O from overseas upping the profit but destroying the system. Constantly a big wig would come up from the south and tell us our jobs were on the line. Strangely most of them went before we did. We had a beautiful office on the second floor overlooking the city and there was one hundred staff. When redundancies hit there was only ten left out of the hundred and would you believe it I was one of the survivors. Don't know why. The District Manager stopped at my desk one day and said, "I hope there are people like you around when it all falls to pieces".

We moved from our fancy office to a tin shed at the local works depot. It wasn't fancy and you couldn't see out the windows but it did have air conditioning. There was one other man and myself who did the same job and luckily we worked well together. Up until then there had been nine others doing the same job in other areas. They were all put off and the two of us took over their work as well as our own. It was a bit hectic but with the magic of computers we managed.

I wasn't a bundle of energy when I first went back to work but I was determined to get back on track. I realised how ill I had been when I saw my reflection in a shop window as I passed. The person I was looking at looked as if he was in the final stages of A I D S. People would stop me in the street and ask,"what has happened to you". As I found references to my appearance annoying I avoided it as much as possible. The fact I could see my eyes had sunk back into my head and my teeth looked too big for my mouth was bad enough.

As I grew stronger with my walking program and my work was no longer a strain, I went back to my work with Lifeline and also the musicals, although the first time back on stage I stayed in the chorus. After that I had minor principal roles again. My greatest effort was an Elizabethan play where I had ten pages of dialogue to remember and a Queen Elizabeth who became very savage if you forgot just one word.

I enjoyed all the musicals I was in and particularly one of my last ones which was, Something Funny Happened On The Way To The Forum. It was a comedy and I played the part of a befuddled old man called Erroneous who had lost his daughter in Rome. To find her he had to tramp seven times around the Seven Hills of Rome. Each time he staggered across the stage going over the seven hills the audience would cheer madly. Afterwards I was asked to do the same performance for the Armidale musical society, but I couldn't because I was already in rehearsal for another musical.

In the early 1990s Alice's niece Susan, Matilda's daughter was getting married in Ireland and we had an invitation. We decided to have two weeks off and fly over. When we arrived at Scull we were given one of Matilda's holiday cottages and Alice's other sister Sheelagh had another close by. I think we drew the short straw as it was decided that the eldest sister Dympna would stay with us. She had been a nun for so long she had become strange to say the least. She spent her time putting our fifty cents in the heater so the cottage was like a sauna. We never saw Matilda before the wedding except when she drove past the cottage to visit Sheelagh. We had come twelve thousand miles and Sheelagh just lived a short car trip away.

The night before the wedding we all went out to dinner to meet the groom and his family. He was a Queen's Council and I was intrigued when he stuck his serviette down the neck of his shirt. I hadn't seen anyone do that before.

On the day of the wedding Dympna threw a tantrum and wouldn't get out of bed saying she wasn't going to the wedding. Sheelagh came running into me saying, "quick Les you've got to get Dympna out of bed". I wasn't used to getting Nuns out of bed but after some persuasion I managed to talk her round.

The wedding was in a Catholic church in Scull and the reception was in a giant marque on the lawn at Matilda's house by the sea. It was an afternoon reception and in a magnificent spot with the lawn going right down to the sea. Inside the marque was set up like a ballroom with very large round tables. The idea was you sat separately from your partner, which might have been good for some but I had a loud mouth man on one side of me and a boring spinster on the other. The food was dished out by waiters on a long table on one side of the marque.
Chapter 30

I became so bored half way through proceedings I slipped off my dinner jacket and went to assist the waiters. I don't think anyone noticed or cared.

The next day we were invited to a luncheon at Matilda's and I thought great, Alice will be able to have a nice little chat with her sister, but no there were so many guests there chatting with Matilda was out.

The day after that Sheelagh and her family were going home and she could see we were a bit upset so she invited us to her place and we thought it would be a good idea. When we said our farewells to Matilda and her husband they were upset we were leaving so early. It was a pity they didn't make an effort when the time was right. We enjoyed our time with Sheelagh and Ian but were glad to board the 'plane back to Australia. It was to be my last trip to Ireland. Alice's parents had died a few years before aged ninety-seven and ninety-eight and it just wasn't the same without them. They had lived on at Little Moyle up until the last.

After we came back Alice was mustering in one day, on the two thousand acres opposite us that we had the use of, at full gallop her horse put his foot down a rabbit hole, spearing her into the ground knocking her out. The horse was unhurt and galloped home. Rebecca found him and set out on him to find her.

Alice by this time had come too and in a daze found herself partway back home at a neighbour's house calling for help. That is where Rebecca found her and went back to get Cynthia to drive her to the hospital.

The orthopaedic specialist on call that Sunday was anxious to go sailing when he inspected Alice's injuries. He told her she had a broken her collar bone and it would mend itself, just go home, take an aspirin and have a rest.

She was still in a lot of pain a couple of days later so we went to see another orthopaedic doctor. He put a figure of eight bandage on her shoulders that would fix it he said, just go home and have a couple of whiskies.

After a few more days it was obvious that all was not well so back into hospital where she was x- rayed this time. The x-ray showed not only did she have a very bad break but because of it being left the two bones had joined in a crossed position and a sliver of bone was heading straight down towards her lung. She had to have an operation to fix the bungle the first doctor had caused and a steel plate put in. She had to have a further operation later to have the plate removed.

Nigel came down to stay with us early in 1990, and he was quite ill, just getting over pneumonia. With some home care he improved quickly. We had a discussion one night about how our area was getting built out. The two thousand acres opposite us which we had the use of had been broken up into five to a hundred acre lots, so we would lose the use of that at some point.

A while back when we had been looking for extra land, at the time we bought Bally de Hob, we had viewed a three hundred acre property at Moonbi Lookout which is twenty-seven kilometres north of Tamworth. I told Nigel about it and as it had been a few years back I didn't know if it was still for sale.

Alice rang the owner up, and yes it was still for sale. He really didn't want to sell it but his wife was very ill and it was no longer practical for him to keep a property he didn't live on. He wanted to retain seven acres around the lookout but if it wasn't the lot I didn't want any of it because the large cement water storage tank was on that section. Nigel wanted to be in on the deal so with his financial help we bought the property.

It was originally called Rocky Glen but we transferred Banyandah's name to it as it was now well known. There were no buildings of any kind and the fences were a mess, none of the internal fences were stock proof and the water system didn't work. It had a set of rickety but useable stock yards. It had a lovely creek running through it which had water in it most of the time. When it rained heavily, all the run off from the Moonbi Ranges came down in a thunderous roar. At the back of the property there were several water falls that were like a cauldron when the creek was up and there was a small dam half way along the creek.

We thought we might be able to run trail rides there in conjunction with our Tintinhull property and we did for about six months. We would take what horses we needed up on the Friday ready for the weekend but we could see it wasn't going to be a long term arrangement.

Nigel was very enthusiastic about setting up the Moonbi property and with his great skill as a landscaper and designer he had it all worked out before returning to Cairns. Alice and I were just as happy to put buildings up on any available flat ground but that wasn't good enough for Nigel. First a giant bulldozer came in and cut out a large chunk of a hill above the dam, being enough for stables shed and yards. Another area was cut out to make a large car park, holding about fifty cars and just above it another flattened out piece for a visitors centre.

Alice and I were amazed when the stable went up, it was huge, four twelve foot by twelve foot stalls on either side in the building with a fifteen foot wide runway down the centre. The walls of the stable were cement blocks that looked like sandstone up to waist high and the rest was wheaten coloured colourbond with a pale green colourbond roof. The floor was completely covered with sand coloured pavers and two large areas outside also paved and railed in for washing the horses. All the stalls had automatic drinkers and meshed windows. Each stall had two half doors to it and the complete flooring gently sloped into the centre isle where there was an underground drain so the whole complex could be flushed out with a hose.

On the far end of the stable an extra two rooms had been built with tiled floors. One was a kitchen and the other was a shower, toilet and laundry. It had all the comforts of home with two very bright lights for working at night and two lesser ones for everyday use. It had a big bioceptic tank for the stable and toilet wast and two five thousand gallon rainwater tanks attached to the stable for drinking water.

I hired two very country hillbilly brothers to put up the stock yards and they were excellent workers and did a fantastic job. There was just one thing I wanted to change after I had spoken to them and as I was busy I sent Alice up to tell them. As Alice delivered her message they looked at her through downcast eyes and eventually said to her, "we are only used to working for the one man", so I had to go up and deliver the message myself.

We thought of what we had to go through when we moved into the original Banyandah, and found it hard to get our head around how quickly everything was moving here but that is how Nigel thought.

Alice and I moved out of Tintinhull and into part of the stable along with some of the horses. We rented out our Tintinhull property for a few years but were never very happy with the tenants. It was comfortable in the stable as we had set up bedrooms in the stalls and we had installed a potbelly stove in the centre isle with our lounge chairs around it.

The next building to go up was the visitor's centre. It was the size of a three car garage with extra two rooms on the end that was for two separate toilets with their own septic system. It had a floor with the same pavers as the stable. The colour throughout the buildings were uniform.

The bulldozer hadn't finished with us yet. He carved out another area, sixty meters by twenty meters, big enough to build a standard dressage arena. The arena was in such a spot that spectators could sit on rocks above it and have an excellent view. He also carved out an area for a round yard to work the horses in. He was with us for three weeks and before he left he enlarged our little dam into a large one.

Alice and I employed a fencing contractor to put up a rubber railed fence around the arena and also the car park. He erected a substantial fence around a twenty acre paddock while he was with us. We then moved all our horses and gear up to Moonbi and from then on ran our business from there. We weren't sure at first how well it would go being that much further out of town. We did lose a few of the younger children but more than made up for it in the bulk of riders who loved being in so much space.

Alice did all the dressage and show work teaching and at times I rode in front of the riders to give them an idea of what they should be doing. Other than that I moved equipment around the arena such as jumping poles and flag and bending poles. If Alice had a large class of children I would help organise them and at times ride with them. We had brought in three semitrailer loads of river sand to cover the arena so it was a joy to ride in it and protected the horse's legs. We also brought in two tip truckloads of river sand for the round yard which Alice and I spread by hand. When we started we didn't realise how much work it would be and it was some time before we completed the job. Cynthia's husband Rodeny had spread the sand in the arena, he had also dug the post holes for the arena, round yard, car park and stock yards which was a great help and very good of him.

We were very upmarket now with flush toilets and everything else we needed. Before any of the buildings went up I built one of my unique dunnies. It wasn't flash but it did the job and it later became somewhere to store unwanted tools. The first day we had riders there before the advent of any buildings, a big storm came up and dumped eleven inches of rain on us within an hour. All we had for protection was to all huddle into the horse float.

Before there were any buildings the bank manager decided he would like to have a look at our operation seeing his bank had loaned us the purchase price, so we decided to have an Australia Day party there and everyone brought a picnic and lots of Australians flags and memorabilia. He and his wife came and just about all the bank staff. We knew a lot of them because they had been out riding before.

Alice had given me two stud Murray Grey cows and calves for Christmas and I had bought five others. As we reached the first gate on the ride all the cattle were there observing us. Cattle are very curious. The bank manager was impressed with them. As we rode over the ridge the cattle also took off and when we reached the far side of the ridge there they were again. The same thing happened on the way home and on arriving at our destination the manager's wife inquired, "how many cattle do you have". They didn't realise they were looking at the same mob of cattle.

It was 1995 when we completed our move to Moonbi. I had shifted all our gear in the horse float and stacked a lot of cartons in one of the stalls. It was a bit of a struggle but with anything I couldn't carry I would get some round pieces of wood and put under the heavy item and roll it to where I wanted it.

Two boys aged twenty from Ireland came to visit, one was a son of one of Alice's cousin. They were a delight to have and stayed some weeks on and off. They were doing an Agricultural course in Ireland and needed some weeks of practical experience on a farm to pass their exams. Alice found them a job on a cotton farm at Wee Waa and they went there for an interview. They didn't take anything with them like clothes, expecting to come back first but the farmer put them on there and then. He gave them clothes that other young backpackers had left behind.

Before they came back for the last time a sister of one of the boys arrived in a camper van with two friends. They stayed for a couple of weeks and were great fun. They did all the cooking which was handy and they were also great eaters. It was winter and they spent a lot of their time around the potbelly stove. The boys had bought a beat up old Valiant station wagon to travel around in and they were constantly peering into the engine trying to work out how to get it back into life. It mainly started with a loud bang and lots of smoke. It must have been fairly strong because after a Bachelor and Spinster Ball at Wee Waa they jumped it over a bore drain. When they all finally departed I advised the boys to put their important documents like their passports at the bottom of their rucksacks. This was because when they left Australia the rucksacks would be the only thing they would take with them. They didn't take my advice so we had a 'phone call from Darwin saying their station wagon had died in Tennant Creek and they were now due to fly out to Singapore. They thought they might have left their passports with us but I knew they hadn't. There wasn't anything we could do and somehow they worked it out and ended up safe back in Ireland. Obviously the passports were left in the collapsed station wagon.

Through the nineties the Equestrian Centre was going from strength to strength. We had another boost from the Northern Daily Leader newspaper. They did a full page spread on what they called a million dollar tourist complex with photos of Alice and I on a rise above the buildings. It was during this time we and our business was nominated for a tourist award by the New South Wales Tourist Board. It was a great thrill for us as was being included in the Lonely Planet magazine.
Chapter 31

We headed off to Armidale on the awards night and it was all very grand with Politicians and Dignitaries in attendance. We didn't win but it was no less a thrill when we were the runner up to a multimillionaire who owned most of the town of Nundle.

In 1998 we had a bit of a shock with Nigel. His business looked like folding up mainly because two building companies had gone broke and owed him a lot of money. He did the right thing by telling us in time and agreeing to let us pay everything out and it would now be all in our name. If he had left it we would have lost the lot because our Tintinhull property was also part of the company we had set up. We didn't have quite enough money to do this so our friend John from Sydney loaned us the amount we were short until we sold our property at Tintinhull.

We sold the Tintihull property to a couple who said they had the money but were waiting on an insurance payout before they had enough for the deal. They moved in and supposedly paying rent but that never happened until we complained. The four months grace was up and still no money so we said out and luckily they did. We then had the hassle of reselling, which luckily we did and was then able to pay John back his loan. With the company we had a new Pajero and a new utility that were rented, unfortunately we couldn't keep the two of them, so we paid the Pajero out and sent the utility back. This worked out well except we now didn't have a farm vehicle. Helens husband was in the Toyota car business and he found me an old sturdy Toyota tabletop four-wheel drive utility. It looked like it had seen better days but it was cheap and perfect for our farm. It became affectionately known to all as the embarrassing truck.

I needed a good horse to be out in the lead of the trail rides as some of the tracks were steep. I had cleared the tracks by hand with a mattock and an axe in the afternoons after coming home from work. It became an obsession with me and I was often out on the tracks until well after dark. Alice was worried about the amount of work I was doing and said she didn't want to find me dead along the track. I said don't worry, I would have died doing something I loved to do. Just dig a hole by the side of the track and push me in. It was meant to be funny but Alice didn't see it that way. I used to pace myself when doing the work so didn't feel I was in any kind of danger.

It was so quiet and peaceful out making tracks and if I happened to be up on a ridge at sundown the view was awesome and not a house in sight. There were many kinds of trees on the property like Cyprus Pines that gave out such a strong perfume, along with Wattle trees that also had a strong perfume and turned the hills into a glorious golden colour when in bloom. There were also many gum trees that I didn't know the name of but when they shed their dull coloured bark they turned into a beautiful apricot colour.

There was always lots of wildlife for me to look at while quietly working by myself. Many large brown kangaroos, wallabies, echidnas, goannas, wild pigs and wild goats. A butcher bird used to follow me around to get the grubs after I had dug out the scrub.

I was still working at Telecom at this time and of course being 1995 I had turned sixty years of age. In my office it was announced that there was going to be a party and on enquiring what it was in aid of I was told it was for my sixtieth birthday. I asked why I was getting a party and was told it was because I was the only one who was still working there at such a venerable age. Many of my co-workers had been up to inspect our Moonbi venture. They asked should a man of my age take on such a project and my answer was why not.

We had a little sausage dog called Scooby Doo but we needed a bigger dog. The property was very isolated and Alice used to worry when she was there on her own so we bought a Maremma. They are a very big fluffy white dog bred to guard stock, anything from chickens to cattle. We had to drive to Singleton to pick him up and luckily I had taken a sheet of plastic with us as he vomited all the way home. He was a beautiful ball of fluff when we got him but he soon grew into a very large dog who took on the responsibility of guarding us. We never took him when we had riders but we always did when we were on our own. He was great company and very faithful especially with Alice. If a stranger came he didn't know he would stand guard in front of us. He never became used to traveling in the car and hated it so if we had to take him to the Vet we would do so in the horse float.

I had to take Scooby Doo to the vet one day and as he always smelled so bad I didn't want to put him in the car so in the horse float he went. When I arrived at the vets I put the back of the horse float down and led him out. You should have seen the astonished looks on the passers-by.

The first horse I bought for myself was a solid fourteen hand grey gelding who was built very strongly. He was very young and only just broken in but not very well. All he wanted to do was trot faster and faster and had to be persuaded to break into a canter. I called him Stickybeak because he was always poking his nose into things. He became a useful horse especially for mustering in the other horses in the mornings. As we progressed together he taught me never to lose concentration for a minute. He had the ability to shy one way and then the other without missing a beat. This maneuvere made it very hard to stay on and it certainly taught me to have a firm grip at all times. After riding him each day for six months I persuaded him that his trick was not on and as he hadn't dislodged me in that time he agreed with me. He then became one of the school horses for the better riders. He was popular with older boys as he was an excellent jumper and sporting horse.

My next horse was a Leopard Appaloosa which I spotted for sale while driving around town one day. He had the very striking colour of a Leopard Appaloosa but his shape was more like a thoroughbred even down to the substantial tail which wasn't usual for an Appaloosa. I bought him for six hundred dollars with a bridle and saddle. I called him Indian Joe and we became famous amongst our riders and at the local hack show. I trained him in dressage and he became very good and I thought I might enter him in an event later on. Alice said it wasn't a good idea because of his colour so I didn't.

He was very popular and showy as I rode him out in the front of the trail rides. He could jump anything and one day out in the lead I had a moment of madness and jumped him through a fork in a tree. He made the jump beautifully but he didn't take into account my legs on either side of him. One of my legs hit the tree and knocked me out of the saddle. I hung on around his neck until I could pull him up. I was in so much pain I knew if I fell off I wouldn't be able to get back on. I completed the ride and when we reached home I asked one of the regulars to come with me. I rode right up to the front door and slid off giving my horse to the rider to deal with while I hobbled into the house. I was just badly bruised but it took me some time to recover. I decided my days of doing something out of the ordinary was over.

Indian Joe stayed as my work horse for the rest of my time at Moonbi. He was such a pleasure to ride and it didn't matter if there was lightning or sleet coming down all around he never became fazed. He was used frequently as a trainer horse for dressage riders.

Alice had a beautiful Arab mare at this time called Anna Christina and she was a lovely mare to ride. Alice was very fond of her and rode her whenever we went out on a trail ride. One unfortunate day it was decided that she needed her teeth seen to and our farrier said he had all the gear and he could do it. He put spider hobbles on her so she couldn't move about while he filed her teeth. This was a big mistake as the mare felt claustrophobic and panicked and threw herself over backwards. Her head hit the ground with a terrible whack splitting her head open. She didn't die straight away so I had to put her out of her pain. Alice was a long time getting over that tragedy.

It was after the loss of Anna Christina that Alice became serious about training Ebony Rose. She trained her from a pleasant ordinary riding horse to the level of Grand Prix which is just about as high as you can go. While she was competing on Ebony she noticed a very large grey horse competing at a lower level and it was for sale. She thought he might be good for me to start off in dressage so we drove over to Gunnedah where he was stabled to have a ride on him. The owner was asking two thousand dollars for him but after careful consideration and Alice's bargaining powers he accepted her offer of six hundred dollars as he wanted to get out of dressage. The owner was more into camp drafting and this horse wouldn't have been any use in that sport. Earl of Wessex came home with us and so began my serious dressage training.

While visiting a friend I saw a very impressive seventeen and a half hand bay unbroken warmblood mare. The owner was a young girl and didn't have enough money to have her broken in so she reluctantly sold her to us. I thought she would make a very impressive dressage mount for Alice. A friend broke her in for us and did a great job, even down to flying changes and she gave her a very responsive mouth.

We called her Lady of Substance, for that is what she was. Alice rode her for a while but didn't like her. I think she felt she needed a parachute every time she got on, she was a long way up. Whatever the reason I now had two dressage horses to ride and train. My two horses and I had a good working relationship, except if I left Lady of Substance for more than a couple of days without any work I would have to get the buck out of her before we started. When she bucked you felt if you were up in the heavens.

When we moved to Moonbi and it was going so well and I was caught up in improving the property, and training the horses, I gradually lost interest in musicals. I was enjoying myself one afternoon clearing a paddock and I suddenly remembered I should have been in town at that time getting ready for a rehearsal. That's when I decided to give the stage away. In the last musical I was in I had to learn to tap dance and for a sixty plus year old body it took its toll. I had resigned from Life Line after seventeen years and I was ready for a new start.

I put more time into the business and learning and training my two horses in dressage. At that point I hadn't entered any competitions but I did travel to Armidale with the Earl of Wessex, Alice and Ebony Rose to have lessons with the German coach Edgar. He liked the team of Alice and I and we always received special attention. We always had a shared lesson together. Alice always worked hard with me at home getting me up to scratch in the arena and it wasn't always easy as we sometimes clashed. We had a two way radio we used to communicate in the arena but that came to an end when I forgot I was still turned on one day and Alice wasn't impressed with my response.

When I turned sixty-two my work at Telecom came to an end. The work I was doing was to be transferred to Newcastle and I had the option of going with it or accepting redundancy. There was no decision to make on my part so I was paid two years wages and out the door. I knew it was coming and as I had the business to put my energy into I didn't miss it one bit.

Alice suggested that now I wasn't going out to work I should start competing at dressage events. I knew I must be ready or otherwise she wouldn't have thought of it. I entered in two events on Earl of Wessex and two on Lady of Substance at Moonbi dressage club. I was pleased with my first effort with two seconds with Earl and one second with Lady. She did well because she had never been to a show before. We entered many events after this and Earl was described as a push button horse which meant all I had to do was sit there and he would do the rest. One of the other contestants I passed on the way to the arena was a man who rode a stallion and he saw fit to say, "he looks old I suppose you have to start somewhere". It did me good to know he was never able to catch up with me in any event. With the knocker who said about the push button horse couldn't have known the amount of work I put into him to get him to that standard. Lady of Substance didn't have a long career in dressage as she became too temperamental. The coach described her as a Prima Donna. She became an extra horse for me to ride around the property.

We decided to have our dam dug even deeper and a man came with two machines, one for ripping the soil and the other for bulldozing it out. We had had a long dry spell and there was very little water in the dam so he was able to have a good go at it. It looked great when he finished with an impressive earth wall on the bottom side. That evening he left his two machines on the lower side of the dam and was to collect them some days later. That night we had a deluge and when I inspected it next morning it was full to the top and the earth bank, not having time to settle looked very shaky and I could see it might not hold. I ran back to the stable and rang the dozer driver to come and move his machines quick. It took him a while to realise that I was serious. He only just moved his machines out in time before the wall collapsed.

Next we employed a professional dam builder and although his dam wasn't as big he had put in two spillways to take the enormous torrent of water that came down from the ranges.
Chapter 32

It was just as well I had insisted retaining the seven acres around the lookout where the thirty thousand gallon cement holding tank was because it kept us out of water troubles during the dam bursts. I had installed an electric pump by the dam and when there was water available I would pump it up into the holding tank. We had a windmill and well on the creek but it wasn't very reliable.

Rebecca now had two little girls, Kia a bit over a year old and Jorja a few months old and she was working at the Correctional centre in Tamworth on twelve hour shifts. Unfortunately because of working too long hours, and things not going so well at home her marriage fell apart. It was an awful time for her and she had a hard time keeping it together. It was during this time the husband's mother got her hands on the two little girls and wouldn't allow us to see them. She became so nasty we had to take out an AVO against her. Rebecca was in a terrible state of mind and needed help. I should have been able to give her support but I couldn't find a way of doing it. She eventually found her way back on track and met a man we became very fond of. He had a tragic story. A little while back he had taken his wife into hospital to have their second baby. Something went terribly wrong and both mother and baby died.

Eventually Rebecca and Greg married under a big Kurrajong tree by the creek at Banyandah. All the family were there and we had the reception in the forty-eight by fifteen foot centre of the stable which was all decked out with flowers which was the work of Helen. By this time they had a baby girl together called Gracie Rose and she had a naming ceremony at the wedding. Not a usual turn of events for us but there you go.

After the ceremony when the celebrant was paid it was ten dollars short and she nearly flipped her lid until the extra ten dollars was produced. Greg's little girl now became one of our grandchildren and she was called Hannah. They had a house in Tamworth so we were able to see them often.

At Moonbi we had Cynthia's children, Alissa, Kristen and Peter out riding with us most weekends and we enjoyed their company as much as they enjoyed the horse riding. They all became competent riders. Cynthia used to sit on a large rock that protruded over the dam watching for their return.

For the Christmas break up we had a bigger and better show starting off after lunch with riders giving a display in the arena with parents or partners cheering on from the sideline. Some would do a solo ride and others would do a precision ride together. We had one rider who was about fourteen years old and she gave a display that Alice had taught her. She was a dancer with very good balance and she was able to ride around the ring standing on the horses back and then vaulting to the ground first one side and then the other. She was a picture to see. Culminating in everybody joining in to give a display to music. I would be out in the lead for the event running and leading one of the very young on Gem Gem a Shetland pony. We always came to a halt and gave a salute in front of the crowd to much cheering. Some of the fathers would take videos of the rides and one would operate the sound system we had. After the displays we would retire to the stable for the festivities.

Our grandchildren, Cynthia's three, Alissa, Kristin and Peter and Greg's little girl Hannah would come out most Saturdays. Later on when Hannah was older Alice used to pick her up from school on Friday afternoon and Alice would deliver her back to school on Monday morning. Not every weekend but quite often. We allowed Alissa and Peter to attend pony camp at Moonbi. Alice went down to the club to see how they were getting on and when she reached the spot where Peter was she couldn't see any children, just horses grazing on the long green grass. As she approached closer Peter shot up out of the grass and said, "we are just grooming the horses Gran", not even the instructor was up and going. Kristin wasn't as keen as the others and Hannah was too young. We loved having them with us during the Christmas parties and they all put on a great display. At one performance Alissa was the MC and Peter was Santa. He forgot his lines and Alissa bent down and said, say "Ho Ho Santa" and Peter dutifully said, "say Ho Ho Santa". One of the biggest excitements of the Christmas show was our harness pony Lollypop coming down the hill out of the darkness and into the light with both he and his wagon covered in tinsel and a real live Santa driving him. The whole complex was lit up with search lights and coloured lights.

Roy and Marisha's eldest boy Kodie came to stay with us every school holiday and would be with us the whole time. He even came to stay before he was school age. I think he must have been about three or four years old the first time he stayed with us. As the parents drove off we expected him to throw a willy but no he just sat in a big arm chair and went off to sleep. Even at that young age there was no way we couldn't take him on the rides with us. He started off with Alice leading him on a quite pony but he was soon able to ride by himself.

He was an early riser, like five am, he would quietly let himself out and when we finally went out to feed the horses we would find him talking to and patting them. They all loved him. After lunch if there wasn't much on he would go and play on a large rock at the back of the stable that had an old ladder on top of it. That in his great imagination was a tall ship and he would sail in it for hours if there wasn't anything else doing.

He became an extremely good rider and was able to muster the mob in by himself. Alice and I had a horse race with him one day and of course he won but we hadn't stipulated where the finish line was so when he pulled up we both shot past him. He wasn't amused. In all the time he came to us we never had a cross word with him.

We had become friendly with a neighbour, Margaret who lived up the road from us and had five and a half thousand acres. For the experience she asked if we would like to come up with Kodie and help with the branding and marking of the cattle. Kodie asked Margaret's manager Brian what was to happen and he told him that they all had to have the station brand on them and the bulls had to have their testicle removed. Kodie asked why and was told, to stop the bulls from fighting. Kodie was later heard to tell one of the male riders not to get into any fights because it would have very bad consequences. When he returned to school he proudly told the class about the testicles day. I'm not sure how that went down. After another stay he went home with a dead echidna skin that stank to high heaven. The teacher must have thought he went to the most horrendous place for his holidays.

His younger brother, Cory came on two occasions for a holiday. He too would have made an excellent rider if he had been able to come more often. One day he watched Alice give a private lesson and afterwards asked if he too could have a private lesson, adding, "And I will listen". Alice must have told the previous rider to listen. Going out on a ride Cory complained that he couldn't get Tara to move so Alice advised him to give her a gentle touch with his riding crop. He gave her a sound whack on the backside and Tara took off up the hill. When Alice caught up with him she asked what had happened and Cory said, she just went mad.

Peter and Kodie were off down the creek annoying rabbits and a rabbit went down a hole. Peter sent Kodie running home to get some petrol and matches which he asked Alice for when he reached her. When he told Alice what he wanted the items for Alice told him to go back down and tell Peter to get home quickly or she would thrash him with the stockwhip until he looks like tomato sauce. The children were never smacked so it must have sounded like a terrible threat. Peter lost all interest in blowing things up after that.

Alissa was allowed when out on the ride to take a small bunch of her friends and go off on their own. They came galloping back in a fright to the group one day and Alice asked them what was the matter. Alissa said they were riding through the trees and they heard very scary music. On enquiring what kind of music she said the kind that Gran listens to. They had ridden to the top of the cliff above the house and Alice must have left the music on and it was wafting up through the trees.

How we met Margaret who lived not far from us was she called in after seeing a write up in the paper about us and a photo of our dressage arena and asked if she would be able to bring her horse down to train him there. We knew of her from a long way back, having seen her at competitions and shows but we had never met her. She was a tall imposing lady and her horse, Bruser was eighteen hands high, a huge animal. We agreed on a small fee and that was the beginning of our friendship. Soon after we were invited up to her property where her son was to have his twenty-first birthday in their grand old woolshed. The party went very well and we met a lot more wonderful people. Amongst them was Elsie, the lady I had rescued from the snake. Of course she made it known what a hero I was and we became lifelong friends. Elsie who was in her eighties was often a guest at Banyandah parties.

At the party was a couple in their forties who had just moved into the area from down south. He was a lot of fun but I don't think his wife had a funny bone in her body. For something to do there was a poetry reading and after we had all had a go David stood up to do his bit. His wife went into a rage stating that he was going to make a fool of himself because he was uneducated. He held firm and his wife drove off leaving him to get home the best way he could. We drove him home after the party had ended starting another long friendship.

It was Margaret who introduced us to the German coach and we often travelled up to Armidale together but in separate transport. The arena we used in Armidale was on a private property owned by two delightful people, David and Fran. Mostly we had our lessons just before lunch and as we all supplied something for the meal, we had it in Fran's home. Edgar used to stay with Fran and David for the week he was in Armidale. We enjoyed that part of the day almost as much as the lesson. If it was raining we used the indoor arena at the private girl's school. It was a good experience for me riding indoors, quite different from riding outdoor, and it had mirror's around to see what you were doing. There was also a mirror at the other arena but it wasn't as good for me as Earl didn't like the look of himself, the indoor mirrors must have been too high for him to see himself in.

Edgar also gave lessons in carriage driving and one of the lessons was just finishing as we about to start. Edgar was impressed when our horses were not bothered by the wagons, as most horses gave them a wide berth. Ours were used to them as we used wagons at home.

We often went to dressage events and caught up with Margret there and we would pool our lunches, open a bottle of wine and have a great time. I think we were often frowned upon by the old fuddy duddies but only because they would have loved to be having such a great time instead of worrying about who was going to beat who. If we won or not the day wasn't waisted. Margaret was a prolific A grade International dressage and Eventing Judge and often judged in England and Europe. She was to judge at Musclebrook and we were competing but not in her events. The club had booked her a room at a motel and she suggested we share it with her. It was a great idea except I had forgotten to put our overnight bag in the car so we had to go to bed in our clothes.

Another time we were all competing at Musclebrook and early in the morning we saw Bruser, Margaret's horse, go past full gallop. I caught him up while Alice went to see what had happened to Margaret. She was in a heap on the ground with a broken leg. Bruser was so big and powerful along with a very nasty nature. Margaret was taken off to hospital and somehow persuaded them to transport her all the way back to Tamworth. At the end of the day we loaded up Bruser and her two little dogs into the horse float and headed for home. I drove her outfit and Alice drove ours. Alice had the biggest job because she had two horses on board and I only had one, this was because Alice didn't want to drive Margaret's fancy Jeep. Bruser was retired after this as it was the third time he had put her in hospital, for me he would have gone to the sale yard. A few days later we picked her up from the hospital and drove her home to her place. She couldn't find her keys, they were probably in her car which was at our place. It felt strange crawling through a lady's bedroom window to get into the house. I hoped no one spotted me.

Margaret had an awful tragedy about this time. She had just come home from spending Christmas with her son in Newcastle when a policeman came during the night to tell her Paul her son had killed himself. He was a lovely boy but he had the demon of schizophrenia and would have been very unhappy. Her manager, Brian rang us up to tell us and ask if we would go up to be with her as she had no one else and her daughter was too far away to get there quickly. We went to the funeral and were surprised at how few people there were for her. I guess she was a very private person and that is what happens. This tragedy cemented our friendship. Margaret had an adopted daughter, Marnie who was a great help to her mother afterwards.

During our time in Moonbi we had a visit from Alice's sister, Sheelagh which was a big event. We drove to Brisbane to pick her up and then on to stay with Roy and Marisha who were living in Brisbane. She said she didn't know what all the fuss of jet lag was about, she felt fine. We went sightseeing during the day and at three pm we sat down for afternoon tea. She went fast asleep at the table and was put to bed. The next day Roy said, "do you think we should check on her", it was mid-day. The dreaded jet lag strikes again, however after that she was fine.
Chapter 33

On the drive back to Moonbi Sheelagh couldn't get over the wide magnificent but empty roads. She loved it at Banyandah and we were able to get her into a game of golf with the Lions Club. We also had a weekend sightseeing in Sydney. Alice and Sheelagh then flew up to stay with Nigel in Cairns and she flew home from there. A very delightful visit.

The next visitor from Ireland was Alice's nephew Stephen. He had visited us when we lived at Tintinhull but had matured since then. He was always a delight to have to stay. Our next Irish visitor was Sheelagh's daughter Emily who was working for a legal firm in Melbourne. She was also a delight and when we saw Emily and Cynthia's daughter Kristin together they looked like sisters. We had Emily's sister Rachael to stay when we were at Tintinhull so quite a few of them made their way out to us.

A little while later we had Emily's brother Graham and his mate to stay. They had come out to watch a Rugby match. Jet lag wasn't going to worry them either but in the middle of the night I woke to find one standing at the foot of our bed saying, "where am I".

Soon after we built a substantial shed close to the stable and it was lined and painted inside and had air conditioning, carpet and a slow combustion heater. We moved into this as it was more comfortable and I divided it off into rooms inside with the use of wardrobes. We had a satellite dish installed as the mountains blocked out any ordinary signals, so now we even had television even if it was world television and not local content.

The closest we could get was Alice Springs. We still had to use the bathroom and kitchen at the far end of the stable. It was ok except in winter, the trip from our quarters to the toilet was freezing.

I looked at the hard unforgiving ground in our garden and thought I could never grow vegies there but then I saw a program on television about Russians growing vegies in their frozen soil. I thought if they can do it so can I so I set about breaking up the concrete soil and making it useful. In the end we had a decent vegie patch and some fruit trees.

Around the shed we called Rose Cottage I grew several Dorothy Perkins rose bushes that were creepers. They only flowered once a year but when they did they were a mass of soft pink roses. I built a dog yard not far from the stable and to hide it from view I put up a trellis and grew several Pier de Ronsard creeping roses on it. Our garden was now covered in lawn grass so we could walk about without carting red clay into the stable.

We planted a row of Chinese Elms along the fence line of the car park which turned out to be a lot of hard work as the rain wasn't forthcoming and none of our hoses reached that far. We carried many hundreds of buckets of water to keep them alive.

When we had horses in the stable we bedded them down with sawdust and it did a great job but it created an enormous amount of work. After much discussion we decided we could do without the stables as they were, because they bought in very little income. We decided to gut the stable and turn it into a house.

We engaged an architect to visit and see if it was viable. After waiting expectantly for him to arrive, this bikie looking fellow with a long pony tail arrived on a Harley motor bike. We looked at him doubtfully but as we had been told he was the best we listened to him. He loved the idea we had of turning the stable into a house and he also loved the building and its surrounds. He put a lot of work into it and came up with a magnificent unique house. It turned out to be more than we could have hoped for.

This meant there was an enormous amount of work ahead of us to dismantle the interior of the stable. The two of us removed all that was removable by hand, like the kitchen cupboards and the watering system. David from up the road came down with his angle grinder and cut the steel stalls into sections. We pulled the saddle room to pieces and made room in Rose Cottage for the saddles and gear. It was a bit smelly and a bit crowded. The horse feed we stored on the veranda of Rose Cottage. David bought the sections of the stalls so we didn't have to worry about them. Next came the thousands of pavers that had to be lifted and stored behind the cottage. What a job that was, David helped to start us on a small patch and Alice and I took it from there. One of our riders who was a fitness instructor wheeled out several barrow loads of them for us. We thought we might use the pavers to pave the space under the pergola at the side of the stable but that never happened, we ended up selling them.

The carpenters came in next and we had to make some small changes. Two of the steel supporting posts had to be removed out of the main area and a huge steel beam across the roof in their place. This gave us one gigatic lounge room. The two rooms on the end of the stable were also used. The former kitchen became the laundry with a large sliding glass door opening out to the clothes line. The other room was changed very little. It only had a bathroom vanity added to it and it was now the ensuite to the master bedroom. The master bedroom which was also large had a double glass door leading out onto the pergola. There were two other large bedrooms and they both had floor to ceiling windows in them. All bedrooms had plenty of inbuilt wardrobe space. There was also a decent family bathroom with bath and shower, it also had a separate toilet.

The main lounge/living area was huge and it opened into a kitchen dining room. Nearly all the walls were either floor to ceiling windows or sliding glass doors. The front door was double glass sliding door and we retained the huge metal sliding door intact in case it was ever needed. The entire building had tiled floors.

Just inside the front door was a wide stairway leading up to the large mezzanine area where our grandchildren loved to sleep. We had about ten beds up there for them and friends. Also just inside the front door and to the left was a big office area with a floor to ceiling window.

The whole building was made for entertaining and it didn't let us down. Being very cold in the mountains we bought the largest slow combustion stove we could find and it was well worth it and well used. Even in the middle of winter, and it went down to nine degrees below, it was never cold.

It had a raked ceiling throughout except for the bedrooms. There were five chandeliers, one over the dining table, one in the office, one in the mezzanine and two in the main lounge. All this might seem a bit much but the renovations cost less than building a house and we had no control over the size as the frame was there already. We had many wonderful parties there and no matter how many people we had it was never crowded.

In September 2001 Alice decided to take Cynthia's eldest girl, Alissa on a trip to Ireland. Rebecca, Gracy and I travelled down to Sydney to help them on the 'plane. After seeing them off we stayed at a motel before returning to Tamworth. Rebecca's husband rang early the next morning and said" turn on the television". I said "we don't have time to watch television, we have a train to catch". He insisted we turn it on so we did, and what a shock we got. The world had gone mad with 'planes flying into buildings in New York. We couldn't believe what we were seeing, and then we started to worry about Alice and Alissa. When we caught up with them on the 'phone, they had had a very tense trip to London as they had found out about the trouble at Jakarta. Arriving over London they were put in a holding pattern for some time because there was a bomb scare at Heathrow. When they landed nothing like the escalators or lifts were working and they had a bother to catch their flight to Dublin.

Alissa must have freaked out and rang Cynthia to come and save her. I advised her not to go but she went anyway causing Alice to feel she had failed. They all stayed with Alice's cousin's daughter, Mercedes while they were in Dublin. Sheelagh loaned Alice her car to travel around Ireland in. It was a sad trip for Alice because soon after they arrived Sheelagh was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer from which she died of six months later.

Alice fainted on the journey home in the 'plane and was moved to first class to recover. They thought they might have to take her off the 'plane in Singapore but she forced herself to put on a bright face so they wouldn't. She looked very ill when she arrived home in Tamworth and it took her some time to recover. I think part of it was the hurt she felt that Alissa didn't trust her to take care of her.

We thought the renovations would be finished by the time she arrived home but as it always happens, the last finishing off bits take a long time.

We had started to worry about the Equestrian Centre's insurance as it was becoming more prevalent to sue for just about any reason. Our insurance went from seven hundred dollars to two thousand, and then beyond that if you could get it. We decided we were too old to start all over again if someone sued us and we lost the lot so we decided to close the Centre down. We had been running it for thirty-seven years and thought it might be wise to take it a bit easier.

Many people were very disappointed about our decision and some of our regular riders offered to buy their favourite horse. This way we were only left with a handful of horses. One of our very regular riders, Helen who turned up every weekend no matter what was very upset so we said "ok you can still come", and six others joined her but we no longer went out on the trail rides, just in the arena.

We had a wonderful few years after we closed down the business with no worries about whether we had the right horse for the right rider or if someone was going to do something stupid. Apart from the few riders we did have, Alice and I kept ourselves busy with other activities we didn't have time for when we were running the business. Alice had always done screen printing and fabric painting and now she was able to do silk painting which she was very good at. I don't think there were any crafts that she didn't excel in. She had several spinning wheels and spun a lot of wool and knitted me a couple of jumpers. She made a lot of crafty items to give away as presents.

I spent more time clearing scrub off the property, gardening and training the four thoroughbreds we had bought. I could see after a while I wasn't going to be able to do a very good job training all four of them so we sold one that was very quiet and made an excellent pony camp horse. Helen fell in love with another so that became her horse when she was with us, and later on she bought him. Chesty was a delight to ride so Helen had it made. Of the two left one was a very big strong back gelding with four white feet and a blaze and the other was a smaller feminine grey mare who was very gentle.

I had a tragedy with Earl of Wessex. During a wild storm he must have run into a tree in fright and when I found him the next morning he was very badly damaged, couldn't move and was in a lot of pain. I called the vet and thought he would put him down straight away as I could see he wasn't going to recover. The vet said no, he would give him a large dose of pain killer and when that wore off he would be ok. When I went to check him next morning he was in terrible pain. I again called the vet but he said he was too busy to come out. Earl and I had been quite a team and I wasn't going to let him suffer any further because of the incompetent vet so I gritted my teeth and put him down myself. Lady of Substance was also wounded in the same storm and was out of action for over a year.

Bad things seem to come in threes, as it was about this time Ebony Rose broke a bone in her hoof. It wasn't a painful injury but it meant she would probably never be ridden again so we turned her out in retirement.

Alice went on to ride the grey mare we called Madame. She was lovely to ride but very green. I had been riding the black gelding, Blarney Cove for some weeks and had even taken him to Edgar for some lessons. He had some very spectacular movements and when he did the extended trot he seemed to float. I could see that Alice was battling with Madame as she was not only green but she didn't have the necessary get up and go needed so I suggested we swap. I knew Alice would be able to take Blarney Cove further up the ladder than I could but she said no, I had trained him and he belonged to me. It was very hard for Alice to go from a Grand Prix horse to start all over again on such a basic horse. It was mother's day and as Alice worked hard on Madame over in the arena, I did Blarney Cove up with his mane platted and ready for a show, then I platted a mother's day card into his main and lead him over to where Alice was working in the arena. I presented him to her and said I wanted her to have him. She could see I was serious this time so she accepted him and went on to do great work with him. I was quite happy with Madame as our skills were more on the same level.

My mind often went back to the days that Indian Joe and I would hunt for the mob hiding in the scrub and then the thunderous clatter as we galloped madly through the trees bringing them home. It was a great joy to me after all the mob had gone and I used to ride out through the bush and imagine I could still see the horses dashing through the scrub, there goes High Kicking Hilda, there goes Porky Houton, there goes Fiddlesticks. The sight of them was endless. It was a ghostly experience but I loved it.
Chapter 34

I often rode Indian Joe out over the hills with Alice or by myself just for the joy of riding. Our Maremma dog, White Wolf would always go with us on these journeys and have a lovely time keeping all the wildlife in order. White Wolf liked to keep order on the property. He came across a young man wondering around up in the hills and had him bailed up on top of a big rock when I got there. The young man was scared out of his wits, shouting" that dog is a killer", where in fact all White Wolf wanted to do was warn him he was where he shouldn't be. I called the dog to me and the grateful youngster clambered down off the rock and ran for the boundary fence.

There were two teenage boys who lived on a property on the other side of the highway and they were twins of about sixteen. They were not very respectful of other people's property and they used to cut our boundary fence to get in with their trail bikes. They would cut up all the tracks doing donuts, then they would cut the boundary fence at the back of us and ride into the neighbours. They would cut the fence in another place to come back in. I was never able to get very close to them but I knew who they were. I was tired of mending fences so I reported the matter to the local policeman at Kootingal who had been at that station a long time. He said, "I know that family well and they wouldn't do anything like that" .It made me angry and I told him I had fenced off several off the tracks with a single barbwire fence, and I hoped they see it in time before they run into it. The stupid man said, "you can't do that", but of course he knew I had every right to do so. Of course I hadn't put up any single wire fences but the threat was enough and I had no further bother.

I had bought a Clydesdale/Suffolk Punch cross draught mare who was very big but quite agile. She was fun to ride because we used to joke that when she got into a canter it measured seven on the richter scale and could be felt in Tamworth. She was so fat when she came to us it was hard to stop the saddle from sliding around on her. We broke her into harness and she was ideal for this as she was so quiet and strong. We had a lot of fun driving her around and even took her down to the Moonbi showground. I entered her in a dressage event and the judges remark was, "not enough bend in the corners". I felt the fact that we had actually rounded the corner was in itself remarkable. She was such a delight, everyone loved her.

One of Rebecca's friends asked if she could have her wedding in our garden and the answer was yes. The young man and his friends came up before the wedding and turned our garden into a picture. The ceremonial table was set up on a giant rock that protruded out of the garden and out over the dam. An ideal setting.

We had a borrowed wagon from a friend when we broke Bridie O'Rourke in so we offered to deliver the bride to the ceremony in the carriage. She was delighted with the idea and on the day we drove Bridie up to the lookout and picked up the bride. We then drove down our avenue with two of our riders out in front, then the bride in the carriage and bringing up the rear was the bridesmaids on the back of the embarrassing truck. It must have looked spectacular coming down the avenue. Up on the car park a huge marque had been erected for the reception. It all went off so well, the bride's father asked if I would be interested in going into business with him arranging weddings. I guess he didn't know how much work went into such an event. The bride and groom were thrilled it went off so well and that made it all worthwhile.

Rebecca and her family decided to move to Cairns for whatever reason and we were devastated at losing them especially as Cynthia had already moved to Mount Isa. This left us with no family in the area. Rebecca wanted us to go with them but I didn't want to sell Banyandah.

We were having really bad droughts as we did for most of the time we were at Moonbi. The drought was so bad it wasn't a case of not being able to afford the hay, there just was very little to be had. We used the old truck to get us past the disaster. I would take the embarrassing truck up the Lookout road with an axe and prune the Kurrajong trees, and I also pruned the ones on our property. It wasn't great fodder but it kept the stock going. When that ran out we grazed the horses on the abundant grass on either side of the Lookout road. They had to be supervised so Alice used to take a chair and a large umbrella and a picnic for herself while she kept a check on them. She liked the tranquillity of sitting by the horses listening to them munching on the grass. Luckily that method allowed us to survive that drought until the next one came along. It was good that we didn't have the bulk of the horses we once had.

There was an air academy in Tamworth and it had lots of students, mainly from Asia or the forces. Before we shut down the Equestrian centre we had many of them come out to ride and have picnics on the creek afterwards. The day after we closed down an engineer from the academy came out and wanted to learn to ride. He was an Irish/Canadian and very good with the gab. He had a lot of personality and Alice agreed to give him lessons. He came regularly for about a year, until he was transferred back to Adelaide where he came from. He liked music and gave Alice a cd he had burned and said it had a great rendition of Ava Maria on it. We didn't find any renditions of Ava Maria so we nicknamed him Ava. A friend of his who was also an engineer at the academy played the keyboard. With Ava on the guitar and John on the keyboard we had many musical evenings with much singing. I was a spoilsport and refused to join in the singing because Ava sang so loud and out of tune I felt I couldn't compete with him. His riding was like his singing and never improved but he enjoyed himself.

In April 2004 Alice and I competed at the Armidale dressage club. I didn't do very well but Alice received a champion ribbon. A few weeks later she was training Blarney Cove in the arena for the next event. She said afterwards everything went black for her and she slumped over the horses whither and that's all she remembers. I was over by the house and I happened to look up and there was Blarney standing calmly by the garden gate with Alice slumped on his whither. For such a high spirited horse to do this was a miracle. He must have walked calmly out of the arena and over to the house gate and just stood there waiting for help to come. I wasn't physically able to lift her off the horse so I undid the girth and pulled her and the saddle off. Alice said the first thing she remembers was me saying, "God you're heavy".

I took Alice up to the house and sat her down. She was extremely cold to touch and was sweating profusely. I should have called an ambulance but not being of quick mind I didn't, partly because I knew she wouldn't have wanted a fuss. It was a couple of days later before I got smart enough to take her into the doctor. It had been a long time since Alice had seen a doctor and he was quite unkind to her for not having regular check-ups. It was unfortunate for us because he was the only doctor in his practice and was overworked and I would say not far off cracking up. After checking Alice his diagnoses was that she had had a heart attack caused by blood clots in the heart. Thinking back he should have sent her straight to the hospital, but he didn't.

What he did was to send me over to the chemist to get a box of injections to dissolve the blood clots. He said to me "you will have to give her an injection into her abdomen twice a day for two weeks and then she will be on warfarin tablets". I balked at this and said I wouldn't be capable of injecting her. Because we lived twenty-seven kilometres out of town, the only other alternative was for her to give them to herself. I don't know how she was strong enough to do it but she did and her whole abdomen was black and blue at the end of it.

Straight after the treatment she became extremely ill, so back off to the doctor again. He said she just had a bad cold, go home and rest. Fortunately by this time he had become a little concerned about her and sent her off to a specialist for tests.

It has puzzled me since as to why theydidn't they send her to hospital. She was indeed very ill with double pneumonia. She was given medication and sent home for me to nurse, which I did to the best of my ability. She couldn't breathe when she lay down so I set her up by the fire in the lounge room in two lounge chairs pushed together.

I nursed her constantly over the next three weeks, making sure she had water and trying to persuade her to eat something. I would cut the toast into small fingers and give her one at a time, fretting that she wasn't going to make it. The recovery was very slow and never completed. They decided she needed a cardio version which is electric shocks to the heart to get it back into rhythm. This made her considerably better and lasted until December that year.

I had been training Alice's horse, Blarney Cove for her so he would be ready for her when she recovered. Alice was sitting in a chair at the end of the arena giving out instructions. I had ridden Madame beforehand and was on the last leg of a Pre Saint George test on Blarney Cove. I asked him for a flying change and he gave me three in a row and I'm not sure what happened after that. We went around the arena in leaps and bounds, bucking so wildly I lost the reins. I remember saying to myself, "you're not going to get rid of me that easily" and I managed to retrieve a set of rains. I pulled really hard on the rains to get his head up and stop him bucking. With that he flipped over and came down on top of me. The last I remember was my head going under his rump.

This must have given Alice an awful shock as I lay in a heap gasping for breath and according to Alice, making an awful noise. I came to with Alice standing over me asking if she should get an ambulance. I said "no I'll be all right" until I found I couldn't get up. I had broken my left arm up in the shoulder, damaged my left elbow, broken most of the ribs down my right side, my right leg was swollen up tight, three collapsed vertebrae in my lower back plus a fracture in my lower back but the damage to my back wasn't discovered for some time later. Neither of us were thinking clearly as this was definitely a case for an ambulance. Alice somehow managed to get me upright and out of the arena but I could see I wasn't going too far on foot. I had been battered before so I thought I would be ok but I wasn't.

I didn't know what damage I had done to myself but I felt it wasn't going to turn out well. I said to Alice I think you had better take me into the hospital. I was in so much pain I wasn't thinking straight, Alice hadn't driven the car since her heart attack back in April. I guess she wasn't thinking straight either, because she loaded me into the car and we set off for the hospital. She was in so much distress as we drove up our avenue she drove off the road a couple of times.

We made it to the front door of the hospital and Alice let me out while she went to find a park. I managed to get through the front door before I collapsed in a heap. I must have looked a sight as I was filthy dirty and had been sweating from my riding. Nurses came running and I was bundled into a wheelchair and whizzed around to casualty. Alice found me there and I was very glad to see her as I had a long wait before a doctor came to attend to me.

When the doctor came, he was an Asian and his English wasn't so good. He asked me what happened and I said "I came off a horse". His next question was "horse, what is horse"? Oh God I'm in big trouble here I thought. The man in the cubical opposite me shouted, "It's a dirty great animal that has a terrible kick". He was in because he had just been kicked.

As they fussed about what was wrong with me I went into shock, shaking all over, feeling hot and cold all at once and ending up vomiting. The nurses did the best they could giving me pain killers but I was still in a lot of pain. After the x-rays were taken the orthopaedic specialist came around and said the break in my arm was a bad one as it was broken up in my shoulder. He said if he operated on it or not the result would be the same, I would have a problem with my arm. There was nothing that could be done about the ribs, they had to mend by themselves. I was in so much pain elsewhere my back wasn't a priority and the damage wasn't discovered for some time later. My arm was put in a sling and kept close to my body. I was admitted to the ward where I stayed for five days. I had a drip in, that had a button on it and I was able to press it every five minutes to inject myself with painkillers.

I was put to bed and my clothes cut off me and then into a hospital gown. Sometime during the night I woke up to find my brother Ted standing at the foot of my bed. I remember saying to him," thank God you're here, I want to go with you". Ted said, "no mate it's not your time yet, you're going to be ok". That's all I remember, Ted had died three years earlier.

I wasn't able to get into or out of bed on my own, someone had to help me and I found it embarrassing that a wards man had to steady me while I had a shower. The showering was caused by Alice. When she came to see me the next morning I was still filthy dirty and she took them to task for leaving me in that condition. Not being able to get out of bed whenever I needed caused other problems like my plumbing seizing up and a catheter having to be inserted. I went in and out of a drug induced sleep during the day I had two other men in the ward with me. They both meant well but I suffered with one reading passages out of the Bible and the other keeping me up with the cricket score, a game I'm not fond of.
Chapter 35

After returning home I felt absolutely useless as I was unable to do anything, even taking care of myself was a struggle. Getting dressed was one of the struggles. It was several weeks before I was able to put my underpants on or shoes and many more weeks before I was able to get my busted arm into my shirt sleeve. I couldn't leave the house for some time in case I fell. Alice did her best to cheer me up and look after me the best that she could but she wasn't well either with her heart giving her problems. The pain in my back became worse but the doctor said he couldn't find anything wrong with it. To relieve the pain I would walk around the house as fast as I could with my fist pressed into my back which helped but then I would become exhausted and have to sit down again. Alice asked if there was anything I wanted and I said "yes, go to sleep and not wake up". The next visit to the doctor she told him I was depressed, I wasn't depressed I just wanted the pain to end.

After the accident I had to attend the hospital once a week for physiotherapy. All that did was to cause me more pain to the extent I would be sick for the rest of the day. The therapist and my family kept telling me if I don't use it I will lose it. The doctor had been right when he said it was never going to be right and I agreed with him.

Alice and I had started art lessons in 2004 at the technical college in Tamworth and through all the ups and downs we had kept them up. It was a great boon for me now that my movement was limited which prevented me doing much else. Alice being unwell through most of the time didn't enjoy it so much but I learnt quite a lot and loved it. It was the start of our painting years that went on to our old age. We started off with charcoal, then water colour, acrylic, oil and pastels. Each one of these mediums was a challenge. Alice's favourite ended up being water colour while mine was acrylic. We learnt how to stretch paper for water colour and how to mix the colours.We even learnt how to make frames and stretch canvas over it, there was just so much to learn.

We decided that as I was never going to get back to what I was before, maybe we should sell the property and move to Cairns, so we put the place on the market. Because of the drought it took a long time to sell. I wasn't happy about selling it but I knew I was no longer capable of caring for three hundred acres. I would miss it terribly but it was something that had to be done. During this time we had two tragedies in our animal world. I went down to inspect the vegetable patch and of course White Wolf came with me as he always did. As we turned back to the house he collapsed like his back was broken and he was in a lot of pain, shivering all over. There was no way I could get him up from the garden as he was big and heavy, and I only had the use of one arm. He looked up at me with such pleading trusting eyes and I was in a hard place. The vet wasn't an option as he would have sunk his teeth into him if he tried to touch him and I couldn't let him lay there in pain. It was very hard but I knew what I had to do, so I closed my mind off and shot him putting him immediately out of his pain. It made us both unbelievably sad but we had to be practical. I wasn't able to lift his body or capable of digging a grave to bury him in. Alice helped me take the wheelbarrow down to the garden and we laid it on its side while we rolled his body into it. Then with Alice on one handle of the wheelbarrow and me on the other we wheeled him out into the paddock where there was a large pile of logs. It wouldn't have been safe to set fire to the logs at that time so we piled logs over his body.

A couple of months later we came home from a trip to town and I could see our Bull Mastif, which we had inherited from Rebecca, asleep in her favourite spot under the trampoline. I didn't think any more about it until I went out to feed her that evening. I thought it was unusual that she wasn't waiting for me so I went over to wake her up. She had died during the day and looked so peaceful lying there just like she had gone to sleep. She was a great loss to us and we felt an acute sense of grief at her passing. We weren't the only ones, the little miniature Schnauzer she had mothered cried for days afterwards. He was the only dog we had left and he must have felt very lonely. Perhaps Ruby knew we were soon to live in a town and she hated town living, that's how we came to have her. She had been in Rebecca's back yard in town and she had gone stir crazy. It was a comfort for us to think back and remember all the good years of happiness she had with us.

The next morning I was up early to say goodbye to Ruby. I used the same method of loading her into the wheelbarrow as I did with White Wolf, laying it on its side and rolling her into it. At ninety kilograms it wasn't easy but I managed to get the transport upright somehow. I then had the problem of only having the use of one arm. I solved this by using my arm sling to lift one handle while I used my good arm to lift the other. It was a harrowingly difficult trip down to the bank of the creek where I had found a deep hole up on the bank under a large Kurrajong tree. That is where I buried Ruby.

We had a lot of rain during the summer and the kikuyu lawn grass was growing so fast I had to mow it every couple of days to keep it looking good in case a buyer came along. That summer was particularly hot and the lawn wasn't easy to mow especially the parts with the steep slopes. I had another problem mowing because I only had one arm to push the mower. I managed by using my good arm and pushing the bar with my stomach which wasn't easy but it worked. As I mowed in the heat one day my heart started to thump madly so I went and sat in the shade for a while until it settled down. I had the same result when I started mowing again so I gave it away for the day.

The next day as I struggled with the mower my heart started beating a tattoo again and this time shade or no shade it wouldn't stop. I went for a check-up a couple of days later with my heart still beating to its own rhythm. The doctor was alarmed when he examined me and said I would probably need a cardio version. He said I needed to go onto warfarin to stop my blood clotting but they couldn't do that as I was due to have a prostate operation and the cardio version would have to wait until that cleared up.

When I went for the prostate operation they couldn't give me a general anesthetic because of my heart. I had a spinal block instead which wasn't a pleasant experience. The doctor was in a hurry and didn't wait long enough for the local anesthetic to work and when she shoved the needle in to my back I nearly leaped off the bed. After the operation I was on a monitor in intensive care for five days because of my heart. The operation was a complete waste of time and with all the pain and discomfort the original problem was worse than ever. The cardio version didn't happen until the next year.

Alice was starting to feel a little stronger so she rode Blarney Cove for a short time each day. Apart from Blarney Cove we still had Madame, who Helen had taken over to ride in competitions while her horse Chesty was recovering from a foot injury. Ebony Rose and Indian Joe were still with us.

As we looked like selling Banyandah we had to give a lot of thought to last of our precious horses. Chesty was ok, he would go to Helen when we left. There was a father and his twelve year old daughter who had been riding with us for several years and we were fond of them as they were kind riders. They asked if they could buy the two horses they regularly rode, which was Indian Joe and Ebony Rose. Perfect for us to have them go together and know they would be cared for. Alice offered Madame to one of her long term favourite students, so she went off to Dubbo. We don't know how Blarney Cove's buyer heard about him because she came from the south coast. She must have known about him somehow because she bought him sight unseen. When the transport came to pick him up, it was the most magnificent padded horse float so we figured he would be ok. We heard from the lady after he arrived and she described him as a darling. It was then we realised for the first time in our lives we no longer had a horse. It was a devastating feeling. It was definitely one of the most significant moments of our lives and it was something we had decided on because we didn't want to ship our horses up to Queensland where they would likely get the Queensland itch.

When our beloved Banyandah was sold we unloaded all our spare furniture, books and unwanted clothes to the Salvation Army. I couldn't believe how many books I had acquired over the years. I gave a box trailer full of books to the Rotary Club. Some of the items we sold, like washing machine, new refrigerator and many useful cupboards.

We bought a shipping container which we had parked close to the house and over some weeks we loaded all we could into it. Nigel and his mate gave us a hand to load some of the heavier items. I lost count of how many times I made a trip to the local dump with unwanted items, so much so I was now on first name basis with the dump warden.

We also bought a sixteen foot caravan and loaded all the left overs into it along with what we would need for our immediate future. Helen and her husband came up to help us load it and pick up her horse Chesty and our horse float that they had bought. We sent Madame off on a transport to the girl Alice had given her to, so that left us pretty empty except for one little dog Arti.

We tucked Arti into the back of the Pajero, hooked up the caravan and set off for our new life. As we went through the front gate we never looked back. I was sick with the 'flu and had a hacking cough and Alice didn't trust my driving while I was in that state. She ended up driving the whole way to Cairns. The first night we stopped off in a caravan park in Warwick, hoping they would accept one little dog. Luckily the owner said he preferred dogs to children.

The second day we made it to Roy and Marisha's place where we stayed in our caravan for a few days. We were anxious to get to our destination so we didn't want to stay too long. It took us two days to drive the rest of the way to Cairns with one overnight stop off. Alice did a magnificent job towing the caravan all that way.

What we didn't know before we set off was that Rebecca and Greg had split up and the family was in turmoil. Rebecca had a new man, Tony who was a policeman she had met at work. It was devastating for us as I'm sure it was for Greg. Hannah and Rebecca were not getting along prior to this so Hannah had moved out to a girlfriends house.

Rebecca met us on the southern outskirts of Cairns and guided us through the city to a caravan park on the northern side. Rebecca didn't stay because Nigel and Greg came to settle us in. The park was very nice and quiet and dog friendly and was on the bus run to the city. Our caravan was parked between two larger vans. One side had a middle aged couple who were living in the van to see if they liked each other enough to travel around Australia together. They fought most of the time and the air became blue. The other side had a miserable elderly couple who wouldn't smile if you paid them. The old lady had a fluffy little white dog that was permanently stuck under her arm and one day as she fixed me with a baleful stare and the dog growled the sweet old lady said, "we know who we don't like don't we darling".

Although Arti was welcome at the park we couldn't have him there because every time we both tried to leave he would set up a monstrous howling. We even tried to sneak out without him seeing us but we never made it past the park gate. Nigel came to the rescue and kept him at his house while we were at the caravan park. He was kept busy there escaping from the attention of a bum sniffing pug dog.

Nigel had married for the third time just before we went to Cairns so we had a new wife to get used to and Rebecca's new partner who we never really got to know, perhaps it was because Greg was still very much in our lives. It was almost too much to take in.

Cairns is a city and the traffic there is fast and furious. In the first couple of weeks we never went anywhere by car, using the bus instead. This had a big disadvantage as we had to walk for miles around the city to find anything like banks, doctors, centrelink and real estate agents. I had lost confidence driving in traffic after the effects of the 'flu and my unstable heart and Alice had a lot of trouble walking very far because of the effects of her heart, so we were in a very hard place. All the family was working and couldn't help so Alice braved it into the city occasionally by car. It was on one of these trips that Alice became very dizzy and sick after a change of medication and she said she was sorry but she wouldn't be able to drive home. I knew I had to drive and there was no reason why I couldn't. As I whizzed out into the traffic that first time with my heart pumping, my confidence came back and I was fine with driving from then on. I became familiar with the streets and enjoyed driving around investigating the city.

One of the first things we had to do was establish ourselves with a medical practice as we needed to have blood tests regularly because of taking warfarin. We were lucky enough to find a doctor we felt comfortable with so we stayed with that practice for the rest of our time in Cairns. Alice had many more tests but they didn't seem to be able to help her. It was the same problem of cold sweats, dizziness and not being able to walk very far. The doctor did one good thing, he gave her a disabled parking ticket so she didn't have to walk so far.

It was because of Alice's problem with walking, especially uphill that from that point on we drove everywhere instead of catching the bus.
Chapter 36

We were keen to find our new home to purchase as soon as possible if only to have peace of mind that we had somewhere to settle. Greg drove us around many open houses at weekends when he was free and we saw some lovely houses. It would have been better if we had bought one of the houses Greg showed us because they were in a more convenient part of the city.

Nigel's wife Karen, who was a forceful lady decided to take over and show us some more upmarket houses. We inspected several with her and one stood out above the rest. It was in a street that was high up on a hill with a lovely breeze and a magnificent view over the Cairns valley. We thought we needed a big house because of all the family around us and this house looked perfect. It had a large entrance hall with an oversize double garage on one side and a single bedroom on the other. The front door had a security camera on it so you could see who was there from the kitchen. All the other rooms were supersized and the house covered most of the block. There were three other large bedrooms, the main having an ensuite and a walk in robe the size of a small bedroom. They all had large inbuilt wardrobes. The kitchen was a large open area with a supersize granite topped island bench in the middle. The side benches were also granite topped. The double sized family bathroom as well as the ensuite had wall tiles from floor to ceiling and the whole floor of the house was tiled, even the large covered deck at the back of the house that had such a magnificent view. The entire garden had been landscaped, what there was of it. The back garden dropped down very steeply and had a set of stairs down to the lower section. To stop any runoff the entire back garden was covered in matting and as I found out later, to access any of the plants on the slope you needed a ladder.

We were both too unwell to look any further so we settled on this house as it indeed didn't need another thing doing to it. There was even an inbuilt vacuum system, filtered water and a double dishwasher.

Luckily there was a spare block of land beside this house so after the sale went through we towed our caravan and parked it on the spare block, hoping the owner wouldn't object.

We moved into the house straight away, even though our shipping container didn't arrive with our furniture for another week. We moved all we needed out of the caravan including two camp beds and were quite comfortable. I think Nigel was surprised that we would want to live in a basically empty house for a week.

When the container arrived we had to park the Pajero out on the vacant block because we had to hire a crane to lift the container off the truck and place it in our driveway, blocking our garage. Unloading the container was an enormous job for two old not very well people. Nigel lifted some of the heavier items in and Rebecca and her partner helped for a couple of hours but it was mostly us who unloaded it. Alice wasn't able to help much so I devised a ramp from the container into the garage. Anything that was still too heavy I unpacked in the container and carried it in bit by bit, like the book cases. Apart from the furniture everything else stayed in the garage to be sorted out later.

Cynthia came over from Mount Isa and stayed for a few days helping to sort out linen and china as well as clothes and she was a marvellous help. She ended up with six full plastic bags and she said to me do not open those bags, take them straight to the Op shop which I dutifully did. I don't know how we would have managed without her help. Everything went easily into its place in the house very neatly. We had bought a refrigerator as soon as we moved in so that was already installed along with a washing machine we had bought off the previous owners. We had also bought two bedroom cupboards, an outdoor setting for the deck and a lawnmower from them. The mower was a waste at first because I wasn't strong enough to use it and had to have a mower man come in once a fortnight.

As Alice's second cardio version hadn't worked I was a bit dubious about having mine, but I had to do something. They put you under sedation for the procedure and they told me I would probably have three shocks. Rebecca came with me and stayed until I went to theatre. They only gave me one shock and it must have had the wrong effect because when I woke up they looked concerned. I wasn't worried, I felt great, calm and at piece with the world. My heart had gone from racing continuously to hardly beating at all and I felt so relaxed. I went home that day feeling well but without any energy.

A few days later I was back in hospital where they were short of beds in the cardiac ward so for the first night they put me in the orthopaedic ward. Before I went to sleep I told the nurse on duty I was in to have my heart fixed, not my bones so don't touch them. The next day I was transferred to the private hospital to have a pacemaker inserted. You only have local anaesthetic for this procedure and you're fully awake. The doctor had trouble getting the wires down into my heart because of the scaring from my previous operation. As it took him longer than normal to do, the anaesthetic had started to wear off by the time he commenced stitching me up and I had a few unpleasant moments before it was completed. The pacemaker was the end of all my troubles in that area. I wish they could have done the same for Alice, and I could never understand why not.

We both tried to get fit by going for an hours walk with Arti every afternoon and I'm sure it did some good but the return trip up the hill for Alice was almost too much. Arti did well out of it though and enjoyed his afternoon walks.

One of the real estate agents we met while looking for a house was the president of a dressage club and when she learned we were into dressage we were quickly involved with the local club. We both did dressage judging at Redlynch, Cairns, Atherton, Ravenshoe and many times at Mareeba. We also judged hacks at the local show at Atherton and Mareeba. We were both Stewards in the horse events three times at the Cairns show. Alice gave bulk lessons for the instructors at the Ravenshoe pony club and I helped from the sidelines. She also gave many private dressage lessons in Cairns until she collapsed one day and I said that's it, no more. We were awarded the trophy for the most helpful to the club in Cairns and they gave us a magnificent parting gift which was three bronze horsemen.

We joined an art group which met once a week and in that group you could use whatever medium you wished. There was between eight and ten people in the group and one extremely good artist was over one hundred years old and still going strong. The whole group was a lovely lot of people and there were two couples we got on with particularly well. We would frequently have dinner at their house or they at ours. One couple gave us many hours of tuition in water colour. I don't think I lived up to their expectation but Alice did well.

Later we joined another group that painted in purely water colour and our friends from the other group also attended. This was a smaller group and not as outgoing as the other group. We made one long term friend there and she was an excellent water-colourist.

Alice was never really well all the time we were in Cairns and had many trips to the hospital. At one time she collapsed in the bathroom and I only just managed to get her into bed before I called the ambulance. The ambulance people were very good when they arrived and agreed she should be in hospital, so off they went with her. I followed as soon as I could but when I arrived at the hospital and inquired about her they said they didn't have anybody by that name, try the private hospital, so I did with no success. I went back to the base hospital because I didn't know what else to do. No she hadn't arrived. As I left the hospital wondering what the hell to do next, I noticed an ambulance in the car park so I figured they might be able to help. By this time a couple of hours had gone by and I was getting very worried. Yes the ambulance man said, we still have her in the ambulance waiting for a space to take her in. I was really worried for her as she was sweating profusely and no one seemed to know or care what to do. She was in hospital for several days with no result.

It was shortly after this that Rebecca dropped her bombshell. She announced that she, her partner and family were relocating to Brisbane. The whole idea of us going to Cairns was her idea in the first place. It knocked the feet out from under us.

Nigel was very thoughtful during the times Alice was in hospital or at home unwell. Each evening he would bring us up a plate each of what they were having for dinner. I told him we could manage but I think it made him feel good. Greg and Hannah often came around to visit us which softened the blow of Rebecca leaving. As our health improved we often met Hannah in town for lunch.

It wasn't long after this that Nigel and his wife split up setting into progress a chain of disasters. Nigel leased a unit in a complex that was new but a dark cloud came over him and he wasn't able to work. He was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and it really took him to a dark place. We went to see if we could help but we realised he didn't want us or anybody else there. Cynthia helped as much as she could on the medical side and he was eventually put on a medication that brought him out of his deep depression. I guess he will always have a battle from that time on but he has gone from strength to strength since then. He has managed to get his life back on track.

We needed a holiday after all this so we booked a Pacific Cruise around the islands of New Caledonia. It was our first cruise and we were really looking forward to it, a great adventure. Alice was having trouble with her bottom teeth so we thought we had better get them seen to first. The dentist sent her to a specialist who diagnosed that they would all have to come out and this would have to be done under anaesthetic. The day of the operation they found they couldn't give her the anaesthetic because of her heart condition so it was done under local anaesthetic, a brutal procedure. Because she was on warfarin she bled badly and the brushing spread down her chin giving her the appearance she had been in a car accident.

We had to cancel the cruise and luckily we were insured. Even so it was a big battle to get the money out of the insurance company. Alice then had the prolonged difficulties of having dentures fitted. The whole procedure was very painful and as we were not in a medical fund, very expensive.

The cruise was supposed to have been taken some months before all this happened but the agent mucked up the booking. When we went into the agent the week before the cruise date, it was discovered we should have been boarding the ship that day. The agent was very upset and said "she didn't know how it happened but she could get us on a later cruise". I asked "who would pay for that" and was informed I would have to. I said "no way, it's your mistake, you fix it". I left her with the knowledge that I wanted the cruise and I wasn't going to pay for it the second time. She eventually booked us on the cruise that we had to cancel because of the dental problems.

At one time our Pajero had to be in the workshop for several days and it was during this time we realised what a disadvantage we were in with the property we had bought. It wasn't on a bus run and to catch a bus, which we had to do at that time, we had to walk a long way. It wasn't so bad going to the bus but the journey home was a problem as it was all uphill. This we were able to do now but thinking down the track how would it be, especially carrying the groceries home. We weighed up all the fores and against, and where we were and Cairns itself. I really liked the City of Cairns but when you live in the outer suburbs like we did, it wasn't very convenient to get to. It also had the disadvantage if you wanted to travel anywhere you first had to fly to Brisbane.

Our house was really beautiful and we loved it but the garden left me with nothing to do in it. The fact that there was only ten feet between our house and the one next door wasn't ideal. All the residents in our street were all young parents with small children and they made sure they didn't get to know that old couple who had moved in. It was six months before I reached the stage of saying hello to the lady next door and even then she scuttled inside soon after the greeting. The only contact we had with locals was with our art groups and although they were important to us it didn't seem enough. It wasn't like when we walked down Peel Street in Tamworth and were greeted by all and sundry. The humidity in Cairns wasn't a great issue, nor the rain in the wet season but I did miss a garden I could work in.

We finally came up with the conclusion that we should find a more conducive area for our needs. We had visited the Sunshine Coast and the Hinterland several times and liked the look of it. We had Christmas with Roy and Marisha and were to be there for four days but the floods came and we were there for two weeks. We had a good look around the area and with estate agents viewed some houses. There were many that would have suited our needs with several towns to consider. There was Gympie, Cooran, Pomona and Cooroy, with the ones being closer to the sea being too expensive. The fact that Roy lived in the area at Traveston wasn't a deciding factor although it helped.
Chapter 37

Our Cairns home went on the market, expecting it to sell reasonably quickly but because it was a the top of the market house it was hard to sell. We reached the stage we were fed up with people with little money wondering through our house. We took it off the market and decided it was fate that we should stay in Cairns. Soon after this decision a real estate agent called and said she had a buyer who really wanted our house. After some bargaining the man bought our house.

That started another frantic round of packing and taking loads off to the Salvation Army. We were getting wise in our old age and hired a removalist to pack our boxes and furniture into the container to be sent south and stored until we settled somewhere. The packers were great under very difficult circumstances, a tropical storm bucketed down for most of the day. Before they left they asked me if I would like them to lift my trolley up onto the roof rack of the Pajero, which was a great help except I forgot it was there and drove into the garage. Luckily the trolley was the only casualty. We were all packed up and left at four am the next morning heading for Traveston. We stayed overnight in a caravan park on the way down.

It was late December 2011 and Roy and Marisha had invited us down for Christmas and to stay on until we found a house. They wanted us to build a cottage on their property which would have been nice but I could see it might have presented a problem down the track. They had converted part of their downstairs into a unit for Marisha's elderly parents and we figured it would become top heavy with elderly residents.

We told the agents we wanted a house that had no stairs and a reasonably flat block of land. We didn't want acres, just a large town block with easy access to transport. We inspected many houses and they were nearly all Queenslanders with a multiple of stairs, some steeper than others. Eventually an agent did show us houses that were built on the flat, but mostly out of town.

We rejected Gympie because of the flooding and the steep hills throughout the town. Cooran was too small a village but Pomona seemed just right. This day we inspected three houses, all very nice but one stood out from all the others. Firstly it was all flat on a large block and only had one neighbour. It was on a corner block with a vast forest on the far side of the road and a park at the back of it. This meant we would only have a short walk across the park to the centre of the village and to the bus and train stops. The village had most things you needed, like an IGA store, chemist, community centre, art gallery, butcher, doctors, hardware store and many others. Pomona had a regular train service to Brisbane and if you were driving it, the journey only took you about one and a half hours. It was only a twenty minute drive to the beach at Noosa and a ten minute drive to Cooroy which was a much bigger town than Pomona.

The house suited us fine as it had four bedrooms with an ensuite in the main and a family bathroom with a separate toilet. The dining and kitchen were adequate and the lounge room was special with windows around three sides of a semi octagonal room. The one thing that I really liked about the house was the exceptionally large under cover outdoor area. It had a double carport and on one side of the house was a large lawn. There was a high paling fence around the block which gave us complete privacy. Alice said it didn't have the one thing we really needed and that was a shed for me to work in. That was solved when they brought their price down by ten thousand dollars. We bought it and moved in on the thirty-first of January 2012.

It has been perfect for us and I was able to build a single car size building in the back garden for my studio. We turned the large lawn into an orchard and vegetable patch and that is what I look out on while I'm working in the studio. There are some other improvements we have made to the house, like solar panels and connection to the sewerage mains. There was a septic tank here before. Roy was surprised we settled on a house so quickly, but then we have always had the need to call somewhere home.

Since moving to Pomona we have been volunteers at the Majestic Theatre where I worked behind the bar after getting my RSA licence to serve alcohol. We joined the art group which has its weekly get-togethers at the gallery. They are not like the Cairns group but we enjoy going anyway. We learned a new form of painting for us from one of the very talented artists who was using scrunched up newspaper instead of brushes. The result was amazing and we both put one of these paintings each in the Noosa show.

Through the art group we joined the garden club which meets at a different member's garden once a month. They are mainly morning tea affairs but it is a good way of getting to know people. We had a viewing of our garden recently and was concerned because it was so small compared to the others but people seemed to enjoy it.

We both volunteer at the Cooroy library. Alice has worked in the library itself and we both give time to what is called, Get Creative. It is to help children become interested in different forms of art. We both enjoy that and it is one morning a month. We have both volunteered at Op Shops but found they were not for us.

With all these groups come Christmas parties, meeting for coffee mornings and general visits which gives us an active social life.

I joined a writers group soon after we moved here and I found I really loved it. Some time passed before I became really part of the group but eventually I became one of them. Each week we are given a subject or sometimes just a word and we have to come back next week with a five or six hundred word short story about it and read it out to the group. At first I found standing up in front of the group and reading out my story rather confronting, but that passed. There are no critics and there is usually a lot of laughter. Through the group I have made a good friends, Pat who has helped and encouraged me with my personal story and Sue who edited my story and set up my book cover, this was an enormous help and I am very grateful.

In choosing the house and the position it is in, I had one strong aim in mind and that was to find a place where Alice would be safe and be able to manage on her own when it came time for me to take that last step.

January the third 2014 marked our fifty fifth Wedding anniversary and it looks like we might make it a bit further down the track with a bit of luck but I will finish off my story here and contemplate the year to come as I am sure it will be filled with exciting things to do. There are still a lot of wonderful memories to look back on like the wonderful friend we had while we at Moonbi. Hester would have been a little older than us but she was able to run her 1500 acre property not far from us and this she did on her own. It was a beautiful property and she bred a beautiful herd of Devon cattle. We often had lunch at her old world home and she would come down to lunch at Banyandah. During one of her visits she noticed we were struggling because of the drought. She said when she was leaving, "bring your horses up to my place, I have plenty of grass." We took two horses up to her property and they were knee deep in grass. We thought this was wonderfully generous of her. That night we had a phone call from her and she said, "where are the rest of them, bring them all up". The herd basked all summer in such wonderful feed as they did again the next summer.

Hester was great company and often came with us on trips to Armidale and to the pictures. She gave us a flock of bantam hens that multiplied greatly keeping us in eggs. The trips to town were the only way we could repay her kindness as she wouldn't accept help or pay for the agistment. We miss her greatly but we keep in contact through phone calls and letters,

Our life has been filled with drama and love and never allowed to be boring so I can't see the years we have left will be any different. Perhaps it will warrant a sequel.

