Walk a War in My Shoes

by Murray Ernest Hall

  In 1864 George and Selina decided it was time to try something different. They sold up their land holdings and moved the family to Melbourne where other relatives had settled previously. They purchased a property in Adolph Street, Richmond. My father was six years old.

  The family adjusted well, they found the weather and living conditions far more pleasant than northern Tasmania had been. With the benefit of a larger surrounding population and supported by their solid work ethics, opportunities opened up for them. They established a market garden and ran a few sheep along the nearby Yarra River, life was good.

  My father grew up on the land, assisting and tending to the animals and crops alongside his parents and siblings. What little schooling he had was done at home, my grandmother being the primary household school teacher. There were no primary schools in the area until 1887 when Burnley Primary opened.

  By the time he reached his early teens the family were well equipped with horse and cart that Father would tend to and take their produce into the Melbourne markets early each morning.

  As nature would predict, Dad became restless with age and around 1880 was offered a position as a stockman to drive cattle from the Channel Country in West Queensland to Adelaide. A far cry from market gardening on the Yarra but it was time to venture out. He loved animals, was an established horseman, the pay was promising and the opportunity to move on in life was too good to refuse. The drive would take 4 months in total and he would tell me that as a single man, it was the best years of his life, he loved the bush and thrived on the rough & tough it could throw up.

  Father would drive a total of three musters, returning to Melbourne between runs, missing the odd year just to break up the effort of the drive and to re-commit to his family obligations based around the market garden.

  The third muster was very difficult and would end badly for him. The weather had been savagely hot, no rain and very few opportunities for the cattle to feed or have good access to water. Nearing Adelaide, after living rough in the bush for the previous three months, both man and beast were hot and exhausted. The mob smelt water and stampeded.

  In the ensuring round up one of father’s stirrups broke and he fell from his horse only to have his other foot caught up in the remaining stirrup. He was dragged along the rough ground for a hundred yards before his horse jumped over a fallen log and father collided with it, breaking his back as they both went over. He was dragged for another quarter of a mile before the horse settled and pulled up.

  Badly injured and in severe pain, he was transported to Adelaide Hospital in the back of a tray and spent 5 weeks there. He was eternally grateful that he could walk, albeit with a stoop which became worse with age.

  On returning from Adelaide father was mostly bed ridden in the family home for many months while his spine strengthened, enough for him to get back on his feet and consider his future. His health and luck slowly returned, picking up a plum job with Melbourne Tramways, working shift work driving a new cable tram from Richmond to Spencer Street and return. A secure job with good back support for a man with a broken back.

  His next stroke of good fortune was that during this period he met my mother, Ada Selina Trinick. A petite, attractive, blue eyed woman, 5’1” tall and ten years younger than he.

  Grandfather George died on the 12th December 1892 and was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery.

  In an unbelievably sad twist of fate, my grandmother Selina, died two weeks later and is buried in the same plot with George.1

  CHAPTER 2

  CLOVERDALE

  AROUND 1881, THREE of Father’s brothers, Thomas, Harry and Edward were each granted three hundred and twenty-acre selections of Crown land in the Otway Ranges, close to a hamlet called Beech Forest. They conjoined their sections which was just south of the town and they would be some of the first inhabitants in the area. Armed with swag’s, tucker bag and axe the brothers set off together to start work clearing portions of their land that would ultimately be suitable for crops and running a few cattle.

  Selecting a parcel of Crown land was not a gift from the government. There was an initial cost to the purchaser who would be required to pay for survey of the desired property and then enter into an arrangement with the Crown to purchase. In the Otway’s at this stage the going rate was one pound per acre with the payback terms being one shilling per acre per year over 20 years.

  Placing their fingers over a map and declaring the block of land they each desired was fraught with danger. Without ever having laid eyes on the properties, a map laid out on a table would have given them the impression that the lay of the land may have been flat. What it failed to show them was high mountains, deep, steep gully’s or how heavily timbered the rain forest was.

  It must have been quite a shock for them to have fought their way from the high ground of Beech Forest and along the southern ridge, through the incredibly dense forest without an inch to spare between tree ferns and three hundred feet high Mountain Ash trees. The forest canopy only allowing the faintest of filtered light to reach ground level. Eventually, three miles out of Beech Forest, they located a survey marker that indicated where their land perimeter was.

  Lesser men would have been despondent looking up through the tree tops searching for the sun, not knowing where to start. Our boys were pioneers, they accepted the challenge, pitched their tent, and got on with the job.

  Over the next couple of years, they collectively made good progress and cleared a few acres along the marginally flat ridge that they would name Hall’s Ridge Road. The land dropped away very sharply on both sides, in some places it is as steep as forty-five degrees, impossible for cattle, dangerous for horses. A magnificent waterfall to the north of the ridge, down near the Aire River would become known as Hall’s Falls2.

  A large percentage of the one thousand acres proved too steep to utilise and the brothers applied to Crown Land administrators for reconsideration on the value of the properties based on it being “unsuitable for settlement”. The Crown declined to write the value down, but it was worth asking the question.

  Thomas, the eldest brother would name his selection “Woodlands”. Edward would call his “Riversdale” and Uncle Harry chose “Fernlea”.

  The brothers were constantly in touch with my father, encouraging him to join them, which in 1893 he did.

  After helping his brothers for a time, father moved his tent to his own property which straddled both sides of a ridge that ran between Beech Forest and Ferguson. A beautiful section of the forest with a large area of flat or gently sloping ground running along the ridge before it dropped away sharply to the Aire River on the southern perimeter and Charley’s Creek down the bottom of the north slopes. He called his property “Cloverdale” and it would cover 313 acres.

  Father purchased the transfer of lease from Mr Malcahey, paying him for the small improvements that had been made to the land and effectively taking over the balance of the contract with the Crown. There was provision to adjust the payback terms and father would be forced to apply for a freeze on repayments on a couple of occasions when times were tough.

  He had chosen exceptionally well, the block had the main corduroy track into town, known as the Beech Forest to Lavers Hill Road, running straight through the centre of the property. The proximity to Beech Forest with an existing track was critical to father’s farming needs.

  The standard size of the Crown Land blocks around Beech Forest were 320 acres, but the Crown surveyors had taken seven acres off the original size of father’s block to compensate for the track passing through the middle, bringing our farm down to 313 acres.

  The property was anything but clover when he first took possession though. It was heavily timbered, similar to the territory his brothers had taken on just a few miles away. Only a very small portion had been cleared previously, and a lot of work would be required. Dad struck a match to the forest floor on several occasions to help clear the undergrowth, it was simply too dense to clear by hand.3 A bu
sh fire that had gone through the area years earlier had left a couple of massive tree stumps on the property that were in excess of 40’ in diameter. They would have been four hundred years old, well and truly mature trees when Captain Cook first stepped on Australian soil.

  Father sowed his pasture between the felled trees and burnt-out logs. A horse, a single rake plough, shovel and a pick being his only tools.

  The track that led the mile eastwards into Beech Forest or the 28-miles north to Colac were rough, narrow and badly corrugated. Corduroy tracks made with sawn timber planks laid across ways in the mud. The Colac to Beech Forest railway line that would run adjacent to the track and through the middle of Cloverdale wouldn’t be built until 1902.

  There was a very limited possibility of salvaging the fallen timber and removing it from the farm for sale in those early years, so the majority was simply destroyed. The local townsfolk of Beech Forest salvaged some and built the first church and a set of stables in town with timber from our farm.

  Father then commenced building a cottage using timber he had cut into planks or sizes suitable for floor joists, roof trusses and weather boards, standing them in a corner of the property to dry. They were all rough sawn, formed with a wedge and trimmed using an axe, not an accurate science but a good bushman’s expertise. The remaining off cuts and kindling were stacked up and burnt.

  My mother had remained in Melbourne while father spent long periods of time working on Cloverdale. They were in constant contact via mail and had planned to marry but asking a new bride to live in a tent wasn’t an option. The cottage was set back twenty yards from the front fence line with the front door facing east so that the morning sun would shine on it. Four-rooms with a veranda on two sides, a steep set of steps out the back door, a single chimney servicing the needs of the household below. A corrugated iron roof with the inside walls beautifully lined with hessian and newspapers. With help from his brothers they had built a magnificent cottage, fit for a new bride.

  As soon as the cottage was liveable, Dad returned to Melbourne and my parents were married in Richmond on 9th May 1894, father was thirty-six years old, mother twenty-six.

  Like my father, mother had very strong work ethics and would do all she could to help with the land clearing, domestic duties of cooking and cleaning plus caring for the two-dairy cows they had been given as a wedding present from uncle Thomas and the Woodlands farm relatives.

  Dad taught her how to handle the two guns they owned, a single shot .22 and a shotgun, and she handled them well. She could shoot a rabbit at 100 yards, skin it and have it prepared for supper within an hour and a half, supplemented with vegetables from the small veggie garden she also tendered. An excellent woman to have by your side in the bush.

  Mum fell pregnant with me in the summer of ’94-’95. Neither of them were confident about their first-born child being born at Cloverdale with the nearest doctor 28 miles away, so in July 1895 mother caught the train up to Melbourne from Colac and camped up with the Trinick side of the family in Richmond. She gave birth to me at the Women’s Hospital in Melbourne on 25th August 1895. Father remained on the farm and would learn of my birth via letter a week later. It would be five weeks before I would meet him and be carried through the front door of Cloverdale.

  I didn’t have to wait long before I would have a playmate, my brother Frank Albert Hall was born in October of 1896. Dad sent Mum and I up to Colac for Franks birth, we were away from Cloverdale for a month.

  Frank and I had a bonny upbringing on the farm, loving and caring parents, spectacular countryside, beautiful animals and I had a brother I would love to death to play and explore the farm with. A young lad couldn’t have wanted for more.

  I have many fond memories sitting on the front veranda eating a bowl of mum’s “special” mash potatoes, all the ingredients including the cow’s milk and butter having come from our farm. Frank and I had to share a spoon though as there were not enough of them for all of us to use at the same time.

  When father built our cottage using the timber from the stock pile he had accumulated it was still very green and the shrinkage in the floor boards became an issue when they aged and dried out. Some of the gaps that appeared were up to three quarters of an inch wide. He would plug them with old newspapers and timber strips that he would hammer through the gaps. Some would be well hidden with a floor rug to cover over but mostly they were hard to hide. It could be a bit breezy during the winter and hard to hold the heat in, summer wasn’t bad with a bit of cool air wafting up late in the day. There were a couple of larger holes where tiger snakes had come up through the floor boards seeking warmth and mother had blown their heads off with the shotgun. I believe some of mum’s best cutlery disappeared through the floor board gaps over the years.

  Twin girls were born on the Cloverdale kitchen table. It wouldn’t be till many years later that I would learn from my mother that my sisters hadn’t survived their birth.

  Their run of misfortune continued when another bush fire went through the area. The house and animals survived, but most of dad’s supply of stock feed and crops were destroyed. This prevented my parents from earning anything from the dairy cows for quite a while. The winter that followed was a very severe one on stock and half the dairy herd died. Dad wrote to the Crown land department seeking an extension of time to pay the rent (lease contract) because of the setbacks and to allow some breathing space. When spring arrived, there was plenty of feed back in the paddocks and he again purchased more head to replace the ones that had perished.

  Early in 1899, Mum, Frank and I were on the train back to Melbourne to stay with the Trinicks again. Baby brother Walter was born in February that year, no more chances with the kitchen table I guess. We were now a three-man team, plenty of strong young lads to help around the farm.

  Beech Forest Primary School opened in 1901 and I was one of the first children to walk through the door. School was just over a mile from Cloverdale and those early classes were conducted in a room of the Ditchley Park Hotel in the centre of Beech Forest.

  Mother walked me in for the first week, but I was on my own after that. Walking to school wasn’t much fun, knee deep in mud during the winter and inches of dust in the summer, a mile each way, each day, could be a bit testing.

  In 1903 the school moved out of the hotel, a few hundred yards further away to a departmental building, adjacent to Wilson’s store. By that time, Frank was school age, so we walked to school and back home together, rain, hail or shine.

  In 1906 a fire started in Wilson’s store, it spread quickly and destroyed the school and the Anglican Church next door. A couple of weeks later the school reopened in the Public Hall which had been built near the road bridge that went over the railway line to Crowes. Fifty children attended that year which included our baby brother Walter.

  Four more children would be born into Cloverdale in the following years, all girls, all still born. I remember being woken by a commotion in the house one morning and jumping out of bed. Dad was standing near the kitchen opening and very firmly told me that everything was okay and to go back to bed.

  I cannot imagine the grief my dear mother must have suffered to have lost six children. Her heart must ache terribly.

  Father buried the infants in a very holy place in the forest. A sharp, deep gully that ran down the west side of the farm. I spent many hours as a boy walking the area in search of my sibling’s grave site, nestling down in the ferns, eating blackberries that grew in abundance. The gentle trickle of the creek water flowing down through the forest floor, glow worms and fire-flies around me.

  I would never find the exact position of their resting places. Father had not marked the graves, but he knew where they were and that’s the most important point. At the base of a mountain ash tree that faced back up through the gully I always felt some sort of connection, a tingle up my spine. Boy hood fantasy or some Divine message? I’ll never know.

  Dad came home from town one day with a black pup. He cla
imed it over a bet and a rum at the Ditchley Park Hotel. At first, its name was Solong because when mum first saw him she said, “So long dog” meaning that the dog should keep going. She wasn’t all that excited about having an additional mouth to feed around the farm. She would ask my father if the dog’s arrival meant he had won the bet or lost it!

  We never knew if he was any particular breed or not but there was a bit of Kelpie/cattle dog in him from the way he rounded up the sheep & cows. Black, lean, fast, big brown eyes and not afraid of work, he was a ripper animal. The name “Solong” faded out and he would be renamed “Dog”.

  We all grew to love that animal very much and he loved us back. It was as if there were four boys in the family, he could do everything except talk. Some days he would walk with us to school, hang around all day and walk home with us. If dad needed him on the farm he would hold him back till we were out of sight and Dog would stay with him all day. He worked well with all the other animals and became a valuable member of our farming family.

  After mum got over the initial arrival of Dog, he grew on her too. She loved him to bits. If Dog wasn’t at school with us or working the farm with dad, he could be found beside mum as she worked in the kitchen, or at milking the cows or laying in the veggie crop. He was welcome company to all of us.

  The five of us sat on the veranda one summer night and collectively cried our eyes out when Dog was killed by a tiger snake.

  The farm ticked over quite well, all the hard work slowly paying off, the stock holdings grew, and a small but steady income was realised. We carried up to fifteen dairy cows. They all had names, Milly, Missy, Polly, Annie etc. and were all milked by hand.

  Milk and cream were separated, the cream being carried to the front gate in square milk cans each morning to meet the Colac Butter Factory cart. A small sample was tested and around two gallons of cream a day would leave Cloverdale.