by A B Facey
At the end of the sixth day I couldn’t stand it any longer so I packed and left. When I asked about wages I got a reply that made me even less confident about Man’s word. The Meikles told me that they had no money and couldn’t afford to pay me. I asked them why they had said they would pay me ten shillings a week, and they replied that I wouldn’t have come if they hadn’t.
So off I went back to Uncle’s place. Grandma was disgusted with Moran and his promise to pay me five shillings a week and keep and clothes. Uncle supported Grandma and they decided that there was nothing that could be done as there was nothing in writing. Uncle said to forget about the Meikles.
I stayed at Uncle’s place for a few days and then I was offered a job with a married settler. He was a small Frenchman married to a big Irish woman. They had no children.
I asked Uncle and Grandma what they thought about the job. Uncle said that the name of the people was Phillips and that they used to be big condenser contractors on the Goldfields. They had plenty of money so Uncle thought that I should get paid if I worked for them. He promised to speak to them about my wages first, if I went with them. Grandma said that it was no good that you couldn’t take the word of most of these people. Uncle suggested that I take the job on trial for awhile; then if it wasn’t any good, leave, as no one could go on working for no wages. He said it was pretty low to take a kid down.
11
A NEW HOME
The Phillips’ place was about six miles north-west of Uncle’s and about three miles from the Scotsman who befriended me when I cleared out from Cave Rock. Uncle and Grandma drove me over in the spring-cart. When we arrived we found that the land was much more improved than Uncle’s place. The Phillips had a two-roomed iron house, several out buildings, and about three hundred acres of cleared land. Most of their property was fenced. They also had two cows, six horses and some pigs.
The place gave me a feeling of security as we drove from the front gate to the house, a distance of about a mile. Uncle said that the Phillips had been there only two years and had their clearing and fencing done by contractors. They didn’t have to worry about Government grants and possum skins to make a living.
The Phillips were home when we arrived and they made us feel very welcome. Uncle told them the purpose of our visit and they said that they badly wanted a boy and would be pleased to give me a job. Uncle asked about my wages and if they intended to keep me as well. He told them how unlucky I had been at Cave Rock and Moran’s. He also told them I could ride a horse and about the different kinds of work I had done. Mr Phillips said he would pay me five shillings a week and full keep; also that I could draw my wages once a month and that they would treat me as their own. He said, ‘Everywhere that we go he will go. Mrs Phillips has been going to town alone, now she can take him with her for company.’ Then Grandma suggested that I take the job on trial for a month and if I liked it I could stay; if not I could come back to Uncle’s. This was agreed. We had some lunch, then Grandma and Uncle went home.
Mr Phillips was about fifty years old and Mrs Phillips was about forty-five. Mrs Phillips showed me where I would sleep and she also explained what they expected of me. She asked me about Cave Rock and about Moran, who she said she knew. He was the district’s M.C. at all the dances and she was surprised at him not being a man of his word.
So I settled into another job and wondered how this one would go. I was a quiet boy and never spoke unless spoken to. I had never been to school and it took me a long time to write my name. I didn’t have much confidence in myself and the previous two and a half years hadn’t helped.
Mrs Phillips showed me around the place. She showed me the pigs, and the layout of the paddocks, and also where the cows were and how to bring them home at night and put them back into the paddock in the morning. She told me that I would be called in the morning and my first job would be to light the fire in the kitchen and put the kettle on, then feed the pigs. (There were a lot of pigs of all different sizes. They had a five acre pig paddock, fenced with posts about eight feet apart. One end of each post was put about two feet into the ground, then eight barbed wires were run between the posts, covering four feet from the ground. This was considered a good pig-proof fence. There were six or seven pig houses, and small post and rail fences inside the pig paddock.)
Mr Phillips was getting ready to put his crop in. (The sowing season for wheat was May and June.) He would get out of bed when I was called, and attend to the feeding and the harnessing of the horses. He usually did this before breakfast. My job, after I had fed the pigs and fowls and put the cows out, was to go to where Mr Phillips was ploughing and pick up all the roots that had been pulled out by the plough. I put them into small heaps so they could be carted to the house for firewood or sometimes, when time was short, burnt. This was hard work and made me very tired. Walking on ground that had just been ploughed made my legs ache, as the earth used to stick to my boots and become heavy.
Mrs Phillips asked me to call her Mum. She said that she would like that, if I agreed, and Mr Phillips told me to call him Frank. They called me Bert, short for my first name, Albert. I agreed to this. I got along fine with these people and they treated me as if I was their own son. Plenty of good food, best I had since I came to the West. Mrs Phillips, or Mum, was a good cook. She was very clean and had a heart of gold. Frank was moody, and he had a vile temper, but was fair.
I had to work hard for a boy not yet twelve years old. I didn’t mind this, and I did as much work as I could, as I wanted to please and stay with these people.
When Frank was busy, every fortnight or three weeks Mum used to go to town for stores. They had a smart pony and a light sulky, which they used for these trips, and a heavy spring-cart for carting heavy loads.
Narrogin, twenty-nine miles away, was our nearest shopping centre. I went with Mum on her shopping trips to keep her company. It took us one day to get there, then we would rest the horse the next day and do the shopping. On the third we would set off early for home.
I used to look forward to these trips; they were fun and a break away from the farm. We always stayed at a boarding-house or Coffee Palace, as some were called. The Coffee Palace was like home – nothing flash. At meal times the girl waiting on you would ask you what you would like, and the beds were just like my own. All my meals and bed were paid for. The lady running the Coffee Palace was a close friend of Mrs Phillips. I don’t remember one single trip that Mum didn’t buy me some new clothes; sometimes a coat or a pair of pants, or shirts, socks and also boots. I was looked after fine. She would give me a couple of shillings to spend as well and none of these things were ever taken out of my wages. (I was paid twenty shillings every four weeks.) The prices at the places where we stopped were very cheap. A good meal cost one shilling and a bed for the night, one shilling and sixpence. A feed for a horse, with the use of a stall in the stable, cost one shilling.
After the seeding was over, Frank used to plough the land that he was going to sow the next year – this was commonly known as fallowing. The farmers used to say that land ploughed for cropping the next year held the moisture better. Should the next season be dry, the farmer stood a better chance of a good crop. If rain came during the summer the ground so ploughed could be scarified and harrowed, which destroyed any weeds and made seeding easier and quicker.
12
THE BOAR
In September, just after my twelfth birthday, Frank wanted a boar pig for his six breeding sows. He had bought the sows and they all had little ones which were now being weaned. Some had already been weaned and were getting into the porker stage. Frank borrowed a large black boar from his brother-in-law. This boar was very savage and every time I went to feed the pigs he tried to attack me. I had to be very careful; he had large tusks and he used to froth at the mouth. I had to jump from pig pen to pig pen to dodge him when feeding them. I was scared stiff of this boar and he seemed to know it. As soon as I went near the pig pen he would have his eye on me.
&nbs
p; One morning early in October, when the weather was getting much warmer, I was passing the pig pen to get the horses in. The boar seemed worse than ever. He never usually bothered me when I was just passing, but for some reason this morning he left the sows and ran down to the fence near where I was walking. He was frothing at the mouth and making a kind of roaring sound.
At first it didn’t worry me, but then he tried twice to get through the fence. The pig fence joined the race where I had to bring the horses, and if the pig did get through my chances against him were nil. I reached the corner of the piggery; beyond that point there was bush and trees. The boar followed the fence along to the corner. I felt gamer now – I had the trees and scrub to run to if he got out.
Being a boy, I couldn’t resist heaving a rock at the boar. When I did this he made one terrific charge at the fence and came straight through and after me. I ran for a large tree leaning at about a forty-five degree angle. It was a sheoak tree with a lot of small limbs attached to its trunk and, with the boar right on my heels, I bounded up it. I had never known my luck. I was just in time – another two yards and he would have had me.
The boar tried to climb the tree but without success. So there I was, up in this tree. It was the nicest tree I had known, and I was pretty safe as long as I could stay where I was. But what about the horses? The sun had begun to rise. The boar at first sat on his haunches looking up at me. Then he rooted a furrow under the tree big enough for his body and laid down.
I was trying to think of a way out of this pickle that I was in. The sun was getting well up into the sky, and guessing by the way my bottom and legs were aching, I had been there about an hour or so. I broke off some small branches and used them as spears. Each time I speared the boar he would get up, walk around the tree, let out a roar, then go back to his furrow and lie down again.
Then, looking down to the house, I saw Frank walking towards us. This horrified me and I wondered how I could warn him about the boar. I made up my mind to call out to him when he got within hearing distance. But Frank had other ideas. He took no notice of me, although I was yelling at the top of my voice. I paused to hear what he was calling out to me and I heard him saying, ‘I’ll give you bird-nesting when I send you to get the horses.’ I called out to him that the boar was loose and that he was here under the tree, but Frank was too riled up and kept coming. Then all at once the boar got up and bounded towards him. As soon as Frank knew the danger he turned and ran for the house.
It was downhill and if anyone had told me that Frank could run as fast as he did I wouldn’t have believed him. He had a little luck because at one stage the boar almost grabbed him. Frank was running along the side of the track and there was a heap of stones about two feet high. Frank jumped this but the boar, being so intent on getting Frank, didn’t see the stones and struck them with his front legs. He fell heavily and that saved Frank.
Frank got inside the house and slammed the door shut. I got down out of the tree and set off for the horses. Then I heard two loud gun shots almost together and I wondered if he had shot the boar. When I returned to the house I saw the boar lying dead about ten feet from the door of the house. Mum had told me several times about Frank’s temper but this was the first time I had seen him properly raged.
My feelings had changed several times during the few minutes of the race between the pig and old Frank. At first I felt amused, then my feelings turned to fear as the boar was catching him, then relief when the boar fell. The fear again gripped me until Frank dashed through the door and shut it. When this happened I felt complete relief.
Frank never said a word when I returned to the house for my breakfast. He looked terribly upset. When Mum gave me my breakfast she asked me what had made the boar get through the pig paddock. I said that I didn’t know but that he had seemed extra savage that morning.
Old Frank usually never took the team out until after the midday meal. That morning he went over and told Jack Connor, Mum’s brother, what had happened. When he returned he was very upset and I heard him say to Mum that her brother was a dirty scoundrel. She didn’t like this and they had a real go-in. At first I thought he was going to hit her but he didn’t. He went over to the stable and harnessed the horses and took them out ploughing – he wouldn’t stop to have his dinner.
When I went into dinner Mum remarked, ‘Now Bert, you have seen Frank in a temper. What do you think of it?’ I said that he goes pretty mad and she said that if he ever got that way to keep away from him. She said that he soon cooled down and that he would be all right again that night. I asked what her brother said about the shooting of his boar. She told me that he had made Frank pay ten pounds. He thought that the boar was worth that but they knew it had only cost him two pounds. Mum said, ‘Jack is like that. He would take his own mother down if he could.’
When Frank came in that night he had gotten over the whole upset and was quite jolly. He said to me, ‘What went through your mind Bert, when the boar was chasing me down the hill?’ I told him about my changed feelings. He laughed and said that he had never got to the house quicker and that the boar nearly had him once, but fell behind. He could almost feel the boar’s teeth. He didn’t know what had happened because he didn’t have time to look behind. I told him about the rocks and said that I felt sure they had saved his life. He said, ‘Oh well, it’s over now. Did Mum tell you what that miserable sod valued that boar at? To think that I nearly lost my life.’
The next morning he sent me over to the plough to get a swingle bar and set of chains. He brought a harnessed horse up to the house and fixed a chain around the pig’s head and dragged it into a timbered paddock where we piled up logs and bushes over it and burnt it.
13
KILLING THE PIG
Frank finished his fallowing about the end of October 1906, and things went fine until Christmas time. Three days before Christmas Frank suggested that we kill a large porker. Mum said that it was a grand idea. They had about forty pigs at the large porker size. Then Mum asked who would kill it. She said, ‘You can’t very well ask Jack on account of what has happened to his boar.’ (Jack was a butcher by trade before he settled on the land.) Old Frank said, ‘Not to worry. I’ve seen him kill hundreds so I’ll kill it. Anyway, it is only a porker and it’s different from killing a big pig.’
So two days before Christmas, I was told to light a fire near the shed close to the house. I had to pile large stones on each side of where the fire was to be lit, and put two iron bars from one wall of stones to the other. These iron bars had to be far enough apart to stand three kerosene tins full of water side by side on them, so that when I put the fire under them, the water would come to the boil. We needed boiling water to scald and clean the pig.
Frank told me to have the water boiling so we could clean the pig at about four o’clock in the afternoon. A few minutes before four, he turned up with a knife and we went to the pig-sties. I had some grain in a bucket to put into a small sty to coax some of the pigs in. When Frank picked out the one he wanted to kill, I was to shut the gate to keep it in. He said that when he grabbed the pig I was to let the others out and shut the gate again.
When he grabbed the pig by its back leg it started to struggle and squeal. I opened the gate and all the small pigs bolted out, but the two sows that were in there didn’t waste any time in coming to the aid of the one Frank was struggling with. It was squealing blue murder and one of the sows grabbed Frank by the leg. I grabbed a stick and hit her over the snout. She let go of Frank and ran out, but then the other sow attacked him. He yelled to me to shut the gate. This I did and jumped over the fence out of the way. Frank was holding the pig he wanted by one of its hind legs, and using the knife in his other hand on the sow as she rushed him. He sliced her snout with the knife. I opened the gate again and the sow, with her snout pouring blood, bolted out.
Frank let go of the pig he was holding and went after the sow, waving the knife at her. I managed to slam the gate shut, stopping the pig he wanted to
kill from getting out. Frank chased the sow for a while, but soon gave up and came back to where I was. He was white with rage, his trousers were badly torn, and so was his leg. When I said that he should go and get his leg attended to, he said, ‘If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll kill that bastard of a pig!’ I drew his attention to the pig that he wanted. ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘you managed to keep it from getting away. Good boy.’
I suggested that if we lifted the pig over the side of the sty we would have no interference from the other pigs. So Frank got over the sty first and I dragged the pig to where he could reach it. He took hold of the pig’s back legs and I grabbed it by the ears and we lifted it over the fence. Then I got over and all was ready for the killing.
Frank said that he had seen Jack kill many pigs this size and that he always sat them up on their bottoms, holding them between his legs, clasping one hand over the snout and bottom jaw. If this is done, the pig cannot bite, and you have one hand free to stick it with the knife.
So Frank sat the pig on its bottom and grabbed the snout with one hand, like a professional slaughterman. I handed him the knife. He looked at me and said, ‘I’ve seen Jack kill dozens of pigs this size, but I’m not sure whether he stuck the knife straight in and down or a little to the left. What do you think Bert?’ I replied that I thought it was straight in and then straight down. Frank said that he thought pigs were similar to us inside and so the heart would be a little to the left.
