by A B Facey
67
POULTRY AND PIGS
In 1947 we managed to set up a small poultry farm on our property at Tuart Hill. Joe had a great liking for poultry so we set him up with four hundred hens. The poultry houses were on the property when we bought it in 1934. Our second eldest son, George, had returned from war and was working for a monumental firm and he was getting good money. This upset Joe, on account of the small amount he was getting out of the poultry, and as George’s boss wanted more youths to train for their business, they offered Joe a job. We then had to decide what to do about the poultry farm.
I had three months long service leave due to me from the Tramways and, having gained some knowledge by reading and learning about poultry and egg production, and working out the profit we had made from four hundred fowls, I found that if we had two thousand head of poultry we could make a better living than me working for the Tramways. When I explained to the Superintendent the position I was placed in, he advised me to apply for three months leave without pay to see if the poultry worked out all right and if it didn’t, he said that I would come back to my job. He also said that he would grant me the leave if I applied, so I did, and leave was granted. So we became poultry farmers in the later part of 1946.
By this time I had been President of the Tramways Union for about five years and had been Vice-President for several years before that, so I also applied for leave of absence from the Union for three months and this was also approved. At this time I had also been, over the previous two years or more, a member of the Perth Roads Board, representing what was known as the Osborne Park Ward.
We built the poultry farm up into a very good business and our profits were more than twice the wages that I would be receiving from the Tramways. Things were settling down from after the war, people were returning to the city and home building was booming. Because of this we were told that the poultry farm would have to be shifted further out of the city, so we bought forty acres of virgin land about ten miles north of the city in what was known as the Wanneroo District. Here we built poultry sheds and a bush humpy to live in. Then we sold our home in Tuart Hill and shifted to the Wanneroo property and went into the poultry business in real earnest. We built our flock up to two thousand hens.
We also built a four-roomed house by ourselves, with jarrah timber and asbestos outer walls and plasterboard linings and ceilings, and a roof of iron. I couldn’t get builders owing to the boom in the building of homes. I had never built a real house but had worked as a builder’s labourer for a time and had some idea as to how it was done. Having worked out what timber, iron, nails, bolts, etc. would be needed, I bought the materials and set to work. With looking after the poultry and doing the odd jobs, it took me nine months to complete that house. I was so proud when I finished and so was Evelyn. I also put in a bathroom, laundry with dry-wells and a toilet. Everything we did ourselves. We pioneered what is known as Warwick Road, Wanneroo.
Evelyn and I worked very hard to make a good living out of the place. My wife would don a pair of bib and brace overalls and help with all the work of raising chickens. It seemed that there were always eggs to clean and pack. I had a truck and every second day would load the eggs up and take them into the market in Perth. I also had a little egg round on the side. I would go around to houses in the area selling the eggs direct at a discount. It was hard work, but we made a good living, and best of all Evelyn and I were working together and for ourselves.
The only problem we had was with foxes. They were trouble, always finding a way to get into the fowl sheds. We lost a lot of fowls through foxes. The fox would get in and run around and around under the perches and the old fowl would be looking down and get so giddy from watching, down she would fall. It was amazing. I never saw anything like it.
In 1949, having previously resigned from the Perth Roads Board when we moved to Wanneroo, I was elected to represent the South Ward of the Wanneroo Roads Board. I spent a lot of time working to get the roads and other services in the district improved, and in most cases, established.
At the end of 1949, in November, George married, and then in August of the following year our youngest daughter, Shirley, left home. She married a chap named Bill Cockman, a descendant of a well-known Wanneroo pioneering family. Now Eric was the only one left at home.
Late in 1950 a man called at our place and wanted to buy our property. As everything was going along fine we told him we didn’t want to sell. He went away and came back three days later, almost begging for us to sell. He had a poultry farm in the city and had to move out further. He got so persistent that I said to my wife, ‘Suppose we put a price on the place well above its worth and demand cash, that will scare him off.’ At the time our youngest son Eric had to travel over thirty miles to school each day by bus, sixteen miles each way. This was our only drawback at Wanneroo. The little lad came home each school day done in. So we decided that we would sell at a price that would put us in a good financial position.
A day or so later the man came back. He was just as eager as ever and I offered him the place at a price well beyond its value. When I told him he whistled and said, ‘Oh, that is too much – and you want cash.’ With that he got in his old motor truck and went away. We hoped he wouldn’t come back as we loved the place.
We had previously sold ten acres to two returned soldiers from the Second World War. We didn’t make anything out of the sale as we sold it to them at the same price that it cost us. We had also sold ten acres to our son-in-law at cost. This left us with twenty acres. All the improvements and buildings were on this twenty acres. The land we had sold had no improvements on it.
Then the man who so badly wanted to buy the property came back again. This time he offered us a price some four hundred pounds below the price we had put on the place, but we stood firm, and after thinking it over for awhile he said, ‘Okay, I’ll buy it.’ That was the end of us at Wanneroo. Well, almost. In later years a street was named after us – Facey Street – and there is also a ‘Barney Street’ in Wanneroo, named after our eldest son who was killed in the war.
While we were waiting for the settlement of the sale we had to look for another place for us to live, and after looking at many places we purchased a property at Gosnells. This was twelve miles south of Perth and an old property that had an old house on it – falling down. The owner was using the property to run cattle and pigs, and it consisted of thirty-six acres nearly all cleared and fenced – about fifteen acres were pig-proof.
We got this property very cheap and I considered it would make an ideal place for pig raising. After we purchased the place we found out that it had a bad name and were told that the previous owner had not been able to rear any young stock at all. This was very upsetting, but I had first-hand knowledge of pig raising so we took no notice of people’s talk and went right ahead. (When I mention the word ‘we’, I mean Evelyn and I – we were partners in everything from the day of our wedding.)
I went over to see a man who was the manager of a large stock firm in Perth. He was also a veterinary surgeon and a top man in his field. He became very interested in our attempt to challenge the ability of this property and its capacity to rear good pigs. He came and had a look at the place and gave me some good advice. One of the troubles had been that the pigs would only live for six to nine days – they would thrive for that time, then go off their food (mother’s milk) – then they got very thin and died. My friend the vet gave me a serum to inject into the sows a week before the little ones were born. This worked wonders with the pigs – I had purchased fourteen sows and two boars. I was congratulated by several stock firms on the way we brought the pigs along and by stock inspectors who had seen my pigs. We used to rear the little ones to prime baconers, then send them to market where we got top market price for them.
One of the secrets of our success with the recovering of this property for raising pigs, cattle and sheep, was the advice given to us to top-dress the whole place with concentrates. We were advised to
put on a mixture of copper, zinc and superphosphate. We did this and the recovery was remarkable. The first rains after we spread the concentrates brought about a complete revival to such an extent that I bought fifty sheep with lambs at foot to keep the grass down. The sheep improved after six weeks to such a condition that we sent them to market and got a hundred percent profit.
The old house on the property was so run down that we had to build another one. After the success of the Wanneroo house we had no trouble doing this. First of all we built just two rooms, with a toilet and laundry and then later we gradually added further rooms onto it. One of the main attractions of the place was a beautiful row of pine trees down the side of it. We put in some fruit trees and Evelyn, as usual, established a good vegetable garden.
The only downfall was the very strong east winds. These were very hot and dry and came in summer. They blew straight down over the Darling Scarp from the inland. They were so strong that people were always losing the rooves from their houses and sheds if they weren’t secure. Anything loose left lying about was just carried away. You’d wake up in the morning and it would be just gone. Of course, holding soil was a big problem.
The first year, without realising, we ploughed the paddock in front of the house and woke next morning to find about three feet of soil around the front door and all over the verandah. Evelyn nearly went crazy for awhile with all the sand everywhere until we could get grass growing again on the ploughed land.
The wind was so strong, in fact, that it would blow all the sand away from under the pig fences and all the pigs would get out. And it is a terrible job to get pigs in again. They have no herd instinct at all so they won’t stay together, and they also have no idea about being chased and going where you want them to go. They’re the most frustrating of animals.
In July 1951 our son Joseph married and he and his wife bought a property in Gosnells and started a small mixed farm. We were happy to have him living nearby.
We stayed on our property for three years and made quite a good living. Then late in 1953 a man came along and offered to buy the place for more than twice as much as it had cost us, so again we sold out. My health had been failing badly and my doctor had sent me to Hollywood Hospital for a month. He also advised me to stop trying to do heavy work, and retire.
So when I came home from hospital and we received an offer for the farm we decided to sell out.
68
GRINDING TO A HALT
I have never ever felt like I was tied down to any one place or any one job. I have always felt that I could sell out or walk off at any time. It didn’t matter. I never ever worried about trying something different or having a go at something. I have always believed that if you want to do something you usually can.
I always liked finding a run-down property, buying it, and then building it up until it was a first class place. Even when I had a place that was running well I would always be on the lookout for something else. If I saw a badly kept place, I would investigate it. It was something I enjoyed. I liked the challenge of building up a place from nothing and making a success where another fellow had failed. And once I had a place running well I was always looking for new ways to improve it – something else I could be doing.
But I was always ready to take a risk and try something new. If it worked out, well good, if not I would just try something else.
So once again we shifted. We purchased a small property in the hills about twenty-five miles from Perth in an easterly direction at a place called Mount Helena, in the Mundaring District. We bought a few fowls and a few breeding pigs. The place consisted of six acres with about eighty fruit trees. I felt that I could manage the work.
We had only been at this place for about three months when the people around the district found out that I had been a member of Local Government in Perth, Wanneroo and Gosnells, and many asked me to stand as a candidate for the Roads Board at the next election to be held in April 1953. I tried to get out of it on account of my health but they wouldn’t take no for an answer. A group of ratepayers wanted someone with new ideas and a progressive attitude and they insisted that I was the man for the job. So after talking things over with my wife I agreed to stand. When the nominations were called for candidates for the election I put my name and won the election easily and so I became a member of the fourth Roads Board in a space of approximately twenty years.
I found my job as a council member (I represented what was known as the Chidlow Ward) a very busy one and it took up a lot of my time. But it was the kind of work that I thrived on. I enjoyed public office and helping and advising people.
One of the biggest problems with Roads Boards in the outer areas of Perth at that time was that the Board members, by and large, had little knowledge of the Roads Board District Act which outlined, among other things, means by which Boards could raise revenue. Most Board members did not know about borrowing money for capital works. They relied on rates for all revenue. As areas became more and more built-up this became a problem – more and more capital works were required, so either the rates went higher and higher to meet these needs, or more often the capital works were neglected. Having been on the Perth Roads Board first I had learnt all about these things and was able to introduce them to the other Boards on which I served. It was often a battle to begin with to convince them that they were better off raising a loan than raising rates every time they wanted to carry out works, but in the end they saw the truth of it. As soon as this happened a lot of public improvements were begun.
Twelve months after I was elected to the Mundaring Roads Board I was elected to the position of Chairman. I was also appointed a Justice of the Peace. I was very thrilled and proud.
Early in 1958 I became very ill – my war injuries were taking the life out of me and I was having more than the usual number of blackouts. Then one day I had a nasty heart attack at a Roads Board meeting. A doctor was called in and he took me to his surgery at Mundaring and gave me a booster injection and made me lie down for awhile. He strongly advised me to resign from the Board and give work away.
I was now sixty-four years old and my war pension was not very much, so I appealed for an increase. About six months before this I twice appealed for an increase but was turned down. So, when I appealed for the third time, two neutral doctors had to examine me as well as my local doctor. After a lengthy wait, I was notified that I had to appear before this review board of doctors to have my appeal examined. I was thoroughly examined by the doctors, who had studied my war history, the hospital files and previous doctors’ reports. One of the doctors asked me when my spleen had been ruptured. I hadn’t known that it was ruptured. He then told the other two doctors to examine a spot up under my ribs. They did this, it was very painful, and all agreed that my spleen was ruptured. The only explanation I could give them for the rupture was that I had been blown up by a shell at Gallipoli and buried by sand-bags.
I was told to take things very carefully and not to do any work. They said that if I wasn’t a teetotaller I would have died long ago. I was glad that I had always kept my promise to Grandma and that I was strong enough to resist the encouragement of others. They would always say, ‘Come on, be a man’, but I’d say, ‘No thanks, I’d rather be a larrikin.’ A week after the examination I received a letter from the Repatriation Department telling me that my pension was to be increased, and that I would get six months back pay. This was good news. It changed my life – I could now live on my pension and not have to worry about having to keep poultry and pigs to make my livelihood.
Our last child, Eric, left home at this time to join the Regular Army. After all the years we were now on our own. Evelyn, however, was not in the best of health either. She had her gall bladder out and had suffered several heart attacks. So we sold our poultry and pigs and now felt the benefit of not having to look after them. My working life had ended.
Two years later we sold the property and bought a house in Midland, a suburb east of Perth and at the foot
of the Darling Scarp, where we were closer to a doctor and a hospital. We realised that we would have to look after ourselves – health was now a big worry for both of us.
In November 1960 our youngest son, Eric, was married – so now all our children, except Barney of course, had gone on to other lives, and to families of their own. Then in 1967 we were up-rooted by the Government’s Main Roads Committee when they wanted to remove our house for a proposed new road. They paid us a good price and we moved to a house closer to the centre of Midland – close to a doctor and chemist.
The following year my wife became very ill and she was sent to hospital several times, for weeks at a time. I engaged several different doctors but she never got much better. She seemed to get worse as the years went by and she had several blackouts. Then, on the eighth of July 1976, she became unconscious and stayed in that state until the third of August 1976. She died at seven o’clock at night in my arms. We had been married for fifty-nine years, eleven months and twelve days. So on this day the loveliest and most beautiful woman left me.
Evelyn had changed my life. I have had two lives, miles apart. Before we married I was on my own. It was a lonely, solitary life – Evelyn changed that. After our marriage my life became something which was much more than just me.
