by A B Facey
Then Jock and I had our breakfast, packed up all our stores and beds, took our tent down and had everything ready to move. I went to the horses and put the harness on them. It seemed the bay mare always worked in the shafts and the black worked in the lead, but I changed this by putting the bay in the shafts, and hooking the black in front. I got into the cart, got a firm grip on the reins, yelled ‘Come on! Get up!’ and shook the reins at them. They started to prance so I called, ‘Whoa!’ and they stopped prancing. I waited for a few seconds and again shook the reins and called, ‘Come on! Get up!’ and they moved off without any further bother.
I drove them on to a nearby road, then turned them around and drove back to where the gang was waiting to be picked up, and told them to load their gear on. While they did this I made a fuss of the horses, patting them and seeing that the harness was comfortable.
When the loading was finished, two men sat on the back of the cart and Harry Beet, the Boss, and the other man sat in the front with me. I took hold of the reins and called to them to get up. They made to go, then the leader started to do a bit of a dance, stamped her feet and tried to turn around, so I called ‘Whoa!’ The leader stopped and I got down, patted her and brushed the flies away from her eyes. I gave them both a friendly pat, then got back into the cart and tried again. To the surprise of all, both horses moved off as if there wasn’t anything wrong.
With all our gear, stores and tools plus five men, we had quite a load. Tom Johnson drove along behind us for a few miles. We still had ten miles to go to Spark’s Reserve, and when Tom saw that the horses had settled down, he passed us. We didn’t have any further trouble with the horses; they turned out to be two of the best I had ever worked with.
Thirteen
My job with this gang took us to many places in the wheat-belt until all the dams were fenced-in and rabbit-proof. When the dam fencing was finished a message was sent to the Boss to take two men and me to a well at a place called Kunjin. It was ninety feet deep and had a solid granite stone bottom. Beautiful fresh water was seeping into the bottom but there wasn’t enough pressure to force the water up to make a large enough catchment.
This job took us six weeks and the work was hard. I had to take my turn going down the well and helping put holes into the granite. One man had to hold the drill, while the other struck it with a heavy hammer. The man holding the drill had to give it a quarter of a turn after each blow. It took hours to put a one-inch hole into the granite to a distance of two feet for blasting. We managed to blast eight feet of rock out of the well and the blast broke through the granite. There was now fifteen feet of water in the well, so our job was well done.
The day before we finished working on the well the Inspector from Perth called on us and camped with us that night. He was full of praise for the job we had done. Harry, our Boss, took ill with back trouble and the Inspector decided to take him to town to the doctor. That left only three of us—Jock McKay, Bentley and me.
The Inspector then asked us if we would clean up a well at Jubuck, a few miles west from where we were. He didn’t know what condition it was in but it could be dangerous. The settlers had let so many buckets fall down into the well that they had blocked it, and now they had to cart water many miles.
‘Now,’ the Inspector said to me, ‘one of you will have to take charge and of course will get boss’ pay. It looks like you.’ I said, ‘I’ll do my best.’ He said, ‘All you have to do is one of you go down the well and fish the buckets out of the water. Hook them two or three at a time on to a grappling iron, then the men at the top can haul them up.’
He then told us that the well was about one hundred and forty feet deep, and we looked at each other with amazement. The well we had just done was, we thought, deep enough.
When Harry and the Inspector were ready to depart, the Inspector said, ‘Come back to the depot at Wickepin when you’ve finished. You should be there in about eight days.’ Then they drove away.
So we set off for the bucket-retrieving job that none of us liked the sound of.
When we got to Jubuck we found a good place to camp close to the well, and went and had a look down it There was a two-man windlass on the well and a wire rope with a hook on each end for buckets—the idea was that one bucket would go down while the other was coming up. The shaft was large—six feet by four feet—and the timbering was very rough, with four to six inch gaps in places.
Jock and Bentley refused to go down the well, so that left me. Taking a hurricane lamp, I gave instructions to the men about how to let me down so that I could have a good look at the condition of the timber. I had fixed a rope loop to put on to one of the bucket hooks to hold me. The men lowered me down slowly. There was a lot of water seeping in and running over the timber, so I got very wet—the water was as cold as ice. I managed to keep the lamp alight by holding it under me away from the falling water. At the bottom there were three buckets which were partly out of the water. There was no foul air in the well and the water—which I had tasted—was fresh and beautiful. I had a good look at the situation, then called to be pulled to the top again.
I changed into some fresh clothes and put on a waterproof overcoat, and when I went back down I took a solid piece of wood with me, to fit in between the well timbers just above where I would be fishing out the buckets. This was to protect me from falling water and anything else while down there. I still had the lamp, and I took some matches in case it went out. I told the men that when I got settled at the bottom, I would call out and they were to pull up the end of the rope I had come down on, fix the three-pronged grappling iron on to it and lower it down to me. I would then hook the eight-gallon steel buckets on to the grappling iron to be taken out of the well. That afternoon we managed to get eight buckets out. When we knocked off at five o’clock I felt much better about the whole job.
The next morning we started at about eight o’clock. I tied a long length of rope to the windlass stays and let it hang down the shaft. As the men lowered me down I used it to steady myself. Now the buckets were proving hard to lift because they had been down for so long and had wedged into the mud and clay at the bottom. I got only two out after a lot of manoeuvring and pulling and decided to send them up out of my way to give me room to work in. I called to the men to pull them up and Jock and Bentley commenced pulling. Then, all of a sudden, all hell seemed to break loose. There was a loud bang about hallway up, then a rattling noise like something hurtling down the shaft, and large lumps of timber and earth came tumbling down. The lamp was knocked from my hands and everything went dark.
The noise of falling earth and timber stopped just as suddenly as it started, but the plip, plip of occasional pieces of rubble could be heard. I couldn’t see a thing and the water was rising. It was now up to my knees. I was sure this was the end for me; it was only a matter of time.
Then I remembered the matches inside my pocket and struck one. The light showed that the board I had placed above me was stopping a lot of timber and earth from falling farther. After striking several matches I thought I could see a way out. By pushing some timber sideways from where I was, I might be able to squeeze through and get on top of the fallen debris. This worked—I got through.
I decided to climb up by placing my toes in between the timber on each side of the shaft, moving up about a foot to eighteen inches at a time. I felt my way with my hands as I went.
At last I came to the spot where the shaft had caved in, about sixty feet from the top, and what I saw was terrifying. All one side of the shaft had broken away, leaving a cavity on the west side roughly seven feet deep and eight feet high. It looked like more would go at any minute.
Looking up, I saw my only chance of getting out of this death trap. The rope I had tied to the stay on the windlass to steady myself was hanging down on the east side of the shaft, still intact. My hopes mounted. I leant gently across and got hold of that precious rope. Pulling on it, I went up and out in a few minutes.
There was nobody aro
und when I got out of the well, and I couldn’t help it, I cried bitterly and couldn’t stop. Yet while I was down the well in great danger and scared stiff, crying was the farthest thing from my mind. I went to our camp, stirred the fire up and put the billy on to make a cup of tea. I had an awful sick feeling in my stomach.
While I was waiting for the billy to boil, a man came galloping up and said loudly, ‘Have you heard anything about that bloke that’s down the well? He must be done for. I wouldn’t go down that damned thing for a thousand pounds.’ Then three men came up in a horse and cart. Jock was one of them, and he ran over to me and said, ‘How in the hell did you manage to get out?’ The horseman stood back dumbfounded and said, ‘It was you!’ They all looked at me in amazement. Then Bentley arrived with three more men in a cart and was just as surprised to see me.
I told Jock that we couldn’t do anything about the well—it was too dangerous. I said we would cover it with logs tomorrow morning, after taking the windlass off. ‘I don’t feel like doing any work this afternoon,’ I said. ‘All I want to do now is lie down until this awful feeling in my stomach goes.’ I lay down, thinking about how lucky you can get. When I thought about how close to death I had been, a cold shiver ran down my spine.
Then Jock and Bentley came running to my tent and Bentley yelled, ‘The windlass has gone.’ Sure enough the whole top part of the well had given away, and the windlass was six feet down the shaft. There wasn’t a thing we could do about it. I said to the men, ‘It’s a complete write-off. We’ll pack up tomorrow and start for Wickepin.’ I would have to report to the Inspector. We had the eight buckets that we fished out, so we would take them with us.
We left the next morning and arrived about six-thirty that evening. The Inspector wasn’t expecting us for another four or five days, and there wasn’t anyone there—it was a Saturday. I told Jock and Bentley we would have to wait until he returned.
The following day there was still no sign of the Inspector so I put the two horses into the cart and told Jock and Bentley I was going to visit my relatives and would be back that evening. Grandma was so pleased to see me and I had lunch with them all and we had a long talk. I never mentioned the near-tragedy at the well as I knew it would worry Grandma. At four o’clock I drove back to the depot.
The following morning the Inspector turned up at about ten o’clock. I had just finished telling the Inspector about the cave-in when Mr Sublet, the man who had given me the job in Perth, and Harry Beet arrived. They had come by train to Wickepin. Harry had been in hospital in Narrogin for a few days, but he said he was much better now.
Mr Sublet and the Inspector retired to the office and I was called in. The Inspector had written down my report as I had told it to him and when I went in Mr Sublet had just finished reading it. He looked up and said, ‘What do you think went wrong?’ I told him that about a week before we finished at Kunjin we had had heavy rain and it could have been that the water continually seeping through was too much for the timber, which must have been rotten in places.
Then Mr Sublet said, ‘Did it occur to you that the men on the top may have been careless?’ I replied, ‘No, I would trust Jock and Bentley with my life.’ That satisfied them and Mr Sublet said, ‘All right, you had a very lucky escape. I am going to recommend to the Government that they put down a two thousand yard dam for the settlers at Jubuck.’
We were told later that afternoon to get ready to go out to a place some sixty miles east of Wickepin, to fence and put pumps and water-troughs on to two dams. This job took us until the end of August.
Back at the depot we had to wait until Mr Sublet came to be given our next job. He turned up with bad news—our gang was to be put off as the kind of work we had been doing was finished. We were all paid up and Tom drove us into Wickepin in the buggy.
I went to Mrs James’ boarding-house and booked in while I made up my mind what I would do next.
On my eighteenth birthday I borrowed a saddle-horse and rode out to Aunt Alice’s place to spend the day with Grandma. We had a wonderful day. Grandma wanted to know how I had been getting along with my schooling. I told her that, owing to shifting about so much, I had neglected my books but I could read well enough, and I could write a letter and sign my name very well. Grandma shook her head and said I was very bright as a child, and if given a reasonable schooling, she felt sure I could have gone far. As things were, she thought I would always have to do hard work for a living.
The day after that, I met a young chap looking for work. His name was Bob Howe and we chummed up. He was a nice chap, twenty years old, tall and wiry like myself and a good worker. He asked me to come into partnership with him on a chopping and burning job about a mile outside the town.
We started work on the first of September. The work was very hard, chopping scrub and trees down, and burning the large trees down. We were paid fifteen shillings an acre cleared, and there were two hundred acres to be done. Working long hours, we earned a little over five pounds a week each. The job wasn’t finished until all the scrub and timber had been felled.
We finished our contract at the end of November, and after that Bob got a job in a blacksmith’s shop, and I got a job wheat-lumping at the Wickepin railway yard with two other men. Our wages were one penny for every bag of wheat we lumped—loaded—or one pound each day, whichever was the greater. This job lasted until the third week in February 1913. The farmers around Wickepin had had a bumper harvest, and although the three of us worked at full speed, I have seen as many as thirty teams waiting to be unloaded. We did very well out of it; between the three of us, we lumped one hundred and sixty thousand bags of wheat.
Wondering where next to look for work, I noticed a lot of men turning up at Wickepin, all waiting for something. This puzzled me until I met Jock McKay walking along the main street. He told me the Government was going to extend the railway line from Wickepin to Merredin, and he hoped to get a job on the plate-layers’ gang. Jock had done this work before and liked it. The pay was good and the work wasn’t hard. He was what they called a ‘dogger’. His job was driving in spikes to hold the rails firmly against the sleepers. The spikes were called dogs, hence the name. He suggested that I put in for the job with him. I said I hadn’t ever done work like that, and he said he could teach me. And for the next two days Jock showed me how to use a special hammer for spoke driving.
The Engineer had an office in the railway yard and Jock took me to him and told the Engineer that I was a dogger and had worked with him before. The Engineer said, ‘If you’re half as good as Jock at driving dogs, you’ll do.’
So the first Monday in March Jock and I and several other men had to go to the small town of Merredin where we were to join another gang. There were forty-two of us altogether, not counting the Ganger, the Boss. I didn’t like our Ganger, but all the gang liked the Engineer very much.
We worked for the first two weeks doing shunting lines and points in the railway yard, then we started on the new line. This section of the new line had already been formed with culverts and bridges, and temporary rails had been laid. Our job was to complete the line ready for traffic.
The pay was good—one pound for an eight hour day. Everything went fine for the first six weeks. I had some anxious moments when I broke the head of some of the spikes. When this happened I had to get a brace and bit to bore another hole, then enter another spike and drive it home. Jock was a good mate. When a spike or hammer handle broke, we would help each other by slipping over the other’s rail and driving some spikes, though we had to watch to be sure the Ganger wasn’t around.
Then one day I broke two spikes in succession. The Ganger was watching close by and it made me nervous. ‘Clumsy fool,’ he called out I didn’t answer him and this seemed to annoy him more, and he called me a ‘clumsy bastard.’ I threw the brace down and walked over to him and said, ‘I don’t mind what you call me, but don’t you put a slur on my mother. You take it back.’ He said, ‘So what are you going to do about it, mu
g?’
Jock called out to me, ‘Don’t take any notice of him, Bert. He’s trying to aggravate you into fighting. He has done it before and the men that have fallen for it have ended up getting a hiding, then the sack.’ The Ganger turned on Jock and said, ‘Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you.’ This man was over six feet tall and about fifteen stone, very strong and powerful. I must admit I was afraid of him.
By now all of the men within a hundred yards were watching to see what was going to happen. The Ganger turned on me again and said, ‘Well, what are you going to make of it?’ I said (and I was scared stiff of this giant of a man), ‘If you won’t withdraw what you said I’m prepared to fight you. You can’t say that about my mother.’ He said, ‘We’ll settle this here and now.’
All the men gathered around, trying to talk me out of it and saying he would kill me. One of the men, Bill Strong, came to me and said that he had been a boxer in his younger days, and told me to keep the Ganger off by using a straight left if I could.
The fight was on: the Ganger came at me like a mad bull and swung a terrific right at my head. I ducked and drove a straight left that hit him flush on the nose. That stopped him, and blood started running from his mouth and nose. Without easing up I repeated the punch again and again, and each time a punch landed his head jerked back. Blood started to run off his chin all over the front of his shirt. Now all fear had left me and I was able to side-step him and hit him at will— he was very groggy. We had only been fighting two or three minutes when a right cross to the chin dropped him into a sitting position. He sat there dazed for a full three minutes. Then I said, ‘Come on, get up. I want to finish this.’ He held up his hand and said he had had enough.
