Chapter 8 Our New Life in the Bush

                                              Chapter 8  Our New Life in the Bush

Peggy and Alec are now my parents, and I refer to them as Mum and Dad.

The war was over and, again hankering for farm life, my father persuaded my mother to accompany him back to Green Springs when I was a year old. At first they lived on a property about two miles out of Green Springs. Larry walked the two miles to the Green Springs School. After a few months they moved to another house even further out, and Larry continued to walk maybe three or four miles every day.

Amazed at his resilience, Peggy said, “He never complained. He loved life and looked on everyday as a new adventure.”

 Mum's mother, Annie, hated the thought of her youngest daughter being buried out in the bush, and she wrote often, urging my mother to come to Brisbane, so sometimes she packed her clothes, and with her baby, travelled the long ponderous journey by steam train down to visit Annie. The distance to Brisbane was 300 miles, and the trip involved changing trains at a little stop called Mungar Junction just outside of Maryborough. This stop occurred in the middle of the night, ensuring all travellers arrived in Brisbane tired out, and grimy from coal dust.

It was on one of these trips that my mother arranged to meet an old work colleague in the city for lunch. I was then sixteen months old and Annie was going to babysit. Mum dressed me and was in the process of preparing to leave the house, when she heard a loud thump in the front room. She ran, to find her mother lying unconscious on the floor.

When she yelled to Annie’s neighbour to call the doctor, he hurried in, but sadly shook his head, "I'm afraid it's too late this time for the doctor, Peggy."  My mother was devastated. She had lost her closest confidant.

Annie died of a stroke, having suffered from high blood pressure for some years.  She was 67.

By this time, Dickie and my grandfather, with Dad’s help, had built a big slab home for Molly and their children. The thousands of colourful birds would have heard a strange new sound in their bush environment, as the brothers sweated through the rhythmic backbreaking strokes of the crosscut saw, cutting down huge ironbark and spotted gum trees. Again using the adze, a broad axe and wedges, they used the bush timber around them. Taking full advantage of the largest trees, the first four slabs were taken from the outside perimeter of the trunk. Lastly, they used the core of the trunk, inserting the wedges and belting them in with a sledgehammer. 

 Fortunately, Larry was interested in the logistics of the building, and as he grew up asked many questions of his father. “Dad said the slabs were slotted in between ironbark posts. Grooves were made on the posts by nailing one inch by one inch timber strips down their full length.”(1 inch equals 2.5 cm.)

 The house was large and open with a galvanized iron roof and a timber floor.  It had a kitchen, a lounge room and two bedrooms. There was no lining or ceiling.

As time went by Dickie and Molly had two more boys, making five children. The youngest two were about seven and eight when my parents came to live on the farm and share the work and income.

 Before we all arrived, the men built on a larger weatherboard kitchen, two side verandahs, and a third bedroom on the corner of the house. On the side verandah furthest away from the living room, Dickie and  my dad put up hessian walls to create a large room big enough for our little family to live in. Dickie and Molly’s two younger boys, and Larry, now eight, were all good companions.

When we settled into the farmhouse, Dad, needing to make money, put into practice an idea he had for creating a temporary income for himself. Because the war was over, the army was selling off surplus trucks at a cheap price. Dad purchased a Ford Blitz ex Bren gun carrier. There was such a huge supply of timber on the two and a half thousand acre farm, that he realized he could make money out of selling logs. The truck was just a roofless cabin, and my father bought a jinker, which is a little platform on wheels attached to a long pole, to support the logs at their far end. Then he rigged up on the truck a winch for loading, which he bought from Hyne’s timber yard in Maryborough, a town 100 miles, (160 km,) away.

    He had to figure out a way to work the cross-cut saw by himself so he could cut down the timber, so, using his skills of invention once again, he cut up some rubber tubing to make a spring which he attached to the opposite end of the long saw. This way he worked one end of the saw and the rubber acted to retract the saw back.

While he was cutting the timber this was the only vehicle they had. If  Mum needed a doctor’s or dentist’s appointment, she went with Dad in the truck to Assville, a larger town 35 miles away, taking we children with her. Larry sat in the middle between my parents, and she carried me in her arms.

Dad was always a daredevil, and one day he said to Mum, "Turn around and look back."

“Oh! My God Alec!”

He knew full well she would be grossly startled. Because of the high load of logs, as they turned a corner the logs protruded right over their heads! It was a scary sight from the front seat.

Seat belts hadn't been invented and there were no laws about driving under the influence of anything. About four miles from the farmhouse on the way to Green Springs the road dipped into a small gully, climbing a steep range for about 200 yards, (or metres,) on the other side. Because Dad almost always went to the pub for a few drinks before he came home in the truck from the timber mill, he usually drove home in a pretty merry state of mind. 

One evening, with wife and children beside him, my dad, who never drove slowly anywhere in any vehicle at any time in his life, was careering down this range on his way home after selling the load of logs, the empty  jinka rattling along behind. Unfortunately, the brakes on the truck had given out., and as they neared the bottom of their steep descent, they could see a car, obviously broken down in the gully. Various people were standing around it. 

I can clearly picture my dad’s arms and legs working frantically to change to a lower gear and pumping a useless brake, as he leaned out of the truck waving his hat and screaming out "Get out of the way! Get out of the way! No brakes! No brakes!"

The people scattered just in time and Dad somehow managed to avoid the car and stop the truck before it went up over the opposite bank. Nobody was upset. They were all laughing hysterically and most of them were unsteady on their feet. Still today, my mother marvels at their foolhardy actions and wonders how they survived all her husband’s escapades.

When I think about it, the whole timber carting project must have been a challenging logistical exercise for Dad, requiring guts of steel...and a generous measure of foolhardiness!