4. Farming at Kinilibah 1899-1920
Kinilibah the little district sandwiched in between the old Clifton Hills station and North Berry Jerry and situated six miles north of Marrar, was originally an outreach of Murrulebale Station and was sub-divided in the late nineties.
Red Bank, said to be the last selection in the Kinilibah area, was balloted for in 1899.
Early settlers to the district included John Leary, James Bourke, James Hazel, Henry White, John Crouch, Chris Fairweather Jnr., W. Lawrence and brothers, Thos. and Stephen Kennedy.
The country was covered with box timber and pine scrub. There were no fences and no permanent water.
The occasional flash flood in the Red Bank and Murrulebale creeks which junction in the area, was of little benefit to the Kinilibah settlers because in the beginning there were no holes in the creek beds big enough to contain much water. Water had to be conserved. My father told me that when the country was first thrown open, it was usual for a man and his wife to select adjoining blocks. They made their home on one block and the second block would eventually be reclaimed by the Crown in costs. I'm not sure if this ever occurred at Kinilibah, but it did on Winchendon Vale.
Kinilibah blocks averaged about 600 acres, which acreage at that time was considered a fair farm. The farms were worked with horse teams and most settlers owned a bare plant - five or six horses, plough, drill binder, stripper and a wagon. The stripper was a unique machine. The box was huge and was constructed in such a way a man could make his bed in it if he so desired. A 'shake down' in the stripper, in the very early days, often solved a room problem for the pioneers.
There are a few people still living, no doubt, who have heard of 'Boko', the character who lived in a disused stripper on a spot where the Coolamon Bowling Club is located.
The first Coolamon paper known as 'The Echo' was published by Mr. John Ledwedge. It comprised two pages and was a very small publication. Each week ‘The Echo’ reserved a tiny space for 'Boko's' weather forecast which the old folk maintained was surprisingly accurate and was followed with great interest by readers of 'The Echo'. 'Boko's' predictions commanded immense respect among competitors in the ploughing matches. 'We took a lot of notice of 'Boko', Peter Dunn said, 'He was never too far out'.
Ploughmen found 'Boko's' predictions helpful when loading equipment to travel to match fields in other areas. During cropping time early settlers cleaned and prepared their own seed for sowing. I recall an awkward looking contraption called a winnower standing in the corner of the chaff shed. It rattled into action when my father turned a wheel. Wheat was poured into the top of it somewhere, and the machine cleaned out the rubbish and the dirt. The wheat was then divided into lots, soaked in the bluestone and left to drain ready for sowing the next day.
In 1927 the winnower was replaced by another machine - the wheat grader. This machine was driven by an engine. It threw out a lot of dust and was very slow, forty bags being a good day's work. But slow though it may have been the advent of the new machine was cause for real joy on the farm (our farm, anyway). It meant there would be no more wheels to turn, no more messy bluestone pits to clean out (a job my brother and I had done for years), and best of all this new machine could be operated by two men and one of them travelled with it. The grader belonged to Mr. Ted Lewis of Berry Jerry.
I remember the bluestone pit during the great mouse plague in 1917. Every night the pit would be full of drowned mice. We would shovel them out, but by the time we finished our nightly quota, which took about an hour, there would be scores of mice already drowned and dozens more swimming in the bluestone. No words could describe the horror of that awful visitation. The smell of mice and the odour of sheep dip stayed with us for a long time after the filthy little nuisances were gone.
The pioneer homes at Kinilbah were humble enough. Made of pise, thick boards, bark slabs, tin and hessian, an odd house had a boarded floor. A few had a verandah.
It was the accepted belief in those days that the kitchen should be located at least fifteen yards from the main building in case of fire.
In wet weather an umbrella hung outside the door for occupants to use when they raced between wickets - Oops! I meant buildings. Sometimes a pair of galoshes would be left beside the umbrella. This gear had double usage.
The toilet was always at the bottom of the yard, shed and yards equally as far in another direction, and the stables and machinery sheds always to billyo someplace else.
The oddest thing though was the way the old settler used to build haystacks a mile or more away from the cutter and cart the hay to it. Our forebears believed in plenty of regular exercise.
None of the early settlers had any money. It was a case of make do with what there was available. Food was plain but there was enough. Imagine today's kids sitting down to a breakfast of rolled oats, a slice of toast (spread with fat and sprinkled with salt and pepper) or plain bread with honey or treacle. There wasn't any butter. School lunches were mainly thick sandwiches (more honey or treacle), a treat was a boiled egg or an apple. A couple of johnny cakes and the lunch was packed. We had nothing to growl about really. The generation before us often had to be satisfied with a plate of boiled wheat for breakfast, and a slice of dry bread for their school dinner. The women baked the bread and very successfully too. They made yeast from potatoes and hops. The yeast was bottled, tightly corked and placed on the shelf over the stove, where, 'it was warm'. In due course there would be a loud pop, the cork would hit the ceiling and the yeast was ready for use. Most women baked about five times a fortnight. Their bread didn't go stale overnight, or mould the way bread does today.
Clothes and fashions were relatively unimportant in the settler age. The women all had a 'best dress'. This dress was worn on special occasions, only, - consequently, it hardly ever saw daylight. The 'second-best dress', a print material (sixpence a yard), was for wearing to town and for visitation among the neighbours. The settler social calendar was of necessity restricted. Men's 'best' was invariably a tailor-made navy serge suit, and a white shirt starched until the collar and cuffs were hard and stiff as boards (men's suits were not sold in shops).
Work clothes were made of blue denim. Denim was a very tough material considered suitable for paddock wear only. No way in those days would young people have been persuaded to enter dance halls or other places of entertainment dressed in faded old denims and shoddy half worn out shoes.
For the settler children it was the 'grow-into' age, mother made all daughters clothes, and sons underwear. Only boys suits and family overcoats were bought. Every garment would be at least two sizes too big for the wearer, because he or she would 'grow into' it. Boots (no one wore shoes) suffered the same indignity. Boots were usually black leather 'lace ups' reinforced with solid steel heel protectors and some kind of tin toe-caps that defied all the kicking and ill-use the wearer could devise.
Generally the wardrobe was just beginning to fit its owner when it was worn out.
Incidentally, there were children who had few clothes and no shoes, because at 4,/- a pair they were too dear.
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Variety And Entertainment At Kinilibah
In 1927 the advent of the Red Bank barn was hailed with enthusiasm. Bradshaws, the Berry Jerry barn and social centre for many years, had closed down after the 1914-1918 war, and the community was left without a regular hall.
The Red Cross, the Comforts fund and other patriotic committees, had raised hundreds of pounds, with 'in aid-of' dances and entertainments in Bradshaws barn during the war years, and this had been made possible by the loyalty of a little company of voluntary musicians, namely - Mill Bradshaw, Mr. and Mrs. W. Lawrence, W. Woods, F. Butler and F. Deihm. These folk never ever let the barn down. Musicians at that time were pretty hard to come by.
The first time an orchestra appeared at a country dance hall in our corner of the world, was at Bradshaws barn. Every year the young men of Berry Jerry organised a Bachelor Ball, which was considered the event of the season.
The day came when the young women decided it was time the bachelors had a bit of competition and they duly promoted a Spinsters Ball. The venture was a tremendous success and the girls were jubilant. The bachelors however, were not to be outdone. When the Bachelors Ball was held a couple of months later, the organisers had a surprise in store for everyone - a three piece orchestra in charge of the programme. They were Annie, Gordon and Frank Miller - relatives of Reg Miller of Marrar.
Their music, apart from being an innovation, was delightfully sweet and mellow and the crowd loved them. It was good-bye to the voluntary music. Very soon Coolamon had a group but they didn't travel much. Then the famous old Marrar Jazz Orchestra got itself together and what a super band it turned out to be.
Later on Roy Lawrence and Emie Hancock came up with Kinilibah Orchestra, and the two bands functioned side by side for years. Kinilibah would have been the only country dance hall where two orchestras were frequently found to be involved in the night's programme.
The old bands didn't need amplification. They were concerned with melody, -not noise, and there would be many elderly people and non-dancers come to dances to listen to the music.