by Stuart Kells
Occasionally, lumps of iron, c-hooks, s-hooks, knives, secateurs etc. are thrown into the crusher and the knives of the crusher are badly damaged. For damaging the crusher by this means growers are now fined, the fines ranging from £2 to £6.
It was a lively few seconds, I can tell you. The deafening row, prancing horses, sparks flying from the crusher, shouts, yells, and all the sounds being echoed and re-echoed throughout the building. I had to move on and unload at the next crusher. When I arrived with my second load in the afternoon there was only one crusher working, number two having given out in my absence.
The one and only working crusher stopped twice while I was waiting: once for the pump and once when the belt broke. I arrived at the distillery at 2.30pm and left at 6.30pm. The sun sets at about 5pm, so it was pitch dark when I left the distillery. There were several teams behind me and I heard the next day that the last team did not leave until 8 o’clock. The latest I have ever unloaded was 7.30pm, and that evening I was the last. I arrived at the ‘still about 4pm and there were twenty-seven teams in front of me with loads varying from twenty-five cwt to three and a half tons (nett, of course).
The largest load ever weighed-in at the ‘still arrived from Berri (twelve to fourteen miles distant) where the congestion at the distillery is a lot worse than it is up here. It was drawn by six horses and weighed eight tons gross, the tare being about two tons. By mathematical calculation I deduct that the nett weight of the grapes was about six tons.
At the Berri ‘still one day there were seventy-five teams waiting to be unloaded. This, I think, is a record. The Renmark Growers Distillery can take in a lot of fruit in a day – 160, 170 and even 180 tons in a day.
Waiting at the ‘still you hear all the news and scandal of Renmark.
Wednesday, 28 May 1924
Last night I went around to the house of Mr Harold Williams. I think he is an Englishman, but he has been out here a good many years. He is the groundsman of the Tintra Tennis Club and that is about all the work he seems to do.
Mr Williams used to write for the Pioneer under the nom de plume of ‘Hotspur’, and that is the name he is known by. He is very ingenious and clever with his hands and his ‘shanty’ (let us call it that) is full of clever inventions and models. One, for instance, was a fan driven by the heat given off by an ordinary oil lamp. This is very useful on summer evenings. One must have a light, so why not have a fan as well at no extra cost? With an ordinary reading oil lamp the fan did 250 revs to the minute. He is very interested in railway engines and talked about them for hours.
Now I know all about ‘Pacific’ engines and ‘super-heated’ engines, automatic feeders and the advantages of large fire boxes, and all sorts of funny things. But his pet subject and hobby is astronomy. He has a four inch telescope which he made himself. He had the lenses sent out from London and a local tinsmith made the tube; all the rest he made himself. We had a look at Jupiter with her moons – there were four visible last night. Then we had a look at Saturn with her rings.
The Southern Cross was easily distinguished. Then he put on an attachment which he called a ‘spectroscope’, or something like that. It comprised of several prisms. Looking at the stars through this they appeared ‘all colours of the rainbow’. But that was not its use. Looking at certain stars through this attachment, vertical lines could be seen in the different colours. And the fact of a line passing through the red might show the presence of hydrogen on that star, a line in the yellow, oxygen, and so on. There is one star in the Southern Hemisphere which shows coloured lines when viewed through the ‘spectroscope’. I think there were two golden lines through the red and one other line besides. I believe these are termed ‘Bright’ lines. It was very cold last eve and we could not view the stars for long.
One of the pickers who was working on the next block all through the harvest now has a job at Moffat & Baxter’s packing shed. He has a tent and ‘batches’ on the next block. He was born in London and for eight years was a steward on a boat, or rather on different boats. His name is Alf Collard. His first trip on the sea was as a ‘bell boy’ and was from London to Australia and back. His wage was thirty shillings a month. Opposite the pursers’ office was a large chart. When a passenger in a cabin rang his bell, the number of his cabin was shown on the chart and the bell rang. The bell boy’s job (there were two of them) was to proceed to the cabin and find out the passenger’s requirements.
The boys plugged up the bell so that it would not ring and then went off for a quiet smoke. An irate passenger rang the bell and no boy appeared, so he continued ringing. Presently the plug fell out. And then the purser wondered why the bell rang so long. Of course, he investigated the matter and the boys got a very severe lecture. This was his first trip and before he had completed it he was ‘fired’. It was like this. There was a large pile of empty bottles near a porthole. Said one boy to the other, ‘I bet you I’ll throw out the last bottle’. (Out of the porthole, naturally.) The reply was, ‘I bet you don’t’. So the bottles began to disappear out of the porthole. The next deck below, in a stately cabin, the first officer was having his afternoon ‘siesta’. The ship was passing through the Red Sea and everything was calm. But something disturbed him: what was it? Plonk, pause, plonk, pause, plonk, pause, plonk and so on. He looked out of the porthole and saw the bottles flying out at regular intervals. You can guess the rest. Williams left at the end of the voyage.
At seventeen he was in the front line trenches in France. At eighteen, ‘on his uppers’ in New York. Last year he took on a job in a tin foil factory in London.
Wednesday, 11 June 1924
I have been wanting to make an entry in this book for some time past but something has always turned up to prevent it. Last Wednesday night I had contemplated doing some writing, but as soon as I entered the sitting room I noticed a distinct glare. On pulling the curtains to one side, I saw that there was a fire somewhere among Mr Bundy’s outbuildings. Mr Bundy is a neighbour. Even as I watched the blaze I heard a person running along the road whistling. I recognized the whistle as that of Jack Waters. I grasped the situation and the handle of the door at the same time and in less time than it takes to tell I was running along the road behind Jack.
It had just started to rain. Jack and I were the first helpers on the scene and we found the fire had a good hold of the evaporator which, in Bundy’s case, was a converted sulphur house. You know what a sulphur house is? The place in which pears, peaches, apricots and nectarines are sulphured. As I have mentioned before, this is an exceptionally late harvest and now that there is very little drying-power in the sun those unfortunate growers who have not yet finished with their dried fruit have had to rig up some kind of an artificial dryer or evaporator (or, to give it its correct name, a dehydrator). This usually takes the form of some sort of a store in a shed. In Bundy’s case it was a ‘copper’ in his sulphur house. Now his sulphur house has a tarred, felt roof and is built on to his stables; or rather, it had and it was. He had the copper in the middle of the sulphur house and wooden trays (three inches by two inches) stacked on either side, on which were laying some fine lexias or raisins.
When we arrived, Bundy and his wife were vainly trying to put out the fire with buckets of water drawn from the underground tank. It was a terrible job filling the buckets, for the water was about three feet from the top of the tank and the only way was to reach down. I found the hose and carried one end to the stand pipe, but unfortunately the connection was missing. So we left the hose for a few minutes and carried water. Bundy stayed by the tank and filled the buckets while we ran to the fire and emptied bucket after bucket into the heart of it. But a couple of hundred well-dried wooden trays, well alight, take some quenching. After we had begun to get it under control, I had another shot at the hose and managed to get it into commission although I had to stay by the stand pipe and hold the hose on. Of course, it leaked badly and I got wet through. I also managed to get wet through with the rain and also with perspiration, fo
r carrying kerosene buckets (which hold four gallons) full of water for even a short time is a warm job, especially if one runs.
Several other helpers had arrived by this time so I asked one to hold the hose on while I procured some rope to tie it on with. I soon found a piece and managed to tie it on, after a fashion. Anyhow, it was good enough to have a steady stream of water playing on the fire. This soon quelled the fierce flames and the worst was over. Soon it was only smouldering. As I was trebly wet through, I slipped off and changed back into my working clothes and sat in front of the fire in the sitting room and discussed the fire with the boss. He did not arrive until the worst was over, as he stopped to put on heavy boots, leggings, overcoat etc., and then he walked across. He is too old to run.
For the first few minutes the glare of the fire created a vivid picture. The roaring flames, golden and red, leaping straight up into the air. Struggling and panting men, sodden with the rain, slipping about with heavy buckets of water. Dancing shadows and prancing flames. Everything lit up with the ruddy glow. Hoarse cries and yells were from time to time heard, but the incessant crackling and snapping of the hungry flames as they devoured the trays drowned all the lesser noises. An occasional splutter as a bucket of water was emptied into the blazing inferno. The faces of the helpers, all lit up with the glare, were bronzed red as they neared the blaze. And all the time a heavy rain falling.
Bundy had placed his lexias in the evaporator in order to dry them. He had succeeded. Lexias usually dry out about four to one. That is, four pounds of fresh fruit to one of dry. Bundy’s dried out at about £50 to nothing.
*
Box 185
Renmark
12th June ’24
3571
Mr V.H. Ryan
Adelaide
Dear sir,
In reply to yours of 7th may I enclose you my cheque for £10 on this a/c. I hope shortly now to settle it up to date.
I unfortunately am a large Doradilla grower and such has been the slump in the market for spirit that we have not been paid yet for last years’ crop and nothing so far for this years but I am given to understand from the Secretary of the Growers Distillery that some large payments will immediately be forthcoming when, of course, the amount owing will be immediately paid.
Yours faithfully
A.B. Withers
*
Monday, 16 June 1924
Once again I will try and write a few more lines. As I was saying in my last entry, when the spirit moves me to do some writing I nearly always get interrupted. Sunday is rather a good day for writing; well, I was going to do some writing but at the last minute I had to go over the river. It was like this. The boss had been looking out for a new cow for some time and he heard that there were some very good beasts over at Jack Bolt’s, and that as he was short of feed he was selling them at a very reasonable figure. So we got Lizzie out and started for his place, which is over the river. It was a lovely track, not cut-up like the Morgan track. The boss had not been to Jack Bolt’s for several years and was rather doubtful of the turning-off.
At last we came to a gate which he thought was right. We had been climbing steadily the whole way and were now several hundred feet above river level. After we turned off we began to descend, first gradually and then suddenly. It was very sandy and the wheels were sinking in three or four inches. After we had descended for about half a mile the boss said he was afraid that we were on the wrong track. It was absolutely impossible to go back the same way as we had come; the sand was far too heavy. So we alighted and walked around a bit to try and find another track to go back by or somebody to direct us to Jack’s. We struck several buildings and one man offered to direct us.
After descending another quarter of a mile, we came to some lignums which only grow near the water. During flood time the river rises over the lignums. It was terribly bumpy, as there was no real track. At length we came to Jack’s ‘house’. This was a stone building about ten feet by twelve feet. Just one room, one door and one window. It was upside down – a bed in one corner with a couple of blankets thrown on top; a dilapidated old dressing table in another corner; a table littered with papers, clothes, boots, tins and everything imaginable; and the floor was even a greater collection of litter. Leaning against the door post was Jack Bolt. He had on an old pair of boots – seams split and with no laces – a very ancient pair of dungarees which badly needed patching, and an old blue shirt which needed treating in a like manner. An old felt hat – holes worn through the crown and with no band – an old pair of socks and a pair of worn-out braces. That’s all. He is of average height and is about the ugliest man I have ever seen. I will not attempt to describe his features, they are really too bad to describe. And he was leaning against the door post sucking away at half an old clay pipe which, it is quite possible, one day contained some tobacco.
Now guess what Jack Bolt is worth? He doesn’t know himself. It was £250,000 several years ago. It must be nearly half a million now.
Sorry but it’s ‘lights out’. I am afraid I must stop.
Tuesday, 17 June 1924
The boss and I talked to Jack for about a quarter of an hour about cows. The boss bought two cows at £4 apiece. Certainly very cheap. Jack said he would bring them across for us, but he could not say when. He would wait until he had four or five to bring across. As we were going he said, ‘You know the printage is nine pence. Just a gentle reminder to add nine pence on to the cheque for print charges’.
The climb from Jack’s ‘mansion’ to the main track was very stiff. In parts it was as steep as St. Michael’s hill and with a sandy surface. We only just managed to pull through. Had the sand been perfectly dry we should not have done it. But owing to it having rained a few days previous to our visit the sand was still damp and had, therefore, a firmer surface. Once on the main track again – which, by the way, is one of the tracks to Mildura – we gaily bowled along. Down a steep hill into Paringa, over the railway line, down the steep incline to the punt, over the river, up the other side, through ‘Paringa paddock’, on the Renmark Avenue, over the ‘big bridge’ which spans the creek, up Tarcoola Street, past Tintra Tennis Courts, into Chowilla Street and we were back once more.
I have been meaning to tell you something about Australian ‘slang’ for some time past and as I have a few minutes to spare I will do so now. To begin with, I think their slang is detestable, meaningless, senseless, idiotic, foolish and shows no sense of originality whatever. I cannot say this of English slang as there are a few words which, in my opinion, are really clever. Take ‘dud’ for instance. Its meanings are many: useless, failure, no good, hopeless, spurious and many others, and all expressed in one short word of three letters. It is something which is not what it is ‘cracked up’ to be. Rather a good word I think. ‘Umpteen’ is also fairly good.
But Australian slang, it’s hopeless. Example: ‘I seen a cop flopping ’is plates of meat on the ’ard.’ This means: ‘I saw a policeman walking down the street’. ‘Plates of meat’ mean ‘heavy feet’ and ‘’ard’ means ‘pavement’ or ‘street’. Another example: ‘Put the tin lid to roses red.’ Meaning put the baby to bed. ‘Tin lid’ means ‘kid’. ‘Roses red’ means ‘bed’. Also, ‘around the corner’ is ‘round the Jonnie Horner’. This is the slang of the lower class but everybody uses such words as:
‘Dinkum’, ‘Dinkie die’, ‘Fair Dinkum’ – all of which mean truthfully, honour, bright etc. Example: ‘Fair dinkum I feel crook’ means ‘I really do feel bad’.
And ‘Bonzer’, ‘Bonser’ – Very good, excellent, top hole. Example: ‘A bonser day’ means ‘A fine day’.
A ‘skite’ is a lie or a liar. Examples: ‘What a skite’ and ‘Oh, you skite’ mean ‘What a lie’ and ‘Oh, you liar’.
Australia is the only country where you can call a ‘dark horse’ a ‘fair cow’ and be perfectly understood. ‘Cow’ is hard to explain. It means ‘rotter’, ‘brute’, ‘beast’ and even ‘pig’. (I am writing nothing but
slang now.) Example: ‘You cow, you’ means ‘You rotter, you’. Instead of ‘Will you have a drink’ it’s ‘My shout’.
But enough of Australian slang. Don’t you agree with me that it’s rotten?
Sunday, 29 June 1924
A few mornings ago I witnessed a very curious phenomenon. It was about 7 o’clock (twenty minutes before the sun rose) that I went out to milk the cow. Although there were no clouds idly floating about, there was a solid bank of clouds about two inches – or two fingers – high (you remember fixing directions when you were in the army) in every direction on the horizon. Whichever way you looked there was this solid bank with an almost perfectly flat surface. As the sun rose the clouds in the east disappeared, they sank below the horizon and hurried around to the west and there appeared above the others. Then all the clouds in the west slowly and majestically began to move. It was like pulling a black curtain over the heavens. The nearer they came, the faster they appeared to move. Soon the sun was in danger. Yes, the clouds were winning. The curtain was soon complete. It was most awe-inspiring and I only wish I could write well enough to give you a glimpse of what it was like.
Another curious phenomena I saw a few weeks ago was a rainbow before the sun had risen. There was a red glow in the east denoting that the sun was thinking about rising when, lo and behold, in the west there appeared a rainbow. Not the kind you are used to seeing, but a red one, nay, almost pink. It was a full-sized rainbow, a perfect semi-circle. As the sun appeared above the horizon it began to rain although a few moments before I could have sworn that there was no rain about.
On another occasion I saw a rainbow after the sun had set. The sun had only just slipped below the horizon when I noticed it. It had then ‘all the colours which are in the rainbow’, but as the glow in the west died away the rainbow at first turned red, then disappeared.
On some still mornings in the summer, when the pumps are working, you can see the smoke issuing from the tall chimneys and apparently keeping the same distance above the ground as the top of the chimney, travelling right around the sky just above the horizon. I have seen the smoke from one pump go in one direction and the smoke from another go in the opposite direction and, somewhere or other, they meet for I have seen this line perfect. The pumps are north from here. I have seen the smoke from one go west and south, and the other east and south, and it has been impossible to detect where they join.