Back in the 1920s, as a young girl I lived in a small town in western New South Wales where my father was the ganger over three men whom he termed as ‘fettlers’. These men had a ‘length’ of rail line to tender, I think it was about thirteen miles either side of the railway station, and they travelled along that distance on a rail trike. Now this trike was a contraption that ran on the railway tracks and it had a flat base for the driver to sit on and a plank for the workers, and to get it going you had a handle to pull back and forward and two pedals to push with your feet.
Our house—well, it wasn’t much more than a hut, really—was built on government land on the outskirts of town. Everybody knew it as the ‘Ganger’s House’, and the land it was on was termed the ‘railway paddock’. Because my father was employed by the railways he had the privilege of renting this land for one shilling per year. He didn’t pay any rates or anything. Now, how much land he had I never really knew, except that it seemed to go on forever. But to give you some idea, it was large enough for him to build a racecourse on and there was also a dam there for the horses. As you may guess, he loved his racehorses.
The Ganger’s House was made from boards and logs, with the logs cut in half like they do in a log home, and there was lots of corrugated iron. Then we had three bedrooms and a kitchen. One bedroom, known as ‘Dad’s Room’, was joined to the kitchen and there was a breezeway between there and the other two bedrooms. The breezeway was an open space, with a roof over it. In fact, it was more of a communal area because that’s where we ate and drank and washed and all those sorts of things.
Then as far as our family went, there was … well, my mother had nine children … wait a minute … one died and Lorna went to live with Mrs Rawson, so there would’ve been at least seven children in the house at most times. And in summer we’d move our old iron- framed beds outside to sleep under the stars, and Mum and Dad had one of those big old-fashioned iron beds with, perhaps it was porcelain knobs on it. Oh, it was lovely.
But oh, the snakes. Dad always used to say that the house was built on a bed of snakes, and he was right. I remember when my eldest sister, Jean, put her hand on a snake, on the railing inside this breezeway and she jumped so high that by the time she came down again the jolly thing had disappeared.
‘I’ll get that snake,’ Dad vowed. So he put this poison in a saucer of milk and he took up his position in his rocking chair with a loaded gun waiting for this snake to come out, so he’d shoot it. Anyhow, we left him sitting there and went to bed and when we come out in the morning, all the milk had gone and Dad had fallen asleep with the gun over his shoulder.
But my father was such a tough old fellow, as maybe many of those old railway fellows were. He used to pull his own teeth and he didn’t believe in doctors. Though there was one time when he crushed the top knuckle of his pointer finger while he was out on the railway track. I don’t know exactly what happened, but he somehow got it caught in the trike. Anyhow, as I said, he was very fond of his horses—well, more than fond really, and he believed that what was good enough for the horses was good enough for him. So if any of the horses had anything wrong with a hoof he’d treat it with bluestone, which was some sort of acid that came in the form of a crystal. So he put a dab of this bluestone on this crushed finger but, instead of curing it, the finger became infected. Then to counteract the effects of the bluestone he put caustic soda on it, and the combination of the two ate right through the top of his finger. Anyway, Dad ended up going to the doctor with that.
But oh, he was very sick there for a while. And I’m not sure how strict he was on his fettlers but he was so strict with us that we were never allowed out. But you know what kids are like: we sensed that, with Dad being in so much pain, he wouldn’t have time to worry about us. So we’d go into his room and say, ‘Dad, we’re just going up to Turner’s’ or ‘Dad, we’re just going off somewhere’ and it’d be alright.
Then one night we went in his room and we said, ‘Dad, we’re just going up to Turner’s.’
‘Like bloody hell yer are,’ he said, and so he must’ve been getting better by then.
Then Dad’s boss was his brother, a railway inspector, over at Bogan Gate. And because of that, Dad had quite a few privileges. So, say, if he wanted to take his horses to Dubbo or Wellington, or he wanted to go with Mum down to the Easter yearling sales in Sydney, his brother always gave him the time off and they’d go. At times like that, all us kids were left at home in our little ganger’s house and Jean, our eldest, would look after us.
Jean was a wonderful person, actually. She couldn’t have been anymore than twelve, at the most. But see, back in the late 1920s, it wasn’t uncommon for someone that young to look after the other children in the family. Anyhow, this particular time, Jean was still at school and Mum and Dad went down to these yearling sales in Sydney. Now, how many of us were there? There was Ted, myself, Marge and Riley, so there was five of us, including Jean. I think the baby went down to Nan’s. Anyhow, that’s when we got the prowler.
Now, I’m going back about eighty years or so and, back then, you never closed your windows or anything. We only had one room with a door that locked, and that was Dad’s room. So there we were in our little ganger’s hut, being looked after by Jean, and one night this fellow came prowling around. He might’ve been drunk or whatever, but he sure frightened us. And in those days there was always a gun lying around the house, just in case of snakes. So Jean got the gun, then she hounded us into Dad’s room and she locked the door. Anyhow, through the window, we could just make out this fellow sneaking towards us. So Jean shouted out, ‘Go away or I’ll shoot!’
Of course, the prowler knew that we were just kids so he crept closer and closer.
‘Go away or I’ll shoot,’ Jean called out again.
Well, this prowler thought it was all a great joke. But then Jean fired the gun and I’ve never seen someone move so fast. He was off like a shot.