From the day Cicely and I arrived at Lanark as a newly married couple, I had worked flat out to get the sheep property running efficiently and, as I hoped, profitably. The fact that children had begun to arrive made this all the more important. In fact, the children came in a rush. The first of them, Amanda, was born in December 1959, barely eleven months after we were married. Then, in January 1961, came the twins, David and Patrick, and finally, in August 1962, our third son, John. Cicely and I then had four children under the age of three.
Life was so busy that I felt obliged to give up playing footy for Branxholme, my local team. I loved playing football, and I continued to miss it long after I played my last game. A cousin of mine, John Whiting of Bassett Station, gave up playing football at the age of 30. He told me later that he always regretted doing it. I quit at 24, so I missed it all the more. I gave up football not merely because I had so much else on my plate; I was also conscious of the fact that I was responsible for a young and growing family. I was now running the sheep farm on my own. A bad injury on the football field would have landed me in deep trouble financially if it meant I was laid up for months.
Once I had given up playing football I found myself with some spare time—and I devoted nearly all of it to planting trees. At that time I was buying most of my trees from the Wimmera Forest Nursery. It may have been a 90-minute drive away, but it was an extremely well run place and I liked the people there. In particular, I became friendly with the district forester, Bill Middleton. Bill was the son of a doctor at Dimboola, who sent him to board at Geelong Grammar, no doubt believing he would not have a future at Dimboola. In the event, Bill became a forester and ended up back in his home territory.
Bill Middleton was a quiet-natured man, yet he held very strong views about trees and their place in the environment, views that had a big influence on my own ideas on tree planting. As young as he was, he had seen a lot of bushland cleared, and I know he took this to heart. It was a cause of immense sadness to him. As the district forester from 1959 to 1976, Bill did some outstanding work reafforesting roadsides in the Wimmera. Some of this work was experimental: he advised the Country Roads Board of Victoria on which species of tree to grow and then monitored how each of them fared. In this way, he was able to determine the right trees for the right location. He also encouraged farmers in the Wimmera to plant trees around their homes, which quite a few did.
Bill and I shared an interest in birdwatching. He knew a lot about birds, and he was happy to share that knowledge with me. He and I, plus one or two other friends such as Murray Gunn, used to go camping together, observing and recording bird life. Some of these camping trips were in the superb Little Desert nature reserve in the heart of the Wimmera, southwest of Dimboola. The name ‘Little Desert’ is misleading; although much of the area is arid, it abounds in native life, both animals and plants. It is not little, either, extending from Dimboola to the South Australian border. Yet in the 1960s the area was in serious danger of being cleared for farmland. This crazy plan had the support of influential politicians, too, most notably Sir William McDonald, the Minister for Lands, who in 1967 called a meeting to discuss it. At the meeting, held at Kaniva, just north of the Little Desert, Bill Middleton and others spoke strongly against the idea. Indeed, the plan to open up the Little Desert caused general outrage. Melbourne’s newspapers ran countless letters from incensed readers. Faced with so much opposition, the Victorian Government scrapped the plan a few years later and instead declared most of the Little Desert a national park.
Graeme Gunn, by now a qualified architect, was another who gave me advice (sometimes whether I wanted it or not) on where to plant trees at Lanark. As far back as the early 1960s Graeme used to stay with us every year or two, usually for a weekend, and on each of his visits he and I did a lot of reminiscing about old times over numerous bottles of beer. He always made a point of inspecting the trees I had planted since his last visit, and he was often critical of what I had done. ‘Why in God’s name did you plant them there? They will look bloody awful. You’ll have to pull them out.’ And so on. As best as I can recall, I never pulled out trees that I had planted, but I did take his advice on certain design matters. There are features of Lanark’s layout today that can be traced back to advice that Graeme gave me 50 years or more ago.
It would be wrong to imagine I devoted several days a week to planting trees. After all, I had a large sheep property to run and a family to support. In those early years at Lanark, I probably worked around 48 hours a week on the farm and maybe spent five hours a week planting trees. In effect, I spent all my spare time planting trees. It was as much time as I could afford.
The truth is I knew very little then about trees. I even had trouble spelling their names. Recently, I came upon an entry that I made in my farm journal in March 1957, in which I recorded the fact that Cicely had suggested ‘banksia’ as the name for a new paddock I was developing. In my journal I spelt the name ‘bankshia’.
In that same month, March 1957, I reported in my journal that I had been enrolled as a paid-up associate member of the NRCL of Victoria, which entitled me to a 15 per cent discount on trees bought at the league’s nursery at Springvale. Another entry twelve days later shows that I took advantage of the discount by buying 200 trees. Later that year, according to my journal, I was busy erecting fences to protect the rows of trees I intended to grow. Planting trees had clearly become an important part of my working life.
I planted trees in my spare time right through the 1960s. I even planted them in 1967, one of the worst drought years on record in Victoria. The drought began in autumn that year and continued, with just an odd break, until early the following year. Jack Childs was still helping me run the place, but after the drought really set in I could no longer afford to pay him; Jack had to leave. It was an amicable parting, and Jack had no trouble finding another job.
The 1967 drought did not hurt us as much as it did other farmers, however, one reason being that I offloaded a large number of sheep just in time. In those early years I occasionally engaged a farm management consultant to advise me. He visited Lanark in September 1967, some months after the drought had begun, and told me I needed to reduce stock numbers immediately. I had a mob of 1600 wethers which he said I should shear at once and sell as quickly as I could. I disagreed, arguing that in two months’ time the wethers would have a full growth of wool, which would make them worth a lot more. The consultant insisted: if I waited two months it would be too late. So, rather grudgingly, I took his advice and sold the wethers at a reasonable price. It was one of the best decisions I was ever talked into making. Two months later, by which time the drought had really set in, I could hardly have given the wethers away.
By now, I had begun planting in spring, usually October, as a matter of policy, and spring in 1967 was horribly dry. Yet even the trees I planted then did pretty well. In fact, most of the trees I planted in those early years survived, which was just as well. If a sizeable number had died on me, I am sure I would have given up large-scale tree planting as a lost cause. This is why anyone setting out to plant trees should make sure at the outset that they are going about it the right way, thereby ensuring the success of the planting. If you do not have success with tree planting early on, you will find it hard to keep going.