In August, three years after the birth of my youngest brother, Ross Stuart, my sister Pamela was born. This was very exciting as Pam was the only girl in our generation of the Cliff family. Mum was pleased she had attained the family she wanted.
We soon sold the bakery and house. Stan began the search for a farm with a visit to Albury and Yarrawonga after which he turned to Alexandria where a property there became the subject of heated discussion. A little later, having inspected farms at Ripplebrook and Glen Forbes in Gippsland, it was announced he bought the 150 acre dairy farm at Glen Forbes, on the railway line to Wonthaggi. We would take possession at Easter.
An irony was to occur in the 1960s when No 2 Albert Street Williamstown, the former Cliff bakery, became the Williamstown Little Theatre. I can think of no better way to enshrine the scene of the Cliff family post war life. Structurally, in 2015, it is largely unchanged from its former life.
CHAPTER 3
GLEN FORBES
It was Easter 1954. We could hardly contain ourselves as the car made its way out of the suburbs onto the South Gippsland Highway toward Wonthaggi. Skirting around Western Port Bay, we passed the fishing village of Tooradin, crossed the drains of Koo Wee Rup and went on to Grantville. We searched intently for the 63 mile post that would mark our turn to the east, away from Corinella. Mum’s stifled tears were the only dampener but we had little sympathy for her. Our childish self interest prevailed.
To my inexperienced eye, this was heaven. The country was unbelievably beautiful. The house was perched a few hundred feet above the Bass flats overlooking Western Port Bay with both Phillip Island and French Island clearly visible in the distance. Behind the house, and rising very steeply was a large hill while over the road was another, if anything even steeper. Alarm bells would have rung a distinct warning to any adult with experience of farming but Mum’s wail on entering the house was the only detractor from our awe. Her premonition of doom was compounded by the rudimentary weatherboard house that consisted of three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and two living rooms. Only one room was lined with unpainted three-ply cladding. The rest sported at least one wall where bare noggins served as shelves.
In the kitchen was a traditional wood stove. The water supply was provided by two 1000 gallon tanks beside the kitchen, another on the bathroom, and a smaller one with a tap outside. To her credit, Mum’s tears stopped and she was soon directing the furniture to its chosen position. Bruce and I were more interested in the dairy and the old shed in a grove of oak trees that served as the hay shed, workshop, and storage for the heavy horse harness we found. I was instantly addicted to the sights and smells.
The inventory of the farm included 25 cows, one bull, two draft horses, a black kelpie dog called Prince, a two-furrow hillside disk plough, a six by four foot horse drawn sled and a rusted unusable horse drawn mower. Electricity was connected to the house but there was none to the dairy or the shedding. The simple bush timber dairy had six wooden head bails and a three unit ‘Eclipse’ milking machine driven by a vertical 3HP petrol Bamford engine. Hot water was provided by an old wood fired copper in the wash room. Only part of the yard was concrete – the rest was mud.
Only our extreme naivety could have allowed the optimism Bruce and I felt. God only knows what Stan was feeling. Mum somehow managed to put the house into working order. Stan seemed bewildered and uncertain where to start or what to do. For some time he made no attempt to milk the cows. I had just turned 13, Bruce was 11, Ross was 4 and Pamela 2. Naturally, our efforts would seem inept to an experienced farmer. By default, I got the milking machine going and with little difficulty solved the problems of milking. Mum had made it clear from the outset she was not going to work on the farm – she would be fully occupied with the children and maintaining the home.
The most immediate and vexatious of our tasks, apart from milking, was to maintain a supply of cut wood for the house and the dairy. To obtain sufficient wood it was necessary to drag fallen trees and limbs off the farm to a site near the house where it could be cut up with a hand saw and axe. To do this I would need the horses. Taking two bridles, I set out to catch the two draught horses quietly grazing in the paddock above the house. The previous owner had told us their names were Tess and Jess.
This was the beginning of my love of working farm horses. Luckily for me these horses were used to working hard and did not waste energy. They would stand where you put them and would work together when driven properly. I put their collars on, then the metal hames. By tying a short rope between their bridles and long reins to the outside of the bridles, they could be driven as a pair. I was able to drive them forward into place between the chain traces laid out in front of the wooden sledge. Once the traces were attached to the hooks on the hames we are ready to go. With a gentle flick of the reins and a click of the tongue we were off, gliding softly and silently across the grass behind the two gentle giants
Our daily routine evolved from necessity. I would get up before 6 a.m. to bring the cows in for milking. To begin, it was a task I really enjoyed. The first job was to light a fire under the copper in the dairy, our only source of hot water. We had arrived in autumn so at that early hour the hills were enshrouded with mist while the flats were invisible in the fog until later in the morning. The hills were so steep the cows would drift to the gullies out of the wind or lie down among the tussocks and bracken ferns that covered a great deal of the farm. The gentle breeze coming from the ocean in the south west was laced with the moist earth smell. I was truly enchanted as I strode along looking for the cows hiding either in the ferns somewhere on the hill or in the sheltered valley behind the Glen Forbes store. It was mystical and eerie to come across them quietly chewing their cud and exhaling their pungent breath in the mist of this beautiful place. It seemed a shame to disturb them. The sight of Prince with me would cause them to stand. Then, like most mammals after a nap, they would perform a luxurious stretch followed by a dump and a pee. Once yarded, I let six cows into the bails and tied a leg rope on each before washing their mud-encrusted udders.
The next step was starting the engine which meant filling the fuel tank, then closing the choke before swinging the crank handle as fast as possible. With luck and repetition, it was notoriously obstinate, it started. Put the plug in to the vacuum pump, assemble the milk releaser and arrange the washed-out milk cans under the cooler to catch the milk. During the milking it was necessary to keep checking the filling of the milk cans and to change them when full. On completion of the milking, the full cans were taken to the milk stand on the roadside. A full can contained 120lb of milk so the effort required was considerable for a thirteen year old boy.
Tying leg ropes could be a hazardous business. Our ropes were usually made from plaited baling twine and were fixed to the post against the cows inside leg. The free end was picked up, brought to the side where the operator stood close into the cow using his leg to move the cows leg back before leaning down and placing a half hitch on the cow’s leg above the hock. Simple enough if the cow is cooperative, but difficult if the cow is kicking with intent and perhaps having a crap at the same time. When annoyed or upset cows are prone to crap and pee obsessively with no regard for your person.
Toward the end of milking, Bruce would appear and take over. He would wash the machines and clean the dairy while I changed and had breakfast in time to catch the school bus at ten past eight. Bruce attended the local state school so he had a little more time before walking about a mile down the disused road that passed through the property. The Watson sisters, Pam and Mary, from their farm further up the old road, would appear on their old pony Whisky and perhaps accompany Bruce if he was on time. The girls rode behind each other in all weathers sitting on a folded chaff bag. A regular amusing sight arose when they had to pass through the old slip rail gate across the old road below our dairy. Whisky, for unknown reasons, would lie down and refuse to get up again until, with much