COUNTRY LIFE


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Introduction:

I grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s at Wilsons Creek, up in the mountains out from Mullumbimby in Northern New South Wales. I was raised on a banana plantation amidst the steep slopes of rainforest and wet sclerophyll (gum) forest and occasional cliff outcrops. The creek we swam in was a very clear, clean freshwater rainforest creek with big deep pools. People now in the City, would give their `eye’ teeth for it as my father used to say.

Wilson’s Creek is about twenty minutes (about ten kilometres) up in one of the many valleys west of Mullumbimby, in the Northern Rivers area. With this time, came for me a strong spiritual love of Creation, Nature, Country Living and the Environment.

It was a hard and simple life with a Dad and Mom and three younger brothers (Gerald, Rick and Colin). My father had come through the Great Depression of the 1930’s. His father had died when he was only thirteen and he had had to leave home and fend for himself. He had learnt many lessons of self-sufficiency …. personally and economically.

I recently saw a DVD called ‘Liam’ a story a little boy called Liam growing up in Liverpool, England in an Irish Catholic family in the 1930’s. The Depression had just started and men where finding it hard to get work in the factories. Factories were closing down from lack of sales and there was no welfare at all. In the midst of growing tensions, there was a rigid traditional Catholic education for the small boy Liam.

There were racial tensions between the Irish versus English, prosperous Jews and grinding poverty of the working class. This poverty was all set all against a rising nationalism led by Mosely with his black-shirted followers (the equivalent of the German people who became the Nazis). The Unions were formulating their identity with a background of Communists advocating for promises of a better society with State-run endeavours.

People coped and made do with frugality and counting every bit of money and put up with a lot of hardship. Even the children worked partime to help the family budget. Sharing and helping out each other was common. It was real do-it-yourself approach to life with a practical wisdom and innovation born out of necessity. The Government wasn’t helping them …. They had to help themselves.

I now have a better understanding of what Dad had to go through to survive by himself in this period with himself alone. The conditions of the Depression were felt in many countries around the world, including Australia at the time. Now I understand the cultural attitudes of frugality, communal help and openness to others and at the same time self sufficiency, emphasis on innovation and practicality, a ‘no-frills’ approach to life and making do with what you have.

These lessons of a ‘do-it-yourself approach to life’ were passed on to us boys in different ways. They were more caught than taught by example. We could make anything for ourselves. As money was always tight, we would make our own fun and amusements individually and together. We would make our own toys and equipment such as billycarts, canoes, thatch huts, tree houses, American Indian suits out of cut and painted hessian, Indian ti-pis to match the theme, homemade chemistry sets and experimenting with electricity from torch batteries to name a few things.

In the 1950’s 240 volt electricity had just come up into the Wilsons Creek Valley. It was generated by the new hydroelectricity power station at the bottom of Laverty’s Gap which had built in 1926 to service the Brunswick Valley. The Gap was the junction between the lower Brunswick Valley and the higher Wilson’s Creek Valley. Water from the Wilson’s Creek flowed south behind the hills to reach the Richmond Valley and the Richmond River many kilometres downstream.

A small curved concrete weir (see photos above) at the Gap had been built which banked the water for several kilometres behind it in a long body of water. A narrow concrete race on the north side of the weir led down the through the Gap hills then dived through a tunnel through the hill to the lower water filtration plant halfway down the Gap. Water was directed by pipe to the township of Mullumbimby for domestic use. Excess water was run down the hill by a falling race and turned the turbines in the power station.
Electricity came to our farm in the early 1960’s from across from the paddocks across the creek. This meant we suddenly had a bright fluorescent light on the ceiling ….. we could see clearly. Mr. Walker was a bachelor man who lived in a small timber cottage nearby where the garage eventually was eventually built ….. about one hundred and fifty metres away. He came over one night to babysit us boys while Mum and Dad went out for the night. He was amazed at having such clear light as he only had a kerosene lamp in his cottage.

The former valve radio in the banana packing shed house which ran on as pack of batteries was replaced by a new benchtop radio running on 240 volts. Often in the afternoon at 5.00 p.m. I would listen to the ‘Argonauts Show’ and especially Enid Blyton’s ‘The Five Findouters’

There was virtually no technology available as we know it today. There was no TV, CD’s, DVD’s, photocopiers or computers and certainly no Internet or websites. Electricity to the farm was a brand new thing ….. the first fluorescent light was a bit unbelievable.

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