A Country Nurse: From Wave Hill to

rural Queensland and almost

everywhere in between Thea Hayes
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Also by Thea Hayes
An Outback Nurse
First published in 2020

Copyright © Thea Hayes 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a
maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is
the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its
educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or
body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the
Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

All images included in the photo inserts have been supplied by the
author, unless otherwise noted.

Allen & Unwin

83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com

ISBN 978 1 76087 715 6

eISBN 978 1 76087 3127

Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia

Cover design: Deborah Parry Graphics

Cover photographs: Getty Images; author's collection
Dedicated to palliative care doctors and nurses in
Australia.
 Contents

Foreword
Introduction
1 ‘You fellar goin’ walkabout?’
2 Our farm Bidgi Park
3 The Corner Store
4 Living in Toogoolawah
5 The biggest surprise ever
6 Getting to know the locals
7 Life as a dairy farmer
8 Our Queensland workers’ cottage
9 Back to nursing
10 Murray Greys
11 The Brisbane Valley Book Club
12 The big move
13 Living on the Downs
14 Home nursing
15 Ralph
16 Home alone
17 Making the most of a disaster
18 Walkabout to England
19 Happenings in St Lucia
20 Mt Olivet
21 Wedding at Straddie
22 Straddie
23 Becoming a jetsetter
24 Adventures in Kenya
25 A crash landing
26 A dolphin, a whale and a Territory vehicle
27 Bob
28 The things I carried
29 ‘Gone walkabout with Bob’
30 A change of direction
31 Carraman
32 Our first flood
33 A lucky escape
34 Our first home
35. Yamba Stud
36 Rupert
37 Settling into Narrandera
38 The Sturt Ladies Club
39 The magpies
40 The Rocky Waterholes Bridge
41 The Wiradjuri
42 A little bit of history
43 Nine lives or more?
44 Rain and more rain
45 Wave Hill/Jinparrak Art
46 A momentous moment
47 The process of having a book published
48 On the move
49 Back to Wave Hill
50 The Gurindji Freedom Day
51 Where to now?
52 The dollarbirds odyssey
Acknowledgements
 Foreword

Once the siren song of the Outback took over Thea’s heart there was
no turning her from her chosen destiny … to live her mothering
years as a station nurse, hostess and housekeeper, married to the
manager of one of Australia’s largest remote Outback cattle stations,
Wave Hill in the Northern Territory, in the wilds of Central Australia.
Thea and her husband Ralph stood behind Prime Minister Gough
Whitlam on the momentous occasion in August 1975 when he
poured a handful of red Wave Hill soil into the hands of tribal
Aboriginal man Vincent Lingiari. It was Australian history in the
making.
All this could not have been further from her childhood years in
the city and for that matter, her early expectations of life.
Yet her sense of adventure, her gaiety, humour and tolerance,
combined with her innate practicality, made her a perfect fit for the
life she chose.
This is the first part of Thea’s story, as told in her first book An
Outback Nurse (Allen & Unwin 2014).
But her story continues! Her spirit burnished in the Outback sun,
Thea and her husband Ralph moved closer to civilisation; but city life
was never to be her choice again, and nor was age to deter her from
continuing her trajectory of laughter and adventure.
Thea’s story is one of hope and inspiration. To meet her is to
understand that age is just a number, serious illness just a hiccup,
and love and friendship the grist of life.
Between the pages of this book is a fantastic story. And what’s
more, it’s an ongoing story. Do your sums and you will be amazed at
the fact that when many—if not most—people are sitting on the sofa
and sipping cups of tea, Thea is still well and truly on the go. Her
future stretches before her as a canvas to be painted.
Enjoy the many canvases this book contains.
Jane Grieve
Author of In Stockmen’s Footsteps
 Introduction

My first book, An Outback Nurse, describes my life as a young nurse

on a cattle station in the middle of the Northern Territory in the
sixties and seventies.
While on a holiday to Uluru, I impulsively accepted a nursing job
on the second largest property under one management in the world,
Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory. It covered four million
acres, with 240 Aboriginal people and thirty white staff to be cared
for, and was owned by one of the richest men in England, Lord Sam
Vestey.
Having never spent any time outside the city, I was totally
unprepared for the place that I would soon call home. My life
changed dramatically. I fell in love with the land, found love, married
the overseer Ralph Hayes and we reared our family in the Outback.
The first time I saw an Aboriginal person was at Curtin Springs in
the Northern Territory, eighty-four kilometres from Uluru, on a bus
tour organised by the CSIRO. A week later I arrived at Wave Hill
Station and met the Gurindji and Warlpiri people, who worked so
happily on the station with the white staff. I was to find the most
fascinating aspect of my nursing job was my relationship working
with and caring for these people.
The book reveals life towards the end of the great pastoral station
era, charting their demise in the sixties and seventies, and the
changes that followed: the Wave Hill walk-off; the handover of land
to the Gurindji tribe; the start of land rights for Aboriginal people.
It’s about my life with my husband and children—having babies,
educating them, looking after the health of the white and Aboriginal
staff, and the friends we made and the fun we all had together.
Many have asked, ‘What happened in the decades since Wave
Hill?’
 This book, A Country Nurse, answers this question for my family
and my readers and also for the Aboriginal people who worked with
us at Wave Hill.
The future held a change of lifestyle for our family, from a large
cattle property to life on a country farm and owning a corner store
at the same time; raising and showing stud cattle, making new
friends, learning new skills, a book club, along with illness and
sadness. Then followed a new love, a new home, travelling Australia
and overseas. Life goes on and if you are adventurous, it gets even
better and there is always something new and exciting around the
corner.
 1

‘You fellar goin’ walkabout?’

Our last day, and our last smoko on Wave Hill. Penny, the youngest
of our four children, raced ahead. Ralph and I wandered slowly
across to the smoko area between the kitchen and the recreation
room at the new Wave Hill Station homestead, at the site of Number
One bore. The Wave Hill mob were all waiting there to join us for
one last cup of tea together. Twenty years previously, in 1960, I had
walked onto Jinparrak (the Gurindji name for old Wave Hill Station)
smoko veranda, paved with flagstones with an outside wall of
paperbark and a roof of spinifex, having just arrived on the mail
plane from Alice Springs to take on the position of station nurse.
Tom Fisher, the manager of Wave Hill Station, had picked me up at
the airstrip, driven me to the station, and after showing me my new
home, called a donga—a galvanised room with paperbark veranda
and outdoor shower—said, ‘I’ll see you at smoko on the smoko
veranda at 3 p.m. You’ll hear the bell.’
I did hear the bell, and nervously walked out onto the veranda to
meet the Wave Hill mob. And my life changed forever.
Ralph was the shy, handsome improvement overseer who gave me
an inquisitive look as I was introduced to the enquiring staff of Wave
Hill; the man I fell in love with, married, and with whom I spent
twenty years on cattle properties in the Outback.
Now, in 1979, the time had come to move on.
Ralph hated the thought of leaving. He had gone to Wave Hill as a
young jackeroo in 1955, giving twenty-five years of his life to the
Vestey Company. Ralph, who could speak the languages of the
Gurindji and Warlpiri people, had grown up on stations in the
Northern Territory. He was little more than eighteen months old
when his father and mother, Dick and Mary Hayes, in 1936 accepted
a management position with the Vesteys at Waterloo Station in the
Northern Territory (Waterloo is east of the Ord River Scheme, where
the famous Argyle Downs Station was pioneered by Patrick Durack,
as written about by Mary Durack in her book Kings in Grass Castles).
Ralph was loved by the Aboriginal people, especially by his
Aboriginal nanny Murrawah. When Ralph became the manager,
Murrawah came to live at Wave Hill. Ralph was always there to help
the Aboriginal people; someone with whom they could discuss
problems in their own language, share stories and tell jokes. One of
his great mates was Vincent Lingiari, who became the head of the
Gurindji tribe.
By the end of the seventies, there was far too much alcohol
consumed on the station, even though it was controlled by our social
club. In preceding years, the Vestey cattle stations were ‘dry’,
meaning no alcohol was permitted for anyone but the manager, and
that was mainly for him to share with VIP visitors. Occasionally
someone’s ‘hide would crack’; they felt desperately in need of
alcohol. A vehicle would sneak off to the nearest watering hole
which in our case was the Top Springs roadhouse, 160 kilometres to
the north, and of course, after that, staff wouldn’t turn up for work
for a day or so.
Ralph and I felt that the time had come for our staff to be able to
enjoy a drink. Times were a-changing—dry stations were a thing of
the past. After contacting head office, we were allowed to start a
social club. Each evening, those who wished could buy two drinks at
the bar in the recreation room. On Saturday night, six drinks were
allowed. But when staff from other stations arrived at the weekend
with requests of ‘let’s have another carton’, consumption of alcohol
started getting out of hand. The Aboriginal people were also getting
their six cans of beer every Saturday night. The Aboriginal women,
who didn’t drink, gave their allocation to their husbands. The nurse
on the station had her hands full on Sunday morning stitching up
split heads, attending broken limbs, cuts and bruises, the result of
drunken brawls in the Aboriginal camp. Introduction of alcohol to
Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory was passed by the
Legislative Committee in 1964. It was the law: the Aboriginal people,
men and women, had the right to drink.
It had been four years previous to that last smoko at Wave Hill
that we had started thinking about our future. The thought of our
boys leaving school, without us being there to guide them, was not
on the cards. We wanted our own place, a farm of our own,
somewhere ‘down south’.
During our holidays every second year, we would look at small
properties in South-East Queensland. Ralph’s brother Milton and wife
Madeline purchased a farm at Toogoolawah, 100 kilometres north
west of Brisbane, and while staying with them, we found a property
that suited us and suited our pocket. Ralph’s mother also lived at
Toogoolawah.
Our new property was a lush 640-acre dairy farm, without a
milking quota, on five deeds, with irrigation and good cultivation on
the hills just outside Toogoolawah. Yes, it was rundown, but we
could see the potential to eventually go into beef cattle. It was close
to town—an hour’s drive to Brisbane—and up in the hills. We even
had our own rainforest.
We employed a very competent man named Owen Ward and his
family to run the dairy while we went back to Wave Hill for another
four years.
And now here we were, about to take off from Wave Hill Station.
It was the ‘show place’ for the Vesteys in the Northern Territory, with
it’s beautiful everything—accommodation, furniture, garden, lovely
staff and dear Aboriginal people. But we were determined to give
‘down south’ a go.
I was packing for weeks before we left, as well as trying to master
the knack of backing and turning a heavily laden horse float with our
Toyota LandCruiser, with Ralph yelling instructions in the
background. Our personal gear, plus the radiogram, was all to go in
the horse float. It was nerve-racking, but I got there in the end.
 We had a large farewell party with guests from all the
neighbouring properties, plus Jimmy the cook put on a silver service
lunch down at the Five Mile Creek.
I don’t think the Aboriginal people at Wave Hill realised we were
leaving for good.
‘You fellar goin’ walkabout?’ they asked us.
I felt very sad to be leaving them and took photos of them all in
family groups; photos that I still have today. They would miss Ralph
very much, but he was happy that his Aboriginal friends were
established in their jobs on the station and being paid their rightful
wage.
Finally, we were off. Penny and Pluto, our Rhodesian Ridgeback,
accompanied me in the Toyota. Ralph drove the borrowed station
truck, laden with his four camp horses, Penny’s pony Pepper and our
Beale pianola, well protected from the horses.
One of the Wave Hill stock inspectors Peter Flanagan came to help
Ralph drive the truck the 3502 kilometres to Toogoolawah and then
was to drive the truck back to Wave Hill. We camped at local
showgrounds along the way, yarding and feeding the horses each
night and morning; eating at roadhouses on the way. One night we
stayed with friends Nora and John Kirsh and their ten children at
Maxwelton. Pepper wasn’t travelling well, so we gave him to the
Kirsh children without telling Penny, as we knew we probably
wouldn’t get back for ages to pick him up. It was late June and such
a cold winter that we nearly froze one night at Roma. We had one
big swag for the three of us; Pluto made four when we pulled him
into our swag to keep us warm. Penny thought it was great fun, and
so did Pluto. The trip would take us ten days including our stay with
the Kirshs.
Two of our teenage sons, Anthony and David, were boarding at
Downlands College in Toowoomba at this stage, having moved from
St Joseph’s College Hunters Hill in Sydney during the Christmas
break. We had left our youngest son, thirteen-year-old Jason, at
Toogoolawah with Ralph’s mother Mary to spend two years at the
local school before going to Downlands as well.
 After calling in to see the boys at Downlands on the way through
Toowoomba, we went straight to Toogoolawah. We had a new life
ahead of us; we wanted to work on our own property and be able to
enjoy life without being so isolated from family and friends. We were
going to make it work for all of us.
 2

Our farm Bidgi Park

Our farm, Bidgi Park, was situated on Scrub Creek Road,

Toogoolawah, only five kilometres out of town in a small cul de sac
of dairy farms. It was a dead-end road, which crossed the Brisbane
River just before our farm, and ran into the Pohlmans Range. As part
of Cressbrook Station, the first property in the Brisbane Valley, Bidgi
Park was the original site for the release of red deer from England in
1870. It was a far cry from our last home, 750 kilometres from the
nearest town—Katherine in the Northern Territory. The name Bidgi
came from my daughter Penny, who at the age of two was
fascinated with grapes. She called them ‘bidgi-bidgi’ as Pansy, her
Aboriginal nanny, had taught her at Wave Hill.
Bidgi Park had irrigated pastures running back into rolling hills
(with lots of lantana, we discovered later), a hay shed and a very fly-
ridden farmhouse. Lantana, an introduced plant from tropical
regions, forms a dense thicket and releases chemicals into the
surrounding soil to prevent seed germination of native flora, so it
eventually takes over native bush land. But it was a dairy farm!
Ralph was pleased, as he had worked on his uncle and aunt’s dairy
farm at Maryborough as a teenager.
Owen Ward, his wife Elaine and their school-aged boys moved in
with their own furniture. The previous owners had left a few pieces
of furniture behind which they were also happy to use. They did
have an antique four-poster steel bed that I was interested in buying
—they refused my offer but when they moved their furniture, they
couldn’t get it out through the door. They told me later they had to
cut the legs off to get it out!
Amazingly, we managed to get a quota (milk at a premium price)
from the Kilcoy Dairy Co-Operative, as our farm was in their pick-up
area. A milk truck picked the milk up, and our milk herd was tested
monthly to determine the quality and quantity of each individual
milker.
We needed more dairy cows, and as cattle prices were rock
bottom in 1976 when we bought our property, we were able to buy
cows for as little as $12.50 each. Unbelievable when you consider
prices of cows now. We discovered ‘clearing sales’ too, buying
second-hand farm equipment for bargain prices.
Our holidays from Wave Hill every second year had meant
spending part of the time at our farm making improvements,
planning how we would clear the lantana and deciding how we
would renovate the house. One holiday the whole family painted the
homestead. We would hire a large caravan to camp in and enjoyed
exploring our property. The farm ran back into two valleys, with
three very steep hills which still had patches of beautiful native
rainforest.
As keen as we had been to move south, we had years of debt
from school fees, and for the next untold number of years there
were vast improvements needed at the farm and homestead, with
only a little money coming in from the dairy.
We needed a cash flow—a business to keep us afloat and keep
our children boarding at Downlands.
We decided to buy a business in Toogoolawah. The choice was a
café or The Corner Store. I have never been a good cook, but loved
playing shop as a child, so The Corner Store won. The owners were
more than happy to wait six months until we left Wave Hill,
promising to spend two weeks with us to ‘put us through the ropes’.
So, that was what was waiting for us on our arrival in
Toogoolawah.
 3

The Corner Store

The Corner Store in Toogoolawah was at the end of the main

shopping centre. The shop came with a three-bedroom house and
garage at the back of the block, and a small backyard with a lawn.
The shop was on a corner—which was a small relief—hence it was
named ‘The Corner Store’. On the other side was a laneway, an old
butcher’s shop and the Exchange Hotel. Diagonally across the street
and across a railway reserve lived Ralph’s mother Mary and her
single sister Eanie. Mary was known to everyone as Cudge—which is
an Indigenous word for white woman. Mary had lived most of her
life in the Northern Territory, bringing up her family at Rosewood and
Waterloo Stations in the Northern Territory, and after her husband
Dick died, she cooked on both Elsey and Wave Hill Stations.
How lucky we were to have family so close at this vital time of
change in our lifestyle—and be able to stay with them on our arrival
from the north. We spent two weeks with Cudge and Eanie, and our
son Jason was there too, having spent the term at the Toogoolawah
High School. Then Ralph, Jason, Penny and I moved into our new
home behind The Corner Store. We had an extension made to the
boys’ bedroom to accommodate the three of them.
We didn’t own any furniture, as the Vesteys had provided
everything at Wave Hill. Our only possessions were our clothes and
personal objects, a radiogram and a pianola. The first thing we
needed to do was to buy furniture for our house. Down to Brisbane
we went, and with the help of Ben Humphries we purchased
furniture from antique and second-hand furniture shops, some of
which I still have today. Ben had toured the Northern Territory and
the Kimberley for years with his hawker van, arriving at Wave Hill
twice a year selling Western gear to the stockmen. We enjoyed Ben’s
visits. He would always stay with us for a couple of days before
continuing on to the next station. After selling his business he
decided to go into Federal politics; he joined the Labor Party and
became Minister for Veteran Affairs from 1987 to 1993.
Two weeks after we arrived in Toogoolawah, we took over The
Corner Store. We went into the shop like babes in the wood—it was
completely foreign. I now know one needs to be born into the retail
business. A bit late now!
The store was open from 7 a.m. until 6.30 p.m., 363 days a year,
with only Christmas Day and Good Friday off. I had to do the
bookkeeping. Did I remember the Business Principles and
Bookkeeping subjects I had learnt at school? Of course not.
Fortunately, two weeks tuition in the running of The Corner Store
from the previous owners did make quite a difference.
We had a cool room where we kept a variety of cold meats—
devon, corned beef, salami, chicken rolls—plus an assortment of
cheeses, and where every evening, all the fruit and vegetables were
transferred for the night. On the counter was the meat slicer, which
Ralph would clean every evening. Invariably, just as he had finished
cleaning off all the accumulation of meat and fat and the slicer was
gleaming and spotless, someone would rush in to order a couple of
slices of ham or corned beef and Ralph, furious but trying not to
show it, would say with a snarl of a smile: ‘Oh! That’s okay …’
We had to purchase a vehicle—a panel van—to pick up all our
stock from Ipswich, seventy-five kilometres away. Every week we
had to make an order to replace the stock that had been bought. It
took half a day to count everything on the shelves. Then one of us
had to go to Tickles, a wholesale store in Ipswich, to buy the stock,
which took all day. I usually went, as I wasn’t game to ask Ralph. He
wasn’t very happy as a storekeeper and I was concerned he might
get angry with the tradesmen down there. On returning to the shop
and unloading tonnes of goods, we then had to price it all and put it
on the shelves. A couple of days later it was time to do another
stocktake and go to Tickles again.
The Corner Store had a ‘book up’ system, which we had inherited;
we had no choice in this matter and if we had refused, we would
have lost customers. Our customers could ‘book up’ a tab until they
decided to pay their bill—and if one reminded the customer of a very
overdue bill, they would get very upset.
We also had customers who bought only one product per week or
month. One such customer had a standing order for a two-litre Triple
Treat ice-cream—the only item she ever bought from us (the ice-
cream man only came once a month). One month this lady didn’t
turn up, so I sold the Triple Treat to someone else. How indignant
she was when she eventually came in, putting her head in the air
and marching out. Good riddance, I thought, making a rude sign to
her departing back. She turned around and saw me, but I didn’t
care. It was worth it to have one less horrible customer.
Another customer wasn’t very happy when Rumpole, our
Ridgeback pup, went visiting a young Apostolic couple across the
road. The German Apostolics, a very close-knit community in
Toogoolawah, came out to Australia assisted by several churches,
one of which was the German Apostolic Church. H.F. Niemeyer came
out with his wife in 1883. He was responsible for arranging an
immigration scheme with the Queensland Government, bringing over
700 German migrants to Queensland.
The wife was home alone and terrified of Rumpole, the gentlest of
creatures who wouldn’t hurt a fly. She relayed a frightening story to
her husband when he returned home. Over came the husband—
peak time early evening—and started abusing Ralph in front of a
shop full of customers. Oh dear, there go all our Apostolic
customers, I thought, but it wasn’t that bad. We did lose that couple
but not many. Still, no more roaming for Rumpole!
As you can gather, life was extremely busy. Ralph would open the
store at 7 a.m., while I cooked breakfast and got Penny and Jason
off to school. No cook to prepare breakfast, no Aboriginal women to
wash up, clean the house, do the washing and ironing. I had to learn
to be a housewife, as well as run a corner store and do the books
for the business.
Ralph hated The Corner Store; putting up with the old ladies
squeezing the paw-paws and the tomatoes; cutting ham on the
meat slicer after having just cleaned it. It was a far cry from running
a large cattle station.
After the first week he said, ‘Put it on the market!’
Eventually Ralph was able to escape from the store, as our dairy
farmer Owen, who had very sadly lost his wife, decided to leave.
Ralph moved out to the farm to do the milking, which he didn’t mind
at all—anything to get away from the shop. He was luckily quite
experienced with dairying, having spent time at his uncle’s dairy
farm at Maryborough after his father died.
 4

Living in Toogoolawah

Penny started preschool in Toogoolawah, which was so very different

to Katherine School of the Air at Wave Hill Station, where she was
the only pupil, with her teacher on the two-way radio 446 kilometres
away. Anthony and David had done their schooling with the Sydney
Correspondence School, but by the time Jason started school the
School of the Air had started in Katherine.
By the time we finished in the shop each day, Ralph and I would
collapse in front of the TV, which we hadn’t ever had at Wave Hill. I
remember watching Mash quite often in the evening, before
preparing dinner.
We finally met our neighbouring dairy farmers from Scrub Creek,
who we had never seen, even though we had been coming to the
farm each holiday. And of course, we met all the Toogoolawahites,
who came into The Corner Store out of curiosity. We tried our best
to impress them, as our competition, the Co-op, was just down the
road and sold everything except delicatessen goods.
Ralph joined the Lions Club. I went along on mixed nights, though
not as a member. Meetings were usually held in the Exchange Hotel,
which was conveniently practically next door.
I went to parent–teacher meetings and worked in the tuck shop at
Toogoolawah Primary School—things I had never had the chance to
do in the Outback and had envied those that did. It wasn’t that
exciting! I also started playing golf once a week, thinking that as my
mother and father had gone on a golfing honeymoon, I might have
inherited their golfing ability—but not so.
Jason completed two years at Toogoolawah High School, moving
out to the farm with Ralph to help with the milking until he went to
Downlands to become a boarder in grade eleven.
Sometimes I would take the van to Toowoomba to pick up the
boys at Downlands and give several lads who lived in the Brisbane
Valley a lift too. They would all sit on the floor of the van. It sounds
horribly dangerous now, but seat belts didn’t come in until 1983 for
the front of a vehicle and 1989 for the back, and no one worried
about it back then. They all survived, thank goodness.
Anthony was in the first fifteen rugby team. We loved being there
for the rugby matches, especially the annual game against
Toowoomba Grammar. It was Anthony’s last year and he had
sprained an ankle but was determined to play. The father of one of
the players, a doctor, gave him an injection. The Downlands team
won, beating Toowoomba Grammar, with Anthony Hayes being
named the man of the match.
David missed his mates at Joeys and wasn’t happy at Downlands.
We gave in to him when he wanted to come home. Toogoolawah
High School only went to grade ten. The grade eleven and twelve
students from Toogoolawah had to go to Kilcoy High on a bus each
day. With such a long day and having had years of boarding school,
he found it difficult to study at home.
Eventually we sent him to Longreach Agricultural College when he
left high school. There he got bored, as on Wave Hill he had done
everything from shoeing and mustering, to cattle management, and
half of the curriculum was on sheep husbandry and David was a
cattle man through and through. He also complained about the
breaks from work just to have a smoke, while shoeing, drenching
and cattle and sheep handling. He eventually got himself expelled by
buying a bottle of Scotch (David has never drunk alcohol), and then
taking one of the town girls out to the movies on Saturday night
(which was also forbidden). The next thing the headmaster rang me
to say that David was being expelled. The headmaster discovered
that he had done it on purpose, and said if only David had told him,
he could have helped him adjust to the college ways.
David then went jackerooing at Muckaty Station, under Alan
Hagen and his wife Miriam, whom we had never met but they were
great friends of Robyn and Graham Fulcher, our Territory friends.
David stayed there two years, coming home for Christmas after the
first year.
I wanted Penny to become the ballerina that I had dreamt of
becoming. We went to Kilcoy every Saturday for ballet lessons. At
the end of every year the ballet students performed a little concert
in the hall where they had the ballet lessons. They all looked
beautiful. One year the students were asked to make up their own
dance and costume to match. Penny chose the music from Cats. I
made her a dress of orange organza out of an old evening dress of
mine. She looked gorgeous and danced divinely and was presented
with first prize. So proud!
 5

The biggest surprise ever

With Ralph heading off to the farm I needed staff at the store, so we
employed several Apostolic women to help, which made life more
bearable in the shop. But I still hated being there, and the thought
that I could be there for years thoroughly depressed me.
I kept thinking about ways to get rid of the shop.
Maybe getting the Mafia to burn it down?
Of course, I didn’t know anyone in the Mafia, or even anyone who
might have criminal connections. I never asked anyone; I was just
feeling so desperate.
One of our neighbours, a very nice couple, were working on the
wife’s parents’ property just down the road from us. One day they
called in to see us, telling us that they had left her parents’ dairy
farm and were now looking for work around the district.
We had been invited to Pricey’s—one of my nursing friends from
RPAH—daughter’s wedding in Sydney and were keen to go. Anne
Price and I had become great friends when we worked together at
Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children in Sydney during our three
months in paediatrics, a requirement during our general nursing
training at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney.
Ralph and I had been to Anne’s wedding to Harry in Sydney, when
on holidays years before. Anne and Harry bought a small, rundown
thirteen-bed hospital in the Northern Suburbs of Sydney and over
the years enlarged it to a fifty-two-bed hospital with two operating
theatres.
 There is no doubt about us nurses.
We asked the couple who now found themselves at a loose end if
they would like to relieve us for two weeks—milking the cows,
feeding them on the irrigated pasture, irrigating and running the
store—while we went to Sydney for the wedding. They jumped at
the chance to be employed for two weeks.
Off we went, Ralph, Penny and I. We had a wonderful time. Ralph
thoroughly enjoyed the break from the exhausting hours of the farm
and for me it was such a relief to not have to go into the store. I
was dreading the thought of going back.
On our return, the couple said, ‘We have something to tell you.’
‘And we think, Thea, you had better sit down to hear this.’
I wonder what this is all about, I thought as I grabbed a chair.
‘We want to buy your shop.’
‘Wow,’ I screamed with joy and amazement. I couldn’t believe it.
‘Tell me that again. I can’t believe it.’
The sale went ahead. We moved everything out to Bidgi Park from
The Corner Store house.
It took me ages to get used to the idea that I didn’t have to go
into the store every day. It had taken two years, two months and
one week to sell.
As it turned out, we had done very well in The Corner Store
business. We sold the shop for a good price, lived well—despite
working very hard—and were able to keep our children educated in
a good boarding school.
 6

Getting to know the locals

After becoming the owners of our property Bidgi Park in 1976, we

realised that living it up on our holidays from Wave Hill would have
to stop. No more extravagant wining and dining in the latest
fashionable restaurants with our friends. We had responsibilities, so
we would spend part of our holidays visiting my family in
Wollongong, do a quick trip to Sydney to pick up the boys—who
were still at school there at the time—and say hello to friends, and
then drive on to Bidgi Park to camp in our caravan, where we would
help Owen with the milking and do a bit of maintenance. I don’t
remember meeting any of our neighbours during those four years.
We did hear that you had to be in the district for twenty years before
you were accepted as a local.
It wasn’t until we took over The Corner Store that we met our
various neighbours, who came into our shop as customers. After I
became a dairy farmer, I realised that most dairy farmers’ wives
have to get up at the crack of dawn to milk the cows, help with
ploughing, irrigating, making hay, cooking meals, and looking after
both the children and their husband. And thus, most of them had
hardly any time nor inclination to socialise.
While staying at Cudge’s house the first week we moved to
Toogoolawah, we had a visit from Gaylene Bourguignon, who invited
us to join her and husband Norm at the Toogoolawah Apex Ball.
There we met Jill and Alan Roughan. Jill had grown up in
Toogoolawah, where her father had been the local chemist. When Jill
married Alan, he became the Green Spot Chemist in the town, taking
over from his father-in-law. Much later, when they celebrated their
60th birthdays just one day apart, guests were invited to come as
either Jill, with long black hair, or Alan, dressed in green and white
spots. There were Jills and Alans everywhere at the party. Tilly
Gardner went as half Jill and half Alan, with half a moustache, and
shirt and trousers on one side and a pretty skirt and blouse on the
other.
Across the river from Bidgi Park lived Duncan and Echo McConnel
—fourth generation owners of Cressbrook Station, which was
established in 1841 and covered the whole of the Brisbane Valley in
the early days. Anthony and David used to work for Duncan during
the school holidays, and eventually for Christopher (the fifth
generation), who took over from his father.
The best party I ever went to was a King Henry XIII party held in
the courtyard at Cressbrook. At least thirty of us all dressed in period
costumes—low cut dresses and balloon boobs for the ladies—and
were greeted with wine and peanuts in shells, which were thrown on
the floor, making a rough carpet in the courtyard of the old
homestead. After much wine was consumed, we were seated at long
plank tables. Large trays of whole chickens, lamb shanks, hunks of
bread and lashings of butter, but no cutlery, were plonked on the
tables. Suddenly someone started throwing food. Jill picked up a
chicken and threw it at me. I got such a shock I automatically threw
it back, and then it was on for one and all. Chicken, lamb shanks,
butter and wine, hurled or poured by all at all; we were covered in
it.
Not exactly genteel behaviour, but we were the peasants and that
was our role. It was the funniest party I had ever been to.
At 4 a.m. when we arrived home, we wondered why we were so
hungry.
One day in The Corner Store we had a visit from Peter Harpham,
one of our stockmen from Wave Hill, who was now managing
Carlton Hill Station in Western Australia. He was accompanied by his
fiancée Susie Shaw, whom he met when Susie and her sister were
travelling around the Kimberley. Susie went to work at Carlton as the
cook, an opportunity to learn the trade, then they both came south
to Kingaroy to get married at her family home. Peter asked Ralph to
be best man.
It was a magnificent wedding, at the country home of Keith Shaw
and his wife Anne on the outskirts of Kingaroy. We’d booked into a
motel in town for the night. The ceremony was in the garden, with
drinks in the old dairy and a wedding breakfast in a marquee. We
made many more local friendships that night.
It was a great wedding; some partied on all night. I went to bed
about 3 a.m., mindful of having to get back to the shop the next
morning, but Ralph didn’t return until about 5 a.m. And what a
mean thing I had to do.
‘Sorry, Ralph, don’t go to bed. We have to leave now.’
Who would want to run a corner store?
Our boys were home from school for the weekend, with Penny
aged just five. By the time we got back from Kingaroy they had
opened the shop and started serving our customers. It was their first
time behind the counter. They did a good job too. The customers
seemed very happy.
 7

Life as a dairy farmer

When Ralph took over the milking, our previous dairy man Owen
gave him a hand until Ralph was able to employ young people, one
at a time from the Ipswich Social Services, to help him. Having no
other accommodation except our house, that’s where they had to
live. They were a diverse lot of unemployed youth, sometimes
turning up for work and sometimes not. Some showed an interest,
and some couldn’t have cared less, and in general the girls were
much more reliable than the boys.
After I found one of the young men in our bedroom, about to help
himself to something from my dressing table, Ralph and I realised
this set up was not going to work. Our house was too small to
accommodate both our family and the hired staff. The alternative
was for me to help Ralph with the milking.
I had never milked a cow before and the only time I had seen
cows milked was when I was eight years old, when my mother,
brother Terry and I camped with a friend on a dairy farm on the
Macquarie Rivulet on the road to Bowral. Terry and I would go to the
dairy nearly every day from our campsite to watch the milking;
having never been on a farm before, we were fascinated.
After running a corner store, I didn’t mind milking at all—anything
was better than being a shopkeeper, so I became a dairy farmer with
my husband.
Ralph would get up at 4.30 a.m. and ride up to the back paddocks
to bring in the dairy cows, while I made him tea and toast, a pre-
milking cuppa.
Penny was now going to and from school on the school bus, which
picked her up at the end of our driveway, 200 metres from the
house.
We had a walk-through dairy. The cows would come into the yard
and be ushered into the bales. A chain would be put across their
rumps. One cow, Snake, was always cranky so she had a leg rope to
keep her from kicking. They would all get a measure of grain; their
teats were washed and milking cups were applied. After they were
milked, the gate in the bales was pushed open and the cows went
off to feed for the day or night or to graze on irrigated pasture.
At no time in my life had I ever complained of a bad back until I
started milking. Sitting on a forty centimetre block of wood, leaning
forward and down to place the dairy cups on the teats of each cow,
then back down to take them off while looking up to see the flow of
milk all the time, was excruciating. Not only did I have a pain in my
back but in my neck as well. After the first week I couldn’t wait to
get to a chiropractor. I became a regular visitor to Mr Kennedy’s
chiropractic practice in Toowoomba.
After milking the 120-odd cows, we would take them down to the
electric fenced area full of rich ryegrass which was constantly
fertilised and irrigated. Fertilise and irrigate, fertilise and irrigate;
every day the same. Have you ever carried and laid irrigation pipes
after a huge frost? Our aluminium irrigation pipes were twenty feet
long, we had to move them every morning to a new section of
ryegrass, which had to be fertilised every day with the fertiliser
spreader, before we started irrigating. When we had a frost, the
pipes were like ice, but we still had to pick them up, carry them to
the new site, connect them together and then turn on the pump.
Ralph and I enrolled in a five-day artificial insemination course at
the University of Queensland farm in Brisbane, to learn how to
inseminate a cow with semen from a bull. It meant getting up at 4
a.m. to milk the cows to get down to the university farm by 8 a.m.
We were instructed in how to watch for oestrus (the heat period in
a cow that lasts twenty-four hours). Artificial insemination or AI
needed to be carried out twelve hours after oestrus. We had lessons
on the anatomy of a cow and how to insert the semen. I guess
being a nurse helped with the anatomy.
We were taught how to insert a straw of semen from a liquid
nitrogen canister into an AI gun and hold it in the right hand, while
inserting a gloved left hand into the anus to feel for the cervix
below. We then had to insert the gun into the entrance to the uterus
and inject the semen. But it’s not easy to feel the cervix with your
hand in the rectum and to find the cervical opening. It took Ralph
and most of the other pupils two days to get ‘the feel’, but I still
couldn’t get the hang of it.
What’s wrong with me? I began to think.
Suddenly, on the third day, I could feel ‘it’—the opening of the
cervix—and everything fell into place. One Holstein Friesian cow was
so large I had to stand on a stool, with my face level with her anus;
thank goodness she saved her business for later.
It would be early evening by the time we returned home after the
AI course, and the old girls in the dairy yard would be getting
agitated waiting to be milked.
It was a very educational week, enabling Ralph and I to AI our
dairy herd with great success. It’s a great feeling when you help
create a living creature, and when the calf is born you feel so proud.
In 1985 when Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen was premier of Queensland
and the South East Queensland Electricity Board employees went on
strike, I remember we only had power for two hours in the morning
and two in the evening. We faced a dilemma: would we feed
ourselves or milk the cows? The cows took precedence and we didn’t
have a hot evening meal any night that week.
We were dairying when the Commonwealth Games were on in
Brisbane in 1982 at the QE11 Stadium. It was wonderful to watch it
all on TV after milking in the morning and before milking in the
evening. We also went to Expo 88 in Brisbane in 1988. A quick trip
down and back. The theme of Expo 88 was ‘Leisure in the Age of
Technology’, and the mascot was an Australian platypus named Expo
Oz—a life sized platypus in bright colours, framed by a Ken Done
sculpture of the word Australia. The site of Expo 88 was across the
river from the CBD where old houses and wharves had existed. It is
where South Bank is today. Thirty-five nations took part. It was a
World Fair, a wonderfully exciting time, and promoted Brisbane as a
tourist destination throughout the world. We enjoyed it so much, we
envied the Brisbanites who could go anytime.
Our dairy herd improved, and we gradually changed from Jersey
and Shorthorn to Holstein Friesians. We even became serious about
showing heifers at a Friesian heifer show in Toogoolawah—a great
education in the daily handling and conformation of cattle, which
was so very different to station cattle in the Outback, which were
usually handled less than once or twice a year, if that.
But the relentless dairying lifestyle was very hard to take. In 1983,
after a few years, we decided to sell our dairy cows and change to
beef cattle.
There hadn’t been a dairy sale in the area for years and the locals
were predicting a very good result for us. Of course, I wanted to
have the best auctioneers, choosing a Brisbane firm in preference to
a local. My first mistake.
At this time dairies were being advised to test their herd for EBL—
Enzootic Bovine Leucosis, also known as Bovine Leukaemia.
As not many local herds had been tested and since ours appeared
very healthy, we decided not to test. However, when the sale
catalogues arrived, the auctioneer had put on the cover ‘Dairy Cows
EBL Free’. Instead of demanding a new catalogue be printed,
without ‘EBL free’, we decided to test. When the results came back,
we were devastated. Forty-six of our best cows were diagnosed with
EBL and sent off to the meat works.
It was absolutely tragic. For weeks I would wake up in the middle
of the night with the number ‘forty-six’ illuminated, flashing in and
out of my brain.
A month later we had our dairy sale, conducted by the local
auctioneer, Shepherdson and Boyd. It was pretty ordinary—121 head
of dairy cattle were sold—but at least we were out of dairying, and
could concentrate on building up a herd of Murray Grey cattle.
 8

Our Queensland workers’

cottage

Life was so busy, and with The Corner Store and the property there
was no time to worry about the state of our Queensland workers’
cottage, with its flyspecked, tongue and groove walls and rough
wooden floors; a far cry from our last home at Wave Hill Station.
Ralph, of course, had to live out there when he took over the milking
—it became a ‘bachelor pad’. Jason moved to the farm to help Ralph,
catching the bus to school each morning, while Penny and I lived at
the shop. We planned to think about improvements when I moved
out of the shop and onto the farm. This was our very first home of
our own and we had plans aplenty to improve it. But as long as we
had no visitors, renovating could wait until later.
A Queensland workers’ cottage can be very attractive, with an
open front veranda, a front door in the middle and two windows on
either side. Unfortunately, the previous owners had at some stage
hung a killer (a beast killed for meat) from a rafter on the front
veranda, which collapsed the beam. The quickest solution for us, not
knowing at the time that we would disfigure the essence of a
Queensland workers’ cottage, was to have the front veranda closed
in. We really needed the extra room, but the house never looked
very attractive after that.
Some friends of ours, Pat and Grey Lapthorn from the Gold Coast,
came to visit just after we purchased the property. Pat and I were
discussing renovation ideas, when I asked Grey’s opinion on the
removal of a wall to enlarge the lounge room.
His reply? ‘Well, Thea, I know what I would do. I’d hire a bulldozer
and knock the whole house down.’
Well, really! This was our very first home and Ralph and I were
quite sure we could improve it.
Tim and Faye, my brother and sister-in-law, and their children flew
out from America to visit my mother in Wollongong. I flew down
with Anthony and Penny to meet them for a family get-together.
David and Jason stayed home to help Ralph with the milking.
It was wonderful to see everyone. My other brothers Tony and
Terry were there too, and everyone wanted to know all about our
new place. Especially Tim and Faye.
‘Dying to see your property,’ they kept saying.
Oh no, I thought, the house is so horrible. But I said, ‘Oh yes, I’d
love you to come!’
They quickly agreed. I hadn’t realised they were serious about
coming to see our farm.
After Anthony, Penny and I returned, Ralph drove down to pick
them up at Ellerston, Kerry Packer’s Hunter Valley property, just out
from Scone in NSW, which some of our friends were managing.
As soon as Ralph had left, I rang my mother-in-law, Cudge, and
asked her if she would come out to the farm to help me do an
urgent make-over on our dilapidated farmhouse. For three days we
cleaned, scrubbed, painted and put grass matting all over the old
floorboards. Brightly coloured cushions and quilt covers were thrown
around with gay abandon and by the time we had finished the place
had been transformed—well, up to a point. The kids and I were
sitting around our now much more stylish house, pretending it
always looked vogue-ish, when Ralph arrived back with Faye and
Tim.
Ralph looked around and exclaimed, ‘Good heavens, what the hell
have you done to this old dump?’
Thanks, Ralph, for giving the game away. We did have a good
laugh when Tim and Faye heard of the panic we had been in.
 During my first year on the farm I started painting the inside of
house, as the boys were home for the school holidays to help Ralph
in the dairy. I painted for weeks, filling in the gaps of the tongue and
groove wall panels with loads of the miracle product ‘No More Gaps’.
I carefully painted the unique scrolls above the doorways and in the
hallways that came with all Queensland workers’ cottages.
As soon as the painting was finished—seemingly using hundreds
of tonnes of ‘off white’—we had a free-standing wood-burning stove
put in the lounge room.
Our attempts to beautify the floors were not as straightforward,
particularly in relation to the faux-lino cork tiles in the kitchen. After
a day at the local races, Ralph dropped a bucket of hot ashes on the
lino, wanting to light the barbeque outside, causing much damage to
the floor. After repairs, it was then my turn to be the centre of a new
lino drama: I dropped a red-hot frying pan onto the floor. By then
the carpet and tile man had no trouble finding our property. We
ended up with three layers on the floor. No drafts coming up through
the floorboards now.
Our pianola brought us much enjoyment. We would all stand
around singing as we followed the words on the rolls. But it was
hard to find a pianola tuner, which is necessary to keep the pianola
in tune—it needs to be done once a year. Fortunately, we had been
told of a pianola tuner, John Rowse, who was the only one in
Queensland and came each year to tune our pianola, before making
a date for the following year.
One year I completely forgot the date of his visit. Visitors were
coming for lunch, Robyn and Graham Fulcher our Territorian friends,
bringing Miriam and Alan Hagen from Muckaty Station, near Renner
Springs in the Northern Territory, where David had worked as a
jackeroo. This particular time, the dining room table was just in front
of the pianola where we were all sitting eating, when John the
pianola tuner knocked on the door.
I greeted him and apologised, saying it wasn’t a convenient time.
Could he come back another day?
‘No, I’m sorry, but I won’t be back for another year.’
 My poor guests had to put up with the ding, dong, gong, song,
ting, again and again and again for about ten minutes. We couldn’t
move anywhere else as we were in the middle of our meal, so we
sat on, hardly hearing one another talk. Everyone except me thought
it was so funny.
Every couple of months we would get together with the Dorans
and the Fulchers who also lived in South-East Queensland,
reminiscing about our lives in the Outback. Jocelyn and Tim Doran
were great friends from the Northern Territory who worked on
several Vesley properties before moving south. We had a Territory
reunion one year, partying on until the early hours. We loved getting
together with our Territory mates.
My mother came to stay at the farm for a couple of weeks from
Wollongong, where she lived unhappily in a retirement village. ‘Full
of old people,’ she said.
When she was seventy-eight, my mother had a deep-seated
cerebral haemorrhage. We were still at Wave Hill at the time, but I
flew down to Wollongong expecting the worst. She recovered, even
flying up to Wave Hill for a visit and to America to visit Tim and
family in the following year. Knowing she was unhappy at the
retirement village, I wanted her to stay and live with us in
Queensland, but she said ‘no’. I wasn’t surprised—at the time our life
with a corner store and a dairy wasn’t an especially pleasant option
for a woman of her age.
About a year after her visit to us, my beautiful mother passed
away aged eighty-two, from another cerebral haemorrhage.
After the boys left school and worked or went to the university in
Toowoomba, they often brought their friends down to the farm. We
always had someone visiting.
Over the years we employed Mark Gardner, a farmer friend,
builder and great carpenter to help us improve the house. At one
stage the site for the washing machine was on the ground outside
the back door. We removed walls, enlarged the kitchen and
bathroom areas, and added verandas to the back and side of the
house. Years later, when I came to Toogoolawah for my dear friend
Jill Roughan’s funeral, I stayed the night at Bidgi. It seemed much
bigger than I remembered, and I was surprised at how comfortable
and pleasant it looked.
 9

Back to nursing

With the boys still away at school, expenses were very high. I
decided I would go back to nursing, and in 1982 applied to Esk
Hospital where I was asked to relieve the night sister for a month. I
had been away from hospital work for twenty years, so it was a real
challenge, especially as I had to learn how to do x-rays and take
blood for pathology.
Esk Hospital was a small, thirty bed hospital 28 kilometres south
of Toogoolawah in the Brisbane Valley, mainly a nursing home for
the district but was also used for emergency cases. Critically ill
patients would arrive at the front door and ring the bell. The doctor
would then be called for and only first aid would be performed by
the nurse in charge until the doctor arrived. Seriously ill patients and
women in labour would be sent on to Ipswich Hospital by
ambulance.
It was a little nerve-racking, especially when I heard some of the
horror stories about patients who arrived too late.
A young teenager who had won a ticket to ride in a horse trial,
similar to a Quilty ride, through the town of Esk, had an enormous
allergic reaction to horsehair and died of an asthma attack on the
steps of the hospital.
Another story was of a young girl who, after spraying tomatoes
with a chemical spray, accidentally squirted some on her face, and
before she could get atropine she died in the car outside the
hospital, with her mother blasting the horn. Atropine is an
intravenous medication used to treat certain types of nerve agents
and pesticide poisonings.
There was a snake bite incident where the patient was bitten by a
brown snake on the ankle, which he had wrapped in his shirt.
Fortunately, he arrived at the hospital and was given the antivenom.
Though it saved his life, it took a year for the wound to heal.
Another case I heard of, but not at Esk, was a snake bite victim
who decided to drive himself to hospital instead of calling for help
and immobilising the wound. By the time he arrived at the hospital,
he was bleeding from every orifice and died.
With these stories in mind, I was lucky to have the Esk general
practitioner, who lived on the outskirts of town, to call when needed.
I would do my rounds as the registered nurse, with my assistant
nurse checking on the patients, particularly the incontinent ones.
This involved making a list of duties for the morning; collecting urine
specimens; taking blood and completing observations—temperature,
pulse and respiration—of all my patients.
Thankfully, nothing too drastic happened when I was on duty.
Several times I had to ring the doctor with lacerations, a broken
arm, and a patient with hypertension who hadn’t taken her pills.
While working there, I found a list of accidents from the Sky
Diving Ramblers at Toogoolawah. It was enough to turn me off ever
doing a parachute jump.
At the end of my month at Esk Hospital, I applied for night shift
work in a nursing home near Cloudland, in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.
Cloudland Ballroom was an iconic entertainment centre in the
1950s–70s on the hilltop at Bowen Hills, and was the stuff of
dreams.
Not so the ward in the nursing home where I started work as the
night nurse. I had one floor of the nursing home in my charge, with
twenty or so elderly patients. Every morning I had to bathe or
shower every one of my patients before the morning staff came on
at 7 a.m. That meant getting them undressed and washing them, as
very few could wash and dress themselves. I was horrified at having
to start waking them up from 4.30 a.m.—and not before, so I was
told—so I would leave it a little later and then had to go flat out to
get them finished. Thank goodness bathing before breakfast is
forbidden in nursing homes today, unless the patient is incontinent.
After each ten-hour shift I would drive home to Toogoolawah, 118
kilometres away, feeling exhausted, so after a few weeks I left and
found a nursing home in Ipswich where I was offered day shifts in
one of their wards. This nursing home was for people who did not
need to be in hospital but could not be cared for at home. I still
remember the little old ladies there lying in bed in the foetal
position, being fed medications for all their bodily functions, just
waiting to die. All very sad to witness, but that is life and I did my
best to make them comfortable.
I only worked there for a month, as soon after, Bidgi Park was sold
and we moved to Murrawah, Oakey.
 10

Murray Greys

It all started when we went to a Murray Grey sale in Toowoomba to

buy a bull to go over our dairy heifers. We found ourselves so
impressed with the Murray Grey cattle, their mothering ability and
muscle development, that we purchased two cows with bull calves at
foot. We would use artificial insemination in the meantime over our
Friesians until we made the move to rearing beef cattle, in particular
the Murray Grey.
Our timing was spot on, as Sam Coco was having a complete
dispersal sale of his stud Wallace Park Murray Greys at his property
near Wagga Wagga, NSW.
At Wallace Park we bought fifteen lots of stud cows with calves at
foot and a stud bull, Wallace Park Colossus 997. And so began our
Bidgi Park Stud.
There was no stopping us after our first show at Toogoolawah
where we did very well showing our cattle. Mind you, we only had
one other Murray Grey competitor! We went to the Brisbane Ekka,
the Royal Brisbane Show, originally called ‘The Brisbane Exhibition’,
taking two steers—Bidgi Park Bozo, led by me, and Bidgi Park
Benjamin, led by Penny, who got sixth in a class of twenty-six led
steers. Against a very large class they presented ribbons for fourth,
fifth and sixth position. We were thrilled. Penny and Benjamin even
had their photo in the Courier Mail.
Over the next few years we went to all the local shows in the tick-
ridden areas with our Murray Greys, and we got used to dipping the
Another random document with
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Act, and accomplish the requisite changes, consistently with the
public sense of fitness and propriety.
This Association, therefore, brings before the country an
efficacious means of obviating, for the future, the necessity or any
approach to the evils of the old system, in accordance with the
general feeling and opinion on the subject, and in strict and active
furtherance of the law as it now stands.
The considerations which the Association desire to lay before the
public arrange themselves under the following general heads:—
The well-known and acknowledged difficulty and danger of the old
process, and the dangerous exposure and risk to property, in
large masses, from the imperfect performance of former
methods.
The harsh, not to say hard and cruel, treatment of the infant
sweeper, from a necessity (in a certain degree, perhaps)
inseparable from the nature of the old process, and the effects
of prescriptive custom, as exercised by unenlightened masters.
The unerring and perfect performance of the Association’s new
Machinery, coupled with its simplicity of construction, its great
effective power, and its ease of management.
The great importance of its certain effect in the immediate extinction
of accidental fire in chimneys.
The great practical economy effected to the public through the
perfect operation of the Machines, and the consequent
incalculable increase of convenience in the domestic
arrangements,—as all the chimneys of a house can be perfectly
swept at one visit, in much less time than is now required; with a
guaranteed security, for the due performance of the specific duty
undertaken, and against injury or loss from carelessness,
mismanagement, or depredation.
The Association has also in view the very important objects of
affording complete relief to the entire class of sweeping adults
and children, by elevating them from their present degraded and
 enslaved condition to the rank of well-ordered, decently-
appointed, and justly-paid workmen.
The date of each application for sweeping chimneys in a house, and
of the execution of the order, with the names of the workmen
employed, will be entered in the books of the Association, at
their principal office, 34, Foley-place: thus affording satisfactory
proof, in cases of fire, of the chimneys having been properly
swept, where the cause of fire may be the subject of legal
controversy; and preventing any disposition on the part of the
labourer to commit petty offences, from the absolute certainty of
immediate detection.
The PATENT RAMONEUR ASSOCIATION, to carry out these
great objects, have appointed respectable persons as Agents to
receive orders; and will employ workmen of known good character,
provided with suitable dresses to carry on the operation; giving them
thus a cleaner and more decent appearance, when not absolutely
employed at work, than is at present witnessed; and who, in lieu of
the scanty and precarious pittance hitherto allowed them, will receive
wages of sufficient amount to afford them the comforts and secure to
them the self-respect enjoyed by other mechanical labourers.
The Association beg to inform the Nobility, Gentry, and Public,
that, under these arrangements, on application being made at the
Central Office, a workman and assistant will attend with the Machine,
and, if necessary at the first trial, the Superintendent will himself be
present at the operation. The usual rate charged for each chimney,
under the old system of Machinery, will not be exceeded; and should
it be desired, houses may be contracted for by the year, on the same
terms as heretofore; no extra charge being made for machinery, or
for the greater convenience, cleanliness, and security of property,
afforded by the arrangements of the Association.
W. S. TROTTER, Secretary.
Superintendent, Mr. W. Speller, 30, Berkeley-street West, Edgware-
road.
 ⁂ In connexion with this establishment, the Association has
introduced a Patent Chimney-pot, which effectually cures the
downward draught, and supersedes the use of “cowls,” which cannot
escape fracture by the Machinery employed in sweeping the
chimneys.

COMMERCIAL AND GENERAL LIFE ASSURANCE, ANNUITY,

ENDOWMENT, AND LOAN ASSOCIATION.
112, Cheapside, London.
Capital 500,000l. in shares of 50l. each. Deposit 2l. per share.
DIRECTORS.

Henry George Ward, Esq., M.P., Chairman.

John Aylwin, Esq., Dulwich.
Robert Bastow, Esq., 20, Surrey-place, Old Kent-road.
William Bastow, Esq., 20, Surrey-place, Old Kent-road.
Henry Cornfoot, Esq., Old Palace, Richmond.
 Adam Duff, Esq., Morden-hill, Blackheath.
Henry Hind Edwards, Esq., Park Village East, Regent’s-park.
Edward Evans, Esq., 2, Stones’-end, Borough.
Robert Meggay, Esq., 38, Great Tower-street.
Richard Pope, Esq., 11, North Terrace, Camberwell.
John Richards, Esq., 17, New Bridge-street, Blackfriars, and
Reading.
Thomas Bush Saunders, Esq., 19, Lincoln’s-inn-fields.

Rates of premium calculated on as low a rate as is consistent with

the safety of the assured and the stability of the Company.
A septennial division of the profits, either in the way of bonuses, or
in the reduction of premiums; two-thirds to the assured, and one-
third to the proprietors.
A system of loan upon personal or other securities, provided the
party borrowing assures his life for double the amount he receives.
Policies which shall have been assigned six months as a bona fide
security not void by death from suicide, duelling, or the hands of
justice.
No entrance fee or other charge beyond the policy stamp.
All matters in dispute, where no fraud is suspected, to be referred
to arbitration.
Claims payable three months after death, or earlier on receiving a
discount.
A liberal commission to all parties bringing business.
Premiums payable yearly, half-yearly, or quarterly.
Medical referees paid by the Office in every case referred to them
for their professional opinions.
Interest at the rate of 5l. per cent. allowed on the paid-up capital.
 Applications for the remaining shares, agencies, and
prospectuses, to be made to the Secretary, 112, Cheapside.
Board days, Mondays and Thursdays, at half-past One o’clock.
FREDERICK LAWRANCE, Secretary.

TO THE CLERGY.
CITY EQUITABLE CLOTHING ESTABLISHMENT, FLEET-STREET
(Three Doors from Temple-bar).
G. EVANS respectfully yet fearlessly submits the following SCALE
of CONTRACTS to the careful perusal of gentlemen who have been
accustomed to pay exorbitant prices, and to assure them that the
articles will be of the best materials and workmanship, as he intends
to continue that honest and just principle of doing business which he
has hitherto pursued, and which he is happy to find has given such
general satisfaction. His long experience in cutting has qualified him
to give a good fit, and his matured judgment enables him to select
none but the best materials.
Naval and Military Uniforms strictly to regulation, with a careful
regard to economy. Liveries unusually low, considering the superior
articles invariably supplied. Ladies’ Riding Habits, not to be
surpassed in style, quality, or price. Young Gentlemen’s Clothing at
extremely moderate prices.
A List of Prices forwarded to gentlemen who do not wish to
contract.
TABLE OF CONTRACT.

No. of Suits. Colours. Super. Best that

per suit. can be made
in every
particular.
£ s. d. £ s. d.
Two Suits Coloured 4 4 0 4 18 0
Ditto Black or Blue 4 18 0 5 10 0
 Three Suits Coloured 4 2 0 4 16 0
Ditto Black or Blue 4 16 0 5 8 0
Four Suits Coloured 4 0 0 4 10 0
Ditto Black or Blue 4 12 0 5 5 0
Five Suits Coloured 4 0 0 4 8 0
Ditto Black or Blue 4 12 0 5 2 0
Six Suits Coloured 3 18 0 4 6 0
Ditto Black or Blue 4 10 0 5 0 0

OLD SUITS TO BE RETURNED.

Silk Waistcoats, 4s. extra; Frock Coats, 10s.; Velvet Waistcoats,
10s.; Velvet Collar, 4s.
A newly-invented Measuring Card (with a Drawing), and Tape
attached, giving instructions to enable any person to use it correctly,
will be forwarded where required.

OIL and LAMP PHENOMENA, and NO PUFF.—CLARK and CO., oil

refiners by chemical process, 261, Strand, and 16, Picket-street, sell
their UNEQUALLED CLARIFIED OIL, at 4s. 10d. per gallon, suitable
for every description of lamp in present use. Four gallons go as far
as five gallons of solar or other common oils, and therefore their
Clarified Oil is cheapest. Lamps burning it require no cleaning, on
account of its purity. It produces a splendid light, without smoke, if
their fire-proof smoke consuming glasses are used; but burns quite
equal to sperm with the common glasses. Oil lamps, best
workmanship and newest style, at manufacturer’s prices: for
instance, excellent table lamps, 21s., usually 38s.; Cambridge
reading or writing lamps, superior, 11s. 9d., usually 21s.; hall lamps
from 2s. 9d.; very superb drawing and dining room lamps, 45s. 9d.,
usually 84s.; beautiful brass and real bronze reading lamps, 15s. 9d.,
usually 30s. These are only specimens of prices. Chandelier designs
to be seen in great variety. Clarified oil, 4s. 10d. imperial gallon; fire-
proof chimneys, 1s. only.—CLARK and CO., 16, Pickett-street, or
261, Strand, three doors from the stone pillars, opposite St.
Clement’s Church, and not a corner shop. To prevent impositions,
observe, strictly, Clark and Co. stamped on the glasses, and sealed
on the oil corks. Books of designs of lamps (for every use) forwarded
free to any part of the kingdom.

PAINT AND PAPER CLEANED ON A NEW PRINCIPLE.—HENRY

BURRIDGE, 15, Grenville-street, Brunswick-square, original Inventor
of the new and approved method of washing Paper-hangings on the
walls of rooms by a Chemical Preparation, to look equal to new,
begs to return his most grateful thanks to the Nobility and Gentry for
the liberal patronage he has received, and trusts by strict attention to
merit a continuance of their favours.
Specimens of paper cleaning may be seen at 15, Grenville-street,
or shewn on the walls that are required to be cleaned. Gilt
Mouldings, Painted Ceilings, Stucco Walls, Wainscots, &c., cleaned
nearly equal to new, Marble Monuments, Busts, and Chimney-pieces
bleached and cleaned without incurring the expense of taking down
and refixing.
Manufacturer of Marble Papers for staircase walls, &c., in a new
and superior style.
Distempering, Whitewashing, and Colouring executed with
despatch.
Established 20 years.
House and Estate Agent.
N.B. No charge for registering.
 AUSTIN & SEELEY,
NEW ROAD, LONDON,
(Corner of Cleveland Street.)

AUSTIN and SEELEY respectfully invite the attention of Builders,

Masons, and others to their extensive Collection of Ornaments,
manufactured in Artificial Stone, of their own peculiar Composition,
without either the use of Roman Cement or the application of Heat.
They are also ready to execute New Models on the lowest
remunerating terms. Their present Stock consists of—
Capitals and Fluted Columns; Trusses, Brackets, and Modillions;
the Royal Arms and Prince of Wales’s Feathers; Centre Ornaments
for Entablatures and Bas-Relievos; Balustrading and Coping, for
which, as their work is waterproof, it is well suited; Rustic and Rough
Stone Facing, and Pier Ornaments, such as Pine-Apples, &c.; Gothic
Work in great variety, including Fonts, Communion Tables, and
Screens; Tazzas and Vases, to the extent of nearly One Hundred
Models; Flower-Boxes, and Garden-Border Edging; Fountains, from
£6 and upwards; Monumental Urns; Figures—Statues from the
antique, as well as some chaste subjects of modern design, Animals,
Birds, &c.; Chimneys and Chimney-Pots, from 1 foot 10 inches to 10
feet high. (As these are so bulky, a portion of Roman Cement is
introduced for economy’s sake.)
N.B. A complete Specimen-Sheet of their Chimneys may be had by
application to A. and S.
 MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION.
THE PATENT STUCCO PAINT CEMENT.—This truly valuable
preparation, the satisfactory result of a long series of experiments,
after having been subjected to the most rigid tests, is now offered
with confidence to the public, as possessing the following
extraordinary qualities, which must at once insure for it a preference
over any Cement yet manufactured.
Architects, Engineers, Contractors, Builders, Masons, Plasterers,
and the Trade are referred to the undermentioned properties of this
valuable discovery, which is secured by Patent to its Inventors and
Proprietors.
1. Its strong adhesive properties, fixing most tenaciously to the
smoothest surfaces, even to glass.
2. Its being highly repellent of water, and thoroughly impervious to
wet or damp.
3. The chemical peculiarity of its composition does not admit of the
possibility of its vegetating, and thereby becoming discoloured.
4. The safe and gradual rapidity with which it dries; hardening the
more by the greater exposure to the atmosphere.
5. Its perfect freedom from any of the caustic qualities of Lime
Stuccoes; and consequently,
6. It may be painted upon as soon as dry, a property possessed by
no other Cement whatever.
7. It is not in the slightest degree affected by frost.
8. It may be kept in the cask as delivered from the Manufactory for
any length of time without deterioration, not requiring to be used (as
other Cements are) immediately after being manufactured. To
Merchants, therefore, and Exporters, even to the remotest parts of
the globe, this Cement will form a most important item of commerce.
 9. To Engineers and Conductors of Public Works, the use of this
Cement is strongly recommended in lieu of mortar, particularly in the
construction of Railway Arches and Tunnelling; its peculiarly
tenacious property forming one hardened mass with the brick or
masonry, or with whatever material it may be used; and it will be
found particularly valuable in laying and pointing roofs, whether of
slate or tile, in the most exposed situations, rendering the whole roof
fixed and immoveable.
This Cement is sold in a fluid state, fit for its mixture with the sand,
at 14s. per cwt.: the proportions being one fourth-part of the fluid to
three-fourths of sand, thereby reducing the price of this Cement
considerably below that of any other yet offered to the public.
One coat of the Cement, so prepared, is sufficient to cover at once
a Brick Front, without any preparatory coat of lime, seven pounds of
the fluid Cement being consumed in covering the square yard; but
when laid on Lime Plaster, four pounds’ weight to the square yard
will be found enough.
Messrs. Johns and Co., of Plymouth (the Patentees), are now
prepared to execute orders to any extent; and beg to intimate that
they have appointed Messrs. Mann and Co., of No. 5, Maiden-lane,
Queen-street, London, as their Sole Agents, at whose Warehouse
any quantity may be procured, specimens may be seen, and every
information obtained, and to whom all communications are to be
addressed.
London, 5, Maiden-lane, Queen-street, Cheapside, May, 1842.

JAMES GRANT, GAS FITTER, No. 1, Vine-street, Tufton-Street,

Westminster, respectfully offers his services to his friends and the
public, to lay gas apparatus, of iron or metal, with every requisite for
lighting houses or apartments, &c., upon sound principles, which
insure safety and prevent smell or other inconvenience, upon
economical terms. Drawings and estimates furnished.
TO MASONS, SCULPTORS, BUILDERS, &c.—WYATT, PARKER,
and Co. beg to inform their friends and the public, that they have just
received from Italy some fine Blocks of Statuary, Veined, Dove,
Sienna, and other Marbles. Also a large quantity of Italian sawn
slabs or tables. To be seen at Albion Wharf, Holland-street, foot of
Blackfriars-bridge, Surrey.

TO ARTISTS, &c.—Wanted, a Gentleman with a taste for

Architectural Drawing, and of competent skill as a Draughtsman and
Colourist, who, in return for the facilities given him to acquire a
knowledge of Architecture, &c., would give his services, or at a
moderate remuneration in instruction. Address H., “Builder” Office.

TO ARCHITECTS, BUILDERS, &c.—J. EVANS, Stove Grate

Manufacturer, 33, King William-street, London-bridge, respectfully
submits the following reduced prices for wholesale orders:—Best
elliptic stoves, 4½d. per inch; register stoves, 10d. per inch; Evans’s
improved patent self-acting kitchen ranges, with ovens and back
boilers, three feet, 4l. 14s. 6d.; three feet four inches, 5l. 15s. 6d.;
three feet eight inches, 6l. 6s.; four feet, 6l. 16s. 6d. Larger sizes,
with steam apparatus complete, from 20l. to 100l. and upwards. The
largest stock of ornamental drawing-room stoves, fenders, &c., in the
kingdom.

TO ARCHITECTS, BUILDERS, AND OTHERS.

The advantages of JAMES FINDON’S Patent improvement to Water-
Closets are the great facility of acting, cleanliness, a durability, a
readiness of being connected to a pipe from a head of water, which
pipe may be used for any other purpose; the whole of the apparatus
being under the seat. Testimonials to be seen at the manufactory,
190½, High Holborn.
N.B. Iron Hopper Closet Basin glazed and trap complete, 1l. 5s.;
Long Iron Hopper Closet Basin glazed and trap complete, 1l. 7s.
TO ARCHITECTS, BUILDERS, DECORATORS, &c.—A Gentleman
who has had considerable experience as a draughtsman and
designer in the Elizabethan style, as applicable to building,
decoration, and furniture, would be glad to meet with an engagement
where he would also make himself generally useful. Apply by letter,
prepaid, to A.B., “Builder” Office.
 MUSIC.
EIGHT-KEYED COCOA FLUTES, with MOSAIC GOLD or GERMAN
SILVER double spring-actioned keys, made on the principle of the
two most eminent Professors, NICHOLSON and RUDAL, price 2l.
15s. with Case, &c., complete.

FLOWERS OF MELODY; or the BEAUTIES of the OPERA and

CONCERT ROOM. Under this title are published, Songs, Airs,
Quadrilles, Waltzes, &c., arranged for the Flute or Violin; the
following are now ready, and may be had by order of any Book or
Music-seller, price Sixpence each:—Songs and Airs from the works
of Albert, Prince of Saxe Coburg Gotha—Beauties of Strauss, Book
I.—Lanner’s Waltzes, Book I.—Airs in the Tempest and Macbeth—
Songs and Airs in the Beggar’s Opera—Songs and Airs in Shiel’s
Opera of The Woodman.—John Limbird’s Music Warehouse, 143,
Strand.

MAINZER’S MUSICAL TIMES, and SINGING CIRCULAR, a

Fortnightly Journal, published the 1st and 15th of every month.
Price 2d.—Stamped Edition for the Country, 3d.

Annual Subscription 4s. 6d.

Six Months’ ditto 2 3
Stamped Edition 6s. 6d.
Ditto ditto 3 3

The “Musical Times” contains original Articles on the Art, in all its
branches, with Criticisms of important Works bearing upon it;
together with notices of the chief Musical Performances in London
and the Provinces. It especially advocates Popular Musical
Education. The rapidly increasing circulation of this Paper, in all parts
of the Kingdom, renders it an important advertising medium. A
composition of one of the celebrated old or modern masters is
presented Monthly to Subscribers (in advance) of Six Months. These
Compositions will consist of Organ Pieces, Madrigals, Glees, Songs,
&c.
Guaranteed Circulation 5,000 Copies.
Scale of Charges for Advertisements:—

Eight Lines and under 5s. 0d.

Every additional Line 0s. 6d.

For a series of insertions, a considerable reduction is made.

Office, 340, Strand; and may be ordered through all News Agents
and Booksellers.
The following Musical Compositions have already been presented to
the Subscribers.
With No. 2.—A Selection of Psalms and Hymns, arranged for one or
two treble voices and additional bass voice. By the Chevalier
Sigismund Neukomm. Part I.
With No. 4.—The Evening Song, for two voices; written for the family
circle. By C. H. Rinck.
With No. 6.—Psalms and Hymns. By the Chevalier Sigismund
Neukomm. Part II.
With No. 8.—Duet. By Alesandro Stradella; with Accompaniment by
G. Hogarth.
With No. 10.—Madrigal. “Turn Amarillis.” By Brewer, 1667.
With the Number for Jan. 1, 1813, will be presented a perfect Fac
Simile of the Original Manuscript of a celebrated Composition of
Mozart.
 COMPOSITION AND MUSICAL WORKS,
BY JOSEPH MAINZER.
SINGING FOR THE MILLION, Eighth Edition: A Practical Course of
Musical Instruction, adapted, from its pleasing simplicity and rapid
effect, to render Musical Reading and Singing familiar to all ages,
capacities, and conditions. Stitched, 1s. 6d.; in cloth, 2s.
SINGING FOR THE MILLION, Second Part; containing numerous
Exercises in Imitations, Figures, and Canons of Jaunaconi, Fuchs,
Albrechtsberger, Hiller, Kittel; Gebhardi, Rinck, and Mainzer,
stitched, 2s. 6d.
MAINZER’S CHORUSES.—2d. each.
PART I.

1 Praise.
2 Psalm CVII.
3 The Cuckoo.
4 The Village Chimes.
5 Independence.
6 The Traveller.
7 God is everywhere.
8 Temperance.

PART II.

9 Invitation to a Redbreast.
10 Call to Prayer.
11 Stanzas to my Child.
12 Infant’s Prayer.
13 Blowing Bubbles.
14 Super Flumina Babylonis.
 15 Prayer.
16 Shepherd Boy.

PART III.

17 The Sea.
18 Contentment.
19 Fraternity.
20 Night Song.
21 Consolation.
22 Hymn.
23 The World we have not seen.
24 Psalm XV.

Part IV. now issuing.

Britain’s Hymn, 2 editions, 3d. and 1s. 6d.

Departure, 3d.
Song of Night, 3d.

GUIDE FOR BEGINNERS IN PIANOFORTE PLAYING, with

English and French words. 5s.
This work is entirely different from those of a similar kind, which
have chiefly in view the great agility of fingers, the elegance of
performance, and the difficulty of execution; while, on the contrary,
the greatest pains have been taken in this work to make it as simple
as possible for the understanding even of children, or all those who
are unacquainted with the Pianoforte.
The following Compositions are to be published successively:—
MUSICAL GRAMMAR. Theory of Chords, of Counterpoint, of
Imitation, Fugue, and Canons. In sheets, 3d. each.
 THE ART OF SINGING, or Guide for the higher practical part of
Execution.
A COLLECTION OF AIRS, DUETS, and CHORUSES of the
Opera “La Jacquerie” (Poor Conrad), with English, French, and
German words.
THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST, an Oratorio.
London: Published at the Repository for Mainzer’s Publications, 340,
Strand.
 PUBLICATIONS.
On Saturday, the 7th of January, 1843, will be published, the First Number of a
New Weekly Periodical, price 4d. or stamped, 5d. to be entitled the
ILLUSTRATED POLYTECHNIC REVIEW. This Journal will be devoted to
Science, the Fine Arts, and Literature. Each Number will contain an Essay or
Essays on some branch of Science or the Fine Arts, together with other highly-
interesting matter. The Review will be printed on a fine Paper, with a new Type,
and will comprise 48 closely-printed columns, 4to. The whole to be illustrated
with numerous fine Engravings, by the first Artists.
Letters, Essays, Works for Review &c. to be addressed to the Editor, 143,
Strand, London, where Advertisements will be received.

Will be published on 1st January, 1843,

LAXTON’S BUILDERS’ PRICE-BOOK for 1843, containing upwards of Ten
Thousand Prices and Memoranda connected with Building. The whole has been
carefully revised and corrected agreeably to the recent alteration of the price of
materials in consequence of the New Tariff. A great variety of additional prices
have been given not before published, together with some useful Tables.
Seventeenth Edition. Published in a convenient size suitable for the Pocket.
Price 4s. bound in cloth, or in the form of a pocket-book, price 5s.
To be had of the Author at his Office, 10, Fludyer-street, Whitehall; John
Weale, Architectural Library, 59, High Holborn; Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., and
R. Groombridge, Paternoster-row; Hebert, 88, Cheapside; and Miller & Field, 6,
Westminster-bridge-road.

NEW WORKS
NOW PUBLISHING BY
H. G. CLARKE & CO. 66, OLD BAILEY, LONDON,
Agent for Ireland, S. J. Machen, 8, D’Olier-street, Dublin,
AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.
THE ENGLISH WIFE; A Manual of Home Duties, designed as a Sequel to the
English Maiden. 12mo. cloth, lettered. Price 4s. 6d. Silk, 6s. Morocco, 8s.
Contents.—Bridal Hopes and Joys. Family Arrangements. Domestic and
Social Duties. State of Mind necessary to the due Discharge of Domestic