Volunteers for Isolated Students Education (VISE)

Two little old ladies together.

 

This is a great organisation, they send retired teachers or helpers out to properties where help is needed during busy or stressful times.  If you are shorthanded at mustering time or shearing or the mother or father is sick the last thing you need to worry about is your childrens education.

 

Our lady, Beryl first came out to us in about 1992, stayed for 6 weeks and was an “Angel” not a retired teacher.  So I was able to concentrate on teaching my girls and helping with the mustering  while Beryl just took over the running of the house. 

 

She was about 62 at the time and was a widow from the sunshine coast (North of Brisbane), she had had 11 children, one died so that left her with 10!!! An awesome effort to bring up 10 kids and I have met most of them now and they are a really nice bunch of people.  I’m sure that Beryl was just looking for a family to care for and spoil, after all her kids had well and truly spread their wings and flown the nest.  She is a fantastic cook and housekeeper, so organised and calm, she also loved our 2 girls and would let them help her with the baking and taught them calligraphy.  She cleaned the place from top to bottom, did windows, cupboards and ceiling fans.  The washing was done every second day and the ironing basket was always empty. She would bake every other day, scones, pikelets, sponge cakes you name it and she would do it.  I think that she gets great satisfaction from cooking the old fashioned way, no short cuts and having people appreciate her efforts.  Beryl also loved meeting the neighbours, the musterers or the shearers and doing the unexpected. 

 

One time she and I and the girls were just sitting down to lunch when we got a call on the radio to bring all the paraphernalia out in a Toyota to kill and butcher a beast in the paddock.  And you do need a fair bit of stuff too – rifle, knives, axe, shovel, old shearers beds to put the meat on and lastly water, soap and a basin  for washing hands in at the end. And some smoko.  We piled in and went to find the men and the beast out in the paddock somewhere.  She still laughs about sitting out in the paddock watching what is commonplace to station people and then boiling up for smoko.  What I remember most was that it was pretty ordinary meat as it came off a very athletic cow who had given us the slip on previous occasions. 

 

Beryl has been up in the plane with me mustering, camped at a waterhole at Innaminka, seen the Thargomindah rodeo and been to the annual Ball in Thargo, attended the Brewarrina Show, and visited the Fox place where we had cattle on agistment near Bree.

 

All up  Beryl has been out about 8 times, she is starting to slow down and her back is not so great these days but she last visited in October 08 and vows she’ll be back again.  At first she used to come to Cunnamulla on the train and we would pick her up from there, she has also come out on the school bus with 30 or so boisterous kids but in latter years she has flown out to Thargomindah.

 

We have just visited her in Caloundra where she invited all her family and friends to join her at the Power Boat Club for a lunch to celebrate her 80^th Birthday.  What a diverse group of people, it was really interesting to finally meet her oldest friends that I had heard so much about mainly during our early morning walks on the dusty roads of Kilcowera.

 

 

  

Party line between Kilcowera Station and Zenonie, Outback Queensland.

 

Sometimes all this activity on the phone was a good thing.  If it rained anywhere over where the straggly little phone line went, the line would go out, if a little tree touched the line, it went out, sometimes the mulga post the line was attached to would fall over taking the line with it and it was said that if a bird flew over the line and did a poopsy the line went out.

So sometimes I would find myself swinging off the handle of the phone ringing, ringing trying to get the attention of the exchange ladies and they couldn’t hear me as the line was down somewhere. Usually someone along the line would eventually pick up and act as a relay between me and town and I would get my message across via a neighbour.  Then we would have to drive along the phone line to fix the problem and try not to get bogged if it had rained.  Sometimes a cow might have decided to have a scratch up against the mulga post and knocked it over.

 

There were times when we had no communication with the outside world because it was too wet to try and fix the line.  Also when it was wet the phone line didn’t work so well and the exchange ladies had to act as a relay between you and whoever you were trying to talk to.  I had to interview a job applicant with the assistance of the exchange lady and a neighbour once.  It was a novel experience.

If you ever wanted to know any goss these were  the  girls to ask, but they were mostly very discreet.  Mostly.  It paid to be discreet and mindful of what you said on the phone at all times. The phone exchange was manned by about 6 ladies rostered on one at a time and was a 24 hour service. If you were on a long distance call they would come on periodically and say “3 minutes are you extending?”  This might be after you had been on for 10 minutes, so that was nice. But you never knew how much they were listening.  To contact the exchange you would grab the handle of the phone wind it around as hard and fast as you could for about 10 seconds. If that didn’t work you’d go harder and faster and longer.

Party lines of the telephone kind. Part 1

Old telephone from the party line days at Kilcowera Station.

 

About 1983 we escaped Kilcowera for a brief trip to Brisbane – first time away since marrying in 1980.  Yeehah!!! I remember being in some business house and the salesperson asked for my phone number, unthinkingly I replied “ Thargomindah 22R”  I got a very blank look and then the question “ How do you dial that”  Good question.  Seeing as I hadn’t been to a city since marrying I didn’t know.  When we were in a local town we used a telecard to make a call.  Seems you had to ring an operator and they would put the caller through to the Thargomindah phone exchange operator who would then ring the station with their own distinctive call.  Our number was 22R – the r was a short, long, short ring, based on Morse code.

 

It had taken me a long time to differentiate between the calls on our party line as there were 8 stations on our line.  Our other place Zenonie was 22U, two shorts and a long and our immediate neighbour was 3 shorts, so everyone on the line knew who was getting a phone call.  Some of the ladies were a bit sticky beakish and would pick up when you were on a call just to see if they could work out who you were talking to in 10 seconds or so.  They could always pretend they had been outside and not heard the phone ring and wanted to make a call themselves but the one on the phone could hear when the other person picked up and if the intruder didn’t put the phone down fairly quickly you would loudly say WORKING!

 

  All having to share one line was a bit frustrating at times especially if you needed to make a call urgently or before close of business, so if you were a bit desperate you would just keep picking up the phone so the other person got the hint to get off, of course if it was an emergency you would just say so and they would get off but probably not before you told them what the nature of the emergency was.  You can imagine that this system didn’t encourage long gossipy calls often.  Except in what were deemed to be the quiet times of the day.  More on this in my next post!

 

 

                                            

Catalogues this week – Innovations, Damart, Retravision, Cellar Masters.

 

Wedge Tailed Eagle - Photo by Peter Strutt

 

A bit more on catalogues…….  Then there were the electrical and white goods catalogues.   Very drool worthy too.  Specialist lingerie ones and those for all things babyish, then along came wine and alcohol catalogues, office supplies, jewelry, Avon, shoes and RM Williams ones (too expensive!!!!!)

My silliest purchase was an expensive ring from Magnamail.  I ordered this diamond ring from a picture, paid up front and waited about 5 months before I received it.  Really thought that I had done my dough. When I did get the ring I was very happy with it though.   Thinking back, all I can say in my defense was that I hadn’t had a shopping splurge for a very long time. And I do love jewelry! 

But that’s not all, then there were the blokes catalogues.  Have you ever seen a bull catalogue?  The pages are strewn with cows and bulls backsides and bulls testicles.  Impressive stuff!!  Then there’s the machinery trader full of dozers, graders, trucks and bits and pieces that lift or push, dig or plough, water or cut something.

 

 Greg especially likes the camping, fishing, 4WD type of catalogues, poor bugger he doesn’t get away much to use our camping gear.  Our last big trip was maybe 5 years ago when we had a good look around WA.  He also likes tool and power tool catalogues, I try to make note of what especially interests him in these for future present giving.  Blokes are so hard to buy a pressie for – I mean you can’t give him a shirt or belt or socks – too boring.  But it’s gotta be something he lusts after.  I draw the line at a $7000 welder though .  I did buy him a Lindsell hoist one birthday cause his back isn’t as good as it used to be.  The doctor told him he should   reassess his capabilities after G strained some back muscles while lifting batteries out of his dozer.

 

Other super interesting ones he gets are water tank catalogues.  I tell you the makers of poly ethylene tanks have really branched out.  Did you know that you can have a dog kennel made out of poly ethylene?  Or a water dish? A calfateria?  Yes –  they make tanks and troughs and poly pipe and poly pegs and things for chook food and water, bins, garden edging, pools, tool boxes and wheel chocks? AMAZING!!!!!

 

We also get a newspaper free each month and it’s basically a catalogue for aeroplanes and all things pertaining to.  Lincott Linen have a catalogue full of work clothes, boots, coats, blankets, sheets, mattress covers, socks and singlets.  I buy our mattress covers there still and Greg’s special woolen socks. We’ve got an old windmill catalogue too.  They are all there to tempt us and then there’s the internet – the window to the world.

 

Letterbox’s fondness for green frogs.

Hereford cattle at Cardenyabba Lagoon, Kilcowera Station.

Another interesting person we had here was Letterbox.  A very capable man, a big burly bloke, very smart and a top musterer.  He had a little weakness though which sometimes prevented him from turning up for the job.  If he wasn’t here on time you just knew that he wasn’t coming.

 

When he first started coming out and doing a few days mustering for us we thought we had really struck it lucky with Letterbox as he was so good at the job and he and Greg got along really well.  After he’d been here awhile he took it upon himself to look after the grass around the shearers’ quarters where he bunked down.  We would often hear “I’ll just slip down and move the sprinklers around the quarters” What a diligent man! A gem!  Or it was “I’ll move the sprinklers in the sheep yard or the cattle yard”  Righto Letterbox!

 

Well it transpired that L was a fairly thirsty sort of a fellow who was mightily fond of what he called his green frogs – cans of VB and he just needed a few to get through the day – and he did move the sprinklers too.

 

One Melbourne Cup day we were bringing a mob of cattle in to the yard and still had 5 or 6 kms to go before the race, I had resigned myself to not seeing it and was a bit glum.  I love the champions of the turf and horse racing.  Looking around at the mob of cattle I saw that Letterbox was nowhere to be seen.  “Huh, b*st*rds gone off to move the sprinklers, I’ll bet!” flashed through my brain.  About a half hour later he returned with a couple of green frogs for everyone and a radio so we could hear the race that stops a nation out in the middle of the paddock.  What a good man!