[ Home ] [ Up ]

THERE WAS A TIME

There was a time some years ago when there just wasn't any corner shop and the daily trot to get a loaf of bread, or the late evening dash to get what you forgot would have been a sheer waste of time and effort.

This makes today's people wonder just how grandfather and grandmother coped.

There are some who well remember those days - when almost everyone owned their own cow, and regularly milked her morn and night... and set the milk and skimmed the cream, and if one didn't own one of those newfangled glass churns they stirred and stirred until the cream clotted and thickened into butter.

Milking Time

(Sketch by 'Mick' Constable)

BUTTER

The buttermilk was carefully poured off to be used by mother in her cooking, whilst the butter was washed, and the water squeezed out with the bat-like butter pats, some plain and flat and some rather fancy with ridges.

The salt was carefully added and the butter patted into prism - and put by in the "cooler", an earthenware dish with lid, and covered with a damp cloth and as the moisture evaporated it cooled the contents.

BREAD

Meanwhile mother had sifted out the flour, whether plain or fine or wheat-meal gristed and added salt and the milky fluid from a jar in which she had been fermenting potato peelings -for in them grew a yeast and when mixed with water and flour produced the necessary carbon-dioxide to give the bread its "leaven" of holes made by gas in the gluten to make the bread light and edible.

In the kitchen garden grew most of the vegetable needs, as beans and peas and cabbage and the like, with among them patches of thyme, sage and marjoram for seasoning, and these were harvested by drying and plucking off the dried leaves to be mixed with bread crumbs for seasoning for the occasional duck, or the pockets of beef olives or other occasional fancy dishes - and always beneath the drip of the tap of the tank a patch of mint - for what were new potatoes, or peas or a leg of lamb without a taste of mint.

Out behind the barn stood two sturdy posts generally forked at their top and across which lay a horizontal pole, one end of which was fitted with two saplings morticed in and crossed to form spokes by which this hoist could be turned. From the cross bar hung a chain on which end was a cross hanger of steel. At killing time the beast was killed beneath the hoist, the cross tree set into the hocks and by turning the cross bars the animal could be hoisted to a height where it could be skinned, gutted and dressed whilst held at a convenient height above the ground.

Preparing the Carcase

(Sketch by 'Mick' Constable)

Pigs, of course were never skinned, they were scalded and the hair scraped from their hide. Well do I remember a story not that old and as true as truth - where a friend of mine, teaching in the country was boarded by the farmer up the road.

One morning shortly after arriving at this place he decided to take a bath and upon entering the bathroom was horrified to see floating in the bath a large pig partly devoid of hair - as he was a city lad he was disgusted, and most upset, but the farmer just couldn't understand what the fuss was all about - he's always done the pigs that-a-way.

Tobacco could be grown, the leaves dried and leaf after leaf lightly coated with honey and laid in a press. Presses need only be two planks fitted with cross bars, and tightened together with a couple of wires tightly twitched. Kept in a reasonable dry spot for a month or so fair tobacco resulted whilst the need for an uplifting drink was of no trouble to the average householder, and many a householder was noted for the degree to which his brew approached a lethal state.

For instance to quote a local case Mulconery out on the Hawke was famous for his brew - as any decent Irishman ought to be - and Mulconery had lots of friends who dropped in casually-like to discuss the farming and things, and should Constable Mitchell or his successors come riding by it was but a short trip to Dun's creek and there the still nestled among the water cress quite safe until the crisis passed.

A bit of wheat mash, and a few other odds and ends will produce a fair and reasonable brew if you know how to go about it - and a lot tastier than creek water, and all.

Now another serious household need was soap and when they ran out they made their own - the smart householder constructing a "Lye-still" by making a wooden chute into which the household ashes were placed. A drop of water poured in regularly, and fresh ashes, and a bottle beneath to collect the decanted fluid - a dark brown acidic liquor which when boiled up with tallow from the unused kitchen fats made a satisfactory rough soap - not your scented fancy bath soaps, mind, but tolerably good for scrubbing the dirt and grease out of working clothes.

SUGAR

So the real needs of the bushman were few - salt, tea and sugar generally, although many used honey as a substitute for sugar - any local native would be happy to supply up to 20 litres of bush honey for as little as two bob (or 20 cents).

GRAIN

Early settlers took up the land for the growth of timber on it, and as soon as this was gone either dug or burned out the stumps and roots and began farming. The little silt plains along the water courses were particularly fertile, and fine wheat corn, barley and the like grew there provided the kangaroos, cockatoos and diseases of moist weather left the crop alone. Small grist mill or even a finely set corn-cracker would produce rough wheat or corn meal flour.

DAIRY CO-OPERATIVES

Those with the space to run a few head of cattle soon found that there was a market for milk and cream, - and it was not long before a salesman was around and talked them into one of those modern Alfa Laval separators and then cream was sold to the factories and those became so profitable that co-operative factories were set up in Taree, Wingham, Dyers Crossing and Tuncurry - The Cape Hawke Rural Co-operative Society. There the cream was churned and magnificent butter produced for sale to the city and export.

Deliveries here were made by cream-boats which met the farmers by the stream, or lake side, and chugged into the factory - and with horse drawn - and eventually motor driven land transport for those not on the water. The waste (skimmed milk) was fed to pigs, and with some cropping, kitchen scraps and a little pollard and bran produced sufficient pigs to cause the establishment of the Bacon Factory at Wingham.

However times change and eventually when this area was included into the Milk Board of Sydney area and quotas of supply were allotted to farmers, the whole milk was taken. Some was separated at the factory and butter and dried milk products produced, but most going to the city supply.

This finished the cheap feeding of pigs and they moved from the district over the ranges to the wheat area, and we then got grain fed bacon.

However, most small dairy farmers dropped out of the business entirely - costs of labour, the necessary machinery to ensure hygienic handling and an economic cost of production killed the industry, and most farmers took to running a few poddies to keep the grass down, and came to town to find a job. So the small and even some of the larger factories also closed down, and except for the graziers, and the big dairymen, farmers are a rare thing now - and so you go down to the corner shop for your every need, like grandfather never did.