INTERVIEW WITH SALLY MIRAMS OF 'RESTALRIG', PERICOE.
INTERVIEW DATE: December 21st, 1998

Sally Mirams moved to 'Restalrig' at Pericoe in the mid 1960's as a newly wed. Her memories of the people and the way of life around the district and the sale of 'Pericoe Station' to the Kapunda Development Company are detailed and lively. She and her husband became friends with several of the elderly residents whose parents and grandparents farmed and ran dairies in this remote area.
They raised a large family and are still living on the same property.

KATE. WHEN DID YOU COME TO PERICOE. WHAT YEAR?
SALLY. We came here in January, 1966.
KATE. FROM WHERE?
SALLY. From Melbourne.
KATE. WHAT DID YOU COME HERE FOR?
SALLY. We were married at the beginning of January and we bought this property. Peter was 23 and I was 20.
KATE. DID YOU WANT TO GET AWAY FROM IT ALL?
SALLY. Peter Jackeroo-ed after leaving school and I always wanted to live in the country so we decided to buy a farm and we bought this place.
KATE. WHAT WERE YOUR IMPRESSIONS WHEN YOU FIRST CAME HERE?
SALLY. Well, the first time I came here we were engaged, that was October, 1965 and we came up the Snake Track, through all that bush and I said to Pete, 'Is there any cleared land?' and then it opened up. It was just lovely. The old cream shed was there, where everyone put the cans of cream from their dairies.
KATE. BETWEEN THE SHOP AND BOLLER'S PLACE.
SALLY. Yes. And what I call the School of Arts at Pericoe, (Pericoe hall) on the Pericoe Road, at the turnoff, was still there. And there were other little houses dotted around there and there was another little cottage on the Pericoe Road there, between McPaul's and Pericoe. Rollo's (South) parents lived there. They owned it, I think. We came in October and all the weeds along the road were flowering, and I thought it was the most beautiful place. I just loved it. The big sandy beaches in the river, I just thought it was wonderful. Swimming spots, and this garden was beautiful when we arrived. We first of all looked at 'Dunblane' and there wasn't any garden there at all. We made an offer and they wouldn't accept it. Gilbert Ryan had shown Pete over 'Dunblane' and he suggested we look at this place, and we came and had a look at this, and we bought it.
KATE. WHAT HISTORY OF THIS PLACE DO YOU KNOW?
SALLY. It was built by a fellow called Joe Ryan. He owned the property and it was built in 1901 or '02. The builder's name was Ernie Hogg. They dug the clay for the bricks here, on the place, from the bottom centre paddock, just above the Towamba river there, on the side of the hill, and they bought the kiln here and they fired all the bricks here on the site and built the house. And then the kitchen section of the house was built afterwards with all the left over bricks and it was built by Joe Ryan. Ernie Hogg built the house. The Joe Ryan who was here was no relation to Issy Ryan and those other Ryans around here. And he had one son, Wilfred, who ended up driving a bus on Parramatta Road. But they sold to Charles Logan. Charles Seaton Logan came from Yass. He was Jean Logan's cousin. John Logan, her father, at 'Edrom' had three daughters.
KATE. DIDN'T HE BUILD 'EDROM'?
SALLY. He built 'Edrom' and he built 'Aston Station' at Bombala. He had three daughters. On daughter, Jean, married her cousin to keep the family name, the Logan name. And he came from Yass and they came here, I can't remember the date, when they were first married they came here. They were engaged for eight years, and I said to Mrs. Logan, 'That's a long time' and she said, 'I was having too much fun at 'Edrom' to get married yet.' So she finally did get married and they had one daughter, Jean Ann. And they lived here for thirty or forty years. And we bought it from them.
KATE. SO RYAN SOLD IT TO LOGAN AND LOGAN SOLD IT TO YOU. SO YOU WERE ONLY THE THIRD OWNERS?
SALLY. No, I think there were people before Joe Ryan, I think, Manning beforehand.
KATE. WAS THAT SIR WILLIAM MANNING?
SALLY. Yes.
KATE. BECAUSE ON THE OLD MAPS I'VE GOT......
SALLY. Yes. We've got an old map and it's got Manning as being the owner of the lot of it.
KATE. I THINK THAT'S WHERE MANNING STREET IN TOWAMBA CAME FROM AND THE HILL THAT'S CALLED 'THE MANNING' ABOVE THE VILLAGE ON THE YAMBULLA FIRE TRAIL WHICH PROBABLY LED OUT TO HERE (Pericoe) AT ONE TIME.
SALLY. The road that you came in on, that's now called Logan's Road, is really Sheepskin Road and it comes right in past our homestead and across the end of our place, across the Wog River, through Carson's and comes out at Burragate. It's called Sheepskin at Burragate, on that end but that is all Sheepskin Road. We've always known it as Sheepskin Road. And the bullocks used to come with butter from Pericoe and join in on the Sheepskin Road and either go to Eden with the butter if it was going on a ship or to Bega through Burragate.
KATE. DID THEY HAVE A DAIRY HERE AT ONE TIME?
SALLY. Yes there was a dairy halfway...at the far end of our place there's a paddock they called Bennett's and there are only four steps remaining where their house was and they dairied there. I think most of the dairies would not have operated all year round like dairies do these days. They would have milked so many months of the year and then dried the cows off. There were eight dairy farms on 'Pericoe'.
KATE. ILENE UMBACK SAID THAT THE COWS THEY MILKED WERE JUST ORDINARY COWS NOT COWS BRED FOR MILK LIKE THEY ARE TODAY.
SALLY. They were more duel purpose cattle in those days. There was milk and beef too. The breeding didn't come in till later.
KATE. HEATHER AND PETER MATTHEWS SAID THAT WHEN THEY FIRST ARRIVED IN 1974 ONE FELLOW CAME AROUND WITH A HORSE AND PLOUGH AND SAID ' I'VE COME TO PLOUGH YOUR SPUD PADDOCK.'
SALLY. Yes, they ploughed their paddocks with their horses to grow corn to feed their horses through the winter so they could plough the paddock the next spring to grow the corn to...and so it went on. Jack Beasley used to never drive a car, he always rode a horse, and he used to do everything by hand and there wasn't one frond of (bracken) fern on his whole place and if ever one appeared he'd cut if off with a scrub hook. And he used to have a little patch of river flat, somewhere down on 'Log Farm', I think, and he grew corn there and he also grew tomatoes and he kept everyone supplied in Towamba. And everyone used to just go and help themselves. He didn't pick them and give them to you, he'd say, 'go and get some tomatoes.' And he grew the same variety every year which was 'Red Cloud' which I tried to get, but not very successfully. Wish I'd kept the seed. But there were lots of bachelors and they all rode a horse. Charlie Laing didn't drive a car, he rode a horse.
KATE. NOW HE LIVED IN MACEY'S PLACE. ('NEREMAN')
SALLY. Yes. And there were Athol and Bob Greer, on the corner and Arthur Beasley, he used to do the gardening at 'Elmgrove'. He used to prune people's fruit trees. Mrs. Love lived at 'Elmgrove', she had a whole lot of boys and the property wasn't to be sold until the youngest was twenty-one. So she ended up moving into Eden and leasing the place and George Hayes leased it for a while and the house was let to Don Stewart and then Max and June Sawers leased it and lived in the house for some time. William (Wentworth) bought it in 1980.
KATE. PERICOE THEN..... WHEN SOMEONE SAYS THEY LIVED AT PERICOE...... WHERE EXACTLY DOES PERICOE START?
SALLY. Well, it adjoins us. The boundary between the parish of Towamba and the parish of Pericoe is the eastern boundary of both 'Restalrig' and 'Rosebank' (McPauls) where both these properties adjoin 'Elmgrove'. Our southern boundary is the end boundary of 'Pericoe Station's' 'Bonny Doon' paddock ........our boundary and part of the Pericoe Creek, and it goes to the Letts Mountain Road, past Letts Mountain Road, I think, yes it does go over the other side of Letts Mountain Road.... it belonged to the Alexander's and when we came here they still owned Pericoe, the Alexander's, and they had a manager there, Tom Graham was the manager, and they put it on the market and they slashed all the serrated tussock and it was sold at auction and Stan Egan bought it, Stan and Nene Egan, they bought 'Pericoe' and lived there and came there ....Stan was an accountant and they didn't realise the serrated tussock was there because it had all been slashed and they didn't know anything about it. It was covered in serrated tussock when they bought it.
KATE. WHEN WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN?
SALLY. About the same time we moved here. '65, '66, I think that Alexander's would have sold 'Pericoe'.
KATE. SO THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE BROTHERS ALF AND BEAU, WAS IT?
SALLY. I don't know. I only know that the family had it. Stan and Nene ran sheep and cattle, Merino sheep and Hereford cattle and we used to go and help them with their lamb marking and they would come and help us with ours and because they had two young children, they use to come here for afternoon tea but they never used to come at night. We used to go and have dinner with them in the homestead, the part that's been pulled down.
KATE. YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT 'PERICOE STATION' HOMESTEAD.
SALLY. Yes.
KATE. THAT WAS THE OLD KITCHEN WITH THE BIG BREAD OVENS UP THE END THERE?
SALLY. Yes. Well, that was all pulled down.....a beautiful room with windows all around .....and a beautiful big lead light chandelier that had originally been a kerosene lamp and then it had been converted to electricity, but Stan and Nene took it with them. Lovely cedar book shelves built in and they took those with them too. They put a little bit of the place on the market, just the other side of the Pericoe Road. Stan Egan put just a little bit on the market because it was too much to cope with, a huge block there. So he thought he'd sell a bit, get some funds and Dr. Prior came down from Canberra and he looked at it and he said, 'Isn't that wattle tree magnificent!' and Stan couldn't believe his ears because he'd been battling all this regrowth and wattle trees. And he (Dr. Prior) said 'This is all very good but it's not enough, have you got any more?' So Stan showed him a bit more of Pericoe (Station) and he ended up selling the whole place to Kapunda. Dr.Prior was employed by the Kapunda Development Company who were Phillipino...Marcos....and he (Stan) ended up selling it...he had no intention of selling it all.
KATE. AND NOW IT'S ALL UNDER PINES.
SALLY. Yes. It was beautiful open grazing country with great, huge clumps of box trees and enormous bulldozers to get rid of these huge trees and its just all covered in pines now. They had various managers, Frank Cousins who lived out at 'Daisy Hill' past where Colin and Edna (Veness) used to live managed 'Pericoe' for a while for Kapunda and then Leon and Hilda Green who managed 'Hill-n-Dale' for a fellow called Quigley. That was all high ti tree when we came here, the whole place and a fellow called Quigley from Gippsland bought the place and Leon Green managed it and they cleared it all and sowed it down and fenced it and then when 'Hill-n-Dale' was sold to Hayes', Leon Green got the job of managing 'Pericoe'.
KATE. 'HILL-N-DALE' WAS CALLED 'JERUSALEM' AT ONE TIME.
SALLY. And 'By Jingo' was part of 'Dunblane' and the Lyons sold that to Bill and Selma Gunn. 'By Jingo' was 'Liddesdale' before Gunns bought it from David and Nancy Lawrence.
KATE. WHAT WAS THE SCHOOL LIKE AND THE VILLAGE....
SALLY. It was a one teacher school. Just only the....oh, what is the office today, well that was the one school room, and the kids used to come in and out from the riverside of the building, through that double door. And Max Long was the school teacher. So Max taught all the grades. He was the only teacher and Ros, his wife, taught sewing one afternoon per week.
KATE. DID THE KIDS RIDE HORSES TO SCHOOL?
SALLY. I can't remember that but a lot of horses were ridden around all over the place. Jack Beasley rode to Burragate everyday to work on 'By Jingo' for Bill Gunn and he took his draught mare and they snigged all the posts for the fence around the bottom of Jingo Creek where it was too steep to drive the tractor and Charlie Laing's father, Donald, he was a little fellow, they still grew corn every year, and he grew the corn and he drove a huge white draught mare, to scuttle the corn.
KATE. ILENE UMBACK WAS A LAING AND SHE TALKED ABOUT CHARLIE.
SALLY. Charlie had a twin brother...I think he was drowned in the Towamba river. He dived in after a set of tennis or something ...he was over heated and dived into a deep cold pool and he had heart failure. I've heard of that happening a few times.
KATE. ANY OTHER TRAGEDIES LIKE THAT HAPPEN AROUND THE AREA THAT YOU HAVE HEARD OF?
SALLY. Steven Macey was talking the other night about Donald Laing seeing two girls jump over the river bank into the river bed just after the flood had gone down and they started sinking...they were on horseback and they started sinking into the sand and he realised they were in trouble and raced to get help but when they got there, there was no sign of horses or girls or anything, they'd just gone, sunk into the sand.
KATE. LIFE IN GENERAL HERE, THE OLD CHARACTERS HERE DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT THEY WERE LIKE?
SALLY. Some of them hardly ever went out of the valley. Jack Beasley didn't ever pay any income tax, no one knew he existed. He wasn't on the electoral roll or anything, I think a few of them were like that.
KATE. DID HE GO TO THE WAR?
SALLY. I don't know whether he did. I know Laurie (Beasley) did. And there was another fellow, McDonald who lived opposite the sports ground...Jack McDonald and his whole yard was always bare. He grew vegies there but not one blade of grass did he allow to grow. There was just nothing, just bare dirt.
KATE. WHY?
SALLY. I don't know. He rode a push bike instead of a horse. He was a prospector. He used to go panning for gold. That's what he did and he was always very quiet about it. I remember beans grown in Towamba, grown on those flats of Ede's and Boller's. All the women in Towamba used to go and pick the beans. They sort of looked upon it as a duty....that they help, to pick the beans and get the beans off. Colin Hurlstone......my kids used to go down and do bean picking in the paddock, it was all done by hand.
KATE. YOU MENTIONED TOPSY EARLIER......
SALLY. Topsy Parker, Darcy Parker's wife, they had the pinkie shop and it was a tiny little room with a counter and they sold warm sherry in little cheese and marmite glasses, half full, half sherry, warm sweet sherry and the other half warm water.
KATE. WAS IT WATERED DOWN OR WAS THAT JUST THE WAY IT WAS
SERVED?
SALLY. Oh, no, no, they served it like that, just so much and then topped it up with water.
KATE. HOW MUCH A GLASS WAS THAT?
SALLY. I don't know. I think I did have one glass once. But I tried to buy a bottle of sherry there and they only had sweet sherry, there was no such thing as dry sherry. They sold port and sherry. They were all fortified wines. It was wine as we know wine. And Topsy used to walk down to the post office every afternoon in her black suede high heel shoes with her apron on. Very few women wore trousers. I was about the only woman who went to a field day, and I was twenty, twenty-one and I was determined I was going too. I worked. I didn't start having kids until I was twenty-three or twenty-four, so I worked fairly hard with Pete on the farm and went to all the field days and for a long time I was the only woman who went.
KATE. WERE YOU RECEIVED WELL?
SALLY. No, not really. I could feel the vibes.
KATE. SO THE WOMAN'S PLACE WAS STILL ON THE FARM, AT HOME.
SALLY. Oh, absolutely. But you'd get people like Phyllis South and Moyna South who both worked milking cows in that dairy, they always did the milking, and always in skirts, even in winter, they always wore skirts, they never wore trousers. Jean Logan, here, we came and stayed with them in October when we looked at the property, before we bought it, and she used to put a pair of overalls over her skirt and she had these little lace up leather shoes that had heels and she called them her running shoes and she'd put them on and go off running after sheep and cattle. And Charlie Logan was injured in the first world war and he was not very mobile, he used to walk with a walking stick so it wasn't easy for him and some of the fences on our place were built by people who went to the first world war and didn't even come back. But these netting fences were put up by people for the privilege of being allowed to trap rabbits here. They weren't paid to put the fence up, it was for the privilege to trap rabbits.
Laurie Beasley used to come here, sometimes Jack Beasley, in the winter and he'd camp in the shearer's hut. He'd come and see you to see if he was allowed to and he'd camp in the shearer's hut on the other side of the wool shed and he'd bring his horse and he'd trap rabbits. And there used to be a lady, Mrs. Rolph, Dot Rolph from Candelo, who had a freezer and she used to come out every couple of days and do a run around and everyone would hang their rabbits....they'd have forked sticks and they'd lace two rabbits...a pair...they were sold by the pair, 2\6 a pair, and they'd gut them but leave the skin on and they'd hang them and cover the whole lot with a hessian chaff bag which was a loose, open weave and leave them there and she'd come and pick them up and they'd be all along the side of the road, these structures....
KATE. WAITING FOR HER?
SALLY. Waiting for her to come. And she'd come and do the whole district and so you'd have to have them there. So often they'd trap the rabbits and keep them alive in a bag and just before the day that they were going to be picked up they'd kill them and gut them, hang them up at the road and then she'd come and pick them all up and leave the money in a tin.
KATE. WOULD THEY WRITE THEIR NAME ON THE BAG?
SALLY. She'd know who they were and on which property, and then Laurie (Beasley) used to work with Pete fencing in the middle of the day but we used to pay him wages for the time he worked. He'd come over sometimes and have a meal..
KATE. SO MY PLACE WASN'T A SHOP WHEN YOU FIRST CAME HERE.
SALLY. No. It wasn't. Just Towamba store. Towamba store was wonderful. Beautiful big wooden counters and wooden floor and everything hanging from the ceiling...hobble chains and horse shoes and buckets and mops and brooms and bridles....everything you could imagine hanging from the ceiling. The post office was that little room off the end of the veranda and the telephone exchange. We had a phone on the wall (at home) where you wound a handle to make the bell ring in the exchange and then you'd have to ask for the number you wanted and she would get the number for you and put you through. Then she'd say, 'Three minutes, are you extending?' you know? It used to be a trunk call, anything from here would be a trunk call, sometimes she'd be kind and let you have a little extra time. And Nene Egan had an exchange at Pericoe. Mary Mitchell had one at Lower Towamba .....and it was a big tie for a woman who had the telephone exchange because she had to man it in office hours, she couldn't go to town that day. Later we got a party line. The post mistress would give one ring if she only wanted one of them and three rings if she wanted the other one so you'd know whether to answer the phone or not.
KATE. McPAULS HAVE BEEN THERE FOR A LONG TIME?
SALLY. Yes. I think that Ron's grandfather might have had that place before him. And so they bought the place from his father. They came one year after we came here. We were so far removed from what everyone was like here. I was twenty and I'd grown up in the city all my life, Peter too, and we'd come to live here among these people who were so utterly different, it was just amazing. But Ron and Elaine (McPaul) who had gone to school in the area......... Ron's mother who had a degree from the conservatorium of music, she played the piano beautifully, she was a very well educated woman.
KATE. DID YOU GO TO ANY DANCES WHEN YOU FIRST CAME HERE?
SALLY. Oh, yes. We went to a couple. Pete hated dancing so we hardly went to any. We went to one school concert in the hall next to the shop. It was the school concert .....the Christmas concert. And as soon as it was over, all the chairs were cleared back and ...I thought it was Laurie Beasley's sister who played the piano.... and she used to play the piano and everyone danced to the piano music. They did the Barn dance, the Pride of Erin and all those old dances. It was just Fox Trots and Waltzes I could do. That was fun. And there was a supper room at the side. We used to have Progress meetings at the sports ground hall and we sent a notice to everyone in the area...everyone got a notice in their mail with their name written on it and everyone brought a plate of food and at the end of the meeting all the chairs were stacked up and the table was brought out into the middle and the food put on and everyone had a cuppa and a chat. It was lovely. Sometimes it was the only time you saw people.
KATE. WHAT ABOUT CHURCH?
SALLY. I went to an Anglican church service in Towamba church, once, and there were about three or four people there. This would have been in 1966. And the Presbyterians used to have their church services...I don't think there were any Catholic services held...until Father Clinton came.... There were very few Catholics in Towamba. Only Issy Ryan and Gropler's when we came.
KATE. DID YOU MEET ANY OF THE OTHER RYAN'S?
SALLY. I remember Gilbert and Ted ... some of his sisters.
KATE. THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN ELSIE AND MINNIE WHO STILL LIVED WITH TED AT BURRAGATE.
SALLY. Yes. Mrs. Ryan (Issy's wife) was lovely. She waited years and years until she got a fence and could have a garden around her house.
KATE. DID THEY HAVE ANY MORE CHILDREN?
SALLY. Yes. One, John and he went to boarding school. When I used to visit them I had to drink tea. In those days everyone just drank tea. No one drank coffee. If you asked for coffee they'd bring out these square bottles of coffee essence...Bushell's coffee essence...gosh, it was disgusting, and it was usually pre sweetened and I can't stand sweet coffee so I used to go and they'd always ask me in for a cup of tea and you'd go in and she (Mrs. Ryan) would have made scones and I always took a bunch of flowers and I'd have to drink a cup of tea. Moyna South.....she'd be moving the cows from Rollo's place to where the dairy was at 'Sunnyside' and you used to go with a big white bucket with a lid on it and buy our milk from her, and there'd be so much cream on top.
KATE. IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU CAN ADD?
SALLY. The shop belonged to Ira Parker when we came here. And it was just the time with the dollar change from pounds, shillings and pence to the decimal currency and Margaret Keller had just come to have a turn of running the shop with the Parker's, to learn how to do it, and they had moved from Tumut. Anyway they came to live at Towamba and Margaret's husband, we all called him Curly, his mother came down, an old German lady, and they bought that house opposite the school, the brown house, and she lived there and planted most of that garden and fruit trees. She taught me how to pickle cucumbers. The Keller's ended up selling the store to the Jackson's. They moved to Queensland and sold the house to Neil Mattson. They were an American couple who later bought Yellow Pinch (nature park in Wolumla) with other people. And Charlie Laing, when he sold up ('Nereman') and Steve and Lucy Macey moved here, he moved to Yellow Pinch and he worked there and grew vegies for them and helped with the animals. He later went to Bimbimbie (nursing home) and he was later found in the lake (Curalo lake in Eden) drowned. All his money was gone. They believe he was robbed. Apparently he used to leave Towamba and boast he was the best dressed man and Laurie Beasley always used to laugh and say he was the worst dressed man to return! He used to get into a terrible mess. Donald, his father would always want to know how you were, and he was a lovely old fellow. He's the one who rode on horseback with the mail for Genoa. He had the mail run from Towamba and Yambulla to Genoa. He went once or twice a week on horseback and did this mail run. He also worked for John Logan who built 'Edrom' ......Jean Logan's father, and he was a very hard man to work for. And Doctor Bloomfield used to come once a month to Towamba and anyone who needed to see him. The young mothers would bring their babies. The clinic would be at the pinkie shop.
PETER MIRAMS. Izzy Ryan mentioned that the people who had the little dairy, sort of down in the middle of the place, ('Restalrig') called Bennett's .......they were a good family of foot runners, that's all he had to say about them.
KATE. THERE WAS A BIG FOOT RACE IN TOWAMBA BETWEEN ALF ALEXANDER AND A BILL BENNETT IN 1929. ALF ALEXANDER WON.
SALLY. (Looking through some notes) Yes, here we are. Three men erected the boundary fence before the first world war, Gordon Ryan, a Harrison and Bob Bower? They were killed in France. This house was built by Ernie (Hogg) and Joe Ryan owned the place.
PETER. Ingram's place at Pericoe was burnt down in the bush fires.
KATE. IT WAS A TWIN TO THIS HOUSE?
PETER. Well, it was built at the same time by the same people who built this house. The same people who made the batch of bricks came out and made one for them too. The two houses were erected in the same period and that one was lost in the bush fires. Someone was telling me...about ten or fifteen years ago, they met a young chap that came out and he got all the bricks from the house that was destroyed. The people who had 'Hill 'n' Dale'......Quigley, the trucking bloke from down at Pambula, he had Leon Green employed there as his manager and Leon really shifted a lot of stuff and got things done quick smart. He gave the valley quite a shake up. All of a sudden there was all this cleared land in the middle of it, whereas before it had virtually all grown back and then George Ballette arrived around there where 'TanahKita' is now and he called it 'By Jingera' because he was a bit put out because I think that Bill Gunn had just beaten him to the mark and called his place 'By Jingo'. I suppose both names are accurate because the old maps refer to both names....Jingo creek and Jingera creek.
SALLY. Charles and Jean Logan were married in 1927 and they came to live here then. This property was called 'Glenor' when Joe Ryan was here, which is an Irish name, and when Logan's took over they changed it to a Scottish name which is 'Restalrig' and they were here for thirty-nine years before we came in 1966.

AND THAT'S THE WAY IT WAS.