INTERVIEW WITH MAX SAWERS born 1933 at Genoa.
INTERVIEW DATE: June 18th, 1999.

Max Sawers spent his early life on 'Log Farm' in Towamba. Related to the Beasleys he worked with Jack Beasley and has precious memories of this character that many village residents remember. Stories of his early days at school and later working on the farm fill out the picture of a lifestyle that in this location barely changed until the mid 1960's. With a sense of humour, Max gives an entertaining account of the life and characters of this small village.

KATE. WHO ARE YOUR GRANDPARENTS?
MAX. There's a Beasley side and a Sawers side.
KATE. A DIRECT LINE IF POSSIBLE. WHO WERE THE FIRST ONES OUT HERE AND FROM WHERE?
MAX. My great, great grandfather came out from England, that's on the Beasley side. Alf (Beasley) may have told you.
KATE. HE GAVE ME THE ONES WHO CAME FROM SCOTLAND, BUT WHERE DOES YOUR LINE FIT INTO THE PICTURE?
MAX. Well if you go to the Sawers side......my forebears were born in Scotland.
KATE. WHO WERE THEY?
MAX. That was Harry Sawers and he had a son, my grandfather, and he was Harry Sawers too. Harry Michael, but he used to get Mick nearly all the time. My father was Jim Sawers and he was born at Burragate. My grandfather, Mick we called him, he dairied for quite a number of years at 'Hill-n-Dale' which used to be 'Jerusalem', for Binnie.
KATE. SHARE-FARMED? WHICH BINNIE?
MAX. Bruce Binnie. There were quite a few Binnies over there, Jim and Arthur. Arthur Binnie used to be over here where the old shack is falling down.
KATE. DALTONS. THE OLD POST OFFICE?
MAX. Yes. Up above the plonk shop there. That's where Arthur and his sister lived. Ginnie Binnie. She taught me to play the piano and the organ. She was a bush nurse......sister.
KATE. SO SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN A MID WIFE TO THE WOMEN AROUND HERE.
MAX. Yes. She was originally.
KATE. SO WHERE DO THE BEASLEYS COME IN YOUR SIDE?
MAX. Well, my mother, Ida Beasley is Alf Beasley's sister. Actually, I was born at Genoa. My mother and father were farming on a property down at Genoa when I was born. I was about two year old when we came back here (Towamba) to 'Log Farm' and was dairying there for Sarah Binnie. I've got a pocket knife that Sarah Binnie....was given to her when she was twenty year old and she gave it to me when....I think I was about eight or nine year old and its got her name written on it. Its still got me puzzled.......she might have been married very young, I don't know, but she was twenty years when it was given to her and I was about eight so that's making that knife a very old knife. Everything still works on it. It's only a small knife and the little plaque on it with Sarah Binnie engraved on it. Dad, he dairied there for Sarah Binnie for quite a number of years. My grandfather used to have the horse teams on the road and my other Grandfather Sawers, he used to have the bullock teams.
KATE. YOUR GRANDFATHER BEASLEY HAD THE HORSE TEAMS .......
MAX. And Grandfather Sawers had the bullocks teams.
KATE. YES. IT WAS INTERESTING TALKING TO HAROLD FARRELL. HE SAID THE BEASLEYS HAD THE HORSES AND THE FARRELLS HAD THE BULLOCKS.
MAX. Yes. Down there this side of 'Model Farm' on the left hand side, they used to call that the bullock yard. And anyone who had a bullock team and they were hauling from Eden up over the mountain, they used to turn the bullocks out there of a night.
KATE. THIS SIDE OF 'MODEL FARM'? (TOWAMBA SIDE)
MAX. Yes. This side, on your left hand side ......
KATE. BEFORE THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE LEFT OF 'MODEL FARM'?
MAX. No. Further back this way. It's all scrub now. That was what was called the bullock yards.
KATE. WHAT YEAR WERE YOU BORN?
MAX. 1933. I'm only young yet. (laughter)
KATE. SO YOU GREW UP, THEN, ON 'LOG FARM'?
MAX. Yes. I went to school from there.
KATE. WHO WAS YOUR TEACHER?
MAX. McKenzie. I done all my schooling with him. I started school in '40 and left at Christmas time in '46 on account of....Mrs.Binnie had died....
KATE. THAT WAS SARAH?
MAX. Yes. And Dad had taken over.....Dad had leased the place then.
KATE. WHEN YOU SAID YOU WERE PUZZLED ABOUT HER....YOU DIDN'T KNOW WHETHER SHE MARRIED OR NOT.......
MAX. Yes....she must have married young because she wasn't......I didn't even know her husband.
KATE. DID SHE MARRY A BINNIE OR WAS SHE ALREADY A BINNIE?
MAX. She married a Binnie. I didn't even know her husband.
KATE. SO YOU DON'T KNOW WHO SHE WAS.
MAX. Yes. She was a Morgan.
KATE. NOT FROM AROUND HERE THEN?
MAX. I don't know. Her brother used to be at Kurrajong Heights and he used to come and visit her occasionally.
KATE. HER HUSBAND WAS WHO?
MAX. Alec. Alec Binnie.
KATE. SO HE DIED AND SHE WAS LEFT ON THE FARM AND THEN YOUR PARENTS CAME THERE TO SHARE FARM.
MAX. Yes. And Dad and Mum in the later years moved from the dairying cottage up to look after her...Mrs.Binnie because she was very close to ninety when she died.
KATE. DID YOUR PARENTS BUY 'LOG FARM'?
MAX. Yes. I'm trying to think what year did we buy that. It must have been '47 and that's how I came to leave school early.
KATE. THAT WAS THE WAY OF IT THEN, YOU DIDN'T GO TO HIGH SCHOOL, YOU WERE NEEDED ON THE FARM.
MAX. Yes. The leaving age then was fourteen and I wasn't fourteen until.....I left in '46 at Christmas time and my birthday was in March '47. I would have been leaving with....Dad and.....Joe McKenzie was the teacher's name, they was pretty good friends and Joe said.........I used to be a bit of a terror at school and...
KATE. REALLY! (LAUGHTER)
MAX. I used to get sent outside to do a lot of work instead of being in school. Because poor old Joe, he used to get sick of giving me the cane. He said to Dad, 'I don't know what you'll make of Max,' he said. I hated school work. Honestly I did. If I could think of doing something in the classroom so I could be sent outside well and good. I always remember I wasn't allowed to sit with my class mates because I'd be digging them in the ribs or something. Then there was a hole in the floor, well, it wasn't that big, you had to aim pretty closely to be able let your pen drop down through it and it used to go down under the school floor and I quite often used to aim it and get it down through there and Joe would come along and he'd say, ' Why aren't you writing, Max?' 'Oh, Sir, me pen's gone.' 'Where's your pen, Max?' 'It accidentally fell down through that hole.' I'd get the cane again, you know. Then I'd have to go out and get the pen and another two or three days go by and I'd drop it down again somehow. And those days, around the wall, there was a ventilation gap up about five feet and you had those tins of paints, water paints and we always used to sit them up on there and there was dozens of those found when they renovated the school. You'd be going out for lunch and you'd put your hand up and run along and knock them off and they'd go down behind the wall. When the renovations .........those times, the school had five heights in it for the age groups and then when the renovations were done they brought all the floors down to the one level and of course those walls came out and all these tins of paint were found.
KATE. WHEN YOU WERE ON 'LOG FARM' DID YOU HAVE THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU WENT TO SCHOOL? AND YOU'D WALK TO SCHOOL?
MAX. I used to have to milk .....both night and morning.
KATE. HOW MANY COWS DID YOU HAVE?
MAX. Well! We started off with the big total of thirty-five cows, by hand.
KATE. YOU AND WHO?
MAX. Dad and Mum and then my sister, she's six years younger than me, Barbara.
KATE. DID YOU HAVE OTHER BROTHERS AND SISTERS?
MAX. No.
KATE. JUST THE TWO OF YOU.
MAX. Yes. As the teacher said to Dad, 'You wouldn't want any more boys like him.' (laughter) Anyway, I did knuckle down and I learnt a lot after I left school because.....my father used to be secretary and president of a lot of organisations around the town here and I thought I can do those things too and I was........I was secretary and president of every damn thing before I left this area. Even when we went back to the school in '57. I was president of the school from '57 to '71. And I didn't think that I'd ever go back to doing those sorts of things the way I hated school. Those days at the school it wasn't only a P and C it was a Progress Association because after Joe McKenzie left, Vance came and that was when we were battling to get this bridge put in down here.
KATE. SO DO YOU KNOW WHEN THIS BRIDGE WAS PUT IN? THE THIRD ONE?
MAX. Yes. 1961 was when it was opened.
KATE. AND DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING OF THE PREVIOUS ONE. THE ONE THAT GOT SILTED UP.
MAX. The 'Old Poley', as we used to call it.
KATE. THAT'S THE LITTLE ONE WHERE THE CEMENT RAMP IS.
MAX. Yes.
KATE. DO YOU KNOW WHAT YEAR THAT ONE WENT IN?
MAX. Yes. That was started in 1920. The big one got washed away in 1919 and they used to out on the crossing up there and it was late 1920 that they started to put that poley bridge in.
KATE. NOW, IS IT TRUE, AND I'VE BEEN TOLD BY A FEW PEOPLE, THAT THEY USED TO RIDE ON HORSEBACK UNDERNEATH THAT SECOND BRIDGE.
MAX. That's right!
KATE. SO THAT IS RIGHT?
MAX. Yes. When I first started school you could stand another person on top of your shoulders and walk under that bridge, I suppose, easy two thirds of the way along, either side from the centre. Because we had a bit of a problem there, us young fellers, we used to put packets of tobacco up on top of the girders up there, you see, and the only way we could get them up there would be to stand on one another's shoulders to get our packets of tobacco. SHOWING MAX SOME PHOTOGRAPHS
MAX. This is the Walter Parker family.
KATE. WERE THEY A FARMING FAMILY?
MAX. Yes. Walter Parker farmed down there at Orman's on the way down to 'Log Farm'.
KATE. WAS THAT 'SUNNYSIDE'? ORMAN'S WAS 'SUNNYSIDE'.
MAX. That's where it is.
KATE. SO THEY HAD THAT. THEY AREN'T ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE SHOP PEOPLE?
MAX. No. Then they finished up coming up here to where Jeff Knight lives. Now this Mrs. Allan and Mrs. Bowtell (in photo) when the war was on and those two planes crashed into Mt.Imlay, well they thought it was an air raid and they were milking and they got down on the cement outside where the cows used to walk out of the bail and they got down on that because they thought it was an air raid. That was prior to them being married.
KATE. THIS IS A PHOTO OF THE SECOND BRIDGE. I COULD IN NO WAY BELIEVE THAT YOU COULD RIDE UNDERNEATH THAT ON HORSEBACK.
THERE'S NO DATE ON THIS BUT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN AROUND THE 1930'S. THAT MUST HAVE FILLED UP.......
MAX. I can remember the water was just barely going under it....you only had to have a bird fly over and pee in it and it would go over the bridge. And the only way we could get the cream across the river was to boat it across.
KATE. SO FROM THE TIME THAT WAS PUT IN, IN THE 1920's .....
MAX. It was the late 1920's that they started on it, yes.
KATE. SO IT DIDN'T TAKE ALL THAT LONG FOR THE SAND TO PILE UP.
MAX. We used to get a heck of a lot of wash out of the hills from up here....in 1939 that's when the rabbits got going madly here. They eroded the country right through to Pericoe ......
KATE. THEY WERE THAT BAD?
MAX. Oh, God, yes.
KATE. SO IT WAS MORE TO DO WITH RABBITS, THE RIVER SANDING UP THAN FARMING PRACTICES?
MAX. Oh, yes. Definitely. It was. Look the rabbits were that bad ....going down to log farm there was an orchard, about an acre and a half, and it had a paling fence around and to catch some rabbits they took two or three palings off there early in the night and went out through the night and put the palings back on and the next day they went out to get these rabbits and they were piled up that high in the corners they were getting out over the top of the paling fence. There was no grass and they'd sour the ground out with their urine and that's when the ti tree took over in this area. It spread like something mad.
KATE. SO YOU THINK THIS PHOTO OF THE BRIDGE MIGHT BE MORE IN THE FORTIES?
MAX. It would have to be in the forties.
KATE. SO IT WAS STARTED IN THE LATE 1920's. I THINK THE BIG BRIDGE WAS FINISHED IN ABOUT A YEAR.
MAX. I think it would have taken a reasonable time because there was quite a bit of hassle getting everything....materials for it. A lot of the materials for that particular bridge, the pylons and that, came from out near what they call the 'Black Range' out there. Grey Box timber. Had it all brought in on horses in those times.
KATE. SO WHAT DATE WOULD YOU PUT ON THE PHOTOGRAPH OF THE SECOND BRIDGE?
MAX. Well, you are looking at about 1946, around there. The approaches to the (second) bridge on this side, they carted in big rock and they used to have to nap it down to the right size with a napping hammer to fit it in down there and I don't know the name of the feller but Jack Beasley hit a rock too hard........like you're napping it down, it's only a small hammer, a hand or so long and you'd work around it and you'd tap it to try and find where a crack will start, I think, and the bloke lost his eye. That's how Jack explained to me what happened.
KATE. I WAS VERY UNHAPPY TO HAVE MISSED JACK. I'D LOVED TO HAVE GOT HIM ON TAPE.
MAX. You'd've had a battle trying to get him. The way it would have been set up would to sit and have a cup of tea.
KATE. ALF (BEASLEY) SAID JACK NEVER DID ANYTHING THE EASY WAY.
MAX. He'd done a lot of work with me, Jack. I used to tell him, 'Come on, we'll do it this way.' 'All right, boy, you're the boss,' he'd say. He'd settled down a hell'va lot. But he was always a bloke who wanted to be ahead of you all the time. And I think I was probably lucky enough that I could out do him and that's how I got along so well with him, I think. He used to say, 'Well, how are we going to do it this way?' But anyone else, he'd just go into it head first without any thought or anything. We put up miles of fencing together and people would say, how the so and so hell can you work with this feller. But he didn't use to be any problem with me. The worst part was that it didn't make any difference whether it was the coldest frostiest morning travelling in the vehicle, he'd have his window wound down and I was the bloke who used to get the wind on the other side. (laughter)
KATE. I HEARD HE DIDN'T LIKE TRAVELLING IN VEHICLES.
MAX. No. He would have travelled with me more than anyone else.
KATE. HE NEVER LEARNT TO DRIVE?
MAX. No. I couldn't get him to get on a tractor to move it anywhere even. Tractors were something that he used to hate the sight of when they first came out. Oh, you can't get around a corn paddock with those sort of things, you know, you got to have the horses, he'd say. He was a character in his own right.
KATE. AND THERE WERE SUCH A LOT OF BACHELORS AROUND.
MAX. A lot of the Beasleys were bachelors. Well, there was Arthur and Herbie and Alf, that was three in one family. And Jack was in another family of the Beasleys.
KATE. AND HIS BROTHER, LES......HE WAS THE ONE KILLED ON THE MOUNTAIN.
MAX. Yes. He was the youngest. Gordon was the eldest boy, there was one sister, Molly, she was the eldest of the family. So there was Molly, Gordon, then Jack and then Les. He was killed on the Station Cutting. He was backed up against the stone on the bank of the Station Cutting down there. They had the horse team and Jack had a young horse in the ....the lead horse. He had three sets of two and then the lead horse. It was only a young horse and McPherson had the first truck around here and they heard him coming and there wasn't much room on Station Cutting in those days and Jack said to Les, 'Race up and grab the (lead) horse and pull him into the bank.' And of course he'd done that and as soon as the vehicle got near him he reared up and bashed Les up against the stone wall.
KATE. WAS THAT ON THE TOWAMBA ROAD?
MAX. Yes. On the Station Cutting on the Towamba Road.
KATE. WHERE ABOUTS IS THAT?
MAX. You know where the Ben Boyd Road goes off, well, only about three hundred yards past that is where it happened.
KATE. TOWARDS EDEN?
MAX. Yes. That's where it happened. McPherson and George Dickie used to run that vehicle down to Eden. (Looking at a photo of the truck)
KATE. LOOK AT THE RUBBER ON THE TYRES. THERE IS NO AIR IN THEM.
MAX. They were hard tyres. That's McPherson and the other one is George Dickie. They were in business together. Because Ron McPherson married George's sister.
KATE. SO WHEN WOULD LES HAVE BEEN KILLED?
MAX. I couldn't tell you exactly. (Leslie Oliver Beasley, killed 10th March 1922, aged 15 years and 3 months. Source: Towamba Cemetery Transcriptions, Bega Valley Genealogy Society. Vol. 2)
KATE. BACK TO YOUR BEFORE AND AFTER SCHOOL JOBS. YOU HAD YOUR MILKING, ALL BY HAND AND YOU'D HAVE TO MILK AFTER YOU GOT HOME FROM SCHOOL?
MAX. Yes.
KATE. SO YOU HAD THE MILKING, SEPARATING.....
MAX. 1948 that finished. We got milking machines in 1948.
KATE. I WAS TALKING TO ROLLO SOUTH AND HE REMEMBERED WHEN THE LITTLE BUTTER FACTORIES CLOSED.
MAX. Once the butter factory at Pambula closed down it was more.......all the butter from there was sent to the Allowrie company and then it became unviable to make those quantities of butter. I think it was about 1968, the cream all went to Bega. That's when things became very hard for dairying here because the cost of coming and picking up from only four places that produced. It got to the stage where you practically had to take it yourself to Bega.
KATE. ROLLO SOUTH SAID THEY HAD TO TAKE THEIRS TO BEGA.
MAX. It was a shame that people didn't get into the whole milk side of things quicker, and got away from just your cream.
KATE. ROLLO SAID THEY TOOK WHOLE MILK UP TO BEGA FOR A WHILE.
MAX. That was at the finish. That was the only way they could get rid of it.
KATE. HE SAID THEY WERE MILKING, CARTING, CAME HOME, MILKING AND SO IT WENT ON.
MAX. If people would have got into that whole milk sooner, there was quite a good market there for it. I think that some of the dairies would have still existed. But as far as the price of separating, trying to run pigs ......that was all you could do with your separated milk, was give it to your pigs and it was a real problem. But we used to have to grow so much corn on the property down there ('Log Farm') to supplement the pigs with the separated milk because unless you put some molasses or pollard with the separated milk there wasn't much body in it.
KATE. SO YOU GREW CORN FOR THE PIGS AND FOR THE HORSES, I SUPPOSE......
MAX. Yes. The horses went out in '48, round about that time, when we got the tractor .......
our first tractor.
KATE. WHO GOT THE FIRST TRACTOR?
MAX. Jackie McLeod. The bloke who used to live in your place. Yes, he got the first 'Farm All'......
KATE. 'FARM ALL', WAS THAT THE BRAND?
MAX. Yes. His first bit of ploughing he done was where Jeff Knight has got the trees in where the road goes up to Shane Mitchel's there. That's where he first started to plough with the tractor then Arthur Clements got a 'Farm All' then......
KATE. WAS ARTHUR CLEMENTS CLIVE'S FATHER?
MAX. Yes. Then the Fergie tractors came out and we were the first ones to have a Fergie tractor here. That made a hell'va difference as far as getting over your paddocks and that was concerned.
KATE. I SUPPOSE IT WOULD HAVE CUT YOUR WORKING DAY IN HALF
HAVING A TRACTOR TO PLOUGH WITH.
MAX. Yes. The only thing you still used to do.....you worked up all your ground for your
corn with the tractor but you still for a few years planted it with a horse and scuffled it with the horse.
KATE. WHAT WAS SCUFFLING?
MAX. Scuffling was ........have you seen......its like a digger type of thing with a handle on it like a plough and a wheel out there in front and it had five feet on it and you worked the centre of it between the rows.
KATE. IT WASN'T A HARVESTER, IT IS WHAT YOU USE TO WEED BETWEEN THE ROWS?
MAX. Yes.
KATE. I ALWAYS IMAGINED SCUFFLING WAS SOME HOW REMOVING THE LEAVES FROM THE CORN COBS.
MAX. No. That's husking. So you used the scuffle to keep the weeds down. You used to leave a strip along with your drill of corn then you went along and chipped the rest of that out with the hoe. Then came the spray. You used to let your weeds get up so high then you'd boom spray along on each side of your drill and saved all that hand work. Then you didn't do the scuffling with a horse, you did it with a scarifier behind the tractor because you didn't have to get up so close to your corn drill.....as long as the ground was loosened up to let the moisture in.
KATE. WHAT WOULD YOUR MOTHER'S WORKING DAY HAVE BEEN LIKE?
MAX. She used to say it was hell. (laughter) Well, she'd have to get up and......well, I used to mainly get myself ready for school and we'd go down to the yard and Mum would be down there milking and then she'd always have my lunch made up for me to go before she went down to do the milking then she'd say it was time you went and had a wash before I went to school. Then she'd come home and get the breakfast ready for Dad and then there'd be chores she'd have to do around the house, of course, and she'd have to go and put the cows into different paddocks and things like that.
KATE. SO WASHING WITH THE COPPER, MAKING BUTTER AND BREAD, THINGS LIKE THAT?
MAX. Yes. In lots of cases in those days, water was boiled in four gallon tins on an open fire. I don't remember it but when we were at Genoa, apparently Mum had taken a four gallon tin off the fire and sat it down and didn't see where harum-scarum me was and I shoved my hand in it and what did I do, I just run my hand over it and pulled the skin off and I don't remember that, I was too young. It was a long time before I got skin back on it. Those were the sort of things they had to do. They used to have a copper set up you'd boil clothes in but if you wanted to heat water to do the washing in the old wash tubs well you had to boil that in the four gallon tins.
KATE. IT WAS HARD WORK.
MAX. Yes. You had your gardening to do in between everything else.
KATE. YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN SELF SUFFICIENT WITH YOUR OWN VEGIES AND MEAT.
MAX. Yes.
KATE. AND DID YOUR MUM MAKE JAMS AND PRESERVES?
MAX. Oh, yes. Her main thing used to be green tomato pickles and melon jam. Dad used to always say, 'Don't go using all those tomatoes for making pickles because I want them to ripen.' He used to love tomato jam. I know the one he used to like was the one with a little bit of lemon juice put in the tomato jam. When the apples got around to ripening we got apple tart, apple turnovers and you'd get sick of apple this and apple that. (laughter) The best apple turnout was my Grandmother Sawers used to make apple rolly polly. She had a big boiler and she used to make them about this long and they'd end up about this round. She used to roll apples and put them in a cloth and put them into boiling water and cook them that way. Oh, and that used to be the best way as far as apples were concerned with me. They say....those were the days when you were able to do for yourself. Today, you get them out of the
supermarket.
KATE. IT'S A VAST CHANGE, ISN'T IT?
MAX. Yes, it is. I'd say that after '48, farm work got much easier but it was more intense because I recall prior to getting the tractor we used to have thirty draft horses to do the work and they were kept under cover and it was my job to feed those night and morning and I had hay fever and could never work it out.........I used to get that jolly crook sometimes, I couldn't get out of bed. Dr. Marshman, he got a very keen interest in hay fever and asthma in grown ups and children, and he made up serums for me and that Miss Binnie that used to be over here, (Dalton's house) used to give me injections of the serum in the afternoons. I used to ride from school over to there and go home. He was very interested in it. He came and spent two or three days over home and just watched my work and it turned out to be the dust off the horse manure in the stables. He got a serum of that mixed up and got injections.
KATE. DID YOU NOTICE A DIFFERENCE?
MAX. Oh, yes! He fixed me! Yes. I couldn't at that particular time.....I was starting to get a keen interest in sport and that kind of thing and I used to get that way that I couldn't get my breath and that's what the cause was.
KATE. YOU WOULD HAVE WALKED TO SCHOOL....DID YOU HEAR ABOUT CHARLIE LAING'S BROTHER DROWNING IN THE RIVER?
MAX. Yes. They were diving off the bridge and he ......he was a half brother to Charlie. He jumped off the bridge there and hit his head on a rock in the river.
KATE. I WAS TOLD THAT HE DIVED INTO A DEEP HOLE ON A VERY HOT DAY AND THE WATER WAS SO COLD THAT HE GOT CRAMP AND DROWNED.
MAX. Well, Jack Beasley said he was with him and he jumped off the bridge and the water was too shallow.
KATE. IT WAS A TRAGEDY.
MAX. Yes. Oh dear, oh dear. Bobby was his first name. That's what was told to me by Jack.
KATE. EVERYONE SAYS, 'WELL, IF JACK SAID IT, IT'S RIGHT.' (laughter)
MAX. I think it was Mavis Beasley who got drowned down here, it used to be Roberts'.......
KATE. 'PARKSIDE'?
MAX. Yes......coming across the river there. She was Arthur's, (Beasley) Herbie's and Hampdon's sister and Big Alf, as we used to call him, their sister.
KATE. HOW DID SHE DROWN?
MAX. Well there was a flood on and they were swimming across and she was hanging on to the horse's tail and there was two of them and she lost the horse's tail. She was washed up down by Laing's somewhere. Then there was a Gloria Beasley who was Old Ben Beasley ......(not to be confused with Young Ben Beasley. See Alf Beasley Interview) who used to live where Terry Knight lives now, his daughter and we don't really know how.....some disease she got. She was only ten or eleven years old. She died from that and he had no other children in the family. That's one side of the Beasley family that did die out. Talking about that Big Alf, he used to work at the Long Bay Jail. He used to be a cook there. He was a jolly good cook too.
KATE. DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE WAR YEARS IN TOWAMBA?
MAX. Yes. There used to be a V.D.C., a Volunteer Defence Corps used to be here.
KATE. STATIONED HERE?
MAX. Yes. They were the farming community around here. There was........ they used to call him Captain.......Pax Sawtell (spelling) and what was the other one's name....he used to come down from the Monaro and train us. I can't remember his name but the two of them used to come down and train us here and I was the baby. I was the youngest in the V.D.C.. I was only twelve or thirteen and our job was to....they always reckoned the Japanese would land at Twofold Bay and we was to move all the stock up to the Monaro, burn everything behind us, then as luck had it, it didn't happen. But then 1945 the war ended, in '46 they had a welcome home for the returned soldiers. They had a sports day over here in Boller's paddock, which was Darcy Parker's paddock and the first wood chop that I ever chopped in was at that particular time. Then they had a big dinner in the hall that night for a welcome home party for the soldiers. That was 1946. I had two uncles on the Sawers side, no three uncles in the war, yes. One uncle, he died a prisoner of war on the Burma railway and the other two didn't get out of Australia. Then Laurie Beasley had a bad knee and they kept him around the mess house nearly all the time. He hated that. Gordon Beasley who ended up here where Terry Knight lives, that was Jack's brother, he went to New Guinea and then there was Alf Tasker and Rufie Lucas, he was Alf's brother-in-law. He lived out at the back of 'Elmgrove' at 'Daisy Hill', then there were three Clements'.......Gordon, Verner, and Ronnie, then there was Les Mitchell, he died a prisoner of war. Mary Mitchell, (Lower Towamba) well her husband's brother died a prisoner of war. Pud, as we used to call him, Gordon was his right name but he always had Pud, he died a prisoner of war on the Burma railway.
KATE. WHY DID THEY GO?
MAX. Well, the thing about it was for a lot of them, work was a big problem for them at that particular stage. That's right, Athol Greer, he was another feller that went. Well, when he joined up and Gordon Beasley, they were ring barking timber at Craig & Mostyn's lease down there.
KATE. WHERE'S THAT?
MAX. Out the back of 'Log Farm'. It's state forest now but Craig & Mostyn was the wattle bark company and they had this lease taken up from the Forestry. They were ring barking all the green timber to let the wattle grow. Athol used to suffer from dog wood itch, so he said, 'That's it, I'm going to join the Army!' Him and Gordon Beasley and Normie Carragher all left the job out there and joined up. That was '39. That's when the ring barking finished out there. And it might be hard for you to believe, but there was this feller who lived down near us ('Log Farm') by the name of Hickson Hay and Craig & Mostyn had him employed, he was an aged person, about in his late fifties and they got him a horse to ride around and if there was a small wattle that wasn't growing straight, he had to put a stake down along side and tie it up so it would grow straight.
KATE. SUCH A CONTRAST TO WHAT IT IS TODAY.
MAX. Oh, yes. It was a crime to drop a wattle down in those days. Well, then there was not a lot of bark stripped out of that until about '59 - '60. There was a mob of Italians in there and they stripped a heck of a lot of bark.
KATE. SOMEONE WAS SAYING THAT. APPARENTLY THEY COULDN'T GET ENOUGH WORKERS SO THEY PUT THE ITALIANS IN BUT THEY DIDN'T TIE IT IN WITH THE WAR.
MAX. That's right. It was '39 when they finished the ring barking....well there was a lot more that Craig & Mostyn wanted done but they couldn't get anyone to do it. There were a lot a small areas of bark stripped by various people I suppose, in the '40's, but that could have been in about '59 they came out and they put in a good two seasons there in stripping.
KATE. THE ITALIANS
MAX. Yes. There was a feller, I can't think of his name......was paying them a wage but he robbed them, he robbed them. But there were two or three of them who were quite reasonable blokes and we had dances over here (the hall near the shop) and they'd come in from their camp out there in the bush and go to the dance. But eat! My word, they could eat. They had a bloke there (in their camp) especially to do the cooking and I was running cattle out there in the bush and I would ride a horse out to have a look around, muster up a bit, you couldn't get past that camp unless you had something to eat.
KATE. HAD THEY BEEN PRISONERS OF WAR?
MAX. No. They were just people who came out here during the war, and grew up and some probably came out after the war too and they were looking for work and this feller was smart enough to make use of them. They had never stripped wattle bark in their lives and the poor cows, their hands were torn to pieces. I mean, I think I was the bloke who said to them, 'Why don't you get gloves?' And they didn't know what the hell they were. That was how some of them got their hands better. It's hard yakka.
KATE. I SUPPOSE AT THAT TIME THERE WOULDN'T BE MANY WAYS OF EARNING MONEY OFF THE FARM, IN THE AREA.
MAX. Prior to the war, that's about all there was, you'd trap rabbits in the winter time and strip wattle in the summer. If you were lucky enough to get a good fox well, that put the icing on the cake.
KATE. WHAT ABOUT THE DANCES THEN?
MAX. Well, there was hardly a weekend went by where there wasn't a dance either here (Towamba) or at Burragate, Rocky Hall and Wyndham. There was what we used to call dances and the big ones we used to call balls. And if you had a ball on the Friday night, on the Saturday night was a Cinderella for the kiddies. They were the good days, I always thought. You'd take the kiddies along on the Friday night, put them to sleep in the car and you'd go out and see that they were all right and have a drink or two, quietly so you didn't wake the kids up .......(laughter) and then Saturday night you'd be that tired and still suffering from a hangover as well and you'd have to get up and have a dance with all the kiddies.
KATE. SO THE CINDERELLA WAS THE KIDS BALL AND THE PARENTS WENT IN AS THEIR PARTNERS.
MAX. Yes. It was the only entertainment you had.
KATE. THAT WAS GOOD.
MAX. Yes. I don't think there was for years, a weekend, that we didn't go to a dance or a ball somewhere. It would be Candelo or Pambula or Eden and Wolumla and then you made your own fun too. We used to have a hell'va lot of fun coming home! (Laughter)
KATE. I WAS TOLD YOU HAD TO STAY OUT ALL NIGHT BECAUSE YOU COULDN'T SEE TO GET HOME. (laughter)
MAX. Well. I know they used to go from here down through Wangrabelle to Genoa to dances at Genoa, on horse back.
KATE. CLIVE CLEMENTS SAID HIS MOTHER RODE FROM WANGRABELLE THROUGH 'NANGUTTA' ACROSS TO BURRAGATE TO A DANCE WITH HER DRESS AND THINGS IN A SADDLE BAG AND STAYED WITH HER RELATIVES OVERNIGHT. SHE'D RIDE BACK THE NEXT DAY, ON HER OWN!
MAX. They used to tell me.....well, Mum used to tell me she started school out at Pericoe.
KATE. YOUR MOTHER WAS A BEASLEY?
MAX. Yes. They used to have dances at Burragate and then the next night....... I just don't know how they worked this one out. They'd have a dance out at the Pericoe hall out there and then go from there to Genoa and they'd have three nights of dancing.
KATE. ONE AFTER THE OTHER. WAS ONE ON SUNDAY NIGHT?
MAX. Well, I suppose it must have been on a Sunday because I certainly don't think they would have one during the week. I don't know how they worked that one. Those were the times that the women used to do themselves up and the males used to try to make themselves look nice too.
KATE. I WAS TALKING TO ALF AND HIS WIFE, MAVIS, SHE CAME FROM NETHERCOTE AND HE SAID THEY USED TO GO ALL OVER THE PLACE. SOME WERE WILLING TO GO LONG DISTANCES TO DANCES AND PROBABLY LOOKING FOR A WIFE TOO.
MAX. Oh, dear, yes. I used to drive Mum mad starching the white collar up and you made sure it was right. That was for the fellers that wanted to dance and wanted to hold a lady's hand, that sort of thing, you know.
KATE. AND THE OTHERS JUST WENT FOR A BIT OF FUN AND TO SOCIALISE. WERE THERE MANY FIGHTS?
MAX. Oh, yes. The worst part of these evenings was that you always had a supper provided and then you'd get the riff raff who came there and didn't want to pay but they always tried to get in and get supper. You'd get the smart Alec who'd get up one end of the table and hurl a cake at some one down the other end. That used to go on. Someone always ended up in a fight. The women went the day before to the hall and made trifles and sandwiches. Mrs. McLeod who used to live here (Hartneady's old shop) .......
KATE. JACK McLEOD'S.........
MAX. Mother. She always used to make what you called cream horns. And they always were put out on the first sitting and everyone used to try to get in on that first sitting to get Mrs.McLeod's cream horns. (laughter)
KATE. I SUPPOSE EVERYONE HAD THEIR SPECIALITY. I WAS TALKING TO ENIE LOVE AND SHE AND HER MOTHER USED TO MAKE CREAM SPONGES AND THEY USED TO WALK FROM OUT THERE, (PERICOE) THREE MILES TO PERICOE HALL TO A DANCE WITH THESE SPONGES THEY'D SPENT ALL DAY MAKING.
MAX. My mother used to make lamingtons. Dad and I used to get sick and tired of it. Mum used to cut the sponge up into squares and Dad and I used to get a fork, poke it in and get the chocolate and ice them up and get the coconut and roll them in it. I can recall my grandmother making lamingtons. And the sponges used to have the cream in the middle and a heap of jam, and cream on the top and they'd stand this high. You had it all over your nose when you tried to eat it. (laughter)
KATE. SO SOME WOULD RIDE TO THE DANCES ON HORSEBACK?
MAX. Yes. I used to....when I first started going to dances I used to ride a horse up here from down home and we'd catch a car....Darcy Parker used to take us a fair bit, about six of us used to fit in Darcy's car. Then Arthur Love got a bus and sometimes........
KATE. NOT THE RED TERROR?
MAX. Yes, the Red Terror. There would be a bus load. (laughter)
KATE. WHAT STOPPED ALL THAT?
MAX. It started to dwindle off a bit before clubs got going. Once the clubs got going the dances started to dwindle right off. More people had cars too, and the late night hotel closing to. The price of music too, rose. One time you could get a band for a small price and then the price of a band went up. You'd have a street stall or something to raise money for your band but then it went up.
KATE. YOU WOULD HAVE HAD YOUR OWN LOCALS WHO PLAYED THE VIOLIN.......
MAX. Yes. There was Wally Smith, he had his own band and they were quite reasonable. They used to travel around all the places. Jean Beasley, who used to live here where Terry Knight is, and Terry Goward used to play the drums. Lots of times it would be the two of them. Then there was a feller who played the sax. It would be the sax, the drums and the
piano. That would be for the Friday night and then for Saturday night it was mostly .......... sometimes you'd have Jean on the piano and sometimes Terry would be on the drums but a lot of times you'd only have the piano.
KATE. THERE IS A VERY OLD PHOTO IN THE TOWAMBA COLLECTION OF A PERSON THEY CALLED PORTER SAWERS. DO YOU KNOW WHO HE WAS?
MAX. Porter Sawers, he got shot out here at Watson's, on the way to Letts Mountain, getting through a fence with a rifle and he must have been getting through and he shot himself up through the head and he was still hanging in the fence when we found him. He used to go silly at times. He was a Sawers but he used to go silly.
KATE. WHAT RELATION WAS HE TO YOU?
MAX. Cousin. He was Jack Sawers', my grandfather's, brother. His brother was.....Austy was his right name.
KATE. OH, HE WAS AUSTIN SAWERS?
MAX. Yes. And they called him Porter.
KATE. OH, HE WAS THE SAME PERSON. I WAS THINKING HE WAS SOMEONE DIFFERENT. WELL, THESE FATHERS CHRISTEN THEIR SONS BY THE SAME NAME AND THEN TO STOP CONFUSION WITH THE FAMILY, I SUPPOSE, THEY CALL THEM BY THEIR MIDDLE NAME OR BY A NICK NAME. IT MIGHT STOP CONFUSION IN THEIR FAMILY BUT, BY CRIKEY, IT DOESN'T HELP WHEN YOU ARE TRYING TO RECORD THEIR HISTORY.
MAX. Now Peter Sawers, Austy's brother, there was a big bet on that he couldn't climb the face of Jingera Rock. He climbed it but he wasn't game to come back down he went back another way.
KATE. DID YOU KNOW OF ANY ABORIGINAL CONTACT OR OF ANY AROUND HERE IN YOUR TIME OR YOUR PARENTS'?
MAX. The only bloke that I know ....my Grandfather used to have an Aborigine with him at one time......I don't know where it was but he used to work with Grandfather on the horse team. But Grandfather reckoned you couldn't get a better bloke. He was as black as black. I can't remember his name. Grandfather said he'd trust him with his life because Grandfather used to go out to 'Nangutta Station' when Phipparts had it . They used to breed a lot of draft horses. There was some deal with Grandfather that he'd go out and catch a young draft horse and put it in the team for a week or so and break it in and then take it back and get another one. They used to sell them at auction and the black feller went with him on that. I used to go out sometimes with him on that and that is the only experience I ever had of any Aborigines. I don't know what became of him because Grandfather, he died reasonably young and he'd given up the team work a few years before he died anyway. But I don't know anything of where he came from.
KATE. DO YOU KNOW OF ANY ABORIGINAL CAMPING GROUNDS AROUND HERE?
MAX. No. I don't know of any sites or anything or camping grounds to be quite honest. And I can't recall ever hearing anything about it. I understand there was an Aboriginal.........I don't know who was the contractor that used to bring turkeys from the tablelands down here. There used to be an Aboriginal that used to be in that. They used to call in to Pericoe and shoe them there.
KATE. THAT WAS THROUGH THE TAR PITS AND SAND?
MAX. Yes.
KATE. I ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT WAS A BIT OF A WILD STORY.
MAX. Well, Leon Green was on Pericoe Station when me and Jack Beasley built stock yards out there for them and then we pulled these cement trays out that they used to put the tar in and where they used to shoe them. Into the tar and into the sand and then head them off down to Eden.
KATE. SUCH AMAZING THINGS YOU FIND HARD TO BELIEVE. I SPOKE A COUPLE OF TIMES TO JACK (BEASLEY) BEFORE HE GOT SICK AND HE SAID THAT HE COULD REMEMBER ONE HUNDRED HORSES LINED UP OVER AT THE BLACKSMITH'S NEAR THE SHOP WITH NOSE BAGS ON GETTING THEIR SHOES CHECKED BEFORE THEY WENT DOWN THE MOUNTAIN TO THE COAST. AND HE SAID HE'D TELL THIS TO YOUNG PEOPLE AND THEY'D JUST LAUGH.
MAX. Yes. Some of the younger generation probably wouldn't believe it.
KATE. DO YOU REMEMBER THE COMMUNITY THAT WERE OUT AT 'FULLIGANS'? THAT WAS THE MAIN ROAD OUT TO LETTS MOUNTAIN?
MAX. Yes.
KATE. THERE WERE WATSONS........I WAS TOLD THEY MILKED SPECIFICALLY FOR A CHEESE FACTORY. THEIR MILK APPARENTLY WENT WHOLE. I THINK IT WAS ALF (BEASLEY) SAID THEY HAD A PROPERLY BRED DAIRY HERD.
MAX. They used to make it out there at Letts Mountain. The old factory used to be on the river (Wog Wog) as you went over to 'Fulligans'. It used to be made in big balls, I was told.
KATE. SO IT WAS MADE OUT THERE AND CARTED IN.
MAX. Yes. It used to go on the boat and go to Sydney.
KATE. SO THE END PRODUCT WAS MADE OUT THERE?
MAX. Yes. The old boiler is still there.
KATE. LEO (FARRELL) SAID THERE WERE THREE DAIRIES ON 'FULLIGANS' AT ONE TIME.
MAX. Yes, there would have been. You see.......I'm certain there was a dairy there on Letts Mountain too.
KATE. LAING'S HAD A DAIRY THERE TOO.
MAX. Yes. At Letts Mountain. That's where Jim Laing and Tommy (Ilene Umback nee Laing. See Ilene Umback interview) and them were because they used to breed some pigs there. My first experience of going out there was when my grandfather bought a sow and litter and we went out in what you'd call a spring cart with netting over the top of it. We put this sow and the litter of pigs in there and took them down to 'Log Farm'. That was my first experience of out at Letts Mountain.
KATE. MOYNA PRICE SAID THAT IT WAS JACK SAWERS AND ANOTHER PERSON WERE THE ONLY ONES TO HAVE A BUGGY AROUND HERE.
MAX. Yes. Jack Sawers lived all of his life at Burragate. You know where the sports ground is at Burragate and then on the corner, the hall used to be there then the road used to go in on your right and about three hundred meters that's where Jack used to live.
KATE. THAT WAS NEAR WHERE LEO (FARRELL) GREW UP.
MAX. Same place. Leo ended up with it. Jack was a great skin tanner. He made kangaroo rugs and that. Jack had the buggy and Mrs. Alec Binnie had one too. Pretty well the same type of buggy with the four lights, two on each side.
KATE. WAS THAT A TWO WHEELED BUGGY OR FOUR WHEELS?
MAX. Four. Yes, and you used to have two horses in it. You'd have the pole and one horse on each side of the pole. I forget what type of lights they were. The first they had, I know they used to have candles in them. They were about this high and about so square and they had like a pyramid thing over the top of them and the stem used to be about that long where it fit down into a hole to hold it. You can imagine going over those smooth roads in those days. (laughter)
KATE. SO YOUR MOTHER AT HOME, SHE WOULD HAVE HAD TO HAVE BEEN NURSE AND EVERYTHING. SHE WOULD HAVE HAD HER HOME REMEDIES TO CURE THOSE THINGS THAT KIDS HAVE.
MAX. Oh, yes. Castor oil, olive oil. Oh, gawd, don't mention it, will you? (laughter) 'You don't look real well, you'd better have a spoonful of this,' she'd say.
KATE. YOU'D GET WELL REAL QUICK.
MAX. Yes. You'd get better before it hit your mouth! And your laxettes of a Friday night. A clean out ready for the weekend. (laughter) The remedy for that used to be to mix up Epsom salts and lemon juice in a jug. You had to have that of a morning, a full glass, and that was supposed to kill all the wogs and keep the back door running as well. (laughter)
KATE. SO YOU WOULD HAVE CORNED YOUR MEAT IN A BARREL?
MAX. Yes. You used to kill a beast and corn as much as you possibly could and for the first week after you killed it you'd eat steak until it comes out your ears to catch up so it wouldn't go off. Then you were pleased to get a bit of silver-side after all that steak! (laughter) You'd have steak and eggs, you'd have grilled steak, steak and gravy.
KATE. HARD TIMES!
MAX. There was something about the old wood stove and the griller over the open fire...the meat had a better flavour.
KATE. I SUPPOSE YOU WOULD HAVE EATEN RABBITS TOO?
MAX. Sometimes that would be your Sunday meal, underground mutton. There were many ways they were cooked and many ways they wasn't cooked right too. If you didn't take the stink wort out around the butt of the tail of the rabbit.......
KATE. IS THERE?
MAX. Didn't you know about that. There's a stink wort there. It goes through the rabbit and the whole rabbit tastes of it. Its only a little piece of stuff there, a brownish looking little piece at the butt of the tail. Its between the bum and the tail. If you don't get that out it'll go right through the meat. That was like poor old Darcy Parker over here. I used to do a lot of mowing for people in those days .......I went and mowed this patch of lucerne on the bottom side of the yards there and, 'You bastard,' he'd say. 'You'd better come in and have some breakfast.' All right, so when the bacon factory was going at Merimbula, you could buy bacon bones. He had them all cooked and you'd chew off what meat there was on the bones. He said, 'We got bones this morning.' He started into the bones before I did, next thing he was yelling, he said, 'Don't touch them! Don't touch them!' 'Why, what's wrong?' 'Oh, look at 'em!' They were fly blown! (laughter)
KATE. DID THEY BOIL THEM TO HAVE FOR BREAKFAST?
MAX. No. They had them cold. You picked the meat off. It was a circus over there. 'Oh, well,' he said, 'We'll have some fruit....better have some cream on that. It's in the fridge, I suppose. Fruit's all right but it's better with a bit of cow on it.' Out comes the billy can and hanging over the side of the billy can is a big blob of cow shit. (laughter)
KATE. WHAT DID HE SAY?
MAX. 'Oh, shit! We'd better get that out!.' Oh dear, oh dear. He was a character.
KATE. WHAT WAS HE LIKE AS A BAR KEEPER, THEN?
MAX. Oh, terrible, terrible. He'd come down from the yard and you know how brown your hands get between your fingers with milking by hand and he'd never wear any boots and the cow dung was all up through his toes....... (laughter) You'd have to put up with it every time.
KATE. SO HE'D SERVE YOU WITH HANDS LIKE THAT?
MAX. Yes.
KATE. WHAT WERE THE GLASSES LIKE THEN?
MAX. You would....if the glass was a bit dirty you'd slip around the other side of the
counter and wash it yourself. Oh, it was rough.
KATE. SO WAS MRS. PARKER THE SAME.
MAX. Oh, Spot, he used to call her. 'Ay, Spot,' he'd call.
KATE. DIDN'T THEY CALL HER TOPSY?
MAX. Yes. But he'd call her Spot. And Norma, he used to call her 'Nought'.
KATE. WAS THAT THEIR DAUGHTER?
MAX. Yes. A boy and a girl. Arnold and Norma. One of the funniest shows over there was Ronnie Haigh.......have you heard anything about Ronnie Haigh?
KATE. NO.
MAX. You haven't heard anything about Ronie Haigh? Oh, my God!
KATE. WHO WAS HE?
MAX. He was a builder. He done most of the building all around this town. And anyway, he....oh, he used to drink and a terrible wag of a bloke. Once he got drink into him he didn't know when to stop. He was building Harry Tasker's house up there at 'Hill-n-Dale'. Harry Tasker bought 'Hill-n-Dale' and he decided he'd build a new house, so Ronnie was building that and when he left here you never knew when you'd see him back on the job again. Anyway, this particular Friday night he lands there at the plonk shop and he says, 'Anything to eat Spot?' 'No!' she said. 'You're not getting anything to eat at this time of the night.' 'Christ!' he said, 'I haven't eaten anything for three hours!' But then of course, he'd been drinking all the time, you see. Anyway he had a couple of drinks and then he disappeared. We thought where the hell has Ronnie disappeared to? He wasn't in his vehicle, oh, we thought, he's somewhere. A little while later, in he comes. 'Well,' he said. 'If you won't give me any tucker, here,' he said, 'Here, we'll have some bloody chook.' And he flopped this rooster on the bar. He'd gone up to the chook yard and got this rooster and rung its neck and slapped it on the bar! (laughter) Only a few days prior to that, Darcy went and bought this rooster from Ubrihien Brothers in Bega. Of all the ones he had to pick was this rooster that Darcy had paid good money for. Well, Topsy, she was going to kill him, she was going to shoot him, you name it, she was going to do it to him. 'Well, it'll taste all right,' he said. 'Get the feathers off it.' Oh, he was a funny man.
KATE. SO HE WOULD HAVE BUILT A LOT OF THE HOUSES AROUND HERE.
MAX. Yes, he renovated a heck of a lot of stuff around here. Yes. Him and his brother and Herb Watson, they were the ones who were painting the inside of the church up here and anyway, they had to paint the inside of the church and put the varnish on the pews. I used to bring the cream up of a morning, from down there, ('Log Farm') and I called in this morning to see how they were going. This was around eleven o'clock. I walked in and here was Ronnie and Jeff, his brother, down on the pews.......one was on one side of the pews and one over here and a flagon of plonk in between each of them and Herb Watson was up on the alter, blessing the wine. (laughter) Drunk as skunks, they were.
KATE. WHEN WAS THAT JOB DONE?
MAX. That would have been done around '58 or '59.
KATE. WAS THAT AROUND THE SAME TIME YOU SAID THOSE FOUR CORNER POSTS WERE PUT IN TO STABILISE THE CHURCH?
MAX. We put them in after that. Very close to that time.
KATE. WAS THAT BECAUSE THE WOOD HAD ROTTED?
MAX. Well, the old church......you'd get in there with a wind and you couldn't hold your book, the building would sway in the wind! So about the other side of kangaroo flat, out there, there was good box trees, actually in the lease that Ben Beasley had over here, and we cut those out with a Hargan (spelling) saw and put them in the corners there.
KATE. DID YOU TAKE THE OLD ONES OUT?
MAX. No. They didn't have any! It was only on blocks, you see.
KATE. SO WITH THESE POSTS YOU RE-ENFORCED THE BUILDING.
MAX. Yes. We put them down into the ground about three foot. And then the iron bars that come through there, they fitted those for use down at the council work shop at Eden.
KATE. AND THAT STABILISED THE WHOLE BUILDING. THE CHURCH IS LISTED NOW WITH THE NATIONAL TRUST. WE WERE ASKING ABOUT THE ORIGINAL COLOURS.
MAX. Yes. It was a reddy brown, brick colour and then that was painted in an off cream when we put those posts in there in '59.
KATE. KURT PONGRATZ PUT A NEW ROOF ON IT. THEY REPAIRED THE BATTENS THAT NEEDED DOING AND IT HAS A RED COLOUR BOND ROOF. THE SPARROWS ARE A PROBLEM THOUGH.
MAX. Whenever we didn't have an organist, they used to make the music for us. (laughter) I see the memorial gates at the sports ground have been hit again.
KATE. YES. THEY ARE NOT WIDE ENOUGH. THEY KEEP GETTING FIXED AND THEY GET HIT AGAIN.
MAX. We had done those twice while I was here. Put them back in to place. They could have put another foot on either side of the gate but no one thought of trucks coming in through there at that particular stage. And when we had gymkhana's they used to go in the top end. After I filled them up with enough beer.......
KATE. SO IT WAS YOUR FAULT THEY KEPT HITTING THE GATES! (laughter)
MAX. I used to be the barman up there for that.
KATE. WAS THAT BAR, THE BUILDING, WAS THAT DONATED BY SOMEBODY?
MAX. No. That was the weather shed that used to be up at the race course. It was a weather shed and grandstand when the race course was going up there and we pulled it down and brought it down there and built another section on the back of it for putting all the horse jumping gear in there and then it was only a small opening we used to serve through and I said that was no good. So that's when we opened right around it then we thought that was no
good because everyone can jump in so I built all those shutters so we could lock it up. That tin was brought from the Pambula Butter Factory and the timber that I put the tin on, came from Honeysuckle.....Arthur Cain had a sawmill at Honeysuckle at the back of June's (Max's wife) parent's place and the timber come from there. After the day was over we used to shut up and you'd come in through the door and that's when the fun used to start.
KATE. SO HOW LONG HAS THAT BAR BEEN THERE?
MAX. It was built there.......well the ground was finished and it was built for the first gymkhana we had there, for the opening.
KATE. DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT YEAR?
MAX. 1955, I think it was. See, the race course.......I think Council took it over and used to lease it out to various people and that's how the Council gave us the O K to pull the shed down. It and the tennis courts were built about the same time. All the rails and posts that are around the oval came from up here .......there were heaps of poles where Doyles had a paddock up near the rifle butts. Have you heard of that?
KATE. NO.
MAX. There used to be a rifle range up the gully there from the race course. Doyles had a paddock in there full of all these stringy bark poles. Roger Doyle donated all the poles and we cut them and then they were carted down here. The posts were cut out of a tree in Ben Beasley's and we bought them down and Ira Parker run the edges off with the circular saw over behind the shop over there. And all those poles that fitted on top of one another were fitted with an adze.
KATE. THAT WAS A LOT OF WORK.
MAX. A lot of blisters too. Those yards, we used to dig down a certain distance and fill them up with water and leave them for two or three hours until the water soaked in so we could dig them out. Oh, that was hard digging there. We had our first bullock ride there.
KATE. I SUPPOSE WHEN THE RIFLE RANGE AND RACE COURSE CLOSED DOWN SOMETHING ELSE OPENED UP.
MAX. The last rifle range was up the back of Issy's (Ryan) here. That would have closed down around about '51. It used to be a range that Bombala, out at Bibbenluke, Pambula, Bega.......we'd do a circuit. This was the only one that was bordered with ti tree. Oh, did it take off!
KATE. JEFF (KNIGHT) SAID THAT THERE WAS ANOTHER PART TO MY HOUSE AND IT WAS TAKEN OFF AND IS DOWN ON THE GENOA PUB AS A LEAN-TO.
MAX. Yes. It was. That was quite a while ago. That was after the store itself was finished. That little room at the front there was where Jack McLeod used to have a barber's shop. And in that small room there, that room used to be packed with people playing euchre. The little fire would be going and it was great. You know, those were the things.....people used to tell bits of stories and people had a good time in those days. And people knew not to come to those euchre parties if you'd been over the plonk shop. You didn't bring it either. You got nowhere near the king's table as they called it! (laughter) When those three fellers were painting the church, Herb and the two Haigh's, they were camping in that big room with the fire there. Two or three of us came over to have a drink with them and they run out of wood. It must have been winter time when they were painting the church, anyway Herb, used to have one of those tea chests with the broom stick handle they used for a bass and we run out of wood and the fires going down. Ronnie said, 'Where's all the bloody wood? There's no wood here. Well we've got to have something on the fire.' So he grabs Herb's tea chest and hurls it into the fire. And Herb went off the deep end proper because he'd had that for years. Anyway Ira Parker had another tea chest over at the shop and he made up another one. But that's what Ronnie Haigh used to do. And Charlie Laing we were talking about, oh, he was a devil when he was drunk. He was over at the plonk shop one night and he was drunk and was tormenting us. We took him and put him in one of Darcy's beds over there and Trevor Tasker had taken a load of wattle bark down to the mill that day and he was back there and we went and got one of his ropes, and to stop Charlie from tormenting us we wound the rope around the bed and around him and tied him in. That was the same night as Ronnie Haigh killed the rooster. So, anyway, Ronnie turns up and Charlie's in there singing out, 'Help me. Help me.' Ronnie goes in and, 'Oh, the poor bugger,' he says. He goes out and gets one of Darcy's butcher knives, and this was a brand new rope of Trevor Tasker's and he cut the rope along one side of the bed and got Charlie out. Oh there were some stories that come out of there. Arthur Beasley rode a horse right in through that bar, one time.
KATE. WHY? OR IS THAT A SILLY QUESTION?
MAX. It was a bet that Arthur was saying that this horse was the quietest horse around and he could ride him anywhere. And big Alf Tasker said, 'I bet you can't ride him through here.' And he did. He rode him up on to the veranda in to the bar and right through to the kitchen and out through the hallway. Topsy was nearly having green kittens. Darcy was saying, 'Christ, Spot'll be on to you.'
KATE. ALF SAID THAT DARCY HATED THE JOB.
MAX. He did. Yes.
KATE. HE SAID THAT IT WAS PRETTY WELL OPEN ALL THE TIME BUT WHEN DARCY STARTED TO YAWN OF A NIGHT TIME, IT WAS TIME TO GO.
MAX. And there was another one when you knew to get out pretty quick. When you saw Darcy start to screw around on his stool, and lift to one side, you got out quick. (laughter)

AND THAT'S THE WAY IT WAS.


SAWERS

Max Sawers' great grandfather: Harry Sawers
Grandfather: Harry Sawers
Father: Jim Sawers
Mother: Ida Beasley

Jims Sawers and Ida Beasley's children: Max and Barbara.