INTERVIEW WITH ILENE 'TOMMY' UMBACK (nee Laing) born 1924 on Pericoe Station -
died October, 1999.
INTERVIEW DATE: August 7th, 1998

Ilene gives a graphic account of the 1938 fire that burnt through Pericoe, Towamba and surrounding district. She tells of the hard life her mother lived managing the family alone while her father drove a bullock team. Neighbours, school days and life on a dairy farm prior to the upgrading by the health department in the early 1930's are vivid in Ilene's memory.
Ilene is a woman of strong character.

Nevil De Costa, who is interested in local history of Candelo, offered what knowledge he had of the Towamba area.

NEVIL. I'll read this to you.....this was told to me by Jack McDonald of Towamba. "Jimmy Sherwin with a big team of corn fed horses, was a carrier of Towamba to Bee Hive, Snobs Flat and then to Yambulla with supplies" and Jack told me that his mother was Harriet Gammon from Jindabyne.
Nevil continues with his own story.
NEVIL. And my father was born at Burragate in 1907, his mother was a Tindall, she was a sister to Caroline Beasley and his father was James Manolis De Costa. James was born in Bombala and they moved down to Towamba in the early 1900's. They were married in 1899 at Eden and they moved into the Towamba-Burragate area where a lot of the other Tindalls were. Sarah's father was there with some of the younger members of the Tindalls. The Beasleys were a very prominent family over there. One of the Beasleys was a carrier. Izzy Ryan was a good person to talk to. It's a pity he's gone. He lived at Yambulla, you know. Well, he was born at Yambulla you know. And he even told me the midwife that bought him into the world but I can't remember what her name was. She charged his father one pound to bring him into the world.
ILENE. Well, old Mrs.Arnold, she brought me into the world. Old George Arnold, he was out there (Towamba) he was the baker, I think. But they're all gone now.
KATE. HE HAD A STORE IN TOWAMBA, DIDN'T HE? MOYNA (ROLLO SOUTH'S SISTER) WAS TELLING ME THAT GEORGE ARNOLD SOLD FRUIT AND VEGETABLES, IT WAS JUST ON THE LEFT NEAR THE CREEK AS YOU GO OUT OF TOWAMBA TOWARDS EDEN.
ILENE. Well, there was a factory there, you see. On the corner. Oh, they had lots of things. But they were gone before my time. But my father shifted the Ryan's in from out there on to the dairy at Alexanders'. That was the first I'd heard of them and they were big gawky kids then and I was only so high. But my memory's pretty good. I can remember my fifth birthday, but when you get talking like this your memories come back.
KATE. DID YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION ON YAMBULLA, NEVIL?
NEVIL. No not much. I've been there. The school had all big long bottles around the garden. They're all broken now. The big old fuel stove was still sitting in the fireplace.
ILENE. They used to drive turkeys and pigs, I suppose they took them to Eden, they used to have bitumen, but I don't think it would be that, probably tar, they had to drive these turkeys through that and then through sand so it would accumulate on their feet so they wouldn't get sore feet.
KATE. YES. CLIVE CLEMENTS TOLD ME THE SAME THING. HE SAID THEY USED TO COME OVER THE MOUNTAIN, STAY OVER NIGHT AND DRIVE THEM DOWN TO THE COAST THE NEXT DAY.
ILENE. And what was the name of the fellow who didn't come back? Les. They used to go around and collect pigs from this fellow and that fellow and then they'd get them in a bunch and then they'd drive them.
NEVIL. There was a book written by a Catholic priest, it was called "Saddle Diary" it was written in the 1860's. I can't think of his name. But there are photos of the Rocky Hall pub in the Cathcart book.
ILENE. John Kersley, he told me there were two pubs, if not three pubs in Rocky Hall at one time. There was one that was supposed to be there near the double churches, that's what they used to call it, I don't know why, on the bottom side of that little scrubby patch. There was one there, he said.
KATE. BOTTOM SIDE OF WHAT?
ILENE. Bottom side of the road ...
KATE. THE ROAD TO WHERE? WHERE AT ROCKY HALL. NEAR THE HALL OR WHERE?
ILENE. No. You know where Joyce Bray is, just back this way. (Now the Rocky Hall Reserve?) There used to be a church there. They shifted it. And the pub was down the bottom side.
NEVIL. Have you heard about any of the Wents (Wendts?) living at Towamba? They were there, I think one died in 1855 at Sheepskin Point, Jeramiah Went, I think. And they can't find his...he's probably buried without a headstone, I suppose. They think he died at Sheepskin Point anyway. And he had a son Jeramiah that was born the same year, 1855, that he died. But they were at Towamba, that's where they were at Sheepskin Point, near the church there, at the bottom of the church.
KATE. NO.
NEVIL. Or Sheepskin Point Road, I think it was called.
KATE. IN TOWAMBA, YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT?
NEVIL. Yes. There's a sign near the corner there.
KATE. ST. PAUL'S CHURCH IN TOWAMBA, ITS IN THE VILLAGE NOW.
NEVIL. It was there last time I went to Towamba.
KATE. WELL, THERE'S NOTHING LIKE THAT THERE NOW.
NEVIL. We went to a house there, two or three houses down from the school there.
KATE. SO WHERE WAS JERAMIAH SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN BURIED?
NEVIL. Well, we think in a paddock somewhere there, that's all we know.
ILENE. Well they did that at one time, didn't they? There's a lot of old Chinamen buried around here and there. There's quite a little cemetery at Nungah.
KATE. DID YOU KNOW WHO WAS BURIED IN THE OLD TOWAMBA CEMETERY? ACROSS THE RIVER FROM 'NEREMEN'.
ILENE. No. I didn't know there was one there.
KATE. THE ONLY HEADSTONE THERE IS FOR AMELIA AND JANE MITCHELL.
ILENE. I can remember going to a Binnie's funeral in Towamba. I can't remember which one it was.
NEVIL. Old Mrs. Binnie was a Bell, wasn't she?
KATE. YES.
ILENE. I think it was a Dave Binnie. I was only a bit of a kid.
NEVIL. She used to smoke a clay pipe.
ILENE. This was a man's funeral I went to. I went with Violet and the Eltons, to it.
KATE. THEY, THE BINNIES, HAD 'DUNBLANE', DIDN'T THEY?
ILENE. Oh, yes. The had 'Dunblane', they owned 'Liddesdale' they owned the best part of Burragate.
KATE. WHERE WAS 'LIDDESDALE'?
ILENE. 'Liddesdale's' up on the hill.
KATE. IN BURRAGATE?
ILENE. Yes. Where Vic Mason lives.
KATE. OH, AT 'BY JINGO'?
ILENE. They altered the name. Bill Gunn altered the name. They (Binnies) at one stage.....
they didn't own where we were at 'Lyndhurst' but they owned Farrell's and where Dee Shelly is, they owned all that and I think they owned all the other side of the road too, and there was a Miss Binnie, she lived up the road from Darcy's pinkie shop (the old wine saloon in Towamba) she lived in a little house up the hill there. She used to teach music (the old Towamba Post Office, - Dalton's house).
NEVIL. Have you got much on the factory at Rocky Hall?
KATE. NO. I HAVEN'T GOT MUCH ON ROCKY HALL YET.
NEVIL. Well, Ben Boyd had an Inn at Rocky Hall, didn't he?
KATE. I BELIEVE SO.
NEVIL. Someone showed me where it was one day.
ILENE. It was on top of the hill, this side of Rixon's.
NEVIL. It was right down on the swamp, this fellow told me.
ILENE. Yes. But it was in Boyd's paddock.
KATE. WAS BOYD'S PADDOCK OPPOSITE THAT HOUSE AT NEW BUILDINGS?
ILENE. No. You go past the house at New Buildings and you go round that elbow and there's a little hill then you fall down towards Kim Satchwell's, well, that clear paddock on that side, that's Boyd's paddock. There was never anything to see in my time.
KATE. I HAVE SOME OLD PHOTOS OF OLD MR. AND MRS. RYAN. TED AND ISSIE'S PARENTS, AND MARIA (Ted and Izzie's sister) SHOWED ME ONE OF BURRAGATE SCHOOL, 1898. WITH ALL THE KIDS OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL.
ILENE. The Ryan's planted those trees around the tennis court. One just above the gate as you go up the hill, Minnie planted that one, she said.
KATE. WHERE WAS THE TENNIS COURT IN BURRAGATE?
ILENE. Just on the left there as you come around the corner, where they've got the kids playground.
KATE. OH, YES. THE FOOTY FIELD.
ILENE. Yes.
NEVIL. I was always sorry they pulled the old hall down in Burragate. There were some lovely old pieces in that.
KATE. WHY DID THEY PULL THE HALL DOWN?
ILENE. Well, it was condemned. We couldn't hold anything in it any more. There was white ants in it and they were going to pull it down and build a place for tennis courts.
KATE. IT SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN A BIT OF A SORE SPOT LOSING THAT HALL.
NEVIL. I can remember looking in the hall once and nearly everything was there. There were chairs, and a piano and kerosene lamps hanging from the ceiling.
ILENE. Gas lamps. They had gas lamps, they used to pump them up.
KATE. THEY WERE THE OLD HURRICANE LAMPS?
ILENE. No. These were run with cordite or something like that. They had a little thing out towards the road there and they used to have to go and pump them up.
NEVIL. That's right. Acetylene gas.
KATE. CONNECTED TO THE LAMPS INSIDE?
ILENE. Yes. It was all rigged up.
NEVIL. They used to pump the cylinder up every so often. They had a, like a candle, on a long rod and they'd pump it up and they'd pull one chain and that would switch the gas on and they'd stick this candle up and that would be the light. They had mantles on them.
ILENE. Oh, the crockery and it all went. They used to use some of the crockery at the sale yard. But everything like that went.
NEVIL. When the Tindall's were over there on the night of the opening of the Burragate hall, Gordon Tindall...you know how young fellows will slide under one another's feet, well this young Gordon Tindall he had hydatids and they didn't know. And one fellow shot under him and he fell, he fell on his stomach and he died. He was dead within a few days. It all burst and killed him. I think he's buried in the Towamba cemetery with Carrie and.....oh there's a lot of them up there. Carrie Beasley, she was a Tindall, her grandma was a Tindall.
ILENE. Tindall's owned that place, I don't know who is there now. You cross Stoney Creek and come up, all on the left there.
NEVIL. It must have been opened about 1908, the hall, was it?
ILENE. I don't know. Aunty Charlotte talked about it. She was only a girl.
NEVIL. This young fellow died in 1908 anyway and they said he didn't last long after he tripped over. So I'd say it must have been some time in 1908.
NEVIL DE COSTA LEAVES.
KATE. THERE WERE A LOT OF UMBACK'S AROUND HERE IN THE EARLY DAYS IN TOWAMBA AND THE AREA. WHO WERE THE FIRST ONES TO COME?
ILENE. Oh, well, the mother died about 1850 something, they came out from Germany and the mother and this one boy, they survived and he was the one who started off here.
KATE. WHAT DO YOU MEAN, SURVIVED?
ILENE. Well, a whole lot of them died on the boat. There were no live sheep and stuff and they died of diarrhoea and that sort of thing.
KATE. THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN FREE SETTLERS THOUGH?
ILENE. I don't know. Well, he got a lot of land out here, Foldean(?) was his name and he had a lot of land. 1854, I think the mother died.
KATE. DID THE HUSBAND DIE ON THE BOAT?
ILENE. I don't think he started out with them.
KATE. SO SHE WOULD HAVE COME OUT ON HER OWN WITH HER CHILD?
ILENE. Her and this boy. I think there was a girl and she died.
KATE. SHE WOULD HAVE HAD SOME EXTENDED FAMILY WITH HER, SURELY?
ILENE. I don't know. But anyway they survived and got here. But you see he owned 'Baelcoola' and he owned some ground at Rockton, 'White Rock', and then he bought 'Sheepskin' from Shelley and then he bought 'Fairfield' ...where he got the money I don't know. Of course, it was only a few bob (shillings) an acre when they got it.
KATE. WHERE WAS 'FAIRFIELD'?
ILENE. At Burragate on the bottom side as you approach the S bends. Nearly grown over now. Hardly any cleared ground on it. We used to walk all over it once. Can't now, of course, all overgrown.
KATE. I SUPPOSE THERE IS NOT THE PRESSURE ON YOU TO MAKE A LIVING OFF IT ANY MORE.
ILENE. No. Then you had to go out and get work.
KATE. DO YOU REMEMBER MUCH OF YOUR PARENTS' CHILDHOOD, THAT THEY SPOKE TO YOU ABOUT?
ILENE. No, not a lot. They were reared at Rockton. They weren't immigrants, I don't think. My grandmother she died in childbirth and McCaffrey's took my father, he was sixteen, I think when his mother died. And it was funny, we went down to Cann River one time and we met this old fellow, he was in the post office and his father took Jimmy and reared him. There was, I think, thirteen in the family.
KATE. SO JIMMY (LAING) WAS YOUR FATHER?
ILENE. Yes. There were only two girls survived. It was a big family. There was Jimmy and Hector and Ilene and Billy and....no, there were three girls. There was Alice .....two of them went to Sydney anyway, and one married Dave Lewis of Bombala and they had a big family. They all had big families then.
KATE. ALL ON THE LAND?
ILENE. Yes, all on the land, except my father, he was a bullock driver. Him and Eddie Love carted all the stuff.....You see all the stuff used to come to Tathra, and they drove bullock teams, they went to Eden and got the supplies off the boat and brought it up and supplied the Towamba Store and they went on to Bombala. This took them days and days and days and that's the way it went.
KATE. AND BACK AGAIN.
ILENE. Yes. And just when you topped the mountain going to Eden, they called it 'The Slabs', I don't know why, they'd unyoke there and I think they brought the bullocks back to either Clements' or Mitchell's and grassed them overnight, and then they'd drive them back there and yoke them and then they'd go to Eden and they'd get the load and come back there and stay again. Then I suppose they'd come to Pericoe or somewhere like that. Because Eddy (Love) was at 'Elmgrove' and they'd unyoke there, I suppose, and then they would go to 'Nungatta' and they'd camp there. Next day they would get to Bombala.
KATE. I WAS READING IN ONE OF THE OLD 'MAGNET' NEWSPAPERS THAT THERE WAS A BIG FIRE THROUGH THE WYNDHAM AND WHIPSTICK AREA IN 1929 AND A BULLOCK DRIVER TIED HIS TEAM IN THE BUSH WHILE HE WENT TO HELP FIGHT THE FIRE. WHEN HE CAME BACK, THERE WAS NOTHING LEFT OF THE TEAM.
ILENE. Yes, Whipstick was burnt out. I don't know who that would have been. Probably a Farrell? 'Course they were bullock drivers too. Old Dave Farrell was killed on the Wyndham - Burragate Road. There used to be a tree there for a long time but its gone now...
KATE. WAS THAT LEO'S (FARRELL) FATHER?
ILENE. No, grandfather. Yes there's a real sweeping corner. My brother-in-law always used to run out of road there...it was near 'Deene Park', there's a big sweeping corner between there and Wyndham, well he was killed there. The bullocks pushed him over on to a tree and jammed him. And one of his sons raced his horse off Whipstick bridge and killed himself, one fellow was lost at war and Pat Farrell is not long gone. He was in his eighties. He was the last one. No, Harold's an offspring, he's Jack Farrell's, one of the oldest of the original family. There's Harold, Leo and Copper. Yes, and he got burnt just above our place there. ('Lyndhurst' at Burragate)
KATE. COPPER?
ILENE. Yes. Copper Farrell. He got burnt and set the house on fire, he had a candle, I think and a curtain got alight. They'd come back from a sale at Wyndham, and we were in bed and I could hear this singing out and I thought it was a cow, and I got up and went out on the veranda and of course, I could see the flames were coming out from under the roof at that stage so I rung everybody around but he was properly burnt before anybody got there, a few bones they raked up, I think. He's buried down at Towamba. They're all buried there. Jack Farrell and his wife and Copper. Leo died just recently from a heart attack in Bombala, that was Harold's brother, he was about my age, and there's only Harold left. He's the oldest of that lot, and he's got two sons, there's Leo, with the big beard, he's a wild looking character...
KATE. WHAT YEAR WERE YOU BORN?
ILENE. 1924.
KATE. AND WHERE WERE YOU BORN.....?
ILENE. At Pericoe. Yes.
KATE. AT THE HOSPITAL THERE?
ILENE. No. There was no hospital there then. There was an old dairy farm...do you know Pericoe? The road, when you come past the Station ('Pericoe Station') down Pericoe Hill they call it, and there's a road going up past there, an old dairy, turn to your right. There was a dairy house there, we were on a dairy. One of the fellows that owned Pericoe at one stage, he burnt the house down. That's where I was born. And old Mrs. Arnold, she was the midwife.
KATE. WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THE PLACE YOU WERE BORN ON?
ILENE. It was just Pericoe, 'Pericoe Station'.
KATE. THAT'S WHERE THE ORIGINAL FARM HOUSE IS NOW? NEAR THE PINES.
ILENE. No. That's the station house. This was the dairy house.
KATE. SO YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN SHARE FARMING?
ILENE. Yes. So Mrs. Arnold was the midwife, and we always laugh, it was August, cold, she put a hot iron in the bed and set the bed on fire. And then we shifted from there out to Letts Mountain, and that's where we were all reared. I was the fourth, there were two more born out at Letts Mountain.
KATE. WAS THAT ON THE WAY TO 'FULLIGAN'S'?
ILENE. Yes. Down the steep hill going towards the Wog River. We had a dairy there.
KATE. OH, YES. THERE'S SOME OLD REMAINS THERE, SOME FRUIT TREES.
ILENE. Oh, yes. We had quite a few fruit trees there. Yam trees or curajongs, whatever you like to call them. Beautiful soil but steep, red soil, but my father wasn't a farmer at all. But we used to grow beautiful vegies there. Of course, he had the bullock yard, and the garden was below the bullock yard and all the wash used to go into the garden. My brother was a great gardener. We could go and pick a kerosene tin full of tomatoes every second day. And we used to grow rhubarb. I hate rhubarb.
KATE. DID YOUR MOTHER PRESERVE AND MAKE JAMS?
ILENE. No, well preserving wasn't in much then. By the time she looked after six kids and everything else, but we had this rhubarb and she made rhubarb jam, rhubarb tarts.....and I've always hated it.
KATE. DID YOU HAVE BROTHERS AND SISTERS?
ILENE. Two brothers and three sisters. The youngest one and the oldest one are gone. The two middle ones are left. I've got a sister living in Bega.
KATE. DID YOU GO TO SCHOOL AT PERICOE?
ILENE. No. I had about six months at Burragate. I never had any school. Ruth went to school at Towamba.
KATE. WHAT WAS YOUR MAIDEN NAME?
ILENE. Laing. Arthur and Charlie went to Pericoe school, they rode horses. They used to race them home, oh, I suppose they were both old horses, but the one old horse, they had to unsaddle him and leave him to find his way home and he'd have to walk from about Letts Creek. They were beautiful horses in their time. We lost a beautiful horse in the 1938 fire at Pericoe, that was a day and a half.
KATE. THAT WAS A PRETTY BAD ONE WASN'T IT? WAS THAT WHEN WILF INGRAM WAS BURNT OUT, AND 'HAYFIELD.'
ILENE. Yes, Wilf's was burnt out but at Pericoe only one house was lost and that was because....this was Arnold's, old Mrs. Arnold she had a kitchen from about here to the fence, away from the house and it was bark and that was why it got burnt. Between the road and the house there was a paddock of corn, they could have put their stuff out there and it would have been quite safe. But no, they took it out on to the bogged ground and you know what cow dung's like. Once that gets alight, it never goes out. You know, you read books and they call them 'Buffalo Chips' they use it for burning, its the same thing. And that's what they did. Old George nearly got burnt himself. My father finished up getting him out. He wouldn't leave and I remember he got him behind him on the horse and he was about fourteen or fifteen stone and my father wasn't skinny and this old horse carried them out and we all finished down at 'Pericoe Station' in the creek, the flat part of the creek. My mother was a very level headed woman but we could have been burnt to cinders because my father was no good for any bloody thing. He panicked. My mother sent us down to the bridge, the crossing, there was a nice patch of sand and a bit of water and she told us to go and wait there while she shut up the house. And my father came along and bullied in, 'Git down to the rest of the people so they know where they are!' 'Course, we started and got half way and we finished up sitting in a little puddle backing into a big rock, blackberries all over it which burnt off but my mother had a wet blanket which she put over us. 'Course I panicked and I was going to tear out at one stage and she grabbed me by the dress and pulled me off balance and I finished up in the puddle. No, my father was absolutely useless in a crisis. But after the fire went through...the rush of the fire goes through and then the rest burns off steadily. We were able to get through, I had a pair of tennis shoes to start but I lost those, I don't know how I got through the cinders and we were all sitting in the creek and this horse... Charlie had raced him all day and he let him go and instead of keeping him he let him go and of course, you open all the gates for the stock when there's a fire coming and he saw the other horses go down past and he thought he'd go and join them and he got halfway up the hill and the fire clapped him, like that, and he fell and got up again and it clapped him again, twice he was caught in it, and of course, the poor fellow came out and rolled in the sand and the skin all came off him, oh, it was dreadful. And this poor old Mrs.Arnold was there and she was about twenty-five stone, I think, and she said, 'Oh, I'm done,' and she sat in a heap of blackberries. How they got her out of it I don't know but anyway, I think somebody shot the horse. That was how it went. Those things stick in your brain. We had a setting hen and she came off and she collapsed and died and we had ferrets and there was three sheets of tin, one ferret survived in that, there was straw on the ground, one fellow died and one fellow survived. Oh, it was terrific heat! But my brother was riding the horse that got burnt and he raced him from 'Nungatta' or half way to 'Nungatta' and said they'd lost the fire and to make preparations to get things together. That was eleven o'clock and three o'clock it was on the wharf at Eden! It just went straight through. It was that quick. A fellow who lived at Shadrack's Creek, (south of Eden ) well he had a pig loose and it ran into the house behind the piano and it got burnt. No, she was a bad show.
KATE. WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FAMILY AFTER THAT? AND OTHER PEOPLE WHO WERE SHARE FARMING AND DAIRYING AROUND THERE.
ILENE. Oh, we just carried on. We didn't get our house burnt. Well, the Arnold's, they built another house for them and they lived there for a while.
KATE. DID EVERYONE PITCH IN AND HELP?
ILENE. Yes. And they lived there for a while and they went away to Sydney. And the old people died in Sydney. And that family's all gone. Lola came back. That was Frank Arnold's daughter she was about two or three then, the boy was about two or eighteen months old and they went away to Sydney and Lola came back to Towamba and had a look around and wanted to know what was going on, but I didn't see her. That was Frank Arnold's daughter. They were cousins of ours. She was an Atkins, old Mrs. Arnold was an Atkins, and my grandmother was an Atkins and they were sisters.
KATE. WERE THERE DAIRY HERDS THAT WERE LOST IN THE FIRE?
ILENE. Not a lot. They lost some and he would have lost a lot of sheep (Alexander, the owner of Pericoe Station) but he was a useless old thing, he was worse that my father. He had everything and he wouldn't value it and he was that tight that he wouldn't look after it and quite a few of the sheep got burnt but we got a bit of rain 'course there was a drought before the fire as always, I suppose we got a bit of rain later on and we carried on with the dairying, but we were only share farmers, we never owned anything.
KATE. WHEN YOU WERE SHARE FARMING, DID YOUR PARENTS GET ANY MONEY FOR FARMING?
ILENE. Very little, I forget now, I think it was seven shillings in the pound.
KATE. DID YOUR PARENTS HAVE TO GROW CORN TO FEED THE HERD?
ILENE. Yes. We put in crops, and of course, super (phosphate) wasn't thought of then. But he wouldn't put anything into it.
KATE. WAS IT ALF ALEXANDER YOU DAIRYED FOR?
ILENE. Yes. There was only the two, Alf and Beau. And Alf owned that farm there ('Pericoe Station') and Beau owned 'Hayfield'. Beau only had one son. Alf Alexander only had one daughter and she married a Pommie fellow from Bega and she died.
KATE. WHAT WAS HER NAME?
ILENE. Joy Martin. She'd be buried in Towamba. Old Art(?) is buried there somewhere, at Towamba. The mother went to Sydney and this Martin had two boys and he went away to Sydney. I haven't heard anything of them since. He married again. He married a Ruby Roberts from Towamba down past the tennis courts, on the flat. (the old house past where Moyna Price now lives). They were living there, the Roberts' and he married this Ruby Roberts. They had a bit of Maori or something, in them. They had beautiful dark curly hair and they could sing like birds. Well, they went away to Sydney. They were Baptists and dairy farmers, big family of them. There were two sets of twins. There was a Walter Roberts and there was a boy, and then there another one, and there was another set of twins.
KATE. DID YOU EAT WELL ON THE FARM?
ILENE. At Pericoe we ate fairly well. But we couldn't grow a garden there, it was poor. But we had plenty of milk and cream, butter and that sort of thing.
KATE. DID YOU MAKE YOUR OWN BUTTER?
ILENE. Yes. Unbeknownst to that old thing he wouldn't have let us make butter out of his milk. We separated it, by hand, and he never had a tank (rainwater) on the dairy. He had a windmill and pumped water for the house but he never put any up for the dairy, we had to cart it in the cream tins from the creek with horses, and they used to get second grade cream, and the tins were all pitted. He wouldn't buy new tins because you can't have tins that have been damaged. They were married to two sisters..
KATE. THE ALEXANDER'S?
ILENE. Yes. And the sister up at 'Hayfield' she used to go crook on the old girl. 'Don't be stupid, Rene,' she said. 'You've got to have good tins to get good milk and good cream.' But they wouldn't buy new tins. 'Course we had to cart the water. We used to cart the cream down to the Post Office, (Pericoe) there was a mail three days per week. Monday, Thursday and Saturday, I think it was. Well at one stage there, there was a dairy at 'Bonnydoon' and the Arnold's had a dairy where they lived and there was one where we was and there was one at 'Two Mile'. 'Two Mile' joined on to where we were and they used to run a wagon in summer and cart the cream in those days but I don't remember it. Oh, yes, the good old days, they call them, but they were bloody rough days.
KATE. DID YOUR MOTHER WEAR ALL THE LONG CLOTHES AND WHALEBONE CORSETS?
ILENE. No. She didn't wear the long dresses but, yes she wore the corsets, which was stupid. The cows were all milked by hand, sit there for hours milking away.
KATE. HOW MANY COWS DID YOU MILK?
ILENE. I think we used to milk about seventy. But they were just cattle. They weren't dairy cattle, a decent breed. Just ordinary cows. There was red ones and black ones. Just whatever you reared. And he saved his own bulls. He never bought a decent bull. Oh, she was a real, what do you call it? Salt Bush Bill farm.
KATE. DID YOUR MOTHER MAKE DO WITH A LOT OF THINGS? DID SHE MAKE MATS OUT OF OLD CLOTH?
ILENE. No. She didn't do that but she made most of our clothes. She was a beautiful dressmaker. Taught herself as far as I know. You used to get the books then. Grace Bros and them.....
KATE. CATALOGUES?
ILENE. Yes. She'd look at a thing and we'd say, oh, I like that, and she'd make it. If we could get the material, of course. Oh, yes, she was a wonderful dressmaker.
KATE. DID YOU HAVE TO BUY MATERIAL THROUGH CATALOGUES?
ILENE. Most of the stuff we did, because we were seven mile from Pericoe and we only had shanks's pony (their own legs) to get all those things. So most of those things we got that way. But we had no way of getting anywhere. I was twelve year old before I saw Bega. And that was just a fluke I think.
KATE. WAS THAT IN A HORSE AND CART?
ILENE. No. We had this one old pony, a cart horse, but we had no conveyance. In later years when we were out at Letts Mountain Mum got hold of a horse. An old rogue he was and we got a sulky from somewhere and bought it off Johnson's our next door neighbour, I think, and I can remember as clear as anything, she was driving to Towamba....... of course, it would take you all day, it was fifteen mile there and fifteen mile back and there was the One Mile culvert, where you turn into Peter Miram's, well you come down there, and somebody had shot a crow and there was a dead crow on the road and do you think this old horse would go past it? No! He backed the damn sulky all over the road. I think in the finish us kids picked it up and threw it away but he knew it'd been there and if you run a sulky backwards, one nut goes one way and the other goes the other way and you screw the wheels off. Anyway, we had to screw those up, we always carried a wrench but we finally got to Towamba. And at that stage, Hartneady's store was still operating, where you live.
KATE. WHAT YEAR WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN?
ILENE. Well, I suppose I would've been four or five, about 1929, and I don't remember the kids doing this, but Clements' they were wild buggers, this old horse, he'd kick up with you, you know, and Mum would take him out of the shafts and tie him up to the fence and those kids would make him kick up. This was Verner and Ron, (Clements) they were the two oldest ones, there was Verner, Ron and Gordon and Clive and then the last one was a girl, Gloria. They only had one girl. She married a Grant from Wyndham. But that was the story those days. Poor old Hartneady, I remember she used to give us bread and jam and we'd only come in from Letts Mountain if we brought tucker with us, we'd get pretty hungry. I can remember old Mr. Hartneady, they only had one girl, Thelda, and she married Jack McLeod. She was a lot older than him but they had a girl, Patty, and they went from Towamba to Genoa and they went into the Hotel. She died while they were there. I don't know who Patty married.
KATE. DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT HARTNEADY'S STORE LOOKED LIKE INSIDE, WHAT THEY SOLD?
ILENE. No, I really don't but they would've sold everything. Those stores sold everything. I can only remember being on the back veranda, I suppose we were told to sit there, and old Mrs. Hartneady bringing us bread and jam. 'Course Mum used to go around back and tie the horse up. Probably about where your chook pen is. They were an old couple then.
KATE. SO WHEN THEY CLOSED THAT WAS THE END OF THE STORE ON THAT SIDE OF THE RIVER?
ILENE. I don't really know whether they died there or they went away.
KATE. THEY'RE BURIED IN TOWAMBA CEMETERY.
ILENE. Oh, well, then. I didn't get around much. Mum would only drive down there once in a blue moon.
KATE. HOW DID YOU GET TO BEGA? WHAT TRANSPORT DID YOU USE?
ILENE. Oh, there was a fellow see.....they found a bit of gold at Letts Mountain, my father and his neighbour that lived over at 'Fulligans' and they found a bit of gold there and there was a fellow from Bombala, Fred (Clements?) he came down and was picking around and he had an old Dodge car and he took us in to Bega. Of course he'd take anything in for a two pound note and that's the first time I went to Bega. I can remember quite well, my mother made us a dress and a hat to go with it, all us kids, there was three of us, and my hat blew out of the car coming home. Nobody missed it. Yes, that's how I got to Bega.
KATE. WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN YOUR FIRST RIDE IN A CAR?
ILENE. No. Arthur Love used to be at Pericoe where the school was, there was a house on the bottom side there, opposite the school and he had a car. Lucy Love at 'Elmgrove' was the first one to have a car in the area. A Fiat. Of course, they had a good bit of ground, well they owned from the 'Two Mile' right down to the 'One Mile' and they owned what they call 'Peter's Swamp', that went right over to where Schumann's are now, and I used to go there on holiday. Now, what were we on, oh, the cars, yes, well she bought the first car and it was a Fiat.
KATE. THIS WAS AFTER SHE WAS WIDOWED?
ILENE. Yes. Then Arthur Love was the next one, he got a car, I can't think what it was.
KATE. WAS THIS PRETTY RADICAL FOR LUCY LOVE TO HAVE A CAR. A WOMAN ON HER OWN?
ILENE. She never learned to drive. The boys drove her, she had a big family, she never drove. There was only her and Arthur Love that had the cars. And we would sometimes go with Arthur Love. I don't know that he took us to Bega. But he did take us to a show at Bombala....we did have photos, I don't know whatever became of the Photos, I think Charlie (Laing) dragged them around and left some here and some there and some everywhere else as he went. He had one of Pericoe, opposite where you turn to go to 'Fulligans' well he was going to buy that place and he lived there for a while, then he went away and he hadn't paid it off or something, and that belonged to Enie Love's brother, and he wanted him to shift out, so Lexie and I went and shifted the stuff, and that clock (pointing to a clock above the fire place) was there, and I got it fixed up. And I've had it ever since.
KATE. WHY DIDN'T YOU GO TO SCHOOL FOR VERY LONG?
ILENE. Well, it was seven mile to Pericoe and we had no conveyance....
KATE. BUT YOU SAID THE BOYS WENT.
ILENE. Yes, well they rode horses, we couldn't all ride horses. I went for a little while at Burragate. I went and stayed with Stan's uncle, my (future) husband's uncle, and we had to cross the Burragate River, and half the time it was up and we weren't allowed to go and my cousin, she only went when it suited her and if she couldn't go, I couldn't go, so I'd say, all put together, I'd had about six months and the only thing I can remember was learning to spell dictation. And I drew a milk jug.
KATE. AND WHAT ABOUT THE DANCES AND THE SOCIAL LIFE, THE TENNIS, CRICKET, RACES AND THE FOOTBALL.
ILENE. Well, I never had any tennis until after I was married and we never went very far to things because as I said, we never had any conveyance, until I was up in my teens, then of course, we had a horse and I'd ride over to Burragate and stay with this uncle when we'd go to a dance and that's about it. But I can remember quite well, it was very disappointing, a neighbour came along and said there's a circus at Towamba, if you like you can get the horse and the spring cart, this was in the afternoon, by the time we done all this and got ready it was half past ten, I think (in the evening) and I can remember Mum saying, look by the time we get down there the circus will have finished, and there was no point in going any further, so we turned around and went home again. You can imagine how disappointed a kid would be. But then we did get to another one, I don't know how we got there, but I can remember quite well. The clown gets in and starts being funny and he wanted a whole lot of boys, he had them all lined up and bent over, and he came along with a big bat thing with a loose board on the back of it. He made them take their coats off and I don't know whether Charlie was there but Arthur was there and Lionel Love and the Clements boys and a whole lot of others I didn't know and he clapped them on the backside with this board.
KATE. WHERE WAS THE CIRCUS HELD. WHICH GROUND?
ILENE. I don't remember, it was night. Probably on Darcy's flat. (beside the wine saloon)
KATE. THERE WAS A VERY ACTIVE SOCIAL LIFE IN THE AREA. IN THE OLD PAPERS, THEY TALK OF REGULAR TENNIS, EUCHRE PARTIES, DANCES, FOOTY, CRICKET, RACES AND THE RIFLE CLUB.
ILENE. Yes, we used to have all these things. They used to have races at Towamba, but I never went to them. And they had the rifle club, that was in off the top of the '60's'.
KATE. AT THE BACK OF EDE'S PLACE?
ILENE. Yes. In there somewhere.
KATE. WHY WAS IT CALLED THE '60's'?
ILENE. That hill's the '60's'. I don't know why they called it that. Coming up to where Ian Hayes lives, that was called 'Mick Sawers's Hill', where 'Hill-n-Dale' is. That was called 'Jerusalem' then. These new people come along and change the old names. But Mick Sawers dairyed there, that was Binnie's. And everybody used to try and get up there, see how far they could get up the hill in top gear. Oh, yes, it was a real battle. Of course, we laughed....... we bought and old Chev off Stan's uncle, just a waste of money it was, it had a cone clutch, and you were always doing the clutch in it, and I remember we were coming down to Towamba one day to tennis, this was when Pauline (Ileen's daughter) was a baby and the school teacher, he had an old Chev, you know, the old touring kind, and he comes along and he catches up to us and here we are driving along to the hill and Carl says, 'What gear are you in?' and Stan says 'I'm in second,' and he says, 'Oh, you're not doing so well.' Oh, yes, those were the days.
KATE. DO YOU REMEMBER THE RYAN'S AT BURRAGATE?
ILENE. Yes. They dairyed there where Irwin is. (the other side of Burragate bridge on the right) And out where Gerelle lives, (where the Beatie's live, on the Burragate fire trail) there was a dairy there, Leo owned that, 'Avondale' Leo called it. They've altered the name now. And further up the creek was another dairy, there was people by the name of Shipways.
KATE. MARIA RYAN WAS TELLING ME THAT SHIPWAYS HAD A LITTLE STORE ON THE RIVER THERE IN BURRAGATE NEAR SHEEPSKIN ROAD.
ILENE. Yes. Down on the track where Jim and Brian are. Oh, yes, well the post office used to be there too. Well, Mrs. Shipway came back, her father had the store and the post office, and she left Burragate when she was nine year old and she used to help her father with the store and things and the post office, before she went to school. She came back, I think, she had her eightieth birthday, sometime in the late seventies, when the eclipse was on. She came with Teddy Ryan and he was a terrible panicker, Teddy, and he wouldn't stay outside when the eclipse was on, an so he rushed the poor old thing through and that was her eightieth birthday while she was there. She told me all this. They used to dairy up there, and they used to bring the cream across that long point that's down from Beatie's and across....the factory used to be there, the shearing shed was the factory.
KATE. THIS IS AT 'LYNDHURST'?
ILENE. Yes. And they dairied there too. And they used to bring the cream across there when they (the Ryan's) were kids. Yes, there are still the rocks and the yard (of the factory) still up there, on this ridge. You know, her husband died and she died without her will being cleared up. Her daughter came with her that day, Maisy Brown was her name. She was a dear old soul, it was nice to meet her. She was the last of the Shipway's, I think.
KATE. DID YOU HELP YOUR MOTHER ON WASHING DAY?
ILENE. We had a creek down that side of us which was closer and a better grade than the river and we had one of those great big old cast iron pots. You couldn't lift it with your hands or anything like that. That was one thing my father did make and that was chair legs, as they called them. Three posts crossed and the pot hung from the middle over the fire. And we had that down there and we put a line down there and as we washed the clothes we hung them up. It was a lot to carry them up the hill wet to the house, so we used to hang them out there. We dug a well out from the side of the creek, but oh, the water was hard, it was blue, it was that hard. When we used to boil it for tea there was a scum on top of it. My mother used to put Ovo, egg preserver in it, she reckoned that softened it. And that's how we were.
KATE. DID SHE STARCH MUCH?
ILENE. No. We never bothered with starch.
KATE. DID SHE RINSE IN BLUO?
ILENE. Rinse in Bluo and that was it.
KATE. AND SHE HAD THE IRON ON THE STOVE?
ILENE. Yes, flat irons in front of the open fire. They had what you call a 'frog mouth' fire, a big one, and she used to sit them in front of that. No, the stove was never good enough. We never had a stove for years, she cooked in a camp oven. There was Johnson's over at 'Fulligans', and when they left, she bought this stove, it was a big hotel range, it was big one, a fire box in the middle and ovens on both sides and my father built a stove house, way up the hill, he couldn't build it close to the house, way up the hill about fifty yards, and Mum used to cook the meals in that. She baked her own bread and that sort of thing. Very seldom cakes, we did have a few chooks at one stage, but there was never any feed, we didn't have money to buy feed for them. We didn't know, you see, we didn't know any different. That was the way of life and that was the way we went. I suppose the old stove house is gone now. I remember us kids used to go up and sit in there, it was warm. It was built of bark, and we used to sit up there. I used to blow into a kerosene tin, I was musical, and I used to blow into a kerosene tin. Mum reckoned it sounded like church music.
KATE. DID YOU BLOW ACROSS THE TOP OF IT?
ILENE. No. They were the square kerosene tins and they had the screw top on one corner and a hole poked in the other, so the air would let the stuff come out. I used to blow in this little hole. My father had an accordion, he could play the accordion, but he wouldn't let us kids touch it. But when he was away, I used to get it out, and I learnt how to play it in a fashion, it suited me. In later years, we got an old wind-up gramophone, I don't know what happened to it, and we had heaps of records. But when he was away.....we had to cut the wood too. We had an old axe that wasn't much good, but he had a good one and he used to plant it, but I watched him and I saw where he put it. I'd sneak it out and cut the wood and put it back, I doubt he ever knew.
KATE. SO, YOUR MOTHER MUST HAVE HAD AN UNHAPPY LIFE THEN.
ILENE. Oh, she had a miserable life. Poor old thing. Just work, work, work. I can remember her saying one time, there were no neighbours or anything, she said, 'I feel like running around the side of the hill, screaming,' so her nerves were raggedy. She didn't die until after I was married. And they never knew what she had. She often used to get sick and I would go up and look after her. My eldest brother got married up in Sydney, he married a Sydney girl and she went up there and stayed with an aunt and uncle and they thought something was wrong with her and they took her up to Surry Hills to have an x-ray and they gave her six months to live. It was T.B. And she went to Waterford (?) and my younger brother and I went to see her once, it wasn't long before she died. She died in September, I think. It was May or June we went to see her. He was cutting sleepers and he had a bad hand he got a stone bruise on his hand and I said how about we go down and see Mum. Pauline was a baby then, about eighteen months and I left her with Stan's parents and we went down and saw her. It wasn't long before she died and wasn't it a battle getting her back home to bury her! She's buried at Towamba. Over on the left as you go in the gate, there's about four or five graves there in a little plot. I don't think they've got any names on them. There's Allen Laing, that's the grandfather, he was buried there and she's buried beside them. There was never any money to put stones on them or anything like that. It was a grim turnout.
KATE. JUST HARD WORK.
ILENE. There used to be a fellow came up, I believe, from Victoria, who would cement them over. (the headstones) A few people in Towamba had him do things. But that's sort of the life.....my father, he died with cancer and he died in hospital. He's buried down there too. He got a pension, he lived pretty well. He came and sat on us and we kept him. He had his money in his pocket. He always had a handful of money because he never spent any. I always laughed.... when he was with us and we went to Bombala and we were having a beer in a pub there and he said, 'You know what I'd like?' he said to Pauline (Ileen's daughter) she was about ten or twelve then, 'a good feed of corned meat.' Pauline said, 'Oh, well, give me some money then and I'll go and buy you some.' She was thinking quicker than me. That's about all I can remember him buying. And he burnt his foot, the kettle boiled and I had an iron across
the front, and stupid, he got up to shift the kettle and put his foot on this iron. He had on a nylon sock and of course, he burnt his foot. He had to have his big toe and I think, his next one amputated. I remember him getting around on crutches and one day I caught him, he used to plait, he was a good plaiter, whips and things. I remember him going with the crutches under his arm and carrying the rest of his stuff and I said, 'Is that all you want them crutches for, to balance you?' I said its about time you sent them back to the hospital. So he did take them back. But he was funny. All we had as milking buckets when we were out on the farm was drench billies, we'd cut the top out of those and boil them.
KATE. WHAT WERE DRENCH BILLIES? WHAT THE DRENCH CAME IN?
ILENE. Yes, now they're all plastic. It used to be tin one time. And we used to clean those out and we used to milk into those and I remember him, I cut a kerosene tin in half...I milked in the bucket and tipped it into that, and I'm looking for the bucket when I'm going to milk and I couldn't find it, went around and he's out on the front veranda, and here he is with his bloody hide soaked in my milking bucket. And I said, 'That's my milking bucket. No wonder I couldn't find it.' He said, 'Oh, why don't you buy a decent one?' He never bought a bucket in his life. Oh, he was a hang on. Always had a flash horse to ride. He used to ride here, there and everywhere. He used to ride down to Towamba, around Burragate and stay where ever it came dark.
KATE. WERE WOMEN GENERALLY TREATED LIKE THAT?
ILENE. Yes, I think so. I think they were all treated that way. They were a general dogs body, the women, in those days. Just a heap of kids, stop at home.
KATE. YOU HAD THE BAKING, EVERYDAY MEALS TO COOK AND ALL THAT HAND WASHING....
ILENE. Yes, you didn't have time for anything else.
KATE. DID YOUR MOTHER MILK ON TOP OF THAT?
ILENE. When we were on the dairy..... she never milked at home...very seldom....unless I had a cut finger or something and I couldn't milk. I used to be the milker. Ruth and I used to milk and later years, we used to skim it first, skim the milk and make the butter, but later, somehow or other, we came on to a separator, a little separator. That was wonderful how we made butter. It was beautiful. I used to make it here, after I came here, (Candelo) I made wangs of it, but then the arthritis got me and I couldn't milk. So that was that.
KATE. DID YOU AS KIDS FEEL MORE OBLIGATED TO HELP YOUR MUM? DID YOU KNOW SHE WAS HAVING A HARD TIME?
ILENE. I did, the others didn't worry much. But I was always the backbone, if she got sick, I was always the one that came home. I was sort of there all the time. Ruth went away but she never went away to work, she went away and had some schooling at Towamba. We had friends that lived there, the neighbours that were over the river when we were out there, they shifted in there and bought that place near Stoney Creek, and she was with them. They milked and she went to school from there. But I don't think she learned very much.
KATE. YOUR MOTHER'S FAMILY WERE THEY THE LAINGS THAT KEEP POPPING UP IN THE OLD MAGNET NEWSPAPERS AROUND THE WYNDHAM AND BURRAGATE AREA?
ILENE. No. She never went to Towamba. One of her uncles lived at Lower Towamba, married to Mum's sister. Jimmy's brother married her sister. And they lived at Lower Towamba there somewhere. We used to have a photo of Grandfather sitting out at the door in the sun, and he died there with them. My eldest brother used to go down and have a few days with them sometimes. He used to worry about Mum a bit, in his young days because he could go down on the cream wagon and I can remember Mum saying, he went over to the shop and caught the bus, I don't know whether he had any money or not, but he said I'd better take some lollies home for the kids. But he only went bullock driving, I mean, he never went and took a job or anything like that. And then they went into the Army, well, I was Jack-of-all-trades then when they went into the Army, in 1938 or 9. We had an old Dodge car cut down into a utility, I had to learn to drive that at a minute's notice because they called them both up, (both brothers) they called everything up towards the end of the war and I had to take over there and learn to drive. And the petrol was rationed, we used to get twelve gallons, we were allotted, that would take you a long way, wouldn't it? They were pretty hard on petrol and there were a couple of policemen came out there, gold digging, and this one fellow found out how much we were getting and he said, 'Oh, that's not enough to run a wheelbarrow on!' So he put in an application, and he got seventeen gallons for us. But that didn't take us that far either. But at that stage I was able to get around and go to a dance or something like that, to break the monotony. So that was a little bit better. And then I got married and we lived at 'Sheepskin' (Burragate) and we used to ride up through the bush, it was only about five miles, to where Mum was and that would make it a little bit better. We'd take her out and take her shopping when she had any money. But when Charlie went into the Army he put in an allowance for her, because she still had the two youngest ones home, so that made it a little bit better for her. But it was too late then, the TB had her. It was pretty thick around this area then, TB. Wyndham was a bad place for it. There's several that died there, Grants, and then there were two old Whitby's, they both had it, but they sent them away and they both got them right. They could get it right if you got it early. So they practically got it cleaned up around now. I haven't heard of any for a long while.

AND THAT'S THE WAY IT WAS.


UMBACK (nee LAING)

Ileen's grandfather: Allan Laing
Grandmother: Ellen Atkins
Father: James Laing
Mothe: Dora Crawford

Children of James and Dora Laing:
Arthur, Charles, Ruth, Ilene, Alexia, Freda.