‘Soggy cigs’:
When grandpa took over management of the farm in the early 1900’s, he said there were only four trees on the whole property of 350 acres. Erosion had become a huge issue especially in the 1950’s with the surge in the rabbit population. Paddocks were stripped bare and the winter rains washed the top soil to the ocean. Massive creeks 60 feet which could easily eat up a building appeared in every gully and it was obvious something had to be done.
One day a fresh faced man visited the farm. He introduced himself as “John Knudsen” from the Soil Conservation Authority. He had a slightly flushed face and an English accent and as he pushed back the long blond hair from his eyes he began to outline a rescue plan to overcome erosion on the farm. Ballie, my uncle was immediately in tune with him and eagerly listened to his proposal to fence off all the creeks, place cement blocks in the base of them and to plant thousands of native trees. This was a pilot scheme and if it worked would then be implemented throughout the rest of Victoria.
Agreement was easily reached and it wasn’t long before teams of men descended on the farm constructing fences and planting trees. Of course the hardest job was placing cement walls in the base of the creek. The theory was that the silt would be trapped behind the wall and the creeks would fill up in time. This was a very interesting time for me to see all the activity. Work began in the summer when the creek was at its lowest level. Corrugated iron chutes were constructed along the sides of the creeks to funnel the water run off from the paddocks and the next job was to block the creek and secure a firm base for the concrete wall. I watched the operation from high up on the bank with the boss’s son, who was a kid the same age as me, around thirteen years old. The approach to hauling out the muddy slush was very clever. Tractors on opposite sides of the creek pulled a scoop in tandem with a long cable through the bottom of the chasm with a lone man guiding its path. The whole operation was supervised by the boss on top who indicated with hand signals which way the tractors were to pull. The operator of the scoop was a man named Charlie Jennings. He was certainly a rough diamond. He had unruly matted hair, a beer belly and wore a glass eye. Why ever they picked him to do the job still astounds me today, possibly because no one else wanted it. He always had a ‘roll your own’ cigarette hanging from his lower lip and he had a mouth on him that would melt metal. I must say, I was quite scared of him and I think everyone else was too when he got wild.
Well, everything was going along famously until the boss was called away and left his son in charge. Charlie was in a foul mood as usual down deep in the pit as he trudged around in his gum boots. After a few short directions, the activity commenced again and it was OK for awhile until disaster struck. The young kid got confused and both tractors pulled against each other jerking the cable up between Charlie’s legs and causing him to be heaved high up into the air. The pain must have been great when you think about it and when it was over, Charlie was left face down in black clayey, dirty soup. We all hid because we knew what was to come. Charlie eventually staggered to his feet and his cigarette had been dislodged from his lower lip and then he began a tirade of abuse which I have never heard matched since that eventful day. He went on with every expletive his vocabulary could muster for a time which seemed like an eternity. When finally he ran out of steam, he reached for his cigarettes in his top pocket and realized they were a soggy mess. This started him off again on another round of profanity. Fortunately, I could just walk away and think what might have been if I had been given the job.
