A THOUSAND MILES AWAY

The twists in my journey through life have been unexpected. Within two years of leaving the farm at Bell, situated on the road between Dalby and Kingaroy, and moving with our four children into a house in Dalby, I was to find myself living temporarily with them in Cooktown, north Queensland. Cooktown was established as a busy port during the Palmer River gold rush. Cooktown sits on the banks of the Endeavour River where Captain Cook beached his ship for repairs after holing it on the Great Barrier Reef in 1770.

I had moved a thousand miles from my home.

The Old Palmer Song

Oh, the wind is fair and free, my boys, the wind is fair and free,
The steamer’s course is north, my boys, and the Palmer we will see.
The Palmer we will see, my boys, and Cooktown’s muddy shore,
Where I’ve been told there’s lots of gold, so stay down south no more.

Chorus

So blow, ye winds, heigh-ho, a-digging we will go,
We’ll stay no more down south, my boys, so let the music play,
In spite of what I’m told, I’m off in search of gold,
And we’ll make a push for the brand new rush, a thousand miles away.

Just before leaving the Bell farm I had received from Margaret Arnott in Canada a gift of Artex embroidery paints. Being the creative homemaker that I am, I used the tubes of paint with ball-point ends, not to colour in designs as the manufacturers intended, but to paint the X of cross-stitch embroidery patterns on the small square checks of gingham fabric. Soon my children were wearing gingham dresses and shirts painted with cross stitch pictures and when I needed to give gifts to family members I was able to sew and embroider a whole range of novelty items.

The move to Dalby allowed me to begin working the party plan demonstrating and selling the Artex embroidery paints. I loved the work and party goers found me both inspirational and entertaining. This meant that I had to arrange for other motherly women to care for my children during my day time absences. At that time, my youngest sister was a primary school teacher in Dalby. In return for her baby-sitting my children at night, I became her dressmaker.

Stewart would be away two or three weeks at time, hurrying home for quick family visits and to see that all was well with the management of our farm land.  For our tenth wedding anniversary in 1970 Stewart surprised me by telling me to arrange for the grandmothers to care for our children for a week, while he took me to Hayman Island on the Barrier Reef. I wondered how we could afford the cost, but he reckoned the earth-moving business was prospering.

When the December school holidays arrived, he arranged for our family to stay in a  fisherman’s hut at a Hay Point beach, near Mackay, where he was then constructing railway culverts. By the following August he was working near Cairns and I took the four children from Brisbane to Cairns - a two day journey on the Sunlander Rail service, to join him there for 2 weeks.

Queensland road map

Stewart had driven our car to Cairns so I could take the children sightseeing, but I remember the long drive home as horrendously uncomfortable. He not only packed the six of us and our luggage into the car, but added two employees and their baggage.

Stewart then moved on to his largest project – the building of a dam for the town water supply in Cooktown. Those next few months were worrying. Creditors were constantly harassing me, the farm manager resigned as he couldn’t accept responsibility for the farm costs Stewart was instructing him to incur, and whenever Stewart returned home he would take any cash I had saved from my work. Selling the Artex hobby paints had proved successful and I became one of the top sales persons within Australia. Every month I would receive an incentive prize, much to the delight of my older children. For each of six months I won a setting for a dinner service until I had a full table setting. Then as the top salesperson one month I won a gold Seiko wrist watch.

A new farm manager was hired and temporarily some of his household furniture was delivered to our Dalby address. Rodney and Carol arrived home from school and sighted the furniture. Rodney shouted, “Look, what Mum has won now!”

Terrible things began to happen. One morning we found our garden gate open and our faithful old British Bulldog, Rodney’s pet for ten years, had disappeared from our garden. Such a dog would surely be noticed within the town, but despite the reward I offered, we never saw “Bullo” again. Stewart immediately sought out the breeder and was able to obtain an adult female dog, who quickly bonded with me. She would remain at either the front of back door of our house – the closest spot to where I was working or sleeping. Within two weeks she was poisoned.

Other things occurred and I began to fear for my children. Perhaps a person Stewart had wronged was trying to bring him home by terrorizing his family. As the 1971 December summer school holidays drew near I made the decision to take my children and flee to Cooktown to be with my husband for the six weeks of the holidays. He rented for us a one room motel unit at the Sovereign Hotel. For a period of time I enjoyed a holiday with very little to do other than care for my children and I found time to immerse myself in the culture of this old gold mining town. Due to the climatic nature of the north, many bush characters  assembled in the town to wait out the WET season. I also discovered that many people had fled from civilization to this distant region.

I was obliged to remain in Cooktown, not six weeks as I had planned, but four months. The cheque I had written to pay for our return flights to and from Cairns wasn’t honoured by the bank and the return portion of the ticket was canceled. Stewart’s monthly applications to the Cooktown Shire Council for contract payments were never  paid in full.  The engineers who designed the dam had failed to undertake drill tests and when our earth-moving equipment met with water-bearing shale they were unable to establish a sound base for the dam – a base that would not leak. The Council could not afford to pay the mounting costs and threatened to sue the engineers. But, the engineers had to approve Stewart’s work before the Council need pay the contracted amount. Naturally, the engineers found excuses every month to disallow portion of Stewart’s claims for payment. The result was that we were unable to pay our creditors. We returned home to Dalby in April, the job unfinished, to begin litigation against the Cooktown Shire Council. Meanwhile our creditors, dissatisfied with Stewart seldom meeting his promises, moved to bankrupt our partnership. We had assets – our farms, house, livestock and machinery, which could be sold to meet portion of the debts. There was no choice. We filed for bankruptcy. We lost everything, including our car thus making it impossible for me to continue selling the Artex paints. Stewart obtained a job, working as a truck driver for his father’s transport company.

Cooktown was a watershed in my life. It was a period when I was removed from familiar circumstances and had the opportunity to read; converse with university educated drop-outs and evaluate the beliefs of others. I bought and read Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch and began to question the chauvinism of male members of my family and the reluctant acceptance of the status quo displayed by older women.

To be continued.