Ravenswood Dreaming, page 61
1864 was a year of learning and a new beginning for the Thomas family and for Ravenswood. It was as though the flood waters had erased the old and primitive ways of farming. Mud bricks and wattle and daub were things of the past. The new Ravenswood Hall was an imposing solid brick structure where everyone had their own space. No more did they have to share rooms. The kitchen was equipped with the latest in stoves. It had space for storing kitchen paraphernalia. Pots and pans could be hung up, dishes washed in a sink. Clear running water was on tap. A separate laundry complete with troughs and a copper for boiling water was in itself marvellous.
During late autumn crops were sown and more stock purchased to take advantage of the winter grass. The rams and billy goats were busy and a good portion of the sheep and goats were with off spring. The vegetable garden was planted with winter vegetables coaxed on with liberal additions of cow, horse and fowl manure. The fowls, ducks, geese and turkeys were in good spirits and producing an abundance of eggs. Where ever one looked the farm was thriving.
Autumn faded into winter and they held their breath in case there was a repetition of the floods. John’s Aboriginal friends assured him that the rains would be milder and he need not worry. Activity on the farm slowed to a steady pace as the early rains re-nourished the plants and animals. The crops were sprouting and promised good yields for the spring and summer. The Aboriginal people stopped calling and it became obvious that they had moved to their winter camp sites in the foothills.
The cart and dray and associated harnesses were delivered during August and a month later the four draft horses arrived. This was a very exciting and busy time for everyone. Getting to know the horses, feeding them and grooming them was something the children could be involved in and they revelled in it. They were not so interested when it came to cleaning out the four stalls and picking up the manure from the yards.
John and the older boys had to learn how the harnesses fitted and were connected to the cart or dray. Then there were the differences between harnessing four horses and two horses on the dray and yet again how to harness one or two horses onto the cart. It was all very complicated. Then of course there were the names of everything. Some were easy to remember others not so easy. There were collars and reins and bits and bridles and more. There were shafts and mouth pieces and traces and belly straps and breast collars. It was never ending. Luckily Arthur Kerridge was a patient man. They suggested to their father that why not have a man in the stables to do it all for them. John would not hear of it. How would you know it had been done correctly if you didn’t know how to do it yourself he argued. It would be like going to sea as captain of ship and not knowing if the sails were rigged properly. He might not be on a ship but he was still the captain.
The horses and the equipment and the dray occupied them for a few weeks. They practised harnessing and unharnessing and correct storage of the equipment and handling of the horses from the stalls to the driveway and back to the stalls. Eventually the Captain was satisfied with their proficiency and they began to take the dray out onto the roads and tracks to learn how to handle the horses and drive the dray around corners and in a full circle.
This meant that when harvest time came they would all be able to transport grain to markets and the mill.
In October 1864 a new distraction in the form of a letter from the boat builder on the Swan arrived, informing Captain Thomas that both boats were ready for inspection and sea trials. John dispatched a letter back saying that he would come up to Fremantle the following week and stay at the Southern Cross Hotel with his two eldest sons. During that time they would catch a ride up the river to the boat yard and inspect the boats and perhaps take them out on the river for a trial run. He also sent a note to the manager of the hotel to reserve a family suite for four days, with the option of an extension.
As planned, John left Arthur in charge of the farm and he and the two boys took a stage coach up to Fremantle.
All went well with the trip to Fremantle. The boats, as John expected, were perfect and the trials on the river confirmed the expertise of the boat builders. On the Wednesday at high tide the three of them manned the larger cutter rigged boat and, with the smaller skiff in tow, sailed down the river and across the bar out into the open sea. It was as if The Captain had never left the sea. It all came rushing back. The sheer thrill of setting sail on a journey set his blood racing. With a brisk south easterly blowing, he set a south westerly course at right angles to the wind and reefed the sail in tightly. The boat responded and literally carved through the water, treating the on-coming waves with disdain. They held this course with John Frederick at the helm for about three hours, beating well out to sea where John knew there were no nasty obstacles they could crash in to. As he expected the easterly wind died away and a strong south westerly took its place. At that point he altered course to the south east and held a line which experience told him would bring them to the mouth of the estuary.
As they approached the entrance John noted that there was a strong sweeping swell charging straight into the mouth and as he had done many times in the past the old Captain judged it perfectly, catching a wave at the crucial moment which propelled the boat into the calm waters of the inlet. His sons were impressed. He shrugged it off with a smile and indicated for Joseph to come and take the helm and pilot them across the inlet.
As they entered the narrow river they lowered the sails and took down the mast, then with two sets of oars and a tail wind the boys made quick time up the river to the landing at Ravenswood.
The following day the spring sunshine put on its best display. Every living thing on the farm seemed to respond. There were frisky new additions in every paddock. The wheat and other grain crops were at full height and it seemed that the heads were filling out as they watched. The horses were out enjoying the warmth. Elizabeth and three of the children were out in the vegetable garden, weeding and planting.
John and Arthur were sorting out what timber they had left over from the construction of the house with a view to repairing and increasing the size of the jetty and landing. Joseph, James and George had taken the new skiff up river. Mrs Kerridge was out hanging out the washing.
John remembered that day in October for a long time. It was that day that Ravenswood farm revealed its true potential. Everything seemed to be falling into place. The stock, the crops, the new horses, the new equipment and vehicles, the new boats and to cap it all off the family out in the sunshine involved in work and activities. The chance to become a land owner that had induced his father and William Gaze to embark on the great adventure was starting to materialize. Ravenswood was real, no longer part of theirs and his dreaming.
November 1864 saw the return of the Aboriginal people to the district. They had seen out the winter camped in shelters in the foothills where there was enough game, kangaroo, possum and bandicoot. For the past month they had been working their way down the river to a camp site near the estuary. In December the crabs and prawns would return from the ocean and they and other groups would feast on them for the next three or four months. In addition there were large schools of mullet and pilchard inhabiting the shallow water where they could be speared or killed with a kylie. Also gathering to feast on the fish and crustceans were thousands of water birds of every description. They too could be brought down with a spear or a kylie or even a well thrown stone. Turtles, ducks, pelicans, swans and larger species of gulls were favoured as they provided the most meat.
Kepool and Moorang had come to the door with a hessian bag of crabs and John had greeted them enthusiastically. As he usually did, he took them around to the kitchen door and presented them with four loaves of bread. They left very happy with the transaction. The two men were frequent visitors all through the summer months, sometimes with fish, sometimes with crabs. In return they were given bread, potatoes and sometimes a cut of meat depending on what was available.
On one occasion John enlisted their help with digging and bagging potatoes. This yielded some twenty eight bags which they helped load onto the dray. To their surprise as payment John gave them a whole bag which he split into two halves so they could carry half a bag each. This was the first of many labouring jobs they helped with around the farm. They helped with bagging wheat and other grain, sawing and chopping wood, baling and stacking hay and cutting and sawing fence posts. John always paid them generously and so they were always willing and worked hard.
Elizabeth provided some excitement and diversion from the usual chores and other activities around the farm. Much to the delight of the two young girls she was delivered of a baby boy in the second week of November, 1864. The next couple of weeks Elizabeth’s sisters and other visitors came to the house to express their congratulations and to see the baby. They named him Alfred Edward. It was as though the two big sisters, Jane and Mary-Ann, now had a purpose in life and for the next year they almost became his nursemaids. They swaddled, dressed, bathed and walked him and put him to bed and generally entertained him. In actual fact they were a big help to Elizabeth so she didn’t complain. The new baby boy was also an attraction for the Aboriginal women who visited the kitchen asking for some sugar or tea. They were quite taken with the new baby boy. If the baby was outside with his two sisters they often lingered a little longer over the basinet.
That summer the farm fulfilled all of John and Elizabeth’s expectations and then some. All of the grain crops had been harvested by the first week in February 1865. The yield was more than they could have dreamed. They held aside enough grain for planting wheat at the beginning of winter and took enough wheat to the mill to provide twenty four bags of flour for their personal use. This was more than enough but they knew they could sell any surplus at a good price at the end of the year. The rest of the wheat was sold to the mill for processing into flour, bran and pollard. The barley and oat crops were sold without being processed.
Excess vegetables from the garden were preserved for their own use or taken to markets in Pinjarra or Mandurah as were surplus eggs. Sales of livestock cattle, goats and horses also brought in revenue. Horses were in great demand in Asia and India and twice a year John took around five to eight up to Fremantle for export. He tried to make these visits coincide with the meetings of the Fremantle Town Trust as he had remained a member. It also gave him an opportunity to check on his business interests, the shop, the Southern Cross Hotel and various other properties that he and Elizabeth owned. Occasionally Elizabeth accompanied him and amused herself shopping and catching up on old friends.
For the next few years the farm continued to prosper. Gradually they worked out what the most profitable enterprises were. When to plant and when to wait. What stock were the best to buy, when to buy them. Each year their profits increased.
The two Aboriginal men continued to appear in the spring and make themselves available for odd jobs around the farm. They were virtually like two part time employees. Each year they became more proficient. They learned how to bundle the hay, to sew up bags of grain, to harness the horses, and to groom the horses. They were now often paid in cash instead of goods and very soon understood that money could buy many different things. They also learned that fish, crabs, prawns and kangaroo skins and emu feathers could be sold to traders and at markets. John often went hunting with them to bag a kangaroo bailed up by their dogs or some wild ducks brought down by a shot gun. Their knowledge and understanding of the bush and ability to find enough food to survive never ceased to amaze him. He trusted them, he found them honest and reliable.
During the summer months when the harvesting was complete, the three of them would take the small skiff down the river to catch crabs. John would use one of the oars to pole the boat slowly across the shallow sandbanks. His two companions would walk ahead and use forked sticks to pin the crabs to the bottom and then pick them up in their bare hands and drop them in the boat. Female crabs with huge clusters of eggs were always released so that there would be plenty of crabs next season.
On other occasions the three of them would take the boat up stream to several spots where a large tree had fallen into the water and they knew that good sized bream were likely to be lurking. They would then spend a few peaceful hours fishing with lines and hooks, using prawns for bait.
One year, on one of these excursions John had brought along a net which they set across a narrow shallow section of the river. The net trapped a variety of fish, mullet, kingfish, bream and pilchard, three dozen in all. John kept some kingfish and bream and the rest he left with the Aboriginal men.
These activities and excursions each spring and summer created a strong bond between the three men.
Often John would relate some incident or skill performed by his friends to Elizabeth. She listened with interest, happy that her husband had some other activities besides the farm to occupy his mind. The Aboriginal men treated her with great respect. Whenever she asked them they would quickly harness a horse to the buggy so that she could visit some neighbours or her sister in-law. She often treated their wounds and minor ailments and the Aboriginal women brought their children to her when they were suffering from some ailment such as ear ache or a sore eye.
By about the fifth year after the dreadful flood, the relationship between the two Aboriginal men and John had become very strong. Whenever they met they referred to one another by name. John was always Captain and the Aboriginal men were always Kepool and Moorang. That year was a very significant one for John and a turning point in his relationship with the Aboriginal men.
Kepool and Moorang suggested that they take the boat and the net up past Pinjarra to a pool where they could catch some marron. It would involve rowing as far as they could and then pulling the boat up on the bank and walking further up the river. At this point the river became a series of ponds connected by rocky rapids. The marron inhabited the ponds and could be enticed out into the open with a variety of baits. Meat of any kind, prawns, pollard, and bread could be used. John remembered feasting on gilgies with William Gaze and he hesitated. His friends who were very observant realised that something was wrong and asked him about it. John shrugged his shoulders and shook off the memory of the dreadful events that occurred at that place. Nevertheless they were still curious.
He had heard about marron and how delicious they were. He had never tasted them, so he agreed to the suggestion.
They agreed on a plan to go hunting marron straight after the harvest was complete, sometime in January. This year’s harvest was of particular interest to John as he had purchased a horse powered Ridley grain harvester, now being manufactured by James Morrow and Joseph Nicholson. These machines had been developed in South Australia and used for some time with spectacular results. The machine lived up to its reputation. They were able to harvest eighty acres of wheat in eight days. The harvesting of the wheat was complete in the first week of January. The date for the marron expedition was set for the 10th of January. It was to be a full day excursion so he explained to Elizabeth that they would be leaving early in the morning and returning late in the afternoon.
Elizabeth was not worried, she was confident in John’s ability to look after himself and besides he would be in the company of two very good bushmen.
On the morning of the 10th the three men met at the landing. They were equipped with bait, a fishing net, some fishing lines, some wooden boxes, some bread and bottles of water. The river was dead calm and the sun had not risen above the trees when they started out. One could tell it was going to be a typical January day, hot and dry. The two younger men had taken up the oars and were applying themselves enthusiastically to the task. Before long they were bathed in perspiration. Kepool called a halt and both men ceased rowing and let the boat coast while they removed their shirts.
John recognized this part of the river which earlier on had been referred to as Jinjanuk and which the settlers had shortened to Jim-jam. It was where the papers had reported that Governor Stirling and the soldiers had camped on their way to attack the Binjareb people. John made no mention of this fact as he was aware that both Kepool and Moorang were Binjareb.
It was difficult to judge but John estimated they had travelled about four miles of the eleven or twelve miles to Pinjarra. He checked his watch and calculated it would take about two hours. From Pinjarra the distance was an unknown one but they had assured him it wasn’t far. When the depth of water prevented them from taking the boat any further they would have to walk and once again they had assured him that it was not far.
Another hour of rowing and the Pinjarra bridge heralded the outskirts of the Pinjarra settlement. They navigated their way under the bridge and passed the several buildings that constituted the town. A few people waved at them but other than that no one took any notice. About one mile further on the river narrowed slightly and was noticeably shallower and then widened into an elongated pond about seventy five yards long. At the far end of the pond John could make out another shallow rocky section which was obviously too shallow for the boat to negotiate. From this point they would have to walk. They pulled the boat up onto the bank and proceeded to unload their equipment and share it between the three of them.
John waited for the two men to indicate which way to proceed. Kepool had not picked up his equipment and was obviously hesitant and apprehensive. John waited sensing that he had something to say.
Captain, this area and this part of the river is very special to our people. We must be very respectful as there are many spirits here. Many of our old people are buried here, so it is much like a graveyard or cemetery that the white people have. We have never allowed a white man to accompany us along this part of the river. You are different, we trust you and we respect you and we know that you trust and respect us.
John nodded indicating that he understood. That is true he said.
Kepool continued. This part of the river and the banks on either side is where many of our people were killed by Governor Stirling and the soldiers. They were attacked by soldiers on horses early one morning. They fought back but spears and clubs were no match for soldiers with guns on horse-back. Many men were killed or wounded as they tried to throw spears. Some ran into the bush and others jumped into the river. Some women and children were killed but most of them also jumped in the river. They thought that the river was a way to escape but the governor had stationed most of his soldiers on the bank opposite and they continued to kill all the people in the water. Most of the men young enough to fight were killed. All the wounded were hunted down and killed. The remaining women and a few children were taken as captives. Those that escaped into the bush were chased by soldiers on horseback. Some of them returned the next day to bury the dead. Then they travelled further south around the southern end of the inlet and stayed there for a long time in the thick bush where they felt safe.
