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Down on the Farm in the Great
Depression
For many years my parents lived on
their property called Umtali. All of us kids were born while at Umtali.
First was Edward, born 1920, who at14lbs and forceps delivery, died an hour
later. Next was Edward, Then the twins, Margaret and Helen, followed by
Keith and Lesley...................
..................We all had
mother’s maiden name of Flexmore for second names. And so it was that
Umtali became a bit overcrowded. Dad sold the property and we moved to
another house about a mile east of the Brid River and right on the banks of
the Great Forester River. We all moved in and he called this property
Malmani. All of us kids grew up here until we got to our teens when we
moved out to lead lives of our own...................
....................On the Malmani
property there were thousands of sheep and hundreds of cattle (mostly Black
Angus). In addition we had horses, bullocks, ducks, chooks, turkeys and a
large collection of animal pets. The pets were swans, possums, guinea pigs,
birds, sugar gliders, kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, pigs and
dogs....................
...................We all grew
up on horseback and were pretty reasonable riders. Ted, a farmhand, and I
did most of the mustering for ear-marking, branding and dipping. Dad’s farm
embraced considerable timber and thick scrub country which he required to
be burnt each year. He would give Ted and me boxes of wax matches that we
could strike and throw from our horses into dry fuel areas for supposed
controlled burning. This was great stuff watching the raging onslaught and
the flames that rapidly climbed huge Stringy Bark trees to the top,
dislodging burning cinders that were carried by the wind for great
distances, lighting additional fires as they fell. These fires were so
rapid and fierce in places that they drove out wombats, rabbits, wallabies
and especially kangaroos, which in turn would be pursued by Ted and me on
horseback.
Some of
the horses got to love the chase, especially a really smart animal called
Jimmy who used to be a harness pacer when younger. Jimmy could catch up to
the fleeing kangaroo and knock it silly with his front legs, allowing a
quick dismount to catch it. Sometimes I would be too slow and the
frightened roo would get mobile again. If this was the case and my feet
touched stirrups...................
The Adams children
....................The worst of
all the mustering catastrophes happened on the day when the farmhand and I
had rounded up a big herd of cattle and were driving them in for branding
and ear-marking. There were about 250 beasts and they had to be driven
through another farmer’s property and kept separate from his herd. We had
to cross over Tucker’s Creek, an area consisting of several streams that
flooded separately through swampy ti-tree ground about 200 yards wide.
There were a number of bridges
that crossed these creeks, and all had no side rails. A boundary fence with
a gate ran parallel close to the last and most dangerous creek. By the time
we reached this area, it was midday and Dad’s farmhand suggested that we
stop and have lunch before allowing the cattle to proceed through the
adjoining property. So we had lunch and then I was sent on to open the
gate. But this turned out to be a very difficult task because the cattle
had milled as far forward as possible and were so tightly packed on the
bridges that there was no space left for my horse. I was frightened and I
slowly edged my horse along the narrow track with swamp on either side. The
cattle became alarmed and began to surge. They pushed each other off the
bridges and down into the cold water. My horse was getting pushed too and
at one stage it had one leg over the side of the bridge and I nearly fell
in. Now I was really terrified.
Fifteen beasts had fallen into
water and the mud before I could get to the gate and open it. Some of the
poor creatures had no chance......................
..............Some days later
Dad began the job of branding, ear-marking, de-horning and castrating the
yearling calves and also a prime scrub bull. Dad insisted that Ted and I
watch while he carried out the operation on the scrub bull. He had locked
the bull in the crush where it was held securely by the neck ready for
castrating. Dad said that this scrub bull was already several years old and
was interfering with the bloodline of his stock and had to be stopped.
A pole was placed behind the
bull’s legs to prevent it kicking. Dad used his sharp knife to cut a long
slit in the scrotum and a set of clamps squeezed the tubes holding the
balls. Dad then cut off the balls and tossed them to the dogs who eagerly
sank their teeth into this unexpected warm meal. Oddly enough, the loss of
these hefty testes seemed to have little effect on the bull. Dad then put a
nostril clamp on the bull and pulled it tight with a rope to one side so
that he could get at the first horn. A massive pair of shears with opposing
twin V-shaped blades that worked a bit like a guillotine was placed over
the horn close to the skull. Ted and I brought great pressure to bear on
the handles; we had to squeeze simultaneously because the horn was so
tough. As the pressure mounted..................
My brother Edward - Dad taught us
boxing at an early age
....................Around this
time the horrible and highly infectious disease of poliomyelitis came to
Tasmania. We kids were all lucky enough to escape it, thanks largely to
Mum. In the early stages of the epidemic, our school was closed. Mum told
us to take our clothes off and swim and play in the river and stay away
from all people. It was pretty cold and windy down there on the waterfront,
but we were tough kids and I think our Mum’s remedy worked well. We
certainly got suntanned and sun-burnt too, all over..................
..................Mum was a bit of a home
doctor. She had a cure for everything. If we had a belly ache, she would
dose us with Epsom salts. With ear aches, it was a clean out with peroxide.
When we got boils, she would examine them from time to time and be quite
sympathetic, but when ready to burst she would grab hold of us and squeeze
like hell. It didn’t matter how loud we yelled, she didn’t stop until all
the puss was out. When we got hair lice, which we got almost every year
from the other kids at school, Dad practically shaved our heads and then
Mum would go to town on our scalps with kerosene and a stiff brush. We felt
that our scalps were practically on fire.
Mum had a happy nature and loved
to play tricks on her progeny. On one occasion she came up to us when we
were very young holding her hand and telling us that she had cut off her
middle finger. And there it was, the middle finger, displayed on
blood-soaked cotton wool in a square tobacco tin. It looked ghastly and
frightened all of us, especially Helen. Having succeeded in frightening the
hell out of all of us, Mother explained that it was all a joke. She had cut
a hole through the bottom..................
....................Our
lifestyle was pretty much routine, going to school, milking cows, chopping
firewood, lighting the fire in the morning and getting breakfast ready. We
hauled in logs with our bullock team and sledge. On some weekends and
holidays we were allowed a change from farm work to shooting wild game for
skins and tucker. We also netted and speared fish in the river. There
wasn’t any money to celebrate birthdays and Christmas the way we do now.
We’d get a few pennies for lollies, a Christmas stocking stuffed with some
hand-me-down clothes and new clothes only if it were absolutely necessary.................
.................When we played,
we invented our own games. Some were funny and some were cruel, depending
on how you looked at it. For example, after Dad had killed and gutted a
sheep, I would take a knife and cut off about five feet of the strongest
gut. I tied a large knot at both ends and then fed each end to two of our
household ducks. The intestine was so tough that the ducks were unable to
bite or break through it. Well, those knots took quite a bit of swallowing,
but once the two ducks had achieved that feat, they kept right on gobbling
until they came face to face. Then one duck would gain the advantage by
pulling hardest on the gut, dragging it from its opponent’s stomach and
quickly consuming its tug-of-war win. This tug-of-war could be reversed
several times before an ultimate winner stood there with
a.......................
.......................Dad’s
bullock team consisted of twelve big animals which Ted and I were taught to
drive. Ted was better at handling them than I was. Dad gave us orders to
couple the bullocks and pull over a fairly solid old tree and drag it away.
Coupling the bullocks was scary
because their huge horns made it difficult to lock the U-shaped neck braces
into the heavy yokes. When that was done we drove the bullocks to the big
tree and attached a strong, steel cable. Everything was ready for Ted to
test his expertise.
It was a tough tree and wouldn’t
budge. So I suggested that we place the rope higher up the tree in order to
gain leverage. Then Ted plied the whip and made the air blue with his most
colourful commands. The twelve strong bullocks gave their all. The result
was comical rather than brilliant. The two bullocks at the rear were almost
lifted off the ground, hung by their necks because the cable was too high.
The humour was vastly increased by Ted’s panicky attempts.................
.......................In order to get bush honey, we tried chopping
down trees with beehives built in the tree hollows. It would sometimes take
us all day to bring a tree down. We had no protective gear and we often got
stung. If one of the dogs was getting in our way, we would put a live bee
under its tail. It would take off like greased lightning, biting its bum as
it went. When one of our beehive raids was successful, we placed the honey
into a hessian bag and trod on it in order to crush the comb. Then we hung
the bag by the stove to warm up so that the honey thinned and flowed
through the hessian and dripped into a container.....................
....................Dad, Ted and I
slept in an extension of the veranda. It was open to the wind, had a
galvanised iron roof and was pretty cold in the Winter. It was here as a
baby that I graduated from my bed in a Cooper’s Sheep Dip Powder box to the
family cot. Eventually I grew too long for the cot and I couldn’t stretch
out. When I complained, Dad bashed out the rails at one end of the cot and
he nailed on some flat boards to extend the cot base by about another
twelve inches. This piece of bush carpentry allowed me years of comfortable
sleep, even though on some nights the biggest mosquitoes in the world
tortured all three of us. Every night before I climbed into my
cot.......................
Page 40
........................When
I was about six, I was playing with my sister Lesley, chopping wood with
one of Dad’s short-handled Kelly axes. Dad used these Kelly axes
exclusively to dissect sheep carcasses for our food. Lesley and I had been
arguing about who should chop off a small branch on the side of a log.
Lesley said she would and I said that I would. Lesley put her hand on the
log to stop me from chopping. I took a pretend swipe to scare her into
pulling her hand away. This worked all right, so I did it again only this
time I made a real swipe in order to get rid of the branch. But this time
Lesley didn’t take her hand away and to our horror, off came the thumb on
her right hand.
The
blood shot up in the air like a rainbow. We were both shocked and Lesley started
to scream her head off. I was in a panic and not knowing what to do. I
threw the thumb in the bush. Mum heard Lesley’s screams and came running.
She scooped up Lesley and yelled at me:”You rotten kid! You wait till your
father sees this. He’ll kill you.”
Dad
was away in the Dort somewhere. Helen, Margaret and Ted were still at
school. Mum was on her own. She phoned Mr. Suter the local bus driver to
take Lesley to the Scottsdale Hospital twelve miles away. She then phoned
the local doctor in Scottsdale, who said to be sure to bring the severed
thumb. Mum rushed back to me with Lesley still in her arms and Lesley’s
hand all wrapped up in a bed sheet soaked through with blood. Mum said,
“The doctor wants the thumb.” I found the thumb in the bushes and wrapped
it in newspaper and gave it to her. Mum was in full panic mode by now and
again told me what Dad was going to do to me when he found out. I thought
about that a lot. I felt pretty certain that he would do something drastic
and I was really afraid.
It was
getting on towards late afternoon and I knew that Dad would be back
shortly, so I took off for the bush, more frightened than ever. About a
mile away I came to a massive, old charred hollow log and I figured this
would be as good a place as any to hole up. It was almost dark by the time
that Dad got home and was told about all the trouble I had caused. He sent
my brother and sisters out to find me and bring me back to the house. I
could hear them in the distance as they..........................
Lesley,
Margaret, Ted, Helen, Keith during the Poliomyelitis years.
...................I
was a bit naive as a child. Once I was in hospital having my tonsils and
adenoids removed and a cyst cut from inside my right eyelid. After two days
the nurses kept on asking me if I’d had my bowels opened. I didn’t know
what bowels were, so I said no. I was aghast when the nurses tipped me over
on my side and poked a hose up my behind with a funnel attached. They
filled me up with some kind of liquid and shortly afterwards I went through
one hell of an embarrassment when I had to explode into a bed pan,
especially when other people were still in the room. Well, I certainly knew
then what bowels were all about. The worst thing about..................
Page 44
...................Often the whole family would
go hunting and pile into Dad’s Dort car. We would load the car up with
greyhounds, sheep dogs, spaniels, terriers and mixed breeds. The big dogs
would stand on the running boards with smaller ones crammed under their
bellies, others would be jammed inside the car where dog fights sometimes
occurred. Such combat drew a few smelly dog farts, bloody rippers that
caused such descriptive comments from mother, we’d all laugh. We‘d leave
early in the morning and walk all day without................
Page 51
..................While I was 12 and with a
broken arm in a sling, Dad asked me to go and rouse out sheep from the
slippery banks of the Forester River. I said I‘ll take my double-barrelled
shotgun in case I saw a duck, but Dad said: “Don’t be silly. You can’t
shoot with one arm.” After about two miles of walking I was preparing to
cross a creek when I slipped and dropped my loaded and cocked 12 guage
shotgun in the water. As luck would have it, the gun landed just out of
reach with about three inches of the barrels protruding from the water and
aimed straight at me. My arm was hurting like hell as I leant down at full
stretch to try and reach it. But the best I could do was to get my little
finger into one of the barrels, jam it sideways and gently pulled towards
me. Bang! Well, I guess that it just wasn’t my turn to die. The trigger on
the other barrel caught on a snag and exploded. My arm and my head were
almost in direct line of fire and it was almost inconceivable that I had
escaped injury. The noise of the gun blast almost blew out my eardrums. I
thought it wiser......................
Page 62
....................I
left home when I turned 14 in 1940 and got a job in Launceston. My starting
wage was ten shillings for seven hours, five days a week, with two evenings
per week night school. I was very nervous at first as some of the new trainees
were much older than me.
The
older students insisted on an initiation ceremony in which they smothered
the new boys’ private parts with timber glue, feathers and sawdust. Most
new kids submitted without a fight; those who resisted were wrestled to the
ground by several of the older students and got the full treatment. I
figured that I wasn’t going to get covered with that muck and I spread the
word that I had been taught how to box and fight. I also said that if they
ganged up on me, I would carefully note who they were and later on I would
get them all one by one and punch the hell out of them.
These
tactics held the gang of older kids off for a month or two. Eventually,
however, it was my turn and I was thrown to the ground before I knew what
had happened. There was a tall ginger haired fellow trying to open my
trousers, so I rammed my knee in his face. The bang I gave him shattered
the top plate of his false teeth and that put him out of action. Well, this
yobbo was one of the ringleaders and when he backed off, they all backed
off with him. For the next couple of days I confronted some of the older
students and threatened to punch the living daylights out of them, but none
of them................
..................My
wage at the time was ten shillings a week and I had to pay that amount for
full board, it was tough going. I later did a five year apprenticeship 44
hours a week at Jacksons Garage learning to be a mechanic as well as oxy
and electric welding, servicing cars, trucks and crawler tractors that were
used in Tasmania’s rugged timber country..................
..................When
my wages improved I was able to purchase an old Indian Scout motor bike for
13 Pounds and it enabled me to tour much of Tassie...........
New
Guineans
.................In
1948 I got a job in New Guinea, servicing and maintaining the Australasian
Petroleum company’s Port Moresby fleet of vehicles and boats. I had ten
local Papuans on my staff and I had to learn Pidgin very quickly in order
to have any communication at all. The pay was good but the heat and
humidity, especially in my tin shed workshop, was terrible. I sweated as
never before. Native wash-wash boys did our laundry, but as they couldn’t
read our name tags, we rarely got our own clothes back. The Papuans were
called Fuzzy Wuzzys because of their massive crop of black curly hair. They
were the happiest folk I had ever seen, perhaps partly because they chewed
beetle nut which tended to make their teeth red and themselves a little
drunk. Port Moresby was a man’s town. The native girls wore grass skirts
and were very pretty, but it was greatly frowned upon for Australian men to
mix with them.
There
was an extreme shortage of white girls and you needed to have the qualities
of Clark Gable in order to get a girl on your arm...................
..................Returning
from New Guinea in 1949 I joined up with a team of would be crocodile
hunters from Brisbane, who were undertaking hunting in the Gulf of
Carpentaria. The venture turned out to be a classic failure, blokes were
scared, fighting each other, worried about girl friends and wives and were
not suitable to the task. However for me it was one of the most thrilling
adventures I’d had to that time............................
Croc
hunting team that was doomed to failure
Page 79
...............After
the hunting failure I worked in Darwin for six months for John Stubbs &
Co and left on the 18th May 1950. I teamed up with a bloke from Sydney
called Laurie and we shared expenses in driving my 1935 Studebaker down the
West Australian coast to Perth.
After
we left Katherine the road deteriorated until really there was no road.
Just a rough boulder-strewn two wheel track over some very rugged creek
beds. The Studebaker was too low to the ground and not suited for this
mighty 3,000 mile slog.
It
soon became clear that we were making such slow progress that we were going
to run out of food. We couldn’t buy any more food until we got to Halls
Creek and that was 500 miles away. But we both had guns and plenty of
ammunition to shoot wild duck, pigeons and kangaroo. We also had a large
container of water that could be refilled from the occasional billabong, or
the Victoria River that wound hundreds of miles to Wave Hill
Station.................
....................It
was dark when we got there and every time we tried to find the main route
south we finished up at one of the many windmills, so we decided to enquire
at the Police Station. The sergeant on duty gave us directions but he was
very concerned that we were attempting the journey in such an unsuitable
vehicle. Anyway he documented us thoroughly and then checked on our meagre
food supplies which he said were grossly insufficient. He asked us to wait
while he went inside his house and then he came back with cabbages,
potatoes, watermelons, bread and tins of food, saying that this should
ensure us a safer passage. So off we went on our southern
safari..................
..................From
Wave Hill the track wound around and over flat boulders and then traversed
seemingly endless plains of cracked clay which almost shook the car to
pieces until we finally got to Inverway and Nicholson Stations. We bought
fuel at Nicholson and the manager offered me £300 for my Studebaker plus a
similar year........................
1935
Studebaker
.....................After
Nicholson the track entered very hilly country with hundreds of creek
crossings that continued and greatly slowed our progress all the way to
Halls Creek. I had to change gears so many times that my left leg ached
from repeatedly engaging the Studebaker`s stiff clutch pedal. Interesting
sightings were the many wild donkeys, feral pigs, dingoes, emus, eagles and
millions of large termite mounds which had been an impressive feature all the
way from Darwin..............
.............The
original town of Halls Creek had been abandoned and the only landmark was
the decaying walls of the old Post Office. It was built from termite mounds
and stood bare and stark on the parched earth. We continued past Broome,
Port Hedland and on to Roeburne and checked out the old Roeburne jail where
many of our indigenous people endured...................
The way it was - Horrible treatment
of Aborigines near Roeburne jail – Courtesy Battye Library
Page 91
......................By
the time I arrived in Perth it was late evening. I couldn’t find
accommodation so I drove around town and finally settled on a nice grassy
area below the steep bank of King’s Park. I knew that West Australia had
some pretty stiff gun laws, so I hid my 303 rifle, my 12 gauge shotgun and
my revolver along the top of the engine. Luckily the motor was a straight
eight, so they all fitted with the hood closed. However, about 2 or 3am I
was rudely awakened from my canvas sleeping bag by two coppers with a
bright torch.
They
fired the usual questions at me: Why was I illegally camped? Did I have a
licence? Was the car registered? They then checked the inside of the
Studebaker with the torch....................
Page 100
.....................During
the 1950’s in Perth, I built a fleet of heavy lift cranes which were a
major success and were readily hired by all types of industries. However
the exciting 1949 crocodile safari trip in the Gulf of Carpentaria still
lingered in my mind and as the crane business was bringing in the
dollars.....................
The
second Goliath crane
...................I
decided to return to the Gulf with my wife Audrey, sister Margaret and fox
terrier Tiger, to hunt crocodiles and try and make a home movie to show
people the variety of wildlife, fishing and the magnitude of the country
itself. Folk in Australia had little knowledge of the inland desert country
and the Northern Territory. So in 1954 we loaded our 1948 Buick and trailer
carrying an upturned home-made plywood dinghy....................
Page 117
...................With
mile after mile of hard yakka we were very glad to see the Rawlinson Ranges
appear above the dunes. They were a joyful indication that we were on
course and would provide a good place to camp for a couple of days.
I then
climbed the mountain, secretly hoping that I would get lucky and trip over
some of Lasseter’s gold. Well, I didn’t find any gold, but I did get a good
look over to the other side and saw the vast expanses of the Gibson Desert
stretching into the distance and disappearing into the Great Sandy Desert.
At the base of the Rawlinsons the track followed the mountain slopes and of
course was no longer of sand. It changed to rocky gravel with lots of deep
ruts caused by water runoff. The ruts were so deep in places that the front
bumper struck the road many times, consequently further slowing our
progress...................
....................Ten
or more miles along this track we passed a series of small burnt areas
about half a mile apart, these became more frequent as we progressed with
some areas still burning. At the last fire we were stopped by an emaciated
young black woman and two piccaninnies who were waving frantically while
holding a billy can. The fires we noticed earlier were apparently used by
the three to warm themselves and to cook their survival tucker, probably
small reptiles. The girl seemed to have come to the end of her tether. She
was a most pathetic sight as she waved her large billy can signalling for
water. This girl, no more than 18 or 19 years of age, was just skin and
bone with a huge facial growth that horribly distorted her appearance. In
her neck just below the tumour, was a dirty inflamed hole that secreted a
runny white puss. It flowed down her flattened breast to a putrid cloth
wrapped around her waist. The smell of this poor soul was
unbelievable...................
Pitiful
sight in the Gibson Desert
....................We
readily supplied her with water along with a loaf of bread, apples,
potatoes and several cans of food. This meant we would have to tighten our
own belts, but there was clearly no choice. It was easy to understand the
girl’s predicament. She was exhausted, she had no food or water and she was
bloody miles from anywhere, trying to survive on goodness knows what. She
was still attempting to feed her two swollen-bellied young boys through her
collapsed breasts, but it looked as though the milk had ceased to flow
months past. Our inability to understand each other in such circumstances
was quite distressing and any help we could give was certainly limited.
Accompanying the trio was a half-breed dingo pup, a bag of bones if ever
there was. With sign language and limited pidgin we achieved some
understanding. It appeared she was.....................
Page 145
........................On
the Robinson River in the Gulf, both Audrey and Margaret turned out to be
fantastic rowers, capable of quietly rowing the dinghy for hours and often
within two or three feet of crocodiles.
From
time to time there were exciting challenges like the one that produced the
greatest adrenalin rush of our lives. We sighted a massive seventeen foot
reptile in the beam of the spotlight as it slowly slithered from the bank
into the water.
We
were directly in its path and it was about four feet underwater by the time
the harpoon was aimed and fired, striking the crocodile mid-section in the
back. As a result it speedily towed the boat several times around a fifty
yard wide section of the river before resting about ten feet under. It was
evidently fearful to cross the shallow sand bars at each
end.......................
Gulf of Carpentaria Northern
Australia
..................Because
this monster was nearly as large as the twenty foot crocodile we had caught
earlier, I decided on a different approach. I resolved not to wait for the
crocodile to rise. I planned to jab a long hand-held harpoon into the
reptile and so pull it to the surface where it could be shot.
We
were able to assess the position of the crocodile by the angle of the gun’s
harpoon cord. Consequently we placed the dinghy directly above it. That
achieved, I thrust the hand harpoon into the water, striking but not
penetrating the crocodile’s back, probably hitting one of its horned
scales. This of course stirred the creature into violent action. It swam
around and around half a dozen more times before again coming to rest. We
cautiously waited a few minutes before I made another attempt. However
before that materialised, the huge reptile rose from the river bed and
clamped his powerful jaws on the bow, crunching through the thin plywood
shell and locked on to the metal frame.........................
Adrenilin
stuff - Shows damage caused by a monster crocodile.
......................Fishing
in the Gulf and its rivers was unbelievable. There were many species that
we caught, some of which were queen fish, tuna, barracuda, mackerel,
groper, threadfin salmon, barramundi, red emperor, coral trout, mangrove
jack, bream, mullet, lobsters, mud crabs, groper, hammer head and tiger
sharks. Such abundance of fish and wildlife in this region made it worthy
of being a marine sanctuary............................
All caught for Aboriginals on
the Sir Edward Pellew Islands
Page 197
After
returning from our Gulf trip it was time to put film together and test its
potential.
Sydney was my greatest Australian challenge and it
was helped by Peter Bowers of the Sydney Morning Herald who wrote this
editorial...............
Do-it-yourself Film
is Box Office
An Australian Film, and a home movie at that,
is about to revive a Sydney Theatre that Hollywood with all its slick
professionalism, could not save. Hoyts Ashfield, closed since late last
year through lack of patronage, re-opens on Friday to show Northern Safari,
a film that has everything. Everything, it would seem, to make it an
instant flop. Northern Safari is essentially a family show, A one - Family
show. It was made by Keith F. Adams. Edited by Keith F. Adams and is
narrated by Keith F. Adams. He recorded the sound track in the lounge room
of his home in Burniston Street, Scarborough, a Perth suburb. It stars the
Adams family, Keith, his wife Audrey, his sister Margaret and Tiger, the
Adams fox terrier.
It records the adventures of the Adams family
on a 7,000 mile expedition from Perth to the Gulf country and back, and Northern
Safari is not a foot under two and a half hours long. Alfred Hitchcock
himself would not dare to make a documentary of that length. Being an
amateur and knowing n | 
