Nellie's daughter Neta was born in that secluded valley in 1909. Later she would recall how, as a child, she would excitedly attempt walking around the top rail of the stockyard. With no permanent human company other than her mother and brother, Neta's development was centred on the day to day activities of a bush block cattle run. Occasionally there would be the excitement of a visitor. Always there was the surrounding bush, mountain slopes and wild animals. Such a remote area was forever under threat from rabbits and dingoes. It would be much later that kangaroos found their way down from the higher, more level country and became a problem. Then the redneck and black wallabies were also threatened to some marked degree by their larger relative.

Packing out wattle bark from the upper Deua River; 1930s.

Neta became familiar with horses and cattle at a very early stage, as she and Everett were the only constant support her mother had. The only way in and out of the valley was by horse or foot and all supplies were carried in by packhorses. It would be the 1950s before a rough steep track was formed by later owners to carry four-wheel drive vehicles into Cudgee, replacing the old bridle track. By that time Neta and her mother were living at Woolla, a place on the Deua River several rough kilometres above its confluence with Moodong Creek. In 1919 Nellie gave the bush away and tried life in the city of Sydney. Two years later she and her two children headed back to the bush.

At one stage she lived at the junction of Moodong Creek and the Deua River. Here, as at Cudgee, and later at Woolla, kurrajongs trees were planted and still survive. They were probably planted near the houses to provide some shade for both horse and human, as the peppercorns of the inland were.

As she raised her children and worked the difficult and remote bush blocks Nellie became admired as a very capable woman, but a hard person. Local oral history tells of Nellie travelling a mob of cattle past the Araluen hotel and riding over to speak to some men she knew who were having a drink under the verandah. Andy Keys, a property owner and local councilor said, 'Nellie, that horse of yours looks pretty knocked up'. To which she replied, 'If you'd been between my legs as long as this horse you'd be knocked up too'. In later years men were to become very respectful of Nellie and her abilities with stock and in the bush, and with her stern reputation, gossip developed her image into a woman that men should be wary of. Some even said that if a man went near her home she would take a shot at him. Of course legends often have little to do with reality, and no man was ever shot at. The simple fact was that as Nellie grew older she preferred to stay at Woolla, keeping to herself in her bush isolation - a certain scenario to start uninformed tongues wagging.

In 1925 Neta moved with her mother and brother to take up Woolla, a picturesque bend on the Deua with towering rock-faced Beamer Mountain nearby. As at Cudgee, a house was built from the surrounding timber, this time of horizontal slabs. Corrugated iron for roofing was brought in on a horse-drawn slide over country so rough and steep that a four-wheel drive vehicle could not manage the tortuous track into the homestead sight until the 1960s. Nellie and her two children cleared the land, built the fences from logs they split themselves, mustered, branded, marked and drove their cattle out to market. Their horses were very important to them and Neta became an excellent horsewoman, winning many awards at the Araluen Sports events over several years. In 1928 Neta's brother Vern was born at Woolla. Sometime during the '30s Everett left home and went timber cutting on the north coast of NSW. Neta and Vern remained at Woolla working the place with their mother. In later years Vern would go off to work at clearing scrub for landholders out from Braidwood. He spent time as a dogger around Cooma for the Southern Tablelands Dingo Destruction Board and picked peaches in season at Araluen. This outside work supported Woolla, which needed all the assistance it could get during leaner times.

Myrtle Davis posing at top of apple box tree after lopping to feed cattle following a severe bushfire which left only four apple box trees unburnt, Woolla; 1952. Note ladder made from round bush timber