Introduction Story - PART 1 Story - PART 2 Story - PART 3 Story - PART 4

My father, always wanting to be seeing new places (he was at one time a gunner on H.M.A.S. Powerful), continued his roaming life and visited America, where he met my mother, then Miss Florence Elizabeth Scott of Phelps, New York State, and he decided to give up the sea and they were married on December 29th 1903 at Clifton Springs. They spent their honeymoon at Niagara Falls. They resided on a small farm owned by my grandmother, Eliza, which he worked industriously, being extremely kind to my mother's mother who was bedridden most of the time.

I was born on June 3rd 1905. A brother, Arthur, was born on 23rd January 1908 and died 9 days later and was buried in the Scott family grave.

After my grandmother's death in 1908 (during whose trying last illness my father was both patient and helpful) he again became restless and persuaded my mother to sell her property in America to pay our fare to Australia 1908. The crossing to Liverpool was made on S.S. Arabic and to Australia on the German S.S. Frederick De Grosse, which we joined in Antwerp, Belgium – arriving in Australia in time to spend Christmas in Adelaide with his sister Lily McGrath.

We proceeded to Sydney and after a period of looking around he decided to take up a selection on the Clarence River at Tabulam in the New England district of N.S.W. My sister Beulah was born at Tenterfield on 17th April 1911.

He built his own house with only the assistance of myself and my mother and made a living by contract work on roads and bridges and as a maintenance man on the road. He also grew vegetables (being 50 miles from the railway there was not much made out of them). Also he used to let his paddocks for agistment for men spelling their horses – in those days most commercial travellers either drove a tandem and kept a spare horse or else worked one horse going up and picked up the other going back – in those days the roads were rough and stony and it was mostly mountainous country through the New England Ranges.

Our supplies to the general store were hauled in by 2 bullock teams, one 28 horse team and a new-fangled “traction engine” which was always running off the road and having to be hauled up out of the gullies again by the bullock teams.

We had a 5-horse mail coach come through daily from Tenterfield one way and Casino the other and a 4-horse paper and parcel coach on Thursdays. The coach change was at the hotel run by Jim Jordan (20 stone).

Sometimes some of the local station owners (who bred horses as well as beef cattle) would have a consignment of horses “Walers” they were called as they were a special strain - mostly dark bays – that were fleet but strong and used to the dry mountainous conditions were eagerly bought by the British Army in India for remounts for use in the Khyber Pass on the Aphgan (sic) border.

My father took me several times on trips on the cattle boats with him in charge of these horses from Ballina to Sydney – he liked the trip as he was able to return to his old love – the sea – and also a few days freedom in Sydney and he took me as I seemed to have a “way” with horses being small was able to squeeze into the stalls when the beasts got down and sit on their heads to keep them quiet until the men could get a rope or two under them to get them on their feet again.