GIFTS OF WAR

War Souvenirs

The above photograph, taken in the nineteen eighties, shows a sample of the war souvenirs that people brought home from the Second War World. Most were collected by my uncles in North Africa but others were given to the family by friends.

Why you would collect souvenirs from the battle field is beyond me. I’d want to get the hell out of there but that’s what soldiers have always done throughout history.

The red object at the top of the photo is an Italian grenade. Diffused of course. It was made of aluminium and it looked like a toy rocket. The second object is a German Africa Korp ammunition pouch, followed by a German soldier’s belt. As we know, the Nazis were one of the most evil and Godless regimes that ever existed.  It is bizarre that such evil people would have put Gott Mitt Uns ( God be with us) on their belt buckles.

Taken out of the scabbard, is a Samurai sword, that a mate of my dad’s gave to him when he returned from New Guinea. I remember it been razor sharp and it was mainly locked away in dad’s gun cupboard.  The craftsmanship was amazing. It was so sharp that you could have easily cut your finger running your finger down the blade. Occasionally dad would take it out for visitors. Most people were always scared by it, especially my mother. I think she thought dad would do something stupid. I remember him pretending to shave with it. Dad sold it in the late nineteen eighties and the guy who had bought it, later told dad that the sword was two hundred and fifty years old. Finally, is a Turkish bayonet that was collected in Gallipoli by an Australian light horseman who used to work for the family. And yes folks, the feet in the picture are mine. They’ve aged a little since then.

And no, we didn’t have a souvenired Tiger tank in the back yard. I wish. But dad did have an American GMC military truck which he nicknamed Gilda, after a Rita Hayworth movie. The ride was rough, the cabin was bare metal but it would go anywhere.  It had a hydraulic winch that was used on many occasions. Over the years dad had crossed a flooded river with the water lapping at his knees and had stuck it in mud that went over the wheels. It didn’t stop in the river and with the help of the winch, he pulled it out.     

       

The Outback Holds Secrets. Watch the trailer of my book, Homecountry.

GUNS

NOTE: PISTOL HANGING ON BEDHEAD. READY FOR ACTION.LORNESLEIGH. LATE 1960'S.

I want to say upfront. I’m not a gun enthusiast myself but I can see a place for a firearm. In the Australian bush especially there’s definitely a need to carry a firearm whether it be a pistol or rifle.

 You never know when you’ll have to put down livestock that are in pain or unable to walk. There may be the need to shoot dingoes who attack and kill the cattle. Wild cattle known as shrubbers will also be shot as they can’t be mustered and will definitely kill a human if approached.

It may sound cruel and unnecessary to some, but cattle are your livelihood and they have to be protected. A firearm will be carried these days in four wheel drive ( RV) but in the old days, they were carried on a horse. I remember my dad, carrying a pump action Remington rifle in the car which he called the dingo gun. When riding a horse, my father carried a pistol and my grandfather Bell, had a lever action Winchester in a holster attached to his saddle.

Yes, I almost forgot, a gun may even save your life in the bush. Apart from rampaging shrubbers coming out of the bush at you, there are snakes and just before I was born in the late fifties, the rivers on our cattle stations were full of crocodiles. My dad shot the last one when I was a baby. Apparently. But that’s another blog.  I have to add,native animals such as kangaroos were not considered as animals to shoot by my family.  

Horses, cattle and the land are the building blocks of my family’s dna but my father and his brother were the gun nuts for want of a better term. Between them their gun collection probably could have outfitted a large partisan group who wanted to take on the Nazis. Their collection comprised many types of firearms, ranging from conventional rifles, shotguns and pistols to a World War One machine gun that had once been mounted on an aircraft. I remember that was stored under a bed. As you do.

Yes, there was the Martini Henry that had been used by the English in the Zulu War. It took bullets made of wrapped brass with a lead bullet and when fired, enveloped the area in a white cloud.  You had to look under the cloud to see if you had hit the target. There were many military rifles from several countries; British, American, Italian, Japanese and German.  It’s all worth another blog.              

            

SUFFER THE LITTLE BUSH CHILDREN

GEORGINA, CONSTANCE, MY GRANDMOTHER.

When I thought about writing this blog I knew it was going to be distressing. The death of children is heart rending for everyone. But just imagine what it was like in the Australian outback one hundred years ago when a child got injured or took ill.

No doctor for a hundred miles; a trip that involved a ride in a buggy over a barely formed road. If you could get to a doctor in time he couldn’t have done anything for infectious diseases that were still around like diphtheria.

 Certainly he could give pain relief (usually opium), set broken bones or do a basic operation. At the turn of the century, one third of the deaths in the vast region of North Queensland (where the family had settled), were children under ten.  Most deaths were from dysentery, scarlet fever and diphtheria.  

John Clark as you can remember had already lost his first wife and their baby girl. Enough was enough you’d think. Unfortunately, tragedy would strike again and it struck twice. Esther and John Clark had had four girls over the years, Jane Florence (my grandmother), Minnie Maud, Georgina and Constance Isabel.

In 1889 Georgina aged five died from a ruptured appendix and in 1892, Constance died from diphtheria. They both died at the Lornesleigh homestead and were buried near the stockyards. Their headstones are still there despite flood waters having passed over them several times. To see your children die is suffering beyond belief and then having to bury them on top of that. How do you keep functioning? I guess, in those days you had to keep going or you gave up and died. For Esther and John, they kept going.

I remember as a kid at Lornesleigh looking at the ornate headstones of the two girls side by side, the graves covered in old seashells. I thought about the two girls and wondered how life would have turned out for them if they had lived. I still think about them occasionally. Probably always will.   

GRAVES OF THE TWO GIRLS.

WARNING: GREAT GRANNIE'S GOT A GUN.

GUN TOTING ESTHER GEARY.

In 1880, John Clark certainly married a woman suited for the rugged Australian outback. My great grandmother, Esther Geary, was no genteel, fainting lady from the city salons. 

She was a true Geary but she was genteel in a way; she didn’t have a police record. In turn, she married a tough man who was creating a cattle empire in one of the most remote and hostile parts of Australia.  During this time, Europeans were encroaching on Aboriginal land and the Aborigines were fighting back.  When she came to Lornesleigh Station in 1880, there was a tribe of Aborigines living at the nearby river.

There was a frontier war going on between Europeans and Aborigines across North Queensland. It was brutal as any war with many thousands of people losing their lives, many been innocently massacred. For the Aborigines, it ultimately meant the loss of their culture and traditional lands. I will speak more about the frontier war in future blogs.

ABORIGINAL FAMILY. Source: janesoceania.

Unlike his contemporaries who were employing savage methods to rid their stations of Aborigines, John Clark wanted to live in harmony with them. I think he thought that this vast land was big enough to support everyone.  A great cause of conflict on cattle stations was the spearing of cattle.  Usually the Aborigines speared the cattle as they were easy targets which in turn resulted in reprisals. At Lornesleigh, John Clark would kill cattle for the Aborigines thus avoiding the savage cascade of events. It was, I guess, frontier diplomacy.

Sometimes, there was a breakdown in communication. My great grandmother was at the homestead by herself one morning when a lone Aboriginal man decided to visit. She was in the kitchen.The stockmen and John Clark were out mustering cattle. The Aboriginal male demanded tobacco. When Esther told him she didn’t have any he became agitated. He was agitated enough that Esther produced a rifle and told him to leave. Unfortunately for him, he laughed and said, “White Mary can’t shoot.”

She fired over his head, the bullet going through the wall of the kitchen. Her last sight of him was him tearing through the bush back to the safety of the Aboriginal camp.

      

AUSTRALIAN BUSH CHRISTMAS. CHRISTMAS DAY.

Santa coming to a kid in the Australian bush still seems a novel idea to me, but he did or so I believed. A novelty song in Australia at the time called Six White Boomers, was based around the idea of Santa swapping his reindeers for six white kangaroos.  The reindeers would probably get heat stroke during the delivery run to Oz and were changed for the roos. I always thought that Santa should change out of his Santa suit into something cooler, say, singlet, shorts and flip-flops. All red of course.

CHRISTMAS GUM TREE. 1959. 

My half-sisters ( they’re twelve and thirteen years older than me) and I always were thinking of Santa’s welfare. They had started the tradition of leaving out food and a cool drink for a hot and weary Santa. However, it wasn’t a glass of milk as you would suspect but a glass of beer. Folks, there’s nothing as refreshing as a cool glass of beer on a hot day. Why should Santa miss out? As we found out years later, Dad was the one that played Santa. He was the bloke that delivered the presents, ate the food and drank the beer. 

Christmas morning couldn’t come quick enough. I remember finding it hard to sleep as any kid would. The thought of Santa coming and the heat wasn’t conducive to sleep. I was ready to unwrap those presents at four in the morning but I was always told to go back to bed. I had to hang on until six. It was worth it. The tree had presents piled high around it. I tore at the presents like I was crazed. I think I opened everyone else’s also. I remember getting toy guns, cowboy and Indian ( with headpiece) suits and even a tepee for presents. Bush Santa was the greatest.

CHRISTMAS LUNCH. 1959

By the time Christmas lunch was ready the heat was intense. You didn’t want to go outside. I don’t know how my mother cooked a hot lunch during the hottest time of the year. As a result, she always looked a little tad stressed. It was tradition to have a hot English lunch. Dad always helped. He would bake and glaze a leg of ham, a tradition I still carry on. 

MUM LOOKS STRESSED.

So on a hot day we sat down for a hot English lunch of roast turkey, roast chicken and roast ham with lots of stuffing and vegetables for at least ten to twenty guests. So much that  there was always leftovers. Dessert was a plum pudding with custard and my mother’s triple with a heavy taste of sherry. They were the greatest Christmases and every year I still try to emulate them (minus the cattle station and the gumtree).

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. And I hope the weather isn’t too hot wherever you are. 

     

GRANDMA BELL'S PLUM PUDDING RECIPE.

GRANDMOTHER BELL. 1940'S.

85g/ 3oz light brown sugar,

115g/ 4oz  butter or margarine,

115g/ 4oz  maple or golden syrup.

115g/ 4oz sultanas,

 2 cups self raising flour,

 1 egg,

 ½ teaspoon bicarb soda dissolved in a little warm water,

½ cup chopped almonds,

2 tablespoons black coffee or coffee essence,

1 tablespoon brandy (if desired)

PLUM PUDDING.

Warm the butter, syrup, and coffee stirring until melted but not hot. Allow to cool. Add the beaten egg, sift in flour, then add sultanas, almonds, brandy, and lastly the soda. Beat quickly and thoroughly. Spoon the mix in to a greased pudding basin or pudding steamer, smooth the mixture gently with the back of a spoon. Cover with a double layer of greaseproof or baking paper, then a layer of aluminium foil and tie securely with string. Set over a saucepan of simmering water and steam the pudding for 2 and 1/2 hours, adding water to the pan if needed.