I was born at Casino, New South Wales, on 4^th June, l908. Mother later told me that it was a cold, frosty morning, but I don't remember anything about that. My father was William Edmund Rankin. He owned a dairy farm, called Dalburrabin, about three kilometres south of Casino, as the crow flies, or about five by road. My mother was Frances Maud, daughter of John and Adelaide Carr, of the neighbouring town of Lismore. John Carr and Dad had been boyhood friends at Palmer's Island, on the Clarence River. Mother was Dad's second wife and I was the first child of their union. Mother was 24 when I was born, and Dad was 52, a big age difference.

One year and six days later, my sister, Nadine, was born, on 10^th June, 1909.

I was a sickly baby, weighing less at six months than I had at birth. I gather that I was started on bottle feeding very early in life and promptly got sick. Mother thereupon rushed me into town, a very rough ride in a sulky, to see a doctor, and started me on a different baby formula, without giving me time to get used to the first. The second one made me just as sick and produced the same reaction from Mother, with the same result yet again, and so on. These frequent, hot and bumpy trips to town, and the frequent changes of food, were doing more harm than good and, by mid-summer, I was not far from death. Dad then intervened, laid in a stock of Allenbury's baby formula, and banned any further visits to the doctor. From then onwards, I steadily improved and am still alive to tell the tale, 80 years later. Thanks, Dad! Thanks, Allenbury's!

My earliest memory is of being held on someone's lap while being driven, in a sulky, over the second Irving Bridge, in Casino, and seeing the old bridge still standing, close by. In 1986, I saw, for the first time, a picture of the two bridges, side by side, and I was quite startled at how closely it fitted my memory. The new bridge was opened in 1908 and the old one pulled down in 1909, so I could only have been a yearling when I last saw it. I also remember two incidents which occurred on the farm, and which my older sisters have confirmed happened when I was two years old. Curiously, I have no recollection of seeing Halley's Comet during its 1910 visit, although my older sisters have told me that they showed it to me on many nights, and that I talked about it for months afterwards.

I have no recollection of Mother before I was about four years old. She left home some time after Nadine was born, probably in 1911, leaving Nadine and me to be raised and cared for by Dad and the younger members of his first family. She came and went several times in the course of our childhood. Sometimes we went with her, and sometimes she left us at Dalburrabin. I don't know why she left each time, or where she went on those occasions when she left us behind, but I know she always remained in touch with Dad.

There were nine children of Dad's first marriage; but, when Nadine and I were babies, only three of these were still living at home. They were Frederick, Emma and Kathleen, the older ones having all embarked on their own adult lives. Although technically they were our half brothers and sisters, there was never any thought of the "half" relationships on their parts then, or by any of us, later. Happily, we were all just brothers and sisters. Dad was always the loving father; from Emma and Kathleen, later always known as Brownie and Kit, we received such loving care and upbringing that we never really missed our mother when she went away, nor felt deprived by her absences. Fred was always the caring and affectionate big brother.

My memories of Mother begin in 1912, when she was running the "Owassa" boarding house, in Keen Street, Lismore, and Nadine and I were living with her. One hot Sunday morning, Nadine and I were enjoying a cold bath, when we heard singing in the Presbyterian Church next door, and went to investigate. Clad only in a few soap bubbles, we casually strolled right up the centre aisle, and stopped the service.

Back on the farm about a year later, with almost boundless freedom, we got up to a lot of mischief. We had two cats, Black Tom and Grey Tom. One day, we decided Black Tom needed a bath, so we dunked him thoroughly in the bath tub and let him go. This elicited a severe scolding and a promise of punishment if we ever did it again. Inevitably, we did it again, one afternoon, while the family were all up at the dairy for the afternoon milking. No sooner had we done it than the promise of punishment became uppermost in our minds. We decided that our salvation must be to hide the cat until he dried out, so we took the wretched animal and dropped him down inside the back of the upright piano in the drawing room.

On another occasion, we went, as we often did, to gather the eggs while the grown-ups were at the afternoon milking. This time, however, we thought it would be fun to experiment with different ways of breaking eggs. We threw them up in the air and watched with glee the way they almost exploded on hitting the ground. We laid them on the ground and bashed them with sticks. We threw them at trees. We climbed onto the roof of a pig shelter, cracked the eggs, emptied the unbroken yolks and whites into the corrugations of the steel roof and watched with fascination as they slid slowly downwards and plopped into the pig pen where they were quickly gobbled up. In short, we had a whale of a time; but discovery was inevitable, as we had smashed the whole lot and so had none to take into the house. Dad, following his usual practice, gave us a severe talking to for a first offence, and promised us punishment if we ever did it again. We did it again, next day, devising even more pleasurable ways of smashing eggs, and Dad duly inflicted the promised punishment with a hamper strap, on our bare legs.

Our two cats were great hunters of mice, rats and snakes; but, one day, Black Tom was bitten by a black snake, and died. Dad buried him at the foot of a big, healthy bloodwood tree. From that day, the tree began visibly to die, and was completely dead in a few months.

Quite early in this period, Kit and Brownie began to stimulate our interest in reading, by reading stories to us after putting us to bed, and beginning to teach us the alphabet and spelling, with the aid of the usual picture books. Later in the same period, Aunt Nan Carr, Mother's sister, came to the farm and acted as our governess, starting us on regular daily lessons. By the end of 1914, I was able to read books meant for children several years older than I was. I was well grounded in elementary arithmetic, and knew the multiplication tables up to twelve times.

By Christmas, 1914, we were living in tents on Clark's Picnic Ground, Byron Bay. After Christmas, Dad returned to the farm, while Mother, Nadine and I remained at Byron Bay. Very early in 1915, Nadine developed measles. Hoping to get it over for both of us, mother put me to sleep with Nadine. No luck; I got my measles over two years later! A little later in the year, we moved into a fenced, three tent compound on the picnic ground and I started school from there, after my 7^th birthday. Thanks to Aunt Nan's good teaching, I was quickly promoted to third grade, and had no difficulty in holding my own at that level. I learnt to swim while we were living at the picnic ground, simply by starting to paddle whenever a wave lifted me off my feet while playing in the surf. Later in that year, we moved to an old house on the edge of a swamp, on the west side of the town, but only stayed there a few months.

By early 1916, we were back in Casino, living with Mother in town, while Dad was still on the farm. When I was enrolled at the Casino school, I was put right back to first grade, where I spent a few weeks mostly weaving pretty paper mats, before being promoted to second grade for the remainder of the year. Between then and September, 1917, we moved twice more, but only to new addresses in the town.

One day, I began to develop a sore throat during the morning school session. I reported this to my teacher, who diagnosed mumps, and told me to go home. As I emerged from the class room, I met Nadine, who had had exactly the same experience, and was also on the way home. Mother decided we should have our mumps on the farm and sent us out there "for the duration". We both had pretty severe infections. Dad, who had never had mumps, did not realise how painful they could be and thought we were being coddled a bit excessively, until he caught them from us. He was almost 62 years old, at the time, and had a very bad time with them, poor man.

A little later in the same year, when I was just nine years old, Mother sent me to one of our two local dentists, a Mr Thomas, for a dental check. Before I relate what befell me, I must tell you a little bit about the history of dentistry in New South Wales. Until about 1915, anyone could practice dentistry, as no special training or qualifications were necessary. Many people, in all sorts of occupations, practiced dentistry as a side line. I think it was in 1915 that legislation was passed bringing the profession under control. Proper qualifications and registration then became requirements. However, those people who were already practising dentistry were allowed to continue to do so, but had to make it their sole occupation. Mr Thomas, who had been the town's chemist, with dentistry as a side line, elected to become a full time dentist and had set up as such, not long before I went to see him.

After looking in my mouth, Mr Thomas said I needed a filling in one double tooth and he started on the excavation with chisel and foot-operated drill. After a while, he put a temporary dressing in the hole and told me to come back again in a few day's time. This procedure was repeated twice a week for two or three weeks, with each session becoming more and more painful as the hole grew wider and deeper. There was no thought of using any local anaesthetic.

Eventually, when the pulp of the tooth was completely exposed, Thomas picked up a barbed needle and, without any warning, plunged it directly into the living nerve and pulled it out. The pain and the shock were quite indescribable and my terrified screams were heard out in the main street. In another couple of visits, he was able to further excavate the now nerveless tooth until there was nothing left but the enamel shell. He then decided it was beyond repair and pulled it out, again without warning or local anaesthetic. When I screamed, he slapped my face and told me to be quiet, or he would pull another tooth!

In September, 1917, sister Kathleen married Charles Marston. Emma had gone to Sydney to train as a nurse, and Fred had gone to live on the selection which he had won in 1915. Dad leased Dalburrabin to Charles for three years and we all went to live in Brisbane. Nadine and I were put into boarding schools and Dad went to live in a boarding house. Mother went to live somewhere else in Brisbane and became heavily involved in a conscription campaign.

When school broke up for the 1917 Christmas holidays, I went to stay with Mother, in the Red Hill area, an inner suburb of Brisbane. On the morning of 18^th December, I was standing on a road, watching a steam roller at work, when I was hit from behind by a motor car, the driver of which was drunk. The steam roller, the car and I, were the only things in a wide road. I did not hear the car coming, but something made me look around at the last moment, and that undoubtedly saved my life. I jumped instantly, putting one hand on the mudguard of the car as I did so, and almost got clear. However, my right leg was run over by both wheels on that side of the car, and both bones were very badly broken between knee and ankle. I was sent spinning by the impact and finished up sitting in the roadway, looking at a very badly bent leg, with a large splinter of bone almost bursting through the skin. Curiously, although I still have a clear memory of starting to jump, and of how I finished up, I have absolutely no memory of the actual impact or of my actual movement to where I came to rest.

The driver of the car made no attempt to stop, but was compelled to do so by the driver of the steam roller, who had seen what happened and steered the roller in front of the car. The driver then reversed back to where I was sitting and, without getting out of the car, asked, "What have I done?". "You broke my leg", I wailed; and with that, he just drove off and left me sitting there.

Some kind person from a nearby shop picked me up gently and carried me to the footpath. The ambulance was called and I was whisked off to the Children's Hospital, picking up Dad at his lodging on the way. At the hospital, Doctor Rivett, a lady, so skilfully set and treated the damaged leg that it recovered completely and has never caused a moment's trouble since.

I was in hospital for almost eight weeks. Mother visited occasionally, but I don't think Dad ever missed a visiting time. He used to bring me books from the Brisbane School of Arts library and one of these was almost certainly instrumental in shaping my future life. It was a story, written by Edward S. Ellis, about two American teenaged youths and their adventures in an early type of aeroplane, which one of them owned. The story included an accurate description of the control system of the aeroplane, so that I was able to understand how it worked, and I was able to identify with the pilot.

After coming out of hospital, I lived with Dad for a time, often going with him to the Brisbane School of Arts, where he used to play chess daily. He taught me to play during this period.

About May (1918), Mother took me to the Darling Downs for two or three months. We spent most of the time in Toowoomba, but had one fortnight on Mount View Station, near Bell, where I had another lucky escape from what could easily have been very serious injury. I was out riding with a grown up daughter of our host, when my horse bolted. The saddle girth must have been loose, for the saddle started to roll. I stuck to it until it was well down the horse's side, but was eventually pulled from it when my head was bashed against the butt of a tree, and I was knocked out. Fortunately, no serious damage was done.

I returned to boarding school in August and remained there until the end of the school year. I was sick in bed when the Great War ended, but was given a hand bell to ring in celebration when the armistice was announced. That was at 9pm, Eastern Australian time, on 11^th November, 1918.

We all returned to Casino at the end of 1918. Dad and I went to live in the Holwood boarding house; Nadine was boarded with a Mrs Ryan, and Mother disappeared to New Zealand for a whole year. There, she took a very active part in a successful campaign for the closing of New Zealand's hotel bars at 6pm.

Nadine and I went back to school at the Casino primary school at the beginning of 1919. I went into the 5^th grade and got accelerated promotion to 6^th towards the end of the year.

During this year, Dad bought me my first bike. One day, in November, I rode it out to Dalburrabin, to visit sister Kathleen. I left it at the "front gate", and walked the l,500 metres across the paddock to the house. A storm began to develop during the afternoon and I decided to get back into town as quickly as possible. As the storm approached, I could see the green tinge in the cloud, which often presaged hail. In the southern outskirts of the town, I was blown off the bike by a sudden, fierce blast of wind. I could not mount again, because of the wind strength, so just picked up the bike and began running with it, being blown along the street almost helplessly, just looking for any open gateway into which I could turn and get into shelter behind a house. I was unable to stop running to open any closed gate. Rain began to fall, mixed with a few marble sized hailstones, which really hurt when they hit me. After a few minutes, I found an open gate, turned into the yard and ducked behind the house. As I turned the corner into its shelter, the world was blotted out by a tremendous storm of hail. Driven by a hurricane force wind, the hail cut visibility to a few metres. Steel roofs and water tanks were badly dented, and sometimes punctured; hundreds of windows were broken; all trees and shrubs were completely stripped of the foliage, and the ground was left covered in a white carpet of hailstones, most of which were the size of golf balls, or bigger. There is no doubt in my mind that, had I been even one second later in reaching shelter, I would have been knocked unconscious, and quite likely beaten to death, by the hail.

In lighter vein, Nadine and I were spending a few days at Dalburrabin with sister Kathleen and her husband, when we decided to go on a mouse hunt in the barn. At one stage of the hunt, I uncovered a mouse, which dashed across the barn, hotly pursued by Nadine. The mouse disappeared into the top of a newly opened bag of chaff, with Nadine only inches behind. She grabbed the top of the bag with both hands and felt what she thought was a whole nest of mice inside. Quick as a flash, she shot one hand inside the bag and hauled out a two metre carpet snake, firmly grasped by the throat!

Mother returned from New Zealand about the end of the year and we went to live in Hartley Street, South Casino, soon afterwards. We had a big house and about a hectare of ground. Mother rented part of the house to a married couple. This was the beginning of a very unpleasant period for us children. Mother began to show signs of the violence and irrational behaviour which eventually destroyed her. She also began to try to turn us against Dad, and was partly successful for a time.

At school, now in 6^th class, I came under the influence of Mr Strang, one of the truly great teachers. I think he left his mark on every child who ever passed through his classes. Apart from teaching us our normal school subjects, he ran the school garden with us pupils as his labour force, really teaching us gardening in the process. He ran the school junior cadets, giving us boys a thorough grounding in elementary military drill. We had a 25 yard rifle range in the school horse paddock. (Some children were still riding horses to school at that time). Mr Strang obtained two Martini action rifles and ammunition from somewhere and taught us all to shoot, and the safe handling of fire arms. He encouraged swimming for the whole school by organising a system of swimming for distance and life saving certificates. Last, but not least, he taught each successive 6^th class part singing and, with the addition of a few adult voices from the secondary section students, turned it into a choir which was always a joy to listen to, often thrillingly so.

Some time in 1920, Casino received its very first visit by an aeroplane, an Avro 504 with a rotary engine. As may be imagined, the visit created enormous interest. All pupils at the school were encouraged to go and see it, and we were also asked to write essays about aeroplanes. To the surprise of everybody, I was able to describe how an aeroplane was controlled in the air, and my essay was read out to the school. The pilot was selling joy rides and that was where and when I had my first flight.

Also in 1920, I paid my first visit to Sydney, as a member of a Boy Scout contingent going to greet the Prince of Wales. We had to go by road to Tenterfield, a distance of 135km, and thence by train. A lorry was hired and fitted with seats, and away we went, about eight o'clock one bright morning. The road was not at all bad, but the same cannot be said of the lorry. We had to get out and push it up the steeper hills. We stopped for lunch at Tabulam, about half way to Tenterfield and limped into that town in the late afternoon, still in good time to catch the train, having averaged about l6km per hour for the journey. Other memories of that expedition are of a cold, sleepless night in the train, of seeing the docks at Newcastle lined with big sailing ships next morning, of sleeping straight through for l4 hours after arrival in Sydney, of spending most of the rest of the visit in the camp's sick bay, and of fending off attempted sexual molestation by the scout master in charge of the sick bay. I never did get to see the Prince of Wales.

The end of 1920 saw the end of my primary schooling. Towards the end of the school year, I sat for, and passed, the examination for what was called the Qualifying Certificate, which qualified one for entry to a high school. A mild dispute then arose about my further education.

My first half year of secondary education was largely wasted. I spent it in the First Year class in the secondary section of the Casino school. That section consisted of a single room which housed the First, Second and Third Year classes. Adequate teaching of these classes was quite impossible and I learnt very little in that time. All through my primary schooling, I had always been at or near the top of my classes. Because of the wasted half year at Casino, when I eventually started at high school in Lismore, I was so far behind the other students that I went straight to the bottom of my class. Except in English and Geography, I remained about there for the whole of my time at high school, but I did get passes in all subjects taken at the Intermediate Examination at the close of Third year, or Year 10 as it is now called, which was the end of my formal education.

With the exception of one first year class, all classes at Lismore High School were mixed, roughly half girls and half boys. It was not until the beginning of second year that I really settled down. At that time, there was a complete regrouping of the students coming up from first year classes, and I found myself in class 2a.

In our new classroom, girls occupied one side of the room and boys the other. Within the appropriate half of the room, we chose our own desks. I chose one in the back row. Two desks away, on my left, was a pretty girl, with long, fair curls and steadfast, hazel eyes. I soon began to feel increasingly attracted to her, and she is sitting beside me as I pen these lines, 66 years later, still the very centre of my life. She was Dorrie Woodland, who lived in Bangalow, about 30 kilometres from Lismore, and came to school by train, each day. In due course, we shyly became acquainted and developed a friendship, which grew and strengthened during that and the following year, in which we continued to be classmates.

There was nothing in the nature of a "crush" about this friendship, nor did it have any sexual undertones. For Dorrie, it was simply a nice, normal friendship with a boy of her own age, who obviously liked her. My feelings were, perhaps, best illustrated by something which happened towards the end of that first year of our acquaintance. I learnt that Dorrie had been hurt (not physically) and disappointed by a certain event, and this had caused her to cry. I was immediately overwhelmed by a longing to take her in my arms, comfort her, and protect her from all hurt, then and in the future. That feeling never again left me.

We were always very short of money while we were in Lismore. To help out, I managed to establish a small vegetable garden in our back yard. The paspalum covered black soil was terribly heavy to break up and work and I had to carry many bags of sand from the river, about 400 metres away, to mix with it, before it was friable enough for gardening. I also found occasional paying jobs, which enabled me to save enough to buy a good second hand bike, on which I explored widely within a radius of about 80 kilometres around Lismore.

In the final year at high school, I again came under the influence of a great teacher who, like Mr Strang in Casino, left an indelible mark on me. He was "The Boss", Mr R.F. Harvey, the school principal. He taught our class French and English. He had the gift of making us want to learn. He also had the gift of making us all feel that we were responsible young people, and of inspiring us to behave with decency and honour in all our activities.

By the second half of 1923, it became apparent that I would not be able to stay at school beyond the end of the year. Mother took me to Sydney during the September school holidays. I am not sure why she did so; but, whilst there, I did go to see the manager of an engineering firm, and also a Mr Shakespeare, who was head of the NSW Country Press Association. Both treated me very kindly and questioned me as if I were a candidate for an apprenticeship. I suppose, therefore, that Mother was trying to arrange my entry into some kind of occupation with good career prospects. However, as later events showed, she was also planning to move Nadine and me right away from Dad's influence and control.

While we were in Sydney, Mother arranged an appointment for me with a doctor who, she said, was a psychiatrist. I have no idea why she did that: she simply told me to go and see him. I did so and, after asking a very few, apparently quite pointless, questions, he told me to lie down on the examination couch. He then unbuttoned the fly of my trousers, drew out my penis, slid back the foreskin and said, "You won't grow any more". And that was the end of that very peculiar "psychiatric" examination! (For the record, I grew another 14 centimetres in the next three years).

Towards the end of the last term at school, Mother announced that, as soon as the Intermediate Certificate examinations were over, I would be going to Richmond, NSW, where I would be employed by the brothers Bill and Jack Shakespeare, who had recently taken over the local Hawkesbury Herald newspaper and printery. I would be paid 30 shillings ($3) a week, which was double an apprentice's wage, and I would be thoroughly trained both as a printer and as a journalist.

Dorrie and another classmate, Gwen McRae, came to stay in Lismore for the duration of the final school examinations. They stayed with one of our neighbours, whose back yard was separated from ours only by a fence in which there was a gap wide enough for us to pass through. This was a particularly happy interlude for us. We both have happy memories of evenings spent with Nadine and Gwen on rugs spread on the grass, under early summer evening skies, sometimes rehearsing and coaching one another in impending examination subjects; sometimes just talking and laughing together, happily getting to know each other better.

Dorrie was a very talented young violinist, who had won many prizes at Eisteddfods from Drummoyne, in Sydney, to Toowoomba, in Queensland. After completing third year high school, she was to go to a convent in Parramatta for two years, to continue her musical studies. From there, she won a year's scholarship to the Conservatorium of Music in Sydney. At the Conservatorium, she won a three year's scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London. But that is anticipating a little.

Just before I left Lismore, I asked Dorrie if we could keep in touch by letter. She told me that, while she was in the convent, she would be able to receive letters from anyone, but would only be allowed to write to members of her own family. We said goodbye to each other one afternoon, on the train which was taking her home from school, and me to Byron Bay to catch the boat to Sydney, en route to Richmond.

The job with the Shakespeare brothers was very interesting and enjoyable. If Mother had not intervened, and in doing so changed the whole course of my life, I might have been with them when, only two or three years later, they moved to Canberra and founded the Canberra Times. My life might then have been spent in the newspaper world. As it was, I left them after only about six or seven months.

Mother and Nadine came to Richmond early in January, 1924. The three of us went to live in a large, unfurnished brick house right in the centre of the town. For some time, life went along fairly normally. I contributed half of my pay to the household budget, and that covered the rental of the house. I opened a savings account, joined the Navy League Sea Cadets, became their yeoman of signals, rowed bow oar in the cutter, explored the country on my bike and, in general, behaved much like any normal teenager of the period. Then, one day, Mother calmly told me that, in future, I was to give all my pay to her. In return, she would keep me in clothes and food and give me a shilling (ten cents) each week to go to the local cinema. I told her I would not do this, but I would increase my contribution to 17 shillings and sixpence ($1.75), which would cover rates as well as rent, and that I would buy all my own clothes and anything else which I might need. Mother simply repeated her order, confident that I would not dare to disobey her, and I again refused. It was a nasty, angry episode.

I brooded over this and decided on a course of action intended to assert my rights and independence. On the next pay day, I banked all of my pay, told Mother what I had done, and why. I also told her that, next week, I would give her all of my pay, after which I would regularly give her the increased amount which I had offered.

Her answer to that was that I was a minor and she would arrange to have my wages paid directly to her in future. Of course, there was no law which entitled her to do that. Then, as now, the law said that wages must be paid directly to the wage earner. Nevertheless, Mother somehow succeeded in convincing the Shakespeares that she was entitled to draw my wages. When next pay day came around, there was nothing for me. Bill told me that he had had to hand over all my pay to Mother and would have to continue to do so in the future. I immediately told Bill that he had a month in which to find a replacement for me, if he wanted one. It was only because he and Jack had been so good to me that I did not leave the job then and there. I went home and told Mother what I had done. Her response showed clearly that she did not believe I was serious in my intentions.

About this time, Nadine was also in some kind of strife with Mother, who was becoming increasingly violent and domineering. On one occasion, she attacked me in my room with a long paling for some alleged misdemeanour. I had to disarm her, broke the stick over my knee, and told her never to try that again. She then tried to starve us into submission by refusing to buy food or cook meals for us. Fortunately, there was some tinned food and dry staples in the house at the time. Nadine and I hid those where Mother never found them, and we lived on those while that crisis lasted.

I left my job on the promised date. I soon got another, in Arnott's biscuit factory at Homebush, a Sydney suburb. It lasted only one day. I was put to work in the tin room, bashing returned, damaged biscuit tins into proper shape for re-use. I was only one of a dozen boys doing this, and there was much other activity going on in the same huge room. Presses were busily stamping out and folding new tins; solderers were busily soldering up their seams; great numbers of tins were being put through washing machines; and, all the time, large numbers of tins were being loaded onto, and unloaded from, trollies, as they were moved about the room from one work station to another. The noise level in the room was positively dangerous. I did not realise how dangerous until I was at the railway station, waiting for my train home at the end of the day. There, I saw an electric train pull into my platform, stop, and move out again, and I never heard a sound. I did not go back next day, even to collect my day's pay.

My next move was to scour the countryside around Richmond on my bike, looking for any kind of work. After a while, I found casual piece work at Kurrajong, picking peas. It was back-breaking work, and I was very slow, at first. However, by the fourth day, I was holding my own with the other pickers and earning a pound ($2.00) a day. That evening, as I was getting into uniform for the weekly Navy League meeting, Mother returned from a trip to Sydney and abruptly informed me that she had found a job for me with a farmer at Wellington, a town about 400 km north west of Sydney. I would be treated as one of the family, and I was to leave next day. I just said, "OK" and went off to the Navy League meeting.

I left late next afternoon and travelled by overnight train, arriving at Wellington early on the following morning, a Saturday. It was the middle of winter, and bitterly cold as we crossed over the Blue Mountains during the night. The carriages were unheated. I was wearing my warmest clothing, but that consisted only of a light suit, light cotton underwear and shirt. I had no sweater, rug or overcoat, and I really suffered.

On arrival at Wellington, there was no one to meet me. I made inquiries and found that my prospective boss lived about 27 km out of town, but was on the phone. I rang him and was told that I had not been expected. However, he told me to go to a certain hotel, have a meal, and he would come and get me. He arrived a few hours later and we drove out to his farm in a handsome trap, drawn by a find chestnut mare.

On arrival, I saw a very nice looking brick house and felt sure I was at least going to be warm and comfortable in it. We unharnessed the mare and put the trap away in the big wagon shed. I picked up my bag, expecting to go down to the house and get out of the cold. Instead, the boss showed me to a room in one corner of the wagon shed. It had two unlined external walls made of rough cypress pine poles which offered absolutely no protection from the bitterly cold south westerly wind. The two interior walls were just loose slabs separating the room from the wagon shed and a horse box. The floor was the natural earth of the hillside on which the shed was built, including its natural slope. The furniture was a hurricane lantern and two wire spring stretchers, with mattresses and pillows, but not bedclothes. I was supposed to have brought blankets with me, but had not been told so. The boss got me a couple of blankets from the house, and a horse rug, told me to come down to the house for the evening meal, and left me to settle in. In this way, I learnt the different meanings of the term, "treated as one of the family", as applied to employees on coastal dairy farms, where I had been raised, and on the farms west of the Great Dividing Range. On the coast, it meant exactly what it said: west of the divide, it meant only, "eat with the family". The boss was not a cruel man, nor was there any intentional harshness in the treatment I received; it was simply the custom in that part of the country, but that did not lessen the shock for me.

For the first few weeks, the work consisted of clearing paddocks of loose surface stones; hard, cold work. In my light town clothes, I suffered badly. At the hut, as my quarters were called, I made a bucket and a wash basin out of four gallon kerosine cans. The wash basin had to double as bath tub and wash tub. I had to wash and bathe in cold water, always exposed to whatever winds were blowing, and standing on a few loose boards to keep my feet out of the mud caused by the splashing of the water. Eventually, I built a rough fire place of loose stones outside the hut and was able to heat water for bathing and washing clothes, but I was never able to escape the wind. On Sundays, I sometimes lay in bed, fully clothed and gloved, and tried to write letters.

Never since have I felt as terribly cold as I did during those first few weeks. However, it was not long before I got over feeling sorry for myself and began to feel some pride in the discovery that I was a lot tougher than I had ever imagined. That is a very good thing for any young man to discover about himself. I began to like the work and the crisp, dry air, even while I still suffered from the cold, which was largely due to wind chill.

After about three and a half weeks, I was called to the telephone, one afternoon, and a telegram from Nadine was read out to me. It said, in effect, that Mother had had a heart attack, was seriously ill, and I was to come home at once. The first train which I could catch left Wellington at eight o'clock next morning. The boss paid me the wages owing to me, which amounted to little more than enough for a one way ticket to Richmond. He lent me a saddle horse which I was to stable in Wellington and he would collect next time he went to town.

Leaving about four o'clock on a very frosty morning, I rode the 27km to Wellington, caught the train and arrived in Richmond early that evening. There, I found that Mother was not ill, at all. It transpired that she had got me the job at Wellington hoping that it would "teach me a lesson". She thought that I soon would have suffered enough to be glad of any face-saving excuse to return home and place myself under her control again. When she thought that time had come, she had thrown a very realistic mock heart attack and told Nadine to send the telegram.

I was very angry when I learnt of this trickery. I demanded, and was reluctantly given, enough money for my rail fare back to Wellington, and left Richmond only forty minutes after arriving, in the same train which had brought me in. I was back in Wellington next morning, less than 24 hours after I had left it.

That was my personal declaration of independence. I was out on my own, prepared to stand on my own feet and assume full responsibility for the conduct of my life. I was 16 years old.

My boss was named Dan Gollan. For ease of writing, I shall simply call him Dan, although I always called him Mr Gollan while I worked for him. He owned a farm of about 1,000 hectares of which about 300 ha. was arable, and the rest suitable only for grazing. He ran about 500 sheep and a number of horses on the property and grew mostly wheat, with some oats, on the arable land. He was aged about 40, married, and had two young children. The horses were used for transportation and all cultivation work. There was no electricity or gas available outside of the towns, in those days, so cooking was done on wood-burning stoves, and lighting was by kerosine (paraffin) lamps. Hot water systems were almost unknown; one just heated water on the stove, or in a separate copper boiler, as it was required. Domestic water supply was usually from rain water tanks in which was stored the run off from the roofs of the house and other buildings.

When I got back to Wellington after the bogus recall to Richmond, I found that Dan had already collected the horse which I had ridden into town the day before, so I rang him to ask for transportation out to the farm. He was astonished to learn that I had returned and told me he had not expected to see me again. He had seen how I had been suffering during the previous weeks and thought that I had arranged for Nadine's telegram to be sent as a face-saving excuse for returning home. He then told me to go to one of the stores in the town, buy myself the warm work clothes and boots I so badly needed, and charge them to him. He would, of course, deduct the cost from my wages in due course. I was also to have breakfast and lunch at the usual hotel at his expense, and wait there while he arranged for a neighbour, who was known to be in town, to pick me up.

The next few months were full of interest and challenge, and I enjoyed them immensely. I learnt a lot and acquired many new skills. I made friends with the local school master, who lived only a few hundred metres away. He lent me many good books from the tiny school's library. I bought a beautiful little .22 calibre rifle, new, for $3.00. I spent many an enjoyable Sunday afternoon hunting rabbits, armed with the rifle and an axe and accompanied by the school master's two young sons and their fox terrier. The rabbits were a pest and we sometimes killed as many as 30 in an afternoon. The boys used to dry and sell the skins for pocket money.

During this period, I soon noticed that Dan had a tendency to bullying. It showed up in the way in which he criticised his wife's tea-making. He was incredibly finicky about his tea. It had to be made strictly in accordance with a number of rules which, according to him, were absolutely necessary for the making of a drinkable beverage. At nearly every meal he accused his poor wife of having done something wrong, as a result of which the tea was horrible. He genuinely believed that he could detect, by taste, the slightest "error" in the tea-making process. Much later in the year, and without his knowledge, I proved how wrong he was and the discovery gave me a certain amount of sly amusement.

One day in the harvest time, Mrs Gollan was away from home and I had to make the tea for the lunch time break. Knowing how finicky Dan was, and not being a tea drinker myself, I asked for, and got, very explicit instructions. I was to put the required amount of tea and sugar into the urn in which the tea would be made, while the water was coming to the boil on the stove. The moment it boiled, I was to pour a specified amount into the urn, let it draw for X minutes, and then add a prescribed amount of milk. Back at the house, I got a bit muddled. I put the tea, sugar and the milk all into the urn together and let them soak for the ten minutes or so which it took the water to boil. Because of the presence of the cold milk, the tea was never subjected to the full temperature of boiling water when I poured it in. I realised my mistake at that moment, but there was not time to make another lot, so I just took it out to the field and hoped for the best. I waited for the explosion as Dan took his first sip, but nothing happened. At the end of the meal, during which he drank two mugs of the tea, I casually asked if the tea had been all right. "Yes, it was very good", was his reply!

On another occasion, I was sent to boil the billy in the fire box of a steam traction engine. I had strict instructions to wait until the water boiled, then to throw in a handful of tea. Instead, I threw in the tea when the water started to simmer around the edges and had to wait at least another five minutes before the water really boiled; meanwhile, the tea just stewed. I did not tell Dan what had happened. In response to my inquiry at the end of the meal, he again assured me that the tea had been "just right".

In the lead up to the harvest, I had to get to know all of the horses, about 24 in number, which would be used in that operation. They would be used in teams of six to draw the header. Teams were changed twice a day, so that three teams were required each day. As far as possible, the same horses were kept together in each team. There were about two dozen sets of harness, consisting of winkers and collars with hames, all looking much alike. Because of variations in the sizes of the horses' heads and necks, and in the sizes of the collars and winkers, it was not possible to allot a set of harness to each horse, nor even to keep the winkers and collars together in sets. I had to be able to recognise every piece of harness and to know just which pieces to put on each horse. The combinations were endless.

The harvest was the culmination of a whole year's work. From it came almost all of the farmer's income. Throughout the harvesting period, the crop was always under threat of destruction by hailstorms and bush fires, and many a crop was lost from those causes. Once the harvest began, therefore, work had to be carefully organised to get the most out of every day, although Sunday was still a day of rest. With everyone working about 16 hours a day, tempers sometimes became frayed.

My job was to manage the horses and get the teams out to the header, wherever it was, at the times specified by Dan. This meant yarding the horses, catching and harnessing the required team, and then leading it out to the work place, often a mile or more from the yard, arriving not later than the specified times. I had to do this three times a day, lead back the "used" team, unharness and feed it. I also had to carry out the tea and food for the morning, lunch and afternoon breaks. All of this was done on horseback or in a trap. In between these fixed tasks, there were always other jobs to be done and I did whatever I had time for.

One day, when Dan was working in a paddock alongside the yard, I got the second team of the day ready a bit early, left it standing in the yard, and went off to do another necessary job. I got back to the yard ten minutes before the time for the change of team to find Dan just completing the change over. He was in a great rage, swore at me and accused me, in very abusive terms, of being late, and of loafing. He kept this up, even after I had told him what I had gone to do, and that I had returned ten minutes before the time he himself had set for the change of teams.

From then on, things went from bad to worse. I was bullied and abused unmercifully every day, entirely without justification. I stood it for a few days and then, after the lunch break one day, I quietly told Dan I would be leaving a week hence. I did not say why. He replied simply "OK. When you get back to the house, tell the Missus to ring up the labour exchange and get them to send someone out", which I did. I knew, of course, and so did Dan, that my departure would disrupt the harvest work. It was unlikely that he would be able to get anyone at that time and, even if he could, no replacement could possibly learn my job without a lengthy handing over period.

There was no more abuse after that, but no friendliness, either. Three days later, when no replacement had arrived, Dan casually asked did I still intend to leave at the end of the week. I replied, just as casually, that I did. After another two days, still with no replacement in sight, Dan again asked if I intended to leave at the end of the week, now only two days away. I again confirmed my intention. With that, Dan said that he was well satisfied with my work and he did not want me to leave. If I would stay on until the end of the harvest, he would give me a bonus of five pounds ($10.00). That would have the effect of doubling my pay for the remainder of the harvest. I then told him that the only reason I had given him notice was his abusive treatment of me, which I would not tolerate any longer. If he would promise to stop that and treat me properly in future, I would stay on. He promised and I stayed. From then on Dan treated me much more as a grown up and we soon developed a real friendship.

One Sunday afternoon, not long after the events narrated above, I was down at the yard, sorting out next morning's team, when I saw a storm approaching from the west and not very far away. A great bulging curtain of red dust was apparently being sucked up from the ground to the leading edge of the cloud. I had never seen anything like it; it looked very frightening. I turned the horses loose, then fled up the hill to rescue the washing, which was hanging on a line outside the hut. I quickly gathered it in, threw it on my bunk, then paused to see what the storm was doing. From the door of my room, which faced north, I could see that it had veered away up a side valley and was no longer a threat; but it was a magnificent sight. While I was admiring this spectacle, the roof of my room and a large part of the wagon shed was suddenly ripped off by a fierce blast of wind, and went floating away down the hillside. Another storm had developed very quickly and struck from the south, with hurricane force wind, torrential rain and much hail. I pushed aside a loose slab and scrambled into the wagon shed, where I clung to one of the main supporting posts, to avoid being blown away. I was instantly drenched by icy rain and battered by hailstones about a centimetre in diameter until the storm passed, about twenty minutes later. As I clung there, shivering and not thinking at all clearly, I was fondly imagining the pleasure of changing into the dry, sun-warmed clothes which I had left on the bunk. When I eventually did get back to the room, they were, of course, saturated, buried under a thirty centimetre pile of ice on an equally saturated bed.

That storm did a tremendous amount of damage. Dan still had about 40 ha. of wheat to be harvested when it struck. When it had passed, there was just bare red soil where the crop had stood. The wind had blown the crop flat, the hail had chopped it to chaff, and the torrential rain had washed every vestige of it away. The same had happened to the stubble where the crop had been stripped. The wind and hail had stripped the leaves from all trees in its path, leaving the country looking rather like an English winter landscape. All grass was chopped off to the roots by the hail and washed away by the rain. Flood waters rushing down every valley, carrying vast amounts of chaff, straw and leaves, flattened miles of fences, often leaving them deeply buried in the mud. Cattle, sheep and horses drifting before the storm travelled for miles through the gaps, becoming hopelessly mixed with the stock from many other farms. It took many days to trace them, sort them out and get them back to their respective owners. That was the end of the harvest, but I was now needed to help with the urgent work of clearing up the storm damage. Stock were traced and recovered, and temporary repairs were made to some fences, where absolutely necessary; the others could wait.

The wheat had been put into bags as it was harvested and those bags had been stacked, in various places in the paddocks, on cypress pine poles laid flat on the ground, to await cartage to railhead after the harvest. This was done to keep the bags off the ground and free from the attacks of white ants, which will not even crawl over cypress pine. These stacks now had to be checked for damage. Some bags, and some of the wheat in them, had received storm and rain damage. Some of the cypress pine poles had sunk into the rain-softened ground, allowing some bags to touch the ground. White ants had quickly eaten holes in these bags, allowing wheat to spill out onto the ground, where some of it had germinated and was growing up through the grain above. Much of the wheat had to be rebagged and there was some loss of grain.

When that was done, the wheat had to be carted to Wellington, 27 km away. This was done on a 12 tonne wagon, drawn by eleven horses, making three round trips a week. The fence repairs were then completed, after which life on the farm returned to normal.

While the cleaning up work was going on, grass, weeds and a crop of self-sown wheat were all growing madly. When the wheat was about 30cm tall, a plague of locusts (we called them grasshoppers), which literally darkened the sky, descended on the place and ate it bare again in a few hours.

About this time, I saw a very convincing demonstration of water divining by a man who professed to be very sceptical of his own powers. Dan had selected a site for a new bore and had called in a contractor to sink it. Very hard rock was struck at about 12 metres, after which progress became very slow - about 30cm a day. After two or three days of this, the contractor told Dan, rather diffidently, that he thought there was a much better site not far away, in another paddock. He explained that he had gone exploring with a forked green stick and had found a place where the stick twisted downwards, very strongly. While he did not really believe in water divining, the stick really had acted as he had described, every time he walked over the place, which he had marked, and he thought it might be worth boring there.

The spot which he had marked was in one of the paddocks from which a crop of wheat had been stripped only a few weeks earlier. There was absolutely nothing about it to indicate the presence of water beneath it. The contractor agreed to a blindfold test. With his eyes securely covered and his green stick in his hands, Dan marched him around and about the area, every now and then directing him over the marked spot. Every time he did this, the stick twisted strongly downwards. It did not move at all anywhere else.

Dan asked the contractor if he had any idea of the depth at which the water might be found. He replied, "I wish I was as sure of winning a thousand pounds as I am that we will strike water at about 80 feet", which was very strange, since he did not even really believe in his divining powers. He could not explain his belief about the depth.

The drill was moved to the site, the bore went down easily, and water was found at 80 feet (about 25 metres), but the flow was disappointingly small. The contractor then said that, because of the strength with which his divining stick had twisted in his hands, he felt certain that there was a much bigger body of water only a few feet further down. Dan authorised further drilling. Only one metre further down, the drill broke into another body of water, which immediately rose about 20 metres in the bore, to within about six metres of the surface, and no amount of pumping was ever able to lower it.

It was soon time to start ploughing two of the fields which we had cleared of surface stone during the winter. I was put into one field with a five furrow stump-jump plough drawn by a team of ten horses harnessed in line abreast. Dan tackled the other field with a six furrow plough and a team of twelve horses, also in line abreast. My team, and the array of swingletrees linking it to the plough, was a very impressive sight from where I sat. Manoeuvering such a wide team around the corners called for some very careful driving to avoid having the horses on the inside of the turns stepping over their trace chains. I had never done any ploughing before this, nor driven more than one horse; but I managed to complete the job to Dan's satisfaction.

When that job was over, Dan told me he had no more work for me and would have to let me go. He gave me a good reference and advised me to stick out for more than a boy's wages when seeking another job.

I went off to Wellington to get some much-needed dental treatment, which took a fortnight. While I was there, Dan learnt that Tom Lewis, a neighbour, was looking for a ploughman, and recommended me. The job was to last only until the planned amount of ground had been ploughed. After asking me to promise that I would not leave before the job was finished, Tom took me on, paying me full man's wages. I forget exactly how much that was, but it would have been about two pounds ten shillings (five dollars) a week and keep.

I went to work as soon as the dental work was finished. My accommodation, this time, was inside a huge, completely weather-proof shed housing harness, stacks of seed wheat, chaff and other stock feed, and much else besides, including lots of mice. My "room" was a sort of alcove, partly surrounded by a stack of bagged chaff. The furniture consisted of a "dressing table" made by piling three light wooden packing cases on top of one another, and a spring stretcher in which the springs had collapsed. I made a mattress by sewing together two partly filled bags of chaff, mouth to mouth, and distributing the chaff in them in such a way as to smooth out the sags in the springs. I had a hurricane lantern to read by, and my own blankets. I was very comfortable. Once again, I found myself driving a ten horse team pulling a five furrow plough.

Whilst working for Dan Gollan, and again here, I was greatly struck by the advantages of using tractors instead of horses for farm work. With horses, hours of what should have been productive working time were lost every day by the chores of yarding, catching, harnessing, leading out to the work site, leading home again, unharnessing and feeding and, in the harvest time, changing teams. With a tractor, the only loss of productive time was the few minutes required for daily servicing and refuelling. Also, a tractor could be worked for 24 hours a day, if need be.

The advantages of this were brought out very clearly during the harvest. Tom Lewis had one of the very few tractors in the district at that time. Helped by his eldest daughter as relief driver, he was able to start stripping about sunrise and continue far into each night. He completed his harvesting well before the big hailstorm hit. On the other hand, Dan was restricted to a much shorter productive working day by the physical endurance of his horses and, as a result, lost one fifth of his crop in the hailstorm.

While I was working for Tom Lewis, I received a letter from Nadine telling me of a visit which she had had from Dad. Some of the things she wrote about him made me want to see him and get to know him again. When I finished the ploughing job, I returned to Casino for a time. It was the winter of 1925 and I had just turned 17.

Dad welcomed me back to Dalburrabin, which still felt very much like home to me. I had many happy memories of the childhood years spent there. Although I had not lived there since I was six years old, I had occasionally spent short periods there as I grew up, and everything about the farm was very, very familiar. I quickly found Dad to be the loving father I remembered from childhood days, and not at all as Mother had tried to make Nadine and me believe; and that made my return even happier.

Dad was nearing the end of his 70^th year and was running the farm with the help of his daughter Sophia Gray and her elder daughter, Evelyn, who was only a few weeks younger than I. Sophia (always known as Fie, in the family) had recently lost her husband. There were three younger children in her family, too young to help with the farm work. I, of course, joined in the work of the farm, at once. Dad was glad of the extra hand and paid me one pound ($2) a week, which was about the going rate for that part of the world, and was certainly all he could afford. Years before, in one of her fits of temper, Mother had vowed to ruin him financially and, by various methods, had largely succeeded in doing so.

Shortly after his 70^th birthday, Dad had a heart attack and was hospitalised for a time. When he returned to the farm, he ignored the medical advice he had been given, to avoid all strenuous activities, and was soon back in hospital with another heart attack. Thereafter, although he soon came out again, he remained an invalid, unable to do more than a few light chores about the place, and the running of the farm became my responsibility. I did the best I could, but was not very successful, as I simply did not have the necessary knowledge or experience.

With Dad out of action, we had to have another pair of hands to help with the milking. A lad was soon obtained through the migrant intake centre in Sydney.

He was a pleasant young Englishman, about my own age and newly arrived in Australia. His name was Bertie; at least, that is what we called him. He was a Londoner. He had once spent a short holiday in Cornwall, where he had seen a cow; and that was the total extent of his experience and knowledge of farming. However, he was cheerful, willing to work and learn, and we all liked him. One thing he never learned, though, was to ride a horse, despite our best efforts to teach him. True, he could sit on top of one while it ambled about the usually peaceful task of bringing in the milking herd; but, let the horse make any sudden, unexpected move and Bertie would fall off. As Bertie himself ruefully told us of one such event, "I was bringing in the cows when one broke away and ran off in another direction. The horse immediately took off after it at a gallop. Then the cow turned left, the horse turned left, and I went straight ahead"! Poor Bertie! He had many such "busters", but he was always able to laugh about them. We were all sorry to lose him when he had to go back to Sydney to be with his mother, just before Christmas.

We quickly got two more English immigrants to replace him, but they were very poor types. They were continuously suspicious that we were trying to fool or get at them in some unexplained way; they eventually walked off the farm, without a word of warning, leaving us very short handed in the midst of a very lush and busy season.

We had about 100 cows in our herd, although the most we ever had in milk at one time was 84. All milking was done by hand. One morning, after I had been home for about a year, we were milking earlier than usual, in complete darkness, in order to get away in good time for a day at the annual agricultural show. As each cow came into my bail, I could not identify her by sight, but found that I could do so, by touch, the moment I took hold of her teats to start milking. Then I realised that I could, in fact, identify every cow in the herd, simply by the feel of her teats! I felt that that was getting to know them altogether too intimately, and it was time to leave. At least, that is the story I like to tell about why I made my next move. The real reason appears at the end of this Ch.

I think it was in the early part of 1926 that Mother suddenly turned up at Dalburrabin and announced that she had returned home to look after Dad and would assume management of the household. She had become a confirmed Christian Scientist and did not hold with the medical treatment Dad was receiving. She seriously interfered with that, and soon became such a disruptive influence on the farm that she had to be asked to leave, which she did. That was the last time I saw Mother outside a mental hospital.

On all dairy farms there has to be a certain amount of cultivation work to grow winter feed for the cattle and corn for the pigs, at the very least. If possible, corn and other crops, such as pumpkins, melons and potatoes are grown as cash crops. The ground has to be prepared for these in the winter, spring and summer, and the plantings made from spring through to early autumn.

As the only able bodied man about the place, I had to take a full part in the dairy work. Four days a week in the cooler weather, and more as it grew hotter, I had to take the cream to the butter factory in town, and do whatever shopping was required, getting back to the farm in time for lunch. At three o'clock, it was time to start the afternoon milking routine. Thus, at best, there were only two days in the week when I could get any cultivation work done, and then only between milkings. All too much of this small amount of available time had to be spent unproductively in bringing in the horses from the paddock, catching and harnessing them, leading them to and from the work site, unharnessing and feeding them. The amount of productive work achieved on each of the available days was hopelessly inadequate for the needs of the farm. To make matters worse, we were running into a very lush, wet spring and summer. Milk production was rising sharply, which meant that milkings took more time each day. Soon, I was having to take the cream to town every day, Sundays included, because the factory could not handle the double flood of cream on Mondays after the Sunday break.

To cope with this situation on the farm, I persuaded Dad to buy a Fordson tractor and a three furrow, power lift plough, which could be controlled from the tractor seat. I think this was the first farm tractor in the district, but I cannot be sure of that. With that outfit, I could be under way with cultivation work within a few minutes and could carry on until within a few minutes of the next milking time. As well, I could work a lot faster with the new equipment, and I could get in useful amounts of work in any spare hour, which I could not have done, at all, with horses.

About the middle of 1926, I bought (on time payment, of course), a beautiful Indian Scout motor bike, which became my pride and joy and on which I explored far and wide, whenever I had a spare day or two.

Somewhere about that time, Dad turned Dalburrabin over to a share farmer, while retaining the right for us to continue living there. I then started canvassing the district for contract ploughing work and quickly got enough to keep me busy. Most of the work was breaking up new ground which farmers felt they could not tackle with their horse-drawn ploughs. However, we were running into a very dry spring, this time. By early October, the ground had dried out and became too hard to plough at all; milk supplies had diminished to the point where farms could no longer afford to pay for such work, and one or two could not pay me for work already done. As a consequence of this, I could not pay the oil company for fuel which I had already used, and I would soon be unable to keep up payments on the motor bike. I badly needed another job.

With no prospect of any work in the now drought stricken coastal area, my thoughts turned again to the wheat belt, and to Wellington in particular. There was no drought in the wheat belt; the hay making would be starting and harvest hands would be needed. I would go there and try my luck.

I packed my few belongings into a small suit case, strapped it onto the carrier of the motor bike, and rode off to Wellington, spending a day or two with my sister Emma ("Brownie") and her husband, on the way. They were then living at Rouse Hill, between Parramatta and Windsor. On arrival at Wellington, I rang Dan Gollan and asked if he needed a good harvest hand. He said he needed one for about ten days, for the hay carting, and to come on out. Pay was 14 shillings ($1.40) a day and keep. I rode out to the farm, where I was warmly welcomed back by the whole family. Since I last saw Dan, he had built a proper hut for his workmen and it was very comfortable.

After completing the hay carting, I moved on southwards, looking for work on the way. In Forbes, I got a harvest job, bag sewing for three young brothers who had just moved onto a farm about 30km south of the town. I was down to my last two pennies (about 1 ½ cents) when I got that job.

I should explain here what bag sewing was. Each header was equipped with a bin which held about 20 bushels (about 700 litres) into which the grain was poured after it had been threshed and winnowed as it passed through the header. From time to time, at convenient stopping places in the field, the bin was empted into three-bushel (about 110 litres) bags. The wheat in each bag then had to be rammed tightly and topped up, to get as much into each bag as possible, after which, the mouth of the bag was tightly sewn up with strong twine. In an average sort of crop, a good bag sewer could just comfortably keep up with the output from a then average sized header.

When I arrived on the farm, I found the three brothers, one of them only 15 years old, living in the only building on the place, a huge shed, open at the front, which housed everything on the farm which had to be kept under cover. One corner was kept clear for use as kitchen and dining room. There was a spare bunk for me. The only water supply was from a farm dam, which was also used by all the sheep and horses on the place.

The harvest progressed normally until only about 40 hectares were left to strip. Then, one morning we woke to fiercely hot, strong northerly winds. The growing season had been good, and there was a great deal of long, dry grass about, as well as the crops and the stubble of those which had been stripped. The fire danger was extreme and, because of this, harvesting was suspended for the day. Soon, a column of smoke was seen rising far away to the north, much too far away to pose any threat to us, but emphasising the fire danger.

A little later in the morning, smoke was seen rising, apparently only just over a hill to the south of us. As the wind was from the north or north west, this was no threat to us, so the two older brothers and I piled into their old Model T Ford and went off to give any help that might be needed. As a precautionary measure, the youngest brother was told to muster all the livestock and move them onto a patch of fallow land (land which had been ploughed and cultivated in preparation for the next crop, and therefore clear of all vegetation), and hold them there, if the wind should change and bring the fire towards the farm.

The fire was about 10km away, more by the roads we had to follow to reach it. By the time we got there, the wind had veered westerly. We joined a group of men who were hoping to stop the advance of the fire by back burning from a wide, bare road. Unfortunately, in an effort to speed up the process, the party laying the fire for the back burn got too far away from the road and their own fire jumped the road, starting a new fire on the other side. There were many men there by that time. There was no water available for fighting the fire, but we were all armed with beaters of various kinds.

When the new fire jumped the road, it started up in an area of sparse vegetation and we were able to beat it out just before it reached the edge of a dense, ripe wheat crop. Several of us stood over the burnt edge, with beaters poised, for many minutes after the last wisp of smoke had died out, until we were quite certain that the fire was really dead. We then turned and started to walk back towards the road. We had taken no more than two or three stops when someone watching us yelled, "Fire behind you"! We swung around instantly, beaters already rising for the first blow, but we were far too late. The fire was already metres away, well into the wheat crop, and racing away far faster than we could run. Such was the almost explosive fire danger that day.

The northern flank of this fire was now burning along another road, running almost down wind. The brothers and I, as well as most of the others in that party, now concentrated on trying to prevent the fire spreading across this road. It had jumped in a few places, but we were dealing successfully with these small outbreaks, when the wind very suddenly whipped around to the south and blew with increased strength. This instantly put us right in the path of the fire and we had to run for our lives, back to the bare road we had left.

This change of wind also sent the fire racing directly towards the brothers' farm, so we all jumped into the car and drove back there, just as fast as the car would go. On one section of the road, we were running down wind, right alongside the fire, and were able to measure its speed of advance. It was travelling at 30 miles an hour (48km/h). Great sheets of flame were being blown almost horizontally about 15 to 20 metres ahead of the actual line of fire, continually starting new blazes ahead of the main fire. It was really awesome.

At one road junction, where we had to turn right, the fire was raging right across the road and we had to wait a few minutes until it cleared, before we could go any further. For the rest of the way back to the farm, the fields on both sides of the road were already burnt out. We saw many dead sheep, and many others still living, but horribly burnt and blinded, some of them with their wool still smouldering.

We got back to the farm to find that the fire had already swept over it; but the shed had not been touched, and the youngest brother and the livestock were all safe on the bare fallow. The tractor and header were also safe, as they had been left standing on bare ground, but all of the remaining crop had been destroyed. A good deal of damage had also been done to the grain already harvested, which had been bagged and stacked on cypress pine poles in the field, in the manner which I have already described, and there had been some damage to fences.

That was the end of the harvest, but I stayed on for a while longer, helping to clear up the mess and rebag the damaged wheat.

When I left the brothers, I headed for the Victorian border, looking for more harvest work. The harvest would be just beginning there. In Corowa, the woman who ran the local labour agency asked me if I could drive a header, and I modestly admitted that I could. I never had driven one, but that is not what she asked me. Header drivers were the elite of the harvest workers and were paid the highest wages, a pound ($2.00) a day and keep. I wanted that job, not only for the pay, but for the experience, which would be very helpful when looking for work in future harvests. I got it. This was in January, 1927, and I was still only 18.

I was directed to a farm on the Victorian side of the Murray River, a few miles down stream from Corowa, owned by a Mr Brent. I rode out there at once, and ran into a quite incredible set up.

The farm was on good land, with a long frontage on the Murray River. It should have been a rich producer; instead, it was badly run down, and it did not take long to find out why. Brent was a city man who had obtained the farm under the soldier settlement scheme after the first world war. He might well have become a successful farmer, as many other men did, in similar circumstances, but he unfortunately married the wrong woman. She was a not so rich bitch of a squatter's daughter, who could never reconcile herself to being just a farmer's wife. She insisted on Brent behaving like her idea of a squatter, or at least like a wealthy gentleman farmer. She insisted that he wear a suit, with collar and tie, every day. He must never soil his hands by doing any of the farm work himself. That must be done by hired hands under his supervision; and Brent was weak enough to give in to her. She felt herself to be so exalted that she could never, under any circumstances, even speak to those hired hands. More about that, later. She could not possibly do the cooking for herself, her husband and one small child, so a live-in cook had to be hired. The family washing all had to be sent to a laundry in Rutherglen, and their seven year old son to an expensive boarding school in Melbourne. And, of course, a man had to be paid all year round to do the general farm work which Brent himself should have been doing.

When I reported to Brent, I found that absolutely nothing had been done to prepare for the harvest, although the wheat was already fully ripe and any delay in stripping it would result in some loss of grain.

The first thing to do was get the header ready. It was almost new, having been bought new for the previous harvest. It had been left standing under a big mulberry tree for almost a year. Fowls had roosted on it and nested in it, mulberries and mulberry leaves had fallen on it and rotted there, and birds feeding on the mulberries had left their droppings all over it. There were dozens of paper wasps' nests inside it, as I soon found, to my cost. It took me several days to clean up this mess and put the machine in working order. Fortunately, the canvas conveyor belts had been removed and stored safely, so there was no trouble with them. Brent, of course, took no part in this work, despite its urgency.

As soon as the header was ready, I asked Brent about horses for the teams which would be needed to draw it. Having seen two crops partly destroyed by hail and fire, I wanted to get this one stripped just as quickly as possible. It turned out that there were only enough horses on the farm to make up one eight horse team, plus one or two spares. They were a very mixed lot, not even all draught horses. One draught mare had a foal at foot. Two of the horses had never been broken in and I would have to break in at least one of them to make up a team. I did this and we eventually got started on the harvesting.

There were about 180 acres (73 ha) to be stripped. The work went very slowly. With only one team, I could work them only a few hours each day. I had to bring them back to the yard at midday to feed and rest them, and to let the mare suckle her foal, and I had to finish much earlier than usual each afternoon. In the field, work was interrupted every now and then by some panicky behaviour by the newly broken-in member of the team. One afternoon, one horse simply dropped dead while the team was on the move, with absolutely no warning. That stopped work not only for that day; I had to catch and break in another horse before it could be resumed. However, the whole crop was eventually safely stripped and bagged.

While all of this was going on, I was sharing a hut with Brent's permanent hand, a young man named Cyril. The hut was about a kilometre from the house, alongside the road to town. All food was provided by Brent, but we had to do our own cooking. We drew dry rations from the house once a week, taking it in turns to collect them from the cook, at the kitchen. About twice a week the Brents would go into Rutherglen and, as they passed the hut, Brent would stop the car and one of us would go out and tell him what groceries we needed. On the way back, he would again stop and one of us would go out and collect whatever he had brought back for us. Whenever I did this, I always greeted Mrs Brent with a polite "Good morning, Mrs Brent", and raised my hat if I was wearing one. Not once did she ever even acknowledge my presence, let alone my greeting. She simply sat there and stared straight ahead.

One day, when I went to the house to collect the dry rations, I went to the kitchen door as usual, and found Mrs Brent and her seven year old son in the room. The cook had been discharged. Standing in the doorway, I said, politely, "Good morning, Mrs Brent. I have come to collect the rations for the hut". Mrs Brent did not reply to me. Instead, she turned to her son and said, "Ask him.....(so and so)". I answered her directly and politely. She again turned to her son and said, "Tell him.....(so and so)", and the conversation continued in this way until she knew what was wanted. She then put the rations into a bag which she handed to her son with the instruction to "Give it to him".

When the harvest was over, Brent asked me to stay on and cart the wheat to the flour mill in Wahgunyah, Corowa's twin town on the Victorian side of the Murray River. He did not have enough money or credit to allow me to get all the horses shod. However, along most of the road to Wahgunyah, it was possible to keep to fairly soft side tracks, and only one or two of the horses developed sore feet. Whenever that happened, Brent was always able to find the necessary ten shillings ($1.00) and I was able to get the horse shod.

The carting was really very pleasant work. Even loading the wagon was not very strenuous. The bags were thrown up onto the wagon, one by one, by a horse-powered "kicker" attached to the side of the wagon and operated by Cyril. As each one came up, I would catch it at the top of its movement and swing it, with very little effort, to where it had to go.

The round trip to and from Wahgunyah was a full day's work. The team was the same which I had used for the harvesting and they were now well used to working together. The road was a pleasant one, little used, almost flat, and flanked by vineyards for much of the way. Starting early in order to get as far as possible in the cool of the morning, I had little to do except sit on the load, calling an infrequent command to the leaders. Occasionally I walked beside them for a while. At the flour mill, it took only a few minutes to weigh in, unload and weigh out. Then came the leisurely return with an empty wagon and the horses needing virtually no attention as they headed for home. The grapes were ripe and sun-warmed, and no one minded a passer-by picking the odd bunch to eat as he went along. Back home, the horses were unharnessed, watered, fed and turned loose for the night.

The next day was an easy one for the horses and only slightly more strenuous for the man. After greasing the axles of the wagon wheels, the horses were hitched up again, but only for as long as it took to load the wagon and haul it into position for an early start next morning. And so it went until the carting was finished - loading and hauling on alternate days, with a rest day on Sunday.

When the carting was over, I cleaned out the header thoroughly, removed the canvas conveyor belts, rolled them up and put them in bags, which I then sewed up tightly and hung by wires from overhead beams in the barn, so that rats could not get at them.

With that done, my job with Brent was finished and it was time to move on again. At that point, Brent told us, sadly, that he was bankrupt and could not pay us the wages owing to us. He had made an arrangement with a store in Rutherglen whereby we could still buy a few groceries. We were welcome to continue living in the hut until we could find other jobs, and we could kill a sheep whenever we needed meat.

In those day, farm hands were not usually paid their wages each week, although they could be, if they wanted it. It was customary for the boss to act as banker, keeping an accurate account of wages earned and expenses incurred by each employee. The employee could draw money whenever he wanted to, but rarely did so for anything more than his immediate needs, until he was leaving, when he would be paid whatever was owing to him. This practice was almost universal, at least west of the Great Dividing Range. It worked well and was convenient for employer and employees, except in the rare cases when an employer suddenly went bankrupt.

I was not much affected by Brent's bankruptcy, as I had drawn money from time to time. I was owed only about nine pounds ($18.00). However, my hut mate, Cyril, had been working for Brent for two years, during which time he had drawn no money, at all. During that period, he had been drawing on savings from an earlier job. After many months, we received one quarter of the wages which had been owing to us; but I was long gone by then.

Throughout the years since we had left high school, Dorrie had never been far from my thoughts. My feelings for her had not weakened or changed in any way. I was not mooning over her, romantically idealising her, or even imagining married life with her. She occupied a very special place in my mind and just thinking about her brought quiet happiness. Even then, it felt as if she were part of me and I would never be a complete being until we came together.

After Dorrie completed her two years at the convent, I began writing to her, and she always answered. My letters to her were just about every day matters; I was far too shy to write anything of my feelings for her. Our exchanges were few and far between, but they did keep us in touch.

While I was still living on Brent's farm, I learnt that Dorrie was to leave for England in early March, to take up a three year scholarship at the Royal College of Music in London. I rode down to Sydney to see her off and say goodbye. I stayed with Brownie and David at Rouse Hill.

I could not go to see Dorrie immediately, as I had only the work clothes I was wearing - shirt, trousers, boots, and nothing else, whatever. After cleaning up at Brownie's, I rode into Sydney and parked the bike outside Murdocks, the best men's outfitters in the city. I went inside and, with the aid of a very helpful assistant, emerged about an hour later, a well dressed young man. I then rode out to where Dorrie was staying with her grandmother and we met for the first time since we had left school, over three years before. I remember very little about that meeting, except that we were rather shy with one another. It was the only meeting we had in Sydney, as Dorrie was in a whirl of packing and farewell parties, and her ship was due to sail in a very few days. However, she told me that, after calling at Hobart, her ship would be in Melbourne for three days, and I said I would meet her again, there.

I rode the motor bike down to Melbourne, stopping for a few days at Brent's, on the way. There was a rabbit trapper sharing our hut at the time. On the morning I was due to leave for Melbourne, he brought in a baby possum. He had found it riding on the back of its mother, which had been caught in one of his traps and had had to be killed. He gave it to me and I tucked it inside my shirt and took it to Melbourne with me. For two days it would neither eat nor drink, but seemed otherwise to be quite well. Eventually, I squeezed a bit of juicy apple between its teeth. It took a few seconds for the taste to register, after which the possum reached out, took the apple from me and fed itself. By the time Dorrie's ship arrived, it would eat and drink anything I offered it. I was then able to give it to Dorrie who, of course, had to pass it on to a steward, as it was quite impossible for her to keep it in her cabin.

I went to see Dorrie as soon as her ship berthed and we decided to go out to Ferntree Gully for the day. A cushion was strapped to the carrier of the motor bike and Dorrie, uncharacteristically, decided to sit sideways on it, facing left. Thank goodness she did so! At a busy, but uncontrolled street intersection on the way to Ferntree Gully, I had cautiously slowed almost to a halt, when a crossing truck clipped the front wheel of the bike, which promptly fell to the left. We were going so slowly that Dorrie just landed on her feet without falling. No damage was done and we went on to spend a happy day in beautiful surroundings.

I do not now remember what else we did, but I went to say goodbye to Dorrie aboard ship, just before it sailed. Up to this time, we had never exchanged even one kiss. Screwing up my courage, I now asked her if I might kiss her goodbye. Dorrie then told me that she was engaged and she felt it would be wrong to let another man kiss her. She told me this very gently for, although I had never written or spoken of it, she knew that I loved her, and she knew her news would hurt me. Loving her as I did, I could only wish her all possible happiness as we parted; but it was with a very heavy heart that I rode back to Brent's.

The grape harvest was just beginning as I left Brent's and I quickly got a job grape picking, still at a pound ($2.00) a day. It lasted one day. Here is what happened.

The grapes were planted in rows, with the vines strung out along wires of what amounted to low fences. The rows were laid out in blocks separated by roads along which the collecting trucks could move. The pickers were issued with four gallon (about 18 litres) buckets and paired off. Each pair was assigned to a row, where they worked one on each side. The bunches were dropped into the buckets as they were picked and the filled buckets carried to the collecting truck and emptied. If one picker finished his side of a row before the other, he had then to help his slower partner. As faster pairs finished their rows, they had to turn back and help slower pairs until the block was finished. The whole work force then moved on to the next block.

When I reported on the first morning, the overseer and I looked at each other and, without a word being said, there was an instant cat and dog reaction. However, I was paired off with an experienced picker and away we went. The picking had to be done squatting on one's heels, shuffling along sideways in this position, and standing up only to carry filled buckets to the truck. Thigh muscles soon began to rebel and quickly became excruciatingly painful. Nevertheless, I managed to keep up with my partner, putting up bucket for bucket with him, all day. As a pair, we were a little better than the average; we fairly often had to help others finish their rows, but no one ever had to help us.

During the lunch break, the overseer came walking by and I asked him the time. I wanted to know whether I had time to slip into town and change a library book before picking resumed. He told me the time, but I could see, at once, that I had blotted my copy book, simply by asking; in his mind, I was immediately tagged as a clock watcher.

As the afternoon wore on, the pain in my thighs grew worse and worse. By four o'clock, I was trying to decide whether I could face another day of it, or whether I would have to give in and quit at the end of the day. Just then, the overseer came along our row, handed me a pound note and just said "Don't come back tomorrow". No reason was given.

My best chance of getting work for the coming autumn and winter now seemed to be in the wheat belt in the Riverina, so I set out to look for work in that area, leaving most of my things in the hut at Brent's. At Junee, I was offered a job for the sowing season, driving a horse-drawn drill cultivator. The farmer's name was Steve Kanaley. The start of sowing would have to wait for a good fall of rain, but there were a few other jobs which needed doing and I could start as soon as I was ready. The pay would be the award rate for a man, two pounds fifteen shillings ($5.50) a week, and keep.

With that settled, I set off, at once, to return to Brent's to pick up the things I had left there. I stayed that night in Wagga Wagga where, after setting aside money to cover the cost of food and petrol for the rest of the journey, I spent my last five shillings (50 cents) on a volume of poetry by Barcroft Boake, one of the fairly early Australian poets. I had read and enjoyed much of the works of most of the early poets, but had read only one poem by Boake, a particularly gloomy one entitled "Where Dead Men Lie", (indeed, that was also the title of this book), and I wanted learn what else he had written.

The job with Mr Kanaley soon fizzled out; by the time I finished up the odd jobs about the place, the rain was still holding off, and he had to let me go. However, before he did so, he recommended me to a friend and neighbour, John Moloney, who was looking for a tractor driver. I rode over to see him; he said the job was for the duration of the sowing and I could start at once, as there was plenty of other work on the farm to keep me busy until the sowing began. Pay would be at the award rate. I moved over and began work immediately. It was April 1927.

"Curranbrobinya", the name of the Moloneys' farm, was at Marinna, about ten kilometres north of Junee, alongside the main southern railway line from Sydney to Albury. My hut was actually a small, three roomed cottage. The only furniture in it was a very dilapidated bunk and an equally bad mattress. I replaced them with a good spring stretcher and new mattress and pillow. I bought myself new blankets, a writing table and chair, and made a useful "chest of drawers" and dressing table simply by stacking three wooden packing cases one on top of another, and was soon quite comfortable. As the weather grew colder, I bought warm working clothes and made a "Wagga rug" for the bunk by sewing three wheat bags together. There was a wood-burning stove in the kitchen, and a kitchen table, so I was able to heat water and bathe in reasonable comfort. While still very bare and crude, this hut was a great improvement on the one in which I spent my first winter in the west.

John had bought the farm only about a year before. He had then married and moved onto the farm about six months before I met him. He was an "all tractor" farmer who came from a wheat farming family and knew his job thoroughly. His farm was of 735 acres (297 ha) and he also farmed, on shares, another 420 acres (l70 ha) owned by his father-in-law. He did a bit of sheep dealing and there were usually a few hundred sheep on the farm.

Most of his plant was new; tractor and reaper-binder had been bought new for the previous harvest; plough and cultivator were second hand but in good condition; the drill-cultivator which we were about to use for the sowing was new. There was, as yet, no header: it was bought later in the year, in time to harvest the crops we were about to sow. It was a joy to work with such good equipment.

When the sowing was over, there was no talk of letting me go and it soon became apparent that there was work for me for as long as I wanted to stay. I stayed for just over two years. There is not much to tell of the work I did in that time. I found the working of the soil, and everything to do with the growing and harvesting of the crops, interesting and deeply satisfying. I learnt a great deal from John and could certainly have made a fairly good job of running a wheat farm, by the time I left. There was, however, one unpleasant incident which I must relate.

One day, in the spring of the first year I was there, we all went off to the annual agricultural show. I did not stay there for long, and spent most of the day in the reading room at the School of Arts, entirely alone. Some days later, I noticed an unusual flurry of activity around the house. John suddenly dashed off into Junee, returning an hour or so later. He then came to where I was working and told me that some jewellery had been stolen from the house, and that he had just reported the matter to the police. He then said, "I don't know what the police know about you, but they told me that I need not look any further than you to find the thief". He went on to tell me that a policeman would be coming out next day to investigate the theft. If I was the thief and would return the stolen articles, I could leave the farm before nightfall, and he would not have have me charged. Of course, I could only say that I had not stolen aything.

Next day, a fatherly police sergeant came to interrogate me. After asking about my movements during the past few months, and on show day, he asked what I was doing with my pay. When I told him I was using most of it to pay off debts and sending small amounts to a sister in Melbourne, he said he was satisfied that I was not the thief, but he would have to search my quarters. When we got to the hut, he looked into the top "drawer" of my dressing table, where the first thing he saw was my snapshot album. He sat down to look through that, and that was the end of the search. He then left, after assuring me that I would hear no more of the matter.

I did, though. A few weeks later, the thieves were caught at Temora, with the stolen articles still in their possession. They had been following the shows and robbing houses while the occupants were away for the day. Following their arrest, the police tried to "return" to me a rifle which they said had been stolen from me. However, my hut had not been visited and my rifle was still hanging in its usual place on the wall of my room.

John was a bit embarrassed about this incident, but I told him I thought he had acted very properly and kindly, and I had no hard feelings.

Once I knew that I was in a secure job, I began thinking about the future. What did I want in life? Was I going the right way about achieving it? In the course of the two years which I spent on Curranbrobinya, I clarified my mind on these and related matters and made the decisions which affected all the rest of my life. In order that the reader should properly understand the rest of this life story, I feel I must briefly discuss these matters here.

I had never really considered what I wanted in life until now. Having partly grown up on a farm, liking farm work, and having come from a very long line of farmers, I just assumed that I was going to be a farmer. However, when I started thinking about it, I soon realised that this could not be my basic aim.

Although my feelings for Dorrie had not changed, I believed I had lost her. I had enough common sense to realise that I would probably fall in love with some other girl, one day, and want to marry her and keep her happy. I would want to provide a reasonably comfortable home and standard of living for anyone I loved. With no financial backing whatever, the only way I could ever get started on a farm of my own would be by the share farming route and it would be many years before I could hope to achieve that. I also had a strong desire to travel and see the world, and a farm would tie me down to one place for a very long time to come.

So, gradually, I realised that my basic aim in life must be to marry some nice girl and do my best to keep her happy. Whatever occupation I chose to follow must enable me to provide adequately for her and any children we might have. The occupation must also be something which I could enjoy. Farming could meet the latter requirement, but there was no likelihood that it could meet the former within any acceptable period of time. I must, therefore, find something else as a permanent occupation.

As I have already related, I had developed an interest in flying, very early in life. That interest was greatly stimulated by my first flight, in 1920. In the late 1920s, my interest was being further stimulated by the many exciting aviation events of that period, such as Lindbergh's solo crossing of the Atlantic, Kingsford Smith's crossing of the Pacific, and the many flights between Britain and Australia. It also became apparent during that period that there was a real commercial future for aviation. If I could join the Royal Australian Air Force as a pilot for a few years, I could achieve two things simultaneously: I would be preparing myself for the role in which I felt I could best serve my country in the event of another war, and I would be qualifying myself for a flying career in civil aviation. That would, I felt sure, enable me to offer any prospective wife a decent standard of living and, finally, it would be an occupation which I would certainly enjoy.

During this period, I also sorted out my ideas on religion. I had had a very confusing and somewhat nonsensical religious upbringing as a child. This had caused me to shy right away from the subject for a few years, but I could not put it out of my mind entirely. Deep down, I felt the need of some kind of guide for the conduct of my life and I began to wonder why I could not bring myself to accept the teachings of any church: why I could not truthfully say, "I believe....." of any creed.

Gradually, it dawned on me that my difficulty was that I could not formulate in my mind any credible idea of the identity or nature of God. My mind utterly rejected the idea of the anthropomorphic, interventionist god who had to be continually worshipped and praised, and who was at the centre of the Christian religion as I had been taught it. (How true is the saying that man always creates God in his own image!) But what else, if anything, was there?

Then, one day, reading the letters of John in the New Testament, I came across the simple statement, twice repeated, that "God is love". I thought about this for a while and realised that it just might be literally true. Our God was supposed to be the supreme influence for good. Love was certainly a tremendous influence for good. The two just might be the same. At any rate, I soon found I could accept John's statement at face value. I had found a comprehensible definition of God, and I had found a guide for the conduct of my life, which I have tried to follow ever since. Being human, I have had my share of failures, but I have usually been able to recognise them and learn from them.

I have not written about this with any idea of persuading anyone to my beliefs. I have related it here simply because it was a significant event which influenced the whole of the rest of my life and must, therefore, be included in this autobiography.

The decision to adopt flying as my career objective was reached about mid 1927. The RAAF was recruiting and training a small number of officer pilots each year to meet its own requirements. In addition to these, it was also training up to ten pilots each year for the RAF. Applicants for these positions could opt for either service exclusively, or express order of preference. I sent an application form to Dad for his consent, as I was under 2l years of age. In the accompanying letter, I told him why I wanted to fly. This was a great surprise to him, as I had never mentioned the matter to him before. He thought flying was a very dangerous occupation and did not believe it had any commercial future. The land, on the other hand, could always give one security. He wrote to me on these lines and asked me to think about it for another year. If I was then still of the same mind, he would give his consent. In fact, he would give it now, if I insisted, but it would please him greatly if I would do as he asked. I did as he asked. With his consent, I applied again in 1928 and was called for an interview in Sydney, the same year. In my application, I had expressed first preference for the RAF and second for the RAAF. I was questioned sharply about this at the interview, but my explanation was considered quite satisfactory. I just said that, above all, I wanted to fly. However, I also wanted to travel and see the world. If it were possible to combine the two, that would be ideal. From the interview, I was sent for medical examination, a signal that I was acceptable, as far as the interviewing officers were concerned, and the medical examiners found nothing wrong.

I went back to Junee to await notification of my fate. About the end of the year, I received a nice letter from the Air Board, telling me that I had not been selected, but inviting me to apply again at the next selection, about October, 1929. I wrote back, asking the Board if they would tell me why I had been rejected. I was careful to explain that I was not questioning their judgement, but would like to know in just what respects I had fallen short of their requirements, as I wanted to do whatever might be in my power to improve my chance of selection at the next interview. I got another nice, but unhelpful, reply, saying that I had been considered satisfactory in every respect, but had simply lost out in competition with other candidates in the final selections.

This answer put the onus on me to decide how I might improve my chances of selection at the next interview. I was as fit as I could possibly be, but I had only the barest minimum standard of education required. In fact, I was slightly below that in one respect, although the Air Board had said that that was acceptable. Where the Board asked for a pass in physics at Intermediate Certificate level, I had only a pass in general science. Obviously, I could do something about improving my education. To do that, I would have to go to night school, and the only facilities for that, at that time, were in Sydney. So, to Sydney I would have to go, and there I would have to find a job, any job, that would provided me with enough money to live on and pay my school fees.

After thinking things over for a while, I adopted the following plan. In what was left of the current year (1929), I would enrol for four subjects, physics, maths 1 and 2, and French. I would concentrate on bringing physics up to intermediate standard in time to sit for the examination in November, and brush up the other three subjects, in which I already had passes. If I again failed to win selection for the RAAF, I would try, by concentrating on the required minimum of four subjects, to get the Leaving Certificate and matriculation in the following year. I would then be able to go on to university if I were again rejected. I would remain eligible for selection until I reached the age of 25. If successive selection boards kept on turning me down until I reached that age, I just might be able to write BSc after my name. It would take a great deal of hard work and determination if I were put to the test. I had no idea whether I could do it, but at least it was something to aim at, and I was going to try.

I told John and Mrs Moloney of my intentions. We agreed a date for finishing up my work with them and, on 9^th May, with my few belongings on the back of my motor bike, and œ19 ($38) in my pocket, I rode off to Sydney to start a new life.

The eight months which I spent in Sydney were very eventful and I did a lot of growing up in that time. There was a lot of industrial unrest in the area, mostly unrelated to any real grievances or hardships in the work force, but stirred up by a powerful communist clique at the Trades Hall, headed by Jock Garden. This clique was openly pushing for revolution and openly inciting unionists to violence and armed insurrection. Part of this scene was a very bogus strike by the Timber Workers' Union, the background to which I must briefly describe.

In 1928, the timber millers found they were running into trouble for lack of skilled tradesmen such as saw doctors and tool makers. The reason for this was that the wage differences between skilled and unskilled workers had become so small that not enough young men could be induced to undertake the long apprenticeships for the skilled trades. The mill owners then applied to the Arbitration Court for a new wage scale in the industry, offering considerable increases for all skilled tradesmen, but also asking for a reduction of one shilling (ten cents) a week for unskilled workers. The union countered with a claim for an all round increase in wages, unrelated to any change in economic circumstances. After hearing argument from both sides, the Court made the award requested by the employers.

Without consulting its members, the union executive immediately ordered a general strike in the industry. The order was completely ignored by the union members, because all the skilled tradesmen were, in effect, being asked to strike against good increases in their pay, while the unskilled members could not see any likely benefit from striking over the loss of one shilling a week. When this lack of response became apparent, "organisers" were sent out to individual yards and, by various means, mostly dishonest, gradually managed to get the men to come out. In one typical case, the "organisers" told the men at one yard, quite untruthfully, that the men had come out at another yard, which they named. "Are you going to be scabs and continue working while they fight your battles"? the "organisers" yelled. "NO"!, roared the sheep in reply, and that yard was out. The "organisers" then went to the yard which they had named, where they now were able to say, truthfully, that the men at so and so's yard were out, and pose the question to which every unionist can only answer, "NO"!, and another yard was out.

Over a period of many weeks, and by the use of such tactics, most of the men at every yard in the Sydney area were induced to walk out of their jobs; but, strangely, the industry did not come to a standstill. The reason was that most of the men simply went to other yards where they were not known and went to work for new employers. A few hard core unionists did stay out at most yards, which they then picketed. Thus, there was some shortage of labour in most yards and the mill owners' association set up a central recruiting office in the city. Job vacancies were advertised daily, safe transport to and from work was offered, and training for anyone who wanted or needed it.

The Trades Hall crew then tried terrorist tactics. They organised what came to be called basher gangs. Individual workers were waylaid and beaten up in dark or lonely streets. Gangs of several men would break into the homes of married workers in the middle of the night, completely wreck them in a few minutes, and be gone before any help could be summoned; and so on. Of course, the union executive claimed that these attacks were all the work of union members who were justifiably incensed by the actions of the scabs who had remained at work. In fact, of the few bashers who were actually caught and convicted, not one was a member of the Timber Workers Union; they were just hired thugs.

This, then, was the state of affairs when I arrived in Sydney. On arrival, I went to live with Nadine, who had recently moved up from Melbourne and had a flat at Elizabeth Bay. I began looking for work, at once, trying the motor trade first, as I had become quite a good mechanic. I quickly learned that there was no chance in that trade, as I had not served an apprenticeship. As soon as I realised that, I turned to the timber industry's employment office, which I have already mentioned. I was immediately offered a job as a crane driver with S.A. Burns & Sons, to start next morning, training to be given on the job. The yard was in the inner suburb of Glebe, with a frontage onto Blackwattle Bay. Safe transport to and from work would be by a special launch from and to a landing stage in the Domain, on the eastern side of Farm Cove.

When I got to the yard, I found that the crane driver's job had been filled only minutes before, but I was offered a job as tailer-out on a saw bench, and accepted that. The tailer-out works on the opposite side of a saw bench from the sawyer. In simplest terms, the sawyer pushes one piece of timber onto the saw from his side of the bench and the tailer-out handles the two pieces which come off on the other side. Depending on the size and kind of timber being sawn, and what it was being cut into, the job could be very easy and simple, or be quite heavy and require considerable knack. I started on the smaller of the two saw benches in the yard, where we cut mostly softwoods for mouldings, and the largest pieces which I had to handle were no more than about 15 feet in length and could be picked up in one hand. I was later promoted to the big saw bench, where we handled great baulks up to nearly 40 feet in length and up to 18 inches by 18 inches cross section.

Having got a job, my next and immediate concern was to get into the city and enrol for night classes. The only way I could get into the city in time to do this after work was to walk up to Glebe Road and go in by tram, so this I did, at the end of my first day at work. As I walked through the yard gate onto the street, I found myself right in the midst of a group of men who were just standing there, chatting. No alarm bell rang in my mind until one of them exlaimed, "Scab"! Another, holding his nose, said, "He stinks"!, and a third, who was standing right in my path, said, "Kick the bastard's guts out"!

I had walked straight into a group of pickets. I suppose I should have been frightened. Instead, I just became furiously angry and continued walking straight at the last speaker. He stepped aside, the group opened up and I continued on my way without missing a step and without any interference whatever. However, I had become a marked man.

That evening, I got myself enrolled, bought the text books I needed, and began studying at once. It then became apparent that I would have to move much closer to work, if I was to get anywhere with my studies. Living at Elizabeth Bay and going to and from work by the launch from Farm Cove, meant leaving home before 6 am, after getting my own breakfast. I found I was getting back about 7 pm, after which I had to clean up and get myself a meal before I could begin studying. This routine also made attendance at night classes impossible. For the evenings on which classes were held, I had to make other and very inconvenient arrangements. I quickly found a comfortable boarding house in Glebe, only a few minutes walk from work and an easy tram ride into the city for those nights when I had to attend classes.

I was, of course, now living right in hostile territory and had to walk through picket lines every morning and afternoon as I went to and from work. I was also particularly vulnerable to assault as I returned from evening classes, which I had to attend two or three nights a week. I was well aware of the danger and at once applied for a licence to carry a pistol. While waiting for that, I armed myself in another way. Whenever I had to be out on the streets in the Glebe area at night, I carried a wide necked bottle of ammonia in my hand, in my overcoat pocket. The screw cap was removed from the bottle which was kept closed only by the palm of my hand. Had anyone attacked me, he would have got about four ounces (about 100 mls) of liquid ammonia straight in his face. Thankfully, no one did. I did not carry the ammonia by day.

Getting a pistol licence was a fairly lengthy business. I first had to apply to the local police who, after making extensive inquiries about character, criminal record, etc., approved the application, but did not issue a licence at that stage. I then had to go to a gun shop, select the weapon I wanted, ask the dealer to put it aside for me and get from him a full description, type, make, calibre and serial number. Back at the police station, after supplying these details, I was then issued with a permit to buy that particular weapon and reasonable amounts of ammunition for it. Armed with this permit, I bought the weapon (a .32 calibre Browning automatic), then had to take it back to the police station, where it was checked against the details previously supplied, after which I was issued with a licence to carry that pistol.

The inquiries into character and criminal record took quite a while and a policeman came to see me at work, late one afternoon, to ask for some required information. Work had finished and everybody had gone by the time the policeman had finished with me, and I set out to walk up to Glebe Road alone. On the way, I had to pass a very ordinary looking man who was standing idly on the kerb with a rolled up newspaper in his hand. As I passed him, he suddenly produced from the paper a heavy antelope's horn with which he stupidly tried to club me on the top of my head. I blocked that easily enough, hitting him in the face with my lunch case at the same time, and quickly had him backing away. At that moment, a second man, who had been hiding in an alley way across the street, tackled me from behind. As we fell to the road, I started to yell for help and wrapped arms and legs around him, hoping to hold him until help arrived. However, this left my head unprotected and No. 1 came back and got in five heavy blows with his club, cutting my scalp with each one, before I could get my arms up to guard it. Raising my arms released No. 2, who got up quickly and did his best to kick the life out of me. By spinning on my bottom, I managed to keep my feet presented to him and, with my arms guarding my head, neither of them was able to land an effective blow or kick after that, in the few seconds before they fled, dropping the club and pursued by a stream of furious swearing from me, I was so angry.

I was disinclined to move, for a while. I could see out of only one eye, as the other was covered by a curtain of blood flowing from the cuts in my scalp. I saw a boy standing nearby and asked him to go and get a policeman whom I knew to be on guard duty not far away, and I just lay there, resting, until he arrived.

After helping me up, an ambulance was summoned and the policeman rode with me to Prince Alfred Hospital where, in the casualty section, the blood was washed from my hair by pouring lots of alcohol over it and the open cuts in my scalp. The hair was then snipped away from around the cuts and, eventually, a doctor arrived and stitched up the three worst cuts without benefit of any kind of anaesthetic. All of this was done with me sitting in a chair with my head over a bucket half full of bloody alcohol and swabs.

The pain of these processes was infinitely worse than the bashing and went on for very much longer. The stitching was by far the worst, as the needle was blunt and only went through the skin each time after several prods by the doctor, and the pain, as he jerkily tied off each stitch, was excruciating. I was determined not to let a sound escape me and, while this was going on, I was trying to relieve my feelings by grimacing and silently pounding my thigh with a clenched fist. The doctor, working over my bowed head, saw nothing of this, but the policeman, who was sitting across the room, could see what I was suffering. Towards the end, he quietly exclaimed, "Cripes, you are tough, son"!, to which the doctor answered airily, "Oh, he's all right; he can't feel any pain, up here". That was nearly too much for me; I still did not make a sound, but I could not prevent at least one tear escaping.

Finally, my head was bandaged and I was allowed to go, with instructions to come back every second day for renewal of dressings. The kindly young policeman took me back to my boarding house, where we arrived about 9 pm. The landlady, bless her, prepared a late meal for me, after which I turned in and slept dreamlessly. It had been quite a day. The date was the 4^th of June, 1929, my 21^st birthday.

I woke up next morning feeling absolutely normal, with not even a sore head, and went to work, as usual. In retrospect, it seems strange that I never, at any time, felt the least bit mentally or physically shaken by this violent episode, but so it was.

On reporting for work, I was told to stay away until dressings were no longer required on my head. It was just as well as, in the next few days I had to spend a good deal of time with the detectives who had been assigned to investigate the bashing. I was able to give them a good description of the man who had first attacked me and I will repeat that here, because of what happened later. He was about 5 feet 9 inches tall and of stocky build. He had very short, bristly red hair. He had a round face, with reddish, freckled complexion, and his teeth were uneven and stained brown.

In the week in which I was off work, I received my pistol licence from the sergeant in charge of the Glebe police station, with the strong advice to shoot first and ask questions afterwards if I were ever attacked again, or even if I thought I was about to be attacked. My landlady had to ask me to leave, because of threats which she had received, so I moved to another boarding house about 100 metres closer to work. I continued attending night classes without interruption and did as much study and homework as was possible in the circumstances.

As soon as possible after I got the pistol, I took it out into the bush and practiced both aimed firing and unaimed firing from the position where the pistol would be when carried in my coat or overcoat pocket, which I would most likely have to do in the event of another surprise attack. Thereafter, whenever I was on the streets of Glebe at night, or in any situation which I thought dangerous, I carried the pistol in my coat pocket, in my hand, loaded, cocked, with safety catch off and finger on the trigger. I never sought trouble, nor did I try to avoid it. I was not going to let any hoodlums intimidate me or restrict my movements by day or night. Neither was I going to do any panic shooting. I knew I could get off an effective shot instantly, if necessary and I could, therefore, afford to wait until I was quite sure an attack was under way before I squeezed the trigger. In the event, I never had to use the pistol, at all.

When I returned to work, the police insisted on providing me with an escort each way, each day. However, the escort did not always turn up, but I never let this hinder my movements. I was in Sydney, and in that job, for a purpose and I was not going to let any threat deflect me from it. I received a certain amount of abuse as I walked through the picket line each morning and afternoon, but never any actual interference. I always carried the pistol and I let it be known that I was armed by carrying it in the hip pocket of my overalls when I was at work. My work place was in clear view of the pickets and the pistol was clearly outlined in saw dust for most of each day.

Actually, the hostility of the pickets did not last for very long. One morning, instead of the usual abuse, one of the older men asked me quietly, "Why do you do it, son"?, so I told him why, and the others listened. Rather to my surprise, he expressed admiration for my effort to "improve myself". The others seemed to agree and we actually became friendly from then onwards.

Word of my plan eventually reached old Mr Burns and I was called into the office to tell him the details. He also expressed admiration for my intentions and told me he would help me if I ever needed it. In particular, I could always have time off, without loss of pay, to attend lectures and examinations.

One day, not long after the bashing, two detectives came and took me down to the Central police station, in the city. On the way, they told me they had caught the man who first attacked me and they wanted me to formally identify him. They carefully explained what the procedure would be, and exactly what I should do and say once I was sure of the identification. They also told me he was a much wanted villain whom they had been after for some time for numerous offences.

On arrival at Central, I was shown into a room in which about eight men were lined up, none of whom even remotely resembled my attacker. I went through the motions of examining them all closely and then told the waiting detectives that the man who had attacked me was not there. They assured me that he was, and urged me to go and have another look, which I did, with the same result. A detective then led me to a peep hole, asked me to look at one particular man in the line up and said, "That is the man who bashed you. Go in and have another look and, when you have identified him, we will see that he is put away for a long time", or words to that effect. That was very naughty of him. However, to oblige him, I went in again and examined this man very thoroughly, but again had to tell the detectives that he was not the man. He was a skinny runt in build, no more than 5 feet 6 inches tall. He had very fair, almost shoulder length hair, a very pale, thin face with unblemished skin, and perfectly even white teeth. Compare that with the description which I had given the police.

One evening in the springtime, I went to visit Nadine in St Vincent's Hospital, where she was recovering from a fractured skull, received in a traffic accident, and there I met Bea Miles. Most Sydneysiders now only remember her as the gross, pestiferous old woman, which she later became; but I was fortunate enough to know her as the beautiful young woman she was in 1929 and 1930. I say fortunate, for she was to have a profound effect for good on my life and it would be no exaggeration to say that I have her to thank, in large measure, for the success of my marriage. Without going into details, I will just say that she had had a tragic upbringing which had left her with a brilliant but somewhat unbalanced mind, a contempt for convention and authority, and a terrible restlessness which made it utterly impossible for her to remain still in one place for any length of time.

We struck up an immediate friendship and spent a lot of time exploring around Sydney, mostly on the motor bike, the movement always soothing her restlessness. We soon became lovers and from her I began to learn something of the beauty of the sexual relationship between two people who share mutual affection, respect and a good deal of love. That alone was a great step forward in my education, because Mother had succeeded in making me feel that anything to do with sex was both dirty and sinful. Bea taught me a great deal about women and about love making, all of it in the nicest way. She also taught me many other things which have stood me in good stead throughout my life, and I still remember her with deep gratitude and affection.

In October, I again appeared before the RAAF Selection Board. Group Captain Goble, the senior member, remembering that I had been living at Junee at the time of my previous interview, asked what I was now doing in Sydney. When I told him why I had come down, what I was doing, and my plan for the future, both he and the other member, Squadron Leader Brownell, seemed to be very impressed. Group Captain Goble then asked if I still wanted to go to England and, when I confirmed this, told me I could consider myself selected for the next course, which would begin at Point Cook on Tuesday, 15^th January, 1930. I would be sent joining instructions and a travel warrant nearer the time.

Needless to say, I was cock a hoop as I went back to the mill after the interview. The very first people I told were the pickets outside the yard gates, and they gave every indication of sharing my pleasure. Of course, the next person I told was old Mr Burns, who had been so interested in my plan, and we agreed that I could work right up to Saturday morning, 12^th January, as I needed every penny I could earn.

In November, I romped through the Intermediate examination in physics and got an "A" pass.

January arrived, but no joining instructions or travel warrant, and I began to worry. I had received instructions from Point Cook telling me what clothes, etc., to bring with me when I joined that station, but nothing from Air Board telling me when and where to report for the formalities of enlistment in the RAAF. When I had still received nothing up to the morning of Saturday the 12^th, I decided to go down to Melbourne and find out what had happened. If I left it any later, I could possibly miss out on the course. I said goodbye to Mr Burns and the pickets, from whom I parted with handshakes all round and the warmest of good wishes for my future. Having previously sold the motor bike, I packed my bag and took the train to Melbourne, that night.