The Road to Gundagai (45 page)

As in all depressions, one ‘knock’ led to another — jobs lost meant less money to spend, less money to spend meant that demand for goods and services dropped further and even more jobs were lost.

In some areas one man in three or four was unemployed. There are no records of how many women were unemployed — in those days the ‘real’ jobs were held by men, even though women supported about a quarter of Australian families back in the early 1930s. Thousands of men went ‘on the wallaby’ — travelling around the country, hoping for a job. Many ‘jumped the rattler’, hiding on goods trains to get from one district to another, though they had to jump off while the train was still moving. Many were injured, and some killed.

Families who couldn’t pay their rent or meet their mortgage payments were thrown out onto the street. Long queues grew outside any factory that might have advertised a single job.

All the government could offer was a small unemployment benefit paid out as food rations, not money — ‘the susso’ (short for sustenance payment) or ‘dole’. The amount varied from state to state, but it was worth about ten shillings a week for married men and five shillings for single men.

Women were not eligible for the susso, even when they were the only support for their families. As Matilda told Blue, in 1932 Victoria’s Minister for Sustenance, Mr Kent Hughes, said that no women would get any help from the government while there were any jobs available as servants — no matter how badly paid or what the conditions were, or even if they couldn’t leave their children to live and work in other people’s homes.

Those ‘on the susso’ had to turn up once a week at the local relief station or police station with their hessian sacks for the flour, hunk of meat, golden syrup, sugar, tea and other staples. Many towns limited strangers to only one susso ration and then they had to move on, to stop a ‘susso camp’ growing up nearby.

But the camps did grow outside each major city and other areas where there was good soil and water, and a chance to make money either as casual labour picking fruit or vegetables, or, as in the susso camp that was once on the edge of our property, panning for gold. Huts were built from old kerosene tins (there were always lots of those around as kero was still used for heating, lights and cooking and even to run a fridge) or scraps of wood and bark and canvas.

Conditions slowly improved towards the end of the 1930s, especially as prices for wool and wheat rose again, and in most of Australia there was no return to the bad drought of 1930. But, for many families, regular work only began with World War II in 1939, when once again most of Australia’s young men vanished to the AIF and overseas.

T
HE WIRELESS (OR RADIO, AS IT IS NOW CALLED)

The first radio station in Australia to broadcast was 2SB (later to be called 2BL) on 23 November 1923 in Sydney. 3AR and 3LO went to air on 26 January 1924 and 13 October 1924 in Melbourne. The first ‘wireless sets’ made in Australia could only pick up one station. Tommy Thompson’s, of course, were more sophisticated and could be tuned to whatever channels were in range. On 1 July 1932, the Prime Minister, Joseph Lyons, formally launched the Australian Broadcasting Commission (now Corporation), the ABC, with twelve radio stations — 2FC and 2BL in Sydney, 3AR and 3LO in Melbourne, 4QG in Brisbane, 5CL in Adelaide, 6WF in Perth, 7ZL in Hobart and the relay stations — 2NC in Newcastle, 2CO at Corowa, 4RK in Rockhampton and 5CK at Crystal Brook. A wireless was a necessity now in well-off homes and a luxury in poorer ones, where neighbours would gather to listen to music and voices from far away, and even re-enactments of the cricket matches being played in England — the ABC commentators used cables from London to give them the scores and a running report of what was happening, and used sound effects in their studios to make it seem like they were there at the matches.

S
CHOOL

By the 1930s all children were supposed to go to school — assuming there was one nearby. Many in the shantytowns of the Depression had no school to go to. Children could also be exempted from school to work, especially if their father was dead or ill or one of the many men who had returned from World War I shattered in body or mind.

Few Indigenous children were allowed into school, even though there were no official rules barring them. Principals often found an excuse so that ‘white’ kids didn’t have to sit near ‘black’ ones.

In some places Indigenous kids had their own schools, but the teacher usually wasn’t qualified, and they were only taught how to do ‘manual’ jobs or domestic work, or carpentry or blacksmithing, not given the sort of education where they could become a teacher or even work in an office, much less ever go to university. Children were even forcibly taken from their families to be trained as servants or stockmen.

E
QUAL PAY AND JOBS FOR WOMEN

It is difficult for anyone born after 1970 to understand just how restrictive life was for Australian women until the 1970s. I worked in a hotel in the months between school and university, working three jobs, housemaid, breakfasts and laundry, fourteen hours a day for seven days a week. I was paid $19.50 a week. A man doing a similar cleaning job was paid $140 a week. The minimum wage at the time was $56 for an eight-hour day, five days a week, plus more money for ‘overtime’ — but only for men. There were few jobs where women had equal pay for equal work. A married woman could not even be a permanent public servant. In some places, like Broken Hill, a married woman was not allowed to work at all. Other trades, like being a mechanic, were barred to women. Unions fought against equal pay for women, on the ground that working women would compete for jobs with men, who had to support their families. But even then, as now, many women were their family’s breadwinners. They did not have it easy.

In wealthier circles women, like some of my mother’s friends, almost never handled money, had no idea of their family’s financial position, or knew how to drive. When they were widowed they were bewildered, having never even written a cheque. A woman cajoled her husband into giving her something expensive she wanted, like a fur coat or a television set — she had no way to save for it herself, except from the housekeeping allowance her husband gave her. Many of the girls I went to school with assumed they’d only work until they got married. Only those who passionately wanted a particular career thought they might work even if they had a husband. We’d talk about how important it was to marry the kind of man who would ‘allow’ us to do the work we loved. Society even as a matter of course blamed a woman who had been assaulted, as much or even more than her attacker.

By and large, women in the 1960s were referred to only by their husband’s names in public — a newspaper would talk of Mrs James Smith, not Jane Smith. Our headmistress told us bluntly that we had to choose between a career, and marriage and motherhood, and that she hoped we’d focus on the fulfilment of a career as she had done, for if she had married she would have had to leave teaching. (This had already changed, due to the shortage of teachers.)

This all changed dramatically in the 1970s. Women’s pay rates and ability to reach the top of their professions still lag behind those of men, and unconscious prejudice still hampers women’s careers. But our society has come a very, very long way in a few decades.

When we criticise societies in which women are oppressed and repressed, it is worth remembering how recently our own society was much the same. It is also worth remembering those who fought — and succeeded — to gain the equality women take for granted today, and how quickly social change can come if you work for it.

E
LEPHANTS

Humans live closely with many animals — dogs, who we have domesticated to accept us as the leader of their pack; and cats, who have possibly domesticated us so we invented sofas for their convenience — as well as horses and elephants.

The elephants who live with humans are genetically the same as wild elephants, but have close bonds with their carers.

Elephants have almost the same life span as a human — sixty to seventy years. We both become adult at about twenty. Elephants are possibly the most intelligent animals that humans work with. They play, have superb memories, and grieve for those who have died or been injured, whether they are elephants or humans. They sulk, hold grudges, play jokes. They also form strong family bonds. Elephants in captivity have been known to form these bonds with humans. Humans bond equally strongly to their elephant companions, possibly because elephants form social bonds very similar to human ones.

An elephant family group of several related females and their young is dominated by the matriarch, who protects and leads her herd. She is usually the oldest and most experienced and she will face danger to protect those she loves. Elephants protect their injured. And, sometimes, when an elephant forms these bonds with people, as Sheba does in this book, she will do the same for them.

Sheba’s habit of removing items of jewellery is based on the habits of a real elephant.

T
HE HYMN
‘S
IMPLE
G
IFTS
’

‘Simple Gifts’ was written by Elder Joseph in 1848 while he was at the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine, USA. The ‘Shakers’ were a Christian sect, so called because one of their forms of prayer involved joyous dancing. They were also known for their superb woodwork and cooking. Each act was held to be a prayer, to be done simply and perfectly. The song has been adapted by many singers since, and other verses added to it by other writers. This one is probably the original, sung to be danced to.

’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free

’Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

’Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain’d,

To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.

T
HE
M
ATILDA
S
AGA

The Road to Gundagai
is the third book in the series that began with
A Waltz for Matilda
and continued with
The Girl from Snowy River
. While all the books can be read by themselves, the thread of the same land, communities and families runs through them all.

A Waltz for Matilda
begins in 1894 and ends in 1915, covering the journey to Federation and the acceptance that we were one nation.

The Girl from Snowy River
is set from 1919 to 1926, but with flashbacks to World War I and the Snowy River Enlistment March, as well as glimpses into the future when on a rock below her house Flinty McAlpine meets a wounded soldier from 1969, who fought in the Vietnam War.

The Road to Gundagai
is set from 1932 to 1935, in the Depression. The next in the series will be set in 1942, in World War II, and the fifth in 1969, where the stories — and the unanswered mysteries that readers may have glimpsed in the books — will come together.

The Joseph McAlpine in this book is the twelve-year-old Joey of
The Girl from Snowy River
and the ‘Mr McAlpine’, Drinkwater’s manager, is Andy, who had gone droving with cattle when
The Girl from Snowy River
opens. Matilda and Tommy are the protagonists in
A Waltz for Matilda
.

‘O
OEY
G
OOEY WAS A WORM, A BIG FAT WORM WAS HE …’

My mother learned this verse as a child in the 1930s, and taught it to her children in the 1950s and ’60s. There are many versions, some of which are claimed by more recent authors. The original author is unknown.

‘A
LL FOR
M
E
G
ROG
’

This traditional Irish folk song was adapted to an Australian setting before the early 1900s.

‘M
Y
T
WEETY
P
IE
’

This is original, but contains the elements and phrases used in popular songs of the 1920s and ’30s.

M
EDICAL ADVICE

Putting butter on a burn was done in the 1930s. Don’t do it. It will make it worse.

Also, these days medical advice suggests keeping a stroke victim cool.

S
QUISHED FLIES

There were several biscuits around in the 1930s with similar nicknames, as well as ‘stuffed monkeys’ and ‘elephant ears’ and other vivid monikers. This recipe is based on an ancient one, where butter or fat was rubbed into ground wheat, barley, oats, rice or other grass seeds, sweetened with whatever fresh or dried fruit was available and baked on a hot rock by the fire. It evolved into Welsh cakes as well as pikelets and Singing Hinnies — so called because they ‘sing’ when the dough is poured onto a hot frying pan.

This is a recipe I adapted long ago, when I lived in a shed with no oven and cooked either on a wood fire or (till it blew up in the heat of one summer, luckily when I wasn’t near it) a single-burner kerosene stove. Makes about twenty-five squished flies.

Ingredients

Pastry:

125g butter (or dripping or lard in the 1930s)

2 cups plain flour (can be buckwheat for a gluten-free version)

½ cup brown sugar