CHILDHOOD MEMORIES OF A PIONEER'S DAUGHTER.

In my daughter's researching I found that my maternal ancestors came from France years ago with the Heugenot refugees and settled in the Isle of Guernsey then later migrated to Australia.

My father was English with an English father and French mother. He came to Australia in his early twenties in about I881. After my parents' marriage they went with my sister 5 years older than me to a gold mining spot in N.S.W. called Paddy's Creek.

I sometimes wonder if the pioneers of that day were courageous, far-seeing or plain stupid. I think they must have been people of great courage to put up with all the inconveniences of that time. My father mined at Paddy's Creek where we lived and I was born. We lived in a slab hut with bark roof and I was broughtinto the world by an Aborigine woman.

There were no conveniences there in those days, everything next to nature. No ice, no water laid on - that came out of the nearby creek - no kerosene or candles for lighting only slush lamps which are treacle tins filled with fat and a piece of rag in the centre for a wick. Cooking was done on an open-hearth fire with pots hanging from hooks, laundry was boiled in kerosene tins over an open fire outside. There was no child endowment, no outside help whatever -it was paddle your own canoe or go under.

My daughter and I thought we would like to see my birthplace -we knew it was somewhere near Bungwahl, thriving town then but now a ghost town, and Bulladelah. We enquired at the Forestry Department at Bulladelah but they hadn't heard of it. Then at the Police Station and got the same answer. Next we went to Coolongolook Forestry office and the forester there not only knew it but showed us where it was on a map. So we found Paddy's Creek somewhere near Mayers Flat. I was four years old when we left there but I recalled having climbed on to the ridge as a child and looked down the mineshaft and saw the buckets being, hauled by windlass. On our exploratory visit we found some shafts. Later we talked to Mr. Baker, the local historian at Bulladelah who has a fund of local knowledge. By coincidence he planned to take a group of young members of their society to Paddy's Creek mines the next weekend so at his invitation we went too. He showed us several shafts and tunnels, the old crushing plant now overgrown with lantana, and the remains of a dam across the creek. When my family moved to Tea Gardens I used to play with my older sister and possibly other children in the carpenter's shop. We used to play hide and seek in the coffins made there. One day I fell into a basket of sharp tools and gashed my leg. The scar is still there. We must have been a nomadic family as we then moved to Hawks Nest on the other side of the Myall River. My sister and I used to wander through thick bush picking wild flowers and talking to the Aborigines on our way to the long sand spit that runs to the headland. We would look across the water to what is now Nelsons Bay and wonder what was in all that bush, which are now houses.

There were only two houses at Hawks Nest, ours and another in thick bush. We had fowls that roosted in a big tree near the house and at night a pack of dingoes would sit underneath howling and hoping for a poultry dinner. I used to watch the men at work tanning their nets in bins of boiling wattle bark or others with planks of wood immersed in boiling water to make it supple enough to bend to form the bows of rowing boats and then be clamped down in place.

My sister used to get out our rowing boat and the two of us would row to an old wreck in the mangroves where I was made to climb up and look down into the still dark water in the hold.

Or we would lose the oars and go floating with the outgoing tide past a sailing vessel loading timber at the old stone wharf. The sailors would lean over the side and laugh at me screaming for all I was worth. Then we would drift onto a mudflat and be rescued by our parents. (God must have watched over me).

Later my family moved to Gloucester where my father was appointed engineer to the new butter factory. The old minute books show he was paid L2.IO.O a week ($5). He paid three pence a week for school fees for each child, which was compulsory then. I loved school, it was a wondrous place of learning and I became an armchair traveller until the latter years of my life when I was privileged to visit many countries.

We lived in the main street just below the Police Station. The old Indian hawker, who used to visit the town in his waggonette with one horse, camped in the vacant paddock next door with his huge bundles of household goods. I can still smell the spices that came from those bundles. We children would watch him cook his evening meal with lots of curry and eggs. Sometimes I took my father's evening meal to him at the butter factory, which was a fair distance from home. Away I would go with the meal in plates and basins tied up in a serviette and "don't spill anything". On my way home I had to cross a bridge over a small stream. I was then about IO and would tiptoe and then run for my life because it was dark and tramps camped under the bridge and I could see their fires burning.

From Gloucester we moved to Narrabri where my father had gone on ahead to be engineer of the Narrabri Electricity Co.

My mother decided to take her brood to see her parents in Kempsey en route. We travelled by mail coach from Gloucester Post Office and went via Krambach, Nabiac, Taree and Port Macquarie. The vehicle was just like Cobb and Co. coach. The passengers sat inside on seats facing each other, luggage was tied on the roof, and the canvas mailbags were strapped on behind. Then complete with driver and four horses and me in my Tom O'Shanter cap with a big quill on the side, away we went.

I well remember Pt.Macquarie with the big pine trees and the ocean beyond. We stopped on the hill near the well because the Police paddock was there and horses were changed. Once or twice on the way I was allowed to sit up on the box alongside the driver. Eventually we arrived in Kempsey and stayed with my grandparents for a period. I was taken to a big old 2 storeyed house (it is still there) to see my great grandmother. She was a little old lady sitting up with a little lace cap on her head like Queen Victoria. That was the only time in my life I saw my grandparents.

We went on our way jiggerty-jog with iron wheels on gravel roads through Hillgrove where we stayed the night, then to Armidale where we caught the train to Narrabri where we lived for a few years. It was there that my family and I spent a night on the tin roof of a house above the floodwaters in the town. And it was in Narrabri that I was awakened in the night to see Halley's Comet.

And life goes on Mrs. Una M.Biggs.

N.B. Father's surname was Lewis. Mother's maiden name was Perrin.

Great grandmother's name was Tilbrook.

Footnote:This story was originally written for the Brisbane Waters Historical Society and is reprinted with their permission.

[Extracted from Colin Wear's collection of Bulahdelah Historical Society material]