COOK STORIES

Alice: when I was there, it's entirely different today.

Neil: You're going back more than fifty years aren't you?

Alice: Keith's sixty one and he was twelve when we left there.

Neil: So when did you go there? How old was he when you went there?

Alice: He must have been about eight.

Neil: So that's fifty three years.

Alice: That's right, because it was sixty odd years since I left Darwin.

Neil: And you came from Darwin, down to Adelaide and then you went across to Cook.

Alice: Yes, well you see the depression was on thick and heavy when we left Darwin and Roy had passed exams while he was in Darwin and when we came back to the G.P.O. there was no job for him, because nobody had gone up. So they asked him would he accept a job out on the east-west line. He came home to me and said "Well I've been offered this job on the east-west line. I don't know what it's going to entail, but it's better than going down a grade, so he said "I think I better go over first and see what it's like." Well, he wasn't over there five seconds and he post haste came home and that's when I went over.

Neil: What did he say?

Alice: Well, he just said, being on his own you see, and he couldn't just stomach it because he just wanted, you know, to go out there to live on your own with no family and he thought, "Oh no, can't stand this" and he said I'd better come out. I didn't know what I was going to.

Neil: Did you have to go out by yourself?

Alice: Yes.

Neil: He didn't come back and get you, you had to go by yourself?

Alice: No. I had to get everything organised and everything shifted out there. As you know when you're married a few years you take a pride and joy in your furniture and we had to pack it all up and get it sent out there. When it arrived at Cook - I had a polished black wood dining room table and they must have put a mattress, a wire mattress, and that rubbed all over the table and there was this great big mark all on the table. There was two legs wrenched off the sideboard and they must have put everything in the railway van and then they must have closed the door and everything had to go and that's how it arrived.

Neil: This is stuff you had in Darwin. It came down with you from Darwin.

Alice: No. We didn't take furniture in Darwin, because we let the place. I think Cyril and Lorna were in it if I remember rightly. And then when we came back, he said you'd better come out to Cook, pack up and come out. So we packed up the furniture and everything and went out to Cook.

Neil: How long did it take you on the train, from Adelaide to Cook in those days, steam train?

Alice: We slept over night.

Mum: We must have been two nights I would say you would be on that train.

Neil: It's over night now, you wake up at Cook in the morning if you leave Adelaide at midday.

Alice: I know we arrived at Cook, well it was dusk and I didn't know what the place was like, no idea. Roy said you'd better come in to see it. It wasn't strictly a post office, it was what they call a repeater station. There was Tarcoola, Cook and Rawlinna were the repeater stations and Roy was in charge with two mechanics.
He said you'd better come in the office because the train did pull in and they used to send a few telegrams and different things and get a few stamps or something, and he said you'd better come in and sit down with the two children because I've got to finish up and he said we've just got to walk a few yards across to where our, there was three postal homes and then there was a long line of railway places. He said when you walk over to our place you've got to lift your feet up high because you'll pick every stone. It was too, not a thing there, just stones, stones.

Greg: Is it what you'd expected, or was it very different to what you had expected?

Alice: I had no idea what I was going to. Like, Darwin was lush and green and all that and you come down and it was terrible.

Neil: I've seen Cook and it isn't too bright.

Alice: It was pretty grim.

Neil: This was before you went to Oodnadatta.

Mum: Orroroo.

Alice: Oh, yes. You see while we were at Cook the inspector came out.
You see, Roy was a Telegraphist and the inspector came out and said to Roy "look, while you're here study a bit, and branch out into the postal side" and he said "I think you could get a post master's job", which he did, and of course while we were there, the gazette comes out you know, what ever office's are vacant and we put in for every office in Australia I think, to get out of Cook you see. Although we had a good time in Cook, I must admit, and anyway we put in for anything and the first job that came along was Orroroo. Orroroo was grim in those days. There was nothing there. Just an old northern town and we struck a locust plague. They ate everything, curtains and all. It was shocking.

Mum: What about the rabbit plague at Cook?

Alice: Out at Cook we struck a rabbit plague, every year was a rabbit plague.
You'd open your back door and the whole yard would move with rabbits, the whole yard. You see they'd come in from the plains in the heat and they'd drink all your water, even soapy water, then they'd swell up in the heat and burst. The stink was terrible. The houses were built up a little bit high off the ground and the three postal homes were very good, they were all jarrah, but the railway homes were shocking and the rabbits would come up and would drink your little bit of soapy water and they'd go under the house or anywhere and they'd die. Well you know, every morning, getting out old dead rabbits, it was terrible, really it was. Rabbits, I've never seen so many, I don't know where they came from. Every year there was a rabbit plague.

Neil: What, summer time?

Alice: Oh, yes in the heat. They'd come over for the water you see, god it was terrible, never known anything like it.

Neil: Did you eat rabbits?

Alice: Oh, no. I won't eat a rabbit if you paid me. See, and the children when we first went there of course we didn't experience a rabbit plague and the kids were out there on the plains, you know hunting and they'd say "Oh, Mum look what I've got. A little rabbit.” They had black rabbits and white rabbits and everything. But when the plagues came it was rabbits, rabbits, rabbits. It was terrible.

Greg: Did you actually see the plagues of rabbits moving, or did they just appear when you woke up one morning?

Alice: Oh, no. See everything's quiet and they'd come and come, but you'd open the door and they'd scatter, but they wanted water. See, there was no water. 2 inches of rain in Cook a year and there used to be a big depression in front of our place, there was no roads, just a track and there was this great big depression about as big as this room and when the rain did come, that would fill up and all the kids would come down there and get into it, Mum and all. Just to go in for the water. They enjoyed it.

Mum: Alice, when the Aborigines came, where actually did they move over from when they came tribing through the (??).

Alice: They came from the Musgrave Ranges and they would track across to Cook and I suppose they were after tea and sugar and stuff like that. They'd come and squat in your back yards. Well, there was no fences, but they'd squat there and they'd stop there.

Neil: The aborigines would come into your back yard?

Alice: Oh, yes. They'd come and squat in your back yard. Mind you, the railway homes had no fence whatsoever, but our three houses there, the postal people had post and wire fences, but that wouldn't stop them. They'd just come and sit in your back yard and they'd wait there until you gave them sugar, tea and tobacco.

Neil: What if you didn't?

Alice: Well, they'd just sit there until you did give it to them. They were dirty aboriginals because there was no water. Their hair was matted and they were terrible, poor things.

Greg: But they were living in a tribal state were they?

Alice: Oh yes, they had no clothes or anything, they were just natural.

Greg: Were you frightened by them at all?

Alice: No, no I was never frightened of them.

Greg: What about other people in Cook, how did they respond to them?

Alice: They didn't take any notice of them.

Neil: Did they come often?

Alice: No, not very often.

Neil: Could you tell the story about the golf course?

Alice: We weren't in Cook very long you see, and they had a hall there, and they had a school with one teacher for the whole school and Roy said one day, "Oh, do we have to play tennis? I think we'll make a golf course". So they got a busy bee going together and we got slag from Pirie and the men were out there making all the scrapes and we got tremendous big pods. I don't know what they were for but children could walk through them. Oh I don't know what they were for, but they were all there on the plain and of course the men commandeered them and strapped them down with wire, pegged them down for bunkers, you know.

Alice: We decided to have a fancy dress golf tournament.

Neil: What did you dress up as?

Alice: Oh, you've no idea the characters and what they put on. It was a scream and you know what Roy'd be like.

Neil: What kind of things?

Alice: He had an old woman's hat on and a tight guernsey all stuffed out in front and then he wound stockings around his legs, he said for varicose veins. And you know, the school teacher, he was done up as a flash girl and it was really funny. So started to play the golf tournament, you know, and we were serious with it, you know.
There was a trophy on the end of it and all of a sudden somebody looked up and they said "gosh, there's a movement away over in the distance, I wonder what it is." And of course, you'd play a few more holes and you'd look over and it would be coming closer and all of a sudden there's all of this band of natives coming over and they were stark naked, the whole lot of them. The men were running with their jumpers and giving them to put on, and they put their legs through the arms of it and it'd be all open in the front and button it up around the stomach, and they'd be running with newspapers to put in front of them and we'd all seen it before the newspapers come out, but oh. Then Roy said, "look over there". And he said “you women pay attention and watch the ball. And we said what do you think we're watching? It was really funny out there, no beg your pardons out there. Oh, that was really funny and the poor devils had tracked about three hundred miles over the Musgrove Ranges. They'd just track over, you see.

Mum: This is part of their life you see, they follow the water, they follow the seasons.

Alice: And then after they'd leave Cook, they'd just track on somewhere else, and that's their habit you see. They were happy.

Mum: They possibly knew there were caves that we're only finding out now, the caves on the Nullabor.

Alice: Yes, well probably they were tracking down to Ooldea, you know, where Daisy Bates was, probably.

Neil: Daisy Bates book. Tell us about Daisy Bates.

Alice: Oh, well. Daisy Bates, you see, she was there when we arrived. We didn't see her. She was at Ooldea you see and she was a really cultured English woman and she used to work in the heat, 107° in the shade and she had these high collars right up here, black frocks on, you know. Real English style. She just squatted down with the natives at Ooldea. I don't know why she did it. I suppose she thought she was doing, you know, the world of good, but she was a bit of a pest. She used to write to the postmaster of Rawlinna and Tarcoola and then they wouldn't take any notice of her. But Roy being a bit soft hearted he used to answer her letters and she reckoned he was the kindest man she'd ever met in her life, but like a fool we never kept those letters you know. We should've.

Greg: What sort of things would she write?

Alice: Well, she'd. How kind he was and the good work she was doing and that God was with her and she was going to teach all the natives this, that and the other and er, I don't know whether they took much notice of her, but they liked her, they tolerated her. She was out there for many years I believe.

Mum: Actually, she was a person who was ahead of her time, I would imagine.

Alice: And she had a son, and I didn't know that until I read the book. Her husband died and she had this son and he went out there to Ooldea to try and get her away but she wouldn't. She wanted to stop out there with the natives. They called her Grandma and different things, but you know, I suppose she did a lot of good for them, I don't know but she was a bit of a pest.

Neil: A bit of a pest.

She was a bit of a, in the government, you know and all that business. You see, nobody took any notice of her. See the postal people, they wouldn't even answer her letters, she'd always be complaining about different things you see and of course Roy would take, you know, he'd answer the letters for her and see what he could do and all this business and she reckoned, oh he was marvellous. I wished I'd kept that letter, but you don't when you're writing, you don't think of it. She died out there, didn't she. I think she died out there you know. I think she did.

Mum: This is it, when you're that age you don't think that you're making history do you?

Alice: Well, you see I, you can't see in the future. I would have taken more notice and put notes down, and all that, but I didn't you see.

Neil: Would she come into Cook, sometimes?

Alice: No, she never came into Cook.

Neil: When did you meet her then?

Alice: Because (Ooldea ??) was Mayor of Tarcoola and she used to come into Tarcoola, but once she went across to the West, one time. You see the train pulls up at Cook to change the crew, you know the crew on the trains, and we met her there. She was a very cultured woman. Very thin and angular she was.

Neil: What, she just got of the train and you had a chat to her?

Alice: Oh, well they all get off the train and stretch their legs. I don't know what she was going to the West for, but she went over and came back again. But that's as much as I know about old Daisy, but I have got a book home and I did read it but it didn't tell you much more.

Mum: Alice's husband was a bit of a character, always one for a laugh and a joke and that sort of thing. He used to try and play the banjo all by ear. Alice's son Keith played the mouth organ and they thought they'd hold dances. So they had a dance every week with banjo and mouth organ music.

Greg: And that was every week?

Mum: Yes, almost.

Alice: One Saturday night. we were fortunate we had a hall there. But see the crew in those days, I'm going back, in those days the crew would come off the train at Cook and they'd change over, get the water for the engines and coal up and all that business and then that crew would stop at Cook and then the crew that was at Cook when the last train came through would go through to Perth.
That's how it was. Well those men, with nothing to do, so they used to go to the hall and we had a eucha and dance one Saturday night and the following Saturday night we'd have a dance and there's all the mothers with their babies, wheel them up in their prams and park them behind the piano and dance away and the kids, we'd expect them to be asleep behind the piano, going for tar. It was really funny.

Neil: So it was a piano, a banjo and a mouth organ?

Alice: Mrs. Green had one special thing she'd play. Mrs. Hammond was another special thing and they'd all take it in turns, whatever they knew and would play the piano. Roy was on the banjo and Keith was on the mouth organ, he was only about 11 or 12, it was really fun, it really was. And you know, I'm short and these big railway men. I thought they were giants. I'd be under their arm pits, you know, they'd say come on you know, and they'd take you around and you'd have to follow them.

Mum: A real barn dance.

Alice: It was really funny, you know, but it was good fun.

Mum: You had to make it otherwise you'd go batty.

Alice: They used to have supper and Mr. Tyrell, he was the head one to get the copper going and get the coffee going or the tea and serve it out and it used to be good fun. But it was so perishing cold in the night. It was freezing. While you were waiting to play euchre you'd be stamping you feet to get warm and yet in the day time it could be 117° in the shade. You'd see all that shimmering across the plains, it was like that all the time and you could notice men, you could notice a sea scene with a jetty with people going backwards and forwards. (Mum: a real mirage) This mirage. It'd be terrific you know, all the shimmering heat day after day.

Mum: When the night started to come on they'd say here comes the doctor, it was the first breeze they had.

Alice: You see, the breeze'd come over every night, here comes the doctor and you'd look forward to that doctor. It'd be lovely and cool in the evening but in the day time and flies. I reckon all the flies go up there in the winter. God. I've never. Look your back could be black with flies.

Greg: In the winter?

Alice: In the summer. All those flies, it was terrible.

Neil: Was it colder in the winter or was it still hot in the winter?

Alice: Look, the winter. Out on that plain the winter is beautiful. It really is beautiful, because that's when we used to play all our golf and the evenings would be cold, but in the summer.

Neil: Wasn't there a pig sty one of your bunkers, a pig sty out..

Alice: Oh, yes and you had to hang a sheet, a wet sheet at the door in the summer for a bit of breeze, you know. Oh, it was hot, boy it was hot. And there was no electricity and yet to have to cook anything in the heat you'd have to go and light up your stove, a big roaring fire to cook your meat and cook all your dinners and stoke up and it roaring, you know.

Neil: And you had to cook your meat as soon as it arrived didn't you?

Alice: Well.

Mum: There were no fridges or ice chests.

Alice: To do your washing, you'd have to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and you'd have to stoke up the old copper to get ready and all your clothes to get out there before the heat came and hang them on the line and by the time hung your last clothes up this end of the line this top would be dry. It was terrible.
Then if you wanted to iron your clothes, don't iron much now but, when you had to iron all your clothes you had to stoke up the old wood fire to get the coals to put in your old iron, go out and swing it in the breeze and come back iron a few clothes and perspiration would be running.

Greg: So you'd have to do that in the summer as well?

Alice: Oh, yes, that was it. You had to and no refrigeration whatsoever.

Neil: Coolgardie safes?

Alice: Er, home made things with bagging on the sides, drip you know, old drip safe. Things wouldn't be cold naturally but oh, you know, it was really hard, but see we were younger and the passenger train would go through I think Wednesdays and I dont know, then the tea and sugar would come through, that's from Port Augusta.

Mum: Tea and sugar train they called it.

Alice: And that would have all the goods on it, your meat and everything you see and they'd unload, fortunately at Cook they had a little store and all the things would be taken in the store but your bread would be brought from Kalgoorlie I think. And they had these big cane baskets with the bread in it and that would be dumped on the side, no platforms or anything, just dumped down there. And you know, by the time you got it, it'd by like chips. Terrible.

Mum: Daily baker.

Alice: It was too. It would be just hard chips, so we decided, the woman across the road from me, she was a fetlers wife and she said, Oh yes, she was as rough as bags, but she was a lovely woman and she said sick of this bread, you know, so we decided to make our own bread. We didn't know how to make yeast so we got a few raisins and I don't know what else we put in it (Mum: potatoes I guess, overnight with water). Well anyway we made our bread and it wasn't bad. And then the vegetables would come with the tea and sugar too, only once a week, that's all you'd get your bread and once a week for your vegetables. And if you saw them in the vegetable shop now, the carrots turned up their tail, you'd throw them out. We had to have them, we just had to.

Alice: There was a Mr. & Mrs. Ryan and the girl and they just lived opposite us in the first of the rail homes and he was a butcher, but he only killed a few little sheep, once a week. So you got a few chops. You would'nt get a leg of lamb. I don't know what he did, but all you'd get is a few chops on Tuesday and then Friday you'd get the tea and sugar would come in and you'd get your goods. And then from when the train would pull in a siding, right out on the clay pan and in the heat you'd have to tramp over these clay pans, hot as hadïes, with all the rabbits dead around you and climb up into the tea and sugar train, get your meat, come home and cook the lot because it wouldn't keep, just wouldn't keep. You know, you'd have a feast you see because the tea and sugar train came in.

Mum: No wonder you lived till 88.

Alice: We'd have a lovely feast. Oh dear it was funny. The little shop you see, he got groceries and that you see. That all came from Port Augusta. Mind you he was the funniest man I've ever met in my life.

Neil: This is the grocer?

Alice: Yes, he was Mr. Dunlop, no, no, wait a minute, I'll/think of it in a minute. No, anyway I can't think of his name. (KSJ note: McLeod). Anyway, he had his wife and two (KSJ note: 3) children out there and the tea and sugar used to come in Fridays, but if you went over to the shop to get anything out of his shop Friday he would insult you. 0o you mustn't go in there, he was too busy. He was too busy getting the things of the train to put in his shop, but if you went over there, ooo. Nobody was to go over there Fridays to get their stuff. So I never forget there was a Mrs. Dunlop there and her brother came from the West for a holiday, he went out to Cook for a holiday.

(everyone laughed at that). (Neil: On the quiet).

Yes, he came out for a holiday, anyway she started, cause you see you couldn't go over and buy cake or anything, we had to do everything. So she was busy one day and she said he would make her some cakes or something, she was going ahead and she didn't have enough flour. So she said "Oh, Roger run over the" what was his name. Isn't it funny when you cant think of it.

Mum: Call him Joe.

Alice: Joe Blo. Oh, go over to old Joe's and get me some flour. He went over and old Joe, oo he just about threw the flour at him you see. Well Mrs. Dunlop, well she was still doing her baking and I've got no currants. Oh Joe Blo go over and get some Currants for me. You know poor old Roger, he threw the Currants at him and he said you tell that bloody Mrs. Dunlop this is not a bloody pantry. You know, he wouldn't serve them.

Mum: Come on customers, come on.

Alice: And then he'd scream at you, and the poor old devil he had a little still down in his cellar and now and again he used to go down there and have a little drop of the doing you see. Look it was a scream, you see and the poor devil he was a returned soldier you see, and he had some little thing wrong. And now and again he would get out in the front of his shop with a machine gun, you know.

Neil: A pretend machine gun.

Alice: A pretend machine gun, mowing the enemy down. He was a scream of a man, honestly. And oh he loved his drink. He ended up at Prospect I think.

Neil: His name wasn't Elliott was it?

Alice: No, after he left the line, they sent somebody else out there you see. Poor old McLeod. Mr. McLeod and he was very ill and the doctor said if you don't give up the drink you're going die tomorrow.

Mum: It was the shop he had to give up.

Alice: He gave it up and they had a bit of a business out on the Prospect Road there for quite a while. He must've come good. But he was a real funny man. But there was some characters out there. I reckon all the characters in the world are out at Cook.

Mum: No comment.

Neil: That's what we want to hear about. We want to hear about the characters out at Cook.

Alice: You remember when all the cricket was on. I don't suppose you would remember, you were too young. You know, when all the cricket was on, you'd sit up till about three in the morning to listen to it.

Neil: Yes. I know that they used to do that.

Greg: We still do it now, but we watch it on the tele.

Neil: Yeh, we watch it on the tele instead now.

Alice: Well, this was on the wireless you see and when a wicket would fall they'd play some little tune, you know and the sound effects would go with the cricket bats and all that.

Mum: Yes, they'd knock the pencil on the desk.

Greg: Allan McGillivray.

Alice: Well, there was another family there, there was 20 odd families I think. Anyway, Mrs. Sayers thought she would go to Kalgoorlie for a holiday. So she left Mr. Sayers, cause naturally he was working there and the cricket was on. So he invited all the camp, they Call them camps you see, invited all the camp into his, and the lounge was half the size of this, little old bag thing, you know and no wood as you know, no wood to light fires. So the railways would bring along sleepers and throw them on the siding and all the householders had to go across and get these sleepers and chop them up.

Greg: It's hard work in itself isn't it, cutting up sleepers.

Alice: Big hard sleepers, but anyway there was two motor cars there, but they were hardly used.

Mum: Nowhere to go.

Alice: No, well I'll tell you they did have somewhere to go. Old Tom Crow, there was a fellow there called old Tom Crow and he had a steel plate in his head, through the war, and poor old thing and he went out bush with the fetlers. You know the fetlers carts that you go like that (?) along the line and he drawed, I don't know where he got it, but a great big log like that of wood. So he gave it to Mr. Sayers, and he said there's some wood for you and this cricket was going on and old Sayers, he had this great big long branch, put it through the front door and there's the fire there, and he never chopped it, but every now and again he'd bring the log in a bit further to burn and then a bit further.

Mum: No hard work attached to it at all.

Alice: It was so funny. It was true. Look it was so funny and then there was a little woman, Mrs. Rosewarne and Mr. Rosewarne was a mighty man and cause they used to come home every lunch time for dinner and I think he was one of the fetlers if I remember rightly. Because there were always, some of the railway people were always at Cook and he would never chop wood for her, the sleepers she had to go and chop them. He'd never chop them and he was a big man, so poor old Mrs. Rosewarne, she got sick of it one day old Mrs. Rosewarne. She thought look I'm not going to chop that wood any longer, she thought to herself. Well he'll come home for dinner directly and I'm not going to get any dinner. So she set the table and she put the axe across the table. See, and he came home to lunch and he looked and he said "what's the axe on the table for?” She said “that's your dinner? Well, he just about..

Mum: She was game.

Alice: Yes, he blew his top and he said "oh, you want some wood do you?". She said "Yes, I'm not going to chop anymore wood". He got the axe and he chopped all the furniture up. He said "There's the wood.".

Mum: Know why he had a plate in his head.

Alice: No, oh no that is absolute honest, honestly that was really.

Neil: What happened then?

Mum: How long did he live?

Neil: How long did they stay?

Alice: Oh, well. They stayed out there for years, out on the line, you know, all those people.

Mum: Yes, but this particular lady with no furniture, how did she get on?

Alice: Oh, I don't know, I suppose she got more but, er, I dont know. But you know.

Neil: Did she go back to chopping the wood?

Alice: Now you've got me tricked.

Neil: A wonderful story.

Alice: That is really honest.

Neil: Yes, I know it is.

Alice: That's really true. There's so many things happened out there. It was, truly it was a scream.

Mum: You all used to look after each other's children if they had measles and things that you had to go and call Mrs. somebody in, you know, come and have a look at my child. What's the matter with it?

Alice: Well there was no doctor. You had to rely on when the train went through, you'd have to rely on if there was a doctor on, you see, but we were all obliged to take on first aid. We had to learn first aid and the head of the first aid, St John's Ambulance used to come out to Cook and examine us. But we'd have to learn it.

Neil: What happened if people were really sick?

Alice: Well, naturally the train would come over to Perth and it would go back to Adelaide twice a week and there was always a doctor on the train and no woman was allowed to stay at Cook if they were having a baby. After seven months, they'd have to go. There was no doctor, nothing. Nothing out there and I think Roy was responsible for getting, there's a hospital there now and he was responsible for getting a hospital and its quite a nice hospital.

Neil: How did he go about that?

Alice: I suppose he approached the government. Look, see, if I'd have known I was going to do all this I, you would've taken notes, but I think he approached the authorities and said that it was time that there was a hospital out there. But it wasn't manned with a doctor, it had two...

Mum: It was a mission. Didn't the Anglican Church of England have a mission hospital there.

Alice: Not there, I don't think, but it was a well appointed hospital. It was a nice building.

Mum: Why they got the hospital, though when anyone was sick, whichever way the train was going, they either go to Port Augusta or Kalgoorlie.

Alice: Well, they'd have to. A lady having a baby she'd have to go either to Kalgoorlie or Port Augusta, she'd have to after seven months. You know nobody seemed to be seriously ill. We'd attempt to, you know, when we decided to make this blooming golf course, you know, all the kids were making golf sticks and one day Keith got bashed there with a golf stick, and had a splinter right in his head there. Well you see, Mr. Cleary, he was the head of the St. Johns Ambulance thing, well he attended to him, I didn't know anything about it till Keith come home and he was all bandaged up, but you had to look after one another. You had to.

Greg: No such thing as tetanus shots or anything like that?

Alice: No, no nothing. There used to be an old missionary bloke from Tarcoola and he used to come right along the line with books on religion and give a bit of a sermon up in the hall. And then the Catholic priest used to come along and he'd go in there and all the Catholic people had to get behind the piano for confession, you know, that was the confession box around the back of the piano.And all the Protestant kids looking through the window. Look, it was so funny you know, they didn't care two hoots.

Mum: No privacy. No privacy at all.

Alice: No privacy, you see and then the Catholic kids would go and look through the window when the Church of England minister used to come across from Ceduna.

Mum: Alice, said all the houses were road up like that and down there all the toilets. You know down the back yard and she said of a morning, you know everyone would go down and come back. Down to lavatory lane they used to call it.

Greg: I can see it now.

Alice: Lavatory lane or um rotten row.

Mum: How are you this morning, oh it's alright I'm just going...

Alice: Yes, it was rotten row or lavatory lane and no fences or anything. You'd see a row of homes and a row of toilets. And poor old, there was Robby out there, he was a handy man and he had, and Ollie would know what I'm talking about, a spring dray, an old spring dray and he had an old white horse and that old white horse was almost human. His little old hut was opposite where we lived and that old horse used to go and put his head through Robbies window and pull the clothes off him to wake him up. No, that is really true and Bobby was a bit of a hard case. He was crippled with, well I don't know what he was crippled with but, nowadays it would be arthritis. His hands were like that (Alice must have shown everyone with her hands) and he used to drive the old horse. He was a remarkable man, but he had a quick sense of humour and every time the train came in, you know, he'd get his old spring dray with the horse and he'd go up and down the platform, all the passengers out and he'd say, taxi sir, taxi sir.

Mum: The spring dray was sort of a two wheel thing and I don't know what you'd say it was like, a square bottom and the sides out a bit, you know back and front and a door down at the back, a tail board or whatever they call it and just the one horse.

Alice: Oh, he was a great old character really. He went to Melbourne for a holiday and he went over to see his sisters, you see and when he came back, there was a Mrs. Bailey there, she said well how did you get on Robby, going to Melbourne. He said, “Oh it was alright” he said, “but I was in the train” he said, “and I lost me pickets on her hair”, he lost his teeth.

Neil: Lost his pickets.

Alice: Lost his pickets in her hair. He said I fell asleep on her shoulder and I lost me pickets in her hair.

Mum: I think why he might have said that is when anyone had a tooth out in front, they always used to say it looks like a picket fence. When he laughs, it looks like a picket fence.

Alice: Poor old Robby, you know. He had a terrible job. He had to go, you know, his job was to go and empty all the pans in the toilets, you know, and he'd take them out bush and I suppose.

Mum: Not much difference really, if the wind blew that way you had bad luck.

Alice: You see, you'd look three hundred miles towards the west and you'd look three hundred miles or more down to the coast and lord knows how long up to the Musgrove Ranges and there was Cook. There was nothing.

Neil: Occasionally you went to the coast.

Alice: Oh, yes. This was funny to. It was nearly a Christmas time, you see, and old Tom Crow and he had this steel plate in his head you see and this Mrs. Dunlop had two children and old Tom reckons he was going down to the Coast for the weekend and somehow or other, I don't know whether Mrs. Dunlop asked him or he asked Mrs. Dunlop would she go with the two children. Well then in turn, she asked Mrs. Rosewall to go with them and she had one child and then Mrs. Rosewall came up to me and she said would you like to go down to the coast. And I said, Oh yes and she said Tom's taking us and there was all us lot in his one car. My two kids, Dunlops two children and Mrs. Rosewall's one and three adults and Tom.

Neil: What kind of car?

Alice: Oh, an old bomb. I don't know what it was and it was three hundred mile we went. Down to the coast.

Mum: What would it've been, an old Essex or an old Dodge or an old Ford or something.

Alice: No roads, you just went. There was no roads.

Greg: So train was the only major route.

Alice: It was just a plain you see and there could've been a minor track I suppose, but now and again you'd come across these big cavern things, you know, what do they call them?

Greg: The underground caves.

Alice: Yes, now and again you'd come to one of those, and then the wombats and all sorts you know. And then you'd come to the Nullarbor station and of course that was almost deserted and then old Tom Crow you know, and all us lot in. Then when we get down towards the coast, and he's going along like that and there was this huge cliffs down. And he's backing onto this cliff and little Dunlop girl, she looked down and she screamed, Oo we're going over, we're going over, and he turned around. I don't know how we didn't go over, I don't know.

Mum: No rear mirrors.

Alice: Nothing. See all the big high cliffs are there, and as though you would get a knife and go straight down like that there's these sand hills, like the pyramids. Shifting sands all the time and we had to go around there and there was no privacy or anything, we all just dossed on the ground and slept overnight. On rocks and you name it. It was an experience, I will admit. We climbed down, you see, and went along the beach, but you can count up on your fingers how many people have actually been right at the head of the bight. It was an experience.

Greg: Could you swim?

Alice: No. No we never went in there to have a swim.

Neil: You went all the way to the coast to see the water and didn't swim.

Alice: All the way to the coast. It was really an experience. But oh what an experience.

Greg: What about finding your way back with no roads, did you get lost or anything?

Alice: Oh well, I suppose old Tom went where he thought. We just got home. It was around about the Christmas time, you see, and of course all the men were left, in what they call them, camps, see and we ladies went down with Tom and the children and when we came back, Roy had a case of beer there, you see. And I said,"what in the world, you've got a case of beer”, and he said “well they're all getting one”. He said “they're all getting a case of beer and I suppose I had to have one”. So they delivered a case of beer like around the Christmas mark and before Christmas the majority of those people had drank it all and they had to get more for Christmas.

Mum: Good excuse wasn't it.

Alice: You see they'd start...

Neil: You said they'd start at one end.

Alice: They'd start right up this end and all go in and have a drink. Then they'd collect that household and they'd go to the next one. By the time they got here, they were very, very merry. Oh, it was funny.

Neil: Just the men, or did the women come to.

Alice: Oh some, yes some of the women. Of course the women would have to stop there and give them refreshments at each household. Oh, look it was really was funny.

Mum: Alice, was it, you said that when the wind blows or something it's so strong of a night time particularly, you cant see a thing in front of you, left right or centre and you had to hang onto the fence to get to your house, because you wouldn't know the way.

Alice: You see. As I say, there's a three hundred mile stretch. Now, you know when the trains coming an hour before it arrives at Cook. Because in those days you could see the smoke from the engine. You'd know that the train was coming and in an hours time it would be at Cook and I'll never forget it. The two mechanics left when we got there and two new ones came. That was poor old Gwen and Grant Queen and the other chap, Ivy Cole and Bert Cole. And Mrs. Cole was a young bride, she came there as a young bride, out there to Cook. Mrs. Green was a hard case, as Ollie knows, she's met Mrs. Green. She was a hard case and she came running into me one day. She'd only been there a little while and she said,"Am I going mad?”. I said “why?”. She said, “we can hear a damn lion roaring”. And I said, “Oh you you must have dreamt it”. “No” she said, “I heard a lion roar”. I said,"no, no”. I said “you might've heard a dingo”. “No", she said. We went out the front and the Wild West Show arrived that night, and it had, you know, like lions and a bit of a circus thing. It was true, she did hear a lion.
She was a hard case, you see and it was so boiling hot out there in the day time that sometimes she'd just slip a gown on. Nothing else you see. So anyway, another mechanic came out to relieve Bert Cole because they had a bit of a holiday somewhere and this other chap was called Cyril Jep. He was a nice looking, oo he was a lovely stamp of a man and he used to slip home occasionally. See the Greens had boarded him, and he used to slip home occasionally, you see, and I don't know to get a drink or tea or something, or do something. And anyway Mrs. Green said to me, come in this afternoon, I don't know what we were doing, but she said slip in this afternoon. I said alright. So all she had on was just this gown, you see, and Cyril Jep decided to come home to get something. She said just give a rap on the front door, she said and I'll open it. Well, I didn't go at the precise time that she thought I would, well Cyril Jep knocked at the door. Well, she opened the door and she said Come in Lady Alice.

Mum: All starkers.

Alice: Oh dear, she was a funny woman. She really was. And she said to me, she wasn't, I don't know why she couldn't cook, but she, every Friday you see, when we went to the Tea and Sugar Train, and we bought the meat home, I'd make pasties. And she said, I've watched you make pasties, and I can't make them. And I said, well there's nothing to it Gwen, I'll come in and I'll watch you. And I said 'alright'. So we cut up the meat and I did the pastry, you couldn't go and buy pastry, so we made all the pastry, put them in the oven and we had pasties. And ooo, they're beautiful. I said, “here take some home to Grant”, her husband. So she said, “I'm going to make pasties next week”. I said, “alright”. She came in the next week and I said, "how'd your pasties go Gwen?. "Don't talk to me about pasties", she said, "the bloody things I could throw them against the wall and they'd come back and hit me". Oh look, she was really a humorous woman and she died with cancer, but she was the most humorous woman I've ever met. Everything was funny, you know. She enjoyed it.

Mum: She made fun.

Alice: She made fun.

Neil: Remember, telling the story about Mrs. Green and what-his-name coming home, was there carry on between other husbands and wives.

Mum: Oh, no, no.

Neil: Because it's such a small community, I wouldn't have thought there would've been.

Alice: No, I really don't think.

Mum: No not with Gwen Green.

Neil: No, I didn't mean with Gwen, but I mean you had lots of travelling people, you know the gangers, and fetlers.

Alice: He means, with the people at Cook, like the husbands and wives. No.

Neil: No, because it was so small, I would've thought there wouldn't have been.

Alice: well there was a family called Stubbs. He had, he had about seven or eight or nine children in different stages, you know. I think he had a couple of married ones, but they were all in this one little house and every year, or twice a year Mrs. Stubbs would go over to Kalgoorlie, take a couple of kids with her. And when she came back, she was a very quiet woman, she would never mix with anyone else. So she would come back, you see, and this Mrs. Tyrell, that lived next, really next door to me, she was the fettlers wife and she'd come to me and she said, I see Mrs. Stubbs is back. Oh well, she said on the line there'll be some beautiful stuff hanging all on the line. She had all these girls, you know, and all their underclothes was absolutely beautiful and all the kids would have new toys, and everything. She would go to Kalgoorlie and do all this shoplifting. No she did all this shoplifting and sheets and all, sheets and you name it.

Neil: How did you know that she'd shoplifted?

Alice: Well she got um. She went to Adelaide once.

Neil: She got knicked, did she?

Alice: She went to Adelaide once. She said Adelaide's no good, you couldn't get anything, but she was caught in Kalgoorlie and she had to go to jail. Yeh, she did, she got caught, but the beautiful stuff she had, she came back laden, suitcases and all. But I...

Greg: And her husband was left to keep an eye on the children.

Alice: But old Stubbsy wasn't a very nice man, old Stubbsy and he was the lowest paid man with the fettlers, you know and he had this dray load of kids.

Mum: Nothing much else to do.

Alice: But they were all so beautifully dressed, you know, but she shoplifted. You know, its the most remarkable thing though, a lot of those Stubbs children were beautiful musicians. One of the girls played the piano beautifully and there was Mr. Croply, he was the schoolteacher, just the one teacher for the whole school and he got very friendly with Katie Stubbs and he said I'm going to marry that Katie Stubbs you know and I'm going to make a lady of her.
And he, when he left Cook, he took her to Adelaide and they did come down to Glenelg to see us at one stage and she was quite lovely, so whether he made a lady of her I don't know, but er, he reckoned he was going to have her and make a lady of her.

Greg: Did the teacher mix in with the local community as well?

Alice: Oh yes, oh yes. There was a, the first school teacher that was there had one hand off, you know, and he was a very fine fellow, and then this Mr. Croply came and it was so strange when Shirley, my daughter, grew up and had her children and she settled at Plympton and Keith and Shirley went to the Plympton School and the Headmaster was this Cropley, and Keith went up to him one day and he said, my mother knows you. And he said, oh does she, and Keith said yes, and Mr. Cropley said, well how come and Keith said, oh you taught my mother out at Cook. He got the shock of his life.

Neil: You said he's still alive, didn't you, this Mr. Cropley?

Alice: Oh yes, I think he's still alive somewhere. And then the, you see, when the train came through and there was all these celebrities on the train to come to Adelaide or Melbourne, they'd get out at Cook and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester was on it one time and he didn't dress up, he had his underpants showing over his pants, you know, just an ordinary man. And all this line of school children, Cropley'd line them up on the platform to meet the Duke, you see, and er there was dead silence, not a word. He had them tutored up to say hooray, you know, and they were so quiet and they wouldn't say a word. And he turned his back and went over to the pigsties to have a look what was over there.

Mum: The Duke did.

Alice: Because the butcher, you see, they were allowed to keep a few sheep and he used to kill the sheep there. He went over to have a look over there.

Neil: And the Duchess got off too?

Alice: Oh yes, she got off and she spoke to us all, you know, and. You know, we met them all that came backwards and forwards on the train and Sir Winston and Lady Dugan, I don't know whether you knew them, they were the Governor here in South Australia for quite a while.

Mum: A long time ago.

Alice: And er, they decided to come out to Cook and see how the people lived on the line. So the, really speaking the Station Master and his wife should've been the ones to welcome them and Mrs. Hamlyn, she didn't appear to be a shy woman but she was a very shy woman out there and she said to me, I couldn't go and meet them. What do you say? And I said well you just treat them like ordinary people, you don't have to go and bow and scrape to them. I couldn't she said, you'll have to do it and I said, well it's not my place. So when the train pulled in, dead silence, not a blooming word, and they stepped out of the train, and of course I thought to myself, well she won't do anything and I went up and welcomed them to Cook and introduced her to the woman and children along the line and then their train shunted up in front of our place.
So they were out there to see how we lived and all that and Roy said to me, "Look I think you better go over and have a word to them, ask them what they want to do". And of course the aid was there, you see, and he bailed me up, I suppose he thought I was going to rob them and I said, “You know, what are they here for, do they want to go to the school and see, and meet the people”, and he said, “oh yes that's what we're here for”. So I went back to Roy and I said “look they want to meet the people”and I said “we'll have to take them down to the hall”. So I sent Keith, my boy right along the camp to tell them to go down to the hall in the evening. And they did the right thing, they took chairs down there, you know, to sit down, cane chairs because we only had forms.

Greg: So everyone knew the Governor was coming, but no-one wanted to arrange anything.

Alice: Yes, they never arranged a thing.

Greg: Because they were all just to scared, they didn't know what to do or?

Alice: Well, I think they were overwhelmed, you know. Well they did the right thing and they took a few cane chairs down there, and put a bit of carpet down the hall and anyway Roy and I went over and got them. We said there's no conveyance whatsoever here, you'll have to walk to the hall. They didn't mind, they came into my place, they had a look around, they said, “oh yes, very nice, very nice” and um Roy had a big roaring fire going, because it was so cold and there was no beg your pardons with him, he went out and got a bucket of water to throw on the fire to put it out. And the Governor said, well that's one way of putting it out.

Mum: He didn't care two hoots.

Alice: Couldn't leave the fire going and them he said, "Well we'll have to walk down to the hall", he said, "but you'll have to lift your feet high, because you'll kick all the stones in the world". And they got down there, and when we got down there, they were all in the hall, all the whole camp, all the men on one side and all the women on the other and he just looked, you see, in the door and he said, "We'll separate the goats from the sheep".

Mum: Real Australian.

Alice: Yes, you know, he went around and shook hands with everybody and then back to us you see, he didn't stop that long but then the next morning, I had to go over and get him to come over to the school to meet, to have a little talk to the kids.

Greg: So, where did he stay, was there a little hotel or something?

Alice: Oh no. He was staying in the carriage. You see, was shunted down and it stopped by our place.

Neil: So would you have a dance or something? what did you do with all the people in the hall? Did he just want to talk to them and they went home?

Alice: All they did was talk to everybody and shook hands and asked how we liked it out there, and what did we do and how did we get on with our hair.

Mum: I bet it was a bit of a shock to them.

Alice: It was. And he said "How do you ladies get on with your hair?". And we said, "We do it all ourselves". He said, "You do a very good job.". They were very nice, very nice and the following year I got a lovely Christmas card from them. I've still got the card.

Mum: It's a wonder that you didn't throw that out.

Neil: Is that right?

Alice: I've still got that card, and er they were very nice and he said it was quite lovely to meet all the people and you know, how did we get our food and what we did and...

Mum: It would be a bit of a query to people like.

Alice: You see, they wanted to come out and meet the people, but Mrs. Hammond, she wouldn't do it, she said I can't.

Mum: It's unlike Emmy, because she's a rather capable person.

Alice: She said, "I couldn't, I couldn't go and talk to them." Well I said, "look think they're just another person. You don't have to go just because they're the Governor and the you know", but he was lovely. He was quite humorous. Lovely fellow and er, oh they enjoyed their stay.

Mum: He was Governor out here for a while.

Neil: Do you remember telling me about a cricket match? When they got drunk and the cricket match.

Alice: Oh my gosh. They, look all those men out there, very friendly, very close knit, all good cobbers. They decided to have a cricket match, you see, on one Sunday. Well, you know what Ivy Cole was like, you know, a shy little thing. She was just a bride out there, you see and she said “What about the cricket match”, and I said “We'll go just over there”, they go on the clay pans you see. And they were out in the morning putting the stumps up and doing everything, you see. Well, they started the cricket match so friendly, oh it was a beautiful friendly match, but the kegs of beer started coming out. Well at the end of the match they were hitting one another with their bats and you name it and Ivy Cole, Oh fancy me coming out here, oh it's terrible, oh it's terrible. You know, you see drink'd get into them and they were fighting one another with logs of wood and you name it. It was really frightening.

Greg: It was quite a fierce battle then?

Mum: On the first circle, it's what they're doing now at the cricket matches.

Alice: There you are, there's violence now, but you see they have a, bowl the ball, you know, bat and get one out and as soon as they'd get a fellow out, you see, they'd go and have a drink.

Mum: A long innings, a very long innings.

Alice: Because there's no entertainment at all you see, so we had to make our own entertainment you see. So Ollie, will know the game. Remember that land, sea and air game.

Mum: Oh, yes.

Neil: How did you play that?

Alice: Well, this land, sea and air game was, because everybody collects in one another's homes you see. Well, to do something one night, we used to play bridge and all that, but we had this game of land, sea and air. So you all sit around in a circle and supposing you stand in the middle and you point to Olive and you say land and she's got to say land in about one second, what's on the land. Well there was one woman, a Mrs. Bailey, I'll never forget her. She was a very excitable woman and she's sitting there and Roy was standing there and he said, sea and she'd say fish. Oh, that's alright Mrs. Bailey, and then he'd go around again, and he would say to her, air, and she would say fish, every mortal thing with her, it'd go round and round and round and every time she'd say fish, so we nick named her fish. Oh, she was a funny woman and I'll never forget her.
Look the dust storms were really unbelievable. You would hear a dust storm coming for an hour before it hit Cook, and you'd hear this roar like thunder, and all the tins and everything you see'd catch with the dust storm and they'd blow you see and they'd roll down and the butcher bloke that was on the corner, his daughter had a cockatoo in a cage, and the wind got this poor cocky and the cage was rolling down and it was saying poor cocky, poor cocky.

Everyone laughed.

Alice: That's true, and they never found cocky. (everyone kept laughing)
No,cocky was blown out on the wind. But this Mrs. um, this Jean Ryan she used to tie her cat, she had a little cat, tie it up on one leg to the leg of the table every night, because it'd wander away. It got used to this dust storm coming and I said, look it's no good shutting windows or shutting anything, it'll just go right through and she said, “Oh I'll be scared”, and I said, “Well come into my place"and I said “We'll have to go on the bed and put the sheet right over us”. And when the dust storm passes, all you do is lift the sheet andthe grit and the dirt and the stones would fall off. You'd be inside and you'd..

Mum: Then the wind'd change and come the other way and you'd open the door and let it go out the other way.

Alice: And you wouldn't sweep the dirt and dust out, you'd shovel it out. And then you'd get it all nice and clean, everything nice and the wind'd change and it'd all come back again. But the dust storms were frightening. You couldn't, you'd hold your hand up like that and you just couldn't see it. I don't know if it's any better now or not.

Greg: Did anyone get lost in a dust storm?

Alice: No, we never, never anybody got lost, no I think they kept well in. But oh, Roy said one day he could hardly, look he only had to go from here over to the gardens over the road here, and he said look I'll have to wait till the storm goes. You'd wander, you'd lose yourself. It was terrible.

Neil: People didn't, children didn't get lost or anything and wander away?

Alice: No. No, they never lost any.

Mum: Well actually there wasn't north, south, east or west for.

Neil: No, but you could imagine a little toddler, only having to go a little way away and being lost and you could really get lost.

Alice: I never heard of anyone getting lost at all, but the preacher used to come across Ceduna, and then the old chappy from Tarcoola had decided to give the children a Sunday School picnic. Well, you may as well go from there to there, there's nothing, so we decided to, yes well all the camp will make something, make some lollies or something, and had races and take the kids out. Well all you had to go was from there to there. They had a good time, they had a really good time.

Neil: What, those standard Sunday School picnic races?

Alice: Well, we'd have a few races for the kids, you know and...

Mum: I suppose the sort of picnic is actually, and you take the surroundings away here and that's what you'd do there.

Alice: And this Mrs. Bailey, a very excitable woman, her husband, well he was the head. I don't know what he was, something to do with the railways, he was stationed out there, but he was just like a big tubulous fellow, oh he was a rough looking man and his three boys were exactly the same. Oh they were rough and she had the little one. He was about five and she nick named him Rosebud. Of all the names she, he was a real little punk kid, you know.

Mum: With a face like that, Rosebud.

Alice: And she would say Rosebud come here. Oh, they were devils of boys, really they were. They would go out catching the rabbits, and they'd skin them alive, they were that type. Oh, they were rough, they were terrifically rough boys. But for our Christmas dinner we had pigeons. There was no poultry. We had pigeons for Christmas dinner. You had to make the best of everything.

Greg: Was it common to go out rabbit shooting, or um?

Alice: Well, no one seemed to go rabbit shooting. Nobody seemed to worry about the rabbits.

Neil: That's funny, because you didn't have much fresh meat, so you would've thought that would've been.

Alice: No, you'd think, no nobody touched the rabbits.

Neil: Did you try to grow things?

Alice: Well, I said to Roy, gee it's terrible, look at the stones, not a blade of grass anywhere, not a tree only three little stumpy trees by the railway. I said, look I'm going to make a, and I'm mad on making rockeries. I'm going to make a bit of a rockery. He said, you won't keep anything, the rabbits'll eat it. Oh, I said, we'll put a fence around it. So we grabbed a few sleepers, you see when they throw the sleepers over, and we grabbed a few and put some wire and where we got the wire netting I wouldn't have a clue. We put wire netting right around it and tried to grow a few things, but oh you couldn't, the rabbits would take it and the heat would get to it.

Neil: And all the water had to be brought in didn't it.

Alice: There was no water of course.

Mum: You couldn't put it on the garden.

Alice: And all the water had to be brought in on the train and they had the, from the big tanks, I think they the pipes in the underground to each household. We didn't, we had five big rainwater tanks, the postal people provided these big rainwater tanks, but if we ran out of that water, we had to pay for the water from the railways. But oh, you know, it was terrifically harsh. Something else I was going to say. The dingoes'd come around at night, howling there, you know. There was nothing for them to eat, I don't know what they lived on.
But this Mr. & Mrs. Bailey, said oh would you like to go for a picnic and I thought where in the world are we going to have a picnic. She said, out there there's some dongas. Well the dongas are just a little depression in the ground with a little stump of salt bush and that's where we went for a picnic.

Mum: A change of scenery.

Alice: This Mrs. Bailey, a very excitable person like I told you, she decided she'd have a bath you see. And she got in the bath one day and merrily having her bath I suppose, nobody was around. Well the storm hit, the dust storm hit Cook you see, and it loosened one of these great big, well the pipes were about as long as this room, you could crawl through them, that was our bunkers and it the unloosened the wires and this great big old round cylinder thing, it rolled and rolled and rolled and it hit Mrs. Bailey's front fence. The railways when they put the new houses in. She got out that bath stark naked, ran and said the end of the earths here, the end of the earths here. The end of the world I mean, the end of the world. I dear it was funny, it was really funny. It was really a scream.

Neil: What was the worst thing that happened while you were there?

Alice: Oh, I don't know. What would be the worst. I don't know.

Neil: It all sounds very funny the way you tell it.

Alice: The fettlers used to go along the line. Oh those poor devils in the heat. They used to have a big of a canopy over them, you know, but they would go out and they would always bring back these, they call them scrub turkeys. Oh, very big things. God you had to have about two ovens to put one in, you know. Oh that was quite a feast, we'd have a turkey now and again, you know, they'd bring them in.

Neil: And these were just wild out there?

Alice: Yes, everything out there used to be wild. Oh, look. And now and again, I don't know where these birds came from, you know the little old green budgie, the common old green budgie, well a flock of them would come over and settle in our little stump of pepper trees, just by the road, by the station masters place. And they'd all settle in these trees and drop dead, no water.

Mum: They were possibly migrating and..

Alice: And I don't know where they'd come from, don't know where they'd come from.

Mum: They'd be the little green grass parrots.

Alice: Just a little weeney bird. Now the original budgies are green and they were these little budgies. They'd come over, you know and the poor things. But these rabbits, oh they were shocking.

Greg: You gave me the impression before, that there were about 20 families and all the fellows were cobbers.

Alice: Yes, there were about 20 railway, there was a railway camp, definitely and the Cook, Rawlinna, and Tarcoola, were repeater stations for the postal and that's why we were out there.

Greg: And everyone got on well with each other. There were no people, families that didn't get on.

Alice: Oh yes, we're all good, you know. We'd have a lot of afternoons, you know, and all the ladies would go to one home and have afternoon tea and, you know, and chat away and that would be quite good. The men were all great cobbers.

Neil: Even after the cricket fight?

Alice: Oh yes, they'd be cobbers.

Mum: Get over it the next day.

Alice: Oh, they'd be right as rain the next morning. Yes, it was really fascinating it was.

Mum: There'd be none of this business about what Mrs. Jones had up the street, or going up shopping with, or having new furniture.

Alice: No.

Greg: That's what I was wondering, because often in, you can get womens coffee mornings and they start talking about someone who is not at the coffee morning.

Alice: No there was nothing like that. when we first went there, there was our three postal homes, and then, there was this long line of railway homes. If you can imagine some of these railway people, way out bush, in like little hut things, and if you had a family they'd give you another little addition, well that's what it was like. And it wasn't lined or anything and the majority of the women or the men out there would line these huts with hessian.
They'd have to otherwise they'd cook. And over the years, the dust and you know from the dust storms, would collect in the homes and it'd get into this hessian. Well, when we were there they decided to pull the old homes down and give them something better. well out come all these carpenters from Port Augusta, you know and they had to stop in some of the little makeshift huts you see and well they were there for quite a while.
And when they started to pull the houses down, they built the new ones first, then they. And when they pulled the old ones down there was a dust storm, because all the dust in those houses in the hessian. It was just full of absolutely thick with dust and that's what they had to put up with. And there little kitchens was just a little lean to and the heat, you could imagine what it was like, nothing like it. How they survived, I don't know.

Mum: Did any of them get around to getting primuses eventually?

Alice: No, nothing like that at all, just the wood stoves, just the real old wood stoves. And you know, Mrs. Hammond, she was a fine woman, as I told you, she was the station masters wife you see. Well, a lot of people, not a lot, but now and again people would get out of the train and they'd want somewhere to stop. Now, three women came out once and they were Coomyites, you've heard of the Coomyites, well they were all in black and Mrs, they wanted to stay because they wanted to go down to the hall and preach you see and they were there for quite a while. Anyway, Mrs. Hammond said I cant put them up, I've got no room. Because we had I think it was about three or four rooms, we had and they were all jarrah. They were nice homes.
And she said "will you put them up". Oh, I said, "I don't know. What are they like, what do they expect" and she said, "Oh, I don't know, I've got no idea". Oh, so she sent them down to me, these three women, all dressed in black. They came in and they said, we were told to come down and you would put us up. So I had to put the two children in one room and give them Shirley's room and they were queer, because. They wouldn't get out of, they wouldn't come down into the kitchen until Roy went to work. They'd see that he went, and they'd go and do their washing and look it was so funny.
All their underclothes was great big thick black stuff, you know, and they'd hang it up, all shapes on the line, so he wouldn't know what they were. Look it was so funny, it was really funny. And they stopped, I had to put them up and they were horrified because we played tennis on a Sunday and um I'll never forget it. They had this service down in the hall you see, and of course Roy and I were obliged to go, we were the only two that turned up to a service.

Greg: Because you had them staying.

Alice: Well we had to go and sit there and listen to them. It was so queer, it was really funny you know. Then there was another chap, came, it was our fault that he came and stopped with us because the old boy, the missionary bloke, he left and another one was to come out. I said to Roy, look there's a new chappy coming, I said he's going to be stationed at Tarcoola, and I said his name is O.W. Harris and that's Eunice's brother, you know her brother was a preacher, and his name was 0. W. Harris. Roy said, oh well we better do the right thing, we better go and meet the train and bring him over to our place and it wasn't him at all. So we had to put him up, but he was good, oh he was good, he chopped all the wood and he cleaned all the shoes. He was pretty good. That was alright, but, then these poor Coomyites you see, we had to go down, Roy and I was the only ones there, we had to listen to all the things they were saying, nobody else'd go.

Greg: Can you remember what sort of thing they talked about?

Alice: No, I don't remember. I think it was just religion and they were horrified because we went out and played golf on the Sunday. Oh, they said it was the worst Sunday that they'd ever put in because we went out playing. But I think they just preached the bible and said something of their beliefs, you know. Oh, they were alright, but.

Mum: Hard to entertain.

Alice: And then we had to put up the minister that came right from Ceduna. Mrs. Hammond, I haven't got room she said. He came right over from Ceduna to preach for the weekend and we had to put him up. And Roy said, you've come over there on your own, three hundred mile it was across, you see. He said, aren't you scared your car would break down, and he said, no I'm not scared, I've got somebody with me. But Roy said, I thought you said you'd come on your own. He said, no the lords with me. You know, what faith. God, you know, anything could happen on those plains. Absolutely fantastic.

Mum: In those days, there were no search parties like there are now.

Alice: No nothing. Not a thing. It was really, er, it was a fantastic place to, you know..

Greg: You don't know of any cars or anything breaking down on the plains at any stage?

Alice: No, well you see, it wasn't a road. There was no roads so cars didn't go backwards and forwards. There was nothing, you'd have to go to the west by train. But now they've got the roads you see, further over towards the coast. So it's quite a good road now, but.

Neil: And while Auntie Alice was in Cook, that was during the depression time for you was it Mum?

Alice: Yes it was.

Mum: Yes, that's right. I was thinking of this depression sort of thing, no way back, yes, early 30's.

Neil: You didn't ever go out to Cook?

Mum: No way, no way.

Alice: You know, some years, many years afterwards I went for a trip up to Jakarta and up that way, you see. I think we caught the little (I cant quite catch the name of the ship) at Perth, with this friend of mine and when that ship got to Singapore a lot of the Western Australian people got off to go to London, because it was cheaper to go from Singapore than it was to go from the West and there was not very many on board, so we went right up to Jakarta and Bali and them we came back to Singapore and the ship was getting a bit full again, and we had sat next to a couple and you know I thought to myself, I know you and it was the Commissioner of Railways who used to come up to Port Augusta. I thought I don't know what I was going to talk to them about.

Mum: This was only recently. This was the trip you did just recently.

Alice: I don't know what I was going to mention there now. It was something to do. Oh, that's right. He was the Commissioner of Railways you see and now and again the Captain would say we'll have a session tonight, if anybody wants to talk about something, you see. Well this Mr. Hanaberry, he had his name put down to talk on the railways and there was some other fellow was talking about wireless or something, you know, and they used to tell him the railways don't pay, you know. No railways pays and after it was all over, you see, and I was sitting in there at the table, and I said, I know why your railways don't pay, and he said, do you, and I said, yes, we're out on the Nullarbor Plains, I said and we used to ask the engine drivers to throw over the coal. He said, I'll send you an account now. That's what we used to do, ask the drivers to throw us the coal. Oh, it was funny out there, you had to make your own fun.

Mum: You'd have to have a sense of humour, or you'd go batty.

Neil: So what else did you do besides cards and dances and golf and cricket.

Alice: Well, we played bridge, you know and then the dances and then otherwise you'd golf and a bit of tennis and apart from that nothing.

Neil: You'd have to bring in all your own water. Did you have fires? I don't mean did you have fires in your grate, what happened if your house caught fire?

Alice: Oh, that's. well look, over by the station master and the little post office, there was a tiny little enclosure with wire around it. One of those tiny little hand carts, with a little red thing with a pump on it. If there was a fire you'd pump like mad and this might be crude, but Roy said I could do better myself, to put that fire out.

Neil: Did things catch fire?

Alice: Oh, yes. There was one little hut there and I said that was. It was like Matt Sennett comedy. This little hut was going and this little engine, they wheeled it up with manpower, you know. Roy said I could do better myself. It was really funny.

Mum: All mod cons.

Alice: There was nothing, absolutely nothing. No ice, nothing. No wireless, well we did have wireless, two old you know.

Neil: Crystal set.

Alice: No, we had a little bit better than a crystal, but the static, you couldn't hear it properly.

Neil: But you'd try and listen to the cricket.

Alice: We got the cricket, and we got Dad & Dave series, Nun's (KSJ note: Martin's ??) corner and. But you know you had to make the best of everything, you just had to.

Greg: What about the children? What sort of things did they get up to?

Alice: Well the children had a, well ours, my two now, when they were small, Shirley only said a little while ago. She said "You know, Mum when we were out on that Nullabor Plain we had the whole plains to play in. We had a wonderful time." They weren't restricted and they used to play with one another and have a really good time.

Greg: They used to wander.

Alice: They used to wander but they didn't go too far. There was a wild west show went through once and Mrs. Dunlop had these two children. One little boy wasn't quite with it, you know and he went over to this wild west show place and they had a little donkey with a little foal and this little Dunlop boy asked for the foal and they gave it to him. Well, you know. And they went off and left the foal with this little boy and that blooming donkey grew up. It was a real pest. It used to chase all the children and bite them.

Alice: It had a pash on Keith. It used to run after Keith and bite him. I don't know what happened to that donkey. I wouldn't have a clue.

Neil: The wild west show. They unloaded and actually did a show for you.

Alice: Oh yes, they unloaded there and they put on a bit of a show and got the train next morning. But this was funny. One night we all had to go down to the hall. There was a picture show going to be put on. Well it was one of those old cinematographs you wind, you know, and one day they were putting on this show and oh the flickering blooming picture. The reel came off and rolled down the hall, and look it was funny.

Mum: It'd take five minutes to rewind.

Alice: But that's the amusement you had to have.

Mum: You had to make your own.

Alice: When these carpenters who'd come to put these new houses up and we put on a bit of a night for them, dancing and all that, you know. Oh, it was alright, we amused ourselves and made the best of it. There must have been a bit of a shortage of ladies to go around? Mm, yes at that time there was, mmm.

Mum: The fettlers wouldn't have their wives with them, they had these little huts to live in.

Alice: Some of the fettlers wives were there but two families left at one stage and twenty two left the camp, two families. But others came, you know.

Mum: How many children at the school?

Alice: Oh I suppose there would have been 30 or 40 kids.

Mum: No Flying Doctor.

Alice: Nothing, no. You had to look after yourself, you had to there was nothing there. You just had to look after yourself. If you got really sick, well you'd have to go to Kalgoorlie or Port Augusta.

Neil: What did you think about Auntie Alice being out there? You were back in town weren't you?

Mum: I thought she was stupid. Plain dumb, I thought she was ratty.

Alice: Thanks very much. Well it was either stop at Torrens Park or let Roy stop out there for. Oh, you know what I mean. I thought well.

Mum: I only said the other day, "I wouldn't go". She said, "You'd have to with your husband". I said, "No he'd have to go on his own, I couldn't take it out there, I'm sure I wouldn't."

Alice: Well, I mean. You see the young kids don't care people or anything. They had a good time I think.

Greg: So there was no real choice you didn't think, you had to go?

Alice: That's right, yes. It was hard, it was hard, very harsh, you know. when you come to think of it you had an old wood stove to go and do all your cooking on. Stoke up, you know.

Mum: When you come to think of it though, when you went to Orroroo there was no big gain there as far as cooking was concerned. You only had the wood stove.

Alice: Yes, that's right.

Mum: And even at Port Augusta you had a wood stove.

Alice: Yes, I did, I had a wood stove at Port Augusta.

Mum: So the wood stoves hung on for a long time in those country towns. I think when I went to Pirie, there was, no I had. There was a wood stove there, but there was also gas. Yes, it was gas.

Mum: I don't know, but you had a wood stove anyhow.

Alice: Yes, but at Port Augusta we had an old wood stove there.

Mum: It was a long time before the stove racket.

Alice: Oh, there was one funny thing you know. Poor old Robby the rouseabout at Cook, you know, he had to empty out all the pans, you know.

Mum: The night man you called him.

Alice: Yeh, oh well. He used to say his life was one rabbit after another and there was one empty pan after another but, oh look. Do I dare tell you one little story.

Neil: Course you dare.

Alice: Well, poor old Robby had to empty all the pans, you see and he had black tar that he would go round in the pans. That was, I suppose, to disinfect them I suppose. well there was one family up there and their name was Inns. Mr. & Mrs. Inns. And poor old Mr. Inns he went down to the toilet and she told all the ladies there one afternoon, she said, "you know," she said "poor old Innsy, he went down to the toilet" she said, "and he got all his what's name all tarred and it was a hell of a job for me to get that off".

Everyone laughed.

Alice: You could imagine it couldn't you. Poor old Innsy. It was so funny, you know.

Mum: It really wasn't funny, funny for the listeners.

Alice: I suppose not really. You would hear, you know what I mean. You don't hear what's going on here, but that community, you know. It was terrific.

Greg: The toilets, instead of having um, pits and holes and things they just had a pot.

Alice: Oh yes, and he'd go out, I suppose he'd go out to the plains somewhere, but I wouldn't know, you know. But that's what he would do.

Greg: Right.

Alice: He was a funny man too. And he said, you know he said, I know everybody in this camp who like one another. He said, "now", he said "you take Mrs. Green up here", he said "she hangs her nightdress right up the end of the line and his pyjamas right next to hers. Now they love each one another". God, he was a funny man. You know, the funny things he'd bring out, you know. Peculiarly humorous, terrific.

Mum: You had to keep your mind busy somehow I guess.

Alice: Oh dear it was funny, really funny.

Greg: You were at Cook when the depression was here?

Alice: Well, the depression was on when we left Darwin, so we didn't have any job to go to, so we were sent out on the line and it was out there.

Greg: So, I'm wondering what sort of effects you felt when you were at Cook from the depression and also yourself, what you felt?

Mum: Well we felt it pretty bad, but you really speaking, I remember you saying we didn't even know it was on actually, because the government jobs, the money was there and every thing else. when I had just got married. I was married about twelve or eighteen months, something like that, yes about that time. And my husband came home and he was earning what we called good money was five pound a week and he said that's the last fiver you're going to get, have a good look at it and I said what've I done and he said well, Saturday mornings is being cut out, that's ten shillings, ten shillings a week drop in wages and we're going on half time and he was in the office and he was the first one, he said he'd take the first stint half time.
And I was pregnant, and I said well I'd better cancel the Memorial Hospital, I won't be able to afford that. He said that's one thing you will afford, we're going to keep that, if nothing else. So then, out of that two pound a week that he got, he paid two shillings tax, so we had one pound eighteen shilling a week to pay fifty (KSJ note: fifteen) shillings a week rent and live on. So we had a, one of my brothers was the same, he was working at Clarksons, but he was put off. But they were allowed to go and earn thirty shillings a week and still get the ration, so they were finding it pretty hard to rent and that sort of thing, so they asked if they could come and live with us.
By this time I'd had Bob, the first child, and she had had her little baby, so she came in to our house, they came in with their little baby and, we had a fair size house that we were paying this fifteen shillings for and we said, well we'll still pay the rent and the gas and light. You bring your rations in and what they don't give you like lamb or the better cuts of things, she had to have milk because she had the baby and she had butter because she had the baby. So we didn't have to buy, it was a leg out for us, we didn't buy butter or milk, but we would buy a better cut of meat, perhaps once a week or once a fortnight and we got by by doing that.
Though my husband's brother went out, they put up fences between them, you know and gone fifty fifty and then they went to work at night in, my uncle had a cafe, I suppose it was called in those days. It was by the police station in Angas street in town and they worked all night for seven and six. I used to go up and do my Aunt's sewing and I'd get two and six for doing that the whole day and then I'd bring all the socks home and darn them, and take them back.
Everybody helped everybody else. There were the people who ripped fences down for fire wood and all that sort of thing. Col. Light Gardens was one of the places that was hit pretty hard. But we got by and got by very well and after that we went back to work and spread out and that was it. This was where I, only in my own simple mind, I think that they'd have been better off this time if they'd said the same thing. You're allowed to earn so much a week, but you'll get rations.
Their pride'd have to be hurt, pretty badly, everybody's pride. I know now cigarettes are taboo, in those days it seemed to be the thing to do is cigarettes and my husband would buy a packet of cigarettes a week and they'd halve them. They'd always but their cigarette and put it back in the packet so they'd have another smoke another time. But I mean it could've been like we were now, we'd have said, "righto go without your cigarettes”.
But, no everything seemed to go around, we got on alright and eventually everybody went back to work and spread out and got their jobs. Well then, not long, well years after of course, the war came and then everybody was in money. I think they got so used to having money, this is why the women work so much now, through the situation of the dollar and what not and the expense of living and that sort of thing. But now my income is only the pension and I can't see for the life of me why people are yelling that they can't pay twenty cents to go to town.
I mean if you can't spend two dollars a week on yourself to go out one day a week or something like that, there's something the matter. And, I think out of your pay you should be able to spend at least ten dollars on yourself for any little privilege you want.

Neil note :
The tape changed over here and think there was a small part of the conversation which wasn't recorded.

Neil: What the lane at the back, lavatory lane. Lavatory lane all blew down.

Alice: The put the blast and they were all blown over so.

Mum: It was no lane, it was just a row.

Alice: Oh, that was funny.

Greg: There was no one in them at the time when they blew over?

Alice: Well, I don't know. Oh, that was funny. Yeh, it was funny alright.

Mum: But the whole thing is, is how many things you had to Cope with. With no convenience.

Alice: Oh, yes. You couldn't go and get anyone to mend anything or do, you just had to do it yourself and we were the bunnies to put all these strays'd come in to Cook to billet them. Anyway it didn't matter I suppose.

Mum: Well, there were no motels and things in those days, nobody knew, they'd be thankful if they got a bed. You know, I mean, you wouldn't go for a holiday if you had to get out at Cook.

Neil: That's why it surprised me that some people came there for a holiday. I mean, even now it's pretty back of beyond.

Alice: It's a funny thing. Very strange, you know, the train would pull in and probably, it would sometimes be a Monday, it'd pull in and we'd have our washing, you know, out there, and a lot of the passengers, oo look at all the washing on the line. See, perhaps they thought we never washed.

Mum: They think you don't wash, that you let them be the colour of dust all the time.

Alice: You know, little things like that, they just didn't realise what we did out there. You see, one woman got off the train and she said "you really don't live here do you?" And I said "yes" and she said "but why? Why do you live here?" Well I said "it's our job". And you know she, they just didn't comprehend. They would now but they just didn't comprehend why we had to live in these dreadful places. But, Cook, Rawlinna and Tarcoola were the flashest ones because the others were just little camps. Nothing. They had nothing, no shops, nothing.

Neil: There are some places still out there that are sort of three houses in a row and that's it on the railway line. There's absolutely nothing else just barren landscape.

Alice: Not a thing. Not a blade of grass, not a tree, just this rough stone. They call nureca stone. I don't know why? And as I tell, what's his name,

Neil: Neil'll do.

Alice: Neil. The Nullarbor Plains attracts these little ostralights and the kids used to pick them up and sell them to the passengers on the train.

Neil: Ostralights are actually quite precious. You can actually get quite a lot of money for ostralights. They're little hard black meteorite stone.

Mum: I think I've got one somewhere.

Alice: Yes, Wally's got one. The chappy out there used to sculpture little things.

Mum: I don't mean the thing you had made.

Alice: Yes, he used to make those out of the stone.

Mum: But I'm thinking the little stone itself.

Alice: Yes, well that's in your stone, that's in there.

Mum: Oh, yes that is in there too, but I've got the one little stone, crude little stone.

Alice: Yes. Yes it's er. They tell me the sea used to go right up there, you know, thousands of years back, because there are shells been found there.

Mum: Well the land must have risen from the sea in lots of places because you do find the shells.

Alice: You see those big caverns that we used to go across.

Neil: Did you ever go down in those caves? Did people go down in them?

Alice: No, I never went down, but, yes some people have been down and look at times, if you stop, and we'd look down them, you know, if you held your hat over them, water'd blow it off and another time it'd suck it down and they reckon that was the rise and fall of the tide.

Alice: They're fascinating, these cavern things there.

Neil: Well, they've only just recently begun to explore them.

Mum: Yes they have.

Alice: See, they've been down with boats and all, haven't they. It's absolutely fantastic country. Just nothing.

Mum: Well, you see that sort of thing happens at Mt. Gambier.

Neil: Would people from your camp or other people have gone down in those caves while you were there?

Alice: I don't think. No I don't think so.

Neil: They wouldn't have gone down with a line or anything?

Alice: I don't think so.

Neil: Well, thank's that's been terrific.

Alice: Oh no, well look I'm only telling you what I know years ago. It's different now.

Neil: Of course it is, but that's why we want to know about it now.

Mum: That's why they don't want to know what it's like now, they can go and see now.

Neil: We can go and look what it's like now.

Alice: Well I mean, if could see in the future I could've made a lot of more historical notes, but you see I wasn't that interested when I was there. I just lived there and that was all about it. As I say, we used to go for little picnics out to what they called dongas. All it was was a little depression in the ground, that's our place we used to go to.

Greg: I've always known the phrase "out in the dongas" but I've never known where it came from.

Neil: I always thought it meant something to do with the vegetation or something, like trees, out in the donga.

Alice: Out in the dongas yes. You could see the Musgrove Ranges in the distance, but they were many miles away. You know that's the straightest railway in Australia.

Mum: It's the longest, straightest one in the world, I think, the longest straight run. I think they mentioned that not long ago on T.V.

Alice: And in that three hundred mile stretch, there's nothing. No vegetation...

Neil: Slight shift of vegetation, you know that little low stuff to the ground.

Alice: Mmm, salt bush or something like that.

Neil: It might be blue here and slightly greener in a few miles.

Alice: When we left Cook, you know, and my two children got in the train to go to Port Augusta I couldn't keep them away from the windows. Trees, trees, look at the trees.

Mum: They hadn't seen one for so long.

Alice: They hadn't seen one.

Neil: And so you would've stayed there all the time. You wouldn't have come home for Christmas or anything like that, you just stayed there.

Alice: Well, where would you go?

Neil: Well you didn't come back to Adelaide to see the family or anybody else?

Alice: No we didn't have a holiday. You served your term there and then after that you'd get your holiday, you see and then we went to Port Augusta and got on the old Moonta. Remember the Moonta used to go out. We went around by way of Moonta to Adelaide.

Greg: So you were there for a four year term and you got what a month in that for holidays? How much time?

Alice: Oh, I dare say we did, yes.

Mum: I don't know how long it was but I know when you were down somebody said to you "where's your furniture" and you said "I don't know, it's on the road somewhere. I don't know whether it will get where we're going". By the time they shove it off here and shove it off somewhere else.

Alice: Yes, as I say, there was two legs wrenched off the sideboard and nobody could fix it, so it had a kerosene box underneath it.

Neil note:
The tape was stopped and then started

Alice: I had two carpet squares, you see. I thought oh take them out. Well I couldn't bring them back to Adelaide. They were thread bare, because you see all the dust and grit and all that. You had no vacuums or anything like that. Straw brooms to sweep all the stuff out.

Neil: That's terrific, thank you so much.

References and material of interest

From From Wikipedia."Cook, Australia". ULiveWhere.com. Archived from the original on 11 March 2007. Retrieved 23 January 2012. Downloaded 25th August 2021.