Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 105
Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 105]
52
vocation, and he was able to retain most of his earnings because, as yet, there was no Federal income taxation: the Commonwealth Government subsisted on revenue from Customs and Excise duties. State Tax began only for net incomes greater than about £800 a year, and then at sixpence in the pound. The tax form was one single page of foolscap size, with little detail and few questions. Wage earners and the majority of the people did not pay income tax, consequently the accountancy profession was not represented in the town.
Labourers wages were customarily six shillings for an eight-hour day, and a six-day week at work was the general rule: hourly rates did not exist. Skilled tradesman were paid a margin of about fifty percent extra. For a constant job in the town, a semi-skilled youth was paid about thirty shillings a week and no fixed hours of work. A pound a week and keep was usual for farmhands, and the time worked daily was governed mainly by the nature of the task, the season and the weather. A young telegraph messenger entering P.M.G. service at the age of sixteen was paid ten shillings a week. Salaries for senior clerks in public or corporation service ranged around £250 a year. A resident engineer in charge of a Public Works Department job, such as a railway, bridge, or road construction, luxuriated on a salary of nearly £400 a year, plus Western Living and horse allowances. Many jobs were done on a piecework basis. The rate for ploughing a wheat paddock was normally six shillings an acre, the ploughman providing the horses, plough and harrows. Special contractors with heavy tank-sinking ploughs, big scoops and a fine team of horses, asked a shilling a cubic yard for creating the big excavation, with sloping sides, to hold water, popularly known as a "tank": if the ground was very hard, maybe a soft shale, they might demand 1/3d per cubic yard. A shilling an acre was a bedrock price for ringbarking trees in average bushland; fourpence to sixpence for suckering. Fencing posts were split, at the stump, in easy timber, for two shillings a hundred. Six-wire fencing with a post every eleven feet, was erected for £30 to £40 per mile, the owner finding the wire only.