Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 107
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[Page 107]
53
In 1907 Dad was affluent enough to purchase six acres of freehold land on the Orange Road, a mile and a half east of the town centre. The price was £120 the lot. It was a run-down market garden, orchard and vineyard, established in the "eighties" by a Mark Coleman, to whom the original Crown Grant had been made. Surrounding it was a very high hedge of African box thorn, tall limes and a few Hawthorn bushes, all growing inside an old split-paling fence, a lot of which had disappeared in places to provide firewood for neighbouring houses. There was a pleasant view to the South, across the undulating farmlands of "The Welcome", and to the East of the low dark blue Bumberry Ranges.
I think the place appealed to Father because it reminded him of his birthplace at Rosedernate, near Clough, in Country Antrim, Northern Ireland, where the farmlands had similar hedged fields, so he named his new home-to-be "Rosedernate" accordingly.
His first improvement was to have five strands of barbed wire strung around the outside of the old fencing and the hedge to keep out the goats that roamed in herds on the Common, on other vacant unfenced lands, and through the residential streets breaking into gardens, and wreaking great destruction of trees, shrubs and plants.
A lovely little milch cow, "Daisy", and her bull-calf, was purchased, to graze on this six-acre pasture, and one of my regular daily jobs, after school, was to bring her, nearly two miles, over the back of the Reservoir Hill, on foot, to our home in Currajong St and separate her from the calf. In the mornings I milked her before breakfast, and walked her back to her paddock before school time.
Soon afterwards Dad rented Hazelhurst's stables in lower Church St, only a few hundred yards from home, and bought a ten-year old bay stockhorse, "Bruce", for me, which made my task of taking "Daisy" back and forward much easier. And of course he had to buy me a brand-new saddle and bridle, and a big alarm clock to rouse me early in the mornings in the 6 ft by 8 ft unbleached calico tent and fly, on the front lawn, in which I slept for nearly two years, Summer and Winter. Also, as some