Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 331
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[Page 331]
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gratuity of about a hundred and eighty pounds, enabled me to buy a small flock of mixed sheep, to start building a four-room weatherboard cottage and to let contracts for the erection of two internal fences to subdivide the area into three nearly equal parts. A bushworker, Charlie Johnson, and his grown-up sons, who lived in Yeoval, accepted a contract to split about a thousand stringybark fencing posts at twenty five shillings a hundred at the stump. Two other local men erected the new six-wire subdivision fencing for forty pounds a mile - labour only - plus six pounds a mile for fastening on rabbit proof wire netting, and sinking the bottom edge six inches in the ground. They all set up camp near the main creek, and amused themselves in the evenings by having boxing bouts with each other, some of which displayed stamina more than skill.
I now lived very primitively in a bark "tent" on the site selected for the house, which I proceeded to build with my own hands and the assistance of a young lad. The Cypress Pine timber was carted from a bush mill about twelve miles away, and bricks for the fireplaces came from Yeoval. At the same time I had to keep an eye on my sheep and cattle and some extra sheep that my Father sent along with a young drover who stayed for a few weeks to help with the livestock. Though the drought had lasted well over a year these animals survived on what pasturage there was, and they were never hand-fed. Actually, they lasted with very little loss for about eight months until the drought broke with heavy rains in June (1920): then the cold and the rains killed a third of the emaciated cattle in a couple of weeks; they were too weak to pull themselves out of the boggy patches. The price of sheep rose steeply when the drought ended, and I sold the wether portion of my sheep at a profit before the prices dropped again, in a few weeks.
Every Saturday we drove, or rode, the six miles to Yeoval to have a good midday feed and a few beers at the hotel, and to buy a big supply of bread, meat, vegetables and groceries, which barely lasted a week, as we had no refrigerator or cellar in which to keep bigger supplies. By the following Friday night we were