Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 65
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[Page 65]
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fresh fruit straight off the trees at will.
Father was a very competent horticulturist, and lost no time in establishing an excellent vegetable garden. I learnt to plant watermelon and pumpkin seeds in the late Spring, and was very proud of my success in producing the big sweet "Cuban Queen" watermelons, and hard light grey "Ironbark" pumpkins, with orange coloured inside: it required an axe to split them. My sort of melons sold for a shilling each in the shops, during their season.
At the age of ten Dad had me doing a man's work in the garden; deep digging the hard red ground with a full-sized fork, and carrying a four-gallon kerosine-tin bucket, full of water, in each hand, from a house tap, to water thirsty plants up to three chains away: the effort made my lips curl and my arms ache; garden hoses were still a luxury to come.
This change from the big crowded city, to the wide open spaces of a Western country town was a tremendous and exciting change, but though we youngsters missed the sea and the beaches, we loved it, despite the hot dusty Summers and the cold frosty Winters: we were now so much closer to Nature.
Parkes had begun, in the early eighteen fifties, as a small gold mining settlement, named Bushmans, when it was just a few huts and cabins, a combined store and post office, and a police station: Forbes had been a large, well established pastoral centre for some years, and later a mining town as well. When we arrived in Parkes it was still a mining town, but most of the the big mines had been worked out, and it was becoming more and more a farmers' and graziers' town. The soil, climate, and rainfall of the district were ideal for wheat growing and mixed farming, and more farms were being created continually by clearing away the virgin bush. The population was about three thousand souls and about half of the older folk were from England and Ireland: there were not many Scots; they had mostly settled in the North of the State, at Glen Innes and Inverell. These immigrants and their families always referred to their particular part of the British Isles as "home": our own Father