Pat Ritter. Books

[patritter]

'His Life Worth Living' - Page 12:

We sailed from Fremantle the same day, and arrived at Port Adelaide on the 24th of August. I went through Port Adelaide to Adelaide by train, but the state trains are very slow, ours going nine miles in forty-five minutes. Pleasure broad, clean streets after the filthy streets of the foreign countries.
The ship left port the same day, and arrived at Port Melbourne on the 25th of August. I went to Melbourne by electric train, which was faster than the last train I travelled to view some of its wonderful parks and gardens. Most of the trains are run by electricity, carried by overhead wires.
The city has an excellent supply of tramcars. After two days in Melbourne, and one day’s sailing after leaving Melbourne, we arrived at one of the most wonderful harbours in the world, Sydney Harbour. The entrance is guarded by the Heads, which make the entrance very narrow, thus doing away with break waters.
The harbour stretches inland for about five miles, and in some places three miles wide. The shore formed in bays, usually covered with bushes and trees. We were welcomed by an Y.M.C.A. agent, who looked after our welfare for the next three days. Most of the buildings were ten storeys high, and the streets are typical of London streets. Hyde Park, a Cleopatra’s Needle, and Paddington in the city, similar to London. We sailed from Sydney on the 1st of September, and arrived at our destination, Brisbane, on the 3rd of September.
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'His Life Worth Living' - Page 13:

Chapter 2
Arrival in Brisbane my accommodation a very old building at Kangaroo Point, historical whitewashed inside and out and looked, an Immigration Centre. My first meal midday dinner, corned beef, pumpkin, mashed potatoes. I'd never before eaten pumpkin or salt beef and didn't eat any. Next time food was placed in front of me I overcome my scruples and cleaned my plate.
Two days later I met the Dean of Brisbane on Coronation Drive. A bearded man, overpowering, a look of determination in his eye, sat behind a huge wooden desk. He smoked.
'Where is your four shillings landing money? Your tin trunk was taken off at Sydney. You will pay to have it transhipped to Brisbane. The money will be taken from my wages.' He roared.
I signed papers in triplicate and received a sermon on economy otherwise I wouldn't survive in Australia. I had no money whatsoever for I couldn’t afford one penny to pay the ferry fare across the Brisbane River. Instead I walked from Kangaroo Point to Coronation Drive and back again.
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'His Life Worth Living' - Page 14:

A few days later I found work at a place called Kia Ora near Gympie. The train journey took six hours, a distance of about one hundred and twenty miles. I met my future boss driving a Ford Truck. I'd never seen a vehicle like this before. An old truck with a wooden floor and sides, wooden seat and a plank of wood about two feet long which jutted out each side so four passengers fitted. The hood, a canopy sheltered the driver and passengers with a curved wooden shield in front. No windscreen and travelled at speed of twenty to twenty-five miles per hour. The journey most exhilarating.
We arrived before dark and shown my quarters, a wooden extension of the garage, which housed the truck. The walls weatherboard unlined and roof weatherboard. A narrow bed and mattress and some blankets, no sheets. My work started next day making cases for bananas, yes; I worked on a banana farm. Other work, chipping weeds on the banana plantation and chopping firewood for the kitchen stove. That stove had an appetite; the missus of the place insisted she only wanted scrub oak. To get this I drove a horse and cart about half a mile, fell a tree, chopped into sections and loaded the wood onto the cart and returned to the farm. Over the next few weeks, I chopped each section into pieces cut to an exact length to fit into the stove.
I never used a hoe on or before this time so the boss showed me how to use these tools. Sometime later, I worked away on another property and someone remarked, 'you're left-handed'. I denied this and told this person the boss showed me how to do the job. He ed and repeated I was left-handed. Ever since then I have been ambidextrous. I learned to milk cows, this was easy except when the cow moved and kicked the bucket over. No bails to secure the cow, just squat down beside her and milk. Both cows were very quiet. I remarked to the boss one day the season was autumn because a huge gum tree had no leaves. He looked at me strangely and said the tree had been ringbarked and been dead for years. Stupid me.
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'His Life Worth Living' - Page 15:

After working on the farm for some months some peculiar happenings. The boss always paid me by cheque on a Gympie Bank. This particular time I got the cheque and went into Gympie to the bank. This Bank closed. When I returned to the farm my wages paid in cash.
Sometime later he said, 'George, a bloke is coming to the farm this afternoon. I want you to go up the paddock behind a big gum tree and stay until he leaves.' This event occurred, I wondered why I needed to hide from this person. A couple of months later I received the sack. I worked on the farm a little over twelve months. To say the least I was startled, sixteen miles from a town with all my belongings. I couldn't do anything but leave.
Sunday I walked to a farmer whom I befriended. 'What's wrong George?' He asked.
'I've been sacked somehow make tracks.' Tears filled my eyes.
‘You'd better come and stay with us lad.’ He said. I did. This man and his family became the keystone of my life. They took me in and gave me a place to call home. I in turn helped them for this man a former gold miner in Gympie suffered from miner’s thrypsis and very sick. I helped him and his wife milk forty cows, and clear their land.
One day another neighbour visited. Her husband and his brother arrived from New South Wales and purchased their property named Kia Ora. They worked hard to clear vine scrub and fence.
‘George how would you like to come and live with us.’ She asked me. I couldn’t say anything, just nod my head. Their family; three daughters and a son. A very fertile soil farm with eighty Illawarra purebred milking shorthorns.
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'His Life Worth Living' - Page 16:

I became one of the family, a bedroom of my own and lived with the most respected man in the Gympie district. He showed me how to plough the land with two horses, how a farmer’s son is on the same footing as a young man working for wages. I became a member of their family. Social evenings were held at Kia Ora School occasionally when farmers and their children attended concerts and dances. His family donated the land free the school was built on and later gave the community another block to build a church. I have to admit I was very backward and embarrassed with my awkwardness for a while but eventually I became one of the mob. I couldn't dance but eventually overcome all my objections and learnt to dance after a fashion.
He owned land at Manubar, which they were clearing. I helped to fall and burn the timber. We planted grass seed in the new ashes. He showed me what to do. I had a horse to ride to the other side of the mountain to work each day. The ride took me through an Aboriginal camp. One day going through this camp they killed a Black Angus shorthorn. The cattle we grew were red, either Illawarra or Hereford. The neighbour’s cattle were black. I rode on. If that beast they killed were red would have been trouble. One of the neighbour’s cattle. I kept my mouth shut.
The home dairy farm at this time worked with a half-share farmer. We decided to run the dairy with the help of the family. I became the farm hand who yarded the cows number eighty to ninety pure bred Illawarra, big red cows each giving two gallons or more of milk daily. All hand milked. No machines in those days. We all got on well together.
Twelve months later the boss decided to give three young men a go at running the farm. His sons and myself. Things did not go along so easy as before and after twelve months another family took over. Their name Cunningham; father Jim, Mrs Ethel, Joyce, Eva and young Blair. I must say I instantly took an interest in Eva and got teased and became too embarrassed to do anything. After all I had nothing but my wages. Years later we married.
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'His Life Worth Living' - Page 17:

After two years since my arrival in Australia, if there was a track from Australia to England, I would have walked back. I was classed with the pest – like rabbit or prickly pear – ‘a bloody Pom’. I met other pommies, new chums, immigrants, all in the same boat as me working on different places in the district. I met up and yarned with other new chums, one of the names given to a new settler from the old country.
One person named Ern who came from London. We often compared notes about conditions and our completely new way of life. He and a partner Henry worked on a small acreage of bananas, on half-shares with the owner of the land. They lived a hard life, isolated with little income. We became close friends. Later in life under different circumstances supported one another. He married and bought a farm at Palmwoods and did fairly well with citrus and small crops. His mate Henry returned to England a disenchanted man. Ern got a job in the sugar mill in Nambour and after many years employed bought the farm.
Eventually I decided to move on. I'd served my apprenticeship. Middle of the depression years with little or no work to find. I decided to travel north to find work. With my worldly possessions of a small port and a blanket I paid my fare and boarded the passenger train to Rockhampton. Ten shillings my savings. I looked for work around Rockhampton which was non existent particularly in the Depression years. I purchased a pushbike for seven shillings and sixpence. A fixed wheeled and rode back to my old boss.
I rode my bike from Rockhampton to Kia Ora under four days sleeping only with an old calico sheet alongside of the road at night; eating along the way. A distance of about three hundred and fifty miles. I did not get a puncture. When I arrived back at the old farm and welcomed like a long lost son. The Boss’s wife who was a good cook had a meal waiting. We sat up late that night, telling of my adventures. I stayed with them for a couple of weeks seeing old friends.
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'His Life Worth Living' - Page 18:

I bought a motorbike some time afterward, and got a swag together, blanket, waterproof, and minimum of clothes and set out west. When I drove through Queen Street in Brisbane following the traffic a whistle sounded. A policeman came over. He was on point duty directing traffic. I had not waited my turn. He asked where I was going and I told him out west to look for work. He looked at my loaded bike, scratched his head and said, ‘on your way son and good luck.’
My first stop Stanthorpe. I remember the cold. I stayed at a Bed and Breakfast. A roaring fire with a good dinner. I left after a good breakfast next day. The morning cold and foggy and did not clear until I arrived at Inglewood. My bike developed a loose chain, which proved to be a bolt in the sprocket. About nine o’clock in the morning I stopped at the garage, in the middle of the town. Nobody was in. I called out, shouted louder and louder. I looked up and down the street, not a sole, not a sound. After fifteen minutes I returned to the garage to get some tools, fixed the chain and continued on my way through the town – a ghost town. Never before had I seen a town completely deserted between nine and nine-thirty in the morning. I wondered if anything happened in that time.
The road west brought me to Talwood, a small town. I made inquiries about work and told about a job some miles away at a property, which name I can’t recall but the owner’s name Newcombe. I duly called and he referred me to a man who with two others, ringbarking and poisoning. That day I became one of a gang. The procedure to cut a frill in the tree about six to ten inches above the ground with an axe and pour poison from a can. The can had a small spout and the liquid coloured red, to prove you had not missed any trees. The liquid was arsenic pentoxide. A most dangerous job I found out later. As I was well acquainted with the axe I had no problem with handling the job. We lived in a tent, food supplied, at our expense and plenty of food.
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