assault but the relationship with my father remained the same. I was wary of him, embarrassed by his behavior with others and despaired of ever pleasing him. The boys I played with were familiar with his language and abuse. I was not afraid of him and that seemed to infuriate him. I refused to cry when he hit me. Almost every confrontation in private resulted in belittling criticism if not of me then of my mother or someone else. The incident of his lying to Mr. Carpenter and others about his war experiences served to erode any sense of respect I might have had for him. These were not isolated incidents. He would regale people with his bragging and exaggerated stories, seeming to have no regard for the truth or his own veracity.
Late one afternoon, as the pubs closed, he was on the footpath in front of the house with my mother. I was further away in front of the butcher’s on the corner of Albert Street. My father called, ‘Come on, you useless fucking bastard, get a move on or I’ll give you a fucking hiding.’ A man who had just left the hotel and walking past said, ‘That’s no way to talk to the boy. Pick on someone your own size.’ Stan told him to mind his own business so the man ran toward him, whereupon Stan shot through the side gate and locked it. The man had a few words with Mum, who was grateful for the intervention. So was I. That man was the only person I ever saw tackle him directly.
Mum and I went to the movies regularly. We each had a keen sense of humour and found a lot to laugh at. She seemed to regard me like a brother or the man about the house. This was understandable perhaps because she was an only child and frequently expressed her regret at not having siblings. Mum’s intention was to have a large family. Intelligent, articulate and possessing a quiet determination, she insisted on good manners and frequently stated she had no intention of creating a problem for some other woman. Her boys, she said, were going to be self sufficient around the house. Beyond that, she was remarkably tolerant of where I was or what I was doing, seeming to believe I could look after myself. It was not entirely my choice. In many ways I was accorded the freedom of a young adult without the luxury of being a child.
In August, three years after the birth of my youngest brother, Ross Stuart, my sister Pamela was born. This was very exciting as Pam was the only girl in our generation of the Cliff family. Mum was pleased she had attained the family she wanted.
We soon sold the bakery and house. Stan began the search for a farm with a visit to Albury and Yarrawonga after which he turned to Alexandria where a property there became the subject of heated discussion. A little later, having inspected farms at Ripplebrook and Glen Forbes in Gippsland, it was announced he bought the 150 acre dairy farm at Glen Forbes, on the railway line to Wonthaggi. We would take possession at Easter.
An irony was to occur in the 1960s when No 2 Albert Street Williamstown, the former Cliff bakery, became the Williamstown Little Theatre. I can think of no better way to enshrine the scene of the Cliff family post war life. Structurally, in 2015, it is largely unchanged from its former life.
CHAPTER 3
GLEN FORBES
It was Easter 1954. We could hardly contain ourselves as the car made its way out of the suburbs onto the South Gippsland Highway toward Wonthaggi. Skirting around Western Port Bay, we passed the fishing village of Tooradin, crossed the drains of Koo Wee Rup and went on to Grantville. We searched intently for the 63 mile post that would mark our turn to the east, away from Corinella. Mum’s stifled tears were the only dampener but we had little sympathy for her. Our childish self interest prevailed.
To my inexperienced eye, this was heaven. The country was unbelievably beautiful. The house was perched a few hundred feet above the Bass flats overlooking Western Port Bay with both Phillip Island and French Island clearly visible in the distance. Behind the house, and rising very steeply was a large hill while over the road was another, if anything even steeper. Alarm bells would have rung a distinct warning to any adult with experience of farming but Mum’s wail on entering the house was the only detractor from our awe. Her premonition of doom was compounded by the rudimentary weatherboard house that consisted of three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and two living rooms. Only one room was lined with unpainted three-ply cladding. The rest sported at least one wall where bare noggins served as shelves.
In the kitchen was a traditional wood stove. The water supply was provided by two 1000 gallon tanks beside the kitchen, another on the bathroom, and a smaller one with a tap outside. To her credit, Mum’s tears stopped and she was soon directing the furniture to its chosen position. Bruce and I were more interested in the dairy and the old shed in a grove of oak trees that served as the hay shed, workshop, and storage for the heavy horse harness we found. I was instantly addicted to the sights and smells.
The inventory of the farm included 25 cows, one bull, two draft horses, a black kelpie dog called Prince, a two-furrow hillside disk plough, a six by four foot horse drawn sled and a rusted unusable horse drawn mower. Electricity was connected to the house but there was none to the dairy or the shedding. The simple bush timber dairy had six wooden head bails and a three unit ‘Eclipse’ milking machine driven by a vertical 3HP petrol Bamford engine. Hot water was provided by an old wood fired copper in the wash room. Only part of the yard was concrete – the rest was mud.
Only our extreme naivety could have allowed the optimism Bruce and I felt. God only knows what Stan was feeling. Mum somehow managed to put the house into working order. Stan seemed bewildered and uncertain where to start or what to do. For some time he made no attempt to milk the cows. I had just turned 13, Bruce was 11, Ross was 4 and Pamela 2. Naturally, our efforts would seem inept to an experienced farmer. By default, I got the milking machine going and with little difficulty solved the problems of milking. Mum had made it clear from the outset she was not going to work on the farm – she would be fully occupied with the children and maintaining the home.
The most immediate and vexatious of our tasks, apart from milking, was to maintain a supply of cut wood for the house and the dairy. To obtain sufficient wood it was necessary to drag fallen trees and limbs off the farm to a site near the house where it could be cut up with a hand saw and axe. To do this I would need the horses. Taking two bridles, I set out to catch the two draught horses quietly grazing in the paddock above the house. The previous owner had told us their names were Tess and Jess.
This was the beginning of my love of working farm horses. Luckily for me these horses were used to working hard and did not waste energy. They would stand where you put them and would work together when driven properly. I put their collars on, then the metal hames. By tying a short rope between their bridles and long reins to the outside of the bridles, they could be driven as a pair. I was able to drive them forward into place between the chain traces laid out in front of the wooden sledge. Once the traces were attached to the hooks on the hames we are ready to go. With a gentle flick of the reins and a click of the tongue we were off, gliding softly and silently across the grass behind the two gentle giants
Our daily routine evolved from necessity. I would get up before 6 a.m. to bring the cows in for milking. To begin, it was a task I really enjoyed. The first job was to light a fire under the copper in the dairy, our only source of hot water. We had arrived in autumn so at that early hour the hills were enshrouded with mist while the flats were invisible in the fog until later in the morning. The hills were so steep the cows would drift to the gullies out of the wind or lie down among the tussocks and bracken ferns that covered a great deal of the farm. The gentle breeze coming from the ocean in the south west was laced with the moist earth smell. I was truly enchanted as I strode along looking for the cows hiding either in the ferns somewhere on the hill or in the sheltered valley behind the Glen Forbes store. It was mystical and eerie to come across them quietly chewing their cud and exhaling their pungent breath in the mist of this beautiful place. It seemed a shame to disturb
