The Lean Years



  THE LEAN YEARS

  Stories of the Great Depression With Much Truth; Though Some Of It Stretched A Little.

  BY

  Henry Cole

  THE GREAT DEPRESSION (My experience)

  There were not many kids around Gwabegar at that time and Old Dick Cole and his four boys were favorably well-known. My Mother stood high in their esteem by cooking tasty treats to serve with the cups of black coffee often needed. Though she hated booze with all the fervor with which the men loved it, she tolerated it. Consequently, when the men came in on Saturday and got the dust flushed from their throats, I got my head patted and bags of boiled lollies thrust into my hands. Knowing her feelings, the men brought Mother flowers, which she loved, when they could find any. This had become such a ritual that I found it hard to understand when it was Monday and the men were loafing around, grumpy, sad-looking, and with no lollies. I was to learn later that that was when the railways department had cancelled the previously issued orders for sleepers and bridge-timbers. This left men used to earning, and spending, good money suddenly without income, and worse, without promise of any. The stories of American millionaires defenestrating into bloody heaps onto footpaths had not disturbed them in the least. There were plenty more American millionaires to go round, and windows for them to jump from. But now the depression had arrived at our place.

  Mum said to Dad, ‘we need a tin of jam.’

  Dad said to me, ‘go down and get a tin of jam.’

  I hotfooted off. The jam was needed to help with lunch and my stomach told me it was due.

  No money was needed, everything was done ‘on tick,’ so I entered the store as bold as brass. ‘A tin of jam, please!’

  A look of consternation passed over the face of the counter-jumper, busy with some bookwork. He looked to someone else in the office. After a couple of doubtful nods between them I was handed a small can. I was about to hand it back explaining that what I wanted was the usual Henry Jones pound and a half, but something of their demeanor alerted me, so I hung onto what I had.

  Father asked, a trifle anxiously I thought, ‘Did you get a tin of jam?’

  I answered dubiously, ‘yes, but it’s a flat tin.’

  He took a look. ‘It is a flat tin too,’ he said ruefully.

  The trades people had got the word about the sleepers being closed, and the sawmills were beginning to close one by one. But Father managed to keep the bills paid. It was about that time that he bought a horse and sulky and fencing materials to meet requirements of settlement on property. To ‘prove up’ as the American cow-boy books have it. I think money was still coming in for sleepers already accepted. There would have been some savings as the sleeper-cutting had been going on for some months and the family’s ambition had been to save up and buy farming and grazing land. Collapse of The Roaring Twenties had now destroyed that plan. On to Plan B.

  Dealing with the government you usually have money coming later and that last payment would be made to last! My father told me later that he went straight to trapping rabbits. That being so, it must have hit us coming on winter. That is when the freezing works opened, and the skins are virtually worthless without winter fur. He would have been up for a fair bit for a kit. Sixty traps with other needfuls would have set him back a bit. And the sleeper-cutting kits were now of no value. At that time I think you would have been up for somewhere near a pound a trap, more for the better brands. And no one would be selling on credit at that time, no one sane anyway.

  As he told it to me, it was the only work he could find and the ground was as hard as rock. This would make things doubly difficult. The hard ground would make it difficult to dig the hole in which to bury the trap from sight. But the worst was that you never catch a rabbit just passing by. They love to play their mating games by scratching small holes in damp soft earth, and that’s when they are caught. If the ground is hard and dry, and grass is scarce, a rabbiter’s life is woe. The Lachlan freezing works would soon drop the price it paid for carcasses if they kept coming in with little meat on their bones and less fur on their hides. The company took the whole rabbit minus the guts, shipping the meat to England. Drought made the rabbits harder to catch and of less value when you caught them.

  Sixpence a pair was a regular price the company paid in my time but it could fall and did during the depression. On a good night’s trapping you would pair your traps, catch two rabbits per trap. That is with four rounds. Walk back along the trap-line when finished setting, then do a sundown round, the main round started when the evening star set at about nine o’clock and finished at about midnight. The morning round started as soon as it was light and would net about the same haul as the night round. Thirty bob a night, seven pound ten a week, and your own boss. Not too bad when the best wage you would get was about three pounds a week. If you could get a job. But you earned it. The mileage you put up was hard on boot leather. You needed plenty of rabbits around to do well. Mostly you found enough to get by. A funny thing about the pricing was that if you got good skins and a bit of luck selling them you could get as much as sixpence a skin and leave the meat to rot in the paddock. But carcassing was surer money. The meat was needed in England.