When I spoke to Edna Haines I wasn’t expecting to find a love story, but I did. Like every good story it contained elements of loss, disappointment, romance and adventure.
It all started in Brisbane when Edna’s mother Dorothy, separated from her husband and working at the Pall Mall Cafe in George Street met a soldier who had his roots in rural Queensland. They fell in love and valiantly she agreed to leave the city and follow him back to Killawarra, his grazing property south west of Miles.
Derwent Stone was his name, a brave man who had already fought in two world wars despite crippling injuries. He had spent years of rehabilitation in London during the first war, and while there studied at Oxford University, where he obtained a degree in teaching. During the Second World War his mission was in Intelligence, the highly secretive division which led him to surveillance checks of covert fortification on the off-shore islands of Queensland.
He was originally from Cooma in New South Wales and came to Queensland when he drew the grazing block in a ballot. When he met Edna’s mother he had already been away from his property for four years due to the war. So when Dorothy and her three children arrived from Brisbane things were a little run down. A brother had made occasional visits to check on things for Derwent, but the place was definitely missing a woman’s touch.
Edna was twelve year’s old at the time, and she remembers riding out to the property in the back of the mailman’s flat bed truck. Little did she know how much the family would come to depend on the mailman and his weekly deliveries. One of Derwent’s first tasks was to build a yard in which he would break in a horse. He had a car, but after four years away, the car had no tyres and fuel was rationed and in short supply.
So the brown mare was broken in to pull the jinker, a sulky modified to use old car tyres with an extended tray for carting goods. Town was twelve miles away, on a rough bush track, so trips to Miles were few. Mostly the family depended on the mailman to do their shopping. Edna and her brothers would stand at the gate until he passed, to give him a shopping list. Late in the afternoon he returned with the goods, groceries, fruit and vegetables, fresh meat and always the mail.
There would be five pound bags of flour, and seventy pound hessian bags of sugar, tinned syrup, dried fruits and lemon essence for baking. Rice was a rare commodity, but barley was readily available, as was macaroni for puddings, cocoa and mixed peel. Cabbages and onions kept well, but mostly the vegetables were tinned.
Any plans for growing their own fruit and vegetables had to be put on hold as dry times forced Derwent to take his beloved Aberdeen Angus herd on the road in search of feed. He and Edna’s oldest brother had been away for eight months when finally he left them on agistment in the forestry at Fairylands near Jandowae.
During this time Dorothy had been forced to leave Edna and her brother alone on the property while she stayed in town, awaiting the birth of her baby. Edna felt confident in her ability to look after the two of them while Mum was away. She was already a competent little cook, and loved to search for new recipes in books and magazines.
The children filled their mornings with school work and household chores. There were two heifers to feed, left behind because they were not strong enough to follow the rest of the herd. One was unable to stand, and spent its days in a sling under a shady tree. The two children did their best to care for the animals but it was clear to Edna that they weren’t going to survive. Had her father been there he would have put the animals out of their misery, but Edna was not able to do that. She fed and watered them until eventually they both died.
A little radio provided some entertainment, and taking care not to use up the battery too much, the children listened avidly to their favourite programmes. The Lawsons at midday each day. Edna remembers mostly that it was a freezing winter, the water in the taps was frozen until eleven o’clock each morning.
It was five weeks before Dorothy came home with the new baby boy. During that time Edna and her brother had only seen her once a week, on Saturdays, when they caught a lift into town with the mailman.
With the return of Derwent to Killawarra the family began to feel more settled. There was still food and clothing rationing but they made do with what they had, and felt that they wanted for nothing. The staples like flour and sugar had to last, so recipes were adapted to suit. Rock cakes or Starvies were made with very little sugar or butter and no eggs. Mex Barley Kernels were in limitless supply and were used like rolled oats to make porridge or puddings with milk. Edna had long ago learnt to use dripping to make pastry. And filled with spoonfuls of Golden Syrup delicious little tarts.
There was no refrigeration then, so it was not practical to kill a beast for the table. A hanging safe, covered in gauze to keep flies out, hung in the breezeway. It was where cooked meat and perishables were stored. Edna, at the age of thirteen fashioned an ingenious cool box from an old wooden packing case lined with hessian. Always handy on the sewing machine, Edna made pockets which she filled with charcoal from the fire. These pockets lined the case, and when soaked in water, cooled well enough to set a jelly.
Nothing was ever wasted. The calico flour bags were painstakingly unpicked and sewn into aprons and even underwear. It was not unusual for a pair of bloomers to have Seafoam Flour emblazoned across the seat of them.
Women looked to the bush to offer some variety in the usual fare, and wild limes and cactus both provided a change in diet. The limes made wonderfully refreshing drinks and a delightful jam, similar to marmalade. The pear shaped fruit of the Prickly Pear were boiled, minus the barbs, with sugar to make jam. The chore of peeling them, though, may not have been worth the effort.
But this was a different era, the time3 and effort women put into preparing food and keeping their children clothed would astound most of us today. They were made of sterner stuff and learnt to make do with what they had and be grateful for it.
