These are the none too reliable memories and impressions of mine of Upper Lansdowne in the 1950s and 1960s.
Upper Lansdowne was the home of my mother Mary, whose father was Des Payne and whose mother was Olive Cicolini. My mother was one of the six children of Des and Olive, and my grandmother had another son, Tom Atkins, from her first marriage to Thomas Atkins, who was killed in 1916. Young Tom was born the same year.
My grandfather, Des Payne was born into a family of twelve children who lived on a large farm on the later named Payne’s Lane. His father’s name was Alexander John Payne and his mother’s name was Mary Ann Quinlivan.
My grandmother, Olive Cicolini was born into a family of five children who lived on another large farm on Koppin Yarratt Road, directly in front of Mt. Olive. Her father was Emmanuel Cicolini and her mother was Mary Jane Walsh. Emmanuel arrived in Australia in 1879, and his brother Dominic, who also settled in Upper Lansdowne, arrived in 1888. They had come from Terzolas, in the Tyrol which, when they left Europe, was Austrian territory.
So these two families, growing up at the same time, going to school together and socializing together, then later inter marrying, became the one family that my mother and her siblings knew. With some exceptions, they were long lived people, most living into their eighties, nineties and one of my great aunts to a hundred.
As a result, these people became not only my mother’s often seen relations -grandparents, aunts, uncles, their spouses, then very many cousins – but my own. They lived on working dairy farms in Upper Lansdowne and surrounding districts. Other families intermarried with them, so that we had Unger cousins and Doyle cousins. None of them were wealthy, but as it was said they didn’t know that they were poor, because they were all the same.
The dairy quota was their main source of income and, with enough children, you could milk a lot of cows. They were good farmers, and apart from dairying, the land was used to grow corn, vegetables, melons, and pigs. Everyone had dozens of chickens and ducks. Upper Lansdowne was wonderful for fruit trees – oranges, lemons, peaches, nectarines, pears, plums, quinces, mulberries, loquats. There were grapes, passion fruits, and chokos. No-one starved to death.
This then was the atmosphere of Upper Lansdowne at the time of my first remembered visit in 1955.
My great uncle Jack Cicolini had picked up my mother and I from the steam train coming down from Brisbane, probably at Lansdowne station. It was the middle of the night and he drove to his mother’s house, my great grandmother “Granny” Cicolini. It was very early in the morning, but the lights were on and I was put back to bed.
In the morning, it was a revelation. The smell of the wood fire stove, the mountains, the wide open spaces, Granny’s iron framed bed and outside the cows, cows, cows. At that time in Upper Lansdowne, the milking – morning and afternoon – was the major event. The dairies were all busy, the wood fired coppers were boiling. There was machine and hand milking and the cows were coming and going. They knew exactly what to do.
Then every morning the open sided milk truck roared up the road to the stand, where the milk cans stood for collection. The truck went up the road then back down to Taree. Every farm had a dairy built of timber and tin with a concrete floor. Every house in Upper Lansdowne was of timber and tin, with shady verandahs and French doors. Inside there were wooden floors, walls and ceilings. Every farmhouse had a wood burning stove, which seemed to be always lit, no matter what time of day. Combined with the fires in the dairies, this meant the smell of burning wood was always in the air.
Upper Lansdowne then was a very ‘alive’ place. The shop opposite the school was a going concern as a general store, selling not only food products, but also bolts of material, work clothes and basic hardware. It was also the post office and manual telephone exchange. My great grandfather Payne was No. 1, and my great grandmother Cicolini was No. 3. In its heyday, the shop had a wagon, which went along a different lane each day. The driver went into the houses and the farmer’s wife would make the list of the things she needed. On another day, the deliveries were made, at one time by my uncle, Tom Atkins. Attached to the shop later, there was a hand-pump operated petrol bowser, where you could get fuel.
The school was active, although with fewer students than in the 1930s and 1940s. Many farms had a tennis court for the local competition. There was Sunday mass at the Catholic church along with baptisms, weddings and funerals. There were similar services at the Anglican church. The hall was regularly used for meetings, formal balls, dances and, in the earlier days, silent films, where my grandmother, Olive Payne, would play the piano, with music to match the action, or mood, of the film. I understand the hall is still central to community activity. In earlier days, the large flat paddock on the corner of Muddy Lane and Koppin Yarratt road, was a horse racing track, and football and cricket fields were closer to the hall.
The Koppin Yarratt road itself was a mysterious thing. I knew where it came from -Taree, but I didn’t know where it went. It snaked around, crossing rivers and creeks on rumbling wooden bridges, then disappeared up into the hills. At night, you could look up towards Comboyne, and see the flash of headlights way up on the cutting. That car would finally pass Granny’s house forty minutes later. And talking of night, how about the number of stars in that sky? Looking up towards Comboyne, at a certain point along Granny’s house fence, there was a perfect echo. You could call out and then your voice would come back. I still don’t know how that worked.
There were also stories of mysterious patches of quicksand on great uncle Reg Payne’s farm on Hogan’s road. The cave on Saville’s Rock was where all the cousins had decided they would escape to, when the Imperial Japanese army marched up the road towards Comboyne. Such excitement, and a little disappointment, when it never happened!
For a boy from the western suburbs of Sydney, this was all heady stuff. There was the freedom to go anywhere, as long as an adult was there too. Across the paddocks, down to the creek, skipping stones, walking over bridges, visiting family that I didn’t know. Then there was the prospect of danger – being chased by a bull, falling in the water, snakes! Everyone had a snake story – snakes in the kitchen, on the table, on the road, on the back of doors. And of course the ghost stories. Everyone had a ghost story. Headless ghosts, laughing ghosts, ghosts on horses, ghosts walking down the road. Given the blackness of Upper Lansdowne nights, who could mock any of it? Especially if you came across a white cow in the middle of the night.
There were also very real stories of tragedy. A toddler cousin, with his father at milking, fell backwards into a cauldron of boiling water and died of his burns. Another young cousin, whose dressing gown caught fire and he couldn’t be saved. Fatal, accidental gunshots.
There were many horse accidents, broken arms and legs and my grandmother’s first husband was killed coming off his horse when it was spooked. He was found by my grandmother, who was following behind, driving the sulky, but he died the next day.
Childbirth was also precarious when the women were so far from the doctor’s help. Babies were born at home, as was my mother and her siblings. Miscarriages could be fatal. Granny Cicolini became the midwife to her family and to many others. She helped to deliver many children in the 1920s and 30s, and was also often called on to help when there was some accident, or other medical emergency.
To me, in 1955 and up until her death, Granny seemed the oldest person in the world. Grey hair tied up in a bun, a formidable walking stick, long, old lady dresses and aprons. She often wrote letters, and they would be in a wayward, spidery script which didn’t bother staying within the lines.
She had been born in 1871 in Newport, Wales, as the family was en route from Ireland to Australia. Ribbed later about being British because of her place of birth, the very Irish lady said that if you were born in a stable, it didn’t make you a horse!
In Sydney as a child, she lived in and around The Rocks, and would tell me how she went down to Circular Quay and watched the tall-masted ships unloading. Later the family moved north to the Manning District and, at the age of 15, she was married to Emmanuel Cicolini in 1886. He had asked her father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Emmanuel had land in Upper Lansdowne, and so from the age of 15 until her death at 88 she lived on the farm. They had five children – three boys and two girls and my grandmother Olive was the last born in 1897.
Starting in the years before the beginning of WWI, the Cicolini farmhouse, or “Beaumanoire” as it was named, became a type of B&B. Travellers going up and down the road could stay the night, rest their horses, and have their breakfast before continuing on the next day. As a girl, my grandmother Olive’s last job of the day was to make up the bread for the morning, and let it rise overnight. She hated doing it and, when she moved to Sydney, never made bread again.
My Cicolini great grandparents and my Payne great grandparents also put their names to the petition to start the Upper Lansdowne school. The large fig tree in front of the school was later planted by my grandfather, Des Payne, around 1910.
For many years, the assistant teacher at the school boarded with my great grandmother at “Beaumanoire” and one of them, Elizabeth Cunningham, married one of the sons of the house, Horace Cicolini.
In January 1960, my great grandmother died. When she had been born, Queen Victoria still had nearly thirty years to reign, the American Civil War had only been over for six years. When she moved to Upper Lansdowne, Australia was still fifteen years from becoming one country. She lived 74 years in Upper Lansdowne, the last 47 as a widow. Her husband had died in 1913. Her life was never easy. She had to endure the tragic deaths of her mother, her husband, her son in WWI, her son-in-law, her sister, her niece, her grandson, and a great grandson.
After Granny’s death, my trips to Upper Lansdowne stopped for more than three years. In May 1963 I was taken back to Upper Lansdowne by my grandfather, Des Payne, my uncle Ray and my cousin Greg. The era of visiting had begun. Granny was gone but my grandfather Payne’s eleven siblings were still living in and around Upper Lansdowne, and mostly on working farms. Uncle Ray would drive, and we would stay either at great uncle Horace Cicolini’s old home, or with great uncle Jack Cicolini and great auntie Polly (Mary) who was my grandfather’s sister. There would be visits to great auntie Kath Unger, great uncle Reg Payne, great auntie Kate Carmody, great auntie Annie McCarthy and great auntie Ena Hicks.
There was always lunch or a cup of tea and they would talk about the old days and I would listen. Those farmhouses seemed more like museums. They were large and dark, and on the walls hung ancient looking framed photos of stern-faced patriarchal figures, arms folded and with droopy moustaches. Those photos looked like they had been in the same place for a hundred years.
With time, the older family members died and the younger ones, unwilling to stay on the farm, moved into town or to Sydney. The milk quota was finished and the land was to be used for beef cattle, if it were used at all. Most of Granny’s original farm was bought by Claude Cicolini. In 1982, her house and immediate paddocks were bought from Claude by my mother and her siblings. It was used very successfully as a family holiday house until, because of advancing years of the siblings, not the house, it was sold out of the family in 2013. And so after 150 years of continuous attachment to the little valley, the Cicolini/Payne connection was at an end.
Mark Fitzgerald 1 March 2022
