My full name is Michael Maxwell Doyle (known as Max)
My paternal great grandfather, Patrick Doyle, came to Australia from Ireland in the 1830s and was granted several blocks of land in the Bundanoon area on the south coast of New South Wales. He met and married an Irish girl who came out with her parents from County Antrim. Her name was Elizabeth Longmore.
My grandfather, Michael Doyle, married Mary Berry. They had had four children when they decided to move to the North Coast of New South Wales. My grandfather, his two brothers and a brother-in-law made the move north in 1903 when my father was two. My father had been born at Bundanoon on 29th August 1901.
A great uncle related the tremendous difficulties they had in getting bullock teams and wagons across Wiseman’s Ferry. After travelling many weeks they arrived at a place between Taree and Old Bar called Redbank. My grandmother had her fifth child while they were camped here.
The four men decided to look at some selections that were becoming available. They were successful in obtaining a 165 acre block each at Upper Lansdowne and moved onto their land and started to clear the timber. They cleared enough land to build a home and in time cleared enough to start dairying. The bullock teams must have been a great help in clearing the land.
Years later two of my uncles had their own bullock teams and pulled huge logs out of the bush to the log dumps. They would be picked up by log lorries and taken to the mills to be cut into timber to build homes.
My father was married to Sylvia Catherine Payne on May 28, 1923. Sylvia had been born at Upper Lansdowne on February 13, 1897.
Over time four children were born at the farm house in Upper Lansdowne: Mary Josephine, Michael Maxwell, Alexander John and Patricia Gwendoline.
My father was involved in the timber industry, as well as running a dairy farm, which he bought when he was married. He drew railway sleepers out of the mountain when he was called on to do so. The sleeper cutters would cut down a suitable tree, saw it into six foot lengths, then split them into what is called billets.
They would use a special axe called a broad axe to finish off the sleeper. When finished they looked almost as if they were cut in a timber mill.
My father handled all the sleepers cut by these men who did this kind of work for a living. From the age of eleven to thirteen I helped him on weekends and holidays. Each of us had a draught horse so we could handle twice as many sleepers. We took them down to a flat area where the lorries could load them and take them to the nearest railway station, where they would be passed or rejected by an inspector. We were paid sixpence a sleeper. The depression years were hard times but being raised on a farm meant we always had food on the table.
My mother was a talented musician and played violin in an orchestra with three of her sisters. They played at balls and dances at many places on the Mid North Coast. Before Mum was married she travelled by horse back to Cundletown Convent for music and painting lessons once a week. The round trip was thirty miles.
My maternal grandparents were Alexander John Payne and Mary Quinlivan. They had a lovely farm at Upper Lansdowne and they reared twelve children and three grandchildren as well.
The dairy farm on which we were raised had a very nice home. The home was weatherboard home with an iron roof. It had a verandah on the front and two sides. The weatherboards were American redwood. The walls and ceiling were also lined with timber. We had three bedrooms, a lounge dining room, a kitchen, a walk in pantry and a bathroom. A skillion was added to the back of the house for the laundry. No electricity was available in those days so we had a fuel stove for cooking and heating the water for bathing. The bath was a round galvanised iron tub with handles on the side. We only had tank water, which we went outside to get. When our tanks were getting low we sometimes had to dig holes in the creek bed and let the water filter through. Times were hard in those days, no money or very little through the depression. Living on a farm we were truly blessed because we had our own eggs and chooks to kill and Dad killed a pig occasionally and made our bacon. Having no refrigeration he had to make most of the pig into bacon.
I attended the Upper Lansdowne Public School, starting at six years old and leaving before I turned fourteen. Unless your parents had enough money to board you in Taree you missed out on a better education. Only one boy in my class was lucky enough to go to high school. There was no such thing as school buses in those days. All the children attending the school were barefooted. The only time I wore shoes to school was when it was a Holy day of obligation and the Catholics would go to Mass and then come back to school. I enjoyed playing football at the lunch break on those days. I must say we didn’t do our shoes much good though. When I started school we had three classrooms and one hundred and thirty pupils. I enjoyed school and deeply regretted not being able to go to high school, however that was the situation and I accepted it. I felt determined to give our family a very good education and fortunately we were able to do that.
One thing I especially remember at school was being caught smoking. A group of us older boys decided to try smoking pine needles wrapped in newspaper, so we collected some needles and paper, made up the cigarette and then climbed to the very top of this big pine tree. Once we got to the top of the tree and made ourselves comfortable we proceeded to light up.
We were having a great time when all of a sudden there was a very loud shout from the bottom of the tree. It was the headmaster who ordered us to come down out of the tree and he would deal with us, which he did. A girl cousin of mine dobbed us in so she wasn’t my favourite cousin for a long time.
When I was about ten years old a cousin gave me a pair of turtledoves. I was very excited having my very own pets. We made a nice sized cage and the whole family seemed to enjoy my doves. After having them about a year or more I decided that it seemed cruel to cage the poor things so I let them out of the cage. I fully expected them to fly off but no they stayed around and we continued to throw them some foods. Sad to say our cat eventually got both of them.
My next pet was a baby pig. My grandfather had a large farm and reared a lot of pigs. From time to time a sow would have more little pigs than she had teats to feed them so I was given the little runt to try and rear. I enjoyed teaching the little pig to drink and it soon learned to drink on its own. It would follow me around all day and I bedded it down at night. Later on it became a big pig and we sent it to a bacon factory to be made into bacon. My dad made all our own bacon. He wouldn’t kill my pet for that reason so it was sent away with a truckload of pigs. It was a very sad day for me.
We had several horses but we never considered them to be pets. The draught horses were used for ploughing the farm paddocks and they were magnificent animals and were so dependable. Our riding horses were our stock horses and were used as our means of getting around. Horses were and still are my favourite animals. Toys were very scarce in my childhood but it never worried us. We had one three wheeled bike between four of us which sometimes led to some fighting for possession. One of our aunties bought the bike for us because our parents just didn’t have the money to spare. We made up our own games and were never bored. Luckily we lived close to a nice creek, which was only about fifty yards from the house.
Through the summer we would swim two or three times a day. Along the creek banks grew some beautiful trees called Ironwood trees and they were ideal for climbing. One of our games was choosing flat stones and throwing them along the water and seeing how many times they touched the water before stopping.
We also made our own catapults out of a well-chosen forked piece of stick and some rubber pieces from an old car tube. The tongue of an old boot completed all you needed for the job. After a lot of practise we became experts and could hit almost anything including things we weren’t supposed to hit.
I have very happy memories of Christmas, even though it was through the depression years. We would go to my grandparents’ home and meet with many of my cousins and play all kinds of games. Christmas dinner was something to look forward to.
We never got any presents in those days, because money just wasn’t available, but we didn’t worry, as we were all in the same situation.
The year the war started, we moved to another farm too far away to enjoy the Christmases at my grandparents home plus we didn’t have a car. For some years we spent Christmas together as a family and they were very enjoyable. Mum did a great job providing a wonderful meal with very little money to spare.
From when I was about eleven years old until I was thirteen I assisted my dad drawing railway sleepers out of the mountain to the level ground where the trucks would pick them up and take them to the nearest railway station where they would be passed by an inspector and used on the railway line. We each had a big draught horse and pulled a few sleepers each trip. Dad was paid sixpence a sleeper. Of course this took place only on weekends and school holidays. I got much pleasure out of doing this sort of work and really looked forward to boiling the Billy at lunchtime.
I assisted my Dad clearing land for cultivation. Dad got one of his brothers, Uncle Tom who had a bullock team to draw the logs and stumps into heaps so we could burn them.
I left school before I turned fourteen and helped Dad and Mum on the dairy farm. I soon learned to use an axe and a brush hook. A brush hook has a curved hook and is mainly used for cutting bracken fern. We moved to another farm on the headwater of the Manning River, three hundred acres and milking seventy cows. However, this wasn’t a good move because we had very little rain in the two years we lived there. The feed for the cattle was so scarce we cut the willow trees along the riverbank to give them something to eat. During the time we lived there I took up trapping rabbits to try and earn a few shillings. We would set off on horseback with a pack horse carrying all our supplies to last about a fortnight. We travelled about thirty miles and when we got there we set up camp under a piece of tarpaulin stretched across the top of a stockyard fence. Our bed was a lot of dried grass with bags over the top and a blanket over that. We didn’t mind sleeping on the ground. I handled thirty traps and my mate had forty traps. He was a more experienced trapper than I was. We made about a pound a day, so we were happy.
We moved again to the beautiful Comboyne Plateau where I continued to help my parents. In 1947 the family left the farm and moved to Richmond. My father Mick worked at Hawkesbury Agricultural College in charge of the teams of draught horses. My brother Alex joined the Queensland Mounted Police. My sister Patricia studied nursing at St Joseph’s Hospital Auburn. My other sister Josie married a local dairy farmer and landowner in the district. I joined the Australian Merchant Navy and went to sea.
Front Row: Josephine, Michael (Mick), Sylvia Doyle