I am pleased to advertise the beer that accompanied us to our retreat near Kojonup because it is a fine, strong, dark and tasty beer that reminds us of the historic English beer making tradition, and anything at the moment that reminds us of home is very welcome.
Once we had settled in to our new little home, Shipton on Christine and Malcolm’s station called Te Opu they took us off on a dual errand, to meet their friends Kathy and Eric at home working in their colourful and imaginative garden and then proceed down to their dried lake bed where there were fallen white gums, yates, ready for the chainsaw and removal. Their 10,000 acres is now leased out giving them room for numerous other passions, on and off their home.
To enhance the lovely view over the ever changing colours of rural SW Aussie they had laid a lawn, lush and green on elevated flat land ending in a classic English visual device, a ha ha, or wall that is an invisible way of keeping livestock out of the garden and maintaining the sense of distance and continuity in the vista without using the visual interruption of a fence. The soil around here, in the area known as the wheat belt is a thin layer over heavy red and grey clay, so deep ploughing is not done as it would raise the clay to the surface. There are rocky outcrops of pink granite which provide very useful building materials and all around Eric and Kathy’s garden Eric has built fine dry stone walls as perfect as the miles of the same to be seen disappearing over the hills in rural Britain, complete with the gentle slope inwards to the top, the throes or long stones that pass from one side to the other and add strength and stability and the shaped capping stones to shed the seasonal rains.
Kathy’s attention to colour and texture contrast of the foliage in the garden means there is a multi-coloured natural palette to enjoy all year round. Little cameo scenes are set up using garden relics from numerous sources as well as their own garden. A honeymoon house next to the main house is there if the couple just married under the roof of the cart port choose to stay their first night in these lovely surroundings. Their own son was married there last October and the photos showed not only the joys of the springtime wedding, but also the garden colours at a different time of year to our visit.
The wooden fence you see is made from branches of the jam tree, a very hard termite resistant wood that lasts for years and is so named because the wood has a distinct smell of raspberry jam. The tree was used as an indicator back in the early days of settlement that the land around was suitable for wheat and sheep farming.
We six sat around a table in the garden chatting and enjoying a delicious morning tea of still warm scones with home-made fig jam and cream and steaming mugs of Yorkshire tea. The sun provides the warmth when there is no wind but in that wind there is the chill reminder of winter on its way, so we made our way down the hill to the dried lake bed and our exercise for the day, humping logs. The lake years ago must have looked lovely as the shallow water disappeared off into the surrounding woodland, but with the drying effect of the warming climate in this area lowering the water table and global climate change, those days are gone and rural drinking water comes from rain catchment.
Malcolm drove us home along dirt tracks that criss-cross this area linking stations and which are maintained by the shire council. I was looking forward to seeing the greening that comes with the early morning dew and winter rains.
Shipton – Views from My Kitchen Window – Some Farmyard Friends – and
Alice, the Black Widow Spider
We settled in to our new home in no time; Rob completed the pre-existing furnishings with a couple of chairs found in Malcolm’s wonderful Aladdin’s cave of a storeroom/workshop. Washed, dried and relocated they made excellent bedroom chairs.
Within a short time I realised the compact homestead was also an observatory on the rural world outside, the pretty farm vistas changing all through the day as the sun moved over us and then faded in the evening, for a few minutes adding a delicious tone of pink to nature’s palette. Rob cleaned and polished the windows so we could see the beauty around us in perfect clarity.
Malcolm sometimes texts us to show us yet another wonder of nature and sometimes dread of man. I was thrilled to see a beautiful red back spider he spotted when turning over a length of metal, that would have been warm in the sunshine. Also known as the Australian Black Widow because this striking female has her relationship with her husband all sewn up, and she invented Superglue to boot.
She, like me is too busy to worry much about housekeeping and her web is a mess, made to be functional and not of ‘Grand Design’ style. But unlike me she eats her husband once the mating process is complete, hence the name. Her mate actually positions his abdomen over her mouth while mating to make it easy for her to feast upon him, thus lengthening the mating process, so to make more babies. Just look at that perfect red marking on her back and at her size, bravely illustrated for me by Malcolm who loaned his finger. She has an hour glass red shape on her belly but neither Malcolm nor I were prepared to turn her over to see; even the pic in Wikipedia shows a dead upside down spider.
A bite from her is unlikely to be fatal, just very uncomfortable with nausea, sweating and agitation for a few days. A horse can help. Since 1956 horses have been injected with a non-lethal dose and the antibodies they produce are used as an anti-venom. But anti-venom is not always necessary, apparently we are quite good at producing our own and paracetamol helps reduce the pain. The best option as with a snake bite and already well known to animals and indigenous people is to lie very still for up to 48 hours. An exception to the non-fatal outcome was an unfortunate backpacker, but then maybe he had underlying health issues (!), now where have I heard that term recently.
Also unlike me she is not a brilliant mother. Her babies try to ‘steal’ food from her which she actively discourages, turning them into little cannibals too, sometimes snacking on their smaller siblings. She is also a thief, stealing prey from other webs knowing that if she gets caught she might become that host’s next meal.
Now here’s where the Superglue comes in. And at this point her human equivalent is coming to mind; the classy, red-lipped Alice from the TV series ‘Luther’, a murderess in black shiny leather just like her arachnid counterpart. Our Black Widow senses her victims; insects, lizards, small snakes and even mice when they touch her web. She leaps out and wraps them in her sticky superglue threads of silk and once immobilised she injects them with the venom that melts their innards. She can then enjoy her delicious smoothie, the only liquid she drinks. She has taste, just like Alice.
So I was saying that people rarely suffer the severest symptoms from the bite; eh well actually it’s the usual thing; the young, sick and elderly have been known to go through agonies and die in pre-venom days and you needn’t think you are entirely safe either. A group of Black Widow immigrants arrived at Preston, Lancashire on a ship laden with mechanical parts from Australia and some are thought to have escaped and if you live near Dartford in Kent, wear gloves before your start gardening to be safe.
On a more placid note the chickens are two of the four house hens who are coasting at the moment and laying no eggs. We fed them while Malcolm and Christine were away helping granddaughter Zoe celebrate her birthday.
The ground around us is greening up by the day. Early morning dew after the cooler nights and a sprinkling of rain is helping. The present job is burning the piles of wood that Malcolm has stacked up with his tractor and we go around and help gather up branches and add them to the flames. This keeps the ground clear and ready for the seeding to be done, which is next on the list and will be done by the farmers who are leasing the land. I believe it is to be barley this year. Rape (Canola), lupins, wheat and oats are also common crops.
All around is the evidence of farming over the years in the form of the old farm machinery, some dating back to the first days of settler activity, rusting and looking more a part of the scenery as time goes on. Also the evidence of children having grown up here, the monkey in the tree, gently moving wooden seated swings in the garden, a little trike on the tennis court. All signs of home.
The pretty little pink mottled lizard we found on the BBQ and as he is typical Redback spider food, we gently let the lid back down to hide him and I made a mental note, “Malcolm where are the gloves?!”
Early Days in Kojonup
One fine morning in February 1837, by white man’s calendar, a group of eight Aborigines were walking stealthily through the lush green countryside of South West Australia, ‘The Great Southern’ towards a waterhole where they hoped to find some wildlife drinking which, using their hunting skills would provide their next meal.
Just imagine the mutual surprise and cultural astonishment they will have felt when they stumbled onto a party of white men, led by Surveyor Alfred Hillman, who were marking the road that would lead from King George Sound (Albany) to the Swan River (Perth). The party had spent the previous night at a lush green spot but found no water there. So they were grateful to these aborigines who gave them the exact location of a spring of fresh water a few miles away.
Hillman was so impressed with the site of this permanent spring he wrote in his field book, ‘This would be a good place for a station.’ I took the photo showing all green foliage underneath a log grating, as that is supposed to be the spring; there certainly was a trickle of water bubbling up and flowing through the plant-life.
The name Kojonup probably originates from the Aborigine word for a long handled axe or ‘kodja’ and ‘norp’ meaning ‘plenty’ and the first part was most likely given to them by those same eight aborigines.
There is much hard quartzite rock in the area, known as Kojonup Sandstone which flakes into razor sharp edges, ideal for a cutting instrument and early settlers found numerous axes around the land suggesting that this could have been a factory area for making the axes that were then traded with other mobs and tribes.
Early relations with the generous aborigines were good with friendly guides helping the newcomers find their way around. They cannot have known of the intentions of the white men to claim the region in the form of large tracts of arable and livestock land that would be bought by settlers. Dissatisfaction was abounding that the coastal plains were not as potentially productive as the rich grasslands of the interior; and the common view was that sheep would thrive and be profitable.
Before any of the obvious benefits of this road linking growing settlements on two different coasts and opening up the entire south west could be enjoyed it was considered essential to build a military barracks there to protect travellers, mail carriers and immigrants intending to settle and farm the area. Hence the photos of the second barrack building, the first having rotted away with the help of termites and ants after just a few years.
The soldiers were a detachment of the 21st Regiment known as the Royal British Fusiliers and may well have joined the army because it offered security and a regular income, while the civilian alternative in the rapidly industrialising homeland was mostly an impoverished and uncertain existence. They lived on meagre rations of salted meat, pease and rum, plus what they could make using flour and salt, but soon they were learning wildlife hunting skills from the generous local ‘dark hunters’ who also imparted their long held knowledge of the nearby countryside, its soil, plants, water supply, animals and trees. When, two years later the regiment departed for duty in India some of the soldiers remained in the colony, happy with their situation and willing to pursue the dream of a new life.
As the season turned through the year the newcomers could see just what a fertile area this was; with grass growing aplenty and up to one’s hip the grazing potential was limitless.
In September 1840 the Government held a public sale of 17 different tracks of land around Kojonup marked off in blocks of 640 acres and by 1842 the sale of what amounted to this stolen land was concluded and the farming future for the investors and settlers assured. Or was it that easy? Of course not: like childbirth the growth of a new colony and township was fraught with pain, sudden disaster, joy and tragedy, not the least of which was the York Road Poisonous Plant of the pea family a member of the lobelia species that decimated the early attempts at pastoral farming by killing the grazing animals.
The photo is from the picture of one we found in the Amity Museum in Albany. The toxic poison was identified as Sodium Flouroacetate and it is still used as the commercially branded 1080 in New Zealand to control non-native pests, amongst much opposition from concerned groups and individuals of the thinking public. NZ imports it from the USA.
Burning Up around Kojonup
We have arrived at a time of year when arable land is being prepared for seeding and the sheep are starting to lamb, as soon, hopefully, there will be plenty of grass for them to eat. They lamb in the autumn here with the early winter rains to grow their food. The three sided earth dams dotted all over the land are gasping for some rain, but of recent years the rainfall; instead of being heavy and prolonged falls that run off millions of gallons of life giving water into the giant receptacles, has come in light showers that tend to soak straight into the dry, sponge-like ground, producing little or no run-off, but providing crops with a chance to grow at least.
The weather, apart from being dry, has been unseasonably warm, a growing trend, and so farmers all over the Great Southern are applying for licences to burn the fallen trees that clutter their land and make using the massive machinery hazardous, risking expensive damage to the machines and making use of the area around them impossible.
Perfect burning weather, but the air is now filled with the smoke from them causing a smoke haze over thousands of square miles with the well-documented damage to the environment that has ruled out this activity in other countries, including our own, despite fire in small doses being the ancient way of cleaning the land and releasing carbon back in to the cycle.
It’s all a matter of scale.
Much of the ozone damage is being done, as we all now know by large scale industrial burning from industry that has been around for only the last two hundred years or so. While indigenous people the world over have wisely and carefully been using fire for cool burning for tens of thousands of years.
When in Rome; do as the Roman do. So Rob and I lent four willing hands in the highly social clear up process. Christine led our little team and would decide when to move on to the next area, cluttered with dead branches of all sizes that have been drying out for a number of years.
We would spend a few hours picking up sticks and carrying them to the nearest blaze while chatting about this that and the other, watching the beauty of fire snacking and crackling its way through the old wood, turning it into sometimes the purest white ash. Malcolm would morph from one vehicle to another to achieve different results. The tractor with the scarifier on the back to scrape the ground into a three metre wide band of soil to act as a fire break, then with its fore end rake to push trunks and big branches into piles and later to compact the fire as it grew smaller; the quad bike to whizz around lighting and checking the piles and the fire truck with its tank of water and hose on the back to moisten the area around trees so they wouldn’t burn and provide damp margins to stop the stubble burning too far. He was in his element.
Eventually Malcolm would tell us the next part of the plan which often meant we were free to walk back to the house and put the kettle on while we drank welcome glasses of water. Then we’d all sit down, sometimes outside under their pretty veranda and chat some more over mugs of tea and a variety of small-cut delectable cakes, Tess relaxing in her basket nearby. What a Life!
We knew all about it the next morning when we got up with the aches and pains of complaining muscles, so we knew the exercise was doing us good.
I’d love to spend a whole year here and see the full annual cycle of farming in this area in comparison to farming at home. I know little about arable farming in Britain, my brother being a dairyman, that is where my very limited knowledge lies. The sense of community in this area is warm and wonderful and I know that the concept of looking out for everyone around oneself is a good thing to be encouraged and enjoyed. My problem is I have never put down roots for long enough; changing location in my adult life every seven years or so, that seven year itch that nips at young roots!
Immediately down the hill from our cottage is a massive fallen eucalyptus tree around which Malcolm has been amassing a big pile of logs. The old tree, probably in the prime of its life or even middle aged as the first settlers grazed their sheep around it, was hollow inside, along its fallen trunk and up a big branch, so we discovered when he lit the windward end and the draught caused smoke to start shooting out through the hollow branch. It was a natural stove in there with an intensity of heat well on its way from turning the flame colour through red, into orange and towards white.
While Rob and I were watching we were poking around a little pile of farm junk and Rob gently lifted a broken slab of concrete to find this female Huntsman Spider you see in the photo. They are venomous but as usual only as a means of defence, and here is a nice word for the day; they are Sparassids because they have eight eyes in two rows of four. Ours was about 7-8 cms across but they can grow to 30 cms in diameter and are as common as they are beautiful. Alarmed at the sudden blast of sunlight her smaller husband ran protectively all over her like a paler, ghostlike version of herself. I quickly took the photo and Rob gently laid the slab back down.
By way of an aside, on our way back to Te Opu with Malcolm and Christine the other day we came across these two semi-wild emus tucked safely behind a fence. The bigger of the two was curious about us that led Malcolm to think they were probably tame once. It made that strange guttural booming sound as it came up the side of the fence to inspect me, standing in the middle of the road to photograph it while ready to duck behind our trailer full with logs should he choose to leap over the fence. Malcolm reassured me he couldn’t do that anyway so I held my ground with more than a small element of doubt in my mind!
The chrysalis shell is one of an abundance we came across measuring around 5 – 8 cm, discarded by their mysterious owners just outside their underground tunnel. It appeared doubtful that they are witchetty grubs or wood moths and identifying them on the internet is difficult because rarely do the compilers of the reports show the chrysalis form. If there are any lepidopterists out there I’d dearly like to know which moth they grow in to please.
Helping me in my research for these blogs I must thank Malcolm and Christine of course, plus their neighbours and Merle Bignell who in 1971 wrote the excellent ‘First the Spring’ book about the history of the Shire of Kojonup. I am using the revised copy published in 1982.
On Monday 18th coming up the 13 regional borders set up in Western Australia to control movement during the pandemic are being reduced to four which means that all of the south western coast will be available to us for exploration. So we plan to take day trips to rekkie places like Bunbury, Busselton and Dunsborough and assess their potential as places to stopover with Zoonie on our way around Cape Leeuwin and northwards. The coast is an exposed one with few options of sheltered anchorages deep enough for us.
It is not the first time boundaries have been set up in this part of the continent. The First Nation people laid an invisible line from Jurien Bay north of Perth to a point on the south coast east of Esperance. On the east side of this line circumcision was practiced as a rite of passage whereas on the west side it was not.
Misty Mornings – Witchetty Grubs and Masses of Sheep
The mystery is solved, thanks to Christine’s effective internet search they are Witchetty Grubs. All around the ancient towering Euc next to the gate towards the stream from the tennis court are the small, up to half inch diameter holes with the chrysalis shells lying nearby. We collected some for the photo to give an idea of scale.
I can describe the cycle from any point simply because it is circular. The shells have probably been lying around since around February. The moist Giant Wood Moth, as the adult form is called, emerges from the hard case and as it dries its wings extend and fill out ready for flight. The adult moth does not feed, its sole purpose being to find a mate and the females to then lay their eggs in the bark of the nearest Eucalyptus tree. Their camouflage colouring is so effective against the tree bark.
It would be quite scary to be out at night while they are flying because they are BIG, about the size of a hand-span with fingers outstretched. The eggs hatch into wriggly white caterpillars that then abseil from the tree to the ground and quickly, because this is their most vulnerable time they burrow into a tunnel closing the entrance with a trap door of munched up wood shavings.
There they metamorphose into their chrysalis form, the shell containing the new moth. Aborigines used to make a green stick into a ‘wityu’ by cutting a nick at the end to form a hook with which they would hook out the grub (varti), but these days they sometimes use a hooked metal rod instead.
I was saying how the fortunes of Kojonup as a growing town were up and down. Along with the poisonous lobelia that grew everywhere and was particularly lethal in the spring time, there were also the long periods of drought and the task of finding enough water to feed the rapidly growing sheep population. These two factors combined to cause many sheep farmers to give up and walk away from their stations, many to the gold fields in a short lived goldrush before the big mining companies moved in and took over. In 1892 Arthur Bayley and John Ford discovered gold 110 miles east of Southern Cross on what is now the Great eastern highway towards Kalgoorlie, but by 1899 many had returned, disillusioned, to a changed town.
But not all would be farmers gave up on the grazing fields ringed by the poisonous plant. Squatter Jones took advantage of the fallow acres by buying, at first 1000 acres and setting to the tedious task of grubbing out the offending plant. Five years later he took on an additional 3000 acres and it is thanks to the hard work and determined attitude of the likes of Squatter that there is a real choice for today’s farmers of sheep or arable or both.
Rob took me to see the recently built massive sheep shed at Katanning; with its vast roof to shade the sheep and catch rain for their water supply. Around 20,000 sheep are sold there each Wednesday. In the book ‘First the Spring’ the author talks of how sheep were slaughtered in the Halal method to supply the Muslim market of Asia, but Malcolm mentioned that two ships export the animals live which is a backward step as far as animal welfare is concerned.
The photo of the railway line at Katanning illustrates another blow for Kojonup at the time of its opening in June 1889. The line was 20 miles away to the east of the town, passing through Katanning and Broomehill both of which boomed due to its daily train and the demand for new buildings to support the regular transport. The trains now took the mail between Albany and Perth in considerably less time than the old mail coach which had ceased operating a year before.
Back to Kojonup for a moment. Remember the little Barracks on the hill? Well a notable marriage took place there in the mid 1870’s between two telegraphists, one a local lass and her amour from Williams further up the road towards Perth. It is said that Mary Jane Elizabeth Chipper and her new husband Frederick Henry Piesse conducted their courtship using morse code along the line between them. Frederick was a hard-working and clever businessman who years later left his poorly paid job and went into the grain milling and marketing business with his brother C. A. Piesse selling flour to, amongst others, the railway gangs.
Frederick and Mary, wealthy by this time, moved into Kobeelya, the house you see in the photo and Frederick built the two cottages in the next pictures for his sons. The natural contrast in their personalities is reflected in the fact that one lived happily in the house as it was while the other extended and improved on the original plan.
The Katanning we saw was quiet because of the Lockdown due to CV and the only clients in the Dome restaurant within Frederick and his brother’s old mill were the well filled soft toys you see around the table in the window. But all that is likely to change TODAY, May 18th 2020, as bars and restaurants are opening again here in WA, with restrictions of course. We will have to return and compare.
On our way back to Te Opu we travelled down the same road along which a bush fire recently got uncomfortably close to the town. And the ruined brick building you see was once the home of one of the Norrish families, another pioneering settler family whose descendants are still farming today.
When Malcolm and Christine were looking for a place to buy they had been renting nearby for a couple of years and so knew the locals. An agent in Perth introduced them to Te Opu at Perth land prices, which were highly inflated of course. Mr Norrish heard about this and bought the 1300 acres of land at local prices and sold 160 acres to our hosts at the same local price.
The first lots of land were marked out in 640 acres lots so many are now multiples and subdivisions and additions of that figure, as with Te Opu.
By the late 1880’s the land itself was beginning to put Kojonup on the map as a good place to invest since it was cropping heavily compared with other areas. Poison leases were being awarded for land that could be rented cheaply, but the plant had to be thoroughly eradicated or it produced suckers that would spread as soon as the axeman had made his way home for the day.
As we drove along, Rob told me how the parrots known as 28’s, which are one of the four sub-species of the native Ringnecked Parrot, were instrumental in destroying the apple orchards that used to grow in the fields alongside the road. They love to eat the blossoms of not only apples but also roses and many other flowering fruits. Originally from the nearby Jarra and Marri forests of the south west no doubt de-forestation led to them moving onto the new neighbouring farmland for their foraging. They are considered a pest to farmers who use various means to control their numbers and they compete with the non-native lorikeet for nesting sites. The western rosella are the other parrots you see in the photos taken just outside our door.
At the same time as the arrival of the railway line east of Kojonup Frederick Watts arrived from Albany full with horticultural enthusiasm. Soon he had an extensive orchard, vegetable plots and a beautiful flower garden around his property on his 1490 acres, watered from a newly built dam. His arable and sheep farming was equally abundant and profitable and the family flourished and entertained in grand style with many happy garden parties. They also took part in the growing rural leisure activities including equestrian and shooting competitions. The nouveau landed gentry of SW Australia. I hope he didn’t live to see his orchards ruined by the parrots!
Towerrinning Lake with Christine
Our life at the farm continues very pleasantly indeed. We have loved the outdoor exercise of log lugging and fire tending, clearing up the wood that can be used and would otherwise be in the way of the machinery. The tree in the picture was hundreds of years old and massive and in a pile between our little cottage, Shipton and the creek. Malcolm started the fire from the windward end. The main trunk was hollow and rotten as was the upward pointing thick branch; so a perfect natural boiler was created complete with its own chimney. You have seen the photos of this mighty tree burning but this one shows the boiler within.
The burn continued for three days and now there is nothing left to show for its long life apart from the ash that will now nourish the ground and which Malcolm has already buried with a layer of soil. His granddaughter Zoe was amazed when I mentioned the fact that trees, like most living things, are made up of over 70% water.
While we were getting ready for our picnic I had a welcome opportunity to photograph the flowers in Christine’s lovely garden around the main house on Te Opu (The Helpers). There are always numerous birds adding life, colour and song to the garden and I am still trying to get my aged head around the fact that autumn here, and not springtime, is when the trees and plants come into flower, thus avoiding the heat and drought of the summer months and that the lambing season here is also in the autumn so there is, drought allowing, fresh new grass for the in-milk ewes and the lambs when they are a little older.
From the picture of the first information board you can see that Kojonup is at the bottom on the Albany road and the lake in the middle bottom of the picture is on the Bunbury road which we shall visit in the next blog. The Re-Diversion looks to be all about the primary extraction industries, including coal mining and the generating of power for the populace doesn’t it. We literally stumbled across an open cast mine on our way to Bunbury, near Collie, which you can also see on the first map.
Towerrinning Lake was a trip down memory lane for Christine as it was a favourite haunt for them when their girls, Kylie and Tennille were growing up. A weekend away from the farm for the short drive to a world of camping and water-sports including water skiing. Christine remembered and we could only guess at the area being crowded and noisy with hundreds of folk enjoying themselves. There were a handful of other people there on our day and the caretakers made us very welcome at this beauty spot loved by many generations and which is on private land.