taggerty

In about December 1927 Mr. Alan Newton operated to remove cartilage from Harold’s knee. HAP blamed his skiing adventures for the knee injury. On his recovery in early 1928 he set off to start work as a Jackaroo at Raby Station near Warren, New South Wales. This undated draft must have been for his first letter home:

Dear Mum and Dad,
I arrived here safely on Tuesday and was pleased to receive your letter. I will do my best to give you details. The country here is all perfectly flat and moderately timbered. The Macquarie river runs through the bottom of the run and we have several creeks, lagoons and lots of tanks (dams) scattered about, all of which are presently flooded. There are also plenty of kangaroos, snakes, mosquitoes, flies and strange looking birds. We have a small orchard and a vineyard which is at present loaded with grapes. Mr. Moore, the manager, seems very decent. He is an old Geelong Grammar boy and is only about 27, but is supposed to be the company’s best stud man. Mr. Jameson the overseer is also a very decent chap. I think he is an old Wesley boy and I think he was at the war, so he is probably a few years older than Mr. Moore. Mick Hawken the other jackaroo, is about 24, and an old Geelong Grammar boy and Cambridge man. His people are very wealthy squatters in South Australia, and I don’t quite know why he is here, as he seems to know as much about sheep as anybody else on the place. We all live at the homestead which is very big and very old, with a housekeeper and a maid. There are also five or six men on the place who live in the men’s hut. I get up at 6 o’clock every morning except every third week when it is my turn to get the horses in and I get up at about 5 o’clock. At breakfast time we cut our lunch and at 7 o’clock we get our orders for the day from Mr. Jameson, and then we are out on the run all day till 6 or 7 at night. At lunch time we camp by a tank or creek and boil our quart pot and eat our lunch, and I generally have a swim as it is very hot. Last week we were busy flying sheep which consists of picking out any fly-blown sheep, cutting the wool off the maggoty part and rubbing in some maggot killer. One day three of us did 250 sheep. Needless to say, I did not do a third of them.
There are a lot of things I have had to order, so I will probably be wanting some money. The list consists of:
1. Stock whip 37/6
2. Spurs 10/-
3. Water bag 20/-
4. Quart pot 14/6
5. Saddle bag 17/6
6 A sheep dog about £4

Every day when we go out we are heavily laden. On our saddle we carry a pair of shears in a sheath, a quart pot in a case, one or two saddle bags containing dinner, a bottle of dip or other odds & ends, a water bag around the horse’s neck as you get very thirsty in the heat & dust, and we generally carry a burr hoe to cut any Bathurst burrs we happen to see.
Could you get some news agent to send me ‘The Sun’? I will probably get used to being a New South Welshman soon but in the meantime I would like to get a Victorian paper if possible. My luggage cost about £2-10 to book through, so if I had been held up on the way I would have had to live on charity. I think I will like it very much here, though at present of course I feel a bit strange. I hope you are both well and like the flat still.
With lots of love,
from Harold

It wasn’t always work at Raby Station. There would be spells of wet weather when everyone just sat around playing cards. Harold said on one rainy day he amassed a good pile of winnings at Vingt et un. Then someone suggested switching to Poker. The change proved disastrous for Harold who not only lost all his winnings but was forced to sell the prized eight day clock from his Hudson in order to made good his debt. He reckoned that cured him of gambling.

It was probably the end of 1928 (for Christmas?) that Harold drove his Hudson home to Melbourne from Raby with his sheepdog pups. Back then the drive was quite an adventure and took a few days. HAP said that even on the Hume Highway there were places where you would drive around a tree on one side if you were heading north and the other side if you were heading south. This time HAP remembered waking up one night in pouring rain and realising that everything in the open car was completely drenched. Worse, he had parked in an almost dry creek bed, but the creek was now rapidly rising, Harold, pups and car were all about to go under water. Harold managed to get the car out and home to Melbourne though it was a complete mess from the combination of soggy confined puppies and boggy roads. His arrival made a big impression on his family and friends.  The bed-time story version of this adventure ended: “A well meaning friend of Dad’s reached into the car to pat one of the dogs, but put his hand in some puppy poop and car-sicked into the gutter.”

During 1928, eight months after his first operation Harold started to have problems with his second knee. He described it in a letter to the surgeon sent from Raby, hoping that it could be diagnosed by mail:

“After about eight months heavy station work…the knee on which you operated is almost as good as new. Unfortunately I have developed almost the same complaint in the other knee… About twelve weeks ago I was lifting a sheep over a fence when my knee gave way… and had locked as the other one used to…I spent about half a day twisting and pulling it about before I discovered how to set it, and for about a week afterwards it was very swollen and stiff. Since then I have put it out four times…when a sheep charged into it…vaulting on to a horse…” 

Alan Newton replied 5 Nov 1928:

“I am afraid that your other knee will continue to give you trouble unless the cartilage is removed, as it has now been put out on five different occasions. The only hope of preventing a recurrence of this displacement is by resting in bed for six weeks after the first time it happens”

…Which obviously didn’t happen, so about July 1929 Harold went to hospital for a second knee operation. Marjorie [Hansen?] sent him some flowers.

Card to Harold in hospital from Marjorie (Hansen?)

He described the experience:

“Sonnet written while coming out of chloroform:

I dimly see a min’stering shape in white,
I feel a gentle hand upon my wrist;
And thus I know I’m mortal still, despite
My half-voiced prayers that I might cease to exist.
By Hell! I curse the unrelenting fate
That brought me back to misery and pain
When eagerly I was knocking at the gate
Into oblivion, but knocked in vain.
I lie bemoaning my unhappy lot
And fighting hard against a pain that sears
Like white-hot branding irons, but I will not
Give in, and childishly dissolve in tears.
But now I see your flowers and read your card,
And somehow Marje, life doesn’t seem so hard”.

About mid 1929 the Beattys had moved from Toorak to “Quinira”, Ringwood street, Ringwood, where they lived until 1932.  Harold’s  girlfriend at the time was Phyllis Rosemary (Cherry) Singleton of Ringwood Park, Corowa.

Cherry Singleton. Harold’s girlfriend in the late 1920’s

He kept the drafts of three letters sent to her from Ringwood late 1929 after visiting her at Corowa on his way home from Raby for the operation. As he was feeling very unsettled at the time the letters are full of angst and mixed messages. Some extracts:

“Well Cherry old thing, I’m home again, and sick to death of it within two days, having played two golf matches and attended one point-to-point race meeting and one bridge party…When your car drove off and left me at Yarrawonga…I got to Benalla some time that night and slept a few miles the other side. It rained all night and all the way to Seymour where I had breakfast… arriving home in time for dinner, and not exceeding 35 m.p.h. over the whole trip. I ought to be cured of speeding for life after the lesson of that burnt out bearing. … I’ve done a day’s work at my garage in town… Bon soir oh destroyer of my peace of mind”
“Dear old Cherry, I hope you have got over the effect of the incoherent ravings which I sent you from hospital in the form of a letter.. My knee is now at the stage where I can play golf and do a little light dancing…I am in a state of perpetual mental unrest…I can’t even find a girl that interests me. About the only thing that keeps me alive is dangerous driving in the Hudson…the old bus still does her 75 m.p.h.”
“Dear Check, Congratulations on your victory over Jean Brown. I suppose you are Corowa’s champion by now on a handicap of about 8. However I think I could still give you a go… having won about a dozen golf balls lately and been second for three trophies.  When are you coming to town? As soon as you let me know I’ll see N.C. Clapperton [Manager of Australian Estates, the company that owned Raby and Jemalong Stations] and arrange when I’m to go away…probably by the end of the month. I was over in South Australia last week, looking over a property which a friend of mine has just bought near Naracoorte. We went in his fabric bodied Sports Riley…the best light car on the road. My work on the Dodge was rather interrupted by my South Australia visit, but I am about up to painting it and it will soon be on the market”.

Harold with Cynthia Collins, Cherry Singleton, Jack and Michael Lewis at Point Leo, 1927-1930

Harold Beatty with Cynthia Collins (foreground), Cherry Singleton and others, Point Leo, 1927-1930

Harold Beatty with Cherry Singleton and friends 1927-1930

Harold Beatty and Jack Lewis leaving Ringwood for Frankston (Jack’s home) 1930

By October 1929 Harold was back at Raby, and had evidently been given the job of transporting sheep from Raby at Warren to another station owned by the same company, Jemalong Station near Forbes. Someone scrawled the procedures for this in blue crayon:

“Loaded by 1.45 p.m. Friday 5th at Wrn
Leave Wrn 2.30 on Ordinary
Pick up Special Nevertire or Narromine 
Arrive Parkes 12.30 Saturday morning
Leave    ”            2.45 A.M.  “
Yarrabandi about 5 A.M. Sat
Engine will stay one hour Yarrabandi to assist unload to trucks (Siding only holds 10)” 

A few weeks later Harold reported back from Jemalong to the manager at Raby:

“8-11-29

Dear Mr. Moore,
The Raby sheep were again thoroughly examined when they were in for crutching, and there still being no sign of vermin in them, we have decided not to dip them. It was discovered at crutching that five aut. ewe wnrs. had been trucked with the aut. ram wnrs. and they are now with their proper mob, so the counts of the two mobs are now five more or less accordingly.

Three aut. ram wnrs. were ham-strung at crutching, and will probably have to have their throats cut. Two of the worker rams are in at the Station receiving special attention, 4-89 with pink-eye, and 2-35 with semi-paralysis of the hind quarters. The rest of the workers are putting on condition rapidly, and will soon be fit to send back to Raby.
There has been very little fly and the feed is still good and all the sheep are in very good condition.

I remain
Yours sincerely
H.A.P. Beatty”

A few days before Christmas 1929, Harold was thrown from a horse at Jemalong Station.  It must have been his turn to get up early to get the horses in, and he was feeling seedy from the previous night. One horse was known as a rogue and he thought he should ride it himself rather than inflict it on someone else. He was found injured and unconscious by his work mates. As it was so close to Christmas and a bad time to get medical attention out there,  his workmates thought the best thing was to put him on a train to Melbourne where his family could look after him. He was put on a stretcher in the goods carriage along with all the live Christmas turkeys. His later description of drifting in and out of consciousness among these travelling companions was hilarious.

Harold at the Beatty’s Ringwood home, Jan 1930, in plaster after being thrown from a horse at Jemalong Station

On his arrival in Melbourne on Christmas Eve, the doctor looked at him doubtfully and concluded that the best thing to do with him was just to splint his arm and shoulder in place, raised as though waving, and plaster over the lot.

He spent the next few weeks at home in Ringwood.  Sturdie came down to stay to keep him company, and also to spend time with Peg going out to the pictures, dancing to the gramaphone and playing tennis. Cherry Singleton and others came to visit Harold as well. His eye was also giving trouble and needed to be lanced.  When the time came to remove the splint and plaster, the doctor told Harold he could drop his arm to its normal position now. Harold tried, but couldn’t move his arm at all. While he was still puzzling about this, without warning the doctor gave it a sudden, vigorous and extremely painful yank. That moved it all right! By March 1930 both the eye and shoulder had recovered and Harold had returned to Raby Station.

The jackaroos were sometimes obliged to stay away from the homestead overnight when they would try to live off the land. HAP said they had once been reduced to cooking and eating parrots which, he said not only didn’t make much of a feed but tasted horrible. On another occasion he was away overnight on the far side of the Macquarie River with a fellow jackaroo called Tommy Bligh. They were in a jinker (or sulky or buggy?) probably checking and mending the boundary fences. Flood water had risen overnight and they were worried that they mightn’t be able to get back home. Tommy was driving. The horse panicked and refused to enter the rapidly flowing water at the ford and kicked back, hitting Tommy in the face. Tommy was a mess, with “half his face hanging off” including one eye. Harold had no idea how to help him. No doubt in shock, Tommy kept trying to get down to the water’s edge thinking he should bathe his injury. Harold tried to persuade him just to sit still on the river bank while he went for help.  Then, having given up on the horse, he dived into the swollen river, swam it and ran flat out the several miles back to the station homestead.

We loved HAP’s stories and assumed they contained an element of exaggeration. Apparently not this one though. On an outback trip in 1970, forty years after his experience there as a jackaroo, HAP called in at Raby Station again, this time accompanied by one of us from the younger generation.  He didn’t expect that anyone there would remember him. Both visitors were thrilled when the Housekeeper cried out “Harold Beatty? Of course I remember you! You’re the one who swam the flooded river the day that Tommy Bligh got his eye kicked out!”

Return to Raby after 40 years. At the homestead. Photograph by James

“You’re the one that swam the flooded river the day that Tommy Bligh got his eye kicked out!” Photo by James

“It’s still here!” Harold, proud of the massive gate posts that he had helped to construct . Photo by James

Harold was away at Raby when the stock market crashed in 1929. He had gone jackarooing on the understanding that his father would eventually buy him a station of his own. HAP recalled a (strictly confidential) conversation with his father that must have been painful for Archie. He had “lost a fortune in Canadian wheat” and could no longer afford to buy a property for his son.  Coming to grips with this disappointment must have been a maturing experience for Harold. After much thought he wrote to Archie:

“Raby”
Warren
October 11 1930

Dear Dad,
Many thanks for your letter and cheque. I appreciate it even more than the £20 you sent me on a previous birthday when times were not so hard.
What I am going to say now will probably be a surprise to you, but I hope, not an unpleasant one.  After several months consideration I have decided that the pastoral industry, except for the healthy and attractive environment which has always appealed to me so much is most unprofitable and disappointing. I also realise that because of the present financial crisis it must be some years before you could possibly afford a property for me, even then probably a bad investment, and I’m afraid I’m temperamentally unsuited to remaining a jackeroo [sic] indefinitely. Even a station manager’s position does not tempt me. If then, you are still prepared to have me in the mill, which is almost more than I deserve, and it is possible to learn something of the business without spending months doing nothing more important than lick stamps and answer telephones, I am willing to try to adapt myself to a commercial life.
I’m afraid I have only a very elementary knowledge of commercial methods and finance, and although, judging by public exam results I apparently used to have a few brains, I doubt whether four years mostly vegetating in the bush has improved them much.
You once suggested that there would be a good opening for me as country traveller with Twiss, and although I fail to see what use I would be, if it were possible, it would certainly be a more congenial way of breaking myself in than to be suddenly shut up in an office six days a week. If, after sufficient trial, I discover that I am a total failure in the city, by that time things might have straightened out sufficiently for you to be able to invest in land with reasonable safety, and I would be better qualified to manage a place for myself through having acquired a little business knowledge.
As soon as I hear from you I will arrange with the boss when I am to leave; lamb marking and crutching are coming on soon and the boss will be going to a Melbourne conference before the end of the year, so he might like me to stay on till after then.
There is no liability in driving my car unregistered out to the ram shed as it is only six miles away, on Raby all the way and no road within miles. I have driven it to town a few times, but I nearly always go with Tom in his racer. The John in Warren is a friend of mine and expects me to register when I’m ready.
I am pretty well situated financially, for although £1 per week does not go far, I find various ways of making money, and with the help of my insurance cheque, have over £70 in the bank, so I can draw on this when I want to register.
I hear that you have not been looking too well lately. You must find business a big strain at present, so perhaps it would be a good idea to get Dr. Hiller or some competent man to give you an overhaul and probably a tonic.
The N.S.W. state elections are coming off soon, and it looks as if Lang with his ludicrously impossible promises will get in. The average working man does not look to see what the promises are founded on, in fact plenty of them do not even know what he is promising. They just vote for the labor candidate on principal [sic] and there are a lot of working men in N.S.W.
Give my love to Mum & Peg and thank them all at home for their birthday letters, telegrams etc.
Your affect. son
Harold 

Within days of posting this letter, Harold had renewed his Driver’s Licence as well as registering the Hudson, and on 23 Dec 1930 he arrived back home in Ringwood (apparently intact this time) ready to start a new phase of his life.