This weekend my dad came to visit and he took home is new toy, which I must say he mastered in quick time
John and his new ipad
Now John has a sense of humour very like Michael from http://farmerswayoflife.blogspot.com.au/So we added the blog to his list of favourites
Check out his face as he reads through The Golden Rules of Farming
Now I am a 6th generation dairy farmer’s daughter of a 5th generation dairy farmer who turned beef farmer as soon as the opportunity arose. I can always remember John telling me from a very early age “Lynne never ever learn to milk a cow”
As is usually the case when John comes to visit there is quite a bit of reminiscing about his life growing up on the family dairy farm at Dapto.
John’s sister my Aunty Ruth recently wrote the family history and below are some extracts which shed some insights on my grandfather Walter Dunster Lindsay and what it was like to dairy in the Illawarra in the 1930’s to 1950’s . You can also see why John would have found milking cows with his father pretty frustrating. The post also gives some insights into why many farmers in the Illawarra were never particularly fond of the Dairy Farmers Cooperative who had a reputation for being very ruthless with their competitors
Some previous background can also be found in the post http://chdairiesdiary.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/eileen-stars-at-international-dairy-week/
Extract from Lindsay Family history by Ruth Rae
Walter was born into a dairy farming family well known in Dapto and throughout the Illawarra of that time. His ancestors had all been farmers, leaders in the community and very well respected.
He was a gentle man, slow to anger and rather shy. This shyness may well have been because he was born with a harelip and cleft palate, neither mended with today’s skills. He probably took more interest in his children than he showed but he seemed to have all the conservatism and indifference to his young family that he claimed his forebears displayed so abundantly. He left his wife, Ethel, to dispense both tenderness and discipline. Only once did he show anger and act upon it. That was when he was obliged to return to the dairy late one evening and did some damage to his shins when he tripped over his son John’s bike which had been carelessly left on the ground just outside the gate from the house. John, despite his protests, was the recipient of a sound hiding according to the traditions of justice of the day. It was only later that it became clear that it was a workman who had borrowed the bike, and not John, and had thrown it on the ground at the gate when he had finished with it. None of the children ever received any form of punishment from their father from that day on.
He did his work slowly, thoroughly and methodically, illustrated by his technique for washing up. He took responsibility for this within the dairy for half a century and, after retirement, continued it into the kitchen. First everything was rinsed, then washed immaculately, then rinsed again. It took all evening for he suspected that detergents had hidden implications for health. When he weeded a garden the result was just perfect and raked evenly to a fine tithe.
His conservatism extended to all things mechanical and, when a shortage of labour during the war forced Lindsay Bros to buy a milking machine, it was taken on with extreme suspicion and reluctance. For most of the war years the cows were milked by machine in the morning because it was the only way to get the job done and by hand in the afternoon when an extra person was available. Even with the machine his distrust was such that he always sat down and verified that the machine had done its work properly by doing a short finishing milking, or stripping as it was called. The cows gradually got used to this and saved up some of their milk for the hand milking so that some of them gave as much milk the second time around as they had initially given to the machine. Consequently milking 80 to 100 cows took an eternity and an inordinate amount of manpower- 6-7 hours a day plus another 2-3 hours for washing and cleaning the dairy equipment. There was not a lot of time for other farm work or recreation and he indulged in very little of either. This remained the case until the “Karara” herd was dispersed in 1958.
In 1864 the first attempt to introduce milking machines to dairy farmers in Australia was made. However the machines were met with great suspicion and cows continued to be milked by hand twice daily seven days a week for many decades to come. Strange but true!
It was many years before he could afford a car (his brother Eric owned one and that was the family car) but he was very pleased with the one he bought and he drove it skilfully and well.
He had a good relationship with Eric and they had nicknames for each other. Dad was ‘Andy’ when Gug was ‘Horace’ while, in other gender mood, Gug was ‘Katie’ and Dad ‘Lena’.
Walter and Eric began to value add (to use a modern expression) to their dairy farming activity by becoming vendors of milk. Eric was the entrepreneur (to use another modern expression) and Walter the anchor man. To upgrade the herd Eric went to New Zealand and bought a prize bull.
Dairy Farming in the blood – 6th and 7th Generation dairy farmers Lynne and Nick Strong collecting Champion Holstein Cow trophy at Albion Park Show 20 years ago –
It became an extremely successful business and WD & ES Lindsay, later to be called Lindsay Bros, was, at its height, retailing more milk in the Wollongong-Port Kembla district than any other firm including the Dairy Farmers Cooperative Milk Company. Some 8 or 9 farmers in the district sold their milk to the firm and this was cooled, stored and distributed through some 3 domestic milk runs and a wholesale network that included almost every milk bar and general store from Dapto in the south to Austinmeer and Coaldale in the north.
Eric would go to bed early and set off in the wee small hours with a laden truck to start the day’s distribution. Particularly in the hot months he would leave the milk in the cool room till the last possible time necessitating the early rising. After the war draconian and unfair government regulations were imposed that forced all other farmers to sell their milk only to a government agent which was the rival Dairy Farmers Milk Cooperative.
The Dairy Farmers Cooperative was a ruthless competitor
With the loss of their major source of supply, Lindsay Bros were forced to sell their domestic business and retain only the wholesale business in the city of Wollongong itself. Their milk was subjected to regular and intrusive testing, while that of the rival company was not, but was always found to be well above the prescribed norms. Eric bought the farm, “Kembla Park” and a subsidiary dairy was set up to augment the supply of milk. Lindsay Bros also bought a small farm at Albion Park to run dry and young stock, but the retail business was only a shadow of its former size. The company could not afford or warrant upgrading its machinery to enable processing and pasteurization which were beginning to be an important part of the industry and the business and herd were sold in 1958. The Dairy Farmers Coop bought the plant which they scrapped to forestall potential competitors but the herd, which had become well known for its productivity in the State herd testing scheme, attracted excellent prices for the time. Walter was 65 at this time and Eric 64 so retirement was timely option.
Dad and Mum fell in love 7 years before they were married, the first of his family to do so. They had to wait for several reasons: her responsibilities to her parents (her two sisters had moved away and were working) and the need to have a home when the farm was established. Karara only had on it a weatherboard old house with no facilities whatever and a cloying smell of dust and age. There was also the matter of religion – he, Protestant and she, Catholic. The exact details of the arrangement that allowed this to happen were never divulged but Mum was presumably excommunicated from the Catholic Church because she never attended mass again. They were married in St Phillips in Sydney and went home to a rented house called “Lakeview’ at Unanderra- a house with no electricity and home to a host of possums. Gug joined them and lived with them for the rest of their lives. Dad spoke of the Catholic Church only with bitterness but he always avoided mentioning the subject of their marriage.
Fortunately, the acrimony did not extend beyond the church and the Carr and Lindsay families had an extremely good relationship.
After the business was sold the garden became a pleasant hobby. He had always had a love of nature and knew all the birds around the farm. He watched them nesting and was so determined that they would not be disturbed that he told nobody about it. I often regret not having been allowed to share his knowledge. Mum would always consult him before hanging out the washing, and I can’t remember that his forecasts were ever wrong. I understand that he had only one year of secondary schooling, but he must have absorbed a tremendous amount of knowledge later as he read the Herald from cover to cover.
One very cold winter when Dad and Mum were house-sitting in Cowra for John and Robyn, I sent them an electric blanket. This was a sheer delight to him – there was only one control and he would set it to keep very warm, while Mum, who couldn’t spoil his enjoyment, slept with both feet outside the sheets. When small battery radios came in he considered it pure heaven to lie in a warm bed, head in the cool air, listening to news from far places. Then I would be called in to prepare a very large, cold milkshake which he drank with gusto before turning out the light………
Sadly I don’t have a picture of my grandfather to share with you I must rectify that and fast
As I said my dad is 82 but he is determined to live life to the fullest and we couldn’t help but laugh when he couldn’t leave without first putting his destination into another toy his Tom Tom – after all he has been driving from the Illawarra to Cowra for almost 60 years
Check out those low profile tyres
PS John hope you enjoy reading this post
