Bullock Teams and Dairy Cows
Bullock team drawing from Kerewong Forest c.1920s
For more than half a century,
bullock teams criss-crossed the forest, hauling logs to
mills at Kendall and to the several mills that set up beside
the road to Comboyne. They hauled to riverside log dumps
where logs were loaded on to punts, driven first by poles
and later steam powered, for transport to mills on the banks
of the Camden Haven River and Inlet. Horse
teams were sometimes used on the open roads, but they were
not as manoeuvrable in the forests as the bullock teams.
Such was the demand for timber
that it seemed almost every landowner had a team. Seven
or eight pairs worked in the forests, twenty-four to twenty-eight
bullocks were linked to draw on the roads.
In 1939 there were
still nineteen bullock teams drawing logs on the Comboyne. The bullocks
were of mixed breeds: Devons, Ayrshires, Jerseys with the odd black
and white Friesian. The very intelligent Jerseys were often leaders
of the team, they frequently also brought up the tail.
From the 1880s, as
settlement in the area increased, many people took up dairying.
In direct contrast to the timber getters who were selective in order
to get the best timber, many areas of valuable timber were cleared
in order to establish (often marginal) dairy farms. Once their farms
were established, dairy farmers found it necessary to do casual
work either at the mills or sleeper cutting to augment their incomes.
Some had small specialty mills on their farms.
Milking was done
by hand, in some cases until well into 1940s when milking machines
powered by diesel or petrol engines were installed. Dairy farms
were said to be powered by an ‘MDK’ – Mum, Dad
and the Kids. Many children fell asleep at their desks after milking
twenty or thirty cows before school. The farming families were mostly
self-sufficient, they had their own milk and cream, separating some
of the latter to make butter in big wooden churns turned by hand.
They kept pigs to feed with the separated milk, killed their own
vealers and porkers and grew their own vegetables.
During the 1950s
there were between two and three hundred dairy farms within a 30
kilometre radius of Kendall - sixteen of them in the short distance
between Kendall School and Heron’s Creek – with an average
herd of 50 to 60 milkers. The herds were mainly Jersey with some
Ayrshire and some AIS (Australian Illawarra Shorthorn). The milking
cow favoured by many was a Jersey/AIS Cross, combining the high
butter fat of Jersey milk with the quieter disposition and more
easily handled udder of the AIS. (The Australian Illawarra Shorthorn
is the only truly Australian breed of cattle. It was developed in
the Illawarra region of New South Wales and proclaimed a registered
breed in 1910.)
Reg Latham, who worked at
the Kendall Co-op, delivered groceries as he picked up the
cream for the Kendall Butter Factory. Farmers took their
cream cans out to the pick-up- points by horse and cart
or by horse-drawn sled, waiting to collect the groceries
that had been ordered
Milk cans were loaded on
to the train at Ross Glen or at Batar Siding to go to the
Manning Milk Depot, the empty cans returning on the next
day’s train. Later cream was also loaded there for
the Taree Butter Factory, until it closed in 1971.
The quota system –
a good payment was made for gallons up to the daily quota
allowed and a smaller payment for over-quota gallons - that
had been used for many years was extended throughout the
whole state in the 1950s. Quotas were negotiable assets
and many farmers who had bought extra quota, often by borrowing
to do so, had it summarily taken away to be allocated to
farmers in other areas. No compensation was paid.
At about the same
time, the ubiquitous black and white Friesians began to replace
the other breeds. Half the number of cows would yield the same volume
of milk. Little matter that it had 5% butter fat instead of the
23% butter fat of the Jersey. There was no premium for superior
milk. By the mid 1960s milk was being transported by road tankers
which required great improvements to be made to rural roads.
As with all other
farming endeavours, dairy farms had to get bigger in order to survive.
The farmers increased the size of their farms and the size of their
herds. A dairy farmer who milked 50 cows per day in the 1950s was
milking up to 150 by the 1990s. His quota then was in the order
of 400 gallons (1800 litres) a day.
When the quota system
was abandoned in June 2000, in what is known as ‘dairy de-regulation’,
farmers who had increased their holdings and their herds over the
previous decades were suddenly deprived of a considerable part of
their income. With milk prices set at what major supermarkets were
prepared to pay, they could no longer afford to replace machinery
or pay wages to employees. Most left the industry.
The decline of the
dairy industry around Kendall mirrors the decline of the railway.
Together they precipitated the period of rural depression that is
now being addressed through community action with government support
© Elaine van