Chapter 11.2 – The Scrapings of the Pot

The Dangerfield Family Joseph and Margaret, and Alice Maud in front, Bessie, Harry, Charles, Lige, Howard at back and I think adopted daughter Ivy in front.

In 1877 Joseph Dangerfield 2 married Margaret Thoday the daughter of my great-great grandparents, Henry and Maria Thoday. They had children, William Charles, Alice Maud (my grandmother), Joseph Henry (Harry), Elizabeth Lilian, Elijah, twins Mary and Martha who died in infancy, Ivy an adopted daughter and and finally came Howard, or as he humorously described himself “The Scrapings of the Pot.” This is part 2 of Howard Dangerfield’s story.

“Near the age of twelve, while on homeward way from school one afternooon, I was playing marbles with my mate Ern Smith, just inside an opening in a fence – a gateway without a gate and which had been so for some time previously. But unnoticed by me, someone had strung a wire across the opening. While playing marbles one of mine ran through this opening and out on to the footpath. Not noticing the wire, I ran after the marble and was caught under the chin by the wire and turned a back somersault on to the footpath landing on my head. Of course I have no recollection of this incident, the evidence coming from my school mate, Ern Smith, with whom I was playing marbles at the time. My first recollection of the affair was on coming to, in bed at midnight that night, eight hours after the happening, with a splitting headache and a roomful of people, including my parents, the local police sergeant, a doctor and several neighbors. That lot earned me three weeks off from school anyway but I doubt if one ever shakes off completely the effects of concussion such as I collected on that occasion.

“You are right, you wouldn’t easily recover from such an accident.”

“I guess it could have been worse, but I had headaches for some time afterwards. There was an area of flat land just beyond William Street and beyond that again a series of rocky hills. The flat at that time was covered with blue bush and among the nearer hills were the slaughter yards of Kidman Bros and Merritt butchers. Cattle being driven to those slaughter yards and nearby holding paddocks were moved along narrow tracks along the flats between those rocky hills. The race course was just beyond Meritts’ slaughter yards. The Marsh boys, who were at that time our next door neighbors, and I used to go out onto that flat with wheelbarrow and cart getting blue bush stumps for our parents for cooking purposes, being very good for cooking scones especially. On one rocky hill nearby was a high, wide and sloping rock which we called the sliding rock. We had an old split cane basket such as was used for the transport of large vegetables from Adelaide to Broken Hill by train. This basket made a good sled for sitting on to slide from the top of the rock to the bottom, a distance as I remember it of some twenty feet, at an angle of about forty-five degrees. It made quite a speedy descent. Occasionally the rider parted company with the sled on the way down, usually to the great detriment of the condition of the seat of his pants. I remember some rather painful interviews with me mum and her slipper because of such mishaps. She had serious objections to my arriving home minus the seat of my pants.”

“Your poor Mum, she must have been a long-suffering woman,” I laughed.

“It was on one occasion when a number of us kids were making our way across the flat to this sliding rock hill that some cattle loomed into view behind us and coming in our direction much too fast for our liking. So footing it to the rocky heights to get out of the way of the cattle seemed highly necessary and we didn’t stop to consider the manner of our going. I’ve said before that my feet would never see my face hurt, nor any other part of me for that matter, and I was soon heading the stampede for the shelter of the rocks. ‘Wait for me’ was a sound I could hear, coming from far in the rear. That was Skinny Howe, who wasn’t as fast on his feet as some of us – but that was his bad luck and I could see no point in waiting considering the circumstance. However, two men on horses came along and cut off the pursuing cattle and Skinny was saved – I’ll admit it wasn’t my fault, but I’d already reached the rocks – and all’s well that ends well.

“On another occasion, a belligerent steer took after us when we were between Merrill’s slaughter yard and the race course, so we took refuge through the race course fence. But that didn’t stop the steer, it only delayed him a little, and he made his way through the fence too. So, for a time, it was a game of musical chairs, backward and forward through the fence – the kids in the lead and the steer following after. It didn’t improve the fence any, but we at least kept out of the way of the steer until a couple of horsemen came and drove off the steer. Oh ho! There was never a dull moment.

“Bone gathering was another of our industries. In one instance we went out past the old ‘Consul’s’ mine to where the then defunct ‘Chilled Meat Supply Co’ had their slaughter yards. We were able to load Marsh’s handcart with five sacks of mixed bones. As there were not quite enough bones to fill that fifth sack, Jack Marsh thought it a good idea to get a few hefty stones to finish it off. There being no dissentients to the idea, we emptied out the bones and put the stones in the bottom and filled the sack with the bones above the stones – but didn’t have the sense to do it with the larger sack but one of the four similar sized ones. So, when we arrived at the rag and bone merchant’s premises and he weighed our load by separate bagfuls, the bag with the stones in the bottom weighed even heavier than the one larger sack. ‘How do you account for that?’ says the merchant. ‘Oh, it has a lot of shin bones in it,’ explains Jack Marsh, ‘and they’re heavier than the others.’ ‘Shin stones more likely,’ says the merchant. ‘All right,’ says Jack, ‘I’ll show you. I’ll empty ‘em out,’ and proceeded to get hold of the bag to do so. That seemed to convince the merchant. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ says he, ‘Leave ‘em.’ That was a near thing – the bluff worked – but we didn’t go to him with any more loads. Anyhow, we only received 5 shillings for the load. Half a day’s hard work for four boys, getting that lot.”

”At least you boys were industrious and innovative,” I commented.

Joseph and Margaret  In middle (I think) and Alice Maud on the front left. Not sure who are the rest of the names in this photo.On the back the name Maud, but can’t recognise her among these.

“We were that, that’s for sure. It was about this period of time that two of Mother’s brothers tried their hands at farming in the Wokurna area, a place situate between Port Broughton and Bute. If my memory serves me correctly, they were Ali and John. (If I’ve not mentioned it before, I do so now) – All mother’s brothers were born comedians and as full of mischief as any young puppy dog. How grandma survived the bringing of that lot to maturity – if they ever did mature – I’ll never know, but she must have had both hands more than full. However, the two mentioned had an assistant with them on this particular farm. It was their habit to have it in turns to prepare the midday meal – one to go to the hut for the purpose, the other two remained working in the paddock till they judged the meal would be ready. They would then proceed to the hut to partake of the good things provided. On this particular occasion, the hired hand was cook – was frying chops over an open fire using the usual frying pan – but he’d put on too much fat which caught alight from the pen flame. At the moment of the arrival of the other two, the acting cook had the frying pan and its contents out in the middle of the hut floor trying to put out the fire. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ said one of the new arrivals. ‘I know what I’m doing,’ says the acting cook. ‘Well,’ says the other, ‘it’s the first time I’ve seen anyone cooking so far from a fire.’

“That farming venture, being before the advent of superphosphate was not a success, so the boys went back to the Wallaroo mines and still were living together. One morning, they awoke a bit late for getting breakfast and off to work. One in particular was a bit loathe to leave his bed but the other, having had his breakfast and about to go off to work, gave the other a final call. ‘Come on, you’ll be late for work, but it won’t take you long to have breakfast.’ The one addressed so, wondered what he meant, until he reached the breakfast table when it was made clear; there was no breakfast left to have. That was typical of the outlook of those boys. There always was a funny side to things but you had to see it for yourself.”

“It seems to me that there are always funny stories when men have to fend for themselves. If there had been just one woman there, then all the men would have suffered amnesia and the woman would be doing all the cooking and cleaning chores, I’m sure,” I had my own brothers in mind as I thought of this.

“Howard, were you brought up with a religious background. Was your mother a religious woman?”

“Very much so. My mother had been brought up in the primitive Methodist faith and lived it to the best of her ability. And so we kids were brought up to follow suit. But very early in my Sunday School days, I began to doubt the accuracy of the things I was taught in relation to Bible revelation. For instance, that the good people go to heaven at death and the evil to eternal torment in the flames of hell, I could not find that in Bible teaching. However, I did read that ‘the living know that they must die but the dead know not anything.’ There were other things too – ‘the heavens are the Lord’s, the earth has he given to the children of men’ – so Jesus told his apostles just before his ascension into heaven, and ‘whither I go, ye cannot come.’ These teachings and many more in this vein in the bible cut right across the teachings of the Methodists and questions that I asked in their classes did not get an answer satisfactory to me. It was at about this time in 1901-1902 that brother Charlie brought what was to us a new teaching and it was confirmed in the Bible and this is how we came in touch with Christadelphian beliefs and found them to agree with scripture. Charles was baptized in 1902 and my mother and two sisters in 1903. It was from this time that the Dangerfield name became pretty well known in Christadelphia.

“My mother always told me that the Dangerfield baptisms took place in Pinnaroo, but it seems that this was not correct?” I asked.

“No they were baptized at Broken Hill, as I have already said,” replied Howard, “Charles in 1902 and Mum and the girls in 1903. At this same time I was in somewhat of a dilemma in another direction. I have told you that at the age of 12 years and ten months I shot through from school as soon as I had gained my compulsory certificate. This was when I could legally leave school and very definitely that was what I wanted to do. In any case, I was not anxious to go back and collect that 12 handers of the cane which was said to be due to me for absconding. But mum was insistent that I go back unless I could get a job. Fortunately for me, I was on good terms with the postmaster at north Broken Hill and when the telegraph messenger employed there was due for his annual holidays, I was offered the job to temporarily take his place. I sure jumped at that opportunity and so gained some experience in post office work but most things that are good come to an end and so did my job, when the chap I replaced came back from his holidays.

“So again it became a battle between mum and me over the ‘school question’ but again I was saved when Dad, who had applied for a scrub farm from the government in the Koppio area of Eyre Peninsula was allotted a farm. This new farm was on the western slope of a range of hills which runs from Port Lincoln to a little above Lipson. These hills lie close to the coast at Lincoln and some five miles inland at the southern end. Our farm overlooked the low-lying Cummins and Wipa area, also Mortlock’s North Black leases. We could see on the western horizon the North Black Hills and beyond them the Marble Range – with Mount Greenly and Mount Drummond standing out starkly from the flat country. To get there from Broken Hill, Dad bought an old second-hand wagon and team of four horses. On October 14, 1903 Dad, brother Lige and I set off with some things in the wagon that Dad felt could be necessary on the farm – a wagon wheel for attaching to a scrub roller which Dad fashioned out of sugar gum poles for a framework and a sugar gum tree trunk for a roller, all picked out of the scrub round about the farm. Also a blacksmith bellows for a forge and a vice and other tools which later proved their worth and Dad’s foresight. We were just a month on that safari arriving at the farm on November 14 1903 after travelling some 400 miles. Much of that distance was very sparsely occupied in those days. We travelled some 10 miles in the day, starting early in the morning and making camp well before nightfall in the evenings.”

“Everything I have heard of great-grandpa Joseph is that he was such a resourceful man. Nothing seemed to frighten him or be too much for him to handle,” I said feeling a certain amount of pride in my great-grandfather.

“We were very proud of our father and he was a wonderful man. He was an excellent horseman and cared for his horses. He considered 20 miles far enough for a team to travel when pulling a wagon with perhaps a ton of equipment in it, the whole covered by a canvas tilt. 1902 had been a year of extreme drought but just before we left the Barrier the drought had been broken by copious rains so we were able to have a wet camp each night right through the journey. In fact on the second night out, we camped at the Mingary creek, well and truly bogged to the axle beds, and so left the task of getting out of it till the next morning when we were able to get the help of extra horses to pull the wagon free. Roads in those days were usually natural surface with here and there perhaps a few miles of made-up metal roads. Sealed roads were not even dreamed of back then. We followed the railway from Cockburn to Yunta, camping the night at Yunta dam. Then struck westward to McCoys Well station, Yalpara, Orroroo, Marshar, Wilmington, through Horrocks Pass to Port August.

“We did not travel on Sundays as Dad deemed it wise to let the horses spell one day a week even though thus far the road surfaces had been firm, but pulling a wagon day after day becomes tiring for a team. That is a thing very much to be avoided as a tiring team can lead to troubles in an emergency and as I have said, apart from the few towns we went through, the country was very sparsely settled. This applied even more so after leaving Port Augusta – We spelled the team for a day at Port Lincoln Gap Dam. Here Dad was halting between two opinions – there were two routes between Port Augusta and Cowell. One followed the Telegraph Line route, which was more direct, but had two ten-mile sand hill areas to cross, which were very heavy going. The other route went via Moonabie Station – better surface track, but some miles further around. Dad had been advised by the McCarthy Brothers who ferried us across the gulf at Port Augusta that our team would be good enough to get us through the Telegraph route without much trouble and he had decided to go that way. But at Lincoln Gap two men in a spring dray came along having come through the Moonabie way and advised Dad not to try the other way. So, a bit of a dilemma arose in his mind and he put a riding saddle on one horse and rode back to Port Augusta West where he again saw the McCarthys. They convinced him he’d get through the Telegraph route okay and it was better watered than the other way, in addition to being shorter.

“So that was the way we finally went. But soon after entering the Gidgee Scrub area, we came across a cross, evidently marking a grave and on it the name John Jervois. We crossed the tram line laid between Hummocky Hill and Iron Nob, well inland from the coast. Hummocky Hill was the former name of the place where Whyalla is now situate, but the Telegraph route kept well inland at the crossing place of the tram line. Watering places on this route were Adams Dam, Randall Tanks, Batchelor Tanks, Poynton Tanks and McGregor Tanks. The latter marked the south end of the sand hill portion of the track and glad we were to see it. These tanks were housed beneath galvanized iron sheds with the lower part of the roof in a line along the centre. The tanks, being in line along the centre of the shed, had the water fed into them by means of a centre guttering and individual down pipes to each tank. As civilization had not then reached these remote areas, vandals had not interfered with the sheds or tanks and water was plentiful at each place. I wonder what they are like now, if there at all? We passed through Middleback Station, also Murninnie, but nobody was present at either one, unlocked, but, like the sheds, tanks all undamaged. We arrived at Murninnie early in the day and Dad decided to give the horses a spell for the rest of the day and following night as they’d had a gruelling time getting through the sandhill area. Did those horses get down to it and pull! Going up the sand hills, they’d shift the wagon for the length of the wagon and stop. Dad would let them make their own time and when they began to shuffle in their tracks again he’d give the signal – they’d get down to it again and heave till they’d shifted forward another wagon length and stop again for a spell. And so it was up each sand hill – heave and stop for a blow, then at it again. No whip was needed. No doubt good horsemanship gets good results. And so we reached Cowell without further incident.

“We stayed just outside the town at a hut occupied by a character called Yankee Frank at his invitation and passed the weekend there. Yank decided to go on the way with us and so we had his company for the rest of the trip and he worked for Dad on the farm at scrub cutting and clearing for some months. We took a small, short-haired terrier with us from Broken Hill and Yank also had a small dog. They were friendly to each other and proved great hunters in the scrub while on the journey. On one occasion while passing through thick, scrub country beyond Arno Bay, the two dogs were hunting in the scrub beside the track. Yank and Lige walked some little distance behind the wagon and I was sitting on the tail of the wagon with them in full view. Suddenly there was a burst of yapping from the two dogs and out onto the track behind Yank and Lige burst a goanna in full flight and making straight for the two on the track. A Goanna will make for anything of any height to get away from pursuit and Yank and Lige became the Goanna’s objective. Lige dodged to one side and Yank sprinted after the wagon. It was the best race I’ve ever watched. Yank was going flat out and the goanna gaining fast urged on by the two dogs just behind. I was in fits of laughter at the sight; so was Lige as he was not in the race. However, Yank with a flying leap on to the tail of the wagon just made it and the goanna made it safely into the scrub again. But Yank was offended because I laughed. Says he, “Howie! it was no laffin’ matter, he nigh had me!”

“Oh, Howard, that is another cartoon for “Footrot Flats” I’m sure!”

“It was very funny, and I “laffed and laffed” using Yank’s way of speaking. In those days, the road did not follow the direct route as now from Cowell to Tumby Bay, but at Elbow Hill, after leaving Cowell, we turned westward until meeting a road which linked Cleve with Arno Bay. We turned left here going in the direction of Arno as far as the dam on the 12-mile plain. Here, instead of getting into Arno we took a direct route to Driver Tanks, thence to Lady Bennaird Tanks, Aratta Vale and so to Tumby Bay. Here, after a day or two’s stay, we went out westward piloted by Dick Saviour along the Stokes Road to Stokes PO at Dranno Springs. Here Dick left us to go to his own farm which was some four miles north of our destination while we made camp at Uranno Springs for some days using it as a base while we located our own farm, proceeding through Yallunda Flat, where at that time Bill Cabot kept a general store on a handy portion of his farm. Our farm proved to be about ten miles from our base camp at Uranno. On locating the allotted farm, we had to cut our way on through the scrub to make a camping place, horse yards, and so on as necessary. So, when we left Uranno and finally moved on to our farm camp, the long trek had ended one month to the day and 420 miles from Broken Hill. Here I received my first introduction to scrub farming and had my fair share of driving a horse team in a scrub roller.