Moving to Meckering ; Meckering Moving !

Margaret, my sister and I going off to Meckering State School. She has a bunch of flowers for the teacher.

            It was 1950 when dad was transferred to Meckering Police Station. It stood on a stand alone triangular block of land at the western entrance to the town. On the side of the police administration office were attached two holding cells.                                                                       

           From our front door, we could look across the Great Eastern Highway which entered connected Meckering to Northam and Perth and continued along the main street to exit and connect eastwards to Cunderdin and eventually, Kalgoorlie.                                   

             We could look across salt marshes to the huge wheat silos that stood beside the railway line and water pipeline. They dominated the scenery. It consisted of a huge structured roofed with silver corrugated iron and had several huge grain augurs which looked like praying mantises, which forced wheat upwards and sprayed it into holes in the roof where it fell and formed huge conical heaps.                                 

           Meckering township, 130 km from Perth on the Great Eastern Highway, is the centre of an important wheat-growing area. The town was originally built on the south bank of the Mortlock River, as a siding and watering point of the Goldfields Railway. It reached its peak about 1906, and in 1913 had a population of about 600.

         As the surrounding land was cleared, the water-table rose and the Mortlock River became progressively saltier and the townsite liable to flooding; population declined to the gain of the adjacent centres of Northam and Cunderdin. The original site was eventually abandoned and the town moved to the south side of the railway, 750 m northeast of the earlier location.          

         In October 1968, the population of Meckering numbered about 230; a further 300 people lived on farms in the vicinity. Apart from the two-storied bank and hotel, all buildings in the town were single storied, and built of a variety of materials, ranging from unfired mud brick to reinforced concrete. There were a few modern dwellings, but otherwise the buildings were a reflection of the past, and several were unoccupied. The most substantial modern constructions were two new grain storage silos, each 11 m in diameter and 30 m high, and a horizontal storage shed 90 m long and 30 m wide.           

        Apart from its local importance, Meckering lies astride all the main arteries connecting Perth to Kalgoorlie and the eastern states of Australia. The Great Eastern Highway, Standard and Narrow Gauge Railways, the Goldfields Water pipeline.

           Although the Meckering earthquake of October 1968 was not the largest in WA's history, it was certainly the most significant in term of damage done and cultural upheaval. It caused ground rupturing nearly 40 km long, some of which is still to be seen today. The maximum heave was 2.4 m, max vertical displacement was 2.0 m, and the maximum strike slip movement (dextral) was 1.5 m. The maximum felt intensity on the Modified Mercalli scale was 9. The damage exceeded $5 million ( in 1968 dollars). Meckering's population at the time was approximately 240 persons.

A car astride the earthquake fault on which was the Great Eastern Highway.

This was the hotel in the main street. The top portion toppled onto cars parked beneath.

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 My sixth birthday…on the front lawn of our house in Meckering.

 

My Meckering School photo. I am in the back row left. Dulcie Wilson ( front row extreme left) and Nancy Reynolds ( front row second from the right) later ( 1962 – 3) attended Graylands Teachers' College with me.

        I  loved going to Meckering State School.

     * I missed one day there…the first since I started school at Leonora Convent, before I moved to Gwalia Convent. This day I had my ride in an aeroplane. Mr Don McKaskeill, who was a flying pardre asked Dad if I like a flight. He had to fly so many hours each year to keep his licence.

        It was great flying over paddocks and seeing sheep like little dots below. As we flew over the school I felt a twinge of guilt…but it didn't last for long.

        * When I started at the school I was in Miss Carter's class…she seemed very old, tall and wrinkled. A new boy asked me who the teacher was and I answered, mistakenly…..she Miss Carter, on old stick! I didn't know she was standing behind the cupboard door till he hand came down on my head. She was also very thin.

                * Near the school we had a vacant block. At playtimes we would often sneak up the and have 'gang fights'. Our ammunition was plants that we pulled from the ground and a clump of earth stayed with the roots. We called them 'coondies'. Grabbing the dried leaves one was able to swing the earth clump around your head and let it go. As part of the gang warfare we had hidden caches of coondies. Part of the game was to raid and steal the caches.

               One day Mr Brown came to the vacant block and walked into the crossfire of our warfare. I don't know if or how many coodies hit him but quite a few of us were caned.

* * * * * * *

                 We kept goats in Meckering and Dad would get mad with us if we let them escape. One day my sister, Margaret and I, were bringing the goats home when the large nanny she was leading bolted. She refused to let go the rope and was dragged , face down, through the mud which had been made by the rains we'd had recently.

* * * * * * *

                   On the vacant block near the police house we allowed our hens and roosters to roam but had to bring them in each night for fear they be taken by foxes.

                  One cantakerous hen always played up for me. If I wanted it to go one way it went the other. So I found my self a long thin stick to shepherd the hen. I was waving the stick about when it came out of my hand. In my horror to see the stick had entered its neck and pinned it to the ground. It gave its last sad squawks.

                    I buried the hen, secretly, and when Dad came home, I said the cantankerous hen was missing…..probably taken by a fox.

* * * * *

                  Dad once took us out to look at a strange house. The owner had constructed all the walls, fences and even the water troughs by using bottles…..mostly brown beer bottles….which were laid sideways and cemented into place.

                         When inside the building, the light effect shining through the numerous bottles in the walls was great.

* * * * * *

                 To supplement our diet and save money money I often went with Dad to set traps. We went late evenings and had to return early the next morning in case a fox would sneak in and take our catch.

                     I can remember Dad straddled over a trap as he set it. Suddenly a rabbit or most probably a cat, rushed out of the burrow causing Dad to move slightly and set the trap off. The end of his finger bore the brunt of the trap teeth !

                     Sometimes he took his rifle and I can remember him chasing after a rabbit taking several shots at it before he finally bought it down. As he fired each shot, the rabbit gave a little jump into the air and continued on its way. When Dad finally bought the animal down, we discovered it was infected with myxamotosis, the disease introduced as a control measure over rabbit numbers.

 

1944 Onwards in the West Australian Goldfields

Me, Graeme Gee, wearing the Australian Cricket team shirt in my  office at  AusIs (Australian International School, Dhaka).

It is another morning in Cranbourne North as the air is filled with the cacophony of grass wrens, doves and mudlarks competing for air space as they flit for ground space. They are fluttering about in the slight morning breeze, chasing the seed mixture we have placed on the bird stands and on the grass.

 What was it like all those years ago in Southern Cross, Western Australia ?

As the winds of war were still sweeping across across Europe, as I was born in  Southern Cross , Western  Australia,  on the 6th July, 1944.

Later in life I was very to find out I was a direct descendant from Charles Gee .

Charles Gee came to the Swan River colony in 1829 . The Swan River colony later came be known as Western Australia.                                                                                                                           

 I have had a long and interesting journey of life that has taken me throughout Western Australia, overseas to England and Bangladesh and finally to here to Cranbourne North in Melbourne, Victoria.

Life in Southern Cross

My parents were surprised how I could remember details of Southern Cross, where I spent the first 5 years of my life.

Dad had a very interesting police case while there.

Two criminals stole a car in the eastern states and headed west across the Nullabor. They must have been afraid of being caught with the stolen car, a huge distinctive American model with big wings protruding from the rear,, so they decided to bury it. Near Southern Cross,

On the Great Eastern Highway, which connects Perth and Kalgoolrie, they stopped travelling and ran the car off the highway and over the huge water pipeline which conveys water from Mundaring Weir to the Goldfields. They dug  a hole in the earth and drove the car in after making numerous tracks through the bush to confuse anyone looking for the burial site.

After the car burial, they even replanted small shrubs and other plants.Sometime later they were recaptured and admitted burying the car. They were flown in a light aircraft along the water pipeline in an attempt to locate the burial site.

My dad, the policeman in charged of the Southern Cross station, and another officer, went to the site where the car was buried. The car was eventually found after a crow bar was driven repeatedly into the soils of the area and struck metal.

It took several days for the car to be dug out. The police took turns digging while on of the criminals was sitting under the shade of trees, nearby, handcuffed to another officer. It took one more day to dig the car out than it did to bury it.

When the car was driven out of the hole, the only damage done was a dent in the roof where the crowbar hit. On the seats of the car were two rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

The car was taken to Southern Police Station where it was washed and awaited the owners to come from the East. Dad was amazed that when the owners turned up. They didn't even thank the police for the work done to recover their vehicle.

Dad always instilled in us the need to thank anyone for good things done by them for you. My parents had in their Innaloo home a periodical magazine of the time, The Pix, which detailed in words and photos the whole story.

At the age of five I left Southern Cross when my father was transferred to another gold mining town, Gwalia.

We left with my mother, and a sister, Margaret Rose, born in August, 1945 and my brother, Brian, born in February, 1947.

As usual our belongings were transferred through the police department by rail. But to our amazment on arriving at our new house, the rail carriage containing our effects was lost by the WAGR. We had to stay at the only hotel in the town while the carriage was found. It was eventually located after 3 days. It had been shunted off onto a small side line at a railway station and forgotten! It was left there in the severe heat of the summer,and needless to say,many of our household items were affected by 40 C + temperatures. Mum found photo albums with the cover plastic melted.

Gwalia was a small town 300 km north of the large mining centre of Kalgoorlie-Boulder. Gwalia is still a small town. In the mining heyday it was very large town. It was so large that trams ran between it and the nearby town of Leonora. It was estimated a thousands of people once lived there, when gold mines were in peak production.

One of the things I did as a kid to get pocket money was to roam the landscape going through the ruins of buildings. We used to get scrape metals, such as door knobs,hinges, etc.

My sister, Nola Mary was born while we in Gwalia. February 20th, 1950.

                   The police house was large and situated on a corner block. It was not far from the railway station and pub. A vacant block was next door and along the back fence ran a lane way. This lane way was used by the miners going home from the pub and the man who came to empty the toilets….the night cart man.

Dad told me a story……in a small mining town the night cart man also drank a lot. One night he was heading out of town with a full load of sewerage. But having drunk a lot was speeding. Coming around a bend, the cart tipped over and the contents spilled all over the road. He took a shovel and began putting it back.

He was so busy he didn't hear the local policeman pull up.
"Okay what do we have here…drunk again !"
"No."
"We know your drunk..answer correctly!"
"I'm not drunk….I'm just stock taking!"

Our had the fowl run built around it.So if you were in a hurry to do 'the business' you might often leave the gate open and hens & roosters would get out. This happened to me one day….Dad's vegie garden suffered greatly…..and so did my backside!

I was sitting in the toilet one day when a hen came in and sat beside me. She laid an egg in my hand.My mother was there one day and she was bitten by a poisonous spider..the Red Back. She was taken to hospital…very ill….they took out two trays of poison….and she came close to death.

Years later an Australian singer, Slim Dusty, wrote a song, the Red Back Under the Toliet Seat…it was popular and enjoyed song….but Mum never enjoyed her experience!

England to the Swan River Colony

Charles Gee and his wife, Mary, arrived in the Swan River Colony at Fremantle on 12th October, 1829. They were aboard 'The Caroline" which had sailed from West Tarring, Sussex, England on the 2nd of June, 1829.The Caroline was a a ship of 400 tons and armed with carriage guns.On this voyage it carried 66 passengers, general cargo, 12 horses, 9 cows, 1 bull, 182 sheep and 24 pigs. The captain's name was Fewson and the ship had been chartered by the Henty brothers. James Henty was in charge of the passengers during this voyage.Many of the passengers were from Worthing. The Gee family lived in a village named Durrington, which was a hamlet of scattered cottages.The Gee family in this voyage consisted of Charles, 32 year old, carpenter; his 32 year old wife, Mary Ann; Charles Junior, aged 12 yrs; Joseph aged 10; William aged 6 ; Walter aged 4 months and Alfred aged 9 months.Mary Ann ( nee Lasseter) was his second wife. Charles' first wife Hannah ( nee Kimbers) had died on the 31st of january, 1827. Mary and Charles married on 15th May, 1828. They were married in the church at Arundel, as had Charles' parents and Grand parents. The Gee family lived in a shack in Murray Street. This site is now in the central part of Perth's CBD. hard to believe! Here on 22nd of August a son, George, was born, but in March of that year Alfred died and in May Walter died at the age of five.On February 20th, 1833 Charlotte Hannah was born. She later married a Truslove and so started a huge family dynasty.In 1836 Frederick Walter was born, but he was always called Walter. I am a descendant of this last born family member. Walter , as a young man, was shepherding sheep on a farm at New Norcia, just north of Perth, when he found a Father Salvado hopelessly lost in the bush. walter guided him back to the monastry and they became close friends. There was another Bishop Salvado who became very famous in WA history. Walter later met an Irish girl, Mary Purtell who was one of many who came to the colony to provide companionship and domestic help for wives of early settlers. They were married on 13th April, 1857 by the priest, Father Salvado whom Walter had saved. The wedding. held at the New Norcia monastry was the fifth marriage to have taken place there. Walter later joined the police force and they reared a family in the Dandaragan area. Walter was away on police duty very often and Mary was left alone with a native couple and dogs for protection. In January 1865, Walter was sent by the authorities on the Sholl expedition to Camden Harbour in the north-west of the State. His wife and family went with him. Camden Harbour is now where Derby is. The Gee family had a connection with the Sholl family which spanned several generations. The matron of honour at my Grandmother's marriage was a Sholl. When I was baby in Southern Cross, a Mr Reg Sholl lived nearby and his 3 daughters used to wheel me around the town in my pram. Later when living in Bunbury, I lived not far from Mr and Mrs Sholl in Tingle Street. One day captain Sholl and his party, which included Walter Gee, were out exploring. A group of aborigines had contact with the party and spears, dowacks and other missiles were used which resulted in shots being fired. Constable Gee was struck in the shoulder blade by a blunt spear. The trip back towards Camden harbour was arduous and lack of food and weather, as well as injuries from the confrontation  sapped the energy of many, particularly Constable Gee. A few days after arrival, Walter Gee died in his wife's arms. A baby girl was born shortly after his death. Walter was buried with honours at Sheep Island.His widow, mary travelled back to Perth aboard the Tien Tsin with five of her children.She was given a grant of land in the heart of the city and ran a farm there, mainly of pigs. Four years after her husband's death she married John Mckenna, uncle of the well known Commisioner of Police in Perth.  Arthur Gee born 1863 to Walter and Mary was my great grand father. he married Mary Annie Lee in 1879. Their son, Arthur Walter Patrick married Mary Mathieson and he was my Grandfather. He was a policeman and died in 1950 (?) when my father was stationed in Gwalia. My father , Arthur Geoffrey ( known as Geoff) was their second child and born in 1919. Dad married Elsie Rose Wood in 1943 and he died on September 18th, 2004. Isobel Bolton is Dad's older sister. I am their eldest child and I was born on July 6th, 1994 at Southern Cross. Postscript: It was said that when Charles Gee landed in the Swan River Colony he was asked his occupation. When he said he was a carpenter….he was told…."Got one of those…you're a policeman.!" Charles was responsible for making the first set of furniture in the Swan River Colony. It was used by the Lands Department.