Sepia Saturday: McKinnon's farm, Homerton

In 1952 my parents moved from a wheat farm in the Wimmera to a dairy farm at Homerton on the south coast of Victoria. I was three years old and my younger brother just one.

Our parents owned the farm for about 35 years so I grew up there and have many happy memories of the farm and the district.

Just a few years ago I met a lady by chance who, as a child, was friends with the girl in the first photo below, Heather McKinnon. The McKinnons had owned our farm before us and I was delighted when Heather gave me some copies of old photographs she had of the farm.

It's been interesting to compare what the farm looked like in the 1930s and as I remember it from the 1950s. Some of the buildings were still there, some not. Dad used a tractor rather than horses. Even the trees and vegetation in the background are interesting.

The three photos below were taken on different occasions so I think the cream cart must have been used to entertain visitors as well as their real purpose of taking the cream cans to the end of the lane for pickup and probably for carting other items around the farm as well. Heather was an only child so I imagine she was very skilled with horses and other farm work.

 

Heather McKinnon with her dogs on the horse-drawn cream sled.

Visitors with the dogs on the cream sled.

When we bought the farm we moved into the McKinnon's home (in the photo below) but it was quite old and we only lived there for about three years before my parents built a new house. Some of the garden trees still exist but the house in this photo is long gone.

Visiting children on the cream sled.

This post has been in response to Sepia Saturday's theme photo of dogs. You can see other responses here.

Sepia Saturday: The Fordson Dexta tractor

Cutting firewood c1975

In the 1970s we bought a farm that was very run down. Nothing on the farm was in working order. The fences were numerous but all were old and had been mended numerous times with extra wire or posts, the house was old and hadn't been repaired at all and had no piped water, the outdoor toilet was way down in the orchard, the orchard was a completely untended (but surprisingly productive), the pasture couldn't be called pasture as it was full of weeds and bracken, the paddocks hadn't been levelled properly so were rough and bumpy and we couldn't stock the farm because the animals would have immediately wandered onto the roads through the broken fences and gates.

But it was cheap so we could afford it and we loved having some land we could call our own, and still do forty years later. Now it is in much better condition all round and is very productive. We no longer live there but we use the house as a holiday house and a local dairy farmer leases the paddocks.

So, the photo. The theme photo for this week's Sepia Saturday is of a tractor in Turkey. So I've chosen to match it with a photo of a tractor on our farm, taken about 1975. My husband and his father are cutting firewood for the wood-burning stoves in the house. The old house had a very old and inefficient wood stove and the only heating in the house was a small wood heater. Timber was in plentiful supply because we were gradually pulling down all the old fences but it had to be sawn into short lengths for the stoves. The photo shows a saw driven by the tractor and when I look at it now I'm amazed at how dangerous it is. It was noisy as well and neither worker is wearing ear protection. 

The tractor itself is a red and blue Fordson Dexta (don't know the model) that we borrowed from my father because at that stage we owned absolutely no farming machinery or equipment. I remember doing numerous turns around the paddocks when I was a child, with my dad driving and me (and sometimes other siblings as well) sitting on the wheel arch - completely unsafe of course but we kids survived our childhoods. We all learned to drive dad's tractors from an early age so we could help with the hay-making, feeding out and numerous other tasks around the farm. We still have a Fordson Major tractor but as it's no longer in working order it's a good restoration project for someone in the future.

You can more theme blog over on the Sepia Saturday page.

Sepia Saturday: Creative play

The Yulunga float

It must be about 1959 or 1960. The place is my parent's farm near Heywood in Victoria's western district.

I was very very lucky to have two neighbouring families who had girls my own age and parents who let us wander freely. It was a different time and we never did anything naughty or got into trouble. We appeared home for meals after spending countless days bike riding, walking in the bush, playing at 'secret clubs' (members were girls only but that rule was not really challenged because the only boy our age around was my younger brother), rabbit trapping with ferrets ... and dress ups.

On this occasion we must have decided to create a float for a street parade, but it was all pretend because we never actually paraded. We commandeered my dad's trailer and raided mum's garden for flowers. The green tunics are school sport uniforms. That's me at front right, with Betty Field at left. Behind her is Wendy Bannam and her sister, Gloria Bannam, is queen of the float. My young sister Anne is in the yellow dress and my other sister, Kaye, is in the green dress at right. I wonder why we called the float 'Yulunga'. I have a faint memory of it being one of our school's sporting house names.

So many great memories.

This blog is in response to the Sepia Saturday theme photo of a 1930 photograph of the Swan Maiden's Carriage at the Grace Brothers Ball in Sydney, Australia. You can float over to Sepia Saturday's webpage to see more bizarre photos from earlier times.