The Commercial Hotel, Bowning

 Bowning

 

Two months later, on 25 March 1954,  we moved into the “Commercial Hotel”, in Bowning. Bowning is still today a small village about 13km from Yass. So this move was right back into my family’s “heartland”, my paternal grandmother’s family coming from the Good Hope district on the other side of Yass, and then my grandparents living in the Bowning / Goondah / Murrumburrah-Harden area for most of their married life. The village was surrounded by productive agricultural lands, for both cropping and sheep.  The Tooth’s archives notes that “the trade of the hotel comes mainly from the local rural workers and is well patronised by interstate truck drivers who use the premises as an overnight and rest centre”. In those days, the Hume Highway ran through the village, although the hotel was not itself on the highway.

 

The Commercial Hotel was described as a “free house”, meaning that it could sell the beers, spirits and other products of both of the big NSW breweries of the day, Tooths and Tooheys. Its owners were the Grace Estate, the Grace family name being a well known one in the Yass area, and indeed with connections to the Dawes and Duffy branches of my own family. The Tooths file on this hotel is quite sparse for this period, particularly on financial matters. There is a reference at this time to an “application to purchase freehold for £20,000” , and, later, a note that the Tooths’ Board had agreed to provide a loan of £14,000 to a prospective purchaser (not my father). The purchase / lease arrangements for this hotel appear to have operated differently to other hotels, particularly the apparent opportunity to purchase freehold. I am unable to ascertain whether dad came into this hotel paying lease fees, as at Tallimba, or was required to purchase the freehold, and obtained a loan from Tooths to help him do this. Photo below is the Tooth's company record card from 1950's.

 

Physically, the hotel itself is described as a “solidly constructed, 2 story brick building, with an iron roof, containing about 9 bedrooms and in addition private quarters of 3 rooms with bathroom and balcony appointments. The trading quarters consists of 2 bars and 2 drinking parlours. Bathroom and toilet accommodation is fair and ample”. Additionally, “the hotel is serviced by a town electricity supply. Water is from a bore on the property and there is a septic tank for sanitary purposes.”

 

Over the road was another yard, in fact a paddock of perhaps 1 or 2 acres, which belonged to the hotel, and in which we kept poultry and pigs. The pigs were useful in disposing of “slops”, food waste from the hotel kitchen, and were probably sold at the Yass Stock markets. I don’t remember any slaughter on our premises – or, if there was, this time I wasn’t required to be present with a white enamel tray!! The closest I came to “animal work” was fishing for yabbies in the creek at the bottom of the yard.

 

It was quite an adventure for a 7 year old to live in such a big 2 story place. Neil would have only been 3 years old, and Helen 1, so I imagine mum was heavily occupied with their care. The photo to the side is Helen enjoying looking at the pigs in the hotel paddock. It’s possible that mum had help with caring for the two littlies, so that she could manage a “saloon bar”, an area which ladies would use when they came to the hotel. Men could also use this bar, but it took until 1970 before women would be allowed to drink in a public bar.

 

During 1954  I was in 2^nd Class at Bowning Public School. I can only guess that for the first 2 months of that school year, between leaving Tallimba on 5 February and arriving at Bowning on 25 March, I went back to the Convent school at Murrumburrah. Perhaps we rented a house in Murrumburrah, or stayed with my dad’s parents, Grandma and Pop? In my third year of schooling, this would be my third school, establishing a pattern which would apply for most of my primary schooling. Fortunately, this didn’t seem to cause any detriment to my education, and no doubt the restrictive nature of the school curriculum at that time would have helped in this regard, as there was a great similarity and sameness to teaching materials and teaching methods across the entire state. The Public Schools system ensured this was the case, with a system of “Schools Inspectors” ensuring each and every school did what was required.

 

A long-lost feature from primary schooling at this time was the “School Milk Program”. Introduced by the Menzies (Coalition) Government in 1951, this was a Federal Government program which both supported the dairy industry and was supposed to aid the nutrition and dental health of us young Australians. Milk was delivered in small glass bottles in as many crates as a school required, and at recess time we all lined up and took a bottle. “Allergies” was not a word you heard a lot in the 1950’s, so I don’t know how the poor kids managed who just couldn’t digest cow’s milk. There is nothing appealing about drinking milk that has been left in the morning sun for a few hours since being delivered to the school. Most likely this didn’t happen as often as I remember – it’s reasonable to expect that some care was taken most days to get it somewhere into the shade. Refrigeration, of course, was impossible, and there were no such things as tuckshops in schools. The expectation was that everyone would drink their milk, all of it, once collected. You would remove the foil top, as deftly as little fingers would permit, or if that proved impossible, just punch your finger through the top and try not to spill too much as you downed the healthy brew. Too vigorous exercise afterwards would see the milk returned in less palatable form to the dirt of the playground.  This program lasted until 1973, when it was deemed “poor value for money” by the newly installed Whitlam (Labor) Government, and joined their list of all sorts of things previously central to Australian life, ditched virtually overnight. I was well past the milk program by then, but not military conscription, which was also ditched  -  but more on that later.

 

Occasional milk stories aside, I have no unhappy memories of school at this time, so I can only assume it was a good experience, socially and educationally. I did have a friend in my class who lived on a farm on the Binalong (northern) side of town, and went there to play. There were other kids around the village, and our place, with the pub building and its outbuildings, and the paddock over the road which finished in a creek at the bottom, was the sort of place which brought other kids in. And of course there’s always the kids who came in while their parents were at the pub, especially on the weekend !

 

Until 1979, a NSW law permitted “Bona Fide Travellers” to come to a hotel on a Sunday and buy liquor, as long as it was consumed on the spot. Hotels, as with virtually every other business, were closed on Sundays and not allowed to trade. However, if you lived more than 30 miles (about 48 km) from a particular hotel, you were permitted to come and drink there. The publican was required to keep a record of “reasons for travel”, and I remember seeing this book in our various hotels. Patrons came in through the back door of the building, and then it was business as normal. I remember seeing many patrons who certainly lived a lot closer than 30 miles !! It’s very interesting to consider that the effect of this law would have been to make the roads of the State even more of a hazard for drink driving accidents. In fact you could say this law encouraged drink driving. Things have certainly changed!!

 

 

The main “Great Southern Railway Line”, from Sydney to Melbourne, runs through Bowning, and the Railway Station is just over the road from the hotel. It’s a beautiful old railway building, in the style of such buildings over so much of the state. Trains don’t stop at Bowning these days, and the buildings on the railway station appear in good repair, being painted in the requisite heritage colours and being someone’s home. In my time there, the railway station was the starting point for adventures walking on the access roads beside the railway tracks, usually in the Yass direction where the terrain was more varied and there were no farms up to the tracks. On one of these excursions, there were a few of us and we came across a clutch of kittens. How they got there I don’t know – abandoned? Born there?  We each picked one up, eager to show a new prospective adoptee to our families. Mine was a ginger one, not entirely friendly, whose claws had to be managed carefully. I managed to wrap him in my jacket, which was an effective way of keeping the unhappy animal quiet, but it showed its disgust  at what was happening by soiling by jacket with a mess of whatever its diet had been. Mum and dad were not at all interested in my new acquisition coming to live with us, and one of the hotel workers was deployed to dispose of the unfortunate animal in the creek down the road. The word “diseased” was mentioned somewhere.  Quite an eventful day. I don’t think this day is entirely the reason I know I am not a “cat person”, but it’s safe to assume it may have contributed!

 

The summer holidays of Christmas 1954 and New Year 1955 saw us take the only family holiday we ever had, as a whole family. Mum, dad, Neil, Helen and me, piled into the Holden, and off to Tathra on the South Coast, a lovely beach area between Bega and Bermagui. No seat belts in cars in those days, so 2 year old Helen sat on the front bench seat between mum and dad, with 4 year old Neil and me on the back seat. Great excitement as we travelled the Hume Highway from Bowning to Yass, then onto the basic road from Yass to Canberra that even then gloried in the title of “Barton Highway”, but which brought little joy to children rapidly tiring of the trip but all too aware that “are we there yet?” was not a question to be asked.

 

I wish I had taken more notice of Canberra and had some memories of my first visit to my later home. We would have come in on much the same alignment of roads as now exists, with the Barton Highway joining the Federal Highway around Dickson, now of course a thriving retail and housing hub but in those days it was the “Dickson Experiment Station”, providing agricultural advice on such matters as soils and pasture research, suitable food crops for this part of the country, and even for sheep farming. It would have been far more exciting driving past these paddocks about two decades earlier when instead of yet more farm land they contained the original Canberra airport. Seeing aircraft on the ground, let alone landing or taking off, this would have been excitement beyond words!!

 

With no Lake Burley Griffin yet constructed, we crossed the slow-flowing Molonglo River via its low level bridge, and drove slowly through the park-land expanses of the ‘Parliamentary Triangle’. Past the Hotel Canberra, a solid and secure  Art Deco statement of importance on the landscape, the gleaming whiteness of (Old) Parliament House off to the left, the built environment itself somehow suggesting that matters of significance happened here. And on to Manuka, already a thriving commercial hub.

 

Our Cusack cousins were living in Canberra at this time, and it’s quite likely we stopped to say hello and perhaps a bite to eat. After all, we were driving right past the Cusack furniture store in Manuka, and we had to stop somewhere for a toilet break and to feed hungry children. Dad’s uncle, Stan Cusack, had just re-married and his children John, David and Joan, dad’s cousins and  13 -15 years younger than dad, were now in their early 20s and there had been a closeness between dad and his cousins growing up in Yass. Stan’s first wife, Alice, a younger sister of my grandmother, had sadly died in 1947, but the Cusack family always retained a link with their Dawes relatives. The Cusack furniture empire remains the longest running business in Canberra, now being over 100 years old and still a family business.

 

Leaving Manuka, a short drive down to Narrabundah and we were leaving Canberra behind. Ahead, the monotony of the seemingly endless Monaro Highway threading its way through sheeplands parched in summer heat. And then, a road I have never forgotten.

 

Heading to the coast from Cooma, the Snowy Mountains Highway descends Brown Mountain. It’s now a sealed road, wildly picturesque, prone to fogs and misting rain – a road to be driven carefully. In 1954, ‘driving carefully’ didn’t come close to describing the experience.

 

The road down the mountain was unsealed. Quite possibly, the entire highway was the same. Rain had set in on the drive from Cooma, and reduced to a foggy mist as we started the mountain descent. In parts the road was no more than single carriage-way, and the entire descent had no guard rails in place. The narrowness of the road meant there was a good view of the sheer drop off to the side, to wherever the trees were rooted in the far distance below. On this narrow, muddy road the car seemed to me to be forever about to slide out of control. I stood mute in the back, fingers white as they gripped the front seat between my parents. Terror flooded every sinew of my body. Not a word was said between mum and dad, his concentration being totally on the road and his driving as the car inched forward. Helen and Neil sat quietly, mercifully unaware of the dangers in our perilous descent. For me, it remains an extended, agonizingly stretched moment frozen in time.

.

But we did get safely to the bottom. Dad’s careful driving saw us successfully navigate the twisting, hairpin bends and the treacherous, slippery, narrow road. And then the beautiful Bega Valley, which, as the home of the Bateman family, I would come to know well. The highway runs through the village of Bemboka, and standing proudly on a rise at the edge of the village is the Catholic Church where generations of Batemans have worshipped. I was last there in September 2012 where I delivered the eulogy for my cousin Lorraine (McDermott) and had great satisfaction in honouring the life of one who was as close to me as a sister. Lorraine’s husband, John Bateman, had been buried from the same church twenty years earlier and it meant a great deal to their children and wider family that both should be reunited in the beautiful Bemboka cemetery on the other side of town.

 

Past the Bateman dairy farm, north onto the Princes Highway, and….Tathra. Each of us, I’m sure, had our own feelings of relief to be safely arrived. And the holiday could begin.

 

How did we manage being on the beach in the summer sun in the years before sunblock? Hats and t-shirts were our best protection, and I don’t remember sunburn so mum clearly looked after us. It was the first time seeing the immensity of the ocean for Neil, Helen and myself, and with the wariness of country kids in an alien place, we marvelled  at the crashing of waves on the shore. Apart from dad, none of us could swim, not even mum, and paddling in the shallows was delight enough. And sand castles!!

 

Holidays are renewing of body and spirit, and at their best bind families even closer. What a pity it was the only family holiday we ever had.

2008 photo, prior to significant renovations in 2011.