Gnowangerup History

The new block still in the Scotsdale area but up on a hill was already cleared and had a bungalow, cowshed, and dairy on it. But it needed fencing, so instead sending the children to school Dad kept them home to do chores and help.
Nel doesn't know why her Dad didn't get into trouble for not sending them to school, but the same thing was happening on other blocks. Of course they didn't mind and thought it was great being away from school.
"Dad was the boss of Nel and a boss over Mum too, Mum didn't have much say about us children. She wanted us to go to school but Dad was the boss."
The children used to help with the fencing, debarking the posts with the back of an axe, putting the posts in place, running the wire, tying the netting onto the wires, and knocking the posts in with a nice size stick. It was a frightfully tedious job. Her Dad and her brother who was a year older, dug the post holes.
There was also more clearing to be done. Ring barking the big trees and chopping and sawing down the smaller trees. There was a mixture of hazel bushes, wattle, karri, red gum, and jarrah trees, a mixture.
Nel and her sister would slash the scrub with a fishhook slasher by hand. You couldn't see through the scrub it was so dense, some of it up to 12 feet high. It was a full-grown man's job but it didn't do them any harm. They actually enjoyed it.
Their bungalow was typical of a group settler house. Four rooms, all the same. The front room and kitchen were lined with tongue and grooved jarrah, the two bedrooms were unlined. It was on stilts and exposed to terrific winds. It was frightening when they would come up across the paddock. The ringbarked trees would drop limbs, bark and even fall over. The house used to shake because of the wind.
As well as cows they kept pigs who drank the skim milk with pollard mixed into it. It was a heavy job carrying kerosene tins full of milk and pollard down to the pigsty. They weren't allowed to have the pig styes close to the dairy for hygienic reasons.
There were a terrible lot of fleas in those days, they had them in our bungalow, and Nel thinks maybe they had them worse than ever 'cos her father let the pigs sleep under the house! Her poor old Mum used to take the blankets off the beds, put them on the clothesline and stand there killing the fleas.
Unfortunately, one day Nel's brother left home as he and her father couldn't get on, and that left Nel and her sister.
In 1936 a wasting disease in the cattle meant they lost herd after herd of heifer calves, that they had reared and tried to build up their milking herd. It was heartbreaking and they found out later due to a cobalt deficiency.
In 1937 a big fire went through Denmark, which did huge damage. They family were over at the Woodwards for the day, and both being on hills they could see their place going up in flames. So of course, they raced home in their horse and cart.
Just as they went passed the hay shed, it collapsed, all the hay was gone. They could hear the corn popping in the cream can in the shed as it got hot."
By an act of God the house was left but most of the sheds were lost, including the cowshed. Luckily, no stock was lost but they had twenty odd cows milking at the time that had to be tied up to the fence and hand milked. They had got used to being machine milked, so they didn't take too kindly to it.
The family had a rough patch after that. Nel's Mum really didn't like it in Australia, she didn't like it at all. After the fire she wanted to move on instead of starting again, but her father was determined to make himself a farmer.
Nel used to get out a little bit. Her father bought her a bicycle and she used to ride to play hockey and tennis. Once a week she would drive the horse and cart into town to take the cream to the factory and do the shopping.

Nel also used to go to the dances at Scotsdale and now and again go into the pictures in Denmark. Billy Kingston used to run a bus. He'd take them in and bring them home again. Nel, her mother and sister, were members of the CA and they used to put on concerts in which they would take part. Nel can clearly remember being an Irish maid in a play and singing 'Play to me, Gypsy' with two other girls.
Nel's sister left home when she was about twenty. Like her brother she also clashed with Dad. Then Nel was the only child left.

There were times when she wanted to get away to see a bit more of life, but she didn't like to leave Mum because she knew she would have a lot more work to do if she left. The mother would help feed the calves but otherwise she was fully busy inside. She had vowed and declared she would never milk a cow, so she never learned to milk. It frightened her.
From time-to-time, the mother would get her little holidays away to stay with her two brothers on a group settlement in Pemberton, but the children never got away anywhere.
At twenty-eight Nel decided to leave home, but it wasn't because she didn't get along with her Dad. Her Mum and Dad were lucky enough to get a young lad from one of the other groupies to come and help them on the farm. So she didn't feel so bad and Mother was actually glad Nel was getting away.
Nel went to work for a lady on a farm out from Mount Barker for two years. She was rather mean to her, so Nel joined the Army and waited to be called up. But that didn't happen and she got tired of waiting, so went to work in the Woollen Mills in Albany

After that Nel married Joseph A. Bennett in 1945 and had their first child the day after her father died. She was in hospital giving birth, so she didn't see the last of her Dad, and he didn't get to see her baby. Nel thought he should have lived a bit longer, but he didn't look after himself.
Her Mum came to live with them. They went from Albany to Williams from Williams to Tenterdon from Tenterdon to Gnowangerup and then we stopped.
They were all such a happy family together and her Mum loved it because she was having babies. She reconciled with Australia and never wanted to return to live in England. She died aged 72 in Gnowangerup.
Regrets? Nel never had any regrets about coming to Western Australia, and she has never gone back to England because she doesn't fancy flying.
And yes it's always nice to visit Denmark and she has been down to the block a couple of times to have a look around. But it's different there now, and there's a padlock on the gate.