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Family Histories
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PARKER Louisa Submitted by: Win Jacobsen "Mum wondered what on earth she had come to when she arrived at Badgebup after marrying Dad. Life for her on a farm was a big change from living in the city. My mother, Louisa Lafferty, married my father, (Joe) Joseph Parker in 1923 at St Patricks Church, Subiaco. Mum was born in 1897 at Geelong, Victoria and came to Perth with her parents when a child and lived at Pangbourne Street, Wembley. She was 13 years of age and the eldest of seven children when her father, an Irishman, died.
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JOSEPH & LOUISA PARKER #1 |
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Dad was born at Red Hill, Surrey, England in 1886 and like his father, was a farm labourer and he became expert at thatching cottages and animal sheds. In 1910, he applied with his friend, Jack Cornford, to come to Australia under an immigration scheme but he was knocked back because applicants were required to be over 5 feet 10 inches (1m.77cm) in height. So he went to Tilbury Docks and got a job on the ship Orvieto and shovelled coal from the Docks to Fremantle to join his friend, Jack, early in 1911. When the 1914-18 war broke out they enlisted but Dad was rejected. Jack Cornford went away with John Stewart and Alec Simpson, all returning without a scratch. At first Dad and Jack Cornford were in partnership on properties abandoned by Alec and Reuben Hinkley and a Mr Holmes, then they had a property each. The land at Badgebup was poor so Dad and Mum left to take up a wheat and sheep farm, 11 miles north of Gnowangerup. Dad named it Tanglewood, after the place he had left in England. They lived in a galvanised iron and timber shack with dirt floors. Hessian bags divided the rooms. Most of the furniture was jarrah orange boxes stacked to form cupboards and drawers. A galvanised iron tub served for a family bath and as a washtub when placed on packing cases with a washboard for scrubbing clothes, Water was often carried in buckets from the farm dam and heated in a copper, a large round receptacle made of copper, built over a closed in fireplace with a grate and had a chimney for the smoke to escape. If the house had run out of water we had to take big buckets down to the dam and carry in enough water to last Mum till the next day – for 24 hours. And then we fed the chooks, collected the eggs and got the cows in and milked them. Fed the calves and the lambs and any other animals that needed feeding. Mum always had a big bowl of warm water for us when we had finished milking the cows and all the jobs, just to wash anything off our feet before we went to school because we didn’t have shoes. And especially when it was frosty your feet would be FROZEN so she always had a bowl of warm water for you to warm your feet. Wash all the farmyard off before you went to school. |
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JOSEPH & LOUISA PARKER'S FAMILY 1944 #2 |
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There were eleven children – six daughters and five sons – and we all worked on the farm until we were adults. Our family, named below, were born at Gnowangerup, except where noted. Hazel Catherine (b.1924) at Katanning, Lilian Margaret (b.1926) at Subiaco, Josephine Mary (b.1927) at Katanning, David Edward (b.1928), Winifred Rose (b.1931), Aileen Ruth (b.1932), (Bert) Francis Bertram (b.1934), Arthur Henry (b.1935), Ernest Stanley (b.1937), Glen Neville (b.1938) and Elsie Grace (b.1940). Hazel, Lilian and Bert are deceased. My sister, Josie, recalled how we greeted a newborn sibling: One day when Mum was coming home with the new baby, we were all very busy, sweeping up, cleaning up and everything in great excitement. Dad was going in after lunch to bring Mum with this new baby home. ... We loved the baby before it even came along, you know, very eagerly. Dad tried to be a farmer but he was not a manager and he was not a leader. But he used to do a fair bit of contract dam sinking in the district to get ready money. Hazel and Lil minded the little ones because Mum had to go down to drive the horses. She always took her baby with her. The youngest, whichever, whether it was a tiny baby or toddler, she’d take the youngest with her. Mum was convent educated at Subiaco. We were lucky that she was really quite well educated and we were lucky too because we took it from her – reading and that sort of thing. Mum wrote all the business letters because Dad hardly had any education as, at that time in England, it was considered that education wasn’t terribly important for farm labourers and their children. There was no school close enough for the children to attend, so Mum taught the two eldest children by correspondence. As the family grew she could not cope with teaching the younger children when they were of school age. Five months after Moortvale School opened in 1938 we attended and travelled nine miles (14.4km) to school by horse and cart. Josie, aged 11, could not read or write but the teacher brought her and her siblings up to their required standard over a couple of years. In 1940 the parents moved the school to shorten the distance our family had to travel. Dad made a jinker to transport the school, which was pulled by horses. He should have been an engineer, or carpenter or something like that because he had a lot of natural talent but not for farming. It was moved a second time to the Tie Line so that more families could attend and to move the enlarged school he made another jinker, which tractors pulled this time. (Josie): Dad had a good way with horses and he used to break in a lot of horses that other people couldn’t manage. He got his legs badly cut one year. He was in front of the binder. He had it lifted up as he was fixing it. He only had three horses on the binder and the Marsh flies were worrying them a bit and as he finished fixing it he said, ‘Right,’ picked up his tools and, of course, the horses took off. We had a new horse that he’d bought and it had been taught to take off when you said ‘right’. We used to say, ‘Gee-up’ and Dad said ‘Right’ and of course the horses took off and the binder got him across the backs of his legs. Mum heard him yelling, ‘Whoa, whoa’ and she raced out. One horse on the left side wouldn’t go as he was saying ‘whoa’ and the next one stopped so the other one had to stop. They had stopped by the time Mum got down there and then Hazel was called to put the horses away and harness another one to the cart. I think Lil helped too. Mum carried heaps of wheat bags over to Dad to prop his legs up to try and stop the bleeding. Mum drove down to Wes Johnston’s so they come up with their truck and picked him up to take him into hospital. He was in there for quite a while. We all had to go and live in town. Mum had to be in there with him, he sufferedi so much with shock. She had to come out every day to milk the cows and feed the dogs and so on. Aileen was a baby and there were five older children. Lil and Hazel went to school while we were in Gnowangerup. Dad always had a limp after that because they had to pull the muscles in the calf of his legs up so much to join them. He always had a shorter leg than the other. He could never walk very far. Mum and Dad managed to stay on the farm through the Great Depression. Before marriage Mum worked for a tailor and fortunately some far-sighted person gave her a treadle Singer Sewing machine for a wedding present. She made clothes for herself and children. Mother was not only a skilled dressmaker and tailor, but knitted socks, singles and jumpers for the family. The girls helped with the knitting when they got older. (Josie): Sometimes when I were quite young I’d hear her say, ‘Oh what on earth are we going to have for tea’ Dad would go off with the kangaroo dogs to hunt and he’d come home empty-handed, when she saw him coming empty- handed her face used to go very red. When she got upset about anything, she was always very worried looking. He was hunting kangaroos with his kangaroo dogs for years and what Mum grew and made off the land, such as grow vegetables and kept chooks and milked cows. That’s about all we lived on, eggs and kangaroo meat and a few vegies. But water, of course, was the big problem in the drier months. Mum scrounged every skerrick she could for the garden but it still wasn’t enough. Mum couldn’t afford to buy a bag of flour so we used to have wheat meal, a lot of wheat meal and we used to turn the old grinder by hand to crush the cows’ grain and enough for our porridge and enough for wheat meal cakes. They were very heavy but they were quite nice. Imagine just wheat meal and baking powder and dripping and eggs. Mum baked her own bread and cut everyone’s hair. She supplemented the farm income by making and selling butter at the Gnowangerup Coop and customers requested her butter. I recall making butter. You have the cream in a big vat and you scrub your hands properly and then you stir it and stir it and stir it, and beat it with your hands until it forms into the butter. The fat separates from the buttermilk, the watery substance or whey and then you skim that off and pat the butter into the squares for sale. We had a square box, you pressed the butter down into that and then the walls were separate from the bottom, you carefully lifted it up and you had one pound of butter there and then you patted it into shape. Our neighbours admired my mother for rearing such a large family in primitive circumstances and said that she was always cheerful and never complained. |
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Josie reflected: Mum was fantastic. That’s it. It’s the only word for it. She was so patient. She was so gentle. She never swore. Dad used to get wild ... He used to swear and carry on but Mum was just that patient all the time. She always looked at the bright side. Of course she had a lot of faith. That’s all that saved Mum was her faith, saved her sanity, I’m sure. I think she was quite proud of us in the end. When Dad died in 1957 my mother took control of farm management. She left the farm in 1963 and lived at Kalamunda for a couple of years, then she house kept at a presbytery and later went to live at Swan Cottages which she said were the best years of her life. She appreciated the care, freedom and the social life".
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JOSEPH & LOUISA PARKER'S HEADSTONES #3 |
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Every endeavour has been made to accurately record the details however if you would like to provide additional images and/or newer information we are pleased to update the details on this site. Please use CONTACT at the top of this page to email us. We appreciate your involvement in recording the history of our area.
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References: Article: Letter by Joe Parker to The Gnowangerup Star, January, 1946 Image: 1, 2, 3 Win JACOBSON nee Parker
Copyright : Gordon Freegard 2024 |
