If I had listened when I was young to my Mother and Father when they spoke of the early family history, more might now have been recorded. But I was not interested then.

"You shall pass through this world but once, any kindness that you may show, or any goodness that you may do, do it now - for you shall not pass this way again."

Born to James Joseph Clancy and Mary Ann Moloney.

 

Chapter 1 Very Early Days

It was 1906 when my parents moved to Albany by boat from Pekina, South Australia. They took with them all their belongings and farm equipment, horses, carts and wagon. This seems totally unthinkable today. There were no modern conveniences such as containers where everything is neatly packed in so that there could be no movement or breakages. The voyage took some time. Travel across the Great Australian Bight is rough at the best of times and my mother may have been pregnant. I recall her saying she was sick all the way and that she wished the boat would sink!
Being the custom of the time, either my father negotiated the purchase or grant of a block of land a few miles out of Gnowangerup, through the South Australian Government or he did this when they arrived in Albany. Whichever, it probably entailed a few days or perhaps weeks stay in Albany before pushing on to Gnowangerup. What we don’t know is what they did with their belongings and animals that would have needed to be housed and cared for during their time there.
Having got all this sorted out they then set out for their block which was some 100 miles north of Albany to start farming virgin land in the Gnowangerup district.
Because it was a Government Grant, it already had a small house, shed and damn. My father called this farm "Clear Valley". It was a very pretty block of land with soft undulating hills, a good water source and well wooded parts which my father considered would be good shelter for the animals. Among their other meagre possessions, Dad took about 6 horses to “Clear Valley”. His reckoning was that they would be able to do a fair bit of the heavy work when it came to clearing and building on the farm.
My eldest brother Jim was born in Albany on 20 November 1906. My father must have taken my mother to Albany prior to the birth, but we have no details of what took place.
My brother Mick was born in Katanning on 22 March 1909.
When my brothers were old enough to attend school, my father leased the farm to two brothers, Nathanial and Joseph Ball (Nat and Joe) and took his family back to Albany. This must have taken some time and lots of energy on the part of both my father and mother with two young boys in tow.
My father bought a house on Middleton Road where we lived. It was his intention that his boys be well educated and only after my bothers finished school did we move back to the farm.
During these years in Albany, my sister Mary was born on 13 September 1915. I too was born during this sojourn. I was only about seven months old when Mary died on 10 October 1918. She was only three.
My recollection of these early years is scanty. I do however remember the Chinese gardens at the back of our place and going to church in the Phaton - a four wheeled buggy that had a hood that was dropped down by a lever beside my father then the weather was fine. The lever bought it up again when it rained. There was a padded seat for my mother and father and another seat facing them where we sat. It was drawn by one horse. (A pretty flash affair!!)
I can just remember going to Middleton Beach for picnics and on the pleasure boat "Silver Star' to Little Grove and Emu Point. One day we went out in a rowing boat to fish, the wind came up and we had trouble getting back to shore (must have been a close shave as I would not have remembered it otherwise).
I also remember I had a friend, Linda Gallop, who lived next door. We played together. Incidentally, her brother's grandson married my daughter Kaye.
My mother and father were very friendly with a Mr & Mrs Boddy who lived in Rowley Street. They had no children of their own, but they had an adopted daughter called Rita McDonnell. Rita became my Godmother.
During this time my father became associated with Mr Michael Brady and they started a brewery situated near a spring of fresh water that flowed out of Mt Clarence. (It was where the Albany High School now stands). It traded under the name A.B. (Albany Beer).
My father was in charge of the brewery and staff. Jimmy Meyers was the brewer. His family were very well known and respected around the district at the time as some of the boys were successful jockeys. Michael Brady became the travelling salesman, His job was to travel the state by train taking orders for A.B. (Albany Beer), Bitter, Larger and Stout from every hotel he came to. Orders were then sent back to the brewery.
Meanwhile I remember being allowed to watch the men bring the vats of beer from the cellar up to the ground floor where the beer was bottled. I was particularly fascinated by the way the labels were attached to the bottles. After the bottles were filled and the tops sealed, one of the staff would take a handful of labels in his right hand, a wet bottle in his left and slap it on, sliding his hand across it leaving the label stuck to the wet bottle. He then repeated the process until he had attached all the labels he had been holding in his right hand. Taking another handful he would continue to repeat the procedure. Others on the staff would then pack the bottles in large wooden boxes. The bottles were quite large probably holding about 1.5 pints. A fully packed box would hold about 50 bottles. These were then hoisted on to wagon to be driven to the station and loaded on the train, where they probably followed the same route as Michael Brady had several days or weeks earlier.
When my brothers Jim and Mick left college Dad sold his half share to Brady and we all went back to the farm at Gnowangerup. The boys drove the buggy, carts or wagon and all the belongings. The horses for the farm were led behind the carts. I was 5 years old at that time and I remember the wattle and dab house with an earth floor and iron roof into which we settled.
A new house had been planned for the farm before they left Albany. My father took Ernie Bennett and Rod Wellstead with him to build the new house that was to be situated at the other end of the property, nearer to Gnowangerup. Bennett was a builder and Wellstead a carpenter. So they set to work to first make the bricks. The clay was dug out of the ground close to where the house was to be built and carried by wheel barrow to the brickworks where it was tipped into a round drum which had an axle and some sort of wheel for mixing the clay and water. The mixing was done by a horse harnessed to a pole. The horse trotted round and round the drum that contained the clay mixture until Mr Bennett said it was ready to put into the wooden brick moulds. When they set, they were stacked into the kilns and fired.
The building then began and soon a fine house was erected. It had a large kitchen and living room, three bedrooms with a passage down the middle and a wooden floored verandah right around. There was a galvanised iron roof with a bullnose verandah. The bathroom and wash house were outside, down about two steps and about 10 feet away from the back door. The WC was beyond the bathroom.
We must have moved into the new house about Christmas and I was given a three wheeled bike with iron wheels. This caused my mother to nearly go bonkers and my father to lose his temper on many an occasion. 'The damned kid' as I was called, rode the bike around and around on the verandah all day. The noise of the iron wheels on the wooden verandah boards was the cause of my mother's problem. I also had the habit of getting off the bike just outside the back door at the foot of the steps. Here I left it for the night. This caused my father's blood pressure to rise considerably. For on his way to the WC (we had no electric lights in those days) he would pierce the night air with language only attributable to a bullock team driver as he tripped over the bike left there by 'the damned kid!'

Glen Garnett lived on a farm opposite ours. He was a bit older than I, but we were good mates and we sometimes rode to school together, Glen rode a bike though. A bike gave a lot more scope for adventure, it was a lot easier to manoeuvre and it didn’t need a bridle or saddle.
So after a while I got a bike too. Riding home in the afternoon was now something to really look forward to, even plan the manoeuvres we could perform on our bikes. A few tumbles, torn shorts, grazed knees and skinned hands were like trophies, if it meant we had learned a new routine.
The chores we had to do before tea each evening were sometimes very rushed. If it took us too long to get home, I would endure a scalding from Mum. She was a woman of few words. But her words when uttered struck the right cord. I knew what to do then!
Times must have been prosperous during my early school years. New cars began to appear and my father bought a Studebaker in about 1928. He learnt to drive it and so did my brothers when he wasn't about. The Studebaker was very flash, the latest model in transport and it was great riding round in it. I felt very important.
In 1930, my father and mother and I went to Katanning to live while Jim and Mick took over the farm. We lived in 36 Carew Street, Katanning. I was twelve and was sent to the Convent School. In Mum and dad’s words it was to put a bit of religion into 'the damned kid’.
That was the year the bubble burst. The price of wheat and wool fell through the floor and we found ourselves back on the farm and some pretty hard times lay ahead. So much for ‘getting a bit of religion’. I don’t recall too much of the hardships, I guess I was pretty used to doing without too many frills. Mum and Dad were simple folk who worked hard for what they earned.
Within a year or two Jim married Dorothy Jecks and left to work elsewhere. Mick continued to work the farm with my father and I went back to school in Gnowangerup. As I said before the farm was only about three miles from the town and I rode my bike most of the time.
School never held a great attraction for me although I did reasonable well at the '3 Rs' and with helping Dad and Mick on the farm, educational opportunities were not a priority in the early thirty’s. So that's about as far as it went. This was to be a great handicap to me in later life especially when I was approached to contest the seat of Moore for the Country Party. I felt I did not have the literary skills needed for public life.
As things were pretty tough, the day I turned fourteen I left school and became the 'sheep man' on the farm, while Dad and Mick did the cropping.
As the Great Depression spread across the country in the early thirty's there is not much to tell except that the barter system worked with the storekeeper.
My mother made butter and took it and eggs to the Co-op and bartered with the manager, Mr Dyson, for tea, sugar and other things she needed like yeast and flour.
Mum made her own bread. And not only that, Mum was a wiz in the kitchen, the laundry, the yard and the chook house. She had to be and if it wasn’t for her enterprising ways we might well have starved on many an occasion.
My mother was a strong woman and I only saw her cry once although I guess there were many times when she did when no one saw her.
That was when she told Dad that Mr Dyson could not take her eggs and butter as he had more than he could handle. But life went one and as a child much of the hardships and financial crisis went over my head. We had enough to eat, plain food, no luxuries and that was about as much as a fourteen year old boy needed.
I remember one morning, a young man Eddie Searle walked out from town and asked dad for work. He said he would work for his food as his mother could not feed him.
As it must have been harvest time Dad said he could sew up the bags of wheat and he would give him his keep and five shillings a week to take home to his mother. This was pretty generous of Dad as he had his own family to keep during this devastating time. Unemployment was at an all time high, but we had plenty to do on the farm and enough to eat.
It was about this time that Mick married Gwen Farr and moved to a two roomed cottage that had been built for them. It was on the farm not far from the main house. We all worked on constructing the house when there was a lull in farm chores.
I don't recall much happening during my teenage years, I guess this was on account of the economic climate of the time. Saturday night was the only time out. There would be a dance somewhere, Tambellup or Broomehill. Sometimes I drove to Katanning and stayed with my cousins Molly and Marj.
We went to all the dances around the district. I fell in love with Ida France, a beautiful blonde. But that didn't last long. Then I became friendly with Elaine Smart. This might have developed into something if fate had not taken a hand. Elaine was a tailoress and worked for ‘Cooky’ Norrish, the tailor.
Sadly Elaine was only eighteen when she died. She squeezed a pimple on her face. It became infected from the dye in the materials she worked with. The dyes in those days were not colour fast as they are today and septicemia set in and within three days she was dead.
For some time then I felt totally lost. She was such a vivacious young person and I really enjoyed her company. We spent many a Saturday night dancing and sharing fun and laughter with our other friends."

"Having finished her schooling, Kaye went to work in the city. She lived with Daphne's Mother in Nedlands. After Pop died, Nan Bishop, as Daphne’s mother was known, became ‘Mum’ in the city for our girls who nearly all stayed with her at one time or another while they sought their fortune in the big smoke.
One by one the children completed their secondary schooling. Both the boys came home to help me on the farm. But Stephen, like Kaye wanted to try something else, so he too went to live in Perth. John on the other hand stayed on the farm and became my right hand man! This wasn’t always the smoothest of relationships and in latter years he has told me quite a few home truths!!
Kaye was the first of our children to marry. She married Nigel Gallop in 1968. They were married at the Catholic Church in Nedlands. Loretta and Jo were in the bridal party and I still remember the excitement and pride that I felt as I walked down the aisle with her, she was truly beautiful. Derral and Sr Carmel Francis came to the church. Derral was not allowed to go to the reception in those days.

Nigel was the grandson of Linda Gallop's brother. Linda was my friend when we went to live in Albany the first time we went back in 1906. Kaye and Nigel met while she was working for MacRobinson–Miller Airlines. Nigel was aspiring to be a pilot at the time. They went to Sydney to live for a short while. Our first grand child, Paul was born on 24 July 1969.
Around this time Stephen went to Perth and worked at the Taxation Office for a while. While working there he flatted with Loretta, who was working as a library clerk in the State Library, Lyn McCann, who worked at Royal Perth Hospital in the pathology laboratories, a friend from Latham, Scott Griffith, who was on a mechanics apprenticeship and Michael Jegiello, who attended teachers training college. These five young people were to be great friends for a very long time and eventually Stephen married Lyn and Loretta married Scott.
Stephen and Lyn moved to "Minjeburra" to live. “Minjeburra” was one of the Tootra blocks at Bindi Bindi that we had bought when we sold ‘Brentwood Park’.
Just three weeks after Stephen's wedding Loretta married Scott. They moved to Scott’s parent’s farm just out of Latham. Scott had taken on the farming of his father's property.
John was courting Ann Warren from Kalannie and just a couple of years later they were married and moved to live on "Toopiter".
Josephine had by this time also gone to Perth to work, she had set her sights on being a hairdresser. She too stayed with Daphne's mother in Nedlands. In October 1987, my youngest daughter, Josephine decided to marry her long time friend, Oswald Roberts. I was very happy to see Josephine settled at last. They continued to live in a very interesting little place in Mosman Park until they sold it in 19.. and moved to Mandurah.

My involvement in the Gilbert and Sullivan Society began to dwindle as I was becoming more involved in a wider range of musical groups. It was about this time that I joined the Westralian Symphony Orchestra's Choir. I sang with them for about three years, performing "The Messiah" and several other Choral works.
The City of Stirling Mayor presented me with a "Ten Year Gold Service Award" on 20 February 1991. This was for services rendered in entertainment within the Shire of Stirling. Then in 1992 at one of my Concerts in the Wesley Auditorium, I was presented with a plaque from the Cottage Hospice inscribed "In appreciation of your generous support over many years". This presentation was a complete surprise - totally unexpected, but one I felt very proud to receive.
My love of music has lead me to continue to strive to nurture a love for the wonderfully elegant music that people of my era admire and I have enjoyed entertaining with Nell Simmon's Concert Party for about fifteen years and now my own group called the Golden Oldies. We visit Senior Citizens venues, Hospitals and Nursing Homes two or three times a week. On 27 April 1995, Joan and I were both made Life Members of the Cancer Foundation of WA. This was "In recognition of the significant contribution to the work of the Cancer Foundation of Western Australia" that we had made through our humble efforts
After Daphne's death I continued to live alone in Rinaldi Crescent, Karrinyup. I remained involved in the Gilbert & Sullivan Society and I kept up my Morning Concerts. By now I was less involved in the farms and I became more involved entertaining Senior Citizens, comparing and performing in many halls and venues in and around the city. I also joined the Men in Harmony Barbershop Singers in 1988.