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Note: Came to 72,000 acres, "Melrose Plains", Tullamore in 1924 with family from Nyngan. Leases ran out, Bert acquired 4266 acres called Flemington. Badly leaking mitral valve kept Bert out of the war and eventually caused his death. Farmed successfully on "Flemington". Mum loved the ballet. She got into a good show in a big theatre (maybe Her Majestys in Sydney) and had front row seats with Dad. Mum was not so impressed when Dad started snoring loudly! BERTRAM THOMAS WARD. Dad's life by son Tony. Bert was the sixth child of nine born to Paddy and Elizabeth Ward (nee Leighton). Bert was born on 22nd May 1910 in Nyngan, where his parents lived at "Green Camp" until 1923 when they bought "Melrose Plains" and moved to the Tullamore district. Dad's early schooling was at Nyngan and then at Forbes until Intermediate - the old Red Bend where the Convent is now. Dad always said he grew part of the hedge there near the road. He was always quick with Mathematics; knew a lot of quick methods with additions, multiplications, divisions. Bert's father, Paddy, had been in partnership with some of his brothers in the Nyngan area and the family also had country in the Megalong Valley. The partnership was dissolved when Paddy and family moved to Tullamore, his brothers John and Tom took over "Delta" and "Green Camp", respectively. Paddy also owned a property called "Berrilee", Pinnacle on the Canoblas road near Orange. "Melrose Plains" was 25,000 acres freehold and lease country all around making up about 72,000 acres. Norman Gatenby was leasing "Melrose Plains", before Paddy took over. It was owned by Thompson, but it was originally developed by the Touts and there was a post office agency there at one time called 'Toutville'. William Wentworth Bucknell bought Melrose Plains from Touts, but he didn't retain it for very long. In those times, it was the centre of an area where many people worked in those labour intensive days. For example, Paddy Ward employed a bookkeeper full time. The long-time bookkeeper was a Mr Gauchan (spelling unsure-pronounced Gorn). Gus Poirrier, accountant, would come up to "Flemington" to do the books and stay a few days; there was some connection with Jim and Sylvia Thompson and Poirriers. Dad could not sharpen a knife very well and it would be the only time I would hear him swear - a blunt knife WOULD make you swear. Years later, I realised that Dad never had to do any butchering, the workmen would do that - how times have changed. They were the good old days for some. Paddy Ward would not have done much physical work on the farm, just manage with labour cheap compared to wool and stock values. They ran some cattle and a lot of sheep. Dad was the engine driver - the old steam engine at the big woolshed - and was a proficient shearer capable of 40 a run in XB's, although he wouldn't have shorn a great deal. He would have learnt quickly during a shearer's strike, I remember him saying how everbody had to get in and shear one year because of a shearer's strike. The big shearer's strike started as early as the 1890's, the start of the ALP. Dad taught me to shear. They would have had a lot of horses but loved racehorses. Uncle Mick was a top bush jockey and father Paddy rode for many years. Paddy would take "smokies" to Sydney with Rodney Quinn's grandfather (Jack) riding them. Frank Walsh introduced me to old Quinn at Nyngan RSL once and he recalled bringing home a great heap of cash from Sydney once. They probably forget the other times when the reverse would have happened! They bred some cattle (Black Poll); they sometimes ran them at the bottom paddock of "Flemington", although it was known as the horse paddock (4,000 acres!). They railed crossbred lambs to New Zealand Loan agents in Sydney (Dad seemed to know all these agents down there). The agents visited the stations and Wards were known for their hospitality. These Crossbreds were bred with Romney Marsh rams - I suppose there was plenty of men around to pull the boofheaded, big-shouldered lambs when the ewes had trouble lambing (dystocia - a nice euphemism). I believe it was a bad trait of Romneys. The remains of a large cellar are still there at "Melrose Plains", necessary to keep stores, which probably only came every three months in the early days. A billiard room with a full-size table was in a separate shed away from the huge homestead. The homestead has 16 foot ceilings and a magnificent long hall of cypress pine, which was the choice timber out of the area. The homestead was built in 1904 after a fire destroyed the previous homestead. They built two homesteads then (there were two brothers Tout) and a manager's house. There was a white picket fence all around the front of the homestead. There were stables, of course, for the Wards first love and a training track. There was a large meathouse and separator room and a garden down near a close-by dam (possibly a spring there). "Melrose Plains" homestead still stands in beautiful rich myall country with a panoramic view of a large chunk of the original holding. Bert went down to enlist for World War II but failed the medical, instead being examined by a horde of doctors in a darkened room. He had a badly leaking mitral valve in his heart, a Ward family legacy and/or, as Mum thought, he had contracted undiagnosed rheumatic fever as a kid. He also survived peritonitis, in pre-penicillin days, from burst appendix - I'm lucky to be here! The doctors told Bert to go back to the farm and not to lift anything too heavy. He also had stones in the kidney a few times - very painful. Aunty Sylvia said that they all suffered from kidney stones except Aunty Kate and probably didn't drink enough water. One doctor told Dad, after one episode of kidney stones, to drink a beer or two a night to flush things - a good doctor to have! Once he was sent to Sydney on the train to have them seen to, but they had shaken through by the time he arrived in Sydney! Dad never learnt to swim, his brother Fred couldn't swim either. Bert, married Doris May Clements on 26th Oct 1940 and they honeymooned in Victoria, in Melbourne at Spring Carnival time of course, where Old Rowley won the Cup at 100/1. There was a complete silence at Flemington at the finish, Mum recalled, as most were not on it, obviously. Mum first met Dad at the Tullamore railway station. She was coming to nurse an ailing Paddy Ward in his home. After they married, they moved down to 4266 acre "Flemington", which Dad had obtained in the split-up of the family interests and the balloting-out of the lease country. The leases ran out about 1931. Charlie and Cath Laing, Mum and Dad's very good friends and close neighbours, drew a block, as did Arthur McCumstie, who married Bert's sister Ethel; another was Shrecks on "Bonnybrook". At first they lived at "Melrose Plains", but Mum refused to live with her mother-in-law as originally planned in the big, but not big enough house, so they came down to a rabbiter's hut on "Flemington" with bag doors, faith in the future, a war on, rationing, only a few paddocks, with one reliable dam and some debt to pay off. The bank wouldn't lend them money to build a house down by the good dam in the middle of "Flemington". The house on "Flemington" grew with the family, rooms dragged down from somewhere around the old house (Melrose Plains), carpentry help from one of Mum's uncles (Charlie Smith - Margot's father) and Dad was a good carpenter. Another piece was dragged down from "Melrose Plains" to make the cottage for sharefarmers. The years and times came good after the war with the huge spike in wool prices. Dad and Mum had 1500 mixed Merino sheep to start with and had to do some improvements to hold "Flemington". There was a lot of fencing done, dam sinking, clearing timber to grow wheat. The original sheep were Merinos, but I don't know what bloodline - most probably a medium/fine Peppin type. Uncle Arthur (Dad's brother-in-law) used to sell Dad old show rams - Arthur had a successful Haddon Rig stud, purer than Haddon Rig, he used to say. Arthur liked dense-wooled sheep that you could almost play a tune on like a drum, consequently they had wrinkles on their wrinkles and big neck folds. They were not the easiest to shear and used to be affected by seed badly some years and flies, especially before mulesing was introduced, were pretty bad some years. Nevertheless, they had very nice fine wool. Dad never mulesed until 1968, after I got home from Ag College. We had a bad fly wave in the Spring of 1966, the year I was home after High School. We seemed to be treating flyblown lambs all the time - no jetting plant either - breech and body strike. Dad rode horses around the farm (in earlier days) - he often rode a half-wild (it seemed to me as a kid), pig-rooting ex-race mare. He bought a Tea 20 Ferguson tractor in the 50's and used to go mustering on that sometimes. I can remember a black Vanguard car before the first Holden Dad had. It used to take a full 2 hours to get home from Parkes - 65 miles, all gravel. The last car he had was a Brougham - Holden, forerunner of the Statesman, after a big wheat year in 1968/69. There was a Ford Customline too, after 1956 (another good year); it was dark green and I can remember him driving it home the first time, very proudly. That's the way it was with possessions then, none of this credit business. For a time, Dad would drive his sheep up to Melrose to shear and crutch, later Charlie Laing built a shed and Dad shore there a few times and finally in 1957, after a bumper year, Dad built a woolshed. Mervyn Day, sharefarmer, built most of it, including welding the roof trusses; he built an attachment for the Fergy to lift the tall ironbark posts of the shed, with a platform on top - 20 feet high. Merv fell from the top one day and, cat-like, landed upright and only hurt the bottom of his feet for a few days - bit lucky! Fortunately, for wheat-growing, the land was fertile and the timber on Flemington was mostly dead and fairly sparse - the Chinese had come through after the gold rush and "rung out" this country including a lot of cypress (I'm still picking up pine stumps). Dad took on sharefarmers as he was told not to overdo lifting and there was a lot of that with cockeying in those days. Dad and Mum were fortunate from the start with sharefarmers. Jim Lander was the first to grow wheat here in the 40's. But, I remember well from the early/mid 50's Stan and then Mervyn Day clearing with Dad and some help from others (Ross Little was one here for a while clearing and fencing and Donald Harvey). They grew very good crops on the fresh country. Later Ken Gordon was excellent in the early 60's and then Jim & Ian McCarron in the late 60's did very well. Thompsons sharefarmed here too for a couple of years in the early/mid 60's and they were the first to crop the 600 acre back paddock after they cleared it. One morning Dad found Mervyn Day asleep on the Chamberlain which had stalled when he failed to negotiate an old dead tree; he had fallen asleep because he had been driving so long and hadn't even woken up when the tractor hit the tree! Stan Day was such a perfectionist, you could always see straight up and down the furrows. He lived in the cottage for years, mainly on tinned food it seemed to me, and I can remember him coming down to play cards at night. He would drive the Chamberlain up to the paddock at exactly 6AM every morning, back for lunch at exactly 12 and knock off at exactly 6PM. Stan, when he left this area, did a bit of cockeying on the little pieces of land he bought and cleared, between the railway and Newell Highway, on the Parkes side of Forbes. He then retired to South Australia. Merv sharefarmed up north for a while. Mervyn Day's family lived on a farm not far from Forbes on the Gunning Gap Road. Stan was his uncle and he came from South Australia. With the sharefarmers on 50%, we were responsible for half the carting, so Dad bought a Bedford truck in 1963/64 - and carted our share to the silos. It only had the small petrol motor, quite slow. We took 4 tonnes of wool to Sydney once in the Bedford - Geoff was coming home from Uni, not long married and to make it worthwhile we took wool down (only four tons) and brought their furniture home. I drove to Lithgow and was passed innumerable times, but the 13 miles the other side of Lithgow apparently took an hour! Geoff and Anne met Dad and I at Lithgow and I brought Anne home and Dad and Geoff went on to Sydney to deliver the wool and pick up the furniture. They had a flat at Summerhill, I think. Dad was elected a councillor on the Lachlan Shire in the early 70's and enjoyed it. Times were very tight on the land and we had bad droughts too in the early 70's; the Ratepayers Association was formed and a majority of candidates gained control. The rates went DOWN! Dad's health started to fail around those early 1970's. They decided to move to Forbes about 1974. His troublesome heart valve wasn't going to keep operating indefinitely. I often drove him to Forbes for blood count tests. So Dad and Mum decided to get the best doctor to replace the mitral valve while his health was still reasonable, the doctors told him it would not be too long before the valve weakened, he wouldn't live too long otherwise and wouldn't have much quality of life. This valve replacement operation was a comparatively new one, but a major one in opening up the chest and getting at the valve; these days it has been perfected. I remember, after the operation, Dad saying that he didn't want to go through that again; he had a huge scar up the middle of his chest and he never regained a healthy look; he was very thin. Dr Harry Windsor, Dr Shanahan and Dr Victor Chang at St Vincent's had operated and for a time it was successful (3 or 4 months?), but the heart area that had given him so much trouble failed. The doctors were not certain if it was the muscle around the valve that failed or rejection. Dad became quite ill and he was taken by air ambulance to St Vincent's where he had another failure or attack and died on the table during an emergency operation by Dr Windsor. The last I saw of Dad was at Forbes and then Parkes airport and I remember telling him that when they got him down to St Vincent's, they would fix him up. I know I was believing they could but Ethel, Arthur, Harold and Kate (Dad's sisters and brothers-in-law) seemed to know his time was up. They told me at Forbes that day that Dad was in serious trouble. So, on 30th November 1975, my father passed away, only 65. He is buried at Forbes, his brother Mick is in the next row. In his comparatively short lifetime, Dad saw a huge numbers of changes; from horses to fast cars; Tiger Moths to supersonic jets and space travel; horse-drawn machinery to broadacre farming with 4 wheel drive tractors; easy living on a large property to "the cost-price squeeze"; droughts; floods; World Wars; the Depression. He was probably the oldest altar boy at Fifield Church (over 40). He was a fair cricketer; he used to open the batting for Boona and/or Kelvin Grove - he said he used to get too nervous if he had to bat any lower; got a 50 once. Dad was a very good billiards player in the old days and I never realised he had a lazy eye for a long time because he had a real good eye for shooting rabbits - I guess the good eye became better to compensate. Played fair tennis too at Kelvin Grove, Mum (who was very good) and Dad played first mixed pair a bit (tennis was a major sport then, as people couldn't travel very far; clubs had started up everywhere according to how far your horses would comfortably take you). He loved playing bowls when he got older and played up to 6 days a week on holidays at Mollymook. He played bowls at Tullamore for many years - Pennants, Championships and social. He was Vice-President there for a while. They had plans to build on a block they owned in Tallwood Avenue, Mollymook, on the South Coast between Milton and Ulladulla. Mum and Dad never travelled overseas; Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide being about the limit. Some doctor told Dad to have a can of beer each night - extra liquid to flush his kidneys. Later in life, he reckoned beer bloated him and he developed a taste for whiskey, but never a heavy drinker to my knowledge, although one day Dad was sitting on the verandah and looked pretty crook when I was fairly young. I tried to comfort Dad and ask him what was the trouble, but couldn't work out why, so I found Mum and told her that Dad was sick. Mum just said, "It serves him right!" He was just home from town and much later, I worked out he had had a bit too much to drink! Dad was enjoying retired life and his grandkids, it's a pity he didn't have a few more years; I for one would have liked to ask him more about the old days and his parents, I never knew.
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