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MR ROY DOUST
SHIRE OF BRIDGETOWN-GREENBUSHES
ORAL HSTORY PROJECT
BICENTENNIAL HERITAGE PROGRAMME
An interview with
Mr Roy Doust
A member of a pioneer family in the Bridgetown area
1981
Conducted by Mrs F Mabey
The original tape forms part of the Bridgetown High School Collection
Reference No OH18
1 x 60 minute tape
Verbatim transcript
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MR ROY DOUST
NOTES TO THE READER
Readers of this Oral History Memoir should bear in mind that it is a verbatim
transcript of the spoken word and reflects the informal conversational style that is
inherent in such historical sources. The Bridgetown-Greenbushes Shire is not
responsible for the factual accuracy of the memoir, not for the views expressed
there-in, these are for the reader to judge.
Aboriginal pronunciations are phonetic as much as possible. In this history, Roy
Doust spells out ‘G-u-g-i-l-u-p’, but the pronunciation is ‘Gugiliup’ all the way
through. In these oral histories, there have been various spellings of Winnijup
(Winnejup) and Wilgarup (Wilgarrup). For consistency we have used ‘Winnijup’,
and ‘Wilgarup’, as recorded on current (2008) maps. What we know as gilgies,
Roy Doust calls ‘googlies’.
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MR ROY DOUST
Narrator
Roy Doust
Interviewer
Mrs F Mabety
Place
Probably “Moonya Lodge”, Ipsen Street, Manjimup
Date
PERSONAL DATA
Roy Doust born 12 March 1890 at Bridgetown
PARENTS
Susan Doust (nee Rummer) born 8 May 1859 in England
Alfred Doust born 9 November 1853 at Newcastle (now
Toodyay), Western Australia
BROTHERS AND
SISTERS
Ida born 2/2/1881 in Bridgetown
Mena born 16/10/1882 in Bridgetown
William born 12/7/1884 in Bridgetown
Edith born 10/5/1886 in Bridgetown
Esther born 1/5/1888 in Bridgetown
Leonard born 28/3/1892 in Bridgetown
Nelmore born 10/9/1894 in Bridgetown
Keith born 18/9/1902 in Bridgetown
Victor (Bob) born 7/10/1905 in Bridgetown
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MR ROY DOUST
SYNOPSIS
SIDE A
Indigenous words and pronunciations … the naming of Geegeelup
Employment, native babies
Moulton, the first policeman in Bridgetown
Brockmans of the Warren
Blechynden brothers arriving in Bridgetown
Native food trapping .. snake, gilgies
Tribe disappearing
Ticket-of-leave settlers
Young convicts - innocence
SIDE B
Young convict – cont.
Thomas Muir of Deeside
‘Bella Vista’ native (Aboriginal) burial site – confirmation,
Winnijup native camp site, ash of cooking sites.
Native (Aboriginal / Indigenous) cooking methods
Goods to and from Bunbury, Blechynden and Doust
Naming of Bridgetown
Tape stops – taped over by 1980’s Top ten music accidentally
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MR ROY DOUST
INTRODUCTION
Mr Roy Doust, a member of a pioneer farming family in the Winnijup area,
Bridgetown, is interviewed by Mrs F Mabey. Mr Doust was born in Bridgetown in
1890 and spent his life in the area. He was manager of the Blackwood Times for
some years and was interested in the history and development of Bridgetown.
Verbatim Transcript
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MR ROY DOUST
SIDE A
RD
Just to gather the correct native pronunciation, in many respects, to dig up
two of my old pals, school day pals, ‘Nookum’ and ‘Yabbie’, two jet black
laddies, who with many other, with a few other white boys, there were not
many of us in the district in those days – I think the total school was about
fourteen or fifteen, including blacks – and many a many a time, we went to
this (‘Joogiliaup’) Gully, (spells) ‘G_u_g_i_l_u_p’, ‘Joogiliup’, now called
‘Geegeelup’ Brook. Well Geegeelup was called by (unintelligible) and
Carey no doubt from gilgies, the common pronunciation for the small
crayfish that’s caught in fresh waters, but the natives had no other name
for it but “gilgies” and they called the creek ‘Gugilup’. I want to say this,
that not only did John Blechynden, the late John Blechynden, but Deeside
boss (that was a common name for Thomas Muir of Deeside) who could
speak the native language fluently, and whilst John Blechynden was not
as forward in the native language as (Deeside boss) he did know a great
percentage of it. Now in those days when I was a kid, Geegeelup Brook
was as dry as a bone right through the summer. There was no water of
any description. Everybody had to go to the (Blackwood) River for water
or put down a well. And once the water started to run gilgies came up
from everywhere, from mud holes that they had buried themselves in and
locked themselves in with water and mud. Even in those days you could
go into a dry patch of country, even a mile away from a gully or a swamp
or anything like that, and you’d find a heap of rubble, or mud and sand and
muck all on the top of the ground and you’d say, “Hello, there’s a gilgie,
there be gilgies down below.” All you had to do was rip away all the old
stuff and dog down and you’d find that gilgie still holding water in the mud
bank, and I’ve hunted with the natives over those areas, not only for
gilgies, but for other means of, er, small potatoes and things like that. I
call them potatoes, but they have another name. These, as I’ve mentioned
before were checked up with Thomas Muir of Deeside and John
Blechynden of Bridgetown, and they were definitely certain that the correct
name of the gully was “Gugilup” Brook.
Now, another name that’s common in Bridgetown is ‘Mattamattup’, which
is a small area on the south eastern section of Bridgetown. Well, I took
that to John Blechyden and I questioned it with John. I said, “What is the
meaning of “Mattamattup”? That’s purely a lip pronunciation, and there’s
no guttural sound in that.” He said, “Look here, laddie,” and I was only a
boy, he said, “’Mattamattup’ is ‘Martamarta’”, and I said, “Well what does
it mean?” He said, “The extraordinary large shin bone of a kangaroo.”
Well, I checked that up and that was correct.
The next one I checked with him was ‘Woora woora ninny’. Barry
Johnston calls his property ‘Warraninny’ – well you know that’s not a
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MR ROY DOUST
native name immediately you see on it, so I took that to them and they
said, ‘woora ninna’ and I said, “Well, what is the meaning of ‘woora ninna’
… (blank) ninna , I said, “Yes, I know it well, been there right from when I
was a kid.” “Well,” he said, “there’s huge rocks there with really perfectly,
almost perfectly formed round bored holes and right through summer they
hold water. Well I can see an old native, leader of the tribe, probably,
gone there in daylight lookin’ for food, tucker of all sorts, and,” he said, “he
seen a doe kangaroo sitting on the other side of that water just brushing
herself down, combing out anything she wanted to and so on, with a little
joey in her pouch, and,” he said, “well he turned around and gave it the
name of ‘woora ninna’. That’s just the native way of pegging it out, you
see?” “Well,” he said, “come further home with me, er, Corbalup – on the
map they call it ‘Corbalup’, you’ve heard of ‘Corbalup’ I suppose,” he said,
and I said, “I’ve always heard it called ‘Corbarlup’ not by Thomas Muir of
Deeside – he calls it ‘Cobblerdup’, ‘Cobblerdup’. So I went and asked old
Tom Muir, when I saw him, which wasn’t very often, but when I did, I saw
him to ask him, and he said, “Laddie, if you have to learn the language,”
he said, “‘Cobberdup’ means a belly full of duck. Now, Cobberdup itself is
a big swamp, a big swamp, nearly verging on a lake, but,” he said, “all
around it are a number of small swamps and the native knew as well as
anybody that at certain times of the year the duck would leave the little
swamp to go to the big swamp, or vice versa, and he said if ever you’ve
seen little ducks travelling behind mother duck, they’d travel in a line, one
behind the other, and he said of course the natives knew that and knew all
their movements, and they would just pounce on the little ducks he said,
take no notice of the old mother duck because they kick up such a fuss
with an apparent broken wings or legs and everything else, and trying to
call you away from the young, same as a male emu will do with the chicks.
They will call you away and then run off leaving you looking silly. And he
said that’s why they go there, and get a belly full of duck, so they called it
‘cobber-la-dup’ and he said so-on right through. Well, there’s numerous
others if you had time to run over them and think and work them out, but
another thing, they were never quite satisfied on ‘Wilgarup’, but you
couldn’t get out of them ‘Wilgarup’, it was ‘Woolgr’up’. You see the
pronunciation with the natives?
FM
Yes, yes.
RD
They were coarse, all ‘gup’ and all of those, same, same as a possum,
‘kumul’ …. k-u-m-u-l, they don’t spell it that way, that’s the correct spelling
in my way of the native pronunciation, koomul, the possum, and so it goes
on, no end of it in the end, but see there’s no-one now, I couldn’t do it
myself, because my memory is not good enough to remember. And you
can imagine playing with native children, all this sort of thing, you … I
know some of their bad language too, you know, because (laughter) … do
you mind me telling you this story, because ….
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MR ROY DOUST
FM
No, I’m a big girl now.
RD
On one occasion, not one occasion, but many occasions, my mother used
to, when a party of ..um a tribe would come along, couple of women would
sing(?) around and ask about doing some washing … you see, all they
wanted was tobacco, they called it ‘bacca’, bacca, flour, sugar, eggs, a bit
of butter, something like that you see. Well my mother would often give
them employment you know, carry the water with buckets, had to carry it
from the well in those days, and they used to carry on their back, what
they call ‘kookas’, they called it ‘kooka’, it was mostly made of brush skins
or kangaroo skin, but mostly brush skins with the baby ones. where they
put the picaninnies in, had the fur on the inside, and they had two straps
across their shoulder and these straps were made from just ordinary
green hide from the kangaroo skins or brush skin or whatever it was, and
they carried their picanninies that way, you see, and they’d start washing
and they might have a picaninny each, or only one probably, but we were
only kids, five or six possibly, I don’t remember. We’d come along and see
their kookas lying there, you know, and of course kid-like, the little black
kid lying inside of it, the girl or whatever, he’d stick his head out, you know,
and then back into the bag, into the kooka, and then they wouldn’t come
out then, so we’d go away and sharpen up a bit of a stick, (laughs) and
look for where their bottom was, and give it a poke, you know. Well I got
used to what the gin’d say, you know, a bit of bad language as well as we
do, and we’d rush away, you know.
But let me tell you another native, well, I can tell you dozens of native
stories, and really good episodes too.
Now the first policeman in Bridgetown was, er, Abraham Moulton, and he
was loaded up at Fremantle in a bullock wagon with his wife and family
and sent out for the Blackwood Police Station, which was before it was
called Bridgetown, and its .. the station was where the water supply officer
lives now just over the river from the old bridges there, right close up to
the road there that comes to Manjimup, and they built a big room that was
kitchen, living, dining room, everything, of stone, built by convicts or ticketof-leave men, and really good stone masons and bricklayers they were
too, and on the end was a store house, because in those days you wanted
a decent store house because when you ordered flour, you never ordered
anything under a ton, sugar – three or four bags and salt, bags of salt and
so on like that, because it had to be carted from Bunbury by wagon, and
on the end there was one cell. They didn’t have iron bars for the windows
but they had 3”x2” pit sawn timber. Well, when you arrive there the
Gugilup, they called themselves the Gugilup tribe, because they lived on
these gilgies right through the year, right through the winter, kangaroos
and possums, mostly possums, they’re easy to get, they’re in thousands,
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MR ROY DOUST
er amongst the goods and chattels that were given to Moulton was a
wheelbarrow, and when he landed at the Blackwood with the wheelbarrow
and all the rest of the things, there were between two or three hundred
native camps along the river at that stage, and I want to point out at this
stage too, that they say “Oh that was a native camp, this was a native
camp, that was a native camp, they always camped here”. Well, they
didn’t, they had no knowledge of health, hygiene or anything else, and you
can imagine, you put down two or three hundred natives, a couple of
hundred at least, camping in a certain area, they … You couldn’t live in a
place after a certain time, you can imagine yourself what it’d be like, they
just had to shift on to another camp. Well, they were camped at that stage
on the Blackwood River not far from where the bowling green is now.
Well, the natives would spend hours wheeling this barrow about, you
know, thoroughly enjoying it, giving one another a ride in it, and all that
sort of thing. Well, one chap apparently got sleeping sickness, one of the
natives. Moulton never made any record, I read his records, unfortunately
destroyed now by white ants at the old Police Station, well, and he was my
mother’s uncle, so I saw a lot of him in that respect. Well, he got sleeping
sickness, he was dead, ‘gengi-gengi’ … ‘devil-devil’, so he realized
immediately that he would be classified as ‘gengi-gengi’ if he … I got a
little bit past myself. He had a sleeping sickness, and the natives came
over and asked Moulton, the Constable, to let them have the wheelbarrow
so they could (they explained to him in their own lingo) so they could
wheel him away on wheels like they’d seen a white man wheeled away
and buried on a buggy or spring cart or whatever it was, you see. That’s
what they wanted to do, but unfortunately for the gengi-gengi, the
wheelbarrow going over rough stones, stick and goodness knows what, on
his way to the burial ground, he woke up. Well immediately he woke up,
he rushed back to the Police Station and asked to be locked up because
he knew that he would be killed, because natives never went back on the
tribal customs. If that man had to die, or did die and came up like that, no
good, he had to be killed. So, Moulton realized, he knew enough about it
to know that they would kill him if he didn’t lock him up, so he locked him
up, but this poor beggar after a week or two, and by the way, all the
natives had cleared out in the meantime, there wasn’t a native to be seen,
they’d all gone, gone bush or gone somewhere, but not a native could be
seen. He came back, after a few days or a few weeks, or whatever it
might have been, I’ve forgotten the time now, he got very, very tired of
being locked up all the time and only coming out and sitting down on a box
outside the cell, so in the end they used to drag him, Moulton or some of
the girls or some of his sons would drag him wood and leave it right
outside the cell and he would chop it up. He enjoyed that. But he got a
little bit venturesome as weeks went by and he would go to the bush and
get a bit of stick or a lump of wood and bring that back and chop it up.
And then one day, they suddenly missed him, and there’s no doubt about
it, all they found were some blood spots, just in the bush away from the
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MR ROY DOUST
cell, not very far away, and realized, as soon as Moulton saw it, he
happened to look up and saw a smoke signal and within a day or two
natives came in from everywhere and held a big corroboree and he never
found out really what happened to the man.
But let me give you another episode of the native days, I don’t know
whether you’re interested. Brockmans, who were married in Busselton,
were the first settlers on the Warren River, right down there below
Pemberton, and they used to travel from Busselton to their home on the
Warren River in a spring cart and horse, and on one trip Mrs Brockman
looked up, I got this from his eldest son, the late Ted Brockman who died
at 95 some years ago, looked up and she saw a baby … a native, a boy,
ooh, just a few days old or whatever it might have been, just quite a
newborn baby, lying on the side of the road and she said, “Good heavens,
they’ve forgotten the baby.” And they pulled up and Brockman got out and
she got out and had a look at it, she picked it up, ooh, she didn’t know
what … she looked down and saw a broken spear and woomera and a
few other odds and ends about you know and an old bone or two and that
sort of thing, and he said, “Look, see those things, they’ve put him there to
die … it’s no good saving him, because they’ll only get him in the end.”
And she said, “Well, I … I just can’t leave a baby like that to die,” she said,
“I just can’t do it and I won’t do it.” So he said, “Well, there’s no good
arguing the point with you, you won’t listen, but there you are, you’re going
to lose the baby. You might have to keep him for twelve months or two or
three years, you see.” They kept that baby for eleven years before the
natives got him, but they got him in the end. So that will give you some
idea of … put you in about the early stages of Bridgetown.
The Blechynden brothers, John and Walter, in their respective ages,
Walter was the youngest of the two, they left Beverley where they were
farming for the simple reason that they were sick and tired of the stock
getting out of their property by the fences … tree falling on the fences, or
the fences being broken and going in to poison country and losing their
stock. So they asked some natives in that area, Great Southern, where
they could find country with no poison, so the natives said, “oh, we tell
you,” you see, so they took him and showed him the Blackwood River, the
tributaries to the Blackwood River “……(missing)……………” unless we
go down’n meet ‘em first and make arrangements,” you see, so they made
up their minds that they were going to go, so they set off, started from the
Williams, followed the tributary until they came to the Blackwood, and
instead of followed the Blackwood, and instead of following the course
around (unintelligible) and wasting miles and miles, they used to get on
the ridges, hilltops or whatever they could, and sight the best .. what they
considered the river would come out. Well it showed that Walter was a
better judge of that than John, and they saved miles and miles on that.
They lived on the country, all they carried with them was a muzzle loading
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MR ROY DOUST
gun and shot, balls, ammunition, and that was the main weight they
carried. And matches of course, they carried plenty of matches, and the
late Walter Blechynden told me on one occasion that he … they were sick
of living on possums and kangaroo and nothing else practically, a few
roots and bardies and things like that, you know, that the natives would
eat, so they thought, “Dash it, we’ll waste a cartridge on a duck. So they
shot a duck, and he said they cooked it in all ways, fried it in a billycan,
cooked some of it in a billycan, some of it in ashes and that, but he said
they’d made the mistake of shooting the duck that came out of Noah’s Ark.
Now they came right through poison country, even at Dinninup, through
Dinninup, Boyup Brook, almost poison right down to Boyup, and until they
got to Bridgetown when they realized they were out of poison country, and
that’s why they settled on the Blackwood then, which was later called
Bridgetown, but was known then as Blackwood. They made their way
back through Bunbury and got the requirements and started to farm there,
but Walter Blechynden came on and started Wilgarup, ‘Woolgr’p’, for
Robert Rose. He was the old uncle of the late JC Rose who was
Chairman of the Warren Road Board for years, and my dad was fourteen
when Walter Blechynden was eighteen when they took over the station,
only a small area, but quite a bit of country taken up at one pound, one
pound per thousand acres, leasehold.
The Gugilup Tribe got very, very small in the end, down to I suppose
about twenty to twenty five at the outside, and the last time I saw them in
line, and they always travelled in line, with the leader, a man, an old white
haired man named ‘Bulliup’ and Bulliup was leading the tribe …. Well the
late Amos Doust who was killed in Gallipoli and a brother of mine and
myself, we’d been out in the bush, and whilst we were there we’d seen a
big snake go down a hole with about six or eight inches of his tail sticking
out, couldn’t get any further down the hole apparently, so one of them
plucked up courage and they pulled, you know, pulled the tail off, quite
easy, and so we thought, they decided it’d be best to put rocks on him and
kill him that way, let him die because he couldn’t get out. So we put a
heap of rocks on top of him and went down to the road, sure enough the
remains of the tribe came along on their way from Balingup and we told
Bulliup about the snake and all the men travelled in front of the tribe, and
then the gins and then the picaninnies and usually a fire-bearer was at the
back. Nearly always a woman, too, and she carried a red gum branch or
a blackboy butt, kept it alight by swinging it occasionally so they wouldn’t
have to make …. you know they usually made another fire when they got
to the camping ground, and that’s what they did when they were travelling
like that. Anyway, we told him about the dugite, they didn’t call it a snake,
it was a ‘dugite’, ‘doogite’, …. tongue pronunciation, ‘doo’, ‘doogite,
(unintelligible). And I never saw the sense of it, for years and years
afterwards, you know, and I can see the old native now, you know, they
took all the stones away and took a lot of other muck away till he could get
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MR ROY DOUST
a good grip of the snake, you see, and when he, when he gripped, he said
you pullem, pullem, pullem,
let him go, pullem, (laughs) it was
instantaneous. He pulled that snake like he was a bit of elastic and let him
go quick, see and apparently the snake lost scale hold, scales, pulled the
old snake out, hit him with a kookarim, put him in a bag and took him
away. I can see that old nigger now, you know, as much as to say, “White
boy, nothing up top.” (laughs)
Gilgies in the rivers, well they had their own system of catching them.
Now at the edge, the end of all the gullies in those days was a little potato
arrangement with a white flower, very nice to eat, not nice to eat, but you
acquire a taste for it before you could eat it, enjoy it. But we’d go after
those and in addition there was a stringy bark which was all over, since
killed out. Well, that stringy bark the natives used for all sorts of things,
tying the same as we would use a string. Now if they were catching
gilgies in deep waters, say you couldn’t reach them with your arm or
anything like that, they would get a lump of what they called spear wood in
the green stage, and if they had a knife or if they had to do it with a cutting
stone, didn’t make much difference, they would sharpen up a bit on the
end and then split it, down to six or eight inches, then they would tie this
stringy bark around it and make it tight, and they would take a little any
wad of stick or stone or anything, and put it there and open it something
like that, you see, to give you a ‘V’. And they would then tie that in there
you see so it couldn’t fall out, and they’d take this long spear out into the
water, you know, and see the gilgie like that and let it down quietly and
then he was locked in there, you see, it would squeeze him in and that’s
how you used to get any amount of marron, but, er, cobbler and things like
that, natives would tell you that if you ever wanted to get cobbler go to the
head of the pool, if you want marron go to the end. That’s what they
would always do.
But then another thing I’ve never …, I’ve seen them, but not in their
natural state, my dad explained it all to me and he had seen the natives
operate them. They used to be, kangaroos were very plentiful in those
days, like the possums, or the kumuls as we would call them, they would,
um, have pads all over the place, all over the country, would be kangaroo
or possum pads, and possum pads were different altogether from the
others because possums would run along a log where possible and then
down on the ground and up onto another log, and run along the log like
that, you see? Well the natives would, instead of, they were never
energetic enough to chase the kangaroo down unless he had about a
dozen dingoes, you know, dingo bred dogs. They would dig a trench
about the width of a three-quarter grown kangaroo, in width, at the top, but
they would taper it off to nothing at the bottom and make it about three
feet deep, it would take a long while, you know, but they used what they
called a ‘kylie’ to do it with. Well when they’d finished that, they’d put it
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MR ROY DOUST
right down on a pad, with a couple of trees close up each side of it, or
something like that, you see, couple of big trees, where the natives could
plant around each tree, and then they would put twigs across it and then
on top of that they would put leaves, or bark, and then gradually put soil
back on it, to make it look like the path. Dad said that when they’d
finished the job it looked just like the path, you know, and the natives then
would detail three or four chaps, or a couple of chaps round each tree and
then they’d get the tribe and round up a mob of kangaroos and (chase)
them down on to these pads and shoo ‘em into these pits, before they had
a chance to get out, of course, the natives ‘d got them.
They had a convict gang working on the Bunbury / Bridgetown road, just
prior to the railways of course, it was when they were making up the road,
and they got as far as Padbury’s Hill, that’s between Balingup and where
Greenbushes is now, and were working there when the government
decided they would call the convicts. They had built the road right up,
halfway up Padbury’s Hill at that stage, but a lot of those people who were
given tickets-of-leave immediately then came on to Bridgetown to settle
down, and some of them were the finest type of people you would wish to
meet, and I knew many of them, of course. I was only a kid, but I worked
with a lot of them too … on farms, I used to do a lot of farm work.
Just let me tell you a story, this is worth recording, to give you some
illustration of the hardships and the reasons why men, and women were
sent to Australia as convicts. One man in particular, we’ll call him ‘Country
Bill’, because he was known by that name, never mind what his other
name was, but ‘Country Bill’. Well, he … ‘Country Bill’ was a real white
man. If he could do you a good turn, he did it, but he’d never do you a
bad one. I worked with him as a shearer and a general farm worker …. he
worked for my father off and on for years and I never found him to do a
bad turn to anybody. Now Bill, and another eleven year old boy as well as
a number of children younger than he, and the other boy, were living in a
county in England and they were playing on a dam which supplied the
village with water in the summertime, but the rains were then starting to
fall and these kiddies were playing on the dam and it had recently started
to overflow, and one child apparently picked up some leaves or something
or other and started to float it out and said, “Here, come and watch my
ship. You can’t get a ship to beat this,” you see? So they were all
accused of ………end of Side A.
There seems to be a bit of a gap between the end of Side A and beginning
of Side B.
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MR ROY DOUST
SIDE B
RD
they could make them travel faster, and in the end Bill and the other
eleven year old boy decided that they were going to beat the other kids, so
they picked up bits of stick, heavy stick and so on, bits of wood or
whatever, you know, and they scraped further in along the outlet over to
the bank, and eventually made a nice little channel and their boats flowed
through without any trouble at all and, but he said after a certain amount of
time, naturally they got a bit tired of that and away they went. But during
the night a storm apparently came up and overflowed and the channel got
washed out and eventually washed the bank away, so the village lost its
supply of water for the summer. Well the police investigated and they
picked out Bill and the other boy, the two eldest, and Bill was sent to
Western Australia and the other boy was sent to the Eastern States. They
never met again. But when he arrived at Fremantle, he was then twelve,
and my mother’s father, Captain Rummer, and I’ve looked up that on the
records, he couldn’t understand, or didn’t know what to do with a boy of
eleven amongst other ages, some of them really wasn’t bad prisoners, but
he didn’t want to put a boy that age ……. it worried him so much, so he
sent a message to Padburys at Guildford, who were running properties at
Guildford then, and asked could they take on a boy of twelve and put him
on as a shepherd or something like that, and Padburys took Bill as a
shepherd, and he started with them and after a few years they transferred
to Balingup and Bill came to Balingup and was shepherding sheep at
Balingup for a long, long time. And then Padbury came down and said,
“Well, I’m going to shift you down to the Blackwood where Blechyndens
have started to live.” So he shifted him down to the Blackwood and he
camped where the present tennis courts are at Bridgetown today, and
that’s where … he worked there for over eighteen months shepherding
sheep all around Bridgetown.
Another interesting point about that tennis court area is the first surveyor
who surveyed the railways from Bunbury to Bridgetown crossed the
Geegeelup Brook above Geegeelup ….that’s old Geegeelup home, Henry
Doust’s home, belongs to Charlie Williamses, Alfred Doust and they
surveyed the railway station where the tennis court is today. But, you
know, everybody complained bitterly about it .. not everybody, because
there were only a few settlers then, but they all complained bitterly about it
and as a result they sent another surveyor by the name of Webb and he
surveyed it on its present stand.
FM
Where does the Geegeelup Creek actually start, do you …?
RD
Oh, right up near Hester Siding.
FM
Hmm, thought it probably was …..
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MR ROY DOUST
RD
That way, and then out the other way beyond the golf links, and then
there’s tributaries running in all over the place then, in small areas …
FM
Now someone mentioned, now who was it I was talking to, oh, I can’t
remember who it was, someone spoke about an Aboriginal burial site out
at Reg Hester’s place there,
RD
Mmm, ‘Bella Vista’
FM
Is that so? In your …
RD
Ooh yes, putting down the foundations, my brother-in-law, Paul Bailey,
built that house, and my sister, of course, she knew about it, afterwards
…. she didn’t know for a long time … they dug up a skeleton. They
…they…see, the natives would not bury where the ground was hard, they
had no digging utensils properly, and they’d only dig deep enough to cover
the man’s head by about a foot, and they sit him up in the grave, you
know, and um, they struck one or two skeletons there in all, and um,
people, people in the district like the old people like my dad knew it was a
burying ground just before they started. He told them that and they said,
“Oh, blow it,” and they went ahead with it. So, if you dig anywhere round
there, you’d find … but, oh I could show you lots of niggers graves, but,
oh, you wouldn’t know what they were now.
FM
Oh, it was just talking about these young fellows that came down,
someone mentioned that ‘Bella Vista’ had been an old burial ground, but
um …….
RD
Yes, but I’d never …. unfortunately I was breaking up some country once
at Winnijup, many years ago, on a place near Doust’s, that’s just sold,
‘Co……?’, and of course I dug any amount of ashes, (something) ashes
that had been used for years and years. You see, with the natives, mind
you, they could cook a possum or anything like that without any trouble at
all, but of course they never cooked them like a white man would cook
them, they .. they liked plenty of blood in them. For instance, they’d take a
kumul, and sometimes take the stomach out, of course, or wouldn’t
bother, and they would put it into ashes, you know, the ashes, cooking
year after year after year in the same spot, coming back all the time,
backwards and forwards, when a place cleaned up a bit, they’d come back
to it, stop there. You can imagine what it was like , they’d put a really
good fire on, you know, and then they’d put this kumul, or half a dozen or
more fur and all, just as they were, and when they came out, they were jet
black, horrible looking mess, but all you had to do was peel them like you
peel a potato, and they were snow white and good eating. And with a
kangaroo, they would wrap the skin around … and cook it the same way.
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MR ROY DOUST
You could see the little native children, you know, eating the, eating the
kumul and kangaroo and that and blood running all down their faces.
Well, I suppose (unintelligible)
RD
… a good story when he’s telling it, you know, at different times you can
relate something to him, and he came in once and he had been to Albany
and back. He used to go from Deeside to Albany or from Deeside to
Bridgetown, you see. When they wanted a holiday, they’d go to Albany,
and whilst he was in Albany, he had a lot of half-castes and natives
working for him, you know, periodically, never had any of them
permanently that I know of, but they worked periodically for him at different
times. And while he was in Albany a fellow asked him for a job, and they
used to travel by horse and buggies and wagon and horse in those days,
and he wanted a job. He said, “I’m a rough carpenter, I’m alright as a
carpenter, you see,” he said, “but I must have a job and get away from the
drink,” so Tommy says, “Righto, get on the wagon and come back with me
to Deeside.” So he came back to Deeside and he was cross-eyed, he
was very cross-eyed indeed and next morning he said to him, “Well, I can’t
give you anything of a carpentry job now,” he said, but, he said, ”Look
here, I want to stake those vines up …. see those vines up there?” he
said, he said, “the stakes are all ready,” he said, “’fraid the natives will
make a mess of it,” he said, “you get three or four of those natives and
take them over with you, put those stakes in around the vines,” showed
him, told him what he wanted done. So away he went, he got three
natives, and away they went over there, the natives looked at him, they’d
never seen a cross-eyed man before, and he said to one chap, “Hey,
come on, Johnny,” he said, “hold the stake, I’ll drive it in. You keep it
upright, now.” The native looked up at him, you know, and said, “Ooh,
ooh, ooh, you know where you’re lookin’ ?” He said, “Of course, you silly
black fool.” (Laughter) He said, “Well you hold the stake yourself.”
(Laughter)
About Thomas Muir. Now Thomas Muir was one of the first to travel from
Albany to Eucla, by horses. He took their own shoes with him to re-shoe
the horses, did the job right through, and travelled on the land. He was an
unusual bushman. I remember on one occasion that my brother and a
cousin went with him to the coast with cattle, and this was the very early
days of settlement. They took with them what was known in those days as
a ‘pea’ rifle, now known as a .22, but it was a larger calibre than the .22.
Naturally being young boys they were anxious to shoot everything they
could see that could fly or run, and Thomas Muir point blank refused to
allow them, refused to allow them to shoot anything unless they required it
for food. He even (laughs), even to allow them to shoot an old crow,
pointing out to the boys that a crow was a scavenger and cleared up the
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MR ROY DOUST
rubbish left by other animals or birds, and right through the piece he
allowed them to shoot one duck and several kangaroos.
RD
Pronunciation, you know.
FM
Yes … The schools been coming down, they’re coming from far and near,
but I think we, I think Joy unconsciously offended Mrs ..um, the person
who came out to us, Mrs, um, Elleman … Ellerman …. Elliman
RD
Oh, she bought that place of Briggs’s (??) ….‘Gugilup’
FM
Say it again?
RD
‘Gugilup’ … ‘Joogiliup’
FM
‘Joogiliup’? Is that right?
RD
course, Joogilies …. we call them gilgies, ‘joogilies’ they call them …
FM
Joogilies … Joogiliup … is that right?
RD
FM
That’s right …
That’s all right, go on, yes, yes ….
RD
He was fourteen and Walter Blechynden was eighteen, and he was
younger, of course, than John Blechynden, and he left Perth with, er, on a
horse, with Robert Rose, and all he had money in the world was enough
to buy two clay pipes and a roll of nigger twist .. that’s a draft tobacco.
Anyway, he was that damn sick after his first effort with the pipe and
tobacco that he threw the lot away, and he never smoked for years
afterwards, but on arrival in Bridgetown he came to Walter Blechynden, to
‘Woolgr’p’, we’ll call it ‘Woolgr’p’, Wilgarup, and er .. settled with him.
Now, naturally he was in and out to Bridgetown, then called Blackwood,
off and on. And he well remembers, and had no hesitation in saying that
Mrs Blechynden, the old lady, the mother of nine boys and two girls, no, it
was seven boys and two girls, seven boys and two girls, and Walter
Blechynden had seven girls and two boys, just the reverse. He well
remembers John Blechynden, who with my dad, each had a six horse
team wagon running to Bunbury – took it in turns – one each week, to
bring back, backwards and forwards, goods and chattels, and he well
remembers that on one of Mr Blechynden’s trips, Mr John Blechynden, he
made enquiries in Bunbury as to where he could buy a pig, and they said
to him, “Well, there’s a couple of barques in, one barque called the
‘Bridgetown’, try that, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get one there. So he went
down to the captain and he sold him a pig, due to he was young, a short
period, and he brought him back to Bridgetown. Mrs Blechynden was so
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MR ROY DOUST
delighted she said, “Well, I’m going to look after this pig, it’s mine, and,”
she said, “I’m going to call it after the barque, Bridgetown.” And she did.
And when Carey came along and surveyed the town he said, “Well, what
do you think we ought to .. what will we call it?” and she said, “Call it
‘Bridgetown’, I like the name.” And he said, “So do I.”
Tape stops …. sadly, blank for a short while and then taped over with
‘Top Ten’ music of the eighties.
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