Off Into The Ice Age …. Overcoming Impossible Odds…

Section 1: The Story of Ken Aitken at Wilsons Creek from 1949 – 1967.

Section 1: My Story as at 05.01.20….. 126 pages

I grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s at Wilsons Creek, up in the mountains out from Mullumbimby in Northern New South Wales, Australia. I was raised on a banana plantation amidst the steep slopes of rainforest and wet sclerophyll (gum) forest and occasional cliff outcrops. The creek we swam in was a very clear, clean freshwater rainforest creek with big deep pools. People now in the City, would give their `eye’ teeth for it as my late father used to say (see photo above).

Wilson’s Creek is about twenty minutes (about ten kilometres) up in one of the many valleys west of Mullumbimby, in the Northern Rivers area. With this time, came for me a strong spiritual love of Creation, Nature, Country Living and the Environment.

It was a hard and simple life with a Dad and Mom and three younger brothers (Gerald, Rick and Colin). My father had come through the Great Depression of the 1930’s. His father had died when he was only thirteen and he had had to leave home and fend for himself. He had learnt many lessons of self-sufficiency …. personally and economically.

Q: Was my time at Wilsons Creek a Glimpse Of the Future  for Me?

A: Wilsons Creek gave me a strong of belonging of what I call the three S’s: Structure, Social Network and Spirituality. I call these the elements of the Sustainable Life. The Sustainable Life for a life of wholeness. Do You live a Whole Life or do you have a Hole in your Life?

This book is written in three parts of Structure, Social Network and Spirituality. In writing this book, I am seeing this life I have lived as if  a dream ….. the images just flow as a series of drifting images as given by a series of dots   ……..

Part 1: Structure:

• There was a strong sense of belonging  given by the valley, the creek, the cliffs, the caves in the cliffs, the slopes and forests
• Each has attached very strong memories, experiences and the stories of each area
• The sense of work in the bananas, imposed a strong work ethic which has been passed on to my two children and shared with Harriet, my wife
• It was a simple life of hard physical work. During my teenage years I worked with my dad and my next younger brother Gerald, in the banana plantation and packing shed. We always had several house cows, a dozen or so chooks and a very large vegetable garden on brown volcanic soil. Did things grow! It was a very self sufficient lifestyle. Mum initially cut everyone’s hair with a pair of hand clippers which later changed to electric clippers …… short back and sides was the order of the day
• There were two adults and four growing boys and we needed to feed ourselves as much as possible. We had a big vegetable garden which grew all the vegetables we needed. This was the inspiration for our  Permaculture Garden at our house at Chambers Flat in  2016 and onwards
• Working together in the family vegetable garden gave a very strong family community as worked in chipping the vegetable rows
• The projects I worked on to complete: the first one  being my /\  shaped  hut I built in the early 1960’s above the house.  I built it  out of small limbs I cut down from the numerous  watergum forest trees along the creek. I then thatched it with blady grass to make it rainproof. I then built a bed in it made from several bags suspended on a timber frame of limbs. I slept in it one night to try it out
• My other significant project was to build  a tree house up in a big Blackbean tree near the banana packing shed. The completion of which gave me great  sense of accomplishment. The tree house was built with logs  I cut with  the axe from watergum forest trees along the creek.

These trees had long straight branches  and made building with them very easy. I first built a ladder which I placed a large branch. The details of the tree house are given below:

• There was plenty of waste  wire  left over from  the bundles  of timber boards  used in the timber banana packing cases
  • The wire was used to fasten everything in the tree house as we didn’t have money for nails and it would have been to  difficulty to use nails
  • Climbing up the ladder, I initially placed  two sturdy  horizontal logs on big branches of the tree. These formed  the foundation  for the floor  of  the tree house
  • began to place and fasten  more horizontal logs onto the two main support logs
  • I then made a thick floor of stringybark bark which Dad had  knocked of many stringybark posts when he was fencing the three kilometre  easement  coming down  Whiteman’s farm (see the later story on that aspect of growing up at Wilson Creek)
  • I then made a cubical framework of logs fastened to the two sturdy horizontal logs on big branches of the tree. It incorporated a tilted roof in the framing of the tree house
  • I then roofed in the tree house with  more sheets of stringybark  bark
  • The tree house was open – sided. I could be up my treehouse and  survey the world

The Black Cotton Fishing Story

We lived initially in a wooden packing shed house before Dad built the house across the creek ….. (equivalent to the caravan Harriet and I lived in for four years on our land from 1977 to 1981 in Brisbane) ….. There was Dad, Mum and I plus Gerald (born in 1952) and Rick (born in 1956) who was one year old.

We lived in this two roomed converted banana packing shed for a number of years from 1950 to 1956 ….. Colin was born in 1958 in the new house across the creek. The banana packing shed had cream painted tar – paper walls on the wooden framing and a simple system of 12-volt lights for lighting. Dad used to charge up a number car batteries in the engine room across the creek …… They were placed serially in line to maximise the power.

My bed, more settee was in the first room of the house along with the kitchen table, Coleman kerosene fridge and a slow combustion stove in vertical galvanised iron recess that enclosed the stove.

The second room was mum and dad’s bedroom. There was a clothes cupboard and  small draw for odds and ends in this room.

Outside were just unpainted, greying and overlapped weatherboards ….. on the roof was a grey galvanised tin roof in typical packing shed construction …… it was raised up a metre or so off the ground on wooden stumps …… I remember catching mice in the mouse trap under this house …. I was only five years old at the time ….

There was an outdoor timber toilet above the house with a cream painted toilet seat placed over a small drum bucket. Water for drinking was obtained by walking down the hill about fifty metres down to the creek and getting a square kerosene bucket of water …. A really laborious chore of bringing the water from the creek. ….. Then leaving it on the ramp landing to the front door.

Dad, because his past in coming through the Depression days of the 1930’s, he had these unusual sets on things like:

•   Being forbidden by Dad to use the thin brown twine on the spool which Dad kept in his drawer in their bedroom

•   Not using the roll of sticky tape ….. it could only be used for special jobs

Fishing:

I was only six years old in 1955 and I was reading a book one day on a bear who had many adventures and went fishing and caught a fish …. Going to Dad’s draw one Sabbath afternoon … (we were Seventh Day Adventist Christians and never went doing things like this on Sabbath). Dad was away somewhere …… opening the draw and cutting off a couple of feet of thin twine …… making a bent pin hook … finding a worm for bait …. going down to a fork in a water gum tree below the old crossing over a shallow pool and letting my line dangle in the water with a worm on the bent pin …. pulling the line up later and there was a mud gudgeon (a small brown fish about 100 mm long) on the end …. it had swallowed my bent pin totally … my first fishing effort …. I was only six …. And wasn’t I excited !!!

See the photographs of the forked watergum I sat in above the pool at this post: The Black Cotton Fishing Story: http://www.kenaitken.net/past-personal-stories/black-cotton-fishing-story/

The photographs were taken in January 2006.

On the next page is a diagram of the positioning of the packing shed house and the house across the creek.

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• The House, Garden and Farm:

My mum Norma Aitken outside our simple house amidst her big garden grown on brown volcanic soil with much rainfall. The banana plantation is shown growing across the background slopes. Her flower garden is shown in detail below. This is the early 1960’s.

We had four growing boys and two adults and we needed to feed ourselves as much as possible. We had a big vegetable garden which grew all the vegetables we needed. This was the inspiration for our  Permaculture Garden. See this post:           (http://www.kenaitken.net/2-whole-garden/post-7-permaculture-garden-room/) at our house at Chambers Flat in  2016 and onwards.

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The Aitken  Family in the late 1960’s:

This was Gerald, myself, Mum (the fashion was that all the woman wore hats in the 1960’s), Colin and Rick

Mum beside some poinsettias flowers in her extensive garden

Mum & Rick: We visited the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. See this website: (https://www.getyourguide.com/s/?q=Gold%20Coast&et=75190) on the Gold Coast where we fed many lorikeets.

We were always making things for ourselves. We made our own billy carts out of a set of pram wheels. We used our feet as brakes on the grass as we came down the hill at a fast pace.

Mum and Dad with Gerald (the next brother down from me ) and Helene his wife and their son.

Dad sitting with Colin and Rick in the early 1960’s on a big rock at the seaward end of the Brunswick River.

Dad with some of the fruit in his avocado plantation in the 1980’s

One of the covered nurseries for indoor plants in the early 1990’s

The banana plantation:

The work in the bananas:

Bananas were planted on the north facing slopes to get the maximum amount of sunlight. Dad always talked about the need of this compared to growers in northern Queensland could grow them on flat  land. Flat land was very desirable as you could easily maintain the plantation and cut the bunches of bananas  when they were ready. I learnt from this that the consequence of growing things had to be the right place.

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Dad and I in the bananas in the late 1960’s.

In the 1960’s Dad bought an additional plantation off Mr. Brown nearby. This photograph was taken outside Brown’s Packing Shed facing Brown’s extensive Avocado Plantation. We had special banana clothes as the sap from the cut stems would permanently stain your clothes. See the post on Mr. and Mrs. Brown: Browns House at Wilsons Creek as in January 2008 http://www.kenaitken.net/past-personal-stories/browns-house-at-wilsons-creek-as-in-january-2012/

I talk more about bananas in this post: Banana Growing in the 1960’s: http://www.kenaitken.net/past-personal-stories/banana-growing-in-the-1960s/

On sloping sites, you needed bulldozed tracks that would twist and turn right to the very top. Initially, the bananas were sent down as  bunches to a lower holding area. These bunches were caught by a rope, otherwise they would smash into the stump behind the wire. In contrast, the later Land Rover carried the bunches carefully down to the packing shed with the bunches wrapped in layers of felt padding to avoid bruising.

Dad using a misting machine to mist the bananas for a disease called Bunchy-Top. See:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_bunchy_top_virus

The bunches of bananas had to be cut at the right time, otherwise they would prematurely go ripe on the way to southern markets  eg. the Melbourne Market and be unsaleable.

On entry into the banana plantation, all boots and socks had to be checked for weed seeds eg. farmer’s friends ….. these seeds would easily cling to socks if you had walked through a farmer’s friend’s weed. Weed seeds could multiply exponentially over time if they got into the plantation.

Chipping with a chipping hoe in a new patch of bananas was a very important thing. It ensured that any weed seeds didn’t get established. The presence of lots of weeds ….. these could grow up to a metre high eg. cofton weed, would make it difficult in walking around amongst the bananas to cut and carry the bunches of bananas out to the collecting area.

This taught me a overall principle of life: there are things in your life which if absorbed in your life, will impede your future progress.

The banana plantations for Grahams and Mr. Brown (neighbours) at the convergence of small creek flowing after a cyclone

It was a simple life of hard physical work. During my teenage years I worked with my dad and my next younger brother Gerald, in the banana plantation and packing shed. We always had several house cows, a dozen or so chooks and a very large vegetable garden on brown volcanic soil. Did things grow! It was a very self sufficient lifestyle. Mum initially cut everyone’s hair with a pair of hand clippers which later changed to electric clippers …… short back and sides was the order of the day.

The country side was quite different to how it is now ……. It then consisted of open paddocks across our land and any neighbours land ….. the grass was kept short by cows grazing in the paddocks. There were occasional large trees standing in the open paddocks left over from the remnant rainforest which had been cleared in earlier years. Tree bands fringed the creeks which remained largely uncleared. It was an understood community principle that you could wander across any paddock or land of your neighbour. This principle began to gradually change in the early 1970’s and through to the 1980’s when people began to be more individualistic and protective of their land. The communal spirit began to disappear as a result.

Paintings of banana cutting: I painted these two paintings in 1966 in my small art class of five fellow students in my final years of Mullumbimby High School. I left High School for further tertiary studies down south at the end of 1967. Our very enthusiastic Art teacher, the late Mr. Brereton, was teaching about the genre style of painting from past artists ….. of painting everyday scenes of life.

Because banana growing was central to our world then, I began to paint scenes from the banana growing world. I was seeing the wonderful sunlight effects falling down through translucent banana leaves, falling in shaded effects on moving bodies, on banana stems and on the trashed leaves and stalks on the ground. I was also experimenting with the new water based acrylic paints which had just become available. They had a really luminescent and broad quality about them.

This painting was hung in a central end staircase of one of the new buildings at the time. Everyone saw it as they moved up and down the stairs. In the early 1980’s I personally obtained it back from the present Art master who had kept it in special storage. It now hangs on a wall in our TV room in our house.

See the post on my Personal Experiences website: Banana Growing in the 1960’s:

Banana Growing in the 1960’s …..

Going to High School

In the 1960’s, my brothers I and walked the three kilometres or so, up along the gravel road to the main Wilsons Creek road to catch the school bus into Mullumbimby High School. This was through open paddocks which were a major problem in spring time due to the nesting magpies and pied butcher birds.

The magpies had a nest down in a lower paddock below the road we walked along. They were very protective of their nesting site and would attack us viciously. We used sticks being swung around our heads to repel them.

Dad took a gun one year and shot them ….. they ceased to be a problem from then on. The butcher birds were another problem altogether. We only had to appear on the horizon of the open paddocks and we would see a small black and white speck flying towards us then it would appear as a pied butcher bird flying towards us. It would ascend high over us then dive bomb us at a fast rate. We used sticks being swung around our heads to repel them plus some yelling at them to cause them to fly off.

We walked in bare feet along the gravel track, carrying our shoes and socks up to the bus stop. Otherwise our shoes would have been thoroughly wet through from the dew on the grass. On some winter mornings there was frost on the grass going up the bend from the creek crossing. Our feet were a bit frozen going up the driveway until they thawed out.

My prior job before going to High School in the 1960’s, was daily turning the manual milk separator for the milk and resultant cream. The skim milk was then fed manually to a weaned calf. The cream we used on everything from bread to Weetbix in the morning. There was always a dozen jars of cream in the fridge. Mum even occasionally made our own butter from the cream.

We always had several house cows

Dad had made a grinder from a combined electric motor and a hand-turned grinder. This ingenious labour saving device reduced whole wheat into heavy ground porridge meal in very short time …. delicious with brown sugar, milk and thick cream! We would have worked of any excess fat in the work during the day or on weekends.

The daily work was punctuated weekly in spending a day at church. I was brought as a Seventh Day Adventist Christian which meant keeping a weekly Sabbath like Old Testament Jews. This Sabbath was linked to a value for nature and the environment. In the Old Testament, the weekly Sabbath was a reminder of the Creation of the world in seven days in Genesis.

It was from this Sabbath teaching, I gained some wonderful perspectives. I now see these in a whole new light now since Harriet, my wife and I and many others left the Adventist Church in 1983. The ideas for the natural house we now live at Chambers Flat, grew out of my subsequent love for the environment.

In 1981, Harriet and I built a unique natural house which people often come out to see. This is on our five acres of light open eucalypt bush at Chambers Flat, Brisbane. The house is largely of glass set into a post and lintel construction of 100-year old broadaxed timbers and sandstone walls. The total concept of indoor-outdoor flow, has a nice ambience to it and the design is unique and lends itself well to future development.

Harriet and I are into simplicity and recycling. We live in this amazing house built out of recycled, rejected materials and only bought material when necessary. See the following posts:

>THE HOUSE: http://www.kenaitken.net/1-the-house/

>External View: http://www.kenaitken.net/1-the-house/external-view/

>Inside the House: http://www.kenaitken.net/1-the-house/inside-the-house/

>OUR LAND OVERALL: http://www.kenaitken.net/1-the-house/our-land-overall-the-car-shed/

I also gained some other wonderful inner values which have endured throughout my life:

1. To be resourceful, innovative, self sufficient, and independent

2. To work hard in every thing

3. To be honest, caring and respectful of others and elders with good manners

4. To be tidy and organised in everything

5. Family: My parents gave me the best they knew how. This included a very strong sense of extended communal family …. both personally within the family then the very strong relational family and then the extended communal family within the church community …… a commitment to others and a strong desire to see people in need always included in that family

At times it was bit unpredictable as Dad sometimes was emotionally explosive when things didn’t fit his expectations. In that era you didn’t just get up and leave your spouse if things became difficult. You stuck it out and sorted the problems out in time.

As I write these memories, I wish for these sometimes to be like a flow of a stream of thoughts as reflections on life. Sometimes a memory is maybe attached to an understanding of life in a universal sense and sometimes it will be even poetically …. Rather than being a set of precise rational proposals. Life is often like this ….. it is an experience you go through which has no definite beginning and ending …. It simply flows into the next experience.

Mullumbimby in the 1960’s was a small country town of about 2,000 people. Now in 2020 the town is very different.  The streets are very busy with cards and there are many bangalow palms planted up the main street.

One of main stores was Mallam’s for groceries. There were no computers back then

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Overview of  Mullumbimby  High School

When I was there from  1962 – 1967. In that time there were 700 students from around the region. There were  students who came by train from Byron Bay.

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History of the school

From: https://mullumbimb-h.schools.nsw.gov.au/about-our-school/history-of-our-school.html

The first school in Mullumbimby was built on what is now the 7th green of the present golf course, south west of the present high school. The school opened in 1886 with 8 pupils. Their teacher was Miss Eliza McGettigan who lived at St Helena & travelled to school on horseback, or rowed a boat across the flooded streams during wet weather. By the end of the first year the enrolment was 19 pupils.

With increasing enrolments a new school was built on the present High school site in 1892 at a cost of £293-6 shillings-8 pence. With the establishment of the railway in 1894, Mullumbimby’s population increased rapidly. The school building had 2 more extensions done to it to provide additional accommodation for what was in 1903 an attendance of 97 pupils. In 1904 a new building to accommodate 156 students was erected at a cost of £658, thereby increasing the total accommodation of the school to 260. This building still stands and is presently the TAS & art staff room.

By 1923, Mullumbimby School was known as a district rural school. Again, the need for extra rooms was felt, and in 1927 at a cost of £2,728 more classrooms, staff rooms and verandahs were added. By this time total enrolment had reached 331. The 1940s saw the school become an intermediate high school, with home economics and science blocks being constructed.

To relieve the growing pressure of Infant & Primary School enrolments, a piece of land was resumed on a property facing Morrison Avenue. The Infants department moved there in 1951, and with the construction of more buildings, the Primary department moved 2 years later. In 1955 the school became a full high school, with John Pearce as its first principal and an intake of 387 pupils. Of 387 pupils in 1955, 147 were in first year (Year 7), 121 in second year, 94 in third year, 21 in fourth year and 6 in fifth year.

Mullumbimby Public School Circa 1912

Excavation for footings for the John Pearce auditorium (JPA) commenced in mid 1984, with the present library constructed during 1982. More recently, 2002-2007 saw much demolition and construction at the school. C Block, constructed in 1958 (English, library and canteen) was demolished, with a temporary English village created between the school & bowling club; and Easter 2004 heralding the first intake of students & staff into the new G block (industrial arts, art and science, canteen). After a short break from building work, A block was refurbished and a new administration building was completed late 2006, with the old administration building converted into a performance space.

Student numbers peaked at over 1200 in 1987, the year before Byron Bay high school was built. At the beginning of 2008 there was a population of 917 students, around 74 teachers, 20 ancillary staff & 4 cleaners.

The school campus once had a very different name. It was called the playground, because so many games took place there, and during breaks, games of various kinds were organised, from marbles to hide and seek. There was a lot of open space to move around in, as there were fewer buildings, along with fewer students.

Part of this playground was not for students, however, and it was known as the horse paddock. It was important to generations of students and there are many stories associated with it.

For example: in the various ways children got to school in days gone by, horse back (along with shanks pony for town kids) was a main one, especially for farm kids. Stories are told that as the first riders set off from along the Tunnel Road, they gathered more as they got closer to town. Some of the children were very young, in primary school, and travelled with older siblings. The horses knew the routine. When they got to the end of Acacia Street, or Jubilee Avenue as it is now called, at Saltwater Creek bridge, they eyed the long straight run ahead, paused for the group to gather, and then took off, unprompted. They knew this was a race track.

At times there were a couple of dozen horses in the school paddock, confined by a fence and a gate that sometimes did not close, at the western side of the paddock, along the creek. Children came on horseback from along the Main Arm Road, Tunnel Road, Mullumbimby Creek and Wilson’s Creek Road. Bridles and saddles were kept in a shed and children had to be independent in organising themselves.

There are tales of recalcitrant horses, nervous riders, and ones that got away, not to mention the pranks that saw horses escaping from their paddock into the main playground.

Now, the horse paddock has been replaced by the need for a student car park.

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A Family Overview:

I invite you travel down some unexplored paths that you may never have travelled down before to a time which will never be repeated. For me, it is a unique time that was very foundational from a personality and character point of view. It is very much my account and my three brothers would have very different memories and would have had different focuses as per the description below …… we all came out with a difference in outlook on life even though we came from the same family:

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Ken: I am more a lateral, creative yet practical thinker …….. into natural things and the environment and I was always roaming along the creek after new creek discoveries, trees, mosses and ferns etc. ….. this finally led me to doing a science degree at the University of QLD. in the early 1970’s …. Then I ran my own business in landscape design and construction for twenty years from 1975 to 1995.

Unknowingly, I was a landscape sculptor. Rather an intangible product to sell and run a business with!! However, I built a structure for my life: my marriage, family and business from this base.  See these posts:

• Greenmount Beach Resort 1980 – 2008: http://www.kenaitken.net/my-past-work/greenmount-beach-resort-1980-2008/
• Sheehan Garden in October 2007 (1984 – 2007):http://www.kenaitken.net/my-past-work/sheehan-garden-october-2007/

In 1995 I had a bad fall off a boogi-board in the surf at Peregian beach, a beach just north of Brisbane. The bad fall resulted in a very severe brain injury with a big bleed on the brain. I lost my ability to talk, walk and had a very scrambled brain. I was in hospital for six months. In rehabilitation I had learn to walk, talk and getting my very scrambled brain back again.

As I am on a life time insurance Income Protection policy, I do not have to work again and I now do some different things (I cannot drive twenty three years on from 2019). I went from being an outer gardener in physical gardens for wealthy clients to being a internal life gardener to hundreds of people around the world via the Internet. I have a vast e-mail network around the world. I have  three websites and send out periodic e-mail broadcasts around the world. It is wonderful  in getting e-mails back from friends in Canada or Hong Kong.

Read my story on this website:  The Recycled Man …. who had two lives:

http://www.kenaitken.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/The-Recycled-Man-as-at-October-2017.pdf

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Gerald: a practical / technical person .……. more conservative than myself …… was always the one experimenting with electricity from torch batteries when he was a teenager …… initially with scissors connecting two torch batteries to light up a small globe …… he was always the one to help Dad repair the broken axle in the short wheel based Land Rover. After doing an apprenticeship in radio repairs in Mullumbimby in the late 1960’s he then married Helene in 1973, then went to Adelaide in South Australia.

Then he eventually went to Sydney to do courses in computer technical repair work for Canon and other companies. He was good at working in the corporate world. Then he went on to manage the service delivery of a contract for maintenance of Voice Systems (PABX’s/phone systems). His company he worked for was Telstra Business Systems (Damovo) which had a contract with Telstra & Defence Australia. Helene his wife was busy at Kimberly Clark, a personal assistant to the manager. The good part was that they both enjoyed their jobs. As of 2017 they are both retired and now travel the world.

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Rick: a creative thinker …. more intellectual than I was at studies etc. He went to Sydney to become a doctor. He married Diane in 1976. They then  lived at a place on the coast  at Culburra near Nowra. In the early 1990’s Rick  became a Christian pastor of a new church under the umbrella of the Apostolic Church. It was a real communal church versus a hierarchical corporation style church. He was a  part-time doctor and part – time pastor.

They moved up to Orange in the last few years to 2018 where he was a  doctor in regional work.  He is not a pastor now but maintains an active interest  in people and their welfare. As of early 2018, he and Diane have moved down to Mossvale in Sydney to be close to their children.

The NSW Rural Doctors Network presented Dr Rick Aitken with a prestigious 2019 Rural Medical Service Award during its annual conference at the Novotel Sydney Manly Pacific at the weekend in December.

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Colin: a practical / technical person …….. a bit like Gerald but far more adventurous in eventually running his own business in an individual sense at Gosford of Sydney ….. it is a business to supply individually designed machines to fill bottles in factories. He married Leanne in 1984.

See his company website at: http://www.colpack.com.au/  From the website:

‘Collier Packaging Pty Ltd is an Australian company established in 1984 and operates from a state of the art manufacturing facility located at West Gosford, Australia.

The company has developed an extensive range of liquid filling and capping machinery and now supplies the cosmetic, automotive, chemical, food and pharmaceutical industries.

Filling and capping machines are assembled from an extensive range of stock components. High quality engineering and design means we can supply a machine to suit a wide range of products with minimal delivery time.

Collier Packaging Pty Ltd objective is to provide technical superior products at competitive prices and provide efficient service and technical support to all their clients.’

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Having relationships with people: The one gift in life we all possess is an ability of having relationships with people in different ways ……… to creatively flow this ability into whatever context is at hand ….. whether business, the corporate world, doctoring the outer person or doctoring the inner person …. I think that is a fruit of growing up in our family …. very social overall with church activities etc. I still have wonderful memories of all the Pathfinder Camps and hikes we went on.

Wilson’s Creek Overview

Wilson’s Creek is about twenty minutes (about ten kilometres) up in one of the many valleys west of Mullumbimby, in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales. Our family area abutted onto Wilson’s Creek, there were a series of three large pools up to fifty metres across, joined together by rapids and boulders. These pools were edged by glass clear waters with darker shadows streaked by lighter translucent sun shafts falling through the edging trees in lighter colours. Water from the top rapids flowed into the first main pool which was our swimming pool which then flowed over tan-coloured rock shelves …… to flow into a deeper dark green pool below which was a much longer pool.  In these pools we went fishing and swimming as kids. There were three large pools up to two metres deep: Pool 1, Pool 2, Pool 3.

Pool 2: I am seeing this area as in a dream ….. the images just flow as a series of drifting images as given by a series of dots   …….. A dark green rainforest pool overhung on the north-eastern side by 50 metre high brush box trees …… smooth tan trunks spreading into elongated branches ending in bunches of very dark green lanceolate leaves ……. Small white flowers eventually retracting into dark brown cupped seed capsules ….. bark is tan coloured with smooth but fibrous texture …… A steep 35 degree bank of red soil ….. descends to the edges of the pool …. Interspersed with large rainforest trees and occasional tall thin trunked Leichhardt’s Tree ferns …. Elegant black trunks with an expanding whorl of 2.0 m long fronds …. bright summer sunlight is broken up into shafts of golden light in amongst the tree canopy ….. they strike the glass – like water in bright shafts of liquid gold probing the green depths amongst boulders and the occasional sunken log … the shafts of light give way to solid shadows of rainforest green in the depths hiding the big 2.00 m long eel … the light in other areas searching the washed tan – brown – cream river gravel creek bottom where the 400 mm long catfish has made it’s concentric ringed nest of graded gravel ….. the centre is a coarse gravel gives way to ripples of lighter gravel ….. the dark shape of the catfish gracefully glides out over the pool depths and slowly circulates over the ringed shapes …… the centre of the rings is where the eggs have been laid.

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Pool 1 was our swimming pool:

Wilsons Creek ….. a rainforest creek of large still pools: Pool 1

Pool 1: Photograph above shows the 1.50 metre high sloped rocky boulder wall on the far side of the pool. This wall sloped down under the water for  two metres to a rocky bottom with a 500 mm wide underwater rock shelf we swam to out on the other side.  In the middle of the pool  there was big rounded boulder about 300 mm below the surface we could initially swim to.

Left hand side of the creek: was where we entered the water ….. the bank sloped down to soft tan – brown river gravel then into shallow water …… this was where the creek flowed slowly around the outside southern edge of the pool … sand and gravel  were  partly covered by organic matter ….. fallen leaves were 200 – 300 mm deep … water was 500 mm deep here ….. whenever you walk here, it releases clouds of gas bubbles ….. one day in the early 1960’s with my chemistry set and books, I learnt this was marsh gas or methane gas which was being released from the decomposing leaves …. The gas was trapped in the gravel and mud and was released when the surface of the gravel was broken.

I caught some of this gas in an inverted waterfilled glass jar where the bubbles arose and displaced the water ….. I put a lid on the jar and took it back to my chemistry set ….. I lit the gas and it burned with a slow blue flame like methylated spirits ….. so I knew it methane being released from the decomposing leaves.

Environmental Journalling in 1995 along the Creek:

Bird Calls: Through the creek bush comes repeated bird sounds (currawongs), the sounds cascade down among the forest trees …… bird sounds, the gentle sounds of moving water and the soft sounds of moving leaves in the occasional breeze interweave together through the rich greenness.

The upper end of the pool (which was Pool 1) is backed by a watergum forest in trim 100 – 300 mm cream – fawn smooth trunks …. Often in multiples of two or three trunks arising next to each other ….. occasional trunks marked out in smooth cream bark but other trunks in darker bark …… lomandra sedges in dark green blades …. Tussocky at the base near the waters edge ….. soft filtered light alights on the dark green leaves alternatively with dark then light green leaves.

Watergum forest in trim cream – fawn smooth trunks

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On the far side of this watergum forest was a ten metre long waterfilled pool with largely vertical sides in large river gravel carved out by recent floods. At pockets in the pool were growing an interesting variety of ferns with a clumping format.  These were fishbone ferns  (Blechnum Nudum:

See the website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blechnum_nudum ) See photos overpage. These become an important fern being grown in Mum and Dad’s wholesale nursery in the mid 1980’s and early 1990’s. They sold the whole property in 1995 and moved down to Ocean Shores (See the post: http://www.kenaitken.net/past-personal-stories/norma-aitken-my-mums-house-and-garden-at-ocean-shores-new-south-wales/).

The fern Blechnum Nudum …….  Large river gravel carved out by recent floods

Photo taken from Mum’s photo album of the watergum forest on the topside of Pool 1

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When I was home in the 1950’s and the 1960’s I remember some of these things:

• How the rain and wind lashed around the eaves  during cyclonic weather
• How I often played dams and paddle wheels made out of empty wooden cotton reels in the grass drain which cut across the hill behind the shed.
• The tossing waves of the swollen creek. When a cyclone was coming down the coast and creek had come up, the flying fox enabled us freedom of movement in a cyclone …… Dad would drive the vehicle across to the other side of the creek and leave it there …… We could always go as a family into town or church when the weather was bad and creek was up.
• We would hear on the radio the progression of the cyclone down the coast and when it was expected to cross our section of coast. TV didn’t exist until the early 1960’s. The creek would be transformed overnight into a huge tossing and surging sea of muddy water filling the whole creek to a depth of ten to twenty metres …… the rain just poured down day after day till the eye of the cyclone passed on and out to sea.
• When the rain had stopped, we would troop as a family down to the creek to the engine room to see how high the creek came up in the middle of the night as invariably the eye of the cyclone had passed over in the middle of the night ….. it could come up around ten to twenty metres in height. If the flood waters had come up anywhere near the engine room at the crossing …. It had been very high if had come up to there.

Description of the creek: our section of the creek consisted of alternating variations in the creek:

• The top pool which was our swimming hole as it had a gravelly sloping bottom going over to a two metre deep rocky bottom with a 250 mm underwater rock we could all swim to. The pool was about 30 metres across by 75 metres long
• Then a narrow constricted passage in which water glided over a 300 mm deep rock shelf to flow into a lower large pool … about 75 metres across by 200 metres long
• Then there was a series of large bouldery rapids for another 200 ++ metres
• Then there was Pool 3= Lower Pool. It was about 50 metres across by 75 metres long …… we rarely swam in here as there was not a good entry to the pool plus it was an uneven depth that was green and mysterious. I only fished here as it was good for catfish
• Then there was a series of large bouldery rapids again for another 200 ++ metres down to the concrete creek crossing which Dad built in the early 1960’s
• For me I was constantly exploring right down and above our section of creek. Virtually every tree grove, pool and boulder has some memory for me. I was out at the old property meeting the new people in 2001 and 2006 as the farm had been sold in 1995
• Swimming in the creek: as a family at the end of hot summer days ..… we used to leave our wet clothes to dry on the clumps of reeds

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Fishing in the creek:

In 1992, Peter and Brett Aitken (my brother, Gerald’s boys) were fishing on one of their infrequent family holiday visits to Wilsons Creek from Adelaide. Peter eventually caught an eel. Was he excited !!

Fishing in the creek: There was always a great sense of wonder and excitement for me personally ….. fishing off the middle rocks between the upper and lower pools ….. for catfish, eels and especially mudgudgeons ….. small fish of maximum length of 175 mm ….. a monster at that length ….. I would catch them on a short bit of line tied to a straight willowy tree branch with a small hook and sinker and a cork float ….. you could see them from 3.00 metres on the tan coloured river gravel on the pool bottom in the clear water …. a tin of worms could be obtained by turning over Mum’s garden edging stones and finding them underneath in the moist red – brown soil ….. worms which were thick and lively attracted the mudgudgeons with their twisting movement on the hook …. I would take my small catch proudly up to the house and I would get one of Mum’s Vacola bottling lids on the slow combustion wood stove and cook my catch of fish in the 100 mm wide lid.

One big mudgudgeon I kept for about a year in a cut down old concrete wash tub near the tap near the upper laundry shed …. I turned it into an aquarium with 50 mm of clean river gravel in the bottom and a small blue flowering water lily obtained from way across on Watson’s land from the billabong on the edge of the big Wilsons Creek Dam ……. I used to feed it with worms everyday …. Eventually the fish would rise up and take worms from my fingers 20 mm out of the water.

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Skin Diving in the creek: I made my first underwater mask out of a section of inner tyre tube stretched over a small face – sized frame from a cut down wooden lid of a banana crate which enclosed a single glass from a disused torch ………. Sealed with tar obtained from spent batteries from the old style of valve radios.

I eventuated graduated to my first store-bought mask which fitted more snugly in a waterproof manner …….. I remember swimming up to the top rapid shallows  in the above pool ….. the clear tumbling and eddying water among the rocks …… seeing the beautiful minnows cavorting in a school of glimmering gold with a stripe of crimson on their sides.

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Pool 2 = Lower Pool: …… we rarely swam in this pool as it didn’t have a very good entry point into the water as kids ….. was suddenly up to 2.00 m deep at the top end when it flowed over the top rock shelves then eventually got to 1.5 m then into underwater boulders at the far end at 100 + metres.

Mr. Walker: In the early 1960’s, there was a bachelor man, a  Mr. Walker who lived in a small timber cottage nearby where the garage eventually was eventually built in the early 1980’s ….. about one hundred and fifty metres away from the house.

He always went to this big pool as shown above to get his kerosene tin of water. There was a big freshwater cod in the shallows. He went back to get his gun and when he came back, it had moved into deeper water. He went back  and got a hand line and caught the huge fish ….it  had a head about 30 mm. across. He gave us a filleted slab  to cook but mum had to cook it up in the pressure cooker …… it was so tough!

There used to be many big freshwater cod in the creek when the timber getters came out in the late 1800’s looking for cedar logs.  They would blow up the pools with dynamite to get the fish. Freshwater cod in the creek became very rare after this period. For Mr. Walker to even see and catch a big freshwater cod was a very rare thing.

Pool 2 = Lower Pool … Description: a dark green rainforest pool overhung on the north-eastern side by 50 metre high brush box trees …… smooth tan trunks spreading into elongated branches ending in bunches of very dark green lanceolate leaves ……. Small white flowers eventually retracting into dark brown cupped seed capsules ….. bark is tan coloured with smooth but fibrous texture.

A steep 45 degree bank of red soil ….. descends to the edges of the pool …. Interspersed with large rainforest trees and occasional tall thin trunked Leichhardt’s Tree ferns …. Elegant black trunks with an expanding whorl of 2.0 m long fronds …. bright summer sunlight broken up into shafts of golden light in amongst the tree canopy ….. they strike the glass – like water in bright shafts of liquid gold probing the green depths amongst boulders and the occasional sunken log … the shafts of light give way to solid shadows of rainforest green in the depths hiding the big 2.00 m long eel … the light in other areas searching the washed tan – brown – cream river gravel creek bottom where the 400 mm long catfish has made it’s concentric ringed nest of graded gravel ….. the centre is a coarse gravel gives way to ripples of lighter gravel ….. the dark shape of the catfish gracefully glides out over the pool depths and slowly circulates over the ringed shapes …… the centre of the rings is where the eggs have been laid.

On the south western side of the pool is a blue quandong tree (Eleocarpus grandis) ….. now grown to 100 metres high in 2005 ….. it had grown from a ten metre high tree in the 1970’s ….. a very fast growing tree with light fawn bark in splotches of darker browns merging with lighter browns …. 150 mm thick branches are splayed outwards in radiating pattern of ten metre long limbs …. Branches end in bunches of dark lanceolate leaves with serrated edges ….. in the right season, the tree has 30 mm. green globular fruit which eventually turned dark blue …. the leaves were a mixture of dark red and others being dark green …. These trees are frequent creek-side trees and when the fruit falls into the creek or eaten by birds, the flesh rots off to leave a 20 mm wavy crenelated woody seed which gets washed down the creek with the river gravel in flood-time …. this often sprouts by the creek into a new tree to form fringing rainforest along the creek.

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Pool 3 = Catfish Waterhole:

Pool 3: We didn’t swim here as Pool 1 with its gravelly entry provided a far easier entry to the water. It was also much further from the house. There were just vertical rocks which fell away into deep green water. It was always a beautiful pool to explore as it had a steep bank on the eastern side which gave an enclosed feeling. It then had rainforest trees which further enclosed it the pool area into mysterious deep green corners.

It was a good catfish fishing hole so I found out. I was the fisherman and I loved to fish. I had a long straight branch as a fishing pole. To the top of the branch, I had tied a three metre length of translucent fishing line. To the end of this line I had an adjustable cork then a large hook. To the hook I would thread on a wriggling earth worm as bait. Catfish just loved wriggling earth worms as bait. I would flick the line out, adjust the floating cork so that the bait was at a suitable depth. I would wait for the cork to bob under and knew I had caught a catfish. I would bring it in slowly and place the fish in a bucket.

We didn’t eat catfish as they didn’t have scales as per the Biblical injunction in the Old Testament (We were Seventh Day Adventist Christians) ….. I often gave these away to the Graham’s, the neighbours on the adjacent property next door.

ABORIGINAL CAMP BY THE LOWER POOL: …. as told by Mr. Brown. See this post: http://www.kenaitken.net/past-personal-stories/browns-house-at-wilsons-creek-as-in-january-2012/)

Mr. and Mrs. Brown had come out to Wilsons Creek in the bullock trail days of the early 1900’s to clear their land, grow bananas on the steep slopes and build their big house with its cream painted weatherboard sides, galvanised tin roof and big wide verandas. Mum had gone over to see Mrs. Brown to have a cup of tea and socialise …. this was in the late 1950’s. See Bullock cart  (See the post from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullock_cart) See what it says on the use of bullock teams and bullock carts.

Mr. Brown used to tell us of how there was an Aboriginal camp by the lower pool on our property.

Flying Fox Wire across Pool 2 … was for getting to the house if the creek was in flood. One day Dad and Gerald came down on a pulley and wire and just missed the floodwaters. See the photograph of Helene Aitken (nee Jenkins) before she married Gerald Aitken, my brother in 1973 ….. going over on the wire in a flooded creek time below the swimming pool.

The other flying fox wire was right down the creek further at the crossing and engine room area of the creek. This was an important access point to the property. Vehicle access normally was via a low level concrete crossing that Dad built with help from my Grandpa in the early 1960’s. See the photo below.

Low level concrete crossing with the exit road on the other side going up  to the house

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Flying Fox Wire Across The Low level Concrete Crossing: When the creek was in flood, Dad had built a main flying fox across the creek to help us all get access to the other side. Flying foxes were a popular way of crossing the creek and were regularly used up and down the creek by other property owners.

This flying fox consisted of two sturdy upright posts on either side of the creek. Then two heavy duty banana wires were wrapped around each other and were then strung between the posts.

A simple pulley system was then used to get us all across the creek. This consisted a banana pulley with a rope attached to a wooden seat which was a big round stick. You hooked the pulley to the wire and sat on the seat. You then slowly pulled yourself by hand across the flooded creek to the other side. You then unhooked yourself and the next person could then come across the wire.

I still remember pulling myself across on the wire and being about a metre above tossing brown floodwaters from a cyclone that had passed through the region. It was a welcome relief to reach the other side.

There were several seats and pulleys on either side of the creek to be used by Dad & Mum and us four boys. When the whole family was across, you would then get in the parked vehicle and go into town. In flood times, Dad would park the Land Rover on the other side of the creek in anticipation of a coming flood. Having a Land Rover meant that you had 4-wheel drive if you needed it. The road into our property could get very muddy in wet weather.

The flying fox over the creek at the engine room meant we could to get to Mullumbimby High School every school day (1962 – 1967). I then walked with my two of my brothers up to Wilsons Creek Rd. to catch the High School bus into Mullumbimby ….. then doing the same in the afternoon after school.

Large bouldery rapids flowed as a series from Pool 3 for 200 ++ metres down to the concrete creek crossing which Dad built in the early 1960’s.

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Floods and cyclones: which came nearly every year in the 1950’s, 1960’s and early 1970’s ….. swirling air would form into a low pressure system over a whole region and would initially gather up in the Coral Sea up north …… forming into a rain depression or cyclone which would rotate clockwise to pass moisture laden air onto the coast from off the sea …… then it moved progressively down the coast to cross our section of the coast in the eye of the cyclone …. This meant the eye of the cyclone was only moving dry air off the land into itself which swirled around to become moisture laden air directed onto the coast.

When a cyclone was coming down the coast and creek had come up, the flying fox enabled us freedom of movement in a cyclone, Dad would drive the vehicle across to the other side of the creek and leave it there. We could always go as a family into town or church when the weather was bad and creek was up. We would hear on the radio the progression of the cyclone down the coast and when it was expected to cross our section of coast. The creek would be transformed overnight into a huge tossing and surging sea of muddy water filling the whole creek to a depth of ten to twenty metres. The rain just poured down day after day till the eye of the cyclone passed on and out to sea.

The hand drawing of the engine room I did in 1966 for my Art Class at Mullumbimby High School  in Northern NSW. See the website:

(https://mullumbimb-h.schools.nsw.gov.au/) I left High School at the end of 1967. In 1968 I left home to begin a new section of my life in Tertiary Education at Avondale College at Cooranbong right down near Morisset, near Newcastle in New South Wales. I went to do a Science Degree. I had a Commonwealth Scholarship to go to the College. Read my stories: The Train Story (See the post: http://www.kenaitken.net/past-personal-stories/the-world-is-a-very-small-place-an-experience-whilst-i-was-a-student-in-1969/) and the Cairns Story. Also see the post:

(http://www.kenaitken.net/past-personal-stories/the-cairns-trip-in-1968/)

I stayed there for two years (1968 / 1969), (Physics didn’t agree with me! …. I had to pass that to keep my Commonwealth Scholarship) then I came up to Brisbane to live. I finished a Science degree (in biological science) at the University of Queensland in 1974. The Federal Government provided free university fees in that era compared to the Hex fee arrangements which are part of the Federal Government’s policy now.

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The House, Garden and Farm:

The house from a distance across the creek

The house doesn’t exist now as it burnt down in 2012 with the renting of the house by the new owner David Dubens. However the photographs, memories and influences remain from growing up there.

My mum Norma Aitken outside our simple house amidst her big garden grown on brown volcanic soil with much rainfall. The banana plantation is shown growing across the background slopes. Her flower garden is shown in detail below. This is in the early 1960’s.

We had four growing boys and two adults and we needed to feed ourselves as much as possible. We had a big vegetable garden which grew all the vegetables we needed. This was the inspiration for our Permaculture Garden (See the post:

http://www.kenaitken.net/2-whole-garden/post-7-permaculture-garden-room/) at our house at Chambers Flat in 2016 and onwards.

Browns House:

Their house was quite a significant house in the district. It was a large timber house on a distant hill across the valley from us. Browns had come out to Wilsons Creek in the bullock trail days of the early 1900’s to clear their land, grow bananas on the slopes and build their big house with its cream painted weatherboards, tin roof and big wide verandas. Mum had gone over to see Mrs. Brown to have a cup of tea and socialise. I was very small …. About six or seven … I was eating an Arnott’s milk biscuit and drinking a cup of milk ….. I was dipping the biscuit in the milk …. I still occasionally dunk my biscuit in my hot drink to this day. I was swinging and climbing in the frangipani trees out the back of Browns …. the few frangipani trees planted down our driveway at Chambers Flat are a reminder of these experiences.

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Upper Wilsons Creek: Large rounded basalt bush boulders, creek in clear, crystalline waters, water as a meandering maze of water amongst the boulders, occasional large pools in a bend in the creek, creek bordered by pockets of Bangalow palms (Australian Rainforest Palms) on flat ground, creek  generally bordered by dense closed rainforest on the slopes, rainforest of a dense dark green leaf canopy with an understorey of tree ferns, wild ginger with large green leaves, cordylines with the large green strap – like leaves and single spindly trunk, tree ferns with their tall fibrous trunks and their cavorting fern fronds that reach out over smaller plants.

When an open ridge appears, you have a glimpse through the trees to the valley below. There is partly cleared  rainforest to give open paddocks fenced in for cows. See the photos below. Distant sharp ridges rise sharply out of the surrounding valley.

See the photos of Upper Wilsons Creek here: http://www.kenaitken.net/past-personal-stories/wilsons-creek-where-ken-aitken-grew-up-in-the-1950s-and-1960s/wilsons-creek-where-ken-aitken-grew-up-in-the-1950s-and-1960s-upper-wilsons-creek/

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Family Outings: Some memories …..

• .Day Trips to Byron Bay to see the whale catching …. Seeing the long Byron jetty way out into the ocean when the whale catchers came in ….. the slip – way up which they snigged the whales …… the tram that they were then loaded onto …. the whaling station ….. sharp flensing knives on wooden handles being wielded ….. cutting a huge side off the whale like a huge fish fillet as they snigged with a wire rope and hook …. the side up to the slipway to be boiled down for whale oil.

I read old newspaper clippings and memoirs about whaling in Byron from 1954 to 1962. To read about the history of whaling at Byron Bay, read these websites:

• Byron’s whaling past: https://www.byronnews.com.au/news/apn-byrons-whaling/142630/
• When Byron Bay was a whaling town: https://www.echo.net.au/2014/05/byron-bay-whaling-town/
• Byron Bay’s jetty: https://www.northernstar.com.au/photos/photo-gallery-23-10-2017-3/57465/#/0 …. especially see View Photo Gallery in full screen. In 2018, there is no trace of the jetty or whaling station as having existed at all.

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• Pipping with Dad and us boys in the sand and water near the edge of the jetty …. twisting our feet in the sand for the feel of the pippies …. Hundreds of pippies for the chooks …. Also earlier than this time, going to Byron Bay up from the jetty …. Schools of mullet coming in ….. the commercial fisherman rowing with their nets and pulling them up on the beach … we were helping them to get them out of the nets …. Going to the fish co-op up from the jetty and buying a few … Dad filleting them and throwing the backbones down the back behind our two room packing shed … I remember looking at the bare backbones the next morning.
• Camping At Brunswick Heads: We would often camp at Brunswick at Massey Green Caravan Park in a tent in the Christmas holidays in the 1960’s. In the early 1960’s there were just bare sandbanks along the entire river to the estuary bar leading to the open ocean. The trawler fleet would be moored at a series of wooden posts with a wooden ramps. When the tide came in, the ramps would be cut off by deep water behind the ramps. Groups of teenagers would fish with handlines off the ramps and off the backs of the trawlers. We would catch bream, whiting and the occasional flathead.
•  I remember fishing with handlines with Dad along the sandbars going out towards the bar. In the early 1960’s that all changed. The local council began to build basalt boulder walls all along the river from a purpose built trawler harbour to walls that extended the bar out beyond the beach on the north and south side of the river. This was to give the trawlers a safe passage at any tide … to exit or enter the river. It was otherwise very dangerous to exit of or enter river on a lower tide. The trawlers could easily capsize with the rough water.

• BRUNSWICK HEADS: The Place Of Recreation For Us As A family

•  KOONYUM RANGE: The Koonyum Range was a range of forested hills on the northern side of us, right above the main Wilsons Creek road. Dad would often go up there to get firewood and cut stringy-bark fence posts.  Dad had obtained permission to get these things from an owner of a large forested area up there. He would go up there in his large 4 wheel drive Landrover to get posts and firewood. 

We would visit these things:

THE CAVES AREA: this was down in a gully of volcanic tuff. This was a soft rock made of many particles blown out a volcano as volcanic ash. It erodes very easy into gulley’s with constant water erosion as in a creek formation. These gulley’s grow many ferns and tree ferns. It was always exciting to stop and explore along these creek gulley’s.

In one of these gulley’s was a system of three connected caves which had been hollowed out by running water. Each cave became larger as they went down the hill. The first cave was entered by carefully climbing down a metre wide hole into a fairly dark vertical tunnel. This first cave was very low and could only be entered by squatting and moving down to the 2nd cave which was head height. A gravel floor was formed of many broken up small rocks. This cave went into the third cave. The third cave was a huge cave which faced downwards and outwards into the creek gulley going down the hill.  The open cave mouth was up to 10 metres in height.

The outside walls of the cave area, was open to the weather and the natural environment. The volcanic tuff cliff walls were covered with dark lichens and green moss. On these cliff faces were small rock orchids which grew as small pink orchid flowers. As we were all interested in plants, we would collect these to take home  and grow.

One day, Rick my third brother, found aboriginal axe heads in the lower cave. This was very rare find as it showed tangible evidence that a tribe of aboriginal people lived and fed off this area of land long before white people came up bullock trails in the late 1800’s looking for red cedar timber.

THE LOOKOUT AND FALLS IN THE NATURE RESERVE: In another section was a nature reserve with a small creek running through it. You could walk down the creek amidst the wonderful sounds of gurgling water and the creek edges of ferns  and sedges. You would come a small waterfall over which the creek cascaded down to far bottom.  It was a truly delightful nature walk in the Koonyum Range.

The lookout was a high level area with no trees and low mountain heath. You could look out to the east across the Brunswick Valley, see the town of Mullumbimby and see the Pacific Ocean.

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Schooling:

The students of Wilsons Creek Primary School in 1963.

I went to this school from 1956 to 1960. Mr. Long was still the teacher in1963 who lived alongside the school in his own house. I had left to go to Mullumbimby High School in 1961.

When I went to the Wilson’s Creek Primary School at the start of 1956 …. I was only seven years old  …. I remember walking with Mum across the creek on the flat creek rocks  from the packing shed house with my new bag on my back ….. the big Flood of 1954 had taken away Dad’s timber footbridge …. walking up past the engine room on the creek bank …. I walked across  the paddocks to Graham’s place ….. the neighbours next door about two kilometres away ….. I then walked to school with Malcolm and Robert Graham.

The first day of school I arrived at this one room cream painted timber building ….. It had a wooden veranda on the northern side and Elsie Sommerville  ….. one of the little girls from a family just up the road from the school was sweeping the veranda. The school had one teacher Mr. Long and about twenty students. The School House was simple affair which had built in 1908. There was also a weatherboard shed for keeping out of the sun or rain.

Most of the students walked to school  …..for  some of  us, it was about five kilometres or more across the hills and creeks. It was always a time of exploring the daily changes in the countryside from home to school and back again. A few rode on horses and there was a horse paddock fenced off up the top of the play ground.

I went to this school from 1956 – 1960 when I left to go to Mullumbimby High School. I did have a  two year change  in 1957 / 58 when I went to the Seventh Day Adventist Primary School in at Mullumbimby. After that I went back to Wilson’s Creek as it was cheaper  than the church run  school.

Being a one teacher school, there were about ten desks around the room, two students per desk. Throughout the years I was there we wrote with steel nibbed pens dipped in ink. It was the job of the school monitor to go around on Monday morning and top up all the ceramic inkwells in the desks with a rubber neck on a glass filler bottle. I was often the school monitor.

As electricity had only come into the Valley recently, the school had a brand new radio and record player. Our great delight was listening to the children’s program on the radio once a week and listening to records ….. black vinyl records. Some of them had music for folk dancing. On some special school open days we had all the parents around to see our work. Even the parents became involved with  in the folk dancing.

Leon Bonsaw  was one of my  fellow students …… he was a weedy kid with victim mentality as I look back ….. I physically got stuck into him one day  for some reason …… picking on him  …. The next day I was remorseful  and gave him a halfpenny by way of recompense  the next day  ….. very valuable to me at the time!

For sport and games we all  played:

•   Rounders in the lower playground which consisted of hitting a soft rubber ball with a softball bat …. Then running around the playground

•   A big rope was tied up the big quandong tree above the school house five or so of us would take turns swinging on the rope out over the slope and coming back to our position …..  a big run up got you further out over the slope

•   At times a group would play ‘drop the hankie’ …..  ten or so of us  would sit in a circle whilst one our number circulated around the group ready to surreptitiously drop a hankie behind someone before they realised it …… if the person dropping the hankie came back to that person with the hankie, he was next for circulating around the group.

For crafts and group things we sometimes all went out in the afternoon and did gardening under the watchful eye of Mr. Long. There were gardens to be weeded along the lower south side of the  schoolhouse. There were also individually planted trees on the outer roadside boundary that needed weeding.

I was always experimenting and making new things ….. like a steam cannon. This consisted of a 20 mm * 150 mm  aluminium  lozenge  container that had a cork in one end. With a bit of water in the container and a methylated spirit burner with a burning flame, the water could be quickly heated to boiling point whereby the cork exploded with a loud explosion and blew out up to 4.00 metres away. When there was no money available for toys, you were innovative and made your own fun with others.

A very special night in the year was the yearly cracker night or Guy Fawkes Night. This night was named after  Guy Fawkes born 1570, York, England who  died Jan. 31, 1606, London. Guy Fawkes was a British soldier and best-known participant in the Gunpowder Plot. Its object was to blow up the Parliament building, while James I and his chief ministers met within, in reprisal for increasing oppression of Roman Catholics in England.

For cracker night we would all build a 2.0 metre high bonfire on the slope above the school. There was cut out a flat cricket  strip, about 1.50 metres wide * 10 metres long. It was on this flat strip we built the bonfire.  Mr. Long would purchase all sorts of fireworks like:

•   Bungers ….. large crackers about 100 mm long * 20 mm wide …. These would go off with loud explosion when you lit the wick

•   Tom Thumbs  ….. small crackers in flat dual-sided  pack of about 80 mm long * 50 mm wide …. The ten or so small crackers on either side of the pack all went off progressively  as you lit the fuse

•   Roman Candles  …..  that initially threw up out a three metre fountain of sparks and smoke  for a few minutes then cascading red glowing balls of fire as an aftermath

•   Skyrockets  …..  that shot away into the night sky with a swish of sparks then exploded  in the cold night in cascade of bright stars

On the actual night it was with great anticipation we would arrive with our parents for a potluck dinner initially. The bonfire was then lit after dinner and the fireworks show would begin. This culminated in the skyrockets being let off to finish the night. In the morning numbers of us would hurry to school to retrieve any dud bungers  we could find. We would extract out the gunpowder and use in various homemade crackers of our own. As various people were injured by exploding fireworks, the public sale of fireworks was banned by the Government in later years.

See the website for the current school fifty years on at: https://wilsonscrk-p.schools.nsw.gov.au/#. I had been sent this website in 2008 by my Gerald my brother in Sydney for Wilsons Creek Primary School where he and I went to primary school in the 1950’s. The students had designed this website with help of their teacher. I had signed the guestbook and soon after that Susan, then a retiring teacher invited me to come and speak at the school when I was down from Brisbane. I phoned Simon Cook the new principal soon after that and asked him if I could speak on a certain day in a months time. He said they would be glad to have me out and speak about the school 50 years on.

It was with some intrepidation yet excitement that that Claire my daughter drove me out to the school by 11. a.m. to meet the teachers and speak to the children at 11.30 a.m. Claire being a trainee teacher got me to turn my whole talk into an interaction around 5-10 questions then feed in my experiences from the 1950’s when Gerald and I were there. I spoke to 60 children for right on half an hour …… the questions just worked wonderfully. I had dozens of hands up all the time …… many wanted to participate. I even had my old birds egg collection from 40 – 50 years ago ….. many wanted to see that at the end of my talk. I had a piece of petrified wood I found in the gully volcanic tuff rock wall in the early 1960’s when I found the bat cave under the cliffs where Mr. Cox’s bananas were (one of the many banana growers in the area at the time) ….. we talked about the bat cave etc. It turned into wonderful time.

See the post: Wilsons Creek where Ken Aitken Grew Up in the 1950’s and 1960’s ….http://www.kenaitken.net/past-personal-stories/wilsons-creek-where-ken-aitken-grew-up-in-the-1950s-and-1960s/

One of the things that has changed in a major way, is that there NO open space anymore …. no open cow paddocks or banana plantations … it is all closed bush ….. planted by many new owners or regrowth. Camphor Laurel trees are everywhere!! What was Brown’s road (an old couple who came on bullock tracks to Wilsons Creek in the early 1900’s) ….. is now called ‘Blackbean Rd.’ ….. you cannot see Brown’s house ….. it is all surrounded by dense trees.

Photographs of The Community Hall  in January 2006:

The Community Hall was a very significant part of the school community and part of the general community. Every Christmas there would be a Christmas tree with Santa Claus coming for presents around the tree.

Walking to Primary School:

We walked everyday across the paddocks and hills with the Graham boys from the next property next door. This was in bare feet from 1956 – 1960 …… we walked to school over past Browns place. We walked across their crossing. However when the creek was in flood, we would go across the flooded creek on Brown’s flying fox.  Mr. Brown was supervising. This was used to get the cases of bananas from Brown’s side of the creek to the other side. The Banana Carrying lorry  would branch off and come down the  road to pick up the bananas and take them into Mullumbimby to the train going down to Sydney or Melbourne. We lived in as very community minded era …… everyone helped each other.

Going across the flooded creek on Brown’s flying fox with Mr. Brown supervising.

Brown’s flying fox consisted  of a heavy duty cable on which ran a carrier of two pulleys. The carrier was a heavy duty suspended frame of a steel and a base of flat boards which hung down from carrier for holding the heavy timber cases of bananas. It then had another circular wire which ran below the overhead wire and around two bicycle rims set up on posts at either end of the overhead wire. By pulling on one wire, you could pull  the carrier across the creek or bring  back again.

We would sit on the carrier whilst Mr. Brown would slowly pull us across the brown  floodwaters of the swollen creek below. We would then walk up through the paddock to the main Wilsons Creek road ….. down along the road past Whipp’s entry, dairy and their pigsty with the big mother pig asleep in the mud …… down the bitumen road  ….. around the corner and over the crossing  across the little creek that flowed down from Whipp’s  top paddock  ….. past the mulberry tree on the left hand side below Mr. Long’s house (the teacher) ….. we would then walk past up to the school for the  day ……. we used to stop on the way home and pick any mulberries if the season was right ….. or pick the fresh mulberry leaves for a shoe box of silkworms ….. these were used to feed our silkworms …. then would transform into golden silken cacoons.

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BUSH FIRE ON THE RIDGE ABOVE OUR HOUSE:

A bushfire had developed in the bush above our house at night. There was a house  and sawmill owned by the Porters about a kilometre along the ridge.

Dad and I and many neighbours drove up and around through Goonengerry and up to  Porter’s house and sawmill. Fortunately there was a bushtrack which led down to the fire. We all went down and helped put out the fire. This was the communal spirit in action.

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Hobbies …… collecting butterflies:  Whilst still at Wilsons Creek  School, I got totally absorbed in catching butterflies ….. on the way to school, coming home from school and at home  …. I made this metre long catching net from some disused mosquito net hand sewn into a 500 mm wire loop mounted on the end of a long stick ….. I would run across the paddocks after some new butterfly.

When butterflies were caught, they were mounted on a large sheet of cardboard with a pin through their thorax. This became my butterfly board.

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Projects on the Property:

The Pet Parrot

Mum and Dad drove in the 1950’s a short-wheel based Land Rover. Whenever we would drive the three kilometres from our house up to the main Wilsons Creek road which was a metalled and bitumen road, or come home, we would drive through a dairy farm owned by Mr. Whiteman. It was pleasant driving through these open grassed paddocks. There was one section we drove by and there was a very big grey stump about three metres high by 1.0 metre thick. It was hollow and a rosella parrot had made its nest at ground level at the base of the stump. We would see the parrot go down or come out the top of the stump and we knew made the parrot had made a nest at ground level.

Whenever we went by the stump, we would often stop and look at the nest of five white eggs in the shallow saucer of wooden stump grit through a small hole we made at base of the stump.  Eventually, the eggs hatched out into small baby rosella parrots which the parents would fly back and forth and feed. Eventually, the  hatchlings became almost as big as the parents. The conversation moved  to taking one of the hatchlings home and building a cage to put it in.

Soon after that agreement, we went a bit further up the creek to visit a friend David who had a cage of budgerigars  for some inspiration. Not only did we get the inspiration but he offered to give us several budgerigars. We said when we had the cage ready, we would come back and get the  budgerigars.

With Dad building it up in the shed above the house, he built a cage out of timber about two metres high x 1.00 metre wide, built a small door at the side base and faced it with small wire netting to keep the  birds in. The cage had a small round wooden dowel across the top of the birds to sit on.

When the cage was built, we went up to the stump, widened the hole and extracted one of the well grown birds, brought it down to the house and put it in the cage.  We then went up to David’s place and picked up the several budgerigars and the parrot had some companions.

About a year later, a budgerigar nesting box was made and installed in the cage. Within a short time two budgerigars had mated, laid eggs in the nesting box. Eventually, out came more budgerigars.

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Fencing: As was said before, Mum and Dad drove a short-wheel based Land Rover. Whenever we would drive the three kilometres from our house up to the main Wilsons Creek road which was a metalled and bitumen road, or come home, we would drive through a dairy farm owned by Mr. Whiteman.  It was pleasant driving through these open grassed paddocks.

Open grassed paddocks of the dairy farm owned by Mr. Whiteman.

Mr. Whiteman lived in a white-painted house  with his wife and three children on the hill as you entered off the main Wilsons Creek road. His dairy shed and cow yards were about 200 metres  beyond the house on the same hill. His dairy cows roamed over open grassed paddocks.

We just travelled over open grass tracks over open grassed paddocks. The tracks finally narrowed as they came down to Wilsons Creek. Then it turned on itself, came through  a low level coarse gravelly crossing. The creek was really beautiful. It was a rainforest creek of large still pools than another ….. all connected by a series  of bouldery rapids. There was a point where the track dipped down and crossed the creek where there was only a heavy gravel bottom. Dad had worked on the crossing by removing any manhandleable rocks. This left a heavy gravel bottom with no bigger stones than 75 mm in size. 

The crossing then became a 50 metre muddy track which led up to the house. Some times after periods of rain, the track would become very muddy with free water on the surface of the track. However, when the short-wheel based  Land Rover was engaged in four wheel drive, the vehicle could easily get up to the  house.

Over one year in the early 1960’s Mr. Whiteman began to get very cross that we were cutting across his land. It got to the point that we came home from church one weekend and Mr. Whiteman had felled a small tree across the entrance to our low level crossing. This meant we couldn’t cross to get up to our house. Mr. Whiteman in being difficult in turning against us in a small way, it became very detrimental to him with the future fencing we did as to what turned out that we had an easement across his land.

We had to back out and travel back up to the Wilsons Creek road. We drove on a bit further to another neighbour’s driveway which led to Browns House. Brown’s Road as we knew it is now called Black Bean Road. Blackbean or Moreton Bay Chestnut trees are wonderful broad leaved rainforest trees that have beautiful orange flowers and very big black seeds in long 300 mm pods. See the post on my personal experiences website:  Browns House at Wilsons Creek as in January 2008:

Browns House at Wilsons Creek as in January 2008

Browns House  as of 2008

Browns had come out to Wilsons Creek in the bullock trail days of the early 1900’s to clear their land, grow bananas on the steep slopes and build their big house with its cream painted weatherboard sides, galvanised tin roof and big wide verandas. They had sold the property to someone else in 1995.

Their road was very extensive and led over the hill where their house was and down to another house  where the Grahams lived. See the post: Banana Growing in the 1960’s: http://www.kenaitken.net/past-personal-stories/banana-growing-in-the-1960s/.

Then the driveway went on further, down over a little creek that eventually flowed into the main creek. The driveway went over some slopes to  where the Knights had had a house up to 1954  when a big landslide came against their house in the middle of a big cyclone. We went up a small  hill  and through into our property.  We had arrived home after a bit of a detour!

Looking across the creek to the house  in the 1960’s

The house from a distance across the creek …… the house doesn’t exist now as it burnt down in 2012 with the renting of the house by the new owner David Dubens. However the photographs, memories and influences remain from growing up there.

Dad cut the chopped branch across the crossing the next day and went into Mullumbimby to see the property people. He came back with a document that showed we had an easement from the main Wilsons Creek road, across the farm and down to the creek leading up to our house. Dad was free to fence the easement  on both sides.

Soon after this decision to fence the easement, Dad went up into the bush on the Koonyum Range. The Koonyum Range was a range of forested hills on the northern side of us, right above the main Wilsons Creek road. Dad would often go up there to get firewood and cut stringy-bark fence posts. Dad had obtained permission to get these things from an owner of a large forested area up there. He would go up there in his large 4 wheel drive Landrover to get posts and firewood. Chainsaws had just come on the market in the early 1960’s. He had exchanged the short-wheel based Land Rover for the larger version. The earth road through the many vertical trees looked like this:

A section of the Koonyum Range …. The access road among tall trees

Dad cut down various stringybark trees for posts into 2.0 metre lengths and loaded them onto the Land Rover. Stringybark as a eucalyptus tree is a very good timber for posts in the ground. He brought them down to the house to split off the bark and split the logs into fence posts using steel wedges. He would probably get three to four fence posts from each log. The bark I later used to make my tree house construction in the big Black Bean tree near the garage. More is said on that later.

He then took these fence posts right up to the alignment of the easement up at the Wilsons Creek road on both sides. He then worked backwards away from  the main road. He had a friend of ours, Cal, who had a tractor with a fence boring unit to come and dig a whole series of post holes  for the fence. He then placed the fence posts into the hole, aligned them correctly, filled the hole with the dugout earth and progressively  rammed the earth tight with the head of a crowbar.

Then when there were about ten posts in place, he then aligned a series of three twenty millimetre holes in each, drilling them with a manual drilling tool. Electric drills hadn’t been invented then and then there was no electricity available. The holes were for the placement of barbed wire along the entire length of the fence.

He worked his way slowly  from the Wilsons Creek road down to the causeway over the Wilsons Creek creek to our house. There were many posts over three kilometres of our easement. There were periodic gates in the fence on either of the easement  to allow for Mr. Whiteman  to move his dairy cattle from one paddock to another and herd them up to the dairy for milking. Instead of just moving the cattle continuously across the paddock, he had now open two gates and carefully move the cattle from one paddock to the next. He had to ensure the cattle didn’t go out on the easement and take a lot more time  in herding  them up to the dairy for milking.  The simplicity of Mr. Whiteman moving his cattle across one  paddock in one go, now became very complicated in moving his cattle  through a set of gates.

I remember one period in the Christmas holidays and I wasn’t in High School and I worked with Dad on one section of the fence. I had to carefully feed the barbed wire through the holes of a set number of posts and Dad would tighten and cut the wire so the wire was very tight.

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When I was home in the 1950’s and the 1960’s I remember some of these things:

• In the 1960’s, my brothers I and walked the three kilometres or so, up along the gravel road to the main Wilsons Creek road to catch the school bus into Mullumbimby High School. This was through open paddocks which were a major problem in spring time due to the nesting magpies and pied butcher birds. I have already touched on this topic

•   One of the main features of the site was the creek ….. it was a series of three large pools up to fifty metres across, joined together by rapids and boulders. These pools were edged by glass clear waters with darker shadows streaked by lighter translucent sun shafts falling through the edging trees in lighter colours. Water from the top rapids flowed into the first main pool which was our swimming pool which then flowed over tan-coloured rock shelves …… to flow into a deeper dark green pool below which was a much longer pool.  In these pools we went fishing and swimming as kids. There were three large pools up to two metres deep: Pool 1, Pool 2, Pool 3.

• How the rain and wind lashed around the eaves  during cyclonic weather
• The tossing waves of the swollen creek. When a cyclone was coming down the coast and creek had come up, the flying fox enabled us freedom of movement in a cyclone.

The hand drawing of the engine room I did in 1966 for my Art Class at Mullumbimby High School (See the website at:

 https://mullumbimb-h.schools.nsw.gov.au/) in Northern NSW. I left High School at the end of 1967. In 1968 I left home to begin a new section of my life in Tertiary Education at Avondale College at Cooranbong right down near Morisset, near Newcastle in New South Wales. I went to do a Science Degree. I had a Commonwealth Scholarship to go to the College. Read my stories: The Train Story. See the post at:

THE WORLD IS A VERY SMALL PLACE: AN EXPERIENCE WHILST I WAS A STUDENT IN 1969 …..

and the Cairns Story. See the post at: http://www.kenaitken.net/past-personal-stories/the-cairns-trip-in-1968/

I stayed there for two years (1968 / 1969), (Physics didn’t agree with me! …. I had to pass that to keep my Commonwealth Scholarship) then I came up to Brisbane to live. I finished a Science degree (in biological science) at the University of Queensland in 1974. The Federal Government provided free university fees in that era compared to the Hex fee arrangements which are part of the Federal Government’s policy now.

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I also gained some other wonderful inner values which have endured throughout my life:

1. To be resourceful, innovative, self sufficient, and independent

2. To work hard in every thing

3. To be honest, caring and respectful of others and elders with good manners

4. To be tidy and organised in everything.

5. Family: My parents gave me the best they knew how. This included a very strong sense of extended communal family …. both personally within the family then the very strong relational family and then the extended communal family within the church community …… a commitment to others and a strong desire to see people in need always included in that family.

At times it was bit unpredictable as Dad sometimes was emotionally explosive when things didn’t fit his expectations. In that era you didn’t just get up and leave your spouse if things became difficult. You stuck it out and sorted the problems out in time.

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