Peter Kreet Art: Pioneering in 20th cent Australia.

Self on our first load of grapes

Pioneering in 20th cent. Australia.

In the mid 60’s Australia offered opportunities to fulfil many potential farmers’ dream of owning a property of their own. Mass migration of the post-war years had helped to build the Snowy Mountain Scheme, a series of interlocking dams and hydro electric power stations. This allowed the development of the Coleambally Irrigation Area, a fairly remote district in central New South Wales. At the time this was a grand national vision, one of the largest irrigation schemes every undertaken in this country. Any interested person could enter a ballot for the allocation of a “farm”. Coleambally was not the only possibility to obtain a property of your own, at the time the Ord River scheme was being developed in Northern Australia, Brigalow country in Queensland was being released, as was the Esperance wheat growing area in West Australia, were it had been discovered that the lack of trace elements in the soil had been the reason for failure in the past. It was possible for anyone with a little capital and drive to make a new life for themselves could try their luck.

My wife, Heather and I had just returned to Australia after several years in Europe and after a few years teaching were keen to try our luck. There is something very seductive about owning land, a desire as old as human habitation of the planet. Personally I always had a secret desire to establish a family vineyard and winery. During the four years I was teaching, I would purchase half hogs head barrels of wine from the Clare Valley, so making my own seemed to be a sensible thing to do. Each of these hogs heads contained some two hundred bottles of new season wine. Our joke used to be keeping a journal on the perceived improvement of our wine cellar, after the first few weeks ,we would be convinced the wine was greatly improved! The last entry a few months later usually would read finished last bottle," great development in all respects”. Not that we drank the lot ourselves regular friends were only too keen to help in this research.

As I did not feel confident enough to select a parcel of land suitable for my purpose, I decided it was best to let the” experts” give the seal of approval on possible land use. The Coleambally Irrigation Area was being developed for rice growing, but spread among the heavy soil types were hillocks of light sandy loam suitable for horticulture. Australians generally were disinterested in horticulture as it was considered too much like hard work, only later did I realise why. History bears out the failure of closer horticultural settlement in the MIA in NSW, as this area was resurrected as a fruit growing area by Italian migrants, after many soldiers walked off their farms. This disinterested proved to be to my advantage as the likelihood of success was greatly enhanced. Luck rode with me and I was allocated my first choice of some one hundred acres. As I had no knowledge of farming, I decided to undertake a correspondence course in fruit growing.

The next problem was how the enterprise was to be financed , the block required clearing grading and sprinkler irrigation. I decided to put together a ten year plan [they were very popular in the 60s]. My first task was to gather together the price history of various vegetables sold in the Sydney markets by season. Then by dividing up many sheets of paper and colouring in each to indicate the rotation of crops ,variety and planting times I could demonstrate the likely cash flow from vegetables growing ,while I was waiting for the vines to grow and bear fruit. I then costed up the capital required to develop twenty acres of grapevines to fruiting and set off to see my friendly bank manager. What ever I did he seemed impressed, so we were ready to set out on this big adventure in the middle of nowhere. I resigned my job at the school I was teaching at, all the staff and my friends thought I had lost my mind, I must confess I did not ever know how to start a tractor let alone work with one.

My young daughters and dog

Our next door neighbour in Paddington wished us well, so we set off in our little car, two children aged three and nine months, plus the cat and dog for an unknown future hundreds of miles in the semi -desert. I had purchased a small transportable house which was just as well, but we would have to wait several weeks for power and wait for rain to have drinking water. My next door neighbour in Coleambally , an old fruit farmer, turned rice grower was a great help in those early days. He had taken up a rice farm for his son. Water for washing proved to be no problem, as we were able to draw water from the irrigation channel by bucket until the rain came and put some in our tank.

Our first task was clearing the block of very large pine trees, then bulldoze the stumps, some required dynamite, then spend months picking up sticks and burning everything before we could grade and install the irrigation equipment. Governments often think you just give an axe ,crowbar and land to a settler and presto, there is a farm. Our clearing took the best part of a year, before we were ready to plant our first crop. Slowly things improved, we used he council road graders to dig our trenched for the irrigation pipes much to the amusement of fellow settlers. Everyone was in the same situation, so considerable camaraderie existed.

Preparing the ground for the first carrot crop

Our first commercial crop was to be carrots, the crop was brilliant, some 650 tons of carrots. Unfortunately although I had selected the correct time to grow the crop, I did not realise that knowledge of supply and demand at any one time was required to maximise profits. Our crop would supply the whole of Australia for six weeks, resulting in a price collapse, resulting in a return of just one dollar per ton after all expenses, was naturally very disappointing, but such is life on the land!

I found that working sixteen to eighteen hours a day were required to develop a fruit and vegetable block, as the months past I sometimes felt that this venture would kill me. Towards the end I would suffer many giddy spells, lost a lot of weight working these long hours in 40 degree heat. Some days I would have to load twenty five tons of potatoes on to a truck single handed. I really was not built to throw one hundred weight bags up onto the back of a truck. The drivers did not consider it their job to get off the truck back.

Heather & girls among the first vine plantings

Apart from the physical strain, the hardest and most disappointing aspect was the outright corruption and dishonest behaviour of various market agent some 600 miles away. No matter what the official price broadcast on the radio, what you received was always considerably less. It was impossible to ever know what your crop had actually been sold for. Then there was the Mafia, who seem to control the marketing and distribution of fresh produce in the Sydney Markets. I have had personal experience of a bag of onions increasing in price from one dollar to eight dollar as it worked it way across the market floor. I shall try to deal with some of these issues in future blogs. But we finally got there, planting premium varieties of wine grapes. At times we were forced to import certain grape canes from aboard.