Bachelors and Spinsters

After the death of their mother, Annie and her sister Eileen lived at the farm in Minyip, keeping house for their father and younger brother Jack. There was plenty to do; housekeeping without electricity is no easy job – no vacuum cleaners, washing machines or refrigerators. Cooking was done on a wood-fired stove. At haymaking and harvesting time there would often be extra men to feed – and they expected hot dinners, too!

Outside the house there were poultry to feed, cows to milk, and gardens to tend. Most people were as self-sufficient as possible, making butter, preserving fruit and growing vegies.

 You might think that life in a small country town would be pretty quiet – dull, even. But you’d be wrong. Country people are pretty good at entertaining themselves! Annie and Eileen had a very busy social life. Perusal of the local newspapers of the time show that there were plenty of social events - a kitchen tea, a concert, a card night, a twenty-first birthday party.

There was plenty of sport for those so inclined: football, golf, tennis and cricket. Lavish afternoon teas and suppers were the norm.

Mum used to tell the story of a school friend from Ballarat, who came to stay on the farm for several weeks, and Annie and Eily did their best to show her a good time. When the lass returned home, she spent several weeks in bed, suffering from “nervous exhaustion”!

By the late twenties, most people had a car; the Mahers had a Ford, a ‘tin Lizzie’ and it went everywhere, over the roughest of roads, and even across paddocks. Their next car was an Essex, followed by a Chev.

Every little community for miles around had at least one Ball; Bachelors and Spinsters Balls were all the rage (not the drunken affairs we hear of nowadays) and people drove a long way to attend them.

One the way home from one such occasion, in wet weather (the main ball season was winter) the car skidded on the greasy road (I’m talking here about an unsealed road which consisted of two wheel tracks with a grassy centre – you can still see a few tracks like that in the Wimmera - and landed in the table drain (wide shallow drain at the side of the road). They were hopelessly bogged, and had to trudge across the paddocks in full evening finery - long dresses for the girls - to the nearest house where they stayed the rest of the night. It was not uncommon for them to return home early in the morning, when the boys would milk the cows and then go to bed.

Everyone had dance programmes, with a little pencil attached, so the boys could book dances. 

When Mum died, we found a few of them among her keepsakes. 

In this one, the writing is my father’s, and I wondered why it had been kept for so long. The date was July 15^th, 1927, and Fred had four dances with Ann. 

She would have been just 19, Fred a couple of years older. What happened that night that caused one of them to keep the dance programme for all those years?

Over the next years, Annie had several boyfriends, but they all fell by the wayside; in a couple of cases, Mum said, because they were drank too much, and there was No Way she would ever marry a drinker! She had seen several relatives suffer the miseries of living with a drinker.

But Fred was always there, a good-looking, rather shy chap, and a beautiful dancer, too. Trouble was, he wasn’t Catholic, and thus not a suitable partner for a good Catholic girl. At what point Mum changed her mind on this, I don’t know, but Fred and Annie announced their engagement at St. Patrick’s Ball in Minyip, in 1936. Not a popular choice with her family, as I’ve written elsewhere.

By now, Eileen was about to be married, and brother Jack would soon follow suit. When that happened Jack would take over the farm, according to the custom of the times, and Annie and her father would have to move out. In those days, sons got farms; daughters were expected to marry (probably another son with a farm, but at least someone who would support them). But Fred, the next-to-youngest of thirteen children, was never going to inherit a farm, so they would have to provide for themselves. Fred had worked for an older cousin since leaving school, and was saving as much as he could to buy his own farm.

Annie at back, right

Annie would also need to earn a living, and she had already arranged to train as a nurse, at the Ballarat Base Hospital. She would not be paid for the first six months, but would at least have her keep, and could live in the Nurses’ home.

 

Annie enjoyed her training, and made many friends among the other nurses. The work was hard, but interesting. During her third year at the Hospital, she caught diphtheria, and was very ill, missing weeks of training.

 She still managed to pass her finals, and became a registered Nurse. She had to make up the lost weeks, of course, but finally she and Fred were able to marry.

(See also “A marriage of two cultures”)