2. Tarling Well.
28km from Narrogin 
​Water holes and soaks were the meeting places and camping sites of the sandalwood cutters and  shepherds minding sheep on pastoral leases before the land was open for farming in 1892. The area surrounding this well was opened up for free selection as early as 1893. A small settlement was established here soon after and Tarling well was built in 1905. This was gazetted in the late 1890's as the main townsite of the area. It was a popular place for weary travellers and their horses and became the delivery point for the local mail run between Narrogin and Gillimanning.

Wickepin is located 210 km south east of Perth via Brookton and Pingelly, and 38km east of Narrogin.
This blog is a guide to historic attractions in the town and signposted parts of the adjoining Facey Drive Trail.

Wickepin has become famous for its association with Albert Facey, the author of the best selling book "A Fortunate Life".
Other remarkable former residents were poet, author, and playwright Dorothy Hewett, and the Church of the First Born sect who established the New Jerusalem settlement east of Wickepin.

The success of Facey’s autobiography A Fortunate Life is one of the remarkable events of Australian publishing. Originally published by the Western Australian-based Fremantle Arts Press in 1981, the book was subsequently published by Penguin and is regularly voted into the top 10 of the most popular Australian books. It was subsequently made into both a play and a successful TV mini-series."

                  Wickepin Town Attractions
1. Murals  can be seen all over town including the Police Station, Wickepin Swimming pool, Wickepin Primary School, Wickepin Newsagency and the Wickepin CRC.

2. Toolseum. Explore this intriguing collection of agricultural tools and photos of a bygone era. Open for viewing by appointment only. Bookings can be made 1 week in advance by contacting the CRC  or email
[email protected].

3. Boarding House 52 Wogolin Road opposite the Toolseum. Private residence. Built around 1910, this was originally Wickepin's community hall. Albert stayed here between 1912-13 while working for the Railways and the Water Supply.

4. Community Resource Centre .Visit the Centre for brochures and information on local attractions and facilities. 
                                                        Contact. 0898881500 or email [email protected].

​5a A.B Facey Homestead  is situated in the main street and is the home that Facey and his family walked out of in 1934 during the Great Depression. The house is much more than just another wheatbelt dwelling. It is a unique opportunity to view the harsh and simple lifestyle of the small wheatbelt farmer in the early 1930s.

6. Heritage Walk Trail. This is an attractive and easy 1.8km trail featuring numbered historical attractions and quirky artwork. Follow the map as some sections of the trail are not clearly marked.

Two Gnome Villages are in the townsite and they are happy to receive visitors. The creator started her gnome family 25 years ago and has accumulated 1700 Gnomes that are all numbered and recorded. Worth a visit for a giggle.

​​2d Gillimanning Approximately 11 km from McCall's farm.
The Facey family camped here when they first came to the area. The town of Gillimanning was established in 1905 although Albert mentions the place as early as 1903 when they moved to Archie McCall's nearby property. By 1907 a weekly mail service had been established between Narrogin and Gillimanning from where the family collected their mail. A very active and dedicated community developed facilities for the area including a community hall and school which opened in 1909. The townsite is unusual in that it is located on a ridge a few kilometres south of Gillimanning Spring. 

 For information on regional Wickepin attractions,click these hyperlinks
Yealering and wide world of Wickepin brochure
Malyalling nature Reserve
Lake Toolibin
Harrismith

References and useful websites
Wickepin WA - Aussie Towns (1)
Wikipedia  - Dorothy Hewitt
Wickepin Shire Council website
"A Fortunate Life" A.B. Facey Penguin Books 1981
​Gillimanning blog 
New Jerusalem: A Historic Wickepin Cult Location

Note- private property, do not enter.

This block was part of the New Jerusalem Settlement. The Bergin home block at Malyalling Rock and it were rated as having the best soils of surveyed blocks in the district at the time.
​The Prosser family ran the Cornwalls Store which was located in the vicinity of the White Well Tarling Hall from 1908 to 1912. The Prossers left the store to buy this farm from Mr Jago. They later moved to Wickepin, but their bachelor son Harry lived in the house. Prossers sold the house to Tony Sartori.
Rex Bergin recalled that in 1961/62 he and Harry lunched in the old house, when he was shearing for Tony Sartori (Harry was a roustabout). The farm was then sold to the present owner.
The derelict house is an interesting mixture of syle and material, which grew and changed over the decades. It is in a lovely position in a valley beside a creek and has a large stone well. Judging by extensive drains and banks in the adjoining creek, and wall damage in the house, I reckon that the house had most likely been occasionally flooded. 

I think that the original house consisted of the lounge, bedrooms and the present kitchen, which had solid fitted  rock and mud cement walls.
The two front rooms had a high arched roof, with flat roofs on the front verandah and back rooms.
​Interestingly each layer of rooms behind the front two becomes increasingly narrow. 
Rooms 5 and 6 also have mostly stone and mud walls, except for the two outside walls (room 5 missing, room 6 galvanised iron) 

All of the roof timbers are milled jarrah, which indicates that the roof had been replaced.
​
A corridor runs down the centre of the house. The lounge and bedroom 1 were fine rooms with plastered and painted walls and a pressed iron ceiling.
The south facing lounge window has been converted to a servery. I think it looked on to a rear verandah before the house was extended and a kitchen was  installed.

The kitchen and bedroom 2 are a bit deceiving. All remaining walls were coated by painted masonite fibre boards, but masonite was not available before 1935. Where masonite has fallen off one can see the original wall treatment - hessian painted with a lime render.

Bedroom 2 has a deteriorated lino covering. A clue to the age of the lino was found in English Pix magazines used as underlay. One magazine showed Victory in Europe Day celebrations in 1945. A 1940 edition featured Australian troops enjoying themselves in Singapore in 1940, which was quite thought provoking. Within a year the Japanese overran Singapore, and these men either died or were in dreadful prison camps.

​Room 5 is a bit of a mystery. It is smaller than the others, it has mud mortar walls on three sides,and the easter wall is missing. The wall between the kitchen and room 5 looks like a later addtion using wattle and daub type construction. An image shows thin jam and sheoak pole reinforcement filled with local mud (probably mixed with a straw type material).
Room 6 also has mud mortar walls on three sides, but they are the higher grade stone construction. The western wall is more recent galvanised iron with a jarrah frame THe interior is lined with masonite. A gas bottle fitting on the outside suggests that it was a bathroom and or laundry in 1970's-1980s.
​Room 7 at the back is definitely the  most recent. Unlike the others this has cement rather than jarrah board floors and is entirely enclosed by galvanised iron.

At the back of the house is an elegantly built little outhouse, which was built with the original house, and more recently housed the electricity generator.
Prior to that I guess that it may have been a butchery or meat storage room. It is much too elegant for a dunny.
​

The original shed frames  still stand up the back.
​
What a tale this house could tell. 

1. School site
Two buildings occupied this empty site. The first, built by settlers was a typical wooden  building with a thatch roof made with grass tree (balga) leaves. in 1887 this was replaced by a handsome brick building with a shingle roof.
 Attendances at the one-teacher school averaged between Ю and 40 until 1908. after which they' declined.
Parents paid five pence (four cents) per week tuition fee.
The school closed in 1913, opened again in 1917, but closed for the last time in 1924 due to insufficient numbers. The bricks were later used for the construction of a building in Pingelly.

2. Ingram's Cottage      This house is on private property. Please view from the road.

William Ingram built this cottage in 1889 using hand-made bricks fired on site. Bush timber was used for the roof and floors. Ingram was one of the first permanent settlers in the district and was granted a 100 acre (40.5 hectare) homestead block in Moorumbine in 1863. He and his wife Mary had arrived from Denton, England earlier that year after enduring seven months at sea. They  initially built a small mud brick dwelling, the remains of which can still be seen in the middle of the property.  After building his new home, Ingram used the mud brick dwelling as a stable and also a blacksmith shop. It is thought that at one time it may have been used as a holding cell for prisoners being transported between Perth and Albany. Note bars on windows. Ingram worked for a while with Atkins and together they built nearly all the stone buildings in Moorambine. He and Mary lived here with their child Eliza until their deaths. Mary in 1918 aged 79, and William in1926 aged 87. The pear tree in the cottage was planted by Ingram in the mid 1880’s.

3. Atkins's Cottage (Moorumbine Cottage)

This cottage was built in 1872 by carpenter and stonemason William Atkins, who also built St  Patrick's Church. That year he and his wife Mary were the first couple to be married at the church, before it was consecrated. They moved into the two-room house and raised 7 or 8 children there. Additional rooms were added later. Underneath the house is a very large cellar that was used for food and drink. The cellar was prone to flooding and Mrs Atkins spent many hours bucketing out water on wet winter days. On the property beyond the house is a large olive tree said to have been planted by Benedictine monks from New Norcia when they passed through the district around 1873

4. Sandalwood Inne
​
The house was built in 1872 for Samuel Wright a Beverley farmer and sandalwood cutter. The land was owned by John Sewell a sheep farmer who sold part of it to Wright in 1882, and the adjoining section to William Atkins in1884
The history of the building is unclear but it appears to have been used for several purposes including an inn and possibly a post office. Charles Chapman Smith and his brother Henry Hawkins Sewell are recorded as using the building as a store in 1876 and their as a hotel in 1882 selling rum. It is believed he possessed a ‘gallon licence" which restricted him to selling liquor in quantities not less than a gallon (4.5 litres) at any one time !!! 
Note the bars in the window on the north side of the building. This room was possibly used at one time as a holding cell for prisoners and convicts. 

6. Site of Flood's Store    North end of paddock opposite the church

This pile of rubbish is all that remains of a general store run by a Mr Flood that was built around 1884. Parker Shaddick grandson of early settler William Shaddick recalled that he bought lollies there on special occasions.
The store was only run for a few years it seems and after a few years that the railway was completed in 1889 it moved to Pingelly

​7 St Patrick’s Church of England
This is a scenic church, flanked by olive trees and a graveyard where leading settlers and their family rest.
Seats    of   the   church   were   made   at   the “Establishment” as  it  was  then  known,  or in other words, by  convict labour in York. Each family held a special pew for which “Pew  Rents”  were  regularly  paid.
Occasional services are still held here. 

​The stone church was completed in 1872 and consecrated in December 1873 by Bishop Hale, Western Australia’s first Anglican bishop.   At first there was no resident minister and communion was taken here only twice a year by a minister from Beverley. Two lay people took services on a regular basis until 1892 when the Rev FC Gillett was appointed to look after the newly formed parish of Moorumbine which included another 11 churches.
Rev. Gillett stayed away in distant places such as the Bannister Parsonage while ministering to his extended parish.
The nearby rectory (not open to the public) was built at this time and was allotted to Rev Gillet for the length of his lifetime. After his death in 1904 it was decided to grant ownership of the rectory to descendants of Rev. Gillett. His position remained vacant after his death, as by this time, Pingelly had become the main economic and cultural centre of the district.   

​This completes the Moorumbine trail. Trail users can return north along Moorumbine road. About 200 metres past St Patrick’s church on the left is the former property of Charles Chapman Smith one of the first permanent settlers in Moorumbine who arrived in about 1860. It is known as ‘Beambine today and is still being farmed by his descendents.
A little further on the right a few rocks and timber poles are all that remains of the stables owned by William and Faith Shaddick who settled in the 1860’s. Their house built nearby was known as the ‘old Moorumbine’, possibly due to the old spring just across the road. The home has long disappeared. The stables are also believed to have been used as a shearing shed.

To continue to Pingelly turn left at Aldersyde road. 

​Moorumbine (also spelt Mourambine is located 10km east of Pingelly
It is the first surveyed township in the Central Great Southern district and was a key stopping point from York to the north, Williams to the south-west and for pioneers and sandalwood cutters, who ventured far inland, until the Great Southern Railway line was constructed in 1889.
​
First white settlers in the district were graziers who purchased small annual ‘tillage leases’ at local waterholes, which were used as a base for sheep grazing on large grazing leases on native pastures.
Lewis John Bayley was the first settler to take up land in the Moorumbine area. In 1846 he was granted 4000 acres (1620 ha) for grazing sheep near a spring called Nalyaring by local Nyoongars. He was followed by other pastoralists keen on obtaining grazing lands for sheep. Individual flocks were tended by up to four shepherds. Initially there was very little farming conducted.

In 1845 an important trade in sandalwood was commenced with Singapore and Shanghai, which led to a sandalwood collecting boom. Principally young men would take wagons out into the bush to pull out sandalwood trees and prepare the wood for export. Sandalwood collecting was also done by later arriving farmers, who had to obtain income by any means to survive while they were clearing and preparing their land for cropping. They also trapped possums for their skins and hunted kangaroos for meat. From 1900 brown mallet bark was also collected for export, mainly to Germany for tanning leather.

​Gradually more permanent settlers arrived in the district, and the fine buildings to be seen on the Moorumbine Heritage Trail were constructed.
These were all built on 100 acre freehold blocks on water sources. The area was first surveyed by Frances John Gregory in 1856 and Richard Austin in 1858.
A permanent settlement was established in about 1860. Among the first permanent settlers were William Shaddick, William Ingram and Charles Chapman Smith.
​The settlement was initially divided into 100-acre homestead blocks and called Moorumbine Commonage  (a reflection of their English country heritage).
Moorumbine Road was originally a track to Beverley called “the Old Beverley Road” until it reached the township as a laneway known as  “The Mourambine  Lane” . Only half a chain wide, this is the ‘Half Chain Road shown on the Moorumbine Heritage Trail. Convicts were marched along this road to do public works, and barred windows on some Moorumbine buildings indicate that they were used as convict holding cells when required.

‘Disease of the liver,...... is extremely rare considering the amount of alcohol consumed. Ref 2

As with other reported first contacts, Nyoongars were friendly and helpful in assisting Moorumbine visitors to find sandalwood and water sources, which they regarded as shared resources. Unfortunately, a clash of values became obvious when settler’s sheep were occasionally speared. Some Nyoongars worked as shepherds and worked on farms, particularly after mass deaths from devastating disease outbreaks in the 1880’s disrupted their society. 
Official opinion of aborigines at this time is reflected in this quote from an 1860 History of WA, which ignores recorded incidences of conflict.

The growth of “Mourambine" itself continued so that on 24th April 1884 it was declared a townsite. No doubt rumours about 
the  construction  of  the  “Beverley-Albany“  railway  brought about this decision. Between  1884 and 1885  twenty-one town lots were sold, indicating faith in the future of the township. 

However the railway line was surveyed through Pingelly 10 km to the west 
One would have thought the people of Moorumbine would have fought to bring the railway through their village, but there is no record of this. Perhaps they preferred their peaceful existence.
The railway marked the rise of Pingelly and the gradual decline of Moorumbine. 
In the 1897 census, the population was: Moorumbine 80 males, 81 females, 161; Pingelly 52 males, 37 females, 89. Moorumbine today has only a few remaining families and the Moorumbine Heritage Trail buildings.
​
St. Patricks Anglican Church is in excellent condition and is still used for the occasional service.

References 

• Pingelly Our People and Progress. 1981 Sylvia Lange
• The York Society Inc
•  Taylor, Thomas George (1860). Western Australia; its history, progress, position, & prospects, Volume 13
•  Lost Pingelly Facebook

• The pioneers of Mourambine, including "a brief history of the townsite, 1842-1924" / researched and written by Lesley A. Lane and Florence C. Wilkes is a book, (which I haven't read) that is kept at the WA State Library .

​While reading local history and talking to veteran Wickepin farmers I was fascinated by tales of a Jewish settlement there. The people in the settlement were not Jewish, but Church of the Firstborn Christians whose tale deserves more attention. I have made this blog from sources in the text.

How did this happen? James Cowley Morgan Fisher was a classic cult leader, but in my opinion, the group thrived due to cooperative and tolerant Christian principles espoused by Emanual Swedenborg, and the common sense of Fisher’s two eldest sons.

​The Sect at Wickepin
There were about 100 members based at Nunawading Victoria. Their faith was an amalgam of Jewish and Christian beliefs as espoused by John Wroe and the Christian Israelites filtered by the idiosyncratic mind of Fisher.   As group grew it began to fragment. To overcome this Fisher ordered his sons to find a new location for the whole group in rural WA.  Fisher members who later moved to WA all had farming backgrounds and many had ties to the Firstborn dating from the 1860s.

The WA colonial government attracted newcomers through a generous policy of land alienation. Settlers could select up to one thousand acres at ten shillings per acre, with the cost spread over twenty years. Free homestead blocks of up to sixty acres were also offered, although farmers had to meet residence and improvement conditions.

They chose the Yarling Creek locality, 40 km east of Narrogin. Opened for selection in 1893, the area was said to have excellent land 'suited for cereals and fruit', and there was an abundance of fresh water easily obtained from springs, soaks and shallow bores, such that there was 'practically no fear in regard to a water famine during the summer months’.

Solomon and Samuel Fisher returned to Victoria to inform their father's followers and prepare to move west. There was no legal provision for communal property title in WA, so each man had to apply for land on adjoining blocks. William Butler and Charles Peters (both related to Fisher through marriage), who had come to WA with Solomon and Samuel, negotiated with the Lands Department, and signed applications for about four thousand hectares on behalf of their colleagues in Victoria. The area was named  ‘New Jerusalem’.
Unlike most new settlers, group members (about 70 in total) were well funded. From the sale of their Victorian properties, they brought an estimated £5,000 to invest, a fortune for the time. The money enabled them to build substantial homesteads, and purchase and acquire the newest and most modern farm machinery.
​
Fisher arrived in WA in early 1902. Fisher and his followers worked together to build wooden slab huts and to clear their rich flats along Yarling Creek. They shared livestock and farm equipment, although each family lived on its own block.
A spirit of sharing, fellowship and intense community was fostered through services and social gatherings. Their cohesiveness was evident in the family and neighbourhood connections between most members. The sect's rural character meant that day-to-day familiarity sustained relationships and avoided social contamination from an urban setting. 
​
By the time of Fisher's death, New Jerusalem was less of an isolated religious group and more a progressive farming settlement, with leadership provided by Solomon and Samuel Richard Fisher. The arrival of the railway and their leader's senility coincided. New Jerusalem continued as a farming community, but it became ever more part of the prosperous Wickepin community rather than a religious group.
There very little physical evidence of their occupation, presumably because buildings were mostly wood.

The group had a significant positive impact on the Wickepin district and was applauded by the local newspaper and a range of State bureaucrats and politicians.
​
In January 1906, New Jerusalem was visited by WA's Minister for Lands (Newton Moore), Director of Agriculture (Charles Chaplin), Surveyor General (Harold Johnston), local member of parliament (George Cowcher), and several Agricultural Society members and reporters, all of whom stayed overnight. Moore (soon to become Premier) was 'very much impressed with the New Jerusalem settlement … they have made commendable progress, and there is every indication of the members becoming prosperous settlers'.The visitors observed that 'a spirit of co-operation and mutual help permeates the whole community and governs all its actions. While communism is entirely absent, the settlement might nevertheless be described as one large family, in which the stronger help the weaker'. They were impressed with the social conditions, and with the regularity of the settlement — the 'homesteads each surrounded by an orchard and garden, stand[ing] near to and in view of one another' — and they admired 'the bright and happy faces of the settlers and the healthy appearance of the children'. The 'whole scene presents a picture of close settlement rarely seen in WA'.

• ​

​Other families who might have been connected with, or were very friendly with New Jerusalem, are Bergin, Boyes, Jago, McCracken and Zinkler. From 18 to 22 selectors in the Wickepin area participated in the New Jerusalem community, some marrying in.
I found this amusing anecdote in the booklet ‘As They Remember It’ available at the Wickepin CRC.
‘Other members included the Robinsons, Zinklers and the Rintouls, who had two girls. Martin Mahar and Mick O’Keefe both Irish were tracking these girls and used to go to the service. One day the preacher ticked them off, so they got some barbed wire and laid it across the pathway. When the preacher came out his arms stretched across these girls he tripped and over he went. Martin and Mick reckoned they got even then’.

Fishers's early history is disputed, but this is the latest interpretation.
​
1831 born James Cowley at Nailsworth Gloucestershire
1840 migrated with his family to Adelaide
1850 married Louisa Phillips in Melbourne. While living in a brothel he was convicted of passing forged cheques and transported as a convict to Van Diemen’s Land
1852 escaped to Melbourne, and assumed the surname Fisher (that of his paternal grandmother), later adding the forename Morgan
1853 Although still married to Louisa he married Caroline Chamberlain. They had two sons Solomon and Samuel before she died during childbirth in August 1855.
1858 Fisher married Emma Pickis Kefford. His mother-in-law, Rhoda Harriet Kefford was a gifted orator who had earlier founded the 'New Church of the First-Born' based on Swedenborg's doctrine. Under her influence Fisher underwent a dramatic religious conversion
1861 he became leader of this sect. Based on the religious principles and practices inherited from his mother-in-law, who died in 1867, and from divine messages, he developed this sect into what he called the 'Church of the Firstborn. He was a faith healer in addition to receiving divine messages. On moonlight nights he led his followers through the country-side banging tins to exorcise the devil.
1871 Fisher and his sect were embroiled in a public scandal. Fisher's failure to save a child's life through faith healing led to civil action by the disgruntled father to recover £34 from Fisher, who had supposedly claimed to be Christ 'with divine power to heal all diseases, whether of body or soul'. The action failed but, a sect member Hyam Rintel testified that his wife, Jessie, had been taken away from him by Fisher, who 'coolly told me he had a revelation that I was to give up my wife to him'; the result being that 'not one of the four children she has now is mine'. Jessie Rintel was the sister of Fisher's wife, Emma, both living with him until their deaths. John Bignell was reported as saying that 'Fisher declares that he himself has the spirit of David … and David had a large number of wives and concubines'. Bignell named the women with whom Fisher lived as his wife Emma and two of her sisters.
1902 the family group migrated to Wickepin
1910 Emma Pickis Fisher, Fisher's legal wife for 52 years and the registered mother of his eight children, died at New Jerusalem on 14 May 1910 aged seventy-nine, Fisher ignored his second wife of forty years, Jessie Rintel, and took up with her eighteen-year-old granddaughter Ruth Mahala Rintel. They eloped and married then returned to live in the family home. This caused considerable discord.
1913 Fisher died and was buried in an unmarked grave
​
While Fisher was apparently a polygamist, his sons and daughters and other members lived monogamously, and the practice of polygamy at New Jerusalem disappeared with Fisher's death.

A few examples of this tolerance are.

• Swedenborg rejected the idea of original sin, and salvation being achieved by faith alone. Charity to others and the ten commandments were equally important.
• He renounced racism. He believed that the "African race" was "in greater enlightenment than others on this earth, since they are such that they think more 'interiorly', and so receive truths and acknowledge them."
• He was tolerant of other religions. If a person is unaware of the doctrines but has believed in one God and lived a life of love for goodness and truth, according to Swedenborg, they will learn them after death.
• Swedenborg did not condemn all sexual activity between those who were not married. While he was particularly against infidelity, Swedenborg believed that all erotic love between a man and a woman – even that which arose within unfavourable circumstances – still had the potential to develop into true conjugial love. Marriage was considered a union of souls, and this can only exist between one man and one woman.

 
There is a Swedenborg Foundation and Swedenborgian churches around the world.

Further information
A Messiah for the West: J. C. M. Fisher and the Church of the Firstborn in Western Australia
Australian Dictionary of Biography

I recently visited a couple of ruined dwellings on a farm south-west of Williams that has an interesting history. Both are on private property.
​Cameron Spragg kindly provided access to the information below.
​
In 1902 after mining and prospecting in the goldfields, John and Edwin isbister decided to become farmers. using a litho in the Lands & Surveys Department in Perth they selected a block of 4,200 acres of virgin bush between Williams and Narrogin . The new block was named “Glenorkney” in memory of their island home, however the registrar misspelled it as ‘Glenorchy” and so it remained.
In company with the surveyor, they left Narrogin heading west for twelve miles along a bush track (now the Williams-Narrogin road), at which point they turned south - blazing the bark on the marri and wandoo trees as they went in order to find their way on the return journey.  After three miles they arrived to see a few survey lines, some pegs and a dense forest of trees and almost impenetrable scrub.
Finalising the land purchase they returned to Kalgoorlie and railed a wagon, cart, tools, etc to Narrogin, where Jack James a cartage contractor took part in the movement to the selection - later he was to become a close family friend and carted the furniture to the first house built in 1903/4 for Edwin and his wife, Henrietta. Only the base of this house remains.
On the day of their arrival they pitched their tents and that evening they selected a large green tree around which they piled bushes and sticks and set them alight.  That night they had very little sleep because of the dingoes howling, probably disturbed or attracted by the fire.  Next morning they expected to see the tree burnt down, its trunk was blackened but otherwise it was unscarred.  Disappointed, Edwin said that he would at least get one down to mark their arrival, and taking a grubber and axe and after a half-day’s work felled the first tree.  Little did they realise the hard work that lay ahead to clear the land.
 This marked the beginning of more than 30 years of back-breaking work on land that was difficult to clear.  For some years after clearing, suckers came from green tree roots still in the ground, and as these were from large trees the new shoots grew very rapidly and had to be knocked off with an axe.  Poison was a similar problem which, after grubbing, suckered from the roots, or when grass was burnt the hard seed would germinate for up for to 20 years later.  During the first 20 years they carried out almost all improvements with their own hands, clearing, sucker bashing, poison grubbing, well sinking, fencing, and invariably they would arrive home after dark in the evening weary and often wet, to be out again the next morning shortly after sunrise.  The first sheds were built from bush timber and roofed with straw and brushwood, the horses’ mangers were fashioned from hollow wandoo logs.  After a few years they were able to run a small flock of sheep which were often harassed by dingoes.  At night the sheep were yarded and if a wild dog was known to be in the area a watch was kept.  One night John walked home and changed watch with Edwin, and during that short period a dingo entered the yard and mauled several sheep.
 Chudichs, or native cats as they were called, attacked the poultry at night and continued to return and kill until they were caught.  One night the dog treed a cat in an old sheoak so Edwin lit a fire underneath and shot it. Torches had not been invented at that time.
​
 Early memories of the uncleared land on Glenorchy and of the Government reserve on the South East side of the farm (Borgey Block) were of the natural unspoiled native bushland. 
The native bushland teemed with birdlife and provided shelter and food for kangaroos, brush wallabies, tamars, numbats and possums. In the timbered country the numbats or “ant-eaters” as they were called, could be seen running about or sitting on top of hollow logs into which they would dive at the first sign of danger.
 A colony of tamar wallabies lived in tunnels under the bushes in a large thicket of dyrandra scrub on Borgey Block.  
 During the first few years there were hundreds of small marsupials known as kangaroo rats, (burrowing bettongs) which lived in warrens like rabbits.  After a few years they appeared to contract a disease and disappeared quite suddenly.
During the summer, the small creeks were dry except for a few odd pools, but in winter they ran with fresh water in which there were small fish and gilgies.  As the creeks dried up the gilgies burrowed into the sides and remained until the next winter, the fish would reappear with the following winter rains.  As there were no foxes, the black duck and teal nested on the banks in rushes or on other debris although they still had their natural predators, “native cats”, hawks and crows.
 
In a creek running through the North East of the property there was a large water hole around which were remnants of an old fence about eight feet high. In earlier days it had been used to catch brumbies when they came to water.
 
When clearing the land for cultivation and pasture, apart from leaving the rough hills uncleared, the Isbister Brothers had left beautiful bands of eucalyptus along the water courses to prevent erosion and provide shelter for livestock.  Many years later, as a result of salt encroachment, most of the trees died and those that survived lost their bloom.  The pools that watered stock in the early summer are no longer suitable for animals to drink.

 Their first implements were a single furrow plough and harrows that were made from a forked tree with spiked pieces of wood driven through holes.  For the first crops, seed and fertiliser were sown from a bag hung from the neck and scattered by hand.  As time went by they acquired horses, a three-furrow mouldboard plough, a twelve-run hoe drill, a five foot McKay harvester, a six-foot Deering binder and a chaff-cutter.
In 1916 they purchased a T-model Ford (WL.14) and in 1919 a Wolseley three-stand shearing plant, which was one of the first in the district.
Edwin organised the cropping and machinery maintenance and teamwork, while John concentrated on livestock husbandry and teamwork. 
The first cereal crop was grown on an area known as the Well Paddock, so named as it contained the well that they had dug for their first permanent water.  The crop was a complete failure, new land, unsuitable fertiliser (probably basic slag), a very wet winter, kangaroos, bettongs and birds all contributed to its destruction.  It was not until the mid1930s that the benefits of superphosphate and subterranean clover increased crop yields from 9 to 15 bushels an acre to 40 to 60 bushels an acre.
As the clearing of the property progressed, paddocks were named after the people who had cleared them, such as Fitz’s Gully, Reid Paddock, Bird Paddock and Clegg Paddock.
In those very early days life on the farm at Williams was hard - no recreation and very little money.  The soils of Glenorchy were poor, giving low yields, and with uneconomic prices for produce, it meant a struggle to survive, which provided no time for public, sporting or social activities, although Edwin was an active member of the Masonic Lodge and in earlier days John was a member of the Williams Road Board or the Narrogin Road Board. John was a lover of nature and planted several avenues of trees on Glenorchy.

Narrogin became their main shopping and business centre as Williams did not have a bank or rail service at that time.  A block of land was held in Narrogin to provide shelter and to feed and water the horses.  Annually one or two wagon loads of wheat made the 16-mile journey to the Great Southern Roller Flour Mill at Narrogin where it was exchanged for flour, bran, pollard and semolina - less a portion of the load to cover the cost of gristing.  Most of the food for the families was produced on the property as each homestead had its own fruit trees and grape vines which provided fresh fruit during the summer months and the surplus was made into preserves, jams and chutneys.  Today almost all the orchards in the district have disappeared or are neglected due to the raids on the fruit by the increased numbers of Port Lincoln and Regent parrots.  During the winter vegetables were grown, but not in summer as no piped water was available.  Due to the lack of green vegetables in summer, it was not uncommon for people to develop sores, known as Barcoo, mostly on the back of the hands.  However, in a patch of damp sand many varieties of pumpkins, water melons and rock melons were grown successfully.

About 1922, the first rabbit was found on the property - a dead one.  John Isbister remarked, “they will never live here, there are too many poisonous bushes in the uncleared country.” Ten years afterwards they were in the district in thousands and a few years later the foxes arrived.  This was a disaster for the native wildlife.  Although originally the foxes’ main food source was the rabbit, they also ate the eggs and young of ducks, ground larks, plovers, curlews, quails, bustards (the latter they would catch before they could take off in flight) and as rabbits became scarce they killed and ate joey kangaroos, young brush wallabies, tamars, numbats, possums, lizards, frogs, as well as the farmers lambs and poultry. Many of the rough hills that were left for shelter became devoid of native wildlife except the tree nesting birds.  Feral cats were rarely seen at the time.

In 1932 Edwin bought out John’s half interest in “Glenorchy” and continued to farm the whole property.  In 1934 John bought “Homewood”, the property of J.A. Roberts at Moora, and moved with his family to that centre.
Edwin continued farming on Glenorchy until his death in 1940, and his wife Henrietta then passed in 1943. Both buried in the Narrogin Cemetery.
His obituary in the Narrogin Observer is a good example of values at this time. "He was particularly welcome because of his many outstanding qualities and genial disposition. In every sense of the word he was a gentleman of the type which does so much to keep alive the best characteristics of the British race."

Daughter Jessie Smith (née Isbister) was then the sole owner of Glenorchy of which was leased out up until 1957 where her daughter , Maxine and her husband Edwin (Ted) Spragg took over the property .
Jessie passed away in Nedlands in August, 1989.
Ted & Maxine Spragg and son Ian ran Glenorchy until it was sold at Auction in November 1997.
Additional land was purchased over the journey, holdings known as the “Clegg “ paddocks - eastern side of the property and a further 1200 acres known as “ Stockers” , SW side of the property .
600 acres also purchased, known as “Moore’s “north side of Glenorchy made up the total of 5,400 acres  on a total of 36 locations . 
 Ted Spragg  was a well respected farmer, and long serving councillor at the Williams shire. He was an elected member of the Shire from 1969 to 1990 and President from 1972 to 1987.  

This link contains an account of early history of the WA branch of the Isbister family. 
​

​I was shown two abandoned houses.
The first house  was the Stocker family home, which was later used by the local pony club. Like many early houses it has a higgly piggly design, probably due to additions as more children arrived in the family.
The centre of the house is a single room with rammed earth walls on a local granite foundation. The wooden board formwork for the walls can still be seen on one side. This may have been the original cottage The rest of the house is constructed of sawn beams clad with corrugated iron and jarrah slats for the ceiling. The house must have been searingly hot in summer days, but cooling down quickly in the evening, and freezing in winter. Judging by the refrigerator the house was occupied until the 1950s-1960’s. Of particular interest is a ceiling mounted gas or kerosene light. 
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A couple of vehicle shells remain further downslope; an FX Holden and half a truck. The truck is a Thames Trader. These were manufactured by the British arm of the Ford Motor Company between 1957 and 1965.

​A block that Ted Spragg bought from George Moore has an old  house with walls of granite blocks and mud mortar. The beautiful and precise construction indicates it had been built by a professional builder in the early 1900s. The intact galvanised iron roof erected when the house was converted to a shearing shed has protected the mud mortar from weather damage.

​                 For a visual tour of these houses, click this Google photos link

Greetings fellow Foxies,
 
This is a large historic shearing shed on the farm that adjoins Geeralying Reserve. It was established by Stanyford Cowcher a grazier who shepherded sheep between Pinjarra and Williams, and established a homestead farm north of Geeralying spring in 1893.

The shearing shed was built between 1900 and 1920. Initially a 4 stand shed, it was expanded to 6 then 10 stands as the Cowcher farm increased.
A stand refers to a shearing platform where the shearer stood as he pulled a sheep from a holding pen in front of him, sheared it  (initially with a blade), then pushed it out down a ramp behind him. When mechanical shearing was introduced each handpiece used by a shearer was powered by an overhead drive axle, which was driven by an engine outside. Today each handpiece is driven by an electric motor.
 
​A 10 stand shed is very large.
Apparently at the rear of the shed there were once stables with a long watering trough, which were destroyed in a storm, and the shed was partially rebuilt.
More modern shearing sheds have the shed holding pens and shearing stand raised above the ground to allow easier sheep movement and dung and urine to fall through the slatted floor. This shed is all on ground level (harder work).
Noongar shearers were common in the early/mid twentieth century, and there were many Noongar families camped in Geeralying Reserve (see this blog).
An elderly Narrogin resident recalled an incident in Narrogin Primary School, when the children were asked where they were born. Most said Vailema Maternity Hospital (in east Narrogin), until a Noongar boy piped up “Cowcher shearing shed at shearing time”
The shed is on private land and is not available to the public without consent

​For a visual exploration of the shed see this   Google Photo album 
Click individual images for information

​Greetings fellow Foxies,
 
Geeralying Reserve is a patch of sheoak wandoo woodland that once surrounded Gearlin/Geeralying Spring. The spring was an important permanent water supply which, with Kunderning Pool to the south and Kondenning Pool at Bannister to the west was an essential water supply along travel routes for the Noongar people, then sandalwood cutters, shepherds and early settlers.
Stanyford Cowcher a grazier who shepherded sheep between Pinjarra and Williams, established a homestead farm north of the spring in 1893.
In 1897, William Lefevre Graham, selected a property on the south east side of the reserve.
In 1906 the Narrogin-Williams railway was built with a siding on the south side of the reserve. Unfortunately for the Graham family, the railway passed right through the home orchard and they decided to move house further south.

​Other farmers established farms in the area and a one-teacher school was built on the Graham property adjoining Manaring Road in 1916. The school was ‘the canvas, sliding shutter type, airy in summer and more airy in winter’ (The Way Through p287). Contrast that with what we have now!
A hall and a tennis court were also built on the reserve but nothing remains of all three except a few plaques.
Over the years, Stanyford’s son Thomas (Tom) Spurling Cowcher, bought out adjoining farms, and part of the reserve east of Cowcher Road.

​There was a significant Aboriginal population in the reserve until changes initiated by the 1967 referendum that gave the Commonwealth government sole powers for Aboriginal-related legislation. Wendy Mcdonald,( a Cowcher before marriage) recalls numerous families living in humpys on the reserve.
According to Stuart Graham, the Ugle family group moved to Geeralying Reserve from Beverley in 1922 to work as shearers and farm workers.
A small fenced area to the north/north-west of the bush is all that remains of an aboriginal cemetery. Apparently the cemetery contains numerous still-born and young babies, two ‘Feather Feet’ (these were aboriginal spirit men/witchdoctors who did not belong to any clan), and Lyla Ugle.
Two vacant asbestos houses on reserve land adjoining Tom Cowcher’s house were apparently built by Tom for aboriginal shearers. I think that the one that contains evidence of relatively recent occupation was the home of John and Lyla Ugle. When Lyla died, John was granted permission to have her buried in the cemetery plot opposite his house so he could see her grave when he got up each morning. He was the last occupant of the reserve to my knowledge. Other inhabitants include Neddy Isaacs and Shirley Hume.

Curious features of the Bain brothers is that they were all lifelong bachelors, and all died at the age of 72.
I could find few references to them in local history books. Their estate (four blocks of land – about five million dollars was left to the Dumbleyung shire and the Dumbleyung Mens Shed. I guess there are plaques around Dumbleyung installed by grateful recipients.
 
For a visual exploration of the houses and shearing shed see this   Google Photo album
Click individual images for information