The Farm by Andrew Chapman by Echo Publishing

T H E FA R M ANDREW CHAPMAN

Images of Rural Australia

For my late sister, Sally, and my new granddaughter Georgie. Across the shifting sands of time …

Echo Publishing A division of Bonnier Publishing Australia 534 Church Street, Richmond Victoria Australia 3121 www.echopublishing.com.au

CONTENTS Foreword Andrew Chapman

Introduction copyright © Adam McNicol All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Introduction Adam McNicol

8 Home Sweet Home

First published 2016

Printed in China Cover and internal design by Anna Wolf National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Chapman, Andrew, photographer. The farm: images of rural Australia / Andrew Chapman; introduction by Adam McNicol. ISBN: 9781760404284 (hardback) Farm life--Australia--Pictorial works. Country life--Australia--Pictorial works. Australia--Rural conditions--Pictorial works. Other Creators/Contributors: McNicol, Adam, writer of introduction. 779.36 Twitter/Instagram: @echo_publishing Facebook: facebook.com/echopublishingAU

The Shed Cover: The cover photo epitomises that practicality and versatility that informs much of The Farm. What do you do with a verandah? Why, park your vintage tractor under it, of course! Beazleys Bridge, VIC. Right: An early 1950s Armstrong Siddeley, bought by Joe Gifford and thought to have been the first ute in their district. A stunning restoration project, should Joe’s grandson, Gary Gifford, ever get the time. Beazleys Bridge, VIC.

60 Out the Back 142 Town 198 Acknowledgements and Technical Notes 223 5

FOREWORD

y its very nature, the farm has mostly been a place of struggle: a struggle to establish, a struggle to maintain, a constant struggle with the elements and seasonal variation. Sometimes the struggles have paid off handsomely, sometimes they ended in ruin. Little wonder that the farming families that have inhabited Australia’s vast spaces were to become renowned for their resilience and dry sense of humour. It’s easy to forget that the barriers of rural remoteness have only been broken down greatly over the past 70 years or so, as the post-World War 2 boom years cleared away the debris of the Great Depression and paved the way for cheaper automobiles, machinery and communications. But, it is in this remoteness, combined with the struggle and making do, that the visual patina of the farmscape has evolved. Goods that were fashioned from what was at hand are left to blend with elemental factors, the results are items that have been sculpted by the mark of time. Necessity has also spawned the inventive streak in people from the land. Not being able to obtain a particular part for some project or other has often necessitated the fabrication of a home-made solution. I recall hearing about one farmer who flew his Cessna light aircraft in for servicing with the wing strut bound up with fencing wire. Many farming families are loath to throw anything out and, with an abundance of storage space available, is it any wonder that ‘things’ accumulate. Why, you never know when that 1924 Ford diff will come in handy, and

An old weatherboard farmhouse stands in the way of suburban encroachment at Craigieburn, VIC.

keeping two more in reserve is surely a demonstration of prudence! I’ve come across all manner of items on farm scrap heaps and in sheds, from horse-drawn buggies to a surplus fighter jet engine. Farmers are the best of

Yardea outstation washbasins, Gawler Ranges, SA.

re‑inventors and were recycling and giving items other uses long before it became fashionable. Houses, windmills, sheds and outbuildings too, often show this patchwork approach to problem solving and, as age wearies them, they take on a character and charm that is unique. It is one of the elements that I enjoy about travelling around this country: the visual surprises that lurk within the landscape. Farms are also often the repositories of technological change and out on the properties where families have resided for many generations without the need for a clearing sale, the really interesting buildings and items are often found. But, year by year, these properties become fewer as younger generations leave the land and the corporatisation of farming brings a more ruthless approach to what is valuable and what is surplus. Fortunately, there are still legions of farmers out there who relish the ability to accumulate, to collect and occasionally (for there is rarely time) to restore items of machinery and buildings to their former glory. Treasures still exist, but whether they get to be renovated and displayed remains to be seen. As the landscape of yesteryear continues its relentless slide into oblivion, I cast my eye out over the modern blandness of much of today’s farm architecture and wonder if those Colorbond farm buildings will ever be looked upon with the great wonder and affection afforded to their predecessors. Andrew Chapman

INTRODUCTION

few kilometres south of Chinkapook, a tiny town near Manangatang in northwestern Victoria’s Mallee region, a rusting International truck lies idle in the corner of a wheat field. The old machine has a rudimentary tow bar chained to its front bumper bar. Its bonnet is missing, but its windscreen is intact and the sturdy bin that would have been used to transport grain sits on its tray. Its rear wheels are stuck in a channel, but its front wheels are on higher ground. As a result, the truck’s headlights gaze upwards. It seems to be dreamily contemplating its fate. A close inspection of the scene provokes one to imagine the events that led to the truck being marooned in the middle of nowhere. The most plausible explanation is that it became bogged in the channel, its owner subsequently attempted to move it but failed. The truck was then deemed too much of a nuisance to rescue and was abandoned. (Pic. page 148) But such an explanation doesn’t answer the key question: Why? Why did the farmer put some effort into moving the machine, then change his mind and abandon it. Why wasn’t the truck eventually sold, even just for scrap metal? Was the farmer doing so well that he didn’t need the money? Were there so many of these trucks around that they were worthless? Capturing scenes that trigger such contemplation is a skill that has made Andrew Chapman one of the nation’s foremost rural photographers. And this latest collection of his rural-focused work, The Farm, invites the viewer

to ponder what has been left behind as the forces of deregulation and technological advances have reshaped Australian agriculture over recent decades. For a little over a century from the 1860s, Australia’s political classes were gripped by the idea that the nation’s sparsely populated inland (the fertile parts, anyway) should be filled with self-sufficient, God-fearing yeoman family farmers, protected by high tariffs and governmentguaranteed prices for produce. Numerous Selection Acts were passed by the states to enable working-class folk to settle on the land. Hundreds of small towns were then laid out to service the farmers and their big families, with a vast railway network constructed to link them to the larger centres, capital cities and ports. As Don Watson wrote in his recent book The Bush, ‘In Queensland the agrarian conviction was especially strong and durable. For a century at least, Liberal, Labor and conservative politicians alike were wedded to the idea that Queensland’s destiny lay not in industry or suburbia, but in a more “natural” and “moral” farming life to which the state was best suited and which best suited the state. … The Queensland strategy had the desired effect: in 1933 just a little over 6 per cent of the population were employed in factories.’ This conviction was behind the Soldier Settlement Schemes that were enacted in each state and territory after the World Wars. Victoria’s post-World War 2 scheme involved an outlay from the State and Commonwealth Governments of just over $99 million. That money

not only created 6000 relatively small farms, it also funded the construction of thousands of dairies, shearing sheds, general-purpose sheds, sheep dips and sheep and cattle yards. Even after all the soldiers were taken care of, governments continued to enact schemes that settled large numbers of people on small holdings. The Heytesbury Project, in Victoria’s high-rainfall south-west, was the largest such example. As part of an undertaking that was controversial when it began in the 1950s and would be unthinkable today, the Victorian Government oversaw the clear-felling and burning of the 40,000-hectare (100,000-acre) Heytesbury Forest. The land was then fertilised, planted with pasture and divided into almost 400 dairy farms. The last of the Heytesbury blocks were not allocated until the late 1970s. Go there today, however, and the tale of Australian farming is laid bare. On the whole, the farmers that remain are prospering. But to develop a sustainable business they have had to buy up four or five neighbouring properties. As the farms have become larger, the majority of the tiny six-cow dairies that were built as part of the Heytesbury Project have been abandoned. Nature is now reclaiming them. Similar changes have played out across the nation. The idea of yeomanry has been replaced by efficiency. Technological improvements have encouraged farmers to increase the size of their holdings because vast amounts of work can be completed with little manpower. In the

Mallee region of Victoria and South Australia you will find huge tractors and harvesters, guided by satellites, sowing and reaping tonnes of grain in the blink of an eye. Most of the farms are at least 8000 hectares (20,000 acres), more than 30 times larger than the original blocks allocated under the local settlement acts. Andrew Chapman’s photographs, taken between the early 1970s and 2015, beautifully illustrate what has been left behind in the aftermath of this vast change across rural Australia. He takes us on a nostalgic trip from the remnants of a jetty used to load bales of wool in northern Western Australia to rusting sheds in Southern Tasmania. What captures Chapman’s eye is the mark that time leaves on manmade objects. Chapman peeks inside abandoned houses, into sheds and under trees, where he finds the museums created by farmers’ refusal to get rid of stuff that is no longer needed. He captures the quirky innovation and eccentricity that can be seen on countless rural properties, and he produces snapshots of the hardship and prosperity that come with changes in the weather. He also takes us to towns that have all but faded away as Australia has become one of the most urbanised countries on earth. The International truck near Chinkapook is but one of the many objects scattered around rural Australia that remind us how life in the bush has changed. It seems to be dreaming of a return to its former glory, even though the world around it has moved on. Adam McNicol

HOME SWEET HOME O

long with the grit, passion and determination, home is where families are made. It is a place to rest weary heads, a place where kids grow up and, quite often, a place that those same kids come to possess. I’ve seen properties that have had six generations pass through them; places that have had the same family live in them since white possession of the district. As time quietly passes, it leaves a patina upon these homes and the possessions that lie within. If only those possessions could talk, what stories they could tell. And, what would the original inhabitants think if they walked back into today’s world, abuzz with all that modernity has brought?

Previous spread: Old farmhouse, Bothwell, TAS.

Old ruins to the north-east of Hawker, SA.

Above: Typical South Gippsland weatherboard farmhouse with calves, VIC.

Right: Ruins at the Wilson Settlement, near Hawker in the Flinders Ranges, SA.

Left: Westfield House, built in the 1850s by WilliamÂ Field, Westbury, TAS.

Derelict farmhouse, Murga, NSW.

Above: Old stone farmhouse ruins in a wheatfield along the Quorn-Wilmington Road, Lower Flinders Ranges, SA.

Right: This old farmhouse along the Barrier Highway, just north of Burra, SA, was immortalised on the cover of the Midnight Oil album, Diesel and Dust.

Having seen better days, this old Victorian farmhouse along Sandy Creek Road at Winjallok, VIC, is just marking time.

The march of modernity comes up against the past at Waubra, VIC.

Left: The old Lockhart outstation quarters at Mulyungarie station, Cockburn, SA.

Right: Curtains in an old disused farmhouse atÂ Winjallok, VIC.