By HELEN McANULTY

With so many people losing jobs and money becoming scarcer, it is always helpful to look back at a time in which circumstances were very similar.

There was no virus lurking in our vicinity then but neither were there any of the modern devices we have today. Medicine had not advanced very far, there were no antibiotics, no Internet and few telephones.

This was The Great Depression which lasted from 1929 almost until the outbreak of the Second World War. At its height, 30% of Australians were out of work and thousands were on the road searching for some way of earning money.

Doreen has a story.

“Whilst I was born after the Depression, it’s DNA is definitely in my genes. Much of what my parents experienced has been passed on to me and many people may describe me as mean.

“I learned not to waste and not to buy what I didn't need. I learned to cook and sew my own clothes and later to sew and make toys for my children. The children used their imaginations in the games they played and they used any number of broken articles to devise games.

“They were happy and content.

“During the Second World War not only was there a very severe drought that impacted very heavily on our farming family but there was also food, clothing and petrol rationing.

“My father made a little metal tea set for me in his farm workshop and an aunt made me a rag doll. He also built a gas producer which sat on the running board of our car. I still have the patent for this gas producer along with many of the letters back and forth when he was attempting to set up for manufacturing it. He was about to start production when the war ended and petrol eventually became more available.

“Food was simple and much was home grown. We killed our own meat, milked a cow and made butter and vegetables and fruit were eaten in season.

“After I married, money wasn’t plentiful as we were saving desperately to buy land and the old frugal ways came in handy.

“When we had our own farm, we periodically had droughts and floods and it was important to not get into any more debt. Our clothes started to look a bit shabby, special occasions were deferred and definitely no holidays.

“However, as one of my teenage daughters reminded me, this would not last forever and we would eventually recover.”

Many people are facing similar conditions today, coming upon us so suddenly and unexpectedly that they may feel they cannot cope.

Keith is a retired farmer and well knows the vagaries of the climate and the sudden problems which can befall those on the land. He also understands the way people recover from economic down-turns having weathered quite a few droughts and the subsequent problems in his lifetime.

Keith says:

“Recovering from disaster is always difficult, painful or even tragic. There is always, in the farm scenario, light at the end of the tunnel. Often a long and dark tunnel!

“But we always know that it will rain again, markets will recover, flood water will recede, and grass will grow fresh and green.

“Farmers have a saying: ‘keep the barn full and keep the banker outside the gate,’ meaning a good farmer will have sufficient fodder on hand to carry his stock over a reasonable drought and won’t ever go too far into debt when you will lose control of your affairs.”

Keith also comments on the steps the government took to pull the country out of the economic disaster which was The Great Depression.

“A prime example was the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge which was completed in 1932.

It was one of the many expensive projects initiated by Premier Jack Lang to provide employment for desperate men and to get them off the dole.

“It was all done with borrowed money which, in due course, the Premier refused to pay back.

He also brought in the Land Moratorium act which forbade a bank to foreclose on a farm which the farmers thought was wonderful and a political winner. However, in many cases it just got them into unmanageable debt.

“Another example of Lang’s[2]  strategy was the construction of the Jemalong Weir on the Lachlan just west of Forbes. No doubt the farmers were agitating for this project which, as well as flood mitigation, provided irrigation for about one hundred farms. This was a boost to the local economy.

Keith concludes that whilst not a lot of thinking on reaction to economic disaster is new, people have always been innovative. He describes what happened in 1946 when the water supply failed at the family home.

“A slide or sled was made from a tree fork much like a wishbone, planks were laid across it and a horse was hitched to the pointy end to pull it. A 200-gallon tank was fixed on the boards. This slide was then dragged by the horse to the creek three miles away where it filled by bucket and thus became the water supply for humans and animals.

“It was a regular operation and the water was precious!”

In these troubled times we are all being called upon to think of different ways to do things. It is remarkable how we have coped with difficulties in the past and we certainly are doing so again. 

Copyright: Helen McAnulty. April, 2020