My Father, Roy Dagg, had a Settlement Purchase Farm on the Richmond River near Woodburn after he returned from the First World War. He was born at Kilgin (near Woodburn NSW) on 1st March 1891, son of William and Grace Dagg. They owned a farm  in that area, which they had worked for some years. William left the farm to work in the quarry at Riley’s Hill (in the same area).  Stone was quarried here and shipped to Ballina to build the breakwater wall at the mouth of the Richmond River. William was killed in the quarry  August 1900.

In February 1902, two of Roy’s uncles (who farmed at Moree) bought a small farm at Riley’s Hill, and leased it to his mother (their sister) for one shilling (10 cents) a year. She died in 1906 (Dad was only 15 at that time,) and he and his three sisters worked the farm until he enlisted in 1916 to go to the war in Europe.  In 1917 he was wounded and sent to hospital in England where he met his first wife. At the end of the war, he married her and they returned to Australia. He could not find work so they bought the farm at Woodburn.

On the 15th February 1922, Dads unmarried sister, his wife and their two young sons went in their horse and sulky to visit friends. On the way home, Dads sister got out and opened the gate to the farm to lead the horse through. The horse took fright and backed the sulky into the river and the two women, two boys and the horse were all drowned. In Dads own words:  “I was a very sad person after losing my first family. I was not able to do much good on or off the farm and was slowly going broke. One Sunday afternoon a girl on a horse came riding down the paddock and into my life.” She was to become his second wife. They had two sons and they lived on the farm quite happily for a few more years.  Mother suffered badly with asthma living close to the sea and about the end of WW2 he sold the farm and went to Lismore. This gave mother some relief. He was able to get work there, and we boys went to school there.

Roy Dagg’s Farm. “The Grove.”

Roy’s farm consisted of 180 acres, made up of 4 parcels of land. [Lot numbers 28, 6, 64, and 104.] It was a long property starting from the Highway on the riverbank, down past the house, farm sheds, through a creek, over a hill (part of Lang’s Hill) and back into rough heath country.  The land behind our back boundary fence was crown land, and this was covered with typical heath or beach front scrub, running back towards the sea at Evans Head and the Air Force Base.

Away from the home buildings was a number of sheds, including a large barn for the storage of dry stock food, another shed for the farm machinery, the milking shed, dairy, and pig sheds and runs. At the side of the old barn were the chaff cutting shed and cattle stalls for use during the winter months to feed the milking cattle. The harness shed had an almost flat roof, and on this roof we stored the vine vegetables (pumpkin, squash, grammar etc) at the end of each growing season. These were for our use and sometimes sold or given to visitors.                                                                                                                                     

In those days herd improvement was maintained by the use of a bull that was kept in his own paddock area. When a cow was about to be ‘dried off,’ and was to be retained within the herd, she would be put into this paddock for the day. This technique was safer for everyone handling the stock, and ensured that cows weren’t coming into calf too early during their producing year.

A little further away, were the pig sties. These consisted of sheds and large runs used in the different stages of raising pigs for the bacon market. The pigs were kept a little way from the cattle yards. Besides the surplus separated milk, they were fed on grain, (mostly grown on the farm), molasses, (a by product of sugar cane processing) and pumpkins, sweet potatoes, artichoke, & other crops grown on the farm ‘in season.’

We would also work some areas near the pigsties and grow sweet potatoes and other root crops. When ready for harvest, we had some sheds on slides and some movable fence sections that we would set up on these areas to let the young pigs in to ‘help themselves.’

Our main income came from dairying, and sending cream to the Lismore butter factory. Other income came from:

  • The rearing of pigs for sale to a bacon factory, which was also in Lismore.
  • Allotted sugar cane acreage, and.
  • Some vegetable and egg and poultry sales to Woodburn retailers and private customers.

To- day all farms in this, and the surrounding areas, are almost all used for sugar cane growing. Our cream went by cream lorry on Monday, Wednesday, & Friday to, at that time, Foley’s butter factory, (taken over in later years by Norco), in Lismore. Our house and farm buildings were about 1km off the road, so the cream had to be taken to the road for pick-up, most times again by man power, in a barrow two cans at a time.  At the top of the season {summer time} we would have to use the horse and cart or slide to save on the number of trips.

The dairying side of our farm was carried out all the year round, with stall-feeding of the milking cattle during the winter months to keep up production.  Mum & Dad did all the milking by hand. In later years we sons were able to help. Before WW2 during most of the summer months, they did sometimes employ men to help with this milking and e other jobs on the farm, like preparing ground for crop planting/harvesting, or fencing new areas to grow more crops.

Some of the milking stock was dried off during the winter, because of the shortage of natural grasses, and the cost of growing or buying supplementary food.

Even in those days, we did grow some winter feed for the cattle, and fed them on ‘home grown chaff’ in stalls after each milking.

This chaff was the green stalks of scalene, corn and cow cane, cut by hand in the fields, brought in by horse and cart, put through a chaff cutter, mixed with some bran and other additives.

During the winter, the milking cattle were also fitted with rugs to help with production.

These rugs were hand made by Mum, from the empty sacks used to carry dry stock food, bran, pollard, flour, and other bags from the local bakeries.              Mum would open the bags down the sides, then two bags were hand sown together, and a shaped front-yoke piece was sewn on, while a fixed strip of sacking was sewn linking the two sides of the rug together at the other {rear} end.  With two short pieces of rope at the yoke end to tie under the cow’s neck, this made a warm/water proof rug thrown over the cow.

These rugs were ‘custom made’ for each cow as to size, and each morning the rugs were removed at milking time {if it was going to be a warm day, with no rain,} and hung on a peg in the milking shed  under the cows name, then placed on again at afternoon milking.

We used a Government funded herd-recording scheme to determine each cow’s production, both as a producer and to select replacement stock for our herd. This test comprised of a sample of milk from each cow which was tested as to the butterfat content of the milk. This gave the farmer an idea as to which cows should be retained in the herd, and which of their calves to keep for adding to the herd.

When we were on this property there was a requirement that all cattle on properties in this area had to be dipped to kill the cattle ticks that were becoming very prevalent in this part of the North Coast.  We had a cattle dip at the front part of our property, and this was manned during the summer months by men from the Dept. of Agriculture to dip stock from the surrounding farms once a month for the seven months that treatment was required. Cattle can now be treated with a spray method in a small holding yard with a less deadly treatment than the one used in our day. Another part of our income was from sugar cane.  Here I must add that the cane grown in those times for sugar, was a different kind to that of today, cane then was soft, and you could slice off the ‘bark,’ and chew the soft sweet inner fibre. We had a quota of cane we could grow; I’m not sure now as to how many acres per year.  All the preparation of the ground for the crop, all planting, attention to growing, harvesting, and carting from the paddock to the river barge, was done by hand and horse drawn equipment. The ground preparation was a horse drawn two-disk plough.

The cane ‘sets’ {lengths of two year old cane stalk cut into pieces about 40cm. long, again using ‘man or woman power’} were dropped down the chute of a horse drawn planter, while Dad walked to one side of the machine, lining up the furrows, and keeping the horses in line, Mum sat on the ‘dropper’ putting the cut pieces of cane into the chute at set spaces so they were placed in the ground and covered with soil by the trailing wheel. You still had to walk over the ground later with a hoe, to see if every set was covered.

Weeding of the early cane growth was done with a horse drawn scarifier, but as the crop grew, hand chipping was employed.

There was no irrigation in those days, and everything depended on the weather for rain at the right time to start the ‘planting’ off to ensure a good harvest.

Each year during the summer time, gangs of men, called cane gangs, would travel from farm to farm harvesting the two-year-old cane with a large knife called a cane knife.  They would first fire the paddock to rid the cane of as much leaf as possible, and also snakes and rats.

They then cut the cane off at ground level,  topped the stalk, stacked them in heaps to be picked up by hand, and placed on flat topped carts drawn by horses, to be taken to the river bank where a hand operated crane would lift the load into a huge barge. When full they would be pulled in batches of three or more, by a steam boat to the sugar mill at Broadwater.

Almost every year that I could remember living on the farm, we would have a bush fire come in across the heath area that ran from the back fence of our property towards the coast.  These fires would burn well in the hot summer time and being fanned by the strong sea breezes, would come onto our back paddocks, which were grassed mainly with Dorrington grass, and this would burn just as fast. There were many times we were kept busy with the men and women from our farm and the neighbouring farms, fighting the fires.  Our job as children, was mostly carting water from the creek in small tanks on a horse drawn slide, to the fire fighters to dampen the bags they were using to beat back the flames.  There were no water tankers and ‘power hoses’ in those days, just all the neighbourhood men, women and children coming together to fight for their properties. All the farmers got together in the mid 40’s, and formed a team to burn along the back boundary fences in the late winter months, to keep down the risk of bush fires destroying their valuable grazing land.