James Henry (Jim) Mahoney stood beside the loaded dray and gazed across the flat to a ridge where yellowing barley grass shimmered in the setting sun.

It was not just a bit of ground, it was a surface living with energy that came from the rich red volcanic soil.

Catherine Ethel, (known as Ethel) his young wife, turned to the three children and told them, "now you kids can help to take the things inside, and don't get in the way of your father".

The journey, in 1913, had been a long one from Tarlo near Goulburn to this farm at Gullen on the Great Dividing Range some 40km west of Goulburn and 20km south of Crookwell.

They were natives of the Goulburn district where Ethel had been raised on a dairy farm and had a practical eye for a good cow paddock. The dray, borrowed from an uncle, was loaded with their worldly possessions. They were following in the footsteps of the early pioneers.

The children, young Jim (James Arthur), Irene and Freda, were scampering around with curiosity after the long trip. They had been born out west at Canbelego where Mahoney, with the fever of gold in his veins had taken his young wife to Mt Boppy, where gold was discovered in 1896.

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The farmhouse was a small one with whitewashed walls and roof of galvanised iron which had replaced the original shingles. Some hardy settler had built it with natural bush materials. It had a frame of timber poles and planks. The walls were filled in with wattle saplings, heavily plastered with mud that was puddled with a mixture of straw to bind it.

Inside, the walls had a smoother surface so they could be pasted over with sheets of newspaper and finished with wallpaper. At times the wallpapers were damaged by mice nibbling at the paste. Re-papering the walls often revealed items of curiosity, quaint advertisements and reflections of earlier times, as loose sheets of newspapers were stripped off to be replaced by new ones.

The house had a living room with a big open fireplace at one end, two bedrooms and a long built-on skillion section that housed the kitchen and a bunkroom. The front faced north with a small verandah under a roof of bullnose galvanised iron.

This was volcanic country and the red earth churned to mud in winter while in summer it cracked up and powdered into red dust. The soil was good for growing big crops of potatoes - so long as the rains came at the right time. We cropped potatoes, oats and turnips but the main cash flow came from our dairy cows. Milking the cows was a daily drudge but without the 'cream cheque' that came from the butter factory at nearby Kialla, I've no doubt existence would at times have been desperate.

Nearby was another small whitewashed structure which served as laundry and storeroom. In front of this outhouse was a wood-fired copper where Mum would boil the clothes on wash day and scrub them clean on a wooden washboard. The clothesline was strung between posts and when the clothes were pegged to it, pushed high with wooden poles to catch the wind. As little kids it was our delight to run figure-eights between the sheets and towels as they hung on the line.

It was in that farmhouse that I was born on November 19,1914, during a violent thunderstorm. Country women of the times could not afford the time or the money for admission to the small cottage hospital in the nearest town of Crookwell some 20 km away. With a young family to care for there was little time to rest from the daily chores. But with a bit of luck and good timing the local midwife, Mrs Spurway, was usually on hand to bring another bush child into the world.

The farm was called 'Springwood' in the district of Gullen and located on a lane connecting the Gurrundah and Grabben Gullen roads. Gullen, Dad explained to us, was the aboriginal term for swamp. And Grabben Gullen meant big swamp. The high country earth held water which soaked out, creating swamps that were covered with rushes.

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