1979 Jackson Family Reunion at Cookernup. The six surviving Jackson siblings at the reunion, L to R: Joe R (1924-1995); Anne McEwin (1922-2018); Nell Fowles (1916-2017); Arthur (1908-1986); Mary Winduss (1906-1998); Faith Rogers (1900-1990). Deceased were: Joe (1898-1918); Eva McQuade (1902-1975); Tom (1904-1975); Bill (1910-1972); Addie Mills (1913-1976). Photo courtesy of Leah Jones.
Joseph JACKSON and Harriet Jane SYMONDS were married at Bunbury on 12th April, 1898.
Joseph Jackson was born on the 31st August, 1865, at Cumberland, England. At the age of nineteen years, he sailed for Australia, disembarking in Victoria. Later he came over to W.A. and worked on the laying of the Albany-Perth railway line.
When gold was discovered in W.A., Joseph was off to the goldfields. He had a lucky strike and returned to England to see his parents. Once back in Australia, he again found gold, this time in the company of his friend Bill Forward. Joseph and Bill returned to England, and while visiting Bill’s sister Jane Symonds and her husband John, Joseph met their eldest daughter Harriet.
Harriet Jane Symonds was born on 18th January, 1881 at Norfolk, England. She travelled to Australia with her parents, three sisters and three brothers, departing from England aboard the Orient Line steamship Ophir on 16th October 1896, landing at Albany.
The Symonds family first settled on a property in Black Rock Road, Yarloop. John and Jane had ten children. However, baby Pearl only lived a few months, and was buried in the Cookernup cemetery.
Joseph Jackson owned the farm next door to the Symonds. He and Harriet married in 1898 and named their property ‘Spring Creek Farm’, where their first two children were born. They then shifted to a property of 136 acres on the western side of the railway at Cookernup, nearly two miles from the small township. This farm was also called ‘Spring Creek Farm’.
Joseph and Bill Forward built the house of rough sawn planks, supported by wooden rails taken from the old timber tramlines. Verandahs were added and fireplaces installed, until it became a home large enough for their eleven children. Sheds and stables were also erected, as well as a very large W.C., which had the distinction of having two seats!
Joseph and Harriet lived there for the remainder of their lives. Their children Joseph, Faith, Eve, Thomas, Mary, Arthur, William, Madeline, Helen, Anne, and the second Joseph attended the Cookernup School for an unbroken period of approximately 34 years.
Harriet managed the farm with the help of the older children, while Joseph, with his own horse team, delivered timber from ‘William’s Mill’, four miles S.E. of Cookernup, to Weeke’s Siding. The timber waggons had steel wheels, which ran on wooden railway lines. They were braked when going downhill, and drawn up the slopes by horse-teams, the horses walking in or alongside the lines.
Sunday, the only day of rest for Joseph, would see him riding home to the farm, on a horse ridden out to the mill by the eldest son Joe, who would then tend to the team that day. This continued even when Joseph Snr. worked at Collie, after the closure of the local mill.
When the three eldest sons turned 14 years, they worked with Joseph in the bush, doing a man’s job, which consisted of a 54-hour week, worked over six days. Later, they hauled logs by horse-teams and whims, to mills such as ‘Lyalls’, ‘Worsley’, ‘Lewis and Reid’, etc. It was a hard life.
During the First World War, Joe, the eldest son, put his age up and joined the 16th Battalion as a horse farrier. Sadly, he was killed at Passchendaele. The eldest daughter Faith joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment (V.A.D.) and became a cook at Fremantle Hospital, during the flu epidemic which claimed many lives.
Joseph Snr. had a union ticket No. 23 issued in 1916 at Big Brook [now Pemberton], by Amalgamated Timber Workers Union of W.A. Big Brook was one of the few mills that was not closed down during the First World War, and Joseph was able to find work there.
The older children sent part of their wages home to help rear the younger ones. As the farm became more productive, the younger children, on leaving school, worked on the farm, some until they married. Milk was separated and cream sent to Bunbury, and later to Harvey, with skimmed milk fed to the calves and pigs.
Milking was done by hand, and stock were watered, mainly by drawing water from the open well. Later a bore with a windmill was installed. Rainwater supplied the household needs in winter, supplemented with water carted from Clarke’s Brook by tank on a horse-drawn waggon.
When spreading superphosphate on the pasture, one person drove a horse and cart up and down the paddock, with someone sitting in the back, throwing the super out by hand.
Hay was cut by a mower and carted loose on a waggon to be stacked in the open. Oats were cut by reaper and binder, and the sheaves then cut into chaff by a chaff-cutter, driven by a horse-works.
Carting and chopping wood for the large kitchen stove, and in the winter, the open fireplace, was no mean feat. The open fire was formed around the steel rim of a railway waggon, and having a timber chimney, it caught fire occasionally, but it was a very cheery place.
One could never forget a Christmas Day at Jacksons, when as many members of the family as possible came for the day. Visitors would appear in the morning and then dinner would be served to the children in the kitchen, followed by a couple of sittings of adults at an enormous table in the front room.
With the introduction of sub-clover to the district, production of the butterfat increased, and with full employment in other areas, an air of prosperity lasted for a number of years. Then the depression struck the country, and prices for butterfat and the recently introduced whole milk scheme suffered severely.
Joseph and the boys came home, as the majority of the timber mills, including Nanga-Brook and Hoffman’s, closed down entirely and Yarloop employed a few men only. Joseph then turned his attention to the swamp block that he owned, four miles west of Yarloop, and five miles from the home farm. His intention was to grow green feed for the milking cows and run fat stock on the good swamp land. Here the boys grew a fine crop of potatoes, but because of early winter rains flooding the swamp, they did not cover their costs. Later Tom worked at the re-opened Hoffman’s Mill, hauling logs with the first petrol-driven crawler tractors.
Arthur drove a horse team, removing snags from the river at the back of Coolup.
Sustenance work commenced on the Harvey River, digging the main diversion to Myalup, and cleaning out the old Harvey River. The workers on the old Harvey River section were camped among the sand-hills on the west side of the river. When the river flooded, Joseph was asked to get food across to the stranded men. He made a sledge from a fork of a tree, chained onto a round water-tank, and harnessed two horses up to it. He then loaded the food into the waterproof tank and set off. The sledge slipped over in the wet clay soil and the tank floated when pulled into the flooded river, with the horses swimming. Loads were taken over for the first few days by Joseph, now aged over 66 years. He and his daughters then took butter, eggs and milk, produced on the farm, which was sold at the camps every night. When the river water sank, the girls would drive a sulky over each day. Harriet made buns twice a week, which quickly sold at the camps.
Later more sustenance men were camped on the Jackson property near Clarke’s Brook. At this time Joseph and son Bill worked at piece-work rates, with their own horses and scoops, digging part of the old Harvey River near the farm.
For many years Harriet taught sewing at the Cookernup School. She also did dressmaking, which included making the majority of wedding dresses for the local girls. Thus she became ‘Gran’ to everyone and was loved by all.
Bill, the seventh child in this large family, loved animals and birds. He filled the farm with his pets, and everyone for miles around would take a delight in seeing ‘Bill’s latest’. There were kangaroos, brush wallabies, pigeons, magpies, cranes, a swan, an emu and one evil-looking crow, not forgetting the kangaroo dogs. The crow met with a sticky end, when caught pinching eggs.
The cranes were most amusing, standing for hours on one leg waiting to be fed. Emily the emu was eventually shot by a ‘new chum’ farmer, because he thought she was attacking him, when all Emily wanted was a feed of wheat that he was throwing to his fowls!
When milk on the farm was first produced for Nestles’ Waroona factory, it entailed those working on the place keeping early hours. The milking was done by hand, the cans loaded into a spring cart and taken a short distance to the pick- up ramp at the crossroads.
As marriages depleted the family, outside labour was employed, but became scarce when the Second World War broke out, thus requiring ‘Spring Creek Farm’ to obtain its first milking machine. Anne and Joe worked the farm at this time.
Irrigation came to the district after the war, and this was to make a vast difference to farms around Cookernup.
Finally, Joe bought the farm from his parents and he and his wife built their own home, not far from the old house, so that they were able to watch over the old folk.
Joseph passed on at the age of almost 86 years, and Harriet a few years later at the age of 73.
A number of the family and descendants still live in the district and surrounding areas.
This short history of the Jackson’s life and events should not be concluded without repeating an old saying – ‘Hurt one Jackson and you hurt them all.’
Reproduced with permission by Leah Jones.
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Reported first in West Australian newspapers and repeated in Eastern States papers, the Jackson family attended the Cookernup School continuously for over 30 years:
CONTINUITY BROKEN
Last Man Out. Our Cookernup correspondent writes: What must surely be almost an Australia record was discovered when the Cookernup school re-opened without the name of Jackson on its roll. For thirty six years there has been an unbroken attendance of children of Mr. and Mrs. J. Jackson, of Cookernup. The eldest son, Joe, who was one of the first pupils to attend the school was killed in the Great War, and since then until last December, when the youngest son, Joe, named after his deceased brother, completed his schooling there, there has always been one or more members of the family at the school. Mr and Mrs Jackson are old settlers and held in high regards and affection by local farmers.
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