Seventy years ago, the sheltered valleys of the Yarrongabilly River supported one of the many lusty pioneering communities that toiled and sweated their way through Australia's early history. The soft deep folds and sheer rock walls of the surrounding hills echoed with the crack of whips and the ring of axes; the rivers were splashed with and muddied with the crossing and recrossing of bullock teams; and the gravel and rocks of the valley floor were crushed and washed for gold. And in the mornings, the warmth of the sun spreading from the mountain ridges down to the pastures below brought to these courageous people a deep love of the valley that was their home.
The valley sheltered them; the valley provided water and food for their stock and timber for their homes. The rest they could do for themselves. From Kiandra and Yarrongabilly they had made their way down to Lobs Hole with bullock wagons and packhorses heavily laden with food and tools and blankets. The women and elder children rode on the horses or on top of the load and the younger children were carried in boxes strung on either side of the packsaddles.
Camping under the wagon at night, they travelled slowly over the well defined bullock tracks of the plateau to the final descent past the Three-Mile Dam or down the steep slopes of the Toll Bar Ridge where bullock teams had to be lowered with wire ropes.
One of these early settlers was John Thomas of Camden who came to Lobs Hole in late in the 1840's. Approaching the valley from Kiandra, he kept to the left bank of the Yarrongabilly River and built his home beneath Sheep Station Hill. It was a large wooden……….Thomas made a bullock track up to the house and in the side of the hill he cut out a small storage space for butter and eggs. He and his wife then settled down to life in this pleasant fertile valley where people worked long and hard yet frequently lived to be over 90.
Thomas went in for cattle and during the long days of summer, he rode around his stock as they grazed on the unfenced pasture of the snow country. Every autumn the cattle were mustered and driven down to the shelter of Lobs Hole. When winter stocks of food had been brought in and snow lay deep on the surrounding hills, Thomas and his neighbours had time to visit one another and to spend long evenings in front of the fire discussing the affairs of the valley and swapping the latest news from the Kiandra gold fields.
John Thomas's first two children were sons. Then in 1884, 50 miles from a doctor and attended by an untrained woman, his wife gave birth to their eldest daughter, Olive. Olive was born with talipes of both feet. Her toes were pointing upwards and her feet lay along her shin bones. Her father long accustomed to relying on his own ingenuity, improvised splints from the stiff covers of a book and bound up his daughter's feet. They grew to be quite normal and it was only much later when Olive was training to be a nurse that she had any further trouble.
A second daughter, Tasmania, was born two years later and was still very young when their mother died, leaving the two children to the care of a series of housekeepers. One of Olive's earliest memories was the wedding of one of these housekeepers to John Gilbert, her father's stockman. The bridegroom was said to be 90 years old - the first white child to be born in Melbourne. The parson who performed the ceremony came from Tumut and the bride and groom rode to Yarrongabilly Village to meet him. It was a grand wedding. The verandahs of the Thomas's house were enclosed with tarpaulins and there were horses tied to every fence and tree. Never before had the children seen such a gathering or such a spread of food.
Being several years younger than their brothers, Olive and Tas relied on each other for companionship and the happiness of those early years was only marred by the normal childhood illness which in that secluded valley, constituted a crisis difficult to appreciate today. Olive, when she was still a very small child, caught German measles. As was usual in those days, the windows in her room were kept tightly closed. She was not allowed anything to drink and a large fire was kept burning day and night. She became desperately ill and for some time her life seemed in danger. Greatly alarmed, her father……Tas finally went down to the creek and filled two bottles. Olive drank it all and the bottles were refilled again and again. Later that evening their father returned afraid to ask if his daughter was still alive.
He had ridden a hundred miles in one day and at the last river crossing his horse had put his foot in a hole and fallen, rolling over on Thomas and injuring his neck. But the strain of the day fell from him as he went to Olive's bedside and found she was better. By giving her sister plenty to drink, Tas had anticipated the doctor's instructions. The windows were flung open and the patient slowly recovered. By the time Olive was allowed to get up again, the leaves had fallen from the fruit trees and Lobs Hole had settled down for the longest and most severe winter the children could remember.
The family's winter food supplies brought into the valley each year before May 24 were calculated with a wide margin. But this particular year, the snow remained on the encircling hills longer than ever before and the food situation became serious. Finally Thomas's elder son George set off with a packhorse for Kiandra via the frozen Three-Mile Lake. It was a long slow journey with the horses sinking deeply into the snow at every step. In the evening when George still hadn't returned Thomas and the other children took lanterns and climbed up out of the valley on foot, calling as they went.
Finally they received a faint reply and George appeared out of the night with a laden packhorse and a badly frostbitten foot. The winter dragged on and although the snow finally melted from the mountains the summer was weak and uncertain. One Christmas morning the children work to see the cherry trees already laden with fruit bent low under a heavy fall of snow.
When Olive and Tas reached school age their father sent them to Kiandra to attend the little school on Township Hill and to board with their Aunt Mary who lived in a fine house surrounded by tall poplar trees. During the winter when snow lay deep in the ..... George would put on his snowshoes and carry his sisters on his back up the hill to the school. Later, when they were older, Olive and Tas had snowshoes of their own. These snowshoes were home made and were waxed with a substance known as Moke. The shoes were held on by a single strap over the foot and to each was attached a cord. The other end of the cord was fastened to the wearer's belt so that the shoe could be easily recovered if it fell off.
During the summers spent in Kiandra the childrenswam in the Mill Hole - a wide deep section of the Eucumbene on the Tumut side of the town; they watched the mustering of brumbies on Long Plain and wandered among the gold diggings playing in the water….. Kiandra in those days was still a prosperous town. The first boom of the gold rush had passed but the streets were lined the shops there were two hotels, a dance hall, courthouse and jail, and many fine houses.
The Chinese population of the town lived down by the river, and the children never ceased to be fascinated by the customs of these strange people. They were irresistibly drawn to the cemetery after each Chinese funeral to see the roast pigs and the sweets, which were left behind the grave and the piles of crackers, which were lit from the bottom and went off in a series of coloured explosions. On one occasion the sight of so many sweets lying abandoned on the grass was too much for the little girls. They waited until the mourners had gone and took some home. Their Aunt was naturally horrified. Although it was dark, she sent them straight back to return the sweets to the grave. The dark walk back to the lonely cemetery was punishment enough.
The children had not been in Kiandra more than a year when their father brought them home and put them in the care of a tutor. Just out from Ireland the tutor, Mr Menzies considered the crude health of his two charges to be unladylike. In an attempt to make them pass and genteel, he does them every morning at eleven a… with turpentine. Tas was the first to rebel. She told her father and the unlucky Mr Menzies was given a month's notice.
Fortunately it was about this time that the parents of Lobs Hole clubbed together to build a small provisional school. Olive and Tas attended for several years. They still remember in the winter picking a flower from their garden and leaving it overnight in a small pool of water. Next morning it would be frozen in a solid block of ice ready to be presented to the teacher. In the afternoons when school was out their playground was the valley with rivers to fish and swim, …which hated the eastern end of the valley.
There were gold diggings to visit and prospectors to talk to and it was an enterprising child who didn't possess a matchbox full of gold, which was compared and bartered like marbles. There was the excitement of watching the bullock teams being lowered of the rock face of the Toll Bar by .. surplus stockmen as they made the final descent of .. Crossing with wheels chocks and brakes full on. In the evenings when the men came home and set with their legs stretched out in front of the huge stone fireplace there were stories to listen to. They told the tale of the big blue-gray wallaroo which came silently up behind George when he was out shooting and pinned his arms to his side; there was the ..story of the dead butcher O'Hare who it was said could be seen on moonlit nights riding over the hills with his head under his arm.
Inevitably the… another favorite topic was the heavy winter when the cattle had been caught by an early fall of snow. According to one of the miners, "the snow was so deep in Kiandra that I had to sit on top of a telegraph pole to tighten my shoes". Then I moped about and suddenly looked down and there , so help me, was Mother Mary, the publican's wife frying steak.
There was no end to the tales from the goldfields and sooner or later, visitors would hear the story of the family with three teenage sons. One evening, so the story went, when the sons were out at a dance, an old married couple selling vegetables called at their home. The boys' parents offered the old couple the big double bed usually occupied by their sons. Two of the boys came home early from the dance and realising what had happened went to sleep in another room but when the third boy came home late, he crept in quietly and got into the double bed as usual. In the morning he woke up entangled in the old woman's hair and found that he had spent the night sleeping between husband and wife.
Everyone dropped in to see John Thomas and his family. His was the largest house in Lobs Hole and his hospitality never failed. The aspiring politicians dropped in and stayed to address whoever cared to listen; the police and black tracker from Tumbarrumba dropped in sometimes for a chat and on one occasion with a warning that the murderer of Constable Guilfoyle had been seen in the mountains. Clergymen of all denominations called to conduct services, which were attended by everyone in the valley. From time to time, Indian hawkers rode down the Toll Bar and at the sight of their silks and ribbons and bright jewelry, Olive and Tas quickly overcame their distinctive fear of the strange brown faces.
The two girls were alone a great deal particularly in the summer months. One memorable morning after the men had left with the dangers of playing with their usual warnings about fire or ?? Olive suggested a walk over Sheep Station Hill to visit their former housekeeper, Mrs Gilbert. There had been very little rain that year and the grass was long and dry. "I wonder" said Tas, "if it would burn?" She dropped a lighted match and almost immediately the grass at their feet burst into flames. Terrified they tried to stamp it out. But it was useless and they were forced to turn and run for their lives. Very soon the whole hillside was ablaze. The flames followed them up the hill and down to their home on the other side. Snatching up a few belonging, the girls rushed for shelter between the rocky walls of the creek.
The fire completely destroyed their home and took the men a week to put it out. John Thomas built another house further down Sheep station Hill on the banks of Sheep Station Creek. Then he packed his daughters off to school at Yarrangobilly Village Olive and Tas boarded with Mrs Gibbs at Jounama Station and rode four and a half miles to school every day. Sometimes they walked and competed to see how many snakes they could kill on the way. When they reached High School age they went to board with friends in Tumut and for four years saw very little of Lobs Hole.
On the few occasions when they did come home, they travelled as far as Yarrongabilly Village by coach - Tas on one occasion making the coach two hours late by reading lurid extracts form "A Bad Boys Diary" to the coachman as he drove up the Talbingo Hill. When their schooling was finished the two girls came home to help in the house. By this time copper mining had started in the valley. There were three main shafts, a drive going right under the river and a flying fox going over it. The copper bearing rock was hauled to the surface in great iron buckets then crushed and melted into blocks. The blocks were then loaded on packhorses who toiled up the Toll Bar to the plateau above. Near the road, the blocks were unloaded and stock piled until there were enough to fill a bullock wagon for the comparatively easy run down to Tumut.
The miners camped in tents or built themselves rough huts. For meals, they had the choice of two boarding houses. The mine manager and his assistants lived in comfortable houses built overlooking the mine workings and the river. This influx of population added greatly to the social life of the valley. There were cricket matches on the flats beside the river, tennis courts were built and the boarding houses were renowned for their gay parties. Dances and parties meant very little to Olive. Even after she had left school she preferred riding and shooting to social activities. Tas on the other hand thought nothing of packing her best frock and shoes in a saddlebag and riding ? miles up to Kiandra for a dance in the local hall. She and a school friend, Sylvia would ride up the narrow track that leads around the rocky faces of the "walls". After the long ride, they would change in one of the hotels and then hurry to join the crowd of young people - shepherds, drovers, prospectors and tourists - who were already dancing ……..violins and mouth organs.
During their visit, Mrs McMiles and Mrs Bellingham mentioned that B…This track down the Walls certainly corresponds with the description of the hazardous route down the rocky cliffs used by Captain Starlight and his followers. Race days, too, were great occasions in Kiandra. Horses were imported from Adaminaby, Tumut and Cooma. The ladies wore bright sashes on their frocks, there were bookies and the gum trees … woman on horseback with one child on their lap and others clinging to their waist as they cantered up the main street and out to the racecourse. In the winter there were the snow show races. Rollicking affairs according to a local poet ….
Shortly after Olive and Tas returned home from school their father engaged a lovely and competent housekeeper whom he later married. The girls were very fond of their stepmother and it was a great blow to whole family when she died in the Tumut Hospital having two little boys - aged three and one. Tas, then only 17, took over the responsibility of bringing up her stepbrothers. Olive in the meantime had married. She had first met her future husband when she was 14. She was, even then, an experienced horsewoman, and on one occasion when the men were away mustering, she was deputed to see a visiting drover, William Speer, through the run.
Later, when Olive was 17 and William Speer became the manager of a Riverina Estate, they met again at a ball. A year later they were married with a wedding ring made from gold found at Lobs Hole. A few years after Olive had left for the western plains, Tas married Albert Bellingham - a young man who had come to the mountains for his health. After the fire which destroyed his first homestead John Thomas had sold part of his run to a Mr Brown. Brown started horsebreeding and built a large house on the eastern sloped of Sheep Station Hill. Mack McGregor was appointed manager and with him came Bert Bellingham then a very delicate youth. The climate of Lobs Hole however soon restored the young man's health and for many years he spent the summer in a small hut beside 8-Mile Dam (Dry Dam) looking after Brown's stud horses.
When Tas was 18 she became his wife. Like Olive, she was christened, confirmed and married in the Tumut Anglican Church. The young couple remained in the mountains for several years after their wedding and then left for Sydney. So it was 50 years ago that Olive and Tas left Lobs Hole. When they returned as guests of the Snowy Mountains Authority, the people and the life they had known had vanished almost without trace.
On the Cooma side of Kiandra, a long poplar tree was all that remained of the Aunt Mary's house. The school on the hill had disappeared, so had the dance hall, the stores, the hotels and practically all the houses. …..had silted up and become almost indistinguishable from the rest of the river. But the change was greatest in Lobs Hole itself. The mines had closed many years before when the price of copper dropped and the shafts were abandoned and overgrown. The mine manager's house, where Olive aged 18 had been given a garden party to celebrate her forthcoming marriage was still standing but had fallen into disrepair. The tents and huts of the miners had gone and stone chimneys and a few scattered timbers were all that remained of the boarding houses.
Occasional glimpses of poplars and fruit trees were the only indication of the homes and families that had made up that prosperous community. From the copper mines, Olive and Tas followed the river down to Wilsons Crossing. There, from the ruins of the Abode Hotel, they turned towards Sheep Station Hill and walked slowly up the overgrown path that followed the course of the Sheep Station Creek. A kangaroo on the hillside stopped to watch them as they passed. Half a mile up the track on the banks of the creek the walls of an old wooden house leant drunkenly inwards. The roof and flooring had gone and timbers were rotting on the thick damp grass. In the garden, a few flowers were struggling for existence among the weeds. Two old trees were bent low with unpicked fruit.
Standing side by side, the two sisters struggled to keep back the tears as they gazed down on the ruins of their old home. But despite the rotting timbers and the overgrown tracks, they knew in their hearts that the spirit of John Thomas and his neighbours could never be erased. The memory of them would remain to walk in the valley, not furtively by moonlight like the ghost of O'Hare, but boldly and openly in the sunlit pastures that they loved. - (Ref- Compiled from the new Monaro Pioneers database after some additional research. 2.10.08. - Plus some additional information supplied by: - Marg Denley [denleym-at-coomatechcentre.com.au] 12.01.11).