HISTORY: Pioneer treasures

That's often the case now as baby boomers get older and suddenly become interested in family history.

They then want to start tracing close relatives, to become family detectives, but come up against serious dead ends trying to compile their family trees.

Up Tea Gardens way, future district family members will now have a head start researching with the latest book by well-respected local historian Janis Winn.

Entitled Pioneers and History from Windy Woppa to Tahlee, the author doesn't expect her 300-page book, dense with old black and white photographs, to appeal to everyone.

But then again, that's not the point. It's to help descendants of resident families have a record of their past after the original tale tellers are long gone.

"While the book will mainly appeal to local families, I think newcomers settling in the area will love reading it. They'd want to look back and discover what happened originally," she said.

And what a tale Winn has spun, drawing on almost 40 years of personal experience and interviewing local families to capture memories before it's too late.

Her just-launched book, limited to 300 copies, sells for $40 and is only available locally.

"Many older people have now sadly gone, so this way I believe their stories at least can be preserved," she said.

She said the pioneer families suffered much hardship, but prospered in what was a remote wilderness on the northern shore of Port Stephens.

And her big, extended local history book is a little like dipping into a lucky dip; you don't know at first what treasures might lie inside.

For the period she largely writes about, from 1900 to the 1930s, seems almost unbelievable when compared to today.

It was a slower-paced time when store boats plied the Myall River and when the giant Birdwood timber mill (until 1953) was a major employer. Back then, up to 24 bullocks in a single team would haul hardwoods out of the vast surrounding forests.

In the earliest days, homes had no fly-screens and no alarm clocks, but for some families it meant being awoken by a herd of 40 cows, bellowing from 5.30am, waiting to be milked, then the children rowing across the river to Tea Gardens (originally Coweambah township) to school.

On returning home, the cows had to be milked again and the fowls and pigs fed. For recreation, the kids could catch fish, trap rabbits or shoot wallabies and were never hungry.

Later they might sit around a campfire, someone would play a mouth organ and the dingoes would howl in the night.

Winn also quotes pioneer Cecil Howard, who in old age, gave her an invaluable glimpse into an era when the one road to Karuah was just a potholed, rough bush track (in 1904) and babies were often delivered at home by neighbours.

Born in 1890, Howard remembered when it was customary for every family to bake its own bread.

"Housewives bought flour in 50-pound bags made of calico which provided two very necessary items for families," he recalled.

The first use was to make all the female pants from the calico bags once the flour mill's brand stamp was bleached off and lace edges added.

The second use of calico was to make pillowslips, using all the small feathers kept from their poultry to fill them. The larger bird feathers were used to make bed ticking, or mattresses. Otherwise, these might be filled with coarse, prickly horsehair.

Howard also remembered itinerant tinsmiths, plus Indian, Chinese and Afghan travelling merchants.

The Afghan hawkers carried almost a whole shop slung over their horses; all types of materials, including clothing, boots, kitchen pots, needles, lace and cotton. The Afghans also operated as herbalists, doing a remarkable job curing a lot of bush ailments, Howard told Winn.

Her book highlights tales from the original families including McRae, Bagnall, Burrows, Phillips, Fidden, Perrin, Howard, Holbert, Evans, Davies, Flood, Thurlow, Smith and Motum.

Winn is herself descended from the Motum family who for years looked after the inner navigation light on Corrie Island.

Also, she has very fond memories of holidays at Pindimar to the west, living in a family oyster shack built out over the water on Wobbygong Creek, staying with her grandfather Jesse Motum.

"Right outside the front door you could catch crabs and collect oysters. It was idyllic. Bread and butter were the only things you'd take there," she said.

"You'd walk up a plank to get hut access, then one day in a southerly gale, it just blew over. Looking back, the shack had no bracing. It just stood there.

"I remember one time at high tide, the winds caused the waves to squirt up inside between the floorboards," she said.

Winn's book includes an insight into the nearby 'Duckhole' where five hulks, including two former Sydney ferries, were dumped as well as maps and details the failed dreams to create major cities at both Pindimar and North Arm Cove.

The popular Jimmy's Beach at today's renamed Winda Wopper was apparently named after a ship runaway, a Jamaican negro called James Levi and then there's Pindimar's famous, if short-lived, commercial shark factory in the 1930s.

Thousands of sharks were killed, with their fins dried, bagged and shipped to China. The shark livers were processed for oil and the tanned hides were converted in leather shoes, bags suitcases and wallets.

There's also memories from the late Inez Radcliffe, then aged 90, the widow of A.B.S. White, a one-time owner of historic Tahlee House, near Karuah.

Inez Radcliffe spent nearly 30 years at Tahlee from 1932. Her father was caretaker at the isolated waterfront site with its convict-built boat harbour.

At times, she saw weird natural phenomena, such as black clouds of moths, thousands of them, invading Tahlee house when a thunderstorm was once brewing.

And when the tide was low, Mrs Radcliffe said she and family members used to swim around the Tahlee wharf "until one night my brother caught 14 sharks from it".

Winn also reveals that Tea Gardens about 1898 had a registered racetrack with bookmakers even attending, despite the clubhouse being an old tram!

"People also ask me about the Limekilns area on the Myall River where oyster shells were burnt to produce lime for building mortar in Newcastle and Sydney," she said.

"There's no trace of these limekilns left now, but that area was always called Holbert Town because only Holberts lived there. The family probably first came up from Botany, in Sydney, to Port Stephens about 1874.

"That's why I've written this book," Winn said.

"If this history isn't recorded now it's going to be lost.

"The next generation won't have a clue what once happened here."