Harry Hiscock

  General Notes:

Electoral Roll: - 1930 - Lochiel, Mulgildie, Qld. - farmer.

Harry was born at Mangalore, Victoria, where his father was a farmer and grazier.
While he was a child, the family moved to a property at Nhill on the edge of the Mallee about 50 miles from the Victoria-South Australia border.
In 1909 he married Lillian Heading at Dimboola near Nhill. Their first child Albert Harry was born in 1910. The same year the young couple moved to a wheat, sheep and dairying property at Tamworth, New South Wales. Here, four more children were added to the family.
In 1923 Harry selected a block of land at Monto, Queensland. In February 1924 he went there to begin working the selection. His family joined him two years later after the property at Tamworth had been sold. Another child was born here in 1928 to complete the family.
Like other selectors Harry began growing cotton, but he also established a dairy herd and piggery from the beginning.
He took cream by horse and sulky to Mulgildie Station, where it was collected by a carrier for delivery to the railhead and then transported to Mundubbera butter factory.
Later, before the establishment of the Monto butter factory in 1929, the cream was sent to Gladstone.
After having lived on the poor country bordering the Mallee and in the cold climate of Tamworth, Harry was always a great believer in the quality of the Monto district for primary production, due to its soil and climate.
Harry's main outside interests were local organisations, such as the School Committee. He was also a member of the Q.D.O.
Harry and Lillian retired to the township of Monto in 1960.

Harry HISCOCK.
My father also Harry, came up here in January 1924. We were farming in New South Wales - wheat and sheep. He was forty two at the time and thought there were more opportunities with the cheap land up here. He came alone and selected a block - of 560 acres - at Splinter Creek, Old Cannindah. There were no improvements on the block - just a few survey pegs. Meanwhile the rest of the family, my mother, brother and three sisters, stayed farming down Tamworth-way until 1926.
My mother came by car from Murgon; my father and brother brought horses from Tamworth and I picked up dairy cattle at Murgon. A few months after arriving I selected a 600 acre block, near the one Mum and Dad had. I was the eldest boy at the time - sixteen. The other brother also selected a block, about five mile away. There was only a road between my block and my fathers; so we operated them together. My block had a lot of scrub to be cut, about 300 acres; there was not much grass, and no water. Dad put in a bore - he put in a well and dams. His block had Splinter Creek through it. We put in cotton - about 200 acres of it some times. It was a good thing, we
grew a lot - mostly good yields.
We had plenty of floods. In '28 we had four in one year and it washed out the cotton but mostly we got something out of it. Cotton was a fairly tough crop. My place was higher and was not so affected. We grew just a bit of cotton on it. Mostly share-farmers worked it, cut the scrub and grew crops on it. I depended mainly on milking cows, and a bit of cotton, for an income. We had about 100 cows most of the time, sometimes up to 140.
The family helped out; we did not have any machines in those days; the milking was done by hand. We lived in a tin hut on my dad's block. It had two rooms when we arrived but we put three more on. We built a house a couple of years after. An old man called Simon brought a sawmill there and cut our timber. That was in 1828. It had eight rooms - a big house for the whole family. All the family helped in the milking. My sister was about one year younger than me, then my brother - three
years younger; the next sister was about five and the other was only a baby. I had left school just before I was fourteen; one sister went to Murgon, staying with her grandmother; the other one went to New Cannindah. It was a provisional school, eleven miles away from the farm. She boarded with an aunt, coming home at weekends by sulky or horse. Mother did all the household chores and also helped in the yard, milking and picking cotton. We had hard times; it all depended on the weather - until we got irrigation, a good many years after.
Incomes weren't very big; we were getting 6d. a pound for butter and 3d. a pound for pigs. In the depression we got a lot of cheap labour - when you gave people one pound for work and their food,(per week). Quite a number of tramps came through. I counted forty-three one day and they were walking this way. Local unemployment wasn't very high because the town wasn't so big; nearly everybody was on properties. Most of the tramps were from the cities; we got some from Melbourne to work for us, picking cotton and corn. (Note: Tramps or swagies as they were called because they carried their possessions with them, were the unemployed mainly from the cities during the depression. There was no unemployment benefits those days, but the Government allowed them a food ration provided they kept moving from town to town, I suppose this was to make them look for work, and many did find some work even if was a feed for chopping wood. Tough times those days).
We were twenty miles out of Monto. We didn't often go to town - there wasn't much to go there for in the '20. We used to shop in Eidsvold or get our stuff from Maryborough. When I came here Arthur Hill was conducting his business out of a tent, Arthur Reinke was building a paper-shop and old Jack Ryan was building a post office. We got our provisions by horse and cart from Eidsvold; supplies would come from Maryborough by train to Ceratodus, and then on the ballast train. In wet weather the carts used to bog badly, down to the floorboards. Bishop Halford used to often stop at our place overnight. He would come along in his horse and sulky. He always set up a stretcher outside and slept under the stars; he wouldn't sleep in the house. He would take services. When we had a cricket match he would watch us play and give a service that night - not forcing himself in any way, just a matter of mixing with people. There also used to be a Methodist fellow come around on a motorbike from Mundubbera. Call on everybody, everybody was the same - Church of England, Methodist or Catholic - just call on you and have a yarn. They weren't trying to change your religion, they were just trying to communicate with people. After a year or so we got together a cricket team and built a pitch down at the creek. The team was called Moorooka - the station paddock our properties came from. The Education Department wouldn't let us call our school Moorooka because of the one in Brisbane. We went to dances at Rupert Marshall's down at Three Moon.
After a while Jimmy Patrick built a cafe in Monto and put a dance hall on top. Our own place had a timber floor and people used to all gather there and have dances. We had a gramophone and an accordion. There were a lot of poor men who worked hard but gave up. They didn't have the money to carry on. This was especially so on the scrub blocks where they couldn't make an income straight away. If they missed a crop they would have to walk off. Some of the selectors who came in didn't know much about farming but still some of them made good farmers. Take Ron Gray, coming from a cafe in England, and he made a go of it . But hard times got at quite a few selectors - depression, falling prices, little money. Getting credit was difficult in the early days because you were only allowed to borrow money for the first five years from the Agricultural Bank. Once the private banks came in it opened the field up. The interest was higher but you could get more money. When we built our house the Agricultural Bank loaned us 300 pounds and that didn't go far. I think the settlement scheme was a good one, but I suppose the government didn't have enough money to lend to everybody. They had their financial worries. The government put the railway in and there were men cutting roads here. No, I don't think the government did too bad. They let us in here on 5 Pound deposit on our block. Then we would have to go to the Land Court when we would have
to put in the first years rent, plus so much of the surveyor's fee and whatever improvements,if any there were on it. Most of the blocks didn't have any improvements. There were a few graziers around - the Baileys and old Paddy Hughes from Mungildie, a wonderful fellow; he helped a lot of people but warned them how hard it would be. He would stand and tell the newcomers: 'You had better go back; we've got thousands of acres; how do you think you are going to live on your few
acres?'

  Noted events in his life were:

• Occupation: Farmer.

Harry married Lilly Ann Florence Heading, daughter of William Heading and Rhoda Sarah Cook, on 12 Aug 1909 in Dimboola, Victoria Australia. (Lilly Ann Florence Heading was born on 28 Aug 1889 in Nhill, Victoria Australia and died on 12 May 1979 in Monto, Queensland Australia.)

  Noted events in their marriage were:

• Certificate: (5400).