Archibald Henry McVicar - the later years at Underbool

Arch selected Block 41, Parish of Nyang, adjacent to the Ouyen to Pinaroo road and rail line, between Nyang (now known as Torrita) and Underbool, opposite the reserve for a proposed railway siding (which was never constructed). The area was so dry for much of the year, the railway builders were not able to access suitable local water for human, construction or locomotive purposes, and so this was railed in by trains as the construction progressed. Later a bore was successfully drilled on the site of the proposed siding. It was more than a decade before the water channels from the Grampians reservoirs reached the area. Prior to that, very low water- use farming and lifestyles were required, although storms and occasional flash flooding occurred. Pearl recounted a storm which dumped so much rain she was required to ride her horse through extensive sheets of water on the way home from school.

Maggie, Ev and the younger children stayed in Avoca until Arch and his son Archie had made some progress at establishing the farm, called Westwood(s), at Underbool. Before the advent of regular mail services, an honour system prevailed, where settlers left outgoing mail in tins along the road, and passersby would look in the tins, and take the mail to the nearest post office, initially at Ouyen, and incoming mail would reach the settlers by the same method.

In the 1916 Municipal Directory for Walpeup Shire, Nyang and Underbool were described as having almost no facilities, with Underbool listed as having only a rail station, stores and a State School, and Nyang having only a station (but the first store in Nyang was built during 1916). Archie, 25, enlisted in the war on 15/3/1916 at Mildura, and around that time Maggie and most of the other children  moved to be with Arch. In that year, Arch was 53 and Jack was 12. The other boys in the family were Selwyn, 4, and Matt, 2. No wonder Florrie, 15, was given the nickname of "Bob", and that Arch employed farm workers.

Photographs of the early days on the McVicar farm are few. Below are probably the first two still in existence, from 1916/17. The back of the left photograph shows that it was originally half a postcard. What was on the other half is unknown. Pearl remembered the photo being taken on her way home from school, but she couldn't remember the photographer.

For further information on Arch and Maggie's life, see A Vision Realised, 1988 , District History of Underbool, Torrita, Linga, Boinka. and Early Memories Unfolded – District History of Torrita.

Arch rode a horse well into old age.  His neighbour, Tom Jackson, told the story of Arch regularly coming to visit, but never getting off the horse. Instead, he would ride as close to their house as possible, and whistle and shout until someone came out. Then he would hold a conversation from his saddle. Eventually, while out riding, he was thrown by, or fell from his horse, and was unable to move. The horse was caught in the fence, and also injured. His son Jack, known for his humour, said that when they found him, they didn't know whether to shoot the horse or shoot Arch. Fortunately, they made the right choice. Arch recovered enough to walk with a crutch, and this is how I mainly remember him, as a very old man, who wouldn't have his photo taken. However, my mother, while we were visiting them at Montague's in 1951, having just taken a photo of Maggie (her grandmother) and me, caught him as he came around the corner of our caravan.  The photos are below.

I don't know how often we visited Arch and Maggie - Grandad and Grandma McVicar for Mum, and Grandad and Grandma "Vicar" for me - at Underbool, from Maryborough, or from Ararat, where we lived 1950-53. My earliest recollections are of, during the journey, seeing the rail lines running between the high corrugated iron fences, to prevent the sand from spilling onto the tracks, and of being caught in a dust storm between Ouyen and the farm, and having to stop until it passed because it was impossible to see out.  We arrived to see Grandma sweeping the sand from the verandah. Every surface in the house had thick dust on it.

Behind the house was the original pine log and corrugated iron settlers' hut, which had had its tin chimney removed, and had been divided into two, a "boys' bedroom" and the bathroom. I wasn't allowed to go into the bedroom because Uncle Jack's guns were in the room, especially not after Uncle Matt's only child, Ken, was killed when he and another boy played with Matt's loaded gun at his house in Underbool township.  Mum was always worried about the guns, because they seemed to be everywhere - across the back shelf of the ute and visiting cars, propped in corners, in and on the tops of wardrobes. There probably weren't all that many, but I certainly noticed their whereabouts, and I was a climber!

For the adjoining bathroom, the water was heated in the smokey cast iron laundry copper on the verandah outside, and bucketed in past the concrete laundry troughs, with the precious water eventually drained out into the garden.  Long before my time, the women of the house had been given a new kitchen by enclosing the south western end of the back verandah, installing a tin chimney - perhaps the original from the hut, and stove, and a low tap to the rain water tank, plus a doorway up a step into the adjoining room in the house. A dresser base was the work top, drawers and cupboard, and the array of black cast iron pots and boilers had moved in. Dishes were washed using a large metal dish filled with hot water from the black cast iron kettle, drained on a metal tray, and wiped by another family member or visitor. Of course, all the precious water went onto the garden, and the plants in their pots of damaged china and cast iron, and opened up kerosene tins. The wooden food safe, with its thick hollow walls filled with charcoal, and water tray on top, lived on the opposite, south eastern end of the verandah.

Up the step was the breakfast room, with its dresser, big table, kerosene fridge in the corner, and wall telephone with its additional earpiece (colloquially the mother-in-law's ear), which you answered only if it rang in a certain way, because it was a party-line. One day it rang with news that I had a new girl cousin, a novelty for me. I don't know what present Grandma sent.  When I was born, it was ten shillings, about half a day's wages.

Through a fly wire door in a partition which originally hadn't been there, was the main room, the "dining room", which also had a door directly onto the back verandah.  This room used to be cleared for dances, but I don't know if that was after the partition was made. It was the only room to have a fireplace, a big one, to burn the large Mallee stumps.  When a fire was burning, people moved their chairs back as the fire heated up, and then forward as it died down. Nevertheless, over near the fly wire door to the breakfast room it was always freezing! The room was furnished with a large dining table and high back chairs, sofa, arm chairs, cedar chiffonnier, Grandad's rocking chair, mirrored sideboard, sewing machine, piano, and battery radio.  Candlesticks and various ornaments were on the mantlepiece, which had to be replaced a couple of times due to white ant activity, with photographs and more ornaments on the sideboard.  I was particularly interested in the biscuit barrel of course, but was banned from touching it, but ......  Fortunately it still exists in one piece.... plus lid.

Through another door was the passage to the front door. It contained the elaborate wicker hallstand, and the row of coat hooks.  To the left was a bedroom, furnished with a light oak suite, including marble topped washstand, and pot under the bed. To the right was Grandma's room, with its big cedar wardrobe. I remember Grandma hitting the wall above her bed with a walking stick each night before bed time to frighten away the sparrows which nested in the walls and woke her too early!

Grandad slept on the semi enclosed north western end of the front verandah, on a iron bed which sat on two large slate slabs on the sandy soil. Early one evening I went out the front door and saw him standing beside his bed in an undershirt and long johns, an amazing sight for me who had never seen such things. Fifty years later, after staying  in the winter at his son Selwyn's adjoining farm,  I asked Arch's daughter Pearl how her father survived the winters out there on the verandah.  She replied " He had a good Dunlopillo mattress". I wasn't asking about the lumpiness of the bed! For Pearl, sleeping under a semi enclosed verandah where the frost crept in and dripped was not a problem for a man who had grown up in such tough conditions on the goldfields of the Pyrenees. She was right!  He lived to nearly 91 years (and she lived to two months off 100!)

The house was lit at dusk with a kerosene lamp which was moved about if really necessary. Later a noisy generator and a bank of batteries were installed in the back shed, and electric lighting was installed, including over Grandad's bed on the verandah, with a pull switch for convenience. Of course, the generator wasn't strong enough to run appliances, and so the kerosene fridge and petrol iron continued. 

Surrounding the house were numerous farm sheds, with the forge, with its enormous leather bellows, and scrap iron dump, closest to the gate. To the west were the long rows of bush timber, corrugated iron and netting chook sheds, some with lift up flaps over the nests, where once, when I was sent to collect the eggs, I tried to dislodge a very determined hen sitting on a clutch.  Aged five, nobody had told me about such things. Of course, the chooks ranged freely over the land, and laid their eggs in their favourite spots under trees and in cavities in the abandoned farm machinery which was parked here and there.

Nearby was the rubbish dump, including an early stove.  I created a play house there, with a rusty hurricane lantern hanging on a branch, broken  rabbit traps, china and pots, and with sticks in the stove for a pretend fire. Grandad used to remove the sticks in case I found matches and lit them. Apparently one morning, after I had been "around the sheep" a few times in the previous days with the colourful Uncle Jack and his wayward dogs, I announced my frustration at the breakfast table as "Every time I put the "f***ing sticks in the stove to pretend I have a fire, someone f***'n well takes them out".  My paddock language was coming along well!

To the south of the house was the vegetable garden in its rabbit proof fence, no doubt close to the back doors to accept the precious water, and Grandma's beehive. Further over was the store shed, and the pan lavatory, which only the women seemed to use.  The men, who had to empty the pan, preferred to dig straight into the sandhills on each occasion.

To the east were the stables and machinery sheds, and the pepper corns (schinus molle) and open ground where the old wagons and buggy wheels lay around. One day, my mother's youngest cousin, Ian, and I were each balancing on the axle of a set of buggy wheels when I fell off and he on his wheels rolled over my abdomen and cut into me. I felt guilty for the trouble he was in because I was the first to climb up onto an axle.

To the north, beside the gate, was the dam, filled from the channel which, in the late winter, brought the water from the distant Grampians to the south. The windmill, day and night pumped the water to the high tank which fed the pipes to various taps.

Arch died on 28/9/1954 at Ouyen. Until just a few days before he died, he had recorded, in his increasingly shaky handwriting, the details of the local weather. I can remember very clearly my father interrupting me, collecting chips at the woodheap in Maryborough, to tell me that "Grandad McVicar  has died".  The image flashed through my mind of sitting opposite that ancient man at the breakfast table at Montague's, the only man whom I had ever seen up close who had a beard, with some of yesterday's egg in it to boot! He was buried in the Underbool Cemetery, near his young grandson Ken. 

What an interesting and great man he had been!

Maggie died on 3/8/1956 at Underbool, aged 83. It had been a very wet winter, and the rivers from the Central Highlands were in flood.  Her descendants and relatives from down south, including my parents, on the way to her funeral were lucky to get across the Avoca River at Charlton along the sandbagged highway. How appropriate it was that the Avoca, her local river for the first 43 years of her life, the river she left behind for life in the water sparse Mallee, challenged so many on their way to her funeral!

Maggie was buried with Arch in the Underbool Cemetery. Later their bachelor son Jack, who ran the farm in Arch's declining years and later, was buried beside them.

On Friday 5th June 2009, Alma Florence McVicar, widow of Selwyn Martin Hoy McVicar, pictured above tending the McVicar graves at Underbool, died aged 94 years. She was the last of the generation which followed Archibald Henry and Margaret Jane Glover McVicar. Her funeral was held at Underbool Uniting Church on Thursday 11th June.  The church was packed, with large numbers of people standing in the porch and outside, and many travelling very long distances to be there. This was an indication of the role which she had played in the community, and in welcoming and hosting members of her own and the McVicar families and their friends. Many children, including myself and my own children spent many happy hours in play and tending the turkeys and chooks on the farm and surrounding areas, and many adults enjoyed Alma's hospitality, from the chat through numerous cups of tea to "going around the garden" and"going around the sheep" to excursions to the Pink Lakes, the football, Lake Walpe, Ouyen and many other locations, to coming back to a wonderful country meal and time on the verandah to see the stars before a night in a warm country bed.  And next morning it was up to see Alma lighting the kitchen stove, with flames leaping up almost to the mantlepiece, and then collecting wood to light the donkey to make the hot water. Indelible memories!

Thank you, Auntie Alma!!  We miss you.

To read the Eulogy for Malcolm (Matt) Lauchlan McVicar, who died in 1992, go to Matt McVicar

 Next page: Eliza Frances McVicar