Memories of Wondai
The time before electricity came to Wondai was remembered well by some local residents. Joyce once had a fright with a petrol iron. ‘It hit the roof and made a hole in it’, she laughed. ‘They patched it up but I can still see where it hit today’. Joyce’s reminiscences included these details:
...horse-drawn carriages, sulkies, romantic candle light...when life was much simpler, slower and far less sophisticated... After school there were the farm chores...milking, feeding pigs and poultry, chopping wood for the stove and the copper. All water had to be carried in to the house in kerosene tins and water for bathing was warmed on the stove. The children were washed in the old tin tub pulled in close to the stove recess, with the light from a kerosene lantern on the kitchen table.
One of the teachers at the little one-teacher school was keen on drama and used what little talent she could muster to produce concerts and plays in the old tin hall. This particular teacher borrowed all the Aladdin Lamps available and used cut-down kerosene tins to reflect the light onto the stage. Kerosene tins were used for everything!
Gathering wood in the days before electricity was an important job... (wood) had to be cut to fit the wood stove and the fire under the copper used to boil the dirty clothes. ...without refrigeration, fresh meat was a luxury. Groceries, meat etc were delivered twice weekly by the van, which picked up the cream for delivery to the local butter factory.
Petrol (in World War Two) was rationed and old-timers still recall with amusement the gas producer attached to an old Ford utility without any tyres, which the farmer used to drive on its rims. Without any lights, one member of the family would run ahead with a kerosene lantern to show the road.
After the war electricity was slowly introduced to the rural areas and looking out across the once dark night time landscape to see the twinkling lights across the countryside was like a glimpse of fairyland.
Another long term resident of Wondai, who prefers to remain anonymous, wrote down his memories on ‘The Introduction of Electricity into the Town of Wondai’. Writing about the time before electricity came to the town and the switch-on ceremony, his words take us vividly back to daily family life in Wondai, and the feelings and emotions stirred when electricity became available to use in the home. Extracts from his letter are provided below.
Wondai had a full-time woodman, who worked very hard to supply a horse-drawn German Wagon load (about a ton). This had been sawn by hand into blocks, which were then split into stove-sized pieces and delivered to your ‘wood heap’. The cost was ten shillings a load.
Practically all homes conformed to the same standard. In the kitchen was the wood stove to provide for cooking, the heating of water and clothes-pressing irons, and for warmth in the winter. I have many happy memories of the family group, snugly gathered in the warm kitchen during cold winter evenings listening with great excitement to the cricket test matches broadcast on short wave wireless from England.
Also standard was the wood-burning copper in the laundry. Clothes were not considered clean unless they were well and truly boiled. Doing a family wash by hand was a physically demanding chore...
For lighting, kerosene lamps were the order of the day...These came in a wide array of styles from the modest little tin kitchen lamp (sometimes to hang on the wall) to more significant designs, which graced the living areas. The advent of pressurised benzene lamps provided a much better light...benzene irons...(had) a downside, for the fuel system was prone to flooding before it became vapourised. The result was a flaming iron, which so often ended up on the end of a broom stick to be taken to the nearest window en route to the garden bed below.
I can recall the switch-on occasion in Wondai... The tension mounted in the town as street light poles were erected. And what poles they were, about four times the height of our present ones. Our local electrician, Mr. Frank Kemp made good progress in wiring houses, shops...In that era the wires were protected by being encased in a black metal tube. Often this could not be concealed, but no-one seemed to mind.
Eventually, the magic moment for ‘switch-on’ arrived, providing what would have to be the most dramatic moment of celebration in the town’s history. In an instant, our modest, dimly lit Wondai came to life in a blaze of light, which (so we felt) rivalled the Great White Way of Broadway.
One of the indirect benefits of electric light was reduction of the threat of house fires. Naked flames had taken a toll over the years notable among the losses was our largest hotel, the Mondure Hotel, which was completely destroyed in 1912.
At the time of the provision of power, Mr. Vic Monteith conducted a wireless sales and service business. He included a small range of electrical goods. One might expect a sales bonanza to follow the switch-on, but such was not the case. People had endured some shockingly hard years and money was hard to find for life’s extras. There were three items which did take off- an electric jug to make a quick cup of tea, a metal 2-slice drop-side toaster and a (no problem) iron. Notwithstanding the tough times, it did not take long for the refrigerator to be recognised for its convenience, comfort and economy.
While most regarded the availability of power as a dream come true, there were a few people who were not impressed. Occasionally, you would hear of people who moved into a rented home (wired) but they would not have the power connected. When (a friend’s relative’s) son and daughter-in-law came to stay, they found the electric iron behind the back yard shed, having had a ride on the ever handy broom handle.
There is an electric light memory that remains with me. Our lamps used to provide adequate light where it was required, on tables and benches, but in the rest of the room there was little light. Our new electric light filled every nook and corner. We sometimes hear the expression that people were happier in the good old days. Maybe there is some truth there, but, should I have to re-locate to another house, I still think I’ll have the power connected.
Offering her point of view as a child growing up without electricity on a property near Wondai, Hilda said,
When I was growing up we had no electricity, our lights were kerosene lamps. My Mother used to iron our clothes with Mother Potts’ Irons heated on the wood stove, later on she had a petrol iron. This used to have flames shoot out all around if it was turned up too high.
Our cooler for our meat, milk, butter and anything needing to be kept cool was a 4 gallon kerosene tin with two sides cut out and put into a sugar bag with a large Billy (7 lbs. syrup tin) with a small hole in the bottom with a match stick in the hole so the water just dripped on the bag keeping it cool. That used to hang on the verandah which usually was the coolest place. The white clothes and the men’s work clothes were boiled in a copper. The coloured clothes were always washed by hand. All this washing was done with a cake of sunlight soap (no soap powder in those days) and everything was wrung out by hand.
Doris was born in 1925 and she had similar pre-electricity memories and experiences to the ones recorded by Hilda. When she first married and had babies, she had to boil the nappies in a kerosene tin on the wood-burning stove. Her first washing machine ‘was like a hand-mixer, which I turned by hand.’ For lighting in the home, the family had an auxiliary plant, ‘which had to be started up each night and turned off at bedtime...’ Her first experience of electricity was when she moved into Wondai town in 1951. Doris said that it was great to be able to boil a jug to make a cup of tea and cook using an electric frypan. When she had her first electric refrigerator after her old kerosene one, she was relieved not to have to remember to fill the tank with kerosene. It was 1954 when she eventually had ‘different electrical appliances, which made life so much easier’. Doris’s memories reinforce some of the points made by other Wondai residents and confirm that the sale of electrical appliances did not necessarily go up instantly as soon as power was readily available. A distinctive choice was made before a purchase was finalised. The electric jug did seem to come out on top for most women with the electric iron a close second place.
The homes in rural areas benefitted in much the same way with additional benefits for the farmers working the land, milking sheds and dairies. As Percy well remembers:
I clearly recall a time...only six years after power came to Wondai, electricity supply being made available to farmers along the Kingaroy to Wondai supply line. Electricity to the dairy shed and milking machines, power to pump skimmed milk and water to the piggery. In the home, folks experienced the novelty of the electric jug, mixing bowl, radio, washing machine and so on.
All this with value for money we find staggering to-day: a deposit of one pound, ($2.00 each) with application. A mains connection, £2 ($4)… There would have been a kilometre of power lines and say 6 to 8 poles in the connection of our house and neighbours across the road in addition to shared transformers on the main line.
In 1939-1940 our Annual Bill for Electric Light was six pounds, one shilling and seven pence, telephone, two pounds and two pence, Radio listeners’ license, one pound.
A farmer’s recollections confirm Percy’s comments and go further to reveal some personal memories about the differences in attitude between city people and those living in rural areas, and the changes he witnessed when the Barambah Valley went from darkness to light.
When one of my brothers was invited to preach at a little country community hall at Brigooda west of Proston, instead of the usual old type of organ, an electric organ was used to provide music for the Church Service... a local farmer’s wife was the organist...A generator driven by a tractor engine parked just outside the window of the hall nearest to where the organ was being played and left running throughout the service provided the electricity to run the organ.
Like a lot of dairy farmers, our 32-volt generator was driven by the engine which powered the milking plant. This powered lights, a Mixmaster, an iron and a washing machine. The generator had to run while the washing machine was being used. City relatives had to be constantly reminded that lights in unoccupied rooms had to be turned off because there was only a limited amount of electricity in the batteries between charging. Some of our neighbours only had 12-volt lights in their houses, and one neighbour had a wind powered generator.
As we lived high up on the side of the Barambah Valley, we could see right over the valley, before main power came, at night we could only see a few dim lights, but when 240-volt power came, what a transformation, lights everywhere, almost like stars in the sky...we felt a lot less lonely.
When mains power first connected to rural properties in the Murgon area, landholders had to sign a five year contract guaranteeing that they would pay for a specified amount of electricity whether they use it or not. In most cases this contract guarantee was not a problem as most farmers used electricity to run their milking machines, hammermills and even irrigation pumps.
One family who lived on the main road near Murgon did not have any electric motors, they had no way of using the amount of electricity they had to pay for, they left every light on in their house twenty four hours a day and to this day this house is still known as ‘The Light House’.
In nearby Proston, a small rural township, Mr. G.T.M. Boynton provided the town with electricity from his two generators. Mr. Boynton has been named the ‘founder of Proston’ by many people. He opened the first cafeteria in Proston, built a garage, a movie theatre and many other buildings in the town. He was the first to supply electricity, originally to businesses, and later extended to include the wider town community. He had obtained permission to install two 70hp Lister engines and supply electric current within a radius of 300 yards. ‘This will be a great advantage to residents within the area’. Mr. Boynton remained the town’s sole supplier of electricity until 1956, when the Wide Bay Burnett Electricity Board took over the system.
Living on a farm in Proston in 1945 meant that Bev and her family did not have reticulated power for some time.
The milking plant was run by a Lister engine and a generator for the house. A few years later we had electricity connected from the town plant. Still later, the whole district was connected to the Wide Bay Burnett Electricity Board supply. When the power went off, we had to milk 60 to 70 cows by hand and separate the milk from the cream by hand, a handle was placed on the separator and we had to wind this handle...which took hours.
The time before electricity came to Wondai was remembered well by some local residents. Joyce once had a fright with a petrol iron. ‘It hit the roof and made a hole in it’, she laughed. ‘They patched it up but I can still see where it hit today’. Joyce’s reminiscences included these details:
...horse-drawn carriages, sulkies, romantic candle light...when life was much simpler, slower and far less sophisticated... After school there were the farm chores...milking, feeding pigs and poultry, chopping wood for the stove and the copper. All water had to be carried in to the house in kerosene tins and water for bathing was warmed on the stove. The children were washed in the old tin tub pulled in close to the stove recess, with the light from a kerosene lantern on the kitchen table.
One of the teachers at the little one-teacher school was keen on drama and used what little talent she could muster to produce concerts and plays in the old tin hall. This particular teacher borrowed all the Aladdin Lamps available and used cut-down kerosene tins to reflect the light onto the stage. Kerosene tins were used for everything!
Gathering wood in the days before electricity was an important job... (wood) had to be cut to fit the wood stove and the fire under the copper used to boil the dirty clothes. ...without refrigeration, fresh meat was a luxury. Groceries, meat etc were delivered twice weekly by the van, which picked up the cream for delivery to the local butter factory.
Petrol (in World War Two) was rationed and old-timers still recall with amusement the gas producer attached to an old Ford utility without any tyres, which the farmer used to drive on its rims. Without any lights, one member of the family would run ahead with a kerosene lantern to show the road.
After the war electricity was slowly introduced to the rural areas and looking out across the once dark night time landscape to see the twinkling lights across the countryside was like a glimpse of fairyland.
Another long term resident of Wondai, who prefers to remain anonymous, wrote down his memories on ‘The Introduction of Electricity into the Town of Wondai’. Writing about the time before electricity came to the town and the switch-on ceremony, his words take us vividly back to daily family life in Wondai, and the feelings and emotions stirred when electricity became available to use in the home. Extracts from his letter are provided below.
Wondai had a full-time woodman, who worked very hard to supply a horse-drawn German Wagon load (about a ton). This had been sawn by hand into blocks, which were then split into stove-sized pieces and delivered to your ‘wood heap’. The cost was ten shillings a load.
Practically all homes conformed to the same standard. In the kitchen was the wood stove to provide for cooking, the heating of water and clothes-pressing irons, and for warmth in the winter. I have many happy memories of the family group, snugly gathered in the warm kitchen during cold winter evenings listening with great excitement to the cricket test matches broadcast on short wave wireless from England.
Also standard was the wood-burning copper in the laundry. Clothes were not considered clean unless they were well and truly boiled. Doing a family wash by hand was a physically demanding chore...
For lighting, kerosene lamps were the order of the day...These came in a wide array of styles from the modest little tin kitchen lamp (sometimes to hang on the wall) to more significant designs, which graced the living areas. The advent of pressurised benzene lamps provided a much better light...benzene irons...(had) a downside, for the fuel system was prone to flooding before it became vapourised. The result was a flaming iron, which so often ended up on the end of a broom stick to be taken to the nearest window en route to the garden bed below.
I can recall the switch-on occasion in Wondai... The tension mounted in the town as street light poles were erected. And what poles they were, about four times the height of our present ones. Our local electrician, Mr. Frank Kemp made good progress in wiring houses, shops...In that era the wires were protected by being encased in a black metal tube. Often this could not be concealed, but no-one seemed to mind.
Eventually, the magic moment for ‘switch-on’ arrived, providing what would have to be the most dramatic moment of celebration in the town’s history. In an instant, our modest, dimly lit Wondai came to life in a blaze of light, which (so we felt) rivalled the Great White Way of Broadway.
One of the indirect benefits of electric light was reduction of the threat of house fires. Naked flames had taken a toll over the years notable among the losses was our largest hotel, the Mondure Hotel, which was completely destroyed in 1912.
At the time of the provision of power, Mr. Vic Monteith conducted a wireless sales and service business. He included a small range of electrical goods. One might expect a sales bonanza to follow the switch-on, but such was not the case. People had endured some shockingly hard years and money was hard to find for life’s extras. There were three items which did take off- an electric jug to make a quick cup of tea, a metal 2-slice drop-side toaster and a (no problem) iron. Notwithstanding the tough times, it did not take long for the refrigerator to be recognised for its convenience, comfort and economy.
While most regarded the availability of power as a dream come true, there were a few people who were not impressed. Occasionally, you would hear of people who moved into a rented home (wired) but they would not have the power connected. When (a friend’s relative’s) son and daughter-in-law came to stay, they found the electric iron behind the back yard shed, having had a ride on the ever handy broom handle.
There is an electric light memory that remains with me. Our lamps used to provide adequate light where it was required, on tables and benches, but in the rest of the room there was little light. Our new electric light filled every nook and corner. We sometimes hear the expression that people were happier in the good old days. Maybe there is some truth there, but, should I have to re-locate to another house, I still think I’ll have the power connected.
Offering her point of view as a child growing up without electricity on a property near Wondai, Hilda said,
When I was growing up we had no electricity, our lights were kerosene lamps. My Mother used to iron our clothes with Mother Potts’ Irons heated on the wood stove, later on she had a petrol iron. This used to have flames shoot out all around if it was turned up too high.
Our cooler for our meat, milk, butter and anything needing to be kept cool was a 4 gallon kerosene tin with two sides cut out and put into a sugar bag with a large Billy (7 lbs. syrup tin) with a small hole in the bottom with a match stick in the hole so the water just dripped on the bag keeping it cool. That used to hang on the verandah which usually was the coolest place. The white clothes and the men’s work clothes were boiled in a copper. The coloured clothes were always washed by hand. All this washing was done with a cake of sunlight soap (no soap powder in those days) and everything was wrung out by hand.
Doris was born in 1925 and she had similar pre-electricity memories and experiences to the ones recorded by Hilda. When she first married and had babies, she had to boil the nappies in a kerosene tin on the wood-burning stove. Her first washing machine ‘was like a hand-mixer, which I turned by hand.’ For lighting in the home, the family had an auxiliary plant, ‘which had to be started up each night and turned off at bedtime...’ Her first experience of electricity was when she moved into Wondai town in 1951. Doris said that it was great to be able to boil a jug to make a cup of tea and cook using an electric frypan. When she had her first electric refrigerator after her old kerosene one, she was relieved not to have to remember to fill the tank with kerosene. It was 1954 when she eventually had ‘different electrical appliances, which made life so much easier’. Doris’s memories reinforce some of the points made by other Wondai residents and confirm that the sale of electrical appliances did not necessarily go up instantly as soon as power was readily available. A distinctive choice was made before a purchase was finalised. The electric jug did seem to come out on top for most women with the electric iron a close second place.
The homes in rural areas benefitted in much the same way with additional benefits for the farmers working the land, milking sheds and dairies. As Percy well remembers:
I clearly recall a time...only six years after power came to Wondai, electricity supply being made available to farmers along the Kingaroy to Wondai supply line. Electricity to the dairy shed and milking machines, power to pump skimmed milk and water to the piggery. In the home, folks experienced the novelty of the electric jug, mixing bowl, radio, washing machine and so on.
All this with value for money we find staggering to-day: a deposit of one pound, ($2.00 each) with application. A mains connection, £2 ($4)… There would have been a kilometre of power lines and say 6 to 8 poles in the connection of our house and neighbours across the road in addition to shared transformers on the main line.
In 1939-1940 our Annual Bill for Electric Light was six pounds, one shilling and seven pence, telephone, two pounds and two pence, Radio listeners’ license, one pound.
A farmer’s recollections confirm Percy’s comments and go further to reveal some personal memories about the differences in attitude between city people and those living in rural areas, and the changes he witnessed when the Barambah Valley went from darkness to light.
When one of my brothers was invited to preach at a little country community hall at Brigooda west of Proston, instead of the usual old type of organ, an electric organ was used to provide music for the Church Service... a local farmer’s wife was the organist...A generator driven by a tractor engine parked just outside the window of the hall nearest to where the organ was being played and left running throughout the service provided the electricity to run the organ.
Like a lot of dairy farmers, our 32-volt generator was driven by the engine which powered the milking plant. This powered lights, a Mixmaster, an iron and a washing machine. The generator had to run while the washing machine was being used. City relatives had to be constantly reminded that lights in unoccupied rooms had to be turned off because there was only a limited amount of electricity in the batteries between charging. Some of our neighbours only had 12-volt lights in their houses, and one neighbour had a wind powered generator.
As we lived high up on the side of the Barambah Valley, we could see right over the valley, before main power came, at night we could only see a few dim lights, but when 240-volt power came, what a transformation, lights everywhere, almost like stars in the sky...we felt a lot less lonely.
When mains power first connected to rural properties in the Murgon area, landholders had to sign a five year contract guaranteeing that they would pay for a specified amount of electricity whether they use it or not. In most cases this contract guarantee was not a problem as most farmers used electricity to run their milking machines, hammermills and even irrigation pumps.
One family who lived on the main road near Murgon did not have any electric motors, they had no way of using the amount of electricity they had to pay for, they left every light on in their house twenty four hours a day and to this day this house is still known as ‘The Light House’.
In nearby Proston, a small rural township, Mr. G.T.M. Boynton provided the town with electricity from his two generators. Mr. Boynton has been named the ‘founder of Proston’ by many people. He opened the first cafeteria in Proston, built a garage, a movie theatre and many other buildings in the town. He was the first to supply electricity, originally to businesses, and later extended to include the wider town community. He had obtained permission to install two 70hp Lister engines and supply electric current within a radius of 300 yards. ‘This will be a great advantage to residents within the area’. Mr. Boynton remained the town’s sole supplier of electricity until 1956, when the Wide Bay Burnett Electricity Board took over the system.
Living on a farm in Proston in 1945 meant that Bev and her family did not have reticulated power for some time.
The milking plant was run by a Lister engine and a generator for the house. A few years later we had electricity connected from the town plant. Still later, the whole district was connected to the Wide Bay Burnett Electricity Board supply. When the power went off, we had to milk 60 to 70 cows by hand and separate the milk from the cream by hand, a handle was placed on the separator and we had to wind this handle...which took hours.
Memories from Joyce, which she shared at a ‘Memories of Energy’ Morning Tea attended by Wondai, Proston and Murgon residents. The morning was planned by Dr. J. King and arranged by the Wondai Heritage Centre volunteers in June, 2009. Joyce wrote more memories for Dr. J. King following the morning tea. See also ‘Power Party Sparks Electrifying Debate’ in South Burnett Times, 23 June, 2009.
1 Memories from Joyce, which she shared at a ‘Memories of Energy’ Morning Tea attended by Wondai, Proston and Murgon residents. The morning was planned by Dr. J. King and arranged by the Wondai Heritage Centre volunteers in June, 2009. Joyce wrote more memories for Dr. J. King following the morning tea. See also ‘Power Party Sparks Electrifying Debate’ in South Burnett Times, 23 June, 2009.
2 Memories from ‘a long-term resident of Wondai’, which he shared at a ‘Memories of Energy’ Morning Tea at Wondai Heritage Centre. in June, 2009. He wrote more memories for Dr. J. King following the morning tea.
3 Memories from Hilda at the Memories of Energy Morning Tea, June, 2009.
4 Memories from Doris in correspondence to the author following the Memories of Energy Morning Tea, June 2009.
5 Memories of Percy Iszlaub, former Mayor of Wondai Shire Council at the Memories of Energy Morning Tea, and written information given to the author, June 2009.
6 Memories of Peter Shelton at the Memories of Energy Morning Tea, and written information from Peter, June 2009.
7 See Matthews, T (1997) Landscapes of Change: A History of the South Burnett Vol 2, p551; The Murgon and District News, 24 March,1980; South Burnett Times, 2 February, 1934; South Burnett Times, 24 December, 1937; Centelabrations, Wondai Shire Council, 2 October, 1959, p.13.
8 Memories from Bev at the Memories of Energy Morning Tea, June 2009.
Author and interviewer: Dr. Jan King
...horse-drawn carriages, sulkies, romantic candle light...when life was much simpler, slower and far less sophisticated... After school there were the farm chores...milking, feeding pigs and poultry, chopping wood for the stove and the copper. All water had to be carried in to the house in kerosene tins and water for bathing was warmed on the stove. The children were washed in the old tin tub pulled in close to the stove recess, with the light from a kerosene lantern on the kitchen table.
One of the teachers at the little one-teacher school was keen on drama and used what little talent she could muster to produce concerts and plays in the old tin hall. This particular teacher borrowed all the Aladdin Lamps available and used cut-down kerosene tins to reflect the light onto the stage. Kerosene tins were used for everything!
Gathering wood in the days before electricity was an important job... (wood) had to be cut to fit the wood stove and the fire under the copper used to boil the dirty clothes. ...without refrigeration, fresh meat was a luxury. Groceries, meat etc were delivered twice weekly by the van, which picked up the cream for delivery to the local butter factory.
Petrol (in World War Two) was rationed and old-timers still recall with amusement the gas producer attached to an old Ford utility without any tyres, which the farmer used to drive on its rims. Without any lights, one member of the family would run ahead with a kerosene lantern to show the road.
After the war electricity was slowly introduced to the rural areas and looking out across the once dark night time landscape to see the twinkling lights across the countryside was like a glimpse of fairyland.
Another long term resident of Wondai, who prefers to remain anonymous, wrote down his memories on ‘The Introduction of Electricity into the Town of Wondai’. Writing about the time before electricity came to the town and the switch-on ceremony, his words take us vividly back to daily family life in Wondai, and the feelings and emotions stirred when electricity became available to use in the home. Extracts from his letter are provided below.
Wondai had a full-time woodman, who worked very hard to supply a horse-drawn German Wagon load (about a ton). This had been sawn by hand into blocks, which were then split into stove-sized pieces and delivered to your ‘wood heap’. The cost was ten shillings a load.
Practically all homes conformed to the same standard. In the kitchen was the wood stove to provide for cooking, the heating of water and clothes-pressing irons, and for warmth in the winter. I have many happy memories of the family group, snugly gathered in the warm kitchen during cold winter evenings listening with great excitement to the cricket test matches broadcast on short wave wireless from England.
Also standard was the wood-burning copper in the laundry. Clothes were not considered clean unless they were well and truly boiled. Doing a family wash by hand was a physically demanding chore...
For lighting, kerosene lamps were the order of the day...These came in a wide array of styles from the modest little tin kitchen lamp (sometimes to hang on the wall) to more significant designs, which graced the living areas. The advent of pressurised benzene lamps provided a much better light...benzene irons...(had) a downside, for the fuel system was prone to flooding before it became vapourised. The result was a flaming iron, which so often ended up on the end of a broom stick to be taken to the nearest window en route to the garden bed below.
I can recall the switch-on occasion in Wondai... The tension mounted in the town as street light poles were erected. And what poles they were, about four times the height of our present ones. Our local electrician, Mr. Frank Kemp made good progress in wiring houses, shops...In that era the wires were protected by being encased in a black metal tube. Often this could not be concealed, but no-one seemed to mind.
Eventually, the magic moment for ‘switch-on’ arrived, providing what would have to be the most dramatic moment of celebration in the town’s history. In an instant, our modest, dimly lit Wondai came to life in a blaze of light, which (so we felt) rivalled the Great White Way of Broadway.
One of the indirect benefits of electric light was reduction of the threat of house fires. Naked flames had taken a toll over the years notable among the losses was our largest hotel, the Mondure Hotel, which was completely destroyed in 1912.
At the time of the provision of power, Mr. Vic Monteith conducted a wireless sales and service business. He included a small range of electrical goods. One might expect a sales bonanza to follow the switch-on, but such was not the case. People had endured some shockingly hard years and money was hard to find for life’s extras. There were three items which did take off- an electric jug to make a quick cup of tea, a metal 2-slice drop-side toaster and a (no problem) iron. Notwithstanding the tough times, it did not take long for the refrigerator to be recognised for its convenience, comfort and economy.
While most regarded the availability of power as a dream come true, there were a few people who were not impressed. Occasionally, you would hear of people who moved into a rented home (wired) but they would not have the power connected. When (a friend’s relative’s) son and daughter-in-law came to stay, they found the electric iron behind the back yard shed, having had a ride on the ever handy broom handle.
There is an electric light memory that remains with me. Our lamps used to provide adequate light where it was required, on tables and benches, but in the rest of the room there was little light. Our new electric light filled every nook and corner. We sometimes hear the expression that people were happier in the good old days. Maybe there is some truth there, but, should I have to re-locate to another house, I still think I’ll have the power connected.
Offering her point of view as a child growing up without electricity on a property near Wondai, Hilda said,
When I was growing up we had no electricity, our lights were kerosene lamps. My Mother used to iron our clothes with Mother Potts’ Irons heated on the wood stove, later on she had a petrol iron. This used to have flames shoot out all around if it was turned up too high.
Our cooler for our meat, milk, butter and anything needing to be kept cool was a 4 gallon kerosene tin with two sides cut out and put into a sugar bag with a large Billy (7 lbs. syrup tin) with a small hole in the bottom with a match stick in the hole so the water just dripped on the bag keeping it cool. That used to hang on the verandah which usually was the coolest place. The white clothes and the men’s work clothes were boiled in a copper. The coloured clothes were always washed by hand. All this washing was done with a cake of sunlight soap (no soap powder in those days) and everything was wrung out by hand.
Doris was born in 1925 and she had similar pre-electricity memories and experiences to the ones recorded by Hilda. When she first married and had babies, she had to boil the nappies in a kerosene tin on the wood-burning stove. Her first washing machine ‘was like a hand-mixer, which I turned by hand.’ For lighting in the home, the family had an auxiliary plant, ‘which had to be started up each night and turned off at bedtime...’ Her first experience of electricity was when she moved into Wondai town in 1951. Doris said that it was great to be able to boil a jug to make a cup of tea and cook using an electric frypan. When she had her first electric refrigerator after her old kerosene one, she was relieved not to have to remember to fill the tank with kerosene. It was 1954 when she eventually had ‘different electrical appliances, which made life so much easier’. Doris’s memories reinforce some of the points made by other Wondai residents and confirm that the sale of electrical appliances did not necessarily go up instantly as soon as power was readily available. A distinctive choice was made before a purchase was finalised. The electric jug did seem to come out on top for most women with the electric iron a close second place.
The homes in rural areas benefitted in much the same way with additional benefits for the farmers working the land, milking sheds and dairies. As Percy well remembers:
I clearly recall a time...only six years after power came to Wondai, electricity supply being made available to farmers along the Kingaroy to Wondai supply line. Electricity to the dairy shed and milking machines, power to pump skimmed milk and water to the piggery. In the home, folks experienced the novelty of the electric jug, mixing bowl, radio, washing machine and so on.
All this with value for money we find staggering to-day: a deposit of one pound, ($2.00 each) with application. A mains connection, £2 ($4)… There would have been a kilometre of power lines and say 6 to 8 poles in the connection of our house and neighbours across the road in addition to shared transformers on the main line.
In 1939-1940 our Annual Bill for Electric Light was six pounds, one shilling and seven pence, telephone, two pounds and two pence, Radio listeners’ license, one pound.
A farmer’s recollections confirm Percy’s comments and go further to reveal some personal memories about the differences in attitude between city people and those living in rural areas, and the changes he witnessed when the Barambah Valley went from darkness to light.
When one of my brothers was invited to preach at a little country community hall at Brigooda west of Proston, instead of the usual old type of organ, an electric organ was used to provide music for the Church Service... a local farmer’s wife was the organist...A generator driven by a tractor engine parked just outside the window of the hall nearest to where the organ was being played and left running throughout the service provided the electricity to run the organ.
Like a lot of dairy farmers, our 32-volt generator was driven by the engine which powered the milking plant. This powered lights, a Mixmaster, an iron and a washing machine. The generator had to run while the washing machine was being used. City relatives had to be constantly reminded that lights in unoccupied rooms had to be turned off because there was only a limited amount of electricity in the batteries between charging. Some of our neighbours only had 12-volt lights in their houses, and one neighbour had a wind powered generator.
As we lived high up on the side of the Barambah Valley, we could see right over the valley, before main power came, at night we could only see a few dim lights, but when 240-volt power came, what a transformation, lights everywhere, almost like stars in the sky...we felt a lot less lonely.
When mains power first connected to rural properties in the Murgon area, landholders had to sign a five year contract guaranteeing that they would pay for a specified amount of electricity whether they use it or not. In most cases this contract guarantee was not a problem as most farmers used electricity to run their milking machines, hammermills and even irrigation pumps.
One family who lived on the main road near Murgon did not have any electric motors, they had no way of using the amount of electricity they had to pay for, they left every light on in their house twenty four hours a day and to this day this house is still known as ‘The Light House’.
In nearby Proston, a small rural township, Mr. G.T.M. Boynton provided the town with electricity from his two generators. Mr. Boynton has been named the ‘founder of Proston’ by many people. He opened the first cafeteria in Proston, built a garage, a movie theatre and many other buildings in the town. He was the first to supply electricity, originally to businesses, and later extended to include the wider town community. He had obtained permission to install two 70hp Lister engines and supply electric current within a radius of 300 yards. ‘This will be a great advantage to residents within the area’. Mr. Boynton remained the town’s sole supplier of electricity until 1956, when the Wide Bay Burnett Electricity Board took over the system.
Living on a farm in Proston in 1945 meant that Bev and her family did not have reticulated power for some time.
The milking plant was run by a Lister engine and a generator for the house. A few years later we had electricity connected from the town plant. Still later, the whole district was connected to the Wide Bay Burnett Electricity Board supply. When the power went off, we had to milk 60 to 70 cows by hand and separate the milk from the cream by hand, a handle was placed on the separator and we had to wind this handle...which took hours.
The time before electricity came to Wondai was remembered well by some local residents. Joyce once had a fright with a petrol iron. ‘It hit the roof and made a hole in it’, she laughed. ‘They patched it up but I can still see where it hit today’. Joyce’s reminiscences included these details:
...horse-drawn carriages, sulkies, romantic candle light...when life was much simpler, slower and far less sophisticated... After school there were the farm chores...milking, feeding pigs and poultry, chopping wood for the stove and the copper. All water had to be carried in to the house in kerosene tins and water for bathing was warmed on the stove. The children were washed in the old tin tub pulled in close to the stove recess, with the light from a kerosene lantern on the kitchen table.
One of the teachers at the little one-teacher school was keen on drama and used what little talent she could muster to produce concerts and plays in the old tin hall. This particular teacher borrowed all the Aladdin Lamps available and used cut-down kerosene tins to reflect the light onto the stage. Kerosene tins were used for everything!
Gathering wood in the days before electricity was an important job... (wood) had to be cut to fit the wood stove and the fire under the copper used to boil the dirty clothes. ...without refrigeration, fresh meat was a luxury. Groceries, meat etc were delivered twice weekly by the van, which picked up the cream for delivery to the local butter factory.
Petrol (in World War Two) was rationed and old-timers still recall with amusement the gas producer attached to an old Ford utility without any tyres, which the farmer used to drive on its rims. Without any lights, one member of the family would run ahead with a kerosene lantern to show the road.
After the war electricity was slowly introduced to the rural areas and looking out across the once dark night time landscape to see the twinkling lights across the countryside was like a glimpse of fairyland.
Another long term resident of Wondai, who prefers to remain anonymous, wrote down his memories on ‘The Introduction of Electricity into the Town of Wondai’. Writing about the time before electricity came to the town and the switch-on ceremony, his words take us vividly back to daily family life in Wondai, and the feelings and emotions stirred when electricity became available to use in the home. Extracts from his letter are provided below.
Wondai had a full-time woodman, who worked very hard to supply a horse-drawn German Wagon load (about a ton). This had been sawn by hand into blocks, which were then split into stove-sized pieces and delivered to your ‘wood heap’. The cost was ten shillings a load.
Practically all homes conformed to the same standard. In the kitchen was the wood stove to provide for cooking, the heating of water and clothes-pressing irons, and for warmth in the winter. I have many happy memories of the family group, snugly gathered in the warm kitchen during cold winter evenings listening with great excitement to the cricket test matches broadcast on short wave wireless from England.
Also standard was the wood-burning copper in the laundry. Clothes were not considered clean unless they were well and truly boiled. Doing a family wash by hand was a physically demanding chore...
For lighting, kerosene lamps were the order of the day...These came in a wide array of styles from the modest little tin kitchen lamp (sometimes to hang on the wall) to more significant designs, which graced the living areas. The advent of pressurised benzene lamps provided a much better light...benzene irons...(had) a downside, for the fuel system was prone to flooding before it became vapourised. The result was a flaming iron, which so often ended up on the end of a broom stick to be taken to the nearest window en route to the garden bed below.
I can recall the switch-on occasion in Wondai... The tension mounted in the town as street light poles were erected. And what poles they were, about four times the height of our present ones. Our local electrician, Mr. Frank Kemp made good progress in wiring houses, shops...In that era the wires were protected by being encased in a black metal tube. Often this could not be concealed, but no-one seemed to mind.
Eventually, the magic moment for ‘switch-on’ arrived, providing what would have to be the most dramatic moment of celebration in the town’s history. In an instant, our modest, dimly lit Wondai came to life in a blaze of light, which (so we felt) rivalled the Great White Way of Broadway.
One of the indirect benefits of electric light was reduction of the threat of house fires. Naked flames had taken a toll over the years notable among the losses was our largest hotel, the Mondure Hotel, which was completely destroyed in 1912.
At the time of the provision of power, Mr. Vic Monteith conducted a wireless sales and service business. He included a small range of electrical goods. One might expect a sales bonanza to follow the switch-on, but such was not the case. People had endured some shockingly hard years and money was hard to find for life’s extras. There were three items which did take off- an electric jug to make a quick cup of tea, a metal 2-slice drop-side toaster and a (no problem) iron. Notwithstanding the tough times, it did not take long for the refrigerator to be recognised for its convenience, comfort and economy.
While most regarded the availability of power as a dream come true, there were a few people who were not impressed. Occasionally, you would hear of people who moved into a rented home (wired) but they would not have the power connected. When (a friend’s relative’s) son and daughter-in-law came to stay, they found the electric iron behind the back yard shed, having had a ride on the ever handy broom handle.
There is an electric light memory that remains with me. Our lamps used to provide adequate light where it was required, on tables and benches, but in the rest of the room there was little light. Our new electric light filled every nook and corner. We sometimes hear the expression that people were happier in the good old days. Maybe there is some truth there, but, should I have to re-locate to another house, I still think I’ll have the power connected.
Offering her point of view as a child growing up without electricity on a property near Wondai, Hilda said,
When I was growing up we had no electricity, our lights were kerosene lamps. My Mother used to iron our clothes with Mother Potts’ Irons heated on the wood stove, later on she had a petrol iron. This used to have flames shoot out all around if it was turned up too high.
Our cooler for our meat, milk, butter and anything needing to be kept cool was a 4 gallon kerosene tin with two sides cut out and put into a sugar bag with a large Billy (7 lbs. syrup tin) with a small hole in the bottom with a match stick in the hole so the water just dripped on the bag keeping it cool. That used to hang on the verandah which usually was the coolest place. The white clothes and the men’s work clothes were boiled in a copper. The coloured clothes were always washed by hand. All this washing was done with a cake of sunlight soap (no soap powder in those days) and everything was wrung out by hand.
Doris was born in 1925 and she had similar pre-electricity memories and experiences to the ones recorded by Hilda. When she first married and had babies, she had to boil the nappies in a kerosene tin on the wood-burning stove. Her first washing machine ‘was like a hand-mixer, which I turned by hand.’ For lighting in the home, the family had an auxiliary plant, ‘which had to be started up each night and turned off at bedtime...’ Her first experience of electricity was when she moved into Wondai town in 1951. Doris said that it was great to be able to boil a jug to make a cup of tea and cook using an electric frypan. When she had her first electric refrigerator after her old kerosene one, she was relieved not to have to remember to fill the tank with kerosene. It was 1954 when she eventually had ‘different electrical appliances, which made life so much easier’. Doris’s memories reinforce some of the points made by other Wondai residents and confirm that the sale of electrical appliances did not necessarily go up instantly as soon as power was readily available. A distinctive choice was made before a purchase was finalised. The electric jug did seem to come out on top for most women with the electric iron a close second place.
The homes in rural areas benefitted in much the same way with additional benefits for the farmers working the land, milking sheds and dairies. As Percy well remembers:
I clearly recall a time...only six years after power came to Wondai, electricity supply being made available to farmers along the Kingaroy to Wondai supply line. Electricity to the dairy shed and milking machines, power to pump skimmed milk and water to the piggery. In the home, folks experienced the novelty of the electric jug, mixing bowl, radio, washing machine and so on.
All this with value for money we find staggering to-day: a deposit of one pound, ($2.00 each) with application. A mains connection, £2 ($4)… There would have been a kilometre of power lines and say 6 to 8 poles in the connection of our house and neighbours across the road in addition to shared transformers on the main line.
In 1939-1940 our Annual Bill for Electric Light was six pounds, one shilling and seven pence, telephone, two pounds and two pence, Radio listeners’ license, one pound.
A farmer’s recollections confirm Percy’s comments and go further to reveal some personal memories about the differences in attitude between city people and those living in rural areas, and the changes he witnessed when the Barambah Valley went from darkness to light.
When one of my brothers was invited to preach at a little country community hall at Brigooda west of Proston, instead of the usual old type of organ, an electric organ was used to provide music for the Church Service... a local farmer’s wife was the organist...A generator driven by a tractor engine parked just outside the window of the hall nearest to where the organ was being played and left running throughout the service provided the electricity to run the organ.
Like a lot of dairy farmers, our 32-volt generator was driven by the engine which powered the milking plant. This powered lights, a Mixmaster, an iron and a washing machine. The generator had to run while the washing machine was being used. City relatives had to be constantly reminded that lights in unoccupied rooms had to be turned off because there was only a limited amount of electricity in the batteries between charging. Some of our neighbours only had 12-volt lights in their houses, and one neighbour had a wind powered generator.
As we lived high up on the side of the Barambah Valley, we could see right over the valley, before main power came, at night we could only see a few dim lights, but when 240-volt power came, what a transformation, lights everywhere, almost like stars in the sky...we felt a lot less lonely.
When mains power first connected to rural properties in the Murgon area, landholders had to sign a five year contract guaranteeing that they would pay for a specified amount of electricity whether they use it or not. In most cases this contract guarantee was not a problem as most farmers used electricity to run their milking machines, hammermills and even irrigation pumps.
One family who lived on the main road near Murgon did not have any electric motors, they had no way of using the amount of electricity they had to pay for, they left every light on in their house twenty four hours a day and to this day this house is still known as ‘The Light House’.
In nearby Proston, a small rural township, Mr. G.T.M. Boynton provided the town with electricity from his two generators. Mr. Boynton has been named the ‘founder of Proston’ by many people. He opened the first cafeteria in Proston, built a garage, a movie theatre and many other buildings in the town. He was the first to supply electricity, originally to businesses, and later extended to include the wider town community. He had obtained permission to install two 70hp Lister engines and supply electric current within a radius of 300 yards. ‘This will be a great advantage to residents within the area’. Mr. Boynton remained the town’s sole supplier of electricity until 1956, when the Wide Bay Burnett Electricity Board took over the system.
Living on a farm in Proston in 1945 meant that Bev and her family did not have reticulated power for some time.
The milking plant was run by a Lister engine and a generator for the house. A few years later we had electricity connected from the town plant. Still later, the whole district was connected to the Wide Bay Burnett Electricity Board supply. When the power went off, we had to milk 60 to 70 cows by hand and separate the milk from the cream by hand, a handle was placed on the separator and we had to wind this handle...which took hours.
Memories from Joyce, which she shared at a ‘Memories of Energy’ Morning Tea attended by Wondai, Proston and Murgon residents. The morning was planned by Dr. J. King and arranged by the Wondai Heritage Centre volunteers in June, 2009. Joyce wrote more memories for Dr. J. King following the morning tea. See also ‘Power Party Sparks Electrifying Debate’ in South Burnett Times, 23 June, 2009.
1 Memories from Joyce, which she shared at a ‘Memories of Energy’ Morning Tea attended by Wondai, Proston and Murgon residents. The morning was planned by Dr. J. King and arranged by the Wondai Heritage Centre volunteers in June, 2009. Joyce wrote more memories for Dr. J. King following the morning tea. See also ‘Power Party Sparks Electrifying Debate’ in South Burnett Times, 23 June, 2009.
2 Memories from ‘a long-term resident of Wondai’, which he shared at a ‘Memories of Energy’ Morning Tea at Wondai Heritage Centre. in June, 2009. He wrote more memories for Dr. J. King following the morning tea.
3 Memories from Hilda at the Memories of Energy Morning Tea, June, 2009.
4 Memories from Doris in correspondence to the author following the Memories of Energy Morning Tea, June 2009.
5 Memories of Percy Iszlaub, former Mayor of Wondai Shire Council at the Memories of Energy Morning Tea, and written information given to the author, June 2009.
6 Memories of Peter Shelton at the Memories of Energy Morning Tea, and written information from Peter, June 2009.
7 See Matthews, T (1997) Landscapes of Change: A History of the South Burnett Vol 2, p551; The Murgon and District News, 24 March,1980; South Burnett Times, 2 February, 1934; South Burnett Times, 24 December, 1937; Centelabrations, Wondai Shire Council, 2 October, 1959, p.13.
8 Memories from Bev at the Memories of Energy Morning Tea, June 2009.
Author and interviewer: Dr. Jan King
