Soldier settlement schemes in Victoria

From WikiShepp: Documenting the History of the Goulburn Valley

Main Page | Recent changes | View source | Page history | Log in / create account |

Printable version | Disclaimers | Privacy policy

World War 1

Over 112,000 men from Victoria had enlisted in the First World War and 91,000 saw service overseas. More than 17,000 were killed and 40,000 men returned wounded.[1] There was immediate concern to reabsorb returning soldiers into civilian life and not have them face a period of unemployment. The discharged Soldier Settlement Act 1917 passed by the Victorian Parliament was the first of a series of measures to give returned soldiers a stake in the land. This could be seen as a development of the earlier Closer Settlement Schemes. ‘Victoria really wants to help soldiers to become stout yeoman, declared The Age.’[2] Behind all this rhetoric there was a concern to move soldiers out of the cities and on to the land in order to quell a possibility of soldier idleness combined with political agitation. The politicians of the day declared that it would be ‘a scheme fit for heroes’. Embedded in this belief was the overriding concern to expand primary industry production in wheat and sheep and what better way than to combine this with soldier settlement.

Each State was responsible for supplying land, while finance was a Commonwealth responsibility. The Victorian government found land in areas such as the Mallee, South Gippsland, Western District, irrigation areas of the Northwest, Central Gippsland and Goulburn Valley.[3] Some of the land was Crown land, and some was pastoral land brought with or without owners’ consent, that is, compulsorily acquired.

Some 21,000 ex-servicemen who returned to Victoria expressed interest in becoming farmers and more than half of them went on to the land.[4] ‘Soldiers could buy land from the State on terms spread over 36 ½ years at a low rate of interest. No payments were due for the first three years while the farm was brought into production.’[5] Each settler was also lent £625, which was later increased to £1,000 to buy stock and equipment. Although this was more generous than the Closer Settlement Scheme, overall assistance was still inadequate, the terms were too tough, and the overseers of the scheme often treated the settlers suspiciously.[6]

As historian Marilyn Lake noted in her book, The Limits of Hope,[7] most farms failed, men left the land owing debts and most were physically and emotionally broken. Stanhope was one such settlement where the government acquired large properties and subdivided them into allotments.[8] The settlers arrived in 1920 and immediately set to dig supply channels for irrigation. They were paid labourers’ wages until they were able to work their own properties. Most began their rural life as dairy farmers.[9] Many farmers left the land in the main because their farms were too small, they could not pay off their debts, and during the 1920s it was difficult to export butter. In 1925 international prices for primary produce fell, and dairying provided no living for a farmer.

However, not all farmers walked off their land. John McEwen (later Sir John McEwen), applied for land near Stanhope in Victoria and astutely chose a larger holding.[10] He survived drought and a rabbit plague and worked as a wharf labourer in Melbourne in order to obtain extra capital for his farm. But throughout the country most settlements failed.

The Victorian 1925 Royal Commission into Soldier Settlements and the 1927 Commonwealth Royal Commission concerned with the mounting debts and failures of the scheme reported that ‘losses throughout Australia amounted to twenty three and a half million pounds, or 40% of total sum invested. The Victorian Government’s share of the loss was almost £8 million by 1929.’[11] The 1925 Royal Commission found the following factors played a part in the failure of the scheme:

Many soldiers had no experience of working the land; some had physical and emotional injuries that were not taken into account. Those men with farming experience survived better. Some government land choices were poor, and it was difficult to farm in poor soil and drought conditions with a lack of water, for example, the Mallee in Victoria. Some farms were too small with inadequate yields to make a living from, and they still had to pay off their debts. After the First World War land prices were high and massive government purchases pushed them higher. The demand for stock and machinery pushed up these prices, but as farm incomes declined so did their assets. The 1920s saw a fall in international prices for primary produce and this was a precursor to the 1930s Great Depression. Between 1917 and 1929, as many as 3,000 soldier settlers walked off their land, or were removed. It figure represented 1 in 4 of the original settlers who left their land in Victoria.[12]

World War 2

Following the failures of the World War 1 schemes, the World War 2 soldier settlement schemes involved more careful planning. Holdings were larger and there was an expansion of intensively cultivated irrigation blocks. Infrastructure was improved, while roads, fencing, houses, crop material and information were supplied to prospective farmers in a thought out way that involved co-operation between the farmers and supervisors of the scheme.

The terms were generous as the government paid each settler a living wage of £9 a week until the block came into production. He was given a temporary lease at a nominal rent, which would increase when the house, sheds and water supply were finished. Once fencing was completed, and pastures established, he was able to put on a stipulated number of stock, machinery and working plant. When the block was developed, the settler was given a year to consolidate his position, during which time he was not charged rent or agistment, and was paid a living allowance. At the end of the year, the Commission’s valuers valued the block, and then the settler was charged an annual rent. About a year later, he received an interim lease that determined the actual value. That lease ran for 3-4 years when finally the settler was given a purchase lease for 55 years at a very low rate of interest.[13]

A total of 16,456 soldiers applied for the scheme throughout Victoria, and the Commission rejected 5,000[14] mainly due to a lack of farming experience. They had learnt the lessons of the World War 1 experience, were stringent in the selection process and, determined not to make the same mistakes, selected men who had farming experience and were physically able to work the land.

In her book, A Blockie’s Wife,[15] Mary Aldridge gives a very comprehensive and engaging account of her experience as a wife in partnership with her husband when they established a dairy farm at Numurkah as part of the post second world war soldier settlement scheme. Her husband, Arthur who was in New Guinea for the duration of the war, obtained early dismissal in order to help his ailing uncle work his orchard at Rochester. The couple regarded the Rochester period as an important opportunity to learn how to farm, and one day possibly have a farm of their own. Mary grew up and worked in Melbourne at the munitions factory during the war, and as she admits, had no experience of farm life but ‘would give it her best’ for Arthur, and this she certainly did.

Having worked with Arthur’s family for a few years, the couple, now with two children, decided to stay on the land, and buy a property of their own. Having heard of the soldier settlement scheme, and land being available at Numurkah, they planned to set up a dairy farm there. In 1951, Arthur was accepted as suitable and was allocated his third choice of land, the first two having gone to ex-prisoners of war, who (as was the policy) were given preference over the others. The scheme involved the men, ‘blockies’ as they were called, helping each other clear, plough, grade and sow the land for a labourer’s wage, paid for by the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission and with the Soldier Settlement Office at Numurkah providing advice and expertise. When that was accomplished, each man would fence his own land and irrigate it.[16] All this was done under the supervision of inspectors and surveyors.

On Arthur and Mary’s land was an old squatters log cabin from the 1860s, and four rooms built apart, which the family lived in until with help from the scheme, they had a new home built on the property. Once they had their new home and all their land was ready to farm, Arthur stopped working for the State Rivers gang as he called them, and set to work on his farm. As Mary tells, ‘with a further allocation of blocks, new gangs of blockies would work on their land.’[17] This couple approached their new life with heroic single-minded determination, took advice when they needed it from the overseers of the scheme, learned how to manage irrigating their land, and eventually established a successful dairy farm. It was a true partnership. In 1957 when their purchase lease was up, they were able to buy their farm and were ready to go it alone.[18]

The influx of the soldier settlement population that numbered about 600 families saw Numurkah grow into a thriving town in the 1950s and 1960s. A new hospital and primary and secondary schools were built to accommodate the growing population. The burgeoning businesses connected to the dairy farming industry provided employment to the young men of the district. The Murray Goulburn Dairy Co-operative, originally at Cobden, expanded under the leadership of Jack McGuire, ‘a genius in his own field’ as Mary described. The Aldridges with other farmers joined the dairy co-operative to sell their milk.[19] Mary helped her husband with the milking. In the early days it was all done by hand, until they could afford the automated equipment. Mary tells a story about how she was forced to apply some crude veterinary skills in an emergency situation. She was milking, and noticed that a cow had torn its teat on some wire. Blood and milk were pouring out of the animal. She rang for the vet but he was attending another emergency, and was unable to help. Arthur tied rope around the cow’s leg while Mary using her largest sewing needle and cotton stitched up the torn teat. It stopped the bleeding and she then applied penicillin over the teat. The next morning Mary milked the sore teat out by hand and a week later it had healed.[20]

They learnt in 1956 that their farm had won the State Championship for ‘A Dairy Farm Under Irrigation’, an award from the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria.[21] As Mary tells, ‘it was icing on the cake and made all the mud, hard work and misery well worthwhile. Also, it made us realise that we had taken the right step in joining the Soldier Settlement Scheme and spurred our ambitions along which, after those first five years, were flagging a little.’[22]

The Aldridges had nothing but praise for the soldier settlement scheme and believe that the government got it right after having learnt the lessons from the disastrous scheme of the First World War. They were grateful for the opportunity because as Mary states, ‘they would not have had a chance of owning land without the help they were given.’[23] And, she further notes, their story is only one of the 600 or so different stories of dairy farms and orchards settled in the Murray Goulburn Valley.


By Cecile Trioli.

Notes

  1. ↑ Dingle, Tony, The Victorians, Settling, p. 180.
  2. ↑ Ibid., p. 180.
  3. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_settlement_(Australia)
  4. ↑ Dingle, Tony, The Victorians, Settling, p. 185.
  5. ↑ Ibid.
  6. ↑ Ibid.
  7. ↑ Lake, Marilyn, The limits of Hope, Soldier Settlement in Victoria 1915-38, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1987. This book focuses mainly on the Mallee in Victoria where the ravages of climate played a big part in the failure of farms.
  8. ↑ Barr, Neil and Cary, John, Greening a Brown Land, p. 217.
  9. ↑ Ibid., p. 219.
  10. ↑ Lloyd, C.J., 'McEwen, Sir John (1900-1980)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol., 15, Melbourne University Press, 2000, pp. 205-208.
  11. ↑ Dingle, Tony, The Victorians, Settling, p. 186.
  12. ↑ Ibid., pp. 186, 187.
  13. ↑ Watson, Catherine, Just a bunch of cow cockies. The Story of the Murray Goulburn Co-operative, Jenkin Buxton Printers, Box Hill, 2000, p. 16.
  14. ↑ Ibid., p. 14.
  15. ↑ Aldridge, Mary, A Blockie’s Wife, The Story of the Murray Valley Soldier Settlement, Clearprint, Shepparton, 1991.
  16. ↑ Ibid., p. 32.
  17. ↑ Ibid., p. 47.
  18. ↑ Ibid., pp. 128-9.
  19. ↑ Ibid., p. 105.
  20. ↑ Ibid., p. 109.
  21. ↑ Ibid., p. 117.
  22. ↑ Ibid.
  23. ↑ Ibid., p. 148.

Retrieved from "http://wiki.gvrlc.vic.gov.au/index.php/Soldier_settlement_schemes_in_Victoria"

This page has been accessed 948 times. This page was last modified on 29 July 2010, at 02:33.