Frederick Thomas Hughes (1881 - 1960)

Born 8 Dec 1881 in Woodside, South Australia, Australia

Ancestors

Husband of Nellie Laura (Campbell) Hughes — married 7 Sep 1910 in Baptist Church, Laura, South Australia

Descendants

Died 13 Jan 1960 at age 78 in Strathalbyn, South Australia, Australia

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Bob Howlett [send private message]

Biography

Frederick Thomas Hughes was born at Woodside, South Australia, on 8 December 1881^[1], the son of George Laurence Hughes and Sarah (Hutchens) Hughes.

Fred worked as a farmer all his working life, firstly at Appila and then at Laura, jointly with his father and his brother Ted, before moving to Everard East (near Blyth) and then Waitpinga.

Fred married Nellie Laura Campbell, daughter of William Horne Campbell and Selina (Smith) Campbell.

Fred and Nell had five children:

• Frederick Campbell Hughes (known as "Cam"), born 23 December 1912, died 20 March 1884, married Dorothy Mildred Watson.
• Mary Elizabeth Hughes, born 23 January 1914, died 14 February 1923, of peritonitis, in Laura, South Australia.
• George William Hughes, born 24 February 1919, died 20 February 1936 at Waitpinga South Australia, in a blasting accident on the family farm.
• Nellie Ruth Hughes, born 11 July 1920, died 22 October 2010, married Philip Thomas Michael Howlett.
• Ralph Laurence Hughes, born 18 June 1922, died 30 March 1995, married Alison Mary Adams

Fred died at age 78 and was buried in the Strathalbyn cemetery, South Australia.

The following biography of Fred and Nell Hughes was written by their daughter Ruth in about 1987.

Fred and Nell Hughes

As children we called them "Ma" and "Pa", to my embarrassment in my primary school days when everyone else called their parents "Mum" and "Dad".

Pa always referred to his own primary schooling at "Appila Yarrowie" and although the town of Appila no longer uses the doublebarrelled name, the pub there is still the "Yarrowie Hotel"^[2]. I believe that the primary schools of those days, the 1890s, gave a certificate to the students who successfully completed the fifth class as Pa did before he left to work on the farm. The only souvenir of his schooldays that I remember seeing was a drawing book which Ma used to treasure and show to us with pride. It began with a very simple, rather stiff, outline of a stem, leaf and four petalled flower, coloured in with water-colour paint; the art developed steadily until, on the last page was an elaborate pencil-shading of a spray of roses, really beautifully executed.

Pa believed in education at all stages, school, pre-school and post-school: I remember him reading to us at bedtime when I was about six years old; he accepted the position of chairman of the school committee at the primary school my brothers and I attended from 1927 to 1934; in that district he established a branch of the Agricultural Bureau and worked hard to maintain it; he became a life member of that organization.

Ma's stories of her schooldays centered on the fact that every Monday morning, washing day, she was kept home from school to mind the baby, even though her mother had the assistance of a paid washerwoman in the tremendous chore of the weekly wash for a large household, mother being the eldest girl in a family of twelve children. (She sometimes went on to say that she was sick of babies before she had any of her own!) At school, as in the home, there was a set weekly routine and the new sums were taught on Mondays. Ma always missed that important lesson! Her mother thought that she was a bit of a duffer and, on a memorable occasion during Ma's teens, when she had, of course, left school to help at home (doing such jobs as ironing, with a flat iron or a "Mrs Potts", all the white pinafores that she and the three younger girls wore) the mother said something that implied that Nellie had not been smart enough to gain her school certificate. Ma bounced out of the room, came back with her certificate and flung it on the table in front of her mother,

"There!"

She had passed! But she never kept any of her children home from school to help on the farm or in the house, no matter how long and hard the days that she and Pa worked.

Both Ma and Pa wished to send us all on to high school though they never persuaded any of their boys to agree to that. But George and I, gaining our qualifying certificates at the end of our grade seven year, repeated that year's work since Ma said that we were too young to leave school. George, after his repeat grade seven year, did a correspondence course in mechanics from the School of Mines; I, during that repeat year, had to take piano lessons and Ma was determined to find a way to continue to pay for them when I would have to leave school, so that I would be able to "do something better than milk cows"! Meanwhile she kept bombarding the Education Department with requests for correspondence lessons for us, but found they were available only to students who had gained their Q.C.'s through the primary correspondence system. She kept on pestering them with protests about this and with asseverations that there should be some way of us continuing our education since we were capable of it but they could not afford to send us away from home to attend a high school or "college". I sat for my second Q.C. at the end of 1933 and on the day that primary schools reopened in 1934 the teacher was notified that "because of the refusal of one higher on the list" I had been awarded an exhibition entitling me to two years of high school, receiving a cash grant per year and, if I had to live away from home, a boarding allowance. Each of the grants was, I think, £25, i.e. a total of £50 per year, and this certainly made the difference for me. High schools were a week later in reopening after the long "Christmas" vacation and in that week Ma got me enrolled, fitted out with uniform and a boarding place. In later years I wondered if someone in the Education Department wangled the exhibition to shut my mother up, or if she had convinced them of the justice of her claims so that they found a way to cut the red tape. But my parents were both pleased and proud at the time and even more so to see me win other scholarships that in the end led me to a university degree.

For Ma and Pa money was scarce all through their lives – until they were both on the old age pension. Pa wasn't happy to apply for that but when, physically, he was no longer fit for a hard day's work he reluctantly applied for the pension. Ma really appreciated being able to budget with that regular inflow of cash: they continued the simple and economical way of living to which they were accustomed, but they could plan ahead, afford little treats and take modest South Australian holidays.

They retired to their fourth and last home. First, from 1910 to 1927 had been the little house on the Laura property which Pa worked in partnership with his father and brother; they had decided to leave that because the farm was not big enough to support three households, because Pa was doing more than a third of the work and because their family had outgrown the house – two main rooms with a kitchen in the enclosed back verandah and two little sleepouts on the front verandah. The proceeds of their joint efforts over almost seventeen years, plus Pa's previous bachelor years (maybe 15 at first at Appila then at Laura) – all this they put into a wheat and sheep property at Everard East – 10 miles west of Blyth, their shopping town, and 6 miles east of of the railway siding of Bumbunga where they carted most of their wheat. But a combination of dry years and the great depression overcame their high hopes: after eight years of hard work and careful husbandry they had to get out with only a 30cwt truck, a scant houseful of furniture and personal effects and about £800 in cash. The only place they could then find and afford was at Waitpinga, near Victor Harbour, a galvanized iron, asbestos-lined house on a mainly scrub block cut by steep sided creeks that dried in the summer to an occasional waterhole. After a further 20 years of hard work there they retired with just enough money to buy a pleasant stone bungalow at the quiet but pleasant town of Strathalbyn.

Although Everard was a financial disaster (washout would be just too ironic) our eight years there included much happiness: everyone was going through hard times, but we had a large stone house and motor transport and we always had enough to eat – food was home grown as well as homecooked; bread was home-baked; rabbits and hares supplemented home-killed sheep, pigs or calves; chooks and turkeys or ducks gave eggs and meat, cows milk, cream and butter; from the vegetable garden we ate what was in season or could be stored. At Laura, Waitpinga and Strathalbyn there were fruit trees too, but at Everard no orchard got established although grapevines did and were loved, not only for grapes for the table but for the leaves which shaded the verandahs and could be used to wrap around the paper lunchwraps that enclosed the lunches that were sent to the paddocks or taken on picnics.

Swaggies often passed through the district. They seldom, if ever, found any paid work there but, at our place at least, they always got tea and tucker and many slept a night or two in our barn.

When one of Ma's nephews, at Laura left school at 14 or less, he worked with the local council employees, cracking stones for roadmaking. On a visit to her sister Ma heard the boy ask for an apple and a bun for his lunch. He was sharply told,

"An apple or a bun – not both"!

When Ma came home she said,

"And that boy is doing a man's work – and hard work even for a man!"

Off she went to see a neighbour who had four daughters.

"Couldn't you use a boy's help?"

"Yes, but I couldn't afford to pay him."

Ma persuaded him that he could afford to offer "five bob a week and Keep" and for that her nephew came and worked for several years for that neighbour. Thus he too had plenty to eat! Ma ordered, for him as for us, mail order clothing and footwear and gradually, out of his five shillings per week, he repaid every penny thus advanced to him.

On Sundays and occasional slack times, this cousin shared our pastimes. He went rabbit trapping and shooting with my brothers and from his share of the skin money eventually bought his own rifle and ammo. On wet Sundays and excessively hot ones, and on winter evenings, we played ping-pong on the big dining table or the cue games of "Bobs" or "Billatelle". Such billiards type games, together with cards and dancing, had been regarded by the grandparents on both sides of the family as temptations of the devil, but Fred and Nell were sensible enough to foster them in the home and the community, usually participating in them personally and encouraging us to take part in them as useful social activities and a change from the more solitary pleasures of reading, doing jigsaw and other puzzles or playing our fifes.

The most prominent social activity for the community was the local tennis competition. Everard entered men's and women's teams and all our family played in the matches pretty regularly, the kids as soon as they were old enough to put up any sort of competition, the cousin by using Pa's racquet until he could buy his own and Ma and Pa themselves on the many occasions when they were required to "make up the numbers". Ma kept to the old-fashioned, genteel lady's underarm serve and opponents faced her with apprehension. She and Pa were pleased to team up, when well into their sixties, to defeat a couple of teenagers in a set of doubles!

In the perennial battles for a little ready cash, Ma boarded the teacher at Everard at £1 per week for a lady (for she did her own washing and ironing) or 30 shillings for a man. That was a godsend for Ma's budget. When we had a man teacher Ma also made time to teach the sewing in the weekly lessons that were compulsory for girls from grades 4 to 7. (Ours was a one-teacher school.)

With a wood stove for baking and cooking, wood fires for winter warmth, (but note that in our family women and girls never chopped wood and seldom carried anything heavier than kindling: men's and women's spheres were strictly defined), with a wood-burning copper and washing board for the weekly clothes-washing, Ma was thankful when troughs that drained away the water superseded the earlier tubs that had had to be lifted to be emptied; the wringer and the mangle were turned by hand; kerosene lamps and lanterns had to have their glasses cleaned and their wicks trimmed daily; there were no sinks or electric gadgets.

Ma's work, in a household that regularly numbered 7 or 8, was no light load. Yet she always welcomed guests for meals, relatives and friends for holidays too. Town cousins who did not always eat well at home could be sure of a good tuck-in at Auntie Nell's table. Orphaned "nieces", Mollie's girls, could regard her home as theirs while they boarded to attend high school and teachers college. Just as, in Everard days, she had accepted Grandpa Hughes as one of the family, in Waitpinga she "adopted" an aged aunt and then her favourite uncle for a long spell at the end of his life.

Of Pa's struggles for money for a special purpose I learnt, from Ma only and only many years after he had achieved his goals. When they left Laura in 1927 he insisted on getting Mary's grave there covered and marked in a way that would stay "respectably tidy" when there was noone to visit and care for it. It took him years to pay off the cost of the headstone and both parents were forever grateful for the understanding patience of the stonemason. After George's death in 1936 he immediately made comparable provision for that grave in the Victor Harbour cemetery and between morning and night milkings he drove a school bus and took daily-paid council work to discharge that debt fairly quickly.

The only time I heard Pa complain of his lot was when George was killed very early in their Waitpinga stint; then Pa wished, with great bitterness, that he had never seen the place. Noone else blamed him in the least: all present believed that they had taken all possible precautions as they undertook blasting operations to build a dam for essential water storage. Pa went noticeably grey in 24 hours but afterwards quietly knuckled down and worked doggedly.

He suffered in silence the wet and cold and the cowyard slush at Waitpinga with the same stoicism he had shown before I was born when during the years of the first world war there was a noticeable gap between the births of their early children, Cam and Mary, and their later trio, George, Ruth and Ralph. He was crippled with "rheumatics", so badly that a doctor told him he would never walk again. Ma said that once when he was confined to bed on a diet of raw eggs: she could take them and his pocket knife in to him, but she could not bear to watch him eat them! A quack remedy was eventually credited with his cure: "Father's rheumatics medicine" – which contained epsom salts and tasted terrible although the full recipe I do not know – was always in the house. In later years Ma herself would take it when she was so stiff that she feared she would not be able to continue coping with her work.

To me both parents always seemed to be healthy, strong, active and energetic, hard-working but never, to others or animals, "slave-drivers". Pa said draught animals needed a full hour's rest at midday and one day per week – Sunday naturally – of complete rest. So did the man who worked with them. So therefore did a man who worked with machines. Pa's days and weeks were built on that pattern and every other worker was entitled to it and expected to take advantage of it. Even when he accepted the tag of "Bush Baptist" because his Sundays, from about 1930, no longer included church attendance, they did not include paddock work.

To the end of their days Ma and Pa remained puritanical in eschewing alcohol and tobacco. The former was never taken into their homes; guests might smoke if they chose, but the family did not, except that when Uncle James became a permanent member he kept a pipe. Formerly, when he had been an occasional visitor, no one needed to be told of his arrival – you smelt his presence as soon as you entered the house.

The both preached and practised the necessity of good turns to others, especially to those down on their luck. At Laura, before I was old enough to remember it, a bushfire swept through their farm; all paddock feed and haystacks were burnt although the houses and stock were saved. For Pa it was an intolerable experience next morning to face his hungry stock and know he had nothing to give them. Then, driving through his gateway came a "bloomin' old German," with a waggonload of hay.

"I knew you would need this first thing this morning, Fred!"

The story was often told to us and in the Waitpinga bushfires of the late'30s which I clearly recall as I was at home for school holidays, the sequel came: our block was not ravaged but a neighbour, who lost everything except his house and dairy herd, saw Pa's old truck roll up first thing in the morning with hay for Bert to feed his cows at the morning milking. He and his wife never forgot it. To a grateful recipient regretting his inability to repay a kindness, Pa and Ma would cheerfully reply,

"Pass it on when you can!"

No wonder they were respected and liked wherever they lived.

At Waitpinga a newcomer, moved onto an adjoining block. It happened that he got early ear-bashings from two locals, one irreverently nicknamed "Holy Joe", the other a well-meaning though somewhat over-zealous evangelistic Christian. Thoroughly fed up, he said, he hopped into his "ute" and drove down to the Hughes block next door.

"Are you bloody religious?"

It was Ma who answered the door.

"Oh!" she said. "You must be the new man. Come in. I've just taken some scones from the oven and Ralph says they're stale as soon as they're cold."

Roger went in and shared the hot scones. For Ma and Pa this was the beginning of a strong friendship with a couple young enough to be their children; it endured well into their retirement at Strathalbyn, where Roger and his wife would call for a visit, a cup of tea and a yarn, the men playing draughts, the women doing their knitting or crochet.

Ma and Pa were at last secure in a house that suited them for the rest of their lives, one they could bequeath to their youngest son, Ralph, as a belated material reward for the years of hard work with no pay that he had put into their Waitpinga block from the time he left school. Cam, when he left school, had been able to get out and work for wages, for Pa was comparitively young then; and when Cam first married his parents did all they could to help him along. Ruth had her education and had married a teacher. In the parents' eyes both were thus satisfactorily settled. For Ralph to get what worldly wealth they could leave behind them seemed to them the fairest thing they could do: not ideal, they knew, but fitting in with their life-long philosophy of making the best of things – doing their best with the hands that fate had dealt them.

The school at Everard East operated from 1910 to 1937. A Google search may reveal a few things about it. The Hughes farmhouse was just across the road from the School. The "neighbour with four daughters" who employed Malcolm Shillabeer for five bob a week was Alf Higgs.

Sadly, the name of the "bloomin' old German", who came to their aid after the fire at Laura, has not been remembered.

Sources

1. ↑ South Australian birth registration: certificate available from GenealogySA.
2. ↑ Appila in Google Maps street view.

See also:

• Frederick Thomas Hughes' profile in FamilyTree on FamilySearch.org.
• The Locked Journal: Frederick Thomas Hughes and Nellie Laura Campbell.
• Frederick Thomas Hughes and Nellie Laura Campbell.