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I didn't do a Bondy. We didn't produce anything new, just things that were in the Australian tradition - but better and stronger. Beyond the ideas I can't take any credit for the growth of the business. The kids were responsible. I was too busy with cattle and gold.
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Our pioneers lived a slightly, not a slightly, but a great deal different life to what they now have, but we are, or our society is, what our pioneers made us, of course, and we've tried to bring to the remembrance of the future generations the kind of life and the kind of people that made Australia.
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Superior craftsmen in any trade will never be short of work.
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If you make something good, people will make a track to your door.
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We give them a good product.
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I think it's very important that we should pass on to our future generations… the things we've learnt.
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Don’t make your story too big. I don’t want you big-noting me.
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If you make something good, people will make a track to your door. We made simple things that people wanted and kept them simple.
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I could see no place for myself in the halls of learning; all I wanted to do was get back to the land.
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When you're living in the bush as a child, there's no television or no telephone…
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The smithy was also used for welding. Everything was hot-welded in those days; there was no such process as oxy-welding.
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Teams being the main source of Dad’s income he had numbers of the big quiet horses with their heavy feet and their long silken manes.
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Bush boots being made by a bushman for bushmen.
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I've raised nine children, of which I'm very proud, but it's a long struggle to reach, shall we say, financial stability. I've been a bit lucky there.
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Land was bringing six shillings an acre, travelling dentists charged a shilling an extraction – but in Caltowie the local draper pulled them out as a free service to customers.
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I used to stagger down the street to the bank with these bags of gold, a shotgun each side, and thinking I was pretty important.
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[On Mao Tse-tung] Mao, he had the right idea but just got bushwhacked.
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I felt at once that the job was not for me, and stayed in it less than a week…
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Sunday should be a day of rest? Dad did manage to stop the waste of a day. He would make church day the day for taking out the colts, and I noticed that he always washed them down carefully and handled them before he put them away. On Sundays the buggy too had a cleaning that other days did not warrant.
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Haulage of one sort or another was the biggest business of the time.
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The sky is still the limit and trees still grow and the seasons come and go and all of the beautiful things we've got around us, they're still here.
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A young tall athletic Indian chap we had with us at that time loved the game of chasing wild cattle. He thought it fun to leap from a galloping horse to even a well-grown bull and throw it either by the front leg or by the tail, an exercise requiring great skill and ability. I doubt if many people have ever seen this done. Of course in the days when cattle were handled more intensively many great old stockmen practised this custom on the big holdings. I do not think the matadors of Spain faced wild bulls so utterly dangerous, yet this was done here in lonely places and amongst thick timber. There were no cheering crowds to watch.
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We are sculptures in the making…
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The school itself was a small stone building, big enough to seat about twenty people. The dozen pupils ranged from beginners like us to those in Grade Five, the top…