Bega Pioneers' Museum has countless files on people and places. This one was written by Len Spindler about his life in the Valley. This extract is set in the late-thirties.
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WE MOVED to an old “bake house” down near the primary school with heaps of room, for 10 shillings a week rent, and then further along the street to a house which was full of bed bugs.
I’d go over all the bed frames with a candle and burn the bugs so we could sleep, and also stood the legs of the beds in little tins of kerosene to keep the bugs out of the bedding.
I had plenty of room down the back for a vegetable garden, till the white butterfly came.
I would pay the kids about a penny a dozen to catch them for me. They would get paid, go back down then return later with the same ones to get paid again.
READ MORE: Move to town had its ups and downs
Despite the Great Depression, working conditions for families were not much worse than before. They only knew hard work.
When the Bank of England closed down, even farmers, who had plenty of money in the bank, could only withdraw enough to run their farms.
Which of course made it harder for the workers, as they wouldn’t do anything that was not absolutely necessary.
War broke out and we were all called up but I was rejected because I was a key man in the timber trade.
We cut thousands of super feet of local pine and most of the trees came from Kameruka.
It was very dangerous because the knots in the pine flitchers would fly off the bench saw in all directions.
I was still working at the saw mill when Old Rowley won the Melbourne Cup.
He started at 100-1 and Eva put two shillings on him and Billie Herbert, the local SP bookie, paid her five quid; a bloody fortune.
I bought some ferrets and would drag the kids out every weekend to go ferreting.
Often the ferrets wouldn’t come out of the burrows so I would send the kids home with a couple of rabbits while I smoked the buggers out.
We ate the rabbits and sold the skins for a few shillings.