Living History

The Swagman – Human Face of the Depression

My memories of the depression really relate not to the actual depression years of the early 1930s, but to those years immediately following, when the impact of the economic disaster was still being felt. To me, as a four-to-six year-old in the years immediately before World War Two, the depression meant ‘swaggies’ - those men (and women) who tramped the roads of country Australia looking for work.

We lived on a small dairy farm on the road leading from Lismore to Byron Bay, on the far north coast of New South Wales. The house was right beside the road, and swagmen were frequent callers. Even though my parents were struggling themselves, they tried to help these desperate passers-by when they could.

One afternoon a woman called at the back door, asking for food. Her husband (presumably that’s who he was - people didn’t have ‘partners’ then) and a couple of children waited by the side of the road. Our father and mother were over at the cowbails, doing the afternoon milking (by hand).

My brother, five years older than me, and all of eight at the time, gave the woman some bread, and some jam out of the tin. I said to him: "What did she put the jam in?" and he replied: "She put it in her hand". And that’s what happened. He simply spooned it into her bare hand. It’s not always easy for kids to know how best to cope with unusual circumstances.

There were some unusual sights too. One afternoon a man and a woman arrived at our place riding camels - animals rarely seen up our way, except perhaps when a circus came to Lismore. My mother gave the couple some food, and they set off towards Byron Bay, 'rockin’ and rollin’ like a ship at sea' as a neighbour described it.

One swaggie was a bit more up-market (although I don’t think that word had been invented then). He toiled up the hill below our place one warm Saturday afternoon, pulling a two-wheeled handcart behind him. It was quite a substantial affair and it turned out to be the conveyance for his personal belongings and for his tools of trade - he was a sign-writer, walking the roads looking for work.

My father, as he always did with strangers, engaged the man in conversation. It turned out that the man could play the musical saw - an ordinary handsaw clamped between the legs in a horizontal position while the right hand drew a violin bow across the top edge of the vibrating saw, and the left hand flexed the saw to enable the full range of notes to be sounded on it.

We were a musical family, and Dad immediately invited the man in for a meal and for a bit of saw-playing, accompanied by my mother on the piano. The man camped beside his cart that night, and so Dad asked him in for breakfast the next morning. We then went off to Sunday school and church.

Our new, saw-virtuoso friend knew when he was on a good wicket because he was still sitting by his cart when we got home - so in he came again, this time for lunch and, as I recall, another short recital. Eventually he headed off towards Lismore.

One of the results of this episode was that I took up saw-playing myself. Not long after arriving in Canberra to live more than 40 years ago I played the saw at a concert in Wesley Hall at our church - then known as National Memorial Methodist Church. As I remarked at the time, it was good to be able to bring a bit of sophistication to the national capital.

I wonder if that musical interlude (I suppose it could be called music) was a precursor of the vigorous musical life of the church (now known as Wesley Uniting Church), which makes it one of the most active performance venues in Canberra. No, perhaps not. But it was an echo of something that had begun by the side of a country road in those long-ago depression years.

Barrie, Jerrabomberra, New South Wales

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