Building sheds at Parndana 1952

Our crew only consisted of myself, the contractor’s son, Kevin Burgess, and Barb who was cook (and boss!) and also carried out the puttying in of the window glass. There was no Silastic in those far off days! Kevin was a big strong lad with a very pleasant manner, he had left school at a very early age and worked with his father in the KI bush cutting fencing posts from swamp gums, and cutting Yakka gum. Both jobs were extremely hard work and cutting Yakka was an absolutely filthy job involving chopping the resin from trees that had been through seasonal scrub fires. These days the resin is still in limited demand, but synthetics have taken over it’s main use which was in the manufacture of fine paint varnishes.

Kevin worked at these jobs for very little remuneration. His father was a very mean individual, but had promised Kevin that when the time was right, (and he had well and truly used his son!) that he would buy him a new ute. I think that building these sheds with Barb and I would have been the first time that he had worked for any time with anyone but his father. Of course he didn’t get paid, part of the deal was that I had him as an unpaid labourer. I felt quite strongly about the way Kevin was treated by his father, and at a later date I encouraged him to make his father keep his promise, and so it was that he packed up and left the Island, and went cane cutting in Queensland the moment his father handed him the keys to brand new Holden ute!

Kevin was a great guy to work with and we all became good friends in the 14 weeks that we built sheds. We had no lifting gear, just some heavy steel pipe trestles, and some wooden planks. All concrete was mixed by hand. We also had some rope and several 44 and 12 gallon drums. We never had a trailer, but part of the arrangement was that Kevin’s father was supposed to move the heavy bulky items from site to site as we completed the sheds. He did this most of the time, but there were occasions when we had to move things ourselves, and we worked out a system where we moved the trestles and planks ourselves roped to the driver’s side of our old Chevvy.

We quickly worked out a routine, the sheds had a 20 metre by 6 metre framework of very heavy steel sections which was in kit form made by Armco that included all necessary parts including corrugated galvanised iron for the roof and sides. No full length roof sheets in those days, cement and water, gravel and sand for the shed footings and the tank stand. Several bags of half inch bolts nuts and thick heavy cast iron washers, also hook bolts to fix all the sheets of iron – there was no timber in the structure, all purlins, stringers and cross braces were heavy angle iron! Window and door frames were welded up units ready to bolt into place.

An area would be cleared by bulldozer at the shed’s proposed location out in thick scrub, and the only track into the site would be where the bulldozer went in clearing a rough track as it went just good enough for the cartage contractor to get his semi-trailer in and unload everything. Kevin was an experienced bushman, and knew the whole area well because he had cut posts and gum over virtually the whole of the Island. We would be told of the location of the materials, but it would be Kevin who directed us to the spot. In those days the whole Soldier’s Settlement area was criss-crossed by bush tracks used by the surveyors of the scheme, there were also old tracks that had been there since the Island was first settled. This hunt for the next site would always take place on a Tuesday, but Monday was always the hardest day of the week, unless by some chance we had managed to start laying out the materials on Sunday after setting up camp. Even the task of laying out all the steel framework in it’s correct place on the ground wasn’t easy – all the main frame beams were very heavy. In some cases the site would be on very uneven ground with holes where large trees had been bulldozed out. The site was supposed to be on a flat area, but on one occasion there was a variation of well over a metre and we found ourselves having to lay out the shed right against the surrounding scrub, and we still had to use a 12 gallon drum to raise the concrete footing high enough for one post, so to this day there is a shed out there with the rusted remains of a drum around one footing!

Monday

Early morning, almost certainly before breakfast would see us moving steel into place if it had not already been done, and bolting the heavy 8mm gusset plates into place on the main shed frames. Each frame would be assembled with it’s footing plates against the appropriate footings and we then faced the task of lifting the assembled frames upright! This was done by placing empty fuel and oil drums in readiness at the eaves and apex of the frames, it was Barb’s job to push these drums under the steelwork as Kevin and I lifted each point in turn, thus the first lift would see a four gallon drum at each point, the next lift would see Barb wrestling a 44 gallon drum into place after removing the small drum (remember, she was pregnant and well on the way with Glenda!). Next lift and a small drum would go on top of the large one and we would now be able to get underneath the frames and get a good lift which we did with forked props that Kevin had cut from the surrounding scrub in different lengths. As we lifted Barb would jam longer props under the steelwork. We also had ropes from the frame to the tow bar of the car, and by this time we would be able to move the car to hold the frame, then after a few more struggles with the longer props, we would have one frame erected and tied securely by ropes to surrounding trees or the other footings or as a last resort mallee stakes driven into the ground which in most cases was loose sandy loam.

The same struggle then took place with the next frame, and as soon as it was up, angle iron purlins and cross bracing would be bolted into place. The frames were then lifted and wriggled into place up on to the footings and the nuts run down on the footing bolts. If we were lucky it would now be lunch time. It was always a great moment when the first two frames stood firmly braced to the footings. This part of the shed was a closed in room with windows and a lock up door, there was extra support framework for the windows and doors, and this was usually put in place at odd times, or even after the evening meal by lantern light. It was our usual practice to do odd jobs in the cool of the evening. One task was to box up the low (200mm) tank stand, this was then filled with the plentiful loose stones that had been dozed out of the ground. We all carried out this task at odd times, carrying buckets of stones of various sizes, and if we had done our job well Kevin would only have to mix a small quantity of concrete to cover the stones and sand fill, the stands were of course supposed to be solid concrete, but we were never burdened by inspectors on these jobs. Only when the job was completed would an inspector show up and make sure that all was in place, and there were no holes showing in the roof!
From here on it was a far easier task. A rope was hitched to the car and run over a pulley at the apex of the erected frames, each succeeding frame still had to be lifted on to the drums as before but from there on the car would pull them up into place. The long props were still used to steady the lift, two purlins would already be bolted on to the previous frame, and as the new frame came up into place, it would be quickly secured in place and the new frame lifted up on to it’s footing and bolted down. So we would all fall into bed on Monday night exhausted – Kevin slept on a camp bed in the caravan’s canvas annexe with our stores and the budgie for company!

Tuesday

Tuesday morning would see us loading shovels and boxing materials into the Chevvy, if it hadn’t been done the previous day by someone with spare time, then we would be off in search of the next shed site, Kevin directing me down dozens of narrow tracks through the scrub, till eventually we would come upon the dozer tracks and then the pile of materials in the rough clearing. I was always glad to arrive because I had to trust Kevin’s directions, but he sure as Hell knew his way about the place! Barb would have packed a lunch for us, and she would expect to spend a quiet day alone in the caravan. She wasn’t real keen at being on her own, especially after one day when a large goanna invaded the camp and she had to retreat inside the van until we arrived home, Kevin promptly despatching the goanna which was still guarding Barb!

In most cases the next shed would be within a couple of miles, but there were times when we had to travel much further. As soon as we found the site Kevin would start unpacking the materials and dragging out bags of cement which had been stowed under some of the galvanised sheeting. In some cases these materials had lain there for months, even through the Winter and so we always carried several bags of fresh cement with us in case the bags on site had become solid, this happened a couple of times, in which case fresh cement would be delivered to the shed site.

My first job would be to take a compass bearing as the sheds had to be built as close as possible to a North/South axis. One side of the machinery section was open, and this had to face East, the reason being the violent winds that assailed the Island from the West. Then we would peg out the four corners of the shed on the best part of the clearing and then run string lines, Kevin sometimes having to chop down small saplings that had sprouted on the site. We would have nailed our footing boxes back together after stripping them from the previous foundations, another odd time job! And as soon as the shed was laid out I would start boxing up while Kevin started mixing concrete. I would then start laying out and boxing the in between footings, and most times Kevin would be right up on me with the concrete, and my next job was to go around and place the footing bolts before the concrete hardened, but most times I would be doing this in between boxing up. Another job was to make a small fire and get the billy boiling so that we could have a cuppa at any time. If the day went well, and it usually did, we would have time to spare, and we would start laying out the steel frame work, we usually managed to do this, sometimes bolting the sections together loosely, this was always a real bonus for us the next Monday! Then it would be pack up and into the car and drive home to camp and a welcome from Barb who was always glad to see us returning, Tuesday was the worst day for her.

Wednesday

This was sheeting around the sides day, and also the day when we would drive out to the main road to pick up a couple of blocks of ice for our caravan ice box – no fancy fridges in those days! This ice would be wrapped up in old wheat sacks, and dropped off by the man who did the post and parcels run around the Island. He was a great character who drove like a demon and never kept to a schedule, his great weakness was his love of a beer. His departure from Kingscote would be delayed until he considered that he had imbibed enough to last him for the journey. He must have been the world’s greatest driver, as there is no record that I know of him ever crashing his sometimes hopelessly overloaded vehicles on the treacherous roads back in those days. Happy Williams was a legend of those times!

Window frames were also fitted and Kevin would fit the glass and clip it into place and Barb would be out there with her putty knife going her hardest – she loved puttying in window glass! Most of the sheeting was a two man job, although at times Barb would push the hook bolts through the holes that I had punched, Kevin would be busy dragging out the steel angle iron roof purlins and stacking them up on the sides of the shed near where they would be used, it took two of us to haul them up and bolt them into place for the roof sheets. This was a good job for the evenings if it hadn’t already been done. Wednesday wasn’t a real hard day, just a few sheets of iron to be carried around, but Kevin usually did all this in his spare moments. I also had a spare moment job of laying out the lengths of guttering and rivetting and soldering them together and fitting the ends and down piping, I would have it all finished and laid out ready to lift up and install in one length, this was another job where we needed Barb’s help.

Thursday

Really an odd job day, I would be cutting the sheets of iron to fill in the gable ends, Kevin would be bolting the guttering support straps into place and together we would be securing the roof purlins, one person could tighten the bolts and I could usually bolt the sheeting on the gable ends without help as the sheets when cut were only small. Sometimes for some reason the window frames had not been fitted on schedule and Barb would be puttying while we bolted purlins in place above her head.

Friday

A long hard day! There was a lot of roofing iron to be lifted up and I would be getting the sheets into place as fast as I could while Kevin moved the trestles around underneath me hopping up and down and pushing hook bolts through the holes that I had punched, mostly through only one sheet but sometimes two. The worst was at the junction of four sheets where it took a lot of hammering before I could get the long thin hard spike through four thicknesses of metal. Most Friday nights would see me still hammering blind in the gathering darkness, and it was at these times that I often hammered the side of my hand and thumb! One way and another, I think I had a permanently bruised hand for the whole 14 weeks! Kevin tried to take a turn at the hole punching, but he lacked the skill to align the roof sheets so it was only when we were fitting the side sheeting that I had some respite. When the hook bolts were pushed through the punched sheets a bituminised fabric washer would be fitted, followed by a contoured galvanised washer, then the nut would be run down tight with a special brace that I had made. Each individual bolt and it’s hole was a job in itself and there were way over 1000 bolts in each shed!

If the wind came up on Friday, we would have to abandon the roofing, this happened on at least one occasion. If this happened we had a couple of options, we could go on to another site and do a set of foundations or if footings were in place we could take Barb with us and erect a framework, or as once happened, go into Kingscote for supplies, and then work through the next weekend. We always had things planned in advance for bad weather or other emergencies.

Saturday morning

Last day. We would have the guttering up in minutes and the water tank rolled on to the concrete slab. Kevin would bend the gutter securing tabs down into place and I would be sheeting the door and fitting the lock. As soon as Kevin had everything finished he would mix up a small amount of concrete, I would have boxed up a doorstep, the wet concrete would be trowelled off, and that would be the end of our contract.

Barb would have been securing the caravan ready to move, and Kevin and I would break camp and pack the car, tying the trestles and boards on to the side of the car. The annexe would be taken down and rolled up, we would probably have a last cup of tea and check that we had everything. The caravan would be hooked up, a last look around and we would head for the next shed site. If by some chance the next shed was further away from Kingscote the caravan would be left close to the main road and the trestles unloaded from the car, and we would pick everything up on our return from town, but usually the next site would be close and we would go there and unload and then head for town. There were no sealed roads on the Island in those days except for the main street of Kingscote and a small amount at Penneshaw. The Council were working on sealing the main road out to Tinsmith’s Corner using the stone that I had crushed, so riding in a car that only had doors on one side was a pretty dusty business, but we never thought much of it at the time and we would soon be in Kingscote and Barb would be buying the supplies, and when her Mother and brother, Phillip, were on the Island we would go around to the bag hut and see them. In fact they came out and stayed with us while working on a couple of the sheds.

Sometimes we would stay in town on Saturday night, but we usually headed off back to the next shed well before dark, and set up camp. If we were too late, we would set up on Sunday. My first job when setting up camp would be to build a toilet for Barb in the scrub. There was usually a dense stand of bulloaks close by and I would chop a path through to a spot that was well screened from the camp, and there I would set to work and dig a hole and build a seat from soft branches and string. When it was finished I would get Barb and she would inspect it – over the weeks she had some pretty cute little toilets!

By the time we had finished the last shed Barb was well on the way with Glenda, we had bought the block of land in Buller Street, and I was busy erecting the Nissen hut and also crushing some odd orders for screenings at the quarry – then Glenda arrived. By this time the quarry contracts had finished for good and I had opened up the Buller Street welding business after spending a week or so building a car engine driven portable welder on a trailer. Phillip had started school at Kingscote by this time, but once again his Mother decided to go back to Adelaide with him so Barb and I soon moved across to Buller Street.

There were a few interesting sides to the shed building project. When I first became involved it was only as a casual worker and I travelled out to Parndarna with Kevin and his father where we set up camp in a completed shed. Kevin’s father was naturally boss but as I quickly found out, he was a complete nut. The first day on the job I found out that he was for some reason trying to build three sheds at different locations at the same time, thus I found myself bolting this strange structure together for a couple of hours, then he piled us into his truck with the tools and I found myself putting roofing sheets on another shed, I no sooner got set up and had the sheets going on smoothly and it was near noon and the boss yelled time for lunch then before we had finished eating, he was saying ’Come on, start packing up, we are moving to the next shed!’. This was to set the pattern for the rest of the week and as far as I could see, we had accomplished relatively little. Upon arriving back in Kingscote I collected what I considered a pretty miserable pay for five days away from home, so I told him that I wouldn’t be working for him any more, and gave him the reasons in no uncertain manner!

To my amazement he turned up the next day, and asked me if I was interested in sub contracting to him with his son as an unpaid (by me) helper. We agreed on a price per shed and I agreed with the proviso that while he was to move the heavy gear from site to site, he was to leave us completely to ourselves and to this he agreed. So it was that we moved the van out to our first independent shed, a site where as it happened he had done the foundations some time previously but we found out on the second day that his footings were all over the place and way out of level. Kevin remarked ’this is the way he always does it, and that’s why we have so much trouble with the erection!’ – in actual fact Kevin and I had built three sheds and his father still hadn’t finished the ones that he had been working on!

A couple of weeks after we had finished the 14 sheds he approached me and asked if I would help on just one more shed, Kevin had left the Island with his new Holden, so he no longer had his cheap worker. I wasn’t keen on the idea as Barb only had a couple of weeks to go with Glenda (our eldest), but he offered me good cash and I accepted. Barb wanted to go as well probably to putty in the windows, so he turned up in his old truck and despite Barb’s condition this idiot of a man drove like a lunatic over the rough tracks into the shed site and Barb was in a bit of a state when we arrived. I can’t remember exactly what happened, I was furious and really told him off and eventually he returned us to Kingscote and I can’t remember ever speaking to him civilly from that moment on, but as it happened I was not yet finished with him!

A short time later I had a phone call from the head office at Parndarna, and they asked me if I could erect a shed at the service complex there to be used as a store shed – the foundation blocks were already in place. When they assured me I would be the sole contractor and they wanted the shed immediately, I accepted what was to be a very well paying proposition. I immediately recruited a big strong guy who I knew well to help us, and we soon had the steel frame up and was ready for the sheeting which only had to be taken out of the store. So it was that I went to the office and asked that the sheeting be ready next day when we arrived on the site. For some reason the chap in the office was rather surprised saying ’We are sorry, but we didn’t expect Mr. Burgess (Kevin’s father) to start the shed till next week!’ So I found out that we were still working for this conniving swindler and he would still finish up with money for nothing! So I went straight back to Barb and our mate and told them the story, then paid the mate for the days work, and we went home never to return.

As the years went by I was to learn that this man regularly conned newcomers to the Island in this way, he was a man with no scruples and few friends. Eventually his wife and two young daughters left him and went to live on the mainland. Kevin returned to the Island some time later but he never worked with his father again. He eventually moved away and married and had a family, but we have never seen him since the day he left.