Springbank - 2. Spring Ch 2

The four-door diesel Wrangler was far more than I expected to get, which is maroon, with wide wheel arches, side steps, bull bar, front winch, two bull bar-mounted spotlights, four roof rack-mounted spotlights, snorkel, passenger side awning, tow bar and rear light and reversing camera. Inside, there are five seats, plus a large rear cargo bay, CB radio, front and rear air-conditioning, and window tinting, and it was a manual which I preferred. It did have over 200k in milage which was a bit of a worry, but I am sure that Dad would not have bought it if it didn’t have a very good service record.

Looking under the bonnet, I saw that it was all clean and in good order, with a dual-battery system, with a 2.6l turbo engine, and as I closed the bonnet, I saw Dad standing there smiling. “So, what do you think, will this do for you on the estate?” Dad asked me, “It is wonderful thanks Dad, a lot more than I expected,” I replied, “Well we can’t have an estate owner driving around in a crappy rundown vehicle can we,” Dad said which made me chuckle.

“It is absolutely awesome, thanks again, now where are the keys, I want to take it for a drive,” I asked, just as Dad held up the set of keys, which made me smile widely, and soon Dad and I were driving down Canning Highway with me driving, and it wasn’t long before we arrived in Fremantle, where Dad suggested that we stop at the fishing harbour on Mews Road. When I parked in the car park where Dad suggested, I was caught by surprise to see the family vehicle parked there, and soon Mum and my brothers appeared.

“Nice vehicle bro, can we have the scooter?” the twins asked in unison, “No,” Mum and Dad replied at the same time, which had me laughing. “You can ride back home with your brother, but only after we have had dinner, I have booked a table for us here,” Dad informed us, which surprised me and my brothers. After a wonderful dinner, the boys climbed into my vehicle with the twins in the back and Levi in the front passenger seat, I decided to take a slightly longer route home, via Stirling Highway to the edge of the city and over the Narrows Bridge to South Perth.

When we arrived home, I parked in the same spot where the car was earlier, just in front of the front entry, and to the side of the double garage. Once locked up, I headed inside, and to my bedroom, which is on the ground floor, before the kitchen and just off the main living room. When originally built, my room was the home theatre room, but with a large family, my folks decided that I should have my own room downstairs, with a toilet just around the corner.

The only problem is that I need to go upstairs to use the bathroom for a shower or bath, which Levi has adjoining his bedroom, as the twins have their separate bedrooms but share a bathroom. Mum and Dad have the entire second floor for themselves and they are the only ones who regularly use the elevator to get to their floor, and for doing homework or study, Levi and I share the home office on the ground floor, while the twins share the study on the first floor. Apart from the living room on the ground floor, we also have a large enclosed alfresco area, which we use regularly during the summer months, as it is right next to the swimming pool.

Upstairs there is a second living room, which the boys use for their gaming and relaxing, with a small balcony, while up on the next level, Mum and Dad have their own separate retreat lounge room, so there is plenty of space for the whole family to spread out and not get in anyones way. The following morning, I telephoned the real estate agents in Toodyay and requested an appointment to visit the estate, and I was told to just contact the people managing the property before the call abruptly ended, which I thought was quite rude of them, especially when I had no idea how to contact the estate.

After doing a bit of an online search, I found the name and phone number of the estate, and I gave him a call apologising that I was calling him directly due to the hostile reception I received from the real estate agency, and the property manager – Davies Carter informed me that the agency has quite a bad reputation in regards to customer service, and they deal with them as less as possible. After agreeing on a time for me to come to the estate on Saturday morning, I thanked Davis for his time, before ending the call.

Two days later on Saturday morning, I was up extra early, already informing Mum and Dad of my plans, and I was on the road by 7 am and soon on the Tonkin Highway, heading north out of the city until I reached Muchea, where the Tonkin becomes the Great Northern Highway, where I continued until I arrived in Chittering and turned off the highway, heading north-east on Blue Plains Road, passing a Buddhist Monastery, before turning right and travelling south on Chittering Road for a short distance, then turning left onto Julimar Road. I was relying on the GPS on my phone for directions to the estate, as I had never been out this way before.

Just 18 kilometres later, the GPS instructed me to turn right onto Springbank Road, so I slowed right down and soon spotted the gravel road, that I needed to take, which had a slight incline and bush on both sides of the road. Just 350 metres later, I arrived at a set of double gates that were closed. Once past the gates, which I closed behind me, I continued down the driveway for 4 kilometres passing cropping paddocks and pockets of bushland, until I saw a Ute parked near a very large shed. “Good morning, you must be Cooper Hudson, you are a lot younger than I expected. I am Davies Carter, Estate manager and general dogsbody,” the man said as he approached as soon as I had parked my vehicle.

“Yes, I am Cooper, nice to meet you, Davies. Tell me, how long have you been working on the estate?” I asked as I shook his hand, “Oh, it must be close to twelve years now, I replaced the last Estate Manager, who had a heart attack while away on holidays,” Davies replied. “Goodness me, that is not a good way to be taking over a big job running a place like this,” I commented, “It was fine, I had a few decades experience working as a Station boss up north, so I just had to adjust my practices a little bit and it has been fairly smooth sailing ever since,” Davies replied.

“So how many structures do you have on the property? As this one here looks to be fairly new?” I asked, “Yes, that is right, this is the main machinery shed, that includes a large maintenance workshop as well as space to house all the larger machinery. Behind this, there is a garage shed, and over there is the Superphosphate storage shed, which we keep locked most of the time these days.

Most buildings are in groups, so the next group of buildings is the shearing shed, yards, single quarters and vehicle shed, which are located just 1.5 kilometres to the west away from the yards, apart from a single storage shed on its own about one kilometre west of the yards, the remaining buildings are fairly close together, and they are all about 2.5 kilometres to the south-west of the yards, with four cottages and a small shed, plus the manager’s house, which is my residence, and the furthest building away is the Main house, which has a garage and a small storage shed.

We also have two access points directly to the Avon River, one is 4 kilometres south of here and just 400 metres south of the staff cottages, while the other gate is 4 kilometres south and slightly east and upstream near Possults Ford and we have a special feature on the estate, in the form of a watch tower located just 300 metres downstream from the southeast boundary of the main estate and 900 metres upstream from the Avon Descent overnight campsite of Cobblers Pool.

For the past few years, the estate leasees, staff and family have a bbq picnic day on the Saturday of the Avon Descent Race, where we have gathered to watch the race from our raised viewing point,” Davies informed me. That sounds very interesting, I have watched that race from a few public vantage spots over the years, but it is always very crowded and I have usually had to hike a fair distance to get to them, I look forward to seeing this interesting watch tower,” I responded. “I am sure you will be impressed with what we have done,” Davies replied. “How many staff are employed on the estate?" I asked.

"We have four full-time and two part-time staff as well as casual contractors when required for seeding, fertilising, harvesting and shearing. Apart from myself, there is Todd Archer, who is the Mechanic and he takes care of checking all the water supplies and maintaining all the pumps, he is 48 and is single, he has been on the estate for five years, so much longer than myself and he has a cabin to himself. We have two farmhands, Joseph Pitt and Kurt Owens, who are in their mid-20s and are possible partners, but I don’t ask as it is not my business, they do all of the bits and pieces of farmwork, including mustering and shed work, they share a cabin and have been with us for two years now.

The part-time lad is Giles who is my 16-year-old son, who works on weekends and during school holidays only, as we insist that he concentrates on his studies. Leah and I have three children in total, Sue and Anna are 11-year-old twins and attend the local school, while Giles attends a private school in Guildford. We occasionally employ overseas backpackers when things get very busy, and they usually bunk down in one of the empty cottages.

My wife Leah is the other part-time worker, and she cleans all the staff accommodation once a week, and the main house and any empty cottages once a month, as it doesn’t get used very much, as well as assisting me with administration duties,” Davies informed me. Over the next two hours, I was shown all of the main buildings on the estate and some of the paddocks that are not in crop and have stock on them.

“We have a small herd of cattle as you can see, which the leasees have been building up the herd over the past few years, with sheep and wool prices not being as good this past five years, and the cattle have been thriving on this land,” Davies said to me. “Although I live and study in Perth, our family has a pastoral property down in the Southeast, near Norseman, which I have just returned from last week, and I am currently at University studying Agriculture Science and Business, so I look forward to putting my studies into practice.

Because I am at University and I have three younger siblings, I still live at home to assist the family, as my Dad is often away in Canberra due to work and my Mum works as a University Lecturer so I often have to mind the brats. I do hope that you and your current staff will remain on the estate after the changeover of management takes place?” I said to Davies. “I was hoping that you would say that… sir, as we would very much like to stay here, as we are very happy here,” Davies replied.

“Good, that is settled then, now where is your management office? Your place I am presuming,” I asked, “Yes sir, I will take you there now if you wish, and afterwards, maybe you would like to check out the watch tower?” Davies replied. “Yes, I am very intrigued with this watch tower, so I do want to see it,” I replied. “We are only a few weeks away from the Avon Descent, so I hope that you and your family can join us on the second Saturday of next month to watch the race,” Davies said to me, “I very much look forward to it,” I replied.

After a good look at the office books which are kept in very good order, and enjoying some morning tea from Leah, we headed towards the South-east border to check out the watch tower, which was a lot more than I expected. It was more like a large log cabin, with a very large covered outdoor patio that overlooks the Avon River. Hidden well back out of view of the river is a 6-bay vehicle shed to keep vehicles undercover in bad weather, from there, a raised covered boardwalk leads to the main entry to the watch tower, which is two levels, is located on a sloping hill down towards the river. A small entry verandah that runs the full width of the building, has a doorway at each end, and five small high windows in the centre.

Entering the Eastern door, we walked down a passageway that led to a big open area, with a large kitchen in the centre of the back wall, with a passageway behind it. We were standing in a large open lounge area, with plenty of lounge chairs, with some facing the river, and some facing inwards in three groups with coffee tables between them. “As you can see there is plenty of seating for up to twenty people, plus more seating out on the viewing balcony, that can seat another ten more people. Behind the kitchen are two sets of toilets, male and female and a disabled bathroom in the middle, which includes a shower, they are the small windows you saw outside on the verandah.

There are two very large septic tanks, that collect all of the human waste, which are emptied regularly, as we have our own waste collection tanker truck. We use this place for birthday parties, Christmas, New Year and any other special event, for staff and their families only and as you can see out the windows, there is a fire pit in one corner and a large BBQ cooking area in the other corner. Staff sometimes come here to camp out, just to get away from everything, which is fine, as long as I am given a little bit of notice in advance, and they must clean up afterwards, and there are strictly no wild parties permitted on the property,” Davies informed me.

Stepping out onto the patio, I had a good look around the place. “How is this place powered?” I asked, “Glad you asked. All of the buildings on this property, have solar panels on the roof of most buildings, and we also have four wind power turbines, and banks of batteries for power storage, so we are mostly off the main power grid here, and only turn over to the main grid if we have had very poor seasonal weather and not enough sunshine or wind power available, which is very rare,” Davies replied.

I glanced over the front railing and saw we were at least four metres from the ground at that point. I also noticed that the nearby Avon River was running very well at the moment, and was just 15 metres from the boundary fenceline and 35 metres from the Watch Tower, in one back corner I noticed a spiral staircase going up to the roof, where I discovered there is an undercover lookout area, that is the size as the front patio and half of the living area downstairs, with a large room in each back corner and a bathroom between them.

“What about during the summer, what do you do when there is a high risk of bushfires?” I asked. “We have sprinklers located on and around every main building and the yards on the estate, to protect them from damage, and to protect the stock too. If we can’t get them trucked off the estate on time, we round them up into the yards and sheds to protect them from the fire. It has happened three times in the time I have worked here, and it has been a successful plan each time, with no animal fatalities due to fire.

We have utilised the Muchea Livestock Centre twice during these emergencies, to keep our stock safe, and apart from fences and loss of stock feed, we have had very little damage during the fire emergencies, and it hasn’t taken us long to fully recover,” Davies said to me.