CAMPBELL James  

Research by Gordon Freegard     2020

James Campbell’s first son, William Campbell was born in 1891 at Ferntree Gully, Victoria. They then lived in Thorpedale, Gippsland where he worked splitting palings and trapping possums which were worth 30/- (3 dollars) per dozen. Money was scarce, but living was very cheap – bacon by the side 2 ½ pennies (3 Cents) per pound, cows could be bought for 7/6 (75 cents), potatoes were grown, rabbits and hares were shot or caught. This was the depression period.

People milked their cows and the children going to school, would ride on the horse-drawn sledges along with the milk cans and take the milk to the Creameries. Households did not have their own separators then so the milk was sent to the Creameries for that process. Then after school the children would bring home the skim milk for the pigs.
 

Western Australia was coming into its own with the discovery of gold, so the family moved West looking for working 1895. James Campbell found work at the Canning Jarrah Timber Company at Canning Mills mainly as a faller from 1895 till 1899. This work was cutting the trees down for the mill with axe and cross cut saw. His wages were 9/6 (95 Cents) per day and they had to strip and bark the logs.
 

CANNING JARRAH TIMBER COMPANY’S MAIN MILLS      # 1
 

Their first mill home in 1895, was a two-roomed cottage built quite near Illawarra Orchard. The sides were made of vertically placed boards with further boards covering the joints. The roof was of horizontally placed overlapping boards, later as they ceased to be waterproof, covered with sheets of corrugated iron. The chimneys were made of vertically placed boards. The size of the fireplace separated the fire from the timber and the jarrah boards (jarrah was used throughout) did not, if care was taken, create a fire risk. When the Campbells occupied the house, the blacksmith at the stables then at Illawarra, made Mrs. Campbell a set of fire bars, hooks and fire irons. Baking was done in a camp oven.
 

THE MILL COTTAGE OCCUPIED BY THE CAMPBELL FAMILY  1895         #2
 

At that time Illawarra Orchard was being developed by the manager of the mill, Lionel White and partners Edward White and Edward Dean-Smith. So James gained some employment helping to clear some of the land on which orange trees were plants. They were not very successful until Thomas Price (Snr) was brought to manage the orchard. He commenced a program of installing drains lined with sawn timber from the mill and filled with crushed blue metal brought from the quarries on the side of the Darling Ranges near the zig zag.
 

WILLIAM, COLIN & HARRY CAMPBELL AT CANNING MILLS  1899        #3
 

The mill worked nine hours a day. They started early in the morning and sometimes worked a night shift as well. There was no electric light. The only light came from slush lamps, which was a container something like a square tin kettle with a heavy cotton wick made from cotton waste pushed into the spout of the lamp which was filled with kerosene. It produced a very poor light with plenty of black smoke.
 

CANNING MILLS SPOT MILL , POSSIBLY AT KANGAROO CREEK       #4
 

As the mills extended their rail lines further into the bush, the workmen’s cottages were also moved from site to site. Canning Jarrah Timber Company had, at different times and locations, three outlying mills; -  No. 1 Sleeper Mill was about three miles up Munday Brook from the main mill., a second mill was at Canning Location 557 (known as Newton’s No. 2, and the third one was No. 4 Mill some distance beyond where the bush tram line crossed Kangaroo Creek.
 

MAP SHOWING CANNING MILLS RAIL LINES & MILL SITES     # 5
 

The only school was at the main Canning Mills site, so for some time Mrs. Campbell ran a school from their cottage at No.4 Mill Site for children from that settlement. She charged 1/- (10 Cents) per week per child and their parents were very pleased for them to get some schooling, however simple the lessons were. Slates and slate pencils were the only requirements needed. Pads and pencils were not around them. Later, as the children got older, William and his two brothers Colin and Harry, walked four miles on a bush track, to go to school at the main Mill site, where a Mr. Butler was the teacher at the time.

  CANNING MILLS SCHOOOL GROUP         #6
  

James caught typhoid fever and spent some time in hospital recovering. When he finally came home the Mill Company gave him what they called a “light” job – carting firewood from the mill to people living in the settlement with a horse and dray.

When the mill closed in 1899 some of the young men enlisted for the Boer War and the older men went to the goldfields to cut timber and firewood for the mines leaving their wives and families at the closed mill site.

While the men worked on the Goldfields, the children and mothers cut firewood which they carried in their arms and stacked alongside the railway to be carried to the brick kilns near Midland Junction. They were paid 6/- (60 Cents) per cord, which is a stack of about a metre long wood, stacked a metre high and about four metres long.

Money was very scarce. The Campbell family lived on home-grown vegetables, home-made bread and meat. William, the eldest son, used to go the local butchers on the days he killed sheep where he was given odd jobs to do. In return he was given the sheep’s head and trotters. His mother would scald the trotters and scrape the wool off, the same way as a pig is scalded and scraped. From the sheep’s head would come the brains, the tongue and the cheeks. The done with the small amount left on, would make a pot of soup.

All their clothes were home-made and their stockings and socks were hand-knitted. There was a bootmaker who travelled up from Midland Junction and he would measure everyone who wanted boots and would return later with the finished article, all hand-made and long lasting jobs they were. Young people would not wear them out before they became too small, so they would be passed on to someone else whom they would fit.

Mrs. Campbell used to bake bread in a 16 inch camp oven for as many as 20 men, She also made hop beer, charging four pence (4 Cents) a bottle. On some Sundays, James spent most of the day cutting hair.

It appears that the family was at Canning Jarrah Timber Company from 1895 till 1901 when they disappear from the records.
 

Every endeavour has been made to accurately record the details however if you would like to provide additional images and/or newer information we are pleased to update the details on this site. Please use CONTACT at the top of this page to email us. We appreciate your involvement in recording the history of our area.

Reference:          Article:              William J. Campbell
                                                 Gordon Freegard

                         Images:            1, 4   Ray Simpson
                                                 2       Price Family Collection
                                                 3, 6   Kalamunda & District Historical Society
                                                 5       Rails Through the Bush, Austin & Gunzberg

Copyright : Gordon Freegard   2008 - 2020