Emails from Australia - Stan Taylor
Edited by Dave Shotton
Former KMC member Stan Taylor contacted the club to pass on his condolences after reading about the sad death of Derek Seddon via the club website, which Stan reads regularly. Stan then exchanged a series of emails with Dave Shotton, recalling Stan’s times with the KMC and his fascinating adventures in Australia. Stan agreed that his reminiscences could be published in the Newsletter, so here they appear in slightly abridged and edited form.
Stan joined the KMC in 1947 and then emigrated to Australia in 1950 but remained a member until 1964. Older members with long memories may remember a previous article entitled ‘A Letter from Australia’ which Stan contributed to the December 1999 Newsletter (available for download in digital form via the website Newsletter archive).
Just read obituary Derek Seddon. Very sorry to hear of his passing. Have climbed and walked with him back in the late 1940's. A great companion back then before I left UK in 1950
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It's a long time ago and I guess there are not many of the group left now. Bowden and Millie, Len Stubbs, Derek. I do, on occasions, get out some old photos and smile at one of Plum Worrall asleep in a 'built in' bed at 'Back Hill o the Bush' in Ayrshire when he and Robbie and I spent a pleasant few days walking and found the abandoned farmhouse.
I left from Liverpool on 13 July 1950 on SS Cheshire and arrived Fremantle on 13 August. A slow trip but quicker than the first settlers! Just! After drifting around - it was a time when willingness to work was the only criterion to get a job - I settled in the Moora area, started commercial beekeeping with another fellow I had met on the boat, then met Betty, married her in '57 and we ran bees until just a few years ago all over Western Australia. Including doing crop pollination up at Kununurra in the Ord River Irrigation Area. Did some climbing until aged 75 when I started to develop arthritis in one knee and, a few years later, lumbar stenosis so don't do much walking now but still have a small, non-migratory apiary where I like to try some management experiments with the bees.
In a KMC newsletter sometime in the mid 50's I was mentioned as "doing a Hillary". I guess you can work that out. [Note for younger readers – if this is a little cryptic, you may wish to Google Sir Edmund Hillary and look up his original profession after leaving university, some years before his ascent of Mount Everest in 1953!]
I often read the KMC website and, when a meet in an area I can remember is proposed, I am there in spirit.
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For the first few years over here I tried to find others interested in climbing but couldn't. Then, much later I discovered that at about the same time there were a few but our paths had never crossed. Then I heard about the WA Climbers' Club and joined but found that the whole game had changed with light shoes, harnesses and tonnes of hardware. But, in the club, there was a group of 'Oldies' - men and women who had 'been there and done that' and who just wanted to enjoy the crags without too much ambition to prove anything and that suited me.
Western Australia contains much land that is amongst the oldest areas above the water and so we don't have any high mountains, just a few hills, as time has worn the country to relative flatness and much of the interior is officially desert so rock climbing is the game rather than mountaineering.
I remember leading Cioch on Skye and ahead was a couple, the young woman dressed in a skirt. When we reached the top she apologised in case she had caused any embarrassment! (I was about 19) but they were French and had assumed that, because all English climbs were so short that they would be just a walk, so also apologised to the English climbing fraternity! This, of course was just after WW2 and European/UK travel had not been on holiday terms for several years previously.
I met one KMC member at a railway station - I think it might have been Exchange station - when I was going to a job (I was a junior member of the auditing racket in those days). He had a rucksack and a fishing rod. I asked where he was off to and he replied "New Zealand" we kept in touch for a short while but I can't recall his name. [Any suggestions as to the identity of this mysterious KMC member would be very welcome!]
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I lived for a short while in Cowesby Street, Moss Side where my parents bought a corner shop. Consequently it was only a mile or so to Plum and Robbie's and we had committee meetings in their lounge room, the walls of which Plum had painted as a panoramic view of the Alps. Plum had made a pair of skis for himself, probably during the war when such luxuries were unlikely to be available. He gave them to me and I was crossing a park carrying them home about midnight when 2 coppers stepped out from behind a bush and demanded to know who I was, where I was going and from where. Then they took notice of the skis and let me go. They were looking for a molester/potential rapist who had been active in the area and must have decided that the equipment was a suitable alibi.
I have started to put down experiences in the vague hope of writing a book but it will start on my arrival in WA. With a fair knowledge of beekeeping since 1953 until today except for about 7 years when I drove [single semi-trailers] from Perth to the Pilbara between '65 and '72 when the iron ore industry was getting going, I can write about the practical side of the job. Most of the books are written on a "one size fits all" style whether the beekeeper operates in the far north of Canada or the mid-west of WA. I recently re-joined the WA Apiarists' Society after about 34 years since I was president. Then we had about 40 members. Now there are over 900 and the core of hobbyists who have some knowledge were starting to drop away as the beginners took up so much of the committee's resources so I started a discussion group where I am allowed to spout my views and experiences.
We started with about 15 attendees a year ago and now have a problem in that the room has a legal limit of 50 and we are at 65. The publicity about the loss of bees for various reasons in some parts of the world plus the advent of the 'Flo Hive' has created the interest. Anyway the committee seems to think that it is a worthwhile endeavour and they presented me with a perpetual shield for services etc. plus a replica to be kept and life membership which is nice
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David, many thanks for that newsletter [the December 1999 issue containing Stan’s article]. I had completely forgotten the message I sent... It's a bit late for corrections but the mountain is Toolbrunup, it doesn't start with an F. I notice Bob Upton mentioned in the newsletter. He and his wife were camped with me and 2 or 3 others at Glen Brittle one year.
When I arrived, fresh from Manchester (I lived in Davyhulme until about 1948) I was surprised at the country village attitude of the residents of the state's capital city - Perth.
When I walked along St Georges Terrace which is a main road through the financial centre, several people said "Good morning" and everything was so laid back. One story I have told my grandkids refers to my driving licence. In 1950, as I said, I was working on the War Service
Land Settlement and, just before Christmas I was given a tiny Fiat crawler tractor fitted with a blade which I used to push a bit of rubbish around. I stayed over Christmas in Perth with a married couple whom I met on the boat and then I walked into the Public Works Dept. and asked for a dozer driver's job. Which they gave me. No CV’s etc. We were sinking dams for regional town’s water supplies and, at one of them another dozer driver offered to sell his motor bike to me. I bought it and, on Saturday morning I rode down to the local cop shop and said I needed a driver's licence for a motor bike. The copper asked where was the bike and when I said it was outside his gate he asked how it got there so I told him that I rode it there. "OK" he said, "you must be able to ride” so he started to write out the licence but asked "What are you doing in Boddington?" "Driving a dozer on the dam" I replied. "You'd better have a licence for that then in case you have to cross a road and some idiot in a car crashes into you" So that was my first experience. In 1953 I worked on a farm but the house burnt down (a weatherboard cottage) so he organised for a replacement and said "You'll have to go to Middle Swan for a load of bricks" " OK but I don't have a 7 tonne truck licence" So I drove the truck into town and got a licence, again just because I had covered the 7 miles safely! And, the very next day I drove the truck and dog trailer to the brick yards about 100 miles meach way and brought 14 tons of bricks home. Later, when Dan and I were running bees we bought a 7 tonne Bedford and had a semi attached so we needed licences. A visit to the police station. The cop gave Dan a licence then looked at my truck licence and said "You've got a semi licence”. The prime mover is (was) called a tractor! And, in the 90's when we changed to the international codings my first replacement gave me an mc [multi trailer combination (road train) licence].
Before we got into bees, Dan and I did some fencing contracts in a new area west of Moora where the land had been thrown open for farming. Some of the country had rocky ridges so we went into Moora and asked where we could buy gelignite, fuses and detonators. Right there in the grocery store. No signatures - just another commodity.
So I could legally drive anything from a motor bike to a multi trailer combination and never had a driving test! Much different now of course. In fact the place is so civilised Betty and I have often looked for someplace else to settle but spent so long thinking about it that it's now too late.
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WOW! David, you are certainly stirring the old grey matter now [with copies of two articles which Stan wrote for the KMC Club Journal 1950]. Co-incidentally I have been looking through my old, very poor quality, photos to see whether there are any that might be of interest and I have one of Plum asleep in the deck chair in the farm house. I remember that he had suffered some severe chafing around the groin area and the sleep was good medicine...
The distances out here are immense compared to UK or Europe. From Perth depot to Carnarvon is 610 miles (nearly 1,000 klms) and to Port Hedland about double that.
From home, here at Upper Swan, to Kununurra is 3,220 klms and I have driven it many times with loads of bees. In recent years I got smarter and would have all the hives at home then get a truck company to leave a freezer semi in our driveway with the freezer running and set at 5 deg C. Overnight we loaded the hives into the trailer and set the bulkhead. This took half the space. Next day the driver came to hitch up and we followed him back to the depot where we put our 1 tonne 4x4 truck into the back of the trailer. He then hitched up a second trailer of goods and set off to Wubin where he collected a third trailer while we flew to Kununurra and spent the next7 months up there. Mid-winter temperatures min about 15C max 28 day after day, and no rain! And big money because No bees = No crops.
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I imagine that the present breed of climbers contains its share of the mad ones. We certainly were far from sociably acceptable at times. I have done some thinking since we started this line of emails and Bowden Black is in my thoughts. On one occasion, Milly had been climbing on another rope and had finished so called out, very loudly "What are you doing Bowden?" Back came the reply, equally loud "Having a piss dear".
And he was. I think that was on the east face of Tryfan and we were probably camped near the Idwal slabs or even in the Youth Hostel. One evening we were all in the nearest town, Capel (?), and we queued for the last bus up the Nant Francon. The driver was very strict and refused to accept more than his legal load so Bowden was refused admission. At the rear of the bus was the emergency door and, as it took off Bo made a jump and got a finger hold in the gutter above the door and one toehold on the door's lower hinge. He rode that way until the stop where we alighted. The only stop till then. If memory doesn't play its usual tricks, that would have been about 5 miles. I can see now, the look on the face of the driver when Bo wished him "Good-night." I think that few people other than rock climbers would be able to do that.
Presumably you have plenty of pictures of the gear we used, or lack of it. Often our conversations would turn to 'all the metal hardware in the European climbs' and our belief was that was 'unsporting' (to be polite). We were very critical yet we ignored the tons of rock that was being ground away by our tricounis etc. A pair of nailed boots, a rucksack, a karabiner and 120 feet of rope was all the special gear we needed. And, in a few cases, a coffin. One Christmas at Grasmere we had sat down to Dinner when a call came to help one of ours who had broken his thigh in a fall high up. On Skye we had to bring down a climber who had broken his ankle on the ridge. Again in the dark but not one of ours.
At the time, the Army was experimenting with Vibram soles that held some promise. Even abseiling was done without a harness.
The first time I went to the Cairngorms was in August 1947 when I had 15 days up there alone apart from people I met. I covered quite a lot of the area from Aviemore to Braemar, all the major tops and some of the lesser ones too. I stayed in Corrour Bothy a couple of nights and met a small group who had camped further along the river and too close and one of them was so bitten by mosquitoes that she couldn't walk and had to be carried. I camped one night under the shelter stone and, in Skye (next year) I descended via the stone chute which, I understand, is now stone free...
Just reminiscing.
Stan Taylor.
