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Article Excerpt
In recent decades, post-first world war soldier settlement in Australia has been subjected to conflicting interpretations. The traditional view, espoused by historians such as Marilyn Lake in Victoria, Quentin Beresford in Tasmania, Rosemary Sparkes in New South Wales, and Ian Dempster in Queensland, is that the state scheme intended to turn swords into ploughshares in the aftermath of the 'war to end all wars' was a tragedy of epic proportions. (1) In 1996, however, Stephen Garton detached himself from this long-held belief by comparing soldier settlement with late-nineteenth-century selection and closer settlement. Acknowledging that individual tragedies were certainly an aspect of post-first world war soldier settlement, Garton nevertheless held that overall it was no worse than earlier rural settlement initiatives. (2) This was a courageous assertion, but the crucial flaw was that Garton had been misled by the statistical data provided by Justice G Herbert Pike, who was commissioned by the federal government in 1928-9 to report on the losses incurred by soldier settlement. Recent scholarly work in Queensland has revealed that Pike's figures are entirely inaccurate, for he classified many different groups of returned servicemen under the rubric of 'soldier settler' even though their circumstances were vastly different from those directly involved in the rural settlement scheme. Thus, by mid-1929 Pike held that the failure rate in the northern state was only forty per cent, whereas it was at least sixty per cent, and almost certainly higher. (3) Queensland was not unique, and further research will undoubtedly result in the traditional view of post-first world war soldier settlement being upheld right throughout Australia. Moreover, the circumstances of soldier settlers beyond 1929 is often obscure, though their situation undeniably deteriorated as the dark clouds of economic depression descended. This was certainly apparent in Western Australia, where large numbers of soldier settlers were engaged in wheat-farming on the most marginal lands. It was against a backdrop of plummeting commodity prices, intermittent drought, and rabbit infestations that soldier settlers in the Campion-Walgoolan district, approximately 300 kilometres north-east of Perth, also became embroiled in a bizarre military campaign in late 1932, known to contemporaries and posterity alike as the 'Emu War'.
Perhaps as many as 5,030 returned servicemen, including a substantial number of ex-British army veterans, embarked on agricultural pursuits in Western Australia under that state's soldier settlement scheme. (4) By September 1920, forty-eight estates, encompassing more than 90,000 hectares had been purchased by the government, (5) but Western Australia's limited arable land ensured that a large number of soldier settlers were placed in the most marginal areas. In a bid to reduce the risk of failure, many engaged in mixed farming--particularly wool-raising and wheat-farming--which is where Western Australia diverged considerably from the other states, with their emphasis on less costly agricultural enterprises. (6) With a run of good seasons during the 1920s the gamble nevertheless appeared to have succeeded, with optimism running high indeed. Albert Facey and his wife Evelyn, for instance, took up a 485-hectare property near Narrogin in the south-west of the state, and by Facey's own account 'made quite a lot of money dealing in the buying and selling of sheep'. Facey was doubly fortunate in that he had considerable agricultural experience, and by the mid-1920s it appeared that little could go wrong:
Our 1924-25 harvest was good. We got fifteen bushels per acre average from our wheat, and about fifty tons of hay from the fifty acres of oats. Wheat prices were good. However, the price of wool fell to two shillings per pound, which was down sixpence per pound on the previous two shearings. (7)
In this way, mixed farming certainly made good sense; if the price of one commodity was down, farmers were propped up by the other. During these golden years, though, wheat required little support. In his novel of post-first world war soldier settlement in Western Australia, John Ewers insisted that 'everyone was in good humour ... It was impossible to be anything else when wheat was just about worth its weight in gold'. (8) Not all, of course, grew wheat, and many soldier settlers were temperamentally or physically unsuited for arduous agricultural pursuits. Even Ewers's fictional character, Ross Daniels, was a schoolteacher rather than a farmer, and it may be pertinent that when later placed in a similar position to the real-life Albert Facey he lost his sanity and died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. (9) The novelist was concerned with the plight of the 'humbler classes', (10) and he had a very clear understanding of the difficulties faced by soldier settlers. Moreover, as Justice Pike found, 1,485 men, or thirty per cent of Western Australia's soldier settlers, had already been forced to abandon their holdings by mid-1929. (11) Suicides may not have been common, but they certainly occurred. (12) Most, however, persevered, though even in the most bounteous years wheat-growers faced serious local problems such as severe winter frosts or sporadic plagues of rabbits. There was also the ever-present menace of government advisers:
There were experts swarming all over the country. Experts in this and experts in that. They drove flash cars and wore collars and ties. They would take off their coats and after an hour's messing around they would achieve no more than any commonsense cocky could do with a piece of fencing wire in half the time. (13)
It was these self-proclaimed 'experts' who were detrimental to the soldier settlers' interests when the great depression struck with a vengeance from 1929. With prices for Australia's primary products plummeting and the balance of payments in deficit, the federal government under Prime Minister James Scullin attempted to overcome the financial disaster by increasing the acreage under crop, particularly the wheat crop. Under the banner 'Grow More Wheat', Scullin encouraged farmers to expand production by offering a guaranteed price of four shillings per bushel at railway sidings. (14) Western Australian farmers responded enthusiastically, increasing the area under wheat by 158,000 hectares over the following twelve months. Unfortunately, the federal government was unable to fulfil its side of the bargain as the Wheat Marketing Bill came before the Senate in June 1930, just as world wheat prices plummeted dramatically. Not surprisingly, it was rejected. (15)
The following December the Wheat Advance Bill, aimed at providing wheat-growers with two shillings sixpence per bushel, fared no better, being abandoned...
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