Uncle Bob

Keeping Our Connection with the Past

It is hard to imagine in these days of artificial intelligence, social media, streamed entertainment, and instant access to knowledge and almost any product, that we also have a whole generation of people who lived an almost opposite extreme lifestyle.

I recently indulged my personal interest in Australian pioneering history with a coffee and a long conversation with a long term client who had a basic upbringing, and limited education but has a passion for maintaining our connection to the past, through Tracmach.

That client is my Uncle Bob Lukins. For context, Bob is now 84 years of age. He is number three of six children (my mum is the oldest) and still involved on ‘Yarramundi’, the farm at Kukerin where they all grew up. He is a farmer, self-taught mechanic, and founder of Tracmach, the Vintage Tractor and Machinery Association of WA

What is your earliest memory?

“I remember during the war how I was worried about my parents. My dad wasn’t at war, but he was very involved in the effort back home through the Voluntary Defence Corp. He was the property manager, so one room in our house was full of guns, ammunition, and hand grenades. We were warned never to go in that room, but you can’t expect young, inquisitive, mischievous kids to stay out of there. Luckily, we never blew the house up.”

Tell me about your education

“Well, I didn’t learn anything if that is what you are asking. My mum tried to teach the 4 eldest kids by correspondence up until I was seven, but we were more interested in being outside. The Merilup school opened 3 miles up the road in 1947 so we all went there. We learned more about life on the ride to and from school than at school. We had 3 bikes between the 4 of us so we dinked each other. We rode every day no matter the weather or conditions.

Apart from one other family we had never met any other kids at that stage of our life, as we rarely left the farm, so it was strange meeting kids from surrounding farms. Some of the other kids rode a horse and cart to school. I was distracted by those other ‘strange’ kids and was terrible at school. The most interesting thing about school was riding there and back with my sisters and brother and exploring along the way.

I only went to school about half of the time, as my dad wanted me to help on the farm, especially during seeding, harvest, and shearing. To be honest I was much happier on the farm as well.

After 4 years Merilup school closed and I had to travel further into Kukerin but even then I spent more days at home than at school until I was 13. I had hoped to go to Ag School, but my dad got sick, so I left school altogether to help more on the farm.

I managed to learn to read and write but my maths was terrible, and it has affected me in farming and life to this day.”

What was farm life like for kids in the 1940s?

“It was busy. When not being asked to help on the farm we were always outside, climbing trees, digging out rabbit warrens, and getting into mischief. There was no supervision as my mum was either working in the house or on the farm. It’s a wonder we survived. I built a small farm out in the bush and spent hours ploughing and growing crops. We all had chores every day. Mine was to collect and chop firewood for cooking and heating water. I would be ‘out on my farm’ until after dark and would hear Mum shouting for the firewood. Only then would I start collecting it in the dark which was a challenge.

It was a very simple existence, but we enjoyed ourselves.”

What is your memory of the use of horses on the farm?

“We had working horses when I was very young. My dad loved animals and naturally used horses for farming. We had two teams of eight Clydesdale horses each. Tony was the name of the leader of one team. He was a giant. The teams were usually set up in a harness two abreast fixed by chains to a Swindle Tree (a huge log) that was then connected to the plough, hay binder, or harvester. The team was controlled by reins to the front and lead horses.

There was always something breaking on the harness. My dad had a blacksmith set up on the farm with a forge, made of sand and bellows, for heating iron and a large anvil for moulding. He would fix most breakages. I helped out in the blacksmith from as early as I can remember, watching how to fix and make things.

The harness gear was kept in a room in our house and was oiled every night after a day of work.

I remember when the teams came home after work they would head to the stables for a feed. We often climbed up the fence and onto one of the horses, Ginny, 3 or 4 of us at a time. She would walk us to the dam for a drink. As she bent to drink it was a challenge to stay on, and we would sometimes fall into the dam.

The horses ate the most enormous amount of feed. One of the most important jobs on the farm was growing, harvesting, and chaffing hay for the fuel that kept the horses going.

We stopped using the horses in 1947 when we bought our first powered machine, an International W4 tractor.”

Where did your interest in mechanics start?

“As a very young kid and in the early days on the farm I always wanted to know how things worked. I remember at the age of about 5 or 6 I pulled apart a clock to see how it worked and put it back together.

This naturally evolved into machinery. As I was home from school so much, I had more time to explore machines and just learnt how they worked. When I left school, I would often spend days at a time in the Kukerin blacksmith shop and mechanic garage offering to help. Sometimes I would run the garage when the mechanic was away.

These skills were very useful on the farm. As we could not afford to buy new machinery, we always bought second hand and I would keep them going well beyond their usual life. As a result, we accumulated many tractors, dozers, and other machines over many years which had many uses on a growing farm.

This interest in older machinery has stayed with me forever and led into my other passion which was collecting and fixing machines that were laying around on farms around the state. So, I was compelled to get involved in starting Tracmach.”

Stay tuned for Part 2 next month to hear about that organisation, Tracmach.

Visit www.tracmach.com

Interview by Brendan Taylor