Salmons of Ashmont

By Anita Buswell

Ashmont was the name of the land where the family led by James and Mary Ann Salmon lived from 1922. It was then on the outskirts of Wagga Wagga, NSW, and now lends its name to a suburb of that city. The old family home is today part of the Loreto Home of Compassion and a carpark stands where there was once a magnificent orchard.

James and

• Language: English
• Publisher: Riverton Press
• Release date: May 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9780648230540

Anita Buswell

Anita Buswell was a woman with a great sense of humour and sharp wit. Wife, mother, gardener, carpenter, jack of all trades, hand that rocked the cradle, hand that cradled the rock. A farmer's wife who turned her mind successfully to things as diverse as the Stock Market, poetry, magnetism and electricity and theology for the earth. Anita published the family memoir Salmons of Ashmont in 1996 and held a memorable book launch at the time. Her book of poetry Me in the Middle appeared in 2018, and Anita wrote many short stories, plays, poems and letters to the Editor during her lifetime. Together with Grace Pierson, Anita wrote Ripples, a history of the Country Women's Association in New South Wales (1982). When asked to describe herself for the back cover of Me in the Middle, she replied: "I love horses, poetry, my late cat and my family, not necessarily in that order. I am inspired by the mystery and connectedness of life." Anita Buswell lived all her life in the Riverina, New South Wales (1922-2018).

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JOHN FRANCIS

B. 29 Aug. 1928.

Little Johnnie was the youngest in a family of ten - hence the little. Mary was born in 1925. My twin sister Gloria and I will be seventy-three in two weeks time - born in 1922. John and Mary were born after the family had moved to Ashmont on the Urana Road, three miles west of the town of Wagga (Wagga Wagga to be politically correct). The area became known as Salmons’ Hill.

I remember Johnnie as a cheerful child. He talked all the time. Dad on occasions would offer him sixpence if he could shut up for three minutes. As far as I recall, Johnnie never won a single sixpence. Curiosity was his downfall: how much is sixpence? How much longer have I got to go? Is it three minutes yet? He was a well-spoken little charmer who never dropped his ings, but even added them where they didn’t fit. I still remember Johnnie playing with reels of cotton when Mum was sewing and referring to them as reels of cotting, much to Mum’s amusement.

It was written on the wall then that this toddler with the inquisitive mind and yearnings for perfection should become a philosopher. But country education gave him no grounding. He settled for English and at school consistently topped his class in this subject.

After primary school at St Mary’s in Wagga, Johnnie went on to the Christian Brothers’ High School, known today as St Michael’s Regional High School. In 1941 while a pupil there, he learned to play the violin. His teacher was Sister Keiran, an Irish nun with the Presentation Order in Wagga. Lessons were at St Joseph’s Primary School in Johnston St, in a tiny room called the music room.

At the time, I was teaching the Kindergarten Class at St Joseph’s. (I was not a trained teacher - just helping out because a nun was sick). One afternoon a very distressed Sister Keiran came to me.

I gave Johnnie an awful leathering today, she said.

Oh?

He will not practise at home and he will not read the music.

So?

So I leathered him.

My sisterly heart leapt to Johnnie’s defence. But he played well today, I heard him.

He plays well all the time, but he plays by ear and I’ve just woken up to him. Somehow he gets me to play the piece through first then away he goes. Perfect. He will not learn to read. So I leathered him. With my tongue, you know - I wouldn’t hit him!

While under the tuition of Sister Keiran, when Johnnie was twelve or thirteen, he sang Brahm’s Lullaby as a duet with Teddy Haynes in the Wagga Wagga Eisteddfod. But they were beaten into second place by Shirley Renits and Teddy’s sister, Rosemary. Johnnie remembers the occasion and even today insists that it was his fault they lost.

I had no stage presence. I hated being up there with all those people gawking at me, while the others loved the stage and were at ease.

Teddy Haynes in adult life had a music shop in Baylis St, selling music instruments. His sister Rosemary stayed with the performing arts and at one stage taught dancing. Shirley Renits went into the Entertainment business in Sydney. Johnnie never changed. While every bit as talented as they were, being gawked at was not for him.

When John left school he went to work in the machinery department of R. J. Brunskill & Co. He was put in the spare parts section where he did not want to go, which he didn’t like and where he didn’t stay. He left and went to his older brother, Bill who was farming a property called Mt Meloguel at Naradhan near Lake Cargelligo.

When he came back to Wagga Wagga he joined Hardy’s Timber Merchants for three years, working on the moulding machines, shaping timber for such things as architraves, window frames, door jambs, floor boards. He liked this work and his family today will verify that he has put his training to good use!

I have a vague recollection of John being at Buswells sometime in my early married life, presumably to give Don a hand with the seasonal farm work. Don asked John to make a tuckerbox.

There’s the wood, says Don, you’ll find some tools in the shed.

John was too long in the shed for the impatient Don: Come on, what the hell’s keepin’ ya? he yelled.

I’m looking for a chisel for the joins, was yelled back.

Never mind the chisel, can’t you see the bloody nails?

I’m a joiner, not a carpenter.

Well bring the nails and I’ll make ya into a bloody carpenter.

To this day, Don, now eighty-seven, remembers the incident with amusement. He will laugh and say, Johnnie’s a joiner you know, not a carpenter. Johnnie remembers it too and he laughs and says, That’s right, I’m a joiner!

Johnnie worked on the Salmon family farm, Rockview, at The Gap - about fifteen or twenty miles from Wagga Wagga on the northern side of the Murrumbidgee. But that’s a story with an unhappy ending, the age-old story of personality clashes between brothers.

Johnnie eventually went back to the trade he wanted to learn at R.J. Brunskill’s and he will tell you today, I’m a motor mechanic. But I think he is a bit more than that, because I have seen certificates which his son Danny dug out of the bottom drawer and had framed about four years ago. They hang in John’s garage (where he hopes no one will see them?) and they state he is a member of the Institute of Automotive Mechanical Engineers.

When John was about eighteen or nineteen, he decided to make one of his dreams come true and he took flying lessons at Eric Condon’s flying school. He did well, and came the time when both Eric and John agreed he was ready to fly solo. But Eric kept postponing the big test and Johnnie reluctantly gave away his dream. Why did he do that?

I couldn’t afford what seemed to me to be extra and unnecessary lessons, he told me. They cost three pounds an hour and though I was working at the time, I was only getting three pounds a week!

In 1955, John married Dawn Musto, of Wagga Wagga. Dawn was in about fourth class at St Joseph’s when I was teaching kindergarten there. She was a bright little girl. When the nuns wanted someone to go on an errand outside the school grounds, they would call on Dawn Musto because she’s so good and reliable.

John and Dawn had six children. But Someone Else can take up that story.

MARY VERONICA

B. 30 Jan. 1925. D. 15 March 1989.

MARY was also a natural when it came to music. She was playing melodies by ear on the piano before she began school, no doubt inheriting her talent from her mother who played piano, mouth organ and accordion, all by ear. When mother was in her sixties, she decided to teach herself to read music. But like John, she found it more enjoyable the other way and she didn’t progress very far.

The date today is 11 September 1995. It is the anniversary of our mother’s death thirty-two years ago. Mary joined her in March 1989.

My earliest memories of Mary see her playing the piano, her little legs not reaching the floor when she sat on the stool. I held her in awe because she could play real tunes that were pleasant to listen to. When I played, Mum would call from the kitchen, Get away from that piano whoever it is. She knew who it was all right, because whatever keys I hit only produced discordant noise.

Mary had blue eyes and Mum would set her brown hair in rags, producing beautiful curls. A well pressed ribbon on top would set her apart. Secretly I envied Mary’s curls. I had straight hair parted down the middle and a bobby pin on each side. At a school reunion, fifty years after I’d left school, a woman came up to me and said: I remember you. You had the straightest hair in the school!

Mary was shy. Terribly, terribly shy. Even in primary school this plagued her and held her back.

In our early primary days, Mary, Gloria and I walked to school from Salmon’s Hill, three miles each way. On Mondays we often bought our lunch at Sadlier’s shop in Coleman Street because there was no bread left for sandwiches after the weekend. We would be given three pence each. In the winter this bought two-penneth of biscuits and a piece of fruit. In the summer we juggled it so we had a penny each for an ice-block on the way home. Our budget would not stretch to ice-cream!

Mary was too shy to ask for her own purchases in the shop and Gloria or I would ask