Close to home!
when I read the subject I for some reason thought of my dad, Noel Stanley Blegg.
When Noel was 19 he felt called to be a minister, so left his parents and the rest of the family in Tasmania and went to Melbourne to study for what he believed would be his life’s work and calling. He travelled from Hobart to Launceston to board the boat to take him across Bass Strait , on board with him were his 2 mates Milford and Robert also travelling for the same reason.
After his study was concluded and he was ordained, he thought he may be sent back to Tasmania, but to his surprise he was told he was going to Yarloop in Western Australia. He knew nothing about the place he had never heard of it, he found it wasn’t a suburb of Perth and he would have another train journey to Yarloop a timber cutting town in the south of WA . Traveling on the same train was another minister also going to the same part of the country also going to Yarloop.
Noel had been given the address of the house he would be living in, when he arrived it was a shed in the back yard of an old house with 2 bunks, a sink, and a small wood burning stove to cook on. It was January and really hot, and by the time they arrived it was rather late, but Noel and Wally were hungry and knew they had to find something to eat, they found some wood and set the fire in the stove, and the only food they found was rice, which Noel really liked, so that would do for tonight, they put some water in a big pan and threw in some of the jar of rice, they both decide that not having eaten since breakfast they thought they might need some more rice to eat so put in the rest of the jar, the rice quickly swelled, to they took some out and added more water, they did this 3 times they had half cooked rice in everything, so when the first lot was cooked they had some to eat, and then had to finish cooking the rest, fortunately they both liked rice so ate it for the next 3 days, plain and with milk and sugar for breakfast! Noel always loved rice, after hearing this story we wondered how he could still eat it!
For the time Noel was at Yarloop he held the church services out at the logging camp in a bag hut but mostly he said outside the bag hut, for music he played a trumpet given to him by his father many years earlier, that trumpet was passed on to one of his grandchildren many years later.
A few years later Noel married and when he was in any of the eastern states when ever dad and mum had holidays long enough they would drive to Western Australia and they always went to Yarloop.
After they retired and came across to spend some time with us we of course went to Yarloop.
On one of these holidays we found the shed that dad had lived in and worked from, it was his office as well and everything else. It was very small to be called a house, but as most of the loggers with their families lived under canvas perhaps what they had was better.