passing of a cream boat

7/28/2019 Passing of a Cream Boat

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ational Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page4896901

PASSING OF THE

CREAM-BOAT

AUSTRALIA

. The men of the Sunrise start before dawn for a day of muscle

knotting work in scenes of peace and high beauty . . . Theirs

is the last boat on the milk-can run on the Manning River, N.S.W.

DELTA COUNTRY of the Manning River.The Pacific Highway here crosses theDawson River, a Manning tributary.

FIRST FLUSH of dawn light is reflected on theriver surface at Croki, a riverside village, one of the

stopping places on the daily cream-boat run.

FARMHOUSE on Oxley I sl an d. In the days when

the river was the onlyaccess

tomainland towns,

it was convenient to build close to the water

MORNING MIST, rising from t he water, is tingedwith gold by the sun's first rays as the cream-boatnears a milking shed in this rich dairy country.

APPROACHING a jetty at Oxley Island to take on

the cans of milk waiting on their " tram." Thebroad waterway is Scotts Creek, a delta channel.


2/3ational Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page4896902

LOADING on Ghinni Creek, i n t he Manning River delta.

I^HE great tidal riversof northern New South

Wales have been a dependable route for trans-

porting even the heaviest loads. Early setders alongthe North Coast mostly

arrivedby ships which

could navigate many miles up-river, and it wasnatural for settlement to begin

on t he r ich r iver

nats, where communications wer e mos t r el iable.While

land-clearingcontinued and farms spread inland,

the river remained the highway. A glance at the mapof

northern New South Wales will show that all the maintowns on the coastal plain have been built along thebanks of these rivers. This also applies to long-establishedindustries such as sugar mi ll s a nd dairy factories.

In the days when roads were poor o r e ve n non-existentand horse- or bullock-drawn vehicles the only means of

transport on land, riverboats could give a relatively fastand reliable service. So, during the lat ter part of the.as*

century and up to the 1940s, the northern riverswere busy with water traffic. Not so many years ago,

Jneweekly steamer from Sydney could be seen crossing the

"ar at the entrance to any o f t hes e rivers.

Today, commercial boats have decreased in number to

avery few as their work is taken over by faster and more*"'cient road

transport, replacing a vigorous and colorfulperiod in t he development of the country.

Theestua ry o f the Manning River with its broad delta

and 12 or ioislands, separated by deep waterways, has

supported r iv er boats f or a much longer time than manyother areas.

The delta is about eight miles wide, from Crowdy Headin the north, down through Harrington to OH Bar in

the south, and covers about 52 square m il es . I t is onlyin recent years that

its main islands have been connected

to the mainland by bridges.The "cream-boats" o f t he Manning River the boats

that carry m ilk f rom dairy farm to factory now representa passing era in the history of the North Coast primary

industry.

The first cream-boat to operate on the river was the

Story and pictures by RAYMOND FERRIS

steam launch Premier, built at Coopernook shipyard onthe Lansdowne River, a tributary of the Manning. It

made a daily run down from the district's first co-operative

factory,on Mitchell's I sland, t o the t own s o f Coopernook

and Langley Vale, as well as Dumaresq and Oxley Islands.

Some time later a second steam launch, with the colorful

name of Yankee Jack, was bought to extend the service

to the r iver towns of Lansdowne and Wingham. This boatwas originally a trader on the Macleay River.

The steam launches were

eventuallyall

replaced bydiesel-engined boats. The last of these left on the cream

boat run is the Sunrise, which will be taken o ff ear lyin the coming year.

The Sunrise can carry up to 150 cans of milk, or 1200

gallons. Now that bridges to the islands have made possiblethe use of stainless-steel tanker trucks, each with a capacityof 2600 gallons, it is understandable t ha t t he last of thecream-boats should be nearing the end of its se rvi ce tothe dairying industry.

The run is concentrated around the edges of the deltaand a short distance along the lower tributaries of the

Manning, where the older farms lie close to the riverbank.The boat covers a distance of 50 miles a day and collects60 to 80 cans of milk.

Many of the older men living in the Manning Valleys ta rted out in life working the cream-boats, an occupationf or t he physically fit. The eight-gallon cans of milk havean

all-up weight of 1181b. and in those times the skipperof the boat and his assistant, loading and unloading 150cans in one day 's run, would lift a t l ea st 1 5 t on s.

It was heavy work and some of the cream-boat menare still remembered along the r iver for thei r feats of

strength and stamina. There are stories of these m en c on -

tinuing the daily pickup with the difficulties of bad weatherand floods added to the normally strenuous work.

Over the years the cream-boats have played their partin f lood r el ie f work, when heavy rains on the headwatersaround Gloucester have

brought a fresh down the river,covering the valley's flood plains and the i sl and s i n the

CONTINUED OVERLEAF


3/3ational Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page4896904

Passing ot the

cream-boatFROM PREVIOUS PAGE

delta. Mitchell's Island is the only one with a hill; the

others are low-lying, rich silt flats rising six to tenfeet

above the water .

The present cream-boat run begins soon after 4.30

a.m. f rom the Co-operative Dairy Soc iety 's fac tory at

Taree. During winter the first two and a half ho urs o f

negotiating river channels and dropping off empty milk

c an s is done before the first light begins to brighten the

sky.

This is where the rivennan's knowledge of channels,

mudbanks, and the position of the islands comes to the

fore. And on mornings when mist has settled on the riverthe work is e ven more difficult, particularly when the

loading jet ty being sought i s a nar row walkway protrudingonly 20ft. out from the riverbank.

When travelling along the channels in these conditions,

the skipper c an s ee absolutely nothing beyond a few yardsand navigation is by "feel."

The first flush of dawn on the river is a beautiful sight,w it h t he del ic ate

pastelt in ts of the brightening sky

reflected in the water, when the night wi nd has died

away and t he a ir is calm. At t his time, even on aclear

morning, small areas of low river mist begin to rise,

grey-bluein color and

turning to tendrilsof

vaporous

gold as the sun's first rays touch them. All too soon the

warming light evaporates the mist and its brief beauty

passes to be replaced by crisp morning sunlight.

Unloading empty cans and loading the milk goes

on a s the boat works its way along the maze of waterways.Sometimes the full cans of milk are waiting at the end of

thejetty;

at other stopping places the farmer will be

moving his load on to the landing as the boat pulls in.

A good, hard lite

Here there is time for a few words whi le the work is

completed, b ut t he skipper can't wait long as there is

s ti ll a fair distance to travel.

At most stopping places the heavy ca ns a re s til l trans-

ported from the milking shed to the jetty on small

trolleys,known as trams, which run on wooden rails. The

tr am is pushed by hand and usually carries four cans.

Between pickups, while the boat is travelling alongbroader reaches, there is t ime for a sandwich and cup of

tea or coffee and to watch pelicans, cormorants, and

graceful wading birds collecting their morning food. An

occasional shouted greeting will be heard f rom a passing

fishing-boat or men working oyster leases. Farmhouses,

grazing cattle, and s tretches of

mangrovesalong the island

banks appearand then recede into the distance. It is a

good but hard life in the open a ir , and the cream-boatman

gets toknow everybody along the river.

With most of the pickup completed after calling at

Mitchell's, Mambo, and Oxley Islands, having sailed

along Scotts Creek, the Lansdowne River, and Ghinni

Creek, the cream-boat turns 'back toward Taree.

Moving along the various waterways, it passes underseveral of the bridges that have spelt the finish of this modeof river tr ansp ort . It s broad hull settled a few inches

deeperin the water under a l oad o f nearly three tons of

milk,the vessel moves

upriver at a steady ten knots. As

it passes the riverside village of Croki and moves on toward

the flat expanse of Dumaresq Island, the brief stops con-tinue to collec t ful l cans that were left as empties i n t hedarkness of

early morning.Taree s oo n c om es into view. There the milk ca ns a re

offloaded to a stepped conveyer belt, which carries them

up the steep riverbank into the factory, and so the day'swork of the cream-boat man draws to an end.

Boattor

sightseersMany people along the r iv er w il l regret the passing

of the cream-boats; it w as a daily event they could set

the clockby. However, like many other means of transport

such as coaches and bullock wagons, which he creamboats

partly replaced, their t ime has gone. To the peopleof

the northern rivers they will always remain as a memoryof times when life, even though hard, was a Kttlc more

leisurely.

The ultimate fate of many of the boats withdrawnfrom service is not known; at least one finished its daysn a mudbank in the lower Manning. The later boats,

sjmilarto the Sunrise and built by craftsmen at a Taree

shipyard, were designed with a broad beam and shallowdraft for river work, but their hul ls still retain the smoothhnes and curves of a good sea boat. One cream-boat has

recently been converted into a tour boat; it makes dailyfrips from Taree upstream to Wingham,

or down to theis.ands of the

delta, and is proving very popular withvisitors.

Asthey step aboard, I wonder how many of these people

are aware of the part played by this brightly painted boatln

the

historyand

developmentof the

ManningRiver

district?

DESTINATION TAREE, the principal town on the Manning River . I ts

two dairy factories process all the milk produced inthe district, and

it is here the cream-boat will unload at the end of its daily run.

HEADING FOR TOWN, with itsheavy

deckload ofmilk,

the

Sunrisemakes a steadyten knots, lt will be off the run soon, and then all

t he d ist ri ct' s mi lk will go by road - there are bridges to the islands.

passing of a cream boat

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