THE EATHER FAMILY 

Peter and Olive have three children who all attended school in Baralaba state school, then finished their education in Rockhampton.  The eldest, Ken, joined the farm partnership with his parents when he left school.  He is currently living in Sydney doing construction work.   Daughter Barbara and her husband.  Lyn, the youngest child joined the Farm Stay Partnership in 1993.

PETER EATHER - life as a nine year old

When I was nine years old the year was 1942.

Our school had just one teacher and there were nine children, 5 of us were from the same family.  I rode 6km to school sitting behind my sister on a horse.  The horse stood in a small paddock until school finished then we caught them again to go home.   As we rode to school we talked about what we thought it would be like when the Japanese army took over Australia and we would wonder if we would be allowed to go to school or sent to prison camps.  We had seen new Australian money made by the Japanese that our neighbour had brought home from New Guinea.

That year we had to dig an air raid shelter in the school grounds.

I was in Sydney to have my eyes tested and was on the Manly Ferry in the Sydney Harbour;  a week later the Japanese submarines were in that same Harbour.  

In this year we could write on paper with a pen that dipped in an ink well on the desk.  Before that we had used a slate with chalk.  A slate is a stone like a tile.

Our toilets were long drops (a big pit and a toilet on top).  We had a bath (the last one in had the most water).  The water was heated by a chip heater.  The water came from a well and a windmill.

The clothes I wore were old and already used by my brothers because of rationing.  My mother did the washing on Monday.  The clothes were put in a boiler and boiled with soap then rinsed in a tub and onto the clothes line.

OLIVE EATHER - life as a nine year old.

I started school with a governess.  I rode my horse to school with two of my sisters and one of my brothers.  During the day we left our horses on what is now the school sports oval.  I liked riding to school because if there was a storm we use to get sent home earlier than the other kids.

We had a big long desk and a bench seat to sit on.  There were no biros we had ink pens and I had a slate for the first year or two but I was probably was using paper when I was nine.  I remember learning about cooking for six weeks; the classes were in a railway carriage.   

I had closed in shoes they were called sand shoes in those days.  We didn’t have a canteen, I remember when I was five years old the ants got into my sandwiches and my teacher gave me some money to go and buy some food from the local cafe.  The cafe ladies name was Mrs Richie.

We didn’t have a uniform; they were introduced in my last couple of years of school.  I finished school when I was 13 years old.  The uniform was blue and it was a pinafore which is like a dress with a blouse underneath.

At my home we had a shower but it was outside and there was only cold water.  So we only had showers in summer time.  We had to have a bath if we wanted hot water.

We use to wash our cloths in a copper which was a tub of water with a fire under it.

Our toilet had a wooden seat with a tin under it.  After we used the toilet we had to empty the tin down the paddock.

There was no electricity and we used lights and a fridge powered by kerosene.   We killed our own cattle for meat we never had sausages and we only had steak for 2 days the rest of the meat was kept in a big tub of brine.  Brine is a special mix of water and salt used to preserve meat.

We also had carbine light that use to make noises and we were frightened of it.  My Grandad use to tell us that it was going to blow up.

Olive Eather (Nee Oram)

PETER EATHER’S FAMILY
Peter Eather was born 29 January 1933 in Singleton, NSW.  Peter was the fourth of five children of Grace and Ivo Eather.  The family grew up on a wheat/sheep farm in an isolated area and Peter attended a one-teacher school.  Ivo was injured in France during WW1, at the Villers Bretonneeux on the Somme, 100km North of Paris. As a result, he spent years in hospital, then finally returned to his family at Bulga where his brothers were running farms.  He married Grace Pankhurst in 1926 and they reared 5 children on a farm called Harparary in NSW.   Ivo and his brother Arthur married sisters.

After leaving school Peter and his brothers joined a partnership and ran the property.  In 1954 the brothers were looking for more land.  They travelled North 1000km and bought a property 16km from Myella.  Peter and brother Don worked the new farm in Qld, while brother Dick and Harry continued to run the wheat/sheep farm in N.S.W.

Eventually the Eather brothers bought a farm for each other, then they ended their partnership.  The eldest, Dick, still owns the original farm in NSW and his son now runs it.

In 1964 Peter married Olive (nee Oram), a farmer’s daughter from Baralaba.  Olive was born 9 August 1943 in the Baralaba hospital.  She was the sixth of eight children of Digger and Cecilia Oram.  Olive worked on her family’s cattle property 10km from Myella.

OLIVE’S FAMILY ANCESTORS
Olive’s Great Grand parents Joseph and Elizabeth Oram married on 14th June 1865 in London and travelled to Australia on the “Bays Water” three months later.  Joseph worked for his passage as a baker on the ship and paid for his wife’s ticket.  They started a family in Central Queensland Joseph bought and worked a butcher shop in Blackwater (2hrs west of Myella).  Joseph’s son Louis had 12 children.  Louis and his son Lewis (Olive’s father) bought a property at Baralaba for 90 pounds in August 1930. This farm is still in the family.  It was given to Olive’s brother Bill.  Out of the 8 children 7 of them have been cattle farmers at one stage.  Currently 4 of them are still farmers.  Olive is the forth child on the horse.  She had to ride her horse 6.5miles to school for a few years until there was a school bus.

PETER'S FAMILY FARM
The first Eather came to NSW in 1790 and Peter is a 7^th generation descendent.  Peter’s eldest Brother Richard (Dick) lived most of his 80 years at Baan Baa on the portion of land which was first settled by Eathers in 1840.  The block has been in Eather possession since 1910.  They have raised sheep and cattle and farmed, growing lucerne for hay, wheat, sorghum and other crops.  Peter moved from this farm to Queensland when he was 21 years old.

HOW  THE  NAME  EATHER  BEGAN
The name Eather first appeared in Australia 1790.  A man called Thomas Heather was sent to Australia as a convict. The name changed from Heather to Eather gradually.   A variety of spelling errors appeared in the records of baptisms, marriages and death certificates; but there was a low level of literacy.  Thomas Heather’s name was first printed as Thomas Eather when he received his first land grant.  Heather was spelt when he applied for his second land grant and Thomas Either was written on his will.  Soon after 1827 the name was frequently spelt 'Ether' or 'Eather'.

THOMAS HEATHER, OUR CONVICT ANCESTOR
Our ancestors Robert Heather (1710-1780) and his wife, Elizabeth were living in Bexley in Kent when their youngest son Thomas Heather (1764-1827) was born.  Thomas had no formal schooling and went through life unable to sign his own name.  At the age of 23 years Thomas Heather was working as a labourer at Chislehurst when he was arrested and charged for robbery.  Found guilty, he was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to a 14yr sentence.  After a year in prison Thomas was moved to the hulks and on 19 January 1790 he sailed from England with the second fleet on the "Neptune".  The ship arrived at Sydney Cove on 28 June 1790.
The conditions under which the Second Fleet sailed were different from those of the First Fleet.  Of the 520 convicts that embarked the Neptune 31% died.  Merchants were contracted per convict,
the more deaths amongst the convicts en route, meant more surplus food left for
sale at the ports visited. The following year Elizabeth Lee (1773-1860), an 18 year old Lancashire lass arrived on the "Mary Ann".  She had worked in England as either a domestic servant or a shop assistant and pleaded guilty for stealing from her employer a grey cloak valued at six pence.   Elizabeth was sentenced to "be sent and transported to some part beyond the seas for a space of 7 years".
The ship, 'Mary Ann' left England on 16 February 1791 and arrived at Port Jackson 9 July 1791.  It was the fastest voyage out by a convict ship up to that date, only 9 convicts dying on the way.

Thomas and Elizabeth Heather married within a few months of her arrival in the colony and they had 8 children.   Land was granted to Thomas on 1 June 1797.  He still had five years of his sentence to complete, but Elizabeth had recently completed her sentence.  Thomas was granted a thirty-acre farm named "Eather Farm" situated at Windsor on the Hawkesbury River in NSW.  The conditions of the grant were: that he should live on the land for five years; that the land would be free from all taxes for ten years; and that he was to make improvements and cultivate the land deemed fit for naval purposes.  They fulfilled these requirements and, in 1803, they sold the farm for eighty-nine pounds.

In 1802, Thomas was granted his ticket-of-leave; then, in 1820, he sought another grant of land and was granted fifty acres.  Thomas was living in Windsor as a store keeper during his last years before he died, aged 63 years.  Elizabeth passed away in Richmond at the age of 88 years.  All of her children lived to at least eighty years of age. She left 157 descendants.