Merrindie

A Family’s Farm

by C. R. (Bert) Kelly

Published by Author, 1988, [First Edition], ISBN 073162985, black and white photographs, illustrated endpapers, hardcover with illustrated laminated boards

Very Good Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, minor rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, no inscriptions (see photographs)

“This book is about the farm, how it came into the Kelly family in the 1870s, how it was developed, and what life on it was like for Bert and his siblings.  Nature gave the farm a fair rainfall by South Australian standards, fairly good soil, and a landscape of entrancing beauty.  The view from the homestead, which was built on a hilltop, across the valley of the Gilbert onto the Kapunda Hills, a view I shared from the neighbouring farm I owned for some twenty years, is one of the most satisfying I ever lived with, not excluding Tuscany or Provence of the Cotswolds.

The life lived in this pleasant though demanding environment is recalled in these pages.  Horses until after World War I dominated the work.  There were no tractors.  Long hours had to be spent providing feed for horses, serving it out to them in barns, attending to their harness, and rubbing them down, implements, which were small, such as the ploughs, harrows, drills, binders, reapers and harvesters.  There were also sheep (the Kellys formed a well-reputed Dorset stud) and a few cattle; and the fencing; and the never ending concern with water with rabbits, with mice plagues, with the depletion of soil and with invasions of weeds. – Walter Crocker (foreword)”