Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows members of the Forshaw family working at Yeldham, their station near Burketown in Queensland not far south of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and in the makeshift family home during the wet season. Two of the daughters work with their goats in a stockyard. The camera pans to show the isolation of their home in the flat bushland and the gathering storm clouds above. The hardship faced by the family is revealed as the rain drips in through the unlined roof and is caught in cans below. A narrator tells their story in voice-over.

Educational value points

• A picture of family life on a remote cattle station is portrayed in this clip, a very different one from the romantic view of pastoral life conveyed by stories of Australian cattle barons and their families. This family lives in primitive conditions in a corrugated-iron shed with no door and its roof and walls unlined. Their continuing struggle to make a living is exceptional in an industry dominated by large pastoral companies with their enormous pastoral leases.

• The clip emphasises values of sacrifice and hard work to create a sympathetic picture of a pioneer family in the bush. Family members, including the children, engage in hard physical labour from an early age to assist in the running of the farm. Comfort is sacrificed for the sake of the larger goal of the success of the property, with the film vividly portraying the stoic endurance of family members as the rain leaks into their makeshift home.

• Growing up on farms or cattle properties in Australia can place high expectations on rural children, and this is clearly revealed in the clip. Both Valmae and Joanne Forshaw have been looking after the goats since they were young children. They are also expected to help with other chores in the home and outside when the boys are away earning money for the farm. All members of a farming family are expected to contribute to the family’s livelihood.

• Some aspects of the nature of the Gulf country of northern Australia are illustrated in the clip. Panning shots emphasise the low flat horizon of this sparsely populated region. The unimproved bushland is suitable for grazing, and pastoralism is the dominant land use throughout the Gulf region. The looming storm clouds indicate the tropical downpours that are a feature of the summer ‘wet’ with an annual 400-800 mm of rain bringing frequent floods.

• The rain that the family endures during the two or three months of the wet season not only forces the men to return to the station, but is also the lifeblood for the Gulf region’s rivers and grasslands. With 23 per cent of Australia’s surface water flowing through the wetlands and rivers in the Gulf country, the rains support the pastoral industry as well as the tourist and fishing industries.

• The sympathetic treatment of the Forshaws is typical of the way the television series A Big Country (1968-91) attempted to tell stories of the lives of ordinary people in rural Australia to its largely urban audience. The Forshaws’ struggle to succeed is told from their point of view in the narration, and the filming emphasises their stoic endurance as well as the drama of the natural world that their lives are so close to.

Two young women are tending goats in a stockyard on the Yeldham’s station near Burketown in Queensland.
Narrator Valmae is 16. She’s been looking after the goats since she was seven. Her younger sister, Joanne, began helping not much after her fifth birthday. They both love animals, but there were other chores like cooking and housework.

The camera pans to show the isolation of their home in the flat bushland and the gathering storm clouds above.
Narrator And when Ian went away after the first couple of years to join his father and older brother fencing, the girls had to take over some of the heavier station work like maintaining the bores and checking fences. In an emergency, one of the men usually managed to get home. But for seven long years, Elton and his two elder sons only visited Yeldham during the wet when they had to abandon their contract work in the bush for two or three months.

Elton walks barefoot through the mud towards the family’s makeshift home for the wet season. The storm breaks.
Narrator And when they did come home, it was for more of the same. All their hard-earned time and capital has been poured into stocking and improving the property, always at the expense of personal comfort. At Yeldham, there is no escaping the rain.

Inside the house, tins on the floor capture the drips from the many leaks in the roof.
Narrator The only dry havens are the caravans parked near the house and used as bedrooms. There are no doors on the Yeldham house. The roof is unlined. To sit in the house itself through a night of rain is a little like sheltering under a leafy tree – not a hundred per cent.