Page:Gillespies Beach Beginnings • Alexander (2010).pdf/78

 home. What is known about them will be recorded towards the end of this account.

My mother, Margaret Clarke nee Williams, often reminisced that when they were old enough in WWI years, all the Williams girls would travel by horseback down to Paringa for a ball, taking their best clothes in a saddle bag. When the dancing ended they slept across double beds in a friend’s house, before saddling up and returning home. Nita Schramm described a similar journey to Weheka in approximately 1914, when she rode by horse over the Weheka Saddle on a bridle track to attend the Cook’s races there, dancing until 4 a.m. afterwards and bedding down across double beds at what was described as William’s boarding house.

When most of her girls had left home and prior to the building of the hostel at Fox Glacier, Julia did employ household help from among other South Westland families to cope with the work load. Lizzie Mulvaney’s name is in my mother’s autograph book and remember also that live-in school teachers often helped with household tasks in return for free board. One girl, Clara Coulson, later O’Sullivan from Paroa near Greymouth worked for Julia Williams in the early 1920s, and became a life-long friend and adopted aunt of our family.

When Fred Williams died in 1938, most of the heavy bush clearance had been done although work such as the removal of stumps and general tidying-up remained a challenge. Fencing was an ongoing chore. It was reported that at that time the farm carried about 2,500 sheep and 700 to 800 head of cattle. In accordance with the tradition and thinking of the times, Fred’s four sons inherited his land holdings. Young Fred inherited the family homestead as well for by that time his three brothers had married and had their own residences. Houses for Harry, Lawn and Pat Williams had been built from timber sawn by family members at the mill established for that purpose and for the Catholic Church, Our Lady of the Snows, a project dear to the heart of Julia Williams