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Jack Archer's furniture and tools

Stanthorpe and District Historical Museum
12 High Street
Stanthorpe QLD, 4380

Returned men like John ‘Jack’ Kinder Archer learned their skills on the job when they took up land at Pikedale Soldiers’ Settlement north-west of Stanthorpe on Queensland’s Granite Belt.

Neighbour and fellow returned soldier Ted Lomas recalled Jack’s arrival at Amiens to take up his 127-acre block:

He was pushing a bicycle and I often wondered since, how he pushed it all the way from Stanthorpe, because it was piled high with all sorts of gear necessary to start a home in the bush. There were blankets, a tent, clothes, food, tools, cooking utensils and tinware for eating from.

The blocks were allocated by ballot and each man was granted a mortgage for £625 regardless of the acreage or value of the land. The loan was to cover the costs of clearing the land, establishing a home, acquiring farming equipment and the planting of their crops – it was insufficient for their needs.

The trees on Jack’s block and his labour were his only available resources and he constructed a rudimentary shelter before his wife Nellie joined him. Ingenuity and make-do were necessary and examples of his resourcefulness can be seen in his furniture and various implements in the Stanthorpe museum.

Nearly 40,000 returned men obtained land under various soldier settlement schemes across the country. In Queensland the Government contributed £100,000 to the Pikedale Soldiers’ Settlement and rail access to the settlement. The now disused line had sidings named for Western Front battles – Fleurbaix, Pozières, Bullecourt, Passchendaele, Bapaume, Messines and Amiens – names familiar to the recently returned soldiers. A training farm was established in 1918 to give basic instruction in orchard management to the soldier settlers – with varying degrees of success.

Despite a supportive and tight-knit community many settlers walked off their land. Of the 700 men who settled under the Pikedale scheme by 1922 less than 400 remained. For some, the farms were too small to be sustainable, heavily timbered and poorly drained; their occupiers under resourced, without the necessary skills and at times hampered by poor markets.

By the Second World War, only twenty-five of the settlers remained. Amongst them was Jack Archer, whose name regularly appeared in newspapers as a prize winning apple grower at Amiens.

A makeshift rake made by Jack Archer from a forked branch of a black wattle sapling.
This float used to smooth concrete. It is constructed of wood from a packing box.
Corner hutch constructed by Jack Archer for use in the cottage he built on his soldiers’ settlers block at Amiens. It had five shelves and was constructed from medium sized tree branches roughly sanded and enclosed at the back with fence pallings.
Two men clearing land at Amiens are dwarfed by the roots of a eucalyptus tree.
Portrait of Driver Jack Archer.
Baby Tom Archer aged six months in a blanket-lined washtub in front of the bark-covered wall of the house, 1920. The door is constructed of a packing case inscribed ‘J Archer, Pikedale, Stanthorpe, Qld’.
The Archer family at their homestead ‘Kurrawong’, c. 1923. The home and other structures were built from trees felled on the block. In the driveway can be seen an Overland vehicle.
Sign post showing 9 signs 'Amiens Messines Bapaume Passchendaele Bullecourt Pozieres Fleurbaix' These were the names of the sidings on the Amiens rail line between Cottonvale and Amiens.

References

Further information

Stanthorpe and District Historical Museum

Website: Stanthorpe and District Historical Museum
Phone: 07 46811711
Email: info@stanthorpehistoricalsociety.org.au
Mail: PO Box 327, Stanthorpe Qld 4380

Amiens (Qld) History Association
Website: Amiens (Qld) History Association