Childhood endeavours revisited

Allan, now living at Parkes with his wife Veronica, had always thought he’d won a significant competition as a child, but at 85 his memory of the event was rather dim.

That was until an acquaintance stumbled across a newspaper clipping from a 1941 issue of The Land which shed some light.

The clipping was about then 11-year-old Allan winning a competition which came with a fairly hefty prize package for the era.

Searching for answers, Allan paid The Land a visit and a page through our archives revealed more of the story.

During 1941 The Land marked its 30th anniversary with a “free Mutual Endeavour Competition” which kicked off in the March offering prizes up to 50 pounds for the reader who could increase the paper’s subscriptions.

According to a story which launched the competition, entry was free and all participants had to do was ask “friends and relations” to pay their subscription accounts to The Land.

For each year paid – either in advance or already owing – participants received 100 votes, while a subscription renewal for two years was worth 250 votes. The entrant with the highest tally of votes at the end of the 10-week the competition, which ran through the April and May, received the 50 pound first prize.

The competition drew 150 entrants.

At that time the Ziebarth family was living at Binya, east of Griffith, in the Riverina, and Allan was the second oldest in a family of six children.

Allan’s father, Frederick, ran a sheep and wheat enterprise on “Rosewood”, and was a longtime subscriber to The Land. “Dad found the competition in The Land and entered my name, although I can’t remember exactly why he entered in my name,” Allan said.

“I remember Dad and I did a lot of driving around the district drumming up subscribers, and Dad made lots of phone calls to others on my behalf.”

The effort paid dividends, because by the end of the competition Allan was just 1040 votes behind the winner, John Watt, “Pinkerton”, Greenethorpe, who had earned 28,140 votes, ahead of “Master Ziebarth” on 27,100 votes, who The Land reported “was not yet 12 years of age” and a member of The Land Beehive Club.

The Land also reported Allan’s mother, Ada, commenting he had “worked like a tiger for votes, writing dozens of letters”.

Allan’s second prize was a 40 pound open order – the equivalent of $2958 in today’s money – with Sydney retailer, Edward Arnold Pty Ltd, and Frederick made a trip to Sydney to claim the winning goods.

“I don’t remember a lot of what my father brought home, but it did include a typewriter for me,” Allan said.

“I was a member of The Land Beehive Club and had three or four pen friends I used to like to write letters, so the typewriter was really useful.”

Little did young Allan realise at the time how prominently letters would feature in his life – you see, he ended up spending more than 30 years on a mail run through central areas of the State.

Allan also tried his hand at farming as well as spending many years working part time as a bartender and manager.

By the early 1950s, aged 24, Allan bought a sheep and wool property at Barmedman, and became a subscriber to The Land in his own right.

Finding life on the land by himself rather lonely, Allan decided to sell the property by 1965 and moved to Tullamore to work part time at the Tullamore Hotel as a bartender – a job he continued for the next 35 years, working under 13 publicans in that time, and at times managing the business.

By 1973 Allan also took on a country mail run which covered 170 kilometres a day through parts of the Tullamore, Condobolin and Trundle districts and also included delivering The Land.

The three-days-a-week mail run – which in later years came back to two days a week – lasted 33 years, and Allan was able to continue working at the pub.

“I loved working the mail run – I liked the driving, meeting people at their mail boxes, and being my own boss,” Allan said.

“At Christmas time one year I found a box waiting for me at a mail box between Tullamore and Condobolin and a child jumped out yelling ‘Merry Christmas’ – it was a lovely surprise.”

About 90 per cent of Allan’s mail-run journey was across dirt roads but only once in the 33 years did floods stop him – that was during the late 1970s when a bridge was washed out.

“When I came across a road cut by water I used to drive up to the nearest house of a landowner to wait for the water to subside, having a cuppa and sandwich – people were always very welcoming,” Allan said.

“During the early years of the mail run I remember there was a lot of bread and groceries also being delivered with the mail – on some trips there was little room for me – but by the end of my time on the run it was just mail and papers as many of the smaller landholders had been bought out by larger ones and people had invested in freezers.”

Allan married Veronica in 1989, after meeting through mutual friends.

They also had their jobs in common, as Veronica had a mail run, undertaking the Tullamore town postal run from 1986-91.

Allan retired from the mail run in 2007 when he turned 77, and the couple retired to Parkes eight years ago this month.