Wednesday, Jun 08, 2011 at 07:28
Hi Kerry
I worked at the old Frewena Roadhouse back in 1980 for about 10 weeks when my friend and I were touring Oz for a couple of years. We saw the job advertised when we were up in
Darwin and phoned up for it. The owner then was a right character called Mr Griffiths or “Griffo” by everyone, never knew his first name but he was a real hoot, we were told that the jobs were ours if we wanted and to get our asses down asap, he didn’t ask our names or anything! When we arrived 2 days later having stopped overnight at Dunmara on the way down Griffo was out, so we were told the “job terms” by one of the other workers, firstly we could stay for as long or short as we liked, no pay until we left, all meals included with an allowance of a couple of beers a day, any extra grog or cigarettes we had were written in a book and deducted when we got paid!. Griffo had a girlfriend (may have been a fiancé) who lived somewhere by Threeways, the name Philip Creek rings a bell and he used to disappear down to her every week for a couple of days leaving about 8 of us to run the place. There was a bar, petrol pumps and a few rooms for hire, I remember the whole place was put together out of corrugated iron, no air-con in those days and no proper fridges for the beer it was all kept in kind of deep freezers which were run from a generator and served up in cans – no glasses! It was mostly truckers who stopped by and occasionally we would get a coach stopping and have a rush of steak sarnies to do. I remember every month the local Aborigines would come down to collect their dole/government handout, as they couldn’t read or write they had to put a finger print in a book when they took their money, they would then go and buy a load of crates of warm beer, sit under the trees outside and get wasted for a couple of days until they had to go back to the station. There were 3 Cattle stations nearby (
well the near in outback terms) they were
Avon Downs, Brunnette Downs and one beginning with C but I can’t remember the name (I had a t-shirt with A.B.C. Stations on it), Frewena used to see the Jackaroos from these from time to time. I remember one night we were woken up by Griffo as he had a couple of beef cattle to slaughter, butcher and freeze before daybreak, apparently they had been let through a “hole” in the fence and came down to the nearest
waterhole, we were instructed to hold legs etc while it was all carried out in the middle of the night!
I remember a good couple of parties taking place while we were there, I can’t remember the reason but remember about 50 or so road trains parked up and down the road – it lasted for a couple of days before the beer ran out and they all headed off on their ways – no taco-graphs in the trucks then, they just put their foot down to catch up on their trip!
Our main entertainment was going out horse riding on the half dozen or so horses kept at the Roadhouse, I also remember seeing a horse being broken in “outback” style, all done and being ridden in a couple of days! I remember we filled up the old swimming
pool, but as there were no chemicals or pumps to clean it we only used it a couple of times to cool off before it got all manky and we couldn’t be bothered to empty it out with buckets again. We also had videos bought in by Griffo to watch in the evenings, again no
satellite tv back then and news was a few days old when the truckers left us their old papers.
It was certainly an experience working there and a shame that it is no longer on the map when it obviously played an important role in the war years!
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