The Longmire Farm around 1950 was 1500 acres (600 hectares) in area, on both sides of what is now Longmire Road and east of the Blyth-Balaklava road. The homestead area was two miles south of Kybunga, a small rail siding famous for its very large stacks of wheat. There were two lovely stone farm houses on the Longmire Road and only 50 yards from it. The other was occupied for many years by Grandpa and Grandma Longmire and was set back about 150 yards from the road. The farm never had a name and the house was known as The Homestead.

The homestead area and most of the farm was set on a naturally-open red earth plain with the Clare Hills to the feast. Prominent Hills to our east included The Peak (noted for its pine tree on the top and bald otherwise), Tower Hill (biggest hill), seven sisters (seven low hills all the same shape). To the west were the sandhills of the mallee country and the backdrop of The Hummocks on the horizon. Sunsets were often spectacular. The sky was clear at night and the southern cross was high in the sky in summer. Winds blew often and strong, especially north wind (hot and dry and dusty) the sou-westerly (showery and cool). The easterlies were usually cold too. Away from the homestead there were only about 3 trees on the farm, although a few more on roadsides. The farm was devoted mainly to wheat and sheep. It was originally settled by Longmires in the 1870s so had been with the one family for three generations. South Australia was the largest wheat producing state of Australia in the late 1800s and the mid north of South Australia was the centre of this food bowl. The Longmire farm had rich red earth throughout.

The Longmire farm had a railway line along its eastern boundary. The line ran from Port Wakefield to Gladstone via Bowmans, Balaklava, Halbury, Hoyleton, Kybunga, Blyth, Hart, Brinkworth, Yacka, Gulnare and Georgetown. Steam trains ran along the line a few times a week. In the summer the trains were always a potential fire hazard, and several times fires burnt near ripe crops.

The farm had signs of draught horses everywhere. We even had one old Clydesdale at home. They were used on the farm from the 1870s to the 1940s. There was a big set of yards with rails an old gear on the farm to do with the horse-drawn era. This included a couple of big wagons, several horse-drawn drays (tippers), an old Ridley wheat stripper, horse feeding troughs, endless horse collars, reins, shackles and horse-drawn ploughs, cultivators and harrows.

Sadly the era of the draught horse had gone. The nice long shed known as the Stables had horse feed troughs and a chaff shed out the back. A horse-driven chaff-cutter was still in place and we had haystacks made from sheaves of hay, nicely finished to shed rain. Chaff was still cut around 1950 and was-stored in the chaff shed.

By 1950 Dad had moved to tractors for farming. He was an early adopter of some farming techniques, and had bought a small caterpillar tractor, wheeled tractors and some equipment suited to tractors, The standard 3-year cropping- pasture rotation in 1950 was wheat: pasture: pasture/fallow. With average rain of about 17in (470mm) thepractice at the time was to conserve moisture by ploughing the land in July-August of the year before planting wheat. That land may have been cultivated and harrowed another 5-6 times before being planted to wheat in May-June of the next year. The organic matter of the soil was being depleted. The pasture year included growing clovers and medics sometimes with a cover crop of oats. The soils of the Longmire farm were red-earth loams In a good year wheat yielded 12-14 bags/acre (about 1 t/ac), some paddocks yielding up to 18-20 bags/acre. All of the wheat harvested was bagged and later the bags were sewn before being carted to the wheat stacks in Kybunga, the wheat was sold to the Australian Wheat Board. Some bags of wheat were retained for next years seed and the seed was cleaned and treated by Alf Hannaford’s mobile seed business about February.

In a dry year a small crop would be harvested although some paddocks would be cut early for hay (maybe 2 bags/acre). Dad was keen on buying new machinery and getting good crops. Phosphate fertilisers were planted with wheat (1 bag superphosphate/acre). The phosphate fertiliser came from Wallaroo where the fertiliser was landed on the docks from overseas. Fertiliser came in bags which weighed a bit less than a bag of wheat. It was hard work filling the combine seeders with wheat seed and fertiliser, especially on cold wintry days. We had about 1000-1200 sheep. There were merino breeders and rams. Some merino ewes were mated to Border Leicester rams also. A killer wether was slaughtered once a week. So we ate a lot of lambs fry (liver), legs of mutton, mutton stews and mutton chops. Cold mutton was standard for sandwiches too.

Dad did the killing and I recall Bill not being very keen to be at the kill. I used to enjoy being there and so did lan, as did the sheepdogs who got a few scraps. Our dogs were rarely tied up and found a home in the garage or under a tree. They liked camping under or aboard vehicles (old trucks and buckboards) too. The dogs were a bit of a motley bunch. They helped to varying degrees when sheep were rounded up and in the yards. I recall Dad yelling and shouting and waving his hands a fair bit at the dogs when they were doing the wrong thing. I think I picked up that habit.

We had a few horses on the farm. They were typical farm horses who did not want to be caught without some feed as a bribe. There was one black pony who sat down on his haunches when got on him. The others were not handled much and were rogues. Our saddlery was very basic and enough to make an equestrian turn up their nose.

Without trees for cover, the poor old sheep had to live out in windy weather which got up to 120 deg F on hot summer days and down to near freezing on cold wintry days. They were tough animals who rarely died from the weather. More died from lambing problems, illnesses and fly strike. The sheep needed a lot of work.

Hay was fed to the sheep when feed got low, usually from Feb (after stubble feed became low)-May (when rains bring on next year’s pick). Must have been around 195 when lan was a little tacker driving the truck while Dad was up on the truck tray feeding out hay to the sheep. lan planted the accelerator just as Dad was down the back and he went flying off the back. You can imagine the cursing and swearing that followed. Not sure if lan got the job of driving again after that. He might have been shifted to chief hay feeder on the back. Shearing was a fun time with local shearers having a lot of fun with us young boys and whoever else was around the shearing shed. The shearers worked to union hours, 7.30-9.30, 10.00-12.00, 1.00-3.00, 3.30-5.30. Good shearers like Jim Eccleston from Halbury and-Bob Lamont would shear about 80-90 a day, only getting a ton with the best going.

Mum went out of her way to cook nice meals for the shearers and they would get a nice lot of sultana cake, meringues, rock buns and very nice hot meals or salads. Dad was generous to the shearers and always made sure they left with their beers and cheques with a bit of a bonus.

Mum did a lot preparing meals (called breakfast, dinner and tea) and morning and afternoon “lunches”. Often we went out with Mum with the food. Mum used to milk cows and feed chooks and animals as well as look after the garden. I used to help her with that as did lan and Bill. I used to enjoy helping with the garden and growing and watering flowers, veges and fruit trees. The garden was always a battle because of the winds. The lawn we had was tough old buffalo grass. We had galvanised iron fences around the house but not many trees for windbreaks.

My favourite tree was the big old pine tree just outside home. It was easy to climb and there was always a bird or something of interest. It looked down over our backyard where we had many hours of cricket and end-to-end footy kicking. I recall Grandpa Longmire pulling up in his flash car (an old Studebaker? with smart finish) and chatting with me under that tree. That is the only recollection I have of him.

There were some very aggressive white-backed magpies on our farm, near home. They used to scare me when young. Also we had many sparrows (locally known as spoggies), swallows, galahs, chicken hawks, crows (chicken and egg thieves), some nice parrots, skylarks, quails and plovers. The plovers were good at looking after their chicks. And the skylarks had beautiful calls. Budgie flocks used to visit occasionally. There were no native animals: no kangaroos, no possums etc. Small bats would come out at night. We had rabbits (which dad used to gas and rip burrows), foxes, hares and pigeons that used to roost in various sheds.

In 1950 the lighting of our home and sheds was powered by a 32 volt system. We had a Windlite tower just out from the house coupled to the batteries and a diesel motor as backup in the generator shed. When some others in the district had kero lamps we had 32v lamps. We were fortunate.

We had a windmill in the well to the north of our house. There were no dams on our farm. Water was supplied by a pipeline which came from a good spring near the Peak in the Clare Hills SE of our farm about 10km from home. That watering system had been set up by the owners of Hughes Park.

Overall the Longmire farm was a very good enterprise with good crops and good prospects. Dad worked hard and was a very good farmer. He was generous and helped a few blokes set up in the Kybunga district. He was not afraid to spend a quid to make a quid. He was always willing to employ people when needed.