Rose Hunt

Rose Hunt (1882 – 1967) was a battler, but Rose saw the value of opportunities! For that, she deserves to be remembered.

In 1903 Rose Hannah Moffatt of Cobargo married Albert Edward Hunt. Albert was a miner who had been helping his father work the Gem Gold Mine at Womban. When Albert married, he took out a lease on the Moruya Silver Mine, which yielded both silver and gold, and he and Rose went to live at Dwyers Creek, west of Moruya. They also bought a twenty-acre allotment nearby.

When Rose was expecting their seventh child it was found that Albert was suffering from 'dusted' lungs, a disease to which many miners were prone before mines were adequately ventilated. Not long after the birth of their daughter, Albert died. He was only 47.

This meant that, in 1921, after eighteen years of contentment and security, Rose was left to provide for five children, a new baby and herself. She owned a small farm, certainly, and had a roof over her head but she now had no income with which to feed and clothe herself and her children. There was no child endowment, no supporting mother's pension, no government help whatsoever in those days.

Despite her grief, Rose set to and coped. She kept the farm going. She milked, separated it and made butter. She tilled the soil and planted vegetables, then watered them with a stirrup pump strapped to her shoulders. She went into the bush, burnt logs and bark and made charcoal.
Her children helped when they were not at school. They rounded up the cows. They collected fallen branches and they kept the wood box full of chopped wood. They rode into town with the butter in a basket and sold it door-to-door. They trapped rabbits and sold them, helped separate the cream, collected the vegetables. One son heightened the sides of the old cart and took sacks of charcoal in for sale.

When they were about 14 and 16, he and his brother used their home-made carrier to cart firewood for sale, bush firewood they had cut and sawn themselves. As the children grew Rose needed more space, so she built an extra room, cutting the logs and stripping the bark herself. Whenever the tanks ran dry she hauled water up from the creek in two kerosene tins attached to a shoulder yoke. Those children old enough would help, with buckets appropriate to their size.

When they became old enough the children attended the Dwyers Creek primary school. At first classes were held in a simple slab hut, but later a more substantial building was used. Although it was always a one teacher school (the teacher’s wife, though, was expected to conduct sewing classes – but she wasn’t counted!), at one stage there were thirty pupils at Dwyers Creek school.
The little settlement slowly grew during the 1920s. As well as miners, sleeper cutters and bark strippers came to live there. More bark huts, more tents and several substantial buildings of logs appeared as the population increased.

Wondering how to increase her income, Rose noticed that many of the workers were single men who, after a long hard day, would arrive back to their tents tired and hungry and have to cook a meal for themselves. This she saw as an opportunity, so she converted the long back room of her house into a dining room and, using an 'anthill' bread oven she had built herself, and her camp oven, she cooked and served three course meals, accompanied by her home-made bread. All they could eat for 2/6 (25 cents)!

In her large soup kettle, hung over the open hearth, she made hearty soups and in her camp oven, hung the same way, she roasted meats and her home-grown vegetables. She made bread and cakes, pies and puddings in her bread oven.

The miners so appreciated her cooking it was not long before she had to employ two girls to help her.

Rose was insistent that everything be done properly. The silver was always polished and the wooden floor scrubbed white, as were the table tops. The hearth was whitewashed with pipeclay which the children found in pockets in the creeks and brought home in buckets.

Rose’s day always started before dawn, yet she sat in the lamp light until quite late at night crocheting bodice tops for women better off financially than she.

Although her main concern was always to make enough money to feed and clothe her children and to give them a decent start, Rose had a strong community spirit. She was always ready to assist in the many trials that beset people living in the small, isolated area.

One thing that irked Rose was that after a week's hard work, she and her children, together with many of the other inhabitants of Dwyers Creek, had to trail into Moruya each Sunday to attend church. For her, this was just another problem to be solved. So, once again, she sawed poles, and cut 58 burrawangs for the roof. With these she constructed a small church at the front of her house. She made some stools and somehow obtained a little old pump organ. Services of various denominations were soon being held there, with the ministers travelling out from Moruya every Sunday.

Growing her own vegetables was not enough for Rose. She also grew her own fruit, putting in the orchard herself. ln her eighties she was still supplying the families of her children! And her new potatoes were always ready by Melbourne Cup Day!

In what should have been her retirement. with the children grown and gone their own ways, Rose Hunt gave up her home and went share-farming with her sons. When she finally acknowledged that even her capacity for hard work had limits, she moved into Moruya, channelling her energy into her vegetable and flower garden.

Rose Hunt passed away in Moruya in 1967.