Profile

Her name is Jocelyn, she rebuilt Kow Plains

22 September 2006, around 1.22pm… Jocelyn steps out from her new air-conditioned Holden hatchback into an extremely hot and dry Mallee spring day. Her short and very thin frame is dressed in a buttoned-up long-sleeve check cotton shirt, navy pleat-front trousers and sensible leather shoes.

Jocelyn walks to a weathered sign and points. “This is the remains of the Kow Plains Station complex, first settled in 1859,” she reads out loud. “The buildings are a tangible reminder of pastoral days and show an outstanding use of local timber and bush craftsmanship.”

She opens the rickety farm-style gate. This busy little woman is largely responsible for the rebuilding of the cluster of Kow Plains cypress pine buildings. She is very proud of the UNESCO ‘honourable mention’ plaque nailed to the main homestead’s wall.

The strong wind barely shifts her thin, short, grey hair. Unbothered by wind-driven dust and debris she walks with a slight bow-legged gait past the ‘Beware, deep wells in vicinity’ sign near to the original 1850s hut.

“There are about 20 wells in the area,” she says with the long vowels of an older woman who has lived most of her life in the outback. “They were dug down by hand through pure limestone. Ernie came over to help us find this well. There he was with his walking stick and he just pointed to it. It wasn’t even covered!

“My son went down there and cleaned it out. A man from Cowangie had a crane and lowered my son down in a drum.”

Herding the straying visitors back into the hut’s first room, she re-starts the Kow Plains story from the beginning.

“This is the original Kow Plains homestead,” she says of the now bare room, but still with bare dirt floors and small gaps between the wall’s cypress pine planks. “Kow Plains was founded by James Smith, also known as Piccaninny Smith. A rough diamond that Piccaninny – small in stature, drank, couldn’t write.

“The Kelly’s lived here for a while (after the McPhersons, after Piccaninny Smith), which is why we have all these good pictures,” Jocelyn says, gesturing with an arm-sweep to the self-framed black-and-white pictures on the wall.

“There’s little Coral Kelly and her dog. We asked Coral what she remembered from her time here, and she said ‘a lovely bougainvillea’. So we had her plant one four years ago at the opening.”

The bougainvillea has since died, like most new plants on the property. This is dirt-dry Mallee land, and there never seems to be enough water.

Jocelyn doesn’t consider herself a true Mallee local. “I came from South Gippsland – I’m a blow-in from 35 years ago,” she says as she moves the visitors towards the hut’s main living area.

The local Country Women’s Association (CWA) recently held a meeting in the hut’s main living area. “We heated the kettles in the fireplace there,” tuts the long-time CWA member.

“A couple of months ago a vintage car club came through. They came through at 9am so we decided to give them a cuppa here. One of the guys used the stove to make damper. They said it was the highlight of their trip!”

Jocelyn’s Kow Plains rebirth story picks up again with the mention of the Canberra-based heritage architect Pip Giovanelli. “We’d been struggling for 15 years. My husband had been coming in nailing the roof back on. We had a lot of the original wood, but everything else we found from other sources. We are real scavengers.”

“It was pouring with rain and Pip walked in and said ‘it’s better than I thought’. It’s probably the only one of its type still standing where it was originally built – people kept wanting to move it.”

She points out the “privy”, then the “pepper trees planted in the 1920s”, before walking the visitors to the larger main homestead built by Dugald McPherson who took over the leasehold from Piccaninny Smith in the 1870s.

“Dugald had plenty of money,” she says as she walks through the homestead front door and into rooms decorated with a scattering of era-relevant relics. “He had 12 children and sent them all to boarding school. He had properties everywhere.

“There’s Dugald over there in a kilt looking down upon you!”

Jocelyn urges the visitors to sign the Visitors' Book before leaving the homestead. She is aware that they are ready to move on, but persuades them to see the poll out back used to hang animal carcasses. They decline to check out the old channel a 10-minute windy walk away.

But she is pleased – the visitors acknowledge her two decades worth of tireless work, and leave impressed.

Back