My Father wrote the story of his life, this is his description of one of the houses he called home during the depression.

The Bag Hut was exactly as it sounds, the uprights of the walls were timber logs cut from Red Gum trees with Hessian attached to make the walls, the hessian was coated with white wash to help make it waterproof, it did have an Iron Roof but it did not have a floor, only Mother Earth which Mum kept covered with old wheat bags. It was two rooms with a little ‘lean to’ attached, this is where I slept, the sleepout did not have a door only a piece of hessian hanging down. On the very cold nights I would pull up the “wagga” Mum had made me. It was two wheat bags sewn together and lined on one side with material so as not to be too rough, but it was warm. It was from here that I went to school, and my memory becomes somewhat clearer as to the happenings in my life. The Bag hut was about 1 mile from the Western Highway on a sand hill covered with Bracken Fern, some 400 yds from the junction of the Little Wimmera River (officially called Mt. William Creek) and Mackenzie Creek. This was a good position to be because we only had a small water tank for drinking water and had to carry water from the river for washing and bathing. Every Saturday we would carry up two 4-gallon tins of water from the river, Mum would heat this in the copper, and we would have our weekly bath. There was no bathroom in the hut, so we were bathed in the kitchen, the bath was a galvanised bath about 30 inches long and 12 inches high. We were bathed one after the other in the same water, it must have been pretty dirty by the time we were finished. Bath day was always on Saturday as we had to go to Sunday School and Church on Sunday. During the week Mum kept us clean, washing our faces and hands with a wet flannel, always remembering to do behind the ears. Even when we grew up Mum would always tell us “Don’t forget to wash behind your ears”