1906-1959
Father
Mother
Siblings
Gertrude, Mary Rebecca, Elva Myrtle, Ethel Bedelia, Arthur Joseph, Edward Milton , Gwenneth Rita and Dorothy Isabel
Married
Children
Norman John, Clifford George, Ronald Edward, Kenneth William, June Elsie, Gordon Bruce.
Jack’s Life
John Samuel Strudwick was born in Kingower, Victoria in 1906. He was the first son and fifth child of John and Bedelia Strudwick.
John assisted his father with various farming and labouring activities. One of the family businesses was felling and trimming eucalyptus trees to sell to miners for scaffolding in their mines around the Bendigo/Inglewood districts. They were also occasional miners and fossickers.
In 1925 the Strudwicks were successful in land ballot in Tullamore. Jack’s father sent his three sons Jack (21), Joe (18) and Milton (17) ahead in a dray, a eucalypt cart and a sulky with the family’s goods and chattels to blaze the trail north. They were only lads at the time but their father trusted them to undertake the job. They had interesting tales from the trek north. They arrived in February 1927.
The rest of the family followed soon after however two of his sisters remained in Victoria as they were already married. His other two elder sisters had perished along with their infant children and grandmother in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1919.
Jack assisted his family settle in and then commenced a contracting business – clearing timber and sinking tanks to develop the district. He invented his own machinery, one piece, a Mallee Roller to facilitate more efficient clearing of the scrub. My father was especially proud of this and would often tell us about it. This was all done with a team of horses.
Jack married Thelma Elsie Doust in 1931. They had six children.
Jack undertook clearing, tank sinking and share-farming for many landholders. He and his family would camp in tents at the site of each contract.
In the late ‘30s Jack and Thelma purchased Slapdown, Fifield. Jack and his sons worked hard to make it a productive farm. However, Jack still undertook a lot of contract work and sharefarming.
He was still using his team of horses to carry out this work. At the completion of a contract, he would load his equipment on a dray then harness his team with a white gelding, Prince, in the lead. The men would leave for home and on waking the next morning would find that Prince had led the team home.
Jack taught his boys the basics of farming at a young age. His son John (Strud) was thirteen and he was helping his Father, Jack, with sowing at Rolf Horsborough’s near Slapdown. Strud was on the combine with a team of horses in front and he remembers that the lead horse was swerving towards a tree so he began pulling and pulling to straighten the horse and ended up just scrapping the bark with the combine with no damage done. Strud said that his father had his hands over his eyes waiting for the crash but it didn’t come. He was proud to make his dad proud.
Dad remembered a time that one year Jack was offered two and sixpence a bushel of wheat in the paddock in the lead up to harvest. When he delivered his wheat to the railway yards (in bags) the buyers only gave him one and threepence. There was nothing he could do about it. Such practices saw the creation of the Wheat Board to stabilise prices.
Jack was a popular man in the Tullamore district, albeit a bit of a larrikin, PP Board notices demonstrate his casual grazing of his work horses on PP Board land.
Jack was killed in a car accident at the age of 52 – he was dearly missed by his family.
Jack loved his family, had a huge bevy of friends and liked nothing more than a beer and a yarn!
Authored by Leah Burnheim