Former Goulburn man Bob Tiyce who spent his working life in the dairy industry, with his granddaughter Kiari. Photo: Vicki Deane.
They were the Australian version of Appalachian hillbillies says Bob Tiyce, reflecting on families including his own living between Goulburn and Marulan in the early 1960s.
“We had no power out there; wood meant everything,” Bob said. “We would cart stumps and sticks on our billy cart, because Dad was working and would go out in the early morning.”
Wood and water from a creek were carried for the copper, for having a bath, heating and cooking. Their mother Heather cooked on an open fire.
“We had kerosene lamps, we ate ’roos, we ate a lot of eels out of Jerrarar Creek,” Bob said, recounting growing up on Tiyces Lane east of Goulburn.
Hessian bags stapled to rafters served as their ceiling at home. “Lying there listening to a storm, there’d be three or four of us in the double bed and the rain hittin’ on the roof,” Bob said.
His great-great-grandfather Harry Tiyce was 16 when he arrived in Australia from Germany in the 1860s.
“He walked the sheep from Sydney all the way to Gundaroo for the Massey family,” he said. Harry’s family moved to Collector and later to Moss Vale where he and his eldest son began a business hauling logs with bullock teams out of Kangaroo Valley back to town.
Four of his sons moved to Tiyces Lane – Bill, Bob, Charlie and Henry.
Charlie and his sons delivered wood to Goulburn Jail, the Base Hospital, Kenmore and for auctions at Thomas Williams. He had an extensive collection of birds ranging from finches to an eagle which became known as ‘Charlie’s Menagerie’. He would catch a huntsman spider which he would de-fang, put in his mouth and feed to his eagle.
Charlie married Mary Ann Collins, a sister of renowned musician and legendary bush woman Pearlie Watling. Their son Arthur and his wife Monica are Bob’s grandparents.
Bob remembers his father Reg would be out the door at 4 am and would not return until 6 pm while working at Royal Oak Pastoral Company north of Goulburn.
When he finished his time at Royal Oak he worked for the prominent pastoralist Ray Bladwell at Loloma dairy near Run-O-Waters Creek south of Goulburn. He also worked in the piggery at Loloma.
Ray Bladwell and his brother Harry owned a butcher shop and went door-to-door selling meat.
May Shepherd with her three brothers, Bernie, Artie (Bob’s grandfather) and Owen at Tiyce’s Lane. Photo: Tiyce family collection.
At Loloma, three men would milk 300 cows with a 16-stand, walk-through machine and the milk was sold to Dairy Farmers in Goulburn. Allan Friend delivered it around the city from a horse-drawn cart up until the late 1960s.
“I would get up at six, slip up to the dairy and all the milk would be ready for me to feed the calves,” Bob said. “I would feed about 80 calves, then I’d go home, get dressed for school.
“We would go under the bridge on the way to school and smash the ice on the water in the creek so the cows could have a drink on their way to the paddocks,” he said.
Charlie Tiyce, one of four brothers who moved east of Goulburn to farms along a lane which is now on the map as Tiyces Lane off the Hume Highway. Photo: Tiyce family collection.
Several other dairies operated around Goulburn, including Hume’s dairy on the Braidwood Road, Billy Brown’s dairy on the same road further out of town, and Charlton on the Bungonia Road a little past the Old Goulburn Brewery.
Ray Bladwell also owned two other properties south of Goulburn – Quialigo, and Goulburn Plains. “Before that he actually owned Woodlawn and that was for our dry paddocks. We would send all the dry cows (non-milking) to Woodlawn and he sold to the mines later,” Bob said.
Completing primary school at Bourke Street Public School, Bob became a foundation student at Mulwaree High School. He left at age 14, travelled throughout the Northern Territory working as a roustabout and driving trucks, unlicensed at age 15.
He returned to Goulburn and worked at Loloma dairy and later married a Goulburn woman, Vivian Ayre. He went to a share-farming dairy in the Hunter Valley and later he and Vivian began a relief dairy service in Queensland.
The first Tiyce in Australia, Harry with his wife Sarah (nee Hardwick). Photo: Tiyce family collection.
“When people went on holidays we’d go down and run the whole farm; milk the cows, move the irrigation pipes, while they had a good holiday,” he said.
“I have arthritis really bad in the thumbs, mainly from pulling teats and doing dairy work.”
The couple now live in retirement at Binnaway, a small town on the banks of the Castlereagh River in central NSW.
