Dad became the 'man-of-the-house' at just four-years-old.

My dad was just four-years-old when his father died.

Dad had two younger sisters and so effectively only a baby himself, he instantly became the “man” of the house.

My dad's swing-saw looked a lot like this.

My grandfather, dad’s dad, was something of an enigma to me as anyone who actually knew him was dead before I arrived, and any record of his life is slight or simply doesn’t exist.

We do know that he owned and operated stables in Echuca’s main street, opposite the Catholic church and stretching through to High St.

He died when a horse kicked his head and we don’t know if that was instant or he died later. I could research it I suppose, but it is not in my nature to look back, despite knowing that preparation for the future is best founded on an understanding of the past.

Dad died in 1992, on my wife’s birthday sadly, and I thought a lot about him as I sat listening to Professor Brendan Wintle talk about the million species at risk of extinction.

An eager interest in the topic was piqued when he asked the audience what is was that posed the greatest threat to Australian mammals.

The audience response was as expected, covering all the usual suspects such as cats, forest clearing, urban sprawl and cars, but Prof Wintle surprised most everyone when he declared it was “rabbits” which were decimating our mammal species. They eat all the grass and leave nothing for others.

Dad had matured quickly into the man of the house and by the time he had reached double figures he was supplementing the family larder and income by catching and selling both rabbits and mussels.

And although rabbits, which were then a pest and still are, might give us reason to curse them for the devastation they cause to our landscapes, there was in fact a vital source of sustenance for many Australian families early last century.

Dad, who rarely talked about himself and you had to drag the stories from him, told of coming home from a rabbiting expedition with nearly more rabbits than he could carry hanging all over his bike.

He said that they were in such proportions one year that if confronted by a fence they were unable to get through, they would chaotically pile up at the fence until the late arrivals could rush over the squirming bodies of their compatriots to clear the fence.

It was during those plagues, he said, that the paddocks themselves appeared to be moving - they were effectively alive with rabbits.

Dad had little education and tried his hand at many things before becoming a beekeeper, and eventually the president of the Victorian Apiarists Association.

As much of the specialised equipment he needed wasn’t available in the pre and post First and Second World War eras, he was forced to design and build his own, including a caravan-like extracting plant and a huge shed with two insulated “warming rooms” critical to the honey extraction process.

Being a beekeeper and so working in what was considered an essential industry - bees wax was needed for weapons sent to the tropics - his attempts to enrol in the armed forces were denied.

As he was one of the few men in what was largely a “men-less” community, it was his task to provide the wood for many families and so about then he dreamt up and built a swing-saw - a rather large blade on the end of a long a metal arm and powered by a small motor that allowed him to move and saw up logs.

Many watching him build it said it would kill him - it didn’t and worked just as he imagined.

And how we need minds like those of my dad now!  He was resourceful, resilient, inventive and because of the life he was born into, he inherently understood the three R’s we all need to hold close now - reduce, reuse and recycle.

A man of his times who would have been a man of our times

My dad would have been a man for today.



The late Alec McLean
 - my dad.

 Dad, however, died about 20 years ago, sometime before the ideas of climate change, conservation and sustainability had been subjects of discussion, although clearly understood by some.
Re-use, conservation and sustainability were simply a way of life for dad, an ideal learned as he lived the lessons ingrained by the so-called Great Depression of the late 1920s.
Dad was in his 80s when he died, and although cautious of romanticising his life, I have memories of him having never having new clothes or for that matter, anything new, except a small, new, utility he bought before he died.
He did his best to dress with some dash for important family moments and as the State president of the Victoria Apiarists’ Association he sometimes had new shirts to accompany his suit for that body’s formalities.
His career as an apiarist (beekeeper) was built around second-hand everything from vehicles, clothes, screws, bolts, nails and anything else imaginable.
Our home and cement toilet in Echuca had been carted by dad, personally, from what was to become the Port of Echuca, his huge shed was built from used materials and was covered with metal stamped out and painted for kerosene tins, second-hand naturally, but unused.
Much of what was in our house came from auction sales as did some of my Christmas presents.
Loo paper was originally old newspapers until dad fell upon boxes of docket books at a clearance sale and so for many years a former Echuca dry cleaners had a new role in the McLean household.
Soon after my wife and I were married, we had mum and dad for meal of chicken and having cleaned the bird of all its meat, my wife was about to throw away the carcass, but dad asked for what was left arguing he could get three meals from it – he did!
Old furniture from auction sales fuelled our wood fires and in some instances became “bottom boards” on dad’s beehives; nails were carefully removed, straightened and stored for future use.
Dad’s times had made him a man for our time, before his time.