Wubin 1920's

Mr Liebe, this house was built 1927 and was added to in the original style 14 years ago. David.

Dam sinking, here on the left these are called dams.

The scoop held about 3/4 cubic yard

The dams were well finished, a silt pond then concrete channel in to it, a kerb round the perimeter and a dry well so that the windmill pump was level with dam base.

Wood U
Gudday M8

Gr8 Pix
Keep m cummin

a tru meaning of HorsePower
n how to contol it

Cya
[ch9787]

David - More great pics. That style of damsinking looks like a lot of hard work to me. Those blokes look like they're getting some pretty tough going in that rocky ground.
I used to occasionally find, partly-completed dams from the horse era, that had been abandoned, because they hit rock they couldn't rip with the road plow.
You'll notice how there's 3 blokes hanging onto the handles of the road plow, that they're ripping with.

When the old Lincke Noack scoops were used, they had two handles, and many an old fella told me about, how, if they hit a rock, a stump or even just a big tree root .. the scoop would flip right over, forward .. and if you were hanging off the scoop handles, pressing down with stiff arms, to stop it from biting in too deep .. it would pick you up, and fling you right over the scoop, dumping you right behind the horses ..

Those old style dams (known as earth tanks on the East Coast), where the wall is placed out from the dam, are known as "table dams" here.
The flat area between the wall and the excavation (the table) was needed to turn the horse teams around.

In modern times, when bulldozers, trailing (towed) rippers, and scoops appeared .. dams were still built the same way, with a table.
However, when dozer blades and rear-mounted rippers became the primary tools, in the late 1950's, damsinkers then just eliminated the table, and built the wall in line with the excavation. These were commonly called "straight-push" dams.

When I first started damsinking contracting in 1965, there were still many farmers who wanted "table" dams built, even though we had hydraulic blades and rear mount rippers.
A "straight-push" dam cost 2 shillings and threepence, per excavated yard (22c approx.) .. but because of the extra pushing distance required, a "table" dam cost 2 shillings and sixpence a yard .. (25c)

The last "table" dam I built, was probably around the early 1970's, and they had practically gone out of fashion by the late 1960's.
I used to get 1000's of jobs, extending dams, by taking the table off an old dam, and making the dam into a straight-push dam. It would be rare to find an original table dam now, because of this.

There were dams built in remote areas using camel and donkey teams, as well as horses. This was often because there was little water or feed in the area.
Camels could go for 2 or 3 weeks without water, and both camels and donkeys didn't need expensive feed bought for them, and hauled in.
Horses needed regular hay and oats, but donkeys and camels could live well off the natural scrub and saltbushes.
There were dams built in this manner in W.A., as far back as the 1860's. Govt dams for the trains, when the railways first started going in, in the early 1880's, were a good money spinner for early damsinkers.
These railways dams were very carefully engineered, and they were often roofed with timber and CGI, to prevent huge losses by evaporation.

My Dad ran a water-drilling operation in the Murchison and as far down as Kalannie, between 1934 and 1937.
He had a 4-wheel trailer-mounted percussion rig, powered by a big single-cylinder Southern Cross engine.

To haul this rig around in the bush of the station country, he had a 3-camel team. He used to really enjoy working with those camels.
He told us one of his camels (a big black bull one, surprisingly - its rare to see black camels) he got for free, because it killed the Afghan from Meekatharrra, who originally owned him.
The Afghan had been beating the camel constantly with a lump of wood .. and the camel just waited until the Afghan was within reach, and he bit the top off his head, killing him instantly.

Dad reckoned that camel was the best camel he ever owned .. a good worker, and he never had a spot of bother with him.
However, he said you had to watch all camels, because they can kick straight-out, sideways .. unlike a horse or cow, that only kicks straight out the back.

Cheers - Ron.

Hello Ron, Interesting info, Dad told me the covered Buntine railway dam was built by a gang of 80 men using blasting, picks and shovels with the spoil being carted out with tip drays.
I know a bit about Southern Cross boring plants, there are over 100 holes on the farm with 8 being suitable for stock water.
Will post this pic with two Bedfords again to excite Deadly! David

Looks as if the plough has been reinforced with a timber beam or could that be original? this work must have been hard on horses.
That scoop ran on skids, a lever on a rack determined cutting depth for filling, when full it was pulled back to lift bowl for transport, a trip handle let it rotate and drop the load as it moved forward.

David - No, numerous road plows built up until the late 1920's, used a timber beam as the main frame. The handles and pull bracket and the plowshare were just bolted to the timber beam.

In the late 1920's and early 1930's, all steel plows started appearing .. and this would have been because crawler tractors were then starting to be used, to pull the plows, instead of horse teams.
Even the small crawler tractors had a much higher drawbar pull than a big (8-horse) team.

However, as far as I'm concerned .. the only blokes considerably braver, than the blokes hanging onto road plow handles, behind a horse team .. would be those blokes hanging onto road plow handles, behind a TRACTOR! ..

Many companies in Australia built simple earthmoving tools .. but the best known, would have to be Britstand.
The Britstand Co. was started in Sydney in 1923 by two gentleman in partnership, a Mr W.H. Reardon, and a Mr. E.R. Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson would be pleased to hear this! )

They started off making drag scoops, single furrow road plows, 2-horse road-graders, and buckscrapers.
The Britstand road plow was based on the Canadian Wiard Plow design, and featured a manganese-alloy steel beam that was guaranteed unbreakable, forever!

By the late 1940's Britstand was a manufacturing powerhouse with a factory covering 120,000 sq ft and over 500 employees.
They had agencies for Oliver-Cletrac crawlers & Oliver wheeltractors, Aveling-Barford Dumpers, road rollers, trenchers, & concrete finishers, Aveling-Austin graders, Austin-Western sweepers, Coventry-Climax and Lansing-Bagnall forklifts & tug-tractors .. and built the Britstand Auto-Patrol Motor Grader, California brand earth-borers, McCarthy rock drills, bulldozers, blades, front-end loaders, winches and cable controls, towed scrapers, rippers ("rooters"), towed rollers, trailers (including low-loaders) .. as well as a wide range of small scoops, fresnos, grader-ditchers and road plows.

The towed scrapers, winches and CCU's were built under licence to Heil of the U.S., and Britstand were also licenced by several other British and American manufacturers to build their equipment.

The Britstand plow came in 8 varieties by WW2. It could be bought as a lightweight, single furrow moldboard plow .. right up to a heavy-duty road plow that could be converted between moldboard and ripper point.

The lightest Britstand Plow came in at 128 lbs .. the heaviest at 316 lbs. In 1944, the cheapest Britstand moldboard plow was