General News
23 May, 2026
Debt, hardship plagued settlers
VETERAN VOICES; Part-2: For many discharged soldiers, settlement involved a high level of indebtedness, with most having to take advantage of the legislative provisions for loans.
A royal commission and other inquiries in the 1920s and 1930s resulted in schemes for easing terms, adjusting installments, reducing debts and revaluing holdings.
However, by 1932 the majority of settlers under soldier settler and closer settlement were insolvent, due largely to the economic conditions of the time.
By 1926 some 3,000 soldier settlers had walked off their properties or had been removed due to their inability to repay their debts.
A settler’s family near Turriff in the Mallee, had to ask the government for financial help soon after they took up their land.
They needed to buy horse feed so that they could begin clearing the dense Mallee scrub.
Soon after this they requested ‘sustenance’ payments, as they had ‘nothing to live on’.
By 1935 they were still living in a house with hessian ceilings and walls.
The board acknowledged that the family’s position was hopeless, and they walked off the land.
Another family’s story is one more sad, but not isolated, outcome of the scheme.
Arriving in 1920 with £70, the family lived in a shed on their property in Gippsland.
By 1922 the settler was pleading for money: ‘Wire me at once … two shillings left’.
Needing more and more financial loans from the government, and accumulating interest, he was caught in a cycle of debt he could not repay.
When the local shop refused to provide him with food and supplies on credit he was left with two options — leave the farm or starve.
Struggling to make a living was a harsh and often degrading existence.
Soldier settlers who received assistance were required to produce lists of grocery purchases, which were checked by Closer Settlement Board officials to ensure that only bare necessities were bought.
The scrutiny of one settler’s grocery account prompted the comment: ‘his groceries included tobacco, saveloys, honey, sauce, pickles, which surely cannot be classed as “necessary edible stores'.
Some families were able to build a home with their own savings, or by using money loaned to them by the Closer Settlement Board.
For these families, life was relatively comfortable. Other families were not so lucky.
The burden of loan repayments, poor crop yields or a lack of savings forced many settlers to live in tents, or in homes made of canvas or hessian bags, scrap tin, or wattle and daub.
These ‘bag humpies’ were far from weatherproof and were a difficult setting in which to rear children.
One settler in the Western District lived with his family in a stable, while another family lived during their first few years under manure bags.
Another settler, his wife and their three little girls lived in similar conditions.
He begged the Board for a loan to build better accommodation for the family, so that when it rained they could at least stay dry and shelter from prevailing weather conditions.
The wives of soldier settlers had to cope with isolation, poverty and difficult living conditions.
They shouldered a large portion of farm work and carried full responsibility for housework and child rearing.
Women were considered vital helpers, assisting their husbands in the fields or cow sheds.
On dairy farms women woke at dawn to milk the cows: on wheat and fruit farms, women worked the same hours of physical labour as their husbands — often longer at harvest time, when they also had to cook meals for all the farm workers.
Child-rearing under difficult living conditions had to be balanced with farm work.
In 1926 one woman wrote to a newspaper, declaring, ‘I have milked with a baby in the pram and a toddler in a little wire netting yard … then bumped the pram home with the two in it and a bucket in each hand!’
On many blocks, the work of the youngest family members was vital.
Children contributed regularly to the day-to-day functioning of the farm, allowing settlers to save on labour costs.
A Mallee settler attributed his block’s success to ‘the labour of my wife and two sons’.
Compulsory schooling was a burden for many families, taking the children away from the fields.
Organizations such as the Victorian Farmers’ Union and the Australian Housewives Association protested the ‘slavery of little children’ on farms.
However, the Closer Settlement Board urged settlers to use the cost-saving labour of their wives and children.
Like Australia’s war pensions scheme, soldier settlement was designed to benefit not only returned servicemen, but also the dependents of soldiers who had been killed in the war.
A deceased soldier’s widow, mother or child was eligible to take up land on the same terms as the returned serviceman.
Nurses could also apply for land through the scheme. At least nine Victorian nurses were successful in their applications to be granted a block.
To be a female settler took enormous courage. Women took to their blocks with determination, defying social standards and expectations.
Although they did not always win the support of the Closer Settlement Board, some of these resilient women earned the high regard of their communities, who recognized and applauded their hard work and dedication.