The Argents of Argents Hill - Part 2
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Part 1 of the Argent's story ended with the family arriving after a long bullock drive in 1868. The moment was summed up by Hepzibah Argent as," "Implements were placed in the barn, slush lamps were lit, the bullocks fed and the Argents were home".
Related: Settlers' extraordinary journey
Their new home had been built by the men in the prior two years. There was a barn and a simple cottage divided into four small rooms with a dirt floor.
With having to wash laundry in the river and cart water in billycans, the accommodation would have been a lot less convenient than the one they left behind.
Hepzibah describes it thus:
"With Allen Argent and his wife Emma, two grown sons, six other children and Frank Grace the tiny house would have been very crowded. Amenities were nil.
"Light came from slush lamps or candles. The lamps were made by pouring fat into tins with a piece of moleskin as a wick. Brooms were made from the bushy tops of dogwood trees."
A store near Macksville provided groceries and material for clothes sewn by hand.
Hepzibah tells of two Aboriginal camps in the near vicinity, one only 300 yards from the homestead.
"The Aboriginals were very friendly and came to get flour, clothing and tobacco. Sometimes they brought honey and fish in exchange. Dingoes were plentiful but they caused little damage."
The Argent's nearest European neighbours were about six miles away.
Farms were not established enough to provide for a family and the men went away cutting cedar while the women and children remained at home. Hepzibah tells of the joy of Saturday when the men came home.
"Saturday was always a happy day in the bush. This was the day when the men came home after their week's work, squaring cedar in the forests. They were happy, carefree days, those Saturdays, when the worries of money, provisions and illness were put away for a few hours."
The following ten years saw an influx in population and the Argents moved to a second selection in 1879. They then moved to a "more pretentious home" which was still in use in 1963 in another location.
The Post Office was opened in 1882 and was named "Argents Hill" after Allen Argent.
Three more children were born to Allen and Emma but the amalgamation of settlers received its greatest boost in 1879 when the Ballard family with 13 children arrived along with the Scriveners with nine children.
In the ensuing years eight members of the Argent family married eight members of the Ballard family.
Allen Argent died in 1900 at the age of 75. Emma died in 1909 just four days short of her 81st birthday. They are both buried at the Argents Hill cemetery. Emma's grave is sorely in need of repair and would make a sensible project for heritage funding.
Hepzibah married Markham Ballard and had nine children. Their house still stands on Graces Road at Argents Hill. It is a pretty spot not far from the river where her children would have swam and played.
The life of Hepzibah Ballard who died in 1963 was remarkable not only by its longevity of over nine decades. She witnessed the development from washing in a river to washing machines. The use of a dogwood broom to an electric vacuum cleaner. From slush lamps to electric light.
She lived through the struggles of early pioneering and the worries of illness and erratic incomes that accompanied it. Her joys were simple: from the weekly homecoming of her father to the gathering together of neighbours for dances and cricket matches.
Recently I took a tour of the Argents Hill area gamely guided by Allen and Emma's great great granddaughter Faye Stuart. The area boasts gently sloping hills, majestic trees, green pastures and sleepy homesteads near rippling rivers.
The old centre of Argents Hill now only has a hall. The post office and a church still stand but are in private hands. If there was a coffee shop at the hall I think I would have never gone home.
- This article was written from records of the Nambucca Headland Museum, the Bowraville Folk Museum, Argent family accounts often quoted verbatim and the photo collections of John Argent and Annis Jones.