(adapted from “Where the Beech Tree Grows”, by Harry Throssel, Binna Burra Lodge Limited, 1984)
Tucked away in a wonderful book entitled ‘Where the Beech Tree Grows: The Story of Binna Burra’, by Harry Throssel, is a chapter on a real German-Australian character, ‘Old Bill’. He became the quintessential Australian bushman – just like many of the pioneers who came out from The Fatherland – my Grandad included in this long list. I think it is so appropriate to detail the life and full character of one such man – who may typify the many men of steel who pioneered our great continent. I know well the lush green jungles of Lamington Plateau, situated astride the heights of the Queensland- NSW border, having walked the many jungle tracks over many years. Both Green Mountains (pioneered by the O’Reilly family) and Binna Burra (developed by the Groom family) are lodges situated so that the public may explore the many treasures and landscapes of the ancient rainforests of Lamington Plateau. This story is about one such amazing man who spent decades in helping such dreams become reality – truly a ‘man of steel’.
Walter Theodore Herman Muller (with umlauts above the ‘u’- meaning the pronunciation of his name was sounding as ‘Miller’), born at Breslau, Germany, in 1885, found childhood tough going with his martinet father, so he ran away to sea when he was just 14. Employed as a rigger on the wooden sailing ships of the time, he sailed the world, once saving a piece of silver from Brazil, until in his early twenties he tired of life on the ocean wave and ‘jumped ship’ in Australia.
Finding work as a miner in the Wolgan valley (New South Wales), Walter settled down with his new wife and her baby daughter Rita, the fathered a further ten children: Annie (known as Anna) born in 1909, Eileen, Elsie and Walter (twins), Elfreda, Richard, Ivy and David (twins), Merle and Mary.
Although Walter was a strict disciplinarian like his father, by and large the family had a happy life in the mining community of Newnes as long as there was work, though money was often scarce. Clothes were usually in short supply and even food at times, but there were always presents for everyone at Christmas, and simple shared pleasures.
Application for Naturalisation (1913) – Walter Theodore Herman Muller
Becoming involved in the life of the community, Walter whistled the accompaniment to his wife’s vocal renditions of ‘Listen to the Mocking-bird’ and other favourites at miners’ concerts. The physically powerful ex-seaman, a boxer himself, taught the sport to boys in the valley, and his prowess as an axeman won prizes at the Miners’ Picnic. He became a naturalised citizen in 1914. He was a keen union man, committed to the support of his mates down the pits, and supported the International Workers of the World (IWW) communist movement. He progressed from miner to overseer and was a keen reader of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Common Cause (the IWW paper).
For Anna, a bright girl, he saw opportunities opening up through which she could fulfil his own dreams. When she had a chance to win a bursary for secondary education in 1922, he helped her with her homework every night. Her school text books for those years were often signed by him, ‘W. Muller’. She won the bursary – the first and only in the history of the school – which enabled her to board at Parramatta Convent School from 1923 to 1927, later going on to teachers college. ‘While God gave me a brain, it was my father who made sure I used it. Whatever I made of myself was due to his influence, ‘, said Anna.
Another of the shared pleasures of those years was a love of nature, the bush and animals. Walter always had a dog – one called Stumpy was killed by a snake – and a horse.
There were difficult times too, especially during strikes. On one occasion, the family had nothing for dinner but white bread, condensed milk and water. When Anna, then 12, complained she was still hungry, blaming it on the union, her father’s response was ‘A man can’t scab on his mates.’ Anna boldly replied, ‘No it’s much easier to scab on your wife and kids’, before escaping what was coming by climbing out of the bedroom window and hiding until rescued by her mother with a lantern.
An even greater fear than hunger was the sound of the siren announcing a mining accident. A tremor would run through the community as relatives wondered if a father or brother were killed or seriously injured. One time it was Walter’s turn and he came home with a broken leg.
The school of hard knocks taught Walter a number of skills, some of them unusual. When, in 1917, a heavy piece of machinery had to be delivered to the valley from Glen Alice, he built a flying fox to haul the load up and down the steep slopes on strong cables.
Eventually the mines became uneconomic – some say as a result of industrial strife – and were closed down, the once happy valley becoming sad and empty and Newnes a ghost town. The family moved to Sydney in 1924.
In Walter’s German ideology women took second place, causing friction with his wife (older by eighteen months) and her Australian sense of individual independence. He believed their job was to serve men and produce their children. Eventually, in 1928, when he was 43, Walter left home, saying he had to find work to support his large family. Ostensibly, on his way to Wagga, his wife and three of his daughters saw him off at Sydney Central Station.
He never came back. A woman he was particularly friendly with before leaving, left at the same time. Occasionally there was a letter, now and again some money, but not for long. Of the children left at home, six were under 14, the youngest 2 years old. The old happy days were gone forever, and family life became a struggle for survival. Anna gained selection for university but had to leave and attend teachers college instead, to get into the workforce more quickly and help support the family.
The children became bitter at being abandoned in such difficult circumstances, especially those who could recall the happy times they used to have with their father. They always hoped he might show up again – especially Mrs Muller when she was dying in her eightieth year in 1964 – but he never did. If he had he would have had to repay the State Aid the family lived on. Most of the family changed their name from Muller to Miller when they began earning their living.
Meanwhile, Walter Theodore Herman Muller had changed his name to William Frederick Muller, made his way up to Queensland and found work at the Lahey timber mill at Canungra. When Binna Burra Lodge needed tough workmen who could wield an axe or manoeuvre heavy loads up mountain sides for the Christmas cam in 1933, Bill Muller was loaned by the mill. He became an employee of the Lodge the next year and remained until his death thirty-four years later, thus becoming the longest serving staff member in the Lodge’s history.
Arthur Groom, in his lovely book ‘One Mountain after Another’ recounts the early days of starting the Lodge and the very first ‘big camp’ of 1933, when all the visitors gear would have to carted up the mountain, and how Old Bill came to Binna Burra:
“The packhorses would have to be of the human genus. Romeo Lahey promised he would produce a man from another of his road gangs; a man who was getting on in years, and who was looking for an easy change such as a permanent job as a handy-man that the future accommodation lodge would offer. He then went away for a few days, and brought back “Old Bill” and a kelpie dog and a big white draught horse. A wide scowl and frowning forehead, a guttural voice hardly changed after thirty years of naturalisation, a floppy old hat, and a stinking pipe, painted Old Bill pretty well. One of his first remarks was, “Vell dis a zdinkin bleddy yob, di is! Romeo telled me he voss bring me to a heasy yob!
But Old Bill soon settled in to work. He was attached to the lovely old white draught-horse and his dog Kemp. He produced a sledge and commenced to haul things together for the big camp. You would see first the white horse breast the hill, with arched neck and jingle of chains, hauling and puffing, then Old Bill with his scowl down near his shoulder blades. Then the dog with an air of ‘I’m in charge here’. A slight hitch and you would then hear that deep guttural voice with rage in it. To the horse, “Gedd ipp, you bleddy mongrel! “ To the dog, “Gedd to bleddy hell out uv id, you zdinkin’ol’gow!”
For the coming years, when advances were made and the flying fox was erected with the horse driving the winder, Old Bill with Dick the horse and Kemp the dog walked around the “bull-wheel” windlass on the crest of the mountain from early daylight until late at night. Always he called his horse a “Zdinkin mongrel”and his dog a “dirty gow”, but no man ever tended his animals with greater affection.
Tony Groom also related:
“I can remember the night of the Thursday before Good Friday, when at 4.30 am, Bill and I stopped work on the haulage of luggage and supplies for nearly eighty people. Bill stumbled and sat in exhaustion beside an open fire out in the yard. His head dropped forward, and nodded out of reality into oblivion. On the other side of the fire, old Kemp, the dog, as tired as any dog could be after following Bill around the bull-wheel all day and night, looked at his master and friend, and mechanically began to nod his head also. I went away inside the building. At 4.30am it was time to begin another day of work; but surely on this occasion thirty minutes nod for man and dog would be in order!”
On another occasion, the big Easter camp of 1934, the already over-worked cook and housekeeper, Mrs Nicoll, needed a number of turkeys to be plucked. Bill grudgingly offered to assist with this task – with a growling toss of his head:
“Give ‘um ‘ere. I vill bluck der zdinkin tings.”
Out on the kitchen landing he plucked and swore, but feathers drifted into Mrs Nicoll’s clean house.
“Bill. Pluck those birds somewhere else.”
“Aw right.” And Bill marched off to the woodheap.
“Bill! Put those feathers into a box and burn them. You’ll have them all over the place.”
An hour later Bill emerged from the darkness, entered the kitchen, and cast the bleeding birds on the table.
“I trew de bleddy fedders in de hingzinnerager, an’dere’s yer bleddy durkeys!”
Bang went the door.
Next morning Mrs Nicoll showed Old Bill feathers scattered about the yard. He had plucked his turkeys into a large box, but too late he discovered that in the darkness he had picked a box without a bottom! In whatever spare time Old Bill had, he followed Romeo Lahey’s surveyed pegline – and dug out a soft, but even, walking track through the jungle floor.
At Binna Burra he was seen as old as soon as he arrived, though only 48, so was called ‘Old Bill’ from the beginning. It was also assumed from go to whoa that he was and always had been, a bachelor.
He was very fond of saying he was a lad ‘when ships were of wood and men were of steel – and now we have ships of steel and men of wood’.
He was father figure for many years to the Groom years (who had pioneered and managed the bush resort). The boys were almost as close to him as were his beloved horses Dick and Trump and dog Kemp – though he always verbally abused the devoted animals. Old Bill was the Groom family’s babysitter and when Tony’s daughter Lisa came along he took over with that generation.
In the early years he was reported more than once to the board by the manager for not pulling his weight. He narrowly missed getting the sack on one occasion and at times missed out on bonuses. In later years he was too entrenched, too much part of the fabric, and did his own work in his own way. He also became a shareholder, and was one of those at the historic meeting on 5 October 1960, signing the attendance sheet in that distinctive hand.
For the first thirteen years of the Lodge’s history, guests knew him as the man who brought their luggage to the top of the mountain on the flying fox, worked by his draught horse pulling the whim around. Many of the early tracks through the forest, though designed by Romeo Lahey, were actually hacked out by Old Bill. For as long as hot water was derived from a wood fire, it was Old Bill who chopped the logs every day, getting up at 2 or 3 in the morning to make an early start.
With his horse-drawn sled he brought water up from the creek before there was a pipeline, and delivered the cream. He was a jack of all trades who was content to let the world outside go by as long as he had his pipe and his occasional jug of ale, especially during the war when he stayed home lest his strong German accent and his temper got him into trouble in the nearby hotels frequented by the army.
Old Bill – with pipe, of course!
He officially retired in 1950, but was a home at the Lodge and 30 shillings a week to supplement his pension in return for odd jobs around the place. He was much missed when he died in 1968. At his request his ashes were buried at the Arthur Groom Memorial, at the place he had made his home for so long.
In 1979, Mrs Anne O’Connell, formerly Anna Muller, came from Sydney to Brisbane on a family visit, travelling with daughter Maureen and her two children. Maureen wanted to combine the trip with a short holiday, so they phoned Binna Burra Lodge and arranged to stay a few days. The day they arrived, a Thursday, an evening talk was given on the early history of the Lodge. There was talk of ‘Old Bill’, but it was only when she saw his surname, Muller, in the photographs that Mrs O’Connell sat up and took notice.
She immediately felt she had discovered the secret of the fifty-year mystery of her father’s disappearance. There were several connecting links – his name, facial appearance, the flying fox he operated, his dogs and horses, and age at death.
Mrs O’Connell’s suspicions reached Richard Groom, who talked things over with her the next evening at dinner. Swapping what they each knew of Walter Muller and Old Bill Muller, they became convinced they were speaking of the same man. Richard, who had known Old Bill throughout his childhood better than he knew his own father, saw a likeness to him in Mrs O’Connell’s face, especially the eyelids, and in her hands.
On matter would clinch it, they decided – a signature. Mrs O’Connell knew she still had the old school books he had signed. The search was now on for a more recent signature by Old Bill at Binna Burra. It was not until Mrs O’Connell was ready to leave on Sunday morning that at last Old Bill’s autograph was found. Later that same year Mrs O’Connell returned to Binna Burra with her sister ‘Else’ for a week, bringing school books bearing her father’s signed name. She was certain had found where her father had got to, but other relatives were not. On comparing the signatures, Richard Groom was sure also.
Mrs O’Connell was relieved to at last unravel the mystery. ‘I always knew he’d be in the mountains somewhere,’ she said. However, she feels ambivalent to the man who gave her so much pleasure and help as a young girl but then abandoned the family. She also thinks he missed out on so much – seeing his children grow up, marry and have grandchildren.
However, as a true bushman, we can be assured that ‘Old Bill’ was content with his life in the wild bush of the McPherson Ranges – where he greatly assisted with the building of the Binna Burra legend.
Old Bill with young Richard Groom
Richard Groom’s opinion was that the Muller family’s loss was Binna Burra’s gain:
“He was a great character – THE character of my lifetime. I saw more of Old Bill than I saw of my own father. He always seemed to have time to sit down and talk. He had a remarkable way with children, he was one of us, a natural, just like any experienced grandfather. Hearing about Mrs O’Connell’s story about his own family explains all this and it makes sense. Before he died he had a few heart attacks, and I spent a lot of time with him. Several times his mind wandered and he mentioned girls’ names. It meant nothing then, but it does now. He pretended to be a woman-hater, but was really an old softie.”
Old Bill was known for his gruffness, his toughness, his apparent bad temper, but to those who knew him well he had a heart of gold.
Marjorie Groom said:
“You had to stand up to him, he could be nasty if you were too soft. Miss Halliday didn’t like him at all at first, but after she tore strips off him one day they became buddies. They used to do the laundry together every day, though by no means would he hang out – that was woman’s work!”
