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In 1920, at the age of 22, she began training as a nurse and was the first probationer at the newly constructed
War Memorial Hospital at Murray Bridge, South Australia. After 12 months of nursing her health broke down,
12 to 14 hour days being the norm with no weekend or annual leave. Induced to go to Wellington, New Zealand,
where she was told conditions for nurses were better, she soon found they were no different, and lasted only six
months. She then worked as nurse and midwife for some of the Lutheran families in New Zealand. By the time she
returned to Australia her parents had retired to Murray Bridge and her brother, Victor, was running the Callington
farm. She enjoyed farm life once again and became housekeeper to a neighbour when his wife died, leaving him
with a 15-year-old son.
In 1932 she decided to look for work in the Northern Territory. She would not have gone in the face of her
mother’s admonition that it was too far away, had not her mother told her that a cousin was going to South Africa to
get married. As Frieda put it, ‘Well, I thought to myself, if she can go to South Africa to get married, I can go to the
Northern Territory and not get married’. Initially she went to keep house for Jack and Valesca Sargeant, who had a
store at Newcastle Waters. Valesca was a school friend. Frieda left Adelaide on the ‘ghan’ on 22 November 1932.
She travelled from Alice Springs northwards with Sam Irvine, the mailman, and was told that her reputation would
be ‘ruined instantly’. She stayed at ‘the prim and proper, straight-laced’ Hazel Golder’s guesthouse until Sam,
having overstayed his time at the pub, was ready. The two women became firm friends and years afterwards Hazel
Golder admitted she had never seen Sam Irvine so drunk as on that day. Frieda sat in the front, amid cans and cases,
and the two other passengers, both men, sat in the back. She later recalled that by the time they left Alice Springs
Sam ‘was as sober as a judge and behaved like a perfect gentleman during the whole of the trip’. They remained
friends. While at Newcastle Waters Frieda joined the North Australian Workers Union and a Woman’s Ticket
No W5 was issued to her on 20 June 1933.
Later in 1933 Frieda returned to Alice Springs to be ‘waitress, offsider, and general hand’ for Hazel Golder.
In 1934 she returned to her parents’ home at Murray Bridge and in December 1935 she returned to New Zealand.
In February 1937 she was again on her way north in the ‘ghan’ to work for Hazel Golder so that the latter could
have a holiday.
After three months of housekeeping for the Haeses who by then had the Tea Tree Well property, she was
engaged in 1938 by Bill Heffernan to be his housekeeper. As soon as she arrived Frieda began growing vegetables
in soil enriched with plenty of sheep and cow manure. The Adelaide Advertiser was later to report on a huge
cauliflower, ‘it measured 9 ft. 6 ins. in circumference. Several of the leaves were 36 inches long, while the heart
on its own weighed 46 lbs’. Frieda and Bill were married in Alice Springs on 12 September 1939; it was a very
happy marriage. In her spare time Frieda contributed many historical articles to the Adelaide Chronicle under the
pseudonym ‘E’s double’ and she sometimes wrote letters to The Farmers’ Journal. There were many visitors to the
station but Frieda coped, regardless of the numbers.
Bill Heffernan died in November 1969. Frieda returned to South Australia in 1974 and died in Adelaide on 25
August 1976. The ashes of both are interred in a monument at Ti Tree.
P A Scherer, Sunset of an Era, 1993.
P A SCHERER, Vol 3.HEFFERNAN, WILLIAM JOSEPH (BILL) (1884–1969), drover and pastoralist, was born at Maryborough,
Queensland, on 28 December 1884, third child of his parents’ marriage. His mother was Margaret, nee Raleigh.
His father was in charge of mining at Mount Shamrock, so Bill did some of his schooling there. His father died in
1896 when he was 12, the family having already suffered a tragic loss when his elder brother and sister were burnt
to death in the family tent. He and his mother went to live in Junee, New South Wales, to be with her family. After
several years more schooling there he was sent to St Joseph’s College at Hunters Hill in Sydney, the fees paid by
an uncle. He soon ran away and took a job with John Bridge & Co as clerk in their wool store. After a short time
he left this job and headed for Cobar in central New South Wales where he worked for about 18 months. At that
time he was about 19 years of age and for most of the time his family had no idea where he was. He bought a horse
and made his way to Broken Hill. He ‘knocked around’ there for a while and in 1905 joined the party of drover
Ted Wilson (Bulloo Downs Ted) and went with a mob to Swan Hill on the Murray. As there was no bridge, they
all had to swim the river.
He then went to have a look at Adelaide and in 1907 teamed up with Billy Philips who was planning to
go to Wave Hill to bring down a mob of cattle. They took a train to Oodnadatta. At that time no meals were
served on the train so they had to buy their meals at the various stations and sidings that catered for travellers.
From there they bought horses to get them to Alice Springs. In Alice they set about organising a droving team,
among whom was Tom Nugent of Ragged 13 fame. There were two plants of horses, about 70 or 80 altogether
and they travelled north along the Overland Telegraph line and across the Murranji track ‘which was still nothing
more than an unsurveyed track, through thick lancewood scrub and over rough and dry country’. From Buchanan
properties in the Wave Hill district they picked up 3 000 head of cattle and drove them in two mobs of about
1 500 each. The Murranji track was out of the question so they travelled in a more or less easterly direction across
the Top End stations via the Armstrong, King, Roper and McArthur Rivers and turned south across the Barkly
Tablelands through Lake Nash to Glengyle, a Kidman property. The next drove took him from Brunette Downs to
Muswellbrook, New South Wales, with cattle belonging to the White family who owned both properties.
With a plant of his own of 60 horses he planned to take up land in Central Australia and worked his way
back across to Banka Banka Station then being run by Tom Nugent. From there he first made application for a