Alistair Wills-Johnson and the Resumptions Protest Federation

What would you do if the Government took over your family farm? Alistair Wills-Johnson led the first major protest over land resumptions in Cockburn.

 
The Association came out fighting, promising that if Housing Minister Herb Graham rejected appeals against the land resumptions, the owners would take action in the Supreme Court.

They also suggested amending the land resumption legislation to require the Government to first look at resuming unimproved land and to negotiate at market rate rather than treasury valuations.

Minister Graham publicly expressed scorn for the Association which he mis-named the ‘Landowners’ Rights Association’:

"…it is suggested that if anyone is so foolish as to forward £1/I/ to your organisation he will be wasting his money as fair settlements by way of return of land and compensation for the balance, if any, will be made in all cases".
 

guided into the settlement, for which William was extremely grateful, and which quite possibly saved their lives. William maintained a relationship with Yonki Yonka over the remaining five years of the latter’s life and established a family tradition of naming properties in memory of his Aboriginal friend.”  

William’s son Frederick Wills-Johnson took the name to Western Australia when, in 1913, at the age of 51 he took up 1150 acres (465 hectares) of land in the Cranbrook area and named the farm ‘Yonki Yonka’.

Alistair farmed in Cranbrook until he married Dorothy May Brewis (1911-1994) in 1936, in East Coolgardie. Dorothy was the daughter of the Archdeacon T.E. Brewis of Kalgoorlie, and after they married, they went to live on Yonki Yonka in a mud-brick house that Alistair had built, called ‘Nookawarra’.

Alistair and Dorothy had 5 children: first-born son Graham (1938-2023) born in Mt Barker, first-born daughter Theo Brewis (1940-2016, also Mt Barker), Helen (b. 1941 Kalgoorlie), Brian (b.1946 at Midland Junction) and Jennifer Nancy (b. 1948 Subiaco).

Having decided in March 1941 that he no longer wanted to be a farmer, Alistair and the family moved to Albany where he was employed as an Organiser by the Primary Producers’ Association (PPA)- which became the Farmer’s Union of WA in 1946. This meant going round farms in the Great Southern and convincing farmers to join the union, pay annual fees, and have someone stand up for their rights. He did this until Japan entered the war, which is when he joined up.

Alistair enlisted in February 1942, in Albany, and served as a private with the 19 Garrison Battalion, Australian 'Army Reserve' for Homeland Defence, and was discharged September 1945.

Alistair’s sister Thora also served; she enlisted in Melbourne in 1939 in the Army, Citizen Military Forces. Their  brother Eric served with the RAAF. After her mother died in 1951 Thora worked as matron at of the CWA Girls Hostel, in Albany, known as 'The Rocks’.

In October 1944, before he was demobbed, Alistair and Dorothy put a £52 deposit on a five-acre block of land at the corner of North Lake and Waverley Roads, Bibra Lake. Alistair had seen the block, which overlooked North Lake with views to the Darling Range, when he was based at the Melville army camp and working as a despatch rider. As a protection against State death duties, the £150 block of land was bought in Dorothy’s name.

The family moved into their almost-finished house in December 1946, despite the fact that the rainwater tank had been installed too late to catch the winter rains, and baths and washing had to be done with tannin-stained water brought up from North Lake in kerosene-tin buckets. Fortunately, their generous neighbour, Felix Monaco, allowed them to run a pipe from his windmill so that the family had untreated ground water for drinking and cooking, until the winter rains came.

“The development of the property was slow, as it was heavily timbered, and [I] only [had] weekend & holiday time to spend on it. [Dorothy] had a flower garden in bloom within a few months.  [My] poultry sheds were not built until 1952, when the profits from some good contract work as a carpenter, together with a modest legacy enabled [me] to concentrate full-time on the farm. At that time fully intensive sheds, deep litter, morning lighting and first cross all pullet flocks were highlights in progressive farming methods. Cage farming was academic, and steel truss sheds were for big industry, and wealthy sheep & wheat farmers. Starting with 500 [day-old] chicks, the partnership of A.& D. progressed from calamity to calamity, and from debt and misfortune to misfortune and debt, until in [our] peak year [we] farmed 2,300 laying hens. It was amazing how the calamities, the misfortunes and bad debts always seemed to be averted at the eleventh hour, but most surviving poultry farmers have had such experiences”.

Alistair and Dorothy were always interested in the ‘political’ side of the industry. From 1956 to 1959 Alistair was president of the Poultry Famers’ Association. He was also a member of the management committee of the Poultry Growers’ Co-operative during 1957-58, and in 1962 took over the editorship of the industry journal, ‘The Egg and Fowl’. He relinquished the editorship in 1964 when he was elected as producer member to the WA Egg Marketing Board. It was taken over by Dorothy who edited the journal for several years.

Alistair was a deep thinker and very much concerned with the economics that affected society. In July 1955 he sent a paper to the philosopher Bertrand Russell at Trinity College, Cambridge, England asking him to read a treatise he had written. In ‘The Financial Basis of Free Enterprise’ he was concerned with the problems besetting Communism and the Capitalist systems of democracies. In his paper he claimed that after 30 years of ‘thinking’ about the problem, he had “established an economic system which is mathematically capable of development, without creating debt, devaluation or a depressed class”. He argued the value of currency should be tied to one economic factor which was common to all human enterprise. He used an example of regulated egg production to explain his principles and thought it reasonable that the Government set up a small experimental community, to demonstrate how his ideas could work. He said he didn’t want to ‘ram his ideas down anybody’s throat’ but that “the continuance of our civilization depends upon our adoption of a workable economic system” to stop the encroachment of communism”. 

With thanks to Alistair’s son Brian for family information
   

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