Interviewer: Sue Rosen

Length: 13,195 words

Date: April 1992

Athol Kemp has lived on a farm at Upper Crescent Reach, from birth in 1925. He was a descendant of convict Peter Kemp. Athol who was an orchardist has witnessed a great deal of change in the river and was able to relate stories from his father as well.

"The story that does stick in my mind a lot was the one, that in the [19]25 flood he had a pig sty on the river bank, and a lot of fruit cases stacked near the pig sty. When he went to bed everything was okay, but it had been raining like hell, [and] the next morning, when he got up, the pigs had gone, floated out of the sty. [The river had] broken the banks in one night. …There were others, [for example] when the old 'Port Eringhi' was travelling on the river, when they used to cart the produce to market …They had a load of watermelons on the banks waiting for the, 'Port Eringhi' to come along and pick them up. The 'Port Eringhi' had missed them, and went by without them, and they got on their horses and chased it down to Sackville here and caught it. The poor beggars had to come all the way back up to Ebenezer, to opposite the church to pick up these watermelons. Of course, they were very, very cranky."