Katanning's Neville Garlick restores old wagons

The wagons, usually pulled by horses, bullocks or camels, were abandoned or destroyed.

Over the years a select group of people have opted to restore what was left of the old timber structures, giving them a new lease on life.

But it is not an easy process and one that takes a lot of time, patience and skill.

One of those enthusiasts is Neville Garlick, a farmer east of Katanning, who took up the hobby of wagon restoration later in life and has become a bit of a master of it.

As you approach his farmhouse, you know you are in the right location, as you are greeted by a collection of beautifully-restored wagons showcased along the gravel driveway.

To understand Mr Garlick's connection with wagons, we need to go back a couple of generations.

His granddad was a wheelright who was born in New South Wales and joined the gold rush to Ballarat, Victoria, before trekking across the country to Kalgoorlie.

His trade was making the wheels and shrinking the tyres over them.

Mr Garlick's granddad also "found a bit of gold but he made money out of distilled water" before the Perth to Kalgoorlie pipeline was completed, back in 1903.

He made enough money to buy a farm near Katanning and he also cleared a lot of land on contract.

"I guess in 1920, wagons were going out of fashion and suddenly they became a thing of the past," Mr Garlick said.

"I think everybody parked them up under a tree."

He said the horses disappeared and a lot of the wagons rotted away, were burnt or fell victim to white ants.

The condition of many wagons was questionable "and I get presented every now and then with some heap of old rubbish and asked if I can restore it".

"Anything can be restored, I have proven that," he said.

"I have had some pretty hopeless looking cases but usually all the steel work is there, that doesn't burn and the white ants don't eat it and the weather doesn't get at it, but that is about all that is left.

"I keep all the bits of wood because you can use them as measurements to give you some guidance as to what the thing was like.

"Every bit of wood I bring home."

While he had always been interested in old wagons, it took some time to take it to the next level.

"Ten years ago I met a man at a clearing sale, I went there because they had a big wagon advertised and I wanted to have a look at it," Mr Garlick said.

"I met this man who had been making wagon wheels for quite some time and I asked him if he would teach me his trade and he virtually ignored me and I thought, 'oh well maybe he doesn't want to pass on his information'."

Eventually Mr Garlick's persistence and genuine interest paid off, earning the respect of this gentleman who agreed to be a mentor.

"He was a really good teacher, he knew everything off the top of his head, I could ring him up and I could ask him something and he would know the answer," he said.

"He was happy to teach me and I was happy to learn."

Learning the craft is not for everyone and not something that many will pick up straight away, but old-fashioned farmer know-how and good hands-on skills guided Mr Garlick, who also built his own house that he still lives in with his wife Joan.

This skillset alone was not going to get him over the line, saying his teacher's guidance was invaluable.

Mr Garlick said there was "a lot of stuff on YouTube and so on now which is pretty helpful" and everyone does it a bit differently and he learnt a lot as he went along, working with the different timber characteristics.

His first project, a set of wagon wheels, proudly stand on the front verandah of his property.

Mr Garlick had very little to work with, saying "they weren't in existence, all I had was the tyres, and I had to make the rest".

Plenty of guidance over the phone with his teacher helped him out and "they turned out alright".

He didn't have to go far to source the wheels as they were found on his farm.

Mr Garlick said over the years there were a lot of old tyres laying around on farms because they were made of metal and they lasted.

One of his biggest projects came from a random phone call from a station owner north west of Cue, about 1200 kilometres away, who asked to restore his wagon.

"I thought, goodness gracious me, you're 1200km away, but he kept at me and at me," Mr Garlick said.

Before committing to the project he asked for some photographs so he knew what to expect.

"He said 'oh I don't have a camera' and so I thought, 'well, how far out in the sticks do you live?'," he said.

"Anyway he had some German backpackers out there and I said give them my email address and he didn't know what that (email) was.

"So I said write down exactly what I tell you and give it to them and they will know what it is."

A few days later when they were in phone range, the backpackers sent through some images.

Curiosity eventually got the better of this farmer-cum-wagon restorer, he picked up his brother-in-law in Perth and they embarked on the journey to chat with Merv Tompkins at Nookawarra station.

The wagon was a big one that was drawn by 16 camels and was used to carry long lengths of railway line and timber and it didn't have a tray on it like a lot of standard wagons did.

It is similar to another wagon that Mr Garlick restored at about the same time which was used to build a railway line from Brunswick to Collie and is now parked in front of his garden.

"He is a really genuine old man," Mr Garlick said of the station owner.

"He offered me a price which I didn't know if it was good or bad.

"I said 'Merv, look I would love to have a go at it' and he handed me a cheque for $10,000 and he said that's half.

"So I came home and I got stuck into it."

Mr Garlick estimated it took about 260 hours to complete the project, spread over about three months, "because I do farm part-time and I don't make hard work of it".

He said lots of people told him he was mad for taking on the big projects but he defended his interest, saying he wasn't in it to make a lot of money.

It took some time for Mr Garlick to be convinced to take on the wagon from Brunswick as well.

"It was a heap of rubbish, but I recognised it for what it was," Mr Garlick said.

"It was almost a cousin of the one I did from way up north, just a smaller scale.

"I was very happy with it," he said of the completed project.

Mr Garlick's first complete wagon restoration originated a little closer to home - originally being on his farm before he purchased it after it had been homed on a neighbouring property.

It was tucked away in an old shed with a dirt floor and a leaking roof, so there was plenty of moisture - and to cap it all off, the white ants had also moved in for a buffet.

Mr Garlick said upon inspection there were so many white ants, he could nearly hear them in action, chewing away at the wood.

He restored this wagon before putting it on display at the Katanning Show, along with the big camel wagon from Cue before it was returned to the station.

Mr Garlick said after those initial projects, the hobby continued to develop.

"I would go to a clearing sale and buy an odd one and some people give you a bit of a skeleton," he said.

When Mr Garlick was quizzed on what he liked working on the most, he said the choice was obvious.

"I really enjoy doing the wheels," he said.

"When you get it all together, if you heat the tyre and shrink it on, you hear it crunch, crunch, crunch as it really tightens up - that is all that holds the wheel together - there are no screws or glue.

"It really tightens the whole thing up and then you stand it all up.

"The old bloke told me with these wheels, if you pick them up and drop them on concrete, it should bounce and they do."

When it comes to making the spokes, different timbers are sourced and are cut with a bandsaw before they are finished by hand.

Yate is one of the timbers recommended by his mentor as it has a fair amount of spring and there are yate trees in the area, growing around swamps and lakes, denoted by very dark bark.

Mr Garlick said it was a challenge to find solid timber and claim it before the insects moved in.

He uses a lot of wandoo timber for the spokes and fellies (which are the sections around the wheel like a rim).

A lot of that is sourced south of Narrogin from a man who has a big bandsaw and cuts the timber into logs.

Over the years Mr Garlick has done about six wagons in what is a big deviation from his farming life.

He has farmed in the area since he was 15 years of age and is now a spritely 78.

When it comes to farming Mr Garlick joked that he was still learning and quantified that by saying, "I am still learning to palm jobs off".

"I have got two sons who have two farms here and their kids are working with them on the farms," Mr Garlick said.

"They are pretty switched on boys and enthusiastic, which you have got to be if you want to be a farmer.

"They are dedicated."

When it comes to the technology employed in agriculture, Mr Garlick said it "has got way ahead of me - I can drive the header but if something goes wrong with it, I go 'you boys come and sort this out".

"I live near town and they live further out and they will ring up and ask me to go and get me this part or this chemical or whatever and maybe run it out 50km," Mr Garlick said.

"So I do quite a bit of that, I do quite a bit of drainage work and whatever is going."

While he has spent a lifetime on the farm, he admitted that wagon restoration was not something on his radar.

"I had never even thought about it, it is just something I have become fascinated with I guess," Mr Garlick said.

As for the future, he has a couple of people still wanting him to complete their projects but he might also make some more big timber table tops, opting for a bit of a change.

He is fascinated by timber, putting it through the saw, looking at the grain and having a vision of what the final project will look like.

Adding to the intrigue, no two bits of timber are the same.

And as any tradesman will tell you, having the right tools are essential to do the job right.

His tool inventory includes a copy lathe which is about 120-years-old and can replicate any spoke that is put into the lathe.

"I can do them just about as quick by hand but I was pretty lucky to get hold of the lathe," Mr Garlick said.

He also has a tyre table which is a big cast iron flat table, about 1.8 metres in diameter and 40 millimetres thick that tyres can be made on.

"I have only seen two of these and I have got one of them," Mr Garlick said.

The typical wagon wheel was built with 14 spokes, however the big camel wagon in Cue had 18 spokes on the massive back wheels and 16 spokes on the front ones.

Those rear wheels topped the scales at 260 kilograms each.

When it comes to finishing the final timber products, some are oiled and some are painted.

He said painting some of the wagon parts was quite fiddly but he didn't mind and there is a mix of oiled and painted wagons on his property.

Mr Garlick said the wagons should be under cover but joked that he couldn't do everything.

READ MORE:

While the wagons were built for horses and camels, he has no desire to hook them up to either creature.

"I am not a horse man, I had a few scares when I was a kid - dad had horses and rode horses," Mr Garlick said.

All the wagons are rebuilt with drawbars so they can be towed but he said they could be changed to accommodate horses if people wanted.

He said there were still a few old wagons laying around on farms that needed restoring.

Mr Garlick said there was a lot of work involved in each project and while he didn't want to make money from them, he said it was costly, with timber and supplies being expensive.

He admits to still scanning clearing sale listings to see what is still out there, but never gets excited about the condition of the parts.

He recalled a sale near Pingrup where no one was bidding on a wagon, so he successfully offered up a couple hundred dollars, but said it was so fragile he could hardly get it home.

Mr Garlick said his wife was supportive but didn't have his vision and "she can't see the end product like I do".

When he gets the wagons home he lays out all the bits of timber like a jigsaw and measures everything from bolt hole to bolt hole before developing a plan.

One of his sons who lives in Perth is a design draftsman, who after receiving all the details, draws them up on his computer and emails them back saying, "dad you have got to get it to the last millimetre".

While being non-committal on future projects, Mr Garlick said he was keen to build a wagon wheel with a big centre hub that would be a mailbox at his farmgate.

The extended family supports the woodworking projects but they don't want to learn the finer points, saying they were too busy with other pursuits.

When talking about the farming advances, he hasn't been a quick adopter.

"I was the last person around here for miles who still had power take-off headers," Mr Garlick said, citing two reasons.

He recalled interest rates at about 22 per cent when people were buying headers on crazy terms and said "I just couldn't do that".

"And I had these old International headers, I had four of them, because I had four sons and Joan (his wife) used to drive one as well and I would be carting," Mr Garlick said.

"These boys knew these old headers inside and out.

"So anyway the day came, we bought a new John Deere header and the other headers were then parked down the side."

Mr Garlick originally made contact with Ripe to talk about the wagons and to see if anyone else in WA restored them.

"I don't know of anyone else in WA doing them, but they probably don't know about me either," he said.

Much of this interview was done when sitting at a stunning 4.2 metre long solid jarrah table, which has also garnered plenty of attention over the years.

"People ask me what this table is worth," Mr Garlick said.

"I have made four tables like this now and I said I have never sold one below $20,000 and they say 'oh yeah', they are worth a lot of money.

"The truth of the matter is I have never sold one - they have all gone to family."