A life on the islands
• Bruce Bensemann reflects on an eventful life.
By Daisy Baker,
February 22, 2023
In nearly 89 years of life, Bruce Bensemann has tried his hand at many things, from work as an apprentice mechanic, a bushman, cray fisherman, farmer and more, all the while feeling a pull to the Furneaux Islands.
He was born in New Zealand, on the top on the of the South Island, which he points out is directly East of Bridport and the home he and his wife Beverly have lived in for 14 years.
At seven months old, Mr Bensemann and his family relocated to Australia, living in New South Wales, then Victoria before moving to Tasmania in 1939.
His schooling life began at Glengarry then Exeter area school, but the majority of it took place on Flinders Island where he lived with his family from 1942.
After completing grade seven, the highest education that could be undertaken on the island, he was sent to Launceston Junior Tech for a probationary period of three months.
“I passed all the subjects and got credits in a few that I liked, particularly blacksmithing, that was my favourite subject,” he said.
At the end of 1949, four months shy of 16, Mr Bensemann finished up school.
“Everything I’ve done since then is from there to there,” he said, gesturing from the floor right to the ceiling.
“I started off as an apprentice motor mechanic at two shillings and hour and then I went cutting grass tree gum.
He said grass tree (Xanthorrhea) grows around one metre in 40 years and in its old age it forms red gum round the inside of the leaves, which can be cut out and used for explosives, paints and varnishes.
Mr Bensemann first went muttonbirding when he was eight or nine years old and he went on to do 17 commercial seasons across Babel Island, Little Green Island, Little Dog and Big Dog, catching an estimated 100,000 birds.
“In the heyday we used to produce one million birds a year. Most of them were sold to New Zealand, salted in barrels,” he said.
“On Babel Island there used to be 30 commercial sheds. When I birded there, there were 22. “Now there’s only one.”
In his last few years muttonbirding, Mr Bensemann said he would have caught around 10,000 birds a year in the five-and-half-week-long season.
Mr Bensemann moved back to mainland Tasmania after his mother remarried and moved to Exton.
He found a job with a bushman across the road, cutting billet pulpwood for making paper at Burnie.
“You had to fall the tree, cut it into three foot nine lengths, split it, load it by hand into a truck, cart it to the railway station and send it to Burnie,” he said.
“I did that for years. I started in 1951.
“That was before chainsaws. There were crosscut saws, then motor saws came in and you could rent one for 15 shillings a week.”
In 1952 an 18-years-old Mr Bensemann was called up for national service training.
He opted to join the Army, which involved three years full time and three years part time training.
After training in Brighton, he was very soon a confirmed corporal and then got promoted to sergeant.
“When I turned 20, I passed my lieutenant exams and I was the youngest commissioned officer in Tasmania.”
After inheriting a grocery and milk bar in 1954, Mr Bensemann had a change
of scenery.
His was the first shop in Launceston to sell Coca-Cola.
“Each week you’d get a retail trader magazine to tell you how much to charge,” he said.
“Five months nearly killed me, shut up in a tiny little room at the side of my office for 70 hours a week, after working out in the sunshine and open air. I sold the shop and went off muttonbirding.”
Mr Bensemann met his wife Beverley in the mid 1950s after buying a bush block from her brother-in-law.
Their courtship began when carting hay one day, with Beverley in the driver’s seat of the truck and Mr Bensemann teaching her how to change gears while standing on the running board.
When they started ‘going together’ he would venture to visit her in Hobart where she was nursing at the time, and every other week Beverly would drive to Westbury to see him.
The pair married in 1962 and had their children Barbara in 1964 and Andrew in 1965.
In 1957 Mr Bensemann purchased his first property in Tasmania, a 25-acre lot at Birralee, which included a fully furnished three-bedroom house complete with linen and crockery, outbuildings and a garage with a car inside, all for 500 pounds (approximately $1,000).
After renovating the house and farming the land, he sold the car and property before he got married.
Some of the furniture is still in their home today.
Mr Bensemann later bought a contracting business, with 1800 acres of forest land between Westbury and Biralee.
At one stage he employed 11 men, had five trucks, a bulldozer and a loader.
He was working seven days a week from daylight to dark, supplying two sawmills in Westbury with logs.
Mr Bensemann’s youngest brother Stevan (Brian) and some of his school mates had gone commercial crayfishing, which piqued his interest.
“So I built a 48-foot steel boat in my backyard and in 1968 I went commercial crayfishing, mainly around the Furneaux Group,” he said.
In 1970, 450-acre Preservation Island was on the market and Mr Bensemann purchased it for $20,000.
In the 15 years he owned the island, he extended the airstrips and built a new wharf, which made loading cattle much easier.
The first shipment of cattle took six hours to load 60 and two of them got drowned.
Using the new 90 feet long and 12 feet wide wharf, they were able to load 90 in one hour without losing any.
“I bought 268 acres opposite the [Bridport] aerodrome up on the bank and I also bought Cox’s Run which was Salier’s land, 590 acres across the road,” he said.
“The price of cattle was so low and I was losing money. There was no income from fishing, I’d sold the fishing boat.
“After wasting 20 years of my life making a farm out of the forest, I ripped it all up and put it back into forest again. That paid and at least we had an income for 15 years.”
Almost a year after selling Preservation Island for $100,000, he heard that East Kangaroo Island was for sale, renowned good land for sheep, for $30,000.
With a rotting house and shearing shed flat on the ground, Mr Bensemann offered the owner $11,000 and it was a deal.
They renovated the house, jacked the shearing shed up and extended it.
After a routine doctor’s check-up seven years later, a severe heart murmur was detected and he took the advice to slow down and sold the island.
In his retirement, Mr Bensemann took up gardening, establishing a wallaby, possum and blackbird proof garden and orchard in their backyard, where he grew many award-winning vegetables for the Scottsdale Show.
He frequently took out the prizes for new potato, broad beans, radishes, peas, banana passionfruit and pumpkin.
He said due to a lack of energy he has sadly had to abandon this hobby.
The Bensemanns have done lots of travelling, with Kangaroo Island being their favourite holiday spot where they have ventured three times.
They also visited Flinders Island three times a year in their earlier days, once for the mutton bird season, then for his mother’s birthday until she passed at 100, and then for the show.
These days Mr Bensemann keeps his mind active, writing frequent articles detailing his memories of Flinders Island for the Island News.
“Now I’m writing stories about visits to other islands – I’ve been on 130 islands.”
His bookshelf is filled with titles about Tasmanian history, the Furneaux Islands and shipwrecks, some of the books in which he and his relatives feature.
Over the years he has been a keen mountain climber, reaching the Mt Gower summit on Lord Howe Island 12 times, most recently in 2016, when three generations of his family ventured to the top.
He wanted to climb it again at 86 in 2020, breaking the record of the oldest person to climb but due to the pandemic and subsequent ill health, this never eventuated.
However, Mr Bensemann still remains active, as part of the weekly Heart Foundation Scottsdale walking group.