Through the eyes of an eight-year-old from the back of his father’s old Morris Oxford, Wayne Bryce’s first glimpse of the family’s much-anticipated new farm was a little disappointing. A huge expanse of bare hay paddocks with a pile of posts on the fence line.

Uninspiring as it might have been to the Bryce children, for their parents John and Nin, and so many other families like them, this parcel of land on the Western District plains of Caramut held their future hopes and dreams.

The Bryces were among 70 families to take up blocks in the Caramut area after Victoria’s Soldier Settlement Commission was introduced to help ex-servicemen make a new start in the years after World War 2.

Under the scheme, land was acquired from the district’s sizeable holdings and allocated to eligible returned soldiers.

In the decade from December 1948, they arrived, many bearing the mental and physical scars of their service, some with little or no farming experience, to build new lives and a new chapter in the history of Caramut.

Their stories of hardship, tenacity and mateship have been documented by district military buff and researcher James ‘Bim’ Affleck in his latest book “Soldiering On: Caramut and the Soldier Settlement Movement”.

On the eve of Remembrance Day and 70 years after the first soldier settlers came to Caramut, many of their families will reunite to mark Friday’s book’s launch at the Warrnambool RSL and a plaque unveiling and display on Saturday at Caramut.

Mr Affleck said the soldier settlement scheme had played a key role in the town’s development with the influx of residents reflected in the growth of sporting clubs, community organisations, school numbers, business opportunities and strong social connections forged.

“The scheme’s legacy was that it really made the town initially. The biggest impact was on the school where numbers trebled from about 30 to more than 100 with the influx of families,” he said.

“Then there were the sporting clubs which were really boosted by the soldier settlers.”

He said the majority of soldier settlers had persevered in often challenging conditions to transform their blocks into successful farming concerns. “Fifty per cent of them went on to become very successful and probably about 25 per cent did fairly well,” he said. “About 10 per cent of them didn’t make a fist of it and didn’t stay long. You’ve got to remember that a lot of them had come out of the Depression and then gone to the war. It was tough for them,” he said. A minority had arrived with no farming experience, although all were required to undertake a farming course as a condition of the scheme.

Today, many of the farms have been amalgamated, swallowed up into larger enterprises as the original soldier settlers retire. Just seven second-generation farmers continue to farm in the area.

Mr Affleck spent two-and-half years researching the book, sourcing contributions from all 70 of the soldier settler families.

Alongside their stories, the book details the earlier history of the town and its colourful and influential characters and the station properties like Boortkoi, Barwidgee, Minjah, Chatsworth House, Caramut North, The Gums, Lawrenny and Goodwood, from which the soldier settlement blocks were carved.

It also incorporates a version of the 1988 Bicentennial history project by the Caramut History Group entitled “Plenty of Possums”.

Leading Aircraftsman John Bryce had given four years of his life to the war effort as a RAAF airframes fitter.  In return, he was allocated a 350-acre largely undeveloped block on Caramut’s Barwidgee estate to build a future for his family.

Of the first jobs, son Wayne remembers the fence post holes being dug by hand with a horse and cart to carry the posts. 

Until the farmhouse went up a few years later, the family, like most on the soldier settlers’ blocks, had to make do with the tin garages they built for accommodation.

“I can remember living in this tin shed on the plains of Caramut through winter with the rain belting down and the wind whistling through the cracks,” he recalls.

“We lived there for 10 months with four kids. We had a thousand-gallon water tank, a woodfire stove and a tin bath that was fired up each Sunday.” The Bryces, who like most, ran sheep and a small dairy herd to supplement their income, farmed one of 12 blocks on Barwidgee with a combined population of 24 adults and 50 children.

“It was an excellent environment to grow up in,” according to Wayne. “It was good in that we all came on to the properties as equals.”

Discharged from the Army aged 34 after a heart attack while serving in New Guinea in 1944, Geoff Howley’s father Austin considered himself lucky to be granted a block on the Boortkoi estate in 1948. 

On an undeveloped tract of 570 acres, he started with sheep, branched into cattle, and according to Geoff, “did quite well”.  

Just two when he came to Caramut, Geoff is now one of the few remaining second-generation farmers still farming in the area. Although now on the Barwidgee estate with Scottish Angus cattle grazing the paddocks instead of sheep, Geoff says he and his wife Joy have stayed because they couldn’t find anything they enjoyed more than farming. “The soldier settlement was a social evolution because it gave so many people an opportunity,” he reflects.

Rod Fyffe, former mayor of Bendigo, has fond memories of growing up on one of The Gums blocks allocated to his father Ian who served as a RAAF mechanic during the war.

“It was a little bit of a golden age for Caramut and it gave a lot of us a fantastic opportunity at the beginning of our lives,” he says. Mr Fyffe, who arrived in Caramut in 1958, attending the local school and various sporting clubs, will officially launch Mr Affleck’s book on Friday. “The soldier settlement scheme was one of those social experiments that was very much an outstanding success, contributing to the economic, social and cultural viability of Caramut and towns like it. I feel very fortunate to have grown up in such a place,” he says.

With a strong family connection to the district, researching the Caramut stories was a personal project for Mr Affleck. His grandmother Constance de Little was born at Caramut House and married his grandfather Albert Affleck from Green Hills and later Minjah station.

Mr Affleck and his wife Anna farmed at Minjah for 30 years before they sold up in 2005 due to health problems and succession planning, moving to Peterborough where he turned his attention to military research and supporting ex-service personnel and their families. Since researching his own father’s Great War service, he has completed six books. His work with the veterans’ community was recognised in 2011 with a Medal of the Order of Australia.