Ian McFee remembers the days when Phillip Island was covered in big trees, bracken ferns and gorse bush.

“When grandpa took over the family farm (on McFees Road) it was all scrub,” recalls the 76-year-old.

“Over the years we cleared a lot of land. It was more difficult before 1968 when the bridge had a load limit and only small bulldozers could get on the island.

“We’d use explosives to blast the stumps out.”

It’s memories like this the fourth generation Phillip Islander shares with the fifth and sixth generations of McFees who live on the island: his two sons – David (an arborist) and Andy (a builder), and four grandchildren.

“The grandchildren are probably a bit young to understand the family history on the island,” says Ian, who has a 23-acre sheep farm at Rhyll.

“But the eldest, who is nine, is interested in my sheep and farming.”

The McFee family first started farming the island when Annie and William McFee moved here in 1891, with land in Rhyll around the current Hastings and Waterloo Streets, where they built their house.

The house is now owned by William and Annie’s great granddaughter, former Bass Coast Shire mayor Pam Rothfield.

“They lived in Hawthorn and ran an ironmongery, which is really a hardware shop in today’s language, and they would come down here initially for the summer before moving to live,” she says.

Pam – who is also a member of the Phillip Island and District Historical Society – says William made a “significant contribution” to the island, serving as a shire councillor for Woolamai and Phillip Island Shire Council for more than 35 years and deputy coroner, as well as a justice of the peace.

The McFees sold the property in the 1940s and Pam purchased it about a decade ago.

Ian says the McFees were “late comers to the island”. 

“The truly early settlers were families like the Forrests and Cleelands.”

Family tree

Ian never met his great grandparents but remembers his grandfather Stan farming dairy and chicory on McFees Road – “you know where the gun club is now, on the land to the left there”.

Ian’s parents Malcolm and Margaret then took over part of the property. Later Ian farmed chicory with his brother Jimmy, who went on to be one of the island’s last chicory farmers, finishing in 1985 (Jimmy now lives in Melaleuca Lodge in Cowes).

Chicory was used as a coffee supplement and supplied to the likes of manufacturers Bushells and Nestle.

“I would cut a lot of wood too, which we needed to run the kiln to dry the chicory. We’d use about three tonnes of wood to dry a tonne of chicory and we’d farm about six acres of chicory a year.”

These days Ian has a vintage tractor collection of just under 20 and he recalls working as a labourer to earn enough money to buy his first tractor at the age of 16.

For many years he has run a tractor contracting business doing agricultural work and earth moving, including working for the old Phillip Island Shire.

“I do it all: back-hoeing, hay baling, slashing, clearing gorse, cleaning dams, ploughing and making house foundations,” says Ian who continues to work full-time around the island, but has slowed a little because of a crook hip and leg.

“I don’t think there’s a farm property on this island I haven’t worked on.”

Future

Ian says he fears for the future of farming on the island, with high land values making it “impossible” to buy land for traditional farming.

“There are not many serious farmers left here now. In the ‘50s there were about 30 dairy farmers and now there’s one, who is probably milking the same amount of cows as those 30 were seven decades ago.

“I think it will be hobby farms in the future or retreats for city people with lots of money, unless people inherit land.

“It’s nice soil here, not ideal for dairy but good fat lamb country.”

He says the island has changed in so many ways.

“The number of people here is the main difference, and the amount of traffic.

“I can handle the people but the traffic I don’t like. There’s always someone in a hurry. It makes it difficult to shift stock on the road.

“About 10 years ago you could stop traffic to move sheep but now I have to cart them in a truck.”