DIVINE PURPOSE: For more than 60 years Jim Adams has been finding water in the mysterious underground system around Mansfield.

Hard working Jim reflects on history of Mansfield as he sees it

Written by Catherine Ritchie.

THERE is something otherworldly about the sound of the straining elm wood against the grip of a work-hardened hand, as Jim Adams trots about his paddocks looking for water.

And if you add the sound of a coin clicking away in his mouth, you could be excused for wondering if he was having you on.

But Mansfield born and bred water diviner Jim Adams claims emphatically he knows what he is doing, and it works.

He was born almost 80 years ago in Mansfield, that by his description was hard to believe was only a lifetime ago.

Then, as now, he lived in Dead Horse Lane, in a house surrounded by English trees the seeds of which his family brought out from England.

Each morning until he was 15 years old he walked to Mansfield Primary School.

"We didn’t think it was too far to walk - these days they wouldn’t walk to the end of the drive, but then everyone walked to school back then and only the kids who lived further out had bicycles," said Mr Adams.

As soon as school was over he went home to help with the second milking and any other jobs that needed doing around the farm and house.

"No one had any money - you had to work damn hard to make a living," he said.

"Young people have lost the ability to work hard, but hard work never hurt anyone, only worry will."

After finishing his leaving, he started working at FS Buckland as a jackeroo on what was then known as The Battery.

He can remember when cattle had to be mustered through the streets of town to be loaded on to the railhead, and then to market.

"There were no trucks then," he said.

It was not long after he started his jackerooing his mother, whose family were of German descent, showed him how to divine water with the forked branch of a plum tree in the garden.