ALEXANDRINA COUNCIL ORAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

 

Interview with Bert LUNDSTROM

 

Interview by Rose GEISLER;  Transcription by G.W. (Frodo) KROCHMAL, with emendations by Bert LUNDSTROM 

Booklet design & Production by FRODO

 

Oral History is "A picture of the past in people's own words" (B. Robertson, 2000 Oral History Handbook). 

It is a spoken account, reflecting personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning.

 

Tape 1, recorded 18/2/2000

 

Side A

 

Rose: I am interviewing Bert Lundstrom at his and Merle’s home on Liverpool Road at Goolwa. It’s a Friday, and it’s very hot.

How did your family come to be in Goolwa, Bert?

Bert: Our grandfather, he came out from Sweden, long time ago, jumped ship, in the 1800s, and went fishing.

Rose: The 1850s?

Bert: The late 1800s, I'm not sure which year it was. He died in 1903. He married a Cremer (?) girl.

Rose: How old was he when he died?

Bert: No, we don’t know. We don’t know where he’s buried. We know he had a bad foot, gangrene or something set in. He went to Strath hospital in a good-wagon, and the shock of him having his leg off killed him. I found that out from a cousin, that went into it all. Mrs. Lundstrom, she had four children – one died – and Pop   -  his real name was Albert

Rose: Who was the one who jumped ship?

Bert: Augustus – he was known as Jacob here, whether he changed his name is another story – Augustus Lundstrom. (Johan August Lundstrom)       He did write letters, someone somewhere has copies of them. A couple come out here, a few years ago, and our other son, Steve, was in Adelaide, and they seen his name in the telephone book, and they couldn’t ring him up, so they left a note to see if he’s any relation.      Greg still writes to him, backwards and forwards.     Our father, he mainly went fishing.

Rose: Augustus, he settled in Goolwa?

Bert: He started in Yankalilla, ring-barking trees, I believe. I met a chap coming home on the train one night from Adelaide, and he told me all about it. His father employed him, and taught him a bit of English, and that. Well, then he went to Victor Harbor, and built a boat down there.     And then he finished up in Goolwa. He had a camp over at Loveday Bay, just on the Coorong, and, as a matter of fact, there’s a bay there, which is called Jacob’s Bight, because that’s where he had his camp.

Rose: Do you know whether he was a fisherman in Sweden?

Bert: No, he was a sailor on a boat.

Rose: I wonder how he felt he had the expertise to do it here.

Bert: He liked the river. He liked the sea. He was mucking around in Victor Harbor for a while.    Greg (Lundstrom) would know all about him.           

When our Father Albert came back from the first war, he went fishing.

Rose: Your father is the son of that Augustus? And when was he born?

Bert: Yes.   Well, I’m not sure when he was born – there was Alex Lundstrom, there was Jack Lundstrom, our Pop – that’s Albert Lundstrom – and then  Ellen, a sister, died, and Annie was a daughter, and she married a Burgar, and some of her ancestors are still around the place.

Rose: Merle has just brought in a family tree.

Bert: Actually, it was Gabril…

Rose: Gabriel?

Bert: No, this is him. His parents were Gabril Lundstrom and Annie, in Sweden, and that’s Johann – that’s where he got the Jacob from – 

Rose: Who did that Augustus marry? The first one that was out here. That was your great-grandfather?

Bert: He married Ellen Cremer

Rose: Johann August was his name, wasn’t it? We’ve just looked at the family, your family tree. He married Ellen Cremer, who was a Goolwa girl?

Bert: That’s right

Rose: And they had four sons and a daughter?

Bert: They had Alec, Jack, Dick and John, no, Jack is John – must have been three sons and two daughters, Ellen died and Annie lived, and married a Mr. Burgar.

Rose: Was that your grandfather?

Bert: Yes, Johann was our grandfather.

Rose: He was the one that had to have his leg removed, and died from shock?

Bert: That’s what we put it down to, shock.

Rose: So his wife was left with a family to bring up? That would be your father, and his brothers?

Bert: Yes. We used to call in there, coming back from school, just to say ‘g’day’.

Rose: And that was down in Brooking Street, and they built a house there.

Bert: John stopped here - that’s Pop’s brother – he went fishing. Alec went to work in the hills somewhere. There was only the three of  them.

Rose: Do you know what the girl, Ellen, died of at sixteen?

Bert: No, Greg’d know, but I don’t. Nell Berger would have all the facts and figures.

Rose: She would have had a struggle to bring that family up.

Bert: Oh yes, no malingering  in those days. She probably worked at something, I don’t know.

Rose: So, your father became a fisherman, too?

Bert: Yes, he went to the War, the first War, but when he came home they went fishing, him and Jack went to the War.

Rose: Did they go to Gallipoli?

Bert: No, they didn’t go to Gallipoli – they went to France. In fact, Jack got a … military medal for heroism in France. We can’t find that - sad - but we knew him pretty well.  We caught up with Mr Kastberg, and he  asked me did I know of it, and I said “No, I knew he had a medal”. Then he got in touch with the others, but he couldn’t find what happened to it. It might have been buried with him. I think Jack was buried out here. He died during the War, the second War. I was away at the time.

Rose: I’m sure his name’s on the memorial here. Have you seen his name on the memorial at Goolwa?

Bert: His is on, but our father’s is not.

Rose: I wonder why?

Bert: Just one of those things.   I went through that – Jack’s  on there, but not ours..

Rose: We’ll have to get his name put on, Bert. Why not, after all this time? The records would be there.

Bert: Yes. Anyhow, they both went fishing, after the War.

Rose: Together, or separately?

Bert: No, separately at the time. They built their little huts, …down at the Murray Mouth…and we had a lot of fun down there. Different from what it is now.  On top of that, there was a lot of old riverboat men, after the riverboats stopped here – they come back and went fishing. Mick and Ted Cremer, when we were kids, they’d tell us yarns about the river. We should have asked them more. They used to tell us they were stuck up in the Darling River for six months with no water, and all this sort of thing. Interesting, very interesting. They were in the ‘30s, late ‘20s and ‘30s.

Rose: Bert, was your father married when he went away to the War?

Bert: No, he got married in the ‘20s, and I was born in ’22. 

Rose: Was your uncle married when he went away?

Bert: No, he didn’t marry. He was single.

Rose: What would your father do, would they camp down there and fish? For how many days?

Bert: Mainly a week. They’d go on the Sunday and come back on the Saturday. They had big boats, but there’s a lot of fishers down there only had a dinghy. They used to work among themselves, then they’d fish up, this sort of thing, every day. Harry Sweetman and his father were agents on the wharf at the time, and they used to handle the fish. I can remember, when I went fishing, about in the late ‘30s, …….the fisherman’d come out, and they might have two or three big mulloway they’d hooked at the Mouth, and they all had their certain marks they’d put on – some of them’d cut the top off the tail, some of them would  put a star on them…you knew each one. And the agent at Goolwa, old Harry Sweetman, he’d throw them on the wharf, or the fisherman used to, and he’d box them up, ice them, put them on the train, and away they’d go to the market. That worked all right. Usually on a Saturday, most of them would come to Goolwa, in different boats. They’d take it in turns.

Rose: Leave their boats down there?

Bert: Yes.  The Treleaven's, they had the Walrus, Pop had the Thelma, there was other, bigger boats, proper fishing boats, - the Woodrows’ had the Ida -  and they’d take it in turns bringing them up and taking them back, and they’d work out different things – if you were coming up, they’d say – “Bring us back some bread”, or milk, or something like that.       There were quite a few fishermen at the time down there..

Rose: You’d have to trust the agent?

Bert: He was an honest sort of a bloke, Harry Sweetman, and his father, too, both of them.  Edward Dawe had the Adelaide Market at the time.

Rose: They put the fish on the train?

Bert: The agents would put them on the train, ice them all up, and they’d go to Adelaide, and be sold by auction the next morning. He’d work out the returns, and, on the weekend, he’d give you the money.

Rose: Did your father and uncle send their fish up every day? Themselves, or send it up with somebody else?

Bert: Yeah, mostly. They used to take it in turns, whoever was coming up..

Rose: They brought the whole lot?

Bert: Yes. They brought the whole lot up. One boat would come up. You might only have one trip a week.

Rose: It was a real co-operative, wasn’t it?

Bert: Yes, it was, really.  There wasn’t never arguing, down there.    Most of the fishing in those days was line fishing, out of the Mouth. There wasn’t many nets used at the time, although we had big old hemp nets, 10-inch nets. Some of the fishermen there, they only had a dinghy, a little bait net they’d catch some mullet and stuff from boat, and a long line that they used to put out to the Mouth, to carry out with the tide.  When we were kids down there, we used to go and sit on the sand hills and watch them – there’d be a dozen or more boats, anchored across the Mouth.

Rose: Inside, not outside?

Bert: Inside the river, but their lines would go out into the surf, 800 yards a line, and they’d all anchor alongside of one another, and in the out-tide, they’d be about 5 or 6 per channel, and they’d float the line out. Then one chap’d get a fish on, and, as he’s caught it in, the others alongside him would have to pull their lines in, too, otherwise they’d tangle up. They’d gaff the fish, and put them into the boat. Mostly all big fish, back in those days.  The Mouth was big in those days, wide, lot more water coming down the river. That was before the barrages were built, in the ‘30s.

Rose: Was it dangerous?

Bert: Oh, yes. Many people drowned down there. I remember we were down  in the hut there one day, and Pop come home in the middle of the night, and I heard him say – “Old Sam’s gone. Sam Armfield”.

Rose: So he was the son of the Armfield of the Slip?

Bert: No, he’d be the grand-father of Doug.      Anyhow, he said – “Sam’s gone”. And what happened, they had a lighthouse on Mundoo, flashing, and they took it away, and every time they’d take that light away, something’d happen, cause he pulled his anchor up, and his dinghy must have turned around in the tide - this is night-time – and he rowed out of the Mouth instead of rowing in, and all they found of him were bits of dinghy and a pair of trousers. They never found him.   Old Matti went out in the flood, the ’56 flood. They found him a fortnight later.  I was down there when two other chaps, Victor Harbour fishers, they went out, and they both got drowned, and never found them.  I was Harbourmaster for ten years, in the ‘70s and the ‘80s, and I used to stress the point down there when I seen how dangerous the Mouth was. Some of them would take notice of it, some wouldn’t.  One day, while I was fishing there, a boat got into trouble in the Mouth. They went down in their little boat, with their little motor on, and not powerful enough to come out against the tide. I went down and pulled them out. I’d been there one day, on another weekend, a boat come down and a chap had a lad with him. He threw his anchor out and kept going. I only had a dinghy with an outboard on it, I went down and pulled him in. He said – “You know, we were here last week, catching fish, and we had no trouble at all.”  Last week they had the barrages shut. But now the barrages’re open. He didn’t realize that he’d come across from the Mundoo, you see.

                                      ………………….

Rose: How many in your immediate family, Bert?

Bert: Brothers and sisters? There’s Murray, he’s died. He was a fisherman, and sister Lorna. that’s the only two.

Rose: And you. Who did your father marry?

Bert: He married Lucy Bowley. She was a local girl. I remember my grandmother on her side, we sat down one day in one of her son’s house, and waited till she died. We had Mrs. Farrow, the District Nurse, with her at the time. She had that place on the corner, near the bowling club.

Rose: There was one along Liverpool Road, too. Who was that, Nurse…?

Bert: Nurse Jemison.  Nurse Farrow was the nurse who brought me into the world in 1922. In fact, I was born in that place down there, Nurse Farrrow's..

Rose: Were they in competition, do you know?

Bert: No, not really. They were the only two nurses here .They used to look after people if there was anything wrong with them.

Rose: Cottage hospitals, weren’t they, in the old days?

Merle: Jemison had gone, long before. They didn’t actually clash.

Rose: So what did your mother’s family do in Goolwa, the Bowleys?

Bert: Charlie Bowley, we don’t know him. He came out from England, and he was a doctor. That’d be in the 1800s. We only knew her, Mrs. Bowley, wife of Charles. From there, she had Mum, Annie Muriel Lucy, actually, Mum’s name was, and she had Mrs. Gibbs, (she married, [becoming] Mrs. Gibbs) – Elsie - , had Jim Bowley, Sid Bowley and Harry Bowley. They were her off-spring.

Merle: Nancy?

Bert: No, Nancy was Elsie’s daughter.

Rose: Did he practice out here?

Bert: I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t remember.

Rose: I wonder what brought them to Goolwa?

Bert: I don’t know. The only person that would have their records would be Joyce Gibbs, now Joyce Bayly. She got all the information from that side of the family, the Bowley side.  I remember Mrs Bowley was a great church-goer, the Methodist church.

Rose: The old one over here, Uniting Church now?

Bert: That’s right. Oh yes, we had to go to church every day. She had a pew over there – they all did, in those days – certain place they had to sit and everything.

Rose: So you had a brother and a sister. When were you born? Were you the oldest?

Bert: Yeah. I was born in 1922. Murray would be born in about ’24 – I’m not sure, he’s dead now. Lorna's the youngest, she’d be a couple of years after that.

Rose: Your mother would have been fairly lonely, with your dad away six days a week?

Bert: Matter of fact, she lived up here on Liverpool Road for a start, when they got married in the ‘20s, in a little house up past the shop, that’s got a frontage coming out. It was the only place there at the time, and berry bushes all around it, and when they got married…

Rose: What sort of berry bushes?

Bert: Prickly..

Rose: Box thorns?

Bert: Box thorns.       That’s where they went after they were married. Pop used to go away fishing, for the week, and she said – “We’ve got to get out of here, there’s too many snakes!” There were snakes everywhere. They sold that place, and then they bought the place in Hay Street, we had a fish shop there.

Rose: Where the fish shop is now?

Bert: There's no fish shop there now. It was Pop’s place. And we bought it off him. We were at Newacott Place. When Mum died – she died in 1950 – Pop was on his own, and we finished up buying the place, the front house. Then we used to start selling fish from there, in a small way, out of an ice-box. We used to get rid of them. In fact, congolly fish were about in those days – that’s a little fish in the river here, and we used to spend all Saturday night fillettin’ them, and getting them ready for Sunday. Some of them sold for about a shilling a pound or something.

Merle: One and three, I think it was.

Bert: One and three, yeah, and the whole ones were five pound for five  shillings something. Anyhow, we done alright, so we thought – okay, we’ll put in ice through, ‘cause there was no ice in Goolwa so we built a little ice unit and refrigeration plant, and that was in the late ‘50s. We started getting people coming in to get ice from us. In fact, we used to deliver ice around the place, to Mrs. Neighbour and old Mrs. Dent and a few other people. They used to have ice-chests then. The fisherman used to come and get their ice from us, instead of going to Victor and those places. We built the shop in the ‘60s. We were flat-out there, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, you might say,  people coming in…

Merle: Anytime, 12 o’clock at night…3 o’clock…

Bert: We finished up, we had a self-service ice, and a self-service cockle machine, which saved you working all night. We stuck that for 16 years, then, when I got crook with me legs…

Rose: Were you fishing at the same time?

Bert: Yeah, I was fishing at the same time. Then we said to the boys –“What about taking it over?”

Rose: See how hard you’ve worked.

Bert: Our sons, Pete, Greg and Steve, helped us, getting the ice out. We used to make two ton a day, and sometimes, the ice’d only be ready at midnight. …No, we done all right but it was hard work, so we give it away in 1978. I bought a house in Liverpool Road, then we sold the shop to Graham Flanagan.

Rose: Let’s go back a bit, Bert. You were growing up – would you go out  fishing with your father? Even before you went to school?

Bert: Oh, yes. No, not before I went to school – we used to go down there, to the camp at the Mouth, as kids, the same as our kids used to go down there when they were babies.  He was only a few months old, wasn’t he? (to Mrs.Lundstrom)   and we had a lovely time down there, quiet old place, the camp was.

Rose: Was that in the holidays?

Bert: As they got older, yes, holidays, Christmas time.

Rose: Where did your mother move to?

Bert: Hay Street, from Liverpool Road, in about 1920.

Rose: That’s right. So you walked from there, up to school, did you?

Bert: Yes, must’ve.

Rose: Do you remember much about your school days?

Bert: Some of the teachers, Rex Walters was one – he was a big feller, good teacher, a good footballer.

Rose: Were there two rooms in the school in those days?

Bert: There was only the big building in those days.

Rose: That’s got two rooms in it, hasn’t it?

Bert: When the barrages started, I was still going to school, and they put on those other rooms. Well, that brought it up to, about.. four?  The barrages were very busy. When I left school, I started working when I was 14 at Mr. Goode’s, Thomas Goode’s. I was on the baker’s cart.

Rose: Did he have a bakery himself, or did he buy in the bread?

Bert: Hurford had the bake-house up near the school, so Thomas Goode's must have had the one down there, near the op. shop.

Rose: Well, that op. shop is an old bakery.[1] Is that it?

Bert: Yes. We used to get up early in the morning. The bread’d be there. We had a baker’s cart, and two horses. Old Gert and Old George, we called them. Gert was a big old pack horse.

Rose: Which Mr. Goode was this?

Bert: Thomas Goode. That was in 1930, the late 1930s. We used to beat one another trying to get down there early……we’d load up with bread, do the town, take all day to go right up there..

Rose: To North Goolwa?

Bert: Right up there – there was a farm up there, and then all  round there, and half way down to the barrage, because from Goolwa down to the  barrage was all these transportable houses, all the way down, and we sold the goods to them from an old bus.. I left the shop just after that, and went fishing with my father

Rose: With your father?

Bert: Yes. There was a few fish about then, so we had two or three years there until ’41, when I joined up – had six years there .

Rose: Let’s go back to your school-days a bit. Who was the youngsters you went to school with? You went to school with Betty Kempe, Betty Dodd, didn’t you?

Bert: She was in our class. There was Alan Willmet(?), and John McKernan (?), and Arthur Taylor

 

 

 

 

Tape 1, recorded 18/2/2000

 

Side B

 

Bert: John McKernan and Arthur Taylor were the two State children. They come down – I don’t know where they come from really – they were probably people  whose parents couldn’t take care of them or something,. Miss Hedding used to look after them, I think she lived around about the roundhouse, or in the round house

Rose: Near Signal Point, you’re talking about the Superintendent’s cottage?

Bert: Yeah, that’s right. ‘Cause there’s an old rubbish-dump in front of that. That was the main town rubbish dump, big cutting went past

Rose: We call it Cutting Road there now. So Signal Point’s built on a rubbish dump?

Bert: Pretty close to it. We used to take our rubbish there and take the kids with us, and we’d bring another load back!

Rose:  Was there a hill there that you tipped it over?

Bert: No, there was a cutting, they cut it out for something to do with the railway, and when that filled up, behind the R.S.L., down there, right to the wharf, a lot of stuff was put in there – in fact, I think they dug out some steamer parts down the wharf end of it.

Rose: Gee, that’d pong a bit! Or was it just rubbish rubbish, not waste?

Merle: Oh, no.  Like, my back-tray (?), from hair-dressing days, that went in there.

Bert: We buried most of our rubbish, I think? Back in those days, we used to dump it in the river – they had another rubbish dump down there…

Rose: In the river?

Bert: Yeah. You’d tip it over the cliff there, go down there with a barrow-load, and tip it over the top of it,…this was on top of salt-water, back then.

Rose: I bet you could still drag up some rubbish from there to this day.

Bert: I suppose you could, old bottles and stuff. It’s about where the sewerage pump is there.

Rose: Yes, I know, just down below Admiral Terrace.

Bert: Back to school, we had Mr. Coglan, he was the headmaster. He used to hide his canes some of the time.

Rose: This Miss Hedding, who had the State children, they didn’t seem to worry that it was a single person who had these children, did they? Dora Tuckwell was telling me that, out at Northfield (?), they called it “Old Maid’s Lane”.

Bert: Yeah. ‘Statetown’ was another name.

Rose: I don’t suppose you ever discovered why so many came to Goolwa?

Bert: No.

Rose: It’s interesting, ‘cause we’re a small population to have as many children as that.         It was probably to supplement income, because there wouldn’t have been a pension system in those days. They were good

reliable people.

Bert: No dole or anything, y’got rations, that’s all. Pretty tough in those days.

Rose: If you were a single person, on your own, it would be tough.

Bert: I used to deliver milk when I was a kid from Hay street, for Mrs. Fletcher. She lived over in that other street. She used to milk cows, because her husband, I think, drowned. Mrs. Fletcher had Geoff, Alan, …children to bring up, and that’s how she brought them up, by selling milk. I earned enough money to buy a push-bike – five pound, back in those days.

Rose: That was a lot of money. Did you sell milk for her?

Bert: It was, in those days. Had a can, with a ladle, and people used to leave their billys outside, and they’d have them overnight.       I used to do that before I went to school. 

 Rose: Weren’t her children old enough to do that?

Bert: They were, but it helped them, by me selling milk for her.

Rose: So she paid you to do that for her?

Bert: I used to do it, yeah. She had the cow-yard across from her house, which was in…

Rose: Hay Street?

Bert: No, on the side of Hay Street, that next one going up towards….goes up the one-way street..

Rose: I call it Little Scotland.

Bert: Yeah, that’s right. The first house behind those flats was Mrs. Fletcher’s, and she had her cow-yard opposite.

Rose: Right there?! In the middle of the town!?!

Bert: Yeah. Old paddock, used to be up to your ankles in sludge come winter-time. She used to go over there, milk her cows..

Rose: But I can’t believe that there was a cow-yard in the middle of the town!!

Bert: Yeah. Cows used to walk down the street!

Rose: They’d just have a common, on common land?

Bert: Yeah. They’d tuck into your hedges and that, and come into your front garden.

Rose: Bert, do you remember the fence around the Memorial Garden, and the cows grazing on it – the coprosma hedge, and they would nip at that, and keep it trimmed?

Bert: Yeah, I remember that.

Rose: Did that little park have a gate on it, that you got inside?

Bert: I think it had a gate – it had two gates, I think, one near the op. shop, down the other end, ….

Rose: Can you remember what Goolwa looked like, when you were a kid?

Bert: I can remember makin’ the main street, and they had all the old people around the town that didn’t have a job, with a pick and shovel, cracking all the stones.

Rose: What? To put the bitumen down?

Bert: Put the base down. They had all these great big stones, they used to carry them round from the school, right down the street, would crack them up, and then they’d put the surface on it. No, it wasn’t a bitumen road then, it was marle, I think. ‘Cause there was trees all the way down the street, Moreton Bay Figs. There was one near Harold Goode’s shop, there was one near the bottom pub, there was one over where the hairdressers’ shop, old Mr. Sexton, was, and they were big Moreton Bay Figs

Merle: They were here in 1942

Bert: The roots used to do a lot of damage. There was one just about in front of  Harold Goode’s shop, the side of that ..verandah had..

Merle: and the petrol pumps, the wind-up petrol pumps, with the little ball in the lead-light thing…

Rose: Where was the petrol station?

Bert: Near Harold Goode’s shop

Rose: He had that, too? There wasn’t much he didn’t have?

Bert: No, he had that.  There we’d line up.  He’d be open till nine o’clock on Fridays, so we’d all wait for our money…(much of this is unclear, unfortunately)…we’d wait there, nine o’clock would come and we’d still be waiting – it was a Friday night, and I had to get up early in the morning because I had the bread-round to do

Rose: You still delivered on Saturday?

Bert: Yeah, delivered Saturdays. I used to try and finish before the football, but you wouldn’t. It’d be Saturday afternoon before you finished.  But, no, he had the petrol pumps and, (when) we went fishing, we’d buy the petrol in 4-gallon tins, square tins. They’d be two in a box, and many a time you’d take two or three boxes to put in your boat with the petrol – most of the boats in those days had old car engines  We had one, a Swift motor - the Thelma, then we got the old Sunbeam Scooter, a pleasure-boat that  Captain  Dodd had, we bought that off him, …

(Rose here remarks, relative to the extraneous noise affecting the recording, that – “The thumping that you can hear is the construction of the bridge [to Hindmarsh Island, then being built] and it can be heard all over Goolwa, even though we’ve got the windows shut.”)

Rose: Tell me about this making the road – you were going to school then?

Bert: That’d be in the ‘20s, middle 20’s, I suppose – and they had up to a dozen chaps there, with picks, hammers, hacking up all these stones. There was no vehicles like they got now. It was all hard yakka. Then they’d put marle over the top of that. I think they rolled it down – they must have – but that was a  good solid base.

Rose: You’re the first one that’s been able to tell me when the main street was sealed.

Bert: There probably was a street of some sort before that, cause it was all horse and carts in those days. We used to have a trough in front of the Goolwa Hotel, that’s where they used to tie the horses up there, near the horse’s trough. And then rings round some of the posts up and down the street…..

Rose: There was still horses and carts in the ‘20s?

Bert: Oh, yes.  The Burgars had a place at Currency Creek – they were Church of Christ people – and they used to come in with their sulkie every Sunday, doesn’t matter what the weather was like.

Rose: Did they have a roof, a cover, on the sulkie? It wasn’t open? “Surrey With The Fringe On Top”!

Bert: Yes, there was a hood.  (I think – I’m not sure – it was the undertaker, – Dave Reed – it was his horse).

Rose: Which Reed was this?

Bert: Dave Reed – he had the carpenter shop, and also had the Goolwa hearse.

Rose: Where the Museum is?

Bert: No, it’s where those shops are there – you got the Corio Hotel, then there was a butcher’s shop, then there was a carpenter’s shop. He used to make all the coffins and everything, and then take them up to Currency Creek.

Rose: So having a carpenter’s shop was an opening to have an (undertaker?)…

Bert: There was a room that there was two old ladies in, behind him. They’d always invite me in for a cup of tea, every morning, when I was on the baker’s cart.

Rose: Did you take money, on your round?

Bert: Oh yes – I had my bag, my little leather bag.

Rose: Gosh, you know the trust that they had in young people in those days was wonderful, wasn’t it?

Merle: You had to trust people. The help you got from people wasn’t money or nothing to do with that, it was help.

Bert: Another thing I had to do was sell so much of yesterday’s bread, so Saturday morning, … early, poor old people had to put a note out, one loaf or two loaves of bread, they used to get yesterday’s!

Rose: Did they know?

Bert: Yeah – “You give me some stale loaves last Friday!”. You had to sell so much of yesterday’s bread, and then you get the fresh bread, as well as the buns,  and the pasties…

Rose: Oh, no! You didn’t take yesterday’s pies out!?!

Bert: No, they used to get cleaned out pretty well. He used to run out of pies and buns…

Rose: So did you give the stale bread to certain people, Bert?

Bert: Only those that don’t go crook!! (laughter) Those that’d go crook, they used to get fresh ones next time.

Rose: Why didn’t he sell it cheap, at the end of the day?

Bert: Ah well, that’s the way it goes – they’d make so many loaves of bread and they don’t like wasting it.

Rose: And were they high tops?

Bert: Yeah, all sorts, pipe loaves, half-loaves, little half-loaves.

Rose: Did you actually have to knock at the door, or did they leave a container at the gate?

Bert: Oh no, mainly you’d sing out … same as the greengrocer used to go around…the butcher, too, sometimes        oh no, they used to deliver all the stuff in those days     (somewhat indecipherable, but with laughter)           Oh, I had a few doggies that used to take to me, too, but you used to know them.    (more laughter)

Rose: So Mr.Goode used to keep you waiting for your pay?

Bert: For a while, till he got everything..

Rose: But he’d finished work?

Bert: About half-past-nine,   but you’d hang around…

Rose: Did you have to work till then?

Bert: Yeah, in the shop, yeah. He used to have rolls and bacon, we’d cut that up…had dairy produce with different people’s names around the town, they’d put their name on it, so you could go in and ask for Mrs. So-and-so’s butter. They used to keep, I forget the name of some of them.  Your mother used to make butter,  (referring to Merle’s mother)   They had their separator...make their own butter… then they used to sell it, the eggs and everything…you’d go in and ask for Mrs. So-and-so’s butter, or Mrs.So-and-so’s eggs, cause you’d know they were good eggs.           

Rose: How times change! You wouldn’t be allowed to sell somebody’s butter that’s made at home now, would you?        How did they keep it?

Bert: The butter used to be in a glass case.  They used to probably bring it in every day. It was only ice-boxes, you’d keep it in and put it in ice-boxes, that was the only thing we had in those days, the ‘20s..

Rose: Was Mrs. Jones’ pound of butter labeled Mrs. Jones’, was it?

Bert: Yeah, they’d have their name on it. The butter paper would have a little thing with their name on it.

Rose: Did any of it get left?

Bert: I suppose they did.

Rose: I wonder why they didn’t go to Mrs Jones and buy it direct from her?

Bert: I suppose they did.

Rose: They could have, I suppose. This was just surplus that they’d bring down to the shop?

Bert: Yeah. We used to sell our almonds there.

Merle: It was an easy way to get rid of it – just give it to the shop.

Rose: Where were your almond trees, behind the house?

Bert: Back of the shop in Hay Street. We used to get enough kernels to pay the water-rates every year. Harold Goode used to buy the almonds.

Rose: You didn’t have the galahs in those days that would have pinched them. That’s what happens now.

Bert: I suppose we did have galahs that pinched them.  Mrs. Fletcher used to sit…cracking almonds, hitting them with a hammer, cracking them. She had a fair few almond trees there.

Rose: These State children, getting back to that, you were naming Miss Hedding, living at the round house. She had two, did she – two boys?

Bert: Yeah. ‘Toe-Cutter’ Taylor and John McKernan. John McKernan joined the Navy. I met him during the War.

Rose: They kept their name? Did they ever know their parents?

Bert: Yeah.  I don’t know. Arthur Taylor, he went home to Western Australia somewhere.

Rose: Can you remember whether these children were effected by being taken away from their homes?

Bert: They didn’t seem to be, no. Taylor was a bit of a bad boy, really, bit of a bully. John was a more pleasant sort of fellow.

Rose: And Miss Hedding was good to them, looked after them?

Bert: Oh yes. They had no complaints there. She had John until the War, that’d be late ‘30s. He joined up…

Rose: Did he stay in the town after he left school? ‘Cause he joined up from here?

Bert: Must’ve. He must’ve joined up from Goolwa. Arthur Taylor, he went working on the railways or something over there (W.A.?), he might’ve gone. I think they kept them for a certain time, and then let them go after they’d finished their schooling. Then they went to high school, I don’t know – Strath was a high school, then Victor after – they had to catch the train up to Strath. I didn’t go to high school. Murry did, my brother.

Rose: Did you not want to?

Bert: I got the Q.C.. (Qualifying Certificate?)  There was a bit of work about, and things were tough, in the Depression, so when I was offered a job to go on the baker’s cart, I took it.

Rose: A community knows its own. Mr. Goode would have known you were a nice boy, and so on, wouldn’t he?

Bert: Yes. We used to know him pretty well.

Rose: Were you working there at the same time as Betty Kempe, Betty Dodd?

Bert: No

Rose: ‘Cause she used to work for Mr. Neighbour

Bert: Yeah, that was down the street, down further,

Rose: And then Mr. Jolly got them to work over there, just before the War, or during the early part of the War, because Betty joined up from there.

Bert: Shepherd’s had the draper’s shop down there,

Rose: Next to Neighbour’s, where the dentist is.

Bert: They were going to school, Joan Shepherd was going to school at the time.

Rose: Were you working for Mr. Goode when you joined up, or had you gone fishing with your father?

Bert: No, I’d gone fishing. I was 14 when I left.    I was about 15 when I went fishing. Murry had come back fishing, too – the three of us went fishing together. Then I joined up, and Murray joined up.  Dad then got in Mr. Tripp, when the hauling season was on.

Rose: I know a Blanche (?) Tripp, she’s the daughter.

Bert: Hauling season is when you’re hauling big schools of fish. Then he finished up shearing.      He lived at Narrung, up near the barrages (?). He was a brother to Mrs. Lush, and Mrs. Joe Lush…

Rose: On the corner, Mrs. Lush’s corner?

Bert: Yeah, that’s right. She was a native woman.  They would have a place at Tauwitchere, too, up top end, near the Coorong.   We started fishing later on, I fished on me own after Pop give it away. I used to join up with Herbie Rigney and Hector Semascho, and the three of us used to go hauling.    Herbie had good eye-sight. He used to go up the top of the mast, and he’d see the fish, and he could tell what they were, from a long way out.

Rose: And this was inside? It wasn’t out in the ocean?

Bert: This was inside. These were the last good years where the fishing was in the 50s, and before the 1956 flood. (The fishing season goes from about September to Easter each year, when the schools of fish used to come into the river around the Mouth, and fishermen from the Coorong used to come down for the season.)

Rose: Was Dick Woodrow Helen Scott’s father?

Bert: No, that was Jean Woodrow.

Rose: She’s in West Park now. What was her husband’s name?

Bert: Norman

Rose: Because she and Betty Spencer talked about the huge hauls of mulloway on the wharf, landing big enough fish to go across a railway wagon, hitting the tail over the sides of it.

Bert: Yeah, yeah - we used to catch big ones down the Mouth like that. I took a chap down one day, line fishing at the Mouth – Geoff Fletcher – he was one of Goolwa’s boys;  he was in the Air Force, and we used to go with a long line out to the Mouth, and I had a jeep; we used to go down to the beach with the jeep.

Rose: What, from this side?

Bert: Goolwa. I’d go out after the ’56 flood, that’s the only place where we could fish, out on the beach there, ‘cause you couldn’t fish in there. So anyhow, I got this fish, and I said to Geoff – ‘Pick it up’, and he said, one hand, he couldn’t pick it, and I looked, and it wasn’t extra big, but it was a fat fish. I picked it up and threw it in the back of the bus, and we went back to the boat, and I gutted it, and I said – ‘Oh, just for the matter, we’ll weigh the guts’, so I had a pair of scales there, and the guts went twelve pound! So I said to him – ‘Just to see what it would weigh’, and I put it in a bag – we used to have to put them in bags then, you couldn’t get her in a box – those brown bags, hessian bags – tail sticking out; I took one in that, and I was paid for 87 pound, and that was in the market. Well, that meant – he’d lost a bit of weight, which is usual, on the way down – he would have been 100 pounds! That’s the biggest one I ever caught.

Merle: I wish he’d stop talking about fish!

Bert: That was hauling season. They were the last two or three years that we done much good down there. I don’t know what happened, just after that, well, after the flood it was all right. They cut the Mouth out, to let the fish come in, it just deteriorated.    Mullaway is a very scarey sort of  fish – back in the old days, when we had sailing boats down the Mouth, or they only used to use sailing,  you could sail across a school of fishes, see one at the Mouth, big school of fish, and  they’d have their tails and fins out of water , and you could sail past them, and go get a net – if they were still around,

Rose: They don’t like the noise

Bert: That’s right.  But now, if you get speedboats and these things around the Mouth, I reckon it stops them coming in. Matter of fact, they’ve been getting a lot more fish around Port Adelaide, and up the West Coast than we ever did, so they by-pass Goolwa. You can still get them outside, they come out along the surf, and they catch them out in the surf, but not in Goolwa. Up in Tauwitchere and those places up there, they used to do well, catching big fish.  Around the Mouth, some were fishing with big old ten-inch nets, all made out of cord stuff, not nylon or anything like that – they were only catching big fish, over 22 pounds – cause they’re pretty hard to keep, the smaller fish, whereas big fish you could keep a lot better, especially when you put ice on them.

Rose: Bert, what did you used to do for fun, as a young feller? Did you play footy?

Bert: Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t play footy much until I came back from the War. I did play before, but most of it was after the War.

Rose: You didn’t come back from the Mouth on a Friday night, and came on Saturday in time for the footy?

Bert: Well, as a matter of fact, now you mention it, I used to run across from the Mouth, across from the huts on the Mundoo, walk over to the houses at Mundoo, and wait for the old T-model Ford to come down – chap used to bring the groceries down from Goolwa or wherever, and get a ride back with him to go to the dance!

Rose: On Saturday?

Bert: Friday or Saturday night.    Another time there was something on, and I thought there was not much doing down here – we had a little dinghy,  which we called the Buckjumper (?), it was a little light sculling dinghy. Nobody was going to Goolwa that day, so I said  -‘I’m going to row.’ So I rowed to Goolwa from the Mouth, just to go to a dance!

Rose: What a young blade will do! There must have been a reason, Bert?

Bert: No, not really.

Rose: And did you dress up properly for a dance? Did you were gloves?

Bert: Oh, just ordinary good clothes.  No, no, I never wore gloves to the dance.

Rose: I know people who did. Where would they hold the dance?

Bert: In the big hall, Centenary Hall, mainly. In those days, they used to have boxing matches and all there, when the barrages were going. Roller-skating, a lot going on there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tape 2, recorded 24/3/2000

 

Side A

 

Rose: You were telling me about the dances. Where were they held?

Bert: Just before the War, in the early ‘30s and ‘40s, in the Institute. Dances used to be held there, and also the movies. Later – must’ve been during the war – they used to have boxing tournaments and one thing and another in the Centenary Hall – that’s the one Mr. Wells, the Goolwa chemist, got built, and then they transferred the movies and dancing over there, eventually. But they were in the Institute, and they had a local electricity supply that was over near Mr. Henley’s place, that was over where the Museum is now. Half-way through the movies, they’d go off, and then come on again…

Rose: Was that due to the power?

Bert: Yeah. Was only local power, and was only electric light. The boys used to have to, picture night, we used to get up on the stage, they had seats up there – we’d have to take over the stage to look at the pictures.

Rose: That was down the west end?

Bert: That was on the road side of the Institute. The projector was on the  outside of the building. They had stairs going up to it on the west side of the library. We had a lot of fun there. You’d all curse and everything when the power went off, and the lights went off and everything else, and then it’d come up again.

Rose: The screen was on the Dawson Street end of the Institute? Where the library is now?

Bert: Yeah. The screen was on that side of it.

Rose: Who was the projectionist?

Bert: Aub George was one of them. He was a local chap, and he was tangled up with the power, too – the power station. That was his name, George,  Aub George. He was the only one I knew of. Could be cause he’d run the electricity.  Many a time we were down there, and we’d go over when they started, it’d be about five o’clock in the afternoon. They’d have a big fly-wheel there, and they’d have to get up on it, and pull it over to get it going – it was a diesel engine.

Rose: It’d take a few men to turn it?

Bert: One good fellow could get it over, but it took a bit of fussing, mucking around, to get it going, and then she’d pump up, and away she’d go.

Rose: How far did the lines to the houses extend?

Bert: It was mainly local. We had it up in Hay Street – light –and he, Aub, used to go round and put it on himself.  Only light, no power.   There was none up Liverpool Road and that, just around the center of the town.

Rose: Can you remember when the power first went on, the light power, how old would you have been?

Bert: I know we only had lamps for a long time.

Rose: What a job, cleaning those lamp glasses! And the wick’d break down. During the War, you couldn’t get the wicks. Did you have Aladdin lamps?

Bert: We had one of those hanging lamps.   That was a table lamp, and it was just candles in the other rooms, until we got the power on.

Rose: Who used to provide the music for the dances?

Bert: Lorna Landcake , Peggy Graham(?) played the pianos.

Rose: Did they have a violinist?

Merle: Lucky to have a pianist.

Bert:  I know when we used to go out to the Currency Creek dances, old Kelter McCannon was the concertina man out there.   Anybody that could play an instrument, they’d be quite welcome to. They mostly done it for nothing, I don’t think anybody charged.

Rose: Where did they have the dances on Hindmarsh Island?

Bert: In the school house. They used to be good little dances.     And, out at Currency Creek, they had the school out there.

Rose: Was that before the hall was built?

Bert: That is the hall, I think.   See, they had a school over on the Island, and they had a school at Currency Creek, and, eventually, over time, they come to Goolwa.

Rose: Bert, you were telling me about before Centenary Hall was built, in 1930, that there was a market garden there?

Bert: There was a little chap who used to grow vegetables. Most vegetables, he used to grow, and I think he probably sold them around the place. Back in those days, greengrocers and bakers, they’d go around delivering round the town – butchers, they’d all go. I can’t remember now, but I think he used to be one that’d sell the stuff there. It had a fairly big iron fence around the road-side of it, I can remember that, before they built the hall.

Rose: Can you remember it being built? It’s all beautiful stone-work, it’s a real work of art.

Bert: Not really. I can’t remember it being built. I was only eight then.

Rose: Can you remember the Institute and Council Chambers being built? Were they there before your time?

Bert: I can remember the little Council chambers where the travel place was,    cause there was a chap called Sandland, I think, used to be District Clerk.  Don’t know when the Council shifted. Did they shift from there to the library?

Rose: To where the library is now.

Merle: The Institute. Bristow-Smith was in that little one when we first come – that’s in 1942. I suppose within a few years they transferred to the other place.

Rose: That frontage to Cadell Street is the most beautiful frontage. You don’t want to ever pull that down. I wouldn’t be game.     So, Bert, you kept fishing until when?

Bert:  Joined up in ’41, six years I was in the Navy, came back in 1947. I went to town for a couple of  years, doing a course in motor-painting (?) and sign-writing, and after that I come back and fish. That’d be in the late ‘40s.

Rose: Bert, what took you into the Navy? Being on the sea here?

Bert: I suppose. Me brother joined up, too, afterward.    No, most of the town-people down at Port Adelaide, they all joined the Navy. We had a few here, that were in submarines (?), in the Navy

Rose: So you were just 19,18,when you joined up?

Bert: 18. Mum wouldn’t let me join up till I was18. I went around the world.

Rose: Where did you go for training?

Bert: Torrens, for a start, down at Birkenhead, and then over to Melbourne – Cerberus – and then I went on the HMAS Manoora – that was an armed merchant cruiser. Then, when HMAS Canberra got sunk, the British gave us another cruiser, the Shropshire, and I was one of the lucky ones that went over to pick her up. We went by troop-ship to San Francisco, overland by train to Boston, took ten days, next Halifax, in Canada, across to Liverpool. Then we had six months in England, right on the time when the V2 bombers were coming over, then we brought her back. We went up to Scapa Flow for a while, done running-in tests with the First Squadron, British, and then we come home, joined up with a convoy from the  north of  Africa. We went from there, then we come home through Cape Town, back through Perth, and then Adelaide. Done the round trip.

Rose: Were you ever in any tight situations?

Bert: Bombers, in England, I was lucky. One place we usually stopped  was in London, Navy place, and it was shut – we used to get up top, where there was double-decker beds. This day, we didn’t – we went over to the other side, over to the North Court London Bridge, and that night a V2 rocket hit where we usually slept, and weren't – we were lucky!  When we come back here...on the Japanese, we went off to the islands, we did a lot of landings there. The biggest sea-battle we had was in the Philippines, the landing at Leyte, we were in that, the Japanese Fleet come up from Singapore, and we were there with the American 7^th Fleet….couple of Australian destroyers… We were anchored there one morning when I was in x-turret, and I’m looking through the periscope when a Japanese Kamikaze plane, missed our tail – in fact our after-gunner, a chap called Roy Cazaly from Tasmania, hit it, and it went into the HMAS Australia , crashed into the bridge, killed the captain and about twenty (twenty-eight?) sailors died.   I see it hit, looking at the time, I said to me mate, Don Leslie, he was in the turret with me...

Rose: This was the gun-turret? Were you a gunner?

Bert: No, I wasn’t a gunner. I was one of the crew. We used to be on the side of the turret. When it went to local control, if something happened, then it could be worked  just independently…we had a phone in there, too.  But I was looking through the telescope at the time…when it hit…I seen it.    But then, when the Japanese Fleet came up, that was a few days after that, we had, I forget how many, we had 4 or 5 American battleships, and cruisers and destroyers. It happened about 3 or 4 in the morning when we got in contact with them, the Japs. They’d been plastered by planes all day, as they were coming up, and some of them were damaged. But we had H.E. (?) shells in our turrets, that were loaded, and they were for bombarding the shore, and when you ‘re in a sea-battle, you’re putting in armour-piercing shells.  As it happened, our first broadside hit the Japanese battleship, the Yamashiro, and set it on fire. Well then, the battleships behind us had a target they could hit, and they got into it properly. We cleaned all of them up … quite a few cruisers, destroyers...That was supposed to be the biggest Navy engagement ever…

Rose: Where was that?

Bert: That was in Leyte, Battle of Surigao Straits.  Then we were cruising around there, getting air-raids nearly every day. But we were lucky. We were about the only ship in the Navy that never got hit. We didn’t have any casualties, all the time I was on. 

Rose: What happened to the Shropshire afterwards?

Bert: Went till the end of the war, went to Japan, and at the end of the War, they took some of the old crew off it, put a lot of young fellers on that’d just joined up, and they had a trip to England. They had a Victory Tour to England, America and back to Australia. Then, she’d had her day, so peacefully, she left for England[2] – scrap. So the circle went around, for the old Shroppy. We still have a re-union, but most of the boys,  most of the chaps I was with, they’re all dead.

 

               (HMAS SHROPSHIRE -

                   Operations & Naval Battles                          15

                   Bombardments carried out                           56

                   Shore Batteries Destroyed                            9

                   Japanese Aircraft Shot Down                        19

                   During the Battle of Surigao Strait, Shropshire fired 32 broadsides at the Battleship Yamashiro in 12 minutes, of which 19 scored hits.)

 

Rose: Where did your brother go?

Bert: He was on a corvette. In the Navy, they had some rule that relations shouldn’t be on one ship – they split them up. He was on the Deloraine.   He was up around the islands.

Rose: Were you the only two Goolwa boys that went in the Navy?

Bert: No, Peter Plummer was one. He’s dead, he had a farm out at Currency Creek.  (There is some discussion between Bert and Merle about Ken, or Glenn, who used to live on the corner of their street,)   Quite a lot of Victor fellers, and Port Elliot.

Rose: Did you used to get reasonable leave?

Bert: We tried to get leave every six months, but you couldn’t. Most of the times we went up north was for a six-month trip.   (Some discussion about shaving, including noting that one had to ask for permission to discontinue shaving, something desirable in the equator-zone, where ‘you got the rashes if you shaved too much’. The sailors were given permission to grow beards).    So I growed a beard, and got me head shaved, up in the Tropics. Coming back, you’d do the same thing, you’d pipe over the what’s-er-name that anybody that wants to continue shaving may.    Yeah, leave was pretty good. Mostly, we had a week off, enough to just get home, say g’day, and go again.

Rose: A lot of local fellows didn’t get back?

Bert: Well, Ron Reed was one that got killed in Tobruk, and then there was another lad, had an accident down in Port Adelaide

Rose: On a ship coming back? Had he just got back, and fell in a hole or something?

Bert: Yeah. He fell down a hole.

Rose: Did he get killed straight away? Cause a couple of people have told me about him.

Bert: I don’t know what happened to him. What was his name – Tuckwell?

Rose: Yes, it was a Tuckwell.

Bert: Who else? Sid Amey  got badly beaten up around in the Middle East. He finished up losing a leg.  George Godfrey (?) had damage to his face, he was over there.

Rose: When you were de-mobilized, did you take advantage of the training that was offered to you?

Bert: Yeah. That’s where I went to town, and done a course. With that, you’d go on about 35 bob a week. But where I was working, the motor-place, they give me an extra pound, and that paid, more or less, for accommodation. After six months, you go on to the minimum award wage, which means that the employer paid, I think it was 20% of your wage, and the Government paid the other. And every three months, I think, it went up 10%, until eventually, after two years, the employer would be paying the lot. But they were on a good wicket. Up where I was, they had upholsterers, they had dent-knockers - that’s painters – and a lot of them were lads in the services and that, and they only paid them half their wages, I’d say…

Rose: Did that have a name, that scheme? Was it a Re-hab scheme?

Bert: Rehabilitation Scheme, that’s right. A lot of them did that.  It was something good to have it, because when I come back, when the fishing wasn’t too good, I used to do a bit of painting, car painting.

Rose: Had Goolwa changed much, when you got back after the war?

Bert: No, it was a bit quieter, actually, because when the barrages were getting built, there was a lot more people around, there was a lot more at school. But, after the war, it seemed the same old Goolwa.   I know when we used to go down the Mouth, we had a hut down there we used to camp in

Rose: Across the other side there?

Bert: Yeah. Sleepy Hollow. When our kids were young, we used to go take them down, and spend the holidays down there, and there weren’t nobody else down there. You had it all to yourselves. So that if you heard a noise, you’d run out and look to see what it was – it was a boat coming up the river. Fishing is not the same as it was back in those days.

Rose: Do you think the barrages made a difference?

Bert: Yes, I think it has, because when they shut the barrages, there was fish everywhere, coming in to try and get up into the lake. In the ‘50s, I was working with Hector Semascho.    …three of us used to go, for hauling – nearly ten ton we got in one haul – and loading them up; in fact, when the barrages were getting built, the copper dam on the Island’s side was nearly finished, and several ton of mulloway swam into the dam, and they closed them off – accidentally, they didn’t know – and you could see them all swimming around in the sheet-piling (?) around the dams, keeping them in. We got permission to save some of the other fish, we could go in and catch them, if we could. It was pretty hard, because the sheet-piling was straight up-and-down, and to get in there, under the fish, and hoist them up. We give it away, but the chaps working on the barrages had the time of their lives afterwards, when the water got pumped out around the dam, around these big old mulloway.  Every day, you might say, in the ‘50s up until the ‘60s, there was catches of fish coming up on the Goolwa Wharf, and they’d go away to town.  I don’t know of any people lately that have… the schools of fish. It’s just one of those things, with the Mouth being closed like it is. Back in those days it was a good Mouth, a nice wide Mouth, and the fish could come in and out.

Rose: Did they want to get up into the lake to spawn?

Bert: I think that’s mainly what they wanted. Early in the piece, we used to fish in the lake as well, while the barrages were being built. The mulloway’d go up there, and you’d catch them in the winter. The Milang fishers had done well, people at Milang and Narrung and all those places – they fished in the lake. The mulloway’d get up there specially in a school, and probably breed up there – I don’t know – but you’d catch them in the summer, coming in, the winter going out. There was all salt-water in Goolwa in those days. We used to go down with a little net, down opposite the station, Goolwa railway station, then we’d walk around and get a feed of mullet.  You could fish off the wharf…there was a lot of garfish around.   Mr. Lush, he used to be a champion on garfish. He was getting a lot more than we were. “The secret”, he said, “Is using a stud blow-fly!”  They were just joking.     Across from the ferry, there were dolphins there. Big old fisherman used to put nets out there and catch mulloway. A lot of the tidal waters, a lot of these places are now dry, especially down on South Lakes, and out there. Those banks out there are normally dry with the low tide, and get flooded with the whole tide (?)

Rose:  What, did that whole area get flooded there? By the tide? Really? How far back did it go?

Bert: Yeah. Tidal waters. It’d go with salt water to the lake.

Rose: Out near South Lakes, how far that way?

Bert: Ah, well Aggie’s Knob, that’s the one close in to the South Lakes, it would go around there, like that, and this bank around here would go dry, and over here, opposite here –

Rose: Liverpool Road

Bert: Would be dry, totally dry.

Rose: Bert, did you sell through a wholesaler, or direct to the public?

Bert: We used to fish, sent them to Adelaide, to fishmarket,  Edward Dawe, and then SFCO took over from them. Towards the end there, before we opened the shop up, we used to sell them out of an ice-box, from our home. But got that way, you couldn’t get enough fish, so we’d get some off other fishermen. Then we built a little room for ice, supplying ice around the town, because a lot of people only had ice-box in those days, ice-chests, and we’d take them around. We built the shop, afterwards, and we put in an ice-plant, used to make three ton a day –that used to keep us busy! We had sixteen years of it, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. (chortles quietly)

Rose: Did you have a delivery round as well?

Bert: No

Rose: People came and got their own?

Bert: Yeah, the ice. We used to sell crayfish and fish and all sorts of things – yabbies, when you could get them. We done all right there, but it was hard work, constant.

Rose: Did you do your own fishing a lot?

Bert: Yeah, I used to do the fishing as well, as  well as the fishermen used to come and put their fish in the cold storage there, to send away to the market.   We used to employ a couple of lads. Pete, one of our lads, he done an ice-round through the summer, to Port Elliot and Middleton Caravan Park, and things like that, serving things.  I got crook, and one thing and another. The boys didn’t want to take it over, cause they knew what it was gonna be like, seven days a week, so we sold it.

Rose: I don’t suppose you got a holiday during that period?

Bert: We worked in – now and again, we’d get a little time off.

Merle: Bruce came. He’d go off and then, come Christmas, he’d always come home Christmas, and that was his job with us. He was a good lad, you could trust him. In fact, all the lads we had were good. Local lads and we knew them.

Rose: We were talking about, when you worked for Mr. Goode, you collected the money and so on, and they trusted you?

Bert: Money-bag around your neck, leather one. They’d know, really, how many loaves of bread you were carting around and how many buns. They’d get an idea how much you sold in a day. You had to play the game, and Mr. Goode was one of those chaps you respected. He trusted everybody, and we trusted him.

 

 

Tape 2, recorded 24/3/2000

 

Side B

 

Rose: Bert, how did your wife, Merle, come to be in Goolwa? She wasn’t a local girl, was she?

Bert: No. Well, her parents come down from Broken Hill, and got a house here.  She opened up a hairdressing shop in Goolwa, where the intersection was, up a bit near the butcher’s.

Merle: That building went. That was pulled down. Where the fish’n’chip, the butcher shop and  that other, just the one around the corner…

Rose: Where the Salvos are?  (Or were, till 2000 – Goolwa Tce.)

Merle: That was just the one shop there, and there was space in between, and that’s Reggie Sexton’s barber shop, and that’s the shop that’s two stories, the bow

Rose: The bow-fronted building.

Merle: The land was vacant between the two shops at the time.

Rose: Had you had a shop of your own before, in Broken Hill?

Merle: No, I worked for Jennifer Keyes, and she kept me on right up until about two on the day I left  (chuckles)  because it was busy up there, the mines "happened", and because of those there was lots of people around. (The mines made available trains for mine people to travel to Adelaide, where they had accomodation at Semaphore, which made it essential to have hair permed.)

Rose: Did you do an apprenticeship?

Merle: Oh, yes.

Rose:  Did you have to go to Sydney for that, to a trade school?

Merle: No, you could do it here.    You could get your registration with South Australia.

Rose: You didn’t have to go to trade school?

Merle: At that period of time, there wasn’t any, no, or at least if there was, it might have just been within the city limits.  You’d have to put your time in, whatever period you had

Rose: So you needed a good employer to train you?

Merle: Oh yes, there was about (counts – 1,2,3,4,5,6,7) – we had a big salon. It was the busiest in Broken Hill.

Bert: Then you opened up at Elliot

Merle: Here first, then at Elliot.

Rose: So you had two salons?

Merle: Yes.  I did open up here, but it was really a bit too quiet for me, coming from the business I did, so, with the other two people in the shop in Elliot, I used to have a certain number of days here, and a certain number of days at Elliot. Then I took on a lass at Elliot. She was very good, too.  Then I got married, she went into town, I transferred the apprenticeship over,

Rose: What did you call the business?

Merle:   ?     Port Elliot was Christine’s Salon, and that was next to the Hotel Elliot. Elliot was still a very busy place, at the time. It used to have a lot of visitors, because of the War – they couldn’t travel, and that used to bring a whole heap down.

Rose: Did you drive over every day?

Merle: Every second or third day. At first, a friend of mine she had a drapery store there, too, the same as me – here and there - and she used to catch the milk lorries to go over. They used to pick her up and take her, no problem at all!

Rose: You’d have trouble getting petrol during the War, wouldn’t you?

Merle: Yes, you had to have your coupons, and you only had a certain amount. I only had a little car, didn’t take much to get me about. We managed alright. She had a car, and I had a car, she used to take her car one week, and I took mine the next.

Rose: So which year were you married? Had you bought the business in Hay Street then?  

Merle: ‘51

Bert: No, we had a little place down Newacott (?) Place, it goes from Hay Street down to the oval, little street down there.   After Mum died, Pop was on his own up there, and we more or less said  - “Instead of you coming up here, we’ll go down there”, cause he couldn’t look after himself.

Rose: Where was that?

Bert: Hay Street, the one opposite the laundry, and we started to sell fish there, and ice-blocks. That’s how it started off.

Rose: Bert, were you still playing footy, when you came home?

Bert: Back in those days, oh yes. I played a couple of games before the War,   (the next little bit is indistinct, a little frustratingly, since he seems to be saying about football and Pt. Elliot)      Before I gave it away, we won the Grand Final ! (laughs)  In about 1953, I think it was.  For a few years after that, they’d call me back in, they’d put me in,  ?     Saturday you’d look forward to, because we’d go to different places in this big old  Abbot's  bus.

Rose: Was that based in Goolwa?  

Bert: No, Victor.  All the team used to go, and most of the supporters. After that, they got cars and things.

Rose: Did you train properly, Bert?

Bert: No, we never trained - no training.

Rose: What, did you just roll up on Saturday?

Bert: Yeah. We didn’t know whether we had a team until we turned up on Saturday.

Rose: And you won a Premiership?

Bert: Yeah, in 1953.         Before that, we used to scratch for a team. About 1951, I think it was, Herb Rigney was captain and I was vice-captain. We were sure we got in. In fact, we had a lot of the natives from the Mission play with Goolwa, the Carters  and people like that, from Point McLeay.

Rose: How did they get over here?

Bert: Mostly, they’d find their way over – I think some of them used to come with the barrage people; some of them lived in Goolwa.  I suppose half our team would have been natives, and half not. We had the right colours, black and white.

Rose: Still do, don’t you?

Bert: Yes, still do. They were good players, the Carter boys.

Rose: Did you have a coach?

Bert: We had a good coach when we come top. We had an ex-footballer from Adelaide, I think it was D. Byrnes.

Rose: It’d be a coach’s nightmare, not knowing whether he was going to have a team or not!

Bert: Oh well, that’s the way it goes.

Rose: Say if you had 25 fellows, would he pick the 18 when he rolled up?

Bert: We’d know, more or less, who you had in positions on the ground, so you just turn up and you play. Towards the end, there, we got a bit more organized. Victor was a strong team in those days – they were the team to beat, ‘cause they hadn’t been beaten for a while.

Rose: Jan Skewes was telling me about the development of the oval. It was a bit of a cow-paddock before that, was it?

Bert: Oh, yes, it was -  you had to get the cows off to play. I can remember when we played where Foodland store is now – they were at that side of the road. There was just a flat.  In fact, I’ve seen a photo, where Podgy Walker – he was a neighbourhood supporter,  had a place just down towards where Armfield’s  Slip is – that showed Podgy, sittin’  in his wheelchair, up on a hill, and that was over there, and the oval was in front of him. From then on, we went across to the oval, where it is now. Both teams used to connect, more or less, in the same place. Matter of fact, Goolwa Bowling Green, there was a little stone room there, and both teams would get in there, and undress, and one thing and the other, to get in the game; and over here in the berry bushes, they used to place a tarpaulin over that…

Rose: Where was the berry bushes?

Bert: Along where the bowling green is, alongside as we were playing; throw some hessian over that,  that was the lavatory  (assorted laughters) – no, true, it was pretty rough!  Eventually, the first club-rooms that were ever there were all built by volunteer labour. That was in the ‘50s. Of course, after that, they built the other one, the double-storey one.     Oh, no, they were pretty rough and ready, the places, didn’t matter where you wee-ed. In fact, down the Valley, that’s down the other side of Victor, we used to have to run around gum trees. There’d be a couple of gum trees inside the oval!    We used to have a lot of fun.

Rose: And what about your supporters, did they?

Bert: Yeah, too right,  Gert and George, old Gert, – they were a couple of identities from Goolwa. Gert and George Bryant (?) George would get over there early in the morning, if it was played in Goolwa, and he’d get in front, to the middle of the goal-post, and that’s where he’d stop. Gert, she used to be a pretty big woman, and old George was deaf – she wasn’t – and I can remember a time when she chased the umpire around the oval – he wasn’t giving us a fair go, so Gert chased him around with her walking-stick!!  But George’d be down there, and every time it went to a goal, it went to Goolwa, it didn’t matter if it was down that end or his end, we finished up with all the goals!

Rose: I hope he wasn’t the official scorer!

Bert: No, no he was just… that was what’s-his-name. We had plenty of supporters, yellin’ and hootin’

Rose: Did they park their cars around the oval like they do now?

Bert: Yes, yes, same

Rose: Nothing like the country footy.     Bert, you were telling me about the early ‘50s, when there was a re-enactment of Sturt’s journey down the Murray. We’d decided which year it was – was it ’52, Merle?

Merle: I think it was about then.

Rose: Tell me the story about that, having the boat, and taking the dignitaries, and so on. 

Bert: We had the Sunbeam, which was a 65-footer, and we more-or-less had the only boat there that was available at the time, Mr Bedford had        two boats, one called the Rose, but we had a big boat. The Council sort of hired us to take them down to the Mouth.  The re-enactment Crew rowed down the river, and some of the local Councillors and that, they all dressed up in their old bowler hats and things like that – top hat. We took them to the Mouth, and I think it was Sturt’s nephew, or distant relation of Sturt’s, he got out and he went across and waded in the Mouth like his grand-father or whatever did,

Rose: He’d come out from England, this fellow?

Bert: Yes, he’d made a special trip out.   Then we come back to Goolwa, and went over to the ferry, and they took a party over to the monument, Sturt’s monument, and they come back with celebrations that went all day.

Rose: One of the film-stars played Sturt, didn’t he? Rod Taylor?

Bert: Yeah. Rod Taylor. He went to America, didn’t he, to live?  And his brother.

Rose: You had a bit of fun with the engine?

Bert: Yeah, we had a narrow escape that day. When we left the Island to come to the wharf, we had two engines, and, instead of just using one to come over, to start the second one, you had to go down into the engine room to start it, and it sparked, starting it, and it ignited the petrol, and Rod Taylor was there, and he called out – “Are you all right?”, and Murry, me brother, he grabbed a fire-extinguisher, and it was one of those ones, that once you start them, they never stop, they empty out. And, of course, I’m down there, with a bag, trying to put the fire out, and I copped the lot!  Eventually, we did get to the wharf on the one engine. It went to panic stations there for a while.

Rose: There were a lot of craft on the water that day.

Bert: Yes, there was craft everywhere. It was a big day. There was, I reckon, a  thousand people on the wharf – it was just crowded.

Rose: So that would be 120 years after Sturt came down. 1830 – 1950. We’ll soon be getting ready for the 200^th.

Bert: I suppose – 2030.      We used to have a lot of fun on that boat, we used to charter it out. Different people, business people, they’d all comedown and have trips up the river, chartered…

Rose: Did they fish off the boat?

Bert: Yeah, they’d fish. We’d been fishing, and we’d go out with our nets, and catch fish, and they’d help us. They’d get all the fish they want – they lived off fish.

Rose: Would you stay away overnight? Did you camp on the bank?

Bert: We had cabins for six or seven people. In fact, I think we would get eight in it, at times. Days out, we would fit twenty in, into the boat, and others had their cabins. No, it was a good old boat.

Rose: What happened to it?

Bert: Well, eventually, Murry went – see, most of the time when you were out, there’s holidays, when everybody else was on holiday, you’d get away in the boat; eventually, he went away when he started building, helping (?) the local builder.   ?     No, it went a bit slack, so we held it up, and I went fishing and Dad giving it away, he was getting that way, towards retiring age, so we eventually sold it. Funny thing was, Captain Dodd had it, and, when he died, we bought it from his wife, and then, sold it back to his son. He took it over, went to Murray Bridge, and, as far as I know, it’s still up there. Never heard what happened to it. It was a good old boat.

Rose: So how long is it since you gave up work?

Bert: We got rid of the shop in 1978, and then I went fishing.   My son was fishing on my licence, I had it till about ’83, ’84, then I transferred it over to him.  Since that, I became ill with me feet and that, it’s a circulation problem.

Rose: Has your son still got the licence?

Bert: No. He’s given that up. Most of the local old fishermen – there’s only new ones up there - most of them have given it away. I can remember when there was ten fishermen down the Mouth, anchored across the Mouth, it was a big wide Mouth, and they were hookin’, putting their lines out in the Mouth, their long lines…     it became a bit commercialized, the fishing, y’had to keep up with it – expenses – be a pile of expenses, with the licences and that, and they’d cost you thousands of dollars, …    I don’t know that it’ll ever come back again – it might – but we’ve got to get a lot more water down the river to keep the Mouth open and nice water fresh to attract the fish.

Rose: Bert, do you know much about the ’56 flood? I suppose all the barrages were wide open?

Bert: Oh, yeah – they were all wide open, and South Lakes was flooded. We went over there. I had a Jeep in those days, and I used to go down to the beach fishing, off the shore, because there was all fresh water right out to sea, and right down to Victor Harbor, and you couldn’t, there was too much tide in, and the fishermen give it away.

Rose: ‘Cause it was flowing too fast?

Bert: Yeah, you couldn’t fish in the river.   I put a net out on the beach instead, I was doing alright at the time, but I had to go through water, half-way down to the beach

Rose: On Beach Road?

Bert: Where that hole is, near the shop. There was a hole in the ground, been built up since.      Your car would get wet up to the running-board.

Rose: Gee, as far as that?

Bert: Yeah. It ended up down on the beach with salt water everywhere, all over your car. Coming back, you’d wash your car in fresh water.         People working on the barrage, they’d used to have to go down there, down Beach Road, and they’d go along the sand dunes, right down to the  barrage – they couldn’t go down Barrage Road, that was underwater. Up here, it was over the road at Kessell’s – it was right over the back

Rose: Where was Kessell’s? Is that a house?

Bert: Just up the road, here. Just up past the Slip. It went over the road there 

Rose: So this part here wasn’t very much flooded?

Bert: No.

Rose: So the other side there, down South Lake, were a lot lower?

Bert: Well, I think they built the road up.   When they built the café down there, that was put up on a mound.

Rose: Which café?

Bert: Where the motel is, the ?  It was a built on a mound. A lot of houses there have been built up.  It’s more of a problem if you go around there somewhere, you get the seas – those lakes in the golf-course, when the water’s high, they’d probably rise… right down, over the road, down to the tea-tree, on the Beach Road, where the tea-tree are, down the back, past where Mr. Dig Traeger lives, those tea-tree at the back, well water went down there.

Rose: Did it really!?  Someone told me, you know, that it didn’t flood at Goolwa! This is a new story to me!

Bert: Well, I reckon the ’31 flood was higher here, meself. I can remember that, ‘cause it undermined the railway line down at the station – they paved all that – and, over where there’s string over ? , back of the railway station, that was all water in there

Merle: That was in 1956, too.

Bert: That’s right, it was in ’56, too. They reckon that ’56 flood was higher. It did a lot of damage around the huts down there at the Mouth, too. I can remember when the huts were here, and there was a few ? bundles of straw (?)  bit of sand spread out the front – all that went, a lot of the sandhills went, with the tide going out.   I used to go down towards the Mouth a bit, I wasn’t game to go right down;   you could see, twenty feet back, big cracks forming, and once water undermined that, …

Rose: The whole thing’d fall down? Goodness me.

Bert: There was just whirlpools going out of the Mouth. In fact, I think I told you that….  Matti was the only one that camped at the Mouth at the time, and he used to come up every couple of weeks for tucker and that. On the way back to his camp, he was washed out the Mouth.

Rose: With the fresh water going out, it must have been terribly turbulent with the tide coming in?

Bert: At the high tide, the water would still run out to sea, it was going out all the time, it’d rise, water’d rise. You couldn’t go down the Mouth much at all.

Rose: The Coorong would’ve got a wonderful flush.

Bert: Yes, it would’ve, a long way up the Coorong, too.   In fact, Tauwitchere Island, they couldn’t go across there. The workers used to go from here, by boat, around to  Pelican  Point. Couldn’t get across, Tauwitchere Island was all flooded. That’s the one between the Island (Hindmarsh?) and the barrage, at Pelican Point. They used to have a break, go around there, stop for a week, and then come back.

Rose: Was the ferry running, to Hindmarsh Island?

Bert:  I think it was running, as far as I know. It’d have to, wouldn’t it, for the people to get across?

Rose: ‘Cause I expect, one of these days, those houses down in the flat, below me, on the east side of where that lake is, on the golf course, because it’s a natural drainage from Beach Road towards the river, those houses in there now, if there’s ever a high river,…

Bert: Where’s your place?

Rose: Up on the sandhills, looking down over that, up near Sir George Ritchie Avenue,

Bert: You’d be pretty right up there.

Rose: I’m all right up there, but I’m saying those houses down on the flat, in that new development there, opposite the bird sanctuary

Bert: That’s right, they’re double-storey ones, aren’t they?

Rose:  Yes, but it’s so flat in there,

Bert: But I don’t know if we’ll get many floods the way it’s going, because the water’s been all used up, up north.

Rose: Big meeting today.

Bert: Yeah, I know.

Rose: Who was it approached you, Bert? I saw in the paper that you’d made some comment relatively recently, about the state of the Mouth and so on. Somebody from the Advertiser must have contacted you?

Bert: No

Rose: I thought there was a Lundstrom. Might have been in the Times, was it?

Bert: No. There is a Gary Hera Singh?

Rose: Yes.

Bert: He gets in a word now and again, he’s interested in the Mouth.

Rose: What do you think about him?

Bert: Oh, he’s all right. He’s secretary of the Fisherman’s Association

Rose: I heard him on the radio once, and I thought he talked more sense than some of the specialists.

Bert: He knows what he’s talking about. His father was a fisherman. In fact, I think his father was a Prisoner Of War.

Rose: Was he based at Meningie?

Bert: His father’s dead, I think.

Rose: No, but Gary?

Bert: Yeah, Pelican Point.I was the secretary for twenty years, of the Southern Fisherman’s Association, and I gave it away eventually, because the fishermen were all up the Coorong, there was not many around Goolwa, or around Victor, Cape Jervis, Noarlunga and all those places, in our association, Southern Fisherman’s Association.     That way, the cray

fisherman went out on their own, we only had half-a–dozen fishermen here, and of course, the majority over at the Coorong – twenty or thirty or more over there, I suppose, so they took the books and that over there, and Gary took it on, and he’s had it for a few years now. Henry Jones is the President.

Rose: They seem to have a management plan now, so that they’re not fishing stock out. It’s to their own advantage to do that.

Bert: Too right it is. They got to manage things properly. Open slather, it used to be before.   There is a chap, I think, they’ve appointed to keep an eye on the Mouth, in case it does play up.

Rose: Were there many accidents down there, and people drowned, during your time?

Bert: Oh yes, about half-a-dozen that I could remember, went out the Mouth. Matti was not the last one

Rose: Matti who?

Bert: Matti Hamalainen – that’s the chap that went out the Mouth in the 1956 flood; but there’s been two more fishermen from Victor, they went out one morning from there, and they haven’t found them; and there’s a couple of anglers that got washed out to sea, and ended up drowned.

 

End of tape

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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