Genealogy...............................................................................v

Tape 1 - EARLY LIFE..............................................................1

Tape 2 – WORLD WAR II, Pt. 1..............................................21

Tape 3 – WORLD WAR II, Pt. 2..............................................43

Tape 4 – WAR SERVICE LAND SETTLEMENT SCHEME.....65

Tape 5 – COUNCILLOR, J.P., R.S.L.......................................85

Tape 6 – LAND VALUATION, GOOLWA................................107

Tape 6a – GOOLWA REAL ESTATE HISTORY.....................129

Tape 7 – BEGINNINGS OF THE COLLECTION.....................137

Tape 8 – RETIREMENT –  W.A. PRETTY COLLECTION;

                   SAMOA.................................................................157

POEMS...................................................................................175

APPENDICES.........................................................................195

Thomas Pretty (1801 – 1873)

Thomas PRETTY      b. 27/8/1801, Islington, London, England

                        d. 22/9/1873 , Nth. Adelaide, S.A. (Cambridge St.)

Mary (née Spooner)  b.        1801, Edmonton, Middlesex, England

                        d. 30/9/1879,  East Moonta, S.A.

            CHILDREN

Thomas William        b. 11/11/1826, Islington, London, England

                        d. 21/7/1866, Bath St. Luke, England (9 New St.)

Hannah                       b. 28/12/1828, Islington, London, England

                        d.           1849, Islington, London, England

George Henry            b. 16/8/1830, Islington, London, England

Emily               b. 23/7/1835, Islington, London, England

            Emigrated from England to Australia with parents

                        m. Eliezer Hainsworth Dodd

                        d. 18/9/1914, Port Elliot, S.A.

Amelia                        b. 7/2/1837, Islington, London, England

            Emigrated from England to Australia with parents

                        d.       1859, Nth. Adelaide, S.A.

                        (Unmarried)

Samuel Edwin           b. 29/7/1838, Islington, London, England

            Emigrated from England to Australia with parents

            Re-emigrated from Australia to America

Eliza Ann                    b. 11/12/1840, Islington, London, England

            Emigrated from England to Australia with parents

John James   b. 10/12/1841, Islington, London, England

            Emigrated from England to Australia with parents

                        d. 10/10/1909, Croydon, S.A.

            GREAT-GRANDFATHER OF W.A.

Mary Ann Elizabeth   b. 5/11/1844, Islington, London, England

            Emigrated from England to Australia with parents

                        d. 30/1/1919, St. Peters, S.A.

            S.S.SUCCESS, 621 tons

            Departed Plymouth, England, on 29/9/1847, under Capt. Ablett,           master with 245 sails, Government emigrants being in steerage.

            Arrived ex-London at Port Adelaide, S.A., on 27/1/1848

John James Pretty (1841-1909)


                                                                                                1916

WALTER CHARLES PRETTY

b. 19/12/1873, Compton, S.A.

Fourth child, and second son, of John James Pretty and Eliza, (née Smith)

Enlisted 10/5/1916 at Millicent, S.A.

Alloted Army number 6314      Rank:: Private

Embarked for overseas 28^th August 1916, from Adelaide

Served in England and France with 10^th Battalion

Returned to Australia 4^th March 1918 - Disembarked Melbourne

Discharged 11^th April 1918 in Adelaide

Medals issued: British War Medal and Victory Medal

d. 30/9/1955, Millicent, S.A.


1915

CHARLES JOHN PRETTY

b. 29/7/1893, Beach Port, S.A.

Eldest child and son of Walter Charles Pretty and Sophia, formerly Fox-

      James David - née Skeer

Enlisted 26^th January, 1915 at Keswick, S.A.

Allotted Army number 421     Rank: Private

Embarked for overseas service 31^st May, 1915, from Adelaide

Served at Gallipoli with 27^th Battalion

Promoted Lance Corporal 17^th November, 1915 at Gallipoli

Hospitalised Middle East 27^th January, 1916

Died of illness 30^th January, 1916, at Cairo

Buried in British Cemetery Cairo  Grave Number 292D

Medals issued to father: 1914/15  Star, British War Medal, and Victory Medal
 

ALBERT ARTHUR PRETTY

b. 18/10/1897

S12734   Albert Arthur PRETTY   (WWI)

SX11732  Albert Arthur PRETTY  (WWII)

WWI Service

Enlisted 12^th July, 1917 at Mount Gambier, S.A.

Commenced full-time duty 11^th August, 1917 with B Company at Mitcham, S.A.

Discharged 5^th September, 1917  medically unfit

WWII Service

Enlisted 11^th March, 1941, at Adelaide, S.A.

Embarked for overseas service 10^th April, 1941

Served in Malaya with 4^th Reserve Motor Transport Company

Taken Prisoner of War 16^th February, 1942

Recovered from Japanese at Siam 20^th August, 1945

Returned to Australia 17^th October, 1945

Served in Adelaide area until discharge on 21^st October, 1947

d. 28/6/1977

1941

W.A. PRETTY

b. 7/8/1921, Millicent, S.A.

No. 416191   R.A.A.F  W.W.II

Enlisted  R.A.A.F. RESERVE  26 December 1940

Enlisted R.A.A.F.  31 March 1941

Discharged R.A.A.F.  21 December 1945

ALEXANDRINA COUNCIL ORAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

                       Interview with W.A. Pretty at his home, 5 Wildman St., Goolwa

Interview, Edited Transcription, Book Design & Production by G.W. (Frodo) Krochmal   Emendments by W.A. Pretty

Reproductions of Thomas, John James & Albert Arthur by Bill Cox

Tape 1, recorded 1/7/2004

Side A

F: We usually start by asking your full name, and when you were born, so I suppose we'll start with that.

W: My full name is Walter Arthur Pretty, and I was born on the 7^th of August, 1921, at Sister Smith's Nursing Home in Millicent, in the south-east of the state. This nursing home doesn't exist any more – I was down there in 1986, the Jubilee Year of the State, the 150^th year - now, on the land, there's an office of one of the political representatives, either State or Commonwealth – I can't remember that 28 years later.

F: That nonetheless makes you far more of a genuine South Australian than I am, since I come from Germany, but you have the wonderful story that your ancestors - not from South Australia at all – one of your ancestors fought against William the Conqueror, with Harold – please tell us that.

W: Well, (chuckles)  even my Aunties have German names, Belinda, Gertrude, Clothilda. There was only one boy in the family – he was named Harold. It was Harold of Wessex who organised the military opposition to William of Normandy, who was really just interested in taking over the country – he spent very little time there. He lost the first battle, at Stamford-bridge[1], but he won at Hastings, so he was able to be crowned King of England, on the basis that he defeated Harold of Wessex.

F: This is the one who got the arrow in the eye, isn't it?

W: Yes. He organised the military resistance, but when he had the arrow in the eye, as you say, that was the end of the thing, the resistance just folded up, and William of Normandy went on to be crowned William I of England – he didn't control Wales and Scotland and the rest of the country. This ancestor of mine, the family went north, to Northumberland, and actually, they adopted the name Praetus, which is Latin for 'of the land'[2], but they were really guerilla fighters against Norman troops, or those who were loyal and converted their loyalty to William. When they were coming south, many centuries later, in Wales, they changed the 's' of Praetus to Praettis, probably just due to inability to spell and write. Praettis, from the Latin...

F: Like the Praetorian  Guard?

W: Yes...and then, Praetty in Wales. It was completely Anglicised when they got to London.

F: Just a side-line, would that have any relation to the fact that the Irish call potatoes 'praties'?

W: No, there wasn't that connection there – the Anglicising of the name was just to fit in with the English language, although my great-great-grandfather was what was called a potato merchant. That was his occupation when he came to South Australia. Why he came to South Australia was that in 1846, 1847, those two years were very bad years for the potato crops in Ireland and in Germany, north-west Germany, Poland. The potato would be sown into a crop, but you could pick up the underground tubers and there would be just a puff of black powder because of the blight. Consequently, he couldn't import any potatoes into England, and his potato-trading business didn't exist. He sold up his interests, which were near to London, and bought a couple of horses; They had 10 children, so the eldest 5 stayed in England, and the youngest 5 came to South Australia. They left in September 1846, and they arrived at Port Adelaide about February, 1847. The research was easy enough, through the lists of people, the Sands and MacDougall Directories and this sort of thing, to trace what he was doing – for instance, one year, there was a drought, and with his horses, he was able to cart water out of the Torrens to sell to the people in the principal town of Adelaide. When that business folded up with the rain, he became a contractor and built houses. There are various stories – but they are verbal – about carting  stone out of the Torrens Parade, for building of the Government House, but that's only hearsay.

F: So what was his name?

W: Thomas Pretty. I have an oil painting, done in London, before he left to come to South Australia; I have that in a house that I have at Newacott Place. Also, a photo of John James Pretty who was a son of Thomas and Mary, née Spooner. I haven't any photos, or evidence, of the females, there, but, around at Mariner's Cottage, there's this oil painting of Thomas Pretty and also the photo of John James Pretty,  my great-grandfather.

F: So Thomas is your great-great-grandfather?

W: Yes. The photo here was taken off a cameo brooch, and then enlarged. There is a photo of Walter Charles Pretty, who was my grandfather. He lived at Beachport, in the south-east. John James Pretty helped to build the railway, worked on the line from Millicent to Beachport. Lacepede Bay, on the northern part of it, is Beachport, and on the southern is Southend.[3]  Well, Southend wasn't protected enough from the storms, and the fishermen couldn't really operate, because of the weather, and Beachport was consequently developed as the township, for export of produce from inland, chicory – during World War II, it was a substitute for coffee - the export of stock, and things like that, then went by ship from Beachport, or went by rail from the area to Millicent, Mount Gambier, then up the line through Naracoorte and Penola, to Keith, to Bordertown, to Adelaide or perhaps to Melbourne.

F: And this is when – this is your grandfather now?

W: Yes. I don't know the date of his birth, but he's in World War I uniform, there's a photo around there. There's a photo of my father around there, too – it's a wall photo, in his World War I uniform. I don't know where his World War I medals are. As a matter of fact, I don't know where my uncle Charles' war medals may be.

F: How many people did you have in World War I?

W: There's my grandfather, and his elder son, Charles, and then my father, Albert Arthur Pretty.

F: So Albert and Charles and their father were all in World War I?

W: Yes, but Charles was the only one at Gallipoli. He was taken off sick to the British Army Hospital at Alexandrina in Egypt. He died in there. He's been buried in the British Army Cemetery outside of Alexandrina, or Cairo – I've forgotten now.

F: By the way, by now they're all spelt P-r-e-double-t-y?

W: Yes. Then my grandfather, who was in the 10^th Battalion, he served in France with the Batallion, and my father, he took sick at Keswick, and he was discharged through invalidity there, but he was in the 8^th Division in Malaya, in World War II, and was captured there, and he was recovered in Siam, now Thailand. My sister has a lot of papers about the service there. I spoke to a chappie who'd been a P.O.W. as well with the Japanese in that area, and he said he just remembered my father as the old man with the long white beard who used to sweep the floors of the hospital.

F: This is your Dad?

W: Yes. He was recovered there after the Tokyo Surrender, and was repatriated to South Australia.

F: That's all quite extraordinary – he must have been fairly advanced in age, to start with, by World War II, if he was in World War I – must have been at least 40.

W: Over 40.

F: And then, on top of it all, his son - 'cause we'll get to it when we start on you – you were in the war, as well!

W: Yes, well I was 18 and three weeks when World War II broke out, so didn't have much chance, that was it! What I did was I passed a couple of subjects, I had to borrow the money and I couldn't get any text-books, (because I didn't have the money to buy them),  I would sit in the State Library, or Public Library as it was called then, until I got kicked out at night-time, with an overcoat  and scarf on, (that was because of a lack of heating in the winter-time), and I could only read up and go through whatever books they had there, because I didn't have any of my own, and couldn't afford any, because, after I matriculated at Balaklava High School, I'd joined the South Australian Public Service. The salary was 25 shillings a week, but my board, in Melbourne Street – boarding house – was 27 and six a week. I delivered the Sunday Mail to get the other 4 shillings – 40 cents – That covered the balance of my board money, at the boarding house. I walked in from Melbourne Street, North Adelaide, to Victoria Square each morning, summer and winter, because I didn't have a threepence for the tram-fare. I was studying part-time. The Public Service Commissioner gave me a cadetship the next year. After the examinations were over, on the 26^th of December, 1940, I joined the R.A.A.F.. The Australian Government didn't have the facilities nor the money to train us – we were eight months in the Empire Air Training Scheme, it was an eight-month training course for air crew. Beforehand, for three months, we went to parades, Morse Code classes with correspondence studies in physics, the English language and mathematics and that sort of thing. I did  not really have the postage money to send the assignments back to the R.A.A.F., but by then my parents were at West Croydon, and I was living there. I would catch a train from West Croydon to Adelaide to go to work. The R.A.A.F. Recruiting Depot was in the old Legislative Building, in Parliament House. I could drop the completed assignments in there when I went past to go to work in the mornings. Then, on the 31^st of March, 1941, I had a call-up, as it was called, to full-time training in uniform.

F: Now, we'll get back to that, because that's a good place to keep going when we go to the War, but we've skipped an awful lot, because back where we were with your grandfather and his job, and he's the son of the man as the potato-merchant, is he, or is he the grand-son?

W: No, he's the grand-son of Thomas.

F: Right, with the potato-blight, who came here – so we'll start with Grandfather, and what he did, and then tell us about Father and what he did, how he met Mum, and then you're born?

W: My grandfather, he was the butcher at Beachport, but there were not any stock sales – he bought and sold any surplus stock for land he had at Millicent. The railway from Millicent to Beachport, and the draining of Lake George – well, the operations of the South Eastern Drainage Board opened up the land. By rule of thumb, the area of the Hundred of Beachport and around there was under water in the wintertime, but it dried out in the summer so that the stock could, in the winter-time, leave the flooded areas and go onto the ridges where they could graze. In the summer-time, the swamps would dry up a bit, and they could get feed from off the land which was previously under water. But the South Eastern Drainage Board, as it was called, drained  - you see, a lot of the land in the South East comprised ridges that ran north and south, just about, and inbetween these ridges were the swamps. The South Eastern Drainage Board cut channels through the ridges and that drained the swamps to Lake George, mainly, and then out to sea from Lake George. That was what made the development of the land possible. He had the butcher shop there. Of course, he's deceased now – my grandmother's buried in the Beachport cemetery, and my grandfather's buried in the Millicent cemetery. He had a butcher shop at Beachport and supplied the shipping with meat, and the township as well.

F: He had a son, who was your Dad?

W: There was an elder son, Charles, who died in Egypt, after being taken off from Gallipoli. He was in the 27^th Battalion – I think that's a Victorian Battalion, I don't know how he came to be in that. There was a second 27^th Battalion in World War II. But whether he enlisted in Victoria or just went there with the Victorian 27^th Battalion because they wanted extra troops for their enlistment and formation of the 27^th Battalion in World War I, he wasn't in the original Gallipoli landing, but he was there as reinforcements, when he was taken off Gallipoli, he died in Egypt.

F: What did your Dad do when he wasn't in the Army?

W: Well, he was a butcher, too, although things weren't too good in the Great Depression, 1928 to the 1930s, and he worked with Goldsborough Mort & Co. Ltd., the stock and station agent.

F: Now we're getting closer to how you get to what you do. Well, you're not a butcher, are you, but you work with land?

W: Ah, well...I went to the Owen Primary School – Owen's a town 50 miles north of Adelaide, in the Lower North. It was named after a general of the Crimean War. It was settled about the turn of the 20^th century. The Hundreds, Dalkey, the town of Balaklava, they are names from Crimea.

F: Is there a Sebastopol, too?   It's alright, where I grew up in Melbourne, there was a series of streets named Crimea, Sebastopol, Balaclava, and there was a whole area named after the Crimean War. Did you go to Owen for any particular reason? Where your family living there then?

W: Yes, well, when my parents married, my mother lived in Millicent, her father had taken up land there – he'd migrated from England, from the County Suffolk, and the family had owned Enderby Hall, in Suffolk. He took up land of the Wyrie Station outside of Millicent. It was practically all swamp, but he drained   the land – well, actually, I've been to Millicent, and it was done through   the Millicent Council - the building of the drains to drain the swamp - and he did it for practically nothing because it was improving his own land. Besides sheep and cattle, he ran a fair few horses in those days. Actually, it was quite close to Millicent, because my mother..well, the children went to the Millicent  School – primary school, there was no high school – and they went into Millicent in a horse and trap for schooling.

Tape 1

Side B

F: So they went to Millicent every day, in the trap?

W: They went to school there, and they had the seven-year schooling, because there was no other school to go to, and there was no higher education above grade 7 in the primary school at that time. My parents married..

F: How did they meet?

W: These areas were not as well populated as they are now, and people in Millicent would know the people in Beachport, and the people in Beachport would know the people in Millicent. They had summer picnic for Millicent, and ran a train to Beachport one Sunday of the year, in the summertime, and they seemed to think that my Grandfather's sausages were quite good  (chortles) and he would make a lot of money on this Sunday summer picnic of these people going to the beach from Millicent, for  the one day of the year that they would be at the beach. The families would know each other. There weren't that many people around in that time. As a matter of fact, the last of the Boandik - as it's pronounced  a fair bit now - Boandik is the correct Aboriginal pronunciation of the local tribe, which was right through from where the Ngarrindjeri finished at Kingston, through to Mount Gambier, and Lankiy, an Aboriginal by the name of Lankiy, lived at Beachport. He had a bit of a whirlie, a shelter, in the sandhills, and he'd come in every now and again to the butcher shop. My grandfather would give him hunks of meat and stuff like that. My father knew him; people of that time would have known, too.

F: And did your parents have much to do with the Aboriginal folks, or just that particular chap?

W: No, he was the last of the Aboriginals – Aborigines, I beg your pardon – when I went to school, Aboriginal was a noun, or an adjective, and the plural was Aborigines, but now on the wireless and all the rest, they get Aboriginals and Aborigine, they seem to mix it up a fair bit, but that's how we were taught our English. He was the last of the Boandik tribe, lived at Beachport, and he'd just go down to the wharf - there was a jetty built there, and also a life-saving boat operated from there with a volunteer crew. He would just lean on the jetty. He'd get some clothes from people, now and again, and there was a Protector of Aborigines actually stationed at Beachport. My parents lived in this house when they were first married. Prior to that there was a Protector of Aborigines who lived at Beachport, because they were given blankets each year, and a flour ration now and again, a tobacco ration, and this sort of thing. They soon died out with the white man's diseases and so on.

F: And your parents lived in the Protector's house?

W: They rented it.

F: After, obviously, the Protector had left and, as you say, there was only one Aboriginal person.

   So how do we get to Owen?

W: My father, he had a butcher shop at Millicent. Then he went to this town as a butcher – Owen. A fair bit of the land had been cleared, but most of it had been, at the beginning of the twentieth century, had been sold off, but it was all Mallee scrub, and had to be cleared. The soil was quite strong, especially to the east and the south, and the north – soils to the west of the town were a bit light-on. There was all this Mallee scrub, and this was being cleared, and the area of the roads cleared of the trees. He was there as a butcher. Things weren't too good in the Depression, and that's when he worked for Goldsborough Mort & Co. Ltd..

F: But you weren't born in Owen, were you?

W: No, I was born in Millicent. My mother and my elder sister went from Millicent and had to go over to Kalangadoo                                                                                - that was a road journey. They then went by train, because it was considered too hazardous for women and children to travel the Coorong, and my father and I went to Owen by road, in a Ford 'A' Car – Millicent to Salt Creek was the first day's journey, then from Salt Creek to Adelaide on the second day. We went from Adelaide to Owen by car, and from Gepp's Cross to Port Wakefield River, which might have been ten or fifteen miles, I don't know, I can't really say – that was the only bitumen road outside of Adelaide, in South Australia, from Gepp's Cross to the River Wakefield.

F: Do you know why they built one there first?

W: No, but that was the only road outside of Adelaide suburban area that was bitumenised.    When we got there, I was about four or five or something, and I started school. I qualified for the Qualifying Certificate without any distinction at the Owen Primary School  (chortles)  Balaklava High School, well that was 12 miles away – I used to ride a motorbike.

F: How old were you when you rode a motorbike?

W: I was 12. Just a two-stroke Coventry Eagle. But I didn't have any alternative, because there was no transport of any sort, for the 12 miles. See, Owen was a town half-way between Hamley Bridge and Balaklava, on the railway line. There was a train that left Owen about 10 o'clock in the morning, (from Adelaide via Hamley Bridge), to go to Balaklava, and you'd come back about half-past two or three o'clock in the afternoon – that wasn't sufficient time there, I had to get my own transport to go to high school.

F: Were you the only kid with a motor-bike?

W: Yes.

F: I'll bet the others were very jealous, too!

W: There weren't many people to go to high school, anyway.

F: Do you remember how many in your class, roughly?

W: I can't remember now, but there were a fair few in the first year, but then they sort of faded out.

F: Because they had to go and work, I would think?

W: Yes, especially if their family had some land. As soon as they were12 years of age, they would go to high school. In those days, it was voluntary. I think it was 12 years of age when one could leave school. They'd have their 7 years – start school about 4 or 5, at the primary school, then after 7 years they'd go to high school. After one year there, they'd reach the age when they could leave. If their parents were on the land, as in farming land or anything like that, or their father had a shoe-shop in the town, they would go and work with the family.

F: Now, for you to even have a motor-bike then is interesting, because this is still the Depression, and how did your parents afford a motor-bike?

W: I used to work, before school and after school, to catch rabbits to send the skins to Adelaide. In addition, I would walk the town before I went to school and collect the empty bottles that were lying around the streets. I had enough in my own bank-account to buy a motor-bike.

F: You bought it yourself at the age of 12 or 13?

W: Yes.

F: You weren't shooting rabbits in the Lucky Period, were you?

W: I was trapping them, I wasn't shooting them.

F: Nobby Clark, whom you may have heard of, in Port Elliot (W intones assent) told me that he made his fortune on rabbits because at some point – and I think it's after the War – the price of rabbits went sky-high, very briefly, and he cashed in very quickly before it sunk again, and I don't remember why that was.

W: I used to sells the skins, as well, when I dressed them, but the carcasses were sold around the town, for fourpence each.

F: And when you trap them, you don't have to pay for a bullet.

W: That's right. I had to go wherever there were rabbits, or warrens. I had to chose the right time, because in the winter there were what we called the 'Mickeys', the newly-born and not-very-big rabbits.  They didn't attract anything for the sale of the carcasses, and the skins weren't worth very much. Like anything else, farming has to be done at the right time.

F: Any idea why they were called mickeys – not after Mickey Mouse?

W: No. They were small rabbits, and they came out of the burrow first up. They would step on the trap and set it off.

         (Puré Pretty arrives with refreshments)

     The carcasses were sold for fourpence. The skins were dried on a frame – on a piece of fencing wire, about two feet or two-feet-six long. It was bent over into a hoop and then the skin was put on that and dried.  When we reckoned there was enough skins, we would  put them on the railway to Adelaide...

F: You obviously did all right, to buy your own motor-bike at 13 or 12, that's pretty impressive! How much was a motor-bike in those days, do you remember what that cost?

W: No, I don't remember, really.

F: Was it new?

W: Yes.

F: Gee! We could find out how much a new Coventry Eagle cost, 'cause they were imported from England, of course – nobody made motor-bikes in this country, did they?

W: That's right, no.

F: Was that a single-cylinder, did you say?

W: Yes. Two-stroke.

F: Like a lawn-mower?

W: Yes, something like that.

F: Nonetheless, that's very impressive, for a lad your age to have bought a brand-new motor-bike.

W: It would take three-quarters or more of an hour to travel the twelve miles in the morning, to go to high-school, and then the twelve miles to come home at night-time.

F: Where did you find time to do your home-work?

W: Oh, I would run the rabbit-traps, and then come back and sit up until about midnight to do my homework.

F:  And then get up at four to go to school again?

W: Well, I had to run the rabbit-traps in the morning before I went to school, and then have breakfast.

F: You obviously just gave up sleeping.

W: Once a month, on the Monday night, in the Institute, there was a  picture show.

F: In Owen? So Owen is big enough to have an Institute?

W: Yes. The projection box for the operator wasn't big enough for two machines, so after each film was run, they'd stop, take the spool off, and put a new one on. The audience would sit in the dark while that went on.

F: And that would be every 20 minutes, 'cause the spools were 20 minutes, weren't they – we're talking silent era?

W: I can't remember now, but I would sit in front of a fire, and make toast and do my homework until my parents came home.

F: Oh, they went to the movies, you didn't? I was about to ask you what were your favourite films! I'm a great lover of silent movies, although this must be the early sound era, the early '30s we're talking about now. And I still love Fred Astaire and I still love Buster Keaton.

W: Yes, I remember Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle.

F: You'd only just rememeber Fatty Arbuckle, because he was disgraced in the end, and he quit movies, I think, either in the very late twenties or very early thirties.

      So you spent a lot of time doing homework, and trapping rabbits, and high school – you're at high school at this point, aren't you? Did you finish high school?

W: I matriculated at Balaklava.

F: In my day, you had to choose between Science and Art, or something. Did you have to do that in those days?

W: They had certain subjects, and that was it, didn't have a choice.

F: So, at this point, were you starting to think – 'I'd like a career where one day I'm the Commonwealth Chief Valuer for South Australia, as well as Valuer-General of the Northern Territory' ?

W: No, I was interested in getting a job.

F: Any job?

W: Yes.  When the school examinations were over at high school, I'd work in the wheat-yards until it was time to start again.

F: The wheat-yards?

W: The wheat-yard at the Owen railway station.

F: You didn't work in your dad's butcher shop as such?

W: No. He worked for Goldsborough-Mort & Co., Ltd..

F: Of course, 'cause he'd stopped by then, hadn't he?

W: Yes.  And I'd brand the bags. Crosby Mann was one of the wheat buyers. I would brand the bags with 'CM'. The wheat in that stack, then, was Crosby Mann's. The farmers would get a Cart Note for the wheat they had delivered.

F: Was Golsborough-Mort & Co., Ltd. an agent?

W: Goldsborough-Mort was a stock and station agent.

F: Is that the same?

W: No. They dealt only in stock.

F: I see, as distinct from wheat and produce.

W: Yes. Goldsborough-Mort would take the wool from the sheep. They would arrange for local auctions for stock, and for farmers to buy other animals for their farms, for breeding and this sort of thing.  They would put young lambs on the stock-trucks at Owen to be sent down to the abbatoirs at Pooraka. They were auctioned there by the stock-agent, to be bought by exporters or local butchers for Adelaide.

F: And, of course, since your dad was a butcher, you already knew quite a lot about the animal and meat side of it?

W: Oh, yeah, yeah. A fair few pigs, if I remember rightly, were sent from there to the abbatoirs.

F: How did you get the job with the wheat?

W: Well, I went over there, and they said - “Do you want to brand the bags?”, and I said “Yes, I'll do that”. At the end of the week, the local agent gave me two shillings, (twenty cents) for twelve hours a day

F: For how many days – five and a half days a week?

W: Oh, there was a half there. We only worked half a day on Saturday, up until about lunchtime.

F: Sixty-six hours a week for two shillings?

W: Yes.

F: Mind, in fairness, two shillings obviously bought more than  20c. does now, nonetheless...

W: (chuckles)  One could get a bottle of lemonade for sixpence, if I remember rightly.

F: But it's not that much further on, it's only a few years later, that you're paying 27 shillings a week board, which gives us some kind of perspective on what 2 shillings buys. What year would we be here, roughly – you're about 16, 17?

W: No, that was when I was about 13 or 14.

F: You didn't leave school at 13 or 14, though.

W: No, I passed my matriculation at Balaklava. In 1937 or 1938, I joined the South Australian Public Service. At the end of the year, when the University year was starting, I just went down to the University office, and signed up for a couple of subjects. They were only too happy to get the money – which I had to borrow anyway, because I didn't have any.

F: The money for what, the University?

W: For the fees.

 End of tape

Tape 2, recorded 15/7/2004

Side A

W: Shortly after that, there was World War II, that was declared. The Germans blamed Poland for that, because they wouldn't...

F: ...lie down and be taken over?

W:  That's right. Neville Chamberlain, the English Prime Minister, had attempted to do something about the take-over of Czechoslovakia by Germany, but there wasn't any treaty with Czechoslovakia, so they rushed about and, anticipating that Poland would be next...

F: How aware of this were you at the time? Because we're now talking 1938 for Czechoslovakia, 1939 for Poland – way back here, did you get a lot of that in the papers, and did you have some kind of sense of dread or anything?

W: In 1939, I did the subject of Public Administration I. The lecturer at the time was a gentleman by the name of Wainwright, who was Auditor-General for South Australia. I remember him saying – he was rather taken with the Civil Administration and its efficiency, particularly the cartel systems - that the Nazis had established all over Germany, and brought these other countries into – he was rather taken with this. We were subject to his admiration for this civil administration, but then he said - “It's a pity it's been built up for war purposes” , so that was the attitude, even then, that eventually there'd be a war between Germany and Britain and her allies. You see, World War I, when England, or Britain, declared war on Germany, was a trade war, because Germany, by trade competition, was taking all the European markets, and the idea was they would go to war with Germany, defeat it militarily, and get their markets back. But Hitler, before the Second World War, was taking over these countries, and taking over their trade for Germany, not by competition, trade-wise, but taking them over under the German administration. For instance, in those three countries – Lithuania, Esthonia and Latvia, there was a trade deal made with them that, in return for primary products, Germany would give them manufactured goods, which turned out to be heaps and heaps of typewriters! The people of the particular country could hardly read or write!

F: Germany gave them typewriters?

W: Yes, manufactured in Germany, you see. They then had trade in their primary products, and got this stuff back in return, which  wasn't worth anything to them at all, because they couldn't read nor write very much, anyway.

F: I'm surprised they got anything in return, let alone typewriters. I have actually read an interesting book from a journalist that lived in Germany at the time, between 1938 and 1941[4], and he charts how, with each country Germany went into, they sent all the loot to Germany, all the valuable things they stole off people, and of course the German population had a boom – but of course, at a certain point, that started to wear out. There wasn't the amount of goods coming back, and the German population that were having this boom slowly began to experience difficulty, because it wasn't a stable economic arrangement – and generally, I didn't think the Germans gave anything back, let alone typewriters.

W: They did in this particular case, goods that wouldn't be any use to the country in question. The country's economy  (Germany's) was based on full employment in the Army and manufacturing

F: Typewriters, amongst other things

W: (chortling) and raw goods. Germany invaded Poland on the first of September, 1939, and the 3^rd of September, Britain declared war on Germany – Britain gave Germany so long to respond, and they didn't take any notice of it, and on the 3^rd of September, Britain declared war on Germany. They were well ahead with their preparations

F: Germany was?

W: Yes

F: Yes, because by 1936 or so, Hitler had already started pumping huge amounts of money into defence and building tanks and military equipment, and, I think, as he took over the Ruhr and the various iron-manufacturers around, near Czechoslovakia, from memory, well of course, he transformed all of that into war production, didn't he?

W: Yes, well it was the motor-car factories and production that...

F:...Daimler, Benz etc...

W: ...they were able to convert this into production for war purposes. Britain wasn't doing much about it. Some time in 1940, they very seriously considered surrendering, because the Army had three-quarters of a million soldiers they'd sent as an expeditionary force to Europe. They had to retreat from Dunkirk, and lost all their armaments and everything else – tanks, transport, guns - and they just had these soldiers who had come back, been brought back across the Channel, and they didn't have any weapons.

F: It must have been amazing living in England at that time, because you surely must have been feeling like doom was imminent, 'cause they're bombing you, and at the same time your soldiers are retreating...

W: There's a story that in the hotel/pub, that the speech of Winston Churchill about - “We will never surrender, we will fight them on the beaches, in the hills, etc.”, and the barmaid said - “Well, what else are we going to do? That's it, that's what we'll all be doing”, and that was apparently the attitude.

F: 'Plucky little Britishers', as it were.

W: (chuckles) Well, yes, I don't know what they would have done if, following Dunkirk, the German forces had crossed the Channel. I'm not that sure that they would have had anything else but broomsticks to...

F:..fend them off with

W: Yes.

F: So how did all that look from here, if you can put your mind-set back into what that was like, all that time ago?

W: We were satisfied we'd win eventually.

F: Was that easier from here because it was so far away?

W: Well yes, Britain was encouraged to continue with the war-fare by America. Britain didn't have the ships to convoy the manufactured goods and foods across the Atlantic, and these were all lend-lease, from destroyers on convoy work, and the cargo ships – most of the cargo ships were built in America to transport the stuff.

F: And, apparently, Roosevelt and Churchill had an almost-secret agreement, long before Pearl Harbour, where in fact Roosevelt put quite a lot of money into the war effort, didn't he?

W: Yes, yes, well that was December of 1941, was Pearl Harbour, and Roosevelt said that the principle was that if your neighbour's house is on fire, you would lend him your hose to put it out When it's all over, he gives you back your hose, and that's the start and the finish of the thing. I don't know that it worked out that way, but in the Battle of Britain, the skies were open to the Germans. Out here in Australia, well I didn't enlist until the end of 1940, after waiting for the Uni exams to be over. Britain didn't have any aircraft to let us have, and we didn't have any aircraft ourselves, after Japan had knocked off Pearl Harbour,

F: Though that's a year after you enrolled

W: Yes, actually we had our Wings Parade a month before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. But we didn't have any aircraft – all we had was training aircraft out here, and Britain said that she couldn't supply us with any 'planes, and America said that she didn't have any aircraft, so the D.O.P., or Department Of (aircraft) Production  was set up, and built a lot of our own aircraft.

F: Fisherman's Bend comes to mind, in Victoria, for some reason.

W: Yes, that was a part, and also Islington Railway workshops, where aircraft were built. Of the Beaufort aircraft, the wings and/or the fuselage were built at Islington, and then transported by road to Fisherman's Bend.

F: Islington is here, isn't it, in South Australia? Fisherman's Bend being Melbourne.

W: Yes. It's near Kilburn.

F: My brother, I think, worked for the old Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation, in the early '70s, or late '60s, with what was left.

W: They built 700 Beaufort aircraft, and then altered the design for transport.

F: They were the big ones? And what, they gutted the innards so you could fit more men into it or something?

W: Yes, well, the Beaufort aircraft was a British design for aerial torpedoes, but by the time that they started rolling them off here in sufficient numbers to be effective in war-time, Britain wouldn't let us have any torpedoes. In any case, aerial torpedoes had outlived their day – they weren't successful. For instance, when the Sharn horst  broke out from the Norway fjords, they attacked out with 64 – or 68 Fairy Swordfish, carrying torpedoes. The British torpedoes were 1500 pound weight, and the American was 2000 pound weight, but every Swordfish was shot down, in the North Sea, and no damage was done to the Sharn horst.

F: To the what, the Sharn horst?

W: Yes, it was a German pocket battleship, not as large as battleships of the time, but faster and more manouverable. We worked on 25% casualties per torpedo drop, so that if we had 20 aircraft, we'd expect to lose 5 - and 20 air-crew - on an average, per mission.

F: That'd be pretty depressing, if you didn't actually lay a finger on the boat that you were trying to bomb.

W: Well, in the Battle of the Midway, the Americans had four aerial torpedo squadrons. They sat two squadrons up, from their aircraft carriers, against the Japanese aircraft carriers and cruisers and destroyers that were in the flotilla, and they all got shot down. So they sent up the other two squadrons that they had in reserve, and the equivalent of one and a half squadrons were shot down. However they damaged an aircraft carrier – the second lot of the aerial torpedoes – I've forgotten the name of the torpedo bombers – but they damaged the steering of the Japanese aircraft carrier. Also I think they sank either a cruiser or a destroyer, and another one was damaged. The Japanese withdrew their ships from that, and that was the victory named the Midway. That was one of the turning points of World War II. The casualties were that heavy with the torpedo bombing. We did not have any 1500-pound British torpedoes, but had American 2000-pound. We had to open the bomb bays and  carry the American 2000-pound torpedo outside of the aircraft.

F: Yes, that rings a bell – because they couldn't close the compartment with the big torpedoes!

W: That's right, yes, that was because the American torpedoes were 500 pound larger and heavier than what the aircraft were built to carry. That was the end of torpedo aircraft carrying aerial torpedoes, because the casualties were so high that Australia couldn't make the aircraft fast enough to cover the losses.

F: Now, that wasn't what you flew though, was it? You flew bombers, but not torpedo boats?

W: We did the torpedo course, and dropped some, but...

F: Can we just go back one step, because you haven't actually told me yet why you enrolled in the Air Force, rather than the Army or the Navy?

W: I wasn't very interested in the Army. (Quiet chuckle)

F: Neither, I'm sure, were many of the others that joined the Army, for that matter.

W: (louder chortle) Living conditions, and all sorts of things like that. I did apply, at the same time as applying to the Air Force, when the exams were over at Uni in 1940. I decided it was time to go into uniform, so I applied to the Royal Australian Navy at Port Adelaide, where the recruiting depot was, and the R.A.A.F. Recruiting depot, in the old Legislative Council building, alongside of the Parliament House. I just went there, I merely wanted the enlistment papers to join the Australian Air Force, and the fellow says - “Have you got your Leaving Certificate?” - that was the Matriculation – and I said - “Oh, yes, I have four Uni subjects”. So he handed me the papers for air crew. The minimum requirement, at that time, for people enlisting in air crew was a Leaving Certificate – it was reduced, in the middle of 1941, down to Primary School level. Churchill had asked, at the beginning of 1840, what would be the biggest single factor for victory in World War II? The War Cabinet told him air warfare would be the biggest part of it, so he said  - “All right, well we'll have to make as many aircraft as we can, and get as many airmen trained.” But they estimated the casualties being so high that Churchill said, “We'll get an Empire Air Training Scheme, where we don't have to train that many in the U.K., and tie up the landing-strips and take-off strips, but all air-crew must be volunteers.” It wasn't long into 1941 before they ran out of people doing Matriculation. By the middle of 1941, for the scheme, they were taking people who'd just completed their Primary School.

F: I take it to go into the Army, you only needed Primary School?

W: You didn't need anything at all.

F: which is why you had more in the Army than in the Air Force.

W: Yes. Then, on the 31^st of March, 1941, I started full-time training.  But beforehand the Australian Government didn't have any money to train us. They didn't have any aircraft. We had three months of parades, Morse Code classes, correspondence, arithmetic, and subjects such as that, physics - then, on the 31^st of March, 1941, I went into full-time training at Victor Harbor, Mount Breckan, Initial Training School. We had three or four weeks there, then we were sorted for those who were to be pilots, navigators, and those who were to be wireless-operator/air-gunners. There I received a letter from the Navy, that they'd made an appointment for me to join the Royal Australian Navy, and I hadn't turned up, and wanting to know what the reason was, and I said - “At the time of putting the papers in for the Australian Navy, I'd put them in to the Air Force as well, and that I'd received a call-up and was in training”, so I didn't hear any more about the Royal Australian Navy. And that cut out the Army - I wasn't interested in the Army - and I went in and completed the training for air-crew. We had our Wings Parade in November,

1941. The next month, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour.

F: You'd been in the Air-Force for about 11 months by then though, hadn't you? Didn't you say you joined right at the beginning of '41?

W: Yes, 31^st of March, 1941.

F: So they spent eight months teaching you physics and whatever?

W: No, we had eight months training for flying duties.

F: Did you have any training in torpedoes?

W: No. This was the Empire Air Training Scheme, and everybody had the eight months, the pilots, navigators, and wireless operator/air-gunners. We had those eight months training in the particular disciplines or things that applied to them. The pilots and the navigators, they stayed at Mount Breckan for another month; the wireless operators/air gunners after the first month, then straight off to Ballarat, to the wireless school – we stayed there for our six months training, on the ground and in the air, flying in aircraft – DC3's, and Tiger Moths – as wireless operators. Then we had a month's training at Port Pirie, at the Bombing and Gunnery School.

F: The what?

W: To St. Mark's College, behind St. Peter's Cathedral – it was an embarkation depot.  We were still there when the pilots and the navigators, to form the crews, were assembled at Sydney in a transport ship on their way to Adelaide, for the wireless operators/air gunners, when Japan attacked.

F: From then, you were instantly in active service?

W: Yes, well there's a railway line that runs from Perth north, to Geraldton, about 300 miles, privately owned, and it was anticipated that, if the Japanese were to attack and occupy Australia from the west, they would land at Geraldton, where there was a training school, advanced training for pilots, where they were flying Avro-Ansons. We were sent there as ground troops, as we didn't have any aircraft. We put the hospital underground, dug the slit trenches, and set up observation posts north and south of Geraldton, Port Jackson, 50 miles north, Dongara, 50 miles south; in Geraldton itself, and then out at the Houtman's Abrolhos – that's a Portuguese, is it? - one of the European countries' - word for a number of islands – set up an observation post with a wireless set, and things like that. I didn't go there, I only went to the other three places. We had World War I wireless sets, with which we tracked the aircraft movements

Tape 2

Side B

W: There were codes for what the aircraft were like, single wings or double wings or single engine or double engines. The sight of an aircraft – which were all American, because the Japanese didn't attack;  Port Hedland was as far south as they attacked. We'd code up a message to send back to the Air Force Base at Geraldton -  about the aircraft, where it was, its description, and where it was headed.   We lived on tinned food for a while. We had fresh food when we first got out there, but we stayed about three or four weeks. By then we'd be living on tinned food only for the last few weeks. I didn't mind not going to the Abrolhos Observation Post. They all had to spend some time in hospital when they came back, because of what we called the Barkoo Rot, that was ulcers on their bodies through no fresh food, and from infection from the coral and things like this.       Then, in the middle of 1942, we moved to Bairnsdale, for 8 weeks.  One of the squadrons, No. 7 R.A.A.F. Beaufort Squadron, had previously been Lockheed Hudsons. They'd lost all their aircraft, and the administration had been sent there and consequently our conversion onto Flying Beauforts.  We lost six aircraft and twenty air-crew in the training, in those eight weeks.  The losses increased afterwards. The first that had gone there had been No. 8 R.A.A.F. Beaufort Squadron, or No.100 Squadron – I think it was No.100 Squadron.  Then they converted these into numbered courses. No. 8 Squadron, (or No.100 Squadron), was called 'One Course'. We were called 'Two Course'. Afterwards, 'Three Course', 'Four Course”, etc.. They were losing more and more aircraft and air-crew in the training, and there was an inquiry from the Air Board into the losses. They came up with that there were worn-out aircraft, and inexperienced air-crew and untrained ground-staff.

F: Were you actually flying, yourself, or were you just the extra-crew, and somebody else was piloting?

W: I was a wireless-operator/air-gunner.

F: Had you, by the way, ever been in an aeroplane before the War?

W: No.

F: Which makes me doubly-intrigued that you should join the Air-Force, if you'd never actually been in an aeroplane?  That's very brave.

W: (laughs) I don't know about that.   The crew of a Beaufort was the pilot, the navigator, and two wireless-operator/air gunners. There was a mid-upper turret, and one of the gunners would be in that.   They had a soft belly – didn't matter so much, because, what the Zeroes would do, they'd come up underneath us

F: The Zeroes?

W: After we did the eight weeks at Bairnsdale, we did three weeks at BTU – Base Torpedo Unit, at Nowra, training on dropping the aerial torpedoes. But Australia only had a few American aerial torpedoes. We dropped the torpedoes, but the losses were too  heavy on active service. We converted to a Bomber Reconnaissance Squadron. During 1942-1943, I flew on Beauforts in New Guinea and Dutch New Guinea. Then, in 1944, I was sent back to Australia for a rest, our crew was broken up and 'sent for a rest', as they called it. I went to Mount Gambier, training, lecturing  on wireless operating to navigator/wireless operators.   Aircraft like Bostons normally just had two crew, a pilot and a navigator/wireless operator.  Then, in 1945, I went back to No. 8 R.A.A.F. Beaufort  Squadron in New Guinea, North of New Guinea, Aitade, Madang, Tadji. That was when the war ended – Tokyo surrendered on the 14^th of August. The Japanese Lieutenant-General Adachi was in charge  of the Japanese troops in New Guinea, and he surrendered on the 13^th of September, 1945.

F: He held out for an extra month?

W: Yes.

F: I have heard it was somewhere like New Guinea where there was still soldiers only about 10 years ago, that didn't know the War had ended – they'd been living in the jungle for 40 years – have you ever heard of that?

W: Yes. Other places in the Islands, and these sort of places, living in the jungle, in villages. They hadn't received any information, they didn't have any communications and they just lived on, believing that their Emperor was immortal, and that he wouldn't be surrendering anyway. (chuckles)    I was discharged from the R.A.A.F. on the 21^st of December, 1945.

F: Now, just before we do move on from there, you did drop a name, sometime ago, that you'd been flying bombers with Gough Whitlam?

W: Yes, early in 1945, I'd been posted to East Sale in Victoria, to fly on B-25s, North American Mitchells. I've forgotten the name of who the pilot was, a Squadron Leader. He was C.O. of the Squadron, whether it existed then, or was being formed, I don't know – but there were air-gunners and wireless operators and the navigator was Gough Whitlam. But I didn't like the B-25s  very much. The wings were too small, and the engines in them were too heavy. They didn't seem to be strong enough, to me. At the same time, there was operational training going on at East Sale for Beaufort aircraft, and I was able to transfer from the B-25 training. What had happened, there was a crew was in training for six weeks – one of the wireless operator/air-gunners had, through sickness or whether he just didn't like the aircraft or was frightened of them or something or other – he went off course, and it left the other three with an incomplete crew; I was able to transfer on, having done the first fort-night of the operational training on the Mitchells, to do just the last two weeks of flying of the course. So I only really did four weeks training of an eight-weeks course. After the fort-night, I left Gough, and went to the other Beaufort crew which was short of a wireless operator/air-gunner.

F: Ah, you were only with Gough for two weeks. He didn't lose you at any point, navigating?

W: No. It was just at the early stages of it, of forming the crew and training. We'd only done ground training, anyway. I had  a fair experience with wireless operating, and I was the wireless operator in the crew.   Then we finished at Ballarat, for our wireless training there, we had to do 18 words a minute Morse Code, sending and receiving. When I went to East Sale, I could do 24 words a minute, receiving and sending.     I had a fair amount of flying on Beaufort aircraft. The crew I went to was trained to be a Beaufort crew.

F: That's despite that they started you with the B-25s?

W: Yes.

F: Now the Beauforts were bigger than the B-25s?

W: They were more solid aircraft, and carried about the same bomb-load.

F: But you could carry the bombs without having the bomb-bay open, like with the torpedo?

W: One of the difficulties with a torpedo was that you dropped them a thousand feet from your target, flying at a hundred feet, at a speed of a hundred knots – all the gunners on the ships knew that, and they knew that soon as the torpedo dropped from the aircraft that you were a thousand feet out, that you were a hundred feet above the sea-level, and what your speed was, and they would   aim their guns straight away, onto you.

F: 'They' being the enemy, you mean?

W: Yes. On the ship. And also, we always attacked broadside-on, to get the maximum target. But the Officer of the Watch, on the bridge, as soon as he saw a torpedo drop from an aircraft, he'd turn it 90 degrees, so that it was facing towards where the torpedo had been dropped, get the minimum target to be hit.

F: Mind you, it takes a while to move a destroyer – that couldn't have been done quickly.

W: You see, the torpedo would go down into the water, and then, after it reached a certain depth, it had a gyroscope on it, set in pure alcohol, and when it reached its depth, the pressure of the water would activate the gyroscope, and, whichever direction the torpedo was pointing, it would run in that way, and couldn't be diverted. Well, off Gasmata, there was a Japanese supply ship, going to Rabaul, escorted  by a Japanese cruiser. We just had our 18 aircraft with torpedoes, and only two of them ran – 16 just bobbed up and down in the water...

F: Like mines?

W: Yes. People had been getting at the alcohol in the torpedoes...

F: You mean they drained the booze out of the gyroscope, and disabled the torpedo?

W: Yes.

F: Oh dear. Alcohol's got a lot to answer for, hasn't it?

W: (laughs)  I think we lost four aircraft on that mission.

F: Of course, that's not really funny, because what it means is if the torpedoes disabled, the enemy gets you, and you don't get the enemy!

W: That's right. We lost four aircraft, and 16 air-crew. Two of the torpedoes ran, but I don't think they hit their targets. By the time of the torpedo dropping into the sea, getting down to its depth, and then being activated under a gyroscope direction to travel this thousand feet, ships were able to manoeuvre and get out of the way of the two torpedoes that did run.

F: And, in the mean time, their gunners were aiming at the aeroplanes.

W: Yes. See, you were only at a hundred feet when the torpedos dropped. Well, as soon as the torpedo dropped, the pilot would, what we'd say, put the throttle through the gate. We had to 'hedge-hop' over the ship, or turn port or starboard, but that wasn't a very good manoeuvre because all the underneath of the plane was made a fairly-easy target for the ship's gunners.

F: Because it was a big aeroplane and you were flying low?

W: Mm. It was better to hedge-hop over the ship, and fly away. It was still 25% casualties on average for a torpedo drop. It wasn't a very economic proposition because of the cost of the aircraft, and the training of the air-crew and everything else. The cost of the torpedos, I don't know what they would have cost them, but the ship's worked on – the ships being built for submarines, the torpedoes they've got at Port Adelaide, cost a million-odd dollars each - the ones they have now. So what these aerial torpedoes would have cost in those days, and drop 18 and do no damage...  Operational flights were always based on what they called economics – it cost so much for an aircraft lost, so much for the training of the air-crew, so much for bombs and this sort of thing, and add them up and let's say it cost a million dollars to put on that operational attack. If they only did, say, half a million dollars damage, it wasn't considered to be economic.

F: And if you're losing a quarter of the men at a time, that's pretty disastrous...

W: We would have to train up another lot of men for the aircraft that were replacing those that were lost.

F: That must have been pretty lousy for morale, because, after all, you must have known quite a few boys that didn't come home, and?

W: We always knew. We lived in tents, at what we called our operational bases. We always knew who hadn't come back, because the kerosene lights weren't on in the particular tent. But  we just accepted it, it was something we got 75c. a day for.

F: It's almost impossible to really appreciate what it was like for you, at the age of 20, when I certainly wasn't flying aeroplanes, trying to kill people, at that age – and to imagine, you must have had it in your mind - “If we don't succeed, we've lost the world”, or whatever.

W: We just accepted it as too bad.    If we got any anti-aircraft shell in the chest, too bad – we just accepted it.

F: Did you?

W: No.

F: So you did very well - you  basically were unscathed?

W: I wasn't even wounded.

F: You did do very well, especially if the chances were one-in-four.

W: Yes, well the only other thing was that if you stayed alive, somebody else died for you, and that was it.

F: I'm sure there aren't too many pleasant memories of that for you, either.

W: Of our hundred who started out full-time training on the 31^st of March, 1941, 74 were killed.   I can't die – as far as I know, I'm the only one left out of that hundred, so there's no-one left to bury me, so that I can't die!

                   (much laughter)

F: Not yet, anyway, not till we finish this!

W: Not for hundreds of years!

F: So I'm now speaking to the last survivor of

W: Number 13 Course, Empire Air Training Scheme.   The Americans, they were just giving their air-crew four weeks training. They weren't very good flyers.

F: Four weeks training, and they might never have been in an aeroplane before?

W: Yes.

F: On the other hand, when you were talking about how much training you had, you made it sound like you had too much of it, because they were busy waiting to put you on the field, whereby you had twelve months or something – you wouldn't want to be in an aeroplane with somebody that had only started flying four weeks ago!

W: After the Japs came into the War, they lost squadrons of aircraft at a time, because they just got lost and ran out of petrol.

F: And didn't have the experience...

W: It was either an R.A.A.F. Navigator or an R.A.A.F. wireless operator who flew with each American squadron.

F: To make sure they didn't get lost?

W: Well, to do the navigation for them.

F: This comes back to what we were saying before, that in the case of Germany, they'd been training pilots for years.

W: They had plenty of air-craft, too, Messerschmitt, the Me-109E fighter, but they didn't go in for heavy aircraft, they just had the medium-light aircraft, the Messerschmitt 110-F, which only carried about the same bomb-load as we did.

F: They didn't have Lancasters or anything?

W: No, no. A Lancaster would carry eight ton.

F: That's big, isn't it?

W: Yes. Eight ton is a lot different from 2000 pounds.

F: So do you think, if the Germans had had Lancasters, they would have taken over London?

W: They came close to taking London with the equipment they had. If they'd crossed the Channel in 1940, from Dunkirk, there couldn't have been any opposition. Militarily, England wouldn't have had any weapons. The Battle of Britain was all aircraft. Sometimes they'd put up British fighters against the German attacking aircraft. They wanted to give the impression that they'd lost probably all they had, anyway. By then, the Germans weren't that backward – what they did, when they had a target to bomb, was that they put out two radar beams, and the aircraft would fly down these radar beams. Where  they crossed, they'd pick that up on their radar sets in their air-craft, and when they'd got to where the crossing of these two beams showed up on the radar, they would then just drop their bombs. They wouldn't look for targets, or sight them or anything else, just drop their bombs and go back.

F: So were the Germans early with radar?

W: Yes.

End of tape

Tape 3, recorded 29/7/2004

Side A

F: At the end of the last tape, we were talking about World War II, but what Mr. Pretty only just now has told me is that he had the misfortune, in 1942, of being in an aeroplane that actually crashed, in New Guinea. I guess, given how many hours he was in the air – (and there'll be an appendix to this document which will have some of that information) – I guess it was inevitable that, sooner-or-later, he'd have to fly out of the air, but perhaps you'd like to tell us a bit more?

W: It was the 13^th of November, 1942, three days before the end of the Battle of the Kokoda Trail. We were at Port Moresby. The merchant shipping bringing supplies in, wouldn't come in to the channel through Walter Bay, to the Port Moresby dock, unless they had air cover. Our job was to provide them with the air cover to let them sail in to the docks, unload their supplies, and get out of there as quickly as they could. On this particular day, we ran out of fuel. We didn't have much in the way of supplies of anything, ourselves. We couldn't make our own landing-strip, and put the aircraft down on an American landing strip for B-25s. The tail-wheel was missing, but we didn't know that at the time. The back of the aircraft dragged along, and got a bit ruined. The aircraft couldn't fly, it was too damaged to fly.

F: You didn't so much crash, as make a sort-of-semi-crash-landing, is that what you mean?

W: Yes. If the tail-wheel had been there, and the aircraft had been okay, we would have got away with landing all right.

F: So what happened – did you careen and do U-es or something?

W: Yes

F: And you didn't crash into anything?

W: No, just the aircraft looped, as it's called when it comes down, and then swung around on the side of the air-strip.   We eventually got the Americans to drive us over to the R.A.A.F. camp – we didn't have any road transport – so we took the guns, and what ammunition we had left, parachutes, and were driven to the R.A.A.F. camping-ground – this was at Port Moresby. I don't know what the name of the American air-strip was, but we were about seven miles out of the Port Moresby town, where we should have been camped, and our aircraft was just pulled up at the side of the air-strip. They didn't have any protection for it or anything like that. Then we had to signal back to Squadron Headquarters in Townsville that the aircraft couldn't fly. We tried to fit a tail-plane on, from the Beaufighter squadron.

F: This was, as you said to me before, a twin-engine Beaufort, and you'd lost the entire back-tail?

W: It had been dragged along the ground, you see. The air-strips were just a graded, flat area with iron sheets, that had a lot of holes cut out of them, and then they were locked together. They used to sound like the world was coming to an end when you took off or landed, because of the noise, the rattling of these iron sheets.

F: That was sort of like a make-do runway, a bit like you had the bridges that they made that were portable?

W: Yes. There wasn't any bitumen in them, or anything like that. The soil was graded level, where it was dry enough and there was no swamp, to make it level for take-off and landing. We always took off in one direction, irrespective of the wind, speed and direction of the wind, we always took off one way and always landed around the other way. We borrowed a tail-plane from Blackjack-Walker's Beaufighter Squadron. It wouldn't fit onto the Beaufort fuselage, so we had to have a part flown up from the mainland. Then that was put on about two and a half weeks after the aircraft had been damaged. We flew the aircraft back to Townsville. There, we had mechanics look over it, and the conclusion was that the main spar  was cracked. In the air the aircraft was likely to break in two any tick of the clock.

F: So you were lucky that you got it back there in one piece!

W: We received orders to fly it to the Aircraft Depot at Charter's Towers, and to leave it there. We got a new aircraft.   Between Port Moresby and Townsville, and Townsville and Charters Towers, it could have just broken up in the air anytime, once the main spar had given way - where it had been cracked and broken.

F: Which was the result of the incident which had happened with the tail-fin?

W: Yes.

F: Would you regard that as your luckiest moment in the War?

W: It was fairly lucky, I guess, because when we came down off the strip and looped off the main run-way and onto the sides, onto the stones, and sparks and dirt and that flying everywhere.

F: I can hear the screeching as you're telling me this

W: The two front wheels remained still okay, of course, so, as the aircraft didn't catch fire, that was okay.  Department of Veteran Affairs say there's no record of it.

F: For all the rest of your flying, for you spent an incredible amount of time in the air, were you never shot at?

W: Oh, yes.

F: But obviously never shot down, because otherwise you would have been a P.O.W. or whatever

W: No. I flew a total of about 1,350 hours. It was over 1,000 hours of those on Beauforts - patrols, aerial photography, bombing strikes, all against the Japanese. Dutch New Guinea or Irian Jaya and Papua New Guinea, Bismarck Sea, Arafua Sea, Princess Marianne Straits.

F: You beat them back, virtually from the shores of Darwin.

W: They didn't have the supplies. At the finish, they were flying kamikaze, which was training aircraft which they would fly into the bridge of ships.

F: Suicide bombing.

W: The pilots and members of the crew would get killed, but they didn't have the fighter or bomber aircraft left. They were just flying training aircraft.

F: At the end of the war, you mean, because they'd run out of everything else?

W: Yes. That was all that they had left, was the training aircraft.    When they first attacked Pearl Harbour, they had some very good aircraft, and very good fliers, too. The Zero, the Japanese fighter plane, had gone into mass-production in 1940. In the first raid on Darwin the only defence was 11 Kittyhawk aircraft, low-flying out of date aircraft. One of them couldn't take off, because it was unserviceable, and the ones that did take off were shot down without damaging any Japanese aircraft.   

F: And, of course, as we now know, Darwin was worse than what we've been told all these years, too.

W: Oh, yes.  230 - 250 people were killed.  The information about that wasn't released to the Australian people through the papers or anything like that.

F: No, it's only in the last 10 years, I think, that we've found that out.

W: After the fourth raid, the Prime Minister announced that Darwin had been bombed, but it had not been conquered.

F: That's Curtin, of course.

W: Yes. Really, the Australian people didn't know anything about what was going on in the attacks on the Australian mainland.

F: We didn't know about the mini-subs in Sydney Harbour, either,

W: No.  See, Broome was where the Spitfires eventually went; I think also at Port Hedland. There were flying boats from the Netherlands East Indies, with a lot of women and children on them,  evacuated them from the Netherlands East Indies, now Indonesia. They were attacked while they were in the water, with the people still there, with incendiaries – consequently, they all burned and most of the people, the air crew and the passengers, had legs and arms burnt off.  We were at Geraldton at the time. They were brought down from Port Hedland to Perth, to the hospitals there, to see if they could do anything for them. But no information like this...

F: Actually, that's the first I've ever heard of attacks on Western Australia.

W: Yes, Broome, Port Hedland, Derby.

F: So we were vastly in more danger than we were taught when I was a kid?

W: Yes, well the information was never released. The papers usually were rubber-stamped “Information Not To Be Released – Could Affect Civilian Morale”.

F: The Nazis didn't tell their people for a long time that Moscow was a disaster either, of course.

W: No, no, you don't do that sort of thing.  See, the battle for the Kokoda Trail, that started in June, 1942, and Kokoda wasn't finally in the Australian hands until 16^th of November, 1942. That's about five months that that was going on, and there were no troops in Australia. We had them in Malaya, the Middle East. The Government conscripted 500 teenagers to go to Kokoda, and hold Kokoda against the Japanese advance.

F: Teenagers?

W: Yeah. 18-year-olds. By the 16^th of November, 1942, when it was said Kokoda was now cleared of any invading troops, of the original 500 of these 18-year-olds, there were 35 left. No information like this has ever been released in newspapers.

F: All we see is, in our little towns, all the memorials to those young guys that went, like we have in Port Elliot.

W: In a lot of cases, there's no graves to mark them. There may be a cross stuck up, but there's nothing underneath. The Japanese were short of food, and they could eat human flesh, boiled with tree-leaves.

F: The Japanese soldiers, you mean?

W: Yes.[5]

F: So that more-or-less brings us to the end of the war with you, and I am sure you were very happy to finish all that flying. You haven't got sick of aeroplanes since, because you go to Samoa on holidays – I would have thought, after all that, that you'd never want to be in an aeroplane again.

W: I've only done about a hundred or two hours since.

F:Only about a hundred or two hours since! I've spent two hours of my whole life on aeroplanes!   Obviously, it was an incredible relief for you, when the war ended.

W: Oh, yes, I was tired.  We just signed anything, papers that they gave us, and I was discharged – I was with a Beaufort Squadron at  Aitope Taidi Strip, when the Tokyo surrender came through. But Lieutenant-General Ardachi, the Japanese in charge of the  campaign in that area where we were didn't surrender until the 13^th of September, 1945. He was flown into Wewak on a D.C. aircraft and “Bull” Gehring, the Australian Air Force Officer of the North-East Area, and “Red Robbie”, he was a Headquarters General in the A.I.F. Army. Ardachi came into Wewak to sign the surrender papers and hand over his sword. It was interesting to be there, and to see it.  I was just R.A.A.F, in the clothes that we had, stained, not ironed. There were a fair number of Army chaps around, in uniforms that had been ironed. I don't know how they arranged all that.

F: Were there any prisoners-of-war? Did they hand over the few that were left from the Kokoda trail?

W: This was in the north of New Guinea, on the coast. The Army built a P.O.W. Camp at Wewak, and the Japanese troops that came in to surrender were placed in that compound. The A.I.F. guards weren't allowed to wear their bayonets in their scabbards, on their belt around their waist. The Japanese P.O.W.s would come up behind them and in front, and grab them and take the bayonets out of the scabbards, and the Australian soldier would finish up with a bayonet in his back. The Japanese P.O.W.s complained that the food wasn't good enough. Aircraft full of cabbages and stuff like this were being flown up from the mainland for them, which we didn't like very much. We were still on two-thirds combat tinned rations of the Air-Force. That was the Geneva Convention, which we signed, that you would have to supply your P.O.W.s with fresh food.

F: What was the tinned stuff you ate?

W: Bulli beef, baked beans, tinned stew, M & V, (meat and vegetables).

F: Rather than dried?

W: Yes, we didn't have dried food.

F: I think nowadays they have more dried.

W: Yes. The Americans, they had a fair amount of dried food.  But when  A9 -112, that was the number of the aircraft that we put down in Port Moresby on the 13^th of November, 1942.

F: The one that sort of crashed?

W: Yes. At the American landing strip, they had a big marquee there that we took our things to.  They brought a Jeep over, to take us to the R.A.A.F. Camp – they had the marquee filled with refrigerators, with fresh chicken and all sorts of stuff!

F: The Americans?

W: Yes. We thought - “Gee Whiz! This is a wonderful place to be – we'll stay here!” They weren't having that.  (laughs)  But to the Japanese in the Wewak P.O.W. Camp we said about the food - “Well, what about the Australians that you've taken P.O.W.? “, They said - “But we didn't sign the Geneva Convention.” Japan didn't sign it, so that they weren't bound to supply sufficient food to the Australian P.O.W.s in Thailand and Burma.

F: Which would have been hellish places, never mind the Burma Railway. It's like the Nazis – I doubt that they signed the Geneva Convention. You wouldn't want to be a P.O.W. with them, would you?

W: You wouldn't think so. My father was a P.O.W., captured in Singapore. He died quite some time ago, of course, but he had a list of disabilities that Repat agreed to accept – they didn't accept malaria as a war-caused medical disability, but did accept debility through lack of food and no balanced diet...

F: They didn't accept any of that?

W: Well, they accepted debility, but not malaria.  It was really the Vietnam fellows that got us...you see, of those of us who came back, most had stomach cancer due to the unpressurised cabin fuselage in the aircraft. In combat and that sort of thing, we used to get down low on the ground, on the water, the swamps, the sea, as low as we could, because we had a soft belly. This stopped aircraft - and especially Zeros - flying up underneath us and getting us by just shooting up our belly.

F: What's a soft belly?

W: We didn't have guns to protect it.

F: Because you were a bomber, but without a gun in your turret, or whatever.

W: We had a mid-upper gun-turret, and two free side Guns – they were World War I guns – one out the port side, one out the starboard, off the beam. Also, we had two of these up the front, through the nose, for the navigator, and then we had a Browning in each wing, which the pilot could shoot, but nothing underneath.

F: Isn't a Browning a revolver?

W: Yes, they're made by the same people, but this was a machine-gun. These were air-cooled – when you're flying and firing guns, the air cools the gun, otherwise, after a few bursts, they were just red-hot and they won't work any more.

F: I'm amazed about the malaria – one of my friends when I was very young was a gentleman you may or may not have met – Bill Green, W.A. Green, became Major Green in the Army, and he was in New Guinea  - Signal Corps. He had malaria. I still remember him. He was a bit older than you, he'd be 102 if he was still alive, and I can still remember him having to cough into a bucket all day – it wasn't a nice disease – and he did have a T.P.I. (Totally and Permanently Incapacitated) Pension of some sort. It wasn't, as you say, the malaria that got him that. You'd think that would be enough!

W: They say that malaria will re-occur for seven years, periodically, but then you wouldn't have any more attacks after that. That's why they wouldn't recognise it.  They wouldn't recognise stomach cancer as a war-caused disability, the Commonwealth Government, or the Repatriation Section of Veteran Affairs, But the Vietnam fellows, they gave them a bit of a rough deal, being conscripted...

Tape 3

Side B

F: We were just talking about how the soldiers that went to Vietnam changed a lot of things. Whereby the Government had previously, after World War II, not recognised stomach cancer and malaria as legitimate ailments that they should subsidise, having sent these soldiers into World War II, and we were just saying how the soldiers who came back from Vietnam were not, until recently, even welcomed into the R.S.L.. I can even remember having a conversation with the now-late head of the R.S.L. in Port Elliot, Howard Jensen, where they were trying to get more Vietnam lads in, but it was after they'd bolted the door, as it were.

W: That's right. See, now it's the Returned and Services League, and non-servicemen can join as associates and that sort of thing. They wouldn't recognise the cancer – tuberculosis was a World War I ailment they recognised. However, they wouldn't recognise it in World War II ex-servicemen. Because of the non-pressurised cabins and fuselages in the aircraft, we developed stomach cancer,  hernias and ulcers from this. Well, they accepted the hernias and the ulcers for treatment and compensation for a pension, but they wouldn't do anything about the stomach cancers. It wasn't until the Vietnam blokes came back and really got stuck into the Commonwealth Government and D.V.A., because of the way that they'd been treated, and the conditions of their service. They got cancer put onto the list of war-caused disabilities.

F: Now, that's agent Orange, isn't it?

W: Yes, well that was one of the causes. We came in on that. Of those with whom I'd enlisted, there were 26 of us came back, but, by the time  the Vietnam vets had got the entitlement to apply to World War II ex-servicemen – by then, of the 26 of us who had come back, I was the only one who was still around. Most of them had died from cardiac ailments and stomach cancer. The Repat wouldn't treat them for the stomach cancers, and they died in St. Andrew's Hospital, and Memorial Hospital in Adelaide.   A third  got  stomach cancer.

F: You didn't get stomach cancer yourself?

W: No, I didn't, no.

F: And you're the very last?

W: Yes. So when the D.V.A. made stomach cancer a real war-service disability, I didn't need anything, because I didn't have it!

F: And it was too late for the others.

W: Yes

F: When you say 26 returned – out of how many?

W: Out of 100 – 74 got killed. We didn't have any wounded. One of the wireless operators/air gunners that I flew with for about a hundred missions, I think he was the only one who was wounded – everybody else was killed.

F: We're talking about aeroplanes being shot down, I imagine. Does that mean three out of every four aeroplanes got shot down?

W: Yes, shot down and...this was accentuated a bit by the torpedo dropping, where our casualties were 25% per mission.

F: By the time you come back, you've got 25% left, if you lost 75 out of 100?

W: One crew went in on its first mission, two on their second, one on their fourth, a few survived the fifth mission. It seemed to have enough experience to handle things a lot better, but the time we lost  our Beaufort A9-112 was on our fifth mission.     There was a fair number of aircraft lost by human error, especially the one-engine aircraft.

F: Why especially the one-engine aircraft?

W: Well, if you lose your motor, you haven't got anything.  But...they'd come in to land too fast, and things like this. We had Pratt and Whitney motors, two Pratt and Whitney motors, 1200 horse-power in each one, but with a full load – and we always carried a 33 1/3% overload -

F: That's asking for trouble, isn't it?

W: Yes, well, if we lost a motor in the air, the other one would only fly, in straight and level flight, for three minutes. When we were taking off, if a motor coughed under 300 feet altitude, you'd lose enough height to pan-cake in, and, of course, with a full fuel-load, they just burned straight away.

F: What does 'pan-cake in' mean?

W: That means you're flying straight and level, and you lose enough height for the aircraft to come down and hit the ground with all its under-carriage

F: You mean flat?

W: Yes.

F: Then you'd break into pieces, surely?

W: The main thing was that the fuel tanks would rupture, and of course, with the hot exhaust and that, they'd catch fire.

F: They'd explode?

W: There'd be bullets going off, everywhere.  (slight chortle)

F: If you're in there, you're dead.

W: Unless you could get out, some way.    You lose a fair amount of aircraft in training, transport. These were all put down as K.I.A. - Killed In Action.

F: Overall, you'd have to admit you had a relatively lucky war, especially considering all the missions you were in. You didn't get stomach cancer, you weren't killed by your own side, or the other side!

W: We bombed the A.I.F. once.

F: (with rather-raucous laugh)    You did what!? You bombed the A.I.F.?

W: Yes. But it wasn't our fault. They were on top of a ridge, and they got down to the bottom, but the Japs were on top of the next ridge, and wouldn't let them up. They wanted the Japanese position bombed, and we said - “We can't fly over the mountains and get there and navigate that way – we'll have to fly in the valleys, and we don't know that we could find it”, and they said - “Oh, well, what will happen is – when you take off, we'll put a smoke-bomb in the Japanese position. All you have to do is bomb the smoke.”

F: But the wind changed?

W: It blew over the A.I.F. position, and that's what we bombed – killed 5, wounded 8, or 13, I've forgotten now. I had a cousin in the Army position, but he wasn't hurt.

F: That's lucky, because I'm sure you have night-mares about it anyway.

W: Yes, you think of these things.

F: Yes. I've read some reference, in your notes somewhere, about you having, as I would expect, some difficulties in the years after the war, with your nerves. I certainly wouldn't blame you for getting into alcohol after all that, either.

W: The dive-bombers – the Vullee's Vengeance - the American dive-bombing aircraft; - actually, dive-bombing went out of fashion after Dunkirk – they weren't any good, and that form of attack wasn't any good in the tropics. They would come down vertically and drop their bomb, in a dive, and it would go straight into the mud or into the swamp – up would come a great spout of water or mud, and it wouldn't do any damage. The most an Australian flew in the dive-bombing was four missions, and they all finished up alcoholics.

F: As we know, lots of soldiers do develop alcohol and serious drug problems, like the Vietnam Vets, too, of course, and I've known some of them. I remember a chap with this great streak across his stomach. That was the Agent Orange.

W: When we got back to our Air Force, on the 13^th of November, 1942, we were told that there wasn't enough food to go around, but we could buy two ounces of tobacco and a packet of papers from the Air Force, a week,

F: You could smoke, but not eat? Great.

W: Yes. (chortles)  We had supplies of that.

F: I suppose that did help to keep your nerves together.

W: There were only two bombs that I remember, landed in our valley, from the Japanese. They really wanted to get Port Moresby – they would have liked to have held Milne Bay, too – because that was where they would have had their bases, store bases, for the invasion of Australia, down the east coast.

F: And they'd then bring in ships, etc.

W: Yes. We had two squadrons of Kittyhawks on Jackson's Field, but when they had one – or was it two? - left, they withdrew them back to the mainland. Zeros had 0.5's guns on them, whereas the R.A.A.F aircraft had .303s. The 0.5's had a range of 1000 yards,  whereas the .303s had a maximum range of 600 yards, which was about half. They could stand off a bit. They bombed and strafed and used their fighter aircraft to try and take Port Moresby. But they'd got to the end of their supply lines.

F: So again, as with Moscow, we really have to be very glad that happened, as otherwise it could have been...I mean, you're partly saying that it wasn't so much your own efforts that stopped the Japanese either – and, for all the Russians that died, it was the snow and lack of supplies that killed the Nazis.

W: It's not the right decisions that win a war – it's the enemy's wrong decisions.

F: I think that could bring us to the end of the war. You were in a lucky position, because you knew what you were coming back to – you'd half-started your course, before the war. You've joined the Public Service, and then started your University course in  Public Administration.  I don't remember if you told us what actually made you do that rather than, say, architecture?

W: Before the war, I had to borrow the money for fees. I didn't have any money for text-books, of course, and had to sit up in the Public Library in an overcoat and scarves, getting whatever text-books I could from the Library. I started in the South Australian Public Service on the 8^th of August, 1938.

F: The day after your 17^th birthday.

W: If I'd started the day before, I would have got a rise. Because I went in the day after my 17^th birthday, I got 25 shillings a week - $2.50 – and my board in Melbourne Street, North Adelaide, where I was. I'm not complaining about this  - I would have taken it, even if there were longer working hours, or less pay, for the sake of getting a job. The boarding house where I stayed, in Melbourne Street,  North Adelaide, was $2.75, or 27 shillings and 6 pence a week. I didn't have any money.

F: No, you were 2 shillings and 6 pence short.

W: (chortles) Yes. Well, I delivered the Sunday Mail on Sundays, for 40 cents. That covered the rest of my board. But I didn't have  threepence to pay the tram-fare into Victoria Square, to where I was working, so I had to walk in there every morning, and back to the boarding-house at night-time, in Melbourne Street.

F: North Adelaide to and from Adelaide – that's a nice enough walk.

W: (chuckles)  Yes.  And I worked Saturday mornings, of course. During World War II, the South Australian Public Service said that they would work 3 hours a week, between Monday and Friday, extra – for no pay, as assistance for the war effort.

F: There would have been quite a few shortages of staff, I would think.

W: Oh, yes. Then, when the war was finished, and Japan had surrendered, the Public Service said - “Now that we've done this, what about us keeping on working those extra 3 hours, Monday to Friday, and cut out the 3 hours on Saturday morning?” Tom Playford said - “Oh well, okay”, and that was that – that was they got rid of Saturday morning for South Australian public servants.

F: And that would have been very early, because in those days Post Offices and everything was open Saturdays.

W: South Australian Government Departments did not work on Saturday morning. But that was how they did it, and I didn't mind that.

F: I bet you didn't! And you had no problem getting straight back into your old job after the war?

W: My discharge certificate said I was being discharged “On demobilisation, to return to civil occupation”, so I took this along to the Public Service Commissioner, and saw some felllow there, and he said - “Which department did you come from? Well, go back there.” So I went over there, that would have been the 21^st or 22^nd of December, 1945. “Oh, yes – when do you want to start? -The 2^nd of January would be all right”, and I said “Okay”. I didn't realise at the time, that if I started the next day – say the 23^rd of December – I would have only had to work the 23^rd and the 24^th, and get a week off for Christmas. I would have got 10 days pay  for two days work!

F: But they diddled you.

W: They didn't want that, and I didn't realise what was happening until afterwards. I started on the 2^nd of January, 1946. I was in the Correspondence Section, where all the letters that came in, and all those that went out were typed and recorded and filed, and this sort of thing. I thought I'd had enough experience in all the rest of it to do something rather than that! I was there for two or three weeks – I've forgotten now. I wanted to find out what date I transferred from Correspondence onto LandSettlement, onto War Service Land  Settlement, but they had a lot of trouble with the records being lost, and they didn't know.

F: You've got a rough idea?

W: Only two or three weeks.

F: So you hadn't been dealing with land at all until this point, even before the war?

W: Before the war, I'd been in the Correspondence Section,  South Australian Department of Lands. Three-quarters of South Australia is Crown Lands, there's only a quarter of it which is free-hold.

F: Even to this day?

W: Yes.

F: So did we get to when you originally joined the Public Service, why you went for the Department of Lands, rather than, I don't know, the Justice Department or Local Government?

W: I didn't get any say in it.

F: You didn't get any say in it?

W: No.  A Mr. W. Tillett, of the Public Service Commissioner's Office had said I could go to the Department of Lands.

F: And that was totally, as it were, the roll of the dice?

W: Yes.

F: Which, considering you ended up virtually the Head Honcho of the whole shooting-dice, if you'll pardon the expression, was pretty amazing, when you think of it.

W: I worked on land settlement. There was a bit of a problem after World War I with repatriation, in regard to farm lands. Blocks were  too small.

F: This was given to the soldiers when they came back, wasn't it?

W: Yes, Repatriation Benefits! They had Crown Leases of the land, and structural improvements - houses and sheds and the fencing and water improvements, windmills and all that – were re-payable.

F: Re-payable? The soldiers had to re-pay the Government for them?

W: Yes. The land itself was under Crown Lease.

F: Is that a 75 year lease or something?

W: No. It was leases in perpetuity. The South Australian Government hasn't any leases above 40 years, and then perpetuity.

F: I'm sorry – none above 40 years, and perpetuity?

W: Pastoral leases – which are 40 years – and a lease in perpetuity says exactly that.

F: It then belongs to the soldier, who leaves it to their family or whatever?

W: They can, with the permission of the Minister of Lands.

F: They needed the permission of the Minister of Lands to transfer it to their beneficiary?

W: Or anybody else.

F: What kind of perpetuity is that – that's odd. Could they sell it?

W: They could sell it, with the permission of the Minister of Lands. There are certain restrictions on purchasing Crown Lands. You can only hold a certain amount of Crown Lands at any one time. If you already have the limit, you can't buy any more, even if the person who has some wants to sell it to you, and you're agreeable to take it. You can't get additional land above a certain value, or a cedrtain acreage, I've just forgotten now.

F: By the same token, if a soldier died intestate, that had one of these leases, I take it the Crown would re-gain the lease?

W: He could still, in accordance with inheritance laws, pass it to members of his family.

F: Even if he died without making a will, and without getting the permission?

W: Yes.

F: So the permission really was cosmetic-ish?

W: Yes, it was.

F: I stopped you as you were saying that, after World War I, the leases were too small, and this was a problem?

W: The other one of two main reasons was that the returning ex-servicemen didn't really know enough about farming to handle the situation. Even considering that the main cause being that the blocks were too small.

F: Wasn't it also the case that some of these blocks were on very arid land?

W: Yes, and they were in some areas – Hawker, there was a lot of land allotted up there, about 400 acres or so units. The theory then was that the rain would follow the plough.

F: Seems dreadfully laughable, even if sad.

W: Long time prior to that, when Goyder was the Surveyor-General, he had put on the map of South Australia, a line above which agriculture should not be practised because of the low rainfall, or uncertain rainfall. Then this cutting up of the land into small agricutural blocks was corrected by the South Australian Government, in 1939, by what they called the Marginal Lands Committee. They bought up all the land about this line of Goyder's, and re-allotted a lot of it back to the people, if they wanted to stay on, in that area, for grazing.

F: Different agricultural practices? Non-intensive?

W: That's right. A lot of under what was called Marginal Lands Perpetual Leases.

End of Tape

Tape 4, recorded 20/8/04

Side A

F: We were talking about how, after the War, you went back to the Department of Lands, and you decided that you wanted to be involved with the War Service Land Settlement Scheme, and, as you said at the end of the last tape, that didn't always work very well because the land wasn't actually all wonderful, and for a lot of them, it was more hard work than...

W: Some of the people who took up blocks after World War I weren't really suited to working on the land, because all that they needed was three references – and you could get one from the local priest, the local publican, and somebody else  - and that meant you were qualified to go into primary production.

F: And none of those people, possibly, knew anything about local primary production conditions?

W: That's right.  And there was some things like fellows who met up  in the Army overseas, and they formed partnerships, and went into it together, but it wasn't long before all the partnerships were dissolved.

F: All of them?

W: Yes.

F: None of them succeeded?

W: None of them succeeded. As a matter of fact, after World War I, if every ex-serviceman, whoever he happened to be, doing whatever, had been given a 3-bedroom house, furnished, and there was no land settlement, it would have been cheaper. Each of the schemes, after World War I, were run by the State Governments, being sovereign Governments and able to issue titles for the land, which the Commonwealth Government couldn't do. The schemes were formulated and run within each State itself. Then there was so much that an ex-serviceman could get, and of course, the dearer the land, the smaller the area. There were such things  as Crown Land subdivided at places like Hawker, in South Australia, which have all disappeared as agricultural land.

F: That's all north of the Goyder line, isn't it?

W: Yes. The Goyder line of rainfall. They had a crop, or a couple of crops, first up, and the theory was that the rain would follow the plough, but it wasn't long before there wasn't enough rainfall  - if you only had 9 or 10 inches of rainfall average a year, it's not enough for long sustained agricultural purposes – running about a dry sheep to the 10 acres. The primary producer needed a lot of land to carry enough sheep to make it worthwhile.

F: Which is alright for Kerry Packer.

W: Yes. It's alright if you have 10,000 square miles, but if you only have a few hundred acres, it's a different story altogether. Then again, out of the money that was allotted for each soldier settler after World War I, the houses had to be built, and sheds put up, and this sort of thing as well.

F: Did any succeed after World War I?

W: Yes. In the 1930s, I worked in the Department of Lands with the scheme, but a lot of them were just living hand-to-mouth. After a war such as World War I or World War II, and back to the time of Elizabeth I, after the war has finished, with surrender or peace or whatever you like to call it, there's always inflation, and depreciation of the currency.

F: Now, this is because from spending money building up the war, the countries suddenly have to re-arrange their economies?

W: Yes. Also afterwards, because of the delay in providing housing and building houses, there's usually more money around, being lent by the lending authorities privately, and banks. There's inflation, and depreciation of the currency. The economies are quite healthy, but then the time comes when re-payment of these loans are required. If there's not sufficient income from resources to which they have been lent, they fold a bit.

F: So are we following here the 1920's boom, and then the Depression?

W: Yes. Keynes, the economist, was at Oxford University. He came up with a theory for there never to be any more depressions, especially like the Great Depression.

F: Because the Government was to print more money?

W: His theory was that there were two forms of economic activity in a country, a private sector and a public sector. The private sector was a Holy Cow, and you couldn't do anything about that, but the Government of the day could adjust the public sector to fit in with the private sector. If there was a fair percentage of unemployment in the private sector, people would be released, and this taken up by the public sector – and vice-versa, if the public sector had surplus labour, that these peoeple would be employed, and get their purchasing power of goods and services, from being employed in the public sector. The public sector would employ, or not employ, according to requirements of the private sector, and these things would even out the general national economies, and there would never be any depressions. Politically, it's not possible to do that.

F: Although, of course, in the 1930's, that was tried. There were various schemes, both here and in America, to provide labour for all the unemployed.

W: Yes, but I'm afraid the thing is... you see, there were one-third of the Australian population unemployed.  That was at the height of the Great Depression, about 1932.  Women were a third of the working force, but they weren't effectively employed, except in specific things such as domestic duties. As for driving tractors, no female employees were in those categories. There were a third of the workforce unemployed, according to Government statistics, but Governmental statistics were such that you had to multiply their figure by two to get to the actual figure. Although the Governmental Statistical figures say that a third of the working-force was unemployed, the females of the country were not taken into consideration. A third was only half of those who were unemployed, so actually there were two-thirds of the working-force unemployed. Consequently the revenue to the Government was very much down, because of the small number of taxpayers, and also large number of people and families wanting sustenance and not being able to get remunerative work, and earn an income. As a matter of fact the unemployed, a lot of whom where living on the banks of the Torrens in dug-outs - generally speaking, a single person received coupons of 5 shillings and 8 pence a week – (that's 57 cents a week); a married man got 15 shillings. Irrespective of the number of dependents and everything else. There was a march on the Treasury building in the middle of Adelaide by the unemployed, down King William Street. With these coupons, they could buy certain things. They couldn't buy tinned fruit. They wanted the amount of food, and the variety of food, increased, and the Unemployment Sustenance amounts increased. They marched on the Treasury Building, and the ex-servicemen there - from World War I, employed in the South Australian Public Service – were issued with guns to guard the Treasury. But they weren't issued with any ammunition, they were just issued with the guns, so nothing came of it, really. (a quiet chortle)  After the War, as after World War II as well, the population had a very good time, in regard to employment, over-employment with continually-increasing wages, with inflation and the cost of living going up, and the cost of housing and everything else.

F: But, then inevitably later there's a reaction again?

W: Yes, well then the time comes when it reverses itself, as our economic system demands.

F: By the way do you remember that march on the Treasury building, 'cause you were working with your Dad, weren't you, at that point?

W: Yes, well I wasn't in the Public Service at that time.

F: You would have been only15 or something.

W: There were all these stories there about it. I was working in the Minister's office, the Minister of Lands, and his secretary – his secretary was the Director of Lands – (with the work effectively done by a public servant of the Department of Lands) – he had been a machine-gunner in World War I. He was one who was there to protect the Treasury Building from the attack by the unemployed, and he used to tell stories about it.

F: Probably slightly embellished?

W: (small chuckle) You never know with these things. Stories that you hear are always romanced a bit, aren't they?

F: At this point, you are still working on the soldier's settlements?

W: After World War II, when I came back, they asked me what I'd like to do. I went to the Public Service Commissioner's office, and he asked which Department I'd come from. I said “Lands”, and he replied – “That's where you go.” So I went over there, and they said to me - “You have to go to the Public Service Commissioner's office.”  I said - “I've been there, and he told me to come here!” This was on the 21^st of December, 1945. So they said - “Alright. Start on the 2^nd of January, 1946”.  If I'd started then, on the 22^nd of December, after a couple of days I would have had leave over Christmas and New Year, paid. Of course, they didn't want that.   So I started on the 2^nd of January, 1946. They asked me what I'd like to do, and I said I'd like to work on the Land Settlement Scheme.

F: Weren't you discouraged by the failure of the first scheme?

W: It was worked out that the information about the failure or otherwise – whatever you'd like to call the World War I scheme – was that there were ex-servicemen put on these blocks who didn't know anything about working them. They would have a Classification Committee and settlement was  - the number of blocks that would be allotted wouldn't equal the number of people who applied, so that there would be some who would apply who wouldn't get blocks. They were classified by the Classification Committee, one for irrigation and one for non-irrigable lands. They were graded on a point system, as to experience, practical and academic, in regard to  agriculture, or fruit-growing and irrigation, or grazing – what was their previous experience and so on. There was a fair mixture of things. For instance, if a person had enlisted under the age of  21, and was discharged under the age of 25, and hadn't had permanent employment, but he could be trained under Commonwealth Re-construction Training Scheme for up to 2 years.  Then he would be  interviewed again, in regard to his experience and graded on his health and experience, and according to if he had problems training. 2 years was the maximum for all rehabilitation schemes after World War II. They always had good references from the people they were living with, and being trained by.

F: Trained on farms? And these weren't farms that were created for the scheme, these are  proper farms?

W: Yes, successful primary producers around the state.

    Then the lands were under-developed or developed, and were purchased and sub-divided. These were essentially in the higher-rainfall areas of the state, to ovecome the failure of crops and pastures. That was supposed to solve the problem. They were to get sufficient land, according to the nature of the soil and the rainfall and everything else, to run 1,000 sheep. Well, a thousand sheep wouldn't be of any use nowadays – if you haven't got 3 or 4 or 5,000 sheep, you couldn't make a living out of it today. But then - one of the things after World War II was the boost to the prices of wool, of various types, and food and so on. Especially those who were allotted  blocks in the earlier part of the scheme came in for all these increases in prices, which most of them were able to set up with the income that they had, and hadn't expected. Others turned to potato growing – there's a lot of the land around Penola, Naracoorte,  - down to pine growing, and wine production, at the present time. A lot of that was soldier settlement, especially the red soils.

F: So that's the big difference between after World War I and after World War II, is that after World War I it was arid land, and after World War II it was more productive land?

W: Yes.

F: Did you have a hand in deciding that?

W: No. A Land Development Executive set up. It purchased  undeveloped and under-developed land, and then they employed these ex-servicemen, on a wage basis, to develop the land, to determine if there were any deficiencies – phosphorus, find out how much superphosphate should be put out, or any other trace elements, and how much. When it was established, it was considered that an ex-serviceman taking up the land, as a principal, could make a reasonable living off it within twelve months. Then the land was allotted to them, and after twelve months they became eligible for  - they were all allotted under War Service. Perpetual Leases and the rents were fairly low – they were 2 ½ % per annum of the costs of acquiring the land, and its development, or an amount fixed because of the productivity of the land. Advances were made at 3 ¾ % for structural improvements and also plant, machinery and stock.

F: And that was considered good. What were commercial interest rates at that time?

W:  Banks couldn't compete with that rate of interest at that time. They were 5 or 6 %.

F: 'Cause, of course, the idea is to reward the soldiers.

W: Well, all the loans made to discharged ex-servicemen were at 3 ¾ %. If they had to borrow money from the Commonwealth Government for a house in a housing scheme, or to purchase a house or to build one by yourself, the loans were all at 3 ¾% for discharged ex-servicemen. And generally speaking, there was just such a need of it. After six months war service, and an Honourable Discharge, they became eligible for these loans, War Service Home Loans, or Land Settlement, or going to study.

F: You weren't actually given the land?

W: No, they were allotted out under the War Service Perpetual Leases. They could be made freehold, or the leasehold converted to a Land Grant – which was the same – but there was a lump-sum payable  to the State Government. There were two sorts of schemes, one where the Commonwealth Government was principal and the State Governments were agents, and another method that was used was where the State Governments were the principals and provided, in the first instance when the Commonwealth was the principal and the States the agents. The State Government carried out all the administration; but when the States – New South Wales and Victoria in particular – were the principals, they had the money out of their own resources, and they carried out the administration of the scheme as well.

F: I take it this was because they were wealthier states than South Australia or Western Australia or whereever.

W: Yes, they were wealthier states. A lot of Victorian land was just the mallee lands of Wimmera, or the irrigation blocks of the rivers like the Murray...

F: Were they any better than what we had here?

W: These were only small blocks, about 30 acres. Also, where they grew fruit and vines (that was as much as a person could work), up to 30 acres.

F: That's Victorian ones?

W: In South Australia as well, but the Victorian ones – see, the ex-srvicemen were employed as a form of labour to develop these sub-divided irrigation blocks, and the plantings and that. That was as much as one person could handle. There was some criticism from some quarters that an ex-serviceman's son couldn't, that it wasn't enough land – but it wasn't there to re-habilitate or re-patriate the son, it was there for the father.

F: But I'm presuming some of that Victorian land would have been far more fertile, even though it was the same size, so they got a better break?

W: Yes, that's right.

Tape 4

Side B

F: So how well did the scheme succeed after World War II?

W: There were some lessees who perhaps should not have received land, but not as many as after World War I. Then the sudden increase in the value of wool, particularly, and then its fall afterwards meant that some of the ex-servicemen couldn't handle the management of the properties.

F: If they didn't own them, they'd just have to walk off, wouldn't they?

W: Yes, well some of them. There were various things put up to them, according to their arrears, the amounts that they owed on the blocks – they may have been some years in arrears in the rent, under the lease. It particularly says in the War Service Land Settlement Agreement Act of 1945, by which the Commonwealth and the States came to this agreement for land settlement of World War II ex-servicemen, that lack of capital was to be no debar to the settlement. Some were allotted land, and all they had was an old buckboard and a couple of pieces of furniture. To make it viable, they had to be financed for their stock and plant – they needed tractors, and they wanted broadcasters to put out the superphosphates and whatever was to go on to the land. South Australia's agricultural lands are all deficient in phosphorus. There are other deficiencies. The houses and the sheds which were put there for them – sometimes they did extra fencing and this sort pf thing, and they were financed for the materials...

F: By the Government?

W: Yes. They were behind with these re-payments. There was structural improvements, and there was stock, and plant that they received advances for. They had their commitments for the annual rental of the leases that they had. Some weren't producing enough off the land to meet those commitments. There were various things said to them - “Look, we'll recommend that all your arrears be written off, and we'll arrange with the Housing Trust to get you a South Australian Housing Trust rental place at Kilburn. There'll be work available at the railway yards at Islington, and you can get employment there. You leave here without any debts owing in regards to the property which you had – that's all fixed – and we'll take back the land, and then we'll see about somebody else taking it,” - even one of the settlers who was considered to be a good primary producer. To get more land allotted to another ex-serviceman.

F: As you said before, there wasn't as much land as there were ex-servicemen.

W: The thing is, after one had been allotted a farm, when you took another ex-serviceman from the pool, he was down on the classification  on the list of the classification committees in regard to the number of points he received. There was a bit of sympathy towards ex-servicemen, you see, and there weren't that many that were not approved for settlement. Eventually, those with a lower classification might have got a lot.

F: Which sounds a bit painful all round, really, because they must  have inevitably failed, surely?

W: Being ex-servicemen, the health situation came into it.

F: As well. Of course, they didn't understand trauma quite as well as we do now either.

W: No. I was at Madang when I returned to South Australia on leave, because my father had been a  P.O.W. with the Japanese. He had been taken in Singapore, and I had leave to come back and see him in Adelaide, and when I reported back to the Personell Depot at Springbank, they said - “Look, what we're going to do is you do not go back, but we'll discharge you”. I said - “Well, that's all right”. I knew that if I went back, I'd be hanging around up there in New Guinea for a while on communications work and that sort of thing. I wouldn't be able to perhaps get onto the 1946 Uni subjects list.

F: 'Cause you volunteered half-way through your Uni course, didn't you?

W: Yes, that's right. I took the papers around to the clothing store, medical to get discharged, signed off, and I said - “Well, what happens now?” The clerk in the office said - “You will have to see if we can get a civilian job”. I was to be discharged “On demobilisation to resume civil occupation”. I went up to the Public Service Commissioner with my Interim Discharge certificate to resume civil occupation.

F: This is already 1945 anyway, so the War is virtually over, or?

W: Oh, yes! This was in December, 1945. Tokyo had surrendered in August. I had spent the interim on flying communication from Modang, Papua-New Guinea.

F: You did remind me of something, when you said there was this incredible spike or mini-boom in the wool prices. I can't remember if I mentioned this earlier, but Nobby Clark, whom I've interviewed at Port Elliot, made his fortune hunting rabbits when, all of a sudden and I imagine at the same time, there was this immense spike in the prices of rabbits, so he almost-overnight made a fortune. I imagine for some people in wool it must have been similar – overnight, all of a sudden, beyond their wildest dreams. But, as you say, then they had trouble adjusting to the prices falling again.

W: Yes. We had a settler, who had been a Captain in the Army. He'd  graduated from the Roseworthy Agricultural course, where he'd gone on a scholarship, before he enlisted. When he came back, discharged, he studied an Agricultural Science course at Adelaide Uni. Then he worked on land development, to test the soils and determine what additives were needed, and in what quantities, and this sort of thing, and to clear sufficient undeveloped land so that they could graze a thousand sheep per block on  allottment, and he was allotted a block, a farm. He came in just at the time of the big increase in the price of wool and he paid 13 pound a head for dry sheep, for wethers. That was at the top of the boom, and before he had a wool clip, the price reduced very considerably. These sheep were then worth about 3 or 4 pound a head.

F: So he was ruined?

W: Yes, well what actually happened was that we took him over. The administration of the Land Settlement Scheme took him over, paid out his creditors, and traded him out of it. Then he sold the farm.

F: But, as you said, overall the scheme was a very expensive one – it would have been cheaper to give each soldier a 3-bedroom house, or whatever you said it was.

W: It would have been, after World War I.

F: And World War II?

W: I don't know. The scheme was more successful after World War II.  But then, the debts that some people had were high - one chappy I remember owed about 70,000 pounds to the Department of Lands on his arrears of rent.

F: That would have been an enormous amount – that'd be like 10 million dollars today, wouldn't it?

W: Probably.

F: Because an ordinary block of land with a house on it wouldn't even cost you 7,000 pounds, never mind 70!

W: There, we wiped off all his debt. He wasn't that well, really, after his service, so we, the South Australian Government, released him of all his debts, and helped for him to come to Adelaide. I think we arranged with the Housing Trust for him to have a house. I've forgotten whether it was rental, and under what circumstances. It was a repatriation scheme, a rehabilitation scheme.

F: Did the Commonwealth subsidise it at all?

W: Depending upon whether the Commonwealth or the State was principal.

F: As you say, in Victoria and N.S.W., the states were wealthy enough, whereas here they must have been subsidised, for surely this state wouldn't have been so wealthy?

W: That's right.

F: So how many years did you work on that scheme?

W: I was there for about 15 years. Everything was being sorted out as to those who were the best managers, others that weren't so good, where the best blocks were – the best land, I mean – where the blocks weren't so good. For instance, at Meningie, there were a number of dairies there, but the land was too poor and the dairy herds weren't producing the butter fat that was required for the income. What happened at Campbell Park - it started off like Eight Mile Creek, that was the subdivision at Port Mac Donnell. Then Kangaroo Island, and eventually Campbell Park. The settlers, as  they were called, always said that the land wasn't any good for dairying, and that was why they weren't getting their income to meet their commitments and all other outgoings. A chappy by the name of Rolo Williams represented the Commonwealth Government, and I was representing the South Australian Government in this joint committee to have a look at these areas that these people were on. We attempted to find out what could be done after we'd been through what the production was, how much income they were getting and we concluded that – Eight Mile Creek, some of it was okay, but the ex-servicemen may have been having a bit of difficulty setting themselves up and continuing to operate, but they were going to be alright, no need to worry about that. At Campbell Park, it was said that the land had been cut up into too-small blocks – I think there were 9 dairy farms on it. We suggested that two of the settlers on there should be transferred to other areas of War Service South Australian Settlement, and that that land be divided up between those who remained, enlarging theirs, so that was done. Kangaroo Island was a bit difficult because they had to pay ten shillings a head to transport stock between the mainland and Kangaroo Island, going there or if they were sending the stock over. If they were selling off lambs – after you take into account that it was going to cost ten shillings a head to transport the stock between the Island and the mainland....But then there was the other  things – they were using about 1,000 pound of super-phosphate per farm, because of the poor nature of the soil. Transporting it from the mainland to Kangaroo Island was also another on-cost. We recommended  certain things, like that they get cheaper rentals on their leases for the first four years, and that they get a year's super free...

F: Meaning that the Government would pay the thousand pounds? What year was this review?

W: It was 1950's.  I was in the firing line as Recovery Officer for the Scheme. I kept a record of what the accounts were that went out,  how much was paid and when, what the balances owing were, and arrears of rent.There was priority in regard to them – if the Scheme held the stock mortgage on the registered proprietors, he could go and get a stock firm to pay it off, by advancing him the money. They would have, if they sold, the wool or cattle or sheep or whatever it was. They would get the proceeds, and give it to the creditors, or a stock firm. Likewise, if the settler sold stock or milk from the dairy or whatever, we would get a Procuration Order on the butter and cheese factory, for a third of the gross proceeds, and let the settler have the other two-thirds for running the property, and living expenses. When the amounts came in, we credited them in order of priority to the accounts on which money was owed, whether advances or interest or penalty interest on interest not paid, and so on.

F: But again, presumably at fairly generous rates compared to what private industry would be doing?

W: Yes. 3 ¾ % normal interest and penalty rates were 3 ¾ % on top of that.

F: Which, again, would be generous compared to private industry?

W: That's right. As a matter of fact, a fellow by the name of Bill Martin, with  whom I went to school, was working for the Bank of New South Wales, now Westpac, and he came to see us about the bank financing these settlers. I explained to him what the Agreement Act set up in regard to financing these ex-servicemen, and repayments. He just said the bank couldn't compete with that, and he left. But there were some of the settlers who got into a bit of strife through higher interest rates, because they didn't want the Government handling their affairs by advancing them money and then they having to repay it. They got stock mortgages, in particular, and against the stock they got advances for plant, tractors and machinery, from commercial banks, at a higher rate of interest. Some of them handled it all right.    What we did, with some of these, where the farms were quite viable, we paid out the stock-firms and took over the  stock mortgages, and received the income when they sold their wool or stock. If they were breeding fat lambs or something like that, we would take over and get whichever stock agent sold them to send the proceeds to the Department. The amount was credited to what their arrears or amounts owing were. Then we'd make advances for operating the farm, living allowances, for super-phosphate, fuel and whatever.

F: But you were taking over at the higher interest rate, which is rather astute – is that what I'm understanding?

W: We paid them out, whatever was the balance owing.

F: So you carried the extra?

W: For instance, if we wanted 3 or 4 thousand dollars to pay out the stock mortgage, we would do that. Then they would have to repay that at 3 ¾ %.

F: But not at the higher rate?

W: Not at the 5 or 6 %.

F: Which means the Government made an extra loss there?

W: The settler was responsible for the repayment of the amount we paid to the stock firm.

F: Just over a longer period of time?

W: We'd advance the money for the stock and plant over ten years, and for structural improvement it was over thirty years. Whereas, if it was for fencing material, and the settler had this from the stock firm, it would be immediately repayable under the stock mortgage. The next proceeds received from wool or whatever, would be credited to the stock firm's account to pay off the amount of fencing material. It doesn't quite work out as simply as that. If we'd advance under a plant account, not under a stock mortgage account, the settler would have ten years to repay it, which would give him a chance to use that finance he had been provided with to increase the productivity of the farm, and to consequently get the income to repay any advances made.

F: Mind you, the Government would have lost on inflation, although of course there wasn't much of it.

W: Really, prices for primary products were fairly stable. The increase in the price of the farms covered it. Also, the lands around Naracoorte were terra rossa land – the red earth – which were found very suitable for vine growing and wine production. They increased a lot in value. If a landholder sold out, he'd get the proceeds after freeholding the property. It couldn't compare with the amount that he received in capital for the sale of the lease.

F: It was a benevolent scheme, that was the idea.

W: It was a repatriation and rehabilitation scheme for these people. There was other single-unit farms where there was no competition. The ex-servicemen found the farm for allotment. If it was a reasonable price, we paid them out and then we'd take it over. We didn't have any competition from anybody else.  If they freeholded their property, they had to pay cash for it.  They'd have a lease and sell it. The settlers would then have a freehold property, and with a proportionary amount that they received, they would then freehold it and pass the land grant on to the purchaser. They would then get a swag of money, like winning CrossLotto.

End of tape

Tape 5, recorded 2/9/04

Side A

F: At the end of the last tape, we had quite a lot of very interesting stuff about your career in the War Service Settlement Branch of the Departmentof Lands. While you were working there, almost exactly 50 years ago from today, you became a Justice of the Peace – but you became a Justice of the Peace after you became a Councillor for Salisbury. How did you come to be a Councillor – you were all of about 30 years of age?

W: Bill Tough, who was the Councillor for the Pooraka Ward, sold his land there, which was rural land in those days but now has all been subdivided and is residential, being built on for housing - a suburb, although still within the Salisbury District Council. I worked in the South Australian Public Service, and had graduated in  Public Service Administration at the University of Adelaide. He said would I be prepared to stand for the seat from which he was resigning? He was leaving the District and was going to live in Stirling.

F: Quick footnote – you graduated in 1948 from that course?

W: Yes.

F: I don't remember if we've had that, but the photo on the cover of this book is of course you going to the 50^th anniversary thereof. Back to Mr. Tough resigning...

W: He said that it seemed to be a bit of a waste to do the study, and not to put it to practical use. There wasn't anybody else on the Council at Salisbury who'd done the studies in regard to Public Service Administration. It was a voluntary position in those days – meetings were held at night-time, first and third Mondays of the weeks of the month. When I would come home from work, I'd travel up to Salisbury.

F: Where was home at that point?

W: Pooraka

F: Which is within the Salisbury Council area?

W: Yes. Pooraka was the township for the metropolitan abattoirs,  Gepps Cross abattoirs, now closed down. I bought some land there, and planted almond trees.

F: Did you smell the abattoir?

W: Sometimes, when they'd be boiling down to get the materials and the fats for making soaps. It was a lot of the offal from the killing-works -

F: Cows and sheep?

W: Yes, I don't think there were horses or goats. I don't think they handled those. It was all cattle and sheep. They had their auctions there. Then the stock were put through the killing-works, and distributed to the new owners, usually and invariably the butchers of the metropolitan area.

F: Was that the major abattoirs for Adelaide?

W: Yes. In the 1930s, I think it was, there was an investigation into the killing of stock for human consumption. The South Australian Government had purchased a lot of land there, and set up the buildings for the abattoirs. The stock firms all had yards. The stock would be auctioned by the stock firm, Goldsborough and Mort & Co. Ltd.. They sent them down, and they'd be purchased. Generally speaking, the export people went around the farms with the stock agents staff. The stock they purchased was trucked to the abattoirs where they were killed, and then exported from there, in a dressed state. However, the meat for the metropolitan area was all killed there, purchased live by the butchers, and distributed after the killing process. It was quite a big operation, and a lot of land was owned by the stock and station agents,  Elder-Smith & Co. Ltd., Goldsborough and Mort & Co. Ltd., South Australian Farmer's Union etc., for holding paddocks when the stock went down there. Drovers were employed by them to take the stock in for the auctioning process.

F: So they had auctions on the abattoirs grounds?

W: Yes. They would just pull into the stockyards, and then sell them from there to whoever. All the country killing was done at local abattoirs outside of country towns, each butcher would have his own “sort-of abattoirs”. They would buy at local stock auction sales,  the stock and station agents would sell on behalf of producers and farmers. They would do their own killings by their own butchers for the town where their business was. That was too simplistic and couldn't handle the stock that was required for the metropolitan area. The South Australian Government set up  the Gepps Cross abattoirs in the 1930s, and Pooraka was the district in which it was set. The houses there were built by the South Australian Government for the workmen. Private people kept the horses, trotters, poultry and this sort of thing. It was a rural setting, really, in the Pooraka Ward of the Salisbury Council, for which they asked me if I would stand.

F: You knew some people in the Council, obviously, that they should ask you?

W: It was really the retiring Councillor that came to me and asked if I was willing to stand for a vacancy. It did happen that the Town Manager at Salisbury was a chappy I had been to school with, at primary school and at high school. We got on all right. Rates were rather minimal, income was more so, and position of Councillor, and Chairman etc, were honorary - no paid positions, apart from the paid staff.

F: Not even the C.E.O.?

W: Yes, yes.

F: Because here, about that time, that was the only paid position too, wasn't it, was the C.E.O.?

W: Yes. Here, at that time, a Miss Depp used to come in for a month or so, at the end of the financial year.

F: Was this when Mr. Bristow-Smith was the C.E.O.?

W: Yes, I think Mr. Bristow-Smith was then.

F: And he got paid?

W: Yes. He was District Clerk. His son still lives here.[6]

F: I've just put his son's finished booklet in the collection. We did an interview with him. He says a little about his dad.

W: They lived up in a house in Wildman Street, No. 15.

F: We're sitting in No. 5, aren't we? So it's only up the street.

W: The name of the house – there's no name on it now – was “OvalView”, because it looked across the oval. I have thought someone could have thought of a better name than that.

F: Well now it looks over the bowling club.   Meanwhile, why did you live in Pooraka, by the way?

W: When I was discharged from the Air Force, I had 450 pound. I thought, I'd better spend it wisely. If I sit down and do nothing, I'm not going to get very far. I bought 428 pounds worth of land, and then built a house – I got an overdraft from the Commonwealth Bank, purchased materials, and built a house on it myself.

F: But why Pooraka? It wasn't the abattoirs that attracted you, surely?

W: No, well the land was available, and advertised from there, so...

F: And particularly cheap, or particularly nice land?

W: Yes. I eventually sold it to Alan Higginbotham, the builder, for a subdivision. He wrecked the house, and pulled up all the almond trees.

F: Your house, that you built? This is how much later – you built yours say 1946 or 7 or something?

W: About 1955 or about that time, that Alan Higginbotham took it over. He created a housing subdivision, built spec houses on the blocks.

F: And made a killing, as they say. He would have been fairly early doing that – nowadays that happens all over the place – there's three or four here.

W: Alan Higginbotham inherited a lot of money from his father, three-quarters of a million pounds, and he was involved in real estate agency work, and then went into building.

F: So you only had your house for about eight years, if that?

W: Yes, probably.

F: And what year was it you became a Councillor, which is where we've diverted from?

W: 1950s. There was an election every two years in those days. About eighteen months of the balance of the term of the previous Councillor, and then re-election for another term. That may have been about the same time that I sold it off, so...

F: Where did you move from there?

W: Klemzig.

F: So you couldn't be a Councillor for there (Salisbury), after that point?

W: Well I could have been, and Council asked me if I would stay on  to the end of the term. It's always been my opinion that, with Local Government, a representative should be local, and a Councillor should live in the Ward that he's representing, convenient purpose for the local residents, so I resigned. I did two terms, the first was the remainder of the other person's, and then one term of my own. The local grocer at Pooraka, Joe Lindblom, took over, and evetually became Mayor of Salisbury. Through his Council work, and he was there for a good many years, he received an Order of Australia or one of those things.

F: Back to you, what were the main features of your 3 years or so as a Councillor – do you remember what the issues were that most involved you?

W: We had the visit by the Queen and Prince Phillip at that time.

F: They came to Salisbury?

W: Prince Phillip opened the Aerodrome, Parafield was it? It had been operating for a long time, but he opened it for us.

F: Was he rude to anyone?  Did you shake hands with him?

W: No. No. I was just invited to go along as an also-ran.

F: So he wasn't rude to you, at least. He's known for that.  But were there other substantial issues that concerned you at the time? Like getting rid of the abattoirs, perhaps?

W: No. That didn't happen for a long time afterwards.   I'm just trying to think of the name of the fellow who was General Manager  of the abattoirs. He'd been a P.O.W. with the Japanese. 

 I was expected to become involved in community matters, at the football club, Vice-President...expected a donation from me.

F: And you didn't even have what you get now if you're a Councillor, you get a certain amount of money to grease the wheels with – an allowance?

W: They get $12000 a year (?)

F: But in your days they didn't?

W: No, we didn't. Nowadays, they get Committee meeting fees, and travelling allowances.

F: And I have to say, our (Port Elliot) Councillor, Geoff Martin, when I was President of the Town and Foreshore group, he was very generous with donating some of his allowance towards the group's needs. But you had nothing to help you with that, in your day?

W: I didn't mind any arrangements like that, or them coming about, because in effect it was local's money, rates money, being spent in the district. I've always thought that that part of local government was a good thing, that people living in the area paid rates to the local Council, and the money spent back in the district.

F: As we're doing right now, which the Council is supporting.

W: Yes. You're not likely to get the work you're doing supported from Port Augusta or Prospect.

F: Back to your days as a Councillor, you also then, at the tender age of 33 or something, became a Justice of the Peace – we're nearly up to your Golden Anniversary. How did that all come about?

W: It was in February 1954, when the appointment was made.

F: You weren't even 33 – you were 32 1/2! Surely, that must have been one of the youngest?

W: No. Usually appointments are made to people 40 or 50 - to give 50 years service, you would have to be about 100 years old.

F: Have there been many that have had 50 years as a Justice of the Peace?

W: Oh, yes. There's a record kept by the Royal Institute of Justices. of those who've served 50 years  I completed 50 years last February. We have a meeting in Adelaide when we receive a certificate. I'll pass it on to my records in the State Library for safe-keeping and preservation.

F: And we'll have a copy in this Library. (Thank you). Now, when you became a Justice of the Peace, you had far more power, or far more duties than you have today – as I understand it, today Justices of the Peace really only witness signatures. I recall, maybe ten years ago, when a lot of things changed  for Justices of the Peace, and they then had various powers taken away from them. Do you recall what the job involved in 1954?

W: Here, I've been on the Bench when there was a Court held, when the old Police Station was operating. There was a court-house attached to it. That Court doesn't operate here now, as the cases are held at Victor Harbor. I do most of my work for the town here in regard to documents.

F: Witnessing of?

W: Yes. A document going to the Supreme Court usually takes about ¾ of an hour by the time it's been gone through, signed and everything else. But some others only take a few minutes, if you're just going to witness a signature. A lady came here yesterday, something to do with Medicare was why she wanted her signature witnessed, but that's what the document said, and she solemnly swore that the contents of this document were correct. Really, you should ask people to have them identified - “Are you so-and-so, of so-and-so address?”, but you know where they live and who they are so you cut a few corners with those things.

F: Because you'd be willing to identify them in court youself, if need be?

W: Yes, because I know them personally.

F: But essentially now, it is about witnessing documents, isn't it?

W: Taking Statutory Declarations and swearing oaths! What one is doing is legalising a document and the signature of the person involved. Only last week, I did a paper for a couple on Hindmarsh Island. It went to Queensland. And in it, I had to give my full name and address as the Justice taking the signatures. I only just put “W.A.”, instead of my full Christian names, and the person handling  it rang up from Queensland and said it'd need my full Christian name, so I passed the information on, and they passed it back to the lawyer in Queensland.  Having witnessed the signatures, or taken the Statutory Declaration, I can become a party to it, become a witness during Court proceedings.

F: Is that what you used to do in the Court here, you were a witness?

W: No. Two Justices of the Peace would sit on the Bench and hear the cases.

F: That's what you can't do now though, isn't it? That's what they've changed?

W: No. A visiting Magistrate goes to Victor Harbor. He hears a lot of cases. Justices still sit for minor debts and traffic offences, to get the bulk of the work out of the way.   If there is a traffic offence, say driving at 40 in a 25-km.-per-hour-zone, and the person pleads guilty, the Justice sitting on the Bench could hear that.

F: And at Victor Harbor, that still would happen, but it would be local Victor Harbor people?

W: Yes, well if a person is before the Court on a traffic offence or a debt, he or she would have to attend the Victor Harbor court. The old police station at Goolwa doesn't have facilities any more.

Tape 5

Side B

F: Were you asked to be a Justice of the Peace by the person who also asked you to be a Councillor, or how did that come about?

W: No, it came up in Council that there was no longer a Justice in the Pooraka area, and somehow or other it was decided that one Councillor didn't have enough to do – the next thing I knew, the local policeman from the Gepps Cross Police Station came to see me at my home, as a police-check for the Attorney-General, who would make the appointment. I remember him saying - “Is this on the instigation of the Department where you've been working, do they want a Justice of the Peace in there?” I said no, it was a Council matter, that they'd raised it for community purposes. It was a scattered area, poultry farms, almond orchards and intense culture.

F: Fairly large Council, like this one?

W: Oh, yes – about 11 miles from  Pooraka to Salisbury, to the Council Office. Meetings started about 7 o'clock, night-time, and went to 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning, then I'd drive back home – it was only the 11 miles - have a sleep and get up and go to work as though nothing had happened.That was just twice a month, though.

F: And write 3,000 poems inbetween, but we'll get to that.

W: I was a Warden at the Pooraka Anglican Church, St. Thomas's. I was expected to make a donation and take an interest in the cricket and tennis clubs. I don't think we had a football club, I can't remember now – but there were sporting clubs, and the social affairs to attend to.   The priest lived at Salisbury, so he would come around to Pooraka, but I've forgotten how many times a month that was, whether it was each Sunday, or whether it was just one, I've forgotten. During the term, we built another room onto the church. We got the material – the Church provided that – and then we spent our Saturdays building this room on the back of the actual Church, because there wasn't a separate room for the priest to robe and de-robe. It come in handy for teaching purposes, once we had arranged for lighting and power and kitchen facilities. It was a timber-frame building, so I guess that – with the number of people living there now compared with the few when I was there – the old timber-frame wooden church has been demolished, and something more substantial has been built. There was a block next door which was vacant, and owned by a local person. I was approached about establishing an R.S.L. Sub-Branch on this particular lot. But there were impossible conditions with it – there was to be no liquor in the R.S.L. Clubrooms, and things like this, so we couldn't do anything about it. The South Australian Branch of the R.S.L. whose  headquarters are in the Parade Ground, at Adelaide. Previously, they were alongside of the Housing Trust headquarters. It had been the Prince Albert Hotel – it was one of the Princes, one of Queen Victoria's sons – and, after World War I, that was purchased as Headquarters for the R.S.L., including the liquor licence. When 6 o'clock closing came into South Australia, that was one that was exempted from it, and could still open up to 10 o'clock at night-time for members.  That has continued down in the statutes of the State to the present day.

F: I remember when 6 o'clock closing finished – when did it start?[7]

W: I think it was after World War I, wasn't it?

F: When was the R.S.L. founded?

W: It was 1915, when the first wounded from Gallipoli came back. They founded the R.S.L..

F: But they didn't have 6 o'clock closing at that point?

W: I think there may have been a referendum held, in regard to it, later in World War I. I'm only guessing now, but I think that was the case.  The enlistment promises of the politicians didn't eventuate, and that's why the R.S.L. was formed. You see, the limbless soldiers of World War I were given about 60 or 80 % Disability Pension for the loss of a leg, we'll say – they were getting 60 or 80% disability, and they were employed by the people with the buildings – now David Jones, and these people – as lift attendants. Their wages, as paid to them by the companies, were the normal lift-attendant's wages, less the amount of the Disability Pension they received from the Commonwealth  Government.

F: That's not totally fair, really, because presumably they worked as hard as two-limbed persons in the same job.

W: Yes, yes. I knew one, I worked with one in the Department of Lands who had lost a leg. Not much was known about these disabilities – he'd lost a leg in France; he was given in his blood-vessels injections of water because they realised that he needed fluid in them, but they didn't realise that it was blood that he wanted. The only fluid they could think of was to pump water into him. He was telling me one day that it would burst, and there'd be water up to the ceiling!  These fellows in these lifts would have a chair to sit on, and they could sit there and take the lift up and  down. Most of these lift-drivers jobs were reserved, or preference was given to, limbless soldiers, legs or arms which had been taken off. But the wages, paid to them by the companies owning the buildings was less than the amount of Disability Pension they received from the Repatriation, as it was called in those days. It was normal wages less the amount of pension that they received.

F: That's a bit of a rort for the companies! I'm presuming if the limbless people were in any other job, they'd get ordinary wages plus their pension?

W: Yes, I don't know that that many people employed them.

F: Again, the rip-off is that the companies have to pay that much less for their employees, which is a bit shady, really.

W: The chappie that I knew in the Department of Lands was skilled in calligraphy. He was very good at that, and he received a normal Public Service salary, and about a 60 or 80 % Disability – they wouldn't give him the full pension, because he was capable of holding down a job. The last time that I saw him was when we were both in Daws Road together, after World War II.

F: The hospital?

W: Yes. He was buggered then. His wife had died, and he was living by himself in the house. He was given a bit of a hard time by the Daws Park doctor, I remember – Dr. Nariella, he was an Indian. He came around and asked him why he was in there, why he was in hospital. He said his local doctor said that he needed a rest and to come to the hospital for investigation about it. He said - “But look what's wrong with you!” Well, he was missing a leg, he'd been on one leg ever since World War I, and that's why he was there.

F: You remember him before World War II then, in the Department of Lands?

W: Yes. He was there when I went there in 1938.

F: And then, there you were in hospital together, after the next war.

W: After World War II, that was when he went there, and I think they gave him an increased pension when he left there. It would be a different proposition now. The Vietnam fellows really shook up the Veteran Affairs Department for us – for instance, because we were flying in non-pressurised aircrafts in combat and the rest of it, we got hernias or cancer of the stomach – busted guts, we called it – but I didn't get cancer of the stomach.

F: Did you get a hernia?

W: Yes.

F: No fun that.

W: No. Now, an ex-servicemen can get treatment at Daws Park for cancer, because of the Vietnam fellows.

F: But you couldn't in your days, even though it had come directly from the war?

W: We couldn't get treatment, we couldn't get any Disability Pension or anything like that.

F: Daws Park is a repatriation hospital, specifically?

W: Yes. Built in 1942, when the wounded first started coming back from New Guinea. Daws Park Repatriation Hospital was built and started off then.

F: But they wouldn't have operated on you for cancer of the stomach after the war?

W: No. As a matter of fact, one of the fellows I used to fly with, Arnie Horstman, died – his local doctor said he would have to go into hospital and get operated on for his stomach, and he had to go to Memorial Hospital in North Adelaide.

F: Is that a private one?

W: Yes. Run by the Methodist Church. They opened him up one afternoon, and just sewed him up again, and he died that night.

F: It was too bad to operate on?

W: Yes. He was going to die anyway, through cancer of the stomach. He left a widow and four children. Veteran Affairs - or Repatriation Commission as it was in those days - eventually came to the party. It took about two years before they would recognise the  war widows' situation. Then Legacy came into it.

F: When were you in Daws Park?

W: 1946.

F: Just before you bought your block in Pooraka, and built your own house and so on.

W: Yes.

F: And that was from the nerves, the pressure of?

W: I always had hyper-tension, blood-pressure and anxiety state, is what they called them.

F: You've done well to get to 83 – some people don't get to anything like that age – they have heart attacks and strokes.

W: Ulcers, stomach ulcers, hernias and cancer of the stomach was what we got, but I didn't get the cancer of the stomach, just had ulcers and a hernia.

F: And they were happy to look after you in Daws Park for those things?

W: Yes.

F: That's a bit horrible in a way, because stomach ulcers and hernia is no fun, but it's not as bad as cancer of the stomach, so the really bad ones they didn't look after.

W: They all died a long long time ago.

F: We should now go back and round out about you being a Councillor and a Justice of the Peace, and why you then moved from Pooraka?

W: I married my first wife.

F: So you were actually busy with all these committees and all these extra meetings, and somewhere in there, you had a kid?

W: I was married in 1953, and my daughter was born in 1954, and my son in 1955.

F: Is that why you moved from Pooraka, because you had the growing family?

W: Yes. We moved from Pooraka in 1955, to Klemzig, bought a house. It was a timber-framed wooden house, built by the Housing Trust. It was impossible to get materials – water-piping and stuff like this – to build your own.

F: And yet, you'd built your own house only 8 years earlier.

W: I had an almond orchard, you see, and I got the piping for this to put  down for watering under the trees.

F: So you had some spare for your house when you built that in 1946?

W: Yes. I needed to live on the place to look after the trees, and take off the crops. I only bought 3 acres, and I leased another 11 acres - or 11 ¼ acres.

F: With more almonds?

W: Yes.

F: You must be sick of almonds. So you were harvesting almonds, you were a Councillor, you were a Justice of the Peace and you had babies?

W: Yes.

F: Busy. And you weren't even writing poetry at this point! Or were you?

W: I've forgotten now.

F: I did want to mention, in case we don't bring it up later, that, at the age of 83, having been a Justice of the Peace for 50 years, where normally now, in this area, you would expect to do – how many a year, did you say, of people coming along, wanting witnesses etc.?

W: I have a record, and I seem to average about 180 a year.

F: Whereas in the last month, you've had 44?

W: 44 in August this year. (2004)

F: Which must be a record really, 'cause that's a quarter of the year's worth in one month.

W: Yes.

F: At your age, you're still a workaholic, really – not much has changed.

W: I fell over by the Council office – the footpaths are brick, and there was a brick standing up. I tripped on that. I went down and smashed my face up, and I was bleeding everywhere. There was a car parked alongside of where I'd fallen over. A lady and a gentleman came over and picked me up, and said - “We'll drive you home”. I said - “Thanks very much, but I just live at 5 Wildman Street”. They said - “Oh, yes – we've been there. You've helped us with some documents, so we're just returning the favour.”  When I was in Daws Road, the time before last, 18 months or a couple of years ago, one of the social workers came around and said - “What do you get from Veteran Affairs or Centrelink?” I said I get everything I want. She asked - “Do you get Meals On Wheels?” I said yes. She said - “I thought they were a lot stricter than that.”  But I said - “We don't live in the city. It's a country town. Everybody knows everybody else, and we try to help each other.” That's the way it is here. That is my way – I can do the legal documents, and that sort of thing. If somebody wants to come here, well I'm usually around the place somewhere and I can contribute that little bit. As for doing voluntary work in the local parks and gardens, I'm not quite up to that. But I can do these other things, from a legal point of view. Everybody comes with a different document. Of the 180, there would be 100 different documents, applications  for Senior Cards, signing up for Powers of Attorney, Matrimonial Dispute Documents – I can handle those sort of things, so that's what I do.

F: And it keeps you stimulated, obviously.

W: Yes, well I think that I'm still contributing a bit, so that's it.

F: I'm sure you're contributing a lot. If you have roughly 180 requests a year now, leaving aside the extraordinary month, how many would it have been back in Pooraka in, say, 1955?

W: Oh, there would have been only about a dozen a year.

F: So that's steadily grown?

W: Yes, but there were various reasons for that. One of them is that there are  more and more documents all the time that have to be signed by people – Court documents; road traffic, where a person can plead guilty and just submit the document with a couple of explanations, and not have to attend Court – whoever is sitting on the Bench, they require the signatures to be witnessed; legal matters interstate, the solicitors, lawyers, want all the documents to be signed up properly, and this has to be verified.

F: Probably a good thing you don't have an ordinary job any more, considering that you're doing ten times as much Justice of the Peace work as you would have been doing when you actually had a job.

W: I guess if the Goolwa Court still operated, I'd be occupied down there at times. When you're sitting in Adelaide, you don't know anybody personally, whereas here – if a young fellow had played up, and the policeman had grabbed him and charged him, you'd have to convene yourself as a Juvenile Court, I think it is, and then, before you can proceed with it, the juvenile must attend, and they must have a Social Worker there, and you want to see the parents and all the rest of it.

F: Bit wearing when you know the people involved.

W: Yes. If he's your next door neighbour, or something like that, then it's a bit awkward! The policeman bringing the charge, he doesn't want it dismissed, and the people don't want their next door neighbour to say “This is a Court penalty” for their young son.

F: And you're caught in the middle of it, the pig in the poke or whatever the expression is.

W: Whatever you do, you're going to be wrong.

F: So, to line up for the next tape, we now have you round about 1955-1956, you're still working in the War Service Land Settlement area, but you've just stopped being a Councillor, and you've moved from Pooraka to Klemzig. You're still a Justice of the Peace, and you haven't yet started to work for the Valuation Section of the Taxation Office, but I suspect on the next tape we'll get up to that, and go through your career as a Land Valuer, which, after all, is the foundation of this enormous library that you've given us. That, as you'll recall, at some point I'm going to ask you bluntly why did you do it, and why have you given it to us?

W: Okay.

End of tape

 

Tape 6, recorded 23/9/04

Side A

F: We're now up to the juicy bits, where you end up in the Commonwealth Public Service. We had you starting the Land Broker's course - and I understand that Land Brokers only exist in South Australia – and over to you -

W: That's the notes that I have about my appointments and duties to the positions in the Commonwealth Public Service.

                   (See APPENDIX II)

F: And this tells us that, just before you turned 40, you entered the Commonwealth Public Service as a Temporary Clerk in the Valuation branch. Had you already done the course at that point?

W: Yes.

F: Was there a particular reason you went into valuation?

W: The salary for the valuers in the Commonwealth Public Service was about 40% of the income received by a valuer in private practice. The Commonwealth Public Service Commissioner had a bit of difficulty in recruiting professional valuation staff. When I applied to go from the South Australian Public Service to the Commonwealth, I had the academic qualifications. I had completed the    examinations and all the requirementsof the Commonwealth Institute of Valuers, well that's where they wanted to appoint me. That suited me all right. The Commonwealth Public Service Commissioner's Officer said that they could appoint me to the Australian Valuation Office, but there wasn't any vacancies at the present time, so if I was prepared to accept a temporary clerk's position, which would mean that, after a period, I would go into the Commonwealth Public Service Superannuation Scheme. When a vacancy became available on the professional staff, I would then get appointed to it. Also, they didn't recruit staff over 40 years of age. I was in a position where I had to accept what they said to beat the deadline.

F: Because, according to this, the date of your actual appointment was the day after your 40^th birthday.

W: Yes. At that time, it was only 35 years of age, but it was 40 years of age for an ex-serviceman. When they told me of the way that I could get an appointment, first on a temporary basis and then on a permanent basis, and then as a professional as soon as a vacancy became on. I just said yes, okay to that because of the time factor.

F: You were then a Valuer Grade 2, for 13 years, is that right?

W: Valuer Grade 1, and then Grade 2, and then Grade 3.

F: And, of course, just before you resigned, you actually became Head Honcho, no less.

W: I was Chief Valuer for South Australia, and Valuer-General for the Northern Territory.

F: Which means what, by the way? It means you've got staff that do the leg-work...

W: Actually, the Northern Territory work for the Commonwealth Public Service was supervised and managed from South Australia, by the South Australian staff.

F: Because the Northern Territory was part of South Australia until – not that late, though?

W: Yes, but the number of people there, and the economics of the Northern Territory didn't make it financially attractive to have a  Departmental set-up in Darwin or Alice Springs or somewhere like that. It was far more economical to have the South Australian staff go to the Northern Territory in the various Departments, for periods. The staff would go there – actually, our fellows bought a house at Darwin, and they lived in it while they were doing their valuation work. There was a lot more attached to it in regard to variety, for instance, all the Local Government work was done, assessments  for Council purposes were done by the Commonwealth valuers. Periodically the leases on the pastoral stations were revalued. These were all Crown leases. It was a matter of periodically determining the annual rental to be paid to be paid by the lessees of the stations. There were aerodromes and mineral deposits which were being leased under mining leases, companies and private individuals. All this had to be done and the cheapest way for the Commonwealth Government was to use the South Australian staff, who would go there for 3 or 4 weeks, and then come back.  When Cyclone Tracy came, 1974, there was a fair few staff in that. Had a fair few in the Northern Territory because at that time, we were revaluing all the pastoral leases. In the case of one chappie, he had his wife and family there. He had taken a Commonwealth car, and he was told by the Administration to come back to South Australia and bring the car back, but he got washed out crossing a creek. The car finished up in a tree!

F: Did he live through it?

W: Yes. But, you see, the circumstances like this, with the climate, the temperatures, the tropical nature of the climate, that, after being there for 3 or 4 weeks, they'd come back to South Australia and the Meditteranean climate. This chappie who had his family up there, he had been recruited for South Australia from Victoria. He was just renting a house in Adelaide, and then he gave that up when he went up to work for us in the Northern Territory, and took his wife and family with him. He was on a special project, because the Commonwealth wanted to acquire land for another aerodrome, and the person who owned the particular land, he didn't want to sell it. It had to be valued for a Court case, and he had to produce all the maps of this area, and who owned it, and what was being done with the land – what land had been sold off to people, qand he was working in regard to that.

F: When his car ended up in the tree?

W: Yes, at the creek crossing.

F: Now at this time, there was State valuers and Commonwealth valuers?

W: Oh, yes.

F: Did they work the same territory?

W: At that time, there was Succession Duty for South Australia, and a State Duty for Commonwealth Government. There was Gift Duty for South Australia, and there was Federal Gift Duty. The executors of a deceased estate submitted, first of all, to the State Government their papers to fix up the estate. These were passed on to us, and, when the valuation was finally concluded, it was automatically adopted by the Commonwealth. We did it for all taxing purposes, except for assessing properties for Water Rates. We did all the South Australian Government valuations, then they were automatically accepted.

F: So the Commonwealth and the State never argued - this block is worth $100,00 – no, it's not, it's worth $200,000?

W: No case of figures being accepted by the South Australian Government and then altered figures being applied in the Commonwealth's case. Things all washed up with the South Australian Government, and when that was completed whatever was agreed to, was automatically applied for the Commonwealth purposes.

F: Almost makes you wonder why there was a Commonwealth one. I suppose there had to be. Was that a smaller office than the State one?

W: That was part of the Taxation Office. They were there for revenue purposes, which we weren't. Well, we were, because the properties could have been valued for taxation purposes, but the figure of the valuation had to be a fair market value in accordance with the legislation. Once that was arrived at, the same result was applied by the South Australian Government. I remember in one case, the person had died, and the South Australian Government had sent the valuations for probate to us. The South Australian Government was interested in acquiring this land before very long, for waterworks purposes, additional land for reservoirs and catchment areas. The solicitor handling the deceased estate didn't understand that there was co-operation, or whatever you want to call it, between various Governmental authorities to deal with the thing – our office increased the value, which the solicitor didn't like at all. I spoke to him on the phone and I said - “The South Australian Government is interested in getting this land, especially with the transition to the beneficiaries of the deceased estate. If they're going to put through the value of the land in the deceased estate at a figure, you'll be accepting that for the South Australian government to purchase the land from this person.” He said - “No, no, that's a different one alltogether”. I said - “Well, it'll have to be the same, because the legislation says there must be at fair market value. If it goes through the deceased estate on the quite low figures that had been submitted in regard to it, you will find that will be the offer by the State to purchase the land, and they will be quoting the private valuer's valuation for this land. That figure is the basis for what they are prepared to pay for it. If that valuation is altered, or the figures increased for probate, it will mean that there will be more Succession Duty payable from the estate of the deceased person, but it will mean that the State will be making an offer based on the figures being agreed to, when they make their offer to purchase the land for public purposes, for the Engineering and Water supply.” He couldn't work this out. It seemed to be fairly simple to me.

F: Because you were pointing it out for the benefit of his client, so his client didn't get too low a price?

W: Yes. The figures were not acceptable to the Australian Valuation Office, because they'd been valued too low, but it was good for the beneficiaries of the deceased estate for the figures to be increased anyway. Although the deceased estate may be paying a bit more Succession Duty in regard to it, but the purchase price that would eventually be offered by the State Government would have been above what had been put on them for probate for the deceased estate.

F: What was the low figure based on?

W: They said that the Australian Government had an interest in purchasing the land, and if they went ahead and purchased it, the holder would have limited tenure from his date of death, it would only go until the South Australian Government took it over for public purposes, and that the value of the land was based on this short tenure that the registered proprietor had until the purchase took effect. But that was beside the point to me – the legislation said that fair market value was what the South Australian Government had to pay, and what the Succession Duty would be based on.

F: Were valuations used then, as now, for setting Council rates?

W: Yes. They are downgraded a bit – or supposed to be – if a Council wanted the South Australian Valuer-General to reassess any properties within the boundaries of their jurisdiction, these are supposed to be based on fair market value for the property, but with a discount for the fact that it is being valued for taxation purposes, and not for market sale. The idea of that is the landholder has a right to appeal the Valuer-General's figure, and, if the market value of the property is $100,000 and the valuation that's come through for taxation or assessment purposes – Council rates – is $75,000. All that's asked at the appeal is - “Would you sell your property for $75,000”. If the person was honest and said no, he wouldn't sell it for that, he wanted the market value of $100,000, there was not much case for the appeal being made by the registered proprietor, because they could say - “We're of the opinion that you will get $100,000 for this property, and, due to the fact that three places sold within a very short distance, of a similar type, at that figure, there's no reason why you wouldn't expect to get $100,00, and all we have for your assessment is $75,000, so that appeal is dismissed.”

F: Whereas, in my case, I bought my house for less than valuation. I was lucky, because I had cash, and got a discount for that, but I was able to have my valuation lowered. That, apparently, can only happen once, according to the rules.

W: The situation is that, in all the legislation, they say a 'fair market value', and if you purchase a property - and there are no strings attached to it – and you purchase it for $80,000, and it's been assessed previously for purposes of rating, water rating and the rest of it, at $100,000, if you appeal against the assessment on the basis that you have just purchased the property on the open market, through an agent that had it listed at $80,000, which you paid for it, it must be accepted that the $80,000 is all that the people could get for that property on the open market, and they could then turn around and reassess it at $80,000 or even $75,000 or $70,000.

F: Which is exactly what happened to me. The house was on the market for more, but no-one wanted it, so when I made an obscene offer, they took it.

      So nowadays valuations are up-dated more than they used to be?

W: What they do is get a median price of one-bedroom houses, within one particular suburb, and two-bedroomed timber-frame houses, and this sort of thing, through computer processes, so it might say that one-bedroomed home units are selling, on average, for 25% more today than they were 12 months ago, so they alter the prices, and put everybody's up by 25%.

F: Which, of course, has happened of late, as we've had a huge boom. But that wouldn't have happened in your day, would it?

W: No.

F: And it wasn't this constant up-grading, every year?

W: No. That's been one of the problems with the assessment section of the Engineering Water Supply, is that the town of Goolwa, here - the township area – may not have been valued for five years, and then it's up-dated. Everybody gets about a 50% increase, whereas what's really happened is that there's been a 10% average increase each year roughly, and it should have been up-dated every year by 10%. People are under-charged, and then get it in one big hit.

F: And this is what happened in your day, because then it was every five years, was it?

W: Yes, five years. You see, real estate, especially residential areas and the rural sector and other places, is that there's normally not a drop in values – they may go up in a couple of years by 30%, and then the market goes quiet, and there's no places being sold. People say they don't want to pay that much, and they don't buy it. But the vendor, he won't sell it for any less. So then you get a levelling-out period on this graph of the alterations in the values and prices. Then after a year, or a couple of years, people say - “Oh, perhaps that figure is okay”, and they'll buy it. What it means is that the values increase, then level off, then they'll increase again, and they will level off. You don't get property going up by 10% every 12 months. So, if you can buy property in this levelling-off period, at the end of it is what is most advantageous for the purchaser. What is most advantageous for the vendor, for the seller, is to sell it at the end of a peak. A purchaser has a different set of dollar-notes to what the vendor has. They talk as they see the proposition to get the most financial advantage for themselves.

Tape 6

Side B

W:...not long before he finds he's paying twice the rates that he paid when he purchased the house, but he's still getting just an Aged Pension from Centrelink. I reckon, if a person buys a retirement house, on retirement from his work, that costs to him to live ought to be fixed in accordance with what his income is. I've had a 2.2% in my superannuation for each of the past two years, but in the last four years, Council rates have gone up 80%. Whatever increases I've got in Council rates, water rates, electricity and all that, comes out of my 2.2% super increases. You have to budget a bit more tightly each year because of all this. It would make life a lot easier for retirees if, on retirement, they could have fixed (rates)

F: But somebody would have to subsidise that, because the Councils, presumably, couldn't afford to subsidise it, so it would have to be subsidised by the State or the Federal Government, surely?

W: Well, there's a bit more to it than what I'm saying – if Council salaries are increased by 5% through cost-of-living or some other reason, they want increase in their income, we'd need these to maintain their level of services.

F: And, obviously, our Council has been very happy with the increase in rates due to the land boom and what-have-you.     Now, once upon a time, though, your department would have had a hand in this, when you were a valuer.

W: No, we didn't value for the State Government charges.

F: Because you were working for the Commonwealth, so your ratings, as you said, were for aerodromes etc.

W: The P.M.G. Department – Post-Master General's – wanted to do some major works, improvements or project in Melbourne. They purchased land for this purpose, at what they considered to be an appropriate site. Then they changed their minds about what they were going to do, and they sold off this land at a considerable loss to the Commonwealth Government, because they'd paid too much for it. Of course they had to bear the loss when the time came to sell it off. Sir Robert Menzies was Prime Minister at the time, and a Cabinet decision was issued that, before the Commonwealth could deal with land in any form, it had to be valued by the Australian Valuation office. So the Australian Valuation Office dealt with these, but we didn't deal with State matters, water works or assessments or anything like that. They had their own assessors for this.

F: Now, I can sort of half work out that if you're doing the domestic ones for Council rates, as you said before, you'd figure out two bedroom houses in this area are selling for so much and so much – but how do you do valuations for what you're talking about, where it's a block of land that isn't so obvious, like the P.M.G. Land?

W: We inspected all properties that we valued, inside and out, whereas for waterworks, they'd just walk down the street and make a street inspection. We had to inspect the house, what it was like inside, and measure it up – obviously, a ten-square house is worth more than a five-square house, to a certain formula, if it looked allright from the outside but, when you got inside there was a lot of salt-damp, well they all put different pictures in regard to the properties.  If somebody were going to buy that property from the owner, the registered proprietor, he would make his inspection and make allowances for how much he would pay as market value for that property. The owner would pass it on to an agentat, say,  $100,000, and somebody might say - “If I can have a look at that, it suits me, it's in the area that I want, and near the facilities that I want. I'll just have a look”. When he gets there it's a one-bedroomed house and the place is falling down with salt-damp. He says - “It's really only land values, because I'll have to bull-doze this”.  That's why they had Appeals, really, against the assessors, in the State, South Australian Public Service, because they never had the staff to make any detailed inspections. With your property, when you appealed your rates, you could have said that the valuer hadn't made an internal inspection of the property, and that would be accepted. You could use that as evidence in support of the fact that the property looks to be worth more, walking down the street, than when you're living in it.

F: In the Commonwealth, you had more staff, I take it, than with the South Australian?

W: Yes. We had 42, but that was with the Northern Territory as well.

F: And did you spend a lot of time looking up the kind of documents that are now in your collection?

W: No, we had searchers in the Lands Titles Office. That's all they did all day long, was go there and get the name of the registered proprietor. We may have a valuation to make of a property held by John Jones, but actually the registered proprietor was Bill Jones, and nothing to do with John Jones. The searcher would go to the Lands Titles Office and search out the land that was wanted, and get from that what the encumbrances were – there may have been a mortgage, or might have been that Engineering and Water Supply had a pipe-line running through the middle of it, or something like that. We would get all these details, which could reflect on the valuation of the property. Valuers didn't really do researching like that at all, just the researchers did this. ...make some short-cuts, such as – Engineering & Water Supply may have a place assessed, with a description of it, and the description may be three-bedroomed house, but the evidence that we had was that it was only a two-bedroomed house. We had to have a look and establish what was the real position.

F: Do the leg-work, in other words.

W: Yes.

F: Mind you, when we get around to the collection that you've ceded to our library, you obviously kept the searchers busy.

W: I did a lot myself. When I retired, I did a lot of searching myself.

F: You must have done, because it's a huge collection!

W: Well, yes - it hadn't been done before..

F: ..for this area specifically, you mean?

W: The area that I was working on, except that I found in the Archive section of the South Australian Library, there would be an assessment for State Land Tax purposes, from the 1880s, I think it was, and then there was a description. For instance, a block of land may have a house on it now, but 120 years ago may have been described as a salty block with box-thorns on it. That was the state of the soil, and why it wasn't built on. That house on it couldn't have been built before 1880. I think I got from the deposits in the Archives of the Inspection Description of all the properties – it was for State Land Tax purposes, and all they were interested in was the vacant nature of the land – they did have a description such as 'no buildings', 'dilapidated wooden post and wire fencing', 'boxthorns' and things like that. So we now have it here, when this land was surveyed by the Queen's Own Regiment, that it was just an open section of land in the Hundred. Then, 30 years later, there'd been no building put on – it was left in its natural state.

F: Surveyed by the Queen's Own Regiment? You mean the Army did the first sets of surveys, before there was a Valuers Department?

W: Yes.  'Town On The Goolwa', which was surveyed in 1839 – for Goolwa was to be the capital of the State.

F: I thought Currency Creek was to be the capital?

W: Yes, but all the land at Currency Creek was surveyed in a Special Survey, and that's where the rural sections were. The town sections were the other side of Brooking Street; all those blocks with very very narrow frontages along Liverpool Road. The survey of the blocks would have fitted into a capital city. If you take the 'Township On The Goolwa', which was surveyed right at the beginning of 1853. It was surveyed as a port for the paddle-steamers which the Government had been working on for some time. 'The Township Of The Goolwa' was surveyed and made up for a port. The ocean-going ships couldn't get through the Mouth to come into here, and the paddle-steamers came down the river, and there was no fuel supply for them out through the Mouth.

F: Which is why they built the railway line to Port Elliot, isn't it?

W: Yes. It was intended for port purposes, for development of the wharves and this, and they did have a look to put a channel – canal – from Goolwa to Port Elliot -

F: But that's later, because I've seen the reports – that's the 1890s, isn't it?

W: Well before then.

F: The Royal Commission – you've got reports of that in your collection – that's somewhere in the 1890s.

W: Actually, the river trade sort of finished about the 1880s. That was a boom period in South Australian history, and the 1890s was a depression period.

F: And I think they were trying to revive the river trade at that point, and that's why they called that Royal Commission, wasn't it?

W: But the railway built from Morgan to Port Adelaide had spelt the death of the river trade, anyway. That was in the 1880s. That was when there was lot of railways built in South Australia. It made it very prosperous, such as through the Lower North, Mid-North. All these public works made South Australia a very prosperous place, but as soon as they stopped, well, of course, it's not prosperous any more. People didn't have the purchasing power in their hands to make other people prosperous by spending it. If they haven't any job and any wages, then they haven't any purchasing power, the people who were supplying the rails, and going to work on the railways and building rolling stock and this at Gawler and Martins, – then the Depression came, in the 1890s.

F: And this area generally dipped for a long time after that, didn't it, until tourism picked up, whenever that would be?

W: Yes. You can say now that tourism and Centrelink are the income for the district.  People live here, and they go to the Goolwa Hotel and the delicatessens and such other businesses, but they really want their income in the holiday seasons from the visitors to keep their businesses alive.

F: Mind, here we've also seen a huge growth in retired people, who bring with them their superannuation and their pensions.

W: There are self-funded retirees, besides the Centrelink pensioners.

F: That'd be the only way to explain how come we've now got Woolies in Goolwa, and that sort of infrastructure, which wouldn't have arrived just for tourists.

W: It's not so long ago that what they called the 'off-season' was from Easter to the October public holiday, Labour Day, and the 'summer season' was from Labour Day through to Easter. Sometimes, it went to Anzac Day, if Anzac Day was on a Friday or a Monday, but the place was fairly dead, you can say, in the off-season. I've seen attempts to extend Easter more into the winter, and to start the long-weekend, Labour Day, back, but it's never been successful, mainly because the weather's a bit unreliable. If you are going to have parades etc., and it's raining cats and dogs... It seems to me that when people, even now – people with holiday houses  – if the Weather Bureau says that it's going to be very very nice weekend for a holiday, and it turns out there's storm and rain, people still come down here for the long weekend or whatever. Then it works the other way – the Bureau says that it's going to be a bit rough, but it turns out that it clears up into a very nice weekend indeed, the people don't come down, they just listen to what the weather is going to be, and rely on it.

F: But we do have a far larger permanent population than we used to.

W: There is a diversity now, of retired people.

F: I think we were one of the fastest-growing areas in Australia only a few years ago.

W: Yes.

F: Which brings me to the question of what brought you down here, because we had you living at Klemzig?

W: I was living at Klemzig, and then at Walkerville. I was travelling through the state all the time, with field work.

F: As well as the Northern Territory?

W: Yes. For my own work, and also the Commonwealth couldn't get qualified valuers, because of the difference between the pay, and that of the valuer in private practice. Commonwealth Public Service valuers got about 40% of the salary that a person in private practice could expect to get.

F: What does a private valuer do? If you're doing valuations for the Government, and for Council rates, what does a private one work for, large real estate companies?

W: Yes, but all the properties had to be valued, if they'd been gifted, or at the death of the owner, or for rental purposes. The valuers in private practice didn't want to work for the Public Service.

F: So we've got you going all over the state and the Northern Territory – what brought you here?

W: It seemed to me that – at that time, there were about 800 people living in Goolwa -

F: This is in the early 1970s?

W: Yes.

F: You're obviously looking toward retirement at that point, in your 50s?

W: A holiday house. I bought a block of land in Birchall Road, when  Adelaide Development had sub-divided that land. In it were lots that were set aside for shops. They never eventuated; I reckoned that the development of the shopping areas in Cadell Street and the Foodland supermarket overtook, and other things such as that taxis were available. They've developed the Goolwa taxis, but you don't need an area like King William Street,

F: Not if there's only 800 people, no.

W: That was about the time of the starting of South Lakes by Ozzie O'Grady.

F: Not Joe Liebermann?

W: No, he was the salesman for Ozzie O'Grady. Ozzie O'Grady went broke, but Liebermann became a millionaire - he was the salesman for the blocks at South Lakes. They could see the potential – it was just a salt swamp, covered in box-thorns, South Lakes, when Ozzie O'Grady came in. He really introduced the Hire Purchase business to South Australia. He'd say - “If you want to buy a shirt from Myers, 10 shillings. All right. You go along and buy it, and bring the docket back here, and we want you to make five payments over the next five months – we'll pay for the shirt -

F: ...and you pay extra interest?

W: Yes. The interest on it is for the accommodation. This was extended into longer periods for furniture and such items, and then purchasing on goods from retail outlets was able to be increased very considerably by the availability of finance through the hire purchase company he set up. What would happen is that he would say - “Okay, you buy it” - they would buy it on his account with Myers, then come back and give the account to Ozzie O'Grady. He probably said  - “2 and 6 a week, for 5 weeks”, so at the end of the month, when he had the account to pay for Myers, he'd already got the price of the shirt paid, in weekly installments to him, and he would then take the account along to Myers and pay for it, and get a discount for cash. Then he'd have other payments coming from the purchaser to cover his interest and everything else. He hadn't really paid out any money until the end of the month, and he'd been receiving weekly payments in the meantime. He had a very successful business going there, and he was in the South Lakes subdivision when that was starting off. It seems that Victor Harbor, which was where all the honeymooners went, and the holiday-makers – this was the poor end of the South Coast, whereas Victor Harbor was the rich end. It seemed to me, that if I could buy a block and build my house, that the market was going to be such that people would be attracted to the cheaper end of the South Coast, to own their own property, rather than going to Victor Harbor and staying at a hotel for a weekend or a week for their holidays. It was attractive financially, and the block of land that I purchased, I couldn't get anybody to build a place on! So I thought the best thing I could do was to buy a house. It was on the market – I've forgotten how much, but I offered them $3,000, and they accepted it.

F: This was for 'Mariner's Cottage'?

W: Yes. They accepted that. I said I only had enough money to pay half the purchase price for it, what about me making monthly payments to you, at bank overdraft interest rates, instead of me having to get a mortgage, and then having to get it discharged, and paying stamp duty on it, and everything else? This fellow who owned it, Ted Brook, was in the Commonwealth Public Service, and he said that was all right.

End of tape

Tape 6a, recorded 23/9/04

Side A

F: We've just had you buying 'Mariner's Cottage' by Mr. Ozzie O'Grady's Hire Purchase Scheme -

W: Ozzie O'Grady had a place in Grenfell Street, where he had some merchandising. He'd been a Bank of Adelaide teller. During the Depression, he'd borrowed a hundred pound from his brother, left the bank, and started this h.p. Business.

F:Which he then introduced to this region?

W: Yes.

F: Where did he get the notion from, America?

W: I don't know, but he was very successful, because people didn't have the ten shillings to buy a shirt, but they could afford 2 and 6 a week for four or five weeks.

F: And end up paying more, of course.

W: Oh yes, a lot more.

F: Didn't you say he went broke during South Lakes? How did he do that?

W: I don't know, but Mr. Liebermann became a millionaire and Ozzie O'Grady went broke. I think Mr. Liebermann was full-time (at South Lakes) He was working on the setting-up of the golf-course, the sale of the blocks, then the sale of the transportable houses.

F: According to Roy Galpin,[8] he was very generous with helping with Council amenities that were involved in all this, and he put up quite a bit of money, and matched Council, and did all that sort of thing.

W: I don't know too much of what went on (there).

F: We've got you in Mariner's Cottage now, which youbought originally as part-investment and holiday home, and I presume you sold Birchall Road?

W: My son was in the Post Office, and he'd come down from Darwin – he'd been working in Darwin. He was going to buy a house, so I said -”You can have the block”, which was then worth $20,000 against the $500 I'd paid for it. In those days, you could buy and sell property if you knew something about the Taxation Act. If you worked in property, you didn't have to pay any Income Tax or Capital Gains Tax on property which you'd purchased. If you bought property, hadn't lived in it, and sold it within twelve months, you were expected to include that in your Income Tax return. But if you held it for two years, it was then a matter of whether you bought it for investment purposes or whether you were going to use it for residential purposes, and then after two years, taxation didn't come into it at all. If you were going to buy any real estate, the thing was to hold it for at least two years and then say nothing about it for income tax purposes, no Capital Gains Tax, that was introduced by Keating.

F: But then we had Death Duties in those days, didn't we?

W: Yes.

F: So, in terms of that, it was actually worth your effort to give it to your son, rather than leave it to him in your will?

W: Yes. Because there was no Gift Duty, State nor Federal. I already organised the sale of it to a fellow, who was in the Post Office – subsequently, he retired and was living here, but has now gone to Victor Harbor to live – he purchased it for $20,000, and I was to draw the documents for the L.T.O., with no costs attached, and he paid the $20,000, and my son used it as a part-deposit towards a house that he wanted to buy. He'd been transferred back here, to South Australia. When I first bought the land, it was ten pound a year Council rates – that wasn't much of a factor in the expenses that you would want to off-set against the profit you're going to make out of the property when you sold it.

F: So how long did you have it before your son sold it, between your paying $500 and your son getting $20,000?

W: About 15 years, I suppose.

F: We've got you in Mariner's Cottage, which brings us back to where your collection started. By now, you've worked as a valuer for the better part of 15 years, you're thinking of retiring, and one day you just get curious, thinking - “Well, what's the story behind this house?”, is that how it happened?

W: Yes. When I purchased it I thought (of) the National Trust, to research out Goolwa and surrounding districts. “The place has been done to death” was what the expression was, but I couldn't find any reliable information, except for John Tolley's book, 'South Coast Story'. Apart from that, there wasn't much. And there were very few papers that had been preserved, such as...what's his name...had an engine-building plant up here, just down from the morgue...this is in the days of the paddle-steamers – there was a chart-room there – Curzon, he had a house – 'Curzon's Residences', it's called – I researched it, just down on the left-hand side from where the round-about's to go in. The Council's got a nearly half-a-million-dollar grant from the Commonwealth Government for safety purposes, and there's a roundabout going in there -

F: This is going towards the bridge, that we're talking about?

W: Yes. That's where his house was, but these engineering works were down on the flat, where Chris Crabtree, (Marine Architect is what he calls himself, he designed the present Goolwa Medical Centre), is.  Anyway, there wasn't the information around, and I'd been told different information from different people which didn't stack up – 70% of what people were telling me, I couldn't use -

F: It was unsubstantiated oral opinions?

W: Yes, that's right, and it varied from what person to person said. So I decided to rely on the original documents, if I could get Governmental documents, or sources that I could quote as being the authority for what I was saying.

F: !5 years of working in the Valuer's Department, having the searchers who looked up the files, obviously stood you in good stead here, because you knew what you were looking for?

W: Yes, and then I had the research there, especially in the General Registery Office, that was the transactions which had taken place, and what had occurred with the properties, registrations of interests and estate's interest, under the Old System, before the Torrens System came into existence. In some cases, places, the land didn't come under the Real Property Act until well after the creation of the Lands Titles Office by Torrens. Documents were still being registered in the General Registery Office – for instance, when they started a Church of Christ here, just after the turn of the twentieth century, in order for an Act of Parliament to be passed for the Church of Christ to be a corporate body, and to be able to hold land for religious purposes, and to be recognised as that, they had to put a document into the General Registery Office of many pages, detailing the history of the creation of the Church of Christ in the U.S.A. - all the history was there.

F: Which is the same as the Old System where you trace the property right back to the first owner?

W: Yes. The first owner not being a person, and not being responsible, the Government couldn't hold that person to what was being signed – it was to be a Church of Christ body, somebody that could be held legally responsible before a Court of Law for the actions of the particular corporate body, and the whole history had to be detailed in the document, and ready to put into the Registery  Office, although this was just a hundred years ago,1900-odd.  But the Church of Christ - two brothers by the name of Campbell from Scotland - went to Ireland to establish a new church. I don't know who their advisors were, for them to go to Ireland to establish a Protestant Church, but they weren't very successful. They went on to America – one brother established his church in Kentucky, and the other went to a neighbouring state. Then they realised that “united we stand, divided we fall”. They amalgamated the two congregations, and this started off the Church of Christ as it is now in existence. The Church came  here  to Goolwa in the very early 1900s. When I found out the document existed in the S.A. General Registery Office, and what the references were, I asked - “Can I have a photocopy of this?”. The reply was - “Give me a ticket for the payment of it” - couple of dollars was what it was then – 40 or 50 dollars you have to pay now. It was all general Registery Office. All the blocks here were created before the Real Property Act came into existence. They all have a history which went back before the Real Property Act.

F: I think your oldest document is about 1839?

W: That was the Currency Creek Special Survey. The first auction was in April, 1853, of the Sections of the Township of the Goolwa, the subdivision of Section 2204, Hundred of Goolwa, which was always held by the South Australian Government. It was never alienated from the Crown, and was reserved as a Section on which the township was to be built. Section 2205, Hundred of Goolwa, started just the other side of Goyder Street. Section 2203, 2202 and half part of 2201 –  a hundred acres - were surveyed out in the Currency Creek Special Survey in 1839. Plans were drawn up and printed, early in 1840. The land was ballotted by the Currency Creek Special Survey Directors in London, in The Jerusalem Coffee House, in the 1840s. They thought that Currency Creek was going to be the new capital for South Australia. I don't see how it could have happened – there was too much vested interest in the principal town of Adelaide and people living in the area up there with no-one living down here. It was a private survey, and not a Government survey, in effect selling residential blocks. They were all ballotted for, by the Directors of the Currency Creek Special Survey Association. It never developed.

F: But they actually surveyed it to the extent that it's got the street names that later became Adelaide streets, of course.

W: Yes, well they are all streets from London – Fenchurch Street and all these. There are some that have been added quite recently,  such as Johnston Street, after Captain George Bain Johnston of the paddle-steamers.     They were the rural sections, out there, for people who held Sections in the Town on the Goolwa...

F: Yes – you bought one here, and you got one there!

W: Yes, that's right. That was in the ballot that took place in 1840 in the Jerusalem Coffee House.

F: So you're sitting in England, you've got money, and you say - “Yes, thank you, I'm going to have two little bits of Australia, thank you very much”?

W: Yes. The sections of 100 acres here, Section 2203, 2202 and part-2201, Hundred of Goolwa, were sections for rural lands of Colonel Light's Survey E. The sections of land in the Town on The Goolwa were ballotted with a section of the rural part, which was out on Currency Creek, where the old inn is.

F: When was Colonel Light's Survey E?

W: Well, he started off – he didn't have any Hundreds or Counties, or anything like that. He did the first survey – Survey A – which was the principal town. That was in one acre sections. He then surveyed other land. I think the land north of Adelaide, Walkerville for instance, was cut up into a 80-  or a 132-acre section, because that was out in the “sticks”.

          Very unfortunately, here the tape starts to distort woefully

F: The notion of a hundred acres being a 'hundred' – I take it that's imported from England.

W: The expression of a Hundred was imported from England in     Feudal times.  

Tape stuffed