VERBATIM TRANSCRIPTION OF LESLIE GRAHAM MACDONALD TAPESRecorded and transcribed by Stanley Graham. Strictly copyright. No part of this manuscript may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language without the written permission of Stanley Graham. Tape identification File Number Tape two green leader. 162\lgstory.013
I was getting fed up with being at home and I decided to look round for a job.[late 1912] I heard from the station master that there was a job out at a place called Girilambone on the Great Western line somewhere up the other side of Nyngan. It was a job on the railway and asked him if there was any chance of getting it and he said “As far as I’m concerned there’s every chance because we know you and we think you can do the job. But he said why don’t you go in for a permanent job on the railway?” I said “No, I’m not ready yet, I might do later on. Anyway, what is this job up at Girilambone?” He said “Oh, it’s nothing. You’re only booking the trains in and out, changing signals, booking any goods or stock or anything like that that’s being despatched from there. It’s nothing of a job, in fact if you’ve got a hobby of any kind you could amuse yourself at that because there’ll be very little else to do but there’s got to be somebody there.” I said “What’s the living conditions like there?” He said “There again, I don’t know, but the last feller that was there lived in a boarding house and I believe he wasn’t very well satisfied with it.” So I said “Alright, I’ll go out but I’ll see what I can find for meself.” I set of for Girilambone and I got meself installed at a little shanty pub that was there and I found out that it was a very rough place. I got talking to some of the railway men and they said that there was a ganger that had a place about ten miles out and they thought that he’d be willing to take me in as a lodger. So I said “What’s this ganger’s name?” He told me his name but I’ve forgotten it since but it doesn’t matter very much. I borrowed a bicycle and went out to see him. Well, he wasn’t there but I saw his wife and she said yes, they’d put me up and I’d have to find some way of getting to work and back home again at night. So I said “I’ll overcome that difficulty alright.” So I went back and got me things and I arranged with the train to stop when they got to this place and I’d get off. They agreed to that and they pulled up and let me off. In the meantime, I’d borrowed a bicycle from a feller in Girilambone and I used to ride to work and home at night.
I stopped there for quite a while, as a matter of fact I was sworn in as a juror there once at a trial. There was a feller who was being tried for stealing a sheep. They hadn’t enough jurors to make up a panel and they come and asked me if I’d sit in it and I said yes. Anyhow we heard all the evidence, there’s no doubt this feller was guilty from all we heard. Anyhow we heard the evidence, found the feller not guilty and he got off. After I’d been there for quite a while, one day I was at home from work, I hadn’t been so well. When the mail train was passing, we always used to go out to see the mail train through, everybody did in those places just to get a look at something different. But as the train was going through the driver leaned out of the cab window and threw a parcel out. It was a note wrapped up in a piece of coal. It was telling me that Jim had met with an accident. He was in the Dubbo hospital not expected to live and would I come as soon as possible. [late 1912] Well there was train back to Dubbo that night, the mail from Bourke to Sydney and it used to get into this place about two or half past in the afternoon. I got ready and flagged the train down, got on it and went home. I went straight to Jim’s home when I got there to see whether I could get any information about him but when I arrived they said that I was too late. He had died and he was to be buried the next day. Well of course, as you can imagine, everything was at sixes and sevens. Father seemed to be in charge of all the funeral preparations and running things so he said to me “We’re going to take Min and the children up home tonight. She’s too cut up to be left here on her own and I’d like you to stay here and Pauline will stay with you.” Now Pauline was a girl named Pauline Barton who was a relation of the Skinners. Her Father was the station master at Paddington in Sydney. I knew Pauline well, she’d stayed at our place many a time in fact she was one of my schooldays sweethearts. Stan and I used to compete for her favours very keenly. Anyhow, these arrangements were made and they all went off home and left Pauline and I alone together with Jim laid out in his coffin in the front room. Now I never thought that I could be affected so much by his death as I was. I was absolutely heart-broken and I could think of nothing else but the days we had spent together when we were kids and I could think of nothing else. Pauline kept messing around making me drink some tea, she got a meal ready, she was doing the best she could I suppose but when it got to be about ten o’clock at night I said to her “Pauline, I think the best thing you can do is go to bed.” She said “Alright, I’ll make a drink of tea and then I’ll go to bed.” and she did this. When she was going into bed she came to say goodnight to me and said “When you go to bed will you come and tuck me in?” I said “Yes, I’ll do that.” Anyhow, I gave her a little bit of time to get ready for bed and I went in just to more or less to appease her a bit and she wanted me to go to bed with her. Well, perhaps under different circumstances I might have done but Jim’s death was laying too heavy on me at the time and I made some excuse about not being able to go to bed and that sort of thing and I think she understood. Anyhow, I sat up all night. The funeral was next day and he was buried in Dubbo cemetery. After the funeral I asked Father what had happened because I didn’t know up to then what had really happened to him. The Old Man said it was all the Post Office’s fault. If it hadn’t been for them he would still be with us. I said “How do you make that out?” He said “Well, there’s two things, firstly he should have had somebody with him. He was working by himself and when he got hurt there was nobody to give him any help until he was found by the fettler gang on the railway. The other thing was that they made him wear a safety belt when he was up a pole when, if he hadn’t had the safety belt on this day he’d have been able to jump clear. Whilst he might have got hurt he certainly wouldn’t have got killed.” Apparently Jim had been working without the safety belt and the Post Office Superintendent in charge of lines got to know this and they wrote him a letter warning him that if he met with an accident when he wasn’t wearing a safety belt he wouldn’t be entitled to any compensation as he was disobeying the rules. Of course, after that, Jim, thinking about his family and that sort of thing, started wearing a safety belt. On this particular occasion he was tightening a wire that was sagging on a telephone line and there was a slight bend at this post that he was up tightening the wire on. The tree that the post had been made from had been examined and there was a little tag nailed to the bottom of each telephone post showing when it was last examined and found sound. Whether he looked at this tag or not, nobody knows but if he had have done he would have been no better of because the tag said that the post had been examined on a recent date and it was found to be alright. So he went up and whilst he was tightening the wire, the post broke off at ground level and he was strapped to it with his safety belt, he couldn’t get away from it. It fell across the railway line and it must have kicked back when it hit the line because it had hit him in the forehead and his head was smashed in, well Father said he was almost unrecognisable until they put his face back together again after he had died. He hadn’t a chance of living. These railway men found him and put him on a train to Dubbo but the doctor said that he hadn’t a chance even if they’d got him straight away after the accident, he was so badly injured. The pole that had broken was examined and it was found that all the core had been eaten out of it by termites and there was only a shell. About half an inch thick all round the outside it was solid so it was perfectly evident that whoever had examined it and put the OK tag on it had not done their job properly. That was made a very strong point at the hearing of the case for compensation later on. Eventually they came to a settlement out of court regarding compensation and I don’t know what the figure was but I think it was somewhere in the region of a thousand pounds and in those days, that was fairly good compensation. Lots of cases, the injured or killed person got nothing at all. Well, the funeral over I set off back to Girilambone but before I left I promised Mother I’d be home for Christmas whatever happened. I hadn’t been back at Girilambone very long when I had a letter from home telling me that young Alec had been up that way and had bought a horse. When he left the place he was working at he left the horse behind and there was some trouble over money because this horse was a swap deal somehow with this bloke. I don’t know exactly what the facts of the case were. Father had straightened out the financial side of it and they asked me, when I was coming home for Christmas, whether I’d collect the horse and bring it home. They said I’d find a saddle and bridle at the place, I wouldn’t have to go to any expense on that account. So I wrote home and said yes I’d collect it and fetch it home with me at Christmas time. Well, when it come to Christmas time [1912], I went out to see these people, they lived about forty mile away out of Girilambone and they said the horse is in the field there and the saddle and bridle are in the harness room. They showed me where it was and they sent a horse tailor out to fetch the horse in. I had a look at it, it seemed alright, it seemed a decent sort of a horse, he was a big strong feller and his feet looked alright to me. I saddled him up and had a ride on him, he was a bit frisky, a bit perky but all in all I couldn’t see any trouble with him. So I had a meal with ‘em and I set off. I got back to Girilambone at night time, stayed there for the night and set off next morning. Well I don’t know exactly how far it is from Girilambone to Dubbo but it’s a pretty good ride. It must be all of a hundred miles if it was a yard. Anyhow, I left early in the morning and we were getting on alright together until sometime early in the afternoon I noticed that he was walking very tenderly. I wondered if his legs were sore. I got off him and felt him all over and he felt alright as far as I could see. I had a look at his feet and I could see what the trouble was, he wanted shoeing. With him having been running on pasture for so long, I didn’t think he’d want shoeing for quite a while. They must have been using him I think because his hooves were well worn down, he was on the frog of his feet. Well the next thing to do was to get him shod and there weren’t many places round there where you could get a horse shod. Anyway I kept on with him and each bit of a settlement I come to I enquired whether there was a blacksmith about and they said no. Eventually, I did find a blacksmith’s shop and I dug an old feller out of the pub and he agreed to come and shoe him. He had a look at him and said “He’s pretty far gone, he wants turning out for a day or two.” He said “This horse’ll never get you to Dubbo tonight.” I felt inclined to agree with him. Anyhow I said “You shoe him and we’ll see how we go.” So he made him a set of shoes and put them on and charged me seven and sixpence. He said “Another thing we can do that might help, well warm some Stockholm tar and put his feet in Stockholm tar for a while. That might take some of the soreness away.” I said “Right, you do that.” He did it and cleaned his feet off afterwards and we set off. Well, it was getting about four or five o’clock in the afternoon. The sun was getting down in the west and he was getting tenderer and tenderer all the time. In fact I’d got off and I was leading him. I was wondering what the hell I was going to do. Suddenly I looked away to the west and I saw a spiral of smoke going up into the sky. Now I knew it wasn’t the mail train because it was the wrong time of the day so I reckoned it must be a goods train of some kind. I knew there was a little siding about a mile further on and I thought if I can get there before the train gets there I might get him on the train. I don’t know how the hell I thought I was going to get him on the train but that was the only thing I could think of. So I did, I got there before the train and I got him up on the platform. At these wayside sidings, the general rule is that if you want to stop the train there’s a flag and a light always hung handy and you can either flag them down with the red flag or a red light at night time. Anyhow I got the flag and flagged the train down and this bloody horse, he hadn’t seen a train for... well I don’t know if he’d ever seen a train. He played merry hell, I had a hell of job to hold him. Eventually he quietened down when he saw the train wasn’t going to do him any harm and the engine stopped opposite the platform. Lo and behold, there on the engine was two fellers that I knew very well, one was Horace Findlater an old school friend and the other feller who was fireman on the train, I’ve forgotten his name now but he was a big curly-headed feller that I’d met in Bourke. After greetings Horace said “What have we got here?” I said “What’s it look like? It’s a horse, have you got an empty wagon on the train, a cattle wagon that I can get him into. I want to get to Dubbo.” He said “We can do better than that, we’ve got a horse box on here but if you go in that we’ll have to put you off at Narromine because we’re picking a horse up at Narromine that’s going down Bathurst way somewhere to a race meeting. If that’s OK with you we’ll put him in the horsebox and push you off at Narromine.” I thought well, that’s alright, Narromine’s only about twelve or fifteen miles from Dubbo and I was quite happy about that. He reckoned we’d get into Narromine somewhere about midnight. Anyhow we tried to get this horse into the horse box. He wouldn’t go in and we had him down between the train and the siding, at least, one leg down. I thought he was crippled. Anyhow we got him out and he didn’t appear to be any the worse. Eventually the only way we could get him in, we got a rope and tied it to one side of the door of the loose box, run it through the handle of the other door, put round his hocks, and I had hold of his head and the guard was beating him with a brush stail and Horace Findlater and the fireman were pulling on this rope. Well, eventually when we got him in he was in back to front so I said to him “Leave him there.” He said “Fetch him out and let’s put him in the right way.” I said “Not bloody likely, we’ll leave him in, he’ll stand just as well as any other way and anyhow, he’s facing the engine.” So we put the door up, got aboard and away we went. When we got into Trangie, I knew they were going to be there a while shunting, so I hopped over to a pub where I knew the landlord although it was past closing time, and I got a bottle of whisky. Just as I was getting back the train started off and I had to run like hell to get aboard it. Anyhow, I got aboard on a truck which was about ten or twelve trucks behind the engine. I had the bottle of whisky in me pocket and I crawled along the top of these cattle wagons on to the tender and down into the engine. They looked round when they saw me coming and said “What the bloody hell are you doing there?” I said “I brought you a drink.” So we got the pannikins out and we had a go at this whisky. The poor old guard, he was in the brake van at the back, he wasn’t getting anything. Between the three of us we finished this bottle of whisky and by the time we got to Narromine we were all in pretty good spirits. I said to Horace “Now where do I get out here? You’ll have to let me out at a platform or a loading stage of some kind.” “Well,” he said, “Just hang on a minute because I been thinking where this other horse is because I think there’s room for two in that box and we could take the partition down and put yours on this side and his on the other side and then when we get to Dubbo you can just slip him out.” Anyhow, they didn’t turn up with this horse and the time come for them to pull out and he said to me “Well, it looks as though he’s not coming so we’ll leave things as they are and take you through to Dubbo.” So off we set and eventually we arrived at Dubbo. On the way down we were discussing how we were going to get the horse off. Findlater said to me “I tell you what we’ll do. If the road is clear we’ll overshoot the station and we’ll run up to the loading pens and we can unload him there. But anyhow, when we got into Dubbo the home signal was against us and we had to just crawl into the station. There was another train shunting on the main line further up so we couldn’t run up to the loading pens. I was now riding on the engine with these lads and I said “What are we going to do now?” He said “There’s only one thing we can do and that’s unload him on the platform. You jump off the engine when we get to the platform and you give us the office when the horse box is opposite the platform and we’ll stop.” Well we did this and in the meantime I’d gone to have a look at the gate. There was a gate at the end of the station for wheeling luggage and that off and I gone to have a look at that to see whether I could get it open but it was locked. So they came down and I said “Well, we can get him off here but there’s only one way I can get him off the station and that’s to take him through the waiting room. Now this waiting room at the station had a cellar underneath it and even when you walked on it, the floor was like a sounding board, it made a hell of a noise with just a man walking on it. I wondered what sort of a noise it’d make with a horse walking on it but that was the only thing that we could do. We let down the door and they said “now you get him out and bugger off. We’ll look after it from here on.” I’d left the saddle and bridle on him. All I had to do was lead him out and get on him and buzz off. So I led him through this waiting room and you’d have thought the whole station was coming down, it made a hell of a noise. The night man in the station must have been asleep because they told me he come dashing out just after I’d got away, wanting to know what all the row was about. They acted silly and said they’d never heard any row and thought he must have been dreaming. But anyhow I got on the horse and got him away. I got home about five o’clock on Christmas morning I think it was. I gave him a feed, unsaddled him and let him go in a small paddock that we had attached to the house. I went and looked for somewhere to sleep. When we were lads at home, in the summertime, we used to sleep in a double bed under the pepper tree. This morning, it was as dark as could be, you couldn’t see a yard in front of you, I went poking about and I bumped into a bed under this tree and I thought Oh, Alec or somebody must be at home and they’ve brought the bed out here to sleep in the open so I took me boots and trousers off and sneaked into bed. I wasn’t in bed very long before I was asleep. When it come daylight I woke up and I had a look to see who was in bed whether it was Alec or Stan or who it was and it was Molly Skinner, I was in bed with her and she was sound asleep so I thought well the best thing I can do is get out of bed as quietly as I possibly can and she’ll not know I’ve been in bed. Anyhow, I was crawling out of bed and I heard this voice saying “You’re not getting up yet. It’s too early to get up yet.” It was her, she’d known that I’d got in bed but she said she hadn’t liked to say anything to me, she didn’t mind me sleeping in the same bed as her, we were almost like brother and sister anyhow. I felt a bit embarrassed for a while when I woke up and found meself in bed with a girl. Whilst I was at home for Christmas [1912] I saw quite a lot of Min and I was amazed at the change in her since Jim’s death. Although he hadn’t been dead very long, it was apparent to me that whilst Min was prepared to be everything that a wife should be to a man when he was living, she didn’t intend to let his death interfere with her pleasure. She was flirting with every man she came into contact almost and she made quite a set at me, inviting me down to her home and wanting me to go and stay with her instead of staying at home. I was trying to dodge her in all the ways I could. Not that I hadn’t the desire to go and spend a bit of time with her but I thought it would cause trouble with Mother and them at home. Anyhow, do what I could I couldn’t dodge her, she found ways and means of getting me to do the things she wanted me to do. Mother tackled me about it and said that I was spending too much time with her and it would be talked about. She said “Anyhow, what about Molly?” I said “What about Molly?” She said “I was always under the impression that it was your intention to marry Molly.” I said “I don’t know where you got that idea. Has Molly said anything to you about it?” She said “Yes, she has.” So I said “Well you leave my love affairs to me and I’ll deal with them myself. I don’t want you interfering with them.” But I made up my mind I should have a talk with Molly. This I did, we went out for a walk one day and we had a heart to heart talk and I made it perfectly clear to her that whilst I thought the world of her I only looked on her as a sister. She said that was what her feelings were about me and she asked me “Is that the only reason that you just feel like a brother to me? Is there nothing else that causes you to feel that way about me?” I said “I know what you’re talking about but it has nothing to do with me.” Molly had a little boy who was supposed to be the son of the Barton family. Some people thought that it was Molly’s illegitimate child. I didn’t know whether it was or not and I wasn’t interested. She started to assure me that this wasn’t her child and she told me the reason why it couldn’t be her child. She had something wrong with her and she couldn’t have children and that was the reason why she hadn’t married. I knew that a lot of people round about, although they didn’t say anything, believed that this boy was Molly’s but I believed after she told me that she was quite truthful when she said that it wasn’t her child. With the situation between Molly and myself made quite clear I thought I was at liberty to have a bit of fun with Min. I saw quite a bit of her whilst I was at home that Christmas time but I found out that she was knocking about with another chap, I forget his name. Once or twice while I was there he called up to see her. So I thought the best thing I could do was back out, get away and stay away. So I went off back to Girilambone but before I went there was a bit of trouble at home over money. I happened to walk in on a discussion between Mother and Father one day and they didn’t stop talking when I went in and it was obvious to me that they were in some kind of money difficulty. I started to apologise and walk out and Father said to me “Oh, there’s no need for you to go. It’s not anything private, it’s a matter that concerns all of us.” I thought Hello, here’s an invitation coming. So I couldn’t do anything else but say “Well, what is the trouble?” They explained it to me and it appears that Mother had got into debt and she hadn’t told Father about it. Of course that was nothing uncommon, she was a devil to spend money and they were about seventy or eighty pounds short. It struck me all of a sudden that I had some money that I’d forgotten all about. In 1908, when the American fleet had come to Australia there was a fight for the heavyweight championship of the world between Jack Johnson and Tommy Burns. The same week, the Melbourne Cup was run. Now I was a great fight fan in those days. I used to read the Sunday papers, when I could get hold of them, reading all the sporting news, particularly the fight news. I really did believe that Tommy Burns would beat Jack Johnson. I’d seen both of them while I was in Sydney, course I was prejudiced in favour of Burns because he was a white man I suppose, but I’d saved up ten pounds. They were laying odds against Burns at the time, he was four to one or five to one or something like that and I went to the local bookmaker in Dubbo and put five pound on Tommy Burns and I also put five pound on Mountain King for the Melbourne Cup at eight to one. Well, as history shows, Tommy Burns was beat in seven rounds, the police had to stop the fight. So I lost me fiver there but Mountain King won the Melbourne Cup and I had forty five pound to come back from the bookmaker. When I drew this money I wasn’t wanting ready cash at the time so I put it in the Post Office Savings Bank. It’d been there ever since. I said to me Father “Just hang on a minute.” and I went and got this bank book out of me case and I brought it out to him. I said “Now look, there’s forty five quid in here and you can have it if you can draw it.” He said “I can’t draw it, you’ll have to draw it.” I said “You’ve got to give seven days notice haven’t you?” He said “Something like that.” Anyhow I said “Leave it with me and I’ll arrange for you to draw the money so you’ve got forty five quid towards your seventy quid there, that’ll help a bit.” They thanked me and I made arrangements with the Post Office that I should sign for the money and give Father a letter of authority to collect it and he could collect it any time after the seven days was up. Those arrangements were made and the matter was cleared up as far as I was concerned. Jack and Mae had been home for Christmas that year and Doris had just started courting. Her boy friend was a draughtsman in the lands office and his name was Allan but I can’t think of his second name. He went to the war when war broke out and was killed in France, he was a pilot in the air force. With the Christmas holiday over I returned to Girilambone and when I got to the place where I was staying I noticed there was a distinct air of coolness everywhere. I didn’t make any enquiries but I could see that this attitude of iciness was directed towards me and I thought well, I’ll just wait and see what happens. Now this place where I was staying was one of a number of cottages where other members of the fettler’s gang lived. Amongst them was a couple that’d not been long out from England. The wife was a girl about twenty three or twenty four or something like that. Their name was Houston. We’d seen quite a bit of each other as was only natural whilst I was staying there over the weekends and in the evenings, playing cards and one thing or another. Perhaps we’d seen more of each other than we should have done, at least that’s what the husband thought. When I got a chance to talk to her I found out that there’d been a hell of a row over the Christmas weekend and it was because of stories that had been told to the husband about my relations with her. Well, I thought there’s not much good staying here with this trouble on because it’ll only get worse and worse. I didn’t want to cause any trouble between this man and his wife, perhaps I had been a bit foolish so I decided to pull out. I paid them what I owed them and went back into Girilambone where I stayed at the shanty pub for a day or two whilst I was settling up with the railway people because I was determined to get away altogether. So I left Girilambone and I went out to Brewarrina. There again, I don’t know why I went to Brewarrina, I just went there. It was getting away from Girilambone, that was the only thing I had in me mind. Whilst I was in Brewarrina I met some fellers that were getting a team together to go out to Munindi(?) to pick up some cattle to fetch back to Bourke, loading at the rail head, to go to the sales in Sydney. I went and had a word with the boss, a man named Cullen, and he said “Yes, he could use a man but what about tackle, did I have a saddle, bridle, rope and whip and all that?” I said “I haven’t got any tackle at all because I tell you, I’ve been working on the railway.” He said, “Have you ever done any droving?” I said “No. Bit I’ve handled stock and I know the routine of droving.” He said “Well, if you’ll find yourself an outfit I’ll take you on. It’s not going to be a very long job and it seems to me to be rather foolish for you to buy an outfit and only use it for three months.” I said “Well, leave that to me to worry about. I’ll get an outfit, you find the riding stock and we’re on. How much a week do you pay?” He said “We pay thirty bob a week, all found and a bonus when we get to the railhead if we haven’t lost too many cattle.” I said “Right, that’ll suit me.” because I was only looking on it as a bit of a break. We went out to Munindi and we were to pick this herd up from a cattle station called Amphitheatre, why it got that name I don’t know but that was its name. Anyhow, when we got there the herd was all collected and inoculated and was ready to go. All we had to do was to get up and get on our way. Well, we made the trip to Bourke, we had no trouble at all, they were nearly all white faced bullocks and they behaved very well. We didn’t have even one breakaway during the whole of the trip. It was a very happy trip too because the weather was starting to cool off a bit and we were in bed each night just after dark when it wasn’t our turn on guard. To wake up in the morning and see the sun coming up over those western plains, and you could see for miles because there was very little timber, a bit of gidgee and a bit of jarrah and mulga but nothing to speak of in the way of forests. As far as fodder was concerned, well there seemed to me to be nothing other than spinifex and rolie-polies but the cattle seemed to do alright on it. They made the trip and were in pretty good nick when we got into Bourke. They were loaded up at Bourke and I said to this chap “Who’s going to Sydney with them?” He said “Well, we generally pick up somebody in the town who’s wanting to go to Sydney. None of these lads want to go with them.” I said “Well, I’ll go with them if you like.” He said “Well, we’ve got another job, a longer job now, we’re going up north. Would you like to stay and come with us?” I said “No, if you don’t mind I’d rather go with these cattle.” So he said “Right, suit yourself.” So I sold me tackle, got aboard the train with ‘em and took ‘em down to Homebush where I handed them over to Dalgetty’s agent. Dalgetty’s were big stock and station agents and they had a big saleyard at Homebush and they also had a lot of pasture land there for the stock to run on whilst they were waiting for the sales. My responsibility was over when I handed them over to their agent and I went into the city for a day or two. Then I decided that I’d go back home. I went on the railway station to catch the train and who should I bump into as I was on the station but a chap that I knew at school, he was older than me, he was in the top class when I was in the bottom, but I knew him very well because they lived only about a mile from us, a feller named Charlie Darling. We got talking whilst we were waiting for the train and he asked me what I’d been doing. I told him some of the places I’d been to, you know, just as young fellers will talk together and he said to me “I’d like to go abroad.” I said “Well, I’ve been toying with the idea of going abroad again and I fancy going to Africa. He said “Aye, I’d like to go to Africa too.” So I said “Well, what’s wrong with us going to Africa?” He Said “Nothing as far as I know.” I said “Have you got any ties at home?” He said “No, there’s nothing at home. I’ve got me Mother but she doesn’t need me, she’s alright without me.” I said “Well, let’s forget about this train, let’s put up somewhere for the night and talk it over a bit tomorrow.” He said “Right, we’ll do that.” We went and found a place to sleep, as a matter of fact we went to the People’s Palace in Pitt Street. It’s a sort of temperance hotel. I’m not sure whether it’s run by the Salvation Army or the Y.M.C.A. Anyhow we talked about this the next day and made some enquiries and found out about the fare and what we had to do to go to South Africa, whether we needed passports or anything like that. We were told that all we had to do was to be vaccinated. We didn’t need a passport because South Africa was part of the British Empire and in those days, as it is now, you don’t need a passport to go from one part of the Commonwealth to another. So, that settled, we found out what the fare was, I forget now but it was somewhere about fourteen or fifteen quid on the Australian Line. There was only one class, there was no such thing as steerage or first class so we booked a passage on the Bendigo to Durban. The boat was to sail in about a weeks time. I said to Charlie “How much money have you got Charlie?” He said “Oh, I’ve got a bit, somewhere about a hundred and odd quid.” I had getting on for a hundred quid after we’d paid our fare so I said “we’ll be alright for money.” We got to Durban [mid 1913], nothing very much happened on the boat and we started to see the town. We really did start to see the town, we had a hell of a good time in Durban for about a week. One of our main occupations was driving about in rickshaws. Then we thought we’d like to go down to Capetown to have look at it. We made enquiries about the fare etc. and off we went down to Capetown. We had a look round there, went round the Seven Sisters and up on to Table Mountain and learned quite a few things about life in Capetown. We went and had a look at the notorious Claypan where all the slum quarters are and all the booze and prostitutes congregated. As a matter of fact any white person seen in the claypan was ostracised by the rest of the people in the city because they reckoned that a person had gone native if he knocked about down there, the place had such a bad reputation. Anyhow, after a week or ten days there we decided to go back to Durban. We landed back in Durban and we woke up one morning and started to have a look at our financial resources. Now we knew that if we were to get a job of any kind we would have to go up into the country somewhere because there was too many people hanging around the cities looking for work, immigrants who wouldn’t go out into the bush. We decided that our best chance would be to go up to Johannesburg, this we decided on. We enquired about the fare and when we got to know the fare we counted up our money and found we just about had enough to get us to Johannesburg with a bob or two left over. We eventually arrived in Johannesburg but you’ll realise we hadn’t enough money to book us in at a hotel. We took our suitcases, we were loaded up with suitcases and clothes and no money, we took this lot and holed up under a bridge in the town. That was the favourite place for all down and outs to go, under the nearest bridge because you got a bit of shelter from the rain if there was any. We started to look for a job. The usual thing in those days, in Africa, when you went to look for a job, it was what’s your name, what religion are you, where do you come from, how old are you? We kept telling the truth when we were asked these things. As soon as we said Australia they seemed to cool off straight away. It was usual for them to say that they had nothing now but call beck in a day or two when we might have something for you. So we were walking down the street one day and we met a feller that I knew in Coonamble. He was the reporter on the Coonamble paper at the time when I got done for my run in with the police. He’d come over to Africa and he was working on a paper in Johannesburg. I don’t know whether it was the Randfontein Gazette or something like that they called the paper. He asked us how we were going on and I said “We’re not doing so good, we’re skint.” He finished up by giving us a couple of bob or half-a-crown or something like that. We decided that we’d go and get a meal with this money. Now in those days, in nearly all the towns both in Africa and at home there were places that they call ‘bushmen’s homes’. Places where you can go into and, on payment of a small fee, you can cook yourselves a meal providing you find all the ingredients for it. We decided that we’d buy some bread and meat and eggs and tea and sugar and what have you and go to one of these bushmen’s homes and cook ourselves a meal. Anyhow, we bought some steak and some bread and some eggs and by the time we’d got those three items we were getting short of money. So we set off for this place and it cost us fourpence for the use of the kitchen and you could buy brews of tea, that was little bags of tea and sugar, enough to make about a pint of tea, for a penny I think it was or a halfpenny. It was something and nothing. We got one of these and I started cooking the steak at the great big fireplace. This fireplace sort of stood out into the room and there was some alcoves at either side and in these alcoves was benches where you could do any cutting up or mixing or anything like that. Whilst we were cooking this stuff Charlie said to me “Have we got any money left?” I said there’s about twopence or threepence, that’s all.” He said “Well, give it to me and I’ll go up and see whether I can get some milk.” So, there was an empty tin there, we washed it out and he went off to see the steward of this place to see whether he could buy a gill of milk or something like that. I got the steak cooked and the eggs in and I thought to meself I’ll just get a bit of salt now to sprinkle under these eggs and I went round into this alcove to get the salt and when I come back the bloody frying pan was gone! Well, the other fellers sitting round were sitting absolutely dumb, deadpan faces, nobody saw anything, nobody saw the frying pan go and I was standing there bewildered when I saw Charlie coming down. He came down with a grin on his face and he was holding this tin out in front of him and I said to him “Charlie, the tin’s not much use to you now. Because if we’re going to have anything to eat it’ll just be tea with milk in it. He said “Why, what’s the matter?” I said “Somebody’s pinched the steak and eggs.” He said “Pinched ‘em, what do you mean, pinched ‘em?” I said “They’re gone!” He just opened his hand, the one that was holding the tin of milk and let it fall on the floor and he rolled into me. Well, we fought up and down this place and eventually I got hold of a chair because he was getting the best of me and I clocked him with this chair. They got hold of us and the steward come along and they chucked us into the street. There we were, out in the street with not even the tea. I had a black eye and he had his nose cut, we were a sorry looking pair. Well, we went off back to our abode under the bridge and cleaned ourselves up as well as we could. We had a good laugh and shook hands over it, we weren’t really bad friends at all it was just one of those things that happen with young fellers who were knocking about the same as we were. Anyhow, I said to him “We got to do something. We can’t go without food.” He said “Well, it’s getting too late in the day to do anything about it now. The only thing we can do is too have a drink of water and go to bed.” Well, we hadn’t had anything to eat that day and I can tell you, I could have eaten a dead Chinaman I felt that hungry. I toyed with the idea of going round to one or two houses and asking for a handout but I couldn’t bring meself top it. We went to bed. Next morning we got up, cleaned ourselves up and went up the town. I said to Charlie “Well, we’re going to have something to eat if it’s the last thing we ever do, we’ve got to do something.” Before we decided what we were going to do we met this reporter bloke again. He said “are you fellers still knocking about here. Haven’t you got yourselves a job yet?” We said no, we didn’t seem to be able to drop on anything. He said “What do you tell them when they question you about things when you’re going after a job?” I said “Oh, they just ask the usual questions, your name, your age and where you come from, your religion and that sort of thing.” He said “what do you tell them?” I said “We tell them the truth.” He said “Oh, that’s why you’re not getting a job. I can see it now. You mustn’t tell them you come from Australia.” So I said “Where the bloody hell are we going to tell them we come from then?” He said you can say anything you want except Australia. You can say England or China or anywhere you like but you mustn’t tell them you come from Australia.” I said “Well, they’ll know we come from Australia by our accent.” He said “Not necessarily so. If you said that you come from England and you picked somewhere like the London area, we talk a bit like cockneys and they might think that you’re cockneys.” So I said “Why won’t they employ Australians?” He said “Well you ought to know. You’ve heard about the Boer War haven’t you? You’ve heard about how the Australians carried on whilst they were over here with the Light Horse and how they were supposed to have raped and murdered people all over the place and burned farmhouses out? Well, these people haven’t forgotten it yet and they haven’t got very much love for Australians. Anyhow you tell the that you come from England and I’ll bet you’ve got a job within a couple of days.” So we said we’d do that. We left him, I didn’t like asking him for any more money and as we walked away from him I said to Charlie “You go down this side of the street and I’ll go down on the other side and every likely looking bloke you see tap him for a shilling. When We’ve got a couple of bob we’re made up. So he said “Right, we’ll do that.” We hadn’t got very far before he’d picked up I think it was three bob or so. He shouted to me and he said “where are we going for a feed?” So I said “We’re going to the best hotel in the town.” He said “We won’t get much at the best hotel in the town for three bob.” Well I didn’t know how much meals were in Johannesburg but I knew that in Durban you could get a good meal for a shilling. Anyhow, I wasn’t bothered about that. I said “We want to go and buy a piece of rope, about quarter inch rope about twenty feet long. Something like a clothes line.” He said “What do we want that for?” I said “Never mind what we want it for but that’s what we need. You leave this to me, I’m engineering this, we’ll get away with it alright. So don’t you bother, just do as I suggest.” Although he was older than me, he was quite prepared to be guided by what I said. In fact, I seemed to be the boss of the party. I’m not swanking about that but I seemed to make all the suggestions and he carried them out and we got on alright that way. Anyhow, we went and bought a piece of clothes line and I said “Now we’ll go back to the bridge and get our luggage.” So we did this and we went up to the hotel and for the purpose of this story we’ll call it the Randfontein Hotel. We went in to the bar and we called for two beers. Beers were sixpence each in those days. They brought us two schooners of beer and we put a bob down. Charlie looked at me as if to say that’s a third of our life savings gone already. I said to the feller behind the bar “Can I see the manager?” He said “yes, I'll fetch him.” He brought this feller out, he was a little, I don’t know whether he was an Italian or a dago, Greek or something like that but he was from somewhere about that area. He said “Good morning gentlemen, what can I do for you?” I said “We want a room apiece.” He said “First or second class?” So I said “First class.” So he said he’d get the porter to get our bags and show us up to our rooms. I said “What time do you have lunch?” He said “It’s on from about twelve o’clock until about two. Any time to suit yourself.” So I said “Right, we’ll go up to our room and wash off and clean up.” He was eyeing us up a bit, me with a black eye and Charlie with a scar across his face but he never said anything because those fellers were used to that sort of thing. We went up to our rooms and we had a wash and brush up and lay down on our beds waiting for twelve o’clock. Dead on the dot of twelve o’clock we were in the dining room then we went upstairs again and lay down a bit more. We still had a shilling left because we’d paid a shilling for the clothes line and a shilling for the beers. I said “Well, we’d better go and look for a job now.” We didn’t go to any of the places where we’d been to before. We found another agency and asked them whether they had anything on. What’s your name, what age are you, what’s your religion and where do you come from? Of course we both said England and I saw him look up when we said England and he said what part of England and I like a bloody fool, couldn’t think of anything else, said Manchester, simply because I’d heard a lot about Manchester and I thought, in those days, that it was close to London. He let it go at that and then he took Charlie’s particulars. Then he asked me what I did and I said “Well, I’m an engineer. I’ll take on anything, any job at all.” He said to Charlie “what about you?” Charlie said “Well, I’ve not trained at anything, I’ve been in the police force.” I thought oh blimey charlie here it comes, he’ll ask him which police force and the silly bugger’ll say Dubbo or something like that. Anyhow he never enquired, he said “We can fix you up with a job. The job I’ve got in mind for you is on a road job. We want somebody that’s used to pile-driving.” I said “Well, I’m your man there, I’m used to pile-driving. I said I’ve been on pile-driving and boring rigs and all that sort of thing. I understand a bit about constructional engineering.” He said “Right, that’s you fixed up and, to Charlie, as far as you’re concerned, we want somebody to take charge of a lot of natives on a grading job.” Charlie said “What’s a grading job?” I said “It’s alright, I know what it is, I’ll explain it to him but he’ll be able to do that job alright it’ll be right up his street.” He said “Right, well what about salary?” I said “Well, what about salary, what’ll we get?” He said “You’ll get fifteen pounds a week and you’ll have to keep yourself out of that. The cost of living round here runs out about a pound a week. You’ll each be allowed four servants.” Charlie’s wages would be ten pounds a week. We each agreed to this and we said “When do we start?” He said “We’re not quite sure yet but there’s an ox caravan going out to the job, it’s about forty mile out. We’ve got to get some more men together and some native labour. We’ll let you know when you’ll be leaving. You’d better leave your address and we’ll get in touch with you.”
We didn’t want him to know where we were staying because we intended to do a break from the hotel. We thought if he knew where we were staying and they knew where we were going they would be able to get in touch with us. I said “No, don’t you bother getting in touch with us, we’re on the street here and we’ll call in every day. We can easy pop in, we’re staying with some friends and we don’t want them to be bothered with any of our affairs.” So he said “All right, have it your own way. If you come in once a day we’ll let you know when we’ll be ready to start.”
So we hung about for a day or two, I think it was about the third or fourth day, we went in one day and he said they were ready to go the following morning. We said “What time in the morning?” He said “The caravan will leave as soon as it’s light in the morning. The best thing you can do is get to the assembly point round about four or five o’clock.” So we asked where the assembly point was, he told us and we went round to the yard and had a look. We had a word with the feller there that was in charge and made all arrangements for getting our things aboard first thing in the morning then we went back to the hotel and spent the rest of the day lounging about. We spent our last remaining shilling on cigarettes. By the way, I’d asked the chap at the office what arrangements there was about supplies and he told us that there was nothing to worry about there as there was a stores on the job and all that we had to do was to draw out and sign for what we wanted and that would be stopped out of our wages at the end of the month. When it come night time we had our supper and went up to our room. We had a talk and we decided it wouldn’t do to leave it until early in the morning to get out because somebody might hear us knocking about and come and see what was going on. We weighed up the position and we come to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to make a break about ten or eleven o’clock.
Well, sometime between ten and eleven o’clock we got our bags and tied them all together. Outside our window there was a little conservatory and we were on the first floor. Charlie said to me when we had got the bags tied together, “Now, what do we do? How do we get these out without somebody seeing us going down the corridor?” I said “We’re not going down the bloody corridor. You go out and go out the front way, speak to the porter as you go out make some excuse to have a word with him so that you’re sure that he notices you. Then, you make your way round under the window. I’ll be waiting for you and when you arrive I’ll lower the suitcases down to you and you can tie ‘em up together and sling ‘em round your neck and make a break for it down that back alleyway. Go down towards the yard and when you get a reasonable distance away, wait for me and I’ll catch up with you.” He made some remark about being the bloody donkey but he went.
I heard him come under the window and I lowered the cases out to him, dropped the rope down and sat on the bed to have a smoke. I give him about half an hour and then I went downstairs. The night porter was sat at his desk, I said to him “It’s hot tonight.” and he said something about it being too hot to be comfortable and I said “I’m wondering what’s become of my friend, he went out a while ago and I haven’t seen him since.” He said “Aye, he went out about an hour since, I saw him going out.” I said “Did you notice which way he went?” He said “I didn’t.” I said I’ll just go and see whether I can bump into him.” I just strolled out and went off up to the point where I was to meet Charlie. When I got there he was sat on the bags, he said “You’ve been long enough coming haven’t you?” I said “Well, I’m here now.” We got the bags and made our way down to this place where the team was congregated. When we got there there was a feller on watch. He said “You’re a bit early aren’t you?” We said we couldn’t sleep and so we’d come out to get here in plenty of time and make a bed out in the open, we might sleep better outside. So no more was said and we were woke up about four or five o’clock in the morning with this jabbering going on round us. When we looked round there seemed to be natives everywhere, dozens of ‘em. We got up, boiled our billy, made ourselves a bit of breakfast because the cook hadn’t come into operation then, he would cook the first meal on the journey out. We got our things aboard and the caravan set forth. [late 1913]
10,489 words. |