VERBATIM TRANSCRIPTION OF LESLIE GRAHAM MACDONALD TAPES

Recorded 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 red leader.                            162\lgstory.015

Before I left Johannesburg, I went to the firm that I’d been working for, I’ve been trying to remember their name but I’m blowed if I can think of it, it was some construction company.  They told me when I went in to draw me money and settle up with them that although they had no liability regarding Charlie’s death, they felt that they would like to do something for any dependents that he might have.  They asked me whether he had any dependents.  I said “As far as I know he has no one only his Mother and she’s an old woman between seventy and eighty years of age and I don’t know of any other relatives.”   He said “Well, when you come in in the morning to get your cheque I’ll have another talk with you.  In the meantime I’ll have another talk with my partner.”   Next morning when I went in to get me money he gave me my cheque across the table and he said “This is a bank draft on the Commercial bank at Dubbo and it’s made out in favour of Mrs Darling.  I’m going to hand it to you and see that she gets it and there’s also a letter inside expressing our sympathy.”  I thanked him very much and took his letter and left.  I thought that was a very nice gesture because they had no liability whatever.  He didn’t meet his death whilst he was on his job, he lost it whilst he was on the booze.  They could have just said we’re very sorry and that’s that.

There was one thing, before I forget, before I left the office, this chap said to me “You know, I always knew that you were Australian.”  I said “What do you mean, you always knew.”  He said I didn’t know when I first engaged you but I soon got to know afterwards by the way you talked and the things you said.”  I said “Well, if you’d have thought we were Australians would you have engaged us in the first place?”  He said “Well, I don’t know, I think I would but I don’t know.”  I said “Well, you didn’t sack us when you found out about it.”  He said “Oh no, I didn’t and if you ever want a job again and you’re this way there’ll be a job for you whatever it is.”  That pleased me immensely.  I was leaving without any ill-feeling on either side and it was very pleasant to think that every thing had gone off as nicely as it did do after such a sad incident.

Well, we arrived back in Sydney and the first thing I had to do was to go to the military authorities and offer myself for enlistment.  I went out to the artillery barracks in Paddington and handed in me papers.  The officer in command said “Right, you’re the first one we’ve had that’s come from so far afield as that but let’s see how you shape up.”  So he sent me first to the doctor for examination.  The doctor examined me and when he finished examining me he said “Put your clothes on.  Wait there.”  I sat down and waited and he come back about ten minutes afterwards.  He said “It’s alright now, you can go into the commander’s office.”  The sergeant took me along and when we went in I expected to go in and sign up but this feller said to me “Sit down.”  So I sat down in the chair and he said “Well, you’ve come a long way to join the army haven’t you?”  I said “Yes.”  He said “Well, I’m sorry, we can’t take you.”  I said “What do you mean, you can’t take me, what’s wrong?”  He said “You’re not medically fit.”  I said “I’m not medically fit?  What’s the matter with me?”  He said you’ve got a complaint which is known as varicocele.”  I said “Oh, have I.  I didn’t know I had it and I don’t know what it is.”  He said “Well, it’s a varicose vein in your testicle.”  I said “I didn’t know I had it, I’ve played football and cricket, I’ve worked hard, rode horses and all that sort of thing and I’ve never known that there was anything, I didn’t know there was anything there.”  He said “Well, according to the medical officer it’s there.”  So I said “What do I do?  Do I go into hospital?”  he said “Well you can if you like but you’ll have to go in at your own expense.  We’re not empowered to operate on you to enable you to join up.  If you were already joined up, then we could operate on you but your not so therefore, you’ll have to have the operation at your own expense.”  So I said “Where do we go from here?”  He said “You can go where you like as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing more we can do with you.”  I said to him “What about giving me a pass home?”  It was a bloody cheeky thing to do but I thought I’ll try it.  He said “Where is your home?”  I said “It’s in Warren.”  He said “I’ll give you a voucher to Warren.”  He straightaway wrote me out a railway voucher.  I got the shock of me life when he gave it to me, it was only a try-on as far as I was concerned but it worked. 

Now the reason I said Warren was that I wanted to go up to Warren and then write a letter home leaving them at home under the impression that I’d been up in the western districts all the time.  I didn’t want them to know that I’d been to Africa.  Anyhow, I went to Warren and stayed at the hotel, the old Royal, and wrote a letter home.  I thought well, I’ll have to stop here a week or ten days just to give meself time to get a reply from Mother and all that sort of thing. 

Whilst I was knocking about I met a feller named Darwin Cato, he was the son of one of the biggest sheep farmers in the western districts, they run about two hundred thousand head of sheep and the owned the ground on each side of the river almost all the way from Warren down to the Overflow, not all the way but most of the way they’d got the river frontage.  Darwin said that they were organising a pig shoot down at the overflow and asked me if I’d like to go along.  I was very glad of the opportunity of going because I had nothing to do to pass me time away.  I said “Well, I’ve got no gun or anything like that.”  He said “Oh, we’ll fix you up with a rifle and we’ll go down this weekend.”  I went out to their place on the Friday night and on the Saturday morning we hooked up a drag and took camping gear aboard and off we went down to the Overflow.  The place we were going to was about forty miles from the station.  We got down there sometime in the afternoon.

On the way down Darwin had been boozing and his brother, I can’t think of his older brother’s name,[later remembers that it was Donald] he’d been on the bottle as well and there was two other lads from Sydney, I’ve forgotten their names.  When we got to the camp I was the only one that was sober as I’d been driving the team.  They didn’t bother about tents or anything, they just lay down under the shade of the nearest tree and went to sleep.  I thought while they are asleep, I’ll go and do a bit of shooting on me own. 

So I took the rifle and a gun, a twelve bore shotgun and a thirty two rifle slung on me back.  I’d never been in the reed-beds before, I had no idea what it was like only from what I’d heard people say.  There’s runs through these reed-beds where the wild pigs make a run.  They keep to it and it’s like a path about two to three feet wide where the floor is padded down fairly solid, you occasionally come to some places where there’s some ooze and you bog up to your knees in it, but you could get along fairly well.

I went in this place and I’d been walking quite a while, I’d heard nothing and seen nothing, when all of a sudden, I saw the head of a snake go across the path in front of me.  He was a big diamond snake, I don’t know how long he was but it seemed to me it took him about half an hour to cross the path.  I thought oh blow this, I’m getting out so I set off out.  I just got near the edge of the reed-beds when I disturbed an old boar pig.  He just jumped up and come straight at me because there was nowhere else for him to go on this path only at me.  I threw the shotgun away and hopped it!  Fortunately I was only about twenty yards into the bed and I got out and there was a stunted old box tree about twenty yards away and I went up this tree like a rat up a drainspout.  He just rushed past and took no further notice of me and went off back into the reed-bed.  I thought oh bugger this shooting, I’ll go and see if I can find the shotgun and go back to camp.  Anyhow, I did this and when I got back I had to put their tents up for them, they were still out.

The next morning they were all suffering from a hangover and none of them wanted to go shooting.  As far as shooting was concerned that weekend it was a complete washout.  None of us ever shot anything.  We never saw anything to shoot, it was just a boozing expedition as far as they were concerned.  I think that was the idea in the first place, their Father was very strict about drink and both of them liked a booze up now and again so I think the whole thing was engineered and arranged to get away for a weekend on the booze. 

On the Sunday afternoon they’d sobered up and we were sat in the shade talking about one thing and another and it came up that this country that we were in was Clancy country.  Clancy, the great drover and stockrider, Clancy of the Overflow.  We got talking about him and somebody mentioned ‘the Man from Snowy River’.  This led on to us talking about the various Australian poets that there’d been, people like Banjo  Patterson, Henry Lawson and Adam Lindsay Gordon and Darwin said to me “You seem to know a lot about these fellers?”  I said “Well, I ought to do, I’ve read them over and over again.”  He said “Do you know any of the pieces of poetry that they wrote?”  and I said “Yes, I know dozens of ‘em.”  He said “Well come on, give us a recitation.”  So I said “What about ‘The Man from Snowy River’?” and he said “That’ll do fine, we’re all interested in horses”  Of course, it’s people who are interested in horses that’s interested in recitations of this kind so I made a start and the story goes something like this..... [recites the whole of the poem from memory on the tape]

That story was composed by Banjo Patterson but about the same period there was another man called Henry Lawson, his famous book was called ‘While the Billy Boils’ but he was more on the comic side, he always seemed to see the funny side of things.  Then there was another great poet, Adam Lindsay Gordon.  Now Adam Lindsay Gordon was born in Scotland and he came of a very good family.  He went to college and eventually into the army.  He was cashiered from the army because in one of the army point-to-point race meetings he got hold of a horse and had it painted and entered it in a race which he won.  The painting and dotting had been found out by the authorities and that was the end of him as far as the army was concerned.  He went to Australia, he did almost everything in Australia from cattle-droving to being a member of parliament.  He wrote a number of poems some of which have now been graded as classics but in his lifetime he never became popular with the general public.  As a matter of fact he died a pauper in a garret in Melbourne.  Today, once a year, thousands of people go to put flowers on his grave.  It always seemed to me to be a great pity that his ability and talent was not recognised whilst he was still living.  Banjo Patterson was a real Australian, he lived Australia, he believed in Australia and he knew Australia from coast to coast.  He wrote some very fine poems about the outback.  There doesn’t seem to have been any other great poets apart from these three which has come up in Australia but I dare say that in time to come when a lot of the contemporary writers are dead, people will start to appreciate their ability.

Anyhow, we left the Overflow and went back to Cato’s station, this I think was somewhere about Tuesday or Wednesday.  Darwin Cato asked me if I would stay on a few days, they were having a cricket match at the weekend and he’d like me to stay and play for the station team.  As I had nothing better to do, I was only killing time waiting for a reply from home, I agreed to stay.  Well, we did go into Warren and when I got there I found a letter waiting for me from home.  Also, a letter from Bertha White whom I had written to from Sydney.  I had a yen to see her and I wrote to her and told her that I proposed to come and visit them for a day or two.  Anyhow, in her letter she said that it wouldn’t be convenient for me to pay a visit to the farm but if I’d come down to Orange she’d arrange to come and meet me at the hotel.  I’ll tell you more about that a little later on.

We went back to get ready for this cricket match.  It was a lot of chaps coming up from the College in Sydney that Donald, that’s his name, had been educated at.  They were making up a scratch team from round about to play against these fellers.  Of course Donald was playing with the university boys.  Well, it was just like any other country cricket match but this feller Donald, he was one of those blokes that knew everything.  He was always telling you what you ought to be doing and if somebody bowled a good ball or made a good catch he always put it down to good luck or a fluke or something like that.

Anyhow, he’d scored about twenty runs and Darwin, who was captaining our side, put me on to bowl.  I said “I can’t bowl Darwin, I’m no match for these blokes.”  He said “You go in and send a few down and you might be lucky.”  Anyhow, I had a go and I used to bowl a ball, a back spinner and it was a ball that, when it hit the ground, it just stopped for a moment.  The third ball I sent down, old Donald made swipe at it, he hit over the top of it and I took his stump.  He was as mad as wet hen because he’d been bowled by a mug.  When we went in afterwards he said to me “You couldn’t have done that again in a thousand years.  I had a look afterwards and the ball landed in a hole about two inches deep and stuck there for a second before it rolled on and that’s how I got out.”  Anyhow he did get out and the country team beat the collage boys.  I think we beat them by about nine or ten runs or something like that.  We had a good time and a good weekend and on the Monday I went into Warren and packed me bags to go down to Orange to meet Bertha. 

I’d written to her and told her when I’d be down there.  I went to the hotel and sure enough, when I got there, she was there so I asked her why she didn’t want me to go out to her home and she said “Well, I didn’t want you to come out home because certain things have happened and I thought you might feel uncomfortable.”  Anyhow, we talked for a bit and I got out of her what had happened.  She’d become engaged to be married.  I thought that’s a very good thing, I always had the idea that she was expecting me to marry her.  Anyhow we talked away and went to the pictures and came back home again to the hotel.  I said “When are you going home?”  She said “They’re coming for me tomorrow.”  So I said “Oh.”  I told her I was very glad she was going to get married and settle down.  Apparently her Father and this lad’s Father had got together and were setting them up on a little farm and I thought well that’s just the job for her but before I left, or before she left in the morning, she told me that if I wanted to marry her she’d tell this bloke that all was off and we’d get married and I said no, it was best to let things go as they are because I’d be no good to her.  She’d do better with this chap than she would with me.  So she accepted that and it was the feller himself who had come to pick her up.  He took a very dim view when he found out that she’d been in there seeing me.  But we had a talk about it and I talked him round and we left good enough friends.  I said goodbye and I never saw either of them again.

I went home to Dubbo and spent a day or two going round visiting all the friends and relations and I really enjoyed being back home for once in a while.  Mother seemed to be very amenable, we didn’t have any rows or anything like that and everything was very happy.  I took Molly to a show or two and I took Mother to a show.  All the news was about trouble on the continent and I decided to go and look for a job but I didn’t feel like settling down.  I had a bit of money but I thought I’d better get away from home before we did fall out with each other so I said goodbye and went off to Cobar to the copper mines.

I got a job in the mines.  I worked there for a while and whilst I was there, war broke out. [4 August 1914]   Everybody was talking about the war and they were urgently calling for volunteers to join the army.  I thought well the best thing I can do is go and see about this operation and get into the army.  So I packed in at the copper mine and went back to Dubbo.

When I got there I went to see a surgeon that I knew very well, a man named Birkett.  I asked him to examine me and he said he couldn’t find anything wrong with me.  I said “Well, they told me that I’d got varicocele.”  He said you might have but the best thing to do is to get another doctor’s opinion then we can decide what ought to be done.”  I said “Well, there’s only one thing to be done and that’s to have an operation.”  He said “yes, if you’ve got varicocele.  Go round and see Doctor Adams, he’s a physician and get him to examine you and if he thinks you have varicocele and you need an operation then come back and see me.” 

So I did this and Adams examined me and said “Oh yes, you’ve got varicocele alright, how have you got it?  Have you had an accident?”  I said “No.  Not that I know of.”  He said “It’s funny, you must have had some sort of an accident to get this, to rupture this blood, vessel because it has been ruptured.”  I said “Could I get it playing football?”  He said “You could do but I don’t really think that you would.”  I mentioned this accident I had when I jumped out of the pavilion at the racecourse.  He said “Aye, that could cause the trouble, that’s probably what’s happened.  You got a shock when you jumped from that pavilion.”  My left leg always was bad after that, as a matter of fact it’s about an inch and a half shorter than the other leg.  He said that that was due to some injury to the hip joint.  Anyhow, I went back to see Birkett and asked him whether he’d operate.  He said yes and I asked him how much it was going to cost me.  He said “Well, I don’t know.  Fifteen or twenty pounds, it won’t be more than twenty pounds.”  I said “When can you operate?”  He said that it could be done straight away.  We made arrangements for me to go into hospital the next day.  They operated on me the following day.  Adams was the anaesthetist and Birkett did the operation.

Well the operation went off all right and I was out of hospital in about three weeks time but I wasn’t right. [early Sept 1914]  I couldn’t offer meself for enlistment in the army until I got right so I had to spend a bit of time convalescent.  I went to see the district superintendent on the railway and I told him all the history of my case and I asked him if he could find me a bit of temporary work, a light job, until I was completely well and was able to go into the army.  He said “I don’t know anywhere now but if you come and see me tomorrow or the next day I’ll have something for you.”  When I did go back to see him he said “I got just the job for you, you can go out to Curban on the Dubbo to Coonamble line and book any stock or wool or any goods that might be loaded there for despatch.”  They told me at the station what I had to do, what sort of book-keeping it was and that sort of thing and they also told me that one of the fettlers lived in a house at the siding and they’d be able to put me up for the time that I was there.”  So I went to see the superintendent and thanked him and he said “You can stay there until you’re fit.  It’s something and nothing of a job but we can justify you being there so you go out and take it easy and get well as soon as you can.”

So off I went to Curban.  I’d been there about a fortnight, I wasn’t feeling too good but I wasn’t feeling too bad.  Then one night I felt sore in the groin and I kept feeling to see if I could find anything and I felt a small lump.  I thought it was probably nothing and it would get better but it got worse very rapidly.  I stuck it for two or three days and it seemed to me like a boil that was coming up, it had no head on it, it was just an angry red lump.  It got that bad I could hardly walk so I said to the people where I was staying that I wasn’t feeling too good and I was going back to Dubbo.  I got on the train, and went back to Dubbo. 

The train gets into Dubbo from Coonamble about half past four or five o’clock in the afternoon.  I got off the train and I thought the best thing for me to do is go down to the doctor now.  I was feeling pretty bloody awful.  It wasn’t very far, only about half a mile and I thought I’ll walk it so I walked down and I got into this street where the doctor’s surgery was and this pain got terrific.  It was so bad that I couldn’t walk, I was hanging on to the railings as I went along.  There was houses on the side of the street that I was on and I’m going along hanging on to these railings when all of a sudden a policeman loomed up.  He said he was going to run me in for being drunk, he thought I was drunk.  Anyhow, after a while I convinced him that I wasn’t drunk but ill and I said “Instead of standing there and telling me what you’re going to do to me help me across to Birkett’s surgery!” 

So he did this after a while and Birkett come out and said to me “How are you going on?”  I said “I’m bloody awful, have a look at this.”  So I went into the surgery, he put me on a couch and took me trousers down and had a look at it.  He never said anything to me, he just looked at it and said “You’ll have to go into hospital.”  I said “When.”  He said “Now.”  I said “Is it that bad?”  He said “You’ll have to have an immediate operation.”  So I said “Why, what’s gone wrong?”  He said “I don’t know but there’s something gone wrong and you’ll have to be operated on right away because you’ve got blood poisoning.”  So I said “Well, we’d better send for a cab and I’ll go to hospital in a cab.”  He said “We won’t do anything of the kind, you’ll go with me.”  He put me in his car and took me up to the hospital himself. 

They got me into bed and he came out to see me.  He said to me “Normally we would operate on you tomorrow morning but I think this is so very urgent that if you agree I propose to do it immediately.”  I said “Well, what does that mean.”  He said “Well it means that you’ll have to have the operation without an anaesthetic.  It isn’t all that terrible, I’m only going to put a small incision in, what about it?”  I said that’s all right with me, anything to stop this pain, it’s driving me crackers.”  So they got me into the operating theatre and somebody held me feet and somebody me hands and somebody me head and he cut me open.  But it didn’t stop me seeing that as soon as he put the first incision in I saw something jump out through the hole.  I saw him shove it away into a kidney bowl that was lying on the table and I said to him “What’s that?”  and he said “Oh it’s nothing, it’s only discharge.”  Anyhow, when he finished, he didn’t seem to do much more than that, he put a tube in, stitched me up and they put me back into bed. 

I tackled him again about this thing that jumped out when he cut me open and he said “It’s nothing at all, it’s just that there was a hard core there and it popped out as soon as I made the incision.”  Well I got no more information from him but a day or two afterwards I got to know from a nurse that I was friendly with that when they’d operated on me in the first place, owing to some mistake, they left a clip inside me.  It was one of those clips that they put on a blood vessel to stop bleeding.  They’d completed the operation and this thing was left in and that’s what caused the abscess to start to form.  Well, I was in hospital for six weeks with that.  I kept having abscess after abscess and the pain was something bloody terrible.  But eventually, I got alright and got out of hospital. [mid October]  Min prevailed upon me to go and stay with her for a while until I got a bit stronger because they thought it was a bit too much for Mother to look after me and Doris was going out to work so I went along and stayed with her.

I was about two or three months before I was able to get about but as soon as I was fit, I went and offered meself for enlistment and I was accepted. [Dec 1914/Jan 1915]

4.930 words.

Back to Index