C) .}1..i•;Y A STATE Government LIBRARY of South Australia
STATE !AI P A. PY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECT' •N
H 1/38
Full transcript of an interview with
JSHN WILLIAM MCLEOD
on 19 June 1986
by Beth M. Robertson
Recording available on cassette
Access for research: Unrestricted Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library OH 1/38 JOHN WILLIAM MCLEOD
NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT This transcript was created by the J. D. Somerville Oral History Collection of the State Library. It conforms to the Somerville Collection's policies for transcription which are explained below. Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The State Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the interview, nor for the views expressed therein. As with any historical source, these are for the reader to judge. It is the Somerville Collection's policy to produce a transcript that is, so far as possible, a verbatim transcript that preserves the interviewee's manner of speaking and the conversational style of the interview. Certain conventions of transcription have been applied (ie. the omission of meaningless noises, false starts and a percentage of the interviewee's crutch words). Where the interviewee has had the opportunity to read the transcript, their suggested alterations have been incorporated in the text (see below). On the whole, the document can be regarded as a raw transcript.
Abbreviations: The interviewee's alterations may be identified by their initials in insertions in the transcript. Punctuation: Square bracket [] indicate material in the transcript that does not occur on the original tape recording. This is usually words, phrases or sentences which the interviewee has inserted to clarify or correct meaning. These are not necessarily differentiated from insertions the interviewer or by Somerville Collection staff which are either minor (a linking word for clarification) or clearly editorial. Relatively insignificant word substitutions or additions by the interviewee as well as minor deletions of words or phrases are often not indicated in the interest of readability. Extensive additional material supplied by the interviewee is usually placed in footnotes at the bottom of the relevant page rather than in square brackets within the text. A series of dots, .... indicates an untranscribable word or phrase. Sentences that were left unfinished in the normal manner of conversation are shown ending in three dashes, - - Spelling: Wherever possible the spelling of proper names and unusual terms has been verified. A parenthesised question mark (?) indicates a word that it has not been possible to verify to date. Typeface: The interviewer's questions are shown in bold print.
Discrepancies between transcript and tape: This proofread transcript represents the authoritative version of this oral history interview. Researchers using the original tape recording of this interview are cautioned to check this transcript for corrections, additions or deletions which have been made by the interviewer or the interviewee but which will not occur on the tape. See the Punctuation section above.) Minor discrepancies of grammar and sentence structure made in the interest of readability can be ignored but significant changes such as deletion of information or correction of fact should be, respectively, duplicated or acknowledged when the tape recorded version of this interview is used for broadcast or any other form of audio publication.
2 AM/15/129-617i Mr Jack McLEOD ii 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Preface 111
Notes to the Transcript iv
Family and Background 1 Father's work as a teamster Uncle Jack of We of the Never-Never Maternal grand mother Mother's youth and childbirth experiences
Childhood 11 Gawler home Father's way with horses Working a team
Schooling 18 Games and pranks
Childhood continued 21 The Gawler Show Family leaving Gawler Life in the Mount Pleasant and Monarto South railway construction camps
Work 25 Nippering for navvies Family's move to the Tod River works, Eyre Peninsula Working scoop horses Blacksmith apprenticeship Father's injury
Return to Gawler 40 Blacksmithing Sandcarting with father in the North Para River Cruelty to horses Effects of the Depression
Collateral Material in File 8617 includes: Photographs P8617A,B.
Cover Illustration Jack McLeod aged about eighteen with scoop horse Jimmy at the Tod River Reservoir works. P8617A. ATB/15/129-617i Mr Jack McLEOD iii 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
PREFACE
John Williams (Jack) McLeod was born in 1904 and named for his father's brother, 'The Quiet Stockman' of We of the Never-Never. Jack's father, 'a real Scotchman', was a teamster for Theodore Ey, the Gawler chaff merchant, during Jack's childhood and infused Jack with a love of horses. When Jack was about thirteen his father joined his brother as a teamster for Timms and Kidman who had the contracts for the Mount Pleasant to Balhannah and Monarto South to Sedan railway lines. Jack, his parents and four younger brothers and sisters, went first to live at Mount Pleasant and then in tents at Monarto South. There Jack left school and began work 'nippering' for the navvies. The McLeod families then went with Timms and Kidman to the Tod River Reservoir where Jack learned the black- smith trade. In 1922, with his father recuperating from an accident and the 'tidying off' of the Todd River Scheme completed, Jack and his family returned to Gawler. Soon afterwards they bought a team of horses and Jack and his father became sand carters, working the North Para River. When the river sand was worked out in later years, Mr McLeod first managed a sand washing plant and then became a storeman with local stores. He married in 1934 and had one son.
Mr McLeod was 81 years of age at the time of the interview.
Mr McLeod is a confident speaker with a marvellous memory and a most evocative manner of speaking. He is softly spoken but record levels of the tape recordings are reasonable. There is little extraneous noise apart from faint traffic sounds and a little noise in the rest of the unit.
The interview session resulted in three hours of tape recorded information.
'S.A. Speaks: An Oral History of Life in South Australia before 1930' was a Jubilee 150 project conducted under the auspices of the History Trust of South Australia for two years and two months ending December 1986. The Interviewees are broadly representative of the population of South Australia as it was in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Selection of Interviewees was guided by a Sex and Occupation Sample calculated from the 1921 Census and Inter- viewees were suggested, in the main, by people who responded to 'S.A. Speaks' publicity. Each interview was preceded by an unrecorded preliminary interview during which details about the Interviewee's family history and life story were sought to help develop a framework for the interview.
As stated in the Conditions of Use for Tape Recordings and Transcripts adopted for the 'S.A. Speaks' project: 'The copyright in the item(s) [viz, the tapes and transcripts of Interview 8617] and all the rights which normally accompany copyright including the right to grant or withhold access to them, conditionally or unconditionally, to publish, reproduce or broadcast them, belongs in the first instance to the History Trust of South Australia for the purposes of the 'S.A. Speaks' project and after the cessation of that project to the Libraries Board of South Australia for the purposes of the Mortlock Library of South Australiana.' ATB/15/129-617i Mr Jack McLEOD iv 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT
Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the spoken word. It was the policy of the Transcriptionist, Chris Gradolf, and the Interviewer, as editor, to produce a transcript that is, so far as possible, a verbatim transcript that preserves the Interviewee's manner of speaking and the informal, conversational style of the interview. Certain conventions of trans- cription have been applied (i.e. the omission of meaningless noises, redundant false starts and a percentage of the Interviewee's crutch words). Also, each Interviewee was given the opportunity to read the transcript of their interview after it had been proofread by the Interviewer. The Interviewee's suggested alterations have been incorporated in the text (see below). On the whole, however, the document can be regarded as a raw transcript.
Researchers using the original tape recording of this interview are cautioned to check this transcript for corrections, additions or deletions which have been made by the Interviewer or the Interviewee but which will not occur on the tapes. Minor discrepancies of gram mar and sentence structure made in the interest of readability can be ignored but significant changes such as deletions of information or correction of fact should be, respectively, duplicated or acknowledged when the tape recorded version of this interview is used for broadcast or publication on cassettes.
Abbreviations
The Interviewee, Jack McLeod, is referred to by the initials NI in all editorial insertions in the transcript.
Punctuation
Square brackets [ 1 indicate material in the transcript that does not occur on the original tape recording.
The Interviewee's initials after a word, phrase or sentence in square brackets, i.e. [word or phrase JM] indicates that the Interviewee made this par- ticular insertion or correction. All uninitialled parentheses were made by the Interviewer.
An series of dots, indicates an untranscribable word or phrase.
Sentences that were left unfinished in the normal manner of conversation are shown ending in three dashes, - - -.
Spelling
Wherever possible the spelling of proper names and unusual terms has been verified. Where uncertainty remains the word has been marked with a cross in the right hand margin of the Interview Log and Data Sheet which can be consulted in the Interview File.
Typeface
The Interviewer's questions are shown in bold print. ATB/I5/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD I. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
'S.A. Speaks: An Oral History of Life in South Australia Before 1930' Beth Robertson interviewing Mr Jack McLeod41111.11111.11111 11111111111111111111111111111111 on 19 June 1986 TAPE I SIDE A
Could you start by telling me your full name?
John William McLeod.
What was the date of your birth?
Twenty first of August nineteen hundred and four.
Where were you born?
Balaklava.
Is that where you spent your childhood?
No, four years I spent at Balaklava, and we came on from Balaklava to Gawler. We spent all my school days at Gawler, and then my father got a job with Mr Timms on the railway lines - building railway lines. The two railway lines we was on were Balhannah to Mount Pleasant, then from Monarto South to Palmer, which the station wasn't named Palmer, it was Apamurra.
Apamurra?
Apamurra. That's about two mile out from Palmer. Then we journeyed from there over to the West Coast, nineteen mile out from Port Lincoln, to what they call Tod River.
I'd like to ask you about those different episodes on your life a little later on. I'd like now to ask you a bit about your family. What was your father's name?
Lachlan Robert - a little bit Scotch.
Yes. Where did he grow up?
Balaklava.
What did you know of his family's background?
Of my Dad, I only knew of his mother, my grandmother, but [I knew] all of his sisters and brothers - there was round about eight of them in that family, including the Quiet Stockman of We of the Never-Never. I won't let him be forgotten because I was named after him. Most of all of my Dad's brothers was all teamsters - horsemen, great horsemen - and that's how they was - - -. The McLeod name was employed by Timms, the big contractors [Timms & Kidman, rail and general contractors], because they was capable men. ATB/I5/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 2. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
There's many a time I've seen my father with sixteen horses on the wagon - well they take controlling. He had a severe accident through a team of horses. The men that was on Tod River was out on strike and the old horse boss got him to change his horses to give his team a spell and take another lot. Well, the horses he took, wasn't used to breechin' - going down the hills [when the horse's weight is thrown on to the breeching leather around its hindquarters]. They started kicking. They had a big old trailer for a wagon with just planks on. Dad got up so he wouldn't get a kick and the planks got shaken off, and he went [over], and the back wheel missed his knee and missed his ankle and crushed the rest of his leg. Before he went, he had said to the old horse boss, 'If you take my near-side leader [and put him in this team], you can take the team yourself'.* Well, it was just as well he done that, because those horses went all the way in from White's River to Tumby Bay on their own - that old leader took them in. He hung to the side of the road and took him all the way in to the well a mile out from Tumby Bay where they used to water the horses. Otherwise - well, Dad was laying on the road then for about seven hours before they came out and found him.
They saw the team without him and went back and looked for him.
Yes, someone told young Joe Timms, who was in Tumby Bay, that a team was on the road.
You said that the men on the Tod River scheme were out on strike. Your father wasn't?
No, they give him permission to take the team to meet the Wandana at Tumby Bay with oats, bran, pollard and chaff - feed for the horses.
He was going to collect that was he?
Yes.
And the striking men had let him do that.
Oh yes, they allowed him to do it.
We'll be talking some more about the Tod River. What did you know of your father's work when he was a very young man? Do you know how he started out?
Yes. I think his first job was, he was driving a team - plough team - on the Werocata Station, out from Balaklava, which was owned by a great man, S.S. Ralli. You can read books about him. He was the man that had the first motorcar around Balaklava, which was one of those old buggy-wheel ones.
* See page 16 for more about the benefits of an experienced near-side leader. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 3. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
And he also bred long dachshund dogs - they were English dogs. Then Dad went from there to Gawler, off of Werocata Station.
Had his father before him been a teamster?
No. His father before him was a windmill mechanic and he finished up break- ing his neck. He was up doing something to the fans of the wheel and a gust of wind caught it and the tail swung around and hit him and bumped him off and broke his neck. Yes, he was an old windmill mechanic. In fact about two years ago, the hammer my grandfather used - a special hammer for rivetting the fans on to the wheels and that - I only give it to Brian [son] to take up to his place. In fact young Megan [granddaughter] took it to school. They had to take a thing to school and she took this hammer of her great-great- grandfather.
Did you ever know him yourself?
No, not to say that I did. I could have seen him in my four years when I was at Balaklava, but he got killed. It was a strange thing. A young chap come to Gawler, the minister of the Church of Christ, Mervyn Laurie, he's got three or four sons ministers now - he's still down at Victor Harbor - and it was Mervyn Laurie's grandfather's windmill that my grandfather fell off. Well, got knocked off, but we always say fall.
Did you know whether your grandfather worked as an independent mechanic or for some company?
No, he had his own business. See, there was no other way that you'd get water in those days, only by windmill. Every farmerld have, one, two, perhaps three, four, windmills. Well, it'd keep you pretty busy putting in new washers and new fans and new tails.
Yes, I imagine it would have been a fairly lonely sort of occupation.
Yes, and it was all done on a pushbike too. That was my grandfather on my Dad's side.
What sort of work did your father do when you first moved into Gawler?
He was driving a team for Theodore Ey - a hay wagon - eight horse team.
What would his daily work have involved?
In those days, it'd be four o'clock in the morning - you'd get up, feed your horses, groom the eight down, put the collar, hames and winkers on them, and tie them up, and they'd give them their breakfast. Dad'd come in to breakfast and he'd go off again and yoke them up and away he'd go - him and an ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 4. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
offsider. The of fsider would stack the hay and Dadid do the pitching - out of the stacks or off the stooks. They'd go out as much, sometimes, about, oh, fourteen mile for a load of hay. That'd be a day's work, a long day, by the time they got up and done the horses and then came back with the load, threw it in the mill, then took the horses out, unyoked them, fed them up - give them their tea - go and have his own tea, then go back again and give the horses their supper. It'd be longer - be more than seven or eight hours in those days.
Do you remember any particular men who worked with him?
Yes. One chap was the idol of my eye. He went to the war - First World War - and the day he left to go away I gave him a cord for his pyjamas, made out of what we used to call tomboy stitch. Do you know it, with the cotton reel?
Yes.
Red and blue - that was the football colour he played. Then he married and all his boys have been married.
What was his name?
Ward - Roy Ward.
Did he work for some years with your father?
Oh yes, on the hay wagons, yes.
Would your father have more than one man working with him at a time?
No, only be two on a wagon.
When you were a schoolboy, did you ever go out with your father when he was working?
Couldn't keep me home. (laughs) Yes, I had a little hay fork about that long.
What, about four feet long?
Yes. I'd turn the sheaves so all Dad'd have to do was put his fork in and toss them up. See, I'd lay them out, tails to him - the butt away from you and the tails to you, to throw the sheaf.
The tails are the heads of the grain.
The head - the grains - yes.
Would they have been just lying in single sheaves on the ground or would they have been - - -?
Be in the stook. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD .5. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
So you'd go along and lay them all out.
Yes.
Would you go out frequently with him during school term?
Oh no. No, only Saturdays. They'd have a short trip Saturday morning, perhaps out about three or four mile. That'd be the short trip Saturday morning. Oh no, I wouldn't be allowed not to go to school. I would have if they'd let me.
You were telling me that you were named for your father's brother. Can you tell me a bit about him?
That's the one that run away to Elsey Station with Mrs Gunn - Mr and Mrs Gunn. Aeneas Gunn - she wrote a book all about We of the Never-Never. I've got that book.
Did you know him when you were a boy?
What, Uncle Jack? Oh yes.
What can you tell me about him?
After he came - - -. When Mr Gunn died and Mrs Gunn sold up and went to Victoria, he came back to Angaston. His trade was a motor mechanic and he got sick of it. He was at Maitland before he run away and they didn't know where he was for twelve months, till Mrs Gunn made him write home to his mother. He went to Angaston then and went in with a chap by the name of Johnson - Johnson & McLeod - in the garage. Then when Mr Johnson died, Uncle Jack carried on, but none of his boys would follow his footsteps. Two of them went in the police force. The one left the police force and he's got a clerical position at Whyalla.
Did your Uncle Jack tell you about his days up North?
Oh yes. He told me some good stories too.
Do you remember any of them?
Oh, very good. (laughs) Yes.
I'd be interested to hear one or two.
I'll tell you one. I mean, don't take no offence by it.
No.
After they'd settled down up there, there was about seven or eight boundary riders, and Mrs Gunn had a Chinese cook and he done all the cooking for all the men and everything. Birthday cakes and everything he'd do. They built a ATS/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 6. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
great big room out of stones and mud and they put a big fireplace in it and the men'd sit in there of a night and have a big log in the fireplace, and that's where they'd play cards of a night, or talk.
Well, there was one chap by the name of Paddy. He used to come every three months with the mail and goods in a - four horses and a, like a, spring trolley. Well, he'd stop there over night and he used to tease the life out of this Chinese chap. They called him Cheon.
One night there they was all sitting around the fire and they was teasing him, and this Paddy said to him, 'Cheon, how is it that you don't get cross and nasty with us, the way I tease you?' And this Chinese chap said to him, 'No,' he says, 'Cheon don't get cross. Cheon's a very placid man. It takes a lot to upset Cheon, but me tell you, when you stop teasing Cheon, Cheon stop peeing in the soup'. (laughs)
Now, whether that was right or not, I don't know, but that was Uncle Jack's story.
That doesn't sound like something that Mrs Gunn would have written in her book.
Oh no, she wouldn't, no. Oh, he reckoned it was right. Oh, he used to tell me some stories. He always would have liked to have gone back and had a trip and I always promised him that when I finished work, that we'd go back in the caravan, in those days. Of course he didn't last that long. I would have taken him back to Elsey Station. There's a big plaque up there with all their names on it - on the station, where the station was.
Did you remember when Mrs Gunn's book first came out?
No. I could get it.
Did your family get a copy at the time?
The book? No. I bought the book - oh, I think it was somewhere in town. Oh, I've read it that many times, I could nearly recite it off.
But the family didn't make a point of getting it when it first came out.
No. No, they wasn't interested. I was the only one that was interested with Uncle Jack.
Was he a bit of a black sheep?
He was a good living man - a good living man - but he was a man that'd want to be on the go all the time. And he liked the bush. He'd go out mustering when it'd come mustering time, the wild horses - and he might be out for two ATB/I5/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 7. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
months, leaving the others. Mustering them up and bring them in to brand them. Then they'd send them from there over to India to Robb. You may have heard or read books about Robb, the great horse man - Indian horse dealer.
Did you ever, when you were a boy, think of following in your uncle's footsteps?
Would have loved it. I'd have loved it.
What do you think held you back?
Oh well, it was the school days and then once we started moving from railway to railway and the reservoirs, I was with horses and that was just what I always wanted - to be with horses. I could've gone to Angaston and worked for Uncle Jack when we come back from the West Coast, and he'd have signed me on as apprentice - two and six a week and my tucker. But then when Dad couldn't get a job, and then he bought the team of horses, well, someone had to go with him. I was the oldest boy, well, I had to settle with him. Because those days families helped families more than what they really do at the present time.
You were mentioning earlier that you did know your father's mother. Can you tell me a bit about her?
Oh yes, Granny. She was Granny to everybody in Balaklava, and if she was walking down the street in her days - she was walking down any street - and anyone started up the bagpipe, upid go her dress and way she'd go with a Scotch dance. Don't matter where it was. (laughs) And she was one of those little old Scotch women, wore black gloves up to her [elbows], little bonnet with the ribbons underneath, and the little dark dresses.
Do you think she was something of a midwife in Balaklava?
Yes, she used to go round helping people with the birth of childs.
That's often why they were nicknamed Granny.
Yes, that's right. There were about eight or nine in the family she brought up. Oh no, Granny was - - -. There was myself and my two brothers. She'd come to stop at Gawler and she'd love to get in our room - the boys' room - with us, finding out what we'd done at school and what pranks we used to get up to. She was great.
Did she ever tell you about her childhood?
Yes, she was born on a dairy in Scotland, and she come out from Scotland. The eldest boy of the family was born on the sailing ship coming out - on the Electric, was the name of the sailing ship. As years went by and Uncle Donald ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 8. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
applied, in those days, for a pension, he couldn't get it because he didn't have his Birth Certificate, and they wouldn't give you another one in those days. Well, we had to turn around and we went to his insurance [representative], and he went to - - He found that Uncle Donald was born on the Electric coming out from Scotland, so they traced the ship back to the port in Scotland and they caught up to his Birth Certificate. Because the captain of the ship registered him at birth.
Yes, she would have been a real pioneer then, and it must have been very difficult for a woman giving birth on a sailing ship.
Yes, the captain done the birth of the child and everything. See, in those days, most of those old sailing captains were qualified doctors - or, say, after a fashion - but they knew enough to do what they had to do.
When you were living in Gawler, you'd mentioned that your Granny would come and visit you. Did you go and visit her in Balaklava?
Balaklava, yes.
Would you stay with her for a time?
Yes. When we first came down, we went back nearly every Christmas, because all of them was there. Nearly all the girls on my Dad's - my Dad's sisters. One of them had the barber's shop at Balaklava for, oh, somewhere around about fifty to sixty years. His name was Tidswell - married Dad's eldest sister.
Would the whole family gather on Christmas Day?
Yes, all that was there. And of course my mother's side was there at Bala- klava as well.
Whose house would you gather at?
Granny's. Oh yes, we had to eat Granny's pudding. (laughs) Always made it in a big cloth. They were great days.
Do you think that your grandmother had an influence on your upbringing?
Well, she was an old lady. She was a terrific Scotch and her —. She'd come to stay with you or we would go to stay with them - the last words she'd say to you when you were leaving her, she'd put her arm around your shoulder, 'Now be good children'. She used to say that to all of us. Put her arm round you and - - -. Whether we - you know, we got a sort of upbringing, we res- pected her, and just those two or three little words meant more than respect to us, that we never took it in our minds to damage those words, because they come from Granny. So, that was the poor old soul. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 9. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
END OF TAPE I SIDE A: TAPE 1 SIDE B
I'd like to ask you a little bit about your mother's side of the family now. What was your mother's name?
Susan Dyer.
Where did she grow up?
Balaklava.
What did her father do for a living?
He used to help his brother. His brother had one horse drays, carting around the town - like garbage - and he used to help him at times. Or other times he'd be in the foundry at Balaklava. He was a maintenance man around the town. He never ever had a - - -. Well, only trade he had, I think, was bending an elbow at the hotel. (laughs) In those days they'd go in there and they'd go for about - one glass of beerld last them about an hour. They'd stop there smoking and - - -.
Was he a heavy drinker?
Oh no. He'd get a bit topsy at times. I didn't know very much of him. I can only just remember him, and that's all - he died.
So did he die relatively early?
Yes. Yes, he died I think somewhere on or around about his sixty.
Like with your other grandfather, were there particular circumstances with his death that you remember?
What, the other one - the one that fell off the windmill?
Did your mother's father meet with an accident, or was there illness?
No, it was illness.
You were telling me last week that your mother worked in various places before she married. Can you tell me about her working life?
Yes, she worked for Upton the Chemist, she worked for Dr Pelew the doctor, and she also went from there to Port Pine and worked for the butchers, her and her sister. I can't just recall the name of the butcher. Not Cavanagh - no, something like Cavanagh. Then she went back and worked for Dr Pelew and then they were married.
What did you gather she did for these people, what sort of work?
General housework and washing and ironing. Housework right through. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 10. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Of course Pelew is a well known name in the cricketing world.
Yes, well it was their grandfather that had the shop at Balaklava - the doctor. And the old Dr Pelew used to do all the refereeing in the boxing tournaments here years ago.
How was the Pelew she worked for related to Nick Pelew?
Well, they'd be Nip Pelew's uncles - old uncles. And the old chemist, he only died about eight or nine year ago. He came from Balaklava to Kensington, old Mr Upton - that was the old chemist.
Did your mother ever talk to you about her childhood and how she was brought up?
Only the way they used to go out dancing and they always went in two horses and a trolley, going out to the barn dances all around. There would always be about a dozen or eighteen, and they'd sit along on bags of chaff, going out to the dances. They worked long hours, in the early days.
My eldest sister, she's still alive, she's eighty six. Then I was the next. Then there was Jessie, she died - she was born at Balaklava. Us three was born at Balaklava - the rest were born at Gawler. [break in recording]
You were saying that the oldest three of you were born up at Balaklava. How many more in the family?
There was another four. There was four boys and three girls in our family. But the last boy didn't live very long. He had something the matter with the throat and they brought him into the Children's Hospital and operated but it wasn't a success.
How old would you have been when he was born?
When Lennie was born I would've been about ten or eleven.
Do you remember the time of his birth?
Oh yes. Yes, in our home, by an old lady - a midwife. She had a great big old white apron on and like a little - I always used to say it was a handkerchief tied around here [on to the crown of her head]. Old Mrs McEwin, and she used to charge two pound.
Did you children know what was going on?
That the baby was being born in the house? Oh yes. We was explained that by my mother's niece that was very close to my mother. In fact she was my mother's pet. She explained everything to us. But we were not to talk about it. We was told not to talk about it, and I can remember her saying to us, 'You ATB/I5/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 11. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
go to Sunday School and what you learn at Sunday School is the same as what I'm telling you now. You mustn't repeat things'. She was a Sunday School teacher, see.
A lot of children grew up not making any connection between their mother's pregnancy and the arrival of the baby.
Yes. Oh no, we knew at that age. But the only time that - when I was - - -. When Bob, that was the one that was the chemist - when he was born, we was living down by the Gawler Caravan Park then, and Dad was going up to feed the horses and I went with him. And old Mrs McEwin was there too, and she took over and they was waiting for the doctor to come. Well, we were going up to where the stables were and the horses in the dark of a morning, and we passed the doctor with his little bag. I can remember my dear old Dad saying to me, 'There you are son, your brother's in that bag'. (laughs)
What did you think about that?
Well, of course I started asking questions. He said, 'You wait till you get home. You'll see him'. That's all I got told. Ask a kiddie today, and round about five or six they can just about tell you.
We were talking a little bit earlier about your mother. How many brothers and sisters did she have? Was it a big family?
Oh yes, there was about seven in her family, and I think there was eight in Dad's.
Did your parents ever tell you how they met and came to marry?
Yes, in a dance hall - an old barn dance. And they all used to go in this wagon, you know, I was saying. That's how they started.
Do you have any memories yourself of the first four years of your life at Bala- klava?
No, only - I can remember my Grandma, I can remember the old Salvation Army that used to play on Saturday night in a round ring in the street not far away from Uncle Ray's, the barber's shop. A lot of the women and people'd get down the street on Saturday night and there they'd be in groups, talking. That's about as much as 1 can remember until later, when we'd go to Bala- klava for holidays.
When the family moved to Gawler, do you remember the move itself?
Yes. Went down by train. Our furniture went down - was loaded at Balaklava and went down to Gawler. We went down and we lived over what we called —. You know I was telling you the Church of Christ? ATB/I5/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 12. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Yes.
Behind the Church of Christ there's a little street down there we lived.
Did you stay in that house for some time?
No. We had only practically shifted in there so we had a place until the house that was attached to the stables was empty. The chap in it had to get out, see, because Ey's wanted it for Dad, because he was the new teamster, and of course the house went with - was connected with the job - because he had to feed the horses and all that.
Where was this house?
In High Street.
Were you north of the Lyndoch Road?
Yes, just off the Lyndoch Road. Straight down by the Masonic Hall. That place in front of the Masonic Hall, which we called Union Street, that's what they call the Pioneer Gardens. That was the first cemetery in Gamier, and when they broke that cemetery up I carted all the headstones from each grave to the back street, right along the edge. Then eventually they took them down to the Council yards. That was the cemetery. They couldn't come up off the main street because it was too steep up, because it was two horses and a hearse, so they had to come up Lyndoch Hill, then down Union Street and in the gate at the back, because you came flat off the road. That's where Dad looked after all the horses, just down there.
Then there's a big place there turned into two flats now. That place was put up and that was a shirt factory - Attiah was the Syrian's name that run - - -. My sister, my eldest sister - the one that's alive - she was the foreman there - in that place.
You were telling me your family took over the home attached to the stables. What sort of a house was it? How would you describe it?
Oh, it was an ordinary house, with a passage. There was one, two - the two front rooms - and a verandah on the front, and then the dining room, and then the spare bedroom, then the big kitchen, and then a small tin room - that was us boys' room. With a passage right through. The old style places have a passage right through them.
Was it a stone house?
Oh yes. Slate - slate stone - nearly all those places in Gawler were in those days. The slate was quarried - - -. As you're going into Gawler, the racecourse ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 13. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
is on your left and there's a big open quarry up on the hill - up what we called Rigg's Hill. That's where all the slate stone come from.
You were saying that the house was attached to the stables. Where was it in relation to the stable yards and buildings?
Oh well, it wouldn't been about from here to the other units over there [a road's width]. The big yard at the back of our place, well we kept the drays and hay wagons in there, and then the stables was that side of it.
Right at the back.
Yes. They're all knocked down now, all bar one little part.
Is the house itself still standing?
Oh yes. And it had a glorious fig tree. Had a great big - those big purple ones - they call them turkey figs. And you know, they'd be juicy and they wouldn't make your mouths as sore as those other little ones. Oh it was a marvellous big old fig tree and it's still there.
With the backyard area being used for the drays and so on, was the family able to have any garden or fruit trees?
Oh yes. We had about eighteen to twenty ducks - that was my job, mixing the bran and pollock for their tea. If Mum wasn't home and she wasn't looking they got wheat - more than once. (laughs) But Dad was pretty crafty. He knew how much bran should've been there and he'd catch me out every time I'd do it.
Did the ducks have water to swim in?
Yes we had a round pond, in the ground. Not cemented in, just a round hole dug out.
I know how messy ducks can be. Did they make a mess of the place?
Yes. What we used to do, from where the pond was we'd run a stretch of barbed wire that they couldn't come out near Mum's clothesline. Because she never used to be too pleased about it.
What other sort of animals did the family have? Did you have chooks?
At times we had chooks. Always had a dog. I was never without a dog. In fact we had a dog right up until - oh, it was just before I retired was the last dog we had. I always had a dog.
Would you be using the ducks' eggs for eating?
Oh yes, ducks' eggs. A little bit richer than a fowl egg. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 14. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Were there any old wives' tales about ducks' eggs? Some people are a bit sus- picious of them.
Never heard of them. In those days you couldn't afford them. If you had them, well you had to use them. All my young sisters and brothers used to cry Christmas time, because there'd always be a couple of ducks get their heads chopped off. My Dad'd never kill a duck. Mug Alec [Jack] would have to hold it and Mum cut it's head off. (laughs)
Did she?
Yes. Because I had to hold it by the legs and it'd flutter its wings.
Was your father a bit soft hearted in that regard?
Oh, he just didn't like killing a duck or a fowl. But he could've been crafty, let Mum do it. But he was a great man - a great man with horses. Old Joe Timms, when we finished Tod River, he thanked everybody and he said, 'Now I'm going to thank the best man in Australia - the best teamster in Australia - for what he does and the way he looks after horses, and a man that can get the horses to pull without flogging them with a stick or a whip'.
What do you think was special about the way your father treated horses?
He had a knack. My old Uncle Jack, he'd never lasso a horse when they was breaking horses in. He'd never lasso. They'd have a big round ring and he'd get in there with that horse and he'd walk around and he wouldn't take his eyes away from the horse's eyes. Eventually he'd get up and pat that horse and the connection was made.
Did your father break his own horses?
Oh yes. I took it on, then, when I was capable.
Did he use that sort of technique?
Dad? Yes. The only thing I ever see him do, once, that I wasn't pleased over it - they had a little horse that they called Plum. That was his name. And when that horse'd feel tired he'd lay down, in the harness or anything, and wouldn't get up. So Dad tried a lump of dirt and put in his mouth, right at the back of his tongue, and that wouldn't shift him. So the next best was he got a bottle of water and poured the water down his ear. He soon got up and shook his head.
And he had another remedy. Everybody used to say - Dad was called Bob, Lachlan Robert - and, 'How is it you keep your horses in such good condition?' Of course he was a proper Scotchman, 'B... feed 'em'. He was a Scotchman ATB/15/129-617 Mir Jack McLEOD 15. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
and he'd have the old pipe and a rainy day the pipe'd be tipped over so the water wouldn't put the tobacco out. He was a Scotchman.
He had a remedy of his own, and that remedy was pure turps - a table- spoonful of pure turps - and two big handfuls of bran, sprinkle it all over, tie [the horses] up - no chaff - tie them up until they ate that - and then not give them a drink for an hour after. And through them eating pure turps with the bran, and all that fumes - congregated together in the horse's stomach - with the fumes, that killed all the bot flies inside, that hang on to - - -. See, a bot fly'll hang on - stick on, like that - or the worms. All horses and dogs'll have worms - about that long [two inches]. You'd follow their droppings around, and here was these dead bot flies and dead worms. That was his remedy. And through doing that and keeping their stomach cleared of bot flies and worms, that's how he always had a shine on the horse's coat.
Would he dose them as a regular procedure? Once a year, once six months?
Oh yes, give them a ball.
About how often?
Well it all depends. If it was a - - -. You'd have to do a mare - you'd do a mare if you were going to put her to be in foal. Well, you'd do her before you put her to the entire so she had a clean body inside with no worms to interfere, with the running milk veins and all that connected with them. But with a gelding, well you could do a gelding any time, but not a mare.
Do you remember, were there commercial treatments that your father could have been using instead?
Oh yes. From the vets. Yes, the vets'd come, but they'd turn around - they'd bottle this up and bottle that up. Dad'd buy a bottle of pure turps, do it himself, for half the price - quarter of the price.
Did he have much call to use the vets?
No. He even done - when any of the mares had foals - he always brought their own in. I only seen him once that he had anything very troublesome, and he finished up putting a rope on the legs of the horse - the little foal - to bring it out. My eye-opener that one.
How old were you at the time?
About - oh, might have been fifteen. That was the pride of my life, that foal.
About how many foals would your father be breeding a year? ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 16. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
See, we had our own entire and that entire, on the side of him - on the side of his foreleg - was a pair of glasses. Just as if you'd pick your glasses up and put them on. And that was the station he came off of - the Spectacle Brand.
END OF TAPE 1 SIDE B: TAPE 2 SIDE A
You were saying that you had your own stallion. Did your father breed more than one foal a year?
Well it all depends. If we had the big contracts, such as the railway or the abattoirs, when they were rebuilding all the Roundhouse at Mile End - we done all that carting, and sent all that sand down - well, you couldn't mess around. And not only that, we couldn't afford not have him working. He was one of our main horses in the shafts. He was a good one too. He wasn't a vicious stallion. He would put three horses on - -. We used to always - we'd break in horses for the baker's and the butcher's cart, and we'd always put that horse when we was breaking him in, in between two up in the front with the stallion. And if that horse, you know, didn't like going - pulling or going - the old stallion'd nip him on the back, just above the tail. That's make him go up into the collar.
In your childhood years, when your father was working for Mr Ey, were foals being born at that time?
No, they were Ey's horses. We didn't buy our teams until we went back in 1920 from Tod River.
We'll talk about that some more. How many horses was your father looking after for Mr Ey?
Oh, one part there, he - - -. There was two hay wagon teams - two of eight - that's sixteen. Well, see, he could have twenty in the stables - because there was two on the chaff trolley and they always kept two spare ones in case one had to be left home to be shod, sent to the blacksmith. Of course, then over the other side of the river where Mr Ey lived, he had a couple of big paddocks there that he used to leave the other horses there. Time'd come, perhaps, a horse looked a bit tired, well Dad'd take perhaps a couple out to the paddock and bring two in from the paddock. That's how he rotated them around. But never would they spell a near-side leader - that's the horse on this side, on the left hand side.
Why was that?
Because that's the horse that would hang to the road. He'd go along on a road and you wouldn't have to worry about it. That one'cl keep right on the edge of the road and of course all the others were coupled to him and you wouldn't ATB/15/129-617 Nir Jack McLEOD 17. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
have to worry about it on the road. You'd never leave your near-side leader out. But he always got the first nose-bag.
So you'd only have one in your team who was capable of taking that position?
Oh no, the others'd do it, but you'd get your near-side leader, and he was always what we always - always class him as your right hand man, near-side leader.
You couldn't afford to leave him out?
Oh no, wouldn't leave him out, because you'd have to perhaps keep your eye open wide. Dad, and old fellows like that, they'd smoke, you know. When they were going out about the fourteen mile [that day], they'd get going on the road and get the near-side leader going, they had their old pipe sitting up there and the eyes shut. The old leader'd take them eight or ten mile. Oh, marvellous horses.
Yes, no need to ask where you got your love of horses from.
No, I was born in with them. I often think - I had a big old horse from Mr Smart at Glenelg. He had some sand off us and he rang us and wanted to know if we wanted a good shafter and at that time and moment we did. We took the horse for what he owed us for the sand and I only had him home two days and he run a nail up in his foot. Well, then he had a poisoned foot, so we had to cut all the frog away and get right down where the nail went in and fill that up with soap and tar. Well, he was about five weeks off and every day I'd give him a bran mash and he put on weight, and he weighed eighteen and a half hundredweight - he was my shafter, and I claimed him. His name was Mac, and I claimed him, and he was a beautiful horse. Didn't need to drive him.
He'd be on the shaft at the - -
He'd be in the shafts and three more'd be in the front of him.
He'd be doing a lot of the pulling.
I don't know if you ever run into Dr Bob Gillen?
No.
Eye specialist he is. Well he used to come with me when he was in Gawler. His father was a doctor in Gawler, and he used to come on the dray and he was only a little fellow, and Mother always used to bring us down a billy of tea about ten o'clock of the morning, and he'd have a drink of 'Cleod's tea. So, I was breaking in a horse - one of the baker's - and it kicked me, and I went up that night to Dr Gillen to get strapped up. He strapped me up. 'Oh,' he said, 'I ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 18. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
want to see you, Jack,' and I said, 'What do you want? Some loam for your tennis court?' - he had a tennis court. 'Oh,' he said, 'you can put a couple of loads there. No,' he said, 'about young Bob'. He said, 'He in the road?' I said, 'No, he's all right'. I said, 'I put a shovel in the sand and make him put his legs either side and give him the old shafter's reins, because a blind man could drive the old shafter. I wouldn't allow him to take the leaders.' And he said, 'Oh, yes, he tells the wife and I about it, and he has a drink of 'Cleod's tea out the old tin billy and the can'. I said, 'No, he's all right, doctor'. I said, 'I'll watch him'. He said, 'Oh, well that's all right,' he said, tell the wife. But,' he said, 'I'll tell you what - -1 See, there was about twelve to sixteen teams in the river there, and there was some pretty tough customers. Dr Gillen said, tell you what, Jack, he's learning that sand carter's language though'. I could've jumped out the window. (laughs)
Well, we'll be talking about the sand carting a little bit later on. I wanted to ask you a little bit about your family life before we go on. Did the family attend church when you were a boy?
Oh yes, Congregational.
Did both of your parents attend?
Not Dad, no. He wouldn't be able to go to church. He wouldn't have the time to leave the pipe out of his mouth. A proper old Scotch man. Good man.
Which of your parents was the disciplinarian in the family?
Oh, Mum.
How would she discipline you children?
Deprive you of anything, especially Fridays. If you played up Friday, you didn't get a home made pasty, and that was sin, to miss out one of Mum's pasties. She always made those big old pasties that were about that long [ten inches] and a curl on them about as thick as your finger. But we never had any trouble as a family. We all helped one another.
I wanted to ask you a little bit about your school days. Which school did you attend as a boy?
Gawler Primary.
Was that far from your home?
Oh, I should say it would've been about three quarters of a mile. You know where the Gawler Oval is?
Yes. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 19. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Well, that's the school, right out side the Oval gates - that's the primary school.
About how old were you when you began?
Seven.
Do you remember starting school?
Yes. And I had a blouse on. In those days they had a galatea blouse done up at the back with the buttons, and I had a ha'penny to spend from Mr Whinnen's shop to get a halpence worth of black peppermints because I was a good boy, I was going to school.
Did the shop keeper give you that?
No, Mum give me the ha'penny. And the old fellow used to make - - -. You know, he'd get a bit of paper and he'd twirl it around. Never have a paper bag, just this little twirl.
Did you get them on your way home, or your way to school?
Oh, to school. But I had to bring one home each to my brother and sisters, and my eldest sister took me. I can remember, my teacher was Miss Ethel Green- wood. No, wait, I'm telling a lie - yes, Ethel, Ethel - the other one was Maude. I thought it was never going to come to the time to go home the first day. It was the longest day I had in my life. I was thinking of horses.
What sort of subjects did you enjoy most at school?
[misunderstands question] Oh, then you weren't allowed out the yard. You had to play in the yard, and we played - - -. Had a football and would play high cock alorum. Did you ever know that?
I've only ever heard the name.
And you'd play that.
What did that involve?
There'd be four of you. One'd stand up against the wall and another one'd put his head in there [the standing boy's chest] and bend over like that, and the next one behind, and then they'd run and jump on top of the back. Well, if you let them down, they had another chance. But if you stood up, until they said, 'high cock alorum, jig, jig, jig, ever see a monkey riding on a pig?' and didn't go down with the weight, it was their turn to go in.
Then there was the cock fighting, but I didn't go there much. I got my shirt torn and I got a quiltin' when I got home. But there was one. One gets on ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 20. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
another one's back - two of you, one on each back - and you pull around the neck and grab until you pull them to the ground. Didn't do much of that. I'd sooner not get the hiding.
Did your mother give you a bit of a thrashing when you got home?
Oh yes. Got the stick, yes. Then give me a piece of bread and jam after, when I stopped crying. (laughs)
Did you enjoy any of the subjects you were taught at school?
Yes, I really liked school. The only thing that I didn't - - I was a naughty boy, I'll tell you too. The old lady had pinch nose glasses and she must have taught everybody around Gawler for about two hundred years, I reckon, and she used to ride a bike. Well, when it'd come singing lesson, I'd stick a pin in her bike - in her tube - and then instead of me going to singing lessons, she'd send me out to mend the bike. (laughs)
Did you do that more than once?
Oh yes. I reckon her bike had more patches than every other bike around GawIer. (laughs) Miss Finch.
Did you ever wag school?
No. Mum might have come down too hard. No, I never wagged school - never done that.
You said earlier that your father wouldn't let you take a day off school to help him. Did you ever had a day off to help your father?
No, we had to go to school.
While you were at school, and perhaps as you were getting a little bit older, did you ever do half part time work outside of school hours?
The only part time work I done was when they'd be hard up at the chaff mill and I'd go in and hand sheaves of hay up to Mr Ey on the cutter - to put in the cutter for chaff. I used to get thre'pence a night.
What sort of hours would you be working at that?
Oh, only about an hour. Yes, he wouldn't keep you there no longer than that - send you home.
How far did you get with your schooling?
I didn't go any higher than Grade 7. Then I went to work. Went to work at Reedy Creek out of Palmer, nippering - carting the tools and boiling the billy for the men and that. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 21. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Had you got your Qualifying Certificate?
No, I never sat for it - no QC.
When you say you went to work, had the family already moved away from Gawler at that time, when you went to Reedy Creek?
No, we all went together.
You did.
Yes.
Before we talk a bit about the different work that you did and the family's moves, did you think the schooling that you got was worthwhile?
Oh yes. We used to take a pride in our work around Show time, because you put your work in the Show. They'd pick the best work out the class and - a great thing of cleaning up, we used to, was the freehand drawing. I can remember it quite plain. You'd go all over that with a - - -. You had to have a light hand, light pencil. Then, when you'd completed that drawing on a sheet of paper, you'd bring breadcrumbs and fine them all up and put all over, and just go over like that, and that takes all the scum off the pencil. I remember that as plain as anything.
And of course, then you'd buy thre'pence for a ticket to go to the Show from school, and buy that from the school.
Was your father involved in the Shows at all with his horses?
Oh yes, always had horses in the hay wagon. Yes, horses all had to be done up and Mr Stewart and Dew - - -. Oh, we'd, not only one we took down, we must have take down thirty, perhaps more. Every year, leading up to the Show, they'd build a new hay wagon. A far mer'd order it but they'd built it and put it in the Show, and we had that job taking that wagon down there and getting it of a night - bringing it back to the shop where they made the wagon.
Flow would the hay wagon be used during the Show?
Just in the building of it. They'd put it in and put the hay frames up and there'd be the new wagon.
That year's model?
Yes. (laughs) That's about what it was, but it was the same thing right throughout.
What would your father's team and wagon be used for in the Show? ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 22. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Oh, more than anything, pulling a wagon around, or perhaps there might be a new roller. See, when they used to roll it with horses - roll the roads - there'd be a new roller with a team of horses. Well it wouldn't only just show the roller and that off, but it'd be an advert for Ey Brothers if anyone wanted anyone to do any rolling. So that's how they'd advertise, in ways like that.
Would your father's hay cart be decorated with Mr Ey's name and things like that?
Oh yes. The wheels'd be red, the framework'd be yellow, and the shafts'd be black - I think that'd be about the three colours - and the drawbars, well, that'd be black. That'd be about the three if! can remember back.
Would the horses be decorated in any way for the Show?
Perhaps and bit of ribbon down their forelock.
I'd like to talk with you about the moves that your family made from now on, after you left school. Did the teacher to have any comment to make about you leaving school?
No. We left, and we went to Mount Pleasant. We went to my aunty's at Hyde Park and stopped overnight, then caught the cab and four horses, and their names was - oh, I've lost them now. They had all the cabs and used to go to Mannum and all that with the four horses - Graves, Graves and Son. We went up and they changed the horses three times from Adelaide to Mount Pleasant. Eventually we got there and Dad didn't get there that day with the wagon, with our furniture and that on it. So there was three houses each side of where we were, all took some of us in. And Dad came the next day, he got there.
Why had your father decided to change work?
Oh, he had a bit of a bust up with Mr Louis Ey.
Do you know what it was about?
More than for raising money. The other men was knocking off. Dad was feeding the horses an hour before they came there and an hour after tea, and the other men was getting the same money. He thought that he'd done it long enough, that he should be reimbursed with a little bit more money for looking after the horses. And he looked after the horses Saturday afternoons and Sundays as well. Any horses sick, he done all of that. Other men was getting the same money as what - - -. But if they was slack at any time, they could be stood down, but not Dad. But he wouldn't get paid for nothing. He'd have to clean out the stables or mend the harness, anything like that. So anyway one word brought another and he left - told them he'd finish up. And they came ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 23. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
the next day, Lou Ey, and apologised, and said, 'We don't want to lose you, Bob'. He says, 'No,' he said, 'but I've lost a lot'. He says, 'It's too late now,' he says, 'I rang Donald' - that's his brother who was the riding horse boss on those railway lines and that. And as soon as he knew Dad was left Ey's, he rang for him to come straight up and take on a plough team up there, on the Line.
Do you know how your mother felt about this change?
Well she didn't mind. Then, we finished that job, and then we went to Monarto South on the Sedan Line and was in tents.
Let's -talk about the time you were on the Balhannah to Mount Pleasant railway. You were living in a house, were you, at Mount Pleasant?
Yes, right across in front of the station - the Police Station.
What sort of work was your father doing?
On a plough team and a wagon, carting goods, from Balhannah right through to Mount Pleasant, for the Line.
About how old were you at this time?
Oh, I wasn't old enough to leave school then. I would've been about thirteen. But when we went down to Monarto South there was a little school there, but there wasn't enough room to put - - -. There was us five and two of my cousins - there was seven more - and there wasn't enough room in the little school, so we got a free ride in the train from Monarto South to Murray Bridge and went to school. But then we was only there about six months and got shifted on, further on, down to Reedy Creek. Well, that's where I got my first job.
Had you attended school while you were at Mount Pleasant?
Yes. They had a kettle drum there and no one could play it. Well, I used to play the kettle drum in the fife band in the school - Gawler School - so I was hat boy, because I could pay the kettle drum.
How long was the family at Mount Pleasant?
We would have been there about - tidying up and everything - about twelve months. Then word come to say that it was tidying everything up, and the next shift would be down to Monarto South.
So the Mount Pleasant Line was just about completed at that time.
Yes.
What about the Monarto South/Sedan Line? Was that just beginning? ATB/I5/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 24. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
That was the starting of it, but one part of it was done long before the Bal- hannah Line, but they didn't have the money to go on with it. After about three or four years, they came back to do it again, they had to redo all they'd done because the rabbits, being where all the banks were that the Lines go on was nice and soft, and the rabbits burrowed in, see, and let everything down. So it had to be renovated. Oh, rabbits by the dozens.
Did you go out hunting?
Oh yes.
Did the family use the meat?
The rabbits? Yes. We got sick of them, over the 'Coast. Up around Monarto South you could snare a hare at times, but over the West Coast there's no hares at all - plenty of rabbits.
You said you were living in tents on the second Line. Where were you living first of all?
In the tents? Monarto South.
Was there no township near you?
A shop and a Post Office at Monarto South.
Was the whole family in one tent, or how was it organised?
Oh no, the tents was sixteen by fourteen and you put them on a frame and put the tent over the frame, then another big fly over the top. Then you'd have one here and one there. Then you'd put a big tarpaulin over between the two of them, for a dining room.
An open air dining room?
No.
Oh, the tarpaulin would go down both sides as well.
Yes.
END OF TAPE 2 SIDE A: TAPE 2 SIDE B
How long were you in tents?
Oh, about —. Five years.
So you were in tents over at Tod River as well.
Yes. And Mother had seven boarders, but not to sleep. Had the two police- men, the pay master - that was a good man to have (laughs) - and a couple of old gangers. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 25. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Was that at Tod River?
Yes.
Let's talk a little bit more about the Monarto South railway. How long were you down there?
See, that was all flat so it didn't take long to do that. But when you came on further toward Reedy Creek and Palmer and Appamurra, there got more hills. Well, you had to cut through them. You travelled quite quick doing the flat work and once we got to Reedy Creek we struck rock cuttings - that held them back a bit.
How long was the family on that job before you went over to the West?
We would've been about eighteen months on Mount Pleasant, and I reckon about the same on Monarto South.
You were saying that you started your first job when your father was working on the Monarto South Line. Can you tell me about that?
Yes, Reedy Creek I started, my first job, and wore my first pair of long trousers. I thought I was just it. In fact I think, if I can remember back, I wanted to go to bed with them - with a pair of long moleskin trousers. (laughs) And I had to boil the billy for the navvies. Then there was one little fellow with the blacksmith - toolsmith they called him. He'd sharpen the picks and drills and the ploughs, and I had to cart them back to where they was required.
What was your position called?
Nipper. I was a nipper. Nippering they called it.
Were you working with the same team your father was working with?
That time then, he two gangs he had to plough for.
So he'd sometimes be with you.
Yes, sometimes.
With his ploughing, was he flattening out the area that the Line was going to be laid on?
Yes, see, as they'd dig it out they'd plough it, and then they'd shovel it up in drays and take it down where they had to build up.
How did you like beginning work?
Oh, good, yes. We used to boil the billies. The old navvies, you know, they might only have a jam tin for a billy, and we had to boil the water. If we ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 26. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
made the tea in the billy, we used to claim sixpence each, off of each man - navvie - and if he didn't give us the sixpence we wouldn't make his tea. Oh no, had to get our sixpence.
Was the sixpence a sort of tip?
Yes, for making the billy - making the tea.
How often would you get it?
Oh, they paid every fortnight.
So would it be sixpence a fortnight?
Oh no, sixpence a day. Oh yes. No, sixpence a day. (laughs)
That sounds like what we'd call fringe benefits.
Yes. (laughs) Yes, that's right.
Why do you think they'd pay you the sixpence?
Well, sixpence was nothing to an old navvie. It was an education to me, because I hadn't been out amongst people. Then getting out amongst the navvies. They were rough, tough and fine men. I'll not run them down because they're great men. They'd see that, when they went out and wanted more money - they'd see that the nippers got a rise too. Oh yes. They wouldn't let them put anything over the nippers.
Were there any strikes by the navvies when you were working on the railway lines?
Yes. Yes, there was a big one over West Coast, on the Tod River. They were great men, the navvies, great men. The old blacksmith - Mum, when she'd make pasties or a pie, she'd always make an extra one for old Dick, that was the old blacksmith. And he had me decked out in a belt with a watch pouch and an old gun metal watch. Do you ever remember those old black gun metal?
Yes.
Oh, you could run over them with a roller and you wouldn't break them. Then a pair of straps around there.
Round your calves?
Yes. That's bowy yangs [bowyangs] - to keep your trousers up from the dirt, the mud. He had me decked out with that.
Was that when you were on the railways?
Yes. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 27. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
So, were you his apprentice?
Well, I suppose you could call it apprentice, but you was a nipper. You wasn't signed up for anything.
Did he begin teaching you his trade?
The blacksmith? Oh, I learnt my trade as a blacksmith on the Tod River.
So it was a bit later on.
I had a bit of an idea through being up there with old Dick on the tools- smithing.
How much did you earn as a nipper?
Two pound two and six.
How often?
A week.
A week. That was pretty good pay for a young lad.
Yes. Because it was only three [pounds], seventeen and six wages - men's wages. Of course we used to get this other sixpence for making their tea. There was two old blokes up there who reckoned they wouldn't pay us, and there was only two wouldn't pay us. Well, the tub with the water in that they had — -. When they finished sharpening the drills or the picks and they'd put it in to cool them off, we told them we'd make their tea out of that, if they didn't give us our sixpence. They give it to us.
That's almost as bad as the Chinese cook.
Yes. (laughs)
Did you keep all your wages yourself or give some to your mother?
No, handed the envelope straight over. Right up, even when I was over on the Coast, when I went driving the horses, and they used to put ten bob a week away for me. If I'd have been like other boys and paid my board, I would have come back with quite a tidy little bankf old.
Were you a bit resentful about that?
No. No, I helped keep my brothers and sisters. My Mum and Dad was always good to me. I was always well fed and well clothed. Well, what else is there over there? Then we used to go once a fortnight, all of us, walk two mile down to White's Flat to a dance, in the barn.
This was over on the - - -? ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 28. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
On the Tod.
Can you tell me how your father came to move the family over to the Tod River scheme?
Yes. See the Monarto South Line run out. Well that was the end of the contract, and the Tod River contract was taken up by the [Concrete-Steel Contracting] Company. Well, like they owed the men five weeks' wages and they couldn't pay them and we'd only just got there when the men stopped, wouldn't work no more - wasn't getting no money. So the Concrete-Steel Company, kicked off and left the job and only for old Mr Joe Timms - you know, the Timms & Kidman, the cattle king - they took it over and paid all the men back five weeks, six weeks' wages. Otherwise I don't know what would've happened.
Of course it was a much bigger move for the family to make, over to Eyre Peninsula. Do you know why he made such a big move?
See, he got bigger money. He got bigger money, controlled more horses. There was three hundred horses on the Tod River, where on those other jobs there wouldn't have been any more than fifty. The more horses he had control of, the bigger the envelope was.
Had your father been in charge of more than one team on the railways?
At times, yes. Yes, there were several drays but the chaps'd just come and pick them up and drive them all day, but those horses would be under Dad's stable.
Was he in charge of all the horses on the railway?
No.
A section of the teams.
Yes. My Uncle Donald was horse boss.
Did your uncle go over to the Tod River?
Yes, he went over there.
How many in that family?
Three boys and a girl.
Were they your family's sort of age as well?
Yes. I think they're all gone - all dead now.
How did your family make the move to Tod River? ATB/I5/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 29. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Dad brought us down by wagon from Monarto South - down this other end, the Palmer end, and down to Port Adelaide. He brought thirty five horses at the same time and we stopped at an auntie at Hyde Park for two nights. Then we caught the old Wandana from Port Adelaide and went over.
Did the horses travel with you?
Oh yes. And you've never heard anything like it in your life. That was another experience I had, to see a horse seasick. They squeal. They don't - you know, when we're bilious, how we carry on - but they squeal at the same time. Here's Dad down amongst the lot of them and poor old Mum, she was seasick before we got out of the Port River. She's no sailor.
How old would your youngest brother have been at this time?
He would have only been about six I think, the youngest one.
Did your oldest sister go with you?
No. She stopped with D & W Murray, the shirt people out at Unley. She was a foreman - she took over from the factory up at Gawler.
Had she gone on to the railways with you?
No. She was living with an auntie at Hyde Park.
So, did your father take the horses that had been working on the railway over to the Peninsula?
Yes.
It was the contract team.
Yes, they were Tim ms's horses.
I see, you were still working for Mr Tim ms.
Yes.
Where did you live when you went over to the Peninsula.
[queries question]
Where did you live?
Over the Peninsula? Tod River. Right on the job, in the tents.
Was it the same sort of tents you'd been living in before?
Yes, we took them with us, and then we went out in the scrub and got timber. And then every year - the cement in those days used to come in bags, not paper bags, bag bags. We'd get the cement bags and open them, sew them all ATB/I5/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 30. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
together and make a new top to go right over the lot. They'd stretch them right out, the cement still in them, and the wet'd get on them, and it'd set like cement - like galvanised iron.
And that'd be over top of the tarpaulin.
Over the tents. And there was a big tin kitchen - that's where Mother done the cooking - and a big brush place where she'd hang all the meat in bags. One of the old carpenters over there made her a big wooden - well, like a big fridge. But it had a tray on the top and they'd put water in that and you'd put a bit of towel - a piece down there and one there, right around it, see. And the water'd soak out of here, over that, and drip down the sides of the fridge - the bag - and that'd get wet and the wind'd blow through it. That's where you'd keep your butter and your milk and all that.
Where did the supplies of food come from?
A chap started a store. To start off with a chap came from North Shields - about seven miles out from Port Lincoln - and another old fellow come from Yallunda Flat, which is twelve mile the other way. He had two horses and a van. Then this other fellow, a chap by the name of Dor ward, he started a - put up a big tin place. But Tim ms's used to come to Mum and get a big order from her and they'd have that sent over from Adelaide.
You say she started something of a boarding house.
Yes, just the meals.
Yes, that's something I've learned - that in those days boarding house didn't necessarily mean sleeping quarters.
Oh no, just come in for your meals.
The money she made from that, was it worthwhile her undertaking it?
Oh yes, we bought the house at Gawler when we come back.
That was a profitable venture.
Oh yes.
That must have involved a lot of extra work for her.
I had to cut all the wood and carry the water for about nearly half a mile every night. There was one of the policemen by the name of Peter Judd - he was a good fellow - and he'd hop in and help me cut the wood, Peter, but the other big old bloke - old Bond, Laurie Bond - he wouldn't, he was too tired!
Did the police have much to occupy them up there? ATB/I5/129-617 IVIr Jack McLEOD 31. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
No, had the time of their life. (laughs) When the navvies - some of the blokes, they had cars from Lincoln, they'd come out and bring wine and that and sell it to the old navvies. Well, they'd get a bit ripe and they had a little tin cell there - pop them in, give them a sleep and let them out next morning.
Were there different nationalities working?
Oh yes. A lot of Maltese come. The first time out from Malta. There was one little fellow, he was driving the horse with me - little Joey Attard, a nice little fellow. He wanted to go shooting and we all had our 410 guns - we'd go around shooting parrots, rabbits or anything. Go out at the emus and get behind the bush with a mirror and focus it on the emu's face, and they'd come right up to you to see what the shining was, and then we'd give it a bang and see which one'd jump the fence quicker.
Did you ever kill emus?
Oh no, you wouldn't kill them with a 410 - only like rat shot. Tickle them a little bit. You'd kill a rabbit. This little Joey Attard, he come out with me one Sunday and I lent him one of my guns, and he reckoned he'd done a lot of shooting over in Malta. You'd go down the creeks - you might be two mile away from one another. He'd go down one side of the mountain, down the creek side, and I'd come this other way. We was going - went down - and I said, 'Well, I'll meet you down the point Joe. If you're there, you wait'. He didn't know much about the bush. So anyway, I was walking along and I got within about a quarter of a mile and I heard 'bang', and I thought, 'Oh, lucky wretch, he's got a duck' - a Teal, a wild Teal duck - and that's all I thought of it.
Anyhow I got down there first and I couldn't see him coming anywhere. I waited and waited, and at last I looked up and here he is coming. He had the duck all right - carrying it, swinging it. And he come up, and when he come up to me 1 said, 'You can't eat that Joey' - it was an old shag. You know, the old shags?
The cormorants?
Yes. I said, 'You can't eat that, fellow'. 'Why not?' he said, 'like-a the duck - fly'. (laughs)
Did you encounter any Aborigines on that job?
Yes, about half a dozen on there. They were good workers, but they'd build up a cheque and away they'd go. The old horse boss - old Bill Gale - he put together a big cheque, and he always carried a revolver with him, and he went ATB/I5/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 32. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
into Port Lincoln on the booze, and mucking around with this revolver and blew that finger off [middle finger on his right hand]. Anyhow, when he come back to work, I said to him, I said, 'Mr Gale, do you miss your finger?' No,' he said, 'course I don't miss my finger, only when I light my pipe,' he said, 'and the wind gets through there and blows the match out'. (laughs) I could write a book.
Was your father much of a drinking man?
No. He'd have a glass of ale.
What was his position on the Tod River?
He was the teamster, head teamster.
What work did you do there?
Driving the horses and nippering when I first went over there. Then I was driving horses - driving the one on a scoop and one on a lead. [Having a horse on a lead meant leading a horse, which was harnessed to a dray filled with dirt, from the top of the reservoir bank - where another man would have left it - down into the reservoir to empty the dry and taking it back to the top of the bank again.] Then I went driving a monkey tail scoop and then they put me on six horses carting cement.
This photograph we have here [see copy on file], was that taken over there?
Yes.
Is that the scoop?
That's the scoop there.
Is that a monkey-tail scoop?
No, that's a wangi.
A wangi?
See you just pull that back and then get hold of each handle and lift it up a bit till it filled up. And that, all you can see around there, that's horse manure.
Is it?
Yes. I'm cleaning out the stables then.
I thought it was mud.
No, that's horse manure.
What's all this debris in the background? ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 33. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Different parts. That's a part of a monkey tail being pulled to pieces. See, and different heaps of stuff. [The monkey tail scoop was much larger than the wangi. It had wheels, a single long handle on the back - hence the name - and it was pulled along by three horses. While the scoop was being pulled along picking up dirt, its wheels were not in contact with the ground. But when the scoop was full the driver would push the handle down until the scoop's wheels touched the ground. The handle was fixed into the lowered position by a clip. The clip was undone and the handle raised to empty the scoop. Another three horse scoop, without wheels, was called a buck scraper.] And down over in there [right of photograph's field of vision], that's the big engine where they used to load the dirt to send down on the bank. I would have loved to have found the others. The blacksmith's shop was over in here [to the left]. That's Jim my - that old horse was half deaf.
Was he a good worker?
Oh yes. Yes, it cost me about ten bob a week for apples for him. I used to feed him on apples.
Was that your typical working gear?
Yes, bar the leggings. I only had the leggings on when I was doing the wet manure.
When you were working the scoop and working Jimmy, would you be responsible for grooming and feeding him?
Not feeding him. Old Mr Gale, he had two or three men to do the feeding.
How about the grooming?
Oh yes, you had to groom your horse every morning. I used to plait his mane here, plait his tail. They all used to call him the show horse.
Did you have any trouble with the sores caused by the harness, and that sort of thing?
No. No, you never had that. Even up home [at Gawler] - we had all the horses up home. Every night we took the collar off a horse, we had a big tin like that with holes in the lid, full of sulphur, and you'd sprinkle that all over your collar.
What would that do?
That'd make like a film over the steam of the collar and it wouldn't rub - it'd be smooth. It wouldn't rub a sore on the horse's neck.
By the steam, you mean because it's hot? ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 34. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Yes. See the collar'd be hot with the sweat, the same with the saddle.
Did you have any tricks like that when you were working on the Tod River.
Oh yes, always had it.
You said that was where you started learning the blacksmith trade.
Yes.
Who did you learn it from?
A chap by the name of Jack Wyvell. He lived at North Shields - he had a blacksmith shop there, and then he got a job out on the Tod River. I was there one dinner time and he didn't have - the striker he had left him - and he said, 'What about coming with me, Jack?' I said, 'Oh, I don't know'. I said, 'What am I going to do with my horses?' 0h,' he said, 'someone'll drive them'. He said, 'I'll tell you what I'll do,' he said. 'Come with me and I'll show you everything and I'll learn you the trade in twelve months'.
So I went home and I sat down and had a talk with Dad and Mum. Dad said, 'I think you're silly if you don't'. He said, 'When this job finishes here, at Tod River, you don't know what you're going to do, and if you've got that start in a blacksmith shop, you'll possibly get a job anywhere'.
So I took an interest in it. I done all general work and the blacksmithing and the farrowing, shoeing, and that's how I became a blacksmith.
Did you have a full twelve months with him?
Oh, more - about eighteen I think. It might've been more than that. But, oh, it took me - - -. Many a times I could have - wished I hadn't, wished I was with the horses. But he was a good man, good blacksmith. He'd show you every- thing, learn you everything. He used to say to me, when the steel on a pick'd get that short [worn to about twelve inches] - and you had to steel them and bring them out there [full length] - 'Go on, you're - - -.' I can remember the first one I done. He says, 'Oh, no, not yet Jack. Go on,' he said, 'I'll give you the boot'. That's how he talked to you. Anyhow, I done it and he went off somewhere and when he come back I'd finished steeling it. He said, 'Did you bring one I've done down here?' I said, 'No'. He said, 'You did,' he said, 'That's better than mine'. I thought I'd better make it pretty good too.
END OF TAPE 2 SIDE B: TAPE 3 SIDE A
When you first started with the blacksmith, what would he start you off with? ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack tVicLEOD 35. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Seven pound hammer - that'd be your hammer - striking hammer. And you'd have to clean the fire out, clean the clinkers out - that's the coal all burnt up, used, finished - clean that out, fill up the box with coal - put a bag of coal in the box. And if they was tyring - putting the tyre back on, or welding a tyre together - you'd have to get sand alongside of it. They used a bit of sand now and then to throw on - that keeps all the scale off the flames of the fire. Then there'd be the horse shoe and making the shoes.
What's scale?
That's dust and rubbish off the coal. It gets on the flame and that creates a bubble [like a scale] when you're welding.
The tyres you'd be working with, would they be all metal?
Oh yes, iron tyres, yes.
With your seven pound hammer, what would you be striking?
When they'd join a tyre together, they'd put it in the machine and make it round and here'd be the joint here, and they'd make that [one end] into like a wedge, and that [the other end] into a wedge. They'd put that in the fire and get it sparkling hot and bring it out and put it in the machine, wind the machine up, and that'd push them together. Then as it's pushing together, I'd have to beat it with a seven pound ham mer until it was all flattened out and welded together.
You were mentioning lengthening the picks that had been worn down.
Yes, steel, any old rasp or any old steel rasp and that, we'd do that. They call that pointing - repainting and putting a steel on the iron because that wouldn't wear down as quick as the iron.
How would you use the rasp?
Oh, cut a piece of it and do the same like that on the end of the pick. Cut it open and shove a bit of steel in there, see, and then get the welding heat on it and bring it all together and it'd gradually come out.
Of course with shoeing horses you would be working with horses again.
Yes.
Did you enjoy that part of it?
Oh yes. Heavy work. I was only - I was never very heavy. Some of those horses are seventeen, sixteen hundredweight. Pick them up and put the foot on your knee when you had to clench them down, tack the shoe on. [break in recording] ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 36. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
We were talking about shoeing horses and how heavy some of the animals were.
Yes, well, I was only light and he made me a three legged stool. I'd have to pick the horse's foot up and up it on that stool, and then put my knee in behind it so the horse would think that he had his foot on your knee. See, and then I wouldn't have the full weight of the horse, and I could go on clenching it up and filing off the hoof. That kept the weight - I didn't have the full weight on me, the old blacksmith.
But the horseld feel you so he'd think you were there.
Yes. Then you'd get one - some of them get a bit cunning you know. When they get a bit sick, if they drag their foot like that, well that'd catch under your knee as well and give you a bit of a kink in the knee. Then the ones that were 'ruly, hard to shoe, we used to put them in a crush pen - a big crush pen he had made - and put a rail in front of them, rail at the back, and tie one leg at a time up to the post. Well, all you had to do was just tack it on. He had to put a belly band - a strap - underneath it, so he couldn't let himself down, or one, so he couldn't rear up on the top. That's what you call a crush pen.
Did it occur to you that you weren't going to be strong enough to make a career of the work?
Oh no, I was wiry, very wiry. I'd have a go at anything. They all used to reckon I used to carry too many picks to the blacksmith's shop. When I'd take the picks up to the blacksmith's shop I wouldn't just go up with one, when I was nippering, I'd put twelve on a handle - put the picks' eyes all on the one handle - and lift it up and on my shoulder. Oh no, I was wiry. I was never afraid to have a go at anything.
What were your earnings as an apprentice blacksmith compared to the labouring work you'd been doing?
The same.
Had that increased from when you were on the railway?
Oh yes. When I came away from Tod River - I left the blacksmith when we had to come over when it finished - and I think it was up around about the three pound something.
Of course you were telling me earlier about your father's accident on the Tod River and the River scheme itself was coming to an end at that time as well. Did the family leave when your father had the accident?
Yes. Well, after he got - - -. He came back from hospital and was out there, but he couldn't - there was no work for him. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 37. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Where did he go to hospital?
Tumby Bay. Yes, it was only a house, and the doctor over Tumby Bay now - oh, they've got a great big hospital there now - the doctor over there is the son of the doctor that was there when they set Dad's leg.
Who was he?
Dr Wibberley - this is young Dr Wibberley. They reckon he's finished now. He's living in Tumby Bay.
Did you go down with your father?
Down to the hospital? I went in a couple of times with Joe Tim ms - young Joe Timms.
Was your father permanently incapacitated by the injury?
Oh, for must have been eighteen months, two years. See it was all crushed and they didn't know right till the finish if they'd have to take it off. The thing that hurt him more than the broken leg, they took his pipe away from him of a night time so he couldn't smoke. And he says to us, 'To think they done that,' he says, 'but the next day it was worse than ever'. I said, 'Why, what did they do?' He said, 'They made me clean my teeth'. (laughs)
Did he have his own teeth?
Yes, then, but he had them out after I came to Gawler - back to Gawler.
So how long did the family stay over on the Peninsula after your father's accident?
Oh, Mother went on with the boarding house. Dad was three months in Tumby Hospital, and then I suppose he would've been about — -. They were just tidying off the job then. Been about another six months I should say.
Were any of your younger brothers and sisters working as well at this time?
No. They were all still at school.
Was there a school at Tod River?
Two and a half mile down, where we used to go and dance. There was a Post Office and a farmhouse and a barn. And then all the old navvies - all the fellows worked on the job - they used to run raffles and that and put the money aside and run dances. Then they finished up and all the chaps that were handy with a hammer and that, they put a hall up at White's Flat. It was a good hall there - good floor.
How often would you go in for dances? ATB/I5/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 38. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Once a fortnight.
Did your mother come too?
Oh yes, all walked. It might be - oh, might be twenty, twenty five, thirty, from the job. All wait for everybody and talking and singing as you're walking along.
Of course your uncle was up there with his family as well.
Yes.
Were there other families living up there?
Oh yes. Yes, a lot of families. When I was watching the other night, that team of bullocks [on TV] - see there was three teams of bullocks over there puddling the bank to make it watertight. [Trenches thirty feet wide were filled with red clay that was watered with a hose to keep it moist and the bullocks would be driven about - up to their stomachs in the clay - treading it into the bank to make it watertight.] And the old fellow just lived down from us that used to drive them - old Bullocky Jack - and he had a great saying. He had a red bullock and he used to say, 'Come 'ere yella, you blurry red sod' - that's the great saying he'd have. (laughs) Where he got the 'yella' - 'Come here yella, you blurry red sod' I don't know. That was old Jackie Hutchins.
Did he then go to Gawler? You said he was living near you.
No, not then. He was living just down from us over the Tod. And the Govern- ment man over there, that was the Government inspector - they were inspecting it all the time - he had a Portuguese black fellow. He had his wife and two girls - he was the cook. And I only see here three weeks where the girl died down at Renown Park - down by Dudley Park cemetery.
You were mentioning earlier a strike at the Tod River while you were there. What was that about?
More money. That's been going on for years, hasn't it? (laughs)
Were you involved in it?
Oh yes. They put down what was wanted.
Did you agree with what they wanted?
I was only nippering then, when that was on. A lot of Broken Hill people, when that big strike was on in 1918 - a lot came down and worked on the job. But, oh, they didn't give a good day's work.
Why do you say that? ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 39. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Oh, I was there and seen them. They'd be - - -. I've always been taught by my Dad to accept a good wage but give a good day's work for your good wage. That was always his motto and that's how I was brought up. I always hope that I'd done a good day's work. A lot of them, I mean, they wouldn't. They'd go and, up the water bag about every five minutes or make a cigarette. Oh, the Broken Hill fellows, they were tough.
The men who came up navvying, did they typically stay for long on the job?
Oh yes, some of them was there the five years with us. Others was there a couple of times - come back again.
About how old were you when you came back to Gawler?
Twenty.
You were twenty years old.
Yes. And I joined up the Gawler Central Football Club the year I came back, and I'm still connected with it.
The Tod River scheme ended in 1922 was it?
That's when they finalised the pipeline.
But you stayed on longer than that.
No. No, we finished at the bank - the big bank that went right across the two mountains. And then we went from there up to what we call Mount Knott [Knott Hill], which is the highest peak around and they dug out a dam. Thousands of gallons of water they'd pump out of the reservoir up to Mount Knott, and then from Mount Knott it runs anywhere on the West Coast.
So you stayed a couple more years up there did you?
After the bank was finished.
What sort of work did you do up there?
Blacks mithing.
Did Mr Wyvell go up there too?
Yes. I've seen him twice since I left. He was an old bachelor and he finished up marrying, and when he retired, he retired in Lincoln. There was an old ganger that started a boarding house in Lincoln, that was out on Tod River, called Barney Lane. And I found out from Barney that old Jack Wyvell was living in Lincoln, and he told me whereabouts. We went around in the car for a trip and to go and see him. I found the little neat place - neat, green, ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 40. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
painted all green. I went around the back, knocked on the door, and this nicely done grey-haired lady came around and she said, 'Yes'. I said, 'Is this where Mr Wyvell lives?' She said, 'Yes'. I said, 'Could I see him please?' Yes,' she said, and Glad [JM's wife] and her girlfriend and her husband were sitting out in the car out the front, see.
Anyhow she goes in. She said, 'Jack, there's some man wants you'. So out he come, and he still had his old pipe hanging out of his mouth. He said, 'I don't know you' - always like that, he was gruff. He was a nice fellow, but that real old gruff voice. 'Don't know you,' he said. I said, 'I reckon you do'. He was looking at me. He said, 'Are you Jimmy?' - he never called me Jack. He'd call me after that old horse I used to drive, Jim my. He got hold of my hand - I think he thought it was one of those old Douglas pumps - he nearly shook it off. (laughs)
He died about eight months ago. We went over there three times - I went to see him, three times I went over. And the saddle - - -. He used to have a horse and the saddle was down in his shed and was as clean as the day he bought it. Poor old Jackie.
Did he ask you whether you'd kept up with the blacksmithing?
Yes. 'Shouldn't have gone away,' he said. See, he came back to North Shields and reopened his old blacksmith's shop before he retired. I could have came with him if I wanted to, but all my brothers and sisters and my mother and father were coming back, so, what was Port Lincoln to me?
As you say, you were twenty years old when you left Eyre Peninsula and came back to Gawler. Where did you settle again in Gawler?
What, to work?
Well, first of all, where did the family live?
In King Street, just up from North Gawler Station. We bought a little house up there.
As you say, your family had been able to save the money to buy a house.
Yes - the boarders.
That would have been the first house the family had owned themselves.
That's right. See, in other times, nearly all horse bosses, they found a house - you paid rent - but they found the house for you. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 41. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
So with your father recuperating from his accident, how did the family support themselves when you first got back to Gawler?
My brother and another sister started working, and Mother used to be down at the bakehouse shop twice a week. Then Dad gradually started. Uncle Donald was the manager of a sand company up there. Well, Dad went feeding the horses. Then there was chap wanted to sell out by the name of Sheehan, so Dad give him a price for the team of horses, and he asked me first, what about coming with him? He couldn't do it on his own on account of his leg and I was the eldest boy.
What work did you do when you got back to Gawler?
Blacksmith. At the blacksmith shop.
Who ran the shop?
Mr Marsh.
Did you have any trouble getting the position?
Yes, but the money was very poor though. I was getting three pound six, I think it was, and when I come back to Marsh, he offered me two pound. I said, 'No'. So anyhow, 'Oh,' he says, 'come and give it a month's trial'. So the black- smith got kicked with a horse and was home for a fortnight and I done all the shoeing and everything, and he only wanted to give me the two pound. I said, 'No'. I said, 'You're saving what money the blacksmith would make out of shoeing, plus the difference between his wages and mine'. So, 'Oh,' he said, 'I can't do it'. 'Well,' I said, 'put me on contract work'. 'Oh no,' he said, 'I wouldn't do that'. He knew I'd make too much on contract work, because he would have to pay for every nail that went in. See, your contract shoeing, you're paid by the nail.
How much a nail?
Oh, it'd be about thre'pence a nail and there were seven nails in each shoe and there was four shoes. Four sevens are twenty eight - twenty eight thre'pences. That wasn't bad money in those days. To point a pick or anything like that. Contract work, you'd get a bit more.
On what occasions would a blacksmith pay for contract work - to pay someone to do work by contract - would that be someone he needed just part time?
Yes, if he wanted contract work.
So he'd only be paid for the work when it came in and perhaps have to do other odd jobs for someone else? ATB/I5/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 42. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Yes. Well, see, old Marsh was a wheelwright too. A handy blacksmith is usually as good as a wheelwright too. He might go on cleaning out the holes for the felloes to go in and all the - any wheel work.
The holes for the felloes?
The felloes - the spokes. See, a dray, it's not spokes - that's felloes.
What was the name of the blacksmith who was injured?
What, at Gawler?
Yes.
Harold Harkness. Good man too, and I got on well with Harold. He told old Marsh, he said, 'Young Jack knows as much as I do about it'.
Did Mr Marsh give you more money?
No. So Dad bought the team and I went with him. That's when I started on the sand trade.
How many horses were there in the team your father bought?
Four. And then we gradually built on it, bought another dray and another four horses. We had about sixteen at one time.
As you said before, you had the stallion. Was he in the original team you bought?
No. He'd come down off the Spectacle Brand. They had him out - - A big old fellow with a wagon had him out at Roseworthy on a farm and couldn't handle him. He always had a bit of vice. He never had the horse yoked up - properly, I always reckoned.
So we heard he wanted to sell him. Well they're powerful horses, a stallion, and in the shafts of the dray, that's like kitten's play to them. So I went and seen him and - - -. Went to the old bloke and I asked him. He said, 'Who's paying for it, you or your father?' I said, 'Be my Dad'. He said, 'You can't have him under fifteen pound'. I opened his mouth and had a look at his teeth, and could see how old he was. I said, 'All right, I'll give you the fifteen pound'. I would have give him twenty, but I wasn't going to tell him. And we must have had that horse, oh - Dad always drove him. He was a good horse - pick his feet up and no chance of falling, see, so he was a good horse to be in the shafts for Dad. Oh, gee, we must have had fifteen years of work out of him.
What did you call him?
Bill. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack IVIcLEOD 43. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
With the sand carting, were you always working with a team of four?
Yes.
What sort of a mix? If you had the stallion on the shaft, what sort of a mix? Did you have mares and geldings?
Yes.
Was there any particular mix that would work well?
Oh yes, you always had the same team. Always had your same horses - oh yes. Yes, he was never any trouble. He was a very placid sort of a horse. We'd let him out of his — -. We had to keep him locked up in a big yard, and always let him out to go down and have a roll, of a night, after you'd go down to feed them up after tea. Have a drink, and have a roll, and he'd come back. Never any trouble.
Would you make a bit of extra money from him using him to service other people's mares?
Oh yes.
Was he in demand?
Yes, but we wouldn't let him out much.
Why was that?
Oh well, it was too heavy a work on him. See, he'd be servicing the mares and at the same time working in the dray all day. Dad was a man that he'd rather go without a feed himself than not feed his horse. You can work it [out] from there. So he wouldn't overwork a horse.
END OF TAPE 3 SIDE A: TAPE 3 SIDE B
I'd like to talk about the sand carting business. When your father bought the team, where did you stable the horses?
At the [Old] Bushman Hotel to start with. That's up around the top end of the street, right around by where Coles's are now.
How long did you stable them there?
Charlie Timms, he had five teams down on the river bank, North Gawler, and he went broke. Dad went down to see if he could get some money out of him - he owed us three hundred pound. Well that was a lot of money in those days. He went broke - went into liquidation. So Dad went in and asked him, he said, 'Well, what am I going to do to pay for my chaff bill?' Well,' he said, 'this is all I can do you Bob,' he says, 'There's five customers - the best customers we ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 44. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
ever had,' he said, 'get right on to them and get them'. So he did, got on to them - Kennett Bros, the big builders, they were one. They was our best customer we ever had. Then we got in with the Supply and Tender Board, then we got in the Abattoirs, then we got in with the Roundhouse at Mile End, and then we was lucky enough to get the contract for all the sand for all the wharfs - when they pulled all the wooden wharfs down at Port Adelaide, and made the concrete wharfs. We sent all that sand down.
About what year was that?
Say the twenties, in the twenties.
Those other contracts that you mentioned, did you get them during the twenties?
Oh, the twenties and on further.
Were you in with the Supply and Tender Board during the twenties?
Yes. Very friendly with the head men on the Supply and Tender Board. He lived at Croydon and he was a fine little fellow. When I came down to sign the second contract with him, he said, 'We've got a couple more tenders in,' he said, 'but they're in the rubbish basket'. He said, 'I'm not going to muck around,' he said. 'We're satisfied and you send it as we want it'. He said, 'That suits me'. His name was Govett. Doreen Govett used to be —. Oh now, what was she? Well known in Adelaide.
She was a singer.
Yes.
When you first started off - I was asking you about your teams of horses - about what time did Charlie Tim ms go broke?
He would have went broke in about '22, I reckon, having a guess.
So just when you were starting off.
Yes, and he had - - -. You know the Newmarket Hotel?
Yes.
Well, just up from the Newmarket used to be a great big tin shed there. That's where he was.
So you took over some of his good customers right at the beginning of your business?
Yes. Oh no, we was loading sand for him before then. See, he owed us three hundred pound.
So you didn't start off on your own account. You were loading for the Timms. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 45. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
To start with, yes.
Was it just your father and you working?
Yes. Until later on, and then when Dad finished and I took it over, and of course sand was getting very, very scarce, then the war broke out and they started all those munitions works and that. I started a washing plant, washing the banks into sand.
Let's talk about the period in the 1920s up until the early years of the Depression. When you were starting to cart sand in the 1920s, where would you be getting it from?
Down in the river, in the water.
Did you work a particular section of the river.
Yes. Different people owned different sections and we had to pay sixpence a ton royalty. Then they'd come and check your book and the Railway Station [records]. That's how the people that owned the river would know how much you took out, because [the Railward] weigh it on the trucks, see, and put it back in your book. Then they'd come and check off ours and charge us sixpence a ton for it.
Did you work a particular section of the river in those early years?
Yes.
Where was it?
You get right down the end of Murray Street over the North Gawler railway line, and there's the river straight in front of you. Right around there and back around up what we called the Redbanks.
I've got this map of the town. There's Murray Street and the railway line and the river. Is that the section you're talking about?
Yes. This here [bend directly opposite northern end of Warren Street], that was our stables.
In that bend.
Yes, that was our stables there.
How far along did you work?
Oh, we went right back four or five mile [up river] in the finish. Cleaned all the bed up, see. When we first started you'd get a big flood and the floodid wash the sand down from up here and fill all this up, or go right around there. That's the South Para. But we gradually went back and back, and cleaned all ATB/I5/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 46. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
the feeding ground, see. Well that cut it all out. And that's where I had the washing plant, up in there.
Before the bridge.
The bridge is there. Yes, right up in here - up in the top. And here was where we had the stables.
You were saying how people owned sections of the river. Did you deal with one person in particular?
Oh no, wherever the sand was. It was a funny thing, you know, you might have hundreds of tons of sand and I've cleaned up all the sand down in my lot. Flood would come, wash all yours down into mine and replenish mine. Well, you'd have to depend on the one behind you. When people own - which they do, they own each river bank. Here's a river here, one bank'd be here, one bank'd be there. One people might own that and another people own this. Well the laws of the river is, if you're carting the sand out, you come to that centre, and at that centre, when the water's right over and you're in there, you've got to draw - you know, make an imaginary line - so that people gets their sand and that people gets their sand, the royalty. But, in the summer time and the flow of the river gradually dies down and that comes from the full width of those banks, between the banks, over there to six feet, you'd come over there. You'd come right over there - the running water is the boundary.
Even though the course of the river had shifted right over on one side.
Yes. Yes, that's the running boundary. You could get into trouble.
Pll bet. You were saying before it was a fairly competitive business.
Oh it was in those days. They used to shunt - - -. Each rake of sand'd be three hundred ton and they'd shunt twice a day at North Gawler. And then there was Central, Gawler Central Station, the big station.
What's the rake?
Rake of trucks. They always call a rake of trucks, sand trucks, a rake.
You'd be getting the sand from the banks. Would you also be getting it from under the water?
Oh, all under the water - washed sand.
How would you get it up out from under the water?
With a shovel.
So you'd be working standing in water. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 47. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Yes. Either that or have rubber boots on. And you'd be wetter with those on than what you would be standing in the water.
Why's that?
Perspire - terrible. But in the winter time, well you had to have them.
During the early years we're talking about, was there any mechanical means of getting the sand out from the river other than shovelling it?
They tried it, but it was never a success, because there were too many get bogged. I've seen many a horses and drays bogged in the river after a flood. What we always used to do, say if we're going to work this part of the river after the flood and there's all sand washed down there, you'd take one horse off. Take him out the team and take the chains off, take his collar off - only have his bridle on - and lead him up and down two or three times, and walk on over it. That'd press that down and then you can drive your dray and your horse over, without getting bogged.
Would the horses be standing in the river during the day?
Yes, all day. And that helped them to look well because they could get a drink any time they want it. See, the first thing you'd go back - you'd go back from the trucks - - -. Throwing the sand in the truck and go back to the river and get another load. As soon as you'd pull up in the water, first thing they'd do, they'd have a drink. See they always had water.
Were there any bad effects to the horses of standing in water?
I reckon that's what's the matter with my legs now.
Did they get trouble with their legs as they got older?
Oh yes, they'd get a bit of heavy work in the river, and if you don't feed them properly you don't get nothing out of them.
Did you see teams that were badly treated?
Oh yes, yes. I had a personal friend, Buller Ryan and Mick Hakendorf - two inspectors for cruelty to dumb animals [Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in SA1 and I was in the club. Anything I seen that hurt me, just get on the phone to Mick or Buller and up they'd come.
When did you first get involved in that?
Oh, I was in the RSPCA nearly all my life, with the horses.
Was your father involved too?
He was with it but never in it. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 48. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Was there any ill-feeling towards you for you taking an interest in the wellbeing of horses from the other - - -?
Not from the horse lovers.
What about the ones who treated them badly?
They would, but they were only the rough ends - the winedots. There was one bloke there with the name of Tierney. We pulled up coming up from the Redbanks one day, Dad and I. We both had drays and who's to pull but Mick Hakendorf and Buller Ryan and, Well, Jack,' he says, 'I'm sorry I've got to show you this'. It's a letter reporting us because we had bad shoulders and saddle back. I said, 'You going to have a look?' You had to lift the prop of the shafts of the dray and prop that up - they'd never do that - and you had to lift the saddle. And anyhow, they couldn't find none.
And he said, 'Do you know this bloke on the sheet of paper?' See, and we clamped down on him - we wouldn't let him in that portion of the river because it was an old lady that run it and they wouldn't pay her. So I said [to her], 'Right, you give me command of looking after that gate and I'll see they don't go in'. And [Tierney] reported me. So anyhow, when they come down across the river, Mick and Buller went over and made them take one horse out and told them there would be a court case. And anyhow, Mick and Buller says, 'We'll go down the street to get some dinner,' and I said, 'Well, are you going straight home?' He said, 'No, we'll be back'. They come back in the afternoon and caught him again with the same horse in the team.
The Tierneys pinched the chaff out the horses' mangers and - - -. The mangers were right along the stables and I'd come down four o'clock in the morning and the first thing you'd do would be run your hand along the manger, see if there was any chaff left so you'd know how much to bring over - back to feed them. And I'm going along like this, and I stopped and touched the bloke's head, and it was this bloke pinching my chaff one trip. And I'd a big black old dog, went everywhere I went with the horses, so I put him in the manger with him. He didn't pinch no more chaff.
Did the dog bite him?
Got him by the shirt and nearly tore it off. 'Oh,' he said, 'I was going to bring you back a bag'. 'Yes,' I said, 'You come back through that gate - - -'.
How would you man that gate so that he wouldn't come on to the section of the river? ATB/I5/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 49. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Lock. Well see that there old lady, old Mrs Lynch, I'd have her behind me. She'd take him to court quick. Only they never ever gave her a cart note or anything, see. She didn't know how much they had.
So on the job during the day you'd be shovelling sand on to the cart that the horses were pulling. Then what would you do after that, once you'd filled a load?
Take it up to the North Gawler Station and throw it in the trucks.
How many trips would you make a day?
Seven. Seven loads. There'd be seven loads, we'd carry two and a half ton per load, a hundred shovelfuls of No. 4 shovel - a hundred shovelfuls to the ton - and seven loads, about seventeen and a half ton on the truck. That'd be our day's work.
What sort of returns would you get?
[queries question]
How much did you earn?
Oh, well, it all depends how much you had to do see. Some days you might get an extra load in. Many a times we were a bit early - we'd go down and get another load and tip it up in the yard, the stable yard, because there was a lot of builders coming around in their ute or whatever they had and wanted a ton of sand. Well that ton of sand was better than selling it in the truck.
What sort of money did you earn?
Oh, it was only a living. It was Depression time mostly. That's what you had to do.
You've mentioned the stables up in the bend of the river where we were looking. Would other sand carters have their horses in that stable as well?
No. No, we had that block. We could've bought that for seventy five pound. If I'd had that now and sold that now, I would have - - -. They would've put twenty units on there. A unit'd be worth fifty thousand. But I couldn't do it.
You were mentioning earlier that as soon as you came back to Gawler you got involved with the Football Club.
Yes.
Which one was that?
Gawler Central.
You were showing me this photograph [see copy on file]. ATB/I5/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 50. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Yes, that's in about '26. That's Lionel Whitford [front, centre] - used to work at Dry Creek at the soap factory. Not many of them left.
Did you play in the team for long?
Oh, played about eight years I think. Then I got my elbow dislocated and used to go down and watch the high school with my elbow strapped up like this, and the lads kept - 'Oh, come on Mr Mac. Come and umpire for us'. So I went and threw the ball up with one hand and that started me umpiring. So I took on umpiring and went for twenty four years.
During the twenties, when you yourself were in your twenties, what other sort of pastimes did you have?
Dancing - old style dancing. Get on our bikes, go out eight and ten, twelve, fifteen mile to a dance.
Would they be held in the towns?
Some would yes. We'd always go once a year to Hamley Bridge, always to St Patrick's dance, Hamley Bridge. And always go to Kapunda on the day they'd have the Kapunda races - foot races - then we'd stop for the dance. Angaston - all over the place.
1 know you got married in 1934. Had you known your wife long?
Five years.
How had you met?
She came up to Gawler. She was stopping with her cousin. Her father was the porter at North Gawler that I was telling you about.
On the Railway?
Yes. Took her to the pictures- that started it off. Thought it was time I settled down - I was happy about it. We've been married fifty two years in December.
You were mentioning the various contracts that you had with your sand carting business. Was there much call for you to come down to Adelaide with that work, during the early years we're talking about?
No. The only time we'd come down - - -. Big people like Kennetts and that, you could bet on them with the right money because they had an accountant. But there might be another chap, just, say, a builder on his own, who might only have a truck of sand a month. Well they'd be hard to get the money out of, so you always had to come down and pick that up. If you left them to send it they'd be weeks, so first slack half a day I'd jump on the train and come down and pick it up. ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 51. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Did you come down to Adelaide to negotiate contracts?
Oh yes. Always come down the Supply and Tender Board. But then once they got to know us, they'd ring us up - 'We'll send you up a contract. Sign it and send it back'. Wasn't supposed to, but we done it. Always got on well with it.
I went home one day, one Christmas time - this was before I was married. I was stopping down Glad's place - she lived down at Welland Avenue, Welland - and went down, stopped home and loaded up about four hundred ton of sand for the wharfs down the Port.
And the phone went one day and a bloke on the phone says, 'What's the idea of sending this sand?' He was an English chap and he wasn't Mr Mears I used to deal with. He said, 'I didn't order it off you'. I said, 'You ordered it off my father'. He ordered too much and he didn't know what to do with it. So he put it over me that they didn't order all of it. So anyhow I went and see Mr Mears, W.H. and he said, 'Leave it to me and give us a ring in a couple of days'. So I give him a ring. 'Well,' he said, 'there's too much Jack. Can we do anything with it?' I said, 'Oh yes,' I said, 'There's a contract coming at the Abattoirs'. 'Right,' he says, 'that'll do'. He said, 'You've done your piece'. He said, 'I'll see it's trucked back at our expense to the Abattoirs'. So that went back and, Anderson, the fellow that had the contract, the Abattoirs, he paid me for the sand and they paid for the freight and it all worked out, but the bloke got put off.
How did the Depression affect the sand carting business?
Oh bad. We was down to - —. We used to go down the river, throw it in the dray, then come up and throw it in the truck - for three bob a ton.
How did that compare to earlier years?
Four and six.
Did you continue to work full time on the sand carting during the Depression?
I went out and done a bit of grape picking and a bit of stooking - hay stooking - rolling on the roads for the Councils.
How early did the Depression hit you? Was it before 1929?
Oh no, it'd be after. After that. Be in the thirties.
We've almost come to the end of another tape.
Good.
I've thoroughly enjoyed listening to you and I think it's been a very - - ATB/15/129-617 Mr Jack McLEOD 52. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8617
Don't think I've told you any lies.
I don't think you did. And what you did tell me I think you said very well. Thank you very much.