Transcript of Interview

Australians at War Film Archive Vincent Cesari (Vince or Caesar) - Transcript of interview Date of interview: 14th May 2003 http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/148 Tape 1 00:30 So as we said before if we could start at the start. Where were you born? I was born at Queenscliff, down at the heads at Port Phillip Bay, on the west side, on the other side of Sorrento. I'll have to divulge my age, 01:00 on the 4th of December…1921. Dad was down there, well, all my family was all there at that time. Of course, work wasn't so plentiful in those days, so roughly round about 1923, 01:30 Dad started playing football with Geelong….with a fisherman's team at Queenscliff, and they got rubbed out after the big blue, the fight and all that, it took place in those days. Then him and Jock (UNCLEAR) and David Warren and Noel Racen, and all of them, they went up to Geelong. But my father, he mostly played in the Second Eighteens. And round about 1926 when he busted his ankle, that's when we shifted up town. He got a bit of a job 02:00 with what you call parks and gardens of Fitzroy, so we shifted up to Prahran in Melbourne here. But then, unfortunately, the family broke up. It took place in those days the same as it does now. And anyway, from there on all of my sisters, they went with the aunties, and I was with my father. And he was with Prahran Football club. 02:30 He went from Prahran to St Kilda, and he was with St Kilda for eight years, and then he went to South Melbourne, and he was with South Melbourne for twenty-two years. And he was still working in the parks and gardens, in Fitzroy Gardens there, with Melbourne City Council. And of course, along the line he…A couple of breaks he had away from that with the Melbourne Fire Brigade, you see, which will come in later. 03:00 From there on he stayed with them until he retired from work, and then he went and worked for the trustees at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. He kept the oval and all those sorts of things. He passed away when he was seventy-eight years of age. How old were you when the family split up? I would have been round about five. That's when we shifted from Queenscliff to Melbourne. 03:30 I was the youngest out of four, we had three sisters and myself. Later on, the parents remarried again and they had two more….half sisters, put it that way. Because, unfortunately, the age and time and the mortality rate gets you down a bit, and there's only three of us left now. My sister over at Essendon and my half sister 04:00 down at…down the road somewhere, anyway, I can never think where she lives, and myself here. And it was just you living with your dad? Yeah, I was with my Dad all the time, unfortunately, I didn't have so much freedom, like the girls did. But we went on from there, and then schooling and things like that took place, but then, as I say, when you are getting back around to the early 1930s, when you're leaving school, 04:30 there was no work. It was like today, but in those days there was none of this money over the counter or paid into your bank account and all that sort of stuff. I finished up in a couple of orphanages, actually. You just couldn't get accommodation. You could get accommodation but you had to pay for it, and if there was no money coming in you couldn't pay for it. And I finished up getting sent up to a place called the Kiewa Valley, 05:00 which is up in North East Victoria. I was milking cows up there for a living, on a princely wage of five shillings a week. Now that five shillings is fifty cents in today's money. The hours were short, but by Christ they started in the very early hours of the morning until late hours of a night time, seven days a week, no overtime. The only way I used to get out of a bit of work was when I was working for Mr Quirk…I would go to church with him on Sundays, so I didn't have to work on the woodheap. 05:30 How old were you when you were milking cows? Thirteen years of age. I only got as far as the seventh grade in those days. I don't know what your equivalents are today, but yeah…So that was it there. And of course you moved around. When he didn't have any more work for me, well then I went to another bloke and another bloke and I finished up…I came down over to Aunty Ford's place, 06:00 and then to…Freddy Deakin's place, and then from there on…I stayed there until I was nearly seventeen. I got a motorbike licence because I went over to New South Wales and got that, if you were seventeen you could get one there. And I came to Melbourne and I worked….Today it's a flash place down there, 06:30 the Australian Jam Factory in Chapel Street, it used to be. That's where they used to make the old tomato soups and canned peaches and apricots and all those sort of stuff. Where the cinema is now? The Jam Factory? Yes, the Jam Factory they call it nowadays. It's big money today. But for forty-eight hours a week there then, you'd be getting the princely sum of thirty one shillings a week. 07:00 That's like three dollars ten cents. What sorts of jobs did they have you doing there? Oh, carting cases of stuff up to the women peeling the pears, coring the stone fruits, all that sort of stuff, carting the rubbish. It wasn't mechanized like it became later on. Then…just before I turned eighteen, 07:30 I decided, well, the war had broke out in 1939, and I decided, 'Well, I might go and join this navy caper.' Number one, because I came from Queenscliff, which is on the heads at…Port Phillip Bay, I should say. From there I thought, 'OK, I'll go there.' But when I got down to Port Phillip Bay to sign up, 08:00 chappie down there, an old navy bloke, he said to me, "Look son, you're only seventeen. If you join up now, which you can if you want to," he said, "All you're going to get is two shillings a day, because you're under the age of eighteen." He said, "You're best to nick off, put your name down," he said, "Nick off and come back when you turn eighteen when you'll get five shillings a day." That's a pretty big lift, thirty cents. So anyway, when I did that, 08:30 and of course when I went down there, they said, "Well, what do you want to be?" I said, "I wouldn't have a clue. What's it all about?" He said, "Well , you've got engine room branch, stokers and all those sort of things." He said, "You'll learn a lot." I said, "What do you learn?" He said, "You learn about boilers and engine rooms, refrigeration, steam and diesel dynamos, converting salt water to fresh water." He said, "And lots of other things," he said. "Driving motor boats…" 09:00 I'm thinking, 'It's getting a bit good.' So I said, "Righto then, what's the other like?" And he said "Of course the cream of that one is being in such hot conditions, you only work four hours on and have eight hours off," like on board. He said, "Whereas if you join as a seaman or a steward or that, you work four hours on and four hours off. Now in that four hours off, you've got to scrub decks, you've got to wash paint work, you've got to do…" And I said, "Oh mate you've lost me. 09:30 I'll come back as a stoker." Well then, I went home again, and I got called up on October, 1940. And that was earlier, the first part. And they said, "Righto, do your medical exam and this that and the other now." And then on the 21st of October, myself and there would have been around about twenty of us altogether, we all went in on the one day. We had to go to Williamstown, 10:00 because Port Melbourne was all the signalmen and all the seaman and all that, but Williamstown was the place with all the engine room branch. It was a very sad induction into the navy because….that was October then, and in the November we were just about ready to go to the Flinders Naval Depot where they manufacture sailors, as the saying is, and the first casualty of the war, 10:30 of the Australian war, happened at the heads. A minesweeper called the Goorangai. She was shifting ships from Queenscliff across to Sorrento ready for the next morning, and it was dark, and everything was blacked out, there were lights on, and the Duntroon, the passenger boat going to Tasmania, she came down and chopped her in half.

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