(7,1-,„ • Ir STATE Government I
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
:(7,1-,„ • ir STATE Government I. LIBRARY of South Australia STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION OH 1/26 Full transcript of an interview with D. MAY SMITH on 27 February 1986 by Beth Robertson for 'SA SPEAKS': AN ORAL HISTORY OF LIFE IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA BEFORE 1930 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 ATB/13/129-604i Mrs D. May SMITH ii 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8604 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Preface iii Notes to the Transcript iv Family and Background 1 Scottish father's bullock driving His first marriage Visiting mother's family in Victoria Granny Cameron, Kingston midwife Childhood 13 Several Kingston homes Taking boarders Backyard produce Class division in Kingston Schooling 25 Kingston School Leaving school aged twelve Helping mother run a boarding house for drain labourers ten miles from Robe 28 Domestic Service 38 Return to Kingston Working for the Postmaster and the Crown and Kingston Arms hotels The Bayview Coffee Palace, Robe The New Market and Terminus Hotels, Adelaide Marriage and Return to Kingston 47 Life on the Murrabinna Station Childbirth and babies Collateral Material in File 8604 includes: -Ftivo Photographs P8604A,B and photocopies of scvcral newspaper articles and cxccrpts of publications featuring the Cameron family. Cover Illustration Malcolm Cameron's bullock team in 1903 and May Cameron, inset, aged sixteen in 1916. ATB/13/129-604i Mrs D. May SMITH ii 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8604 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Preface 111 Notes to the Transcript iv Family and Background 1 Scottish father's bullock driving His first marriage Visiting mother's family in Victoria Granny Cameron, Kingston midwife Childhood 13 Several Kingston homes Taking boarders Backy441 produce Class division in Kingston Schooling 25 Kingston School Leaving school aged twelve Helping mother run a boarding house for drain labourers ten miles from Robe 28 Domestic Service 38 Return to Kingston Working for the Postmaster and the Crown and Kingston Arms hotels The Bayview Coffee Palace, Robe The New Market and Terminus Hotels, Adelaide Marriage and Return to Kingston 47 Life on the Murrabinna Station Childbirth and babies Collateral Material in File 8604 includes: Photographs P8604A,B and photocopies of several newspaper articles and excerpts of publications featuring the Cameron family. Cover Illustration Malcolm Cameron's bullock team in 1903 and May Cameron, inset, aged sixteen in 1916. ATB/13/129-604i Mrs D. May SMITH iii 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8604 PREFACE Dorothy May Smith (nee Cameron) was born in 1900 and brought up in and around Kingston SE, where her father, who worked a team of fourteen bullocks all over the South East, made his home base. The family sometimes left the town to be near him on long-term jobs, and May describes in detail how she left school age twelve to help her mother run a boarding house (for meals, not accommodation) for two years ten miles from Robe for the Drain L labourers while her father carted machinery for the works. On her return to Kingston, May began about five years as a housemaid and waitress, first in the Crown and Kingston Arms hotels in Kingston, then in the Bayview Coffee Palace in Robe and finally at the New Market and Terminus hotels in Adelaide. When her boyfriend, a Victorian labourer she had met at the boarding house, returned from the war, they decided to marry and she returned to Kingston to live. During the 1920s Mrs Smith had five of her nine children and for two and a half years in the mid 1920s she and her husband, working as a farm labourer, lived in isolation on out-paddocks of the Murrabinna Station. Mrs Smith was 85 years of age at the time of the interview. The sound levels of the tape recordings are good, overcoming a good deal of extraneous noise including voices in the building and traffic outside. '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 8604] 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/13/129-604i Mrs D. May SMITH iv 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8604 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 grammar 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, D. May Smith, is referred to by the initials MS in all editorial insertions in the transcript. Punctuation Square brackets [I 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 MS] 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 ter ms 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/13/129-604 Mrs D. May SMITH 1. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8604 'S.A. Speaks: An Oral History of Life in South Australia Before 1930' Beth Robertson interviewing Mrs D. May Smith 111.1.1.111111.1 allinalliffinniffilWININIM on 27 February 1986 TAPE 1 SIDE A If you could just start by telling me your full name? Dorothy May - Cameron it was. And now? Smith. Were you known as Dorothy? No, always as May. It's only the pension authorities and, like the birth cer- tificate, see, that you have to use your first name. Do you know why you were called May, rather than Dorothy? After an Auntie. I don't know where the Dorothy came from. What was the date of your birth? On the seventh of March nineteen hundred, I was born. Then it's easy to keep track of your age. Yes, with the years. Where were your born? At N hill, Victoria. Why were you born over there? Well my mother went over to her people for a holiday at the same time, see, for a few weeks before I was born. Her parents lived there. Did she have others of her children with her parents? Then? Oh, my older brother was a year and eleven months older than me. Do you know if others of your brothers and sisters were born in Victoria? Well, I couldn't tell you about the first family, where all them were born, because, see, they were older than me. The older brother was born at Kingston and then I was born at Nhill and my other brother, who died in New Zealand - he was born at Kingston, and the baby brother that died at eight months, he was born at Kingston too. So your mother didn't usually go to her mother? ATB/13/129-604 Mrs D.