Australians at War Film Archive Kevin Harrington
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Australians at War Film Archive Kevin Harrington (KP, the boy from Gun) - Transcript of interview Date of interview: 19th August 2003 http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/686 Tape 1 00:40 So first of all, if you can tell me a bit about where you were born and where you grew up and your schooling years? Well, I was born in Gundagai on the 21 January 1924, the second eldest of eight children and Gundagai was a great place to grow up in because of all the 01:00 activities that went on in that town. At that time it was approximately half way between Sydney and Melbourne so the tourists staying overnight were there almost every day. There were 4 hotels in Gundagai itself and two on the other side of the river and they were invariably filled each evening and we saw some great personalities, as kids, as they passed through Gundagai. For example, Ambrose Palmer the champion 01:30 boxer going through to Sydney for one of his big fights. He had a yarn to the kids. The Australian Test Cricket team. We were having a game of cricket one day, fronting the main street, and these fellows were peering over the rail looking at us and they came down and introduced themselves and there were some of the greats like McCabe and Oldfield, Mailey, the great cricket players of the time and I also saw a great Australian 02:00 singer and I will think of her name in a moment, got a standing ovation in the theatre one evening. Gladys Moncliff, one of our famous earlier artists, got a standing ovation in the theatre. It has some humorous moments too, because as school kids we watched cyclists arriving in Gundagai when Melbourne celebrated its 100th Anniversary in 1938 and there was a cycle race from Sydney to Melbourne 02:30 finishing in Melbourne and an international Frenchman, a Tour de France rider, was neck and neck with Hubert Opman, the famous Australian cyclist, into Gundagai but the Frenchman came in first. The Country Women’s Association had beautiful tables of food all lined up for the cyclists but mainly like salads and energy food. The Frenchman got off his bike. They offered him food and he shook his head, they offered him wine and he shook his 03:00 head. Whatever they offered him, he refused and in exasperation he sat down and relieved himself in the gutter, to the delight of all the school kids watching what was going on and as I said, Gundagai was a great place to grow up in as a kid because we all learnt to swim in the Murrumbidgee and that was a big feature because the inter-town rivalry between Tumut, Cootamundra, Young, Harden, Wagga [Wagga] 03:30 was always very great. Even at the schoolboy level up to the senior levels, in the football season in winter and in summer, cricket and tennis and swimming. Inter-town competitions were big so we used to visit those towns regularly and that was interesting. I went to the Convent School at Gundagai to the finish of primary school and because there was no high school in Gundagai then, I went to Tumut by train 04:00 every day, leaving about 8 o’clock in the morning and getting to Tumut about half past 9, twenty-five to 10 and that was interesting because one day the driver went to the pub whilst he was spelling to come back in the afternoon and he got pretty full and when he took the train off from Tumut on the way home and he opened the throttle full out and of course we were cheering him all the way, the train was rocketing along but 04:30 the police had been forewarned because it was dangerous and when it got to South Gundagai, before it came over a mile long bridge across the flat over the Murrumbidgee, the Police were there to take him off but we kids were urging him on and because he used to go through every station that he had to pull up in, instead of pulling up at the station he would have to go through and back cause he wasn’t completely in control. 05:00 Growing up in the Depression, we didn’t feel the effect like some people did. We lived in the town and there was a big Chinese market garden on the Murrumbidgee Flats and they virtually supplied the town with green vegetables and a lot of people grew their own vegetables but it wasn’t unusual at 05:30 all to see men passing through that were on the dole in the Depression looking for jobs, looking for food and I can remember my parents packing food parcels to send to Sydney. Some relatives, who lived at Newtown and who had lost their jobs, were having a hard time and as a result we regularly sent them food parcels. 06:00 Another interesting aspect of living in Gundagai was things like Kingsford Smith, the famous aviator, came to Gundagai on a barn storming tour and for 10 shillings which is a dollar now, my brother and I went for a flight up just to circle the town and back down again because he was raising funds for his flying activities and wanted to fit in as many as he could. That was an interesting 06:30 aspect. I’m thinking furiously of other developments that took place but the seasons were a big feature of country life because eg. in the wintertime, football time, that was big inter-town rivalries and if Gundagai won the competition away playing say Tumut or they would take a special train to 07:00 take the supporters there and would arrive home with the driver cockadoodle dooing on his train as they entered the Gundagai station and there was great celebrations. Another interesting thing as a young kid was when the circus came to town. Now it used to come by train and we used to get up at 4 o’clock in the morning and go down and watch the elephants unload the train and these 07:30 mighty beasts gently easing the lion carriages or animal carriages down, transporting them to the flat where they erected the Big Top and to watch them performing as they did. That is in the work situation and then in the circus itself. That was always a very, very interesting thing from a young person’s point of view because they were spectacular with what they could do and how gently they could handle equipment. 08:00 The local show was always a big feature too, each year. Jimmy Sharman’s Boxing Tent would come to town and in terms of Australian history, that was a feature of most Australian towns beside the agricultural show which always highlighted the agricultural products of the local area, just like the exhibition does here now, and it was always a looked-forward-to event from a 08:30 young child’s point of view because of the hurdy-gurdy’s and the rides and what have you. We’ll come back and talk a lot more about the time at Gundagai cause it’s a really fascinating sort of life, but just can you just tell me a bit about when once you passed your intermediate and the work that you did then? Employment opportunities 09:00 were very small in Gundagai because it was a town of about 2,000 people so a good friend of mine, John Megsy Malloy, and I sat for a public exam in Canberra and we were both appointed to departments there. I was appointed to the Prime Minister’s Department. He was appointed to the Department of the Interior, which looked after all the local aspects of Canberra, Local Government aspects. I was appointed to the Records Branch of the Prime Minister’s Department and 09:30 it comprised many sections: a cable section for deciphering cables from overseas, external territories which Australia administered at that stage, protocol on behalf of the Government and a big Correspondence Department. When I was introduced to them, I walked into this room and fifty women stopped typing to see who this new kid was 10:00 and it was interesting because there were quite a few Queensland…I’m a New South Welshman having been born at Gundagai but there were quite a few Queensland girls there who I met later on. One of my first early jobs was to take confidential cables from the Prime Minister’s Department, which had been decoded, in heavily wax sealed envelopes over to the private secretaries of each 10:30 Minister in the Menzies government and give them to them personally, not anyone else and as a result of that after about, oh I forget whether six or nine months, Murray Toole who was Private Secretary to Senator McBride in the Menzies government, Senator McBride was the Minister for Supply and Development, asked me if I would like to join him as his assistant and I said, “What have I got to do?”. He said, “The Department’s Headquarters were in Melbourne.” 11:00 So when the House (House of Representatives) wasn’t sitting, they would be in Melbourne or wherever the Minister had to go for conferences and meetings. He lived in Adelaide himself. So, he said, “You’ve got to arrange all the transport bookings, do all the filing”, and this included, strangely enough, War Cabinet Records.