STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION OH 561/28 Full transcript of an interview with H. A. BAILEY On 5 March 1973 By Mary Rose Goggs Recording available on CD 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 561/28 H. A. BAILEY 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. 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OH 561/28 Interview of Mr HA Bailey by Mary Rose Goggs, recorded in Adelaide on 5th March 1973 for broadcast on ABC Radio 5CL on 11th March 1973 as part of the series ‘Now in retirement’. TAPE 1 SIDE A When most people think of surveyors, Mr Bailey, they have a mental picture of two men, one with a theodolite standing on some apparently arbitrary spot, and the other some distance away doing one knows what what. Is this basically in what surveying consists? Yes; there are different types of surveying, of course, but basically it is the measurement of distances, the positioning of points on the ground and the recording of them in order to put them on a map. Did you specialise, yourself, in one kind rather than another? Yes; I specialised in land boundary surveys. Did you choose to become a surveyor? Not really. I chose to become a draftsman, but after spending one year in the office of the Lands Department I found that I was meeting elderly draftsmen with poor eyesight, bent backs through poring over maps. I also met survey cadets, young fellows who came in with exciting tales of the bush, and I thought, ‘Well, this is the life for me.’ Surveying is something that one goes out and does; you don’t do it in an office. Did you go immediately into distant country areas? Yes; as soon as I was appointed a cadet I went to the Cobdogla district on the River Murray and spent one year and one day in that one camp. Survey work is preparation for something, isn’t it? With what did these early camps have to do? In those days most of our early camps were for the opening of land. The Cobdogla survey was for irrigation purposes, but many of our survey parties at that time were in distant parts on Eyre Peninsula, for instance, on the West Coast opening up farming land. How did you live, Mr Bailey? 3 We lived in tents; we had to be self-sufficient. I think we all enjoyed the life. We certainly had to be resourceful. When motor vehicles were first used in camps they were driven in the bush away from roads and we had to improvise many repairs. You must have been bogged often, too. Oh, many times. In 1926, Mr Bailey, you joined a private firm in Mildura. Was this different work from that which you’d been doing? No; the work was very similar. It was still land boundary work, and in fact we had one very large contract for the Western Land Board of New South Wales which was similar to the work I had been doing in South Australia. This was the ….. ….. subdivision, when we subdivided a quarter of a million acres of land, and I remember the distance around the outer boundaries of our block of land was just a hundred and fifty miles. Just a huge area, isn’t it? Yes, it was a huge area. We ran three survey parties at the one time on this area. In 1939 you left the private firm in Mildura and returned to the Lands Department. Was this a personal choice, or were you what I believe they call ‘manpowered’? Oh, no; the manpower came into being later. I left Mildura early in 1939 before the War started, and this was a personal decision for family reasons we wished to return to our old home in Adelaide but when you speak of manpower, this strained labour when people in employment were not allowed to change their job or not allowed to give up their work unless it was satisfactory to the manpower authorities. And this affected me later when I had completed the military mapping work I was engaged on. This was the necessary war work, wasn’t it? Yes. An emergency mapping work was carried out by the Lands Department for the military, but then the Surveyor-General, Mr Hambidge, asked me to devise a means for covering the mapping, placing the position of every house, windmill and physical object within an accuracy of about one hundred feet in as quick a manner as possible. And for this I devised a scheme of graduating the speedometer on the 4 utility into chains instead of the tenths of a mile as shown on most, and with the use of a prismatic compass taking bearings to objects in the paddocks and another little instrument called an optical square, I was able to map the area very quickly. Did you do this alone, or did you have assistance? I only had a lad as a driver with me. And are your maps still used, Mr Bailey? No, not officially. They’ve been superseded by more accurate maps by the use of aerial photography. It was then, when this work was completed, that I applied to Manpower to be released from my work with the Lands Department in order to join the Air Force. What kind of survey work did you do with them? Well, at first I was on the mapping of airfields that had already been constructed, with a unit familiarly known as the ‘Berks and Bricks’ [?]. Then, after that, I joined an airfield construction squadron and worked in further out areas locating sites for new aerodromes and doing engineering surveys for the construction of these aerodromes. Did you get away from Australia? Yes, I spent quite some time in Dutch New Guinea and also, at the end of the War, I was in Moritai. After the War, Mr Bailey, you went back to the Lands Department and, in 1947, became a member of the Surveyors’ Board. What did that entail? Well, the Surveyors’ Board is responsible for the setting of examinations or it was at that stage, before the Institute of Technology arranged the course we were responsible for the setting and marking of examination papers for candidates for a licence in terrain, and we also were concerned with the ethics of the qualified surveyors. Your responsibilities must have been further extended when you became Chief Surveyor in 1955.