; STATE Government .1—.1 LIBRARY of South Australia STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION OH 1/14 Full transcript of an interview with NEIL SEAFORTH MACKENZIE on 20 SEPTEMBER 1985 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/11/129-14i Mr Neil Seaforth MACKENZIE ii 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8514 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Preface iii Notes to the Transcript iv Family and Schooling 1 Work 6 Assistant in Adelaide warehouse Military Service 9 Compulsory Military Training Service with the 10th Battalion in France Work (continued) 22 Unsettled return to civilian life Survey team at Overland Corner Soldiers' Settlement, Bar mera 27 Accommodation Irrigation farming - grape growing Courtship and Marriage 33 Later work experiences Index (Interim Subject Heading List) 39 Collateral Material in File 8514 includes: Photographs P85I4A-H and a photocopy of a letter that Mr MacKenzie's father gave him on his departure for the war (L8514). Cover Illustration Neil MacKenzie (front row, third from right), aged nineteen, on the day he enlisted in 1916. ATB/11/129-14i Mr Neil Seaforth MACKENZIE iii 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8514 PREFACE Neil Seaforth MacKenzie was born in 1897 at Petersburg (Peterborough). That year the family moved to Adelaide when Neil's father, a shorthand writer with the railways, was transferred to Islington. Neil left Adelaide High School in about 1913 and worked as the assistant to the Manager of a British manufacturer's warehouse in the City. He enlisted in September 1916 and spent almost three years in France - mainly keeping his head down to avoid Fritz and Australian officers! On his return Neil found it hard to settle and went bush, working for twelve months with a surveying team around Overland Corner preparatory to taking up a Soldier Settlement block growing grapes at Barmera in April 1922. Mr MacKenzie married in 1926, had three children and worked the block until 1955. Mr MacKenzie was 88 years of age at the time of the interview. When speaking of his wartime experiences, Mr MacKenzie is most animated (this includes giving a rapid salute whenever he mentions an officer) and hardly requires prompting. Otherwise he is not always expansive but has a sound memory and an engaging dry wit. Mr MacKenzie tired a little towards the end of the inter- view. The quality of the tape recording is good although a squeaky chair is evident and Mr MacKenzie does not always enunciate clearly and tends to lose the ends of sentences. The interview was recorded in one session resulting in two hours and twenty five minutes 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 8514] 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/11/129-14i Mr Neil Seaforth MACKENZIE iv 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8514 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, Mr Neil MacKenzie, is referred to by the initials NM 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 NM] 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/11/129-14 Mr Neil Seaforth MacKENZIE 1. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8514 'S.A. Speaks: An Oral History of Life in South Australia Before 1930' Beth Robertson interviewing Mr Neil Seaforth MacKenzie ansiiiminini on 20 September 1985 TAPE 1 SIDE A Could you start by telling me your full name? Neil Seaforth MacKenzie. Where did the Seaforth come from? The Seaforth was one of the Dad's being of Scottish descendent, I was named after Seaforth Highlanders. That's where the Seaforth came in. Have you always been known as Neil? Yes. Have you ever had any nicknames? Only during the war and they used to call me Burgoo then. Because I used to go for the porridge - burgoo. (laughs) What date were you born? The eleventh of May 1897 at Peterborough. Oh, it was Petersburg then. Why were your family there? Well my dad, he came out from the old country, and being connected with the railways in Scotland, he came out and he applied for a job in Victoria. He worked there for some years and then he decided he'd go down to Tasmania. It was a bit too cold there, so then he went to Queensland. And from Queens- land he came back and was given the job at Peterborough as a shorthand writer to the South Australian Railways up there, which was the big locomo- tive department. It was from there that he came down to Islington and was in the Chief Mechanical Engineer's Office and he spent some time there until he was asked to go to Newcastle to view all the coal for the South Australian Railways at Broken Hill Proprietary and the Western Australian Railways, and that's where he spent, well, the last - biggest portion of his life - over there. And he was well respected. Because I know when I was a lad and a brother, we went over to see him, and he was great friends of John Brown, the big coal magnate, and when we went over there he said that the boys could have the mine for the day, which was very good of him. And he sent a special engine ATB/11/129-14 Mr Neil Seaforth MacKENZIE 2. 'S.A. SPEAKS' 8514 down and a tender, and we went up to a mine - I can't think of the name of the mine at the present - but we went up there and, oh, had a super lunch, had a look all round the place, and then we came back again. Oh no, it was an experience. And then also the Manager of one of the mines there, he had a collier coming from Newcastle to Sydney, so he asked if we'd like to go down on the collier, which we did, and we landed in Sydney on a Sunday morning. And Sunday morning in Sydney's like all the rest of them - dead. (laughter) But we found the hotel and got on all right.