STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION OH 715/4 Full transcript of an interview with ROBERT DAVID BAKEWELL on 24 February 2005 By Robb Linn 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 715/4 ROBERT DAVID BAKEWELL 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. 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OH 715/4 Authorised, edited transcription of an interview with Robert David Bakewell recorded by Rob Linn on 24th February 2005 at Adelaide, South Australia, for the Don Dunstan Foundation. (Interviewee’s voice is at lower volume and associated with some echo.) DISK 1 Tape identification, tape identification. This is an interview with Mr Bob Bakewell for the Don Dunstan Foundation and the Libraries Board of South Australia on 24th February 2005. This is tape one, tape one, interviewer Rob Linn. Bob, you were born in September in 1927 in England. Can you tell me a bit, please, about your parents and your background in the UK. Yes. I was born at a place called Wickham Skeith, which is in Suffolk. My mother was Dorothy Eavestaff, the noted concert pianist, and my father was involved with the Wool Secretariat. It was more an accidental birth, I suppose, than a prearranged one. And we lived in England, and then came back to Australia and then went back to England again in the late ’30s, just prior to the Second World War. Now, you were schooled in the minor public school tradition in England, is that right, Bob? Yes, that’s right. And then, during the War, from my memory of our earlier conversation, you were actually evacuated to Canada? Yes. It was (sound of mobile telephone interference) ‘the last male Bakewell’ sort of theory, I gather: we were shoved on the old Aquitania1, which was a very old ship even then, and had a safe voyage to Halifax. We boys enjoyed it; I don’t think the crew did as far as we and other children were concerned, or nor did the teachers who got seasick, but for some reason us young fellows didn’t get seasick. And did you return after the War, to the UK? 1 The Aquitania, we were told, was to take back troops and Empire air crew to the United Kingdom. – RB 3 I came back to do my National Service – I could either do it in Canada or do it in England. If I did it in England you did a shorter period, and as I’d been to school in England and born in England I was liable to be called up. Now, what about with further education? Then, after that, I had to take another exam because they didn’t recognise what’s called the Higher School Canadian Certificate, which I scraped through, and then started a course in Economics at the London University. I didn’t complete that there, I completed it after we returned to Australia, on what you call a correspondence basis, which was quite common in those days. Was that at the LSE2, was it? Yes, the LSE, yes. And then I then did further studies by going back to Canada, to the University of British Columbia, which is in Vancouver, to do Administration – it wasn’t called ‘Public Administration’ in Canada, I think it was called ‘Civil Administration’, I’m not sure, but you get a postgraduate diploma, which I finished, and did some time with the Department of Municipal Affairs on a part-time basis to pay my fees. This was because you couldn’t transfer sterling or Australian dollars into Canadian dollars easily because of bank restrictions, I think, so I had to get a job, we’ll say as a soda jerk, but I got a job and some money. Bob, you obviously had family connections in Australia, and I know in Adelaide that there were Bakewells living here, but what brought you to come to Australia? I could not settle down after Canada and wanted to return. My father died, unfortunately, and the relatives in Australia were fairly distant, in the sense that we’re in a book but you go up and down, as it were, and the nearest connection was a Bakewell in Melbourne – Guy Bakewell, who was a cousin – second cousin, sorry – of some of the Bakewells in the UK. So, on my returning, I must admit they helped me to meet people and join such things as the Overseas League, Victoria League, et cetera, to ‘get the bastard married’, I think was more or less (laughs) the angle, ‘before he went off the rails’! And then, at that point, really I didn’t see a great deal of the Bakewell family. I did meet the Bakewells in Adelaide but I felt 2 LSE – London School of Economics. 4 that, as they had lost their only son, Kenneth, in North Africa, it would be sensible to be very discreet because old Ken Bakewell and his wife – beautiful people – were still very upset.3 So, Bob, on your return you eventually join up with a stock and station agency in Naracoorte, have I got that right? Elder Smith’s in Adelaide, first of all, mainly with the help of Helen Bagot’s family – she was a Bakewell. They got me an introduction to Mr Sweetman, the company secretary, and after basic training I was eventually moved down to Naracoorte, which I’d never been to before, and had a good time there, later marrying a girl from the South-East. Yes, you married Joan in 1954, I remember that. Yes, December. December. And what led you then to go into COR4, the petroleum side of things? Money. The stock firms were very, very good in training, but they didn’t really pay very much – I know it sounds a bit silly, but as a young man proposing to get married – – –. I think it was £1 2s 6d a week. While I did have some private funds I felt that I should try and get some more money, and COR at that stage had had some connection with the government and I thought, ‘Well, give anything a try.’ And it was very useful, because it gave me a reasonably good grounding in country areas of South Australia, what was happening in the sales, et cetera. But I didn’t persevere in the company and decided that I would head for Canberra.