STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION OH 593/2 Full transcript of an interview with MARY HELEN NEWPORT on 1 June 2001 By Peter Donovan 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 593/2 MARY HELEN NEWPORT 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 593/2 Interview of Mary Helen Newport by Peter Donovan, recorded in Canberra on 1st June 2001 as part of The Honoured Women Oral History Project Part II for the Somerville Oral History Collection of the Mortlock Library of South Australiana. TAPE 1 SIDE A My full name is Mary Helen Newport. I lived in a suburb called Plympton about four miles out of Adelaide – I can’t think what the kilometers are (laughs) – out of Adelaide on the way to Glenelg, and I am single. My date of birth is 15th January 1927. Place of birth, I was born in Adelaide and grew up there. My parents – my father was a carpenter. He was the second-oldest in a large family. I always thought he had a great potential, but being one of a large family he had to go out to work as soon as he was able, and this enabled his younger brothers and sisters to reach their full potential, like heads of government agencies, Secretary to the Minister of Education, positions like that. Could you just elaborate on those, just mention their names, uncles and – – –? Yes. Walter Bernard Newport, because of not meeting all the physical requirements, couldn’t go to war, so he was in charge of the procurement agency. I’ve just forgotten its name now, but it was to do with the Commonwealth Department of Supply and the wartime allocation of materials. Another uncle who became a Jesuit was Secretary to the Minister of Education. His name was Sylvanus Langford Newport. He left that position to become a Jesuit. Another aunt, Gertrude Veronica Newport who became Mrs Shaw, was a school teacher. She was probably quite well-known. But they were the younger ones. The older ones had to go out to work as quickly as they could to help support the family. My mother, she came from a family who used to live at Marino1, and they were quite well-to-do, but they fell on hard times. They lived in a lovely house, apparently, and they even had a carriage, some sort of a carriage, according to the family legend. And they had a ballroom in their house. But they fell on hard times and had to give that up eventually and shifted to Forestville. I never knew if my mother had a specific occupation. I think 1 I understand they owned a chaff mill and cement works – MHN. 3 they were just ‘ladies’, quote unquote, and maybe just – I know an aunt became a lady’s companion, which was the thing in those days, probably. So that’s all I can say about my mother. Unfortunately, she became very ill for a long time when my brother and I were children, and she died of cancer when I was twelve. And this placed a great burden on the family, of course, because there was no Medicare in those days, and so we were in straitened circumstances for quite some time. (break in recording) Religion was an important part of our lives. My parents both were great workers for the Church. The church in Plympton – or Mornington, which was another part of the suburb – had only just been started up about the time I was about eight years of age, I suppose, and therefore they were engaged in a lot of pioneering work helping set up that church. We’re talking Catholic Church, aren’t we? The Catholic Church, yes, the Roman Catholic Church, yes. And besides that my father was always helping out round the district. Because he was a carpenter, people were always calling upon him to do all sorts of things, and so he was always helping out somewhere or other. And he even taught woodwork classes down at Sacred Heart College. (break in recording) Education. For the first two years of my school life I went to the Plympton public school, and then when the church school was set up in Mornington I finished the rest of my primary education there. I won a scholarship to St Aloysius College, the Convent of Mercy in the city, and, as I mentioned, because we were in straitened circumstances, I had to get through my education as quickly as possible and get out to work. So in two years I did the Intermediate. I enjoyed school life very much. Exams never bothered me, they never have, I always liked them. I looked upon them as a sort of climax to your study to show what you’d learned. I came within the first ten in that Intermediate exam at the age of fourteen in English and in Bookkeeping, and on the strength of that the nuns at the Convent of Mercy offered me another scholarship. However, I’d also put in for a scholarship to go to Chartres Business College, which was considered the best business college at that time, having decided I wanted to pursue a career as a secretary, so I was torn between these two scholarship offers. However, the economic pressure was great, and I felt I 4 had to get out to work, so I took the Chartres one. In reflection now, of course, I would love to have gone on and gone to university, but we couldn’t have afforded it anyway. I did quite well at Chartres and was offered a position – I was too young to join the public service, which my uncle, who’d done quite well in it, wanted me to go into. He felt that was a good, permanent, safe job. And so I spent about a year at Elder Smith and Company and then sat for the Public Service Exam and was appointed to the Taxation Department, which I enjoyed very much. It was a large department, and it was a bit like a large family. We had great times. We had a good social club and I enjoyed working there, but after a time you had the pressure to get promotion and there wasn’t much around in Adelaide. And so when the offer came of a transfer to Canberra I seized it and I went to work in Canberra at the age of twenty or twenty-one for about a year.