Australians at War Film Archive Roland Kinnear (Roly) - Transcript of interview Date of interview: 18th March 2004 http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/1621 Tape 1 00:35 Thanks for joining us today, Mr Kinnear, can I ask you to give us a summary of your life? I’ll try to the best of my ability. As you already know, I was born in February 1930. Lived at Potter Street at Russell Lea which is on the top end of Iron Cove near Iron Point. Grew up there. Mischievous as all boys were 01:00 at that stage. Fond memories of the closed pot man coming round and the knife sharpeners in those days. And the various times when the bands used to come around and play on the corner and us kids’d get up there and suck lemons in front of them and play up. Went to school at Drummoyne Public School and then to first year at Drummoyne High School. Then was taken away because my parents became manager and matron of the old Aborigines’ Welfare Board and 01:30 they were posted to Brewarrina for their first trip. From Brewarrina I was sent back to Sydney to go to school and had to repeat again. My third year in a row repeating first year, which was getting very boring. Then they were transferred to another settlement at Moonacullah in the south west Riverina and I went back to school there and finished my school while we were there. Then I was farmed off 02:00 to an aunt at Epping and finished my schooling at Hornsby Tech [Technical] High where I became very involved with the army cadets and had a posting to go to Duntroon, but my parents said no. Refused to sign the papers because I had to have a trade, not an army career. So I did my apprenticeship at Cockatoo Docks and Engineering Company. The day that I came out of my time and finished my week as a journeyman, I joined 02:30 the K [Korea] Force. I’d already been in the Citizens’ Military Forces. Posted out to Ingleburn. Talked into joining the regular army. So signed from the two year contract to K Force to a 6 year stint with the regular army then served in Korea. Since coming home from Korea, I had various jobs, didn’t settle well, up in the mountains. Then came to Forster in 1960 and haven’t looked back. And there we are up to 03:00 date. Perfect. Can I ask you Mr Kinnear, what was Russell Lea like as a neighbourhood when you were growing up? It was a great little neighbourhood. You didn’t have very far to go for a swim. About two blocks away. The kids in the street were great kids. Very fond memories of the McLachlan family and the Moores. We used to play of an afternoon after school – rounders 03:30 and the usual things, countries and those sort of things that I don’t think kids have ever heard of nowadays. Can you explain what those games are? Countries was everybody took a country’s name and you stood in a circle. You had a tennis ball. The tennis ball was pelted up in the air by somebody to start the game off and when they pelted the ball up in the air they would call a country’s name. Everybody would disperse. 04:00 When the person whose country had been called grabbed the ball they had to try and brand somebody of another country and then they’d become the centre and up went the ball again. We used to play Brandings, stand across the street from one another and pelt a tennis ball at one another. Statues was another fun game we used to play. You’d all line up and you’d start to run and someone would scream out “Statue!” and you had to 04:30 freeze in that position and you had to hold that position till everybody was checked. Just little games. Naturally, we used to have war games against kids in other streets. Nobody ever got injured or anything, it was just a lot of fun. And we used to raid the Chinese garden. It was only a short distance away from our home at the time. As kids, we used to follow the iceman around. Because in those days refrigeration wasn’t 05:00 in, in the early thirties. It was great to get little chips of ice off the iceman to suck on. They were like sweets to us. When the baker came in we always followed him round in the hope that we might get a bread roll to share between a few of us. Always ran after the horse and cart with the clothes prop man. As I say, kids of today don’t know. See them come round, these blokes during the Depression 05:30 that couldn’t get work so they’d go out into the bush, cut clothes props, cause in those days there was no rotary lines, it was just a line strung between two poles and they had to have a prop to hold up and stop them sagging the clothes on the ground. They used to come round, “Clothes props! Anybody for clothes props?” As kids we used to yell out in between, “What’s your wife’s legs like?” “Clothes props!” as they’d go on 06:00 we’d call in between them. But as kids it was just general muck up, good fun. My mother was a very good cook and she used to round up all the kids in blackberry season and we’d go down the Iron Cove round Rodd Point area, and all the kids with their little buckets or billies would pick blackberries and back to our place and mother would cook up heaps of blackberry jams, blackberry pies, and it was distributed amongst all the kids. They were the 06:30 good parts. Had some sad parts. Young Alan McLachlan, the bloke that I grew up with, his uncle brought a brand new motor bike and everyone was just waiting a turn to have a ride in this brand new motor bike in the sidecar. And Alan, being his nephew, got the first ride. They drove up around the corner onto the Lyons Road, the main road, and we heard this terrific bang and of course we all ran up there and they’d been hit by a truck. 07:00 That devastated our little street. Alan’s never been forgotten, nor his family, though they’ve spread quite a ways around the country. But you overcome those things with kids and gradually grew up old enough to be coming interested in watching the rowing crews around Iron Cove. Went down to 07:30 Drummoyne Rowing Club as a 15 year old and said I wanted to be a rower and they looked at me and said, “We’ll put you in a boat as a coxswain but you’ll never be a rower. You’re not big enough.” I used to carry a half a bag of sand to make up – I was 7 stone 7 weight at 15. Even when I was 17. I used to cox in the senior eights for Drummoyne Rowing Club and also cox the New South Wales lightweight four in the Australian championships. 08:00 Can I just take you back? What did your parents do for work? My mother was strictly a housewife. In those days, women didn’t work. Single women, yes. But married women, that was a definite no-no in those days. She did all the housework and the house duties. Tended the kids’ needs. Washing, the ironing, the cooking, you name it. In those days too you had a gas stove, 08:30 washing machines was not heard of. It was a copper. Also some people who were lucky enough had gas heaters to heat their bath water. We had a chip heater in our place. Being not much trees about the area to get little bits of timber to go in them we used to feed it with 09:00 paper. My father worked, he was a painter and sign writer, at the Botanic Gardens in Sydney. All the names of the plants plus their native names, he used to sign write all those till he became involved with the Aborigines’ Welfare Board and they took on their job as manager and matron of aboriginal stations under the old Aborigines’ Welfare Board that’s now defunct. Can I ask 09:30 what memories do you have of the Second World War as a boy? Being involved in it with school cadets, was following it very closely. I actually was in Sydney at school when the Japanese attacked Sydney Harbour. My mother immediately panicked and had me brought back to Brewarrina. 10:00 That’s another reason why I had to repeat another year at school. Schooling was interrupted terrifically. I was a volunteer when I came back from Brewarrina the following year in the Volunteer Air Observers Corps. I was staying or boarding with an aunt at Epping. We used to do our shifts. I was in the Boys’ Brigade and we used to do our shifts in an observation 10:30 post on top of a three storey shopping complex at Epping right by the railway station. We used to trundle up there every Saturday and Sunday and sometimes of a night time.