1:01:57

JABEZ AND NED GIBBS

Maureen Grantham

07/02/1995

E0082

00:51:58

Lisa Iles

8/10/2015

City of Joondalup

This is an interview with Ned and Jabez Gibbs on 7 February 1995 at 99 Gibbs Road,

Nowergup.

MG: You came out to Wanneroo when you were a child?

NG: Yeah.

MG: Where did you come from?

NG: Cannington.

MG: How did you get here?

NG: Horse and cart.

MG: Took a long while?

NG: Yeah. Came out with horse and carts and settled down up at Pipidinny Road for a few

years and then they moved from there down to here.

MG: What did you live in at first?

NG: Well they slapped up a tin roof and then put bags around and whitewashed them.

MG: Yes.

JG: Hessian bags.

MG: Hessian bags, like sacks?

NG: Yeah.

NG: So all the houses were built out this way in the early times. And then they gradually

build better houses as they went along.

MG: Yes. And what did you do when you first came here, your parents, what did they do?

NG: Well they had some cattle and a few pigs and stuff.

MG: Yeah.

NG: I don’t know what they came all this way out for?

MG: No. Did you grow your own food?

NG: Yeah I did.

MG: You kept yourselves self-sufficient?

NG: Yeah, well you had to go in the bush and get kangaroo or wild ducks or something for

meat.

MG: And did you kids go to school, you two?

NG: Not for late, ‘til they started running a truck down later in life, about in the, I think it had

to be about in ’28 and 9, or sometime like that. They were pretty rough vehicles they used,

sat on a table top truck.

MG: So how many children were you lived in that house?

NG: Well there was nine altogether.

MG: Nine altogether?

NG: Some came later when things were better but.

MG: When did you move here?

NG: Oh.

JG: 1917, wasn’t it?

NG: I think they came out from Cannington in 1919, it would be about four years before they

come on down from Pipidinny to here.

MG: So you moved onto this place, what year, roughly?

NG: Roughly about 1923 or 4 I think.

MG: What did you do at first here?

NG: They were market gardening. You used to have to take it by horse and cart. They’d

leave in the afternoon and get in in the morning and then they’d come home again the next

day.

MG: Was it a good living?

NG: Well, it wasn’t much of a living in those days.

MG: No.

NG: Everything, well you had to put up the hardships, you couldn’t keep meat or anything,

you had to go and get it out of the bush. Grow your own vegetables.

MG: What did you use for fertilisers and things like that?

NG: Well they’d buy a bag of Super or something and put in the, bring back with the horse

and cart.

MG: What did you eat? You’d cook your own vegetables.

NG: Yeah, all that stuff. Whatever it took, rice or something to go with it. You never took

any notice because that’s all you knew in life. The only ones that had a hard time was the

mothers.

MG: Yes, I bet they did. Did you have a well?

NG: Yeah, had a well. There was no windmills around at that time. You pulled it up with a

bucket or a hand pump.

MG: How did you water the vegetables?

NG: Well they grew in that swamp there. That’s all a peat swamp.

JG: Irrigation only came in in the early forties from then on. But before that was all, all the

market gardening was did in the swamps all around Western Australia just about, like

Osborne Park and all through those areas.

MG: Did you children have to work at all?

NG: Oh yes, everybody did something. When the tomato season was on, everybody had to

help to pick and pack them and once, about 1927, they got a truck then so from then on it

wasn’t bad.

MG: Did you have many neighbours here?

NG: Oh, there was one about three miles up there and another one a couple of miles over

this way.

MG: And they grew vegetables too, did they?

NG: Yeah, they all got a bit of existence out of it.

MG: Did you meet them much? Did you go and see them much?

NG: Oh, not that, you’d meet them now and again but people never used to go visiting that

much.

MG: No? What did you like doing at school?

NG: Well I never did much school because I was getting a bit too late when I got down

there.

MG: Which school did you go to from here?

JG: Wanneroo, where the CALM is.

MG: After that, when you grew up, what did you do when you grew up and had children?

NG: Well you went to town once a week on a Saturday night, for your entertainment or they

had dances down at the old Wanneroo Hall.

MG: Did you go to the film shows?

NG: Wasn’t any film shows in those…

JG: The pictures.

MG: The pictures.

NG: Oh well if you went to town you could go but otherwise.

JG: Pearsalls

NG: Oh well, there were a few picture shows down there what people went to on a Saturday

night. Then as it got on everybody seemed to go on to town then.

MG: Did you ever go into Perth?

NG: Once a week you’d go in on a Saturday night or one day now and again when they

started running a bus from Yanchep. Once that opened up you could catch it in the morning

and come back in the evenings.

MG: Oh yes, it was a motor bus, was it?

NG: Yeah.

MG: Yeah, how long did that used to take?

NG: Oh, about hour and a half, to go in.

MG: A fair old journey, must have been worth it? What did you do when you were in Perth?

NG: Just went and had a look around.

MG: Lots of shops down there, was there?

NG: What, in Perth?

MG: Yeah.

NG: Yes, the same shops that’s there today only they’re bigger. Bairds and all those shops

were there, Boans.

JG: North Perth was the last jumping off place to Wanneroo, up to the early forties. After

that there was nothing really. All that’s all came in since the forties.

MG: Ah yes. What you mean this side of the railway line really?

JG: Northern Perth, out Charles Street. You know where the Vegas Hotel used to be? Well

that’s gone now. Well that was the last place, there and Osborne Park.

NG: That was a shopping centre.

JG: That was the shopping centre.

MG: Oh yes and that’s where you got your shopping from?

JG: Groceries and stuff from, yeah. Man by the name of Ballantine had the shop there and

then Gippanis brothers came, after that Yanchep Traders.

MG: Go on, when the Italians

NG: They came out, they took up lots around, growing vegetables. After the Italians, the

Greeks came.

JG: Greeks and Macedonians.

MG: They started the vegetable growing in a big way?

NG: Yes, there was a lot of it then.

MG: One of your family was on the Road Board, weren’t they?

JG: Yeah, the father.

NG: Oh, and a brother was there.

JG: A brother in later years, but the father was on from about 1927, something like that I

think. Used to ride on horseback down to Wanneroo.

MG: Oh yes, that took a long while?

JG: Yes, I’d imagine so.

MG: Yes. What to go to the meeting?

JG: Yeah.

NG: Don’t know what they went for because there wasn’t much to do. Weren’t getting much

money in, rates and that, cheap.

MG: What about the church?

NG: Well that was built …

JG: Catholic Church was the only church there. St Anthony’s that was built in the early

thirties wasn’t it?

NG: Something like that.

MG: And you were Protestant?

NG: Yeah.

MG: So you didn’t go to church?

JG: No, no we didn’t go to church.

MG: Did a priest come out, or a vicar?

NG: No, no.

MG: Never came out here at all?

NG: Never seen any parsons out around here.

MG: What did people do when they wanted to get married or buried?

NG: Oh well they had to go and make arrangements in Perth at the registry office.

MG: Oh I see, yes. That was hard wasn’t it?

JG: Oh yes, was a hard times in those times.

NG: I lost two brothers in the war. They went away to Singapore when that fell. Landed

them up there without any guns or anything.

MG: That’s right. That was bad wasn’t it?

NG: Yeah, a bad blue there.

MG: Were your parents alive then? They must have been?

JG: Father.

NG: The father was the mother had died before then.

JG: Mother died in 1932 I think. When the younger sister was born.

MG: And in the war, was the petrol rationing very restrictive?

NG: Yes.

JG: Very.

MG: Did you get into Perth to sell your vegetables and that?

NG: Well they were only big enough to take so much in a week and that was all you could

get.

JG: You had to ration and that was it. When that went you’d have to apply to if you could

some more.

MG: Oh yes, and I don’t think food rationing would have bothered you though, would it

here?

JG: Well, you lived off the land, more or less.

NG: If you were restricted, the butter and sugar and all that.

JG: Tea and all that stuff.

MG: Tea, you couldn’t get very easily?

NG: No.

JG: No and sugar

MG: You didn’t have ration books though, did you?

NG: Yeah. Just the same as Perth, yeah it were under the same.

JG: Yeah, oh yeah.

MG: The tea must have been shipped in, mustn’t it though?

JG: Oh, would have to come from Ceylon or one of those places in those times.

NG: I think the coffee you got was only weed; they used to burn it up nearly and then

goosed it up to make coffee.

MG: What happened after the war, Wanneroo got bigger didn’t it, after the war?

NG: Yeah, it started to grow then.

JG: Wanneroo was hardly, people from town never knew where Wanneroo was, I don’t

think until about 1950 or something like that. If you went to town and you wanted something

and you said you came from Wanneroo they’d ask you ‘Where’s Wanneroo?’ They didn’t

know, that’s how it was.

NG: First shop in the centre was the one what’s down here now.

JG: Villanovas.

NG: The only thing, they increased it bigger but they may have started up the shop instead

of Villanovas,

MG: Yes. Was it a big shopping centre?

NG: No.

JG: No, just a small shop, that’s all.

MG: And what about the telephone, when did you get the telephone?

NG: I think that was going during the war in ’39.

JG: No, the telephone…

NG: Not up here but down Wanneroo it was.

JG: We never got the telephone here until about 1950 I think, something like that.

NG: Same with the power, that came in late.

JG: That came through in 1968, the power through here.

MG: Really?

JG: We all, Yanchep and about eight others of us, we had to get so much money and they

so much, paid so much back each year to get the power through to Yanchep. There were

eight different ah.

MG: Eight farmers?

JG: Yeah, had to pay in to get it through.

MG: To get the line through?

JG: Yeah.

MG: Did you have gas before that?

JG: No, no gas. No gas here now even. We use bottle gas.

NG: No, no gas.

MG: So your mother cooked on a wood stove?

NG: Wood stove, yeah.

MG: Yes, and you’ve always cooked on wood until electric came?

JG: Yeah.

MG: And how did you light the house?

JG: Oh we had a generator and about 24 batteries I think. And our own generator.

NG: Kerosene?

MG: A windmill?

JG: No, just with a little three-horse-power motor and used to start that up, a kerosene little

engine and start that up and charge the batteries every two or three days.

MG: Did it use a lot of kero?

JG: No, not really.

MG: I should think you got a different flickering light, was it?

JG: It was strong like, just a light but not like the light of today.

MG: When did you start having a big market garden, when did you move out of the swamp?

JG: In about 1946.

MG: 1946 out of the swamp?

JG: Yeah, yeah out of the swampland.

MG: How did you water it?

JG: We had a pump, big Southern Cross engine, 24/25 horsepower motor and that watered

did the irrigating. It was pumped, the water, with a Stalker pump. They’d bring it to the top

and did the irrigation.

MG: Did you just grow vegetables?

JG: All vegetables, yeah.

MG: Not fruit?

JG: No, no fruit.

MG: What was your main market?

JG: Tomatoes and cauliflowers mainly.

MG: And you sent them all to Perth, did you?

JG: Yeah, they went to market, into West Perth, to the markets.

MG: You didn’t sell much in Wanneroo?

JG: No, no shops in Wanneroo. Everything went to West Perth to the markets.

MG: Were things easier for you then?

NG: Oh yes, much easier.

JG: Much easier because the tractor came in and where you had to do it by hand, the

tractors came in and machinery made it much easier, gardening, spraying and whatever.

MG: That’s right.

NG: It was dry, the swamps, than what it was in those days. Haven’t seen any water on this

swamp for about two or three years.

MG: You haven’t?

NG: No, I think they dig bores on the east side of Pinjar; it takes most of the water now.

MG: Would it come back if we get more rain do you think?

NG: Oh, it might.

JG: I think that when the cycle goes around I think it will all come back again. That’s what I

think myself.

NG: Well, they’re pumping that much water out of it now for all the suburbs and all.

JG: Lake Pinjar used to be just a sheet of water like sea, there’d be that much water in it, it

would run from out of the lake here out into the where the pine forest is today, over the road

about two or three feet deep.

MG: Many birds on it?

JG: Ducks, wild ducks and swans.

MG: Did you go out shooting them?

JG: We used to shoot around here, we never go over as far as Pinjar, ‘cause you’d have to

walk otherwise.

MG: A long way?

JG: Yes.

MG: Did you go fishing?

JG: Yes, we used to go fishing now and again. Fish on the rocks at Quinns Rocks.

MG: Did you take the horse down there in the early days or did you drive down?

JG: I think the father had the horse and cart in those times and then we ended up with a

little truck and we used to go in that.

NG: And you couldn’t get out there ‘til they’d made a, surveyed a road out because the land

owners wouldn’t let you through.

JG: Father was the one behind getting the road through to where Quinns Rocks is that is

where they used to go. Where the caravan park is now, that used to be where they’d all go

there for fishing. Then later on as the years went on they moved up the other way to where

the boat ramp is today at Quinns. That’s where all the fishing would be done at the rocks at

Quinns, right down, you’d come along the rocks right down as far as where Mindarie is.

Walk along the beach, along the rocks.

MG: Did you ever go down to race days for a picnic at Perry’s Paddock?

JG: No, not in my time. Maybe in Ned’s time.

NG: Perry’s Paddock, that’s out from Wembley.

JG: No, no you know Perry’s Paddocks, down at Wanneroo.

NG: Oh, down at Wanneroo. They used to have a race meeting there once a year.

MG: Yes, did you go there?

NG: Yeah, I went there and seen it.

MG: Did you race your horses?

NG: Never had a horse.

MG: You never had a horse?

JG: They used to have races up here, didn’t they at

NG: Ooh, that was only a picnic one.

JG: Picnics, was it? At, oh what did they call it, Neeracup Lake there. They used to have

picnics there, racing and whatever.

NG: That was only amongst the settlers.

MG: That sounds fun! Did all the farmers go?

JG: Oh yeah.

MG: There weren’t that many farmers here.

NG: No, there were only about half a dozen.

MG: What sort of time was that then, in those days?

JG: That would be back in the early thirties, wouldn’t it?

NG: Before that.

MG: Did the war stop that, did it?

JG: Oh, it stopped long before the war.

MG: Yes?

NG: Yeah.

JG: The war started in 1939 and that would be back in the late twenties early thirties.

MG: Ah, yes.

NG: Where the Light Horse was camped, the last one, camp, was down here where they

put that bit of a thing up there down the road a few miles back. They were big camp there,

military camp.

MG: In the war?

NG/JG: Yeah.

NG: The Light Horse was in there.

MG: Oh yes. Which war was that?

NG: Second World War.

MG: They had the Light Horse there, in the Second World War, yeah?

NG: Oh, they had about a thousand horses, they used to ride up and down the coast

looking for enemy landings and stuff.

MG: Yes. They’d need a horse, wouldn’t they, if the roads …

NG: Yeah well, they couldn’t get through, it was all stony.

JG: No roads or anything like that, from North Beach right through to Two Rocks, no roads,

just all bush. Might be a little bit of a sand track or something, that’s about all.

MG: Yes. Did they ever find any landings?

NG: They did at Two Rocks.

JG: Two Rocks, yes. They caught some Japanese there. Two or three, I think they caught

there, came in on a sampan. So the Japs was close to home.

MG: Yes, closer than we thought.

JG: Never realised but all along the beach you would find bales of rubber, washed up on

the beach. You used to sneak out, you weren’t supposed to be out around the beach but

you’d go along the beach and that and you’d find bales of rubber and that, washed up from

where ships had been sunk. So they must have been pretty close.

MG: Yes, yes.

JG: Big bales, that big.

MG: Did you find any of the prisoners of war? Some got out at Geraldton, weren’t there?

NG: They never got down this far.

JG: They were up north of Carnarvon.

MG: Oh, north of Carnarvon, were they?

JG: Yeah, they got them up there. A cousin, he was in the army, he went up there and

brought down the captain and some of them.

NG: That was a mystery, that Sydney; they never found a survivor out of that. The warship,

it was sunk up there. Never found one survivor out of about 1,500 men.

MG: No bodies?

NG: No, they just disappeared. The Germans off the boat, what they were fighting, they

came ashore but not the Australians, every one went.

MG: Has anybody done any diving there to find them?

NG: They can’t find the boat; it’s in too deeper water.

MG: So you were closer to war than we thought you were.

JG: That’s right. All the windows and everything had to be, you couldn’t have any light

showing out at night.

MG: No?

JG: It had to be blacked out, all the windows and stuff.

MG: Did you see any planes?

JG/NG: No.

MG: You never saw anything?

JG: No, no planes through here, no. I don’t think they came any further down than about

Broome.

NG: Exmouth.

JG: Or Exmouth, yeah.

MG: Did you have to look out for spies?

JG: Oh, you were supposed to report anything suspicious, if you’d seen anything.

NG: Well you had to go once a week and down to, they had an observation thing at there at

the corner of Dundebar Road and Wanneroo Road and put one night a week in there,

spotting for planes. If you’d seen a plane you had to ring up to tell there was a plane coming

in.

MG: Oh, yes. But you didn’t have a telephone?

NG: Yeah, but it was down there.

JG: Out at Wanneroo.

NG: You had to go down and stay the night there.

MG: Yeah. And they rang down to Perth, did they?

NG: You rang from there, they had a telephone there.

MG: Oh, I see, yeah. That would have been a bit of a blow if you’d seen a plane, wouldn’t

it?

NG: You only seen… I don’t know.

JG: The plane would have been there before you got through on the telephone!

MG: And bombed you all, dropped the parachutists.

MG: Did you worry about parachutists in the war?

JG: No, you never thought about anything like that. You just went ahead and did your work,

what you had to do.

NG: Wanted the commandeer the shot gun.

NG: I brought the unemployed men out from town and built tents for them and put them in

there and they had to spend one week there and one week at home. But it was pretty rough

on those office blokes that never did a hard day’s work in their life to be brought out into the

bush.

MG: Yes, what did they do?

NG: Knocked limestone off, or put in where they building the road.

MG: And they built the road from?

NG: Down where you see it, it used to be a shop and a bit of a weekend market thing down

there and from there right through to Yanchep.

MG: Did they use machines to build the roads?

NG: No machines, all hand work.

MG: And did those men do the pine forests as well?

NG: Well they were different men that was employed there, after the war they started that.

But these others, they had to do that, well by the time they’d finished building it, things were

getting better then, they could go back to their jobs.

MG: And what did they do when they finished the road to Yanchep, where did those men go

then?

NG: Well, that’s what I said, at times it started to improve, so they went back to their jobs

then.

MG: They went back to their jobs, so they sort of finished before home time?

NG: Yeah.

JG: Even they’d go down to the Harvey.

NG: They were the single chaps who went there. They never took married men down there.

MG: These were married men, were they?

NG: Yeah, the married men they had out here.

MG: And they had to do that to get some money to…

NG: Yeah, they were getting three pound a week for working on the roads. Well, wages

weren’t dear then, that was about the top wage, seven dollars a week.

MG: And they dug it all out by hand?

NG: Yeah.

JG: Nine feet wide and 18 inches deep.

MG: That’s right.

JG: And they filled it up with the limestone and napped it.

MG: Where was the limestone from, the quarry?

NG: Off the top of the hills

JG: No, no quarries. Off the top of the hills, just went through and broke it off and threw it

into the drays and carted it in with horse and …

MG: Horse and cart?

JG: Yeah.

MG: Into the road?

JG: Yeah.

MG: That sounds really hard.

NG: It was hard all right.

JG: Hard for men out of offices.

MG: Yes.

JG: No work for them so they had to do that to get money to live. There was no on the dole

business.

MG: No, no. You didn’t think you’d have that, unemployment pay though.

JG: Well that was the unemployment pay, they had to go and work for it.

MG: Oh, I see.

JG: Yeah, they were all the unemployed.

MG: And where did they work?

NG: Anywhere.

JG: Anywhere in Perth. All around the Perth area.

NG: Anybody who wanted work had to go there.

MG: And they trucked them up here and put them in these carts?

JG: Yeah. And all they did was pull some drays, you had horse and cart, carted the stone

in and whatever. Right through to Yanchep.

MG: Did you ever go to the caves at Yanchep?

JG: Oh yes, plenty of times up there.

MG: When you were children or later?

JG: Oh, in the later years.

MG: It must have been quite a job to get through to Yanchep at first?

NG: Yeah well they used to go by horse and cart or sulky as they call it and then as they got

motors they went in them then.

MG: This is a continuation of the tape with Jabez Gibbs on the 3 March 1995.

MG: You said your father pioneered Gibbs Road, where was the original road?

JG: The original road was at where Wattle Avenue is today and it went through the reserve

as the stock route in those times was called the stock route and it came out where the

Quinns area is there now, where, oh how can I explain it?

NG: Caravan Park.

JB: No. Where it went, it came right across the stock route and it came, there is a gate

going into Clarkson’s property, where the, oh how can I explain it?

NG: Where the original road goes through there now?

JG: It met up with the original road where it is today, where the houses are being built there

now, up against the reserve and it went through there and there is a little park about half way

out along Quinns or Hester Avenue I think it is today, and it went through past this little park

and it was all sand. And it came out where the caravan park is today. That was the reserve

and people used to go there and have their holidays and that there. And down at the beach

they had a big bush shed with all benches and that for people to have their lunches and

whatever. And there was a well there and they used to pump the water with a hand pump to

get it out. But the Shire has filled the well in, in the years, like later years.

MG: Was it ever?

JG: No. Not until into the fifties, about the fifties I should think.

MG: Well, did many people live down there?

JG: No, nobody - it was all station area. Clarkson owned the land and it went through his

property and there was nobody there at all until, probably, a few shack holders in the 40s,

that’s about all.

MG: That was the road your father pioneered, was it?

JG: Yeah, he pioneered it probably back in about 1927/30, something like that.

MG: How often did you go down there, you used to go fishing?

JG: To just go fishing, that’s all, yeah.

MG: Did you catch anything?

JG: Oh, not very often, did we Ned?

NG: No.

MG: Was it hard going down there?

JG: Oh yes, it was all sand and boggy boggy sand.

MG: Did you used to take the cart, horse and cart?

JG: Ah, I think they took the horse and cart first, wasn’t it?

NG: Oh that was only once in months.

JG: But then we had a little truck and we’d all go down in that on the weekend on a Sunday.

Where all the people from far and wide used to come there on a Sunday.

MG: And you had a picnic?

JG: Yeah, they used to have picnics and that there down there and had a sort of a lean-to

from the rocks out, they had like tables made out of timber and that there and then the

vandals burnt it all so it was never in those times they had vandals too. And they never ever

did it up.

MG: What school did you go to?

JG: Wanneroo School where the CALM is today. That’s where the school was.

MG: What sort of building was it?

JG: Oh, just weatherboard and asbestos with a tin roof.

MG: Did it have many rooms in it?

JG: Ah, three.

MG: And that was separate classrooms?

JG: Yeah, separate classrooms, from the infants’ right up to seventh standard and seventh

grade.

MG: And separate teachers?

JG: Yeah, three teachers.

NG: The first one was the school master and his wife as the teachers.

MG: How old were you when you started?

JG: I started at six.

MG: What hours did you go?

JG: Well, we’d leave home here in the morning at half past seven and we’d catch the school

bus up at the highway about quarter to eight. Then we’d go from there out to Clarkson

Avenue to Pinjar out and pick the Sinagra’s up at Pinjar and then come back to Wanneroo

School. You’d get to school probably about half past eight, quarter to nine in the morning.

And school would go in at nine and then in the afternoon you’d do the trip back to Pinjar and

back around and home again. You’d get home about a quarter to five.

MG: How many brothers and sisters went with you then?

JG: One, two, three, four.

MG: Four?

JG: Yeah.

MG: And went together?

JG: Yeah, all went together. There’s five of us altogether.

MG: And you walked up the sandy track from here?

JG: Yeah, from the sandy track from up here, up to the highway, every morning and back

again at night.

MG: What subjects did you do at school?

JG: Just the same as today more or less.

MG: This was in the thirties wasn’t it?

JG: Yes, in the thirties and early forties.

MG: Did you have many books at school?

JG: Oh yes, you’d have your reading books and spelling books and your sums, as they

called it in those days, books. History books and that’s about all, but you never brought

them home, they were all left at school.

MG: In the desk?

JG: In the desk at school.

MG: Did you have a shortage of paper when the war years were on?

JG: No, not really. The government supplied all the paper in those times. Pads and that,

you were issued with a pad and pencils.

MG: What about discipline?

JG: It was very strict, very strict if you did wrong you got the cane. You had to hold your

hand out and get the cane and that disciplined you, you didn’t like getting that, I can tell you

that.

MG: Girls and boys?

JG: Girls and boys, yes, everyone got the cane if they did wrong.

MG: Right from Year Twos?

JG: Oh, the infants I think they used to make them sing or something in front of a class.

MG: Did you do singing? You must have done singing.

JG: Oh yes, singing and scripture work and all of that sort of thing.

MG: And you did games, you know?

JG: Yeah, but they’re only you did cricket and a little bit of football and rounders and hockey

and all of that sort of thing. You made your own sport more or less, but you never went

away, what would I say, contesting against other schools or anything.

MG: What was the nearest school then?

JG: Oh, the St Anthony’s was there in those times.

NG: Oh no, they all have come later.

JG: Back in the thirties, the St Anthony’s was there.

NG: Osborne Park was the nearest school in the early days.

JG: Oh, that’s when you went to school, yeah.

MG: Did you never play sport with St Anthony’s?

JG: No. Oh we did a few times, but there was too many arguments so they chopped it out.

MG: Oh yes. Do you remember what sort of games you played at play time?

JG: Yeah, we used to play rounders or hockey or cricket, something like that.

MG: At play time?

JG: Yeah, play time.

MG: Boys and girls together?

JG: No. Separate, separate.

MG: Did girls play the same games?

JG: Yeah, the girls played all their different, same sports.

MG: Yes. They would have played more netball, perhaps?

JG: No, I don’t think they played netball in those times.

MG: No?

JG: I don’t think so. I couldn’t remember them playing netball.

MG: Did they play skipping?

JG: Oh, skipping and hop jump and skip or whatever you call it, step. All different sorts of

things. But you made your own sports, more or less, sport.

MG: Did you have much equipment?

JG: No. You had your, you might have had a cricket bat and a ball and you used a box or

something for the wickets or something like that. No, in those times you never had like the

kids of today has got.

MG: You didn’t have proper sports equipment then?

JG: No, no. In those days you had just what your parents could afford.

MG: What sort of clothes did you wear to go to school?

JG: Just a pair of little, a pair of trousers and a shirt, that’s all. In the winter you might have

a pullover if you were lucky.

MG: What did you wear in the rain?

JG: Oh well you had a rain coat in those times, yeah, you might have a rain coat or

something like that.

MG: How old were you when you left school?

JG: I was 15. I’d spent two years in seventh grade.

MG: And what did you and your brothers and sisters do when you left school?

JG: I worked in the market garden.

MG: Here?

JG: Yeah.

MG: You all who worked on it?

JG: Oh, my sisters they did the housework in the house here, didn’t they Ned?

NG: Yeah.

MG: Yeah?

JG: ‘Cause mother had died and there was only left father with all the kids.

MG: Oh okay. Did all you boys work on the market garden?

JG: Yes.

MG: How many of you worked there?

JG: There was one, two two went to war. There was three, four, five.

MG: Five of you?

JG: Mmm.

MG: Did you have much land then?

JG: Oh I think it’s a hundred acres I think father had, but, market garden was only about

what, about ten acres, wouldn’t it be Ned?

NG: That’s all.

JG: It would be swampland

MG: From the swampland?

JG: Yeah, the swamp.

MG: That was before you had…

JG: Yeah, before we had machinery and whatever. All dug by spade.

MG: Yes, that was hard digging?

JG: Yes.

MG: Hard work?

JG: Oh yes, hard work digging.

MG: Was the land difficult to work?

JG: Well the land was, was all rushes and blackboys and all of that sort of bushes and

everything had to be cleaned by hand and then made into what they call beds. On each

side there would be a drain for the water to run through and that’s how it worked. They dug

with a spade, everything was digged with a spade until into the later years when they got

rotary hoes and tractors and all of that sort of thing.

MG: You said that in the war years the Light Horse called in on the house.

JG: Yeah, oh yes. We knew quite a few of the chappies from the Light Horse.

MG: What did they call in for?

JG: Just to have a talk and that was all.

MG: Did they tell you what they found on their?

JG: Not really, just now and again they’d tell you something.

MG: No, you weren’t supposed to

JG: They weren’t supposed to tell you anything, ‘cause all was secret.

MG: Did they go up and down the coast very much?

JG: Every day I think they rode the horses up and down the coast, right through to Gingin.

NG: Through to Gingin.

JG: Or more Moore River.

JG: From North Beach I think they rode right through, they had different

NG: Camps.

JG: Camps along the way. And this, from North Beach they’d come so far and the others

would go so far and that’s how they went until they went right up the coast.

MG: Well that was quite a way they went.

JG: Oh, a long way, yes. All by horseback. There was no roads or anything like that; they

just rode tracks where the horses went through.

MG: Was it difficult in the winter to get through, I expect?

JG: Well it’s all, along the coast it’s all limestoney, only just a few patches of sand would be

there, all the rest was limestone right up the coast.

MG: So it’s quite a good ride for the horses to go on?

NG: They had them shod.

NG: They had them shod and they got through quite easy I think.

MG: They said that Lady Lindsay was a spy.

JG: Oh I wouldn’t know that, I don’t know. She was there long, long years before the,

before the war, wasn’t she Ned?

NG: Yes. Same as that Major in the British Army.

JG: I don’t think she was a spy. But you never know.

MG: How much land did Lady Lindsay have?

JG: Something like about 12,000 acres I think it would be.

MG: What did she do on this land?

JG: Very little, other than breed some Shetland ponies and had a few cattle on it. That’s

about all.

MG: Did she milk cattle?

JG: No.

NG: Those days you’d had them taken away to the clay country because they got Coastal

Diseases. Later on it was found that cobalt copper did away with taken them away.

JG: Used to have to take them to the clay country for three months of the year, from this

area, like on the coastal country.

MG: Did the cobalt and that come in the soil or the water?

JG: The?

MG: Was it cobalt?

JG: Cobalt. No, you spread it on the land or put it in the water. You’d buy it from the

chemist in those times.

MG: And so she didn’t sort of use the cattle and what about the Shetland ponies, what did

she breed them for?

JG: Just to look at, I think. Had plenty of money and she just bred them.

MG: She didn’t sell them?

JG: No. Very few of them she sold.

MG: They would have been a bit small perhaps for a cart?

JG: Oh yeah, they were too small for carthorses. They’re only, probably, what would you

say, ten hands?

NG: Ten or twelve.

JG: Ten or twelve hands as they talk of a horse.

MG: Did she ride down to her estate with one, to go in with the cart?

JG: Oh she had her own cart with a dray horse.

MG: A big horse?

JG: Yeah, big horse, yeah.

End of recording

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