| Author |
 Topic  |
|
Doc
Keeper of the Scrolls
2010 Posts
|
|
 Posted -
17/05/2004
:
16:28
|
VERBATIM TRANSCRIPTION OF LESLIE GRAHAM MACDONALD TAPES
Recorded and transcribed by Stanley Graham. Strictly copyright. No part of this manuscript may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language without the written permission of Stanley Graham.
Tape identification File Number
Tape two green leader. 162\lgstory.011
When we arrived in Kingston [late 1911], by the way, Campbell wasn’t with us. He’d gone back to Sydney on another boat. It was another man I was working under when I got there. I found out that the cost of living figures which had been given to me in Fiji were the assessment of the cost of living to a native, not to a European. From what I could make out of it, it was going to take the whole of me wages to enable me to live anyway decently. I talked to the other fellers and they said their wages was a lot higher than mine. I went to see the foreman on the job and he said he couldn’t do anything about it, I’d have to see the manager. I said “Well, who is the manager?” He said “It’s young Mr Smith, he’s in charge.” I said “Where is he now.” He said “We don’t know, he’s been away for a couple of days but he’ll be back any time now.”
In the mean time, we was getting ready to start and drive some piles. We got the first pile into position and we had it held up in the crane and steered it into the correct position. We got the pile-driver up to it and let it go so that we could get the bridle on to it from the pile-driver and it slowly sank into the mud. It sank down until there was only about eight or nine feet of it above water. Somebody said “What are we going to do about that?” One of the fellers said “Let’s hit it and see what happens. It might strike bottom because it has been surveyed. Anyhow, we give it one belt and it went out of sight.
In the meantime, young Smith had returned. He wouldn’t discuss my problem because he was too worried about this pile. So he gave instructions for two of these piles to be joined together. They made a sleeve out of quarter flat steel plate and put it round the top pile and let another pile down alongside the one we’d knocked in and when it got nearly to the bottom we put this other pile on top of it. It sank down, and although they had to tap it it was still going about two foot every blow. That meant they were about eighty feet into the mud and they hadn’t found bottom.
Well, there was trouble in the camp then. Somebody had made a mistake and it was the surveyor who had surveyed the site because on all those jobs, before they quote for them they send surveyors out who do trials to find out what the rock bottom is so that they know the length of the piles. This feller had give a rock bottom figure of somewhere about 30 odd feet. Anyhow, work was suspended whilst some more piles were brought in. They were going to bring steel piles in. I made that an excuse that I couldn’t stop there under the conditions that they had me working under if they couldn’t find me something to do. Were they going to pay us for doing nothing? Young Smith said everybody was on half pay whilst we were waiting. Well, that was no use to me so I went into the town to see whether there was anybody there who could take me out such as the consul or the Crown Agent or something like that. I did find a Crown Agent but of course he was in cahoots with the Smith and Timms people and whilst he didn’t do anything against me, he didn’t do anything for me.
In the town I met a priest and he was one of these priests who went round amongst the sailors and the various floating population, more like a missionary sort of a bloke. He could talk good English and I told him what my problem was. He said “Yes, I’m afraid that happens quite a lot, that sort of thing. There doesn’t appear to be anything you can do about it if you’ve signed the contract you’ve got to honour it. But I’ll tell you what you can do if you want to. You can come and live with me whilst you’re here and though I can’t feed you, if you come and live with me you won’t have any lodgings to pay. You can buy food and cook it at my place and things might work out a bit cheaper for you.” So I decided to do that because I liked the bloke. He was a nice sort of a feller and I went and lived with him whilst I was there.
I learned quite a lot from this man. He used to sit at night and he’d talk to me for hours and I never ever once found what he was saying to be uninteresting. He could go on and on and on talking about interesting things and expounding his philosophy. He was the man who decided me that the Buddhist way of life was the only reasonable philosophy for anyone to live up to because he gets right down to realistic things. There’s no such thing as read and believe, for everything that he said he could give you a feasible reason. Every belief he had he could give you a reasonable explanation for it. We had some very interesting arguments and every time I had to admit that his philosophy was a lot more plausible than what where then some of my beliefs.
One of the things he said to me, one of the first things he ever said to me was he said “Don’t you get the idea that we don’t believe in God. The only difference between you and me is that you call it God and I call it the Supreme Being. We believe in a Supreme Being but we don’t believe that your sins can be forgiven on this earth. If you commit a sin then you’ve got to pay for that sin in your reincarnation.” I said “Will you explain to me how it works?” He said “To start of with, we believe that the Supreme Being is a gentle and a kindly and a just person or Being. If that is so and there is no hereafter, how is it that some children are born with a silver spoon in their mouth and never want for anything. They never have to work, they never suffer any illnesses and they have an easy and pleasant life. Another child is born, it’s probably deformed, it’s born of poor parents, it suffers hunger, malnutrition, has severe illnesses, meets with serious accidents and that sort of thing. Now, if there is a God and that God is a just God, he’s not going to start two people off under entirely different conditions unless there is some reason for it. We believe the reason for it is that the one that’s born with a silver spoon in its mouth and lives a free and happy life, on its previous time on earth, lived a good life, committed no sins and is reaping the reward. The other ones that have all the ill fortune, ill health and trouble, they are paying for the sins they committed during their previous time on earth and that we believe is a reasonable solution to the problem of punishment for sins committed.” He went on with lots of other things. He always used to say to me “You’ve not got to convince other people that what you do is right, you’ve got to convince yourself. If you can convince yourself that you’re right then you are right but for goodness sake be honest with yourself and don’t try to pull the wool over your own eyes. Don’t worry about what other people say, you be satisfied that what you are doing is the right thing and go ahead and do it. You’ll find out in the long run that what you have done has, in fact, been the right thing to do.”
The pictures that I see on television screens today about Jamaica are nothing like what I saw when I was there fifty odd years ago. Amongst the natives at that time there was nothing but poverty and squalor. The only thing that seemed to be easy to obtain was rum. You could get a bottle of rum for a worn out shirt or a pair of trousers or even for a pair of socks without any trouble at all. Jamaicans seemed to be able to get hold of that but they had no money and they lived very, very rough. I think they were often short of food. Then there was the other side, the wealthy side of the town and they really were wealthy, they had everything, four or five servants, they lived in big houses, drove about in flash buggies and pairs and that sort of thing and seemed to be having a whale of a time. The two classes were miles apart.
Anyhow, I got fed up with things. We were doing no work and playing about. I decided that I’d make a break and get away. I heard there was a ship in port that was going back to Australia and I went down and had a word with the captain. He said that they didn’t want anybody, they had a full crew. I told him what things were like there and it was pretty bad. He said “Well, we’re not sailing until the day after tomorrow or the next day. Come down again tomorrow and I’ll see how things are then.”
So I went down next day and he said “No, we’re still not wanting anybody, but I’ll tell you what, you can come aboard and work your passage home, come as supercargo.” I said “That’ll do me.” So he said “Alright, we’ll sign you on as a greaser and you’ll get two bob a day, your passage home and your food.” I said “Right, that suits me.”
I was a bit worried because I’d missed being home for Christmas. It was then January (1912) and I knew I’d have a bit of explaining to do when I got home. Anyhow, eventually, I got home somewhere in February 1912.
Mother let me know that she was disappointed that I didn’t get home for Christmas. I got the usual sermon about getting further and further away from home and not visiting the relations and old people. Of course, she believed that I’d just come from Warren, she didn’t know that I’d come up from Sydney because I went from there to Narromine, stayed there the day and came back on the evening train because I knew if I went home off the mail train in the morning they’d smell a rat.
I stayed at home for a while. Things wasn’t too good so I soon got fed up of being at home and I decided that I’d make a break for it again. I went down town to see if I could pick anything up and while I was down there I met a lad called Cherry Langley that I’d been at school with. We got talking about what was going on. He said I was just the bloke he wanted to see because he was organising a pigeon shoot and they were a bit short of competitors. He said “You’ve done a bit of pigeon shooting haven’t you?” I said “I’ve done a bit but it’s a while since I shot.” He said “Will you have a do?” I said “How much does it cost to enter?” He said “Oh, you don’t want to bother about that, me Father’ll pay that.” I said “What’s the prize if I win?” He said “Are you sure of winning?” I said “Well, I wouldn’t be going in for it if I didn’t think I could win.” He told me what the prize was. I forget but it was only a few pound it wasn’t very much. I said “Well, I’ll have a go.” and he said “Alright.” He arranged to pick me up and take me up to the shoot.
We went up and to cut a long story short, after shooting all afternoon I was in the last four and we were to get ten birds apiece. Now, the way that the scoring goes, it’s who can bring down the most birds per barrel. If you can get a bird with every barrel you can be tied with but you can’t be beaten. One feller shot and he got eight birds with ten barrels. That wasn’t too bad. The next feller shot and I think he got about seven or eight birds with twelve or thirteen barrels. The other feller was somewhere the same and then it come my turn to shoot last. I won it, I got nine birds with nine barrels and the other bird, the gun misfired so I didn’t get a shot at him or I might have got the ten. We had a bit of an argument, I wanted another shot because this cartridge had misfired. But they wouldn’t give it to me. The reason they wouldn’t give it to me was that one cartridge, the cartridge in the choke bore, hadn’t been changed. It was a spent cartridge and they said that I would have had a chance with a second barrel. Well, that was quite true.
Anyhow, I got me winnings and went home and decided that the next morning I would go up to Narromine and have a look round there. So I got on the train next morning and went to Narromine. I stayed at the Railway Hotel which was run by a man named MacDonald. I went round to see Jimmy Mullins the chap that I knew and I asked him if there was any jobs going. He said “Yes, I could give you a job, they were busy.” He said “I’ve got an old friend of yours here, perhaps you’d like to go and see him.” I said “Who’s that?” He said “Go down in the blacksmith’s shop, you’ll find him down there.” So of course as soon as he mentioned the blacksmith’s shop I remembered Vic Hansen.
I went down there and old Vic was there and he was glad to see me, I was glad to see him too. I arranged with Jimmy to start work the next day and I asked him what I was going to be doing. He said “I’m going to put you with a feller called Ernie Schnapps, he’s a German fitter I’ve got here and he’s a good un. He’ll probably teach you something.”
The first job I had with Ernie Schnapps was repairing a boiler that’d sprung a leak in the foundation plate between the foundation plate and the inner skin. It meant boring out the rivets that were leaking, opening the holes out and putting oversize rivets in. To do this job one had to work inside the boiler and one outside. Well, I was the one inside with a dolly holding the rivets up whilst old Ernie rivetted them over from the outside. We were having trouble getting the rivets in, I think it was because the holes we bored in were a little bit on the tight side and with the rivet being hot, if you tried to knock it up, it jumped it up and it was hopeless to get it in at all. This had happened a couple of times and old Ernie said to me “If you can’t get ‘em in shout.” So I said I would do. Well, we come to one and I got it nearly in but not quite but it was through far enough for him to start rivetting. I shouted but he didn’t stop, he went on rivetting. Eventually I stuck me head out the boiler and shouted at him but of course he’d rivetted it over on the outside then and it meant cutting it off again. Well he came down and stuck his head in the firehole door and started abusing me and I jammed the hot dolly on his forehead. I burned a big hole in his forehead with it. He come after me with a hammer and there was hell to play for a while but anyhow I got out, I run away, I went out of the shop altogether and went to the pub. He quietened down after a while. Jimmy Mullins come and smoothed things over a bit and we got back together again. We didn’t have any more trouble after that.
He used to get my goat because at that time, he used to tell me that there’d be a war and he was always talking about Der Tag. It used to get my goat but all in all he was a very clever engineer and I learned a lot from him.
Whilst I was working for Mullins I was sent one day to a place in the town that’d had something wrong with the pump that they pumped the water from the well with. Nearly all the houses in Narromine was supplied by wells. You struck water about thirty feet down, it was seepage water from the river. Some had windmills, some had pumps and some had to wind it up with buckets. These people had a pump. The plunger was worn in this pump and I had to get a new plunger made because it would have taken too long to wait for one coming up from Sydney. I got the size of it and went back to the shop and we couldn’t find a piece of phosphor bronze or a bit of cast iron the right size to make a plunger out of so old Schnapps and I decided we’d make the phosphor bronze from some brass and copper and tin mixture and cast one. This we did and turned it and I took it back to fit it in. Anyhow I got the pump working alright and the lady of the house had asked me in for a drink of tea, in fact she’d given me me meals while I was there and she said to me “Where do you come from?” I said “I come from Dubbo.” She didn’t know me name and she said “Do you know anybody in Dubbo or round about Dubbo named MacDonald?” I said “Aye. My name’s MacDonald.” She said “What’s your first name?” and I told her she said “Wait a minute, and she went inside and she said afterwards that she was looking at a diary. She came back and said “Would you be surprised to know that I’m your Godmother?” I said I would because I didn’t know I had a Godmother. She told me the story about the christening on the railway station. They’d forgotten all about it. Of course she was thrilled to bits because she’d met her godson and I had to go round on the Sunday to have dinner with her, her husband and her children and in fact she got a bit of a bloody nuisance. She was trying to Mother me a bit too much and it didn’t go down very well with me so I cooled her off the best way I could.
Well, I was going home, not every weekend but every second or third weekend just as the fit struck me. I went home one Saturday, Father was at home and he said to me “What are you doing tonight?” I said “I’m not doing anything in particular, I thought I’d go down town and perhaps have a game of cards or something like that.” He said “Well, George Ganes is home and I was wondering whether you’d take him down with you and let him be seen about with you. He hasn’t got too many friends.” So I said “That’s alright with me.” He said I’m going down there now, I’ll tell him. You can pick him up when you go down tonight.” I said “We won’t wait for tonight, I’ll go down this afternoon.” The pubs were open all day and I thought we might go down and have a drink or two. I didn’t tell the Old Man that. Anyhow I went about three o’clock and picked George up and we went off down town.
We were in one or two pool rooms and we played a game of cards. We was just trailing round doing nothing in particular and we met a feller that had been out in the bush working. He had come in with a roll to spend it, he was flashing it about and I said to him. “The best thing you can do is to get rid of that money somewhere matey or you’ll be losing it.” He told me to mind me own business and we let it go at that. That night, we made arrangements to play cards in the back room of a pub. We’d been with one or two shady customers in the afternoon, ‘cos you’re bound to do in these poolrooms and that sort of thing. Anyhow, we went playing nap and we played all night. I got home with George the next morning and we’d never been apart, we’d never been away from each other. So I thought nothing at all about it. I’d got a lot of money. Well, it was a lot of money for me in those days, about fifteen or twenty pounds and a lot of it was in silver. I remember I had it tied up in a handkerchief and I didn’t quite know what to do with this money. I daren’t give it to Mother because she wouldn’t have took it knowing it was gambling money. Anyhow I gave it to Doris and asked her to mind it for me. She said she would and she took it and that was that. I went back to Narromine on the Sunday night.
I never heard anything about it until the following Saturday. The police came down to the works. The trooper said to me “Will you be going home today?” I said, “I wasn’t thinking about it. Why?” He said “The police in Dubbo want to see you.” “Oh.” I said, “Do they. What for?” He said “I dunno but sergeant has been speaking to us on the phone and they’ve asked us to tell you that they want to see you. If I was you I should have a run home tonight and go and see him and get it cleared up.” I said “I will do.”
Anyhow, I didn’t get chance to go to the police station to get it cleared up, there was a trooper on the station waiting for me. He said “Would you come down to the station.” I said “Right.” We went down to the station and he started asking me questions about the previous Saturday, if I’d been in with George Ganes and if I’d been with Billy Bean who was another tough character round the district. I didn’t know what all this was leading up to. So in the finish he said to me “Well look, if you know anything about this job the best thing you can do is to tell the truth because you’ll not do George Ganes any good and you might do yourself a lot of harm. Now someone has had this money, there’s no doubt at all about that. It’s got to be George Ganes or you because we know of nobody else who was in this man’s company.” So I swore blind that I knew nothing at all about it. He says “Well, where did you get all the money that you gave your sister to keep for you?” I said “That’s nothing to do with this man and I’m not going to tell you where I got it.” “Right” he said, “It’s up to you whether you tell us where you got it or not but it’ll want some explaining away. There’s fifteen or twenty quid there. I know it’s not half of the roll that he says he’s lost but it’s a bit of it and if there was more than two of you in it that could explain it, that could be your share.”
So I still stuck to it that I knew nothing about it and I was certain that George Ganes didn’t know anything about it. I told him people we’d been with and I owned up in the finish that we’d been playing cards and that I’d won this money gambling. I gave him, as near as I could, a true story about what had happened. He said to me “If it wasn’t for your Father I’d take you in, but I’m going to take George Ganes in because I’m sure that he had something to do with it and if we get him inside he’ll own up to it.” I said “I don’t think he will because he had nothing to do with it.” Anyhow, they decided to arrest old George.There was nothing I could do about it but I went down town at night time and I met this Billy Bean and I was telling him about it. Well, he’d been away from town and he didn’t know anything at all about it. He said “Oh, I know that George Gains didn’t get the money. I’ll tell you something else, that feller was going to hide his money, he told me he was going to hide it.” I said “Well, will you go to see the police and tell them that?” He said “Yes, I’ll go and tell them.” Anyhow he went and told the police and to cut a long story short, when they got down to it in the end, this feller remembered that he’d put this money in a treacle tin and buried it down on the bank of the river. They went and searched and eventually they found it. Well of course this let old George out and it let me out but it was a bit worrying while it lasted and I was dead sure that Mother and Father would get to know about it. Anyhow they didn’t get to know anything until it was all over and then I told them then. I also told them that’s the last time I’m going to go in George Ganes’ company. I didn’t want to go in gaol.
I was getting a bit fed up with working for Jimmy Mullins, it was all hard work and we were too close to the pub. I was spending more than I was earning and the bit of money that I’d saved up was beginning to disappear. I decided that I’d try to get a job where it wasn’t so easy to spend money. With this end in view I went to see a man that I knew, a man named Reg Rainer who was the manager for a firm of hay and corn merchants called Bishop and Bailey.
Reg offered me a job on a chaff cutter. I said “Reg, don’t put me on this job thinking that I’m going to stay a long time because I’m not. As long as you know that I’ll only be on for a few months that’s OK.” He said “Oh, that’s alright with me. This is our busy time and if you’ll give us a hand out, when you’re ready to go that’s OK, I don’t mind.”
I took this job on. We were working pretty close in around Narromine, close enough to get into town every weekend at any rate. They were a hell-bending mob that was on this machine, they were as wild as March hares and I can tell you we had some pretty lively times in town. Reg’s wife knew that I didn’t go much for this boozing and fighting business that used to go on in the town. She encouraged me to spend more time at her house. I went one weekend and there was a girl there, she’d be about eighteen or nineteen I should think, she wasn’t twenty. It was Mrs Rainer’s sister. A girl called Bertha White and she had a baby with her. I could see that they were a bit embarrassed explaining this baby away and in the finish I took Reg to one side and I said “Look Reg, it’s perfectly clear to me that this is your sister-in-law’s baby, and why not tell me that she’s a widow woman or that her husband’s away somewhere. That’ll save embarrassing her or your wife.”
Anyhow they did this and the next day, being Sunday, I asked this girl if she’d like to go out to a garden with me, out on the MacQuarrie River. She said yes, she’d like to go. So we harnessed up the pony in the sulky and off we went. At this garden, you could go in there and buy all sorts of fruit, melons and vegetables, anything you wanted and there was also a cafe there where you could have a bit of a meal, spend the afternoon on the river, eating fruit and melons and having a feed.
Well we did this and we got talking and eventually she told me her story. She said that she’d met a feller and they’d become engaged to be married and she got in the family way. When he found out she was going to have a baby he hopped it. She never heard anything from him afterwards. I said it was nothing to be ashamed of or worry about, if I was her I’d just take no notice and go on. Whilst she was in Narromine I’d go anywhere she liked with her. I enjoyed being with her, she was nice girl and I was rather fond of her. Anyhow, that went on for a time and she had to go back home to her people’s place. They were farmers about twelve miles out of Orange. I was going home on Saturday afternoon and she was going to Orange the same afternoon. They were going to pick her up at the hotel in Orange on the Sunday morning. Anyhow I said I’d travel down to Dubbo with her and we got in the train and when the train was running into Dubbo she began to cry. So I said what’s the matter and talked to her. She was weeping because she was going home and feeling very sorry for herself. I said “Would you like me to come to Orange with you?” She said she would so I hopped out at Dubbo and got a ticket to Orange and got back on the train with her.
My idea was to take her to the hotel and leave her there, put up somewhere and catch the train back home in the early hours of the morning. Well, we got into Wellington on the way down and who the hell should appear on the platform but Stan! He come running up and said “Hello, what are you doing here?” and all that sort of thing. I felt a bit embarrassed with this girl being with us and he said to me “Who’s your friend?” Straight away without thinking I said “It’s me wife, we’ve just been married. Well, we’ve been married a while now, this is our baby.” Of course he opened the carriage door, flew in and kissed this girl and making a hell of a fuss of her and I thought blimey charlie, that’s done it, what am I going to do now?
I thought Oh blast it, let it go. I said to him “Where are you going?” He said “Oh, we’re on our way up to Dubbo. We’re taking a train of empties back. I’ll be home tonight.” I thought that’s good, you’ll be home before I get a chance to talk to you. Anyhow, we had to let it go at that. We went on to Orange and he went back to his engine. We put up at this hotel and about two o’clock in the morning I got up and went into the bedroom and said goodbye to this girl, got me bag and caught the train. We’d done nothing wrong, there was nothing wrong, there could have been perhaps but there wasn’t. I’m not claiming any medals for it but there was just nothing wrong done. Before I left she asked me if I’d come and see her. I said yes, I’ll come down and see you the first time I get a chance. I’m sorry I can’t stop here an meet your people this morning but I want to go back. I left her, caught the train and went back home.
When I got home I’m faced with this story about being married. They were none to pleased about it either. Why hadn’t I told them and why didn’t I bring her there to see them and why this, why that and why everything. I thought oh, to hell with this, I’m off. So I went down town and I never went home again. I caught the train next day and went back to Narromine to the job.
When I got to Narromine I thought I can’t stay here. They’ll hear this story before very long and I’ll get in trouble with them so I decided to pull out for a while. I told Reg I was off. I packed me bag and I got on the train on Monday morning and went up to a place called Nyngan. I don’t know why I went to Nyngan, I was just poking about to see what I could hear. Whilst I was there I heard that there was a big re-sleepering job going on between Byrock and Burke. I was told that they wanted some men there. I went down to the station and had a word with the station master and he said, “That’s right. They do want some men and I’ve got instructions that anyone I sign on, I’ve to send them out to them. What are you? Are you a navvy?” I said “No, I,m not a navvy.” He said “Well, it’s navvies they’re wanting.” I said “Well, that’s alright with me I’ll go as a navvy.” So he said “Well, you be down here for the train tomorrow. We’ll send you out on the train and they’ll put you off at a place called Girilambone. You’ll have to walk it from there but it’s only about five or six miles.” So I got on to the train, went out to Girilambone and went out on to the job.
The foreman, or the ganger as he was called on the job, I’ve forgotten his name now but he was a half caste chap and he looked like a mountain, he was a mountain of flesh. He said to me “Do you think you can do this job alright?” I said “I don’t know whether I can or not but I’ll have a go at it. I want some money and I want a job.” He said “alright, we’ll see how you go on.”
5,970 words.
|
|
|
|
LESLIE GRAHAM MACDONALD TAPE (11)
