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Doc
Keeper of the Scrolls
2010 Posts
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 Posted -
17/05/2004
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16:40
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VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT OF LESLIE GRAHAM MACDONALD TAPES.
RECORDED AND TRANSCRIBED BY HIS SON, STANLEY GRAHAM
STRICTLY COPYRIGHT. NO PART OF THIS TYPESCRIPT MAY BE REPRODUCED BY ANY MEANS, NOR BE TRANSMITTED, NOR TRANSLATED INTO ANY MACHINE LANGUAGE WITHOUT THE SPECIFIC WRITTEN PERMISSION OF STANLEY GRAHAM.
Tape identification: Tape 1, yellow leader, track 1.
File number: 24\lgstory.001.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this life story and it has struck me that I have quite a lot of things to do before I can start to tell the story of my life, such as make some notes, so that I’ve got everything down in chronological order and I’ve got to have some notes of suggestions so that I won’t be speech-bound when I start recording. The other thing that worries me is whether some of the words, like place names will be understandable when they are heard on a recording. Places like the Warrambungle Mountains, Gulargumbone, Murrumbidgerie, Tucklebung, Uabalong and Eeegidgeriegeebung. Place names like that. The other point is that, not having kept any records, all the recording that I do will have to be by memory. It’s possible that some of the incidents, while the gist is there, I will have forgotten the minor points and to make the story complete I shall have to improvise and fit in names which will not always be correct. Another point is that I will have to use some names which are fictional because of hurting someone’s feelings in talking about things which don’t throw them up in a very good light.
I’ve been wondering what we’re going to call this tale and the best name I can think of for it is to call it THE CONFESSIONS OF A TRANSGRESSOR
On an April night in 1893 [Sunday, 17th. April 1893] at a little place called Rocky Creek, about half way between Dubbo and Wellington, in New South Wales, my Mother gave birth to her seventh son. He had arrived about a fortnight early and because of this, the lady friend who was going to attend to her during the confinement wasn’t there. [This was Jack Minogue’s wife, the widow leFevre. She lived at Murrumbidgie, now Wongarbon.] It was a very wild and stormy night and my Brother Jim was sent off to bring this lady who lived about eight miles away. He went off on horseback but by the time he got back I’d already arrived.
Because of the fact that my Mother had had no attention, something went wrong and as far as I can understand, I was almost drowned. But anyhow, they got me right and everything was alright as far as they knew and everything went alright for about a fortnight, then I became ill.
They didn’t know what was the matter with me. They took me to a doctor in Dubbo, a man called Doctor Demolion. He examined me and said to my Mother “The best thing you can do is take him home. You’ll be lucky if he is alive when you get there. There’s nothing I can do, for him.
So Mother set off home. She had to go by train. Whilst she was waiting for the train at the railway station she told the stationmaster what the doctor had said. The stationmaster was a lay-preacher and he said to Mother, “Has the boy been christened?” She said no. He said, “Well, if he’s going to die, we can’t allow him to die without being christened and if you like, I’ll perform the ceremony.” So Mother agreed and the next thing they had to do was to find someone to act as Godfather or Godmother. They found a lady, a complete stranger, waiting on the station who readily agreed to act in this capacity. So I was christened Leslie MacDonald. Mother took me home, I didn’t die, in fact I slowly recovered. [The birth was registered at the Prebyterian Church in Dubbo on 23 May 1893]
Now, all this I know because it was told me by my Mother and I don’t have any clear recollection of anything else until we were living at Eumalga. Then I’d be about five years old.
Eumalga was a place which was owned by a man called William Brownlow and Father had got a job there acting as his manager on a farm growing wheat, cattle and sheep.
At this stage I think I had better give you some particulars about the family.
I was the seventh son, my elder Brother Charlie was away from home working at sea. My Brother George died when he was only two years old. There was Brother Jim, Sister Mae, Brother Stanley and Sister Doris, a younger Brother Alec and of course, myself.
Eumalga was a wonderful old place. It had been the family home of some people called Serisier who were a wealthy French family who went out to Australia in the early years with the idea of starting a vineyard and growing and producing wine. There was a vineyard of about 150 acres of vines, a cellar, oh, it must have easily been fifty yards long and 25 yards wide with barrels of all descriptions and when we went there the vineyard was still in operation but not being run to its full capacity as it had been in the days of the Serisiers. The house was built on a bungalow style with a verandah all round and the main bedrooms and living room and one big entertaining hall which acted as our dormitory. The beds were all put round the walls and we brothers and sisters all slept in this one big room.
I remember this room particularly because the day we got news that Queen Victoria had died [22 January 1901], Mother congregated us all in this room, made us all kneel at our beds and say prayers for the Queen whilst we gazed at her photograph hung on the wall. Mother was crying and you’d have thought that one of the family had died. That’s a very vivid recollection with me. I can remember it as if it had happened only yesterday. I can hear her voice now as she led us in the Lord’s Prayer and before the prayers were over she had all of us crying too. But still a great memory.
We had at that time a girl servant, I’ll never forget her, her name was Mae Reel. Eventually Mae was taken away to an asylum and I’ve often wondered whether we boys didn’t contribute in no small measure to her going mad.
She used to look after us when Mother and Father was away and it was when the Governor gang was out. A report came one day to say that they’d been seen in the neighbourhood. Now these Governor boys, they were coloured lads who’d gone bushranging after some dispute they had had with a farmer that they were working for. They’d started off by murdering the whole of the family and then set out to take revenge on any other people they knew in the neighbourhood who had ever done them what they considered to be a bad turn.
This day, Mother was away in Mudgee, Father was somewhere off the station and wasn’t expected home that night. The report came through the Governors were in the district and Mae got us all into the big room, bolted and barred all the doors, got Father’s .44 Winchester with a supply of shells and built herself a barricade in front of one of the french windows and lay there waiting for the Governor boys to show up. What she intended to do with them we found out later on when Father arrived home in the middle of the night. He tried all the doors, Couldn’t get in, came round the house shouting, Mae let go at something and eventually, Father got her to understand that it was him and not the Governors that was there and she let him in.
Eumalga gave me some marvellous memories. We had a wonderful time, particularly with the three boys an Mae all growing up together. We got up to some terrible pranks.
I remember that on one occasion we were out hunting and we chased a big iguana and it run down a rabbit hole. Now we dug this iguana out and took it home tied on a piece of wire. Stan had been given a toy farm waggon and Jim had the idea of harnessing this thing up to the farm wagon and giving Mae a shock with it. I mean Mae Reel.
So we harnessed the old iguana up to the wagon and we took it down to the bottom end of the garden and they sent me to bring Mae out on some pretext or other. I got her outside and when we got into the middle of the garden, Jimmy let the iguana go. It came tearing straight at us and went straight through Mae’s legs. She threw up in the air and landed on her backside and the old iguana went underneath the house. He smashed the strings and left the farm wagon standing at the verandah steps but he went underneath the house and we never saw him again. Mae threatened to give us no tea that night. We weren’t going to get anything to eat so we took a bucket of water and slopped it all over her and beat her with a wet towel until she got us some supper. When Mother came home of course we got a bloody good hiding when Mae told her what we had done.
Another day, there were some young steers in the paddock and Jim thought it would be a good idea if we got these steers in and did a bit of rodeo work. We got ‘em in and roped a young steer, oh, about twelve months old he’d be, and we drove a stake into the ground and tied this rope to it. The idea was to get on him and see if we could ride him round the ring without falling off. Well, Stan had a go, Jim had a go. We didn’t get Mae to have a go and eventually I said I’d have a go. I got up and got about half way round the ring when he pitched me over his head and as he went over me he put his hoof into me mouth. It cut a hole right through me mouth so we decided to let him go. But the trouble was what we going to tell Mother and Father about this sore in me mouth.
Anyhow, we thought of all sorts of excuses and reasons about how it had happened but in the end, Mae decided she’d tell on us so she told. Stan and Jim got a bloody good hiding. I didn’t get touched because I had a sore mouth.
Another day, we were trying to find the twelve bore gun because we wanted to shoot some crows. We couldn’t find it but we found a box of cartridges. Well, we wondered what we could do with these cartridges. So Jim said,”I’ve got an idea.” He went off and come back with a piece of half inch drainpipe. He put this cartridge into the drainpipe, got a hammer and a nail. He fastened it to a stake in the vineyard, he put the nail on the cap and hit it with this bloody hammer and there was a hell of a bang. Where it went I don’t know, but the shell wasn’t there, we could see no shell and the bloody hammer went flying up the vineyard. It was a wonder he didn’t get his head knocked off.
So that being a failure, we decided we’d have an explosion of some kind. There was a lot of dried grass in the vineyard, so we put two or three shells in some grass, heaped it up and set fire the grass forgetting that we were setting fire to the vineyard. Luckily, the wind was blowing away from the house and within ten minutes there was a fire raging right across the vineyard.
Father was working at the woolshed about half a mile away and Jim said to me, “You go and get Father and we’ll try putting it out with wet sacks”.
So I hared off but on the way I met Father coming down, he’d seen the smoke and he came racing down on his saddle horse and he said to me “Where’s the fire?” I said, “It’s in the vineyard” and he said “Come on, climb up behind”. So he got hold of me hand and pulled me up behind him and off we went till we came to a wire fence. He wasn’t going to stop for this fence, he was going to jump it but the horse didn’t see the wires unfortunately. He raced into the fence, I shot over the old man’s head, he went over the horse’s head but he didn’t stop running. He picked himself up and went running towards the house.
Anyhow, they got there and by the time they had got there two or three neighbours had shown up from close about and they soon had the fire under control. Then the inquest.
How did it start? Don’t know. Nobody knew. So one chap, Rick Brownlow, said “Have you seen anyone about?” Stan said, “Aye, there was a tramp come for some water”. “Did you give him anything?” We said no. They said “Did he ask for anything?” “He asked for some water and some grub and we said we’d give him some water but we had no grub to give him.” So they just put their heads together and said, “Huh, he’s thrown a bloody match in it while he was walking away.” Course, there was no tramp and they never got to know how that started for about twenty years afterwards. One night I was talking to Father and I told him all about it and he only laughed. I don’t think he’d have laughed the day it happened though if he’d got to know. Somebody would have got a good hiding. Although Father never used to give us a hiding, Mother always used to do the whipping.
One of the great milestones of my life was the first time I went to school. The school [Eschol] was about eight miles away from where we lived and we either used to walk to school or, if a horse was available, we used to go on horseback. We had one old horse that we used to ride to school and Jim, of course, being the oldest, would be in the saddle. Mae would be behind Jim, Stan sitting on the horse’s rump and I used to have to sit on the horse’s withers. This old bloke got a bit cunning after a while and he realised that if he put his head down quickly I used to slip off. Which I very often did do. But, we used to get to school alright with him.
One day at school we went up a hillside which was quite close to the school looking for five-corners. That’s the little sweet berry that grows wild and looks very much like wimberries do in this country. We found so many, and were having such an interesting time that when the school bell rang we didn’t bother to go back. The schoolteacher come out with one or two of the big boys shouting to us to come down. We didn’t come down and they decided they’d come up and get us. They started off up the hill and Jim said, “Come on, get some rocks and let’s roll some rocks down at ‘em. That’ll stop ‘em coming up!” Anyhow, we got big boulders as big as we could handle and started ‘em off down the hill and these fellers sheered off in all directions. Anyhow, they didn’t come up after us so we stayed up there all afternoon and when they’d all left the school we went and got the horse and went home.
Next day when we went to school we all got the cane and Jim was kept in. Well, we went out of school at letting out time and sat waiting for him to come. All of a sudden we heard a noise and saw Jim come flying out of the window. He was shouting, “Get the horse, get the horse!” We didn’t wait for the saddle, we just put the bridle on him and all four of us were up and away with the old schoolteacher after us on his bike but he couldn’t catch us and we got away.
He followed us home and told Father about it and Father says “If anyone gets a good hiding it’ll be you so you’d better get off and leave them alone.”
After the schoolteacher had gone away, Father called Jim and asked him why he’d jumped through the window. He said “Well, I was told I had to write ‘I will regularly attend school’ a hundred times. I sat down and wrote it all out and two or three times whilst I was writing it the schoolteacher come and looked over me shoulder and when I took it to him to show him I’d written it he said “You’ve spelt regularly wrong, go back and write it out again”. Jim said, “I’m blowed if I will.” He hit him with the slate and up and out of the window and that’s how he came to break out of school.
But we went to school the next day the schoolteacher never said a word about it. It might never have happened. We left it completely alone.
2,982 words.
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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 15/08/2011 : 06:39
Brought this up for Gloria. You'll find all the Leslie Graham Macdonald transcripts archived individually. If you read the epilogue you'll find what we later discovered when I wrote 'An Australian Life'. It's an intriguing example of how a man dealt with the events of his life, I haven't judged him, he was still my dad and he was a good bloke.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk  |
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LESLIE GRAHAM MACDONALD TAPE (01)
