Millers Point Oral History Project Summary Report

Transcription

1 Millers Point Oral History Project Summary Report

2 Contents Written by Frank Heimans for Housing NSW Liverpool Road ASHFIELD, NSW 2131 Locked Bag 4001, ASHFIELD BC 1800 General Enquiries: The Millers Point Oral History Project 4 History and People 6 Ethnicity 8 The Plague 8 Reputation 10 The Great Depression 10 Second World War 11 Community Spirit 11 Shops and Commerce 13 Observatory Hill 15 Housing and Amenities 15 Children s Lives 16 Education and Job Expectations 18 The Waterfront 20 The Pubs 24 The Residentials 27 The Maritime Services Board 28 Housing NSW 29 Community Activism 32 Battle of the Landladies 33 Youth and the Mentoring Scheme 34 Darling House 36 Death at Millers Point 36 Changing Demographics 37 Heritage 38 East Darling Harbour 39 Physical Changes to the Precinct 40 Conclusions and Future Prospects 41 Appendix A: Millers Point Chronology 44 Index to Recordings 49 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project

3 The Millers Point Oral History Project In February 2005, Housing NSW through the NSW Department of Commerce commissioned an oral history project to add to the understanding of the history of Millers Point and its community to assist in the formulation of management and interpretation strategies for the area by the various stakeholders. The project was commissioned in response to recommendations in the document Conservation Management Guidelines for Department of Housing Properties at Millers Point, prepared by Heritage Design Services for the Government Architect s Office, NSW Department of Commerce, for Housing NSW. The Project Manager for the Department of Commerce was Verena Ong while Michael Modder represented Housing NSW during the course of the project. The project brief to tenderers stated that the long-term residents of Millers Point provide a rich resource of oral information contributing to an understanding of the history of the area and the community. It also recognised that it is important for Housing NSW to assist its understanding of residents needs, expectations and the community s attachment to the place and thus in the formulation of strategies, such as social housing, local area plan, community options and others. The oral history consultants were expected to explore what it was that made this part of the city a community and investigate their aspirations for the future and how they saw themselves as a part of Sydney. In March 2005 Cinetel Productions Pty Ltd was selected as the preferred tenderer and Frank Heimans and Siobhán McHugh were nominated as the professional interviewers, while four local volunteer community interviewers, Margaret Anderson, Fiona Campbell, Brian Harrison and Beverley Sutton Cross were trained and also carried out interviews with residents. A Steering Committee, made up of representatives of the Department of Commerce, Housing NSW, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, Council of the City of Sydney, The National Trust, Millers Point Estate Advisory Board and an independent heritage consultant oversaw the project. The project called for the recording of 50 individual interviews with residents. Some of those interviews were joint interviews with another family member. At the end of March 2005 the community was alerted to the commencement of the project by a letter box leaflet drop to all 600 houses in Millers Point, asking for people who wanted to have their stories recorded to come forward. This resulted in about 12 positive replies and the rest of the interviewees were selected by the consultants. The consultants also researched several previous oral histories recorded in Millers Point by Paul Ashton and Kate Blackmore in 1985, by Richard Raxworthy in 1990 and by Nadia Iacono in These were documented but do not form part of this project. The first of 50 interviews was recorded on 23 June 2005 with Harry Lapham, born in 1911, a resident of Darling House who died in Over the next seven months the remaining interviews were recorded by the professional historians and the four community volunteer interviewers. Most interviews were logged and key interviews were transcribed in full. Interviewees each received an audio cassette of their interview and a letter of thanks. Photographs of each interviewee were also taken at the time of recording. The Summary Report was written, the project was completed in February 2006 and materials were delivered to the Department of Commerce early in March Altogether the project consists of 79 digital audio tapes, representing approximately 60 hours of recording with 55 participants. The Millers Point community was generous in their assistance and told their stories with great passion and conviction. A real picture of a living precinct emerged during the interview process. Many expressed their sense of place, of belonging to Millers Point but also expressed their anxieties in what was to become of the suburb and their future in it. The collection of oral history interviews, when released by Housing NSW will be deposited in the State Library of NSW Oral History Collection. Copies of tapes and transcripts will also be deposited in the Library of the City of Sydney and the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority where it will add to existing knowledge about Millers Point. The oral history consultants would like to express their thanks to Housing NSW who made this project possible and who have supported it from its inception. The oral history consultants would also like to following people who guided the project to successful completion: Verena Ong, Siobhán McHugh, Rosie Block, Joan Domicelj, Michael Modder, Lynda Kelly, Margaret Penson, Mara Barnes, Shirley Fitzgerald, Beverley Sutton Cross, Bruce Pettman, Fiona Campbell, Margaret Anderson, Brian Harrison, the 55 interviewees who so generous made themselves available and the Millers Point community as a whole. Frank Heimans Oral History Producer April Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 5

4 History and People Millers Point is associated with the earliest Sydney settlement, named after John Leighton, known as Jack the Miller who in 1826 fell to his death from a ladder when drunk. It s an historic heritage precinct with a distinctive village within a big city feel, a selfcontained neighbourhood close to the CBD, but never part of it. It has a very integrated community who love living there and have a sense of belonging and allegiance to the place. Many of our interviewees could not imagine living anywhere else. The residents have a rich reservoir of memories of living at the Point, going, in some cases, as far back as six generations. They were born, worked, lived and died in the houses at Millers Point. They also have a strong sense of history and heritage. It s a community within a community where everyone knew each other through work and place of living. Some interviewees describe it as a company town (virtually everyone worked for Maritime Services Board or was connected with it or the waterfront in some way). Most of the people of Millers Point are connected through marriage a boy would normally marry a local girl, or vice versa. Marie Shehady married a Millers Point man in the early 1960s: I remember when we first came here I met one of the mothers at the school and she said to me, Marie, you are new in the area don t say a word about anybody to anybody else because nearly everybody here is related. (Marie Shehady, Tape MP-BSC3, Side A, 04:59) The two main religious sects generally got on well together but lived in specific streets of Millers Point, as Beverley Sutton recalls: When I was allocated the house in Merriman Street my father was absolutely horrified and he said to me, Well I don t want you going around to that street I don t like that street. I hope I am not doing him a disservice here, but I think the inference was, Well, they are mostly Catholics around there, that s not a Protestant street. The Protestants seemed to live in Lower Fort Street, Windmill Street there was some sort of demarcation. (Beverley Sutton, Tape MP-15 Side A, 11:19) Bill Ford Ford s mother knew the religious preferences of every employer at Millers Point - which companies would hire Catholics and those who wouldn t. Marie Shehady Pointers as they called themselves strongly identified with the area and even groups of streets within the area: You had this clear relationship with wherever you lived, whether you were a High Street boy, or a Windmill Street boy or a Lower Fort Street boy or a Trinity Avenue boy that was important. (Russell Taylor, Tape MP-FH13, Side A, 17:01) Beverley Sutton Bill Ford s mother was a Protestant but his father was Catholic: There was an attempt by the churches to keep people within the faith. I remember very vividly once one of the Catholic priests coming to our house at No. 23A (Dalgety Terrace) you had to walk up the stairs he came to tell my father he was living in sin and he should stop it. I remember my mother coming to the door and sort of sending him scuffling down the stairs. I am not sure what happened to the priest but he never came back again. (Bill Ford, Tape MP-SM16A, Side A, 09:41) Caporn s Map of Sydney, 1836 Russell Taylor 6 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 7

5 Ethnicity The Plague The origin of the population is mostly Anglo- Celtic. In the 1950s there were a few Chinese families, some Maltese, two Aboriginal families and a smattering of Italians, Lebanese and Greeks: I can remember at the local shop, milk bar it was on the corner of Kent Street I can remember my father saying go up to the Dagos and get whatever, and I thought their name was Dago when I was little. It wasn t until years later that I realised that they were Greek. (Marie Pearson, Tape MP-MA1, Side B, 42:05) Millers Point has always been connected with maritime activity. Whaling ships came from the 1830s, then the wool clippers and later other cargo ships called. It was the place where the bubonic plague of 1900 was first recorded and the people of Millers Point were accused by the press of the time that their precinct had been the cause of the plague: In fact as many people were affected by the plague in places like Redfern as they were at Millers Point and that was because some of those places actually had wool stores too, and so the wool that was being unloaded at Millers Point and transported to somewhere else. As they transport it they are also transporting the rat, with the flea, with the plague. (Shirley Fitzgerald, Tape MP-FH23, Side B, 34:40) that meant efficient use of the wharves. In terms of Millers Point it meant getting hold of that private wharfage so that it could be redeveloped as more efficient work space. The plague I guess was a godsend because it did give them the excuse to resume, and they resumed the wharves and they resumed a certain amount of housing as well. (Shirley Fitzgerald, Tape MP-FH23, Side B, 33:10) Although large parts of Millers Point were resumed in 1900 by the newly set up Sydney Harbour Trust, fine housing for sea captains and store owners had already been constructed, particularly in Kent and Lower Fort Street and these remained intact. After the First World War, the Sydney Harbour Trust completely rebuilt Pottinger Street and Hickson Road, causing further loss of heritage housing. In the 1920s the demolition of Princes Street, Harp Street and other now vanished streets occurred to make way for the Bradfield Highway and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, as some of the older interviewees recall: I remember what the place looked like before, Princes Street and that. We used to go up to St Patrick s over the hill and there was a square there called Grosvenor Square and there was this big Grosvenor Hotel, much like Petty s, it s one that all the country people stayed at. Buchanan s whisky place was next to it. When the Bridge was built I can remember it starting and all these places being pulled down. They pulled some nice houses down in Princes Street and it altered the whole place really. (Alice Brown, Tape MP-FH43 Side B, 42:17) Alice Brown Marie Pearson Shirley Fitzgerald The plague gave the government of the day the reason to demolish large parts of what they deemed to be sub-standard housing but they also seemed to have had an ulterior motive: I do think there s a lot of evidence to indicate that (the plague) really was the excuse the government was looking for. They had a genuine concern about the state of the wharves, that a lot of the wharves were fairly unsanitary, and more importantly, inefficient. The colony, the nation we d just become a nation had just gone through a major depression and a major collapse in trade and so on, and there was a very strong need on the part of the government to involve itself in efficient trading practices and part of Remodelling the Rocks, Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 9

6 Reputation The Great Depression Second World War Community Spirit For most of its existence, Millers Point did not enjoy a savoury reputation. In the 1950s, everyone (except the Millers Point population) considered it as a slum. Sydneysiders in other suburbs assumed that Millers Point people were uneducated blue-collar workers and would not want to live there if they didn t have to. When Janet Farley first came to live in Millers Point people told her: Why would you want to live there, it s nothing but a dump. Now people are paying millions and millions to move into the dump. (Janet Farley, Tape MP-SM11 Side A, 22:15) Some of our interviewees lived through the Great Depression and recall the hardships suffered by their parents and the strikes on the waterfront while they went barefoot to school. Agnes Phillips recounts that three families shared her house. Unemployed men set up tents and tried to survive at the park at the end of Merriman Street where the Eye Hospital, the Eye Ozzie, had once been. Phyllis Flynn lived through those times: There was a lot of people when the Depression hit who couldn t pay their rents. They had to move so a lot of them went out to what they called Happy Valley, out at La Perouse. That is when they built their own little humpies out of tin and all that, I suppose, and that s where they lived. (Phyllis Flynn, Tape MP-FH33 Side B, 47:56) Pointers recall the declaration of war and watched their lovers and husbands leaving on the troop ships, going to war, as they sang The Maori s Farewell. They practised drills in the air raid shelter under the Bridge, boarded up their windows and lived on ration coupons. They also remember the attacks in Sydney Harbour when the HMAS Kuttabul was torpedoed by Japanese submarines with the loss of 19 lives in 1942: The night the submarines came in the harbour I d come up from Manly, could have been there when they were in the harbour, I don t know, but I m not very long home when the sirens went off. My grandmother wouldn t get off the lounge and you had to open your windows a bit and then I got under the table and there we had to sit until the siren went off. (Alice Brown, Tape MP-FH43 Side B, 57:19) At the end of the war Pointers saw their loved ones return home: I can remember the end of the war in Lower Fort Street and they were all dancing they sent us home from school. I remember the American planes after the war did a fly-by and a couple of Spitfires went under the Harbour Bridge. (John Ross, Tape MP-FH16 Side B, 46:52) Despite its poverty, Millers Point s great attribute is its extraordinary community spirit. Newcomers to the area still discover a strong sense of cohesion, belonging and loyalty: I felt very rooted to the spot because my family were here so long, we have roots in the area from my grandparents being here, from this area and that connects me in a way to my grandparents and my mother, the three most important people in my life and they were all here. They ve all passed now, those three people and being in the area gives me a sense of connectedness to their memories. (Teri Carter, Tape MP-SM6 Side A, 21:25) Janet Farley Phyllis Flynn, 1940s The one thing residents of Millers Point had in common was poverty. Families were generally large and Bill Ford s family of ten all lived in one small house at 23A Dalgety Terrace. But people did not complain: We were all just struggling together. Most people didn t have much but the interesting thing about not having much, of course, just in retrospect was that we didn t know we didn t have much we were happy with what we had. (Marie Pearson, Tape MP-MA2, Side A, 20:49) John Ross, 1950 Teri Carter This community spirit manifested itself in the way that people would address each other as aunty or uncle even though they might not be related, in the way they would drop into each other s houses for a chat and a cup of tea, shared or bartered food, washed and swept their neighbour s stairs, looked after sick families and fished together: In the summer season, down at Dalgety Wharf there d be easily 60 or 70 people there at dusk each night throwing a line into the water. (Frank Hyde, Tape MP-SM3 Side B, 40:44) Frank Hyde 10 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 11

7 Shops and Commerce (My father) was a good fisherman. Central Steps, which we called the Metal Wharf - he fished off that wharf for many years. I d come home from school and go down and catch small yellowtail and then when he knocked off work he d come down and get the yellowtail and he d fish for the big ones. He d bring home jewfish as tall as him, he was five foot three and that is how big these fish were. (Des Gray, Tape MP-FH28 Side A, 13:57) We used to have the Village Green with a fence all around it and I always wondered, and people told me about the Tree of Knowledge and I finally found out where it was from a photograph. It s on the far end of the Village Green up near the Lord Nelson there s a tree there and people, mainly men would come out of their houses and they would stand around the Tree of Knowledge and talk about the day s affairs. (Brian Harrison, Tape MP-FH3 Side B, 50:02) The Millers Point mob are we, the Millers Point mob are we. We re always up to mischief, wherever we might be. One day in the courtyard a copper said to me, If you belong to the Millers Point mob, well come along with me. He grabbed me by the collar and tried to run me in, I lifted up my hairy fist and hit him in the chin. How many eggs for breakfast, how many eggs for tea? A loaf of bread as big as your head and a lousy cup of tea. The kids sang that all the way through the city. (Judy Taylor, Tape MP-FH45 Side B, 28:59) Some of our interviewees have extraordinarily vivid memories of neighbours, shops and places of commerce at the Point. They recall enterprises long gone, such as the blacksmith s shop, the cooperage in Kent Street, Playfair s meat factory and the wool and bond stores. There were little shops where they would buy their groceries, the butcher, chemist, fish shop and shoemaker. Harry Lapham remembers Asher, the pawnbroker, the Ham and Beef shop and John Holly s milk bar whose foundations sank 18 inches and had to be condemned. There was Rube Lewis, a particularly interesting local character who sold comics and cigarettes to underage kids, kept a gun in his shop and was reputed to be a baccarat dealer in his spare time: Reuben Lewis had the barber shop which was infamous because he sold condoms on display in the front window during the war. Apparently he made an absolute killing from the armed services. Rube used to know how to cut hair one style: it was called a Basin Cut. He put his hand on the top of your head and he had the hand clippers and a pair of scissors and the clippers were never-ever sharp, they pulled the hair on the back of your neck but he basically trimmed to the top of your ears in a circle. You looked like you d come out of a Franciscan order or something, it was a cruel haircut. There was another barber just up the road but he was twice as expensive, so if your mum gave you a shilling to buy a haircut and you went to Rube Lewis you had sixpence to spend over, but when you went home your mother knew where you got your haircut, you never went to the good barber, you know. (Russell Fitchett, Tape MP-FH42 Side A, 22:24) Des Gray On summer evenings the community would get together: The steps up in Munn Street - I can remember there were eighteen stairs and in summertime you d see the neighbours, they d all come along and we d sit on those steps at the bottom, the mothers and the parents on the steps, and it was nice. Everybody would talk and pass the time until about nine o clock at night. (Betty Borg, Tape MP-FH20, Side A, 23:19) Betty Borg Brian Harrison At Christmas, Aunt Biddy, a local lady, would do her good deed: Christmas time when Martin Place would have the Christmas tree up Biddy would come and collect all the kids of Millers Point and they d start at the Village Green, which was in the Argyle Cut, and they d walk down the Argyle Cut, up George Street to Martin Place, do the circle of the city and then come back up Kent Street. Then she d deliver them back to all their respective homes. The kids had their Millers Point song and they used to sing The Millers Point Mob as they walked through the city: Judy Taylor Pointers would close off the street if they had something to celebrate. On Boxing Day Kent Street was blocked off and people put out tables of food and beer. On New Year s Eve the Bischell family would carry their piano out onto the street to entertain the neighbourhood. A huge bonfire would be lit on Dalgety Hill, a local boy would dress up as Father Time and everyone came out in the street to wish each other a happy New Year. During the year there were the Wharfies, Painters & Dockers and Maritime Services Board picnics to keep the people socially connected. Mothers got together to help the nuns at St Brigid s and cleaned St Patrick s, the local church. On Sundays, whole families went on the tram to picnics at Nielsen Park or Clifton Gardens. 12 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 13

8 Observatory Hill Housing and Amenities Russell Fitchett Shopkeepers offered credit to the people by ticking it up entering the debt in a book which the family would pay off in weekly instalments. Often the shops threw in an extra item or two, such as a dozen eggs or an extra loaf of bread if the family was needy. In addition to the shops there were a variety of colourful hawkers who called and sold milk, bread and other necessities from their carts. The coal man sold coal in winter and ice blocks in summer. The rabbitoh could skin a rabbit in ten seconds. Rabbit fur was an extra penny. The rabbit man was also the fish man on Fridays. Frank Hyde was the local milkman until he forged a career for himself in football and broadcasting. Jacko was the fruit and vegetable man. There was a knives-and-scissors sharpening man and a clothesline prop man who sold Y-shaped tree forks to hold up the washing: Charlie Wong was a door-to-door salesman and all his wares he carried in like a suitcase, and it would have been about 24 inches long, 18 inches high, and he d have in that a pair of slacks, a jumper, a nightgown, maybe a pair of towels, something feminine, like a petticoat, or whatever. He would knock on your door and he would show you his wares and if you liked anything I bought a couple of jumpers from him you would tell him what size and the next week he d come back with it wrapped in a brown paper parcel under his arm. You had credit, you would pay it off, you would give him five shillings here and 10 shillings there. That was his little business and when you gave him some paper money, like 10 shillings, he would take out of his pocket a wad of notes, like the size of a mandarin and roll it around and stick it back in his pocket. (Marie Shehadie, Tape MP-BSC3, Side A, 24:24) The highest part of Millers Point, Observatory Hill is a place of special significance to Sydneysiders. Observatory Hill slopes down to the harbour. The Observatory used to fire a one o clock gun so that ships could set their clocks when that proved to be too dangerous the cannon was replaced by a valve that opened and released a falling ball on top of the Observatory, a visual clue to shipping. As a child, Russell Fitchett lived in No.2 Cottage on Observatory Hill: No.2 Cottage was originally called the Messenger s Cottage. There was a set of flagstaffs up on Observatory Hill which was semaphores for shipping, because you could look down directly to the harbour, to the Heads and the messenger had a bike and what happened in the house next door they had photos and paintings of ships for identification purposes and they d identify the ship coming in to the harbour, which were usually sailing ships. I had seen a lot of the old photos and paintings when I was a kid. They d send the messenger and the messenger would go to the shipping company, usually in Hunter Street or down that area they d find out what wharf the ship had to go to, the messenger would then ride back up the hill and tell the Semaphore Station, who d semaphore the ship, or the tug that used to tow them around, and so the ship would know what berth to go to. When we were up there it was called the Messenger s Cottage but because of the tenancy that my family had there it s now listed in books as Fitchett s Cottage. It directly adjoins the Observatory. There was only the three buildings there and there was another cottage, the Weather Bureau Cottage at the back of Observatory Hill. (Fitchett, Tape MP- FH41 Side A, 18:50) Fitchett recalls seeing the disused cannonballs that were still stored on racks in the Observatory. He also informs that there used to be a bowling green at the Observatory which was removed when they constructed a new building to house the telescope. Housing stock at Millers Point dates back to about the 1850s. Betty Borg s house at 20A Munn Street was typical of the style of architecture in the street: Well the stairway you go up 18 stairs I remember you went up and it branched a doorway to the right and to the left. My grandparents lived in the left, in 18A, and there was a wall jutted out, a sort of a dividing wall, and my mother s place was 20A. As you looked down the stairs on the front veranda went right along over the stairway and it had like a wire mesh on top of a wooden railing that you could see into the stairway, you know if somebody was there. Then when you went in the front door there was one bedroom to the right, a small one, which ended up being mine. The kitchen was to the left of that hallway and up in the corner was the bathroom, it was an inside bathroom that was very good, but you had to carry the hot water in from outside into the bathroom because there was no water running through there. Then you turned right up to another hallway and on the left was another room, which was on its own, sort of. You went past that and you faced the veranda door and that led out onto the veranda. Then you turned left up there, at that veranda door without going out, staying in the hallway, and you went into the big bedroom. The wall of that bedroom and the wall of the room that was on its own, just after the bathroom belonged to the hotel. (Betty Borg, Tape MP-FH20, Side A, 21:05) Living conditions were hard Warren Cox s sister slept in a cupboard under the staircase and Eileen Pearson s children slept in the attic. Ron Joseph s gaslight was replaced by electric light only in 1940 and washing day could take all day everything was boiled, blued and starched. 14 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 15

9 Children s Lives I can remember when I used to do all the sheets they were washed by copper, you d light up the old fire and you would throw the sheets in and you would boil the heck out of them. Then you had to be nearly a bodybuilder to lift them out and into the tub and rinse them in cold water. I had a wringer, one of these things that you sit on the side of the tub and you turned the handle around. (Marie Shehady, Tape MP-BSC3, Side B,36:30) Fuel stoves were fed on coal and wood and when in the late 1950s Sydney removed its tram tracks, thousands of blue gum woodblocks were dug up, sold and burnt for fuel. Bathing facilities were primitive: The bathroom was down the back a tin bath, and if you wanted to have a bath, you used to light the copper up and had to carry buckets of water down the stairs, so you didn t do that every day and my brother, being the last one, he used to sit in the copper. He was only tiny and that was still warm from the fire underneath. (Flo Seckold, Tape MP-FH10 Side A, 03:25) Flo Seckold Children enjoyed a way of life that can only be envied today. They played at the King George V playground, practised football in the park, played basketball, netball, racquet-ball, paddle tennis, vigoro, fished at the Met or swam at the Chains. Des Gray raced billycarts: We used to race from the top of High Street, there was a street called Munn Street - it used to go all the way down into Dalgety s Wharf which had a very sharp bend on it and went round into Sussex Street, the Hungry Mile. We used to race down there. There was one day we built a billycart, and about half the size of this room the box would have been, we got it from some store down in Erskine Street, carted it all back home, put axles on it, wheels, and about 15 of us got in it and down the hill we went. Well, we didn t turn the corner because it just wouldn t turn, so we went straight through the gates of Dalgety s Wharf, big steel gates. There was quite a lot of people got hurt that day. I ve still got a scar up here actually, underneath my chin there. (Des Gray, Tape MP-FH28 Side A, 19:02) Bill Ford swam at the Met : We learned to swim off the Metal Wharf and one of the fascinating things is you dive in off the Metal Wharf and you swim about five strokes and you turn directly back onto the steps. There were sharks in this area so you dived in with great bravado, swam your five strokes and turned at right angles. The first school swimming carnival I went to I dived in, swam and turned 90 degrees and ran slap bang into the side wall of the swimming pool and put my hand up as if I had finished. So that s where we learned to swim. (Bill Ford, Tape MP-SM16A Side A, 27:33) Cricket was another popular pastime: Every Sunday morning there was a game of cricket down in Hickson Road, and a good standard of cricket too, I might add. Every quarter of an hour we d stop to let a car go by. (Ron Josephs, Tape MP-FH35, Side A, 12:33) Ron Josephs We used to have to play cricket in the streets there, in Pottinger Street or down in Hickson Road where one Sunday morning we got pinched for playing cricket because it was Sunday. Anyway, there were quite a few of us, we had to go to the Children s Court up in Albion Street, we got a lecture. Those over 18 had to go to Central Court and they got fined 2. (Harry Lapham, Tape MP-SM2, Side B, 56:24) Dalgety s Wool store on Dalgety s Wharf was an unlikely place for kids to play: It was just a great big store, a monstrous big building with stacks and stacks of wool in it. That was one of our playgrounds, we d go in there and play. The guys who worked in the wool sheds, I don t know what they were called, if they caught us they used to take our pants off and wipe this red dye on our testicles and send us home. Mum would always know then, Ah, you ve been to the wool sheds all day. (Des Gray, Tape MP- FH28 Side A, 19:57) Children climbed the arch of the bridge or made their way up the pylon to the room where the Cat Lady lived with her 20 white cats. They saw circus elephants unloaded on the wharves for Ashton s circus, drank milkshakes in Charlie Conran s milk bar, played cockylorum, chase the tin or hitched a tram ride to Luna Park where the first 200 kids would be given a bag of lollies and tickets to free rides at Coney Island. They watched the boats coming into the harbour and knew which line it was and where it would berth. For Teri Carter Millers Point was a world full of imagination: As a child I remember spending a lot of time in the park across the road in Dawes Point Park. There s one tree near the bus stop at George Street North there, right on the park. That was my favourite tree to sit up because no-one would know I was there and I would watch people come and go and it used to amuse me that I was up there and I had a rich fantasy life, being an only child, so I spent a lot of time on my own, so I would be up the tree thinking I was in Africa somewhere. (Teri Carter, Tape MP-SM5, Side A, 25:50) The copper would also become useful at Christmas: The copper would be scrubbed out until it shone and the Christmas puddings would be boiled in it. Then after they were cooked it was cleaned out again and when the ham had to be cooked the ham was put in it, then it had to be cleaned out again. (Alice Brown, Tape MP-FH43 Side B, 35:51) Harry Lapham 16 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 17

10 Education and Job Expectations Dalgety s Wool Store in 1875 Lance Kindergarten, High Street Millers Point, mid 1930s (Bill Ford front row, left) The job opportunities were you became a wharfie, you became a storeman or you became a tugman; one of my uncles was a tugman; or if you had local political connections you could get a job in the Council, which was a much more secure system. Thinking back on the kids I grew up with most of them got an apprenticeship and that was because the parents, having gone through the tremendous insecurity of the 1930s wanted some sort of security and apprenticeships were seen as the most secure way. Not to escape the waterfront but to have security in life. I think the Daily Mirror interviewed me when I won the Fulbright Scholarship and the title was No Hoper Makes Good. They interviewed my mother and my mother said, All I ever wanted for him to get was an apprenticeship, which I didn t get. (Bill Ford, Tape MP-SM16A Side A, 13:26) Beverley Sutton Children at Millers Point attended Lance Kindergarten, St Brigid s School, St Patrick s and Fort Street Primary School. Many of our interviewees remembered attending Lance Kindergarten in High Street, then a free service to residents of Millers Point: When I went to Lance Kindergarten they used to have nap time and they used to have canvas little stretchers and if you played up they used to tie you in, so I used to play up a bit just to get tied in. (Brian Harrison Tape MP-FH3 Side B, 39:20) Frank Hyde went to St Brigid s School: My first schooling was at St Brigid s, Millers Point, behind the Post Office. I ll never forget it, the first day I went to school I was four and I immediately fell in love with a nun, Sister Gabriel. She was huge but she was all beauty. (Frank Hyde, Tape MP-SM3 Side A, 20:41) School students were not expected to go beyond Intermediate Certificate and university was out of the question. Job expectations for boys were limited: Girls became barmaids, cleaners, housemaids, tea packers for Bushells, production line workers for Cowan s paper factory in Kent Street or tobacco leaf graders at the W.D & H.O. Wills tobacco factory at Kensington. If you were bright, you might aspire to become a typist or stenographer. My best friend, Kay and I, we went through Fort Street Primary together, then we sat the exams in what we called Sixth Class. Now Kay and I were allocated to Fort Street Girls High, we were the only two, and our parents, both her mother and my mother, were not happy with that because they knew that as soon as we were 15 we had to both get out and work. It was naturally assumed in those days that if you went to Fort Street Girls High you technically were university material and that was the way the curriculum was structured, but our parents weren t happy with that because they knew there was no way in the world they could afford for us to go to university and we both had to leave school at Intermediate age and get a job. So we are all victims of our times in some way, shape, or form. (Beverley Sutton, Tape MP-SM14 Side B, 55:37) 18 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 19

11 The Waterfront The rich maritime history of Millers Point and Dawes Point have given the precinct a special character with particular emphasis on sights, sounds, smells and memories connected with a working harbour. Interviewees mentioned the sounds of the coal lumpers as ships loaded their fuel, the blasts of ships horns, the sirens that went off in the wool stores when shifts started and ended and the sound of wool wagons coming up Kent Street. They also remember the smell of diesel oil and lanolin that pervaded the district. All these were comforting it meant that there was work and income. Most Millers Point men and their fathers were traditionally coal lumpers, wharf labourers or tugboat and ferry deckhands. All work was casual. Some days or weeks there would not be any work at all. During the Great Depression, men walked The Hungry Mile, the stretch of Hickson Road between pick-up points, looking for work. This period coined the term Bull system: The Bull system was where the stevedore stood up in front of a crowd of wharfies looking for a job and he would pick out the bulls - that is the big, tough, strong ones, and if you didn t work to the pace of the bulls then you were sacked. So it was pretty unfair. The bull system was also a corrupt system, it was not unknown to bribe the stevedore to ensure you got the job that day. (Bill Ford, Tape MP- SM16A Side A, 21:56) In the 1950s that iniquitous system was replaced by the Gang System at five o clock each morning Radio 2KY would broadcast the names of work gangs, their badge numbers and the pick-up centres where they were to report for work. Men did three shifts on the waterfront, the day, twilight and midnight shift. A wharfie had an iron hook, made for him by the blacksmith in Rhodens Lane, which they used to sling the wheat sacks and wool bales over their shoulders in the days before mechanisation. Conditions of work before the 1960s were often atrocious - the men came into frequent contact with asbestos, coal lumpers worked in coal dust and contracted emphysema and lung cancer, men worked in extreme heat on decks and in intense cold in freezers below. Facilities were primitive: They weren t supplied with anything, they never had a canteen, they used to sit on the edge of the wharf and have their smokos on the ship. They never had change rooms. There used to be nails on some of the posts in the shed and they d hang their gear on that just go home in that. If they did dirty jobs sometimes the billies which they used to make their cup of tea in they d have an extra one that would have holes in the bottom and put water in it and just rinse the water off to get a lot of the dirt off before they d go home, because they had no showers or anything. Pretty rough times. (Warren Cox, Tape MP-FH18 Side A, 04:36) Warren Cox John Ross father was a waterside worker: The timber boats was the worst job they d have to go up the river and unload timber off the boat it had come out on the lighters they d have to stand in the lighters and sometimes the big logs would come down and they had to stand on the logs in the water, sort of tie them together and I know there was a couple of bad accidents down there. (John Ross, Tape MP-FH16, Side A, 12:45) John Ross Accidents on the waterfront were serious and frequent: A lot of people were killed, falling down holds, getting crushed by cranes dropping loads. There was a young fellow, Darkie Hogan was his name, from Woolloomooloo, he died. I worked for the Waterside Union for 11, 12 years and there were a lot of people killed. (Amanda Barlow, Tape MP-FC2 Side A, 13:48) Amanda Barlow People used to get hit with the crane, the actual hook because once the crane driver started to lower the hook he could no longer see down below. I witnessed a foreman he used to scream all the time, he was a screamer and he d be screaming at everyone he d say come out and meet the hooks everyone used to shake hands with the hook, and it was on a Sunday and he was screaming at these forklift drivers and the forklift s as big as this house, huge. He was screaming that much that the forklift driver couldn t hear him and consequently he ran over the top of him, so he never screamed again. (Don McWorthy, Tape MP-BH2 Side B, 32:58) Don McWorthy Many men were also killed or injured by falling wool bales. Gaylene Harkin s grandfather died that way: His name was Teddy and in Merriman Street there was the wool store, that s where the wool came off the boats and the guys would pull it up and store it in bales and build them up. He worked up the top of Bettington Street. That is where he was later on killed by a falling bale. I was a young child at the time and I remember a lot of people running around and I remember being chased out of the room. When I got older my grandmother said that it was part of the job in those days there was no warning if a bale fell. He got hit on the back of the neck and there was no point in taking him to a hospital because they didn t have the technology they do today, so he died at home. (Gaylene Harkin, Tape MP- FH37 Side A, 05:51). 20 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 21

12 Gaylene Harkin Des Gray s father was also hit by a bale of wool but survived to tell his tale: He was off work for six months with a broken leg, so he decided to build a rowing boat. He built it in my sisters bedroom and when it was finished he couldn t get it out because it wouldn t fit through the door or the window. So he had to pull it half to pieces and then take it out into the backyard, which was a very small yard and put it back together again. (Des Gray, Tape MP-FH28 Side A, 14:32) With the advent of oil-burning ships the coal lumpers lost their jobs and livelihood. Many joined the Communist Party in the 1930s believing that it would give them a better deal. In the 1950s many more joined the two mainstream unions, the Waterside Workers Federation and the Seamen s Union of Australia. But it was not a simple matter to join a union: It was a Catch-22 situation. To get to sea you had to be a member of the union and you couldn t be a member of the union unless you were already at sea. (Russell Fitchett, Tape MP-FH42 Side B, 33:01) It was a big part of my life being a trade unionist, as were most of the people in Millers Point. The men were very proud of their unionism, I mean May Day march, the first six rows were all from Millers Point, Balmain and Pyrmont. (Russell Fitchett, Tape MP-FH42 Side B, 34:31) In 1954 a prolonged strike by waterside workers tested the patience of both unions and stevedoring companies. Eventually, the Waterside Workers Federation under its leader Jim Healy and the Seamen s Union run by Elliott Valance Elliott agitated for better conditions which were granted eventually in the 1960s. In the days before containerisation, it was considered fair game to steal from the waterfront employer but not from the community, or each other. Bill Ford has this story to tell: I learnt very quickly some of the cultures of the waterfront. The first day I was sent across to the goods yard they were unloading pigs, big porkers, to be taken off the rail trucks and delivered to either a ship or a freezer area. My job was to count them coming off and I remember saying to the first truckie, You ve got 25, and he said, No, no, you can t count, kid, I ve got 24. I said, You ve got 25. He said, Listen kid, you d better learn to count in this area. One of them was a freebie which would be delivered to a friendly butcher s shop somewhere. (Bill Ford, Tape MP-SM17 Side A, 12:50). Goods pilfered from the waterfront would often turn up for sale in the pubs: I remember I had a job selling newspapers at age about 10, I guess and I used to do the Palisade, the Cook and the Nelson. I remember particularly walking into the Lord Nelson one night selling newspapers and at one end of the bar there was a guy selling Alaskan crab claws and at age 10 I had never even heard of Alaskan crabs, but he had quite a supply of frozen Alaskan crab claws. There were quite often situations where in the Palisade, particularly the guys that came off the ship then had access to a room, and I remember being invited in. I wanted a pair of shoes and I was invited to have a look in the room and the place was just chock-a-block from floor to ceiling with boxes and boxes and boxes of shoes. I had fairly large feet but no problems with sizes. I remember buying a pair of pointy-toed oxblood red shoes that were just my favourite shoes. (Robert Johnston, Tape MP-FH32 Side A, 09:24) Robert Johnston Don McWorthy worked on the waterfront for 12 years: Well it was never really called thieving but at the end of the day it was. I do remember a couple of incidents. There was a couple of wine barrels (in the ship s hold) made out of oak and a few of the old wharfies were alcoholics, so they got a little nail and went in between one of the boards in this oak barrel and they got a paper cup and tasted it, and they said Oh, that s all right, that ll do us. So no-one went to lunch and they were all down there, getting blind drunk and of course they wouldn t send it up onto the wharf in the crane. And then a couple of days later this guy comes down and put his head over the hatch and said, Is there a couple of oak barrels down there? They said, Yeah, it s beautiful what is it? And he said, I hope you haven t been drinking it. They said Yes, we have why, what s in it? And he said, Well I m from Sydney University and there s preserved monkey inside there, in white spirits. So they finally put it out on the wharf but there was a lot of sick people after that. (Don McWorthy, Tape MP-BH2 Side A, 24:12) 22 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 23

13 The Pubs Hero of Waterloo Hotel, corner Windmill Street and Lower Fort Street, 1901 According to Russell Fitchett, there were 27 pubs in a one-kilometre radius from Observatory Hill. Frank Hyde can remember back to the 1920s: A common phrase, when I was that high, among my elders was What pub do you drink at? There were no clubs then, there were just pubs. I could tell you which fellows drank at the Palisade Hotel, I could tell you who drank at the Lord Nelson, the Orient Hotel and the Dunbarton. (Frank Hyde, Tape MP-SM4, Side A, 10:52) Judy Taylor was the publican s daughter and barmaid at the Captain Cook Hotel: When the wharfies came for their morning tea they only had a 15-minute break we used to have to watch every car that pulled up and we learned what they drank and we d have their drink on the bar when they walked in the door and as soon as one was emptied you had the next one ready for them to drink. Some of them might have six schooners in their morning tea break. (Judy Taylor, Tape MP-FH45 Side A, 07:58) The pubs were more than just places to drink, they had social clubs where patrons might be taken on dances or ferry cruises. The Palisade had its own golf club and the Captain Cook ran raffles to raise money for worthy causes: We used to run a chook raffle every Friday night, sometimes Thursdays, for St Brigid s School and for the football club that was later formed in Millers Point. Many times that one chook could have been won 15 times because people would win it, get a few beers under their belt and they d leave and the chook would be sitting on the bar and we d raffle it again. (Judy Taylor, Tape MP-FH45 Side A, 16:20) As expected, every pub had its SP bookie. Russell Taylor was a one-time-bookie himself: SP bookmaking, from a community point of view apart from a protest against authority was considered to be a legitimate occupation. Everybody on Millers Point had an interest in the races, whether they be the thoroughbred, the greyhounds or the trots. So in every pub there was an SP bookmaker and there were some that were based in some of the houses there was one in Merriman Street, there was one in Windmill Street, Cumberland, Kent Street. you know, you had a choice. (Russell Taylor, Tape MP- FH12 Side A, 24:50) Pat Armstrong ran the Palisade Hotel in Bettington Street: Everyone knew about it. While I was living there, Armstrong was a member of Parliament and it was common knowledge that he ran several bookie shops around the area. (Lawrie Anderson, Tape MP7 Side B, 33:25) Lawrie Anderson Lucky Fernleigh was in the paper he died the other day, 88, came originally from Millers Point - he used to run the SP down there in the back of a house opposite the Palisade, next to the little grocery shop. I remember dad used to be the cockatoo out the front of the Palisade standing on the corner on a Saturday arvo, and when the coppers would come a message would go across, Close up the shop, close the back gate so they couldn t get in. There was another one down at Windmill Street, Cec Moore s. They got raided quite a bit but they just got a fine, they were back operating the next week anyway. My wife s nanna in Argyle Place used to have a couple of bets, like a shilling bet or something, and they used to drop a tin on a rope over the back of Cec Moore s and the cockatoo out the back of Cec Moore s would grab the tin and take it in and put it on for them. (Warren Cox, Tape MP-FH18 Side B, 50:17) The SP bookies were loyal to their customers: There was one in Windmill Street who was the most frequented because he had a better setup than most. At Christmas time, if you had gambled with him, depending on the rate of your gambling there was always an envelope for you I used to bet as a kid threepence each way and at Christmas time there might be 10 shillings in there and that was your rebate for gambling with him. The bigger gamblers, like the fathers and that, they might get 15, which was a lot of money. (Fitchett, Tape MP-FH42 Side A, 25:22) It was not unusual to witness a fight outside one of the hotels: There were scenes of all sorts of interesting activity, including violence, not just between locals who may have had too much to drink from time to time but also between visiting seamen, particularly Pommies and the locals who always wanted to work out who was the strongest, who were the best drinkers and who were the best fighters. As kids that was part of our entertainment if you sat outside of one of the busier pubs of a Friday or Saturday night you could be assured that you d see a few interesting fights. (Russell Taylor, Tape MP-FH12 Side A, 19:48) I can remember seeing two well-known street fighters fight on the corner of Kent and Argyle Street and they literally belted one another for 20 minutes, stopped, went and had a couple of schooners, then went back and got into the fight again. (Russell Fitchett, Tape MP-FH42 Side B, 30:35) The Captain Cook was reputed to have some unsavoury characters among its clientele: A lot of them had chequered pasts and they were the local crooks that used to drink there. Some of them were criminals, really good criminals, some of them were only petty crooks, but Mickel Hurley is one of them and Abo Henry, who has a book out now. Neddy Smith used to drink there. There was one chap who used to come there that was known for doing a couple of robberies and he used to wear a wig, and being a hairdresser in my past life it was not uncommon for him to ask me could I cut the wig into different styles so that he would look different at each job that he might have gone to. But when my mum passed away she was very loved by all of them, her funeral was at St Brigid s everyone of them came to her funeral and to me that speaks volumes, they may be crooks but they were crooks with a heart. They were crooks who would help anybody that was down and out in Millers Point, particularly the older men and older ladies. They always made sure that there was a dollar in their pocket, particularly the old men, so that they could have a drink, they never saw anybody go without money. (Judy Taylor, Tape MP- FH45 Side A, 11:21 & 19:31) 24 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 25

14 The Residentials But it was not only the crooks who were corrupt: We actually had a Police Prosecutor that lived at Millers Point at the time, whom my dad nicknamed Elliott Ness, and nobody really liked him and he was very critical of the crooks that drank at the Captain Cook Hotel but he ended up one himself. (Judy Taylor, Tape MP-FH45 Side A, 11:32) In the 1970s when drugs came to Millers Point petty crime lost whatever innocence it may have had and took on a new dimension. Danny Chubb was one of the local boys. Brian Harrison remembers him well: One guy who was the worst thug of all was Danny Chubb, who lived down in High Street and he was three or four years older than me but he was a real thug at school he would do terrible things to people kids, and I remember when I was 17 I happened to be in the Hero (of Waterloo) Hotel and I came out with a friend and Danny Chubb walked past. He grabbed me and gave me two black eyes and a broken nose with one punch my nose has never been the same. Six years later they shot him outside the Lance Kindergarten and I asked a paramedic who came to my door who lived in High Street and he told me the end of the story years later. I asked him Is it true that his mother raced out of the house and said Don t touch him, he s got gold teeth? and he said it was true. He said, It was a hit job they put two bullets into his chest and walked up to him and put another one in his head. He said, I was the one who covered him up. (Brian Harrison, Tape MP- FH3 Side B, 51:56) We actually spoke to him 10 minutes before he was shot and one of the local kids came up on his bike singing out that Danny had been gunned down in front of his mother s house in High Street, next door to the Lance Kindergarten. (Judy Taylor, Tape MP-FH45 Side A, 13:54) Surprisingly, despite several murders committed in Millers Point and a continuing drug problem residents generally feel very safe, with a few exceptions:. It depends who s living in the area. We ve had families from time to time that have been a serious problem. Some of them mug people, some of them do break and enters, some break into cars and that changes over the years. We re going through a good patch at the moment. (Millicent Chalmers, Tape Mp-SM12 Side B, 42:24) Millicent Chalmers Lower Fort Street, 1949 For those living in residentials, the glorified name given to the boarding houses of Lower Fort Street and Argyle Place, owned by the Maritime Services Board (and later Housing NSW) life also had its ups and downs. Hundreds of mostly single men lived in residentials at the Point. Many of the landladies had divided their substantial terraces into what Amanda Barlow describes as rabbit warrens. Bede, one of Sally Clough s boarders lived in one shoe boxsize room at her boarding house for 43 years. When Clough bought the goodwill to her terrace at No 9 Lower Fort Street in 1979 it had one bathroom for 10 people and only one toilet. The only water was a cold water tap on the back veranda and the house had no cooking facilities whatsoever. At her own expense, Clough added additional bathrooms and a kitchen. Brian Harrison s grandmother bought the tenancy lease to Milson Terrace at 11 Lower Fort Street, built in 1896 and reputed to be one of the finest terrace houses in the land. Harrison recalls that a boarder hanged himself in the bathroom and he recounts another occasion: I remember in my grandmother s place she had a young Greek sea captain and this night she heard a lot of voices in the hallway could have been one of the many men, so she went to sleep. At two o clock in the morning she woke up and she heard moans coming from upstairs and she went up and there was this young guy in bed, blood all over the sheets and up the wall and what had happened was, this young Greek guy was saving up enough money to bring over his family from Greece and after his caller had left, guilt had got the better of the young guy and he had pulled down his trousers and sliced off his penis. (Brian Harrison, Tape MP-FH3, Side B, 44:12) 26 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 27

15 The Maritime Services Board Housing NSW Marie Shehady, a woman with a big heart ran one of the Point s many boarding houses: I know when we had the residential when people were sick I would cook for them, I wanted it to be a home for them. We d help each other out, if they couldn t pay the rent this week well, we d take it next week, or we d take it in instalments. If they didn t have any money for food we d give them back the rent. I think we used to call it, St Vincent de Paulo, but great times. I used to clean their rooms and change their sheets every week. I did all the stairways, the hallways, the bathroom, the backyard, front yard, all polishing and dusting. I might add I was very houseproud, so it was really done well, it was a full-time job. Then I actually worked for a period during that time too. I had my aunt come to live with us when her husband passed away and she was a very lovely lady, she was there 15 years and she was quite ill and bedridden, so apart from working, looking after the house and the children I used to cook and look after her and her son. I might add now, 31 years later I still come back every fortnight and look after her son and clean his unit. (Marie Shehady, Tape MP- BSC3, Side A, 06:20 & 14:50) Marie saved a tenant s life when he overdosed in the residential next door. At times she also provided additional voluntary services: I remember this dear old gentleman he was a builder and he used to have I think it was six-monthly washing experiences and I ve never known one man to have so many flannelette shirts. He would do his washing when he was on holidays and he would hang it all over the clothesline and over the bushes because he had so much, there was never enough clothesline space. Then he d go up to town to be with his mates and I would run to the shop, buy two bottles of bleach, come back and take all his washing in and re-wash it, hang it out again. I don t think he ever knew that after he had done his washing I would do it again for him. (Marie Shehady, Tape MP-BSC3, Side A, 10:35) Although the Maritime Services Board owned the properties, they were landlords by default, as Graeme Goodsell points out: The Maritime Services Board really were only interested in running the business of the Maritime Services Board, which is ports and docks and things, which is what they were originally set up to do. It was an historical accident, if you like, after the Plague and clearing of the bad housing stock down there that they became a landlord. (Graeme Goodsell, Tape MP-FH39 Side A, 15:15). Graeme Goodsell Some of our interviewees remember the Maritime Services Board fondly: They were excellent landlords. They had their own tradesmen which were on call any day of the week, virtually. The rents were quite adequate at the time for working people, whatever, but if anything was wrong electrically, plumbing or whatever it was always instantaneous and you always were able to speak to the boss of the section. The Maritime Services Board even had their own Rat Squad, which was a set of fox terriers they always had six to eight dogs and they always had a set of puppies coming on and these fox terriers, they d take them onto a wharf and they d seal all the sheds on the wharf and they just put them in there and at the end of the day there d be hundreds of (dead) rats that s something I ll always remember, and some of the rats were humungous. (Fitchett, Tape MP- FH41 Side B, 33:53) Other interviewees insist that the Maritime Services Board did little to repair their properties and that it expected tenants to fix the interiors themselves, but they did paint the exteriors every few years all in one colour, beige. But the Maritime Services Board never asked their tenants to sign any lease and they allowed an unofficial hereditary system to continue: I guess the most important thing about the MSB was that it was a benign landlord for the people in Millers Point, that it didn t fix their houses up, it didn t look after them, but it left them alone and it ignored them and that was, in a way, the best thing that could have happened from some points of view because it meant that people just were allowed to alter their houses, put on a leanto at the back if they needed grandpa to stay over or whatever. It almost became that those houses were hereditary. If the Maritime Services Board had been more concerned to look after its housing property then you would have had to apply and when somebody died there would be lists and it would have been done properly and bureaucratically. In fact it was done quite word-of-mouth and if somebody died and they had an aunt or somebody else that could take over that house it would almost happen automatically. So that actually deepened the sense of place of a village of families who had longterm connections to the place and there was almost an expectation that is our house whereas of course it wasn t. (Shirley Fitzgerald, Tape MP-FH23 Side B, 53:17) On 1 January 1986 the housing regime changed with the takeover of Millers Point by Housing NSW. All former Maritime Services Board tenants now became Housing NSW tenants. Rents went up and in the case of Betty Borg s house: It went up into the hundreds. (Under the Martime Services Board) we were paying about $90 something a week, which was cheap, we admit, but we used to upkeep the house, the place itself. We had altered it, tiled the bathroom, built the kitchen in, everything like that, made the entrance from inside to go into the bathroom and things. But the Housing Commission didn t take that into account, they didn t care about that, they just saw that s how we were and because (my husband) was working and earning a good wage and overtime it went up and we were paying over $200 to $300 a week and that is 20 years ago. (Betty Borg, Tape MP-FH20, Side A, 25:30) The increased rents certainly forced some people out into the suburbs and shopkeepers and landladies were concerned that their businesses would become unprofitable to run. But the residents biggest fear was that Housing NSW would change the nature of their precinct by bringing in lowincome families, some with drug and alcohol problems: There was a lot of angst that what the government might be doing was moving in people who were dysfunctional and unable to care for the places and so on because that would give them the justification for selling them. I don t know that there is any truth in that, but certainly the Housing Department had a much more efficient way of allocating housing as people s marbles came up, as it were. (Shirley Fitzgerald, Tape MP-FH23 Side A, 53:17) Housing NSW, in order to be fair to all residents brought in a system of rent based on income: Technically, I did not meet Housing s criteria because I was a single woman with no children at that stage and I was earning a pretty good income and so I actually was supposed to move out of the house because 28 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 29

16 I did not meet their policy. Luckily for me I had a really good tenancy officer at the time and I put up a pretty good argument about living in the community all my life had strong ties to the community wouldn t live anywhere else if I had the opportunity of living in the Point any other way than in the Department of Housing and so they did let me take over the lease. I haven t paid market rent, but I ve always paid the top rent, 25% of my income. (Cathie Farley, Tape MP-SM10 Side B, 58:13) When I was having electrics put in, because there were no such thing as power points, I was having it done in the room upstairs and the electrician had to pull up some floorboards and he came down to see me and he said, Are you aware that three of the bearers up there, he said, there is absolutely nothing left, they are all eaten out with white ants. Now that was very dangerous because you could see the ceiling was not stable, but in his opinion he felt that if anybody jumped up there the ceiling could come down and indeed some years later the lath and plaster ceiling in the hallway fell down one Christmas. I ve been waiting nine months now for all of the termite damage that is on every level in this house now, all through the architraving there, around the door, all through the skirting. I ve got it in floorboards upstairs, it is up in the attic, it is down in the kitchen. I reported that nine months ago and I m still waiting for them to come and the termites are active. (Beverley Sutton, Tape MP-SM15 Side B, 44:10) Eileen Pearson with her son Bill As far as repairs are concerned I ve been waiting 10 years for some of the problems in my bathroom to be sorted. They ve told me that the money s available and that they ll be here to do it but I forgot to ask them which year they are coming. (Sally Clough, Tape MP-BH1 Side B, 43:51 Cathie Farley It seems though that many residents are unhappy with the maintenance of their houses: They re very slack in their repairs. Before the Olympics, I m sleeping in the front room and they put a new roof right down the street and I could feel the rain. Luckily my bed was on casters, so I could move it out of the way. They said Well wait until the Olympics are over. They took two and a half years to come and fix it. (Eileen Pearson, Tape MP-FH2, 33:35) Sally Clough Millers Point, 1976 Walsh Bay, Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 31

17 Community Activism Battle of the Landladies The residents of Millers Point have a long history of protest and defiance. During the Green Bans at the neighbouring The Rocks in the early 1970s, Amanda Barlow laid down and chained herself to a bulldozer. She spent the night at Central police cells before being released. Gaylene Harkin and friends helped to save a group of houses from demolition by commandeering a semitrailer and blocking the street off, preventing bulldozers from entering. When the media turned up, it was all over for the Sydney Cove Redevelopment Authority and the houses were saved. But the threat did not end there. In the mid 1970s, housing in Munn Street and Merriman Street was demolished to make way for the Maritime Services Board tower and wharves were enlarged, causing further loss of housing and amenities. Understandably, residents are worried that one day the State Government will try to sell off their public housing. In April 1989 Dawn Caruana came home one day to find a sign that had been fastened to the balcony of her terrace in Kent Street: Well, I was out and saw the For Sale sign on my building. I guess I went into a state of shock because it was a Good Friday or Easter Saturday and I thought how dare anyone put up a sign while I m away, so I did a ring around and I eventually got onto Frank Sartor, who was the Lord Mayor at the time it was under Nick Greiner s time. Anyway, we rang around and got onto the unions and we rang the media and apparently the Government wanted to sell it off and didn t let anyone know. Mine was the only one with the For Sale sign but there were other houses across the road they wanted to sell as well, it was virtually my whole block they wanted to sell at that time. We got the media down Channel Nine and Channel Seven and Two and all the unions. In the park we had a big meeting. I thought once this goes, the whole of Millers Point s going to go I thought how dare you do this there ll be no history at all! The residents were terribly opposed to it. The unions were marvellous, they just walked off we had the Waterside, which is the strongest union of all the only one we were waiting on was going to be the airport that was going to be a close down, so the whole city would have just stopped. (Dawn Caruana, Tape MP-FH11, Side B, 44:20) Dawn Caruana Gaylene Harkin was also involved in the fight to save Lance Kindergarten: One of my children was going to Lance Kindergarten and at that time Esso owned the land. They decided that they wanted to sell it and they were going to demolish it and build a block of flats. There was no other kindergarten for miles and miles from where we lived and so we decided to protest. I don t know why we got dressed up in black capes and all that, but we did and we marched to Parliament House, took all our kids with us, protested there. Protested at the Esso Building for weeks and weeks we were in there every day, we took our chairs up there. The kids couldn t go to Day Care so we would turn their front foyer into a Day Care area they probably got sick and tired of seeing us. We took the kids there, there was a lot of toddlers running around all over the place screaming and carrying on, I don t care. We took finger painting, I think we took this homemade play dough. I think after having 10 kids screaming in their foyer for over a week they had enough. The day that the place was supposed to be demolished we decided to chain ourselves to these big giant trees that were on the property. Once the media turned up Esso told us they wanted to talk to us the next day and they told us that they had sold the property to the Kindergarten Union. So the building had been saved. (Gaylene Harkin, Tape MP-FH38 Side A, 08:00) In the 1990s the community organised a protest against the Walsh Bay Wharf residential development. Gaylene Harkin was on the Estate Advisory Committee: We even had a protest once, a big march. We would picket all the wharf. Open walkways was one thing, the rights of people to walk around wharves, that Walsh shouldn t be closed off. They have always been open to the public and the public should have the right to keep a hold of our open space. (Harkin, Tape MP-FH38 Side A, 01:29). I guess I was a little bit disenchanted about what happened with Walsh Bay I was actually on a committee that was fighting what happened down there. Not that I didn t think that Walsh Bay needed development, it did. It was a beautiful set of old wharves that was sadly lacking, but unfortunately we got shafted as far as what they ended up giving approval to and I think primarily it has changed the face of Millers Point and Sydney because this was an old place it was the birthplace of Australia and I don t feel it has the same sense of being the birthplace of Australia anymore. It s now sort of like trendy apartments and marina and all that sort of stuff. (Cathie Farley, Tape MP-SM11 Side A, 10:05) In 1982 Housing NSW and the Millers Point landladies commenced battle. It began when Jack Ferguson, the Labor Minister for Ports, Housing and Public Works and Deputy Premier of NSW came to visit: Along comes Jack Ferguson one day and says Who lives in these places? and when he learnt who lived here he decided that he had friends who d like to live here. So of course we marshalled all our landladies, or Shirley (Ball) marshalled them and we all stood well and truly behind her I think there was something like 60 of us when we started to do battle. He said the Maritime Services Board shouldn t have this property so he moved it over to the Department of Housing. I think he wrote to us early in December and he wanted us all out by 23rd December and because we had a weekly tenancy, the weekly tenancy had expired. (Sally Clough, Tape MP-BH1, Side A, 22:11) They were very stressful times because we had, say, seven people and we were given a week s notice, now what was going to happen to those people? What was going to happen to us as a family? I mean the way they made us feel was that we had no rights, it was illegal to be in a residential. But we bought those residentials and our landlord at the time was the Maritime Services Board who knew that these leases were exchanged for monetary gain and they didn t do anything about it. It was only when it really transferred over to the Housing Commission that the trouble started. (Marie Shehady, Tape MP- BSC3 Side A, 18:15) The landladies raised funds to pay their legal costs, organised a campaign of working bees and painted banners to hang on the balconies of their houses in protest. But the Department reacted strongly: The Department of Housing wouldn t accept our rent and what they were trying to do was make the existing tenants who were living in our premises with our commodities like changing the linen and all that sort of thing they had to pay the Department of Housing the rent. And one of the things they did is take over the electricity they had all the electricity accounts changed over to Housing 32 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 33

18 Youth and the Mentoring Scheme without our consent, so we stormed in there one day and got that sorted out. (Sally Clough, Tape MP-BH1, Side A, 25:48). We entered into an eight-year battle with the Department to actually maintain our interest and our residency in the area. Over a period of time what they did was that the Department then went to our tenants and they said, Well these people are running these properties illegally because we don t condone it, we don t accept sub-lettings in this way, so if you don t want to pay your rent, don t. They are running the places illegally, so therefore you are legally not bound to pay your rent. A number of tenants, I might add, took advantage of that. They also said to the tenants, We will accept you onto our list and if you want to pay your rent to us well then you can become Department of Housing tenants so some of them did that. Some of them were very cagey didn t pay the Department, but also didn t pay the landladies. But by the same token you also had tenants who did the right thing because their landladies had been good to them and continued to pay their landladies. (Beverley Sutton, Tape MP-SM15 Side A, 22:00) The Department of Housing were just.. they couldn t believe that a bunch of little old ladies were fighting these big bureaucrats and winning. We understand that they used to take a weekend away in the country and stay in a motel to try and dream up what we d do next, or how they could try and defeat us. (Sally Clough, Tape MP-BH1, Side B, 30:07). In days gone by the King George V Centre in Cumberland Street was the playground of the children and teenagers of Millers Point. It was a free service, run by the City of Sydney Council. It was refurbished and today, one pays to go in. As an alternative, the Council set up a Youth Centre at the Abraham Mott Hall. Helen Xiros the social worker at the Youth Centre comments on the lack of open space for teenagers at Millers Point: There is nothing in the area to get them off the streets, so with a Youth Centre to get them off the street they are welcoming to anything. There is nothing for them to do, so they are sitting on the street playing football or just hanging around basically there is no space for them, there are no outdoor parks where they can play a game of touch football or play a game of basketball. They tend to play in the middle of the road because there is no outdoor space that is sufficient for them to play in. They are just in their groups, hanging around, so they are seen as troublemakers but they are really just having fun. The Youth Centre just gives them an opportunity where it is a safe environment, where they can come inside, it is a space that is their own. (Helen Xiros, Tape MP-FH27, Side A, 06:53) We thought youth mentoring was a good one because it touched a number of areas. The future goal was employment, but we saw mentoring as a step towards future employment. Our initial objective was to have a positive adult friend who listens to and understands young people in Millers Point. Basically a friend that they can bounce ideas off. Other objectives were to give the young people an exposure to different recreational activities their mentors for example might take them out of Millers Point, take them bowling, take them to golf, something that they ordinarily wouldn t do. It also gave them exposure to different work opportunities, even just by coming into the building and seeing what other people do. Also to increase the self-esteem of the young people, increase their confidence and some self-development for them as well. (Adrien Meredith, Tape MP- FH36 Side B, 33:01 & 40:36) Adrien Meredith about self-esteem, role-modelling, homework assistance, job search, TAFE courses, it is that adult person they can have in their lives who they can go to if they need that type of assistance with anything. (Helen Xiros, Tape MPFH27, Side A, 14:04) The Youth Mentoring Program became an outstanding success story with 35 of Lend Lease staff now involved. The program has been extended to include primary school age students from Fort Street Public School. It has created positive outcomes for the teenagers and Lend Lease staff. The battle of the landladies stretched over eight years and through seven courts into the Supreme Court of NSW. It was a David and Goliath affair but in the end the astute landladies won their case. They were granted a 20-year lease on their tenancies which expires in Helen Xiros Another positive development has been the creation of a Youth Mentoring Program. Adrien Meredith is the community liaison person at Lend Lease who devised the program: We started off with a pilot program so we started off with a small group of young people, I think it was about 10, and 10 mentors. The mentors went through a training program through TAFE-Outreach, which was Mentoring the Community TAFE program where they got the basics about mentoring. From there we just matched a young person with a mentor, one-on-one. They meet once a week for an hour, maybe two, then, depending on the flexibility of work load and the young person s social life as well they negotiate between the two of them how often they meet, what they do. It is all 34 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 35

19 Darling House For years there was no aged care facility at Millers Point. As the community started agitating for such a place, several people got together to make it happen. They included Sister David Fitzmaurice, Nita McCrae and Shirley Ball: I d like to applaud the work of Sister David Fitzmaurice who came to Millers Point and worked tirelessly for the people here. She had this great desire to see a place here in Millers Point for our elderly people so that they could be cared for in the environment that they were used to and it was really because of that great desire of hers and another woman, Nita McCrae, that the place we have there in Trinity Avenue, Darling House now exists. (Sister Marie Pearson, Tape MP-MA2, Side B, 43:04) Darling House was at various times a disused tea-chest storage area and trucking company. It is now an outstanding facility, as Harry Lapham indicates: Wonderful best move I ever made. This d be the best place in Sydney marvellous place, good staff, marvellous people, great. (Harry Lapham, Tape MP-SM1 Side B, 49:40) Ray Newey is Chairman of Darling House: Those who get old, it looks after them with dignity and respect. People who live there I think are very fortunate because it s more like living in their own home rather than living in an aged care facility. Financially, it s not viable it does not stand alone with the Government s support and the moneys we receive from the residents, so the only way it can survive is by charity, so we have to arrange functions all the time to raise public funds so we can continue to keep the facility afloat. (Ray Newey, Tape MP-FC3 Side A, 24:14) Ray Newey Death at Millers Point Death at Millers Point was not such a sombre affair. Alice Brown s grandmother continued the old Irish traditions in the 1920s: She used to lay people out when they died, wash them and lay them out. I remember one winter s night we were sitting by the fire and a lady came across from High Street her mother was dying and she wanted to know would granny mind if she called her out in the middle of the night. When they died they used to put sheets all round the room and some people would put a little black cross on them. Then the coffin would be in the room and people would sit around talking and drinking. It was quite different to what it is now, so that is probably where the wakes these days came from. Most people would be buried from the house and the neighbours would put their blinds down and close their doors when the funeral was going off. I can still see the mourning coaches they had they had a couple of horses and little narrow doors that they d have to get in with their big dresses and that. (Granny) had a black outfit she wore and she had this hat with a black ostrich feather in it, that was the one she wore for funerals. (For large funerals) they d be taken up to the Mortuary Travel in Regent Street and they had quite a nice stone building there which was called the Mortuary and there would be a special train there, the funeral train, and they d be put onto that. Then they d go out to the cemetery. (Alice Brown, Tape MP-FH43 Side A, 16:41-22:15) Changing Demographics Current issues in Millers Point are the new policies brought in by Housing NSW. Public housing residents are fearful that they will not be able to pay the increased rent thresholds and meet the criteria for staying at Millers Point. They are also concerned that the nature of their suburb will change with the influx of more low-income families who don t have the same sense of commitment to maintaining the precinct. Brian Harrison warns how this fear of change is affecting the older residents of Millers Point: It s the characters that still live here, but it s so sad that they re dying out, they re not moving out, they re dying out and as they get older a lot of them live in fear. they re not really aware of what s going on, all they want to do is just live their life out where they have for many, many years, because they hear rumours that they re going to sell the houses, and people who spread rumours like that, they re totally wrong. We re affecting people s emotions the worst thing that can happen to anyone as they grow older is to move. (Brian Harrison, Tape MP-FH3 Side B, 48:54) I think (the residents) constantly feel threatened because you just have to stand there, stand on Observatory Hill, and look at the high-rise looming up behind you and then look down at these special little properties in Millers Point and you can see anybody who is looking at it from the point of view of urban real estate is going to want to get their paws on it. The idea that you can have subsidised housing in the middle of your city, which we do in Millers Point and a few other places people with an interest in keeping a good social mix would say that is how you make a city vibrant, that is how you keep it alive, but people who want to make money, or rich people who would like a nice little city pad would always be moving in the other direction. (Shirley Fitzgerald, Tape MP-FH23 Side B, 58:05) Some of the more affluent sections of society have already moved into expensive apartments at Walsh Bay and Kent Street: There has not been, I don t believe, a great deal of community spirit coming from those who live at Walsh Bay. (Ray Newey, Tape MP-FC3 Side B, 28:55) In contrast residents in the Highgate Apartment complex in High Street have tried to make a difference. Harold Kerr is one such resident: Highgate is a very unusual place because it is a community within itself and I think this is very unusual for a high-rise apartment building. I am told by people who have lived in other apartment buildings here that this was pretty well unique. The developer, in the process of selling the building talked about a vertical village and I have a firm belief that this was a sales ploy, but it really did become a vertical village. A number of the people who moved in at the very beginning felt that there should be social activity of all kinds. They formed something called the Coffee Club, which initially used to meet once a week and invited anyone to come along and people got to know each other. This expanded into a variety of other social events that then started to involve the other buildings. The Coffee Club came the Kent Street Connection and a variety of social events were created and people really did get to know each other. (Harold Kerr, Tape MP-FH25 Side A, 17:30 Harold Kerr Ray Newey is another Highgate resident who has contributed to the community: We have a children s tennis club that was established by a mixture of people from the high-rise end here and the other end of Millers Point which requires funds and again activities are held to fund raise for these. This goes on and on and on, it is never ending, it is a very interesting exercise. (Harold Kerr, Tape MP-FH25 Side A, 19:45) 36 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 37

20 Heritage Our interviewees expressed the concept that it is somewhat of a miracle that Millers Point remained intact for most of the 20th century, despite redevelopment in neighbouring areas. Remarkably, Harold Kerr discovered to his amazement that so historic and important an area had not actually been heritage listed: The situation was that the Department of Housing had done quite a lot of work and there were some 110, 112, 113, individual listings on the register. But this meant that these individual properties and their immediate curtilage were protected, but nothing else was. Things of, shall we say, extreme importance such as Observatory Hill, the area where the old Fort Street School stands, the old Metrological building, all of that, all of the areas within the Cahill Expressway, none of this was actually protected. It had certainly been thought about because it was not my idea, the thought was fed to me by the then Assistant Director of the Heritage Office, a gentleman by the name of Rhys McDougal. At one of the meetings we had out there when were talking about Hickson Road just as an offhand comment he said to me, When this is over if ever you are interested it could be a good thing to look at the listing. As far as Rhys McDougal is concerned the Heritage Office just doesn t have the resources to be able to cover absolutely everything that they feel necessary. So we took it on here and we resourced it in the sense that we funded the necessary submissions that had to be made and these funds came from the entire community. There were dollar donations from pensioners in the area and there were $1000 donations from other entities as well and we collected something like $20,000 and used these fund to prepare the submissions. But it was a long haul to reach that particular point. (Harold Kerr, Tape MP-FH25 Side B, 30:46-34:55) After some initial setbacks heritage listing for Millers Point and Dawes Point was finally achieved in But what does heritage listing mean in actual terms?: Until quite recently it meant a lot more than it does now because the State Government recently in relation to activities in the Redfern district have suggested that under certain circumstances they can override heritage listings. But in general it means that no development can take place without the authority of the Heritage Office and they are always going to take into consideration preservation of what there is and contain any unwanted development. So hopefully it means that the area will be preserved effectively as it is, help it to be maintained as it is, as a national treasure, which it really is. (Harold Kerr, Tape MP-FH25 Side B, 39:39) East Darling Harbour In about 2007 as Patrick Stevedoring vacates the wharves on the western edge of Millers Point, a new battle is looming over the legacy of the public land they will leave behind. It is an issue that will profoundly affect the future of Millers Point and public opinion is running strongly against the proposal: The government schemes of course for Darling Harbour East, or whatever they are calling it is at this stage an ideas competition. As I understand they ve engaged a couple of the people who were seen to be the better ones to take their designs a bit further, but in the end it is only going to be master planning it doesn t necessarily represent what will be there, certainly not in their current form they are very much ideas. Yes, it will have a huge impact, I m sure, on Millers Point. I imagine there will be a huge difference in the demographic of the people who may well move in there. It may well again, of course, put pressure back on to the Millers Point housing as being something where governments will see again dollar signs in their eyes and want to sell it off and do something else with it. The dilemma, I suppose, has always been on the one hand this housing stock of heritage value and I think that is probably accepted and recognised, but the question is whether it should be occupied by low-income earners and that will probably be the fight that will happen again. (Graeme Goodsell, Tape MP- FH40, 00:45) It will have an impact on Millers Point in terms of traffic and congestion and all those sorts of things. There will be more pressure on the traditional population to move them on, get them out, change the whole social mix to something that s more up-market. But it will have an impact too on the whole of Sydney, because if we continue to use all our wharf space for that kind of high-rise, dense residential/commercial activity again we just lose the complexity of what the harbour was all about. One of the things that some people said when the Walsh Bay wharves were up for redevelopment was, Why on earth aren t we thinking of them in terms of the ferry wharves? Circular Quay is bursting at the gills it makes sense to use the harbour much more efficiently for water transport than we are. The same argument is now being raised about Darling Harbour. If we continue to use every speck of waterfront land for private use then those sorts of infrastructure planning things become impossible you can t suddenly find space for ferry wharves if it has all be sold off. So it has the effect of all of these things, of blanding out what was a complex maritime history into a mill pond for the rich to sail their boats on, I guess. (Shirley Fitzgerald, Tape MP24 Side A, 08:56) Unfortunately down there you ve got more affordability to be able to make it modern because it will tie in to Cockle Bay and Darling Harbour and I just feel that it could end up being a big extension of Darling Harbour, rather than fitting the area it s going to be built in. (Cathie Farley, Tape MP-SM112 Side A, 11:45) Harold Kerr is involved in fighting the proposal with the recently formed Working Harbour Coalition: We were looking at what developers and the Government and a lot of other people see as mile-high-stacks of million dollar notes and decided very quickly that this wasn t something that we could address as a community issue, it had to be a broader issue, and we then went ahead and formed the Working Harbour Coalition, which involved larger entities than we were and a very diverse group. What we set out to do was to become, or to set up a nonpolitical diverse group that was concerned about the preservation of Sydney as a working harbour and also preservation of the publicly-owned land. Preservation in the sense of encouraging government not to sell this publicly-owned land because it was irreplaceable. That group consisted of a mixed group of bedfellows, if I can put it that way. The National Trust is involved, the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), Asia- World Shipping Services, Sydney Harbour Maritime Forum, two city councillors and also of course the Millers Point/Dawes Point/The Rocks Resident Action Group. (Harold Kerr, Tape MP-FH25 Side B, 42:29) 38 Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project Housing NSW Millers Point Oral History Project 39