Interviewer: Kevin Murray

Date of Interview: January 2010

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David can you tell us when you first came to Burnside and what the circumstances were of coming to Burnside?

My mother was working as a cook in various country properties and I was usually attending bush schools, local to the properties. My mother decided that I’d reached an age when I needed to have a more or less permanent education. Rather than moving from this little school to that little school. So she put me in Burnside when I was seven. So I attended the local school there. They put me in second class at that school but after about a week decided that my reading was beyond that so they stuck me up into third class. So I continued in third class there until I finished school actually.

I didn’t do my Intermediate because when I got to third year the school only had about four kids who they considered good enough to do the Intermediate. You couldn’t do it at that school you had to go down to Parramatta. I was not included because I wasn’t terribly good at school at that stage for various reasons. I was taken out of school and went to work in the homes. They had gardens and the dairy so that was my education experience up to that time.

David, age 8, with his mother

David, can you tell me your earliest memories of living in Airlie?

My first memory of going to Airlie was my mother taking me up the hill. Walking along the verandah which was polished concrete and leaving me at the front door where the matron came out to grab me. She departed and that was that. My earliest memories were of sitting round the front steps and watching buses come up from Parramatta heading towards Pennant Hills. I was crying, I’d stop crying for a minute and look at the bus to see if mother had perhaps got out of the bus. Which she hadn’t of course she was out in the country still working as a cook. A tubby matron would get out and wander into the home across the road who had been shopping down at Parramatta. The bus would clash its gears and carry on its way up towards Pennant Hills. I would lower my head to my knees and cry again.

What age were you then David?

I was still seven. I was put into the home when I was seven. I was still seven these are the first few months of being put into Burnside. The homes differed sometimes you would get into a home where the kids and the matron seemed to get on reasonably well. But Airlie was one where it was not quite like that. The sub-matron had a reputation as being a real hard woman. Punishing kids, I’d hardly call it punishing, bashing kids for practically no reason. There were one or two other homes that were similar. Anyway that was what happened. One incident that sticks in my mind I was on the shelters. Every month you would get a new work sheet. Kids would be put onto various jobs. A couple of kids had to get up at four o’clock in the morning to start the stove and the heater for the hot water. They were on the kitchen as it were. Others were on various other jobs. One of the earliest ones that I was on were the shelters. You had to scrub out the shelters every morning with hot water and soap and a scrubbing brush, including the lavatories that were near the shelters.

On this particular occasion I had finished around there and I’d gone around to get a final bucket of hot water to just finish the job I was doing. Miss James was in a bad mood and called me useless. Tell by your big seat that you can’t do anything properly, worthless a worm she said. “You’re not a boy you’re a worm” she said on one occasion. Finally I’d had enough of that and I said “yes and I am a boy too”. I quickly grabbed my bucket and wanted to walk quickly back round to the shelters knowing that I would get bashed because you never answered back to Miss James. She came around but she didn’t as it turned out bash me. She grabbed my bucket and filled it with water and took it in and threw it on the shelter floor. Grabbed another bucket full of water and did this I don’t know how many times. A dozen or so buckets of water until it was dribbling over a little thing near the front door that… I don’t know what it was just a little raised bit. The water would have been about an inch deep at that stage. She finally snarled “now get on your hands and knees and clean it all up, wipe it all up”. So I did that finally but of course it took hours and I didn’t get any tea that afternoon. Finally finished cleaning the place up about nine o’clock and went up and went to bed. That was one incident.

Airlie

Another one was I was on the boards at this stage. These are the bread boards that are used in the kitchen, kitchen boards. Of course you cut meat up on them that sort of thing. You had to clean them all up. Scrub them carefully, put them out to dry. She was examining after I did this one morning and found a slight mark on one of them. So she gave me a few cuts with the strap and I had to re clean the boards again and put them out. When she used the strap it was a razor strop which was cut into two down the middle. So you had two bits of the strop. When she gave you a few bangs around the legs. She would hold you by the arm and bang you around the backside and the legs. Usually you’d end up with a bit of blood, because where the strop hit you the bit in the middle would raise a welt, which would bleed a bit.

Another occasion was when I had a blind boil on my backside. I managed to get to sleep, sleeping on my side pretty largely or half on my face. At lights out nobody was allowed to say another word. If there was any talking she’d come in and belt people. On this occasion, it certainly wasn’t me I hadn’t said anything but she thought it was me. She came in and whipped the blankets down and belted me on the backside with a strap and of course this burst the boil and I had pus all over the back of my pajamas. I tried to tell her this that it was wet there. She said “I don’t want to hear just go back to bed and go to sleep”.

Bed used at Burnside

Do you have memories about the actual building itself? Where did you sleep and where did you eat?

It was a good solid home built of sandstone. Rough on the outside. Cut on the inside and the outside, but these blocks looked nice. It had stairs at the front that you’d walk up. There was a longish verandah made of cement that was polished. In fact we had to polish it from time to time with polish on our hands and knees and rubbing the thing. The other end of the verandah went into the dormitory. We had about thirty kids altogether in Airlie and we slept in this dormitory. Rows of thirty beds, the younger kids slept on the end of the dormitory where the matrons came in. So that if there was any problem with the younger kids who had just come into Burnside and wasn’t used to it and might have been sobbing a bit the matron would come in and tell them to shut up or else. They’d get belted or if it was the senior matron Miss Field who was much kinder. She might come in and try to get him to be quiet by talking to him a bit. So the older kids would be down the far end of the dormitory. There was a loo off to one side of the dormitory and a bathroom where you’d have your evening bath. If you needed to go to the loo everybody went. Lights out at I said eight o’clock, I think it might have been nine o’clock. Though nine is a bit late, anyway whether it was eight or nine o’clock the matron would come in and say “OK its lights out time, everybody to the loo”.

You’d get up each morning at six o’clock. There were kids on the kitchen who had to go down and light the fire and get the porridge going and start the thing with the coke for the water heater. They got up about four o’clock. They would have their own clock and the alarm would go off at four and they had to get up and go down there and start everything off. Other than that six o’clock was the… I’m pretty sure it was six o’clock was the getting up time. Matron would come up and everybody had to get up and get dressed and make their beds. We all had to make our bed and then we’d go out and do our various jobs. Sweeping the paths or washing the shelters, that was one of the jobs and gathering coal and coke for the heaters. The coal and coke bins were on the road at the back of the house. About once a month the lorry I think it would have been or maybe a horse and cart I can’t remember, would deliver a load of coal and coke. Whoever was on filling the bins did that every morning. They’d have to go out and find enough coal. Often the coal was in big bits so you’d have to use a hammer, bang it and break it up. So you’ve got the nice little bits that were of the required size. Pretty well always you’d be out of those big bits of coal before the end of the period. So you’d be there with a spade turning over slag. Tiny little bits and coal dust trying to find a bit that you could put in the thing. Sometimes when I was on that for example you couldn’t find there just wasn’t enough. So you were putting in tiny little bits, this big into the coal bucket. Buckets of coal incidentally were jam tins which previously would have held about twenty seven pounds of jam.

Stoking the fire

How old were you when were shifted to Robertson?

I’d be about eleven or twelve as near as I can remember.

What do you remember about the building itself, Robertson?

Oh the building itself. They were all fairly solid most of the buildings they had this sandstone base and usually bricks on top of that. Robertson itself had a tower and to get to it you had to go through a matron’s bedroom. But then it was a small door and you went up a circular staircase to the tower. The only memory I have of what the tower was used for. Every year the matron’s would make a bit of Christmas cake. It was in a great big tin like this. You’d get this Christmas cake made and to keep it, because it had been made about a month before Christmas, and to keep it they’d put it up in the tower. The only problem was that it would be affected by I think flies or something. You’d get these very small worm things which had a web. You’d get your Christmas cake and break it into two and hold one bit and there’d be all this web holding the bottom bit.

From Robertson, then, you moved to the farm home?

Yeah they called it the farm home.

Working in the garden

Can you tell us about your memories of the farm home and what you did there?

Farm home didn’t have matrons, they took on a couple. They had to run the place. Mr. and Mrs. Shearer(?) and a cook as well. So they had three people looking after the farm home. The farm home, I was one of the first kids that went to it. Prior to that a number of kids worked on the vegetable gardens, the flower gardens, laundry, were helpers to the carpenter and the painter. They had off siders to help do that sort of thing and a number of us on the dairy. We worked from the homes that we were in. I was still in Robertson at the time and you’d get up at four o’clock or whatever it was and walk down to the dairy and milk the cows, weigh the milk and put it in the cart. Get the horse and take all the milk round to all the homes.

I should say I suppose that one of the problems at that time. The head of the dairy was a Mr. Cameron a real old Scottish bloke. Sometimes you couldn’t hear what he was saying. He’d come in for morning tea. You’d start about four o’clock and have morning tea about five o’clock in between the milking. Normally you’d bring something from home. The matron would give you a slice of bread with a bit of dripping on it. Mr. Cameron if someone didn’t get theirs he’d say” Hey no taste laddie” and laddie would say “well they didn’t…”here you are laddie” and Mr. Cameron would give him half of his. Which was quite good but Mr. Cameron got some sort of blood disorder and died. So they changed things at the dairy quite a lot. Kids started getting up later because there was no one to supervise as much and if you get down and start doing the milking later than it should the cows don’t give the same amount of milk and the whole thing started going off.

Picking time in the garden

Coming back to the farm home it was built so that the kids that were coming down all moved into the farm home. Which as I said was just near the dairy so the dairy kids could get up half an hour later than they used to and just walk across the paddock to the dairy. There were also other kids that worked on the vegetable garden, the flower gardens. There was a carpenter’s offsider and a plumber’s offsider who lived there. I started on the flower gardens I think. Some of the kids who liked the best jobs would go with the carpenter or the painter because they were just with that worker and got reasonably well looked after. They had a variety of jobs to do. Other than that if you were just on the flower gardens as I was you were given a spade or a fork and told to dig that garden there. Mr. Dick was the person who’d say “I want that whole garden dug there”. So you’re digging the thing which is as boring as hell of course. That’s what you had to do.

Was that all day? You would work from early morning?

Well half past seven was the start time and you finished at five so it was a full days work. Well you knocked off for morning tea had about a quarter of an hour for morning and afternoon tea. I think we got a full hour for lunch because you had to go home to your home where you were still living before the farm home was opened and have lunch and come back again. One of the good things with Mr. Dick that I rather liked was that if you were working with him, usually on the flower gardens. You had to go down to his house which was down a dirt road at the bottom of the hill and get a billy of tea and his morning tea. Mrs. Dick, his wife, would often slip you a bit of cake too.

The School building

You mentioned that you went to school until the age of fourteen can you tell us where you went to school and what that experience was like?

Well it was Burnside’s own school although staffed by education department people. The school was quite near Robertson so while I was in Robertson you just walked across the road and you were in school. Apart from that the school was quite good I thought. The principal was a fellow named Edwards, I think named Banner Edwards. I think he used to play cricket or something for Australia, some sport. So he was well versed in that. He had a few other teachers who were fairly keen on sports. Including for example Ron Rankin a footballer I think he played for Australia. Tichy Wright was another one who was another good sportsman. So Burnside kids were able to participate in sports days where you went down and played against other schools.

There was a bit in a School Magazine at one stage talking about Burnside kids and saying how wonderful they were because they’d won all their matches for the last twelve years or something like that. Of course we were rough as hell. Got belted by the matrons and played a lot of sports ourselves when we were able to. Consequently we were well practiced in playing footy and cricket and didn’t worry too much if you got bowled over by a kid tackling you. There was one occasion where this kid made a kick at a football and kicked the thing of grass and had a compound fracture of his toe. We had to hop him all the way down to the hospital. A small kid fairly thin was heavily tackled by another kid and you could hear the crack of his breaking shin all over the football field. So we had to cart him off. We actually went up to the home and got a sheet so that we could carry him because hopping on one foot with a broken leg wasn’t a good idea we thought. So we carried him in a sheet down to the hospital.

Old desk from Burnside Public School

Sargood Hall was a large part of Burnside. Can you tell us some of your memories of events and things that happened in Sargood Hall?

Actually the hall itself was above the store where we put all the things together. It was underneath Sargood Hall. Sargood Hall was the central hall I suppose. It had a nice circular garden outside that was kept very nice with flowers. The hall itself was large enough to accommodate pretty well all the kids in prayers. We used to come there every morning at nine o’clock for prayers before going to school. It was a biggish area on the ground… and there was an attic or an area upstairs where some of the kids would go upstairs into this thing right at the back where they could see what was going on. It was also used for the church. We would go there to church on Sunday. Often there would be a minister from Parramatta who would come and take the service. The service lasted about an hour on Sundays. Apart from that the hall was used for pictures. It didn’t start off all that regularly but I think after a while it was pretty much once a month. You’d go there to see a picture and right up the back they had a rolled up screen which would be pulled down and tied at the bottom. The picture would be shown from a projection room high up. You’d see usually fairly old pictures. Usually black and white cowboy pictures because cowboy pictures are fairly popular. All the kids would fit into it. You’d have the five and six year olds right down the front. The older kids would be up the back. There would be a couple of homes that would squeeze into this upstairs place. So it was big enough to take about five hundred kids. It had art pictures on the side, not photographs including some of the previous superintendents and others who had worked in the place.

Sargood Hall after morning prayers

The superintendent that was there most of the time I was there Mr. Milliken. He left and it was taken over by the fellow who was his offsider. Senior clerk or something named Mr. Ross. Prior to that it was Dr. Macintyre. Dr. Macintyre was more highly regarded certainly than Mr. Milliken or Mr. Ross. He was considered to be one who got on well with the kids whereas Mr. Milliken didn’t.

We had a rebellion as we called it. It wasn’t the only one that was there, I forget what actually caused it. This was when I was in Robertson. I think some kid was wrongly accused by the matron of doing something and was given a belting. In addition we were all told that we weren’t going to our monthly picture show. We weren’t going to do that, that was going to be stopped. So we had a bit of a chat amongst ourselves and decided that this was just a bit over the odds. Because we were all quite innocent. So we said we’d have what we called a rebellion. What that meant we just packed up and left the place. Some of us broke into the domestic science building over at the school and spent the night there, pinching food and stuff that they happened to have there. Others dug out money that they might have had stuck away somewhere. We weren’t allowed to keep money but parents and others would give you two bob (shillings) or something like this when they visited. Some of us had a few shillings. So we hoyed off down to Parramatta and bought bread and butter and jam and made a meal out of that. We were pretty much away for I think about two days on our little rebellion. Finally we started drifting back to the home again because we’d run out of money and couldn’t find out anything else to do. Of course Mr. Milliken came and we were all belted one at a time. Taken into the sewing room and given a belt around the legs with his cane. They went through the whole home like that, belted all of us.

Playing football

There is a fairly large sports oval at the back of Burnside Homes. I understand you can recall what the sports ground was like before that oval was built. Can you describe what was there before it and your memories of the building of the sports ground?

The sports ground, when I say sports ground it was where we played footy and so on. It slanted down not a lot but it slanted to one corner. It had tufty grass on it because it didn’t get mowed all that often. Beyond that, there was bush and further down there was a creek that used to run down towards Parramatta Dam. It always had a bit of water and a few eels in it. Then the Homes decided that they needed something a bit better. It wasn’t just the Homes decided it had a lot of supporters, people who gave a fair bit of money to the Homes. They put out a magazine about every six months, I think, about the Home. Not for the kids but you’d sometimes get hold of one. They’d have a list of all the people that had donated money to Homes and it would run from everything like a couple of thousand pounds down to someone who’d given say two pounds or something of that sort. So they did get a fair whack of money and it was decided at one stage that they needed a better sports ground and so they paid some sort of company I suppose to come in. They built up, brought in a lot of soil, and built up a certain point on this slanty down bit in the middle over there a different sports ground. It was level and had a grandstand and behind the grandstand a new swimming pool. Before that the swimming pool was behind the school and it had a fence around it made of stone or brick which was finished with cement render. It had broken bottles around the top to stop kids from getting in. But in one point in one corner, to go swimming out of time, kids had gone across it so often that the glass was all smooth. The kids could get across there without too much problem. The dressing room was also for the school the woodwork, metalwork room.

Woodworking class

Visiting days at Burnside were every second Saturday and a large number of kids would have a relative sometimes their remaining parent. Where most of them only had one parent, many of them didn’t have any. An aunt would frequently visit and almost always they would bring a bag of fruit or lollies which you would hoe into while they were visiting. They started coming in the afternoon about two and they were supposed to be gone again by five. So there was about a three hour period on visiting days where you could stay with your relative and hoe into anything they brought. Not just lollies and fruit of course. They’d bring cake. But they would also bring more than you were going to eat while they were visiting. This was usually left at the home and the matron would put it in the pantry which was always locked of course but opened up at certain times and given to the kid of the parent who’d left it. Also shared, as long as the kid agreed, mostly they did because if they didn’t they’d get bashed. It had to be shared out with other kids. So the fruit and lollies and cake or whatever the parents had left was shared out amongst the kids in the home.

Your mother visited you when you were in the home?

I can’t remember for how long but certainly she would have been coming up every visiting day for probably a couple of years I suppose. Not every visiting day for some reason or other she would sometimes miss. What had happened was that before I went to Burnside she worked around the countryside on sheep stations and cattle stations as a cook. She decided that she wanted to be closer to Burnside so she got a job with the owners of a pharmacy in Parramatta.

David with cousins Shirley and Bonnie. David played drums in the Burnside band, hence the Scottish attire.

So she worked at their place in Harris Park near Parramatta as a cook there. So while she was there she would certainly be visiting pretty much every visiting day. Although not always because she was sometimes required to be on duty on that particular Saturday and couldn’t make it. So I saw quite a bit of her at that stage.

How about later in your time at Burnside?

She died when I was fourteen. I had only just started work. I had left school and been working for about six months. She got appendicitis and it became a problem. An aunt took me to visit her when she was in hospital, I can’t remember the name of the hospital. She was hardly compos mentis at the time. My aunt told her that I was there and she sort of mumbled something. I didn’t really communicate with her because she was pretty much out to it. The aunt then finally took me back to Burnside and I think the following day or a couple of days later. I was called to the superintendent’s office and he told me that mother had died. That was that.

What did you feel about your mother leaving you at Burnside?

I knew that a lot of kids were left there. It was during the Great Depression. I went there in 1933 which was I think the Great Depression as it was called had been going for about a year by that time. It continued for several years and a lot of kids were put into Burnside for the same reason. Their parents just lost work. They couldn’t afford to keep the kids they were moving around. They didn’t have permanent homes so they just had to put the kids in an orphanage and that’s where we went. So I didn’t think much about it. It was just one of the things that happened.

What age were you, David, when you left Burnside?

I was sixteen. What happened was there was no high school beyond third year at the school except for one or two kids that might have been allowed to go down to Parramatta High School and continue with a bit of education. Most of the rest of us were taken out of school and worked on various jobs around the place. Sixteen was the age when kids normally left Burnside. I think I was close to sixteen when I left. My mother had died when I was fourteen though. And another aunt who visited occasionally, my Aunt Dulcie who lived in Bexley, came and asked me what I wanted to do? Her husband my Uncle Wally had said he could probably arrange an apprenticeship in some trade or other.

Drums used by Burnside Band

This didn’t mean anything to me at all I didn’t know anything about what an apprenticeship was. The alternative Aunt Dulcie said was you can go and work for Uncle Gus and Auntie May in Queensland on a sugar cane plantation. That sounded ooh that’s fun. Queensland get right away from here and work on a sugar cane plantation, so I’ll go off and do that. That’s what happened I only lasted there about six months so I shot off and found a job on a cattle station outside Bundaberg.