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by Bettye Ross

The following was told to me by two very charming ladies named Jess Chadwick and her sister Georgie some years ago. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the manner it was told to me, mainly by Jess, Georgie who had early Alzheimers didn’t really have much to say. Unfortunately Jess moved before we could go any further and now has Alzheimers and Georgie has passed on.

As Jess said: “Georgie was born in a Police Station at Mortdale. We lived in the Police Station in the country, but our father wasn’t a Policeman!

When we went to the Valley to live there was no Doctor there – this was Newnes Valley or Newnes, a place 40 miles from Lithgow and we went there to live. They had no Doctor. They’d had an old Doctor there but they got rid of him. It didn’t matter what you had – whether you had a cut on your foot, a cracked skull or a cold he mixed up the same mixture and used it, so the Miners got fed up and got a woman Doctor, and then none of them would go to her and so she went too. Anyway when Mum was having Georgie we came down this way. The Works had closed down up there but we did go back after Georgie was born at Mortdale.

Dad had worked at the Mines – coal and shale, and when we went there to live, the Policeman was getting married and went into a bigger cottage, so we went to live in the Old Police Station he moved out of. So as I said, we lived in a Police Station, but our Dad wasn’t a Policeman. However Mum came down to Mortdale to have Georgie and would not stay with either her relations or Dad’s there for fear of upsetting either side of the family, so we took rooms with a woman there. After Georgie was born and we moved out that home became the Mortdale Police Station. So once more we had lived in a Police Station.

When Dad worked at the Mines they would have a Benefit for any of the Miners who had been hurt they’d hold a Concert, all the chairs were put round on the stage and everybody would take a seat and when it was their turn to perform they’d get up recite or whatever then go back and sit down. At each side of the stage were two men done up with black face paint and they told jokes and made much fun. To decorate the stage they used to go into Capertee Valley and get the tree ferns and bring them out, just with a horse and cart and they looked like peacocks, you know with the big tail, and then the tree ferns were placed all round the back of the stage to make it look nice. They had a Bazaar or Fete for the young ones. This was for a Miner who had been badly injured and you could write a letter to someone and put your price on the letter (in case) someone wanted to take it. We were quite young and didn’t know anything about boyfriends and that, but there were a couple of boys who we thought looked nice so we wrote, supposedly a letter, just a page, put it in the envelope and we put two pounds on the thing, for Stamp Duty. If someone wanted to read it, they had to pay ten shillings, five shillings or two pounds or whatever for it and all the money raised went to the injured Miner. I’ll tell you this Booth for the Post Office, at the Bazaar was well patronised.

I was born in Scotland. I came out here in August, 1913 and we lived at Mortdale for about two years. Then we went up the country. Dad had got a job at Eveleigh but didn’t like it and told a couple so that he had known in Scotland. The man was working in the Mines in the Valley.

We’d come out on the “Norseman” which didn’t stop till we got to Melbourne. We were supposed to stop at Teneriffe – there was a bad storm and the other ship that left with us limped into Melbourne two days after us and there was nothing left on its deck, from the storm. I met my husband, Robert Chadwick, when I was sixteen and he told me he’d come out here on the “Norseman” when he was nine years old and I thought he was only trying to fool me because I must have told him I’d come out on it, but when I met his parents I found it was true, but we didn’t remember each other on the ship.

When we first came to Mortdale we were in Martin Place and Dad said he’d take a walk in the bush on the other side of Boundary Road. You know there were Aborigines round there then. They said “take a big stick” and Dad said “what for?” and they said “snakes and everything”. Anyway Dad only went a little way and thought he’d better heed their words and get a stick and as he went to break a sapling a Kookaburra laughed and gave him such a fright. First time he’d heard one.

A friend of Georgie’s, Dulcie Marceau went to Minnamurra and I had a girlfriend Rita Smith whose parents had a cottage there. We used to go down for holidays and one night near the Minnamurra River we went to a party and we weren’t allowed to drink and didn’t want to anyway, and I kept pouring my drink into the Aspidistra plant near the door. When it came time for us to go home, this chap said he’d take Georgie home, as another boy wanted to, but he said “no” he’d take her home and “none of you fellows are taking her home. I am and I go around the road, not across the Golf Course”.

So (said Georgie to this) he took me home. I hadn’t had a drink it was all gone on the Aspidistra! Every time I pass that house, it’s still there by the river, I think of that Aspidistra.

(Jess again) Rita Smith’s Uncle Bill went to Scotland and brought a bride back and her maiden name was Jean Smith! Bill and Jean had a son, Billy Smith the St. George Footballer!

How our Dad ever got a job in the Mines we don’t know because his family had owned their own boats on the Forth River. He intended to go on boats on Sydney Harbour but two of his brothers drew out at the last minute. They were going to make a combine.

We have another sister Ann, she was born in Grangemouth near the Forth Bridge, Scotland. She was two years older than me.

Anyway Dad’s brothers all built boats. Dad intended to go in with his brothers but they pulled out with the Shipping strike that was on and didn’t come out here. Our neighbours were Stanners then, and it’s Stannard that’s on the water there now. They had launches for years. When we were going to come out here we had to wait a long time, possibly six months, because of a Shipping strike and Dad had paid our fares but he had to pay an extra five pounds because by then I’d turned three before we left Scotland, but he was paid the five pounds by Aberdeen Shipping Co. out here. I’ve still got the Receipt!

So we didn’t come out as immigrants, we had our own cabin and everything and Dad got a bunk for a Mrs. Marshall, a woman who was very sick. You see Dad had met this girl and she was crying and when Dad asked her why she said she’d lost her money, a shilling or two, her mother had given her to go and get some brandy, and Dad asked her where her mother was and she said “she’s sick in bed” and when our parents went to see her the room she was in was moving and shaking and it was like that all the time. It must have been near the engine or propeller and Dad had a chap on the boat whose girlfriend was on board so he got her shifted and Mrs. Marshall put in her bunk, and she always said Mum and Dad saved her life.

So we came to Penshurst, to Ocean St. and we were with Uncle Jim and he and Dad were on the front verandah the next morning and who should came along the road but this girl – we knew her by now as Cissie and Dad said “where’d you come from” and she said “just down the road”. None of us knew where each other were going. They were staying with relations at Penshurst too. These relations did beautiful work, in Stonemasonry. That family stayed in Penshurst a long time.

We came back to Mortdale in 1922 and been down here ever since. We’d gone back to the Valley in 1916. I didn’t go to Mortdale school, only when Mum had come down to have Georgie – only for a few weeks that is. Georgie knew the Mortdale area well, she went to school there with Dulcie Marceau (a relation of Bettye Ross’s) and I think there are some school photo’s with Dulcie in. Georgie went right up to sixth class at Mortdale then went to Hurstville school but still lived at Mortdale.

There were only dirt roads when we went to Mortdale. I remember it burning my feet. There were two little creeks between Broughton and Universal Streets and they had a little wooden bridge over them. We were afraid to cross this bridge when it was foggy.

We had returned to Newnes Valley when Georgie was about a month or two months old and then we came back to Mortdale before Georgie was going to school. Dad had a brother at Mortdale. I started school at Newnes and only had nine months to go. We must have come down at Easter and I couldn’t get into Hurstville or Kogarah schools as it was after Christmas and they were full, so I had to go to Arncliffe Domestic Science.

I learnt to cook and sew there. It was a beautiful old home and had just been taken over by the Education Department and was to teach girls to cook, make beds and clean up and everything, and that was all I did for nine months. I turned 14 when I left there. Up at Newnes Valley school only went to sixth class and you just stayed on, because if you wanted to go to First Year you would have to have gone to live in Lithgow.

The school at Arncliffe was where the Bridge goes across the highway, well the school was on the left there and the house was behind that, overlooking Botany Bay. They (Dept. of Education) had taken it over and we used to have to sit in the corridor, where the Laundry was, to beat eggs – but we also learnt stenciling – how to cut a pattern and a little bit of sewing. As regards Arithmetic and Decimals and things like that we didn’t do any of those. It was called a Domestic Science and I think it must have been the first year it started, when I started there after the Easter.

I went into tailoring. Only a little place. There was one cutter and he was the greaser and everything. I was there for years. They were a Jewish family. Then I went to another place as big as a picture-show, a factory and I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t keep up with the work. Where I’d been before we did everything properly – our suits were fitted not “off the peg” sort of thing. That was the time of the depression and this new place went “bung”. I finished working for the Dentist’s wife, in the house, in Penshurst.

When I was at the factory, I’d been crying and I told Dad I couldn’t keep up because all they were giving me I’d always been taught to do things properly – not a stitch showing inside the pockets – and here we went straight though, not like before where we either went on the table to do the hand sewing right round the lapels or round the coat or we could go on the machine and do the machine work. There were only four girls – Daisy, Nellie, Mrs. King and myself and there always had to be two of us on the table.

In those days you had to learn to sew. You made your own clothes. We’d go to town Saturday morning and buy some material and we’d wear it that night.

Georgie became a Milliner and I think she was only at the one place all her life and Annie worked in Handbags. We all used our hands.

I married Bob in 1932 (he was a Moulder by trade) and I just worked in the mornings for Mrs., C…. the Dentist’s wife. Our only child Rob was born ten years later.

Bob was in St. George Athletics and had a lot of trophies for running and tennis. I had some for tennis too and Bob built a China Cabinet – a glass case – on the wall to hold them.

My Mum died in 1958 and Dad died 1969, both at Mortdale.

This article was first published in the February 2001 edition of our magazine.

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This photo is one of a series taken from “The Towers” at Arncliffe in the early part of this century. Standing forlorn and neglected atop the Forest Road ridge, “The Towers” has sweeping views of the whole of Arncliffe. The series of photographs was taken sequentially in a 360 degree radius and present a clear picture of what the area was like circa 1910.

Surprisingly, the overall impression is one more reminiscent of a country town than that of a Sydney suburb. The area still “undeveloped” and covered in native vegetation is interesting considering the concentration of population and industry of today’s Arncliffe.

The house itself was built for Thomas Lawless about 1890. It was acquired by Edward William Esdaile in 1910. Mr Esdaile was an optical goods manufacturer and a prolific photographer. The sequence of photos in question were taken from the castellated parapet at the rear of the house.

“The Towers” later became a private school and in later years was subdivided into flats.

It stands well back from the road at 105 Forest Rd and although still occupied has now fallen into a state of considerable dilapidation.

This article was first published in the August 1990 edition of our magazine.

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by R. W. Rathbone (based on the research of E. C. B. McLeurin, former Head of the Department of Semitic Studies, Sydney University)

Early in 1989, I was asked by the Council to compile a list of the streets in the Municipality of Rockdale and how they received their names. Many are named after the district’s pioneers or members of their families; some are descriptive geographical names; royal and vice-regal names abound as do the names of former mayors and aldermen. The principals of the development companies which subdivided the land after the opening of the Illawarra Railway Line are well represented and there is a smattering of aboriginal names. The origins of many of them were easy to track down but others took many hours of research. A number had very unusual origins and one of these was Wazir Street, Arncliffe. The origin of this name has fascinated local residents for years.

Wazir Street, Arncliffe was named after Dr. Wazir Beg, a noted Presbyterian divine and the Minister of the Chalmers Street Free Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Street, Redfern from 1865 until 1882. He was born in India at Poona in the State of Bombay some time in 1827. His parents were devout Moslems and he received a typical Moslem middle-class education. About 1842 he became secretly converted to Christianity and was befriended by a Scottish Presbyterian missionary family. He then became a teacher in the mission school in Poona and decided to become a missionary.

He was an outstanding linguist, speaking Hindustani, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Latin, Greek and English. In 1853 he completed his theological training and was licenced as a Minister. He then went to Edinburgh where he decided to study medicine. In 1861 he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in London.

In 1864 he arrived in Melbourne as a ship’s surgeon but his great interest was not medicine but Semitic History. The Semites were the descendants of Shem, one of the three sons of Noah born after the Great Flood and included the Jews, Arameans, Phoenicians, Arabs and Assyrians. No university in Australia provided studies in this area but the University of Sydney had a readership In Oriental Languages and Literature based mainly on the Arabic language. Beg successfully applied for the position and was also appointed Oriental interpreter to the Government. The University position did not last because of the lack of students and in 1865 he accepted the Ministry at Chalmers Street.

There he became a noted scholar on Presbyterianism and his Manual of Presbyterian Principles, published in 1870 was probably the most in depth study of the Presbyterian Faith published in many years. He was also a political activist taking a leading part in the campaign against State Aid for denominational schools. He became a prominent Freemason and rose to become Grand Chaplain of the N.S.W. Lodge as well as being editor of its journal, The Freemason. He was also an Orangeman, editor of that organization’s paper and a bitter critic of Roman Catholicism and the ritualism of the Anglican High Church.

He had suffered from Bright’s Disease for many years and died aged 58 at his home in Woolloomooloo in January, 1885. He was survived by his wife Margaret Robertson, a Tasmanian widow whom he had married in 1873, and five children. He purchased the land in Arncliffe in 1882 as an investment and it was sold by his widow in 1887 as Beg’s Estate.

This article was first published in the August 1990 edition of our magazine.

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by B.J. Madden

Smithson’s Wine Bar in Stoney Creek Road was a feature of Kingsgrove’s life for about 50 years. (Smithson’s Tobacco Factory, run by Thomas Smithson, is a separate story).

James Edward Smithson was a son of Thomas Smithson, and was born on 26 February 1844 at Leeds, Yorkshire. On 7 May 1867, he married, at St. Mary’s Cathedral Sydney, Martha Jane Craven, who had been born on 29 March 1849 at Cork, Ireland. She was orphaned at a very young age and was brought to Australia by her foster parents.

After the marriage, the couple went to live at “Pembroke Cottage” in Stoney Creek Road (Now No.9 Bennett Street). J.E. Smithson bought land on the opposite side of Stoney Creek Road and built a stone house there and moved in about 1869. (Land Records indicate that he bought 2 acres 16 p an oblong block, part of lot 12, in 1871. He extended his holdings in subsequent years).

On his marriage certificate, J E Smithson’s occupation was given as tobacconist. However, he developed an extensive farm with fruit trees, vegetables, cows, pigs, fowls, horses, bees, lucerne etc. He was also a fine builder, and constructed many buildings in the St. George District and elsewhere, including “Holt House” at Sylvania. Besides his own house, he also designed and built a solid bridge in Stoney Creek Road near Laycock Street, and he built other country bridges. He also added weatherboard additions to the back of his house as the family grew.

In about 1880, they begun to sell wine on the property. At first, the wine was sold from a closed-in section of the verandah at the front of the house. A window announced “Smithson’s Wine Bar” to all passing along Stoney Creek Road. Business prospered. Christmas periods were particularly busy and saw horses and carriages lining both sides of Stoney Creek Road. Around the turn of the century, a separate building was erected for the wine bar, but it was attached to the house on the western side and the roof alignment was altered to incorporate this room. The wine bar was about 2 metres forward of the original house, with a verandah in front of that again. The original “Smithson’s Wine Bar” window was transferred from the verandah room to the new bar.

The grapes (thought to be about 5 tons in the 19201 s) were brought in fruit boxes by train from Mudgee each year. In the early 1920’s prices were:

for port and sherry 2/- a pint, 3/0 a quart, 14/- a gallon in stone jars.

Muscat was slightly dearer at 2/3 a pint.

All the wines were naturally fortified – no spirit concentrate was ever added. There were 50 large 100 gallon casks in the cellar and there was a bottling room at the rear of the bar. James Edward Smithson had four sons and three daughters. The eldest son, Charles, was born in “Pembroke Cottage”, and the other children were born in the cottage which was to be associated with the wine bar. Charles became the wine maker. A son-in-law Fred Ball, who had married Ethel, managed the business from about 1920.

J.E.Smithson died in April 1926. The wine bar continued until it was sold by auction on 11 June 1934. The land was acquired by Bexley Municipal Council and became Kingsgrove Park for a time, prior to Bexley Golf Course being established. After Bexley Golf Club built it club house behind the wine bar building, the sturdy old stone house was demolished in the 19501s. The wine press had been sold about 1933 or 1934 to a German wine maker in Orange.

When the Smithson family first built their house in Stoney Creek Road, there was an ironbark forest on the flat. This was later cleared and the timber sold. This area became the holding yards for C. J. Stone’s slaughterhouse, the land being leased from Smithson.

This article was first published in the April 1981 edition of our magazine.

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by Thelma Hayman

In 1911 when I went to live with my grandparents in Matthew Street, the lower end of which is now known as Hillcrest Avenue, this particular section of Hurstville was then being opened up as a residential area. It was not until the closing of the 1914-1918 World War that Hurstville Grove began to be closely settled.

On the opposite side of the street to where my grandparents resided was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Webb. It may be mentioned that Mr. Webb held the responsible position of foreman in the paint shop division of the Eveleigh Railway Workshops and that his good wife, before her marriage, was Miss Anna Hall, the eldest daughter of Mr. Hall, the first stationmaster at Hurstville. Because of our friendship with Mrs. Webb I came to know Mrs. Hall and her other two daughters and their families. The second daughter was named Lavinia and she married Mr. Albert Schloeffel, a member of the long established firm of estate agents, still operating in Hurstville as Messrs. Schloeffal and Paul. The other girl, Martha, was wedded to Mr. Horace Hearn. I believe there was a son named Thomas, but I was not acquainted with him.

The house of the Hall family is still standing at the corner of Pearl Street and Gloucester Road, opposite the present Hurstville Community Hospital. In my recollection the latter premises, known formerly as “Goshen”, was the home of the Louden family. Mr. Louden being a boot and shoe manufacturer. The house was eventually utilised as the Goshen Private Hospital and, in due course, became the community Hospital. The original building was a large white-painted weatherboard cottage, surrounded by wide verandahs, and set amidst beautifully kept gardens and shrubbery. Underneath the house was a large cellar which, in the days before household refrigeration became almost universal, was most useful for keeping food-stuffs cool.

It was customary for suburbanites to keep numerous ducks and fowls confined within wired enclosures at the rear of the house, a hole generally being cut in the base of the dividing fence to let the birds forage at will on the adjacent vacant paddock. The Hall family were no exception to this rule and much exchanging of broody hens and ducks, together with settings of eggs, went on amongst the neighbours. The merits or otherwise of the various roosters were also discussed and their exuberant crowing at the break of day was, perhaps, the principal sound to be heard in old-time Hurstville.

The good ladies of the Hall household were great makers of jams, preserves, pickles, etc., made from the fruit and vegetables grown in their back yard garden. It was a great delight in those now far off days to go down to the cellar where Mrs. Hall kept good things to eat. The rows of neatly labelled jars standing in order along the various shelves were, in modern parlance, a finger-licken” attraction, The dimly lit cellar, especially in the hot summer months, was always delightfully cool and well aired.

Of course, living so close to the Webb family my memories of them are the strongest. There were three girls and two boys, who were Mrs. Webb’s step-children (Mr. Webb having been left a widower with a very young family to rear). These children all attended Hurstville Public School. It was quite a distance to walk and there was no form of public transport for local services in those days. Quite often, instead of walking the full length of Hillcrest Avenue, we children would turn off at Belmore Road, now King Georges Road, and proceed across the overhead traffic bridge at Penshurst, this deviation being made to take eggs, and sometimes ducks and fowls, to Mrs. Hall’s place, the birds being placed in a sugar-bag in which a hole was cut at a convenient height to permit the unfortunate bird to have a last look at the surrounding world in general. The long trek to the school was then resumed. After school we would, on occasion, call at Gloucester Road again to carry back similar items to Mrs. Webb.

There were many employees of the Railway Department living close to our home at Hurstville Grove and I well remember the 1917 Railwaymen’s Strike and its often uncontrolled happenings. Mr. Webb remained loyal to the Department, being a “Staff” man by his very position, and it became necessary for him to have a police escort from the nearby railway station to his home, the strikers of the locality walking along the opposite side of the street calling out “Scab”, an opprobrious name totally undeserved in his particular case. The strikers also exhibited their fury by throwing stones on the roof of Mr. Webb’s house at all hours of the day and night. It was an offensive period to say the least, and its rancour lasted for many a long year after the event. Upon his retirement from the Railway Department, Mr. and Mrs. Webb went to live at Tahmoor where the good wife died about 1960, Mr. Webb having predeceased her.

This article was first published in the October 1970 edition of our magazine.

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