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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