AN INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY BERNARD O’NEIL WITH ELIZABETH MICHELMORE OF KENSINGTON GARDENS, SOUTH AUSTRALIA ON THE 16TH OF DECEMBER 2004 IN REGARDS TO THE HISTORY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA
[Square brackets include comments and corrections provided by Mrs Michelmore in March 2007.]

Tape 1, Side A

[0:26] Thanks Elizabeth for agreeing to be involved in our project. We’re going to follow through your connections with the Department and so on. But perhaps if we could get a little bit of a personal background to put things in a bit of context, your own personal story, a few little highlights there.
I was born in Murray Bridge: I won’t tell you what date it was or I’ll give away my age. (laughs). OK. My parents built a large home on a block of land which was an acre and first dealt with the Department of Agriculture in choosing their trees that they would grow on the land. Over the years my parents/family had quite a bit to do with the Department of Agriculture because the people in Murray Bridge who belonged to that were their friends. So I knew about the Department of Agriculture right from an early child. My brother, Peter, went to Roseworthy College and there in the first year he shared a room with a chap called Andrew Michelmore, who was commonly known as Andy. Peter said to Andrew, ‘I’ve two sisters. I have a sister Sally, who’s two years younger than I am, and I’ve got a young sister who’s six years younger than I am and her name’s Elizabeth. She’s only a kid, but she’s the one you’re going to marry when you’re older’. He didn’t know how right he was. Unfortunately, Peter was killed in the war and so he didn’t see Andrew marry me.

This is unbeknown to you, I presume.
Absolutely unbeknown to me. I used to think he was quite a funny fellow you know. (laughs). An old man, but I always told him I got desperate so on June 2nd 1956 I married Andrew. I didn’t know I was marrying a bigamist, because Andrew had another bride! He even had a room in his house for her. That was called the Department of Agriculture. That is the situation.

We might pick up on that in a moment, but a little bit of backtracking just to … Peter went to Roseworthy …
Roseworthy, yes.

Had he graduated at the …
Yes. He graduated and then he joined the Air Force and he was lost over the sea. My other brother, John, was also lost over the sea. That was the history of the family: there were only daughters left in our family.

Peter didn’t get actively involved in the agricultural …
He didn’t get involved at all, no.

[3:55] We were talking earlier about some of your ancestors and you mentioned your great-great-grandfather?
My great-grandfather.

Great-grandfather. Thomas Pugh?
Thomas Pugh, who came to Australia ostensibly to build the gasworks in Sydney, but his ship was wrecked at Sierra Leone and he did not get there in time to build the gasworks, so when he arrived there, he came over here to South Australia. Then he built a house where the Norwood Town Hall now stands, but he went to the goldfields for a short while, for six weeks. Promised his wife he’d be home in six weeks. He did. He got enough gold to build the first … to go to the Adelaide Hills and grow apples. That was also in the family, that sort of ‘farming’, you might say, was in the family.

The apple orchard was in Balhannah?
Balhannah, yes, that’s right.

You mentioned the houses you had are still there.
Yes, the houses are still there. They’re quite unique. One is called the ‘barn house’ and he stored the apples underneath the barn house.

You said that one’s on the State Heritage Register.
It’s on the State Heritage, yes, that’s on the State Heritage, yes.

[5:30] And there was another interesting story about his apple interests.
He was the first person – we understand – in Australia to try to send apples to England, but they didn’t arrive in good condition: they were shrivelled up. He used the word ‘refrigeration’. He said he thought they should be refrigerated. Now I can’t understand when he did this, but I can’t imagine the word ‘refrigeration’ would be used, but obviously he knew a little bit about refrigeration, long before it was really practised.

That’s something we can follow through for you perhaps.
Yes, I’d be interested to know about it, actually.

[6:15] So there’s a little bit of, just those couple of stories have given us a little bit of family background from your side in agriculture. But you yourself you went from …
I loved botany. I was very, very fond of botany. I had friends who lived on farms and we used to go out, I used to love going out to farms, but really I was in on the deep end when I was first married. Going to Keith was a real learning curve I had to have to know more about farming and the work that Andrew was doing. He had an office in the home. Actually, the AMP owned the house that we lived in, when they were opening up that particular area. The Department was going to send an Agricultural Adviser down further south. The AMP asked them whether they would send one to Keith. They said, ‘We haven’t a house’. They said, ‘We will provide one’. So our first house was owned by the AMP. We paid rent to the Department to the AMP, but as Andrew was the only officer there, although he was supposed to be the Agricultural Adviser, it was amazing how many other jobs he got, even for potato growers and the ilk like that and doing work for the Soils group in clearing the land. That land [that] should be cleared, he used to do the checks on that. His work was very diverse because there wasn’t another person of that ilk there. Later on they got another chap to come on the sheep: Paul Heap came in to the sheep, but …

[8:30] You had to be jack-of-all-trades.
Had to be a jack-of-all-trades. I soon learnt the ropes. In fact, it was quite interesting. Andrew was away a lot because his area was quite a large area: it went right down below Tailem Bend to the edge of Murray Bridge. It was a large area and he was away a fair bit. Because the AMP settlers were young and had rather modern ideas, they did think that a woman would know something, if you understand what I mean, because a lot of farmers are very conservative, but these were young fellows who hadn’t been farming before (most of them) so they did think that a woman might know something. So they would ring and they would say, ‘I’ve got a problem’. I’d say, ‘Andrew’s away at the moment’ (because the office was in the home). ‘Can you help me Elizabeth?’. I said, ‘At the present moment you describe the symptoms. I’ll know the symptoms and I’ll tell you what I think you should do, but don’t do it until tomorrow because when Andrew comes home at midnight tonight I’ll tell him what I’ve told you and if it’s wrong, he’ll ring you first thing in the morning at 6 o’clock’. (laughs) So I became the ‘Assistant Agricultural Adviser’. It was quite funny really. I never made a mistake: that’s the thing I’m so proud of, I didn’t make a mistake.

So you were down at Keith for a few years?
A few years. I’ve got to think how long … got to think how old my eldest son was: he was four. I think six years, yes.

Was that tied up with the AMP scheme?
The AMP wanted the Department to come there. It was the AMP settlers … There were the two types of people: the old established families in the area and the AMP settlers and some soldier settlements too, so they were three sort of distinct groups. It was quite interesting how Andy would give … I would hear him giving some advice slightly differently, the way he put it, to the various people that rang him.

When you belong to the Department of Agriculture, the government gives you a house. In this case the AMP gave us a place, the AMP gave the government the place. If you move around the place, people won’t get the idea it’s your carpets and everything has to be moved and your furniture has to move from one place to the other and be quite different. This is like it is for people in the Education Department or other government departments: you’d go from one place to another, which are quite different from one another. We thought we’d do things the cheap way. We carpeted our house. We bought the underfelt and I dyed hessian in the copper. (laughs) Dyed hessian and we covered … the carpets were hessian so that when we moved we just chucked the hessian away. It worked out very, very well. The blue room and the green room, various colours of the dye. (laughs) I got the dye under my fingernails. It was quite interesting.

Also, the climate of the time; post-war, even though it was several years after the war, you’ve still got restrictions on goods and a rationing type situation and it costs money to re-carpet.
Yes. We always had to provide a room in our house as the office because there was no office. The government never gave us any money for providing the room in our house and giving up a room, which I was not over happy about because once they did get an office in the town, the government paid the rental [for that] and the room became our own, but Andrew still kept it as his office. That was wrong of them to do that.

Did that ever get taken up with the Department by Andy …?
Andrew did ask them to cut down his rental, but the AMP wanted the house we were in. They suddenly decided they wanted the house we were in. Unfortunately, Andrew wasn’t told. He was just rung up one day and said, ‘We want you to look for a house for somebody in Keith’. Andrew thought he was going to get an assistant, because he’d been asking for an assistant. He happened to go into the hotel and they said, ‘We know just the house you want Andy. We know you’re moving’. He said, ‘Why?’. Everybody in the town knew that the AMP wanted the house. We didn’t know. Then the government decided that Andrew should look for a house for them. When we found a couple, they said they were sub-standard. It was exactly the same house as we were [in], a copy of the same house we were living in, it was sub-standard. (laughs) They didn’t have enough money to … They hadn’t allotted money to get a house there. That was the big problem. So they told Andrew we had to move to Naracoorte. Although that was out of his area, he was still to do the same area. So he had to drive into his area and then go up as far as beyond Tailem Bend, which was ridiculous. I was at that moment very ill, because I didn’t ‘enjoy’ having children. I turned on everything I could possibly. I was in hospital at that particular time we were told. So out of hospital I came and Andy and I decided we would buy a house in Keith because the local farmers objected to Andrew going out of the town. They approached Mr Playford and demanded that Andy stay within the town. We thought we’ve got to do something about this, so we bought an asbestos house, our first house, for £2300.

In the thriving town of Keith!
In the thriving town of Keith. So we bought a house and solved the problem for the Department. We moved out of our house. The other house wasn’t ready. I came out of the hospital, supervised the move. The local people gave us a house in which we put our furniture for the time being, stored in one room, and then we moved to our own house. Then I had twins, unexpectedly, yes.

Was that the cause of the illness?
Yes. I was very ill actually, but there you are.

Were you in the local hospital?
I was in the local hospital. I was secretary of the group that ran the hospital. I got good treatment in the hospital. I was in there for a number of weeks.

In that instance you didn’t move to Naracoorte, you were able to stay in …
We were able to stay in Keith and then …

It sort of demonstrates, though, some good rapport …
Yes.

… between Andrew and the farmers.
Yes. They were wonderful. They moved us with trucks and horse floats. It was wonderful. But I was still in hospital the day they moved us into the house. Andrew set up the house and I didn’t want to alter anything, so there you are.

As I said, this suggests therefore there is some good personal …
Yes, there was.

… and a good community spirit …
Yes.

… and the Agriculture Department people, person in this case, is part of that community.
Yes.

[17:40] Just to backtrack slightly, Elizabeth. You mentioned when you married in 1956 that Andrew was a little bit older. Had he been working with the Department?
Yes.

Since Roseworthy?
No. He was in the forces. He was in the Veterinary Corp which didn’t get out Australia. Eventually he [changed to] the Air Force and got his wings. Then the war finished. He didn’t get out of Australia. He wasn’t a ‘returned serviceman’. He joined up before the war started, so it was just bad luck for him, because he got nothing. He didn’t get anything and in the Department they were taking returned servicemen first, but he got into the Department.

Could you explain a little bit more about that period then from ’45 to the time you were married? What did Andrew do?
He was in the Department.

He was in the Department.
He was in the Department. He’d been at Minnipa. He was the Adviser at Streaky Bay. Then the Adviser at Keith. He’d been in the Department after the war. After the war he went back to Roseworthy and helped there and then was hoping to get into the Department and eventually got into the Department.

What was his area of speciality …?
He was in agronomy. He liked agronomy, whereas my brother Peter was with animals. They were going to work together, yes.

I suppose you were saying working down at Keith you’ve got to do everything, he wasn’t just agronomist.
Yes. He wasn’t au fait with the animals as much. He hated being asked things about animals. He’d look up books and things like that.

Of course, it’s not like today where you can just get on the telephone and ring Adelaide and get an answer, it was more …
There was a chap down at Naracoorte who belonged to the Department, a vet, but he was never home and his wife wouldn’t take messages. (laughs). So there you are. When he was in desperation, he’d ring him, but quite often she would not take messages. I did just the opposite: I helped all the farmers.

Were there vets locally?
No. One came later; he was the vet in Naracoorte. There’s one in Naracoorte, but that’s a fair distance from Keith. There were private vets in Naracoorte too.

I was just wondering how the farmers would’ve coped with some of these livestock problems: Andy’s unable to help and Naracoorte’s too far away.
He did his best. He made one mistake and as a result of that … He didn’t recognise foot-rot. He thought it was foot ulcer or something like that and as a result of that there was an outcry because he hadn’t recognised it. They wanted somebody there, so they got a foot-rot chap there, who was Paul Heap, who later on became the pig expert in the Department, so he came too, while we were there.

Is that sort of how the assistant came to be appointed?
Almost, yes.

[21:10] You say you were about six years or so in Keith.
In Keith, yes. Then Andrew was wooed by the Development Bank. He left the Department of Agriculture and went to the Development Bank. They told him he’d have a lot to do with farmers and he found out he didn’t, he wasn’t at all happy. We moved to Adelaide and went to Netherby. He applied to go back to the Department of Agriculture – ‘OK, you start at the bottom again’ (laughs) and back to Minnipa, so that was interesting.

When was that?
196[2].

Post-Keith?
Post-Keith, yes.

You said …
I can’t remember the date. It might’ve been 1962 or ’63, I can’t remember.

’62?
Yes, around that time, yes.

So it was a very short stint outside the Department.
Yes, it was only a short stint outside the Department.

And you’d moved up to town?
We’d moved to Netherby.

Moved to Netherby, yes.
Then we went from this lovely house we bought at Netherby, we went to another asbestos house in Minnipa. It was interesting. When you go into a country town, a woman goes into a country town, if her husband is Agricultural Adviser it’s almost expected of her to be mixed up with the CWA or the hospitals, all those types of things. I took on all sorts of jobs in Keith and again took on all sorts of jobs when [at] Minnipa. I was secretary of the CWA and mixed up with the school, school welfare and all that type of thing. Somehow it was expected of an Agricultural Adviser’s wife. I might be wrong about that, but I always felt the expectation was there. I liked being involved in things anyhow.

[23:25] Given the personal circumstances, your personal interests, and also the fact you’re from Murray Bridge, so you’re from the country, it’s perhaps not a big a culture shock for you to experience that, whereas someone from the city would be …
Mind you, just before I was married I’d been working three years in London, so that was very different, I can assure you, yes. (laughs)

You didn’t actually cover that when we were talking before about your own background. You did say off the tape that you had acquired a teaching degree.
Yes.

After your schooling,
Yes.

You taught a little time in South Australia?
Yes. And then in England. I was a ‘Games Mistress’ in England. (laughs)

That’s the sports games?
Yes. (laughs)

[24:20] What about – you talked about involvement in things in the country town – the Womens Agricultural Bureau?
I was never in the town where there was a Womens Agriculture Bureau. I was only in places where there was a CWA. Andrew’s family was very much mixed up with the Womens Agricultural Bureau. They were farmers and the women were very mixed up with the Agriculture Bureau. When we were at Minnipa, the woman from the Agriculture Bureau, the woman in charge there, came over and taught us how to run meetings. That was quite interesting that she did that. So all these things were in a country town, you got a lot of help, from a whole lot of people. I can remember that Tony Whitehill, the man who was the tree expert at the Botanic Gardens, came over to us to tell us what trees we should grow. That was the first time he’d ever given a lecture and he was quite moved about it. It was quite interesting to meet all the … Being in the Department of Agriculture you meet quite an interesting lot of people I found and you get to know more about your State. It was great being at the hub in a country town.

As I said before, ‘the thriving town Keith’, I wasn’t been facetious: these country towns were important regional centres in some cases …
Absolutely.

… or important towns in themselves.
Yes. Minnipa had the research centre there, which was very, very important as far as the people of the West Coast were concerned. Andrew had worked there before, originally, as a young fellow and to go back there again was quite interesting to see how things had changed there.

[26.15] Was he based in the Research Centre when you were at Minnipa?
No. He was the Agriculture Adviser for the area, but we just happened to live in the Research Centre. That was the one time we didn’t have an office in our home. We could take the things to the Research Centre; he had a room at the Research Centre. Again, it was another asbestos house. It was interesting to see the way the … the attitude towards – I don’t know if it was the attitude towards women or what it is – but being in this asbestos house, it used to get very hot in Minnipa. They had a slow combustion stove and would you believe it, these slow combustion stoves the Department had bought, they took the water heaters out of them so you had to have a chip bar heater and a copper. After having lived at Adelaide at Netherby, to go to a chip bar heater, a copper, was not so easy. I had had it before, but at Keith we had electric, you could turn on the hot water, but not so ... Andrew put the hot water system in at Keith actually himself.

A fairly rustic, almost primitive, condition.
Yes. I could never understand why they took that out because they had enough rainwater, we had two tanks there, they could’ve run that if they thought the water was going to be the problem, yes.

Living conditions: you’ve got a young family, a growing family, you’ve got the best at the moment, but …
Yes. Our eldest son had started school elsewhere, but he was in his first year at school, he went there to Minnipa and the twins started school at Minnipa too. I got very mixed up with the school and was president of the Welfare Association and all that sort of thing.

A form of new ..
Andrew was president of the school council. They wanted to put a fence around the school. He got the facts. The Department allowed the school council to build the fence and it was done at a quarter of the price it would’ve had been if they had sent their own people there. The farmers all came in and helped, they provided things, they got things, so that was interesting too.

It’s that sense of community spirit again.
The community spirit, it was really good.

The other thing that comes through, Elizabeth, is you mentioned in our discussion before today about your own father and mother and their strong sense of community at Murray Bridge.
Yes.

And so obviously it’s passed from the parents to the daughter!
It’s natural. I think that grows. My sister’s also been very involved in Adelaide here. In fact, she won last year the International Womens Day [prize]. She was the one selected to receive the prize for the person who had done most this year, I’m sorry it was this year she was chosen as the International Woman of the Year in Adelaide, but, of course, the Advertiser didn’t print it. (laughs).

I might’ve missed it, depending on the surname, as well!
Yes. The surname, her name is Smith. Yes.

It’s interesting that the trait, that characteristic, is passed on ...
Yes, I think it is.

… your father was mixed up in so many groups in the …
Yes. He was originally the District Clerk, but he wasn’t well enough to go the 1914–1918 War. He got the job as District Clerk on the condition when they advertised the job again, it would be given to a returned servicemen. Nobody applied the first time it was advertised again. Then a couple of years later it was advertised again and a returned serviceman took the job. But that was the attitude if you didn’t go to the war.

Servicemen had priority.
The servicemen had priority, even though it was no fault of your own: he tried 14 times to join up and he was told he’d get a shot if he tried again. (laughs).

He had another sort of a future, one way or the other!
Absolutely, yes.

But you were saying he was heavily involved in …
Both my parents were, yes. Dad was secretary of everything there was and mother was president of all the women’s associations, except for the Red Cross.

Had they maintained their property in Murray Bridge? You had the one acre …
Yes. We had a beautiful garden. In fact, in the Adelaide Show they used to have a category of ‘Produce of one garden’. My father won so many years that they cut it out. (laughs) One garden, yes, because nobody would want to go in it because he’d always win.

Perhaps again, there’s that transfer of interest from the parents to the daughter with an interest in gardening and agricultural things.

[32:25] At Minnipa … Actually I might just pause and I’ll turn it over.

End of Side A, Tape 1
Tape 1, Side B

[0:05] … same way at Keith again, you …
No. That was interesting. I found that as far as farmers were concerned, the modern farmers down at Keith sort of saw me as this ‘Assistant Agricultural Adviser’. At Minnipa, they would sometimes ring and I’d say, ‘Andrew’s not in at the moment, but I know he’s saying this’. They would say, ‘I will check in the morning’, not ‘I’ll ring him again in the morning’. And he said, ‘My wife told you that’. When we went to Nuriootpa, no way would they let me say … Good German farmers and no way would they let a woman say anything: she didn’t know anything. It was very interesting to see the three different types of farmers that they were. The importance of a woman you might say. (laughs) I just learned not to say anything at Nuriootpa – I was wasting my breath.

Did you try at Minnipa, did you break through and …
Not as easily as I could, not like it was in Keith, it was a little different: ‘Oh, are you sure you got it right’ whereas at Keith … I always said to both of them, ‘Andrew will ring in the morning if it’s not right’, but they always checked on me, even though they would discover that I’d been right. It was never quite the same. (laughs) … I didn’t have to really keep up with every bit of advice to the same extent.

I was going to ask you about that: if you’re in a position of offering advice in an informal, official capacity, but did Andrew give you information about issues and discuss things that he …
He would come home from Bureaus sometimes about midnight and he would lie in bed and tell me everything that’d gone on so I knew. Our children all knew exactly when we sat down at the kitchen – not the kitchen table (didn’t eat in the kitchen) – in the dining table, when we sat down to the dining table, our children would … they learnt a lot about agriculture. Our house was full of agriculture, the Agriculture Department. Whereas I can understand a lot of other Advisers that was stopped, but with Andrew he loved to share and I was interested in it, so it made a difference didn’t it?

[3:20] Did you take the children on trips with you, for example?
No. For instance, when I was first in the Department and while we were at Minnipa too, you owned your own car and the government … we had to fill in when you got your petrol you had to fill in how many miles you’d gone for the Department. So we only had to have one car, because we couldn’t afford a second car. We wouldn’t have been able to afford a second car. We had the one car which Andrew used so it was as a result of that, because we lived a distance away from the shops in Keith and again at Minnipa, Andrew did all the shopping. I just gave him the list. (laughs). Because I got into this habit, this went on for years. When we came to live in Adelaide, Andrew did all the shopping. Suddenly when he died, I’ve got to go into the shops and I didn’t know things existed. I didn’t know you can buy sauces for spaghetti that you didn’t have to do so much hard work with. I didn’t know these things existed, because I don’t watch commercial television. It was truly funny, when you work it out.

It was a novel experience.
Yes. So it’s become a new experience, I go to the shop and think, ‘Lord, look at that. What do they use that for?’.

A whole new world!
Absolutely. So I think I’m going to enjoy shopping, anyhow, so that’s one of the things.

Although he was doing some of those domestic chores, what I was asking there was if he’d taken the children out with him on any of the field trips or going to see farmers, or he’d take them along for a ride on a tractor or …
Yes, to a certain extent, but you had to be … Really, when you had the car and were using it for government work, you weren’t supposed to take either your wife or your children. Mind you, they did. Quite often we’d go for weekends and camp and go and see farmers. He could do that, but you weren’t supposed to take your wife in the car when you were doing government work, even though it was your car you weren’t supposed to take your wife. He was a good obedient servant to that extent. When we first married and he was doing work with the soils department, he’d take me out and we’d dig up soils. I don’t like knitting. I’ve never knitted anything in my life. I loathe knitting ’cause wool seemed to upset my fingers, they’d get very hot, but my mother and sister … I’d make at least a singlet for my baby I was expecting. We would dig these soils up and then I’d wash my hands from the water bottle that we took and then I would do a few rows of this knitting. So there were the grey soils and the red soils (laughs). … My mother finished knitting the singlet. I’ve washed it very carefully and we never got the stripes out of it. (laughs).

A multi-coloured …
A multi-coloured singlet. That’s my one experience of knitting and I’ve never done any since. But I did help there to begin with. At Keith I was able to help him there. But you didn’t take your wife with you at Minnipa, or even less at the Barossa because by the time we got to the Barossa, he had to have a government car and when they have the government car, because you live a long distance away, you could use the government car to go home. Then we had to get a car of our own because I couldn’t go in the government car. The government car would be parked behind my car in the drive. If Andrew was in the shower, I’d say, ‘Hurry up. I want to go somewhere. You have to back the government car’ because they told him that I wasn’t even allowed to back the car out. So to get my car out ...

There was always the possibility that you could roll out the driveway or something.
Yes. So I’d say, ‘Hurry up and get out of that shower and back the government car out’.

[8:40] What about the Department’s attitude to, you, as the ‘assistant’.
Didn’t know.

Did they know about it?
I don’t think they knew. We kept quiet about it. Andrew never said to them, ‘I’ve got my assistant’. I don’t think the farmers who said ‘Well I ring up and Elizabeth answers it’ … The Department didn’t know.

It might be different if there was a problem on the farm or something; if there’d been a problem on the farm and the advice had …
Yes. But I always said that Andrew will ring you in morning. Andrew didn’t have to ring them, so it was always … I was very careful about it.

Yes. Protect yourself there
Yes. You do to have to protect yourself and I realised that. Andrew … But the farmers just started asking me. An interesting thing too is that when you’re married to an Agricultural Adviser you’d go to a ball or you’d go to anything and the farmers buttonhole your husband. It would have nothing to do with agriculture, whatever it is, this ‘do’ for the town hall or something like that, and you are sitting there, no-one to look after you because over in the corner some farmer’s button-holing your husband and wanting his advice. Whenever you walked down the street, they’d buttonhole your husband and ask him for advice. It was quite fascinating the way this went on. When we went to Nuri., it was different because the large area of farms were not around. There [were] the vines and the orchards around Nuriootpa, so we didn’t get button-holed as much in Nuriootpa as we did in Keith and Minnipa, but you lost your husband quite often at different places, it was quite sad, really. Oh dear, I’d have to grab him all the time. (laughs).

[11:05] Did that happen with the wives of farmers or females in the …
What do you mean?

Did they start talking to you, for example, on …
Yes. They’d come and chat.

… farming matters or would they …
Yes, particularly the AMP people, they did. Yes. It happened most like that in Keith, not so much in the other two places that Andrew was with and after he married me.

It’s not as if you were going to be sitting around yourself, talking knitting patterns or …
No. I didn’t knit, so it didn’t ... I found that the majority of farmers’ wives do not talk knitting patterns and that type of thing. It’s the wrong impression that’s been given over the years. The majority of them were quite intelligent women, who had a lot to do with running their farms, particularly, as I say, the young ones down there at Keith. But wherever we were, they were prepared to talk about the state of the world and that sort of thing. I found the majority of the farmers were very astute in the women that they married. It wasn’t just all work or it wasn’t just all ‘women’s work is in house’. Over the years I found that women were more and more interested in the running of the farms. It was quite interesting to see how much more they became, particularly in that Barossa area, how the women there were at last being recognised by their husbands as knowing something. It was quite interesting to see over the time how that attitude altered.

Can sort of imagine in the case of Keith and Minnipa that newer farmers coming in at Keith, even the older farmers in Minnipa, there’d be a different sort of rapport with their wives.
Absolutely … They would check on what … If I’d told them what Andrew had been saying, they’d check the next day. But in the Barossa they didn’t check at all. They were slower to recognise women there. They do now, I’m positive they do.

[13:45] Minnipa is from ’62 to …?
Six, to ’66. When the coins began to mix on the 14th of February, 1966, yes. [Part sung to the promotional tune.] We moved to Nuriootpa.

What led to that transition Elizabeth?
I don’t know. They wanted to put … [Pause – coughing.]

Elizabeth, just asking there about the reason for the move to Nuriootpa, whether it was Andrew getting a promotion or …
No, it wasn’t. He wasn’t getting a promotion. Minnipa, or Streaky Bay originally, ... Andrew started off at Streaky Bay. Their office was at Streaky Bay. Then somehow they changed it to Minnipa, which I think was a big mistake. When he joined the Department again, he had to start at the bottom, so to speak, ’cause he’d been a naughty boy and left them.

Although he was only away for a short time?
Yes. Did the wrong thing by them. They weren’t at all happy with him leaving them. He did the wrong thing by wanting to come back. (laughs.) He blotted his copybooks several times. When we moved in Keith, he blotted his copybook by doing that, didn’t do what the Department wanted, even though he’d saved their bacon, but he’d bought the house of his own and Advisers didn’t have their own houses. We didn’t buy a house in Minnipa because we thought we won’t have good re-sale value. It wasn’t the place to go. But when we went to Nuriootpa, we started off in the government place and we bought our own house there and eventually we built a house of our own at Tanunda.

But if you’re at the whim of the Department moving you around it’d be risky to buy a house at Minnipa or even in Nuri.
We knew houses would sell in Nuriootpa. We built a house in Tanunda and we put it on the market and sold it that day. It was a lovely place, we designed it ourselves.

So moving to Nuri. in ’66. Just on the Minnipa side of the thing, the work there was essentially the same as in Keith? You were saying, agronomy and …
No. Down in Keith it was more pastures because that was what they planted after they opened up that area. This is in the Ninety-Mile Desert and they were using trace elements. It was very interesting work. It was new work, completely new work. Then Andrew discovered that there was a pink cutworm in the scrub that came into the lucerne and he did the original research on pink cutworm. It was quite an interesting thing following that work on pink cutworm. Using the soil side of things, they had the non-wetting soils and he helped with the work on the non-wetting soils. They called them oily sands to start with because that was the [way] that water just sat on the top of them. With a friend, they did a bit of work and they found out that if they mixed Persil up, they could put Persil in the ground and [the water] went through and that’s how things altered. They used that type of thing for a long while and now they’re using this business of spraying clay on the top of the soil and …

Was he experimenting in a …
Well he …

… [official] capacity for the Department or is it just trial and error?
Put it this way. With the people who came to do that, he helped them quite often and then they said, ‘Will you do this and will you do that?’ and ‘Check on this, check on that’. Then he worked with some of the farmers that are trying to find out answers. They worked almost apart from the Department, but they found out a few things and then he told the Department what they were finding out.

[18:45] Was he one to write up a report? Was Andrew one to write up reports?
No, he was not very good at that. He didn’t leave much behind him in the way of written reports ... Somebody might have said he had a paucity of words because he could write a report in six lines that somebody else took six pages and it would have had as much information as the six pages I always used to say.

He was good at summarising?
He was very good at summarising, but it wasn’t always accepted by the Department of Agriculture when he gave his reports, because they were only short and they wanted all the detail, but Andy thought the detail wasn’t necessary: you’re getting to the point, get to the point. It was interesting, but there you are.

[19:45] You mentioned it was pasture-type work in Keith.
Yes. There was mainly cropping over there on the West Coast. Then when he went to Nuri., it was mainly cropping but there was pasture work as well, particularly the growing of lucerne. He was a great one on going out with his sweep net into the crops. He’d [swish] his sweep net through – I’m trying to think of the jolly thing that was attacking the lucerne, I cannot think of the name of it, it wasn’t lucerne leaf – Etiella! Etiella. They called him ‘Sharp eyes’ down there because he would say, ‘There’s Etiella that is attacking this crop of lucerne’. They’d say, ‘No it isn’t’. He’d run his sweep net through and he’d see it. Somehow he’d see … his eyes could see these little eggs sitting on the side of the pod. Then he’d suddenly say, he’d go like this through there. It was quite amazing how he’d do that.

In a sweeping sort of action
Yes. He could also scythe, which most people can’t do these days, but being brought up on the farm in a depression where they stayed on their farm and everybody else moved off their farm at Strathalbyn, off their surrounding farms, because they went broke. He knew how to do things the hard way.

So that was a mix of cropping and pasture at Nuri. and, of course, it’s a wine-growing area.
Yes.

Get involved in any of that?
No, much to the disgust of the wine people in the Barossa. His expertise wasn’t in wine. Drinking it, yes. But in vineyards, no his expertise wasn’t in vineyards. That’s the Horticultural Branch and he left that to the Horticultural Branch to do. The office was first in the main street. Then they finished up building a new set of offices, the Viticulturist Centre. That’s where he was the officer-in-charge. But it’s a long story: he was never allotted the viticulture people.

They stood alone in their own section?
They came to all the meetings, they did everything. He made the final decisions, but he was never given the … Oh, it’s a long story, but the fellow who followed him was given them and therefore was on a higher wage than Andrew was. Although Andrew did all their work, he was never allotted them because they said he didn’t know viticulture, which he did to a certain extent: he found out as much as he possibly could about it and he recognised things in vines and what have you and he worked very closely with one of the chaps who was there, but he was never give the … You had to have a certain number of people before you got a certain salary and these weren’t allotted to him. It was weird, because he did all the work for them, did all the Senior Adviser’s work for them, running the show, running the office.

[23:50] A couple of old ones there, they must have got territorial …
Absolutely. It was quite silly. I got very angry with the Department because I thought they could work a lot better together over the years. Often I’d shove my beak in and said that they could if the powers that be … [They’d say], ‘Elizabeth can’t keep her mouth shut’. (laughs). But they ought to have been able to work better with one another. There were certain people in the Department, in the other compartments (as they called them), with whom Andrew did very, very well and got on very well. He worked on rye grass toxicity – you’ve heard of that?

Yes.
He was one that did considerable amount of work in that particular area. I can remember he wrote a paper on it, on the whole thing, he had to write a paper on it. He sent it down to Adelaide. They said, ‘I will have to ask so and so’, who was the bloke who was working on it in the animal side of the things. ‘He’s left South Australia, we’ll send the paper to him, then we’ll print it when he sent it back again and send it back to you’. So the chap altered one word, which Andrew didn’t agree with, and his name was to go on it because he was senior. Andrew refused to get it printed. Western Australia printed the same thing ahead of South Australia, and it was adequate. Andrew at that stage was so angry that his work wasn’t recognised. Then he also designed – was it an insect or weed, insects, can’t think of it – no it was a weed chart, that’s right a weed chart. He designed a weed chart showing the weed and what chemical could be used and whether this chemical would mix with that chemical and that sort of thing. He designed that for the local people. One day he sent it down to Adelaide to the expert there and he said, ‘Great idea, Andy, we’ll print it’. They sent him a copy of what they were going to print. Now, because of the new chemicals in the thing, they did make a couple of alterations over it and they sent it to go underneath this other officer’s name. It was all Andrew’s work. This happened a lot in the Department.

So someone more senior was …
Did you come across this argument before?

I’ve heard a little bit of this where the senior person will put the name on.
Third person put their name on. It was Andrew’s work. Andrew said, ‘You’re not putting that, I refuse to have that printed’. The senior person said, ‘I’m terribly sorry Andrew, I left your name off’, so Andrew’s name (they became good friends after that) went on it for one copy only. From then on it was ‘so and so and Department of Agriculture people’. Now that idea was used by the big chemical companies of the world making this chart. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Did he harbour any …
No … Andy wasn’t the sort of person who harboured ill feeling. His wife felt more hurt, can I say that, that his work wasn’t recognised because he was only an Agricultural Adviser, he didn’t have a degree. When Andrew joined the Department, the Director had the same qualifications that he had, a Roseworthy diploma, can you understand that?

[28:45] There’s an ongoing discussion about these people with degrees versus people with diplomas: a lot of people are …
My son Michael got a diploma. When he went into the Department he decided that … He just happened to be the unlucky one who could do another year, or the next year: when he finished at Roseworthy the next year it went to the degree and you could do another year and bring yourself up to the degree. He started doing that and then went to New Guinea instead, thought he’d earn some money, so he missed out on getting it altered, doing an extra year and getting a degree. Later on he did the graduate diploma, which is supposed to be considered the same as a degree. Never really. Two people go out for a job and one has a degree and one has the Roseworthy graduate diploma, the person with the degree will get more points than the person with the graduate diploma, because that was what he was advised to do in the Department.

That’s interesting because you’d think people within the industry generally, whether it be government department or private sector and so on, they’d be aware of this: it wouldn’t make any difference at all …
It does.

… but there’s on-going tension between diploma and graduates.
It does. No. It’s not only that because these days when you go up for a job it’s not necessarily people in the Department who are the ones who are looking at your job, it’s these so-called experts that are brought in. At the time when Michael was looking for a higher job women were getting so many extra points because they were women. That, I thought, was one of the worst things that ever happened in government departments.

Positive discrimination.
Absolutely positive discrimination. That’s why he went to New South Wales.

It’s interesting that he followed in his father’s footsteps.
He followed in his father’s footsteps, yes. He went to Roseworthy and then he wanted to be an Adviser like his father, but somehow or rather he got into the job that was offered in the weeds, so he went into weeds and then he got the feral animals, the dingoes and everything. And he loved it, he really loved it.

He was working up at Port Augusta?
Port Augusta. He loved Port Augusta, he was really very happy there, but then the Department passed him by and so because he only had the graduate diploma and he wasn’t a woman, so over to New South Wales, up two increments, senior, immediately.

And he’s still working in the Department there?
Yes. So it’s interesting to see the … the notion of the Department. Andy joined the Department … first of all they had to be – what were they calling them? Can’t remember. They called them two sorts of officers: you came in as a Field Officer then you became a Project Officer or Project … whatever was the right word, Project Officer I think is now the American way of saying it, so you did that and then you became an Adviser. So you went through a graduation, which was rather a much better idea about how they’re doing things now …

[32:45] End of Side B, Tape 1

Tape 2, Side A

[0:15] Interesting, we were talking there off the tape Elizabeth about some of your teaching experiences and you did a bit of agriculture teaching and you were able to turn to Andrew for advice while you were at Nuriootpa as relief teacher in various subjects, particularly agriculture, so in a sense you’re keeping up with what’s happening.
Yes.

It might’ve been interesting for the kids to go home and say, ‘The Agricultural Adviser’s wife was teaching us agriculture’. (Both laugh)
Yes. Of course, in the Barossa it was very much towards the vines but they had to do the general agriculture course. They wondered why they had to learn about cows. Now, interesting enough, they’ve got cows and things that the school owns, so they are doing a wider … And are making wine up there too: the students are making wine, very nice wine at that too.

[1:15] We’ve diverted but in a practical way by talking about Michael, your son and his career in New South Wales. Moving on from there, we should just perhaps just round out the story looking at Andrew’s time at Nuriootpa and your time there and how things worked out within the Nuriootpa part of the story.
When Andrew went there as an Agricultural Adviser, they changed their name to an agronomist, then they changed their name to something else. I can’t remember what it was. It was quite a strange name. They were all given that same name, can’t remember what it was, they changed their name again and eventually then they went back to Agricultural Adviser and now they’re something different again – what are they now? I don’t know what they’re called.

They’re more like consultants these days.
Consultancies.

More like that these days, yes.
When we were at Nuri., Andrew used to talk on local radio quite often and he persuaded the farmers to ring. He said, ‘Now when you go out early in the morning before breakfast, you go around your paddocks and you see what’s wrong. Ring me straight away, hit the nail on the head, because the damage that has been done can get further’. So they would sometimes start … 6 o’clock in the morning our phone would start ringing and Andrew would advise from his bed. I can remember one morning he got up at half past nine because the phone had been going all night (laughs) with some pea weevil or something like that was attacking the peas. So people were ringing him. The Adviser who followed him refused to have the phone on in the house like that because too many people were ringing him up early in the morning. It was quite hilarious how our bed became the Department of Agriculture. (laughs)

This is presumably because the farmers have to go out and work …
They had to go out … Not only that but that is the time of the day when the farmer goes out to have a look at … When he comes in for breakfast, he says to his wife, ‘My Lord, I went out and something’s eating this or the grain has lodged’, or something like that, ‘What do I do about it?’. Straight on the phone before he had his breakfast, he’d ring Andrew. That was quite interesting. I’d click my heels together and I’d think, ‘Yes, another farmer ringing, another farmer ringing’. But I can remember the time one morning he got up at half past nine because he hadn’t been able to get out of bed. I don’t think a lot of other Advisers followed that practice. It just happened to be one that Andrew found suited him and, of course, then he’d get out of bed and then he’d walk down the street, having driven from Tanunda to Nuri., towards the end there, he’d walk down the street and it’d be quarter past nine and somebody would say, ‘My word you’ve got a cushy job’. (laughs) Also, he’d been out the night before to a Bureau. If you went out to a Bureau, you had to be back at work at 9 o’clock in the morning. That took up a lot of your ... A lot of those chaps were really devoted to their jobs, they really did a first-class job.

You’re on call, as you’re indicating …
You’re on call, yes.

[5:30] … all the time. You mentioned things like going to Bureau meetings and presentations on the radio.
Yes.

So there’d be a profile, people know who you are.
Yes. When we were down at Keith, it was on the Victorian 2WV, I remember that was a Victorian one.

He did down there as well?
Yes. Down there at the Keith, he did one. That was the one that the farmers’ listened to there. I can’t remember … it wasn’t as much on the radio at Minnipa but when we got to Nuriootpa there was 5CK. I must tell you this. Jon Lamb was the man who was up at 5CK and he used to come along to your home and tape it, like you’re doing here, and ask you the questions. He’d do a run through first and then he would say, ‘Now we’ll tape it and get it correct’. Andrew was talking about lucerne, this particular day, and I knew what was … I’d been sitting and listening to them and I was out in the kitchen to make them a cup of tea while they were doing it and I knew what questions he was going to ask Andrew and I knew how he was going to finish off, I knew all that. He threw him a question at the end. I’d thought he’d turn the tape off. He just said, ‘Why are you so interested in lucerne?’. Andrew said, ‘I think it’s the perfect fodder’. I thought he was off the tape and so I shouted out in the kitchen, ‘If it’s so jolly good, why don’t you eat it yourself?’. Jon said, ‘Oh, I’ve taped that. I’ll rub it off’. But he didn’t. He blew it up and then he said when it came over, ‘That was Elizabeth, his wife talking from the kitchen’. Andrew discovered then how many farmers listened to the radio. It was absolutely amazing the numbers … Some rang him up and talked a bit, ‘Wasn’t that a great one, your wife coming in like that?’. Then he’d go out to Bureaus and they said, ‘I heard your wife on the radio the other day’. It was really quite fascinating: it made you realise how many farmers did actually use the 5CK.

By implication, therefore, quite a few farmers so the ratings must’ve been pretty good for the station.
Yes, absolutely, yes.

At least for the program.
That was really good.

When was that, roughly, when Jon Lamb doing the radio interviews? Would that be in the ’70s?
’70s, I think it was, yes. Then he went up river and he was up there and eventually the Doyle chap, Ian Doyle, came there. He used to come. But Andrew used to go there to Port Pirie, quite often. Ian would ring him up and he’d tape the conversation on the radio.

[9:10] Did you remain at Nuriootpa, or Andrew working-wise?
No, we moved to Tanunda. We bought a house at Nuri. Then we decided that we didn’t want to stay in that house when he retired. He was going to retire there. So we went looking for a block of land. We always wanted to build a house of our own. I designed a house and Andrew chose what it would be built of. We built a house that faced slightly east of north, which was the perfect facing of it, had wide verandahs, we had solar heating, we had 10 000 gallons of rainwater. We moved with the times.

You built that at Tanunda?
Tanunda.

But Andrew kept working in Nuriootpa?
Yes, kept working in Nuri. Then when he retired he had a heart attack. The specialist said, ‘Go to Adelaide’. We moved to Adelaide. We didn’t want to.

Practicality says.
Yes.

When did he retire?
He was born in 1919, so he’d be 65, wouldn’t he? 1974, would it be? Or what?

’84?
’84. ’84, sorry, I can’t add up

’84, so that’s about 18 years …
The old brain. (laughs)

That’s the mathematics you didn’t teach!
I liked maths.

But that’s ’66 to ’84 at Nuri., almost 18–19 years.
Yes. Before we went to Nuri., we were moved about a lot more. In the job you were expected to be moved around a fair bit, but around that time they let people stay long in the district. At one stage of the piece, towards the end, Andrew thought that a lot of Advisers were getting help, younger people alongside them, so he said to the Department, ‘I’ve got a lot of information. I would like to hand it on to somebody. Get somebody to help me. It’s a big area. I cover a big area, I’d like some help’. They said, ‘Andy, we’ve never had one complaint from your area’. Of course, Andrew very defiantly said, ‘That’s the way it’s going to stay’. I said, ‘Why didn’t you get them to give you help for advice to the farmers?’. (laughs) He’d have got help, but they worked him to death because he had a heart attack, as I said. He worked very, very hard.

Was the heart attack after he retired?
Yes, yes. It was too much for him.

Retirement was too much?
Yes. I always said he would be back at the Department, but when he retired he went back there once. No, he didn’t help them. He thought ‘No, let them other fellows do their own jobs’.

[12:45] I was going to ask you about his working in here, he’s working with other people there, unlike people who stand alone without any assistance, there’s always the assistance, he was working with other people so it’s more a team approach.
Yes. They were a good crowd he worked with. He was very, very, happy about …

Did you form friendships with the …
Yes, yes.

Were they the Roseworthy graduates and the University graduates and …?
He was President of the Roseworthy Old Scholars Association. I helped there too. They gave me the honour of making me a life member, although I didn’t go to Roseworthy. I’m the only woman that’s a life member and I didn’t go to Roseworthy. I helped over the years with all the things that they did there. My brother went to Roseworthy, my son went to Roseworthy, my husband went to Roseworthy – why shouldn’t I be interested in Roseworthy?

Through those connections those people were keeping in contact, apart from the work connections. Roseworthy and in the Department – the level of friendship and whether people kept in contact. You’re saying he only went back for one time after he retired.
I meant back to the office, yes. No, he saw them. He’d see them and they’d come to our home and things like that. But he just didn’t want to go interfere in the office. Somebody else taking his job, it was unfair to have somebody breathing down your neck there as the past Agricultural Adviser. He just felt that way. He didn’t want anybody breathing down his neck and he didn’t expect to breathe down anybody’s neck.

Did he maintain an interest …?
Actually, when we came to Adelaide he lectured at Roseworthy. He filled in for a year on the graduate diploma. In that particular year … This is interesting: he had always had a lot to do with the Waite Institute, probably more than other Advisers. He used the Waite Institute a lot. So when he had to do this course at Roseworthy, he had the notes, but he felt they were – the person who’s place he was taken – a bit ‘behind the times’ – beg your pardon, this shouldn’t go on tape should it? Alright. So he went up to the Waite and found out what the latest was on this work that he was doing. He went across the divide it was in those days: the CSIRO and the Waite were opposite one another but they could’ve been a distance of 160 000 miles deep or a wide road. They didn’t … He went over to find out what they were doing. He invited the [folk?] to our house and discussed it with us. Got them to go and out and discuss it with the students up there, so he invited them to talk and there’d be one from the Waite and one from the CSIRO and his knowledge from the Department. That brought … Only the other day somebody said, ‘Andrew brought the Waite and the CSIRO together and the Department even’. Of course, now they’ve got SARDI.

The divide is breaking down.
Yes. They said that he did more than anybody to make them talk to one another.

Was he aware of that himself?
He said they didn’t talk to one another and some of them didn’t even know one another, working on the same sort of thing, but they soon got to make great mates, it was good to see it and now they’ve got SARDI, and they really are all working together, it’s great to see that, but this happens in everything in that in the government departments or in department’s doing work similar to one another, they are not very good at sharing information. They seem to be doing it a lot more. I’m sorry he didn’t live to see that, actually.

We’ve got things like Cooperative Research Centres run by people like …
Yes. I’m sorry Andrew didn’t live to see that, because he always felt that there was a division.

[17:45] What about at another level, Elizabeth: was he one to go to conferences and seminars?
Oh, he did that to the day he died! Did that to the day he died. Oh yes.

He enjoyed meetings?
He loved it. I’m still getting all the letters. I’ve let them know he died. I got one from the rabbit control people: I got a letter from them inviting Andrew to the meeting. I keep on getting letters to … All these people inviting Andrew to meetings. I’ve written and told them he’s died and they don’t read their letters!

They’d like him there in spirit, perhaps? (Both laugh.)
Yes, in spirit. Yes. He loved that sort of thing. He kept his knowledge up right to the end, right to the last day, he was talking about it on the last day.

[18:30] When did he die, by the way?
Four years ago, I think it was. 2000, yes. He saw 2000 in, that’s right. He wasn’t ill for very long. Had a heart attack and died.

… lived to 2000 for the record.
Yes.

[18:45] You were talking there about his …
I talk about him too much. My sister thinks that I think he’s a saint or something like that, but I’m telling the truth. I don’t think it was always recognised by other people.

[19.19] You’ve given some good insights into his working life, your own involvement in it and …
It’s very important. I’m a bit old-fashioned where the wife should take an interest in what her husband does.

You weren’t on the periphery: you were actively involved …
I was on the periphery really, but I was just interested.

[19:10] You were interested and so you could …
When we came to town we worked in the Herbarium because Andrew was also secretary of the Coolabah Club of South Australia, about which you know nothing: everybody should know ’cause [now] we’re mad keen on ‘Trees for Life’. There was a group in South Australia, which was mainly farmers, they wanted somebody to help …, mainly farmers or people who had expertise in trees called the ‘Coolabah Club’ which worked with the Highways Department and did the work on planting trees on the side of a road. We were the first ones that planted the native trees on the side of the road. The idea was to plant trees on farms and research Australian trees. It actually was the first tree club of its kind in Australia, surprisingly. There was the Society for Growing Australian Plants, which I think was 6 months older, but that wasn’t concentrating on farms and sides of roads. The Coolabah Club did a fantastic job. Over the years, gradually, things from the Department came in. The ideas of … They took over the work and then the Trees for Life came in, or what I call [Trees for Life], they were ‘Men of the Trees’. None of our members were members of Men of the Trees before it came to Australia. It was very interesting. The chap that was in the Highways Department working on that died two days ago. We had a great work with … We dealt with the Highways Department, but the Coolabah Club died when Andrew died, they couldn’t find another secretary.

Right. It wasn’t subsumed by these other societies?
They realised that all these others … There were these societies that were being … Some of them were being paid by the government and so forth for advice to farmers on tree growing and growing trees on saline areas, growing trees on windy areas, all that business. They did a whole lot of research. Of course, that went in with other people, yes, so he was very keen on trees.

[21:45] Your own comments before about building the house and using solar energy and so on, it’s a situation …
People thought Andrew was old-fashioned – he was as modern as they come – because he’s an old fashioned gentleman and he had a little bit of a speech impediment, which was very awkward. I’ve picked it up a bit myself: I find myself doing it myself over the years. When he felt uncomfortable with somebody, he ‘ummed’ and ‘aahed’ and made a short story long. He was known for making a short story long. It was only because if he was with people [who’d known] him at all he was absolutely alright, he was full of information, he was absolutely on the spot. But if somebody bothered him, he had this … Our son Michael has got it. Now both of them got it from the terrible shock that they had. I won’t say what Andrew’s shock was: it was horrible. But Michael’s was the gun at the head in New Guinea for 2½ hours: came home with this hesitation, exactly the same as his father had, so it was interesting.

Very interesting.
Yes.

[23.44] Did Andrew have any problems, say, with speaking in an Agricultural Bureau situation?
I don’t think so. He used to get the farmers to have a question time. One thing I admired about him is that he could answer all their questions. If there’s one he [couldn’t], he was honest enough to say, ‘I don’t know, but I’ll find out’. I think this is the big fault with a lot of people, they just give something off the cuff, it’s not quite right, but I think to say you don’t know and I’ll find out that’s the right thing to say.

But he also knew who he could find out from.
Absolutely.

In the Department or …
Waite or what have you. Yes. Of course, I thought a lot of him: you can see that, can’t you?

Yes.
He was my ‘saint’. I’m very lucky to be married to him and I’m so glad that people … He chased me for years and I didn’t take any notice of him.

Couldn’t make your mind up?
Yes. I always told him I was getting desperate in the late 20s.

[24:25] We’re just about finished with the time anyway so we won’t go into the modern family history here, but I should at least thank you, slightly formally, for contributing.
You can come back. You can cut that down by 100. (laughs)

Contributed marvellously to … and a special insight too because …
The Ag. Adviser is a very important person in a community. I feel that the job has altered too much now. He doesn’t go out to the farmers, the farmers can’t ring him at the drop of a hat, the farmers now have to make an appointment, don’t they?

[25:00] Yes.

End of interview