MY name is Michelle Ashford and I am interviewing my grandfather Clem Ashford for a Regional History project in Open Foundation. The date is 30 August 1989 and I am interviewing Clem at his house in Merewether.

Michelle:
Tell us a bit about your family and where you were born.

Clem.
Both my grandparents were pioneering families, one was into wine and the other had a property, that eventually remained in the family for 100 years.  I was born in 1909 in Scone itself and I lived there for the first 4 or so years until the war began. In the meantime, my father was a member of parliament. He was put up for parliament and was elected in the Dubbo area and that meant that a great part of his life was spent in Sydney. Having a wife and children, we lived 20 miles out of town and in those days 20 miles was at least an hour and a half in the sulky to go out so it wasn't convenient to be coming up and down all hours in the train to Sydney, so we moved to Sydney, near Randwick.

Being in a ministrial position as a Minister for Lands we had a government car and there were no restrictions in those day, the Government car belonged to the family, it was used for hairdressing or taking the kids to school, nobody said anything.

Michelle:
You left school at sixteen ...

Clem:
We lived at numerous areas in Sydney and finally settled down in Mosman, when I was 15 my father died suddenly. He wasn't elected to parliament that year so he was back on the property again and working too hard for someone who had been sitting back doing more or less office duties, just died suddenly, 
The idea then was to move back to the property. I stayed with friends in Sydney and when I was 15 I got my first job as a postage boy  and that job kept me going for a while. I went home to the property at Christmas, then I got a job at the Commonwealth bank through influence which you really needed in those days, it was not a matter of passing exams or qualifications, it was simply who you knew.

Of course, in those days Bank staff were regarded more highly in the community than now, but I never wanted to work in the bank, I wanted to stay on the property, but I was working in the bank by the time I was 16 and I was living on my own money . With the money I earnt in the bank I had to pay my board and live on it.

I enjoyed Sydney during the twenty's days, although the depression was coming on. Things were very hard, people didn't have work. The unemployed in those days only got 5 shillings a week which enabled them to buy 5 meals a week. A lot lived in huts and on the beaches around Sydney, down Chinaman 's Beach and some of the expensive beach areas now.

Fortunately, I was very lucky to have a job in the Bank. Following that I got attracted to Margery and eventually became engaged. I was very keen to get married, being lonely and away from home, not that I didn't have friends, it's Just that growing up age. When I was about 20 I wanted to get married but I had to wait until I was 21,

I joined the Bank when I was 16 in 1926 and left the Bank in 1946. In the meantime I had been transferred to Newcastle, I always had the idea of moving out of the Bank but when you have a family and you have your money every week and you get a pair of shoes half soled and you’re broke for the next fortnight, there's never any chance that people get caught in a job that their money isn't enough to lift them out of it. I decided then I would like to do architecture, so I went and did higher mathematics at the Technical College for 2 years but in the 3rd year, I had to be apprenticed I found out then that I couldn’t possibly afford to be apprenticed with a family to Keep, because I had 4 children and you can't keep four children and be apprenticed. I had to stay with the Bank.

During the time I had been studying, I had spent extra time working to make money , so starting from house painting and one thing or another and also pencilling at the races and doing the bag for the bookmaker, Which the Bank highly disapproved of, eventually I got into making lampshades and  then from the lampshades, the parts of the lampshades were hand painted, I went further on and started making ashtrays out of felt, with Mexican men and fringed edges on them and they had a paper fastener tor the centre. We put them over the arms of their chairs and l think I  got about 1 and 11 for them. I used to sell them at Grover’s' at Hamilton and Gary had all the shops seeing if they would take them and I think I got about 23 shillings for the work on a dozen. but that was good money to me.

From then I got the idea to start making beach bags, so Margery and I, she did the sewing on the bags and I did all  the designing, printing, sewing, the assembly of the bags and putting the brass eyelets in with an eyeleting machine, I roping and packaging them. We made quite a considerable amount of money on that.

Michelle: 
You had a letter didn't you from David Jones?

Clem
Yes, I had this letter from David Jones saying, this was much later on when I was still making them, that it was one of the best lines it had and they were sorry they had to give up my line but due to other obligations they could not keep going so tied down with an American firm with another line which included the bags .

I went to see if I could sell to Miss Mathias of "Curzon", she was not very keen at first and then people came up to the counter trying to buy them when I put them down, after about three people had tried to buy them she said "send me down two dozen". After that I received a telegram from Curzon’s saying "Keep sending, no restriction on the order" because she knew I could only make so many, and from then I made really big money on that. I still worked in the 8anK at that time and it was all weekend and night work.

Michelle: 
What were the Bank thinking of you working?

Clem:
The Bank didn’t approve of any one working in those days, you couldn't have two jobs but if you put lt in your wife's name they can't say anything about it because they have no control over her, so I just did it in joint names with Margery. Eventually With that money I bought, I used to have a Mrs Jukes come, she ran the Strand Theatre and the lolly shop, when the Strand Theatre was in existence.

Michelle:
Across the road from David Jones, was it?

Clem.
No, it was just opposite Martin Street. Mrs Junes worked there and she was married to someone who was connected to the Fuller family and she used to come into the Bank through me, and she used to pay in six hundred pounds a week, there was only she and her husband there and it was pretty obvious to me, the Manager was getting twenty pounds a week and I was getting seven pounds a week in the 8ank. It as very obvious that they were making much, much more.
You begin to think what your customers are getting and why you are working in the Bank so I said to her if any milk bars or theatre shops become available or vacant to let me know .
One day she came in arid told me "The chap from Stockton wants to get out, it will only be a few hundred pounds the money he owes and he can't pay his rent every week and they really want to get rid of him from the theatre. I went over to see this man and I offered him four hundred pounds for the business and he actually jumped at it. I took over closed it for about a week and repainted it and called it  "Shipmates" and decorated it up with ships wheels and fishnets and fish and a few paintings on the wall and the girls wore blue overalls with red pirates hats .

The first being Stockton, a very conservative area, you coma into Stockton and you're a stranger, and they stick to the shopkeeper over road and for the first couple of weeks nobody came in. It took about a month, the end of the month I would have my place packed compared to that place over road, because they had become used to me by then and they liked it, so I started packing the sweets in, buying the sweet sleeves and doing them up in the cellophane bags because nobody was doing that and they went very well, and good orange drinks, milkshakes and coffee .

Michelle
Were you selling fish then?

Clem:
No, only confectionary and theatre stuff and then you could have sandwiches and coffee afterward the pictures. At the time I was running that, I was making the bags too, so in the morning when I first got up I would go over to the theatre shop and bring in the milk, lock the door, go over at five o clock when I had finished at the Bank,  I got up 
at 4.30am in those days, go across and let the two girls in that ran the shop. Then I would go home and make dinner and Margery would go over and look after it while I had my dinner, for a While and stay until the interval rush then she would go home and I would stay on and do the rush after the theatre. After that I would go home at night and start printing the bags until 3.00am in the morning, then go to bed to get up in the morning at 5.00am to go through the same routine every day and all day Sundays because the theatres were not open on Sundays then

Michelle:
The theatres would have been very busy then too.

Clem ·
Yes, they were very busy because there was no television or videos so all the movie places were packed. So from there, I had done so well there that Peters !cs-cream asked me if I would like to do Newcastle Beach, I went down to see the chap who was there but he was a little bit frightened of me because he had been making good money and he wouldn't give me any figures as to how much money he made so I just looked, his Wife had all these diamond rings and they had a Daimler and another car and a place up in Peal Street and they were building another place somewhere around so I didn't need to ask if he was making any money, but then when I tried to get some figures off him he just went up and ah because he thought that because I used to be in the Bank he thought I might have had something to do with the Taxation department because he had very little knowledge like that.

Michelle:
I suppose it was understandable for him.

Clem·
Well they had been there for twenty years and that was in1967 so I had sold out to a chap at a really good price the place at Stockton to a Greek from Maitland and he bought it for his girlfriend, so he paid me well for it. Then when I got to the Beach the only place you could buy fish and chips was mum’s and dad's and down at the Sydney Show they had been selling chips down there and they were doing quite a big trade and it was run by people who ran a restaurant in Sydney they had special cone paper for it, they had special grease paper that wrapped like a cone and filled it up with chips) I went down there and had a good look around and got the idea there from a chap who tried to sell me a potato peeler. I went HMAS Adelaide they were pulling to bits and saw this potato peeler and saw it would be run on different power to what I would be using, that was when I bought the ships wheel, that was 1946. I thought otherwise and I bought a peeler and had it fitted up and I started selling chips at the beach and that's how I sot the name potato chips.

Michelle:
So there was no-one else around then.

Clem:
Selling was something you did at the Sydney Show, you didn't do it anywhere else. So the chips down there, because the Oil was very clean and they were freshly cooked and they put in at the right temperature because I had enough stoves and they were nice and crispy on the outside and floury on the inside and I worked up such a reputation that I was selling chips at Newcastle beach on a wet day, I would have a queue waiting on a wet day.

So, from there I moved up, read the paper one night at home and there. was a bailiff sale up in Hunter Street, No 4 Hunter Street which doesn'1 exist now, it's part of the park there. I went up there, there was a big Russian lady there with a big bull neck, thick nose and tough as you could be, and she ran a brothel upstairs and a dining room. She had a chap living with her, I talked to her about it and she said she had this man living with her and he paid for the things and she said he was "yellow", and she said she chased him with a carving knife and he got scared and ran away, fancy being soared of a knife. 

l ended up buying the business, I hadn't thought of il the day before, I only paid about four hundred pounds for it, and I actually bought the building which was about three thousand pounds in those days. From there I started selling these chips and I used to have a queue for the best part of twenty years 1 January 1950 ! started there and called it "Shipmates''
I got one of the Jenkins, Alec he did all the carpentry for me, we worked together and I started selling the chips and from then for the next twenty years there was a queue
right up around the corner and all the chips were freshly cooked.

Micelle :
Do you prepared all the food freshly on the premises.

Clem:
Yes, everything was prepared on the premises, and then from chips, we started off with chips only, and from that I put in, they had an ice- cream cone at that time , a square cone and I started and filling the cone with a salmon, potato and onion also a filling with mincemeat , potato and onion and then they were dipped in batter, "frittzels"  I invented the name, I took the patent. on the name frittzels so no-one else could use it, because there were pretzels, but this was frittzels, so I started selling these frittzels. I used to do bananas in batter, banana fritters and the bananas were done in a sweet batter with cream on top and the pineapple fritters rolled in cinnamon and sugar. Eventually I put in a refrigerator to carry fish, and then I started selling fish as well as chips. The only thing t hat got me about selling fish at that time was that it changed my award, I had to go into the shop assistants award.

.Michelle:
So what was the award beforehand?

Clem·  
l used to operate on the refreshment room, like a sweet shop, you know with just pineapple and bananas and chips and I had fruit salad and fruit drink. At that time people either had an ice-cream shop or they had a fish shop, nobody ever mixed things originally, that was the first of mixing them.

Michelle:
How many people did you have working for you then?

Clem:
At that time I had twelve fryers going and we would serve up to four thousand serves in a day.

Michelle:
How many potatoes would you go through in a week.

Clem:
There were about 160 serves to a bag and l think there were 16 bags to a tonne, so we would go through a couple of tonnes a day. It was a never-ending job, I used to work that hard that I would be open of a night and you couldn’t get the place closed, people wouldn't go home.

Michelle:
This was more or less the only place.

Clem·
Yes, it was the only thing to do, I would be there at 2.0oam and eventually when I went to go home the girls would have to come in to do the pans, the oil had to taken out every day of the two main fryers and it was moved down and down and when i t got to the end fryer it all went out. The oil never got any more than honey coloured, that was why they were so good. When I went to go home late at night, I would be so tired, by this time I had given up manufacturing the bags and sold the place at Stockton and when I got the beach going, I had the place at Stockton, the beach tied up the bags and the Bank, at that stage was when I gave the Bank up, because I always felt you've got something behind you with each stepping stone, without making one big leap without giving everything up and going into the thing. I used to be that tired of a night that when I left, I'd go outside and think "did I turn the stoves off" so I'd go back inside and turn the stoves off, and Ide go back to the car and think "did I close the front door" and when I get to the door I think " did I really turn the stoves off", you work when you’re asleep.

Michelle :   
So with your fish were you Just battering the fish? It was all fresh, wasn't it?

Clem :
No, it wasn't fresh fish , the only fresh fish we had was gummy sharks, and people used to love them but you couldn’t' t say it was shark, we used to say in those days when they weren't so strict, that it was Whiting. Every piece of fish was out to the tail, you know out to the point, so everyone would come in and say ''I want a nice tail piece like I had yesterday'', because everybody though they got the tail, because that was the instruction, you had to slice it down then cut it to a point.

Michelle :
What sort of fish were you using in those days?

Clem ;

We were using hake, I think it was two and three pence a pound, twenty three cents a pound, that's forty six cents a kilo.

Michelle:
Compared to what it is now.

Clem :
The potatoes were fourteen shillings a hundred weight , that's a penny a pound, we were charging six pence for them, so it really good money then .

Michelle:
so you just brought in the frozen fish and it wasn't prepared or anything.

Clem :
From that I got the idea of selling donuts, I saw the people over the road who lived in a terrace house , they were on the pension, and I offered them a rental for the downstairs and to do the upstairs for them and they jumped at the idea, because they only had pension money and for people who had no money all of a sudden had this money coming in in rent, every week, I think I was only paying them about twenty pounds a week, which was a lot considering their pension was only 3 or 4 pounds. I moved in there, and l had these donuts, all kinds of donuts, and they used to be iced with pineapple, passionfruit and strawberry icing and then they would have walnuts and cream and toffee . I made up my own recipes with the yeast and the flour. Before I started that one somebody came and asked me would I do the Dairy Queen, so l got the place next door under the same circumstances, and started off with this Dairy Delight, it was the same as Dairy Queen but it was Dairy Delight, and I got a franchise to sell that. Well the first day there I took 200 pounds on sixpenny serves that's 8 000 serves the first day. The police were down there, the whole of Hunter Street was blocked, I ran an advertisement in the Sunday paper and it blocked the street.

Michelle:
And the police were down there?

Clem;
The police were down there controlling the crowd, it was that bad.

Michelle:
How many people did you have working in your shop?

Clem:
Only about 5, I only had a counter 10 feet long. rt was a most amazing success, such as successful as the chips. After that I started the donut stand, but eventually the donuts, the donuts went well but they needed a bit of backing so we started the hamburgers and donuts which went well together. I’m convinced in business that the more you try to sell the less you'll do, if you try to do everything you don't get it, it's like selling seafoods you have to stick to seafoods.

Michelle:
How were you packaging your food then?

Clem:
That was another thing that was a winner, because I had so much going I couldn't keep control of the money so I was good friends with the Geoffrey’s in Sydney, they were in Dixon Street, they were paper bag makers, everybody used paper bags then or you would use these bags made out of grease paper or some such thing. I hit on a way of keeping control of the money by having a chip bag printed with "Chips" on it in bright red and that would hold one serve, the girls couldn't give bigger serves, then I picked on a tall narrow bag for holding fish and then there were bags for the frittzels, and there were bags in all sorts of shapes and I used every bag for a serve. Then we had larger bags to put the smaller bags in the larger bags were only made out of ordinary paper like brown paper, and if you put them in with the inside bags you had a lot of grease, so you had to use the inside bags, so the outside bags were never worried about, they were just carrying bags. I would put down 1000 of these and 2000 of these.

Michelle:
That was really innovative.

Clem:
And on the other side of the Dairy Delight I needed to have a measuring stick to go in that milk drums, and I would Know what was used by the height of fluid in the drums, in the machines, I don't know if they still do it but they should be emptied out e very night and put back in the drums, in the fridge and not left in the machine. The machine should be washed out every night.

Michelle:
So "Shipmates" wasn't really affected by seasonal? Through winter was it still as busy?

Clem:
No, that was one reason when I had the beach was, the beach made good money, very good money and it was a good business to run, it was enough for a family to live 
comfortably on, and fairly good class. But you finished selling at say the end of March and you didn’t start again until September, so you had all winter to sit back and have 
a holiday, and then you came back to work again. The drawback of it was that I felt you were at the whims of the council and you could only get a 2 year lease, you can get a 10 year lease to start with but you can't get any more, you could only get 2 years without it going to tenders, so once the lease goes to tenders if you get whatever the council decides 10 years or 15 years but you could only get a 2 year renewal. You might say " Oh' no I forget it" and all of a sudden overnight you have no job and no business, that's why I started the street.

One day I was up water-skiing up at Shoal Bay and I struck a little girl up there and she was nice, she was a nurse. We were skiing on the same boat. She said she was looking after her brother who had a nervous breakdown and she said "you would know them they've got that delicatessen shop between Coles and Woolworths" , and she said they were trying to sell it but they couldn't get the money for it . I said "How much do they want?" and she said she thought they wanted only 6 thousand pounds for it and I said " I would like to have a look at that '', because it immediately struck me that if i had a shop there I could do very well, so I went to see them and I ended up buying it.

It was only a narrow little place, and I did all the counter with looking glass, little squares of glass and a stainless steel top and I painted everything royal blue, blue Laminex and orange Laminex and glitter and I called it "The crystal Bar." It was a milk bar with ready out sandw1ches. I used to make the sandwiches up out of the shop and bring them down and my instructions were the fillings had to be as thick as the sandwiches and I had plenty of butter on it. Everybody at that stage was going and buying their sandwiches off Coles.

When my sandwiches started mine were a penny more, a penny was quite a bit in those days but they were well worth it and all my sandwiches were going that fast because the sandwiches were juicy and nice. Coles went and did a special window display, right next to my shop, only around the corner, with a table set with sandwiches "available inside'' , but they didn't realise that why mine were selling was the quality of the sandwiches. That makes you think how people don't mind what they pay, it's the quality that they want within reason. That place was such a success

Michelle:
How many places did you have going at once then?

Clem·
I had the two on Newcastle Beach, and the "Shipmates" and then over the road I had the Dairy Delight which is a different place with all the drinks with kinds of milkshakes
and drinks and next door I had the hamburger shop going called ''Sugar and Spice" & "The Crystal Bar" in Hunter Street, then the "Shipmates Dairy shop" at Garden City, and lt Was a terrific success, and Gary came along to me at this time, then later when I left and Tony did the other one. I used to have 100 girls working for me.

Michelle·
That was quite a lot of people to have working for you. Then were their other places coming up in competition?

Clem:
No, I had it all my own way.

Michelle·
so when did you start travelling then?

Clem.
By this time I had been putting up with a lot at home, and Adrian is one person who realises what I put up with because he was there, he said he had never heard anything like it, and I decided at that time, I had been reading books and doing yoga, because I was going to the gymnasium and I was doing weightlifting, and Alf Lester said to me "What about yoga, don't you ever do that?'', and I thought that wasn't for me because not many people did it then . He said "Can you do a headstand?  and I said No, '' and he said "It isn’t that hard, So I learnt to do headstands, then I started reading books on yoga and yoga philosophy and about mental happiness and tranquillity in your life. I realised that the life I was living, and the partner I was with, with alcohol, that none of it fitted together, I was always going to live in a turmoil. Another thing that disgusted me was that I had worked all those long hours and worked that hard to make that money to be torn to pieces, especially when your trying to do your best for everyone. and all the work, and you think, well money hasn't brought me any happiness, it's only brought me unhappiness.

So when things came to a point at home, and it wasn't my suggestion, it was suggested that I go, I went, and I was supposed to come home again, but it wasn't on. Then when I left, and because of that, of having everything and striving for everything, having to stay at the best, eat the best, and do the best, I bicorne friendly then, at that stage I was broken hearted inside, and when I went to Sydney one day and I bought a couple of Alan Shores paintings and live never confided to anyone how I felt about my troubles. I thought I can't go any further, and I thought here's a good one I'll tell him , and he said to me ''Your just the person I’m looking for, I've got so many women l don't know how to look after them all", it's just the opposite to what I expected, saying sympathy and that, he made fun and so from then I got the opportunity to mix in with all the hippy crowd in Sydney I that sat on lounges without springs in them, did a bit of smoking now and then, they just lived their lives on the floor. After all the Victorian Leagues, and all the other things it was such a relief to me .

When I left home, I want and lived up in a room with nothing.

I lived in a bare room for a long time I wouldn't buy food unless I felt like eating, you just learn about life, and it doesn't take money to make you happy, you can be just as happy without it. I found I was just as happy, I had saved up some money to go to India, so when I broke up the marriage, to get away from everything, I went and lived like a hermit up on Cape York Peninsula. I came back after 6 months of living on the beach and in the bush and having some really good experiences. I came back again not to go back to the old life, all the money had been taken care of, and I had very little money, but I had paid my fare to India.

I went across then to India, and the thing was we would land in Madras, we went across to Singapore, Penang and then I ended up going across to Nugapuoknum, south of India ondatras and working my way up, real I was living in New Delhi. and from there I went up to live in a in a house boat. very poor house boat too, only 3 rupees a night, about 2 shillings a night arrived in India for a while; I had my return ticket and in those days when you had a return ticket to Sydney you could keep going forward, so I was able to include in that Bangkok and Manila and Hong Kong , not like today. Most of the time I had Allan with me, and while I was there, I met Yappa, an Israeli girl who was very lovely. She travelled baok to Australia; I met her when she got here, and I got her a job through John Laws

When I came back I bought a lot of things with me, all those things that had to be checked by customs. I had all kinds of gadgets I had picked up from along the way, I eventually got through customs and I stayed here for five days and I got on a yacht with Alec Hankin to go around the Pacific for 7 months. The day before we left the navigator dropped out here, we had this boat that was about 30 feet long, and 8 foot 6 inches wide, and four bunks and five people to go around the Pacific, and no navigator.

We kept going, we just put the compass on 045 degrees and we got there. There is a mountain there that is 4000 feet high, visibility of 4000 feet is about 80 miles on the ocean, so you have 160-mile range. there are a lot of wrecks on the reef around Noumea

Michelle:
So you came back then after that?

Clem·
No, when I got to Western Samoa I had this big row with Alec, and deserted the ship. He said "What are you going to do? live on the island or on the ship" and I said "Alec, I 'm going to live on the island". I stayed there for 3014 days and it was a lovely place, the people were lovely, but then l went back because if I wanted to stay I had to go and see the Immigration Department in one of the larger towns, I wouldn't have been allowed to stay there, because they are very strict, you are only allowed to stay there for 4 days, at that stage and even the citizens there, if they take up a New Zealand citizenship they are only allowed back as visitors, only allowed back the 4 days.

When we got down there, so we decided, I hadn't seen immigration by that stage, Alec wanted to go to Aggy Grey’s that night and I thought ''Oh no, this is the very thing I've
been avoiding, because you get all these hotels with all the western influence. I decided to go with him, I didn’t I want to go but he wanted me for company.

The next day we went down by the dinghy, and I hopped of because Alec's much bigger than me, and I'm lighter, and I hopped off onto a rock and held tne dinghy to pull him in and a wave came over and pushed the dinghy and a copper nail went through to my bone. I spent 6 weeks in hospital, in the mean time they waited about 3 weeks for me, then 1 watched them go cut through the reef, and I felt I had control of that boat although we had those rough seas, like for a day before we got there everybody thought it was the end the boat was leaking and we didn’t know where we were , so it was like a bit of heaven when we did find the Island. But I had no idea that we found it, I felt like a Polynesian because l never heard of Savva islands until we got there. I felt just like I belonged there; everyone has a dream of living on a pacific island with the palm trees and the reefs, it's Just a dream, it was really just a dream come true for me. I wouldn't eat any European food they offered me , I would only eat the island food.

Michelle:
So you learnt the language and everything?

Clem:
I know a considerable part of the language, but I never learnt the language completely because they only have nine letters, five vowels. You hear them talking about one thing, some words have forty meaning, because of the shortage of words. You can pick up language of what people are talking about but they also talk in a lot of  proverbs I know all the polite sayings, as for following the conversation, I couldn't; it goes too fast.

In meantime Alec's gone off again, they sat off for Tahiti, so after about 6 weeks, I asked if I could go out to the village for the last week or so, and they said yes, the customs read the rights to me about staying there.

Michelle
so you left the hospital then.

Clem:
Yes, I went out to the village, then I decided after I had been there for a week, that I had better catch up with Alec again, I had to get back to Australia; he had gone to Tahiti,
so I got on a plane and flew across to Tahiti. I stayed there with the old French ladies, in a very old boarding houses for only $3.00 a day, opposite the post office. I had quite a good time then, and mixed with quite a few people. I waited and waited and used to go down to the yachts coming in every day and they were never there. Eventually I got a message from the post office that they had gone down to the Cook Islands. I thought "What about the Cook Islands; I’ll possibility get there and they've gone somewhere else", instead of going to the Cook Islands, I went back to Western Samoa again to live in the village. Got ln there on a permit somehow or another arranged, and when I left western Samoa, I went down to Noumea. I didn't have much money left by that stage so I was expecting to get some money, but in the meantime I only had about $20.00 or $30 .00 so l think I spent about $20.00 and I got in a light plane and I went up to Malakal Island, because it was one of these uninhabited islands with the Europeans, there were a few Frenchmen there and a bit of a hospital and a few of the English because they were both represented.

I was anxious to get to these really primitive people; they had been head hunters five years before and they never wore any clothes, they used to wear a coconut belt and then they would wrap their penis up in this fluffy stuff and pull it up and tuck it in the belt, and leave their testicles down, and I thought I would like to get up to this primitive place, I got there, and I became friendly with a guy named Marcus; he had a wife living in one of the villages, so I said to Marcus "Look, this is all I've got", it was only $7.00 or $10.00, so r gave it all to him. He said "Don't worry about it, I'll look after you. '' The "first thing he did was to go and buy two bottles of Lemonade. He spent the money, and he was glad to have me for company, and he was looking after me.

He took me to the village where his wife was. When I got to the village, they didn't rush up and kiss and hug each other; he rushes and picks up the little boy and makes a great fuss of him, then I have to work out that this was his son, and I had to work out who was the mother of the son, because they don't introduce you. I learnt a lot from that guy going through and we got to villages there with no money, and we travelled right around.

I as told I should take Malaria tablets because all sorts of diseases were going around, so I started taking the tablets, but I felt so well after a while I didn't bother and within a few days I caught Malaria.

When I got back to where we started on Malakula Island, the French people were the only people coming ln on planes and because I didn't speak French, they wouldn't pick me up. I just had to stay there and stay there. Eventually someone got me on a plane going to Santo, and then I explained to the woman, that I had paid for the ticket, and they didn't pick me up, so I was allowed to stay at the hotel but there was no food. That's all they would be responsible for, and l had no money for food, but I became friendly with the natives and they were buying me food and drink. Eventually I got down and the money wasn't there, even when I got back to Port Villa, and there was a French Hotel there so I went along, and I had a credit card for Hotel Australia which impres5ed him very much, and he said I could have my meals there and give him the 11 the money when I had it. Eventually I got a draft then from there I came down to Fiji again, and back to Australia.

I stayed for about a week, and went straight back because I was allowed to stay for another 6 months on the island, and I lived the best part of two years over there.

Michelle  
so you were away from Australia except for those 5 days you weren't really here for a while .

Clem:
No, I wasn't here for a while. I lived up there and when I did come back I would go back again.

Michelle
So you came back, and started up Clams 11 years ago.

Clem:
No when I came back, I had to get a divorce to fix up business for marital affairs. After that I bought Clams. It took me about a year and a half to build, that's fourteen years ago.

Michelle:
You bought that little miner's cottage to live in, didn’t you?

Clem·
Yes, that's right. When I came back, I still had no money, so I got some material and started doing screen printing the same as what they did the carpet printing on the islands. I used to print the frocks and 1 used to sign them "Tulomulolo" which was the title name they had g1ven to me up there. In 1969  went back and got the tattoo. From then I went on unemployment then on the pension, then with money I got from the frocks I bought the land for Clams.

Michelle:
The frocks were a success weren’t’ t they?

Clem·
Yes, I've had a few successes, and Clams was a terrific success when we first started it, but of course Gary helped me there with finance in the end. There is only one thing I'm sorry for that I really got tied down with Gary; I wanted to make it into a take-away.

Michelle:
Like "Shipmates"?

Clem:
Some ways takeaways are so much easier than restaurants.

Michelle:
There is so much into restaurants , there are so many things.

Clem·
There are so many worries.

Michelle:
Staff and everything.

Clem.
You can get a person work in your place; coffee shops are nearly down to that standard.

Michelle·
But, with restaurants they are a whole different ball game again. So, do you think Newcastle has changed it's eating habits from starting off then and now,

Clem:
When r first came to Newcastle when the kids were young, you would go down to the Northern for dinner. Hardly anyone would eat out, we were one of the few who ate out, you only ate out if you had money or were making money. When you did go to eating out, there was the coffee shop in Bolton Street, or otherwise you went to a Greek milk bar that had coffee, or steak. You could get a hotel dinner, but a hotel meal in those days consisted of a set menu, Chicken or roast beef, Fruit salad and ice-cream or plum pudding and that sort of thing, lt s only the latter years since the war that we've had all these other places coming in bringing in all these new foods Apart from that there were exclusive restaurants in Sydney places you went to, but you could count them, otherwise it was just an ordinary pub

Michelle:
I think also with Newcastle, people are going back to the cheaper alternative.

Clem:
I agree, people are also eating in centres, like shopping centres, The Wharf, it's a centre because people congregate there. Darby Street ls turning into a centre where people congregate. A restaurant that is a bit out of the way has to be a bit different to draw people there; you can do it, I'm a bit out of the way aren't I? But r can understand people eating at The Wharf, there is something to walk around and see afterwards, and the other big thing is, that you can eat and have a few drinks in town and walk back to the accommodation,

Michelle:
That's changed everything too now like drinking and DUI is so prevalent.

Clem.
Yes, not like before when you take the risk. People don't take the risk now. I think Newcastle has a mining town feeling where everyone knows everyone else, but Newcastle is finally coming into its own now.