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.