One of my predecessors, Lorna Humphreys, interviewed a number of elderly Campbelltown residents in the 1970s. A question she often asked her interviewees centered around what Campbelltown was like in the Great Depression. I thought I would include some snippets of these interviews that talked about those Depression years.
We didn’t do too bad in the depression
at all. One lad came in here a while back and wanted to know we had suffered
and that. I said we didn’t suffer, our relations helped us. – Florence Allen
It was depression time. We advertised
for a sawyer and there were about 10 or 12 men standing at the gate in the
morning. In those times you asked them to show you what they could do. This man
was a great big handsome fellow, and he just had a pair of sandshoes on, he
didn’t own a pair of shoes. Anyway he got the job. – Rita Brunero
Did
you have many nights when there was hardly anyone there (Macquarie Cinema)?
Yes, but if there were only two there we would
still show it. Then there were the days of the depression. The poor devils
would be lined up outside the theatre. Nobody had any money and they would ask
if they could come into the pictures. They would be filthy and walking the
streets. I had a special place down the front.
I
never heard of people going hungry or being put out of their homes or anything.
But the hordes that used to come through and would ask for food.
We used to put them in the front of the
theatre. It was hard for us. We used to run dances and do other things. – Fred Eves
What
was the depression like here in Ingleburn? Did it affect people very much do
you think?
Well
it didn’t affect father, he kept his job right through. And we weren’t very
conscious of it in a way ‘cause you’re only kids you know, a lot of things go
over your head. But, I can remember a lot of people saying, you know, how hard
up they were, and that sort of thing. They used to go into the city on Fridays
for two and sixpence, return for two and sixpence, and they’d go to the Town Hall and you’d pay
threepence I think it was to go in, and you’d sit down and sing.
Did
they have dole queues in Ingleburn or did they have to go somewhere else?
Ah,
they had men working on the roads, solicitors and all kinds of chaps they had,
I remember they cleared this, when we first came here you couldn’t see down the
Cumberland Road, now I can see right the way down to the pines down there, but
before you couldn’t because it was only just a dirt track, sort of three ruts,
the horse goes in and the two wheels down there. Well then during the depression
they had these chaps working, and they cleared the road, they opened up all
this here, it used to be all bush from here to the railway, and right back. We
had these chaps, they cleared the roads, just cut down the scrub and stuff. I
remember the chaps working, it sort of didn’t worry us. – Margaret Firth
When
you lived in Campbelltown during the depression years, how did people pay you
for delivering their babies?
They
didn’t pay me. Do you know Milgate Lane? Somebody found out that I was on a
case down there and told me that I would never get paid. Women had funny
husbands in those days. They had to hide their money. – Emily Jane Kisbee
How
did the Depression affect around here in Campbelltown? Do you remember?
Well later on when we came back it was
still bad. People, two or three a day, would come to the house for food. Men
mostly. Well the women weren’t used to working. See the women weren’t used to
having jobs. There were no jobs for them. I remember Marie trying to get a job
and she put an ad in the paper for a lady jackeroo. – Angela Lysaght
What do you remember about the depression
years in Campbelltown? You would have been old enough to have been aware that
there was one.
It was during the depression years that we
moved to Campbelltown. The reason for my father leaving the farm was because he
became ill. That was around 1923. I don’t know why it was so hard to get
labour. He couldn’t get labour on the farm. He would even take people in off
the roads. There were a lot of swaggie type people in those days. They would
take the job and they had their own room on the farm and you would get up the
next morning and they would be gone. It became such a problem to employ
anybody. He decided that he would become one of the employable instead of being
a boss.
He worked for my uncle in the butcher’s shop
part of the time. During the depression years we were lucky because we owned
two or three houses. We had a couple in Picton and we had a couple here so we
had rent coming in from those. We were lucky we had railway people who were not
out of work and could pay the rent.
You were at school, but do you remember things getting
worse in the depression years? Were there scruffy children and hungry children?
I think there some poorly dressed children. I
don’t know that anyone really wanted for food. There was a coupon system.
I haven’t come across anyone yet who lived in Campbelltown
and was terribly aware of the depression; it seemed to have almost passed them
by.
Maybe it did, because in those days it was
largely a farming community and they grew what they needed to eat. – Leila Spearing
How
about during the depression, I have been told that people camped out under the
bridge at Menangle along the river.
Yes, I used to walk to school every day along
the river to school and they would be there.
It has been very hard to find out anything much about the
depression years in this area.
The locals seemed to manage all right. They
grew their own food. I can remember in the war years we were growing our own
vegetables. I was a child in the depression and I can remember that well. I can
remember the banks closing. I was thinking the other day about the building
society and people were panicking but that was what happened in the depression.
People rushed to the banks to get their money and they closed the banks. – George Taber
No-one seems to have mentioned how the
depression affected Campbelltown.
I can remember when Leumeah opened up as a
residential area and people could buy a block of land for around £5 and put up
anything. It was a real shanty town. It was quite an area with one room shacks.
How long did the shanties stay?
For many years, Leumeah was a real shanty town.
What about the other side of the railway line, the other
side of Broughton Street?
Yes, there were a couple of old houses the
other side of Broughton Street near the old Milk Depot. There were some further
opposite the railway which they called Struggletown. – Miss E. Triglone
Written by Andrew Allen
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