'Black Gold, Kindred Spirits'

Q Tell us how you became a coal miner?

I started work when I was fourteen and I left school on the Friday and on the Monday I was working underground with my father…..I came from I came out from Scotland on December 19,.. well left on October arrived on December 1928. I started work in coal mines in 1925. And I worked three years in Scotland, and we come, my father brought us out here to get rid of the coal mines and ah being the depression days that was the first place we landed. Because that's all that was available and ah we've been down the coal mines ever since.

Q So you were called communists?

Well I mean they we were called communists because that ah..... ah.... the people didn't understand. If they'd have come and seen us and our environment, like they're doing at the present time they would've seen our point of view, but I says all they were, they read the papers, they read it and they believed it. Because 90% what you read in the papers was all bloody bullshit, I mean if they read it I mean…everybody believed the papers well they'd want to get their head read.

Q Going back to your first impressions of Wonthaggi?

Chuckle.. Well I we, we weren't prepared when we come here to about all that it was only through experience that we ah that we got learnt ah to live when your in Rome do as the Romans do, you see. Oh well the day following when we arrived in Wonthaggi the day following we went down the street and I am ah. Because the day we arrived it was pouring, pissing down and ah we didn't see much when we arrived , but the following day it was beautiful day we went down the street and I, I was looking in a shop window and I get a hell of thump in the back and oh geez, another pommie bastard, I was prepared to job him you see. Because in the old country you see "bastard" is a bad word it's a fighting word you see, but out here it's just like my dear, my darling and all that business, and I thought well my, my cousin he says to me, he says look pay to attention he's says he's welcoming you to Wonthaggi. And I says he's got bloody queer way of showing it hasn't he You'll live and learn as you go along and by Christ I've learned, mate I've learned, a whole lot more than that. And in fact I still get called a pommie bastard you know, and I've been here 60,.. 66, ...67 years and I still get called a pommie bastard, I,. I don't mind getting called a Scotch bastard, but ahh a Pommie bastard? You know what a Pommie is? A Pommie's a Scotchman with his brains knocked out.

Oh well that was on the early part when we first come out here, you see wanted a job we had to go down to the State Coal Mine offices for the manager's office was and ah he's office was ah sort of an annex built of the where the main offices, it was an annex thing you had to up a couple of steps to go on to a sort of porch and then you had to walk along the porch . But he, he never even seen who the man he was talking to. You only took one step up like that and he heard your footsteps "Nothing Doing". And I said, I didn't know who the man was until ah pointed out in the street one day that's the general manager, and I said I've been down there looking for a job and I says all I hear is this voice "Nothing Doing". Until one day one of the chaps who were ah were married and had a couple of kiddies and they were really battling and went down and braved the lion in his den. And fair dinkum he got a job straight away because he had the guts to go in and lay the law down to the bloody manager, he says the manager says if all you buggers outside had of come in they would've got jobs too. But they said ah you said ah, as soon as I said nothing doing they walked away. Said they didn't want a job….That was McLeish, yeah.

Q Tell us about your rock fall?

Yeah well ah when I found out the shot-firer wouldn't get in until later on, I started work with the pick and through working with the pick the coal started to talk back and then that's when um I was very careful because I.... I ....ah I….ah….previous things that I've seen accidents happen so I was careful and then it quietened down so I knew there was something else and so I went and looked around and I picked this little bit of coal off and that's when the whole darn coal-face come at me and I could see it coming and I had time because it didn't want you called burst out it, just sort of come in one hell of a roar and ah I only had a certain distance to go back but I couldn't go back any further and I had to stand up like that when the coal instead of dropping down here where I thought it would drop it dropped here and caught me on my sternum and that's where I finished up with a broken sternum and I was off the work for eight weeks. But ah when I got hurt I just remember it happening and then waking up in the hospital. That's all as far as I'm concerned……. a bit of coal the coal face was being held by that little piece like that and when I took that piece away woof,.. woof I could hear my mates singing at the two fellows working in the place next to me

The thickest point of the coal was at the top, because what do you call the leaf of the coal it didn't go straight up and down it went like that. And the thickest part was at the top and where I was picking this little bit here this is the part that caught me you see allowed for it to be straight up and down but I didn't allow for that part that caught me you see…………………………………….Just one of those things.

Q What did it sound like?

Well, woof, woof, woof you see…………….... and when it did come the whole face just went woooooooooooooooof, (DAVE STANDS UP) I stood like that, hoping for the best the darn thing I thought was going to go down there but it just pinned me like that an ah pulled my flannel shirt onto my neck and it ah I got a groove on the back of my neck oh for .....after I ahh ah ah. I believe the deputy, shot-firer who got me, you see I don't know how they got me out with that big lump of coal on me, how they broke it up to get me out I don't know cause I was never told and I never I asked.

Q Why were there so many strikes in Wonthaggi?

When the wheat industry had a bumper crop they arranged to ah, ah…………….to sack a man to cause a strike well that happened okay. But the second year it happened when they had a bumper crop instead of going on strike they ah grassed the coal and when they got the trucks back again they had to pay twice to refill the grassed coal so the third year it happened, it wasn't the next year it happened by the way the next year it happened the State Coal Mine refused them trucks because it cost them too much money to get the coal in.

Mainly the strikes were for conditions and money . . . . . . . . . we fought for along time to get holiday pay, eventually we got it in 19……oh I know, I was married in 1947 and we didn't have holiday pay then, we had holidays, we got a month's holiday at Christmas time and a week at Easter time and I never got no pay, no pay for holidays and I don't think anybody in Victoria got holiday pay. As I said it was only through the efforts of the Wonthaggi miners that holiday pay come into being and I ah, anybody thinks that the holiday pay they getting now is through the goodness of their employers heart they've got another bloody thing coming; because it was the Wonthaggi people who fought for that, and striked over that and lost time over that and suffered over that, that got the bloody holiday pay and sick pay and I mean I don't give damn who hears this, or sees, this that's the truth. And as I say a lot of people come to Wonthaggi………………."what you went on strike for?" And I said……

The wonthaggi miners were the first to receive holiday pay in Victoria I don't know about other states, but the Wonthaggi miners were the first to receive it and sick pay because the simple reason they fought for it, went on strike over it, lost time over it, and suffered ah oh lots of thing that the people of Victoria wouldn't understand, but they benefited in the long run through the kindred unions applied for it later on and they were granted, but the point was they didn't have to go on strike they just applied for it and got it. Now if they had've have applied for it and been refused; would they went on strike? You see well we don't know that, you see they were lucky they were sort of come through with a silver spoon in their bloody mouth. The Wonthaggi people were the ones who fought for it and that's why we were termed a bloody mess of communists. Because we stuck-up for our rights were willing to loose time for our rights and ah, deserved what we got, but the people in Melbourne didn't realize it, they only believed what they read in the bloody papers. It's only since this place opened up here, the tourist place up here what the conditions that miners went through and ah in fact what they're seeing is not the worst of the conditions it's the best of the conditions.

Q And what about the community spirit?

People say coming from the old country out here to Wonthaggi and they never had a house and they wanted to build a house if they had a job here the men they were working with would hop in and help them build a house, if they were short of money they'd give them some money assorted food stuffs and clothes for the kiddies and all that they would help in there and ah in case you help me today and I'll help you tomorrow that the .....…… the thing was. But the point was as long as you were willing to work, if you was a bludger oh Christ you was in trouble mate, you were in trouble, I mean you was on your own.

I love Wonthaggi, I love the people in it I mean I may have me arguments and fights with ah, but that's besides the point, I mean ah on the whole I love Wonthaggi I mean…………

END OF INTERVIEW
Date: September 1995