Margaret Ewart and Garland Churcher

Interviewed by Eve Klein on 27 December 2000

SIDE A

Eve Klein. Apparently, you were born in Mosman can you tell us something about where you were born and what it was like at the time you were born. What are your first memories?

Margaret Ewart. I can’t remember anything of when I was born. (laughter) I was born in Raglan St, my father was a builder, and he was just building a new home. They moved in one month before I was born, so I was born at the end of January, 1915. It was a two storey house with a magnificent view looking out over Balmoral, right across to Manly, with natural bushland all around. There was a very narrow steep hill leading up to the shopping center and just above our home was the home of Sir William Cullen, Tregoyd, which everybody would know about now. One of my earliest memories, I think, would be after the war and my mother and some of the neighbours would go along to Georges Heights where there was an army hospital, taking cakes to the boys for afternoon tea, and I would go along with my sister and other little girls and be dressed up, often in various costumes. I can remember that so plainly and seeing the sisters in their long frocks and big white aprons, and veils with the Red Cross on the front, and I thought oh that’s what I would love to be.

Eve Klein. What brought your parents to Mosman?

Margaret Ewart. My father came from Scotland at the end of the 1800s and they lived at Tempe, which was the first home they had, and they would row over here for picnics and my grandfather fell in love with Balmoral. It reminded him of the lochs of Scotland, of course, it was unspoilt then – no houses. He said – that is where we are going to live. They moved over here to Mosman in 1893, I think it was, in Gurrigal St, Spit Junction.

Eve Klein. Did they find out what it was like there?

Margaret Ewart. It was very primitive in a way. There was a small ferry that came into Mosman Bay, they had to walk up from there.

Eve Klein. They commuted by ferry, already in those days?

Margaret Ewart. Yes, and if they wanted to go to North Sydney, well they just had to walk, there was no tram or bus to North Sydney. My grandfather, who was also a builder, of course, had a horse-drawn vehicle, which they would use. There was a punt across the Spit.

Eve Klein. Did you know your grandfather?

Margaret Ewart. Yes, they eventually lived in Gordon St, where he built a home.

Eve Klein. Any idea what the neighbourhood was like? What was the proximity to other houses, do you know?

Margaret Ewart. There were very few I suppose. I don’t know exactly how many there were, but there wouldn’t be a lot at that time.

Eve Klein. That was your grandfather, and then your father, also lived there?

Margaret Ewart. Yes, he went to the Mosman school here. It was a little stone building, just up the front, where the school is now.

Eve Klein. Was that Mosman Primary or Mosman High?

Margaret Ewart. Well, there was no high school for many years. The whole school was only tiny and there were very few students. By the time my father reached 10 he had been through the only classes they had and he used to tutor the smaller boys.

Eve Klein. What was the site? Where is that?

Margaret Ewart. Right on Military Rd, where the high school is now, but it was a little stone building and outside it had a bell on a post. I can remember that – a big bell. Later on they built that big stone building that goes on to Avenue Rd.

Eve Klein. When would that have been? In your childhood?

Margaret Ewart. I don’t remember the stone building. I remember our father telling us about that and I’ve seen pictures of it somewhere. But the big building was there when I went to school, but we went down Belmont Rd to the Kindergarten that’s still there now. That was purely Kindergarten.

Eve Klein. From Raglan St – you lived in Raglan St and…

Margaret Ewart. ….we walked all the way up there. No wonder we’re good walkers. There was no transport at all. We even remember when the tram-line went down by our place, we were very cross about that, spoiling our bushland.

Eve Klein. Bushland was important to you was it?

Margaret Ewart. Oh yes. We had a magnificent childhood really, compared to what children have today, because we didn’t have to be frightened of anything. There were no nasty people about. We played in that bushland, and built our cubby houses and had fights with the boys about stores and things like that. It was great fun, and dad bought us a little iron stove so that we could light a fire in it, because then it wasn’t dangerous, the fire couldn’t get out. And we’d go down to the jetty and catch little fish and cook them in our stove. Mum would give us potatoes and onions and we’d cook those in the ashes. Coming down from Sir William Cullen’s there was a magnificent gully down there. It is a tragedy that it was ever lost; it was beautiful. Lovely big trees and lots of lilly pilly trees growing right over, huge rocks covered with green moss and big pools of water. We used to splash around and have lovely times there.

Eve Klein. There was no concern or worry about what we are so fretful about with children being near water?

Margaret Ewart. We learnt to swim at a very early age. We used to go to the Balmoral baths.

Eve Klein. There were baths at Clifton Gardens too, weren’t there?

Margaret Ewart. I don’t know whether there was when we were children. There was a fence put around later on, but in the early days there wasn’t anything. But there were proper baths. There were two – one for the ladies and one for men, we didn’t have mixed bathing to start with. I think on Saturday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon we were allowed mixed bathing. It was rather funny because the men used to wear briefs, they’re going back to it almost now. But you could see through the slats from the ladies’ baths, why they bothered segregating us I wouldn’t know. Anyhow, we all learnt to swim very early and we were supposed to go to the baths because there was supervision there if anything happened. Like you (to sister) diving off the springboard and hitting your head, she was unconscious and had to be pulled out. Those sorts of things can happen. Our parents felt we were safer in there.

Eve Klein. And you were able to go wherever you wanted to without any concern. Your mother would just say OK you…

Margaret Ewart. ….we always had to be home by five o’clock.

Eve Klein. And that was the only condition. The rest was assumed that you’d be fine.

Margaret Ewart. When we were growing up Garland said to mother one day: you know you were a funny sort of a mother, you didn’t know where we were half the time. She said: well nobody molested you did they? Our father was very good. Saturday was our day and he’d take us on picnics and row us out to Store Beach – the one beside the navy, which is now a nudist beach, but it was a pretty little beach.

Eve Klein. Did he have his own rowboat?

Margaret Ewart. No, we used to get it from the boatshed beside the baths. And you (to sister) rowed everywhere. And other times we’d go down to the Spit and he’d take a rowboat from there and row us to Rose Bay.

Eve Klein. When you were talking about your grandfather rowing from Tempe, would that have been his own boat that he had?

Margaret Ewart. Oh no, he’d have to hire one.

Eve Klein. Do you think your childhood was very different to your father’s?

Margaret Ewart. Oh totally.

Eve Klein. In which way?

Margaret Ewart. Our father had a very, very strong Scottish father; he was hard really. A tough man, hard on all his children. My father was the eldest and he would have to stay – there were three boys before there were any girls and dad would have to stay home from school when grandma was having a baby, she never had a doctor, she only had midwives in those days. He’d stay home from school and do the shopping and the washing and I think Dad did all the shopping anyhow, because there wasn’t a butcher in Mosman when they came here. He had to go over to the Quay and take a sack.

Eve Klein. How would he get there?

Margaret Ewart. On this little ferry.

Eve Klein. As regards other shopping, for instance bread and so on…

Margaret Ewart. ….there was a bakery and general stores.

Eve Klein. Where would they have been?

Margaret Ewart. I think Mrs Hill was one of the first ones, opposite Belmont Rd. A lot of those shops in Military Rd are pretty old. That one on the corner of Raglan St, Dukes the chemist was there. On the other corner was Moran & Cato’s. In those days too, you didn’t have to shop like the ladies do today.

Eve Klein. Why is that?

Margaret Ewart. Well, they used to send a representative from whichever firm it was, the butcher or the greengrocer, or the Moran & Cato’s and they came and got your order, and then they brought it down in a horse and cart. Once a week mother would go up and pay the accounts and we used to like to go with her because they would give us boiled lollies.

Eve Klein. So once a week you had a delivery.

Margaret Ewart. Oh, it might have been more than once a week.

Eve Klein. How many children were you?

Margaret Ewart. Five in our family. Three girls and two boys.

Eve Klein. What sort of a life did your mother have?

Margaret Ewart. Early in the piece she had a very, very good life I think. She had maids and nurse maids and people coming in to do the cleaning. She didn’t have to do any shopping. But she did a lot of social work, she’d go to the slums and help the sisters in the slums.

Eve Klein. In which area would that be?

Margaret Ewart. Surry Hills and Redfern, and some other place, I can’t remember. Anyhow, that sort of thing she would do, and both my parents were great workers in the Mosman Methodist Church. Grandfather built the original Church, which is now the Art Centre. And then my father, of course, was the Head Foreman for him, and by the time they built the big Church dad was in charge then because his father had a slight stroke, which didn’t incapacitate him, he went grey practically overnight. I don’t remember his age, but he died in his 70s from pernicious aneamia because in those days they didn’t have the treatment they have now. So dad really carried the burden of the family all through, and because his father was such a hard man, his brothers and sisters always turned to him. Dad was always the one they came to. Several of his brothers worked in there, it was John Ewart & Sons. Again, building was different in those days. Dad had a permanent group of men that worked for him all the time. It didn’t matter what happened, if it rained they still got their wages because they were on his books. But that all had to alter, of course, when the Depression came, because there was no work and building was the first thing that was affected.

Eve Klein. How did that affect you? What do you recall about that?

Margaret Ewart. We couldn’t go to town and choose the frocks we wanted anymore. Mother had us taught dressmaking because she couldn’t sew at all. We were then able to make our own clothes when the time came. We were to go to Burwood Methodist Ladies College when we finished Primary School, and that had to be knocked on the head. We were having piano lessons – that had to go.

Eve Klein. Over what period of time would you have been affected?

Margaret Ewart. Quite a long time. It really didn’t worry us that much.

Eve Klein. So it was during your senior school years?

Margaret Ewart. Yes, but after the war years too, the building trade wasn’t terribly good was it?

(Garland Churcher speaks intermittently but voice too faint to hear.)

Margaret Ewart. You see, mother had a lot of money when she was married.

Eve Klein. Where did she come from?

Margaret Ewart. She was born in New Zealand and her mother died when she was two. So at first she was boarded out in New Zealand and then her father brought her to Sydney. He was an engineer and was at sea a lot, so he brought her to Sydney to her grandparents, who had a Funeral Parlour in Newtown, which Bulls have now, and they came from England, her grandparents. They went to New Zealand first but they came over here, so she lived with her grandparents. She had a pretty sheltered sort of life, she learnt to sing and paint and do those sorts of things, but nothing like sewing or mending or anything. And then they moved to Mosman. I’m not sure which year they came – early 1900s I would say.

Eve Klein. Before she met your father?

Margaret Ewart. Oh yes – to Shadforth St, and she met Dad after that. She was only a little girl when they came to Mosman. That was a rather funny story too, a friend of hers took her to – this friend of mothers was a dressmaker and she took mother to visit Mrs Ewart one day, they were living in Gordon St. Dad was grown up, but his younger brothers were only little ones. Mother couldn’t understand Grandma Ewart’s accent, so she was quite embarassed. She stayed on the floor and played with the babies. Grandmother looked over to her and said: I can see your fond of wairns (wee ones) Miss Ewart. Mum is looking all over herself to see what wairns were. So she got up and she said to (indistinct): oh I think I’ll have to go now, it is time for my grandparent’s afternoon tea. And when she’d gone Grandma said to Amy: is yon girl no right in the head? Never thinking she was going to get her for a daughter-in-law.

Eve Klein. About what age were they when they married?

Margaret Ewart. About 21 I think mother was, and dad was about 23.

Eve Klein. Where did she have her babies, in hospital?

Margaret Ewart. No, the first one Wallace, he nearly killed her, he was 12 ½ pounds, and born at home with a midwife. They wouldn’t let Dad there, and in the end after about three days he got desperate and he said he was going to do something about it, he couldn’t stand it, so he got a doctor and fortunately the baby was able to be delivered. When Garland was born there was a private hospital in Middle Head Rd, just about opposite where Muston St comes in. Do you remember Garland?

Garland. Glengarry.

Eve Klein. So the first child would have been born about 1910?

Garland. I was born in 1911, so Wallace must have been 1906 when he was born.

Margaret Ewart. Oh no, no, Mum wasn’t married until 1909.

Eve Klein. Wallace was the oldest brother – around 1909, so by 1912 there was already a hospital.

Margaret Ewart. Yes, Garland was born in this hospital, which was called Glengarry, but not where Glengarry went eventually. It was just in Middle Head Rd. When I was born – I was the third, I was born at Raglan St, and so were my younger sister and brother. Born at home, but mother didn’t have a doctor, but she had a midwife, Miss Thorpe. She used to come and live in; she’d come in for a couple of weeks before the baby was born and stay for six weeks afterwards. She was very fussy, she wouldn’t let Mother down the stairs or anything for a long time. We had Miss McGee who was the housekeeper.

Eve Klein. She lived in also? She lived with you? A big house?

Margaret Ewart. Anyhow, that’s how we were all born at home. The last three were born there in Raglan St, and we had Dr Glennie Holmes, I think it was. The old Glennie Holmes not the…

Garland Churcher. Dr Nathan for me I think.

Margaret Ewart. Yes, but I think we were – Dr Holmes used to live on the corner of Gouldsbury St where the restaurant is now.

Eve Klein. How did he travel to a patient? Did he have a car?

Margaret Ewart. I think he had a car then by that time. The Fords had come in by then. Our father had a Ford tractor for his business and everybody used to come to have a look at it. It was the first one I think, they’d ever seen.

Eve Klein. How did your father’s materials get transported?

Margaret Ewart. In the early days they had a horse drawn vehicle and they used to use that too, to take the footballers around. Dad used to always have to drive because he was the only one that didn’t drink and the boys used to get Buena Vista afterwards, sitting out in the….

Eve Klein. ….the Buena Vista here, and that existed in….

Margaret Ewart. ….yes, when Dad was a child, it is different to what it is now of course. It was called the Buena Vista.

Eve Klein. How pleasant was schooling?

Margaret Ewart. Oh, it was very, very pleasant. There was a big brick building, which is still there facing Gouldsbury St, then eventually they put two more little fabric places on the Belmont Rd side. But it was lovely, it had big peppercorn trees that we sat under to eat our lunch. It was very, very pleasant.

Eve Klein. And you took your lunch with you?

Margaret Ewart. Well I did in Kindergarten, but when we got to big school, we used to like to go home for lunch, so we walked up and down that hill three times a day.

Eve Klein. How much time did you have to get home and back again?

Margaret Ewart. An hour.

Eve Klein. And you could do that, it was not a problem?

Margaret Ewart. When you came up to big school – what we call the big school – senior school, had been built. The new whiteish building. We finished our last couple of years there and then there was a Domestic Science School attached to that where you went on to High School.

Eve Klein. There was a Domestic Science school attached, as an extra subject or part of…

Margaret Ewart. ….just after sixth class, if you were going to High School then you went to another school. If you wanted to go to Domestic Science you stayed there.

Eve Klein. Did you think that was a good training?

Margaret Ewart. I don’t know, I didn’t do it.

Garland Churcher. I went to Domestic Science. I didn’t do three years, I did two years and then I went to East Sydney Technical College.

Margaret Ewart. She did an Art Scholarship too.

Eve Klein. What did you do after you left school?

Margaret Ewart. For a while I stayed at home, and I did a business course, which I hated. William’s Business College was at Spit Junction, on the corner of Vista St. But I hated that, so I stayed at home for a little while and then I took up nursing, which was the one thing I wanted to do.

Eve Klein. Under which conditions did you take up nursing? Where did you go?

Margaret Ewart. I went to War Memorial at Waverley. I had friends there and they suggested I should go there, and I loved it. It was a four-year course, and of course, the war started before I’d finished – the year before. So I put my name down to go into the army and I got called up in January 1941 and stayed in the army until July 1946, and came out of the army and went overseas for four and a half years after a couple of years at home.

Eve Klein. Can you describe those years? You had finished your nursing by 1941.

Margaret Ewart. I finished in 1940 and I went to Wellington to work at a hospital there in NSW until I was called up.

Eve Klein. Was your nursing experience used for the army?

Margaret Ewart. Oh rather. We were nursing the troops.

Eve Klein. Where were you?

Margaret Ewart. The first 18 months I was up in Darwin and I was there for that first raid, so we had a busy time. Then I went to New Guinea, at the time of the Kokoda Trail, and we were there for two and a half years I think. Then we came back and I went to Morotai, so I had all tropical service, and we were the sort of main hospital. There were two units on Morotai for the Borneo campaign, we got the troops from the campaigns in Borneo.

Eve Klein. What was life like here during the war, from your parent’s point of view, or from your siblings point of view?

Margaret Ewart. Ask Garland. I wasn’t home very much. Well you had rationing…

Eve Klein. (I am now just handing the microphone over to Miss Ewart’s sister). Your first name is?

Garland Churcher. Garland Churcher.

Eve Klein. She’s just going to comment on the life in Mosman during the war.

Garland Churcher. Well it was busy with war things. Masses of canteens were opened, big ones and little ones. I went to a small one in Mosman. Always busy, always somebody there. I made nets but they invited me to stop because I had funny thumbs that made knots in the nets. So I then did bandage rolling and I went to a Dr Balls – I think his name was, and he taught us First Aid and all about the eyes and if you got something in your eye, and all that sort of business – what to do. It was quite a good light medical history. I suppose life was busy doing….

Margaret Ewart. ….you didn’t notice the shortage of food.

Garland Churcher. You couldn’t get much tea or something like that.

Margaret Ewart. But you were on ration books.

Garland Churcher. Yes, we had ration books, but mother must have dealt with all that. It didn’t make any difference to me. I was married then of course, but…

Eve Klein. ….was your father still working then?

Garland Churcher. Yes, he was.

Eve Klein. Could he get supplies for building?

Margaret Ewart. Oh no, you could only do essential works when there’s a war on. He got hit by two wars really. But still we were lucky, we weren’t affected terribly by the war. Our parents were I suppose, they had worries, we didn’t have a worry in our heads, did we? We always had plenty of food, and clothes etc.

Garland Churcher. Mother was a great gardener. She had chooks….

Margaret Ewart. ….we had tremendous orders when we were all at home eating and she knew the greengrocer very well and she got him to save all the spotted fruit instead of throwing it out and she’d bring it home and we’d go through this box peeling apples and coring them and getting the spots out and then she’d stew them up and then she’d take them to people she knew who were having a very hard time, because it was quite shocking for some people. One of our friends, he had been the china and glassware buyer for Grace Bros, and he immediately lost his job. He was used to going overseas and buying etc, and there he was left with two children and no income. I think he was going to the markets and buying cases of fruit and going round his friends and selling it. So these people that mother knew who were having a pretty torrid time, she’d take them jars of these fruits that she’d stew up.

Eve Klein. Over those years how did Mosman change?

Garland Churcher. It was slow moving to start with. I don’t think Mosman started to go ahead, really, until after the Second World War, and then there were tremendous changes.

Eve Klein. What were those changes?

Garland Churcher. Buildings. Miles more people, and lots of homes. But it was a gradual change, like the building of the Spit Bridge in the early days, the temporary bridge.

Eve Klein. And also, of course, you experienced the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Garland Churcher. Oh yes, we walked across it.

Eve Klein. What difference did that make?

Garland Churcher. Oh, a wonderful difference to the time getting to town, because if you went in a vehicle, you had to wait for the punt, sometimes you couldn’t get on to that punt, you’d have to wait for the next one until it went across and back again. Most of our father’s building was done from Pott’s Pt out to Rose Bay, because in the early days when they came to Mosman there wasn’t much going on here at all to start with. So they got their clientele in that area. Dad used public transport a lot when he was going out to supervise [tape break – pause in recording].

Eve Klein. Just continuing the interview, you were just saying about….

Garland Churcher. My father had season ticket at the Zoo so he could walk down through the Zoo to go to the ferry and go to town that way. There was a ferry then across to Athol. He would then use public transport.

Eve Klein. How much would your mother get about? Would she use the city very much?

Garland Churcher. No only to shop. When we were children we did all our clothing shopping there and at Christmas time, because we went in to see all the windows and Grace Bros up at Broadway had a wonderful set of caves, didn’t they? Another thing we loved to do was to go to Farmers that was on the corner of Pitt and Market, and they had this beautiful outdoor area upstairs where you could have afternoon tea. They served it beautifully on three tiered cake stands. Sometimes we had our hair cut there, and we’d have afternoon tea there.

Eve Klein. So it was a day out in the city was it?

Garland Churcher. At one time we had a girl working for us. Mary didn’t seem to have very many friends, so on her day off she often used to take us out, and she took us into town this day, so we said: oh let’s go to Farmers for afternoon tea. All these beautiful cakes came after having scones and sandwiches. Of course, we could only eat one each because they were cream puffs and all sorts of things, so Mary thought – oh dear I’m not going to waste all these, so while they weren’t looking she was wrapping them up and putting them in her handbag, but she didn’t know you had to pay for what you ate. (laughter)

Eve Klein. Was that an extravagance, or was it just a normal outing? Was it very expensive?

Margaret Ewart. It turned out very expensive when she had to pay for it.

Eve Klein. But to go out like that with the children?

Margaret Ewart. Well I don’t think it was, not compared with what it is today. It is very hard to adjust to present day finance when you’re not working and your income is limited, so you can’t understand what they have to pay now for entertainment. To go and hear these pop singers and spend over $100, to me is a shocking waste of money.

Eve Klein. What would your parents think was an essential, and what was an expected situation, and what would they think would be an extravagance?

Margaret Ewart. Oh I don’t know what they would have thought do you, was an extravagance?

Garland Churcher. I don’t think we dwelt on that sort of thing, we always had plenty to eat.

Eve Klein. You didn’t search for more? What about the boys in the family, did they have a good life, your brothers?

Margaret Ewart. The oldest was a brother and the youngest. Bruce was the baby of house; we all spoilt him. He did very, very, well. I think they had a very happy childhood, as we did. Wallace, I can remember, had billy carts, they were the fashion in those days. You can imagine with our hill it was beautiful. It was a shocking road; it was half the width it is now. A little single track, and right at the bottom there was a sort of bridge over a culvert and many times when they came down, they went over that and they were covered in gravel, you couldn’t see their skin. They always brought every accident that happened to mother. She was rather good at First Aid, and our father had his study – the first room in the entrance, so she’d throw a sheet over the leather lounge and the bodies would be placed.

Eve Klein. Did you know what she used in those days?

Margaret Ewart. They used a lot of Iodine of course, in those days. Oh she’d bathe it off with some disinfectant. I don’t think we had Dettol did we, when we were children? There was something she bathed them in first and then dab it with Iodine and masses of creams and whatever.

Eve Klein. Nobody ever had any problems.

Margaret Ewart. No, it was amazing really because I don’t know where she really got her knowledge from because she didn’t grow up in a family. She was very good. She wanted to be a nurse, but the family wouldn’t allow it in those days. One of the ladies living opposite us had a baby boy when she was about 40. She didn’t know how to cope with it, and the poor little thing was starving to death really, and in the end she sent an SOS to mother and mother went over and she was horrified when she saw how thin the poor little fellow was. It was crying all the time and evidently vomiting anything he took. So mum put him on to condensed milk and he could tolerate that, and from then on he didn’t look back. So how she knew those things…..

Garland Churcher. ….she always wanted to be a nurse.

Margaret Ewart. I think she had a big medical book that she consulted for everything. We didn’t have very much illness. We had the usual chicken pox, and measles and whooping cough.

Eve Klein. Everyone recovered very well.

Garland Churcher. It was the flu wasn’t it, when we had….

Margaret Ewart. …oh yes, the bubonic plague in 1919, just after the war.

Eve Klein. Can you describe that?

Garland Churcher. I can’t remember much about that, I was only four. All I remember was that we had to wear a mask when we went out and we had around our necks a string with a little bag of camphor. We had a lovely time playing with it and throwing it, and of course, it landed up on the two storey roof. That’s all I remember about it.

Margaret Ewart. I can remember the doctor and us all sitting on the lounge in Dad’s study injecting us all, the neighbours children and everything else.

Eve Klein. Were those injections successful?

Margaret Ewart. They must have been, we didn’t get the flu. None of our family had it at all.

Eve Klein. During this time were your grandparents still alive?

Margaret Ewart. Oh yes, they were alive then.

Eve Klein. What sort of a life would they have led? Would they have retired?

Garland Churcher. Oh yes grandpa had to retire because of his health. Grandma was always busy, as you can imagine, because with having 10 children, she had 12 pregnancies, but 10 living children. They were at home for quite a long time because I can remember going to meals in Gordon St, sitting at that great big table with all those people. All those uncles….

Margaret Ewart. ….and grandfather saying grace.

Garland Churcher. Oh yes, he used to ramble on for hours. But grandma didn’t have a social life at all, she was just home busily working all the time. She’d go to the Church.

Margaret Ewart. I don’t think she did much there though.

Garland Churcher. No she didn’t, she was too busy at home I think. You see with our mother, they entertained at home a lot. They had afternoon teas….

Margaret Ewart. ….our mother was a great entainer….

Garland Churcher. ….and musical evenings and that sort of thing.

Eve Klein. And the musical evenings were around a piano, or records?

Garland Churcher. Mother could sing, you see. She had a good voice and she could play the piano very well. I always remember that lady that came – and her playing the (indistinct), she pounced around the piano – (laughter)

Eve Klein. What was your main entertainment as teenagers, in the early 1930s?

Garland Churcher. Swimming mainly and tennis. I played hockey at school, you played basket ball I think, didn’t you? Our Church had very good young peoples’ societies. The Methodist Girl’s Comradeship, which really was excellent. We went to meetings once a week, but we had to have turns being the President, the Secretary, the Treasurer, all very good training really, when you look back on it. Sometimes we had book readings, or somebody there to speak – sometimes we played games.

Eve Klein. Did you have dances?

Garland Churcher. The Methodist Church doesn’t believe in dancing.

Margaret Ewart. But now you can.

Garland Churcher. Our father was very fond of young people and did a lot for the young people. He had the senior – what they called the Bible Class in the Sunday School, which was for the late teenagers and they had discussion groups, which was rather unusual for that time. He’d get them to read a chapter of the Bible and then they discussed it, and they came on Sundays. That sort of thing. Well then he decided he’d take the boys away for a camping trip on holiday weekends, so mother had to come, of course, and we children, we all went. And he’d have about 20 young men to be fed and all that. We had lots of fun with them, didn’t we, with those boys?

Margaret Ewart. We wore shorts once, mum decided that amongst all these boys we’d be better in shorts. We were down at Lake Killawarra and oh, the ladies were looking at us – those hussies!! They were the funniest looking shorts too; we made them ourselves.

Eve Klein. Having then completed your war service, you say you went overseas, you were away for four years. When you came back, did you come back to Mosman?

Margaret Ewart. Yes.

Eve Klein. What did you find about Mosman then, in comparison to what you’d been used to?

Margaret Ewart. A tremendous change as far as building was concerned. There were far more houses. Areas were opening up all the time. Apart from that, nothing very much had changed.

Garland Churcher. More people.

Margaret Ewart. We remember too, when the Esplanade was built at Balmoral, when we were children, that wasn’t there. There were sand dunes. I can remember it quite plainly because we were very hostile about that too.

Eve Klein. What were you upset about?

Margaret Ewart. Well it was our beautiful sand dunes. To spoil it with that cement structure was shocking. The same as we hated when they built that monstrosity there, they’re in too. The bathing pavilion, we thought that was the ugliest thing we’d ever seen. But it was the dressing sheds in those days and you had to have dressing sheds. But we didn’t like the look of it.

Eve Klein. What was the water like in comparison with today? Was it clear and good to swim in?

Margaret Ewart. Oh yes it was very…

Garland Churcher. …it’s getting better now too. We notice a big difference. Sometimes at low tide it used to bring a lot of scuffy stuff on top of it.

Margaret Ewart. But it’s not as bad as it used to be Garland, is it?

Garland Churcher. I’m talking about when we were children. At low tide it used to bring in leaves…

Margaret Ewart. ….you’d get those off the rocks all the time. You can’t get away from that. But we find it is getting much better now.

Eve Klein. To live in Mosman now, what’s your comment on life style in your age group now?

Margaret Ewart. Oh again, I think it is extremely pleasant for our age group, because there are so many things to belong to, if you want to belong to things. There’s the ladies blowling clubs and those sorts of things, and croquet and then the Mosman Community Centre does wonders for elderly people, not that we go there, but it is there if we want it. And when we do want it, it is there, we know, and that I think, makes a great difference.. But also I think, we’re used to home entertainment and so we still like to entertain at home, rather than going to clubs. We prefer it and we play bridge and have friends here for lunch and go to their homes – so we go all over the place. But just our friends, we don’t play in clubs, we don’t like club life. I belonged to Middle Harbour Yacht Club for many years, but that was when I was young.

Eve Klein. And it is easy to get around. You don’t have problems with….

Margaret Ewart. ……I still have a car and Garland had a car until fairly recent years. She’s got her Mercedes with a driver, we call it the bus – right at her door.

Garland Churcher. (laughter) Quite a good bus service. If I want to go to the city I can get the bus down to Taronga Wharf.

Eve Klein. Where are you living?

Garland Churcher. I’m at the Esplanade at Balmoral Beach. Right on the waterfront.

Margaret Ewart. In millionaire’s room she is…. (laughter)

Garland Churcher. ….lovely views, straight across. The bus is on the corner of Raglan St to Chatswood if I want to go up that way.

Eve Klein. How long have you lived there?

Garland Churcher. Since 1973.

SIDE B

Eve Klein. Were you in Mosman prior to that too?

Garland Churcher. No, I was at Gordon, on the North Shore line, only for a few years. My husband died there, and I came back to Mosman. It’s home to me.

Eve Klein. Can you recall your reaction, having been overseas? Where were you living there, in Britain?

Margaret Ewart. Oh, England, Ireland, Scotland, Denmark and America. I worked in all those places.

Eve Klein. As a nurse? How did you find Mosman from a sophisticated point of view, or from just an international point of view?

Margaret Ewart. I was just so very thrilled to get home. Having been in the army for those years and then away again for that length of time, there’s no place like home. I’ve seen a lot of the world and it is very beautiful and I loved it all, but this will do me.

Eve Klein. That would have been in the 50s, when you came back?

Margaret Ewart. 1956.

Eve Klein. And your parents, what were they doing then?

Margaret Ewart. They’d moved. They sold Raglan St, because my father was a builder, he had to go somewhere, where he could have a building yard and they moved to 44 Avenue Rd, just a few doors up from Cowles Rd. It is an old stone house that went through to the park. It is a big block, and it is now a TV place. They’re going to put units on it.

Eve Klein. Where the newsagent is?

Margaret Ewart. It’s just below that. A little stone cottage and it’s got a new building built on to it now. And then they had their building yard down the back, there was plenty of room there. That upset me a bit when I came out of the army, they had moved during the war years because everybody went at one time. It was strange to me to live in a one storey house to start with. I was used to coming home and you could come in with a few people and make as much noise as you liked, nobody knew you were there, but when you got to a cottage it was different.

Eve Klein. How many children were still at home then?

Margaret Ewart. Only me. The others are all married.

Eve Klein. Did your siblings come back to house often?

Margaret Ewart. Oh yes, Garland and Jean…

Garland Churcher. …I lived in (indistinct) at the top of Killarney Street.

Margaret Ewart. Jean was living up at West Pymble. They all came on Thursday night for dinner. The husbands would come straight from work, they’d come in the afternoon with the little ones. At Christmas time we always had the great big gathering.

Eve Klein. At your parent’s place, everyone gathered at your parents?

Margaret Ewart. The whole family, and a few waifs and strays too. Christmas day was almost a nightmare to me, it was a busy day.

Eve Klein. Did your mother do it in those days?

Margaret Ewart. I helped…

Garland Churcher. ….we would have a full proper roast Christmas dinner. Go to Church first, come home and cook the roast dinner and have all that, then the family would descend upon us at 5 o’clock and we’d have cold turkey and ham and salads. Mum made about 15 different sweets, she loved making these fancy sweets. She was a good cook, wasn’t she? That’s one thing she liked doing – cooking and gardening.

Eve Klein. Were they well, did they find….

Margaret Ewart. ….oh yes, they both enjoyed extremely good health. Our father died very suddenly of cancer when he was 76. Mother lived until she was nearly 96 wasn’t she?

Eve Klein. Did she have a recipe for longevity?

Margaret Ewart. She was always interested in new ideas. She did a lot of home visiting of elderly people; older than herself sometimes. But she liked to go and see them and chat, she was a good chatterer. The same with the Church, she was always the one that would notice new people coming to the Church, and she’d speak to them and make them feel welcome and invite them home, and things like that. When they started the Senior Citizens there, where they did arts and crafts and things, she would go, and I said to her – what on Earth do you do, because she didn’t do any handwork. And she said: oh I just go round making everybody feel welcome. She’d go to the gardening talk and then she’d go round and chat to everybody.

Eve Klein. The options for young girls like yourselves? What were they, as regards a profession? You decided and loved nursing. What other options would there have been?

Margaret Ewart. Well mostly secretarial. Garland went to Art College, but they’re instructors told them they were wasting their time, that there wouldn’t be any jobs available for them, they’d all finish up ticket writers. Well she didn’t want to be a ticket writer.

Eve Klein. What about teaching? Did anyone consider that?

Margaret Ewart. Oh yes, occasionally people went into teaching. But there weren’t many professional things, were there, available? Mostly teaching or secretarial work, or nursing. But again, you see, the war helped to change that a good deal, because girls had to do all sorts of things during the war years when the boys were away.

Eve Klein. So they found a new lease of life. That’s very interesting. You were talking about that house….

Margaret Ewart. ….that was painted by an aunt of ours in 1942 from memory, as it was in 1917, she’s got it written on there.

Eve Klein. That was in 1917 – so the building in the background, what would that be?

Margaret Ewart. That’s what we used to call the St Patrick’s College at Manly, and it used to stand out because there weren’t any other buildings. Now you can just see the turret.

Eve Klein. It still stands out, doesn’t it, today?

Margaret Ewart. They built the new road, they made it twice as wide and the pavement went half-way up that high wall in the front of our place….

Garland Churcher. ….and they had to build that wall.

Margaret Ewart. So the footpath is right against it, and the road is right across.

Eve Klein. So when you were walking to school, you were walking on pavement, or you were walking mainly on….

Margaret Ewart. ….it was tarred. Oh yes we had pavement on this side, didn’t we?

Garland Churcher. This side of the road going up.

Margaret Ewart. I don’t remember any pavement but I remember a big deep gutter.

Garland Churcher. That’s on the other side, but on this side, where the Geoffrey’s and the people used to live there was a tiny path up that side.

Margaret Ewart. Do you see the post and rail fence?

Eve Klein. Yes….

Garland Churcher. ….and there’s a gas lamp there in that picture too. We used to see the man come round and light the lamp with a taper, he used to come on his bike.

Eve Klein. And in the morning would they put it on?

Margaret Ewart. I think he must have had to come in the early hours of the morning.

Garland Churcher. He probably came and pulled the little chain, or whatever it was he pulled.

Eve Klein. Do you remember any picture theatres?

Margaret Ewart. Yes, there was one in Spit Junction.

Garland Churcher. There was the (indistinct) too, the (indistinct) where the soldiers could come.

Margaret Ewart. I think that came after Spit Junction. That was the one I remember first. It was right on the corner where the theatre is now. It was a great big ugly place, just one floor, with great big pictures of film stars on the wall.

Garland Churcher. It was just a great big shed with a tin roof, and pictures of film stars, like Gloria Swanson.

Eve Klein. Was it a big occasion to go to the picture theatre?

Margaret Ewart. We weren’t encouraged to go to the pictures. It had to be something special. A lot of the children used to go every Saturday because they had serials. Tom Mix and all this fellows. Our parents believed in taking us out in the open spaces. We went rowing and swimming, and picnicking. But occasionally when Charlie Chaplin was screened, we were always allowed to go and see Charlie Chaplin. That became a special occasion to us.

Eve Klein. And being out in open sunshine, did you have to worry about the sun, or protection from the sun?

Margaret Ewart. Fortunately, both our parents had olive complexion. Look at the colour of me – see out in the sun, and driving and things? We had to be a little bit careful at the beginning of the season that we didn’t get too much sun too quickly.

Eve Klein. You were aware of the worry of that?

Margaret Ewart. Well occasionally we got a bad burning and then we’d know about having great big blisters, so we were a bit more careful the next time. But Dad’s body was very white.

Garland Churcher. He had the whitest flesh, he was a Scotsman, and they had extremely white flesh. He’d put his sleeves up to there, and he’d be as brown as a nut. As soon as he lifted it up….he had to be very careful.

Margaret Ewart. They used to like fishing.

Eve Klein. Did they catch quite a lot in those days?

Margaret Ewart. Oh yes. It was rather a joke when we were children in Raglan St. Little boys would come in during the school holidays and they’d follow mother around the house saying: Mrs Ewart there are a lot of fish down off the jetty. They’d keep at her, and keep at her, and then she’d say: well go home and ask your mother and I’ll take you. She’d go out with about six little boys on to the wharf and they used to catch so many fish.

Eve Klein. What did they catch?

Margaret Ewart. Oh all sorts of fish. It was usually Tailor. Often dad had to go down to carry them home, they had so many. Oh, they caught flathead and bream. There were a lot of fish about Balmoral in those days.

Garland Churcher. Mother used to go fishing with her father when she was a girl. He used to go down to Balmoral and get a rowing boat and go out rowing, he was mad about fishing, and she used to go out with him. They both loved it. It was the only time she ever saw a parent you see, because he was seafaring man and away a lot of the time.

Eve Klein. That was most interesting. Thank you so much.