STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY
COLLECTION
OH 561/5
Full transcript of an interview with
W. E. DUNCAN
On 11 July 1972
By Lynne Arnold
Recording available on CD
Access for research: Unrestricted
Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study
Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the
State Library
OH 561/5
W. E. DUNCAN
NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT
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J.D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION, MORTLOCK
LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIANA: INTERVIEW NO. OH 561/5
Interview of Mr W.E. Duncan by Lynne Arnold recorded in Adelaide on 11 th July
1972 and broadcast on ABC Radio on 20th August 1972 as part of the series ‘Now
in retirement’. This recording forms part of the ‘Now in retirement’, ABC Radio,
1972-74 project of the Somerville Oral History Collection of the Mortlock Library
of South Australiana.
TAPE 1 SIDE A
Mr Duncan, as a boy of fifteen and a half in the South Australian country town of
Moonta, what suddenly decided you to join the PMG?
Well, at that particular time I was attending the Moonta High School, and I noticed a
notice on the Moonta Post Office saying that an examination would be held for entry
into the Post Master General’s Department. I decided to sit for that examination,
which I did, and successfully passed the examination.
What did your family think about you leaving school at that age?
Well, I approached my parents and my father said, ‘Well, I’ll leave the decision to
you. You can either sit for that examination or you can remain at school as long as
you desire.’
Did your family think it was a good career for a boy in those days?
Well, they had probably mixed feelings about it and didn’t like to direct me one way
or the other and left it entirely to me.
But now that I decided to sit for that
examination they are now of the opinion that it was a good decision.
When you left Moonta where did you go?
Well, whilst at Moonta I passed my telegraph test and I was then transferred to the
Chief Telegraph Office in Adelaide, where I transmitted and received telegrams.
And from there what happened?
Well, after a short time in the Chief Telegraph Office, I was promoted to the position
of Postal Clerk at Nairne in the Adelaide Hills when that office was made official for
the first time. And after some time there, I referred  I transferred to the relief staff,
performing duty in suburban and country offices. In 1926 I applied for the position
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of Telegraphist in the GPO at Adelaide, and I was successful in passing the
examination for appointment.
Why did you have this attraction for Adelaide all the time? You seemed to always
come back to Adelaide.
Yes, well, during my relief work in the country I met up with a certain young lady
who is now my wife, and she lived in the city, and that was what caused me to apply
to get back to the city.
Oh, I see. Well, then, after some time again in Adelaide, where did you go?
In 1929 I was temporarily transferred to the Sydney Chief Telegraph Office for the
purpose of gaining experience in Australia’s largest telegraph office. It was whilst
working at Sydney that I saw the Picturegram service operating for the first time. I
remember I obtained a copy of a picture of the then film star, Mary Pickford, which
had been transmitted from Melbourne to Sydney. The Picturegram service did not
come to Adelaide until quite a few years later, however.
Well, you must have felt that you had really seen something that no-one in
Adelaide had seen before.
Yes, that is so, and I gained a lot of experience in addition.
And then where did you go?
In 1931 I temporarily transferred to Alice Springs, one of the repeating stations on
the overland telegraph line, also to gain experience.
Good heavens! Alice Springs from Sydney in those days must have been quite a
contrast. How did you get there?
Well, I left on the Ghan at 7.22 on a Thursday morning and I arrived at Alice Springs
at half past ten on a Saturday night.
Did you expect it to be as long as that?
Yes. I was told that it would be three days altogether, but it was nothing in those
days for the train to be a day or so late.
And what were the conditions on the train in that time?
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The conditions were quite good  not up to present day standards, by any means.
Once you got on the train to Alice Springs, convention and formality were
completely forgotten.
And was there a catering service?
Yes, there was a dining car on there.
And what time of the year was it? What was the weather like?
It was the beginning of the year. The weather was quite good, very pleasant.
So you had a pleasant trip there.
Yes, I enjoyed the trip, really.
And then when you actually reached Alice Springs and you realised that here you
were, what was the sight that met your eyes?
Well, I was a little bit astounded at first when I saw the wide open spaces there and I
didn’t know whether I’d done the right thing or not going to Alice Springs and for
the first couple of days I think if I’d had a chance to return south I would have done
so.
Why in particular? Was it just the loneliness, or were there other reasons?
Oh, it was loneliness, and the night I arrived I remember there was quite a fight out
in the telegraph station between a couple of chappies, and that was one of the
reasons. I thought, ‘Well, if it’s going to be like this, I’d rather be down south where
things are more peaceful.’
What was the town itself like?
The town itself was rather small. The railhead was only extended from Oodnadatta
to Alice Springs in August nineteen hundred and twenty-nine, and some of the
people moved from Oodnadatta to Alice Springs. But even allowing for that in early
1931 there were only a hundred-odd people in the town and it was rather small
indeed and very quiet.
Well, when you compare it now with a town with a population of about ten
thousand people and  oh, lord knows how many houses and shops and hotels,
what was it actually like, you know, physically? What sort of houses and hotels
were there? What met your eye?
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Yes, well, very few houses, as you can imagine for a hundred-odd people, and there
were only about four commercial establishments in the town. Wallace Fogarty’s had
the main general store down the north end of Todd Street, somewhere diagonally
across from the present Riverside Hotel. Mrs Underdown and her son Lye also had a
small galvanised iron shop there, somewhere about the site of their present Hotel
Alice Springs. There was another gentleman by the name of Mr Bill Fox that had a
shoe shop and, apart from that, the only other commercial building was the Stuart
Arms Hotel, a small, single-storey rambling sort of a place where refrigeration was
unknown. The drinks were kept cool there by placing the bottles on the cement floor
with wet bags thereon.
It sounds very much as though beer in those days was just as important in Alice
Springs as it is now. Is that right?
That is right, too, yes, that is so.
Well, now, out to the telegraph station  how did you travel out there?
Well, two of the  the lineman and the batteryman employed on the station, they
both had motor vehicles, and the night I arrived they escorted me out there.
What did they do for petrol?
Well, you could buy petrol up there, but it was rather expensive.
Was it brought up by the Ghan?
It was brought up by the Ghan. Yes  well, it was really the only means of bringing
it up.
And you got out to the telegraph station, and how many people were on the staff
there?
There were three of us on the postal staff, including the officer in charge, plus a
lineman and a batteryman. We had hundreds of batteries there to keep in order for a
line.
And was the telegraph station the only means of communication in and out of the
town?
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Yes, that was the only communication. There were no telephones in or out of Alice
Springs, either to the north or south. There were three local subscribers in the town
who could speak to each other only.
What, this was a direct line? There was no switchboard that they could   ?
Yes, we had a little switchboard on the wall and we could connect these three
subscribers.
And did the same sort of thing apply that does now, where they ring each other up
and then send someone round to tell someone to answer their telephone.
(laughter)
No, not exactly. No, today at the present time there’s been a big change at Alice
Springs. They have a modern, automatic exchange there with over two thousand
subscribers. The Telex service plays a great part  they would have, I should say,
fifty-odd Telex services up there. There would be between thirty and forty radiotelephone services up there. The telegraph still plays an important part with the
Royal Flying Doctor Service, and they have a telegraph staff of eight.
And this of course is back in the town now, isn’t it?
That is back in the town.
Well, to get back to the original telegraph station, did you have to deal in any way
with, you know, medical calls for help and with any sort of communication from
the stations around?
No. There was no communication with us. We could not receive any information or
any calls whatsoever from the stations around.
Just simply from Darwin and to Adelaide, was it? It was a repeater station   .
From the repeater station we could only  on the telegraph we could only contact or
speak with Adelaide and Darwin and intermediate stations.
What was the set-up there? Was it fairly self-contained, the telegraph station
itself?
Yes, it was very self-contained: it was just like living on a farmhouse two miles out
of the town.
How did you manage for food and entertainment, things like this?
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Well, all of our food, or most of our food, came from the South  we used to have to
order all of our groceries and what have you. We got a bag of vegetables each
fortnight from the South, and we pooled our living expenses. Although the wages
were not very high those days we were able to live very well there for approximately
five pounds per month. As regards the amusements and entertainment at Alice
Springs, there was almost none, you might say. There were very few young ladies in
the town and it was difficult to get enough young persons together to run a dance or
similar entertainment. We were fortunate that one lady came from the South seeking
employment up there: she was an excellent pianist, and she did play for a couple of
our dances up there. We might get enough together to run, say, two sets of Alberts
or the Lancers  they were nearly the old-time  nearly always the old-time square
dances, and me being of slight build of course I used to find it a little bit difficult to
support some of those solidly-built ladies from the Centre in the circular movements
of some of those square dances.
(laughs) Well, what were some of the other things you used to do? I remember
you showing me some photographs of yourself looking very suave in white tennis
clothes.
Oh, yes. We had a tennis court out at the old station. It was made of Antben [?] and
had an excellent surface on it, and that was our only form of entertainment or
enjoyment at the station: there was nothing else there. The only other thing I think
we had there was a gramophone. We did have a wireless set, but the induction was
that bad from the telegraph that it was almost impossible to hear these stations or
hear the programme, owing to interference from the telegraph.
Of course, nowadays Alice Springs is a stopping-over point for aeroplanes from
all directions, but in about 1931 I suppose aeroplanes were fairly few and far
between. Do you have any particular memories of this?
Yes; during 1931 the only aeroplane I saw was Jimmy Mollison when he spent a
night at Alice Springs on his way to Darwin in an attempt on the AustralianEngland
record, which he subsequently broke. Apart from that, I did not see any other
aeroplanes at all.
Did you meet Jimmy Mollison yourself?
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Yes, I met Jimmy. I went out to the aerodrome and he wrote a telegram which I took
into the telegraph station and transmitted for him.
Yes, and then he flew off again the next day?
Yes; the next morning very early, somewhere about six o’clock, he was airborne and
he came out over the old telegraph station and he circled around quite a number of
times warming up his engine quite low down, and eventually he gave me a parting
wave and he headed north for Darwin.
It must have been exciting for you. How did the other people of the Alice district
feel about it? Did they turn out to welcome him?
Not too many. There were only about five or six of us at the ’drome, if I remember
rightly.
Well, to get back to the station again and the sort of work you did: shortly after
this  I think in 1932, wasn’t it?  the station was closed down.
That’s right.
Must have been fairly sad for you: how did you feel about packing up and putting
away of equipment that had been going for so long?
Well, as a matter of fact, I left shortly before the transfer took part. I left at the end
of nineteen hundred and thirty-one, and the transfer took part on the 28th of January
nineteen hundred and thirty-two, when the new Post Office in the town of Alice
Springs  which was then known as Stuart  was completed and the telegraph
facilities were transferred into the new Post Office.
What was it like, feeling as though everything depended on you? You know, there
you were at Alice with this telegraph station, and it was the communication
between Darwin and the South. Did you ever feel a sense that, you know, if
anything went wrong, you’d be completely cut off?
Yes. That often  I often had that feeling, and we often experienced those cut off
conditions.
What happened when you did?
Well, we couldn’t do anything about it. We just had to wait until somebody went
out onto the line to ascertain the cause of the trouble and rectify it. In the meantime,
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we were like somebody on an island without communications: we were completely
cut off.
Did you do much exploring around Alice itself?
No, I could not get out a great lot. I went to some of the nearer places such as
Standley Chasm and Simpson’s Gap, and up the North Road a little, but I couldn’t
get out very much because there was not much in the way of motor transport those
days, and when the opportunity offered to go out, on a trip out from Alice Springs, I
would be working or vice versa.
And of course the road through to Darwin wasn’t completed until during the
War   .
No, it was a very, very rough road. And we had a mail contractor there that used to
take the mail from Alice Springs to the railhead at Burnham.
Anyone in particular you remember at that time? The post must have been 
although there were only a few people you must have come into contact, of course,
with people who are regarded as characters of the Outback these days  anyone in
particular you can think of?
Yes, there were several there. There was one in particular I’ll always remember, and
that was Bob Buck, or the late Bob Buck. He was a well-known bushman and an
explorer. Bob in his later years was to be seen sitting on a seat outside of the Stuart
Arms Hotel or inside of the Stuart Arms Hotel, relating all of his experiences to the
tourists who used to go to the Alice every year. Whilst I was there, Bob led an
expedition out into the Petermann Ranges looking for the lost Lasseter’s Reef, which
of course he was unsuccessful in finding.
And when you left Alice Springs, I believe you eventually came down to Adelaide
again and you were in the telegraph office at the time of the Darwin bombing.
What was this like? What exactly happened?
That’s right. Well, that was in February 1942, if I remember correctly, and we got
this dramatic message over the telegraph to say that the staff were leaving the office
because Darwin was being bombed.
And as you know, unfortunately, in that
bombing raid we lost a lot of our valuable employees.
Mr Duncan, you still had another 30 years left in the Post Office, and you must
have seen an enormous amount of changes in that time. What were some of the
things that remain with you particularly?
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Well, I should think the enormous growth in both the telegraph and the telephone
traffic. The first Adelaide telephone exchange was opened on the 14 th of May 1883,
and it closed down exactly seventy-two years later to the day on the 14th of May
nineteen hundred and fifty-five. When that exchange was connected there were only
forty-eight subscribers connected thereto.
You must have also seen the end of Morse, too.
Yes. Morse continued to be used until the 14th of August nineteen hundred and fiftynine, when the automatic teleprinter service known as TRESS  T-R-E-double-S, an
abbreviation for Teleprinter Reperforator Switching System  was introduced. The
few remaining Morse circuits that were left were withdrawn from use in 1960. The
automatic TRESS system is still in use and it is a very quick and modern system.
And now that you’ve retired, what do you want to do?
Well, I have had several trips into the country so far, but there have been
commitments that are keeping me in Adelaide month by month for the rest of this
year. But after the end of this year I hope to do some travel.
Honours seem to be heaped upon you. You seem to be going back to and from
Alice Springs whenever there’s a celebration and re-enacting the part of the first
Post Master  or the first man at the telegraph station. Does this bring you much
joy?
Very much. As a matter of fact, last year I attended the Centenary of the founding of
Alice Springs. I was invited back by the Centenary Planning Committee to play the
part of the telegraph station master, because, as I said, I was the only person left in
the Department who worked at the old station.
END OF TAPE: END OF INTERVIEW
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