STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL ... · Interview with James Douglas Everett...
Transcript of STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL ... · Interview with James Douglas Everett...
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STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
OH 770/10
Full transcript of an interview with
JAMES DOUGLAS EVERETT
on 03 December 2007
by Catherine Murphy
for the
CAMPBELLTOWN ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
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
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OH 770/10 JAMES EVERETT
NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT
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J.D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION, STATE
LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA: INTERVIEW NO. OH 770/10
Interview with James Douglas Everett recorded by Catherine Murphy at
Campbelltown, South Australia, on 3rd
December 2007 for The State Library of
South Australia’s Campbelltown Oral History Project.
DISK 1 OF 1
This is an interview with Jim – or is it James? –
James.
– Everett.
Everett, that’s right.
E-V-E-R-E-double-T, and the date is Monday, 3rd
December 2007 and it’s eleven-
thirty in the morning, we’re at the Campbelltown Library out the back, in a
special quiet room. So, Jim, I’m going to talk to you today about the history of the
Campbelltown Uniting Church in particular, but first of all I’d like to get a little
bit of background about you as a person. So can you tell me your full name and
date of birth?
Right. James Douglas Everett. I was born in Gawler, 19th January 1943.
And who were your parents?
My parents were George or Douglas and Mavis Everett. We lived on a farm at
Roseworthy, between Roseworthy and Templars. That farm had been developed by
my great-grandparents in 1850, when they’d taken it from original scrub, literally,
into a farm. So I was the fourth generation.
Was it mixed farming?
A mixed farm, yes.
And what was your mum’s name?
Mavis. She had been Spry, was her maiden name. She’d come originally from
Hamley Bridge, been born in Hamley Bridge, but had lived most of her young life in
Adelaide but then married back into territory where her grandparents and parents had
lived also.
Okay. So where did you do your primary, secondary and tertiary schooling?
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The farm was part of a family estate and so in the 1950s we came to live in St Peters
in the house that had been my grandmother’s and I was educated at East Adelaide
Primary, Norwood High School, and then while I was working I did some studies,
some accountancy studies, at what was then the old School of Mines which is now
part of the University of South Australia.
So when you say the farm was a family estate does that mean it was divided up
amongst the family and your family moved to Adelaide?
It was part of a trust. My grandfather had died when my father was nineteen and so
my father assumed the running of the property and the family estate for forty-five
years and so he chose to come to the city but still kept some interest in the country.
But I’m an only child and I was born when my father was in his late forties, so I’m a
generation out on normal ages.
And, Jim, what work did you do when you left school?
I started off, like most people, as the office boy in a big retail company and you
started off, as always, learning the basics – ordering stationery and delivering cheques
and all those things that used to happen. You did your study at night and you learnt
commercial values and bookkeeping and all those things, a lot of it on the job.
So tell me about your family and connection to organised religion, and whether
you were brought up in the – Methodist? –
Yes.
– Church, just give me a little bit of background to that.
My great-grandparents, when they arrived in South Australia in 1850, first settled in
Woodville for about twelve months and then they moved to what was then called –
well, the farm was between Roseworthy and Templars, the little township, and they
then became involved with what was then the Wesleyan Methodist Church and my
great-grandfather was one of the foundation trustees and builder of that church, and
that became the home, I guess, the spiritual home, of the family till the 1950s. In
fact, I was baptised in that church, as was my father and grandfather, and most of my
relatives are buried in the little cemetery behind that church today.
My mother came to live in the city and she was very involved with a church in
Halifax Street called Madge Memorial Methodist Church, where her older sister
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played the pipe organ. And Mum joined the church choir at fourteen and she did
have an excellent voice, as soprano, and then in 1930 she joined what was then the
Pirie Street Methodist Church Choir and stayed there till 1940, and so she was very
much part of the youth and the activities of the Church and my father in the country
was also. So I grew up, I guess, in that environment. We also had links with Gawler.
My mum would sing at every wedding and every event, was always the guest soloist
ever since I can remember, and then when we came to St Peters she joined the choir
at Spicer Memorial and that’s where I grew up, too, and so I’ve been part of the life
of, I guess, the Methodist Church since literally I was taken to church, probably,
when I was two weeks old, I don’t know. (laughs)
So I suppose that story explains your interest in history.
Yes. Yes, very much.
As well as in relation to the history of the Church.
Yes.
When did you formalise that interest?
I guess the interest was really formalised – I’d always been very interested in family
history and South Australian because we were unique in the sense that the family had
stayed on one property for all of that period, which meant that all of the records and
ledgers and everything – and I still have them – were never destroyed, as happens
when families move; and my father, even though we lived in the city, constantly
travelled back to his friends and his country associations. And being an only child I
guess I heard all the stories, which never generally happens when you’re a big family.
My church history interest, when I joined what was then the Methodist Historical
Society in 1970, when I was invited to become the Secretary of the Council of that
society. And then in 1973 I was invited to write a lecture which later became
published on the history of Pirie Street Methodist Church, which was at that stage
going to be closed before they combined with what was Stowe Congregational
Church to form one congregation, and I was invited to write that. So I guess that
really did develop – because of family links – develop my real interest.
And the church historical society that you became the secretary of, who was
involved in that and how did you kind of make contact with them?
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Well, the first approach came through one of our retired ministers, who used to for a
while live in Campbelltown: Reverend G. Bellamy Stribley[?], who had been the
editor of the Methodist paper, monthly publication, for the state and was involved in
the Council and knew of some history interest, invited me to join and to become the
secretary, and so from that you develop all the links and all the networks; and, as
does happen in a small community and in the church community, you have many
links and networks and relationships and people that you’ve met. It is, was, like a
big, big family.
So, Jim, were you working as an accountant –
Yes.
– and also involved as a lay preacher?
Yes.
What was your involvement with the Church, as a preacher?
I was working full-time and, as in the Methodist Church, as in the Uniting Church,
people can be trained to become a lay preacher, which is a voluntary task but you
have to do training, and that is something that would happen on weekends. But I’ve
been in full employment and even now I only work – I’ve reached the stage where I
now only work twenty hours a week because I’m just about due to fully retire.
And where did you do that training, and then where did you preach?
The training I did, in those days you did it through your local church, generally
mentored by a minister, and in our case at Campbelltown there was three people that
did the course together for nearly two years and we were mentored by the minister at
Payneham Road Methodist Church, who was a very good scholar. And the minister’s
wife at the time, Melva Rofe, and Janet Munro, the local doctor’s wife, we did the
course together and then, since that time, I’ve chosen to preach at other parishes,
because you get an invitation, and we had a number of friends in the country and
because of my country links I was invited to regularly preach at places like Riverton
and Gawler, Freeling, et cetera.
Could you spell the names of the people, the women, that you did the – – –?
Yes, right. Rofe, R-O-F-E, and Munro, M-U-N-R-O.
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Thank you. Jim, when did you move to Campbelltown and was it at the time that
you married?
We married in January 1966 and we bought a block at that time in Osborne Street,
Campbelltown, which was a reasonably new subdivision, and we built a house during
that year, so we’ve been in Campbelltown since 1966. At that stage, the East Marden
School, which backs onto our block, was just a remains of an orchard and there was
only four houses in our street. The Linear Park, of course, didn’t exist and neither did
the O-Bahn, that was still growing vegetables. The government had acquired the land
but it was still market gardens. So we’ve been in Campbelltown from that time
onwards.
What was the attraction of this area to you, starting out as a young family? Was it
just the price of the land or other things?
Well, having grown up with our local links in St Peters and eastern suburbs you
tended to – most of your friends tended to move when they married to Tea Tree
Gully, Vale Park, Modbury, this general direction, so there was an attraction to move
in the same area. I mean I would not normally, I suppose, consider living the other,
western side of the city – not that there’s anything, but just because all of your friends
and your contacts. And we like the area, we looked at dozens of blocks, but we just
loved the position of our block and we’ve benefited, of course, because the Linear
Park is now at the end of our street.
I’m just looking at the book that you’ve written From Darley to Campbell Town1 –
two separate words, as you pointed out – and it’s the history of the Campbelltown
Uniting Church 1847–1981. So you lived through the last decade of that time, and
I’m wondering if it would make sense, now that we’re at that point in the
interview, for you to tell me about the last decade and then we’ll go into the early
history.
The last decade, when we arrived at Campbelltown of course the Methodist Church
was still very strong and at the time when we arrived at Campbelltown there’d been
much growth in the area, particularly from the Lower North East Road up through
Hambledon[?] Road, there’s been a lot of areas being built, and we arrived at a
church that had a Sunday school of about three hundred children.
1 From Darley to Campbell Town : a history of the Campbelltown Uniting (formerly Methodist) Church,
1847-1981, Coterie Publishers Australia in conjunction with Campbelltown Uniting Church, 1981.
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Where’s the church?
At Campbelltown.
Whereabouts, what address is it?
It’s at 609 Lower North East Road, Campbelltown. And the congregation was
probably – on most Sunday mornings, the church, which seats about two hundred
people, was full. And so during those first ten years that we were here or those first
ten years, which were the last years of Methodism, we had three children of our own
who were baptised in that church and many other people came so that there was a lot
of growth, there was a lot of young marrieds, of people that had been married, you
know, in the last ten years, who were new to the district. There was also quite a
group of people of the original gardening families who had owned the land, who their
families had been part of the church for the last hundred years, who were still present
in the congregation.
And who were some of those families?
Well, I can think of people like the Packer family, the Stocks – they are still there,
there was the Pitts and the Neills, the Jameses and also the Genans.
And Neal is N-E-A-L?
No, N-E-I-double-L.
And Gehan?
Gehan, G-E-H-A-N. And the Headings[?] also, they were related to the Gehans. In
addition there were a number of new people, and of course the confusion is that there
is also Shirley and Reg Neale, N-E-A-L-E, who are the owners of Paradise Motors,
and they were members, they came perhaps five years before us to Campbelltown
Methodist Church.
So that was a very interesting decade at the beginning of major changes.
Yes.
And how would you identify those changes?
I think the changes were very strongly in that people were coming in with new ideas,
they’d come many from many different suburbs, and they came in with new,
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innovative ideas and probably some of the old families weren’t always ready for
change, because many of those families had stayed in the district and had married in
the district and had never been out, particularly in the life of the church, to see what
happened elsewhere.
And who was the reverend then and how was that change managed, or that
conflict – generational conflict?
The minister when we came was the Reverend Clarrie Hore, H-O-R-E. He came in
and I think he managed it – most people were open to change and people really got
on very well. There were two particular families who didn’t really cope with it and
during his ministry they chose to worship elsewhere, mainly because I think they’d
been perhaps very dominating in the past and found it a bit hard to take – not a back
seat, but to not have complete control. And so that group for a while worshipped
elsewhere and, while Mr Hore didn’t really make changes, but he brought it a little bit
perhaps up-to-date.
What were some of the innovations?
Well, I think they needed to accept the bigger Sunday school and to be a bit more
tolerant of children, because when you’ve got a big Sunday school of three hundred
children it’s pretty difficult to manage that. There was changes in worship, to a
certain extent, a different choir and a style that perhaps they’d never been exposed to.
In fact, I can remember being a trustee of the church – there was a certain number of
people appointed trustees to manage the property – and at a particular trustee meeting
a member of the congregation offered a brass cross to place on the communion table,
and the vote from the trustees was five against and seven to accept. And one trustee’s
comment was, ‘We can’t have that, we’re going to Rome’. So there was very much
still a Protestant attitude of a few, and that particular gentleman’s only died three or
four years ago and I think he would have still held that view to today, even though
now the church has a cross out the front and an illuminated cross on the wall, plus
that (laughs) brass cross on the communion table that was a gift. So there was things
– symbolism has changed in the worship of the church. Particularly, Campbelltown
was a country church. The church I worshipped in, Spicer Memorial in Fourth
Avenue, St Peters, was a Methodist church and our worship was not much different
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to the local Anglican church, where in fact we would chant the psalms and have what
I’d call ‘high church’ worship, I suppose.
Is ‘Spicer’ – – –?
S-P-I-C-E-R, Spicer Memorial, in Fourth Avenue, St Peters.
And did it become a little more relaxed and less traditional in other ways? And I
read in the book that the church began to accommodate mothers’ groups and
young people’s, teenage groups.
Yes.
Were you involved in any of that?
We were involved to a certain extent because my wife was involved with the young
mothers when the children were little. The youth group, our children were probably
too young for that, but some people did start to develop youth groups and alternative
options; whereas traditionally, as a small country church, there would have just been
worship and Sunday school – and a tennis club. Tennis club’s always been very
strong at Campbelltown and it was almost, for some of us, I think, some people –
some of the old families saw the tennis club as more important than anything. It had
been a social outreach even from the ’30s. But these other groups, there needed to be
a bit of tolerance because they would use the hall for a social and things like that and,
you know, people can become a bit – have ownership of space, but there was nothing
went on that you [wouldn’t] expect normal children and normal teenagers – – –. But
there needed to be a bit of give and take. But there was never really big tensions. As
I say, there was a couple of families that didn’t cope with it and chose for a while to
(laughs) worship elsewhere.
What was the biggest change at the end of this period that occurred?
I think the biggest change was that we, with the Uniting Church coming into place in
1977, that some of the old links – – –. Methodism always operated in like what they
called a ‘circuit’ where you had two or three churches together and, while they had
their individual minister, they shared, supported each other financially and in other
ways; and since early days Campbelltown had had a very strong relationship with
Payneham Road Methodist Church, the one at Marden on the corner of Payneham
Road and Lower Portrush Road at Marden; and in earlier days, particularly in the
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1930s and ’40s when it was a small, country congregation, Payneham Road
Congregation had in fact supported the cost of ministry; and the ’70s and Uniting
Church brought change. Payneham Road, we lost that link and we became linked
with the new suburbs of Athelstone and Dernancourt, and we were the strong
financial church then and it was our turn to support them financially with ministry
and, in fact, when the first minister went to Athelstone just after the year of the
cyclone which I think was ’76, the Campbelltown trustees – that was before Uniting
Church – in fact paid nearly ten thousand dollars for the new manse. It doesn’t sound
a lot of money but that same manse today would cost probably four hundred thousand
dollars. So there was change of associations and support.
So you became the parent, not the child.
Yes. We became the parent. And at that stage, of course, the church was very strong
financially, numerically. They were the strong days, and in fact one of the things that
happened was we built a porch on the front of the building to try and alleviate the
road noise because in the 1960s, late 1960s, seven foot of the land was taken away to
widen the Lower North East Road, and that was a project, but that was the main
building project that that property has had since about the 1920s was this porch, and
it’s like a meeting area and a porch which acts as a buffer for road noise. Prior to
that, there’d been just minor building alterations like the sanctuary area was
remodelled to reflect the current open style rather than the central pulpit, but the
major building was to put on the porch at the front.
In the process of uniting the Methodists and Protestants –
The Congregational and Presbyterians, yes.
– yes, where did the Campbelltown church stand within that debate?
Well, the vote to go into union was taken about eighteen months before and I think
out of our congregation there was about sixteen people voted against going into
union. But, in fairness, union – Uniting Church – really meant for Campbelltown and
Dernancourt and Athelstone and these eastern part of the suburbs no change because
there was no Congregational or Presbyterian churches in the area to combine, so for
many people they saw it as a name change – and in some ways, up until the last five
to ten years, that’s really about what did happen. The government has changed, the
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method of government within your local congregation changed, but really we weren’t
faced with needing to combine with the local Presbyterian church around the corner
which meant that we could have had to sell property, because many churches where
there’s been combination has meant sooner or later the congregation’s had to make a
decision about property.
Amalgamation.
Amalgamation and sale of property. I wonder, (laughs) if there’d been that situation,
whether the vote would have been different; but, of course, the Methodist Church was
a corporate church and if seventy-five per cent of the congregations around Australia
voted the whole Church went in, whereas in the case of Congregational and
Presbyterian Churches, each congregation was a separate legal entity and if they
didn’t vote to go to union they didn’t. But of course in South Australia the
Congregational churches were very small in number and so were the Presbyterian
churches. Interstate – Sydney, Melbourne, in Victoria and New South Wales – the
Presbyterian Church is a very strong continuing church, as big as the Uniting Church;
but South Australia was uniquely Protestant and had been settled, of course, by very
strong Methodists. In fact, Methodists were in the early 1900s, if you look at census,
were more prominent than even the Anglicans.
So where did the archival historical arm of the Methodist Church fit within all of
this amalgamation? And you must have been involved at that point: how was it
handled?
Well, what happened with the history, the Methodists had had a historical society to
foster history and maintain history since the 1950s. They changed – as happened so
much in South Australia – they changed the name, of course, to the Uniting Church
Historical Society, established a new council and invited people from the other two
denominations to join, so it became a society for the three denominations. Each of
the other two denominations had not had a society as such, but they’d both had a
person who had been called their archivist, so they’d had an individual person that
looked after their history. And all of the three Churches had always deposited their
principal records with the State Library in a special collection, and even today there
are four collections in the State Library: the Methodist Church Collection, the
Congregational Church Collection, the Presbyterian Church Collection and now the
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Uniting Church Collection, and we’re still continuing to add to those collections.
They are the principal minute books and the principal records, the ..... and local
histories and newssheets are maintained by the Historical Society at their own
History Centre.
Are you the official archivist for the Uniting Church?
I am now. I was only appointed eighteen months ago. So my task now is, as
churches surrender records, is to sort through those records, determine what is
principal and that must be lodged with the Library, determine what must go to the
History Centre and determine what ends up being recycled, because so often – and
which we prefer people to do – is to give us all their records, but some things like a
list of the number of scones that were sold at the Strawberry Fête are not really
relevant because if they’re recorded in a minute book that’s okay; but any loose bits
of paper and things like that, some are kept depending on their value, but the majority
of those become recycled.
Very interesting. I’ll just have a pause and we’ll have a drink of water. I think
now is the time to go back into the history of the Uniting Church in Campbelltown
and how it was decided, and when it was decided, that you would write this book.
Well, I was approached by the local committee of elders because they were going to
celebrate the hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the Campbelltown Methodist
Uniting Church. Now, they’d chosen as the anniversary date the hundred and fiftieth
year from the opening of the first church in Chapel Street, Campbelltown – hence the
name – and they’d also celebrated the centenary based on the 1858 date, and so I was
invited to write this history. When I started to write the history, in fact, I established
that before they had built in Chapel Street in 1858 they’d been meeting as a
congregation at Darley, which was the little suburb which is now recognised by
Darley Road, and they in fact had met in the Traveller’s Rest Inn that was run by a
gentleman called Mr James Crowle, spelt C-R-O-W-L-E – Crowle Road at Paradise
is named after him – and that they were part of the Adelaide Wesleyan preachers’
plan or circuit, which stretched from Willunga to Princess Royal Mine out at Burra,
and Darley was a preaching place and they normally had their services at three
o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. So that was really in a way the beginning of the
congregation.
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This is what date?
Eighteen forty-seven. But the celebration was based on the first building, so once
you’ve established a date you really can’t change, even though some people wanted
to, it was appropriate. So the book was produced for the hundred and twenty-fifth
anniversary.
So the growth of Methodism in this district, the Campbelltown district, was closely
linked to the development of the Wesleyan Methodist Society in South Australia,
the birth of that. Is that correct?
Yes, because in Methodism there was four groups: there was the Wesleyan
Methodist, the Primitive Methodist, the Bible Christians and the Methodist New
Connection. The other three were splinter groups from the Wesleyan Methodist but
they all came to South Australia from different parts of England, many established –
like at Moonta, there was thirteen Methodist churches of all the different persuasions
(laughs) in the township and the mining area of Moonta. In 1900 they all came
together to form the Methodist Church in South Australia and in 1902 nationally they
came together to form the Methodist Church of Australasia. But the Wesleyans
probably were the predominant because they tended to be the merchants and farmers
and, even today, if you go round the city and look at Uniting churches, you can
identify the style of building relating to the churches like Wesley Church at Kent
Town, that grand church that seats fifteen hundred people; the one at Payneham
Road, on the corner of Payneham Road and Marden; Malvern Uniting Church: they
are built in a style of reasonably – like, for the time – reasonably prosperous and
fairly traditional. The Bible Christians and the Primitive Methodists tend to build
little chapels, very sparse, and they represented in a way the merchant class and the
workers – not that there weren’t workers in the Wesleyans, but the Wesleyans tended
to be the people like the Waterhouses and the Coultons[?] and people that – they
established Prince Alfred College very early in the piece, and John Dunne[?] the flour
miller and the Bonython family and many of the merchant families and farming
families, the Hannafords and people like that were members of that church.
Very interesting. So you mentioned the first preaching circuit. When did that
conclude and then what happened after that?
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In about the 1850s, because of the sheer distance and the fact that they needed to rely
on local preachers, which has always been one of the strengths of the Church, they
started to create what they called circuits, which were groups of places, and they
created – and Campbelltown, by 1858 when they were at Campbelltown, they were
included with Norwood, Kent Town, Payneham, Magill and little Athelstone, and so
they were a group. Then that group continued until 1914, when the grouping became
Payneham, Campbelltown, Klemzig and that was the group. Then in the ’50s I think
Athelstone came into the group, until 1977.
How did the local – well, it wasn’t Campbelltown then.
No.
What do we call it? We just call it Campbelltown?
Campbelltown. Even though the postal, official address was ‘Campbell Town’, as
two words. But by about the 1860s, 1870s, it had just reverted to ‘Campbelltown’ as
we know it today.
So tell me a little bit about the history of who donated the land and how the first
chapel in Chapel Street was built.
Well, the land was given to the Church or they paid one shilling because they needed
to transfer it from James Crowle, the gentleman whose hotel they’d met in at Darley
Road, his hotel also had the pound alongside of it and the place where it is is from
Lower North East Road, going up Darley Road towards the Campbelltown School,
on your left about a hundred yards. That’s about where the pound and the hotel
originally was.
This is an animal pound, is it?
Yes, animal pound. He was also employed by the local District Council of Stepney,
as it was then called, as the pound keeper, and I gather – I’ve read separately – that he
was a bit of character: that if he saw your cow wandering on the road he’d impound
it so he could fine you and get paid. So he gave the land, he gave a block in Chapel
Street, which is just off around the corner from Hill Street on the left-hand side, and
today there stands a big Tudor house on the site which was built in 1930 by
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Mr Kingsley Stock from Stock’s Garage, and he demolished it in 1930, the original
old church, to build his home when he married.
The original church was a rammed concrete and stone building, literally built by
putting up boards and the concrete and rods and that were rammed in.
Compacting.
Compacted. And that remained the church till 1908.
And no doubt it was called ‘Chapel Street’ sometime later, it would have been
‘Section’ something.
It would have been a section that he gave, but there would have been a street, but they
would have taken its name from the chapel because, traditionally, in the old
understanding, the ‘Church’ was the Anglican in England and the ‘Chapel’ was for
the Nonconformists, as they were known, so it was a name that tended to be brought
out to South Australia. But as time went on the churches like Wesley Church at Kent
Town were called ‘churches’ – and I mean they’re grand enough to be; Wesley
Church seats fifteen hundred people, which is more than either of the cathedrals in
Adelaide. But ‘Chapel Street’ would have come from that little chapel.
What would have been around there, did you research any of that?
At the time, on the main road where Stock’s Corner now is and the service station,
there was a small blacksmith’s shop; but the rest were gardens. And there was a
couple of houses later built in Chapel Street, because Chapel Street really is parallel
to the North East Road and that was the edge of the village of Campbelltown and
there were a few houses in there, but they mainly were on acre blocks where people
could keep a cow or grow vegetables, and even in the 1930s photographs they were
still growing – the corner of Hill Street and North East Road was all vegetable patch,
and in fact I have an aerial photo that was taken in 1930 by Mr Kingsley Stock out of
a little it would have been a Tiger Moth showing the street, and you can identify the
church, the hall and the manse and their garage, and then you can see Hill Street and
it’s all paddocks.
There would have been no other chapel or church in the vicinity.
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17
No. The nearest church would have been St Martin’s Anglican, which was built,
opened I think a year before, on the corner of Gorge Road; and then there would have
been a church at Payneham, Methodist church at Payneham – not at the site of the
current one, but in Henry Street. And there was also later a little Congregational
chapel built at Athelstone on the site of what is now the Athelstone Independent
Cemetery, but that wasn’t built till about the 1880s, so it was the only church – oh,
the Anglicans and the Methodists were the only two church buildings.
Did they have a bell that would ring out –
Yes.
– for church on Sundays and was there a minister located there at that time?
There was no minister here. The minister would have come from Payneham or
Norwood or Kent Town.
On horseback, no doubt.
Yes, on horseback, yes. And he would have been part of what they called the circuit.
The first minister was appointed to Campbelltown in 1912 and that first year was a
lay person who lived here; and then the next year was the Reverend W.O. Harris, who
was appointed, and he and his wife came – fairly young minister with twin daughters,
and at the hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary one of those two daughters turned up
to the function.
Wonderful. And there is a manse for them to live in?
There was a manse. The manse was built, it used to be on the corner – originally they
rented a house on the corner of Chapel Street and Hill Street, and that was
demolished about ten, twelve years ago. It never belonged to the Church, that was
only rented. And in 1926 they built a bungalow house at 610 Lower North East Road
and the minister still currently lives in that house. Ten years ago it had major
renovations and additions, so it’s a four-bedroomed house with all of the modern
requirements, but it’s a beautiful bungalow, and that was built in 1926.
So in about the first half a century there was – – –.
They really were – no minister; they relied on local preachers and they relied on the
minister coming from the other churches. And they would have done that because
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18
that was the normal practice within the Church, that the ministers would travel within
their circuit.
There was a bell, to answer your question, there was a bell in the turret, the little
turret on the front, and when that church was sold in – when they built the new
church on the Lower North East Road in 1903 they sold the old church to A.J. Stock
who by then – in 1900 he purchased the blacksmith shop on the corner, and he
purchased that little church with a view to use it as a place, as a paint shop. When he
built a dray or a buggy he needed to take it out of the foundry to paint, so they cut a
big hole in the side and made it into a paint shop. And the bell went up – was taken
down and was sent up to Tiverton Station out of Burra and it’s still up there, because
one of his daughters married the Tiver family at Burra, and it has been returned on
special occasions just for the day, because they’re relations and Betty and John Fry,
who live just down from the library here on Montacute Road, are related to that
family and they’ve been able to borrow it.
And it was one of the minister’s daughters, was it?
No, it was one of the Stocks.
The Stocks.
A.J. Stock’s daughter married into the Tiver family, who are very well-known
pastoralists out of Burra.
How were the finances of all of this managed? Was it locally done or centrally in
the state or the city?
Normally the local congregation – well, they were given the land; they would have
had to raise the money for the building and they would have borrowed, borrowed
from the local bank, to have built. They used to have great fundraisers: tea meetings,
which was an old-fashioned way, we would call it a ‘social’, but where there’d be a
meal provided by the ladies and everyone would buy a ticket and pay, and that was a
very well-known way in the Church of having a tea meeting and then after the meal
or feed they would have a soloist and a speaker.
Where would all this take place?
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19
This would have happened in the church or, if they didn’t have a church, in early days
when they were raising money for the Campbelltown church they had a couple in the
Anglican hall at St Martin’s. But that was a common way of raising money, the tea
meetings; and the story is told – not only here, but if you read Church history – that
all the ladies would compete to see who could produce the best tray of food, as they
described it. So competition’s still the same, only it’s in a different way, dressed up
in a different manner. (laughs)
And was there a trust set up to manage all of these finances, and who managed the
trust?
Well, in the Methodist Church there were trustees appointed for each individual
property. They were appointed by the minister who was in charge of the individual
circuit and they were appointed under the terms of a model deed for the Methodist
Church – Wesleyan Methodist model deed – and at the time when that was being
drafted Campbelltown Church was just being transferred, so we became, our trust, or
the Campbelltown trust of 1858, became the basis of the model deed. It just
happened that they were at that time, and then that became the way we held property
right up until 1972. And each trustee had to sign, as you would as a trustee of an
estate, and you were responsible and if they took a mortgage the trustees would have
to guarantee it and sign for it.
I wonder if it would be interesting to read a little bit of what you’ve written in your
book about the early days in Campbelltown. It’s quite a good description of 1866,
which is in this early period. If you don’t want to read the whole lot, just a section
that you think is most interesting?
I think it’s worth recording because it reminds us that what we now know as a city of
Campbelltown is made up of a number of villages which were in those days, and
really right up probably until the late 1940s, early 1950s, were still separate, very
separate little communities, and it’s only since the subdivision’s taken place that
we’ve come together as a city and in fact that’s probably one of the reasons why as a
city we don’t really have a centre that’s identified as a city centre. We have our
Council Chambers and our library, but we’ve never really had a city centre like a lot
of cities do because we’re a group of villages. And this description is recorded in the
South Australian Gazetteer, which was really like, I guess, an old road directory for
want of a better word, and it describes:
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Campbelltown is a postal township in the electoral district of
East Torrens, Hundred of Adelaide, and under the control of
the District Council of Payneham. It lies five miles
north-east of Adelaide and is bounded on the west by the
Torrens River, on the east by the south branch of the
North-East Road. The township has an area of 260 acres and
was named after C.J.F. Campbell, Esq. The main reservoir
supplying the Adelaide Waterworks lies about half a mile to
the east.
The district is an agricultural one, the land being taken up as
market gardens and for the growth of hay. There are also
numerous vineyards in the neighbourhood and many of the
farmers graze cattle on the outlying lands.
The nearest places are Newton, one mile east; Paradise, half a
mile north-east; and Darley, one mile north. There are no
regular conveyances to these places and the communication
with Adelaide is by omnibus twice a day.
There is a Post Office, a Church of England, a Wesleyan
Chapel and one hotel, the Glynde, about a mile south of the
township on the Lower North-East Road.
The surrounding country is low but the land is of good
description, forming part of the Adelaide Plains, and the
formation chiefly limestone. The population numbers about
160 persons.
Thank you very much. Beautiful. Let’s just talk a little bit more about those days.
I read in your book that there were gatherings called ‘class meetings’, which were
ways for local people to contribute, I think, to needy people in the district. Could
you tell me a little bit more about that?
The class meeting was very distinctive to the Methodist Church because the idea was
that they met on a weekly basis within people’s homes to have prayers, share each
other’s spiritual and physical needs – bearing in mind that there was no social
security, so if somebody was ill or there was no sickness funds support each other
physically – and also care for the congregation, for the church. This had grown up
out of John Wesley’s original intention in England that he did not wish to break away
from the Anglican Church but he wanted his people to meet together but to still on
Sunday worship in the Anglican parish church. But as time went on they were
excluded and so therefore they established chapels. So the class meeting was part of
that. In a sense it was a caring fellowship group.
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A grass roots – – –.
Grass roots. But it also was important to study and share and part of their Christian
growth and conversion. And in fact to be a member you were required to regularly
attend a class meeting, and it was in about the 1880s, 1890s, that that gradually
started to become, as the Church became more organised into circuits, that that
became less and less and by the early 1900s most of them had ceased.
It’s interesting in my book, and I’ve just remembered, I see that the classes met
regularly and that they were averaging giving to the funds four pounds ten shillings a
quarter, which was quite a substantial amount, which would have paid towards
ministry and upkeep of the buildings. Normally with the church the upkeep of the
building was maintained by people paying pew rents – P-E-W, pews – pew rents, and
what would happen is that you as a family would reserve a seat in the church for your
family and you would pay rent for it annually, which would be paid quarterly, and
that would in fact pay for the maintenance of the building. It was a good idea but it
also had some problems because if a visitor came (laughs) and sat in your seat some
people would get a little bit upset by that. But that continued in many of our churches
right up till the 1930s and the big churches – I can remember as a child going to
Spicer, where my grandmother had worshipped, and we always out of habit sat in the
same seat but her name was still on the card on the end of the seat even though pew
rents had ceased; but up until the 1940s she would have paid.
How much?
Oh, it was probably something like four or five pounds a year. Depends on the
congregation. Probably at Campbelltown it might have only been a couple of pounds
a year; but that money they needed to maintain the building.
So you would literally own a part of the church.
Well, you had rights over it, I suppose, and if anybody sat in your seat I suppose you
could invite them to leave, (laughs) which wasn’t probably – – –. But in a small
congregation like Campbelltown there would have been the regulars and they would
have [been] unlikely to have had a visitor because you were out in rural countryside.
But that was how the money was raised.
And were the stipends for the ministers paid from that as well?
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That was paid mainly from the class meeting and from the offering, as is still the case
today. We don’t have pew rents, but from the offering moneys a stipend is paid to
the minister.
So the wealthier the congregation the better off the minister is?
No, because in the Methodist Church and in the Uniting Church the central body sets
a standard stipend. Congregations can choose to pay above that, but these days the
stipend is set to cover – if you add up the stipend plus the parsonage and the other
benefits it’s probably these days equivalent to sixty or seventy thousand dollars a
year, so it is market. In the early days the Methodist Church paid a stipend which
was again centrally determined, but of course in those days the parsonages had big
yards with lots of fruit trees and places for their horse, because they needed to keep a
horse, and the families would – you know, fruit trees in those days, families
preserved and made jam and did all of those things.
Had a cow for milk.
And probably had a cow for milk. They would have, certainly, here because they had
a lot of space. Inner suburban may not have.
And no shops.
Well, there was a little grocery store, of course, in Campbelltown and it was on the
opposite side from the manse. Well, in the 1930s there was a little grocery store run
by the Floyd family and Ken Floyd, the son, is now the President of the Morialta
Probus Club and he still lives in Campbelltown. But where the main Campbelltown
Shopping Centre opposite the Campbelltown Methodist Church is now, that was a big
market garden run by the Munchenberg[?] family and the road opposite Hambledon
Road, opposite the church which comes up, didn’t even exist.
So how were the children in the district involved in the life of the Church in these
early days?
Well, the children, there was the school at Campbelltown, which is now the site of
the Marche Club – that’s M-A-R-C-H-E, Italian club – were all educated there and
that was the original school, and the children there, and then they were
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accommodated – in 1912 the Church built what they called a Sunday school hall so
there was a place for them to go for activities, for Sunday school, for other events.
No Sunday school before 1912?
Oh, there was before 1912, but they would have in those days met in the old church
or in the other church because there was no specifically separate – – –. We believe
there was a Sunday school right from 1850s but they didn’t have their own separate
building until 1912.
And that was in the hall that was constructed that year.
Yes. And it’s the current hall that the Church uses. It’s had additions but it’s the
hall. And it’s interesting that one of the ladies in our congregation today, her
grandfather laid the foundation stone of that hall and she still worships with us and
she’s now eighty-eight.
Who’s that?
Well, the foundation stone was laid by Mr Pitt, who had a property on George Street
at Paradise, and Mrs Betty Neill – spelt N-E-I-double-L – is his granddaughter and
she is eighty-eight, and she still drives a car and worships with us most Sundays.
Oh, wow.
And so there still are – she is probably the lady with the oldest link, now; and he was
also a first trustee of the church in Chapel Street.
Wonderful. [I suppose the children and the families as a whole would have
gathered – – –.]
END OF DISK 1: DISK 2
[And so there still are – she is probably the lady with the oldest link, now; and he was
also a first trustee of the church in Chapel Street.
Wonderful.] I suppose the children and the families as a whole would have
gathered for recreation from the early days as well – for picnics or trips or tennis:
what do you know about that?
I was given a fair bit of background by Mr Kingsley Stock at the time I was writing
the paper and he remembered when, as a student, when the school at Campbelltown
got to a hundred scholars, which meant they got a second teacher.
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In what year would this be?
This would have been in about 1915, approximately. And he remembers as a child
them having Sunday school picnics and picnics out at the paddock behind the church
in what was the garden of the Rowney family, and Rowney Avenue runs at the back
of the church and that was the dividing. He remembers picnics there.
R-O-W-N-E-Y?
N-E-Y.
I just have to ask for the transcriptionist.
Yes. That’s correct, Rowney. And he remembers that. He also remembers after
school a lady used to have a reading session in the church, in the Sunday school hall
for children, and used to read Pilgrim’s progress to the children and he was one of
those.
In about 1920 the first tennis court was laid behind the church and tennis became
very important to a lot of those families. It started off as a cinder tennis court, just
covered in cinders, but later asphalt, and by the 1960s they’d built four courts which
are still there. They’re not all used for tennis these days but I think they still play
social tennis on one and the other one’s used for netball.
Was this competition tennis with other districts or just social?
Well, it was social but it was also competition within the Church. The Methodist
Church had the Methodist Church Tennis Association and churches used to play
against each other, and there was fairly fierce competition. There was an annual cup
and shield and on a number of occasions Campbelltown won it in the 1930s, and I
think the Association still operates – be it limited – as the Uniting Church Tennis
Association; and there was also a Uniting Church Cricket Association, which
encouraged young people in the community – they weren’t always church people – to
belong and that was important, particularly during the Depression years, when
families couldn’t afford much, the fact that they could still play tennis or cricket was
probably a very good social outreach.
And did they have fêtes in those early days as well?
Yes, fêtes and tea meetings were very much part of their fundraising.
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25
So like an old English village, really.
Yes. It was very much like a village. It’s also that during – I think from the 1930s,
1940s, the local Red Cross branch always met in the Campbelltown Methodist
Church Hall, and right up until the 1970s I think when it was disbanded, the local
branch of Red Cross, they always met in the hall. And in the early days, in the 1930s,
the trustees used to lease the back room to a local doctor for a surgery for a small
time; and also in the ’50s they leased it to the Mothers’ and Babies’ [Health]
Association – yes, that’s the name it used to be – as a clinic space for young babies
and mothers before they built their own rooms which is behind the shopping centre at
Campbelltown. So it in a way was very much like a village.
How did the district and the Church community fare during the Great Depression
– well, World War I, the Depression, World War II?
Yes.
What were the significant events or histories during that period?
Both the First and the Second World Wars, it’s interesting to look: in the church
there’s two honour rolls and if you look at those honour rolls you’ll find in many
cases families where perhaps three or four sons went to war and numbers were killed,
and so you’ll see the names and you’ll see the little cross alongside one name which
means that they – – –. But whilst there was not a lot of people there were families,
and of course in those days there were six and seven children often in a family, and
so that would have affected some families. There’s some where there’s two sons
perhaps killed, so the effect that would have had on the community, especially a
small community – even in the Second World War it was still a small community –
would have had some effect.
The Depression, I suppose, it had an effect on the Church but I think they were
lucky in the sense that they belonged to what we called the circuit and they had
Payneham Road Church as the mother church and that church was always reasonably
comfortable because a lot of the members there, as well as at Campbelltown, were
gardeners and the Depression, whilst they might have got less for their goods, they
didn’t suffer like people that depended on another employee for work; they could be a
little bit self-sustaining. It would have had an effect on their income but it did mean –
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26
They ate.
– they ate and they probably had a little bit of money because they still could sell
some produce.
They might have had transport with horses.
Yes. And the Payneham people, most of the members of Payneham Road Church,
were fairly established families who’d been early – the Pitts and the Hobbses and the
Jameses – and they’d been fairly well established, and for many of those families the
Depression probably didn’t make – made some difference, but not the major
difference that we understand perhaps in some areas where people depended on
foundries and businesses.
And when you say the Depression affected the Church, what do you mean by that?
Well, it affected the Church in the sense that it meant that money was harder to come
by, and in fact I do have a note in my book that during the Depression the circuit
could no longer afford to have a phone for the minister so the telephone was cut off
and people would have to leave messages for him with the store down the road and
he would go down and get his messages once a day. So it would have had that effect.
It would have probably meant that the basic stipend was less, but probably many of
the people supported the minister by vegetables, as happened in the country, or meat
or milk and those things. So in a small community they probably managed a little
better than in some industrial areas.
And how about the numbers of worshippers, members of the congregation, from
the First War through to the Second?
They stayed, looking at the membership rolls, the membership stayed fairly
consistent during that period at about a hundred members because the area, there was
not many new houses being built, especially during the Depression, there was
basically no new housing, so if people left somebody else’d buy the property but
there’d be very little change. The Church probably was a centre for people to gather
and, as I say, it provided a cricket club, a tennis club, some of those things that
enabled people to at least have some social outreach. And I’ve heard – not just
related to this church but in general history – many people have written that the
Church was, in a sense, their only place because they could go to church, be accepted,
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there’d be a place for their children at Sunday school, there’d perhaps be a tennis
club, a cricket club, and many churches ran gymnasiums so there was somewhere for
young people, many teenagers I suppose who were unemployed. So in a sense the
Church was a social – provided an outreach in those times.
But Campbelltown was lucky in the sense that it had the support of Payneham and
the people managed but the fact they had to cut off the telephone showed how tightly
the budget was restrained. We can’t understand that today; I mean, if we haven’t got
three telephones and fifteen power points in our house we think we’re poor, (laughs)
don’t we?
So at the end of World War II when this district was in transition from rural to
suburban and agricultural land was turning into land for housing, what impact did
that have on the numbers in the area and the members of the Church?
The first real subdivision around started between 1950 and 1955. Most of the
subdivision at that stage, early subdivisions were in Paradise and behind what is the
Campbelltown Shopping Centre, through there, and a lot of it was built in by the then
South Australian Housing Trust. That meant initially – and I remember looking at
statistics – that between the 1950 and the 1955 Census the population of the area in
fact went down by a few hundred because many of the gardeners started to move, sell
up, subdivide and move out to Virginia, or some went down to McLaren Vale and
some, of course, just retired.
As the land became more valuable.
As the land [became] more valuable for subdivision.
And also rates were increased.
I think the Campbelltown Council, from what I understand, always kept a rural rate;
but the land became valuable – close to the city – and even down along James Street,
which follows the creek, Third Creek, that was subdivided, and the Housing Trust
built individual homes for sale through there and that was in about 1958 to 1960, and
so the land was becoming valuable and that meant many families retired but many
moved out and sometimes the sons went and worked elsewhere because they’d grown
up and worked with their father on the garden and once the garden was sold the sons
often went and worked in other jobs, some driving trucks or ran businesses. So there
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was a social change, too, and I can think of one person I know, he was an only child,
and his parents sold up and he became a teacher, schoolteacher, and worked with
disabled children for the rest of his working life. Another friend of ours who we
know very well, his father owned land and he was an only child: he went and worked
for Woodroofe’s or somebody driving trucks because that’s where he was skilled,
you know; he’d been a gardener. So it had some social changes. It meant that
suddenly some of the members of the congregation I think who’d been very
comfortable, because they’d had property, suddenly were very prosperous – trips to
England and holiday houses, a whole group of them bought holiday houses at
Aldinga Beach – and there were some very smart new Ford Customlines in the
church car park. So I guess that had that change.
But then of course the new people came in, like us – we were young marrieds with
a new house and mortgage –
Swelled the numbers.
– and swelled the numbers. So there was a change. But that initial change in the ’50s
meant that the congregation probably stayed fairly stagnant, but in fact the district
went back in numbers, census numbers, only a few hundred but those few hundred
while the subdivision was taking place and the new building.
And then the numbers in the congregation doubled and trebled.
Gradually trebled. And it got, I think at one stage, probably in about – be just before
the hundred and twenty-fifth in 1980 and just before that – our membership was
something like two hundred and fifty confirmed members. That also means that your
actual attendance and involvement was higher because not everyone is a confirmed
member of the Church and, as I say, there was sometimes up to four hundred children
or more in the Sunday school.
I notice that you mentioned the new hall and the Mothers’ and Babies’ clinic in the
’60s –
Yes.
– and that also in the ’60s there was a push to communicate with people via a
Church magazine.
Yes.
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29
Can you tell me a little bit about that, did you look at those?
Yes. They decided to create a quarterly magazine which they would send out to all.
In those days, of course, you didn’t print them; you ran them off on a Gestetner. You
typed them on a sheet and ran them off on a Gestetner, duplicated them, and they
were put together and it was a way to sent out to the community to retain some of the
history. In fact, I’ve got a set of four still home because for the first year it was
launched my wife was the editor and she used to type the thing on a stencil and then
it was run off on the local (laughs) duplicator at the church.
Gestetner.
Gestetner at the church. And they were topical about what groups were doing and
every time she included a profile of one of the early members. Then, over the years,
like most voluntary things, the magazine ceased and then it was picked up again; but
certainly that was a way of communicating with people on the fringe and outside.
And there were teens’ groups and couples’ groups and I think a modern morning
service.
Yes. They started – the Couples’ Club was formed mainly because there were so
many young marrieds with young children and the idea was about every six or eight
weeks on a Saturday night there’d be an event. You’d all take supper or go out
somewhere and the idea was to allow people that opportunity to probably get
Grandma to babysit because many times those days that was the only opportunity to
get out. In the majority of cases, when the children were young in those days, most
of the wives were still home and didn’t go back to professions or work till after the
children went to school – some did but not many, because child care was not the
norm in those days – and so it was an opportunity for people to get out and mix and
do things. They did also attempt, for a while there was a modern service in the sense
that they used guitars and modern music and they met in the hall generally because
they found the formal layout of the church they saw as restrictive. But that lasted for
a few years but it tended to – as certain people, I guess, who were the driving force
moved somewhere else then it lapsed.
So what was it like for you as a lay preacher during the time that you lived here?
What were those years when you were a lay preacher?
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30
Well, I would occasionally preach at Campbelltown but generally elsewhere, because
we had a permanent minister and so the normal custom was that the permanent
minister preaches and that the lay preachers assist if he’s on holidays, sick. And in
those days we had about three others so there was about five of us, so you may get a
chance once a year to lead the service; but generally you would go elsewhere.
Did you look forward to those times when you could locally lead the service?
Oh, yes, they were good times. Always when it’s in your own group it’s not the
same, in the sense that I suppose you’re on more tenterhooks than perhaps if you go
elsewhere. But they were good times in the sense that you could include other people
and the whole congregation in what you were hoping to do.
And this is in the 1970s, isn’t it?
’Seventies and ’80s, yes.
’Eighties. So you would go out to country areas.
Yes.
You mentioned Riverton. Is it the same now, does that process still take place?
It happens – not for me, because I have other involvements; and I still have links and
occasionally I go and preach at Payneham Road because they were the links of the
old circuit, and if I chose to make myself available I could (laughs) just about every
Sunday be preaching; but I’ve chosen not to because of other involvements. And
things change.
Yes. So between the period that ends this book –
Yes.
– From Darley to Campbell Town, so from 1982 until this year is another quarter of
a century.
Century, yes.
So have you updated, are you writing something that follows on or could you tell
me a little bit about the changes?
Right. At this stage we’ve not written – or we’ve gathered some information but it’s
not been documented. There’s been quite a few changes. I suppose the first change
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was that in about 1995 the links that had been part of the Uniting Church, which was
Dernancourt and Athelstone and Campbelltown, were broken and each church
became a separate, single parish.
Because the numbers were big enough?
Yes; and also that’s a philosophy of the Uniting Church, albeit that I don’t agree with
it, but the philosophy is that each church becomes independent. It doesn’t happen in
the country because that’s financially not practical. And so Campbelltown then
found itself on its own. Now, by then, most of the children of our children’s age
group, the people that had arrived in the ’60s and the early ’70s, had grown up,
married or moved away and so therefore the Sunday school we find ourselves from
then onwards with a Sunday school of only thirty or forty children. Many people,
some of the older members of the congregation, had started to retire and so therefore
incomes were limited, and the numbers that worship had started to move down to
perhaps a hundred and twenty, hundred and thirty. There were still things happening
but that was part of the change because it’s reflected in the schools, that East Marden
Primary School that got to nine hundred scholars is now only three hundred and fifty;
Campbelltown Primary that was seventeen hundred is down to about seven hundred;
Charles Campbell High School became the combination of Campbelltown High
School and Charles Campbell, and in fact Campbelltown High School’s been sold off
and is housing. So these changes were affecting the Church.
Also many of us have chosen not to shift, so we’re still in the same house and
probably will remain so until we go to a retirement village or whatever, so that means
that, while the Church is still stable, the numbers, there’s not the young people
coming in because the housing in this district hasn’t started to really turn over that
first generation because most of the houses were built in the ’60s and ’70s, and once
they start to turn over it will mean possibly that there’ll be new people come in; but
whether they will relate to the Church in this different age is yet to be – – –. And the
Church probably needs to be innovative to attract them. I’d say probably, as a
congregation, our worship is still very traditional and so therefore not that much
different than it was thirty-five years ago, except for the use of electronic overheads.
But the actual format, with a choir and style, is not that much different, and so
whether we will attract new people when that starts to happen I don’t know.
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And families are having less children anyway.
Yes, so therefore there’s less children: where probably most of our age group might
have had two or three children, many are only having one or two. So things have
changed a bit. There is – in the 1990s they adopted, set up a group called a ‘Drop-in’,
and on Thursdays people from the community come in, they can play cards, they can
just talk, they can play carpet bowls and they have morning tea and lunch, so that’s
still an outreach; but that again, as the district’s changed, it’s still operating but not
with the large numbers that it did when it started. I mean I’m not sure of how many
they get now, but probably they’d get twenty or thirty whereas once they were getting
fifty and sixty. Sometimes people are brought over, too, from the nursing home at
North East Community Hospital, but only ones that can be in a wheelchair. So
there’s those things happening. There’s still ladies’ fellowship groups; there’s
nothing for men; but churches are noted never to generally have men’s groups much.
A lot of the men in our congregation belong to Rotary and Probus. There is a group
on Monday evenings that currently meets as a friendship, caring group and they do
quilting, which of course is the fashion, and they attract about twenty-five to thirty
people and over half of the ladies that come are not directly involved with the
congregation; so that’s a small outreach.
But we’re living in a different climate than we even were in the ’60s. When most
of us arrived in the district we had come from churches – not all, but we’d come from
churches and come with those links. Many people that did join our congregation
necessarily didn’t have, perhaps, the long historic links that I had, but they’ve come
and been involved and they found new friendship and – well, now, forty years, some
of them – and they socialise and travel together and do things. But there’s not a lot of
new people.
Are you optimistic?
Oh, yes. I think we need to probably be prepared to change, and that’s not easy even
for somebody like me because I rather personally would be just as happy worshipping
at St Peter’s Cathedral with the ritual as I would with modern drums. But when my
sons were home they were part of a group that did that and it was important for them
because you’ve got to – but now I’m free, I guess – well, not free now, but I’m older
– I prefer, but I’m not sure that that will attract people.
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The other thing that we’ve got to realise, I think, is – being optimistic – that
Sunday is no longer the only day, perhaps, when we ought to hold – – –. We may
have to think about a mid-week worship service, because some people have to work
on Sundays. So the patterns are different, society is different, values are different. I
think the basic structure is there and the care, but we’ve got to get people to – – –.
And while the district – we’ve got to wait and see what’s going to happen with the
district. I mean, many of the houses around us are being let to Sudanese people and
that can be an outreach but, in my opinion – I’ll say my opinion – it can also be a
problem, because I’ve got fairly strong views on that one (laughs) so I won’t express
them.
Well, tell me a little bit about yourself in the present.
Yes.
Any other publications that you might have written and works that you’re
involved with, committees that you’re engaged with.
Right. Well, as well for the Church history, the first one I wrote, which originally
was in the form of a – – –. What was the Methodist Historical Society used to invite
people each year to prepare what they called a lecture and you would speak on the
subject, and mine was on Pirie Street Methodist Church in 1973. But then the
manuscript was printed into a book. And then in 1981 I was invited by the
Campbelltown people to write From Darley to Campbell Town, and then in 1983
Spicer Memorial Church at St Peters celebrated its centenary and so I was asked to
write their centenary history. So I suppose, as happens, once people know you do it
(laughs) they’re on your doorstep.
And then in 2006 I was invited to write a book which is a history of Epworth
Building in Pirie Street, 33 Pirie Street. It’s a six-storey building alongside where
Pirie Street Church used to stand.
Art Deco.
Yes. It was built in 1926.
It’s a lovely building.
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That was built by the Church and was owned by the Church until 2003, and so the
Board asked me to write a history because it’s quite a unique story. It was built by
the Church to provide accommodation for the Church officers and also income, and
built on that site was the original parsonage of the Pirie Street Church. So there was
those four histories.
I’ve contributed over the years small segments to some of the district – Elizabeth
Warburton, the well-known author, wrote a number of district, eastern suburban
council histories. She wrote first Paddocks beneath2, the history of Burnside; St
Peters3; and also of course the Campbelltown book From the river to the hills
4, and I
contributed small segments to her of Church history in those. And I’ve also written
articles for the Uniting Church, we put out a quarterly magazine, so you may write a
two- or three-page segment.
I’m currently reviewing my history of Pirie Street because now we have more
modern methods of producing photographs and texts, and so that will probably be
reprinted; and I’ve done a fair bit, because I was the foundation president of the
Campbelltown Historical Society when it was founded in 1987 as a result of
Elizabeth Warburton’s book. The Mayor at the time, Max Amber, chose to form or
we agreed to form a historical society and I was the president for the first five years,
so I’ve had involvement in that.
I’m just about due to formally retire and, as you indicated, I’m the archivist for the
Uniting Church Synod, which is a retirement job or it’s a voluntary job but it’s
something that I’ll enjoy. I serve as a board member of Uniting Care Adelaide East,
which is one of the missions that used to be, was known as the Hackney Mission,
early established, and I serve on that board. And I also serve on a trust called Spicer
Cottages Trust, which is a trust that provides homes for – it’s a separate trust in its
own right, under its own private act of parliament, established in 1897, which
2 The paddocks beneath: a history of Burnside from the beginning, The Corporation of the City of
Burnside, 1981.
3 St Peters: a suburban town, The Corporation of St Peters, 1983.
4 From the River to the Hills: Campbelltown, 150 Years, The Corporation of the City of Campbelltown,
1986.
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provides homes for widows and/or ministers of was the Methodist but now the
Uniting Church, and I’ve served on that trust for thirty-five years.
Where are those homes?
We’ve got five in Payneham, five in Campbelltown over just off Arthur Street – it
was called Finchley Park; it’s now Magill. We’ve got one at Felixstow and another
one at Rostrevor. We’ve got altogether thirteen and we’re due to build another two
very soon.
They’re all new builds?
Well, the original gift in 1897 was some very valuable property. In 1990 they were
then getting not suitable so we sold eight and built fourteen new ones.
Wonderful. You’ve mentioned some of the families who’ve been important to the
Campbelltown history and the Campbelltown Methodist history in particular –
Yes.
– but I’m aware that we haven’t mentioned any of the ministers at Campbelltown
who might have been important to remember, who’ve contributed in a big way. So
would you like to just mention a few of those?
Right. Because in the Methodist Church and ministers were appointed generally for
an average of four-to-five-year terms, in the Uniting Church they’re called and they
can stay up to ten years, it’s a different structure. But when we talked about some of
the ministers, the first minister appointed, W.O. Harris, who came as a young man
with these two twin girls I mentioned, he later went on to become President of the
Methodist Conference and the Secretary of the Conference – in other words, we
would call I guess in business a company secretary.
Of course, in the early days, many of the ministers that were appointed to
Campbelltown were younger because it was a country appointment. (laughs) Today
it seems unusual to describe it as a ‘country’ appointment; but it was, really. Most of
them were ministers who went on to serve in many other places. One particular one
that I can think of, Reverend Clarrie Hore who came in 1966, he’d come from the
country and he’d candidated for the ministry – during the War he worked for the
Whyalla shipyards building frigates, and he candidated for the ministry and he came
and he was a very special pastor, in the sense that he cared for people; and I’ve heard
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people say that he’d go and visit you in the garden and if you were under the truck
he’d get in under the truck to talk to you. And he was also the person that I guess
was there when there was the change.
How long was he here?
He was here for five years, and he was the one that probably was just at that time
when the real changes were really happening from gardening to suburbia.
Then there was the Reverend Trevor Oates and the Reverend Ken Rofe, who were
there in the ’60s and the ’70s when the growth, and they at that stage were
responsible for three growing congregations: they used to look after Dernancourt,
Athelstone and Campbelltown. That was a pretty big load when you had membership
of two hundred and fifty at Campbelltown and growing, and same at Athelstone and
Dernancourt which were new subdivisions then. And since union there’s been – they
were there after union; but since the Uniting Church we’ve had longest, the Reverend
Dr Joe Akehurst was here for nearly eight years.
Sorry, I didn’t catch that.
Akehurst, A-K-E-H-U-R-S-T. He was here for nearly eight years. And then Ken
Wright who was before our current minister, he was with us for three years but then
he went to Port Pirie because there was a particular need and nobody would take
ministry in the country. People don’t seem to want to go and serve in the country any
more. And our current minister, Gilles Ambler[?], has been with us five years.
But there’s been – I guess W.O. Harris is the one that started off and went out to be
– and another one in 1917 who was only here for one year, too, W.J. Bailey[?], he
later went on to become the Director of the Methodist Young People’s Department.
That’s an old-fashioned term, but he was responsible to look after the youth camps,
and the Methodist Church owns Nunyara at Belair, which is a youth camp. He was
responsible to buy that after the Second World War. And they also own Adare at
Victor Harbor, which is a youth camp. And so he was one of the people that were
very – later; when he would have been here in 1917 he would have only been a very
young man, but he later went on to develop those unique campsites which are still
used today and provide a very important outreach.
Well, I think we’ve covered most of the territory.
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Yes.
Is there anything you can think of that I’ve missed asking you about?
I think you’re right, that we’ve covered most of the territory. I see at the moment that
whilst we’re still part of the community, as we’ve said, what the future holds depends
a bit on the changes of the district and the moves, and I guess part of our ability to
change.
Well, thank you very much for this conversation today, Jim: it’s been very
interesting, I appreciate it a lot. And this will be the end of the interview with Jim
Everett on 3rd
December 2007. The interviewer is Catherine Murphy and there’s
only one file on this recording.
END OF RECORDING.