Interview Transcript from Illawarra Stories Wollongong City Libraries Oral History Project – Fay Connor
Interviewer: Edie Swift
Interview date: 7 May 2018
Edie Swift: My name is Edie Swift and today is May 7th, 2018. I’m interviewing Fay Connor, a Bulgo shack owner. We will be talking about Fay’s memories of Bulgo. We’re now at her house in Broulee. The oral history will go into the State Library of New South Wales and the Local Studies Library at Wollongong Library. So, we can just start with your memories, and what is your date of birth?
Fay Connor: The 15th of October 1938, so that’s, I’m 79, I’ll be eighty this year.
Edie Swift: OK. So, any memories you have of Bulgo would be very helpful.
Fay Connor: These are, um, shortened quite a bit, but as I go along, I will add things to it. But our cabin, as it stands now, was erected around 1932. Now before that time, and before I came along our family camped at the northern end of the beach in tents. Ah, now my grandmother and her half-sister, they went camping there, as well as all their children, and one night the rains came and there was a mudslide, and the tents were buried. Now, my grandmother’s half-sister, Mrs Burns, or Auntie Marg as I will call her, her family had one fatality. Two of their children were buried in the mud, but they got Alice out, but Roy died in that mudslide.
Edie Swift: Can you mention all their names?
Fay Connor: All the children’s names?
Edie Swift: And your grandmothers’ names.
Fay Connor: My grandmother’s name was Rose Aiken, and her daughters were my mother, Thelma Aiken, Mavis Aiken, and Catherine Aiken. Catherine was handicapped, she’d had poliomyelitis, polio, yes, when she was only about eighteen months old, and she was crippled, she was handicapped. The night that the mudslide came down, my mother grabbed a knife, and she actually slashed the back of the tent and picked up my handicapped Aunt Catherine and carried her out of the tent before the mud could get into the tent and that was how they got out, mum had slashed the back of the tent. But next door was my Auntie Marge, and her children, Alice was buried, Roy was buried. I don’t know all the names of the people that were there that night. I think Mary, one of their daughters was there, but I’m not quite sure of all the other names. But they did get a lot of the mud in their tent, but anyway they did get Alice out alive, but they couldn’t save Roy. So, Auntie Marge had thirteen children.
Edie Swift: When are we talking about?
Fay Connor: We’re talking about 1932, I believe, yeah. It was a horrible night, it was raining, it was dark, and all the mud and it was just a horrible, horrible night. But when this happened, they all decided to get further along the beach and build cabins. So, they left that, the cliff area the northern end of the beach and went along where there were no steep cliffs, and they built their cabins, and that’s where ours is today. Auntie Marge, of course and Uncle Lionel, Mr and Mrs Burns, they built their cabin just in front of us. But because there were so many of the children between them, and their children to this day, they are still down the beach, they’re still going down to the huts, so it all started, actually, with Ma Burns and Pa Burns
Edie Swift: Can you mention their children’s names?
Fay Connor: All their children’s names, yes, there was Emily who was the eldest, Violet, Alice, Dot, Daisy Joyce, Billy, Cecil, Lionel, and Edna. I think that’s the lot, yes.
Edie Swift: And where did they live.
Fay Connor: They, we all lived in Helensburgh, but we all had our cabins very close together down at Bulga. But we all lived in Helensburgh not far from one another.
Edie Swift: So they bring food down.
Fay Connor: Everything that we took down to Bulga, except the palm trees that I will mention in a moment.
Edie Swift: I mean the ones that had the tents.
Fay Connor: Everyone that had the tents, everything, from that day to this day, is carried down on your back. Now and again, some of the kids in this modern day, they do take their boats around to Austinmer and maybe get building materials, anything that’s heavy – refrigerator, batteries, they can get those there now. But other than that, everything comes down on your back.
Edie Swift And how do these people, when they, they did build their, this is your aunt, your grandmother, what happened then? How did they build the hut, and how did they get the stuff down?
Fay Connor: Well, the only thing that we got from the um, well actually the surrounds were the palm trunks, the palm tree trunks. Our cabins in those days were all the uprights, and across from the roof were all from the palm trees. Everything else was carried. down the hill, all the timber. We carried the concrete down. Everything was carried down the hill, so they were built, and everyone helped each other build the cabins. So, it was a community of effort. And most of them have been modernised. There’s not a lot of them that are in the original condition they were in 1932.
Edie Swift: So in 1932, what would the cabin look like?
Fay Connor: Um, very much a hut, very much it was corrugated iron and of course the palm tree trunks, concrete floor, no glass in the windows, just push out shutters. Very much a hut that you would find in the bush anywhere. It didn’t have all the modern cons, of course. We um, I have these notes further on, but we used to get bathed in tin bathtubs and we, um, it was just very, very vintage huts. I have seen many on the TV where the maybe our ethnic people build their cabins and huts, and they’re very, very similar to those, but just the basics. The very basics. We did eventually get um; I’m getting ahead of myself here. I will describe the hut a little bit further on, but yes, it was only what we could carry down the hill and what we could put together.
Edie Swift: So when they built that first hut, how did they get the materials in?
Fay Connor: As I said, down you carried it on your back. You carried all the timber between you. We did have, we still have, what is called the timber track. It is part of the hill, part of coming down the hill, but it was from the top of the hill to the halfway mark down. It wasn’t, a track that was traversed by people, it was only there for carrying timbers, fridges, beds, ropes. We put them onto pieces of wood, and we pulled them down the timber track. So, it’s a straight down the hill track that is too dangerous for people to walk on to get to the bottom of the hill. It’s only for taking stuff down the hill that it’s just too hard to carry around the bends. That is still there, that timber track but it’s not used as much now. But everything was just manhandled down that timber track, and yeah, and everyone helped.
Edie Swift: And who actually built the hut, the original one?
Fay Connor: The people that were down there, whoever was down there just got together.
Edie Swift: Who was that though, in your family?
Fay Connor: Well there were probably 60, 70 families down there, some were from Sydney, most of them were from Helensburgh. They were a lot of people down there.
Edie Swift: But your immediate family, who was that?
Fay Connor: Well that was my grandfather ah he would’ve actually helped do the cabin, but he died in 1945. But he would’ve been one of the people that would’ve helped build the cabin, and my father, they would’ve been the two.
Edie Swift: And how old was your father then? In 1932, he was born in sixteen, so he would have been only sixteen.
Edie Swift: What was his name again?
Fay Connor: Frank Manning. Yes, he would have been there then, I’m just trying to think. They were married in nineteen, early 1938. And he was a Helensburgh boy then, so yes, he would’ve been there, and he would’ve been helping.
Edie Swift: What did your grandfather do in Helensburgh?
Fay Connor: He was a miner.
Edie Swift: What mine was that?
Fay Connor: The Helensburgh mine it was called, and um that went down the family. That was my grandfather, my father, my husband, my son. Um, they all worked in the Helensburgh mine, as did most people that were down at Bulga. Most of them were miners. I might read further on, what I have here Edie, and this might come out. I’ve got my first memory of Bulga was riding from Helensburgh on the back of our horse, Tom. We had this old horse and mum used to get chaff bags and two huge chaff bags, tied them in the middle, put all our clothes in there and that would go on to Tom’s back. My auntie that was disabled, she would sit up on Tom and mum had five children and whoever was the youngest sat up on the horse with my auntie. The rest of us had to walk down the hill. And we rode Tom from Helensburgh all the way down into Otford and all the way up the hill and then back down into Bulga. It was quite a long walk and a long ride, but that was the only way at that time that we could get to Bulga, and it was through the bush track from Helensburgh.
Edie Swift: Is that a track right now, also?
Fay Connor: No it’s a road now, it goes through the national park, it is a road. Um, so I’m reading from my notes here, there was an area roped off, at the beach, to keep the horses in. So, there was a big horse yard built up behind the cabins and everyone that had a horse, put the horses in there. In the cabin we had homemade double bunks, they were all made from timber, and they were all homemade, um we only had had two rooms in the cabin, bedroom, and kitchen. Uh, the kitchen had an old cooking and heating water for our bath. And I can remember as children, you know, it was, you were lucky if you got the first bath. But we all went through the bath sitting in front of the heated stove. Eight of us stayed in these two rooms in the cabin at any one time. Now the block of ground in front of our hut was vacant for many years until Kevin Gormley, Joyce’s Kevin, cleared it and all the men carried their hut down on their backs from the green which is up on a hill and placed it on the block, and it still stands there to this day. And I can still remember them walking along the beach, all the men, underneath the cabin, they all had the cabin up on the shoulders and they walked along the beach and placed it in the area where it is now. I don’t know the year of that, I can’t remember what year it was, but I know I was very young, I’m thinking maybe six, so that would’ve been early 40’s. When the Helensburgh mine was on strike, which was quite often, and I’m still going back to my time when I was very very young, uh, the family of the miners stayed in their huts at Bulga. Now most of the people down at Bulga, at that time were miners so when the mine went on strike everyone went to Bulga. Uh, it was very cheap living down there. We caught heaps of fish, and we supplied many needy families back up in Helensburgh as well as the campers on the beach. So, all the men that had boats went out, caught the fish brought them in and we distributed, among the people at Bulga and up in Helensburgh. Now it was at this time when I was very very young my father taught me how to clean fish and I’ve done it ever since, dad got me onto a knife when I could handle a knife and that’s what he taught me to do, but I could never skin the rabbits that he caught. There was no electricity, no phone or pleasure outings to pay for at Bulga so it was a really good saving to go down there. We went to Otford school until the strikes were finished and the kids at Bulga also had to go up the hill and down the other side into Otford to carry all their kerosene and bread. The kerosene of course was for all our fridges and lights, that’s the only fuel that we had down there.
Edie Swift: Did you, was there, a store up at Otford?
Fay Connor: Yeah there was a little store, a little corner store, and um we would go up there and of course the first thing we had to learn was never put kerosene next to bread, so when, but it was a learning process. But yes, that was the only way we could get food down the hill was to go up the hill and down the other side into Otford.
Edie Swift: Who had the store, do you remember?
Fay Connor: Yes, um, Bill, James, Bill, and Madge James had the store for many many years.
Edie Swift: How many years are we talking about?
Fay Connor: Well, as again, I was going to school up there, so I would’ve been four or five, so again, early forties. And I don’t know how long they kept it, but it was for many many years.
Edie Swift: And what could you get there?
Fay Connor: It was a typical corner store, it was milk and bread, and kerosene. Um, they had tins of food, milk, just the normal basic things that you would take to Bulga. Um, I can’t remember the price wise or anything, I could imagine it was a little bit dearer, but it was very convenient to be able to go up there and get what we needed and take it back down.
Edie Swift: Do you remember Lilyvale station, at all?
Fay Connor: Oh yes, Lilyvale station, I have walked through the tunnel there, um, but it was a tiny, tiny station that, I still remember actually coming down through the Lilyvale tunnel, coming to Otford, and there was a track from Otford station up to the top of Otford hill, before we went down to Bulga and it was very, very overgrown in those days but we could get up from straight up through all the bush and leaves up there, to go to Bulga. But yes, Lilyvale station was a tiny, tiny station. Um, I worked for, no I was actually related to one of the people just up from the station who had a pig farm, and he was one of the relations that I’m talking about coming down from Ma Burns. And his pig station, his pig farm, used to come right down to Lilyvale station, uh he was one of the Blackwells.
Edie Swift: What was his name?
Fay Connor: His name was um Blackwell, um what was his first name? There’s so many Blackwells, oh gosh there’s Bluey, there’s, I can’t remember his first name now, but he had a huge pig farm there and um most of the Blackwells in Helensburgh married into the Burns’ family so it’s a very close-knit community, anyway.
Edie Swift: Did you know the people who that ran the station?
Fay Connor: No, no. Because as I mentioned, when we went to Bulga we didn’t go by train or anything. We got onto Tom, and we went up the hills and down the dales sort of thing, so we never went by train. I’m reading again in the early 1940’s onward [laughing], I don’t know why this memory keeps coming back to me, but there were cows grazing up on the green, if they came down to the beach we just had to give way to them and I can remember when I was a little girl and all these cows would be coming down the beach and I was terrified but it was just a thing you know, if the cows came down to the beach, you got out of their way. Um, we swam in the channel, in the rock pools and there’s a huge rock pool there called The Baths, and the men created it decades and decades ago I have seen a photo and it looks to me like it goes back to the 20’s, 30’s but they did dig out this rock pool. It’s there to this day and people use it every day. It’s been diligently maintained ever since. The underground creek that we have at Bulga, is still there. It’s our only source of water for the total community or it was in those days. We drank it, we never boiled it we drank it as it came out of the underground. No one ever got sick we had no adverse effects at all from this water. It would be horrifying in this day and age to do that, but we did that and no effects. We’d take turns in putting our bucket under the creek and carrying the water to our cabins every day so whoever was the eldest child in our family would have the job of carrying the water. But it was good, it was good living, it was good living, you knew what you had to do, and everyone helped each other. At the end of the beach, there was a huge rock called the boulder It’s been many years, a favourite climbing and playing rock formation for many generations of kids it’s just like an icon of Bulga. Everyone talks about the boulder, we even had our races that would be, that you’d have to start here and go around the boulder and come back. It was just part of our life. And old Ma Burns was the lady that used to sit on there and fish so if you ever wanted to find old Ma Burns, she’d be on the rock, she’d be on the boulder. fishing. It’s still there to this day.
Edie Swift: So how to now?
Fay Connor: In time wise?
Edie Swift: Yeah.
Fay Connor: In time wise, well we could go back to oh Bulga has been there for so many years, but my memory is again, in the early 40’s. I would have been two, three when I can remember that boulder. We were able to climb it, but we had to hold on tight because it was quite tall. But it was just part and parcel of being at Bulga, is to climb the boulder. There are things you don’t forget from your childhood because it was magical to be able to go up into this big rock, sit up there maybe watch, old Ma Burns fishing. It’s just a memory that you don’t lose because of the magic of that boulder at the end of the beach.
Edie Swift: How had the, how had the, your shack changed, if you, you were small and then you got to be about ten or eleven years old?
Fay Connor: Um, it didn’t change very much at all. Actually, one big change was putting glass in one of the window spaces that was a big change. It didn’t change very much up until, um, maybe up until I got married and that was in ’58, and my husband and I built a cabin on the level above my parents’ cabin and at that time it still had really changed at that time until my son started going down. Um, and Glen was born in ’62. So, I’d put say fifteen years onto that, maybe sixteen and then when he started going down there, he rebuilt the cabin with my husband’s help. Um, he put fibro on it to start with, because we didn’t know the dangers of fibro. He put an extra room on the back so that would have been in the 70’s, so it was up til ’70’s before it really changed.
Edie Swift: And it was the same, and did you have any refrigerator?
Fay Connor: We had a kerosene fridge from the start and we now, or that kerosene fridge was there up until, oh probably, ten years ago and then we got a gas fridge, we do have a gas fridge there now. But these are all the modernization that we did to the hut later. But now from where they were we’ve got different, we took the fibro down now and we have corrugated iron, we have fibreglass on the roof. We have solar panels on the roof now, we had none of these niceties in those days they very basic but now we can go down there and we have a freezer on and we have our light switch that we can just turn on and yes things are much different but they didn’t change til probably the 70’s.
Edie Swift: And when you were a little girl going back then when you were three to fifteen or so, do you remember, what are your memories of what you did down there, and did it change, was it easier to come down the path?
Fay Connor: Um, it, the path was maintained but not as much as it is now, so it didn’t change that much really. I cannot remember the year that we lost our horse. My auntie had two sticks and she used to walk down that hill with two walking sticks because one of her legs didn’t grow. But I can’t put a year onto that, but it was, I used to go down there so it was probably about when I was twelve or thirteen. We lost Tom and Katie used to walk down the hill. The hill was very rough. And old Ma Burns was one lady that tried to keep it maintained, she’d get up there with a shovel and whatever but um, now it’s walking in a park. But in those days, it was very, very hard the track. And I think probably that did put people off from going down there, if they’d sort of drive around the cliffs and see the beach down there but finding no path and no easy way to get down there, I should imagine it would have put them off so we’d very very rarely have day-trippers, anyone other than, you know, the cabin owners.
Edie Swift: What happened to the horse?
Fay Connor: The horse, he just eventually died of old age, taking him up and down the hill I think he just had enough [laughing], he said I’m out of here and that I can’t remember what year that was, I was very young again, but I don’t remember when Tom went.
Edie Swift: So when you, up until when you were two to about fifteen what do you remember about the activities of Bulga, would you go down for Christmas, was Easter big?
Fay Connor: We’d go down every weekend. As I mentioned the miners were on strike a lot, so we’d always be down there then, every Christmas we had six weeks down there, every school holidays, we practically lived down there, it was just such a big part of our life. There were always lots of children down there, there was always sports, it was always bonding. As I mentioned a lot of our relatives were down there, so it was a very social thing. The men had boats. We didn’t take alcohol or anything much down like that at that time, they do now because it’s easier, but we didn’t at the time. It was just a very very lovely family; it was like a picnic day. We had, which we still have, we have our New Years Day races when we’d all get together and if you won a race, you got twenty cents. I’ll never forget that I won twenty cents once. We had fishing competitions, the men, the adults gave us so much time. It was just a beautiful feeling to be there, to be part of that social committee, community. The huts, as I said were all very very basic again that word, but they were, so I don’t know it was just, I just loved. The atmosphere, the people, the beach, the whales, the dolphins, the rocks, the pools, everything was just magic.
Edie Swift: How could you go down when in the winter wasn’t it bad weather sometimes?
Fay Connor: Not, no, we didn’t have many bad weather down there but we had the old stove, an old Bega stove in the cabin and that kept us warm. Um, and strangely enough we when with the storms were on down there, never seen anything so magnificent as being down there with the storms and the lightning and the effects, the lightening actually hit the rocks many times. But no, the winters were beautiful we’d all, we did play a lot of cards a lot of board games. And that was again a bonding thing for the family because nowadays you know, they have their phones their iPads and that, we didn’t, we had each other, and we just amused each other. So that is something that I always feel very sorry these days, the families have all these distractions and don’t have each other because we just revelled in it, it was wonderful and again my notes which I probably come to. We used to have euchre parties, ahm, poker, we used to play poker ’til the sun come up and we’d go home then and go to bed. Board games with the adults, there was just so much activity, but it was all social. It was just a wonderful place to be and my memories of all that time was just of sporting events, of people giving you their time, having barbecues, having bingo on the beach. Um, where do you get that now. They are to me just lovely memories and even when we, um I remember, I got my first job, and it came Christmas time and of course mum and dad and all the other four children were going to Bulga. I couldn’t go to Bulga because I had this job in Sydney so I told them that they could keep their job, I was going to Bulga, so I gave up the job and went down to Bulga for 6 weeks [laughing], then I went back up and found another job. But um, that is the feeling that you get, you’re not going to miss out.
Edie Swift: And can you mention some of the other families you knew when you were like five to fifteen years old.
Fay Connor: The other families that I could remember were mostly as I said, old Ma Burns’ family, their family, they all got married and they all had kids and then they all had huts and then they were all very close but I was working when I was fifteen I was working actually, I had to get permission to leave school and a lot of the people that I was working with in the factory, that I was working in Helensburgh they had cabins down there too, so the owner or the manager of the factory was Val Musser his children have still got cabins down there. Chris has got a cabin, Gary’s got a cabin, um, their daughter has got a cabin. So it’s people that we socialized with or worked with in Helensburgh, or went to school with, so many of them because Helensburgh was never big population it was all miners so everyone got time off together The people, the names that was all the Woods’ they were all down there with all their kids, naturally the Collins’, all the Burns’, all the Aikens. How many were there, the Marshalls. There was a man there called um, oh Whitty, um Smacka Smacka Whitty. We all had different names down there for each other and his name was Smacka he had a cabin near, um, further along to the north end, and he lived there, and they found him one day, he just lived there and sat on a seat watching the ocean all day. He was a lovely guy, but they found him there one day dead in the chair and they couldn’t lay him out [laughing] because he was still the shape of the chair, so they took him up, but he was there, he was just another icon at Bulga, Smacka. Um, and his cabin’s still there one of the Collins’ has got his cabin now.
Edie Swift: So what happened, did they just acquire the cabin?
Fay Connor: No, they were the people, most of them that had the tents down at the beach and they just made the cabins then they came down and their families so the people that are down there now, those cabins were built around the 1930’s, and have down through their families.
Edie Swift: But when that man died how did the other guy take it?
Fay Connor: Well, he was a Collins and one of his relatives Collins got the hut, it was Billy, Billy Collins got his hut.
Edie Swift: Did they have to pay the family or?
Fay Connor: No, no in those days there wasn’t a lot of recording done as far as National Parks was concerned. National Parks took I’m not quite sure, Johnny Arnie would know but National Parks took Bulga over in a certain year, I can’t remember the year and they took possession of the beach and therefore then we had to go through all our paperwork. Before that there was no paperwork so cabins just changed hands very very easily.
Edie Swift: Before that who owned the land then?
Fay Connor: Um, part of, the bottom part of it was Maritime Services the top part of it to my memory was privately owned but no it just evolved as a place to go to, there was never any ownership that I knew of. There was ownership up on the green. But not ownership down the bottom.
Edie Swift: So when you got to be fifteen, how did the community change between when you were fifteen and twenty-five, for instance?
Fay Connor: I don’t really feel that community changed that much, Edie. I can’t remember it changing, people just grew older the people that grew older as I, I was nineteen when I was married but I still went down Bulga it didn’t change anything. And I don’t think it changed for many others either, they just grew up, they got married, they had children and they kept coming down to Bulga so other than modernizing the huts the cabins and buying better boats, I don’t think it’s changed. Same people, different generation, as I have in my notes, we’ve had five generations in our cabin and many of the cabins are the same.
Edie Swift: So you went to work did you when you were fifteen?
Fay Connor: Yes.
Edie Swift: And what type of factory was that?
Fay Connor: Um, this Val Mercer I was mentioning to you he was a manager of the factory that made overalls and jeans those sort of things for men and I went to work there for twelve months and then I went to Sydney and that was when I threw the job in because I wanted to go to Bulga. But then I went to Sydney after that and worked in Sydney, but it still never stopped anyone from going to Bulga.
Edie Swift: What did you, how did you get to Sydney?
Fay Connor: Oh, by train, I used to leave at twenty to seven on the bus and I’d get home at twenty to seven every night. So, I was sixteen and I was working, I was away 12 hours a day.
Edie Swift: What were you doing in Sydney?
Fay Connor: I was on a, an accounting machine in a big company. Um, and being at school I learnt to type so that helped me out. But um, and then I went to Bennett and Woods, yes, just office jobs mostly and they got better and better as I grew older but um, yes.
Edie Swift: And who, how did you meet your husband, then?
Fay Connor: Those from Helensburgh and he played rugby and I loved rugby league so that’s how we met he was playing and I was the spectator and we met there but then again, um, we would get a bus which was unusual but a lot of the people from Bulga were on this bus and we’d get this bus of a Sunday when we weren’t at Bulga and we’d go, there was a gentleman called Dusty McCubben and he had this bus at Waterfall and he would come and pick all the people up from Helensburgh, take us down to northern suburbs football ground, we’d all go down there and we’d watch the locals, our locals from Helensburgh played down at Scarborough and my husband played at Scarborough and uh, but they were all, you could go through the buses everybody on the bus was a Bulga person, it was just the fact that we all kept together but yeah, we’d go to Scarborough when we could, lots of people.
Edie Swift: So as you came into your 30’s, now what year are we talking about then?
Fay Connor: Into my 30’s is, well I was married when I was nineteen, and by thirty, I’d had three children, oh four but it sounds very boring but still nothing has changed, the children went to school Friday afternoon we’d come home, and we’d all go to Bulga. Um, the only thing that changed for me [laughing] was that I had a combustion stove in my house at, in Helensburgh that supplied hot water so we’d leave Bulga earlier than normal to go home and heat the water at Helensburgh for the kids’ bath and whatever, but other than that, look nothing changes, nothing changes. The children grew up down there, I think probably we didn’t go down as much when they were going sort of to high school at that time they were doing a lot of homework and whatever and we didn’t go down quite as much and then the children got off our hands and yeah, we went back down again, every weekend.
Edie Swift: So did you still have to walk, it was a long walk?
Fay Connor: Ah, but [laughing].
Edie Swift: Well when you start driving there?
Fay Connor: A man called Jonty Delliger, he had a taxi company in Helensburgh and every Friday night his name was, I can’t think, I think it was John Delliger, but we called him Jonty. He had a taxi service and Friday afternoon you’d see the men coming home from the pit and they’d all go and get Jonty and Jonty would go round the various homes on a Friday night and pick up the people to go to Bulga, so there was a taxi service when we didn’t have cars and then by the time dad got a car we were able to go down because the road was then built. There is another road going to Bulga from Helensburgh, through the track that we used to take with Tom but the main road was going around Stanwell Park, The Tops there, Stanwell Tops, so we’d take our car and we’d leave the car up the top but that was, oh dear, I was still only young then that would have been when I was around seventeen, seventeen, eighteen I can still remember getting Jonty taxi so we didn’t have a car ’til after that. We were married in ’58. We wouldn’t have got a car until around about the 60’s so up until then we were going down with Jonty’s taxi.
Edie Swift: Did you just leave your car somewhere?
Fay Connor: Up the top of the hill, there was.
Edie Swift: Was it alright there?
Fay Connor: Yes, yes never a problem.
Edie Swift: But now they’re locked up.
Fay Connor: They’re in a bit of an area there with a gate on. If you’ve got a four-wheel drive there’s only a very small mound around it, it’s quite easy to get in and out but we’ve never had any trouble with the cars there We leave them on the street if we can get into this lock up area, not a worry.
Edie Swift: How did you get the area there to lock them up?
Fay Connor: It goes back a long time, but I think the coal mine had something to do with it because it was all based on coal, coal dust and coal. So, I feel that was something that and see a lot of the people down there, as I say, are miners and they had the ability to be able to get the mine to do these things for us. So, I’m fairly sure that was done by the mine but it’s only a small area you’d only fit two houses on it, maybe at a push.
Edie Swift: Did you ever go to that pie shop?
Fay Connor: No, I did or did many, many years ago before it was a pie shop. But we found that over the years various people owned that shop, but they never opened it every day or any particular time, it was just when they felt like making a pie or whatever. There was never any specific times so, and at that time that opened we were able to bring our groceries down from Helensburgh in the car, so we didn’t need it.
Edie Swift: So if you’re going to go down and you’re, let’s say you’re eighteen years old, what would you bring for the weekend?
Fay Connor: Well mostly everything would be down there, all our tin things and that sort of stuff was down there, um, when I was eighteen. Well we always had [laughing], one of the main staple things at Bulga was jaffles, and I don’t know whether you’ve seen a jaffle iron, but we always had jaffle. Mum made the most beautiful stews, so we’d have stew on our jaffles. But we had exactly the same as what we’d have at Helensburgh, we had all our cereals, we had all our meat, the cereals would probably go down each week and the meat. Milk, we always had a problem with milk and mum took Sunshine Milk down. You can still get Sunshine Milk I believe, but we always had Sunshine Milk powder that was our milk. Um, and we always carried our bread, all those, the fresh things we carried down but other things, even things like toilet paper and tooth paste, it was always down there we always stored it because we’re down there every week so it’s the same as doing a week shopping at home, in Helensburgh, we just take extra things down every week, no specific things and we caught so much fish It was a home from home.
Edie Swift: So do you, now do you um, still uh, fish?
Fay Connor: Not as much, not as much now because over the many many years, I’m going back to 1930, it was fantastic fishing off the rocks at all times we could go fishing. But now lately, in the last, what say, ten, fifteen years there’s a lot of seaweed growing around the edges of the rocks and it’s, we find it very very hard to fish now. You’re losing too much gear etcetera and we’ve lost that little bit of uh, sporting, what would you say, keenness, yeah that we used to have but we still have certain places that we know we can go to and I will cover that in my notes a little bit later, but um, yeah, we still fish.
Edie Swift: Do you want to go on with your notes?
Fay Connor: Yes, I will, um.
Edie Swift: I heard a sound.
Fay Connor: Oh, that’s just some texts coming in
Edie Swift: Ok, ok I’ve got here which goes on from what we were talking about.
Fay Connor: Um, I was talking about the Bowler in my notes, and I’ve got, there was also a reef on the northern end of the beach, that’s further out north than the Bowler it’s called low reef, uh, now it’s mainly waves at high tide that covers that reef. And over the years we had various people down there that um, fished in certain areas and low reef was always fished by Val Mercer, so if, and I don’t know why because very very rarely could you get out on the point of low reef because it was always quite dangerous, the waves coming over but whenever there was a good tide, Val would be out there fishing. But I’ve got here, at the tip of the channel. See years ago we named various parts of Bulga, and we all now to this day know if someone says I’m going fishing in Tinny, we all know where Tinny is because we’ve named various areas of the rock ledges so the tip of the channel we called Tinny and that’s where we fish for groper, if you want groper you go out to Tinny. We had rock areas known as Arney’s, which was after John Arney’s family. The Flats, we have Square Rock, Green Point, the Gulf, Bennetts Hole, Snapper Bowler and High Point and Red Reef, so if you say to someone, I’m going round the flats, they know exactly where you’re going, and they know what you’re going to fish for. So, this is again part of the history of Bulga, that we named various parts of it. If I told someone I was going to Mandarin Reef to get crabs they’d know where I was. Um, I’ve got these names have been recognised for decades and probably there are good stories behind those names, and I don’t know what they are, but I’m sure there are. From Highpoint, which is right around the southern end of Bulga, you can see all the way to Port Kembla to the south and from the north all the way up towards Kurnell. Yet, when you’re down Bulga you always get that wonderful feeling of complete isolation and peace, that’s what we all got down there. The small rock pools was a magical for young children with tiny blue and gold fish in them or maybe an octopus or crabs, star fish or colourful coral and that has never changed. All our little rock pools have all got those beautiful things in them, we’ve never lost them. So, this is how our children grew up over the years, experiencing the wonders, the freedom, and the safety of this unique environment. Our hut has been in our family for five years, five generations and hopefully that will increase over the coming years. Many of the Bulga children have grown up over the years, married, had children, and are now introducing them to their family cabins, and so it goes. So, I would be taking my grandchildren down there now and it just goes on and on.
Edie Swift: So who are your grandchildren and then your children?
Fay Connor: My children are, I have four children, I still have three My other child he passed in 2000 he was a policeman and he was also a hang glider he, and he took people up hang gliding off Stanwell Tops which is just above Bulga and he went up there one day and he took a lady up hang gliding because it was her birthday and one of the other flyers up there crashed into him and he crashed to earth from a great height and he was killed. Um, so that was Glenn, my eldest was Sharon my daughter, she lives just around from me here and Sharon absolutely loves Bulga it’s come through from me to her, she’s got this beautiful love of it. And then I have Craig and Adrian, now their children. Um, my son who passed his wife lives or lived at Otford up until about 2 years ago, so her children go down to Bulga a lot, now they’re my grandchildren. My great grandchildren [laughing] are not old enough yet. But um, Sharon my daughter, her two children go to Bulga, so they have a love of it. But the love of it seems to have come down my side more so than like, I had four a sister and three brothers but it hasn’t come down through them as much as it has with me so it’s coming down my generation a lot but it’s there for all us, for anyone that wants, it’s there.
Edie Swift: Now, your husband is here I hope we can continue. I don’t, could he wait a few more minutes.
Fay Connor: I’ll just.
Edie Swift: I don’t want to turn this off.
Fay Connor: Nope [laughing]. Because I think we’re just. So, what have I got here? Um, oh I’ve got here, as the years rolled by, the Bulga community retained its charm. The cabin have been carefully maintained, we are lucky to have amongst our community, builders, plumbers, electricians, roofing experts, concreters, engineers. Um, so the maintenance is shared when required, we now have many water storage tanks peppered around the hills. We have specific campers who check these water tanks and the plumbing so as not to lose any of this precious water. We have working bees to clean up the beach and keep it safe for the kids. All rubbish including tins, glass, garbage and plastics are taken up the hill to recycling. We don’t leave any of our rubbish down there. My grandfather drowned at Bulga in 1945 when his boat capsized. But when my mother swam out to help with the belt, the seatbelt on, it was too late to save my grandfather. Our community has many sad memories of their times at Bulga but there are many beautiful memories too.
Edie Swift: Do you have a surf club?
Fay Connor: No we don’t, we only have the reel and the rope to go out but my aunty that was disabled, she was letting the rope out, my mother put the belt around her waist, she swam out, my dad was in the boat that capsized. He saved three men, but we couldn’t save my grandfather and he drowned, that was in ’45. So, I’ve got here we now share our, share our space with deer, foxes, monitor lizards, snakes and lyrebirds and we all live in harmony [laughing]. But er, there have been people who have died down there, we have had sad times but oh we’ve had some yeah, some great times with the young kids that are coming along.
Edie Swift: Well I think we conclude; you did a wonderful job. Is there anything more you’d like to add?
Fay Connor: We are having trouble at the moment with ah, the National Park wanting to put our payments up and we are refusing to pay what they’re asking for us because it is just too much They have um, worked their amount out um, comparing it to caravan parks and we are nothing like a caravan park, we should not be paying what the caravan parks are paying and we feel it is just too excessive. The beaches going towards Sydney, Era, Garie they have signed forms to say they will pay those amounts. We are not going to pay them. We consider our self-heritage listed and we will go to court not to do this But, the history that we have down there and the history that we have with helping people out in Helensburgh in needy times, um, helping each other out down the beach, the comradery, the comradery I should say, the feeling about everyone down at Bulga, it is unique. I have never known a place like this, and I think to try and push us out of there is not good. I just hope it never happens because I want my grandchildren, my great grandchildren to enjoy the place. It is um, as I say many many times it is magical, and I don’t want to lose that magic in my life or my children’s lives so I hopefully we’ll keep it for many years.
Edie Swift: Well thank you so much it was just wonderful to hear that Fay, and would you donate this to the Local Studies library?
Fay Connor: I’d be very honoured.
Edie Swift: And also to the State Library of New South Wales.
Fay Connor: I hope someone hears this and understands what we have and what we have to keep.
Edie Swift: Thank you.