Interview Transcript from Illawarra Stories Wollongong City Libraries Oral History Project – Lance Puckeridge

Interviewer: Claire Gerson

Interview date: 3/06/2021

Claire Gerson The following interview was conducted with LancePuckeridge as part of Wollongong City Council libraries Illawarra Stories oral history project. It took place at the reference library at the central library on the 3rd of June 2021. The interviewer is Claire Gerson. Good afternoon LanceThank you for coming in today.

Lance Puckeridge Thank you for inviting me in today.

Claire Gerson You’re welcome. Let’s start at the beginning. Were you born in the Illawarra? Lance Puckeridge I think it was 6:30 in the morning, the sun was… No, [laughs] I was born at Port Kembla day of 1938.MM beach, as it’s known, North beach really, they were holiday homes down there but become permanent homes. And I was born in my grandparents’ home, ah, which later became our home. Yes, I can’t really add to that. Ah, don’t remember the day that well myself, but I know the world was blessed to receive me. My mother didn’t think so. My mother was, ah, had a boy six years older and desperately wanted a daughter and I suffered very badly, ah, for that. Ah, I had to do all girls type work and things within the house and around the house. The other point that my poor, my poor Mum had, ah, mental problems And, ah, I took after the Aboriginal side that my Dad come from rather than the Scottish side that my Mum came from.

Claire Gerson And were you unusual in that your Dad openly talked about his Aboriginality? Lance Puckeridge No, he never mentioned it. He never said a word. Dad was 6 foot 3 and 17 stone, a huge big man. Mum at 4 foot high on a stepladder ruled him with an iron fist. And he never bit, he never bit back. My aunts used to say, ‘Your Dad’ – one lived next door to us – ah, ‘Your Dad’s not a man, he’s a mouse.’ And I used to think well, if he wasn’t a mouse he’d have killed her [laughs] in the first year of marriage. So very unusual household. Ah, I did not know I was, I had Aboriginal blood till I was full grown adult. A simplistic little thing, I always did the washing up. Big brother, and he was married at 19 and left home, and Dad took over the washing. I still had to do the wiping up and I’d stand with one foot up on one knee and mother would go berserk. And I couldn’t understand what she was going off about till eventually her favourite weapon, if the, ah, suitcase strap didn’t work, which hung on the fireplace all the time, she’d pick up the poker and she only hit me across

the leg with the poker once and I never [laughs] stood, stood on one leg again. And again it wasn’t till I was a mature adult that I realised the implications. Um, both my brothers grew up much taller than I. They were actually blue eyed and took after the Scottish side of the family. My baby brother and myself, in that photograph there.

Claire Gerson You mentioned both brothers, but up until now you only said one brother. So, they had another go for a girl and got a boy.

Lance Puckeridge No they got a girl. Yes, seven years after me they got a girl. And then 5,6,7,8,9 years, um, four years after that they got another boy which wasn’t expected. Mother decided to wreck the whole house, ah, when she found – I was only a kid, but I can, wondered why she was smashing things up. Poor Mum really did have mental issues. Ah, I remember Dad used to, he worked all night shift and he’d come home and he’d do the washing and he do the vacuuming and he’d do all the housework and then he’d get the shopping list and he’d walk over and bend down and kiss her on the forehead. Never saw that reciprocated. Never saw him not do that, but never reciprocated. Ah, one day she was wanting to go out somewhere in the afternoon. He said, ‘I’ve gotta go to bed. I’ve had no sleep for two days.’ And he went in for a sleep, so mother grabbed the bottle of kerosene and poured it all over the lounge room floor. It was ni-, lineoleum, not carpet, and as she threw the matches in it there were pools of blue flame that went out. Had she picked up the methylated spirits bottle [laughs] that was there we’d have been gone. ‘Dad, she’s trying to pull – burn the house down,’ So it was an exciting childhood in many ways. Um, I, I didn’t know, ah, why she punished me. I tried to go cane cutting at 13. Ah, I was wagging school a few, and of course, ah, with the three lads I went with, ‘Have you ever been to Luna Park?’ And we went and spent our sports fees on Luna Park. I was supposed to pick out what trains we were gonna jump in Darling Harbour. It was a goods yard in those days and coming from the wharfs I knew how to read the dockets on railway wagons. So, I was going to pick out the Queensland train. Ah, the two weak ones went home on the late train at 9 o’clock, but Huffy and I we made it to the paper train early hours of the morning. When I arrived back, the whole street of the street was divided into three groups. You had the Catholics, the Protestants, and the intermarried between both lots, ah, [laughs] so, ah, they’re all out. They had to hold mother off me. My auntie, who lived next door, ah, used to protect me and take me into her house, and I got, every school holidays I got hurt somehow, cut open, burnt, whatever, but she’d take me and protect me for a – I always wanted her to be my Mum. Although her daughter who is still alive and we’re very close to, ah, said she was tough too, so I don’t know which house was the better one to be in.

Claire Gerson So what was available if you had mental health problems back then?

Lance Puckeridge I don’t think anything. Everybody…

Claire Gerson Did you go and talk to your local…

Lance Puckeridge Oh, I, I, ah…

Claire Gerson If you attended church would you talk to..?

Lance Puckeridge I, no, no no. I went, I was sent to Sunday school every morning – ah! every morning – every Sunday.

Claire Gerson I was thinking about your mother, who would she go to?

Lance Puckeridge She wouldn’t go to anybody. You wouldn’t lower yourself to say you had any type of defect whatever it may be. My mother was a WASP. Now that terminology is not used much today. Do you know what a WASP is?

Claire Gerson Yeah, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

Lance Puckeridge That’s it. So, all those Catholics in Surf Beach Road, were going to hell.

Later in life when I become chaplain at Missions to Seamen and Dad died I said, ‘There’s a room where the kids are growing up.’ ‘I couldn’t go there. You have those people.’ And ‘those people’, or anybody that weren’t White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Never went near church herself. Her moth-, her grandmother was the matriarch of Arncliffe Methodist Church and, ‘I’ve got plenty in heaven pulling for me. I don’t have to go to church.’ She sent her envelope, which annoyed me greatly, once they brought in planned giving, she sent the envelope to that Church without fail all her life. When Dad died they never even offered a hand to that took a, I was out, I was away on holidays and didn’t know till I come back. But there was no help offered or whatever you know. But that’s life. Um, they didn’t know her, they didn’t know her as a parishioner they only knew her as somebody who sent money in every week. Um, she was utterly ashamed of the fact of having, my Dad having Aboriginal blood. Even tried to tell me we had Indian blood, ah, anything but Aboriginal blood. And the funny part of it, August 1940, look up the South Coast Times and the other paper wasn’t the Mercury, it was a different name. The obituaries to my great grandfather, unbelievable for an Aboriginal man of that day. And old Mr Parsons, John’s father, not the founder but the son of the founder, I think he was William – Harry was the founder of Parsons. When he found out I’d become Missions to Seamen chaplain and we were at a, doing a service actually, and he asked me to come in and sat me down and told me all about this beautiful Aboriginal man, which was my great grandfather and at that stage Wollongong’s grave digger, ah, for many, many years. One of the reports in those paper talks of, um, a, a prominent lady from St Michaels, and that’s where he worshipped, and when they’d come down to the graveside, ah, in respect he’d lined the whole grave and a metre around the outside with Arium, Arum Lilies,the flowers and the leaves in tribute to her. So that’s the sort of man he was, yes. So, um, I have a proud heritage. I had no heritage; I knew nothing of family life. Ah, my Dad, well, he just never bucked the system, but we’d go every year, he worked all night shifts so he got penalty rates every year instead of two weeks holiday he had about six weeks holiday. My family

Claire Gerson That would have been unusual then.

Lance Puckeridge Yes. All the family worked on the locomotives that serviced the port, brought stones for the great wall, serviced the ships. Dad tried to sign up for – I was, as a kid, disappointed that Uncle Alec next door had been a Rat of Tobruk. Um, other uncles had been away and Dad hadn’t joined up. And as a kid I felt a bit bad about that until long after his death I found the papers. He’d applied to join up. He was flat footed and colour blind so he lost his license to drive locomotives anymore and become a cleaner on night shift. And cleaners got one and, ah, time and a half penalties, double time and extra holidays. So, every year we’d go to the North Coast to an uncle’s farm and a share farmer and Dad would like billy-o the whole time. But all the cousins they had about 10 girls up there, ah, they absolutely loved Dad and they used to say to my wife when she later met them,’Oh, we suffered Lena just to be and see Frank.’ But he’d never argue. He’d never – big man – ah, had my first fight in a tent at, um, well, that’s a story, another story, again, I could go off with. But Dad and I had, I had the lightweight, he had the heavyweight, ah, I was 13: ‘Mate gotta be 16!’ ‘Oh, I don’t know if he be well 16. I’m his father.’ So, the crowd all jeered, ‘I’ll have the big feller on the end.’ ‘We don’t do funerals Pop.’ ‘Cause Dad had pure white hair.’Tell you what smart Alec, I’ll have him and then I’ll have you straight after.’ Needless to say, we both won our fights. Kiama show, I’d just turned 13 on the 3rd of January. We went for a milkshake. He said, ‘Don’t you ever tell your ‘b’ mother about this or she’ll kill the pair of us.’I still remember I can’t tell Mum; she’ll kill the pair of us. But, ah, looking back on family photos, ah, and I’ve got hundreds at home, um, I’m always with him or near him up till at 14 I ran away to go cane cutting. A few months later with another group we were supposed to be running away but we never left the district. And one of them had broken into an old siding that went into the steelworks but wasn’t used in the marshalling yards at north Port Kembla and they’d broken up an old telephone and they had magnets. So, ‘Oh yes, we’ll all have a magnet.’ And of course, it had NSW Government Railways on it, so it was government property. Well, the other kids hadn’t been in trouble. Three months before I’d tried the runaway, taken up to Port Kembla police station and there was a magistrate there and he said, ah, ‘The likes of you are a blight on society and if I could have my way I’d put you away forever.’ And I didn’t know.

Claire Gerson[unclear].

Lance Puckeridge I didn’t know what he was talking about. He was talking about my Aboriginality, but I didn’t know that I was Aboriginal. Two years

Claire Gerson So he could tell by looking at you?

Lance Puckeridge No, the family, the family name. And, um, ‘Right, two years in Mittagong Boys home.’ Which you progressed to Long Bay and you become a very professional criminal. Fortunately, through the distant rellies lass that had got pregnant to a distant, distant cousin – Dad was a share farmer, he took in State wards. And I believe – I didn’t believe in God even though I went to Sunday school. But God had his finger on me. I went there and two years. I did on the dairy farm and then came back and put my name down and went to sea.

Claire Gerson And why did you put your name down to go sea?

Lance Puckeridge Um.

Claire Gerson What drew you to that?

Lance Puckeridge Oh, as a kid I either played on MM beach and swam in summer or hung around the ships, hoping to be invited on board to have something eat, to eat or see all the, watching the Muslim lads that we didn’t know were Muslims but them people that come out and put their mats down and faced the east and prayed and all those exotic things

were there. I didn’t know what they meant in that stage of my life, but it was all part of my education for later on.

Claire Gerson And what, you looked and thought I’d like to be on one of those boats.

Lance Puckeridge Mo-, most kids in Port Kembla wanted to go to sea. Yeah.

Claire Gerson Right.

Lance Puckeridge Yeah, it was just a thing that kids in Port Kembla did – steelworks or the sea, yes.

Claire Gerson And that was Merchant Marine or Navy?

Lance Puckeridge No Merchant – real seamen. The Grey Funnel line they don’t regard as real seamen because most, not all, some do the whole life, but most only do a period of 10 years or so, whereas Merchant Navy you usually in it for good. Ah, I only went deep sea for a couple of years or so till I become an Able Seaman. And then I worked around the port when I married on dredges and barges and at one stage, ah, they were training me up to be the hardhat diver. Um, the hardhat diver for the Public Works then was a fellow called Al Murray, lived down at Oak Flats, an Englishman from the Royal Navy. And then Johnson brothers come along with their scuba gear, and while you were dressing the poor old over up, they’d done the job three times over and gone home. And, ah, yes, so it went out. I was just in the year of it going out.

Claire Gerson And where did you, while you were a seaman, where did you sail to?

Lance Puckeridge Oh, the Australian coast. They, ah, Australian ships were just starting to run up to Japan. Ah, my greatest adventure was on the ‘River Murray’ – yeah, the ‘River Murray’. She nearly sank in ’54 I think in the Bight. It was a great sea drama and, yeah, a long history on that. But, ah, that photograph there, that’s the ‘City Services’ busting up on Bass point and ’43 she went up. This is 1947. That’s the family. The nonchalant 9-year old’s myself. You’ll notice it’s winter. Um, everybody’s got overcoats on, but the two boys have got Jesus sandals on. I got my first pair of shoes from a cousin when I joi-, I was allowed to go into scouts at 11. I was too big to become a cub and scouts were 12, but they accepted me in, I was big for my age. And a cousin in Sydney who lived in Newtown, a very poor part of Newtown, sent me down his sec-, a pair of his second-hand shoes so I could have shoes. You had to wear shoes and socks at the scouts. Till then I would never had anything but…

Claire Gerson Does that mean most of the boys and girls who went to your school were also Lance Puckeridge No, no. Half, half and half.

Claire Gerson had no shoes whatever.

Lance Puckeridge No. I did, no, I didn’t bring a photo of that lot. Ah, I should have. Um, very interesting that half the kids are like me and the other half had socks. You never had a uniform in those days, but their dress, some even had a tie and a jacket. But they were the posh end of town. Three poor parts of Port Kembla were, ah, Spoonerville built, ah, well start with Coomaditchie. When they took all the indigenous folk off Hill 60 they took them and started dropping them from about Bomaderry south right down the coast. Well of course they were all out of country. Ah, that within months, most of them were back and form-, formed the first camps at Coomaditchie in the bush there. They called it official camps in those days. The next poor area of course was Spoonerville, two rows of houses, 3 rooms, a tap at the end of each row, and that’s where you got your water in a bucket. No toilets.

Claire Gerson This is in 19-, the end of the 1930s?

Lance Puckeridge Yes. That was perhaps even earlier on during a depression that’s what caused it. It was called after the Minister for Housing, Spooner. And they were there up till nearly the ’60s I think. Um, they were very poor folk. They didn’t have bathrooms. I saw, heard a thing a few weeks ago, it said ‘two bedrooms and a bathroom’. They didn’t have bathrooms, they had common area and a bedroom each end, didn’t matter how many kids you had. And then the third poor area was Surf Beach Road and they’d started as holiday flats. Most, not all, some were built of, ah, corrugated iron and whatever. But most were like little miner’s cottages that you still see up Scarborough and so on. And, ah, they

Claire Gerson Well there aren’t many left.

Lance Puckeridge No, oh, there’s quite a few up round Scarborough there looked after, like preserved.

Claire Gerson At the front they might look.

Lance Puckeridge Oh yeah, yeah, oh, yes yes. Don’t go behind. Peter Hands, a friend of mine, and Peter, he’s one of our guides actually, and he lives up there. Yeah, we paid, ah, two lots of camping sites so I can remember as a teenager it was about five shillings, it was about 10 shillings a week for the two camping sites. Um, we were, all of Port Kembla suffered terribly with blackouts and so on during World War 2. We never did because we were connected. We weren’t there during the war, but after the war the big blackouts. Bunnerong couldn’t keep up and they didn’t have the hydro scheme in and, but we were connected to the emergency services.

Claire Gerson I was going to ask you, ’cause you’re saying, you’re describing houses that don’t have running water, but I was gonna say, did you have power?

Lance Puckeridge We had running water and power.

Claire Gerson Right.

Lance Puckeridge ‘Cause we tapped into the water from the wharves. So, there was, what skulduggery, who did what, what, you know, but nobody worried. Um.

Claire Gerson Did you all have outside dunnies?

Lance Puckeridge Yes, outside dunny. Um, outside, my cousin next door had a toilet and a laundry and I used to think, oh, they’re snobs. Of course, we had a wash house and a toilet,

no a toilet, dunny whatever. Any rate, ah,

Claire Gerson The pan toilet, you still had the pan though?

Lance Puckeridge Oh, you, great thing in a dark night, you could smell it. You didn’t need a torch to go and find it [laughs] you just just… Yes, yes it was, ah, I can remember, ah, my kids the latter three. We had two and eight years later we had another three. We were in a Commission home at Berkeley and we’d go up to visit Nanna at Engadine. And we had sewerage, Engadine didn’t at that stage. And they used to refuse to go to the toilet because Nanna had such a dirty toilet and it stunk. And they didn’t know why, they didn’t realise ’cause it was the pan still sitting there. Ah, my wife used to say, ‘I’m sick of this. When these kids grow up I’m out of here. I’ve had this life. ‘And I’d say, ‘Stick with me, kid, and you’ll see the world. And the seven of us couldn’t have gone to Manly on the ferry, we just [laughs] wouldn’t have had the money. Very much an optimist, optimist. Um, last count I think we’ve done 57 countries, mainly related to my work as a chaplain going to conferences. Ah, the Australasian conference was every two years, which was a State of Australia or New Zealand or Singapore or Hong Kong and then the World conference every two years.

was in England. And, ah, we’d always, I’d always have that much holidays saved up, go over to Europe and so forth, so.

Claire Gerson So just to backtrack for a minute, how did you go from being a seaman to becoming a chaplain to the seamen?

Lance Puckeridge Well, that in itself’s another story. Ah, I did 10 years in Lysaght’s heavy industry. Ah, the moment I could leave ’cause I never worked one, five shifts a week – seven, eight, nine, ten. Eleven was my best, I did that a few times, every doubler, every roster shift. With five kids, they used to call me hungry and I’d say, ‘Well, you go and feed my five kids and my wife and rear them and I won’t do the overtime.’ And when I could afford to get out I got out. Ah, unfortunately there was no seaman work going at the time and they were looking for, ah, a bouncer at the Master Builders Club. And I had a boxing background and soon as I, Les Hickey, who’s not with us anymore was a lovely gentleman of a boss. Great manager of clubs. And, ah, ‘Tell me a bit about yourself.’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t drink and I don’t smoke and I don’t gamble.’ ‘Can you start this afternoon.’ [laughs] ‘No.’ And he threw me $20, $20 note or whatever to get a pair of black pants and white shirt and bow tie. And, ah, yes, so I spent a decade, ah, running things there and then God come into my life. My wife had been a devout Christian and a pain in the bum like most wives who are devout Christian. Yes, so, um, I, I took that up and, ah, God come into my life. Ah, my wife – I’d been brought up a Methodist – she was Anglican, high church Anglican. Ah, then started going, they were very fundamental Methodists where we went at Berkeley and so on.

Claire Gerson What no dancing, no singing and no, no fun?

Lance Puckeridge Well no sex standing up, it might lead to dancing.

Claire Gerson Yeah.

Lance Puckeridge Yeah, yeah. That’s exactly it. And of course, when they joined in with the other churches, the Congregation and the Presbyterian were given a choice. The Methodists weren’t, so a lot of them broke away and formed Southern Baptist Berean Baptist at Corrimal.

Claire Gerson It would stay Low church.

Lance Puckeridge So they so they stayed very hard-line fundamental church, yeah, open brethren. Ah, the male speaks, the female should shut her mouth and keep her place.

Claire Gerson And are we talking about large congregations here or smaller?

Lance Puckeridge Smaller congregations, yeah.

More home church type things. Most of them have broken up or got too old for it today, but very hardline fundamentalism. Ah, my experience, I believe God changed my life. I believe I can look back to that little kid, ah, that was persecuted by a sick Mum. I was the only one that had last years of her life I went and had cuppa with her at least three times a week. Wanted her to come and live with us. She wanted me desperately to bury her, which I did. Ah, but you know, she couldn’t – I don’t know what she came through. There was, were rumours in the family that she had a child at 12 years of age and whatever, whatever. And, ah, I don’t know. Old aunties went to open up and then closed up for family sake. But, ah, no having animosity, my two brothers grew up very, well drank terribly. Um, very, one of them had Aboriginal folk living – ‘Bloody Abos!’ you know. I’d say, ‘Mate, we’ve got the same blood.’ And, ‘You might have, but I certainly haven’t.’ And, ah, so I’ve really, ah, when I retired, I started and I go to We-, I have Weja, a cleaning agency. I’m supposed to be going away next week with them, but I can’t because of my knee, for a holiday to Dubbo. Ah, I go to ‘Aunty Jeans’ which is an elder’s program to keep you fit and keep the mind running. Ah, I go to the IAMS. I’ve tried to embrace the culture and learn. I feel in some way, I mean.

I didn’t suffer like the stolen generation. That ‘d be silly, but I suffered under somebody who was so aghast at having Aboriginal blood connected to the family that, ah, yeah, very bitter lady she was, which was sad. And, ah, everybody wants to be loved from my time as a chaplain. I’m not a Jesus salesman, but God wants me to love you and that’s you, that fellow over there, just in life itself. And I’ve had the most incredible if I just sat down as a young person – I couldn’t read or write when I married. Ah, I still refer to myself

Claire Gerson I thought you said you left school at 14?

Lance Puckeridge I left school at 14, I couldn’t read or write.

Claire Gerson How come?

Lance Puckeridge Ah, in about 4th class a magic thing came out called an IQ test. ‘What did I get Sir? What did I get Sir? ”So, I what did I get?’ ‘Oh Puck you got minus nothing.’ And the whole class bre-, broke up and right through into adulthood I knew that I was a dummy.

I was minus nothing. I couldn’t learn if I wanted to.

Claire Gerson And did your parents read and write? Were there any books at home?

Lance Puckeridge No. I’d see Dad with the newspaper sometimes, but how much he could read I don’t know. I never saw Mum pick up a book or write or

Claire Gerson So what did you do with things like forms when you had to join the seamen or get a job, or

Lance Puckeridge God in his own way equips illiterate people. Halfway through my time at the Builders, I was starting to visit regular members that were in hospital. I was and somebody suggested I do a welfare course and I went to TAFE. And three hours it took me to talk my way in because I had no educational background. And I did 18 months and they changed it from a daytime course that I could go to because I worked at night to a, and I had to give it up so I did. But I could sit down and whatever that lecturer said, I wouldn’t say word for word, but in my own words I could present that lecture in three months’ time. It’s just one – today – it’s, oh, crikey, I left nine.

Claire Gerson That doesn’t surprise me because there’s, there’s a noted connection between recall and, and general um, memory and lack of literacy. You know, most oral cultures obviously rely on it, so if you haven’t got the literacy, you often have the memory. But I’m still wondering how you managed to blag your way through situations where they would have wanted a form filled in.

Lance Puckeridge I would often leave a job if you had to study or do anything. ‘Oh, I can’t do that,’ or ‘I can’t.’ But no, I you know, I learned that I wasn’t a dummy. That in fact I always equated, ah, intelle-, intelligent people to be highly educated people. And of course that is not quite right [laughs]. Yes, so, ah, I, I soon found out that, ah, yeah, intelligent people may not have any education at all, but can work out situations, what’s going on. Um, I’ve I’ve had the most wonderful, wonderful life. My poor darling wife was a royalist. I was an old socialist. There’s my first union book at 16, Seamen’s Union. Very proud union man. Not a, never be, could never be a communist, but very much a socialist like Lee Kuan Yew, one of my heroes of the 20th century. But, um, the first time, when did we go – ’88 that first trip to England to a World conference. And because of my activism in trying to protect the seamen of the third, third World countries, um, I was presented, Merle and I were presented to Princess Anne on two occasions later on, five years apart, ah, with other folk and then have lunch with her. And of course, Merle being a Royalist, well that just blew her socks off greatly. Poor darling, um, who was dux of Corrimal High. It was only year 10 when she went there, it was only brand new. And marriage – she was going to be a nurse. She was a nurse’s aide at Coledale when I met her and met this handsome young seaman and that was the end of her life, stupidly. Ah, [laughs] but no, we’ve had a, a great life. I really, ah, regrets, we’ve had drugs, we’ve had jail, we’ve had all the things that modern fam-. I got five kids, three married. We’ve had five divorces, half the grandkids I’ve never seen. The half I do regard me more as I’m their Dad, they call me Pop. But even the one, ah, walking her down the aisle and, ah, she insisted it had to be me, I was the only Dad she ever knew. And yeah, so we’ve had a, a beautiful I think fruitful life. Seamen found us and he’s been trying to get me back to China for the last five years. About five years ago, ah, their ship had came, come in, put under arrest. They had no food, they had no money, no money to bunkers, and they were, ah, they’d been trapped on board for nearly two years and several of them and made a pact to suicide. And I turned up the first day they were there and every day for six weeks I took them to the Mission and took them sightseeing and got them food at the right price or, um, Country Grocer, Ross, would fill my bus for about $20. Um, ‘Oh, the poor darlings’, he’d say. And, ah, that man, nearly 20 years later he was, had his family out here on a Pacific cruise and, ah, rang the Mission and got my number and rang me and said, ah, ‘I’m a businessman now. ‘We met up, he, he got a cab down from Sydney, we spent the day together. Merle and I took him back to Sydney and, ah, within weeks we were in China first class all the way and, ah, took us out to the Far East where he was born and bred. He said, ‘You’re not coming as a tourist.’ We did walk on the Great Wall, which is a, an incredible experience. I, I always like, I thought standing at Ayers Rock, which I’ve done a couple of times, the prickle down the spine, maybe my Aboriginality. But bit of the same feeling on the Great Wall, it’s just unbelievable. You’re in something of history that’s just beyond, beyond description.

Claire Gerson And how did you get interested in the, ah, what you described as the plight of international crew?

Lance Puckeridge Um, I think coming from a

just a poor ordinary working-class background gave me the feeling of helping those that needed help. Um, we had a chap at, um,

Port Kembla, Archie Cowan, was Australian bantamweight champion from 1927 to ’33 I believe. I think Archie had, I believe, indigenous blood. Ah, Archie come to the scouts one night and we were putting this great box is coming so we’re all excited and we’ve got men sized gloves on which was ridiculous. And we’re trying to hit each other and he said. ‘I’ve never been disgusted in a group of Port Kembla boys as I am tonight.’ He said, ‘You couldn’t fight your way out of a wet paper bag. ‘So, we formed a troop both from the public school and the scouts, and I joined that troop. And, um, yes, he, he had a big bearing on my life. He, he and his wife were part of my, ah, Ladies Guild that used to have a lunch every, once a month to raise money to run the, the Missions to Seamen. Ah, within itself, ah, I’d been anti-God rather. Ah, I started going to church with my wife to the Baptist in Wollongong and then the Church of Christ, just because she’d been such a faithful good wife and, ah, you know, suffered me and five kids. The older kids didn’t, wouldn’t take part, the younger kids did. And, um, the, she was going to the Methodist Church. When I went a few times it didn’t impress me. And during this time when I tried to do a social welfare course, sitting next to me was a lady who used to want to mother and smother me, but she was a lovely lady. Ah, she, she’d been an offi-, army officer and later on her husband left her and she went back to being an officer, Gwen Gray. And she invited us to the Port Kembla Salvation Army and Merle had always wanted to know about it. And of course, Merle loved it ’cause in the Salvation Army, unlike some very fundamentalist churches where the female should never speak, ah, the officer was always the equivalent, the husband and the wife. He was in charge of the church overall, but she was in charge of women and children’s ministry and would regularly preach and quite often were far better preachers than the male were. So Merle took to it and, ah, only went there for a month or two, and I gave my heart to God and said, ‘Well I’m 40, whatever’s left, you’ve got.’ Fully expecting they’re all, ‘Oh, you’ll become envoys, or you’ll go to college. Well, ‘Can’t go to college mate, I still can’t read correctly,’ but they didn’t know that. And the Missions to Seamen was about to close. It had been handed to Sydney years before, which it shouldn’t have. I was offered to a three month’s trial. They fully expected it to close. I was not supported; I was supported by St Stevens. The folk there come back six weeks after us from 20 years on Groote Island, David and Cami Woodbridge. And David supported me wonderfully. Other parts didn’t because I wasn’t an Anglican and specially some of the lay people never got over it [laughs]. But that three months turned into 25 years.

Claire Gerson And what was the role of the Mission to Seamen?

Lance Puckeridge The Missions to Seamen is, ah, well the Flying Angel – where’s my badge? You didn’t know you’re in, in the company of an Angel did you? Of course, being English, you should really know they support it wonderfully over there being an island nation. Every port’s got a Missions to Seamen – the Flying Angel. Revelations 14-6, ‘And I saw another Angel flying with a good message of good news to every nation, tribe and people.’ And that’s, ah, that’s, that’s what it was to serve the seafarers. Ah, started off in the Bristol Channel between Wales and England and the work’s been going for 200 years. It’s now not the Missions to Seamen anymore, it’s the Missions to Seafarer because there’s six ladies go to [laughs] – no, there’s more than six. But they did change the name just when I was leaving, but again, I can just look back and see so much of my life where God touched me and had control and I didn’t know it. When I was sent away at 14 and very disturbed poor Mum and the first Christmas on the farm the farmer’s sister come up and she had a son who was still at school, 14 the same age as me. And she come out and tucked him in and kissed him goodnight. And we were sleeping on the veranda and she did the same to me and, yeah, first time in my life anybody had been kind or, you know. And, ah, here I’m breaking up at 80 odd, that’s ridiculous. Grow up,

Lance Puckeridge. Like the first time last November when Merle come out and said, ‘Where’s Lance Puckeridge?’ ‘I am Lance Puckeridge.’ ‘Don’t be a smart arse. I’ve said I’m talking about Lance Puckeridge, my husband not Lance Puckeridge my father.’ And of course she was looking for the fellow with the jet black hair and whatever. Ah, we’ve had a couple of experience. She’s, she’s in care now the poor darling but I see a virtually every day. But no, ah, something I had in mind there I was going to tell you, but I’ll go on and on forever.

Claire Gerson Well I was asking you about the, why, what Missions to Seaman do, because Lance Puckeridge Well, ah, depends who

Claire Gerson you know because you’ve been working there. But most people don’t know they exist and wouldn’t know what, why they’re there.

Lance Puckeridge In England most of the churches, even if not the Anglican churches, support it. Even if they’ve when I’d go over for our conferences, I had a week in Leicestershire and I, at little town called ?Rovely?, and all the churches in the area I’d go round and represent and tell them about the work. Some of the chaplains very much very high churchmen, very traditional churchmen, and you go through all and of course the Anglican High Church is not that much different to the Catholic Church, except they don’t recognise the Pope as God. But, ah, some chaplains we got involved. I was very much because of my Union background, my working background, ah, to have kids coming, ah, one lad walked from the coal loader one night all the way around to Port Kembla to the Mission. He’d been trapped on that ship for a number of years. He was actually dying and they wouldn’t get help for him, he was an Asian lad. And, ah, things like that, ah, and I started to – bashings, assault, having to sleep with officers, ah, to keep their jobs. They’d line up to get a job, Filipinos, big, big host of cheap labour. Ah, righto the ITF, it’s, it’s $200 a month fair and you sign there now. That’s for these, ah, trouble making unionists in the Western ports. Sign here you’re getting $100. ‘But, but!’ And look over your shoulder, there’s 3,000 lined up to get a job. And of course, Nana’s given her wedding ring, young sister’s gone prostituted herself. Everything to pay the agent to get them away to sea. And people don’t believe it, they don’t see it, ah, they don’t want to see it. Who owns the ships? Well probably you do if you’ve got shares in AMP or – not particularly AMP. But if you’ve got shares in different companies that’s who owns…

Claire Gerson Are you talking about Australian ships or international?

Lance Puckeridge International ships. We don’t have any ships virtually in Australia. John Howard tried to follow his – he was a love child of Margaret Thatcher’s or something like that. And he wanted to follow, wipe out the unions. She tried it. Years later, Prince Philip stood up and said, ‘For goodness sake, we’re an island nation and we haven’t got a Merchant Navy. We had the biggest Merchant Navy there was. Where is it?’ And the same thing happened here. Ah, my son sailed the ‘Iron Pacific’, biggest ship ever to come to Australia, merchant ship. Ah, he was boatswain and quartermaster on it for its last seven years at sea. He was 17 years at sea, Andrew. Um, he thought he had his arm chopped off, they, he took it to Spain when they sold it off. He was one, one of the crew on. But no more BHP ships. His last ship was a tanker TK Line out of Canada. Who owns TK Line? – BHP.But Australia’s, it’s un-, under a foreign flag now, it’s under a flag of convenience. So, they beat the unions in that sense. Unions haven’t laid down and died, but they’re certainly limping a bit. You know the, they’ve been wounded badly. But, ah, to work with Third World country men whose often their unions signed them up to what – and they’re the ones supposedly protecting them. Just horrible, just really horrible. I remember going on a ship one night and big European captain and this little, ah, Thai kid and he’d slammed him against the bulkhead and he drew back his fist just as I stepped in. I saw him slam him and I said, ‘No, don’t stop.’ He knew – I’d met him already – ‘Don’t stop before, ’cause of me Captain. Go ahead and hit him.’ I said, ‘And when you finish with him have a go at me and you’re gonna find out something different.’ [laughs] I was half his size but full of mouth, you know, full of talk. But, um, Oh, some of the horrible,

horrible things. And had a British captain. This kid had been picked on by a junior officer, got sick of it and flattened the junior officer. Ah, I get a call – all the Union boys are out of town

down at Union Camp, and no IT health inspector. Down I go. The pilot was walking out. They were just about to shift the ship and, um, told him what was, ‘Oh, it’s in dispute, Hooray.’ Of course, they’re very – lot of solidarity in Port Kembla. I get on board and I said, ah, ‘How long do you expect to be here, Captain?’ He, he was refusing to pay him his money. They were putting him on a plane home, but he’d have to return the ticket – 18 months’ worth of wages.

And I said, ‘How long do you expect to be here Captain?’ And he said, ah, Oh so many days. And I said, ‘Well, I think you can lengthen it a bit you’re gonna hold this attitude.’ And he called me for everything and blackmailing Unionist and I was a bit of scum. And old chief engineer was a dour old Scot and the Captain was an Englishman. And he said, ‘Captain, if I were you I’d listen very carefully to what the padre’s telling you.’ He said, ‘Been to Kembla many times before.’ He said, ‘I think you’d be wise.’He went to his safe and opened it up and there was the bundle of American dollars, this kid’s money all made up, gunna go into Captain’s holiday fund. ‘Oh, we got a great Captain.’ ‘Yeah, why’s that? How often do you do boat drill?’ ‘We don’t. We don’t have to; every seaman knows how to launch a boat.’ Only trouble is when you’ve never done a boat drill half of them are frozen in, they’ve rusted into the davits, you can’t get the jolly things out. Oh yes, Sir.’We’ve, we’ve got a good Captain and good…’ ‘Yeah, why’s that?’ ‘Well, instead of being like you westerners who’ve got to eat three big meals a day, we get $20 US extra a month cause we only have two. But of course, Captain’s still charging the company for three. But yeah, so these were things that I documented. I kept dates, I kept everything. When I went to the Ships of Shame inquiry, ah, that.

Claire Gerson Can you just explain what the Ships of Shame inquiry was, cause it was nearly 30 years ago and I think…

Lance Puckeridge It started with the Kirki. And the Kirki was an oil tanker that had been brought from the scrap yards of India or Bangladesh, I’m

not sure which now, been painted up, even holes in the deck had been covered with cardboard and painted over to look good. Her bow broke off in a big sea in the Indian Ocean off the Western Australian coast. What happens if it’s on the east – we could lose the Barrier Reef. And that was the forerunner of the Kirki. Well, why did the insurers insure her? She was insured by Lloyds of London, regarded as the best in the world.

Some inspector either took a backhander or whatever, whatever, who knows. And they took me down, Colin Hollis for Throsby, and Colin took Merle and I down, um, put us up for a weekend and they put me on the stand. They put me on for 10 minutes and we adj-, adjourned for lunch 45 minutes later. As you can see I can talk. And then after lunch we went back onto the stand. And I said everybody’s talking about nuts and bolts and so on, but there’d been no talk about crews being abused and bashed and physically. And it doesn’t come up too much these days but it does happen, it still happens. And yeah.

Claire Gerson Well, one, that occurred to me because I know I happen to know about Ships of Shame inquiry. And during the height of the pandemic last year when there was mention of all these international vessels, most of which were crewed by Filipinos and Bangladeshis, that were just abandoned in international waters all around the world with presumably some of them having already contracted the virus, just to make matters worse, but not able to get it in touch with their families. I sort of thought well, there’s parallels with what was happening 30 years ago.

Lance Puckeridge Very much so. It’s still happening. The vessel that’s laying out there now, that bulk carrier, was held up here, ah, unsafe vessels. But who can speak up? There’s no strength left in the Union. Back in the day, Port Kembla was the pilot, the, ah, linesman. Ah, the Wharfies, the Painters and Dockers, they were all separate. While the Maritime Union’s one today. But you had the strength to pull things into line and to do something. And it wasn’t willi-, always remember Miss Fierravanti-Wells, our great senator, that I’ve never seen in real life. Heard her on the radio saying, ‘Oh those wicked union men at the steelworks. My father went grey over them.’ And I thought, sweetheart, never about money. Safety for, a, a jolly shunter a day would lose – or a week – could lose their leg if not their life. There was that many men killed and maimed and the strikes were about that, they weren’t about money, they were about safety first and saving people’s lives. But people don’t want to see it. They just turn that a working-class person’s an ignorant fool, ah, doesn’t deserve any protection. Claire Gerson I was going to ask you, the Ships of Shame inquiry came out with a long list of recommendations. That would have been ’92-’93. Do you know if any of them were acted upon before the Howard government came in in ’96 and everything changed?

Lance Puckeridge The second Ships of Shame inquiry, they made a mistake and sent me an invite via Sydney. Sydney, the senior chaplain was ropeable that I’d been involved. I was nothing but a stooge for the Unionists.And he sent the business manager from Sydney who’d virtually never been on the deck of a ship, let alone been a seaman.Um, one of the, in, in my experience, ah, the Member for North Coast made a very snarly comment about me and what would I know. And Bill Morris was the chairperson. He was the federal member for Newcastle. And he asked me was I a seaman. ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘I think,’ – and my experience 16 years at that stage at the Mission – he said, ‘I think Chaplain Puckeridge would have more experience and knowledge than anybody else in this room. And it was a fact. It wasn’t – because they just hadn’t – wasn’t part of their life – they didn’t – and people.

wouldn’t understand or accept that this could happen in this day and age. Well, if a fellow didn’t want to sleep with a senior officer, he just say get lost. Not when you’re thousands of miles from home. They’ve got your wages tied up, they’ve got your visa – your passport – tied up, ah, and probably owed a lot, a lot of money. Um, yeah.

Claire Gerson And there’s nowhere to run.

Lance Puckeridge There’s nowhere to run. It like anywhere, Sydney got involved and we had a senior Chaplain who, ah, was trying to do good. He’d had nothing to do with the sea or ships. He’d come back, he was a, a evangelical man from Sydney diocese.

He went to a Catholic diocese and become dean of a cathedral and, and then fell foul of it and he was trying to be Anglo Catholic. And there’s a lot of politics in the church as I know now, but you do know. And he come back to Sydney and they didn’t want to have him back because he’d gone off with the, you know, and he ended up in charge of Missions to Seafarers in Sydney. And, um, he started helping out Iranians jumping ship. And the next thing word was going there and they were coming up from Melbourne and, ah, I got contacted and I said, ‘No, that’s not our role.’ Our role is purely – in fact I took a, ah, some Iranians, there were two wives and I think there were three or four fellows, two husbands and couple a – transferring from a Kembla ship to one at White Bay loading to go back to Iran and they were gonna clear out from Sydney. And I said they – I had their passports – and I said, ‘I can’t give you your passports because I’d be breaking the law.’ I said, ‘I’m gonna be in the terminal – I had to put some Koreans on a plane – for about 40 minutes. If I come back out and you’re not here, well it’s gonna take me a while to get around to notifying whoever whatever – I’ve been looking for you or whatever.’ Ah, but I said, ‘Just remember you got family at home, you may never see them again. Your mums, your dads and kids or whatever. ‘I said, ‘It’s a big thing and things could change over there.’ It’s not – and when I come back they were crying their eyes out but they were there, yeah. And, ah, I felt real bad when I got to that ship. But I still felt that I’d done the right thing by them morally. And, um, yeah, we can’t help everybody. We can try and point them in the right direction, try and get them help. Ah, Les Symes, ah, came to a conference. He was head of ITF in Sydney. He’d been a wharfie and whatever and he was head of the ITF in Sydney at the time.

Claire Gerson Which is the International Transport Federation.

Lance Puckeridge Federation. And they’re the backbone, they’re the, they’re the bit of strength you have. And Les come to this conference, first Australian one for many years. And we were at Point Piper at a convent. And the boys all went out and got their slabs of beer ’cause there wasn’t any bar. And of course, I was never a drinker, right. When I was a young fellow, I had, I’d had a drink, I had a smoke. But I thought what a waste of money ’cause I always tried to keep, still try to keep fit for my age. And they, ah, said to Les, ‘Oh, this commo’s coming and this…’ They’re running him down to the lowest. ‘And he’s going to come and talk.’ And they’re, ‘Flamin’ Commos!’ And I thought, well, he’s probably gonna, which he did, turned out to be a great mate. Ah, and, ‘Right, we’ve got a few beers on at smoko. Never mind the cuppa tea.’ And he said, ‘My Dad was an alcoholic. I don’t drink thanks.’I thought, Yep, thought he was my sort of man. And from then on we become very good friends. But Les said every Filipino ship comes in, you’ll have ‘X’ amount who want to come to… They used to say to me as I was driving from Port Kembla to Wollongong – the median – ‘I could put a house there. That’s a waste of land.’ Which from their perspective was, but certainly not from ours. And he said, ‘You dissuade, you dissuade, you dissuade. But the moment the ship sails and they knock on your door, that’s when you ring the right number.’ And that’s how I operated for 25 years. I didn’t cause trouble. I – when it was a genuine – there was, well one particular case. A ship had actually, they’d loaded it and

the ribs were breaking away.and it was Indian crew and they were sailing. And one of the engineers, I had him in Port Hospital, they got up the psychiatrist from down at Shellharbour Hospital and we had a talk and he said, ‘If a man is that afraid of going to sea,’ he said, ‘he shouldn’t be at sea because mentally he’s not right, he’s gonna…’ And that fella never sailed. During the course of the Ships of Shame inquiry I think we had seven ships left and never got to the other side, insured to the hilt. Buy them from – like the Kirki – buy them from the scrap yards, paint them up, put an Asian crew on. If they’ve got to pay out $100 US for each man in compensation, oh, big deal. But they’re – it’s insured as a new ship – it’s in everything, the cargo, the crew. Ah, these were the things that they found within Ships of Shame inquiry.

Claire GersonSo one of the things that, that comes to mind is clearly, ah, insurance companies. Leaving aside all the organisations that exist that are supposed to look into whether the ship is seaworthy and look into safety of crew, etc. It seems to me that.

somewhere along the line, the insurance companies aren’t doing their job. Which is kind of ironic as they began in16th-17th century to protect men of sound bottom who were sailing to the New World and places unheard off as yet by Europeans. But they’re obviously not looking at the, all these ships that are plying the world.

Lance Puckeridge But the third world countries became such a source of labour, cheap labour, ah, no kickbacks, ah, you know. If we’d have had six Australian ships sink with six Australia – all hell’d have broken out all over the world. But what, you know, it’s a natural culling. Had somebody telling me the other day COVID the, the ah, the Chinese set it going for sure, yes, they did it on purpose. They didn’t have to fire one bullet and look how many they’ve wiped out. And I thought what a stupid attitude. They’ve wiped out as many Chinese as what, and, Oh, just natural culling, you know, that’s God’s way of sorting things out. And people just, they can’t, each one of us is a human being that wants to be loved. I, I’ve sat in jail cells, I’ve visited prisons and I don’t think I’ve struck anybody from the hardest, hard,

you know, unless they’re completely insane, that doesn’t want to be loved in some way, fashion, respected. Ah, told, you’re a good lady or you’re a good bloke or you’ve done a good job. I never stop praising my grandkids, ah, telling them, ‘You’ve got more potential than you could ever dream of.’ Within myself, I was the most inad-, adequate, ah, or I, I, in company I’d go bright red and just hide. Then I found that I wasn’t a bad bloke and if I had an opinion it was worth putting that opinion forward. Um, I do a job with Inside Industries. I’m supposed to be their Port historian. First meeting – and we’ve got one on Monday -they’re talking and doing things and I said, ‘Well, I’ve just arrived. I know nothing.’ You know, and I said, ‘But I did notice there’s nothing, you know, if you come and visit and you do your tours or your steelworks tour, there’s nothing to take away.’ And I said, ‘All my life, you know, you always want something to take away – a sample or a photo.’ ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, you know, everybody’s got their cameras that..’ And I thought. ‘Oh, shut up.

Lance Puckeridge, you’re new not the. They invited me to speak, ‘Come on you’re the new bloke say some-…’ And I felt quite put down by a couple of particular gentlemen. The biggest thing in my tours -Do you know what pig iron is? That’s pig iron. I bring these out.

Claire Gerson Pig Iron Bob.

Lance Puckeridge Pig Iron Bob. We go to the memorial at the harbour. Ah, ships, heaps, ah, that I take on the tour. And everybody is rapt. ‘Oh, could I get a copy of that? And could I get this or that?’ And I thought no, you’re not as dumb as what you think.

Lance Puckeridge. That, yeah, people somehow, I don’t know why, ah, quite often want to be superior to somebody else or more knowledgeable or whatever. They sent a lass with me to train. ‘Where’s your script? ‘I don’t have one. Depends. Today’s tour’s going to be different to tomorrow and if it’s a heap of school kids, I’ll be talking. But, ah, whatever you want to ask me, I’ll tell you if I know because I’ll share my knowledge. Ah, any knowledge I have I’ve picked up from old people and listen. I’ll sit and listen to an old person talk for – and now I am one [laughs]. But even from a young age I could never get enough of sit, sitting and listening to stories. So, um, yes, I don’t know whether that sums up my whole life. And the Ships… Claire Gerson You mentioned in passing very casually that you’re the Port historian. So how long have you been the Port historian and

Lance Puckeridge Since 1999.

Claire Gerson did you get recommended?

Lance Puckeridge No, I went to the Inside Industry’s office in the Visitor’s Centre in 19- Claire Gerson And they’re the people who now own Port Kembla or…?

Lance Puckeridge No, no, no, no. They work within the confines of BlueScope.BlueScope supports them, but they’re not part thereof, ah, but they’re supported from engineers and different staff, retired staff. Ah, it’s promoting the steelworks. They’re trying to get back to having big tours for school kids and all the schools going and seeing how it’s done. I went there. My next-door neighbour – I live in a village at, ah, Unanderra, Waples Road, the Uniting Church village and my neighbour who only has one grandchild, he comes up at Christmas, and of course COVID’s mucked that up. But he was coming up and he knew nothing about the steelworks, so I called in to see if any brochures or pamphlets to teach him about the steelworks. Got talking to, ah, Brent, the Manager of Inside Industries. And as we spoke and found out I had an indigenous background and found out that I had a bit of knowledge of the area, invited me to come and I couldn’t do the steelworks tour as such because you climb up and down 300 steps, you walk about 2 kilometres and now I’ve had both knees done I’m – and I don’t need that in my life. But, ah, he found out I had knowledge that he’d not heard or seen or whatever, and I had photographic proof of different stuff. And, ah, he invited me to join them and I’ve been, well, 2000 – we retired 2001. In 2000 we signed the bill our retirement home and Merle had a cerebral haemorrhage. We moved into that home in 2001 and I’ve been the carer ever since, up until she went into full care in November. But, ah, she’s had leukemia, she’s had every – we had ten years there and then we’ve been, now 11 years in the village. But I, I just her constant companion. And when this come along, ah, I said, ‘Look, there’s a daycare five doors.’ She wouldn’t go. ‘I’ll just stay home in bed,’ which wasn’t good for her. But, ah, I took, my kids, the couple that didn’t have time – beside their ingrown toenail or sore back – to come and see how Dad and Mum are -one in particular – um, yes. ‘Take it Dad.’ Well, it was the greatest thing that just blew all the cobwebs away. I didn’t have to think what I’m getting for the meal tonight or what I’m gonna do tomorrow, or about changing Merle. And, ah, it worked very well. COVID interrupted it very, very much.

Claire Gerson How often were you doing the tours?

Lance Puckeridge Um, I, I was doing it at the first bit about one a week. I said I don’t want too much. I don’t want it to interrupt my pension. Ah, I’m happy to teach anybody that follows me, but I can’t give a written script. Because I don’t think – ah, in fact just before Christmas last I had a group, ah, from, any rate, fairly big group. And whe-, I, Tony, one of the bus drivers from, ah, Warrigal – we use their buses a lot – Tony, ah, at the end of the tour I always give them – and he’s an excellent driver. Big coach, 50-45 people, 50 people on board and, um, I think Probus club or something it was. And I said what an excellent driver, and one of the, the head of the party got up and gave me a bit of a wrap and what an informative time. And he turned to Tony and Tony said, ‘Oh, Lance Puckeridge is the best.’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah, but you must get sick of it hearing it all the time.’ He said, ‘Every time I go out it’s something, I learn something new.’ So, I thought that was the best wrap I could have from this driver that’s been with me so many times. Um, yeah, it, it’s, um, I, I suppose my interest in history, my lack of education has made me really hungry to learn new things. Claire Gerson Plus you obviously love telling a story.

Lance Puckeridge Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes. Well, I try to cover facts. Always stay at the start of a tour. Nothing worse to go on a tour and have 10,000 facts thrown at you in the first kilometre. You switch straight off. And if you wanna ask me something, I’ll try and answer it. And I’ve usually got the dates and that down. But I just tell the story as I see the story and how I feel the story. And that will change for whatever group it is. Ah, group from Wollondilly.

that was just before Christmas I think – we going through, I’ve got a pass into where the guns were. They call it Heritage Point. I still call it Surf Beach Road, even though there’s a big shed where the houses were. But as we’re going in and I looked out and I said to their carer – we had 14 on board. And I said, ‘What’s that out there?’ And she said, ‘Oh my God, it’s a boat overturned’. She could see this big shiny black thing. I said, ‘Keep watching that boat.’ And of course, the next thing up in the air. And then its mate went up and then they had never seen whales in real life before. They took photos, then it’s waving the big dorsal and they’re all madly waving. And I thought it was just magic you could never buy the experience of the excitement of these adults. Two weeks ago, after I had my knee op get down there and I looked out and off the islands. I said, ah, ‘What’s that out there?’ Any rate one lady looked and said, ‘Oh I just saw some fish jumping.’ Well, I could see the shoal moving the top of the water but you couldn’t see that.

Claire Gerson Dolphins.

Lance Puckeridge Biggest pod of dolphins. One of the fellows said, ‘It’s a whale.’ ‘No, it’s not a whale.” With that they worked them in a big ‘S’ from the island, right into where we were standing, and they’re trapped between the breakwater and them, brought them in. And it was the biggest pod of dolphins I’ve seen in a long time. Funny thing as a kid being reared there, right up until the ’50s I suppose they were always porpoises. We alwa-, we never used the word dolphin.

Claire Gerson Oh, right.

Lance Puckeridge And it was when Sea World started up in, ah, sou-, southern Queensland, the Gold Coast, ah, that they had dolphins, that we started saying ‘dolphin’. We used to always say ‘porpoise’ which is a similar but very different creature, yes.

Claire Gerson And did they appreciate what a rare treat they were being given?

Lance Puckeridge Oh, absolutely yes. They stand there and I bring out my photographs, Surf Beach Road there’s the gun emplacements. Um, there’s where the houses were. We’re standing here near this second gun, and they just, they’re, they’re amazed that somebody could be reared in such a, an incredible… On a beautiful day, the surf’s rolling in, the beaches golden. Ah, old maps will show you, and it’ll say, um, Harbourmaster. These four houses were on, we call it, um, what’d we call it – Signal Hill, yeah, or something – Flagstaff Hill. Ah, they were a bit higher, it’s now covered in industrial sheds with the Fertilizers. But the harbourmaster was also the pilot and his coxswain and harbour – there were four of them lived there. And they’d go out and the harbourmaster would become the pilot and bring them in. Ah, there’s 15 houses. That’s the one I was born in right there. It was the last one. Well, there’s the last two there, but they’re the gun emplacements. A lot argue there was no tunnel. There’s the entrance to the tunnel. My kids always say, ‘Of course there were tunnels we used to swim in them.’ Unbeknownst to me – this is my youngest kids. You went down that fed up with the guns and here there were block houses that had the munitions. So, if they dropped the bomb, the whole lot wouldn’t go sky high. And that’s why they kept the munitions separate from the gun emplacements themselves. Ah, I have photographs of firing the guns. Um, one of my fellow guides, he was an engineer and lost his wife 18 months two years ago and lovely bloke and we just hit it off from word go. And he said, he said, ‘Oh my Dad was a gunner down there. And I said, ‘Did you ever see the guns?’ And he said, ‘No.’ And I said, ‘Oh I’ll bring in some photos.’ And, and he stood there and his eyes welled up and there was his Dad looking at him. And that, that to me that’s the joy of life – to be able to, yeah, ‘Could I have a copy?’ ‘Can you have it? Course you can have a copy.’ Yeah, so. I looked a bit different in that one didn’t I? That’s me with my dear old – he had the biggest hands – oh, he was a big man. But a gentle, beautiful giant till some bloke upset him [laughs], and then he could eat them. That’s another point. Ah, Pig iron Bob ’cause there’s a monument down there for the Dalfram and everybody knows the, ‘Do you know what pig iron is?’ And most people have not got a clue what pig iron is. And as a kid they would often be laying broken on the tracks where they’re taken. I could pick up two pieces but I couldn’t pick up three, it was too heavy. I don’t know what they actually weighed.

Claire Gerson So explain what pig iron is.

Lance Puckeridge Pig iron is the raw, is iron. And the old, ah, pumps and the old pots were made out of iron but would shatter if you dropped them or sudden temperature changes. And when they started adding in scrap steel and a few other chemicals, it become steel which is pliable and can be done into things. So, ah, that’s some wharfies with pig iron. That’s actually the crew of the Dalfram and a wharfie and a seaman.

Claire Gerson Do you also want to explain where the expression ‘Pig iron Bob’ comes from Lance Puckeridge Well

Claire Gerson and what it’s about?

Lance Puckeridge yes, he, ah, good old Bob Menzies.

Claire Gerson There is actually, I don’t know if you’ve walked through the walkway that goes from Crown Street past IPAC to get to the library, but there’s a series of paintings, and one of them is about Pig iron Bob.

Lance Puckeridge Right. No, I’ve not seen that. Japan had invaded Manchuria and were heading for China. And the pig iron was

Claire Gerson This was during, just before the Second World War.

Lance Puckeridge’39. Ah, the Dalfram was taking a load to, of pig iron to be turned into steel and bombs to Japan. And the wharfies and the seamen of Port Kembla said no. And, ah, it become a very hostile dispute. Ah, Bob Menzies was sending in the troops to

Claire Gerson To break the strike?

Lance Puckeridge to break the strike. And ended up they stepped back from the strike in the end and she did sail. But that was the last load ever to go to Japan prior to World War Two. And of course they were right. Ah, Darwin copped some of that steel back, yeah, very much so. About two years, no, couldn’t have been two – yeah, yeah ’99, um, 2019 when I first started I had a group of university lecturers, quite young people from China. And the only thing they wanted to see on the whole tour was there’s a monument, ah, like a big hand grenade. It’s a sculpture down at Heritage Park or whatever you want to call it – Surf Beach Road – ah, saying thank you to the Australian people particularly the wharfies and seamen that tried to prevent, ah, the Japanese getting that steel. And that was the main focus of, ah, they knew all about it.

Claire Gerson Was it made by Chinese artists or..?

Lance Puckeridge No, I’m not sure. No, I think it’s, no, I, I could be incorrect and I don’t like to say yes I know when I’m incorrect, so I’ll leave that one. I should know. I know it cost a ridiculous amount of money. But [laughs] I was surprised that they knew what was there and that was part of the tour and that’s what they wanted to see. But every group I take, sometime, not young school kids, but mature adults upwards, ah, ‘Anybody know the name Bob or Pig iron..?’ And straight away, ‘That so-and-so.’ Well that, I know very much which way they voted, comes out quite distinct [laughs]. Ah, but most, ah, story has, you know, been wrong. One of my, ah, my first world conference in the UK for Missions to Seamen, we, we stayed, we were at, ah, Cambridge University. And, ah, we were in the, the church or wing of the university and as we’d go up to the meal room there was the bust of, and I turned my head and refused to look at him. And of course, couple of the larrikins that knew me quite well, ‘What, what are you up to?’ ‘That bloke!’ I said, ‘He sent us into Turkey just to be a, a distraction when they were in First World War and cost us big with…’ Nobody mentions that in the ANZACS, oh, that’s never mentioned, no. We should never have been sent there as War minister and then as Prime Minister, ah, when they wanted to bring the Rats of Tobruk home and everything go into new, ‘Oh, let the Japanese take it over and we’ll win it back after we’ve won Europe.’ And they were his words. And so, I did not like that gentleman. He might have been the saviour of you British. Good, lovely, but he certainly wasn’t [laughs] didn’t want to be the saviour of Australia.

Claire Gerson Yes. Well, some Indian historians have other things to say about him too as well. ‘Cause he was responsible for a huge famine in what was then ah, West Bengal. Lance Puckeridge Right, right. Have you been to India?

Claire Gerson Yes.

Lance Puckeridge Yes.

Claire Gerson Well, you’ve had so much to say that was fascinating. I feel like I should be, um, interviewing you longer, but we, there’s only a certain amount we can put up on the website. Ah, so I’d like to thank you for coming in today and sharing just a small part of your stories.

Lance Puckeridge I would have liked to have shared more, but my wife has a jealous nature and she’d know something was going on when I said I was in love with your name to start with. So [laughs] no, it’s been a privilege. Ah, hope I haven’t been a pain in the neck. Ah, I love to share, I love my life and, um, it, yeah, it’s been, God’s been great to me. Not that I always saw that or thought it or appreciated it. As the boys on the waterfront will say,’ Lance Puckeridge, what happens if you’re wrong and there’s no God? I’ll say, ‘Well, I’ve had the greatest joy serving people.’ And that’s all that matters.

Claire Gerson A fine point to end on.