Interview transcript from Illawarra Stories Wollongong City Libraries Oral History Project – Ray Jones
Interviewer Jo Oliver
3rd April 2019
Jo Oliver So thank you Ray for coming in
Ray Jones That’s fine.
Jo Oliver and being willing to be interviewed, and I understand your family has
a long connection to the Port Kembla area, so can you tell me about your life, were you born there?
Ray Jones Oh, I was born at Wollongong Hospital, grew up in Port Kembla.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones Virtually all my life except for 8 years I lived in America.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones Um, I got married and but otherwise, we’ve, I still live in Port Kembla.
Jo Oliver Right.
Ray Jones Not far from where my parents built their house, and, um, I grew up with my two sisters and my brother and my grandparents were all in Port Kembla.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm. So, who was first in the family to come to Port Kembla in your looking back in your family?
Ray Jones It was probably my great-great grandparents, um they had the boarding house in Port Kembla main street for many, many years and then, um, then after my on my father’s side of the family and then my, ah, mother’s side of the family they came a few years later and then they had a shop in the main street as well. And that was my great grandma. An ah, we worked in it, you know, in both of them, um.
Jo Oliver And what, so roughly when would that have been that your great grandparents were, came?
Ray Jones Oh, that would be, I would I’d be guessing in the somewhere between 1910 and 1920.
Ray Jones Um.
Jo Oliver And what, what brought them to the area?
Ray Jones The growth in the area.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm. They saw opportunity.
Ray Jones Yep.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones So they, they basically moved up from um from Mount (??) in the country, and my, my mother’s family, um, her, her grandfather, um, came from Milton and he was the Mayor of Milton for a number of years. And with his brothers down in that area as well with a butcher shop and the, and the bakery and the stockyards and
Jo Oliver And then the ones who your great-grandparents who came to Port Kembla, what, what were their names?
Ray Jones That would be um, um, John Thomas O’Connell and um, going back to Eileen. And then on my dad’s side, Eileen Hudson’s, and then my, ah, my grandfather he moved out here from Ireland. He was a seaman and, um, after spending many years during the 1st World ar on the merchant ships he moved out to, um, to Australia to the warmth. Out at that area and then you go back even further there was, um, John Boag, um, he’s the one that lived down in Milton, and then his descendants moved up to this area. And then, and then on my father’s side his, his mother’s great-grandparents was, ah, Thomas Hudson-Hodson. Um, and then they, they moved into the area. They’re the ones that had the, the, um, cafe and the, the boarding house.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm. So, can you tell us a bit more about that, that, did you say that was in Wentworth Street?
Ray Jones That was in Went, Wentworth Street. It was up on western side of Wentworth Street, um, half way up the hill on the south side between Fitzwilliam Street and Allan Street, that was the boarding house.
Jo Oliver Mm.
Ray Jones Ah, it was there after I was born [laughs].
Jo Oliver Right.
Ray Jones Things had changed a lot.
Jo Oliver And did it have a name do you know?
Ray Jones Not that I’m,
Jo Oliver No?
Ray Jones not that I’m aware of. Um, well, I’d hear stories about my ah, about my great-great grandmother cooking in the fuel stoves. And then they’d have euchre night on a Tuesday night with threepence, you know, to get in, that does you scones and cream and a cup of tea as well. Um and my dad would, and his brother would get the milk cow and they would take it up on top of the hill for it to feed during the day and then in the afternoon they’d get it and bring it back again and. And then they would collect chunks of coal along the railway tracks near the Port Kembla, um, train station and that was used in the fuel stoves and, you know, so anything to, to save money.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones And then they my father and his brother they raised geese in the back of in their backyard and then they sold the geese at Christmas time for people for their Christmas goose, you know, as they, as they grew up.
Jo Oliver Multi-business.
Ray Jones Yes. Everybody, everybody in those years was, was involved in helping one way or another.
Jo Oliver Mm. And who would you think would have stayed in the boarding house, would that have been tourists or..?
Ray Jones No, mainly the workers.
Jo Oliver Workers.
Ray Jones That have just moved to the area and they haven’t got a house yet and things like this, it was mainly that during the growth of the area.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones So
Jo Oliver So that the would be the beginning of the steelworks and..?
Ray Jones The steelworks it was mainly, at that time I would say. Um, you could have had some people that were off the train, um, at Port Kembla station, um, needed a place to stay overnight, or they were moving down the coast further or, or something. But, ah, or seamen.
Jo Oliver Mm. Yeah.
Ray Jones Ah, but, ah, that was their lifestyle at that time.
Jo Oliver Yeah. And you mentioned there was, your family had a cafe also in..?
Ray Jones That was part of the boarding house. There was, there was a cafe, ‘cause that was the dining room for the, the boarding house but it was also used as the cafe.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones Ah, on my mother’s side they had a like a more of a milk bar type of thing.
Jo Oliver And where was that?
Ray Jones That was a bit further down the street, it’s, ah, it would have been about the same position as the current scout shop, um, closer to Allan Street.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones Um.
Jo Oliver And do you know what they served; it was luncheon?
Ray Jones Same, same.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones It was just open generally all the time, um, as more of a milk bar confectionery. They had the things that they would, they would serve for people that were going to the Whiteway picture theatres and, and things like that. But, you know, everything was in the main street.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones You didn’t travel into Wollongong.
Jo Oliver No, no.
Ray Jones You know, it was too far away.
Jo Oliver Yeah. So, do you have any memories of, was that still there when you were growing up?
Jo Oliver No, no.
Jo Oliver That was gone.
Ray Jones That was all that side of my family was gone. I think the only thing that was left was the, um, if anything was my, um, Grandmother’s sister, Mavis, she still lived in the Port Kembla main street. She lived in a flat above the newsagents. And then she worked at the Commercial Hotel.
Jo Oliver Right.
Ray Jones And, ah, we as, as children growing up we’d sneak into the back of the hotel and she’d make a, a fizzy drink for us. You know, so, spoiling the, the children
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones as we grew up.
Jo Oliver Yeah, yeah.
Ray Jones And then later in the years I, when I was in high school, I used to sell the
newspapers around the hotels.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones So
Jo Oliver How would you do that, did you have some sort of a barrow or something or..?
Ray Jones No, just just carry them on me arm.
Jo Oliver Carry them.
Ray Jones Yeah.
Jo Oliver So where would you pick them up from?
Ray Jones Well I’d start off at, at the high school and I walked down to the north gate at Metal Manufactures, and I could pick up anywhere from 100 to 200 newspapers and carry them on my shoulder down to the jetties. And I’d sell them on all ships down in the harbour at No.3 and No.4 jetty. And then after I finished that then I’d walk back up to the main street and hand in all the ones I hadn’t sold and the money. And then I would do the last what we call run through all the shops and the hotels, um, in, in, in the main street before going home for dinner. And now and again we’d, we’d get an envelope from across the bar at the hotel and we had to you know, we got, um, I think it was a shilling to deliver it to the SP Bookie up in the alley way.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones in behind the shops.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm. And was that a once a week thing delivering the papers?
Ray Jones No.
Jo Oliver Every day?
Ray Jones Monday to Friday.
Jo Oliver Right. And would that have been the Illawarra Mercury?
Ray Jones Illawarra Mercury and the, and the, um, and the Herald and the Telegraph, yeah. Each, some of each.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones There was the late, there was, it was basically the late edition that was coming out from the Sydney papers.
Jo Oliver Right, okay.
Ray Jones It was late in the afternoon, cause you had the morning papers. So, if you didn’t sell a lot of Mercurys because they only came out once a day, but the Herald and the Telegraph came out twice a day I n the morning, um, and then you had the late editions.
Jo Oliver Mm-mm.
Ray Jones So.
Jo Oliver And would you, you get paid for that?
Ray Jones And we’d get paid for ex-, so many, so much like a,I can’t remember how much it was, but like a,um, a penny or whatever it was per newspaper that was sold. So that’s, yeah, always been doing something for pocket money.
Jo Oliver Yeah. What would you do with your pocket money?
Ray Jones I saved it.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones Yeah, yeah. It went towards, I saved it and then when I eventually left high school and started my apprenticeship, my, my bank book was used to, the money that I’d saved all those years to buy my first tools to be an apprentice fitter and turner at the steelworks.
Jo Oliver So jumping back a little bit in, then you went to school in Port Kembla.
Ray Jones Port Kembla primary and Port Kembla High School and then to Wollongong TAFE.
Jo Oliver Right. And have previous members of your family gone to school at those schools?
Ray Jones All of them. My mother and my father and my, um, sisters and my younger brother. We all went to Port Kembla primary school.
Jo Oliver And do you have any memories of the schools, or do you have any, do you know any stories from your parents and grandparents about the schools?
Ray Jones Um, not, not that I can remember. I can think of the fact that when the big chimney stack was being built I was in 5th and 6th class, and it was completed the year I was in 6th class. And um, I remember one time one of the workers there, a hard hat was blown off their head and it came down into the, into the, um, school ground and, and my, my brother claimed it [laughing].
Jo Oliver He didn’t give it back?
Ray Jones Well we didn’t think come after
Jo Oliver Didn’t come looking?
Ray Jones Didn’t come looking for it.
Jo Oliver Right.
Ray Jones And, and, and when we were playing cricket, we were always trying to hit the ball over the school fence and over the, the fence into the E. R & S and so we could go back and retrieve it.
Jo Oliver Okay, right.
Ray Jones But I remember the years when that area there was, it was actually houses.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones And there was the managers of ER&S lived in the houses there. And just the same as there was houses for the Metal Managers, so.
Jo Oliver And they were demolished then?
Ray Jones They were all demolished. All the, the best ones were demolished to build the chimney and the, um, ones in the, at Metal Manufacturers were actually still there, um, and my wife and I and two of our children lived in one of them when we moved back from Am-, America and I started work at Metal Manufacturers, and that was probably in the, um, late 1980’s, early 1990’s that they were actually demolished as well. They had to, too much
to maintain them.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones Considering they were, they were there and some of them were actually there
prior to the, ah, 1st World War. Because Metal Manufacturers was going to start up, um, but
due to the war the equipment couldn’t come out from England to start the, it up properly, um, until up to the 1st World War was complete.
Jo Oliver And you went to Wollongong
TAFE and did fitting and turning.
Ray Jones Yep.
Jo Oliver And then was your first job with ..?
Ray Jones With the steelworks.
Jo Oliver Yeah
Ray Jones With, at, in the apprentice centre.
Jo Oliver Mm.
Ray Jones And my father did his apprenticeship as a fitter and turner at Metal Manufacturers and then he ended up, um, he ended up working fora toy factory that was in Flinders Street for a while. And then he worked at, um, Port Kembla power station.
Jo Oliver Right.
Ray Jones Um, his, his, probably his claim to fame is that he was walking from one area of the power station into the boiler room when the boiler blew up and, um, and the concussion from that blew him back through and tore the door frame out of the wall, um, into the other room – lucky to survive. He was sort of unconscious for over a week.
Jo Oliver Oh, that’s a long time!
Ray Jones Um, so that was, you know, about the same time, it was around about1951 1953, just after I was born, um, that that happened.
Jo Oliver Had severe concussion from that.
Ray Jones Yep.
Jo Oliver And was he able to go back to work?
Ray Jones Yes.
Jo Oliver And did he have any long term…?
Ray Jones No. No, nothing at all. Um, and then when Tallawarra power station, then he went to, he was transferred to Canberra and he, he, he started up Canberra power station. And he was transferred back to Tallawarra power station to work on starting up Tallawarra
power station and he worked there all of his life, the rest of his life until he retired.
Jo Oliver Mm. And you’ve brought in a lovely, um, uniform for want of a better word, of, um, the Order of Odd Fellows used to wear. Do you..?
Ray Jones No, that was my grandfather.
Jo Oliver That was your grandfathers, sorry, okay.
Ray Jones That was my grandfather.
Jo Oliver So do you know any more about that?
Ray Jones John O’Connell. No, other than he was a member and, um, I can remember him in his tuxedo with his bow tie and, you know, because we actually lived when, while my father was building our family house we were living and my grandfather’s house. So, um, we moved up into our family house when I was about 6 years of age. Um, I always remember the, you know, seeing my grandfather in his, what we called his pelican suit [laughs]
Jo Oliver Okay. And how often would that have been do you think, would it..?
Ray Jones Oh, I imagine he probably went once a week
Jo Oliver Once a week, yeah. So you didn’t see him with the, the collar and the belt, would he have taken that..?
Ray Jones I’m sure I did.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones Um, but, um, whether I remember that, that far back or not, you know.
Jo Oliver No, no. Or maybe he took it with him and put it on there?
Ray Jones Because, you know, I think he passed away when I was around about, um,12 years of age.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones Both my grandfathers
Jo Oliver Right.
Ray Jones Passed away and during the, in about a 12 to 24 month period.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm. And were their jobs were with the, um, the boarding house and the..?
Ray Jones No, no.
Jo Oliver They had other jobs?
Ray Jones They had other jobs.
Jo Oliver Right. What did they do?
Ray Jones My, um, my mother’s father he was a train driver.
Jo Oliver Mm.
Ray Jones He brought the coal from Kembla, Mt Kembla mine down to the jetties and as he went through, through Port Kembla station he’d make the, the train jerk to shake off all the loose coal off the carriages. And then people like my father would go along when they were children and pick up all the coal and take it home. They’d use that in their fuel stoves. Jo Oliver Okay.
Ray Jones And then my other grandfather, my father, my father’s father he was originally a seaman. Um, started out as a, a cabin boy for his grandfather on a clipper ship and worked as a seaman during the 1st World War. And, and his ships were sunk a couple times, you know, out from underneath him. So, he came out to the Pacific for the warmth. He ended up being a, um, a rigger down at, [coughs] the um, at Metal Manufacturers.
Jo Oliver What did that involve, was, what..?
Ray Jones Climbing up on cranes and, and rewiring roping cranes and all that type of thing.
Jo Oliver Mm.
Ray Jones And he did that until he actually fell off the crane and he broke both legs and his
hip. And, um, the story goes that they had to get him to Wollongong, the only hospital was in at Wollongong, so they just load him into a horse drawn cart and the, ah, to keep the pain down it was a bottle of scotch [laughs] as they travelled all the way out to Fig-, Figtree and then through into Wollongong because you couldn’t cross the, the, the only bridge across Tom Thumb lagoon was a pedestrian bridge for pushbikes. So, then he, then he ended up working in the tool store in the tool room.
Jo Oliver So he did recover
from that?
Ray Jones Yes, yes, he just limped around alot. He could, he couldn’t chase us children [laughs]
Jo Oliver No.
Ray Jones as we were growing up, like he early, could in his earlier years, you know.
Jo Oliver So they were able to find work for him within the same company?
Ray Jones Yes, which they did.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones And, um, so, you know. And then my mother, she worked at Metal Manufacturers for a while. Um, she was the, the mail girl.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones She would pick up the mail from the, from the post office and
she would take down to Metal Manufacturers and she would deliver to everybody. And then she moved on to working for the Customs Office up near the, um, the Court-, the current Port Kembla Courthouse. And, um, I think Mum’s probably claim to fame is they had the Earl or Duke of Gloucester was visiting and when they’re all standing out the front outside the Customs House and they realised that the Union Jack wasn’t flying. So, she – or the Australian flag wasn’t flying – so she raced inside, grabbed the flag, raced outside,
hooked it all up. hoisted it up the flagpole, tied it off and everybody was standing there and waved at, as this royal person goes past and nobody realises that the flag is upside down [laughs] – a distress signal!
And then, ah, and then she, after havin children, she became a housewife the rest of her life. But, um, I always remember Mum making, she loved her flowers, she, she would make bouquets of flowers for weddings and everything and, um, she, she played the organ at
St Stephen’s Anglican church from when she was 16 years of age until she was 80 years of age. So, at all the funerals and every wedding and so, some cases she was making all the bouquets for the, for the bride for the wedding and then playing the organ for the wedding. And so we, we grew up in the church. Well, it was always Sunday school first and then the church service after that, waiting for mum to, ’cause that was followed Sunday school.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones And then we would in our younger years we would wait for Mum and then we’d walk home with Mum cause, you know, only had one car and Dad worked shift work, so, um.
Jo Oliver And was there any other social functions, other than the Sunday services?
Ray Jones Well, um, there was fellowship that when we get older an there’s the boys’ club and the girl’s club in the evening, some evenings, we’d play games and things like this. But um, and then we’d always have the, the, um, the church picnic, which was normally down to, um, Jamberoo, to the park down there and have the church picnic on a Saturday once a year and…
Jo Oliver Would they take a bus for that?
Ray Jones They would load up a bus.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones Just load, every Sunday there would a bus that would pick us all up through Port Kembla, and, um, deliver us to the church, then if you – for the Sunday school. And then the bus was always there to take the Sunday school people home. But if we waited for my mother to finish doing the organ for the church service then we would all walk home.
Jo Oliver Yeah, yeah.
Ray Jones Or dad would, in the summer months, dad would pick us up from there and take us out to my uncle Frank’s out, he live on the edge of lake, and drop all of us kids off there and Mum, we’d have the, have lunch there. And then he would go to the Yacht Club, and he would sail his sailing boat and, um, us kids would, you know, play in the water, in the lake and throw seaweed at each other or play cricket along the foreshore of the lake there. Um, my, my father’s elder, older brother Frank he was a, a, um, avid, a very, you know, ah, cricket player. He played for New South Wales Country so he was always in the
backyard with us playing cricket and showing us how to, always trying to hit his fast bowls,
which we never could [laughs].
Jo Oliver And with the sailing, that, um, tell me a bit about your, your dad and the sailing club. Had that been going for a long time that club?
Ray Jones Um, well, Port Kembla, ah, the Illawarra Yacht Club started actually over in Primbee. They operated out of an old shed, you know, over there and they sailed fairly large boats which you just didn’t lift out of the water by hand, so they just moored them. And that’s when dad first started sailing there. And that was soon after he was married in, in 1948. Um, and, um, then at, then they moved over to [coughs] the Lake Heights side of the lake and built their clubhouse and everything over there. Um, and that just developed from there. Um, Dad at one time was the secretary-treasurer, um, with a fellow by the name of John Greenlees, he was the Assistant General Manager at the steelworks, he was the president. Um, and they then negotiated to buy more land. Um, and the real estate agent – and that was from the Wentworth estate – and the real estate agent was trying to sell it by the the square foot and they were trying to convince him that at the high tide it was really by the bucketful. And, um, but unbeknown to the, ah, real estate agent, they already knew that
the, um, when they were going to put in the sewers through Lake Heights and Berkeley they needed somewhere to dump all the extra dirt. And one of their members worked for the Water Board and they told the board that this was going to happen, so they bought the, this piece of property from the Wentworth estate which was by the bucketful at high tide! And then they made a deal with the Water Board and the Water Board paid them to dump the soil in their piece of land which is now the current site of Illawarra Yacht Club.
Jo Oliver Okay. So, they got a bit more than
Ray Jones They got a bit more than what they planned on.
Jo Oliver Brought it in. Right. And did your father have his own boat or were their boats owned by the Yacht Club?
Ray Jones No, he had, he, he was a partner in, in a, in a yacht with John Greenlees and, um, a bloke called Jan. And then he also travelled to Sydney and he sailed at, um, St George Sailing Club in Sydney as well on Saturdays. And he’d sail on, at Lake Illawarra Yacht Club on Sundays, and, ah, they’d catcha train up to, to do that.
Jo Oliver And what sort of yachts were they?
Ray Jones Oh, oh, what they call 16-foot skiffs.
But when he first started sailing there they were called Open Class 18-ers. Um, and then when I was around about 15 years of age my father and I built our first yacht which was about 17 foot long. It was designed by a friend of his and, um, and then that’s when I was introduced to, um, by all about fittings from a place at, um, in Sydney. And it was, um, part of Miller & Wentworth Sails and a gentleman by, by the name of Bob Miller sold us all the fittings. Um, so we got to know Bob really well and became a very personal friend of his because Dad had sailed against him at St George Sailing Club.
Jo Oliver Okay.
Ray Jones Ah, and then many, many years later, um, there was a, a break up in the company. Miller & Wentworth Sails was broken up into two halves, but Bob Miller couldn’t keep his name as ‘Miller’, um, as part of the deal, so he changed his name. So, his name became, um, his first name was Ben which he named after his dog when he was growing up. And his, his surname was his mother’s maiden name and it was Lexcen. And it was Ben Lexcen who designed Australia II that won the America’s Cup. So, for many years we, um, we got to know Bob Miller then and then Ben Lexcen
later. Um, so it was…
Jo Oliver And what was your made from, what did you make it from?
Ray Jones Well the first one was made out of plywood.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones And, um, and Dad would get all the framework of the yacht was from timber crates that he got at Tallawarra power station with new equipment coming in. Whatever you could do to save money. A lot of some of the fittings were actually made at the power station, you know, to go on to the yacht. So that, that was ‘Katie 1’. And um, and then when he retired the family, um, my father and I put money together and we bought, um, what is Katie II which is, which is now 32 years old and I still race it. It’s a lot bigger because it’s, it’s on a trailer and it sleeps 6 people inside it. And, um, and we’ve won club championships, um, events from two different yacht clubs, four of those. We’ve also won two Australian championships and six State championships. So yes, so it goes back to the, you know, as he, Dad used to always said to me, you’ve got the sailor’s blood in me from my, my father and his grandfather, ah, having the clipper ship sailing out of Ireland and across to Canada and America and back again. So, it’s in our blood.
Jo Oliver So when did you first learn to sail?
Ray Jones Um, I’m told the first time I was out in a, in a sailing boat was, was a family day. There was hardly any wind so they got the smallest person that was available which was me. I was there at 6 years of age, and they gave me a little tiny bucket and I bailed the water out of it as we sailed around the course.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones Um, and then I, I was in the, I actually started sailing competitive when I was about 9 years of age.
Jo Oliver That was very young. On your father’s boat or…?
Ray Jones No, that was just in a small boat.
Jo Oliver Okay.
Ray Jones You know, um, with children. And then I just gradually moved into large boats. And then I got to, I got the bug as well and I used to travel on the train to Sydney and the
person that owned this big, ah, Tornado Catamaran, um, used to pick me up at Hurstville
station and we’d go down to Botany Bay. We’d rig the boat, we’d race it, he’d drop me back at the, the, um, at the train station. And he would go home, and I would catch the train home. And he was a fellow by the name of Ron Airsdale. Everybody called him ‘Spike’. And he had actually had been a dentist in Port, in Port Kembla.
Jo Oliver Really
Ray Jones And he lived in the house that’s right next door to the back entrance to the, um, Catholic Church. And, um…
Jo Oliver And did you always sail on the lake, or would you ever go out to the sea?
Ray Jones I’ve, I’ve sailed, I’ve sailed offshore as well in other boats. I’ve sailed our boat offshore in Cronulla ah, more recently I towed it, three days towing it, up to the Whitsundays and then I raced it up there at Airlie Beach race week, Hamilton Island race week. Ah, what else – I tow it to, um, Port Stephens, race it there, um, all over down to Lakes Entrance in Victoria – um, everywhere. And that’s the benefit of this particular style boat or yacht. Um, the keel lifts up inside it so you can put it on the trailer and you tow it to your location then rig it and then sail it
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones And my wife sails with me and my children have sailed with me. The children grew up in, with the boat and we’d go down to St Georges basin and they’d be swimming. And I’d, and my father and my brother and myself and my wife we’d be racing the boat while the children were playing in the beach and then as a family weekend away.
Jo Oliver Right. And here at Lake Illawarra, ah, the, um, the sailing club, is it mostly locals still or do people come from further out?
Ray Jones There’s, there’s, there’s regular regattas where people come from, from all over Australia and, and New South Wales.
Jo Oliver Mm.
Ray Jones Um, with the particular yacht that I have it’s called a trailer sailor.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones And there was an association which I’ve been president of, which is
The New South Wales Trailer Yacht Association. And we’d have a regatta at a different location each month during the sailing season.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones So we’d go to Pittwater, Sydney Harbour, Botany Bay, um, Port Stephens, Lake Illawarra, St George’s Basin, Jervis Bay, Canberra or Bateman’s Bay.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones And, um, yeah, so we travel around with the boat.
Jo Oliver Yeah
Ray Jones And, and you, you get to know all these people, it’s like one big family. You’re seeing them once a month and, um, there’s a lot of the people, you know, ah, that, that my
children that treated other people like uncles and aunts. You know, they’re, they’re the sailing uncles and aunts they’re not the born uncle and aunt type of thing.
Jo Oliver So it’s a real family passion?
Ray Jones Yes.
Jo Oliver Yeah. And with your work, you started off as a fitter and turner at the steelworks.
Ray Jones Yeah.
Jo Oliver And what were you making then?
Ray Jones Any parts to repair things in the steelworks or I would work as pulling those machines apart and putting them back together again. Um, then I, after my apprenticeship I left there and went to work for Garnock Engineering, and they did all the repairs on the ships in the harbour. So I worked on that for, um, for about three years.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones And then I, ah, my, my wife was over here – she’s the American, she was in Australia. She was a Rotary exchange student going to Wollongong high school with the Port Kembla Rotary club. I belonged to the Port Kembla Rotaract club, we met and, um,
what is it now, 47 years later [laughs].
Jo Oliver The rest is history.
Ray Jones The rest is history.
Jo Oliver Right.
Ray Jones Ah, and, ah, then four children and, you know, and now four grandchildren and just keeps on growing.
Jo Oliver And thinking about Wentworth Street and what it was like when you were younger, you mentioned the picture theatre. Did you
Ray Jones Yeah
Jo Oliver used to go to the pictures?
Ray Jones Yes. I went to
Jo Oliver What do you remember about that experience? To the, to the Whiteway. All the Jaffas rolling down the floor because the, the, you know, downstairs was a sloping floor.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones So somebody would drop Jaffas and then you’d hear them running all the way to the bottom and. And, um, [coughs] yeah. So, then you also had Woolworths in Port Kembla main street back in those days. And hardware stores and everything was in
Port Kembla main street. Because King Street didn’t go through the cutting at the Brambles, so when you came from Wollongong you came across a bridge at the, at the entrance to the inner harbour and then through, either down Military Road or down Port Kembla Mil-, or Wentworth Street, to go to Shellharbour.
Jo Oliver Right.
Ray Jones That was the way home.
Jo Oliver Way home.
Ray Jones Um.
Jo Oliver A lot of people shopped locally?
Ray Jones Yes.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones There was, there was just no, no real Warrawong down there. And then eventually Warrawong shopping centre was built and then it just grew and grew and grew. Um, when I was about, um,16 years of age I was then working part time as an usher at the Odeon theatre in, in Warrawong. And, um, and, ah, a couple things that, you know, funny things that had happened during that era was the, um, we had the movie ‘Winnie the Pooh’ and they sent over all the costumes from Disney. And, um, and I was Winnie the Poo
Jo Oliver [laughs]. Right.
Ray Jones And for about two weeks
Jo Oliver Right.
Ray Jones during school holidays walking around the shopping centre and my mate Warren Taylor was the, was the rabbit and then somebody else was the owl. And, um.
Jo Oliver And you were drumming up business for the movie?
Ray Jones That was to promote the movie.
Jo Oliver Yeah, yeah.
Ray Jones They, they, um, and then, then another time the Flintstone movie was came along and Iended up being Fred Flintstone [laughs] you know, you know, for, for a week.
And, um, met people like Bill Sayer, um, who was from Port Kembla Surf Club and, and the Whales swim-, ah, swimming club. He was also an usher. He was the senior usher in the afternoon and we were junior ushers.
Jo Oliver Okay.
Ray Jones You know, um.
Jo Oliver And you had to show people to their seat?
Ray Jones Yes.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones In, once, once the, the lights went out.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones In most cases there wasn’t that call, you know, they could find their own way anyway.
Jo Oliver Yeah, yeah.
Ray Jones So it was only when it was really full that there. And that was the, the theatre that, that would start the, the support picture at, at 6 o’clock and in the af-, in the evening and then the main show would start between 7.30 and quarter to eight. And then, then they would show the support movie last.
Jo Oliver Right.
Ray Jones So you’d start, you’d come at 6 if you’re on, if you worked night shift at the steelworks, you could come at 6 you could watch the support and the main, leave, hop on the bus and go to work. But if you came later then you could watch the main picture first and then the support last. So, this is was why the, it was actually the only theatre in all of Wollongong, ah, that did that.
Jo Oliver That catered for people’s work.
Ray Jones Yep.
Jo Oliver And, ah, what about sport? You mentioned cricket before, but, um, were you involved in..?
Ray Jones I was, I was never a cricket player.
Jo Oliver No.
Ray Jones Um, I, I played rugby league from age 8 until age 18.I also played baseball.
Jo Oliver Right.
Ray Jones Um, so they were my, they were my winter sports. I mean we played
baseball in the morning and then rugby league in the afternoon.
Jo Oliver You would have been tired on Saturday night [laughs].
Ray Jones Yeah, yeah. And, ah, I was fortunate enough to select, I was selected one time to play for Illawarra when I was 16. And we played on the Wollongong Show Ground, and we were actually the support game prior to the French playing against the Illawarra senior grade.
Jo Oliver Mm.
Ray Jones Um, so that was my, my thrill.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones in, in, my, my career. Um, and I was also involved in well through school, um, athletics in cross-country running.
Jo Oliver And, um, Rotary, well you mentioned Rotaract, so is that sort of youth..?
Ray Jones That’s a youth group up to 24 years of age – 18 to 24.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones That’s for both males and females.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones the youth club.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones And, um, so…
Jo Oliver And would they be involved in fundraising?
Ray Jones Yes, we raised money, um, for charities an everything. Um, on one occasion
well we actually build a bath club – a bath tub. We tooka bath tub and added cans to it so it would float and put a seat on it and put rollocks on it and the group, starting at about 4o’clock in the morning, we rode it around all of Lake Illawarra
Jo Oliver Really.
Ray Jones And we ended up finishing about 11 o’clock at night.
Jo Oliver Mm. Tiring.
Ray Jones And then, um, and we raised money.
Jo Oliver So people sponsored you?
Ray Jones Yeah, sponsored us. But we had to, we started at Illawarra Yacht Club and we had to touch the, um, the breakwater at, at, at Berkeley. Then we had to touch the jetty at Kanahooka, then we had to touch the power station and so we had to touch all
these spots.
Jo Oliver The same crew?
Ray Jones And we just kept on swapping
Jo Oliver Oh, okay.
Ray Jones people as, you know, you know, one person tie up.
Jo Oliver Oh, one person to do [unclear]
Ray Jones They would do sections.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones And then unless you got really tired. And then we took the, um, the bath tub and we actually put some mattress type of thing in it and I volunteered to sleep and eat and live in the bath tub floating in Belmore Basin for 48 hours.
Jo Oliver Sorry you said that?
Ray Jones [laughs] In a way. You know, I was, I was, you know, I was at alot of aches and pains when I, I got, when I got, eventually got out of it. So starting from 6 o’clock on a Friday afternoon until 6 o’clock on Sunday evening I lived in the bath tub. And I would do laps rowing it around the Belmore Basin.
Jo Oliver Yeah, yeah.
Ray Jones But we had a, an anchor tied to one end of it and the other, other rope was tied to the jetty. And we had a big sign on it Lifeline’.
Jo Oliver Right.
Ray Jones [coughs] And we were raising money for Lifeline.
Jo Oliver Lifeline was it?
Ray Jones So you do, younger years you to some very crazy things.
Jo Oliver Yeah, but for a good – and sounds like it was fun.
Ray Jones But, but I’ve always been involved with my community.
Jo Oliver And then you’ve been involved in Rotary back here?
Ray Jones Yep. And then we came, my wife and I were both members of the Rotary Club.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones Um.
Jo Oliver Port Kembla’s changed by the, your memory and certainly over your family’s time there. How would you describe the changes that have happened?
Ray Jones Well it’s, it was like a ghost town for, for a lot of years. When I, when I came back from America after being in America for eight years and, ah, one, one major thing that I
noticed was the lack of pollution.
Jo Oliver Right.
Ray Jones Which was a major plus.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones Um, considering.
Jo Oliver So what, when did you come back, what year?
Ray Jones I came back in 1982.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones Um, and we stopped at the top of Bulli Pass there at the, and looked down and I said, ‘Is the steelworks closed?’ And my dad said, ‘No.’ And I said, ‘Well there’s no
brown and black smoke anymore.’ And he said, ‘Well they had to do it. They had to
clean it up and they cleaned it up.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones Um.
Jo Oliver So we you conscious of that when you were younger that you were living in quite a polluted environment?
Ray Jones Well, yeah, because you could always taste the sulphur dioxide in your, in your
mouth all the time, um, from the fumes, um, from the Fertilizers and the and, and E.R.& S.
And we’d come out of school, um, ah, in primary school to play and it was very hard to
even see the buildings of E.R.& S. because of the pollution some days. If the wind wasn’t blowing, it just hung there. It was, the pollution was that heavy it wouldn’t go up. It would go up, it’d blow up, use fans to blow it up a chimney and then it would settle back down again.
Jo Oliver Yeah. And was the community concerned about that, or..?
Ray Jones Not at that point.
Jo Oliver No.
Ray Jones It wasn’t a major thing. It was, it was part of living in an industrial climate, I think.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones Um, you just got used to that fact. We always blamed it on, on, um, more so on E.R. & S.I think, um, than anything else. And then, um, Fertilizers built their small chimney stack and then E.R.& S. built their chimney stack. And where, if you were down in the main street before the chimneys were built, you could always taste this sulphur taste in your mouth and smell. Um, then after the Fertilizers chimney was built and then we got it up at the house [laughs].
Jo Oliver Oh, I see.
Ray Jones And it wasn’t coming from E.R.& S. it was coming from the Fertilizers more.
Jo Oliver Really.
Ray Jones That, that particular time and place.
Jo Oliver Yeah, yeah.
Ray Jones We still had the pollutions from the, the big chimney but as we, we always used to laugh about it, the fact then, we said, right they, they’ve now got a chimney 600ft.
high, by the time it comes down it’ll, it’ll land in Albion Park now it won’t land in Port Kembla.
Jo Oliver Okay. So, when you came back in, was it the late ’80s?
Ray Jones ’82.
Jo Oliver 82. You said it was clean, much cleaner, but it was a ghost town, did you say?
Ray Jones The main street.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones There was, there was so many shops that were just locked. They were just close and, and, and, and papers stuck over the windows and things like this because of how much the shopping centre and grown. And then since then the shopping centre, Warrawong shopping centre has grown even bigger.
Jo Oliver Mm-mm.
Ray Jones Ah, but now you’re seeing a lot of, lot of new stuff coming into the Port Kembla. Um, and it’s probably, what’s got a lot to do with it, is probably that the, the rent is that much cheaper than a lot of other areas. So, you’ve got these arty groups and things like this and, and bridal photographies and, and, and gifts and, and, and because it’s, it’s a cheaper rent than other areas in Wollongong. So, they’ve got alot, a lot of people, um, go there. It’s, it’s amazing now that you can, you can go down there on a, on a Saturday at 1, 2 o’clock and sometimes not find a parking space because of all the people that are coming to the, to the, to the Street.
Jo Oliver So it’s reinventing itself.
Ray Jones Oh, yes.
Jo Oliver As a, more of a cultural or arts area.
Ray Jones Yep. And, um, I used to have a, I, I remember all the discussions I’d have with
Frank Arkell many years ago. Who, ah, we were personal friends with Frank because Frank actually grew up on the other side of the fence from where my father grew up in Port Kembla
before his family move to Cringila. Um, but he, he grew up in Port Kembla first. And, um, and when he was Mayor here the, we’d have all these discussions over a lemon squash at the, at the Yacht club.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones Um, when he came out to present the trophy or something like this. And, and, um, I said then, I, I’ve seen other areas in the United States. Um, I’ve been to, I worked in Chicago for the three months and got to go to a lot of different places in Chicago. Um, Detroit, um, all these other cities that, that I, I went to and saw. But even the smaller t-smaller communities that were relying on a alot of industry, where because of pollution they didn’t have the money to fix it, so they could, took the easy way out and they just closed.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones And so you see the boardings going up on windows of shops and shops closing and everything. But there’s always ways around it, they looked at other, other other ways of doing it. They didn’t charge them rates
Jo Oliver I see for five years
Jo Oliver Mm.
Ray Jones So the rate money that they expected that the, the, the shop owner or the building owner to put that money into redeveloping their shop.
Jo Oliver Hm-mm.
Ray Jones And you see that, you see that in the, in the main street.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones There’s all these new, there’s, um, which used to be the Bonds singlet sh-, factory up on the corner Fitzwilliam and and, um, Wentworth Street. Um, it’s all got a new
glass front on it now and, and new aluminium windows and everything like this. And so, it’s, it’s changing.
Jo Oliver And what is that now, is that ..?
Ray Jones It hasn’t, they’re just re-doing it.
Jo Oliver Okay.
Ray Jones They haven’t put it up for rent yet, they’re just redoing it. And then you see
a number of the other shops that are, that have done the same thing. It’s, it’s changing, things are changing.
Jo Oliver Yeah, yeah.
Ray Jones There’s a lot of cafes opening up. Hopefully one day it’ll be like one of these suburbs in Sydney where all the yuppies go.
Jo Oliver Yeah.
Ray Jones They’re like as I say you know hopefully that might happen.
Jo Oliver Yeah, that might be the future.
Ray Jones Yeah.
Jo Oliver Do you think also the real estate around is it going up in, in value as a result do you think of revitalisation?
Ray Jones Well Port [coughs], yes, Port Kembla you know considering that in 2000 I
bought my house in Port Kembla for $150,000. Yes, I’ve done improvements of it, I’ve added to it and things like this and it’s now valued at probably about $700,000. But we’re also seeing a lot of younger people buying the older houses. You know their grandparents might have lived in Port Kembla, they always had access to the beach and everything like this. They grew up that way. But their parents built down in Albion Park or Dapto, West Dapto Um, they’re moving back. They’re buying the old houses. They’re either fixing them all up and, um, or they’re tearing them down and building a new house.
Jo Oliver Yeah, yeah.
Ray Jones So the value of the properties are going up dramatically.
Jo Oliver It’s really a place of great natural beauty.
Ray Jones And like I say to our, our visitors from, from America that come over, where else could you be where I can walk to three beaches in 10 minutes, three different beaches, take my pick in, in 10 minutes. And like the café that’s down at the, um, pilot station at the harbour, the visitors from, that we had from overseas they, this is absolutely brilliant. And we get up early on Sunday morning, we go for a walk down to Fisherman’s beach and along the, the walkway down to the, to the harbour, um, past MM beach and stop for breakfast and
then we walk back again.
Jo Oliver Yes, I think things have really changed.
Ray Jones Mm. Yep.
Jo Oliver Yeah. Thank you so much for all that information and memories and things. Is there, is there anything else that you would like to add?
Ray Jones No, I
Jo Oliver No.
Ray Jones I think what, what you’re doing is a brilliant idea.
Jo Oliver So thank you so much Ray.
Ray Jones It was a pleasure.
Jo Oliver Okay, thankyou.