Interview Transcript from Illawarra Stories Wollongong City Libraries Oral History Project – Henry (Sonny) Simms – Part 1
Interviewer: Stuart Traynor
Interview Date: 28 November 2021
Stuart Traynor: The following interview was conducted with Henry (Sonny) Sims as part of the Wollongong City Council Libraries Illawarra stories Oral History project. It took place at Sonny’s home on Saturday morning, the 28th of November, and the interviewer is Stuart. Traynor. Sonny it’s a pleasure to talk to you and you had a big day yesterday. Tell me about what happened?
Henry Simms: Yes, Stuart, I had a great, the last two days. They revolved around the stolen generation. On Thursday, we had our annual general meeting at the Bomaderry Bowling Club plus we had an early Christmas luncheon and then we elected our new committee. And I’ve been asked what I like to stand for a position on the committee, which I did, and I was elected on Thursday. So I’m member now, a committee member of CBACH. That’s an abbreviation for the Children of Bomaderry Aboriginal Children’s Home. That’s a home at Bomaderry, Beinda Street, Bomaderry with home of the stolen generation. The first in New South Wales, where the children removed and I have evidence to prove that, of little day-old babies born and taken and removed from their mums.
Stuart Traynor: And your dad was in the home. Was he?
Henry Simms: My dad was in the home. He was taken as a child. He left the homes when he was 12 years old, and he was sent to a little place this side of Moree called Gurley. He worked for a grazier at Moree up until the age of 18, and upon reaching 18 he was free. Just like an American slave. He was a free man.
Stuart Traynor: His name was also Henry?
Henry Simms: In our family. My dad’s name was Henry Joseph Simms. His nickname was Pat. But the eldest boy in our family, that name has come down to the eldest boy, and my son is also called Henry Joseph Simms. But that’s where it’s going to stop, because he had two girls and he’s not going to add to his family. It’s sad that he won’t carry on, but I’m disappointed, but I’ve gotta cop that.
Stuart Traynor: And your Grandfather was Henry Joseph as well?
Henry Simms: Henry Joseph Simms. He was a good man and our family. We are Artifact Makers. That’s been our tradition but also my Pop, they used to call him Tiger. He also come down from La Perouse and he done fishing at Wreck Bay in the mullet season.
Stuart Traynor: So your Grandfather was a La Perouse man?
Henry Simms: He was a La Perouse man. All of us are La Perouse.
Stuart Traynor: What language is that?
Henry Simms: Dharawal, Dharawal is the language. A lot of people say Dharawal is the tribe, but Dharawal is the language. And we are Bidjigal people. That’s our tribe.
Stuart Traynor: Now when you were growing up and your dad was growing up, was the language discouraged by the authorities or you actually speak Dharawal.
Henry Simms: No, the language forbidden. That’s why we lost all language ’cause the mission managers who control their lives said that was taboo and weren’t to be talked or spoke of. And they really policed that, and we lost language because of that. They were called the Aborigines. The first order was the Aborigines Protecting Protection Board where they were supposedly protecting us. Then that was changed I think in ’31, to the Aborigines Welfare Board, where they were supposed to be looking after our welfare. And in hindsight, there was a lot of crap.
Stuart Traynor: Did your Dad ever talk much about when he was taken to Bomaderry? Henry Simms We didn’t know Dad was a child of the stolen generation until we were. Anyhow, well into our 20’s.
Stuart Traynor: Wow
Henry Simms: Well Dad never know. He never discussed it because he hated the system. He hated the welfare board. He hated mission managers, and he hated coppers, so Dad really resented those people.
Stuart Traynor: So how, how did you come to know the, the full story of his early life?
Henry Simms: Well one day, well Dad and I used to come down from Sydney and we’d catch the train as far as Berry and over at Berry we used to go onto this private property, we’d sneak onto this property and cut corkwood which we made our go-to, ‘cos it was good soft workable wood and we used to go onto this property. It was all arranged with the taxi driver in, ah, Berry, he’d take us up there, and went to pick us up. We, we’d visit there numerous times and that, we’d leave everything for the taxi driver, and he’d put our, all our timber on the train for us. Then after we finished, we did track over to Nowra, Dad and I. And we walked over to Nowra and when we walked, we’d walk past the Bomaderry homes and my Dad was like a trotter, he’d look to the east, he looked to the left, he wouldn’t look to the right because he knew what that place stood for. And it wasn’t till many years later Dad told, Dad told us he was forcibly removed as a young child.
Stuart Traynor: What age Sonny, did he tell you, oh, was he taken I mean?
Henry Simms: He was taken at three years of age.
Stuart Traynor: Yeah.
Henry Simms: Three, three years old he was.
Stuart Traynor: Which is pretty heart breaking to do at that age isn’t it? The same happened in the Northern Territory, taking kids at four.
Henry Simms: And like the Stolen Generations, has had a drastic effect on us, our family, the Simms’s. Dad was taken at an early age and come to Bomaderry. But in Dad’s time Kinchela boys home or Bimbadeen girls’ home at Cootamundra for the girls wasn’t erected so the earlier years, they spent their time at Bomaderry until they were supposedly apprenticed out. Then in later years my Dad’s two younger brothers, Uncle Herb, and Uncle Bill Simms, they come to Bomaderry, but upon reaching 12, they were both sent to Kinchela boys home. And in 1956, when our Mum had a heart attack at La Perouse we, within an hour of Mum taken to Prince Henry Hospital, the Welfare board was there within an hour and took us and we were removed to Royleston boys home in Glebe and my sisters went to Bidura girls home in Glebe. So I went to, ah, Royleston with my brothers Vic and Robert. We were there for three months.
Stuart Traynor: 1956.
Henry Simms: 1956. So if our Mum didn’t recover in that period of the three months we were in Royleston and Bidura, our next port of call was going to be Bomaderry children’s home.
Stuart Traynor: And how old were you then in 1956?
Henry Simms: I think I was 13, yeah I was 13. And I remember vividly because they was ready to go to school, they were ready to go to high school. My sisters, one brother had already left and went to La Perouse primary school, Bob, the youngest brother, and we had to go to La Perouse school to pick him up. We were removed within that hour by a Mr Saxby and a Mr Green, two of the head men of the Aborigines Welfare Board, the Mission Manager, Mr Jeffrey and the local copper, Joe Beecroft who, in later years, formed the Police Rescue Squad. And you’ll see that they had the anniversary of the Granville train disaster, you’ll see Joe Beecroft in those films, climbing over the carriages in white overalls and his little black, ah, peaked copper’s hat.
Stuart Traynor: Tell us about your mother, ‘cos your mother was actually from down the South Coast way, wasn’t she?
Henry Simms: Mum, ironically, both my parents were born on missions. My Dad born on La Perouse Aboriginal Reserve and my Mum born on Roseby Park Aboriginal Mission at Roseby Park.
Stuart Traynor: That’s at Orient Point.
Henry Simms: Orient Point.
Stuart Traynor: And your Mum’s name?
Henry Simms My Mum’s name was Barbara Lonesborough and she, in later years she married Bertie Timberry. They divorced and she married my Dad, Pat Simms. But Mum, going to the Mission school at Roseby Park where the Mission manager’s wife also became the schoolteacher, well, she couldn’t spell ‘cat’ herself. That’s why we had a high rate of illiterate people because the Mission manager’s wife on most of the station reserves and Missions was the schoolteacher. So the Mission manager, he had a big strawberry patch, and he asked my dear old Mum, “Barbara I want you to go down,” it was a fresh cow pat too, it was, and he said, “I want you to go and pick up that cow pat and put it on my strawberries”. Mum had had enough of that, so she refused. Upon her refusal, she was expelled from the Mission school. So the only school available then was Greenwell Point where she had to row across the river in an old heavily tarred punt. Where my Pop used to watch her go to school and come home from school because of the current in the river and she had to be a really strong rower, my Mum. But there’s only a couple of hundred metres but by geez it was a big current.
Stuart Traynor: She was obviously a strong willed and a strong character.
Henry Simms: Oh, yes, Mum she was a great woman.
Stuart Traynor: How did she meet your Dad?
Henry Simms: Well, in the, in the earlier days, I’ve only recently found this out myself, opposite the Bomaderry Children’s Home, there was an Aboriginal camp there, and there was about eight different families, and one of those camps was, in that camp was the Dixon family. They are Mum’s family. So in the school holidays when my Nan got sick, my Mum went to the Bomaderry primary school at the same time as my Dad, so they would have known each other from school at Bomaderry. So when Dad finished his time at, ah, Gurley working for this grazier, he made his way back down the coast where he played rugby league down here and that’s how he met my Mum, through playing rugby league.
Stuart Traynor: And your Mum actually when they got married, went away, and lived at La Perouse with him?
Henry Simms: Mum went back home to Dad’s birthplace, La Perouse Aboriginal Reserve. She was there till many years later when she had decided to come back home after her and Dad separated, Mum come back home to her birthplace.
Stuart Traynor: Was that a big thing for her, to leave her own country and go there.
Henry Simms: It was.
Stuart Traynor: Or was that common in those days?
Henry Simms: No, well, there was, she didn’t wanna go, but she said, “I’ll give it a try.” That’s the words she said, “I’ll give it a try”.
Stuart Traynor: And she obviously loved him and wanted to go with him?
Henry Simms: Yeah, go with him. But he was a bit of a class footballer, she used to call him a lairiser [laughs].
Stuart Traynor: A bit of a character was he?
Henry Simms: Yeah, she said he was always pullin’ his socks up and looked around smiling. He played on the wing. Ah, he was pretty quick, which all our family are all good runners, good athletes.
Stuart Traynor: So what level of football did he play?
Henry Simms: Only a local group seven competition
Stuart Traynor: Yep.
Henry Simms: Here, here in the South Coast. He enjoyed it, he always spoke to me about it, he was a great supporter. He loved rugby league, and he was fully supportive of me in my rugby league days.
Stuart Traynor: We’ll come back to that in a, in a tick. Um, what sort of work did he do? And you mentioned earlier, you’re a family of artefact makers as well.
Henry Simms: Our family, we are family, family orientated, we’re, we’re, um, artefact makers. We can make anything from any piece of timber. So on the Mission at La Perouse there was a big shed set up for the Simms family. That’s one thing we ever got from the Welfare Board, a big shed, where we made all our artefacts in that shed. And we supplied the overseas export trade, and they were sent across there on the two American ships that come out each fortnight. They were a millionaire’s, ah, cruise ships called the Monterrey and the Mariposa, and they took our wares back to America to be sold there.
Stuart Traynor: So did you get a reason-, reasonable cut of that income or was many of that taken?
Henry Simms: No, when, when we had the big orders we’d also get the help of the Timbery, Timbery brothers and other people at La Perouse there and they’d share the money. But Dad was a top salesman, and he was even wanted by, um, Scarfes, the suit makers, to work with them as a salesman. He said, “No, I can make more working for my people selling our artefacts.” And that’s what he done. Plus he had another option too, he also worked in the building trade. And he was, he was a foreman at Pagewood when they built General Motors Holden. My Dad was the, the, a boss, the foreman. Plus he was a union organiser. He wouldn’t even let his own brother start working till he joined the union. And as, as a salesman selling our artefacts, he had the gift of the gab. And sometimes he’d go away, and he’d be drunk, and he wouldn’t come home for a week. He’d go walkabout and our Uncle was really worried about we should keep calm because Joe Timbery, not the boomerang player but the nephew of him, my Uncle Bob would send him into town to sell our wares, but he’d come home empty handed. And my Dad relished that because he knew he had it all tied up. He had all the shops in the City like Anthony Hordern’s, Winn’s, all the big major department stores well they bought our wares but only to buy off him. So Joe couldn’t sell nothing, and Dad always made that comment to my Uncle Bob, “He couldn’t sell a fish on Good Friday.”
Stuart Traynor: Right. What was it like growing up in La Perouse, what sort of community was it?
Henry Simms: Growing up on the Mission was good. We made our own, own games. Although we were under control of the Mission managers we, we beat them all the time. We were always a jump ahead of them. We made our own fun and in my life growing up on the Mission, I can recall five Mission managers and the last Mission manager, old Mr Jones, a single man, bit of a drunk, he was the best. He never carried out any inspections like they done every Friday on the Mission like all the other Mission managers did. He, he let all that go, and this is a thing where he could have been jailed. Every Sunday morning he come down to my Dad’s house and he said to Bill Jones, oh Bill Jones actually said to him, “Oh Pat, have you got a wee while?” Because the Mission manager he’d be shaking from the grog, and he knew my Dad always bought two bottles of Toohey’s flag ale up. Although it was illegal to bring grog on the Mission, my father still done it. So Dad said to him, “Go inside and ask Barbara,” that was my Mum, “to give her, to give you a bottle of Toohey’s flag ale and two glasses. My father wouldn’t drink out of a bottle. So he’d go in, get the two glass off Mum and the bottle of beer and he’d come out and sit up the back, under, with Dad under the trees while me father made cut out boomerangs or nulla nullas or shields. He sat there with him until he drunk the two bottles of beer and that more or less fixed him up. Then he used to go down to the Yarra Bay Sailing Club on the Sunday for lunch, being a single man and no one to cook for him. And on his way home he’d come back, and he’d have two bottles of Toohey’s flag ale in his arm, and he be staggering up and all the people on the Mission’d be watching him and he didn’t care about that. He’d come down and he’d give them back to my father. And it was law that if you were caught giving grog to Aboriginals, it was instant six months jail! Here’s the Mission manager giving grog to my father and even drinking with my father on the Mission. So he let all those things go and…
Stuart Traynor: He obviously respected your Dad though?
Henry Simms: He respected every, respected everyone on Mission because he went to every house, especially at Christmas time, and he’d have a drink with everybody which was, which was taboo, illegal to do all that. But he, he waived that aside and done that. A good man and we give him a great send off when he , when they shut us all down.
Stuart Traynor: So when did he die, do you know?
Henry Simms: I don’t know when Bill died, but once the Welfare Board shut down, we, we don’t know where he finished up. But he was the best and he was loved by everybody. He was a great man.
Stuart Traynor: That’s good to hear that positive side.
Henry Simms: The worst manager we had out of the five, I can recall, was a German fella called Lutwyche. He really policed it and rammed it home; he’d even lock the gate of a night-time at 6 o’clock. He was, he was a hard man, but we had ways and means of leading him to…
Stuart Traynor: Tell us a bit about your Mum during those years, um…
Henry Simms: Mum, Mum was a good worker but Mum and Dad, up until 1957, Mum and Dad they sep-, they separated my first year at high school. And with that, I, I become, more or less, the man of the house. Um, Mum got out and she used to work for a factory in, ah, Alexandria called Butler and Gorman. They used to wash all our bottles and jars and reuse them.
Stuart Traynor: Yep.
Henry Simms: So Mum worked in that trade so she hard to raise our family up there. Dad never helped at all because Dad, he was an alcoholic. And whatever money he had, he drunk it. Mum was really reliable and helped us right through. She…
Stuart Traynor: She held the family together.
Henry Simms: She never deserted us. And I, me being the eldest boy, I was out doing all odd jobs before and after school. Before school I’d, I’d carry ice, I’d cart ice to the different houses around Maroubra, Matraville and, ah, Malabar. Prior to carrying ice that of a morning, I’d do a paper run from La Perouse to Long Bay jail for old Mr Rogers. So I worked two jobs before I even went to school. I’d go to school and my legs would be blue where the ice used to rub against my legs. And that money I earnt; I give that to my Mum.
Stuart Traynor: And, and what was it like in that broader community, was there much, um, ah, prejudice against the Aboriginal people or was there a general level of acceptance? How did people get on?
Henry Simms: La, La Perouse was the best place in NSW, well in Australia I say. I always tell kids at the school this, that I come from a place where there’s no racism – unheard off. Because at La Perouse, at Yarra Bay – Little Bay was the pommy camp – Yarra Bay and Happy Valley was the camps with the homeless, the down and outs, and the battlers. There was no, there was Chi-, we were the League of Nations at La Perouse school! Chinese, Indian, Yugoslavs, you name it, Russians, Baltics, they all went to La Perouse school. And that’s reminiscent in our photos, if you look at our school photos, we are all bare footed. None of us was a class above anybody else. And that’s why it was so great going to school with them all there and we cared and shared for each other. So there was no, really no racism at La Perouse school, none whatsoever.
Stuart Traynor: And, and, ah, how much, um, ah, sort of was, I’m thinking about how your culture was, ah, part of your upbringing?
Henry Simms: Culture was great, especially in our family. Well we made the artefacts, but with our competitions at La Perouse, with our boomerang throwing competitions, spear throwing competition and of a weekend, up to eight families sold their, their wares down at La Perouse where the tram terminus was. So that was a big business and that’s only finished a couple of years ago for our family and our brother, Vic, was the last artefact maker La Perouse. Now there’s no one there now.
Stuart Traynor: Wow. So your Mum and Dad separated and then she moved back to her own country did she?
Henry Simms: Mum, Mum come back home.
Stuart Traynor: Yep.
Henry Simms: But all those years living in La Perouse on the Mission, on the reserve at La Perouse, there was a big dormitory so when country people come to the city, for any treatment with GP’s, because in the country they’ve never had them, so they all come into the city, so they house them at La Perouse in these dormitories. And the people from the South Coast, they didn’t stay in them dormitories, they come down to us. They said, “We’re going down to our South Coast person.” Mum. And I can recall a lot of times, there was a Mr Joe Foster, he also come from Roseby Park where Mum come from. There were some people come there once and they were South Coasters, he said, “Look, go down the Mission there”, he said. This was a young lady. She had a young child with her, and she didn’t know anybody, But he knew that her family come from the South Coast. He said, “Go down there to the Mission”, he said, “and you ask for Barbara Simms down there.”
Stuart Traynor: So what was the accommodation like, what housing was provided?
Henry Simms: We, we had three-bedroom houses, running water, electricity, it was good. Prior to that we lived in an old shack, but it was a damn good shack though, made by my father, my father’s brother, Uncle George, ‘cos he was in the building industry, Uncle Bob Simms, Dudley Timbery, all they, all mob got together, and they built us a magic house even though it was all tin and just off the Mission till our new house on the Mission was built. Then we moved into a new three-bedroom home on the Mission. And we were down the bottom end of the mission, us, and our Auntie, and it was called Possum Flat, that’s where we lived.
Stuart Traynor: Possum Flat?
Henry Simms: Possum Flat. And we were the closest to the beach on the Mission. But on the Mission it was great growing up, especially when athletics come around. We’d have our athletic carnival on the Mission and there was great rivalry between the Simms, the Timberys and the Longbottoms. And that continued right through, there was always that rivalry.
Stuart Traynor: Some very famous names there, in terms of South Sydney football, Longbottoms and Simms, of course.
Henry Simms: Well Kevin was a lot bigger than us but, geez, we used to bust him when we all played together. He’d, he’d get on top for a little while but in the finish we’d bust him.
Stuart Traynor: He was a full back wasn’t he?
Henry Simms: He was a fullback, yeah.
Stuart Traynor: And a goal kicker?
Henry Simms: Goal kicker. That’s one thing, every, always, when we played footy on the, on the flat, that’s one thing Eric always made sure we built the goal posts. And he’d be, he’d be kicking goals as a kid right through till he made the big time.
Stuart Traynor: And of course, ah, the thing about Eric is that they actually changed the, the rules a bit be-, with, ah, he was such a big kicker of field goals wasn’t he?
Henry Simms: He, he kicked so many field goals that they from two points, they changed it down to one, because he was a prolific kicker of field goals. And he learned that as a kid, when we played on the Mission, like, us kids down the bottom of the Mission, ‘cos there were a lot of people lived off the Mission in shacks, so we’d have a good competition down amongst ourselves. Then the bottom end of the Mission would play the top end up on the Mission on the big flat. So we’d have the kids from Possum Flat playing all the other kids up at the top. There’d be the Longbottoms and the Timberys and the Ardlers. There’d be the Simms’s on the bottom Possum Flat, Morgans and a couple of the others, the Archibalds and that, and Turnbulls. We played the top end of the Mission.
Stuart Traynor: There was a John Morgan played for..?
Henry Simms: Ambro-, Ambrose Morgan.
Stuart Traynor: Ambrose… He lived in the shack opposite us and when his Auntie reared him up, they moved back to Tabulam, he come and lived with us, he lived with us on the Mission, worked with me at Thatcher and Obergs at Mascot. But we had great rivalry on the Mission, especially against the Longbottoms and the Timberys. We had rivalry in athletics, rugby league and cracker night. Cracker night was held on the 24th of May.
Stuart Traynor: That’s right. It was called Empire night.
Henry Simms: Empire night.
Stuart Traynor: I remember it well.
Henry Simms: And we had a competition who had the biggest bonfire. We’d cart bushes from up the golf links road for a couple of weeks. We’d get pinched today if we done that today. We got old tyres, whatever we could get. We’d, and we had to, we had to sleep in our bonfires because there was a fear other mob going down burn, burnin’ them down.
Stuart Traynor: They’d raid your stuff or burn them down.
Henry Simms: So we made giant scarecrows on ours. At Possum Flat we were the drawcard. We were the last ones to light our bonfire, and everybody come and sat round on the hill and watched ours.
Stuart Traynor: I think, um, our kids, because you and I are not much different in age, ah, our kids have no idea of what, ah, you know, Cracker night, Bonfire night and how big it was.
Henry Simms: No, it was great. And you got a transfer from school, Empire day, you got a transfer.
Stuart Traynor: And, and the, um, ah, the fireworks that, ah, we played with.
Henry Simms: The penny bungers.
Stuart Traynor: Yeah. Dangerous stuff aye?
Henry Simms: Dangerous stuff. Them bungers, we used to go around blowing up letter boxes!
Stuart Traynor: Well you weren’t alone in that bad trait, there was a lot of young Australian blokes doing the same thing.
Henry Simms: And on, on that particular night, you never seen a cat or a dog outside. But we had a massive bonfire and we, we’d always beat the Longbottoms.
Stuart Traynor: That’s good.
Henry Simms: We had, we always had that rivalry, yet they were our cousins! Simms’s married into the Longbottoms.
Stuart Traynor: So the families got on well, there was a real sense of affinity.
Henry Simms: Oh yeah, ‘cos we’s all on the same level, all poor. Nobody was a class above anybody.
Stuart Traynor: So when did you move down to the South Coast?
Henry Simms: I first come down to the coast, I used to come to the coast all the time to visit Mum’s people, down at Orient Point, because Pop had a lot of land. Mum’s father, he, he pioneered the oyster industry in the Crookhaven River along with his brother Uncle Jack and a fellow up on Georges River called Haser. They pioneered the oyster industry, plus Pop had fishing nets and he’d always set the net in the river. And he taught us the oyster trade and the art of fishing, setting the nets. But I first come to the coast in 1959.
Stuart Traynor: So what was Pop’s name?
Henry Simms: Bob Lonesborough.
Stuart Traynor: Bob Lonesborough.
Henry Simms: The Park down there’s named after him.
Stuart Traynor: And his wife?
Henry Simms: Christina.
Stuart Traynor: Christina.
Henry Simms: Christina Dixon. And Nan was a full blood, she was a full blood, Nan, like her brothers, the Dixon brothers.
Stuart Traynor: From the South Coast area?
Henry Simms: From Roseby Park.
Stuart Traynor: Bomaderry, yeah. A lot of the sisters from there too went to La Perouse and married people from La Perouse.
Stuart Traynor: But the people at Roseby Park were they mainly from that Orient Point area or were they bringing people from further down the coast, from other Yuin country people?
Henry Simms: All from there.
Stuart Traynor: Right.
Henry Simms: All from that area.
Stuart Traynor: So it was a very strong local…
Henry Simms; Some were brought over from Cullinghutti, you’d call Coolangatta, we call it Cullinghutti, but they come across from there.
Stuart Traynor: So you wouldn’t have had, ah, Wallaga Lake people there?
Henry Simms: No. No, what’s-a-name come later on, they lived out here at South Nowra. They were the fringe dwellers.
Stuart Traynor: Yep.
Henry Simms: The Mumblers and the others out there, lived out at, ah, South Nowra. They lived there, they lived at Worrigee. That’s, they were two of our fringe dwelling camps out there. But I come to the coast in ’59. I lived with the Stewart family in Quinns Lane, South Nowra and I worked in the sawmill there. Run, owned by – it opened in March 1959 – by the Weir brothers, Charlie, Ronnie and, ah, Edgar Weir. I worked for them, me and Frankie Stewart, Arthur McLeod and Bob McLeod was the manager and saw sharpener. And where Bunnings is now, that’s where the sawmill used to be, right. My wages, I, we never had, ah, friction in the mill then, you had to wind the log through then shovel out your sawdust. That was my job and I got £4/3/9 a week [Four pounds, three and nine]. On that I paid a quid [£1] board and I said, I used, the, the Post office was just down the road from the mill, of a Friday I got paid I wired £2 home to my Mum, and I just kept me picture fares.
Stuart Traynor: So your Mum moved back and, and was at Roseby Park?
Henry Simms: This is earlier days, she’s still on the Mission up there.
Stuart Traynor: Yeah, yeah.
Henry Simms: I sent £2 a week home.
Stuart Traynor: To, to La Perouse?
Henry Simms: To La Pa-, to Mum, to help her with my brothers and sisters.
Stuart Traynor: That was 1959.
Henry Simms: ’59.
Stuart Traynor: So when did your Mum move back to her country?
Henry Simms: She come back down, when, ah, just after Dad died, just after they found him dead down, at the foyer Yarra Bay Sailing Club.
Stuart Traynor: What happened to him?
Henry Simms: He fell, he fell down at the foy-, there’s, there’s a brick wall there now, but he fell down an embank-, about eight foot deep, about big as a, the door frame and broke his neck.
Stuart Traynor: It must have been…Yeah.
Henry Simms: And he wasn’t found till 2 o’clock the next day. Two kids along the beach along near there, looking for lemonade bottles.
Stuart Traynor: How, how old was he at the time?
Henry Simms: Dad was 59.
Stuart Traynor: Only a young fella.
Henry Simms: Young man, so he never had much of a life.
Stuart Traynor: No.
Henry Simms: Never had much of a life, my father.
Stuart Traynor: And your Mum decided she’d go back home?
Henry Simms: She’d had enough, she come home back to her people down here. She said, “I’m going back home to my country.” That was it.
Stuart Traynor: And your Mum was a very widely respected woman.
Henry Simms: Widely respected woman and knew a lot of Aboriginal folklore. Lot of people come to Mum for information about different families and where their family connections were.
Stuart Traynor: So when she died in 2009, I read in a, in a pap-, in a newspaper article I found online, she was actually the oldest Aboriginal person.
Henry Simms: In the district.
Stuart Traynor: In the district in 2009 when she died.
Henry Simms: That was a funny thing that, like, Mum lived in town in St Ann Street, she was fully independent, my mother. And, like I visited her every day ‘cos she lived alongside my former wife, next door in the pensioner units. And the day she broke a hip, I was there with her that day. She come out of the bathroom, slipped on the bloody rug, and broke her hip. That took away her independence, so I had to put her into the Bomaderry Nursing Home. I argued with my brother and sister over that. I nearly come to blows with my brother Vic over it because, but I overruled it because I was her power of attorney.
Stuart Traynor: How did she handle it, was she happy to go there? Did she think it was the right thing?
Henry Simms: No, she didn’t want to leave home because she, up till that time she broke her hip, she was, she done her own cooking, ironing, and all that. She was fully independent. And I put her in the home, see, and that’s the part that I still look back on, that’s the part that killed her, she fretted.
Stuart Traynor: But you had to make a hard decision.
Henry Simms: I made the hard decision, although I overruled a brother and sister to place her over there. I wanted to put her into the nursing home here in Nowra in town, my daughter’s a nurse there. But they didn’t want that, so I put her in a nursing home in Bomaderry. And I knew she was getting close to death when she, I went to see her on the Sunday before, which I used to do every Sunday, she said, “Mum and Dad was here to see me.”
Stuart Traynor: Right.
Henry Simms: She started to reflect back and get visions.
Stuart Traynor: So what did you know of her Mum and Dad? And you mentioned her being an important cultural woman?
Henry Simms: I never, I never saw me grandmother, either my Mum’s, ah, mother or my Dad’s, mother, I never saw, I, I seen grandfathers but not me grandmother. But she knew, she was a great rock fisherman, my mother, and a great diver.
Stuart Traynor: Really, yeah.
Henry Simms: When she’d go diving out at Callala for mutton fish, you call ’em abalone, we call ’em mutton fish and she’d lock-, lobster diver. She’d come up and the black hair’d be all over the water and she’d have two lobsters in her hand. She was a great lady around the rocks, and she taught us the dangers of rock fishing. She always told us, “Never go on your own to the rocks fishing, go with somebody.” And she said, “When you’re fishing always watch for that 5th wave.” She said. “That 5th wave was the wave that always broke.” And you watch that, that is correct, and I’ve told a lot of people that, I’ve saved a lot of people up there at, ah, La Perouse when I’ve seen Asians fishing on the dangerous places and I outline them, “Watch that 5th wave.” And a little Chinese bloke that day thanked me ‘cos him and his wife and child would’ve got washed away. And in her lifetime she had seen what the non-Aboriginal person calls the yowie. We call him a doolagahl, that’s the hairy man. And Mum has seen what you call the clever black fella, the initiated man. Mum has seen him in her lifetime. She said she counted them. They used to come to Pop’s house for supplies, one clever black fella especially. My Pop would give him smoked fish, he gave him tobacco, pipe tobacco, ‘cos he give him an Indian Head pipe and he sent him on with the basics, flour, tea, and sugar. And Mum and her sisters and brother would be cowering around Mum’s legs, and the old clever black fella said, “Bob, tell your kids not to be afraid of me. I’ll make sure no harm comes to you or your family while I’m alive.” And Mum said when he turned side on he had a little kangaroo bag under, under his wallah, that’s a beard, you’d see all these things moving in the bag. And Mum said that was all his little special things he had in that bag in there. But she said he was black as ace of spades, barefooted, big cracks in heel in his foot, old, old trousers on, shiny dirt with black, his old overcoat just tied up with a bit of twine from the bush and that’s all he was, no shirt or nothing. And he used to come to Pop’s house twice a year and get supplies and go again.
Stuart Traynor: So your Mum was a cultural woman I’d say?
Henry Simms: A cultural woman. She saw them, and I’ve seen them in my life at Bodalla, when I played rugby league down there.
Stuart Traynor: And, and did she, um…
Henry Simms: She passed that on to us.
Stuart Traynor: I was gunna say how, how, who did..?
Henry Simms: We’d sit down even when we’d go camping at Callala, we’d sit down around the campfire or at home round our open fire on the Mission and she’d tell us all these stories and learn us and tell us all about these things which were true and that was law, and we believed all those things too. Mum was our, Mum taught us all our culture because Dad was locked away as a child of the Stolen Generation. Dad taught us later on about artefacts, but Mum taught all us our folklore and our culture.
Stuart Traynor: And did she have, ah, she was still fluent in any language?
Henry Simms: She could talk the language. She could have a yarn about you Stuart and you wouldn’t know she was talking about ya. We know the language, we, we know the words of it, but we can’t speak it fluently.
Stuart Traynor: Yeah. So you know names of objects and things?
Henry Simms: Oh yeah, yeah, we know all our names, but there’s one I, one little thing that all the Nations in the country know, it’s mirrigaan, that’s the dog. Everyone’s got that down as either mirrigin or mirrigaan, so everyone knows that the dog.
Stuart Traynor: Did she ever talk to you in language?
Henry Simms: No she, she wouldn’t pass it on to us.
Stuart Traynor: Was that her choice, or was that because it was discouraged or ..?
Henry Simms: No, that was her choice.
Stuart Traynor: Yeah.
Henry Simms: You could get into a lot of trouble over that because it was, it was taboo. And the, the Mission manager frowned upon it there. There was, I can recall three people in La Perouse who only spoke the language, but they lived off the Mission. Old Mrs Noble, she was a full blood. She married a non-Aboriginal man, but her two sons, two clever black fellows, they were initiated men. I went in there one morning to deliver two blocks of ice and put it in her ice chest. Her and her two sons were talking in the lingo. That frightened the hell out of me. I couldn’t put the ice in the ice chest quick enough and get out of it. Because her hair was hanging down over her face, talk, head down talking in the lingo and her two sons, Hugo and Weenie One were talking in the lingo.
Stuart Traynor: But why did it frighten you?
Henry Simms: To see her like that with the hair down here, straight away that put the wind up me.
Stuart Traynor: Yep.
Henry Simms: And Hugo, because I knew ’em, they used to come our place to talk to Dad, ‘cos they’d come home and get a nip off Dad too. The two brothers, they were clever black fellas. And they had the scars, big bulging scars though.
Stuart Traynor: Now was your mother, um, unusual in the fact that she passed on those, ah, stories and kept the culture alive, or..?
Henry Simms: Well she was practically the only, the only lady who knew and passed it on.
Stuart Traynor: Yeah. So she was significant, and she knew the importance of it.
Henry Simms: Yeah. She took us to the rocks and other people would come with us to learn all that, other women. And I was glad, especially a lady called Alice Foster. If we went to the rocks at Malabar, Alice would come. We went, went to a little place called Pussycat at Every’s Head, Alice Foster would come. Our Aunty, but all the, Aunty Myrtle Green would come, they followed Mum. Mum taught all them all about the rocks and how to hunt and gather especially seafood. My Mum was deadly on that. We’d go to the rocks, it wasn’t a day out, it wasn’t a picnic. It was a day of sustenance ‘cos we’d have, we’d have a feed on the rocks, we’d have tea out the rocks there. Mum’d catch fish, she’d make a big soup in a five gallon drum and we looked forward to them days. She taught us, and I’ve been back, and I’ve showed my kids what is was like as a kid. And that’s why I, like meself, we go to the rocks, we can go to Currarong get a feed of mutton fish, eat lobsters out there. All, all because of Mum.
Stuart Traynor: What were the living conditions like at Orient Point? You said the housing was good at La Perouse but not so good there.
Henry Simms: Not at Orient Point. They never, they never had running water, they never had electricity. It wasn’t till later years that they got these meters on, and you put two bob at a time in for the, they were, they were the money meter boxes.
Stuart Traynor: Yep.
Henry Simms: And when the two-bob run out, your power run out.
Stuart Traynor: Yeah.
Henry Simms: And that, then the water was in tanks. Then when the tanks was low, they, the Mission manager send the fella from Greenwell Point, old Jack McCarthy with his big water truck to top each, each tank up on the Mission. Um, the houses were old. Some of them, some of them huts on the Mission, you wouldn’t call ’em houses because they were brought through from the Snowy System.
Stuart Traynor: I thought that was the case, so they were just, um..?
Henry Simms: And that, that, me, and Lee, that was our first house on the Mission at Roseby Park was one of the low huts brought through from the Snowy. But we made the best of it with our, we, we looked out on the land. And we used to go and get clay and put clay over the walls and around the chimney, you know, to keep ’em, not only to seal all the holes and that in it, it made it comfortable and made it decorative.
Stuart Traynor: Now you became a leader within that community yourself. How did you start to begin playing a greater role?
Henry Simms: Well, I was like my father, I was interested in politics and in my workplace I, I was a Union Rep. I, I’m a strong Labor man. I tell everybody that. At the elections here in the Shoalhaven, I usually run the booth up, they call it South Nowra but it’s the Shoalhaven high school. I still run that booth for the Labor Party in the State election. I run that booth for the Federal election of Gilmore for the Labor Party. And when ATSIC come into being, but prior to ATSIC, the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council had nine councils throughout NSW, and I stood here for the seat of Illawarra/South Coast.
Stuart Traynor: So what year are we roughly talking?
Henry Simms: ’94.
Stuart Traynor: ’94.
Henry Simms: ’94. The Land Council, ah, the Land Rights Act come into being in 1983, May 1983. But I didn’t stand for election until ’94, and I was elected as the State Land Councillor, for the Rep, as the Illawarra/South Coast Rep. Then halfway through that term, ATSIC come into being, our own black organisation and I stood, stood for that, their position. That was democratically, it was run by the Electoral Commission, and I was elected in that. I opposed about 10 other candidates. I got over the line and I…
Stuart Traynor: So what area did you represent within ATSIC? How big was the electorate?
Henry Simms: All south-east NSW and ACT.
Stuart Traynor: So you represented that, that area?
Henry Simms: That area.
Stuart Traynor: Were you, was it a multi member representation, or just you?
Henry Simms: No there was other one from Canberra.
Stuart Traynor: Yep.
Henry Simms: There was, there was a ten-person board on there and I was there. I was, I was an ATSIC Councillor until we were shut down.
Stuart Traynor: By, in the Howard government years.
Henry Simms: Howard government shut us down. If our Minister for Aboriginal Affairs at that time would’ve sacked Sugar Ray Robinson from Charters Towers and Clarkey from, ah, Warrnambool, we’d have been still operative today because they were the two blokes who were diddling the till.
Stuart Traynor: Yeah, made it hard, didn’t it?
Henry Simms: They made it hard, but Howard said, “No, I want ’em all together.” The lot of them and that. He wiped us out and I was there, ‘cos we were, we were, I call meself a black politician and that’s on my resume, ‘A black politician, self-taught.’ And I’ve, I’ve really done all through the Land Rights Act. I was the CEO of the Land Council till I, I retired in December 2008.
Stuart Traynor: So when did you assume that role?
Henry Simms: I picked it up in ’94. Then I took over the local Land Council not long after. I was right through that after ATSIC finished.
Stuart Traynor: And what, what lands did that Land Council cover? The Nowra region.
Henry Simms: The Nowra region. Then, then they cut it right down. The South Coast region just comprised of Illawarra, Nowra, and the little Mission, Roseby Park.
Stuart Traynor: Yep.
Henry Simms: They changed their name to Jerrinja in 1975. And I, we, none of our family ever recognised that name.
Stuart Traynor: So is that a language name or a place name?
Henry Simms: Stuart, that name, in 1975 when they was allocated money to build the new houses down there at Roseby Park, two men they had to give it a name, so they called it the Jerrinja Aboriginal Housing Corporation. The name Jerrinja is a Dunghutti word, Kempsey, because one of these gentlemen was a Kempsey man. And the other one was a young bloke who grew up on the Mission, I knew him all my life. And they was asked why, why have you given it the name ‘Jerrinja’, and they said, “Well, all the older ones are gone now, they wouldn’t know, but in Dunghutti language Jerrinja means you’re going for a crap.”
Stuart Traynor: A-ha.
Henry Simms: So I called it the Crap Land Council.
Stuart Traynor: Right.
Henry Simms: But they carried on, they started in 1975, then when the Land Rights Act come into being in 1983, they transferred the name over to the Land Council, but it is a Dunghutti word, it’s from Kempsey.
Stuart Traynor: I mean I lived 40 years of my life in the NT, and I’m used to, ah, the local language names being still very strong and named. Is that the case around the Nowra area, do people still..?
Henry Simms: Oh, there’s, there’s a big division, especially the older ones, like my family, and others from down there too that still refer to Roseby Park and I’ll always say it’s Roseby Park, our family, ‘cos on Mum’s birth certificate it states, ‘Born at Roseby Park’. Jerrinja’ s only that word introduced in 1975. And there’s many people who are now deceased who, who come from Roseby Park, people who went the, when I first served in the War come from Roseby Park. No Jerrinja. I, I disdain from that word. I honestly hate it.
Stuart Traynor: So, um, ah, that build up to the land rights movement in New South Wales, were you actively involved in that like you were later, take a minor role or..?
Henry Simms: I, I was in the marches, the protests. And I, we had a big rally in Canberra when we were setting up the tent embassy and…
Stuart Traynor: So this is in the early ’70s?
Henry Simms: Yes. Ambrose, Ambrose Golden Brown who was to become our first ever Aboriginal Councillor on Shoalhaven City Councillor, he said, “Follow me,” he said, ” I know me way around here.” So we got raided by the coppers! They come from everywhere. They just gathered us, women, and everybody. So he said, “Come with me, this is the best way.” Run into the biggest copper I ever run into in my life. By gee he give it to me. I went down and he put another few into me, but then he went to put the boot, I just rolled, and I got him off balance, I tripped him and that was me chance to go then.
Stuart Traynor: But why were the coppers reacting that way?
Henry Simms: They didn’t want us to set up, they were, they were, they were against us, we were antagonising other people, that’s what they said. And look at it today, that’s heritage listed now, the tent embassy, heritage listed. And that was kicked off by a few people, but geez we had a lot of rallies.
Stuart Traynor: Yep.
Henry Simms: And we had rallies at, I go back to my Dad. In the days when we were looking for a better life for our people, they only talk about Ferguson and the other fellows involved with that. My father was in that movement. Even my other uncle, Uncle Wes, Uncle Wesley Simms. Uncle Wes’s is all in photos. I got a photo in my book here of Uncle Wes, of this book I got from my friend, I only got this, this morning actually. This would be a good book for you Stuart, bit older mate, to have a look at.
Stuart Traynor: It would be good to get this into, into the library.
Henry Simms: And all the Mission and all that there too see. Got three, or is it one, there’s a picture in here of, of, of that group and my uncle Ned’s in there. And he was a big man like all our family were big. I’m following my Mum.
Stuart Traynor: You’re, you’re a winger, you’re a lean cut fellow.
Henry Simms: In my time, I’ve been a boxer. That’s the old Mission, that’s down Roseby Park, that’s down towards the lighthouse there, that’s the lighthouse and that’s the wharf where the trawlers are. Pop’s property’s back around in this little headland here. And that’s where Mum used to row from there around to the old wharf we had to walk up to school. So imagine the current in that river. There was a bloke here too, Morton. He was a local Member here and he made things hard for the people. They found that in later years he was also a member of the Aborigines Protection Board.
Stuart Traynor: Oh, right.
Henry Simms: They were, that was last ?? See the book, in here, see you’ve only got Ferguson, Jackie Patten, the other fellow called ?? that’s old what’s-is-name from Foster. That’s my uncle Ned, that’s my uncle Wesley Simms, they don’t get a mention, only on this bloke Ferguson is there.
Stuart Traynor: So what years are we talking about here when this activism..?
Henry Simms: This in the ’30s.
Stuart Traynor: Yep.
Henry Simms: This is in the ’30’s. And you see how, how dark he is and how big he is? My eldest boy, Henry. He’s like him.
Stuart Traynor: Lot like him,
Henry Simms: Dark like him. But they never got a mention. And I can recall when Dad was in this movement and in later years, this is going back to the late ’50s, they still having rallies in, they’d have rallies on La Perouse Mission. Old Pearl Gibbs and Charlie Leon from Foster would come down and did that, “Coming up, Pat, big meet mob today.” And we’d say, “Where you going Dad?’ “Men’s business.” That’s what he’d say, “Men’s business.” And you know, we weren’t allowed to sit in or listen, we had to go, “Go play. Don’t, don’t sticky beak around here.” That’s like when the women’s business we had to, “No eaves-, eavesdropping here. Go!”. That’s the thing we respected, we were banished in a way, “This is not for you kids.”
Stuart Traynor: So what was, what was happening between, in those years leading up to the Land Rights Act in New South Wales here in, in your area?
Henry Simms: Nowra was bad here. We were one of the third most racist towns in New South Wales.
Stuart Traynor: So it was very different to La Perouse then.
Henry Simms: Very different to La Perouse. Here we had two picture theatres in town then. One was called the Roxy, which is still there today in Berry Street. The other one’s called the West’s it’s on the corner, there’s a Horizon Bank where that, ah, picture theatre was. The first nine rows were literally roped off for us. We would, if we went to the pictures with a white girl, she could sit up the back stalls or upstairs, we had to go down to the first nine rows. Same as if my sisters went with a white boyfriend. Come out of that picture theatre your neck’d be jigged from looking straight up at the screen. And the usher made sure you stayed down your nine rows.
Stuart Traynor: So what years are we talking about, that they’re still doing this?
Henry Simms: This was back in ’63, ’64.
Stuart Traynor: That’s what I thought. So this, ah, is a time when you would have thought that had cha-…
Henry Simms: You know the only place where it wasn’t, wasn’t, ah, carried out? Moruya. You can go to the picture theatre in Moruya you can sit anywhere you like.
Stuart Traynor: So Nowra was a lot different.
Henry Simms: Bega, Bega was like Nowra.
Stuart Traynor: Yep. Hard.
Henry Simms: But Nowra was a racist town like third only to Moree and Brewarrina, where that was, we had, we had a copper here called Blizzard. He come from Berry. And after the pictures finished in the night, on the Friday or Saturday night whatever, we all went mainly Friday night because that’s all we had money for. The bus’d be there. You made sure you caught that bus home because don’t be caught walking around town after the pictures finished. This man, we were only teenagers but he, he’d want to fight ya or kick you up the ass. And he did that a lot of the time, but we were too quick to get away from him. But we made sure we weren’t around town or be visible around town after the pictures finished.
Stuart Traynor: What was it like in the workforce, did you find prejudice there or was it ..?
Henry Simms: The only place for Aboriginals to work at that time was in sawmills. That’s why the sawmills right along the coast of New South, south-east coast, all had Aboriginal workers, sawmen. They were brilliant saw workers. You never saw no girls in sho-, stores, or anything like that. There was no one even on the Shoalhaven City Council – no Aboriginal labour. That didn’t change to least ah, late, ah mid to late ’60s before they start to employ Aboriginal people. There were no girls in the shops but sawmill work. If you didn’t want to the sawmill, you picked peas and beans in season and you dug potatoes and you pulled corn.
Stuart Traynor: Now I know I, I read, ah, in your Mum’s life story, after she died, I mentioned that. So where, where was that the farms there for that?
Henry Simms: All out here, Wogamia.
Stuart Traynor: To the west of Nowra?
Henry Simms: West here, west along the Nowra River, along the Shoalhaven River.
Stuart Traynor: So there’s a lot of horticulture in Nowra?
Henry Simms: A lot. All the farmers grew peas and beans, corn, and pumpkin and that was our source of income then. And my eldest sister, Thelma, in that photo there with the pink, she’d be one of the best workers on the coast here, not only here, but down Bega too. She followed the work around, me and her travel a lot.
Stuart Traynor: And what were the wages like, were they fair? Were you getting the same wages as white people?
Henry Simms: No, wages were, were a mere pittance, they were a mere pittance.
Stuart Traynor: In the sawmill, you were on less money than a white fellow would get?
Henry Simms: If I was paid out in this mill here and I had a friend, the white man, they paid over in the other mill, he’d, he’d get a few quid more than me. We, we were paid the lesser rate. But if you wanted to get by and have a quid in your pocket, because the dole wasn’t available then, you went to picking or sawmill, that, that was your only source of income. And like, the pea and bean season was only short, from about October till April. And in the winter you picked the pumpkins, the corn. of course, went hard then and you had the spuds.
Stuart Traynor: So they had work all year round?
Henry Simms: All year round. And the biggest source of employment with the picking, the seasonal workers was a fella called Bo, Bo Campbell. He, he lived down in Nowra.
Stuart Traynor: And what was he like?
Henry Simms: He was a good bloke, he was fair. And like, we never had cars, he had a wagon, and he’d take people to the paddocks, he done a shuttle service. But the ones from Orient Point out at Browns Flat, out South Nowra, and Worrigee Lane where Jimmy Little grew up, the farmers at Bodalla, the Labice brothers, they, they were the biggest growers on the coast, and also, ah, Ottons down at Bega, they’d come up with trucks, big Diamantinas covered with canopies. The mob at Worrigee and South, ah, Browns Flat, they’d go to Bob Laverton’s farm at Bodalla. The ones down the Roseby Park Mission, we’d get on that truck and go to Rolley Laverton’s farm up at Bodalla. The others went to Otton’s farm at Bega. Before you left you had to go up to the Mission house where you were going to, you sign off and you signed off. When you come back you signed on there. And the differences in, ah, like, wages, La Perouse we were better off because it’s only 7 miles from the Sydney GPO, we had plenty of work. Whereas in the country, specially down here, wintertime, no work around for anybody. Maybe a bit of domestic work, some of the ladies, my mother-in-law used to go, walk out to Culburra, other places do domestic work, barefooted, for a non aboriginal person to get money to feed the kids. On the Missions like Roseby Park and other places, they were given rations and you got the basics, flour, tea, and sugar. The meat you got; I laugh when I tell the kids about this. We, all of us still laugh about it, we still buy this at the butcher shop, mutton flaps, called breast of mutton, 99% fat. So you’re eating the belly carcass of the sheep and the kids laugh, almost spew, when I tell ’em about it at school and I talk to ’em. That was our cut of meat. When you did get sausage you were more or less eating a pig filled up with sawdust, that’s what it tasted like. I’ve experienced all this and that’s why I can talk with authority about it. And come wintertime, June every winter, your Mum or your Dad fronted up to the Mission, not only here, but all the Mission reserves in NSW and you’re issued blankets. We laugh about these too. Some had the red stripe down the middle, some old government blanket we still got that. One had the blue stripe, and one had the red. And on that stamped with big yellow words, AWB, Aborigines Welfare Board. If you were caught off the Mission with that blanket in your possession you were classified and charged with stealing government property, that there. And all depends how many kids you had that, that’s how many blankets, I don’t know. But Mum beat that system. All the corn bags, Mum used to sow them up, we used to call ’em a wagga. And Mum might put some patchwork quilting on ’em, not only Mum, all the other ladies, all the other mothers. Every household would have a wagga on the bed. So we beat that system there. And like, La Pa we only got blankets at La Pa, we never got the ration. That’s all we got at La Pa Mission; we had no money.
Stuart Traynor: Were there a lot of restrictions on people’s movements? At Roseby Park you mentioned having to sign in and sign out.
Henry Simms: You had to get permission to go to a funeral, wherever, whenever your movements was and when, you had to toe the line. And, like, clubs weren’t the go then, it was pubs, and you had to what we called a dog tag. In other words, they say it’s an exemption certificate. To get that dog tag you had to be of good character and every month in Sydney, in Bridge Street, Sydney, the Mission manager used to meet there with all the hierarchy of the Aborigines Welfare Board, and they present their monthly report. And if there was a member, a lady, or a man, seeking that exemption certificate to give ’em the right to go into the pub to drink, they discussed it then, if that person was fit enough otherwise they were knocked back. Then on the Mission, a lot of times, they had people on the Mission who, who were the dogs, they’d report ya for the most trivial things and you got expelled off the Mission. On Roseby Park, my Mum and Dad lived under a fig tree there many years ago, even before I was born, and my father used to go to Sydney and the Waterside Workers and the Builders Labourers Federation used to give him boxes of clothing, sewing material, all that, tobacco for the men, all other stuff for the women. And he’d bring them out and he’d share them around. Because of one black fella who thought he was a class above everybody, he went and reported my father, said that he was selling all that stuff, after getting it for nothing, he was come back and selling it, which was wrong. My Dad handed it out. Well, my Dad eventually got sacked over this incident. But this bloke, he fancied, ‘cos he used to do a little bit of boxing, he fancied himself, and my Dad wasn’t bad himself. So my father-in-law, Dave Carpenter always told me about this and Dave Connolly, they, they watched that fight that day. This bloke went home and come back, and he had his boxing shorts on. He had his boots; he looked the part. And he had a pair of white trousers with the four-leaf clover, because he’d done a bit of boxing now and then in the Illawarra. Well they said my Dad punched the piss out of him. Give him the biggest shock of his life. One day down the Mission there he said to me, “I’ll do what I give to your father.” I said, “What’s that, get bashed?” I said, “My father give you the biggest…” His name was John Longbottom. I said, “My father literally punched the piss out of you.” And I said, “My father or Dave Carpenter or Dave Connolly told me they’d give it to you.” I said, “So don’t come here with your little standover talk.” I said, “Because I’m a lot younger than my father.” And I said, “I’ve boxed in Sydney,” I said, “and I’ll give you a bigger bashing.” But that quietened him down. He never ever told me again after that, this John Longbottom, ‘cos, he used to let his cows roam on the Mission, and he was an arsehole. And I used to let, I’d let the wire down and let them out.
Stuart Traynor: Um, we’ll come back to the dog tag in a minute, but, um, so you’re a bit of a boxer?
Henry Simms: I done boxing.
Stuart Traynor: Ah, you trained as a boxer?
Henry Simms: I trained as a boxer. I trained, first of all I went to Randwick Boys, Police Boys Club at Kingsford, I was in the boxing team there. Then we got a raw deal with this old sergeant, old Sergeant McGaskill, he was a hard man.
Stuart Traynor: Good man or just a hard man?
Henry Simms: Hard man, he was a hard man.
Stuart Traynor: Yeah, right.
Henry Simms: So I switched allegiance to the East Sydney Police Boys Club. Me and about four others did, and we come under the guidance of Jimmy Carruthers. And…
Stuart Traynor: World bantam weight champion.
Henry Simms: World bantam weight champion. He, he was our instructor at East Sydney Police Boys Club, and we got, from there we got selected in the City side to box against Mudgee, in the country up at Mudgee. And I fought a fellow called Errol Balsam at Mudgee, he was the central district champion. It was a scheduled 8 round fight, and I stopped him in 6. Then I turned…
Stuart Traynor: Did you put him down, or was it a technical knockout?
Henry Simms: No I put him down.
Stuart Traynor: You put him down.
Henry Simms: I put him to sleep. I can still, I can still literally recall them four punches, best four punches I’ve ever used in my life, and he swayed into it lovely. By leading with that first one to the mid, Jim Caruthers always said, “Think you’re falling a tree. Go for the middle.”
Stuart Traynor: Yep.
Henry Simms: So I put a vicious left hit into the solar plexus and a right cross and another left. Then, Bang! the right uppercut, he was asleep. And he come in the ring, he had every dressing gown on, you know. We had, we had a dressing gown, but not as flashy as him. Then I travelled home with Roy Bell, his boxing troupe.
Stuart Traynor: I don’t know, tell me more about him.
Henry Simms: And that, he travelled all over Australia, Victoria, Northern Territory. I travelled with him.
Stuart Traynor: It was a show circuit was it?
Henry Simms: A show circuit.
Stuart Traynor: Yep.
Henry Simms: And you fought, you fought above your weight, you fought tall blokes, you fought short blokes, but you fought anybody. If anybody bailed you up in the morning you had to fight ’em.
Stuart Traynor: So how old are you at the time when you with the troupe?
Henry Simms: 17. And this fella, Crookwell Show, he said, “I want the little bloke there.”
Stuart Traynor: Which was you?
Henry Simms: Me. Now that was all right. I said, well, Roy said, “It’s up to you. Give it to him.” And I did give it to him. And I found out that he had a sister, beautiful, one of the best-looking sheilas I’d ever seen. And, but she was, she was engaged to this, ah, racehorse trainer, yeah, from Crookwell. “Are you coming here now?” But I said, “No. clear out.” But I fought a bloke in Queanbeyan, Kenny Bradley. We fought twice. The first time we fought a draw, the second time I stopped him. I was on the path to fight for the bantam weight title. Jim, ah, Jarrett in South Australia.
Stuart Traynor: The, the Australian bantam weight title?
Henry Simms: The Australian bantam weight title. I was overlooked for that. They chose this other bugger above me, and he wasn’t in the first four. And because I was a black fella, I was overlooked. And that’s the thing they looked at, if you was a black fella and you had no money, you had no hope.
Stuart Traynor: Might you have gone on to the Olympics with that, or was that not a ..?
Henry Simms: No, I wouldn’t have went on to the Olympics.
Stuart Traynor: But there was a path to that?
Henry Simms: There was a path to that, yeah see. And I fought some good blokes in my amateur days, but I fought some good men in my, ah, professional days too.
Stuart Traynor: How old were you when you started fighting professionally?
Henry Simms: Just after I, about 19, I was.
Stuart Traynor: Right. A couple of years after.
Henry Simms: Yeah, a couple of years. But I, I was taught by a good man, and he taught me how, how to, not to get hurt. That was his main thing he told us, not to get hurt. And he said, “You gotta keep movin’, be alert.” And he said, “The worst thing you do before a fight,” he said, “Don’t go out with a woman”. He stressed that point.
Stuart Traynor: Right.
Henry Simms: He said you lose all your reflexes, he said. But he taught us well. But I, with the, with the boxing troupe, it was something I enjoyed. I loved it because you learn how to defend yourself against all comers. And with old Roy Bell, he was a hard man, but a, he was a good man in, in other ways too. Because you’d sleep out, they’d allocate the blocks in the showground on the Thursday. He’d stay outside of town up till the Thursday before he’d come in because he didn’t like paying the fees.
Stuart Traynor: Right.
Henry Simms: So you’d stay out and you’d sleep under, you’d pull out your mattress, we had a big trailer. It was like monkeys in a circus, they had cages in ’em, we’d [laughs] share that. And we’d just drag out our mattress and we’d just sleep on the riverbank. And you ate whatever he, you never had topside steak or a rump or all that, you ate what he shot. So we’re out the back of, ah, we’re on our way to Cooma and we stopped at Paddy’s River. And he knew a bloke there with a, and we camped at Paddy’s River ‘cos there’s a big Creek and that there and no fees. We stayed there. And he said to me, “Sonny,” he said, “you want to come shooting?” He was a crack shot.
Stuart Traynor: Right.
Henry Simms: They used to have a clay pigeon shoot in Melbourne every year, he was a known good shooter. And he said, “Come with me, I got a gun for ya.” An old blue shotgun. So we give him the wag and away we go. In jumps this black labrador, only a young dog. Away we go to this big lagoon, ducks all over it, we fired, ducks all over it, and he give him the signal to go and retrieve. He just sat there like that. I had to go in! Into this lagoon, and I come back, and he was a man who very seldom laughed, very seldom laughed. And he had tears coming out of his eyes, he’s laughing at me ‘cos I was covered in leeches. Well we had a heap of ducks. We had, our trainer in the boxing tent was a fellow called Ces Meredith, come from Charters Towers. He fought for the Australian heavy weight title four times. He got disqualified three. [laughs] Well he was our trainer.
Stuart Traynor: What happened the fourth time?
Henry Simms: He won it.
Stuart Traynor: He won it.
Henry Simms: He won it, yeah. And so all the other boys, they were from all over Australia, travelling with us. They had to pluck and clean the ducks; I was off that. So as they’re cleaning up, around come the corner was this black dog, I give him a hell of a kick in the guts.
Stuart Traynor: Ah.
Henry Simms: And he yelped! Mrs Bell come running around, she loved dogs, and parrots and that. She said, “I heard that…” “Oh,” I said. “Something’s frightened him there then he jumped backwards and hurt himself”. It was me kicking him in the guts I was covered in leeches and that. She believed it though.
Stuart Traynor: You bugger. And so they were some of the things. Down at the Bega show, I fought this fellow from Victoria because picking season was on. The show’s on down there in February, and I give this bloke a bit of a pasting. And I made a silly mistake, I went to the toilet on me own ‘cos the toilet wasn’t too far away from where our camp was and they were watching, and they cut me off. Put his arms across, the other fella put his arm across the entrance. Other fella come to where I was at the piss trough. I was ready. I said, “I’ll get one,” I said, ‘but two of youse will do me.” And Ces was watching all this. He was like a mad boy, he just come rushing in and Bang! The bloke that was holding his arms across the door, one hit and he was gone, he was out cold. Other bloke, he knocked him in the piss trough.
Stuart Traynor Wow!
Henry Simms: And pissed on him. [laughs] And he was a man who saved me from a bashing because them blokes were out to give it to me because I give it to this bloke from Victoria, Koorie fella. But Cec come to my aid that time. But leading up to that, prior to the show starting on the Friday evening, there was a lot of people in Victoria picking peas and peas at the time from Victoria and we all had women. And because Cec was a big, big man, baldy head, like a big, we used to call him, he was built, he was Superman, so he never got a woman. No-one wanted to go with him. So we’re all on the Bega showground, I’m behind this, this hurdle here. We all went back to the camp and got our blanket and pillow as they knew there was something on, and he said to me, “Sonny, you little black ‘B,’ where you going?” I said, “Just over here”. And you know he’s walked around the Bega showground, up the top, you’re looking down into the ground above the trotting track, and he’s singing out, “Sonny you little black bastard, where are ya?” I wouldn’t answer, nor would any of the others, ‘cos we were out on the showground with women, you know he searched around until he found the main switch. On come the lights, there was black fellows and white blokes and sheilas going everywhere.
Stuart Traynor: Right.
Henry Simms: Well he, he, that made him, he was happy about that. Yes, but he was a good man. You trained hard with him; you just didn’t lay around the camp. Then when we done Gunning show, we had a little bloke from Victoria, Reggie Wiggins. So this, they, all our tucker was cooked in camp ovens and good tucker what Cec cooked which made a good meal. And he said, “Don’t touch that little one there.” “Why?” “That’s Reggie’s. Don’t youse touch it”. He had it dosed up, because he’d go there with the damn onion Run the damn, around there, and he says “Cec, you don’t have to clean that one, wash that one ‘cos I’ve done it.” He said, “Where?” “I done it”. I thought Cec was gunna bash the hell out of him. And so he fixed him up by cooking his own. He couldn’t, at Gunning show, he never left the toilet.
Stuart Traynor: Right. [laughs]
Henry Simms: But even some of the things, some days hard, some days good. You fought anybody, any, everybody wanted to fight the little fella.
Stuart Traynor: So the show circuit was all year round was it?
Henry Simms: They travel from here, go down to Bega, then they come back up through Cooma, then head, head north, then they will come back. Then Royal Easter and six boxing troupes come to the Royal Easter.
Stuart Traynor: So you fought at the Royal Easter show?
Henry Simms: Royal Easter Show. They all had to come together for the long period of boxing. So when we was in Royleston there was a bloke there, he was a standover. I made sure my two brothers were all right, I looked after my two brothers, specially my brother Bob, Bob was simple. And we used to come out 11 o’clock, wash our hands and get ready to go in for lunch and honestly that wasn’t much lunch, just bread and jam, not fresh bread either. And he just come up and he said, “Simms, when are you going to meet me behind the toilet?” I said, “Yeah right, you’re on”. I give him the biggest shock of his life. Then, at the Royal Easter, this is years later at the Royal Easter, I’m up on the board and I’m fighting this other bloke from, ah, from Merrylands. He was a former fireman. This bloke’s singing out to me, not by Sonny but my name in those days was Henry. He’s there with his wife, well I presume, and a little girl. He’s waving at me. He recognised me on the board. I said, “After this next fight, I’ll see ya’.” I went down. It was that fella I bashed at Royleston. He was married, had a child.
Stuart Traynor: Yep.
Henry Simms: Great job, going well. But when I bashed him at Glebe at Royleston, all the others said, “We’re glad you done that.” Because when, if they didn’t have a parent who come and visit ’em, some might get a pair of shoes, sandshoes, some might get some lollies or fruit or a pair undies or something, he’d take it off ’em, that was his property. And then they said, “Now we’re glad you done that to him.” But he was a standover man.
Stuart Traynor: So what led to you giving away the boxing?
Henry Simms: I preferred Rugby League. It, there was good money there, the money was good.
Stuart Traynor: You were getting paid to play Rugby League?
Henry Simms: I got paid, I was a paid player.
Stuart Traynor: So where were you getting paid? What, what leagues were you in then?
Henry Simms: Oh, just playing the..
Stuart Traynor: The Group 7?
Henry Simms: No, I went to the Group 16 first, Bodalla.
Stuart Traynor: Yep.
Henry Simms: I had me contact, £20 a game.
Stuart Traynor: Really?
Henry Simms: South Sydney Juniors got me the job. They got eight of us a job because it was hard for us in Sydney, and they had plenty of players at La Pa to keep the stocks going there. So I went to Group 16, some boys went to Wauchope, some went to Cobar, some went out to Lightning Ridge, Tumbarumba, four boys went to Tumbarumba down there. I chose Group 16 ‘cos I knew what down Group 16 was.
Stuart Traynor: So what years are we talking about here?
Henry Simms: ’63, ’64. I went down there.
Stuart Traynor: And how old are you at that time?
Henry Simms: 19, 20 then.
Stuart Traynor: So you just finished the boxing and got into the Rugby League.
Henry Simms: I got into the Rugby League. And, ah, down there me contract come up, it was £20 a game, and the basic wage was only 13 quid!
Stuart Traynor: I was going to say it’s good money, yeah.
Henry Simms: Twen-, and I had a bonus. Every try I scored there was a quid.
Stuart Traynor: Right. Was that £20 win or lose?
Henry Simms: That was my statutory fee.
Stuart Traynor: Yep. And then you got bonuses.
Henry Simms: Bonuses, a quid a try. So one day against Eden, I scored three tries.
Stuart Traynor: So three extra quid.
Henry Simms: So Frankie Still who worked with me in the mill out at South Nowra, he was, he was playing half back for reserve grade, and he was a mad gambler, he had nothing. So he said, “Hey, go and get a sub.” “What for?” He said, “You scored three tries!” He said, “That’s.., here,” he said, “we’ve gotta have a drink”. He said, “Go and get a sub.” ‘Cos I knew I couldn’t get me contract money. But he said, “Get at least a quid so we can have a drink.”
Stuart Traynor: So sub is supplementary money is it?
Henry Simms: Yeah, get a sub on that money, see. I went and got it. I got 30 bob, and I shouted him and a few others. Because you could get a schooner then, for about, I think it was 33 cents or 3 bob for a schooner!
Stuart Traynor: Decimal currency came in in ’66? So we’re in the pre…
Henry Simms: Right, I was out doing the reservoir at Nowra Hill. We were fascinated by the look of the dollar, first piece, 14th of February 1966.