STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OH 456/9

Full transcript of an interview with

GEORGE & SALLY HAWKER

on 22 May 1997

by Rob Linn

Recording available on CD

Access for research: Unrestricted

Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study

Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library

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OH 456/9 GEORGE & SALLY HAWKER

NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT

This transcript was donated to the State Library. It was not created by the J.D. Somerville Oral History Collection and does not necessarily conform to the Somerville Collection's policies for transcription.

Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The State Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the interview, nor for the views expressed therein. As with any historical source, these are for the reader to judge.

This transcript had not been proofread prior to donation to the State Library and has not yet been proofread since. Researchers are cautioned not to accept the spelling of proper names and unusual words and can expect to find typographical errors as well.

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TAPE 1 - SIDE A AUSTRALIAN RURAL HISTORY PROJECT. Interview with George and Sally Hawker at Bungaree Station, Clare, South Australia, on 22nd May, 1997. Interviewer: Rob Linn. Well, George or Sally, how did you both come to meet here? Sally, you've got a background in South Africa, and George, you were born and bred here, how did this situation come to be? GH: I was seduced. (Laughter) Simple country boy.

SH: Yes, I don't know how far in depth you want to go. Way back, as far as

the family was concerned, my Mother was always interested in affairs rural,

and through a very convoluted way she became a pen-friend to Joan Hawker's

husband, John. And over the years they corresponded on subjects of grazing

and land management. And some years later, Ryves Hawker was travelling in

Africa and read an article written by my Mother, and contacted her and asked if

he could come and stay and perhaps work in South Africa. In those days it

was impossible for - because of the language barrier - for him to have worked

effectively. So he came and stayed with us and we just passed him on from

one stud breeder to the next. He was 23 and I was 13. Fairly impressionable

age.

At that stage I wanted to go farming and Father said I could go farming - I was

the youngest of three girls - but I had to have some career before I went

farming, and so a quick university degree with a BA and a Dip.Ed was the

easiest thing to do. So having done that I came to Australia to learn about

farming, and naturally, prior to leaving South Africa, I contacted Ryves, and

said, 'Look, when I get to South Australia I'll need a job'. And so he

recommended that I contacted George's parents. And it was great. I worked in

Western Australia for some time, again through Ryves Hawker. He put me in

contact with the Edkins family - Charles and Jane. GH: In Western Australia.

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SH: Yes. Charles had been a jackeroo at Anama many years before, and

Jane Edkins had been an English girl, doing exactly what I did, and she met

Charles at Anama and they got married. Perhaps if I'd known it I might not

have come here. (Laughter) So I came here to learn about farming.

So what year was that, Sally? SH: 1972. And George, what was Bungaree like in 1972? Give me a bit of your background and background of the place. GH: Jackeroos, men.

SH: How many? There would have been a host of them.

GH: Two or three, then. And there was a single overseer. And single

jackeroos, obviously. But there was a mechanic. SH: The cook. The gardener. GH: There was a cook. There was a gardener. There was - SH: All the houses were full.

GH: - a maintenance man who did carpentry, mended pipes. Did all those sort

of things. Yes, someone in every house. Of course, Bumburnie, Marola and

Bluff still existed then, and Booborowie. SH: Yes, the land holding was bigger.

GH: And there was a truck. Someone used to drive the truck backwards and

forwards. You know, carting stuff here and there. And principally, sheep, was

the major enterprise. We had about 250 breeding cows in those days. SH: The red Angus cattle.

GH: Red and black Angus, yes. And we used to farm about six or seven

hundred acres only to oats.

So the Merino stud was the heart of the enterprise?

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GH: The emphasis was on Merino sheep and the stud, of course, came

second. I wish it was wool growing, was the most profitable, but - like, when

we were selling wethers for $4, and thinking we're going to make a million

dollars.

Sold wethers for $4?

GH: $4 a head. The following year we got 12 for them. I thought, 'Gee, this is

big money'. Of course, in those days a Rolls Royce only cost $20,000. So,

you know, $12,000 for a mob of sheep was pretty good. (Laughter) SH: A loaf of bread was 30 cents when I came to Australia.

How did the country strike you, Sally, when you first found it was there? Were there similarities to your South Africa?

SH: Yes, there were. And there still are - in terms of terrain. Not around this

area so much but towards Burra. Burra reminded me a lot of South Africa.

That sort of salt bush country. The only big difference really was when I arrived

in Perth. I saw, for the first time in my life, a white man pushing a lawn mower.

I'd never seen a white man push a lawn mower in my life. (Laughter) And I

was just stunned.

So in South Africa, you were from a rural area? SH: Yes.

And your parents were farmers?

SH: Yes. Dad was second generation on the land and it was, in many ways,

rather like this in terms of tradition, and I felt at home here because many of the

books in the library were the books that I'd had in the library at home.

And George, there was a very strong tradition here, wasn't there? Were you encouraged to come back on the land? GH: Yes. No real option. There was never an option. SH: Never a discussion.

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GH: No, there was no discussion.

SH: In fact, your Father at one stage said that if you didn't come back - GH: He'd sell the place. SH: - he would sell the place. That was the threat. And you wanted to come back though? GH: Yes, but not straight away. SH: You wanted to go to Vietnam. GH: Well, that was only a way of - SH: A way of getting away.

GH: Staying away. I wanted to go and work in the West and do something

else. And travel overseas for a year or so.

SH: But in many ways, our children are luckier than we are because of the

generation gap. George's father was that much older. GH: Yes. Dad's generation had the Depression and the War, which sort of interrupted their - SH: Slowed everything down.

GH: - younger years, whereas now I think - when Edward was 15, I was the

same age as my Father was when I was born. So obviously the generation

gap is not as big. So therefore, God willing and reasonable health, there

shouldn't be the same pressure.

Well, eventually you two somehow met and the inevitable happened. You got married and Sally became a South African Australian. What are you exactly, Sally? GH: She has an Australian passport. South African born Australian is probably right.

And when you were married your Father was still alive, George?

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GH: Mm.

And the property was still fundamentally around wool?

GH: Yes. Yes, it was still run as a partnership, and Dad had passed the land

onto his children, so it was in four pieces. I mean, it was run as one but it

belonged to the four of us, yes. Now at that stage your parents were living in this - the big house on the place? GH: Yes.

You were in the overseer's house? GH: Mm.

And the children were born there, if I remember right. When did you begin to notice things changing, if you like. That perhaps the farming wasn't going to continue forever in the same way as it once had with wool as the dominant feature?

GH: Wool was dominant in our lives right up until about 1988/89. And then I -

earlier than that. In the 80's I could see that wool was going to become more

expensive to produce, and country like this, which is quite valuable in terms of

the cost per acre, you couldn't pay for it if you had to buy it by growing wool, so

you had to do other things. And in effect we had to buy it. When people look

back and say it's inherited, that's not really the point. You know, I've got a 50%

equity. I had to buy my family out. And of course for a period of high interest

rates, it wasn't very easy. So the English system where the eldest son inherits

and the rest go and do something else is probably the fair way to do it. But in

actual fact that's not how it works in this country. But it does mean that these

places can't go on for generation and generation. The fact that Bungaree's

lasted for five generations I think is reasonably unique. SH: You're almost a statistic now.

GH: And the businesses that go for four generations is like 1%.

SH: Right across the board, not just farming. All businesses. Yes. That's quite correct, yes.

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GH: Doesn't matter whatever it is.

Can you tell me how the cultural tourism thing began, because it certainly wasn't here in my first memory of Bungaree in the mid 70's.

GH: We always a de facto tourist business, funnily enough. Because there

was always people coming here who had some tie with the place. Who'd

worked here, or their grandparents had worked here, or they'd been born here,

or they got married here or - the relationship might have been quite tenuous but

there was always someone. And also my parents contacts, particularly Dad's

with his wartime experiences and the people he met in the Army. A lot of those

worked here or stayed here or did something after the War. So there was

always people coming and going, and as far as - there's always wool tours and

that sort of thing. And WEA, and people like that, used to come here. So there

was always that sort of thing on a very casual basis. So it was really once all

the cottages became empty and things had changed that we decided - SH: Evolved.

GH: Evolved. Shearers quarters first. In fact, we didn't use them. So what do

we do with them? Sally is someone who likes to be busy. So she didn't know

how busy she wanted to be but she wanted to try it.

SH: Largely it was - my interpretation would be slightly different in the sense

that initially George's mother always dealt with the casual person who turned

up, and then when I gave up teaching and became housebound, I found that

that side of things was thrown on to me. You know, 'Would you take these

people around?' And I was becoming embarrassed because I looked at the

buildings as a stranger did and I thought these buildings are beautiful but

they're falling down. And I realised that there was a necessity - a need to do

something. Convert them into something.

Was the fact that they were vacant an inevitable result of the changing labour conditions of the 60's and 70's? That wages for rural labour were becoming much higher - SH: Your Father thought you'd go broke when you had a wage bill of - what? 30,000?

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GH: Yes. Dad throwing his hands in when the wage bill got to 36,000, and

saying, 'You can't make money at this'. In those days people were on $100 a

week. I mean, it was -

SH: When we first got married, a married man was earning $50 a week, and I

was earning $10 a week. Oh, $8 initially, and your Mother gave me more two

more. So, I earned $10 a week.

GH: It's all relative. You know in the 1950's you had to sell four or five sheep

to pay someone's wages, whereas now you've got to sell ten or fifteen fat

lambs to pay someone's wages. I mean, no-one on this place would earn less

than $500 a week. But of course that's what - I mean, in all during the rough

time, we had two staff on the farm whereas originally we had seven or eight

when I came home. And that was subsidised by tourism to, you know, try and

keep the fabric of the place operational. SH: The business going. So okay, there's a change in labour conditions, the place is beginning to fall down when they're empty, I suppose in a sense, don't they? That's just inevitable. SH: It deteriorated very fast.

And the shearers quarters are empty. And were you also spurred on by others in the community to do something? GH: Not really. No.

SH: It really actually started over the Gourmet Weekend 1986. They needed -

it was the beginning of the Gourmet Wine Festival and every bed was needed,

and we actually had some people staying that very first week - that first Easter

and the Gourmet Weekend. Since then, tourism has become very much a

sought after enterprise and the number of beds would've multiplied by - gosh,

4/500%.

What was the original aim in doing up the shearers quarters? SH: Really just to maintain the buildings.

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GH: Just to maintain the buildings. That was the sole aim.

SH: Because at the time we had casual shearers coming from Spalding and

elsewhere, and they would only spend two or three weeks of the year,

maximum, in the shearers quarters. So it seemed logical to just extend it and

repair it so that it could be used by other people. And the same - likewise the

Council chamber was falling down, so that was the first cottage we repaired.

And my philosophy has always been to turn a liability into an asset. And we

had a huge liability with the buildings. GH: I'm trying to do that with my wife. (Laughter)

No domestics on tape! (Laughter) Did you have to teach yourself new skills to, you know, restore the buildings or conserve them in any sense? SH: Again, it sort of evolved. It's trial and error to a certain extent.

GH: I'm an expert on septic tanks, and on drains, on hot water services, on

rooves, on gutters.

SH: I think one's whole attitude and view of life changes as a result of tourism.

I remember, years ago, watching - before tourism - watching Fawlty Towers

and thinking, 'This is ridiculous'. Now I know it's not ridiculous. It happens all

the time. (Laughter)

GH: It's a bit like parenting. You know, something that's evolved. You don't

have any real training in it. You've seen other people do it but you don't

actually know what you're doing, and it does make you very appreciative when

you go anywhere else.

SH: When we go anywhere we see a totally different view to the one anyone

else would see.

What did the early tourist coming in here appreciate about the place? What were the type of comments that people gave?

SH: I think that it was authentic. Bungaree hadn't been opened to the public,

and so they really did feel privileged to be able to come into a place like this

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and see a working property that still functioned and was not a dude ranch or -

you know, it hadn't been fabricated for tourism. And that still holds true. The

farming enterprise, to me, contributes a great deal to the feeling of the place.

They will put up with cracks in walls because it's historic. It's all part of the

charm of the place. GH: None of the artefacts here have been acquired. They're all -

SH: They're all genuine. People will often look at the old vintage vehicles and

say, 'My gosh, where did you get that from?' And I say, 'Well, it worked here.

We didn't go out and acquire it'.

And originally you furnished all the different cottages and rooms from - GH: With furniture that was - SH: That was from the place. GH: It was derelict. That's right. GH: It was all stored and we restored it.

SH: We had - some years ago, we lost all our furniture. That was part and

parcel of the risk you take when you open to the public.

Now, when did the cultural tourism side begin to build up very quickly? Was that immediate or -? GH: No.

(telephone interruption) Just to recap that question, when did cultural tourism happen quickly or when did it build up? I think George was just saying, no, that it actually built up over time.

GH: It built up to when we started doing those tape - we used to do formal

tours every Sunday, and most Sunday mornings you did one at 10 o'clock and

you'd take ten people around and that became too time consuming, so

introduced a tape recorder with the - they'd take a tape tour. Take them out

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with a photograph album. That worked quite well for a while but people

become more and more presumptuous.

SH: We've actually found a big change in the nature of people - the nature of

the public. Now, we've actually stopped tape tours so individual people can no

longer come here unless they stay overnight. If they stay overnight, the tour is

complimentary and they have free access to everything. So the only tours that

we do now are actual group tours - bus groups - that come in and make a

booking. So the casual person off the road can no longer just walk in as they

were able to before, simply because we were finding that those two and three

people, every now and then, would offend the existing guests. Look in through

bedroom windows, and it was becoming an issue and our residential guests

are really important to us.

Now, as tourism built up, did a conflict develop between the farming and grazing side of the enterprise and the tourism?

SH: The two really have - it's like a marriage. There's days when I'm sure

George curses it, just as I'm sure there's days when you curse me.

GH: When we started the rule was, don't affect the bank balance negatively,

don't waste station staff - SH: Don't use station staff.

GH: Don't use station staff and don't neglect the family. She's actually done

all of those. She has? Oh, I see. (Laughter)

SH: Tourism has. No, George feels very neglected sometimes. I don't

actually ever ask the station staff to do anything personally. I always address it

through George. So that whatever I ask is done but it's done when it fits in with

George's existing farming programme.

Well, after your Father died, George, how did your Mother - Lady Hawker - actually take the increase in tourism? SH: She was actually very supportive.

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GH: Up to a point.

SH: There were only a few things she didn't understand. She didn't

understand why I had to give people meals. She didn't understand that service

aspect of it that is essential. It goes hand in hand with the industry. She didn't

understand why we had to put in new china and presentable furniture. She

didn't understand when I walked into our house and took the books from our

house and put them into that cottage. My philosophy is that if people walk into

a house and there are books that are torn, they will have no regard for them.

And they will tear even more pages out of the books. But if you give them good

books, they will respect them. So she couldn't understand that if something

was chipped I would throw it out. I would not leave chipped china in a cottage.

Sally, did you see the tourism actually reflecting rural Australia in particular and building on a true rural Australia? Was that something you wanted to enhance?

SH: When people come here I try to give them a better understanding of the

man on the land, the life we lead, because many people who come here, this is

the only experience of farming they will ever have. They don't have a country

cousin any more. Twenty years ago most people in the city would've perhaps

had a holiday on an uncle's property, but now the children who come here

often say, 'We're going to the farm'. It's the only farm they have in their lives.

So it's really up to us to educate them. And again, develop communication and

respect for another way of life. So, yes, from an educational point of view, I

think we do establish that role quite distinctly. And it's often in explaining the

economics as George did earlier, drawing comparisons like buying a tractor,

what you have to produce or sell in order to buy a tractor twenty years ago and

what you have to produce or sell today to buy the same, or equivalent, piece of

machinery.

Have you found that urban people tend to have little idea of a rural property?

SH: None at all. You get a few that - a lot are interested. A few have

understanding. Day after day we might be having severe drought, and a few

drops of rain and they say, 'Oh, the rain has spoilt the holiday'. And I have to

bite my tongue to say, 'Well, without the rain, you know, most of us wouldn't

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survive'. So rain is a blight on a holiday. Little things like that make you realise

that they have no idea what it is like to battle against the elements.

Now, has there been an increasing pressure as the number of tourists has increased and as the place has become successful, to keep on doing up the old buildings and keep on putting capital into it? Does that affect the farming at all, too, or is that still an adjunct to the tourism growth?

SH: We haven't reached full potential. George keeps saying, 'When are you

going to stop?' Because the buildings still need further development.

So it's taken nearly ten years to start working your way through most of the old buildings to have some form of restoration?

SH: That's right. It would be wonderful to have sufficient finance to say, 'Right.

We'll finish that. We'll do the balcony and we'll upgrade the entrance, the

roads'. But there just isn't the finance to do that. So it is to a certain extent,

piecemeal, as we can afford it.

Just to ask again - the farming side and the tourist side are actually self-contained? GH: Yes.

SH: We separate the finances totally, and at the end of the year they're

brought in together again, so we know exactly where we're going. GH: We try and apportion costs to the relevant enterprise.

SH: So things like electricity, I pay my portion of it.

Now, the other side to this is how people in the mid North - rural community - responded to the success of Bungaree as a rural tourism venture.

GH: Very rude, initially. Because a number of people since surviving - one of

the people who was rudest to me about it has now gone broke on his farm

because he couldn't make a go of it because he's a wool producer.

SH: They'd initial their comments with, 'How can you open to the public? How

can you become a shopkeeper?' Then they looked again and realised that it

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has helped us through. So there's a little bit of envy, jealousy - whatever you

like to call it. And now we've - with a couple of State and National tourism

awards, we suffer from the tall poppy syndrome. GH: The local community aren't supportive at all. SH: The local community don't support us. But that is to be expected. GH: Except when they want something.

So your support's come from urban people, from interstate people, from international - GH: Interstate - we have the big repeat business.

TAPE 1 - SIDE B So you in fact you haven't had a lot of rural support. The support's come from outside. Do you both feel that perhaps in the future this type of dual use of a property of this nature is going to be a necessity? SH: It is the only answer here.

GH: Unless our terms of trade improve significantly, and I don't think they're

going to because they've gone downhill all my life. I mean, two years ago we

had an aberration when wheat prices were higher than normal, which made a

big difference because that - it doesn't often go with good yields. In that year

we had particularly good yields and good prices, which made a big difference.

And we had some disposable income to spend on machinery and

improvements and things like that. But I think it would be imprudent to say

tourism no longer has a significant part to play at Bungaree. I think the facilities

we have, we're never going to go back to having - SH: There's no other use for them.

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GH: - permanent labour, apart from a couple we already have. And they've

lived in their own house - people tend to want to live in their own house. So,

therefore, the sort of wages they're earning they can buy a house in Clare.

Well, given the reaction of the local community, if you like, to the success of Bungaree, is there a sense in which people in rural communities have a nostalgia for the past, or want to keep back there without seeing the reality of the present? GH: Possibly. I think the trouble with most rural communities is that they don't really think - SH: Terribly parochial.

GH: Yes. - think terribly far ahead. They want it all now and they want

someone else to do it.

Are many of these people who are on the local Tourist Association newcomers to the area? In a sense that they are outsiders coming in to run tourism operations? GH: Some of them are.

SH: Some of them are. In fact, most of the successful enterprises in the

Valley are run by people who've come in, seen the potential of the Valley and

developed it. Like the Country Club, the owners of the Clare Central Motel,

Thorn Park - those boys. Yes, it sort of - often the local burghers perhaps can't

see the potential, and somebody else comes in and invests in the Valley and

does something spectacular.

So in an attempt to bring it together, where to now with this part of rural Australia?

GH: I know a very nice block of land in Mauritius, which (couldn't decipher

words). (Laughter) SH: Come on! It was the Falkland Islands before they had their war.

GH: No. After the Falkland Islands. (Laughter)

Where to now? I think more of the same but trying to -

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SH: Do what we do better.

GH: And if possible, broaden our base a little bit with more -

SH: We can offer so much more.

GH: - professional marketing, which we are looking at at the moment. And

obviously, with the farm, just try to be more and more efficient. And more

profitable enterprises. We're going to spend more money on a deer enterprise. SH: Diversifying in that side. GH: I see that as quite a good - SH: Another diversity.

GH: - quite profitable diversion. We run cattle. We run sheep. But again, my

forebears would turn - my Father would be turning in his grave because we'd

been using British breed rams. Any ewe that doesn't lamb is mated to a

Dorset ram. SH: Mutton Merino. GH: We've actually done very well out of -

SH: Crossbreds.

For the prime lamb market? SH: Mm.

GH: And we've done extremely well out of that, and we've actually put a lot of

them across the table here for our clients. We intend to do the same with

venison.

Is that a type of value adding? Using your own -

GH: Oh, it is because you're taking a lamb which is worth $50 and you're

turning him into $150. That's not - again, our peers don't recognise that. It's

got to be something trendy like producing - Emu fillets.

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GH: Or something like that. I mean, the good old basic rural produce turning

in for something else. And we're not just giving people lamb roast. In fact

we're giving very little of that. Most of our lambs get turned into fillet. I mean,

we don't keep a chop. I would say it is value adding. I mean, there's so many

people trying to value add with wool, for instance. They don't really see a big

market for it. We have - some have cattle. We have our grain for agricultural

enterprises.

SH: But really with tourism, where we value add, is that a lot of enterprises in

the Valley and elsewhere provide bed and breakfast and that is it. We look

further - GH: We try to provide an experience.

SH: - and so that not only is a family educated but they have a better

environment. There's more for the children to do. People often phone up and

say, 'What is there for the children to do?' So we cater for that market. And

likewise with conferences.

I think our biggest problem, as we discussed earlier this afternoon, is finding

good labour - permanent labour. And once we've cracked that one, it'll be a lot

easier. At the moment we burn the candle at both ends and it doesn't always

work as well as it should.

Do you find people of a like mind in other parts of rural Australia? Not here per se but other parts?

SH: We haven't really had an opportunity to take time off to discover. What I'd

love to do is visit other enterprises. But once again we are tied here to a

certain extent. GH: It's rare that Sally and I can get away together. SH: It sounds ridiculous, but when we do, all we want to do is sleep.

One of the questions I really wanted to put to you, do you see yourself as indicative of a current generation of Australian rural people, if you like? GH: Having to adapt?

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Mm. SH: Yes.

GH: Yes.

SH: It was interesting. A while back, Ann Hawker went to the field days and

her comment when she came back was - I said, 'How was it?' And she said, 'I

saw a lot of tired men'. And Ann is George's -

SH: Ryves' wife. And that was her description. And I just thought, 'Well, that

fits almost every farmer. They're working harder, longer hours, for less return'.

And constantly the technology is changing. The amount of reading that you

have to do just to keep abreast of the trends and markets, it's no longer a way

of life, it's a business. And really a farmer has to be so multi-skilled to handle it

all. It's not an easy way of life any more.

GH: It's looking at - I mean, the problem is that it's our home as well. It's

looking at the things of business, which none of us are very good at. We might

say we are but bottom line is - SH: Emotional. GH: - the fact that we all have an emotional tie to our land. SH: And emotional link to the staff.

GH: All those sort of things. I mean, we're employing people with very, I

guess, Edwardian ideas, and trying to treat people as they should be treated in

our opinion with using those sort of values, of course in a modern industrial

system which doesn't recognise those values. You know, an employee's a

number. And eat him up and spit him out.

SH: George always laughs at me because I will work long hours, much longer

than the staff, because I know that they have a life to lead other than

Bungaree. And he'll say, 'Why don't you get them to do that duty?' And I say,

'Well, I can't sleep - if they're working, there's no way I could come home.

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So are you caught between a rock and a hard place, both of you?

GH: We have created a tiger. We've got it by the tail and we don't know quite

how to let it go so that it doesn't bite us. (Laughter) SH: Oh, there's a challenge. You meet some fabulous people though.