STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OH 834/29

Full transcript of an interview with

TREVOR ROGERS

01 June & 16 August 2007

by Tony Rogers

for the

BUREAU OF METEOROLOGY ORAL HISTORY

PROJECT

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 834/29 TREVOR ROGERS

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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AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT

BUREAU OF METEOROLOGY

History Unit

Interview with

Trevor Rogers

Interviewer

Tony Rogers

1 June 2007 at Kent Town SA

Interview number: 07030

The History Unit is a volunteer group of experienced researchers and writers assisting the Bureau of Meteorology

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Interview with Trevor Rogers at Kent Town on 1 June 2007

Interviewer: Tony Rogers

Interview number: 07030rogers

Tony Rogers This is Tony Rogers at Kent Town talking with Trevor Rogers on the first

of June 2007as part of the centenary project of the Bureau of Meteorology. Thanks,

Trev, for agreeing to talk to us. I’ll give you a transcript and a cd of what we’ve

talked about and you can make any corrections that you want to. Can you tell me a

little bit, to start off with, about how you started with the Bureau because you tell me

you’ve been here a long time?

Trevor Rogers It’s a bit of a story in itself, I guess. I may be one of those weird sort of

people but I joined the Bureau when I was actually living in Sydney. I’d been in

Sydney and I was doing a bit of oil painting at the time and I was actually working

with Qantas and so that actually built steadily on the scientific approach which I had

adopted. A wonderful old gentleman said to me one day. I was actually living with his

son. I told him, I said: Gee, I’ve applied for a job with the Bureau of Meteorology, do

you know much about them? The guy said: No, but being a professor of geography at

Sydney University, I had the odd conversation with them. As a matter of fact there

was a fellow here, unfortunately he has passed on a couple of years ago, a fellow by

the name of John Armstrong. John Armstrong was the meteorologist here and he

knew the professor, John Hines, quite well. Anyway, the prof said to me: you can’t go

wrong, they’re pretty good to work for, but then profs have been wrong. He was a

very interesting bloke and I just signed up there and then. Then I got a letter from

them and they said you’d better come down to Melbourne being in Sydney at the

time. I knew all the training that they did at that time, which was a combination of

electronics type training and the weather type training as well, had to be done in

Melbourne. So it was goodbye to Sydney and off down to Melbourne.

Tony Rogers When was this?

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Trevor Rogers That would have been ’65 because I finished my training in Melbourne

around about August or September ’66. We graduated as people called Radio

observers which was a bit of a funny terminology, I guess, in those days. What used

to happen then was, you not only did the observing side of things, plotting charts, you

actually did all the synoptic observations, you did sonde flights and did the radar

flights, but on top of that, we actually had to maintain and run the equipment itself.

That necessitated us doing a little bit of a longer course than what the observing

people did at that particular time and we came out as so-called radio observers

whereas the other people came out being listed as weather observers. Some of the

gear that we used to work on then was pretty antiquated, certainly it didn’t bear any

remote resemblance to what it is actually now. Once again, I suppose, having been in

the establishment for 42 years and being a trained technician before I actually joined

the Bureau, I was dabbling in things like valves because transistors were never ever

heard of, or basically transistors had just started coming in. So when we got to the

Bureau we went backwards for a bit because the Bureau unfortunately, at that stage,

never had any transistorized equipment, it was all old valve equipment and a lot of it

was relics of the Royal Australian Navy, and a lot of it was 1942 to 1948 vintage

radar, 277 radar which was the old marine radar. It was a horrifying machine. It had

parts with electronics in it and it also had things like air relays so you were working

with compressed air as well as electronics at the same time and you often thought how

on earth can we get any information out of anything like this. At that time the Bureau

had a really good little training school going. They never had a lot of technical people,

so-called, and the technical people that they had, some of them were ex-RAN, and

amazingly enough at that particular time, I think the Bureau was going through a

phase where they were finding it incredibly difficult to recruit people in Australia.

What they did was run an overseas recruitment campaign, not for the so-called

weather observer people, but for the radio observer people because at that time there

was a lot of people who were at a bit of a loose end in Britain because lot of the

aircraft manufacturing industries, a lot of the radar type industry, hadn't really got

going. I always remember there was an advert in the paper, I think it was the

Melbourne Herald, and it was a half column advert advertising for these people in the

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UK, what they were being paid etc. etc. In the course I happened to be on there were

actually six people came straight out from the UK. There were eight of us on the

course, there were only two Australians, the rest were people who were brought out

from Britain to fill those positions that they couldn't fill from Australian resources at

that particular point in time. At the same time, I guess you realize, the Navy was

burgeoning out because they had all these new resources. The RAAF was scooping up

people and the poor old Bureau found it difficult. Anyway, the training course went

on for nearly eight months because we had to do all the extra training. at the end of

that we were posted out. We really didn't have much of a say in it because prior to us

coming through the ranks people did a quick course and then they were posted out to

all these different stations, basically the radar stations, the bigger stations around

Australia. When you look back on it, you think Gee whiz, people say it's all go now,

well, quite honestly, it was all go then, probably more so then because to a lot of

people that was new technology, technologies that they had never used for launching

weather balloons before and certainly in the modes of weather watch which was a

little bit on an unthinkable phase at the point in time.

Tony Rogers What do you mean by unthinkable?

Trevor Rogers Well, there were some vagaries around where they thought they might

have been able to use radar for a weather watch facility. No-one was really on top of

it and it was something they'd developed out of the material resources they had at that

point in time. The forerunner of modern day weather watch was in actual fact a radar

called a 277, which was a marine radar. It had some pretty rudimentary scanning

devices and things in it and the signals from it were not good. Operators had to shuffle

a lot of hand wheels around to get what they were actually looking at and then, and

only then, when they considered that they had it right, they actually took a photograph

of what they were looking at. The photographs were put on fax machines, or delivered

by hand wherever they had to go. I guess that was the first look at weather watch,

from the 277 radar.

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Tony Rogers Could I ask you a question about what you just said a little earlier. You

said you were on the course with six people from the UK as well as two Australians.

Were they a success, these imports?

Trevor Rogers Yes, they were all bar except one and one, I think, was a bit like a lost

sheep. He'd been through a lot in England and just couldn't pick up the transition

coming from the UK to Australia even though houses were basically found for them

and if they didn't want it they could find something else. Unfortunately, after about

five or six years, a couple of the other who were in that particular group, they dropped

out too. They didn't feel it was their line of work. The other interesting thing that

comes into it, is that's where people suddenly thought, Gee, now we've done this,

we've got to start using that knowledge and these people are going to post us to

somewhere where there might not be t he glamour and the glitter. One guy came from

Manchester and I suppose was quite used to the Manchester environment and ended

up going to Longreach in Queensland. Forty years ago that was a big step for anyone

in that situation. And that was true for a lot of people around that time. A lot of us

didn't think about it, we just got on with the job, but the people who came into the

country to do it, they did find it a bit hard because they'd left all their friends, relatives

and those sorts of things at home; The majority of them got over it and they were

good value, but unfortunately at that stage they weren't young people either, so their

lifetime in the Bureau was short, with the exception of one character, whose name

was Dave Granger, and everyone used to call him Grave Danger for obvious reasons

because we were always fiddling with EHT bits and pieces which you could get

zapped by at any time. Dave was very good value. Some of the others probably had a

life of about twenty years in the Bureau. Dave was a young guy. I think that's why he

lasted so long.

Tony Rogers Is he still around?

Trevor Rogers Yes, he retired - I reckon it would have been ten years ago Dave retired

in Victoria. It was always funny because we used to get these bits of paper flying

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around the place with Dave's name on the bottom and every time something came up

that required a bit of an outside voice, Dave would be there to give his comments. as a

matter of fact, he sent out a couple of newspaper clippings about four years ago. He

had obviously been looking at a bit of history himself and sent it across. It was the

advert that actually came out of the paper. I've got a copy somewhere myself but I just

haven't been able to put my hands on it. It's very interesting to read. The other thing

that was interesting to read then, and it's probably why people kept out of it, was the

wages people were getting. They were not great considering what they had to put up

with. That may have put people off to a certain extent too. Oh no, it was interesting

times and they were good times. Sure you had to take bad with the good, but that was

life and you got on with it. You felt that you had a significant contribution to m ake if

you could get somewhere and develop thing. At that stage the Bureau was susceptible

to people putting there ideas in and if they were tangible they would seriously

consider them. That was a good thing that existed then too. I guess that still exists

even today. People are encouraged to their ideas in. Coming from an engineering

background, we still do it today. I think that’s what makes the job so intriguing to a

lot of people, especially young people that we get now. But time changes. We know

that. Basically, I guess that is a bit about the early stuff.

Tony Rogers Could I ask you – I don’t know if you have any opinion on this –at the end

of the second world war, and you came in twenty years after the second world war,

you had a lot of people who had been subsumed into the RAAF during the war,

because that’s what happened to meteorologists. They came out again and became a

part of the civilian one. You’ve got a carry-over from the wartime approach, or the

wartime atmosphere, because a lot of people had been involved then, but by twenty

years later, you might say you had a new guard coming in, was that apparent or am I

just putting things into what I’ve heard?

Trevor Rogers No, no. That was quite apparent to a certain extent. It wasn’t there right

from the word go, but I think that came from the caliber of the people that the Bureau

employed at that stage, because in our situation we were all basically qualified

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technicians. There were a couple of the British guys, they were army and two air force

people and the rest were naval, but there were very very few people other than those

sort of categories until I’d been in about five years and it did change. It changed quite

quickly and that was when the Bureau went through a phase of really developing their

own training school. They had a very good training school, but at that stage it was

basically converting people. People were qualified technicians before they came in

and their objective was to convert them onto the equipment that the Bureau was

running at that time. And that has never changed. That philosophy has never changed.

Even today young lads who come in have got to have an associate diploma in

electronic engineering, then they go to Melbourne and they learn all the latest radar

techniques, digital communications, remote sensing to a certain extent, so the whole

plethora of things is really opened up for them. I think that’s what makes it so

interesting for them. The other very interesting thing is the Bureau, voer those years,

has developed a good camaraderie between people because you’re all there for a

specific purpose. If I’ve got a problem or you’ve got a problem, you can discuss itr

with people on the same level that you’re at. I think was a great thing that the Bureau

encouraged, whereas prior to that, when the first people came through who had been

involved in the war effort, the camaraderie was probably there, but not to the extent it

was a little bit later. I guess that might have been that people had had enough by then

and this was something new that obviously the people coming in had never

experienced before and they found something, which really suited them. The system

worked really well. That’s despite having to get on tramcars and go out to Keeler or

the training school at Bowes Avenue out there, which is interesting within itself. It

didn’t bother people. If you were out in the mud or the rain or whatever, you were

there for a purpose an the purpose was to keep going and learn as much as you could.

about it because you knew, even in the nineteen-sixties when I first joined,

communications wee not all that they should have been. Certainly there were no

mobile telephones. Fax machines, Telstra had them but there again it wasn’t until

about probably ’72 or ’73 that the Bureau took them over from Telstra or the GPO at

that time. There was a very interesting guy in Melbourne who took that on off his

oww bat. He developed the fax aspect of communications in the Bureau and he was a

10

terrific guy. Then, as techs, everyone had to come in, because we were out at

Bullamakanka – we were out at all the places that you’d like to name. You could pick

up a map and see where the Bureau is now and you can see that thirty years ago

communications would not, by any stroke of the imagination have been what they are

today. They were pretty interesting times. I can remember when I had to wake the

bloke up in the telephone exchange. If I was called out to fix something in the early

hours of the morning before the flight the following morning and people knew that

the gear was not operating, I’d have to come out and fix the radar at all hours of the

night and day. If you wanted to ring anyone in Melbourne or get something from

Perth, you had to wake up the bloke in the telephone exchange first because it was all

party line stuff and he’d have to put the call in for you. It was long distance calling. It

was trying but you got over that. You managed This is the terrific thing. You can go

through life without realizing it’s happening to you, but I’ve seen a lot of people come

along and they’ve been in a situation where they’ve doubted their own ability, but the

one thing in the early days that the Bureau depended on was people’s ability to think

for themselves and fix things for themselves. It wasn’t like going to the corner shop or

down to J-Car or Dick Smiths to buy bits and pieces. You might have been two

thousand kilometers away, especially up in the Pacific islands or, in New Guinea it

was even worse. In Antarctica it wasn’t so bad because you had a big cupboard you

went to and you opened the cupboard and all these things fell out. For a while people

were like kids in lolly shops.

Tony Rogers Something I meant to ask. You said you joined the Bureau in ’65, so you

would have been about 23 then. Where did you get your initial training before you

went to the Bureau? I did my initial training with weapons research here in Salisbury.

I then went from weapons research to the then GPO as a technician. It quickly

changed the name to the PMG. I used to travel the countryside then with a group of

people. We had a radiotelephone division and they were based down here at Caulfield

Avenue, down at Edwardstown. We used to scoot all round the place and do surveys

and hook up microwave links, the early microwave stuff. I started in Adelaide.

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Tony Rogers You grew up in Adelaide?

Trevor Rogers Yes I grew up in Adelaide, but the horizons had to be changed as far as I

was concerned. I was always a bit of an adventurer and I wanted to get out and about.

I went from being here in Adelaide and traveling through South Australia and went to

Sydney and signed up with Qantas. I was actually in ground engineering. That was

really interesting. We used to do all the early flight computing stuff on 707s and

Lockheed Electra aircraft. You’ll have to excuse the wry smile but one of the groups

we used to do maintenance for were Garuda who unfortunately had that big accident.

It was all get up and go. We used to work shift work there and then I joined a

company, you may have heard of them. They used to produce a lot of electronic

components and loudspeakers and radios. The old Rola and I joined them as a sales

rep in New South Wales. It was my job to go around to all the electronics companies

and see if I could flog off all these electronic components. It was interesting because I

think that’s where you developed. It wasn’t an intentional thing to do but you used to

be able to size up situations very very quickly because if you didn’t and you were

selling I don’t know how many thousand dollars worth of components to the big

manufacturers, EMI and the Ferris Radio people out at Kerrnindale, you weren’t in

the race. I was probably too honest for their requirements because one thing used to

really annoy me. Every Monday morning you’d be in a different purchasing officer’s

little environment and you’d have you little briefcase under your arm and you knew

that over there the guy came from Manufacturers Special Components and you had to

sell you components and all these other people sitting there. I used to think who’d be

telling the white lies that morning. I couldn’t do that because I thought that was

wrong. I’ve never been able to do that with people and I’ve not intention to do that.

Tony Rogers So joining the Bureau allowed you to be honest.

Trevor Rogers Yeah and I think that was a great thing. The reason I say that is that I

had depend on my own resources to a certain extent. I had to make my own opinions

and I had to very honest with people. If I rang you up two thousand kilometers away

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and I said I had some funny problem on my radar here, dah de dah de dah... If you’re

not honest with the person at the other end, then the person at the other end finds it

incredibly difficult to try and nut out and help you with you r problem. I guess that’s

where a lot of it came from too.

Tony Rogers So when you graduated from Melbourne, where did they send you?

Trevor Rogers My first posting was down to Hobart and it was the fright of a bloody

lifetime.

Tony Rogers Why?

Trevor Rogers Well, it was of the first times since leaving Qantas that I’d been on shift

work. I was the only one there on shift work. There was no one else there for miles

around except the flight service bloke who was in a tower about a kilometer and a half

away and a rust old telephone. And that was all you had and you had to get in there,

start the radar up, get it working properly, then do the early morning, the three o’clock

in the morning, balloon flights and stuff like that. And always remember there was an

instance down there which frightened the bloody daylights out of me. I was there at 2

o’clock one morning and went to start the radar up and it was finding it very difficult

to start up, the alternator and stuff. Then I noticed the lights in the building were

going on and off. I thought there must be a power surge somewhere. The next thing

the air service bloke phoned me up on this rusty old telephone and said, “Are you

having trouble over there with your power?” I said, “Yes, I am.” He said, “Well, look

across the paddock at what’s coming across the paddock.” It was the first time that I

had ever seen ball lightning. The ball lightning had come and conked out the power

line. They were wooden poles with wooden cross arms and the first pole it hit, there

was one hell of a bang and the next thing this cross arm was burning. this white ball,

about this big, was coming down the power lines.

Tony Rogers About a metre across?

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Trevor Rogers Yeah. I thought this is something wrong here. So I just shut everything

down and it hit another pole, which was about 150 metres out from the building.

There was one hell of a bang and it disappeared. I thought what have I just witnessed.

I’ve got to be seeing things. I rang the guy back up in the tower and I said, “Did you

see that?” He said, “Of course I saw it, you clown. I phoned you up so you could look

at it. I said, “What was it?” “No idea!” Anyway, I went from Hobart, I was there for

around about 4 or 5 months, I reckon, and I came quickly back here to Adelaide.

Things were all go when I got to Adelaide. I was the fourth person here in Adelaide

because at that stage there was person at Mount Gambier. There was also another

person posted to Woomera. There were about two groups ahead of me when my

group came through. We plodded on here. It was a good environment to work in.

When you look at things now you wonder how on earth we got the work done. We

were basically working on kitchen tables down there at the West Terrace office. We

had two little rooms, right down the back of the offices at West Terrace that we had to

do all the technical work in when we weren’t out in the field. We had to fix these big

fax machines. The interesting thing was we had to bring these fax machines from

Western Offices, where the Bureau was also established. They had their forecasting

centre and their observational section in Western Offices. Now Western Offices

would have been two hundred metres across the road from the West Terrace corner.

We used to have to wheel these fax machines. Rain, hail or shine across the road and

hope that you were fast enough because the trolleys that we had these darn things on

were basically homemade things. Dodge in and out of the traffic and say to the

forecaster in Western Offices, “Here’s your fax machine. It might be a bit wet so

don’t turn it on for ten minutes. Just let it dry out.” At that time I never got down to

Adelaide airport very much because the other two guys used to go down to the airport

a fair bit and do that. Then I went up to Broome and that was absolutely horrifying.

Someone walked in one day and they said, oh, your next posting is Broome.”

“Pardon, where’s Broome?” “It’s up on the Western Australian coast.” I’d married by

then, but we didn’t have any kids or anything so we went up to Broome. My wife and

I were the young kids on the block, if you like. It was terribly cliquey place. It was

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amazing. At that stage I’d never walked into an atmosphere like it. It was as though,

because you were young, people looked down at you. What could you know? You’re

the young whippersnapper. You wouldn’t have too many clues. Once you got over

that it wasn’t too bad. The three other people were up there on the station, three

observers and I was the radio observer. I had to look after all the electronic stuff and

do half the weather observations and do a whole sequence of monthly returns. You

hear all these funny stories about people sleeping on shifts and all the rest of it. Well,

I thought this is not for me so it was then, while I was at Broome, that I enrolled in

Outreach, which is the arm of the University of Western Australia and I started doing

Geology because I was in a position that during my travels I used to go up to Derby

from Broome and I used to go out to Halls Creek from Broome because my

maintenance took me out there to fix all the gear out there. While other people were

doing their own things, I used to do a lot of night time study when I was on shift work

and not doing other things. Whenever I went across to Halls Creek I always used to

spend nearly a week there by the time I went through all the equipment, got it

calibrated and all the rest of it. They had a radar, they had solar radiation, they had

telemetry stuff. So there was a fair bit of equipment around. I’d do eight or nine hours

most days because I didn’t want to be there longer than I had to, I used to go out and

see the geologist at Pickings Mather who was really starting to open up the

Kimberleys at that time, mining. There was one thing that the outreach of the uni

could neve understand. I never ever told them until late in the piece either, because

they used to say: we can’t understand how you are doing this because you’ve never

attended one of our field weekends. I said: how can I. I’m up in Broome. I can’t just

fly down for a field weekend at Kalamunda or somewhere like that. They nearly fell

over backwards when I told them what I had been doing because I had my own

samples and everything that I’d developed through the cooperation of the young

geologists at Pickings Mather. Of course there was no TV in those days. All you had

was a bit of music to listen to, but that didn’t bother me. There’s always something at

most of these places that you can do and some of them are absolutely incredible and

some of the people that you meet are absolutely amazing. I think I may have

mentioned yesterday to you about Ernie Bridge. Now Ernie Bridge was a butcher in a

15

side street of Oodnadatta. I used to get a sugar bag of meat whenever I went across

there because I used to fly. I used to fly there with MMA, and that’s another

interesting story in itself.

Tony Rogers What’s MMA?

Trevor Rogers MacRobertson Miller Airlines. They were the forerunners of Ansett and

TAA going up and down the coast. Ernie was a terrific chap. He as an Aboriginal and

he used to supply most of the people up and around Halls Creek with their meat. They

always said he was one of the biggest cattle rustlers in the Kimberleys, old Ernie. But

Ernie was one of those characters who was a great thinker and I used to sit down

sometimes for hours on end of a night-time, talking with Ernie and having a beer.

Ernie would be telling you all his expectations of life and what he’d been doing. The

interesting thing with Ernie, and this is what makes him such an interesting character,

was he actually ended up being the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in the Charles

Court government. That was a few years down the track and I hadn’t seen Ernie for

15 years, but I knew he was working at things and everyone took notice of Ernie, until

I bumped into him at Alice Springs airport. I said: how are you going, Ernie. You

don’t remember me, do you? He said: it’s funny you know. Your face is familiar. I

said: where did you remember me from? He said: Halls Creek. I said: you’ve got a

good memory because you were a butcher there, weren’t you? He said: how do you

know that? I said: because I’m the guy who used to buy your meat by the sugar bag

full. He was a tremendous bloke and I sued to always enjoy the trips to Halls Creek.

Mind you it took you away from your home environment, but you lived with it

because it was still, not engrained in you, but you still had a sense of being proud that

you were really doing something, really achieving something, and you were achieving

something on your own. Sure there were always people who would give you a hand. I

mentioned MacRobertson Miller Airlines because I used to fly from Broome. They

used to do a milk run through the Kimberleys. They used to go from Broome to

Derby, Fitzroy Crossing, Gibb River, Baralgo, Victoria River Downs, all the big

places. And if you've done much reading up there, you will also know that it was also

16

the home of the Duracks. Now MMA was started by a group of people, and I always

remember, I was a young bloke then and I used to go to toe beach a lot. It was only a

kilometre and a half across from the back of the airport where the met off ice used to

be. Early mornings, Horrie Miller would be out there. Horrie Miller was the husband

of Mary Durack, the author who wrote Kings in Grass Castles and things like that.

Well, Horrie was always out at the beach playing golf and the other interesting thing

about Horrie was that he used to have Australia's only operational Wackett aeroplane

in a hangar. It was an Australian single engine aeroplane. the were two of them. One

series of single engine aircraft was called Wirraways and the others were Wacketts.

And Horrie had one of these things in a hangar there because of his affiliations with

MMA and whenever he was going to start one of these things up, Horrie would say:

I'm going it up today, do you want to come and see it? So you'd go out there. He'd

say: Open all the doors first. So you'd open up and there would be a cloud of bloody

smoke, like you wouldn't believe, and this thing would start up and Horrie would be

sitting in the seat there because he couldn't fly, he was too elderly to fly at that stage.

He was a marvellous fellow. He used to tell us all these stories about his early days.

Amazingly enough, what reminded me about that story was that last night ABC had a

story where they mentioned some of foundation members starting up these little

airlines, but they neve mentioned Horrie Miller and I was a bit put out because they

never mentioned his name. To supplement incomes from the Met, because the wages

weren't great. From memory, back then wages were about $4000.00 a year, and they

couldn't get a lot of people to do lots of jobs, so I actually also had a small BP

refuelling agency and I used to refuel a lot of planes that would come through doing

aerial surveys and things like that and they'd always come in to the Bureau to check

up on what the weather situation was up through the Northwest and things like that.

Later on it was the helicopter pilots because at that stage they were doing one of the

longest runs in the world. They were going from Broome, Rowley Shoals, Browse

Island, Ashmore and back. It was a bit of a feat. They were a good group of people

too. We used to have a bit to do with lighthouse keepers through the Met. We

certainly used to have a bit to do with the lighthouse keeper at Cape Leveque, which

is about 120 km north of Broome. They were good days in Broome and they were still

17

the days when you could come in and all your goods, seventy per cent of your good,

were actually delivered by ship. We used to have to put an order in from the big

companies in Perth and they would ship your stuff in what they called D-E boats

which were the freight ships going up and down the coast or the K boats which

carried the odd one or two people as well. We used to have to line up on the Broome

jetty, this was the new Broome jetty because we saw the last of the old Broome jetty

while we were there. I've got some photographs of that too somewhere. That was

intriguing because the boats would come in on a king tide, a thirty foot tide, and then

the boats would be left sitting on the sand just tied up to the wooden wharf. You've

probably seen pictures of that in schoolbooks and things, but that actually used to

happen and the maintenance people on the boats would go along and scrape barnacles

off all the rest of it. The Broome days were very very good.

Tony Rogers How long were you there.

Trevor Rogers I was there for nearly three and a half years in Broome.

Tony Rogers You said you ran a little BP agency. Did the Bureau approve of this?

Trevor Rogers Not really.

Tony Rogers Did they know about it?

Trevor Rogers Yes, and the reason why thyme knew about it was that I took over from

one of the guys who was already running it and the other fellow who was there. He

had the big one. He had the Mobil agency and that used to do all the Vickers

Viscounts that were flying up and down at that stage and the F27s, the Focker

Friendships. It was interesting. Someone just said to me one day: Do you want

something extra? I said: What's that? They said: Do you want to take over the BP

refuelling? One of the reasons that happened was that there was never a time that

18

there wasn't someone in the Met office, twenty-four hours a day. If a plane came in,

you were there and you could zip over for half an hour.

Tony Rogers The Bureau knew it happened, didn't really approve, but didn't object to it?

Trevor Rogers They never objected to it.

Tony Rogers There seem to be a number of things like that which used to happen. I'm

wondering whether the Bureau closed their eyes to it or just thought it was inevitable.

Trevor Rogers I think the attitude was that if you didn't tell too many people about it,

no-one would worry about it and you were so far away from real life situations that

you just went and did it because there wasn't anyone else in the town that was going

to do it and at one stage I was actually helping the ABC out. I used to be the Broome

correspondent with the ABC.

Tony Rogers How many people in Broome at that time?

Trevor Rogers Golly gosh, there would have been probably about 300 and pearling was

going like crazy. It was just at the beginning when Kirri Bay Pearl was first started up

there pearling and round at Port Keats, up from Darwin. Anyway, the Kirri Pearl used

to run radars on their boats. They could never get people to do the work on them, and

so, being a qualified radio tech I first bit my teeth on Farrino radar there. They'd ring

up when they came when they came in that they'd got a crook radar. "I can't get there

this afternoon, I'm on shift, so could I do it tomorrow morning before I go on the

afternoon shift?" No problem. They'd take you out to the boat, you'd fix the problems.

Normally they weren't really difficult. It was just that a bit of abuse used to occur now

and again and they were pretty easy problems to fix. That saved the company an

awful lot of money because they would have to fly someone up from Perth, which

could have taken two days, to get someone to do the job. I guess this was another

facet. You mentioned just a minute ago that you wondered what the Bureau thought.

19

Never once did I receive any cash payment for doing those jobs. I used to say nothing,

but you could almost guarantee that within one or two days of doing it that there'd be

this huge bag of prawns hanging on the back door, or a couple of enormous fish or, if

you could get three or four days off, "Do you want to come up to Port Keats." I'd say

that no I couldn't do that because at that stage my wife was actually running the out-

patients department at the Broome District Hospital. I couldn't just race off and leave

her. We were like ships in the night., She was on shift work, I was on shift work. One

would be home and one would be asleep, so you'd have to pussyfoot around a bit. The

house that we lived in, in Broome. Gee whiz people complain about houses now,

that's amazing! We only had half a dozen windows in the house with glass in them,

the others were completely open and, listen to this one, three of the windows, the

window in the end of the veranda, the window in the storeroom, and the kitchen

window over the kitchen sink, were lead. They were lead fly wire when we first went

there. That shows you how old the houses were. You never thought twice about it. It

was a house, it was a roof over your head, you could come and go as you pleased, so

no one really complained about it. I think I probably got the raw deal out of the four

houses that the Bureau had there. I got the oldest one, but it didn't bother us. It was

roomy, there was no air-conditioning, you just had ceiling fans.

Tony Rogers How did you wife find it? She went there because you did, not because she

had a job.

Trevor Rogers She was already a trained sister, nursing sister, and it was a bit of a

challenge for her. She was working down here at Ashford at the time and when I

came home in the afternoon and said, "Do want the good news or the bad news?", she

said, "Give us the good news first." "OK, we'll be here for tea tonight but, in four or

five days time, we're shift in real quick." It was about a week. She adapted to that, you

had to. there was none of this you're-hard-done-by like you get in a lot of situations

now. Or someone owes you something. That sort of situation never existed. You just

went there and you got on with it. We were there for three and a half years.

20

Tony Rogers Your wife liked it?

Trevor Rogers Yeah, yeah.

Tony Rogers She got a job there?

Trevor Rogers She was a trained sister. They lapped her up. They couldn't get good

people. It was quite amazing. The characters you meet. I tend not to dwell on them

because they're just so picturesque in the back of my mind. If you can remember those

people I think it's better than taking photographic pictures. One character I had a lot to

do with up there and so did my wife because he used to go to the hospital a lot. This

guy was a courier during the war. His name was Collinson. I can't remember what his

first name was. He said to my wife at the hospital. He heard what I did and she said,

"Well, he does everything." Anyway, he said he wanted a fence put up because he

said the kids were pinching his watermelons he had growing. So she said, "Would you

go round and see him?" I said, "Yeah, I'll go round and see him." I went round to see

him and he put the proposal to me, "Could you help me out with the fence?" I said,

"Look, I'll willingly do that for you. You get the materials organised and I'll come

around." He had callipers on his arms and he couldn’t belt things and wire things up.

So I did it and thought nothing about it. He was right on this little escarpment that

came down over Roebuck Bay and we used to sit there and eat his own goats' milk

cheese and drink his own homemade wine. This was enough reward for me because I

always thought he was such a marvellous bloke. I got quite attached to the old fellow.

He said to me, "You don't want any money." I said, "No, I'm not interested in your

money. The association we've had has been good enough." He said, "Right, you won't

take any money. It's been good. Here's a phone number. Ring this up." I had this

phone number for maybe three or four weeks and eventually I rang it up. It was

stockbrokers in Perth. I can't remember their name now. I've got it at home

somewhere. The guy said, "Oh, how is the old bugger going?" I thought they

obviously know him and I said, "Great, he's good. I've just put a fence up round his

place." "Oh, are you the bloke he's talking about." "He's mentioned me, has he?"

21

"Mate, he's really talked about things." I said, "Good on him, it's been good." The last

year we were there I kept going by the old fellow's place and there was always the

bank manager's car there. Then it stopped and I thought, "What's happened?" To cut a

long story short, the old fellow had dies and it was two weeks before someone found

him. He was at that stage the biggest shareholder, the biggest private shareholder, in

BHP, Western Mining and another crowd called Glass Containers who became part of

ACI and a few other people. A marvellous fellow and, six months after that, we left

and went down to Perth. It was all hustle and bustle down in Perth because it was

absolutely new. They had some more interesting equipment, they had some gear

down there they called Spherics. Spherics used to be a triangulation network that the

Bureau set up to do thunderstorm research. We used on that. We used to work on the

stuff at Guildford, which was Perth airport at that stage, and we used to have a

number of other maintenance runs. I had a maintenance run which took me from Perth

up to Geraldton and back. From Perth to Kalgoorlie, Esperance, Albany and back

home. That was a two-week trip. So you'd be away for two weeks fixing all the gear

up. The Bureau didn't give you a lot of encouragement because their attitude was -

they'd changed their attitude to a certain extent at that stage. I guess change is going

on all the time. You weren't allowed to work on Sundays. Sundays you couldn't work

at all. The then OiC of the Albany Met office said, the first time I went down there,

"What are going to do? There's not a lot you can do here at this time of the year. The

pilots come over here now and again to get a met briefing. There's one going out this

morning with Chain's Beach." Chains Beach used to be a whaling company operating

out of Albany. He said, "I'll ask the pilot if he wants an extra spotter." I said, "OK,

that would be good. I'll take some coffee and some sandwiches." He said, "You'll be

out for a while. You'll be up and down for about six hours, just flying p and down on

the Bight spotting whales." I went out doing that with them when I used to go down to

Albany. So that filled in a bit of a weekend. Then I used to have a bit of a look around

the place at the same time, then back to Perth. After I finished at Perth, the

opportunity came to come back here.

Tony Rogers How long were you at Perth?

22

Trevor Rogers About fourteen months. Then I actually jagged a job here in Adelaide.

At that time you didn't have a lot of say in what was going on. If a posting came up

you put in an application for it and if it came up then good-on-you. We came back

here and, amazingly enough, there were still the original three people who were here

when I was on a fleeting look-see before going to Broome. They welcomed you with

open arms. Then we had a merry bunch of four. Numbers were slowly building up.

The Bureau in those days was still endeavouring to push out most of the new little

forms of hat they were there to provide, services to the people and stuff like that. It

was great. And, of course, from Adelaide I just launched out onto all these other

escapades. You never thought about it. Someone would come in and say, "look,

Oodnadatta's broken down. Could you go there and in the next couple of days." You

knew you'd be away for a week so you packed a suitcase and off you went for a week.

My first sortie up there was in 1971, which was the first year when I went from here

up to Oodnadatta. Oodnadatta then was a pretty makeshift sort of place. In fact they

still had the original balloon-filling shed there which was a galvanised iron shed. It

used to horrify you went you used to think what people were doing. People were

making a gas that burns at about 3000 degrees Celsius and blows up at the drop of a

hat if you had a static spark. Here’s these people’s playing around with it in a bloody

tin shed. At that stage they had a really good office. They had a nice brick office and

the balloon-filling shed. They never used to old galvanised one after they got the

Brock building in. It was great. There are an incredible number of stories about things

that used to go on and happen.

Tony Rogers Such as?

Trevor Rogers I always remember the pub there. The pub was a pretty Spartan place

and the poor old publican was usually run off his feet because all the people would be

coming in from the surrounding stations and the people who used to fix the windmills.

There were some really good nights. Thursday and Friday nights were great.

Unfortunately, they still had a patch of earth floor in the pub. I'll never forget it

23

because one of the local ladies was looking in through the window giving everyone a

mouthful of cheek. This night the poor old publican had obviously had a bit of a torrid

week, so he said, "If you do that once again, lady, I'm going to get you." Of course,

"come and Get me" sort of thing. He said, "You watch this." We were standing at the

bar. There was no running water and they washed the beer glasses in tins. He grabbed

one of these and walked out from behind the bar out of her line of view because she

was looking through this window and Whoomph! Straight up and over her. then he

says, "Now get your cake of soap and go and have a proper wash." I thought this is

not on. Things like that used to happen all the time. We used to go out in the clay

pans. Once again, you weren't allowed to work on the equipment on Sundays, so we

used to go playing cricket on the clay pans. That was a great thing. An esky out on the

clay pans, fantastic. That was where I bumped into Bill Wentworth. When I first met

Bill Wentworth out there, he was then Minister of Aboriginal Affairs in the Liberal

government. He was up there trying to suss out with the people what was their real

problem. Trying to do the right thing by them. I could see that the discussions weren't

getting anywhere, in fact they were getting quite uptight, this was in the hotel, so I

said to him, "Look, why don't you call a meeting tomorrow morning over at the

railway yard?" It had a little building over there. "Get all the people together over

there and I'm sure they'd really like to give you their opinions." He came to me after

ten minutes talking to his little entourage. He said, "How come you know so much

about this place?" I said, "Well, it's like this. I've been coming up and down here for

twenty years, and I know a lot of the people." They had their little meeting and really

got some good information. The people had their say in what was going on. It wasn't

until years after that I met Bill Wentworth and he was then retired from politics and

he was driving beach buggies across the Simpson Desert with four or five other

people. Same pub, round about the same time of the year and I just happened to be

there and I walked in with one of the Met people and I just walked straight up to this

bloke said, "Bill Wentworth, how are you?" He looked at me, he had this funny way,

and said, "To whom am I addressing myself?" I told him. He said, "My goodness me,

doesn't time fly." That was the second time I met him. He was a marvellous

gentleman. He came across to a lot of people not as a very nice sort of person, but he

24

was a great guy. I can't say that the Met's been harsh, although I've had my ups and

down times, but on the whole it's been good. It's a product of how you feel about the

situations you've been thrown into. I think psychologists will tell you that the more

you think about a place, probably the worst time you're going to have is when you get

there. Whereas, if you go to any place and you're not biased in any form about what

you're going to find, how people are going to react, or whatever, then you really have

a great time. But you don't have a lot of facilities with you. You're not taking a lot of

stuff with you, you're not travelling with a lot of baggage, and it's great. But

nowadays nowadays, the whole emphasis has shifted and well be it so, it's changing

times I guess. I used to go to Giles. I used to go in and out of Giles like clockwork. It

might have been just after I went to Oodnadatta in 1971. It was very Spartan as you'll

see in the photographs but it was a good environment to work in because you did it

all. You had to do it all because help was so far away and that didn't matter whether it

was everyday life, whether it was medical problems or whether it was engineering

type problems, or whether it was weather type problems. You were there and you had

to deal with those things because in those days, when I went up there, all we had was

a radio link; no telephones, no nothing. You had to get on the radio and all your

weather observations, your stores and that were all ordered up over the radio and you

had to go from Giles to Woomera, because Woomera would ring all the voice-over

stuff, the messages, and they would send a telegram down here and people would get

their act together and send all these bits and pieces up on the next supply run,

whenever that happened to be. It was all AM radio stuff. Then we went to single

sideband stuff. We used to have a whole hut, up there at Giles as big as this room, and

we used to have all the AM stuff because we used to have all these different

frequencies. We could talk to the Flying Doctor, we could talk to an aircraft coming

in, we could talk to Adelaide on about four or five different frequencies. It was a full-

time job, but I used to go up there and, when I first went there, it was for a period of

three months. I had to run the diesels, do the powerhouse, run all the diesels and stuff.

I had to do vehicle maintenance, all the air conditioning, and all our own equipment

because the Bureau took this on and in full capacity. The last of the WRE people had

left because long range workers were running it then and you had to make what you

25

could out of it. Look there were good times and there were bad times. There were

punch-ups, there were all sorts of graft and nonsense going on from time to time. If

you put that in the back of your mind and you thought, as I had to say to groups of

people up there on numerous occasions. You sit down at a table having a beer or

something like that. I'd say, "Listen, we're all here. If we can't get on, we've got a

problem. There's the table. Everyone put their cards on the table."

Tony Rogers How many of you would have been there?

Trevor Rogers Six. There was a cook, a mechanic and the other four were observers. I

used to just come in on a maintenance basis or when the Bureau could not get a

contracted mechanic up there to run the diesels or to do the work.

Tony Rogers The guys who were up there, they were on one year contracts or six

months?

Trevor Rogers They were on six month contracts.

Tony Rogers Six month contracts and you would come in for maybe three months or

less.

Trevor Rogers No. I would do the odd stint, which would go for three months, but

normally I would go for two weeks.

Tony Rogers So you were sort of the in-comer.

Trevor Rogers I had to go up there and fix the mess half the time and, mind you, there

were a couple of occasions when I walked in to some absolute disasters.

Tony Rogers Emotional disasters, you mean? People mess?

26

Trevor Rogers No. There were more messes than just people too and I had to try and

sort those things out. I always remember that one day there was a group of workers

out from the Department of Public Works in Alice Springs. They were out there

putting in some squatter’s tanks because the old ones had had it. I was out there

helping them do some pipe work and we could hear the nonsense going on from

where we were and we must have been 30 or 40 metres away from the mess. One of

the Works Department blokes says to me, "What's going on in there?" I said, "Well,

OK I'll find out. If I don't come out the door come and see what's happening." So I

went in the door and there are two people inside having a go at each other. One of the

observing peoples, in fact it was the then OiC. I'm not going to name anyone but, as

far as I'm concerned, I don't know how they picked these people in those particular

days. He was arguing with the cook. The cook was a very experienced fellow. He'd

been cooking on oilrigs and all round the place. He was a marvellous chap. When I

walked in there was the cook chasing this bloke around inside the kitchen with a meat

cleaver, and, if you've seen any early pictures of the Giles mess it's a sight to behold. I

walked in on this and my immediate thought was to get everyone in there and to get it

sorted out. Then I thought that I could do it myself. So I stood there, bloody knees

knocking together and I said, "Stop now, both of you. Bloody stop your stupid

childish antics. Do you realise what you are doing?" In an instance there was silence

and I said, "Isn't that incredible. That's marvellous. All we've heard for the last two

hours is you two blokes carrying on like pork chops in a synagogue." Anyway, I got

them separated and I said to Cooky, "What on earth happened?" Cooky told me

straight out. "He deducted my pay." "Pay? How did that happen?" Then I said to the

then OiC, "Get out of here. You're useless. What caused this?" He said, "He wouldn't

cook my breakfast this morning." I said, "Really." I knew what had been going on. I

said, "Did you ever stop and think what day it was?" "No, I don't have to worry about

that." I said, "I think it's the first thing you should consider." He said, "What is it.

You're so smart." I said, "It's Cook's birthday. Last night is of all you people sitting

round the bar getting horribly drunk and, because Cooky slept in and wouldn't cook

you your breakfast this morning, you've gone off the deep end and are having a go at

him. Why don't you wake up to yourself? You're a menace to yourself, let alone

27

everyone else." I went over to see Cooky, 'cause Cooky locked himself in his room.

He wouldn't speak to this bloke. So I said, "What's happened Cooky?" Cooky tells me

what had happened. For months and months, and I'd seen it myself because I'd been in

the mess, Cooky was there at 5 o'clock every morning without fail to cook those

people a cooked breakfast, should they have wanted it. No one wanted it. They used

to get up, do what they thought they had to do, then go back to bed and wake up later.

It didn't bother Cooky. Cooky was still there. On this particular morning, for some

reason or other, this bloke wanted a cooked breakfast and he demanded a cooked

breakfast, but Cooky stayed in bed because he had a headache. And that's how it

started. Those little incidents, they used to happen time and time again.

Tony Rogers Did it get solved, that one?

Trevor Rogers It got solved, but, at the same time, I got no backing from the Bureau to

solve that. When I thought about it afterwards, I thought that was a pretty silly thing

to do because Cooky still had the meat cleaver in his hand when I was talking to him

and all he had to do was lift the meat cleaver and I'd have been lamb chops, or

whatever it was, for the evening meal. That's a people issue and you had to deal with

those people issues. Unfortunately, the Bureau then had a series of young people

come through who I really don't think.... When Weapons Research had it, they had a

camp manager. When the Met took it over, no camp manager. I guess they were

saving money and didn't think they needed one. That was a big mistake that they

made. They really did need one because, if they'd got rid of that facet, what they

should have done was sit back and say OK, we'll have a camp manager in here to

solve all this sort of problems. That was not an isolated incident. I spent three and a

half years of my forty-two in the Bureau up at Giles alone. That's a big slice out of

someone's life just at the one spot that the Bureau had. That's how I got to know so

much about it. When I first went there, too, indigenous people were marvellous. You

never saw them. No-one carried on about them and all the rest of it. They'd come up

and ask could they have some water and we actually put a tap in for them, away from

the building so that, if they didn't want to come near the building, they could just get

28

water from a tap, fill their little tins up and disappear. There were only about four or

five families living there when I first went there and they were good people. They

taught me a lot. In all the visits I had there, on and off, it's absolutely amazing what I

learnt from them. But I think you had to.... Don't get me wrong here but I've always

been against do-gooders because I think do-gooders in society have done more

damage than anyone else that I've seen, put together. Giles unfortunately was a classic

case of it, the way it started off. People would not listen to you. We had to deal with

these people and we dealt with them in a good way. They didn't want a lot, they

weren't invasive or anything like that until a lot of white community officers got in

there and said, "You start pushing for this, that and something else." That's when the

trouble started and it's sad to see that. It didn't only happen there. I've seen it happen

in other places too. I can pride myself in so much as I could sit in the dirt with them

and I could be accepted by them. It didn't matter who they were. A classic instance of

that is... I laughed. You may remember this. A few years ago - I forget the guy's name

was, but he was an anthropologist who was working out of Hermannsburg and he was

collecting Sheringa stones, which are history stones basically. Well I probably knew

about them before he did because people would sit in the dirt and show you these

things and show you the message sticks. One day they came to me up in the garage

and they said to me, "You have these." I said, "No; no. I can't take that. That's your

history." I knew what they were. "No. You take this and you buy us a truck" I said,

"No, I can't do that for you. That's wrong." Oh. We've had others do this. I said, "I

don't know where the others came from but I'm not doing it. But you've got me

interested and I want to know about them." I knew I was coming back so the Old

Fellers said, "Here, you take." So I took this thing and I went t o the guy who was

looking after the anthropological section here at the museum. I walked in there this

day and this bloke eyes lit up like neon signs when he saw them. "Where did you get

them from?" "Never mind where I got them from. Can you tell me a bit about them?"

And he told me. He waffled on a bit there. I said, "Thanks very much but I think I’ll

learn more from the people I'm going to return these too." "Are you going to return

them?" "Of course I am." Two weeks later I went back there and the Old Fellers met

me when I got off the plane. As soon as I opened my bag and pulled out these things,

29

I had them wrapped in newspapers, the smiles on their faces! Well, I've never seen

people smile like that before! Obviously they knew they could trust me. I never had

one iota of trouble with them. We always got on famously. But I know a lot people

did have a lot of problems with them. As I said, they showed me an awful lot. I would

never have had that experience if I hadn't willingly gone there, open-minded in the

first place, to help the Bureau out. That's it. Like I said, that's life. There's another

classic instance there. One of the families, the Mitchells. Grace, she'd done a little bit

of nursing. We had a week of foul weather. It rained and it poured. Grace came

knocking on the door one night and she said, "We've got a sick woman." I said,

"What's happened, Grace?" I used to do a fair bit of the medical stuff up there for

them too, because it wasn't as easy to get the Flying Doctor in then as it is now. I went

down to this wurlie at the end of the runway. It was a properly made wurlie with a

little bit of canvas over the top to keep it a little bit dry and Grace said, "She's in

there." I said, "Well, before I go in, Grace, what's happened? Do you know a bit about

it?" Grace said, "Yes, the woman was out chopping, chopping wood, and the axe

slipped and she's cut her foot." When I got there, she'd cut her foot alright. She's split

the foot almost right up to the ankle. I said, "When did this happen, Grace?" She said,

"Early this morning." This was nine o'clock at night. It was a funny situation. You go

into auto. Even though in the place where they were there was the most atrocious

smell because there were dogs in there, there were people in there and a foot was

rotting. She'd got gangrene. I didn't have to be a Flying Doctor to see what was going

on outhere. Anyway, I said, "Righto, look, I'm not too sure about this weather but, if

we clear the back of the truck out, we can take you down to Docker River because our

district is out. The flying Doctor's not going to come in here." So I got on the radio,

there was still no phone there in those days and said to the Flying Doctor in Alice

Springs, "We've got this lady here. She's got a bad foot injury. Could we meet you at

the Docker River airstrip in the morning, please." "Yeah," he said. "No problem at

all." He was a bit uppity about it. I got impression that he thought someone had rung

up at some ridiculous hour of the night asking help. I suppose I'm a bit the same way

sometimes, I don't know. We got this woman. What normally would be a two-hour

trip took five hours. We got bogged twice and it was a hell of a thing. We had three or

30

four of the other Aboriginal people there. They were hitting their heads with rocks.

It's a sympathy thing that sometimes starts up among them. Anyway, the Flying

Doctor landed and the first thing he said to me was, "Where in the hell have you

been?" I thought, "Hey Flying Doctor, didn't you take the bloody Hippocratic oath or

whatever it is." I said, " Why are you saying that to me?" And he said, "Oh, you

know." I said, "OK, you've had a bad night. You just come round the other side of this

aircraft." I lit into him. I shouldn't have, but I lit into him. I couldn't stand his attitude.

Anyway, he walked away and looked around as though nothing had happened and the

sister came over to me and she said, "I heard what you said. Good on you. He's had it

coming for some time." That was just another little incident that you had to put up

with; road accidents...

Tony Rogers How did that woman cope. Did she get better?

Trevor Rogers No, she lost a foot. Just above the ankle, she lost it. I saw her, I'd reckon

it would be two years after that and she was hobbling around alright. I thought

something must have been done right. Those sort of things came up too. Then I can

remember, it must have been about 1974, the whole of central Australia got almost

flooded, rainfall-wise. At Giles, we woke up after a night of torrential rain and we

were on an island. It was amazing. There were all these little islands popping up out

of this lake. I'd never seen anything like it before. Another chap, who was a bit of an

adventurer, and myself, got a tractor tube. From the Giles camp down to Sladen Water

where it goes through the Rawlinson Ranges would be about five km, I reckon, and I

reckon we were down there in half an hour sitting on the rubber tube. There was that

much water running out through the Sladen Water gap. A week after that, the water

had all gone and you would have sworn you were in the tropics sitting on pure white

beach, crystal-clear water, only the trees weren't palm trees, they were ruddy gum

trees. You thought, where am I. Basically, those things used to happen at Giles all the

time and you just did your best. And then in the nineteen-eighties, things started to get

a little bit better. Radios were improved and then in the mid-eighties they actually got

an arterial [?] link out there, a satellite link. Things looked up a bit. Then again, I

31

think people had that much time to do things that they tended to become bored out

there. That camaraderie that existed prior to that disappeared. I think that was a bit of

a tragedy in a way. It became very businesslike and you wondered what you had

walked into. The regional director came to me, Friday of one week. He said, "You

know a lot about Giles, don't you?" I said, "I know a lot about Giles, what's your

problem>" He said, "We haven't heard from them for three days." I said, "Pardon,

what do you mean you haven't heard from them for three days, you've got all the radio

gear and stuff in the world, how come you haven't heard any messages come out for

three days?" An he said, "Well, I don't know, but we've got this problem. Could you

go up and help find out what's wrong?" So I jumped on a plane, got to Alice Springs

at eleven o'clock at night. I was picked up at about 5 o'clock the next morning by the

pilot from SATASS [?] and went out. Luckily the RD had said to me when I left

here< "I'll give you the authority to keep this plane on the ground for two hours. Don't

let the pilot hurry you along a bit. I don't what you're going to find." I said, "Thanks

very much."

Tony Rogers Who was the regional director then?

Trevor Rogers A gentleman by the name of Brunt, Alan Brunt. I got up there and I

knew straightaway that there was a big problem. Everything was quiet, there were no

engines going, there was nothing. To cut a long story short, I got the engines going.

They'd shut down just because the batteries had boiled dry on the alarm systems on

the engines and they couldn't generate any power. I said to them, "What's the problem

with that? You've got a little petrol generator. Why can't you start that? You can run

two refrigerators and the radio gear off that. Is that too much trouble?" So we got that

going and we went to use the radio. It was all going well until I found that someone

had kicked it around like a football in a mad fit. I said to these guys, "You're your

own worst enemies because you haven't realised is that people are getting very

concerned that hey haven't heard from you for three days. What's the score? You've

got to now prove to me what the cause is behind all this." Well, there was a lot of

nonsense going on. One of the things was that before I got this little Honda generator

32

going, I said, "Where's this portable generator?" He said, "Dunno." He wouldn't tell

me anything. Anyway, I just got on with the job. I was down in the workshop and I

walked up to the table, pulled the drawer out and all these butterflies, receipts, fell out

of the drawer onto the floor. I picked them up. The second one I picked up is 'Hire of

a generator to the Blackstone community.' I thought: What? Where did they get the

generator to hire out? I walked back up 200 metres back to the office. "You've got to

tell me what's going on here because the plane has now got thirty minutes left to sit

the end of that runway before I've got to get back on it to get to Alice Springs before

last light, so, if you can't be honest with me, I think the door's going to slam." So one

of them said to me, "We hired it out to people." I said, "I can see that. It's on the

receipts here. I tell you what. I'll get rid of the plane if you people can get on to the

radio and you can get that generator back here first thing in the morning. No questions

asked." Which they duly did, but, for three or four days after that, they wouldn't speak

to me because I'd caught them out. This refers probably to what you may have said

originally about did the Bureau know what was going on at that stage. I think the

Bureau did have an idea of what was going on, but the Bureau didn't want to do

anything about it. And that was sad because if they had done a few simple things in

the first place it would never have got to the proportion that it got to.

Tony Rogers What about the bar at Giles?

Trevor Rogers The bar? That used to be an amazing thing. You know I saw people sit at

that bar and I saw each one of those six people who were there walk away with

$6000.00 in little airline bags and my boss, who was with me at the time, who didn't

know much about Giles, said to me, "What's happening here?" I said, "This is their

big divvy up from their bar profits and all the rest of it." There was a little bit more to

it than bar profits, I can tell you. The bar used to be a real calling point because all we

had there at that stage was some rollies, the movies. We used to get a couple of those.

There were still no TV and videos in the early days there. You know, everyone would

be there having a few beers. Even in the early days people would be there singing a

few songs that they might have know, albeit that some of them weren't too good for

33

some peoples' ears. It was that camaraderie and the bar created that, but the bar did

turn over a lot of money. then they went into printed t-shirts and all the rest of it and

all that money went through the bar. Most of the tourists who used to come along

liked to pop in. They'd have a beer, a cool drink, or whatever, but of course that was

before the ruling came in that said they weren't to have alcohol there. I can remember

the Aboriginals coming up there and breaking into stores and walking away with

cartons of beer and all sorts. It was a thriving metropolis. People would come up from

Warburton. People would come down from Docker River and for any tourists who

used to come past it used to be like a Mecca at the bar. Some of the stories that used

to emanate from around that bar, they were absolutely amazing. There'd be the normal

bar type things. People would build can castles. The only thing would be that the can

castles wouldn't be sitting on the bar, they'd be sitting on the roof because there was a

ginormous fan, suction fan up there, and it would suck all the beer cans up onto the

roof. So you didn't build from the tabletop, you built from the ceiling-top. They had a

pool t able. When I first went there they actually had a library too. They had an old

library with all these old books in it and some of them were really interesting old

books. She was a throbbing metropolis, the old bloody bar. It was absolutely bloody

amazing. And the people that you used to see come through there was absolutely

incredible. One sticks in my mind without a doubt as being an incredible fellow. I

knew of his escapades long before he became a governor of South Australia. I'm

talking now about Sir Mark Oliphant. Now, Sir Mark Oliphant just before he finished

his tour of duty here did a tour around South Australia and called in. Giles was one of

these places I suppose he'd heard of and he and his entourage, they called in. I always

remember it was a pretty cool night and I was down in the workshop, working away

and there was this little knock on the door. I thought who'd be knocking on the door at

this hour of the bloody night because work was finished. Low and behold, there was

Sir Mark standing there. He said, "Would it be alright if I came in?" I said, " 'Cos it

would. Come in out of the cold." I had the radar dismantled on the bench and I had

the section of the radar that has the magnetron and the klystron on it. Now, Sir Mark

Oliphant during the was the developer of the klystron and the magnetron. That's how

the Brits got their first radar systems up and running. He talked for two hours, almost

34

non-stop, probably like me. He talked for two hours telling me. I knew that too

because I'd read his autobiography. He used to work at the Cavendish Laboratories in

the UK. He worked with Lord Rutherford on the nuclear stuff too. It was so funny

because he disappeared for two hours and there was a sudden knock at the door. He

said, "Don't answer that." I said, "What do you mean, don't answer it?" He said, "This

has been the most precious two hours I've had for donkey's ages. I had to get away

from those people up there. Sometimes they drive me barmy." This is the governor

telling me that. He was a marvellous bloke. I've got his autograph in book at home

somewhere. In fact it's in his book I've got at home on the mantelpiece about his

autobiography. You meet characters out there. Len Beadell, you might have heard of

Len Beadell, he used to go up there a lot with Dick Lang's Desert Trek. I used to

bump into, have a yarn with him every time I saw him up there. He autographed a

couple of postcards for me. There's a picture in there of Len in his old army boots. I

think he used to like to give the tourists their value for money. He thought it was the

thing, still the done thing, to have his cold showers in the morning and walk around

without his socks on in these old tan coloured army boots.

Tony Rogers A bit of a showman, was he?

Trevor Rogers He was in a way, but I think people put him up to that as well. I know he

used to do a lot of work with Dick Lang's Desert Trek tours. I think they used to egg

him along a bit. He was a great bloke and he actually painted some of the murals on

the wall in the mess at Giles. He actually painted them. One of our techs, who retired

about four years ago, Len Beadell did a watercolour sketch of him too where it

showed a picture of someone sitting in the dish, the radar dish, the WF2 radar dish

that was up there. All those things used to happen, for goodness sake. You can go on

and on.

Tony Rogers When was the last time you went to Giles?

35

Trevor Rogers I went up there just before we relinquished it. I think it was '86. We used

to administer it from down here, I didn't make it up to their reunion. They had a

reunion not so long ago. Someone said to come up. There was just too much going on

around here and my wife was a bit crook at the time so I couldn't just race off and

leave her. One day I might get back up but I've always found that the places you go to

the second time around are never the same. I think that being the type of person that I

probably am, I'd find that very disappointing because I've got such vivid memories of

good times, and bad times. It tells you more than looking at photographs.

Tony Rogers Those times you went to Giles you were based in Adelaide. Were you

based in Adelaide always after you came back here?

Trevor Rogers After I came back here I was with the exception that I had one of the

longest stints out at Willis Island. I had eight months out there and when we came

back that was the last time the Cape boats, that were operated by the Department of

Marine and whatever - they finished. We were signed off when we got back to Cairns.

Tony Rogers What did your wife think of you going away for eight months to Willis

Island? She presumably didn't go.

Trevor Rogers I think she came to find at a very early stage that I've always been one of

these people, not with a sense of adventure but.... She got used to it, I guess. That's

probably a selfish way of looking at it but you try and make amends in other ways.

Interestingly enough I know my boys, I've got three lads, they've always said to me,

"Gee whiz, why don't you write a book?" And I've said, "No, I couldn't be bothered. I

just really don't have the time to sit and do it." Maybe if I retired one day, I could. My

life has been full and it's been great to get out there and do those things.

Tony Rogers It's been full of the Bureau really, hasn’t it?

36

Trevor Rogers Yeah, with the exception of a short period with PMG, or Telstra, or

whatever you call them now, and just a few little stints. I think if you can put your

mind to anything, or be open about it, you can almost just about anything. I've always

looked at things as being a bit of a sense of adventure, I suppose. I used to do rock

climbing, kayaking, and all the rest. I think it's what keeps you going half the time.

You can turn off and go and do those sorts of things. In fact, I still teach young people

now and again rack climbing.

Tony Rogers You said you went to Macquarie. When was that?

Trevor Rogers That was in about '79, '80, I'll have to check up on that. When we were

picked up from Macquarie. I used to do these projects down there. I said the one

about the stomach contents of cat’s rabbits. We used to trap rabbits but we didn't used

to worry about stomach contents.

Tony Rogers So when you went down to Macquarie, your wife stayed here and you had

kids at that time. Did she find it difficult?

Trevor Rogers It wasn't too bad. It wasn't easy, but my wife is the type of person who

realises someone's got to do these things and the support is there.

Tony Rogers Did you go home and say, "I'm going to Macquarie" or did you say, "What

do you think about my going to Macquarie?"

Trevor Rogers I just said I was considering it. What did she think about it? She

basically said, "OK, you're probably better off to do it now than what you are later

on." Even though I had three kids. The amazing thing about that is when I went down

there, you could talk to them over radio-telephone network and every month you

could send a coded message that was delivered to them. It was interesting to see the

attitude of the kids. It was like walking out of their lives for twelve months, but being

able to talk to them now and again. They always had this concept that you could

37

always bring a penguin back, and they'd be happy with that. All they wanted was a

penguin. You'd say, "that's a good thought, but where are you going to keep it?" They

had all this worked out. They were going to keep this penguin in a bath and keep it in

a refrigerator, there was an old refrigerator out he back, and I thought that showed a

bit of lateral thinking on their part.

Tony Rogers How old were they then?

Trevor Rogers Oh, gee. The eldest bloke would have been 8. Then they went eight, six

and about four at that time. I used to make moccasins. Tan the rabbit skins and make

moccasins out of them and use penguin knuckles for a little bit of decoration on the

front of the moccasin. They were tickled pink. These moccasins went to school and

goodness knows what.

Tony Rogers So they kept an interest in what you were doing while you were down

there. I'm interested in that because different people's wives, because it's been mainly

males that have talked about it, have had really different approaches to the Bureau.

Some, like your wife, coped - coped with you, I suppose...

Trevor Rogers She coped because her background was that originally she came off a

farm and, I think, living a farm type existence taught her at a very early age to be

independent of lots of things that were going on. Maybe, if you didn't have that

background, it may well have been a bit more difficult, but she had always been a

relatively resourceful person and independent. So, if the chips were down, she could

cope. A lot of people do have a lot of trouble as you probably can understand, but a

lot of that comes because I think things have not been discussed properly in the first

place. There's not that feeling between people. There's "This is my thing and I'm

going to do it regardless of what's going on out there." That's the wrong attitude to

start with. If you get people involved in what you're doing, there's no doubt about it

that it works ten times better. It certainly works better in your family situation and it

works better in every other situation that I've ever walked into. But that's not to say it

38

wasn't difficult. Yes, it was difficult and then when I went to Willis that was a bit

difficult too because my mother died and they flew me back and I couldn't get back to

Willis straight away because it was during the cyclone season and I ended up working

in Cairns for a couple of weeks before they could fly me back out to Willis. At the

same time you look back on that and your wife had to cope with most of the business

side of things while you're not there and I think it teaches them too to expand out a bit

and be a bit more independent. I might be a weird one but I think people do get to be

too dependent on each other to a certain extent. That's probably just me. It's all your

friends. I think it's your friends who probably make it difficult too. I've always been in

a situation where I've never had many friends, I'm a loner, I prefer to be that way. I

could count the number of friends I've got here on one hand because there are so few.

That's not to say that you don't have a certain type of camaraderie between people, but

that's different from having a direct relationship with someone. I think you've got to

learn to give and take a bit too. Life in the Bureau has not been all beer and skittles,

but, at the same time, we as ordinary people tend to look more at the good times than

the bad times so therefore you tend to draw the conclusion: it's been great. I would

never have got to the places that I've been, I would never have met the people I have

met, and seen things going on in this country that I've seen going on, if I hadn't been

employed by an instrumentality, if I can call it that, like the Bureau. I think it's a great

thing, it's a great forward-looking thing to drive people, and I think that, even today,

it's the way a lot of young people come into the Bureau because you get that sense of

being able to move around and being able to come up with the goods when it's

required, and that sort of thing. It's great, it really is, but the stories go on and on. It's

amazing if you sit and think about it. I've just jotted some notes here but I've covered

most of it.

Tony Rogers You've done a very good job. I was going to ask you about Macquarie but

I'm just thinking that we are talking for quite a long time. I want to look at your

photos. Maybe we could talk about Macquarie later and bring this part of the

conversation to an end. If we can look at the photos, maybe I'll leave the recorder on

while we talk about them. Then if I could copies of some of the photos.

39

Trevor Rogers You work it however you want to work it because all you've got to do,

I'm downstairs anyway if I'm not away, you can come down and find or we can work

something out and that won't be a problem.

Tony Rogers So this is the end of our conversation at this stage on the first of June with

Trevor Rogers and we will look at some photographs. I'll leave the recorder on

because, if I can get some copies of them I can tie your comments about the

photographs in with them. So let's have a look at them and keep your notes in case

you haven't covered everything.

Trevor Rogers I haven't!

Edited descriptions of photographs follow, interspersed with additional anecdotes

Early Giles. 1973 b + w of G. Old diesel generators - easiest to use.

Bailey Huts where people lived. Looks attractive - top spot.

Bore water, plus a bit of rainwater.

Colour - says '83, but earlier.

Mess and rec area; kitchen at very end plus cold room and little patio. Cages under trees

have parrots. Across is laundry and old library, plus people could stay there.

Plane taxis right up to buildings. Transmitter hut was full of equipment in old days.

Caravan belonged to IPSO (Australian Ionospheric Prediction people). They'd send

signals to analyse ionosphere. Various other groups came and went.

90 foot radio antenna. Trevor would climb to top.

Various views of living huts with quadrangle at end.

Postcard shows part of Bluestreak rocket.

Countryside is beautiful with terrific escarpments. Exhilarating place. Road now good

but used to be terrible.

The famous bar - not very big! See fan above bar.

Rawlinson Ranges 6km away. Walkedup them Sundays because not allowed to work!

40

Mid-winter dinner includes Peter Clements and Brian Cowrill [?].

Docker river and Kintor.

Old office at Oodnadatta; town itself; market garden; race course; railway bridge.

Pub at William Creek.

Trevor Rogers This is Cook on the trans-railway. We used to have to go out there and

fix a synchrotap. It's an anemometer. It registers wind direction and wind speed. I was

out there an there's nowhere to stay. One of the Australian Inland Mission sisters out

there said sleep in the hospital and I had a guy out here with me. At 3 o'clock in the

morning there was this great scream. I thought someone had been murdered. This girl

came running in with her all-standing up on end. She said, "Somebody just had a go at

me." I said, "What do you mean somebody just had a go at you?" "Oh, they came out

from behind the bushes mumbling." What happened was that the guy who was with

me went over to the Workers Club, got a belly full of beer, couldn't find his way back

to the hospital where were both supposed to be staying the night and he flaked out in

the bushes. He woke up at 3o'clock in the morning. The girl went to do the 3o'clock

observations from the screen, and coming back with her obs book, this guy stepped

straight out from the bushes and said, "How are you going?" Needless to say, it

played on him nest day. I couldn't find this bloke anywhere until I found him flaked

out in an old dentist chair at the back of some old buildings (see photo).

Tony Rogers Did he apologise?

Trevor Rogers Yes, he did. It all got sorted in the end. It was just one of those little

things that sort of happen.

Tony Rogers So you've been to Cook as well. I always thought Cook only had one

building. It's a lot bigger than that, isn't it.

Trevor Rogers Well, it was when we were out there. Cook reminds me of Forrest. I

went out to Forrest when I was based here in Adelaide on the Trans-railway to help

41

refurbish a radar there and to stop the train to pick you up, or to get anything dropped

off it, you had to wave this lollipop like the people on school crossings. You waved

this lollipop in the hope that the train stopped. It was about half past four in the

afternoon. I remember waving this lollipop and the blokes I'm with are in the truck.

They're going to pick up all the parts we need from the brake van. I'm wondering why

they're taking off and I'm thinking, I'm waving this lollipop to stop the train and off

the take in this truck thinking the brakeman's going to finish up down there. It was

only half the story. They got about 200 metres down from me and the next thing,

there's a couple of them standing up in the truck trying to look through the train

windows. I thought what on earth's going on here? What had happened that they must

have seen some lady sun-baking because they were on the western side. The train

came in and it was nice and warm. This lady must have been sun-baking on the bed in

the carriage. Someone must have seen what was happening and they decided they

were going to have a look through the window before the train stops. They'd forgotten

all about me. They got the goods from the brake van and came back. And told me.

Early one of office at West Terrace

Tony Rogers Who was regional director when you first started?

Trevor Rogers A colourful character by the name of John Hogan.

Tony Rogers He was there. You knew Doc then. What did you think of him?

Trevor Rogers He was a very fair man, but everyone used to think he was very harsh.

I'll tell you a story. I used to shift at Adelaide Airport sometimes. Doc Hogan used to

play golf at the Glenelg golf links. I was there one Sunday morning and there was

another chap behind the black curtain that used to go around the radar. The door flew

open and this little dog raced in, piddled on the curtains, barked, stood up on its hind

legs and the bloke from behind the curtains comes out and says, "What in the name of

fortune's going on here." In the meantime Doc Hogan came in the door. The poor

42

bloke behind the curtain was swearing and carrying on about what had happened

because someone had to get the mop and mop the dog wee off the floor. The guy

behind the curtain says to me, "Who is it at the door." I said, "I don't know but it's a

man with glasses." "Tell him to bloody come in here, I'll tell him." Of course it's Doc

Hogan. the curtain goes back and Jack Fry flies out from behind the curtain. "Well,"

he says, "this is a good start for a bloody Sunday morning anyway. I hope I've bloody

ruined your golf day." Doc Hogan said, "I'm sorry fellows. I didn't intend to call in

but it's an hour before I can tee off at the golf links and I thought I'd just come across

and see what was going on." He was a good bloke, very fair and he sat and listened. I

never found him a problem. A lot of people did. I remember we put an old

anemometer up in his backyard. He'd finished then. When I first arrived here in

Adelaide he was there. By the time I came back a second time he was gone.

pix of Willis Island.

Old Adelaide offices. On front tower used to be a Beckley-Robinson anemometer. Over

200 years old. Did it up and still have it in BoM.

Mural that Len Beadell painted on kitchen wall at Giles.

Pix of dingoes and story of their stealing wire insulation.

Inside Oodnadatta office.

Tony Rogers I should turn this off probably after 2 hours and 23 minutes.

End of interview