National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 57| June 2002


Remarkable Australians:
Interviews from the Oral History Collection

Max Thompson
Max Thompson
Ted and Gloria Duggan
Ted and Gloria Duggan

While the Oral History Branch interviews people who govern Australians, educate them, defend
them and entertain them, it also records the lives of those whom historians and politicians call ‘ordinary’ people. Such people reveal dimensions to Australian society that are not likely to emerge from interviews with the powerful and influential.

In recent weeks I have interviewed two men, Ted Duggan aged 79 (Oral History Collection TRC4739) and Max Thompson aged 82 (Oral History Collection TRC4822), who worked in a variety of rural occupations. Both were shearers in their youth, Ted mixing shearing with sleeper cutting and farm labouring, Max with professional boxing. Both served in World War II. After the war, Ted was a bee farmer, a motor mechanic and then a postal contractor. From the 1950s he also ran a small family farm in the Merriwa district, New South Wales. Max did a range of jobs, including some showground boxing and acting as the ‘wood and water joey’ on the set of the film Sundowners, but most of his time was spent mining at Mt Isa and Captains Flat. Eventually he became a waste contractor in the ACT. He has always been involved in horseracing. Both men worked hard for their respective families and took pride in their children’s achievements. Both are superb raconteurs, Ted possessing a great sense of fun, Max a mischievous dry wit.

What might future generations make of these two men? Possibly they will be struck by how hard they worked in an age of crude technology. Perhaps, if today’s emphasis on credentialism strengthens, they will marvel at the fact that neither man had degrees or diplomas, in Ted’s case not even in motor mechanics. The humour, language and values embedded in the interviews could seem strange or quaint. We can be sure that ‘dinnyhayser’ and ‘geeing’ will send them to a dictionary. And, should the word ‘ordinary’ still mean something like normal, customary, usual or commonplace, they will almost certainly want Ted and Max classified in some other way.
—John Merritt

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