Old Days, Old Ways

by Alex Nicol

  Never let it be said that farmers are not inventive. The rice crop is flown into waterlogged paddies, so let’s fly the wheat crop in.

  Hazeltons, flying out of the Cudal airport, had a well-established top-dressing and aerial-spraying business; they were also pioneers when it came to aerial firefighting. They were up for the job. Several local farmers had already used them to get the crop in. Hazeltons were now refining the technique, and I wanted to know how it was being done. I was keen to go up with a pilot and experience it firsthand. As always, Hazeltons were cooperative; all I had to do was present myself at Cudal.

  Now, I’d experienced flying in light aircraft before, and reckoned I had the technique of recording in that noisy atmosphere down pat. Just turn the microphone input down very low and hold the mic right against your lips. It gives you clear voice against the background of the aircraft noise—perfect. And if I wanted comment from the pilot? Just ask the question, leave a break and put the mic close to his lips. Easy.

  When I got to Cudal I was a bit disappointed. I wouldn’t be going up with a pilot actually sowing a crop; someone else would take me up to ‘observe’. As we taxied for take-off, I noticed a badly dented crop duster minus a wing at the side of the strip.

  ‘Ouch! Who did that?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘Ah—what happened?’

  ‘Just touched a corner post.’

  ‘Landing?’

  ‘No, turning at the end of a run.’

  ‘Oh. You okay?’

  ‘Yeah. You’re never in trouble so long as you keep flying.’

  Flying the crop in, I was to learn, was done at about the same height as crop spraying. To put it into perspective, the aircraft needed to lift a fraction to go over the fence at the end of a run. I expected that, as ‘observers’, we’d fly high over the paddock while the bloke below us did the job.

  Not a bit of it. My pilot settled in at perhaps 10 feet above the plane sowing the crop and followed him up and down the paddock. All I can really remember is the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach as we lifted, turned and dipped at the end of each run. I did remember to turn the tape recorder on but, strangely, when I got back to the studio there was nothing on it but the sound of the aircraft. I hadn’t said a word.

  Back home, I laid over the sound of the aircraft a riveting description of how the job was done. Hear that? I was there on the job.

  TECHNICIAN MAGIC

  ‘Have a try at this.’

  ‘This’ was a piece of cable with a post office jack at one end and two little bulldog clips at the other, and it was being offered by one of the Postmaster-General’s Department technicians who kept an eye on things technical at 2CR. I didn’t have the faintest idea what it might do. We were technical virgins inheriting Postmaster-General technology.

  Tucked away in the record library at 2CR was a big 78 rpm shellac disc without a label. Curiosity must be satisfied, so I sat it on a turntable and dropped the pick-up arm into place—only to see it immediately rejected. It took a couple more tries before the penny dropped that with this record the pick-up arm started in the centre of the disc and worked towards the outside.

  What I had was a recording of an interview between an unnamed reporter and someone from the Department of Agriculture extolling the virtues of superphosphate. It was an early field recording from the times when Aunty ABC would send a recording van out into the bush for just such an interview. It would have been a full day’s adventure with what was then cutting-edge technology.

  Sitting beside me on the console desk in the studio was a set of chimes. If you’re old enough, you just might remember the melodious bong, bong, bong that issued periodically for no apparent reason during ABC broadcasts. The chimes were a signal that a switch between ABC networks was about to take place.

  Now, when any ten-year-old can whip out a handheld device to record whatever action takes his fancy and then instantly transmit it to his friends, it all sounds terribly quaint.

  Broadcasts from 2CR’s Orange studio could be picked up as far away as St George, in Queensland, and down on the Victorian border, but, for all practical purposes, it covered an area perhaps 500 miles east to west, and 300 miles north to south.

  If you wanted to cover a story anywhere in that wide sweep of New South Wales, there was only one way: drive to meet the subject, then interview them and drive back. You spent a lot of time on the road. There was no legal technology available for recording a telephone conversation. It was possible to use a nasty suction cap on the back of a receiver device, but the quality was terrible, and anyway it was illegal to record a telephone conversation.

  The ABC had two standard portable tape recorders. The Nagra was a heavy but beautiful machine that was (and is) absolutely bulletproof, and that provided magnificent recording quality. And then there was the Stelavox, a particularly nasty piece of work nicknamed the ‘Stelavixen’. It was light but equipped with only a three-inch tape; consequently, you had about three to four minutes of recording time. It certainly focused your attention on getting to the crux of the story. It also had the frustrating habit of running out of battery power at a critical moment, so you often finished up with a variable speed recording and some strange voice reproduction.

  ‘I reckon this’ll let you turn any telephone into a landline.’ It was our friendly tech, wiggling his bit of cable and bulldog clips at me.

  A ‘landline’ was the standard way of sending a recording from one ABC studio to another while retaining the sound quality. In effect, it meant dedicating a particular telephone line to the task, and keeping all other ‘calls’ off it.

  ‘You could ring from Bourke, attach this to your recorder and you’d get broadcast-quality sound here at the studio.’

  If that bit of cable and doodahs could do that, I wanted it! But how did it work?

  He reached for the phone receiver and unscrewed the mouthpiece. ‘That’s the microphone,’ he said, pointing to a disc-shaped object. ‘That’s your problem—poor-quality mic, poor-quality sound.’

  He took the two bulldog clips and attached them to the wires behind the telephone mic, and plugged the jack at the other end of the cable into the output of the recorder.

  ‘There you are—straight from the recorder onto the phone line, with no loss of quality.’ He was very pleased with himself.

  ‘Who came up with this idea?’ I asked.

  ‘Me.’

  ‘Is it legal?’

  ‘Who’s to know?’

  Who indeed? And that couple of cents worth of equipment saved hours of time—and was only one of the magic tricks those PMG technicians produced.

  SHINDY’S

  ‘The track is lightning fast, and the rose gardens are just coming into full bloom.’

  We might have been talking about Royal Randwick, but we weren’t. We were on the phone to Shindy Mitchell. Every year, just before the Louth races, Shindy would ring 2CR to spruik the big event, and we’d gravely discuss the state of the famous rose gardens.

  Louth has a district population of, I guess, 100 or 150. But it is one of those tiny towns that’s been able to develop its once-a-year race meeting into a ‘bush experience’ for the punters. It’s not unusual to see 4000 or 5000 turn up for the big day, and there’s little chance of them trampling the rose gardens—there aren’t any, but Shindy could always spin a yarn.

  He was one of the great Western Division characters. The story goes that he once received a letter addressed to ‘Shindy Mitchell, Australia’. I don’t doubt it.

  Shindy’s Inn was and is something of an institution out on the Darling. A party of touring actors once stopped there for a beer on their way through to Broken Hill for an engagement. This was too good an opportunity to miss, so Shindy offered an invitation: ‘Put the show on here.’ They did, and they got a house.

  You could always get a crowd into Shindy’s—or, as it turned out, out of Shindy’s.

  At 2CR we once fielded a desperate appeal for help from a di
straught family in Bathurst. They’d just celebrated a family wedding, and the bride and groom had left for a honeymoon fishing out on the Darling. Tragically, the bride’s mother died the day after the wedding.

  How to contact the honeymooning couple? We rang Shindy’s and they cleared the bar, sending the patrons up and down the river to look for the couple.

  THE FABULOUS FOUR

  I was supposed to be their teacher, but they were so much wiser than me. In a matter of weeks, they became teacher—and what gentle teachers they were.

  We called it the Colombo Plan. Students from Asia and Africa would come to Australia and we would teach them. Oh yes, we would teach them. The ABC was an enthusiastic teacher. We’d show these people how to communicate with their farmers—after all, no one did this farmer education business better than Aunty.

  Nanda, from Sri Lanka, in her sari with bare midriff, looked a touch uncomfortable as I met her off the plane in an Orange winter. Nuri, an Afghan woman, spoke English ‘just a little’. And Lahani and Vimal, the two Nepalese men, had a worldly-wise swagger about them. All four of them were going to work with me for the next three months.

  Mount Canobolas was on the way back from the airport, and there was snow at the summit! I decided to take them for a run up. They’d like to see that, I was sure.

  It had been a modest fall, all of 6 or 7 inches. Strangely, neither Nuri nor the two men seemed impressed. Nanda’s bare midriff turned an interesting shade of purple.

  Nuri would live with us. Friends had agreed to take Nanda into their home. For the two men, the local pub would be home for the next three months.

  Cultural sensitivity wasn’t my strong point back then, and I wasn’t on my own. Aunty had been known to send Hindu and Muslim off together into the Australian bush to ‘learn’, and been quite surprised when near murder was committed instead. No, I didn’t make any allowances for the fact that this quartet had suddenly been thrown together in a strange country with a very young man who had a high opinion of his capabilities.

  Nanda was a broadcaster and English was her second language. Nuri had just graduated as an economist and spoke very little English; in a marvel of maladministration, someone had decided that this city-bred, cultured woman would be a great broadcaster of farming techniques. My Nepalese guests were chalk and cheese. Lahani was ‘a poet’ and the king’s nephew. Vimal was a hard-boiled journalist. We were going to get on just fine.

  We organised a welcome dinner. Local farmers, plus some friends of ours and Nanda’s new family, were invited for a meet-and-greet at our house. Diana was doing her bit to see that things went smoothly, and was flat-out in the kitchen when Nanda informed me that she would take a bath before dinner.

  ‘Nanda wants a bath,’ I told my wife.

  ‘Now?’ Diana asked.

  ‘Now.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, she doesn’t know how to operate the heater.’

  ‘Tell her.’

  ‘She’s a lady. I can’t go into the bathroom with a lady.’

  ‘Oh, get out of the way.’

  Nanda’s English, she assured us, was very good. She broadcast in English, so communication would not be a problem.

  We had a gas bath heater. You might remember the type. Turn on the gas, it heats a plate. Water runs across the plate. Instant hot water.

  Diana demonstrated. ‘This is the gas control. Turn it this way and the gas will ignite. This is the tap. Turn it this way and water will flow. Can you manage?’

  She received a withering look in return. Lesson one: don’t patronise Nanda.

  There were still a couple of hours before our other guests would arrive, and I was making awkward attempts at getting a conversation going. Vimal and Lahani were chatting happily to each other, and Nuri was doing her best to understand what I was trying to say, and to show some interest.

  ‘Eeeyow! Ha! Ha! Haaa!’

  What a strange sound … It was coming from the bathroom.

  ‘Whaa! Whaa! Whaa! Whaa!’ A rhythmic thumping. That too was coming from the bathroom. God—it was the heater. It was going to blow up!

  The screams lifted an octave, running up to a breathless crescendo. The sequence repeated—up another octave, and again a run up the cut scales—and all the time the growl of the heater deepened. Obviously, Nanda had the gas up high and hadn’t yet worked out how to turn on the water.

  Now there was a terrifying thumping at the bathroom door. Nanda had given up any thought of controlling this beast. She wanted out.

  ‘Nanda, turn on the water! The water, Nanda,’ I yelled. ‘Diana, Nanda’s having trouble with the heater.’

  ‘So go in and turn the water on.’

  ‘She might be in the … you know.’

  ‘Oh, get out of the way. Nanda, let me in. Nanda!’

  The screams had subsided, to be replaced by a despairing and repeated sob, and all the while the growl of the heater grew more menacing.

  Nanda was going to get out of that bathroom no matter what happened, but in her panic (there, I’ve used the word) she was trying to open the door outwards. On the other side, Diana was equally determined to open the door inwards. And all the time the heater heated.

  Lahani and Vimal were beginning to show interest. Would they do the gentlemanly thing and go to her assistance? Not a bit of it. This was great entertainment. Let’s see what happens.

  I’d joined Diana at the door.

  ‘Give it a good shove and get her out of the way,’ I was instructed.

  ‘I might push her back onto the heater.’

  ‘Give it a shove!’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  Diana burst in, the door slammed shut behind her and the growl turned to a nasty, prolonged hisss. Instant sauna.

  ‘Turn on the water, Nanda,’ Diana said calmly. ‘I showed you.’

  ‘I know. I know.’

  Diana returned to the kitchen and the awkward attempts at conversation returned, but with an edge. Everyone had an ear and an eye to the bathroom door.

  It took a long time, but Nanda emerged glowing in a fresh sari.

  One look from her was enough. Nothing had happened. In the unlikely event that some of us might think that she had been in distress—or, worse, had panicked—well, we were mistaken. She’d simply been left to deal with a defective machine.

  Already we were learning.

  SPUD LUMPING

  I blame Neil Inall. He insisted that we make our interviews ‘real’. None of this finding a nice quiet spot to record the interview. No, get out there where there was some background noise. Let people know that we were there on the spot. He was right, but it meant learning how to balance that background sound with the foreground sound, and sometimes things didn’t go according to plan. He led the way.

  Millthorpe is a small community just to the south of Orange, and the locals prided themselves on the spuds they grew and the men who lumped the bags. It was inevitable that there’d be competition as to who was the best spud lumper in the district—and just as inevitable that the question would be debated in one of the local pubs.

  And so the Millthorpe Murphy Marathon was born, a race from one pub to the next with a bag of spuds on your back. Neil would cover the story.

  He lined up with the starters, his Nagra tape recorder firmly strapped down and his microphone at the ready. He ‘called’ the race while running with the contestants. AM, the ABC’s elite current-affairs program, bought the story. Millthorpe was on the map and we were mightily impressed. There’d be more of this.

  WHO YOU KNOW

  The news was out that a man on the run had the dirt on the infamous Roger Rogerson. The Federal Police had the fugitive in safekeeping somewhere or other, and they hoped to use him to break up a drug-smuggling ring. Supposedly, no one knew where he was.

  PM, the ABC’s top afternoon radio current-affairs program, got the tip that the mystery man might be somewhere in 2CR country, and asked if I could pick up any information as to his whereabouts.


  Strangers stand out in small communities, especially strangers with a police escort. So it was only a matter of knowing where to ask—and, I suppose, of being trusted with the information. I was directed to our man and set off with mic and recorder.

  It was an isolated farmhouse with a Federal Police officer at the front gate, who was obviously not pleased to see me. He muttered into a walkie-talkie and let me through.

  Our man was very happy to talk. He really wanted to stay out of jail, for fairly obvious reasons; he had recorded telephone conversations he wanted to play for me; and he was prepared to talk for as long as I was prepared to let the tape recorder roll.

  Oh, was he cooperative. Disconcertingly, he held a nasty-looking .303 rifle the whole time. I reasoned that the Federal Police were unlikely to let him anywhere near a loaded weapon. Still …

  The producer of PM expressed his amazement when I booked a landline to send the story through. ‘You found him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No one was supposed to know where he is.’

  ‘You have to know who to ask.’

  AROUND THE WEST

  TV came to the Central West of New South Wales in 1962 and changed the way people listened to radio. No more sitting around the set at night listening to serials or symphonies—except of course in the Far West of New South Wales. No TV there until satellite technology came along in the mid-1980s.

  2CR responded to their needs with a very old-fashioned radio program just for the West. Every Wednesday night, Pat Britten would put to air Around the West, a program of music, news and stories especially for the people in the Western Division. It involved an extraordinary suspension of belief on the part of listeners and presenters to make it happen.

  Twice a year Pat and a selection of staff from 2CR would fly out to the west and binge-collect stories to keep the program running. Two would be dropped off at, say, Cobar, and the plane would fly on to drop the other pair off at, say, Brewarrina. Then would follow the most extraordinary couple of days.