Transcript

During that time, I was only very young most of the time, and I can well remember going out with my father and posting notices on all the telephone posts around the street, which was the way of advertising in those days. We'd have flour and water and a brush, and paste this on the back of the notices; stick them up on the telephone posts or the electric light posts around the corners of the streets, which was round about eye height (and that was always at dark so you wouldn't be dobbed in [by] whoever'd catch you defacing the poles).

In that campaign I can well remember Jim Webb was the town crier. He had a great big bell, like you see Harry Secombe in some of his TV shows some years ago. He used to stand on the corner - had a tremendous voice, would carry hundreds of yards - and he'd say, 'Oyez, oyez, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Jack Curtin will lecture to you people in the Mosman [Park] Town Hall at 8 o'clock on Friday night. All be there and hear what he has to say.' And as a lad I was always going to these lectures, or electioneering speeches, and Jack Curtin introduced me to two words, 'fiduciary issue' - I didn't know what it meant, but still I found out - and 'troglodytes' - that was his expression to downgrade some of the opposition. If they had outlandish ideas he said that they were troglodytes.

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