Our Place: Newtown & Darlington Interviews

Our Place - Newtown - Claire Mulhearn b. 1906

Claire had lived with her brother, Keith, in Fitzroy Street Newtown since 1912. Claire talks warmly of family life and also of the work of women (everything had to be ironed) and children (a lot of the children sold papers and ran messages), family outings (Bronte), typical meals (leg of lamb or pork and plum pudding on Sundays). She mentions the flu epidemic of 1919, childhood illnesses and the Newtown shops (Newtown was the shopping area of Sydney). Claire talks about the sounds and smells emanating from the local factories and railway workshops. This is a broad ranging interview filled with character and colour and language we no longer hear (we were young ladies I'll have you know, dash it all!).

Caveat: This video was shot on a Sony Hi 8 video recorder. It was not until 2010 that we could get the analogue tapes digitised. Despite careful storage in the intervening period there has been some deterioration in quality. While we have retained the original .mov files from the original digitization in the SRA Archive, by necessity uploaded here are .mp4 files. The video is raw and unedited, a primary source document recording the occassion.