Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 165
Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 165]
82
for all State buildings and Civil Engineering works. The Public Works Department would, in the first instance, build the railways and then hand them over to the Railways Department for operation and maintenance.
An exception to the day-labour policy of the Labour Party, was the award of a contract to Norton Griffiths, a powerful English concern, to build the first section of the Sydney underground railway from Central Station to Circular Quay, via Wynyard Square. As well as constructing this transport facility for a profitable lump-sum, Norton Griffiths undertook to raise the money needed to finance it, in London, where big investors were now becoming rather mistrustful of the new Labour Party Government, and disinclined to lend money to N.S.W. at reasonable interest rates.
Work began at both ends in 1913 and progressed vigorously, but when war was raging late in 1914, the State Government decided to cancel this contract and paid a large sum in compensation to Norton Griffiths, which, in informed quarters was considered outrageously excessive; but the incidence of the war smothered the scandal.
A Resident Engineer and staff arrived at the Parkes construction depot at the beginning of 1913, and a few months afterwards I was engaged as a cadet-engineer, but primarily as a rouseabout to the Resident Engineer, W.A. Mahoney, a fiery red-headed Irish New Zealander, and also as an offsider to the Assistant Engineer a pleasant phlegmatic younger man, who treated me in a "big brotherly" way. But for a few days, every four weeks, I had to assist the Paymaster in compiling the big monthly pay sheets: the navvies were paid only every four weeks, though they could draw two official cash orders (Government cheques) on account of pay due to them at the time. The cost of a pick and shovel, at 3/6d each, was deducted from their first pay, but was refunded at the rate of sixpence a month for each item, in future earnings. Sixpence a week was deducted for "Medical Fund".
Pay Day was every fourth Friday, and preparing the huge paysheets from the several gangers' time sheets, cross-checking