7/6/1909 - married Hazel Thornton CRESWELL (21/12/1886 - 4/11/1915)

Issue
John Creswell Newland (3/3/1910 - 20/6/1991) Married Margaret Leonie Martin (16/11/1915)
Basil Creswell Newland (21/2/1913 - ?  ) Married Constance Mary Austin (2/12/1913)
Malcolm Creswell Newland (2/10/15 -   ) Married Joan Cuthbert Emery (2/12/1913)

1930 - married Mildred Faith DINNING (4/3/1904), daughter of William John Hawkridge Dinning and Ethel Caroline Leach.

My earliest years
My name is Malcolm Creswell Newland and I was born on 2/10/1915. I was always told that I was born at Parkwyn Hospital, which was on the continuation of Wakefield St, Adelaide. I cannot confirm if my brother Basil was born in High St Unley Park.

I can remember taking off a cotton reel that was on my cot as the brass knob that once used to be on there was missing.

My first recollections of my place of living was at the Creswells’ place at High St. I can remember odd things at random from that time. The Creswells’ had the big old place at the end of View St, Unley Park. They cut a portion off their large block of land and built the nice place on the corner of High St and George St, which was demolished in 2002.

I never had much to do with the neighbours as I was a very small child. People called Dean – the man of the house was Commissioner of Police or something similar - they lived in the original Creswell house at the end of View St and a fellow named Smith who was the leading barrister of the town at that time lived almost directly opposite. These were all fairly shadowy figures to me. I used to toddle in on occasions and say good day, but that was about it.

My mother Hazel died about 5 weeks after I was born and I have no recollection of her at all. She died from complications resulting from my birth. I have thought about her death subsequently and think that she died of a thrombosis in the lung (note: Her death certificate states that she died of gangrene of the bowel). This started as a clot in her leg which pregnant women are pre-disposed to and moved up into her body. With my latterly accumulated medical knowledge, I strongly believe that that was her fate. She would have been in her late twenties, possibly thirty years of age.

The Creswells’ did not talk to me at all about my mother from what I remember. This was an odd situation.

I saw my father Ralph very rarely indeed. He was a very shadowy figure who used to appear occasionally. He used to come down from Watervale and get John and Basil out of boarding school. He then would take us all to the Maple Leaf Cafe and we would have fried fish. That was a great event in our lives. the cafe was in a basement in James Place in the city. This nice cafe was the one we always patronised and we regarded these outings as a bit of a red letter day.

I was always scared of him. I think in those days, everyone was scared of the generation ahead of them. In fact, I was scared of the whole Newland family; they used to fill me with awe. I rarely saw any of them and may not even have recognised them if I ran into them in the street. There was no close relationship whatever. However, I thought my father was alright, notwithstanding my fleeting association with him. I can't remember how often he came down; it might have been every 3-6 months but I don't really know. I was not really a part of the Newland family as a young person as the Creswells’ were who I knew and relied upon.

I did not know my brothers at all when I was a child. They too were rather shadowy figures to me, as they were living either at Watervale or boarding school. I lived with the Creswell’s because I was the smallest and as a consequence, I hardly knew my brothers at all. John and Basil were almost foreign to me and again I held them in some awe. They were bigger than me and I did not know them.

At some stage and I can't remember when, I was taken up to Watervale by my Aunt Anne (Creswell) on the train to stay with my father. I can't remember whether John or Basil were there. I visited Watervale two or three times with Anne which gave me the chance to eye the place over. It was very strange to me indeed.

The Creswell children were not really brothers and sisters for me as they were much younger. The oldest was John who died when he was about 2 years old. Then there was Bob, then Joan and lastly, Geoff. Their father, my Uncle John, was enormously good to me. He appeared to be very affectionately disposed towards Hazel and that may have had something to do with it. He had an old Harley-Davidson motorbike with a sidecar and on Sundays, he used to take me up to the National Park at Belair. He would buy me a chocolate bar with some slimy stuff inside and that was a pretty red letter day. He really was more my father than Dad, just from the relationship that developed.

I was living with Granny Creswell and old Aunt Anne and I at first remember her daughters Katy and Jean who were then unmarried. They all lent a hand in looking after me and wiping my bottom and so on. Really the debt I owe the Creswell family is absolutely enormous and as with all these sorts of debts, you don't recognise them until it's too late. When John was doing a line with Barbara, they still used to consider my needs - I must been a bloody nuisance. When John started courting Barbara, he had the motor bike. Then in 1923, he bought a 4 cylinder Buick that was a bit more luxurious than the bike. When John and Barbara went on a picnic, they mostly took me. Then with the effluxion of time, it was Jean and Owen that got married first by a long chalk. They also used to take me on family picnics, where I would be a nuisance. The next ones were Katy and Geoff and then after that, Barbara appeared on the scene. They were all unbelievably generous and good to me.

Uncle John is not in the earliest part of my memories, because he was away at World War 1. He was in France and did all the things that soldiers in WW1 did. I can remember being polished and shone to go and meet the tram, because Uncle John was coming home from the War. The tram stopped at the High St stop and I can remember going along to meet him. It must have been about 1919 by the time he was de-mobilised at the finish of the War. I was about four years old by then.

Kindergarten and school days
In 1920, I went to a little kindergarten up the street in St Columba's Hall. It's been demolished, but then there was a little kindergarten called Tiverton. It was quite a good institution, where I began my formal education. I was there from 1921 to 1924 as from there, I went to St Peters College in 1925. I started in Form 3b when I was about 9 years old. There was no Palm House attached to the school then. The first year I went every day in the tram from Unley Park and then I started boarding.

I don't have any clear recollections about the food. It was traditional for boarders to complain about the food. We just ate what we got, prunes and custard on Tuesdays, rhubarb and something on Wednesdays. I didn't expect to enjoy the food.

I can't recall if I enjoyed my time at Saints because in those days, enjoyment was not relevant. You did what was expected of you and that was all there was to it. Both my brothers were at Saints then and I did not go to Queen’s School as they did. I think Basil had moved up to the big school by the time I started as a boarder and John certainly had. They made no contact with me and certainly never came to see me. I suppose I knew they were there - my relationship with my brothers then was a pretty impersonal business. They were nothing like the relations that the Creswell’s' were. Clearly in my young mind, the Newlands' were pretty much strangers. I don’t recall that any connection was made by anyone at school between me and them.

I remember Basil caning me when I was a boarder at Allen House. I think he was wrong to do it, but I didn’t question it at the time. Notwithstanding all that, I bear him no ill will. John and Basil were school prefects and I was a house prefect. John did pretty well in all sports; intercol cricket, football and athletics. He was a pretty good athlete. I did not reach those dizzy heights. The second eleven was as far as I got. I used to play a little bit of tennis as a boarder, but tennis was not then recognised as an official sport as it is nowadays. Old George Gardner, the music master, used to coach the tennis but I don't know whether he knew anything about it.

The only headmaster at Saints in my time was Canon Kenneth Julian Faithful Bickersteth. As with most people of my generation, I had enormous regard for him; he was some person. We all held him in considerable awe, but he must have been quite a personality. This is only a small instance, but in my last year in the preparatory school, he came flowing down, always walking briskly with his great long legs and gown flying out in the wind behind him. He wore his mortar board. It was actually my second to last year in the prep. and Andy Dyer was my form-master. He was a pretty good bloke - sometimes known as Conrad Dyer. I suspect he might have had Indian blood; I don't know, but he was good value.

At one time, we were all incarcerated in our classrooms and had to go and see Bickersteth one by one, in Edward Stokes' study. Stokes was the head of the prep. Of course a small boy down at my level going to see the headmaster in the study was something of an ordeal. Apparently there was a bit of smut circulating through the school and he got us one at a time in the study and said sternly: "Now boy, tell any dirty stories you know!." Well you can imagine what that was like; it reduced you to jelly quick smart. Well he interrogated us and sorted it all out. Then there were announcements about how things had to improve and what a nasty lot of little horrors we were and so on.

At that time at Saints, there was a system where every Friday you could put up your hand and say that you wanted a pencil or rubber or whatever. This was provided for you and of course went on the bill. Of course I didn't know anything about bills and so forth. We just mucked around and if you lost something, you just got another one. Anyhow, I must have worked up quite a bill - you know, half a dozen rulers at a penny each or something similar.

One day at muster and I did not like this at all, Edward Stokes got up and announced "Here is a bill for stationery that a boy has ordered and on this bill for 3 months (or whatever), there are 7 rulers and 5 rubbers, etc. This is outrageous and I have a letter here from his father saying he wants me to put a stop to it." We all laughed like mad at this poor unfortunate whose father had written to him. At the end of this pronouncement, Edward Stokes said: "Newland secundus, come and stand out here!" Now that's the most devastating thing to happen to a small boy and I thought it was appalling. It reduced me to a jelly. The form-master of my classroom 4a was a bloke called Vines and he was a man of some perspicacity and he realised that I was somewhat shattered by this dreadful ordeal. He took me home to his house at the back of Wyatt House and gave me a drink of lemonade, or something of that sort. As I was ‘Newland secundus’, Basil must still have been there at that stage.

Career possibilities and university
I went right up through the school and it was Uncle John (Creswell) who probably influenced my career choice, as he controlled my destiny in most respects. In a way, this might have made Dad a bit cross - I don't know because he was really quite a stranger to me. It was probably partly his doing, but circumstances were responsible in many respects. On weekends, boarders were allowed out to visit relations and I always went to the Creswells’. There was no one else to go to, as Dad was up at Watervale.

I knew there were other relatives, but I knew no other Newland cousins except that I mentioned Ridgeway in my prayers, because somebody told me I should. I didn't ever know Ridgeway - I don't know why he in particular got a mention.

Well before I left school, I had an ill conceived idea about joining the Navy, for no particular reason. I had probably read about some small boy doing this and having fun, but I think it was Uncle John who disabused me of this bright idea. I recall that at this stage, Dad organised a job for me in the South British Insurance Co. I had no idea what an insurance company was, but Uncle John put his foot down on that plan. I don't know if there was any acrimony between them, but Uncle John said that I ought to do medicine. I remember his reasoning that a doctor could make a reasonably good living and cope with life, whereas an office boy in any company might find himself out on his ear.

Uncle John went round various members of the Newland family and begged them to financially assist this poor orphan child. Money values were different then, when I left school in 1932 and I can remember he had considerable difficulty with the Newlands’ in his attempts before this. They were all as tight as hell and this was understandable I suppose as I meant nothing to them whatever. Uncle John was just battling for his dead sister's child.

Anyhow, he managed to extract from Granny Newland - she was a fair devil - something around 100 pounds/year was my recollection. There were one or two others who helped; Uncle Hal may have contributed 50 pounds/year or something. This was depression time and they all withdrew their support after a year and Uncle John was left carrying the entire can, which he did. Dad I think contributed a little, but he was not in a position to contribute much. Things were very tough and the grapes didn't sell; they just rotted on the vine. He had a big mortgage on the Watervale house and that was it.

The family dragon
Granny Newland, Jane Isabella, was Simpson's wife, my father's mother. Everybody was afraid of Granny Newland, not just me. Everyone had a similar opinion from what I have read and heard. The Governor's wife treated her with considerable awe because she had such a sharp tongue. I have a book that records the governor's wife of the time meeting Mrs Newland at the races and avoiding her because she was such an old dragon.

Basil and I used to go and see Granny Newland when we were boarders in Allen House. John used to board with Granny Newland at that stage, when they had moved from Burnside (Undelcara) and lived in Hill St, North Adelaide next to a big old church. It was 45 or 145 Hill St. Grandfather Newland had died by then and it was only Granny Newland living there. It was a rather austere kind of house and she was a most austere woman. She was always dressed in black from head to foot and these sorts of women always wore a tape-like garment around their necks to stop their heads from falling off. We used to have to go and see her, no more often than we could help it.

As I said, John was boarding with her and had found all sorts of ways of defeating her. He had an old pair of football boots which he kept hidden and all polished up. When he had to play football, he’d get these boots out. But he also had his other pair of football boots uncleaned that he took with him and wore. All sorts of subterfuges like this were played out on her.

Basil and I would go there for Sunday lunch now and then, which was quite a walk for a small boy from Saints, but there was no other choice. Basil's limp was certainly noticeable then, but I don't recall how he dealt with the walk. Granny Newland did not have us for lunch out of any feelings for me, I can assure you. It was more a sense of duty and she had a high sense of duty.

One dreadful weekend and it really was dreadful, Basil and I went and stayed weekend with Granny Newland and was it a shocker. I was scared stiff of her and I probably showed it. We used to play a card game called Besique. As luck would have it, I got all the right cards all the weekend, which was the worst possible thing that could have happened. It was quite an involved card game and the three of us were required to play it. As it happened, I could not get rid of my good cards quickly enough and they would always sort of appear and bring me down. Anyhow I eventually finished up with a magnificent hand and points galore. But I was not game to declare it so I shut up about it.

Granny Newland had a maid, poor woman, called Ellen and when dinner was served, it had to be sharp at 1 0'clock. At this hour, Granny Newland would be standing by the grandfather clock at the bend in the passage with a watch. She would exclaim "Lunch is late; Ellen's late; I can't think what she's doing!", and this was her usual ritual. Poor Ellen would come trembling up the passage, because dinner was half a minute late. Once I got sent out the back because my nails were not very clean: "Malcolm, your nails are not clean. Go and clean them at once!" This was the general sort of atmosphere; it was quite terrifying.

At the end of this particular weekend, she gave Basil a pound, which was a somewhat vast sum of money in those times. She didn't give me a cracker. She said; "Malcolm irritates me", and I got out the door with a boot - that's all I got. She was a fair old bitch and event has really stuck in my mind, the old devil. Basil did not share the pound.

Watervale and my father
The first trips to Watervale were with Aunt Anne. I was a small child and she took me there in the train. It was all very strange to me and the only thing I remember is that the spare room floor had a sort of hump in it. I'm not quite sure when this happened, but my father announced suddenly that I was to go to Watervale in the school holidays and in effect, sever my connections with the Creswells'. It was not quite as radical as it sounds, but it had that effect. Up till then I spent weekends and exeats with the Creswells' but then, I'm not sure when, I started going to Watervale for school holidays. This was a pretty radical step for me, given what had happened in my earlier life and I guess I just batted along as best I could. It was very strange, I have to say.

The Watervale property was 80 acres, largely a vineyard and not very far from Buring and Sobels winery in Watervale. Dad used to sell his grapes to Buring and Sobels until such time as the Depression came long, when no one would buy them anyway. He also had a few acres of fruit trees; apricots, plums and some other varieties. I think this was his only form of income, but I am not in a position to be entirely sure.

Dad started his working life in South Africa as an industrial chemist. He had been to the School of Mines and got the appropriate qualifications. He then went to Johannesburg and worked in the gold mines, or what ever mines there were in Johannesburg - I was never very clear about this. I guess he saved some money then, as he was not married. When he returned to Australia, he bought a small sheep farm near Kapunda, at Hansborough. I did not ever know that property as a child, although Joan and I once went exploring around the locality and found the homestead, to satisfy my curiosity. That's where he set up when he came back to SA and I think he probably married our mother and took her to live at Hansborough. I am a little vague about this. John as the eldest was the only one of the family that knew much about Hansborough. I'm not sure if Basil ever went there and I certainly did not. For some reason that is not clear to me, he gave away the Hansborough idea and bought the block at Watervale.

I think he spent 4 to 5 years in South Africa before returning to SA and marrying at a relatively young age. I'm not sure when he moved to Watervale, as Watervale was the only place I knew. I think he was making his way quite well at Watervale. To my untutored mind as a child, when he used to come down from Watervale, he appeared to be reasonably well off. When he came down, he regularly used to take us all out to lunch and there never seemed to be any shortage of money up until the Depression. When the Depression came along, that wrecked everything for him and lots of other people. I think his income must have fallen almost to zero, because you could not sell the crops. I used to stand out on the main road and sell apricots by the case for about 3 to 4 shillings. It was a big deal if we got 4 shillings. Things were very, very tight and I know he had a very tough time.

In terms of paying for us to go to Saints, John and Basil were there before times got tough. There were no problems for them as far as I know. In my case, Uncle John (Creswell) figures predominantly in all this. My mother died in 1915 and left a small legacy. My Grandfather Creswell was a very astute businessman, very hard working, pretty well off and he provided for everybody. When he died at the age of 50 years or thereabouts of high blood pressure, or a stroke, his estate was divided up strictly and fairly. The grandsons all got their cut in due proportions and our mother got her percentage. When she died, we all got our percentage of what she left. It was not anything enormous, but I got something like 60 pounds a year, which was quite a lot of money in those days. My course at Saints was paid for from this money my mother left, plus a contribution from Uncle John (Creswell).

As I have already said, Uncle John suggested to the Newland relatives that they contribute to this poor starveling, but they weren't too keen. Granny Newland contributed for one term or something and then said she couldn't afford any more. This was probably not unreasonable, as everything was collapsing and everyone was going broke. This included Dad who went broke quite quickly and had to mortgage the house at Watervale and by doing so, just managed to keep his head above water. I don't know whether these tough times were an extra burden on his health, but they could well have been. I know he was pretty worried; he just didn't have any money.

To give Granny Newland her due, she knew he was having a really tough time and helped out until her money dried up too. She just couldn't support our very impoverished branch of the family anymore. Any final burden there was fell once more on Uncle John, as far as I was concerned.

This state of affairs brings in sorts of things, as it was about this time that Mildred Dinning appeared on the scene. Mildred was the young nurse who had looked after Dad in Ru Rua Hospital in Barton Tce, North Adelaide. This was a reasonably big and up-market private hospital. I am a little vague about this, but I think Uncle Hal (Sir Henry Newland) was a part-owner or something like that. Dad had a private room there for what seemed like months- it certainly was a pretty long time. Mildred nursed him there, as an employee of the hospital. She had trained there and was a sister.

I'm not sure of the length of time he was there, but ultimately, Dad was allowed to go home, providing he had a trained nurse to look after him. So the arrangement was that Mildred was to come to Watervale to take up residence. So that is what happened and she came along with considerable excitement. She was a very attractive girl in her early twenties or possibly 25 years old. She first came in the Christmas holidays, so I was in residence at Watervale. I don't know how the marriage to Dad all came about - whether it was in the context of respectability given the times, I could not say. They seemed to get on pretty well together, so I think it was more than just making things respectable.

So she came to live at Watervale to look after Dad because he really was not terribly well. I was never very clear as to what was wrong with him, I have to say. However, I remember when I was at Medical School, Dr DeCrespigny saying that he had a peculiar case of an elderly man who was grossly jaundiced, had liver disease and also kidney trouble. I’m sure old ‘Crep’ didn't realise this might be of particular interest to one of his students, but it all seemed to fit Dad's condition. He talked about this case in a lecture, using it as an example of something he was talking about. I acknowledge that I may have been wrong, but there were at least similarities.

I probably was not old enough to accurately assess the situation but looking back on it, I think Basil fell for Mildred and so did I up to a point, although I was considerably more juvenile. But then everything started to go sour and I was not quite sure why. I was very much under Basil's influence and he refused to stay in the house. Something pretty funny went on and I did not know what it was. He took me with him and we built a little humpy out among the apricot trees. We lived there and cooked our own meals and Dad and Mildred lived up in the main house, which was a pretty peculiar situation. That went on for 2 months through the long holidays. At the end of the holidays, I probably went back to school. At that stage, Basil was riding his hunter Anchoosa or whatever its name was, up around the lower north. I sort of lost track of him at this time. I can't remember how long Dad and Mildred were married, but it was for quite a significant time.

I don't think Basil and Mildred had any sort of affair as he was still pretty young then and she was quite a bit older. I don't know what they were up to, but I think it was probably pie-in-sky. Maybe I was totally wrong because it really has only come to me in the last 20 to 30 years that Basil really had fallen for Mildred - I'm sure he had. Her people came from Mundulla, a little town just out of Bordertown in the South East.

After Dad died, a manager moved in to run the Watervale property; this was when I was at medical school in my first year. His death was no surprise as he had been ill for so long. But I was very immature then and just accepted everything that came along. It was a fairly abnormal family situation.

Looking back to those times, there were fairly marked class distinctions and Dad was a fairly public spirited citizen and like old Mr Castine across the road, would have been regarded as fairly upper class. They were more or less "country squire" types, fairly well up the social scale. There were quite a lot of labouring types in the district and Dad employed 2 men until things got tough and then he had one man. Eventually he got rid the other man, as there wasn't anything for him to do as nothing got sold.

Marriage and my siblings
Basil and I got married on the same day, but it was not a double wedding or anything like that. It was purely coincidental. I can't remember all the details, but I was married in the afternoon of February 3 and he was married in the evening of Feb 3. He came to my wedding and I can remember seeing him in the Saints chapel, biting his nails and looking as nervous as hell. I had a bit of a reception in some cafe on North Terrace and took straight off for Melbourne in a little car that I had. Basil was at the first part of my reception but I did not go to any part of his wedding.

My future wife Joan was a nurse at the Adelaide hospital. She was a very attractive girl; I thought she was terrific. At about that time there was one of the University processions which had all the usual sort of bawdy business. Joan was a nurse in the Casualty Department and I grabbed the opportunity to attract her attention by borrowing a nurse’s uniform from her. Before this, she had given me some scissors to take some stitches out of some patient and she did not wash the lysol off them properly and I got some fairly inflamed fingers. So anyway, I borrowed this uniform from her and I can't remember the theme of the procession- the Lord Mayor was Mr Cain and I can remember there was an enormous chamber pot which along with other offerings, was mounted on a trolley pulled by horses. This chamber pot was lying on its side containing a placard which read: 'Cain wasn't able'. There were all sorts of crash-hot wit like that. I spent the whole afternoon being dragged around Adelaide with a fellow student called Ian North. I was being kissed the whole way round because I was dressed up as a nurse and he was dressed up as a medical student. So that was it.

We were lectured at Medical school by practising medicos, although some had University appointments as professors. However the brains of the place were practising physicians and surgeons and it was these people that largely taught us. We got to know them better than we did the professorial staff.

During this time, John was working in Elder Smith and lived with Granny Newland. Being older than me, he wasn't terrified of her as I was. He used to keep guessing with a few tricks; for example the football boots story that I have already mentioned. He had a number of subterfuges like that.

It's true that as we got older, Basil tended to move to the left of centre with his political thinking and John moved further to the right, while little brother kept his peace in the middle. We all welcomed the opportunity of getting together and getting to know each other better. John used to come to my place for tennis in summer and there were the occasional barbecue lunches at Vernon Park with chops described by Basil as “black on the outside and blood in the middle”. In earlier times, John had moved away and after he was married, he lived down at Glenelg, or somewhere like that. He was living his own life and Basil and I got together a bit. I remember he and Constance had a house at the top of the old Belair Road and Joan and I were living with Joan's mother. I came out of the army in May 1946 and did a bit of refresher course at the Adelaide Hospital as all army doctors had to and then I got the job in Naracoorte in May 1946.

I didn't have much to do with anybody from the family during that time because I was a long way away. I was involved in a convalescent depot in Ballarat, but I can't remember when I got away from that. Joan was still living with her mother when I came out of the army. We built a little humpy - well, it wasn't really a humpy I suppose - we put up a pre-fabricated room in Joan's mother's back yard. This was before I got out of the army actually and it gave us a sort of room where we stayed there until I got the job in Naracoorte.

It is true that the three Newland brothers never really had close contact with each other at any stage of our lives except for the time when Basil and I were at Watervale. I suppose we were fairly closely tangled up with each then. We were really fairly detached and accepted life as it came.

The supposed Newland motto "Perseverance conquers" was the sort of thing Basil would tend to latch on to. I think at the time I was fairly proud that the Newlands had a motto like that but whether it was genuine, I really have no idea.

Concluding remarks
When I think about the family and its members and their achievements, old Sir Henry stands out as a real achiever. He was a fairly towering figure although I never really knew him and was always scared of him. I was scared of all of them really and that was just a fact of life. The Creswells’ were really my family and the Newlands’ were sort of also-rans, given the fact that the Creswells’ had done so much for me right up to when I was married.

Recorded at Lourdes Valley, 18 Cross Rd, Myrtle Bank by Nicholas Newland

Edited 29/3/04