John Mason

INTERVIEWER
Simone Taylor

RECORDED
5 October 2016

TRANSCRIPTION
Sue Piper
Simone Taylor

John talks about his life as a minister in the Methodist Church and the decision to stand for the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales following the death of Dubbo Mayor and Local Member for Dubbo Lesley Hunter Ford in 1964.

Transcript Excerpt

(I): So you obviously loved your role as a minister of the Methodist Church here in Dubbo ...

(S): Mmm I did, I did.

(I): …how then did you get into politics?

(S): Well I think the people of the church were very upset that I did (laughs). I think that that was one of the worrying times, I think they were very distressed that I did make the move, but there you are. Um well, Les had only just, not long I think - two years - before this had become the Member for Dubbo after – this was of course a great railway town, Dubbo - well so was most of the areas were so dependent on the railway line. So we were surrounded. All the seats were held by Labor in those days. Mr Renshaw¹ was the member for Castlereagh and Mr Nott² was the member in the Mudgee area and so it went on, and Les was the first really one to break through that, and he won by only about 180-160 votes I think. But he won the seat and he was doing a great job for Dubbo.

However, they were in opposition and erm however, it was the annual meeting of the council and he was to be re-elected as Mayor. So he asked, he and Peg asked Meg and myself to have dinner with them. And then we had dinner in the Amaroo. In those days the Amaroo was ‘the Hotel’. It was the posh hotel (laughs) and they had a very sort of, very special dining room for that sort of thing, and we had a very nice dinner there, and we went off to the council meeting. Les was re-elected and then the sad thing is that he said, “I've got to drive back to Sydney.” That very night he drove after the election, his re-election as Mayor. He drove back to Sydney, got as far as Kurrajong Heights, and had a massive heart attack. I'm guessing he was still just in his 50's, and um, he just died on the roadside, and so, there we were. It was December, December 1964, and it was really, you know, we were all so shattered. I had to conduct the service, the funeral service. It was a very big - the whole of the community was shattered.

(I): Where was the funeral service held?

(S): Well erm, there was a service held here by the Bishop of Bathurst actually held a community service here, I figured the same time as we were holding his service, was to be held in Manly Methodist church. I don’t know quite why, there was some reason why the family wanted that. I think they might’ve had a place in Manly, where they, where they went, where Les probably stayed while he was in Parliament, and anyway, erm, that's where the service was to be. So all of, I think a special plane was, I think Ansett provided a special plane to take us all - we all flew down - the Councillors, the Aldermen, all the officials of Dubbo were to go. We all flew down in a special plane to Sydney to go to the funeral. It was a very big occasion, and of course, oh, all of the, all of the people in Sydney, senior people in business and public service and so on, Parliament, they were all there. Federal and State, it was a massive big occasion. So I had the privilege of conducting that.

Later on of course, when I got into Parliament, the Labor party used to attack me saying, “You only got in here - rode in on Les Ford’s funeral,” that's what they used to say to me (laughs). Anyway, I don't think it was nearly as bad as it is today, I think the tone of Parliament has changed dramatically since those days. Anyway so that’s how I became the member, actually I should say more than that. One of my neighbours, my closest neighbour to - I used to live in Church Street – the parsonage was just in Church Street where Wesley Hall is now, and my neighbour was a leading business man in Dubbo who had a nickname of Snozzle, Snozzle Bowen, he was called. ³

(I): What was his first name sorry?

(S): Well, I'm trying to remember his first name (laughs). I just know him as - I know him so well as Snozzle. He used to come and talk to me all the time and he was a character, he owned half of Macquarie Street and ah, but he was a - he was isolated in many ways, an individual who kept to himself. He was very insular and erm, but he was a very interesting man. But he came, and he was the first to come and say, “Look the town’s desperate, there's nobody to take Les' place, you’re the only person that any of us could think of that could take his, could possibly take his place, and so you've got to stand.” So I thought that was a great joke. But I don’t know if he organised it, but then I'd have people ringing me up every three or four times a day, I'd get phone calls from leading people in the community saying, “Look, you've got to think about standing for Parliament because there’s nobody else.” So it went on, until eventually I thought I would have to take it seriously. So I did, and that led to, I don't know how long you want this story to go on. It could go on for a long time…

(I): No, no, no the full story. Please ...

(S): So, you want the full story, so of course I had to. The church protocol was if you were considering any important or serious action in your life, you had to discuss it with the Chairman of the District as they were called then, and that was the Minister at Orange, Rupert Guy Walker, a wonderful man. So, I went down and saw him, he was a friend of mine. We'd been together, he was next door to me. He talked me into coming to, he was the one that organised me to come to Dubbo, and before that, he'd been at Bowral, and I was at Goulburn. He organised me to go to Newcastle (laughs) when he went to Maitland. So we were pretty close. And I was expecting him to say to me, “John, you can't do this, you know, they love you too much at Dubbo, you’re having too good a Ministry there, everybody says that to me.” And I was expecting all that sort of thing, you see. And I was really shocked when he said to me, “Perhaps you ought to think seriously about this, God may be calling you to a different Ministry.” I was shattered. I was expecting him to say, “No, we can't do without you.” Oh I was really shattered, I came home very subdued because I was really knocked about thinking they don't want me. And anyway, we did as he asked me to do, we, we thought and prayed about it, and I decided that okay, I would stand. So, that caused great problems.

Firstly, my church were terribly upset, because they didn't want me to go. At least, they made it very clear that they didn't want me to go (laughs). Anyway, erm, I went, but the church law in those days was that… erm, you couldn't do that if one side said I'd stand, and was preselected, I got a letter from the - a week later, after I was preselected - I got a letter from the President of the Church in Australia saying I had seven days to retire or they would cease to recognise me as a Minister (sighs). Gosh, can you imagine how I felt then, and erm, we didn't know whether there was going to be a by-election, 'cause it was December, and they were three year terms in those days. They were three year terms, but you couldn't be guaranteed it would go three years or what. Didn't know if there was going to be a by-election, and here was I with five children, and of course I had to leave the house in seven days.

(I): The house you were living in was part of the Methodist Church?

(S): Yes, it was the parsonage, where the Minister lived. I had to get out of that within seven days. I had no income, so I had to live on my superannuation. They paid me out my superannuation that I’d paid. And you can imagine the state I was in, I didn't know, we had nowhere to live. Anyway, Peg Ford was too distressed by the death, she couldn't stay in Dubbo. She said, “I can't stay here, I've got to go. Come and stay in my house.” So, that's what she did, and 'cause she'd gone, she'd left, and she said, “Come and stay here.” Which we did. And later on when I won, she graciously, on very good terms, sold us the house. So we had a very happy time in that house.

¹Mr John Brophy Renshaw was the Member of Castlereagh from 1941 to 1980. (Parliament of New South Wales, Mr John Brophy Renshaw, accessed 22-10-2018 at: https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/members/Pages/profiles/renshaw_john-brophy.aspx

²Mr Leo Mervyn Nott served as the Member for Mudgee from 1953 to 1968, and as the Member for Burrendong from 1971-1973. (Parliament of New South Wales, Mr Leo Meryn Nott, accessed 22-10-2018 at: https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/members/Pages/member-details.aspx?pk=1746

³Snozzle Bowen’s full name was Roy Noel Bowen. He was also known as Neil Bowen.