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Photos from 1971-Present
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There was no doubt that Alf had tickets on himself. And he liked to talk. He could go on a bit with his yarns, mostly about his own exploits. But he was not a bore, what he said was interesting. You didn’t get the exhaustion, and desire to escape, which comes from listening to a windbag.
A favourite family story is told by Alf’s grandson, Andy Guidera. Andy visited Alf and Dot at their home in Port Noarlunga sometime in the 1980s. Dot was doing some knitting, and Alf was talking to Andy, going through photos and, as usual, regaling Andy with “stories of Alf”. After a time, and when Alf paused ever so slightly, Dot broke in and said: “Andy, you know your grandfather likes to talk a lot, don’t you? … And do you know what your grandfather likes to talk about most, Andy? Alfred Charles Shields!”
Alf looked wounded, but only for an instant. He quickly recovered his sunny nature, and started talking again – about himself!
Wherever he went on his travels, Alf would often call up the local radio station or newspaper, and offer to be interviewed. On his 1953 world tour, he was interviewed by the BBC for a quarter-hour on the different aspects of Australian, American and English speedway. His papers included articles from the Barrier Daily Truth (19th June 1949), the Bristol Evening Post (10th May 1953), the Gold Coast Bulletin (20th July 1956 and 29th November 1963), the Alice Springs Star (22nd May 1984), etc.
The Bristol story starts out: “Had a call today from a man …” The article also noted that Alf was “a man who confesses ‘I love talking about myself’”.
He told the Alice Springs Star: “I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. And I don’t like women … And I’m a bloody liar!”
The Advertiser, Adelaide’s daily newspaper, ran a story about Rowley Park speedway when it closed in 1979. Alf was interviewed and photographed for the story. When he died, 8 copies of the story were found in his papers. You never know when you might need one to hand out to an admirer!
Alf liked to say: “Everyone should be allowed to have their proud boast.”
The Butcher’s Picnic [the final feature race of the night, usually 10 laps, and with no restrictions on car types or engine sizes], fireworks and charity nights were always popular. In his time, Dad was averaging good crowds and getting up to 14,000 people attending in one night. Kath remembers how focused he was on regaining the public’s interest in motor sport in Adelaide. Josie remembers the weekly program meetings held in our home, and the official’s stand which was built at the speedway so that she could observe and report on the results of each race.
Some well known drivers such as Jack Brabham, N.S.W. champ who was later knighted, Frank (Satan) Brewer, Bob Playfair – 1949 world speedcar champion – and the vivacious Irish driver Fay Taylour competed during dad’s term as promoter. He invited US Davis Cup team members Trabert and Seixas, as well as Australians Hartwig and Rose, to be spectators to raise publicity.31
| 31 | The David Cup final for 1952 was played at Memorial Drive Park in Adelaide from 29th to 31st December 1952. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_Davis_Cup. |
Alf often spoke of how many jobs, occupations and businesses he had had. He sat down with his grandson Steve Palyga in the 1970s and they made a list.
Alf missed some activities, like his stint shooting buffalo and kangaroo for skins in the Northern Territory in the late 1940s, a cattle grazing venture, his ownership and leasing of four midget race cars in the early 1950s, a business selling patterned cylinder heads, and the site construction works he did in the early 1960s for his and Dot’s new home in Burleigh Heads.
That fact, and the list, near enough proves Alf’s oft-repeated statement that he had been involved in more than 40 businesses. Alf was given to boasting, but it was never idle boasting.
My friend with the Henderson motorcycle still worked there, and he made extra money by fitting electric lights and power points in old houses at night and on weekends. The price was 35/– for lights and £2/10/– for power points. After a few months I started out on my own, using his licence. He sure was a good mate.
I soon bought my first motorbike, the first of many, an Indian Powerplus 6/8.9 With the blue metal roads in Sydney and the network of tram rails that used to stick up about 2” in places, I seemed to spend more time on my ear and elbows than on the saddle.
For 5 years I never had an unpatched pair of pants. I remember going into town one pay night and buying a new pair of sports trousers for £1/5/–. They never made it home in one piece, holes on the knee and backside as usual.
I later joined the Newtown Motor Cycle Club, and purchased an A.J.S. 2¾ hp T.T. replica for £105, paying it off at 25/– per week. Thank God for old houses that needed lights and power connected.
The Club had various activity days including hill climbs, one mile acceleration tests, slow races,10 reverse gear 10/12 Harley races,11 flag rally races,12 and so on.
| 9 | According to Google AI Overview, 5/7 standardly indicates a capacity of 750cc, 6/8 standardly indicates a capacity of 800cc, and 10/12 standardly indicates a capacity of 1200cc. |
| 10 | Apparently a reference to races where the last one to cross the finish line without putting a foot down wins, the object being to go as slow as possible but still stay balanced. |
| 11 | Referring to racing in reverse, making it tricky to stay in a straight line at speed. Apparently, a Harley 1200cc bike (aka the “10/12”) of the time had a reverse gear. |
| 12 | Possibly a reference to a race where riders tackle the course one by one, and the quickest time wins, although that would already by then be called a time trial. Possibly also a reference to a race where competitors circulate but racing only starts when the flag drops, or where the competitors run to their bikes once the flag drops, or where you need to cross the finish line once the flag drops (and can thus lose even if leading by laps), consistency and reliability being just as important in rallying as outright speed. |
The casualty report by the Battalion’s Adjutant below stated that Charlie had been shot through the heart by a German machine-gunner as his battalion was storming the Hindenburg line. Tom Moore takes up the story: “Subsequent Red Cross interviews of members of Charlie’s unit revealed some confusion over what happened to his body. Some concurred with the Adjutant but at least one believed that Charlie’s body had been removed for burial. In any event, Charles Emil Noblet died on a battlefield in France, just as his father had feared, and rests there with no known grave.”6 One witness told the Red Cross: “He was very popular with his mates.”
| 6 | Charlie’s war service records are at https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=8002306. He is memorialised on the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux, which has the names of more than 10,000 Australians who died in France during the First World War but have no known grave. |
Mick had enlisted at the age of 39 in Perth in January 1916. Having been a miner in a past life, he was put in the Mining Corps, later the 2nd Company, Australian Tunnelling Corps. He was sent to the Western Front, where he suffered a gunshot wound from which he recovered. He later died on active service of “Congestion of Lungs” on 24th August 1916.5
| 5 | Mick’s war service records are at https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=8083113, and a history of his life and service is linked at https://www.tunnellers.net/pages/sa___slpag.html. Mick is buried in Plot 4, Row A, Grave 45 at the Longuenesse (St Omer) Souvenir Cemetery, 35 kilometres south-east of Calais, France, see https://www.twgpp.org/photograph/view/3424232. |
Grandma Shields was brought up in County Tipperary in Ireland during the potato famine of the late 1840s (when she was aged between 5 and 9). Alf said: “I remember her telling me that she had seen people eating grass.”
Alf had very fond memories of her: “She was a marvellous woman.”
Grandma Shields used to read the paper out to Alf and Nell every day, even though she had never gone to school. If she didn’t know a word, she would say “wheelbarrow” in its place. Alf could never understand why she read so fluently, but couldn’t write a single word, not even her own name.
“Father all his life was a good conscientious unionist, and an ardent member of the Trolley & Draymens Union, he was on the committee. We had a big photo, about two feet by two feet, with Billy Hughes, the patron of the Union, in the centre, and around the outer perimeter were headshots of the committee. Father had his watchchain and his go-to-meeting suit on.”2
| 2 | The below somewhat similar image of the Union’s Picnic Committee is at https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-138394233/view. The Transport Workers Union (NSW branch) started life in 1888 as the Sydney Trolley & Draymen’s Union: see https://twunsw.org.au/about-us/. |
Dot’s articles are pithily written. They are more social commentary than short stories.
Design for daughters (1947) laments the casual behaviour of a modern young woman, something which was never in her mother’s “design” for her. Behaviour such as kissing male strangers, smoking cigarettes, drinking cocktails, “bringing ‘the crowd’ home to upset the house and dance”, and so on. The piece is quite imaginative given that Dot’s own daughters were largely vice free.
The piece also reflects gender norms of the time: the mothers are “all much the same, they get through their housework quickly and play bridge or go to an afternoon show”. The mother’s ultimate “design” is “eventually an engagement to the favored [boyfriend] with wedding bells on the horizon”, and, once that is achieved, mother “can now relax into comfortable middle-age”.
The story shifts focus to a specific mother and daughter and, interestingly, Dot has them breaking with those tropes: “Mother is smart” and, as for the daughter: “To avoid being considered quiet and dull, she has to talk nonsense in a loud voice, and to get on with the boys at all, she has to let dimwits make imitation love to her.”
That pay envelope (1946) goes through how a weekly wage of £6/9/418 must be doled out. As might be expected given the austerity of the post-War reconstruction period in Australia, there is nothing left for discretionary spending: “I do it every week and am usually a penny or threepence on the right side”.
Dot does give her narrator a pat on the back: “I am a wife, and a good manager”. Alf wasn’t a wage earner then, but Dot echoes what would no doubt have been his attitude when she says: “Then 6/– [to him] for liquid refreshment – Social Obligation he calls it.”
Dressing-gown wives (1948) is a day in the life of a stay-at-home housewife. Stereotypes of the times abound: the husband is untidy, the wife is intent on making sure he is “well-turned out” at work, but insecure at him “admir[ing] the attractive females on the way”, she dreams of him buying her a new pair of slippers, and she “looks fresh and attractive when Bill arrives home”.
But Bill has “a weary now-don’t-worry-me-with-your-domestic-troubles look on his face”, and they sit through dinner in silence. The piece ends with the wife being optimistic (or Dot possibly means to convey that she is being unrealistic): “But [she] is a woman, adaptable and hopeful, and in spite of Bill’s shortcomings, he is the man she married and she is going to see to it that he mends his ways and makes a career of being a happy husband”.
Take my seat, Madam (undated) is an observation of the “comedy of manners” seen daily on the buses and trams given the unwritten rules (since wholly disappeared) as to who should give up their seat to whom. Dot canvasses the various rules, implying that they are actually quite unruly, and so much so that “the cussedness of human nature” guarantees that when one properly thinks he or she need not give up their seat, “they are certain to hear a voice immediately behind them remarking ‘Isn’t it disgusting the way the men grab all the seats these days, and the young girls too – no manners!’”
| 18 | Which converts to $12.93 in decimal currency or, with inflation, $566.17 today. |
Violet Hickling was the 3rd child of Dot’s uncle Albert Edward John Ludlam, known as Jack. The family lived in Coventry. She was killed in the Second World War by a land mine during a German air raid on 8th-9th April 1941. The family history is that she was delivering a baby at the time, and that her younger brother Harold, a member of the Auxiliary Fire Service, dug her, the mother and the baby out of the ruins. Harold’s daughter, Sue Hope, confirmed the story to Kath Palyga in a 2002 letter.
Over 800 of the civilians killed in the Coventry air raids are buried in a mass grave at Coventry’s London Road Cemetery. Violet’s name is listed on the Blitz Memorial there.14
Violet’s mother and youngest sister were both named Florence.
On 11th July 1941, Dot’s father wrote to her:
We received a letter yesterday from little Florrie (England) with some very sad news. In the first “blitz” they were bombed out, and whilst her Mother and Florrie were in Air-Raid Shelters their homes were blown to bits, everything they had was gone. Poor Alf (eldest son) was so badly injured he had to have his leg amputated. And whilst lying in Hospital and Violet’s husband with him, the Hospital got a direct hit and they were pulverised with shattered glass. They had nearly recovered and were home again when Alf’s home was bombed and poor Violet with another woman and her two little girls took refuge in an Air-Raid Shelter when a land mine exploded and blew them all to pieces. Poor Violet’s body was found with the head arms & legs all severed. Just her trunk. It was such a pitiful letter. Uncle Jack & Florrie are inconsolable.
| 14 | See https://www.familyresearcher.co.uk/Blitz-Victims/Index-of-Blitz-Victims-on-War-Memorial-part-1.html. The below image courtesy of https://www.familyresearcher.co.uk/Blitz-Victims/Coventry-Blitz-Victims-detalls-H.html. That webpage also has a short biography of Violet. The land mines used (“luftminen”) by the Luftwaffe were massive 2,200-pound parachute mines filled with high explosives. They were designed to explode on impact and to flatten buildings through sheer concussive force, rather than creating impact craters. Further as to the Coventry bombings, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Blitz. The second image below is of the damage to the centre of Coventry after a raid in November 1940, courtesy of https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/second-world-war/blitz/15-powerful-photos-of-the-blitz, image 6. See also image 13. |
Josie, Barbara and Bette were delivered by Nurse Maud Kerr, a midwife who lived in Woodstock in the house next door to the Shields family, which was also the town’s hospital. Her daughter was Sister Janet Kerr, one of 65 Australian nurses and over 250 civilians evacuated from Singapore on the Vyner Brooke on 12th February 1942, three days before the fall of Malaya.
The Vyner Brooke was bombed by Japanese aircraft and sunk in Bangka Strait two days later. Twenty two nurses who survived the sinking were washed ashore on Bangka Island, where they surrendered to the Japanese, along with twenty five British soldiers.
On 16th February 1942, the group was massacred by the Japanese. The soldiers were bayoneted, and the nurses were ordered to march into the sea where they were machine-gunned. Only Sister Vivian Bullwinkel and two soldiers survived the massacre, and were re-taken as prisoners.12
| 12 | Sister Kerr’s war service records are at https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=4621826. For further information on the Bangka massacre, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangka_Island_massacre and https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C371606. |
