CHAPTER 7
Business, Charity and Sentiment
After long searching for records I discovered a sound recording of an interview with Walter Wiegelmann by Averil Holt from the South Australian Housing Trust, recorded 18 October 1981. The sound recording interview became available on the 6 May 2001 to the public. The transcript typist was Joyce Locke.
A.H.
Right, Mr. Wiegelmann. Could you tell me about the start, how you got involved? What were you doing before you joined the company Wender & Duerholt?
W.W.
Well, I did nothing before. I was a young schoolboy, and I started to commence my work, my relationship with Wender & Duerholt in 1944, during the War time. And it was in the after War years, that in 19, late 1949, early 1950, we saw an advertisement in our, we had an Amsterdam branch in those days, an advertisement from Australia House in London where the Australian, then Housing Ministry, Canberra, under the leadership of Director Welsh, advertised for imported housing into Australia, and either as section homes, or pre-cut homes the theme we followed. And then we commenced to take an interest in that. We invited the documents, we had to brush up on our English terms, and gradually set up a quotation for the Ministry of Housing in Canberra via the Australia House, preparing this tender document. And the we, Wender & Duerholt at the time, Wender & Duerholt G.M.B.H, the German company, we in the case, were chosen into the closer field, and a team of people from Canberra then came to Europe and amongst other companies visited Wender & Duerholt in Remscheid (Lennep) in West Germany and negotiated with us.
A. H.
Excuse me, can you spell Remschalt?
W. W.
Yes, Remscheid, is a township of about 120.000 people, it’s name is spelt R-E- M-S-C-H-E-I-D, Remscheid, and is about 35 miles away from Cologne, from the Cologne area, and Director Welsh from Canberra, and other people from his department came to Europe, visited the Company, and we were then instructed to erect a sample house. It would go very far back in very great detail to mention the hazards and the trauma we had, in translating Australian specifications at that time. One particular item comes to hand, that nobody in the Australian Office in Cologne, or the Mission in Berlin, or the Australia House in London ever heard of a super foot. So Australia House London in fact, went so far as to cable, telephoning was just not on in those days, cable Australia, and ask for an interpretation of a super foot. Because everything that one tendered for was in - talking timber - was in terms of super foot and we had never ever heard of it. Nobody knew. Now of course we know, 12 square inches, one foot long, but then we didn’t know that then. And so we had quite a hilarious time, in the very serious sense, to interpret specifications. However, we erected a sample house.
Mr. Thurston, he was then the Deputy Senior Architect, later becoming the Senior Architect of the Trust, Syd Thurston came to Germany and inspected the house. I in fact went to Hamburg and met him when he came from Denmark, with a Danish company involved as well. I remember that in detail and Mr, Thurston. I met him in the Atlantic Hotel in Hamburg. We travelled together down to Remscheid, and inspected the house, and then went further down to Bavaria. In our German office of course, and Mr. Thurston was introduced to the Managing Director of Wender & Duerholt, Mr, Eugen Lohman, and also to our Technical Director, Helmut Link, later on Helmut Link and myself together with the company out to Australia to erect these homes, and then.
We were then instructed to erect this particular sample house in Melbourne for some strange reason or other, and Mr. Lohman, the Managing Director, packed his bags and the house was shipped and was erected in Melbourne in the Preston District, in 1951. After that took place, Mr. Lohman was then delegated and sent to the South Australian Housing Trust, always under the auspices of the Housing Ministry in Canberra, Mr. Welsch once more. He was very instrumental at the time. And then Mr. Lohman met up with Mr. Ramsay, and Mr. Thurston, and Mr. Cartledge, the then Chairman of the Trust, and finally a contract was negotiated, and then the trauma began of putting things together, of preparing shipment. And everything had to be brought from Germany to Australia. This housing contract, the human element of it was that we had to bring 150 people to Australia. Each of them had to be interviewed, their history, shortly after the was, their history submitted to the Australian Consulate in Cologne, or Australian Military Mission as it was then called, into Cologne. Only 10 percent of those 150 people were allowed to be married, the rest of them to be single people.
A. H.
Do you know why?
W. W.
I have never understood really why. If I like to, in human terms think back, I think it was really a matter of accommodation. Single people one can deal with, one can somehow put together. I really feel it was the matter of accommodation. There were so many displaced persons coming from Europe into Australia that that really was the reason. Australia was underdeveloped to a degree. In those days one would call it that way, yes. And the whole idea was, of the Australian Government, alongside with other governments in the world, Canada, America and so forth, to very rapidly increase its housing scheme, in order to accommodate all these DP’s, displaced persons, coming from German refugee camps into Australia in that particular instance. And it had to be done quick, and it had to be done efficient, and had to be done with the least call on the Australian resources. In fact, I usually pointed out that by the contract we were allowed to only use 5 things in Australia, in executing that contract for 500 houses. That was water, and that was sand, and that were five, 1,000 bricks for the outer chimney, and the underground, under foundation timbers, because they were termite proof, and paint because it was sun resisting, while the German paint of course would sort of flake off with the sun that we have in Australia so often. They were the only five things we were allowed to use in Australia, the rest were all brought from Europe, including the 150 men to put the houses up, their accommodation, their beds, tables, chars, pillows, knifes and forks, cup and saucers, everything was brought from Germany. Like an independent army we came to Australia. We brought all that with us, and as it turned out the ship with the beds and tables and chairs hadn’t arrived when we, as the first team, came to Australia. So we slept on the floor in straw bags .
We were given initially two or three of these, what we discuss, temporary homes, asbestos huts, to be used until such time as we had - we couldn’t sleep under the stars I suppose - until we had erected our own camp facility which came in the first shipment. That was arrested in the anchorage for some days, if not weeks, because it didn’t pay its due somewhere. Ship was called the Atta, A-T-T-A, quite an interesting feature of first import. And so the story went on. Once more I remember that on this January day in 1952, I submitted the final list of people to the Australian Mission Office in Cologne. I then also met up, accidentally as it happened, with Harold Holt, who was the Australian Minister for Immigration, and he was having a meeting at the office together with ah, a man called Fidock. He was the Railway Commissioner at the time, and they brought a lot of people from Germany, for the South Australian Railway system. Hence the two were together in the office and I came in addition to that and we sort of haggled out the plan, how to get all these people to Australia. Then our first team - back to Wender & Duerholt - The 500 home were shipped in basically in 10 lots of 50. Most of the ships were charter ships and they arrived all during that year of 1952, and the 150 people we brought from Germany came in 3 or 4 shiploads.
A. H.
May I just ask, did you only supply South Australia, or did your firm supply?
W. W.
No, we had only one contact with the South Australian Housing Trust for 500 homes. We were not in any way involved any other state.
A. H.
Oh, I see.
W. W.
Only very much, singled out to be the supplier to the Housing Trust. This particular company of Wender & Duerholt. And Germany, as it of course were, is metric country, while Australia was then a country with, was it called?
A. H.
Imperial measure.
W. W.
Imperial measure, well yes. In the state that was a particular set at the time. I’m speaking of the plumbing material. In fact the plumbing material could not be sent from Germany. It had to be all brought from England. So we went to England, to Manchester, to a firm called Greatorix in Old Trafford Park, very much in the limelight these days with cricket, and we brought, from Greatorix in Old Trafford Park, we brought the plumbing materials. They were shipped independently from England. Toilets and hand basins and traps and taps and all that.
A. H.
Because your fittings wouldn’t fit ours?
W. W.
The German fittings, if we had brought them from Germany, there would’ve been chaos, because they wouldn’t fit the Australian Imperial threads. So it went on. In fact we brought everything from Germany for these homes. Pre-cut, naturally the timber, floors windows, roof covers, annealed steel roof covering. It is still there in quite good condition in the Marion district, at the southern end of Morphett Road, still to be seen, all this horizontally weatherboarded homes. In contrast to the English homes that came in sections. They are easily to be identified by having vertical shuttering, or vertical weatherboarding.
A. H.
Oh, that’s interesting.
W. W.
The German homes, because they were brought as materials, not as premanufactured sections, had the horizontal weatherboard. Hence, they’re quite easy to identify in the Morphett Road district, southern end, and Dover Gardens suburb. And we brought our own earthenware pipes, plastic pipes of course weren’t heard of. We brought earthenware pipes, asbestos sheets, glass, hardware, screws, nails, and cement, whatever goes into a house we brought with us. It was really a nightmare then to start. So, then we arrived on this mid-March day, 22nd March 1952, and presented our credentials so to say, to the Chief Architect, Mr. Sydney Thurston, and then set out to work. Started in the Marion District, in Morphett Road, and digging holes for stumps, gradually setting up our building site, and our first depot, in that area where now, driving through, we call it little Remscheid these days.
A. H.
Do you really?
W. W.
Where we still have the 500 homes that we, in fact erected in those years.
A. H.
All the homes you brought were built in one place, they didn’t spread out?
W. W.
No, they were all built in the Marion Council area, at the southern end of Morphett Road, Dover Gardens and that area, or there might’ve been an exceptional one. I remember there were two homes perhaps, we built as sample homes, or for some reason or other which escapes me why, built in the Windsor Gardens area. The Windsor Gardens Hotel then was the end of the world. Further than that there was nothing. Now I remember we built two homes there and I do not, - 30 years ago - I really wouldn’t know why we did that, or why we were told to do that. But basically that was it was.
And of course in 1954, when that contract was completed of the imported homes, then we participated in ordinary tendering as was known all over the years, and continued our job for the South Australian Housing Trust, and with local contracts. But one could go on probably for a long time, to describe, human details, as a, happenings as they occurred, as these homes were erected.
Language difficulties of the people coming. Family difficulties, accommodation difficulties, climatic were very trying for the German people who come from a winter the end of a very severe, the severe Australian summer. And differences in the ways Australian people ate in regards to food. The German people had to get used to that, the sort of human, the human little stories that go with it. In material term, in business term, it was difficult. To start, to purchase the tools. We were, practically came without money. The German Mark in those days was so tightly controlled that all of us who came from Germany were given 10 pounds Sterling when we left, for a ship trip of 4 weeks. When we arrived in Australia, there was hardly anyone with more than 4 or 5 shillings. We would have had perhaps 40 or 50 cents in to day’s terms. That was all we had left, that much. And when we arrived we had to wait for the first week of wages to be paid out. In managerial terms, Mr. Lohman, the Managing Director of the German Company, had engaged our friend Rudolf Schultz. He was then a Melbourne man that lives in Melbourne now again. He was already in Australia from periods before the War, and he was engaged to the company as a sort of Australian Adviser.
A. H.
Adviser
W. W.
Adviser. Australian man, he was actually Managing Director of the Australian Company, and Helmut Link and myself were sent out from the German Company as Managers to assist Mr. Schultz to erect those 500 homes. He was really the only Australian resident man, who was engaged by Wender & Duerholt. All of the other people were German imports the after War period.
A. H.
How long did it take you to erect a house?
W. W.
Oh, well course they are erected in-groups of housing. It would be very difficult. But all in all, by the end of 1954, two and a half years later, they were finished.
A. H.
The 500?
W. W.
The 500 homes. One could then say, well it took about 2 working years, divide that by 500, you’ve got some sort of figure. But they were erected in-groups of course, and it’s very hard to stipulate a certain, how long it takes to build a house.
A. H.
But the Housing Trust had already done the preliminary work, I assume. They had got the roads in, and the sewerage in. It was just a matter of you coming and putting your houses on it?
W. W.
Yes. We had to connect with the sewerage ourselves. When we, in fact, their preliminary work had not been done. When we were introduced to the paddock, the first paddock on the corner of Morphett Road and Seacombe Road,sort of a square kilometer area, there were almond trees and vines on it. They had to be eradicated first, had to be taken out first. And then amongst our building houses, the E.W.S. Department came and put in their deep sewer, their water, and so forth. It was a very very trying time. But we were purely, on Monday 24th March 1952, we were introduced to a paddock, and we had to start from there on. There was nothing prepared. Thee were then no sewer lines, no sewer pipes in the ground. All that was done by the E.W.S. Department as we progressed with our work. Which again was a very trying affair made it very difficult.
A. H.
Yes .
W. W.
However, the enormous demands of Australian housing in those years were felt of course, all along, by every facility, every Department being behind in their timing, in providing the services that are normally needs to put a house up.To build the house itself is one thing, to have the vacant block available served, is the other side of a picture book, isn’t it.
A. H.
Oh yes, yes.
W. W.
Made it very difficult.
A. H.
How did you choose the people to come out with you? Were they volunteers? Was there any question that they would be able to stay in Australia after their contract was finished?
W. W.
Of the 150 people, perhaps 10 percent were original Wender & Duerholt people who had, everybody who came with us practically volunteered to come, by answering an advertisement. Wender & Duerholt advertised, in fact looking for people to come to Australia and participating in the erection of some 500 homes. And all of us, who came here, came on a temporary work permit basis, which was valid for two years. Not on a migrant basis. We paid our own fares; there were not assisted passage schemes as there were available later on to migrants.
A. H.
You say you paid your own fare? The individuals paid their own fare, or the company paid?
W. W.
No, the individuals paid their own fares. That was part of the contract.
A. H.
Good gracious.
W. W.
Yes, that was part of the voluntary idea to come to Australia.
A. H.
Which would’ve been how much then? Can you remember?
W. W.
Oh I don’t remember, perhaps 80 pounds or 100 pounds. It was, you know, relatively little. But people wanted to get away from Germany, from the after War math, Germany was not a very well country in those days. It had its ills, and it was well thought that people would like to use that particular contract as an opportunity. As it’s turned out to be, to come to Australia. People, of this 150, only perhaps 10 percent went back to Germany to live. The other 135 to mention a figure would be spread all over the country.
Wherever we go, we find people that came with us on the first two or three ships. Whether it’s Darwin, or Brisbane, or the South Australian countryside, or Melbourne, or Perth. They’re spread everywhere, in all sorts of capacities. Not necessarily building homes. One is the Chief Curator of the Brisbane Gaol Grounds. He came with us. One is a Hotel owner in Darwin. We all have distributed and developed the skills and interest and talents over the years. So most of the people are in Australia and spread all over the country. Most of them stayed.
After two years we were then able to apply to have this temporary work permit visa changed into a fully fledged migrant visa, which then gave us a chance after four or five years to apply for Naturalisation and so forth. That was the human part of it. Then, after 54, after 54/55, we and the company brought a property in Bennett Avenue in Edwardstown, and again, once more a paddock, and then began to draw up Wender & Duerholt, perhaps the way it has been known for the last 10 or 15 years. Mr. Schultz and Mr. Link and myself worked the company up to what it was known in the seventies, and participated in, we participated in public tendering, and secured, on the local scene, and secured in 1961 our first lager contract for the Trust in the Christies Beach area. That was then the developing outer area, and as I mentioned on my little script I did before, before you come, that after perhaps putting up in the Christies area, 2000 homes, the company donated to the Trust, or further, to the Noarlunga Council, a monument, that is in Christies Beach now, engulfs the Rainmakers.
A. H.
Yeas, I do know it.
W. W.
Yes. And Mr. Shedly the Architect did the design, did the sculpture and the design. And the area there is even today known as Lohman Park. It is called the Lohman Park and has a description in describing mentioning Mr. Lohman, ‘the old Managing Director’, who’s still alive, he’s 85 today.
A. H.
Oh.
W. W.
Not today, he’s now 85.
A. H.
Yes. He’s living in Germany?
W. W.
He’s living in Germany, he’s alive, yes, and the are is known today, is maintained by the Noarlunga Council, and is very nicely opposite the Gulf View Shopping Centre, and it’s called Lohman Park.
A. H.
Oh, I hadn’t realised the connection.
W. W.
Yes, and the area, the monument of the area was opened, I was present at the day. So were we all. By Mr. Frank Walsh, the then Premier of the State. And of course that was days when Mr. Cartledge was still alive, and Mr. Ramsay was still alive, and was quite a great day. Mr. Lohman was here from Germany, to participate in the opening.
A. H.
They were timber frame houses were they, they were all made of timber?
W. W.
Well, are we now going back to the German houses?
A. H.
Yes .
W. W.
They were timber of course. And then gradually South Australia swung away from timber area into full brick home. But the within the Trust it was realised with the Bay of Biscay soil, with the poor soil conditions we have in Australia, in the Adelaide area, South Australia. That the brick veneer construction, as it the became known in the sixties, the brick veneer construction became the very popular way of building. And that would have been about 1962/63, the most prevalent method of construction that was by the Trust in the Adelaide area.
A. H.
I understand that they had to almost change the law to get permission to erect timber homes. For some reason they weren’t allowed to build timber homes, so, you probably don’t know that, but that doesn’t matter. What I’m trying to get at is, what, how did people, general public view your homes. Because: I think it would’ve been a fairly new procedure, to build timber homes. Do you know what the public reaction would’ve been to them?
W. W.
No, because we were not really involved in any negotiations with the public. We, in the early - you are referring to the timber homes that came from Germany?
A. H.
The first 500 homes. I just thought if there’d been any comments in newspapers or?
W. W.
No, not that I know of. We all had rather poor knowledge of English. We wouldn’t have been easily able to really follow any comments that were made in the public. I really don’t know. But then we were not involved at all with the public. We were terribly involved in our own sphere of building up these homes that were contracted with the Trust.
A. H.
And you all slept and eat.
W. W.
That’s right. In our little sphere, in our little area, and we were really not in any way connected with the public and had the desire to exist, and the necessity to exist, commanded us to stick to our task and do work from morning to night, to in fact do what had to be done. We had very little contact.
A. H.
Yes, it must have been quite a change from the Northern Hemisphere.
W. W.
Oh yes. It was a financial struggle. The contract, in fact Wender & Duerholt was the only company that, of what we know, that contracted with the Trust for the erected house in South Australia. It was done; the contract was executed in two sections. A, the section fee on board Hamburg. That was the purchase part of the contract.
Then the Trust paid the ship ocean freight, it was part of the contract of course, it was all within the contract sum, but that sort of was the noman’s land in between. And then the local company took over the delivery of the goods from the ship and the erection and then was paid in the usual way of progress payments from the Trust. So before we could claim the first footings, or the first walls, and the first rooves, or whatever goes with it, we had to - on our hands and knees probably, as the saying goes, go to the Trust and get a loan from the Trust to exist. Because we had no money at all, and weren’t allowed to bring any money from Germany.
The German Mark was very restricted in those days. So, financially it was a very very trying time. Business wise, from the company’s point of view, and of course, also from the personal point of view, the first wage had to be used for butter and for bread and so on. For bread and margarine, whatever there was in those days. And while most of the other companies, be they English or Dutch, French all those companies were involved in Australia. Most of those if not all of the companies dealt on a different basis with the housing instrumentalities, mostly Housing Commissions of the eastern states or so forth. That they were contracted on the basis that the Trust purchased the homes on a FOB basis, or a CF basis in Port Adelaide, or Port Melbourne or such like, and then a separate company was formed in Australia to undertake the erection of the homes, and Wender & Duerholt, as far I know, they remember, was the only company that contracted to the house finally erected and handed over to the Trust, and was paid accordingly, apart from the contract amount being split up into FOB amount, the shipping, the ocean freight, and the local content of the contract.
A. H.
I believe you remember Mr. Ramsay. How did you get on with him?
W. W.
Oh Mr. Ramsay was the well-known GM or General Manager of the Housing Trust. The person we were first, we were Mr. Schultz and Mr. Link and myself, and we were introduced to Mr. Ramsay in our very early days in March 1952. And he was the type of man that we felt we could go at any time and plead with and ask for help. He realised the tremendous difficulties the company, or as human beings, we as persons had to go through in coming, practically thrown into the Adelaide scene, and having tremendous tasks ahead of us. And that went through to later years, that at any time we felt we had a problem, we could go to him and ask for advice, and I do not remember a day when he was not somehow able to solve our problem, or to put us on a different track. Put us on the right track, he’s never put us on the wrong track. That is how we remember Alec Ramsay.
A.H.
That’s very good. Who else did you have to deal with?
W. W.
Ooh, in the olden days, we dealt with the Account, Mr. Bruce Davis, quite a personality. In financial matters. On the material point of view, we were very much connected with Mr. Dick Bagot, and his deputy Mr. Rod Shannon. Mr. Bagot of course is dead; Mr. Rod Shannon is still alive. He was, until recently Marketing Manager for the Woods and Forests Department. And I remember Dick Bagot as a very very helpful man, being immediately, having been connected immediately with the supply problems, he has helped me in my early years a great deal to overcome materials difficulties, supply, to overcome supply difficulties, materials in Australia was very scarce.
You had to queue up for a bag of cement, hence of course, the initial stipulation, that we had to be completely independent of any Australian resource, short of say, the water story and all that I mentioned, we brought our own cement of course, but then timber had to come from the west, and in later years, as we became, as we grew. Wender & Duerholt became a very independent company in South Australia, supply wise. We marched out and bought timbers in America for our roof constructions. We produced our own roof trusses. We had our own joinery. We went frequently to Malaya to purchase timbers for many many years, we did that. And in the Housing Trust era, Mr. Bagot was a very helpful gentleman in supporting our independence.
A. H.
Were you the only member of your initial group who spoke English?
W. W.
No, of course Mr. Schultz, Mr. Rudolf Schultz, was the English speaking part
of our.
A. H.
Yes, he was the one who lived in Australia.
W. W.
Who had migrated from Germany. He was born in Berlin actually, and migrated for the German motorcar firm, GKW, before the War. And then during the War he was interned.
A. H.
So you were, you were telling me you were fairly young then, Twenty-two?
W. W.
I was 22 when I came from Germany yes. I had some school experience in English and then Wender & Duerholt in the very early years after the war was occupied by the American Occupation Force and we were then, of course, working with the Americans together. Hence, the German people gradually got acquainted with English language, and I think we all had a smattering of English as we came. But when we landed in Melbourne, and got then aquainted with the Australian slang, we immediately capitulated and simply forgot everything we knew, because we had to learn right from scratch. The Australian language, in German school terms, and in German. Many times, the Australian English is so different from what would be heard in England or otherwise that we had to learn right from scratch.
A. H.
And what was your position with the company? I mean, how did they describe you?
W. W.
We came out as Assistant Managers, and then in 1955, we became Directors of the Company, and then gave the companies, companies business right to the day when Mr. Schultz and Mr. Link and myself separated from Wender & Duerholt.
End of interview recording. Why did the interview end? Because Water Wiegelmann notices it was recorded.
Summary of the Interview
Walter Wiegelmann began working for the large German company Wender & Duerholt as a school leaver in Germany in 1944. After the War the company successfully tendered for supplying the Housing Trust with prefabricated imported houses, to be erected on site without needing to use scarce local materials. In 1952 Mr Wiegelmann, then age 22, was sent to Adelaide as an Assistant Manager of the company’s contingent to deliver and build 500 houses. He remained in South Australia as a director of Wender & Duerholt (Australia) Ltd.
The company built 7,500 houses for the Trust over the next 21 years. He worked with the company until 1973. He speaks about the difficulties of international tendering; the Australian Federal Government’s involvement in the process; organizing the “army” of 150 men brought to Adelaide to erect the houses; building the houses at Dover Gardens; the formation of the Australian subsidiary with Rudolph Schulz of Melbourne as the resident director; the conditions under which he and the other 150 workers came to Australia; the transition from temporary work permit to migrant vis