Kevin Mackay SKINNER, OAM 1924 --2018

Shire Pioneer and Inspiration to Many

Written by Elizabeth Craig

for Sutherland Shire Historical Society Bulletin No.209, November 2018

Two phrases often used to describe this popular long-serving former Councillor and Shire President are ‘passionate about Sutherland Shire’, and ‘one of Sutherland Shire’s greatest leaders’.

 Kevin Skinner was elected to Sutherland Shire Council in 1962, retiring in 1987. His 25-year service included six terms as President (1973-1974 and 1981-1986).

 We can count amongst his achievements the establishment of more than 60 sporting and recreation areas in the Shire, his support of community projects, such as volunteer bushfire brigades (he was a life member of Menai Bushfire Brigade), the Camellia Gardens, the Sutherland to Surf race (see SSHS Bulletin, August 2018) and a new museum for Sutherland Shire Historical Society in1986.  He was also passionate about preserving the Shire’s natural environment, and fought to end sand mining in Kurnell.

 Tellingly, Kevin Skinner, a Labor politician, had the respect and the friendship of all sides of politics. Former Sutherland Shire Clerk, John Rayner explained: ‘His political opponents respected him because of his love of the Shire and because he desired to get things right in the community.’[i]

 We are fortunate to have in Sutherland Library’s Local Studies archive two oral history interviews with Kevin Skinner. One conducted by former Sutherland Chief Librarian, Bernard Sargent in 1993. And in 2006, Kevin and his wife, Gwen were interviewed by Elizabeth Craig.[ii]  These interviews provide insights into the making of the man and what drove him.

 Early years

Born in Mackay, in Queensland in 1924, Kevin, the youngest of nine children, was three months old when he lost his father after a motorbike accident. The local community rallied, holding fundraising functions for the family, raising enough money for Kevin’s mother to buy a house. A religious woman, she bought Evandale, a farmhouse on acreage attached to a Seventh Day Adventist estate in Cooranbong near Newcastle. Here the family were self-sufficient with an orchard, vegetable garden and cows, as well as the support of the church. ‘We all had jobs to do,’ recalled Kevin, ‘Mine was to pick up morning wood or kindling from under trees to light the fires.’ When the jobs were done the children could run wild – and did. ’We explored all the bush for miles around, up the hills and in the creeks. We couldn’t have had a better life.’

 The children went to the primary school at Cooranbong, but because of hernias which needed treating, Kevin didn’t start school until he was eight. At about this time Kevin’s mother became restless and for the next few years the family had several moves around the Central coast area.  The children were enterprising. At Brisbane Waters their landlord sold them a boat for £2 which they paid off at 2/- a week by selling cow manure to asparagus farmers and digging worms to sell to fishermen. By sixth class, Kevin had attended six schools. The family then moved to Hamilton so that the children still at home could go to a church high school.

 Independence

At 16, Kevin and his mother moved to Wahroonga in Sydney (the others had left home). When she was widowed for the second time, Kevin left school to help support his mother. He first worked on a pig farm at West Pennant Hills, getting up at 3.00am to feed the pigs, and later on a flower farm and market garden. Then a friend was leaving for New Zealand. He had a window cleaning business and offered Kevin his Indian motorbike and step ladders to take over the business, working around Haberfield. ‘I earned about ten times as much as I had on the pig farm,’ said Kevin.

 Although still only 17, Kevin enlisted for war service in 1941 using his brother’s birth certificate. His mother, a pacifist was very upset. ‘She told me she’d rather I be killed than to kill someone,’ recalled Kevin. She reported his age to the army which discharged him. Undeterred Kevin enlisted again, getting someone else to sign his application form. His mother gave him a small bible, with hundreds of passages underlined for his attention. He still had that bible when interviewed by Bernard Sargent in 1993. Kevin served in New Guinea with the 17^th infantry Brigade, 6^th battalion. He allocated five of his six shillings a day pay to his mother to make sure she was all right.

In 1945, while on home leave, Kevin attended a recreational picnic at Clifton Gardens. Here he met his future wife, Gwen Bulmer who was from Bexley. They married four months later, and Kevin was discharged from the army in August 1946.

Gwen’s father, a carpenter, was a great support to the young couple, and when Kevin spoke to him about his job prospects, he commented, ‘I don’t think you’d make a carpenter, but plumbers do a bit of everything. Why don’t you try that.’ He did. He applied to do a Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme (CRTS) set up by the government trade union movement. Kevin had to wait for four years to do the CRTS, but meanwhile he studied at St George Tech at night and got his drainers’ licence, working on weekends. After finishing the CRTS and working for a licenced plumber, he eventually got his licence and went into business for himself. Meanwhile, to expand his skills he did courses in carpentry, bricklaying and pressure welding.

When he saw an advertisement for a plumbing inspector at the Water Board, Kevin applied for and got the job. He continued with extra studies, doing a management course. Plumbing systems were in the throes of change and he enjoyed testing new programs and teaching them to other inspectors. Kevin was on the Water Board for 29 years and 9 months, finishing as Chief Inspector of Water Conservation. 

 Settling in Jannali

Kevin and Gwen visited a friend, Bob Sims, in Soldiers Road, Jannali. They loved the rural area. ‘It was Spring and very pretty with the wildflowers out,’ he recalled. When a block became available in Mitchell Avenue, right beside the railway station they bought it for £68, paying it off at £3 per week. It was a lot of money, as nothing was saved after paying living expenses. Like everyone else in the army, Kevin smoked in those days and Gwen kept the budget for everything, including tobacco for Kevin’s smoking.

 Mitchell Avenue had no footpath and no sewer, but they had water and there was a huge drain alongside the road containing yabbis. ‘We had to put planks across it to get to our house.’ There were about four houses in the street – including the Ackermans and the Parsons. A lot of returned soldiers from the St George area were moving to Sutherland Shire because land was available and cheap. They built alongside the railway line because it was convenient for commuting to work.

 Gwen’s father built their house for them. He built a garage first, then cut the timber for the cottage – hardwood because you couldn’t get Oregon. There was a shortage of materials. You had to get a permit for bricks and for tiles. When the permits were granted and the materials eventually arrived, Gwen’s father put it all together piece by piece. ‘He was one of the best tradesmen you could ever meet,’ says Kevin. They moved in in 1947.

 Building was going on all around them. Some built a garage to live in while they built the house, others built the back half of a house and lived in it while they waited for the materials to build the front half.

 Pioneering spirit

Jannali had a small shopping centre in that early post-war period.  Joe Cary’s Butcher Shop was on the western side of the line, and a small mixed business on the corner. Across the line was Fishers’ general store, post office and banking agency. Mail was delivered on horseback by Mrs Larkin. The Fisher family had been there for a long time, and their son Rod became a local doctor.

 The Fishers were very good, supportive people, as were the MacPhersons, who took over from them. Gwen recalled that when she and Kevin were having a hard time financially, Mrs MacPherson arranged to give her credit for anything she needed but could not pay for. This community spirit was right through Jannali. People helped each other out without being asked. The Skinners attribute this spirit of cooperation to a pioneering mentality and a regimented life in the army. ‘If people didn’t work together as a unit, you didn’t succeed,’ explained Gwen.

It was this pioneering spirit which led Jannali residents to chip in and build an RSL hall on land leased from the Council. ’That became the focal point of all the good times,’ recalled Kevin. ‘We had dances there. It was a happy group of people.’  On Friday nights it was men’s night while the women stayed home to mind the kids. ‘Men needed to get together, to talk, to reminisce,’ says Gwen. They played cards, or darts. ‘It was really good.’

 During the devastating 1954 floods in the Hunter Valley, Kevin and Gwen organized a food collection to take up to flood victims. Kevin borrowed some loudspeakers and loaded them on to his truck, and, with the help of other RSL members, drove around the Shire calling for tinned food and good clothing. ‘We had a tremendous response,’ he recalled. ‘We got more food and clothing than we could carry on the truck.’ Tom Russell, who later became the Jannali newsagent, drove up to the flood area with him. Keith Bates, local Liberal Councillor and a Jannali resident organized trucks from Sutherland Council to carry supplies up to Maitland.

 Bushfires were an ever-present danger in the Shire and the RSL had organized for knapsacks and a hose post – a big box with fire hoses and pipes to go to the waterboard mains – to be put in a nearby house. Kevin met with the hose post crew to practise. ‘We’d run the hoses out and play being firefighters,’ he said. It got Kevin interested in bushfire fighting, and it was partly because of his wish to improve facilities for the volunteer firemen that he decided to run for Council. He won a seat in 1962, on his second try.

        Politics

Kevin first became interested in politics in the early 1950s. He was a delegate to the RSL’s Southern Metropolitan District Council which held meetings in Mortdale. Here he met and became good friends with people on both sides of the political fence. They included Labor men like Gough Whitlam (later Australian Prime Minster) and Arthur Gietzelt (who became Sutherland Shire President and then Federal Minister for Veterans Affairs), and Liberal followers, including Ray Watson (later a Shire Councillor) and a Sutherland solicitor. ‘That taught me that even if you were on opposing sides in political parties you gained far more by discussion and dialogue than if you tried to belt your ideas into their heads,’ remarked Kevin.

 In conversation Gough suggested that Kevin join a political party.  Kevin became a foundation member of the Jannali Labor Party, and eventually a life member.

Work with Sutherland Shire Council

Kevin Skinner did make vast improvements in conditions for volunteer bushfire fighters, but his first role on election to Council, was as member of the Parks and Playgrounds Committee. With two children of his own, Ross and Robyn, he was very aware of the lack of sporting facilities for kids in the Shire. Women’s sports were totally neglected, and there was no tenure of grounds for sporting clubs. He set about to change that situation, and when he was appointed Chairman of the Parks and Playgrounds and the Sports Advisory committees, he convinced Council to approve the secure allocation of grounds for sporting clubs in return for the Clubs helping to manage and maintain the grounds.

More than 60 new sports grounds were allocated between 1964 and 1971. One Kevin found most satisfying was Bellingarra, allocated to women’s netball. Lack of available funds to put facilities on the grounds did not deter him. Using his plumbing skills, and with the voluntary help of former plumbers and others, he put in toilets and sewers, thus saving hundreds of dollars.

Waratah Park complex was another project Kevin was proud of. It catered for several codes – athletics, soccer, Rugby League, Aussie Rules and tennis as well as the swimming pool. A closed bike circuit was built around the park. Kevin organized through Council that a bee garden be established there so that bee keepers had somewhere to raise Queen bees. A small museum was eventually built and people from school kids to retirees come through in buses to learn how bees are raised and honey is formed. ‘That is a real success story,’ remarked Kevin.

The catalyst to improving conditions for bushfire fighters

In 1968 Kevin was involved in the worst fire in the Shire’s then recorded history, causing a state of emergency to be declared. ‘Most of the Shire was in flames,’ recalled Kevin. He told of his nightmare journey, driving with other volunteers through Bundeena with flames all around them, and having to kick fallen burning trees off the road to get the vehicle through. ‘It was a scene of absolute devastation,’ he said. They eventually got to Audley and were called to Engadine where the fire had jumped the railway line, the railway station was burning and attempts were being made to save nearby houses.

 There was a Council meeting on that night and Kevin went straight to the meeting from the fire. He was hot and sweaty and his hair was a mess when he addressed the meeting. He told them about the conditions and said that what upset him most was that all the bushfire fighters had to supply their own overalls, boots, and a lot of the equipment they used. His proposal that Council supply clothing and safety equipment in future was adopted unanimously. Fire fighters also wanted a full-time fire officer, and this was a harder battle to win. After a good deal of debate in which fire fighters dumped their gear in front of Council Chambers, declaring that they would fight no more fires without one, a fire officer was appointed. And later, with the help of a supportive media, a purpose-built tanker was designed and approved, as was the fabric, design and the orange colour of protective suits shown by research to be the most suitable in fire-fighting situations.

 Kevin’s many battles to protect our natural environment from destruction is evidence of his passion for conservation. He wasn’t always successful. He failed to stop sandmining in Kurnell, but he and Arthur Gietzelt were successful in their determination to prevent an airport being built at Towra Point, thus saving the wetlands which attract migratory birds. He learned an appreciation of nature from his mother. ‘She taught us as kids that we didn’t own the bush, but we were guardians of it,’ he said.

 Other achievements Kevin was proud of include his naming of the suburb of Kareela in 1968. It was planned to be ‘Salisbury’, but Kevin wanted an Aboriginal name. ‘Kareela’ means south wind, and although it’s from a South Australian language, the Geographical Names Board eventually accepted it. The Joseph Banks Native Garden, a 1970 project for the Cook Bicentennial was also Kevin’s idea.

Gwen Skinner, Kevin’s beloved wife and support for 69 years, passed away on 26 May 2014.

Kevin Skinner retired from service on Sutherland Shire Council in 1987. That year he was awarded an OAM for his service to local government.  He was chosen as one of the 100 ‘Faces of the Shire in the Council’s centenary celebration in 2006.

Councillor Peter Scaysbrook probably summed it up for everyone when he said earlier this year that Kevin, ‘… was of an era that has probably gone forever, but he will remain an inspiration to us all.’

To hear interviews with Kevin Skinner in full, contact the Local Studies Librarian at Sutherland Library and arrange a time to listen to them.

References:

1. St George and Sutherland Shire Leader, 28 June, 2018

2. Oral History Interviews with Bernard Sargent (December 1993) and Elizabeth Craig (June 2006), Sutherland Shire Library, Local  Studies

3. St George and Sutherland Shire Leader, 18 July, 2018