STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OH 730/37

Full transcript of interviews with

HENRY NINIO

AND

LYNETTE NINIO

on 2 and 23 May, and 13 June, 2013

by Madeleine Regan

Recording available on CDs

Access for research: Unrestricted

Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study

Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the Adelaide City Council Archives

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OH 730/37 HENRY NINIO AND LYNETTE NINIO

NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT

This transcript was donated to the State Library. It was not created by the J.D. Somerville Oral History Collection and does not necessarily conform to the Somerville Collection's policies for transcription.

Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The State Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the interview, nor for the views expressed therein. As with any historical source, these are for the reader to judge.

This transcript had not been proofread prior to donation to the State Library and has not yet been proofread since. Researchers are cautioned not to accept the spelling of proper names and unusual words and can expect to find typographical errors as well.

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First interview with Henry Ninio

recorded by Madeleine Regan

2 May 2013

at Henry’s home in Glenelg North1

for the City of Adelaide Oral History (Extension) Project 2012/2013

Also present is Henry’s wife, Lynette

Oral Historian (OH): Thank you, Henry, for agreeing to this interview.

Henry Jacques Nino (HN): You’re welcome.

OH: We’re going to start with some background information about you, and then

your own family here. Could you give me your full name please?

HN: Henry Jacques Ninio.

OH: And your date of birth?

HN: 27 October, 1935.

OH: Henry, where were you born?

HN: I was born in Cairo, Egypt.

OH: Thank you. I’d just like for the record the names of your parents, and where

they were born.

HN: My mother was Irma and my father was Jacques, and they were both born in

Turkey.

OH: What was your mother’s family name?

HN: Abraham.

OH: What were their occupations?

HN: My father was a chemist, my mother used to be a teacher.

1 The correct address is Novar Garden

4

OH: And what were your parents doing around the time that you were born?

HN: My father used to own a drug store, and my mother just looked after the

children at home.

OH: How many siblings did you have?

HN: I had two, two brothers, one older and one younger.

OH: Right! So you were the middle one?

HN: I was the middle one.

OH: I’ve already said that Lynette is here with us today, and Lynette’s name before

you married?

HN: Gibson.

OH: Gibson. And Lynette isn’t right with us at the moment, but where was Lynette

born?

HN: She was born in Adelaide.

OH: Ah hah! And her occupation?

HN: She’s a chemist.

OH: Okay! And your children?

HN: I have three, Daniel ... two actually, Daniel and Jacqueline.

OH: Where are they living at the moment?

HN: Jacqueline is living in Sydney and Daniel is living here.

OH: Jacqueline has a really important role?

HN: Yes, she’s a rabbi, and Daniel has a very important role too, he’s a cardiologist.

OH: Here in Adelaide?

HN: Yes, here in Adelaide.

OH: Well thank you for that information. We’re going now to talk about your early

education. So you said that you were born in Cairo, and did you go to primary

school in Cairo?

HN: Yes, I went to primary and secondary school in Cairo, English Mission College.

OH: When you were at school, what were your aspirations?

5

HN: Well I really didn’t think much about them. My father made up his mind that I

should be a chemist, so that’s what I did.

OH: So when you finished your high school you went on to?

HN: University. I did two years in Cairo, but then I had to leave because of the War.

I was a refugee, I came to Adelaide.

OH: I was thinking about you coming to Adelaide because I understand that it was

1956?

HN: Yes.

OH: So the circumstances were difficult?

HN: Yeah, they were very difficult.

OH: And what happened with your family, like did you come with your parents?

HN: I came with my brother, Albert, my older brother, and the rest of the family

followed on a few years later.

OH: Why Adelaide?

HN: We had an uncle who used to live here, he brought us over.

OH: Where was he living?

HN: He was living in Malvern.

OH: And is that where you lived first?

HN: Yes. Yes, I lived with him for a while.

OH: So in 1956 you were 21?

HN: Twenty.

OH: What happened when you first arrived?

HN: Well I had to enrol at the university, find myself an apprenticeship because it

was an apprenticeship situation being a chemist, and I was apprenticed, and I

went to university.

OH: What were the arrangements? Were your first two years of Pharmacy certified?

HN: No, they weren’t, I had to start from scratch.

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OH: I meant to ask you the languages that you grew up speaking. Could you tell me

those?

HN: Yes, I, I spoke English and French and Spanish, and Arabic and Italian.

OH: So when you arrived in Adelaide, you were already a proficient English

speaker?

HN: Yes, I was.

OH: So to then go to university was, what was that like?

HN: It was alright, I had no problems at all.

OH: When you say that it was an apprenticeship arrangement, how many years was

the Pharmacy course?

HN: Four.

OH: Did you have to be an apprentice for the complete four years?

HN: Yes, I did.

OH: And where did you find your apprenticeship?

HN: I was indentured first at a pharmacy in Plympton, and then one in Gouger

Street. I changed because it was closer to the university.

OH: I wanted to ask you what were your first memories of Adelaide?

HN: I always found it a very beautiful place, I loved Adelaide from the start. The

buildings, the people, the way of life, I loved the whole place.

OH: What about the contrast with Cairo?

HN: A big, big contrast.

OH: In what ways?

HN: Well they were very primitive in Cairo in many ways, compared to Australia, so

you can’t really compare them, they were two different worlds.

OH: And what about size of the City, or of Adelaide?

HN: It’s very small compared to Cairo.

OH: The sense of living in Adelaide, some people say that in the ’50s there just

weren’t people around.

7

HN: No, I didn’t have any trouble, I had family here, and I had no problems at all.

OH: Do you remember what the City looked like in terms of, say, transport or

shopping, that kind of thing?

HN: It’s completely different from what it was today. Shopping especially, it was

mainly strip shopping, there were no, no supermarkets or shopping centres, or

anything like that, just the four big department stores, and the strip shopping

centres all around Adelaide. It’s completely different.

OH: Easy to get around?

HN: Yes, it was quite easy, there was the buses and the trams.

OH: When you were a student at the university, how did you use the City?

HN: Well I studied in the City and I was an apprentice in the City, and I worked in

the City, so I used the City a lot really. I was mainly in the City.

OH: And what about for your social life as a young man, what would you have done,

or would you have had time for social life?

HN: Yes, I was a member of the sporting club called the Maccabi, it’s a Jewish

sporting club, and all my connections really were through that.

OH: So you had a strong connection right from the beginning with the Jewish

community?

HN: Yes.

OH: Where was the synagogue at that time?

HN: In Synagogue Place in the City.

OH: Ah! The first synagogue?

HN: Yes.

OH: How big was the community in those days?

HN: It used to be about 1,500-2,000.

Lynette Ninio (LN): It was a bit less than that I think when Henry first came, about

1,500 maybe.

OH: Were there many young people like you who had come new to Adelaide?

HN: Yes, there were quite a few.

8

OH: From Egypt?

HN: Yes.

OH: The sporting club, what sort of things did you do?

HN: I played basketball and squash.

OH: Was that located in the City or in the suburbs?

HN: In the suburbs.

LN: It was in Walkerville.

HN: In Walkerville.

OH: Right! And did you continue living in Malvern?

HN: No, I was there for about a year I suppose, and then I went to Payneham, I

moved with my brother to Payneham, in a very, very small apartment. It was

very hard, it was very, very small.

OH: How, how did you finance yourself?

HN: My brother, he helped me along, plus I got a very small amount of money from

my apprenticeship, not much but just enough to live.

OH: So that was the usual arrangement for chemists to pay a small amount?

HN: Yes.

OH: Would you remember the sort of hours that you would have had to have served

in that apprenticeship?

HN: It was three days a week.

OH: So you were studying two days and working three days?

HN: Mm, pretty much.

LN: Each year the number of hours that you studied, and the number of hours that

you were in the actual pharmacy working, differed, so some years you spent

more time in the pharmacy than at university, other years you spent more time

at university than at the pharmacy.

HN: That’s right.

9

LN: And in a couple of years there were night lectures and practicals as well, so

sometimes you’d have a very long day at the university, long contact hours,

they were all contact hours.

OH: Yes, not like being an Arts student?

HN: No.

[Laughter]

OH: How many people would have been in your year?

HN: About 25, 30.

OH: And there was enough work in pharmacies for the apprentices to carry ...

HN: Pharmacy was a very good profession then, it’s not anymore, it’s very bad.

OH: So you completed your degree in 1960 and what did you do then?

HN: I was employed by chemists for under some of their branches.

OH: And which chemist was that?

HN: Several of them. There was Freeman, the chemist; Somerville, the chemist;

Sauer, the chemist.

OH: Who was that?

HN: Sauer [Henry spells the name Sauer].

OH: Oh, okay. Were these the ones in the City?

HN: Yes.

OH: So Gouger Street?

HN: Yes.

OH: Who owned the one in Gouger Street.

HN: Somerville.

OH: Who were the customers in Gouger Street at that time?

HN: They were mixed, multi-racial, multi-racial a lot, and Australians of course.

OH: Was it a pharmacy that served residents, or was it mainly for people who

worked in the City.

10

HN: Both, both.

OH: And then what about Hindley Street, who was the owner of that one?

HN: Freeman.

OH: And how different was that?

HN: It was quite different because it was in the centre of the City. It was next to the

Theatre Royal as a matter of fact, and it was quite, quite different.

OH: Did you ever get any stars who needed [laughs] ...?

HN: No [laughs].

OH: So the last one in James Place was owned by?

HN: That was a Freeman shop as well.

LN: No, that was Lou Ravesi’s.

HN: No, in James Place she said.

OH: Yes.

LN: Oh, James Place, sorry.

OH: So that was Freeman as well?

HN: Mm.

OH: How different was that pharmacy?

HN: That was almost similar to the one in Hindley Street, because it was in the

centre of the City, very close to the department stores.

OH: The kind of customers who were coming through would have been different

from say the ones at Gouger Street?

HN: Very, very few residents, mainly the people who worked in the City. There

were a lot of people working in the City at that stage, 65,000, something like

that, quite a few.

OH: Coming in like every day?

HN: Mm.

OH: What about Lou Ravesi, did you also work for him?

HN: Yes, I worked for Lou Ravesi in Grote Street.

11

OH: Oh, so you were in Gouger Street and Grote Street?

HN: Both.

OH: Right! Was there any difference in the pharmacies?

HN: Yes! In Ravesi it was Italian-oriented, a lot of Italian customers.

OH: And in Grote Street?

HN: Mixed.

OH: How long did you work in that kind of situation where you were moving

between the pharmacies?

HN: How many years would that have been?

LN: Well I think you left in 1968 or 1969 when you ...

HN: About, about ten years.

LN: It may have been later but ...

OH: Yeah! So 1968 was the perfume, yeah.

LN: Yes, but Henry continued to work in pharmacies even after we first opened that

first perfume shop.

OH: Oh, okay.

LN: Because that didn’t make money [laughs].

OH: No, no, that’s true, and we’ll get onto that in a moment.

LN: I think one of the things that was interesting was that the pharmacy that Henry

worked in, in Grote Street, was the first long-hours pharmacy in Adelaide, they

opened late.

OH: Was that the Lou Ravesi one?

LN: And that was the new Ravesi store, and that was very long hours, wasn’t it?

HN: Yes.

LN: The first time that they had an after-hours pharmacy.

OH: That’s interesting. Where was that located?

HN: Right in the centre of Gouger Street.

12

OH: So close to the [Central] Market?

HN: Yes, very close.

OH: Oh, that’s, that’s interesting. Were there kind of legal requirements for most

pharmacies to close at a certain time?

HN: Yes, we had to close at 6pm, but we stayed open until midnight.

OH: And what kind of people were buying at the pharmacy at that time?

HN: Mainly emergencies.

OH: Oh right, interesting! So it meant that you would have had good access to the

Market?

HN: Yes, I still go there often.

OH: Did you have a favourite stall or place that you went to?

HN: No, it’s a fantastic place, the Market, it caters for just about everybody.

OH: And was Lucia’s open at that time?

HN: Yes, yes she was.

OH: So you could expect to have good coffee?

HN: Good coffee and good pizza.

OH: That’s great! I’ve also got down here that you were a founding partner of

Simes?

HN: Yes.

OH: And that was, the date that I’ve got is about 1961?

HN: And you’re right.

LN: Yes.

OH: Can you tell me about being a co-founder of that partnership?

HN: Yes. His name was Alex Siros, he was a Greek, and we started a wholesaling

business in perfumery and pharmaceuticals.

LN: I think you have to remember that there were four partners originally.

HN: Yes, but only for a very short time.

13

LN: Short time, mm, and it started in order to bring some pharmaceuticals from

Italy. Was that right?

HN: Yes.

OH: What kind of pharmaceuticals?

HN: Italian pharmaceuticals.

OH: Was that over the counter or ...?

HN: Yes.

OH: What would be examples of that?

HN: Oh, I don’t remember, it’s such a long time ago.

OH: It’s interesting because I did have here that perfumery, cosmetics, and baby

products.

HN: Yes, yeah, baby products came after.

LN: They came later.

OH: So why did you decide, or why did the partnership decide, to be selling these

goods that came from Europe?

HN: Well it was a source of getting merchandise that you couldn’t get anywhere

else, especially the baby products. They came from America.

LN: But the Italian pharmaceuticals, it was because the clientele at Ravesi’s were

mostly Italian, and they remembered certain things that they had.

HN: That’s true.

LN: And that they wanted to bring in from home. So there were, I can’t remember

the name, the one that was like Eno’s, and several ...

OH: Oh, the one, the powder that frothed up?

LN: Yes, over the counter, those sorts of things, and just common everyday

medications that people were familiar with, so they formed this company in

order to bring some of those into the shop, and then distribute them.

OH: So you were a young entrepreneur?

HN: Yes, you can say that [laughs].

OH: If you formed that partnership, were you also selling to other pharmacies?

14

HN: Yes, indeed.

OH: Just in Adelaide?

HN: Yes.

OH: So you would have had to have had a warehouse?

HN: Yes, we had a big warehouse in Magill Road, off Magill Road, and we

wholesaled from there. We had the reps on the road selling, and it started off

very small and then it grew up slowly.

OH: Was it possible to manage the growth in ...?

HN: Yes, yes.

OH: So that was an interesting parallel activity to the pharmacy?

HN: Yes. I didn’t stay in pharmacy very much longer after that.

OH: Because you …?

HN: I didn’t like it very much.

OH: And by this time had your parents come to Adelaide?

HN: Yes, they had, they had.

OH: Where did they live when they came?

HN: They, they had a flat off Anzac Highway.

OH: Did your father practice here?

HN: No, no.

OH: Was the next step for you opening the perfumery?

HN: Yes.

OH: And I’ve got down here that it was around 1968?

HN: That’s right.

OH: So can you tell me what led you to make that decision?

HN: Well there was a need for a perfume shop in Adelaide because there wasn’t one

so ...

OH: How did people buy their perfume at that time?

15

HN: In the department stores and the pharmacies, but mainly the department stores. I

wanted a shop that specialised in perfumery, and I opened it.

OH: So what were you selling first of all in say the 1968-69?

HN: Mainly the French perfumes.

OH: And so you had to import them yourself?

HN: No, there were people importing them here, and I used to buy it from them.

OH: Where was that first shop?

HN: In the City Cross (Arcade).

OH: So the City Cross was already there in 1968?

HN: I was one of the first tenants.

OH: What was it like having this exclusive first perfume shop?

HN: It was very scary because it was something that was not known, and I had to

really promote hard and work hard.

OH: How did you promote?

HN: Advertising and give lectures.

OH: That’s interesting. Where did you give the lectures?

HN: WEA [Workers’ Educational Association].

OH: Oh, on perfume?

HN: Yeah.

OH: Oh! And what sort of people would go along to your lectures?

HN: All sorts of people were there.

LN: Well I think the fairly typical WEA audience, I think they were mostly middle-

aged people, not very young because most young people were not interested,

but that was much later actually when you got to the stage ... He did a lot of

training of staff so that our staff were very knowledgeable about what they sold,

and that was the difference between the department store experience, and

coming to Henry’s Piaf, was that first of all, all the perfumes were in one

counter, and the staff had really good knowledge.

OH: Did you call your shop Piaf?

16

HN: Yes.

OH: What was the significance of Piaf?

HN: It was, it was French, very short, and very easy to remember.

OH: And was it related to the singer?

HN: Yes, I was very fond of her, her music.

OH: So you were like educating people about perfumes?

HN: Absolutely, yes.

OH: We were talking before the interview began about your nose, and somewhere, I

told you, I had read that you had one of the most excellent noses for perfume in

Australia.

HN: Yes, I, I had a very good nose, I could discern one perfume from the other one

quite easily. It was a gift.

OH: Did you try to impart that to your staff?

HN: Very difficult, very difficult. I explained it to them but they were all different.

OH: And in those days what were the major perfumes that women in Adelaide were

buying?

HN: Mainly they were French perfumes. There were a few from America, a few

from England, and a few from Australia, which I pretty much pioneered.

OH: And are these the perfumes that you created?

HN: Yes.

OH: I understand that your first perfume, or your first fragrance, was called Piaf?

HN: Yes.

OH: Where were your laboratories or work spaces?

HN: In Magill Road, in Stepney.

OH: So you continued to have that property there?

HN: Yes.

OH: And were you still selling the other lines of cosmetics and baby products?

HN: Yes, yes.

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OH: Did you set up a laboratory?

HN: Well yes, it was very small because it’s not difficult to make perfumes.

[Laughter]

OH: That surprises me, Henry. It must have taken some time to develop the different

perfumes, because you also created one called Boronia?

HN: Yes.

OH: And also one called Orient?

HN: Yes.

OH: Any others?

HN: Enchanté.

OH: And you weren’t happy with just creating Piaf?

HN: No, no.

OH: What led you to ...?

HN: We had a range of perfumes.

LN: Henry wanted to have a perfume that was an Australian perfume, which is

where Boronia came in, so we had the House perfume, and then Boronia.

OH: With the Boronia perfume, obviously you would have somehow been able to

source actual Boronia oil?

HN: Yes.

OH: And where did you source that from?

HN: From perfume suppliers. They were people who sold the primary products to

make perfumes, they sold Rose, Jasmine, Boronia, the whole lot.

OH: Where were they located?

HN: Mainly in Melbourne and Sydney.

OH: So you’d have to have it transported here?

HN: Mm.

OH: And in what kind of volumes would you have, say Boronia?

18

HN: Litres.

OH: And then you would have used that and added and created this really exquisite

perfume.

HN: Perfume.

OH: And then did you have to make decisions about bottles and how you would sell

it?

HN: I didn’t have much choice because Australian bottles are very limited. There’s

only one place that makes bottles in Australia and they were all very standard

and very ugly, they weren’t very nice looking bottles.

LN: Beer and soft drinks.

[Laughter]

OH: So did you continue trading in the City Cross?

HN: Yes.

OH: Did you grow beyond the City Cross?

HN: Yes, we had shops in pretty much all the shopping centres.

OH: And that was part of your plan to move your product?

HN: My, my plan was to franchise eventually, but it never happened.

OH: Did you move beyond South Australia with your perfumes?

HN: No, no.

LN: Yes we did, we went to Western Australia.

HN: Yes, we did, we had one shop in Western Australia, two, two shops.

OH: That must have added some complexity to your working life?

HN: I had a cousin who was looking for a job, and I sent her there, and she managed

them for me.

OH: Like how enjoyable was that for you, to be in that kind of world of perfume?

HN: Very, very enjoyable, very good.

OH: How much time would you have spent in the shop, and how much time making

perfume?

19

HN: The making was not very long, mainly in the shop.

OH: Right. I understand that you were able to develop another very strong interest,

kind of related to perfumes, in making a collection of bottles?

HN: Yes, I’ll show you some later if you like.

OH: I’d love to see them. Tell me about how you came to collect antique bottles.

HN: Well it seemed like a natural progression from one thing to the next, how the

bottles evolved from very primitive ones to the common day ones.

OH: Where did you place your collection as it was growing?

HN: In Simes, in the warehouse, we had a showroom.

OH: So you would gradually accumulate, and did people give you bottles as well?

HN: I had three people giving me bottles.

OH: Oh! So you built up a wonderful collection?

HN: Mm.

OH: One other thing that I think I’ve left out was, Henry, you became Director and

part-owner of Birks Chemist?

HN: Yes, that’s right. My partner and I and a third person, another chemist, bought

Birks Chemist, we bought the building and the business.

OH: And that was on the corner of?

HN: Gawler Place and Rundle Mall.

OH: You would have been in the City at the time that Rundle Mall became the Mall?

HN: Yes, I was indeed.

OH: And that was, I happen to know, 1976, so you would have been in City Cross at

that time?

HN: Yes.

OH: You became a member of the Rundle Mall Committee?

HN: Yes, I was.

OH: Why was that committee established?

20

HN: It was established to ... for the Mall, to get people to come and shop in the Mall,

come and visit the Mall.

OH: And you were a representative of a particular group?

HN: The retail group.

OH: And I understand the small retailers?

HN: Small retailers.

OH: Because there was also a representative for the?

HN: Department stores.

OH: For you as a small trader, were there issues that were created because of the

Mall?

HN: Yes, there were always issues with the Mall, spruikers and the fountain, where

it should be located, and things like that, the escalators.

OH: So you had a position on a lot of the issues?

HN: Yes.

OH: How was the balance between the small retailers and the department stores?

HN: Well it wasn’t, it wasn’t very balanced, the department stores ruled the roost

really.

OH: And so it was obviously important then to have a representative?

HN: Yes, very important.

OH: Was your role then to report back to your group?

HN: Yes. I had a newsletter which went out to them, explaining to them what we

were trying to do, and how we were trying to do it; the promotions, the

advertising, the things that went on in the Mall.

OH: You know when you think about your association with the shopping centre

really, of Adelaide, from the time that you were apprenticed as a chemist, was it

a big change to have a Mall?

HN: Very big, yes, very, very big.

OH: What do you think resulted from that?

21

HN: Well it changed the shopping habits of people a lot. Instead of going to the

small suburban shops, they used to come to the City.

OH: Do you think it increased the numbers of people who came to the City?

HN: Yes.

OH: That’s interesting. At that time what was the relationship that the committee had

to the City Council?

HN: It didn’t have a relationship really.

LN: Was there not a representative on the Council, on the Rundle Mall Committee,

from the Council? I think there would have been.

OH: Yes, and I should have prefaced that, because the Lord Mayor chaired the

committee.

LN: That’s right.

OH: And I think that the Hindmarsh Ward representative was there as well.

HN: Mm, mm.

OH: I guess my question really is the City Council obviously felt strongly about the

development of the Mall?

HN: Always has, but we haven’t got it right. They’re still squabbling about it now

[laughs].

OH: One of those chestnuts?

HN: Yes.

OH: I wanted to ask you about your interest in the Adelaide City Council, and we’ll

kind of move into that area now because you had 14 years of being involved

with the City Council, and I’d like to ask you how did you first become

interested in standing for ...?

HN: Well, I thought I could do more for the City by being on the Council and

voicing the opinion of the small traders, so I joined.

OH: What would you have thought at that time, say 1983 you were first elected to

the Gawler Ward, and I see unopposed ...?

HN: Mm.

OH: What had you hoped to contribute at that point?

22

HN: Well it’s very difficult to make a contribution on your own, you have to have a

group of people, like-minded, that thought the same way as you did and voted

accordingly, so that’s what I tried to do, is to make groups of people that

thought the same as I did.

OH: I notice, I’ve got three committees that you were a member of at that time, and I

think the first one is Works, Traffic and Parking. Were the things like traffic

and parking important at that time?

HN: Parking was paramount, very, very important. If it weren’t for the car parks at

the City Cross that the Council owns, there wouldn’t be anybody coming into

Rundle Mall at all. They actually built them, they bought them and built them.

OH: So you think that was really significant?

HN: Very significant, it made a huge difference.

OH: Another committee that you were on was Legislation, Properties and General,

and I know it’s probably, we’re talking about 30 years ago, but the next one I

think is really interesting, Health, Parks and Community Service, the fact that

those things were put together, but I’m wondering like were you interested in

those areas of Health?

HN: Mm, I was.

OH: Was that because of your background as a pharmacist?

HN: No, I don’t think so, I was just ... I was interested in that because there were

many issues to do with Health. That’s when the AIDS (Acquired

Immunodeficiency Syndrome) was very strong, and I was a member of one of

these committees that monitored the propagation of the disease and that.

OH: And Parks?

HN: Parks not so much because we had beautiful Park Lands and they were very

well kept.

OH: And Community Service?

HN: Yes, I, I had a very soft spot for the homeless and the very poor who lived in the

City, the community of the City. I had to do a lot with the nuns and the people

that looked after them.

OH: At Hutt Street?

HN: Yes.

OH: Right! The Gawler Ward was in the City but not part of the big shopping focus?

23

HN: No, it was in the Hindley Street area.

LN: West of King William Street.

HN: I only stayed there for two years and then I moved to, to Hindmarsh Ward.

OH: Was that important for you to become a Councillor in the Hindmarsh Ward?

HN: Yes.

OH: Why was that?

HN: Because it was more central to the things I was trying to do.

OH: You had a second Councillor who was at that time with you. Who was that?

HN: Michael Harrison.

OH: Did you, like how did you work together, or did it work having two?

HN: Yes, you needed at least two per Ward.

OH: I noticed in a flyer that you had written that you saw that the Hindmarsh Ward

was a very multicultural business area, and that obviously was something that

was important to you?

HN: Yes, it was, and it was very multicultural.

OH: Do you think the fact that you were from a culture that was other than an Anglo

culture was important to other people?

HN: Some, some, not, not much.

OH: Lynette, you’re nodding?

LN: I think it was very important because a lot of people who came from other

countries identified with Henry on the Council at that time. There were other

members from other ethnic groups, like there were Greeks and Italians at that

stage as well, but a lot of people came to Henry because he had the language

benefits.

OH: Yes.

LN: They felt very comfortable talking with him, and he had that experience of

being an outsider when he first came.

OH: Yeah! So that, that sense of knowing that you would understand their

circumstances perhaps more than somebody who’d grown up here?

24

HN: Yes, that’s true.

LN: In fact he’d have people from the community coming to ask him to write a letter

for them, or to telephone for them, because their language, their English skills

were not so good. He was very popular because of that.

OH: I can imagine you would have been a really important resource, yeah.

HN: I was.

OH: One of the things that I understand in 1985, in that election, was that you

wanted to see the residential population increase?

HN: That was one of my aims.

LN: Always.

HN: Still is.

OH: Why is that important, do you think?

HN: Well, what is a city but the people, you need people to create a city.

OH: If there weren’t people living in the City, or in a city, what happens to the city?

HN: It just dies.

OH: And yet obviously people go into the City to work.

HN: Yes, but that’s, that’s reduced a lot now, not as much as before.

OH: I imagine in terms of creating a life outside working hours, would you see

residents as being important?

HN: Yes, very. They’re the lifeblood of the City really, because come 5 o’clock

everybody goes home, and it’s the people who live in the City that stay.

OH: Yes, yeah. Another very interesting item that I see was important to you at this

time was the issue of childcare arrangements and facilities in the City. Do you

remember your role in, in researching about that?

HN: No, I didn’t, I didn’t have a big role in that.

OH: But it was ...

HN: I just knew it was very important but I didn’t do very much about it.

OH: Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting, isn’t it, because one of the things that I think that

you were in favour of was a crèche or child-minding facilities?

25

HN: Yes.

OH: I see that you were also in favour of lower council rates?

HN: [laughs] Always.

[Laughter]

OH: Why?

HN: Always. Well because if you have the money there you spend it. If you pull the

strings a bit it becomes more, more viable.

LN: And at that time the, the areas around Adelaide, the aim was to keep the rates in

the City at a similar level to those in the immediate surrounding suburbs so that

there was no disadvantage to being in the City. So they had to considerably

discount rates otherwise if they paid the rates that the businesses paid, then it

would be not viable to actually live in the City.

OH: So in order to continue increasing the population, there had to be some kind of

rationale for people to live there, and council rates being kept low?

HN: With the businesses especially, more, more so than the residents.

OH: Did you want the business rates, the rates for businesses to be kept low too?

HN: Yes.

OH: How was that received?

HN: [laughs] Mixed.

OH: Yeah. During this time that you were a Councillor, say 1983-1987, you were

continuing to work in Piaf?

HN: Yes.

OH: Was it possible to manage the commitments of Council alongside ...?

HN: It was hard but I managed, yes.

OH: I imagine it would have been a busy life?

HN: It was a busy life.

OH: Because once you’re a Councillor and you’re on those committees, the cycle of

meetings continues?

HN: Yes.

26

OH: And Steve ... Steve, I’m looking at Steve Condous as being Lord Mayor. At the

time that Steve was Lord Mayor in 1987, you campaigned for Deputy Lord

Mayor?

HN: Yes.

OH: And Henry, why did you decide to take that step?

HN: Well I wanted to be Mayor eventually, so I thought it was a logical step to take.

OH: I can see that that would work.

HN: Yeah.

OH: How different was it, to become a Deputy Lord Mayor from being a

Councillor?

HN: No difference at all, you just did things for the Lord Mayor when he wasn’t

available. Other than that, nothing.

OH: So there weren’t added responsibilities?

HN: No.

OH: And Lynette, what about for you, did you have a role as a, married to the

Deputy Lord Mayor?

LN: As part of being married to a Councillor at that time there was a Lady

Mayoress’s Committee, which was headed by the current Lady Mayoress of the

time. It had been set up about ten years before I think, and Angela Condous was

Lady Mayoress at the time. We had a very big committee which fundraised for

City of Adelaide charities, so ...

OH: And you were involved in that?

LN: I became involved in that through Henry being on Council, and then

occasionally while he was Deputy Lord Mayor, then obviously I stepped in for

things for Angela as well, but not very often [laughs].

OH: How did you manage that?

LN: Oh, it was, it was actually really interesting because, as was the time later, you

met all sorts of people in the City that I wouldn’t otherwise have had contact

with.

OH: Were you working at that time?

LN: I worked part-time.

27

OH: Some of the committees that you were on as Deputy Lord Mayor, it seemed to

me that there were a greater number of committees, and I’m not sure if that was

true, but Planning and Environment was a committee that you were on, and

Policy and City Development?

HN: Mm.

OH: So I can see a theme running there, from the time that you were involved in the

Rundle Street Mall, the planning, the thinking about the City?

HN: Yes, yes.

OH: You were back on the Rundle Mall Committee because I think you’d had to

come off when you were the Councillor for Hindmarsh, but you were back with

Steve Condous when he was Lord Mayor.

One interesting committee was the Corporation Public Working Party, and I

was wondering, like do you have a memory of that?

HN: No [laughs].

OH: You obviously must have overseen ...

LN: There were a lot of committees [laughs].

OH: Yeah. But one that you might remember is the Central Market Working Party?

HN: Yes, I was, I was a member of that. That was a very interesting one because

they, they had specific problems the traders. They had to work only part-time,

they didn’t work every day of the week, and it was very hard for them really to

bring fruit in, bring it out, food. It was interesting but it was very hard.

OH: Do you remember whether there were any building development at that time in

the Market, you know, there had been a revamping of the buildings?

HN: Not at that time, no.

OH: Right, right. Another committee that you were a member of was the City of

Adelaide Sister City.

HN: Yes.

OH: What were your views on Adelaide being, or having Sister Cities?

HN: I think it’s a waste of time. It’s, it doesn’t give any, any result of note, and you

have obligations to them. You have to do certain things and go and visit, or they

come and visit, but it wasn’t successful really, still isn’t.

28

LN: It’s a good cultural exchange but it was never a great [pause] but not a great

business result.

HN: There was no business generated from it, or education exchanges, nothing like

that.

OH: It’s interesting, yeah. Then we’re moving on in your career in the Council. In

’91, ’92, you were Deputy Lord Mayor again, and I see that you were elected

unopposed [laughs], and I see this theme of Planning and Environment, Policy

and City Development, and Planning Approvals, so membership of these

committees. Reflecting back at that time, was it important for you to be on those

committees?

HN: Yes, it was.

OH: What did you want to contribute?

HN: I wanted to contribute to the actual planning of the city. There was so much to

be done, Victoria Square, Rundle Mall, Hindley Street. Rundle Street East was

my, my baby. I, I created it actually.

OH: What did you want to create?

HN: Well bring it to life, it used to be dead.

OH: After the East ...

LN: After the Market left.

OH: After the East End Market?

HN: Mm.

OH: And so what did you, what were some of the things that you did to bring the life

there?

HN: I found people that were prepared to put money to build units there and shops.

LN: I think you should explain how you brought Max ...

HN: Yes, I, I brought a developer from Sydney to do it.

OH: And that was Max?

HN: Liberman.

OH: And what in particular did he do?

HN: He actually did the constructions, all the units.

29

LN: The East End development, all that area behind the old East End Market, he

came over and negotiated with the government and the Council. There had been

previous efforts and attempts to do this, but Henry managed to get Max over,

whose experience enabled him to actually do it. He was involved with the

development of West Lakes, and had lived in Adelaide, moved to Sydney, but

Henry had known him for a long time, and he persuaded him to come back to

do that development.

OH: That apartment block right on the corner there of Grenfell [Street] and East

Terrace?

LN: All of them.

HN: All of them.

OH: All of them?

LN: That whole development.

OH: Very big!

HN: Very big.

LN: It was a huge thing.

OH: How well was it received at the time?

HN: Very well, very, very well.

OH: And why do you think that was?

HN: There was a need for it, obviously.

OH: So what were the benefits that you thought came from that initiative?

HN: More residents, more shops, more people.

OH: And a very beautiful place on the Park Lands there.

HN: It is, it is.

OH: You, in that time that you had your second term as Deputy Lord Mayor, were

involved again with the Adelaide Sister City, and you went to Austin, Texas, I

understand?

HN: Yes, yes.

OH: What was that experience like?

30

HN: It was different, I didn’t enjoy it very much.

LN: I loved it.

OH: So you went along too, Lynette?

HN: Yes.

OH: How different or how similar is the City of Austin, Texas?

HN: In size it’s very similar.

LN: It has a much bigger river though [laughs]. That was the major difference

physically I think, but it was a lovely city.

OH: And a mix of population?

HN: No, no not really.

LN: A lot of music.

HN: They didn’t.

LN: There was a lot of emphasis on music in the city, wasn’t there?

HN: Yeah.

LN: We took Kim Bonython with us.

HN: Yes.

LN: And quite a few interesting people who came with us that time.

OH: So how big was the group?

LN: There would have been 20 of us, maybe more.

HN: Thirty.

LN: Thirty.

HN: Yeah.

OH: What an interesting initiative to take. Was that the first visit to Austin?

HN: Yes.

LN: Well not the first Sister City visit, no, but it was the first for us.

HN: For us it was the first, yeah.

31

OH: Yeah, yeah. Oh, an interesting experience. I think that we will bring the first

interview to a close there, unless there is anything else that you can remember

from your time as Deputy Lord Mayor.

In the next interview we’ll begin with the time as Lord Mayor, but is there

anything else that you would like to say about your time as Deputy Lord

Mayor?

HN: No, not really. As I say, it wasn’t, being Deputy Lord Mayor wasn’t any

different from being a Councillor.

OH: Except probably a little bit more work.

HN: A little more work.

LN: A little bit more work.

OH: Yeah.

32

Interview No: 2

Second interview with Henry Ninio

Recorded by Madeleine Regan on 23 May 2013

at Henry’s home in Glenelg North2

for the City of Adelaide Oral History (Extension) Project 2012/2013

Also present is Henry’s wife, Lynette

Oral Historian (OH): Thank you very much, Henry, for agreeing to this interview, and

also to you, Lynette.

I’m going to follow up from last interview just one question, and that’s about

your collection of antique bottles, and I wanted to ask at its largest, how many

were in your collection?

Henry Jacques Nino (HN): Approximately 1,000.

OH: And they, they had quite a date range?

HN: Yes, from 4,000 BC right up to today. They still make very beautiful perfume

bottles in Venice and France, America now.

OH: How did you find your individual bottles?

HN: Mainly through antique dealers, and auctions.

OH: And now, how many would be in your collection?

HN: About 400-500.

OH: And the rest of them?

HN: The rest of them are at Simes. I’m not connected with Simes anymore, I left my

interest in Simes a few years ago.

OH: The 400 or 500 bottles that you have, were they your favourites?

HN: Some of them were, yes, some of them were. They’re all favourites, they’ve all

got something special about them.

2 The correct address is Novar Gardens

33

OH: Yeah, and I’ve seen them and they’re very beautiful. Well thanks for that

information, Henry.

We’re now going to turn the focus of this interview to your decision to become

Lord Mayor in 1993. You’d had ten years of experience in Council and that

included being a Councillor in two Wards, and also Deputy Lord Mayor for two

terms. So I’m wondering why you made that decision to become Lord Mayor.

HN: Well, I thought I could contribute something to the City. I had a lot of

experience especially as Deputy Lord Mayor you get into a lot of things that the

Lord Mayor would normally do, and it seemed to me like the natural thing to

do. My wife seemed quite keen on the idea so we, we did it together.

OH: And I noticed from newspaper cuttings that you had collected for the time that

you were Lord Mayor, that you called yourself a team, like a partnership.

HN: Yes, very much so.

OH: What about your campaign? I know that you were elected unopposed, but you

still had a campaign, and we’ve identified about seven issues that were part of

your campaign, and the first one was about having a united and cohesive

Council.

HN: Yes. Well during my, my term as Councillor for ten years, there was always a

divisive Council, it never formed a cohesive proper Council, so what I wanted

to do is ... We had two factions you see, we had the Development faction and

the Heritage faction, and I was more in the Development faction. I wanted to

see the City develop more and grow more, and there were others that wanted to

conserve all the old houses and all the old buildings that we had. Somewhere in

between lies the balance, but I think it’s almost about right now.

OH: The second issue is related to that, addressing the pro-Development and pro-

Heritage factions. The next item was about your decision to freeze rates for two

years. Can you tell me something about that?

HN: Yes, people didn’t like to pay rates, they were always against it, but to keep on

increasing the rates was not the way to go, we had to cut down on staff, cut

down on expenses, rather than increase the rates, so I made it my business to

make sure the rates were not increased for two years.

OH: Were you able to keep that promise?

HN: Yes, I was, yes I was.

OH: The next one, the next item in your campaign was to promote Adelaide as the

state’s greatest asset.

34

HN: Well it is, because it’s the hub of where everything important happens. The City

is really, we’re very much a City state, and Adelaide is in the city state.

OH: You also advocated more public consultation?

HN: Yes. One of the very first things I did was to have a Cabinet of my own,

independent of Council altogether, people from various, various walks of life,

the clergy, the welfare associations, people who lived in the City, worked in the

City, to get their ideas and their views, which I could put to Council, and then

they met once a month, which was very useful, very good for me.

OH: How was that received by Council?

HN: Not very well, half the Council thought it was a good idea, the other half said,

We have a Council, we don’t need any more input from anybody else, which is

wrong. We always need new ideas, new input, new initiatives.

OH: And for you that, that was the Lord Mayoral Advisory Committee that helped?

HN: That’s right.

OH: Another strong item in your campaign was about attracting more residents to

live in the City?

HN: There weren’t enough residents at all really. There was about 1,200 residents

when I took over, and when I finished there was about 2,000, so there was quite

a big increase.

OH: Why had that been a challenge for previous Councils to attract residents?

HN: Well there was, there was no, no place for them to live. We need housing, we

need flats, units, and there was always this Heritage faction that wanted to stop

that. I wanted to increase the availability of flats and units and developments.

OH: And the last one was about developing tourism, national and international. Had

that not been happening previously?

HN: Not, not at all, not, not in the slightest. I thought we should take the initiative

and promote the City as a tourist destination from overseas and interstate

especially, like the Barossa Valley, Victor Harbor, places like that.

OH: There’s a phrase that was used in a speech that was reported in the newspaper at

the time, that you wanted to jump-start the inner City [laughs]?

HN: Yes, yes I did. I wanted, I wanted things to happen, things were very stagnant,

they weren’t happening. The streets were getting older, the pavements were

getting older, Rundle Mall was getting not good. Victoria Square was a

shambles. The East End Market was a problem. Hindley Street was terrible, and

35

the East End especially, completely under-developed and useless, so I wanted

all that to happen, jump-start in fact.

OH: So you had really strong ideas about how you were going to ...

HN: Yes.

OH: ... come into this role?

HN: Yes.

OH: What happened when you became Lord Mayor, what was that like? Can you

remember how you felt?

HN: Oh, I felt very, very proud, and very, very happy. I thought I could achieve

something, and I think I did.

OH: Lynette, what was it like for you? What did it feel like when Henry became

Lord Mayor?

Lynette Ninio (LN): It was a, an amazing time because the, the contrast between our

life before and our life afterwards was just extraordinary, almost from one day

to the next. You went from fairly normal lifestyle [laughs] to something that

was, oh, just incredible.

OH: Do you remember your swearing in?

HN: Yes.

OH: Can you tell me about that?

HN: It wasn’t anything special, you just swear.

[Lynette laughs]

HN: We had the robes and ...

LN: I remember Henry being robed the first time.

HN: And with the chain, the Lord Mayoral chain.

LN: Because the Lord Mayoral chain is kept locked away because it’s worth ...

HN: Quite a few thousand dollars.

LN: Hundreds of thousands of dollars, it’s solid gold.

HN: Yes.

36

LN: And so ...

HN: There’s a picture of it there.

LN: ... it’s brought out only for special occasions, and so it was a, you know, whole

procedure to go through the robing and to have the chain placed and made

secure.

HN: It wasn’t easy to do, I had somebody help me to put, to get into the robe and put

the ...

LN: It’s very heavy.

OH: Who helped you? Did you have a ...?

HN: I had an Orderly who looked after me.

OH: Right!

HN: Bill.

OH: Bill, and what was his surname?

HN: Bill Slater.

OH: And so he would have known how to get you presented?

HN: Oh yes, he, he’d had years of experience.

OH: And was the chain heavy?

HN: No, it wasn’t all that heavy because it rested on the shoulders.

OH: When you put on the robes, how did that make you feel?

HN: Very special, very special indeed.

OH: Is there a ritual that involves the whole new Council at that point?

HN: No, we ... They all get sworn in one by one, and we become a Council, and then

we go to the Government House to meet the Governor, and get introduced to

the Governor, whoever it is. That’s a very interesting ceremony as well.

OH: And when you were introduced to the Governor ... Who was the Governor at

that time?

LN: Dame Roma Mitchell.

HN: Was it Dame Roma Mitchell? I think, I think so.

37

LN: Yes, it was, but do you remember the, the way that you went to Government

House?

HN: Yes, we had to walk down the street, down King William Street, from the Town

Hall.

LN: All robed.

HN: All robed, into Government House.

OH: All the Council?

HN: Yes.

OH: So you must have turned heads?

HN: Yes, we did.

LN: Well, the traffic was stopped and they all wore their robes, because the Council

members at that time wore robes as well, and the Aldermen had red robes and

the Council members had black robes, so it was an impressive sight.

OH: Very impressive! And then what happened once you were sworn in by the

Governor? Was there ...?

HN: It was a cocktail party they gave us, it was quite, quite, it was quite lovely.

OH: Were you required to make a speech at that point?

HN: No, I didn’t make a speech then.

OH: Oh, that’s interesting. So from there I wanted to ask you what staff did you have

as Lord Mayor? You had an Orderly?

HN: I had an Orderly, a driver, and two secretaries, two female secretaries.

OH: And what were their names?

HN: Bronwyn and Ivanka were the girls, and the driver was Bill, and Don.

OH: The work that your team did to support you, how important was that?

HN: Very important, very important, especially the secretaries. They had to make

sure all my agenda was right every day. I had a paper in front of me telling me

exactly what I had to do for the day, and they prepared receptions and meetings,

very important. I couldn’t do without them.

OH: It’s interesting that you had two secretaries.

38

HN: Mm.

OH: And were their roles different?

HN: One was a senior to the other one and, and very much the same work.

LN: Bronwyn was actually your Personal Assistant.

HN: My Personal Assistant.

LN: And Ivanka took care of most of the functions at that time.

OH: From the beginning did you have many functions?

HN: Yes, practically every day just about.

OH: So it was a fulltime role that you entered?

HN: Oh yes.

OH: And what would your hours of work generally have been?

HN: I used to go at 9am and finish at 5pm.

OH: And then if you had functions after work?

HN: I used to go to those as well, functions with speeches and openings, and meeting

important people. I met some very important people in my time.

OH: What about the first experiences of functions as Lord Mayor, do you recall how

you felt at that time?

HN: A bit nervous because it’s, it’s an important role, but afterwards you get used to

it and it becomes a routine, quite easy.

OH: When you gave speeches, how did you prepare for those? Did you have a

speech writer?

HN: I briefed a speech writer and then they wrote a speech for me.

OH: Because I imagine that you would have had a lot of different sorts of speeches

to give?

HN: Yes [laughs].

OH: And you wouldn’t have had time to prepare?

HN: It’s not so, so much, so much the time, yeah, yeah, it is the time, yeah.

39

OH: And Lynette, what about your first experience of Lady Mayoress, what was that

like?

LN: That’s very overwhelming actually. I had to open a conference and I don’t think

I’d even thought about it beforehand that these sort of things would happen. I

had a Personal Assistant who’d worked for the previous two, three Lady

Mayoresses, and she ran my life.

OH: What was her name?

LN: Margaret, Margaret Roberts, who was my right hand, my left hand, and my

head most of the time, she was absolutely amazing. So she briefed me to tell me

what I would have to do and we got through it together the first time [laughs],

but after that it became easier, but the first one was very scary.

OH: Do you remember what the conference was?

LN: No, but they gave me a mug as a gift, and I still have it [laughs]. I always

remember that mug, it was my first gift as Lady Mayoress.

[Laughter]

OH: Did you have role models of previous Lady Mayoresses?

LN: Yes, because there was a Lady Mayoress’s Committee, which was set up by,

oh, sorry I can’t remember which Lady Mayoress it was, but it was a large

committee that raised money for various organisations within the City. So I had

been a member of that committee from the time that Henry joined Council, so I

met with and worked with the previous three Lady Mayoresses, so that was a

great help.

OH: So you would have got to have known, I guess, some of the responsibilities?

LN: Yes, yes, and when Henry was Deputy Lord Mayor, while the Mayor was, Lord

Mayor was away, Henry was Acting Lord Mayor, so we did have some

opportunities to get an idea of what the role was about.

OH: When you say that you were on the Lady Mayoress Committee, and you were

chairing it, and I understand that there were 50 members?

LN: That committee was a very large committee. I think there were 80 members at

once stage. It was enormous.

OH: How did you manage that?

LN: Well I didn’t. I was very lucky that Angela Condous, who was the previous

Lady Mayoress, with her Executive – I was one of her Executive at the time –

we decided that we had to reduce the numbers, because there were a lot of

40

people there that had just ... were there in name only, and she wanted to bring

new people on to the committee, but she couldn’t do it, so we culled over a few

years, and so by the time I came I think it was down to about 40, which was

great fun actually, mm.

OH: And a busy kind of committee?

LN: Yes, we had, we usually had two or three major functions a year to raise money.

We had Mothers’ Day morning tea each year. We had usually one major

evening function, a ball or some sort of gala event, and then probably some

fashion theme, because Angela was very, very keen on fashion, so she ran a lot

of fashion-themed evenings. And the Lady Mayoress’s Committee, also at that

time, had a fashion award which was run every two years, so that was an

interesting one too.

OH: Was the fashion award for a South Australian?

LN: It was for a South Australian budding fashion designer. So we had a lot of

entries from the Marleston TAFE where most of the training goes, but a lot of

independent people entered as well. We had a judging day when the entries

were judged, and then we had a function where every entry was paraded, and

the winners were announced.

OH: What would that award have meant for a young fashion designer?

LN: Well part of the award was to work with a local fashion designer. George Gross

and Harry Who were very generous and usually helped out by, they were

judges, and they would give the winner some time working with them, and then

they also had a cash prize as well, and it was a prestigious award at the time.

OH: And an interesting initiative?

LN: Yes.

OH: From a City Council?

HN: It’s still going, isn’t it?

LN: No, no, it stopped when I finished being Lady Mayoress, because the next

person was, was not ... Yes, the Lady Mayoress’s Committee changed

considerably after I left. It was time.

OH: Yes.

LN: It was becoming a bit anachronistic [laughs].

OH: In terms of the social occasions, Henry, what kinds of decisions had to be made

by you as Mayor, like guest lists?

41

HN: Oh, they, they were standard. We had guest lists for certain things and guest

lists for other things.

LN: Also if we were doing a function for an organisation, for instance, we did a lot

of receptions.

HN: We’d get them to supply the ...

LN: And they would supply their own guest list for the reception.

HN: Their own guest for the reception, yes.

OH: What does having a Lord Mayoral Reception mean?

HN: Having people at the Town Hall, receiving them in the Queen Adelaide Room,

and giving them some sort of refreshment, and speeches. It’s quite, quite

impressive, quite, it’s quite lovely. We had a lot of those.

OH: Who made the decisions about what receptions to, to have?

HN: I did I suppose. They, they gave us the request and we usually accepted all of

them.

LN: Within the budget [laughs].

HN: Yeah, within the budget.

OH: I’d like to ask you about some of the significant matters early in your first term

as Lord Mayor, because I understand that there were, there had been a review,

an internal review, of the Council, and there was concern about the numbers of

staff being employed.

HN: The staff and a number of Councillors as well. There seems to, there seemed to

be a general move in all Councils to cut the number of Councillors and make

them smaller Councils, or larger Councils smaller I guess, and we, we followed

suit, we were in favour of that. We, we had, we had to cut our staff and we had

to cut the number of Councillors.

OH: There were a number of initiatives and ideas for improving amenities and

locations in the City in your, like even in your first year, and you’ve already

mentioned about Victoria Square, but I’m interested to know why you thought

in ’93 that it was important to be looking at Victoria Square, because here we

are in 2013 looking at it?

HN: Well it’s a very important place, very, very important place. The interest

seemed, seemed to have been in Rundle Mall all the time, but Victoria Square is

a very important place for cars especially, and people, comings and goings, it’s

42

a very important location. I wanted it to be the best it could possibly be, trees

and roads.

OH: Do you think that the idea of Victoria Square was taken up by the Council?

HN: It really has been taken up several times and nothing was done about it, many,

many times it’s been taken up and nothing’s been doing about it.

OH: Why do you think that is?

HN: Well, usually different ideas, different views, and lack of money. It takes a lot

of money to do a place like Victoria Square, it’s a huge place.

OH: So the size of what you would do would be a factor in getting a budget?

HN: Yes, absolutely.

LN: And there was always controversy about what would happen to the traffic,

always.

HN: It’s a shambles now.

OH: And there’s a lot of change at the moment with taking trees out and moving

statues and fountain, and major work?

HN: Mm.

OH: Another amenity that you were interested in looking at was upgrading Rundle

Mall.

HN: That’s been a perennial problem too, upgrading Rundle Mall. Every upgrade

seems to be not right. This one isn’t right, the one they’ve just finished now,

and they have to do it, do it all over again. It’s not right, the, the pavement is

wrong, the ground you walk on is wrong. The tenant mix is not very good. It’s

not, it’s lost its, its charm.

OH: In 1993 Rundle Mall had been in existence for probably 13 or 15 years,

something like that?

HN: Yes.

OH: What was your feeling about it at that time?

HN: I, I thought it needed remodelling, re, revamping, refreshing, different types of

retailers and ... It seems, it seems to be too staid, too old-fashioned. It needed to

be revamped as indeed it was.

OH: And at that time also there was a push for Sunday trading in the City. Was it

just Rundle Mall or was it the City?

43

HN: No, just Rundle Mall. We wanted to declare it as a tourist attraction, a tourist

precinct, so we were able to do that because by law you can’t open on Sundays,

but we, we managed to get around that, and now they’re open on Sundays.

OH: And I notice that another related issue for you was a proposal for 24-hour

trading in Rundle Mall?

HN: Yes. Well if we were serious about it being a tourist attraction and a tourist

place, a tourist venue, then it had to be 24-hours trading, but that didn’t happen,

it didn’t work.

OH: Why didn’t it work?

HN: There weren’t enough tourists, enough people.

OH: 24-hour trading would have been a really big change in Adelaide?

HN: Very big, very big change.

OH: Another item that you were interested in, in improving was North Terrace?

HN: Yes, North Terrace is a very important terrace really, it’s where all our Galleries

are, our Museums, our ... it’s ... universities, and that seemed to be a bit staid

too, it needed revamping, it needed uplifting a bit. That was very important.

OH: Another one close to the City was the Victoria Park Racecourse, and you were

interested in upgrading?

HN: Yes. That, that never happened because there was always factions, people

wanted to leave it to the way it was, and people wanted to put lights, and didn’t

work, and they wanted to play at night, and that wasn’t very successful.

LN: And it was still a racecourse then too.

HN: It was still a racecourse, that’s right.

OH: And as Lord Mayor did you attend the races?

HN: No, not very often. I did about twice a year, three times a year, not very often.

OH: One other location that you were interested in, in the first year of your office,

was resolving the Le Cornu site?

HN: It’s still there, the problem is still there.

[Laughter]

44

HN: It’s such a wonderful place for residential development. Why it hasn’t been

done I don’t know. It’s this Heritage faction that kept, kept on knocking all the

plans that were put before it, every time, it just, just didn’t happen.

OH: So it’s 20 years.

HN: It is 20 years.

OH: Henry, in October of 1993, and you were elected unopposed in May, so a few

months later you had a City of Adelaide Master Plan?

HN: Yes. David Johnson, Geof Nairn, and myself, put a plan together to see where

the City was going in the next 20 years.

LN: It was a vision.

HN: A vision. That was really knocked on the head by the opposing faction on

Council, they didn’t like the idea, but it was a very good plan, but it didn’t

happen.

OH: Why – you’ve mentioned Geof Nairn and David Johnson and yourself, and you

were called in the media The Three Wise Men – why was that?

HN: That was a joke actually [laughs]. We wanted to solve all the problems at once,

and it wasn’t that easy.

OH: In this vision or the Master Plan, there were lots of new ideas.

HN: Yes, there were.

OH: For the City and for the Park Lands?

HN: Have we got a ...?

LN: A copy?

HN: A copy.

LN: We have, not right in front of me at the moment, but we do have a copy.

OH: But some of the important things that you were wanting to introduce were more

sporting facilities in the Park Lands?

HN: Yes.

OH: From an equestrian centre in the north Park Lands; golf range in the West;

athletics.

HN: Yes, all these things.

45

LN: A lot more tree planting.

HN: We wanted them to be used more, they weren’t being used. They were there,

they were very beautiful to look at, but people didn’t use them, and parks are

for people.

OH: When you had this vision and the idea of the Master Plan, how were you

promoting it?

HN: We put ads in the paper and we had a permanent display at the Town Hall, quite

a big one, and we had people explain it to individuals as they came in, but it

never, never caught on very well.

OH: So how did that make you feel?

HN: Not very well, not very good. I was disappointed.

OH: Were any of the items in that vision taken up?

HN: No, I don’t think they were actually.

LN: I don’t remember, I’m sorry [laughs].

OH: I know that you were responsible for a lot of tree planting in your time?

HN: Yes, yes. I was responsible for tree planting especially in Hutt Street. It’s a

wonderful place to, to walk in now with all the trees on either side, it’s very

good.

OH: I understand also Burbridge Road?

HN: Yes, yes.

LN: That entrance into the City.

HN: Very important.

LN: Henry wanted to have native vegetation there, not exotic vegetation.

OH: Moving on to a few other items that were important in your first year, you

initiated a Jobs for Youth Program?

HN: Yes. We tried to get a committee together to persuade people that had

businesses to employ just one person, one, one young, young person, and if they

couldn’t to put them on to people who could, and we created 1,700 jobs like

that. That was quite successful.

OH: How did you get people to commit to that?

46

HN: Well they just did, they gave, they gave them jobs.

OH: But did you have public meetings, or how, how did you get that moving?

HN: We had a committee.

LN: But you approached people individually too.

HN: And individually of course.

LN: A lot of business you approached individually to ask them if they would

participate.

HN: Yes.

LN: And it was done in conjunction with, was it the Central Mission? No.

HN: Yes.

LN: Yes, Central Mission.

HN: Yes.

OH: I understand that you were behind that in a very strong, strong way?

HN: Yes.

OH: Henry, I know also that in your early time you were President of the Council of

Capital Cities Lord Mayors.

HN: That happens once every four years, they elect somebody , it happened to be

Adelaide’s turn.

OH: And what was involved in that role?

HN: We just met and talked about things that were of mutual concern, ideas.

OH: What seems interesting is the idea of having a Capital City Council, because a

Council would be responsible for a diverse range of things in addition to the

usual rates and services.

HN: No it wasn’t, it was, it was mainly that, but comparing one with the other.

Queensland, for example, Brisbane, it’s a very, very big City, it’s as big as

South Australia just about, compared to Adelaide, so it was good to get ideas

from that.

OH: In a capital city where you’re the Council, there were additional issues that were

important for a Council to consider, like you’ve mentioned tourist, for example?

47

HN: Yes.

LN: Yes, I think the Capital City Mayors had a lot more in common than Henry

perhaps had with local Council Mayors, in lots of ways, because they all, as

Henry said, tourism and those sort of larger issues, were common to all of them,

and a lot of them had the same problems as we did of course.

[Laughter]

HN: Always a shortage of money.

OH: And I think that that was obviously an issue for your time in Council, and also

for South Australia?

HN: Yes.

OH: And that you saw a city-driven economic reform as being important, I

understand?

HN: Yes, yes I did.

OH: I’m very interested in something I read about an idea you had in late-1993,

because you were interested in what was called a high tech approach to Council

meetings and business, and your idea was to introduce mobile phones and

laptops for Council meetings?

HN: That’s right.

OH: Twenty years ago, Henry?

HN: Mm.

OH: How did you know about these things [laughs]?

HN: Oh, you, you read, you learn, you listen. It would have been a good idea. I don’t

think they have them even now.

LN: Yes, they do.

HN: They do?

LN: The mobile phones at that time, we had a phone in a car, which was an

enormous luxury to have a car phone, and then when the first mobile phones

came in Henry was a very enthusiastic [laughs] user of a mobile phone – the

brick [laughs].

OH: Very different from what they are now.

HN: Yes.

48

LN: Yeah.

HN: Yes.

OH: So you, you were interested in technology?

HN: Yes. Look, I’m not all that interested in technology, but what it could do.

OH: And I also understand that you were concerned about the amount of paper that

was being used for meetings and other parts of Council business?

HN: Reams and reams of paper.

OH: So the idea of having laptops?

HN: It would have been a very good ...

LN: They weren’t, they weren’t available then, it was just a dream at that stage but

...

OH: And now it seems so obvious?

HN: Yes.

OH: I was really impressed by your prescience.

[Laughter]

OH: There was an announcement at the end of 1995 that the Grand Prix would be

held in Melbourne, and I understand that that was a big blow to the Council in

particular?

HN: It was a very big blow, very big blow, because it was, it was very successful

and we did it very well actually, very well, but they outbid us, as these things

go, and they’re a bigger, bigger city, more money, more, more anything, so they

pinched it.

OH: Because I imagine that would have been a major tourist event in the City?

HN: It was, it was one of the main events in the City, yes.

OH: By April of ’94, nearly a year after you were elected, there was a large

expenditure in the Council on voluntary separation packages, which we’ve

touched on before about having to reduce the number of staff. How was that

time for you as Lord Mayor? I imagine it could have been quite a challenge?

HN: No, it wasn’t a challenge. The people who wanted to take the package just took

it and went. It was quite a few went actually.

49

OH: And it meant that you had a lot of new Executive staff at that time?

HN: Yes, yes we did, including the new City Manager.

LN: It was a restructure, wasn’t it?

HN: Complete restructure.

OH: How did that affect you as Lord Mayor and keeping on with business?

HN: It didn’t affect me really very much. We have an administration, they, they do

all, all the work, and you just supervise it.

OH: And the wheels?

HN: Keep going, that’s right.

OH: Another thing that happened at the end of that year was a bid for the 2002

Commonwealth Games.

HN: And we were not successful. We tried but we weren’t successful.

OH: How much work was involved in putting that bid together do you recall?

HN: I don’t remember financially, but it was quite a lot of work and a lot of people

involved. Do you remember much about it?

LN: I don’t remember a lot about that, but it was a joint, I mean it was the ...

HN: The government, City Council.

LN: ... a state bid, so it wasn’t just an Adelaide City Council bid, so it was part of a

major bid, but we did, I would imagine that there would have been a lot of work

done by the Adelaide City Council at the time.

HN: Mm.

OH: I was going to ask you, around this time Robert Hannaford had painted your

portrait, why had you chosen Robert Hannaford?

HN: Well he is one of the best portrait artists in the country. He ...

LN: Henry looked at the other portraits of the previous Lord Mayors, and decided

that he wanted Robert Hannaford to do his because he liked his style.

HN: He was very good, very, very good.

OH: What is the tradition of having a portrait painted?

50

HN: There isn’t one, you either have it or don’t have it. It’s at your expense.

OH: Where does the portrait hang now?

HN: It’s in the Town Hall, this is a copy.

OH: So for every Lord Mayor in chronology is there a painting or a portrait?

HN: There are photographs in chronology, not, not, not portraits.

LN: Most of the Mayors did have portraits done, but they weren’t always hung in

the same place. At the time when we left they were hanging in the foyer outside

the meeting room, the Colonel Light Room, but where they are now I don’t

know. I haven’t been to the Town Hall for some time [laughs].

HN: Aren’t they still there?

LN: I don’t know.

OH: Lynette, when you were Lady Mayoress how much time would you have spent

at the Town Hall?

LN: I was there nearly every day. It was, it was my choice, it really is a role where

you take on as much or as little as you want, and Angela Condous,as Lady

Mayoress, had her particular interests, and I’d watched her, and so when I

became Lady Mayoress for the first six months I think, we just sort of continued

the same way, and then gradually moved into areas that I was interested in.

There are a lot of, a lot of charities, charitable organisations, of various sorts

that need a figurehead to come for a function or something, it provides that, and

that’s what the Lady Mayoress did, the role of the Lady Mayoress.

At the time we had a Governor who was a female. Prior to that the wife of the

Governor took a lot of these, well was Patron of a lot of these roles, these

organisations, and so it happened that I became Patron of a lot more

organisations [laughs] than previous Lady Mayoresses had been, simply

because the Governor couldn’t take as many as previous Governors’ wives had

done, as well as the ones that the Governor normally would have, so it was an

interesting experience.

OH: What would the role of Patron mean?

LN: Well really it’s a nominal role. It gives that organisation some ...

HN: Prestige.

LN: .... prestige, yes. It means that at an Annual General Meeting or a special

occasion for that organisation, then they had a special guest who could come

and add a bit of prestige, as Henry says, to the event [laughs], and that really, in

51

a lot of ways, was the role of the Lady Mayoress at that time, was to provide

that position.

OH: Would you have to make a speech or present or ...?

LN: Quite often. Sometimes it would be a speech, sometimes it would be presenting

awards. For instance the bowling clubs, the Adelaide Bowling Clubs, each year

they would have a special day when awards were presented, and there may be

50 or 70 people, women bowlers, who would receive awards, so it was a big

occasion for them.

OH: If you had to make a speech, did you write that yourself?

LN: No. In a similar way to Henry, Margaret and I would work on it together. I

would, well she would tell me what the organisation was [laughs] and a bit

about it, and we’d decide which things we would like to say, and after about six

months Margaret decided that she’d caught Lynette speak, as she called it

[laughs], and could write a speech that sounded like my, something that I would

write, so together we did them, but by the end of ...

HN: She was very clever.

LN: She, she still is, she’s an excellent, excellent assistant, she really made the role

very easy for me.

OH: And had she been the person ...

LN: Yes, she’d been the assistant for two Lady Mayoresses before me.

OH: So she had had quite an experience of it?

LN: She’d had quite a lot, yes.

OH: Prior to becoming Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress, how much experience had

each of you with public speaking?

HN: Very little.

LN: I’d had a little because I’d always been involved in committees, you know,

from school, kindergarten, school, the Synagogue. I’d been involved there on

the Board for quite some time. I’d been President of the Synagogue, so I had

done some public speaking.

OH: And for you Henry, not a great experience?

HN: Not much at all. The Synagogue, yeah, but really not very much; staff training, I

used to train my staff, but not, not very much.

52

OH: I’m interested because in the paper cuttings that I’ve had the opportunity to look

through, there’s so many photos of you at different functions, being the primary

person.

HN: Yes, I would make a speech in all those.

LN: Some were very short speeches, they weren’t major pieces of writing, but there

were occasions when you had to make a, a speech that was of some

significance.

HN: Yes.

LN: But mostly they were formal format speeches almost, formula speeches.

OH: How did you like being in the public eye?

HN: I loved it, yeah.

OH: That was lucky!

HN: I loved it.

[Laughter]

HN: I loved it.

LN: I don’t think you’d take that role unless you did.

OH: In one of the newspaper articles before you became Lord Mayor, or maybe just

after, a journalist said, And so begins Henry and Lynette’s two years of shaking

hands.

[Laughter]

OH: Something like that.

LN: Well that’s, that’s quite true [laughs]. We shook a lot of hands.

HN: A lot of hands.

OH: I was going to ask you about the second year of your Lord Mayor role, and

there was a strong focus on tourism and investment, that you must have

committed to?

HN: I didn’t commit to tourism and investment, did I?

LN: I don’t remember.

53

OH: I think, I think it was a direction that you wanted the Council to move in. I

understand that Sunday trading began in the City in November ’94, so would

that have been part of your interest?

HN: Yes, and different times in the Central Market as well, that changed. They

opened on Thursdays as well.

OH: So that increased the exposure?

HN: Yeah.

OH: And trading hours?

HN: Yeah.

OH: Yeah. I noticed that in ’94 you made a visit to Himeji?

HN: Yes.

OH: The Sister City.

HN: Yes. It was very interesting. We went up to the Himeji Castle, we walked up the

stairs. How many steps were there? Thousands!

LN: There were a lot [laughs].

HN: And we went in a typical house, and we met the Mayor of course.

LN: And a lot of gifts were exchanged.

HN: We went, yeah, we went to a school.

OH: And I understand you became a karaoke expert?

[Laughter]

HN: I’m not too bad.

OH: The idea of the Sister City was obviously important in your term as Lord

Mayor, because you made a number of visits?

HN: Yes.

OH: As we said last time, Austin, Texas. I think you always went to ...

HN: To Christchurch and Penang.

54

LN: It was the standard that each year we would visit one, the Lord Mayor would

visit one of our Sister Cities, and then the next time that Sister City would come

to us, so it was an exchange of visits.

OH: And I ...

LN: So it meant every four years we’d have two contacts with our Sister City.

OH: Right! So you obviously hosted some of the Sister City visits here in Adelaide?

HN: Yes, we did, yes we did indeed.

OH: How extensive were those occasions, or those times?

HN: They weren’t very extensive, just ...

LN: They were usually about a week.

HN: Yeah.

LN: And there was a lot of preparation obviously went into any sort of visit of that

sort, and it depended on which group of people went with us, or came to us.

Each time we went to a different city we’d take a different group of people,

because we’d try to take people who had some interest in doing business with

that city or that state.

OH: How was that research done to find out who would be people to take on those

visits?

HN: Oh, it’s not, not very difficult.

LN: There were Sister City Committees.

OH: And they would have made the connections?

HN: Yes.

LN: And they did a lot of the, the work, the background work to these visits.

OH: An interesting ... was it an interesting aspect of your role?

HN: I didn’t find it very interesting, no, because it wasn’t fruitful, nothing ever

happened except we, we just visited people.

LN: Henry never ever felt that we got the return on the investment, but it was a nice

idea but in practical terms we often ... You’d get a lot of, you’d get some

tourism, very little but some, but not a lot of business that actually came from

those visits.

55

HN: Students maybe.

LN: A lot of students.

OH: I understand, Henry, that you were very interested in Malaysia because of the

connection through students who’d studied in Adelaide?

HN: Yes.

OH: And I think you held ...

LN: An Alumni reception.

OH: What was involved in that Alumni reception?

HN: I don’t remember that one very well.

LN: You don’t?

HN: No.

LN: When we were on our visit there, it was arranged for us to meet with a lot of ...

because there were so many Asian students, and Malaysian particularly, who

came and studied at our universities and then went back, so there was always a

lot of interaction between Malaysia and Australia on that basis, and it just

happened that when we were there, they did this Alumni reception and dinner,

which was very impressive.

HN: Mm.

OH: That’s really an interesting aspect. We’re near the end of this interview, and I

was just going to ask you, by sometime in ’94 there was an article in The

Advertiser. I think that it was after your first year as Lord Mayor, that you and

Lynette began doorknocking for the second term.

HN: Yes, yes we did, not, not very serious doorknocking, not ... Later on we did but

not straightaway.

LN: But the decision was made then to run for a second term.

HN: Yeah, yeah.

OH: And how significant was that decision for you to run for a second term?

HN: I just made the decision and did it.

LN: Henry felt at the time, I can remember that we, we talked about it, and Henry

felt that the two-year term was really not adequate. You spent the first year

56

finding out about things, and the second year trying to start the project, and you

really needed another term to be able to get some feedback and return.

HN: I have to go.

LN: Okay! Well I think we’ll bring ...

57

Interview No: 3

Third interview with Henry Ninio

Recorded by Madeleine Regan on 13 June 2013

at Henry’s home in Novar Gardens

for the City of Adelaide Oral History (Extension) Project 2012/2013

Also present is Henry’s wife, Lynette

Oral Historian (OH): Thank you, Henry, for agreeing to this third interview.

Henry Jacques Nino (HN): You’re welcome.

OH: We’re picking up from last time and going to talk about your campaign for

election as Lord Mayor, and your second term. You had, your first term was

’93-’95, and during that first term you decided to campaign again for Lord

Mayor?

HN: That’s right.

OH: I understand that with one exception, which was Steve Condous, that you

changed the convention by a second term?

HN: Yes, I did. It was a convention that the Lord Mayor only served one term, and it

used to be one year actually, and then they made it two years, and Steve

Condous actually ran three terms, six years.

OH: And when you made that decision how, how was your decision received?

HN: Not very favourably by my colleagues. I didn’t have much support from

Council, that was my lot, my problems. There was always niggling Questions

Without Notice, and wasting of time. They didn’t support me, which is a shame

really because we could have achieved a lot more if they had.

OH: So your decision then meant that you had to campaign?

HN: Had to campaign very, very heavily and very hard. It wasn’t a very pleasant

campaign, and there was words spoken on both sides, advertisements, and

complaints. It wasn’t a pleasant election at all.

OH: You must have had a very strong idea that you wanted to have a second term as

Lord Mayor?

58

HN: Yes, I had made up my mind and I was going to work for it [laughs]. My wife

worked very, very hard assisting me, she worked very hard.

OH: What would have been involved in your campaign?

HN: Sending material out to ratepayers and doorknocking.

OH: The experience of doorknocking, what was that like?

HN: It’s, it’s very unpleasant really because you don’t know what, what they are or

what their affiliation is, it’s very difficult, but once you get talking and once you

get started ... My wife can tell you a lot more about that because she did a lot of

doorknocking.

OH: Lynette, what was your experience of the doorknocking?

Lynette Ninio (LN): Well it was quite frustrating because you’d door-knock a street

and there might only be four people home in the street at the time, but I mostly

did my doorknocking for Henry in North Adelaide, and I had, I enjoyed it

because we’ve met some most interesting people.

HN: Mm.

LN: And a lot of support for Henry, which is always a nice thing to get, you know,

very few people told me to go away, so that was good. So it was a very positive

thing in the end, although the frustrations were there.

OH: How freely would people have spoken about what they thought was important

about Council?

LN: Oh, most people were prepared to tell me what was wrong [laughs] or what they

would like corrected, or improved, but usually I found doorknocking, they were

usually minor street-level incidents, they weren’t major issues. Very few people

that I door knocked had major issues, and when they did I referred them to

Henry.

[Laughter]

HN: And I referred them to the administration.

[Laughter]

HN: That’s just the way it went.

OH: Henry, you had five quite significant matters that you raised for your campaign,

and the first one was about freezing rates?

HN: Which I did. The rates stayed the same for four years.

59

OH: Because that had been part of your platform in ...

HN: Yes, in the first election.

OH: Yes.

HN: And it was the same in the second election. I didn’t see any point in raising the

rates when we didn’t use the money for anything – we had enough funds – we

tried even to reduce borrowings, which we did.

OH: How common would it have been not to increase rates?

HN: Very, very uncommon, very uncommon. It was a very positive and very ...

people liked it.

LN: And I think it was mostly the residential rates that you were concerned with,

wasn’t it?

HN: Yes.

LN: Because Henry always wanted to keep the rates for the residents of the City on

a par with those of residential Councils, or suburban Councils, that adjoined us,

as opposed to a commercial rate, which is quite significantly more.

HN: And we gave them a rebate, rebates of 45%.

OH: Can you explain the 45% rebate?

HN: It was just to, to make easier for them to afford living in the City.

OH: And this was for residents?

HN: Yes.

OH: You had a strong position on residents in the City of Adelaide?

HN: In what way?

OH: I understand that you wanted to attract ...

HN: Yes, this was one of my, one of my things. I wanted a lot more people to come

and live in the City, and I wanted to attract more students to come and study in

the City, and live in the City.

OH: And the 45% residential rebate, do you think that that was a factor in attracting

people?

HN: It must have been, it must have been. Certainly if it wasn’t, if it wasn’t there it

would have been less, less popular.

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OH: You aimed to double the City residential population by the year 2000?

HN: I didn’t quite make it but a significant increase in population.

OH: How strong was the support for increasing residential population?

HN: Well it wasn’t, it wasn’t really because the only way to increase it was to have

high-level residential developments to make it possible for people to afford one

unit, but they didn’t allow it because they wanted to keep the heights low. It’s

changed a lot now since then, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t changed then, it was very

difficult.

OH: Another part of your platform was about increasing trees and planting in the

Park Lands?

HN: We, we did a lot of those, I think 20,000 a year.

OH: Why was that important to you?

HN: Well trees are life, it’s, it’s very important, it gives a city life. Hutt Street is a

very good example of what we did. We planted trees there and it made a big

difference to the street, brought it alive.

OH: Many people now would say it’s become like a precinct.

HN: Yes, it is, it is a precinct.

OH: The final part of your platform was about consolidating administrative reforms

in the Council.

HN: We had a new City Manager, and he organised all that very well, put some

information technology into the system, and it worked very, very well.

OH: So those were important parts of your campaign?

HN: And they were all fulfilled.

OH: At the time of the campaign there was a media comment that said it was a dirty

election battle. What was meant by that?

HN: It wasn’t a dirty election, it was a lot of bad, bad feelings on both sides. She, she

wrote a letter saying nasty things about me, and I retaliated. It wasn’t a pleasant

election campaign at all.

OH: And the other candidate was?

HN: Jane Rann.

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OH: Would it be fair to say that the pro-Development and pro-Heritage factions were

an issue?

HN: Yes, they were, very much so. That’s what kept the Council down for so many

years, we could never reach agreements.

OH: And did that come out in the campaign?

HN: Yes.

OH: However, you were successfully elected?

HN: I was by a large margin.

OH: And this was in May of 1995?

HN: Yes.

OH: How did you feel about that win?

HN: I felt very good, very gratified. It showed me that the people appreciated me,

because I won quite, quite significantly, twice, twice the vote of my opponent.

OH: And you were, you know, you went through the same rituals that you had been

through at your, what do you call it?

HN: Swearing in.

OH: Swearing in?

HN: Yes.

OH: Did you have to walk down to Government House?

HN: Yes, we did that every year, every year.

LN: Dame Roma Mitchell.

HN: Yes.

OH: You wanted, in the publicity I’ve read, for the City of Adelaide to have

leadership in economic, social and cultural areas?

HN: Yes, yes I did.

OH: Some of the issues, and there are so many that we could talk about, but one of

the ones that was in the early months of your second term was about Hindley

Street. There were problems in Hindley Street.

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HN: Big problems in Hindley Street, and it was a street that was left, it deteriorated

very badly. There were some beautiful heritage buildings there that were not,

not, not kept up, and they weren’t painted. The nightclubs and nightlife was

very, very bad, bad publicity for the street; very little residential in Hindley

Street, hardly any.

LN: And there were a lot of young children on the streets at night at the time, that

created a lot of disturbance, didn’t it?

HN: Yes, it did.

LN: A lot of concern for these very young children, 10, 11, 12, being out on the

streets at night.

HN: I used to have meetings, regular meetings with the Commissioner of Police to

see if we could do something to improve the situation. We had, we had a

fatality there once, which wasn’t good.

OH: And I think that was in the first couple of months of your second term.

HN: Yes, yes.

OH: Why do you think that happened in Hindley Street?

HN: I think it’s because people stayed late at night, drank a lot, and, and just

misbehaved. It wasn’t a good atmosphere. It’s still the same now, it’s not, not

very good. They still open until 5 o’clock in the morning.

LN: I think the presence of the universities has made a big difference.

HN: A bit difference.

OH: Especially that extreme West End.

LN: The western end.

OH: Yes.

HN: Yes.

LN: That was, that was one of the projects that I think came during your term, isn’t

it?

HN: Yes.

LN: The building of the University of South Australia campus, and it was hoped that

that would improve the atmosphere in the area, and bring life to it during the

day as well at night.

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HN: Well certainly it improved the residential population, more people were living

in the City.

OH: And that was part of your idea to attract students?

HN: Yes.

OH: So that they were there close to the university?

HN: Yes.

OH: Yeah.

HN: And very good economically too. They spend their money here, it was very

good.

OH: There seems to be a problem, and I imagine it was at this time that we’re talking

about, the, the area of Hindley Street between Leigh Street and Morphett Street?

HN: Yes, that was the bad part, and the pavements were dirty, they weren’t, they

weren’t kept properly, they weren’t, they weren’t up to standard.

OH: Along with this in Hindley Street, there seemed to be a feeling that public safety

should be increased in the City?

HN: Yes, yes. It was paramount, very important, because there was all the perceived

fright by the people, they wouldn’t come to the City because they thought they

might get mugged or something like that, so they didn’t come.

OH: So part of your idea was to make it safer?

HN: Mm. It used to be a street where there was a department store working very,

very well, Miller Anderson if you remember. There was the Theatre Royal,

there was quite a few nice places in Hindley Street, it was a nice street.

OH: And there were places that a lot of Europeans went to too, in the ’50s and the

’60s, weren’t there?

HN: Yes, it was the only place you could have a decent cup of coffee, and a decent

meal.

LN: And a gelato.

HN: And a gelato, that’s right. They used to queue up to buy gelato. Do you

remember that at Flash, they used to queue to buy it?

OH: Such a small shop.

HN: Yes, it was a small shop.

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OH: Yeah, yeah. One of the other issues that was important in this time of your

second term, Henry, was the Adelaide 21 Capital City Strategy.

HN: That was a very, very important strategy. It didn’t work unfortunately because I

didn’t get the support from the Council again. It was supposed to be a ...

LN: I think you’re thinking about the Adelaide Vision, which was the first one.

HN: Yes, but even the second one.

LN: This was the one that was with the State Government?

HN: State, Federal and Local.

OH: And the idea behind it?

HN: Is to have a strategy to make it, to make the City a better City in all aspects,

economically and liveable, a great place to live, and so on, to study.

OH: There were interesting kinds of ideas, like one was environmental management,

and do you remember how, how significant that was?

HN: It wasn’t very significant at all, nobody knew about pollution or carbon dioxide

or any of these things, it was unknown.

OH: So it was early in ...

LN: I think it was not high on the agenda at that time.

OH: There was support for inner-city schools to be available for population?

HN: Well on the one hand they say they want to increase the population, and on the,

on the other hand they say want to close the schools for junior schools, which

was ridiculous. Sturt Street [Primary School] and Gilles Street [Primary School]

were the two I fought very hard to preserve and keep. They’re still there.

OH: During your term I think Sturt Street was closed, and I understand that you were

very involved in the campaign to try and keep it open?

HN: Yes, that’s right.

OH: You also wanted to increase the marketing of universities, both interstate and

overseas?

HN: Yes, I did, but that, but that requires money of course, and I believe it was a

government job really more than a city job, to spend money to advertise the

place as the ideal place to come and study.

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LN: I think you spent a lot of time trying to convince the government of the day that

this was an important area to work in, to encourage more students to come to

the City.

OH: And also to have the accommodation available?

HN: Mm, mm.

OH: Yeah. Another issue I understand that you were interested in was expanding

Chinatown?

HN: Yes.

OH: And what was behind your thinking there?

HN: Every city has a Chinatown and we didn’t have a proper one. We had a lot of

Chinese people in the one place but it wasn’t properly organised. Now, now it

is.

LN: It wasn’t formerly a Chinatown, was it?

HN: No. Now it is.

OH: One other interesting idea that you promoted was to create links between

Rundle Mall, the East End, the universities, and the [River] Torrens. What do

you remember about that idea?

HN: Well I, I think Rundle Mall and Hindley Street should be a continuum, and the

East End. It’s, it’s all one, one street really and it should be connected.

OH: And you wanted people to have a sense of like in a social life or ...?

HN: Have you seen the East End now, it’s a proper shopping precinct, a lot of

fashion, a lot of eating places, it’s a fantastic place to shop, almost as good as

Rundle Mall, sometimes better.

OH: So that was a dream that you had?

HN: Yes, yes.

OH: Cleaning up of the River Torrens was something that was a fairly important

item?

HN: Well we always argued that we didn’t cause the pollution, it came from up,

upstream, and it cost us a lot of money to keep it clean when the season came

but it’s, it’s a continuous job, it never, never finishes. There wasn’t a solution to

it, you just had to keep going and keep, keep cleaning it.

OH: And obviously a responsibility of Council?

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HN: Yes.

LN: I think you also talked at the time about using the Torrens, the area along the

Torrens, a lot more than what it was being used at the time.

OH: For?

HN: Sports.

LN: Just for recreation, for people just to come and enjoy more eating places and

coffee shops, and things of that sort.

HN: They used to have canoeing in the River, quite a lot of activity.

OH: I’m moving now to you, Lynette, and talking, would like to talk about your

Lady Mayoress role and the committee, and I understand that you opened up the

Town Hall for an Open Day in 1996?

LN: We did. It was, it was a wonderful idea and my committee, I had quite large

Lady Mayoress’s Committee, who were all very enthusiastic, so we persuaded

the administration, who were a little cautious about it because of the security

problems and things like that, but we thought that Government House had Open

Days where people could come and see a building that’s public property, and

we wanted to be able to try and do something similar in the Town Hall, so we

opened the areas that are not normally available to the public – so the Queen

Adelaide Room, which was the reception area; the Lord Mayor’s Office, my

rooms, and then extended it of course to the Town Hall upstairs, and the

banquet area.

OH: Was this a new idea for the Council?

LN: They had had Open Days before but the Open Days concentrated then on the

Council and the working of Council, rather than the, the reception rooms being

open. So they’d open the Council Chamber and they’d show them the

Administration Building, but we wanted to have the whole area open for a day.

It was a wonderful experience.

OH: What was involved in planning for that in terms of staff or volunteers?

LN: Well because I had a large committee, I had a lot of volunteers who were

willing to be there on the day and to prepare. We needed to get a lot of

publicity, obviously, which is often the hardest part, or was then. We also

wanted the Town Hall to look beautiful, so we had people from flower-

arranging groups come and do flowers for us so that it looked absolutely

gorgeous on the day, and my committee members helped with the security. The

biggest, the biggest hurdle was convincing the administration that we could

manage the security, or that it could be managed. We didn’t manage it but it

could be managed without too much problem.

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OH: You said it was successful?

LN: It was.

OH: Was that in terms of numbers?

LN: Yes, we had, I can’t remember the numbers but ...

HN: Thousands.

LN: We had a constant flow of people through the rooms, and in each room we had

one or two people who could talk about that particular room. We had the

Council Chamber open. Henry had his office open, my office, as I said before,

and the Queen Adelaide Room, which is a beautiful room.

OH: What is the Queen Adelaide Room, or say in your time, how was it used?

LN: It was used as the reception area, so whenever there were receptions – in our

time there were two or three a week constantly – that was where all our

entertainment happened.

OH: And how was it set up?

LN: It’s a very large room with kitchens, its own kitchens. It’s full of memorabilia,

Queen Adelaide memorabilia and other ... It was the Archives Department used

to look after that for us and decide what displays would be on. They’d change

them occasionally according to a theme. It’s a very Victorian looking room, you

know, wallpaper, high ceilings, a gorgeous, huge gilt mirror at one end, and so

people would come in through the big doors at the front and be, there would be

a reception line.

HN: That mirror was in somebody’s home in North Adelaide. It was a huge thing but

it looked magnificent.

LN: It is a beautiful room.

OH: During the Open Days did you offer refreshments, or was it just people coming

in, having a look?

LN: No, we couldn’t, it was logistically impossible to do that. We had a wishing

well so that people ... well actually it wasn’t a wishing well, we had a papier

mache model of the Town Hall, which was a money box, and people could put

donations and they went to various charities, it was a gold coin.

OH: And who had made the ...?

LN: Unfortunately I can’t remember her name.

OH: Someone on staff?

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LN: No, no, it was a lady that I had contact with when she’d visited the Town Hall

at some stage. I knew that she had this skill, and it’s still at the Town Hall

somewhere [laughs].

HN: I don’t think we mentioned that at the time I had a special interest in the

disabled, making it possible for them to get into buildings which up to then

nobody cared about, but that was something I did, which worked very well.

OH: How did you follow that up, Henry?

HN: With the administration and then the owners of the buildings made it, explained

to them this was important for disabled people to be able to go in with whatever

they had.

OH: And that was specifically in the Council properties?

HN: Yes. No, it was right through the City.

LN: But you started with the Council properties as a demonstration.

HN: Yes, I started, yes, that’s right.

LN: And it later became Law.

OH: A really important act to take?

HN: Yes, it was important.

OH: Just finishing off about the Open Days, did you do that again, like how many

times in your term?

LN: I think we did it twice in my terms, but the other project that I had, which didn’t

come off in my time but came later, was to have window boxes on the outside

of the Town Hall, and flowers around the outside of the building. We tried very

hard for that, but being a heritage building there were all sorts of issues with

water and ... but they were eventually overcome, but unfortunately not in our

time [laughs], but it certainly was started during the time that I was there.

HN: But in our time we did have something very important to raise money for the

Anglican Church. We had a luncheon which was catered for and paid for by

restaurant owners in the City, and we charged quite a bit of money for people to

come in, and we raised over $50,000.

LN: That was the Archbishop’s lunch, wasn’t it?

HN: Yes. We ran it for four years, it was very successful.

OH: And you held it in the Town Hall?

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HN: Yes.

OH: Oh! An interesting initiative.

HN: Yes, it was.

OH: Another initiative that I think you were responsible for, Henry, was the

unveiling of a plaque in Rundle Park, to commemorate the late President of

Egypt?

HN: Yes, I, I was, as you know I’m Jewish ...

OH: Yes.

HN: And I was born in Egypt, so we had both the Ambassadors coming to visit me,

and I put the idea to them whether they would participate jointly in, in doing

this, and they said yes, so we did it officially. It was a very momentous occasion

actually because things were very iffy at the time.

OH: This was after the assassination?

HN: Yes.

OH: Of?

HN: Yitzhak Rabin and ...Sadat.

OH: So that plaque is still there?

HN: Yes. It’s very difficult to clean I might tell you.

[Laughter]

OH: Why is that?

HN: We tried and it doesn’t clean very easily.

LN: A friend of ours went to see it one day and decided it needed cleaning.

[Laughter]

LN: But it’s lovely now because there’s a grove of trees around that we, some of

them were planted on that day, weren’t they?

HN: On that day, yeah.

OH: Where in, in particular is it in Rundle Park?

LN: It’s up in the corner where, North Terrace and Dequetteville Terrace corner.

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OH: So it’s up quite high?

LN: It’s right up in that corner, yes. It’s quite a remote section actually [laughs].

OH: But with a grove of trees that, that’s ...?

LN: Yes, there’s a group of trees there now that have grown quite well [laughs].

OH: Henry, there were some difficult times, obviously, in your term as Lord Mayor?

HN: Yes, I, I had a run-in with the Premier of the time, Dean Brown, who wanted to

sack the Council, as they did in Melbourne, for no good reason really. He didn’t

have any good reason, just to gain more power for himself I think, and he

wanted to appoint administrators to run the Council rather than Councillors, but

it didn’t work. We fought a very vigorous battle against it and he stopped doing

it.

OH: That must have been quite a challenge for you?

HN: It was a big challenge, yes, because it meant that there wouldn’t be a Council.

OH: Henry, Rundle Mall was an issue in 1996, it was time for an update?

HN: It’s always time for an update, there’s an update going on just now. Yes, it was,

but we did it, we did the repaving and we shifted the fountain, quite a few

initiatives that worked quite well, coffee shops in the middle of the, of the Mall.

OH: And that’s interesting because of your long association with Rundle Mall?

HN: Yes.

OH: Because you’d been on the Rundle Mall Committee, hadn’t you?

HN: Yes, I had for a long time.

OH: In July of ’96 your Chief Executive at the Council, Ilan Hershman, was

appointed to a body called the Adelaide Partnership, and that had been

recommended in the Adelaide 21 Report. Do you remember the formation or

the function I mean, of the Adelaide Partnership?

HN: I think in a nutshell it, it was to make Adelaide a better place to do business, to

work, to live, to study, and initiatives such as that. It, it was really Mr Hershman

who was the driving force behind it. It didn’t work as well as we expected but

we, we tried.

OH: There was a change in government or in the Premier later in that year?

HN: Yes, yes. I got on very well with the, with the new Premier.

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OH: And the new Premier was?

HN: Was Bannon.

OH: John Olsen?

LN: John Olsen.

HN: Oh, that one?

OH: Yes.

HN: Yes. I didn’t have much to do with him.

OH: About the time that the change in leadership of the government occurred, you

announced that you were going to stand as Alderman?

HN: Yes.

OH: In the next election.

HN: Yes. That was also a, something that they did in the old days.

LN: Tradition.

HN: Yes, a tradition to support the new Mayor because of all the experience that you

gained during your Lord Mayoralty, and you did that as a Senior Alderman.

OH: And your second term came to an end in May of ’97?

HN: Yes.

OH: We’re looking at a page in front of us which was dated 22 May ’96, and the

heading is, Lord Mayor Henry lists his highlights and lowlights, and we’ve

agreed that we’ll just go through them.

HN: Yes.

OH: So if I start off saying what they are, maybe you will comment?

HN: Yes.

OH: So the first one was Australia Remembers. Why was that a highlight?

HN: It attracted an enormous amount of people, more, more than the time that it

actually happened in 1945. It was very popular and very moving. It was a very,

very important day.

OH: Henry, could you just describe what it was, what was the event?

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HN: It was to celebrate the victory in the Pacific during the War.

LN: They had a huge parade on King William Road. It was, it was an extraordinary

day altogether, but as Henry said, a very emotional day in lots of ways.

OH: And I imagine that the guest list would have been, like did you have a reception

at the Town Hall after that?

HN: Yes, yes.

OH: So you would have had a guest list that was very significant?

HN: Yes, we did. It was an important day.

LN: And it was a government, it was a State Government initiative as well. I mean it

wasn’t just the Town Hall, but we were all involved in the planning and the

actual day itself.

OH: So that was a very big event?

LN: Mm.

OH: The second highlight is about the Corporation Reform?

HN: We changed completely the way that the departments were run, and we had new

... Mr Hershman did a fantastic job doing that and they ( ) very well,

information technology, we had quite an improvement in that area.

OH: The third one is the Adelaide 21 Project, which we have talked about already.

HN: Yes.

OH: Is there anything else you’d like to say about that?

HN: No, not really, we covered it pretty well I think.

OH: The next one is about the rates freeze.

HN: Yes, well we, we achieved that, we didn’t increase the rates for four years,

which was the two terms of my Mayoralty.

OH: The next one we’re looking at is debt reduction.

HN: That’s right, we did a bit of that too, even though we didn’t increase the rates

we were able to reduce the, the debts.

OH: And there’s actually quite a percentage that you reduced it?

HN: Yes, it was quite, quite a percentage.

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OH: Here it says ...

HN: 25%, that’s correct.

OH: The following one is capital works?

HN: Yes, we had a continuous program to do works, there’s always works to be

done in the City, but I introduced it and it keeps still going very well.

OH: Another one was UPark?

HN: Yes, we called it UPark, we just, they were just car, car parks, we ran it as a

proper business and it generated a lot of funds for the Council. It was very

successful.

OH: Approximately, do you remember how many car parks the Council would have

owned?

HN: How many car parks?

OH: Mm.

LN: About five.

HN: Five or six.

OH: So it was a substantial investment.

HN: Substantial, yes. If it wasn’t for that we wouldn’t, the City would have died

without the car parks.

OH: A following point is about Regional Partnership.

HN: Yes, we didn’t, I didn’t believe in that, I thought that Adelaide should be a

Council on its own, it shouldn’t amalgamate with any other Council. There

were amalgamations in the suburbs but not, I didn’t, I didn’t think that ... I

thought Adelaide, being a City State, had to stay a Council.

OH: But you did establish a regional body with neighbouring Councils?

HN: Yes, we did, just, just for talking about common problems and common issues.

LN: And I think there were some administration things that were combined at the

time.

HN: Yes.

OH: Here’s another one, the West End Urban Design Strategy, which we’ve talked

about in relation to the ...

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LN: To the universities and ...

HN: Yes.

OH: Mm, and the Performing Arts Centre.

HN: Yeah, Performing ... That’s a very successful one.

OH: We’ve spoken about the Rundle Mall upgrade?

HN: Yes.

OH: And you say in the, in the newspaper article, People should wait for the final

touches late next year, before passing judgement.

HN: Yes.

OH: You said that, The Mall will be sensational!!

[Laughter]

LN: Always controversy about change [laughs].

HN: Yes.

OH: And here’s the Hindley Street issue, and you obviously felt pleased that there’d

been a joint approach with the Commissioner?

HN: Yes.

OH: And you had also involved traders, landlords?

HN: Yes, we had meetings.

LN: It was a very successful combination I think, that it got a whole band of people

working together to produce a result, rather than each of them trying to do

separate things.

OH: The next one is the disabled access, which we’ve spoken about.

HN: Yes.

OH: Gouger Street?

HN: Gouger Street has become a meeting place now, it’s very, very popular. We

promoted Gouger Street as a, as a place where you go to eat, and it was very

close to the Market as well.

OH: And part of the Chinatown initiative?

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HN: Yes, part of the Chinatown initiative.

OH: The Environmental Plan, there was a drafting of the Local Agenda 21

Environmental Management Plan?

HN: That wasn’t much, we didn’t do very much in that area

OH: Here’s the Torrens clean-up.

HN: Yes.

OH: [laughs] And the Water Catchment Board?

HN: Yes.

LN: But that was all part of that Torrens clean-up, wasn’t it?

HN: Yes.

LN: Trying to get people together to work together towards a better solution.

OH: The Halifax Eco-City?

HN: There was in fact a development which was eco-friendly, that was built in the

Halifax Street Depot. We cleaned it at very, very expensive cost, but we

managed to do it and it still exists now. It’s quite, quite attractive. My wife went

to see it the other day.

OH: Is that the one in Sturt Street?

LN: Yes, Christie Walk. It was the remnant of the Grand Plan, because that group

really wanted to use the whole of the site as a major eco development, but

unfortunately it was far too expensive to be able to do it on a large scale, and so

it finished being Christie Walk, which is a very attractive place, very popular.

OH: An interesting part of the City?

LN: Very interesting, yes.

OH: Just a couple more of your highlights here. Amalgamating library services.

LN: Mm, that was Jim Crawford, wasn’t it?

HN: Yes, that was Jim Crawford. We had a Councillor who was especially interested

in that area.

LN: In libraries.

HN: In libraries, and he did a lot of work in that area. He amalgamated it.

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OH: What had been there previously?

HN: There was no connection between one and the other.

OH: And amalgamating them through technology?

HN: Yes, mainly.

OH: And the final highlight here, I’m sure there are many others, but the Queen’s

Theatre. What can you say about the Queen’s Theatre?

HN: Well I thought it would be a very important thing to do to refurbish it and then

bring it back to its original glory, which we did. We had a Patron in Keith

Michell, who agreed very nicely to, to become Patron, and we fundraised to get

enough money to do it, and it’s still in existence now, but it’s being used.

OH: Can you just briefly give a history of the theatre, when it was built and the site

that it’s on?

HN: It was built in 1830.

LN: 1841.

HN: 1841, and the site was, I don’t know why they built it there really.

OH: But it’s ...

LN: Gilles Lane.

HN: Gilles Lane.

OH: Which is?

LN: Off Currie Street.

HN: It was used for many, many purposes over the years, not as a theatre

continuously, used as government offices and things like that.

LN: It finished as a car park.

OH: Henry, I think you’ve got here a plaque that celebrates or acknowledges your

role in that?

HN: Yes.

OH: Who gave you that plaque?

HN: It was ...

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LN: At the time of the launch of the theatre.

HN: It was written by ...

LN: Peter Bladen I think, and we had a man that the Council used as a calligrapher,

so he took this poem by Peter Bladen, and made this beautiful calligraphy, and

it was presented to Henry at the time.

OH: What year was that?

LN: That was in ’98 I think, or ’96 or ’98?

HN: ’96.

LN: ’96 sorry.

OH: And that was in your second term?

HN: Yes.

OH: Yeah, yeah.

LN: When the theatre was reopened for the Festival [of Arts].

OH: Oh, OK. That must have been a great sense of achievement for you?

HN: It was.

OH: Henry, this article in the paper on 22 May 1996, gives a few lowlights, and the

first one is about Council infighting?

HN: Yes, I wasn’t able to stop that, it’s, it’s the perennial problem of Heritage

against Development, and that was never, never resolved. It’s still, still going

today.

OH: And the second dot point is about time wasting.

HN: Yes, they just asked Questions Without Notice to embarrass me, for no good

reason. I wasn’t able to stop that either.

OH: The loss of the Grand Prix is the third one.

HN: Yes, that was a very big blow for us because we fought so hard to get it, and all

of a sudden we didn’t have it. I didn’t like the Grand Prix very much but I liked

what it did for the City, put us on the map.

[Lynette laughs]

OH: The last one is roller blading.

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HN: Yes, they allowed it in the City, which I was completely against. I wasn’t able

to stop it.

OH: Was the Skate Park build in your time?

HN: No.

OH: No, that was after?

HN: Much after.

OH: So there’s quite a list there of achievements that marked your time as Lord

Mayor?

HN: Yes.

OH: And then at the May ’97 elections, Jane Lomax-Smith was elected Lord Mayor

and you were an Alderman. How did you feel about the outcome of the

election?

HN: It was as expected. The Heritage people had the numbers to elect the Lord

Mayor and they did. It wasn’t a particularly exciting election, it was pretty well

known who was going to win.

OH: Then the role as Alderman, how did that feel?

HN: Alright. I did my share, I worked as hard as I did when I was Lord Mayor in

certain issues.

OH: Did you pick up your business activities or your business after you finished

your terms as Lord Mayor?

HN: Yes, I did, for a while.

OH: And then you had to retire as a result of ill health?

HN: Yes.

OH: In about October of ’97?

HN: Yes.

OH: How did you feel about completing your time with the Council?

HN: I was very sad about it really after so many years, it was 14 years, but I’m still

very close to it, and I’m still very interested in what happens there.

OH: And there’s always something happening?

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HN: Yes, always.

[Laughter]

OH: What about activities that you’ve taken on since retirement?

HN: Well I do some reading. I collect, as you know, antiques, and I did a bit of

travelling with my wife. I must say, I don’t, I’m quite happy to be retired, it’s a

good feeling.

OH: Obviously you have flexibility of time?

HN: Yes, yes.

OH: Organisations, I’d like to just turn to those because you were a member of quite

a few organisations in your time. The Small Business Corporation was ...

HN: I still attended meetings for that.

OH: And what happens with the Small Business Corporation?

HN: Well it’s not really small business anymore but they call it that because they are

a conglomeration of small businesses. They contribute a lot to the economy.

OH: In South Australia?

HN: In, in Australia.

OH: In Australia, oh, right. And what about the French-Australian Committee?

HN: I was a member of that as well.

OH: What was the purpose of the French-Australian Committee?

HN: To promote relationships between France and Australia.

LN: You did the War Memorial for the French community.

HN: That’s right, I did the War Memorial for the French community in North

Terrace.

LN: There’s a special commemorative memorial there.

OH: What was involved with that?

LN: The French community wanted, had been lobbying for something for a long

time and Henry helped with the RSL [Returned Solders’ League], wasn’t it, to

be able to do it?

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HN: Yes.

LN: … at that site.

OH: Oh. Was this to commemorate Australian citizens who were, French-

Australians who had fought during the War?

HN: Some did, not all, some did.

LN: I think it was to commemorate the ... I don’t remember now, but there were

very strong links between France and Australia after the Second World War,

because so many Australians lost their lives there in the First World War too,

and Henry had very strong connections with the French community.

OH: And the Australian Society of Perfumers and Flavourists (Association).

HN: I didn’t, I didn’t go to many meetings because they’re in Sydney, but I kept in

touch with them.

OH: How big would that association be?

HN: Not very big.

LN: But it was an enormous honour to be asked to be part of it.

HN: Yes, that’s right. I’m still a member.

OH: If you went to a meeting what would be the discussion?

HN: Oh the new, new ingredients that they’ve found and discovered to use in

perfumery, the synthetics, which is a great part of the perfume industry. They

hardly use any, any real fragrances anymore, it’s all synthetic.

OH: Are there many people in Australia who are making perfume now?

HN: I don’t think so, no, maybe half a dozen or so, but they’re not very, very

popular, not very big.

OH: No. A very select group.

HN: Mm.

OH: The Pharmaceutical Society of South Australia?

HN: I’m just a member, that’s all.

OH: And what does the society do?

HN: They don’t do very much, do they?

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[Laughter]

LN: The society looks after the registration and administration for pharmacists in

South Australia.

OH: So it’s like a professional body?

LN: It’s a professional body, yes, for pharmacists.

OH: The Retail Traders’ Association?

HN: I don’t go to meetings there anymore and I don’t go to the French, Italian

Chambers of Commerce either.

LN: But during your time on the Council you spent a lot of time with those two

committees, didn’t you?

HN: I did, yes.

OH: Both the French Chamber of Commerce and the Italian Chamber of Commerce?

HN: Yes.

OH: How strong are they?

HN: Not strong. The Italian is much stronger than the French of course because of

the numbers.

OH: Where would those committees have met?

HN: What was it called, the place, the French one, we used to go to quite often?

LN: I don’t remember, sorry.

OH: And the Italian, was that in the Italian Club at Carrington Street?

HN: Yes.

OH: And of course you spoke fluent French and Italian.

HN: I did.

OH: And the last one was in 1983 you were President of the Liberal Jewish

Congregation.

HN: Yes, I did that for one year. My wife was President after me for a while.

LN: Much after you [laughs].

HN: Yes.

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OH: Was this when the congregation was still in Synagogue Place in the City?

HN: No, we ...

LN: This is the Progressive Congregation which is based on Hackney Road. There

are two Synagogues, there were at the time, two Synagogues in Adelaide, and

ours was the younger of the two.

OH: And I understand that there is an anniversary that’s going to be celebrated of,

the Congregation?

HN: Next Saturday.

OH: How many years?

LN: Fifty.

HN: Fifty.

OH: So you arrived in 1956 in Adelaide?

HN: Yes.

OH: And the Congregation would have been ...

LN: It wasn’t existing at that time.

OH: That’s interesting.

LN: Yes.

OH: Henry, in 1993 you were awarded an important acknowledgement. I’m

wondering if you could say it in French?

HN: Yes. Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Merite.

OH: And the citation, can you read the citation there?

HN: For continued efforts in developing friendship between the two countries of

France and Australia.

OH: What was involved in receiving that award? Did you go to France?

HN: No, the Ambassador did, did a reception in the Town Hall. We had the

Governor of South Australia came to that. It was very, very impressive, very,

very nice, and I got a medal.

OH: The KOM?

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HN: Knight of the Order of Merit.

OH: When you received that award, are there any expectations of you?

HN: No, no.

OH: I imagine it’s not a very common award here in Australia?

HN: No, it isn’t [laughs], it isn’t.

OH: Well congratulations.

HN: Thank you.

OH: That’s 20 years ago.

HN: Yes.

LN: It’s a long time.

OH: You were a Paul Harris Fellow in Rotary?

HN: Yes, that’s for my work with, in Rotary.

LN: Henry was a member of the Adelaide Rotary Club for many, many years.

OH: Oh! And did you continue when you were Lord Mayor?

HN: Yes, yes I did.

OH: Henry and Lynette, we’re just going to bring this part ...[to a close]

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Interview No: 4

Fourth interview with Henry Ninio

Recorded by Madeleine Regan on 13 June 2013

at Henry’s home in Novar Gardens

for the City of Adelaide Oral History (Extension) Project 2012/2013

Also present is Henry’s wife, Lynette

Oral Historian (OH): Thanks again for agreeing to complete this interview, Henry, and

we’re going to bring the interview to a close by talking about your relationship

to the City of Adelaide, and then I’ll also ask Lynette as she was such an

important person in the time that you were Lord Mayor, in her role as Lady

Mayoress.

So if you think, Henry, about the changes, some of the significant changes

you’ve seen in Adelaide since you arrived in 1956, what would they be?

Henry Jacques Nino (HN): There’s a saying in French that says, plus ça change, plus

c'est la meme chose, which is exactly what happens, the more things that

happen, the more things stay the same. There are a lot of changes really but

basically Adelaide is Adelaide, nothing much has changed. It’s a beautiful place

to live, probably the best place in the world.

OH: Why do you say that?

HN: Well it gives you a lot of opportunities. I came here as a refugee in 1956, and I

became Lord Mayor of the City, which is quite an achievement, it doesn’t

happen too often. I studied here, it gave me the opportunity to get a degree. I

worked here, I got a business here, I got property here, it gave me everything, a

beautiful wife and children, everything worked very well.

OH: If you think about, say, walking down, as it was, Rundle Street, in 1956, and

you compare now, Rundle Mall, what would you say has changed?

HN: Oh, it’s completely different, it’s a different place altogether. Now it’s become

a fashion haven really, and before it was just a, just a walkway. There was

nothing there, was there?

Lynette Ninio (LN): It was a street with lots of traffic [laughs].

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HN: Yeah, that’s right. And the same with Rundle Mall, there was, there was traffic

in Rundle Mall when I came.

OH: What about the feel of the city, if you think back to ’56?

HN: Very cosmopolitan, it’s become very, very cosmopolitan with so many different

nationalities from all over the world. It has changed a lot. It’s not the same

Adelaide as it used to be because of that.

LN: Do you remember saying how quiet it was here compared with Cairo [laughs]?

HN: Mm.

LN: When you came here it was, after the buzz of living in a city like Cairo.

HN: It still is when compared to Cairo.

LN: Right. Okay. [laughs].

OH: The fact that there are not as many people walking the streets?

HN: Yes. Cairo has 20 million people in Cairo, we have 20 million in Australia.

OH: Yeah, so different, isn’t it? What are some of the things that you like about

Adelaide, if you thought about some places that you enjoy going to in the City?

HN: I enjoy Rundle Mall, I enjoy some of the shopping centres that are all around

Adelaide. I enjoy mainly, mainly the shopping, I like the shopping. I like the

Market [Central Market].

LN: Henry has always been a retailer [laughs].

OH: And the Market you like?

HN: Yes. I like the Art Gallery very much, I go, I go often.

OH: So there are plenty of opportunities for you to enjoy the City?

HN: Yes, there are.

OH: What do you think about the future in Adelaide? Say if you thought in 10 years

or 20 years time, what can you imagine will happen?

HN: I think more of the same really, we’re going to have more, more people, more

buildings, more residents I hope in the City, more students, but it’s going to be

much, much the same as it is now but bigger.

OH: And challenges for the City?

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HN: I think the biggest challenge is to get more students to come and study in

Adelaide, that’s a big challenge, to get more people to come and live in the

City.

OH: Henry, if you had to describe your relationship to the City, how, how would you

describe it, what would be some words that you’d use?

HN: I think we’re inseparable, very connected. I love, I love the City of Adelaide.

OH: And of course your association has been, as you say, from somebody who came

as a young man, as a refugee, to somebody who has had an important role in the

Capital City Council?

HN: Yes, yes, that’s been a big, big thing in my life.

OH: Any words of advice for the future, about the City of Adelaide?

HN: [laughs] I’m very loathe to give advice because when you’re in the sidelines

you don’t give advice unless, unless they ask for it.

[Laughter]

OH: That’s a good answer, Henry, that’s a good answer. Anything else that you’d

like to include that we haven’t spoken about?

HN: No, I think, I think we’ve done pretty well, we’ve covered a lot of ground.

OH: We have. So Lynette, I’d like to ask you what about the changes that you’ve

seen in Adelaide, because you grew up in Adelaide?

LN: I was born here in Hindmarsh. I grew up in the western suburbs of Adelaide,

and I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve never lived for any length of time in any

other place, and I love it, I think it’s the perfect city.

OH: What would make it the perfect city for you?

LN: I think that it has everything you need in a city. It has accessibility, it has

variety, it has the cultural needs for most people who live here, and we’re lucky

enough to be able to go to a beach or to the hills, or to a winery, or ... It’s just an

amazing place, I think, paradise [laughs]. In fact my mother-in-law when she

came here was quite shocked, having lived in Cairo and then Rome and then

came to Australia, and she said, No people, no people [laughs], and I think if

she saw the City now she would really appreciate that it’s a City of people.

OH: For you, if you reflect about some of the main changes that you’ve seen in

Adelaide in your lifetime, what would they be?

LN: I think it’s the change in, the changes in the suburbs especially for me, because

when I was a child, and it’s such a long time ago now [laughs], it really is, there

87

were so many tracts that were still open land, and now that’s all developed, and

that density is coming in, which I like I have to say.

I was lucky that I was able to go to school in the City as well, I went to

Adelaide Girls’ High [School], so from primary school in the suburbs I went to

secondary school in the City. I had, I was very fortunate, I had that education

which was very special, and I, I just love the City. I don’t mind developments.

[Laughter]

LN: But I do, I must say I do appreciate the ...

HN: The retention of heritage.

LN: The retention of the heritage and the look of North Adelaide. It has, it’s a

beautiful place and I would not like that to be spoiled because that’s a point of

difference for us from so many other cities. We have this lovely area that is

charming and different.

OH: And do you have any other favourite places that are important to you within the

City?

LN: I think I’m like Henry, I love Rundle Mall, it’s always been an exciting place. I

always have a soft spot for the school, which is not there anymore – the Market

area is where I went to school in Grote Street, so there was always an

association with the Market, and my other love is the [River] Torrens area,

especially now that we’ve got Linear Park which is just gorgeous. I walk it all

the time.

[Laughter]

OH: How would you describe your relationship to the City?

LN: Oh, it’s sort of part of my family I think. It’s, even though it’s always there, it’s

part of my, part of my genes I think [laughs]. I’m an Adelaide girl and can

never be anything else.

OH: Henry said that you, you still keep an interest in the affairs of the City, and

would that be the same for you, Lynette?

LN: I think I was never a political, never had a political interest in the City, but I still

love the City and I like to see what’s happening there, and I think because of the

long, because of our association with the City, it’s always the retail areas that

create the most interest, the changes there are always exciting.

OH: You mentioned that you’d seen Christie Walk recently?

LN: Yes.

88

OH: Is that something that you’re interested in, in terms of residential developments?

LN: At the time when that development was being proposed, I was really excited

because I thought this again was going to be a wonderful point of difference for

Adelaide. Unfortunately, because of economics it just didn’t go ahead, but it’s

nice to have this, this little pocket which shows what could have been done.

OH: Finally about the future, what would you see happening in the next 10-20 years

in Adelaide?

LN: Oh, I think there’d be more suburban density. I think the City is, I think with the

development of, at long last, of Victoria Square [laughs] and Victoria Park, I

think those two things are going to make an enormous difference to the way we

use the City. I’m not so enthused about the differences at the [Adelaide] Oval

[laughs], but the area of the Festival Centre and the Convention Centre, that

riverbank there, is going to be a fabulous area I think in the next ten years.

OH: That’s great! Is there anything else that you would like to cover, Lynette, in the

interview? I’m aware that I didn’t ask you about how you felt at the time that

Henry’s second term came to the end, like as Lady Mayoress. How did that

feel?

LN: Oh, I was a little sad I think because it was a wonderful four years that we’d had

and, and a really exciting time. You’re in a position where you meet people and

see things that you would normally have no opportunity to experience, so that

was a very exciting four years. I must say I was very tired at the end of it

[laughs]. It was a very, very busy time, but great, wonderful.

OH: Is there anything else that you’d like to add that we haven’t covered in the

interview?

LN: No, I don’t think so.

HN: No, I don’t think so.

LN: It was, it was a wonderful time.

HN: Mm [laughs].

LN: It’s nice to look back on it.

OH: Oh well that’s great. Thank you very much, and thank you to both of you for

contributing to the project, and for giving your different perspectives on

particularly those four years when you were Lord Mayor, Henry, and Lynette,

when you were Lady Mayoress, so I appreciate your contribution.

LN: We thank you for helping us to reflect back on that time because we hadn’t

thought about it for a long time.

89

HN: Mm, that’s right.

LN: So it was a great pleasure to look back and think about good times.

OH: Great, thank you very much.