2 Lithgow – Mining Scars: 1914–31
Lithgow – Mining Scars: 1914–31
Leon was born on 15 March 1914 in the town of Lithgow, west of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia. At that time, Australia’s population was just short of five million people.
Lithgow was founded in a valley that was later discovered to be in the middle of a region full of significant deposits of coal and iron ore. After 1874, when the mining of coal and iron ore became viable, Lithgow enjoyed a long period of industrial activity. At its peak, the town had industries for coal and iron-ore production, iron and steel, brick-making, terracotta pottery, clothing and small arms production.
Lithgow shared similarities with mining towns in other parts of the world. Its heart was a stark, scarred, smoke-filled, mining landscape. There was very little vegetation and a significant amount of pollution from pumped waste. Even the trees on the edge of the town looked unhealthy.1 Within this landscape, the town’s brass band, workers’ club and amenities built by churches and other groups worked to reduce the effect of this environment on the town’s inhabitants.
Today, Lithgow abuts the tourist destination of Australia’s Blue Mountains. Nevertheless, it still echoes its mining and manufacturing past. The main streets have an eerie, industrial memory, as if they are recollecting the throb of a factory in production rather than the feel of relaxed coffee-drinking in nearby tourist towns in the mountains.
Leon’s father, George Morris, was an engineer,2 who came to Australia from England in the 1890s as a single man. He married Priscilla Walker in the Sydney suburb of Balmain in 1903.3 He was twenty-nine and she was twenty when they moved to Lithgow. The family suffered a massive tragedy in 1912 when Priscilla died suddenly of gastroenteritis. They had been married for just nine years and had a young boy, Phil, who had been born in Lithgow in 1905.4 Phil at seven was now without a mother, and George was a widower.
In 1913 George married Ivy Charlotte Lamb, who had been born in 1892 to John and Mary Lamb. At the time of her marriage she was working as an office assistant.5 She was twenty and George was thirty-nine. The wedding took place at St Paul’s Church of England church, Lithgow, and was conducted by the rector, Revd D.H. Dillon. The Lithgow Mercury listed Ivy as ‘the eldest daughter of the Lambs who lived in Mort Street’.6 George gave Ivy the pearls she wore on the wedding day. Her sister, Myrtle, was one of the bridesmaids and Sydney Field, her cousin, was George’s best man. They honeymooned in Leura in the Blue Mountains. Where Phil stayed during this time, no one knows. Upon their return, George and Ivy set up home at 3 Clarice Street, Lithgow, the house in which all the family would be raised. Leon, born in 1914, was George and Ivy’s first child and he joined his stepbrother Phil. Then came sister Jean in 1915, brothers John in 1918 and Max in 1928. The five siblings were twenty-three years apart.
Early Years
Leon’s family largely missed the impact of World War I, and Leon was only four when it ended. The family had survived intact, as his father was required to remain in industry through that period. In the period after the war, Leon spent his time at school, with his mates and with his family. One early family memory of Leon involved a doting lady who stopped young Leon and Jean, and asked, ‘Are you twins?’ Leon had not worked out what ‘twins’ meant, but figured it was best answered by saying ‘yes’. He and his sister scored a penny each from the lady.7
Like many Australians, Leon was fun-loving. In a land where the open spaces overshadowed the cities he had a ‘happy-go-lucky’ laid-back style.8 Many happy times were spent at a local sunny creek where you could picnic and have family games. There were other times at Hassan Walls. The walls were a series of sandstone rocks atop the valleys, with caves the children imagined were bushrangers’ hideouts. Leon and his mates would often ride their bikes to the rocks, caves and tracks around Hassan Walls and expended their energy in endless adventures. When Leon returned to Lithgow from Sydney in his study years he continued to ride his bike near Hassan Walls with his much younger brother Max. Having outgrown his bike, he would roar along the tracks with his knees sticking out at crazy angles, laughing his head off.
Leon did not come out of all these adventures unscathed. One incident, in particular, marked his early years and was recalled by those working at the town’s hospital. One day a person came into the hospital needing some attention to an eye problem when a nurse remarked, ‘I hate children throwing things … a lad in our street had a stick thrown at him and lost the sight of his eye.’ Leon’s sister-in-law, Wilma, who was working in the hospital at that time, turned to her colleague and said, ‘Yes, and that boy is now my brother in law.’9 Leon’s brother, Max, remarked that ‘Leon could never make anything clearly out of that eye’.10 Typical of Leon, he never mentioned the incident nor its consequence: blindness in one eye. He had to be directly questioned before commenting on it. He wore rather large glasses for most of his working life and only a very careful person might have noticed that one eye was not quite normal in appearance.
As well as being involved in sport at school and church levels, Leon also played tennis with his stepbrother, Phil, and his brother, John. He had an amazing love affair with statistics, which are an important part of all serious sport, and he kept score of various events he was following. These interests fuelled his lifelong love of sport.
Leon’s family was close-knit, and regular attenders at the nearby Church of England church. The children had plenty of opportunities to observe the commitment of their parents to the church and to the welfare of others. Leon’s mother, Ivy, possessed an inner attractiveness, which he inherited, and his father was a faithful churchman, being the Sunday-school superintendent for some time and a licensed lay reader. From 1907 he was the rector’s warden, considered the most senior lay position one could hold in a parish. During the early years the children attended Sunday-school picnics11 and later the many social and sporting activities linked to the church alongside the regular Sunday worship. The young Leon actively took part in these activities, but it was not until he was a teenager that he acquired a deep passion to discover the truth at the heart of the Christian faith.
Although they were not overtly demonstrative, Leon’s family held strong views. Family conversations within the Morris home were lively and spirited, and they concentrated ‘on the here and now’.12 When asked if the family shared much personal history, Leon replied, ‘Not a great deal. But I don’t think there was any attempt to keep it hidden.’13 They had a keen interest in continuing education, which was not shared by all of Lithgow’s population with its heavily industrial and working-class bias.
School Years
Leon attended the local Lithgow Public School, where he proved to be an outstanding student. At the end of Grade 5 he sat the Qualifying Certificate exam for high-school entry as a practice run for the following year, and he did so well that he was allowed to skip Grade 6. So, at the age of ten, Leon started high school, where he also skipped a year. As a consequence, he was ready for university one year before he was old enough to enter and had to repeat the final year of high school. It was this event that caused him to reflect years later on his education as ‘not of any set plan, but nobody knew what to do with me, and I didn’t know’.14 Instead of questioning why he was ahead of the other children, Leon focused his energies on making the most of opportunities as they arose. He felt a keen sense of responsibility in this regard, and it explains at least part of his drive.
Of his time in the Lithgow schools, Leon said, ‘I … had my first education and got to understand a little bit about the rudiments of learning and what wonderful things one can find in books.’15 He always spoke warmly of his ‘Lithgovian’ upbringing, as he called it, and never forgot where he came from.
That Leon was clever is without dispute, but not within the family. When his brother, Max, was questioned about Leon’s particular cleverness, he jovially said that they thought Leon was clever like the rest of them. His sister-in-law, who knew him from a young age, whimsically recalled that ‘he sure had a brain’.16 Leon’s sister, Jean, and brother, John, were also bright but lacked the opportunities that Leon received. One undisputed difference did exist, however. Max would go on to say that ‘where Leon shone from an early age was his excessive ability to concentrate’.17
The legendary Australian cricketer, Sir Donald Bradman, once explained his superior batting average on superior concentration.18 This also worked in Leon’s favour. He was accurate, he was fast and he concentrated. Beginning in high school, Leon established the habit of regimented intense study. He would study for fifty-five minutes and then spend five minutes playing quoits – that is, throwing a small hand-held rope circle over a peg set up about three yards away. Leon would repeat these two activities for several hours straight. This practice bore fruit, and it became, along with his punctuality, a defining characteristic in whatever country he lived.
Leon made it to the University of Sydney in March 1931. No one from the Morris family had ever been close to a university. Here was a young man from a mining town embarking on a new venture – in the case of Leon, in the sciences. He was still sixteen years of age, and was in the rare company of those first-year students attending the university while still wearing short trousers.
The Great Depression
Besides school and church, the other big influence in Leon’s early life was his family’s business. After arriving in Lithgow, George Morris worked in the town’s main foundry19 and rose to be one of the managers in pattern-making. In 1910 he left to begin his own foundry in Gas Works Lane, alongside the railway, to make Lithgow Stoves and other items.20 In 1919 after the war it reopened as Great Western Foundry and produced ‘modern appliances for the manufacture of every class of castings in connection with mining, industrial, agricultural machinery and general requirements’.21
As was the case with many families, the boys in their teenage years worked with their father. When it was possible outside school hours, they worked at the foundry to earn a bit of pocket money. The processes of running a successful small foundry were complex, and clear organization was required to manage the process from base metals through to finished products. They reproduced this same attention to detail in their later lives, and it certainly featured strongly in Leon’s methodical approach. His creative and methodical organizational and academic skills left many a competent academic in awe.22 In addition to observing his father’s style and expertise, Leon witnessed the difficulties of running a business that could not make quite enough money – not unlike the difficulties he later faced in running a theological college.
The Great Depression took hold as Leon entered his teenage years. The emergence of iron-ore and steel-manufacturing centres elsewhere in Australia23 had already led to a significant reduction in business in Lithgow. Most of the larger enterprises in the town had failed to make real profits over the long term, with most relying on huge injections of private and government capital, and the depression exacerbated this problem to such an extent that only some industries remained viable.
George Morris had employed up to a dozen men at times, and his creative business and organizational skills meant the foundry lasted well into the depression before it finally succumbed and closed, forcing the family to move to Sydney. Although Leon was living in Sydney by this time, he was keenly aware of his family’s struggle.
Despite these circumstances, there was never any question that Leon should cease his studies and find other work; the die was cast. It was an extremely costly exercise for the family to keep Leon at university, but his extraordinary gifts and abilities convinced them that their sacrifices were worthwhile. The support of his family in this way had a marked impact on Leon. He responded with a drive and commitment to succeed, as well as a desire to encourage and support others. This attitude was evident in his efforts in the academic arena, in his lifestyle choices and how he managed his finances.
These early foundations were a valuable legacy for Leon. He carried this legacy to the end of his life, and it shaped and prepared him for his fight for love and truth.