Woodwind players during the war

During the war years the orchestra was augmented with Principals from Interstate. Two bassoonists became great friends of our family: Fred Morgan from Melbourne and Wally Black from Sydney. Fred Morgan was a rough and ready character whose mother ran a dairy in Carlton. Fred used to write to my father whist sitting on the toilet; a continuous missive written on toilet paper with red pencil. Wally Black was a perfect gentleman with impeccable manners. He had a club foot and used to walk with a profound limp. Both were superb musicians.

Also during the war woodwind reeds were difficult if not impossible to obtain as they predominately came from France. In those days much of the Marion area comprised of vineyards which were surrounded with cane windbreaks. Fred Morgan discovered that this cane made quite good bassoon reeds so that on his visits to Adelaide our Sunday drive was to Marion cane cutting. This became known to quite a few woodwind players around the country as a result of which my father had quite a mailing list for Marion cane.

David Bottrall