By Lyn Collingwood, Bulletin 10/2024, December

Gould’s Book Arcade on King Street Newtown was a local landmark – a messy warehouse of books, records, posters, videotapes and left-wing paraphernalia. Its owner, Bob Gould, died in 2011 after falling from a ladder in the store, and over 500 attended his funeral. One mourner recalled asking Bob where a certain item could be found. ‘How the hell would I know?’ was the gruff response. Bob’s father, Stephen, was politically active in Glebe.

Stephen Gould was born into a Catholic family at Clybacca near Kempsey on the Macleay River. His father, Robert Gould, an Irish immigrant from Sixmilebridge, County Clare, had landed in Sydney on the Peterborough in 1878 and first tried his hand at farming at Glenrock and Smithtown. Stephen’s mother, Bridget O’Brien, arrived as a 17-year-old Irish immigrant aboard the Devon in 1881. She and Robert married in 1884. They lived for a time at Glenrock before moving permanently to Clybacca.

Ten children were born to the couple: Peter (1885–1968 died in Queensland), John (1887–1972), Patrick Stanislaus (1888–1935), Ann (known as Annie, b. 1892), Stephen, Mary (born and died 1895), Kathleen (1896–1898), Bridget (1899–1946), Mary Kathleen (1901–1986) and Margaret Eileen (known as Eileen 1906–1983). Before her marriage, Bridget taught at the Convent of Mercy, Kempsey, while Eileen became headmistress of West Kempsey Infants’ School.

As a teenager, Stephen went to Queensland, where he cut cane, worked on Brisbane trams and became active in the Tramways Union. When he enlisted in the First World War in January 1916, he gave his occupation as labourer. He wrote to his parents of a cold and muddy Christmas in France, the constant shelling, and his feelings about conscription: ‘It is a very hard question to cast an opinion on. Still for myself I like to see the same freedom of voluntary enlistment which was given to me given to all others in Australia.’ Postwar, Stephen’s anti-conscription stance hardened.

Stephen was seriously injured on the Western Front, resulting in the surgical amputation of his left arm and the shortening of one leg because of a shrapnel wound to the thigh. Nicknamed ‘Wingy’, he returned home in February 1919 to a hero’s welcome in Clybacca’s local hall. He immediately set about studying to be a teacher and spent most of 1920 on a scholarship at Hereford House Annex of Sydney Teachers College in Glebe (since demolished to make space for Foley Park). His first posting was to Tabulam Public School. By 1928, he was sports master at Fort Street Primary, Millers Point. One of his star students was Amy Smith who became a state champion sprinter and javelin thrower. 

By 1930, Stephen’s sister Eileen, also a teacher, was living in Glebe, at 165 Bridge Road, while he was lodging at Whitehall, 415 Glebe Point Road, a mansion converted into a 16-bedroom boarding house run by Maude Finnan. The property cornering Cook Street was earlier known as Sidcup. (It has been replaced by townhouses; a stone wall and a heritage fig tree are the only reminders of its past.) A staunch supporter of Jack Lang, Stephen was Secretary of the ALP’s Glebe branch, ran economics classes at the RSSL Labor Club at 49 Glebe Point Road (now Gleebooks) and wrote for the Labor Daily. In 1931, he was among those arrested at a free speech meeting in St Johns Road.

Close to Whitehall was Dalma, 13 Cook Street, the home of Evelien O’Halloran née Evelyn Maud Conlon (1882–1956). Her Catholic family was well-known in Glebe, especially her uncle Michael Joseph Conlon, who owned a large pottery business on Broughton Street. In 1912, Evelyn married accountant Richard Thomas Disney O’Halloran. They had two children: Ethel Doris, born in 1913, and Terence Leslie (1918-1975). Ethel was educated at St James Girls’ School Forest Lodge, where she learned shorthand and typing, while her brother attended the Patrician Brothers school, Forest Lodge. He became a fine athlete and a fighter pilot in the Second World War. 

Richard O’Halloran wrote an Insurance Ready Reckoner and was an unsuccessful ALP candidate for the Murray electorate in 1917. He was declared bankrupt in 1919, by which time he was back in Cook Street. He and his wife then became involved in developing the Evelien Estate at Cardiff near Newcastle – the former as a partner in O’Halloran and Lamb public accountants and auditors, the latter as a partner in real estate agency Evelyn Estate. Richard, who had a horse racing gambling problem, was charged with embezzlement in 1928 and nine years later was given a jail sentence for stealing money from his clients. He moved to Canberra and died aged 64 in 1947. Although long estranged from his family, he was recorded in his death notice as a dear husband and beloved father.

The O’Hallorans’ daughter married Stephen Gould at St Anne’s Church Bondi in 1934, a ceremony written up in the Labor Daily. Her husband’s junior by 18 years, Ethel was given away by her 15-year-old brother. The couple moved permanently to the Eastern Suburbs. Stephen joined the ALP’s Bondi branch and its Central Executive. In 1935, he spoke in the Domain on the threat of conscription if Australia were drawn into the Italo-Ethiopian war in Africa. In 1936, Stephen protested against the hanging of 18-year-old Edwin Hickey at Long Bay Gaol. When the Lang faction was expelled from the ALP in 1940, he stood unsuccessfully for East Sydney against Eddie Ward.

Stephen’s mother, Bridget, died aged 80 in October 1943, followed by his father, Robert, aged 87 in July 1945. After a Requiem Mass in All Saints’ Catholic Church, each was buried in West Kempsey Catholic Cemetery. In 1949, Robert Gould’s 91-acre farm, Hillview, was put up for sale.

Born in 1937 and named Robert Stephen Gould, Bob Gould was only a month old when his political trajectory was sealed with a contribution in his name to an ALP election campaign. His father (who had learned to do everything with one arm: play golf, mow the lawn, mix and lay concrete) died aged 80 on 9 June 1974 at North Bondi.

Sources: Hogan, Michael (2004) Local Labor: a history of the Labor Party in Glebe, 1891-2003; National Archives of Australia; NSW electoral rolls; NSW Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages; Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages; NSW State Records; Sands Directory; Trove website.

Note: An article on Michael Joseph Conlon was published in Bulletin 5/2011. The Bob Gould archive is held by the State Library of NSW.