Jack Elsegood was born on Kangaroo Island to Olive Mabel and Frederick Charles.
On leaving school at 12 to help support the family because of his father’s ill health he worked at many jobs including at the Salt Lakes scraping, butchering meat like his father and loading salt onto trains. When Jack was 18 during the Depression, he and his brother-in-law Bill Cooksley rode their bicycles to Broken Hill seeking work.
In December 1941 he married Marion Eva Ransom and they moved to near Pine Lagoon and share-farmed with his brother Fred. Other jobs he had were cutting gum and leaf and distilling eucalyptus at Pine Lagoon. Jack also did shearing – blades under the sky to start with and later with Fred transporting a portable two-stand shearing plant from shed to shed.
When the Shearer’s Hall of Fame was established at Parndana in 2005, Jack was one of the first four to be recognised.
He had the ability to divine for water and used it to help many farmers.
He taught his three daughters to fish, ride horses, drive and made up a four to play tennis on the court at home. The girls also learnt all sorts of farm skills.
Throughout his life Jack was a keen sportsman. He played football and cricket, representing the Island in Country Carnivals. When he retired from cricket at 48 he took up tennis. Later came bowls at Birchmore Bowling Club where he was awarded Life Membership. Golf, fishing, shooting and horse riding were other sports he enjoyed.
Jack was heavily involved in community organisations, including Agricultural Bureau of which he was a Life Member, firefighting and Kingscote District Council on which he represented Haines for 18 years and was chairman for another year. He was on the Hospital Board, a Freemason, including Master and Grand Master, member of Senior Citizens and Volunteer at the local Museum. As a member of Lions, Jack was awarded Life Membership and the Melvin Jones Fellow Award for Dedicated Human Services.
Marion and Jack were married for nearly 45 years before Marion died in 1986.
In 1987 Jack married May and became Poppa Jack or Grandpa Jack to May’s grandchildren and great grandchildren and a friend to her children who have a great affection for him.
When they married they said that if they had five years together they’d be lucky. In fact it has been 21 years and it is only recently they have slowed down and not been able to live in their own home. At his 90th birthday, Jack told everyone, among other things, “we don’t need anyone telling us what to do with our koalas and corellas”.
Jack is survived by his wife May and daughters Liz Weatherspoon, Jenny Clifford and Lyn Coombe, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Lucy Olive May (known as May) Elsegood was born in Broken Hill to Jack Charles and Olive Myrtle Austin, the eldest of three children.
May was 10 and her sister Doss only 9 when their mother died and the girls were separately fostered with their father’s cousins. Their father worked at Mallala and when he received his wages he would visit his two daughters to share the bulk of his wages equally between the fostering families.
For most of her life May suffered from debilitating migraines several times each week, which were a result of a virus she contracted when young.
It caused her to be excessively nervous, to endure severe headaches, lose the use of her legs and her speech. Recovery was slow, and she was not able to go to school for 12 months.
May left school at 14 and was employed as a general house cleaner and the cook and laundress for a family, working about 70 hours a week for a wage of seven shillings.
She married Gilbert Kenneth Ronald Pitt in 1936.
Together they had five natural children, acquired themselves a foster son and had 43 years of marriage.
May arrived on Kangaroo Island at Easter, 1937, travelling in the company of her mother-in-law Amelia Cousins on the steam ship Karatta to join her husband Ken and father Jack Austin who had been on the Island for 12 months. Her first job on Kangaroo Island was to help Ken Yacca gumming on the western end of Kangaroo Island. She and Ken worked at Cygnet River for Augustus and Christina Boettcher.
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