. . . Snips and Snails and puppy dog tails. . .

(complete storyline).

Spiny Echidna, by; Patricia Hopwood-Wade..( www.pjpaintings.com )

Spiked Echidna.

Just up-river and around a few bends, around ten miles from the main town of the region (I think you know the one I mean), was the little hamlet of “Spiked Echidna”…the name arising from the government surveyor who set out the village remarking on the surprising number of echidnas in that particular area. It consisted of a small cluster of multi-ethnic families that settled here during and after the Great Depression, when the government made land available for the many new arrivals from overseas and other families driven by unemployment and poverty to these and many other regional centres along The Murray River.

The landscape around “Spike”( the shortening of the longer name being a common thing in Australian lingo) was mostly flat or shallow undulating, this is where most of the old pioneer farming families settled and farmed, but the little hamlet we are describing was a descent into gullies, shallow creeks when it rained and a general wasteland that was seen as of no use to the practice of farming, hence the giving over to use of the “sussos” that came in desperation to find and build a home for their family.

The main line of the railway passed nearby, and several quarries suitable for ballast when the railway was first built now lay idle and tempting for local kids to climb and scramble about in. There was a long, high embankment where the rail swept across those gullies toward and away from the regional town..in the days of steam locomotives, lumps of coal from the fuel-tender behind the engine would sometimes fall off or the stevedore, in a moment of boredom would hurl at a rabbit sighted near the track..and in time there was a scattering of these lumps that the kids used for marking on flat surfaces drawings of various and innocuous graffiti.

There were several religious creeds among the families, the most favoured being Catholic and Protestant..of which with the “Proddos”, there were several synods of arguable interpretations of their beliefs..the Catholics to a family were in agreeance, but poor..the proddo kids would tease the “mick” kids with a chant ; “Catholic dogs stink like frogs”, which would draw the inevitable hail of stone missiles in retaliation..but when it came to play, it was one in-all in.

Over time, some of the families of Spiked Echidna came to run small shops and cafes in the large, regional town..one of these families was the Fookes..they started up a fish and chip shop where there was never a consideration that such an enterprise could succeed. Mr Fookes was a fisherman who, with his sons, had a camp on the seashore over on the peninsula, where he would spend a week away catching, cleaning and freezing the fish before taking it to the fish market and bringing a required amount home to sell in the shop. His wife ran the shop and cooked the fish and chips and it became a wonder of the local community.

Mrs Fookes had the voice and stride like a sergeant major..she would call for her child and he would hear her loud and clear half a mile away!…and woe betide him if he didn’t heed her call.

But she ran the fish shop built by her fisherman husband at the high spot of the carpark that led to the rocky shore there at the river bend of our neighbourhood..the gathering place of a mix of many nations and ages, young folk of both genders..young kids of the boomer generation who framed a collective there of social sharing and support that relied upon Mrs. Fookes’s  generosity as the backbone of our little collective…she was a saint, even if she didn’t realise it.

Spiked Echidna, with its inhabitants of Dutch, Latvian, Scottish, German, Irish and some of dubious parentage altogether, became ‘fellow travelers’ in that poverty enriched neighbourhood  in the foothills on the edge of  “forever”.

By a coincidental twist of fate, while the adults, survivors of a world war, in some cases two wars, an economic depression that impoverished so many, were a motley collection of spiritually broken , in some cases physically broken individuals, who were subjected to the corrupting influence of conservative thinking and propaganda that drove a wedge of fear into their susceptible hearts, their “multi-mix” children, with an improved diet of high protein, clean water, fresh air and unsupervised, unregulated freedom on the wide reaches of  the river, grew into wild free-spirited youths, who found rebellion against the restraints of conservative lifestyle as easy as diving off “Sharkey rock” into a clean , cool river. The young men and women that grew from such a healthy outdoors environment, grew bodies that glowed with a shimmering water-silvered endowment that drew the envy of the gods!

Having no money and no capacity to travel far, all the children congregated in a tribal-like conglomerate on the shoreline. There was nothing in the stultifying doctrine of Catholicism or the Protestant work ethic that could not be laughed off under the pagan influence of sun , river and freedom and the merciful salvation of Fookes’s Fish and Chip Shop.

Ahh!..Mrs. Fookes..never did she know how much she helped create a revolution in her own small way, by her unconnected generosity to the local kids. From behind the counter of that unique fish and chippery, she contributed to the making of “baby-boomer” revolutionaries. She may have had a stride like a parade-ground Sergeant Major, and a voice to match..but her heart was of pure gold. She wasn’t like “Aunt Mary”, the railway porter on the train station who would line the kids up and threaten any delinquents that she would cut their heads off and put a cabbage in its place if’n she had any more cheek!

Mrs. Fookes saw how so many were scrawny kids hungry for a decent bit of daytime tucker, scrounging around for empty cool-drink bottles left behind by the weekend tourists to cash in for a bob’s worth of chips..one of the kids would go inside with a few bottles at threepence each return deposit and Mrs Fookes would dish out more than a shillings chips and sometimes throw in a piece of fish that “was just laying around waiting for a mouth to eat “…and there’s a couple extra chips or a “ potato pattie for your little plump friend (Maris) there at the door…he looks hungrier than the rest of you!” and the booty was all shared around amongst many..right down to greasy fingers dabbing up even the last salt grains..’all for one, one for all’…till she worked out a way to legitimise her care by pointing one day to some large empty glass jars in an alcove by the counter..”Listen you kids” she said in her commanding voice, “I want some interesting shells and things to make a river-world display for the customers to look at while they wait..if you bring me something interesting or curious from the river, I will give you some fish and chips in return…but it’s gotta be interesting, mind!” and she wagged a finger in warning to not try any silly buggers with her..and she meant it!..and she stuck to her word…The kids would bring their little treasures from Moorundi’s  hoard and she’d exchange for tucker…strange twisted and shaped shells, dug out from their wedge in the cliffs…the dried, hollowed out husks of exquisite yabbies and the like…little treasures given up by the river..they brought them to Mrs. Fookes like Fagan’s pickpockets seeking reward for their efforts! Did anyone then realise what this meant, this system of barter ?..It meant freedom!..liberated from going home during the day for food..No longer under the parents watchful eyes the children were free to create their own river-side society from morning to late afternoon,without oversight or consultation with adults!..God bless Mrs. Fookes!..and may a warm fire be forever burning in her hearth and warm slippers handy on a cold night…God bless her.

Mind you, she had to have a pretty tough hide to handle her fisherman husband ; Edgar Gordon Fookes…a stone-cutter by trade, fisherman by choice and garrulous old bastard by nature. Edgar and his sons had a fishers camp on the Peninsula, where they would set out to their secret fishing grounds and catch choice fish to clean and put on ice which Edgar would deliver straight back to the shop..never were fresher fish, more delicious fish and chips served to a long queue of faithful customers..so deep at the counter on a Friday night till a ticketing system had to be introduced.

Edgar would deliver his catch and then lean against the end of the counter smoking his big, fat meerschaum pipe and observing what he called ‘the idle rich” customers coming and going. He was a garrulous old bloke and the kids held their distance when he was around, saving their moments to barter with the kindly Mrs. Fookes when he was away.

Edgar Fookes wasn’t one to be messed around with..story goes that once, in the Fish-market auctions, the independent fishermen were sick and tired of the auctioneer placing their catches down the sale list, even though they could very often be the first there with their lot, just to satisfy and be rewarded by the big corporate fishing companies..one day Edgar challenged the auctioneer on this unfair matter…the auctioneer told him to shut it or else he’ll be last on the list!…Where upon Edgar snatched up a gummy-shark, swung it a couple of times around his head an whalloped the auctioneer off the dias and proceeded to do his own mock auction in place!

One day , on a quiet afternoon, Edgar was “resting” on his arm at the end of the counter watching a matronly tourist lady in heavy fur coat peruse with concerned expression and a pair of  prinz nez opera glasses the trays of select fish in the display fridge…after several sweeps in this manner, Edgar could be observed huffing and puffing in an agitated way on his pipe..Edgar prided himself on the freshness and quality of his catch..Finally, the matron straightened up and dropping her glasses to her bosom, addressed Mrs. Fookes behind the counter.

“ Madam,“ she spoke in a ‘Toorak Gardens’ dialect ,“Are these fish frrrrresh?”.

This was too much for Edgar to take lying down! He swiftly sidled up to the lady and taking his pipe with a sudden but measured movement from his mouth , he looked her square in the eye and informed her in a mocking emulation of the lady’s own accent;

“Madam!…if they were any frrrrresher…they’d be indecent!” and he turned abruptly away to resume his place at the end of the counter..huffing and puffing at his pipe.

Mrs Hancock cuts our hair.

It’s funny, you know; the innocent image of adults one has as a child, compared to the actual reality known by the adults of the time around you. Mrs. Hancock used to cut our hair when we were children. The four of us kids; from the oldest brother, down incl’ to my sister, then myself the youngest. We would be marched down across the railway-line by the eldest in military style (“hup-two three four”), each clutching a bob (one shilling) in our sweaty little hands to get that generic haircut for which Mrs. Hancock was infamous: “The Baseoh” for boys and the “Page Boy” for girls, about once every couple of months. Most of the kids in the district would sport a Mrs. Hancock “special”, and we’d be all lined up on the railway station going to school, looking like a lot of miniature “Moes”,as in “The Three Stooges” (google it), waiting for the train, girls incl’. I wonder that some social science person didn’t do a study on  “Demographic by haircut” kind of thing for those days? There must have been a “Mrs. Hancock” in every suburb. Truth be known, I believe most barbers, like most architects, have one basic style and everything else is a derivative there-of.

Mrs. Hancock was one of the many home-enterprise businesses that used to operate in Spike..along with other women doing sewing repairs or dressmaking and a couple of men took on mechanics to make or supplement an income. The local orchards and vineyards were good for seasonal work, but that wasn’t all year ‘round, so most of the inhabitants had to “make do”. Old Mr. Hocking made these unique, own designed windmills, or rather wind-pumps, scaled on the real ones you see out in the paddocks..He made and soldered them out of used tin cans, using his own design and made jigs to bend, fold and solder the separate parts so that the finished product resembled the real thing, but scaled down and with his own secret pump mechanism in it, you could fill the miniature troughs, place it where a breeze would blow and the fan blade would turn pumping water around and around the connected pipes and troughs…he made and sold so many of these toys to supplement his aged pension.

The image I had of Mrs. Hancock as a child was of this frumpy old lady, dressed in ‘lop-sided’, beige cardigan and dress, living in this dreary old fibro house, with creepy shadows and dull lighting. She would sit us in an old stuffed, armless chair next to one of those half-round side tables of dark timber and curved legs and armed with scissors, a smelly fag and the endless glass of water, she would attack our tangled locks with all the tactics of “Tojo in a Zero” (google it) coming out of the sun! The fag-end would send an endless swirl of smoke past her wincing eye, she’d take a gulp of water, vice-clasp our head unceremoniously with her left hand and her right hand would start with the then continuous;  ”snipsnipsnipsnip-snipping” as she dove into the job, to come out the other side in an undisturbed arc, the arm ascending upward to hover above our heads somewhere “sit still child!” mechanically, continuously, snipsnipsnipsnip snipping ! One sat in a horror of anticipation for the next “strafing” (and you know, I can’t stand being “dive-bombed” by mozzies to this day, I don’t mind so much the bite, it’s the hovering, whirring, buzzing that drives me crazy!).

Her house was the last one on that side of the road, behind the train station. I think it was called “Cygnet Terrace” before it was pushed through and became “The Cove Road”, thereby cutting off the notorious Emma St. Crossing that cost the lives of a young couple whose car was hit by the train coming out of the blind cutting there at the crossing, a cold wind would cut down through the barren gullies there in winter. Ted Hancock was a forever optimistic trainer of trotting horses and he could be heard telling any kid who was watching him groom the horse and listening (the adults had given up on THAT idle occupation with Ted years before) that here was the next big thing in the trotting and harness racing world..and”..you’d be silly if’n you didn’t put a couple of quid on the nose for it next Satterdee.”..The chance of any kid betting in that neighbourhood was increased when the milky, who delivered the daily measure of milk to households via a big scoop into the household’s billy can left at the gate, from stainless-steel urns carted around by a slow-clopping horse and sulky-wagon that followed him as he scuttled house to house down the streets…the other “fundraiser” the milky provided for the amusement and occupation of the district, was being the local SP bookie…and one placed one’s bets inside the billy can left there at the gate.

But it wasn’t till years later, when I first started going to the pub as an older youth, that I realized that the “glass of water” always at her beck, was gin and tonic, yes, poor old Mrs. Hancock was a gin-dipso (google it), and , going by her familiarity with her fellows in the front bar of the local hotel ; an old hand at the game. I suppose that is why her front parlour where she “scalped “ us kids always had the curtains drawn. I think, you know, my mother would have heard of that, but then again, many in that “fringe district” where we lived were escapees from reality, my old man bought there because it was cheap land, not now though! It was at the end of that railway line spur, hang on, that’s not quite true, there was one more stop; ”The Slips”, but that place only got two or three trains a day then and it was the refuge of bankrupts, hermits and criminals. I got to meet quite a few in later years, so can confirm the statement!

Back to the mistaken image of adults one has as a child. I remember also being taken into the front-bar of an hotel by my dad as a very young boy, he having a beer and me a raspberry, and this man bending down to me and saying in a beery voice; ” Hello little fellah, what’s your name, eh, eh?” and I got real scared, but my dad was just smiling. I couldn’t then understand why he didn’t chase the ugly man away! Poor old bastard was just another drunk saying hello to a kid, but then, I was a sensitive child!………………………….still am!

Len.

We knew him just as ‘Len”, not “Lenny”, nor the more imperial; “Leonard”, which by the way was his designated Christian name..but to us kids, he was always just Len.

Len was a couple of years older than the rest of us, having come from England several years before and now living nearby to Harry and Maris, and knowing nobody else in the whole country, he became attached to us kids as we made adventure among the big pine and gum trees that stretched their limbs out over the deep gully to which we attached ropes with large knotted ends from which we would swing recklessly way out over the imagined abyss.. or when we would come home from the movie house at Brighton, which we called “the flea-pit”, full of adventure ideas from the latest Tarzan, cowboy or war movie…and our favourite which was Beau Geste…where we would quickly break into two teams, one of fierce Arabs, the other of noble Foreign Legionaires in their sand-dune fort fighting off those attacking Arabs wielding sticks and throwing clumps of lumpy sand…and the yelps and cries would ring through the air!

In his own way, Len would educate us kids with his much more vast knowledge of worldly things…because Len had access to books. And he could read better and understand the longer words..and he also had wonderful comic books like “Eagle” comics, which had pictures of warplanes, like Spitfires and Lancaster bombers which were drawn with sections cut-away so the working parts were exposed so you could see how they were built…Len had amazing knowledge and was the reference point to which us kids would consult as proof of opinion.

“Girls” Len opined when one of the boys asked if his sister could join our gang “Girls are different to us boys..they’re a bit soft and they don’t know how to hit right with a sword or shoot right with a gun…I don’t know about girls…best not”…we were so young then.

One of the books Len had was called “Marine and fresh water fishes of South Australia”..this book came in handy when we would ride our treadlys to the river kiosk and hire a rowboat and go fishing on the shallow reaches of the river. If we caught a fish, Len would consult the pictures in the book and declare with certainty that ; “Yes, it’s a silver bream, a common species caught in many fresh water rivers and streams of the state.”

Another book Len had was called ; “What Bird is That?”..and we used it to identify those winged creatures we spotted around about.. and Len made us commit to the moral imperative that one; “never, never shoots or kills a native bird!”…he was like that, an Englishman to the core and it is of no error of judgement that it is said that ; “The English make rules, The Greeks make reasons for the rules and the Italians make excuses to break them!”.

It was on one dramatic moment in our adventures that Len showed true courage and steadfastness..when Harry, with the rest of us in climbing the face of the old quarry of the Lenwood Cement Works, froze in fright halfway down the cliff-face..Harry clung on there in whimpering fear and even though the rest of us kids tried to encourage him with kindly advice that soon descended into frustrating chucking of stones and sticks at him , trying to dislodge him from his refuge spot so we could all go home, he wouldn’t budge. All this while, Len stood in silence, then, without so much as a word, he deftly ascended the quarry-face, foot and hand gripping the bluestone rocks until he reached Harry’s location there on the sheer face. Then, with carefully encouraging words and using his hands, he guided Harry’s feet from one foothold to another until they were both safe at the bottom of the cliff..Harry stood there in silent shame at his behaviour, while the rest of us kids stood there in silent shame at our behaviour…until Len suddenly announced in a determined voice..

“Alright..let’s go home", and we all joined as one gang again and went home and not a word was ever said about the incident and it was as if it never happened….which is as it should be.

Goya..: Boys playing at soldiers.

Harry.

The general consensus in our little group of boys as we rested before the next charge of Arabs attacking the fort of the French Foreign Legion whilst playing “Beau Geste” in the sand dunes down by the river, was that poor Harry had an “affliction”..that was the word Len, the oldest of us boys and who had a better education because he was English and had come here five years before from Great Britain and had just that year started high school, whilst we other boys were still in the last year of primary school and even a few of us went to St Theresa’s Catholic school and were more better versed in knowing the lives of the martyrs than English grammar. We also were a mix of Latvian, German, Italian, Dutch and that was about it…But the “general consensus”, as Len put it, was that Harry had this unfortunate “affliction” that kept him from joining in with our games every day at exactly four o’clock after school..you see, Harry had musical talent and every day after school, his father had Harry glued to the piano thumping out turgid solos of Tchaikovsky or Beethoven for the next hour whilst we others ran, jumped and played in the creek and gully or in the sand dunes down by the river.

Harry had an older brother who was in contrast to Harry’s tall, thin build, that is; short, waddling and fat..and he had no musical skills at all and his father gave up on him years before..but Maris did have one skill that was called upon by us boys when the occasion demanded it..Maris had the unique skill of farting-on-demand!…

“So if Harry has an “affliction” with music, then Maris also has an “affliction” with his farting”. Hans opined.

“No” Len replied in an informative manner “It is not an affliction that Maris has, but a talent..Harry has an affliction, Maris has a talent.” And then almost as if on cue, Maris farted.

There were times when we would request Maris to supply a fart on what we considered an appropriate moment, like one Monday morning at the school assembly when the whole school was called upon to sing the national anthem, which was “God save the Queen”..before the usual Monday morning gathering, a few of us boys coaxed Maris to supply an appropriate finale fart when the song was finished.. and sure enough, just as the last bars of the music faded, and as the principle of the school, a rather seriously dour chap named Mr. Waite, stepped up to the lectern to give his “boosting” talk to start the week..in that quietened hiatus as Mr. Waite drew breath to speak, a deep, sublime rumble of flatulence almost equal to an incoming thunderstorm echoed around the assembly hall..Maris had farted on demand.

The hubbub of snickering that followed this singular blasphemy was immediately hushed by a stern countance and the upheld hand of the principle…

“Steady now, steady now” his booming voice commanded “We’re getting lax…( a long pause as he glared around the hall)…and I would suggest next time the boy who performed that..disturbance..for I am disinclined to even consider a young lady would stoop to such vulgarity..the next time he feels inclined to do the same, he should go outside and shake himself.”

And with that collective admonishment, we were all dismissed to our respective classes..Maris had obtained heroic status.

His name was Maris Salups…Of course, we kids lazily condensed his Latvian surname to more suit our casualness and his happy easy-going nature to “Slopsy”….His brother’s name was Artūrs…..too hard!…he got called : “Harry”….Harry grew from a gangling boy to a full-blown archetype “Viking Warrior” in both phiz and psyche!.. a body like “Conan the Warrior” and a voice like Barry White….he was much in demand by the “gentler sex”….we scowled in the corner of the local front-bar…but we scowled quietly!

Their parents were escapees from a turmoiled Europe after the second world war…the father was a very good musician…before a very bad motorcycle and side-car accident….I remember him tirelessly trying to teach Harry the piano, and he succeeded..even against Harry’s wishes (too much sun..too much surf in Australia!)…there was a small bust of Ludwig van’ on the upright piano and Harry would everyday be there rolling out some turgid piece, with his father smoking a dour pipe whilst sitting in a teacher’s contemplate at the end of the keyboard. I remember once the father went out of the room to fill his pipe as Harry played…he had no sooner gone than the rebellious spirit grabbed the youth’s hands and a playful Jerry-Lee Lewis piece sprung from the keyboard….parents came running and Harry immediately fell back into the rhythm of the classical piece as if nothing had happened!

Maris was a lost cause as far as artistic instruction went and his father left him alone and he, with all us adventurous kids would immediately make for the gully to swing from the trees like Tarzan, or wooden sticks in hands, make for the sand-dunes ala Beau Geste!…we could always see Harry, finally released from Tchaikovsky, running toward us in frenetic glee!

Their mother was an artist..with oils…she could often be seen UNDISTURBED! in a small side room off the shed painting away. I remember once..I must have been about nine or ten..chasing Harry through the house and we were pulled up in the lounge room where Mrs. Salups had a lot of her framed paintings propped on the chairs there…She held us up ..”Boys, boys…stop!..I would like you to meet Mr….” of course, young boys are even less inclined to remember names than manners and we said hello to the grey-suited stranger standing there hat in hand and stolid standing…and then ran on. It was only many years later, whilst walking down Rundle Mall, past a Myers window display of a full-size photo cut-out of a man in a grey suit with several framed paintings of his on display that I recognised him as that same gentleman in Mrs. Salup’s lounge-room ..and her introductory words came straight back to me..”Boys, boys..stop!..I would like you to meet Mr. Hans Heysen”.

This is an important story…look at the players..Myself ;Italian / Irish..them Latvian..others in our group incl’ English, Dutch , German..and well..you know it…..AND…let us embrace the reality..: All Australian!

This..is the Australia I vote for, not a mean-spirited polarising of one ethnic group against the other…for there is no one ethnic majority that can work this huge nation on it’s own…there never has been….I support..it’s motto, no less intense than us kids on a limb of a huge pine tree about to group-swing way out over the gully depths, all clasping onto the one many-knotted rope..: “One in -All in!”…..GO!

Kids, cultural differences and Willy Wilson’s ferrets.

When one reflects on some of those past acts of terrorism it seems the culprits of a certain “terrorism raid” were teens from 14yrs…backed by “adults”…Jeesus..how frightening!..it would have scared the bejeesus out of us as kids, so when my big brother , with the help of his ‘Junior Chemistry Set’ purchased by the adults in the family for a Chrissy pressy, discovered that if one mixed sulphur with some salt-petre…we would have  been raided by ASIO these days.

AND we had a “plot” to scare the rival gang across the gully..; The O’Niels with a cunning assembly of inflated party balloons and some of the “Ingredient X” and following a scary demonstration of our recently discovered knowledge of gunpowder, were going to float the “Greek Fire” across to their grass fort and wreak havoc and let slip the dogs of “war”…..nyahhahahahaha!!

Unfortunately, the one dexterous user of the bow and arrow (constructed of wild-olive branches and bamboo arrows, the feather fletches from grandma’s pet turkey’s arse stuck on with wattle-gum) ; John O’Niel shot long and true and burst two of the balloons and so sabotaged the entire plot!…party balloons were hard to come by in those days!

But anyway, we made a big show of what they could expect…one day..so help me god!

Only flaw in the plan was that we all grew up and set about to inflict “terrorism” on the girls that fell within our limits of wandering..

But truth be known, even there, we were no match for a greater plan of a greater scheme of things and our small band of tremulous but heroic boy-warriors were soon overwhelmed by that power bigger than all of us…and I will never forget those last words of Karl Hebble as he finally succumbed to that fatal feminine wound…

“I will”…

On “our side” of the gully, up the hill a ways, there was a ruin of a house..or rather, not really a ruin, but the remnants of an intention to build..it perhaps was one of those ill-fated projects that get started by one of the party “in expectation of”..but is then abandoned when things go awry…I know of a few such stories..quite sad, really…I’ll tell you about them someday..

Anyway, we closed off the windows and doors in this one-roomed ‘fort” and we started a “club”…and we called it “The Kit Kat Klub”…I don’t know for the life of me where we got that name…all I can think of is perhaps that old sit-com ; “The Private World of Dobie Gilles” (perhaps!).

But the “eternal enemy” from across the gully..no!..not the O’Niels this time, but those German immigrants ..; the Skrypeks and the Leuchells…broke in and graffitied our club name there on the wall to : “The Shit Kat Klub”….bastards!!

The first thing to do was to get out the old chemistry set!

It was then that we learned of the abyss that divided catholicism from the proddos’…WE would never have written the word ; “shit” on any wall…THAT would be a “cardinal sin” !…just seeing the word there, I remember made me blush…but also perhaps, dangerously, awoke in me a curiosity for the power of the word.

Billy cart Kids by Christine Forbes.

The bitza races…

As it turned out, we didn’t have to formulate an act of revenge on those Germans across the gully, as they suffered their own self-inflicted punishment due to their experimental bitza they intended to enter for the big bitza race that started at the top of Paringa Avenue and ended in a rather abrupt stop at the junction of Jervois terrace..if you failed to stop at this point, you ran the risk of shooting over Jervois Terrace into Ivan Coleman’s yard.. and Ivan Coleman was a garrulous old man with many words, not many of them complimentary!

I know there is a bone of contention about the interpretation of the name “bitza”…but we young boys had our own fiefdom of claiming rights on names and we called those “billy carts” of the day; “bitzas”..as they were made of bits of this and bits of that!…so as far as I am concerned, we will go by that chosen name.

Of course, much secret preparation was done by those competitors wishing to win the great bitza race and the exchange of juvenile knowledge of the best wheels (those with ball-bearing centres most favoured), the best grease, the length and breath of the chassis and whether a pivoting stick as a handbrake was needed drew much conversation amongst the cognoscenti.

But one of the Germans, Ingo, had a brilliant plan to swamp the whole race with his “super bitza” of a long plank borrowed from his father’s shed and running on twenty four inch bicycle wheels!…it was known among those boys with a native knowledge of physics, that bicycle wheels could get up to greater speeds than the smaller pram wheels, but they took longer to gather speed which could extend further than the race length required, and so the argument for and against lingered, mainly centering on the practical reality that no-one had ever built a bitza with bicycle wheels. This neglect was about to come to an end.

Ingo spent many after school days constructing his craft. The most difficult part was finding the four bicycle wheels for the chassis..this was solved by a lucky find at the local mega council rubbish dump, where the local boys would congregate on Saturdays to scrounge about the mountains of hard rubbish when the bulldozer driver had gone home.sometimes fights broke out amongst the ethnicities over territorial rights to scrounge..but in the end, fair ground was declared over all the tip and the boys were left to plunder at will. It was on one of these forays into the wilds of domestic castaways that Ingo struck gold!…he now had his supreme secret weapon..the super bitza was complete, all that awaited was some test runs to iron out any bugs in the machine.

Spinks Road was chosen as the test track because it was long, moderately steep and lay just outside Ingo’s home..it descended along the side of the main gully in the area and cruised past the only other occupied house on its length that of the other German family nearby..the Luchelles, where Klaus Luchelle volunteered to act as safety officer should Ingo come careering too fast down the road.

Actually, this was just as well, because that is exactly the predicament Ingo found himself in once the so named; “Bismark” got up to maximum speed after a slow start. Not only did the machine become scaringly fast, but because of the lack of signature engineering skills needed in its construction, the combination of speed, length of central plank and the rough, corrugated dirt surface of Spinks Road, it developed very quickly an exaggerated central plank bouncing action as it descended down the road, resulting finally in the centre board whereupon Ingo was seated, hitting the surface of the road and with a resounding snap, flew clear of the back transom and axle, the entire front part, combined with rope steering mechanism, foot rests and handbrake, flew out of Ingo’s grasp, himself falling back with the rear wheels and axle cradled in the crook of his legs, himself desperately holding with both arms onto either side of the axle, both lower legs and feet on one side of the rear axle, himself desperately holding with both arms onto either side of the axle while his torso and bottom, unfortunately bounced and dragged along the rough, gravelled road.

This unfortunate state of affair could have been much worse, except for the quick action of the appointed safety officer..with a shout of authority Klaus Luchelle proclaimed ; “I’m the ambulance!” and he thrust a garden wheelbarrow out onto the road right in front of the yelping Ingo Skrypek!

I do not think we need describe the following chaos that ensured after such desperate action, sufficient to relate that only six stitches were required on one bottom to repair Ingo’s pride, but his parental retribution was by far the worse!

Yes..growing up with only half a clue as to what is really going on in the adult world maybe a good thing. And speaking of girls when you are growing up..I remember this little plump girl used to hang around us down the river all those long hot summers..Cyglinda..or Ziggy as we used to call her…it was amazing how in the space of only a couple of summers, she had lost that puppy-fat..or rather it had moved to all the right places and those scraggly locks of wispy hair had grown to blonde tresses to be admired…amazing!!

Ziggy became Cyglinda..once again and where only a couple of years ago she had thrown Davey Parker over her shoulder in a full toss for giving her lip, there walked with demure poise an attractive young lady!

Ah yes…Cyglinda …her old man was, I believe a unrepentant Hitlerite..He had a white scar ran around his neck, about 1/2″ wide where he claimed a Polish officer, when he was captured as a German soldier, had cut his throat and left him in the snow, he would gladly and proudly exhibit this “mark of Cain” to all the boys who clamoured to get an eyeball of such masculine courage…He survived, as was apparent..and thrived on Emma Street .

Emma Street held a sort of local “infamy”, in that it was the scene of a fateful train collision where two people, a man and his wife were killed. There were no bells or wig-wag signals there and the train came suddenly onto the crossing from between a cutting.

It wasn’t so dangerous in the days of steam locomotives, as the noise and smoke from the engine gave warning…but with the onset of the old “Red-Hen” diesel electric trains, they were much quieter.

The train-line came out of a cutting onto a high embankment that fell away on both sides..The road wound into the gully past Langdon’s and Willy Wilson’s place, curved around the base and ascended the side of the hill straight onto the Emma Street crossing.

It was there every night, the grandmother of the four children of those parents killed , would walk to the crossing with the children to meet the parents on the other side and then they would all get into the car for the ride home just up The Cove Road a ways…so they were there when the car was hit and they must have saw their parents killed. It was talked about for years. The crossing was closed after that accident.

I must have been about nine or ten years old then. I remember hearing the crash while we were racing our bitzas down Paringa Avenue hill..it wasn’t a crash!, but more of a whoomph!..and someone said ;

‘Was that a crash?”…but then it was silent so we went back to our bitzas..until the sirens came and then we ran toward the station and we could see the “Red-Hen” train stopped just at Emma Street crossing and we knew it was an accident.

When I got there, I could see these two bodies laid out on the ground with sheets covering them..but the sheets were not long enough to cover the entire body, so the feet stuck out the bottom…It was a man and a woman..the man had black patent-leather shoes and his feet were leaning away from each other in a ‘V’..The woman had stockings on and one apricot “pump” shoe on her right foot, there was only the one shoe..but in their haste to make the bodies half decent, they had put the ladies shoe on the wrong foot, and it hung there by the toes…and I had this almost unstoppable urge to go and put the shoe (an apricot one with a white petal with a bright pearl centre fixed at the tongue) on the correct foot…of course, I didn’t.

I was staring at this strange and to me, unsightly anomaly; transfixed by this one disorderly item when the world came crashing in with Willy Wilson’s pitched voice calling my name….I looked to where he was standing at the bottom of the high embankment on which we stood .

“Is it an accident? “ he asked in all innocence.

“Yes!” I replied

“Anyone hurt?”

“Yes”.

“Oh…..Hey!…I’m going ferret’n tomorra…wanna come?”…I had turned back to the bodies there and was once again held by the offending shoe..and that was the funny thing , it was the shoe that worried me more than the two people dead there…very strange !

“D’you wanna come!!” Willie called again…an as I turned away a big copper appeared on the scene and called for us kids to clear off out of it..

“Someone get these kids out of here!” he yelled…”C’mon..get out of it you kids..bugger off!”

We turned and ran away and I remembered Willy , so I called back to him..

“Ok..yeah!..tomorro’ at my place..ok?”…and I could see my mother coming with that cross look on her face so I ducked past Hogben’s place across the paddock to home. But I tell you what..those ferrets of Willy’s were an out of control lot..and he didn’t know that much about the fine art of ferreting and that turned out to be one big adventure!

I was telling you about Willie Wilson and his ferrets…Willie Wilson kept ferrets, he used them for trapping rabbits in any of the multitude of warrens dotted about the hills where I grew up before the Mixxy got a hold..I’m talking back in the late fifties or so. A lot of people kept ferrets for that purpose in those days..there was a front-bar trade in fresh bunny-meat back then..along with local caught fish like callop and such, that you could buy off the catchers down at the Seacliff Hotel….I know, ’cause my old man used to come home of a Thursday evening, with a smile on his face, a good half-dozen clinking away in his kit-bag, a big bar of Cadbury’s chocolate in his rough hands and a roll of newspaper-wrapped fresh produce under his arm…every Thursday night, like clockwork…that’s how it went in those days..before age, homesickness for the old country and the drink got a hold on him…that’s how it went in those days…

Willie Wilson kept ferrets, so did the Oxfords…and the O’Niels..not the ones on the corner, but down by the station…The O’Niels on the corner..They kept ferrets to catch rabbits…the ferrets were clean, but the cages would sometimes stink to high heaven!..Tex, Marlene Oxford’s long time beau kept the cages clean,,I’ll tell you about him too someday. Tex knew how to hunt with ferrets…Willie was just learning…it was a slow job with Willie…he was young, he was keen.

I can only recall going “ferreting” with Willie once…just after that Emma St. crossing crash that I told you about..The day was cold, it was wet and the whole episode was a disaster for both ferreting and friendship. There were four of us..Davey Parker, Bruce Irving, myself and Willie..we took turns carrying the cage with the ferrets..we hiked right up to the top of the long gully, not far from the old Linwood Quarry, where one of the O’Niel men (there were four families, not related , in the district) got his coat caught in the crusher feeder and was killed there…I can just remember the wife coming to our place and my Mother comforting her with some prayers…I suppose it was a catholic thing.

There is an art to catching rabbits with ferrets…Willie did not have that art..all he did was to block as many holes as he had nets, bury in the rest and then let the ferret down one hole..if all goes well, the rabbits will flee the ferret and get caught in any one of the nets as they run out of the warren..the biggest worry, is that if the ferret is hungry, it will trap and kill a rabbit down in the warren and remain there till it eats it to it’s hearts content. Then all you can do is to try to smoke it out or wait.

That’s what must have happened..after the rabbits stopped coming out, the ferret remained. Willie tried to smoke it out with setting fire to some paper in one of the holes, but all it did was to sear the ferrets nose and made it flee back down the warren……..and it rained..and it rained, and rained, and rained some more till we all looked like a picture of one of those groups of American Indian’s sitting under their blankets on the prairie..except we didn’t have blankets, just wet skin, cold hands and it was getting dark and we lost our patience and our kid-tempers and told Willie where he could stick his ferret IF it EVER came out and to our dying shame, we deserted him there and then.

Not my most glorious moment, but there is only so much the patience of a child can stand, especially when we could see more rabbits hopping about the dusky hill-sides than what we caught with the stupid ferret!

The last I heard of Willie Wilson , and that was many, many years ago, was from aforementioned Bruce…He mentioned he had bumped into Willie at the old “Vincent Hotel” there on Mosely Square.

“He was hard up for some dough and he said in all confidence that he had been “casing” this jeweler shop down Jetty Road, and he had a plan all worked out on how to rob the place….I told him I didn’t want to know…truth is ; I thought he was full of bullshit at the time” Bruce took a healthy drought from his pint of beer.

“And then?” I asked.

“Well..I was wrong..he did rob the shop…or rather..he TRIED to rob the shop..”

Now..bear with me dear reader and let us ‘workshop’ through what Bruce told me :

It seems that Willy’s “well thought out plan” consisted of an early hours raid on the shop with the help of an airline bag with half a house-brick secreted inside it. The object of the brick was to penetrate the plate-glass shop-front, the airline bag was to transport the swag away…devilishly clever , what?

But…(there’s always a but in these plans).

Scene: Willie stands in front of the jeweler shop , it is three am. No-one is about..he takes the half-brick from the bag and flings it toward the window….

STOP!…

Let us apply the filmatic application of slow motion to the following scene…: We are at the moment where the brick has just left the grip of Willy’s right hand..At that very moment, a police patrol on it’s regular neighbourhood patrol turns the corner into Jetty Road two shops down from the Jeweller..The lights attract Willy’s gaze and he turns his head (we’re still in slow motion, mind) toward the source..the police officer in the passengers seat likewise turns his gaze toward a person in the moment of executing an unexpected action on the sidewalk of number one fifty six Jetty Road Glenelg..The half-brick continues it’s unstoppable course toward the plate glass…cause and effect is inevitable.

The upshot (if we return to real time) was that the patrol car had pulled up, apprehended and escorted Willy to the back seat of the patrol car while the last shards of the plate-glass window was still tinkling onto the sidewalk…cruel fate.

And that was that for Willy Wilson as far as I can report. I have heard no more.

Bruce.

Even in his pre-teen years, Bruce was a glorious fisherman. I deliberately use the adjective in a superlative way; “glorious”, because his feel and touch of the water, wind and river when he fished was almost a sacred thing. He could many times be seen in the water to his upper thighs out on a spit of rocky bend casting for small-fry or other medium sized fish. He would have a wicker creel at his hip, suspended over his shoulder by a webbing strap.  He once described to me whilst in a moment of frustrating envy at his catching literally many, many bream, when I was pushed to catch but one!..I even had Bruce bait my hook and I fished as close to his line as was decently polite..but to no avail and to his amusement as well..

“ You have to feel the sound and movement of the fish through the line” he explained “ the line becomes water and so you have to touch so gently so you too almost become as water when you hold the line”…I could see he was having difficulty in putting his understanding of the nature of what he was doing and feeling into words..but I “got” what he meant..not that it improved my catch any better, I just didn’t have Bruce’s touch.

We kids all knew Bruce had something different about him from a very young age, because he could sell things that could earn him pocket money far in excess of what we kids got for doing chores for our parents, of when recruited by old people, like the Misses Bones, two aged sisters who lived on the corner of Newland Ave and Frank St. My brother and myself got a job pulling the weeds in their back yard one spring..it was very tiring work for which we received the princely sum of two florins each..Bruce, with his natural gift for entrepreneurial flair achieved a much higher rate of return for his fishing efforts.

Because of his fishing prowess, Bruce found he had more fish than could be consumed by his own family. Some he gave away to friends. Then he decided that rather than just give the excess catch away, after all his effort catching and cleaning, he would package them into certain weights and offer them for sale at a modest price to the neighbourhood. This was such a success, that he decided to branch out and sell white-bait and cockles he caught for himself as bait and sell the excess on as well. Bruce obtained a number of plain, white wax-lined paper milk-shake cups the tops which he folded and sealed with staples so that he could keep the produce fresh, made a stencil of his brand name of “Bruce’s Baits” and sold them also for a modest price.

We would sometimes mock his mother’s call-name for Bruce, which was ; “Brroosay” when she called for him to come from his shed when we visited him..” Brroosay! ..Brroosay!” she’d call..but he didn’t mind, as he was always an independent sort of kid who didn’t rely on peer-group approval. He wasn’t one to mince words or grumble and he would calmly take up a challenge without fear or favour, like one rare time Bruce was with our group and Adam Jablonskis dared anyone to crawl under the shallow culvert under the railway line and stay there as the train ran over the top..an offer of a florin coin was the bet…of course none of us had the nerve..it was a shallow ditch under the rail line and our imagine told us that anything could happen…the rails could at that very moment collapse, never mind they had been there for so many years…but that was it, Hans argued..they had been there for so long they could collapse at any time!…after this to-and-froing, when the train whistle could be heard approaching, Bruce, without a word, grabbed the florin coin from Adam’s hand and slipped under the rails…of course, nothing happened except I wouldn’t be surprised if the train driver didn’t wonder at what a small group of kids was doing staring in wide-eyed wonder at the wheels as the train went past.. I suspect he and our parents would have a heart attack if they knew.

Bruce used the money he earned to buy things for his fishing hobby..like, he was the first kid in the district to own one of the new “egg-beater” type fishing reels, before then, he relied upon his old “Alvey” side-caster reel. But other than that visible sign of his “wealth”, there was little to give notice of his humble enterprises..Bruce in the end, was just “Brroosay”.

 

Whistling in the dark: Frank Duveneck.

The Phantom’s Cave.

To get to one of our favourite play-spots, that is the Phantom’s Cave, you had to crawl through and under a large swale of the huge foliage of wild artichokes that covered much of the gully owned by Mr Ivan Coleman. It didn’t pay to fall foul of Ivan Coleman, as he was a garrulous old man who seemed to be unable to be complimented or pleased…I know this because one day I sidled up next to him just before descending to join the other kids at the hidden, darkened entrance to The Phantom’s Cave at the bottom of the gully. He was standing quietly and pensively staring out over the mass of overgrown wild artichoke thistles that covered most of his back property. He was silent as I approached and it took a little while before he spoke in a kind of sad, fatalistic voice.

“You know, I worked my backside off digging holes in this hard, bloody shaley ground to plant dozens of trees so they would grow thick and tall in this gully..I planted them, I watered them, I pulled weeds out around them..and now look at it…nothing…not one survived..nothing but wild artichoke from stem to stern…” and he just stood there in deep reflection. Myself and the other kids saw those artichokes as so wonderful..we would create hidden passages under their leaves as entrance or escape routes to confuse our eternal foes; The O’Niels, who lived on the corner of Newland Ave. and Frank street, just over the road from the Misses Bones..The O’Niels were keen to capture our Phantom Cave and claim it as their own, hence the hidden tunnels under the wild artichoke fronds, so I didn’t share nor have an inkling of the hatred Ivan Coleman had for the artichokes…until I innocently and cheeringly blurted out in their defence a compliment I heard my mother say to Mrs Potts about her ability to grow such a lush garden..”Oh, but Mr. Coleman the artichokes are just so healthy and wonderful..I think you must have a real green thumb!”

The Phantom’s Cave was in reality a culvert that ran under the old railway embankment that was there before the local council filled in the gullies with their mega hard-rubbish dumps.It existed as a branch of our imagination from reading the old “Phantom” comics of the era. The flat, concrete masonry that framed the entrance of the culvert, itself around ten feet in height and width, with a flat floor, we emblazoned with what we thought were scary images to frighten away any uninvited intruders to our domain.

There were large skull-like images scraped of black coal dust from discarded lumps of coal fuel from the steam locomotives that passed overhead. These images were crude, childish drawings of a skull, looking more like a two-dimensional outline of a lightbulb, with darkened splodges for eye sockets and instead of a pin-socket as in a regular light-bulb, there were a series of vertical strokes of black coal dust that represented skull teeth.

We kids would congregate at that entrance and using the long, straight stalks of the flowering stems of the wild artichokes, mould from the natural clay in the side of the gully, spearheads which we used to frighten away any of the gang of the O’Niels mob.

Any kid who wanted to join “The Phantom Club” had to go through “initiation”. This involved swearing allegiance to a set of principles involving loyalty to the point of death, the principles of “Phantom Lore”…a dogma that was never truly revealed, it being a most fluid thing changing with the circumstances and mood of the older kids in the group. It also involved the inductee being given a flat slab of shale picked off the ground all around the gully, with his first name initial written in coal upon it and commanded to walk to the darkened end of the “Phantom Cave” and place the piece of shale upon a ledge there without crying out running or flinching in fear from this ordeal. While the tremulous child was walking slowly toward what many thought was their doom in the dark, many skulls and other rough sketches illustrated tunnel, the other kids at the entrance would beat sticks upon a piece of corrugated iron and scream harrowing yelps, moans and cries to try to frighten the inductee to abandon his mission, throw the piece of shale into the unknown blackness of the culvert and flee back to the light. Once the initiated placed their marked piece of stone on the ledge at the back of the culvert, they could…and for the love of life SHOULD..flee as fast as their little legs could carry them back to their friends. Upon success of their initiation, a coal-dust streak was smeared upon each of their facial cheeks and they were whoopingly welcomed into the circle of the “ Phantom Fellowship”.

This method if initiating new members continued for one whole summer, until a local girl..Cyglinda..suddenly turned up uninvited after crawling down one of the many hidden tunnels under the wild artichoke fronds.

“Watcha doin’” she asked, her appearance making the little clan of boys jump in fright.

“You’re not allowed to be here!” the oldest boy, Trevor replied.

“Why not? It’s not your property” Cyglinda sassily replied. “And what are you yelling for?”

This intrusion just as a new member was being sent down the culvert for initiation was inconvenient, so after a quick instruction to the intruding girl, they continued yelping and moaning and banging the sheet of corrugated iron.

Cyglinda thought it fun, so she decided to join in..and firmly planting her feet on the flat concrete apron of the culvert, did so with the most harrowing howl of female falsetto, banshee-like fearsome cry that made even those boys at the entrance shrink away in fright and the inductee flung away his initialled stone and fled quickly back to the others at the entrance, thereby technically failing the indentureship.

We say; “technically”, because the boy in question filed a protest that among all the fearsome threats and distractions he was compelled to face, no-one warned him that a girl was going to be one of the threats. This incontestable fact was considered and the protest upheld on the grounds of excessive cruelty..Cyglinda was chased away with clay-dobbed spears and threats, but not before yelling ; “Your play stuff is dumb and stupid!”.. and the boy was once again allowed to contest his initiation.

But such a practice soon faded after the Cyglinda incident and the whole initiation ruse fell away at the end of that Summer…there was consensus among the boys that keeping any girls from joining their games was best to maintain their “manly” independence.

Little did we know that those days of carefree boyish adventures were slated, numbered and doomed to suffer that inevitable, unstoppable fate of all childhood imaginations…: that of growing up.

The dump.

The existence of The Phantom Cave was made possible when the local council closed off the other side of the culvert under the high embankment and placed a series of concrete pipes there leading down to the river to take the run-off winter water that flowed down the creek, and on top of these pipes, they commenced to infill the gully with a mega hard-rubbish and domestic waste dump.

This dump became a mecca for the local boys to rummage through the hard rubbish on the weekends..through the week, there were workers and trucks and a bulldozer working the site so they couldn’t congregate there to fossick..so imagine their horror when after six months of such bliss, in the space of a week, there appeared a makeshift cyclone fence right around the dump, replete with a sign on the gate stating : “NO SCAVENGING!”..and ; “TRESPASSES PROSECUTED!” this was a disaster for the kids and they could be seen leaning against the wire, their fingers clasping the mesh and looking like so many refugees in rags.

But if the kids felt bad, spare a thought for the tractor driver..for there were no air-conditioned cabins in those days..no cabin at all!..and the driver would sit there pulling the levers of the machine as it pushed the garbage from the dump-trucks into the hollows..all he had to protect himself from the heat, flies, noise and stench was a set of ear-muffs, big eye-goggles and a scarf around his lower face..come winter or summer.

It was on one of these summer days of excessive heat, when Alistair, standing hopefully at the fence with several other boys, suddenly felt an affinity for that bulldozer driver..and excusing himself from the gang, he made his way quickly home, picked the biggest, fattest ripe bunch of muscatel grapes from his home vines and made his way back to the dump fence. These grapes he held up as high as his small arms could lift them, for it was a big bunch and they were heavy. He held the bunch up so the bulldozer driver could see them.

This did not take long, as the driver was indeed dry, thirsty and fed up with the stench…He spotted the little boy at the gate just holding the most attractive bunch of grapes he believed he had ever seen..Alistair just held the grapes up a little higher..The driver stopped the machine and slumped back in the seat, he pushed the goggles up to his hairline and flung the face-scarf off with a tiresome gesture, with his foot resting on the dashboard, his eyes drawn between the soft, juicy blushing glow of those grapes and the big eyes of the little boy..a confederacy of camaraderie immediately formed between them..as man to boy, for there is a continuity of “knowing” between us..the driver admired this kid’s initiative and he smiled to him.

Swinging his legs over the controls of the tractor, he slid off the seat, stepped onto the caterpillar tracks and made his way to the gate where Alistair held the grapes. Without a word, but with a nod and wink of acknowledgment, the driver opened the gate, letting only Alistair in. He took the bunch of grapes from Alistair’s arms, broke it in half, one half of which he placed on the seat of his ute, the other he held and knelt on one knee in front of the boy and softly said..: “When I finish…you finish…ok?” and he let Alistair loose on the hard rubbish dump while he leant against the bulldozer track and delightfully dropped one grape at a time into his mouth.

Oh how the other boys still outside the wire wailed and lamented…howled and wept at Alistair’s fortune..then started crying out to him to “please get me this!…see if you can find that!” and other desperate cajoling..

When the driver finished the last grape, he gave a loud whistle to Alistair, who gathered up his box of swag and made for the opened gate..At the gate, the driver stood with a big smile on his face as he let the boy through..Alistair paused on exiting, looked to the driver, thanked him and then asked..; “Do you like figs?”…the driver thought for a minute then answered, not with words, but with lip movement only..:”Love ‘em!”…and that was all Alistair needed to hear.

  Potts.

When Adam Jablonskis made the wager of a florin if anyone of us kids would crawl under the railway lines and stay there while the train ran over the top, he did it with the surety of an “old hand” at such things.. for it was not that long ago that he, himself had gained notorious respect for winning a bet of one florin (the minimum stake in the kitty for such wagers) if he could eat a caterpillar.

It was Mick Oxford and Potts who challenged Adam, who accepted the bet, the one condition put upon Adam was that the instigators, Mick and Potts could pick the sacrificial insect…in doing so, they selected the biggest, fattest, most hairy beast of a thing they could find, but much to the guffawing goading of the rest of us, not only did Adam devour the syrupy thing, but did it not in one gulp, but bite by bite, dabbing the green, oozing slime from his lips with index finger and then sipping the remnants off that finger to finish with a murmur of delight and asking in a mocking tone; “So..what’s for desert?”

Adam, Mick Oxford and Potts were several years older than us kids, but not that much older that they wouldn’t join in with games..one of the favourites being hide and seek in the evenings when it made finding others that much harder. Potts seemed to always get caught first, much to his chargrin, but the fault was his own, being the proud and singular owner of the only pair of luminous socks in the district, his ankles, as they pumped between bush and scrub were easily detectable if the one that was “it” just dropped to ground level and searched the stems and trunks of the undergrowth…and likely as not, there was Potts’s ankles, all brightly lit yellow slipping and scurrying around..soon to be met with a cry of; “Behind the prickly pear, Potts!”

It was on one evening, just as the sun was setting and the game of “brandy” was chosen as the game for the day..”brandy” being not the alcoholic drink, but rather with using a tennis ball, the one who was “it” had to chase and “brand” others by throwing accurately the ball to hit another boy…the band of boys were standing around waiting to start the game, Potts was “it”, having been chosen by the boys standing in a circle and the ball dropped and whomsoever it bounces to being “it”..Potts was “it” and we were just about to scatter, Potts was in the action of soaking the tennis ball in his mother’s fish pond to make the impact just that much more stinging, when Mrs Jablonskis walked in upon us all with the biggest, ripest watermelon from her garden..We all stopped to listen.

“Jonathon” she commanded “Here is the melon I promised your mother, you will give it to her, yes?” and she handed the beast of a thing over into the arms of Potts, nodded, turned and left him standing there cradling the watermelon..we kids all gathered around in wide-eyed wonder at the treasure in his arms.

There existed for a hiatus in time a stilled silence as Potts looked around at our expectant faces, then without a word of encouragement from us, he suddenly spread his arms wide, letting the melon fall to the lawn and shattering into several parts, the bright, red, juicy flesh just an invite for us to dig-in! “oops!” was the only apology Potts made before there was a general scramble of ferocious consumption similar to a pack of wild hyenas tearing into a fallen beast.

Watermelons and Potts were familiar to each other in that he was the main culprit that systematically raided Mrs Holmstrom’s vast melon patch to snitch a ripe melon if available..he would do this by working his way through the jungle of lush melon leaves that crept over and out of the Holmstrom’s back yard. Potts would crawl on his belly, melon to melon tapping the shell seeking that right, hollowed sound that gave the ripness of that melon away..then, taking his trusty scout, pocket knife out, he would cut the melon free from the vine and make his way out of the forest to break free and run with his booty.

This one time, however, Ruth Holmstrom was waiting for him, and upon his sudden standing up with his melon swag clutched to his person ready to flee, he was shaken to his luminous socks with the booming command of; “Right!…got you!” and Mrs Holmstrom was upon him…but many exploits of similar episodes of “catch and run” made Potts fleet of foot and it was of but a split second for him to turn and sprint out of Ruth’s grasp…he ran with all the speed he could muster, with Ruth..still a youngish woman..not more than five steps behind and due to his failure to leave the melon behind, was at the point of catching him when he made the wise and calculated decision to quickly and in stride place the ripe melon on the ground whilst continuing his flight..this action had the desired effect with Ruth Holmstrom halting in her pursuit of the cuprit to then rescue the greater treasure to her of the prized melon..with a cry of; “Don’t you worry, Potts…I’ll catch up to you one day!…don’t you worry!”..Potts had already scurried under the wire fence, crossed the railway line and leaped to the station platform to make his way back to the safe confines of home.

Ruth Holmstrom.

I have to tell you the story (as I know it) of Ruth Holmstrom. I have to give her a bit of longevity in this world lest she be forgotten altogether, for the little I know of her as a child of around six or seven years is through my one clear memory of meeting her on the footpath at her letterbox as I was making my way to the river one summer day.. She looked down to me and smiled weakly.

The Holmstroms lived on Jervois Tce. About halfway between our house and Rowland’s Deli’ at the top of the hill-slope to the river there by Mrs. Fookes’ Fish & Chip shop.. The house was of red-brick, plain frontage, with dull, dark-green painted doors and windows. The blinds were always drawn. There was a low red-brick front fence with a small white gate. Mrs. Holmstrom grew watermelons out the back yard that didn’t have a side fence to the road , and so the ripe melons were subject to some young boys stealing one or two..to which Ruth would give chase when she could, yelling and cursing at them…young Potts was a main culprit and he was swift of foot..to his credit, he did share the booty amongst us other kids.

There were three children with Vernon and Ruth Holmstrom…the oldest was a girl whose name slips my memory a tad..I’ve got it written down somewhere..just a tic an’ I’ll find it….ah, yes..Julie..and then there was Kevin and Trevor. I knew the two boys better because they joined the other local boys down the river.. They were known by their nick-names of ; “Sharkey” (Kevin) and “Porpoise” ( the younger Trevor)..there is a large diving-off rock there at the river bend called “Sharkey”and I thought and still do think it was named after the older Holmstrom boy as he could be so often sitting there alone on the rock.

The one time I remember Mrs.Holmstrom was the summer day I was walking down the path to the river..I had my towel over my shoulder and I was jumping over the lines of tiny ants that I had noticed had made a right-angled track every so often regularly across the path…I was jumping one of these tracks when I bumped into Ruth Holmstrom at her letterbox there by the gate , collecting her mail…She was a big blowsy sort of woman with a wavey, ruffled mass of shortish dark hair and she had on a loose, floaty, white cotton dress with large red flower prints on it..neither she nor I said a word..she just looked down at me and smiled weakly and it was then I noticed one side of her face was swollen and marked by a large bruise along with a black-eye. She just smiled at me, glanced nervously around and then quickly made her way back inside the house.

Potts lived just a couple of houses up from the Holmstroms and I asked him recently about Ruth and Vernon and told of my memory..and he remarked that he wasn’t surprised, because he witnessed Vernon hit Ruth in the face with a full, closed fist once when he was there with the boys..he said the sound was like a crunching whack!, and he fled out the back door. Vernon was a violent man, extremely violent..he could be heard up and down the street yelling and threatening all the family..he would not stop short of striking the children as swiftly and as viciously as he did his wife..yet he was never reported to the police and the community kept quiet, as was the custom..or shall we say ; “culture” in those days when it came to domestic violence.

When My sister was here over Christmas I spoke to her too about this recurring memory and she told me that yes, Mrs. Holmstrom had come to our mother several times to complain about Vernon’s drunken violence…but my mother had told her to try and keep the peace and hold the family together for the sake of the children.. Ruth, along with her husband was also an alcoholic…so there was that too.

But it was not long after the meeting at the letter-box , when our mother was getting the bath ready for us kids one night that she matter-of-fact quietly informed us that Mrs. Holmstrom had died that week and she had died because she had slipped in the bath and chipped the bone in her elbow and that small chip had worked its way up to her heart and she had died from a heart attack because of the bone chip…so you see..you have to be careful not to muck around while having a bath otherwise you could fall over and chip your elbow and die like Ruth Holmstrom.

But I no longer believe a word of that story.

 

Looie Loorick.

He was a caricature of a stick-man drawing, was looie..in that he had long, thin arms and legs attached to a long thin frame of a torso..add to that slim dimension a elongated head with a shock of spikey hair and extra bright, wide eyed expression that seemed to be forever gazing through exaggerated “coke-bottle” glasses and you have a picture of the boy.

Then we have to consider the personality of the child. Being of Dutch origin, he was by nature suspicious as that nationality seems to be..I suspect, and this is my own opinion based on personal experience, that the people of the Netherlands, living and thriving as they have done for so many millenia on the low-lands of the west coast of Europe, in many cases just above water level, or in some areas below sea level, so that dykes have to be built to keep the sea back when high tide is reached. This state of living in an awareness that they are at a level in geographic physical terms BELOW the countries that surround them in Europe has created a kind of neurotic paranoia that they feel the rest of Europe “looks down on them”, and so insecurity has been genetically inbuilt into the national psyche that has made them naturally suspicious of their fellow humanity.

This would surface with Looie when given a piece of information on any given subject of the moment to enquire of the giver a cynical “Who says so!?”…or ; “What’s the proof of that?”…and other such questioning reprisals..but in the end, the natural inquisitiveness would mostly overcome the initial doubt and Looie would go along with the suggestion..and in many cases go along with an enthusiasm greater that that of his fellows or even the original one who made such a suggestion!

This level of enthusiasm reached a zenith one day just after cracker night, when all the nation gathered to celebrate the moment an Englishman named Mr. Guy Fawkes attempted and failed to blow up the English Parliament and all those seated within, with an unspecified number of barrels of gunpowder located underneath The House in the cellar, on the fifth of November in the year of 1605…which demonstrated that the English do not forgive quickly and are capable of harbouring a grudge for a long time..which, by the way, would explain their hatred of the Catholic Church and The Pope for not allowing Henry the Eighth to live in bigamy just because he decided that he wanted another wife to add to his court concubines..so a new branch of the agreed religion was forged and still operates as a kind of entrepreneurial franchise from the original Vatican copyrighted Catholicism….they are like that, the English…pickey.

Anyway, back to Looie.

It came to pass that on the day following that salubrious occasion of the failure of the aforementioned Mr. Fawkes, the local kids would go rummaging around the detritus left behind by the adults who gathered on the local sandy reach of the river to let off their firecrackers, skyrockets, Roman Candles, Catherine Wheels and various other explosives in the evening, in search of misfired bungers or other firecrackers left behind after the night’s celebrations and then make use of them at their own pleasure. In some lucky years, a fourpenny bunger, which as any veteran of those years would remember was the biggest cracker you could buy and equivalent, in the imaginative minds of the boys equal to a blast of a stick of Gelignite! …these prized crackers were then used in some cases as retribution for an adult’s abuse or reporting of a boy to his parents for some misdemeanour that resulted in punishment..so that vengeance was achieved through using the fourpenny bunger as a demolition tool placed in the offending adult’s letterbox to blow it to smithereens!

On this day, Looie and Maris were rewarded with the find of an unused skyrocket..a double treasure in that it rewarded one when it first was set off and then if retrieved, could be displayed on a shelf in one’s room as treasure alongside a collection of bottle-tops and footy-cards..

Having set the rocket off from the sandy reach of the river, the two boys watched carefully its trajectory to note where it had landed and in this case could see it fell behind the only garage in town. Hurrying to that location, they searched high and low among the old cars and wrecks there to no avail.. the frustration was beginning to tell and illogical propositions were starting to suggest themselves to the boys..

“Perhaps it fell down the chimney!” Looie opined.

“How could that happen, we saw it go behind the building” Maris snarled.

“Who says so!” Looie counter argued..

Then Maris, standing next to an old motorcar long time wreck with a fuel tank at the back without it’s fuel cap on, sparked up with ; “Hey!...perhaps it fell into this tank!”, to which Looie threw in his usual cynical rebuke on the likely impossibility of such a thing happening..

“I very much doubt that!” he said.

“Mabey..” said Maris, encouraged by this moment of original thinking” but we can’t find it nowhere else and it just could have”…and Maris extracted a box of matches from his pocket to give light to see into the tank..and was stopped by Looie before he could strike the match..

“ Don’t do that…you’re too short to see in properly…here, give the matches to me..I’ll do it.”

It was very fortunate that the motorcar wreck had stood there in the back yard of Wilson’s garage for many years and any residual fuel had long ago evaporated, leaving behind only the faintest volume of fumes, so that the resulting explosion when Looie introduced the flame to the opening of the fuel tank resulted in little more than a soft ; “FROOPH!” of black smoke that engulphed the head of Looie Loorick in a moment of surprise for both boys.

If one was to describe the appearance Maris saw on Looie turning to look at him in dumfounded silence after the event, the makeup of a clown from the Moscow Circus would be the equal in contrast from what was normal. One would have to describe a face thoroughly blackened with soot as in a minstrel show, the eyebrows singed off and the fringe of his spiked hair above his forehead sparkling and frizzling still in delightful, little sparks. Upon removal of his blackened glasses, two dazzling, white circles, shone like cockle-shells in a darkened mud wash, with a pair of eyes lit by what appeared as an amazed wide-eyed countenance of the sudden and unexpected preceding event…Maris gazed long and silently at the apparition before him…and then farted!

 

A box of spoons.

There is innocence in childhood that has the capacity to reduce a complex situation to the simplest of solutions. It has its own shining beauty in that it need not be corrected, nor adjudicated upon…just to be sure that such innocence will be perhaps, irretrievably lost once past the “coming of age”. But then, surely, each age has its’ attractions..even old age can offer a “safe harbour” for memories of the child we all once were.

At Alistair’s mother passing that year, he came into possession of all her archived household accounts and diaries…THEY were meticulously kept, right down to the last cent. Her correspondence, however was not so conscientiously maintained.. they were bundled or loose, in no discernable order of from any particular author…and all in a big box along with pamphlets and postcards. So it was no surprise to Alistair when he came across one envelope that had written in one corner in her perfect script ; “ Keepsakes”.

Upon examination of the contents, among snippets from his mother’s Aunt Lou of  Sth. Africa, or some distant relatives interstate, there was a small cut square of wrapping paper..a faded yellow in colour with the print of two bells tied with a flourished ribbon and the script ; “Your wedding Bells” half circled above them.

This piece of paper ‘rang some bells’ with Alistair, if you’ll excuse the pun..and, begging your indulgence,I’ll tell you the story. How do I know the story so well? you’ll ask after it has been told…You see, like all those childish adventures and miss-adventures that come to the attention of  parents, they are told and re-told and repeated with some embarrassed amusement, right into adult lives at every Christmas party or friends gathering.

It went like this :

A Box of Spoons.

It’s a curious cycle that has parents giving their offspring Christian names that would elevate them, if only in nomenclature, above their poverty-enriched status. So was the only child of Francis Hogben given the name “Alistair” at birth with a surety of decision that stopped short any debate on other possible names for her child. “He is to be named Alistair” she spoke wearily after the birth, then lay silently to feed the child. Francis Hogben was a single parent in a “Trust” house, How and why she was on her own shall remain a mystery,… that is not our story.

“Damn poverty!” she would grumble to no-one in particular, “Oh to have a little extra money…even to buy some decent cutlery rather than this mish-mash of rubbish!” and she cast a plain steel knife into the dishwater.

Alistair heard this complaint many times as he grew up to his six years of age, so it formed an impression on his gentle child-mind that associated knives and forks and spoons with a degree of wealth. When his mother went shopping at  “Tommy Johnson’s  4 Square” grocery store, he would wander out the front of the market to gaze into the plate glass window of the jeweler next door. But not at the expensive, glittering baubles of diamonds and emerald rings and bracelets, nor at the expensive timepieces. No, he stared hungrily with sweaty hands flat pressed against the glass at a set of glowing silver cutlery all embossed on their handles with delicate textures that mesmerised the tender-mind of the boy. And the fact that they were embedded in a rich, red plush of crushed velvet that itself seemed to shimmer was an added bonus. Oh how he would love to be able to make a gift of that set to his mother! If he stood there too long staring, a frowning face would inevitably appear above the cutlery set and a hand would make shoo!, shoo! away motions that would send Alistair backing slowly away over to the store door to wait for his mother.

There were two major events that affected Alistair’s life, both to the frustration of his mother, one was his susceptibility to asthmatic or bronchitis attacks, which with the croup in his lungs and the fits of coughing would keep him home from school for days at a time. It had even put him in hospital overnight a couple of times so that now, when he had an attack, a district nurse dropped in to check on him. The other event, one that brought rapture to Alistair’s heart was the opening, in a nearby gully of a mega council rubbish dump. Alistair became, to his mothers concern an inveterate “tip-fly”. He would descend onto that refuse heap every spare moment that the council men weren’t there (for it was “forbidden to scavenge”) to pluck little treasures from that miasma of debris. He would come home with a box full of trinkets and toys and, of course, always a little “something for Mum!”…And!…and, despite her distaste for the subject, a certain curiosity would compel her to look into his “treasure chest” of swag.

“What have you got this time?” she’d ask as her eyes scanned the collection of knick-knacks. And Alistair would rummage expertly amongst them hummingly to produce a little treasure for her…for her he found it, a piece of colourful patterned china? a bauble of a cut glass vase perhaps? a book of verse… (she loved verse, he knew). And his mother would smooth his hair with her hand and plant a kiss on the top of his head in thank you and place the trinket or whatever up on the “special shelf”.

Ally would smile happily, but always at the back of his mind was that lingering awareness of his mother’s concern for what she called ; “their poverty” and that elusive set of cutlery, one day he would bring her a set of cutlery, he was sure he would, for in his child mind, there was nothing to distinguish this throw-away society from all that in the shops on the high-street. The measure of wealth was to him nothing more than the collection of material things..of trinkets ..of glitter and shine.

Come one winters’ day when the rain rattled on the glass of the window next to Alistair’s bed fit to drive even the hardiest birds to cover, Alistair gazed up from the picture book that was to amuse him as he lay resting from the latest attack of croup. He coughed a hacking , phlegmy cough that bought his mother in from the kitchen.

“Ah, dear, dear,” she fussed with the crumpled bed clothes and placed a warm moist hand on his forehead. “How’s my little chap then?” she cooed automatically. Alistair shrugged. “I’ve got the nurse coming today to look at you.” she consoled, “you just lie down and rest till she comes” and with one last smoothing down of the blankets she left the room.

Rest?  Rest? tell a six year old boy to lay and rest when, if not for the blasted coughing, he could be out in the wild…rest!! From out of  his window Alistair could at any time see down across the open sweep of paddocks to the gully that was the dump. Hardy scavenging crows would on most days circle like vultures then settle on the heaps of domestic garbage to feed. The site drew Alistair’s attention like iron to a magnet.

“It doesn’t look like the men are working now it’s raining,” he thought, “I might be able to sneak down for a look.”

This logic resolved his boredom and he quietly slipped out of bed and dressed for adventure. He opened his window carefully and climbed through into a bush of pelargoniums, the boy was free! His many trips to that “El Dorado” had worn a track through the grass and around the sparse, wild-olive trees that dotted the paddocks. As he got closer to the tip, each olive tree had a clear patch around its base furtherest away from the cyclone-wire fence of the tip. Here he’d spy out the ground. The way was clear, the men were not working with the steady rain, they would be in the shed. Raindrops dripped from the dark leaves of the olive tree down Alistairs’ back, he shivered in reaction, but he didn’t really notice the wet; he had other distractions! He crept to the fence and along to the large corrugated iron shed that housed the bulldozer. There were a lot of old nail holes in the sheeting, to one of these Alistair put his eye as he had done on many occasion. Two men sat at an old table in the shed, they were playing cards. Alistair listened:

“Where’d you get these cards from?” one man asked mockingly, there was a moments silence.

“Found ’em t’ other day,” the other grumbled while in deep concentration on his cards. After a few cards were thrown down and others picked up, one threw his cards triumphantly on the table.

“Full house” he boastfully cried, “Kings high!” and he smiled. The other frowned quizzically then nodded. ‘

“Not bad” he said “I’ve only got five aces!”

“What!!” the first man exclaimed in disbelief.

Alistair left them at this point to argue the toss and seeing that they were involved in other duties, he made for his goal through the steady rain. He had gathered a few little ‘lovelies’ in his swag when he came across a jumble of wrapping papers and discarded ribbons amid confetti and used papers plates. The whole lot was next to a pile of rancid domestic waste. He poked about amongst the wedding debris (for that is what it was) with his seasoned eyes searching for booty. Then, all at once, amongst the scrap paper wrapping, he plucked out a small box, a card-board box about six inches square and one inch thick, it had a buffed crimson lid. He shook it, it rattled dully, he pondered on its’ contents and tried to guess, he played this game often, coins? buttons? No, too solid, nails? No too few! give up…carefully he eased the crimson lid off and gazed into the container.

Gosh! his eyes glowed with delight. He quickly closed the lid and slipped the box under his shirt less it become more rain speckled in his box of loot. His box! No, mustn’t  forget that and he picked it up, he’d got enough now, yes! Oh how wonderful! he turned to sneak back home, gloriously happy, wait; paper! wrapping paper everywhere!, he snatched up a piece that had “Your Wedding Bells” scripted over it, along with a length of white ribbon and he ran over to his spot at the fence which he crawled under to make for home,…home, there past the shed with the huge silent bulldozer smelling of dust and diesel and the two men laughing inside, home, past the dark olive trees and across the grassy paddock home, home, and how he ran, the grey clouds tumbled and the rain streaked in silvered incline toward his house…home!

The district nurse had arrived, Francis showed her in and led her down to Alistair’s room. He wasn’t there!…and his window was ajar!

“Oh lord! where can he be?” Francis exclaimed, but she had a pretty good idea. “Boys, they’re the hardest things in the world to keep in one place!” and she moved to gaze out the window. She couldn’t see him, but she knew he wouldn’t be long.

“He…he must have gone to look at something,” she explained weakly, “I’m sure he’ll be back in a minute…would you like a cup of tea while you wait?” The nurse looked at her watch and remarked that yes it was near lunch time anyway. and yes a cuppa would be nice..ta! so they both adjourned to the kitchen.

Alistair crept up to his window and climbed through…he coughed harshly…his mother heard and excusing herself went to investigate. She found him standing at his dresser wrapping a package, drops of water fell onto the rug under his shoes.

“Ally…Ally…where have you been? why, you’re soaked !…and…and your shoes, they’re filthy!” Alistair gave scant attention to his mother’s angry remarks, but thrust out a small, hastily wrapped package toward her. Francis was taken aback by the tactic, she gazed dumbly down at the package that had “Your Wedding Bells” emblazoned on the wrapper.

“It’s for you Mum,” Alistair quietly but eagerly offered. He stood there soaked to the skin with the length of white ribbon he had no time to use, dangling loosely in his hand.

“It’s…it’s a…” but no! he wouldn’t tell her what it was, though one look at his wide-eyed expression and you could see he was dying to tell, he bit his bottom lip to stop himself and handed his mother the package, then clasped his hands together eagerly.

As Francis took the clumsily wrapped package, the paper unfolded itself like petals of a flower to reveal a small box about six inches square and one inch thick, its’ lid was a crimson wash, speckled with rain-drops that raised welts on the smooth surface. She gazed wonderingly down at the box.

“Open it Mum, it’s for you…I found it for you.” Francis gently praised open the lid and her mouth formed a little “o” with an accompanied sigh. Alistair crowded next to her and peeked into the box also. There, embedded in a plush of rich, red crushed velvet lay six bright, shiny silver tea-spoons, all embossed on their stems with delicate textured patterns that mesmerized Mother and son, a soft glow from the single filament light in the ceiling reflected spangles up into their eyes.

“It’s a box of spoons Mum.” Alistair whispered, “a box of spoons for you to have so now we won’t be so poor.” he said keenly.

Francis looked to her son standing there all a tremble and took him into her arms. She smoothed and kissed the top of his head and murmured more to herself than to him.

“I never knew how rich we were.” The nurse called down the corridor, Francis quickly stashed the spoons. They put Alistair back into bed and the nurse attended to his needs. He was ordered to stay put in his bed. Alistair snuggled down into the depths of his blankets and smiled contentedly at the thought of his days’ glory. He listened to the hum of conversation between his mother and the nurse in the kitchen, the chiming of the spoons against the side of the tea-cups as they stirred their brew rang an angelus in his heart.

“Oh, what lovely spoons” the nurse cooed syrupy, “where did you get them?”

“Oh these?” Francis replied nonchalantly, “why, they were a…a gift, from someone… someone very special to me.” Alistair pulled his knees up to his chest, he coughed several times. His mother listened to the nurses chatter and cocked one ear to listen to her child’s coughing she nodded big-eyed at something the nurse had said, but at the same time sighed comfortably, for those coughs had a particular sound, the croup was easing, Alistair was on the mend.