testormblog

[testormblog]

At the Railway’s Mercy

Nearly everybody including me, who lived beyond Brisbane’s boundaries, relied on trains for transportation.  Trams didn’t run outside the city’s perimeter.  Whilst motor vehicles had increased in number since the fifties, regional roads were still built for horse and cart traffic.  This reliance made the Railway a powerful organisation.  Such monopoly, its’ executives believed would continue forever.

The Railway treated its employees, passengers and freight customers alike with condescension.  It transported almost everything everywhere on its own timetable: the living, their animals, the dead and anything these needed for their existence and business.  It brought mail from all corners of the state to the General Post Office in Brisbane for sorting and onward travel.  People accepted their deliveries would arrive whenever and in whatever condition these eventually did, having passed through multiple pairs of hands.

The Railway’s lines crisscrossed the length and breadth of the state.  Even tinpot communities of a few hundred people had stations manned with staff and permanent track maintenance crews.  The Railway’s costs to operate as well as to maintain its infrastructure and to build more greatly exceeded the normal person’s comprehension.  Notwithstanding its volume of traffic, it didn’t earn a profit with the deficit of thousands of pounds footed by the taxpayers.  They didn’t complain.  Accordingly, the Railway saw no reason why it should change its antiquated, inefficient practices.

Every week day, I joined the thousands of its passengers.  Those days that I began my journey at Bethania Station, I waited for a suburban rattler pulled by a PB15 steam engine to arrive at 6.25 am.  Usually, the train came on time as it should have given that the station was its first stop.  I stepped up from the low platform on to a carriage’s running board and grabbed the metal handles to climb into one of the train’s six second class carriages.

Inside, I looked for the least dirty seat and brushed the coal dust from it.  Some people sat on the advertisement section of their newspapers.  I wasn’t sure which was worse on one’s backside, a coal smudge or an advertisement for unmentionables.  A few men smoked cigarettes and pipes even though the carriage may have been designated as nonsmoking.  Smoke was both outside and inside; there wasn’t any difference.  At least the nicotine smell cloaked the unwashed smell of some passengers.  The ticket snapper soon came along with the hope I was a fare evader.  This was not so and never so!  The guard leant out from the rear carriage and waited for the station master’s hand signal.  Upon receiving this, he waved his green flag and blew his whistle.  The engine driver released the mighty steam engine’s brakes and engaged its drive wheels.  The train lurched forward and began its slow thirty-two kilometre journey to South Brisbane Station.

As a child, I loved train rides to Brisbane.  As a young man, the opposite applied.  The route rarely varied so the daily scenes outside the carriage window didn’t either.  After thousands of journeys, I barely glanced at them anymore.  The constant clicky clack of the train’s steel wheels numbed my mind into a state of lethargy.  I usually battled to stay awake as one never knew what crooked characters were passengers too.  Everybody generally was suspicious of everybody else unless they knew them.  Consequently, I didn’t engage in conversations with strangers.  Whilst some people hid behind their newspapers, I didn’t take out a text book from my bag.  The train’s constant noise and movement as well as passenger interruptions made concentration difficult.

The journey was like a trip through history.  The train chugged through open country, over the Logan River and across the biggest bridge between Brisbane and Bethania.  Supposedly, steam engines faster than the PB15 were too heavy to cross the aging timber bridge.  The train stopped for a passenger at Loganlea sometimes.  This small farming hamlet existed as it did last century.  Onwards, the train steamed into the current century to Kingston, the area’s commercial hub where a prosperous butter factory operated and a once illustrious gold mine had existed.  Despite the fixed gold price, the mine hadn’t turned a profit.  Rumours lingered from its heyday that the miners themselves had pocketed the gold and become rich.  Alas, they left behind an environmental debacle for the politicians to resolve.  Next, at Woodridge, the train filled up with workers.  The place was posh in name only.  The government had encouraged migrants to settle there; yet had failed to plan a town or services for them.  This failure would condemn it and its residents to future impoverishment.

I absentmindedly watched more stations flit by.  At Runcorn, the foundations of the wartime military warehouses were still visible.  Later, the Bradford Kendall heavy machinery foundry would be built on them.  During World War Two, the surrounding suburbs had been the military’s manufacturing hub for equipment and armaments.  Onwards, the train chugged to Rocklea which perennial floods attempted to wash away.  It then picked up speed and ran express to South Brisbane.  At Moorooka, I glanced at the interstate goods yards, colloquially called Clapham Junction, where a long line of retired Bayer Garrett steam engines had been parked on a track indefinitely.  During the war, troops had erected a tent city close to here.  As the train passed Park Road Station, Boggo Road Gaol loomed above with its gloomy Victorian architecture, home to the perpetrators of heinous crimes.  At least, they saw the sunlight whilst working in the gardens.

The steam train thundered through the only tunnel on the route.  Anyone who forgot to raise the rattly glass windows beforehand ended up covered in soot and coal dust.  After nineteen stations, the train screeched to a halt at South Brisbane Station and disgorged hundreds of passengers.  A mass of bodies charged down the stairs to the street.  People boarded trams to the City or walked instead past the fish board, along the polluted Brisbane River and its docks then across Victoria Bridge.  The smell was nauseating.

Unfortunately, the whole return journey awaited me if I wasn’t at college that night.  I couldn’t believe that people endured this monotony for the duration of their working lives.  I wasn’t yet eighteen and had already decided I didn’t like adult life or the big city very much.  I also yearned for some respite from the Railway’s and its schedule’s control over my daily existence.  My childhood romance with it was waning.

[testormblog]

Where Can I Sleep?

The Station Master’s discovery of me asleep in the railway carriage forced me to find a bed in Brisbane for college nights.  If somebody else had found me like a copper, I could have been arrested for vagrancy even though I hadn’t intended to sleep overnight in the carriage.

Mother mentioned she had a friend at Sunnybank, who’d give me bed and breakfast for five shillings a night.  The minute Mother said ‘friend’, I should have been suspicious.  This friend I hadn’t heard of previously.  Mother had probably met this supposed friend on her most recent train trip to Brisbane.  My desperation won out however.  I could stumble into bed at eleven yet catch my usual train from Sunnybank station, much later at 7.30 am.  The arrangement seemed like a reasonable solution.

The next week, I walked from the train station with my small kit bag and a piece of paper with the address.  It was 10 pm.  Whilst I was familiar with the road, I didn’t know the house.  I arrived at the address and looked twice at the ramshackle hovel and its overgrown surrounds.  Surely not!  I knocked on the door because I had nowhere else to go.  The door creaked open a little.  A haggard, sixtyish year old woman, wearing a stained and holey dressing gown, peered through the crack.  She asked for the five shillings.  Some cats and dogs inside awoke and started up quite a melee.

The woman beckoned me inside.  My mother’s housekeeping was deficient but none was done here.  The squalid scene before me was worthy of a graphic horror movie and the smell of a rubbish dump.  Small furry creatures of varying sizes scurried away from my feet.  I smelt their verminous odour.  However, the cockroaches ruled the abode by sheer number.  A black and white television caught my attention.  My family couldn’t afford one of these.  I tried to see the picture playing on it but some cockroaches were holding a party on the rear side of the television’s glass screen.

I had no other option.  The trains were finished for the night.  Whilst I knew I wouldn’t sleep a wink; I couldn’t camp somewhere outside.  The streets weren’t safe.  Street lighting didn’t exist.  Dangers seemed to lurk in the shadows and made everybody fearful of darkness.  Besides, the night was cold and damp.  At a bare minimum, here I had shelter.  Neither was the woman a physical threat to me.

The woman showed me where the bathroom was and to a bed.  I gave the bathroom a miss.  No way was I going to shower in it.  Slimy used water filled the bathtub (which had the shower overhead) and the wash basin.  A multitude of roaches had committed suicide in both.  I took my trousers off and laid on top of the bed then counted the minutes one by one until morning.  When the first peep of dawn came, I silently escaped out the front door before the old hag stirred.  I wasn’t staying for my cooked breakfast; I had risked my constitution enough.  I tidied myself up as best as possible in the train station’s bathroom and hoped nobody would notice my appearance at work that day.  At least, the office’s omnipresent nicotine smoke cloud would obscure yesterday’s body odour.  Never again, I vowed to listen to Mother’s advice and never I did!

About the same time, I heard the Bethania Station Master’s daughter had married and bought with her husband a home at Salisbury.  Lorraine was a fine girl.  We had worked at the Bethania Refreshment Rooms together.  I thought the young couple might give me bed and breakfast for some extra income.  They were struggling financially too.  Well, Lorraine took pity on me and I was beyond grateful.  Perhaps, a kind word from her father helped.

The couple’s house was no more than a two bedroom wooden cottage purchased from the Housing Commission, a government scheme.  Still, it was clean and pleasant.  It also contained a bathroom complete with a proper toilet.

Salisbury was fifteen kilometres from the City and was considered to be a fringe suburb.  ‘Fringe’ was an overly polite description in its case.  It was nothing like its majestic counterpart in England.  It sat on a floodplain on which surrounding industry had sprung up as munitions factories in World War Two.  The Brisbane tram terminated at it at a terminus located amongst the industrial buildings.  Beyond these through some bushland and across a swampy creek was Lorraine’s house.  A bush track wound up a steep bank and through the swamp to there.  In daylight hours with people in the vicinity, the route was safe enough for an athletic young man.  At night time, it was perilous.  The factories’ surrounds were dimly lit and the swamp was cloaked in complete darkness.  Alas, the route was the only available path.  So being surefooted, I took my chances for a few nights and encountered nobody else.

Then one night, a middle aged, heavy set man rode the tram and alighted at the terminus too.  I didn’t make eye contact with him.  Other than him, I saw nothing unusual so began to weave my way through the maze of alleys between the buildings.  At a subliminal level, I felt a presence behind me.  All my muscles tensed.  I realised the man was following me.  He caught up to me as I neared the steep bank.  He said hello in a gravelly voice.  Given my rural upbringing, I treated all strangers with suspicion.  I was polite yet apprehensive.  I had never been propositioned before and couldn’t think what he'd want from me.  I hadn’t a spare penny to give him neither did I look as though I had.  Furthermore, if he were a thief, he’d have hit me on the back of the head rather than speak to me.  I feared he was going to murder me but couldn’t fathom why.  This man could easily overpower me.  I’d be defenceless against his bulk.  I increased my step size to put distance between us and thought quickly back to my childhood escapades in the bush.  My advantages were agility plus knowledge of the track despite the darkness and of the treacherous swamp.

I ran with my hair bristling on my neck.  The man came fast after me!  I knew exactly where some saplings had been laid in the mud to provide people with a firm footing and to save their shoes on their walk across the swamp.  A spot of moonlight shone for a moment at the crossing.  I sprang and my surefooted feet landed on the makeshift sapling plank perfectly and I continued to run.  My assailant didn’t land so!  He slipped and fell into the mud and murky water.  I sprinted faster than ever before to Lorraine’s place.  Somehow, I recognised that this man was evil.  I never used the track again nor caught the tram.  I resorted to the later train and the longer route home along the main roads though slept an hour less.

I needed a driver’s licence and wheels!

[testormblog]

Going Nowhere

Most children strive to grow up quickly to escape their boundaries.  I was no different.  Now sixteen years old, I was considered an adult.  Alas, the reverse happened to me; I became a prisoner not an escapee!  My life had become wretched and I was powerless to change it for the next five years of my indenture after my probation period finished.

Every day, I sweated at the Ipswich Workshops then lined up to required technical classes at the Ipswich Technical College, three nights a week and for a half day.  At least this meant I avoided the old codgers at the boarding house.  I only heard their loud snores as I flopped on to my lumpy bed, exhausted and utterly miserable.  Besides, I missed my beloved birds and had left them in Dad’s care.  I hated where I lived but couldn’t afford anywhere else.  My landlord demanded nearly all my wages.  He left me a few measly shillings for my train fares.

One shouldn’t give up hope.  I valiantly tried to keep it and searched for a chance to roll my dice of fortune again.  I read the available jobs listed in the Railway’s Workers Weekly when nobody was looking.  A couple months after I had started work, the Chief Engineer’s Office listed four cadet (apprentice) draftsman positions in Brisbane.  I thought one of these might be an escape route and quickly applied.  My Railway exam ranking secured me an interview and a position.  The top ranked guy scored another.  We virtually evaporated from the Workshops and reappeared in a huge drafting room of hundreds of desks in Brisbane City.  I never returned except once some sixty years later after the hell had met its own demise.

I felt like a jailbird released from prison, and its stepping stone the half way house, into better society.  I didn’t realise that life would be tough on the other side too.  I soon discovered that my electrical studies weren’t useful to a cadet draftsman.  The other cadets were enrolled in draftsman courses or engineering studies.  Thus, I needed to switch.  The Queensland Central Technical College had recently reviewed its engineering subjects, updated them for modern practices and rolled out its 1960 Engineering Diploma, a seven year course.  I decided to do it.  I started three months behind and had lots of catching up to do.  Alas, I was time poor.  I sat in the classroom from six to nine four nights a week and for a half day on Saturday.  On the nights, I waited a couple hours on a draughty train platform for the ‘Midnight Horror.  At 1 am, I staggered up the road to home for a woeful three hours sleep.  I was close to being a dead man walking.  One night, at 2 am, the Bethania Station Master on duty, fortunately one of Dad’s mates, found me asleep in a train carriage laid over for the night.  His daughter, who lived closer to the City, took pity on me and took me in.  I kept my head down at work and college.  I miraculously survived and passed every engineering subject that year.

At work, I went from a place where men swore in English to one where they swore in foreign languages, predominantly Russian.  Whilst the bosses were Australian, many workers were White Russians, post war escapees from Red Russia.  These men chain smoked foul smelling pipes and cigarettes.  A metre thick smoke cloud hovered over everybody, constrained above by the ceiling.  The room was a death cell whether one smoked or not.  Doubtlessly, a lad looking for acceptance by his colleagues, I smoked a few packets of Camel and Rothmans.  I had tasted nothing as disgusting as these cheap cigarettes.  Thus, I didn’t smoke much outside the office nor could I afford to, thus I evaded this addiction.

Everybody in the Chief Engineer’s Office worked silently and diligently unlike their brethren in the Workshops.  No pranks happened here!  I was eager to learn whatever I could.  However, nobody sought to teach me anything.  The men were immersed in whatever segment of infrastructure they had to design.  Being a cadet, they trusted me to do no more than trace their pencil designs on cartridge paper on to blue linen in Indian ink.  These tracings became the blue prints for the manufacture of componentry.  I traced various shaped steel components, scaled to dimensions, for the foundry at the Workshops.  The task was monotonous and tedious due to the careful penmanship required.  For two and a half years, I never drew up any of my own design work.  Nor did my pitiful wage of less than ten pound a week increase.  I earnt marginally less at the Workshops.  Heavens, I could have earnt more birding.

The office bell clanged eight times a day, four times to start work and four times to stop it.  It first rang at 9 am and last at 5.06 pm.  It ruled my day!  As required, I signed on in a book at these times irrespective of when I really began or finished.  The 5.06 pm finishing time clashed with the South Brisbane train timetable.  In those days, no rail bridge connected Brisbane City to the Southside.  On my college free nights, I had fourteen minutes to sprint through the street crowd, down Adelaide Street to George Street then across the old Victoria Bridge, a kilometre and a half.  Missing the train meant at least a half hour wait for the next.  I, being a runner, usually beat the train by a minute if I wasn’t queued to sign the book.  Most of the men in the same predicament signed the book the following morning.  So, I did too.

One night, the Chief Clerk, a power hungry snake, laid a trap for us.  He worded up his team beforehand though.  Somebody leaked his intention but didn’t tell me nor another guy about it.  The next morning, the snake frog marched us two into the Chief Engineer’s office, a suite so palatial it widened my eyes.  I cast my eyes to the floor and stood stone still whilst the Chief Engineer harshly berated us for disobeying the Railway rule.

As my mother unwittingly taught me, take the heat, retreat yet note the score as outstanding and wait for the day to complete.  The chance would come.

Years into the future, a colleague would eventually be promoted to the Railway’s Chief Engineer.  We’d meet again across a desk with me employed by another organisation.  Between us would be a tender for a new rail bridge.  He’d fail to check the document thoroughly.  My allegiance would be to my then employer not to him nor the Railway.  I’d remember the timebook incident and my misery working for the Railway.  That day, the Railway would pay dearly, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth.

That office bell began to sound like the dead knell to me.  Older cadets were resigning.  Then the guy, who began with me, snagged a role with an oil company.  I knew I had to ‘write on the wall’ too despite my indenture and my Railway blood.

[testormblog]

False Promise

It was the end of 1959.  I was sixteen years old and needed to fund my existence.  There was no question, or choice depending on one’s opinion, about the job opportunities available to me.  Pop had and Dad still did work for the Railway; thus, I should too.  My only other option was casual labour on the local farms.

Dad asked George, his drinking mate, how I should apply for a proper job with the Railway.  George, being the Assistant Secretary to the Commissioner of Queensland Railways, was an important man.  He was Reggie’s father too and had a bit of a shine towards me.  He also knew I had buckled down when I had covered Reggie’s holiday leave as Beenleigh Station’s porter.  I had swept the trains and the platforms with super efficiency.  The Station Master had been astounded that I had wanted more jobs and handed over his paperwork to do.

George said I had two options: apply for a porter’s position at a station or sit the annual exam and hope to secure a trade apprenticeship.  Back then, the Railway was an organisation built on longevity where one started at the bottom.  My stint as a relief porter was enough time at the bottom for me!  So, I decided to sit the Railway exam.  Any apprenticeship would do; just a chance to jam my toe through the metaphoric doorway.  My situation was dire!  Otherwise, I’d be shovelling animal crap for a living.

I sat down amongst hundreds of young men in the Brisbane Central Technical College’ massive gymnasium.  Like me, most sweated with nervousness.  The morning, a hot Saturday in December, didn’t help.  Air conditioning was yet to be invented; the reek of body odour was putrid.  I noted the written exam was split evenly between Mathematics and English questions.  Whilst the Mathematics component wasn’t a worry; I had the willies about the English section.  If I had to write an essay, I was doomed!  Thankfully, it comprised of a dictation test and another for reading and comprehension.  I wasn’t a wordsmith but I could listen, recall what was said and read well.  I scribbled my answers quickly and prayed that my legibility and spelling were sufficient.  Afterwards, I put the wretched exam out of my mind and went birding to earn a few pounds.

Early in January, George strolled up to home smiling.  He told Dad my results and that I had placed fourth in Queensland, out of all the state’s testing centres.  My father was flabbergasted!  He didn’t know I had achieved an excellent Junior pass from high school.  Fourth meant I was fourth in line to choose from approximately one hundred apprenticeships on offer.  I was elated!  This was a huge step towards a solid future.  Better yet, I moved up to second position when the two top applicants chose options elsewhere.  I chose the second highest paid apprenticeship, that of an electrical fitter; the first being already taken.  I figuratively kissed those cows’ arses goodbye!  The four year indenture meant a meagre yet steady wage if I watched my own arse.

I started work at the Ipswich Railway Workshops.  I also took a room at a men’s boarding house in Ipswich and ate slop and potato during the week.  This rundown establishment was little more than a half way house for reprobates, who slept with their rum bottles.

Each morning, I caught the Workshops train with a thousand other men.  Unlike me, many didn’t pay their fares.  They jumped aboard from a disused platform when the train reversed to change points onto the Workshop Line.  Sometimes, they played ‘cat and mouse’ with the ticket snappers and risked penalty fares and fines.  To me, this exercise seemed counterproductive to the Railway as it delayed the train and the jobs scheduled that day.  Yet everybody still received full wages.

Upon walking through the Workshops gate, I discovered a place beyond my imagination.  The Workshops were a large sprawling complex of buildings.  Some were tall and long.  These accommodated massive steam engines, carriages, good wagons and overhead gantry cranes.  Many were built during the prior century although the machinery housed inside them was now powered with electricity.  Every trade had their designated workshop.  There were smithies, electricians, carpenters, upholsters and mechanical engineers to name some of the trades.  Here, steam engines and rail motors were serviced whilst carriages and goods wagons were constructed and repaired.  I was bedazzled by the locomotives, I’d see there: the Beyer Garett, PB15, C16, C17, C19 and tank engines.

The Workshops were regimented by Railway rules.  However, an underlying culture existed amongst the workers where nobody dobbed anybody in for breaking these.  The supervisors were incompetent; ignorant of their responsibilities to their jobs and their employees.  Given the Workshops enormity, men easily and purposefully lost themselves from 7 am to 4 pm.  Nobody looked for them.  On payday, they appeared.

The workshops were hot, noisy, dirty places and often smoky.  The foul smell of sulphur fumes intermingled with other noxious odours from metals and humans.  Men crafted by hand all the parts and tools their specific workshops required.  Safe work methods weren’t practiced.  The tasks were monotonous.  Men plodded along with the same task all day.  That was unless a foreign order arrived.  A foreign was somebody’s personal job like to rebuild their truck’s engine block.  I did what I was tasked to do; that being to manufacture small metal parts.  I was bored!

Accordingly, employees avoided constructive work wherever possible.  They pulled pranks in abundance.  Every new worker was initiated by a dunking in the water trough.  This was a frequent occurrence.  If the rookie resisted, he earnt a worse dunking and would be almost drowned.  I suffered my turn and miserably slogged around in my heavy wet overalls for the whole day.  However, far worse for us rookies were the unexpected dowses by the senior apprentices with their illegally manufactured water cannon device that they connected to the water fountain.

One day, when I was melting lead in a crucible, such an idiot appeared with the water cannon ready to dowse me.  His intention was exceedingly dangerous, potentially deadly.  I knew if water touched molten lead, the lead would explode!  Without any thought (I didn’t have time to think!), I threw a lead ingot round, about ten centimetres in diameter and a kilogram in weight, at him to divert his attention.  He didn’t catch it!  Yet, my throw, me being a cricket bowler, to my dismay was too accurate.  The ingot hit his arm and cut a deep gash.  Blood streamed from this.  He collapsed!  I was horrified and certain I’d be sacked.  His mates, who had looked on, carted him off to First Aid.  Later that day, he and his gang returned.  His arm was in a sling with the wound stitched up.  He commented that everybody should watch out for ingots falling off the bench.  The incident was buried!  Nobody targeted me with the water cannon again.

I thought Dad’s lot out on the train track was better than mine.  He worked in the fresh air and sunshine.  This fallacious promise of a decent future was really the shackle to lifelong drudgery in disguise.

[testormblog]

Lou Lou

By high school, I had grown into a confident lad with respect to the sweeter gender.  Mother had taken me to community dances from the age of seven.  By ten years old, I had mastered the steps to many ballroom dances.  By fourteen, I was sweeping young ladies off their feet.  Neither did they allow me to rest my feet.  Other local lads were clueless as to where they should put their feet and stepped on their partners’ toes.  Thus, when I walked through the high school’s gates, my eyes widened.  I saw attractive girls everywhere and soon realised many were smart.  Soon after, my election to House Captain guaranteed my popularity with them.

I had met Elizabeth, the pretty girl in my confirmation class, a few times to see movies together.  Though, I faded into her background afterwards.  She, being a couple years older, began to look for a marital prospect.  Alas, her little sister, Lou Lou, sought me out.  We were in the same year at high school.  She decided I’d be hers not her big sister’s.  She was prettier and more vibrant too.  Better yet, she possessed a rebellious streak.  Lou Lou ensnared me the moment I stared into her eyes.  Her lips curled into a saucy smile.  She knew she had won.

We thought we were the perfect match.  She and I were equally pegged in intelligence.  We were both born to local German families and shared the same religious faith.  What we didn’t expect was our families’ religious bigotry towards each other and our blossoming relationship.

Lou Lou’s parents were horrified she had hooked up with me.  Her father and uncle both served as church elders at local Lutheran churches.  Her family attended church services every Sunday whereas mine never did.  They were respectable people; my family wasn’t.  Between Dad’s irreligious weekend pursuits and his disreputable friendships along with Mother’s and my frequency at heathen dance halls, my morality was suspect.  My parents were deemed ignorant too.  They were barely capable of basic arithmetic.  Whereas Lou Lou’s Uncle Ernie was an educated man; he being the mathematics teacher at Beenleigh Primary.  Worse yet, this uncle and her aunt lived opposite us at Bethania and knew our comings and goings.  On the flipside, Lou Lou’s family home faced my aunt’s house in Beenleigh.  This led to her parents finding a reason to dislike my relative too.  To worsen the animosity, Ernie provoked me into a verbal brawl one day at Bethania Railway Station with false accusations about my bird enterprise.  These hurt me as I cared very much about my birds, their health and the cleanliness of their aviaries.

Despite our relationship being troublesome, we enjoyed its forbidden status.  We engineered apparently chance meetings to avoid suspicion.  We met up at the Brisbane Show away from local eyes.  We both belonged to Lutheran Youth and successfully escaped to the beach together for a few days under the guise of the annual camp at Coolum.  Afterward, we were eager for another escapade.  The Billy Graham Rally seemed a perfect opportunity for our subterfuge.  The irony of our duplicity made us laugh.

In 1959, the American Baptist evangelist, conducted a revival crusade around Australia to ‘save the youth’.  He was the religious equivalent of a charismatic rock star, who packed sports stadiums with naïve teenagers and filled them with hype.  In Brisbane, the local churches organised giant rallies by region and supplied bus transport to the Brisbane Exhibition Ground.  On our region’s designated night, about sixteen packed buses travelled from Beenleigh.  At the time, this was a considerable number of teenagers from the small rural area.

What a stage show!  Lou Lou and I squeezed between thousands of others to sit on the ground.  American gospel singers warmed up the crowd’s mood with their powerful voices.  We hadn’t heard music and songs like theirs before.  These captured our hearts and lifted our spirits.  Then, Billy Graham appeared on stage.  He glowed, probably with sweat.  His voice boomed from amplifiers all around us.  He delivered his sermon with theatrical frenzy.  He told us our souls would be eternally damned if we didn’t repent of our supposed sin and follow Christ’s teachings.  When the crowd’s hysteria reached its height, ushers appeared with milk buckets to extract cash from everybody.  At the sermon’s zenith, Graham called those attendees touched by God’s spirit to come forward and to pledge their lives to Christ.  Whilst I wasn’t caught up in the moment’s phrenzy, Lou Lou was.  I knew never to promise anything to anybody especially a preacher.  Still, I had to wait for Lou Lou to return from the long line of dedicatees.  Looking back, I’d wonder if these people would fulfil their pledges.

Unfortunately for Lou Lou and I, our damnation came the following day for not abiding by the teachings of another.  Our Form and Mathematics teacher, Mr Powell, had deliberately set us a compulsory assignment the prior day.  Of course, we hadn’t time to complete it.  Consequently, we suffered a severe reprimand in front of our class.  I suspected Mr Powell thought our relationship had become too intense and used the opportunity to make his opinion known.

We found meeting up at school socials problematic.  A few teachers had wised up to our ruses and had warned us to cool our relationship.  These warnings only warmed it up further.  One night after a school social, Mr Powell drove around Beenleigh searching for us.  Lou Lou and I evaded discovery by hiding in the shadow of a shop doorway.  This gave us such a thrill.

Soon after, we met up with another young couple for a double date.  After a night of just hanging out together, the other lad drove me home in his car in the wee hours of the morning.  My parents weren’t pleased!  They probably had received backlash that I was corrupting a church loving, god fearing girl; they perhaps realised the opposite was more likely true.

Both sets of parents put their feet firmly down.  Dad saw Lou Lou at Beenleigh Train Station and told her his thoughts quite bluntly.  He didn’t want her to ruin my future.

Our relationship waned then faltered after our junior exams.  Lou Lou started her senior studies at Salisbury High School.  Our flame briefly reignited then life sent us in different directions.  Lou Lou would never finish her studies and marry instead.  Sadly, she’d lose her husband young.  She’d marry again and end up with a blended tribe of multi-racial children, many adopted.  She’d keep her pledge and not inherit her family’s bigotry.

The irony of our relationship was that people’s perception of it didn’t equate to its reality.  It was driven by the excitement generated by our ruses.  Whilst I was enamoured with Lou Lou, I liked other girls too and still attended dances with my mother, much to Lou Lou’s disgust.  Hence, I never moved past holding her hand or kissing her.  If Lou Lou hadn’t been forbidden to enter a dance hall and had danced with me, our story may have ended differently.

[testormblog]

No Longer a Rapscallion

I could make a start in the world and not sit the scholarship exam at the end of grade seven.  It wasn’t compulsory.  My parents hadn’t sat it.  I supposed it would prove I had a brain.  I passed the exam easily making no effort to study beforehand.  I achieved a 72.4% pass with an excellent mathematics grade yet a mediocre English one.  Language skills, other than the ability to launch a verbal volley of expletives, weren’t important in my family.  My academic rival, Ronnie, sat with equal success.  We gleefully discovered in the newspaper the teacher’s daughter barely passed though.

My parents paid little heed to my achievement.  They instead were keen for me to find a proper job to contribute money to the household.  Dad had seen jobs at Evans Deakin Shipbuilders and Heavy Engineering advertised in the newspaper.  Its workshops were located at Rocklea, Brisbane’s industrial hub, next to the train line we often travelled.  So, Mother dragged me there in my Sunday best.  We found our way to a cheerless grey office and met a grizzled man wearing a short sleeve collared shirt complemented with a sad taste tie.  Mother sat and I stood nervously.  I kept my mouth shut least I raised Mother’s ire.  The man asked for my scholarship results.  He leaned back in his creaky chair and sized me up.

He spoke, ‘Mrs, I am sorry; I cannot in good conscience give your boy a job.  He is too bright to sweep the floor in this factory.  With a scholarship pass as good as this, he should go to high school.  You should be proud of him.’

Unfortunately, Mother only heard the man’s first sentence.  Her demeanour was like ice all the way home.  She had counted on my prospective wages.

Soon after, my parents made me an offer.  They’d feed me whilst I went to high school.  However, I’d need to fund my uniforms, text books and anything else from my money.  The uniforms were expensive yet compulsory.  They comprised of long trousers, school shirts, a tie, a felt hat, socks, leather shoes and a school blazer.  No longer was I a ragamuffin in whatever shirt and shorts I grabbed to wear.  I was a well dressed young man.  To give Mother credit, she’d always ensure my uniform was clean and ironed.  Perhaps, she was secretly chuffed in front of our neighbours that her son was going to high school.

I had no idea what people learnt at high school.  My older mate, Reggie, couldn’t tell me.  He finished primary school then went to work at the Railway.  I couldn’t discuss it with Ronnie either.  He was being sent to boarding school.  My parents knew nothing about it nor did any of my relatives.  I was the first of both family lines to go.  To begin with, I had an interview with Beenleigh High’s headmaster.  Whilst waiting for this, I spoke with another boy.  He told me he wanted to become an engineer.  I didn’t know anything about engineers.  The headmaster asked me into his office.  Again, I trembled with nervousness.  This man was about to determine my future.  He scanned my scholarship results then enquired what job would I like.  I simply told him I enjoyed woodwork and technical drawing.  He winked and wrote industrial on my enrolment form.

Initially, I felt like a nobody after I had finally grown into a somebody.  I sat learning subjects, I had little clue about, taught by different teachers.  In my previous grade, I had heard the same lessons for the six years before and wasn’t bothered to do any homework.  Now, I didn’t feel very smart.  Some of my classmates were though.  I kept a low profile.  Still, I had a face to save and had invested my precious savings.  Thus, I did my homework and studied hard for the seemingly endless exams.  Besides, I strove to win at whatever activity I attempted.  I wished with my whole soul for my name to be added to the school’s leader board at the end of junior.  My peers’ fierce competition drove me harder.  I even scaled back my bird enterprise to accommodate my efforts.

Whilst I was acquainting myself with my new lowly status as a sub-junior, the sports house captain elections for the school’s two sports houses occurred.  I had been assigned to Lavarack House.  When the nominations were announced at school parade, I expected these to be juniors.  To my utter surprise, my name was called.  More surprisingly still, the students elected me.  So, I wasn’t a nobody after all!  My reputation on the sports field had preceded me.  I was thrust into a position of leadership, a scary proposition for an introverted lad.

I then needed to prove I was the sports star everybody thought I was.  I undertook to win the year’s cross country race.  I had been running from trouble for years!  I had grown into a tall lad too.  I trained surreptitiously after dark and ran up to six kilometres a night.  Somehow, I could keep pace without tiring.  In later life, I’d learn I had a slow heart rate, good for a long distance runner.  Sure enough, no other lads kept pace in that race with me.  I won that year and the next to inscribe my name in the school’s record book.  I was unbeatable in the mile races on the school’s sports days too.  The same happened with the high jump, which I really wanted to win.  My long legs ensured I cleared those bars effortlessly.  I was everybody’s sports star!  The following year, the students re-elected me as captain and elected me a school prefect too.  I had earnt respect and learnt this meant more than to win.

In junior year, the school chose me to role play Captain Logan alongside eight other students as convicts and four as soldiers in Beenleigh’s Centennial celebration to commemorate the State of Queensland’s first century in 1959.  I felt honoured!  This event was important to the community and reflected the struggles of local families, including mine, to build new lives in a foreign country.  I was given a replica Belltop Shako hat, a blue military style blazer with tails, white trousers and long black boots to wear.  The best part of my attire was the musket.  It was empty though!  I stood proudly on a whale boat whilst the ‘convicts’ rowed it up the Logan River.  A flotilla of small ships followed us and we all set anchor at Logan River Bridge.  Quite a spectacle!

As busy as these years were, I loved them.  I earnt my name on the school’s leader board and achieved six ‘A’s, two ‘B’s and a ‘C’ in English in my junior exams.  My teachers thought I should go on to senior at Salisbury High School.  I knew my luck was up however.  I realised my sport star days were finished too.  I accepted my fate without complaint.

Despite my family’s poverty and Mother’s dire foresight into my future, I had grown from a scruffy, unwanted boy into a self assured, polite young man.

[testormblog]

Straight Draw

I didn’t inherit my father’s love of horse races.  I saw Dad lose more than win.  I valued the money I earnt too much to squander it so.  In fact, Dad’s addiction, that was how I saw it, really irritated me as a child.  He commandeered the radio every Friday night to hear which horses were listed to run that Saturday.  Consequently, I missed sequential episodes of my radio stories.  Then all day Saturday, he listened to the races ran in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.  At the time, I found the race caller’s constant chatter annoying.  Later as an adult, I realised my father looked forward to little else in his modest life.  He worked hard labour in the heat, cold and dirt day in and day out.  He earnt his time listening to the radio whilst sitting in a cool spot on the veranda.

Later Saturday evening, whilst I worked, I overheard Dad’s conversations with his mates whilst they chugged beers in Mattie’s bar.  They analysed horses’ forms, their wins and losses, the qualities of the various race courses and the bookmakers’ odds.  Some horses ran well on dry tracks and others on wet.  Consequently, I knew everything there was to know about the sport.

When the Melbourne Cup Race approached annually, energetic discussions and an infectious air of excited anticipation invaded the bar.  The men spoke of little else in the six week leadup.  Twenty-four horses would line up for the most famous race in Australia and run three thousand two hundred metres, about two miles back then.  Not only would the men lay bets with the local but illegal starting price (called an ‘SP’) bookmaker on the day, they bought tickets in sweeps, which popped up at businesses around the community.  It seemed the only establishment not running a sweep was the church!  A sweep was akin to a blind lucky dip.  Lots of tickets were sold but only tickets were drawn for the number of horses in the race.  The remaining tickets lost out.

The Station Master at Bethania Railway Station organised the biggest sweep around.  He sold tickets for weeks ahead at two shillings each to anybody willing to cough up such an extravagant amount.  By comparison, two bob usually bought you five tickets in a raffle.  Nevertheless, all the local Railway men bought at least five tickets if not ten.

In 1957, this race fever caught me in its grip too.  I was fourteen and wanted to join in the men’s excitement.  I deliberated for several days if I should purchase one two shilling ticket.  I only earnt three shillings for my Saturday morning shift at the refreshment rooms.  Besides, my odds were extremely poor; one ticket versus the hundreds sold to score a horse then one horse against twenty-four to win one of the three places.  Foolishly, I did buy one ticket, just one.  I told nobody about my gamble and hid the ticket in my money tin.

The day before the Melbourne Cup, the Station Master drew the twenty-four horse names from all the tickets he had sold in front of a crowd of ticket holders.  I wasn’t present but my father was of course.  Dad arrived home miserable.  He grumbled he had lucked out again and hadn’t secured a horse in the draw.

He then said, with a quizzical look on his face, ‘Jakob, you drew a horse though.  It’s Straight Draw.  However, the odds of it winning aren’t good.  Sorry lad.’

I felt down too.  I had wasted two precious shillings.  That was a lesson to myself.  Nevertheless, I had a horse to cheer on tomorrow.

The next day, I thought of little else.  The race was scheduled to be run twenty minutes before school finished.  The school had no radio so the students couldn’t listen to it.  The school teacher wouldn’t have allowed this anyway.  Alas, news of which horses had placed in the Cup travelled quickly.  As I walked my bicycle to the school’s front gate, I heard somebody yell that Straight Draw had won the Melbourne Cup.  Excitement bubbled up inside me.  I had never been so excited before.  I couldn’t believe my luck to score the winning ticket.

Dad walked with me to see his mate, the Station Master.  Even he was beaming!

Some loitering locals weren’t impressed however that I had won the sweep.  They suggested not so politely that my ticket should be disqualified because I was a minor and not legally entitled to bet.

The Station Master firmly replied, ‘The boy bought his ticket fair and square with money he earnt like everybody else.’  He then handed me a considerable amount of dosh with a broad smile.

I didn’t know it yet; but I’d need that money soon.  It would help change the direction of my future.  My win certainly was a miracle.

[testormblog]

Learning the Tools

Grade seven was a paradoxical year for me.  On Saturdays, I pretended to be quiet and pious in confirmation class aside from my furtive winks at the pretty girl.  Yet on Wednesdays, I was as noisy as I could be, banging the hell out of timber boards or tin sheets with a hammer and real religious fervour.

Pop was a tools man.  Given I had lurked in his shadow since I began to walk, I wanted to be one too.  My Uncle Alan, a bridge carpenter, was one but Dad wasn’t.  It befuddled me that my father couldn’t drive a nail or use a screw driver.  Maybe, Dad’s fingers lacked the dexterity required.  Perhaps, I inherited my dexterity from Mother.  She certainly had it to thread needles.  Consequently, my father owned very few tools.  Pop had probably given Dad the hammer and the hand saw hidden away in our shed although he came by when anything in our house needed repair.

I often ogled Pop’s tools.  Alan stored his tools at Pop’s place too.  I was careful not to let my light fingers anywhere near those.  I learnt that tools were to men what jewellery was to women only useful.  Whenever Pop worked with his tools, I watched intently.  As I grew, he taught me their uses and how to handle them safely then let me help him.  Sometimes, we worked together with the cross cut saw to fell trees.  Young though I was, the saw was safer and easier to use with one of us at each end.

In my final two years of primary school, the Education Department gave me the opportunity to attend rural school one day a week at a much larger district school.  This scheme strove to prepare boys, without academic prospects due to their circumstances, for a trade, and girls for home duties in readiness for marriage.  Despite the government department’s dictum, my school teacher strongly discouraged me and other students from participation.  Fortunately, the decision was ours and our parents to make.  Since the Railway would issue me a travel pass, my parents didn’t care what I chose to do.  So, of course, I was going!  I was born to be a tools man.  Ronnie was going too.  His father didn’t mix his words with the school teacher.  With the two class brains absent, the dunderheads remained and only wished to do diddy squat.  Our school teacher found the situation quite an inconvenience.  For the other four days a week, he attempted to mentally intimidate us whenever possible in front of our classmates.  We knew his game and acted, as best as we could, like saints.

So, Ronnie and I caught the train to Beenleigh and walked the kilometre to the school. We were now thirteen and quite familiar with catching trains.  Children from a few other country schools joined us.  Before long, on our train trips home, an orange peel fight would erupt amongst everybody.  Fortunately, we jumped off at the first stop and escaped these and the usual reprimand from the guard.

The first day was a big deal for us.  We met the twenty plus other boys in our class.  We felt a bit lost to start with amongst so many strangers.  We had to find our way around the school too.  This had lots of buildings, numerous teachers and hundreds of students compared with our one room one teacher school with forty children from the age of five to fourteen.  It was really three schools in one, a primary, a secondary and the rural school with its two big sheds.  When I saw inside these sheds, my eyes opened in wonderment.  I wanted to use every tool in them.  I eyed the electric powered tools enthusiastically.  Pop didn’t own any of these!  One shed was set up for woodwork and the other for tin smithing and technical drawing.

I thought our teacher was an odd man.  Ronnie conferred.  We found his mannerisms strange.  Today, a person would say he was effeminate.  Back then, we, country lads, were innocent of different sexual orientations.  Soon after, I’d unfortunately see him drunk outside of school hours.  Sadly, the harsh social judgement of the community cost him his job.  The man didn’t act inappropriately or unkindly towards us or any boys we knew.

When the new teacher walked in, every single boy’s mouth gaped open in utter silence.  A real hero stood before us!  A very masculine one!  This teacher was Wally Walmsley, an all round cricketer and the coach for the Queensland Cricket Team.  Back then, cricketers worked in day jobs too.  This hero was a batsman capable of batting in any position and was a master of the leg break and googly bowling techniques.  Nobody played up in class!  Of course, we boys played cricket with him at lunch breaks.

In woodwork, I learnt joinery, in particular how to dove tail two pieces of wood together with intersecting cut teeth.  If one wanted to become a furniture or cabinet maker, they needed this skill.  I was just happy I could now repair things that broke at home.  The best thing I made was a sewing box with drawers, which I graciously gave to Mother.  I really enjoyed working with wood and was quite skilled at it given Pop’s earlier teaching.  I found tin smithing more difficult however.  Cutting tin sheets into patterned pieces and hammering these into the required shapes to make cake tins and billy cans was easy enough.  Alas, I struggled to solder the joins between the pieces of tin neatly.  Whilst this worried me at the time, I needn’t have been concerned.  I wasn’t destined to be a plumber.  Besides, soldering would soon become an obsolete skill when the fabrication of metal tanks and the connection of metal pipework ceased.

Alas, the moment I picked up my pencil and slid my set square and T square around a large sheet of paper in my technical drawing class, my imagination came alive and my ability shone.  I was already good at drawing.  I realised a plan was just the specifications for a pattern to construct something.  I knew about patterns and measurements.  I had watched Mother draft and cut out hundreds of patterns for the dresses she sewed her clients.  I also had a natural eye for perspective and could draw it in my diagrams.  Perhaps, my roaming up and down dale over the countryside had developed my spatial awareness.  Then, with my aptitude for mathematics, everything in technical drawing made sense.

I no longer knocked pieces of wood together in a haphazard way to build something.  I calculated the size and measurements for my projects and drew scaled plans with different drawings for their various elevations and perspectives.  I cut the timber or tin according to these plans and the scales required and built my projects.  I used my brain to design and my hands to construct.

I grew from wanting to be a tools man, who followed instructions, to be a design man, who determined the instructions.  I’d subsequently learn that draftsmen were the best paid of the trades too.

I had discovered my gift; a gift that would open the door to my future!

[testormblog]

Which Religion to Follow?

My family abided by three religions though Mother followed none.  Perhaps, fashion was hers.  She frequently made pilgrimages to Brisbane’s upmarket department stores, boutiques and draperies to stay abreast of clothing styles and fabrics.  Dad devoted his spare waking moments to racehorses and cricket.  Every Saturday, he either listened to, on the radio, or attended the races.  On Sundays, he played cricket from eight in the morning to ten at night.  Both activities finished with the drinking of beer with mates.  When the cricket and the horseraces were broadcast simultaneously on different radio channels, he never knew which to listen to.  He needed to be well informed on both; these being his main topics of conversation with Pop and his mates.

I didn’t find racehorses interesting.  I was never going to ride one!  Occasionally, I rode a cart horse or a draught horse at a slow clip clop speed if somebody helped me on to its back.  Besides, I worked out early that Dad’s devotion was financially ill founded.  Cricket though became more than a religion to me; it was a second language.  As a baby, I had listened to the summer broadcasts in my crib and knew all the rules by the time I could speak.  When I began running around the backyard, Dad bought me a bat and ball and taught me to play.  I grew to be a fervent worshipper of the sport, practicing my batting and bowling techniques religiously.

Don Bradman and his team of ‘Invincibles’ had won every game on the 1948 English tour.  The following year, he had retired.  This legendary man had begun his quick, meteoric rise from humble beginnings in the bush.  This gave hope to every Australian boy.  Each dreamt of being his replacement.  Me included!  I played a fierce game with my mates in the schoolyard, and as a young man, played for a representative team in South West Queensland.  As this team’s opening bowler, I struck fear into many opposition batsmen.  Unfortunately, my future path wouldn’t align with my dream and cricket would be sacrificed.

My family paid lip service to our third religion, the faith of our forefathers.  Nearly all the families in the community faithfully attended church each Sunday.  My family didn’t!  Most people married within their faiths and adhered to their families’ ethnic roots.  This wasn’t so with my parents.  Dad was born a Lutheran of Germanic stock whilst Mother claimed to be a Methodist of mixed English, Scottish and Germanic lineage.  She only stepped inside churches to admire the bridal and bridesmaid gowns she had sewed.  We were outcasts!  At home, we avoided all substance of religion in our daily lives.  This made me a religiously bemused child.

It also made me a very bored child on Sundays; these being very quiet.  With Dad gone, Mother retreated to her sewing room.  Nobody else worked.  Nobody chopped wood, felled trees or banged a hammer.  Only a few trains ran.  Any noise could be heard for miles.  Thus, I couldn’t conduct any of my spurious activities in the bush.  Besides, both Reggie and Ronnie were from religious families.  In fact, ninety-five percent of the children at my school were Lutheran and most attended Sunday School in the old German school building, built in the late 1800’s.  My parents, in their hypocrisy, decided I should go too to learn the values I should have learnt at home.  Perhaps, Nana and Pop gently encouraged this decision.  So, I went.  I obediently listened to the Bible stories and coloured in the paper pictures provided, improving my dexterity with pencils.  Though, I did skip the church service in favour of a roast lunch at Pop’s and Nana’s house.

Strangely, Pastor Reuter’s wife was one of Mother’s few friends despite Mother’s well known nasty and unchristian tongue.  This lady visited our house regularly.  I liked her and the pastor very much and often dropped by them at the parsonage.  They saved me stamps from their mail for my stamp collection.  I particularly treasured the envelopes and stamps from Germany.

As a child, I didn’t understand the pastor however.  He delivered fire and brimstone sermons with these focused on sin and repentance.  Those I heard frightened the gee willikers out of me.  He maintained the dour persona of an older man and always dressed in his black clerical attire.  He held himself aloof and detached from his parishioners and shunned most of the community’s social activities.  He never greeted or farewelled the congregation at church services.  He spoke to nobody before these either and departed during the last hymn.  Each week day, he promptly returned to his home office after his 8.15am drive to the train station for his mail.  Yet, he was responsible for dispensing spiritual guidance and compassion to those in need.  Perhaps, he was busy with three parishes to care for.

When I was twelve years old, the church’s Youth Society seemed to be a ‘happening’ group.  Its teenage members regularly travelled away to conferences and festivals.  The Society also played sports competitions against other church groups and fielded a table tennis team.  Of course, I was a natural with a racket.  Afterall, it was just a round bat held in a different position.  Alas, I had a significant hurdle to jump to join!

The church required a young person to confirm their faith to join the Society.  To do this, one attended half day religious instruction classes every Saturday for a year then struggled through a verbal examination held in front of the congregation.  At the time, I had just begun grade six at school and was two years under the usual age of fourteen.  I had already decided to study for my scholarship exams the following year.  Back then, these were voluntary with the consequence that most local students finishing primary school avoided them.  My mate and academic competitor, Ronnie, as well as another lad were in the same predicament.  So, we plucked up courage to ask Pastor Reuter if we could begin confirmation classes early.  The intransigent Church Council debated our request for a few weeks.  Fortunately, Ronnie’s father served as one of its senior elders and swayed the argument in our favour.

Unfortunately for us, Pastor Reuter extended our tuition or indoctrination, as some said, to eighteen months due to our age.  However, I didn’t mind.  He also combined all the students from his parishes into one class.  Here, I met a pretty girl from Beenleigh.

Whilst I later gave away my cricket ball, I did learn at church that God would always provide what I’d need (but not necessarily what I’d want).  Indeed, he would!

[testormblog]

The Outback

I thought Dad’s annual family rail pass to be a tremendous privilege.  So did he.  If only, he and Mother would visit interesting places.  I no longer wished to wade in Southport’s still water to Mother’s allowed depth of twenty centimetres.  Regrettably, Dad didn’t like leaving the local area except to go to his beloved races or Southport.  Perhaps, he believed he needed government permission.  Mother though wished to see outside our small corner of Queensland.  She had visited relatives scattered further afield.

Once, Dad did relent to Mother’s wishes.  He agreed we could take the train from Brisbane to Dirranbandi, though without my five year old brother.  I found this funny named place on the map in my purloined Queensland Rail Country Timetable Book, my Railway Bible.  We were going to the Outback!

The two days, we’d be away, didn’t seem a long time.  How wrong I’d be!  I was excited to be travelling a great distance, further than Toowoomba to where Mother and I had previously travelled.  I didn’t worry about where I’d sleep.  Afterall, one didn’t sleep on an adventure.

At 6 am, we caught the first City train, took a tram across the bridge from South Brisbane to Roma Street and connected with the mixed goods and passenger train to Dirranbandi.  The long train had goods wagons and first and second class carriages.  The carriages were identical except first class cost more.  Posh people didn’t want to sit with the riff raff, which was nearly everybody.  Dad’s pass entitled us to first class tickets and a whole compartment to ourselves.

The train’s C-16 steam engine made good time until it reached the base of the Great Dividing Range.  I loved the train’s rhythmic motion, its constant chugging noise and the whistles its engine driver blew.  I didn’t mind the coal soot that was sucked into our carriage.  I glued myself to the window.  I didn’t want the train to reach our destination.  That meant the wonderful sights flying past my window would end.

The Lockyer Valley’s market garden farms passed by.  Draught horses with ploughs toiled in paddocks.  Potatoes, cabbages and cauliflowers grew in orderly rows.  The pumpkin vines were disorderly, occupying whole paddocks.  The train crossed flowing creeks.  Everywhere was picturesque and green.  At Helidon, men coupled a second steam engine behind the guard’s van.  The front engine pulled and the rear engine pushed the train slowly around the mountain range’s bends.  I saw rainforest and waterfalls.  At Spring Bluff Train Station, close to the range’s top, I had a vast view of the valley below.

Then the train picked up speed until it arrived in Toowoomba.  At the city’s station, the second engine and some carriages were uncoupled.  Goods wagons were exchanged too.  A new crew started.  My family sat on a bench eating our packed lunch for the couple hours.

The train pulled out at dusk.  Darkness surrounded it; yet inside, it was dimly lit.  It crossed the Darling Downs wheatlands.  I had the strange sensation of moving through the blackness without having any sense of direction as to where I was going.  The train’s motion rocked me into a fitful sleep.  Each time it stopped at a station or a siding, I awoke with a start.  I peered through the window at wooden place name signs.  By the middle of the night, it chugged into the city of Warwick where more wagons were exchanged.

On and on the train travelled further west.  Just when I thought the night would never end, the sun peeped on the horizon at Inglewood.  I watched its fiery ball rise to heaven and paint the sky in brilliant orange.  The sky seemed wider here than at home and the sunrise more magnificent.

I was in the Outback!  The countryside was foreign to me.  Parched yellow grass and spangly grey bushes of lignum dotted the flat plains of black soil.  These stretched far and wide.  The creeks were dry beds of sand and the rivers mere streams.  The rivers’ names, the Macintyre, the Weir, the Moonie and the Balonne, meant nothing to me but later in life they’d indelibly inscribe themselves in my memory.

I thought the environment was inhospitable.  Yet, it was crowded with animals.  The land appeared to be rolling with mobs of hundreds of kangaroos hopping across it.  Before, I had only seen a kangaroo on the Australian penny.  Crows picked at the unlucky dead ones that had been caught in the railway fences.  Thousands of sheep grazed on the plains too, right up to the tracks.  Flocks of birds flew overhead.  To my delight, I saw a whole flock take off from the ground at once.  I identified galahs, budgerigars, cockatoos and quarrians.  If only I could trap some of these birds to take home.  So much money flew above me!

The train took on water and exchanged mail bags with stockmen on horseback at sidings and tinpot stations.  At Noondoo, it pulled up beside a huge homestead to offload supplies.  Amidst nowhere, a stockman waved the train down and boarded it carrying a saddle over his shoulder and meagre belongings in his hands.  His craggy face resembled the cracked earth of the plains.

The new day brought heat I hadn’t experienced before, and by midmorning, was burning hot.  When I jumped from the train in Dirranbandi at eleven o’clock, my eyeballs fried from the heat and glare.  On the platform, wool bales were stacked ready for loading.  The large station was a major hub in Australia’s wool empire during the 1950’s wool boom.  We were at the end of the line.  Dad felt homesick.  He had been away from home just over a day.  Fortunately for him, the train would depart for Brisbane in three hours’ time.

The town, if it could be called that, had two pubs, a few essential type businesses but nothing for us to see.  Dad went to Mc Gregor’s Hotel to quench his thirst and ease his homesickness whilst Mother and I found a cafe.  Good fortune shone on Dad there.  He stumbled upon the local police sergeant, whom he had gone to school with.

We departed on time at two.  Sunset happened at the same spot as sunrise.  Thus, I didn’t see the wheatfields on my return either.  After sixty hours travel, we arrived home in the clothes we started in.  Mother was keen to tell her clients she had travelled to places they hadn’t.  Dad swore he’d not leave home again.  I thought I’d never be lucky enough to go back.

Alas, those black soil plains wove a spell on me.  The saying, ‘Go west young man.’, wedged itself in the back of my mind.  When the chance to return came, I did.  Next time, I’d drive and would travel the route many times.  Thankfully, the round trip by road would be a shorter fourteen hours.

The Outback was a hot blooded temptress with a coin.  One side was marked fortune and the other, hardship.  I didn’t fear it.  The four years, I’d later spend in it, would determine how lucky I’d be in life.

[testormblog]

Money with Wings

One day, I found a live baby parrot on the ground, fallen from its nest.  I thought it could be my pet so carefully carried it home and showed it to my father.  Dad smiled sadly at me.  He liked the little bird too.  He said, ‘Jakob, put it in an old cage in the shed.  However, it probably won’t survive.’  He was right.  I brought a few more young parrots home.  We fed them bread and honey.  Unfortunately, they didn’t survive either.  The next one, I fed grain.  It lived and thrived.

I decided to catch more birds.  What a challenge!  They were smart and escaped me quickly.  I talked to Pop about this and he built me a single door treadle trap.  Inside it, I placed a tub of grain to attract my quarry.  Once the bird was inside, its weight closed the door.  The trap worked well and I caught some birds.  Dad then suggested we construct an aviary.

At that year’s Beenleigh Show, I loitered around the bird exhibits and discovered that people bought birds.  I had a keen eye for money making ventures.  Some rare birds were selling for ten shillings each.  I knew where these nested in the bush and could catch three or four of them a day.  Forty shillings beat the miserly two shillings an hour Mattie Jones paid me.

I expanded the aviary then built another and constructed more traps.  My hobby became a small business.  I held up to one hundred birds in stock.  I began to breed, both from birds I caught and purchased.  I bought a state show champion and bred beautiful opaline budgerigars.  My aviaries housed budgerigars of every colour, a variety of parrots, including some pretty peach face lovebirds, and java finches.  My birds won show prizes every year.  This gained me free advertising and clients.  Everybody wanted a pet bird yet suppliers were few.

Still, my enterprise wasn’t an easy lark.  My aviaries had to be registered with a government department.  I had regulations to learn.  These included which species I could legally trap and breed.  An inspector could arrive anytime unannounced.  Sometimes, a pretty bird flew my way and I had no idea whether I should make it mine.  Nevertheless, my pet shop clients never asked if the birds were trapped or bred.  I looked after my birds well and only kept the healthy ones.  I helped the local farmers in return for bird feed, otherwise difficult and expensive to obtain.  They let me harvest cobs of corn as well as stalks of milo to thrash for seed.  I nicked off from school at lunch to check my traps and transfer any quarry in with my call birds.  With Reggie, I delivered orders as far as Brisbane.  Reggie really liked driving his car if I covered his fuel.  The pet shops always accepted whatever I offered.  After expenses, each delivery earnt me a hundred shillings plus, over five pounds.  Good pocket money!

I quickly learnt which birds attracted what prices.  Generally, their prices reflected their availability for sale, their physical appearance and condition as well as their dietary requirements.  Scaly green parrots were plentiful and difficult to feed.  They fetched a shilling each.  Rainbow lorikeets were rare at that time as well as beautifully coloured.  They were worth twenty scaly greens.  A pair of pale headed rosellas brought four shillings.  Most finches sold at ten shillings per dozen except for a single gouldian.  This small purple and gold breasted, green winged, red faced bird netted twenty shillings.  Nobody wanted pigeons, miners or magpies however.  If a cockatiel flew my way, that was a lucky day.  The same applied to a galah.  Back then, the galahs lived out west and strays were difficult to trap.  Both these species were talking birds.  This made my price negotiable.

The biggest threat to my business were Mother’s two cats, Peter and Jimmy.  She loved them and they her but nobody else.  Dad and I avoided them.  They sank their claws into anything living and efficiently killed whatever wasn’t human, including native fauna.  Mother claimed they were good ratters.  Well, these cats bore a grudge towards me.  When I was little and they much smaller, I decided Peter’s bluey grey colour should be green thus painted him so with housepaint.  These murderers longed to avenge my misdeed and sought to slaughter my beloved birds.  They often prowled around my aviaries hoping for an open door before they buggered off to the chook house.  One day, they took their frustration out on a poor hen.  Dad then exacted his on them!

The illegal export game was a risk too.  I unwittingly became caught in it.  A Mr Bright enquired about birds for sale.  He had seen my aviaries whilst driving by.  I was suspicious of him.  He admired my best birds kept in the large open aviary.  Many of these were my call birds and weren’t for sale.  They called their wild cousins into traps for me.  He offered me prices I couldn’t refuse.  Thus, I sold some.  He ordered others and returned for them.

Mr Bright asked about a specific bird not available in the pet shops.  I knew this bird lived near the creek.  He offered me twenty shillings each, a pound, and placed a £25 order.  Big money!  I found a couple nests then watched the chicks hatch and grow.  I stole them when they had their feathers and were ready to fly.  I caught fish daily to feed them and waited for Mr Bright to return.  He didn’t!  I pondered what to do with these birds; release them or sell them to another client.  I figured they were valuable given Bright’s offer of a man’s weekly wage.

Late on a Saturday afternoon, Reggie drove me to a client’s house.  I regularly delivered birds there, showing up without prior notice, as was the case this time.  Dad came too.  He suspected something wasn’t right.  This client, nicknamed Happy Dog, sold top notch birds at his pet shop in the City.  Dad and I knocked on his front door for some minutes.  We heard grunting noises from inside.  An unhappy Happy appeared in his boxers.  He saw the cage of birds and beckoned us into the light of the enclosed veranda.  On this veranda was a bed on which sat a different type of bird wrapped in a sheet, likely the sort who did tricks.  She was displeased that her transaction was interrupted.  I was naïve to her kind of business and only hoped to offload the birds for my small fortune.

My hope evaporated.  Happy said these birds were illegal to keep.  The woman yelled at both him and I in coarse language.  She demanded I leave with the birds and he come back to bed.  He moved me away from her earshot and asked me the price.  I told him Bright’s offer.  The enormous amount seemed a joke.  He laughed, then replied he’d pay twenty-five shillings tops, a tenth of the price.  I reluctantly handed over the birds and resolved to stick to my usual species.  I continued to supply Happy.  He was a major client.

I saved my profits. My birds laid me quite a nest egg to feather my future.  When my adult life began, my business flew the coup.

[testormblog]

My First Boss

If anybody struggled more than my family, it was Mattie Jones.  Mattie was a small woman, plain in looks and past her marrying years.  She must have been at least sixty.  Non rimmed spectacles sat on the bridge of her nose.  Her mouth held a frequent cigarette.  When Mattie spoke, she was honest and direct.  She never smiled.  I didn’t think Mattie knew how to.

She had just her brother, Tom, for company.  He lived with her in the Railway house that once housed the refreshment rooms’ waitresses.  He survived on a meagre government pension until cancer of the sinus would steal him from her.  Mattie relied heavily on her Catholic faith for solace.  Tom however wouldn’t enter any church.  Such behaviour wasn’t unusual after the war.  Mattie suffered the guilt of his supposed sin.  She paid indulgences to ensure Tom’s soul passed from purgatory to heaven on his subsequent demise.

The first time, I saw Mattie, was when I learnt the ice cream shop had closed at Bethania Train Station and the pretty, young waitresses working in the refreshment rooms were gone.  Mattie took their place.  She leased the refreshment rooms and took over the liquor licence from the Railway.  Those days, the Railway favoured its own.  When it closed the refreshment rooms at country train stations, it offered leases and the liquor licences to their previous manageresses.  Mattie had managed refreshment rooms elsewhere and knew no other job.

She took over the bar and hired a local woman to serve in the tea room.  At Bethania, the Brisbane train connected with the Southport train with six to ten minutes to spare.  In this time, Mattie sold liquor as well as tea, coffee, sandwiches and cake to passengers.  On the weekends, she served two trains on Saturday and another two on Sunday night.  Each connection meant fifty to one hundred hungry and thirsty people because eating and drinking were prohibited on these trains.  Sunday evening was the busiest with people returning from Southport.  Often, the trains ran late.  Then, the Station Master was sorely tempted to fudge the connection time so certain train drivers wouldn’t be reprimanded.  This reduced the minutes Mattie had to serve passengers and thus her income.  Alas, she knew the Railway Commissioner personally.

If the Railway couldn’t turn a profit from the refreshment rooms after the war trade departed, it was difficult for Mattie to do so.  She cut whatever corners wherever she could to earn her pennies.  Though, she always kept her ham bones aside to make soup for those locals struggling with sickness or destitution.  The local Railway employees supported her as much as they could afford to.  She was of Railway blood like them.  Legally, Mattie could only serve alcohol to connecting passengers.  Illegally, she served the locals too.  The locals merely vacated the bar whilst she served passengers.  With no pub nearby, the men drank in her bar every Saturday night.  The Germanic community considered beer to be its menfolk’s lifeblood.  Besides, Bethania was a backdrop too far from the City to attract the liquor inspectors’ attention.

Dad, a Saturday night regular, knew Mattie quite well.  So, she was a natural target for me to ask for a job.  By this time, I was twelve and needed more dosh than I could make from collecting bottles.  Sometimes, I was given a small tip when I delivered one of Mother’s dresses and received the payment.  My parents couldn’t spare any pence for me though.  They couldn’t spare a bread crust for a mouse either.

Mattie said I could help serve the weekend trains.  For these four and a half hours a week, she paid me a mere nine shillings or in today’s terms ninety cents.  Whilst the amount was measly, I had no other regular options.  The job was also considerably easier than the irregular day labour I sometimes did on farms.  Mattie was kind to me too.  So, I happily worked for her until I needed an adult job.

Mattie taught me how to shave ham and tomatoes paper thin and to heat the butter to oil to spread it further on slices of bread.  I learnt to keep a poker face when selling sandwiches.  Sometimes, they weren’t fresh and I had chased the mice away from them.  If a local asked for a sandwich, I subtly nodded or shook my head, hoping Mattie didn’t see.  If that wasn’t bad enough, I collected the dregs of undrunk beer in the bar.  She poured it back into a jug for redistribution before the next train arrived.  To speed up bar sales, she pre poured pots of beer, topping them off with fresh beer to add a touch of fizz and a head.  She poured legal sized nips of rum too.  The rum was laced with water.  The punters chugged their drinks so quickly they didn’t notice and didn’t have time to argue.  Neither did they have time to notice whether the refreshment rooms were clean.  Mattie’s hygiene practices were cursory.  I disliked touching the large greasy dishcloth she used to wipe down surfaces.  She only washed it when she remembered.

The mice’s cousins, the rats, lived at the train station too.  Before the trains arrived, I patrolled the refreshment rooms for these residents.  They scurried down the holes in the old wooden floor.  My least favourite task was emptying the large rat trap sitting outside the tea room’s kitchen door.  This ingenious contraption comprised of a four gallon, cylindrical, metal drum with one end removed.  It sat vertically and was filled with water.  A wire was strung across its upward open end.  Midway along this wire, a jam tin was threaded on its side.  When any weight was applied to this tin, it spun.  A semicircular wire handle was attached to the drum’s sides.  Mattie hung a piece of stale cheese on a string from the handle.  A rat would climb up the drum then jump across the water on to the jam tin hoping to grab the cheese.  The tin then spun the rat into the water where it drowned.  I didn’t know if Mattie emptied the drum through the week but I did every weekend.

Of course, I didn’t mind burning the rubbish in the Railway house’s yard.  Any opportunity to watch a few flames dance was always a bonus.  Though, I really enjoyed counting the till and calculating the day’s takings and its profit.  Mattie knew all her costs.

Whilst Mattie paid me little, she compensated with the life skills she gave me.  I learnt the basics of business and the politeness required to deal with drunks and toffs alike.  I eavesdropped on bar conversations but never repeated the details.  Most of all, I perfected my poker face.  I didn’t realise how important this last skill would be.

[testormblog]

Bullets and Explosives

I loved denotating explosions: their clouds of dirt, their noise and obliterating an earthen mound I had constructed.  Each one had to be bigger than my last.

With the war not long finished, warfare to capture young boys’ imaginations, mine included.  I learnt about the major battles at school.  Hollywood portrayed Ally service men as heroes.  The Cold War split the world into east and west.  The Korean War was happening.  Nobody knew if another global conflict would erupt.  Hence, I like most boys of my generation believed we should be combat ready and engaged in play activities to be so.

The bush provided perfect cover for my mock battles.  I dug trenches and fortified them with pretend guns.  Dad didn’t own a gun.  Sometimes, we borrowed his brother’s ex Army 303 rifle to go fishing in the river at low tide when the mullet were visible amongst the reeds.  He’d fire the 303 into the water to stun the fish.  Then we’d grab them as they floated to the surface.  Dad wouldn’t let me shoot however.  Still, he didn’t mind me collecting his spent shell cases for my pretend armoury.  Neither did he care when the live bullets in his shed disappeared.  Pop always had plenty more to share.  Perhaps, Pop acquired these during his days working near the US Army Base at Camp Cable.

I itched to use that ammunition.  I just needed an opportunity and a willing participant.  I reasoned an explosion in an open paddock would be safer than in the scrub.  My school mate, Ron, was enthusiastic.  He exclaimed, ‘Brilliant!  I know where and nobody will see what we’re up to.’

So, Ron invited me for an ‘innocent’ play date.  After morning tea, he announced he’d show me around his family’s farm.  We grabbed a shovel from the shed supposedly to wield against snakes.  We snuck off to a small ravine at the back of the farm.  It was the perfect spot to build our mock military installation for subsequent destruction.  We ensured no cattle were grazing nearby and dug a safety trench away from the denotation site.  We loosely packed a pile of bullets in the ravine’s bank.  I lit a fire under them.  We then ran to our trench for cover and waited for the fire’s flames to reach them.

‘Pop and whiz!’  Those bullets exploded loudly in every direction.  Very scary!  Disappointingly, the bank didn’t blow up.  After a discussion, we decided not to repeat this exploit.

t t t

The highlight of my year was Guy Fawkes Night on 5th November.  At school, I was taught that Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators almost blew up the English Parliament in 1605.  The Parliament subsequently decreed English citizens should annually celebrate King James’ escape from assassination with a bonfire and burn a Guy Fawkes’ effigy placed at its apex.  Australians inherited this custom and my community wholeheartedly supported it.  I thought lighting a bonfire to celebrate an explosion that didn’t happen seemed absurd.

Nevertheless, Reggie and I agreed this opportunity was too good to ignore.  For each of the next few years, we spent the prior three months collecting fire fuel from the neighbouring farms.  I liked swinging an axe and a bush hook.  Whilst we never asked the farmers for permission, none gave us any grief.  We lugged the tinder to my parents’ property where we’d build the bonfire.  We made a Guy Fawkes effigy from a hessian bag stuffed with chaff and dressed it in old clothes.  Being the smaller of us, I climbed a ladder to place it at the top of our eight metre high precarious stack of firewood.  On the night, everybody around joined our families to enjoy the spectacle.

Each year, we planned a more spectacular bonfire than the previous.  Thus, we needed to pillage firewood from further afield although we didn’t like lugging it far.  So, Reggie struck a covert deal with the Station Master.  We’d strip the Railway Reserve of timber and borrow Bethania Station’s flat top to transport this to the fire site beside the railway track.  We didn’t realise the Station Master had conned us.

Reggie and I added fireworks to our repertoire and scoured the countryside for bottles to fund these.  We bought every type of firework the local general store sold: Catherine whirly wheels, sparklers, roman candles, penny bungers and rockets.  We determined where to put them and the order we’d ignite them to achieve the most dramatic effect and noise.  We lit roman candles to shoot stars.  We hurdled penny bungers concealed in handfuls of mud at the ground to create noisy explosions.  We launched rockets from beer bottles set up on fence posts.  I liked the rockets the most; they exploded in the air.  In a time when people feared darkness, these mesmerising light displays conquered their fears and gave them a sense of wonderment.

I didn’t mind the bungers either.  They were good for pranks.  The smallest bunger, a Tom Thumb, was two and half centimetres in size.  Once, I lost a couple.  Odd for me because I closely guarded them.  Strangely, my toddler brother’s breathing deteriorated.  Eventually, Mother took him to the doctor.  I watched the doctor extract my red and green Tom Thumbs from his nostrils.  Like me, Gary had light fingers.

By thirteen, I wished to blow something big up.  After much debate with Reggie, I proposed we lay a line of denotators along the railway track about thirty metres away from the year’s planned fire.  We knew denotators were easy to pilfer.  My dad, a fettler, kept a supply on his railway trike.  The Station Master also had a supply.  Track gangs laid three denotators at intervals along railway tracks to warn engine drivers of track closures for work or obstacles like fallen trees and wash outs.  Trains were to stop before they reached the third denotator.

We planned for the huge PB15 steam engine, which hauled the daily goods train, to ignite the denotators.  This would set off a sequence of miniature explosions.  Yes, our plan was highly illegal!  However, Reggie squared it with the train’s regular engine driver.  The driver was very willing to participate.  In fact, most of the community knew the plan.  That year’s Guy Fawkes Night, everybody, living in Station Street, gathered outside to watch the steam engine ‘explode’ before their eyes.  Of course, it didn’t.  The detonator explosions were too small to cause any damage just hellish noise.  Against the night’s darkness, they framed the giant black engine in incandescent white light.  The community loved the spectacle as well as Reggie and I.  In a roguish way, it saw us as heroes and we escaped reprimand.  That was our best Guy Fawkes celebration ever.  The next year, Reggie started work with the Railway and I replaced explosives with cricket balls.

Sadly but wisely, Guy Fawkes Night is a tradition now lost to young boys.

[testormblog]

Temperature and Temptation

With summer, the school holidays arrived.  To me, that meant idle time and temptation, in other words freedom.  I particularly liked skulking along the Logan River’s banks checking the wild mango trees for fruit.  I loved mangoes!  Their sticky juice permanently stained my chin for the season.  Whilst I adhered to Mother’s warnings about snakes, I didn’t abide by hers to stay away from all watercourses.  Those mangoes were way too big a temptation.  Mother feared I’d drown in any pool of water larger than a puddle. I thought she worried needlessly; though, her fear was reasonable in hindsight.  Back then, most people couldn’t swim and nearly nobody could breathe under water.  As there wasn’t any community swimming bath built in the area; I and the other local children had no opportunity to learn.  Consequently, people drowned.

Alas, Mother’s threat, that she’d kill me instantly if she caught me near water, didn’t deter me.  I wasn’t sure which death would be quicker, easier or the least painful; drowning or the punishment I’d receive for sticking my toe in water.  Despite shying away from bath water, I stuck my feet in every pool of water I saw; unless it smelt of course.  I waded in a nearby creek’s shallows on a hot day and through flash flood water to go wherever I needed.  Mother never checked if my feet were dirty or clean from a dip in a puddle on the way home.

In distance terms, the Bethania Waterford area wasn’t far from the coast.  Thus, summer was hot and humid.  The surrounding thickets of bush trapped this heat and humidity.  Fortunately, I knew where this creek was hidden amongst the dense scrub.  It was located conveniently close to Pop’s and Nana’s house and just over one and a half kilometres from my home.  It flowed through a string of waterholes.  Some of these were large pools and others long, narrow channels.  With no roads nor railway houses in the vicinity, the creek became a frequent and secret haunt of mine.  I knew Mother would never find me here.  Being sweaty with the heat, I often felt tempted to immerse myself in the creek’s cool waters.  However, it looked deep and appeared to flow quite fast.  I was alone too.  My previous injury with the tomahawk near this creek had taught me not to engage in dangerous pursuits by myself.

Soon after this injury, I began hanging around regularly with Reggie.  As neither of us were farmers’ children, we had time to goof about.  I learned that mischief was far more enjoyable when it was shared.  Which of us was the worse influence on the other was uncertain.  Reggie was a neighbour’s son and was about six years older than me.  As a young boy, I treated him like an older cousin.  Sometimes, he doubled me on the handle bar of his bicycle to and from school.  By the time I was nine, I had adopted him as my big brother.  He didn’t mind.  There were no other lads in the surrounding area for him to hang with either.  Besides, he loved my bit of hero worship.

His father and uncle were mates with my dad.  The three men were an incongruous trio just as Reggie and I were an unlikely pair.  Reggie’s dad held an important job high up in the Railway; mine didn’t.  Still, their Railway blood was thick.  His uncle meanwhile involved himself with illicit pursuits and paid the price accordingly.  Due to Dad’s friendship, Mother couldn’t disapprove of my budding bromance with Reggie.

Reggie was good to me.  He taught me to be entrepreneurial.  Together, we collected soft drink bottles along the railway tracks for their deposit money and halved the rewards.  When his father bought him a new bicycle to accommodate his lengthening legs, he sold me his older, smaller one for the money I earnt from the bottles.

He had a talent for making fun too.  One day whilst riding along a bush track, we stopped at the creek.  We rode down the creek’s bank into the water as deep as we dared to go.  Reggie couldn’t swim either.  Nevertheless, being the taller of us, he checked the creek’s depth and thought it safe enough for us.  We stripped off.  Reggie was as wily as I.  We didn’t need our mothers to see wet clothing.  We launched our bikes off the creek bank and crashed into the water, splashing each other.  We laughed loudly.  I hadn’t laughed like this before.  The spot became one of our favourite summer hangouts.

We became more adventurous and surveyed the creek’s length and its depths.  Its central channel looked deeper than Reggie’s standing height but its width wasn’t wide.  We had previously spied people swimming in it.  So, we thought we’d take a dip too.  Being country lads, we had our trusty rope with us.  Boys always carried a rope.  It could be used to drag wood home or to help climb a tree.  We tied the rope to a strong looking gum.  This was our lifeline to hold on to while swimming in the creek.  Soon, we let it go and discovered how to dog paddle from one side of the creek to the other.  We swam there often.  I even hid a pair of khaki green shorts permanently in a tree to have a dip on route to Pop’s house.  I no longer looked a dirty urchin.  Luckily, nobody noticed!

Temptation and its friend, stupidity, beckoned Reggie and me to a larger, deeper waterhole further along the creek.  On one sweltering day, this crystal clear pool of water was very enticing.  I jumped into it first without a thought about the creek’s fast flowing current.  This current caught me in its grasp.  I valiantly tried to swim against it but it determinedly dragged me downstream.  I flailed frantically, trying to swim to the creek’s bank.  Reggie dived into those perilous waters, and being much stronger, pulled me to safety.  If I hadn’t panicked, I probably would have floated to the bank where the creek narrowed.  I answered my question about death.  Drowning would be quicker, easier and less painful than Mother’s punishment.

From that day, Reggie and I respected water and its dangers.  In time, we became better swimmers though not fishes like my future children would be.  Neither of us would ever muster the courage to swim underwater either.  At least, we didn’t fear water like our parents did even if we wouldn’t wet our toes in the Logan River.  By the way, they never caught us swimming.

Sometimes, temptation is the best teacher if one survives its lessons and their consequences.  Its lessons aren’t easily forgotten.  The dangers aside, Reggie brought fun into my life and had my back.

[testormblog]

Snakes, Agents of the Devil

From the moment I walked, Mother constantly warned me to watch out for snakes.  Every time I stepped outside, I scanned the ground for the slithery blighters.  Bing, my dog, was always hyper alert too.  He, a Fox Terrier, was a brilliant snake dog.  During our wanderings in the bush, he and I often saw the treacherous creatures.  When one slithered our way, he’d skirt around it then fearlessly attack it side on.  He’d bite its body and shake it violently until it died.

Snakes were a daily threat to everybody’s existence.  Even so, I only remember dogs and cats dying from snake bites, not any people.  To be honest, humans created the problem.  Our habitation of the area had brought farms, chook houses and rainwater tanks.  Mice and rats thrived on the grain stored to feed livestock and chickens.  The frogs happily spawned in the poorly maintained rainwater tanks.  Thus, with mice, rats, eggs, chicks and frogs on the menu, the snakes fed well and bred accordingly.  We also built them warm places to hide and hibernate for the winters.  Our wooden barns and houses weren’t snake proof.  The snakes found gaps between the boards to squeeze through.  They liked to curl up in linen cupboards or find somewhere warm in the kitchen when the annual chill came.  They easily moved about, camouflaged by the long grass everywhere.  Lawnmowers and slashers weren’t invented yet.  Mother kept two pet cats, monstrous killers, to despatch snakes and vermin seeking to live at our home. 

Thus, everybody feared snakes.  Furthermore, given the biblical references to serpents, these creatures exuded an evil mystic.  The superstitious and generally religious community thought them to be the Devil’s agents.  Such was its paranoia that people believed the surrounding area to be infested with a plague of them and every single one needed to be exterminated, irrespective of its poisonous status.  Whilst the browns and red belly blacks were lethal and whip snakes poisonous, the humble green tree snakes were neither.  If confronted, they slithered away or emitted a horrid stink.  There weren’t many carpet pythons around though.  Despite these pythons being over two metres in length, they were non venomous and wary of humans. 

Nevertheless, people killed every slithering creature they saw with whatever weapon they could grab, generally a shovel or a hoe but not an axe.  A person had to stay clear of a snake’s strike range.  Whilst a gun was the best option, not everybody had one sitting nearby when required.  Afterwards, they hung the snake’s carcass on their house fence, until it decayed, to proclaim their macabre victory and to act as a warning to others.  Some men boasted they could grab a snake by its tail, crack the devil like a whip and send its head flying off.  They probably drank a decent nip of rum first.  Many told tales of snakes.  These competed with the biggest fish stories fishermen recounted with the snakes increasing in size, length and ferocity over time.

My family had its own tales of altercation with snakes.  One day, Pop and I narrowly missed a tussle with a big blighter.  Pop was taking me home on the sulky with Bess, travelling along a disused track through some scrub.  We heard a loud rustle in a tree we were riding past.  Suddenly, a large black snake projected itself from the tree to another on the other side of the track.  It narrowly missed our heads.  Pop said some German profanities and stared at me in horrified incredulity.  I suppose his profanities were forgivable since they related to an ungodly creature.  A bird squawked.  We looked around to see the snake’s body hanging from a nest as it devoured the eggs inside.  If this snake had landed on Bess or us that would have been a right melee and a frightening one as we were defenceless.

Though, the snake, who found a warm home in our family’s thunderbox, created the most uproar, both in alarm and noise.  Mother disturbed a lethal red belly black from its hiding spot in the corner of the wooden closet.  This two metre long snake slithered through one of the vent holes in the closet and along the floor.  The gauze over these holes had rusted away.  Mother shrieked loudly enough for everybody nearby to hear and ran outside.  Me being a young boy at the time, I wasn’t far from her and was playing in the yard.  She yelled at me to watch the dunny from the outside to see where the snake would go.  I saw it silently skulk up the wall and out the gap where the wall met the roof.  It slithered upwards as far as it could then squeezed under the roof’s ridge cap, the tin piece that covered the join between the iron sheets.  I could still see its tail.

As Dad was away working, Mother rallied help from the neighbours.  In fact, the immediate community arrived, eager to participate in the snake hunt, with each person holding their chosen weapon.  Everybody had an idea how to coax the devil from its relative safety.  Somebody suggested throwing a bucket of boiling water at it.  Firing a gun at it was ruled out as the shot would have put a hole in the roof.  Men banged sticks on the dunny roof’s iron sheets.  Still, the snake didn’t move.  Eventually, the local sawmiller produced a hoe with a long wire wrapped around its end.  He poked the snake to tease it from the spot.  Another man was ready with a shovel.  When the snake slithered to the ground, he hit it quickly and hard to break its back.

If Mother had been bitten by the red belly black, she’d have run to the kitchen for the bottle of antivenene, everybody kept, and prayed hard that the potion worked.  Then she’d have had to act kindlier towards her uncle by marriage, Andy Stapleton, who concocted it.  Her family were jealous of his supposed wealth, earnt from his potion.  Apparently, he had watched a black snake bite a goanna.  Afterwards, the lizard searched for then consumed a certain weed.  It survived.  Andy distilled a potion from this weed and promoted it as successfully tested by himself though it wasn’t scientifically.  Nobody really knew if this ‘snake oil’ of his worked, and as its recipe died with Andy, nobody ever will.

Snakes, the Devil’s agents they are not.  They’re just predators in nature’s ecosystem, which we disturbed.  Nevertheless, I feared them as mortal enemies and some I still do.

[testormblog]

The Wanderer

Each route I walked to school was a game of jeopardy.  The gravel road was the longer and the least preferred by my bare feet.  The route across the patchwork of paddocks and the creek was shorter.  One was covered with scrub and one with burs.  Another was home to a big, dangerous, red bull.  His farmer had wired a piece of tin to his horns to cover his face and to block his vision.  Thus, where he stood in the paddock each day determined my decision.  Believing myself smart and fleetfooted; I usually chose this route and avoided him and his peripheral sight.  Nevertheless, he chased me some times and made me scurry over the paddock’s fence and cop splinters in my hands.  Crossing the makeshift footbridge over the creek was a challenge too.  It had no handrails.  It was slippery when wet and dangerous when the creek flooded.  Sometimes, another lad would lurk nearby ready to push whoever came along into the water.

When I was about eleven, I learnt that a few boys hiked a ride on the back of the milk truck from the train station to school.  I rode with them a few times but quickly realised the ride wasn’t free and meant leaving home earlier.  On our way to school, we boys had to load and stack the galvanised steel milk cans the carrier collected from the farms on route.  Each contained ten gallons of milk.  This job was heavy and dangerous for us, boys, and more so for those of us barefooted.  At least, my feet remained somewhat intact, except for bloody grazes and prickles, if I walked.  Eventually, I scrounged enough pennies, hard earnt from collecting bottles from the railway tracks, to buy a second hand bicycle from a neighbour.

With Mother preoccupied with my baby brother and her sewing business, I was free to wander further afield.  I just needed to do my chores, appear for dinner and tell Mother where I was going.  I soon realised she took little notice of wherever I said and rarely spoke to anybody related to Dad, who may have seen me in strange places.  These facts gave me and my dog, Bing, a wide area of places to venture to.  Bing, a Fox Terrier, had arrived in my life when I was about six.  Initially, we roamed between Pop’s and Nana’s place and my great uncle’s dairy farm.  My great uncle was always pleased to see another pair of hands arrive.  Then, I decided there were so many other places I should explore.

I mainly kept to my people’s territory.  The areas across the river remained foreign to me.  When I did venture across both bridges, I stuck to the train line or the roads to stay out of trouble.  Alas, in the territory familiar to me, I knew every tree, creek, dam, waterhole, farm gate, fruit tree, bush grave and other places of interest for miles.  Wherever I wandered and whatever mischief I enjoyed in the scrub, I told nobody and kept my bottom safe.  Whilst I was forbidden to go near watercourses, to climb farmers’ fruit trees to nick fruit or to explore the Parson’s Bush, I did.  The so named dense thicket belonged to the church and had never been cleared; a perfect place to hide in and to build mock forts to fight against imaginary Indians.

I avoided the market garden farms stretched along the Logan River’s flats and their farm houses built above its flood line.  Instead, I explored the abandoned farms now reclaimed by the bush.  When I was thirsty, I picked oranges or mandarins from the trees that still grew there.  I snacked on any wild guavas I found too.  I investigated anything else lying around these farms but wasn’t tempted to pilfer anything other than the fruit.  If I saw anybody nearby, I scampered away faster than a hare.

I climbed trees, crawled over fallen logs, shimmied under branches, and cut brush out of my way.  The country was hillocky and thickly covered with regrowth timber that had sprung from the devastation left by the loggers.  Vines, some poisonous, strangled these she oaks and eucalypti.  The ground was infested with lantana and cobblers’ pegs.  Rusty barbed wire fences divided the prickle country into large land parcels men had won in government ballots over the prior hundred years.  These stood as testament to what they had lost.  Occasionally, I saw dry cows and beef cattle grazing there but never milking cows.  There was scant grass to feed them.  So, there weren’t any warm squirts of milk for me on a chilly day.

The wildlife scarpered when it heard me noisily thrash my way through the thick scrub.  Ghosts of kangaroos watched me.  The long gone farmers had eradicated them because they competed with their livestock for food.  A few of the kangaroo’s smaller cousin, the wallaby, still survived.  I attempted to trap one but failed.  The hares hid in their logs until dusk, after I had gone.  Whilst I caught foxes loitering by the chicken coop, I didn’t see them in the bush.  When I skulked stealthily to waterholes, I spied goannas lazing on the banks.  These giant lizards, I left alone.  The birds caught my attention however, especially the colourful parrots.  Like young boys of the time, I owned a shanghai.  Lamentably, I targeted a few birds.  Fortunately, I missed all except one peewee.  Afterwards, I felt ashamed of myself.  It was small, harmless creature.  Not harmless though were the snakes.  They terrified me.

On my forays, I discovered a disused rifle range where trench warfare had been practiced during World War One.  I dug through the dirt mounds looking for shell cases, props for my forts.  I found rudimentary graves scattered through the bush, marked by broken fences and crosses.  I wondered about these forgotten people.  One day, I came across a sizeable dugout, cut into the top of a sharp knoll, overgrown with brush.  This was about one hundred by one hundred metres square and two and a half metres deep.  It had stone walls hewn by hand.  Despite my intense curiosity about its existence and purpose, I dared not ask any adults about it.

While I didn’t receive the affection and material benefits other children enjoyed; I had freedom and adventures they couldn’t have.  They worked on their family farms and weren’t allowed to roam about.  People kept to their known places.  I instead yearned to explore the unknown ones.  I learnt so much about the topography of the environment and how to survive its dangers.  My ubiquitous wandering fed my inquisitive mind more than any book would have. 

[testormblog]

The Show

The biggest event of the year was the Beenleigh Agricultural Show.  The community eagerly looked forward to it for months beforehand and talked about nothing else.  It happened each September after the westly winds blew winter’s frosts away.  The local farmers entered the show’s competitions with their animals and spring’s harvest.  They also keenly awaited the latest machinery for sale even if they weren’t buying.  The car dealerships promoted their newest cars they’d display at the show.  They rubbed their hands in anticipation of the vehicles they’d sell by peer group pressure.  Women baked for competitions to protect or to gain their reputations as the best bakers in the surrounds.  They also grew the brightest flowers for their floral arrangements.  The young women vied with each other to be crowned the Show Princess.

The show and its gala ball kept Mother busy for weeks ahead sewing ballgowns and day dresses for clients.  She laid yards of coloured fabric out on every spare surface at home.  Her wealthier ladies planned their outfits well in advance and insisted theirs surpass everybody else’s in style and discussion amongst the community.  When they came for their fittings, Mother carefully hid other works in progress.  As the women gushed over their beautiful dresses, she beamed with delight.

Sadly, she never saw the gowns, she sewed, worn to the ball.  Dad wouldn’t take her.  He insisted that dancing was against his religious conviction.  I thought what conviction given his acquaintanceship with lowlifes.  Besides, Mother wasn’t a Lutheran.  She could dance respectably too.

Going to the show was really about been seen there and seeing others.  Everybody who was anybody went.  The event added colour to people’s otherwise drab existence.  Women wore their best frocks and accessorised these with stylish shoes, handbags and hats.  Mother’s outfit was always resplendent.  The women walked around the Exhibition Hall appearing to be interested in the exhibits.  In reality, they were exhibiting their outfits; using each time they stopped to chat as an opportunity to do so.  Mother revelled in the envious glances hers gained.  Me, I preferred to watch the Grand Parade where the farmers showed their horses and cattle.  As a young boy, I imagined a bull escaping its handler and causing uproar amongst the audience.  This never happened.

The bright lights of sideshow alley always lit my eyes up.  Mother called the alley the money pit.  She said carnies fleeced showgoers.  She was right!  Every game was rigged.  I often watched the teenage lads try their luck at the duck target shooting.  They never won any substantial prizes.  Yet, I knew some were crack shots and could shoot a duck flying overhead.  When I was young, Mother allowed me one ride on the merry-go-round.  When I was older, I kept an eye on the ground for tickets dropped by the ticket collectors and squandered very little of my hard earnt pocket money on rides.

At lunch time, Mother and I met her sisters to share a picnic and to watch the woodchopping competition.  I think they liked to see the woodchoppers’ bare shoulders, rippling muscles and arms glistening with sweat.  Being of Scottish descent, they also liked to hear the Scottish pipe bands play.  I loved this especially.  I thought the bagpipes were such a weird looking contraption and was fascinated by their ability to produce noise.

Mother always left Dad at the front gate.  When she disappeared; he snuck off to the bar tent to join his disreputable mates.  Early in the afternoon, once the bar crowd had consumed sufficient liquid courage to be full of bravado, the fights promoter opened the boxing tent.  The men jostled, with their admission fees in their hands, to be at the front of the line, keen to stand ringside.  The spruiker stood in the ring, goading local hopefuls to fight the show’s boxers for a few pounds prize money.  The audience made bets amongst itself as the fights promoter didn’t run a legal tab.  The competition was set up to entertain the crowd rather than be a fair game.  Most of the hopefuls were hopeless and fell to the mat quickly.  They didn’t have a soft landing either.  The mat was merely a tarp covering hard ground.  My father fantasised about boxing in the ring though he was now too old and sensible to be so stupid.  In his younger days, he saw success in the boxing ring as a ticket out of poverty.  He had trained ready for his turn on the mat but saved his face by misfortune.  He fell off a bicycle and broke his arm beforehand.  By the time, I was old enough to enter the boxing tent, I valued my brain and my body too much to fight.

When I was nine, the show opened another door for me.  The Show Society ran drawing competitions in concert with the local schools and gave free entry passes to exhibitors.  I drew a rural scene of a barn with pastels.  A cow stood in its yard behind a slip rail fence, and in the background, was a haystack.  At that time, haystacks dotted farms everywhere.  I was excited to receive my free entry ticket.  I had never received anything for free before.  Mother and I checked out the exhibits in the pavilion.  I wanted to see my drawing on display.  I had made a decent effort with it.  We couldn’t find it anywhere amongst the pictures of cats, dogs and flowers.  I felt despondent.  Mother turned toward a huge wall.  Displayed prominently on it was my drawing!  She exclaimed in surprise.  Next to it, a blue ticket was pinned.  It had won first prize!  I was surprised too and chuffed with myself.  We looked around to see if other Waterford students had won prizes.  Zilch!  Only me!  My teacher even walked up to us to congratulate me.

Apparently, I had a natural eye for spatial dimensions and perspective and could replicate these on paper.  My talents were beginning to reveal themselves to me.

Seeing my picture and my name proudly displayed in front of the whole community meant I was somebody, not a nobody hardly anybody cared about.  I didn’t think about besting other people.  I was just hungry for approval and recognition.  Over the coming years, various show competitions gave me this.  A child of no hope became one of hope.