1
Psychologists tell us that we are the product of our genes and of our environment. In the world of today, filled with notions of psychology and sociology, no one denies this, and we could forever debate the relative part played in our lives by our nature and by our nurture. However, the time comes when we must grow towards independence, and assume responsibility for the person that we are to become, whatever our background.
This book is the story of my emergence from a state of dependence to independence. Every one of us has the same path to travel through life although, when young, we think that we are unique. Eventually we discover that this is not so: the problems we encounter and the dragons that we fight are common to all of us, differing only in personal detail. Thus, in reading this book, you may encounter much that is familiar to you and you may find yourself saying "Yes. I've been there, done that."
So let me start by going back in time to 1918, almost at the end of the First World War when my parents met. Let us peep into their lives and discover their background and the kind of persons that they were.
- I
It was one of those beautiful late Spring mornings that puts a spring into your step. The sky was almost cloudless with just a few cottonwool flecks to give it interest. There was a warmth about, and Dolly thought how pleasant it would be to go swimming at the back beach. On her way home from a game of tennis with Selma Gibbs, even the bees had started their drowsy hum in the bushes beside the path. Only last Sunday they had gone up the river to the "Sand Patches" and had their first swim for the season. Summer was certainly on its way and life was looking a little brighter.
It was three years since her parents had come down from Perth to live at Bunbury. Her father, Harry Humfrey Rumble, or Pa as he was known in the family, was busy at the breakwater. The Public Works Department had sent him down in 1915 as resident engineer to supervise the harbour extensions. He had established a quarry at Roelands, blasted the rock-face, built railway tracks to cart the huge rocks, and was now fully occupied with the new breakwater construction. He still had problems and occasionally disappeared from work, but they did not seem as frequent or as great as before.
Even now Dolly felt afraid when she thought of the past. She thought of the many times in Perth when her father had disappeared and the family had to seek him out, drunk, in some unknown place. She had been scared and afraid then, and remembered him being sometimes brought home in a horse and cart. There were times when she had to guard his room, so that her mother could get some sleep. She was still afraid of him, although less so now that she was almost eighteen, but he had always been a Victorian father, and his word was Law. Dolly learnt to be desperately afraid of life and when, in later years, her children criticised her for something, she would say, `If you knew what I went through as a child, you would be the same.' She rarely expanded on this.
2
1: MY ORIGINS
Of course, everyone knew that Harry Humfrey Rumble was a brilliant but eccentric man. Dolly's mind wandered over recent incidents: She remembered when Pa took Mum for a ride in his motorcycle and sidecar, but never travelled more than eight miles an hour. The local policeman had stopped him one day and said, half in jest, that he was obstructing the traffic. Often he would wake up at two or three in the morning, sit up in bed beside Mum - who was trying to sleep - and practice his banjo. At least he had a sense of humour, and he always said what he felt, regardless of the company. Only the other day, at Mum's last At Home day, he had come back from the office in the middle of the afternoon to find all the ladies in the drawing room with the Anglican vicar. As he walked into the room, the vicar took a large bite of sponge cake. `Ah, Reverend,' he said, with a mischievous glint in his eye, `About your Father's business, as usual, I see.' Everyone felt embarrassed, but most had learnt to accept his cutting wit.
By now Dolly had reached White road. It never took very long to walk from the tennis court to home. They had been lucky to rent Newton Moore's house, as it was only a few minutes walk to town, to the river, or to many of her friends' homes. She liked the look of it, too, with its wide verandas around the front and side and those beautiful weeping willows at the back. It was a cool, pleasant place, and she enjoyed it there. Her older sister Phyllis also lived there with Mum and Pa, but she felt sad that she did not have her eldest sister Maudie for company. Maudie was like a second mother to her. Dolly, being the youngest in a family of seven, had always turned to Maudie to help her, or to comfort her when her four older brothers teased her.
Her oldest brother, Horace, was away in London with the Australian Infantry Forces. He had been wounded in France, taken a prisoner of war, and had almost died of lockjaw before being exchanged with a German prisoner. Now he was visiting his granny Letitia and his aunty Blanche at Blackheath. Dolly had many romantic feelings about her relations in England and often daydreamed about their life in a big house with servants. She had even started writing to them, and wished that she were there instead of Horace. But Hol wrote many interesting letters, and Mum just waited on the postman to receive them.
There were times when she hated Horace. He knew how to be sarcastic. If he wanted to make her really mad, he simply reminded her that when he was twelve and the family lived in Marmion Street, Fremantle, his father had kept him home from school for a year to help his mother. `You don't know what you're talking about, Dolly,' he would say, adding, as though to prove his point, `I used to wash your nappies.' Dolly had no answer to this, but turned to Maudie. Now, Maudie was in Perth nursing at the Children's Hospital. Fortunately Newton Moore's house was big and, at times like Christmas, the other members of the family could easily come by train for a visit. Then she would talk for hours with Maudie and with Eric and Humfrey.
`How was the tennis?' Mum asked as she walked in the front door. Just a week ago she, Phyllis and Mum had become members of the tennis club. Already they were enjoying it. Dolly went in and rested until lunch time. Later, Selma called by to arrange for the group to go to the pictures next day at the Lyric theatre. Almost every week they went along to see a film as there were so few other attractions in the small country town. This week they were showing Alice Brady in The Knife, a comedy called A Hero for a Minute and, of course, there was the thirteenth episode of the exciting serial Seven Pearls. Selma also brought some fish that her brother Lionel had caught down at the long jetty. `There's a big sailing ship come in today,' said Selma excitedly, `Lionel said it looked beautiful with its three tall masts and all its sails -but, of course, they had to furl most of them before coming near the jetty.' There was not much shipping that came into Bunbury, and a sailing ship was always of interest.
3
MY MOTHER'S BACKGROUND: BUNBURY AND THE END OF WORLD WAR I
- II
Mum had had a bad cold but was getting better. On Monday afternoon she had visitors. Mrs Herbert Johnston, Mrs Bell, Mrs and Dulcie Robinson, and Mrs Vershuer all came for afternoon tea. Even when it was not an official "At Home" day, friends were always dropping in. Since Bunbury was a small town, you knew almost everyone in your social circle, and were never short of company or conversation. But Dolly felt at a loose end. `Mum,' she said, when the visitors had gone, `Come to the pics with me tonight? There's a Douglas Fairbanks film on. I'll shout you.' In the end, Phyl, Cora Gibbs and Mrs Telford from over the road also decided to come along. Together they walked to the Lyric theatre in Victoria Street. The Lyric had many associations for Dolly. When Maudie had been in Bunbury, she had taken part in an amateur theatrical group, the Rustics. They had enjoyed listening to her tell them about the rehearsals, before going to the opening night at the Lyric theatre.
Tonight there was an unexpected crowd. Maybe the double "draw" of Doug Fairbanks in The man from Painted Post together with that heartthrob Vivian Martin in Give Becky a Chance had brought them along. However, half way through the film, the screen suddenly went blank. A disappointed, impatient murmur rippled through the crowd. A moment later a hastily written message appeared on the screen: "GERMANY SURRENDERS!" It was 9.30 at night on 11th November!
Forgetting Douglas Fairbanks, all interest in the film was lost. Everyone stampeded out into the street. All Bunbury seemed to appear in Victoria Street simultaneously. One group of youths had found some leftover firecrackers from 5th November Guy Fawkes night, and was letting them off in the crowd. People shouted, linked arms and danced down the street. One or two motor cars - there were not many in Bunbury - were trying to drive through the crowd. They joined in the fun and started honking their horns. Others jumped on the running boards for the ride. Kerosene tins became instantaneous drums, and there was an air of infectious excitement.
Slowly, calm returned. The crackers had all been expended, and people dispersed to go home and talk about it, far into the night. Soon, sons and husbands would be returning from overseas. Little by little, people wandered back to the Lyric and, when the projectionist thought that most were there, the show continued. Back home, Mayor Baldock put his mind to victory celebrations.
The next few days saw a flurry of hastily arranged festivities. Early Tuesday morning Dolly and Phyl, with Cora and Selma Gibbs attended a thanksgiving service in the Council Chamber grounds and then took part in a procession, all the way down to Haywards. Someone had suggested a victory dance for that night, so the girls spent all afternoon helping to get the State school room ready. Dolly's parents practised their musical pieces and, while the dance was in progress at the school, they played four piano and banjo duets at a Soldiers' Gift Concert in the Council Chambers. They all felt a little tired on Wednesday morning, but Phyl, full of energy, went over to the Council chambers in the evening to cut sandwiches for the school treat next day.
It was an exciting week. The Mayor decided that a party was in order for the Captain, officers and young midshipmen from the Sailing ship that was in port, to be held on Wednesday the twentieth at the Baldock's home.
`Do you know,' said Mrs Baldock, `there are ten young lads on that ship, scarcely out of school?' She spoke as though she did not approve of such young people going to sea.
`They say there was a Mutiny on board at Rio de Janeiro and, to make up the crew, the Company shipped these young lads out from London.'
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1: MY ORIGINS
Her husband had already met Captain Donaldson from the Monkbarns since, while in port, he was staying, not on board, but at the Rose, Bunbury's best hotel.
`With all these celebrations, I think it would be nice,' she said, in her best motherly tone, `to give them a good time. They are all probably very homesick, what with the war ending, and everything.'
Phyllis wanted to go to the party. She loved parties and was often the centre of attraction. Already, she knew all the boys in Bunbury. When someone asked her `How many boys in Bunbury have you kissed?', She had replied: `It would be easier to ask me how many I haven't kissed!' There was another reason she wanted to go. When serving drinks at the school children's treat, she had met a young officer from the ship. Mr Chown was third mate and seemed a very nice person; she would like to meet him again.
`Pa, can Dolly and I go to the party at the Baldock's?' In social matters like this they always had to have approval, but knowing that Pa was sometimes strict, they had approached him together. Dolly remembered the time she had asked for a new hat earlier in the year.
`Stand up against that wall, girl,' he had said sharply. `I have fed you and clothed you these last seventeen years, and you ask me for a new hat! Show me your old hat.' Dolly felt like weeping. `There's nothing wrong with your hat' he had declared, on inspection. And that was that!
Both Dolly and Phyl sensed that he was in a bad mood, not inclined to be soft-hearted. It was true that they had already been to a dance and to the pictures and had had an exciting time.
`You've been out enough already.' They were on losing ground. `And I'm not going to have my daughters going out with sailors.' They thought he was about to add the cliche about sailors having a girl in every port, but he didn't.
They were bitterly disappointed. Selma and Cora would be going. `Can't you do something Mum,' they had pleaded, `to get him to change his mind?' Their mother was a resourceful, but gentle, person and she knew her husband well. She had handled worse crises than this. `I'll wait 'till he's in a better mood,' she had said.
By Tuesday they had permission. Mum had a way of doing things, and she always did it so nicely that everyone liked her. Dolly and Phyl went over to Baldock's to help with cooking and the preparation. The Captain had a daughter who lived in Melbourne and, because his nine-year-old granddaughter could not remember him, they had come over from Melbourne to see him. They, too, were going to the party.
The party was a great success and everyone enjoyed themselves. By the end of the evening Phyl had made friends with an Alfred Donnithorne, and he brought her home. Dolly was attracted to a young cadet who said he was eighteen; he seemed just what she imagined a polite, quiet, refined young English gentleman would be. Mr Fall had walked home with her.
Next morning the girls, still in their nightdresses, talked about the party. Dolly sat at the end of Phyllis's bed. `How long are they going to be in port?' Dolly wondered. `I was told the other day that they were loading jarrah timber to take back to London and would be here a few weeks yet.' Phyllis always knew the local gossip. `Why don't we ask them to tea on Sunday?'
So Phyllis wrote a letter to Mr Chown asking if he would come to tea, bringing Mr Donnithorne and Mr Fall with him.
5
MY PARENTS MEET
They asked Connie Baldock to come so it would balance the group, but when Sunday came Dolly was bitterly disappointed; they all arrived except Mr Fall. Mr Chown gave Vic Fall's apologies saying he could not come as he had been rostered for duty. At three in the afternoon the boys rowed the girls up to Turkey Point, but were thankful when the Bath family offered to tow them back behind their launch. It was a swelteringly hot day - the first real foretaste of the West Australian summer - so after tea they all strolled over to the back beach. Dolly excused herself. She wondered why she had felt so terribly disappointed all day. While the others were out, she wrote a letter in her neatest hand:
Dear Mr. Fall,
It was so disappointing that you should suddenly have to go on night duty instead of coming here today, for I felt quite out in the cold; so I am sending you these few lines to ask will you come to tennis with me on Tuesday afternoon, it is nearly opposite our house, so could you call here for me at about 2.30 p.m.
Hope you will not disappoint me again,
Yours sincerely
She posted it immediately
Dolly did not have to wait until Tuesday to see Mr Fall again; On Sunday afternoon she went down town and bumped into him. It was her mother's last At Home day for the year, so she invited him back to the house. Her mother had introduced him to the ladies as `one of the young Middies off the Monkbarns.' He had been so polite and gentlemanly. On Tuesday he arrived at 2.45, ready for tennis, and they enjoyed several games together. At four o'clock, Phyl came over with some afternoon tea, and they all sat on the lawn and talked.
After tea that night Dolly felt lighthearted. She sat at the piano and played for a while. `I think you like that young Victor Fall,' her mother said, `He certainly seems a very nice young man. What a pity they will be leaving soon.' Before the ship sailed, Dolly saw much of Victor. He came around on Wednesday night, and then on Thursday he and Ted Chown took both girls to visit two crew members who had landed themselves in hospital through falls from the ship. Vic was up at the house again on Friday, and by the time she walked with him back to the jetty in the early evening she knew that she was in love.
6
1: MY ORIGINS
- III
Vic was on duty that night but, when in harbour, this was seldom arduous. He lent over the rail with a feeling of elation. How much had happened! It seemed yesterday that, soon after his father had died last year, he had absconded from his school in Northampton and presented himself as an eighteen year-old to the local recruiting office. If it had not been for the vicar, who lived next door to him in the nearby village of Long Buckby, he would probably now be serving somewhere in France, waiting for shipment back home. Instead, he was leaning over the rail in the tiny seaport of Bunbury on the other side of the world.
The Vicar, by chance, had come by and seen him at the recruiting office. `What's young Fall doing there?' He proclaimed in the kind of voice he usually reserved for Sunday sermons. `He's barely fifteen.' In spite of what he had told Dolly, he was still only fifteen and would not turn sixteen until just before Christmas. He was big and very mature for his age so the recruiting officer had been on the point of accepting him.
Victor was sent back to school. `What do you mean by running off and trying to join up?' The Headmaster was stern. He and young Fall had had their differences before and there was not much love lost between the two. What a damned fool question, Victor thought. If he doesn't realise that every young fellow is just dying to serve his country, then he doesn't deserve an answer.
For his age, Vic was very patriotic and had a high sense of adventure. His father had been fifty-two when he was born and, since the age of ten or eleven, they had spent much time together. They had gone for long walks and had tramped all over the battlefield of Naseby. His father had a way of making history come alive so Vic had lived and loved every detail of the battle. As they strolled beneath the oaks and across the fields his father quoted Tennyson and instilled in him a patriotic and romantic love of King and Country. The Headmaster did not understand this. `Well, if you've got no satisfactory answer, young man, you might as well stay away from school altogether.'
His mother now had to decide what to do with Victor. As a young nurse, Emily McNamara had come up from London just before the turn of the century to nurse George Edward Fall who had suffered a broken kneecap. He was twenty years' her senior, but they had fallen in love, married, and had produced three children. Don and Marjorie were not the problem that Victor had been; as the youngest he had always been the more adventurous, and combined this with a somewhat stubborn streak. Her husband's death had caused enough problems as it was without the need for this added worry.
James, Victor's grandfather, had owned a menswear shop in Long Buckby and, in 1866, had sent his sixteen-year-old son to Dundee to learn the trade. On his return, George had taken over and expanded the business. By 1885 he was sufficiently secure to open a clothing factory. Gilbert and Sullivan's opera, HMS Pinafore, after its first performance in 1878, had created a large demand for pinafores, so he had concentrated on these, importing artificial silk and other materials from Germany and Japan. By the turn of the century he had built up quite an export trade with Canada and South Africa, and had become prosperous. It was then that he had bought The Firs for his new wife, with its two-and-a-half acres of land. Emily had been happy there - that is, until the outbreak of war. George had taken this hard. Exports had to be cut. Shipping became difficult, and the source of raw materials almost dried up. In 1916 George had become ill and had died only recently. The business was falling apart and both Don and Victor were far too young to take over. George's death had also greatly upset Victor. Not that he showed his feelings, but Emily knew how close her youngest son had been to his father, and how difficult it was now, because Victor had never shared that closeness with her.
7
MY FATHER'S BACKGROUND
The immediate, if somewhat temporary, solution was to get her son away from Long Buckby and its associations. She arranged with her brother-in-law, William Charlesworth, that he work in London. William had been Chief Draughtsman at Woolwich Arsenal for many years and Victor soon found himself staying with his uncle in a tall four-storey house on Bostall Heath, and working in the nearby arsenal.
He disliked the noise of the lathes and other machinery and hated the restrictive working conditions. He wished he could find something more exciting. Whilst he was in London he saw something of his mother's brother, Victor McNamara, after whom he had been named. Uncle Vic was secretary of the Mile End Distillery, and was his favourite uncle. Walking along the Thames together he had watched the many ships setting sail, and slowly the adventure of life at sea began to appeal to him.
So it was that, through the efforts of Uncle Vic, his mother signed the indenture papers with the shipping agent John Stewart & Co. of Billiter Street, London E.C.3, so that he might train to be an officer and, hopefully, one day, gain his Masters' ticket. She was told that he was to join a sailing ship, the Monkbarns, which was in Rio De Janeiro awaiting new crew. The company was sending ten young apprentices in the steamship Highland Rover. Emily came down to London with him and, in a small book, young Victor wrote the details:
Ship "Monkbarns" Capt. Donaldson. Passage ticket No. 3478, ss "Highland Rover", Nelson Line. Cabin a, Berth 1 From Tilbury. Thursday 1st. August.
Then he added, to be sure:
Train leaves Fenchurch St. station at 10.17 am.
They reached Rio on 2 September and Captain Donaldson came on board to pick up the young lads. He was much older than Vic had thought, being almost seventy, with a white beard and disciplined face. He took them all to the Consul's office and then to the Monkbarns, which was in dry dock. On the 19 September they were towed out past the mouth of the bay, and set sail. By Sunday 6 October they were in the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope and making very good running. Already Vic was discovering the realities of life after a few days of bad weather. Brass-buttoned uniforms were packed away. Dungarees were the order of the day with hard but exhilarating work.
He had little time to think of the life he had left behind, and little time to be homesick until, shortly after catching an albatross, they ran into an unexpected week of calm weather before picking up a fair wind that would take them to Bunbury. He remembered how, during those calms, he had lent over the rail, almost in the same spot as he was now, and allowed himself to engage in a bout of nostalgia.
He had many happy memories of his home "The Firs." How many times he had walked home, around the bend and down the hill away from the village square! First he walked past the old part of the building, built of stone around 1630. He could see where the windows had been bricked up during the Napoleonic wars to avoid the window tax. He would then walk into the grounds by the stables, past the croquet lawn and in the front door on the side of the house facing away from the street. Vic remembered the days in the nursery with his governess, Miss Wicks. She had told him of an incident when he was three years old, but which he could not remember. His parents were having a croquet party and he had wandered into a nearby room called the Cellar, in which dairy produce was kept - including a large cask of Devonshire cider. Miss Wicks delighted in recalling how young Victor had sampled the cider, got himself drunk, and then wandered out on the croquet lawn with a chamber pot on his head.
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1: MY ORIGINS
He really did remember "old Cope" - dear old Cope, the head gardener who was always complaining to his mother about the misdemeanours of the two boys. `They've bin climbin' the Victoria plum tree, agin, Mum,' or, `Excuse me, Mum, but the young 'gemmen have been at them strawberries agin.' Dear old Cope, when would he see him again?
And then another memory planted itself in his mind. Standing at the nursery window he had seen the red flag flying from the Coronation Pole on the morning of the coronation of King George the Fifth, in 1911. Even at the age of nine this incident had appealed to him. At ten in the morning there was to have been an official hoisting of the Union Jack but, sad to say, a young socialist, one Johnson by name, had hoisted a large red flag to the top of the ninety-foot pole, with the words The People's Flag inscribed thereon in large white letters. He had then cut the halliards. With a pole that high, there was only one man in the whole district able to climb to the top, and that was this same Johnson. After considerable delay he was eventually found, peacefully fishing in the canal some miles away. After some persuasion, and a considerable fee, he had agreed to return to the village to climb the pole. . . .
The orchard with its chestnut tree, the gooseberries and red currants that they raided, the plums and the pears. . . The times that he and Don had climbed the brick wall behind the wilderness at the far end and listened to the farmers at the Kings Head talking over their ales. . .and his Father. . . Oh, these were memories.
Vic roused himself. The reality was that he was far from home, beneath the Southern Cross in the little town of Bunbury, and there was a girl he liked. The hard realisation was that in a few days they would be sailing.
- IV
The Monkbarns set sail from Bunbury on Thursday December the fifth. Vic penciled the record of the departure in his little log book:
`Dec. 5th.: Left Bunbury for Cape Town - with a cargo of Jarrah wood. There are no tugs in Bunbury so we had to sail right away from the buoys. I was aloft on the fore loosing sail. We set the jibs & fore-lower top'sle first and then, once she had her head to the sea, crowded sail after sail on her. I had plenty of work to do up aloft, from where there was a fine view of the bay & town. The jetty with the "Auldgirth" alongside, the long breakwater with the lighthouse on the hill at the back. The wreck across the bay at Turkey-Point, White Road, with the roof of Rumble's house showing plainly in the sunlight. Everywhere blue sky & sea with glistening sands & in the far distance the hills of the Darling Range.
By the 2nd dog watch the coast had become a faint blue line. The last most of us will ever see of Bunbury. . .'
Of course, one can't write too much in such a public document as a diary. Dolly simply wrote:
` Thurs. 5th. : The boat sailed today for Capetown, Phyl and I went to tennis in the afternoon, I did some ironing. Phyl and I walked down town after tea for some stamps.'
They both needed stamps now: Phyl was writing to Ted Chown and Dolly to Victor. Although Dolly had written fourteen letters to Vic by the beginning of March, she did not receive Vic's first letter until the fourth.
9
COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE
Monkbarns Capetown 26/2/19
My darling girl I can't help thinking of you tonight. It is my 'night aboard' and it is very lonely & dull & memories will come back. I shall never forget those nights under the willows & that evening we parted - it seems years ago, though it is only three months. When shall I see you again, dearest? Who knows? - but some day we must meet again & then we will make up for everything . . . . . . I don't know where we are going from here we may be here for weeks yet, and after that months may pass before I even hear from you . . . . . I hope we come back to Bunbury but don't build up any hopes, as the chances are we may not.
Well, good bye little girl. I like to think as I sit here in South Africa, that you are waiting for me in Good Old Bunbury. Our short happy days have gone, but memories remain.
The months went by and Dolly continued to write. Pa gave her an autograph album for Christmas, 1919 and she asked him to write something in it. He penned:
To our Baby:- Jany.1920
Baby Doll -as your teens run past Our last little puzzle you truly prove With your longing to go through life so fast And your vague desires to be truly in love Why dream of a middy half way up a mast Or the 'mate' of a cockshell on ocean vast When you've no idea who will claim at last
Baby Doll.
Baby Doll -When you put up your hair And your skirt grew down as your legs grew long When your first little love brought a world of care And nothing was left but a farewell song Why dream of a middy who's never there Or whose visits are short & far more rare While there's others about who think you fair
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1: MY ORIGINS
Baby Doll.
Baby Doll -What's in store in the coming years
Neither I, nor your mother, nor you can see
But there's nothing so bad as a maiden's fears
She will pick the wrong one of her two or three.
For whichever you pick there will sure be tears
And when you have picked one, some more little dears
And worries. . . and trouble, and . . . best close your ears
Baby Doll.
`You'll never see him again,' Pa had said.
`But I will! She replied hotly, `We love each other, and one day I will marry him.'
Pa laughed. `Look, Dolly, If you marry Vic Fall, I'll give you my new set of the works of Charles Dickens.' He had just bought all twenty volumes and they were his pride and joy. He was also confident that he would not be parting with them.
Vic Fall was indentured for some years to the shipping company and served out his time on the Monkbarns. The ship never returned to Bunbury.
- V
Harry Humfrey Rumble honoured his undertaking by giving his complete set of the works of Dickens to Dolly when she and Victor married in June 1925. Having given up the sea in 1923, Victor settled in Western Australia but had nothing behind him. He had no money, and his training at sea was of no use to him on land. There was much unemployment in Britain, and Australia was not much better. He sought the advice of Dolly's father and visited Millars' Timber and Trading Company to see if they could give him a job. He returned to Dorothy with an offer of a position as a junior clerk at Mornington Mills, one of the company's small timber mills. Mornington was about 140 km south of Perth. After their marriage, Dorothy joined him for eight months at Mornington, but did not like its isolation and parochial lifestyle.
At the end of January 1926 they had good news: Millars transferred Vic to Yarloop, another Company town, but on the main railway line from Perth to Bunbury. He was still a junior clerk, but received an increase in salary. They arrived to their new, larger, empty house in Yarloop on 1 February, excited about the change. By this time, Dorothy was pregnant and her daughter, Dorothy Joan, was born on 22 July. Twenty-two months later she gave birth to John Victor on 7 May 1928.
25
COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE
26
1: MY ORIGINS
2
Yarloop was my world for ten years. I was born there, went to school there, learnt to be lonely there and learnt to live in my imagination. I loved and depended on my mother, respected and held my father in awe. He was an important person in the town. My sister and I were isolated from other members of our family. At the age of ten we came to the city, lived in Perth, and I went to a new school: The Christian Brothers High School in Highgate. I remained lonely because I did not play sport, and was too shy to make friends. Although I grew to love learning, I hated school because the Brothers wielded their straps all too willingly and seemed to enjoy inflicting pain on boys who made mistakes in their homework. I lived in fear of the strap and absented myself from school as often as I could.
- I
Small children accept life as it is. Their parents, their home, their school, and their environment simply exist and define their world. It is not until much later that they can differentiate and compare, and so become critical. And so it was with me. Experience of my limited world came from, and was interpreted first by my parents and then by my teachers at school. By far the biggest influence was that of my parents. However, I am writing sixty years after the events of this chapter and bring to it reflections garnered from experience over the years. It would be impossible to recover my exact emotional impressions of events so long ago.
My first awareness was of my mother, father and sister and of the house in which we lived. Then came the shops where my mother bought her daily provisions, and the shopkeepers of whom I was always afraid because I did not know how to respond to their cheeky questions. Finally, came school with the need to regulate life and to relate to others outside my family.
Yarloop was a small town of several hundred people. The Perth-Bunbury railway line, running North-South, bisected the town into the western side with its hotel and a few shops, and the eastern side, which was company owned. This, again, was divided into two parts, the "Top Yard" at the northern end of the town and the "Workshops" at the southern end. Everyone lived in small company-owned weather-board houses with rusty, corrugated iron rooves that straddled the few, lazy, gravel roads that ran from one end of town to the other. Half way between the Top Yard and the Workshops was the Yarloop District Hospital with the doctor's house, surgery, and a few wards. Finally, on a small rise overlooking the workshops stood the Mill Manager's house - distinct with its painted red roof and well-watered garden, the "Cottage" for visiting company staff, and three houses for the staff who worked in a small office at the base of the rise.
Saw-milling started in the area in 1895, and Millars' built the workshops in 1901. The 1920s and early 1930s were the hey-days of saw milling. Virgin forests waited to be tapped, and no one was conscious either of environmental problems or of the need to preserve our natural heritage. Millars T & T, as it was often called, ran private railway lines to both Hoffman's Mill and to Nanga Brook in the nearby hills. Old wood-fired steam locomotives hauled rakes of newly hewn logs from these mills down to the top yard where the timber was cut to size, dressed and then either stored in great stacks to dry, or placed in drying kilns.
27
The workshops maintained all mill equipment including the locomotives and rolling stock. There were the pattern making, casting and moulding shops, the boiler shop, the forge and the pounding steam hammer to shape red-hot metal. At the saw-doctor's shop they sharpened the huge circular and crosscut saws. There were old lathes and milling machines driven from a maze of overhead shafts and belts, powered by an endlessly-wood-stoked steam boiler and engine, tended by Roy Williamson in blackened overalls and a cheery grin. Outside and around the workshops lay discarded and rusting boilers, locomotives, machinery and metal turnings of all kinds in an area known as scrap-iron alley.
The butcher's shop, a lolly and barber's shop, a small local hall and Millars' general store, grandly called "The Yarloop Emporium" were all next to the workshops. The Emporium justified the "And Trading" part of Millars' official name. Mill workers received their pay from the company and what was not spent in the pub on the other side of the railway line, came back to the company from the sale of goods and provisions at the emporium. One could buy flour, sugar, groceries of all kinds, smoked fish, broken chocolate biscuits, cottons and threads, and other commodities for home maintenance. There were large crates containing tins of "Laurel" Kerosene plentifully used to light lamps, as no one had electricity except the Mill Manager and the Chief Clerk.
There was friendly rivalry between those who worked at the top yard and those who worked in the workshops and this extended to their children. Each year in the week leading up to Guy Fawke's night on 5 November two giant bonfires were constructed. One was outside the school grounds at the workshop end of town. The other was at the top yard. Each had a huge guy placed on top, and I remember that all the local children ran with great excitement from one to the other to see which bonfire burnt the best. There were several small churches in the town. Our Catholic church, near the top yard, was but ten minutes' walk from home.
When I became conscious of my environment at the age of five, Yarloop was struggling through the great economic depression that had hit the world in 1929. For a time, Millars put my father on half-pay - supposedly for halftime work - but he still worked a full day. No one had money, there was little food and clothing, and no luxuries. Most children were poorly dressed and all children went barefoot. As a young child starting school, I was never conscious of the depression. Life simply was. Nor was I conscious that my mother always had my sister and me well-dressed, neat and tidy. This set us apart from the other children who were often ragged and went about, unkempt, some with runny noses. Our dress was the symbol that we were different from the others. We were the children of the Staff. We lived in a staff house, set apart from the others. Our house was bigger than those of the mill workers.
Mother always placed great value on status and position. She had come from a background where her mother held At Home days during which well-dressed, polite lady-friends called and gently sipped tea with the vicar and other prominent people. My mother so misread the nature of Yarloop that she arrived with visiting cards to leave at the homes of people when she called, but found them out. This was not the way of the rough-hewn mill workers and their families who regarded her as a snob. This was the world into which I was born.
- II I was born in our house at Yarloop - as my mother's diary recorded - at 5.05 pm, Monday 7 May 1928 on an official public holiday appropriately known as Labour Day. Not only did my mother have a long and painful labour but within three weeks of my birth I developed a serious problem. I was constantly sick and could not keep down my food. Alfred Jacobs, the local doctor, and eventually a lifelong friend to my father, came to see me twice on 31 May. He found me terribly ill and diagnosed pyloris stenosis. This was a blockage at the outlet of the stomach so no food could pass through the body. He advised my mother to take me to Perth as soon as possible. It was then three in the afternoon. By four o'clock she was on the Perth-bound train, feeling very worried and
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upset. My grandmother's diary takes up the story:
Thursday 31 May: Vic rang about 5 pm to tell us that Dolly, Phyl and the two children were on the train coming to Perth, as the baby had to have an operation, Dr Jacobs feared. He had been vomiting since Monday, so he recommended taking him to Dr Crisp, the children's specialist. We rang him directly, they arrived and he confirmed Dr Jacobs' diagnosis and recommended taking baby John to "Hamel House" tomorrow morning. He rang the matron from our house and arranged to operate at 12 o'clock. We then rang Father Fagan about baptising the child, and he immediately sent up Father McKeon, who did it in our dining room, Pa and Phyllis standing sponsors. I took Joan in my bedroom and the girls shared the front room with the baby and Miriamme, as Phyl had to give saline injections to baby during the night. They got to bed at 1 am.
Dr Crisp told my mother that he could either treat my condition medically -and the last child so treated had died after ten months -or he could operate on me to remove the blockage, for which there was a 50 percent chance of survival. At nine o'clock in the morning Dolly and her mother Kate left me at Hamel House hospital. Dolly was very worried and feared hospitals. Only two years previously her favourite sister Maudie, having given birth to Miriamme, developed septic meningitis from unsterilised hospital instruments, and had died.
Dr. Crisp rang during the afternoon to say that he had completed the operation and thought I had a good chance of survival. Mother came to Hamel House every day to feed me and slowly I recovered. On 11 June my stitches were taken out and that evening my mother brought me to my grandparents' home. After a final check on 18 June, we returned by train to Yarloop.
As I grew up, I was constantly reminded of the trauma of my birth and operation. I was thin and bony; Mother was worried because my shoulder blades stuck out. She considered me delicate, to be treated with care and mollycoddled. I was fed on malt-extract and cod-liver oil to "build me up", much to the annoyance of my sister Joan who was not allowed to have any.
For the next few years my world centred on my mother. My father was a shadowy authority figure whom we did not disturb. Each morning he disappeared down the hill to the office, reappeared for lunch and, in the evening, sat in his chair smoking his pipe and reading his book. He had no idea how to relate to children -babies especially. In those days, babies and children were the woman's responsibility. The man was the breadwinner. It was still the days when "children should be seen but not heard." We were constantly reminded of this.
When my sister Joan was born in 1926, Dad returned to the office, and the other staff congratulated him on the arrival of the baby. Highly embarrassed, he replied, "What baby?" When mother wheeled us in our pram, he insisted on walking ahead as though we were nothing to do with him. He refused to help my mother pull the pram up the hill through the black sand to our house. There were times when we travelled to Perth by train and he refused to sit in the same compartment with us. He occupied another compartment. Once, he said that children should be born at the age of fifteen; he spoke to us as adults, and with authority. Dad did not know how to communicate at a child's level, and left this to his wife. I regarded him as a very important man in the town, as I noted that the mill workers regarded him with respect. When I became older, he was the President of the Parents and Citizens Association at school. I stood in awe of him. If I wanted something, I communicated this through my mother. Mother always placed him first, other people and her children, second. She always agreed with him, and I never saw them quarrel. Later, I was to realise that she lived her life through him. She was very afraid of life, and he gave her security.
- III When my parents moved to Yarloop, they lived in the centre house of a block of three. On one side was the home of Mr Robinson, the Chief Clerk. On the other side lived a widow, Mrs Shrubsole, known to us as "Shrubby". Mother sometimes visited Shrubby to keep her company as
29
MY BIRTH AT YARLOOP
she was probably lonely. We were taken along and thoroughly disliked it. Shrubby kept a parrot in a cage, and the house reeked of parrot droppings and stuffiness.
While Mother talked to Shrubby we had to sit quietly, not saying a word unless spoken to, and then our responses were little more than "Yes" or "No". Mother took great pride not only in that we were always well dressed, but that we were well mannered. But our enforced well-mannered behaviour prevented us from developing a character and individuality of our own. I was simply an extension of my mother. I learnt how never to have an opinion of my own. The rough and tumble mateship enjoyed by the mill boys was never part of my life. My father regarded contact sports disdainfully. Football was only played by louts. As we grew older, he taught us to play chess but lost interest.
Mother always wanted my father to gain promotion especially as his pay was low. Dad enrolled in correspondence courses in accountancy and secretarial work and often studied at night, but I was too young to know this. He did well and received a gold medal in 1931 for gaining first place in Australia. But what use was a gold medal when there were no jobs to be had during the depression years? He applied for job after job, but never obtained one. So my mother told the parish priest how much she longed for her husband to gain promotion. Father Doddy replied, "Well, Mrs Fall, you must pray for it." She did, and immediately the Chief Clerk next door dropped dead. Dad became the Chief Clerk. This was not the answer to her prayers that she had expected but, at least, Dad received an increase in pay and we moved next door to a larger house - and to one that had electricity.
Some of my earliest recollections are those of going to bed in our first house. My sister and I shared a bedroom. Mother was afraid of the dark and communicated this to us. When it became dusk, she lit a simple kerosene lamp. This had a metal base filled with kerosene. At the top of the base a two-centimetre wide wick protruded that could be wound up and down. A bulbous, tapered glass tube partly protected the flame from the wind, while a shiny sheet of metal on one side reflected the light in one direction. I still remember the smell of the burning kerosene, especially when the lamp was extinguished. When we were in bed, Mother left a small "night-light" for us. This was a squat candle about five centimetres in diameter and five centimetres high. She placed it on a table near our bed and the flickering flames made my sister feel nauseous, although they did not affect me.
I often had an active mind and could not sleep. Mother put "singing Mary" by my bed. This was a 25 cm tall stature of Mary, the mother of Jesus, which contained a musical box. I would often drift off to sleep before the music box ran down, or I would call out for my mother to rewind it.
On a cold winter's night, warmly tucked up beneath the blankets, a most pleasant sensation was to hear rain approaching. It would start at the other end of the town, and I could hear the rain on the corrugated iron rooves, as it slowly came nearer and nearer, until I heard the beginning pitter-patter on our roof that finally became a loud roar. While we all liked the sound of the rain, mother was terrified of thunder and lightning. She would cover the mirrors with cloth, tell us never to stand in a draught, or to hold in our hand a metal object, like a pair of scissors, as we could be struck dead. She literally hid under the blankets. I realised that there were times when nature could be very threatening, as my mother's fear was very real. I remember once, during the height of a thunderstorm my father taking me out to the front veranda to admire the lightning. From him I learnt eventually that it was not to be feared.
I much preferred the Chief Clerk's house to our first house. My sister and I had separate bedrooms and outside my bedroom there was a large fig tree, beneath which I had a sand-patch where I could play. The kitchen was a large rectangular room, with a wood stove at one end, and a pine table in the middle. Almost all wood stoves were manufactured in Perth by a company called Metters, and their Early-Kooka wood stove could be found in most houses. It was built into a brick surround and comprised an oven beneath a firebox, on top of which there was a flat black surface on which to place saucepans and kettles. Many a country woman gained much skill in adjusting the amount of wood on the fire, and the damper in the flue or chimney stack, so that her sponge cakes rose magnificently, while her roasts were cooked to perfection. When, in later years, country women
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turned to gas stoves, they vowed that they were not as good as their old wood stoves.
31
OUR YARLOOP HOME
We had no hot water unless we heated it in a kettle on the stove. We poured successive kettles of hot water into the bath at bath-time. In later years, when we lived in Mt. Lawley, we had the luxury of a "chip" bath-heater at the end of the bath. This was a cylindrical heater of about 30 cm diameter with a small door in the side into which we inserted small wood chips or crumpled newspaper. After setting fire to it with a match, it roared up and soon produced sufficient hot water for a shallow bath. In Yarloop, we had nothing so grand. My father never deigned to bath me. This was a job for my mother. However, she was embarrassed by anything that suggested sex. From the time that I was a very small child, she always insisted that I kept my genitals draped with a flannel. Her insistence on the flannel made me realise that there was something very wrong about letting anyone see that part of you naked.
The wash-house was an external shed beneath another fig tree. This was fitted with a large wood-fired copper, two cement troughs and a washing board. Washing was a hot and arduous task. Dirty clothes were first scrubbed - particularly at shirt cuffs and collars. The washing board comprised a wooden frame about forty by sixty centimetres, holding a thick sheet of glass, rippled and ridged on one side. Particularly dirty items of clothing would be soaped and rubbed vigorously against the board before being thrown into the copper. The copper was so-named because it was literally a large copper pot with a spherical base, set above a brick fireplace. Filled with water, clothes, and soap, the wood fire brought the water to the boil. Then, the soap bubbled and frothed at the surface, the room became hot and filled with steam, smelling strongly of the hot soap. As a small child, I loved the smell.
A long pine stick about three or four centimetres in diameter, known as a copper stick, was used to turn over the clothes in the bubbling water. Eventually they were taken out with the copper stick amidst clouds of steam and placed in the cement troughs where they were rinsed, "blue-bag" being added to the white clothes to make them more brilliantly white. Clothes-lines were slung across the back garden between two posts. The newly washed clothes were pegged on the lines, which were then raised in the air with clothes props. Local Aboriginals made and sold the props, cutting them from trees so that they ended in a forked branch. The clothesline was placed in the fork of the prop, which was then hoisted to raise the clothes well off the ground.
Mother usually did the washing once a week although, for a time, she employed Mrs Klatt to wash for her. Mrs Klatt was a well educated but poor widow. Ironing was also a hot job in the summer. This was done with "flatirons". These had detachable handles and were placed on the top of the hot kitchen stove. When hot, the handle was attached, the surface cleaned, and then used for ironing. These were known as "Mrs Potts'" irons. As they cooled, they were placed back on the stove and exchanged for another hot iron.
Everyone had problems keeping food from going bad in summer. There were no refrigerators in those days. In summer, I suffered very often from bilious attacks and vomiting. I think this was due to tainted meat, as we could not afford to waste anything. Our only means of keeping anything relatively cool was to put it in the Coolgardie safe. This sat in the shade on the back veranda on four wooden legs. Each leg stood in a jam tin filled with water, to prevent ants from getting to the food.
Our Coolgardie safe comprised a wooden frame with a door and an internal shelf. The frame and door were covered with hessian, down which water trickled from a tank of water above. The wind, blowing through the hessian, caused evaporation and this cooled the safe by a few degrees. On the back veranda we also hung a water bag. This canvas bag, filled with water, worked on the same principle as the Coolgardie safe, and had a tap at the bottom, from which we could draw cold water on a hot day.
Life was rudimentary, and nothing illustrated this better than the lavatory placed alongside the back fence. There were no such things as flush toilets or septic-tanks. The "Lav" had a simple wooden seat, beneath which was placed a large black-tarred pan. A "nightman" came regularly with his horse
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and dray to remove the pan and replace it with a new one. My father noted, with some amusement that, while the nightman emptied the pans of the mill workers once a week, we staff had our pans emptied twice a week. The implication was that we did twice as much!
The lav stood against the back fence and had a small flap door at the back through which the pan could be removed. My sister and I were always in great fear that the nightman would come while we were sitting on the lav, or that some cheeky boy would wait until we went in, and would then open the door at the back and look at us. A wooden lid fitted over the lavatory seat to contain the smell, and the flies. A bottle of phenyl - a trade name for the common and powerful carbolic acid disinfectant - was kept in the lav and used liberally. Soft toilet paper was unheard of. My mother cut newspaper into squares for us to use. In later years she sometimes bought apples wrapped in soft tissue paper. The gentle tissue paper was heavenly in the lav, compared to the harsh newspaper.
My mother told me never to push hard when going to the lav as she once heard of a little boy whose bowels dropped out when he did so. She was very good at unconsciously building fear into me. Every time I was in the lav I had a terrifying mental picture of my entrails coming out and hanging down; I became very frightened to go. Fear struck me, too, when I had to go to the lav at night. Whilst there I became convinced that some monster was lurking outside the door and would grab me as I emerged. I opened the door and fled for my life back to the house through the dark, breathing a great sigh or relief when I reached the back door. What a good thing it was that we all kept a porcelain chamber pot under our beds for use at night!
I was also very afraid of the small war memorial opposite the Yarloop Emporium. My mother told me that it was a monument to Yarloop soldiers killed in the first world war. I could not say the word "monument" and pronounced it "momument". My father laughed at me and this made me feel bad. So every time I had to pass the monument, I became so fearful that I ran past it at great speed. The very sight of it brought back bad memories of being ridiculed. I did have some positive achievements and remember feeling so proud on the day that I finally worked out which shoe went on my left foot, and which on my right.
The local barber was another source of fear. When I was young, my mother came with me and sat me upon a wooden box on top of the barber's seat. She told the barber to cut my hair very gently because she said my neck was very weak. I thought I must be abnormal. She also told me to wash my hair carefully before going for a haircut, because it would be dreadful if the barber discovered nits in my hair. Some children at school had nits, so I became convinced that the barber would find them in my hair and then accuse me of being dirty and filthy.
As I grew older, she was insistent that I carefully wash my ears, because, she said, wouldn't it be awful if someone saw that you had wax in your ears! Only more fearful, was her statement that I should change my underwear regularly because, wouldn't it be awful if you were hurt in an accident, went to hospital, and there they discovered that you had dirty underwear! No wonder that I grew up thinking that everyone was just waiting to find fault with me. By the time I left Yarloop at the age of ten I was very afraid of all adults.
- IV
I started school in 1934, at the age of five-and-a-half. It was only a five minute walk to school through the black sand and through an area known as "the huts". These were small wooden shacks for bachelors who worked in the mill. We were told always to hurry past them, then to skirt around Mrs Brown's house and her chook-yard, past the Methodist hall, and into the school grounds. It was a three-roomed, three-teacher primary school with several classes taken by each teacher. I started in Standard I - or "first bubs" as it was called. By the time I left the school I was in Fifth Standard.
33
FIRST YEARS AT SCHOOL
The school was very simple. A small gravel playground in front was shaded by a large pine tree. Around the side, in a sea of black sand, an open play shed, used on rainy days, backed on to a woodworking room. I remember my mother treasuring a small piece of fancy fretwork that I made for her in later years that proclaimed the motto "Keep Smiling". At the back of the school there were two swings and a seesaw.
At the far end of the grounds stood the boys' lavatory with what seemed like acres of black sand between it and the school buildings. Before the first day of school my mother walked with me to the school, showed me my class room, and pointed out the boys' lavatory. This was the scene of my first bad experience and one that affected me until my late teens.
One morning at playtime, I went to the boys' lavatory. It was a crude affair with a single cubicle and a separate cylindrical, tarred pan around which the boys stood and urinated. Often, some boys played the fool and tried to urinate on each other. The big boys thought it great fun if a smaller boy could not get out of the way quickly enough, and got soaked, especially if it made it look like he had wet his pants. On this day two big boys suddenly said, `Let's pull Fallie's cock' and grabbed at my penis. Although they got hold of it, I broke away and ran back to the school. For the rest of the morning I felt bad that I had run away. Maybe I should have let them pull my cock. Then I would be one of them. Anyway, I wondered what it would be like to have my cock pulled.
When I returned to school after lunch, I saw the two big boys in the playground. Plucking up courage, I went up to them and said with trepidation, `You can pull my cock if you want to'. I expected them to say, `Right. Come up to the lavatory and we'll pull it.' Instead, they turned to a group of girls who were nearby and, in a loud voice, called out to them `Fallie says we can pull his cock.' I went red with embarrassment and shame, and vigorously denied that I had ever said anything like that, and ran away.
This incident had an enormous affect on me for many years. Never again would I go to the lavatory at school. About three years later, still at Yarloop, I saw six of my classmates playing in a field near my house. I went to join them. They sat around in a circle talking and then one of them said: `Let's pull our cocks out and play with them.' They all did this. I jumped up and ran home for my life.
When I was ten, we moved to Perth and I went to Christian Brothers' schools; first at Highgate for four years and then at Aquinas College for two years. Never could I pluck up courage to go to the lavatory at school, no matter how much I was bursting. The very sight of the lavatory filled me with terror. It was not until I was seventeen years of age, and had left school, that I forced myself to go into a public toilet in a park when I was in desperate need. I remember my heart pounding fearfully as I plucked up courage to walk in. It was deserted, but it took a long time before I could go into any public toilet without suffering violent pangs of fear.
If this was a bad experience, then most of my school days in Yarloop were good. I soon settled into the routine of first bubs. The teacher read us stories and, in the winter, she lit a fire in the class room and we sat around on mats. We all had slates about 25 x 15 cm in size, framed in light coloured wood, and chalks with which to draw. I looked forward to learning to read and write. Even more, I looked forward to later classes when I would write with pen and ink. This was a tangible sign of growing up. Our desks had hinged lids and on the flat top beyond the hinge, a hole in the wood provided a place to put the white inkwell filled from ink kept in large stone bottles. We had steel nibs and blotting paper. After learning to write with pencil, it was wonderful to graduate to writing with ink in our copybooks. Each page of our copy book had several lines of beautiful copperplate writing, like this:
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2: CHILDHOOD - THE UNCRITICAL YEARS (1928 - 1941)
Beneath each line there was space to copy our own version. I loved the heavy downstrokes and the light up strokes, and tried so hard to emulate them, but somehow my efforts never looked very much like the original. Often I returned home my hands grubby with ink. I never developed a neat hand, no matter how hard I tried!
I loved the smell of the new school books I received at the beginning of each year. A love of books was something easily inculcated into me. My father had many books on his shelf, and my mother read to us from the time we were very young. In 1934, at the age of six, I won first prize for the best fancy costume for a boy under eight years at the Yarloop Children's Fancy Dress Ball. My prize was a beautiful book called MY FAVOURITE ANNUAL 1933. This was my first real book and I prized it greatly. My mother read me stories and poems from the book, and encouraged me to learn to read them for myself. Sixty years later I still have the book. It shows signs of much loving use; the pictures still bring me remembered warmth.
Mother loved fairy tales, especially because they were make-believe and ended with And they lived happily ever afterwards. Fairy tales always depicted the triumph of good over evil, and held high the values of truth, honesty and bravery. I had little problem with truth and honesty, for to tell an untruth was unthinkable. But bravery - that was another thing. I knew that I was never very brave, as my mind was filled with so many fears.
We had large, hardcovered books of Grimms Fairy Tales, Alice in Wonderland and King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Soon we knew by heart the story of the Brave Little Tailor, the Cheshire Cat, and of Merlin the magician. She also bought a copy of A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh. She had a very soft spot for Winnie the Pooh, who was a very loving little bear, but one who kept reminding people that he was a bear of little brain. Mother felt that this described herself perfectly, and throughout her life, when something was too difficult for her to think about, she would exclaim: `You must remember that I am a bear of little brain.'
When I was eight, my parents bought a copy of the ten volumes of Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopaedia. What a treasure trove of knowledge and interest they proved to be. Many a winter's afternoon was spent pouring over these volumes.
- V -
Yarloop was a socially stratified town. Staff and their families were not encouraged to mix with the mill workers. My parents, especially my mother, were very class-conscious. Many years later, my sister Joan, recalled this:
We had no friends. My mother thought that the mill children were beneath us, and the mothers of the other children wouldn't let them play with us either. There was a problem on both sides. In that respect, it was a terrible childhood.
Outside school hours my sister and I led a quiet and a lonely existence within our own home. We did not learn to socialise with others, to take part in sport, or to join in the rough and tumble of children's life. I was never a member of a gang. At school, during playtime, I played on the swings or the seesaw. Sometimes I engaged in hopscotch, but quickly stopped when the boys declared it a "cissy" game fit only for girls, who were despised. Sometimes I played marbles with the other boys, but did not have their skill. Most boys played "for keeps" - that is, if they knocked out your marbles,
35
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
they kept them. I was always losing marbles, and the fun went out of the game. I was always conscious of being ridiculed by others when I had no skill at a game. So, I stopped playing.
The mill boys had many rough games, a favourite being cockfights. This was played by four boys, teaming up in twos. In each pair, one would sit astride the shoulders of the other, and then the two pairs would join in battle, each trying to knock the other to the ground. This was played in the black-sand area of the playground, and soon the boys where black and dusty, and sometimes had a few bruises. Cock-fighting often took place with five or six pairs engaging simultaneously. I was too scared to play.
Fights between boys were common. Sometimes, after school, boys congregated in a circle outside the school grounds while two of them engaged in battle, throwing punches at each other until one retired with a bloodied nose or a black eye. Such "games" terrified me, and I quickly ran home. The mill boys often used crude language but this was utterly forbidden in my home. Even to say that someone told a lie was too coarse for my mother. I could use no word stronger than "fib", although a "white lie" was sometimes permitted. And while the boys at school talked of having a shit, a piss or of going wee-wee, this was not allowed at home. My mother, unable to talk about anything that involved bodily functions, invented the euphemisms "little chair-chair" and "big chair-chair". I used these words until I was quite old, but was too embarrassed to use such childish language in the presence of others; neither could I use the words that everyone else used, because I was conditioned against them. Fortunately, with my hangup about going to any toilet outside my home, the situation did not arise.
My father made friends with a few men in the town. He formed a chess club, a dramatic club and a discussion group. My mother sat around and listened, made supper, but did not contribute. Yarloop was not the environment she wanted, and was not the life she had envisioned when she and Victor first met. Her notions of the future were always romantic, divorced from reality, with which she could never come to terms. She was never happy in Yarloop, and felt very lonely. With Dad, she joined the local tennis club, but fell out with the members and stopped playing. She made a few friends but, through directness and lack of tact, often gave offence to others. Mother did things, as she felt, for others - and then felt hurt when they did not return her kindness. Increasingly she suffered from nervous tension and often spent the day lying on her bed with violent headaches. She felt hemmed in and isolated in Yarloop, but saw no means of escape. Often my sister and I came home from school to find mother lying on her bed with a "sick headache", as she called them. It was probably a migraine. A strong smell of Eau-de-Cologne permeated the house from a damp cloth she kept on her brow, and we had to play very quiet games.
Occasionally the son of one of my parents' friends came to play at my home, but this was not often. I was never asked back to their home to play, and my mother did not encourage it. She wanted me at home where she could keep her eye on me and make certain that I did not get into bad company, which she thought abounded in the town. I was not allowed to do anything without first seeking her permission. My mother wanted to know where I was at all times, and what I was doing. So I played in my sand-patch by myself, read my books, and developed a vivid private inner life in my imagination that no one could touch. Occasionally she allowed me to play for a while amongst the rusty engines in scrap iron alley. I invariably brought home various treasures such as heat-tarnished and convoluted metal turnings discarded from the workshop lathes.
- VI
As I grew older, I was even allowed to play at the tank-stand opposite our house. Vividly, I remember a particular morning during the school holidays. At these times I sometimes lay in bed
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2: CHILDHOOD - THE UNCRITICAL YEARS (1928 - 1941)
until quite late, but not on this day. I knew that this morning Mr Dornbusch would be coming by with his horse and dray, laden with fruit and vegetables. He came along the sandy track in front of our house and stopped to see what my mother wanted. He weighed items in his old scales, which were bolted to the back; I liked the way they rattled and swung about as his horse plodded along. Sometimes he gave us an apple; usually he let us sit on the back of the dray until we reached Shrubby's house. I knew that today I would catch him if I got up early, so I quickly dressed and ran across to play at the old tank-stand that stood at the edge of a clump of trees not fifty feet from our front gate. From there I would see him coming.
The tank supplied the town with water and stood on top of high jarrah piles. There was a wooden ladder going to the top and a platform on which I could stand, but I wasn't tall enough to see over the top to the water inside, although I could hear it. Several pipes ran from under the ground to the top of the tank. They were about three or four inches in diameter, and felt lovely to touch: icy cold, even on a hot day. If I put my ear to them, I could hear the hum of the water inside and imagined it came from miles away.
I especially loved the winter when the tank overflowed. Then, beneath the stand, a thick layer of chocolate mud formed -sometimes quite shiny on top. When it had set, I enjoyed cutting it up, taking great hunks back to my sand patch beneath the fig tree.
This morning, waiting for Mr Dornbusch to come by, I was doing what I loved most: shinning up the vertical pipe with arms and legs wrapped around it, climbing six inches at a time. When I got about half way up my arms started to ache and the palms of my hands felt sore, but my heart beat fast because it was exciting - and it felt dangerous. I knew that one day I would reach the top.
Old Mr Tilley walked by from the cottage to the workshops every day. His wife was housekeeper there. He was short and tubby, always wore a crumpled felt hat and needed a shave. This morning he walked by when I was about a quarter of the way up the pipe.
‘Hello Jack,’ he called, with a bit of a smile, ‘How far can you climb?’
Although christened John, my parents called me Jack until, at the age of ten, I insisted on my proper name.
‘Almost to the top,’ I replied breathlessly because I had already been at it for a while.
‘I'll tell you what,’ he said, taking a coin out of his pocket, ‘I'll give you sixpence if you can reach the top.’
Gee! Sixpence! A whole week's pocket money! I was sure I could do it. So, I continued my climb. Not too bad for the first half. Then there was the join in the pipe, where it got thicker for an inch or so, and felt rough to my hands. When I was a little further up, that joint gave me something to grip with my feet.
I do not know how high it was; it felt like a hundred feet, but it could not have been more than twenty. About three feet from the top I felt I could go no further. As I tried to pull up, the muscles in my arms ached more and more and I could hardly move. Two feet to go. Less than two feet. No, I could not do it. I let go my grasp and slid back down to the bottom. I looked appealingly to Mr Tilley. I had almost made it, surely that was worth something. I waited.
‘Too bad,’ said Mr Tilley, and thrust the coveted sixpence back into his pocket. ‘Maybe another time,’ and he went on his way.
I have never forgotten that incident, and I do not know why it remains so vivid for me. Maybe it was
37
SOCIAL LIFE IN YARLOOP
the first time I tried and failed. Maybe it was just the loss of the sixpence. However, since that day, if I once set my mind on achieving something, I have never let the effort involved prevent me from getting there. I have often wondered whether that determination came from my experience with Mr Tilley and his sixpence.
- VII
The old hall near the workshops, apart from the churches, was the social meeting point for the town. It was the venue for the annual children's fancy dress ball, the pictures, community singing and for productions of the Yarloop Dramatic Club, for which my father was both organiser and an actor.
The fancy dress ball was a great occasion for the town, and most mothers spent much time inventing inexpensive costumes for their children. Crepe paper from Gillard's store was much in demand. When the worst years of the economic depression were over, the costumes became more elaborate. In 1936, our school teacher taught us how to dance the lancers; we then performed these during the fancy dress ball. I remember being dressed in Elizabethan costume and feeling very proud to take part in such an important event.
Preparation of the hall on the day of the ball was very exciting. Adults put candle wax over the floor so that it became very slippery. We children spent our time racing across the room and then sliding, occasionally with mishaps that ended in crying. Several times we practised the Grand March. How important we felt on the night itself when the judges sat on the stage and we formed a long line of pairs. Then, when the piano started playing the grand march, we walked around the hall, first pair to the left, next pair to the right, and so on, until we met at the back of the hall and formed fours. Parents stood by to correct any couple that turned the wrong way. I remember being studiously careful as Joan and I came to the front, and felt much relieved when we turned the right way and did not need correction. Once at the back of the hall we marched up to the front again, this time in fours. Then we split, first four to the left, next to the right until finally we came up in groups of eight.
Then we waited for the judges to announce the winners and stood about the hall with our parents or friends, while the judges deliberated, sometimes pointing to this group or to that. Finally came the announcement. Those collecting prizes went up to the stage with broad grins on their faces. Many were downhearted because they had not won a prize. A few very small children burst into tears through disappointment, though many a parent donated a special small prize for their own child to avoid such a calamity. The judges announced the special prizes after the main prizes, and sullen faces turned into happy, important grins, as their prize was announced. A few children, overawed by the judges, would not collect their prize, so their parents went up to the stage for them. Later in the evening there was a supper prepared by all the mothers. Invariably this comprised the sweet and sickly goodies that children love.
One year Joan and I went as a pair of devils, with masks on our faces. After the grand parade we were told us to take off the masks because they frightened the small children. Another year, I became a postman in peak cap, carrying a large mail bag. Joan was disguised as a bright red post box and looked out on the world through the letter-posting slot. Trouble arose when boys decided to "post" things in the slot.
Regular films were shown in the hall and occasionally we were taken if mother considered them suitable. The projectionist set up rows of chairs and, since they were all on the same level, it was sometimes difficult to see the screen. The chairs were hard so people brought rugs and cushions with them. Children were told they had to sit in the front rows. This immediately caused a problem for my mother: she insisted that we must sit with her, even if it meant bringing a small folding chair to put in the aisle. I think the other children regarded us as "mummie's little darlings", but we never sat
38
2: CHILDHOOD - THE UNCRITICAL YEARS (1928 - 1941)
at the front amongst the bottles that were rolled on the floor, or the skirmishes that took place if the film was not interesting.
Sometimes there was a long wait at the interval. The program always started with the National Anthem, followed by a newsreel, then came the first of the two feature films. On the same night, these films were also shown, but in reverse order, in the neighbouring town of Waroona. At the interval, one car set out from Yarloop and another from Waroona, twelve kilometres away. They met at the midpoint, exchanged reels of film, and then returned to show the second film.
I must have been very young when I saw my first film. I still remember thinking that they were real people on a stage. One film gave me nightmares for many nights. My parents took me to a comedy featuring Gracie Fields, a well-known comic actress. During the film someone threw a knife at her. It missed, and stuck into a picture of King Henry VIII on the wall. As it did so, King Henry raised his arms above his head in astonishment. This worried me enormously. How could a picture raise its arms? This was impossible; but I saw it happen. Many a night I woke in fright, reliving the scene.
With two full-length feature films, the program was always long, and sometimes I fell asleep, or felt too tired to walk home afterwards. My parents carried me on their back.
The 1930s were times of great economic hardship. So many people were out of work, so many people were poor and hungry, while those who struggled to support their families on low wages could not afford amusements or luxuries. In many a family, children were allowed butter on their bread, or jam on their bread, but not both butter and jam. That was too extravagant.
My father had a social conscience and wondered why this hardship had to exist in a land of plenty. He and his close friend Dr Alf Jacobs became active members in the Douglas Social Credit Movement, and together they travelled the countryside lecturing on the economic ideas of Major Douglas. Dad formed a discussion group that met regularly in our house. This group also organised regular community singing and an annual sports day to provide social activity for the local people.
I loved the community singing, which was first held in the old hall before graduating in 1937 to the new hall built on the other side of the railway line opposite the railway station. The hall was usually filled and a lantern slide projected the words of each song on a screen. Someone acted as pianist, another as the compere, and everyone filled the hall with rousing songs. At the interval, a cup of tea and a biscuit was had, and usually one or two people with voices supposedly better than the average rendered a solo, which was received with much clapping. There was a friendly atmosphere, and much exchange of local gossip, but a few people were critical because the organisers made a small charge to cover the cost of the event.
On my sixth birthday, Labour day, Monday 7 May 1934 my father and the Douglas Social Credit committee held their first Annual sports day. For weeks before this they planned the program, found sponsors and advertised the event. Ten years later, my mother recalled this in her diary:
Vic organised sports and other functions in aid of D.S.C., bringing back the thrill of the old log-chopping days, and ending with balls in the local hall. Murphy's merry-go-round and swing boats made a great attraction for the children. We ran our big sports day always on Labour Day, the first Monday in May. The Sunday before, all the committee would meet at our home and all looked for signs of rain on their departure. We always insured against rain, and many a worry we would get from the clouds.
An official program cost threepence, and the front cover proclaimed:
39
SOCIAL LIFE IN YARLOOP
Under the auspices of Yarloop Branch Douglas Social Credit Movement
W44444444444444U
W4444444444444444444444444444U
Monday, May 7, 1934
W4444444444444444444444444444U
W4444444444444444444444444444U
"Harvey-M urray Times"
The Patron was Dr. A. N. Jacobs, the President, Mr H. Hicks and the Secretary, Mr V. G. Fall.
40
2: CHILDHOOD - THE UNCRITICAL YEARS (1928 - 1941)
These sports days, held in a field behind the Yarloop Hotel, proved a great success; each successive year found an increasing number of entrants in the events. I remember well the children's program for the 1936 sports day. This started at 10.30 in the morning. We had running races, egg and spoon races, sack races, three-legged races and the like. Winners received book prizes that my parents had sent down by train from Boans, a large department store in Perth. A day or two before Labour Day, they spread these books on the floor while choosing prizes for each event. They allowed Joan and me to look at all the books and to keep one each for ourselves. How exciting it was, and what a wonderful smell the new books had! This was the only way I ever received a sports-day book. I was never game to enter any sprint events, and usually came almost last in novelty races.
In 1934 the adult events started at 1.00 pm with a 75-yard single ladies race but by 1936 these races started in the morning immediately after the children's program because of the increased participation. There were conventional races: sprint handicaps, married ladies races, junior and senior cycle races, a boxing event, an old buffers' race and novelty races such as thread the needle, and kick the football.
Perhaps the events of greatest interest were the log chops - as these came straight out of the forestry tradition and allowed powerful young men to display their prowess and speed at felling a tree. These were the days before mechanisation. Trees were felled in the bush by hand, using crosscut saws and axes. In one type of event a series of twelve or fourteen inch diameter logs was secured horizontally to the ground, the competitors stood astride them, legs apart, and wielded their axes to cut the log through at the centre. In other events, long logs were sunk vertically in the ground and stood five or six feet out of the ground. The axemen stood beside the logs and cut them through at a height of about three feet. Men spent hours carefully honing their axe blades to razor-sharp keenness, and then carefully protected the blades in leather pouches. The competitors struck the logs, blow by blow, with unerring accuracy, each blow landing precisely on the edge of the last cut, cleaving out a wedge until finally the log split in two. Everyone crowded round to watch the event - but stood far enough away to avoid flying pieces of wood. The axemen's muscled arms glistened with sweat as each strove to become the winner.
Of all the events, the log chop attracted the largest prize: £18 and a gold medal donated by the Plumb Axe Company. The official program contained advertisements from the sponsors such as:
The greatest number of championships has been won
with a ..
For decade upon decade there has been only one make of axe that has never lost its popularity . . . this is the "Plumb" Axe.
From the wood heaps in back yards to the forests where giants of the tree-world are felled . . . there you will find the "Plumb" Axe in constant use.
The "Plumb" is the choice of the greatest axemen of the world - more championships have been won with a plumb than any other make of axe . . . at all chopping contests the majority of axes in use are "Plumbs" . . . there must be a big advantage in using a "Plumb" otherwise world champions would not use "Plumbs" so freely; further "Plumb" Axes are better axes for all Australian hardwoods . . . chop with a "Plumb" for greater chopping efficiency.
3½, 4, 4¼, 4½ lbs. Hickory handles
41
LABOUR DAY SPORTS
42
2: CHILDHOOD - THE UNCRITICAL YEARS (1928 - 1941)
Each year the sports day ended with a ball held in the hall near the workshops. The committee spent hours in preparation. In 1936 they built an outdoor "rose garden" beside the hall, with temporary walls constructed from posts and wire, covered with palm and tree branches and decorated with roses. As with all small towns, there was much gossip, some townsfolk criticising the organisers for failing to do this or that. It was ever thus.
At the 1936 sports day, I was intrigued by a public address system over which officials made announcements. I had never seen such a thing before. I followed the cables back from the loudspeakers until I located a large black box. It fascinated me, and I wondered how such a thing could work. Not long afterwards, friends of my parents at Mornington Mills gave me an old cylindrical gramophone, and an old radio inside which I discovered coils of wire, smelling of shellac, and old vacuum tubes. Neither was in working condition, but I brought them home and took them to pieces trying to discover, without success, how they worked.
I had long wondered about things and often lay upon the grass on a summer's evening looking up at the stars. The sky was so vast and exciting. Now, the interest extended to other things about me, and I turned to Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopaedia. This embryonic interest was increased when at the age of ten my parents gave me beautiful books with such titles as The Wonder Book of Science, The Wonder Book of Electricity, The Wonder Book of Engineering, and The Wonder Book of Inventions. These were so exciting that I decided, right then, that I would become an electrical engineer when I grew up. My mother encouraged me, telling me that many of my ancestors including my grandfather - had been engineers.
- VIII
In many ways, 1936 was an important year for me: my father became involved in building a swimming pool for the town; we bought both our first radio and our first car. The swimming pool was a great boon. Although on the coastal strip, Yarloop was so far inland that it was not easy to travel to the ocean. Several tracks led to the coast but they were sandy and in poor condition. Most people had no means of getting there. However, behind the hotel, and parallel with the railway line, ran a small creek. My father and others decided that this could be turned into a town swimming pool. Using wooden planks, they built a weir at the downstream end and, while waiting for the dam to fill, constructed men and women's changing sheds and a small "lemonade" bar, or kiosk. The changing sheds had wooden walls, seats inside along the walls, but were open to the sky.
Satisfied with their work, everyone waited for the pool to fill. At last it did so, and started flowing over the weir. Yarloop now boasted a pool over twenty feet wide in places. The last task was to build a diving board and, for the official opening day, a slippery pole, jutting horizontally out over the water.
The whole town came to the opening ceremony. Some took part in races or in diving competitions, but I only remember the slippery pole competition. The pole was greased; it was difficult to walk to its end without slipping off, and everyone enjoyed seeing two competitors sitting astride the pole, facing each other, each trying to knock the other into the water.
After the official program, we all enjoyed taking a dip until someone called out `Shark! Shark! Everyone out of the water.' It was not a shark, but a deadly tiger snake swimming downstream. When the swimmers realised it was a snake, there was a mad scramble to get to the shore. Several men clubbed the five-foot snake to death and then hung it over a nearby wire fence. My parents took us over to look at it, twitching. They said that snakes did not die until the sun went down, and that it would continue to twitch until dark. In her haste to get out of the pool, mother jagged her toe on a root. It started swelling and became more and more painful. She hobbled home, and later discovered that she had broken it.
43
THE SWIMMING POOL, OUR FIRST RADIO AND CAR
Quite often on the weekends our whole family walked to the swimming pool for a swim. Dad would not take me with him into the men's changing shed, and I was too scared to go in by myself, so mother took me into the ladies' shed with her. She told me I should not be there with her, as I was too old, and that the other ladies would disapprove; I should go into the men's shed to change, but would not. Eventually I changed quickly in the lemonade bar, but felt very bad about it.
Dad was very proud of our first radio, which we kept for many years. It was built by a friend, Laurie Wilkinson, while Mr Connolly, the pattern-maker from the workshops, built the cabinet from a local She-oak tree. The highly polished cabinet stood about a metre in height, was 40 cm in width and 30 cm deep and occupied pride of place in our lounge room. All the radio stations were in Perth, and reception was poor, so Dad had two tall timber masts erected: One at the front and the other at the back of our block of land. With a wire strung between the poles, reception proved much better, especially at night. I was intrigued by the batteries needed to make the radio work. There were three of them, called the "A", "B" and "C" batteries. The "A" battery was a six-volt accumulator or "wet" cell, used to heat the filaments of the four valves. There were three large "B" batteries, which were "dry" cells strung together to provide 135-volt "High Tension". At the time, I did not know the reason for the "C" battery.
The radio immediately expanded our horizon. We listened to the children's session before tea, to music, and after tea to the serial Dad and Dave, which was a saga of life in a small parochial country town called Snake Gully. My parents listened to serious programs like the news and discussions, but these did not interest me.
Our first car was a ten-horsepower, secondhand, dark green "baby" Ford. The term "horsepower" is no longer in use, but was an imperial measure of power, notionally equivalent to the power that could be exerted by one horse. In metric terms, one horsepower equals 746 watts. If the radio expanded our world, then the car gave us freedom - especially for my mother. In her 1944 diary, she recalled the purchase of the car and the effect it had on her.
I received 265 -my share of a sale of property my mother left us - so we furnished the lounge and later Vic and I bought a Ford 10 sedan. I put 150 into it. This was a great thrill of my life. After a few lessons I got my driver's licence.
No one can realise what it was for me to be behind that wheel tearing along those South-West roads - the only outlet I ever got to my feelings - to be born a girl and longing to roam and roam, I always felt stifled, never ever getting a chance to do just what I wanted. Living for years in a small country town was not the dream I had when I first met Vic when I was seventeen and he was a brassbounder on a windjammer . . .
It was in December 1936 that they bought the secondhand car. Mother called it her magic carpet. We visited Dr. Jacobs who had taken up practice in Harvey, ten miles away. My parents also visited friends in Mornington Mills. Sometimes we drove to a field where we collected mushrooms. Occasionally we drove to Perth on roads that were now sealed. All minor local roads were still gravel and often quite corrugated. I was always a problem to the family because I easily became car-sick but felt better if I sat in the front seat. Sometimes we had to stop by side of the road while I recovered.
Once we went for a holiday to Mandurah but returned home after a few days to collect something we had forgotten. I did not like staying at Mandurah and announced that I was staying home; there was no way that I would go back with them. Eventually mother said, `All right, you can stay home. The rest of us will return to Mandurah.' I had not expected this, and stood on the front veranda watching their car slowly drive away from the house. Predictably, I burst into tears and ran after them as they waited for me.
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2: CHILDHOOD - THE UNCRITICAL YEARS (1928 - 1941)
We had a happier holiday camping at Meelup, south of Busselton. My uncle Humfrey was a very keen fisherman and loved camping. He had an old Chevrolet car on the side of which he strapped a small collapsible boat he had made for fishing. He asked my family to join his family at Meelup, so we set out from Yarloop, drove to Busselton and then took the gravel road to Cape Naturaliste. We then turned off this road and headed down a very rough and bumpy track to reach the beautiful and isolated bay of Meelup. My father found the driving a hair-raising experience, but we reached our destination and set up camp beside that of Uncle Humf.
Joan and I had a small play-tent and decided to sleep in that. One night there was a tremendous storm and our tent was drenched. Next morning our only water supply, a natural fresh water spring, was salty because the storm had driven the sea up the beach and contaminated it. Uncle Humf was always enormously enthusiastic - a common trait for all the Rumbles. He would throw out his fishing line and cast berley upon the water to attract the fish while proclaiming, `They're definitely here, boys! They're definitely here!'
- IX
Living in Yarloop, I was not very conscious of my larger family - such as my Uncle Humf, and his family. Mother often told us about her family but, before we had a car, we were very isolated from them. My father's father died before my birth; his mother remarried and lived in England; I was never to meet her. His older brother, Don, married in England but had no children, while his sister, Marjorie, was a widow living in the Cameron Highlands of Malaya, teaching French at a school.
Although my mother's mother and father, Kate and Harry, visited Yarloop when I was very young, I have only vague recollections of those days: Early in 1932, at the age of four, I recall waiting on the railway station for them to arrive. I remember the toy car and a garage they gave me better than I remember them. My Aunty Phyl was the closest to my mother, although they argued constantly. In September 1932 Phyl went to hospital for a kidney operation; Pa, as my grandfather Harry was known to everyone, brought her two children, Miriamme and Joseph, to stay with us for ten weeks. Phyl and her husband Ted had the expense of the operation and could not afford to maintain their children, and they were too much for Pa. My parents struggled on half-pay to look after the enlarged family, and drew on their small savings.
Then, while Phyllis was still in hospital, my grandmother Kate died on 31 October. My mother wrote in her diary:
How I worshipped her and how I shall miss my mother and Maudie thro' all the years to come - Maudie who knew how terrified I was to face things alone - but I could not tell my mother because she had already had too many sorrows, and I did love her so.
When Phyl recovered, she came down to Yarloop for a rest, and her husband Ted joined her for Christmas. One of the few vivid memories I have is of a huge bush fire that developed in December on a day that was 108EF (42EC) in the shade. The fire came right to the bush behind our house, and the crackling and falling of burning trees kept everyone awake at night. Men fought the fire throughout the night. At one time, we thought the houses would go up in flames, and Phyllis declared that she would catch the first train back to Perth.
As I grew older, Miriamme and Joseph became the only cousins that we knew well. Several times they stayed with us, and once we visited them at their home in Goomalling where Ted was the Road Board Secretary -a position now known as Shire Clerk. We four children had much fun together. Several times we organised a concert for the grown ups, who duly sat in the lounge room, while we stood in the hall and performed items. A large drape separated the lounge from the hall; we used this
45
AWARENESS OF MY EXTENDED FAMILY
as a stage curtain. I only remember two incidents related to these concerts. We had an old acoustic "His Master's Voice" gramophone. On the night of the concert we put records on this, and connected a long string to the start lever. I held this string on the stage, and pulled it when we wanted the music to start. I thought this was awfully clever. We also spent some days preparing our own "wine" made from various grapes growing in the garden. During the interval we served this to the adults. My father took a sip and then, in jest, rushed to the front door and, opening it, proclaimed in a loud voice: `I'm going to be sick!' There, on the other side of the door, about to knock, stood a visitor. She quickly stepped out of his way. This incident became an oft-repeated family joke.
Mother did not have a good word for her sarcastic brother, Horace. In her 1944 diary, reflecting on the depression years of 1932, she wrote:
We were always struggling. . . Vic applied for various other positions, but no luck with so many unemployed. Things looked very black for us so I persuaded Vic to ask help from Horace, to see if he could put in a good word about a job, but he only sneered at Vic - which made him come home very upset and wishing he had never asked him - but he did it for my sake.
Until we moved to Perth in 1939 I had no contact with Uncle Eric, but knew that he had his own warehouse selling chemists' products. Mother said he was a shrewd business man. Finally, I knew that I had another uncle - Dr Leslie Rumble - who was a famous Catholic priest in Sydney; he conducted a radio program, but I never heard it.
In 1937 I became aware of a large rectangular crate stored in a spare room. Dad said that it contained an oil painting of my Great-Great-Grandfather, Rev. Edward Fall. He had received it from England in 1925 but until now could not afford to have it framed in Perth. Eventually the job was done, and my reverend ancestor appeared on the wall of our house.
The painting was probably executed around the time of his retirement from the Baptist Church in Rugby in 1848. From 1937 until the present time, almost sixty years later, he has looked down on me from the wall of each successive home in which my parents have lived. He now hangs on the wall in my own home. At first I was intrigued by having a painting of an ancestor, but soon thought nothing of it. However, as the years went by, I became more aware of him. For many years he has watched me from his place on the wall in a benign, benevolent way. Today, I feel that I know him well, and that he knows me; he created in me a sense of my ancestry.
Mother always had a romantic love of the past. She told me how her parents, Harry Humfrey Rumble and Kate Knight, had fallen in love in England and married, but migrated to Australia when there was a serious family quarrel. Kate's father, Anthony Knight, was a wealthy man who did not need to work for a living - but mother did not know where he obtained his wealth. She also told me that Anthony Knight's wife, Letitia, was the daughter of a rich Chinaman, Ho Chee - possibly an Ambassador to England - who married a sixteen year-old English girl, Charlotte Mole. Although this was very exciting, I soon realised that my family was even more illustrious when she told me that, on the Rumble side, one branch went back to a wealthy landowner who was Lord of the Manor, while another was descended from the Black Prince in England. For someone brought up on a healthy diet of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, this made my family very special indeed.
- X
On Sunday mornings, mother took Joan and me to the Catholic church for mass. When we were very young she had a hard time trying to keep us amused, but slowly we learnt to sit still and remain quiet during the boring service. There was no resident priest in Yarloop, so Father Doddy drove over from Harvey to say Mass. The weatherboard church was very small: a tiny entrance vestibule, the church proper with a small aisle down the centre and a few rows of pews, a simple wooden altar and a sacristy behind for robing. At the back of the church stood an old harmonium
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2: CHILDHOOD - THE UNCRITICAL YEARS (1928 - 1941)
not that we had hymns or music often. Mother and other women parishioners took turns to clean the
47
AWARENESS OF MY EXTENDED FAMILY
church on Saturdays and to provide flowers for the altar. When I was very small, she once pointed to the altar and said that Jesus lived in there. The altar had a small wooden door on one side, and I wondered how it was possible for a man to live inside that door. Surely it was too small?
Sometimes I went along with her to the church on cleaning day; usually she let me play the harmonium. Some parishioners objected to this, saying that it was not right to play ordinary tunes in the house of God, but mother was never narrow-minded in this: she said that God would not object to this practical way of keeping me amused. I pulled various stops, and pumped away with my feet to keep the bellows full, and then played the simple tunes that I knew from the piano at home. Once, I even played hymns for the congregation on a Sunday!
Our piano was a Thurmer bought by my grandmother in 1908. She gave it to my mother in February 1927. For a period my sister learnt the piano from Mrs Schlam, the wife of the mill manager, Leo Schlam. I badly wanted to learn, but my mother said that she could not afford it. So she showed me the notes on the keyboard and told me that the lines on the music score could be remembered from
the phrase Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit, while the spaces in between spelt F A C E. She told me about a crochet and a quaver, and I experimented. I had a good ear for music and could quickly pick out a tune. I devised an elementary harmony using all the black notes on the keyboard. Years later I discovered that I played in the key of F< - five sharps! My harmony was based on the major chords of F< and C< - not that I knew that at the time: it simply sounded right to me.
Dad never attended church; he said he was an Anglican - but this was only nominal. He was not religiously inclined; to him it seemed an unnecessary pursuit. Mother had an unusual religious background. Her father Harry changed his religion several times. He and his wife Kate became Catholics in 1902; while living in Bunbury from 1915 to 1922, he was Anglican. Then he changed back to Catholicism. Every time he changed religion, his whole family had to change.
His daughters all became, and remained, Catholic mainly because of Kate. Kate became very devout, attended mass daily, and said that she hoped all her daughters would remain Catholic because she could not bear to die with them non-Catholic, because then she would never see them again. All my mother's brothers became non-Catholics apart from Leslie, who became a priest. The Rev. Dr. Leslie Rumble was regarded by all Catholics in Australia as a very great and learned priest, as he conducted a question and answer program on the radio directed at non-Catholics. These questions and answers were syndicated and appeared in the Catholic press. He published books under the title "Radio Replies", which had a circulation of four-million copies worldwide. It felt very grand to have such a celebrated uncle.
Every night my sister and I were taught to say our prayers. Mother also told us that we each had our own special guardian angel who looked after us. I found this a mixed blessing as I realised that my guardian angel at all times saw everything that I did, both good and bad. I felt that I could do nothing secretly. My guardian angel became the embodiment of a strong guilty conscience and this strengthened my feeling that people would always be critical of me and find me wanting.
Lent was a very special time remembered because for many weeks before Easter we were not allowed to eat lollies. Every week we received sixpence pocket money. Usually we went to Mrs Balla's lolly shop near the workshops. The owner's real name was Mrs Ballard but we all abbreviated it and referred to the shop as "Mrs Balla's". She had two trays - a penny tray, and a halfpenny tray and we could inspect these while trying to decide which sweets to buy. I would never go by myself, so mother took me. She did this even during Lent, and each week we continued to buy our lollies. However, we were not allowed to eat them, but placed them in a large glass jar in our bedrooms. Week by week, more sweets accumulated until at noon on Easter Saturday, the "fast" period was declared over and my sister and I had an orgy.
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2: CHILDHOOD - THE UNCRITICAL YEARS (1928 - 1941)
I remember two other religious events while I was in Yarloop. One week, our tiny church was paid a visit Rev. Dr Prendiville, the Archbishop in Perth. He arrived in grand, purple vestments. Mother said that everyone in turn had to line up and kiss his ring. I was a little afraid to approach this pompous looking individual, and I remember his extended, limp hand with podgy fingers as I kissed his ring. Even at my young age I felt that he was remote and distant. Had I had the vocabulary and understanding of an adult, I would have used the word "condescending".
The second event was my first confession and first communion at the age of seven. Only my first confession stands out as significant. Mother told me that seven was the age of reason. That now I was old enough to know right from wrong, and that I was responsible for what I did. When I did something wrong, I committed a sin, which displeased God. If I displeased Him enough I would not go to Heaven when I died, but would be sent to Hell. This was still the days of fire and brimstone sermons and occasionally a missionary Father conducted our Sunday service. I had heard about eternal damnation and the fires of hell, and, although it was all rather unreal for me, the thought of hell was very frightening. However, the Church said that if we were truly sorry for the wrong we had done, God would forgive us. We went to confession to confess our sins to the priest, who acted for God in forgiving us.
For someone as timid and as afraid of people as I was, the thought of confession was scary. As the time approached for my first confession I asked my mother what I should say. `Just say,' she said, `that you forgot to say your prayers, that you quarrelled with your sister and were disobedient to your parents.' So, when I went to my first confession, I started with the carefully rehearsed set words: `Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. . .' and then prattled off my three stock sins. Even when I went to live in Perth and became a teenager, I never had the courage to confess more than these three sins - except once.
In Perth, the confessional box had three compartments. The priest sat in the central one, with a parishioner in each of the other boxes. Those waiting for confession sat outside in the church pews. When I was next in line, I waited until the confessional door opened, and a parishioner came out. I then went in and knelt, facing the priest's compartment. A small shutter to his compartment was closed, and I could hear the mumbling of his voice as he heard the confession of the person on the other side. Invariably I came out in a cold sweat and my heart pounded. I was very afraid. Then I heard the priest close the slide on the other side and open my shutter, as he turned towards me. A small purple veil separated me from the priest and, trembling, I started with the words, `Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. . . ', followed by my standard sins. I felt relieved at the end when the priest told me to say three "Hail Mary's" for my penance and closed the shutter. By this time my brow was wet with perspiration and I felt that, as I came out, everyone would notice this. I went up to a front pew to say my penance, as there, people could only see my back.
- XI
In later years, my mother said that 1937 was one of the happiest years in her life. Although she disliked living in Yarloop she now had a car and enjoyed the emancipation that it gave. It was the last year that the family was together; the problems of World War II, which was to break out in September 1939, were barely on the horizon.
For my sister and me, it was the year of the Coronation of King George VI on 12 May. There were no direct broadcasts of events from England then, but recordings were sent out from Britain and played on the local radio. We all knew about the pageantry of the great coronation from newsreels shown at the pictures. Many children received books containing paper cut-out pictures from which they constructed three-dimensional cavalcades of the coronation procession complete with yeomen, horses, and carriages. It was very exciting and grand. As President of the Parents and Citizen's Association, Dad came to our school and handed everyone a medal to commemorate the coronation, mounted on a red, white and blue ribbon. We were very proud of this, although Joan was most annoyed when, in front of everyone, Dad handed her a medal with the words, `Here you are, fat one.'
49
MY EARLY EXPERIENCE OF CHURCH AND RELIGION
These were the days when our teachers asked us to open our atlases at the map of the world; proudly they pointed out the areas coloured pink. The British Empire was mighty, and spread all over the world. Australia was coloured pink, so was South Africa, Canada, India and other countries. We belonged to the mightiest of nations. We sang patriotic songs like Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory, and felt ourselves to be British as much as, or even more than "Australian". Western Australia had its roots set deeply in the British Isles, the Mother country. When Dad talked of "home", he meant Britain.
We spurned foreigners; Italians were "Dagos". My sister made friends with Nellie Riegert, for mutual support, because neither was well accepted by the other girls: Joan belonged to the "staff" while Nellie's family was German. After Mussolini's troops marched into Abyssinia in October 1935, children sang songs like:
Won't you come to Abyssinia, won't you come Bring your own ammunition and your gun. Mussolini will be there, and we'll blow him off his chair, Won't you come to Abyssinia won't you come.
The "White Australia" policy excluded Asians. We regarded those who were not British, and especially those who were not European, as inferior people. A few Japanese toys came on our local market. My parents impressed on me that the Japanese made only very cheap and shoddy articles; they were good imitators, but had no original, innovative ideas of their own. To me, Hong Kong was a remote, mysterious and sinister part of the Orient, peopled by slant-eyed Chinese with long drooping moustaches, clutching wicked-looking knives in their hands. We still lived under the shadow of "The Yellow Peril": If we were not careful, hordes of Asians would descend on us and take over our country. They had to be kept out.
Over the next few years the world, and our perception of it, was to change radically, but, at the family level, significant changes occurred in 1938. Nineteen thirty seven was the last year that Joan could attend the Yarloop primary school. There were no high schools near us. Very reluctantly, my parents enrolled her as a boarder at Santa Maria College in Attadale. Mother hated parting with Joan but, having the car, we could sometimes make the eighty-mile journey to visit her.
Towards the end of 1938 Millars' appointed Dad to the position of Mill Auditor and Inspector. He hated this position because it took him away from home. Taking the Baby Ford, he left home early Monday morning and spent the week inspecting mills. He returned late on Friday afternoon, tired and weary. Although this greatly affected my mother, it did not affect me. My father did not feature in my life: it made no difference whether he was present or absent. Nor did Joan's absence affect me. Although we had played together, and argued as siblings always do, I had never formed a close relationship with her. We each went our own way, and I was not to grow close to her until many years later after my mother died in 1988. So, neither my father, nor my sister play a significant part in the account of my early life.
In January 1939 we left Yarloop and settled in Perth, as Dad's work as auditor was now based on the Head Office. In one sense, I was not unhappy to leave the town. In 1939 I was due to move into the third classroom at Yarloop school. This was presided over by the headmaster. One day, coming out of my class, looking along the corridor towards the headmaster's classroom, I saw him wielding his cane against a boy that he had bent over his knee. The boy cried in pain at each stroke. Another day, three of the boys from my class decided to wag school during the first period after lunch. When they returned to school, my teacher reported this to the headmaster. He said they were to stay in the classroom at the end of the day. As we left the room, he arrived, holding his cane. All the boys, except the three miscreants, ran around to the other side of the school, where they could hide beneath the windows of our classroom and listen to what went on. I remember hearing the stern voice of the headmaster and then his order for the boys to bend over the desks in the front row. They each received six heavy strokes of the cane. I decided that I did not want to be a member of his class.
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2: CHILDHOOD - THE UNCRITICAL YEARS (1928 - 1941)
Before we left the town, the Parents and Citizen's Association and the staff of Millars' gave my parents a "sendoff" in the new hall. Most of the town came along. While my parents sat on the stage, various people presented them with gifts and made speeches, to which Dad responded. When he started to make his speech, I was running around outside the hall playing "chasey" with a few boys. Someone called out to me: "Your Dad's making a speech." So I came and stood at the door of the Hall, which was overflowing with people. I saw Dad on the stage speaking; this made me feel very embarrassed and I wished I was not there. When he finished, the people around me commented on what a wonderful speech he had made; this only embarrassed me more, and I was very happy when I could continue my game of chasey.
It was a hot, humid day late in January 1939 that we set out for Perth in our car. As usual, I sat in the front seat because of my propensity for car-sickness, while Mother and Joan sat in the back, laden with household goods. It was uncomfortable and humid, a storm breaking just as we reached Perth. Joan had left boarding school and transferred to the Sacred Heart High School in Highgate as a day scholar, while I was to go to the Christian Brothers' High School on the corner of Harold and Stirling streets, also in Highgate.
For the first year we lived in the centre flat in a group of three at 144 Walcott street on the corner of Longroyd Street, Mt. Lawley. Lance Mazel, whose parents owned a shoe store in the city, was a boy of my age and lived in one of the flats. He and I played make-believe battles with our tin soldiers, quite unconscious of the looming world war that would take Dad away from home until the end of 1945. At the age of eleven years I was completely unconscious of anything other than my own small world. I knew nothing of the rising nervous tension in my mother that became worse as the year progressed. She hated living in the small, cramped flat but Dad had a one year lease on it, and could not move to a house until early in 1940.
I was still extremely timid and would never go into a shop to ask for anything. During the year, when Dad was away auditing in the country, Mother became very ill with a bad attack of influenza and could not get out of bed. She asked me to go to Blennerhassett's corner store across the road for a pound of butter. `Here is one and twopence,' she said, `all you have to do is hand them the money and ask for a pound of butter.' The very thought of doing this terrified me. I struggled in my mind between plucking up the courage to ask for the butter, and refusing to go though I knew my mother was very sick. Finally I refused to go and, for a long time afterwards, felt very bad about it. That refusal even troubles me today, over sixty years later.
Blennerhassett's was typical of all corner stores in those days. There were no supermarkets: they lay in the future. Our corner store had a counter on two sides separating the customer from the goods that were on shelves at the back. Usually mother went to the store with a long list of goods. Mr Blennerhassett took his pencil from behind his ear and wrote each item down in his docket book. He then selected them from the shelves and added up the prices. Most people in his trade became very efficient at mental arithmetic and could add up long lists of figures very quickly. Dad was very good at this and sneered at anyone who did not have his prodigious proficiency.
When the war with Germany broke out in September, Mother's nerves became worse and she also developed a swollen and painful knee. She felt certain that the war would separate her from the husband on whom she depended so much. Dad's sister Marjorie paid us a disastrous visit from Malaya. She and Mother just did not get along and, to make matters worse, I got a severe dose of mumps just before she arrived, got in a bad mood, and then acted very badly, making it more difficult for everyone.
Years later, I read Mother's 1944 diary when she reflected on this period:
51
WE LEAVE YARLOOP AND SETTLE IN PERTH
I had no help and everything was driving me crazy - till I couldn't sleep at all. One night after midnight I got Vic to walk and walk the streets of Mt.Lawley. It was so painful, but little did Vic guess my thoughts - I was afraid of myself. No sleep made me feel I didn't want to live any more - so I walked and walked hoping for daylight to come. How I longed for Vic and my children alone. Marjorie did her best to smash my happiness. Maybe the war made everyone on edge. . . .
I wished so badly that Maudie was alive - the only one who really knew me and the terror life held for me. Why should Marjorie come, the one year when we were in a flat - money was low -health rotten, and the thought all the time, how long was I going to have Vic. I have always loved him so much, too much, which makes me afraid.
- XII
I was oblivious to all these problems. My problems centred on school. Christian Brothers' High School was just a mile from our home. For Christmas, 1938, my parents gave me and my sister each an adult-sized bicycle. I rode my bicycle to school every day, and came home for lunch. I remember being interviewed by the headmaster, Brother Keenan, before starting at the school. Mother took me down to meet him. He said to me:
`Can you do gazinters? You can't come to this school unless you can do gazinters.' Perplexed, I answered `No.' `I'm sure you can. You know, two gazinter four, three gazinter nine.'
He seemed kind, and had a sense of humour, but I was soon to experience another aspect of him. I entered the last year of primary school. Our classroom was large and held the last two primary years. Soon after I started school, our teacher announced that at noon, the whole school was to assemble in our room. The bigger boys from higher classes arrived and stood around the walls. Then the headmaster appeared with three big boys in long trousers who were made to stand at the front. Apparently they had done something dreadful. I thought it was to do with running in the street in their long trousers, but that could not have been right. Brother Keenan then produced a heavy strap and told the boys to bend over, one by one. He thrashed each of them on the buttocks until they cried. It was supposed to be a lesson to us all, but about what, I did not know. All I knew was that I had dreaded going into the headmaster's class at Yarloop because I had seen him wield his cane. Now I was in a school where the headmaster wielded a strap.
Soon I discovered that every Brother had a strap and used it frequently. Most straps were about 45 to 60 cm long, 3 to 4 cm wide and 2 to 3 cm thick. They were heavy because, the boys said, they comprised a strip of lead encased in leather, but I did not know if this were true. All bad behaviour was cured with the strap. If a boy was caught throwing a rubber at another boy in class, he received the strap. The Brothers "corrected" our homework every morning with the strap. Each night we were given homework to do on four or five different topics. Next morning, we exchanged homework books with our neighbour and each marked the other's work, as the teacher told us the correct answers. Woe betide any pair of boys who colluded to minimise the number of wrong answers. If we only got one wrong we could remain in our seats, but if there was more than one wrong, we had to line up around the walls of the room.
One by one the boys then went up to the teacher and announced how many they got wrong. If they got two wrong, they received one stroke of the strap, if three were wrong, they received two strokes, and so on. Boys held out their arms without bending the elbow, palm uppermost. The teacher raised his strap and brought it down with as much force as he could muster on the palm, often aiming for the ball of the thumb. A searing, burning pain shot through the hand and the palm went numb. Successive strokes were administered on alternate hands until the boy returned to his seat, eyes sometimes brimming with tears, to nurse his hands between his thighs or under his armpits. It was
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2: CHILDHOOD - THE UNCRITICAL YEARS (1928 - 1941)
considered unmanly to actually cry. The exercise was carried out with military precision: if a boy was to receive more than one stroke, after the first stroke he was required to lower that hand and immediately turn and hold out the other hand. Failure to do so on command meant greater punishment. The teacher might alter the blow so that it landed along the wrist, which was more painful, or the boy might receive an extra stroke.
Some teachers seemed to enjoy giving the strap. I remember one Brother who walked around the classroom to check on boys' work. If he thought a boy was not doing well, he would stop, take hold of the boy's hand by the fingers and then start asking the boy questions about his work while bringing his strap down with moderate strength on the ball of the thumb, time and time again. At each stroke, the boy winced, often drawing in his breath in mid-sentence if trying to answer a question. The Brother smiled and finally raised his strap high and brought it down, full force, for one last very painful blow. The other boys observed this ritual with fascinated, frightened glee. Next time it could be them.
Some boys received the strap every day. I was already a good student and, even in 1939, did one to two hours' homework each week night, so I rarely got the strap. However, the thought of it terrified me. Whenever I got a cold and stayed home from school, I malingered for as long as possible, delaying the day of my return. I never told my mother that the Brothers gave the strap. I felt too ashamed to do so. It was demeaning, and was not something to be talked about. However, mother, recognised my fear of school and of people, because I had inherited her fears, and she was sympathetic. She often allowed me to malinger but said, `If you say you are sick, then you must stay in bed.' I did so, and used the opportunity to learn to study for myself. I loved most of my school subjects and enjoyed study.
My attitude to school - as opposed to education - was best summed up by something I stamped on the back of my school weekly record book in 1941. I had a rubber stamp comprising individual letters that could be made up into any phrase. On the back of my book I stamped the words from a famous poem:
The strap was one way to keep the students docile and regimented in their way of life. Whether it was of any educational value was doubtful, but it was an authoritative system in keeping with the authority of the Church. In later years, when I was at the University, one of my former teachers said to me: `Why is it that all our boys get such high marks in their final public exams, but so many go on to fail at their university studies?' He did not like my reply: `Because you impose external discipline on them. When they reach the freedom of the university, they don't know how to handle it. School did not teach them internal discipline.'
For the first time my school required me to wear a uniform, complete with school badge, and with pith helmet in the summer. The school day was regulated around religious practice. At the first period we rose when the teacher came in, and recited prayers. This was repeated every hour. At noon, we stood to recite the Angelus and then had a period of "Christian Doctrine". In the earlier years, this meant learning the catechism by rote. Our catechism was in a little red book and comprised a summary of the principles of the Catholic religion in question and answer form. It mattered not whether we understood the principles, provided we knew the answers word for word. Not to know why God so loved Mankind was to invite the "loving" use of the strap. For a sensitive boy with an enquiring mind, nothing could be more calculated to turn me off religion. At the time I did not realise this and did not question why the practice of my religion meant so little to me.
53
CHRISTIAN BROTHERS' HIGH SCHOOL, HIGHGATE
In 1939 I had a short reprieve from the possibility of getting the strap: My teachers tried to have me change from writing with my left hand to my right hand. Using my left hand rather than my right had always come naturally to me. My sister was also left-handed, though both our parents were right-handed. Now, for several months, the school decreed that I must write only with my right hand. With much difficulty I tried doing this, but no one could read my writing. The teachers could not read it, nor could my neighbour when trying to check my homework. As it could not be read, it could not be marked wrong, so never did I have to line up around the wall. Eventually the school gave up their attempt to change me, and allowed me to revert to using my left hand.
I very much enjoyed being part of the school choir. Possessing a good boy-soprano voice, I soon learnt to sing Latin High Masses and the secular songs we learnt for the annual school concert. I was to take part in these for the next three years, once or twice singing at the concert with five other boys. The program dubbed the item, "Select Voices". In the third year of high school my voice broke, and finally I dropped out of the choir.
In high school we had weekly elocution classes from Lilly Kavanaugh. For some reason, we all knew her as "Shanghai Lil". I developed a good, clear voice and sometimes the school selected me to make announcements at the annual concert. We held these concerts at His Majesty's Theatre on the corner of Hay and King Streets in central Perth. I remember standing very nervously in the wings with one of my teachers directly behind me. At the right moment he whispered in my ear - `Right, You're on.' Out I went on to the stage so dazzled by the footlights and a spotlight that it was difficult to see the audience. Then, in as clear a voice as I could muster, I announced the next item - maybe a display of gymnastics. I waited on stage to introduce each segment of the item. Before the event I always felt very afraid but, once on the stage, my nerves disappeared. I dreaded the moment of action but, once into it, I saw it through. I could never have guessed at the age of twelve or thirteen that my professional career would be that of a university lecturer.
In my third year of high school a contest was held for the "The Principal's Cup in Public Speaking." Given the option, I would not have taken part, but I was not given the option. The school told me I was a competitor, and that I had to prepare a short speech. By this time the war was well in progress
1
and I decided to address the theme : "Money is produced in times of war. Why can't it be produced in times of peace for peaceful objects?" It was a naive speech, but I delivered it as best I could, and discovered that its theme was much more serious that those of my competitors. To my surprise the Principal awarded me the cup. It was the only cup I ever received.
I greatly respected my science teacher, Brother Hodda -although he gave the strap like all the other Brothers. He increased my interest in mathematics, in chemistry and in physics. I remember him saying:
When you want to learn something, use your hands to write it down; use your eyes to look at what you are writing; use your voice to say it out aloud; use your ears to listen to what you are saying. Use all your senses so that your thoughts are not distracted, and then use your thoughts to understand what you are learning, and to slot it into place beside other things you already know.
It was good advice.
1See Appendix A, page 652 for the text of the speech
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2: CHILDHOOD - THE UNCRITICAL YEARS (1928 - 1941)
- XIII
It was in January 1940 that Dad found a house to let at 18 Woodroyd Street, Mt. Lawley. We were all very thankful to move out of the flat and into this house, only one street away. It had two bedrooms and a back veranda. It was not long before Dad arranged for part of the veranda to be enclosed and converted to a sleepout. This became my bedroom. The "sleepout" was a convenient way of adding an extra room to a house. Most houses were built with wide verandas to protect them from the hot summer sun. It was then a relatively inexpensive alteration to enclose a veranda by using wood or other panelling to a height of about three feet, and then to install a set of glass louvred or sliding windows. I had sliding windows, and found my new bedroom very comfortable.
Although not as large, the house was an improvement on our Yarloop home. The electricity was supplied by the SEC - the State Electricity Commission -unlike the electricity at Yarloop that came from a dynamo powered by the workshops steam engine and which was shut down at ten o'clock each night. The kitchen had both a wood stove and a gas stove, but there was no hot water. The bathroom contained a "chip" bath-heater for which we had so longed when in Yarloop.
The lavatory was connected to a deep sewerage system but was still located in a little brick house in the garden. In the days of pan lavatories, these were always placed in the garden both for the convenience of the nightman, and for reasons of health. When the sewerage system appeared, many old lavatories were converted; the custom of building them in outside buildings persisted for some years. Most city homes built in the 1940's had internal “toilets”, as they gradually became known, but our house was of 1920's vintage. Flush lavatories contained a cement cistern filled with water, placed on wooden rafters about five or six feet from the ground above the pedestal. A chain with a metal handle hung from the cistern and, after going to the toilet, one “pulled the chain” to flush the toilet. The phrase “pull the chain” lingered with many people for years after this system was replaced by low-level cisterns, operated by lever or button.
Now that we lived further away from Blennerhassetts corner store, Mother visited them to place her order, and later in the day they delivered the goods to our home. The milkman delivered milk, the baker and the iceman delivered their wares and, twice a day, the postman delivered letters. He rode a bicycle and, as he placed a letter in the letter box, he blew a whistle. A few houses had refrigerators, but most did not. Our house had an ice-chest. This comprised an upper compartment into which large blocks of ice were placed. The lower compartment had two shelves to store perishable food. An outlet pipe drained away the melted ice, which was collected either in a container placed under the chest, or was allowed to soak into the ground beneath the house by drilling a hole in the wooden floorboards and placing a funnel in the hole to collect the drips. All floors were constructed of interlocking “tongue-and-groove” wooden boards.
I enjoyed life in my sleepout. In 1940 I started studies in Chemistry and Physics and became fascinated with both these new subjects. My interest in electricity grew and, through lack of care and knowledge, I gave myself a severe electric shock from the 250-volt supply at home. I did not tell my parents about this, but it gave me a very healthy respect for electricity. I purchased a small microscope and by experiment found how to add an additional lens to make it even more powerful. With great curiosity I explored leaves, ants, spiders and sundry bugs as a new world opened to me. Mother encouraged me to start a scrap book and I cut out pictures of fighter and bomber aircraft and stuck them in my book. In Yarloop, we rarely saw aircraft; it was exciting to be in Perth and occasionally see one flying overhead.
This was the year that I discovered comic books and looked forward to each monthly edition of Buck Rogers, who rocketed from planet to planet in his deadly fight against Ming the Merciless. I also started reading novels and especially remember Ballantine's Coral Island and the sequel The Gorilla Hunters. Soon, I had discovered the Biggles books by W.E. Johns, being tales of adventure in the air during and immediately after World War I. I read Biggles Flies West and the four books in The
55
WE MOVE TO WOODROYD STREET: MY INTEREST IN SCIENCE & READING
Biggles Omnibus. Over the next two years I added such books as Bringing Down the Air-Pirates by
J.F.C. Westerman to my collection. I also read Herbert Strang's book, A Thousand Miles an Hour. It seemed incredible that anything might one day travel at that speed. Most of these hardcovered books cost two shillings and six pence and could be found in Boans book department. I had a bookcase in my sleepout and classified, numbered and arranged every book neatly on the shelf. Already I was developing a preference for organisation and precision in what I did.
I remained inward-looking and solitary; I was afraid to visit the home of any other boys at school, and made no close friends. My mother still kept me neatly dressed and my hair, tidy. This earned me the nickname Handsome at school, and I was known by no other name. I detested it. My mother now had no reason to deplore the other people in our street and encouraged me to make friends with Maurice Humbert across the road, and with Gerard Leahy who lived three doors from me. His family kept fowls in the yard and had a grass tennis court. I was very reluctant to visit them but did so when forced into it by Mother. I was still very shy of people and this shyness was to become more intense over the next few years.
It was in 1940 that we sold our Baby Ford as Millars supplied Dad with a single-seater Dodge for his country work. In that year Dad wanted to be involved in the war. He joined the 11th Battalion local Militia and trained in several camps, but was restless. Eventually, he joined the Royal Air Force and went overseas. This had little affect on me, but was devastating to mother. She developed a rash on her hands and arms, but she said it was from the use of detergents when washing the dishes. With reference to April 1941, she wrote in her diary:
Vic was getting very restless with this war on -the Militia was not what he wanted I knew he was longing to go overseas again. I could quite understand, as I would love to if I were a man. His mind was on the war and he was interested in nothing else. But he was so wrapped up in himself, I'm sure he didn't understand the horror that this war meant to me.
Dad saw an advertisement in the West Australian newspaper calling for men aged 32 to 50 to work for the R.A.F in administrative positions overseas. He applied, and went for an interview. Mother wrote in her diary:
edge. The strain was awful -how many more days was I to have Vic - the one
When the telegram came for him he was in camp. I opened it and went cold all over and dead like a stone. I was powerless to move. . . When he came home, I said, "It has come". I could have burst into tears but the joy and smile on his face - another adventure in his life.
Dad caught the train to Sydney on 17 May 1941 after a mad rush of making arrangements and packing. Mother continued her diary:
I said goodbye to Vic in my bedroom as Vic does not like public farewells. He did not even kiss Joan, or say goodbye to Joan or John on the station. Vic has always been so wrapped up in the big things of life, he forgets the little things. Joan was most hurt, so was I because he should have thought of his children's feelings. I have learnt to understand Vic so well but at times I have been awfully hurt by his ways, but my love for him has been indescribable.
While Joan felt hurt, I did not. I simply accepted his departure and looked forward to receiving something that I had asked him to buy for me in Sydney: I wanted a much more powerful microscope. It arrived in an exciting box, much larger than the box containing my old microscope. When I
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2: CHILDHOOD - THE UNCRITICAL YEARS (1928 - 1941)
opened it, I found it full of useless accessories, while the microscope itself was inferior to the one I already had. I was bitterly disappointed but hid this from Mother, because I knew that Dad had done his best. It was simply that he had never taken enough interest in me or my microscope to understand what I really wanted. It was typical of me at the age of thirteen, and of my lack of any meaningful relationship with Dad, that I should be more disappointed in the microscope than I was in losing my father. I had no foreboding of the future, as did Mother.
- XIV
As a child I experienced the normal range of ailments: coughs, colds, bilious attacks, croup, chicken pox, mumps and measles. At times I was a real trial to my mother as I depended on her so much; when very young, I screamed whenever she left me. Whether this extreme dependence arose from the trauma of my operation I do not know. In January 1930 she found it difficult to play tennis because, whenever she left me to go on the court, I screamed. A few weeks later, she went with friends to Harvey weir for a swim; I screamed until she came out. Often I screamed at night, and she took me into bed with her. In her diary she wrote:
I do so long for Jack to be two years older. He does cry so much for me and won't leave me for anyone. It sounds very nice when he is so fond of me but I do want a rest sometimes. If only he adores me so much when he is a man, as he does now but the question is "will he".
This dependence continued for a long time and transformed itself into an intense fear of other people. I shall never know the true reason for this. Nor will I ever know how this related to the overwhelming feeling of possession by my mother that I developed as a teenager and from which I felt I could never escape.
Whenever an accident occurred, I seemed the one involved. At the age of four I fell off a bed and broke my collar bone clean through. When the doctor suggested he set it without anaesthetic, my mother almost fainted. In 1936, at the age of eight, we had a holiday at Rottnest Island in one of the bungalows. My Aunty Phyl and her family, and Uncle Horace in his family were in adjacent bungalows. One evening at dusk my cousins and I were playing at the end of the jetty, getting in and out of a small rowing boat tethered to the jetty. As I went to step into the boat, someone purposefully pushed it out. I plunged into the water and went under. On the shore Mother heard someone call out, `A young boy has just fallen off the end of the jetty into the water!' `I bet it is Jack,' she immediately thought. Soon someone fished me out and Mother took me home to change into dry clothes.
Four other incidents occurred when I was eight. We came to Perth for a holiday and my grandfather visited us, giving me a kiss with his prickly moustache. After the holiday, on the train trip home, I developed chicken pox. On reaching Yarloop we discovered that the whole school had gone down with it while we were away. I gave the chicken pox to Grandfather at the age of seventy-two, and he was quite ill.
The second incident related to a visit to the dentist, but also raised for me the question of values and the perception of my parents. When I was very young, I regarded my parents as all-powerful, all-knowing, and able to do everything. They inculcated in me very strict ideas of honesty and truthfulness, and I tried to emulate them in this. They were my model, and I regarded them as perfect. This changed when I was eight years of age.
Almost all children living in the country suffered from bad teeth - dental decay was very common. Mother said it was "all the iron in the water." Not surprisingly, the time came when one of my back teeth needed extracting. Knowing that I would probably have a tantrum over this, Mother asked my respected school teacher, Miss Mavis Eastlake, to come with us to the dentist in Harvey, where I would have the tooth out. She hoped that, with my school teacher present, I would be cooperative. I
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DAD GOES TO THE WAR. MY ACCIDENTS AND ILLNESSES
was terrified by the prospect. When we reached the dentist, I put on a such a show of histrionics that nobody could do anything with me. I returned home with my tooth intact.
My parents then decided that the only way to overcome the problem was to take me to the local hospital, give me a "whiff," as my mother called it, and have the tooth out under anaesthetic. I was scared, and objected.
`It will be all right,' assured my parents, `The whiff is nothing. It has a nice smell of lemons and oranges, and you will feel nothing.'
So I submitted. When the doctor placed the mask over my face and started administering the chloroform, the smell was ghastly and, in the few seconds before I went under, I cried out inwardly to myself: `They lied, they lied'. When I recovered, the tooth was gone, but so was my trust in my parents. I could never overcome the feeling that my perfect parents had lied to me, and could never be trusted again. They were not perfect. This was a bitter blow, and I remember the feeling to this day.
One day my teacher planned a picnic-hike for the class. We set off along the railway line that ran to Nanga Brook and seemed to walk for miles and miles. On the way home, when we reached the outskirts of the town, my ankles became so sore that I dropped behind the others. As we were in sight of the houses, my teacher let me walk more slowly and find my own way home. When the others were out of sight, I dropped down on all fours and crawled the rest of the way home on my hands and knees because it was too painful to walk. Mother worried when I was late returning home, as it was dusk when I arrived. This was an extreme example of something that often troubled me: I had very flat feet with virtually no instep; standing or walking for any length of time was painful.
We travelled to Perth and visited a physiotherapist; she confirmed a weakness in my ankles, gave me exercises to do, and said that I should not play active sport. When we settled in Perth in the following year, I gave this as an excuse for not playing sport at school. If the truth be known, I greatly feared playing. I could not throw a ball overarm, so would be jeered at if I played cricket. The contact sport of football frightened me. Apart from swimming, these were the only sports then available to school boys, so it was very convenient that I had a certificate from the physiotherapist that excused me from participation.
Occasionally the school went swimming at Crawley Baths in Mounts Bay Road. These have long been demolished. All the boys marched from the school, clutching their bathers and a towel, to board three trams waiting for us in Beaufort Street. These trams took us to the baths, where we practised competitive swimming. It seemed that all sport was competitive; the aim was always to beat someone. Taking part in swimming races involved first diving into the water. Although I could swim, I would not dive because it frightened me, so I pretended that I could not swim and paddled around in shallow water.
It was a mistake not to take part in school sport. Consequently, there were many lessons in life that I did not learn. It set me apart from the others, making it more difficult for me to form friendships. On school sports days, while the other boys enjoyed their active games, I had to do school work in the classroom with boys who were temporarily unwell and excused from sport.
I always had difficulty in reading the blackboard at Yarloop school, so usually sat in the front row. In 1938, mother took me to see an eye doctor. He declared that I had very severe astigmatism and should have been wearing glasses since I was five years old. Soon I was fitted with a pair of tortoiseshell glasses.
- XV
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2: CHILDHOOD - THE UNCRITICAL YEARS (1928 - 1941)
It would be wrong to conclude a chapter on my childhood without introducing the subject of food. Many of our meals were formal, taken with our parents. From an early age they taught us impeccable table manners: the correct way to hold and use a knife and fork; whether the spoon should be drawn towards or away from us when taking soup; the need to place our knife and fork together when finishing the meal to indicate to others that we had finished and that our plates could be removed. They constantly reminded us to sit up straight on the chair and not to slump.
Sometimes our meal would be informal. We all enjoyed sitting around the open fire on a Sunday winter's night, toasting-fork in hand, toasting pieces of bread on which we spread jam or honey. In Yarloop, the open fire was magnificent because sometimes Dad put a whole railway sleeper on it. It then burnt all day and all night, and would still be burning next morning. Sometimes after the meal, we lay on our stomachs, building make-believe pictures in the flames, or listening to Mother read us a story.
The food we had as children lacked the variety that we have today. It was good, plain and wholesome. Mother always cooked a roast for Saturday lunch. It was either roast lamb with mint sauce, or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. She prided herself on her Yorkshire pudding: `I make the real Yorkshire pudding,' she would say, implying that all the other women made an inferior or non genuine article. `I learnt it from my Mother.' This gave it immediate authority.
We watched Mother basting the roast on the Metters wood stove. Joan and I stood around hoping she would cut off a "knuckle" and give it to us, hot, on a fork. There were always leftovers from the roast. Sometimes she sliced and reheated the meat, with rich brown gravy and roast potatoes. More often she minced the meat and made it into potato pie. We seldom had chicken because it was expensive, but there was plenty of rabbit. Lamp chops, braised steak, beef stew, and Irish stew with dumplings, these were our staple diet. I was always a finicky eater, did not like onions and would not touch meat that had a trace of fat on it. I would only eat a few vegetables.
Everything was very plain, without much variety, and quite predictable. Sometimes we had "toad-in-the-hole" - sausages cooked in a batter mixture, with the sausages popping up through the batter. We also liked steak and kidney pie. We started using lamb's kidney, but we all liked the flavour so much that we changed to ox kidney, which was stronger. I do not remember having lamb's fry and bacon until I was a teenager.
One of my favourite dishes was not steak and kidney pie, but steak and kidney pudding. Mother cooked this in a porcelain bowl standing in a big saucepan of water. It would take about five hours for all the juices to be absorbed into the suet. It came out rich, brown, and very tasty.
There is a family story from a time many years later, when we were living in Currie Hall, a university student residence. A young Vietnamese student, Vu Van Van, who had almost become part of the family, asked me what was my favourite meal. I said `Steak and Kidney pudding.' He had never heard of it, so we said we would make it for him one day. He duly came to the meal and consumed the steak and kidney. Obviously he did not like it, as it was so far removed from his own Vietnamese diet. When asked how he enjoyed it, he tried hard to say something that was polite. He would not say he did not like it, because that would be disrespectful. So he said: `I can eat anything.'
In Yarloop, we had English fillet -smoked fish - about once a week, served with mashed potatoes. We dobbed the fish with butter. Mother made salmon rissoles with tinned salmon, using rice as a base. Boiled eggs, scrambled eggs on toast, poached eggs were all on the menu. Sometimes on Sunday morning we had bacon and eggs -this was enjoyed by everyone. We always followed this with toast and marmalade - a favourite of my Father's.
In winter, steamed puddings featured on the dessert list. Sometimes we had a steamed pudding with golden syrup poured over it. Some of the best puddings were made with suet -which, nowadays, is
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THE FOOD WE ATE AS CHILDREN
almost impossible to obtain from the butcher. Spotted Dog, sometimes called Spotted Dick, was a favourite. It comprised a suet pudding with sultanas in it, served piping hot. When we were given our slice, we sprinkled sugar on it. Then there was a luscious date pudding, also based on suet.
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2: CHILDHOOD - THE UNCRITICAL YEARS (1928 - 1941)
This was especially tasty the following day when we cut cold slices and spread them with butter. I could never have enough. Occasionally we had roly poly pudding.
My Father delighted in telling the story of the two old bachelors who shared a house together. By chance a friend dropped in at dinner time, and obviously wanted to stay for the meal. When it came to dessert, they produced a roly poly pudding. Said one old bachelor to the visitor: `Do you like ends? No? Well, then, me and me mate does.' Whereupon, with a glint in his eye, he cut the roly poly clean across the centre into two equal "ends", took one himself, and gave the other to his mate. Dad always roared with laughter at this. Whenever anything resembling an old fashioned roly poly appeared on the table, he would turn to one member of the family and say: `Do you like ends?'
The roly poly pudding is out of fashion today. As I remember, it was another suet based pudding. Mother shredded the suet and mixed it with flour, salt and baking powder. Adding a little water, she rolled it out like a pastry, about a quarter of an inch thick. Next she spread it with raspberry jam, rolled it up like a Swiss roll, and sealed the ends. Finally she wrapped it in a floured cloth, and boiled it for an hour in a cauldron, or large saucepan of water. By the time it came out of the pot and the cloth was removed, it had developed a whitish outer skin. Here and there, the raspberry jam oozed out. Much to my mother's disgust and indignation, Dad always referred to it as "boiled baby," which description, when I look back over the years, was most apt. The description did not stop us from enjoying it.
Bread and butter custards, treacle tarts made with golden syrup, jam tarts, apple pies, jellies, junkets, blancmanges, and - on party occasions - trifles, were standard. Sometimes we had stewed apple and custard. Mother was very particular about her custard -she did not use custard powder, which produced a bright yellow custard. She made an egg custard of her own. This was the "proper" way to make custard, and there was always the implication that those who did not make it this way were in some way inferior. Tinned fruit - apricots and peaches, in particular, - were popular but were not often served because of the cost. There was also "cup-of-tea" plum pudding, the name referring to one of the ingredients.
Mother was never very good at making sponges: they would rarely "rise" to her satisfaction. Butter sponges were her specialty, and often had a chocolate icing on top and a creamy butter icing in the middle. When she made this, we stood around hoping we would get a "butterball." This was a dob of butter that we mixed with sugar, and rolled into a ball.
In very early childhood for breakfast we had bread and milk, or milk arrowroot biscuits soaked in milk - both with sugar on top. Later, we graduated to "Weeties" - a West Australian made cereal. It was only years later that "Kellogs" took over. We drank milk, glasses of water and sometimes raspberry cordial or lemon barley water. Aerated, carbonated drinks, such as lemonade, were reserved for very special occasions as they were expensive.
Our childhood may have been lived during the depression years, but never were we hungry, nor did we consciously go without the essentials of life - but we were the lucky ones. I remember once having tea in our back garden at Yarloop. I had my eye on a luscious, mouth-watering raspberry jam tart mother had made, when a tramp - an itinerant vagrant - looked over the fence: `I'm hungry. Have you got anything to eat, Missus?' Mother handed him the entire jam tart. I almost cried.
The departure of my father overseas when I was thirteen years of age marks a fitting place to end the account of childhood. My childhood experiences set the pattern for my life. Soon I was to assume greater responsibilities and face the slow and difficult task of surmounting my many fears. I was also to discover that youth was much more complex than childhood.