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

Spiked Echidna.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whistling in the dark: Frank Duveneck.

The Phantom’s Cave.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This method of initiating new members continued for one whole summer, until a local girl..Cyglinda..suddenly turned up uninvited after crawling down one of the many hidden tunnels under the wild artichoke fronds. Cyglinda was a stout, plump girl with one of the loudest voices heard on a girl.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Potts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bruce.

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

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

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

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

We would sometimes mock his mother’s call-name for Bruce, which was ; “Brroosay” when she called for him to come from his shed when we visited him..” Brroosay! ..Brroosay!” she’d call..but he didn’t mind, as he was always an independent sort of kid who didn’t rely on peer-group approval. He wasn’t one to mince words or grumble and he would calmly take up a challenge without fear or favour, like one rare time Bruce was with our group near the railway crossing which we used sit and write down car number plates as they slowed to cross the railway line. In a moment of boredom as no cars were to be seen, Adam Jablonskis dared anyone to crawl under the shallow culvert under the railway line and stay there as the train ran over the top..an offer of a florin coin was the bet…of course none of us had the nerve..it was a shallow ditch under the rail line and our imagination told us that anything could happen…the rails could at that very moment collapse, never mind they had been there for so many years…but that was it, Hans argued..they had been there for so long they could collapse at any time!…after this to-and-froing, when the train whistle could be heard approaching, Bruce, without a word, grabbed the florin coin from Adam’s hand and deftly slipped under the rails…of course, nothing happened except I wouldn’t be surprised if the train driver didn’t wonder at what a small group of kids were doing staring in wide-eyed wonder at the wheels as the train went past.. I suspect he and our parents would have a heart attack if they knew.

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

Goya..”Boys playing at soldiers”.

Len.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kids, cultural differences and Willy Wilson’s ferrets.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I will”…

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

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

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

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

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

The bitza races…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wrote this yarn up a long time ago, this is one of those classic “blow up the dunny” yarns that were more prevalent in the days of “knock-about” working camps and such. I doubt the modern facilities used on outback work camps would need such desperate action (thank you Unions!)….but I remember such site dunnys when at distant building jobs.

Precious.

Precious was a “travelling stores requisitioner and supplier” for a large mineral drilling company .  He was called “Precious” because of his penchant for slapping on the after-shave and a Dandy for the attire…In town it would be “Fletcher Jones” and Julius Marlow..out back it was strictly R.M.Williams, right down to the Cuban heels..and always particular about things right down to the hair-oil.

Back in my youth, when a bad case of industrial diarrhea forced me from the building industry for a short break, I took a job with that drilling supply company, building specialized shipping crates for machinery and drilling equipment…it was a dumb job, just what I wanted…didn’t have to think much, and we could play “shoot-‘em-up” target practice with the air-compressed nail gun (they didn’t have safety locks those days)…one of the shipping clerks would make a dash past the timber racks and I’d try and get him with the “rat,tat,tat” nail gun…great fun!

Come smoko, a group would gather and yarn about life and things..you know..the usual crap . One of the sales reps used to work on the rigs and one day he told about this chap nick-named “Precious”…I’ll relate it to you as best I remember he told us .

Doug Orchard’s (Orchies) crew had set up camp on a grid-line somewhere way out west of Longreach in Qld’ in January..Lethargy usually sets in by that month in Summer, due to the heat and isolation from all forms of civilized discipline.

When the camp was first set up, Doug discovered an old, dry bore hole about fifty yards from the camp.

“This” he thought “will do for a dunny-hole and will save me from setting up and drilling one”.

He asked the “cocky” about using the old bore hole and the farmer shrugged and said; “Sure, why not?” So the rickety site dunny was erected over the old bore hole. This toilet hadn’t a roof because of the horrors of being trapped in such a sweat box under an unforgiving sun with a bad …..bad conscience (shall we say?).

It was January and a Sunday and it was hot so that most of the team were sitting outside under the mess-van annex in canvas deck chairs having a cold beer. There were a couple of dogs lolling about there too.

Who should turn up but “Precious”…Actually , they could see someone approaching by the thin streak of dust rising over the dirt road on the distant plain rising to the low plateau on which they were camped.

“A fiver it’s Precious” one of the men spoke languidly to no-one in particular.

“You’re on”..replied Bob.

When Precious stepped out of the truck, a fiver changed hands with a fatalistic sigh from Bob.

“Hello chaps” greeted Precious, without a hair out of place and a smile on his face.

“ ‘day Precious”..they replied and greetings were exchanged in monosyllabic words as only can be understood by those who have spent time in the outback and mixed with the many and complex eccentrics that inhabit those remote parts…and it is said that an open mouth only attracts flies.

Precious settled down in an empty chair and partook of a nice cool beer…only he drank from a glass..his own..After a short interval of idle chatting, he indicated he wanted to use “the conveniences” (his words).

“Down by the big tree” Bob pointed with his chin.

“Flamin’ long hike” exclaimed Precious.

Bob shrugged and flicked the ash from his cigarette.

After returning from the dunny. Precious complained ,with a screwed-up nose ;

“ I can see why you’re so far from that dunny!.. Geez, fellahs, it’s a bit on the nose!”

“It don’t bother us, Precious” said Bob.

“No..I s’pose it wouldn’t” said Precious with a sigh “anyway , I’ll do you a favour and burn it out….er..where’s some petrol?”

One of the men motioned to some five gallon drums in the shade of a lean-to. Precious doffed his Akubra, took one of the drums and headed down to the toilet.

As Precious told his story later…”A man’s a fool. I’ll tell you what happened..I emptied the whole drum down that hole..say; How deep is it?…you don’t say…well, no wonder I didn’t hear it splash on the bottom. Well, after I’d emptied the drum, I lit a match and threw it down..nothing happened (it musta blew out before it got deep enough) I tried again and still nothing, so I got a few bits of toilet paper, lit them and dropped them down and stepped back…still nothing!!??..Well, I don’t know what made me do it, I shoulda’ known better..but I gingerly leant out over that hole and looked down…and suddenly..god! it was frightening .”

Doug, was up at the rig and arrived at the mess van as Precious was walking down to the dunny with the drum of petrol. The boys told him what precious was up to. He just grunted..”Good luck to him” he thought and sat down to a beer with the other blokes.

“A fiver says he’ll blow himself up”

“You’re on” said Bob.

He’d only a couple of draws on his beer when suddenly.. and it’s strange how, at a distance, the action happens before the sound reaches you..like a person chopping wood with an axe, and you can see the axe fall before the “chop” sound reaches you.

They saw Precious’ Akubra hat flip, spinning away out the top of the dunny like a frisbee with bits of snowy stuff floating with it, then the ‘WHOOMPH” of the explosion and Precious crashed out of that dunny, ‘swimming’ sort of out of the smoke and coughing heavily. Bob reached into his pocket and gave over the fiver…Doug, not to miss a chance at dry humour asked ; “Baked beans for tea again tonight , Bob?”

The sales rep said they all just sat there like they were the audience in a theatre watching a show. Precious came stumbling back shaking his head and cursing..when he got closer, they could see bits of toilet paper and..stuff..stuck all over his face…”an’ his eyebrows were all burnt off”

“You’re gonna have to change your after-shave, precious.” Bob said, shaking his head.

Anyway, that’s why you’d know Precious if’n you met him…He’d probably tell you his tale if you showed curiosity in his complexion.

He’s a bit nervous around petrol these days, and even traded in his old petrol driven truck he swore by and bought a diesel.. “Better mileage” is what he says.