Pointless Stories

Pointless Stories: Memoirs of an Albany Boy By Graham Lees Dedication: For Steve Foreword Before you start reading these stories, it might be a good idea if I tell you that this is a work of fiction. Most of the things that are recorded here are very loosely based on events that really did happen, but not necessarily in the way I have depicted or to the characters involved, except me. Before you get hot under the collar and accuse me of telling spare ribs, remember this! After all, Napoleon Bonaparte is credited with saying “What is history but a fable agreed upon?” You will note that I seldom come out of it smelling of anything less than roses! Naturally this wasn’t really the case but when I did something stupid or made an arse of myself, I have attributed it to one of the other characters. Let’s face it, I am hardly likely to go out of my way to make myself look silly, am I? Some of the characters are completely figments of my imagination. Some have been given different names. I do have a brother and a sister who are very unlike me in nearly every way and did not necessarily behave in the way I have depicted. Sometimes they did, though! One or two of the events are completely made up and I don’t know that they ever happened to anyone, anywhere, ever. Albany, however, does exist, so do all the geographical features mentioned. And I really did have a Ford Anglia . . . Albany First, let’s get one thing straight! The town’s name is Albany! Not Orlbany like the Poms say, or Arlbany, as North Americans call it. In fact, if you were trying to pass yourself off as a local, you would pronounce it Owl-bany. But even a trained actor have to do a lot of homework to succeed! Albany is in Western Australia, right down the bottom on that little rounded bit that other Sandgropers call “The Buttock of Australia”. Yeah, that bit! The town nestles between two small hills, grandly called Mount Clarence and Mount Melville. They’re not really mountains at all, though. Albany is too insignificant to have real mountains so it got Clarence and Melville instead. These are often referred to as the “Pimples on the Buttock of Australia”. Immediately to the south is what looks at first like a big lake until you see that it has a wharf with ocean-going vessels tied up to it. Then you realise there is a passage at the eastern end that leads out into King George Sound. This large inlet is called Princess Royal Harbour and its main use, other than to house the wharf, is that it is the finish line for the Perth to Albany Yacht Race, which is where yachts race from Perth to Albany. Albany people don’t suffer bullshit very easily and call a spade a spade and they call the Perth to Albany yacht race the Perth to Albany Yacht Race! It is also the start line for the Albany to Perth Yacht Race for reasons similar to the above!

In years gone by, Albany was also home to a small fleet of whaling boats that tied up at the Albany Town Jetty, a jetty that was at the foot of the main street of the town. Creative nomenclature decreed that this would be known as the Albany Town Jetty, and despite a lot of initial confusion, the name stuck. Anyway, in the late nineteen seventies it was becoming increasingly difficult to get crews for these boats as Norwegians became a bit thin on the ground and the Japanese had still not been completely forgiven for the War in the Pacific. Nobody else was interested in a career in whaling. For years the industry had stubbornly resisted protests that it was cruel, barbaric and inhuman. Enormous pressure was being brought to bear to close down the practice and this was the death knell for whaling in Albany. The boats were converted into floating restaurants and the whaling station was converted into Albany Whale World, a museum and funfair where all the rides are built to look like whales. The name of this institution was agonised over by the people of Albany, unsure of whether visitors would see the name and connect it with a history involved in whaling. Nobody ever visited the museum, but the funfair attracted large crowds during the summer fortnight. Although it was the first British Settlement in the state, Albany always seems to be the end of something. Not content with just being on the Buttock of Australia, it has always served as the terminal station for one thing or another, such as the aforementioned Perth to Albany Yacht Race. In 1826, Major Edmund Lockyer colonised a hamlet on King George Sound and named it Frederickstown after some mate of his in the British Royal family. The idea was to plant a flag on the western half of the country before the French could claim it. As a honour to the founder, they named a slum after him and to this day, when people think of the dashing major, they think of the scruffy asbestos and iron shacks which house the lower socio-economic demographic of the northern suburb. The explorer John Eyre, who crossed the Nullarbor westwards from Adelaide some time later, finished his journey in Fredrickstown and sat down and wrote a long dissertation on why they should name everything along the southern coast of Australia after him. Then, when the first telegraph lines where strung across the Nullarbor, they finished in Frederickstown. It was of little or no consequence that nearly all the people these telegrams were addressed to lived in Perth or Kalgoorlie, hundreds of miles away. Frederickstown was a good place to finish things, so the telegraph finished in Frederickstown. Messages that had been wired from Sydney, San Francisco and Shanghai in the twinkling of an eye were put into an envelope and carried by horse and buggy to Perth, a trip that took two weeks on a good day and up to a month when the pubs were open. Or they went by steamer, which took slightly longer and only stopped at the pubs in Augusta, Bunbury and Mandurah. So Frederickstown became the cutting edge of communications technology. But in those days, handwriting was large and flowery and the word Frederickstown was too big to fit onto the small envelopes of the paper-scarce colony. Especially the swashy way they wrote their “F”s. So they changed the town’s name to Albany and pronounced it that way just to confound the Poms and Yanks. There are hundreds of Albanys scattered throughout the English speaking world but these Western Australian people had the good sense to distinguish theirs from the rest! The Bibbulmun Track is an overgrown pathway through the coalmines and burnt out remains of logging camps that make up the landmass known as the Great Southern Region. It was named after a tribe of indigenous people known as aborigines who lived in the region and who, anthropologists tell us, never lived anywhere near Albany. If they had, these anthropologists say, they would not have called themselves Bibbulmun, preferring a more obscure name such as the Albany Tribe. Anyway, these Bibbulmun people used to love to go for a good hike with their little

woolly hats, their anoraks and their butane stoves, so they made the Bibbulmun Track to walk along, singing tramping songs and stopping occasionally to brew up a cup of tea. Anyway, this track was the main pedestrian route between Kalamunda in the Darling Ranges and Northcliffe in the Karri forest near Pemberton. This is where it finished. But the people of Albany got really jealous when it was discovered that something finished somewhere other than in Albany. They demanded that it be extended a hundred miles to the east in their own town, right near the railway station, which is, co-incidentally, the final stop on the Perth to Albany line. I lived in Albany until 1971 but my heart will forever remain there. It is undoubtedly the most picturesque place in the world. Put it another way, it can be quite pleasant on a sunny day! In Albany it rains for an average of eighteen hours every day, three hundred and sixty five days of the year. For the rest of the time the weather is perfect with only a bit of constant drizzle. This gives the place the beautiful green vegetation that captured the attention of the early pioneers who noticed the similarity to their native England, with its rainswept beauty and its torrential grandeur. This is why everyone who visits Albany is held captive. They cannot leave their hotel rooms because it is too miserable to venture out! On a beautiful, warm, sunny day the people of Albany walk around looking all confused, wondering what has gone wrong with their weather. Townsfolk call themselves Albanians, after the inhabitants of the poorest, harshest, most uninteresting and politically unstable bit of Europe. For some reason they believe this identifies them as coming from Albany, as opposed to Albania. But not all Albanians were born in the town. In fact, probably a larger proportion of migrants live here than anywhere outside Melbourne and Darwin. The original pioneers were free settlers from England and Scotland along with Irish and Welsh convicts. Oh, and Scandinavians who were only after the whales. After World War Two, a lot of Dutch, Poles and Italian people came here to live. More recently a tiny trickle of people from the Middle East moved in although they remain unobtrusive and almost no-one knows they are there. Or if they do, they never mention it. Okay, no more sarcasm! In the nineteen fifties when we first moved in, there were very few folk who were not immigrants. On the day I started school at Albany Junior Primary School, a boy from the Nyoonga Tribe started as well. The Nyoonga Tribe was the name given to the aboriginal people of the area before the Europeans came. Nyoonga means Albany in Nyoonga, so Nyoonga Tribe literally means Albany Tribe. Anyway, the other kids in my class asked us where we were from. I replied in my charming little Cockney lilt that I was from England, and no-one seemed particularly interested. They knew hundreds of people from England and that was quite frankly, old hat. Then they asked Billy Colbung where he was from. “Mt Barker!” he replied. “No!” the other kids chorused. “What country are you from?” “Australia!” declared Billy. “Don’t be a dumbarse. This IS Australia!” “That’s where I’m from!” said Billy, shaking his head in perplexity. “Piss orf!” the other kids said.

Later that day I heard a bunch of them taunting him with the chant: “Dutchy, Dutchy, Pom, Pom! You don’t know where you come from!” But they are not particularly racist. They are probably the most cosmopolitan people in the world. Fatima and Rosa are best friends who do each other’s hair, while Otto and Nguyen go fishing together every Saturday. Mr Watenabe’s daughter Gretel is engaged to Antonio, whose sister Clodagh works for Dr M’bele. Unfortunately, I can’t go on telling you about all the racial interfacing for very long because Albany is such a small place there simply are not enough people. I have to tell you about Boongul When I was a teenager there I did what teenagers all over the world do. I got pissed, tried to get into the pants of the local girls and made a nuisance of myself playing music really loudly. But Albany was a great place to be a teenager. There weren’t too many people to tell you to stop being such a pain in the arse. There was hardly anybody in town if you decided to chuck a wheelie during peak hour traffic. And nobody had anything worth vandalising, stealing or grafittiing so it was difficult to draw attention to yourself. On Saturday evenings a huge gang of four or five youths would go into town and watch the movie at either the Regent Cinema or the Empire Theatre. It had to be one or the other because although both of them were fully functioning cinemas, only one or the other would be open on any given night, due, probably, to a shortage of projectionists. These were owned by the same bloke, Mr Crisp, who knew more about movies than anybody in town. This was largely due to the fact that he actually watched them while everyone else was either rolling Jaffas down the floor under the seats, feeling up some sheila in the back row or wondering why there was no film on the screen until they realised they were in the Regent while the show was on at the Empire. I saw some great movies at the Regent and the Empire. Or more precisely, I saw some great movie trailers at the Regent or the Empire, due to the fact that I was too busy rolling Jaffas down the floor under the seats or feeling up some sheila in the back row during the feature film. Saturday nights in Albany were great! After the movie, we’d go and steal a bottle of Fanta from the shed behind Coles. Well, it was an invitation to help ourselves, really, seeing as there was a two inch gap under the door that you could just get your arm through and, by lying in the mud and squeezing your shoulder inwards while turning your elbow at a very unnatural angle, you could tip over a crate and sometimes forage around until you grabbed one of the bottles if it had rolled towards the door. Then we’d sit down at the back of the Proudlove’s Bus, blowing chewing gum bubbles until we arrived back in Spencer Park. As I said, Saturday nights in Albany were great! Fridays were even better! We still had some money left on Friday nights on account of that being the day we received our pay. We used to walk or scunge a lift down to the Beach Coffee Bar at Middleton and go to the local dance that was referred to as the “Stomp”. This was a Sydney word that somehow penetrated the language and meant a dance held at the beach. Only ours was known as the Albany Stomp so it wouldn’t be confused with one being conducted at Dee Why or Manly or somewhere. We wouldn’t admit to digging Surf music though. We were into the genuine article! We had bands who played music by The Small Faces, Herman’s Hermits and Manfred Mann. Our primarily English roots came to the surface here and singers like Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent and Chubby Checker were not even considered because they were Septic Tanks! We even dumped on Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs when we discovered they were not from Leicester but from Texas! Texas, I ask you? What next?

But in reality we did dance to surf music so long as it was Australian Surf Music. The Joy Boys, The Atlantics, Little Pattie. I loved Little Pattie! She was sweet and blonde and looked like somebody’s kid sister. In those days we’d have even scruffed somebody’s kid sister, we were so desperate and horny! We used to go down to the Beach Coffee Bar at eight o’clock and leave at midnight. I don’t think I ever saw anyone drinking coffee at the Beach Coffee Bar so I don’t know why it was called that. All they served was Coke and milkshakes. Oh, and what the owner called “hamburgers”. These were tiny little scraps of minced something, burned beyond all recognition on a griddle then hidden in a salad sandwich that was never properly cut through so that when you picked one piece up, the other half was still dangling from it and the contents, including onions and tomato sauce, landed on your shirt. I remember the owner, Don Green, once saying to me: “You been to Perth?” Me: “Yup. Last October.” Don: “Is it true that in Perth they put their hamburgers in rolls?” I assured him that it was true and he shook his head in disbelief that the catering industry had progressed so far behind his back. Anyway, I’d go down there with my mate Boongul who came from Ravensthorpe, a little way to the east of Albany. Old Boongul couldn’t say Ravensthorpe and called it Raisinthorpe, which confused the geography students who immediately went home and consulted their atlases. He was a good bloke, Old Boongul. He’d believe anything anyone would tell him. Imagine every day being April Fool’s Day! That’s what it must have been like for Old Boongul. It was great fun to tell him that Regina Knowles, the most beautiful girl in Albany, no wait, make that “the most beautiful girl in the whole world”, had a crush on him and then watch him strut over there and try to chat her up. He wasn’t the best looking bloke in Albany. Not even the best looking bloke in Spencer Park. I doubt he was ever even the best looking bloke in his own lavatory cubicle but he used to go over to where Reggie was sitting, brush his hair back with one hand, then lean on the wall behind her chair while he pumped halitosis into her face. She would move her head to one side and try to hold her breath while he thought of something cool to say. Old Boongul had observed us suave young sophisticates do a line with a girl and noticed it normally involved offering them Gauloise or Black Russian cigarettes which we would then light for them with a gold plated Ronson. Old Boongul used to roll his own and light them with an oily packet of Redheads so the effect on Regina was not terribly impressive. She would glare at us, knowing we had put him up to it, then her brother would go over and rescue her while we made our way out to the dunny to get rid of the Coke and milkshakes that were fermenting inside us. Old Boongul was actually a couple of months younger than me but he was always called “Old” Boongul. Nobody knew what his real name was but Robbie Bean reckoned even his Mum called him Boongul when he went there to pick him up one evening. I believe he got his name from the local word for the Redwood tree (eucalyptus transcontinentalis), a tough specimen that is very hard to cultivate. I loved Old Boongul! He was a real Albany character. As you probably guessed, he was not very bright – a couple of cattle grids short of a long road! But there was nothing about him to dislike and I could never quite imagine life without Old Boongul. One night at the Stomp – the Albany Stomp, that is, not one in Dee Why or Manly – a drunk came from the Esplanade pub across the road and tried to pick a fight with Old Boongul.

Boongul was huge, about six feet eight and weighed at least twenty stone. This was when he left kindergarten at the age of twelve, so by the time he was eighteen he was a massive lump of granite as large and as rugged as Dog Rock. Anyway, this drunk decided he liked his chances with Old Boongul and threw an unannounced punch at him. Boongul blinked with disbelief because nobody had ever thrown a punch at him before. He grabbed the drunk’s tiny little fist in his great big hairy paw and said: “Wot ya do that for?” The drunk regarded this as a sign of hostility and drew a stubby of Emu Export Lager from his jacket pocket. Old Boongul grinned all over his face because if there was one thing he liked better than anything else in the world, it was Emu Export Lager straight from the stubby! But this drunk wasn’t about to be sociable! He smashed the bottle against the wall of the Beach Coffee Bar and in a sort of a stabbing, slashing movement, he lurched at Old Boongul who burst out laughing! The bottle had completely shattered and the drunk was left holding only the cap! We tried to sober the drunk up, but Don didn’t have any coffee, although he offered to duck home and get a jar of instant from his kitchen cupboard. Even apart from his physique, Old Boongul was easily the most recognisable bloke in town. He always wore a huge bank teller’s peak that was fixed around his head with a band of sock elastic. I think I mentioned the weather in Albany, so you’ll understand that this peak was not used to keep the sun out of his eyes, rather to keep the rain out of his mouth! You see Old Boongul had the largest lower mandible I have ever seen on a human being. His bottom jaw stuck out a good two and a half inches further than his upper one and with his wide mouth, it looked a bit like one of those porcelain urinals you see in those poncy Perth pubs. When it rained, the water would fill up his mouth in a few seconds if he didn’t wear his peak! After I left town, he apparently married a girl we used to call “Fruit Fly” and went back to live in Raisinthorpe. I never saw him again. Location, Location I mentioned an Albany landmark called Dog Rock. This is a huge lump of rock near the centre of town. For some mysterious reason only a town planner could explain, they built Middleton Road really close to it. So close, in fact, that the damned thing actually stuck about three feet out into the tarmac! Even though they painted a collar on it in white emulsion, cars used to scrape it almost every Friday and Saturday as their drivers went to the Stomp or home from the Regent Cinema. Dog Rock was one of the good things about showing a visitor around Albany. “It really does look like a dog’s head!” they would exclaim, then ask you to drive around again so they could ascertain which breed it belonged to. “It isn’t any breed,” locals would say. “It’s a bit of rock!” People who work in the tourist industry do not refer to places as beaches, towns, mountain ranges or national parks. They are “destinations”. All of them! Hotels, resorts, harbours, everything! Even shell museums and caravan parks! This really pisses off Albany people. Theirs is not a “premier tourist destination” at all. It is a nice place where Perth people like to go for a holiday to escape the heat of their dreadful summers. My mother, though, refused to admit that Albany was a cold, damp, miserable place and would argue with anyone who said it was. She got quite adamant and would glower at them, arms akimbo as she stood in her front garden, laying down the law.

“We didn’t have to wear our overcoats at all last week,” she would insist. “Except in the evenings and sometimes really early in the morning!” “But Mum,” I would say. “It’s February! The middle of summer! You shouldn’t need a coat at this time of year!” “Stop arguing and come inside before you catch your death of cold!” You already know that the two hills in Albany are called Clarence and Melville but there is also a third one important to the town’s natural beauty. This is called Mt Adelaide and is joined to Clarence by a short ridge upon which is a memorial drive. This came about because the Desert Mounted Corp statue was built there in the nineteen sixties to commemorate all those young men who lied about their age to enlist in the Great War of 1914-1918. Their troop ships assembled in King George Sound before departing for Egypt to start the ANZAC tradition, so the last place they saw was the hills of Albany. This is something that takes pride of place in every Albanian’s thoughts every day since it happened. Particularly as it involves Albany being the last place. Nobody seems to know who Clarence and Melville were. Some say they ran a florist shop in York Street and others say they were a vaudeville act in the Empire Theatre before the days of moving pictures but I am sure the hills were really named after some Field Marshals or Dukes who lied about their ages to get into the Crimean War or something. However the naming of the third hill is known to have been in honour of the capital city of South Australia, fifteen hundred or so miles to the east. One day, the story goes, a scholar was looking at his atlas and realised that if you drew a straight line in a certain direction from the centre of the hill, the first large town it would pass through was Adelaide on the Torrens River. He was so excited about this that he suggested the hill be named Mt Adelaide and this was duly gazetted. If he had moved his straight-edge around, he would have noticed it also ran through Johannesburg, Calcutta, Singapore, Jakarta, Manilla and Darwin, but fortunately lateral thinking is not an attribute Albany people aspire to. Another nearby feature also has a very interesting name. The tiny hamlet of Denmark, on the Denmark River thirty miles to the west of Albany, was not named after the Scandinavian country. In fact it was named after a person whose nickname was Mr Denmark. When he turned up for his first day at Albany Junior Primary School back in the nineteenth century sometime, the kids gathered around and asked him where he was from. “Copenhagen!” he announced. “That’s not a country! What country are you from?” “Dansk!” “Piss orf! That’s not a country, either. What country are you really from?” The kid was really quite upset and tearfully faced the chanted taunts of “Dutchy, Dutchy, Pom, Pom” until the geography teacher came down to find out why the new kid was crying. When she was told, she informed the children that Dansk was the country we know as Denmark. From that day on, the kids called the new boy Denmark and when he grew to be a couple of feet taller and ten stone heavier than they were, he made them call him Mister Denmark. Actually, it was discovered some time later that he did not really come from Copenhagen but a village nearby called Bornholm, so they named another town and a beach just that to keep him happy. True tale. Most of it! Albany folk, particularly menfolk, love a yarn. Even if it has no point, they love to listen to someone else’s story. And then, what is even better is if it reminds them of a story of their own. In fact they love this nearly as much as they love drinking Emu Export Lager from a stubby.

The bloke who used to beat the little dings and dents out of my 1962 Ford Anglia really loved a yarn. Bull sessions, he called them and he could always top the story you told or else he would simply revise it, changing one or two details and tell it back to you. One day I told him I had been in the Weld Hotel and saw old Barney Adams having a quiet schooner before dinner. “I haven’t seen you for a few weeks, Barney,” I said. “Been in Perth havin’ me back seen to, haven’t I?” he replied. “Oh,” I said. “Did you go on the bus or did you catch the train?” “Dunno. Me brother bought the tickets.” Jack laughed uproariously at this and then said “That reminds me of one I heard. Seems there was this old gal who was coming out of church and the vicar said to her, I notice you haven’t been in church for the past few weeks. Is everything alright?’ “I’ve been in Melbourne visiting my sister, Padre, the old gal said. “That’s nice, did you fly or get the Indian Pacific? asked the preacher. “I really don’t know, Vicar, the old gal said. My sister sent me the tickets.“ I stared at him in disbelief for a moment then blurted out “But that’s the same joke I just told you!” “No it’s not! Yours was about a bloke in the pub. Mine was about some old woman coming out of church!” Another time I went in to collect my car and he said “You’re looking a bit fragile! Been burning both ends? I say, you’re looking a bit fragile! Been burning both ends, hey?” He often said the same thing twice if he wasn’t repeating someone else. “No! I didn’t sleep very well. I’ve got a tooth ache.” “You should see a dentist. I say, you should see a dentist.” “I’ve got an appointment this afternoon,” I told him. A curious look came into his eyes and he turned them towards the ceiling. “Really funny you should say that,” he said. “I say, really funny you should say that. Just yesterday I saw old Ted Penter down the street. I said How’s business Ted? and he said Not too bad. It’s been better, Jack, but I mustn’t grumble, he said. How’s that boy of yours? I said. Is he still playing cricket? I said. Yeah, he said. Knocked a ton against Rocky Gully last Sunday. Took three wickets too, he said. That’s nice to hear, Ted, I said. Matter of fact I was just saying to Dorothy that when the weather gets a bit better we’ll have to have you over for another barbecue. How is Nita, by the way? I said. Aw, not too good, he said. She had all her upper set out last Monday, he said. Now isn’t that a coincidence? I say, now isn’t that a coincidence?” My kids tell me off for telling pointless stories but who can blame me when I had a mentor like Jack Hadley? Their favourite pointless story of mine concerns my Ford Anglia. You will notice all my best pointless stories involve that Anglia. It was my first car and shared quite a few first experiences with me that I don’t intend going into right now. But the best one was about the time I was driving down Campbell Road and saw two young ladies who worked at the nursing home behind my parent’s house. I stopped and offered them a lift and noticed one of them was carrying a very small kitten. As soon as we peeled out of there the kitten got loose and ran under my feet, where it crawled between the pedals and the floor. I couldn’t brake or disengage the clutch without crushing it, so I

had to knock the four-on-the-floor gearshift into neutral and apply the handbrake in order to stop and get the kitten out. Now I regard that as a really good, interesting story but my kids groan every time I relate it. Albany is chock full of stories! Some are of the pointless type, many more have a sort of point, but most are just stories of the struggles the common man faces every day just to keep his head above water and to retain his identity in an ever more impersonal world. One such man was Ken Ferrall. Sugarbag During the Great Depression, Ken and his brother Wal applied to migrate to Australia under the Group Settlement Scheme. They were town boys from one of the cities in the west of England – Bristol or Taunton or Weston-Super-Mare or somewhere where they speak with that delicious, rich accent and curious turn of phrase. Ken had a particular idiosyncrasy that resulted in him getting a typical Albany nickname. He never wore a raincoat or cape nor carried an umbrella, which is a curiosity itself in Albany’s inclement weather. Instead, he always had a few old empty sugar bags in the covered tray of his Holden Utility. If it was raining when he wanted to leave his car, and it invariably was, he would simply pick up one of the bags and wear that. As the bags had been slit along one end to pour out the sugar, he used to turn it upside down and then push one of the closed corners into the other so that it formed a large hood that he put over his head. He was only a relatively short man, maybe five feet five or so and the trailing sugar bag kept quite a bit of his body dry. The old sacks, still with the CSR stencil fading away with each drenching, gave rise to his nickname and “Sugarbag” Ferrall was one of the most easily recognised figures around town. But Sugarbag was feral by nature as well as by name. The only bit of England he retained other than the “Ooh arrrgh” of his Somerset burr was his other sartorial habit of tying a bit of twine around each ankle to stop insects crawling up the legs of his grey corduroy trousers! As I said, Sugarbag and Wal had arrived in Australia during the nineteen thirties and were taken by bullock dray out past Denmark to the Kent River, where they were left to fend for themselves. The immigration people tossed them a bit of seed and a few tools, along with some dry supplies – flour, tea, beans, tins of corned beef and of course, bags of sugar. Working in the driving winter rain and the short hot summers, these two lads carved a meagre living out of the dense karri and tingle forests of the Buttock of Australia. With an axe they would cut a ring of bark away from the tallest, straightest trees so that within a few months they died. This was a process Sugarbag called “rungbarking”. When the tree was suitably deceased, they would dig a long trench outward from the base then carefully fell the tree over it with a saw and axe. Wal was bigger and heavier than Sugarbag so he jumped down into the trench while his brother perched on the end of the sawn-off tree and dropped one handle of a huge rip saw into the hole. With the smaller brother pulling upwards on the saw and then relaxing while his larger sibling below hauled down, getting covered in sawdust in the process, these two young men cut dozens of planks. After using what they needed to build a shack, they sold the rest in Denmark for a few shillings to buy what they could not produce for themselves. At the same time they taught themselves how to live in an environment totally alien to everything they had grown up in until they became master bushmen, more at home in the undergrowth of the Kent River than they were in town. As I said, Ferrall by name and feral by nature. As a boy I learned a lot from Sugarbag. Every year on Good Friday, Dad would pack Mum and my brother and me into the old Austin A40 and head out through Denmark down a red gravel road

until we came to a gap in the fence. We’d drive along a sandtrack until we found Sugarbag cutting away some tree that had toppled across the track. Then we’d help him haul the branches away and off he’d go in the old ute, us following, until we came to where he’d erected the tents. His wife, Ida, would have the billy on, complete with a gumleaf to add flavour. She’d pour us hot, strong tea to wash down the rabbit and bush pumpkin stew she would ladle from a gigantic iron cauldron then garnish with a sprig of wild parsley. By the time we returned to Albany on Easter Monday we would be filthy dirty, covered in cuts, bruises and kangaroo ticks and looking forward to the following Easter. I think Sugarbag was a street sweeper in Albany but his real love was photography. Not just thirty five millimetre slides that he took at a rate of around fifty exposures a day, but also sixteen millimetre movies. There must be rolls and rolls of footage of my brother and me setting rabbit snares, learning to “rungbark” trees and imitating bird-calls. Everything that moved within a hundred mile radius of Albany had been captured for posterity on thin strips of celluloid by Sugarbag. And his daughter Nola was even more eager than he was! Other than Mr Crisp at the cinemas, Sugarbag had the only movie projector in town – a Bell and Howell that used to inexplicably stop ten minutes into every movie. He would fiddle around in the dark and get it going again, while giving my dad a running commentary about what happened and how he was fixing it. One night in the Albany Town Hall, about fifteen minutes into one of those Discover Australia With Shell travelogues, Sugarbag stopped the projector and started peering into it with a battery torch. He was strangely silent so Dad leaned over and asked him what was the matter. “Nuthin’!” grunted Sugarbag. “But she normally packs up around this time so I stopped her to find out why she hasn’t!” Cliffy and Howard Another character who was equally well known around Albany was Howard Carbone. He was quite a bit younger than Sugarbag and one of his sons, Cliffy, often hung around with Old Boongul and me. In fact, Cliffy played in the same hockey team as I did but was in a totally different league when it came to pulling the ladies. Cliffy had Howard’s good looks but he also had charisma. I don’t think he realised how irresistible he was to girls because he was very shy and stuttered a bit when he spoke to them. But he certainly got his end away and he used to try to share the secrets of his success with me. He once told me that it was a good idea to keep kissing and cuddling a girl even after you’d finished and before you got dressed or lit up a cigarette or whatever you did post-coitally. Then, he explained, they would think you really liked them and would want to go out with you again! I wanted to tell him that I thought what he was doing was a bit dishonest and most girls were smarter and wouldn’t be deceived by something so blatant. But he thought he was imparting a great wisdom so I held my tongue. But for all his philandering, Cliffy managed to keep himself free from the matrimonial clutches of the young ladies of Albany. He never went out with any of them more than three or four times and I thought he was just taking advantage of the situation. After all the most famous saying to come out of Albany is “Every scruff you miss out on is one scruff you’ll never catch up on.” But then one day at the Albany Stomp, Cliffy fell head-over-heels in love. He fell so heavily that they say the ground shook as far away as Katanning! Regina Knowles’ older sister, Chrissie, came back to town and one Friday night accompanied her sibling down to the Stomp. I was playing there with one of the bands I occasionally joined. As an electric bass player I was often in demand because Albany guitarists couldn’t get their minds around either the bass clef or the idea of playing an instrument one string at a time. They had to bash every string even if it

wasn’t supposed to be heard in the chord they were playing and the idea of picking, unless it was the lead melody or a riff, was outside the realms of their imagination. So I was standing there, plunking away and grooving along to the beat when I saw Cliffy approach her, his face beetroot red and twiddling his fingers nervously. When he spoke to her she looked up and smiled so sweetly that Cliffy’s heart was lost in as much time as it took to flip over and find its way into his mouth. He danced with her all evening and about ten minutes before midnight they disappeared together. I saw him the next evening at the Regent Cinema and asked who she was and how he got on. By his blushes and fumbling for words, I had no doubt she did to him what every young bloke hopes will happen on his first date and he eventually confirmed it. “You know, Lizard, I’m going to ask her if she’ll go to the dance at the Yacht Club with me tomorrow evening,” he said. “You’re playing, aren’t you?” I was. Another little combo used to play romantic ballads of people like Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Tony Bennett to more mature audiences around town and I used to help out if their double-bass player had overdone the singing syrup during the weekend. On the few occasions he had played in this condition, things hadn’t necessarily gone as planned. Twice he fell off the stage and once had to be taken to the Albany Regional Hospital with concussion. Another time he spewed all over the drummer’s snare. But Cliffy never turned up and nor did Chrissie. I saw him at the fish and chip shop on Wednesday evening and asked him where he had got to, hoping to hear some really spicy stuff. But he shrugged sadly and said she hadn’t been able to go out on Sunday due to another engagement. I didn’t know, until Howard told me a couple of weeks later, that the other engagement was in fact an engagement to marry some fellow she had met in Bunbury while working in the Port Authority there. Cliffy, it seemed, had been her last wild fling before settling down to a life of wedded bliss. Cliffy was shattered. I tried to cheer him up by writing a little love song about her, the lyrics being from his perspective, but I think it did more harm than good. The first time I played it with the band at the Stomp, Cliffy went his familiar shade of vermilion. When I followed his eyes, I saw Chrissie was sitting right down the back with her sister and a fellow I didn’t recognise, but when I saw the gravel rash on his knuckles, I realised he was a Bunbury lad and, therefore, probably the other engagement. Cliff left the Stomp and I didn’t see him for a few weeks until the hockey season started again. I went up to him at training and apologised if I had embarrassed him by singing the song. “I was going to apologise to you, Lizard,” he said. “I’ve been avoiding you. You weren’t to know how I really felt. I told her I loved her and she said she loved me too! I suppose it has to happen sometimes, but I really thought I’d found the right one!” I saw him again the following week at the training ground and he just smiled wanly and asked if I would tape-record the song for him, which I did. I handed him the cassette the following Friday at the Stomp. He came up to the stage after escorting a pretty young thing back to her chair, looking a lot happier and when I gave him the tape, he said without any trace of a boast “You know, I had it coming! Regina told me I’ve broken dozens of hearts around Albany but she wishes it hadn’t been her sister who broke mine!” Cliffy’s dad, Howard, was a different kettle of fish altogether. He had been cleaning shop windows since he left school. Everyone in town knew him by name and he knew nearly everyone else just as intimately. He did a lovely job of the huge panes of glass fronting York Street and Stirling Terrace and they glistened feebly in the watery sunlight between downpours. Howard always wore a blue chambray shirt and darker blue drill shorts. He wore brown work boots and grey woollen socks. Summer and winter! He never wore a cardigan or a jumper and only towards the later part of the nineteen sixties did he start wearing a hat to keep his head

warm as his hair started to thin. And what made him even more conspicuous was that he had a little indentation in his left leg where his dog always stood. Wherever he was – in church, in the deli or sitting watching television – that dog alway fitted neatly into his leg indent. I’m sure he had it put there just for that reason. I used to think he called the dog Harry but as I started to spend more time with Cliffy at his house, I realised Howard called him Hairy. The dog wasn’t really what you would describe as hairy, he had a smooth, healthy coat that looked like it was specially made for a Chum commercial. Goodness knows what breed he was. I don’t think many tourists would guess even if you drove around past him several times! But Howard loved Hairy and Hairy loved Howard. One day I asked him why he named him that. “I didn’t name him!” Howard said and for a moment I thought that was the last I was going to hear about it. Then Howard went the same shade that Cliffy goes around a pretty girl and he started fiddling nervously with his chamois leather. “I was in the Royal George one evening,” he said. “There was a German sailor there off the boats. He had the dog with him and he looked like he was crying. The sailor, not the dog. “You know what I’m like. I hate to see anyone a bit down so I asked him what the matter was. He said his skipper had told him to get rid of the dog before they sailed. The whole crew loved the little mutt, including the captain, even though he had fallen overboard a couple of times and had to be rescued with the life dinghy. The dog, that is, not the captain! But the owner’s representative was coming aboard in Adelaide and there would be hell to pay if they found out there was an animal on board. It’s probably a German maritime superstition or something, I suppose, like setting sail on Friday. “Anyway, I said I’d take him and the sailor seemed pleased. I asked him what the dog’s name was and he told me. I carefully memorised it but I forgot to write it down. We got drunker and drunker and I kept reciting it to myself as it was a strange, Kraut name. Quite long, too. “Anyway, I was really pissed by the time I went home and when I woke up in the morning, the dog was licking my face. I tried to tell Sue about him but she said I had explained the previous night when I got home. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the German had said its name was but. “Sue remembered! Apparently I had told her it was “Herr Dusklesy Musklesy Mowie Winsom” or something that sounded like that so that’s what we call him. It’s even on his registration at the council. But we call him Hairy for short.” The German sailor continued to visit Howard and Hairy every time his ship came into port. He would catch the bus up to Spencer Park and sit there all evening drinking the beer he brought and stroking the dog in his lap. One day when he’d been away for longer than usual, he was walking from the bus stop and saw Howard wiping suds off the window of Lister’s Bakery in Angove Road. He always got off the bus outside the shops so he could buy some sausage for Hairy from Shannon’s Butchers and Fine Meats. He scooped Hairy up into his huge, donkey-jacketed arm and then threw the other one around Howard. There in the middle of Angove Road, he planted a big wet kiss on each of Howard’s cheeks in the most endearing show of emotion and affection Spencer Park has ever seen. Howard nearly died and even though he wore dark glasses for about a month after that, hoping no one would recognise him, he knew that it being pension day, there had been dozens of folk who had witnessed it. Capsicum Neither Howard nor Cliffy ever smoked, which was quite unusual in Albany in the sixties. Most people, men and women alike, used to smoke at least twenty a day and they never changed

brands. The new varieties like Winfield and Escort never took off because Rothmans, Craven A and Capstan were the only smoke any self-respecting Albanian would been seen with in his mouth. I didn’t know much about smoking as my Dad had given it up years before we arrived in town and my mother, God bless her, always had more sense. The previous year I had had experimented with cigarettes on two occasions, the first simply blowing the smoke out as soon as it got into my mouth and the second time it made me quite ill. Soon after I began my employment at the newspaper, the manager gave me ten bob and asked me to get him some Red Capstan. I thought he said a red capsicum and went up to Anderson’s Greengrocers, came back and handed Mr Cruttenden nine shillings and eight pence and a brown paper bag. When he opened it he laughed so hard he wet himself and went around and told all the compositors and printers, then went upstairs and told the reporters and sub-editors and finally went and sat on the toilet for ten minutes to calm himself down. For years after that he called me the Capsicum Kid. But I didn’t mind going up to Anderson’s Greengrocers because the girl who used to live next door to me worked there. Although she was a year older than I was, we used to play tennis together on the courts behind St John’s Church of England. In fact she taught me how to keep score! Up until then I had just played against my mates and we scored like you do in table tennis. First one to twenty one was the winner! She was quite refined and knew really useful stuff like that. At the time we were living down near the Parade Street soccer ground and one day we were kicking a ball around and I noticed a forty four gallon oil drum lying on its side. It was empty and had obviously been abandoned and pushed down the bank from Vancouver Street until it wound up in the ditch. I hauled it out and, never passing up the chance to show off in front of a girl, stood up on it and started rolling it along the pitch by walking and making the thing turn under me. This went well for a while so I started to make it go faster and faster but it got away from me and I went flying off backwards and landed right on the base of my spine where it brings a tear to your eye when you land on it. I sat on the ground with wet cheeks, almost unable to breath from the blow to my back, while Mavis ran over and got my Mum to make sure I was all right. It took quite a while to live that one down! It comes, I think, from a combination of being a smartarse, hyperactive and a bit of a natural showman. That and being unbelievably clumsy. It is a family trait and all of us seem to do dumb things from time to time. My First Transistor Radio In about nineteen sixty-four, I wanted a transistor radio. They were tiny and portable and so, so cool! What an iPod is to a twenty-first century kid, a transistor radio was to a kid in 1964. And in Albany they were also devilishly expensive. I think there was one in Drew Robinson’s for sixteen pounds nineteen and sixpence and that was the bottom of the price range, but in the English newspapers my uncle used to mail to us, they were ridiculously affordable. Four pounds nine shillings! Allowing that Australian currency was worth something in those days – around twenty five shillings sterling to the Australian pound – that meant if Uncle Sid could get one for us, it would come in at under five quid, even with package and postage stamps! But we forgot to tell Uncle Sid about customs duty and he wrote what it was and how much it cost on the little green sticker, instead of ticking the box marked “gift”.

Eventually a card arrived in our letterbox that there was a parcel down at the customs office and when I went to collect it, I was presented with a bill for fourteen pounds five shillings for import tax! I had to go up to the Rural and Industries Bank to draw out a sum that huge. Nobody carried that sort of fortune in those days and plastic was at least a decade away. Anyway, I loved that radio, even though it was very difficult to get the batteries for it in Albany. Mr Rodgers at Great Southern Electrical used to have to order them for me and then started keeping four or five under the counter because I went through them so quickly. About two weeks after it arrived from England, my Dad and brother wanted to go out and collect some firewood. Dad borrowed the next-door-neighbour’s trailer and hitched it up and set off out the Elleker Road to where they had seen a few tuart trees that had blown over. While they cut them up and stacked them into the trailer, they listened to the cricket on my transistor that I loaned to them. They stood it on the roof of the Cortina so they could hear it above the sound of the chopping and sawing. But when it came time to drive home, both of them forgot all about it, blaring away above them. They just peeled off out of there and my precious eighteen pound fourteen shilling transistor radio hit the gravel and stayed there with John Arlott still spouting on about square legs and silly mid ons. When it wasn’t where it normally was in my bedroom, I forgot all about having loaned it to them and hunted everywhere in the house. The regular Saturday evening request programme came on local radio and I still hadn’t found it so started listening to it on the AWA in the kitchen. “Where’s your transistor,” asked Mum, and Dad’s hand flew to his mouth. Guiltily he told us that he had been listening to the cricket on it out at Elleker but had forgotten to bring it home with him. In the pouring rain and pitch black night, we drove back out there and Dad was very careful to make sure that if it was still on the road, he wouldn’t run over it. We hunted high and low for nearly an hour in the mud, poking under logs and shining the torch into clumps of long grass. Eventually we gave up and Dad promised to buy me another one when his next Army pension cheque arrived. I was a bit pissed off but I don’t think I was that upset really. After all, I was the worst offender in the world for losing other people’s things. I don’t know how many times I left my sister’s tennis racket down at St John’s. I once famously borrowed my brother’s bicycle to go down to the landbacked wharf when I went fishing, then forgot how I got there and walked five miles home with a half dozen mackerel slung over my shoulder. Dad made me walk all the way back there to collect it but even that never taught me a lesson. But this evening, when we got home, there was a station sedan parked in the drive and a chap standing on the top step talking to Mum. He had been working on his tractor in a nearby paddock and saw the radio fall off the car. When he picked it up he noticed I had biroed my name and address on the vinyl underneath it and as soon as he got off work and had his tea, he returned it to us. That’s what Albany people were like in those days. I expect they still are! The Only Snag His full name was Jacques Eduard Dufall Shannon, but when he was in Primary School, all the kids called him Jed after his first three initials. His mother was French and named him after her own father but his Dad always called him Jakey or Jack. That wasn’t good enough for me and my mates who were rock and roll mad, so by changing the emphasis on the vowels, we decided Jacques E. D. Shannon was enough like Jackie De Shannon, a very popular American singer and songwriter of the late 1950s. She had a hit single with a very up-tempo number called Buddy, which got to about number twelve on the Albany Top Forty, I think. So Jed became Buddy and soon everyone, even his Dad started calling him that. Only his mother and aunt stuck with Jacques.

Buddy did an apprenticeship as a butcher and, in all but one thing, he was very good at his trade. The one thing he failed at, quite miserably, I must add, was making sausages. When he opened his own shop, he found that while everything else sold like hot cakes, the sausages stayed where they were until he threw them out. But Buddy yearned to be a great sausage maker! Being a master butcher was fine. Anyone could do that. After all, what did it involve other than selecting good stock and cutting it up properly! His mince was delicious and he even supplied the Beach Coffee Bar with hamburger! But his sausages remained a disaster. When he first opened the shop, I went in with the expressed purpose of buying some sausages. I always had, and still have, a liking for reconstituted meat, offal and breadcrumbs forced into a bit of sheep’s intestine. Buddy asked me what kind I would like and I asked what kind he had. He reeled off a list starting with cevapcici, through chipolatas, frankfurters, thin beef, pork and herbed chicken to salami, bratwurst and chorizo. I was impressed and asked what he recommended. I ended off with two pounds of barbecue and a pound of skinless he said was perfect for sausage rolls. When Mum cooked them, none of us said anything but I noticed my brother was the only one who ate more than a couple of experimental bites. He would have drenched them so thickly in HP Sauce anyway, he couldn’t possibly have tasted them. We just assumed that this first batch must have gone a bit wrong and we gave them a few more tries before going back to buying the pre-packaged Watsonias from the grocery shop. But soon we started hearing other people mention them and before long, Buddy was giving them away ten pounds at a time when you bought a side of beef to put in the freezer. Within a year he was even handing them out with a pound of lambs fry and once I went in to see if he could change a shilling for the telephone and he plonked a huge parcel of them on the counter as a gift! Even Howard Carbone’s dog Hairy only ate them to be polite! But Buddy was a very kind-hearted man and whenever we had a barbecue at the Surf Lifesaving Club at Middleton Beach, he would deliver a huge esky full of chops, hamburgers and the inevitable sausages. We used to cook them all up and the chops and hamburger would go in minutes and only when the lifesavers started to get a bit wobbly would any of the snaggers get eaten. One hot summer’s evening with the temperature in the high fifties, there were quite a few wobbly surf lifesavers and as Old Boongul and I went back to the car to get some more beer, I noticed Cliffy in the sand dunes throwing his heart up. “Have a few too many, Cliffy?” I said, knowing that as soon as the caps started coming off, Cliffy had the propensity to overindulge. He turned around and, wiping his mouth, started to apologise. “I’m not allowed to drink grog! “ he said. “I’m still on penicillin for a bit of a problem I’ve got down there.” He indicated his trouser front and looked deeply into my eyes, imploring me not to ask what exactly the problem was. I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but tried to look sympathetic and nodded wisely. “I didn’t know those were Buddy’s sausages and I ate two of them!” he moaned. “Just as well you’re on penicillin, then!” said Old Boongul. But I remember my Mum talking to Mrs Bull who lived next door. Mrs Bull was a very genteel old widow who was a marvellous cook. She told Mum that once she asked Buddy what his secret ingredient was, probably wanting to make sure she never accidentally duplicated it. Buddy grinned all over his face. At last! A culinary gourmet who could appreciate the finer points of the art of producing smallgoods!

“I use some rosemary, garlic and basil that I grow in my back garden,” he proudly announced. “Oh, and parsley, of course.” “Of course,” agreed Mrs Bull. But later, she told Mum: “I think those herbs must have their roots in his septic tank!” But Buddy remained one of the most popular men in Albany and although he eventually gave up making sausages and bought them from a butcher in York Street, his shop was always busy. Buddy’s mother, as I probably gave the impression, was a French woman. So, surprisingly, was her sister, Angélique Françoise, who taught languages at the High School. Not only French language! She also taught German and Italian with almost no accent at all. Even her English was perfect, although the absence of any accent made it obvious she was an immigrant. Which was not surprising in Albany. She taught me French and my sister and brother both studied German with her and we all passed our Junior exams in those subjects with distinctions. She was a classically beautiful woman and everyone admired her, the boys in a slightly more robust fashion! On the inside back cover of my French copybook I wrote in neat cursive: “Angélique Françoise Dufall Was an absolute hit at the Ball. And we couldn’t help stare At her cute derriére As she tangoed and waltzed round the Hall!” I never showed that to anyone and I didn’t think anyone else even knew I had written it. But someone had secretly copied it out and sent it to the committee in charge of compiling the 1961 Year Book. They even credited me with being the author! The copy was submitted to the printers and it was not until the galley proofs were returned did anyone at the school even pick it up and read it. Then it all hit the fan! Mr Gregson, the deputy headmaster, called me down to his office and bawled me out. I denied having submitted it and I think he believed me because the handwriting was nothing like mine. But I was so proud of it, I couldn’t resist admitting to having composed it in the first place. Old Gregson thanked me for owning up but I knew he was not really grateful that I had. I think he would have liked to send me home with a note as he thought my Dad would have taken a dim view, being a deacon in the Church. However, Gregson had a policy of not consulting parents if a student confessed unless the offence was really bad or a criminal charge could have been laid. Anyway, I was slightly chastened and for a few days I kept my head down and bum up. I didn’t have French again until Thursday morning and I was dreading it because I knew that if Madamoiselle Dufall said anything in front of the class, the rush of blood to my face would have made my veins burst and spurted out all over my brand new school blazer! But to my relief, she never paid me particular attention, other than to get me to conjugate a rather difficult verb. When I succeeded, she just said “I am pleased to see someone takes La Français seriously!” and carried on with the lesson. When the siren went and we all filed out of the room, she looked at me and indicated somehow with her eyebrows that I should approach her desk. My heart thudded in my chest and I felt abject misery. I really liked Madamoiselle Dufall and hated the thought that I had offended her. I started planning to offer to sweep her drive, mow her lawn, chop all her firewood, anything to redeem my appalling behaviour! But all she said was “The poem! I thought it was very clever!” If I had been older and more mature, I know I would have leaned over and kissed her!

News Sleuth One of the reporters at the newspaper where I did my apprenticeship was a real professional at his job, too. In John Milson’s mind, nothing ever happens unless its primary purpose is to be reported in the press. He could be seen, day and night, scurrying around town in his dark grey suit over a green cardigan and red tie, trilby hat and brown leather shoes. All he needed was a little card in his hatband saying “Press” and he would have been straight out of one of those American nineteen sixties situation comedies on TV. His notebook and pencil were never far from his fingertips and his newsman’s nose was always twitching. I would like a dollar for every time I heard him say “Is there a story in that?” John lived next door to my parents with his very pleasant little wife and their baby daughter who, many years in the distant future would become one of the nation’s leading environmental scientists. He drove a battered two-door Cortina and had a Pentax single lens reflex camera permanently hanging around his neck on a strap that I swear was sewn directly onto the skin of his shoulders. Once, when there was a car accident at the bottom of our street in the early hours of the morning, John emerged in his striped flannelette pyjamas with the camera already in place, even though he was still pulling on his dressing gown and had his slippers in the same hand as his notebook! I would arrive home from the surf lifesaving club and he would come straight over to find out if there were any shark attacks, rescues or serious rips at Middleton that day. I used to tease him a bit at first, telling him all about a fictitious attempted mass belt-rescue where we had to end off calling in the Navy helicopter and frogmen to search for bodies. He duly noted everything down in his little spiroflex notepad and it was only when old Jack Wheeler, the linotype operator, started to set it and queried it with the editor, did he smell a rat and force a confession from me. But even after that incident, John still sniffed around, quizzing people in the main street, eavesdropping conversations and attending Council meetings in the hope of scooping the big story. I remember when the Apollo Eleven astronauts had just landed on the moon and we lost television pictures for a short while. John did not have a set of his own and came over at lunchtime to watch it on ours. The absence of a picture really frustrated him and he kept muttering darkly about “historic occasion . . .” and “. . . pretty poor show!” He complained loudly that “You’d think on something as important as this, those types at NASA would have got their act together a bit better!” and seemed to take it as a personal insult and affront to him that they had stuffed up so badly. Once he was prescribed some medicine for a cold and it was in a bottle that looked a bit like a small Pine-O-Kleen” container. Of course, John being John, he put them next to each other in the bathroom cabinet and, predictably, took a dose of disinfectant by accident. He realised immediately what he had done and read the label to find out what to do for first aid. “Drink at least half a pint of milk” the instruction read, so to be on the safe side, John went to the fridge and knocked back a quart and a half. Within minutes he was vomiting it all back up, along with the offending toilet cleaner. But being sick was being sick to John and he decided that he was severely ill with the possibility he might die! He came racing over and it took my sister, who was home on leave from nursing school, about an hour to calm him down and explain that vomiting was the device used to get the poison out before it entered his gut. I don’t know whether he believed her, but seemed reassured that after this amount of time he was still alive, so he stopped panicking.

One evening at around half past eight I sat back to watch “Z Cars” on the telly when there was a knock on the door. Some instinct or sixth sense told me it was the News Sleuth of Spencer Park so, prepared for a long session of getting nowhere fast, I switched the set off and answered it. “I think I left my car in town!” he told me, rolling the brim of his trilby around his forefinger. The camera was around his neck but the notebook must have been in his cardigan pocket. I could see the little eraser on his pencil sticking out of the top pocket of his jacket. “Do you know where?” I asked, picking the Anglia keys up from the hall bureau. “Probably at the opticians,” he replied. “I had an appointment this afternoon and then I got a lift home with your Dad after work because my car was not in the car park behind the office.” We drove down to town and went past the optician’s shop. There wasn’t a single car anywhere in Peels Place and none in the car park behind the cut-off corner of York Street, either. “Why did you drive there from the office when it’s only just over the road?” I asked, wondering why that had not occurred to me before during the drive down. Was it rubbing off on me? God, what a dreadful thought! “That’s a point!” he remarked, excitedly and I thought he was going to bring out his pad and make a note of it. “Maybe I did park it round the back of work after all!” So we drove around there and again the car park was abandoned except for the cleaning contractor’s ute, half backed into the paper store where its owner was probably nicking a few reams of foolscap to flog off to one of the local stationers. “Where else could it be?” I asked and he scratched his head. “I didn’t go anywhere else!” he pondered. “You don’t think one of the comps is pulling a prank on me, do you?” “Definitely not!” I ascertained. If anyone was pulling any pranks, especially one of the compositors, I would have been consulted. “Perhaps I had better go home and sleep on it. It might occur to me in the night where I left it.” I had visions of him banging on my window at three o’clock, excitedly telling me where he had parked and wanting to go there right that minute so I made him promise to wait until morning before he told me, if his memory suddenly returned. Just as a precaution, I drove past all his regular haunts: the Council Chambers, the Albany Club and the White Star Hotel, but there were no Cortinas anywhere. As I pulled the Anglia into my driveway, I looked across to where his wife’s pleasant face was peering anxiously out of her lounge room window and noticed that just behind the corner of the house was the distinctive lines of John’s car boot. “Isn’t that your Cortina, John?” I asked and he leapt out of the car and ran over to ensure it was not an optical illusion or a trick of the light. Then it dawned on him. “Oh, now I remember. I went home at lunchtime and Marion drove me back into town. She thought I might have to have eye drops or something at the opticians and not be able to see well enough to drive home. She must have moved my car down the drive so she could get hers in front of it.” He apologised again the next day and bought me a bottle of Bundaberg Rum. I told the editor all about it though, and he wrote a funny little article, keeping John anonymous, and put it in a humorous column he sometimes wrote for the editorial page. Poonch Me Real ’Ard

Albany never got television until 1965 and then only the ABC. For a few years before that some people had TV sets in their lounges and huge aerials in their backyards, the tops of which were somewhere in the low hanging clouds that perpetually covered the town. It was only a matter of logical deduction or local gossip that told us these galvanised pipes sticking hundreds of yards up into the strato-cumulus were used for the reception of television signals from Perth. But these were not really very successful. You’d go around to someone’s place to watch telly and all you’d see was shadowy shapes without features, wandering around on a background reminiscent of a very misty rainstorm at sea. The sound would be some eerie voices or music emanating from a sort of crackly hiss. They used to put a violet coloured filter over the front to minimise the snowstorm effect but all it did was make the picture dimmer. People would say things like: “Was that Hoss or Little Joe clambering up that mountain?” and the other one would say “I don’t think it was either. I think we’re watching Mr Squiggle!” Or: “Why are we watching the test pattern?” and the answer would be “That’s not the test pattern. It’s John Harper-Nelson’s tie!” But until they built the big mast at Mt Barker and the smaller repeater antennae on Clarence, Albany people would amuse themselves by going to the Regent or Empire cinemas, playing cards and drinking themselves stupid or listening to the radio. But listening to the radio was not much more interesting than trying to pick up television signals. The local station was okay for about three hours at a time, but Mantovani and Percy Faith only recorded so many albums and “Dr Paul” and “Portia Faces Life” were not everyone’s cup of tea. There was “Back to the Bible” and “Wool Sale Reports”, plus a relay of the ABC News that came on exactly the same time as it did on the ABC radio station that had a greater signal strength. Any efforts to make the commercial radio station more interesting was met with stiff opposition. Once when they played both the Billy Vaughan Orchestra’s “Baby Elephant Walk” and Pat Boone singing “April Love” in the same hour, the switchboard went mad with people complaining about things like “devil’s music” and “If I wanted to be surrounded by garbage, I’d go and live in Lake Sepping!” Lake Sepping was a dual-purpose lake near Middleton Beach. It provided both the town’s drinking water and was the site of the Albany Rubbish Tip. So we tended to make our own fun, like kicking a ball around if the weather was not too bad or sitting and seeing who could out-stare each other without blinking if it was pouring with rain. Teddy Waterman was an expert at this game. He could outstare anyone, even the infantryman on the Desert Mounted Corps statue on the hill. He was a natural and would take on all comers. Teddy had an affliction that should have been a huge disadvantage to him. He suffered from a mild form of epilepsy and occasionally he would go off into a small trance-like fit for anything up to a minute. As soon as he emerged from this catatonic-like state, he would mutter “Beat it!” which was Albanian for “Please go away. You are annoying me!” My sister had one ambition in life and that was to outstare Teddy Waterman. She practised on me, my brother, on the budgie, in the mirror and everywhere. But every time the fixtures list showed her playing Teddy she would lose. The match always went into extra time and often would have to be resumed after tea. But she never won. One day when they had been at it for around an hour and a half, Teddy suddenly muttered “Beat it!” and my sister said “Did you just have a petty mal?” “Yup!” said Teddy. “But I didn’t blink, did I?” He hadn’t, either, and he won the three points. Teddy would go into a petty mal at the worst possible times. Once when he and I were having a punch up! He was a year younger than me, but a lot bigger, maybe two stones, and in eleven year olds that is quite a fair bit of difference. But we were bashing away in the garden and just as I feigned with my left and swung with my right, he dropped into one of his trances. I hit him on the

left side of his chin and he spun around in the other direction and fell straight through the louvred window of the sleepout, breaking four slats of glass on the way through. I copped a dickens of a punishment for that, even though if he had been aware at the time he wouldn’t have even noticed the blow. I think I was sent down to the wood heap with the axe every day for a month, even though I apologised sincerely to him and Mum and even forewent my pocket money to pay for the new glass. But what used to worry Mum was the way you would see him sitting on the back of his Dad’s old Vespa, cutting a good fifty miles an hour up York Street. Very often he would be hanging on the back, his head on one side and his eyes all glassy. Suddenly he would sit up and mouth the words “Beat it!” and you’d know he had had one of his “turns” as Mum called them. She spoke to his father, a complete idiot who should have been certified, but he shrugged and said that Teddy had never fallen off yet and there was nothing to worry about. He added something about “Me and our Ted roaring through the night” and staggered back into the bar of the Premier Hotel. Teddy went on to achieve his boyhood ambition in food service, catering to agricultural workers. Why that particular line of work appealed to him I never did find out, but as a lad, if asked what he wanted to be when he left school, he always said: “A shearer’s cook!” His father, Charles Edward Waterman, was a linotype operator at the newspaper when I started my apprenticeship. He had been there for quite a few years but eventually became such a liability they had to sack him. He used to brag mercilessly about his exploits, most of which had happened in India. He claimed to speak fluent Urdu but as no one else in Albany knew the language or had even seen a phrasebook, this was sort of accepted on his say-so. Teddy used to say to him “Say something to me in Urdu, Dad, and I’ll answer you!” Charlie always said the same mumbled gobbledygook and Teddy always replied with some more of the same. It was their party piece and we didn’t like to deprive them of that little entertainment. Mrs Waterman had disappeared some time in the past and we didn’t ask about her, although my Mum did meet her once when she helped Charlie up Grey Street and into his home after the singing syrup made his legs stop functioning properly. Mrs Waterman was waiting on the front porch with a thick bundle of envelopes in her hand and after she dug the keys from Charlie’s pocket and opened the front door, she took his weight from Mum’s shoulder, stepped inside and then let him fall heavily to the boards. She casually stepped over him and extended her hand to Mum. “I am Shalimar,” she said. “Charles’ wife. Thank you for being a good friend to him.” But Charlie’s other party trick was to say to any of Teddy’s friends “Come on, poonch me! Poonch me real ’ard!” He would undo his shirt buttons and display a tattoo of Popeye on his chest and one of those gigantic stomachs that have only recently come into fashion. He was a peasant Yorkshireman who had retained his accent despite living in India and Albany for many decades. “Coom on, poonch me!” he urged, and we would gingerly jab at him, a little scared that we would have trouble extracting our tiny fists from those great folds of flesh. But once I had a rotten day at school, failing a history test, going out for a duck at cricket and then getting a puncture on the way home. “Poonch me!” he goaded and I hauled back and threw my entire body behind it. I was also unfashionably big as a child, although not as large as Teddy. I let rip with a blow John Wayne would have videoed and studied over and over until he had copied it to perfection! Old Charlie doubled over, or as near to doubling over as his gut would let him. His face went purple and the water squirted out of his tear ducts like small fountains. But he never lost his dignity for a second.

When he regained his composure, which I must admit was remarkably quickly, he lit a Capstan Filter and said nonchalantly “Didn’t ’urt!” But I think he may have been telling the truth and that he did have a very high pain threshold. There is one of those legends that circulate in printing factories and which, through mere re-telling it, becomes more than folklore. It becomes fact in the minds of those who relate it. Of course, like all urban legends, this one had several armies of people prepared to swear that they were actually present when it happened. The truth is it really did happen about five years before I started my apprenticeship. One day I looked in the accident book and it was listed there in fading blue ink: 13th July, 1959. 1930 hrs. Chas. Waterman. linotype operator. Serious cut to his thumb caused by unsafe usage of metal saw. Required fifteen stitches. J. Wheeler, first aid officer. So it really happened! That night he was asked to work overtime and given five shillings with which to buy his tea. This was an award requirement in the Printing and Kindred Industries Union if you were asked to work more than eight hours in any single day. He bought his meal by the schoonerful at the Premier and spent a little of his overtime pay to have a few middies for dessert. Then he returned to his machine and started to typeset the following day’s news. The sub-editor requested that an irregular column measure be used on a particular media release to accommodate an unusual sized “block”, or printing plate, which had been provided. It was standard practice that if the width of the line was other than the normal nine, eighteen-and-a-half or twenty-seven picas of the single, double or three column measure, the typesetter himself would cut it down before placing it on a galley for the compositors to make a rough impression, or “pull” for the proofreader. Charlie went to the saw and never realised that he had not engaged the safety guard, or had so much disdain for it as many comps did, that he left it up. As you already know from the accident report, he then proceeded to pare the top of his thumb down almost to the first joint. Immediately his keen mind swung into action and he administered first aid on himself by popping it straight into his mouth to stop the blood from going everywhere. Linotype metal is primarily lead and tin and oxidises quickly, so the hands of anyone using it are always coated in a greyish-silver layer of grime. This all went into his mouth as well and, fortunately, that which was washed off by his saliva went down his throat with the blood where it was sterilised by the surgical-spirit-like properties of his evening meal. This at least stopped him getting blood poisoning. Charlie briefly informed Jack, his foreman, that he had to get it seen to and staggered up the road to the doctor’s surgery, which stayed open until eight o’clock for just such industrial emergencies as this. The GP gave him an antibiotic that was also neutralised by the contents of Charlie’s gastric system, and placed fifteen sutures neatly along the jagged line of sliced flesh. He bandaged it up, put a leather sheath on it and told Charlie to go straight home. So he did what he was told after walking over the road to the Premier to get a belated anaesthetic. Charlie fronted up to work again the following morning, and at around oh nine hundred hours, was again switching on the slug saw. Again he neglected the safety device and once again the blade ripped into his thumb, this time shredding the gauze, leather and little bits of catgut on the way. Again Charlie popped it all into his mouth and retraced the previous evening’s journey up to Doctor Leonard’s surgery. The entry in the accident report for that day read: 14th July, 1959. 0900 hrs. Charlie did the same thing again to the same thumb. Another twenty-two sutures. Recommend he no longer be permitted to use the saw. J. Wheeler, first aid officer.

However, they continued to employ him for a few more years and he eventually got asked to leave when he became increasingly hostile to his fellow workers, wrestling one of the press operators to the ground over a really silly incident. There had been some sharks hanging around in King George Sound, menacing bathers at Middleton Beach. The ranger had been asked to try to shoot them with a World War Two LeeEnfield he kept for just that sort of assignment. It is quite dangerous firing a .303 calibre rifle bullet into water, due to possible ricochets and as yet the ranger had been unsuccessful. There was a story about it going into the next edition of the paper. This was exciting stuff, pre-Nine Eleven! John Milson was not yet the news sleuth he later became, but something like this would have been right up his alley! At morning tea time while he was spreading margarine onto his raisin toast, Charlie started bragging. “If Ranger can’t do it, I’ll swim out and kill the buggers!” he announced. “This is a job for a man!” “What will you use to kill them with?” one of the machinists asked. “We haven’t got a long enough extension lead for the slug saw and you don’t know that breathing on them will necessarily fix them!” “I’ll take me butter knife!” Charlie bragged, brandishing his piece of cutlery. We all roared with laughter and one of the linotype apprentices set the following paragraph and slipped it into the front page just as it was going to press: “Today, Mr Charles Waterman of Albany, offered to end the shark threat by swimming out into King George Sound, armed only with a butter knife!” The press operator ran off a few issues with this in it and gave one to Charlie who went into the toilet to read it. He came out beaming all over his face and went down to the press room. “Leave it in!” he demanded. “I can’t, Mate!” said the printer. “The boss would sack me!” “No,” insisted Charlie. “Leave it in. I’ll square it away with the editor.” But the printer laughed and restarted the run, which by now had the paragraph removed and the column rejustified. Charlie ran after him and punched the stop button. “Don’t ever do that again!” growled the machine operator. “No one touches a start or stop button on a newspaper press unless he is authorised to. Particularly someone who isn’t even allowed to operate composing room equipment any more!” Charlie wasn’t going to be spoken to like this by a mere printer! He grabbed the guy by the overalls and dragged him to the ground until the guillotine operator and one of the book binders came and hauled him off. We never saw Charlie for a few years, then one day I was cycling up York Street and there was a familiar looking Popeye on the torso of a chap shovelling out rubbish from a stormwater drain on the roadside. It was Charlie, as clear eyed and healthy as I have ever seen a reformed alcoholic! I See Youse Got the Weather Wrong Again One of my duties after I first started work was to do the deliveries that could be done on a bicycle. Although I was officially indentured as a hand composing apprentice, it was accepted by the union that the newest employee should be the general dogsbody. So I got to take small parcels of stationery and office printing out to clients up to a three-mile radius.

Albany is not the best place in the world to ride a bike. For a start, the wind and the rain is always in your face. If you ride to Lockyer, you will be ploughing into a stubborn northerly whistling down Perth Road and as you are about to return, the wind will whip around and you will be faced with a howling gale blowing straight in from the Antarctic. A trip to Middleton is marred only by the current of air racing in from the Bight, while on the way back to town, the “Roaring Forties” tries to blow you back into the Sound. In addition to this, everywhere is uphill! The main street in town is a steep slope down the bed of the Yakamia Creek, which runs the full length of the thoroughfare into the Harbour. When we first moved into town, stormwater drains a yard wide and two feet deep lined York Street and Grey Street, which runs from Melville in the west right up to where the bush starts and the houses end on Clarence. Serpentine Road and Earl Street were the same. Spencer, Aberdeen and Collie Streets run parallel either side of York Street. All had raging torrents along each verge between the road and the footpath and had to be crossed on little wooden footbridges. During the nineteen sixties, the Albany Municipal Council covered the drains with huge concrete slabs. But to this day, you can hear the water rushing along underneath you when you park your car and if you peer down between the joins, you can often make out the froth that it creates surging just beneath the slabs. At least once a decade, normally during a particularly wet winter, a huge hole will appear in York Street near the intersection with Stirling Terrace as the creek erodes the earth and road base above it and causes it to collapse. John Milson used to love to be first on the scene when this happened, clicking away with his Pentax and interviewing passers-by in the hopes that someone had had a close brush with death. On one occasion, a Falcon Sedan drove into the hole under cover of darkness and it is rumoured that in his gratitude, John bought him a bottle of whisky every Christmas for the next five years. I was quite glad when my term as delivery boy ended and some other poor little sod left school and turned up, all bright-eyed with anticipation of a dazzling career, only to have his dreams shattered when he was presented with his bicycle clips and introduced to the Malvern Star. But I got to know quite a few local business people and often shared a cup of tea and a few laughs with them. For example, whenever I took complimentary newspapers to the good folk in the offices of Drew Robinson and Sons in Stirling Terrace, they would always hassle me about the weather forecast. “I see youse got the weather wrong again!” they would chortle with delight. I tried to explain that I didn’t have anything to do with the little panel at the top of the front page that used to always optimistically prophecy that there would be a “becoming fine” change the following day. I would argue that even the managing editor could only publish what the boffins at the meteorological bureau sent to him but that was no excuse to the employees of Albany’s largest department store! If the report from the weather bureau said it was going to be fine then, ergo, it must be our fault for making it rain! I used to get verbally abused for every spelling and punctuation mistake, or “literals”, as printers call them. These would be recited and a plausible explanation demanded. If I tried to blame gremlins, contributed copy being wrong or even human error I would be reviled as a careless incompetent, even though at that stage I didn’t even know how to hold a composing stick. If the error appeared in an advertisement, the aggrieved businessman would personally dress me down, demanding a full refund then and there and dismissing with disgust my promises to consult the advertising manager. I was shirking my responsibility and should be ashamed of myself!

After all, one fifteen year old boy does all the work at a newspaper office while the editor, subeditors, journos, photographers, account managers, bookkeepers, sales staff and production crews just party away without a care in the world. When you apply for an apprenticeship in a newspaper they don’t check your education reports, your personal references or your criminal record. They test to see how thick skinned you are and many a weakling with only brilliant academic qualifications to present are summarily rejected. You have to be able to prove you can stand up to the combined Albany Chamber of Commerce and the Businessmen’s Association without flinching! Everyone in Albany always knew all about everyone else’s business, so there was really no need for a news or social section in the rag. But that was what everyone bought it for. They knew when the next stock sale was on and what was showing at the Regent Cinema. They were at the footy last Sunday so they knew who scored and who got reported for consistently low tackling. The tides and shipping information may have interested a few people and advertisements seemed to annoy most people even more than inaccurate weather reports. The police superintendent was the biggest gossip in town, so everyone knew what had happened in the law courts even before the Judge had hung up his silly little wig. So why did they buy the paper? To read “The Phantom” comic strip? To chuckle at Phil Cutter’s cartoon comment on the Letters to the Editor page? No way! It was to see who had been caught doing what! And to maybe realise the lifelong dream of seeing your own name in print. There could be no other reasons. But because of this, being an apprentice newspaper compositor was one of the most exciting jobs in town. And being the errand boy made you even more important in the eye of the general public than the editor himself! Ted Loveridge Once upon a time, between the two World Wars, Albany had a flourishing underworld. The era is officially known as the Great Depression, but in Albany it is known as “When Ted The Toilet Was Here”. After the second war, there was a time of economic prosperity, known in the rest of the world as the nineteen fifties, but in Albany it was referred to as “Just After Ted The Toilet Went To Gaol.” The underworld sort of dissolved after that, when the top crime bosses went inside and everyone else was just too plain lazy to organise the easy pickings in a slack town like Albany. Ted The Toilet was christened Edward Thomas Toynbee but got his nickname for two reasons, mainly because of the smell of his flatulence. The other was for his use of profanity, which was nearly as foul as the methane he produced down the other end. The chap who used to come in and clean the newspaper offices in the evening and carry out many other of his business activities at the same time was The Toilet’s greatest admirer. Ted Loveridge, the son of a Presbyterian minister and a lubra from the local aboriginal reserve, used to tell many a pointless story about his hero, most of which are so forgettable that very few fell into Albany Folklore. When he was fifteen, Ted Loveridge parted company with the straight life. The following week he parted company with all his front teeth. Ted had a large handbarrow that he found abandoned in one of the bays at the Albany Markets while its owner went for a pickle sandwich and a middy at the London Hotel. He made a few structural alterations to it, painted it a really sissy pink colour with some enamel that had been left out the back of the illicit brothel after it had been decorated, and in a very wonky cursive, lettered the words “Loveridge Haullege” along the tailgate. If calligraphy was not his strong suit, neither was spelling.

He hid the barrow in a vacant storeroom under the Post Office for a few weeks until the former owner had forgotten he had lost it, then went into business for himself. His first client was Mr Toynbee. “Ted, I want you to take this satchel down to the Albany Races at Centennial Oval and give it to my employee, Ted Tugwell. You don’t need to know what’s in there, just go straight there and don’t open it. That shouldn’t be too difficult, even for you!” But it was too difficult! Ted’s natural curiosity was enhanced by the educated guess that the satchel contained money. Besides which, it clinked when you shook it! Ted found it far too hard to go more than one block before he succumbed to the temptation to have a look inside. There was nearly fifty pounds! It was Ted “The Book” Tugwell’s cash float for the day. In 1939, that was a lot of money. There were mostly pounds and ten-shilling notes, but there were also quite a few florins and about twenty “deenas” or shilling pieces. Ted Loveridge always had a few pence of his own in his pocket so on the way up York Street, he ducked into the Albany Hotel, which was the only one which would serve anyone who was six years under the legal drinking age. The thought of swaggering in with nearly fifty quid in a satchel was just too much of a temptation for the young reprobate. Within minutes his wildest dreams came true and one of the blokes at the bar said: “So, Ted. What ya got in the satchel?” “Oh!” Ted bragged. “About ’alf a century! Business was quite kind to me this week!” It wasn’t a lie, he told himself. He had nearly fifty quid in the bag and now that he was in The Toilet’s employ, business WAS good. He didn’t notice a thickset man in a green fedora approach him from a dark corner. “Twenty seven of that’ll be mine then!” Ted Balcomb told him. “Remember? Ten for the crates of whisky, five you borrowed and twelve you put on that lame nag at Belmont Park!” He unbuttoned the flap on the leather satchel and extracted twenty one of the pound notes and twelve of the ten bobs. Ted Loveridge got on his knees and begged. “Please, Mr Balcomb! Give us another coupla days. I gotta deliver this to someone. It aint mine.” “You said business was kind to you this week! It won’t take long to make it up then, will it, Ted?” He pocketed the wad of notes and strode out the door with his two henchmen, Ted Duckett and Ted Woolmer. At this point it would probably be a good idea to point out that in the early years of the twentieth century in Albany, a lot of boys were christened Edward. There were quite a few Edwards of note at the time – members of the Royal Family, politicians, sportsmen, explorers and music hall acts. Most mothers had high aspirations for their sons and believed by giving him a distinguished name like Edward would automatically lead to a successful life of wealth and importance. Also, most of their fathers and fathers-in-law were named Edward, too, so it was quite an easy option. So poor old Ted Loveridge went around to everyone in the bar and tried to beg twenty seven quid to take down to The Book. It was Thursday and everyone got paid on Friday, so other than the few pence they were wasting on the Albany’s watered down lager, they were all skint. Ted went into hiding. For five days he lay in a chicken coop behind Widow Barnsley’s house, eating corn and raw eggs until, bewildered why her hens had apparently stopped laying, she crawled into the galvanised iron shelter and confronted Ted. She was a big woman and she dragged him out by the hair.

He was covered with chook manure and bits of straw so she turned on the hosepipe she used for sluicing out the chook run and squirted some of the filth from Ted’s person. Then she marched him, soaking wet, down to the Police Station. There was nothing to charge Ted with. It is not an offence to lie in a poultry house, other than maybe trespassing, but even then, the intent to commit a felony needs to be present. So the sergeant let Ted go. However, over the road, sitting in his Hudson taxicab, Ted “The Taxi” Turnbull saw young Ted enter the cop shop then emerge two minutes later. He ran up Stirling Terrace and told Ted The Toilet. Six minutes after that, Ted Loveridge had his front teeth extracted without any anaesthetic. Two days on again, he put his age up three years and enlisted in the Australian Army. Putting his age up three years had the curious effect of making him only ten years younger than his mother. In his second week at Bindoon Training Camp, Ted was picked up by the Regimental Police for wheeling twenty four bottles of rum, fifty cartons of Craven A and two sides of bacon from the Officer’s Mess along Great Northern Highway on a wood-barrow at two thirty in the morning. As it was only his first offence (that they knew about) he received a year in the stockade. A month after he was released, but still confined to barracks, four houses in Bindoon were broken into and Ted was again arrested on Great Northern Highway in the early hours of the morning with thirty bob, three engagement rings and a bottle of port in his greatcoat pocket. This time the RP handed him over to the civilian Police and the Magistrate put him away for eighteen months. Then the Army decided they could probably do without this puny bit of manpower, despite the Second World War needing all the gun fodder it could get, and sent him back to Albany. The next eighteen or so years were spent in much of the same fashion and when he headed back from Fremantle Gaol in 1961, he decided he was going to make a success of his life. He got a job cleaning the offices of the newspaper, the radio station, a car dealership and a couple of shops. The money he earned from these went to buy a Holden FX utility which he did up with parts he found abandoned on the Spare Parts shelves of the car dealership. The ute came in handy for transporting all the things people had carelessly left lying around in the offices. There were others who could put them to good use and who would thank Ted very warmly for his thoughtfulness in passing them on. One evening while I was working overtime, Ted came up to me and leaned on his broom. This was something he did really well, having got lots of practice at it. “I say, Son,” he started. “Could you do a small job for me, d’ya reckon?” It was common practice to do little print jobs for other members of the staff – wedding and party invites, business cards for some extra-curricular sideline, raffle books for sporting clubs, even office stationery for a spouse’s business. Old Cruttenden turned a blind eye to it. He sort of had to because when he was on the machines himself, he was the worst offender of them all! The owners knew it went on, as do the owners of nearly every printing firm in the world. It is regarded as a perk. “What is it, Ted?” I asked and he produced a battered envelope from his pocket. Inside was a Gordon’s Gin label with one corner a bit torn. “Oh come on, Ted! I could get into real trouble if I forged them. And you could go down again if you sold bootleg. Especially passing it off as a major brand!” I probably didn’t say exactly those words as I was a bit wet behind the ears and didn’t know terminology like that in those days, but the sentiment was there.

Ted shrugged and never mentioned it again. However, about two months later I was around at Old Boongul’s house and he poured me a gin and tonic. The tonic water was just the usual Kirk’s but what he poured out of the gin bottle nearly took the skin off my tongue! It was Chateau Loveridge, for sure. When the moonshine caper was put to an end by the local constabulary without actually laying charges, Ted supplemented his wages and other odd pound notes he came by when he started organising chook raffles in the pubs on Friday nights. Chooks were easy to come by because one of the shops he cleaned specialised in poultry and smallgoods and were not particularly careful with their inventory. Eventually the police sergeant informed Ted that, in order to run any sort of raffle, he needed to be licensed and hold a current permit from the Lotteries Commission. Due to his unfortunate habit of getting caught doing unlawful things, Ted was ineligible for these formalities and resorted to cooking the chooks and trying to sell them from the back of his ute in the car park at the Stomp. He finished up his days in poverty, suffering hardships when the good people of Albany started to become suspicious and distrustful and began locking their doors and windows. The last thing Ted said before the nurse pulled his eyelids down and drew a sheet up over his face was: “I think I might have a couple of brand new hospital thermometers still in their wrappers in my lockup!” Ted’s Boy Ted’s boy, known throughout Albany as Ted’s Boy or sometimes just Ted, was really named Warren. Ted was not his father, although they shared the same surname. In fact, Ted and Ted’s Boy had the same father. When Ted’s mother had outlived her usefulness to Reverend Loveridge, he simply swapped her for a younger model in the same way people upgrade their computers nowadays. Then, when she was no longer able to meet his demands, he moved on to an even younger lubra. Old Ted was, as you found out earlier, officially ten years younger than his mother, so it was not unnatural that he made friends with one of the subsequent lubras when the good pastor had finished with her. (It may have been the fourth or fifth, for all we know.) She was about the same age as Ted and had a small child. Between visits to gaol, Ted lived with her, initially in an old humpy on the back of Mt Clarence, then in a galvanised iron shack with a dirt floor in Marbellup and finally in a State Housing Commission bungalow. Ted’s Boy, or rather his half brother as it turned out, emulated Ted in his earlier years but while the older chap had a bit of character, Ted’s Boy was always a nasty, vicious little tyke. No one liked him, not even Ted. Old Loveridge probably never even met him, because pregnancy was one of the reasons he used to trade in his old models, but it is doubtful that he would have liked him, either. As a child, he bullied other children and stole their toys, bikes and whatever pocket money they had. As an adolescent he started mugging women and taking their purses, bashing old people for the few shillings he might find in their kitchen drawers and indecently assaulting some of them as well. At least three unsolved murders all had the Warren Loveridge hallmark although nobody could prove anything. In the late nineteen sixties, Ted’s Boy began hanging around the wharf. He would befriend the sailors as they came off the cargo vessels for shore leave and introduce them to the town. For this they would often buy his meals and alcohol and even pay him to drive them to the Esplanade or Stomp to look for girls. He ran errands and relied heavily on their poor understanding of Australian currency, exchange rates and local prices. Many was the time there was only a few cents change out of a twenty dollar note after Ted’s Boy bought them a carton of Rothmans, a pizza or a six-pack of stubbies.

Then he discovered that his new acquaintances had an even bigger source of profit. And there was a growing demand for that source as hippies and junkies started flocking to the town to get away from the cities where prices were too high or they had become too well known. Ted’s Boy used to buy from the sailors and sell to the locals. There were no effective customs checks on the sailors in those days and they were free to come and go as they pleased with only their superiors on board to carry out searches if they so desired. Lots of these sailors were quite trusting and naive when it came to making friends. Warren would quickly learn how to win them over, then offer to sell their contraband which was mostly narcotics, for a very small commission “to cover my costs: petrol, incidentals, stuff like that!” Every now and again, ensuring the sailor friend had a few grams of whatever was their particular poison on their person, he would shop them to the local police. The police would then round up the suspect, frisk him and find the evidence then lock him up until his boat was about to sail. They would drive him in the paddy wagon down to the wharf and hand him over to the ship’s officers, still in handcuffs. Ted’s Boy would then be free to flog off the dope and keep all the proceeds. Many of the captains would ban that particular sailor from further shore leave until arriving back at their home port, where their services would no longer be required with the shipping line again. Because the other sailors had benefited from their dealings with Ted’s Boy, they would vouch for him and recommend to their mates on other freighters that they seek him out to sell their stuff, so his victims usually didn’t suspect he had grassed them. But then a new officer came to work for the Albany police and she took an even greater dislike to Ted’s Boy than her colleagues had. She was of a new breed of well-educated, suspicious cops, so the first time he rang up to dob a sailor, she traced the call and went straight around and arrested him. He had a whole sackful of stuff on him and she handcuffed him to the paddy wagon while she searched his flat. There she found the fruits of many burglaries, mugging and fraudulent transactions. She hauled him back to the station and charged him. Meanwhile, the unsuspecting sailor was rounded up by a couple of the other cops and was already locked away in the watch house. The duty officer made a point of feeding a new prisoner straight away, regardless of the time of day, so when Ted’s Boy was thrown in the cell with him, the incumbent was eating fish and chips with a fork. The officer turned the key and went to buy another serve for his newest prisoner but when he came back, the prisoner was in no condition to enjoy them. The police canteen dinner plate had been broken in half and the jagged edge was sticking out of Ted’s Boy’s throat and the fork, which had so recently been piercing a lump of snapper, was now embedded between his ribs with the prongs penetrating his pericardium. The heart ruptured within seconds and Ted’s Boy dropped dead on the floor of the cell. The sailor claimed to have never met Ted’s Boy before and swore that after the officer left the cell, his new cellmate had demanded the meal and grabbed at it, braking the plate in the process. The momentum created by his pulling motion caused the shard of china to fly back and lodge in his neck. Then as he lurched forward, the sailor, in an act of charity, had reached forward to stop the young man doing any more damage in the fall. Unfortunately he still held the fork which amazingly found its way into Ted’s Boy’s ribcage and subsequently his heart. The duty officer testified that some of the dinner plates were indeed cracked and could have broken in half with a very small amount of pressure. The coroner found it “accidental death” and the sailor was only charged with possession of drugs for which he was subsequently found guilty.

This sailor, despite his accent, was a naturalised Australian, so after his release he headed north and became a shire council employee in some wheatbelt town until it was discovered he had a criminal record and given the sack. He moved back to Albany and stayed there until the late nineteen eighties when he just disappeared. Ted’s Boy had outlived Ted by thirteen days and with no one to provide for her any more, his mother was found dead by the rent collector in their little asbestos fibro home a couple of months later. The Lord’s Advocate Since arriving in Australia from London we had been attending a non-denominational assembly of Christians in a small industrial town south of Perth. I was only about ten when we hit Albany in August 1959 and although it was smaller than London, it was a lot bigger than Kwinana, our home for the previous few years. For a couple of weeks we went to the Salvation Army to worship, but they were too conservative compared to the fundamentalist meetings we were used to in recent years. So we went up the road to a more relaxed church where they loved to sing, sway, clap hands and yell out things like “Hallelujah, Brother”, Praise the Lord”, A-a-a-men!” and “Hands down if you are staying for coffee!” We took our seats in a pew halfway back, wondering why all the rows nearer to the pulpit were empty. There was a handful of people in the very front row, which we guessed correctly, was the diaconate. They were the ones who were singing loudest without reading the hymns from a book, as were we, nearer the back. There was a small choir to one side of the altar and a bright eyed, blonde boy doing a wonderful job on the piano. He could have played in any band in Australia, he was so talented, but he was obviously getting all the musical and spiritual satisfaction he needed right there in Albany. Then, right on seven thirty, he stopped playing and everyone in the building reverently bowed their heads in silent prayer as a tiny little bloke of about sixty five years of age entered from a vestry on the left and strode up to the pulpit. Actually it was probably more a strut than a stride, his confidence in himself was so big it made up for any height deficiency! He stopped behind the pulpit and raised his hands. “Dear loving heavenly Father, we . . .” he began and I closed my eyes ready for a prayer. But that was where he stopped. For about eight seconds there was total silence and I wondered, as only a ten year old boy does, if I had been struck deaf all of a sudden. When I made a tiny squeaking noise and realised I hadn’t, I opened one eye and peeped at the pulpit, expecting to see that the reason for the silence must be that this little old man had died and was slumped over the lectern. But this hadn’t happened either! In fact he was too short to have slumped over anything. He was standing there with his face raised to the ceiling and his arms outstretched. He was merely gathering his thoughts and deciding what he would say next. I closed my eye and waited and he began again, this time telling God all that was wrong with the world and how He should go about repairing it. Strangely, everything wrong with the world at that point in history was happening right there in Albany. God was extremely fortunate in having an agent like Billy Thripp right there on the scene. God listened as Billy itemised all the sins and iniquities of the population. I could feel my mother stir uneasily as she realised that she had brought her family to live in this den of iniquity which was a sort of twentieth century reincarnation of Sodom and Gomorrah. But I am sure she relaxed as she realised that God had it all in hand with the best person for the job to advise him and carry out the necessary work to remedy it.

When all this was done, Billy started making his report to God, telling him of all the deficiencies he had filled, all the wretched lives he had delivered a little comfort into and all the deep, dark sinful corners into which he had shone the light of hope. I hope God was impressed because I certainly was! In one single week, Billy Thripp had done more than all the philanthropists, social workers and charity organisations had achieved so far that century! This was not a mere man, this was a giant, a mountain of self sacrifice and giving which should be an example to us all. Then I heard my father snort and my sister gave a little giggle. Mum was trying to keep a straight face and my brother was reading a Famous Five book. Although they said nothing, I could tell they were all, with the exception of my brother, thinking “What a pompous little ass!” My brother was probably thinking how lucky Julian, Dick, George and Anne were to be drinking lashings of lemonade and eating hard boiled eggs, instead of being stuck in some smelly, cold church listening to a twit spout on about how good he was. We saw a lot of Billy Thripp over the next few years. He would enter people’s houses without knocking or being invited and immediately launch into a long prayer followed by a full report of all the good works he had done that day. “I was up in the hospital this afternoon and prayed with dear Sister Harris who is in dark despair. I brought comfort and light into her poor, sad life. I managed to get a look at her medical notes and to my horror, I found that she has not very much longer until she will be with our sweet Lord, so I was blessed by being able to come to her now in her hour of need.” Or: “That poor, wretched family out at Gledhow, the Robinsons. They had no food left in their cupboard, but Praise the Lord, I was able to deliver to them a large basket of fresh fruit donated by one of the farmers. I tell you, Brothers and Sisters, it is such a blessing to be right here at the cutting edge of the Lord’s ministry in these sad times!” Billy drove a small Morris Minor which was constantly in the service of the church. There was not an idle bone in Billy’s infinitesimal body. I defy anyone to say he was a bludger because he was the world’s very first geriatric Attention Deficit Hypertension Disorder All-Action Clergyman. But he had the greatest ego the world has ever known. Anyone who thought Cassius Clay was bad soon changed his mind when he met Pastor Thripp. I never realised until after he died that he had never been ordained as a minister of the Church but because he had such a dynamic personality, he just moved into the job when the vacancy occurred and he took over. Nobody, not even the deacons, ever thought to query his position and I don’t know if he received remuneration as I am sure any salary would have to have been paid by the head office in Sydney and not by the local congregation. And I am just as sure that they would not have approved of this pious, self-righteous gnome who was a cross between a tyrannical dictator and Orwell’s Big Brother. But not only did I learn that he had never been ordained, he was not even a member of our Church! He was a Methodist! One thing is for sure, while Billy was in charge, there was a marked decline in sin around Albany! After all, it is one thing to be discussed by your gossiping neighbours, but another entirely to be the subject of a conversation between Billy and God! The reason the rows nearer to the front were always empty when Billy was in attendance was because he was quite short sighted. He used to peer myopically out into the congregation, looking for someone he recognised as needing to be humiliated. Occasionally he would misidentify someone and launch into a scathing attack on their behaviour of the past week, only to be gently put wise by one of the deacons. Week after week his prayers from the pulpit would contain private and personal information he had received in strictest confidence or through clever detection work. It would not surprise me to

find that he steamed open people’s letters, read the contents then reglued and replaced them in the letterboxes during his uninvited visits to the homes of parishioners. A typical prayer would go something like this: “Dear loving heavenly Father, we . . . beseech Thee to give comfort and succour to our dear sister, Agnes Playne as she suffers the deprivations and indignities brought about by her husband, Arnold’s, addiction to strong drink. Lord, help her to stand strongly in the face of the violence and abuse which Thou hath decreed to be her lot to bear. Intercede, we pray Thee, in this woman’s life that his vile acts and degrading performances will only make her a stronger and better disciple of Thine. “We also ask you to take pity on our dear brother, Robert Braithwaite as he goes through the agonies of separation from his wife. Help her to see the errors of her adulterous ways with the many men who use and abuse her body for their own selfish perversions and satisfaction, Lord, and return her into Thy flock to bask once more in Thy glorious Light! “Lord, Thou knowest the contents of Brother Clarence and Sister Judy’s hearts as their son faces the justice system of this wonderful land that Thou hath blessed us with. Help them to remain strong as this wayward son is confronted with his wicked and iniquitous behaviour towards that poor unfortunate woman whom he did deal with in such a vicious and bestial manner. Help him to have full contrition so that he can receive your wondrous forgiveness as did the Prodigal Son in Thy Scripture. These things we ask . . .” and so on, much to the delight of the church gossips, the embarrassment of the named and I am sure, the dismay of the many fine Christians in the congregation. But one particular incident really infuriated much of the parish so that quite a few good souls left and went to the Church of Christ. When the offering was collected, Billy used to pretend to be reading from his hymnal or to be deep in personal prayer, but everyone knew he was watching to see how much people were giving. Because of this, they tended to donate more in order to escape having to give reasons and explanations for their thrift. On this evening he launched into a mini-sermon immediately after the stewards had placed the plates on the altar. Its subject was a criticism of everyone who did not tithe, or give one tenth of their income back to the work of God. He singled out one man in particular, although he did not name him. “I have noticed,” pontificated Billy, “that one businessman in this congregation, who constantly makes a pretext of respectability, only ever slips a few shillings onto the plate when it is very apparent his income is substantially more than the five or so pounds tithing would indicate. “But as if this was not selfish enough, if you enter his shop you will observe that all the items for sale are a ha’penny or so more than in the other emporia of this borough! For example, a pound of tea is tuppence more than the store down the road. A dozen bread rolls is a penny more than at the bakery, while his cheddar cheese is thruppence more for a quarter pound. “And this same man has the audacity to short change the Lord!” His voice rose in both volume and pitch as he delivered the Scriptural authority. “The Good Book is correct when it tells us that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven!” We all knew to whom Billy was referring as there was only one grocer present. There was dead silence for a full half minute and Billy stood at his pulpit, smirking triumphantly. He was just about to start on a “Dear Loving Heavenly Father we . . .” when the Church Secretary stood up and said, “Pastor, may I speak with you in your vestry immediately?” “Please do not interrupt this service!” Billy ordered and tried to ignore Mrs Tanner. He raised his hands and started “Dear loving hea . . .”

“Pastor! I insist!” “Woman, be silent!” he thundered and then my father and three other male deacons also rose from their seats and stood behind the tiny figure of Mrs Tanner. The anger on Billy’s face turned to surprise, then dismay as they all indicated to the door. Silently he followed the five out through to the vestry. The remaining deacons also stood up and walked behind him. The blonde pianist struck a huge, two handed chord on his instrument and started to bash out “Onward Christian Soldiers”. The choirmaster started swinging his arms in an attempt to conduct the half-hearted singing that broke out but he was obviously more interested in looking over his shoulder at the vestry door and kept losing the time. After three verses, the deacons re-entered the church and one of them took the pulpit. He spoke in a half whisper to the pianist who performed a very slick coda and grinned sheepishly at us in the back pews. The deacon apologised for the interruption and announced that the preacher had decided to return to the Manse over the road. He then led the congregation in the last hymn and bade us all farewell. Of course, we couldn’t wait to get outside to ask Dad what had transpired in the vestry but he told us to mind our own businesses, go home and he would see us later. We went home and Mum made us cocoa. Just as we were about to go to bed, we heard Dad whistling a merry tune coming along Vancouver Street. For probably the first time in our lives, Dad treated us like adults and we tried to behave the same way. We didn’t ask any questions and we didn’t giggle. We promised that what we heard would never go past that room. However, I believe the Statute of Limitations is only thirty years on these sorts of promises I feel I am at liberty to disclose what he said. Apparently, as soon as the door of the vestry was closed, Billy tried to regain his composure but was immediately bawled down by Mrs Tanner who felt a lot more confident now she had the backing of the entire diaconate. She pointed out to Billy, frequently admonishing him to shut up, that the grocer in question was one of the finest Christian men in the town, that his dedication to the church and to the Lord could never be called into question. He not only regularly contributed to the church building fund, the upkeep and maintenance of the bookshop and charity store, numerous missionary organisations and programs, but was putting the sons of two congregation members through theological college entirely from his own pocket. Billy was desperately trying to interject and Dad said he looked like our goldfish Joe, blowing bubbles at the glass wall of the tank. We resisted the urge to grin and clamoured to hear more of what the ferocious Mrs Tanner had said. She then prodded him with her forefinger and said, “And if you had ever bothered to find out, his merchandise is slightly more expensive because he only buys the very best available, he is totally loyal to his suppliers and he always pays in full on invoice. In addition, his weights and measures are scrupulously exact and he always errs in the favour of the customer. If you don’t know what that means, he always drops an extra ounce in, a couple more biscuits, a few more beans or nuts or whatever. And he is the last of a dying breed of grocers to honour the old tradition of the “Baker’s Dozen”, thirteen instead of twelve. “He is one of the most respected businessmen in this town and with very good reason! You must go back into the church and apologise for your injudicious outburst and ensure it never happens again!” But Billy just opened the outside door and started to walk out. “You all disgust me!” he spat. “I work for the Lord and he will be the final arbiter!”

He then dismissed them with a flamboyant wave of his hand and crossed the road to his little cottage, leaving the deacons to close the service. We were delighted. As soon as Mum and Dad had retired into the lounge to discuss things further, we crept into my sister’s room, hoping to disseminate what it was all about and what it meant. But she wanted to listen to a serial on the radio and told us to go to bed. The next day, Billy was out and about again as if nothing had happened but it was at least a month before he dared take on any other member of the congregation. I don’t know whether all our family were paragons of virtue, but I never heard him criticise any of us, although I am probably one of the few people who lived in Albany in those days who could say that. Or maybe it was just that I used to drop off to sleep during his sermons and maybe he saved the best for last! Eventually Billy retired, not through ill-health but because he had put everything right, led all the sinners to salvation and cleaned up the town in a way that Wyatt Earp would have envied and with a lot less gunfire. His mighty work was done and now was the time for a lesser man to maintain the flock while Billy moved on to his next great challenge. Besides, nearly everyone had left the church and found other congregations with whom to worship. After he left, we had a very quiet man take the pulpit who everyone loved and the flock soon returned to the fold. Proof Reading During one hockey season, our goalkeeper went through a rough spin in his life when his car blew up, his parents both died and his beloved cat disappeared. He quite often used to miss training and on more than one occasion he turned up late for a match. As I played in defence, I wore larger shin pads in my stockings so I would drop back as “kicking defender” until he arrived with his big cricket-type pads and full protective gear. One afternoon when we were playing in Mt Barker I dashed out of the goal to reduce the angle. The attacking forward swung at the ball, sent it out of play, then with his follow-through struck me a beauty on the unprotected bit just below my right knee. Fortunately Johnny McQuaid turned up just then and took over in goal while I was subbed off, barely able to walk. We played out a nil-all draw, which was disappointing because if memory serves me well, a win would have left us too far ahead on the table for anyone else to threaten us. But at the time I was more concerned about my throbbing leg. Cliffy drove my car home for me and I sat in the back with a packet of frozen carrots the ambulance officer strapped to my shin. The coach was pissed off because when he sent Boongul to get frozen peas, he had to buy carrots, which cost five cents more. Initially he returned with a pack of split peas as that was all they had of that vegetable. We made him go back and change them for something out of the freezer. Anyway my leg swelled up like a pumpkin and I had to go to the doctor’s on Monday in considerable agony. The skin was a livid purple and was red hot to the touch. In addition, I had a really rotten headache and didn’t feel like eating, which surprised my Mum, or drinking, which surprised my team-mates even more! The doctor prescribed something called ichthammol to be applied to the skin and gave me some penicillin tablets. He also gave me a medical certificate to say I must be given a sit-down job or not attend work for a week until it was better. It was, he said, cellulitis: an inflammation of the tissue, probably caused by the fungal infection on my feet spreading to the bruised area. In those days it was very common to have athletes foot, tinea and other nasties chewing away at the skin of the feet inside warm, damp shoes and socks.

This was especially so among athletes who raced through public showers and never dried between their toes and even more particularly in Albany where nothing ever got a chance to dry out. Fortunately, the proof-reader was on holidays that week and old Jack Wheeler, the linotype foreman who normally stood in for him, was sent grumbling and moaning back to his machine. I took my place in the little glass cubicle with a hatch for galley-proofs and copy to be passed through for my perusal. This was great, I thought. It was hockey season, which means winter. In Albany winter means that the weather is not only the usual windy, overcast, rainy, miserable condition it is in for the entire year, but it gets icy cold as well. Alan, the regular reader, had brought in a two-bar heater and plugged it in under his desk so it was nice and toasty five minutes after we turned it on in the morning. It got a bit hot on my inflamed shin so I moved it over to the left-hand side and settled in a for a week or so of cosy comfort. But, unlike Alan and Jack, I was familiar with the English language and this really upset the subeditor and the journos who were only familiar with football, how to get paper into their Office Remingtons and the barstools at the Premier. So not only did I mark the words which were misspelt or commas which were left off, I also did what sub-editors do in the real world. I corrected grammar and the misuse of words as well. The first galley I read was about a visit by a Perth soccer team which had beaten our local boys by a cricket-type score – 35-nil or something. Apparently the Albany coach had recommended: “We had better forget about this fiasco and fast!” I went to the sports reporter and asked if this was a bit drastic and wouldn’t a simple overhaul of their diet be a safer alternative? He looked at me blankly and asked me what the unprintable I was talking about. I shook my head in wonder and changed the phrase to “quickly forget about this fiasco, ” which was what the coach obviously meant. Then I read an article by the social writer about a wedding that had taken place about the same time the Mt Barker team was mutilating my leg. One paragraph described the bridesmaids as wearing Dutch caps. I blinked at it a couple of times and changed it to “Dutchgirl-type hats.” Their contraception devices may be pertinent in one of Billy Thripp’s prayers, but certainly not in the “Around Albany” column. Two paragraphs down, it said “a small intimate get-together took place after the wedding.” I would have been most sorry for the groom if it hadn’t, so I substituted the word “intimate” for “family”. I had to re-read the entire article as I had a sudden afterthought that perhaps this was why the bridesmaids had been protected in such a manner. The next item was headed “Bach played at church”. I didn’t study music history at high school, but I was pretty sure that old J.S. had shuffled his mortal coil quite a long time ago and as I didn’t believe in ghosts, I was sure that they really meant “Bach music in church.” Then in the news, a headline made my stomach churn. “Blood runs out after serious car accident” headed a story about the Red Cross being acutely short of blood because of a spate of traffic injuries and surgical procedures. They were requesting that donors contact the blood service as soon as possible, so “Blood stocks low after serious accidents” seemed more palatable. This went on all morning and I wasn’t even trying to be picky! If I had, I would have run out of room in the margins to make those little marks that sadly seem to have disappeared these days. Since the advent of highlighter pens, the offending word has a stroke drawn through it and it is up to the typesetter to either check the copy or take a guess!

But in those days, little squiggly lines, rows of dot underscores, weirdly drawn symbols and peculiar words such as “stet” and “trs” meant the same thing to everyone involved in the setting and composition of printed matter. I had a liberal sprinkling of these on the galley proofs, but there were also a lot of cross-outs and corrected words which meant that often a whole paragraph needed to be reset. I limped happily off to the lunchroom at twelve o’clock, feeling I had done a satisfying, productive morning’s work. But when I returned to the cosy little glass room, there was a note on the desk next to the jars of red, blue and green pens. The only place you are ever certain of finding a pen in a newspaper house is in the proof-reader’s office. But never look or ask for black as they simply don’t exist. As proofing ink is always that colour, marks in black are hard to see and can be missed, so depending on his mood, his favourite football club’s strip or personal choice, a proof-reader will always mark in something different. However I never saw a proof marked in pink in those days, if that means anything to you. Proof-readers were a manly lot! By the way, black is a colour to a printer, despite popular misconception. This note, written in green ink, was from Mr Cruttenden, demanding that I go immediately to his office. That was no problem despite my sore leg as it was just on the other side of the toilets from where I was sitting. “Afternoon, Guv’nor, ” I chirped. “You wanted to see me?” “Yes. Sit down.” I did as bade and he pretended to be writing on his production planner with a forbidden black biro. Eventually he looked up and frowned. “How’s your leg?” “Good. I’m resting it!” “Yes, I see.” This wasn’t easy for him. “Um . . . Jack tells me you have been a bit, shall we say, over-enthusiastic with your proof-reading this morning.” It was a statement but it seemed to me that he wanted an answer. “I’ll show you.” I volunteered, and went and got a bundle of second pulls from the box. “Look!” Old Cruttenden read in silence for a few minutes. He was formerly a press operator so reading was naturally difficult for him. He shifted his spectacles up onto his forehead in a position we used to refer to “glasses on full beam” and placed the long sheets of paper on his blotter. “Why can’t you ever do anything like a normal person?” he asked, with no emotion whatsoever in his voice. No malice, no exasperation, no disdain, no condescension! Nothing! Just a flat, deadpan statement! “Do you mean like a normal Albany person, or like a normal “normal” person?” I asked, cheekily. “Look, Capsicum, I came here from the Hobart Mercury, and I thought Tasmanians were strange! But since then I have learned to live by this motto. That’s all I am going to say.” He handed me an octavo sized card with the words “When in Rome, do as the Romans” printed on it. I went back to my glass cubby and stuck the card up where everyone could see it. Thereafter, I reverted to allowing the quaint turns of phrase, the often-startling misuse of everyday words and the mental images that the weird syntax conjured up.

Haute Cuisine Generally unrecognised in the world of haute cuisine, Albany is the home to many sumptuous gourmet dishes. Honestly! Because of its isolation for much of its history and being surrounded by fertile farmland, swampy vegetable plots and an ocean teeming with life, a distinctive style of cooking has evolved. Best known are the seafood dishes. For many years restaurants served up what they described on their menus as Moreton Bay Bugs, but which had never been anywhere near Brisbane. They were hauled straight out of Princess Royal Harbour and other inlets along the Rainbow Coast by scruffy looking families of Albanians who referred to themselves as crayfishermen. The Albany bug is considerably larger than its Queensland cousin and because it enjoys cleaner, colder water, is much tastier. Now that it is in vogue many get exported to Perth and interstate, but the best recipes are a carefully guarded Albany secret which, if I were to divulge it, I would have to come out and kill everyone who reads this narrative. Needless to say, it contains parsley. Every dish ever cooked in Albany contains parsley, unless it is lamb, in which case it will contain mint. This law is as irrefutable as any in the land and is totally uncontested in any competition or cookery dispute. In fact when recipes are swapped after church or, these days, on the internet, Albany cooks don’t even bother to mention parsley as without it, the dish would not exist so it goes without saying! There are even a few sweet desserts that require a sprig of parsley as garnish! Fish pies adorn many a plate in many a restaurant and dining room in the old town. Coming from a seafaring population, one would expect this but the favourite version is made from the ugliest creature ever known to man. Even uglier than Old Boongul whom I must admit it strongly resembles, the Albany catfish makes a most delicious meal when stewed up with parsley, leeks, onions and garlic, a couple of thinly sliced nadine potatoes. It is then placed in a casserole dish with cheese sauce poured over it, then topped with thick, savoury crumble. This is all popped into the oven until the crust goes golden brown, then sprinkled generously with grated Mt Barker Fully Matured Cheddar for the final two or three minutes. Because this fish, which is speared with a gidgee rather than caught with a hook and line, has viciously sharp spines on its back, it is called a “cobbler”. The early pioneers used to make their own shoes and clothes from animal skins and leather so used one of the tough, pointed spines as an awl to poke holes in the material to help the needle when stitching it together. This sort of work is the job of a cobbler, hence the name. Therefore, with typical Albany humour, some witty chef decided that this fish crumble should be called “Cobbler Cobbler”. Albany fishermen catch huge salmon from the beaches and this is normally sold to a cannery or a smokehouse, but a lot of it finds its way to the tables of local folk and is nearly as popular as snapper. Snapper is caught beyond the islands and is traditionally rendered inedible by coating it with a thick batter and then dehydrating it in a vat of scalding vegetable oil until it is as deficient in nutrition as its traditional accompaniment, the french-fried potato, or chip. Oyster Harbour, to the north east of the town, used to host some delectable shellfish from which it gets its name. In recent years these have nearly been depleted, as have the abalone. Again, if you want to pass yourself off as a local, you must call it “abber-loney” or they won’t know what you mean. Once these magnificent shells could be found clinging to granite rocks all around the coast, particularly in more sheltered coves and bays. Now, just as along the Perth coasts, they have been decimated by poachers who remove far more than their bag limit and try to smuggle them

into China where, like almost everything that is not grown in that country, it is regarded as an aphrodisiac. I much prefer an abalone to an oyster but I have never been under any illusions as to what effect it has on that part of my private anatomy! Being an Albany boy I have never needed any stimulation in that department whatsoever. I am not boasting, just stating a blunt fact. Species Homo Sapiens from the Great Southern are known in science not only for their incredible fertility rate but also their anxiety to practise it as often as possible! Whether this is because of the cool, clean environment, the absence of traffic lights for a radius of at least two hundred kilometres or the consumption of all that parsley, even the CSIRO has not been able to ascertain. But the Census Bureau has been aware of this phenomenon for many decades. I think it is the catering! It must be! Albany girls are brought up to believe that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, even though the men know the real way involves ministrations just below that organ and on the outside. Many a girl has migrated to the town, has been snapped up within days of arrival and finds herself, without any struggle or regret, at the altar within a matter of course, despite her culinary prowess. Skinny Dipping But other than when I have been sick or suffering a hockey injury, the only times in my life when I was ever off my food it involved a girl. She was quite a cute looking thing, a year younger than me at High School. I met her at a Christian Endeavour meeting and at first was too shy even to speak to her other than as part of a group. Then one Easter when I was fifteen, we all went off to Pemberton, deep in the jarrah and karri forests near Manjimup. (Just to clarify that last sentence, there was only one Easter when I was fifteen. I just did not say it very accurately.) The youth group was holding a “house party” which was really a weekend spent in a series of timber huts surrounding a huge hall where they made us sit and listen to sermons and lectures on how young ladies and gentlemen should behave when in each other’s company. I knew how I wanted to behave in Jenny Malone’s company but it wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that I found any opportunity. (NB: Malone rhymes with pinecone, not abalone!) All Good Friday, Saturday evening and again on Easter morning Reverend Greene preached at us to the point that our rebellious little teenage spirits were bursting at the seams. Then with a surprisingly relaxed attitude, he suggested that the afternoon be spent in quiet meditation and reflection within the cathedral-tall forests around the town. We walked along quiet country lanes made of red gravel, wondering at all God’s creations – the height of the trees, the brilliant flashes of colour as a parrot would dart from branch to branch and the still, placid lakes formed by streams from icy underground springs. I marvelled at the way Jenny’s tight blue jeans clung to her every time she placed one foot in front of the other. By teatime I was so hot I would have evaporated any of those icy ponds had I stuck my toe into it! That evening I sat through a two-and-a-half-hour evangelical sermon designed to bring together the lessons we were supposed to have absorbed over the past three days. All I wanted to bring together was Jenny’s firm little body and my own.

So after the sermon while all the goody-two-shoes sat around in the cookhouse drinking cocoa and singing verses and hymns, I asked Jenny if she wanted to go down to the swimming lake and look at the Easter moon reflected in the water. To my enormous surprise she said she’d love to! My mate, Steve, took my lead and asked the exact same question to her friend Anne and although I would have liked to be alone with Jenny, we set off between the giant trees to the lake, a quarter of a mile away. The Easter moon was high and clear in the sky. There wasn’t a cloud anywhere, which made the scene really surreal and romantic. But as it was well into the autumn and the latitude quite southerly, the absence of cloud cover meant that it was also very chilly. This was good at first because, although we were all Albany youngsters and quite used to the cold, it gave us the excuse to cuddle up nice and close and see if we could find warm places to put our hands. Jenny commented that although the lake would seem pretty cold at first if you dived in, it would actually be warmer than the surrounding air and you would quickly acclimatise to it. Without saying anything, I shucked my jacket, shirt, boots and socks, jeans and then, in just my underdaks, took a long, flying dive into the water. It was freezing and it felt like a knife had been driven into my chest. I gasped for air through my restricted throat until my bronchus relaxed enough so that I could fill my lungs properly. I heard a splash beside me and Steve’s head broke through the surface. We shrieked with exhilaration and turned to look at the shore. Jenny was already naked to the waist and pulling at a boot while Anne was looking uncertain and unbuttoning her cardigan. “Come on in!” I yelled. “You were right! It isn’t a bit cold!” Jenny stripped away the last few garments and ran to the water’s edge wearing the tiniest pair of knickers I had ever seen which, at that early stage in my life, I had to admit was a very limited sample. In the bright moonlight she looked magnificent and even though I was sure I was going to die of pneumonia, at least I would die contented! Mum sent me to the house party hoping I would find God and instead I discovered heaven! But just as she dived, I noticed two figures emerge from the waterbush and wattle undergrowth surrounding the lake. It was the Reverend and Mrs Greene who noticed our absence from the cocoa fiesta and came to investigate. Jenny hit the water and a second later broke surface less than a metre from me. “Shit that’s cold!” she squealed and Mrs Greene’s hand flew to her mouth. Reverend Greene was striding down the path to the landing, barking out orders for us to come in immediately. In the light of clear reasoning, he was absolutely correct. What we had done was complete stupidity under the circumstances. It was so cold in that lake that we could have caught pneumonia. It was also highly likely that the shock of so rapidly lowering our body temperatures, and I admit Jenny had made mine extremely high, could have sent us into shock and we could have drowned. In addition, Steve had undergone open heart surgery for a ventricular septal defect, or what they called a “hole in the heart”, less than a year before and it could easily have killed him. As I say, it was utter stupidity! But none of that mattered to Reverend Greene. We were boys and girls together and we were unclothed! He could easily explain away our deaths or serious permanent disability but how would he ever be able to formulate a good enough defence for our depravity and his inadequate chaperoning skills?

Three near-naked teenagers in the lake and another only slightly better attired on the bank while under his jurisdiction? No defence attorney in the world would take on that case in the court of public decency of a small southern town! His reputation as a youth leader was in tatters. He would have to re-apply to the missionary organisation for a posting to Papua or The Amazon! I swam to the landing and nonchalantly climbed up the ladder right in front of Mrs Greene. I thought it best to enter the enemy’s lair boldly and showing no sign of weakness. Besides, my recently proud manhood was shrivelled to infinitesimal proportions by the icy water so she wouldn’t have even had the thrill of seeing my young, athletic masculinity in full glory beneath my Jockettes! Steve jumped out right behind me and we ran to where our clothing lay. I grabbed my big woollen jacket and took it back down to the landing so that Jenny could step right out of the lake into it without having old Greeney cast his lascivious eyes on her. For all his pious pomposity, I know he would have had lecherous memories of that moment for the rest of his life if I hadn’t immediately hidden her in my coat. I have those lecherous memories instead! We dressed very quickly but in silence and followed the Greenes back to the house party, shivering with our cold, damp bodies sticking to our underwear. Steve was grinning and trying to get close to Anne, but Mrs Greene kept blocking his path. I put my arm around Jenny and we both burst into laughter, which was the last thing the reverend couple expected. On our return everyone was kicked out of the cookhouse while Mrs Greene ladled us huge mugs of cocoa. I hate the stuff and poured some milk out of a bottle I found in the fridge and drank that instead. Then we got a lecture that would have scalded the ears off Ted The Toilet, had he been there! The state of our health and wellbeing was not mentioned once although that should have been his primary concern. Firstly we got bombarded with scriptural quotes about carnal sins, iniquities of the flesh, riotous behaviour and the results of a life of adultery. Then I was singled out for being the oldest and the son of a deacon. The others, I was told, looked up to me as an example and I had let them down with my lack of leadership. I squared my shoulders and decided to carry that one only because I was flattered by it! Jenny copped a serve because of the profanity she had uttered when she struck the water! Then the real crux of the matter came out! Everyone at the house party would know what had happened by now! How? I am still not sure, but the following morning Reverend Greene made certain that if they did not know before breakfast, they did afterwards! And there was no way he could keep it secret, he gravely informed us. The word would soon filter back through the entire church community, embarrassing our parents and families and bringing shame on us which no amount of good work could ever reconcile! We were doomed to a life of public disgrace and an eternity of misery and damnation! His reputation as pastor of the flock was sullied and for the remainder of his tenure he would be known as the one who allowed an orgy to take place right under his nose at one of his house parties! And all because we took off our clothes in mixed company! On the way back to Albany, Steve and I were made to sit in the back of Reverend Greene’s car while Mrs Greene sat in the front of another car with the two girls in the back. When we stopped for tea, we were forbidden to speak to the girls and on arrival back in Albany we were driven straight to our homes while the girls went directly to theirs.

Reverend Greene dropped Steve off first. He didn’t know Steve’s parents very well and was not sure of his footing. But Dad was a member of the church – an office bearer and as such was in for the full narrative, complete with scriptural verses, opinions, accusations of trust betrayal and the reverend’s own personal condemnation. Dad listened with a grim face for a couple of minutes then went and opened the front door. “Thanks, Grafton! I’ll deal with it now!” Grafton? Dinkum! Reverend Greene started to protest that he had not delivered the full, damning story, but Dad was quite insistent. He left but only after trying to extract a promise that Dad would deal with me in the severest, most appropriate manner. I think he was envisaging methods involving manacles, lashes and straps embedded with metal studs. Dad went into the kitchen and made a pot of tea. “You’ll want to hear this, Love,” he said to Mum and she came in and took the cup and saucer from him. “So what actually happened, Son?” he asked, without any accusation or reprimand in his voice. “Get back into the lounge!” he ordered my brother. “This doesn’t concern you!” I told Mum and Dad pretty much exactly what had happened except for the warm places my hands had discovered. Dad seemed to understand entirely and even though Mum said “I would have expected more of you, Gra!” she made no effort to express anger or even disapproval even though I know they both thought I was a total fool for what I’d done. Mum wanted to know all about Jenny. Was she born again? Did she go to our church? Who were her parents? Where did they worship? All the important stuff. Nothing trivial like: How old is she? Have I known her long? Is she suffering from hypothermia? But at least I could deal with these questions without being made to feel inadequate which at fifteen, always ends in shouting matches and the offending party storming out. Then Dad did what he always does whenever I got into any trouble with girls. He started telling me about his escapades when he was a similar age until Mum told him I wasn’t interested in what he had got up to with the floosies of West London. I protested that I was interested but Dad stopped anyway. Mum cooked two sausages, an egg and baked beans and I sat at the table to eat it but I really wasn’t hungry. I pushed it around the plate and eventually went out and fed it to the dog who thought cold fry-up was the best thing ever. Then I went through to bed. Lying there in the darkness I firmly believed I had fallen in love. Perhaps I had, I still don’t know. How do you know stuff like that when you are fifteen, your hormones are racing and you have a mad pastor telling you that he knew better than God who had, after all, designed fifteen year old boys whose only function was to be as horny as hell! My sister came home and walked unannounced into my room. She sat on the bed for a while and giggled. I told her to buzz off but she stopped giggling and squeezed my arm. “I like Jenny,” she said. “She’s nice. Did Mum and Dad give you a lecture?” “No. Dad just told me what a randy little bugger he was in his day and Mum wanted to know if she was a Christian. Do you mean that? You really like her?” “Yes. Rodney says she’s nice, too.” Well, if Rodney thought she was, that was all that mattered. “He says she’s very pretty. Do you think she’s prettier than me?” “She’s not as up herself as you!” I said. “Piss off and let me sleep.” “That’s gratitude for you! I came in to see you were alright.”

“Thanks. Now go!” “Yes, well while you were cavorting naked in the pool, I was giving Rodney the scruffing of his life in the back seat of his VeeDub!” That was supposed to make me feel better? She still hasn’t changed. It’s always got to be all about her! I sometimes wonder how come I turned out so normal! Next day at school I expected Reverend Greene’s prophecy to have come true and that everyone already would know about what had happened. But if they did, they did a remarkably un-Albany job of not letting on. At lunchtime Steve and I saw Anne and Jenny and walked over to them but they were just going into the domestic science building where boys were not allowed. It still amazes me that in the 1960s, girls did domestic science and typing while boys did woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing and no amount of persuasion or reasoning could sway the powers-that-be. Two of the boys in our class became journalists, one became a chef and another two are qualified tailors yet none of us were allowed to study these girl-only subjects. I don’t know if any of the girls became engineers, architects, carpenters, fitters and turners, boilermakers, etc but I doubt it. All they were trained for was sewing, cooking and secretarial work! But most important was cooking and the way to a man’s heart. The official version. So I never got to speak to Jenny until after school and then only briefly before her bus took her into town and I was left leaning on my bike, gazing longingly after her. She asked me whether I copped it from the old folk and I asked her had she suffered from her brief immersion. We both laughed and I said I’d see her at Christian Endeavour on Friday. But she never came. On Sunday she was in church in the morning and I walked home with her, pushing my bike. I asked her if I could take her to the pictures the following Saturday and she asked me what was on. “Elvis Presley in Blue Hawaii!” I said. I had been looking forward to that film for a while and she said “Good. I’ll see you at seven then.” I asked her if she would be at CE on Friday and she said she doubted whether she would go again. I didn’t ask her why but assumed she probably wasn’t allowed to any more because of what happened at Pemberton. But hey! An Elvis film in the back row of the Regent with Jenny Malone? God loved me more than Reverend Greene did! I only saw her twice during the week, even though I hung around the bus stop afterwards. I don’t know whether she deliberately avoided me or whether other arrangements stopped our paths from crossing. Saturday came around at last. I was still off my food and Mum began to think she should make a doctor’s appointment for me to see if I was okay. I could think of nothing but the tender way Jenny had looked at me and kissed me by the lake and what she felt like as she snuggled, wet with lake-water, into my outstretched jacket! I rode my bicycle into town and dumped it in some lantana on Parade Street then walked two blocks to her place. It was close enough to the cinema that we could walk there and back and then I could ride home afterwards. That autumn was strangely dry and there was still no forecast of rain. The errand boy at the newspaper whom I would replace at the end of the year was obviously delivering the weather to the satisfaction of the storemen at Drew Robinsons! I went up onto the verandah and was about to bash the knocker on the door when it opened. Jenny stood there wearing a housecoat but looking as gorgeous and desirable as I had ever seen her.

“You ready to go?” I asked. “Go where?” she said, her eyes deliberately not looking at mine. My heart sunk and I backed away. “We were going to go to the pictures. You remember? Elvis? Blue Hawaii?” “Oh, I’d love to but I have to do some stuff. Homework and I need to wash my hair and things.” “Can’t you do your homework tomorrow and I don’t mind if you come to the pictures with dirty things,” I said, trying to sound light-hearted although I knew it was futile. I was dumped. Good and proper! I didn’t wait for a reply. “See you in church tomorrow!” I grunted and started walking back to my bike. Then a thought struck me. She was going out with someone else! That was it! Reverend Greene had spoken to God and this was my punishment! So for an hour and a half I sat beside a pampas grass where I could see both the front and back door of her house at the same time. Eventually I realised I was being silly and fetched my bike and rode home. Boy, that roast beef and Yorkshire pudding tasted good next day at dinnertime! My appetite was back, but right through that dry, cold autumn I would get little sads every time I saw her. She stopped coming to Church and CE and I stopped hanging around the bus stop after school. By winter, she was just the memory of a childish crush that I had outgrown. Besides, the hockey season had started! For five years I hardly thought of her again. I did my Junior exam and passed really well. Then in January I started working and made a new circle of friends. I practiced hard on my guitar and was thinking of forming a serious rock and roll band, much to my father’s disgust. He had always been a huge fan of Doris Day and thought I should get into swing music, maybe a bit of jazz, but rock and roll was a passing fad and that Elvis and Gene Pitney and Cliff Richard were little more than one-hit-wonders. But I was devoted to it and when the Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers brought their Merseybeat to Australia there was no way any other music would be good enough. When the Seekers came along and Judy Durham replaced Little Pattie in my fantasies, I had completely forgotten about my first experience of love. Years later I came out of the back door of the newspaper office and saw someone sitting in my Anglia. I didn’t have a regular girlfriend and none of my other friends were likely to do that – just turn up unannounced and wait for me in the car. It wasn’t my Mum that was for sure and my sister was in Perth doing her nursing training, so I was a bit surprised. Robbie Bean’s mother once sat in the car, expecting me to drive her home as though it was my duty, but this time the springs were not flattened out and the wheel arches pressing against the tyres as they would have been if his fat parent had been there. I must explain something else here. In those days, nobody ever locked cars. Most people even left the keys in the ignition. I don’t mean just for a few moments while they nipped into a shop for twenty Rothmans or a red capsicum or something. They would park on York Street and spend three hours in the Premier then come out in no fit state to drive and find their car waiting just where they left it, unlocked and with the key still in place. Everyone trusted everyone else and I am not aware of anyone breaching that trust or having their car stolen. Except in one case and I will mention that later. So to find someone in my car was not a serious breaking and entering matter, just a rather curious event. It would have been quite normal to just walk through the back door into the comp room, come over to my frame and say “Can I get a lift home with you after work, Mate?” But here was a very attractive brunette sitting in my passenger seat.

Cliffy and the foreman nudged each other and gave me a knowing wink. “Looks like you’ll be breaking the drought tonight, Lizard!” they chortled. The girl looked vaguely familiar and it wasn’t until I was at the windscreen that I realised it was Jenny Malone. “Pleased to see me?” she laughed, shaking her head to flick the hair out of her eyes. “Yes, well it’s been a long time. Elvis has made quite a few movies since you stood me up!” “You’re not still sore about that, are you? That was years ago. We were just kids!” I was still sore and I felt squirmy. Although I did not have a steady girlfriend I was uncomfortable about being with Jenny, even though she looked fabulous. Even though she smelt nice and had a very sexy laugh. I just didn’t know. “You broke my heart, you know!” I told her, feeling like a fool but unable to stop myself. “I took it pretty bad!” “Yes, well I’m sorry. I was confused back then too. It was puberty. It happens to girls too, you know!” I peeled out of the car park and took her along to Festing Street and stopped outside the house with the verandah that I had watched from the pampas grass all those years before. “I don’t live here now. My folks went back to the farm after I left school. I’m training to be a nurse at the hospital near you. I live in the quarters.” I U-yed out of there and drove her to the hospital. She prattled on all the way and when I stopped outside the nurses quarters she made no attempt to get out. I misunderstood what she was doing and thought she wanted me to do the debonair stuff. I got out and walked around to open her door for her. She laughed and blew cigarette smoke in my face. I hated girls doing that. Not only did it seem trampish, it was plain bad manners. It put me in a rotten mood. “You’re home”, I said. “Mind how you go.” “Can you pick me up tonight? I hear you are playing at the Stomp and I wouldn’t mind going.” “Sorry!” I said. “My car will be full of equipment. There’s a bus at seven thirty and I’m sure you’ll find someone to bring you home.” She got out and I drove away fuming. Was she just using me to get lifts around town or was she trying to win me back? Don’t be a fool, I told myself. She’s just a user. Peel out! I had a shower and put on my nice new paisley shirt that Mum had brought back from England for me when she went back for Grandad’s funeral. I hadn’t worn it in public and I was sure everyone was going to be impressed with what I looked like! The fellows in the band noticed and told me I looked like a sissy but I expected them to say that. We set up the amps and drums and microphones and, not really understanding what a sound test was, we slapped a few chords, said “One-two! One-two!” into the mics and then went to get a coke and a Beach Coffee Bar Burger from the kiosk. She was one of the first to come in through the door. She still had the power to make me wonder what might have been between us, but the other blokes just stood and gawped! When she came over and threw her arms around me and her lips around my face, they nearly split their skin-tight jeans! I asked her to let go of me so we could start playing and she ran her hand over my arse and let it linger long enough for the guys to drool with envy. Then she sat on the edge of the stage and stayed there right through the bracket. When I sang a Stevie Winwood number she stuck her ear up to my voice amp. That pissed me right off!

In the first break, I spoke to her severely. “Knock it off, Jenny!” I told her. “You’re not only making a fool of yourself but you are making me look like an idiot, too.” “Twang!” she pouted. “Those boys in the band are creaming their underdaks about me. They’re all jealous of you!” “Just go away. Find someone to dance with. There’s Old Boongul! Go and dance with him!” But again she sat on the stage right in front of me. I had a really good friend called Glenda Rockman. She was a bit of a tomboy but we got on well together. Nothing sexual, just great mates. All my friends accepted her in exactly the same way. She used to give my car a lube and oil job and change my points and plugs. Well, the Anglia’s, anyway! But her sister was a real piece of work! Glenda was a tomboy but Karen was something else again. She showed me how to surf, taught me to play in the bass clef and could bowl Cliffy out in the nets. And he was one of the top-scoring batsmen for North Albany! She was very popular with the boys and was always surrounded by half a dozen of them. She also had a great singing voice. One day at Glenda’s I picked up Karen’s guitar and played a few chords and she came in on the piano. Next thing we were singing a whole bunch of Nancy and Lee, Johnny Cash and June Carter and even Sonny and Cher. Glenda insisted we should do a few songs together at the Stomp and it became a tradition that during the second bracket, when there were enough people there but things hadn’t really started swinging we do a handful of these duets. A sort of a crowdwarmer! Karen came on stage, as usual the life and soul of the party. We started a really wild version of “Cinderella, Rockafella” and flirted like crazy, our lips almost touching on some occasions. The dancers always loved this. It was up-tempo and great to stomp to. And Karen’s act was so sensual it even made me horny. Reverend Greene would have been left a gibbering wreck! But Jenny looked daggers! She glared at Karen and stormed down the hall and leaned against the counter, completely ignoring Don when he tried to tempt her with a hamburger. She stood there fuming while Karen and I did “I’m Goin’ to Jackson” and then she disappeared. Good riddance, I thought. She was freaking me out! But she seemed to get over her anger and when I lugged my amp out to the car afterwards, there she was again in the front passenger seat. “Can I get a lift home with you or are you taking her?” she said, indicating Karen who was carrying my bass while a crowd of her admirers brought out incidentals like my mic and gig bag full of leads, picks, spare strings and condoms. All the regular paraphernalia carried by bass musicians. “Stop being a pain in the arse!” I warned her. “You’re getting on my nerves!” But I drove her home, foolishly and told her not to bother me again. It didn’t do any good. Every time I’d come out of work when she was not on duty she would be in my car. At every dance she would be there, sitting on the stage until the blokes in the band started to refer to her as ”Lizard’s Groupie”, “The Lizard Tragic” and eventually just “Traj”. This is, I am told, the origin of that unique Albany expression. It was thought up especially for my stalker! The word stalker was not used in those days. It wasn’t regarded as seriously then as it is now. There was a fellow who regularly came to the Stomp who used to stalk girls all the time. He would phone them, hang around outside their houses and kerb crawl when they were trying to walk

down the street. He was under the misapprehension that they were flattered by his attention but mostly they were just frightened of him. On a number of occasions we had to go and drag him away and try to convince him he was being a prat! But Jenny was starting to put the wind up me, although nobody else took it seriously. Cliffy was the exception however and, in the goodness of his heart, tried to reason with her. “But he used to be besotted with me!” she cried. “But you weren’t interested in him then,” Cliffy argued. “He moved on!” “He was so juvey then. Now he’s more mature.” “Now you’re the one being a bit juvey,” Cliffy said. “And you are getting on his nerves.” “You’ve never been in love, Cliff. You wouldn’t understand!” Of course, Cliffy did understand what it was to be in love. But this was not love, it was obsession. She really startled him when she suddenly said: “Did you know I’m going to have his baby?” Cliffy came and asked me if this was true and I said that unless they’d found a way of doing it that they hadn’t told me about yet, there was absolutely no way possible! He went back and challenged her with it. “That’s not what I said. I said that one day I would have his baby, just you wait and see. And I will, too!” Karen and Glenda were delighted by it all. They really didn’t believe there was something going on even when I started locking my car doors. “Look, Lizard,” Karen said. “You’re a lovely boy and we love you to bits. But face it, you’re really not the sort who a girl like her is going to go head-over-heels in love with. She’ll turn out to be quite nice when you get to know her, you’ll see!” One evening Dad asked me if I was having a problem with a girl. Someone in town had told him because if anyone in Albany has any sort of personal situation, it immediately goes into the public domain. Dad is always the last to hear about it. I explained to him that this girl would not leave me alone, following me around, cramping my style. Dad looked thoughtful for a moment then launched into one of his experiences. “I remember when I was about your age there was this lass who lived in Brentford. She used to watch my brother Les and I play football. He was a great right half. Very fast and could turn on a sixpence. The ball never left his feet! I played in goal and used to feed the ball straight out to him and he would dribble it right down the touchline then pass it to our centre forward who was a chandelier at the boat-yard.” “I think you mean a chandler, Dad.” “Yes, that’s right. What did I say?” “Never mind, Dad. Go on with the story.” “Between the three of us we got promotion two years in a row and a talent scout came over from Fulham to look at us.” “Was there a point you wanted to make, Dad?” “Oh, yes! There was! Um, this girl used to have a thing for Les but he was already married to your Aunty Phyllis so she switched her attention to me.” “And?” He had the faraway look in his eyes.

“Oh yes. She used to stand behind the goal and talk to me through the net and once she distracted my attention and I let in an own goal that a defender passed back to me. The coach wasn’t ’alf cross because we were down one-nil at the time from a penalty.” “Good story, Dad. I’ll bear that in mind.” “Glad to be of help, Son. Any time you’ve got problems, never be afraid to come and talk to me about it.” The Anglia had a little T-shaped handle with a keyhole in the middle of it which you used to open and close the boot and lock it if you lived anywhere but Albany. It never occurred to me that if I locked the passenger and driver’s doors, Jenny would open the boot and get in there. But one day she did. I dropped Old Boongul off at his home before I realised she was in there. Suddenly the lid flew up as I put the car into reverse and prepared to back out of his drive. As I was skewed right around looking through the back window at the time, it didn’t half give me a fright. Then Jenny’s face appeared over the top and I braked hard. She fell out onto the drive and I got out to give her a real basting. It was even more stupid than diving into a freezing cold pool in Pemberton at Easter! I could have reversed over her! But she was crying. “I didn’t know it would be so scary in there’” she sobbed. “I was petrified! I tried to get out while the car was going but I was even too scared to do that. When it stopped I thought we were at your place!” I understood about claustrophobia. My arsehole of a brother had closed the lid of Dad’s Cortina on me while I was in the boot trying to change a light bulb. I was in there for about three-quarters of an hour before Robbie Bean came over to see if I was going to the Drive-In. When he asked my brother where I was, he replied, smirking, “Still in Dad’s boot I suppose. I locked him in. There’s no way he could of got out!” Robbie got the key from Dad and released me and I didn’t seem any the worse for wear. But two weeks later I went inside my wardrobe to fix the shirt rack and felt a bit uncomfortable. When I closed the door I started to shake and every time I got into an enclosed place I had an anxiety attack, especially if I couldn’t see an escape route. Nowadays they have to sedate me if I have an MRI scan. Although I have tried to overcome it, it still gives me nightmares when I hear of people trapped under rubble or in mine collapses. That’s a legacy of my smart-arsed brother and his nasty pranks. I knew that Jenny must have been pretty scared so I drove her back to the nurses quarters. She left me alone for a while after that then gradually began frequenting the Stomps again and pestered me for lifts home. But it was pretty half-hearted now and eventually, when I left town, she married a farmer from Gardener River. However when I returned from working in England, several people told me that the marriage broke up and she came back to Albany for a while. She often asked where I was, then eventually drifted off again. I haven’t heard of her in thirty years now and haven’t a clue where she is. Maybe she is in London hanging around Fleet Street waiting for me to give her a lift home! Now the chapter you have all been waiting for . . . The Ford Anglia

I had that old Ford Anglia for about three years and in that time it went from being quite a nice little motor to a complete wreck. Cars are very important tools of trade to teenagers in Albany. They weren’t V8 hoons like the kids from Bunbury and Mandurah were, or ute drivers like the bogans from the inland towns. In Albany they were a combination of office, workbench, love parlour, movie cinema and dining room. Oh, yes, and sometimes a means of transport. Generally they favoured small English cars: Minis, Austin 1800s, Cortinas, Morris 1100s, Ford Prefects, Anglias and later on Toyota Corollas, Holden Toranas and Datsun Sunnys. There were always a lot of FJ and FC Holdens, some Zephyr 6s and a sprinkling of Customlines and Falcons, but generally Albany boys liked their quiet little four cylinder sedans. A favourite sport was to drive to the top of Clarence then turn around in the big car park and let the car roll down Apex Drive, gathering as much speed as possible. At the foot of the Drive you had to make a fierce right turn onto Forts Road and then another even more dangerous entry into Marine Drive, praying that there was no traffic coming around the blind corner from Middleton Beach. Here, Marine Drive went downhill again for about three-quarters of a mile before being renamed Burgoyne Road. At this point, the idea was to make a sharp left into a steep side road called Cuddihy Street and then another ninety-degree turn at the bottom onto Brunswick Terrace. At the Old Post Office the road dipped again and you were in Stirling Terrace in what these days would be called the Central Business District, but in those days was just called “town”. All this while, the motor had not been running and you still kept it off as you raced along Stirling Terrace before turning right into York Street, the main thoroughfare. Here the road became uphill and depending on the speed you had attained by the time you made the last turn, the further up York Street you could travel before rolling to a stop. I once made it to the lychgate of St John’s Church and was hailed a champion for nearly three months until Dick Poynter in his V8 Chrysler Valiant was still going when he had to stop for a pedestrian coming out of the Commonwealth Bank opposite the Town Hall. He had reached speeds of seventy-two miles an hour on Stirling Terrace! But the Anglia couldn’t take this sort of driving for long and while the motor remained as solid as ever, the bodywork started to deteriorate. I would like to boast that the springs under the back seat took a beating as well but I have to let honesty prevail and admit that most of my scruffing took place on the front passenger seat in a position known colloquially as “upright” or the “Rosie Pownall position.” I never found out who Rosie Pownall was or why she had a position named after her. But that really doesn’t have anything to do with my Ford Anglia becoming decrepit. That model had only two doors. I think they all did. You had to tilt the front seats up so passengers could get in the back. The doors were made extra wide for just this reason, as well as so Robbie Bean’s mother could scunge lifts into town with you on account of she couldn’t get through the narrow portals of Uncle Ron’s Austin 7. Uncle Ron was not really Robbie’s uncle but that was what his mother insisted he address the man she lived with. Anyway, because it had only two doors, the back windows did not roll down but opened outwards on little hinged clasps so that a couple of inches of air could get in to the back when Old Boongul started farting in the front passenger seat. They got so much opening and closing for this very reason that eventually they broke and while they could be clamped shut quite securely, if you opened them they flapped about a bit. The only thing holding them in were two flat prongs that were inserted into the rubber window seals. One evening we were haring down Marine Drive in hope of beating Dick’s York Street distance record when Old Boongul let one go. His mother kept a couple of ducks in her backyard and Old Boongul was very partial to their eggs. Unfortunately, they had the alarming effect on his bowel

that caused him to expel flatus without warning. The result was very sulphuric and being heavier than air, hung around for ages. Cliffy, sitting in the back, suddenly found that the atmosphere around him had turned to methane, so in self-preservation he opened the window. Just at that moment the Anglia went over a pothole and the window shot out of its little slots and shattered on the gravel shoulder of the road. It took three weeks for Barnesby’s to get a replacement and it was mid-winter. We cut a temporary alternative out of Masonite and stuck it in with insulating tape but the draught whistled around cruelly inside the cab. After that we forbade Boongul to ride with us if he had been eating duck’s eggs. Broad Beans But it wasn’t only his Mum’s duck eggs that had that effect on Boongul. My Mum was also partly to blame. She used to make a cauliflower cheese that was the stuff of legends! I know her secret ingredient and use it but not too many others do. It also involves not using parsley, so it never really caught on in Albany, But like everyone who ever tasted it, Boongul could not resist it. It was up there with drinking Emu Export Lager straight from the bottle as far as my mate was concerned. Then Mum went one better! She applied the same cheese sauce to some stewed broad beans and baked that. It was sensational! Topped with breadcrumbs and a little nutmeg, its memory remained on the palate all evening and every time Mum asked what we wanted for tea, that was our first request. I think the bean option came about because once, when she went to Dad’s garden and cut a cauliflower, she found that the cabbage moth larvae had eaten all the insides out of it leaving a perfectly formed shell only a few millimetres thick. It was the last one in the garden and the shops were already closed. So with typical Albany Mum ingenuity, she looked around for a substitute and there, just like a footballer waiting on the bench to be selected by the coach, were three neat rows of bean vines, heaving under the weight of their pods, crying out to be harvested. Dad is very proud of his vegetable-growing prowess. He also has a secret ingredient but there are very few gardeners in Albany who don’t already use that vital compound to make their gardens the envy of Western Australia. It is the end product of the equine digestive tract and is often referred to as manure. My Uncle Buck calls it “horse’s doin’s”. We had a pastor from England once whose very posh wife told Sugarbag he should learn to call it fertiliser. “I’ve only just learned to call it manure, Marm!” he told her. But Dad was inordinately proud of his vegetables, particularly his legumes. “My broad beans are next to nothing this year!” he once boasted to Mrs Bull. “He means ‘second to none’,” Mum had to explain. Anyway, Boongul loved Mum’s vegetable dishes, particularly her mornay. I don’t know if it was a chemical reaction with the duck eggs or whether it was just a phenomenon of his particular strain of gastric juices but the broad bean cheese worked like a charm on Boongul. You could hear him as he set off down the road and he was still clearly audible as he went around the corner. The Psychedelic Dash I think this was Boongul’s idea originally and I know he supplied the raw materials.

The dashboard on the Anglia was made of fluted aluminium. When it was new it looked a treat, but after a few years it got a bit tatty, especially around the ignition lock where drivers’ fingers and dangling keys gradually eroded the shining elegance away and left it greasy and worn. Boongul turned up with a roll of contact adhesive vinyl, which was still a new thing in those days and quite expensive. This one had an oak grain pattern on it and looked very smart – perfect for my dashboard. I offered to pay him for it but he said it was okay, his cousin had brought it back from Japan and given it to him. He had several more rolls of it and intended to use my dashboard as a test run and exhibition model so he could start a little mini-business in dashboard renovation. “Fair enough,” I said, always the early innovator and we carefully cut out the shape of the panel with some scissors. We used a razor blade to make the holes for the speedometer and the other dials and ignition lock, then carefully peeled the backing paper away. It looked a million dollars and Boongul beamed as much of a huge grin as his protruding lower mandible would allow. All our mates were dead jealous and Boongul promised to do theirs in the next few days at one dollar a dash. We had just gone over to decimal currency and Boongul, like most other Albany people, could not get their heads around the idea that there were two dollars to a pound. Although they could recite the conversion rate with no problem, if you said ten dollars their psyches told them ten pounds, so nearly everything halved in price in Albany in February 1966. Anyway, after we had done a few laps of Albany looking for prospective clientele, I brought Dad out to have a look. “It’s peeling away a bit at the corner,” he said and poked at it with his forefinger to try to make it stick back down. Instead it stuck to his finger and as he withdrew it, the whole sheet came away. Boongul was dismayed but said “Never mind, I’ve got plenty more. I’ll redo it tomorrow.” But by the next day the dashboard looked dreadful. We couldn’t get the old adhesive off no matter what we tried. Water, kerosene, dishwashing liquid, turpentine, meth, even some white spirit which printers still used to clean ink from reusable type! Nothing worked. It only made the mess worse. It had bubbled up and gone brittle. AlI could do was to try to scrape it off with the razor blade we had used to cut the shape in the first place, which Boongul had left on the floor ready to stick into someone’s foot when they got in without their shoes after swimming. I was reluctant to let him reapply it and he accepted that. After all, he reasoned, it must have been a peculiarity in the material the dash was made of in the first place. But I was left with an awful looking panel that was far worse than it had been prior to the failed interior decoration experiment. I searched around in Dad’s shed and found a small tin of white gloss enamel that the label said was ideal for painting over aluminium, among other things. It said to clean off any previous emulsion with turpentine or paint thinner. There was a tin of acetone on the paint shelf so I took that. First, I got a jar of panel filler, commonly referred to as Spak or TickyTack, and filled in the little grooves on the aluminium so I had a flat surface to work with. I sanded it down with fine glass paper and picked off little blobs on the skirting with the trusty, multi-purpose razor blade. It worked a treat and it looked like I had found the solution. I carefully painted the entire dash panel after masking so as not to get any on the chromed plastic of the dial surrounds. It gleamed in the wishy-washy Albany sunshine, and next day when I applied a second coat, it looked just like it was meant to appear that way.

By the third day though, I was fed up with it. It had no character! At least the aluminium had had a bit of a feature with the horizontal ridges of the fluting and, for one glorious day, the oak grained contact vinyl that had made it the créme de la créme of dashboards! So I got out my acrylic paints and with a 00 sable brush, painted a very neat paisley design on it, copied from the shirt my Mum had brought back from England for me. Everyone said that shirt looked so nice with my brown corduroy blazer and as the interior upholstery had become a similar shade, mainly due to the cigarette smoke, I knew I was onto a winner with that pattern. It looked a million dollars, which in Albany that year equated to a million pounds! Wow, was I onto a winner here? If Boongul could sign up car owners at a buck a time for boring old wood grain, I could go for at least five, maybe up to ten for big dashes! Okay, it would take a bit longer and would require them bringing the vehicle back three times but no worries. I was rich! That is until the following day when I got in and looked at my pride, my joy, my handiwork! It looked like Boongul had vomited on it! I nearly cried. The acrylic paint had reacted somehow with the gloss enamel which had become unstable after being applied over the Spak and acetone, which had also probably got upset by residual traces of Boongul’s contact vinyl adhesive. The result was that the paisley pattern had been absorbed very slightly and had gone a bit blurry. The edges of each line and dot had lightened as a result, giving it the appearance of one of those carpets in wealthy people’s homes, where there are different heights to the tufts to form patterns. It was a psychedelic, furry, pseudo-relief, paisley-pattern dashboard! Albany loved it and for months I got requests to duplicate it on cars, surfboards, sides of panel vans and even the exterior of a shop! Of course it never worked again, no matter how I tried to combine all those chemicals. But I had the most talked-about dashboard in Albany! Jeremy O’Keefe Jeremy O’Keefe worked for a menswear shop on York Street. He had been there since he left school sixteen years previously and knew almost everything about menswear, alterations and repairs, fashion, how to match ties with shirts and a myriad other things that go into dressing the male body. So one day after a hissy fit with his boss, he decided to go out on his own. He managed to save most of his wages over the past years and he rented a small premises in town, liaised with the representatives of garment wholesalers from Perth and stocked the racks he had Steve, who was a cabinet maker’s apprentice, build for him in the shop. I bought a couple of shirts from him the day he opened and so did Steve and some of our mates. The band contemplated asking him to fit us out with uniforms but as we were all far too busy trying to learn new songs, write original material and get laid, we never quite got around to it. After about six weeks, I remembered seeing some sharp-looking waistcoats among his stock when he first opened and paid him a visit. He was glum! “I didn’t know it would be like this,” he moaned. “I’ve hardly had a single customer in here all week.” “Why don’t you put an ad in the paper?” I asked. “Maybe people don’t know you are here.” “They should,” he said. “I’m right in the middle of town opposite the library and council chambers!”

“Yes,” I said. “But you’re at the far end of the arcade, upstairs over the model railway shop. You haven’t even got a sign outside.” I bought the waistcoat from him and noticed that the sales docket was only number twenty-three. After nearly two months of trading, that was not very promising at all. In my typical fashion, I lost a button off the waistcoat the following evening and couldn’t find one to match in the basket Mum has in the linen closet where she keeps those kinds of things. So I dropped back into Jeremy’s shop. I noticed that he had taped a sheet from an exercise book on the wall outside the model shop. In blue biro, it read: “Jeremy. Gentlemen’s Outfitters and Tailors. Alterations and Repairs. Upstairs.” There was an arrow pointing in the direction of the aforementioned Upstairs. But when I went up, his face was longer than ever. “Must be a recession!” he wailed. “It was never this quiet at Percy’s! And I put a sign up outside as you suggested!” “No offence, Jeremy, but that is not really what I meant by a sign. You need a professionally painted one.” “I can’t afford that!” he grizzled. “I’m losing fifty or sixty dollars a week as it is. And I’m drawing no wages, either!” “I’m not surprised!” I said. “Seriously, Mate, no one knows you’re here!” “Can’t you tell all your friends at the Stomp and get your Dad to announce it at church on Sunday. Like you said, I have to advertise and everyone says word of mouth is best!” “Look, Jeremy, I’ve worked at the newspaper for four years now and I tell you, you will have to put an ad in there. Probably in the sports section. Tell you what, I’ll talk to Alf Bond and see if he can do you a special introductory ad at a reduced price. I know he’s done that before to help kickstart new businesses.” The logic behind this was good. If business was slow before advertising, then picked up afterwards, the retailer would realise the reason and buy regular space in order to keep his name in the memory of shoppers. Alf was happy to oblige because in addition to his salary, he got a commission based on the number of column inches he sold. The first ad appeared a week later. Jeremy made a special trip over to see me. “I can’t thank you enough, Lizard!” he enthused. “Business is booming! You were right!” “Well,” I admitted modestly. “I do know what I am talking about. You have an extensive range of really fashionable stock and your service is exemplary so people are delighted to shop with you, now they know you’re here!” In the following week’s ad he included the words “extensive range”, “fashionable stock” and “exemplary service.” He invited me to select, free of charge, any tie from his extensive range. He made the same offer to Alf who searched through the purples, pinks and mauves and eventually found a slim, dark blue number with a little white anchor on it. His cost one dollar twenty-five while mine was ninety-nine cents. I continued to shop there and noticed an ever-increasing number of customers each time I visited. Jeremy’s old EH Holden made way for a brand new Ford Fairlane and his smile grew wider every hour he had the shop open. “Don’t you think you should have a signwriter do a big display on the awning out the front?” I suggested one day. “Locals know you’re here because of the ad in the paper, but in a few weeks there will be a heap of holiday makers in town and they might not know about you! A sign would attract them in!”

“Oh, I don’t know.” he said, his smile drawing in a bit at the edges. “That would be pretty expensive. I don’t know it would be worth it.” “I think you’d be surprised,” I said. “Signage is cheaper than most people think. I’ll ask Robbie Bean’s uncle to come and give you a no-obligation quote.” So two weeks later as I came out of the library I looked across the street and there was a large fifteen by five foot sign mounted above the front awning of the arcade, glistening wetly in its fresh paint, reflecting the pale midday sun back across York Street. Then suddenly, three weeks after that when the town was full of pastoralists in for the stock sales, grain growers spending their harvest money in one go and Perth people escaping the searing heat of the “smoke”, Jeremy came in and cancelled his ads. “I can’t afford to keep advertising,” he bitched. “What’s the matter,” asked Alf. “I thought business was booming!” “It is! The shop’s full all the time. I can’t keep up the pace. I’m rushed off my feet all day every day!” “Why don’t you hire an assistant, then? You can’t do everything yourself.” “Yes, but that would cost twenty bucks or so a week! Wish I’d never gone into business now. Paying for this, paying for that! I’ve had my hand in my bloody pocket the whole time!” Nobody Read Dickens in 1966 When I was eighteen I didn’t know much about girls. Oh, I knew I liked the way they looked, the way they felt, what they smelt like and what I thought I would probably like to do with them, but I didn’t have the first clue about them. I still don’t profess to know anything about them but I think I know a lot more about their feelings and how they like you to treat them. But at eighteen all I bothered to find out about was rock and roll. I read everything I could find – newspapers, magazines, books, record jackets, everything remotely connected with popular recording artists. I watched the two television shows we got which were just Australian dancers miming overseas rock songs. I went to the top of Clarence at night where the radio reception was really good and you could not only listen to 6KY, 6PR and 6PM from Perth but sometimes even get Adelaide and Melbourne rock stations as well. In fact, I knew so much about the subject, the record shop at the top of York Street would ring me and ask if I knew whether a certain artist had recorded a certain song and what album it was on. Big deal, you say. Why didn’t they just look it up? On what? The Web? Sorry, twenty-five years too early. Catalogues? In Albany? The latest record catalogues we received down there were all pre-60s, except for classical and religious music, which aficionados ensured were ordered in. Remember too, telephone calls to Perth still had to be manually connected and cost the devil. It was quicker and cheaper to phone me at work! So with my encyclopaedic knowledge of early sixties rock and roll, I was reluctantly accepted as an expert. Fifteen years later I would have been called a guru, which is such a pathetic excuse for a word that I no longer let anyone know how knowledgable I am in case they apply that stupid title to me. There was a reporter at the rag who was only about twenty or so and whenever any sort of performer came to Albany he would get the complimentary tickets, attend and then write a small article, normally getting most of it wrong. This was because he went straight to the pub after footy training and was sleeping soundly before the end of the first act or movement of whatever performance he attended.

When Johnny O’Keefe (no relation, I think, to our very own Jeremy) came to Albany, the editor asked me if I would like the tickets as Wozzy had stuffed up one too many reviews and attracted the ire of most of the promoters. I leapt at the chance and although I remember the maestro himself refusing to speak to me but sending a roadie out to tell me to buzz off, despite my freshly printed business card, I wrote a very accurate and unbiased critical analysis. The editor, as well as quite a lot of rock fans, was very impressed and I was asked if I would like to write a regular column in Wednesday’s paper. Wednesday was a good edition for columns as all the weekend football was covered in Monday’s issue and Friday’s was devoted almost entirely to what all the reporters prophesied would happen at the forthcoming weekend’s fixtures. I built up quite a following at the Stomp and around town. Kids would approach me to ask me about some group or to be proved wrong when they erroneously believed something other than what I had put in the Teen column. So I knew a lot more about rock and roll than I did about the feelings of the female adolescent members of species homo sapiens. But so what? They all loved me! In fact, I was probably really an insensitive slob but no one ever spelled it out to me. For example, there was a girl who lived in Marbellup right near the intersection of Denmark Road and Marbellup Road. Her Dad had a horse stud and made enough money to ensure she always looked really nice. She was very attractive in a big, pink sort of way. Not fat, just developed well and most of the boys in town had erotic fantasies about her. The intersection she lived near was the roads that went to Denmark in the west and Elleker in the south. So on Denmark Road there was a signpost saying “Elleker Turn-Off” which pointed directly at her house. One day I asked her if it indicated that she was the Elleker Turn-Off. She asked me if she turned me off and I didn’t know what to say, so I mumbled something about who was I to argue with the Albany Road Board. See what I mean, I was a prat! The girl, Narelle Berry, was actually a very intelligent, very talented young lady who, in addition to featuring in many youthful bedtime reveries, knew more about electrical appliances, electronics and audio-visual systems than most tradesmen in Albany. As such, whenever anyone like Johnny O’Keefe came to town, she was always on hand to look after the sound levels, on-stage equipment and lighting. And the first time my band got asked to play on one of these concerts she was there to make us sound as good as possible, which was a hell of a lot better than we ever did at the Stomp! There were several popular groups and vocalists coming from Melbourne to do one concert in the Albany Town Hall, a huge limestone and granite building in York Street. I think that at least three of these stars had number one hits on Australian charts that year, so it was a very special event. And as well as playing, I was going to cover it for the paper. I had instructions to get interviews wherever possible, because that was what the kids wanted and they or their parents were the ones who bought the paper. Our bracket went really well. We were first on of course, because if they put us on after one of the visitors, the contrast in technique and ability would make us a laughing stock. Afterwards I put my bass in the car and collected my notebook and biro ready to take down my impressions. The next act was a female singer whose first song was slowly making it up the charts. I liked the song but really knew little about Lynn Verity because not much had been written about her. On release of her record the studio had sent me a press handout telling her age and that she lived in St Kilda where she was doing her matriculation by evening and correspondence classes. It also mentioned who had written the song but nobody knew who Young and Vanda were in those days.

When I saw her on stage, I was amazed at how lacking in taste the Aussie public really is! This little lady was a bombshell! She stood a little over five feet two, had auburn coloured hair and the nicest face I had ever seen. And she won me over completely by singing “When Will the Good Apples Fall” which was a hit for The Seekers. At first I tried to compare her to Judy Durham but then it struck me. Judy was in England. Lynn Verity was fifteen yards away and there was only a stage curtain between us! As soon as her bracket was over and she had taken her bows, I went around to stand near her dressing room. After a respectful five minutes I tapped on the door. “Come in!” she called. “I’m decent!” There she was, sitting in an armchair with a pair of spectacles on her face. But they only enhanced how pretty she looked. She had changed from her stage outfit and was wearing jeans and a blouse. As I entered she put down the paperback she was reading. “Oh, are you Lizard?” she asked. “Yes,” I said. “I’m from the newspaper. Can you spare me a few minutes?” She looked confused. “Weren’t you in that group before me?” “Oh, yes. But how did you know my name?” “The girl doing the sound said ‘Don’t use that mic. Lizard has been guzzying into that one!’ What’s guzzying?” “Spitting,” I told her. “It’s Albany slang. Guzzy is saliva, as is the verb to salivate or spit.” I realised I was waffling so I tried to change the subject. “But we don’t want to discuss my bodily fluids. Did you . . . ” But at that moment the next group started playing and we were drowned out. “Is there somewhere we can go where it’s not so noisy?” she shouted. I resisted the urge to say “My bed” and I took her hand. She picked up her book and followed me. When we got outside the building, I said: “There’s a cafe on the next corner. They’ve got an espresso machine.” Again I felt like a dick. Lynn came from St Kilda! Boasting that a cafe had an espresso machine was like saying your bike had wheels! “What I mean is, their coffee is not too bad.” We set off down the road and I took the book from her hand. “Hard Times” by Charles Dickens. “We did this at school!” I told her. “I bet you did a lot of other things at school that don’t bear mentioning,” she grinned impishly. I blushed but it was dark under my umbrella so she didn’t notice. We reached the cafe and she ordered a flat white. I wasn’t really into coffee, coming from a Pommy family and had an Earl Grey. We sat at a table in the corner. “So what did you want to know?” she asked. I suddenly felt bold. “Well to begin with, why do my knees feel all weak when I look into your eyes?” I asked. “Nothing to do with my eyes!” she quipped back. “You probably stood up a bit quickly. Not a good idea when you’re overweight!” “I asked for that!” I chuckled. “Okay then. We’ll start again. What made you get into this business in the first place?”

“Oh, I suppose I did it hoping to meet nice men like you!” This time she saw me blush. “Well,” she said. “I owed you a compliment!” That was the first time a girl had ever referred to me as a man and my heart bounded. Not only was I a man, but a nice one as well! She started to tell me that originally she entered a talent quest hoping to win some money to help her finish school and go to university. She hadn’t won. The Seekers had so she had no chance. But afterwards a man asked her if she would perform with his band and the rest, she said, was history. She was earning money. Not much! But she was studying and paying her bills. I didn’t know anything about university but winged it. “So what do you intend to major in?” I asked, feeling pretty sure that was the expression. “I’m pretty worried about the state of the oceans so I want to study biology. Marine life.” “State of the oceans?” I queried. “What do you mean?” “Well, I know a lot of people think that I got this idea from some weird high school teacher, but that’s not the case. My dad goes fishing and said that when he was a boy there were a lot more fish, more species, too, in Port Phillip Bay. They’ve disappeared, a lot of them. Fished out!” “Are you serious?” I asked and then regretted it. Why would she joke about that, of all things. I already knew she had a great sense of humour: I had been the butt of it! But she was thrilled that I had asked. She told me heaps about a subject I never even knew existed and she chatted on for ages, only stopping to wince when she first tasted her coffee. Before I realised it, it was eleven o’clock and I had no interviews, no reviews of the later acts. Nothing! Except a wonderful coffee companion! Her book was still on the table beside her. “So how come, if you are going to study marine biology, are you reading Dickens?” Nobody read Dickens in 1966. Unless they had to, of course, like I did in Second Year High. They read “From Russia With Love”, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” or John Lennon’s “Spaniard in the Works.” Nobody read Dickens. “I enjoy it!” she answered because that was the obvious thing to say. She made no pretence of anything. Her music, her studies, her literature or herself! I had never met a girl like this but I knew I wanted to continue knowing her. However she looked at her watch and whistled. “I’ll be in the shit! It’s after eleven! We’d better get back!” We walked back up York Street, she worrying about staying out late and me without a care in the world. I had no interview, no concert review, nothing! Who gave a rat’s? When we got to the Premier Hotel where she was staying, she said: “Thanks, Graham. That was a really nice evening. I’m normally too busy to do anything like that. It was lovely.” I wanted to beg her to see me again but I knew that was being silly. Our worlds were diametrically opposite! But I couldn’t let it end like that. “Can I write to you?” I asked. “I mean, I want to know how you get on with . . . with your studies and everything.” “What’s your address?” she asked. “I’ll drop you a line when I get back to Melbourne.” I got out my biro and pad but she thrust her book at me. “Write it on the flyleaf.”

But just as I took the novel and turned the cover, the door opened and a man in his shirtsleeves and braces came out. “Where the devil have you been? We were just about to call the police!” “Max,” began Lynn. “This is Lizard. We’ve been having coffee!” “Piss off, kid, before I call the cops. Jeeze, I should punch your head in!” I’d have liked to see the fat old bastard try! “Good night, Lynn.” I said. “I had a lovely evening. Thanks!” and I tried to hand her the book, but Max pushed her through the doorway and slammed the thing shut in my face. I was about to knock and leave Hard Times on the mat but then thought better of it. I slipped it into the pocket of my brown corduroy jacket and walked back to my car feeling a mixture of loneliness and elation. She had called me a nice man. She treated me like an equal. She spoke as though I was as knowledgeable and clever as she was. And she said she had enjoyed my company. I was glad I could give her that! But she gave me the memory of a wonderful evening in the presence of a goddess! I had no story for the paper, but I had a story to tell my children and my children’s children! And I had her copy of Hard Times! That’s not really the end of the story, though. I have to tell you these couple of anecdotes. The following week Old Boongul was in my room looking for a comic. He saw the treasured copy of Hard Times on my bedside table and picked it up. “Charles Dickens? He hasn’t written anything new for quite a while now, has he?” Then, of course, there was my Dad. “Gregor at the cafe says you were in there with a really pretty little girl last night. Was it someone we know?” “No, Dad. You’ll never believe this, but it was one of the singers from the concert. She’s from Melbourne. Do you want to hear her record?” He listened and nodded with approval. “She’s good. How come you were with her in the cafe?” So I told him the whole story and he nodded again. ”That reminds me of once when I was going home on leave from my battalion!” he started. “I got off the train at Charing Cross and there was a whole lot of people on the platform sheltering from an air raid. “After a bit, the all-clear sounded and we went up the stairs. I was thirsty and hungry because we’d come up from Sussex so I went into a tea-shop and sat down. It was crowded and I got the last table. I was sitting there by myself when who should come in and ask if she could sit next to me but Vera Lynn!” “Are you sure it was her, Dad?” I asked. “There must have been hundreds of women in greatcoats and caps with that hairstyle!” “It was her alright,” he insisted. “I should know. I had a picture of her in my boot locker! “Anyway, she had a cup of tea and I had some Bovril. We got talking. She was one of the nicest women I have ever met, other than your Mother,” he said, looking over his shoulder theatrically.

“It made me think that in an air raid, no one is worth any more than anyone else! A corporal in the Fusiliers and the Sweetheart of the Forces!” We both sat there for a few minutes with our memories, mine of last night, his of twenty-five years previously. Suddenly he said: “It’s odd, isn’t it? I had Bovril with Vera Lynn and you had coffee with Lynn Verity! The names are similar.” He went out and left me sitting there with Lynn’s song on the turntable and her book in my hand. It was far spookier than that, I thought. A quarter of a century ago, a singing star made Dad realise that all people are equal and now another singing star taught me the exact same thing. Events in both our lives with lasting memories and a major lesson learnt. But sadly, I no longer have that copy of Hard Times. While I was in England, Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin and many people were left homeless. In the public fund-raising appeals to help with relief work, many people held jumble sales and Mum wrote and asked me if I still wanted all the books in my bedroom or could she donate them. They were nearly all science fiction or Westerns, so I wrote back and said it was okay. It was nearly a year before it occurred to me that Hard Times was among them but by then it was too late. If you have a very old copy you bought second-hand and it’s got “Lynn Verity” written on the top of the flyleaf and an address in Albany at the bottom, look after it. I know it will bring you happiness. The Beach Ever since I was little lad in England, I have loved the beach. If summer happened to fall on a Saturday or Sunday, my parents would wrap us up in our warm clothes and we’d catch the bus down to Folkestone and spend the day on the “sands”, sheltering from the wind and rain under the arches. Or maybe we’d go to Dymchurch where the beach was made up of smooth pebbles that hurt our tiny feet to walk on and left bruises if you fell over trying to run on them. So when we got to Australia it was like paradise to me. We lived about three miles from the beach at Kwinana on Cockburn Sound before it got all oily and clogged with sea grass. The sand was a brilliant white and the sea a sharp clear aquamarine, which I think is a beautiful word to describe the colour of an ocean. We loved that beach with its foot-blistering sand and the rusting hulk of the Kwinana, a beached freighter that gave the shire its name. The captain’s name, by the way, was Medina and the nearby town was named after him and the streets after his crew – Atkinson, Tucker, Hubbard, Pace, etc. Oh, I suppose the main drag, Medina Avenue, was named after the skipper, too! We would play for hours in the water with Dad and Uncle Buck while Mum and Aunty Gladys sat under the peppercorn trees on a little grassed area near the dunnies, drinking Thermos tea and reading English Woman’s Weekly which Aunty Dora posted them from Canterbury. But when Dad applied for a job in Albany, we quizzed him and Mum when they got home from the interview. “Is it near the beach?” we wanted to know. “Yes! The beach is just at the foot of the main street and there are bays and coves and rocky headlands all around the town. We went for a walk along one of them.” So although we moved there in August, we were eagerly looking forward to a wonderful carefree beach-bum existence. Kwinana was warm enough to swim all year round for us little Pommy kids who were not yet acclimatised and we imagined it would be the same in Albany, which was only five hours away to the south.

Huh! That’s what we thought! It was teeming with rain, which hit at an angle of thirty degrees to the ground due to the Roaring Forty, a westerly wind which travels around the Southern Hemisphere, picking up speed as it goes. It gets it name from the fortieth parallel but rides either side of it for a distance of about ten or fifteen degrees. Bits of it race off up the western coast to make life unbearable for everyone between Augusta and Mandurah. But most of it zooms in and focuses all its energy on King George Sound. As it comes straight off the Southern Ocean, it chills the air to a freezing five degrees Celsius which the weak Albany sun can warm only if it gets a chance to peep through the thick blanket of clouds So, to put it another way, it wasn’t ideal beach weather. But was that going to stop us? No way! The water in the harbour was just too nasty to swim in. It wasn’t really water, more like slime! Even the English Channel had more H2O than this. This was like swimming in a jelly mould! We were temporarily dismayed until a man who worked with Dad and whose son was in my class at school, took us to Emu Point and Middleton Beach. Middleton was magnificent. A beautiful, long sweep of white beach starting behind the northern head of Princess Royal Harbour and extending all the way to Emu Point, five miles away. The surf was powerful, breaking about seventy metres from the shore and the water was a deep gunmetal grey to match the sky. There were dunes along the entire length and it could be reached at several points from gravel roads. At the southern end was Mermaid Cove with a jetty, some tiny grassed areas, a Surf Lifesaving Club and the Beach Coffee Bar, home of the renowned Albany Stomp. As soon as the icy spring made way for the cold summer, I started frequenting Middleton. Mum would take us there on the bus and then we would walk home around Marine Drive and she would buy some sausages or chops at the butchers for our tea. It was a great afternoon out and the cold never really bothered us at all. It turned us into Albanians! Then Mum got a job at the Anglican Church and couldn’t take us there any more. However, she gave us eight pence each to catch the bus and have an icy pole at the Beach Coffee Bar. My sister was at that age when she felt she should pretend she was growing up and didn’t want to babysit two brats wearing knitted woollen swimming trunks who had noses all sloppy with mucous from swimming in sub-zero water. So just my brother and I went. We walked around the corner to Peels Place where the Proudloves bus ran a half-hourly service on weekday afternoons. It wasn’t there when we arrived so we punched each other and told each other stupid lies until it arrived. Then we climbed aboard, paid our tuppence each for a ticket and commandeered the back row. The bus set off and we resumed fighting. When it stopped at Middleton, we went to get off and I realised we didn’t have our towels and trunks. A quick search of the rear seats convinced us that we must have left them at the bus stop in town. We explained this to the driver who told us we had better stay on board until he had finished his foul-smelling roll-up and made the return trip. When we got back into Albany we collected our kit and climbed back on board the bus. “That’ll be tuppence each,” the driver told us. I paid for my ticket but my brother burst into tears. He had hoped to ride both ways and have an icy pole, or save the four-pence so he could one day buy himself a toupee and a real estate agency. Now his plans were set back by a whole two pennies! He always turned on the waterworks if he didn’t get his own way. Dad nicknamed him “Watermelon” because of his soaking wet cheeks. I believe that, up until this day, if he cannot find a buyer willing to pay the vendor’s asking price, he still bawls his eyes out! At least, I wouldn’t be surprised!

So we had the alternative of not having an icy pole or walking home. I decided the walk home would be good for me, as there was no way I was foregoing my confection! But the sook stood there whimpering for a long time before deciding to not have the lolly AND walk home, giving him a four penny start on his Irish Jig and his career plans. After I graduated from Primary School, I used to ride my bike to the beach several times every week. We had moved up to Spencer Park by now and it was a great ride down McLeod Street and Middleton Road but a hard slog home again afterwards. We had three-speed gears on our bikes in those days, which were encased in the hub of the rear wheel and were high-ratio, unlike the Shimano chain gears of today. On McLeod Street I used to get off and push it up to the Miramar Road intersection. But that never deterred me and I was one of the most regular visitors to Middleton in those early years of the 1960s. But I always felt cheated! In the movies, beaches were normally studded with palm trees, beautiful dusky maidens in colourful sarongs or grass skirts. This idyllic scene was always overhung by an impossibly blue sky. I had seen Blue Hawaii, South Pacific and A Summer Place and a whole lot of other films at the Empire and knew what a beach was supposed to look like. I had to make do with a few ragged Norfolk Island Pines, some old men scratching around for jetsam in the shallows and the heavy rain clouds which didn’t only threaten, they delivered! But although I felt dudded, I was now an Albany kid. I expected to be cold, windswept and miserable. It didn’t worry me except it made it very hard to get a suntan like Frankie Avalon’s But I persisted, lying in the dunes on a towel with the wind sandblasting my white, hairless body. No matter where I lay, on whichever side of the dunes, that wind would find me and shred the epidermis from me, leaving me even more sore and red than if the sun had been given a chance! But I was not the only one who tried. There were always a few hardy souls in the water trying to ride a wave and occasionally succeeding, but more often getting dumped ferociously on their heads and losing their boards. Once, I heard voices coming from the other side of the dune valley I was lying in. I didn’t need to listen for very long to realise they were coming from a group of half a dozen girls from my class. I crept up the dune and peered over. Sure enough, there were my classmates lying on striped towels in their one-piece bathers, getting flayed alive by the sandstorm. They had a huge battery-operated valve-radio playing the inevitable Mantovani tunes. I was going to go over and join them when I noticed two of them had their straps undone and the tops rolled down to their waists. As they were lying on their tummies, I couldn’t see what all thirteen-year-old boys dream of catching a glimpse of! But, I decided, if I was patient, they would have to turn over to expose the front sides to the carborundum effect of the wind. I held my breath and didn’t blink once for over half an hour, while the other four girls rolled backwards and forwards, their tiny breasts safe inside their cotton swimming costumes. But their two more daring chums remained immobile until eventually they put an arm under the towels and, holding them tightly to their blossoming bosoms, they hitched up the swimsuits and secured them again with the straps. Still, I had given it my best try! One Saturday afternoon it was really warm, around eleven or twelve Celsius, and the beach was packed! There could have been up to a hundred people in the water and the waves were ideal for body surfing. I was swimming and catching the odd wave here or there with Watermelon howling his eyes out nearby every time I got a ride and he didn’t.

Suddenly the siren sounded at the Surf Lifesaving Club and people began to leave the water. At first I thought it was a shark alarm, then I realised I was getting pulled away from the shore. I grabbed my brother and started towing him in which only set him off blubbering again, even though he was only two years younger than me – about eleven or so – and in his last year at Primary School. Still, you should never let your age get in the way of having a good weep, so I grabbed his mouth to shut him up and hauled him into the shore. When I turned around, there were a number of people being pulled out in the undertow, or rip, as we called it. I had often swum in the rip and knew that as long as you didn’t work against it, it was pretty harmless. Just breaststroke with your body as high in the water as you could and go across it to the edge where the water became choppy again. This way you conserved energy without fighting it directly. In the rip the surface was sort of smooth and gave the impression of being slightly concave, although I think this is more of an illusion than reality. I noticed a few kids from school a little way out and I went back, against the instructions of the life-guards. They were not out too deep so I told them to come back in and explained what the problem was and how to deal with it. They all quickly made it to safety. Then I saw another kid a bit further out and he seemed to be getting sucked along. I swam the few strokes to him and started to tell him, when I realised we were getting well into the middle of the smooth patch. “Just stay calm and wait until we get to the side,” I told him. “We’ll be okay.” “Are you sure?” he asked. “I’ve got a crook heart!” I ignored this remark as I didn’t know anything about crook hearts and was only concerned with getting back to shore and trying to stop my brother from making a bigger sook of himself than he already was. “Just follow me!” I said and started breaststroking over to the edge, about fifty yards away. I turned and saw I was swimming too fast for him and went back. To the kid’s credit, he stayed calm and trusting. “I’m Graham,” I told him. “The kids call me Lizard!” “I know,” he replied. “We go to the same Sunday School. I’m Stephen!” We breaststroked and dogpaddled over to the normal water and started to make our way in to the beach. Stephen looked a bit tired so I stayed right alongside him. I already had my bronze and silver lifesaving medals and was sure that if he had any trouble, I could pull him into the shore as long as he remained calm. We only had twenty or so yards to go when he stepped into one of those holes which often form at surf beaches. He stumbled and I put my hand under his elbow and helped him up. All of a sudden he was whisked off his feet and a womanly voice said: “Are you two alright?” “Yes!” I said, recognising Miss Colmer, the Phys.Ed teacher from school. “We’re fine now!” But she didn’t put Steve down because she knew he had a heart defect and wasn’t taking any chances. She carried him in her arms as though he was a toddler. When she got him to the beach, she checked his pulse and as it wasn’t racing any more than you would expect from a thirteen year old boy who had just been physically handled by a bikini-clad gym-mistress, she went to render her services elsewhere! “Why did you let her do that!” asked Steve, quite annoyed. “I was fine once you helped me up!” “Hang on, Mate!” I protested. “I didn’t have any say in it. What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m embarrassed. What if anyone else saw me?” “So?” Then it dawned on me. “You fancy her, don’t you?” “Drop dead!” There was an accusing silence. “Yes, as a matter of fact. I do!” “I don’t like her much!” Tactless as ever. “She’s a grumpy old bitch!” “She’s very nice,” Steve defended her. “She goes to our church, you know!” “So does Old Gregson and he’s a bastard!” That was the strongest word I knew at the time. A Bottle of Sarsaparilla and a Vanilla Slice Miss Colmer was not only the sports mistress but, because she didn’t really have enough work to justify her employment, they made her the Careers Guidance Counsellor as well. I am certain she had no experience or training in this field but the Education Department insisted that someone take this role and she was the only one they could spare. When we came to the school for an orientation day from Grade Seven, she tried to explain the curriculum to us. She prepared charts telling us which subjects we could study and, accordingly to our requirements, which stream we should enter. I stuck my hand up. “I want to be a journalist!” I told her. “A newspaper reporter. Which course should I take?” “Ah,” she breathed, glad that at least one kid was going to ask her a relevant question other than are there any Bobbsey Twins books in the library and can we go to the toilet between periods even if it isn’t a scheduled recess. “Yes, I would think that Stream B would be ideal for you.” “But then I wouldn’t be able to do History or Civics in Second Year. It says you need Social Studies A as a pre-requisite!” “Why would you need History or Civics if you want to be a reporter? You will need English Grammar and Lit. That would be the important course.” I caught on quickly in those days. Why argue against the ignorant? I wish I still followed that advice! But she noticed the look of disdain on my face and marked my cards as a troublemaker. A while later at a Church Bazaar, I was looking at some second-hand books and picked up an ancient hardcover called “No Orchids for Miss Blandish” by James Hadley Chase. I thought my mother would enjoy it because she often read romantic novels. I opened it at random. Hmm, probably a bit risque for my mother’s sensitive tastes. I was about to replace it when it was slammed shut in my hands. “You shouldn’t be reading that filth!” Miss Colmer whispered harshly from above me. “Here, do you like Science Fiction?” She handed me a copy of Agnar Mykle’s “Lasso Around the Moon.” I had already looked at that one and knew it certainly wasn’t science fiction, unless Norwegian erotica qualified for the Hugo Award. She also told me off once when I was eating an ice cream while riding my bike. She pulled alongside me and spoke suddenly. “You should keep both hands on the handlebars except when making a turn signal!” she snarled. “If you must eat, stop cycling until you’ve finished!” I nearly fell off in surprise and put out my hand to stop me from toppling over. In doing so, I got ice cream over the boot of her shiny new Renault.

So I wasn’t Miss Colmer’s biggest fan, and I knew she wasn’t mine, either! But the day after the rip I was standing near the Church and she made a point of coming over and speaking to me. I started to cringe but she smiled sweetly and said: “How are you today? No ill effects after yesterday’s little adventure?” “Fine,” I told her, reluctant to say more and risk condemning myself. Everything you say will be taken down and may be used as evidence against you! While we were eating our Sunday roast, Dad beamed at me. “Miss Colmer said you rescued some kid from the whatsname yesterday. She was really impressed!” I tried to explain and think I got through to him. He said he was proud of me then started to tell me about the time a girl accidentally dropped half-a-crown off Richmond Bridge. He dived in wearing his Bond Street suit trousers and two-tone winkle-pickers to retrieve it and how she continued to be his “main squeeze” right up until the outbreak of war. After that, every time Miss Comer saw me, she would come over and make a fuss. As a consequence, Steve started to hang around me hoping she would notice him as well. Although I pointed out to him she was probably eight years our senior, he was persistent. I admired that about Steve. When you’re on a good thing, stick to it, as the Mortein bottles used to advise! One day she told me that the reason she picked him up and carried him was because of his ventricular septal defect and explained what that meant. I never really understood before but she said that Steve was very plucky and told me to look after him. I have a bit of the Mother Hen about me and have gone through life picking up strays who need looking after, so I became pretty chummy with him. Being the Phys.Ed teacher, she had to know the medical conditions of her students so that she didn’t let them try to do things that could be detrimental to their health. When Steve started high school his Mum sent her a letter. Miss Colmer was really a very attractive young woman who was unfashionably buff! In an era where women were not even allowed to run marathons and it was deemed unladylike to have muscles, she was like one of the Amazons in the Wonder Woman comics. However, I was too much of a male chauvinistic pig, or would have been if the expression had been invented ten years earlier, and I just thought she was a bit butch. But Steve and Mr Holling didn’t think so. Mr Holling was the woodwork teacher and was a clumsy, oafish peasant who could not possibly have had the intelligence to graduate from teachers training college. He probably became a manual arts teacher because of the saying “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach!” Anyway, he worshipped Miss Colmer and started following her around. He even came to the Church Youth Group so he could stare under her pew at her shapely, ripped legs clad in light tan, seamless stockings. One day – I forget the reason for the occasion – we were on some sort of Church Outing and Steve and I went into a little tearoom. I think it was at Frenchman’s Bay. Suddenly Miss Colmer came in, followed as always by her faithful woodwork teacher. She asked us if she could sit at our table and noticing the rapture spreading across Steve’s face, I told her she was welcome. Mr Holling dragged his knuckles over and stood there panting like a puppy. “Ya want a cuppa tea, Emma?” he drooled at Miss Colmer. “Yes, please, Mr Holling,” she said. “That’s most kind.” She turned to us. “Would you like anything, boys?” she asked.

“White tea, please,” I said. “Could I have a bottle of sarsaparilla and a vanilla slice?” asked Steve, knowing that would really piss Holling off. He was very mean with his money and kept his coins in a little leather bag with a drawstring. He ambled off, mumbling and grumbling and some minutes later came back with a tray. “Thanks, Miss Colmer!” Steve enthused. “That was really decent of you!” Old Holling looked like my brother does when someone takes the last cheese straw before he’s had one! He’d forked out a shilling for three teas, nine-pence for the soft drink and sixpence for the joe blake and nobody acknowledged it! Steve failed his woodwork exams every term after that! Despite this setback, he became a cabinet-maker when he left school! In 1994 we had a class reunion. It was the first time we all got together since we left and Miss Colmer was there. She still looked as fit as she did in 1961 but maturity had softened her features. She was not as old as many of our other teachers and I even had a little perv at her sensational legs. She didn’t recognise me at first. I haven’t got as much hair as I had in those days and no acne. I noticed one of the girls who had organised the evening go over to her just after I arrived and whisper something in her ear. She looked a bit surprised and then came to where I was slapping long-lost backs and kissing cheeks I wished I had been allowed to thirty years earlier. “I’m so glad you came back for this,” she smiled. “Is Stephen coming?” She hadn’t heard he had died when a truck hit his car back in the late 1960s. I told her as gently as I could and a couple of tears formed in the corners of her eyes. “I always thought of you two as David and Jonathon from the Bible,” she said. “I’ll never forget that day you pulled him from the rip!” I was about to tell her the real story but then changed my mind. It wasn’t that I wanted to be a hero in her eyes. It was Steve who had the crush on her, after all. But if someone believes something for thirty-three years, it becomes history according to the Napoleonic edict I mentioned in the foreword to this book! The Great Fish and Chip Caper I am sure there was a lot of undiagnosed depression in the 1960s, especially in towns like Albany. After drugs ripped the town apart in the middle part of the nineteen-seventies, mental illness increased to the point general practitioners and psychologists could no longer ignore. It could not be disregarded as an unwillingness to adapt to changing technology and society or the loneliness of living in a remote settlement. But that was ten years in the future. During the nineteen-sixties, the most depressed were the housewives whose dreams of a relaxed life of luxury as seen in 1950s soap operas were brought into the sharp focus of reality when considerations like financial necessity, drudgery of housework and boredom were factored in. Prescriptions for tranquillisers – “Mother’s Little Helper” the Rolling Stones called them in one of their songs – started to appear and the consumption of gin as opposed to cups of Amgoorie changed the composition of shopping lists. The menfolk also suffered boredom, drudgery and injury from labour-intensive work in the days before the micro-processor changed everything. Work practices were dirty, unsafe and undefined. Industrial relations were only as good as the local shop steward and when the men got home, their wives whinged at them about their own tedious lives and problems.

So they stayed in the pub until late or hung around the snooker hall, which only made matters worse. The only things that brightened their sad, tired lives were the occasional John Wayne flick and Sunday afternoon at the footy. Teenage boys like me were in a state of depression all the time except for a few hours on Friday and Saturday evenings. We worked hard all week, partied hard all weekend and had nothing to show for it at the end. All our pay went on trying to impress girls – our cars, our clothes, buying them gifts, flowers, sweets, taking them to the movies, to concerts, dances and dinner. And for all the good it did us! The only effect was to make one generation of young women more spoilt, more self-centred and more demanding than any other before or since. Our behaviour in the sixties directly led to the advent of the femininist movement because until girls began to realise the power they wielded, they never realised they had any worth. Suddenly they were inundated with attention! We bent over backwards to please them and in the process got rejected, scorned and ridiculed. Fortunately, that imbalance has started to correct itself. But boy, did things get bad for a while! I recall one particular Saturday afternoon. I was collating my notes and magazine clippings, preparing to convert them into next Wednesday’s teen column, when there was a knock on my front door. I think Mum and Dad were walking along the beach and my sister was too selfimportant to ever go and see who was there. Watermelon was probably having a good cry somewhere so it was left to me to answer it. Just as well, as it turned out, because it was for me. It was Stephanie Riley, a girl a year or so younger than me who lived four doors down the street. She was close to tears so I invited her in. “What’s the matter? You don’t look too good!” I asked. “I’m supposed to be going to the School Ball tonight with Peter Whitehorse but his mother just rang to say he broke his leg this morning and is in hospital.” “That’s awful!” I commiserated. Peter was a bricklayer’s apprentice who was in my class in third year. I didn’t know him very well but I quite liked him as he always said good day to me and waved if he drove past. “Do you want me to drive you up to the hospital?” “No!” she said. “I haven’t got time. I’ve got to find another date! That’s why I’m here. I knew you had a suit and I thought you could take me. But don’t go getting any ideas!” It wasn’t in my upbringing to use the language I did then, especially to young ladies. But that illustrates just how self-centred some of them became. Not all! Just some of them. A lot of them were really nice, like Glenda and her sister Karen, Reggie, Narelle Berry and other girls who we regularly hung around with. In fact, Glenda was so much like us blokes that she shared in what must have been one of the daftest, albeit harmless, stunts we ever pulled. I decided that the old Ford Anglia had outlived its usefulness as a scruff mobile. Its chick magnet properties had depolarised, and various bits and pieces had dropped off, like the wing mirrors, one of the windscreen wipers and, on one memorable occasion I have already related, a back window! I sadly took the car down to Barnesby Motors, mourning the passing of an era. It felt like I was getting a divorce. They said they would accept it as a trade-in on a brand new Ford Capri. Now this was a seriously cool motor car! It was described as a fastback coupé with sixteen hundred cubic centimetre engine and leather upholstery. There were probably very few girls in the whole of Western Australia who would not instantly drop them for me if I got one of these! So I ordered one in bright orange-red with white upholstery in the GT model. That meant it included magnesium wheels, flat, anti-glare paint on the bonnet and various little stickers and

stuff that added nothing to the performance but which would reduce the time it took between meeting a girl and having it off with her on the passenger seat! It took a couple of weeks to get shipped down from the depot in North Fremantle and it arrived one Monday morning. It took about a day to do the pre-delivery and then the salesman phoned me in the afternoon on Tuesday to say I could collect it any time after four o’clock. I asked Old Cruttenden if I could leave an hour early. He signed my clock card and right on four I was walking into the showrooms, asking to see the salesman. He gave me various papers to sign and I handed over my Anglia keys, expecting them to drive the old bomb straight down to the rubbish tip, which by now had moved from Lake Seppings to a more hygienic site at Hanrahan Road behind Mt Melville. But they didn’t, I found out. They had a buyer who restored it and right up until my parents moved to Busselton in the last few years of the century it was still chugging around Albany, although no longer bulging at the seams with nubile young women and randy youths! I cannot say whether it was ever again used to transport a kitten from Spencer Park into town or not, but I doubt it. Before I left, he told me that in order to keep the warranty valid, I had to bring it back after five hundred miles so they could check it all out again, tighten things that needed tightening and loosen things that needed loosening. They would also drain the sump and give it a tune up. “Don’t,” he impressed on me, “drive at more than fifty miles an hour during this time.” So, very proudly, I drove it up York Street on my way to show it off to Cliffy, Boongul and Robbie Bean when they got home from work. At the intersection of Serpentine Road, I saw a Road Traffic Authority car pull out from behind the Council offices and follow me up the street. In those days, the Western Australian Police Force did not patrol the highways to enforce the Traffic Code. This was left to town councils who employed the biggest bunch of criminally insane misfits they could muster. They got someone to sew some really huge uniforms to fit over their bloated, misshapen bodies. Then they put them into high-performance Holden sedans with as little training as they thought they could get away with and sent them out to terrorise any motorist they felt like bullying. The one in the car following me was a giant we called Singapore Sam but who was actually part Indonesian, part Dutch and part tree gorilla. We marvelled at the animal trainer who had taught this simian to drive a car and approximate the human behaviour on the odd occasion. Anyway, he followed me up York Street and around the Hordern Monument into Middleton Road. Just before we got to Dog Rock, he put his siren and light on. These cars had one red pimple light mounted on the top, which must have really pissed off these giant apes. Their professional colleagues in the proper-cops had flashing red and blue strip lights that scared the living daylights out of you if they suddenly appeared in your rear-view mirror. Being a responsible citizen, I pulled over to the side of the road. He parked his car on a forty-five degree angle in front of me so as to prevent my suddenly departing the scene and to block all the east bound traffic on Middleton Road at peak hour. For nearly forty minutes he checked out my car, opening every compartment and poking around in every nook and cranny. He told me to lift the bonnet where he rifled around, pulling the leads from spark plugs and unscrewing the tops of hydraulic fluid reservoirs. He fiddled with the dipstick and took the top off the air filter. He made me start the engine then revved it with the accelerator arm. Eventually, like a hyperactive child, he could no longer find anything to amuse him under there, so turned his attention to the boot. First he took out the spare tyre and examined it then did the same to the jack and tyre tools. He left these on the road and told me to replace them in their compartments. While I was doing this, he roughly pushed me out of the way with his huge, hirsute arm and proceeded to pull all the contacts off the rear lights, reversing lights and indicators. Then he abandoned these and studied

the interior, leaving me with a spaghetti-like bunch of wires to try to sort out and put back onto their respective bulbs. He poked around in the glove box and each ashtray. He wound each window down and up a few times and tested the door-handles, lights, indicators and the reversing lamp. Fortunately I had replaced the wires correctly so he turned on the windscreen wipers and squirted the washers. Then he started the engine again and put the car into each of the gears and back into neutral, all the while keeping his foot on the clutch. Finally he turned on the AM radio and grunted with satisfaction that it only picked up the local and ABC stations like all well-behaved Albany wirelesses should. Finally he slipped it into gear and started to rev the motor and I was sure he was going to take it for a test drive. Then the radio in his own car started to make a noise and he swung his way back through the trees and telegraph poles to grunt incoherently into it. Then he reversed back into the traffic and peeled out, leaving a whole bunch of motorists skidding around, applying their brakes on the damp, slippery tarmac. That incident is still remembered as one of the finest ever performances by any traffic cop and I am sure old Singapore Sam has a special memorial to him in the RTA Hall of Fame. The sole purpose was to check out at the first Ford Capri to be sold in Albany. If someone had filmed it I am sure Channel Seven would make a special “Australia’s Most Ludicrous Traffic Cops” programme just so they could show it! When I got up to Spencer Park the boys already knew I had the car as they had seen it parked on the side of the road with a huge hairy monkey clambering all over it but they were anxious for a ride. We drove to the Spencer Park Fish Supply to get some fish and chips first, but they were closed. Cliffy decided to walk home as his Mum was doing a roast so Robbie, Boongul and I elected to drive back into town and get some from Rodella’s, just near where my Capri had recently been examined. A sign on the front door announced that during the winter, the shop would be shutting at five o’clock on Mondays and Tuesdays due to reduced demand. As winter in Albany lasts from late February until mid-December, that meant we would have to find somewhere else to dine. We were about to peel when we saw Glenda emerge from the State Electricity Commission office where she worked. She came over excitedly when she recognised us in the new vehicle. Boongul hopped in the back and she sat in the shiny white leather bucket seat next to me. “Where are we going?” she asked. “To get some fish and chips!” Boongul told her. “But Smithson’s and Rodella’s are both closed.” Glenda suggested the Sunshine Cafe down the bottom of the main street but Boongul was quite adamant that he wouldn’t eat there again after a portion of cod had made him throw up several years before. “What about that place we got that snapper and chips and fritters after the footy that time?” Robbie asked. “That was in Mt Barker!” I protested. But everyone else agreed so we set off to drive the thirty miles up the Albany Highway to where the fish and chips were calling. But when we got there in the last fading light of the evening, it was closed. The pub was serving rissoles in gravy or leg of lamb in mint sauce with baked vegetables and as we had set our hearts on something with far more trans fatty acids, sodium and cholesterol inducing agents, we declined their fare. Kojonup has several cafes and takeaway food shops on the main road as it passes through that little farming community so we were sure to find some there. But after we drove north for the next sixty miles, we were still without a meal. One of the shops had closed and a laundrette opened in its place. Another had only a pimply fourteen year old girl in attendance who would not leave the front counter to go into the kitchen until her Dad returned in three-quarters-of-an-hour, while the

other did not serve hot meals after seven o’clock on weekday evenings. It was already approaching seven thirty due to the fifty miles an hour speed limit set by the Ford warranty. “Oh, well,” said Glenda. “We will have to settle for a pie and sauce it seems.” “It’s only twenty five miles to Katanning!” declared Boongul. “You can always get fish and chips there. Even for breakfast! I once went in to have bacon, eggs and beans and I got chips and salad with that. They were serving battered flake as well. I know we’ll get some there!” So we left the Albany Highway and half an hour later we arrived in Katanning. For a Tuesday evening, the place was a hive of activity! There was dog cocking its leg on the wheel of a Falcon ute parked outside the pub and a couple of aboriginal women squatting in the rain with a bottle in a paper bag. Nearby a grubby, damp little kid was scooping handsful of sugar from a packet into his mouth. The only lights in the whole street were coming from the pub and the police station. Even the bulb in the public toilet was broken. None of the shops were lit so we tossed up whether to head back to Kojo and take our chances with a lukewarm pastie served up by the spotty teenager. “How far is it to Narrogin?” Boongul asked. None of us were sure but we knew which road to take so we set off again, by now pretty hungry and a bit annoyed. Surely fish and chips shouldn’t be this hard to get! Even in Western Australia on a wet, miserable Tuesday evening! Wagin, halfway to Narrogin, was shut and bolted down as secure as a ship in a storm as we guessed it would be. No tucker there! But the car was such a dream to drive that we were soon in Narrogin and parked outside the fish and chip shop in the main street. Boongul burst into there like an athlete sprinting through the finishing tape but the forlorn-looking Greek man informed us that the health inspector had closed him down until he had cleaned his chip vat out and replaced it with new fat. “Eetsa only a few months old!” he complained. “We change eet just before Christmas. October, anyway! Eetsa not gorn orf yet. Eeta not smell or anything! Not a too much, anyway!” We commiserated with him but he couldn’t even sell us a bag of lollies. He was officially closed down and he wasn’t about to break the law. However he told us that his brother ran the roadhouse in Williams and he stayed open until midnight to cater to the motorists travelling between Perth and Albany. “My seester-in-law. She’s a very good cook!” he declared and proved it by touching his forefinger to his thumb and kissing it. With a recommendation like that we had no doubts! Boongul wasn’t too thrilled at the idea because he had once stopped there with his Mum and they had a meal. “They didn’t serve it in paper!” he complained. “It was on plates and they put a slice of lemon alongside it.” “What for?” I asked. “Some people put lemon on their fish!” Glenda said, knowledgeably. “It’s citric acid which is like the acetic acid you get in vinegar. It doesn’t taste too bad!” “I’m not putting nitric acid on my food!” insisted Boongul. “That’s what they use up in the mines! It burns like buggery when you get it on your skin!” “Citric acid!” Glenda shook her head in disgust at his ignorance. “Surely you had lemon juice on your fish and chips in England, Robbie!” “Nah, we used to have ’em for supper every Friday back in Liverpool!” grunted Robbie. “Always had vinegar and salt and sometimes a couple of gherkins or pickled onions! Me Uncle puts salad cream on his!” “Did you live in Liverpool?” asked Boongul. “Did you ever go to the Cavern?”

“I was only nine when we left!” said Robbie. “They wouldn’t have let me in!” “What about saveloys?” I asked. “Did you have savs at the chippy in Liverpool, Robbie?” “Yeah, but I didn’t used to get them. I always had plaice or sole. Tell you what! Buddy makes awful saveloys. Don bought some and made hot dogs one Friday at the Stomp and they made us chuck.” By now we were in Williams but the man at the roadhouse, who couldn’t have been the brother of the Greek in Narrogin because he was Scottish, told us that his wife who did the cooking had gone home feeling sick. “I suspect she’s got a wee bun in the oven!” he said with a wink at Glenda. “Why did he say that?” asked Boongul when we got back to the car. “Dunno!” we all said, just as mystified as Boongul. Still, if she was a cook it stood to reason she might bake bread rolls occasionally. So eventually, after much discussion, we decided that if North Bannister didn’t have fish and chips either, we would try Armadale and, failing that, somewhere in Victoria Park was sure to be serving them. The southern approach road into Perth was not the junk food mecca that it is today. The only illuminated sign saying “fish and chips” had accidentally been left on by the proprietor when he closed up shop and went home three hours earlier. By now it was approaching midnight and Glenda looked as though she could cry. We bought some scungy, emaciated hamburgers at an all night deli in Beaufort Street in North Perth and pondered whether we should try Van Eileen in Cottesloe, which was a famous landmark among the juvenile delinquents in Perth back in those days. It never closed, even on Good Friday it was rumoured, and they sold the tastiest, most exciting fast food anywhere this side of the equator. Glenda had phoned Karen from Armadale, dialling by the flame of a cigarette lighter as the bulb in the phone booth was broken, so she wouldn’t be worried by her absence at bedtime. Boongul’s Mum was visiting her family in Raisinthorpe, my wrinklies were up North somewhere in their caravan while Robbie’s Mum and Uncle never gave a stuff where he was or what he was doing. He hadn’t spoken to them since he left school. In fact they may not have known he left school! We drove down Stirling Highway and when we saw people walking back to their cars with big, steaming newspaper-wrapped packages, we knew our journey had not been in vain! Van Eileen started life as a caravan that was parked by the side of the Perth to Fremantle road and sold burgers and Coke. Over the years it expanded out of all proportion and was so brightly illuminated, John Glenn saw it from his orbiting space-craft in 1962 and gave Perth its nickname of “The City of Lights”. Those chips and the battered, dried-out shark meat they served up were delicious! I had two portions of each, plus a Chiko Roll, a pineapple fritter and a large bottle of Passiona. This was a feast fit for the gods! I bet they didn’t serve up fare like this on Mt Olympus along with their ambrosia! They probably had too much respect for their arteries! Boongul was tucking it away like there was no tomorrow. He had experimentally squeezed some lemon onto his fish and was gradually acquiring a taste for it. His magnificent lower jaw was getting the work-out he had dreamed of for the past seven or eight hours. Robbie was lying on a bench by the road with a look of bliss and a lot of chip grease on his face while Glenda was asking everyone if they knew where the toilet was. I went back and bought four matchsticks and four vanilla slices for the return journey. Then we filled the tank at the place where the taxi-drivers buy their petrol in Freo.

At fifty miles an hour it took us nearly six hours to get back to Albany. One hour just to get out of the Metro area and then we had to slow down to thirty-five to go through each country town. The Road Traffic Authority are nocturnal creatures who never sleep. They just hang in the trees, waiting to pounce, even though only two or three cars pass through between midnight and seven each morning. I was battling to stay awake and Robbie drove for a while so I could get a bit of a nap in the back seat, but then Boongul and Glenda started a silly conversation which kept me awake. First, Boongul announced that he wished he had been born a girl because then he would have all the blokes in Albany busting to get into his pants. Glenda asked him why he wanted to have sex with all these men, was he queer or something? For a moment that stumped Boongul, then he said that if he was a girl having sex with men he wouldn’t be queer, he would be straight. Glenda said that if she were a boy, she wouldn’t have sex with someone as ugly as Boongul anyway. There were lots of nice looking girls in Albany and she would have sex with them. “But that’s my point!” shouted Boongul. “They don’t let you! That’s why I said if I was a girl, I’d have my pick of the boys!” I don’t know whether Robbie was also trying to have a sleep. He shouldn’t have been as he was driving. Suddenly he said: “Even if I was a poof I wouldn’t want to have sex with you, Boongul!” “We’ve already decided that I’m not!” said Boongul, getting quite annoyed that nobody seemed to take his point. “If I was a girl and you were a poof you wouldn’t want to have sex with me anyway, even if I was a bloke which I’m not for the sake of this argument.” “Do you think Jeremy O’Keefe is a poof?” asked Robbie. “Why should he be?” asked Glenda. “Just because he sells men’s clothing?” “That and because he sits down to tinkle!” “So do I and I’m not a poof!” scoffed Glenda. “Yeah but you’re a girl!” laughed Boongul, glad the glare of attention was off him. “At least you were last time I looked!” “Ah, you’ve been peeping through my bathroom window again, have you?” demanded Glenda and Boongul looked quite embarrassed. “Would anyone like a matchstick?” I asked, just to shut them up and it worked for a while, even though Boongul nearly choked when he breathed some of the icing sugar they had sprinkled on the top. He spluttered and guzzied all over the beautiful white leather upholstery on the back of the passenger seat. I demanded he wipe it down with his handkerchief until I saw the state of the square of cotton he pulled out of his jeans pocket. In addition to the grease and grime where he had wiped his hands after finishing work the previous afternoon, there was a whole lot of mayonnaise and chip grease from his face after the Van Eileen feast. I rubbed the guzzy off with the Albany Woollen Mills Travel Rug that was compulsory in every car in the Great Southern in those days. At last we boned into Albany. It was five past seven and we just had enough time to shower and clean our teeth before starting work for another day. But first, I had to take the Capri in to have its five-hundred-mile post-delivery check. The salesman was amazed! I had set an Albany record of achieving it in just fifteen hours from the moment of collection to delivery at Barnesby’s workshop door!

Big John Old Cruttenden, my boss at the newspaper, did not have any hair growing across the top of his head. Not that this is unusual and I will be the first to admit that I am in a similar boat. It is useless to deny it when the world can witness it for itself. But Old Cruttenden did. For some reason, a few bald men think that if they put some hair there, no matter where it came from, people will fondly imagine they are growing it themselves. My brother went and bought some imitation hair for just this purpose and it appears, not putting too fine a point on it, utterly absurd! When he was younger he went to a clinic that transplanted some from somewhere else. Where, I hate to contemplate! I don’t know about transplanting hair, but I do know about planting and growing a lawn using buffalo-grass runners. In Watermelon’s case, he can’t have prepared the soil well enough first, used the wrong fertiliser or didn’t irrigate it sufficiently because the roots never took properly and it always looked as though the mower blades were blunt. But Old Cruttenden didn’t go in for any of this technical stuff. He had a fringe of hair around the sides so he reckoned he could use that. On the right hand side he trimmed it just as anyone else would. But on the left he let it grow until it touched his shoulder. Carefully snipping it to exactly the right shape and length, he brushed it across his head from a point about half an inch above his left ear. This covered his pate to a certain extent and I am sure that if he had used lacquer it would have deceived most myopic people at a distance of greater than five hundred yards. And it gave him a parting that was just above the tip of his left ear. He didn’t take into account that a three-quarters-of-an-inch strip of scalp does not contain nearly as many follicles as a seven inch strip and this is where his plan failed. He didn’t go in for high tech stuff like hair-spray so he always had strands of it sticking together in some places and wide swathes of skin showing through everywhere else. Except when he walked down York Street! When he went up the road to buy his Red Capstan at the newsagency, the westerly blew his hair over his head and kept it reasonably well in place. But when he came out and walked back down, the Roaring Forty lifted the leading edge and made it stand straight up a good nine inches above his head. Then, when he came back into the building, it just flopped down where ever it could find a place to fall. Fortunately the toilet was just down the corridor so he could go in and comb it to his distinctive style and regain his assumed dignity. But Big John had an inner dignity that shortcomings such as male pattern baldness could never extinguish. He was almost totally bald and those wisps that did have the audacity to stick out from his otherwise noble dome were quickly removed with the Gillette. Instead of looking like a clown, as Old Cruttenden did, he looked positively stately! If I were to make a list of the nicest people I have ever met, I would find Giovanni Capperelli’s name right up there with the front runners. We called him John, because he asked us to. He didn’t like the way we pronounced his Italian name and I must admit that with our tortured Albany accents, it was the best idea all round. John was a huge man from near Milan where they breed them big, fair skinned and jovial. He had the largest heart I have ever encountered and was always interested in whoever was speaking. He never queried or disagreed with anyone. Unfortunately not everyone treated him the same way but he knew how to disarm any negative situation, mainly with his wide, genuine smile. My family lived immediately behind a home for the aged. None of the residents were ill, just a bit frail and doddery and needed their meals to be prepared, have their rooms and clothes cleaned and their medication organised. As Mum had been a nurse during World War Two, she applied for

and got a job there. One of the other nurses told her that her fiance was arriving from Italy soon and was looking for digs until they got married. Mum agreed to put him up in one of the vacated bedrooms as my sister was doing her nursing training in Perth and I had recently moved into a flat with Cliffy and another apprentice named Harley. Only Watermelon remained at home, although I admit I did keep coming back to do my laundry, have a decent meal and take our old dog for a walk at weekends. So Big John arrived at the Railway Station on the Albany Weekender, an overnight train service that got in on Saturday morning and left again on Sunday night. Strangely, it also arrived on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and left again an hour or two later, swapping the driver and conductor with their counterparts from the previous visit. It was still called the Albany Weekender even when it travelled midweek but nobody ever queried public transport naming conventions. It is futile. John was dressed just like a Chicago gangster! He wore a broad-brimmed fedora hat with a flashy mauve band, a crisp black cotton shirt with a tie and pocket-handkerchief the same hue as the hat band. I had never seen such a magnificent black suit, with lapels a good eight inches wide and a chalk stripe nearly a quarter of an inch thick. Around his waist he had a cow-leather belt with a gold buckle which actually glistened in the Albany sunshine along with his numerous rings and neck chains. On his feet he wore a pair of green rubber thongs. Green rubber thongs! Honestly! It completely ruined the effect, but in the two years I knew him, I only ever saw him wearing thongs or some gangry looking work boots. Oh, except at his wedding, when he had a sensational pair of handmade Italian loafers in soft, black chamois. But that was nearly a year later. In the meantime, he wore thongs because someone in Italy told him that was people did in Australia. He tried them, found them comfortable and stuck with them. I took him and his trunks to Mum’s house and as usual, she cooked him some breakfast. I have never seen anyone who looked less like they needed breakfast before, except maybe Charlie Waterman. Only John wasn’t fat, he was built like a mallee bull. His chest was as big around as a twentygallon beer barrel and about as firm. His shoulders barely fitted into the Anglia, despite its oversize doors. And he stood about six feet five in his thongs but without his fedora, which he quickly disposed of and swapped for an Army giggle hat as soon as the surplus store opened on Monday. He and Mabella, his fiancee, spent the afternoon together and I think they went dancing at the Italian Club that evening. As I no longer lived with Mum and Dad, I did my usual Saturday night thing of drinking whisky and Coke at the drive-in movies that had taken over from the Regent and Empire Cinemas in the weekend sex lives of Albany’s teenagers. It was more private to feel up some girl in a car than in the back row of a theatre. But on Sunday Mum invited me around to lunch and Mabella and John were there too. Mum and Dad did not drink alcohol and didn’t like anyone else drinking it in their home. They had their own reasons for this and I never questioned it. But Dad had a funny idea that Stones Green Ginger Wine was non-alcoholic so at Christmas he always got me to buy a few bottles from the gallon licence at Barnett’s store. Western Australia loves quaint laws and Albany people love them most of all! It persists with them against all logic and reason even until this very day. They set them apart from everyone else in the world, even when it seriously disadvantages everybody. Admittedly quite a few relating to the sale and consumption of alcohol have been repealed, although a number remain. One that has been gone for nearly forty years now was the gallon licence. If you did not have a full hotel licence, you could apply for a gallon licence. This was the only type of liquor store or off-licence allowed. But it meant that you were obliged to sell alcoholic beverages a gallon at a time.

Most wine, beer and spirits were sold in twenty-six fluid ounce bottles, which meant that you had to buy them five at a time. This, in fact, supplied you with a little less than a gallon but I never heard anyone complain about the discrepancy. Still it was a lot cheaper than buying single bottles of Stones at pub prices so Dad would get me to buy two for him and I used to drink whatever was in the other three bottles at wherever the next party was. So Dad had a bottle of Stones left over from the last festive season that he put on the table along with some Golden West Kole. They carefully explained to John that they disapproved of “strong” liquor in their house which completely confused to poor man who could see for himself that their preferred tipple was 13.9 percent alcohol by volume! That afternoon I drove him around to see the sights of Albany and he never made any attempt at all to determine the breed of Dog Rock although he did take note of all the pubs, bars and wine lounges. We became firm friends from that afternoon on. When Alan, our proofreader, went to gaol for embezzling funds from the motorcycle club where he was the honorary treasurer, we employed a very mild mannered Welshman named Steve Brooks. Brooksie didn’t do terribly well as a reader but proved to be a really good commercial illustrator. This was about the time we abandoned the rigid designs of letterpress printing where everything was composed from raised surfaces – metal type, plates or “blocks” mounted on thick pieces of plywood and spaced out with strips of lead, pieces of aluminium or steel “furniture” and wooden “reglets”. In its place came offset lithography, where images and type were pasted onto a sheet of cardboard, photographed to create a negative film that was then exposed onto sheet-metal. When processed, this had surface areas attractive or repellent to oil-based ink. The printing surface attracted and the “white” areas repelled ink and attracted water. These were then transferred onto a rubber-encased roller and printed onto the paper. If that is too complicated for you to understand, don’t worry. Most letterpress printers never really caught on and a lot of them gave up and became street sweepers, lawn mowing contractors or politicians. But it meant that Brooksie’s drawings could be used much more readily in advertisements and he became an important part of the commercial art team. I expressed an interest in similar training and Brooksie took me under his wing. He taught me a lot about drafting, rendering, effect of light on a subject and how to achieve the appearance of texture on a surface. He also told me I was, in his opinion, too fat and should lose weight. He was right of course. Anyone who would drive from Albany to Cottesloe and back in one night, just to pig out on fish and chips is a prime candidate for obesity. And my sister used to embarrass me in public by referring to me as “Fatboy”. I asked him his advice on slimming and he gave it in four simple words. “Eat less, shit more!” But the other things he taught me made a big difference to my life. I took up sketching and painting as a hobby which, to the amusement of my friends I spent quite a lot of time pursuing. After my successful effort on the dashboard of the Anglia, I began to experiment with conté crayons, chinagraph pencils and charcoal. And I had a wonderful collection of erasers from stuff the consistency of play dough through to very hard India rubber. All were purchased under the supervision of Brooksie down at Norman’s Newsagency and Stationers on Stirling Terrace. After drawing pictures of the cats, dogs and budgerigars my mother kept as pets, I tried a few portraits of family and friends. These subjects were all very flattered that someone would want to draw them and in return, flattered me by saying I had a lot of natural talent and that I was progressing well under Steve’s tutelage. I liked to think so too and my new hobby began to do wonders for my hat size!

Watermelon had a friend called Wesley Hinge, who everyone called Whinge, due to the way he constantly complained and whined when he was asked to do anything. Between Watermelon’s blubbering and Whinge’s whinging, they drove Mum and Mrs Hinge to distraction. Whose ever home they went to after school would shut them in the lounge with a big bag of crisps and the radiogram and let them spend the evening in their own misery without upsetting too many other people. But Whinge saw some of my drawings one day and after complaining that they didn’t look a bit like the subjects and I was wasting my time on such a futile pursuit, he went home and praised my work to his sister. Her name was Geraldine and she was a couple of years ahead of me at school. I don’t know what their cookery teacher taught them in Domestic Science or Home Economics, or whatever they called it back then, but the ingredients must have had a profound aphrodisiac effect on their libidos. Both she and my sister always seemed to be in the back of some car down under the peppercorn trees at Emu Point. Geri asked me to do a sketch of her to give her Mum for a birthday and when I had completed it she offered to pay me for the work I had put in. Not wanting to ruin my amateur status, I refused so she asked me if I would like her to pose nude for a few sessions. Nineteen-year-old boys have traditionally got superfluous testosterone spurting out of orifices not designed for that purpose and I was no exception. When her parents went away for a few days on business I nipped around to her house and set up my apparatus. I was fully aware that Geri had probably the nicest arse I had seen up until that time and when she took off her bathrobe and stood before me, I had absolutely no doubt. My first session was a disaster because my hand was quivering far too much to draw the neat, deft strokes that this form of art required. Besides which my heart was palpitating so vigorously, I kept breaking the points off my charcoals. But there was no shortage of lead in my pencil! After about an hour, she made a cup of tea and came and surveyed my handiwork. “You should probably stick to drawing faces,” she said, not unkindly. I nodded glumly and sipped my Amgoorie. “You haven’t got the skin texture right! Art isn’t only a visual thing, it should be tactile, too!” My hormones had slowed down just enough to understand what she was saying. I nodded stupidly and stroked her cheek. “It’s not facial skin texture you seem to have trouble with!” she said. “That portrait you did was really good. No, it’s the body skin you didn’t get right. Look!” She bared one of her shapely buttocks and thrust it out for me to touch. My heart pounded. Gingerly at first, I ran my fingers over it then emboldened by the way her teeth latched onto my ear, I grasped it firmly and pulled her down on top me. She proceeded to give me a lesson Brooksie could not have taught in a million years! Anyway, this little story is not as irrelevant as it might seem. I was telling you about Big John, the Italian immigrant who was lodging with my Mum and Dad. One evening he came around to the flat I shared with Cliffy and Harley and saw some of my drawings stuck on the wall. As I said, he was a very generous man and he heaped praise on my skills. I started showing off as I normally do and got out those I had done of Geri, including some of her gorgeous bum. I normally kept them in a folder in my wardrobe but I couldn’t resist displaying them to a man with such impeccable artistic taste. John was really impressed but now it was not only with my handiwork! He couldn’t take his eyes off those two beautifully rounded globes. He asked me if she was my girlfriend.

“No, not really,” I said. “We went together a few times but now she’s more of a friend, like Glenda.” He had met Glenda and had difficulty with her sense of humour. Oh, he liked her a lot but never knew when she was teasing him. “I would very much like to meet this Geraldine!” he declared. “Well, if you pronounce her name like that, I think she would enjoy meeting you, too!” I said. He sounded out the syllables in something like a French accent and most young ladies would have dropped their knickers on the spot if he spoke to them like that. “But what about Mabella?” I asked. “I don’t think she would be very enamoured if you started perving on some other chick’s arse!” I had to explain to him what this meant and he grinned. “Mabella and I are not, how you say, lovers!” he said quietly. “As children we played together in our town and when she come to Australia with her parents, she say I should follow her over later. But her heart is no longer in it. We change, you know. What was, when we were children, no longer is.” “I didn’t realise!” I commiserated. “I thought you were planning on getting married!” “Yes, we were but now we are not so sure. We discuss it all the time and we think it might be a mistake.” He looked at me to make sure I had understood him properly and I nodded gravely. “It is not so much me! She is good woman. Very good cook and would make lovely babies.” I was a bit surprised he didn’t say bambinos. His English was improving! “But this country is not like Italia and these things are not so much an important way of living, I think you say!” “So you want to meet Aussie sheilas?” I asked and he nodded eagerly. “Stick with me, Boy, and I’ll bring you all the chicks you can handle!” But John had been impressed with my drawings too, not just the beautiful posterior of Geraldine Hinge and he requested I draw a picture of him. “Okay!” I agreed. “Get your daks off and turn around!” John loved Aussie humour and roared with laughter at this. “No!” he said. “I could not compete with her. My bottom is too much hairy! You just draw my face and bald head!” So I did. I drew a head and shoulders in charcoal, another of him sitting in front of the fire with the flickering light of the flames on his strong profile. Then I did a third in Indian ink which was a caricature of him, a sort of cartoon, with his wide lapelled suit and a violin case, Mafioso style. There were Italian and Australian flags in the backgound and on his feet were the inevitable thongs. He specially loved this one and asked me to sign it, which I did. “Could you please write on it ‘To my friend, Giovanni’ and I will send it to my mama? She will love it!” So I wrote “To my good mate Giovanni. A dinkum Aussie!” and the next day he went to the newsagent and bought two pieces of strawboard and a large envelope, then trotted up to the post office and mailed it off to Italy. But, thoughtful man that he was, he insisted he pay me. Again I refused. After all, he was a good mate. I know Watermelon would have looked at me with amazement for refusing hard cash but I believe some things are worth more than money.

And I was right! The next evening he came around with two bottles of chianti with woven straw baskets around them, a huge pizza he had made himself in Mum’s stove and a plate of cheese and meat I had never even heard of before, but which smelt delicious. I still think of him every time I enter a continental deli. He was a bit apologetic about the pizza because apparently the type of cheese they use in Milan was not available in Albany. Most Italians in town were from Napoli, Roma and Brindisi where the southern, aromatic cuisine is considerably different to the robust fare of the Alpine district. But I wasn’t complaining, nor were Cliffy and Harley. By the end of the evening we were staggering around, just as much from our bloated bellies as from the chianti. Boy, if I was going to follow Hughie’s instructions I would have to spend a lot of time on the toot after this! The following Friday I introduced him to Geri and the rest, as they say, is history! She was utterly charmed by his gentlemanly good manners and the attention he paid to her the whole time he was with her. In return, he was in awe of her incredible arse! But he fell in love with her and the two of them spent a lot of time at our flat until they got married about eight months later. The week before the nuptials, I went around to Geri’s house and gave her a large manilla envelope with the sketches inside. I don’t know if she knew John had seen them – I never asked. If she didn’t she may never know the part I played in what proved to be a very happy marriage. John always had time for his male friends and Geri, like a good Albany wife, understood. We introduced him to Australian Rules Football, although he never failed to maintain his allegiance to AC Milan, his “real” football team in Italy. We tried to get him drinking Emu Export Lager straight from the bottle and although he never gave up trying to enjoy it, he said the coldness hurt his throat and he would have to have a large Lambrusco to warm it back up again! During his first summer in Albany, there was quite a serious fire in the mallee behind Melville and John was in “ze vine lounge” as he called it, when the call went out for volunteers. He didn’t realise that they were referring to the Volunteer Bush Fire Brigade, a well-trained outfit of men who, although they held down other jobs, were on call to meet emergencies. He thought they wanted anyone who was able to go, so off he went. He was still in his regular drinking clothes – singlet, shorts, giggle hat and thongs – and he set off around the hill to see if he could be of any assistance without going home to put on more suitable attire. In a bushfire, you don’t only need protective boots but a thick jacket and pants to keep the heat out, gloves and a helmet to deflect any branches or fiery debris. John had none of this. He marched straight up to the fire chief and asked where they needed him. The fire chief told him to get the hell out of there and John got confused. “But I wish to help!” he insisted. “You’d help a lot more if you shoved off and stopped making a bloody nuisance of yourself!” the fireman shouted and John, knowing when he was not wanted set off back to his car. But around one side of the car park the fire was already starting to lick away at the dry grass. To walk right around and enter by the road would have taken over a minute and John realised he did not have that much time before the entire area was engulfed. As his was the only car and there were no other people around, he took a run-up and leapt over the flames. Unfortunately, his thong caught on a fallen branch as he leapt and it came off. He landed just on the edge of the burning area and scorched the skin of the bare foot. It was very painful and he was a bit unsure whether he would be able to drive all the way to the hospital to get it treated.

However, he had only gone a hundred yards or so when a policeman indicated to him to pull over. This policeman’s job was to ensure nobody entered the fire zone, although he had no orders about anyone leaving. But when John wound down the window to ask him what he wanted, the cop immediately got him to blow into the breathalyser and booked him on the spot for driving with a blood alcohol reading of zero point one-one which was point zero three percent over the allowable limit. John had spent the previous three hours tasting the produce of Plantagenet Winery. But the constable radioed for an ambulance to come and treat John’s foot and then impounded his car keys. He had to wait by the ambulance until the fire was under control and the medics were free to drive him to the hospital! Last Night I Sat Behind The Woodshed Although I had depicted him carrying a violin case in the cartoon, John in fact played a concertina. This versatile instrument was very popular in Italy, although foreigners always imagined they were listening to the accordion. In John’s huge hairy paws, the instrument looked like a Christmas cracker toy! John was not a great musician but he played with enormous gusto. Sometimes he would take it with him to the Italian Club during the afternoon and sit in a corner with a bottle of spumante and just quietly play old Milanese melodies on it, tapping his thonged foot in time with the beat. Then, as the afternoon progressed into evening and John’s dexterity deteriorated, a four-piece combo came in and played dance music and the members would leap and clap in time with their music. One Sunday John came around to our flat, carrying his concertina in the old Air Italia bag he always had hanging over his shoulder. “The band at the Italian Club will not be able to play for the next three Saturdays. Two of the musicians are in the CMF and are going to a camp and the guitarist is playing soccer in Adelaide!” CMF was the Citizens Military Forces, as the Army Reserve was called in those days. “I told them to leave it to me, I would organise a band.” “I see, so you want me to play bass for you, is that it?” I asked. “Or if you could play guitar that would be good. We don’t worry too much with the bass, but guitar makes a good accompaniment to the music they want. Dean Martin, Al Martino, Mario Lanza, that sort of thing.” “Have you got a drummer?” I asked. “I presume you will be playing your squeeze box?” “I will play and teach you lots of songs. You will only need the chords and they are all very simple. And one of the members says his son is good at playing the drums so I have asked him to bring them around here for a practice.” My neighbours never complained about noise from our parties so I was pretty sure the sounds of us rehearsing wouldn’t worry them much, but I hadn’t heard young Lucio banging the pigskins! He drove up in a battered Holden Station Sedan and proceeded to unload the largest mismatched selection of drums I had ever seen. He had three snares, about seven tom-toms and goodness knows how many cymbals. His bass was a good thirty six inches high, a foot deep and he had difficulty getting it out of the front seat of the wagon – the only place left for it after all the other stuff. We had to limit him to playing with brushes as he had a tendency to bash each piece as hard as his wrists would allow. I think years later he went on to play in a heavy metal band where his talents were better appreciated.

So John taught me approximately forty Italian tunes in six days. I knew a lot of them already as the radio station tried to keep a variety of different ethnic audiences happy and had an Italian programme, along with French, German, Russian and Greek music sessions. And Dean Martin songs had been popular in Albany for years. By the end of the week I was considered proficient to play the favourites so I dug out a jar of Brylcreem and slicked back my hair in the approved manner for young continental men. Harley snipped the back of my neck into a straight line with the scissors. We took the instruments out to the Italian Club and when Lucio arrived, we did a quick sound test. At about seven-thirty the Club was full and the vino was flowing well. Lots of old men with greyflannel suits, yellow shirts and striped ties were dancing with big, fat women in expensive ball gowns. A few discontented looking boys stood along one wall scowling at me – the only foreigner in the room! John stepped up to the microphone and said something in Italian. Everyone looked pretty stonefaced, so Lucio translated it from Milanese into Neapolitan and they all roared with laughter. I recognised the words “Papa” and “Salerno” so assumed it was about my father’s participation in the beach landing on the coast near Naples during World War Two. A man standing beside the stage stepped up and slapped me on the back so I raised my fingers in a V for Victory salute and the crowd cheered. Then John launched into the song that has been top of the Italian hit parade for about five decades – “Volaré”. Every seat was vacated and the dance floor filled with couples swirling around in gay abandon, crashing into other couples and whooping along with the chorus. Then after one verse and chorus, John abruptly stopped playing and took a bow. Everyone looked a bit disappointed and then our concertina player started the next song. Again they all frolicked around merrily and again he stopped after the first verse. I went over to him and suggested that he play it at least three times, preferably four, to drag out our limited repertoire a bit. At this rate we would have exhausted all our tunes in three-quartersof-an-hour with three-and-a-quarter hours still to fill. So next song, “Innamorata”, when he had played the verse and chorus twice, he started playing just the chords and began singing. I am not Italian, but to me it sounded dreadful. And judging by the reaction of the dancers, they were not terribly impressed either. This time, at the end of the song Lucio spoke to him in Italian and I guessed he told him just to play and not sing. When John started vamping the third verse, Lucio burst into song. He had a surprisingly good tenor and held the tune really well. We had hit on the winning combination! From then on every song followed the same format. John would play two verses and two choruses, Lucio would sing two verses and choruses and John would go back and repeat his two. I was beginning to quite enjoy the gig and now and again, when I felt confident enough, I would chuck in a little tremolo trill, trying to make the Maton sound like a mandolin. This delighted the audience and on a couple of songs I got plucky and attempted to harmonise with Lucio. It was going really well. Then, as we neared the end of our repertoire and there was still around three-quarters of an hour to go, John began to play a piece we had not rehearsed. I picked it up pretty quickly as I recognised the tune. By the end of the second chorus, I was grooving. Then John started to play just chords and I expected Lucio to sing. But he didn’t! I looked over at him and he was just stroking away at the snare and shrugging in a continental way that indicated he did not know the words. John meanwhile continued to play the same chord over and over, waiting for a voice to chime in. I mentioned that I recognised the tune. It is a Neapolitan song about a cable-car that apparently Richard Strauss heard and used as part of his “Aus Italien”. For his plagiarism, he was taken to court and sued. The song is a jaunty little number called “Funiculi Funicula” and I knew it because

not only had Strauss Junior nicked it, it had been borrowed by Kiwi rugby players and had some rather bawdy lyrics added. Its Anglicised title is “Last Night I Stayed Up Late and Sat Behind the Woodshed” and was all about a practice which mothers tell their sons will make them go blind! But they were the only words I knew so I stepped behind the microphone and sang. Most of the dancers kept twirling and bumping their way around the floor but a few, who probably understood English better than the rest, stopped and listened with huge grins on their faces. When I finished singing they burst into applause until John resumed his instrumental. At the end of the song Lucio said to me “You’re a big hit, Lizard! Did you just make that up?” The English-speakers in the audience were buzzing around whispering to their not-so-linguistic compadrés and everyone was chuckling. One man was making little back-and-forth gestures with his hand. Someone brought over a huge flagon of red and filled our glasses to the top and they all moved a little closer to the stage when John started his next number. I suppose they all hoped I would do another rude song for them. But I had to disappoint them although when we reprised “Volaré”, I sang the English lyrics with Lucio, then tried the Italian ones and made a horrible mess, which brought another round of applause and drinks. At the end of the evening, just as we were about to finish and pack up, John came over and said he had so many requests for me to sing “Last Night I Stayed Up Late and Sat Behind the Woodshed”, that he thought we should do it again. This time though, he made me sing the verse over and over while the dancers joined hands in a big circle and jigged around. I stepped down from the stage and stood in the ring while someone held the microphone for me, then played the melody on the guitar, throwing in a few little licks and embellishments. It was as though Senor Lanza himself had walked in! The following week, I was greeted in the car park and showered with drinks and cakes all evening. I sang “The Woodshed Song”, as it became known, four times. Because I had memorised some other lyrics in Italian, I shared the singing with Lucio, even abandoning our instruments at one stage and, with arms draped over each other’s shoulders, kicked around the dance floor in time to John’s concertina. I could envisage a career in Musica Italiano stretching way beyond the original three-week season and saw myself in years to come, huge-bellied from all the spaghetti, pizza and spumante, still wowing them with my nocturnal manual callisthenics behind the said outbuilding. But by the third week the novelty had worn off and after a couple of hours of playing, most of the men lit up cigarettes and went out the back to play tombola while the women sat in little groups discussing pasta sauce recipes. It is an illustration of John’s big heart and generosity that when we got paid for the three dances, at first he refused to take his share. “You and Lucio did all the singing and making the people laugh!” he said. “I am just happy to be able to make the music for my friends to dance to!” But although I could see Lucio’s eyes light up at the prospect of getting a bit more than he had anticipated, he backed me up when I insisted John had arranged the gig and supplied the charts, so deserved at least as much as we did. Reluctantly he agreed to accept it. I think it only totalled around ninety dollars each for twelve hours playing but remember in those days a tradesman earned thirty dollars for forty hours labour so it wasn’t really anything to be sneezed at. And Lucio and I were still serving apprenticeships!

But John could not let it rest. The following Thursday he and Geri took us to the Esplanade pub or “Ze Esply-o-nard” as he pronounced it, for a slap-up meal. Watermelon As unbelievable as it sounds, Watermelon occasionally drew the attention of one or the other of the local girls. Perhaps they were attracted by his willingness to show his feminine side and not be ashamed to cry in public, I don’t know, but he seemed to do alright for himself in that department now and again. And when he did he became almost bearable for a little while. One young lady who succumbed to his watery wiles was a skinny blonde named Cheryl who worked for the radio station. He used to let her pay for his tickets to the pictures, the Stomp and any other venue that required money and she bought most of his beer, cigarettes and petrol as well. Until she moved to Perth with her parents. Normally he would have just unceremoniously dumped her and looked for someone else or sat behind the woodshed until the next sucker came along. But there must have been something special about Cheryl because he wrote to her now and again and also got replies. One evening while we were watching “F Troop” on telly, he asked me if I wanted to go to Perth for the weekend. Obviously the reason he chose me was so that I would share the cost of the petrol or, hopefully, pay for it all after hearing his plea that he would be footing the bill for the oil, servicing, wear and tear, tyre rubber, etc. “No way,” I replied. “Not under those conditions. I’ll pay for half the petrol. That’s it. After all, I’ll have to pay for a motel for the night while you’ll stay at the White’s for free. And food!” He grumpily agreed. He’d probably already asked Whinge and his other mates and they had said no so I was a last resort. On Friday, we decided, we would come straight home from work, have a sleep for a few hours, then set off around eleven. I was not playing in a band at that time. Folk music had become the big thing and one of the chaps at the paper had asked me to form an acoustic guitar and singing duo with him and we played most evenings in a coffee shop on the Terrace. It didn’t pay much but it was easier work and I got to tell a few jokes and perform some of my own compositions as well of those of The Seekers, who I idolised. And I fancied the proprietor’s daughter. At around eleven, we loaded our spare jocks, toothbrushes and clean shirts into Watermelon’s Cortina, along with a package of cakes, pies and sweets Mum wanted us to give to our sister at the Nurses’ Quarters at Royal Perth Hospital. Then we belted ourselves in and he drove off the lawn where he parked his car and onto the street. The kerbs in Albany in those days were all slabs of quarried granite, half-buried alongside the verge before the tarmac was laid and in some places they still remain. But most are now gone and have been replaced with the smooth-edged concrete variety which are not so steep to drive over. As we bumped down onto the road, there was a bit of a clunk and scraping noise as Watermelon had put lowering blocks in the U-Bolts under the axles to make his car ride only a few inches above the ground. This modification was illegal but as even the gorillas at the RTA thought it looked cool, it was not enforced. It was raining slightly as we peeled out into the misty, miserable night. In those days North Road was mostly on the drawing board and didn’t go right through from Spencer Park to Lockyer until a few years later. It went from Bluff Rock to Sanford Road just past the hockey field and netball courts. There was still a strip of swampland that had to be filled so there wasn’t even a track or side road. We drove into town and then out the Albany Highway.

But at the Denmark Road turn-off, something made me check the car’s dials. I didn’t trust Watermelon one bit and was probably checking that the car wasn’t overheating or that he was still doing only thirty-five miles an hour. He was an arrogant little prat so I never put anything past him. “I thought you said you’d already filled up with petrol!” I said. “We won’t get any at this time of night. Everywhere closed at midnight. You’d better go back to Ma’s!” Ma’s was an “all-night” petrol station and snack bar about a mile out of Albany on Perth Road. When I say “all-night”, I mean it stayed open for about an hour-and-a-half after the drive-in finished during the week and until about one-thirty on Fridays and Saturdays. “I did!” Watermelon burst into tears. “I filled it at the Shell Station on my way home!” “Then we must have broken the fuel line when we bumped off the kerb!” I suggested and a quick inspection of the road behind us showed a slick of oily emulsion making rainbow colours on the rain-soaked surface. He turned the car around and we made it to within a quarter mile of home before the motor spluttered and cut out. I got out and pushed to the top of our hill and Watermelon sat howling his eyes out and steering. The mean little bugger didn’t even stop at the top of the hill and let me get in, he just rolled down and parked in front of the house. I ran down the road, my leather-soled Beatle boots sliding in the petrol slick on the tar. I was nearly drenched by now and just wanted to have a shower and go back to bed. But Watermelon had other ideas. “Can we take your car?” he sobbed. “I don’t think we can fix mine. It looks like that little nipple thing for draining it has been knocked right off!” “I haven’t got much fuel!” I said, offering him a tissue. “Nowhere near enough to get even out to Ma’s.” I habitually let my tank run really low, especially on Fridays, as I am sure Watermelon used to siphon some off. I generally filled up on my way to the Stomp when his was already topped up for the weekend. And this Friday, knowing we were going to Perth, I had deliberately made sure I used it all up! “But we can get going first thing in the morning when the garage opens at seven o’clock! Les will fix it in a moment.” “That’s too late!” he bawled. “By the time we get to Perth it will be nearly lunch time and we have to leave on Sunday. It’s not worth going in that case!” “I agree,” I said and got my bag from the boot. I made some Ovaltine and had a shower. Watermelon kept on pleading but I ignored him. He wanted me to take the risk of running out of petrol before we got to Ma’s but I wasn’t going to be in on it. I’d been drenched once already this evening and besides which, I didn’t want to take the Anglia. It would be my oil, my tyres, my wear and tear and – nothing was more certain – my petrol. There was no way he would offer to contribute to the cost of the trip even though it was to his benefit, not mine. I find it hard to believe he is my brother. Mum and Dad are generous to a fault and meanness is certainly not among my sister’s many and exotic faults. She had a reputation for sharing it out amongst the boys of her acquaintance and all her nicknames attest to that! On another occasion he wanted to go to a quiz night in Denmark which is about thirty miles to the west. Somehow he managed to talk me into going with him and even offered to take his car. I had, of course, refused to take the Anglia because I didn’t really want to go and wasn’t going to put myself out for him! However I had agreed to pay the five dollars for the entry ticket which I privately thought was a bit exorbitant, seeing as it was, after all, in aid of his work social club! We would be paying for the ticket at the door although he had already booked them and arranged a table. The tables each accommodated eight people so a total of forty dollars a table was to be collected per group. Watermelon, I knew, wanted me on his table as I had a much better general

knowledge than most residents of the Great Southern who were only interested in football and who was last scruffing who. Our table was, with him and me answering all the questions, likely to take out most of the prizes. I arrived home from work at five fifteen and Watermelon was already in the bathroom scrubbing his tear ducts ready for the next outburst. I expected he would be in there for another fifteen minutes or so, then I could have ten minutes to scrub off the residue from a busy day’s newspaper composing and perform what was still, in those days, an almost unnecessary shave. But although I banged on the door several times he wouldn’t hurry up. It was getting close to six o’clock and I knew he wanted to leave around half past. I made a cup of tea and watched The Banana Splits Show on telly. Eventually I heard the bathroom door open and Watermelon emerged, fully dressed in his suit, floral shirt and paisley tie, looking a million dollars. He smelt fabulous and I knew he had sloshed my Old Spice on very lavishly. “Aren’t you ready yet?” he wailed. “I’m ready to leave!” “You’ve been in the bathroom since I got home!” I complained. “How could I have got ready?” “Well, you’ll have to come as you are. I can’t wait for you. I told Andreas we would meet him for a drink in the pub before the quiz.” “Twang!” I retorted. “I’m not going until I’ve had a shower. I’ll only be ten minutes at the most.” But the egocentric little sod wouldn’t wait. He insisted on leaving right away. “You’ll just have to go without me then,” I told him. “I’m not going until I’ve had a shower.” “Gloria won’t mind if you stink!” he said, referring to a girl he worked with who had a crush on me and who I had decided might stand a chance if I was hard-up one night. “She’s got a head cold!” “No, you go on your own. I might nip down to the Esplanade, instead.” “Can you give me your five dollars then?” “Drop dead! I’m not paying if I’m not going!” “But you said you’d go and I’ve booked your ticket!” “Then you’ll have to pay for it!” “That’s not fair. You said!” “Well wait until I’ve had a shower then!” But he wouldn’t wait and I wouldn’t give him the five dollars even though he whined and sobbed and appealed to Dad to intervene. Dad just told us a story about how his brother Les still owed him ten bob over a bet they made in 1935 as to which one of them would be the to first get a date with Marjory Lumsden at the Co-op in Twickenham. For months afterwards Watermelon tried everything he could think of to get that five dollars but he never did! At least, not that I know of. In those days people didn’t lock their doors! The Return of Barrel Watermelon wasn’t the only tightwad in Albany. There were plenty of others. In fact I sometimes think that Albany people rank up there with Jews and Scots for meanness. My Dad worked with a little bloke from Victoria who would possibly take the blue ribbon if thrift were a contest at the Albany Show. He once came to work with a sack of cabbages and held one up in front of Dad. “I grew these in my garden!” he boasted. “Would you like one, Lenny?”

“That’s very kind of you, John!” said Dad in amazement. He had never seen the generous side of him before. “That’s okay, Lenny!” beamed John, magnanimously. “Anderson’s are selling them for one-andfourpence and they are not as big as these. You can have it for a shilling!” My Dad is a very polite man so he didn’t tell John what he thought he should do with it. Anyway, being a grocer’s son he knew it wouldn’t have fit. John’s arse was tighter than a goldfish’s. John once conned me into playing at his sister-in-law’s wedding and I got a couple of band mates to come with me so we could give them something to dance to at the reception. He told me there was a drink in it for us so we were happy to oblige. Anyway, that is all it turned out to be! He brought a bottle and three glasses over to the stage and poured us one each! Later I learned from another guest that he saw the groom give John twelve quid “for the band!” and when I fronted him with it he insisted he only ever promised us a drink and we had, as he said, got a glass of Barossa Pearl each. The bloke who drove Albany’s only taxi was an American who had come over with the US Navy during the war and courted a local woman. This was not unheard of among Yank sailors. But he continued writing to her and, in 1946, came back and married her. Both were very good musicians, she a pianist and he played mainly brass but could turn his hand to most other instruments. Dad was speaking to him one day and he mentioned I wanted to learn guitar. Bill said he had taught several students and would be more than happy to teach me at ten bob for a half-hour lesson each week. The current rate was eight and six but Bill was a top-class teacher so I considered it worthwhile. And he was very good! Although he was a bit impatient and not familiar with a lot of guitar techniques, he taught me to read music and the correct place to put my fingers. He taught me a lot of bad habits too and my son still tells me off for wrapping my hand around the neck instead of placing my thumb behind the fret-board to get a firmer yet more manoeuvrable action. That aside, he got me started quite well. Every Tuesday evening I would pack my guitar into its case and walk the mile and a half to his house, have my lesson, give him ten bob and then walk home again. His wife Poppa used to pop into the studio room and bring Bill his post-prandial cup of coffee but one particular evening she didn’t show. After the lesson, as I was putting on my coat, Bill took his car keys from the rack in the hall. “Poppa’s in hospital having her corns done!” he said. “I’m going up to visit her so if you like, I can drop you off at the corner of Angove Road!” “Thanks,” I said. “It’s pretty cold and miserable and I wasn’t really looking forward to walking!” So I got into the taxi alongside him and believe it or not, he turned on the bloody trip-meter! “You’re not going to charge me, are you?” I asked, opening the door to get out. I only had nine pence left until payday! He looked crestfallen for a moment then realised here was a forty-five-year-old man trying to scam a sixteen-year-old student. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Force of habit!” Twang! That walk home improved a lot once I got the transistor radio. I would hold my guitar case in one hand and the tranny in the other and listen to “Life With Dexter”, a radio show starring the

Australian comedian, Willie Fennell. It began at seven twenty and went for half an hour, so I just got out of Bill’s studio when it came on and it would finish just before I got home. One night as I walked by the Technical College, I saw a familiar figure emerge from the front door. I was about to wave when my blood suddenly froze! A year earlier, while I was still at High School, “Barrel” Ferguson had been my technical drawing teacher. He was a miserable man, grossly overweight and probably very depressed. His skin was ruddy, particularly his nose, which suggested excessive indulgence in the singing syrup. One day we turned up for Tech D and were sitting at our drawing boards when Sinclair, the senior trades master, came in and announced he was taking over the class because Mr Ferguson had suffered a very severe heart attack and was in Royal Perth Hospital. We never saw him again which didn’t surprise us because Pieter Flugge told us that his Dad knew someone whose daughter worked at Royal Perth and said that Barrel hadn’t pulled through and had died having bypass surgery. We never rejoiced but we never mourned either. No one particularly liked him but also no one particularly hated him. Except Flugge, whose arse had once been instrumental in breaking a straight edge after he wouldn’t shut up in class and Barrel got fed up with him! So to see Barrel, as large as life, striding out of the Tech building put the very devil up me and I think I turned up the volume on Dexter and ran all the way up Campbell Road. Next day at lunchtime I went over to the warehouse where Pieter Flugge worked and told him I had seen Barrel and that he was as much alive as he had been the day he got his arse bruised. “Yeah!” chuckled Flugge. “Youse dumb buggers all believed me, didn’t you?” Not very funny! Willie Fennell would never have stooped that low to get a laugh! The Hordern Monument A’Capella Quartet I don’t know whether we were the only Barbers Shop Quartet ever to come from Albany, but if not, we must have had the strangest origin. Once again it involved that fascination young Australian men have with their motor cars. Dick Poynter had only recently moved to Albany from Cranbrook and his first purchase after he arrived was a brand new V8 Chrysler Valiant. This was a seriously big car and I could probably have driven the Anglia into the cabin and parked it without it getting in anyone’s way. It had bench seats front and rear that were wide enough to seat eight adults, as long as some of them were the size of Glenda and not too many were as big as Dick or Boongul! Dick started hanging around with me and my mates for two reasons. Firstly we were great company, good blokes and did lots of really interesting things! We had a wide circle of friends, excellent taste in women, clothes, music, food, wine and football teams and we were far more intelligent conversationalists than your average Albany hoon who communicated in grunts and vague fist gestures. The other reason Dick stuck close to me was simple. He was trying to get into my sister’s pants. The reason it was quicker to read the second reason was because it was, generally, quicker to achieve! I don’t know whether he had any luck but if not he would have been the first failure I ever heard of. But it wasn’t for want of trying. One of our favourite pastimes was hanging around in cars, driving up and down York Street, Stirling Terrace and Middleton Road. On the weekend Middleton Road saw a constant stream of vehicles – maybe up to a dozen an hour! Don’t laugh! This is Albany we are talking about, not New York or Sydney or somewhere!

The beach was a popular destination during the summer and on Friday nights when there was a Stomp quite a few girls used to head down there. Also, the most popular pub, the Esplanade, commonly known as the Nard, was just over the road from the beach and they had a band playing there on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and both sessions on Sunday. Again we get back to the quaint laws Albany people love especially if they involve the consumption of alcohol. Pubs could only open for four hours on Sunday – from noon until two and again from four until six. This caused a swill effect with the Nard being packed with louts trying to get drunk before the licensee stopped serving them. Because until nineteen sixty nine, the legal age to drink in a licensed premises was twenty one, it didn’t feature much in my teenage years and about the time I gained my majority they changed the law and made drinking and voting available to eighteen year olds. As I said, quaint laws but then again, we had even quainter politicians in Western Australia. We still do, I might add! One of our favourite ways to amuse our selves in a car was to do a “lap”. This involved going right around the perimeter of Albany, a feat that took about forty-five minutes in those days. We would start in Spencer Park, go down Collingwood Road to Lower King Road and turn right until we hit Emu Point Road, right again to Middleton Beach then around Marine Drive to Town. From Stirling Terrace we continued onto Festing Street and the Wool Stores then out to Lockyer along Hanrahan Road. Once North Road was completed we went down there, up Ulster Road to Angove Road then back into Spencer Park. But before North Road was finished, we had to go nearly into town and along Sanford Road to where it joined what already existed of North Road. Wow, what a thrilling evening’s entertainment! And then we’d cap it off with watching an episode of Z Cars before having a smoke and a cup of Ovaltine out on the verandah. This was something we would do on a weekday evening if there was nothing like band practice, watching the girls play netball or a John Wayne movie on the telly. When Dick arrived with his Valiant, we found we could get four blokes, Glenda and the driver in at the same time. We always used to sing at the top of our voices as we travelled around the “lap”. Robbie Bean started singing “Wimowey a Wimowey” and when we all joined in, he trilled out the lead vocal “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.” While Cliffy and Boongul continued the “wimowey” backing, I harmonised on the lead with Robbie. Dick and Glenda were delighted and when we finished that song, we started “Duke of Earl” and then “Blue Moon”. By Hanrahan Road, we were into The Four Seasons songbook and as we raced along Sanford Road, still gravel then, we were pounding out “Walk Like a Man” with me doing the falsetto. Sanford Road terminated at North Road and vice versa. The result was an L shaped junction – a ninety degree turn. Immediately opposite the end of Sanford Road was the Yakamia Creek where it went underground on its way to Princess Royal Harbour. Dick hit that corner just as we were singing “Forget about the girl and walk like a man from youoo”. But although he turned the wheel hard to the right, the Valiant continued in a northerly direction. Only now, instead of the bonnet leading, the left-hand-side front fender did! The car was still turning a bit and Dick’s brake pedal was hard on the floor. All there was between the road and the creek were two white posts – the ones with the little reflectors on so you knew where the side of the road is. The car hit both of them simultaneously and they assisted enormously in helping to slow the car. However, they weren’t there as a safety barrier and were not buried very deeply into the ground. Fortunately though, they held and the car came to rest with the right-hand wheels on the road, the rear-left wheel just touching the side of the bank and the front-left way out over the creek. The two white posts were now horizontal and taking nearly all the weight of the huge car. We didn’t sing any more of the song and the three of us in the back – Robbie, Cliffy and me – scrambled out of the right-hand rear door. The car rocked violently and I jumped back in, standing

up with my hands gripping the roof to try to stabilise it and stop it dropping into the creek, six feet below. Boongul experimentally opened his door and Dick asked him if he thought he could jump out so that the weight would be back on the right hand side, which was still on firm land. Boongul leaned right out, altering the centre of gravity so that the car pitched precariously then leapt out into the darkness. We heard a splash, an obscene word and then a sloshing sound as Boongul waded through the mud and up the embankment. Now only Dick and Glenda were in the car, I was in the back doorway and Robbie and Cliffy were sitting on the boot, ready to leap off if the car tipped again. “Can you climb out over me?” Dick asked Glenda and she started crawling out of her seat and across his lap. He yelped as she put her knee into his groin and then stuck her bum in his face. But she got out successfully and the car was a bit more secure. “Can you get out, Dick, or will she tip if you do?” I asked. Dick squirmed over to the door and swung his feet out onto the road. The car lurched violently again and he quickly brought his weight back where it had been. “Will one of you run down to Lockyer Avenue and see if anyone with a car is at Centennial Oval?” he asked and Cliffy raced off. Four minutes later we saw some headlights turn into North Road and a truck started coming up the street towards us. It stopped behind the Valiant and Cliffy and one of the local tradesmen climbed out. “I’ll have you out in no time,” promised the driver. “I’ve got a bit of rope in the back. I’ll haul you away from there before you know it!” While he tied one end onto his tow bar, Boongul crawled under the Valiant and secured the other to one of the rear leaf springs supporting the axle. We made Boongul do it as he was already soaking wet and muddy from the creek. The driver got into his cab and gently drove away until the slack on the rope was taken up. Then he gradually accelerated a bit more until Dick’s car started to edge slowly away from the side and finally come to rest with all four wheels on the road. We gave a cheer and Boongul threw his arms around Glenda and hugged her. She belted him for making her clothes wet and getting mud on her new cashmere sweater. Dick told the truck driver what had happened and how grateful he was that the car had been rescued before it could fall over the bank and probably be damaged beyond repair. It was such a heavy car that if it had fallen those six feet or so it would have caused a lot of grief, not only to the coachwork, but probably to the chassis. The driver retrieved his rope and got back into the cab. Then he accidentally put the shift into reverse and instead of peeling out up North Road, he smashed straight into Dick’s brand new Chrysler Valiant, putting a huge ding in the rear fender and buckling the boot lid! The car was insured but it took several weeks until Dick got it back from the panel and paint shop. In the meantime, the Hordern Monument A’Capella Quartet was born and instead of “lapping”, we stood on Mum’s front verandah practising our harmonies and drinking Emu Export. The Hordern Monument, as you probably know, is the stone plinth where York Street, Albany Highway, Lockyer Avenue and Middleton Road meet up. Before they put a traffic island around it, the base was decorated with lots of different coloured streaks of duco from cars that didn’t quite miss it. Why we named our vocal group after it is still a mystery to me. But you must admit it sounded impressive. Our one and only performance was at a talent show in the Town Hall, where we were by far the best act. Our selection was “That Old Gang of Mine” because that was the only song we could find printed scores for all the vocal parts. The crowd screamed and stamped and clapped but the judge, a retired music teacher from Bunbury, declared that there was no longer any interest in this kind of music and we would do

ourselves a favour by switching to something more contemporary. He awarded the first prize to a husband and wife who played “Blessed Assurance” on the harmonica and spoons. Like a Restless Tiger . . . As the popular-music columnist at the newspaper, I became a bit of a celebrity and not only locally, as it turned out! If I wasn’t playing in a band, I could always be found hanging around one of the dance venues and the guys on the door used to let me in for free. Except for a while when I got Watermelon a job selling the tickets at the Stomp! The little bugger used to insist I give him the entry money but I used to barge straight through and the bouncer checking the tickets ignored his indignant squawks or told him to shut up. He got the sack from that job a few weeks later when I caught him giving a Dutch sailor two dollars fifty change from a twenty when the ticket was only two fifty. He tried to plead that in the ultra-violet light, the twenty looked purple but he worked in a bank and knew the appearance of money nearly as well as he did his own reflection in the mirror. I was at the Stomp one night and was just grooving to the sounds of whichever band was playing when they held a dancing contest. One of the go-go girls was leaving and they wanted to find a replacement so the winner, if she was good enough, was to be offered the job. They asked me to be the judge but I handed the task over to Glenda because I would have been more impressed by the shape of the contestant’s arses than their ability to dance! However I heartily approved of Glenda’s final choice, a very shapely blonde called Maureen who really knew how to move it. She was invited onto the stage to dance the next number so everyone could watch. Blow me down if the chap she was dancing with didn’t hop up onto the other side of the stage and started gyrating around too. Alan, the group’s leader, told him to hop it but not before everyone had yelled out a lot of ribald comments and wolf whistled at him. He looked furious and at first refused to go but when the bouncer started lumbering towards him he reluctantly stepped off the stage and stood glaring at everyone around him. I didn’t pay much more attention but on Monday he came to the front desk of the newspaper and asked if he could speak to me. I was at lunch at the time, but Alison, the receptionist, knew this and sent him up to the staff room. I didn’t recognise him at first and had all but forgotten the incident but he hadn’t! He started demanding that I write an article in my column, admonishing everyone who jeered him and explain that it was perfectly acceptable to have male go-go dancers. He also wanted an apology from the band for trying to make him look like a fool. The other staff members who had been at the Stomp were all pressing in, having a chuckle and making remarks which only infuriated him more. I tried to explain that the band laid out the conditions before the contest and that it was just girls who would be judged. In the nineteen sixties there were no equal-opportunity laws or Sex Discrimination Acts to consider so he had no grounds for a complaint. “Why did you even get up on the stage?” I asked. “Surely you know what Albany blokes are like! They were bound to think you were a sissy! You asked for it, I’m afraid!” The kid went almost purple with fury. “So I’m a sissy, am I?” he yelled. “You’re calling me a sissy, are you?” “No but I’m calling you a trouble maker now. I think you’d better hop it, Mate.” I was getting a bit upset and I could feel my heart start to race. “Are you going to print it or not?” he shouted. “No, I’m not. Get out of here or we’ll throw you out!”

“Oh, yeah! Tough when you’ve got your mates around, aren’t you?” he taunted and I agreed. He walked downstairs and swore at Alison on the way out who wondered what on earth she had done. Anyway on Friday as I stepped out of the Anglia down at the Stomp car park, a fist suddenly shot out and hit me full in the face and sent me reeling. I went over and hit my head on the kerb. Next thing I knew, there was Boongul looking in my face from close range with concern all over his lovely, ugly countenance. He was rubbing his right fist with the other hand. Nearby, out cold on the pavement, was the male go-go dancer! I never saw him again so he either left town or kept well out of my way after that! But that wasn’t the only bit of excitement that came my way because of the Teen column. Every six months or so a troupe of musicians and singers would do a tour of country Australia and include Albany. I think they were organised by the company that looked after their interests or it was a promotional thing by the record companies because the musos were all somehow related. Either they shared a common label or they had the same manager and came from the same city. One such tour included the highly successful duo Bobby and Laurie who had a number of hits in the East and two here in the West – a cover of Roger Miller’s “Hitch Hiker” and “High Noon” from the film of the same name. They were very talented and the girls loved them so they had star billing. I spoke to them briefly back stage and gave them a very good review, mostly to appease the girl I was currently going with who was a big fan. About five or six weeks later, Alison rang through and said there was someone at the counter who wanted to see me. Normally, if it was someone she knew, she would just direct him through to my frame or drawing board, but this time she just announced the visitor. When I went to Reception, there was a young man standing there who I admit, looked vaguely familiar but then, with the dreadful haircuts and turtle-necked sweaters in those days, most people looked similar. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember me?” the fellow said and I must have looked even more quizzical than before. “Laurie Allen!” “Where do I know you from?” I asked, innocently. “We were here a month or so back. You know, Bobby Bright and Laurie Allen?” “You’re Laurie Allen from Bobby and Laurie?” I asked, stupidly. “Yes. You interviewed us. Remember?” I felt a bit unsure. Certainly this fellow bore a slight resemblance to Laurie Allen – dark, shoulder length hair, wide, full-lipped mouth, slender build – but, as I said, so did nearly everyone those days. “So, er, what are you doing back in Albany, then?” I asked, feeling almost certain I was being taken for a chump, but not wanting to boot him out in case he really was the pop idol. I might have a story here! Shades of John Milson! “Having a couple of weeks off after the tour. I liked the look of the place and thought it would be nice to spend some time down here.” “So why did you come in to see me, then?” I asked, still on guard. “I thought you might know where I could get a gig.” “A gig? You mean singing?” “That’s what I do!” It was one thing to be sucked in, but another entirely to involve one of the local venues or bands. I suggested he go and see Alan, the guitarist from the band currently playing the Stomp and when he left I rang Alan to tell him about it and voice my suspicions.

“I’ll give him a try,” he said. “We’re rehearsing tonight so he can audition then. Why don’t you drop in, too?” I said I would and at eight I drove around to the hall in Little Grove where they rehearsed. Laurie was already there and was talking to Alan, explaining what he wanted to sing. When he stepped behind the microphone it was obvious he was a novice at this game and although his voice wasn’t bad, his timing was woeful and he kept coming in early. “Sorry, Mate!” said Alan, with diplomacy. “You’d better stick to singing with Bobby Bright. You’re obviously not a soloist!” Laurie looked crestfallen but realised the jig was up. “Come on, Pal. I’ll drive you home!” I offered and he followed me out after thanking the band for their time and patience. “Who are you really?” I asked when we were in the Anglia. “We know you’re not really Laurie Allen.” “Okay!” he said and offered me a cigarette and lit it. “My name is Laurie but I’m not who I said I was. I did do the tour with Bobby and Laurie but I was just in the road crew, driving and setting up equipment and things like that. I thought I’d come down here and have a bit of fun and hopefully make a couple of quid and pull some birds and stuff.” “Well thanks for owning up,” I said, trying to sound friendly rather than paternal. “As soon as you opened your mouth I knew you weren’t him. And I looked in this week’s Everybody’s magazine and the real Bobby and Laurie are playing in Melbourne at the moment.” “Sorry if I’ve been a nuisance,” he said and I believed him this time. I dropped him in Stirling Terrace where he said he was staying at one of the pubs then went home. At around ten-thirty next morning, Alison rang through again. “Your mate who was here yesterday is back,” she said. “He wants to know if he can see you?” I groaned but agreed. I was quite busy as the paper went to bed at noon and we had all hands to the pump. I washed mine and went through to the front office. “Sorry if you were busy, Lizard,” he apologised. “I just wondered if I could borrow your car for a short while!” “No! Sorry. No way!” “I wouldn’t normally ask but I’m running late. I have to be at the Police Station at ten forty five.” “It’s less than quarter of a mile, Laurie. Walk! Or hitchhike!” I was making a reference to the Bobby and Laurie song. “Jeeze, I thought you were a mate.” “Sorry, but I said no! Now get going. You can’t keep the fuzz waiting!” He grumbled a bit but left. I went back to the comp room and we finished the edition. Then we went to lunch while the press operators did their bit. While I was in the staff room, Alison came up and told me I was wanted on the phone. I put my pastie on the table, went down to the office and picked up the phone. “Can I help you?” I asked. “Yes, Graham is it?” “That’s right. What can I do you for?” “It’s Sergeant Brough from the Mt Barker Police here. Do you know a Lorenzo Martelli from Melbourne?”

“Lorenzo Martelli? I don’t think so! Oh, wait! A skinny guy with long black hair? What’s he done?” “Do you know him then?” “Not really. Only met him yesterday. I think he tried to thump my car this morning!” “He gave your name as a referee. So you won’t vouch for his character?” “No way? So what’s he done?” “He was driving in a car reported as stolen from Albany late this morning. Do you know anything about that?” “No, sorry! But if you need a statement or anything, let me know!” “If we do we’ll be in touch. Thanks for your help!” That was the only car I ever remember being stolen in Albany in the sixties. Rules and Regulations No anthology of pointless stories set in Albany in the nineteen sixties would be complete without mention of School Sport. It was the high spot in an otherwise dreary existence of getting up, sitting all day in a cheerless, cold classroom and then going home again to a cheerless, cold house to go back to bed. School Sport was cool! In the summer there was cricket, tennis or swimming for the boys and golf, tennis and swimming for the girls. In winter the girls could do table tennis, netball or hockey while the boys had a choice of Australian Rules Football, soccer or hockey. I don’t really know how the girls divided up their sports but the boys were definitely ethnic-based. The Aussies did footy, the Poms and Dutch did soccer, and the Poles and Yugoslavs did hockey. They played hockey so that they could pretend their sticks were guns and they could kill each other with them. Then, as they grew out of that phase, they discovered that while it is difficult to actually kill someone with a hockey stick, you are able to maim and injure them quite badly. There were a few Italians at the State High School although most families sent their kids to St Josephs Convent school or Christian Brothers College and occasionally they would tell us about the strange behaviour of the nuns and brothers who taught them. But the Italian boys who did go to Albany Senior High School did not do winter sport. They brought a note from their parents saying they were sick. In summer they all played tennis. None of the other boys did because after each serve the Ding kids would check that their hair had not gotten out of place and would pat it and run their fingers through it. They all saturated their hair in Californian Poppy and this transferred from their hair to their hands and then to the ball. The hair on the tennis balls was all slicked down and Miss Colmer had to take them home each night and put them in her washing machine. One Monday in the middle of winter, Mr Rate the sports master told us that on Friday every boy in the school was obliged to do a six-mile cross-country run. The following day, he announced that all boys who played Australian Rules Football would be exempted. This led us soccer players to declare that the footy players were a bunch of poofs who wouldn’t have the endurance to run six miles. The official reason given was that with nearly six hundred boys, the logistics were too great and they didn’t have sufficient course marshals. The footy players were in intense training to meet Mt Barker High and Denmark Agricultural High in a three-way competition the following week and needed more practice. The aboriginal boys at Mt Barker and the farm boys from Denmark Ag used to regularly beat the crap out of our lads and this year it was going to be different, they told us!

Then on Wednesday they announced that boys with a note would have to be course marshals and stand out in the rain checking the numbers of the runners to make sure no one took a short cut or got lost. There was a lot of groaning and at least one “Mama Mia”. On Thursday, the route was pinned onto the Sports Notice Board and a Roneoed copy given to every non-footy playing boy to study and memorise. For some reason, notices handed out to school children were referred to as “Roneoed” and were printed in a mucky brown colour on a Gestetner stencil machine. Fortunately this technology has now passed into history although it made a brief, unsuccessful appearance in the mid nineteen nineties when someone had the idea of competing with thermal wax printers by cutting the stencils with a laser using a word processing or DTP programme. Fortunately the bubble jet won. But we had a look at the route and approved! It started at the sports oval near the netball courts away from the footy players so that they wouldn’t get too depressed and spoil their chances of winning the following week. We would then run in front of the school, up Suffolk Street and then behind the Pine Forest. This was not, of course, a real forest, just a plantation to revegetate the site that was accidentally cleared when the company who built the school misread the map. Then we entered the mallee on Mt Clarence and ran along a four-wheel-drive track alongside a drainage channel. This track doubled as a fire break and inspection road for the pipe that took water from the catchment tanks to the northern suburbs. Then, and this was where the map got a bit unclear, it followed another track through the bush down to Innes Street which ran along the south side of the hill. This track was apparently just a walking path and not traversable by car so it didn’t appear on any street directory. From Innes Street it went along until it reached Clarence Street, presumably either named after Mt Clarence or the person Mt Clarence was named after. In Albany it is sometimes difficult to determine. Down Clarence to Burgoyne Road then on to Marine Drive, which would be closed off for the afternoon, and then back along Middleton Road on the footpath, up Denman and back onto Burt Street, the other end of which was the school. I don’t know if anyone really went out and measured the course, but we were assured it was six miles. At lunchtime on Friday we got into our running clothes and freshly blancoed Slazenger or Dunlop sandshoes. I was in First Year or in Albany High School jargon, a Melon, so our lot was the last to be running. The Fifth Year men were off first because they would be faster and if the Melons went before them we would clog the path and make it difficult to pass. Since I arrived in Albany my best mate had been a kid called Melvin Bourne, who we called Sydney. (Mel Bourne, get it?) He was very bright and would have done much better at school than he did except he had a habit of saying aloud whatever came into his head. And not just aloud! He made sure everyone heard. Mr Rate looked at the motley bunch of soccer and hockey Melons standing near the wire netting. “What are you doing here, Del Borello? How come you haven’t got a note this week?” “His mum didn’t have any paper!” yelled out Sydney. “She used the last bit to wrap his sandwiches and the salami made it all greasy and her biro wouldn’t work” “I don’t want to know about that, Bourne!” Mr Rate sounded threatening but Sydney had already got a few giggles and wasn’t giving up now. “Yes you do, Sir. Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked him!” I groaned but along side, Pieter Flugge was nearly wetting himself with laughter. “Report to detention on Monday afternoon, Bourne. You too, Flugge!” “Why me, Sir? I didn’t say anything!” complained Flugge but Mr Rate just told him to be there or else . . .

Eventually we set off. It was freezing cold and we hardly even got to the top of Suffolk Street before it started to rain. The wind cut through us like a knife and we were covered in goose bumps before we had a chance to warm up properly. Some of the kids had bolted like startled kangaroos at the sound of the gun and were already out of sight up the fire-break. The rest of us plodded up the hill muttering that it was really more like ten miles than six and that we should conserve our energy. At the top of Suffolk Street where we turned off into the mallee, the first marshals under the supervision of Mr Sinclair from Manual Arts, wrote down our numbers and directed us to the track. We ran for a few hundred yards before Miss McGee directed us to the right where the track forked. About half a mile on, when we came to the southern end of the hill, we struck an obstacle. There was a four-strand wire fence with a gate right in our path. Normally we would have climbed over it and continued on, but this had coiled barbed wire along the top and a sign in big red letters saying “Keep Out. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.” “I suppose that doesn’t mean us,” pondered Flugge but the rest of us made a snap decision. We would follow the fence down until it came to a path or some other obstacle we could deal with if and when the time came. We only had to run about fifty yards when it came out on a little bank alongside Innes Road. We jumped down and continued on until Mr Major directed us down Clarence Road. From then on it was pretty plain sailing. Every now and then we would encounter another teacher who would direct us around a corner or a group of note holders writing down our numbers. By now our numbers were illegible because they were done in Indian ink and had run. Besides which, the paper that they had been painted onto was sodden and flapping where it had broken away from the safety pins. We had to yell our numbers as we passed. But we were warm from the running and after all, we were Albany kids! Nothing could daunt us. Despite a discussion when we got to Middleton Beach as to whether we should nip into the Esplanade for a hot toddy, we continued on up the footpath to Middleton Road. One of the kids I was running with, a Second Year boy who was lagging behind his classmates, had gone into Readshaws shop and bought some Tarzan Jubes and he handed them around. He was voted a top lad and a good egg and although he came last in his year, nobody had a more successful run that afternoon! He was still grinning when he came out of the showers and put his dry uniform back on. Eventually we boned into the school oval and Mr Rate marked our numbers while Miss Colmer noted our times from her stopwatch. We had overtaken all our classmates who had sped off at the beginning then slowed down two miles later and walked painfully for the last few. Quite surprisingly, Sydney came in first and I was fourth in First Year. We were both pretty fit and knew our times were correct but we weren’t used to this sort of success. We were quite chuffed. But it was short-lived. Mr Mainwaring came along as we were getting our bikes from the rack. “You’ll have to go back to the Gym Shed. Mr Rate wants to speak to you!” He was red in the face and really angry so we didn’t argue. “Which way did you boys run?” Mr Rate demanded. “Did you take a shortcut?” “No. We followed all the directions until we came to the gate. Then we went down onto Innes . . .” I started. “Gate? What gate?” “Just before Innes Road. At the end of the bush track.” “Why didn’t you follow Mr Mainwaring’s directions and go down the gravel path?” “We didn’t see Mr Mainwaring. Where was he?”

Mr Rate patiently tapped on the map pinned to the notice board. “Here!” he said, pointing to a spot about a hundred yards before the fence. He had traced the route in red ink and it was clearly marked to run down a path onto Innes Road. “I’ll have to disqualify you!” he said, apologetically. “You missed a checkpoint where the path came out onto Innes Road.” “But we weren’t told!” blurted Sydney. “Where was Mr Mainwaring, anyway? Having a fag behind a rock, probably!” “That’s enough, Bourne! You’re already in enough trouble for answering back. Now, off you go.” Sydney was really pissed off. He had won fairly and squarely by his reckoning and would have received a book prize at the end of year. I was only fourth and for all it was worth, I might as well have been last so it didn’t bother me. But Sydney was ropable. “I’m going to tell my Dad!” he grizzled. “It’s just not bloody fair!” I think Mr Bourne must have complained because Miss Colmer, who was by now my greatest fan after the rip rescue business, came and spoke to me after church. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this but I appealed to Mr Rate to reinstate your positions in the cross country,” she said. “I know officially you didn’t meet the rules and regulations but I told him I didn’t think it was your fault. Mr Mainwaring should have been there to direct you.” “Where was he then, Miss Colmer?” “I don’t know. When he got back he said he hadn’t left the post. There were about twenty of you who missed the second checkpoint. You were at the back of the field. That’s probably why.” “Sydney . . . that’s Melvin . . . thinks he went for a cigarette and missed us. Is that what happened?” “Mr Mainwaring does smoke, that’s correct. And nicotine is very addictive. I hope you never smoke, do you?” “Of course not, Miss!” I replied self-righteously. Sydney never got his prize though. Miss Colmer was over-ruled. Swimming and Cycling Events In First Year, the Swimming Carnival was held at Middleton Beach. Down at the south end is a little rocky bay named Ellen Cove. I don’t know which Ellen or why the feature was given her name, but there was a jetty with a board-walk on the northern side which rendered it not quite totally unsuitable for a swimming carnival. But it was the best we had. Each group of eight swimmers, determined by that hit and miss method school sports teachers have of pitting students against their classmates, regardless of their size, strength and swimming ability, would line up along the jetty in rows awaiting the instruction to climb onto the board-walk. Then they would be commanded to get set and a cap pistol would indicate they should dive into the water and proceed, by whichever technique ascribed, to a string of buoys about fifty yards away. No race was longer than fifty yards due to the rocks behind the finish line and the fact that the water was too turbulent to contemplate turning and swimming back into the line of breakers pounding in from the jetty end. The spectators sat on the rocks and cheered on their factions, even though from that distance and in the pounding surf, none of them had a clue how their team was faring. Every now and again, Mr Mossensen, who had once been a State swimming coach, would garble something over the loudspeaker but his voice was completely drowned out by the wind whistling around the

side of Mt Adelaide and blowing the sound out over the Bight. They probably knew more about what was going on in Nanarup where his team updates would have ended up! Spectators were under strict instructions not to leave the rocks unless competing or getting changed afterwards. A block of change rooms, showers and toilets had been built nearby a couple of years earlier and a squad of strategically placed teachers ensured that after leaving the amenities block, students proceeded directly back to their seating. That is, unless someone else had thumped their rock while they were gone in which case a fight would break out. A few reckless souls like Tom Macalister and Geoff Sinclair waited until they thought no one was watching the jetty path, then plunged across into the mallee on the other side and proceeded to climb the bank to Marine Drive. Under cover of the low scrub on either side, they crept around to the Beach Coffee Bar and returned fifteen minutes later with chocolate smeared over the innocent expressions on their faces. I tried but got caught and had to sit next to Gregson until it was my turn to half swim, half bodysurf the First Year Freestyle event. One good thing though, was that as Proudloves had nowhere near enough buses to chauffeur everyone to the beach, kids living nearby were permitted to walk there without having to report to school first and those who wished to cycle were extended the same privilege. So Sydney and I rode our treadlies. The following year, Mr Rate and Miss Colmer asserted that it was dangerous holding the Swimming Carnival at Ellen Cove with the surf washing too many Melons onto the rocks. One kid cut his shin and required stitches and Pieter Flugge bumped his head, resulting in a lump the size of a chook egg and some decidedly weird behaviour for the remainder of his school days. So they scouted far and wide for a suitable venue. There was no swimming pool in Albany in those days. A few years later, the lack of aquatic sport facilities prompted the manager of the radio station to hold a Radiothon to raise the twenty five thousand pounds required for building one. The first year they raised nearly four thousand and by the time the second one was organised, that figure had swelled to nine due to cake stalls, concerts and street collections. The second Radiothon raised a further seven thousand five hundred pounds but the committee got fed up waiting and used the money to buy a pontoon that they floated fifty metres from the end of the Ellen Cove jetty. Didn’t the donors set up a howl? You could hear it all the way to Mt Barker! Whole issues of the newspaper were devoted to the scandal! Anyway a few decades later the civic fathers somehow managed to approve an application for a private pool and then eventually Albany got its public aquatic centre out of jealousy over the success of this independent businessman. But in 1962 the search for a swimming carnival venue unearthed Dymesbury Park. This was a pool created by damming a stream that flowed into the Upper King, excavating a large square pit behind it and constructing a diving board, starting blocks on one end and ensuring the other end was deep enough to swim without scraping your nipples or testicles off. People have an expectation that swimming carnivals should be held in sparkling, aqua-coloured pools with tiled surrounds and grandstands around three sides. Dymesbury Park met none of these criteria. One side was the dam wall. Two sides were native mallee and the fourth – the one with the diving board and ladder sticking out of the water – had a grass-and-doublegee area with some swings, a litter bin and kiosk selling fruit drinks, ice cream and meat pies. On the back of the shop was a galvanised iron shed, divided in half by a wall made of asbestos fibro, about six feet high and two feet from the dirt floor. One half was for males and the other for females to get changed in. Each side had a single shower rose and a huge muddy puddle under it. At least, I am reliably informed that the female side was so equipped. The queue to peep under the wall was about ten deep and I never got a chance look. But the prime criterion of swimming carnivals was met! It was a safe place to swim without any snags, rocks, waves or other unexpected nasties. And despite what a lot of people may think,

snakes are more frightened of humans than we are of them and will seldom attack unless startled. The herpetological population of Upper King would have heard us coming hours earlier and fled! Again, we were allowed to ride our bikes so long as we advised the school the previous day with a parental approval form. Sydney and I felt we should do our bit to leave high-demand bus seats to more deserving backsides and decided to pedal the eight miles from my house. Sydney lived in town so had a further two miles each way, a fact he constantly reminded me of as his legs began to tire on the hills and I sped away from him. On the spring-loaded carriers over our rear wheels we clipped our rolled up towels with bathers inside, our bags with sandwiches, a Jonathon apple and slice of cake, little cellulose bottle of orange cordial and raincoat. In our pockets, along with regular things like scout knife, piece of string, snotty handkerchief and various useful screws and nails we had collected over time, was a sixpence to buy an ice cream at lunch. The day had been selected well. It was noted in the annals of Albany Meteorology, a science already discussed in this volume, that the week following Labour Day in March has the lowest rainfall of the year. And this year was no exception. On Monday people got previously unheard-of sunburn. On Tuesday the temperature was still in the high sixties. On Wednesday, when their sunburnt skin started peeling, it was bright and warm and on Thursday, the day of the Swimming Carnival, it was forecast to reach seventy-two degrees! The morning started brilliantly. We rode down Collingwood Road in bright sunshine with not a cloud in the sky. Through Flinders Park there was no wind at all to either assist or hinder us. We met up with a crowd of other cyclists on their way to Dymesbury and formed a huge convoy of around seventy Malvern Stars and Raleighs. At Lower King we were actually sweating and we stopped to remove our jumpers and have a sip from our orange cordial bottles. By the time we had pushed along Norwood Road to Chester Pass Road we were desperate for a swim to cool our hot, tired limbs. “There’s no way old Rate will let us have a swim until lunch!” declared Sydney. “Lets go and see if there’s anywhere we can get a dip in the river.” He rode across the highway into a gravel car park and disappeared down a little track. Moments later he reappeared. “There’s a natural swimming hole just down here!” he shouted and we all cycled over to him. Down the track a few yards we could see the sunlight reflecting off cool, inviting river. Dropping our bikes to the ground, we ran to the river’s edge and started stripping away our clothes before someone pointed out that there were a few girls among us. Second Year High School boys are probably the most modest creatures on earth. They cup their willies in their hands when they use a public urinal and wrap a towel around themselves until they are safely inside the gym shower cubicles and the doors are closed. So why the appeal of skinnydipping is so strong is a matter some bright anthropologist could probably get a huge government grant to study. Some of the boys put on their swimming trunks. Some dived in wearing their Bonds Athletics while a few of us uninhibited kids just ripped our daks down and plunged straight in. Experience had taught us that where any nudity was involved, either to their own bodies or to anyone else’s, schoolgirls make very hasty exits. We could hear their bike tyres squealing as they pedalled furiously to get away from this most disgusting and deplorable boorishness! But we also knew that these girls would not pimp on us. “Pimping” in Albany is not procuring customers for prostitution. It is ratting, tattle-taling, informing the authorities of wrongdoings or misdemeanours. Or to put it in girly terms: “telling on you!” Instead, they would giggle about it later with their friends and exaggerate what they saw. I know! I have a sister!

“That Richard Howe has got a huge one! Biggest I’ve ever seen!” “Jansie van Noort has got one that’s all curly like a pig’s tail!” And: “That creep they call Lizard was standing there facing me but it was so tiny I could hardly see it!” So we had a cool, refreshing swim and then swaggered over the road to Dymesbury Park where, judging by the giggles and sniggers, the first of the rumours had already started. The carnival was a great success. There weren’t enough water taps and the queue to buy icypoles was so long most kids missed out. One kid dropped the satchel containing his lunch, his clothes and his bus fare home into the pool. Even though Mr Rate gave him permission to duckdive down and retrieve it, it sank to the bottom and it was so dark down there they didn’t locate it until we were about to leave. A big bubble rose to the surface, followed by a banana. On diving back in, the kid found his satchel slowly rising to the top. The only thing missing was his four pence for the bus, which Miss Colmer refunded from her own purse. We suspected that he actually spent it at the kiosk beforehand and seized the opportunity to benefit by his misfortune. But by now the clouds were rolling in and the sky took on its much more familiar gunmetal hue. Massive storm clouds appeared in the west and the tops of the trees started to sway ominously. Mr Mossensen rounded up all the cyclists and made us ride together, even commandeering one of the prefect’s bicycles so he could keep his eye on us, while the machine’s owner was taken back to school in the bus. At every intersection, Mr Mossensen took a roll-call to ensure that his one hundred and twenty charges were still with him. In this way, we eventually arrived back in Spencer Park. Some of the kids lived on the route and only had a mile or so of side road to ride along to get to their houses or farms, so he crossed them off his list as they left the convoy. When we got to Elizabeth Farm, the rain was slanting down in the manner to which we were accustomed, but by Bayonet Head Road, it was gusting at a good sixty miles an hour. We were riding straight into it! Mr Mossensen gathered us all together and announced that if anyone wanted to remain here with their bikes, he would arrange for buses to return and collect them but only three girls and one boy accepted his offer. He wrote a capital B next to their names on the list and made them promise to wait in the shelter until he returned. I think they did as I never heard anything to the contrary and I was always abreast of any exciting developments that occurred of this nature. It was getting quite dark and he organised those with headlights to ride at the front while those with the strongest rear lights rode at the back. I fell into the latter category. Some kids had no lights at all and they rode along in the middle of the single file. We made it to where Collingwood Road meets Lower King Road and half a dozen kids left to ride out to Emu Point. They were ordered to stay together until they reached the little fishing hamlet and holiday resort. The School Captain, Rick Swain, was with them and Mr Mossensen had full confidence in him. The rest of us rode up the steep hill and I departed when we got to the bottom of our street. About a quarter of the group lived in Spencer Park and as many again lived between here and the school. Sydney lived on the town side of school and related the remainder of the story the following morning. Apparently, when they got to the intersection of North Road and Campbell Road, Mr Mossensen realised that the number of cyclists in his care didn’t reconcile with his roll. He was adamant that they did when he checked the last group out at the shops on Angove Road. It was now only half a mile to the school, its lights beckoning seductively on the hill ahead. Selecting Sydney to ride back with him the way they had been, Mr Mossensen dispatched the remaining forty or so students to the school then set off back up the hill.

“Fortunately I have A-One vision!” Sydney boasted to our classmates at school the following morning. “Even in all that rain and hail and muck, my eagle eyes detected a glint of light from the telephone box behind a bush on the corner of David Street. When we went over there was some drenched little Melon trying to ring his Dad to come and collect him in his truck!” After that they rode back to school and then to their respective abodes in town. If not for the next paragraph, this would be a completely pointless story. As it is, it has most of the requirements to qualify for this book. The following year they made us all travel on buses that shuttled back and forth several times to ferry us to and from Dymesbury Park. May She Reign Over Us In 1963 Queen Elizabeth the Second visited Australia with Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh. The main reason was to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the official naming of the capital, Canberra. The other reason was so that the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, could continue his infatuation with her on home soil. Just to show the rest of the world that there was an Australia outside of New South Wales, the Queen officially opened Council House in Perth, at that time the tallest building in the city. She also attended a ceremony at the University of Western Australia to commemorate its golden jubilee. The date was March 25. For some reason known only to bureaucrats in the education department, high school students from all over the State were invited to line the route of her motorcade between these two venues. Not imagining for one second that there were real people actually living outside the metropolitan area, the public servants were startled to discover students in many of the towns wanted to visit Perth to see their sovereign. I had never really contemplated the royal family. I knew my Mum and Dad were potty about them and that they had a kid a month younger than me who seemed to be missing out on a lot of fun because he spent all his time being photographed with his sister. But all of a sudden I was presented with a golden opportunity of having a day off school, a trip in a bus to Perth with all its attendant edible goodies and the chance to add another pointless story to my budding collection. So at five o’clock on a rainy, miserable March day, Dad drove me up to the school with some sandwiches and fruit cake in my satchel, along with a book to read on the bus. Even though everyone knows that school kids vomit if they read books on the school bus, this was required equipment for the journey. I also had two Mad magazines and a Superman comic which didn’t make me sick at all because I didn’t have to follow lines of type across the page while the swaying motion was playing havoc with my inner ears. Three Proudloves buses were packed with students who were arguing about who could sit where. Although many more applied than were accepted, I was chosen because I had never been on any excursions with the school except for end of year picnics and visits to the Municipal Library and the Old Gaol. Being English probably helped a bit because I wouldn’t have any seditious, anti-monarchist leanings like those Irish kids who had been had brainwashed at St Joseph’s and CBC! By Mt Barker I was sound asleep. Getting up at five in the morning is not a natural state for a fifteen-year-old. Getting up at seven o’clock is not a natural state for a fifteen-year-old and my own children would have (and probably still do if they can get away with it) stayed in bed until the little hand is on the ten! But by Kojonup I was getting hungry and ate my lunch. It was still only just breakfast time and the passengers around me were getting restless.

We started singing to amuse ourselves and to annoy Gregson. I wanted to sing Jay and the Americans’ “Come a Little Bit Closer” but the other kids thought I was singing the Joy Boys song of the same name but it was entirely different. So we sang songs from Broadway shows, except the girls wanted to do South Pacific and the boys wanted West Side Story. We finally settled on Miss Perry’s music lesson songs: “Nobody’s Child“, “Marie’s Wedding” and “Skye Boat Song”. Miss Perry, as you guessed, came from Scotland. I went back to sleep until just before Williams. I was woken up when the bus lurched and some girls screamed. “What happened?” I asked and someone explained that our driver, a nineteen-year-old hoon from Narrikup, had got impatient driving at sixty-five miles an hour and had tried to pass the bus in front. Just as he did so, the twenty year old hoon from Mt Manypeaks driving the other bus had got fed up doing sixty five and had pulled out to overtake the bus in front of him. The driver of this was a highly responsible forty-eight-year-old gentleman from Mira Mar. Our hoon had been able to brake in time to avoid colliding with the bus in front and just managed to swerve back into the left lane without tipping the bus over. Old Gregson went and had some very stern words with him and, without the threat of after-school detention available to him, had severely chastised him to the point he behaved himself for the remainder of the trip. I resumed my sleep until Armadale where we were ordered out of the bus, into a toilet and told that there would not be any more such facilities now until after lunch. We were to adjust our ties, comb our hair and ensure all our buttons were done up. Her Majesty would not be very impressed if she saw the way Western Australian school children allowed their appearances to deteriorate! We all complied and after examining ourselves in a mirror that had seen better days and certainly more silvering paint, we brushed the cake crumbs off our jackets and splashed water down the front of Pieter Flugge’s grey melange trousers to make it look as though he had wet himself. Other kids would have been mortified but not Flugge! He giggled and paraded and even started to get his private parts out until one of the prefects told him to get back on the bus. It was a completely wasted practical joke that backfired on us. We tried it on some kids from another bus later in the day with far greater success. We drove into Perth and went to Kings Park where there was a huge marquee set up near a parking area. There were already about a dozen buses there and hundreds of kids from Geraldton, Bunbury and Kalgoorlie milling around. Gregson got off the bus and told everyone to remain in their seats until he returned to direct us to wherever we were to go, then disappeared into a little brick building some way from the car park. Immediately he had gone from view, Flugge and half a dozen lower school kids got off the bus, raced over to the marquee and went inside. “Oh,” cried one of the girls. “They’ve gone into the tent. Perhaps we’re supposed to, as well!” “No!” shouted one of the prefects. “Mr Gregson said to remain here!” “But they’ve gone inside,” the girl persisted, sounding panicky. Just then Flugge came out of the marquee, only now he had a huge man in a small suit grasping his collar. The other kids followed and got back on the bus. “Youse bush kids stoopid or sump’n?” the big man growled at us. “Youse were tol’ to stay in yaw bus till we sent for youse!” Gregson returned with wet hands and drops of liquid on his shoes. “It’s alright, Mr Somethingoranotherovic. I’ll deal with it, now.” “Dey wen’ inna tent an’ dey not s’posed ta!” “Okay! I said I’ll deal with it!”

“Would you say his suit is too small for him or do you think he is too big for his suit?” I asked, doing a very good impression of Mel Bourne. I got told to shut up. Gregson was now in a really ugly mood. No one likes to have his tinkle interrupted! The big guy mumbled and grumbled and dragged himself back to his tent but then came out again immediately and told us we could now come and get our lunch. Seven hundred kids charged into the marquee and in the process knocked down one of the supporting poles and pulled up a few guy ropes. Five trestle tables had been set up, one containing soggy lettuce and egg sandwiches on huge plates the size of dustbin lids. Another had paper cups of brackish swamp water that smelled reminiscently of syrup and whose only redeeming feature was that it was wet on this hot Perth noon. Yet another trestle had piles of lumps that looked like what you’d find on the ground near a feedlot. The fourth contained curved, fleshy things that on closer inspection proved to have once been bananas. Now they were limp, brown and black items that fell to pieces when you picked them up. The last table had a solitary tea urn, a tiny sugar bowl and no milk or teaspoons. There were more of the paper cups and only Gregson and one of the other teachers seemed interested. I got the very last sandwich and three of the brown artefacts. The cup of swamp water got knocked out of my hand by a frantic miner’s daughter from the Goldfields who was doing her best to empty the tables before anyone else could get to them. I tried the sandwich but it was disgusting. I am sure it wasn’t a real chook that laid those eggs but if it was, it should have been ashamed of itself. I dropped it into the bin. “Good tucker, huh?” grunted Mr Somethingoranotherovic standing alongside me, stuffing four or five into his mouth at a time. “This isn’t bad!” I offered, holding up one of the lumps from the third table. “Give your livestock my compliments!” “Ta! I will!” he mumbled and shuffled off, looking pleased. At last the rubbish bins were full and the tables empty. All the kids looked a bit glum except those from Bunbury who were hyperactive from the sugar that had been mixed into the swamp water. “Okay, now make your way in an orderly fashion down that footpath and you will come to a road!” Gregson yelled, trying to be heard above the complaining that the lunch was inedible and that they were still hungry. “When you get to the road, I want you to stop! Do not go onto the road! Do not go under the ropes! Wait at the end of the path!” The path was about three feet wide so when the front kids stopped, the seven hundred behind them tried to keep going and of course they fell onto the rope barricades that the Metropolitan Police Force had spent the previous four days erecting. Gregson came along and distributed us evenly along the road verge. “How long until the Royal Motorcade will be along?” he asked one of the policemen who was trying to reassemble the barriers. “Huh?” “How long until the Royal Party comes?” “Oh! You mean the Queen? Dunno! Fifteen minutes, half-hour. It’s hard to say. You know what they’re like!” Gregson told us all to stand or sit quietly because the eyes of the world were on us and we would give Albany a terrible reputation if we as much as spoke or wriggled. “Fancy a drag?” Murray Watkins asked. He was a Fourth Year boy but already had a five o’clock shadow and hair sticking out the top of his shirt. Some of the kids reckoned he was twenty and

had been kept down a few times. I found out on the bus going home that he left school after his Junior and worked on his family’s farm, then came back to school so he could qualify to go to Muchea Agricultural College. “Busting!” I told him. “Haven’t had one since we left Albany.” Actually I hadn’t had one since two Sundays previously when Steve had nicked some from his brother’s glove-box and we smoked them on the way home from church, hiding them in our sleeves when the minister drove by on his way to take communion at the hospital. We slipped into the mallee without Gregson or any other authority figures seeing us. Then, before we had gone five paces, a huge roar went up so we turned and went back to our places. Everyone was looking down the road and standing on their tiptoes, except the kids in the front row who were giving the rows behind them annoyed looks and in some cases, punches in the chest! An open vehicle was approaching with some people standing in the back seat. As it got nearer we could see it was university students in a World War Two Jeep. One of them was wearing a cardboard crown, a white dress and smeared lipstick while the other had a broad red sash draped across his chest. They were blowing kisses and saluting to the crowd. There was a hand-painted slogan on a piece of cardboard attached to the rear of the vehicle, but I couldn’t make out what it said. We returned to Kings Park and went in about forty yards or so. The scrub was quite thick here but fairly low so we had to stoop a bit so we couldn’t be seen from the road. We sat behind a ghost gum and Murray took out a squashed packet of Peter Stuyvesant. We selected one each and tried to make them return to their original cylindrical shape. He produced a box of Redheads and lit his then leaned over and applied the flame to the end of mine. I just got it lit and was about to draw on it when a really big cheer came from the road. “Probably more Uni dickheads!” declared Murray. This was only the second time I had ever smoked. The first time I had kept the smoke in my mouth. Steve had done the same and neither of us knew that to get the maximum effect from the nicotine, you were supposed to breathe the fumes into your lungs. Murray was drawing it right back and blowing it out through his nose as though he had been smoking for five years. After all, he probably had! I cautiously took some back to my throat then let it trickle out of my nostrils. Even more warily, I let a little into my lungs. It wasn’t enough to make me choke but I did cough very slightly. “I’ve got a bit of smokers cough, too!” Murray nodded. “Should cut back I suppose. Read that it can cause cancer but me Dad and Grandad smoked all their lives and never got it!” “Yeah,” I said knowledgeably. “They’re always printing stuff like that. Helps fill the papers up!” By the end of the cigarette I was feeling quite light headed and when I stood up to go back to our school group, my legs were all wobbly. I sat back down. “It’s nice and cool here in the shade!” I said. “Let’s stay here for a bit longer instead of going out into the sun. She’ll probably be ages yet!” Murray was already standing up, looking quite alarmed. “They’re all leaving!” he whispered. “We’d better get back!” Feeling a little groggy, I jogged back to the road verge and we joined our schoolmates on the walk back to the bus. “Thanks for the smoke!” I lied to Murray. “I needed that!” “Where are we going?” Murray asked one of the other kids, who looked surprised.

“Back to the bus, I s’pose!” “Why?” “Well there’s nothing else to see! Who else do you want? President Kennedy?” “Oh, bugger!” muttered Murray. “We missed her! We came all this way to see her and then we missed her!” “I don’t suppose she noticed!” I replied. I was feeling really sick now and knew I was going to chunder. As we got back to the bus I felt it rising up out of my gorge. I raced over to the brick dunny. All my lunch came up and just as I was rinsing my mouth and sloshing water over my face, Gregson came in to check up on me. “Must have been that food!” he declared, amiably. “It was foul, wasn’t it?” Messing around in boats I have never been one of those boring boat enthusiasts who rush out and buy a huge, expensive craft to take over to Rottnest at weekends and spend so much time on board drinking that they drift out to sea and don’t have enough fuel to get back to land. I do enjoy the relaxed feeling of floating on water, though. When we first came to Albany my sister was a Melon and she came home from school talking about Sandra Nye. Sandra Nye did this. Sandra Nye did that. Some boys were talking to Sandra Nye after school. Mum thought it would be nice to get to meet the parents of our school friends so she went to the town library and looked in the telephone directory to find out where Sandra Nye lived. There were no Nyes in the book but that wasn’t surprising. Most people didn’t have a telephone anyway so she looked in the Electoral Roll. Still no luck but not anything to alarm you. Perhaps my sister was saying Knight but rushing it to the point of not pronouncing the final consonant. We did have a typical Cockney gutteral stop after all! But when we listened carefully we all agreed it was definitely pronounced Nye! Dad said he thought perhaps it was a foreign name and had weird spelling. Kneighy or Gnaeiou or something. This was quite normal in Albany. My sister never paused to draw breath once she got home from school so Mum never got a chance to ask her where Sandra Nye lived or even how her name was spelt. She just rattled on from arrival to bedtime, not even pausing to empty her mouth before continuing when we were eating. When Mum broached the subject at breakfast one day, my sister just snarled at her and muttered something about minding her own business and not checking up on her and stop being ree-diculous! That was a big word in nineteen-fifty-nine. Ree – and you could hold that syllable for as long as you wanted or you ran out of breath, which my sister never did – diculous. So Mum asked me if I would ask Sandra Nye how her name was spelt and where she lived. Next time I saw her riding her bike down Aberdeen Street, I caught up with her and made the first request. “Yes,” she giggled. “It is a funny name, isn’t it? It’s C-h-r-i-t-c-h-i-s-o-n.” And she showed me where she had written it in blue Parker ink on the inside of her satchel flap. “Oh!” I mumbled, confused. “Er, do you live near here?” “Yes, right here!” she said and turned into a driveway.

“Nice house,” I said. “I’ll see you!” So I went home and told Mum. She insisted I had asked the wrong girl and said I couldn’t even get a simple task like that correct. My sister got home from school and turned the ignition switch on her mouth. But Mum cut in before she could accelerate. “How is Sandra Chritchison, today? Graham said her saw her riding her bike home.” “Yeah, she rode today. Sandra Nye usually walk home together but she has to go out this evening because there’s a thing on at her church and she has to be measured for a frock and get her hair cut and her Mum works at the abattoirs and gets home at three thirty so they were going straight . . .’ And Mum shifted her own brain into neutral and coasted from then on. Sandra ‘n’ I! So Mum phoned her mother and a couple of weeks later they invited us around for a barbecue. We knew they were weird because people didn’t have barbecues at their own home. They had them at the beach or the park with hundreds of snotty nosed kids, flies and seagulls vying for the tucker. But the Chritchisons had a lovely brick and mortar construction in their back garden with a hotplate, a grill and a warming oven, all powered by town gas. There was a roof over it made from Alsonite and a brick wall along the south and west sides to keep out the wind. It was five-star and the Chritchisons were immensely proud of it. “Arthur Nye built it a couple of years ago and we use it all the time!” Mrs Chritchison told us. “Arthur? Is that your husband?” Mum asked. “No! Mr Nye. The man next door. But everyone calls him Arthur. Little chap with a tweed overcoat. You’ve probably seen him. He goes to the Salvation Army!” Sandra had a brother who was a year older than her and he took Watermelon and me to the shed. Inside was a collection of kayaks and canoes – about eight if I remember correctly. “Do you like canoeing?” he asked and before we could reply, he had explained all about the construction of each and how different craft were used in different types of water. “This one is for rapids and you’ll see it is reinforced to stop rocks cracking the hull. This one is for open sea and this one is for racing.” And so on. Then he invited us to go out on the Harbour with him the following Saturday if Mum would give us permission. We never asked permission to do anything in those days. There was no point. She would say “Ask your Father!” When we went to Dad and repeated the request, he would answer “Have you done your homework?” When we lied and said we had, he would say “Well, if your Mother said it’s okay by her, then it’s okay by me!” So we never used to bother with the formality unless it involved scunging some money off them! On Saturday we presented at his house and he had the canoes on little four-wheeled trolleys with a handle to push them down to the seafront. Five hours later, soaking wet, muddy, freezing cold and as happy as a pig in shit, we returned home declaring that we wanted canoes for our next birthdays.

Because it was the first time in five weeks since we arrived that Mum didn’t have to tell my brother to stop snivelling, she said “We’ll see!” and then regretted it as we never let up for second after that. Dad solved the problem by getting two sheets of galvanised iron and bending them in half down the long axis. Then he riveted and soldered the ends so that a sort of canoe shape was achieved. Because the iron had recently been on a neighbour’s chook house, it was covered in manure and had lots of nail holes. The first he dealt with by hosing them down and painting them yellow and red, the second he put bolts through and sealed with washers and nuts. Little holes got a blob of solder on both sides. Then he carved Indian paddles out of a piece of Scots pine and bolted them onto sawn-off bits of an old rake handle he found in the shed. We took them down to the water behind the woollen mill and tried them out. They were a huge success and the only ointment Mum had to apply that evening was to the blisters on our hands. But first she had to pull out all the wood-splinters from the weathered rake handle that were stuck in our palms. I had that canoe for about three years until Watermelon borrowed it without asking one day for Whinge to use. They left it in the Yakamia Swamp when they both fled in tears after seeing an anaconda that turned out to be a bicycle inner tube. When we returned to get them, they were nowhere to be found. I tried making replicas after that but they always sank or fell to bits. Dad had started an apprenticeship with a Thames shipwright in the nineteen-twenties and understood the art of seaworthiness, a thing that somehow eluded me. Some years later when I had been working for a while, my love of the beach led to my taking up snorkelling. I would go down to Emu Point and put on my flippers, goggles and snorkel and swim out into the channel, searching the rocks for whatever shellfish were there. I guess I had better clarify that a bit, after having already related two stories about skinny-dipping. Not only did I put on my flippers, goggles and snorkel, I also used to wear Speedos. Albany wasn’t ready for anything otherwise on its public beaches in the 1960s! Soon the abalone and oysters caught on that I was after them and they slipped around the corner into the rougher waters of King George Sound. I was a strong swimmer but I really needed a boat to carry me to the reefs and rocky islands in the sound so I started looking around for a cheap, second-hand dinghy, preferably with a small outboard motor. I didn’t mind rowing. In fact I was faster than most of the little Seagull engines the other divers used when they took me out in their craft. But an engine meant you could go further without tiring yourself for diving. And the return trip was more enjoyable, too. Sandra’s brother came to the rescue again. One of his mates had an old dinghy that he said I could have for no payment. He never used it any more and had bought a power launch that he used for starting and refereeing canoe races. It was moored in the mouth of the King River near the bridge and I could collect the oars and motor and take possession whenever I liked. By Saturday I had asked nearly everyone I knew if they would like to leave their car at Emu Point, come over to King River with me and we would chug back across Oyster Harbour, then drive me back to my car. They all had cricket matches, rifle shoots, family outings and important personal matters to attend to which had to be done on Saturday afternoon. When I changed the date to any time on Sunday, they got even more creative with nieces’ First Communions, weddings, funerals and confirmations. Besides which, it seemed Albany would become a ghost town as everyone was going to Perth, Esperance or Bunbury for the weekend. Even Boongul was going to Raisinthorpe to his uncle’s bar mitzvah. “I thought he was Lutheran?” I queried. “He used to be, then he converted!” Boongul said.

“What, when he found out I bought a boat?” I say “bought” because in the end Dad wouldn’t let me accept it as a gift. He insisted I offer money but when that was refused, I gave the chap a carton of Craven A and a dozen bottles of Swan Lager. Mum made me take twelve scotch eggs and a jar of strawberry jam she had made in case he didn’t drink or smoke. Dad saw I was glum and offered to come with me instead. I really welcomed this, not only because I needed a driver and my alternative was to leave my bike at Emu Point and cycle back to my car, but also because I never spent nearly enough time in Dad’s company. Albany did one of its uncharacteristic skites that day. It was early December and the sun was brilliant. By noon it was really warm and we were both looking forward to a pleasant afternoon gliding across the millpond surface of one of the most beautiful riverine estuaries in the world. Both the King and the Kalgan flow into Oyster Harbour, along with quite a few streams, drainage ditches and farm dam run-offs and it is quite a considerable distance from the river mouth to the entrance at Emu Point. Dad followed me down to the Point and parked his car under the peppercorn trees then we drove along Lower King Road and parked on the water’s edge near the bridge. The little green dinghy was bobbing around on the sparkling water twenty feet away and we lugged the motor and oars out to it. I filled the tank with some two-stroke fuel I had bought from the service station that morning. The engine fired first time and soon we were chugging out into the harbour with the tough little half-a-horse-power motor thrusting us along. Dad had his transistor radio tuned, as always, to the cricket and I sat in the back watching the tiny wash disturbing the mirror perfect surface of the water. When we got near Green Island, the engine ran out of fuel and I refilled it from a can I had brought with me. The cricketers had gone to lunch, so Dad turned his radio off and started regaling me with stories about punting around on the Thames in the nineteen thirties. I recognised quite a few of the stories as having been lifted from Jerome K. Jerome’s book “Three Men in a Boat” but it was nice hearing Dad take credit for them, especially when he substituted Mr Jerome’s two companions for one of his lusty Isleworth wenches. “The nineteen thirties were a time of great wealth and prosperity and we never had a care in the world!” he told me with deep sincerity. “What, despite the Depression?” I asked and he blinked, deciding not to respond to such a supercilious question. The time passed quickly and still the day kept its shape. Beautiful days in Albany nearly always end in disaster – fierce storms, hail, gale force winds, shipwrecks and daring rescues by the harbourmaster and his team! But not today! Everything went perfectly. At last we reached Emu Point and tied the dinghy to a pole that was obviously not being used and that I had observed as being spare for a couple of weeks now. Even if it had already been claimed it wouldn’t have made a difference as we dropped an anchor to stop it swinging and any other user could have tied up to the same post with no problem. I undid the brackets from the engine and poured the remaining fuel back into the can. Dad took the oars and we waded to the shore near where his car was parked. “Drat!” muttered Dad. “I can’t find my whatsnames! My keys!” Then a guilty look spread across his face. “Oh!” He stayed silent for a few minutes while he composed his next sentence so it would have minimal impact. “When we got out of your car I put my wallet and change and stuff into your glove-box. I must have put my keys in there, too, for safekeeping! Well, I didn’t want to risk losing them overboard.”

“We’ll have to walk home, get your spare keys then see if someone can drive us back here!” I said. It was about five miles home but about nine to Lower King Bridge, so this was the better option, as long as we could get a lift back. Otherwise I would have to cycle then do all sorts of trips to get Dad’s Cortina and my Anglia under the same carport that night. But Dad had a better idea. “It’s still early, you’ve got plenty of fuel in the can and it’s a dayrious glor!” He loved to spoonerise. “Let’s put the Seagull back on the whatsname, go back to your car and get my keys! Besides, England are one for eighty six and they are just coming back onto the field!” So we reinstalled the motor to the dinghy and set off again. But just near Green Island on the third leg of the voyage, the petrol ran out and I had to rely on my skills as an oarsman for the next nautical mile-and-a-half. But to Albany’s credit, it was still fine and sunny when we arrived home at six forty-five. And I never did find out what Dad did to that lass on the Eyot back in ’thirty-seven! Of course now that the boat was moored at Emu Point, my friends had no important plans for the following weekend. In fact, they were all very eager to accompany me on the water. The only problem for me was that I had promised to be on duty at the Surf Club both days. However, employing a lot of eyelid batting, sweet talk and general seductiveness, Karen and Regina elicited a promise from me to take them over to a little beach on the Sound side of the Point where very few people ever went. We had discovered it one day while snorkelling as it couldn’t be seen from the town side. In fact, you could only just see it from Middleton Beach, three miles away, if you used binoculars. I know they wanted to touch up their all-over tans and with bodies like that, who was I to deny such perfection? So I agreed. Besides, who knows, they might ask me to stay and rub the Ambré Solair on them! The weather was still holding on really well on Saturday. It was not quite as nice as the previous week and we had a couple of cold, rainy squalls on Wednesday and Thursday but the little panel on the masthead of the newspaper said it would remain fine and who were we to argue? Middleton never gets very busy until late in the morning on Saturday so I told the club captain I would be there at eleven o’clock and could stay until three. That would give Karen and Reggie over four hours to develop that mouth-watering tone that only the weak southern sun can impart without first burning the top layer of skin. After dropping them off at their beach, I would return to the boat mooring poles, drive around to do my stint at the club then return later to ferry them back. All went extremely well except they rejected my very kind offer to rub on the lotion or to even stay and supervise. Reggie was wearing one of those peaks that look so silly on Boongul but which made her lovely face even prettier. I wondered if Boongul’s peak made him more ugly and if he took it off, would it have the effect of making him look more normal? The girls shoved me back into the boat and pushed me out into the channel, making sure I didn’t just stop off at the next cove and sneak back over the headland for a perv. Back at the club we were quite busy. Chris Bell, the surf boat sweep, asked me to set up the flags, particularly those which kept the bathers away from the area where the boat was launched and re-beached. We also had some pickets and bunting we erected to mark the area visibly as in the past we had a few near misses as the boat cannoned in to the shore on one of the waves. A girl of about eleven hassled me constantly as I worked and followed me back up the beach to the club when the boys took the Pontiac Chieftain II off on a patrol. The boat was a solid little beast made of oak and carried a crew of five – four rowing and the captain coxing and working

the sweep oar. I don’t know what it weighed but it took six of us to carry it in and out of the surf and place it on hard rubber cylinders to roll it up or down the beach. They were out for around an hour and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had gone over to Emu Point with the intention of sneaking a glimpse of Karen and Reggie! But eventually I saw them coming back and lined up with the beach. We had a loudspeaker mounted on a pole and I thumbed the microphone. “Please remain outside the boat area as the patrol is about to return! I repeat, please stay outside the restricted area as the surf-boat is about to return. Parents, please ensure your children do not go anywhere near the area between the boat flags!” Then I ran down to the water’s edge and screamed at all the people who had entered the restricted area immediately upon hearing my announcement. “Please leave the area!” I shouted to at least ten people who had taken up observation points near the centre of the roped off bit. “Just do as I say! I will explain it to you later! It is dangerous to remain there!” Eventually I got everyone out and stood by one of the flags, ready to help the crew carry the boat up the sand. The eleven-year-old girl was still standing alongside me, prattling on as only elevenyear-old girls do. The waves were beginning to get quite big now and I knew Chris and the lads would have a very fast run into the beach. I had been with them on a few occasions and it gives you a thrill to race down the face of a big roller with your oars shipped and let the momentum carry you right up to the beach. She was coming in fast! The crew had drawn in their oars and were holding them vertically so that they would not get in anyone’s way if the boat went over. I could see Chris straining on the sweep trying to keep it coming in straight. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw my eleven-year-old shadow walking right across its path. Finally she had got fed up with my ignoring her and gone to find someone else to annoy. Without even contemplating the danger, I sprinted away from the post and grabbed her in my arms and just kept on running. I didn’t dare look again to see how close the bow was but suddenly there was a thud in my hip and a searing pain right across my left buttock. I kept going and when I reached the bunting on the other side, I dropped her into the water and verbally blasted her. I used words I never even used in the Army and she burst into tears and called me a horrible, nasty man, completely oblivious to the fact I had just saved her from serious injury, probably even death! Glenda came running over and took the little girl from me. “You’re bleeding!” she said. “I’ll find this girl’s parents then I’ll fix you up in the first aid room!” My speedos were ripped and there was, as she had told me, some blood but the wound wasn’t deep. I went up to the club and Glenda came in and ordered me to take my trunks off while she collected some iodine and cotton wool. “Does it hurt?” she asked. “Not the cut!” I told her, standing there naked, my pride and joy all shrivelled and shrunken by the cold seawater. I covered it with my hands like a Second Year student. Not that she noticed, anyway. Or she was too polite to say if she had! “I took a hit on the hip and that feels a bit tender!” Chris came up to say how he thought they were going to run straight into the girl and how he wrenched the sweep oar right around so that they would miss us. Ironically it was the blade of this which struck my hip. Still, better that than the bow!

Then he went to deal with the girl’s father who was complaining about how roughly I had handled his precious daughter and that he was going to report it to the police. Chris restrained himself and never punched him! He convinced the man that anything less than what I did would have resulted in a very nasty accident and that, unless he was prepared to find witnesses and instigate proceedings, he would be better off giving his kid a good smack on the arse and go away! You could still legally do that in those days. Meanwhile, Glenda was convinced I should go and have myself checked out at the hospital emergency ward, maybe have x-rays to make sure nothing was broken or chipped. Club rules stipulated that after any physical injury, this was the prescribed course of action. “I thought you were a goner, Lizard!” she said, trying not to cry. But there was a little tremble in her voice and some tears rolled down her cheek. She was driving my Anglia and we were at the hospital in about eight minutes. Of course, the triage nurse took about forty minutes to even interview me and then, although I was the only patient in the emergency department, it took another hour before I was felt, prodded and x-rayed and given the all clear. I was told to “take it easy for a few days” because the hip was badly bruised. Finally, three hours after we arrived there, we got back into the car. “Aren’t you supposed to be picking up Karen and Reggie?” asked Glenda and I looked at my watch. It was nearly five o’clock. The weather had broken while we were in the hospital and the drizzle had started. It was dull and grey and the tops of the trees were beginning to sway. The girls would be getting cold on that beach with only their bikinis and light shifts! We got down to Emu Point and set up the boat. By the time we got through the channel there was a howling wind and the tops of the waves were breaking over the bow of the little green dinghy. Glenda sat in the middle so that my greater bulk would weigh the stern down but she eventually came and sat on the other side of the outboard. We rounded the point and in a few minutes we saw the girls huddled together next to a rock at the far end of the beach where there was a tiny bit of shelter from the gale. They were furious but when Glenda explained what had happened they calmed down. We had the foresight to throw a couple of blankets from the boot of the Anglia into the boat and although they were now as wet as we were, they stopped the biting wind from freezing the girls’ skin. They had their beach towels as well, so they were quite protected from the storm that was now getting fierce. Even though it was only a week away from Christmas it felt like mid-winter. I was only in my shorts, tee-shirt and a terry-towelling yachting jacket while Glenda had a nylon spray jacket on over her shirt and shorts. We were pretty miserable! Then the real fun started. The wind was coming from the south and blowing us back onto the shore. We had to get out into the open channel or we would end off hitting the rocks and breaking up the boat. Glenda and Karen were in the back controlling the motor, Reggie was sitting on the floor in front of them and I had the rowlocks in and was struggling to fit the oars without knocking her head off. Eventually I started rowing and helped the little outboard to propel us out into the channel. Here the waves were quite big and pounding towards the far shore, which I didn’t mind as we could have beached there and walked back to the car. But the wind was doing its best to prevent us reaching the point where the waves were breaking. Even then, I was reluctant to surf it to the beach as a slight deviation could cause us to capsize or swamp. We had to try to get to the calmer water inside the Harbour. Regina was crying and looking petrified so Karen suggested they swap places. She came and sat alongside me and took one of the oars. Between us we began to make headway as Glenda coaxed every bit of power out of that ancient little engine. But at least now we were feeling more encouraged as we could see the lights in the cafe getting closer.

It was nearly dark although it was over half an hour until sundown. The sky had turned from gunmetal grey to jet black, except for the jagged streaks of lightning that lit up the waves, the sand hills and the rocks every few seconds. With an oar each, Karen and I dug deeply into the water and told ourselves that every stroke was a yard closer to safety. After what seemed like a lifetime, with my hip getting more painful at each stroke, we rounded the point and let the wash of a small wave push us towards Emu Beach. It petered out at about the same time as I did and I shipped the oars and stowed them under the seats. Glenda steered us around the jetty pens to our mooring at the flats. I stood up and the boat rocked violently, making me fall back onto the seat. My hip seized up completely and I could barely step over the side into the shallow water and make my way back to the car. There was no way could I drive, so Glenda took over and dropped me at home first. She carried the oars up the drive and put them under the house, then she and Karen hoisted the Seagull out of the boot and stowed that as well. Dad came out and gave them a hand. I could see Watermelon in the front room window with a grin on his face which surprised me until I realised he was gloating about my sodden appearance and agonised attempts to mount the front stairs. Glenda said they would bring the car back later and they left. Mum made me a cup of Ovaltine and a sausage and egg sandwich and I went to bed. I told Dad what had happened and he related what it had been like jumping from the landing craft at Salerno under the Jerry guns. When I started to drop off, he took my cup and plate and turned the light off. A couple of hours later I awoke and Glenda was sitting on my bed. Karen was in a chair alongside. Mum had let them in to see how I was but had remained just outside the open door to make sure we didn’t get up to any funny business. After all, I already had one scratch on my arse cheek! After a day like that there was no way even I was going to submit to an orgy with two of the toughest, nicest ladies in Albany! Zere ist Gut News unt Zere ist Bad News When we first came to Australia in 1957, we stayed for a couple of weeks with my mother’s cousin Gladys, her husband Aubrey and their three daughters, Marilyn, Janice and Denise. We were “Ten Pound Poms” and in order to qualify for this privilege, you needed someone already in Australia to sponsor you and guarantee you a home and help you find accommodation, employment and your local boozer. Otherwise you got put in a migrant hostel, which was about the worst introduction to the country because it was full of other “Ten Pound Poms”! After Aunty Gladys showed us the employment pages in the West Australian newspaper and the State Housing Commission, Mum went around and took her choice of dozens of available asbestos fibro and tile bungalows in Medina. We spent the following two and a half years there until they decided Albany was a better place to live. If they had been residing in any other place in Australia, people would have questioned the sanity, but remember they were living in Medina . . . Aunty Gladys and Uncle Buck approved of this move wholeheartedly. It gave them somewhere cool to visit during those dreadful hot summers and was sufficiently England-like to satisfy the cravings your average Pom gets for icy gales, torrential downpours and general misery. And we always enjoyed their visits, even though we knew that as soon as they got back to Medina we would be criticised, ridiculed and our lifestyle ripped to shreds, both to family and friends in the metropolitan area as well as by letter to those still in England.

Aunty Gladys was a kind enough woman who never amounted to as much as her capabilities should have let her. She was quite a good organiser, very witty and a quick thinker. She and Aubrey had been ballroom dancers in Folkestone and won prizes in their day. Aubrey, in addition to being nimble on his pegs, was a welder for Alcoa who would have enjoyed being a regular feature in the social pages. He was a perfectionist in everything he did, from raising his three daughters to home handyman projects, gardening and his own appearance. He was very vain. Watermelon idolised him for this and later emulated him too a tee, from his shoes, his clothes and his immaculately cut hair, later to be replaced by a toupee. Aubrey didn’t like his first name and preferred to be called Buck, a diminutive of his surname, Buchan. Apparently he was upset about being teased at school. His classmates called him Audrey, which made him cry. In Albany, when the kids in my class corrupted my surname to Lizard, they nicknamed Watermelon with a diminutive of that and called him Lizzie, which made him cry too. But then, he would have cried anyway, so it doesn’t mean he disapproved. But Uncle Buck was a sad man, not only because he was married to Aunty Gladys, lived in Medina and was a welder at Alcoa. He had a problem with growing old! Although he was a handsome man in a tall, dark, slim way, he mourned his passing youth. If he had been more inclined to smile he would have been attractive. I think he knew this and probably practised in the mirror and saw a fine looking male face reflecting dashingly back at him and could not understand why he didn’t have hordes of adoring females at his feet. I have a similar problem! So Buck did what many mid-life-crisis men do. He bought a bright red, open-topped MG sports car. In this, he once confided to me, he hoped to pick up a young lady with long blonde hair that would sparkle in the sun as it trailed out behind her as they cruised the beach roads between Fremantle and Mandurah. What a romantic! I don’t know why it didn’t work, as the only time I ever drove it, I picked up the most gorgeous girl in Albany – Regina Knowles! But then, I did that nearly every day in my Anglia so it must have been the lift home she was interested in and not Buck’s mature-aged would-be scruffmobile. But I liked Uncle Buck and he saw me as the son he never had. He saw Watermelon as a pain in the arse who made his upholstery wet. But then so did everyone else. They would visit us nearly every summer and often we would go and stay with them for a weekend when we did our annual Christmas Shopping Run to the huge department stores in Perth each November. But, living in a popular vacation destination which was also a nice place to visit to escape those fierce Perth Januaries, we seemed to be inundated with requests for free holiday accommodation. There always seemed to be cars parked all over the lawn, a couple of caravans in the garden and people stacked like sardines into our spare room and lounge. Invariably I had some spoilt little brat on a camp bed on the floor in my bedroom who I would deliberately trip over in the night and wake up at the crack of dawn when I went down for my early morning beach run. I drove off knowing he could be relied on to wake the rest of the house with his demands for attention. We didn’t have ADHD in those days, we had attention-seeking, bed-wetting, deformed brats who drank too much red cordial and slept on the floor of my bedroom. But generally we didn’t mind them. Mum and Dad were always very generous and although they worked hard to feed and clothe us kids, they felt it was the neighbourly thing to be hospitable to folks we saw once a year and who didn’t live anywhere near our neighbourhood. One summer that was tested to the absolute limit.

I sat for my Junior Certificate in November and did the final exam the day before the news came that President Kennedy had been assassinated. Not that if it had been any other way it would have affected me in the slightest but I just thought I would mention it to paint a vivid, historic background to this tale. During those summer holidays I worked as an errand boy for the newspaper with the proviso that if I got a satisfactory mark in the Junior and if I still wanted it, there would be the offer of an apprenticeship before the school year commenced in February. I finished work in the afternoon at five o’clock and rode home on my three-speed-gear Malvern Star. This day I had a small item of cargo to transport that I had bought at lunchtime with my saved-up wages. It was the sound track of the musical “West Side Story”. This piece was very popular in Albany for some reason and I loved it. I cycled home with the twelve inch long-playing record in my satchel, eager to get home and play it on the AWA gramophone we were buying on hire purchase. There was a BMW parked out the front with metro plates but I didn’t even take notice or see that it contained three people. I couldn’t have cared less if it had been George Stephenson’s “Rocket” stuffed tight with NASA astronauts. It was summer, I was young and I had “West Side Story” in my satchel. I let myself in the back door. We never locked the back door because there was no need. People in Albany never let themselves into your house unless they were Billy Thripp or unless you had invited them. I went into the lounge straight away and opened the lid of the gramophone. There was a knock on the door, but I turned the record player on and took the big vinyl disk out of its jacket. Lovingly I placed it on the turntable and gently slid the stylus-arm autocue. Then I decided I probably should answer the door. On the verandah stood a very ugly, stocky man, about five feet three inches tall. Next to him stood an even uglier, even stockier woman of about five feet no inches. And behind them stood a really attractive girl of about five feet five inches, fourteen years old and wearing a short, cotton, floral-print dress. I immediately disregarded the two older people and devoted all my attention to the third. “Ve are friends off Don unt Shirley Deerink. Zey said for us to komm to you for your hospitality! Turn off zat dreadful noise unt let us come in!” “Hang on a minute!” I protested. I didn’t want to deny this lovely little creature entry into our house but I weighed it against having to spend time in the company of this cheap imitation of Mein Führer and was not so certain. “Do my parents know you are coming?” “Zat is no concern off yours! Vhere ist your parents. Inform zem ve are here!” “They’re not home yet. They should be here by about six. Can you come back then?” The girl was obviously not interested in me. She hadn’t even smiled! But then I wouldn’t have smiled either if I was forced to keep the company of this nasty little product of a one night stand between a cane toad and a German garden gnome! “Zat ist tventy minutes away! Ve haff travelled from Perth and are in need of a drink. Please make us some coffee and bring it to us here!” I expected him to say “Schnell” but he added “Right avay!” instead. “Sorry, but I can’t invite you in. I don’t know you! If you like, you can wait on the verandah in those chairs. I’ll get you some coffee. Milk and sugar?” “Ja!” reluctantly he turned and sat in the most comfortable chair leaving his wife and daughter to sit on wooden kitchen chairs. “Unt turn off zat dreadful noise!”

I ignored this last command and put the kettle on. When I returned with the coffee, milk and sugar, he sniffed it suspiciously and put it on the little table where Mum stands her cacti. “Is ziss Nescafé?” he demanded. “No, it isn’t!” I told him truthfully. It was a jar of Pablo that Dad had bought on special at Tom the Cheap Grocer and had been in the larder for about two years because no-one liked it. But I knew what he meant.. “You vill go unt brew us proper coffee!” he glared officiously at me. “Unt how many times do I haff to tell you about ze awful noise!” “That,” I announced. “Is not an awful noise. It was written by one of you Krauts called Leonard Bernstein!” The little man went as red as the record jacket. “He ist not Deustche! He ist ein Juden!” “I stand corrected. But so was Jesus!” I said quietly. “But I doubt if you ever heard of him. He said ‘Blessed are the meek’!” “I know who Jesus is!” he roared again. “Ve are Christian friends of Don unt Shirley Deerink! Now go unt get ze proper coffee!” “Point A,” I said. “We only have instant coffee. And Point B. Stop ordering me around like you own the place!” I picked up his still full cup and put it on the tray with the empties which the woman and girl handed me. “And Point C. If you don’t want to clear off, sit there and shut up until my parents decide what to do with you!” I went in and listened to the record but I couldn’t enjoy it. He made me angry and my heart was thudding in my chest. I hoped Mum and Dad would not be long. I was only just sixteen and not used to dealing with pricks like this. I made sure the window was open so the full force of the music would really piss him off out there on the verandah. Then I heard Dad’s car pull up and heard his voice. “Hello! I’m Len! Just a minute, I’ll tell Graham to turn that dreadful noise off!” I could imagine the smug satisfaction that would have spread across Adolf’s face when he said that. I turned the volume down. “I am Heinz Schneider. Pleased to meet you! Unt zis is mein frau – mein vife, Stella. Unt our daughter Kristen!” “How can I help you, Heinz?” Dad offered his hand but the Kraut ignored it. “Don Deerink iss a friend of mine!” he announced. “He said you vould offer us your hospitality!” “Of course!” Dad said. “Don is a good personal friend of ours. What help do you need?” “Ve haff driven down from Perth! Ve need somewhere to sleep unt keep our things!” “Ah,” said Dad. “I know the Emu Point Motel is very good. And there are always spare on-site vans at the Caravan Park, if you prefer. They’re a bit cheaper, of course. Then there’s . . .” “Zat iss not vot I mean!” barked Heinz. “Don said you vould put us up here!” “Oh, I don’t know!” said Dad, shaking his head. “You will have to wait until Eve gets home.” “In Germany, ze man iss the head off ze house!” Heinz thundered and Dad told him to calm down. He wasn’t in Germany and Mum would be home very soon. “Can I offer you a cup of tea, or something?” “Not zat dreadful coffee ze boy made! Yes, I vill haff tea!” Dad went into the kitchen, leaving the Schneiders in the lounge. “Get rid of ‘em, Dad!” I implored. “He’s trouble. You heard how he spoke to you!”

“Yes, but he’s a friend of Don and Shirl! I can’t throw him out!” “It’s up to you, Dad, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!” “Don’t speak to me like that! My mother would have slapped me if I had spoken to her like that.” I went back to the lounge and took my record off the turntable. I was about to go to my room but couldn’t resist putting on a Shadows record and turning the volume right up. Then I went out to my room and put the LP on my bed. I returned to the kitchen, cut a slice of the cake my father had just put on a plate with the teacups, then went out the back. I cycled over to Steve’s house and never returned until about seven. Poor old Mum returned from her work at six, nearly had a blue with Dad about the Hun Invasion then rushed about to make some tea suitable for their Teutonic appetites. Dad was laying the table and there was a lot of steam coming from the kitchen. Mum told me to wash my hands then bring the guests through to the kitchen table for dinner. I stuck my head around the door and muttered sweetly “Dinner’s ready. Come and get it!” The meal was a disaster. As soon as Mum placed the steak and kidney pie in front of Herr Schneider, he grabbed his knife and fork and poked it. He was about to voice his disapproval of it but Dad said quietly “Let’s give thanks to the Lord!” and said a table grace. Schneider chewed away with a discontented look on his face. Frau Schneider and Kristen seemed to enjoy theirs but barely said a word as though having been forbidden to by the head of their house. “Speaking at ze table ist verböten! If you persist in zis behaviour, you vill be shot!” Mum was looking worried, Dad had the same frown he wears when he is at Communion and Watermelon was blubbering because Mum had told him that morning that he could have sausages for tea and here he was enduring steak and kidney pie! Eventually he poured HP Sauce all over it and couldn’t tell the difference. I rabbited as usual, dribbling on about work, the beach, the weather, the Junior results, Cliff Richard and, of course, West Side Story. I could see it was annoying him and was determined to make it as effective as possible. When the meal was finished, Dad tried to involve Heinz in conversation. “Whereabouts in Germany are you from, then, Mate?” he asked. I expected Schneider to say it was Top Secret and I vill ask ze questions, but he just said “Berlin”. “Oh,” said Dad. “I was in Germany at the end of the war. Never got to Berlin though. I was in the British Army. A P.O.W. In Silesia!” If I had been Dad, I would not just have kicked him out of my house at his next remark. I would have beaten him to a pulp first. “Ze British Tommy was stupid, ignorant unt cru-el! Zey inflicted unnecessary injury unt pain on ze Deutsche people! Zey killed for ze love of killing! I haff no tolerance for ze British whatsoever!” I got up out of my chair ready to assist Dad in whatever action he decided to take. Mum, however, laid her hand on his arm and said quietly “Let it go, Len. Don’t let him upset you!” Dad shook his head and counted to ten under his breath. Eins, zwei, drei . . . “I told you so,” I said out loud to Dad. “The man’s a pig! And look at the way he completely disregards his wife and daughter!” “It’s alright,” he said. “Turn the other cheek!” “Cool!” I shrugged. I snapped a Nazi salute at Herr Schneider and left the room. I got my new record and played it really loudly. No one told me to turn it down.

When they returned to the lounge, I went out and helped Mum wash up. She didn’t look very happy. “They are friends of Don and Shirl’s!” she said several times. “We must treat them as our friends!” The Schneiders stayed at our house that night. I suggested they be offered a rock in the goldfish pond but Herr and Frau Toad slept in the spare room. Watermelon was made to sleep in the lounge so Kristen could sleep in his room. He bawled and sobbed and I told Mum she had better put dry sheets on the bed. I remarked that she was welcome to share my bed with me, but Mum was in no mood for my immature comments. Then I went over to Robbie Bean’s house and played West Side Story on his gramophone. When I returned they were all in bed. Next morning, Herr Sauerkraut was all smiles and bonhomie. “Ve had ein gut sleep last night! Ze bed voss far too soft but ve are used to being uncomfortable in ziss country!” “That’s all that matters!” I said. “Please can I have the paper? The Junior results are published today and I want to see how I went!” This was very important to me as well as to Mum and Dad. Even Watermelon feigned an interest. He knew that if I did well there would be some reward for me from which he might benefit. “Venn I haff finished viz it!” He deliberately turned back a few pages. I nearly tore it from his hands but remembered Dad’s directive to turn the other cheek. I grabbed two pieces of buttered toast and wrapped them around a rasher of bacon and an egg. “See you, folks. Not you, Kraut! I trust you’ll be gone when I get back! I can’t say what a pleasure it was meeting you because it wasn’t!” I cycled down to work. Shame about the babe! She had serious possibilities but not with an old man like that! I bought a West Australian at the newsagency and to my joy I had passed in all seven subjects, with distinctions in three and two more with honours. I had a mark of eighty-six in English Grammar! When I got home the Boche had gone. Mum and Dad bought me a Box Brownie as a reward for my good results, much to Watermelon’s disgust. Three weeks later Don and Shirl Deering came down for their annual visit. They were aghast when they heard the way the Schneiders had behaved. “Yes,” said Don. “We do know them – slightly. He works for Bill Britza.” Don could never have a conversation without bringing Bill Britza into it, for some reason. “He asked me if we knew anyone in Albany who could recommend somewhere to stay and we gave him your name. You’re the only people we know here anyway! I never thought for a minute they would construe that as meaning you’d put them up. “I’m so sorry! Did he really say that British Tommies were stupid, ignorant and cruel! I’ll have to tell Bill Britza. He won’t be very impressed at all!” The Last Word . . . So that is my collection of pointless stories. I know that even before I have printed them and bound them I will have thought of more or little additions and repairs to those I have included. I will probably also regret some I did put in! Maybe I will do a second edition or maybe even a sequel at some stage. It all depends on the response I get from this lot!

I harbour some secret doubts as to why I wrote this. It could be I am suffering some sort of a midlife crisis without the red sports car, it could be a desire to show off and bullshit about what a fabulously rich and happy adolescence I spent. It could be a need for closure on some episodes of my life (doesn’t that expression churn your guts?) And I could be just a very bored old man looking for something to do in semi-retirement! It could even be all of these but I don’t care. I enjoyed doing it! Mainly, I hope you enjoyed them too! I wrote them with the intention of sharing some amusing and interesting moments from my teenage years. And to share some of the downright boring, dull and vexatious bits, too. Don’t imagine you can guess the identity of a few of the characters. You will almost certainly be wrong. They are so hybridised, amalgamated or otherwise changed that, other than in a few cases, they don’t even exist. Some are totally made up because, while not claiming to be more creative than God, I am not bound by the restraints he had when making people! Those mentioned in passing who do not effect or influence the story may be recognisable, but they will not find any reason for taking offence. My family is depicted as described only as a backdrop and comparison to my own good nature, wisdom, talent, maturity and positive outlook. It is not my intention to make them look good, bad or otherwise. I didn’t need to resort to that!

Graham Lees Kingsley, Western Australia June 2006