Australia and Tasmania - A great start to things.

My next memory is of our departure by boat to Australia, I must have been about 5 years old I think. I still have a strong memory of the paper streamers that people on the boat used to throw down to their friends and family below on the shore, so that a sort of symbolic last contact was created. Actually a very sad thing to do, since in those days when people went off to somewhere like Australia they were highly unlikely to return, so in all probability this was the last tangible contact they had with each other. The moment when the streamers broke was something I will always remember with sadness..... I made a number of long sea voyages as a kid, so I went through this sad ceremony a number of times.

I have a number of confused memories of that trip:-

Being told and believing that dates were packed into their boxes by Arabs trampling them in with their bare feet and being horrified by this when I saw the dirty bare feet of those Arabs in Egypt as we stopped at both ends of the Suez canal. It was many years before I could eat dates with any ease as that memory stuck with me.. Be careful what you tell kids, unexpected things can stick in their minds and effect them for the rest of their life’s.

This is me in Suez. I was sulking because I wasn't allowed to eat a fourth banana.

Owing to the war, I had never seen or tasted a banana before, and loved them!

My other memory of Egypt from that trip was seeing a man shot down by Egyptian police on our ship as he attempted to escape from them. Apparently he had just been arrested for theft, and as he ran from them, they simply shot him. That made an impression on me to say the least.

Also in Suez, Me as a small Imperialist with Lorraine, my Mum.

Climbing a set of stairs to get from the small boat that took us from our ship to the shore at Aden, and as my head reached the level of the jetty, a camel sitting there, gazed at me sadly and then spat firmly into my face. I have always been ambivalent about camels ever since that day.

Later whilst wandering around Aden (a horrible, grey, dusty and poverty stricken place it was in those days) having to step over a man lying in the road and being told that he was dying. To be honest I have no idea if that was true or not, but it made a strong impression on me, obviously. Particularly the fact that no one seemed bothered about the poor bloke. That and the cops shooting that thief taught me at an early age that the world is a rough place.

In fact there are only two other things that have stuck in my mind from that trip, and that was my first “Crossing of the Line”. Crossing the equator was something that was always celebrated in those days, and this consisted of members of the crew dressing up as Greek gods, Neptune and so on, chasing passengers and anyone else who hadn't crossed the equator before. The unfortunate victim was hauled before Neptune and then sentenced to be covered in soap, or compelled to have a pillow fight with another victim on a greasy pole laid across the swimming pool. Altogether great fun for all, but I was scared silly by those guys in their weird costumes dashing around hunting for victims, so I hid and was only caught almost at the end of the ceremony.

This meant I was given my certificate – duly signed by King Neptune – to state that I had been before his court, and crossed the equator, a document I was very glad to have on subsequent crossings of the equator in ships. Saved me a number of times from the ordeal of pillow fighting on that dreaded greasy pole and so on.

Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific I achieved swimming, not something that many can boast of “I learned to swim in the middle of the Pacific” sounds good I reckon.

Other than that I have no real memories of that first long ocean voyage. We stopped at all manner of intriguing places, but I have no recollection of any of them.

Anyhow, after about 5 weeks on that ship, she was called the Stratheden by the way, we arrived in Australia, and there my memories shut down almost completely. The next things I remember all took place in Tasmania where we went to live after living around Melbourne and Geelong for a while.

Russ about to go to New Guinea to discuss with the Japanese Imperial Army their plans to take over the world.  With his father (Pop) a lovely man.

I can remember a number of flights from Melbourne to Tasmania which were in DC3's, a lovely, bouncy and noisy plane to fly in, which I still remember with great affection. As we lived near to a small town on the north coast of Tasmania called Burnie, the airport we used was called Wynyard. I believe it is now a fully fledged airport, with all the normal things at any international airport, but in those days it was simply a long flat grassy field with a smallish building to one side, and they had to chase the sheep off the runway each time a plane was due to land or take off. I still have vivid memories of the DC3 bouncing along that grass runway like a demented kangaroo. All very enjoyable and a fond set of memories for me to enjoy.

For some reason with our arrival in Tasmania, my memories seemed to start taking some real form, and whilst there are still large areas of mistiness, I have a reasonable set of memories of places, people and events from our time in Tasmania.

Basically I enjoyed our time in Tassie, it was a perfect place for a kid in those days.... Long before the disease of health and safety hit the world, we were taught instead to assess danger and expected to use our intelligence to avoid serious injury, which by and large worked, and on those occasions we did do something stupid, well we learned from the pain and never did it again... And remarkably few of us died as far as I recall.. well actually none of us died or suffered any serious injuries.

And this in a country full of highly poisonous snakes and spiders, drunken drivers and a sea full of sting rays and sharks.. oh and people wandering around hunting with rifles too of course. And a generally hillbilly approach to life. I have since gathered that the Tasmanians of those days were regarded as Red Necks by the rest of Australia, and probably with reason too. They were a strange mob of weird and unlikely folk, who did things their own way and didn’t take kindly to outsiders telling them what they should do.

I am very unsure of the chronology of out Tasmanian period – we moved from house to house a few times while we were there, and underwent a number of odd experiences as well. So once again all I can do here is recount some of the things I recall, in no particular order, more to give a feel of how it was for me to be a small boy living there in the years immediately following the second world war up to about 1951 I think.

A Headless me and Russ on the beach at Doctor's Rocks

To begin with we lived in a rented house on a farm at a place called Doctor's Rocks (no idea how it came by that name) which was some 10 or 20 miles along the coast to the west of Burnie. Our house was about a 15 minute walk from the coast, where a small train line ran along the coast joining the various towns along that coast. And in order for me to get to school I had to walk down to the train track and stand there until the train came along, wave it down and clamber aboard and join my friends as we went to school that way.

Going home was simply the same thing in reverse, we would board the train at Burnie station, and when it reached the point we needed to get out, we would lean out of the carriage window and wave, whereupon the driver would stop the train and we would clamber down to the ground. And the train would chug off to its next stop at the following farm.

All seemed the most normal thing in the world to us kids.

I went to a school (for want of a better word) called Upper Federal Street State School – Now that is a name to conjure with!. Which as far as I can remember consisted of three rooms, two being classrooms, the third being the Head's office. My memories of the place are misty, but universally nasty. Kids were in one room until they achieved a certain academic level, then they were promoted to the second room.... The Head's only function as far as we kids were concerned was to cane us whenever one or other of the two teachers sent us to him for that purpose.. A primitive and horrid place. Probably set the pattern for my loathing of all schools thereafter.

The only good memories I had of the school were on those periods when the farmers were burning off the undergrowth, so as one walked down to catch the train in the morning, the path would be swarming with huge tarantula spiders trying to escape the smouldering grass all around. These we would catch and put into boxes, and take to school. And at a signal we would let them all go at the same time, to the horror of the teacher who was scared silly of those huge, hairy and relatively harmless spiders... was fun, but got us a good beating. We felt it was worth it though.

Living on that farm was fun, I loved almost everything about it. By local standards it wasn't a very big one, at about 2000 acres, and its main activity was cattle raising, so we were surrounded by cattle all the time there. Once a year a whole gang of farm workers would head off to the top of the farm - the farm was a long relatively narrow strip shape, at right angles to the coast, so the south end (away from the sea) was actually pretty remote. There was a small family who lived up there, and whose function as far as I could gather was simply to keep a vague eye on the cattle up there who roamed free and were more or less wild.

The reason all the workers went up there was to round up, count and bring back some of the cattle. This they did in a whole flock of ancient and very battered American cars. Roaring around the place rounding up the cattle. I went up there once with them and had the time of my life in those huge Yank Tanks... Loved it. The only bit I did not enjoy was the sawing off the horns of the bulls. This was a brutal affair, the bull being wedged into a sort of wooden box so he couldn’t move his head or body.. then a worker would simply saw away at his horns until they came off... Blood and screams galore... Not nice.

What else from that life? Well I leaned how to ride a bike while I was there, the rather older daughter of our nearest neighbours, a family called Brown who worked on the farm, owned a huge bike, and she showed me how to ride the thing.... Bouncing around the small paddock between her house and ours.. Enjoyed that.

One experience in that small paddock I enjoyed rather less was falling face first into a cow pat there one day... Still remember the revolting green sliminess of that crap...

Lorraine and I on a beach in Tassie

I used to go wandering around the surrounding countryside with friends, attempting to fish with bent pins on a bit of string tied to a stick... never caught anything but had fun doing that, and of course discovered all about leeches in the process.

And on one memorable occasion we came across a recently dead Tiger Snake, so we slung it over a stick and took it proudly home to show our parents... They were horrified and took it off us instantly and gave us all a real bollocking..... even dead snakes can be dangerous if there is any venom left in their heads and one gets pricked by their teeth we were told very forcibly. But their reaction was a source of great amusement to us horrible kids. We were country kids and of course knew all about that danger already.

I also hunted rabbits most days before going to school. I went out with Russ's .22 rifle and shot a handful of rabbits, cut of their tails and slung the bodies into the chicken run for the chooks to eat. The tails I brought to the Police Station in Burnie and was given I think, 1 shilling for each tail. Good source of pocket money.

On the other hand, I often went around with the old bloke who set gin traps by all the rabbit warren entrances. These things I hated with a passion, as they are totally cruel and horrible. They almost never killed the poor old rabbits, but grabbed them by a leg, their belly or some other part. So I used to go around after the things had been set, and sprang them with sticks....

For me, that was an entirely idyllic period of my life... I loved that farm and the people who worked on it. They treated me with gentleness and as one of them.... Pissing matches against trees with the men workers (who could piss higher) and so on.. All good stuff for a small boy.

We then moved (I have no idea why) to a very strange and Gothic old house owned by two horrible old women, who among other odd things were holding an equally old and totally nutty man prisoner in their house. This they did by the simple means of not letting him have any pants or boots, so he sort of wandered around naked from the waist down. I never did sort out what on earth that was all about. But they were two hateful and scary old women. I lived in real fear of them, and have one scar from them that has been with me all of my subsequent life. They insisted that one should only use three pieces of lavatory paper to wipe your bum... I still have a twinge if I use more than three sheets... Strange isn't it?

After that we moved – to my great relief – to what is called a Slab Hut in Australia, a shanty made from corrugated iron on a beach at a place called Penguin. This was really primitive in every way, no electricity, running water or anything. There was a well with a hand pump, and to wash clothes or get any hot water there was a wood fired thing which did that for us. I have reasonably pleasant memories of that one. But nothing much apart from the fact that we lived there and a mental image of what it looked like.

While all of this was going on, Russ had been running a dental practice in Burnie and arranging for a house to be built for us to live in... And in due time it was finished and the proud Builder welcomed us to live in our new house. We rapidly discovered that the idiot in typical idiot builder tradition had not bothered to connect any of the house drains to any drainage system, it all simply emptied itself out underground in the back yard... All water and of course lavatory stuff went there.. So in no time a horrid, stinking swamp was the result. Somehow this was all sorted out, I have no recollection how, and we settled down to an uneventful life in Burnie.

A friend and I standing outside the drainless house in Burnie
I think the small person in the pram was probably my sister Sandy, but it might have been my brother Nick... Simply don't know.

At some point in all of this I had acquired a Cocker Spaniel called Kim as a pet, which I of course loved dearly, but have no particular memories off. I simply remember my sadness when we left Tasmania, and I had to leave her behind.

Whilst I enjoyed my life in Tasmania, my mother had a rotten time of it. Actually she had nothing other than horrible experiences in Australia by and large. As a child she had lived in France and England, and then during the war she spent her time with musicians, artists and actors, and generally was a very cultured woman, so when she got to Australia she was regarded as some sort of weird “arty” and socialist person (she had been a member of the Communist party briefly during the war), and on top of that, she was a divorcee, all things that were totally unacceptable in post war Australian society.. So she acquired a life-long loathing of all things Australian understandably enough. Australia in those days was an intolerant cultural desert, not a nice place at all if you had any interest in the arts, which she decidedly did. Poor woman.

Also while in Australia my sister Sandy and brother Nick were born,,,, So were were a complete family.