Age: 17
The Ascot Months: There were a few significant incidents in my next Brisbane adventure, when I boarded with Margaret and Nev Lymbery, and their two small girls, Jan and Fay, at 99a Upper Lancaster Road, Ascot, right near Eagle Farm Racecourse.
It was a sudden move, precipitated by Brother Les, orchestrated by Ern, and totally unanticipated by young Norman. Brother Les, bless him, was deeply concerned that his little brother had become addicted to gambling, in the form of threepenny blind poker and, sad to say, he was right. Because he loved me dearly (and in no way because he wanted me to get into trouble with Ern), he thoughtfully wrote home, and expressed his shock and horror that I was being led deeper and deeper into a lifestyle of vice and vicissitude.
Shortly after this Mum and Ern received this letter, I went home to Maryborough for the weekend. It was a waste of a return ticket, really, because Ern, subjected me to a lengthy and totally appropriate diatribe on how I had let him down, the family down, myself down, my job security down, and most of the western world down. He then drove me back to Brisbane, and personally secured my new boarding situation. (I am fairly certain he sought character references from Margaret and Nev concerning their attitudes to gambling and other temptations in general). He also assisted me in enrolling in an economics/accounting course at a night school in the Trocadero Building at South Brisbane, which I believe was the forerunner to TAFE (the school, not the building).
The Lymberys had two dogs, Blackie, a black cattle dog, and Tiny, a small brown Heinz dog (57 varieties). After a few weeks, I discovered that I had absolutely no understanding of Economics or Accounting, so I spent my college evenings at the old State Library in William Street (in case the Lymberys had instructions to let Ern know if I missed any of my night schooling). Soon, however, I stopped going, because Margaret confided that she thought my stepfather was a bloody tyrant! After that I spent my evenings either running through Oriel Park with Blackie and Tiny, or playing match poker with the Lymberys and their previous boarder, Lyn Black, who was 19, gorgeous, and drove her VERY OWN mini-minor!
Lyn provided me with one of the most cringe-filled memories of my life. She clearly liked me, and on one of her visits, she asked me if I would like to go to the Gold Coast with her on the following Sunday. I was ECSTATIC! Tom and Peter and I had always discussed hitching to the Gold Coast one Sunday, but had never worked out quite how to go about it. Unfortunately, my memory got in the way of Lyn’s message, and I blurted out: “Oh yes, please! Can my friend Peter come too?” I noticed that Lyn looked at me in a rather strange manner, but, after a pause, she said, “okay.”
On the way to the Coast, I insisted on sitting in the back seat, and Peter and Lyn chatted fairly amiably all the way down and back. It was, I thought, a great day. After that day, Lyn didn’t visit the Lymberys again.
Some years later, I had a flash of understanding, and I realised that, when presented with opportunities, I didn’t have the faintest idea what to do with them! And, as I write this, I cringe.
The other memorable moment at Ascot was a particular Saturday, when I decided to visit my Brother Bert at Graceville. I walked down to the Eagle Farm railway station, to find that the next train departed after the last race. I had two pounds in my pocket, so I decided to go to the races. It was Stradbroke Handicap day, and I knew nothing about racing except that George Moore was a good jockey, and he was riding at Eagle Farm that day.
I backed every one of his horses, and he rode six winners, including Kilshery, the winner of the Stradbroke Handicap. It was a good day, and when I left, I had an extra ten pounds (more than two weeks wages) in my pocket, and I went home, stopping only to buy Margaret Lymbery a box of Cadbury Roses chocolates.
The only other happening of note was that the Lymberys had television, and we all watched shows such as Paladin and I think Bonanza. During the commercial breaks there were frequent ads for Alpine cigarettes, all of which showed a handsome young man attracting beautiful young women because he smoked Alpine. I took up smoking, though I had NO idea what I would do with a beautiful young woman when I attracted one. Most summer Sunday afternoons saw me at the Valley Baths, lying on my towel, smoking Alpine cigarettes, accompanied by much coughing and spluttering. Needless to say, the tally of beautiful young women attracted was NIL.
Nev Lymbery drove a truck for James Hardie and Company, and his income was not high, so, after I had been there a few months, another boarder came, named Jim, with his seven year old daughter Joanne. He was fine, she was obnoxious. After a few weeks, I realised that a seven year old would always triumph against a 17 year-old, so I sought alternative lodgings.
Miss Kluge, 30 Graceville Avenue, Graceville: Brother Bert came to my rescue, with the blessing of Ern. He found me a room not too far from his home, with a dear old spinster lady named Miss Kluge. She lived in a high-set house, with front verandah, and she provided full board to young gentlemen. In the few months I was there, Dave Laing came to stay. He worked for the National Bank, and came from Wandoan. He was obsessed with cricket, and we spent many hours batting or bowling in her side yard, using a large tree as the wicket. Dave damaged the tree a lot, because he was quite fast as a bowler, and I missed approximately 93.5% of his deliveries. He also introduced me to playing snooker at night in smoke-filled snooker parlours in the city, then having a lamb tongues on a roll at a cafe de kerb afterwards.
Miss Kluge had a collie which seemed to claim all of her affection, and she harboured a deep animosity to ‘those people over the road’. Unfortunately, I got talking (on the walk to the railway station) to the daughter of ‘those people over the road’, one Patricia Cox, who was a 16 year old schoolgirl, and she invited me over to play table tennis. We developed a firm friendship, and I spent many evenings over the road with Miss Kluge’s arch-enemies.
I also met a young girl, Lorraine Green, who worked in an office, and we played social tennis a few times. Once I even took her to the Graceville Picture Theatre, and once she took me to a party where I learned to dance the Wellington. Then her mother decided that she was too young for romance, and ended our innocent affair.
Lorraine
Lorraine Green. That’s who the band reminded me of, when they played their medley of old Beatles numbers. The years dissolved in the music, as she smiled in my mind.
We met, walking to the station, on one of those distant mornings which grow sunnier with passing time. She had lived her almost-sixteen years in the low blue house at the bottom end of Graceville Avenue, and I had been boarding with Miss Kluge for two months, in her faded, high-set house at the top end of the Avenue, nearer the station. Dear old Miss Kluge and her over-loved collie.
Seventeen and almost-sixteen shared the same section of road, at the same moment of time, that morning, and she smiled at me, for me. I don’t think any girl had ever smiled for me, before that morning.
“Hello,” I said, “walking to the station?” or something equally silly.
“Yes,” she replied. “You live at Miss Kluge’s, don’t you?”
She had an innocent, natural manner which set me at ease, and we warmed to each other immediately. We chatted all the way to the station.
After that first morning, we met almost every morning; I made sure of that. I would stand on Miss Kluge’s worn wooden verandah, peeping through the louvers until Lorraine went past – a minute or two later, I left the house. She always dawdled, and I strode out quickly, and caught her just the other side of Oxley Road. We sat together on the train, sometimes with her friend Kerry.
I caught different trains home for a week until I caught the right one. Her train home then became my train home. We walked together to Miss Kluge’s, sharing the day’s trivia, smiling a lot.
“Do you play canasta?” she asked.
Canasta? I’d never HEARD of it!
I shook my head. “No, but I’ve always wanted to learn it.”
On Friday night that week, I visited her home, and learned canasta. I met her parents, her brother, her girl friend Kerry, and found the game easy to learn. I enjoyed myself.
“Please please me”, sang the Beatles one Sunday afternoon, during canasta.
“I like the Beatles,” I said, knowing that she had bought the record.
Lorraine smiled, pleased, and the sun shone in my world.
“Would you like to come to a barbecue on Saturday night?” she asked.
I was cautious, afraid, and shy with my peers. “Um, who will be there? What will we do?’
“It’s just a few friends. We’ll sit by the river, and eat, and listen to music and dance a bit.”
“But, I don’t dance!” And I was terrified of any occasion that showed up my ignorance and lack of social skills.
“Everybody dances; besides, there’s a fabulous new dance called the Wellington. It’s simple – I’ll teach you!”
The Wellington WAS an easy dance to learn and to do, and the barbecue, my first adult social outing, was a huge success.
Lorraine and I held hands going home, in the back of Kerry’s boyfriend’s car, and I kissed her goodnight at her gate. It was my first real kiss, a strange, gentle, innocent sensation, with a hint of something stronger yet to come.
I was invited down to tea on a Sunday night for Lorraine’s birthday, and I gave her a little locket that was far too expensive for the occasion, and for the stage our relationship had reached. Later, on the tiny porch, chaperoned by moonlight, we kissed, long, tenderly. I felt the first, sweet, gentle touch of love.
“That was the best birthday present I’ve ever had,” she whispered, standing beside me on the moonlit porch.
I floated home, in love, in love.
“Would you like to go to the pictures?”
“I’d love to, if my mother doesn’t mind.”
We went by train to Indooroopilly, and walked across the road to the El Dorado. I took her home by taxi that night, and we stood in the porch for a long, long time.
“My mother says we have to stop seeing each other for a bit. She thinhks we’re a bit too serious for our age.” She looked down at the ground.
Bent and broken dreams crumpled, crumbled, round my feet, my head, my heart.
“All right,” I said, and smiled, sadly.
Some months later, I met her in town. We chatted, like old friends, of nothing much. She had a new boy friend, I had a new job.
She rang me two weeks later – could I meet her for lunch? Of course!
She was in love, with a law clerk in her office, but her mother wanted her to end the relationship. Could I think of anything that might help?
Not really, I told her, except perhaps to wait a little longer; that love would endure, if it were strong enough. She tossed her shining curls impatiently – “But I can’t possibly wait any longer! We love each other!”
“So did we,” I gently reminded her.
“Yes, but that, that was different.”
An empty silence followed the words. We spoke of getting back to work, awkwardly papering over the cracks.
Just over a year later, I wrote to her, because I was still lonely, and wanted a friend. The letter was returned, unclaimed. Perhaps her mother had returned it without Lorraine even seeing it. That seemed likely. Funny, I couldn’t even remember what her mother looked like. She was just a vague, forbidding shadow.
It didn’t really matter. For a time, I had known Lorraine, and had loved her. For a little time, she had once loved me.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’, sang the Beatles, but for me, the song had ended.
Norm Wotherspoon 1974
Miss Kluge and I parted ways, quite quickly, just after the 3rd of April 1963. We did not part on good terms, and the fault was entirely mine. At the time, I was working in what was then the State Government Insurance Office building, which was bordered by Adelaide, Edward, and Ann Streets, and Anzac Square, with the Eternal Flame, across from Central Station.
On my 18th birthday, I asked Ken O’Connell (who was not a friend, but the closest I had to one where I was working) if I could buy him a drink at lunch time. He accepted, and we had two beers each at the Globe Hotel, halfway along Adelaide Street towards the City Hall. Legal drinking age was 21 in those days, but the laws weren’t quite as strictly enforced back then.
After work, still in a celebratory frame of mind, I asked Ken if he wanted another drink. He said he’s like to, but perhaps not. I played my trump card – would he like a scotch (his favourite tipple, but a tad expensive for clerical budgets). He agreed, and we went back to the Globe.
I hope that all my young readers will pay close attention to the lesson I learned here, which was: NEVER, EVER take strong drink in large quantities UNLESS you have imbibed them before, and are fully aware of the consequences!
All that I knew of scotch whisky I had learned on television, so I blithely fronted the bar, and, in my most adult squeak (no, my voice hadn’t completely broken at this point), I asked for “Two double scotches on the rocks!” When I tasted the stuff, I realised that I didn’t like it at all. So, as a young would-be macho man-of-the-world, I drained my glassin two great gulps, and ordered another round.
On the following day, Ken told me that I had ordered four rounds of double scotches on the rocks – he had drunk three glasses, I had drunk five, and we left the bar after I had unsuccessfully failed to demonstrate my incredible agility in getting up from the floor unaided. He took me to Central Station, and poured me onto my train; he then asked two ladies to make sure that I disembarked at Graceville, I clearly remember this dreadful insult, and so I stood by the door from Indooroopilly Station onwards, so that no one would need to tell ME when to get off!
The two girls who lived next door with Mrs Hastie told me a few days later that they had seen me in the middle of Oxley Road, directing traffic, on my way home from my birthday drinks.
Miss Kluge was out, visiting a friend, when I arrived home. Dave Laing told me that she has prepared a special birthday dinner for me, and was MOST annoyed when I hadn’t arrived to eat it. She had thrown it into the bin.
After three days of absolutely no conversation from her except for meaningful sniffs, I spoke with Brother Bert, and he and Carmel accepted me into their home as a boarder.
Bert and Carmel, 78 Strickland Terrace, Graceville: I stayed a few months with Bert and Carmel, met several friends and neighbours, played tennis with them on Saturday afternoon at the Corinda School tennis courts (I was an untutored, ungainly tennis player, but I developed a fearsome smash from the net, which succeeded 50% of the time – pity I never learned to serve properly). Brother Les, who had moved back with them after I left Bulimba Hostel, was by this time working at the Mitchell Post Office, so there was room for little Norm.
After a few months, I moved again, but that is the subject of another chapter in my life in Brisbane before the Army.