Chapter 6: Escape from the Nest

Chapter 6: Escape from the Nest!

Age: 16

But First! More Maryborough Loose Ends![1]

During this past week I chatted with an eminent Medical Gentleman (You KNOW who you are!), and, in the course of our conversation, I mentioned that I had to leave out some incidents because, although they were happy memories, they seemed trivial.

He responded that, if they were happy, I should really include them, given that I had experienced a fair bit of gloom during my childhood. So, bowing to his (sensible) opinion, I bring you:

Flying kites on a Sunday afternoon:

One glorious, cool, windy, sunny, Sunday afternoon, when I was about seven, Ern took Les and I to the northern bank of the Mary River at Tinana, where we  met Brother Jim and his wife Peggy and her twin sister June. Jim had a kite, and he showed us how to fly it. We spent perhaps an hour there, and I was trusted to hold the string several times, as I watched the kite soar high above my head. It seemed like magic, and my spirits rose higher, I remember, than the kite itself.

Bruvver Bert’s Circus Act:

When he was 14 or 15, Bert went to a circus in Maryborough, and was particularly impressed with the sword swallower. The next day, he put on a show for Les (aged six) and little Norm (aged four or five). He had threaded several needles onto a long piece of cotton, after which he tied the ends together. Then, with suitable fanfare, his excited audience watched in delight as he lowered the cotton, with attached needles, into his mouth – and somehow let the cotton slip from his hand! Les and I were ecstatic! Not only was Bert a sword swallower, he was also a magician – he had made the needles vanish! We clapped and clapped. Mother took Bert to the doctor, and he had to eat bread and cotton wool sandwiches for a week.

Holidays with Austin and Win:  

Brother Austin was the one who missed our father most, and he felt betrayed when Mother married Ern. After a series of arguments, Austin left home at 14 and joined the railway department at a town west of Bowen. After we had moved to Maryborough, he visited for his first holiday. He stayed out late the first night, and would not get up for breakfast the next morning. Mum said, “Austin, Ern says you have to get up for breakfast, or you can’t stay with us any longer.” Austin said, “That’s fine,” and left for Sydney that day. I was too young (three or four) to pay much attention to the drama, but, when I was 11, Mum[2], Les and I flew from Toowoomba to Sydney to visit Grandma and Grandad Stabler (Mother’s parents).  

Three particular highlights stand out from this visit. One was discovering that I had all these OTHER relatives in the world – aunts, an uncle, and several cousins. A more impressive one was TELEVISION! My grandparents lived at Mascot, near the airport, and had a black and white television set that actually showed real pictures, not just test patterns! Mind you, the shows were fairly awful American pap, (Amos ‘n Andy is the only one I can recall) but, to an 11 year old, everything on television was incredibly exciting.

The best part of our visit was the way that my brother Austin and his bride, Win, showed us around. They took us on drives to scenic places, around the city, on the city and suburban trains, to Luna Park, and to a drive-in (we saw “Old Yeller, I think’). Austin and I somehow hit it off, and perhaps I confided a few things about life with Ern that touched a chord with him.

When Austin took us to the airport for the flight back to Toowoomba, he invited Les and me to come and stay with him at any time on our school holidays. The offer didn’t excite Les much, but me! Heck, I wanted to go straight home, pack, and come back down.

When Mum told Ern, he first said no, but then he thought about it a little more. I can see the brain cogs turning: ‘Hmmm, on the one hand, I am stuck with this lazy, stupid and rebellious little man, and on the other hand, I really don’t care much for Austin. If I send Norman to Sydney, Austin will find out what’s he’s REALLY like, and will regret having offered. And I will have some respite from Norman. Hmmm’.

(NOTE: The above does not in any way represent what Ern really thought. I had not at that stage mastered the art of mind reading. What he really thought was probably more along the lines of how much he would miss me for even a few weeks).

The outcome was that I had three glorious holidays of several weeks each in Sydney, with Win and Austin. I roamed the city by myself during the working week, helped Win about the house, climbed one of the pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, discovered the sinful fun of PINBALL machines in an arcade, and had incredibly exciting times at weekends. Austin drove us round to scenic spots, took us to beaches, movies,  … and my cousin’s wedding. I was fifteen, and had been used to beer from years of draining the dregs from the long-necks Mum and Ern drank each night (It was my job to take them and put them in the stack beside the fence). However, the most beer I’d ever drunk in one session was about a quarter of a glass. At the wedding, however, I decided that, after years of dregging, I was a seasoned drinker, and there were LOTS of beer on tap (and on tables) and very little supervision of a 15 year old from Maryborough. Every time I met Austin for the next ten years I blushed and apologised for messing up his car!

I just hadn’t paid enough attention in physics to the theory of ancient Greek who discovered some Law of Something (Not the Law of Gravel, which Isaac Newton discovered when an apple hit him on the head with such force that he fell onto some gravel, thus skinning both knees). Anyhow this ancient person said that if you put water into a bath and then put a person into the bath, the water level rises.

I think the corollary Law is that, when you put enough beer into an inexperienced drinker, in a fairly short time the beer will also rise incredibly quickly and, for some inexplicable reason, with carrots and tomatoes in it. (I must check this with Steve – he knows lots about physics. But I think that’s fairly right). So, this Greek was drinking beer in the bath, watching the water rise, drank too much, threw up, his wife came in and yelled, “You Reeka!” That’s how it was with me, but in a car, not a bath. And no one said ‘You Reeka!’

I will always owe a huge debt of gratitude to Austin and Win for the kindness and love they showed me, not just as a shy, lonely teenager, but all through the years.

Austin suggested that I come to Sydney after I finished school, get a job, and board with him and Win. Every Saturday morning he and I looked through the many, many pages of job advertisements in the Sydney Morning Herald, and I was very keen to go. Ern said no.

One final stray forever memory about Sydney. Lawrence the Drycleaners advertised their business on their vans that drove about collecting and delivering laundry.

The vans were painted a sickening puce/purple, completely opposite to the nicely toned cream with green letters on Ern’s Mattress King commercial van. I said to Austin how ugly it was to see these vans, and I wondered why they were painted in such bilious colours.

On my next visit a year later, he said to me one day, “Do you know any dry cleaning companies in Sydney?” I replied. “Only Lawrence the Drycleaners, the one with the horrible paintwork.” He replied, “Think about it. They are painted like that, not to look pretty, but so that you will remember the name if you ever need your clothes dry cleaned.” My first lesson about effective advertising.

I Gotta Get Out of this Place! :

Somewhere I have a vague half-memory that I have mentioned elsewhere my Year 10 Junior Examination results.  If I didn’t: here they are. If I have mentioned them somewhere else: here they are again!

English: A; Mathematics B: A; French: B; Latin: B; Mathematics A: C; Chemistry: C; History: Fail; Physics: Fail.

I will admit, right here, that I didn’t study very hard at high school. I never saw the point, given that I KNEW I was stupid (and lazy) and that I would enter the workforce as a labourer on the roads, working with our next door neighbour, Bob Kruger, for the Burrum Shire Council. 

After finishing my Junior Year, I couldn’t get a job, apart from a holiday one at Woolworths, where a very buxom young maiden named Laurel caused me to blush often, by asking me if I wanted to kiss her. I was about 1.5 metres in height (around 5 feet, for those used to the old standards), with a very fine crop of pimples, which stood out very nicely when I blushed. (Did I want to kiss her, dear reader? DID I EVER!!! Alas, I had absolutely no social skills with girls, and knew little of the physical differences between boys and girls except that girls had longer hair – this WAS back in the 1950s – and bumpy bits, and boys had secret bits that apparently girls didn’t. I knew very little about sex or sexuality).

Enough of the naughty dreams of sinful things I knew nothing about!

Ern decided that, since I was unemployable, I should return to school for Year 11 at least. I did, though most unwillingly. I pleaded to go to Sydney, but he thought Austin, who was married, working as a book keeper, and studying accountancy, would lead me far from the paths of virtue into a life of moral turpitude (or should that be immoral turpitude?).

Then, in April, came the LETTER, from the Public Service Board. Each year, after results from the Junior Examination were published, the Queensland Public Service invited selected applicants to join their wonderful, SECURE, boring, SECURE, workforce. (All students had to apply towards the end of Year 10).  Those with the very best results were offered positions in January, and were sent to the most glamorous Departments. The next best were offered positions in February, to the somewhat less glamorous Departments. In March, people with average results were offered positions with average Departments, and in April those with really poor passes were allocated to the bottom of the heap Departments.

I received my letter in April, and was invited to join the ranks of the minions within the Department of Machinery, Scaffolding, Weights and Measures, incorporating the Division of Occupational Safety AND the Government Horologist! (No dear, the Government Horologist is the Government Watchmaker and Clock Fixer, not what you thought at all!).

Ern decided that it would be best for him, my mother, and me, if I went into public service. My mother agreed, and I tried to conceal my unbridled joy, for fear he would change his mind.

Ern mapped out the move to Brisbane. I was provided with one pair of long pants (my first ever), several singlets and sensible underpants, two long-sleeved business shirts, one a seasick green, the other a bilious pink, a bank account with twenty pounds($40) in it for emergencies, and a stern piece of advice which has stayed with me, ever since. He said, “You had better keep this job. It’s the only one you’ll ever get.”

Ern also arranged that I would board at the Bulimba Hostel (at Bulimba, of course), and that Brother Les, who at that time was staying with our brother Bert and his Bride Carmel at Graceville, would also board at the hostel to keep me safe from the baser temptations of life. Me! Who had never laid a hand on a baser temptation! (No dear, that ISN’T what I meant. Now please wash your mouth out).

My salary to begin with, as a Junior Clerk on Probation, would be just on SIX POUNDS per fortnight gross ($12.00). I never knew there was so much money in the world! The hostel charged one pound five shillings per week for full board (breakfast, cut lunch, dinner), so I would have …. Um …four pounds 15 shillings to spend! (Less tax, which I hadn’t known about, and less the one pound a week I had to deposit into an account of Ern’s choice, which I couldn’t access until I was 21.

Freedom Day 1961:

            Soldier, Coming Home (unfinished)

After an undistinguished academic career,

the kid left home, just sixteen;

went to Brisbane as

a junior public servant.

Mouselike in his mediocrity,

but free at last, able to pursue

his grey dreams of security.

Ironically, Ern drove me to Brisbane (and my mother, of course), where we arrived on Monday May 1^st 1961, which was Labour Day/May Day (a Public Holiday). Les met us at Bulimba Hostel, where Ern met the manager, George Lambert, a tall, forbidding man with piercing dark eyes. I’m not certain what Ern told him, but I was acceptable enough, and Ern paid my first fortnight’s board.

We then trooped over to inspect my room in a tall, two storied building. Ern wasn’t particularly to find that I was sharing a room with an elderly English gentleman, and not with Les. I suspect Les arranged that deliberately, and, if he did, I silently applauded him for it.

My mother then instructed me on how to use the particular washing machines in the laundry room, and she and Ern drove away. Les then said he had something to do, and disappeared, so I spent the afternoon most pleasantly exploring my kingdom.

I checked out the large dining room (to find out when I could eat), and the community room (large stage, piano, darts, table tennis – happy Normie!). There was even a small room used as a library, with just the sort of books I liked to read – Westerns, murder mysteries.

I looked around the accommodation buildings more closely. There were three, two long narrow two-storied buildings behind the huge front building (reception, library, office, dining and community rooms), and a third across a small street, which contained the rooms for women and girls.

There were small lounge rooms with a basic table and a few chairs at each end of every building. Those became very important to me fairly quickly and also brought about my departure from the hostel. Poker games were played in several of those rooms most nights, and I became both hooked on and reasonably skilful at poker. Unfortunately, my communication skills weren’t quite good enough, because the people who owed me money tended to not pay, whereas those to whom I lost demanded and got instant payment.

The people at the hostel were mainly transients, merchant seamen, criminals, old, retired people with little means, people, like my room mate, in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s who spent their days and their pensions at the pub in Oxford Street., and young people fresh from the country, at the start of their working life.

Although I was threatened several times by some very rough people, I only had one fight at the hostel, and it was over who had booked the table tennis table. He and I had played several times, but we had a bit of a falling out in a game, and usually ignored each other. This night, he invited me outside, and my temper took me there, though I was smaller and far less muscled. I’m fairly certain he’s forgotten the incident, ( I met him briefly about eight years ago) but he certainly belted me around, fair and square, so I can say now, “I hold no grudges, Lenny Scanlen, just the memory.” Len retired a few years ago from the position of Auditor-General of Queensland, so he certainly did well with his studies.

I went down to the river, and looked at the brown water for a while, conjuring up a feeling of mystery and romance, that gave me a brilliant first line for a story I haven’t yet written – “Night … on the river.” Perhaps I am so awed by the perfection of that first line that, like the would-be author in Camus’ ‘The Plague’, I can progress no further.

Late in the afternoon I sat on a seat outside the main building, and was joined by a young man in a clean white shirt and long trousers. He introduced himself as Colm Bonar, and proceeded to destroy every misconception I had ever held about Irish folk. At school I had heard innumerable Pat and Mick jokes, all of which gave me the definite understanding that Irish people were all as thick as two planks, just as the Jewish people and the Scots were very stingy with their money. Colm Bonar was two years older than me, and was one of the most engaging, intelligent people I had ever met in my life. I thought I had found a friend, but he was only staying a fortnight, before travelling north, working when he needed to, seeing the sights when he had money. Many years later, when I saw ‘The Dave Allen Show’ for the first time, I thought he may have been Com with another name. The same engaging (if slightly lawless) smile, sharp wit, and capacity to keep the audience enthralled from beginning to end.

Wherever you are, Colm Bonar, I thank you for that conversation. When he left me to go into the city, it was time for dinner. The meal was average, but no one cared if my hair was combed, my nails were clean, or my shirt was fully done up. After dinner (no washing up, either). The dining room became a television room. Bonus!

Les de Leon, a curly-haired man in his forties, with what I now think would be diagnosed as osteo-sclerosis (he had a permanently bowed back) taught me to play table tennis, and he was seriously good. He worked for a government department, and was a very goodhearted man.

There were also two delightful young twin girls, very petite, who worked in government somewhere, and Les taught them table tennis too. I fell in love with Pam, who wore the most beautiful dainty ear rings. (True Confessions time: Because I had absolutely no clear or clever communication techniques (except with much older people) I could not possibly tell Pam of the molten feelings I had for her. I decided that I had to somehow make her feel very sorry for me, and come to my side, her moist eyes shining with love. My plan was simple in its execution, but the results weren’t exactly what I had hoped for. At around 7:00 p.m. one night, I walked up and down the street beside the women’s hostel, singing “Nobody Knows the Troubles I’ve Seen/Nobody Knows the Sooorrrrow/Nobody Knows the Heaaarrrrt Aches’ It’s such a Dark Tomorrrrow?” [3]I thought it was going well, until a louvered window opened above my head and a most unladylike voice shouted for me to “SHUT UP, FOR GOD SAKES!”

I did make a few friends at the hostel. Eric Read (known as Junior), who was my most regular table tennis opponent. Eric worked at the Department of Main Roads, and shared a room with Joe Aldridge, who was slightly slow in speech and movement, very crooked and protruding teeth. Joe worked at Perrot’s Nursery, and was one of the nicest, most honest people I had ever met. Unfortunately, I didn’t fully recognise it at the time, and I think that I used my not-so-nice wit against Joe at times. I know that he died, I read it in the paper. Forgive me, Joe, for any cruelty in the jokes I made.

The two close friends were a young Englishman named Peter, who had invented a horse racing game played with dice and tokens on a large sheet of cardboard with lines and colours making it look like a race course. Peter was responsible for my losing my best chance to that time of learning about IT! (NO, Dear, not WITH Peter! Wait until we get to that part … of the story).

The other was Tom Haddin, a man in his early 30s, with thick glasses and a boyish grin, and a huge enthusiasm for life. We three got on incredibly well, and at one stage decided to move in together, to a flat on the top floor of a building at eh corner of Harcourt and Brunswick Streets, New Farm. Ern said no. Sigh. The flat is still there, and I look at it longingly whenever I go by.

Tom moved, becoming a boarder at a house in Mount Gravatt, and I visited him several times. Once he took me as his guest to the Belmont Rifle Range, and let me fire a couple of rounds from his rifle. I didn’t like it, but I never told Tom. The last time I saw him was on a clear evening, when many stars were in the sky, and Tom had just bought a wonderful new telescope, with tripod, to pursue his latest hobby, astronomy. I met him at his boarding house, and within we, plus the telescope and tripod, were walking up a track to the top of Mount Gravatt itself. Though the stars blazed in the trees, there were lots of trees along the way, and we stumbled from time to time. It was on this journey that Tom told me, casually, as friends do, that he suffered a condition which he called manic depression. This came not only as a surprise, but also, I regret, as a cause to be quite fearful. Here I was, trudging along a dark track, halfway up a mountain, with a man who had just told me he was crazy!

When we arrived at the top of the mountain, I became considerably more fearful very quickly. Tom was setting his tripod up in a space between two parked cars. Dotted round the area were several other parked cars. “Tom,” I whispered (remember that I was still incredibly innocent of many  - okay, virtually all – of the facts of life), “what are all these cars doing here?”

“Oh,” he replied, in a VERY loud voice, “that’s all the people who come up here to make love!”

At that moment, the two cars on either side of us roared away very fast and quite loudly. I decided to focus my gaze definitely and forever DOWN the mountainside, not turning my head at all, in any direction. A couple of centuries later, Tom had seen enough stars, and I had even looked through the telescope, but without seeing anything except blurs.

For whatever reason, Tom never contacted me again and, because his landlady either didn’t have a phone, or wouldn’t let her boarders make or take calls, I could not contact him. I went there once, but he was out.

I have often wondered whether he realised that I was less comfortable with him after he told me of his illness. Some years ago I came to terms with that, and I believe that, if Tom had contacted me again, we would even now be friends. I have only ever deliberately closed three deep friendships in my life.

Several times since then, I have started a story about that night. It always begins:

“Forgive me my madness, Tom, as I did not forgive you yours.”

Let me now close the door on my first Brisbane abode, the Bulimba Hostel, since rebuilt, and used now as either an Aged Care or Special Needs accommodation place.

And now, to fill up the rest of the page, (and to lighten the mood) I give you:

A Poem – by Little Normie Wotherspoon

I wish, o, I wish,

For a Jellybean Fish;

He could swim round my pond, like a king.

But I won’t say a word

To my Blueberry Bird,

He’s a TERRIBLY jealous old thing!

ANOTHER APPENDIX[4]

Bulimba Hostel

Joe Aldridge	Friend – had physical disabilities and slow to think and to speak – Honest, genuine, caring man
Colm Bonar	Irishman – witty, wise, mature, engaging
Les de Leon	Table Tennis Coach
Tom Haddin/Hadden	Suffered  Bi-Polar Disorder; rifle-shooter, astronomer, from Toowoomba, Thoroughly good friend.
George Lambert	Bulimba Hostel Manager
Len Scanlan	My only hostel fistfight (mainly my face hitting his fists) Became Auditor-General for Queensland
Pam	My petite, unrequited, lost love who never even knew my name!
Peter	Englishman, good friend, Enters story briefly at a later date.

---

[1] Thanks to Sabina for calling to mind that the song, “Susie Darlin’”, mentioned in the previous chapter, became a hit first for Robin Luke.

[2] As I grew older, I addressed my mother less as “Mother”, and more as “Mum”, something I suspect I learned from other children at primary school.

[3] Yes, I CAN still sing this, but I rarely do, fraught as it is with sad memories.

[4] I’ll sort out the Appendices after I have completed a couple (or three) which should fit in earlier.