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Aussietrekker's memoirs (in many instalments)
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 19, 2014 3:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

And so we embarked upon our first long walk to the new school. For Martin and Colette, the walks would last for three or four years, but for myself, it would be no more than four weeks- being at the tail-end of Grade Six and the end of the Australian school year which occurred in December.
Yesterday, we'd been pupils at St. Mary's in Williamstown, today we would join St. Mary's in Altona. Two schools, both called St. Mary's, but in appearance they were poles apart. The new school was half the size of the old one, and only one storey high. It was a single cream-coloured Spanish style building, and incorporated a tiny church which was flanked by the few classrooms. Even though the school was also much smaller in population, I do not know how it was possible to fit so many children into its interior. A very small concrete playground stood between the school and the timber multi-purpose hall. There was neither football ground nor basketball court here...just a solitary goalpost at each end of the concrete. It was a stark contrast to the affluence of the church and school we had just left. But in between the school and the presbytery at the corner of McBain Street, a magnificent new modern church was under construction. Directly across the street was the railway station, behind which was Pier Street, and the main shopping centre. The two priests lived in an ordinary house at the street corner. A few doors from the school at the Sargood Street corner, was another ordinary brick house, which housed the nuns. It was identified only by a brass plate on the wall, which read ST.JOSEPH'S CONVENT. Like our previous teaching staff, the nuns belonged to the Sisters of St.Joseph. There was no affluence here, no need for the nuns to take a taxi each day from a sumptuous historic convent. In fact, there was not one double-storey house in the whole of Altona in November, 1964.
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 19, 2014 4:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whereas the school we had left had an attractive uniform, the Altona version was hideous, and I was glad to be at the end of my primary school days and would never have to wear it. The dress was a plain dark blue, almost black, with a horrible white rounded collar. It was totally the wrong choice of colour for a summer dress, as it would have given no relief on the hot days, but on the constructive side, it could provide excellent camouflage for ink spills, as the fabric matched exactly what was in our inkwells. Equally ugly was the hat. Not the nice sturdy velour hat with a striped band and metal badge, but a navy beret, which made the girls look like they were diminutive volunteers for St.John's Ambulance. The boys were spared these indignities, with only a solitary school jumper to align them with St. Mary's.
As well as having a much smaller student intake, the school demographic was vastly different. The most obvious difference was the proliferation of children from Mediterranean migrant families. In Williamstown every class had some token Maltese or Italian children, but in Altona, they were well represented. Most of the others had the status of being the children or grandchildren of the "Parish Pioneers" or prosperous local Catholic business owners. A novel addition was the R.A.A.F. kids. They were bussed in each day from the Air Force base in Laverton, and there were also several children from the large Laverton Housing Commission estate.
Colette went into Grade Two with its 80 pupils and a very nice Irish nun named Sister Killian, Martin's Grade Three teacher I don't recall, and I had the good fortune to be taught by the pleasant Sister Veronica herself, in a composite class of Grade 6,7 and 8.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 2:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't remember having to march into class each morning, but each day started with prayers and singing of hymns just like in any Catholic primary school around the world, and the blackboard was headed by the now familiar "AMDG". Sister Veronica delegated three or four very tall girls to take me under their wing, which they did beyond the call of duty in the ensuing days and weeks. In the yard at lunchtime, I was given the curiosity of an endangered species. Being the only Ulster family in the school, our accent was found to be fascinating by the other children, who gathered around in awe, periodically whispering to each other "I like the way she talks!". My new friends spoiled me rotten at the tuckshop each day, always buying me one of whatever they bought for themselves. To me, they seemed to have bottomless purses. These girls were not only much older than me, they came from families where they had older brothers and sisters, some of whom were married. One girl even had nieces and nephews. It must have seemed very sophisticated to me at the time, and I enjoyed the attention. For the month I spent in grade Six, I was their darling. It was a nice place to be.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 3:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The tuckshop, like everything else in this new school, wasn't a patch on the old one. The lolly selection was very limited, replaced by snacky biscuits called Cheddarettes. These MSG-riddled items tasted glorious. They still, thank heavens, sold the long thin icy Pipeline Petes, but here they were called Slippery Sams, and they contained enough Azo Dyes to cause a potential epidemic of cancer. But both parents and children were blissfully ignorant of such things back then.
The nuns, as mentioned before, only needed to roll out of bed into the classrooms each morning. I recall most of them as being very cheerful and approachable if you wanted to yarn with them in the playground at lunchtime. They ranged in age from the youthful Sister Timothy to that oldest-of-life-forms, Sister Denise. It was impossible to estimate her age, but if there are indeed such things as the reported sightings of Alien Grays, the colour of this lady's reptilian skin alone would have qualified her as the Missing Link. I'm told she dropped dead in her classroom a few years later. There was also a Sister Aloysius and Benedict, and a tiny little Irish nun - one of the nicest I ever met- called Sister Columban.
There were two priests, an old one called Father Nooney and a young one, Father Rubeo. Father Nooney was lovely, and I never saw him without a smiling, benign face. Father Rubeo was cocky and confident, with a sharp wit that flowed into his comical sermons, which often had the congregation in stitches. Soon after our arrival in the parish, someone left him a load of money. That puzzled me, as priests were always poor like Jesus, so wouldn't he have to give the money away? So I was greatly relieved when he spent it on taking the altar boys on a holiday to Tasmania, and thereafter thought of him as being very kind for doing so. Hmmmm....just like the Azo Dyes in the Slippery Sams, the parents and children knew not what they know now.
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 4:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Can't wait for the next instalment on that one!
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 4:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well there won't be one! Because a google search will give an instalment that can surpass anything I could write! Shocked
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 22, 2014 8:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I remember several trivial events from those four weeks at St. Marys including, believe it or not, the names of nearly all my classmates, most of whom I never saw again. I remember selling raffle tickets in the yard at lunchtime, for a doll's bassinette, and having a communication struggle with a little Prep girl who wanted to buy a ticket. I didn't know what a bassinette was, and it was only when Sister Benedict came over and bailed me out that I discovered it was a cradle, familiarly known in Ireland as a "Moses Basket".
As it was approaching the end of the year, things were very relaxed in the classroom. One day, Sister Veronica (maybe in an effort to get rid of the girls for a few hours?) announced that those who would be attending the new St. Joseph's College after Christmas could go on a tour of the school. An excited procession of us walked unsupervised all the way along Railway Street to Maidstone Street, and we felt so grown up.
Another outing for four responsible Grade Sixes was an afternoon off to attend the Junior Council meeting at the Civic Centre. This valuable initiative was probably the first of its kind, and involved the monthly input from four children from each of the local primary and high schools, at a meeting in the Council Chamber which was chaired by the Shire President, Mr.Ginifer. The children from St. Mary's only had to walk up the street and cross Civic Parade. The others were picked up in busses. As well as getting most of the the afternoon off, the children were liberally provided after the meeting with bottles of Tarax and cream cakes from Noonans! Upon returning to school, a report was given on the agenda discussed. Someone had talked about Air Pollution. I didn't know what it was, but it sounded boring. I was more interested in hearing about the epidemic of rats which were harbouring in the quarry up Miller's Road, on which the Altona Gate shopping centre was eventually built.
As Christmas approached, the weather became hotter. The girls started coming to school with fistfuls of Christmas cards to give to their friends. At 3d. a pop, it was not an extravagance within my own budget. The cards in those days were large and solid, of the French Fold type, which was a sizeable piece of card folded in four. They died out long ago, and gradually degenerated into the scungy items of today that curl from underneath and refuse to stand up on any surface.
I remember prize-giving day. Children were ranked by number according to achievement, or lack of. It was an honour to be declared First in the Class ( I had done it once in Ireland) but in a class of up to 80 kids, someone had to be bottom of the class. Imagine parents tolerating that assault on childrens' rights today!
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 11:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Of all the things to remember, one of my most vivid recollections was of the Fly Spray Competition. One afternoon, the class was told to get busy creating a slogan on how to combat disease spread by flies. The best would be entered in a schools' competition. Most of the kids' creations went no further than "buy a can of Mortein", but there was no commercialism permitted. That caused a dilemma, as imaginations were stretched. Knowing next to nothing about flies, the afternoon became arduous as I struggled to think of anything to write. There was a whiz-kid in the class, a girl called Ann who lived down the Birdcage (a new housing estate near the golf course, where all the streets were named after birds). With her black hair cut in a 1920's style, she was like a walking encyclopedia from some bygone era. Ann was smart and articulate, well ahead of her time, and she scooped up a jackpot of books on prize-giving day. Had I been in the class for the whole year, it would have been my mission to attempt to give her some competition. But in the Fly Spray competition, I would have failed miserably. While the entire class was struggling with life beyond Mortein, Ann came up with a catchy little poem with rhyming words such as "germinating" and "exterminating". I thought it was brilliant. As time ran out, the best I could come up with was:
"GET RID OF THE FLY. IT WILL MAKE YOU DIE."
It wasn't chosen.
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 14, 2014 11:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

As each day went by, the class was getting more and more into the Christmas spirit. I learned some beautiful Advent hymns, and we sang the familiar Christmas carols. In the afternoons, the class wall-mounted radio would be turned on to the the Schools' Broadcasts from the ABC, and we would learn to sing along with "An Australian Christmas Carol". It is still one of my favourites to this day. At the time, it sounded exotic and magical, and the lyrics so far removed from a Northern Hemisphere Christmas song.
It went:
The North Wind is tossing the leaves
The red dust is over the town.
The sparrows are under the eaves
And the grass in the paddock is brown.
As we lift up our voices and sing
To the Christ Child, the Heavenly King.

The tree ferns in green gullies sway
The cool breeze flows silently by.
The joy-bells are greeting the day
And the clouds are adrift in the sky.
As we lift up our voices and sing
To the Christ Child, the Heavenly King.[i]
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 14, 2014 11:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Walking home from school each day was an event in itself, and there were many comparisons to be drawn with walking home from school in Ireland. The December sun was blazing in a blue sky, and the entire town was flat as a tack, with all the streets on the same level and not the slightest hint of a rise in the ground for miles. The houses in Bangor had been built upon hills both gentle and steep, known as Drumlins, and this was the default landscape for most of our part of Ulster and beyond. Our own street had been located on a very steep hill, and our backyard itself had a gradient so steep that my Dad had once concreted a load of steps to access our terraced vegie garden. In the wintertime, walking to school was precarious in the slippery ice, and navigating those slippery streets could guarantee falling over so often that we would be soaking wet by the time we arrived very late to the school. But those days were now gone, never to return.
Another noticeable danger had also been eliminated forever from our childhood. We could walk to and from school without being victims of sectarian attacks by other children. No more would we be bailed up by the children of local bigots, or have to run the gauntlet passing the "Hill School" down the road from our own, and be asked "are you a Fenian?", a question that led to an inevitable beating up, verbal abuse or stoning. For that alone, I will always be thankful to my parents for taking us to the other side of the world. In Australia's past, there had been something of a problem- as anyone who was raised in the 1930's would testify- but nothing on the scale of what was the daily occurrence in Ulster. In an era when the dangerous colonial cocktail of religion, politics, economy and gathering of wealth ruled the roost, there was sure to be some residual tribal antagonism. In Melbourne, the climate had long festered in the presence of one Archbishop Mannix, a powerful Irish import who pontificated from St. Patrick's Cathedral and his grand mansion "Raheen" in Kew with a rod of iron. But Mannix had recently died, age 99 years and 9 months, and the spell was broken. Newcomers like ourselves had inherited an emotional climate where no-one cared what anyone's faith-background was, and in fact, the majority of Australians we would meet in the future avoided churches and religion like a plague, but would always do you a good turn and make you feel welcome. Some of these good folk liked to refer to themselves as "Bush Baptists" or "Wheelbarrow Baptists", a quaint term to assert that they "didn't go anywhere, but would never do harm to anyone". In such widespread company, I was growing to love the Australian way of life more and more.
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 2:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There was a lot to see on these long and sunny walks home. There were no rows of identical houses like in Britain- every house in Altona looked different to its neighbour, and was single-storey. The "domestic architecture" was eclectic, and ranged from home-made fibro-cement shacks (whose owners must have been grateful for a lenient or non-existent Building Permit) to the master-built Italian brick offerings, which became known to all as
"W@G" houses". These structures were bombproof, and could be identified by a matching brick garage, excessive use of ornamental wrought iron, scalloped curtains and an exotic painting on the meter box. Another giveaway was a front garden full of vegetables or the the favoured Dahlia in multiple colours. The most common housing was double or triple-fronted weatherboard or brick veneer, like the one we had just moved into. These were interspersed with all sorts of strange-looking dwellings, as well as with many blocks which were vacant, and would often remain so for years. The vacant blocks were interesting. Most had yet to be built upon, but some had held a previous habitation that had long been pulled down, and I used to love checking them out for "garden remnants". Then I would excitedly pick a bunch of flowers for Mum. The most common flower of these derelict gardens was the Zantadeschia, or Arum Lily. Mum and I thought they were lovely, but an English neighbour almost screamed at me one day when I brought her a bunch. Apparently where she'd come from, they were associated with funerals, and having them in the house would guarantee the attentions of the Grim Reaper.
A lot of these vacant blocks had one or two horses or sheep grazing, so it often took a while to get home, as we would stop and call the sheep over for a pat. But some of the blocks had goats, and some of those goats could be very nasty. They would charge over to us with heads in butting mode, and we'd run away. We soon got to know where the goat-houses were, and no matter how beautiful the flowers were, they would have to stay there. Some of the blocks contained two houses- a shack that was lived in, and a real house under construction. It was not uncommon for European families to live in this way. Mama and Papa would work like slaves in local factories during the week, and build the house themselves on weekends.
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 3:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There was a little housing estate called Seaholme, where an organised house-building cooperative by British migrants had been implemented in the previous decade. It was a goodwill participation-equity system by a dedicated team of volunteer labourers and skilled tradesmen, who would be in a queue to take possession of a house as it was completed. It was a successful venture, and many of those houses are still lived in.
The weatherboard houses were painted in various colours. White and lemon were common for British migrants and Australians, but a colourful or garish colour scheme would always be inhabited by a Maltese, Italian, Greek or Yugoslav family. The mothers, tending the vegies or flowers in the front gardens, would also be dressed in colourful clothing and head scarfs, except for the many who wore all black. These "black widows" were compelled to dress in mourning for a year after a close family member had died, and if there had been a run of deaths in the family, numerous years could pass before normal garb was resumed. I recall seeing some of these women dressed in nothing in black for the whole eight years I lived in Altona. A couple of miles away in North Altona, which was predominantly of European settlement, the pavements were thick with these young and old women, dressed from head to toe in black scarf, dress, cardigan, stockings and shoes. They must have been so hot in the summertime. My Mum had never seen anything like this before, and was initially fascinated. There were few tall beauties among them...they tended to be of a short, squat physique, and Mum genially compared their shape to the radiogram we had bought at the Footscray Auction.
One house stood out on the way home from school like no other. It was rendered white with an Art Deco look about it, and the main bedroom was a bulbous outcrop. This gave it the nickname of "The Toilet Roll House" and that's just what it looked like. It is still there, surviving among the encroaching two-storey "mansions" in Civic Parade.
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 10:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Every garden we passed had its individual fascination, from the letterboxes to the meter boxes. None of the front doors had slits for mail delivery- there was a metal or wooden postbox at the bottom of every driveway, mounted on a post. Sometimes they would be built into a brick wall. The postie would ride by quickly on a red bike, and blow a whistle when the mail was dropped. As it was the custom for most houses in Altona to have no front fence or wall, the whistle frequently caused the resident dogs to race out and harass the postie, and so it was eventually discontinued.
The decorations on the meter boxes were diverse. Those that lacked imagination had only a diagonal line dividing them into two painted panels. Others had plastic figures mounted onto them, like the one with the cowboy riding a horse which graced our own house. Now and again we would see a Maltese Cross, proudly displayed, and I will never forget the magnificent hand-painted galleon sailing in a sea of choppy waves. Many of the gardens were full of tacky ornaments, ranging from gnomes to full-size plaster storks, koalas etc. A timber house would often have one or two fan-shaped trellises by the doorway, which would feature a climbing plant, and another favourite garden ornament was the giant wagon wheel. Walking home from school was never boring.
If we chose the alternate route along Railway Street, we would see more of the same, with the addition of a railway line dissecting the long street. Between Pier Street and what was then known as Grieve Highway, nine blocks away, the track was open and unfenced, and could be easily crossed by children making a shortcut. It was perfectly safe, as no trains ran on that stretch of track until the early 1980's. So I was puzzled to see a series of scary signs that read CONTACT WITH OVERHEAD WIRES WILL CAUSE DEATH! There were no wires, and never a train, and I found out recently that the abandoned track had once been used to ferry coal from the mines near Maidstone Street.
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 11:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In a short time, I became part of a group who took the same route on the long walk home. There was Philip, a Maltese boy with numerous brothers and sisters, who lived not far away in Civic Parade, and his Italian mate Nicky, who lived the furthest away at the back of Harrington Square. And a brother and sister from Grade Seven, Frankie and Dorothy, who lived in Rose Street. They were all pleasant children, and I enjoyed their company each day.
We got wind of some "freebies" via the other children, and would make a pit stop on most days to collect a treasure. Crossing the railway line to the Upton Street shops, you could get a free blotter, which on one side had blue printing advertising the various shops and their services. But the best was the promotional "play money" from the Dry Cleaners at the bottom of Pier Street. Although it involved a two-street detour in the opposite direction it was worth it. All you had to do was walk up the steps to the ricketty wooden shop and ask, and the nice lady would give you a few fake pounds each day. In no time we had built up a great collection, well enough to keep us in games of "wee shops" throughout the summer.
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 4:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There was one house occupied next door on one side, and three vacant blocks on the other side. Our new neighbours were a family from London, and I remember going into their house on the night we arrived, and my parents and the new neighbours comparing construction and decorating. I remember their walls were stencilled all over in a floral pattern, like fake wallpaper. I had not seen anything like it, and it looked like every flower and leaf had been painted by hand. There were very few houses at our end of the long street, but when I started going into the more established houses at the other end, I would make observations and compare them to our own. It was a strange thing for a ten-year-old to do, but I was a stickybeak and the whole experience of being thrust into a brand-new housing estate, so different in appearance from what we'd had at home, was still very novel. The "established" houses on the Wimpey Estate down the street had been built and occupied since only the year before, but there was already a close-knit community down there, which failed to take hold in the upper half of the street where the houses were privately built, and where, like my own parents, people kept mostly to themselves. The proximity of the two back-to-back schools no doubt contributed to the thriving interaction at the lower end, as every house was full of young children who went to school together with their neighbours. None of them went to St. Mary's. Their houses were also very similar, with three or four styles repeated throughout the streets, and they all had the same white timber horizontal railed fencing, not unlike an endless horse property. They also had one thing in common that I envied for
a long time...a green, grassy lawn! I would walk among these houses on many a night after a "scorcher", and see loads of happy children cooling off barefoot under a sprinkler over green grass. No doubt, all these lawns had been established by Wimpey as part of the package, but at No.62 and in our part of the street in general, there was no such luxury. In fact, there was a reason why the Wimpey houses ended where the private houses began. At this point the building ground became very difficult, consisting of a concoction of nasty clay and almost impenetrable rock. It was sold off as individual house lots, and the builders and occupants would take their chances. So any hopes I entertained of having a front garden anytime soon were a waste of time. I was told that the clay would have to be dug up and turned over again and again, then topsoil would have to be bought and spread, grass seed planted, then more waiting. Although we all went to work digging, little progress was made as the clay became rock hard in the relentless sun. For what seemed like years, our front garden (or lack of) consisted of giant clumps of clay, hewn out by Dad's shovel, which could be hopefully broken later into small clumps. Hosing these large clumps to speed things up didn't help much, as the clay hunks were transformed into a horrible runny yellow-brown and the water had little impact beyond the surface. And when it eventually rained, and poured, the whole frontage between the two fences gave the impression that our new house had contracted Dysentery.
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