Jod's Friend Hector

On this Labour Day holiday today Jod's old friend Eric Neil from Syndal tech days of the early-mid 1960's visited him at the farm. I spent a half hour or so talking to them both about days gone by and about Eric's family. Eric has a twin brother Don who lives in Perth and some years ago Jod went over and stayed with him for a week or so.

I had only vague recollection of Don and Eric who are identical in appearance, but I remembered them being at our house in Mt. Waverley. They had an older sister Nanette whom I never met but Jod reminded me last week when talking about Eric's visit that he had a crush on her way back then and carved her name into his forearm with a knife. Jod, Don and Eric were a couple of years older than me. Don was the quieter of the two apparently and a brilliant wood carver and makes walking sticks and knives and many other things. There was a younger brother, Les, but I don't think I ever met him, and another sister, and an older brother Perry whom I met a few years ago when he visited Jod. Eric still works as a chippy as he has all his working life and for a long time has worked at the Hazlewood power station. All the Neils were creative and talented, and could do anything with their hands, according to Jod.

Jod and Eric today

I was glad I took the time to talk to Eric, he had many good stories and it occurs to me that last 50 plus years of the Neil family would make very interesting reading as a social history record of recent Australian history . Not that I will get far into it here but just a snippet will explain somewhat my point.

So there were six kids in the family. They lived at Notting Hill and their house was surrounded by paddocks. Their father was of Scottish origin and a commercial painter by trade. He was a heavy drinker Jod says. He would take two big full size cans of Fosters with him to work wrapped in newspaper and have one at morning tea time and the other at lunch. Around afternoon smoko he'd say he was going to look at a job, but go to the pub. Don and Eric were with him one time and before morning smoko, Eric, who was the prankster of the twins, took his beer cans out of the bag and sat them in in the hot sun for a while then shook them vigourously before wrapping them again in newspaper and put them back. You can imagine what happened when he opened the first can, then the second, and he went nuts.

 Older brother Perry went to Vietnam, as a conscripted soldier in one of the early intakes. He was seriously wounded when his company was ambushed. They thought they were setting up an ambush on the basis of intelligence, but in fact it was a trap. Eric said that Perry remembered seeing a Vietnamese hurrying across a field with a rocket launcher on his shoulder. He took a shot at him and thought he got him but at almost the same time an explosion sent him flying as a rocket went off close by. A piece of shrapnel passed through his midriff and came out his back and also left his penis dangling by threads. He remembered being loaded onto a helicopter on a stretcher and seeing one of his mates also come on board but with two hands holding his guts from falling out completely, and with a lot of dirt and sticks adhering to the whole mess. Perry was patched up and his penis sowed back on properly in hospital where he was for a long time and amazingly survived. He was told he'd never walk again and would probably not survive more than five years. He was in a wheelchair and constantly dosed up on painkillers, for years I think.

I don't know how it came to be but Perry somehow got off the drugs and out of the wheelchair and fathered two children and is alive and quite well today. The ambush killed 16 Australians and wounded 32 and Eric said it was reported in the Melbourne press on Labour Day in a tiny article on page 3, while the front page had pictures of the King and Queen of Moomba. It was Australia's second largest Australian engagement in Vietnam he said, Lon Tan the largest. He said it was the Coral battle or something I didn't quite catch, but I have not checked it to be accurate with the name.

Don joined the army after leaving school and spent 9 years as an army cook and also went to Vietnam. Eric said he was also in hospital there, with blokes in beds around him who had their hand/s blown off of or arm/s or leg/s, or other horrific injuries, and when they asked how he was injured he felt a bit bad saying "cutting onion rings", but in the tropical conditions a cut would blow up quickly if not treated properly and infection could lead to the loss of limb or partial. In later years Don worked as a cook for mining companies. He married and raised a family but his wife died recently from cancer. Eric married and still is and has grand kids.

Jod and Eric 50 plus years ago 

Nanette married twice and spent years working in the Mt Argyle mines in WA. She didn't have children and lives with her sister who never married, in Oakleigh I think. Not long after the Syndal tech days the family moved to Korumburra.  Brother Les was a mechanic and now lives in SA, at Hawker Jod thinks.

While I was in Jod's little house at the farm I couldn't help taking a shot of this pic on his wall of him and Chad Morgan of many years ago, probably early 1970's.

We are very lucky to have survived so many decades and have so much to look back over, good and bad, mad and sad. Old friends are a great thing to have.