More on Shit

I did talk to Elvie and Meredith about the sewage coming to our house in Mt Waverley and the toilet in Nanna and Poppa Williams house in Hartwell (that I could not remember). Elvie said the toilet there was inside and had the customary chain flush from a cistern on the wall above. She also said as far as she could remember the house at her home was connected to sewage all her life. She was born in 1928. She did say that her mother told her that her house in Donald St was the first in the area. I can't imagine that this house would have been connected to sewage at first but only old nanna could tell us and she died in 1996 aged 99. Old nanna was apparently so very lonely there at first during the day not having any neighbours, as their house was the first in the area. As time went by and other houses were being built around her she said it was a great comfort hearing the tradesmen and particularly their whistling as they worked. This area was known as East Malvern, then later as South Ashburton. Newer parts of Ashburton east of Warragul Rd were not built till the 1950/60's.

My recollection of the toilets at Mt Waverley Primary school were vague, except that they were rudimentary so I asked Meredith if she remembered. She did, saying they were disgusting, a handful of cubicles for the girls which were covered with roofing, but outside the cubicles there was no roof, a concrete floor and no hand basin, just a single tap in the corner which ran onto the floor into an open drain on the concrete covered with moss and slime. She said it was rarely cleaned, if ever. There was no piped sewage and the pans removed from the back by the dunnyman. There were many times turds on the floor because cubicles were full and it was a a totally freak out disgusting situation which was not changed until new toilets were built in her last year there which would I think have been in 1965.

My last year at that school was 1963 so I would have had the old toilets for my entire time there. This was baby boomer time and that school had more than 1000 pupils in the 1960's.  Meredith's recollection sparked some memory of mine which concurred with hers. It was frowned upon to ask to go to the toilet during class time and only if you were desperate for a crap were you allowed to put your hand up in class and ask permission to go to the toilet. Once when I did when I got there a kid from an older grade was balling his eyes out as he was trying to clean himself up after not making it and shitting in his pants outside the cubicles. The shit was on the floor and I had to step around it and him. He was a grade older than me and I always felt a little intimidated by him but I was moved by the abject misery of his situation. I guess we have all shat our pants at an inopportune time at least once in our lives. Good thing is we can put it in the past and move on.

Great Works

Great Works

I have been thinking about my septic tank cleaning of the other day and my wonderment at the huge task it is to deal with the effluent from a large city. My knowledge of the city’s sewage system is limited but it starts with a toilet or toilets in every house where people sit and open their bowels to dump their waste. (This in itself amazes me because it can be said that humans have a hole at the top into which we place our food and nourishment to provide sustenance and energy, and a hole at the other end of the alimentary canal where the waste is expelled. Attached to this of course is a set of arms and legs and a brain and lungs and various other organs and senses that enable us to function. Much of what we do in our daily lives is directly connected to the need to provide food to put into the hole a the top.)

The flushing of millions of toilets goes on every day and the effluent is piped from the household into a sewage system that runs down the street and joins with other pipes from other streets. I remember when I was a boy the sewage system came to our street in Mt. Waverley, prior to that we had an old timber dunny detached from the house with a wooden structure to sit on including a toilet seat, with a pan underneath to hold the weekly dumpings. A man with a truck filled with little compartments to hold the pans brought an empty one on his shoulder into the backyard. He’d go to the back of the dunny, open the trapdoor and drag out the full pan, put the empty one in then hoist the full one onto his shoulder. The dog used to bark and snarl at him but he was totally oblivious, ignoring it, as he walked unhurriedly back out to his truck. I guess he drove all the full cans to a tipping point where he tipped out the contents then hosed clean the pans, although I never thought to enquire what happened or where it went.

The sewage coming was a joyful thing, our house had been built with an inside toliet room about ten years prior, in expectation that a sewage system would follow. For about the first ten years of my life this little room was used for storage of things like gumboots and raincoats. I remember as a small boy I woke in the middle of the night busting for a pee and it was either raining heavily or I was too scared to go out to the outside dunny and in desperation I pissed in a gumboot, then promptly forgot about it the next day and not rinsing out the boot and drying it out. You can imagine the stench some time later when dad went to put on his boot. I did own up to this misdemeanor and was surprised that there was not serious punishment but rather much laughter, which recurred as the story was told over many years.

There was a big trench dug along the back boundary of our block and indeed the whole length of the street. From memory there was a digging machine of some sort but I think there was also a lot of hand digging as well because of difficult access. I recall there being a lot of mud and mess and it was great when it was all over and we had an inside functioning toilet. No one enjoyed going out to outside dunny on cold wet nights with a torch thinking about the red back spiders that hid in the woodwork beneath your bum. Little sister Meredith was always too frightened to go out by herself at night and many was the time I had to go out with her and wait till she was done.

During this pre sewage time at Mt. Waverley I recall now that when we went to my grandmother’s house in Ashburton there was a flushing toilet (outside) with a cast iron cistern suspended on the wall with a chain coming down to pull to release the water.  I think my other grandparents at Hartwell had a flushing toilet inside the house but I can’t remember any details so I must ask mum and Jod and Meredith if they remember. The grandparents’ houses would have been built in the 1920’s in Nanna Wilson’s case in Ashburton, and thereabouts for dad’s parents in Hartwell. As these suburbs were established the sewage was connected up earlier being closer to the city, and Melbourne’s sewage system I believe began in the 1880’s with a series of beautiful brick tunnels/pipes built in a labyrinth under the city in what was an engineering masterpiece for its time. This I learned from a visit to Spotswood pumping station when we had young kids at school. I think there was a gravity feed mostly to this site then with a huge steam engine driven pump the effluent was sent out to Werribee. I think this pumping station still operates but now with deisel or electric pumps. The guide telling us this at Spotswood said the most amazing things are found in the effluent as it is screened before pumping, including things like fingers and toes and bits of bodies and human foetuses.

Apparently prior to this sewage system Melbourne had reached crisis point. Human waste was dumped after manual collection on any vacant land and then main dumping stations which were filled to overflowing and serious disease resulted not to mention the stench. All of this I’m sure could be factually documented but this is not the purpose of my narrative here.

My sixty buckets of shit was a trigger that brought all these things to mind. This is what is happening to me at age 65. I reflect on things that have happened, or are happenning, and memories come back out of nowhere, some vague, some explicit, some pleasuring, some horrible and distressing. We carry around a bucket of shit with us from our past. It’s better dumped, maybe that’s what this about, I don’t know. I just know I’m going too write it all down.

Day Out With Thomas

Speaking of a bucket of shit, tonight I’ll be attending a meeting of the Puffing Billy Working Group which is a sub group of the newly formed Gembrook Community Group. The notice of this meeting came in an email –

 “There is a meeting at **** ****’s home on Tuesday 13th June at 7pm for the PBR Working Group to discuss the results of the Stakeholders working group meeting and to nominate representatives to be on the stakeholders working group and formulate a list of the concerns and issues to be resolved by the stakeholders working group including possible solutions for these concerns and issues  I encourage all members to attend this very important meeting.”

**** ****** Convener PBR Working Group “

There was a stakeholder’s meeting last week at the PB railway station which I did not attend and which was a follow up to a stakeholder’s meeting in May which I did attend. At the May meeting I was disappointed with the outcome as no concession came from PB Railway that there was to be any less, or any restraint of plans for, PB events in Gembrook for the 2017/2018 spring summer autumn season. The PB CEO said he could not give any assurance and he would take it to the Railway Board at their next meeting and was happy to meet with us again after that to tell us their decision. I told my fellow Working Group members that I did not think they would reduce the number of events or put plans on hold as they were requested. I said I would not attend any more meetings with PB staff as they were full of bullshit and made me want to spew up when I had to listen to it.

There were 20 events for the 2016/2017 season which in my view, shared by many, that this was an over the top intrusion to our town in terms of crowds and congestion of traffic, noise and dust. It was part of the PB Master Plan to make Gembrook the ‘Event Hub’ for Puffing Billy in order to increase patronage at the Gembrook the end of the line and make it pay and not lose money as it had been. So all the Thomas events were shifted from Emerald. That’s it in a nutshell. Many residents, of which I’m one, had objection to this and we have now become referred to as stakeholders.

On advice from politicians and Cardinia council whom I had written to in protest, I joined the new Gembrook Community Group which was formed largely as a result of this intrusion to our town with no consultation. The GCG established a sub group called the PB Working Group which I signed onto. I see in the notice of tonight’s meeting that there is to be a stakeholder’s working group formed. I’m doubtful at this point that I’ll participate any further beyond attending tonight to hear the result of last week’s Stakeholder’s meeting. A friend who did attend told me the PB CEO said there was to be no change to the number of events, but I want to hear what other strategies other people may have in mind, if any, before I make the judgement to dump this bucket of shit and move on.  

There have been umpteen meetings since the first information night held by PB on the 28 Sep last year when I first voiced my strong opposition. Here we are in June just a few months away from the new season’s events and PB have conceded nothing despite all our exhotations with council, politicians and State Tourism. They all say they support PB and cannot do anything about the events held in Gembrook.

Yes, time to dump this shit and move on. Thomas the Tank Engine is a nonsense built on the back of a commercial British TV show and a huge offshore toy company which takes a big whack of the revenue. Perverse social engineering. It indoctrinates kids with herd like mentality needing to be entertained by events and hoopla rather than educating them with things that matter, such as the natural environment and connection with mother earth. Kids don’t need much to be happy and they thrive with nature and activity. A bit of open space and bush or a bat and ball or a footy gave me a very happy childhood.     

Sixty Buckets of Shit

Today 10 Jun

I lifted the lid of the septic tank cautiously using a spade at first to prize it loose. When I could get my fingers underneath it I braced myself over it with knees and shoulders square and lifted the concrete plate which was about 2 foot by 18 inches and perhaps 3 inches thick.

Immediately visible on top of the mass in the tank was solid shit packed like a cake. I started shovelling it out into two twenty litre buckets. There was not much smell at this point, the packed old shit was crusted and thick, needing slicing with the spade to lift chunks into the buckets. It was a dry day but cold, perfect conditions for the task. In warm weather I thought, the stench would be unbelievable, like it was the last time I did this about 13 years ago, when the system was obviously blocked and toilets and laundry sink were not clearing properly and urgent action was necessary. On that occasion the septic tank man couldn’t come for four days so I took to investigating myself rather than have inoperable toilets and washing machine till he did. I found the blockage in the entry to the tank and amid the swarms of flies I cleared the solids from the tank and tipped them into a big hole I had dug in the garden.  I cancelled the septic man having solved the problem myself.

This time I was onto it before there was a serious problem. When Lib was in the shower before going to work early one morning recently I was outside doing something, probably taking a piss, and I heard the water going down the pipe from the vent outside the laundry. Instead of the customary constant tinkle of running water there was an odd sound like “whoop, whoop, whoop,” as if there was a build up of water that forced its way through at intervals of a few seconds. Hello I thought, after all these years there could be an obstruction looming as the septic tank clogged with solids.

My assessment was spot on. For more than a decade I’ve put a bacterial cleaning agent into the septic tank weekly via the toilet and this has done well, thirteen years between tank cleaning is a good result. But it shows that manual cleaning is inevitable, whether that be by commercial pumping out which is recommended every five years, or by spade and bucket which has been my choice this last two times. I had a large hole dug out under the trees into which I had poured the grease from the grease trap a couple of months ago when I cleaned it. The grease and liqid had disappeared into mother earth, so the hole was used again.

I quickly filled the hole with solids from the tank. I didn’t dig another hole, I thought I’d just keep piling the shit up and cover it with dirt and debris when I finished, or else I’d never finish before the light ran out given that we are nearly at the shortest day of the year. I stopped counting at sixty buckets but there were not many more. I got the concrete lid of the tank back in place with great difficulty and covered the now big mound of shit with dirt leaves and old cardboard packaging. I took of my clothes and soaked them in the launry trough with disinfectant and took myself to a long hot bath where I scrubbed up far more assiduously than usual.

That is the shit from three or four people over 13 years. Imagine the volume for the population of a city like Melbourne. My hat is doffed to the authority responsible for dealing with it, not just Melbourne but in all cities worldwide, it’s a huge task without which society would break down with disease and filth and stench. 

A Wild Night

I just checked the rain gauge, nearly 50 mls fell overnight, mostly in bursts of five or ten minutes now and again through the night. This followed an earth tremor which spooked Pip into intense shivering. She had been behaving strangely for some time prior so she must have known something was going on. I had to nurse her for a couple of hours afterwards as she wouldn't leave my lap.

Another "terrorist" incident yesterday, a lone wolf nutter in Brighton, a minor incident compared to what has happened recently in Britain and Europe. Every time it happens the political leaders come out and say "we remain united and defiant and will not cowered by these terrorists who are trying to destroy our way of life and culture," something like that, Malcolm Turnbull the latest this morning.

I think maybe it's time to look closely at our foreign policy. We have military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria and have had for long time at great financial and political cost not to mention the loss of innocent civilian lives. This terrorism is response to that in my opinion. The US spends $3 billion per month to hold up in Afghaistan (I saw this on Lateline last week, and are about to increase their numbers so have asked Australia for more, so that Af'n does not be a feeding/ breeding ground for terrorists). I don't think it is achieving, in fact is counter productive.

Perhaps we are seeing the collapse of capitalism. Communism ran its race. Rule by corporation and big business has perhaps now ran its race.

Interesting times.  

Are You Going to Scarborough Fair

Parsley sage rosemary and thyme,
Remember me to one who lives there,
she once was a true love of mine.