The Tooth Got Sucked Up

It was Boxing Day. Lib went to work. I had a day of peace and quiet ahead and was happy to stay home. It's a lovely thought - not to have to go anywhere at all.

After going back to bed for an hour or so after Lib left at 6.30am, for some semi sleep/blissful meditation/dreaming, I had a half hour of my latest read in the bath ('The Forgotten Summer' by Carole Drinkwater - a bit of a chic lit novel given to Lib by sister Meredith some time ago- but I'm enjoying it).

Now well rested by coffee time, I felt up to the dreaded task of cleaning the oven. I removed all the rails and racks sprayed hot soapy water  and went at it with a non scratch scourer. About half the grime came away so I repeated, this time using stainless steel liquid cleaner and a steelo pad. Success. Hard work down on your knees with the odd fingernail bent backwards here and there, and still a few impossible to remove marks, but yes. Success. Also cleaned the racks and rails before putting them back.

Another coffee, check on the horse racing odds and form (no gambling, just make believe bets for a while to see how I would have gone with real bets), a bowl of Singapore Noodles for lunch. I had bought these at a good shop in FTG the Monday before Xmas and secreted them in the outside fridge knowing I'd be glad of them for lunch one day soon.

Before Lib left, in answer to my inquiry, "Is there anything you'd like me to do?" she suggested,

"It'd be good if you could clean up here." She gestured to a section in the living room area where we used to have a wood stove, brick base and sides. We have Dave Dickson's large coffee table there and the tendency for all of us is to put anything and everything there and it gets cluttered and the dust builds up.

So I was into that. Moving books, magazines, wine rack, assorted paraphernalia. Gord had said he'd vacuum as he usually does so after I moved everything and found a home for it, he chimed in before I put the table back. I was outside watering and came in and Gord came up quite close, he had his lips peeled back and he was pointing at his teeth. I have known Gord all his life, he's prone to sign language, and off beat cryptic language. This time I had no idea what he was getting at.

"Bad news. The tooth got sucked up."

"What tooth? What are you talking about?"

"Your tooth."

I twigged. Last Monday week I took Lib to Neerim Sth to have a cataract removed. While she was there and I had a few hours to kill I visited the 'Blerick Tree Farm'. The owner grew up in Emerald and her father used to service my van. I bought a small copper beech tree, can't help myself. I will never see it to maturity and probably will never get to pick any foliage from it. But to me it had symbolic value - the day of Lib's cataract op - and I'd plant it somewhere.

Then a few nights later I sat watching TV to find something rolling around in my mouth. Plucking it out, it was half a back molar, a good chunk of tooth. I put it on the table next to my lounge chair. The tooth it came from had a jagged edge that caught my tongue. Irritated, I tried to file down the sharp edge with an emery board. No luck.

The next evening I told Lib and Gord of my misfortune and showed them the large bit of tooth. I moved it from the table to the railing behind my chair, floor level of the hallway behind. I told them I'd put it in the pot holding the copper beech, so that when the tree was planted some of my DNA would be with it forever. Then I forgot about it.

So my tooth went into the vacuum cleaner. I had searched around and eventually found a metal nail file for sale in  $2 shop in FTG, the same day I bought the Singapore Noodles. I managed to file the sharp edges off the broken tooth, much to the relief of my lacerated tongue.

Easier than finding a dentist over Xmas The copper beech will not have my DNA but it will be a great joy to plant it somewhere in the autumn, in the hope it will survive to maturity long after I'm gone.

A Reflection at Christmas

On Christmas Eve I'm grateful that this is the first working day day (Mon- Fri) in many months that I have no obligation to pick produce for customers. It's a lovely feeling.

Anticipating an email response I checked my hotmail inbox just now. I don't normally look at the junk items folder but I noticed there were 1138 items there so I opened it. It told me that items are automatically deleted after 10 days so that means I had received an average of over 110 junk emails per day since 14 Dec. A quick scan of these items showed a wide range subjects including how to get strong erections, invitations from mediums telling me how wonderful I am and to click here to find out my future, weight loss schemes, all manner of prizes I had "won", invitation to meet hot Asian girls, how to recognize and what to do if I had a heart attack, life insurance sales...on and on... I would need a week to list them properly. I conclude these emails are attempts to coerce money out of me. I'm grateful the filter system sends them to junk without me having to see them.

It has been a busy 6 weeks in the lead up to Christmas. When last week started I was so glad it was nearly over and we'd get a bit of a break soon. We'd been fortunate that for the most part the weather over weeks of picking beech foliage (and the spring blossom prior) had been cool and mild with plenty of rain in our part of the world. Just the odd hot day or two, manageable. Then last week there were two hot days forecast and by Wednesday I was tired but pleased that I'd worked through the heat and picked high volume to keep the greedy customers happy. Friday was forecast 44C so I put in a big effort Thursday to do most of Friday's picking. Our main wholesaler had given me a big order for Friday pick up - herbs not beech - which I also did as well as the weekly order of foliage that another customer picks up on the weekend. I was relieved the main guy didn't order beech for Friday and assumed his shed had plenty in it and he'd want none left over next week.

Lib and the boys left for Lakes Entrance Thursday morning. Lib had a week off following the procedure to remove a cataract on the Monday at Neerim South. So come Friday morning I woke confident the day would hold no problem for me other than a comfortable amount of picking to finish the order for the weekend lady. I got up on the roof early to cover the skylight with a tarp to keep the house cooler and cleared the downpipes of leaves while up there as a possible thunderstorm was forecast with the change to come that night. I came back inside for breakfast and the phone rang - Meredith, to tell me the wholesaler had rang and wanted 30 bunches of copper beech for that afternoon. With no hesitation I said "NO, I'm not doing it at this short notice, not in that heat forecast." So I jibbed it, but justifiably at my age given the extreme heat and strenuous work required working off a ladder or climbing the tree.

Melbourne's temp that day was 43.5C. The thermometer at home recorded 40C max. Horsham and Hamilton in the state's west had 48C. I came home to a hot little house after doing some watering, digging up the garlic in the vegie garden at the farm, and going to Monbulk to shop at Aldi. I opened all the doors and windows to get a little air movement, removed my sweaty clothes and poured a sherry to follow the light beer I'd had on the way home. All good, time for some peace and quiet in relaxed solitude.

I didn't turn the aircon on. There by myself I saw no need. I don't really like it anyway. I thought of my childhood. No aircon. I thought of my five years in Wangaratta, a hot place in summer, in various rental situations. No aircon. Camped in a caravan through summer in the Mallee with a beekeeper I worked with, summer 74/75. No aircon. A wet towel over the head and another on the feet. How things have changed. Aircon is a recent innovation. Now just about every building in Melbourne has aircon belting away as soon as the temperature rises into thirties. No wonder there's a shortage of energy.

Our microwave oven packed it in a few weeks ago. Lib and Gord were discussing the purchase of a new one. I thought about it and spoke up.

"I don't want another one. I use it only to heat up my pre brewed herb tea every morning, I can just as easily do that in a saucepan on the gas, almost as quickly. And anything else I want heated, say left over pizza occasionally, I can do in a  small frypan with a lid, on low. And Gord you can heat your oats the same way and your packet meals. Let's save the money and not buy another microwave."

This suggestion was greeted with disapproval, but two days later Lib said, "I agree with you about the microwave. Not having one will also free up bench space."

So much of what we spend on is unnecessary. And it starts with crap like Christmas. We've had Black Friday sales and early Boxing Day sales and constant infuriating advertising to make us buy things we don't need. It's the consumerist economy. Constant indulgence, entertainment. Buy Buy Buy!

CRAP CRAP CRAP!

Kevin Murray - Fitzroy Legend

I watched a show on Fox Sports Thursday night on the merger of Fitzroy and Brisbane in the mid 1990's. It told of Fitzroy's (and many other clubs') financial strife in the decade prior to the merger, and of Brisbane's early difficulties after entering the fledgling national competition. It was a tumultuous time as the VFL transitioned to the AFL with growing pains.

There were many interviews with  prominent people including Ross Oakley, Jonathan Brown, Alistair Lynch, Robert Walls, Greg Miller and so on, but the person most impressive to me was the man who was the face of Fitzroy when I was a kid. Kevin Murray.

The VFL in the early 1960's was very much Melbourne suburban with Geelong the distant family member, the away trip to Geelong dreaded by Melbourne teams due to the long bus ride to play there, almost comical today nearly 60 years on. I have a football magazine publication of 1962 in which an article talked about the future and possible changes. It had the byline "Fitzroy vs Fremantle?" Absurd to me at the time.

The face of the VFL in the early sixties were the captains or star players from each team - Ron Barassi, Ted Whitten, Bob Skilton, Graeme Arthur, Kevin Murray, Verdun Howell and John Nicholls come to mind. Kevin "Bulldog" Murray was Fitzroy's star player who represented Victoria regularly and was highly regarded as a gentleman from the rough school; hard, tough and wiry but totally fair.

Kevin Murray kicked off the Fox sports show on the merger talking about his childhood growing up in Fitzroy, selling footy records on Saturdays at both the Fitzroy ground and Collingwood's Victoria Park, both in close walking distance from home. His father was a member of the Fitzroy 1944 premiership team. His two brothers played reserve and U19 footy with Fitzroy. Kevin lived and breathed footy and Fitzroy all his life. He spoke of his career and the pain of losing so many games through lean years and the agonies of Fitzroy's financial demise. He passed Jack Dyer's then record number of games, this despite going to East Perth for two years as captain coach in the mid sixties, where he won a best and fairest and took East Perth to a losing grand final. He supported the merger with Brisbane and was a public spokesperson for it, arguing that Fitzroy's history, colours, theme song, would be preserved along with the name "Lions". Other interviewees said without Kevin getting behind it they doubted Fitzroy people would have got on board and enjoyed the huge success of the 2001-2003 triple premierships.

I was moved by Kevin's story, his humility, his integrity. I have not met the man, but he looms large as one of my favourite people. I was moved to blog post.

Kevin won the 1969 Brownlow medal. He has worn it around his neck every day since, such is his pride, and his desire to share it with whomever he meets that may like to see it, especially Fitzroy people and kids. He was 31 years old when he won it, after being runner up in the early sixties.

I remember when Kevin won his Brownlow I was in Lorne with Rickyralph and we listened to the count on radio. I checked Wikipedia and found that the count was on September 6, which would be right as it was held the Monday night after the the last round, not the Monday before the grand final as it is now. It was a popular win the football world such was the admiration for Kevin Murray and the fact that he'd finished second and third previously, and was hot favourite in 1962 but came nowhere when bolter Alistair Lord bobbed up (Wikipedia is wonderful).

It occurred to me that Ralphie, whose birthday is late September, would not have had is driving licence, which he got on his 18th birthday I think, as he would have been 17 on September 6. So we must have hitchhiked down there in the September school holidays. He was still at Caulfield GS doing year 12 and I was at Camberwell GS repeating year 11 after being expelled from Caulfield late in 1968.

This restrospection made me wonder where did we sleep, if we did not have a car. I then remembered that numerous times when we went down there we slept in the pavilion structure that was on the beach front. I can't remember if we had sleeping bags or just stretched out on the benches but it must have been cold. Ralphie would probably remember, his memory of our youth is far better than mine.

I also recall listening to Lionel Rose beating Fighting Harada for the world bantamweight championship in Japan, on the radio at Lorne. Was at night I think. Wikipedia tells me that was Feb 27, 1968, so we must have been hitching and roughing it again. I would have been 15 nearly 16 and Ralphie 16.

It seems like a different world now, almost unbelievable is our past, like a different life. But seeing and hearing Kevin Murray as an 80+year old man, who has had strokes and heart attacks, still honourable as he was then, make me realize that yes my adolescence did happen, somehow Ralphie and I survived, helping each other.

Kevin "Bulldog" Murray is still a great role model.

Update on Health

I have just written to my rheumatologist and include it here as it explains my current position - one of optimism and confidence.

Dear Mark,

My apologies for missing my 2pm appointment yesterday. I arrived at 3pm with the mistaken belief that my appointment was for that time. I did not make another appointment as I'm hopeful I'm in remission or the RA has gone away, Whatever the terminology I take this optimism as I have not injected the Abatacept for 4 months, and as you will see I have not taken the Methotextrate since last December.

My last Abatacept injection was 10 July. I developed a head cold in May which unusually persisted into July so I wondered if I stopped the immune suppressant for a week perhaps it would go. The next week I had no RA flare up so did not inject, and this has continued till now. Strangely the head cold has remained, or is it some form of hayfever, or persistent virus? However it has diminished to a point where I have only occasional sneezing or nose run.

I was keen to talk to you about this and see what my blood tests showed so maybe you could send me the blood test results with a brief comment. I'm hopeful they are within normal range. I'm feeling so well; I have some early morning stiffness in back, back shoulders and legs often but this passes and I think is due to my strenuous work and quite normal for that reason, given my age. I'm working very well, unfortunately circumstances not allowing me to retire, but the physical niggles do not prevent my objectives.

I thank you for your excellent service which has brought me to this point of confidence (perhaps along with lifestyle and dietary changes I have made, and with time). I still have a full bottle of Methotrexate with some six months to run before expiry and similarly 6 Abatacept injections in my fridge, and I think the chemist is still holding one or two valid repeats waiting for me to order if I need.

If I have a flare up I'll ring you before I do anything, or if necessary due to protocol go through my GP. Touch wood, this won't be necessary.

My apologies, thanks again, and much goodwill. All best for your upcoming leave,

Carey Williams

Cup Day

I had a dollar each way on Vow and Declare but made a small loss on the day, not having success in other races. I worked in the afternoon and took the top off two beech trees to fill an order for 40 tall bunches. There'll be much of the same activity till Christmas then through January and February, or till the beech is depleted.

It has been a good spring for blossom. The lilac, bird cherry, viburnums, dogwood,(except strangely some trees that didn't flower) mock orange etc kept us busy. Blossom has almost finished. We had a good deal of rain through winter and early spring, and it was cold, very cold, well into October for the most part. This slowed flowering down, giving us a better chances to get most of it.

Beside this regular cyclical work, and pruning etc, I was busy with renovations at home, work we planned to do at home in preparation for selling our house this spring. It didn't happen, we didn't get enough done, painting and such. My and Lib's Lib's busy work routine prevented us putting the house on the market. Maybe next year, maybe not, Lib has eased off talking about selling, retiring and moving to new pasture in our advancing age. She has recovered well from the chemo etc and has a bit of sparkle back. We'll play it by ear for now.

Cousin Bruce and wife Jill have had some trauma on a trip to the USA. Jill had a perforated ulcer which led to peritonitis and several days in intensive care in Sylva Nth Carolina. She's recovering well and Bruce has kept his friends and family informed on Facebook. I commented wishing them all best one time which prompted Bruce to email me asking if Lib and I were OK as I hadn't done a blog post for some time. It was that prompting that has brought me to blog post now. I have been meaning to for weeks but always felt too tired at night, and always too much to do daytime. The new STP reporting for small business to the tax office caused me a lot of grief and time trying to register and comply by Sep 30 and then subsequent reports. It would be too painful to me to explain but let's say I spent many hours on the phone in queues till I could wait no longer and had to start again the next day. I really think the world has gone quite mad. The traffic is horrendous whenever I venture far and is getting bad locally. And people drive so fast and do such reckless stupid things.

Perhaps I'm just getting too old for it. I watched a Clint Eastwood movie called 'Coogan's Bluff', a good antidote to a hard day's work on Melbourne Cup day, and it amazed me how things have changed so much. In the end scene Coogan sat smoking in the helicopter crowded with passengers that took off from the roof of the PANAM skyscraper in New York. It reminded me that my first trip OS was to the USA in 1979 on a PANAM flight. I think PANAM went broke at some point decades ago. The movie was made in 1968, 51 years ago, time certainly flies.

We had a surprise visit from our friend Ian Sinclair weekend before last. On the Tuesday night he rang, I thought he was in Canada where he lives, but after some conversation he said he was camped on Mt Terrible near Jamieson, one of our haunts in our youth, again about fifty years ago. He was here last January and had a knee replacement done in Canada in July. He bought an airfare to Australia on impulse because of an offer too good to be true price wise came up but he had only half an hour to accept. He rang the other night from Robe in Sth Australia and is headed to WA and then up the coast. Good luck to him, he's a free spirit if ever there was one and loves birds and the bush. He's getting his other knee replaced when he goes home. He has two boys, one about 30, the other 19, which is why he stays in Canada. He likes it there anyway, He lives in the Yukon which is about the size of Victoria but has only about 35,000 people to our 5 million plus.

Our garden has been beautiful this spring and abounds with birds. I have a lot of wood cut for next winter by virtue of my pruning at the farm. We burned so much this year from May till now with not many days warm enough to not light the fire at night. We did cop a heat blast or two in October but only for a few days then it got cold again. The poor old bees have had a hard time and struggled through.

To finish on a happy note. I saw a satin bower bird yesterday. There was something moving near where we throw our peelings from the kitchen. It retreated into the shrubbery so I waited motionless for a few minutes till it came slowly slowly back further till it was in my clear view 10-15 feet away, feeding from the fruit scraps from our daily morning fruit salad. It was going to town on what was left of a mango. A beautiful creature, it made my day.

Thanks to Bruce for the prompt, and I wish you and Jill well for safe return home after such an ordeal. I'd like to think my enthusiasm for blogging has returned. I've got a Ralphie tale or two to tell, continuing from some posts on Mt Waverley a few months ago.

Hypocrisy

An exercise for homework at writing class a couple of weeks ago was to write something about hypocrisy either from personal experience or a story where the central character experiences hypocrisy.

I thought long and hard about it and concluded that I have seen hypocrisy around me all my life.

As a boy there was a rule in our house that we were not to drink straight from the milk bottle in the fridge. This was unhygienic we were told as germs could spread from our mouth onto the milk bottle and grow and infect the next person to use the milk. One day, a hot day, not long after a lecture my siblings and I heard on this subject, I was in the hall which adjoined the kitchen and I saw mum go to the fridge, pull out the milk bottle and take a big swig. She wiped the milk from her lips and put the bottle back.

My parents  sent us kids to the local Baptist church for Sunday school every week. We learned the ten commandments and discussed bible stories. The commandment "Thou shall not use the Lord's name in vain" was another house rule at home. This did not seem to apply to my father who when he lost his temper would launch into such blasphemy the likes I have not heard the equal to this day.

At primary school we had assembly in the open every week if it was not raining. 'God Save The Queen' was played over the loudspeaker and the headmaster gave a short topical speech. We then marched to our class rooms in order to the tune of 'Colonel Bogey'. We were left in no doubt that we lived in the lucky country, the great democracy and the land of the 'fair go'. On to secondary school, a Church of England grammar school, we sang hymns at assembly, and heard speeches espousing the values and virtues of our nation and its heritage.

Yet it was not until 1967 and a referendum, that our indigeneous people were be able to vote at elections. At this time also, Australia was involved in a military conflict in Vietnam. War was never declared, but conscription by birthday ballot forced 20yo men into National Service. The 'Fair Go' seems negotiable, with political expediency foremost.

At school we were shown films about lung cancer and smoking. My maths teacher in year11, Pete Hutchinson, a fine man I add, fagged away in class as he marked papers while the students did maths exercises. Radio, TV, magazines, newspapers were full on with cigarette advertising at the same time.

As a young man now in my twenties I shared house for a while with another bloke, he engaged to a good church girl, righteous and virginal. In the months before the wedding he'd sneak out at night and visit a lady friend up the road, staying till early morning when he'd slink back before going to work. Of course his fiance was unaware of his nightly diversions. He dutifully attended church with her on Sundays.

I hardly need to mention the sexual predator scandals of the powerful established churches and even the Salvation Army in recent times. Hypocrisy of the highest order.

My sister is married to a retired doctor and had the good sense to read some of his medical journals. She told me of an article by a cardiologist in which he advised GP's to not recommend canola oil as healthy for the heart, because it isn't. Yet if you read advice from various sources canola oil is promoted as a healthy option. Canola is grown extensively throughout southern Australia and is an important commercial crop. It seems ethics go out the window when there's a threat to the economy.

The government and sporting bodies make a fortune from gambling companies and their sponsorship. Saturation advertising exists in all forms of the media and at sporting venues yet, despite the ruin of lives from gambling addiction, it's OK if the advertising is followed by the words "gamble responsibly".

And now the Emerald Tourist Railway, known as 'Puffing Billy', is building a $20m discovery centre in Emerald Lake Park with the help of Federal, State and local government, seen as a boost to the economy. This means trains spewing coal smoke particulates daily over the length of the track ever increasing in number, to make more money from Asian tourists. Ethics fenestrated.

The new blasphemy is to question or criticize anything that threatens the new God, the economy. Never mind pollution, or the general interests and public health. Money is the thing.

Yes hypocrisy exists everywhere. God fearing (old God) pilgrims and politicians are not immune.

If I sound judgemental, it's because I am a hypocrite. It is almost impossible not to be while interacting with people and society. As the quote from Jose Emilio Pacheco says-

"We are all hypocrites. We cannot see ourselves or judge ourselves the way we see and judge others."

Where Am I?

Waking up in strange surroundings can be unsettling for a few moments till the brain clicks in and you realize that you are in fact on holiday in some location, or away visiting relatives, or even in hospital, as the case may be. I was prompted to think about this by a quote that was given to us at writing class recently -

"If you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are."

We were asked to write something using the quote as a starting point. I think the purpose was to examine our sense of place and identity, and consider how our place in the world defines who we are, what motivates us, and how we think and act.

Apart from these brief night time or early morning confusions on waking, I have never really been unaware of my whereabouts in the context of the world, and the good fortune I had to be born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, into a middle class family in the post WW2 baby boomer era.

For the first decade or so of my life I comfortably believed everything fed to me by my parents, at school as I saluted the flag and sang the national anthem, and marched back after assembly on the quadrangle into the classroom to the recorded music of Colonel Bogey.

But front of my mind as I contemplate this quote, is a day I woke up I had no idea where I was, even after thinking about it for a some time in the cold early dawn. Let me explain.

I think it was early 1968, January, so I would have been 15 years old, approaching 16. A couple of weeks earlier my parents were meddling in my bedroom and found a bottle full of cigarette buts sealed tightly with a lid, the aftermath of my late night last fags hanging my head out the window before retiring. This was the second time I had been caught out smoking in a short period, the first causing confrontation with my father, which left me bruised and battered and my father unscathed. My parents were serious wowsers, strongly opposed to tobacco and alcohol.

This second time dad told me I could leave home if didn't want to abide by his rules, saying plenty of young people left home and made good. I packed a bag and caught a train to Footscray station, walked to the Geelong Rd and started hitchhiking. I was headed to Torquay where I had friends camping at the beach town for the school holidays. I had no idea what I'd do after the holiday period, the only thing that mattered was the moment and the next day. 

I was there for some days with these school mates and another turned up, my mate RickyRalph, with whom I've had a close frienship continuing to the present. As it happened one evening we were all going the pictures but not unusually decided to get a bit liquored up first. There was a vacant block next to the timber building that served as a movie theatre, and somehow I didn't make it to the pictures after skulling a bottle of screwdriver, and flaking out in the vacant block. When my mates came back to get me I wasn't there.

In the morning I woke up with a terrible hangover. I was in a room with a timber floor and walls and nothing else that I recall. It was quite dark,there must have been a small window high up, but there was no way out of this small room. I was physically ill and desolate of spirit. Alone. Lost. No idea where I was. 

After sometime in this state of confusion I heard a noise outside, somebody was outside toying with the door, trying to open it.

"Mate, are you in there?" a familiar voice said. RickyRalph.

"Yes, I'm in here, where am I?"

"You're in the lock up, at the cop shop, I can't open the door, it has a lock."

Ralphie explained that the cops had been patrolling the picture theatre and found me paralytic.

Then there was a loud angry voice suddenly yelling.

"What the hell are you doing? Get out of here now or you'll end up in there with him." The resident cop had come out of the station and into the back yard where the lock up was.

"I'm just seeing if my mate's alright". 

"Get the hell out of here," yelled the cop, and he then cursed the the German Shepherd who was supposed to keep anyone out of the yard. "You useless bloody thing." Ralphie had no fear of dogs.

Sometime later I was taken into the police station and processed and released and went back to my mates' tent. Days later a letter came from from my father, addressed to the campground and the appropriate site. He apologized and said he'd like me to come home.

I was required to attend Children's Court in Geelong a month or two later to aswer the charge of Drunk and Disorderly. The cop reading the charge was a middle aged angry looking man who had come up to me outside the court beforehand.

"Don't you ever call a policeman a fucking bastard again."

After he'd finished his evidence the magistrate or JP said, "But what did he do?"

Cop- "When he was woken he was most abusive."

Magistrate- "He was asleep when you found him. I do not consider that disorderly conduct. Case dismissed." 

Thinking back now, it was during my adolescent fog that I began to question things. As years then decades passed I realized much of what I was fed as a youngster was, as the hit song went, "Ain't necessarily so."

Today I question everything. Going back to visit Mt.Waverley where I grew up everything has changed so much it feels like my childhood and youth never really happened, it was in some other realm. Our family home went long ago, replaced by modern apartments, as have been most of the houses.

Geographically I know very well where I am. The changes are rapid at Emerald where I work, and Gembrook where I live. I loathe going to Melbourne because of the traffic and congestion. Australia has changed so much. There are so many things I question and dislike about our nation and our society. Yes I know where I am, and who I am, but I no longer feel comfortable or "at home".











   

More Mt Waverley

Ricky Ralph came up to visit me last Saturday. He said he enjoyed reading my posts about Mt Waverley and was looking forward to reading more. Rick and I met in 1964 at Malvern Grammar, our first year of secondary school. We were in the same class but didn't become close friends until say 1966/67 by which time we had moved on to Caulfield Grammar, Malvern being its Junior school. What brought us together was probably that we didn't quite fit into the system very well and felt some resentment to the rigid discipline, especially as it was sometimes unfair and to be truthful quite absurd. Ralphie wants me to be brutally honest and tell all as it was. I don't know about that, that period of my life I find a little embarrassing looking back, say 15-20yo. At least he's given me the green light to write about him. Rick's parents moved to Mt Waverley in about 67/68 and by then we were best mates who spent nearly all our spare time together.

But first I have to finish the Mt Waverley Primary school story. In Grade 4 Mr Laub watched as me and Bill Genat kissed our girlfriends Janyne and Marilyn before they boarded their bus to home. Other kids were with Mr Laub and they tipped Bill and me off that he'd seen us kiss the girls and we'd be in strife. Next day he asked us to stay back and gave us a bit of a lecture that we were not to be doing that, his exact words I can't recall, but the gist of it was that we should leave that sort of thing till we were about 18. We would have been 9 yo so 18 seemed like never.

The next year I was in a different Grade 5 to Janyne, much to my disappointment. I had Mr Worthy (Bob), a good bloke whom I liked a lot. As he called the roll first day when he came to me, nearly last as I always was as it was alphabetical, he asked me did I have an older brother. When I said yes Joddy, who had been in Mr. Worthy's class two years earlier, he just stared at me. Meredith said when she went into Mr Worthy's class two years later, when he did the roll first day, he asked her did she have two older brothers and when she said yes he put his head on the desk and covered it with his hands. Mind you I was always quite well behaved and a good student at primary school. Mr Worthy did have occasion to give me the strap once, along with Graeme Burrowes and Chris Barker. He caught us teasing Gay Elliot, who had an unfortunate habit of bursting into tears in class and got the nickname 'Geeza'. Now Burrowes was a bit of a nutcase, he had the reputation of being the best tweedie fighter and challenged all comers. I don't claim that me and Chris were innocent but it was definitely Burrowes who was relentless in his taunting of Gay- "Geeza, Geeza, Geeza," until she'd burst into tears. This day at lunchtime Gay broke down and I don't remember if she dobbed us or Worthy caught us but after lunch we had to line up for the strap. Burrowes was first and he almost screamed with each cut. Chris next, winced and grimaced but was noiseless. Other kids in the class told me I got the hardest but I neither flinched or made a sound. I don't even know if it hurt, I think the brain just shut off. This was toward the end of the year and a few days later in a casual sort of moment me and a few others were near Mr Worthy's desk and I found him looking at me with a bit of a stare. When I looked back at him, holding eye contact for some seconds, he said, "I'm beginning to lose my fear of you now."

What he meant was he'd had Jod two years earlier and had been traumatized by the experience, and was expecting me to explode at some point, especially when he strapped me. I remember when Jod was in Bob Worthy's class a couple of years earlier there was an incident where Jod refused to do what he was asked, yelled expletives and bolted out of the class, climbed onto the roof of the toilets and into the pine trees and they couldn't get him down.

Grade five saw my love affair with Janyne come to an end. In seperate classes now (they probably did this on purpose) she seemed to be avoiding me at playtime and lunchtime. I went up to her one day, she was playing knuckles with her friends, sitting on the asphalt in a circle. I said to her "You said you wanted marry me when we grow up."

She replied, "Oh that was last year." It was over, but I did carry a torch for her for years, secretly.

By this time I was great mates with Graeme Forster, we were inseperable for five years or so. I had holidays with his family at Lorne and Torquay and we were always playing cricket, football, shuttlecock, or snooker or billiards, or riding bikes somewhere. His nickname was Bubs, because he had brothers 3 and 4 years older and the name had stuck from his early days.

We were in Terry Stabler's class in Grade 6, a fantastic year. Mr Stabler was English and very popular with his class. We spent time nearly everyday playing rounders. In the 1980's and 90's Mr Stabler used to come to our farm to buy honey. He lived in Berwick then. I thanked him for that happy year and commented on how relaxed and fun it was and asked him how he got away with letting us play rounders for much of the day. He said that class was not supposed to be his, all the bright well behaved kids were selected to give another teacher an easy time because they were recovering from an operation, or almost retired, something like that. It may have been Davo or Skippy himself, Mr Skipworth was the headmaster, a good old bloke, rotund, silver haired, always wearing a dark suit with braces. At the last minute it didn't happen and Terry Stabler got the gig. He said he really didn't have to do anything as all the kids were on top of the carriculum from early.

Football and cricket were a big deal in the last two years of primary school. In Grade 5 I played in the school footy team, Graeme did too, and we won the comp. The next year not so good. We played against Syndal, Glen Waverley, Chadstone, and later Pinewood, and maybe others that escape me. I had great success in cricket, bowling leg spin, copying Richie Benaud. I had figures of 7/10 in one match, 4/5 in another. Geoff Burston and I saved the day against Syndal in one match with a big partnership after a top order collapse. Geoff later was an accomplished bass guitarist in 'The Black Sorrows' who were quite famous for a time. Robert Rose cleaned me up one day though against Pinewood, carting my leggies all over the ground. He was the son of Bob Rose, Collingwood legend, and played cricket for Victoria in the 70's, and football for Collingwood and Footscray, .

That'll probably do for my Mt.Waverley PS  recollections. I have been good friends with Ian Sinclair who was in Jod's year for about the last fifty years, he lives in Whitehorse in the Yukon Canada. His brother Colin who was in my year and captain of the football team in our last year runs a fishing tackle shop in Adaminaby and takes people fly fishing. Graeme Strachan died in a helicopter crash in Qld. Graeme Forster last I heard was living on the Gold Coast. So was Janyne Wilcox. Other names such as John Weatherley, John Fitzgibbon, Steven Perry, Gary Royal, Bruce Warne, Alan Lightfoot, Philip Shine, Bill Edwards, twins Frank and John Gammon, Ross Walters, David Jewell, Tony Smith, Jimmy Slatter, Denis Chambers, Jeremy Hartley, Terry Thorrington, Gail Beaton, Pam McCauley, Pam Hope, Meg Ockendon, Marilyn Williams, Dianne Cunliffe, Dianne Edgelow, Robin Hudson, Linda Wallace come to mind, as would more if  I thought long enough. It's amazing what you do recall when you get immersed like this. I would be very curious to know what happened to all those kids I went through school with. A Mt.Waverley PS reunion from 1963 would be most interesting, but I don't think it possible. Too long ago and people would be dispersed all over Australia and the world.

Mt Waverley Primary School

Formal education started for me at Mt. Waverley primary school in 1957. That class was known to all as 'Bubs', but I suppose it was Preps officially, as it was when my kids went to school. The teacher was Mrs Longmuir if my memory serves me, a pleasant lady, dark hair. I recall very little of the year except that first day mum walked with me to school and after that I was supposed to go with Jod who had started two years earlier, but I think I went by myself after the first day, Jod didn't want to know his little brother.

I had been to kindergarten the previous year and remember little of this except I didn't like it. The kinder was new if I'm right, a cream brick building at the 11 oclock point of the oval in Sherwood drive. I don't think there was a kinda prior. Jod didn't go to one. A walkway connected Sherwood Drive and Virginia St past the kinda and the progress hall on the Stephenson's Rd corner with Virginia St (a timber building that was used for community meetings and children's club things. I went to a gymnast club thing there a couple of times, later it was used to store mountains of newspapers for a service club before it caught fire and burned down one day) I was a quiet kid and wasn't really into the stuff they wanted me to do at kinda (drawing and cutting paper up and mucking about with clag?}. This is vague recollection, but my strongest memory of kinder is they had a pet frog in an old wash trough in the yard and we were asked to catch flies and bring them as food for the frog. Mum found this amusing but I seriously spent a lot of time one weekend trying to catch flies. When I turned up to kinder with some in a jar, the only kid that did, it created laughter for the ladies at kinder. Not understanding, I was annoyed.

My clearest recall of Bubs was sitting on the floor, with Mrs Longmuir asking questions and putting up numbers and things like letters and words on the blackboard. I always had my hand up to answer the questions when often no others did. This seemed to irritate Mrs Longmuir, she said seeing I was so good with the answers I could go outside and play and sent me out. I didn't realize this was some sort of reward (if it was) and when I got outside I didn't know what to do by myself and just sat miserable on the steps of the class rooms. From memory these were temporary classrooms, three in a row, Bubs first one, then grade one, then grade 2. I wasn't so quick to show I knew all the answers after this.

Grade one the teacher was Mrs Bennett, a middle aged well dressed woman with blue rinse hair and often puffing on a fag in class. She was agreeable and friendly but had a stern side. My only memory of an incident in her class is that she took exception to me twiddling my finger through my hair at the front, She warned me that if I kept doing it she'd put a bobby pin in my hair to hold it down. It was an unconscious habit I couldn't control so she pinned my hair which caused much amusement to the boys as bobby pins were a girl thing. I copped a bit of flack at lunchtime. Grade 2 we had Mrs Nicholson, a large woman with grey hair who had a bad temper and she'd lose it if a kid annoyed her and thump the daylights out of their back with a brutal hand. At the end of grade 2 I got an award from the Education Dept or someone for 5 pounds for being equal top of the class with Howard Partridge.

Memory gets a bit better come 1960, Grade 3. My teacher was a lovely young lady Mrs Lambert. I think her first name was Diane but I may be wrong. She was tall with dark hair and very pretty. I already knew her. The previous year she was a grade 4 teacher and had Jod in her class. Now Jod was always a hopeless student, could grasp nothing, and was defiant to boot. Mrs Lambert tried her utmost to help him. She contacted our parents and offered to tutor Jod at her house. Mum said Ok she would come home from work and take Jod to Mrs Lambert's house but there was a problem as there were two younger ones. Mrs Lambert said bring them too she will give them something to do. So Jod, and sometimes Meredith and me, were dropped at Mrs Lambert's house in Blackburn Rd while she tried her best with Jod. The work she gave me was dead easy so when I had her as a teacher in grade 3 she knew I was well up to speed. Mrs L's husband was a policeman and he came home a couple of times while the tutoring was on and he was a nice man. I'm not sure really if this was after school or on weekends or school holidays, They didn't have kids, being a young couple getting established. I would love to contact them now, I did try to track Mrs L once but no luck. They may well have passed on anyway as I'm now 67 so they would be in their mid/late 80's.

By 1960 the school had grown. I think there were two grade 3's, both large classes. Mt. Waverley was a boom suburb with all the baby boomer generation needing schooling. In the 60's I think it became the largest primary school in the state for enrollment. Mt Waverley was changed from semi rural to totally urban in a short tome. Yet next door to the school we still had a market garden that used draft horses. We had to separate our rubbish from our lunch into food scraps or other as the food scraps went to the pigs the market gardener kept. Outside the grade three four classes some trees for shade with wooden seats beneath and a monkey bar, and a row of large pine trees stretching up to the northern boundary. Under these trees was a toilet block, very old and inadequate, no sewage, pans emptied by night cart, and a bit further up a shelter shed and at the end a maypole and maybe some other play equipment. I may be wrong with some of this detail as we are talking about 60 years ago, so if other ex students stumble on this blog post I apologize for errors. On one side of the pine trees was a sort of fine yellow gravel that extended to Park Lane, on which formal and non formal running races were held and the girls played softball. On the other side of the pine trees was an oval or more a level paddock (across to Marriot's farm where the draft horses often grazed), where boys kicked the footy in recess and lunchtime. There were cricket nets and concrete pitches there, maybe only in the last few years I was there. In front of the buildings on the east side were netball courts on Park Lane boundary. Assembly was held here. (Once a week?) We'd line up in our grades to the flag and the God Save the Queen then march in single file to our classrooms to Colonel Bogey music or some such.  I think maybe some parking for teachers cars too was on that boundary. I have enjoyed reminiscing about this as it has made me remember many pupils male and female that I haven't thought of in many years, too numerous to list.

In grade 3 I had my first love affair, with Janyne Wilcox. Her friend was Marilyn Ryan. My friend Bill Genat was in love with Marilyn.They both lived in East Oakleigh and I think just came to the school in that year. There was a shortage of schools for the burgeoning population which is why Mt Waverley had such a large enrolment. These girls came by bus I think with others of course. The love affair lasted a couple of years. I sometimes rode my bike to Janyne's house after school. I was in the same grade four class as Janyne with Mr Laub. We had graduated to the old original school building now and there were more than 60 kids in the class. No heating except for an open fire in extremely cold weather and it was the era of inkwells and nib pens still. Mr Laub was a good teacher, a small man, quietly spoken and well liked.

This post is going too long and will not be of much interest to people other than those from Mt. Waverley so I'll post this and finish my primary school story another time.

Neighbours

Our neighbours in Virginia St. Mt Waverley were a pretty stable lot in that most of them were there the whole time we were, although on one side first it was the Skilbecks, then the Jewells followed by the Dixons. On the other side I only remember the Hurley's who were still there when we left. Bob and June Hurley, parents of Jill and David were a quiet respectable family who were never anything but pleasant and helpful. Bob worked in the city I think in insurance and walked to the train daily in his suit carrying his brief case. Jill was in Meredith's year at school and David was a couple of years younger. As a young chap he did a fair bit of loud bawling in the back yard, for what reason we didn't know because we never heard conflict or other drama.

On the contrary we must have horrified them with our noise. Our place was a gathering point for local boys, friends of Jod and myself, and the activities were boisterous. This was probably because my mother worked so there was no parental supervision at our place after school or on Saturdays and school holidays. In addition, Lyle had a games room built on the back of the house in the early sixties and put a three quarter size billiard table in it which was like a magnet. Kids would come and go of their own accord. Some knew where the house key was and would let themselves in if no-one was home and play pool snooker or billiards. There was football and cricket in the back yard and the pines, yonnie fights, water fights and often loud music.

Some kids had air rifles as did Jod, and shooting sparrows and blackbirds, regarded as pests, was a popular past time. One time, Ray McLeod I think it was, was stalking a blackbird perched on the spouting of the Dixon's next door. Just as he aimed Mrs.Dixon spotted him from the lounge room window directly below where he was aiming. The shot missed the bird but hit the spout with a loud bang and she screamed and accused him of shooting at her. There was a big fuss over that and for a time air guns were banned at our house. There was always something or somebody being banned. After a window breakage football or cricket would be banned in the back yard for a while and we'd have to play in the pines or on Sherwood oval.

After the Jewell's left mid sixties, and they may well have done so because of us, the Dixon's, Les and Mrs and their son John moved in. The parents were elderly and Les had had a stroke and was severely restricted walking very slowly with a stick. Son John was a big man about 6 ft 5, a primary school teacher, who was quiet as a mouse and hardly ever spoke. He was not married, about 40 odd, would just say hello and comment on the weather. His only real interest seemed to be his car, he bought a Holden 186S  in 1966 and later a Monaro and washed them fastidiously. John never complained but Mrs Dixon did regularly, with good reason I'm sure. I got on alright with Mrs Dixon, now and again she'd get me doing odd jobs for her and she paid me. She did complain though about the incessant noise of ball hitting brick wall in our backyard. I'd throw it for hours and when it came back at me I'd face up with the cricket bat and practice shots. The heavy rubber guts ball was banned by my parents when the plaster started cracking in the lounge room. It was more Jod and his mates that upset Mrs Dixon. One time Alan Sealy rode his bike up and down our driveway calling out "Sherman" in a deep monotonous drawl for a couple of hours. Sherman was Jod's pet black rabbit that he stole from a burrow as a kitten and took it home as a pet. It turned savage as an adult much to the amusement of Jod's mates who often took up chanting Sherman's name. It drove Mrs Dixon nuts. Sherman, also driven nuts probably, escaped and lived happily as a feral for a few years.

As you went up Virginia St. there was the Cranat's, the Kayes, the Partridges, the Cantillons. There were twin Cantillon girls in Jod's year at school. They had an older brother who was killed in the 1980's Jod says when he lived at Wheelers Hill and while working under his car in his driveway and slipped off the jack. On the other side at the top were the Strachans. Graeme Strachan who later became famous as lead singer "Shirley" of 'Skyhooks' was in my year at school and one of my childhood playmates. He had three sisters all younger. His father Ron was a well regarded local builder and built our games room addition. I don't remember the names of the other families coming back down that side of the street until the last house next the church opposite us which was the Shackleton's. Greg Shackleton was one of the Balibo 5 killed in East Timor by the the Indonesian military in 1975.

Next to the Hurley's was the Wickam's who also had a daughter Coral in Meredith's year. Then on the corner with Park Lane was the Hoskins. Across Park Lane on our side was the Ford's. They had boys a bit older than Jod. Their house was one of the first built in the area perhaps 20 or more years before ours, in the style of of an old farm house. By the sixties the garden was overgrown and contained large poplar trees that were probably the parents of the suckers in the vacant block at the back of the pines.

Mr Ford shot himself. Jod said he heard the gunshot. Mrs Ford was alcoholic. She crashed the car into the baker's van and he had to have his legs amputated. Jod said he was in their garden with one of the Ford boys one day when he heard Mr Ford say to his wife inside the house, "You drunken pig." Before he suicided Mr Ford was big in banking, Jod thinks. I liked Mrs Ford, she'd walk down our street going home (no longer driving after the accident) and would say hello and have a chat. She was a tall stately woman if I recall, usually wearing a fur coat. The Ford's house and garden was a bit spooky, I rarely ventured in there exploring, but occasionally did with mates to look at the old concrete swimming pool which was deep and full to about a foot and a half from the top, but dirty. Graeme Strachan and Howard Partridge were in there one day after school when one of them (not sure which) fell in. The other panicked and ran off.  A man walking past heard the boy yelling for help and went and pulled him out.

The big Poplar trees in the Ford's place were glorious yellow in autumn. We had big flocks of starlings that would congregate in autumn, towards dusk, on the power lines, in the pines, in Ford's poplars, thousands of them. They'd fly up in mass do some acrobatics then resettle. As it got late they'd start up a hell of a noise then just before dark they'd take off and land somewhere else then be dead quiet. Jod said this was their ploy to fool predators like cats, luring them somewhere then at the last moving somewhere else.

The starlings would then one day be gone, migrated to Queensland for the winter so we believed.

The Pines

I talked to Jod about the horse eating Lyle's cabbages. He told me it was Billy Holman's horse 'Kim'. Bill was at school same year as Jod and was "a good bloke," I agree. Jod continued as memories came back.

"Bill was a bit of a hero for a while. A group of us was standing around my bird aviary in the back yard under the pines when we saw a big rat scurrying along the top of the fence. Without hesitation Bill pulled out his knife and threw it at the rat. In a total fluke it hit the rat fair in the guts and skewered it at some distance. It made Bill famous for a bit."

"What became of Bill, do you know?"

"He died, in the mid 60's. Got bucked off his horse and hit by a passing truck, in Waimerie Dve. But somebody told me that, I can't be sure it's right. It was later when I was in the railways. But I never saw Billy Holman again so it could be right."

The Pines were a great part of our childhood. A sort of local community playground, without play equipment, just the trees which were heavily branched enabling them to be easily climbed. You could move along through the trees hanging over other people's back yards or climb to a comfortable position close to the top and see the neighbourhood for many blocks, watch people walking to and from their homes or in cars, hanging out washing, gardening, or other activities they wouldn't do if they knew they were watched.

For some of the neighbours it was irritating to have kids in the trees above watching them. Jod particularly liked to annoy Eric Jewell next door. When he was in his backyard splitting wood Jod would climb along above him and shake branches and the dried needles would shower down on Eric and get down his shirt. He'd curse and yell at Jod to piss off, Jod refusing, as he knew the not agile Eric could not climb up and catch him. Eric complained to our parents but Jod always claimed he didn't do it on purpose, Mr Jewell just came out and split wood under where he was climbing.

At different times the pines hosted our knife throwing, the trunks being good targets as we imitated the western movies, sword fighting with home made wooden swords a la Robin Hood, shanghais were big for a while, digging underground hideouts (this was banned after one filled with water after big rain and nearly drowned Meredith when she slipped in) and most of all in my case, a place to kick the footy with my mates. As kids it was long enough that our best efforts would not go over the fence, it being much bigger than the back yard. On weekends sometimes we'd go through the pines to kick the footy on Sherwood oval with dad. Lyle could kick the ball a mile we thought, so he liked the oval, and I think showing off. On the way back he'd always impress us by kicking the ball from inside the pines right over the top into our back yard. Sometimes he didn't make it and the ball would wedge somewhere high in the trees and one of us would have to climb to get it. As I got older say about16, I tried to kick the ball over and found it was quite easy, but to us as young kids Dad was like superman sending the ball spiraling over the pines. Sometimes it'd smash into the roof of the house and mum would go crook. I think he liked to annoy her. They often argued on Sundays in particular, sometimes it was quite heated and Lyle would jump in his car and rev it to blazes and drive off for an hour two.

The Pines were full of bird life. Maggies, mudlarks, ravens, currawongs as well as blackbirds sparrows, thrushes, starlings. Jod was a full on birder all his childhood, as were many of his mates. They had egg collections and roamed the various bush areas in the district, competing with their collections and always on the look out for nests of the rarer varieties. Jod sometimes took fledgings from the nest and raised them as pets at home. He had magpies, a mudlark, and a raven and a currawong at different times. His raven would sit on his shoulder as he rode to school on his bike and then fly home when he got there. These pets stayed around for a year or so and then disappeared. The mudlark came back now and again for a few years as friendly as ever.

A memory of the pines was seeing a young local ride in one Sunday morning carrying a bottle of beer. Sitting on his bike lent against a tree trunk he uncapped the bottle and slowly drank it with rests between swigs. I was in the the back yard with Lyle who watched him from the fence and said to him "Having a sly grog are you?"

It was Mick Longeno, who was a year or so older than me. He must have knocked off the beer from somewhere as he was well under age. He answered Lyle, "That's right," and continued drinking at his own pace. Sadly Mick was killed in a car accident a year or so later, along with Mark Fenton. They were in the back seat of an early Holden turning right into Bales St. from Waverley Road late on a Saturday night when a speeding Mercedes crashed straight into the back. The two in front of the car survived the impact and escaped the resulting inferno but the rear passengers had no chance.

Another memory of the pines is watching Steve Edglow climb to the very top of one tree and hold the leader with one arm and then lean out so it bent over, and grab the leader of the next tree with his other arm and stay there in suspension all the while laughing like a maniac while we expected him to fall at any minute. Steve was a daredevil, a bit mad really. He was in Jod's year at school. His brother Graeme, a year older than me, was a nice kid and we knocked about together for a year or so. A sister Dianne was in my year at school and there was another girl Trixie in Meredith's year. They were always quite poor as Mrs Edglow was a single mum. Steve joined the army after he left school and was a cook there for 9 years. He went to Vietnam. He left the army and did many things and would have an interesting life story. Last we heard he lived on a yacht and sailed all over Australia and Asia, but Jod can shed no light on what became of him. Jod tracked down Graeme some years ago but he said Steve had fallen out with his family and they hadn't heard from him in years. Jod says he thinks the yacht probably sank in a cyclone taking Steve with it.

A Sense of Place

I read a book recently titled 'A Man's Got to have a Hobby' by William McInnes which Gord gave me for Christmas. It tells of the author's early experiences as a child in suburban Brisbane in the 60's and 70's and the influence of his parents with their quirky traits that some might see as eccentric. It tells of local characters and changes to the suburb with the rampaging "appropriate development" as William goes back as an adult to visit his parents at Christmas and other reasons.

It sparked memories of my childhood in Mt Waverley and the vibrant daily activities in our family home, similarly humourous to those of William McInnes, although I tell of a time 10 years earlier, that is the 50's and 60's. Automatic cars were a rarity, some families had no car, milk was delivered by horse and cart, bread came to the front door, so did the doctor if you were unwell, and until the early sixties when sewage came the night man collected the toilet pan once a week from the outside dunny.

Much of this is vague to me, my memory is not good, sometimes I think that might be a good thing. Far better at recall are my sister Meredith, two years younger than me, and brother Jod two years older, who, despite more than 50 years of high alcohol consumption has a memory like a steel trap and recalls every detail of any event or neighbourhood description. I've since given the book to Meredith to read and I hope she'll tell me things she recalls if it sparks her memory like it did mine.

When telling her about the book when I was about half way through, I said I couldn't remember Dad growing vegies in the back yard. She said yes he did, quite passionately for a time. He was very upset when one day someone left the back gate open and a horse that was kept sometimes in the reserve behind our house which we called "the pines" came into our backyard and ate all Lyle's cabbages.

The Pines were not pines actually, they were cypress trees, closely planted around the perimeter of the rectangular reserve of about half an acre. This land was enclosed by houses whose back fences were the typical 6 ft timber paling variety. It had an opening in one corner (fenced closed when the horse was there, but we could still get through a gap between a cypress trunk and the timber fence) giving access to and from Sherwood Rd which at that point had an oval in the middle before it narrowed to one to take it to Stephenson's Rd at the east end and again at the west end going to and intersecting with Park Lane.

In the early days there was a vacant block at the west end of the "Pines" reserve. This we called "the Suckers" as it was inundated by poplar suckers, but not so as to restrict our access and we went to school this way, out our back gate, through the "pines" and the "suckers' and onto Park Lane to our school, Mt.Waverley Primary 3034, about five minutes walk from home.

Sherwood Rd and Park Lane and the lower part of our street, Virginia St, Beverley Grove and a few others, were built using concrete in the 1930's, before there were any houses.  They were the start of a failed Glen Alvie Country Club style development that was to involve the golf course (now Riversdale) and tennis courts and clubhouses. The reserve behind our house was set aside as a little park. The depression put paid to the development and building did not start in earnest till the early 1950's. My family moved there in 1951 I think, and I was born in 1952 and came home from hospital to the red brick house which was one of only a few in Virginia St at that time. I'm told that before the Methodist church was built opposite from our house you could see the trains coming into the station and Lyle used to walk across the paddocks to catch the train to work.

Speaking of quirky eccentric families, ours could be seen as such, but there was no shortage of odd behaviour in the neighbourhood by both children and adults. My father and brother were often involved. It was a time when old fashioned ideals such as those of my grandparents collided with  radical change and new technology. I think my parents, and their children, were victims of the collision.
 

Dawn Splendour

Pip woke me for the second time this morning at about 6.45am. The earlier was about 4.30am, too early for me to go outside to the shed in total darkness to feed her so after letting her out for a pee and a thirst quench for me as well I went back to bed.

Second time up the sun was rising in the east and the sky was lit in stunning rose pink brightness behind the tree silhouettes. I stood on the deck absorbing this beauty for ten minutes, the birds singing their joy; blackbirds, kookaburras, magpies, and others I can't say I could identify. It was perfectly still, and not cold, I checked the thermometer, it said 9C. The peace and beauty of this early morning will stay in my memory, possibly forever.

I realized that no matter the result of yesterday's federal election, the sun rises, the birds sing, and just like after every other election I've experienced, life goes on pretty much exactly the same. The previous night I'd gone to Maria's house to watch the count unfold, fully expecting a Labour victory. There, in the company of Maria, poet John, Isabella and Cathy, all Labour supporters, Gord and I watched in almost total disbelief as the figures revealed the return of the Coalition.

So nothing changes. The rich will get richer, the poor poorer. Environment degradation to continue.

I'm just so glad to be able to enjoy the the peace and quiet of the morning, at age 67. I'm hoping I will  live to see the next election projected to be in 2022, meaning I'd be seventy years old. A nice target. I'm fortunate in good health and I'm confident the target achievable. Hopefully there'll be many more beautiful sunrises and days enjoying the natural world.

Politics is a human construct. My good mate RR has voted informal for decades and refuses to get involved. Perhaps he's right. I regret I didn't put some on the Libs at the 6 to 1 the bookies were offering, I thought about it but decided it would be throwing money away, they had Labour at 1.12 for a dollar, a sure thing I thought.

Ralphie tipped 9

Yes, RR, behind me by 2 in the tipping comp, had a full board this week, caught up on me by one. Good thing I had $5 on his tips and collected $159. Never thought I'd be barracking for Hawthorn but there I was biting my nails.

Good Friday

Late last Thursday, the day before Good Friday, I was picking bay foliage in Gembrook, for the reason that if I got some of my picking done before Friday then I would have a few days relatively free to work at home before customers came on Monday to pick up their orders. These customers usually come Saturdays but had put it forward to Monday due to many of their customers being closed over Easter. I was so looking forward to catching up on house and garden duties at home.

It didn't work out. I had been to the farm on the Thursday, I can't remember what I did and it matters not, but I came home early, after catching up with young Sam, a uni student, who does some casual work on his days off uni. I had to get back early as Lib needed someone to go with her to the optometrist in Pakenham. She'd been having some trouble with her vision, dark shadows, and when making the 3pm appt with the opto he said to bring someone who could drive her home as he would put drops in her eyes so he could examine better, these drops would give her blurry vision for a couple of hours.

I got home with little time to spare but Gord said he'd go with Lib so I went picking after a cuppa and was away a couple of hours. They were back when I returned so before putting my bunches in water I went in to see how Lib got on.

"Not good," she said. "He thinks I might have a detached or torn retina. He says I should go to Emergency at the Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne tomorrow as it can be serious if not attended to and lead to blindness."

"Bugger," I replied. My heart sank immediately, but I thought oh well I have till Monday to fill the orders. "Well we'll leave pretty early if we can."

I went outside to get the foliage into buckets and Gord came out with the phone and handed it to me. It was my good friend Pat MacKenzie from Warrnambool who said he was in Melbourne and would like to come up and see us tomorrow. I explained Lib's eye situation and we exchanged mobile numbers and I said I'd ring him when we got to the hospital, maybe we can meet up in Melbourne. It was toward midday when we got there and after letting Lib out at Emergency and finding car parking I rang Pat's mobile. He and Carmel were across the road in a cafe so they came over and we all sat in Emergency waiting room catching up on news in between interviews with the desk clerk and nursing staff. After about an hour they took Lib in for examination and it was not long before they called me in. Lib's retina was detached and she was operated on that afternoon and admitted as a private patient. Therefore I would not have to wait around for hours till Lib could leave, and I would not have to have her back there at 8am when the surgeon would come to check her.

So I went with Pat and Carmel back to the cafe. They bought me lunch and I'm so grateful that they were there, not just for renewing aquaintance, but because their attendance lifted me (and Lib) out of our tension and anxiety. A difficult and depressing day had a silver lining and it was as if fate or my guardian angel had arranged them to be there for us. They are truly special people.

The cafe we were in must have been under a hospital. A big tall bloke came in pushing a new born in a small hospital pram thing with a perspex/plastic cover. I recognized him as Mark Jamar who played some years at Melbourne then at Essendon. I had a chat to him and wished him well. He said he now had two sons, hopefully one will be a father son selection at Melbourne, and now another for Essendon.

I picked Lib up on the Saturday. We had lunch on the way home and found a 24hr chemist to get the cortisone drops she must put in her eye 4 times a day for two weeks. She can't see out of the crook eye (which looks sunken back), just blur, which can last for 2-7 weeks. The poor girl is miserable and can't do much. We have to go back to the hospital on Friday for a follow up Drs appt. Touch wood all will be well. I'm doing my picking tomorrow for Saturday, early as Friday will be a wipe out workwise.

Poor Lib sure has had a pummeling this last twelve months.

What a Weekend

The weather for the weekend was perfect. Mild, sunny, still, autumn at its best.

I'm pleased to say the two new queens I introduced last Thursday week were accepted and they are laying well. A beautiful thing to see. The colony at Leanne's place which has been difficult to handle for a long time were docile and content on Saturday when I checked. Amazing really, because the bees are still all the progeny of the old queen, but the new introduced queen seems to have worked a spell over them. Her newly laid brood will not be born for a couple of weeks but the hive seems already transformed from savage to calm.

New Queens

We returned from our blissful holiday in Adelaide last Thursday week. It looked like no rain had fallen during our ten day holiday, so dry and parched was the landscape. Fortunately our friend Sandy had done a good job watering our pots and small vegie garden while we were away and I had watered the young plants in the garden before we left and there were no losses.

First day back Friday 29 March was warm to hot with a fair wind, most unpleasant as I worked reluctantly. I ordered two queen bees from a breeder in Qld, thinking that if I could autumn requeen two hives that were poor all season then next season may bring better result. The forecast was not good for the weekend. The breeder said he'd send the queens on Monday and they'd probably arrive Wednesday, by which time I thought the weather would have to have improved. Saturday 30th turned cold and it rained all day pretty much, just the excuse I needed to have some rest. There was 30- 50 ml of rain in the district, still waiting for friend Glen to tell me how much fell here on this side of Gembrook.

Sunday I was on roster duty in the museum. It was very quiet. I enjoyed Beryl's company.

Come Wednesday, full of expectation that the queen bees would arrive, excitedly I went up to the post office. No queens at 10.30am, mail clearance finishing time. It was a pleasant day, mild sunny morning. They told me the queens may come about lunchtime, the post van picked up and sometimes brought more parcels. What do I do? I decided to find the old queens in the hives and kill them, thinking that even if the queens did not come for a day or two it would be alright, at least I'd be able to put them in the queenless hives quickly even if the weather was not ideal.

I found the queen quickly in the hive at our place and pinched her head off, something I do not enjoy, but necessary. The other hive at my friend Leanne's place was more challenging. I couldn't find her. This hive had been savage and difficult for some time and I confess to not being well practised or skilled at finding queens. It's something, like many things, that if you are doing it often you get good at it, but that was not the case for me. Compounding the difficulty, clouds had blocked the sun, the bees were so hungry, the hive dry with no nectar coming in, so the bees were quick to anger, and if you don't find the queen quickly with combs all around the open hive robber bees are on the scene. It took strength of mind to continue. I decided to shake all the bees from the combs into an empty box above a queen excluder above some brood and smoke them down hoping I'd then find the queen who would be stuck above the excluder. Whether this would have worked or not I don't know, because as I picked up the lid covered with bees, the last thing to shake, I spied her hiding in the corner.

By this time the hive was highly agitated and robbers were rampant. I was equally agitated and greatly relieved at finding her majesty, the dark mother of this angry colony. This time the head was pinched with relish.

Back to the post office I learned the queens had in fact arrived, but I took them home and inserted them the next day into the the two now queenless hives, giving the them a day to quieten down and adjust to being queenless. The candy in the queen cage escape takes a day or so for the bees to remove, by which time the queen and her escorts have acquired the scent of the hive so that they are accepted by the colony and not killed as aliens. I will check the hives when the weather is good in a week or so and I will be overjoyed if the introduction of the new queens has been successful and they are rearing new brood.

Each night I go to bed and think with some satisfaction that I have done it, what I had planned to do for some months. I'll let you know if I was successful.

March 5..Edgy

Pip woke me at 4.45am, as she often does around then or soon after, presumably she wants to do her toilet thing. I don't hesitate to get up, the dog has never peed inside in my recollection and nor do I want such happening. Besides I'm ready for a pee myslf so outside we go.

Mind you I'm a bit dopey as I put on gumboots at the back door and walk to the shed to put out Pip's breakfast, prepared the night before. Usually by the time I have done this and my wee, she is there hungry and into breakfast. Not so this morning. I stood and waited in the early grey light, whistled, listened and waited. There's often traffic on the main road at that hour, you can hear the cars coming from a long distance away and I sympathise with these poor buggers that have to be travelling at that time to work who knows where. Sometimes I can hear Pip moving about in the crunchy dry leaves on the ground.

I had to wait a couple of minutes till she turned up, then she just stood and looked at her food with no interest in eating it. Now this is not all that unusual for her. She sometimes goes off her food for a day or so, wants to go in and out of the house a lot, and we figure she has a mild digestive problem which soon passes. But today it worried me, I'm a bit toey after the snake bite thing just a couple of weeks back. Could it be possible that she'd bitten again in the couple of minutes that she'd been out in the garden toileting? I believe snakes do hunt at night and the way March is going nothing would surprise me. I was not about to ring Tom the vet at 5am unless there was more dramatic obvious reason so I went back inside to bed and Pip went to hers in the office. But she didn't stay there. I could hear her nails as she walked up and down the wooden steps. Up again I put a lead on her and we went outside. She had no inclination to do anything but stand sit at my feet. As I patted her she quivered a bit. My anxiety was not eased.

We went back inside. I put her compression jacket on. Maybe she was unsettled by atmospheric factors that she senses well before we hear thunder. There were storms forecast for today. She went up to our bed and lay there which she does usually after I have got up the second time to start my day proper. She likes to sleep where I sleep when I'm not there. I put books or such what on my pillow so she's on the doona not the sheets.

It is now 7.30am I have been doing some things on the computer since 6. She has come out a couple of times but I just checked and she's lying curled looking peaceful. I would think I can forget the 2nd snakebite possibility. Surely symptoms would have developed had that been so? Am I becoming a bit of a nervous wreck? No, not quite, but yes, I'm edgy.

I stayed home yesterday due to the blocked pipe drama. A plumber came about 5pm and put his screw worm jigger thing through the pipe and touch wood that is also now behind me.

Now I'm worried that that an airB+B I've prepaid for a future holiday is a scam. I told RR about it on Saturday and he told me of his experience last year of booking and paying an airBB in Darwin to go to a wedding, only to find the owner cancelled him the day prior. This bloke had done this many times and multiple booked his place and pocketed the money with the customers left with nowhere to stay. RR said he would never do AirBB again, after this incident when he then had to pay through the nose for scarce availability accomm for multiple people for multiple nights.

I think my nervousness about this was not helped by an incident yesterday. I went up to the top our drive to put a sign up so the plumber could find us easily. I have an old cast iron kettle that sits on a tree stump near the top of the drive. I use this to rest the sign on in the street when I know someone is coming. The plumber rang and said he was delayed so I went up the street to shop and as I drove out I saw that someone had knocked off the kettle and the sign was lying flat on the ground. This in our little dead end street. I'd only put it out about half an hour earlier. And there's been press about looters working in these fire areas where people who have evacuated have been robbed.

Yes I'm edgy.

Mad March

We may be only four days in but the indications are dreadful. On Friday 1 Mar, it was about 40C. I worked hard picking much foliage in the heat. At about 2.30pm a thunderstorm pronounced itself with great vigour while I was home bunching and having a cup of tea after busily picking and before going to the farm.

Pip went nuts with the thunder, It was strange, there didn't seem to be any clouds. I later looked, there was some moving away but it was violent thunder. Ten minutes or so later the fire sirens went off and I could smell smoke so I knew lightning had started a fire reasonably close by. I knew from the sirens they were onto it, but I took Pip with me when I left for the farm just in case.

In any case that dry storm was what started the Bunyip State Park fires which have raged since then. Helicopters have been flying over our house at regular intervals for three days, presumably some dropping water on the fire and others assessing. I have felt quite safe, despite the unnerving sight of billowing smoke to the east. We are on the western edge of all that bush, and the prevailing breeze has been away from us. Just the same we've been anxious, as anybody would be.

Now today, yesterday actually as I'm up past midnight, the shit hit the fan. Rickyralph visited this morning, all good, me relaxing after Friday heat and Satuday repeat. Still 38-40C. Then I went to the can, flushed it, bowl filled to brim before slowly emptying. Hello I thought to myself, a problem. I was prompted by this to clean the grease trap as a starting point, knowing it was overdue. It did not improve the situation so I went under the house to an inspection point in the pipe to the septic tank. The main pipe from the toilets was leaking, meaning it was full and held some pressure, there was a blockage somewhere. I took the cap of the inspection point, predictably shit and water and paper spewed out which I was expecting having gone down this track a couple of decades ago. I put the cap back on and tried the toilet but no change, just gurgling and slow release of water. So obviously blockage was other side of the inspection point, between it and septic tank, and now probably an air lock to boot. I knew there was another inspection point top side of the septic tank so I started to dig and after some careful digging so as not to damage the pipe I found it. No amount of putting hose up pipe, or down the other way from the point under the house (yes I took the cap of again and more stuff spewed out, by this time it was quite muddy and shitty under there) would clear the blockage so I gave up, slashed a couple of sherrys and thought well it looks like I'll have to find a plumber tomorrow.

I went inside and had a bath and then a roast dinner of chicken. Gord had a bath late at night, pulled the plug, then realized the water from the bath was going back into the shower then overflowing onto the floor. Lots of towels by me cleaning up. Then, Gord called out, he'd gone up to the other bathroom, to find sullage flooding into the shower, this brown in colour and stinking and obviously full of faeces.

I was almost out of my tree by now. You can imagine the clean up, bearing in mind that the pipes are regurging and we can't use the bathrooms or toilets. Pardon my bad language, no I will restrain, FMD.

I'll try to find a plumber tomorrow. If this is an indicator of a mad March to follow Freaky February God help me.

Freaky February

Monday18 Feb our little dog Pip was bitten by a snake. We didn't see this event. I was home, no orders to pick, oddly, so I was catching up on bookwork and waiting for Gord to come home from his dentist app. When he did come home, about 1pm, I heard him say, "There's something wrong with Pip."

Lib was on the deck reading a book, and I was inside at the computer. I went out to find Pip panting, salivating and quivering. Her whole body was tensed, she was greatly distressed. I took her straight up the street to the vet. Fortunately a lady vet Belinda was in attendance, she said straight away, "This looks like a snakebite." I had thought maybe Pip had eaten some snail pellets I had put out on some broccolli seedlings the day before.

There was no way of knowing until the result of patholoy blood test came the next day if in fact it was snake bite, by which time it would be too late, she would have died. I gave them permission to administer antivenin, which they promptly did.  When I enquired later by phone I was told she had an amazingly quick response to the injection and was doing well, but would need to be kept for a couple of days to monitor progress. How lucky were we, firstly that we were right there, secondly that there was a vet in attendance two minutes away, and thirdly that they had the antivenin on hand which I believe is not always the case.

Beautiful little Pip has survived and it seems fully recovered.

But February amazed for many things. Reknowned horse trainer Darren Weir was suspended for three years. Over a decade I had watched his career explode to be Victoria's most successful and perhaps Australia's leading trainer. Then suddenly gone.

February also saw Cardinal Bill Pell found guilty of sex crimes against minors and jailed. What can I say about that, given my position of not knowing the truth? But the jury found him guilty, that I do know. And there's anecdotal evidence going back two decades before these crimes were alleged, that Pell as a senior in the Ballarat diocese, covered up similar criminal activity by paedophile priests in northern and western Victoria for many years. Thes priests were ultimately found guilty also, the evidence eventually overwhelming.

The floods in North Qld apparently wiped out the cattle industry. I have listened to the appeals for the Australian government to assist in its rebuilding. I have serious doubt as to the validity of this. When I visited my mate Dave Dickson at a property west of Charters Towers some years ago where he worked on a cattle station as a property caretaker. He said to me me then, "I don't know why they raise and farm cattle here, it's not good for cattle, they struggle and it's hard. But fruit trees grow so well, and with plentiful bore water you can grow almost anything." He loved his garden and his plantation was a veritable oasis. So my thought is, Why would you rebuild the cattle industry there when history has shown that it will be destroyed again by flood?

Now despite the above mentioned surprises of February, of greater alarm to me is the front page of the Pakenham Gazette of mid Feb. Officially, due to EPA restrictions, Cardinia Council has no way of dealing with our recyclable rubbish and it's all going to landfill now. I'm disgusted. All our efforts to diligently sort our refuse, in my case to the extent of collecting all plasic bottletops and putting them in a plastic container till it's full, likewise with metal tops into tin cans, seem to have been useless. how pathetic is this? Our managers, planners and governments have been and are appallingly negligent. It defies my understanding. My thought is- if it can't be recycled, reused, or biodegraded easily, its manufacture should be banned. No exceptions, ifs, buts or maybes. Banned. Outlawed. at present we are trashing the planet to the detriment of those to follow.

What about the massive fish kill in the Darling River?

Freaky February.
,

Love

He watches from his studio. She walks in the garden she loves, looking, bending, weeding, scratching. He thinks. I still love her, just like when we were teenagers so many years ago, I love her the same. He told me.

He watches again, another day. She feeds the birds on the deck in front of their kitchen. The kitchen looks out over the valley. The valley they saw forty years ago when looking to buy. It reminded them of their village in England where they grew up.

"We'll take it," they said, even before they had seen inside the house.

He watches from the kitchen, this other day. She trips and falls as she puts seed in the feeder. Her head hits the timber rail. He rushes to her, lying on the deck. She is dead, her neck broken.

He told me. "I was watching her. She fell. In an instant she was dead, my beautiful wife, the love of my life. Gone. There with me, then gone, in an instant."

Hot January

As one who works outside I can assure you January was a hot month. Indeed I saw this morning that Climate Council states that January was the hottest on record. Very little rain too, 15ml here in Gembrook, and half that was in a storm very late in the month after a prolonged heatwave, so it really was ineffective.

January also saw our 38th wedding anniversary. Also a visit from our friend Ian Sinclair who stayed six days. He arrived in Aus from Yukon Province in Canada and spent the first couple of weeks in Canberra and Adaminaby where his brother Col lives. It was about -20C when he left the Yukon and the daily max when he was here ranged from 35-45C. He loved our garden and its birdlife but was dismayed at the noise during the day from motor bikes and trucks, which he said had escalated enormously in the three years since he was last here. After he left, the next morning he rang from Mt Terrible to let me know he was there, one of our old haunts. He said the road had been much improved, and had been diverted here and there to cut out the bad bits, which were still obvious. He said he was amazed that 45 years ago we made it up there in our two wheel drive vehicles. When he reached the top there were five vehicles there with workmen installing solar panels for the mobile phone tower. Therefore he had reception and could ring. Back in the old days the fire watcher camped up there in an old cabin for three months, supplies coming up weekly. He loved our visits, broke the monotony, and the grog we brought. Mind you he was most diligent in his tower during the day, but loved our company at night.

At the moment the floods around Townsville are dominating the news. Record rainfall over a week or more and still going. The news vision is sad to watch when you think of the thousands of people and properties devastated. And since, hundreds of thousands of drowned cattle in NW Qld.

The annual threat of bushfires is with us in the south and with several weeks of predicted hot weather ahead all hell could break loose on any day with a strong wind to fan the numerous continuing fires that are currently burning but not running wild or uncontrolled. The bush is tinder dry.

January saw the beginning of the end for horse trainer Darren Weir. As a (very much mug) punter this was astounding. I have watched from a distance as Weir grew from a small country trainer to the biggest in Australia with record winning numbers.The caravan rolls on.

The Australian Tennis open came and went with the usual mountain of publicity. A few weeks prior all the news bulletins and sport shows were full of reporting on tennis tournaments to jog us into gear.
Then the barrage of publicity for the Open and the flagellating appraisals of the "player's favourite tournament", almost nauseating. I admit I watched some, in particular that young Greek guy who knocked out Federer and followed it up till he was blitzed by the poise and power of Nadal in the semifinal. Then, I watched the the final expecting an epic, only to see the Joker blitz Nadal in straight sets, almost without a whimper from the previously supreme Nadal. I think it was mind domination as well as tennis ability.

Not a word about tennis since in the media. Now it's all politics and AFLW. We are driven by the media. All I know for sure is that out of the blue today it rained, don't know how much till Glen tells me, my gauge broke off the post. Rickyralph came up for a visit, he is well. It was a beautiful restful day of rain after several brutal weeks of heat and hard work. Last week was huge as florist customers stocked up for Valentine's Day. Got knocked up. Tired, rested today. Family day tomorrow, Pascoe Vale at Lib's niece's place with Lib's sisters and theirs, in lieu of Christmas getogether that didn't.