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.