Category: Childhood Memories

The concert finished with us all standing to attention and bellowing out “God save the Queen”.  I knew all the words, even the second verse, cos I was in the choir, and we led the school at Monday morning’s assembly. But today the Anthem’s conclusion was taken as a ‘starting pistol’. As soon as that last, long, drawn-out “…Queeeeen” concluded, we were off!

We kids moved collectively and immediately to our various bag-racks. From there, onto the bike shed, and on our trusty Malvern Stars, rushed the school gate. Six weeks of glorious sunny fun ahead!

I raced my big brother the two kilometres through the foreshore tracks from school to home. As always, he won. But that wasn’t going to dampen my mood. Mum had a plate of pikelets, her fantastic strawberry jam and clotted cream on the table as we noisily burst into the kitchen.

Ten days until Christmas, six until our Banksia Holiday Park would start to fill with campers. Most of the guests had rebooked their site for this year before they left last Christmas. I spent a while contemplating the gang’s reunion – a whole year since we had seen each other – Ian, Bruce, Spiro, Andie, Johno and Suzie – yer I know, she was a girl, but she could climb trees as good as us!

I had already revisited our clubhouse, out the back of the Park, hidden in the dense Ti Tree scrub. I discovered, and chucked out the couple of possum’s nests built over the winter. I came across an old blanket in our garage, and I spread it over the dirt floor – it really tarted up the place. I’m sure Mum wouldn’t mind me borrowing the cups and plates. She never uses them, always just sitting in the glass cupboard, and they were now stacked in the Marchant’s lemonade crate I found at the tip! This was going to be the best school holiday ever!

There were a couple of cold, rainy days, but plenty of ferociously hot ones. I spent hours at the beach after school and on weekends, working on my tan. My sister introduced me to a coconut and olive oil tanning elixir. Several people asked about my salady smell.

I still got sunburnt a few times, usually after I forgot to reapply the ‘dressing’ after swimming!  I regularly lost several layers of skin over the summer. Mum said I was like a snake, throwing off my old skin. It was the price you paid to present a grown-up, tanned bod to the assembled gang, and we all sported flaky arms, legs or backs over the summer!

Bruce’s family was the first to arrive, and we climbed to the top of the giant pine tree to eat our first Cream-Between of the summer. Ian and Suzie arrived the following day, with Andie and Johno the next. Mum made me a plate of sandwiches and provided a whole bottle of lemonade for our inaugural 1958/59 Sharks’ Club luncheon!

Dad told me that Spiro’s Mum had rung last week and cancelled their booking. He said something about a strike at the Port Melbourne docks, where his dad worked as a wharfie. He had been arrested; Dad said he was in Pentridge! Oh well, I suppose it would mean more lollies for each of the Gang!

Christmas Day finally arrived. Presents, and an enforced day of family togetherness, overeating and the Oldies “… singing a few of their favourite songs…” after preliminary beers, wine and the alcohol-fuelled trifle was finished.

I scored quite well in my pillow slip. There was a new set of coloured pencils, a colouring-in book, a ruler, a Phantom comic, a packet of Smarties, a Polly Waffle, and a bag of lollies. There were two Gob-smackers, eight liquorice blocks, eight raspberry jubes, four Sherbies and a Redskin.

Under the tree was a Meccano set from Mum and Dad. It was a kit to make a huge crane. I already had a windmill and a truck, and the crane would be great to load the truck! There were also two Matchbox cars, a blue one and a green one. Grandpa gave me his old wristwatch. The glass was a bit scratched, but he showed me how to use the little wheel at the side to wind it up and to change the time. I got four hankies and two pairs of socks from Nanna, and three dorky books from my brother and sisters.

The Gang met first thing the next morning.  I organised a treasure hunt from the clubhouse. I had raided my sister’s old collection of bangles and stuff; they sparkled wonderfully, and I hid the glitter in grass tufts and in the forks of the trees. I even chucked one down a rabbit burrow.

That last spot was a bit of a disaster, as just after I threw the bangle in, an angry, but small Tiger snake slithered out, indignant at my intrusion. I found a bit of stick, banged it on the head and chucked it away!

Cricket was always something associated with summer holidays. The Poms were here, in Melbourne. Grandpa and Dad used to set up the radiogram outside on the verandah; heaven help any loud interruptions from us kids. Dinner usually had Dad reliving the day’s highlights. I know we thrashed the blighters!

The Caravan Park had heaps of kids’ activities. The campers had formed an Activities Committee to organise events, including regular, free ice cream handouts! There were dress-up parades, beauty contests, evening concerts, movie nights, sandcastle building and treasure hunts down on the beach. The days just morphed into each other – hot, dry and never-ending.

There was the day Suzie and I were together at the top of the pine tree. We had finished our ice creams, and she suddenly suggested a kissing competition. I used my new watch: we kissed for 85 seconds, without a break! There were other attempts over the weeks, but we never beat that time, not even on New Year’s Eve! She had this funny, strawberry taste. I liked it!

But holidays finish. Mum took me up to Frankston on the bus to buy new Clarks, shorts and shirts. I whinged about the trip and achieved a plate of chips and a lime malted milk, with extra ice cream!  A week later, I started Grade Five, a new teacher, but the same old same old.

I secretly admitted that the Sharks gang were getting a bit boring! I actually felt relieved to be back in the familiar, ordered world: predictable reading, composition, sums and science, music broadcasts, even the great adventures of the Argonauts Club. There were well-established gangs at lunchtimes, year-long friendships, after-school adventures, and occasional excursions.

As a nine-year-old, life was good!

I think things can be traced back to my early childhood; Mum’s penchant for Christopher Robin: the need to avoid the cracks in the pavement. Don’t worry, I have already alerted the grandchildren on the necessity to jump right over the lines! At 75, I still do. Take a close look when I am walking down the street, note that sudden elongated step taken just in the nick of time!

But things have gotten much worse. I bought a Subaru. I now count Subaru cars on the road, estimating a number in my head before heading off – I will pass four on the trip to the supermarket, ten to drop the grandchildren off, forty-five on the trip to Daylesford, one way. There are rules too – the cars must be on the road, you can’t count parked cars, or those sitting in driveways! I admit that if things are close, I do include my own Subaru in the count. You’d be amazed at the accuracy of my estimations!

Oh, and then there is the number plate reading. Look at this one, I muse, as I am sitting behind 1AM 5FG. It has a complementary red ‘p’ plate. Later that day I see WHY BHV, a rather cheeky rego for us aficionados.

As soon as my mind registers any repetition, I start to count. It might be a fence – 142 pickets, seven magpies on the corner, traffic lights: wow, I just got five green lights; there’s ten identical cottages in that terrace, 11 pairs of jocks drying on the line, the library has three flights, each with ten steps and the bedside clock registers 4.56am.

SBS’s On Demand film menus are regimented in lines, with nine movies in each; there are 187 longish steps to the Milk Bar – if you start at our front gate, not the front door: that adds an extra 12 steps! I see a picture of a public housing tower – 21 stories and I note that only every second window has an air conditioner sticking out. And so it goes – a never ending cornucopia of things to count.

My MS Word program counts words – I wonder if that was ever somebody’s job? Wouldn’t that be a great way to earn a crust. But it tells me that you can fit about 742 words on a page, if you stick to 11 pt Calibri font. Wonderful really; imagine all the different length words you write, lots of really small ones, just three or four letters long, and then those that run out to nine, or ten letters, some even 14! The word count is pretty consistent! I’m amazed how it all works? I now restrict myself to 500 words to a page.

I sometimes consider whether I am alone with my counting. If I had analytical skills, I could research this, maybe start a support group – a web page for others similarly fixated.

For now, I’ll just spend a moment counting the words in this story. Mmmm exactly 500!

Whenever I walk in a London street,
I’m ever so careful to watch my feet;
And I keep in the squares,
And the masses of bears,
Who wait at the corners all ready to eat
The sillies who tread on the lines of the street

Lines and Squares, A.A.Milne

Our youngest grandson started school yesterday. He was as excited as a coiled spring; keyed up for weeks, egged on by his much older six-and-a-half-year-old brother. I spoke to the debutante on the phone last night and he was tumbling over himself, telling me about drawing a huge lion, and the teacher telling the class about dinosaurs. He mentioned his surprise of not having Olivia, Trent and Becky in the class. They were not even at the school!

My mind started to spin back to my own introduction to primary school, entry into the ‘Bubs at the Rosebud Primary. I have vivid memories, the large sandpit, the shaded playground and my dawning realisation over the first couple of days that I was not going to use plasticine in class. With absolute clarity, I recall my disappointment, and my belief that the squishy balls were just delayed, they would be offered tomorrow, or the next day, surely.

That was 70 years ago. I sit on the couch as emotions swirl, I realise that my disappointment, all those years ago is still within, remembered as a visceral milestone of that transition. I wonder what a ‘shrink might make of this!

At kinder the individual, coloured sticks had long ago melded into a uniformly dark grey splodge, but nobody seemed to mind. I kept up a lively chatter as I rolled, cut, pressed and constructed, sometimes with John and Jane helping, other times, just by myself.  The adventures on offer were fabulous: Mum was told that I was sometimes even reluctant to leave the tables for morning cake and juice.

Kinder ended with the arrival of hot sunny days, daily trips down to the nearby beach, occasional ice cream treats, my elder brother and sister supervising my sandcastle constructions, sometimes joining in. That summer went on forever.

There was mention of going to the big school ‘Next Year’, but the import of that milestone was mostly buried by the sandcastles, and the delicately placed shell and seaweed ornamentation. Mum and I went to town on the bus and I was kitted out with Clarkes’ shoes, a couple of pairs of shorts, new shirts and socks. We lunched at the Coles cafeteria and I remember ice cream with strawberry topping. That cafeteria – such a highlight!

But the big day arrived. I was at school. We had a story and we were each asked to talk about our holiday activities. There was drawing, we even had an early afternoon nap, but there was no plasticine?  I asked the other kids. They didn’t know. I asked my big brother – he told me they didn’t do it in the big school.

I never forgot the plasticine, and despite frequent consideration, was never able to adequately explain that lingering memory. It just remains as a little bump, an insignificant ‘significance’.

Memories exist, but I have managed to avoid potential plasticine-linked trauma, albeit with the memory of plasticine still occasionally surfacing!

“Next!” That was my dismissal. He’d asked me if I’d ever sung in a choir. I hadn’t and I told him so.

“Here endeth the lesson” a phrase that comes to mind in an unguarded moment, when I wander back to that audition, sixty-five years ago. Week three, the school chaplain had one hundred new, eleven-year-old boys yarded, drafting speedily, hopeful that somewhere in the flock he might come across a choired prodigy.

He had a prestigious reputation as a Choir Master, relocating from Kings College, Cambridge. Some nights I still wrestle with my failure to remonstrate. Maybe he might have reassessed my dismissal if I had just broken out with a few lines from a G&S operetta or a “Please Sir, I’d like…”. But of course, I didn’t. I meekly left the room.

I was aware that I was from the other side of the tracks. I perceived this private boarding school, afforded because of a dramatic change in family fortunes, would forever pin me to the bottom of a pre-ordained pecking order. I was from Rosebud, they all seemed to live in Toorak and beachside holidays were at Barwon Heads. The mismatch was crushing.

My social acceptability was not being helped by newspaper headlines reporting my uncle for his villainous, anti-Australian activities. His vociferous opposition to our involvement in the Vietnam conflict was gaining national traction, but not among my fellow students. Menzies was suggesting treason, the tabloids were having a field day, and me, desperate for admission, fell further into the mire.

My sister and I were both sopranos. We knew all the lyrics, and harmonies within the G&S repertoire, from South Pacific, Oklahoma, High Society, Fiddler on the Roof and any other stray musical exposures we came across. We even picked up and inserted harmonies against Dad’s breathy whistling of childhood-learned hymns and could entertain, me taking the upper registry of the 23rd Psalm.

I didn’t appreciate the significance of missed voice training, vital to taking my voice through puberty in any meaningful way. Rather, I just saw my exclusion from a wonderous four-part singing opportunity, that I badly wanted to be part of! But I still didn’t pluck up the courage to say anything.

In my last year, I finally had the sense, and self-worth, to approach the choirmaster and join. I was part of their chorale. Dio mio! Those wasted years! As a tenor, I revelled in that year.

Singing stayed with me as a favourite, but generally private pursuit. I joined regional choirs and musical repertory groups, the occasional solo performances from Mozart, Handel and Bizet, but more so, as a folk festival entertainer. I became a Rogers and Hammerstein bathroom singer, not Luciano at La Scala: more a pub performing Mario Lanza.

I was left with an unanswerable question. What if, as an 11-year-old, I had been more forthcoming? Dreams continued to titillate, to explore the what-ifs of a missed musical career. I still sing in the car, by myself.

It has been a couple of decades, and I was pleasantly surprised at my reaction to the email. He was going to be in Melbourne for a conference. “What about a catch-up?” I am waiting at the terminal.

We were the ultimate Three Musketeers, Stephen, Becky and I. We were in Bubs together, throughout Primary and for most of our early Secondary schooling. We shared the same classes, the same interests; inseparable in, and out of school. There were sleep overs, parties; three sets of parents sharing the responsibilities.

There was some competitive banter, but not enough to ever strain things. I remember our lunch boxes used to create a bit of friction. Mum was forever putting little paper-twists of last night’s leftovers, a wedge of smelly cheese, a few dry biscuits, a taramasalata, gherkin and egg sandwich. Steve or Beck’s Mum loaded peanut butter, or cheese and vegemite sandwiches on de-crusted, white bread, a slice of cake, and a fruit juice box. Nobody wanted to swap anything from my box!

Bye and bye, puberty arrived. Stephen and I were early casualties, as Beck found the older boys had already thrown away the train sets, the tree house and bikes! I saw Beck coughing on a ciggie, behind the Shelter Shed one afternoon!

We did eventually achieve a half-way sense of masculinity, squeaky, unpredictable voices, fluff forming on our cheeks and things changing ‘down below’. Steve found some magazines and we poured over the ‘educational’ pictures.

Beck’s eighteenth birthday was a bit of a watershed. She looked fabulous – her blond hair, her figure and outfit. Steve and I were in awe, both quite openly appreciating the changes that had occurred, envious of the current guy at her command, our own girlfriends, both still in fifth form, unable to cut the mustard.

We all breezed into Uni, Steve into Vet Science at Flinders, in Adelaide, Beck and I into Medicine, at Melbourne. Beck and I continued to party together, and for a few brief months in our final year, we became a discrete, albeit furiously erotic ‘item’. Our affaire remained off the radar; I don’t think Steve ever knew.

I still mull over what might have been. How did she end up marrying Steve? He took up an offer of a post-graduate posting in Sri Lanka, working with the privately-funded Elephants for Life organisation. Beck ended up at the Women and Children’s Hospital while I went interstate, into private practice.

Contact between us drifted, as work, and my own family commitments took centre stage. There were the Christmas Letters, the occasional email but their wedding invitation knocked me for a six! I had no idea they were even in the same hemisphere.

That corner of memory that holds the wistful emotions had never comfortably ‘placed’ or settled Beck. The unbidden longing occasionally resurfaced. When I saw both of them, coming down the concourse, my emotions fell apart. The hugs had me tearing up, loudly – a spectacle that I couldn’t quite explain.

I used to love crossing the road from our place, my feet scrunching up the long gravel driveway, my focus, the sights and smells of Uncle Clive’s workshop. Shellac, or paint assaulted the nostrils, recently sawn lengths of timber were assembled, a lump of lard on the saw bench, a pile of old rags, furniture polish, all at the ready. I inhaled deeply as I entered his domain.

The bench was expectantly neat, albeit small piles of missed shavings. The handsaw, hammer, a plane and several screwdrivers on the bench suggested a new project.

A breathily whistled “The Surrey with the fringe on top” set the tempo for our friendly banter. “G’day Mister” he proffered, as I sauntered up to the bench, crunching a carrot, pulled, in passing from his extensive vegetable garden near the shed.

“Can I play with the screws, please” and in answer, he lifted me up onto the benchtop. I hummed in harmony, an octave above his tenor, as my gaze moved wondrously towards the jars hanging below the louvred, double window. The lid from each jar was secured, screwed into a length of timber that stretched back towards the wall. I just loved twisting and opening a jar, my nose crinkling as the residual smells wafted up.

Uncle Clive never threw old fixings away. “A good screw is a reward” he often remarked, years before such a double-entendre would raise eyebrows and a few knowledgeable chuckles. His storage jars held nails he’d straightened, bits of fuse wire, short coils of solder, brackets, small hinges. There were thin, inch-long nails, sometimes rusted into an amorphous blob. He showed me that you could rekindle their individuality with a gentle hammer-tap.

His storages included vegemite jars, with dozens of tiny screws, larger pickle jars, right through to round Christmas biscuit tins. They held the bigger sets of screws, flanges, nuts and bolts, hinges and whatnots, usually all wrapped into impregnated oilcloth.

Those glass jars never seemed to break, except when the one holding eight, 3” nails slipped through my fingers onto the concrete floor. We swept up the broken pieces and he found another big jar for the nails.

He showed me how to straighten the nails, holding them firmly by their tips, revolving and strategically tapping the metal back into straight shafts on his old heavy blacksmith’s anvil. There were a few bruises, but over the years my proficiency improved!

We sang together often, and my ‘ear’ enabled me to match his tenor in melodic duets comfortably. The Mikado, Pinafore, South Pacific, Robeson’s Motherless Child, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Ol’ Man River. We knew all the lyrics.

Clive was a happy worker, and his perfectly pitched tenor often won him an appreciative audience in the local eisteddfods. As a committed Communist, Paul Robeson’s songs were inspirational and he often played the 78s on the old HMV player in the corner. His tenor to Robeson’s bass, me holding the soprano melody. Our harmonies and descants filled the shed!

“Granpa, high-yer, sing high-yer.” Giggling from both me and three-year-old Thomas continued as the old tyre was brought back to deliver an almighty swing. Wheeeee – Thomas’ long golden hair swept back off his face, as the tyre, Thomas and his angelic features flew through the late summer twilight.

My memory wandered. Grandpa had bought my favourite, Vanilla ‘Wafer’. The nurse told me off for dripping it onto the sheet. I had a clunky, heavy plaster on my arm, too!

Sixty-five years earlier, I had had those same bird-like fantasies, flying, weightless, up, up and away, higher than the Faraway Tree, as my cousin – she was only four – did the ‘heavy lifting’.  Oh, how I flew!

It was on one of those flights that I honed my plans to construct a parachute. I would need much higher ground than the swing afforded, maybe one of the big banksias, or from the top of the fence, or the shed roof? I anticipated that finding a suitable launch site wasn’t going to be an issue.

The sheet off my bed would make the best ‘chute. I had studied the picture in the Biggles Annual – yep, the sheet would do the trick. I still had to figure out how to get me and the sheet harnessed together, as contrary to the pictured ‘blueprint’, I didn’t have silk string.

I took my plan onto the bus, and to school. During recess, I discussed my ideas with Frankie and Sylvie, my two best mates. Sylvie suggested cutting holes in the sheet for my arms. Mmmm that might work. I wondered if Mum would notice? Unlikely, as all she ever did was throw them on the line. I could put the bits back into the holes before she’d see.

“Granpa, sing high-yer. Sing high-yer, Granpa” came an exasperated intrusion into my reverie. I was back on the job, getting that tyre to arc beautifully from the salmon gum on my daughter’s bush block. The evening light mellowed our surrounds, even tamed the pesky, biting midges.

My hero always wore a ‘chute. It was hanging around his bum, as he climbed into his Sopwith Camel. The harness? I had it. I would tie a couple of loops in the edges of the sheet, put my arms through and ‘hey Presto’, job done!

I was going to need a couple of days to work everything through. The weekend would give me the perfect break. I discussed my plans with my cousin. She had agreed to be my ‘Jump Sergeant’. The schedule was set for after school next Tuesday.

The sandpit under the Banksia was the launch site. I had the sheet with the corners tied off, my arms through the loops and I climbed, with difficulty, up onto the limb. I didn’t get the same magical feeling that I got when I read Biggles, but the Jump Sergeant had started the count down. “Eight, five, four, seven, three, two, one, ready-set-go; chocks away!” I jumped.

“Gran-paaaa. Sing high-yer”.

I remember when I first stepped on them! My foot–faulted. I had aimed for a long step, achieving just three quarters. Reckless behaviour. Mum, and my older sister Alice, had warned me against such loose stepping. My hand went to the bottom of my right pocket, squeezing the bejesus out of my rabbit’s foot. Careful, think, there was no time to get in a funk!

I had wondered if a backwards step would suffice. Nah, that was just kid’s stuff. I had heard Clarke Kent say that if you raced around the world really, really, really quickly, six times, you could turn back time. Mmm, that might work. But my cape was in the wash – Mum pinched it after I spilt the chocolate milk. I needed to think.

I could see old people coming towards us –one with a long beard was going to … . I clutched Mum’s hand, ever so tightly. Phew, we got passed, unharmed.

Ahead I saw they were painting the Palace Hotel – green! The guys had ladders right out on the footpath. Hey, excuse me, surely we’re not going to – were we? At the last moment, Mum, with a perfunctory spring in her step, took us out and around the ladders. I had looked up at Alice and noticed a sort of triumphal look on her face, she mouthed “You silly!” as we made the move.

We approached Donaldson’s dairy, with that old lemon tree to the side. No Hairy about, but I could see hundreds of squished lemons, windfalls, smelly, slippery and … OMG there was a milk can, lying on its side, milk puddling with the lemons, and were those chillies? This couldn’t be happening to us? Mar-um!

Luckily the Masked Warrior was always prepared. I carried a bag of salt in my pocket. I grabbed a bit and quickly threw it over my left shoulder. There was a moment’s hesitation: was it the left shoulder? I was careful not to spill any. Looking across at Alice, I again saw that sort of smug look cross her face. She had seen me throw the salt. It wasn’t disgust or odium, rather, just a superior, older sister sort of look.

She could act like that sometimes, but I knew that without my extra-sensory alerts, we would always be at risk. I was ready to save Mum, maybe even Alice: well, at a pinch.

We approached the Milk Bar on the corner. There would be three pence worth of mixed on offer. Memories drifted – one gobstopper or two humbugs? Humbugs would leave enough for six honey bears, four clinkers and, ah, those flavours sloshing around my gob! The ecstasy, those delicious decisions.

In anticipation, I skipped a few steps. Ooh, no, dead-meat! I had landed on a crack, again! Lightning flashed, the pavement opened wide – a deep, dark chasm, tortured cries, wafting smells of rotting flesh, peril, punishment, possibly permanent perdition!

Seventy years on. My grandchildren and I still take care to avoid the cracks!

“Next!” trumpeted through the doorway.  My eleven-year-old self nervously entered the choir master’s rooms. “Have you ever sung in a choir?” “Ah, er … no” He bellowed ‘next’, signaling the end of my audition and any choral opportunities!

During school holidays, my sister and I continued to sing soprano duets to all of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, the popular musicals – South Pacific, My Fair Lady, Oklahoma, Fidler on the Roof. Dad bought us a folder, full of the lyrics. He often joined us, tentative inputs, moving to preferred whistling or humming accompaniment, as we sang.

And we did – in the garden, in the car, doing the dishes, at the beach! One or other of us would pitch a note at the other, a taunt to correctly guess which tune was next, sometimes needing a second, even a third note, and then away we went!

Back at school, as the years rolled on, I kept my disappointment to myself, consoled in the knowledge that anyone singing in the school choir was a ‘wuss’! I didn’t need any more distinctions – my socialist parentage had already provided enough ammunition for my comrades at this privileged institution.

Sundays came around and I secretly revelled in the hymn-singing, often inserting my own descants, blocking out the assembled school as they heaved their way through the 23^rd Psalm. I had my eyes and ears fixed on the choristers, two rows either side of the aisle, in the Apse, junior’s singing soprano and alto, backed with tenors and bass singers drawn from senior school, all kitted in red and white outfits.

There were special days – Saint’s feast days, Easter and Christmas, that were just ethereal – the Te Deum Landaus, Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion opened unknown joys.

In sixth form, my final year, I finally had the self-confidence to throw off my fears. I joined the choir. What a year – I matriculated, but of more import, I had professional voice training. I was intimately involved in making those harmonies –  with my left, right, and with those across the aisle!

I suppose it was a case of better late, than never, although I knew that missing those pre-pubescent years of training would restrict my capacities, forever! I went on to occasionally sing in amateur rep musical theatre, a few solo performances, choirs, folk club gigs, I often sang in the car, by myself.

In moments of quiet, idle contemplation, I still wonder how those shoes of Luciano might have felt, to have taken a leaf from the pages of Jose or Placido, Andrea Bocelli. Ahh – braggadocio, don’t be silly! Briefly, a dream offers its own unchallengeable reality.

I am regularly brought up with the never-ceasing angst of ‘what if…’, why hadn’t I protested, maybe just sung a few lines from South Pacific, kicked the Choirmaster in the groin, demanding to be heard! “If I could turn back time.”

I listen intently for early signs that my grandchildren might have a voice! That’s dangerous, careful!

I had passed this old oak tree a hundred times before but had never noticed that tiny door! How had I missed its bright, fire-engine red invitation?

I got down on my hands and knees to take a closer look. There was a tiny, blue doorknob that I grasped. The door is locked, I thought, as I applied as much pressure as my thumb and forefinger could gingerly deliver. It wasn’t, just really stiff: it started to give, and suddenly a bright ray of light shadowed the door.

I went through the door and saw an old steam train at the station. Clouds of steam were billowing from the funnel, the conductor impatiently blowing his whistle, calling “All aboard”! I jumped for it, as we moved off, out and up, in a flurry of sparks, steam and excitement.

We went up through the clouds, passing close to the Moon. I saw that Old Man: he was smiling and winking! I remembered that I hadn’t had breakfast and I was starving. There was a bulge in the pocket of my spacesuit, and I found a pot of Cumquat marmalade, another of peanut butter, and some fresh, buttered toast. Yum, my favourite combo, as I munched. We passed quite a few planets – one was blue, another green, and we were getting close to an orangey-red one.

I was dropping a lot of crumbs, but the little silver-suited attendants quickly brushed them up and threw them out the window. “Would you like coffee? With cream? Sugar” A silver pot of scalding, hot coffee arrived.

We were whizzing along. We passed through a shower of sparklers, and the kids were waving them around, making sky-pictures. The noise in the train was deafening, excited chatter among my fellow-travellers. I asked one of them what was happening and they said that we were getting close to home! It had been ages since they had been home and everyone was keen to see their families.

One of the girls pointed to the orangey orb. “That is our home. You call it Jupiter

65 years ago, I often climbed into bed with my Grandpa, who slept in the room across the hall. He was a wonderful storyteller, ever ready to lead me into the wonderous adventures of his own early childhood. Tales of clearing tall timber in Gippsland, about huge, vaguely controlled burns, subsequent windrows of potatoes, the first dairy cows purchased, a growing herd, frosty, barefoot mornings in the milking shed, surplus milk going to the Poowong butter factory.

I absorbed stories of family tragedy, his late-night trek through a dark, trackless bush to fetch the midwife, the loss of a young life, a small coffin in a darkened front room! He showed me a faint scar running across and down the sides of his nose. He told of a sliver of tin, thrown high by his brother leaving his nose hanging by the septum and of another neighbourly dash for medical help, stitches and eventual bragging rights! He retold of the day he returned from school to find the house burnt, a pile of smouldering timber, the tears at the loss of his teddy!

The neighbours took in the whole family – there were eight children and the subsequent town project over the next few months to rebuild the house. Donated or loaned furnishings – he remembered a new teddy!

There were snakes, huge ones slithering into and through his life. One was found in his sister’s bed, another underneath the Coolgardie meat safe on the back verandah. Many years later I witnessed Grandpa, loaded shotgun across his knees, sitting in our lounge closely watching a saucer of milk placed to entice a Tiger’ out from a crack near the fireplace.

And then there were the black jelly beans – a bag full, kept high on a shelf in his wardrobe. My efforts to increase the ration achieved a broken chair and a smacked bottom.

As I got older the stories moved to the verandah and refocused on living in Ballarat, his worldview and his political interests.

With the death of his daughter, he abandoned Christianity for Communism, explaining to me “…to punish God for abandoning him.” He maintained a commitment to charitable works, but his context broadened dramatically. He threw himself into the Jewish Welfare Society, helping to resettle refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. He followed the Indian Independence Movement, calls for Aboriginal Citizenship and the impacts of the Depression.

He remained a ‘concerned, vocal citizen’ throughout his life, ever writing letters to The Argus and The Age’s Editor, and I suspect would have been ashamed of the notion of “the quiet Australian”, the government’s leadership failures, rampant corporate greed and the disengaged electorate.

“Bloody pine trees”, Dad always said, as we passed that grove of huge old trees at our boundary fence. He had a set against them, but I don’t remember any specific explanation for his dislike. For us, they offered escape, adventure, testing boundaries, skills; an opportunity to command a realm as wide and as close as the sky, a secret shared only with the magpies.

My tree was the second in from the road. My cousin, she had chosen the fourth one. We passed them on the walk to and from the bus, and there was always time for a climb. She was still a bit of a sook – she was only eight and liked to perch on a flat bit, about four branches from the ground. At nine, I had conquered the treetops – almost, well, I mean, my crowsnest was just below where the branches started to sway in the wind. But I could still search out the sea, the beach, highway traffic, and I could yell across to Suzie in her nearby possie. My sword and shield were tucked into a group of smaller branches, always at the ready to ward off marauding Vikings, dinosaurs or tigers, and we would still be home in time for strawberry jam on pikelets, with globs of Daisy’s scalded cream.

I think it must have been my elder brother – it was the sort of thing he did. I knew dinosaurs couldn’t reach up that high. It was Monday arvo and standing at my tree, I saw my weapons, broken, lying on the ground. There were scuff marks in the needles. I was sure my gear didn’t just fall. It was a hot December day, just before Christmas, no breezes, still as the cemetery down the road. Nah, they didn’t just fall. I needed to change my hidey-hole.

I went to the shed, rummaging through Dad’s tools and stuff. Got it – a roll of tape. I put it carefully into my school bag for tomorrow’s repair work. My stomach reminded me it was pikelet-time!

We heard the racket first, ‘clank, clank, squeal, clank …’. We started to run, then gobsmacked, we stopped, frozen, as around the corner we see the bulldozer working on our trees. Piles of broken branches already heaped up, Dad and my uncle at the edge of the pile with a jerrycan. I saw, felt a whoomph, as the match caught the fuel. “What have you done? Why are you knocking down our cubbies?” I madly danced towards them, swinging my bag in a desperate effort to stop them. I was snivelling, Suzie started to cry while Dad and my uncle looked quizzically at each other.

The dozer continued to work on the clearing. I threw the roll of tape at Dad. I yelled through my tears and utter desolation. I think I may have wet my pants, too!

Not even strawberry pikelets and cream consoled my sense of betrayal. That night, over dinner Dad said “Bloody pine trees!”