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.