Living History

Frank's story - School years

In 1948 I started my education at the local public school. I should say my formal education because my mother had already taught me to read and write and do some basic arithmetic. As I was the only child at the school born in 1941, I was put together with those a year older, not that it made a great deal of difference. There were about 30 pupils in the whole school and only one teacher. So grades 1and 2 were seated in the second room, with the connecting doors open and grades 3, 4, 5 and 6 were in the main room. A second teacher was provided in about 1950 when the pupil population increased to about 50.

The school was situated on a hill and from the end of the school ground down to the river stood a plantation of pine trees. These had been planted during the years my mother had attended the school, and provided a great place for us kids to play during and after school. Opposite the school was a sports ground and after that the local Catholic school. Many a battle was fought on this ground between us Prodestants and the Tykes, both during and after school. Such was life in those days. You would belt the daylights out of one another one day and be best mates again a couple of days later. As the school numbers were so small a football team had 6 to 12 year olds playing together. I loved every minute of it.

At the start of my second year at school, I fell in love for the first time. This beautiful, black eyed, blond girl turned up and I fell in love the first moment I saw her. Of course it was years later that I realized that’s what it was. Caroline had the same effect on every boy in our age group for years to come. It took a few years I was about twelve before we had our first kiss, in a haystack on Delegate Station near where she lived.

For some unknown reason, John a cousin of mine, who was a couple of years younger than me but was bigger, could not get along and were for ever fighting in the playground. On one occasion we started fighting on the sports ground, prior to the start of a game of cricket between the two schools. The teacher had had enough and said to keep on fighting and if he seen us stop at any time for the whole afternoon he would give us the cane. Now in those days the cane was feared like nothing else. So John and I traded punches until neither of us could lift our hands higher than our knees. We could hardly walk home after school and our parents probably wondered why we went to bed so early and readily. I know I was sore for a week, but would never have admitted it. Needless to say we did not pick on each other for a few weeks after that.

I was a bright student and often beat older students at tests which all classes took part in. My first year at school was the year that the local shire created a Park complete with Swings, Slippery Dip, See Saws and Roundabout. A set of Memorial Gates was erected, as an entrance to the park even though it was never fenced around. The day they Commemorated the gates to the WWII Soldiers who never returned. A group of us younger children, rushed through the gates down to the playground. I ran up the See Saw plank. Fell off and broke my left arm. This was the first of many school holidays I spent either in plaster or recovering from Measles, Chicken Pox or Mumps.

Summers were spent at the local swimming holes and Saturday afternoon was spent at the movies. One swimming hole had a tree lying in the water along the edge of the river. This became the scene for what ever was on at the pictures the previous week. Fort Dodge, A Battleship, Pirate ship, Fighter plane. Sherwood Forrest. You name it. In the winter the picture theatre (the local school of arts hall) became a roller skating hall. Football and billy carts took place of Picture re-enactments at the swimming hole. After school I would run home as I had chores to do, cutting wood for the stove and fire fetching water from the tank and other errands Mum would have for me. All this was done as quickly as possible so I would be finished in time for the radio serials. There was no television back then and from 4.30pm to 5pm the radio would have adventure serials Biggles, Superman, Hop Harrigan , Jason and the Argonauts just to name a few. At night we use to listen to shows like Life with Dexter and the Cadbury’s Bunk House show. And I must not forget the famous lunch time series Blue Hills one of the longest running radio shows ever.

School holidays were for me and my mate Kevin, the time when we made pocket money. We were forever trying out some venture to make a shilling. Two come to mind. Starting the fire in the mornings required kindling (thin splinters of wood), twigs or bark so Kevin and I scrounged up six sets of small pram wheels and axles. We made a platform of wood on each set and connect three sets behind our billy carts. We hauled them out of town up a hill to where a stand of gum trees stood. We then tied large bundles of bark on to each platform. We then cut a good size branch and tied a rope to it and the end of the last platform. We then put the branch in our billy cart and started off down the hill when we started to go too fast we threw the tree branch out and it acted as a brake to slow us down. It took us from six in the morning to five in the afternoon to get there and back home. The next day we sold bundles of bark for a bundle to the house owners and made five shillings each for the week end. A shilling in those days got you into the pictures and a small bottle of drink as well. The other venture occurred when Kevin’s father purchased an old horse and a dray, at a clearing sale. He intended to give the old horse a good retirement home on his farm. Kevin convinced his father to keep him in town for a while and to let us use him to pull the dray for us. Now in those days there was no electricity and we living in a cold climate. Every house had an open fireplace, these were made of brick, and to protect the brick, the bricks were coated with a mixture of pipe clay and water. This had to be applied regularly the pipe clay was a white clay that had to be dug out of the ground. The local supply was located about four miles out of town. The first lot of school holidays after the arrival of the horse Kevin and I loaded up the dray with sugar bags, kerosene tins, wooden boxes and pick and shovels. With sandwiches and drink and headed out to the pipe clay pit. It was hard work but we headed home just on dusk with all containers full. Again the householders were happy to pay for the home delivery we provided. After several trips to the pit Kevin’s father decided we were expecting too much from the old horse, so our commercial enterprise came to an end. We had made about five quid each for our effort so it was well worthwhile.

My Mum’s Dad was known as Big Bill to all us kids, loved my Mum’s curry. She reckoned he knew when she was making curry before she did. He would turn up for tea and afterwards would sit in an old lounge chair by the fire and tell us yarns. A riddle he gave us was one I will always remember. If it takes a dog with a wooden hind leg nine days to catch a cat with a glass eye, how many sticks of gelignite would you stick up a billy goats bottom to blow off his horns without injuring his eye sight?

He used to often turn up late in the evening after we, the kids, had gone to bed. He loved to sit by the fire and listen to the old short wave radio that we had. Big Bill died in 1953. In late 1954 after I come back from Bega where I was at boarding school, I woke up late one night and went out to go to the toilet, on the way back to bed I thought I heard the radio going. I looked into the lounge room and there was Big Bill sitting in the chair listening to the radio. The next morning I told Mum and she said he has been dead for twelve months. I swear on a stack of bibles that I saw him that night.

One Saturday night the picture showing was ‘The Body Snatchers’ one of the first scary movies of the time. I don’t recall how I managed to get to go to it. When I got home Mum went crook on me, as I had not fed my dog before I had left. Our back yard was a long one and you went past the clothes line then there were a gum tree, further down was a quince tree it was there where my dogs kennel was situated. I took the piece of lamb’s flap and went to feed the dog. I ducked under the clothesline and when I got to the first tree a horse that had strayed into the yard spooked me. It snorted I yelled and threw the meat in the general direction of the dog, raced back to the house. In my haste [not knowing it was a horse at the time], I forgot to duck at the clothes line, it caught me by the throat and I was jerked back and landed on my back. I thought the bloody body snatchers had me. Yelling my head off I made it back to the house. Mum said the next morning I was as white as a ghost and had this red welt across my neck. Of course I found the horse in the yard the next morning, but I had nightmares for weeks after.

In 1954 I started high school. There was no high school in Delegate so I was sent to Bega and boarded at a hostel for students attending High School. It was a bit of a shock to go from a class of three or four students to a class of twenty-five, all of which were the top students of that grade from Bega and other surrounding villages. One weekend I was allowed to go and spend the weekend at a distant cousin’s home. This particular Saturday the local picture theatre was showing a movie call “The Thing”, another outer space horror picture. On the way home we had to go through a long alley and there were no lights. We had only gone a few yards when a noise startled us. We took off running flat out slap bang into a cow, which was asleep in the middle of the alley. The cow let out a bellow we let out a scream and I don’t think our feet touched the ground for the next hundred yards. More nightmares and I have seen very few horror movies to this day. Unfortunately I was not happy there and at the end of the second term holidays I refused to go back. The alternative was to go back to the local school and do my studies via the Correspondence School under the supervision of the local schoolteacher. I did not mind this as being at home meant I could carry on with my latest venture. During the previous holidays I had bought ten rabbit traps. I carried them in a sugar bag on my pushbike about five miles out of town to an area that had a lot of rabbits. Myxomatosis had been introduced to reduce the rabbit population and this meant that the price of rabbit skins had increased from four shillings and six pence per pound weight. To as much as fifty-four shillings per pound. In the winter, when the rabbit pelts were at their best, it took an average of five skins to make up a pound weight of dried skins. With my ten traps I was getting up to fifteen rabbits a week. This was much needed money as Dad was often laid up with reoccurrences of Malaria and lack of shearing due to wet weather. In the winter I had to boil water and pour it into the handlebars of my bike and put a cork into the ends. This stopped my hands from sticking to them it was that cold. The rabbits that had been caught earlier in the night would be frozen stiff, when I did my rounds each morning.

Electricity came to town in 1954, and for the first time the local Café had ice cream. Banana splits and ice cream sundaes became very popular.

In 1955 a school bus service was started to take high school students from Delegate and Craigie to the Bombala high school. So I stopped the Correspondence and went to Bombala.

Frank

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