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Genealogy – Me & Mine

A Potted History of Keith Lello by Keith Lello

in collaboration with Noelin Burnie

(Written January/February 2005)

Initially my own work, there were a few incidences in my story for which I needed clarification. I made my notes available to my sister, Noelin Burnie who was in a better position than most to fill in the gaps. Am I glad I did. Not only was she able make some corrections, she was able to provide new information and also kick-start some of the faded areas of my memory.

Some of our recollections differ, even conflict. Some differing instances have been represented separately with suitable comment. As expected, our perceptions of events will be influenced significantly by our age difference. Non’s more mature outlook should provide a more accurate recollection than my own for the earlier instances. However, if you subscribe to the theory that perception is reality, then for me, my account is accurate.

Noelin writes:

Keith was born in the early hours of the morning of 15th May 1945. At only 8¾ pounds, he was the runt of the litter. Because of the cord being around his neck at birth, he was left with a visible “V” on his forehead which was still there when peace was declared some 3 months later. Mum always thought it was an omen!

When he was nine months old, he bit Mum while she was breast feeding him. She smacked him after which he refused to touch that terrible thing again so on the bottle he went. Mum suffered the pressure of suddenly stopping breast feeding for some time.

At 18 months, in a fit of rage the bottle went flying and Keith had a cup and then demanded to feed himself. What a mess he made but he soon learnt.

It was only a few months after that when a friend and myself took him for a walk. The next morning out comes Keith crawling along the floor on his knees as he couldn’t stand. Definitely my fault; I had tired the little darling out. After a trip to the doctor he was sent to hospital as poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis) was definitely around and he had to be isolated. It seemed a bit late as he had had the fever some 10 days or so before.

Dad had to make Keith copper boots as he would bash his feet on the floor and break the plaster. Mum would have to take him back to have a new lot fitted. He used to scoot around quite well on his knees and backside. After it was considered time for the plaster to come off, it was then that all the hard work started.

Exercising his legs, massaging with oil, coaxing him to walk. He surely must remember all those hours of picking up marbles with his toes and the 3 wheel bike we had to push him around on making sure all the time he kept his feet on the pedals. Oh my aching back!

Learning to Walk

Not many people can remember learning to walk. I can. Inflicted with the dreaded infantile paralysis called poliomyelitis, my earliest memories are being placed in two lounge chairs pushed together in front of a large brown Breville radio listening to the ABC's Kindergarten Of The Air. On warm afternoons, my mother would place me in a small wooden chair in the back yard so that I could get the benefit of some sunshine.
Each visit to the hospital would result in the doctor putting plaster on my legs. My impression was that the plaster was to my groin but Non, (Noelin – my sister) claims it was from foot to knee. My recollection is that when I got home, Mum made Dad cut it  off with what appeared to me to be a very large pair of tin snips.  After the rubbing in of generous quantities of caster oil, Mum's universal medicine of choice, my puny legs were wrapped in bandages and a pair of "L" shaped copper sheaths purpose built by my father would be placed over the back of my legs and feet.

Non tells me different. She claims that the copper boots were to protect the plaster from being smashed off by me. She suggests that my tin snips recollection was Dad cutting off the residual plaster.

While I was sure that several times a day the copper boots and bandages would be removed and olive oil energetically applied and that these ministrations saved my legs from the characteristic shortening and deformity associated with the disease and I frequently, although belatedly, thank my mother for her faith and dedication to her self appointed task. Collaboration with Non however provides a different version. Her recollection is that Mum was not as dedicated as I depict her. We may never know the reality. I do remember Mum rubbing oil into my legs and wrapping the bandages around them and the copper boots survived a number of years hanging on the workshop wall till, no doubt the need for a bit of sheet copper caused their demise.

And, I couldn’t possibly have been the naughty boy Non recollects: I can remember copping curry one day when I crawled behind the couch in our lounge room where Dad had placed a few tins of paint and varnish. Somehow I managed to prize the lid off a tin of varnish and with a brush which was with the paint tins, commenced to apply varnish to the unpainted plaster wall. It was a mystery to me why it didn’t work for me like it did for Dad when he painted. He had let me put a few dabs of paint on a wall a few days before and it was nothing like this. No chunks of plaster stuck to the brush and pulled out of the wall when Dad did it? Needless to say, my attempts to help out with the painting were quickly discovered and I can remember getting a smack for my trouble.

That begs the question, could a small boy who only wanted to do things like help his father out by varnishing a plaster wall really be, as Non claims, naughty enough to smash the plaster off his own legs?

To a small child, Dad's arrival home from work is always cause for excitement.  To a small child virtually anchored to a chair in the back yard, the event is doubly exciting.  I recall calling to him the moment I heard the sounds of Charlie Rough’s old Chevrolet utility enter the drive.  Every now and then he would have a lolly of the "All Day Sucker"  variety for me.  But I had to earn it.  After lifting me from the chair to the lawn, he would measure out a short distance and insist I walk to him before I could have it.  I recall the frustration of trying to stand let alone walk and the frequent falling down.  If I crawled, a method of movement I could manage with a dragging of legs, Dad would walk backwards the same distance that I crawled.  Eventually I would be given the lolly but not before I had satisfied Dad that I had tried really hard to walk.

Sometimes Dad could drive Mum and myself to the hospital in Latrobe, other times we would have to take the train.  I can remember being taken once by Noelin and her then boyfriend.  It was on that visit that I recall sitting on the side of a hand-basin being supported by Non while a nurse wrapped the plaster impregnated bandages around my legs.  Why Mum didn't come that time, I don't know.  Perhaps she was tired of being berated by the doctor for either her or me removing my plaster.

There was no specific period or time that I actually learned to walk.  I can remember depending on Mum, Dad, Noelin and Tom to move me from one place to the other then I remember being a normal boy, initially with the help of the copper boots and then without them.  With the exception of the backyard sessions with Dad, I have no other recollection of the transition from being paralysed to being “normal."

The passage of time certainly depletes some of the memories. Since writing the above paragraph, Non reminded me of the times Curley would take me to the pub with him and sit me on the end of the bar while he enjoyed a drink or two. As soon as she mentioned it the instant memory of the raspberry cordials – a mixture of raspberry syrup and lemonade – came flooding back. I spent a good deal of time with Curley in those early days and although it was some time later, he was booked by the Forth policeman for carrying me as a pillion passenger on the back of his motor bike. Apparently it was illegal to carry a child under 12 years old on the back of a motor bike.

Other Family Ailments.

I suffered a few broken bones and recall frequently being smitten by tonsillitis but Non reminded me of other ailments. She writes:-

You must remember the infection in your ear Keith? Mum going backwards and forwards to doctors and then to hospital. Penicillin was the thing and then it had not long come into use. Your little bum was like a pin cushion. Mum finally took you to a EN&T specialist in Hobart. It was discovered that you had a grass seed in your ear that had so much pus and muck around it that it was as big round as a threepenny bit. Mum could only conclude you got it in your ear in hospital as the baby bedding was hung out on fences to air out in those days. This all happened in between times with your plaster sessions.

Non continues: It was about this time Mum was also going backwards and forwards to Hobart with Tom because he had developed gland trouble which they diagnosed would choke him if he didn’t stop growing. Mum was told maybe when he turned 14 they would know one way or the other. More about him later. Anyway, you legs were pretty good when I started going out with Allan (Curley) in late 1949. He was always carting you off down to the pub and sitting you on the bar with a raspberry cordial. You also loved going up to Mrs Rough’s house 2 doors up and singing to her (mainly) “I’m Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover.” After your performance she would give you money to go and get an ice cream.

Living in a shed.

Dad built the house at 81 Parker Street Devonport and while it was being constructed, we slept in the rather large workshop at the back. The kitchen was useable so when Mum and Dad woke up, they would go into the house leaving me to sleep on in the cot.

When I woke, I would wait for Mum to come and check me and take me into the house. I can remember some mornings having to scream out to get attention.

Eventually the house was completed and I moved into the back bedroom with Tom, my elder brother.

This shed had quite a history. Although I was too young to remember, Dad did tell me the story which he described as a moonlight flit. I didn’t know what it meant at the time but the outcome obviously pleased Dad from the joy in his voice when he recounted the story. The following is Non’s version of the same story:

“Before moving to Parker Street in Devonport, we lived in Chettle Street and that is where Dad actually built the shed we initially lived in at Parker Street. Knowing he would eventually move it, when he built it, he bolted the bits together.

He was paying off the block in Parker Street and he constructed the house with poured concrete outer walls and had finished the kitchen, the back bedroom, laundry and toilet before the move was made.

Old Mick Enright, the landlord at Chettle Street, thought he had himself a beautiful shed when he knew his tenants were moving out. He did jump up and down when the shed disappeared with the tenants. He had tried to stop Dad from taking it but as it was all bolted and on a temporary foundation, there was nothing he could do about it.

We were already living in the house when Keith contracted polio. We knew there was something wrong when he crawled down the passage – all polished boards – where normally he would have walked.

Terror in the back yard

Being unable to walk, I was dependent on other people to move me around. One episode, the appearance of a large dog-like monster in the back yard one day while I was out sitting in my chair, remains crystal clear in my memory.

Although not malicious, every time the big playful creature would grab me, I would let out a cry of anguish. It may have been the terror which caused it, but while the animal had hold of me I was unable to call very loudly. However, Tom, who was doing something elsewhere in the yard, would eventually hear my muted calls and come and wave the monster away.

I remember wishing he would chase it right away but apparently keen to get back to what he was doing, as soon as the monster let go, Tom would turn his attention elsewhere. Needless to say, within a short space of time, the monster would again begin using me as a play toy.

That was the first time I had experienced laryngitis. I awoke to discover my soreness was not caused by a monster that had hold of me but was as a result of falling from my bed onto the linoleum covered floor. A strange, husky, whispering but obviously anxious voice was calling, “Tom! Tom! Tom! It took me a little while to realise the voice was my own. Tom’s bed was empty and had he been there, I doubt that I would have been able to call loud enough to wake him. Sore, cold and frightened that I had permanently lost my voice because of the monster dream, I lay on the floor clutching the blankets around me. Eventually Mum came in and found me.

Early Schooling

Time to go to school and I was placed in the care of Alice Robinson, a girl a little older than me who lived next door. “Hold onto Alice’s hand and don’t let go,” I was instructed, “Alice will take you to where you have to go.”

Alice had other ideas. To be seen holding the hand of a small boy apparently was not the ideal situation to be in so as soon as we were out of sight, I had to keep up with her and her friend. Although I managed, there were a few anxious moments. It was a relief when I became self sufficient in getting to and from school. That was a bit disappointing to me because next to Non who was a second Mum to me, Alice was my favourite person in the whole world.

On the subject of Alice, Non writes: Did you know Alice later became a PE teacher and introduced herself to me at Savage River School when I was on canteen duty? Small world!

As far as I can remember we moved out of Parker Street in late 1951. It was before my son Butch (another Allen) was born in March 1952. I thought Dad had a Morris panel van by this time but I guess he was borrowing Charlie’s ute to move the furniture. Tom by this time (14½ to 15) had dropped out of high school due to ill health. After they moved to the farm his health improved right up till they bought the kerosene Silent Knight refrigerator. It was the fumes from that which gave him asthma. He was never allergic to grasses as you claim.

Not used to mixing with other kids my own age, at school I can remember being quite reserved. The level of raw energy demonstrated by some of the other boys and the volume of the noise generated by them tended to frighten me.

One of the favourite pastimes at the school was sliding down a dirt bank formed by a row of pine trees. The bank was next to the Catholic Church yard used by the pupils at the Lady Of Lourdes Convent School. It was certainly ritualistic but contained no malice when in a sing-song voice we chanted to the pupils over the fence, “Convent dogs, sitting on logs, eating maggots out of frogs.”

The standard response, delivered on cue and in the same sing-song manner, “State School rats, their hair in plaits, eating gizzards out of cats.” I think the actual word used in the rhyme was lizards and not gizzards; possibly because at that young and tender age we didn’t know what gizzards meant.

While sliding down the bank may have been a favourite pastime with us kids, it was not popular with Mum who had to wash the red mud from my clothes after doing it on a wet day. One of the parents must have complained to the school because the bank was ruled out of bounds. With the banning of the bank came the cessation of the taunts across the fence. I may have persevered had I known that perhaps one of the Convent Dogs on the other side of the fence was to become my wife many years later.

Parker Street

As enjoyable as it was, my time at the Devonport Primary School was short because when I was 6 years of age, our home at 81 Parker Street was sold to a man I never met but whose name, I was told, was Piggy Wilson. I learned years later that this was not his real name but a nickname bestowed upon him because as a councillor on the Devonport Council, he was rather abrupt.

From Non:

Piggy Wilson was so named as I recall because he owned a big piggery out Spreyton way. He probably got on the council later but at that time he was getting married and moved into Parker Street after the honeymoon.

Two other memories of Devonport are deeply embedded. One involved a bonfire and the other a billy cart derby. Non assisted my faulty recollection and made several corrections to the following account.

Trevor Roberts and family built on the block previously owned by the council and they lived in a shack at first.

The Taylor Family lived opposite our house in a house owned by the Railway. Graham was an only child. Tom and Glo Reynolds lived next to them and had 4 daughters at that stage but had 2 sons after we left.

The Chap next to them was the bloke of Sherrifs who started Book City in Hobart and who later committed suicide.

Almost directly across the street from us was a vacant block used by the Council as a storage area for a few pipes and a pile of gravel. Tommy Reynolds was a train driver who lived next door to the yard. Brother Tom was friendly with Graham Taylor and a boy named Trevor Roberts who lived across and up the street a couple of houses.

Permission was obtained through Vic Roberts, Trevor’s dad, to build a bonfire on the block. This was to be no half-hearted thing, this was going to be the pride and joy of the neighbourhood! For weeks, heads of trees were dragged from all points of the district and accumulated on the vacant block. Soon, what had been instigated by the three boys quickly became a neighbourhood enterprise.

A hole was dug and before a sturdy pole fixed into it, truck and tractor tyres were placed around the hole. Smaller car tyres were later threaded onto the pole before all the dry foliage and tree branches were stacked around the growing mound.

Everyone was hoping for a fine night except that a few nights before the appointed date, someone set fire to the structure and during the night it burned down. After so much hard work, the boys were devastated. The whole neighbourhood pitched in and a new bonfire was erected. Not as pretentious as the previous one but a good night was still had by all.

The billycart episode sparked a neighbourhood controversy which split friendships and created tension. Dad’s workshop was a fully equipped carpenter’s shop and able to handle most tasks including the building of billy carts. Graham Taylor and brother Thomas decided they were going to construct a cart for entry into the up coming billy cart derby. The rules were strict and the cart specifications quite stringent.

For weeks, various designs were built and tested but the one which ended up being offered to the Stewards for qualifying was a timber chassis with paper machete body built over curved timber strips. Green and black gloss paint gave the craft the appearance of a giant, flat soled shoe on wheels.

Tom, followed by Graham put the most effort into the design and construction with some effort provided by Trevor. The prize, a racing style push bike, was much coveted and determined to win it, every advantage was exploited. Since it was a push start, the weight of the driver was a factor so Trevor, the lightest was assigned the driving.

The shiny green and black machine won the heats and pulled off the final. As well as the bike, the prize included a gold rose bowl vase arrangement and a fountain pen. The conflict commenced when Trevor claimed, because he was the driver, the bike was exclusively his. Trevor got the bike but lost his friends. I remember the gold rose bowl being around for a while but I never knew what finally became of it.

It was late in the day when a six year old boy sat between his parents in the old Chevrolet ute belonging to Charlie Ruff, Dad’s employer, and left 81 Parker Street for the last time. I was sitting between my parents because Mum was nursing new baby brother Allan.

On the trip to a new home I had not seen before, as young as I was, I remember some emotions I couldn’t fully understand. As a distraction, Dad taught me how to change gears in the ute and how, on his signal, to time the movement of the lever to prevent the crunching noise from the gear box. I felt so important at the time and was somewhat sorry when we arrived at our new home.

Arriving at the farm was no big deal as I recall. There were lots of things to see, we were forbidden to go anywhere near the river and I was promised I could have a dog. Instead of a back bedroom shared with Tom, we now shared a front bedroom.

Early Days

Nine years older than I, Tom was very much the big brother. Sometime he would magnanimously condescend to assist me with things or play with me but just as frequently he was likely to biff me for being a torment or a nuisance. Wrestling with him was no fun either; he always used to win. That was, except when he was having an asthma attack, a frequent occurrence in his youth.

During an attack he was quite helpless. Did he have a sympathetic young brother caring about his condition? Not likely! Payback time. It would infuriate him if I stayed just out of effective grabbing or hitting range parodying his rasping breath and wheezing distress. He would try and hit me but I could easily evade his feeble attempts. It was strange that after he recovered he never sought retribution for my cruel treatment of him during his period of helplessness. Perhaps he had not recovered as much as he pretended or perhaps he recognised a brief period or role reversal and just let it go.

With baby brother Allan five years younger than me, there was a similarity in the relationships but the 4 years difference in the differences altered things a little. Tom was very much the lad around town before I was 10 and after he started work as a Chainman with a surveyor with the PWD, I saw little of him.

As a Surveyor’s Chainman, Tom had to walk through fields of grass in all seasons. As an asthma suffer it was not the best environment in which to work. Mum used to worry; particularly when he was working away from home and staying in hotels. Eventually Max Monnigan, Tom’s surveyor boss, transferred to Hobart and Tom went with him.

An era when telephones were not common and long distance calls were expensive, we received little news of Tom. Starved of news of and from him, for one of his birthdays, Mum sent him a writing pad and a handful of stamped and addressed envelopes. I don’t think she received all the envelopes back but for a while the ruse worked.

If Tom came home at Christmas time, he would call to the Hobart wharves and fill his lunch tin with scallops. They were relatively cheap and I think it was Tom’s way of saying sorry to Mum for not keeping in touch. Mum was a good cook but there was always something extra special about the scallops Tom brought home at Christmas time. Not always, but usually Tom bought a present for my young brother and I. It was always a special time when Tom came home.

Nanna Lello

I have a very brief memory of Nana Lello when she stayed with us at Devonport. It was after I learned to walk.  She was a frail lady helping with the washing up when she fell to the floor.  My memory is walking around the table to see her lying on the floor with Mum recovering the dinner plate Nana still had clutched firmly between her fingers.  Although I don't know how long, I know her stay with us was brief.  On the day she was to return to Melbourne, she told me she would wave to me from the plane as she flew over our house.  I never saw the plane fly over our house but at Mum’s prompting and with her assistance I found a tennis ball tied in a handkerchief in the back yard that Nanna had supposedly thrown out of the window of the plane for me. As small as I was I remembered thinking how skilful she must have been to drop the ball into our yard from the height of an aeroplane.

Dad’s Employment

Dad left Queenstown to go to Hobart at about age 15 to do his apprenticeship as a cabinet maker with Millingtons, the undertakers who, as well as making coffins, also produced fine furniture. I understand that they frequently won first prizes at trade shows and Dad was extremely proud of being part of it.

One of the Millington “things” was the ability to make your own coffin. I remember seeing an early photograph of Dad in a standing position smiling from his own pride and joy. When I asked him where it was now, he claimed Mum wouldn’t let him keep it and cart it round with them so he had to sell it. I often wonder if that was the case or if it was economic necessity.

Dad told me once that during the depression, (early 1930’s) their rent was 35 shillings a week and his wage was 33 shillings and sixpence.  He claimed they managed to live by making up the shortfall by doing odd jobs for people and by producing blackwood jewellery boxes.

(I was sure that Dad claimed his wages was less than his rent when he told me the story. Noelin assures me the rent was nineteen shillings a week.)

At or about the same time we moved to the farm, Dad started work with the Public Works Department or PWD as it was referred to. Mum confided in me years later that the move to the farm and to the PWD was at her insistence because Charlie Ruff, Dad’s employer who lived a couple of houses up Parker Street and whose joinery workshop was in his back yard, was encouraging Dad to drink.

Whether her concern was real or imagined we may never know but I can only remember seeing Dad slightly inebriated once. That was after a PWD Christmas party. My young brother and I left for school at 7.30 each morning when Dad left for work to avoid walking the two and a quarter miles. It meant we had a lot of time to fill in after we arrived at school but we had no opposition to the use of the playground equipment.

Non’s account of the reason for the move is different. I expect that Dad made a reasonable profit on the Parker Street house and although it didn’t completely eliminate the need for a mortgage – I know they had one on the farm – it possibly reduced it significantly and was possibly a factor. Non claims that it was because Mum used to like to have a gamble on the cards and didn’t always win that Dad forced the move to extract Mum from the town and into the isolated area where there were no cards to be played.

In preference to walking up the Wilmot Road the two and a quarter miles home after school, particularly in inclement weather, we would sometimes wait around for Dad to pick us up. It was one of those nights after the PWD Christmas party and it happened to coincide with a period when Tom was working locally. I knew something was different when I saw Tom was driving our FJ Series Holden van. Dad was extremely jovial but his joviality did not survive his arrival home. Mother, who was milking the cows at the time, was not amused.

Young brother

Born on 2nd August 1950 and Christened Allan David Lello, my young brother is five years younger than I. When Allan learned to talk, he was definitely determined to practise his new found skill. Where Dad worked at the PWD, he often spent some time with a painter called Joe Eade. Apparently Joe was an incessant talker. We were doing a job one day and although I can’t remember what the job was, I do remember Allan’s constant flow of questions and I also remember Dad getting tired of framing answers in a way that wouldn’t generate follow-on questions. He failed. After a time Dad proclaimed, “Gee you can talk! Honestly, you talk more than Joe Eade!” Since that day, Allan was called Joe and remained Joe for many years.

When we first went to the farm, Dad knew virtually nothing about farming and the area was not the same as the farming area in which Mum had grown up. Assistance was sought from an acquaintance and work mate of Dad’s called Jack Howell. Jack used to fascinate us because he suffered from a disorder known as St. Vitus Dance as a result of which his head was constantly in motion from side to side. He smoked a pipe and I used to wait to see if he would miss his mouth with the stem of his pipe. He never did.

Jack used to live just up from the school in Wilmot Road and would come up to the farm and cut and plant potato seed as well as grade and bag the crop on the few occasions we grew spuds. Dad and Jack used to take it in turns taking their car into Ulverstone to the PWD yard where they both worked. Non claims it was Jack who named brother Allan Joe. Perhaps both accounts are correct as they would have both known Joe Eade.

Despite the age difference, growing up on the farm together, Joe and I were great mates. To a degree, isolated on a farm, your baby brother is often the only one you can play with. However, a couple of amusing instances worthy of note come to mind:

Being the son of a carpenter meant access to tools and equipment, and always a good supply of fixtures, fittings and fastenings on hand. And being on a farm meant that there was a lot of material and bits laying around which you could adapt to almost any job. If you wanted to make something, you just did it.

Joe decided that he wanted to build a billy cart one day. He was all of about five years old at the time and his ambitions certainly exceeded his capabilities. After watching him attempt for a long time to drive a much-too-big nail into a place where he really should have used a screw, I offered to help. The rejection was emphatic. It was Joe’s project and he was going to do it, no matter how badly, by himself.

Frustration and the mounting pile of bent nails forced me to take over to at least show him how. With him still rejecting my suggestions and offers of help, I was forced to use my superior strength to elbow him out of the way. Ignoring his protests, I knew that he would be so grateful for the satisfactory completion of the task. For a start, I pointed out, he was using an unsuitable small hammer. It was a special hammer supplied as part of a wire straining tool used in erecting fences. I had my head down over the work hammering with a more suitable hammer when the unsuitable hammer struck me in the back of the head. Fair in the centre he got me. They say when you are knocked out you see stars. They’re right. Although I didn’t lose consciousness, I saw the stars and a little blood was visible on my fingertips when I rubbed the spot.

It was mid afternoon and as she frequently did, Mum was having a lie down at the time. Prematurely awakened, she showed little interest in the still rising lump or my voluminous tears. Mum assured me that it would be alright. I tried to convince her that it was a malicious unprovoked attack for which Joe should be severely punished. She was quite disinterested. When the swelling went down, it left me with an odd little bump I still have to this day. Thanks Joe. Although born of considerable pain, I call it my lump of knowledge. Thanks have to be given here to the gene for full heads of hair in the family. If I ever go bald . . . . .

Joe and I would go to the pictures in Devonport sometimes and we were fascinated by the sound a ricocheting bullet made in films. Tom had an air rifle and when he wasn’t around, provided we could scrounge enough pocket money to buy the slugs, it became ours. As an experiment, Joe went onto the roof and flattened himself behind the chimney. With due warning, I fired a couple of slugs at the appropriate angle at the side of the chimney. Not quite as dramatic as in the pictures, the distorted slugs did however, whine off into the distance.

It was my turn to get behind the chimney. After the first couple of whiners, I was satisfied that I had sufficient experience of what it was like to be shot at. I declared my intention to get down to Joe but as soon as I moved out from behind the cover of the brickwork, I was greeted by a flying chip off a brick and the whine of a ricocheting slug much too close to be comfortable. My howl of protest was not loud enough to hide the unmistakable sound of the air rifle being quickly cocked.

Despite my pleading, I was pinned behind the chimney for some time. I would tentatively stick an elbow out to see if he was still there and the response would be instantaneous. While I didn’t really think he would go for the actual body shot, after the experience with the billy cart, I certainly wasn’t game enough to find out. Eventually Joe lost interest and I was able to clamber down. Perhaps payback time was a feature of all sibling relationships.

Tom and the Police Force.

It was with total scepticism we greeted the news that Tom intended enrolling for the Police Force. We knew that his asthma would certainly eliminate his chances. We were wrong. He had met Ann and many of her friends were in the Police Force. Furthermore, he had undertaken sensitivity tests and found what triggered his attacks. With pollen high on the allergy list, surveying was not his ideal occupation. He got in and became a Constable.

The family speculated on how he would survive his first nasty accident. We defined “nasty” as being any accident in which any blood was present. We very quickly found out.

Our scepticism was born of our experiences with Tom and his aversion to blood. He could have a nose bleed and faint. One day we were putting up an extension to the chook house and I had to use a mattock to clear away some rubbish. In the manner of small boys with heavy tools I swung it high into the air before arcing it down onto the spot with the offending growth. Except this time, it didn’t reach its intended target. Unseen by me, Tom raised his elbow into the arc of the tool edge. Serious injury was averted because he was wearing a leather jacket at the time. However, the blow was serious enough to break the skin and cause some bruising.

With the leather jacket over his shoulder and undamaged arm, Tom went into the house to have the mandatory application of Dettol in warm water made to the wound. He was sitting in a chair by the slow combustion wood stove waiting for Mum to mix the potion when he fainted and pitched forward head first under the stove.

Mum was cooking so she had the fire quite hot. Again it was the leather jacket which saved Tom from serious burning. Between Mum and me, we even managed to pull him out before serious damage occurred to the leather jacket.

And now my big brother with the propensity to faint at the sight of blood was a Policeman.

His first serious accident happened while he was off duty and it was with some pride of achievement that he recounted the experience for us. Apparently a multi vehicle accident, there were several injuries and Tom was one of the first on the scene. One of the victims had been severed from shoulder to groin and in an era before seatbelts, there were other people thrown from vehicles and suffering multiple injuries.

Tom immediately took charge of the scene and continued to assist after the on-duty police and ambulances had arrived. After the carnage had been cleaned away, the road painted, vehicles removed and the Fire Brigade had hosed the blood and oil off the road, someone asked Tom if he was alright. He assured them he was fine but in his account of the story, he sheepishly admitted to almost immediately turning away and violently vomiting on the side of the road. Even though my comment was along the line of, “You should have done that before they hosed everything down,” I was secretly proud of him and pleased that our concerns were foundless. Apparently Tom’s reaction to the sight of blood that we had come to expect was confined to the sight of his own blood.

Butch and Joe

Not too long after Joe was born, Noelene and Alan (Curley) had their first, a boy they named Alan after his father. The consensus of opinion was that there were too many Alans around so he was nicknamed Butch from a very early age. Because Butch had always been Butch, I have to confess to not immediately remembering his proper first name when I came to write this account.

Be that as it may, the difference between Joe and Butch’s ages was less than that between Joe’s and mine. Consequently, Joe and Butch spent a lot of time together. Uncle Joe as a form of address by Butch stuck for a while and it was quite amusing to hear this little kid address another little kid as “Uncle.”

A Butch drama.

The part of our farm which was covered by bush was not easily accessed. We gathered wood from there but as per usual, Dad had an inventive way of getting it from the top of the hill to down on the flat. He and Tom strung a heavy gauge wire from the top of the hill to a flat area down the bottom by the road. A trip mechanism fashioned from a piece of horse harness called a swingle tree ensured logs sent down the wire would be directed off the wire to pile up in a jumbled mass.

All the wood gathered on top of the hill was reduced to logs which could be lifted by two people. Wire slings which were simply used bailing wire loops were used to support the logs. Specially made steel hooks were fashioned as the link between the sling and the transport wire.

One after the other, the logs were lifted onto the wire and given the push which started them sliding down to be flicked off at the bottom. Every so often a piece of oil soaked bag was sent down under a hook to lubricate the wire. Between harvests, the wire would rust so if you forgot to send the oil down on the first log, the shower of sparks from the hook was quite interesting.

At the bottom, the logs got loaded on the trailer to be taken to the back yard where the saw bench was set up. As you may have guessed, us kids would have to gather up the hooks and slings so they could be taken up the top for the next episode.

Several times I contemplated making a sling of rope and coming down the wire when Dad and Tom weren’t about but watching the speed at which the modified swingle tree flicked the logs off – and the height from which it flicked them – dissuaded me from doing so.

This particular day, Non and Butch were at the farm and Dad and Tom were gathering wood and accumulating it at the top of the wire. Butch, quite young at the time, stopped breathing. Mum and Non called out to me and when I went inside they had hold of an arm and a leg each and were rhythmically elevating first his head and then his feet. Poor Butch was blue in the face. “Get your father!” I needed no prompting. I ran part way towards where I expected Dad & Tom would be, cupped my hands to my mouth and yelled, “Come quick, Butch is dieing!” They did come quick and still rocking him back and forth Mum and Non got into the back of our then Morris Cowley van and Dad sped off towards the hospital. Butch apparently revived on the way and on arrival at hospital an examination revealed nothing out of the ordinary and he was allowed to come home. As far as I’m aware, that was the one and only incident of that nature that Butch suffered.

Raspberries

In the house immediately to the south – towards the Wilmot direction – lived the Enwright family consisting of Hedley, his wife and his daughter Fairley. Fairley’s health was not good and Hedley used to milk a couple of goats so that she had the benefit of this milk in her diet. I had seen Mum hand milk cows any number of times but I remember feeling horrified the first time I saw this rather large man milking a relatively small goat. Perhaps it was the realisation that a goat only has two teats and I equated that with being a human characteristic.

One of Hedley’s attributes was that he had a very large patch of raspberries he commercially picked. For threepence per pound, anyone could get work at Hedley’s place during the raspberry season.

I tried but as a raspberry picker, I was hopeless. Mum on the other hand was excellent. I could pick a row of raspberry bushes and get virtually nothing from it. Mum could pick it immediately after me, take about a quarter of the time to pick the row and get up to six times the amount of fruit I managed. In the finish I used to pick a few and put them in Mum’s tin. My motive was not the money but more the enjoyment of eating so many very fresh raspberries.

Unfortunately, the retired British Naval Commander, Robert Blackwell and his Tahitian wife Marion, who brought the property from Hedley, let the raspberries go. I’m sure Mum missed supplementing the family’s Christmas period income from her picking.

Ennie's Hole

Adjacent to the Enwright property was a little quiet bay of deep water in the river with a grassy bank well protected by blackberry bushes. Those of us who knew where the track in were usually rewarded by a trout or two. It was a secret place the boys of the region went to where you could swear without fear of retribution and speculate on all mysterious matters. There were usually enough fallen branches in the vicinity to light a fire so sometimes the catch was cooked and eaten immediately.

There could be feuds between families – and there sometimes was, there could be falling outs between friends but Ennie's Hole was a place of truce.

Marion Blackwell

Bob Blackwell was old. We suspect he married Marion so he would have someone to look after him in his old age. She was a lovely lady who smoked like the proverbial chimney and made soft toys to pass the time. Marion was happy to share her knowledge with Mum in return for Mum’s ability to sell their joint produce.

Marion used to ride a push bike down to the township of Forth to buy their provisions and collect the mail. Characteristic of country living, we would collect her mail when we went down and vice versa. We used to collect our mail from the post office at Forth every Saturday morning. While we had milking cows, Marion would come down each morning for her billy of milk and collect her mail. Apparently her and Bob owned a little plantation in Tahiti and while I don’t believe they received any money from there, she used to receive parcels of dried vanilla beans and dried bananas. Unheard of in Australia at that time, when Marion gave us some of the dried beans, Mum had to invent her own uses for them. She did. Let me assure you that real vanilla is a far better flavour than the vanilla essence we had been used to.

After Bob Blackwell died, with Dad’s help Marion obtained her driver's licence and purchased a little Gogomobile sedan which caused her, and subsequently Dad, all sorts of frustration with its unreliability. Eventually the Gogomobile made way for a Morris Mini much to everyone’s relief.

The Blackwell residence was the last house up the road to get the power on. The Hydro Electric Commission, the Government corporation responsible for the generation and distribution of power at that time, would only take the step of bringing power up our road if we all paid a deposit and guaranteed to use a minimum amount of power each quarter. At a meeting of residents we all agreed except Bob. Because he declined we all had to pay more for the connection and guarantee to use more. There was some heated debate and some residual animosity about his refusal but we went ahead with the project any way. True to his word, Bob never attempted to connect the power “on the cheap” after it went past his place. After he died however, Marion had it connected. Some people complained but we never begrudged her the small luxury. Marion died in her late eighties in a nursing home in Ulverstone.

Water problems

When we first went to the farm, we were plagued with water problems. The windmill which was to pump water from the river was unreliable. Tom and Dad cleared the growing trees from around it in an attempt to deliver more wind to it but that failed. Even when it was belting around, it did not always deliver water.

Dad experimented with a paddle wheel in a floating raft as an alternative means of pumping but it did not deliver enough power. The experiment became academic when the river flooded and the raft, no doubt dislodged from it’s moorings by a floating log, was swept away.

After much investigation and replacing of valves suspected of being faulty, the distance between the input of the pump and the surface of the river was measured. It was close to the limit of the distance a pump can suck water, a distance of approximately 28 feet at sea level. This meant that when the river was low and/or the atmospheric pressure low, the pump either refused to work at all or worked rather inefficiently.

The tower had been erected on a natural plateau in the river bank and to re-foot it and move it closer to the river was a major task. The other fear was that if it was closer to the river it could be struck and damaged by a floating log during a flood. Dad and Tom overcame the problem by digging a 6 foot deep channel under the tower, lowering the pump to the floor of it and extending the exit pipe and the shaft from the windmill gearbox. After that, the windmill became a very effective pump, filling the tanks in no time – provided the wind blew.

We all tend to associate windmills as depicted in photographs. That is, a tranquil scene with the tower silhouetted against a striking crimson sunset. Not so. There is a tail vane to turn the fan into the wind. With the vane fully extended during a gale, the structure attempts to belt itself to death and water gushes out of the tank overflow to splash loudly on the concrete and saturate everything the gusting wind can reach with it. The small boys of the family are sent down to feather the fan sideways to the wind. A trudge down the yard, past the chook house, through the paddock to grasp the crank-like handle and wind the steel cable onto the spool. When the big vane is parallel to the fan, stick the retaining pin in the spool edge and trudge back up to the warmth of the house.

Then, with the fan pointed edge on to the wind, it fails to pump and over the next week or so the tank empties. Again a small boy is despatched to reset the vane. Under those circumstances, it is usual for there to be no wind for days and the tanks run dry.

Always inventive, Dad adapted an old power-take-off (tractor) mower to couple to the windmill’s pump shaft. Back the tractor up, put the belt on the pulley, swap the pump shaft over and fill the tank. Once we had overcome the water problem, the tin-under-the-seat-your-job-to-bury-it-every-week-Keith outside toilet could be upgraded to a septic tank. More on that subject later.

The need to couple the tractor to the windmill pump was superseded by an arrangement with Marion Blackwell. Her water was from a little dam about the size of a small suit case, in a creek in the hills up above and to the south of her house. She had no tank and the fall of the water gave her good pressure except that all too often the intake pipe would block with leaves. It was a fairly arduous climb to clear the blockage and while Bob and Marion did it while they were able, in later years she called on us to clear it for her.

During particular periods of the year this became a frequent task and even though we took our turns it was a nuisance as it had to be done quickly. You frequently brought home a leech or two from your efforts and more than once I slipped over on the wet track.

Tired of the imposition, Dad obtained enough pipe to run the few hundred metres between our houses and coupled the plumbing together. We had to have a stop tap to prevent our tanks from permanently overflowing but if Marion’s supply failed, she could still get water by turning the stop tap on and drawing from our tanks. If there was no wind, we could top up our tanks by opening the tap. The real beauty was of course, that we could take our own sweet time about clambering up the track to clear the blockages. The windmill was partially feathered all the time and most times was adequate to our needs.

Workshop, weapons and tools.

Although only small there were four bedrooms in the farm home as well as two “sleep-outs” on the front veranda. Dad claimed the bedroom off the kitchen as his workshop and the carpenters’ bench from the shed at Parker Street plus many of the tools, were installed in there. A couple of boxes of infrequently used tools were kept in the sleep-out directly outside Tom’s and my bedroom window. One of those boxes contained a mystery that will now never be solved and one I will elucidate on later.

A visiting friend once commented on how strange it was to have a workshop immediately off the side of your kitchen. I had never thought about it. It was just the thing to have. You wanted a tool to do something, straight to the workshop off the kitchen. Something needed oiling? Grab one of the oilcans from the workshop. Need to glue some timber together? Just pop into the workshop and fire up the glue-pot. Having trouble getting a nut of something? Just run it into the workshop, there’s a blowlamp in there. In later life I owned a house with a half decent workshop underneath it but it never came close to the convenience or the range of equipment Dad kept in the room off the kitchen at the farm at the Forth.

Outside by the woodpile we had an anvil and a blacksmiths leg vice. A brazier containing some coke used to double as a forge. If we needed more heat than the brazier could deliver then we had to wait till Dad could take it into work. The leg vice was an excellent device for calibrating the sights of a gun. With cardboard to protect the weapon we would clamp it in the vice pointing down the line of the fence. Tack a plain piece of stiff cardboard as a target to a fence post about 25 to 30 yards down the fence and with the rifle held firmly in the vice, fire a shot at it. After that it was just a matter of adjusting the sights till they were looking fair at the hole. Another shot to ascertain the gun hadn’t moved. If the second shot didn’t go through the hole the first one made, then the weapon had moved and you had to do it again.

Adjacent to the milking shed was a garage which rarely housed a car. Boxes of bolts, rolls of fencing wire, staples, elastrator and packets of rings, full length shelves containing a full range of screws, tins of paint, all manner of fixtures, piles of spud bags, rolls of bailing twine, tins of grease, drums of oil, a grease gun or two, and so on. A veritable Aladdin’s Cave.

Built into the side of a bank just behind the blacksmith area, a car ramp. Dad and Tom went into the bush and cut the tree down which was to form the four piles, two long and two short, onto the tops of which the planks were fastened. The piles were cemented into holes dug into the bank in such a way that the two ramp runners were level. Two short angled ramp pieces allowed you to drive a car or a tractor, or a truck onto the ramp at which time it was level. The ramp was quite long and you could position the vehicle to provide whatever working height underneath it you wanted.

After I left home, I would time my visits home to roughly coincide with car services. It was so easy to drive up onto the ramp, drain the oil, check everything out, put some grease into the nipples and do anything else that had to be done. Dad had even made some apparatus which allowed him to do his own wheel alignments but I believe it was vehicle specific and never attempted to come to terms with the complexities involved.

When he shifted to Ulverstone and therefore lost the ramp, Dad dug a pit under the carport as an alternative. A poor substitute but it was better than nothing. Joe and I used it to recondition the engine of a little van I owned when I was first married. Due to a lack of proper tools, the recondition was only partially successful and I sold the van to a TV repairer not thinking for a minute at that time that I would later become a TV technician myself.

Our gate post

One may wonder how an inanimate object as boring as a gate post can rise to prominence. Ours did.

The most milking cows we had at any one time was nine which mum hand milked night and morning. The milk was separated into cream and skim milk and the cream sold to the butter factory in Ulverstone. The skim milk was not wasted. It was used to raise young calves as beef animals. When we didn’t have calves, we always had pigs which were very happy to have skim milk in their diet.

This meant that every so often we had fattened stock to be taken to the sale yards. Bill Last, a farmer from Kindred also contracted his cartage services to the farmers in the district. For a fee he would take your stock to the saleyard for and bring home any purchases you made. Our loading ramp was angled off from the gate and every time Bill came to collect or deliver stock, he always nudged the gatepost. Tom and Dad would spend some time straightening it up and rehanging the gate only to have Bill knock it next time he came.

“I believe he does it deliberately,” Dad observed as we were straightening it one day, “Too bloody lazy to take two bites at it he has to try and get through in one sweep.” It really rankled Dad and one day he and Tom came back from the bush with this absolutely massive log dragging behind the tractor. A hole big enough to accommodate a couple of bodies was dug where the gatepost used to be and with a pair of she-legs fashioned specially for the task and a lot of careful manipulation with the tractor, this massive post was finally planted in the hole. I noted that there was nearly as much of the post under the ground as there was above it.

After the post had been tamped into the hole and the gate rehung, Dad muttered something like, “Now let’s see if Bill Last can knock that one out of the ground!” I wasn’t there when Bill came next time but according to Mum, Bill bent the heavy steel bumper on the truck and although he didn’t say anything, he did not appear to be happy.

The gatepost featured in a number of games for which it became home base. If someone was to pick something up as they came past, we would often leave it on the gatepost for them. If I went out unexpectedly when a friend was due to call, a pebble on the gatepost told them not to bother looking around the farm for me. My friend would put the pebble by the base of the post to indicated that they had been and received the message.

Possibly the most dramatic use to which the gatepost was put was as a firing platform for a muzzle loading gun.

Tom did some work for Mrs Cartwright, an elderly lady who lived a few miles up the road. Before he died, her husband was a second hand dealer and an avid collector of all sorts of brick-a-brack. Both Curley and Tom used to do some work for her from time to time and because she could not afford to pay much so to supplement their pay, she invited them to select something from the shed. Over a period of several weeks, Tom came home with a single shot lever action Winchester rifle, an old octagonal barrel, hinge block rifle, a muzzle loading rifle, a sword or two and a red metal container full of black powder.

Dad insisted that a gunsmith check the weapons before we were allowed to fire them and I believe they were declared unsafe and sold off to collectors. The container of black powder we kept.

Joe and I poured a couple of piles of the powder onto the concrete and lit it. A disappointing brief and spluttering flame plus a lot of smoke and a black smudge on the concrete was all we achieved. We decided that it would be more spectacular if it was used in a gun as it was meant to be.

We built our own gun. By this time, Oscar, my best friend from up the road was part of the process and while his role was minimal, because of his involvement, it was not reasonably possible to abandon the project when it got scary.

A piece of iron water pipe with a copper pipe sleeve was the barrel. I knew we had to have a strong breach to withstand the recoil but I had no real means of fashioning one. In the finish I resorted to cutting two quartering splits up one end of the pipe, hammering them inward to form a restriction and then setting a strong mixture of concrete in the semi blocked-off end to form a seal.

Although we had no idea of the necessary strength of either the barrel or the breach, we knew that it was probably not safe to hold it when it was fired. When we had given the concrete plug a few days to harden, we fixed this crude barrel to a piece of wood by the equally crude expedient of bending two rows of four inch nails over it. A four inch nail was driven into the wood immediately behind the breach to prevent the barrel from being recoiled backwards.

The firing mechanism, if it could be given such a sophisticated description, was a small countersunk hole drilled through the side of the pipe just in front of the concrete plug.

We didn’t know what to use as a projectile but since there was a few four inch nails left over from the barrel fixing process, it seemed only reasonable to use one of those. Not sure how safe this powder was and not knowing anything about what load should be used, we just tipped the red metal container’s spout into the upturned barrel’s muzzle till we thought a fair amount had gone down there.

A piece of rag was wadded down the barrel to hold the powder in place, then the four inch nail followed by another piece of rag. A quick check to make sure a few grains of powder could be seen down the firing hole, pour a bit of powder into the countersink and she’s ready to fire.

It was no good firing a fine weapon like the one we had constructed if there was no way of seeing the effects of the shot. The gatepost again came into prominence. If we sat the device on top of the gatepost we could actually point it at a short part of the fence directly over the other side of the road. It was a post and rail fence except for this one span which had been filled in with palings. I thought that we should be able to shoot the nail across the road with sufficient force to drive it at least part way into one of the palings.

Ross Cunningham – or Oscar as we called him – my best friend from a farm up the road, was with Joe and I when the time came to fire it. Mum was milking the cows in the adjacent shed and Dad was not due home from work yet. We had a free hand to do it. I remember thinking that if Oscar had not been there perhaps I wouldn’t fire it for fear it might blow up but since I had created an expectation it was something which had to happen.

A problem. Someone had to light the powder but whoever it was would be exposed to the possibility of the barrel exploding. With the three of us crouching down beside the gatepost, I tried to reach up with a match. That method didn’t work. I forget what method we ultimately used but the home-made, muzzle-loading, cement breached, canon actually fired!

The effect was dramatic. A deafening noise, a belch of flame and a massive cloud of blue smoke, smouldering pieces of rag on the roadway and the canon, including the flat-iron we had placed on the front of the barrel to stop it from kicking up, were all projected backwards onto the ground behind the gatepost.

The most dramatic effect was yet to come. Before we could really assess the overall impact of the shot, Mum, red faced with rage, shot out of the milking shed demanding to know what was going on. It appears the cow she was milking, normally very placid, panicked in the stall and as well as spilling the milk in the bucket under her udders, stepped on Mum’s foot.

She was not a happy person. The tirade had barely started before Oscar took off on his bike at the rate of knots leaving me and Joe to face the music. Joe of course was only the baby so it had to all be my fault. The home-made, muzzle-loading, cement breached gun and the red metal powder container were immediately confiscated to be later thrown in the river. This was Mum’s place of disposal of any item we should be deprived of for any reason. More often than not a basic search would reveal the hiding place of the item the surreptitious use of which could then continue.

That was not the case with the gun and the powder container. I was wild when that disappeared off the face of the earth. Even a search of the likely spots down river failed to reveal either item. I suspect the powder container was quite a valuable collectable even then.

An examination of the fence provided my first real lesson in ballistics. I expected to find either a small hole where the nail speared through the fence or see part of the nail protruding from the fence. Instead, there was a four inch gash in one of the palings at a forty five degree angle across it. On the entry side, you could even see the enlargement made by the head at one end and the narrowing of the pointed end of the nail at the other. The nail had hit the fence sideways with such velocity that it had punched straight through, even across the grain of the timber. From then on, I had a healthy respect for explosive devices and high speed projectiles.

The shot gun shell

After the home-made, muzzle-loading, cement breached gun incident one would have thought that I had endured enough experimentation with such devices. Not so. I remember watching Dad reload a shot gun cartridge with sand one day as a bird deterrent. Shortly after that I used the knowledge to recover the powder from a cartridge just to see it go flash when it was lit. I thought the firing cap may make an interesting little bang so I held it in the leg vice and took the point of a nail to the back if it. The little snap noise was quite disappointing but the piece of brass which flew from the back of the unrestrained firing cap and embedded itself into my forehead fair between my eyes was kind of scary. Another valuable lesson in ballistics: The breach of a weapon does much more than absorb the shock of the recoil!

Car roof.

Dad was extremely strict when it came to gun protocols and training. From a very early age we were drilled in all the gun safety rules. “Why am I pushing the gun under the fence sideways?” He would ask and I had to give him all the reasons for the umpteenth time. “When is the only time we ever point a gun at anything?”

“Only when we intend to shoot it at something.”

“More people are killed by what kind of gun?”

“An empty one,” I would studiously reply knowing he would tell me again about instances where “empty” guns were pointed at people and killed them.

“Tell me the correct way to pass a gun from one person to the other.” When I had told him, we would practice the manoeuvre, muzzle above head-height, barrel pointing harmlessly skyward.

So confident was I with the quality of Dad’s gun safety training that later on when I had to give a lecture to my High School class on a special subject of my choosing, and in light of a recent accidental gunshot fatality in the community, I chose gun safety as my subject.

Despite all the training, one more valuable lesson in handling weaponry was yet to be had. This particular day brother-in-law Curley had borrowed his brother’s Holden ute and Browning automatic rifle. Curley and I were going rabbit shooting up the road. I directed him to a place usually alive with rabbits. On the way up, I was familiarising myself with this elaborate automatic rifle and not fully understanding the load-fire-eject sequence of the open breach system, I squeezed the trigger as the only means I could see of closing the breach. No gun I had ever seen could fire a bullet with the breach open. This one did. I was amazed. Curley looked over with a stunned look on his face and asked, “Did that go off?” I nodded my head sheepishly.

Dad’s training had dictated that the weapon was pointed upward when being handled and so I frantically looked for the bullet hole. “You can hardly see it,” I reassured Curley when I found a barely perceptible mark in the vinyl of the cabin lining. Unfortunately the jaggered tear we found in the metal of the outside cost Curley dearly to fix.

To make the day even worse, we went to several areas normally alive with rabbits and saw only two and got none. In frustration, Curley emptied a full magazine of bullets at a blue wren sitting on a tree root. Despite wood chips and bark flying everywhere under the barrage, the poor wren flew away, shaken but otherwise unscathed.

Snakes alive.

Living on a farm meant the inevitable run-in with legless creatures. While it may now be fashionable to let all creatures live in harmony with humans, we had a very simple philosophy about sharing our space with snakes: One of us has to go! Accordingly, if they intruded into our space, we killed them. When Mum accidentally picked one up when she was pulling grass from the garden bed alongside the front path, she killed it. When I found one slithering through the orchard by the side of the house, I called out to Mum who came and killed it. When Tom found one sunning itself in the paddock immediately across the road from our house, he killed it.

Our outside dunny was across a piece of concreted yard and diagonally off to the left of our back porch. The door catch was a loop of dog chain stapled to the door which held the door closed by the simple expedient of hooking the other end of the chain over a bent nail driven into the door jamb. From anywhere in front of the dunny, you could see if it was occupied. If the chain was hanging down, there was someone in there, if it was looped over the nail, it was vacant.

I headed to the loo one day and automatically noted the chain was on the hook. I was standing in front of the door about to unhook the chain when the door rattled. Absolute astonishment. This couldn’t happen. For a moment I speculated that someone had locked someone in the toilet. Apart from Mum, there was only Joe and me around the place. I hadn’t locked Joe in there and he hadn’t locked me in there so there had to be another explanation. The door rattled again, more forcefully than before. When I looked down, I found the reason in the form of a six foot, black tiger snake squirming his way through the gap under the door. Being bare footed at the time and given the circumstances which caused me to be where I was, I have to confess to almost having a nasty accident!

A panic call to Mum and the monstrosity met his doom trying to escape into the orchard through the gap between the dunny and the back shed. The trophy hung on our fence for some time before it deteriorated to a husk.

Before I could swim, Curley often used to take me swimming. I would climb on his back while he waded or swam to where we wanted to go. One day we were swimming in the stretch of water between Ennies hole and the island between our place and the Scout Camp reserve directly over the river from us. I was on Curley’s back when he suddenly put me down into the water. I was tall enough to reach the bottom but there was not much leeway and I was inclined to be a bit panicky. When Curley pointed up the river, the reason for his concern became apparent. A big black snake was swimming through the water directly towards us. We moved out of it’s apparent path and the snake changed direction.

If you have ever seen a large snake swimming directly towards you, it is an odd sight. Only the snake’s head and about a foot of it’s length immediately behind it’s head is held out of the water. You still get a perception of it’s size and to a little kid whose eyes are close to the surface of the water through which the snake is swimming, it was a bloody big one!

The Forth river has a bottom lined with large stones worn smooth by the action of the running water rubbing them together for possibly millions of years. To walk on them is extremely difficult as they turn easily under your feet. This is particularly apparent in deeper water when your own buoyancy makes you light in the water. Curley must have concluded that with a small boy on his back he could neither out run nor out swim this particular reptile. Before I realised what he was doing, he dived down to the bottom and retrieved a couple of stones which he threw in the direction of the snake. At the first splash, the snake jinxed but kept coming towards us. Twice more Curley dived down and hurled the rocks he retrieved at the snake. With the shortening range came greater accuracy and although he never actually hit the snake he came close enough to convince the reptile that it would be a good idea to turn back. A couple more rocks to ensure a continued retreat and the incident was almost over.

We watched as the snake neared the shore, wondering how it would get out of the water. It was heading towards a dense clump of tea tree bushes the heads of which were leaning over into the river. So close to the water’s surface, I didn’t see it happen but Curley voiced his astonishment as it powered it’s way up and over the curved bushes. I was told later that there was no need to be afraid as a snake cannot strike in the water. The theory being that is, as soon as it lifts it’s head to strike, it sinks and because it has no firm surface against which to push, any strike it manages to make is ineffective.

I liked that theory but I hoped I would never have to test it. Confronted with the same circumstances, for me it would definitely be the Curley method in preference to seeing if there was any difference in the theory and the practical.

The huts

When we first went to the farm, there were a significant number of trees suitable for power poles. Dad organised with the Stubbs’s, a family of logging contractors, to harvest the poles. Leo Stubbs had reputedly been kicked in the head by a horse when he was a boy as a result of which he was said to be, “not quite right.” What he was however, was a bloody good bullock team driver. I used to watch in fascination as Leo and his team hauled these massive logs down the zig-zag track from the top of the hill to the flat where the truck would come and collect them. Equally as exciting was watching Leo have the animals pull the logs up a pair of skids and onto the jinker.

The result of this harvest was that there was a large quantity of bark slabs left laying around the floor of the bush. An ideal material to build a bark hut with.

Tom harvested some saplings for framework and on a rocky point high on the river bank, constructed his bark hut retreat. It was short lived. We had not been on the farm long enough to know just how far the river could rise. I can remember Tom coming into bed in the middle of the night after the rising river had started to wash through his hut. He was able to salvage most things but the hut itself did not survive the night.

In later years, Oscar Cunningham and myself decided that we would build a hut in bush north of his farm which had a lot of bark left laying around. We accumulated the bark in a heap but then couldn’t dig through the tough rocky terrain to place the corner posts. Plan B.

We found 3 trees in the relative right places to form a 10 foot by 10 foot hut. It didn’t matter, we reasoned, if the corner pole we had to dig the hole for was a bit shallow because it would be held by the walls. The project was too ambitions. We exhausted Dad’s supply of nails of a particular size and had no money to get more. About half a mile away from where we were building, there was a flying fox across the river. It was a rickety 3 sided wooden cage suspended by two blocks on a steel cable stretched high across the river. Originally erected I believe to take hay across to cattle a farmer used to sometimes graze on the river flats. However we used to use the cage to scoot back and forth and sometimes tourists would stop to look at these 3 small boys sitting in this rickety edifice suspended high across the middle of the river. We used to show off by pulling it into the bank and chatting to them. This gave us the idea to raise the money we needed to buy nails.

Although we raised a bit of money, the hut never got built but we enjoyed the experience of entertaining the tourists.

The cage

Instead of the hap hazard method we used to extract money from the tourists, we needed to be more scientific in our methods. The Wilmot Road from the township of Forth was one of the few ways that people could get to Cradle Mountain, a natural attraction for many of the visitors to our State. Over looking the stretch of water over which the cage was suspended was a lookout area on the side of the road. In the middle of the river immediately below the lookout is a huge rock which looks for all intents and purposes like a very large crocodile’s head. Strangely enough, us kids named it, Crocodile Rock.

Hire cars bringing tourists up to Cradle Mountain often used to stop there for the spectacular view. That was our cue. We would bounce up and down on the cable to attract the attention of the occupants of the car. As the car moved off, we would begin pulling in towards the bank trying to time our arrival for about the same time the car would take to cover the few hundred yards from the lookout to the cage.

If the car stopped, and they frequently did, we would go up and offer the tourist a ride across the river for sixpence. Only one ever accepted but many of them would pay us to show them how it worked. They were the ones we liked.

The pylon to which the cable was fixed was well up the bank away from the waters edge. The bank sloped away towards the river with a gentle slope at first then getting steeper and finally falling away quite steeply down to the river’s edge some thirty feet below. Joe, who wasn’t much more than a baby at the time, and Oscar used to get inside the 3 sided cage. I would get behind and push it out on the wire. Just before the bank fell away too far, I would pretend to trip and grab hold of the rail around the floor of the cage. The onlooker would be confronted with the sight of an old rickety wooden cage speeding out across and high above a river with two small boys inside it and a slightly larger boy hanging by his fingers beneath it.

After the cage came to a halt in the middle of the river, I would laboriously struggle to climb up into the device and succeed after an appropriate number of failed attempts before pulling ourselves back to the tourist to collect our money. Most of them were that guilty at having exposed 3 little kids to such danger that they would usually give more money than they had agreed. We used to ask for sixpence but usually got sixpence each, sometimes more, after such a show. It was money for jam. We loved doing it but to get paid so handsomely for it was something else.

The cage was never locked and that was fine by us kids. Sometimes some idiots would unhook it and push it out into the centre of the river. That didn’t deter us in the slightest. Geoff Hillier, another boy from the area had perfected the technique of sliding out on the wire by suspending most of your body weight by the simple expedient of hooking your legs over a piece of tree branch shaped in the form of a shallow “W.” It was easier if there were two of you; one to hold the wood while the other swung their legs up but it could be done by one if required. The piece of wood was kept and hidden so it could be used whenever needed.

Oscar and I rode our bikes up to the cage one day, as usual, taking it in turns to double dink Joe. When we arrived, the Cooper boys from the Forth township had taken the cage over the river. We knew it was them because of their identifiable kaki coloured FX Holden. The sound of a rifle shot alerted us to the fact that they were rabbiting. Just for a lark, I swam across the river and prepared to pinch the cage. We intended to hide in the bushes to see what they would do when they came back. Because the bank was lower on the Devonport side of the river, the cage was suspended from a large tree stump as a pylon and there was a couple of sets of steps leading up to a mounting platform. I spotted the shooter about four hundred yards away. I waited till he was looking in the opposite direction and went up the steps. Still keeping my eye on him, I entered the cage and proceeded to unhook it confident that even if he discovered me now I could get across the river before he could get anywhere near me.

Dad’s rules of shooting were my undoing. “Never separate if there is more than one of you.” As I undid the restraining chain, it clinked. I was quietly letting the cage run down the sag of the cable when a voice from nearby commanded, “Stop right there, Kid!” There were two of them. I must have walked past one of them as close as a few feet. When I looked, I was looking at the barrel of a .22 rifle. This bloke definitely didn’t know Dad’s rules!

I should have been deathly scared but instinct kicked in. Something told me that I had to remain calm, not show my fear and just do as he said. “Bring it back.” I pulled the cage back the three or four yards it had rolled before I stopped it. He called out to his brother who came haring over to where we were.

“Hook it up and get out.” This with the rifle still pointed directly at me. The two boys pushed past me, the first holding the rifle on me, and mounted the cage.

Alarm bells started to ring when he asked, “Who knows you’re here, Kid?”

“My brother and a friend.”

He scanned the other side of the river. “Where are they now?”

The buggers had taken off as soon as the bloke popped up with the rifle. They weren’t stupid! Neither was I. “They hid to watch what happened.”

“How did you get across the river, Kid?”

“I swam.”

“Well you can bloody well swim back then!” With that, they let the restraining chain go and the cage ran down the sag in the cable to the middle of the river. The rifle stopped pointing at me when the bloke had to start pulling the cage up to the other side. Just in case one of them got stupid and let off a shot, I disappeared behind the pylon.

“Bloody water.” I knew exactly what they were doing. At the sight of the big kid’s rifle, Joe and Oscar were in such a hurry to get out of there that they had left my bike behind. I had a couple of slow leaks in the inner tubes and I reasoned that you never got a slow leak in a tractor tyre that was partially filled with water so if I filled my bike tyres with water then I wouldn’t have the slow leak problem. It worked. So slow was the escape of the water from the tyres that when I arrived at the other bank, I was able to tighten the valve and there was enough pressure there to still ride the bike.

A few months later I was walking home from school when I came across the Cooper boy’s familiar FX Holden. They were obviously fishing out of sight of the road. Payback time.

I didn’t hang around to find out how they managed with two flat tyres. It could have been worse, I certainly had time to let down all four but they had let down two of mine . . . .

A note to the reader

I was enticed by Jan and other family members to compile the above account. As I am enjoying doing it, I intend to continue on with it if only for the amusement of my immediate family members and to act as a nostalgia prompt in my failing years (which are rushing down relentlessly upon me.)

Future continuations will include such subjects as:

Warren Rooke’s stays on the farm Donald Lello’s brief stay on the farm

Raiding rubbish dumps. Fulton Park

What not to do with tractors Devonport High School

Meeting Margaret Becoming a TIT (Tech-in-Training)

Marriage Parenthood

Career Other stuff.

To briefly round out the rest:

1961 Open Swimming Champion Devonport High School

1962 TIT PMG’s Department.

1966 Married Margaret Jeffrey of Devonport (1st October)

1967 Nicholas Lello born (1st July)

1967 Qualified as Senior Technician

1971 Matthew Keith Lello born (13th April)

1978 Georgia Maria Lello born (1st February)

1990 (4th July) left Telecom to become a financial planner.

Lots of other stuff, before, in between and after.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this narration thus far. As they say in the classics, “Watch this space!”

Keith Lello