This document is 9 pages long so If you have a spare half hour, scroll down and read what it was like for me growing up in the Australian bush; you may find it far removed from your own upbringing but it certainly offers an insight into how a person's childhood can rub off on what they do later in life. When I get the time I'll add a few pictures to illustrate the facts but original pix I don't have because I didn't have a camera in those days.
QUEENSLAND IN THE BUSH
At 70 years of age, the recollections of my childhood days are bound to have some inconsistencies, especially in the timing of events, but none that would alter the basic facts. Certainly, it was a childhood full of adventure & new horizons which as I look back upon them now, contained a fair share of adversity but nevertheless, still remains to be some of the best years of my life. Family life didn't start well with mum marrying pregnant at 16 then having her first born son Neville, placed in the care of her mother who spirited him off to be raised in another part of Australia…...strange! Neville's father I believe was killed while serving in the armed forces. My own father & that of brother Dennis who followed me, were figures that neither of us ever met; that was even more strange for mum, during her lifetime, said very little about them. The figure that I refer to in the following anecdotes as "dad" was in fact our stepfather.
During November 1937, I was born in Babinda, Queensland Australia & in the following 12-13 years lived through a childhood that never provided what one could call a stable home life but instead, one of intermittent school attendance, varying lifestyles & an ever changing roof over my head. To some it may be considered a hardship but for a young lad like me, it was all one big adventure with far more "Ups" than "Downs." Sometimes I wished that our nomadic lifestyle could have been different than it was but in retrospect, I'm glad that it wasn't for it infused my soul with a desire to explore new horizons; a need that continued on throughout the later years of my life, particularly in marriage after I met someone who felt the same but for different reasons.
In my early years, not far from Babinda, I was raised on a large banana plantation under the ever threatening cloud mantel of leech bound, Mt Bartle-Frere where flying foxes blackened the sky in their thousands, that is, if kids like me threw stones into their daytime roosting trees. With the Great Barrier Reef on my doorstep & the proximity of the Atherton Tablelands, this northern region of Australia, was a wonderful introduction to the color of the land. Giant dark leaved trees, with an abundance of brilliant red flowers were favourite haunts of Rainbow Lorikeets that regularly flew in noisy squadrons overhead. Butterflies were everywhere their color sometimes rivaling the Rainbow Bee-Eaters, birds that often showed off their skill in aerobatics while maneuvering for insects overhead. I have never forgotten the sight of them, flying in small groups with their long tails trailing behind & their liquid "trrp-trrp" calls still audible from afar. My earliest adventure recollections are those of wandering alone in dark rainforest fascinated by the many strange calls heard there & also, of beach "tenting it" on Green Island off the Cairns coast. Those were the days when you had the island's rainforests & coral reefs to yourself and a time when a 6-7 yr old could wander alone without fear of abduction; at least that was the way my dad seemed to handle it. While he fished which he loved to do, I began my collection of beach shells which were plentiful then & of a great variety. My favourites were what I called rocket ships but I know now to be the Amoria Undulata, especially the Wavy Volute. The much smaller, kelp shells also kept me busy with their many different colored bands that distinguished them from one another.
My days of freedom to wander at will on Green Island are a far cry indeed from the commercialized venue it has become today which in itself, is only a small example of the insidious tourist growth some refer to as progress that has infiltrated the once untouched beauty of the Australian East Coast. At Green Island, I had not the use of a snorkel or had learned to use one, so I just poked around in tidal pools while dad rock fished for our breakfast/lunch & dinner. Left to my own ends, I looked for pretty things both on the beach & in the pools. As luck would have it, I never picked up a Blue Ringed octopus but saw many; they looked too slimy to pick up but pretty nevertheless, especially the way they kept changing color when I tried to poke them out of rock crevices with a stick. I wonder now why dad never ever warned me of such things, they were simpler times then I guess & so you found out things the hard way. Had I picked one up, I could well have died young for their bite can be deadly. Maybe dad just wanted to get rid of me; one less mouth to feed? But his bliss would have been short lived because brother Dennis arrived & so for the first time, I was introduced to diaper changing & bottle feeding but that gave way in the end to someone I could talk to & torture at times…….boys will be boys! Caring for kids, became part of my life growing up as John, Max, Marlon & Rickie were yet to come; what fun I had scaring the hell out of those boys.
On the banana plantation, we lived in a galvanised tin shack with an earthen floor, wood stove, kerosene "fridge'' & lamps for lights, wood-chip heater for showers and wooden framed, glassless windows that we propped open in daytime for light and air but had to close at night because of the hordes of insects. My bed, which was a frustratingly squeaky, folding, army-style canvas "stretcher," (typical of many to come) was kept in place by having its 4 wooden legs sitting in small holes dug in the ground for that purpose. We had no radio & when he was old enough, my younger brother Dennis & I kept ourselves amused at night by singing songs & letting loose, from screw top jars, dozens of fireflies caught during the day. Trapped under white bed sheets pulled over our heads, they swarmed, glowing & flickering around us creating a magical spectacle not easily forgotten and one of many about the land "Down Under" I hope that I can still recall to my day of passing. The songs we sang were learned word for word from 78rpm records that we played continuously on an old windup gramophone. When the steel tipped needles became so worn down that the audio was god-awful, we used lemon tree thorns which worked fine for a very short period but were at least plentiful. Daytime amusements included netting then releasing butterflies with the grand prize being the large Ulysses, their iridescent blues were exquisite and never failed to impress me and we treated them with great care.
Paw-paw (papaya) trees were plentiful & if there was one thing I could do well, it was climbing their slender trunks to reach the best fruit with Dennis waiting to catch them below. Giant, pleasurable feeds were had on these but easily the closest a young lad could be to heaven when it came to fruit, was throwing sticks into wild mango trees & catching the results when mangoes fell. To this day, to me anyway, no fruit out-flavours the taste of a tree ripened mango unlike the stuff we get in stores these days which are picked virtually green prior to shipping and do not ripen in the same way. Because there was no roof lining underneath our galvanized iron clad home, (one of many to come) the typical corrugated iron roof did a very good job of broiling those under it in the summer & lightly baking them in the winter, if one could call it winter at that latitude. Rainfall was plentiful here & the roar of squalls descending the flanks of Bartle Frere, sounded much like an approaching express train. When it hit those corrugated iron roofs, it was almost impossible to carry on a conversation inside the building but was it ever wonderful to listen to at night when huddled dry in bed. I miss that sound greatly in the modern homes of today which do a good job of muffling a sound that, to me at least, was better than any lullaby a parent could sing.
Our water supply on the plantation came from a natural spring which was diverted over many 6ft long pieces of "V" shaped galvanised iron, overlapping each other to form a continuous channel down a steep hillside through the banana trees. End of the line, was a large water tank (complete with squawky green frogs) into which the water ran continually, that is, until foraging animals, somewhere on the hillside, dragged themselves across the channels, or into them, and dislodged the flow. It was my job to repair that when it happened & many was the time that I got the "living-daylights" scared out of me when encountering Lace Monitors (second largest monitor next to the Perentie) that often went after the water. I got used to the 6 -7 inch wide (17cm), Huntsman spiders which frequently bolted out of banana bunches that I was carrying & then scuttled down my arm or back; they were a common sight in the house toilet as well, quite a surprise really when you reached for the toilet paper & sometimes found them straddling the roll. On the plantation, I stepped around & over snakes without too much concern but to a 6-7 year old, the 6ft (2m) & longer Lace Monitor looked like some kind of fierce, clawed, mythical dragon well able to rip you apart before eating you while still alive. These lizard-like giants could run much faster across the rough terrain than I could; I feared them! When I roamed the hills looking for ripening bananas & Paw-Paws, I was always listening for the unmistakable rattle of loose stones as the monitors foraged amongst the banana trees.
I recall when dad & mum went into town on Saturday nights & left us alone (wouldn't be allowed today), we used to turn down the kerosene lamps to minimize the insects then open the kitchen door after we spread bread crumbs on the floor. Soon enough, while we watched, bandicoots would come in sniffing around and made good targets for paper pellets that we shot at them with rubber band "shanghais." The occasional tarantula would wander in as well which we soon flattened with dad's large, wide leather belt that was used to thrash the hell out of us if we so much as breathed when he was around. Squashing big, hairy spiders was a good outlet for us for it helped to relieve the frustration we both felt over the severity & regularity of dad's unwelcome discipline. Large toads that ventured in got socked with the brass buckle end of the belt but we made sure to wash the belt off afterwards in case we got something from that if & when dad used it on us. The toads were quite poisonous. We eventually left the banana plantation & Babinda because mum became paranoic about the Japanese invading northern Australia as they had already landed in New Guinea & were heading south on the Kokoda Trail. At that time, Australia was recalling troops from overseas to try and hold them off but mum wasn't taking any chances.
Always looking for work, dad dragged me & younger brother Dennis throughout Eastern Australia in general, sending me off to 14 different schools in the process most of which were of the one room & one teacher variety, at least in Queensland anyway. My biggest complaint about that was that it seemed I stayed at one school only long enough to become fascinated by a new girlfriend then had to leave her. Where was mum when all this was going on? Most of the time she seemed to be in hospital having another baby, 5 more after me, and guess who was left to bathe, feed, dress, treat & advise the others when all this was going on……..little wonder that children were not high on my list of priorities in marriage.
Meanwhile back at the ever changing homesteads, Innisfail (Qld) saw us living in tents alongside sugarcane fields while dad cut cane. Biggest problem here was the constant snake problem; red bellied blacks & brown, both deadly. It was there I met my first & last Taipan, the only snake that aggressively reared up at me (cobra style) when I confronted it. Dennis & I were snoozing in the heat of the day on our stretchers when a yell from him startled me and I awoke to see the snake which had wandered into our open tent. Jumping off my stretcher I startled the snake and it reared erect to face me as I backed away from it; it was easily the biggest snake I had ever seen. Then I did a crazy thing, instead of retreating to safety, I reached above me for the wooden handle of dad's 13 inch, razor sharp, flat bladed cane cutting knife that he kept hanging from the tent ceiling; of course I had been warned never to touch it. I took the snakes head off with it in one almighty reverse swipe but unfortunately, Dennis had placed himself behind me and the follow through of the swing struck him above his right eye; I was only 7yrs old or thereabouts and when Dennis fell to the ground I thought I had killed him……….."bummer!" I had never seen so much blood, it was everywhere! Yes I got help & Dennis survived (he still has the scar) but of course I got the usual thrashing; the snake was identified later as a coastal Taipan, one of the deadliest in the world; dad said it was just over 7ft long.
Other highlights on the cane farm were joy riding on the "Locos," cute little trains that pulled long lines of open carriages loaded with cut cane to the sugar mill. And of course, how can I forget the spectacle of the cane fields when they were burned before cutting. It was indeed an experience for one so young to feel the heat from massive flames that lit up the night sky for miles around. Also, fleeing snakes, toads, mice, bandicoots were everywhere; you had to be careful where you walked.
Dad liked to beach fish & one weekend, he took us camping to Mission Beach just south of Innisfail. He would fish for hours which got a little boring for me, so I left him fishing & Dennis to collect shells while I took off into the coastal rain forest; crazy of course, I could easily have gotten lost but my childhood was one long adventure after another & in retrospect, easily the greatest upbringing a kid could ask for. Well into the forest, I came across a nest on the ground with three largish blue eggs & of course, picked one up to have a look at it. I was immediately aware of something thrashing through the bush behind me & turned to see a large, very mean looking bird approaching. It seemed to be as tall as me with oversized claws on its feet & appeared even more menacing than a Lace Monitor. I took off and ran all the way back to the beach never daring to look behind me. I wonder now, in the year 2007, if such a thing as a Cassowary even exists in such areas anymore and how many "Dinki-Di" Aussies have even seen one in the wild; very, very few I would imagine other than at zoos of course. I never told dad but was haunted by that experience for some time after as I never understood what it was that I had encountered until at school one day, I recognized it in a bird book. When defending itself or its nest, the book mentioned that the Cassowary, using large extended claws on its feet, was quite capable of disemboweling a human; nice, very nice!
South of Innisfail, dad took on the job of helping to build & erect a new radio tower for station 4AY near the town of Ayr, during which time he palmed us off to stay with friends on the coast at Bowen, south of Ayr. We weren't happy about that but soon changed our minds when we found out that they at least had a decent house with an interior flush toilet & a plumbed shower, luxuries that we never had until I married & moved into a new home. Perhaps the best thing about the house for me, was a large, flowering Frangipani tree right outside my bedroom window; to me the smell from those flowers was far better than any perfume mum ever wore & it was free for the taking. Perhaps the worst thing about living in that house, was the possum family living in a nearby mango tree. Sure, the two babies looked cute with their shiny, pink, wet noses & large black eyes staring into my flashlight, but when their mum left them to forage, they kicked up such an infernal, squawking tirade that it was near impossible to sleep. Dad's Bowen friends also had a boat that allowed them to access the coral reefs not far off the coast in the Whitsundays where I discovered for the first time, flying fish, sharks & dolphins. I also tried snorkeling which I immediately loved because it allowed me to float face down in the water for hours without having to worry about breathing. Snorkeling provided access to life underwater, another fascination that I explored much further after I joined the Berry Spear fishing Club on the N.S.W. Sth.Cst.
While at Bowen, Dennis was too little & didn't like the snorkel idea or the rougher water over the reef. I thought I could handle it but soon ran afoul of Fire Coral which thankfully, only scraped lightly across my chest as I was washed over it; it looked like any other coral to me, pretty too, WRONG! To that day, I had not experienced such pain it was excruciating, far worse than any bee or wasp sting that I had previously suffered. I don't know where they got it from so soon, but some people turned up and poured vinegar over my rash which certainly dulled the pain. However, years later, south of Sydney, N.S.W, I brushed lightly against the outer trailing tentacles of an unseen Box Jellyfish & that turned out to be far worse. My days on the reef outside of Bowen, were an eye opener for me; it was a wondrous place but I was too young to be allowed to wander & snorkel on my own as I did for I didn't swim hardly at all and the snorkel provide a false sense of security. Fortunately, I had rubber boots on when I inadvertently trod on a Stone Fish (one of the world's deadliest) which are virtually impossible to see if you are not really looking where you are putting your feet; some of the poisonous barbs actually pierced the thin rubber souls but luckily, broke off before they reached my foot. And then while snorkeling, I innocently probed the deadly Lion fish with a stick to try & make them move faster; such a beautiful exotic fish but at that time I had no idea what I was dealing with…..I know now! I wonder now just how prevalent these wonders of the Barrier are with hordes of tourists descending on the reefs. In my time, the shells washed up on the beaches were simply amazing in their variety and quantity. Incidentally, the radio tower which dad was helping to build & erect collapsed when it was part-way up and being hoisted into a vertical position; some were injured and the project was abandoned.
And then there came our next makeshift home on a small-crop farm at Upper Brookfield, west of Brisbane. Before I attended the one room school there, (2 mile walk one way) I stayed at & went to school briefly at Indooroopilly, a Brisbane suburb if I remember rightly. The Brookfield house was on stilts and an airy affair with no glass in the windows & a haven underneath the house for lizard seeking Whip-snakes, coiled up & sleeping in the ceiling rafters. Sometimes, snakes would find their way up between the upstairs room walls & poke their heads out of knot-holes in the wall boards looking no doubt for prey or a way down. If we saw them, this practice turned out to be much to their detriment because given the chance, I was able to jam their heads in the knot-hole with a broom handle while Dennis flailed away at the luckless "critters" with a long stick.
Under the house, the soil was quite dry & sandy & a perfect hunting ground for Antlions, a small predatory insect. Their tiny, carefully constructed sand pits were so angled, that if any luckless small insect such as an ant, stumbled into them, the side of the pit just kept crumbling away beneath them until finally they ended up in the bottom of the pit where barely visible Antlion pincers lay in waiting to seize, drag under & devour prey. Nature can be cruel but then I was worse, for I spent countless hours carefully guiding ants into the sand pits with a stick. Paw-paws trees surrounded the house with some even in reach of my bedroom window which was convenient as I watched the fruit ripen. But there was more to it than that because the flying foxes liked them too so with Dennis holding a flashlight, I used to try and shoot them down with a home-made bow & arrows as they alighted on nearby trees at night. Unfortunately, the paw-paws suffered more than the fruit bats. Fig trees were one of the bat's favourites but I never bothered them there because I didn't like figs anyway.
Life on the farm was great because the crops featured were watermelons, passion fruit, bananas, pineapples, pumpkins, squashes, tomatoes, beans, peas, beets, cabbages, cauliflowers & an assortment of fruit trees much to the delight of the "King Lories," a glorious mixture of crimson & blue & one of Australia's many beautiful parrot varieties. After my first experience with a Funnel Web spider however, I became vary wary when out in the fields selecting free squashes & pumpkins or the like. Despite my already many creature experiences, the sight of a large, black, hairy, menacing spider rearing back aggressively on its hind legs & baring the largest fangs I had ever seen, absolutely scared the living daylights out of me……..I can still see that thing in front of me even to this day. I had disturbed him when I picked up a pumpkin under which he had been building a nest & it seemed he resented that a lot & was about to launch himself onto me. I didn't know then that Funnel Webs don't jump but to make sure he didn't, he ended up totally pulverized under a hastily thrown 10lb pumpkin. For humans, Funnel Webs are one of the world's most deadly spiders.
It was at Upper Brookfield that I became the proud owner of a new, blue & gold Malvern Star bicycle. I learned to ride it with mum running beside me steadying the cycle but panicked one day when I suddenly realized she had let go of the bike & I was on my own. The resulting alarm & wobble that followed, took me right into a barbwire fence where the bike & myself ended up in a twisted, mangled heap. Barbed wire is an unforgiving barrier & I was cut all over which somehow I managed to overlook because my new bike's shiny paintwork was scratched unmercifully, a factor that bothered me more than my own body damage. At Upper Brookfield, I attended a tiny, one room school (as usual) where the boys all wore uniforms that consisted of grey short pants, blue shirt, striped tie & straw hats. Oddly enough, everyone seemed to remove their shoes & run around barefoot all day, but because of the sun, we were not allowed to remove our hats. Every morning before lessons, there was a roll call & after that, we all stood to rigid attention while the flag was raised & we sang Advance Australia Fair. How things have changed! Yes, life was simpler then but they were good times for our teachers whom we treated with great respect. Going barefoot didn't always work out however as I discovered one school day when I chased a soccer ball into long grass & instead of kicking it, I missed & kicked some old, rusty fencing wire hidden in the grass & managed to drive a piece of it up deep between my big toe & the next………god it hurt! Then there were tetanus injections, which hurt even more! There was a large Oleander tree growing up alongside the school which seemed to be a haven for gloriously colored chrysalis which I avidly collected to watch the butterflies emerge from their pupal stage. My favourites were the all silver or all gold varieties & I was always climbing in the tree after them during which time branches broke off exuding white sap that ended up all over my hands. No one ever told me, including the teacher, that the Oleander was an extremely dangerous & toxic shrub; the white sap can kill if ingested & the leaves too……..ignorance is bliss! Fortunately, I never rubbed my eyes with the residue still on my hands.
Lower Brookfield introduced me to yet another school & a new shack of sorts, on stilts again but this time attached to a dairy farm where, unlike Upper Brookfield, I didn't have to walk a mile each way after school to get fresh farm milk in a two quart "billy" can. But I did have to get up at unearthly hours to help with the hand milking & in the afternoon go looking for the herd to whistle them up and lead them back for the evening milking. I usually found them on a hilly, grassy slope at the fringe of the forest but I always approached the area carefully because the cows were sometimes accompanied by mobs of grazing grey kangaroos & what fun they were to watch, especially when they were back on their tails sparring with one another, mostly in play but sometimes seriously. I could have watched them for hours had it not been for the need to lead the "milkers" home, or else!
Early rising meant early breakfast after which I set off to school with the end result of that being, at least in the winter anyway, that I had time to climb up on the school roof and collect ice that had formed in the roof guttering. The purpose of this was to have it ready and put it down the girl's backs when they arrived for school. I loved that but the girls hated it & usually ran for cover but I could always run faster than them. My school nickname was "lanky." The girls were more afraid of me than the snakes which frequented the tall knife-like grass commonly found around the school; the damn stuff had sharp edges that could cut you if you chased a soccer ball into it or whatever.
I need not have worried however over scratching my bike at Upper Brookfield because at Lower Brookfield, I decided to take Dennis for a ride on the main road one day & "wiped-out" on a graveled corner throwing him face down on the roadway. I careered on out of control until I hit a roadside guide post buckling the front wheel in the process while I ended up in a blackberry bush notorious for its flesh ripping thorns & the Uncle Remus Brer Rabbit stories. Dennis cried for a week after that accident because he suffered a terrible gravel rash on his face, arms & legs; I think I cried even longer after the inevitable thrashing because I should not have been on the main road with him in the first place……sigh! Also at Lower Brookfield, I got into the habit of hiding my shoes in an old tree stump located in a field that I crossed on the way to school. Why wear them I thought when I felt so much more comfortable without them; my feet were very tough in those days. This worked out well until one day on my way home, I found the stump burned to the ground by the property owner doing a clearing job on his land. Unfortunately, they were almost new shoes bought for Sunday school; need I say further what followed after that? Kapow! Bash! Thump! Shriek! Wack! Slap! More shrieks!...etc…etc…etc.
I took on my very first job at Lower Brookfield; it was an hourly rate thing during which time I wandered the entire dairy property over the weekends with a garden hoe, trying to remove what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of Scotch Thistles. It was tough going for I had to hack them out root & all so they wouldn't come back & for a young lad of ten or thereabouts, it was damn boring too. But I stuck it out because I had many kangaroo encounters & it also allowed me to wander off the property to explore adjacent forest & be paid for it as well; boys will be boys! In the forest, I nearly always heard kangaroos before I saw them because of the distinctive "thump-thump" sound they made on the ground as they moved through the forest. I had several memorable experiences on these forest jaunts, all "firsts" for me, one being sighting Koalas in the wild. I never saw them on the ground, only high up in the Eucalypts, sometimes with babies on their backs. It was disappointing & surprising to me when they were awake & squabbling amongst themselves. The guttural groans & grunts were nothing at all like what I had imagined a cute, cuddly looking koala bear would make.
It was on one of those same forest excursions that I came across my first platypus, nesting under tree roots that projected from a bank above a crystal clear stream. I was so fascinated by its activities that I followed it, non thinking, far upstream which unfortunately branched several times before I finally lost sight of my new friend after which I turned back to retrace my route. Darkness comes quickly after sunset in that part of the world & before long I started to become confused as to the way home because of the stream's meanderings and with dusk approaching, I thought of dingoes although I had never ever seen one. For some reason, I sometimes dreamed of being attacked by a pack of them, most likely due to the stories I had read. As dusk fell, I bemoaned the fact that I had left my thistle hoe back where I first saw the platypus, leaving me without a weapon as I thought at the time. I was okay with that until I heard the most "God-awful" scream echo through the forest, easily the loudest & most horrific noise that I had ever heard in the Australian bush, a bush that I already knew well. Several times that almost unbearable noise shattered the silence of the forest, sounding for all the world like a child or a young woman screaming in intense pain. As the sound moved closer, the effect on me, alone in the forest, was intense to the point of my pooping my pants. I could not even begin to guess what was making such an awful shriek. I never ever heard that call again, despite many more years in the Australian bush but once heard never forgotten & many years later in Africa, not even the "Bush Babies" could surpass its intensity. As luck would have it, I came across my hoe as I had left it on first sighting the platypus; it was almost dark then but I knew the way back from there because of an old track I had followed which led away from the property fence. I took the time to wash my pants out & thought my troubles were over but on the trip back across familiar pastures, I wished to hell I had spent more time on removing thistles because it seemed that I ran into every last one of them & that was with short pants. Getting home wasn't fun either because it was weekend & dad had gone out looking for me……..groan!! Yep, I didn't forget that licking in a hurry either.
Several days later, after that drama had cleared, I told dad about the screams which he promptly dismissed as pure imagination. My teacher at school treated the story similarly but believe me, one does not imagine such an event. Years later, older & wiser, I learned the screams were that of a Barking Owl, a rare occurrence in the Australian bush & in itself the source of Bunyip legend folklore. To this day, I feel privileged that I may be one of only a few Australians that have ever heard this wonderful bird let forth its haunting cries of terror & pain.
While on the dairy farm, we boiled our own milk in a large saucepan the night before breakfast and by morning, it had cooled with at least an inch thick layer of cream on top……..it was great stuff and a far cry from today's skimmed & pasteurized excuse for milk. At Upper Brookfield, I used to walk a mile each way after school to get the milk from a dairy farm up the road. On my way back from that dairy one day, I was climbing through a wooden pasture gate with a full "billy-can" in one hand & suddenly found myself face to face with the flicking tongue of a brown snake that had coiled itself around the wooden slats in the gate. Instinctively, I struck out at it with the only weapon I had, the milk can of course & man, what a mess I made of myself, the gate & the snake as 2 quarts of fresh milk flew everywhere. Yep, you guessed it, dad didn't believe that story either & another thrashing followed then I had to go back for more milk after it was administered; at times, I really hated my father. As we got older, Dennis & I used to discuss plans re bringing about dad's demise; the discussion was fun but amounted to nothing because we were wise enough to realize that if the family breadwinner wasn't around, we both would face slow starvation. Mind you, as far as the general "billy-can" scenario went, I was no angel! I used to marvel at how centrifugal force kept the milk in the can, without a lid, when I used to swing it up & over my head in a 360 degree arc…..boys will be boys! It worked great until the can handle came off one day……sigh!
I had my moments with mum as well who was quiet adept at throwing things at you like a saucepan, block of wood or even an iron if she happened to be holding one, hot or cold. At the dairy farm, there was a pee-wee nesting in the rain gutter above my bedroom window which once the little guys arrived, provided a liberal supply of airborne bird lice into my bedroom much to my chagrin! In an attempt to get them out of my hair, mum poured kerosene over my head which may have knocked the hell out of the lice but also severely burned my tender scalp…..it was very painful & it took a long time to heal; my hair was never the same again. Dad threw the cat up on the roof & it soon finished off the nest occupants; not sure how "tabby" ever got back down from the roof though.
The dairy farm's water supply was a decent size creek, always flowing, which had the biggest eels Dennis & I had ever seen. We had hunted creek eels before, but these eels were nearly 2 metres long & definitely the slimiest, strongest things I have ever tried to hold on to. We spent our weekends stalking them with long, strong sharpened sticks for spears; what we did occasionally manage to impale, dad cooked & it was on those occasions that he didn't thrash us for coming home wet. This in itself was a contradiction because his instructions were to stay away from the creek because I was not a good enough swimmer to save Dennis if he fell in, let alone myself. As it turned out, the creek was not the best place for swimming anyway for I picked up a tick from doing just that; the damn thing had securely imbedded itself behind my right ear. By the time I became aware of it, the tick had swelled to three times its size. Dad held a glowing cigarette against its bulging rear end hoping that would make the tick withdraw from the skin but instead, it just buried its head further in. In the end, dad pulled it off with a pair of long-nose pliers but even then, parts of its head remained in the skin & I got very, very sick from that stinking rotten thing. Dennis had his own particular encounter with that same creek when the bank above it gave way one day, sending him headfirst into the water. At that time, he came as close to drowning as he likely ever will. Without a snorkel, I was simply too afraid to enter the water as it looked too deep for me & as he struggled & screamed while going under then back up again, I ran off looking for the biggest dead tree branch I could find. We were fortunate that day that I found one & managed to wade out far enough for him to grab hold of it; he would not be alive today had I not been able to reach him. We never told our parents of that day & even today, I can still see the look of terror on Dennis's face as he was going under perhaps for the last time.
Inland a ways from West Burleigh (further south), I probably had a similar look of terror on my face when I went yelling back to yet another glassless, galvanized iron abode of sorts to inform mum that the biggest snake I had ever seen was coiled up on the toilet seat in our "outhouse" which was a stinky, "long drop" affair situated by a small swamp about 100ft from the homestead's back door. Mum wasn't game enough to go in there to physically remove the Carpet snake so instead, she threw of all things a heavy, steel crowbar at it which dislodged the snake right enough but also carried on & took the back clean out of the outhouse, timbers and all. At least I didn't get blamed for that one when dad had to rebuild the wall later. I always hated that outhouse because it often had poisonous Red Back spiders that lived under the toilet top where you were supposed to place your behind. Dad sprayed them a few times but more always came back sooner or later. Because of that, I never used the seat in the conventional sense, choosing instead to climb up on the seat & straddle it then get out fast. I never knew how mum got on & never asked. The swamp near the house was a good food source for snakes as they went after the numerous frogs there; frogs that set up such a bedlam of song at night, it was difficult to get to sleep until I got used to it. Actually, it got that way that I missed them once they shut-up for the night, usually all at exactly the same moment much to my puzzlement.
One thing at the swamp that never seemed to give us any peace, was the long, sad, wailing calls from a resident Bush Stone Curlew that lamented its cause day & night, it near drove mum mad, or at least madder than she usually was. At this homestead we had the usual large, circular, galvanized water tank on stilts fed from rainwater off the roof. Of course, there was no indoor plumbing so we had to go out to a tap on the tank to get our water but that was no big deal, we got used to that, but we could never get used to the fact that there was sometimes a Tiger snake coiled up on the damp ground under the tap which had a slight drip depending on how you left the tap when you used it last. Yes, they were also poisonous & aggressive as well but not like the Taipan.
At West Burleigh, we lived on a poultry farm so I was introduced to collecting eggs, feeding chickens & on occasion, chopping off chicken heads which I disliked intensely. Plucking was even worse and naturally, we lived on chicken & eggs during our stay there. Used wisely, chicken manure makes great fertilizer and like all the places in Queensland that we lived in, I had a thriving garden, my pride & joy. On this farm, I had gone to a great deal of trouble to manufacture, from tree saplings, a 6ft tall trellis network, shaped in the form of an inverted "V" to support my runner bean crop. Long, green Beans hung down from everywhere above me when they were in full crop, making them easier to pick. Unfortunately, long, slender, Green-Tree snakes liked the trellis too and were very difficult to see amongst the vine leaves unless they happened to turn so that their lemon colored underbellies showed up. Because of these quick moving snakes, I had to watch what I was reaching for when picking until one day, one bit me on the finger when I was reaching through leaves to get beans. Fortunately, the snakes are not poisonous but nevertheless, in a rage, I threw the nearest thing I could find at it which happened to be an axe. The force of the throw & weight of the axe, demolished the entire structure which collapsed in a mangled heap of saplings, snake & bean vines; I cried & never built another…….ever!
It was at West Burleigh, that I also had a "close shave" with my second funnel web spider which for some reason had found its way indoors & was climbing up the leg of mum's newly acquired baby crib in which, John, the latest kiddo addition to the family, was sleeping. But we have dealt with Funnel Webs already so I'll give that story a miss. If you had good hearing like I did, you could usually hear snakes move if all else was quiet but spiders are totally silent & that's the main reason why I feared them more. However, for weeks after that second Funnel Web encounter, I tried not to think what would have happened if the spider had reached the baby. He may have survived but likely, I would've had trouble surviving after being left tied to a tree over a "Bull-dog" nest; fearsome, agile ants with a bite that left you with hot, searing pain & they were big "suckers" to boot. Of course I speak in jest, but I'm sure dad contemplated the idea more than once.
On my last foray into Queensland, June 2005, I was saddened to see how much West Burleigh & its inland environs & also, nearby Burleigh Heads had changed. The open fields & abundant fruit trees had vanished under suburbia & after wandering around in a maze of high-rise, I gave up trying to find Tallebudgera beach where I used to explore rock pools while dad fished nearby in Currumbin creek. The area where we used to pitch our tent is now a National Park; so much for freedom! Further inland, the swamp & poultry farm had long gone as had the schoolhouse. It was hard to imagine that I used to walk to school there along a winding gravel road lined with lantana & blackberry bushes loaded with berries, I loved them. Wild guava was also plentiful and I haven't forgotten the abundance of Macadamia nut trees that I had great feeds off enroute to school. At that time, the one room school was bordered on three sides with mulberry, fig & loquat trees, more treats! The mulberry leaves were great for my many silkworms, too many in fact. What amazing things they are, I unraveled miles of silk off their cocoons but then was at a loss as to what to do next. As was often the case, all the kids had their own little garden plot at the school; I made the mistake of planting pineapples because I had to leave before they fruited, that was dumb!
Not far from the NSW border & west of Coolangatta, we ended up on yet another banana plantation which also grew pineapples so I didn't feel so bad about leaving my school plot; leaving my girlfriend however, was a different matter. Set up on stilts again with the usual metal ant-caps to keep out the termites, our rented home contained an electric refrigerator, our first after a long line of kerosene burning refrigerators. But it didn't end there! We also had indoor plumbing to the sink, window glass without cracks, a larger capacity chip heater for showers & a fuel efficient wood fuel stove. For those of you that have never had the experience of using a chip heater for a shower, the procedure was a follows. First you cut the wood for it which needed to be a certain size to fit into a burning chamber located beneath the water tank housing, usually holding 5 gallons or thereabouts. After lighting the fire, the art was to heat the water so that it stayed just hot enough but didn't run cold before you had washed all your essential parts. Results varied from scalding to freezing but sometimes not bad until the water ran cold which was usually far too soon for a good wash-up unless you were a midget. Needless to say, we avoided showering if at all possible, a trait that still lingers in me even today.
However, as usual, there was still the need for wood which meant forages into the nearby bush mostly by myself but sometimes with Dennis to cut & drag home enough wood for a day or two's supply. Dad was away cutting cane somewhere & mum was home but pregnant AGAIN which meant, as usual, I was the man of the house at least till weekends when dad came home. I had become very proficient with the use of an axe since I was old enough to swing the weight of one & like dad, I kept mine razor sharp by honing the blade with a wet stone. Acquired skill does not come without mishap however, especially with axes. Flying wood can whiplash back on you with great force as scars above both my eyebrows could attest and to this day I can still see the large, poorly healed, scar above my left ankle where I opened my leg right down to the bone. Have you ever looked past your own white flesh lying open to the point where you can see your leg bone? Take my word for it, it's gruesome, & a sight that I hope I never have to witness again. That little mishap occurred because I favoured hollow logs when it came to selecting wood for fuel; reason being that they were easier to cut and split. Australian Gums are very hard wood to cut with any axe but they were the most plentiful. Trouble with the hollow logs, is that they were also "hang-outs" for snakes which often didn't emerge from same until I started cutting into the logs with my axe. On that day, a good size brown (very poisonous) came flying out of a log I was cutting and as it passed between my legs, I instinctively took a swipe at it missing the snake of course but slicing my leg instead. It was a horrific gaping cut which I forced back together by wrapping my leather belt around the wound & tightening it as much as I could stand. I felt quite faint by the time I dragged myself home; we had no car, there were no doctors available so mum cleaned the cut & strapped it closed with sticking plaster which is how it eventually scarred over and healed, lousy scar though!
Without mum's knowledge, I took a container of gasoline with me back into the bush the next day and after pouring it all over the log, I set fire to it grossly underestimating the result. After tossing a lighted match into it, the following explosion blew me off my feet, singed all my hair and practically removed all my eyebrows. Never saw the snake though. Yes, the eyebrows gave me away when I got back & I copped it when dad came home, wound or no wound……..Ce'St La Vie! I would have copped it even more if dad had of found out how close I came to piercing Dennis's eardrum with an arrow. It was on this last banana farm that we both manufactured our very best and most powerful bows from the supple branches of willow trees that grew along the banks of a nearby creek. Prefabricated circular wooden stakes of a diameter just perfect for arrows were plentiful because dad used them to stake out his young tomato plants. After cutting notches in one end & sharpening the other to a fine point with our pocket knifes, we had ourselves some jolly decent arrows. On a windless day, we could fire them almost 100 yards with our bows. And what did we use these bows for? Amongst other things, we hunted each other through the banana trees firing at one another on sight but always at a tree close by the prey. This practice of course was sheer idiocy but at our young ages, we thought it was fun. Banana tree trunks are quite soft & sappy when young & if close enough, we could fire arrows right through them so that the points stuck out the other side which is exactly what happened one day when Dennis suddenly moved quickly from one tree to another as I was shooting. Tucked in behind a young tree, with his face snug against the trunk for cover, my arrow inadvertently thudded into the same tree, first piercing the trunk and then striking the back of Dennis's jaw just below the earlobe. It was only a flesh wound but had the arrow been half an inch higher and had I been a little closer, the force of it could well have entered his ear and pierced his eardrum and perhaps more of what lay behind.
As mum's latest baby time drew near, dad moved us just across the Queensland border to a hotel in Murwillumbah where I attended yet another school, a short distance walk across a nearby park. Short or not, I dreaded the walk because I had to run the gauntlet of two nesting families of magpies which delighted in making "dive bomb" attacks on my head. No matter which route I tried to choose they still found me until one day I ran so fast to escape them, that I accidentally ran into a large wasp nest attached to a fence and so arrived back at the hotel not only with blood on my scalp because I had lost my hat, but with my face swollen to the point where one eye had closed altogether. At least dad wasn't there to follow up on that little episode of misery. At the hotel, milk was delivered in bottles to our hotel door. In those days, the bottles were capped with silver foil tops & I took great pains to encase on both sides, a one penny coin with this foil then rubbing the surface of it until the head and tails came through the foil enough to roughly resemble a "two-bob" piece, (two shillings.) My boyhood scheming paid off on more than one occasion when I offered the counterfeits up during carefully chosen busy lunch time periods at the school "tuck-shop" across the road where I bought treats that normally I couldn't afford. It worked for a while until I got caught out at which time I ran like the wind to escape the consequences which I did, but sadly, was never able to return to the shop again for fear of being recognized.
But then it rained & rained & rained till the Tweed River finally broke its banks, flooded the park & didn't stop rising until halfway up the main floor walls of the hotel. And so there Dennis & I stayed, on the upper floor with nothing else to do but drop makeshift fishing lines out the window into the muddy water below. There was little or no current in the floodwater, that being elsewhere no doubt, but what could one catch with a bent safety pin & cheese attached? The things you do when you are kids! Meanwhile mum, who had been surviving the flood ordeal on Coca-Cola & Bex powders, went off to hospital leaving toddler John in our care. I don't remember how she managed to get to the hospital with the flood as it was but at least dad arrived the next day in a boat after rowing across the park. We stayed on at the hotel with dad at our best behaviour which was wise, until the flood subsided & mum arrived with baby Max………….more diapers to wash out and put up to dry over the bath……sigh!
At that same time, American soldiers were everywhere with their soft packs of "Lucky Strike" & "Camel" cigarettes which mum seemed to thrive on, pregnancy and all. While taking their "R & R" on the Gold coast, some Americans managed to find their way to our hotel where their stories of Japanese atrocities soon had mum hell-bent on moving further south to the safety of a big city which was a joke because when we arrived in Sydney, N.S.W., all the homes had their windows blacked out because lights were not allowed to be visible after dark for fear of possible air attack. I remember hearing air raid sirens, watching searchlights in the sky & seeing a large number of American sea planes "Flying Boats" assembled at Rose Bay not far from where I attended my first regular school made of brick. I remember it well for it was there I managed to crack my skull on a brick ledge but I won't get started on that for now. Moving further south into NSW to once again live in the bush, I acquired my first rifle & years later, joined a spear-fishing club all of which opened up a whole new world for me but THAT'S ANOTHER STORY.
QUEENSLAND IN THE BUSH
At 70 years of age, the recollections of my childhood days are bound to have some inconsistencies, especially in the timing of events, but none that would alter the basic facts. Certainly, it was a childhood full of adventure & new horizons which as I look back upon them now, contained a fair share of adversity but nevertheless, still remains to be some of the best years of my life. Family life didn't start well with mum marrying pregnant at 16 then having her first born son Neville, placed in the care of her mother who spirited him off to be raised in another part of Australia…...strange! Neville's father I believe was killed while serving in the armed forces. My own father & that of brother Dennis who followed me, were figures that neither of us ever met; that was even more strange for mum, during her lifetime, said very little about them. The figure that I refer to in the following anecdotes as "dad" was in fact our stepfather.
During November 1937, I was born in Babinda, Queensland Australia & in the following 12-13 years lived through a childhood that never provided what one could call a stable home life but instead, one of intermittent school attendance, varying lifestyles & an ever changing roof over my head. To some it may be considered a hardship but for a young lad like me, it was all one big adventure with far more "Ups" than "Downs." Sometimes I wished that our nomadic lifestyle could have been different than it was but in retrospect, I'm glad that it wasn't for it infused my soul with a desire to explore new horizons; a need that continued on throughout the later years of my life, particularly in marriage after I met someone who felt the same but for different reasons.
In my early years, not far from Babinda, I was raised on a large banana plantation under the ever threatening cloud mantel of leech bound, Mt Bartle-Frere where flying foxes blackened the sky in their thousands, that is, if kids like me threw stones into their daytime roosting trees. With the Great Barrier Reef on my doorstep & the proximity of the Atherton Tablelands, this northern region of Australia, was a wonderful introduction to the color of the land. Giant dark leaved trees, with an abundance of brilliant red flowers were favourite haunts of Rainbow Lorikeets that regularly flew in noisy squadrons overhead. Butterflies were everywhere their color sometimes rivaling the Rainbow Bee-Eaters, birds that often showed off their skill in aerobatics while maneuvering for insects overhead. I have never forgotten the sight of them, flying in small groups with their long tails trailing behind & their liquid "trrp-trrp" calls still audible from afar. My earliest adventure recollections are those of wandering alone in dark rainforest fascinated by the many strange calls heard there & also, of beach "tenting it" on Green Island off the Cairns coast. Those were the days when you had the island's rainforests & coral reefs to yourself and a time when a 6-7 yr old could wander alone without fear of abduction; at least that was the way my dad seemed to handle it. While he fished which he loved to do, I began my collection of beach shells which were plentiful then & of a great variety. My favourites were what I called rocket ships but I know now to be the Amoria Undulata, especially the Wavy Volute. The much smaller, kelp shells also kept me busy with their many different colored bands that distinguished them from one another.
My days of freedom to wander at will on Green Island are a far cry indeed from the commercialized venue it has become today which in itself, is only a small example of the insidious tourist growth some refer to as progress that has infiltrated the once untouched beauty of the Australian East Coast. At Green Island, I had not the use of a snorkel or had learned to use one, so I just poked around in tidal pools while dad rock fished for our breakfast/lunch & dinner. Left to my own ends, I looked for pretty things both on the beach & in the pools. As luck would have it, I never picked up a Blue Ringed octopus but saw many; they looked too slimy to pick up but pretty nevertheless, especially the way they kept changing color when I tried to poke them out of rock crevices with a stick. I wonder now why dad never ever warned me of such things, they were simpler times then I guess & so you found out things the hard way. Had I picked one up, I could well have died young for their bite can be deadly. Maybe dad just wanted to get rid of me; one less mouth to feed? But his bliss would have been short lived because brother Dennis arrived & so for the first time, I was introduced to diaper changing & bottle feeding but that gave way in the end to someone I could talk to & torture at times…….boys will be boys! Caring for kids, became part of my life growing up as John, Max, Marlon & Rickie were yet to come; what fun I had scaring the hell out of those boys.
On the banana plantation, we lived in a galvanised tin shack with an earthen floor, wood stove, kerosene "fridge'' & lamps for lights, wood-chip heater for showers and wooden framed, glassless windows that we propped open in daytime for light and air but had to close at night because of the hordes of insects. My bed, which was a frustratingly squeaky, folding, army-style canvas "stretcher," (typical of many to come) was kept in place by having its 4 wooden legs sitting in small holes dug in the ground for that purpose. We had no radio & when he was old enough, my younger brother Dennis & I kept ourselves amused at night by singing songs & letting loose, from screw top jars, dozens of fireflies caught during the day. Trapped under white bed sheets pulled over our heads, they swarmed, glowing & flickering around us creating a magical spectacle not easily forgotten and one of many about the land "Down Under" I hope that I can still recall to my day of passing. The songs we sang were learned word for word from 78rpm records that we played continuously on an old windup gramophone. When the steel tipped needles became so worn down that the audio was god-awful, we used lemon tree thorns which worked fine for a very short period but were at least plentiful. Daytime amusements included netting then releasing butterflies with the grand prize being the large Ulysses, their iridescent blues were exquisite and never failed to impress me and we treated them with great care.
Paw-paw (papaya) trees were plentiful & if there was one thing I could do well, it was climbing their slender trunks to reach the best fruit with Dennis waiting to catch them below. Giant, pleasurable feeds were had on these but easily the closest a young lad could be to heaven when it came to fruit, was throwing sticks into wild mango trees & catching the results when mangoes fell. To this day, to me anyway, no fruit out-flavours the taste of a tree ripened mango unlike the stuff we get in stores these days which are picked virtually green prior to shipping and do not ripen in the same way. Because there was no roof lining underneath our galvanized iron clad home, (one of many to come) the typical corrugated iron roof did a very good job of broiling those under it in the summer & lightly baking them in the winter, if one could call it winter at that latitude. Rainfall was plentiful here & the roar of squalls descending the flanks of Bartle Frere, sounded much like an approaching express train. When it hit those corrugated iron roofs, it was almost impossible to carry on a conversation inside the building but was it ever wonderful to listen to at night when huddled dry in bed. I miss that sound greatly in the modern homes of today which do a good job of muffling a sound that, to me at least, was better than any lullaby a parent could sing.
Our water supply on the plantation came from a natural spring which was diverted over many 6ft long pieces of "V" shaped galvanised iron, overlapping each other to form a continuous channel down a steep hillside through the banana trees. End of the line, was a large water tank (complete with squawky green frogs) into which the water ran continually, that is, until foraging animals, somewhere on the hillside, dragged themselves across the channels, or into them, and dislodged the flow. It was my job to repair that when it happened & many was the time that I got the "living-daylights" scared out of me when encountering Lace Monitors (second largest monitor next to the Perentie) that often went after the water. I got used to the 6 -7 inch wide (17cm), Huntsman spiders which frequently bolted out of banana bunches that I was carrying & then scuttled down my arm or back; they were a common sight in the house toilet as well, quite a surprise really when you reached for the toilet paper & sometimes found them straddling the roll. On the plantation, I stepped around & over snakes without too much concern but to a 6-7 year old, the 6ft (2m) & longer Lace Monitor looked like some kind of fierce, clawed, mythical dragon well able to rip you apart before eating you while still alive. These lizard-like giants could run much faster across the rough terrain than I could; I feared them! When I roamed the hills looking for ripening bananas & Paw-Paws, I was always listening for the unmistakable rattle of loose stones as the monitors foraged amongst the banana trees.
I recall when dad & mum went into town on Saturday nights & left us alone (wouldn't be allowed today), we used to turn down the kerosene lamps to minimize the insects then open the kitchen door after we spread bread crumbs on the floor. Soon enough, while we watched, bandicoots would come in sniffing around and made good targets for paper pellets that we shot at them with rubber band "shanghais." The occasional tarantula would wander in as well which we soon flattened with dad's large, wide leather belt that was used to thrash the hell out of us if we so much as breathed when he was around. Squashing big, hairy spiders was a good outlet for us for it helped to relieve the frustration we both felt over the severity & regularity of dad's unwelcome discipline. Large toads that ventured in got socked with the brass buckle end of the belt but we made sure to wash the belt off afterwards in case we got something from that if & when dad used it on us. The toads were quite poisonous. We eventually left the banana plantation & Babinda because mum became paranoic about the Japanese invading northern Australia as they had already landed in New Guinea & were heading south on the Kokoda Trail. At that time, Australia was recalling troops from overseas to try and hold them off but mum wasn't taking any chances.
Always looking for work, dad dragged me & younger brother Dennis throughout Eastern Australia in general, sending me off to 14 different schools in the process most of which were of the one room & one teacher variety, at least in Queensland anyway. My biggest complaint about that was that it seemed I stayed at one school only long enough to become fascinated by a new girlfriend then had to leave her. Where was mum when all this was going on? Most of the time she seemed to be in hospital having another baby, 5 more after me, and guess who was left to bathe, feed, dress, treat & advise the others when all this was going on……..little wonder that children were not high on my list of priorities in marriage.
Meanwhile back at the ever changing homesteads, Innisfail (Qld) saw us living in tents alongside sugarcane fields while dad cut cane. Biggest problem here was the constant snake problem; red bellied blacks & brown, both deadly. It was there I met my first & last Taipan, the only snake that aggressively reared up at me (cobra style) when I confronted it. Dennis & I were snoozing in the heat of the day on our stretchers when a yell from him startled me and I awoke to see the snake which had wandered into our open tent. Jumping off my stretcher I startled the snake and it reared erect to face me as I backed away from it; it was easily the biggest snake I had ever seen. Then I did a crazy thing, instead of retreating to safety, I reached above me for the wooden handle of dad's 13 inch, razor sharp, flat bladed cane cutting knife that he kept hanging from the tent ceiling; of course I had been warned never to touch it. I took the snakes head off with it in one almighty reverse swipe but unfortunately, Dennis had placed himself behind me and the follow through of the swing struck him above his right eye; I was only 7yrs old or thereabouts and when Dennis fell to the ground I thought I had killed him……….."bummer!" I had never seen so much blood, it was everywhere! Yes I got help & Dennis survived (he still has the scar) but of course I got the usual thrashing; the snake was identified later as a coastal Taipan, one of the deadliest in the world; dad said it was just over 7ft long.
Other highlights on the cane farm were joy riding on the "Locos," cute little trains that pulled long lines of open carriages loaded with cut cane to the sugar mill. And of course, how can I forget the spectacle of the cane fields when they were burned before cutting. It was indeed an experience for one so young to feel the heat from massive flames that lit up the night sky for miles around. Also, fleeing snakes, toads, mice, bandicoots were everywhere; you had to be careful where you walked.
Dad liked to beach fish & one weekend, he took us camping to Mission Beach just south of Innisfail. He would fish for hours which got a little boring for me, so I left him fishing & Dennis to collect shells while I took off into the coastal rain forest; crazy of course, I could easily have gotten lost but my childhood was one long adventure after another & in retrospect, easily the greatest upbringing a kid could ask for. Well into the forest, I came across a nest on the ground with three largish blue eggs & of course, picked one up to have a look at it. I was immediately aware of something thrashing through the bush behind me & turned to see a large, very mean looking bird approaching. It seemed to be as tall as me with oversized claws on its feet & appeared even more menacing than a Lace Monitor. I took off and ran all the way back to the beach never daring to look behind me. I wonder now, in the year 2007, if such a thing as a Cassowary even exists in such areas anymore and how many "Dinki-Di" Aussies have even seen one in the wild; very, very few I would imagine other than at zoos of course. I never told dad but was haunted by that experience for some time after as I never understood what it was that I had encountered until at school one day, I recognized it in a bird book. When defending itself or its nest, the book mentioned that the Cassowary, using large extended claws on its feet, was quite capable of disemboweling a human; nice, very nice!
South of Innisfail, dad took on the job of helping to build & erect a new radio tower for station 4AY near the town of Ayr, during which time he palmed us off to stay with friends on the coast at Bowen, south of Ayr. We weren't happy about that but soon changed our minds when we found out that they at least had a decent house with an interior flush toilet & a plumbed shower, luxuries that we never had until I married & moved into a new home. Perhaps the best thing about the house for me, was a large, flowering Frangipani tree right outside my bedroom window; to me the smell from those flowers was far better than any perfume mum ever wore & it was free for the taking. Perhaps the worst thing about living in that house, was the possum family living in a nearby mango tree. Sure, the two babies looked cute with their shiny, pink, wet noses & large black eyes staring into my flashlight, but when their mum left them to forage, they kicked up such an infernal, squawking tirade that it was near impossible to sleep. Dad's Bowen friends also had a boat that allowed them to access the coral reefs not far off the coast in the Whitsundays where I discovered for the first time, flying fish, sharks & dolphins. I also tried snorkeling which I immediately loved because it allowed me to float face down in the water for hours without having to worry about breathing. Snorkeling provided access to life underwater, another fascination that I explored much further after I joined the Berry Spear fishing Club on the N.S.W. Sth.Cst.
While at Bowen, Dennis was too little & didn't like the snorkel idea or the rougher water over the reef. I thought I could handle it but soon ran afoul of Fire Coral which thankfully, only scraped lightly across my chest as I was washed over it; it looked like any other coral to me, pretty too, WRONG! To that day, I had not experienced such pain it was excruciating, far worse than any bee or wasp sting that I had previously suffered. I don't know where they got it from so soon, but some people turned up and poured vinegar over my rash which certainly dulled the pain. However, years later, south of Sydney, N.S.W, I brushed lightly against the outer trailing tentacles of an unseen Box Jellyfish & that turned out to be far worse. My days on the reef outside of Bowen, were an eye opener for me; it was a wondrous place but I was too young to be allowed to wander & snorkel on my own as I did for I didn't swim hardly at all and the snorkel provide a false sense of security. Fortunately, I had rubber boots on when I inadvertently trod on a Stone Fish (one of the world's deadliest) which are virtually impossible to see if you are not really looking where you are putting your feet; some of the poisonous barbs actually pierced the thin rubber souls but luckily, broke off before they reached my foot. And then while snorkeling, I innocently probed the deadly Lion fish with a stick to try & make them move faster; such a beautiful exotic fish but at that time I had no idea what I was dealing with…..I know now! I wonder now just how prevalent these wonders of the Barrier are with hordes of tourists descending on the reefs. In my time, the shells washed up on the beaches were simply amazing in their variety and quantity. Incidentally, the radio tower which dad was helping to build & erect collapsed when it was part-way up and being hoisted into a vertical position; some were injured and the project was abandoned.
And then there came our next makeshift home on a small-crop farm at Upper Brookfield, west of Brisbane. Before I attended the one room school there, (2 mile walk one way) I stayed at & went to school briefly at Indooroopilly, a Brisbane suburb if I remember rightly. The Brookfield house was on stilts and an airy affair with no glass in the windows & a haven underneath the house for lizard seeking Whip-snakes, coiled up & sleeping in the ceiling rafters. Sometimes, snakes would find their way up between the upstairs room walls & poke their heads out of knot-holes in the wall boards looking no doubt for prey or a way down. If we saw them, this practice turned out to be much to their detriment because given the chance, I was able to jam their heads in the knot-hole with a broom handle while Dennis flailed away at the luckless "critters" with a long stick.
Under the house, the soil was quite dry & sandy & a perfect hunting ground for Antlions, a small predatory insect. Their tiny, carefully constructed sand pits were so angled, that if any luckless small insect such as an ant, stumbled into them, the side of the pit just kept crumbling away beneath them until finally they ended up in the bottom of the pit where barely visible Antlion pincers lay in waiting to seize, drag under & devour prey. Nature can be cruel but then I was worse, for I spent countless hours carefully guiding ants into the sand pits with a stick. Paw-paws trees surrounded the house with some even in reach of my bedroom window which was convenient as I watched the fruit ripen. But there was more to it than that because the flying foxes liked them too so with Dennis holding a flashlight, I used to try and shoot them down with a home-made bow & arrows as they alighted on nearby trees at night. Unfortunately, the paw-paws suffered more than the fruit bats. Fig trees were one of the bat's favourites but I never bothered them there because I didn't like figs anyway.
Life on the farm was great because the crops featured were watermelons, passion fruit, bananas, pineapples, pumpkins, squashes, tomatoes, beans, peas, beets, cabbages, cauliflowers & an assortment of fruit trees much to the delight of the "King Lories," a glorious mixture of crimson & blue & one of Australia's many beautiful parrot varieties. After my first experience with a Funnel Web spider however, I became vary wary when out in the fields selecting free squashes & pumpkins or the like. Despite my already many creature experiences, the sight of a large, black, hairy, menacing spider rearing back aggressively on its hind legs & baring the largest fangs I had ever seen, absolutely scared the living daylights out of me……..I can still see that thing in front of me even to this day. I had disturbed him when I picked up a pumpkin under which he had been building a nest & it seemed he resented that a lot & was about to launch himself onto me. I didn't know then that Funnel Webs don't jump but to make sure he didn't, he ended up totally pulverized under a hastily thrown 10lb pumpkin. For humans, Funnel Webs are one of the world's most deadly spiders.
It was at Upper Brookfield that I became the proud owner of a new, blue & gold Malvern Star bicycle. I learned to ride it with mum running beside me steadying the cycle but panicked one day when I suddenly realized she had let go of the bike & I was on my own. The resulting alarm & wobble that followed, took me right into a barbwire fence where the bike & myself ended up in a twisted, mangled heap. Barbed wire is an unforgiving barrier & I was cut all over which somehow I managed to overlook because my new bike's shiny paintwork was scratched unmercifully, a factor that bothered me more than my own body damage. At Upper Brookfield, I attended a tiny, one room school (as usual) where the boys all wore uniforms that consisted of grey short pants, blue shirt, striped tie & straw hats. Oddly enough, everyone seemed to remove their shoes & run around barefoot all day, but because of the sun, we were not allowed to remove our hats. Every morning before lessons, there was a roll call & after that, we all stood to rigid attention while the flag was raised & we sang Advance Australia Fair. How things have changed! Yes, life was simpler then but they were good times for our teachers whom we treated with great respect. Going barefoot didn't always work out however as I discovered one school day when I chased a soccer ball into long grass & instead of kicking it, I missed & kicked some old, rusty fencing wire hidden in the grass & managed to drive a piece of it up deep between my big toe & the next………god it hurt! Then there were tetanus injections, which hurt even more! There was a large Oleander tree growing up alongside the school which seemed to be a haven for gloriously colored chrysalis which I avidly collected to watch the butterflies emerge from their pupal stage. My favourites were the all silver or all gold varieties & I was always climbing in the tree after them during which time branches broke off exuding white sap that ended up all over my hands. No one ever told me, including the teacher, that the Oleander was an extremely dangerous & toxic shrub; the white sap can kill if ingested & the leaves too……..ignorance is bliss! Fortunately, I never rubbed my eyes with the residue still on my hands.
Lower Brookfield introduced me to yet another school & a new shack of sorts, on stilts again but this time attached to a dairy farm where, unlike Upper Brookfield, I didn't have to walk a mile each way after school to get fresh farm milk in a two quart "billy" can. But I did have to get up at unearthly hours to help with the hand milking & in the afternoon go looking for the herd to whistle them up and lead them back for the evening milking. I usually found them on a hilly, grassy slope at the fringe of the forest but I always approached the area carefully because the cows were sometimes accompanied by mobs of grazing grey kangaroos & what fun they were to watch, especially when they were back on their tails sparring with one another, mostly in play but sometimes seriously. I could have watched them for hours had it not been for the need to lead the "milkers" home, or else!
Early rising meant early breakfast after which I set off to school with the end result of that being, at least in the winter anyway, that I had time to climb up on the school roof and collect ice that had formed in the roof guttering. The purpose of this was to have it ready and put it down the girl's backs when they arrived for school. I loved that but the girls hated it & usually ran for cover but I could always run faster than them. My school nickname was "lanky." The girls were more afraid of me than the snakes which frequented the tall knife-like grass commonly found around the school; the damn stuff had sharp edges that could cut you if you chased a soccer ball into it or whatever.
I need not have worried however over scratching my bike at Upper Brookfield because at Lower Brookfield, I decided to take Dennis for a ride on the main road one day & "wiped-out" on a graveled corner throwing him face down on the roadway. I careered on out of control until I hit a roadside guide post buckling the front wheel in the process while I ended up in a blackberry bush notorious for its flesh ripping thorns & the Uncle Remus Brer Rabbit stories. Dennis cried for a week after that accident because he suffered a terrible gravel rash on his face, arms & legs; I think I cried even longer after the inevitable thrashing because I should not have been on the main road with him in the first place……sigh! Also at Lower Brookfield, I got into the habit of hiding my shoes in an old tree stump located in a field that I crossed on the way to school. Why wear them I thought when I felt so much more comfortable without them; my feet were very tough in those days. This worked out well until one day on my way home, I found the stump burned to the ground by the property owner doing a clearing job on his land. Unfortunately, they were almost new shoes bought for Sunday school; need I say further what followed after that? Kapow! Bash! Thump! Shriek! Wack! Slap! More shrieks!...etc…etc…etc.
I took on my very first job at Lower Brookfield; it was an hourly rate thing during which time I wandered the entire dairy property over the weekends with a garden hoe, trying to remove what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of Scotch Thistles. It was tough going for I had to hack them out root & all so they wouldn't come back & for a young lad of ten or thereabouts, it was damn boring too. But I stuck it out because I had many kangaroo encounters & it also allowed me to wander off the property to explore adjacent forest & be paid for it as well; boys will be boys! In the forest, I nearly always heard kangaroos before I saw them because of the distinctive "thump-thump" sound they made on the ground as they moved through the forest. I had several memorable experiences on these forest jaunts, all "firsts" for me, one being sighting Koalas in the wild. I never saw them on the ground, only high up in the Eucalypts, sometimes with babies on their backs. It was disappointing & surprising to me when they were awake & squabbling amongst themselves. The guttural groans & grunts were nothing at all like what I had imagined a cute, cuddly looking koala bear would make.
It was on one of those same forest excursions that I came across my first platypus, nesting under tree roots that projected from a bank above a crystal clear stream. I was so fascinated by its activities that I followed it, non thinking, far upstream which unfortunately branched several times before I finally lost sight of my new friend after which I turned back to retrace my route. Darkness comes quickly after sunset in that part of the world & before long I started to become confused as to the way home because of the stream's meanderings and with dusk approaching, I thought of dingoes although I had never ever seen one. For some reason, I sometimes dreamed of being attacked by a pack of them, most likely due to the stories I had read. As dusk fell, I bemoaned the fact that I had left my thistle hoe back where I first saw the platypus, leaving me without a weapon as I thought at the time. I was okay with that until I heard the most "God-awful" scream echo through the forest, easily the loudest & most horrific noise that I had ever heard in the Australian bush, a bush that I already knew well. Several times that almost unbearable noise shattered the silence of the forest, sounding for all the world like a child or a young woman screaming in intense pain. As the sound moved closer, the effect on me, alone in the forest, was intense to the point of my pooping my pants. I could not even begin to guess what was making such an awful shriek. I never ever heard that call again, despite many more years in the Australian bush but once heard never forgotten & many years later in Africa, not even the "Bush Babies" could surpass its intensity. As luck would have it, I came across my hoe as I had left it on first sighting the platypus; it was almost dark then but I knew the way back from there because of an old track I had followed which led away from the property fence. I took the time to wash my pants out & thought my troubles were over but on the trip back across familiar pastures, I wished to hell I had spent more time on removing thistles because it seemed that I ran into every last one of them & that was with short pants. Getting home wasn't fun either because it was weekend & dad had gone out looking for me……..groan!! Yep, I didn't forget that licking in a hurry either.
Several days later, after that drama had cleared, I told dad about the screams which he promptly dismissed as pure imagination. My teacher at school treated the story similarly but believe me, one does not imagine such an event. Years later, older & wiser, I learned the screams were that of a Barking Owl, a rare occurrence in the Australian bush & in itself the source of Bunyip legend folklore. To this day, I feel privileged that I may be one of only a few Australians that have ever heard this wonderful bird let forth its haunting cries of terror & pain.
While on the dairy farm, we boiled our own milk in a large saucepan the night before breakfast and by morning, it had cooled with at least an inch thick layer of cream on top……..it was great stuff and a far cry from today's skimmed & pasteurized excuse for milk. At Upper Brookfield, I used to walk a mile each way after school to get the milk from a dairy farm up the road. On my way back from that dairy one day, I was climbing through a wooden pasture gate with a full "billy-can" in one hand & suddenly found myself face to face with the flicking tongue of a brown snake that had coiled itself around the wooden slats in the gate. Instinctively, I struck out at it with the only weapon I had, the milk can of course & man, what a mess I made of myself, the gate & the snake as 2 quarts of fresh milk flew everywhere. Yep, you guessed it, dad didn't believe that story either & another thrashing followed then I had to go back for more milk after it was administered; at times, I really hated my father. As we got older, Dennis & I used to discuss plans re bringing about dad's demise; the discussion was fun but amounted to nothing because we were wise enough to realize that if the family breadwinner wasn't around, we both would face slow starvation. Mind you, as far as the general "billy-can" scenario went, I was no angel! I used to marvel at how centrifugal force kept the milk in the can, without a lid, when I used to swing it up & over my head in a 360 degree arc…..boys will be boys! It worked great until the can handle came off one day……sigh!
I had my moments with mum as well who was quiet adept at throwing things at you like a saucepan, block of wood or even an iron if she happened to be holding one, hot or cold. At the dairy farm, there was a pee-wee nesting in the rain gutter above my bedroom window which once the little guys arrived, provided a liberal supply of airborne bird lice into my bedroom much to my chagrin! In an attempt to get them out of my hair, mum poured kerosene over my head which may have knocked the hell out of the lice but also severely burned my tender scalp…..it was very painful & it took a long time to heal; my hair was never the same again. Dad threw the cat up on the roof & it soon finished off the nest occupants; not sure how "tabby" ever got back down from the roof though.
The dairy farm's water supply was a decent size creek, always flowing, which had the biggest eels Dennis & I had ever seen. We had hunted creek eels before, but these eels were nearly 2 metres long & definitely the slimiest, strongest things I have ever tried to hold on to. We spent our weekends stalking them with long, strong sharpened sticks for spears; what we did occasionally manage to impale, dad cooked & it was on those occasions that he didn't thrash us for coming home wet. This in itself was a contradiction because his instructions were to stay away from the creek because I was not a good enough swimmer to save Dennis if he fell in, let alone myself. As it turned out, the creek was not the best place for swimming anyway for I picked up a tick from doing just that; the damn thing had securely imbedded itself behind my right ear. By the time I became aware of it, the tick had swelled to three times its size. Dad held a glowing cigarette against its bulging rear end hoping that would make the tick withdraw from the skin but instead, it just buried its head further in. In the end, dad pulled it off with a pair of long-nose pliers but even then, parts of its head remained in the skin & I got very, very sick from that stinking rotten thing. Dennis had his own particular encounter with that same creek when the bank above it gave way one day, sending him headfirst into the water. At that time, he came as close to drowning as he likely ever will. Without a snorkel, I was simply too afraid to enter the water as it looked too deep for me & as he struggled & screamed while going under then back up again, I ran off looking for the biggest dead tree branch I could find. We were fortunate that day that I found one & managed to wade out far enough for him to grab hold of it; he would not be alive today had I not been able to reach him. We never told our parents of that day & even today, I can still see the look of terror on Dennis's face as he was going under perhaps for the last time.
Inland a ways from West Burleigh (further south), I probably had a similar look of terror on my face when I went yelling back to yet another glassless, galvanized iron abode of sorts to inform mum that the biggest snake I had ever seen was coiled up on the toilet seat in our "outhouse" which was a stinky, "long drop" affair situated by a small swamp about 100ft from the homestead's back door. Mum wasn't game enough to go in there to physically remove the Carpet snake so instead, she threw of all things a heavy, steel crowbar at it which dislodged the snake right enough but also carried on & took the back clean out of the outhouse, timbers and all. At least I didn't get blamed for that one when dad had to rebuild the wall later. I always hated that outhouse because it often had poisonous Red Back spiders that lived under the toilet top where you were supposed to place your behind. Dad sprayed them a few times but more always came back sooner or later. Because of that, I never used the seat in the conventional sense, choosing instead to climb up on the seat & straddle it then get out fast. I never knew how mum got on & never asked. The swamp near the house was a good food source for snakes as they went after the numerous frogs there; frogs that set up such a bedlam of song at night, it was difficult to get to sleep until I got used to it. Actually, it got that way that I missed them once they shut-up for the night, usually all at exactly the same moment much to my puzzlement.
One thing at the swamp that never seemed to give us any peace, was the long, sad, wailing calls from a resident Bush Stone Curlew that lamented its cause day & night, it near drove mum mad, or at least madder than she usually was. At this homestead we had the usual large, circular, galvanized water tank on stilts fed from rainwater off the roof. Of course, there was no indoor plumbing so we had to go out to a tap on the tank to get our water but that was no big deal, we got used to that, but we could never get used to the fact that there was sometimes a Tiger snake coiled up on the damp ground under the tap which had a slight drip depending on how you left the tap when you used it last. Yes, they were also poisonous & aggressive as well but not like the Taipan.
At West Burleigh, we lived on a poultry farm so I was introduced to collecting eggs, feeding chickens & on occasion, chopping off chicken heads which I disliked intensely. Plucking was even worse and naturally, we lived on chicken & eggs during our stay there. Used wisely, chicken manure makes great fertilizer and like all the places in Queensland that we lived in, I had a thriving garden, my pride & joy. On this farm, I had gone to a great deal of trouble to manufacture, from tree saplings, a 6ft tall trellis network, shaped in the form of an inverted "V" to support my runner bean crop. Long, green Beans hung down from everywhere above me when they were in full crop, making them easier to pick. Unfortunately, long, slender, Green-Tree snakes liked the trellis too and were very difficult to see amongst the vine leaves unless they happened to turn so that their lemon colored underbellies showed up. Because of these quick moving snakes, I had to watch what I was reaching for when picking until one day, one bit me on the finger when I was reaching through leaves to get beans. Fortunately, the snakes are not poisonous but nevertheless, in a rage, I threw the nearest thing I could find at it which happened to be an axe. The force of the throw & weight of the axe, demolished the entire structure which collapsed in a mangled heap of saplings, snake & bean vines; I cried & never built another…….ever!
It was at West Burleigh, that I also had a "close shave" with my second funnel web spider which for some reason had found its way indoors & was climbing up the leg of mum's newly acquired baby crib in which, John, the latest kiddo addition to the family, was sleeping. But we have dealt with Funnel Webs already so I'll give that story a miss. If you had good hearing like I did, you could usually hear snakes move if all else was quiet but spiders are totally silent & that's the main reason why I feared them more. However, for weeks after that second Funnel Web encounter, I tried not to think what would have happened if the spider had reached the baby. He may have survived but likely, I would've had trouble surviving after being left tied to a tree over a "Bull-dog" nest; fearsome, agile ants with a bite that left you with hot, searing pain & they were big "suckers" to boot. Of course I speak in jest, but I'm sure dad contemplated the idea more than once.
On my last foray into Queensland, June 2005, I was saddened to see how much West Burleigh & its inland environs & also, nearby Burleigh Heads had changed. The open fields & abundant fruit trees had vanished under suburbia & after wandering around in a maze of high-rise, I gave up trying to find Tallebudgera beach where I used to explore rock pools while dad fished nearby in Currumbin creek. The area where we used to pitch our tent is now a National Park; so much for freedom! Further inland, the swamp & poultry farm had long gone as had the schoolhouse. It was hard to imagine that I used to walk to school there along a winding gravel road lined with lantana & blackberry bushes loaded with berries, I loved them. Wild guava was also plentiful and I haven't forgotten the abundance of Macadamia nut trees that I had great feeds off enroute to school. At that time, the one room school was bordered on three sides with mulberry, fig & loquat trees, more treats! The mulberry leaves were great for my many silkworms, too many in fact. What amazing things they are, I unraveled miles of silk off their cocoons but then was at a loss as to what to do next. As was often the case, all the kids had their own little garden plot at the school; I made the mistake of planting pineapples because I had to leave before they fruited, that was dumb!
Not far from the NSW border & west of Coolangatta, we ended up on yet another banana plantation which also grew pineapples so I didn't feel so bad about leaving my school plot; leaving my girlfriend however, was a different matter. Set up on stilts again with the usual metal ant-caps to keep out the termites, our rented home contained an electric refrigerator, our first after a long line of kerosene burning refrigerators. But it didn't end there! We also had indoor plumbing to the sink, window glass without cracks, a larger capacity chip heater for showers & a fuel efficient wood fuel stove. For those of you that have never had the experience of using a chip heater for a shower, the procedure was a follows. First you cut the wood for it which needed to be a certain size to fit into a burning chamber located beneath the water tank housing, usually holding 5 gallons or thereabouts. After lighting the fire, the art was to heat the water so that it stayed just hot enough but didn't run cold before you had washed all your essential parts. Results varied from scalding to freezing but sometimes not bad until the water ran cold which was usually far too soon for a good wash-up unless you were a midget. Needless to say, we avoided showering if at all possible, a trait that still lingers in me even today.
However, as usual, there was still the need for wood which meant forages into the nearby bush mostly by myself but sometimes with Dennis to cut & drag home enough wood for a day or two's supply. Dad was away cutting cane somewhere & mum was home but pregnant AGAIN which meant, as usual, I was the man of the house at least till weekends when dad came home. I had become very proficient with the use of an axe since I was old enough to swing the weight of one & like dad, I kept mine razor sharp by honing the blade with a wet stone. Acquired skill does not come without mishap however, especially with axes. Flying wood can whiplash back on you with great force as scars above both my eyebrows could attest and to this day I can still see the large, poorly healed, scar above my left ankle where I opened my leg right down to the bone. Have you ever looked past your own white flesh lying open to the point where you can see your leg bone? Take my word for it, it's gruesome, & a sight that I hope I never have to witness again. That little mishap occurred because I favoured hollow logs when it came to selecting wood for fuel; reason being that they were easier to cut and split. Australian Gums are very hard wood to cut with any axe but they were the most plentiful. Trouble with the hollow logs, is that they were also "hang-outs" for snakes which often didn't emerge from same until I started cutting into the logs with my axe. On that day, a good size brown (very poisonous) came flying out of a log I was cutting and as it passed between my legs, I instinctively took a swipe at it missing the snake of course but slicing my leg instead. It was a horrific gaping cut which I forced back together by wrapping my leather belt around the wound & tightening it as much as I could stand. I felt quite faint by the time I dragged myself home; we had no car, there were no doctors available so mum cleaned the cut & strapped it closed with sticking plaster which is how it eventually scarred over and healed, lousy scar though!
Without mum's knowledge, I took a container of gasoline with me back into the bush the next day and after pouring it all over the log, I set fire to it grossly underestimating the result. After tossing a lighted match into it, the following explosion blew me off my feet, singed all my hair and practically removed all my eyebrows. Never saw the snake though. Yes, the eyebrows gave me away when I got back & I copped it when dad came home, wound or no wound……..Ce'St La Vie! I would have copped it even more if dad had of found out how close I came to piercing Dennis's eardrum with an arrow. It was on this last banana farm that we both manufactured our very best and most powerful bows from the supple branches of willow trees that grew along the banks of a nearby creek. Prefabricated circular wooden stakes of a diameter just perfect for arrows were plentiful because dad used them to stake out his young tomato plants. After cutting notches in one end & sharpening the other to a fine point with our pocket knifes, we had ourselves some jolly decent arrows. On a windless day, we could fire them almost 100 yards with our bows. And what did we use these bows for? Amongst other things, we hunted each other through the banana trees firing at one another on sight but always at a tree close by the prey. This practice of course was sheer idiocy but at our young ages, we thought it was fun. Banana tree trunks are quite soft & sappy when young & if close enough, we could fire arrows right through them so that the points stuck out the other side which is exactly what happened one day when Dennis suddenly moved quickly from one tree to another as I was shooting. Tucked in behind a young tree, with his face snug against the trunk for cover, my arrow inadvertently thudded into the same tree, first piercing the trunk and then striking the back of Dennis's jaw just below the earlobe. It was only a flesh wound but had the arrow been half an inch higher and had I been a little closer, the force of it could well have entered his ear and pierced his eardrum and perhaps more of what lay behind.
As mum's latest baby time drew near, dad moved us just across the Queensland border to a hotel in Murwillumbah where I attended yet another school, a short distance walk across a nearby park. Short or not, I dreaded the walk because I had to run the gauntlet of two nesting families of magpies which delighted in making "dive bomb" attacks on my head. No matter which route I tried to choose they still found me until one day I ran so fast to escape them, that I accidentally ran into a large wasp nest attached to a fence and so arrived back at the hotel not only with blood on my scalp because I had lost my hat, but with my face swollen to the point where one eye had closed altogether. At least dad wasn't there to follow up on that little episode of misery. At the hotel, milk was delivered in bottles to our hotel door. In those days, the bottles were capped with silver foil tops & I took great pains to encase on both sides, a one penny coin with this foil then rubbing the surface of it until the head and tails came through the foil enough to roughly resemble a "two-bob" piece, (two shillings.) My boyhood scheming paid off on more than one occasion when I offered the counterfeits up during carefully chosen busy lunch time periods at the school "tuck-shop" across the road where I bought treats that normally I couldn't afford. It worked for a while until I got caught out at which time I ran like the wind to escape the consequences which I did, but sadly, was never able to return to the shop again for fear of being recognized.
But then it rained & rained & rained till the Tweed River finally broke its banks, flooded the park & didn't stop rising until halfway up the main floor walls of the hotel. And so there Dennis & I stayed, on the upper floor with nothing else to do but drop makeshift fishing lines out the window into the muddy water below. There was little or no current in the floodwater, that being elsewhere no doubt, but what could one catch with a bent safety pin & cheese attached? The things you do when you are kids! Meanwhile mum, who had been surviving the flood ordeal on Coca-Cola & Bex powders, went off to hospital leaving toddler John in our care. I don't remember how she managed to get to the hospital with the flood as it was but at least dad arrived the next day in a boat after rowing across the park. We stayed on at the hotel with dad at our best behaviour which was wise, until the flood subsided & mum arrived with baby Max………….more diapers to wash out and put up to dry over the bath……sigh!
At that same time, American soldiers were everywhere with their soft packs of "Lucky Strike" & "Camel" cigarettes which mum seemed to thrive on, pregnancy and all. While taking their "R & R" on the Gold coast, some Americans managed to find their way to our hotel where their stories of Japanese atrocities soon had mum hell-bent on moving further south to the safety of a big city which was a joke because when we arrived in Sydney, N.S.W., all the homes had their windows blacked out because lights were not allowed to be visible after dark for fear of possible air attack. I remember hearing air raid sirens, watching searchlights in the sky & seeing a large number of American sea planes "Flying Boats" assembled at Rose Bay not far from where I attended my first regular school made of brick. I remember it well for it was there I managed to crack my skull on a brick ledge but I won't get started on that for now. Moving further south into NSW to once again live in the bush, I acquired my first rifle & years later, joined a spear-fishing club all of which opened up a whole new world for me but THAT'S ANOTHER STORY.