My wicked start to life in Brisbane [Part 2]

[continued from Part 1 - click here to read Part 1]

 I had no idea how soon that adventure was going to manifest itself.

   The train pulled away from the station and the waving stopped. As it turned out, Peter and I were alone in the compartment. There was no third passenger, though that didn’t mean there would not be, as Gladstone was only the first of the many stops the Rocky Mail would make before it pulled in to Roma St Station in Brisbane. Gin Gin, Bundaberg, Maryborough, Gympie, Nambour.… There were quite a few little towns on the way, and the train would wait for some time at each of them through the night. The stopping instead of the noise and stillness of the train was what woke you up, if you’d managed to get to sleep at all. But that wasn’t on my mind right then.

   We had barely got out of sight of the station when Peter said, ‘That’s over, at last.’ I turned to him, surprised.

   ‘What’s over?’

   ‘The eternal time – at home - when I can’t have a decent smoke.’ He dragged a packet of Benson & Hedges from his bag.

   Dear God. Within thirty seconds from waving goodbye to my mother, I had discovered another Bimbo Brown, though this one looked like a young Sean Connery and didn’t have dirt perpetually behind his ears.

   He selected two cigarettes carefully from the golden B&H box, put them both between his lips and lit them at one go from a match he flicked into the ashtray in the compartment, and handed me one. What was I to do? He hadn’t offered me the choice but simply assumed my need for nicotine would be as strong as his. I felt like someone who’d been given something by a Japanese guest – I had no idea of the protocol for handling such a gift – and certainly not for refusing it.

   But once, years before, I had found a thin dead gumtree stick with a hole through the middle of it. I was, at the time, up at the old Toohey house on our property after we’d bought it. Idly, I had lit the end of it with a wax match from a tin in the kitchen, and drew on the other end of the stick, blowing smoke into the air and NOT doing the dreaded drawback.

   Then I discovered that by drawing the smoke into my mouth, closing it and opening some valve in my throat – I think it’s actually the epiglottis – and forcing the air from my mouth out through my nose, I could do a reasonably fair imitation of the drawback. Try it sometime and you’ll see what I mean - it’s not like you’re going to get hooked on smoking a dry stick with a hole through the centre. It was murder on the sinuses but I filed the trick away for future reference, not expecting it ever to be needed.

   Honestly, I never imagined I would be using this rather specialised piece of knowledge while the train was still picking up speed getting away from Gladstone railway station, but it solved the diplomatic problem in the compartment while retaining some cred for coolness. He might have been a Nudgee boy but I was after all his senior and going to a tertiary institution, even if younger than he. I felt the need to retain the balance of power, or some form of seniority at least.

   In any case, he wasn’t taking a speck of notice of what I was doing, making the not unreasonable assumption that every adolescent boy could and would smoke at every opportunity. He was again digging into his bag, from which he produced two stubbies of Fourex.

   For those of you ignorant of Queensland ways, these were smallish bottles of the only beer drunk without embarrassment by real men in Queensland in the 60s. You could buy another Queensland beer, Bulimba Gold Top, but you would be revealing by our standards an appalling ignorance of the quality of beer.

   Any idea you might have of getting out a Victorian beer like VB would have had you completely out of the right social circles where I came from, even though they were exactly the same beer but with different labels. And if you really wanted to become persona non grata, then try offering a proper Queenslander an imported beer! If the term ‘wanker’ had been invented then, which it hadn’t, then you would surely have been called one. And quite justifiably by early 1960s standards, in my humble opinion.

  There was a built-in bottle opener under the fold-down washbasin of every sleeping compartment in the Rocky Mail – or any civilised passenger train in Australia at the time for that matter. Bear in mind that screwtops for fizzy drinks or beer hadn’t yet been invented either. A seasoned veteran, Peter flipped the tops off the luke-warm stubbies and handed me one of those as well.

   Holy smoke. We weren’t even at the Toolooa bends five km from Gladstone and I was faux-puffing on a cigarette and illegally drinking alcohol (the age of adulthood then fixed at 21, not even 18!) and my poor mother would barely have made it out of Gladstone on the way back to Calliope by that time.

   If she weren’t quite aghast by that turn of events – and I admit to being pretty surprised by them myself – she would have been totally appalled at what happened later in the evening. While I was sipping sedately on my stubbie, Peter chugged his down in about a minute – long enough to finish his smoke – and left the compartment, saying in his best General MacArthur accent, ‘I shall return.’

   Now I KNOW what you’re thinking, but don’t even try to anticipate things, because you’re just going to get it all wrong. In fact, let’s clear this up once and for all. He wasn’t going to the toilet to shoot up on heroin, or snort cocaine (though where you’d do the latter on a rocking and rolling Rocky Mail that had now been wound up to top speed of about 70 kph I have no idea.) Hard drugs like those just weren’t around in the early 60s. Hard to credit that, I know, but really, the only ones till the late 60s up our way were tobacco and alcohol. No grass, no smack, no coke, no crack, no ice or ekkies. Just grog and smokes. OK?

   So where the blazes was my new mate Peter going while I quickly stubbed out the last three quarters of my smoke and pushed it as far into the deep ashtray as possible so he couldn’t see it had been abandoned while still a goer?

   He was away a while and came back looking pleased with himself. AHAH! Now I know what you’re thinking – that he’d found a girl or maybe two to bring to the compartment, now it was obvious we weren’t having a third party (like a Baptist minister or one of the Christian Brothers) to share with for some hours at least.

   Wrong again. Be patient.

[continued]

My wicked start to life in Brisbane [Part 1]

This seems to be about the right time to tell you about a strange little incident that took place when I first went to Brisbane to go to Teachers College in 1964. I was 16 years old.

   I had won a Teacher’s Scholarship and was mentally ready. No more milking cows! With Dad not as well as he should have been, he decided to employ a local youth, Bruce Gunston, to handle some of the yard work to take some of the strain off both Mum and himself. That was a relief to me as well. I was old enough by then to appreciate the gap that my leaving would cause.

   As soon as I was offered the Scholarship at the end of 1963, we went to the haberdashery department at Friends store in Gladstone. Three pairs of high quality woollen trousers were bought for me, best country style with wide cuffs, and enough white cotton shirts for a fresh one daily. Ties were mandatory as part of the ‘uniform’ for trainee teachers. I was also fitted out with new shoes. Haberdashery at Friends must have been very pleased with the sale of all these items on that day.

   I was to board with Mum’s sister and her family at Enoggera. My allowance from the Department of Education was 7 pounds per week, with 4 pounds 10 shillings to go to Aunty Mavis. She did all the washing and ironing for me as well as full meals, so this was very generous of her, as she had three children of her own, and washing, ironing and starching five cotton shirts a week extra, apart from my other laundry, was no picnic.

   She was also an excellent cook, so the favour she did for Mum was enormous. Four pound ten would probably not even cover expenses for looking after me. It was a great relief to Mum to know I would be going there.

   A second-class sleeper booking on the Rockhampton Mail train was made for me to travel to Brisbane. The Rocky Mail, as it was known locally, was a passenger/mail train that got to Gladstone at about 6 pm for boarding, and arrived in Brisbane at about 8 or 9 am the next day. It was a slow trip for the 500 kms, but no-one expected better. If you booked a single ticket, you never knew whom your companions in the compartment might be till you got on board.

   My mother drove me to the station, heart aflutter with a mother’s anxiety that all would go well with the trip down and the early weeks of settling in to a new life. I had farewelled my father at the cowyard. A handshake was all the intimacy we would share at the parting, though it was a watershed moment for us. There had never been any demonstrable sentimentality between us, but it wasn’t expected or required. It wasn’t the way we did things, and any closer expression of the family bond would only have embarrassed us both. He may have said, ‘Look after yourself’, but that would have been it.

   The Gladstone station was starting to fill up by the time we got there, people coming out on to the platform in dribs and drabs. This was the busiest time for train travel in the whole year, as the private schools boarding students would be returning to their colleges scattered all over Brisbane. Anyone not travelling was supposed to buy a platform ticket, but people rarely bothered. They just got into the station by walking through a loading zone at the end of the platform.

   Air travel in 1963 was, of course, an option only for the super rich. No-one would have dreamed of sending a student of any sort back to school on a plane.

   Waiting on the platform, I waved to Peter Moloney, dressed up to the nines in his Nudgee College uniform with its smart jacket. He had gone to Gladstone High till Junior, then sent to Nudgee to finish his final two years of high school. He was in a grade below me though the same age, or maybe a little older than I, as I had gone through school at least a year younger than I should.

   He was looking at his ticket and came over to me, our respective mothers behind each of us. ‘Seems we’re in the same carriage,’ he said, looking at my ticket. ‘Hey…. same compartment, in fact, what about that?’

   My mother was pleased. Peter Moloney had done the trip to Brisbane each term for the previous year, and she felt comfortable that one of my travelling companions at least was not only someone I knew, but smart looking, urbane and confident in his bearing. He played Seconds in the GPS Rugby for Nudgee though had been reserve for the Firsts. The GPS (Greater Public Schools) competition in South Queensland was where State and often National Rugby players began their serious football careers.

   The train arrived after its trip from its terminus at Rockhampton and we jumped aboard to stow our luggage in the overhead racks in our compartment. I had more than he did but then again he had left things at Nudgee and didn’t need to cart them up and down the coast. We got back off the train to wait out the last few minutes and say goodbye to our parents.

   Our parting was brief and once again, not demonstrative. A hug and a kiss, and then me standing at the window of the compartment, waving goodbye - that was it. I didn’t think a great deal about how Mum might be feeling. For me, it was just the beginning of a new life adventure.

   I had no idea how soon that adventure was going to manifest itself. 
[continued]

Storms and childhood

Everyone has their own childhood storm experiences, I'm sure. In the country, the vividness is enhanced by the natural surroundings - the absence of other distractions. It's just you and Nature. Jan and Lyn share theirs here and there's no way I could improve on them. I have added only one small bit because it's one where I really should have been killed by that experience.

Jan's story

   If there was one thing that Calliope could turn on with a vengeance......it was storms. And I mean STORMS.... scary, violent, rowdy electrical storms. Some of my most vivid childhood memories are about storms - because they usually happened about the time we were walking home from school - and I had some very personal encounters with them.

    

Brewing storms

   We would be sitting in our classroom after lunch and at about 2pm, big banks of cloud that formed the storm heads would become visible - usually to the south west - but not always. Our teacher would begin peering anxiously out of the window - and you could see the concern and indecision on his face.

Go or stay?  

   There were a few families of kids, including us - who had a fair hike to get home - and he had a dilemma! Should he allow us to go home early or not? School didn't close for the day until 3.30 pm then. As the sky became darker and more menacing, he would usually finally decide to send the kids most at risk, on their way - the Wrights, Lowes, Smalls, Whitneys, the kids from Stowe, Gunstons - all of us who had creeks (with the potential to flash flood) between our properties and the school. It wasn't an easy decision for him to make - obviously, it was risky either way, with electrical storms.

    

   Sometimes he timed it right - and we would make it safely home before the storm hit - but other times, the storms were fast moving - and it would've been decidedly safer if we had remained at school. There was no calling in to Mylne's store on stormy days! The thunder would be rumbling as we made our way along the road heading past the back of the pub in the direction of Elvie's place - and the lightning flashes would be more brilliant each time.

Trees and storms

   Dad always told us that if we counted the seconds between the flash and the crash, that would indicate how many miles away the storm was. Well.... I can remember on occasions that by the time we had passed Small's property, there was no time to count between the flash and the crash. The temptation to run and shelter under two large shady trees beside the road was very strong - but we had been warned about that! I can remember being terrified by a kind of a "crackling fizzz" as the lightning flashed - then instantly the crack and boom of the thunder!

    

   These weren't the most pleasant of experiences and I remember on more than one occasion that the tears wouldn't be too far away as we scrambled up the stairs at either Elvie's, Aunty Annie's or if we were lucky.... home!

Crossing the flooded creek 

   Sometimes, we would only manage to reach Aunty Annie's and Uncle Dave's house when the storm hit and when there was torrential rain, it would soon fill the creek which overflowed onto the flats. We would have to wait until the water subsided a bit before we could set out for the last part of our walk home over the creek, across the flats and up our hill. Uncle Dave was a lovely gentle man who would make sure we crossed safely - even carrying us if necessary.

Hail 

   Occasionally, there would be hail - and I remember one enormous hailstorm where the hailstones were very large and in one area of the creek where there was a deep little backwater, the hail compacted into a solid block of ice, seven feet (just over 2 meters) thick - which took a couple of days to melt completely. 

Tempting targets    

    There were three large gum trees in a row originally, in the paddock between Aunty Annie's house and ours - standing alone quite some distance apart - and a perfect target for lightning. The farmers, then, were famous for cutting down everything in sight - leaving one lone tree - or at very best, two - here and there - instead of leaving small groves of trees for shade for the cattle and to give the poor trees some kind of protection from lightning. Anything that dared try to grow again would be despatched without delay. Some people made their living out of ringbarking trees or suckering any young ones that tried to make an appearance.

    

   Inevitably, the first of the three big gums, was struck by lightning - I was at home at the time. The tree was split in halves right down the trunk and I remember seeing fire. That tree didn't survive. Some time later, the second of the trees, the middle one, was also struck - and half of the tree was left on the ground - it eventually also died - after struggling for a time. The one remaining tree was close to our boundary fence around Dad's peanut patch at the foot of the hill, on which our house stood. It too eventually succumbed to a lightning strike - losing a large branch - but if I remember correctly, that one did survive - though definitely looking deformed and battle scarred. 

    

Cows know best

   One storm I remember vividly was when I was quite small - we owned only the original property then - and the milking was done in the dairy downhill from the house. As was the way with most farmers, storms were a part of life - and they tended to be a trifle gung-ho about them. On this day, there was a particularly nasty storm - Mum had retreated back to the house with us (and the dogs, who were under the bed on the verandah!) - but Dad chose to keep on working.

  

   I was looking out at the storm from the safety of our back door and I noticed that some of our cattle were sheltering under a large tree near the dairy. Suddenly, inexplicably and without warning .... they moved en masse..... out from under the tree and into the open. Less than a minute later, there was the most vicious flash of lightning followed instantaneously, by the most incredible crash of thunder - and then an awful CRAACK! Half of the large tree that the cattle had been sheltering under, fell to the ground exactly where they had been standing. Some instinct had prompted them to sense the impending danger. This was too much, even for Dad - because he seemingly suddenly appeared at the back steps of the house. I don't even remember seeing him run. He was a good athlete - but I reckon, had there been a time clock on him on that day, he would've broken a world record!

The big cyclone (1949)

   Of course, the grandfather of all "storms" that I remember was the cyclone, which hit our area when I was six years old. Usually cyclones passed us by just out to sea on the ocean side of the Great Barrier Reef which gave us some protection.

   Even so, they were bad enough - but this one was different. It had passed by us out to sea - but these brutes are unpredictable. This one did what was later described as a U-turn and began heading north again - but this time, on the inside of the reef. This was big trouble - and so it turned out to be. There was dreadful damage in Gladstone and environs and I still have vivid memories, despite being so young.

As it approached    

   I remember our house swaying in the wind - it was a new experience and very scary! How thankful we were that Dad had anchored our house to the wooden stumps with cyclone bolts - or it would surely have been blown down. The noise was dreadful - and we had no idea what was going to happen. Our neighbour’s house collapsed - the roof was lifted and then the whole thing came down. He came over to our place - and of course, we gave him a bed on the verandah of our house.

As it departed

   The storm went on for hours and hours - first the winds howling from one direction - then a small lull - only to be buffeted again from the opposite direction. I remember thinking it was never going to end! Finally, it did.... and we were able to venture out and see what damage had been done.

   Our dear old house was the only building that came through relatively unscathed - every other building was damaged - the farm buildings and sheds all required repairs. The most spectacular thing that happened (apart from our neighbour's house) involved a special dairy, in which our cream was kept. (These were the days before Mum and Dad purchased Toohey's property - and later began to supply milk.)

   To our astonishment, the cream dairy had disappeared completely. The winds had lifted it from its concrete base and deposited it upside down about 100 metres away beside the creek. The most unbelievable thing was - that the cans of cream were still sitting as Dad had left them, on the bench.....untouched.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose...    

   I hear a lot today about the severity of today's storms - and there's no doubting that - but they would certainly be rivalled by some of the most memorable ones from my young days at Calliope! 

  

Lyn's story

Those storms - they were the only blight on summer but we lived through some fierce ones when we were growing up. Jan, you have filled in a few things for me that I wasn't quite aware of – I had a hazy sort of an idea why the cement slab was down the hill but not really tying it in with the old dairy.

The vanishing dairy

   I can just remember the old dairy. I can recall the one above the cowyard a lot better, but the slab that was left after the cyclone took the building down from the house was a site for many of our games. We used to pretend it was a ballroom - testament to the power of our imaginations! And the old tree that the cattle moved out from under in the nick of time would have been the pepperina, I'm guessing.

Verdon and the snake

   We didn't play there much but Verdon Harrison disturbed a brown snake there once which stood up on its tail and scared the living daylights out of us. He lifted up a big sheet of tin and it was underneath it. I remember cutting through the corner of Boys's paddock running to the yard to tell Mum and Dad about it. Luckily the snake took off too, away from us....

Scared? What, me?  

    But to get back to the storms, we used to hate it if they came during the night and you and I Jan would be diving under the blankets all the time so we couldn't see the lightning. But walking home with one threatening was the worst. We probably all remember the day when you and I, Jan, were hurrying home and you, Den, decided to dawdle. We kept singing out to you to hurry up but you wouldn't. We were at the first railway fence when you had just got to the big tea trees, when a vicious bolt streaked down just on the other side of them and the thunder cracked straight after. THAT did the trick. You took off and beat us home by a long way after that scare.

Comment by the dawdling boy

    [I have refrained from commenting on things through these stories, as to do so would be a pure indulgence. But I feel I must on this one as it was literally a hair-raising experience for me.]

    Lyn was right. I was just dawdling. Unlike the girls, I adored storms – the lightning and thunder - and the closer they were, the better. But I was almost killed this time. Jan and Lyn were imploring me to get a move on. As I got close to the fence, I had a weird sensation. The hairs on my arms started to rise and my hair started to float upwards.

   Then beside me, about 20 metres away, a small bright light extended into a five metre high ribbon of electrical energy, dancing up and down on the spot, shimmering and wobbling just above the ground. Just dancing there, on the spot. I was utterly mesmerized, transfixed by the sight. It was like I had a partner beside me. I guess I did...

   This little shimmering bolt of energy suddenly extended upwards to the cloud above with a sizzling hiss. Simultaneously, there was the most earth-shattering noise I’ve ever experienced.

    As Lyn said, THAT did the trick. The hair-raising experience was the lightning searching out a path through my body to discharge the cloud above at that point. But although I was the tallest object in the immediate vicinity, it chose a path nearer the fence to strike.

    Had it chosen me, I would have become one sad little statistic relating to storm activity that day. Lightning became something to be viewed from a safe distance from then onwards. But I still loved it.

Back to Lyn

    I remember those three trees on the flat. The middle one was a very good launch pad for a bad tempered magpie who would wait for me to be all by myself and then attack from the tree. I had quite a few holes in my straw hat from it - better the hat than my head, I suppose. When one of those trees came down its trunk made a nice bridge at the point where we crossed the gully, though the water was usually so shallow we didn't need to walk on it. When I was in hospital after I fell off the bike and couldn't walk, I fell asleep one afternoon and dreamt I was walking across that tree trunk, and just as I got to the middle, it broke, and I woke up with the most enormous jump, my heart pounding very fast!

No wasting milk!  

    Of course, Mum always talked of her own big fright at the old dairy when a huge bolt of lightning and crash of thunder so scared her she bolted for the side fence of the bails which was made of big old logs and got to the top one complete with a bucket of milk from which not a drop had been spilt and without really knowing how she got there!

More storm activity – by us!  

    I also remember us all being on the big verandah bed when a fierce storm struck one morning. As I remember it, Dad had gone into Calliope for the mail, etc. in the sulky, I think, and this terrible storm came up very quickly. I thought we counted ten trees that had been struck that morning. The dogs were under the bed whining every now and then. Den, you decided you would hop off the bed and have a look over the verandah rail, but just as you put your feet on the floor, another flash and crash made you change your mind, and you were back on the bed in a twinkling!

  

    Given the number of wire fences we had to climb through and the trees along the way, we were lucky that we never came to harm but there were a couple of close shaves that were quite enough for us. I don't recall the cyclone, but I do remember the floor of the old outside kitchen being there for a while before Dad removed it. The cyclone had blown the rest of it down.

After the storm….  

    The only good thing that went with the storms was the rain, and I have lovely memories of the brilliantly clear air after the storm, the sunset causing the strangest glow behind the retreating storm clouds, and the poddy calves all running madly and kicking up their heels. The creek trees were for a little while, hung with diamonds and the ozone charged air made it feel very good to be alive.

    

    Lots of memories - and I always think of one more! I used to love it when the frogs sat on the wire mesh lid of the tank under the spouting when it was raining heavily. Up to six would congregate there and have what looked to be a delightful shower! Froggie heaven, I think!

  

 Jan’s final word on storms

     Sounds like I wasn't the only one to have some vivid storm memories! Actually Lyn, the tree that was struck where the cows had been sheltering, was a big gum - I think it was what we used to call a bloodwood, with reddish bark. The big branch that came down was really heavy and fell from a considerable height - had the cattle not moved, there would surely have been some bad injuries or worse.    

   They were corkers of storms though, weren't they? Really vicious! It IS a wonder we weren't hurt - guardian angels working overtime, I think.     

   You would only have been three when the cyclone hit - and Den, you were only one - so you won't recall much of it. It's funny about that big verandah bed - even through the cyclone, Mum and the three of us spent some of the time on that bed. Maybe it was our storm haven - I know that UNDER it, was a favourite hiding spot for the dogs - the only time they were allowed upstairs. You had to take pity on them - poor things - they were terrified!    

   All of the other kids who were allowed to go early had bikes - we were the only ones who had to walk. No wonder poor old Mr Curtis was worried!

    

  

   

Diary Newcastle, December 2009 [Rough Notes 18 December 2009]

As a kind of anniversary of sorts, I'll write about the post-operative conditions following the craniotomy performed on me on 17 December last year, as I wrote it down straight after – well, mainly the events afterwards. I don’t recall too much of what they were doing to my brain at the time, as I wasn't awake!, but their task was to remove as much of the tumour as they could safely reach – which unfortunately wasn’t all of it. Tracey’s view would be somewhat different, as she knew things that were happening that I didn’t.

Immediately after waking

   I don't remember falling asleep - or the point at which I did - though the last time I had anaesthetic I remember a slip-sliding feeling into oblivion. Not this time. I woke up coughing and spluttering from the effects of some tube they must have put into my throat, causing congestion to my lungs and my throat was sore. But I gradually became aware of my existence once again, and cautiously tested out my reactions to things, knowing at least that I could think and feel. Soon they put me through the normal reaction tests and established all was as well as it could be.

   I had a sore head but I don't remember its being too painful. Tracey came in and was well pleased to see that I was doing OK, as she knew that even in successful operations of this type there is sometimes some temporary problem with some brain function.

   The time for sending me to a ward came and went, and it soon became obvious that there was a problem of finding a space for me. Even a bed! I was on a very narrow recovery bed suitable for a child, with my arms hanging over the sides.

Off to ‘recovery’

   It must have been nearly an hour later when they took me off to a ward where there was a space. Tracey was there all this time, right with them.

My companions

   The only way to describe the scene in the ward is bedlam. In one corner of the 4 bed room was a woman called Carol who was clearly brain damaged and said she was paraplegic. That wasn't strictly true as she had crushed vertebrae and couldn't walk, but she had some control over her limbs. She had been there for some weeks. In the other corner was an elderly chap called Bill, who had just had a shunt replaced in his head. Unfortunately for Bill this had interfered with his ability to control his bodily functions, which meant a lot of work for the nurses and tremendous embarrassment for him, as it was clear he had never been in such a position before.

   Carol was on the mobile phone to someone giving him a right piece of her scrambled mind while loudly giving poor Bill a bollocking for not being able to control his body. She was telling him how lazy and self-centred he was to give the nurses this extra work, on what was an unusually busy night. The nurses were of course simply embarrassed by the gratuitous advice Carol was giving Bill.

   In the third corner was Colin, who had been involved in a car accident. Colin was in a lot of trouble. His neck and part of his body were in a rigid brace, so he was in a half-sitting position in which he could not move. He was disorientated, probably from the drugs he had been given to control the pain, calling out constantly, trying to get out of bed and with no idea where he was - and coughing terribly. He had a massive amount of congestion in his lungs which was choking him and he couldn't spit it out - he had a sucker thing like at the dentist's to drain any fluid he coughed up, but of course that made him terribly thirsty and dehydrated - and he was not allowed to drink water as it probably would go down the wrong passage.

   In short, he was in dire straits, and I really felt for him. He had to get rid of the congestion in his chest which was likely to turn to pneumonia at any stage, but was unable to, yet he had to be free of pneumonia before they could operate for the condition that had him in the body brace. Apparently, he was not quite bad enough to be taken to intensive care, which makes you realise how bloody desperately ill you have to be to be put in there.

   But I was sharing a 4 bed room with three cases that meant alarms were constantly going off, as Colin was pulling out cannulas and trying to cough up gunk from his chest and dying of thirst, and Carol giving unhelpful advice to everyone - including Colin - about what they should be doing. It was like one of those hospitals in a war zone, where everyone is running round and people who need treatment are made to wait because there’s simply no choice.

Lucky me!

   In these circumstances I was quite fortunate on a number of counts. I was not in undue pain or discomfort, in spite of the fact that I was still in my bloody surgical clothing, and on a child's bed with little space for my arms. It was also fortunate in that if I *had* been in some difficulties, the nurses were in such strife with the other patients that they couldn't have attended to me anyway. Tracey was doing what she could, mercifully, and I can only imagine what my night would have been like had she not been there to do something about it. Naturally she shouldn't help with anyone else in there as that is against the rules, but she stayed with me, hoping that the other crises would settle down long enough for me to be changed into better sleeping gear than a bloodied hospital gown used for surgery. There was no hope of having me cleaned up post-surgery by the nursing staff, of course; they had life-saving things to do and I respected their priorities. Under the circumstances I didn’t really expect to be attended to.

   We were both very conscious that time was ticking on and family would be anxiously waiting for news, but Tracey knew that she couldn't leave me in the middle of that debacle. Finally, we changed my clothing into something more comfortable (and warm) because the air conditioning was quite cold, and as nothing was changing in terms of the difficulties the nurses were in, she got the nurses to show her the kitchen, and made me some tea and toast (as I hadn't eaten since 6:00 am and was quite hungry, and there was no-one to get me food).

Contacting family

   I was anxious that she contact family, so she left with great reluctance and tears in her eyes knowing that it was going to be the night from hell for me and there was nothing she could do about it. She was also utterly worn out as we had started at 6 am and had been spending most of the day either waiting around in apprehension or fighting for some better conditions for me. It was a terrible end of the day for her and I knew that when she got back to the motel she wouldn't sleep a wink (which was obviously the case when I saw her the next morning - very early.)

A fun night

   So the night started. I could see a clock on the wall and it must have been after 9:00 pm by then. I watched the hands of the clock go round minute by minute as the nurses battled with and for Colin, cleaned up Bill, and attended in between to Carol's demands for coffee, lozenges, drinks of other sorts with strict instructions as to what should be in them and being thoroughly pissed off that the attention of the nurses was focused on the others. At times, doctors were called when Colin got into serious trouble with his breathing and they fought to settle him down when he was panicking. I could hardly blame him for that. In his situation, I would have been too, and with good reason.

   In short, I was in the room with a man who was going through continuous torture and no hope of relief, begging for water which couldn't be given. I learned for the first time in my life how to use a 'bottle' and by the end of the night was pretty expert at it. That was just as well as the drip in my arm turned me into a sort of water recycling plant. Physically I was fairly comfortable and really conscious only of the fact that of the 4 people in the room, I was way the best off, in the short term at least.

   The nurses were also grateful for that, but they came round every hour or so and asked me the same questions - what day is it today? Month? Year? Who is the Prime Minister? So the night wore on, turned into grey, and by 4 am it was first light, this being one of the shortest night of the year. I had maybe dozed a few times for a couple of minutes. Yet I felt surprisingly clear and sharp.

   Colin's condition deteriorated at last to the point later in the morning that they decided he was sick enough to go into Intensive Care, and Bill's condition was stabilising. He was far from perfect but better off than he was. Carol had closed all her curtains as she was cranky with me for saying at one stage through the night to Colin when he was in desperate straits, "Hang in there, Colin, the nurse is coming shortly." I hoped that were true. I heard him give a little sigh as if to say, at least someone understands. But up till then it had been Carol's job to make helpful comments like. "You'll be right, mate" and I was trespassing on her turf. At least she was in sympathy with him, unlike with 'lazy, selfish' 80 year old Bill in the bed next to me.

    I shouldn’t be too hard on Carol. She had her own issues and was a brick or two short of a load for whatever reason. It wasn’t my place to know, but I hadn’t forgiven her for her attack on Bill the night before, however irrational she may have been.

   All this is of course from my perspective alone, and doesn't give the real credit to what Tracey was doing unbeknownst to me in badgering staff for a real bed for me, one even insisting that all beds were all the same! (They weren’t....) And a hundred other things to try to ensure that I would be as comfortable as I could be for the night.

No ordinary night

   I should also say that this was one of those nights  - a freak one where all sorts of emergencies had come in at once. It happens. Tracey hammered them into giving me a decent room for the rest of my stay in the hospital – which was one day. The morning after, we discharged ourselves, drove up to Armidale immediately, and started our own recovery programme.

   I simply cannot imagine what would have happened had Tracey not been there. I don’t blame the hospital staff in the least. It wasn’t their fault. But I do now understand what it is like to be in a hospital under near-crisis conditions. Many would say what I experienced was not all that far from ‘normal’.

Afterthought

Remember: we get the hospital (and aged care) facilities we deserve. If we don’t demand better from our elected representatives and tell them what we’re willing to sacrifice to have them, then there’ll always be something more important to spend public money on. Like gifts to everyone to buy big TVs. Well, it won’t do you much good if you’re in a car crash over Christmas and wind up in a 4 person room with not enough staff to cope….

   Until about twelve months ago I didn’t think much about it either. Mea culpa too.

  

   

Doing the right thing: postscript

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You can see from my last story that at the age of 6 or so, I coveted above all other material possessions a car that you could sit in, move using pedals and steer with a steering wheel. In fact, I probably would have been perfectly happy with a Fred Flintstone model and pushed it along the ground with my feet, as long as the steering wheel worked. Come to think of it, the engineering of a steering wheel for the front ‘wheel’ of Fred’s car indicates that cavemen must have been a lot more advanced than we give them credit for, if they got that to work.

   Bimbo Brown had a red, pedal-powered, tin car with a working steering wheel. The only place he could really drive it was on their concrete path to the gate from the house; about three metres I would say. Cars of this type were designed in the 50s for rich kids who had acres of driveway, or a quiet suburban street they could hijack for personal use. Calliope was just not that sort of place in the 1950s, and Bimbo’s house upstairs wouldn’t have more than two metres of clearway for car racing anywhere, but at some Christmas he must have wanted a pedal car and of course, a car he got.

   Then again maybe his mother expected him to want a red tin car with a real steering wheel and bought it anyway, oblivious to the fact that three metres of straight concrete path with no place to turn at either end was not the ideal racing circuit for such a vehicle. Nor were these models designed for cross-country pedalling; you just got bogged in grass and would have need leg muscles of a Tour de France cyclist to negotiate the terrain. I know. I tried it on their kikuyu lawn when he finally gave me a drive of it, and it’s like trying to ride your bike on heavy dry beach sand. Hopeless. Call in the Auto Service to help dig you out.

   OK, I admit it. I was jealous. You may have got a hint of that already, as you’re a discerning sort of person, I know, and I can’t fool you all that easy. Bimbo Brown had a car he didn’t really want and left out in the rain and Queensland sunshine to deteriorate, while we had at least eight metres of wooden verandah wide enough to swing a cat or turn his red tin pedal car the other way on the car’s turning circle alone. Using the steering wheel for its intended purpose, no less. I could have driven that car for hours non-stop on our verandah, coming in only for a change of tyres and a jam sandwich. Well, forget the tyre change at the pitstop then. Sometimes I get a bit carried away, I know, but envy does that to you.

   I mean, he did look pretty silly on the rare occasions he drove his vehicle on the path at his place, having to get up at each end, turn it around like people wearing their horses do on stage, and continue the unexciting journey to the other end – only to have to repeat the operation there in four seconds. Was that living – really?

   So, I had a think about this. I must have been about seven and the hankering for a steering wheel vehicle remained both strong and unfulfilled. Bimbo’s red car was starting to fall apart, from wicked neglect. Wheels were coming loose and it certainly needed a grease and oil change. In fact, it had never received its first 500 mile service as far as I could see. Worst of all, the steering wheel was getting unstable and was starting to crack. This was to me a tragic waste.

   I decided to make an offer on the vehicle. Now I did this in full knowledge of its poor condition, and the fact that driving it home across the creek, the ploughed paddock between his house and ours and the steepish hill up to our house presented significant obstacles. Gelignite Jack in the Redex Round Australia car trials faced fewer difficulties than I did, and he had a full maintenance crew to back him up – all I had was a small adjustable spanner and I wasn’t even very good at using that.

   So, picture the scene. Bimbo’s parents were down at the Diggers Arms having a beer and we had his almost-vintage car on his concrete path, and he was about to be acquainted with my offer. I had one shilling and ninepence, but at a pinch could use a table knife to extract three more pennies from the piggy bank to bring it up to two shillings if required. (The twenty cent coin replaced the two shilling piece, or florin as it was sometimes called, if that’s any help to you in estimating the generosity of my offer.)

   We were pretty much home alone, except for Bimbo’s older brother Malcolm who was upstairs with not the faintest interest in what we were doing, making some sort of whip out of a dried bull’s penis. Now I know you are going to think I made that up. I didn’t. I don’t care if you do, it’s the truth and I stand by it. What’s more I saw it as he was whipping it about earlier in the day, and it was a quite nasty weapon. He didn’t call it a penis, though. He used a four-letter word we weren’t allowed to say and it’s not proper to repeat it here. But then both Bimbo and Malcolm used all sorts of words in everyday speaking that would turn your hair grey; ones that Dad only used when the bull turned round in the crush before dipping.

   ‘The car….’ I said to him. ‘You don’t really want it, do you?’ Bimbo looked non-committal.

   ‘I’ll give you one and nine for it.’

   I thought it a fair offer, considering the rebuilding I might have to do and the relocation challenge. 

   I mentioned that we were home alone because I want you to picture the scene, as I said before. Bimbo, on hearing my offer, got out a ten pack of tailor-made Ardath and lit one up with a silver cigarette lighter he’d got from god-knows-where. He didn’t offer me one as he did get into a bit of trouble resulting from that other smoking incident, and wisely excluded me from the joys of tobacco ever more, for which I was grateful.

   He stood there, left hand stroking his chin, gazing pensively at the car, dragging lazily on the cigarette, and I got this vision, as clear as if it were etched into my brain, of Bimbo three or four decades down the track. It wasn’t just the sight of him in this pose with the smoke in his mouth; it was the words.

 ‘Nah, Den. Nah. She’s.... she's just too old tuh sell, mate.’

‘Nah, Den. Nah. She’s.... she's just too old tuh sell, mate.’
Illustration by Watto

   Shortly after, "she" was despatched to the rubbish tip. I did eventually get my own car with a steering wheel. It was a Datsun 1000 I bought brand new in 1966, but after driving it up and down to Brisbane scores of times, the thrill of the steering wheel did finally wear off, I have to admit.

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Doing the right thing

Those of you with spectacularly good memories, or who either loved or loathed an earlier tale will recall that I made mention of Policeman Sugars and his son’s toy car, a decade or so before I got my license.  You DO recall that? In that case, you’ve got an even better memory than our old town gossip, who, like the Bourbons, learned nothing and forgot nothing. I won’t mention her name here because she may yet get at me from beyond the grave.… and she may still have relatives round Calliope.

   What happened was this. For some reason, Robin Sugars, the copper’s son, threw a rock at me and it hit me below the right eye. I don’t remember why but it’s irrelevant, as 6-year-old boys will hurl rocks at each other for any or no special reason. Maybe it was that I said Robin sounded like a girl’s name, and if I did say that, then it would certainly have been good enough reason to chuck a gooley at me. I would have thrown one at him for less. Be that as it may, let’s move on.

   His father was mortified by the incident and contacted Mum with profuse apologies. I guess it doesn’t look great that the cop’s son is assaulting his schoolmates with a deadly weapon and inflicting a wound that should have been stitched. But fifteen miles is a long trip over the rough unsealed road to Gladstone just for cosmetic surgery, so something made of Elastoplast did the trick in holding my face together till it healed. We were tough, or so we pretended. Truth was, I was more scared of getting stitches than having scars.

   My eyes are surrounded by scars that needed stitches and didn’t always get them, but those are other stories, some worth the telling. Not here and not now, though.

   The upshot of the apology was that I was invited round to the policeman’s house at an undetermined date in the future after school to play with Rob Sugars, just to show there were no hard feelings. In fact, six-year-old boys forget such things as minor battles almost immediately anyway, so the gesture was mainly to comfort the adults. You can see I even started to call him ‘Rob’ so he could have a more macho sounding name instead of soppy Robin. (Maybe I DID say he had a girl’s name!)

   My sister Lyn, two years older than I, was good friends with Ann Sugars, Rob’s sister, and it transpired that we took it upon ourselves to go visiting the Sugars residence after school not long after. Lyn may remember the details of the decision to go, but I don’t. What I did know was that Rob Sugars had a pedal car with a real steering wheel, and I wanted desperately to drive that car.

A similar model to Robin Sugars' pedal car, 
minus aerodynamic fins

  It’s not that we didn’t have wheels, because we built many a billy-cart. These were steered by a rope attached to the T-piece. It worked OK, but the turning circle wasn’t great, which was just as well really or there would have been many more spills.

   But billy-carts don’t have a steering wheel, and I coveted that particular advance in engineering like no other. Rob had the car and wide verandahs round the police station house, and I had a blackmail advantage over the stone-throwing incident, while Lyn and Ann were keen to do whatever eight year old girls do when they play together – that was the least of my concerns. All I wanted was to drive the car with its real steering wheel.

Common billy-cart. No steering wheel.... 

   So, we played, very happily. And we played. The 4.30 sawmill whistle blew  - a time when we had always been home for at least half an hour. Mum never really knew exactly when we came home as she was always milking at the time, but home time was round 4 pm at the latest. We were having way too much fun to stop playing, until the shadows lengthened and it got close to sunset – about the time Mum would be home from the dairy.

   The police station was on the western side of Calliope; our property was on the east. Maybe Mrs Sugars shooed us off at last, but at some stage it vaguely occurred to us that we should have been home long before. We set off, and then remembered one unbreakable rule of our household – we had always to get the mail from the Post Office before coming home – or Dad said he would send us back for it. That was a long walk for short legs. The mail had to be collected.

   So.… we stopped at the Post Office, and discovered something outside our comprehension. The PO was shut! The door was firmly closed. It had never been closed before when we collected the mail after school; it was always open. But then we had never tried to collect the mail at about 5.30 pm before.

   Thus for probably the first time in our lives we had to try to solve a dilemma too great for us – the clash between the inflexible rule that we had to bring home the mail, and the fact that the PO door was closed to us. It could have been so easy if we had an ounce of cunning between us. We could just have forgotten about the mail, said that there was none – as was often the case – and got ourselves home as fast as we could. No-one would have been any the wiser, on that count at least. But to do that was beyond our understanding of the way the world worked.

   No. We were as bound by that conflict between Dad’s command and the closed PO door as Isaac Asimov’s robots were bound to their three laws, but whereas the laws of robotics did not conflict with each other, our two, for the first time in our experience, did. Strangely enough, we did not even understand this conflict. We agreed that the only solution was to sit on the steps of the PO and wait till it opened again, collect the mail, and get home as soon as possible.

   Meanwhile, Mum had arrived home from milking to find the house deserted, which must have been rather alarming. Dressing quickly in something more presentable than yard clothes, she ran over to Aunty Anne’s and asked if she’d seen us, as we always went past Aunty Anne’s in the hope of being given food on the way home from school. She never disappointed us, I have to add. Aunty Anne immediately despatched her youngest son Des on his bike to ride down towards town to see if there was any sight of us.

   He cycled steadily on through the fading light and it became clear that we were not on our way. We had our mission to complete. He headed for the school via the route we would have taken home. All was quiet down town (inasmuch as Calliope had a ‘down-town’) but he located us without too much trouble sitting cheerily enough with our legs swinging over the edge of the PO verandah.

   ‘What the heck do you think you’re doing?’ he growled at us. ‘Why aren’t you home?’

   ‘We’re waiting for the Post Office to open so we can get the mail,’ said Lyn, as confused as I was that we were getting roused on.

   Des was lost for words, briefly. He stepped off his bike and ordered us to start walking, with him. ‘Your mother’s worried sick!’

"It's sure to open soon...."
Illustration by Watto

   ‘But why?’ we didn’t ask the question aloud. After all, WE knew where we were and we weren’t worried, so why should she be? It simply didn’t make any sense to us. The fact that there were coal trucks constantly going through Calliope at a pretty good rate of knots on our route home was of no concern to us – we were used to them. There were other dangers, no doubt, beyond our ken, but we didn't have a clue about them.

   ‘Walk faster!’ Des urged us on, and before long we met Mum heading our way with a very worried look on her face. We still didn’t really get what the fuss was about. The thing I noticed about her was that she was in street clothes instead of cowyard clobber. What had brought that on?

   The worried look changed to immense relief the moment she figured out who the three figures emerging from the gloom were.

   ‘On the Post Office steps they were. Waiting to get the mail.’ Des couldn’t resist a bit of a grin, though Mum’s face told us it was no laughing matter that she thought her two errant children had disappeared forever.

   Poor Lyn of course must have copped the brunt of the scolding, on the grounds that she was nearly two whole years older than I, and a girl, and therefore should have known better than an addle-headed boy, but I think Mum was just too relieved to find us alive and unharmed to have her whole heart in her condemnation. The truth was that mea was just as culpa. We both knew we shouldn’t have been home that late, but I don’t think we ever thought we were doing the wrong thing by waiting for the Post Office to open its doors to us again. To us, it could have happened at any moment.

   It makes perfect sense to you, doesn’t it? Mind you, we might have rethought it a bit had we known that would involve sitting there waiting all night, missing not only dinner but breakfast. We were getting mighty hungry!