Chapter 6

The manager’s house in Bauer Street in Southport was set to one side of a large block of land of perhaps 1 acre. A drive ran from the garage at the rear, alongside the house to the gate, separating the house from a large stretch of lawn that once was a tennis court. The frontage, fenced in white pickets, was about 180 feet, to the delight of two fox terriers, Blue (our dog) and Bonzo (the Cosgrave’s dog). When out for a walk, usually with his mistress Mrs. Cosgrave, Bonzo would attract Blue to one end of the fence where they would converse in barks through the gaps in the pickets. On some undetectable cue, they would then gallop together all 60 yards flat out right to the end of the fence, pulling up with a squeal, if not of brakes, then certainly of delight. Further barked conversation took place as they turned southwards and galloped off the full length of the fence in the opposite direction. Even when the gates were open, the opportunity to meet up was ignored. There was no thought of quitting this uproarious game of racing up and back, flat out, accompanied by a brief conversation at each end. The large gates opened inwards, creating an obstacle for Blue on the inside. Not fazed, he just accelerated to compensate for the diversion he was forced to make. There were clear paths worn inside and outside the fence No doubt that would have posed a puzzle to anyone seeking the cause, unless they were privileged to see the two dogs in action. Bonzo and Blue could keep this up for many laps, usually until one owner called it off because of the noise. It was a rare sight.

Tennis courts around Southport at this time sometimes had a bitumen surface, but most were made of a soil called “ant bed”
I do not know why it was so named nor do I know why it was chosen. It was, when rolled, a smooth surface, which gave a high bounce and was easy on the feet. The lines were provided by nailing down white tapes or by spraying a suspension of whiting on the court, guided by string lines as was done for lawn (grass) courts.

The erstwhile court at Bauer Street was probably made of ant bed. However it had been planted with couch grass and kept as a putting green by the then manager of the Cable Station, a Mr. Gregory. No doubt golf was his game. By the time we occupied the house, the surface of the putting green had become uneven and was of little use for putting. The ball did go into the hole but it was by good luck rather than by skilful putting.

There were large numbers of green ants in the grass in this area. In fact some of the bumpiness of the surface was due to small hills made by their nests. These green ants frequently bit the dog Blue and us children, The bite was a powerful sting, believed by some to be formic acid like the sting of bees. Nevertheless the putting green made a great cricket pitch and the picket fence served as the leg field. On the off side there was an open grassed area and a large garden, often planted with vegetables which slowed the progress of the ball towards the house.

One advantage of the putting green was the sturdy red flag and flagstick in the hole. Why was this an advantage? The flag was made of tin and was an ideal target for practice shots from my Daisy air gun. It made a satisfying noise when hit. The number of holes testified to the accuracy of at least some of the shots normally fired from about 10 metres away. Here I must immodestly refer to my winning of the Shooting competitions (with .303 rifles) at two of the RAAF stations at which I trained, during the war. Perhaps my success was due to the practice with the little red flag.

Several well-established trees grew in a line parallel and close to the fence dividing our land from the next block. One was a Norfolk Island pine, or some other pine, on which the branches grew out horizontally. They were space well for a ten-year-old boy to climb easily. The view from the highest safe branches near the top included Main Beach. I recall seeing sand and sea, but the years that have passed make this recollection doubtful.

In the northeastern corner of the land stood a magnificent bunya pine tree. The prickly leaves were unpleasant to handle and painful to step on with bare feet. Every third year as I recall there was a crop of “nuts” which were edible when roasted. It would have been foolhardy to spend much time near the base of the tree when the nuts were ripening. About the size and weight of a coconut these would fall with a sickening thud on impact.



One day while in the main street of Southport I noticed in the window of Mr Percy Earl’s garage a bicycle propped up with its fixed wheels being driven around by rollers. There was an odometer attached to one wheel. A notice beside the cycle encouraged all who were interested to guess the distance in miles it would travel in a week if it were going along the road at the same rate. There was a list of times that it would be run for each day. The correct or the closest guess would win the bicycle that was a Malvern Star.

Needless to say, the town buzzed with speculation and excitement. On the spot guesses ranged widely. Boys of all ages looked wistfully at the gleaming machine humming away the miles on its rollers with the fervent wish that they would win it. After all, the Malvern Star was the Rolls Royce of “push bikes” at the time. Over the dinner table that night Dick and I hazarded so many guesses that Dad was stimulated into taking enough interest to ask us all about the competition. It turned out to be the sort of problem that challenged him. In fact, had I known then what I later learned about his own father, it would have challenged him too.

First Dad measured the distance that over the ground that a standard bicycle wheel moved with one revolution. This was a 28 inch diameter wheel. He also checked the difference between the tyre pumped up hard and inflated with less pressure. Armed with this information and a stopwatch and accompanied by a breathless, excited child he drove down town to Earl’s service station. Fortunately we were able to spot the valve and thus could count the number of revolutions taken by the wheel over a certain time. This was repeated to give some sort of average result. Then Dad multiplied the figure found for the timed interval, by the time proposed that the wheels would turn during the week. He came up with the figure of 1,838.8 miles. He put his application in and we also put in some wild guesses. We waited with scarcely concealed excitement for the end of the week and the drawing of the winner on the Saturday afternoon matinee picture show at the Pier Theatre. Mum came with me to the theatre. Most of the town turned up to see the drawing.
With some ceremony, the sponsor produced the bicycle and removed the odometer. During a short speech he announced that the guesses ranged from the low hundreds to over ten thousand. He read out the mileage that had been achieved during the 5-day trial. It was 1838,6 miles. From their list of guesses they soon found that the closest figure had been given by Dad. His name was read out, and as Mum was not keen to go up to the stage, I went happily although somewhat shyly to receive our new bike. It was scarcely a popular result, as each person thought his guess would win. We were even criticized for having “worked it out”, rather than hazarding a guess. No doubt others had tried but had not come so close. We were very happy with the Malvern Star even though it was a “fixed wheel” bike. Some time later we sold it to Peter Stephenson. It was about the only thing that I remember winning. Of course the credit was due to Dad who had approached the problem correctly.

During the later years at the State school, a boy of about my age began attending the same class. As his father was down in Southport on extended leave from Toowoomba, the son, Garnet Hills had to go to school at Southport. We became firm friends and played together. We shared a love of sport and often played tennis together. Now some 58 years later, we are still friends although there have been gaps of some years between our meetings. By chance recently we met again and caught up with the broad pattern of activity that occurred since we last met. Garnet had been widowed and when we met was courting an old friend who had lost her husband. Garnet has since married Marie.

He told a story from our days at Southport. Apparently we two were playing cricket on the lawn at Bauer St. when the family arrived home by car and drove up to the side verandah. Just as Dick got out of the car, I bowled to Garnet, who to his horror, hit the cricket ball straight towards the car. Quite unaware, Dick shut the car door, turned with a hand raised in the air into which the ball sped making a perfect catch. Much cricket practice took place on that area of lawn that had been a tennis court.
Gregory, a previous manager, had had it dug up and planted as a putting green. There was one hole from which a steel rod and tin flag protruded. The flag was peppered with holes where I had used it for target practice with my Daisy air gun. When one loaded a Daisy air gun with the little round plain lead or copper covered lead bullets that it fired, the ball was allowed to run down the barrel from the muzzle. To check whether it was held, the gun was pointed to the ground, usually with a finger over the end of the barrel to stop the bullet from falling out. On one occasion whilst doing this, I inadvertently pulled the trigger, firing the bullet into my left index finger. There was some bleeding and a small slit wound. What was uncertain was whether the bullet had lodged in the finger. In about a week the wound healed, but there was a suspicious bulge in the finger. The indecision was settled after a few more days when I caught a cricket ball with that hand, and felt pain in the finger. Dad took me to the Ambulance officer who confirmed the diagnosis of a bullet, and proceeded to cut it out there and then with no ceremony and certainly no anaesthetic. Dad gave me an ice cream for not crying. I kept the bullet in a little glass tube for years before common sense overcame nostalgia.
Having mentioned the previous manager, Gregory, (a name with negative vibes for Dad and for me) I must tell this short tale. Amongst the goods in the house I found a shoe brush, which we added to our own, and all were kept in our shoebox. One day while cleaning shoes in the sun, I noticed scratch marks on this brush that I had found. Closer examination showed words scratched on the handle "TO HINTON AND DAMN YOU". As Hinton and Gregory were both batchelors, they had decided to share the manager's house. Presumably Gregory had borrowed a brush from Hinton, who persistently requested that it be returned.
In this house I found a large Atlas of the World. It was one in which each map faced a blank sheet of high quality white paper. There were about 200 pages in the book. Some previous occupant had filled the previously blank pages with drawings. These drawings were mostly caricatures or cartoons of men and women of the period of about 1920 and were extraordinarily well drawn. Each line was definite, graceful and necessary. To this day I regret that we did not keep it (it was not on the inventory) to make sure more people saw it. There seems no doubt that a gifted artist had made the drawings but there were no clues to the identity of that person.

As much of my early childhood was spent in the great and worldwide depression of the late 20's and early 30's I saw many aspects of life that were different from the 1990's when this is being written. Although there has been a severe recession for much of the 5 years since 1991 and over a million people are out of work, the impact generally has been less than that of the depression of the thirties. For example, there were tens of thousands who, to seek work, literally walked from south to north of the eastern States of Australia. They would take what casual jobs were offering in each little town or accept what charity was offered. In this age when few still walk to the corner shop, there can be little realisation just what hardships were endured by these people. There always were some itinerant workers and one can read of them in the poems of the bush written before the depression. These folk had become hardened to the wandering life and many even enjoyed moving from place to place. In the depression however white collar workers joined the ranks of unemployed, and often these were not the same type of hardy souls. While they suffered the same physical hardships as the hardier souls, they were less able to adapt to it having become accustomed to working with their brains rather than their brawn. The itinerants would knock on every door in a town seeking any sort of job for a "feed" or for payment of small amount of money. As far as I can remember a good wage at this time for someone in work was about three pounds a week, or roughly 35 cents an hour (compare with say $20 an hour today). Is it any wonder that the expressions "a penny saved is a penny gained" and "watch the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves" were part of the philosophy of life. Cost of living figures I do not have for those days, as there was not such a thing as a cost of living index. At the same time there was no income tax. However most people, even those in work, lived frugally. Of course there were neither the amusements available nor the variety of goods in the shops on which to spend money. Today even those on the dole do not have the same concept of frugality. There is some self-denial, but a different range of activities and goods now are felt to be necessities. There was "relief work" which was mostly work on the roads or so-called “public works”. For this there was a payment or dole. Today the dole is given out without requiring the recipient to work. For many, survival was all that mattered. There was very little personal transport except the occasional bicycle or horse, and no "eating out". Fun as it might be defined today, such as “living in the fast lane” still applied to the wealthy folk, but to the majority fun was mostly simple enjoyment or as they used to say, you made your own fun. Singing around the family piano or in a hall where there was a piano was one example of the simple pleasures that was affordable.
However by the time that we have reached in this story, around 1936, growth of the economy was just beginning again and some of the schoolchildren in Southport had shoes. Petrol was about 5 cents a litre, but very few people had cars. Dad seldom took holidays, but I can remember one or two. Two weeks leave per year was all that was allowed. In this year we drove to Sydney and Canberra, which was exciting for us. I cannot remember whether we sensed an improvement in the household economy. Perhaps we were too young to know. One day after Dad had spent time in the Cable Office in Sydney, he bade us follow him to a shop in the city. The shop turned out to be a jeweller where Dick and I each became recipients of a Rollex watch. We were ecstatic! Up till then neither of us had owned a watch. While they were very good watches they cost only four pounds each, and mine lasted for 27 years.
Sydney was no surprise to us because we had lived there but it was a pleasure to see the harbour and take a ferry trip, and to see some of our old family friends. We had never been to Canberra, the national capital. It had been established for only a decade. In those days the main tourist sights were views from the mountain at the back of the city and the Parliament buildings. We were guided to the Senate and House of Representatives and had the various ceremonial and historical outlines given to us. Lake Burley Griffin was not in existence then, nor were the buildings of the High Court, Library, University, Art Gallery, nor of course was the new Parliament House.
The family all enjoyed driving in the countryside, and this appreciation has remained with me, and happily is shared by Marcia.