In 1955 Chassa-boy, Marjorie, my brother (nine) and myself (five), were living in a weather-board house in Shepparton across the road from the high school where Chas was the geography teacher. The vacant lot on one side of the house doubled as a chook run, the same place we gathered around a tall bonfire on Guy Fawkes night to watch rockets shooting their pretty stars up into the sky.
Chassa-boy was a handsome man, even more so in the uniform he donned to lead the school cadets in their marching practice on the oval, and at reunions with his military mates. There's a photo of them raising their beer glasses to their mascot, a plump rooster (that Chassa-boy must have retreived from the chook pen), while they joyfully intoned their mantra - 'Up she goes, the big red rooster!' Chassa-boy would often call out this incantation at home, particularly after a few drinks and my brother and I as innocent chorus, would join in. What it meant, we had no idea, we knew it was somehow connected to the war our father had so bravely fought before we were born, but we loved the wild spirit it represented, signaling a welcome break from toeing the line and best behaviour. We knew when the adults around the kitchen table were a few beers in, like them we could behave badly and get away with it.
My brother and I spent plenty of time off on our own, playing on the railway tracks near the huge Ardmona fruit cannery, rolling small trolleys back and forth, collecting pocketfuls of packing case staples, for what, I don't know, throwing rocks at things, kicking cans around. And on the weekends we'd all go out to visit family friends on their orchard, helping out in the packing shed, picking as many peaches and apricots and we could carry, and staying on for an evening barbeque on the lushly irrigated homestead lawn.
Shepparton is flat, very flat, and sits on the floodplain of the Goulburn River, sister to the Murray. Although generally dry, from time to time the rivers would flood and once snuck up to our back door, covering the back step, but luckily didn't come any further.
Chassa-boy was obsessed with weather; always pointing out to us the different categories of clouds, measuring the rain, checking the high and low pressure systems on weather maps printed daily in the newspaper. He was also the senior master and one of his jobs was to make the school timetable on a big board with coloured tabs and strips. He was good at his job, a strict disciplinarian, eminently responsible with leadership qualities too boot.
On the other side of the river sat the town of Moroopna, home to the rubbish tip, which we visited often and where I first encountered Aboriginal people of the Yora Yora nation, peeking out from their humpies, surviving on throw aways and hand-me downs. Another landmark was the Moroopna Base Hospital where I ended up one Christmas with Murray Valley Encephalitus, a mosquito borne brain illness which can be fatal or cause neurogogical damage. Luckily for me it was not the case although later in my hippy years Chassa-boy would trot this theory out to explain my wayward way of life.
I was kept in hospital (in isolation at first) for several weeks and Chassa-boy would cross the river to visit me regularly, standing outside the mosquito screen to read from my favorite Enid Blyton book Noddy. I knew then that he loved me, and I adored him, a fact I would forget in my teenage years, when his handsome charm was lost to the bottle and I simmered in silent rebellion against his authoritative dominance.
Meanwhile Marj was doing all the things a good mother does; dressing my brother and I up for the fancy dress ball - me as a good fairy, my brother as Errol Flynn's Robin Hood; decorating our bikes and tricycles with crepe paper for the local parade; making us believe that the snow on the Xmas tree was real snow, not talcum powder. These were happy days, with Chassa-boy always singing around the house, practicing for his role for a local production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado.
But an event occured toward the end of our Shepparton stay that sits in my memory so vividly it overshadows the rest. In the middle of a cold winter's night the house filled with black thick smoke and we were bundled out of our beds to stand shivering in our pyjamas on the front lawn. Flames were leaping from the chimney and it looked like the whole house would soon be on fire. I felt our vulnerabity keenly as our little family stood huddled together, about to lose everything. I was glad Chassa-boy was not away on one of his cadet bivouacs and as an part-time uniformed man, could stand tall as our protector. If I hadn't known it before, I knew now that this was his job; that a mother was inherently weak and a father, inherently strong. Marj would later rail against this biological imperative but in an era when divorce was considered an aberration, like so many women of her generation she would find there was no way out.
The fire brigade arrived and pronounced it was not the whole house, just old soot in the chimney that had caught fire. Our tragedy had been averted. The smoke cleared and we were able to go back to our beds as if it had all been a dream.
Chassa-boy was a handsome man, even more so in the uniform he donned to lead the school cadets in their marching practice on the oval, and at reunions with his military mates. There's a photo of them raising their beer glasses to their mascot, a plump rooster (that Chassa-boy must have retreived from the chook pen), while they joyfully intoned their mantra - 'Up she goes, the big red rooster!' Chassa-boy would often call out this incantation at home, particularly after a few drinks and my brother and I as innocent chorus, would join in. What it meant, we had no idea, we knew it was somehow connected to the war our father had so bravely fought before we were born, but we loved the wild spirit it represented, signaling a welcome break from toeing the line and best behaviour. We knew when the adults around the kitchen table were a few beers in, like them we could behave badly and get away with it.
My brother and I spent plenty of time off on our own, playing on the railway tracks near the huge Ardmona fruit cannery, rolling small trolleys back and forth, collecting pocketfuls of packing case staples, for what, I don't know, throwing rocks at things, kicking cans around. And on the weekends we'd all go out to visit family friends on their orchard, helping out in the packing shed, picking as many peaches and apricots and we could carry, and staying on for an evening barbeque on the lushly irrigated homestead lawn.
Shepparton is flat, very flat, and sits on the floodplain of the Goulburn River, sister to the Murray. Although generally dry, from time to time the rivers would flood and once snuck up to our back door, covering the back step, but luckily didn't come any further.
Chassa-boy was obsessed with weather; always pointing out to us the different categories of clouds, measuring the rain, checking the high and low pressure systems on weather maps printed daily in the newspaper. He was also the senior master and one of his jobs was to make the school timetable on a big board with coloured tabs and strips. He was good at his job, a strict disciplinarian, eminently responsible with leadership qualities too boot.
On the other side of the river sat the town of Moroopna, home to the rubbish tip, which we visited often and where I first encountered Aboriginal people of the Yora Yora nation, peeking out from their humpies, surviving on throw aways and hand-me downs. Another landmark was the Moroopna Base Hospital where I ended up one Christmas with Murray Valley Encephalitus, a mosquito borne brain illness which can be fatal or cause neurogogical damage. Luckily for me it was not the case although later in my hippy years Chassa-boy would trot this theory out to explain my wayward way of life.
I was kept in hospital (in isolation at first) for several weeks and Chassa-boy would cross the river to visit me regularly, standing outside the mosquito screen to read from my favorite Enid Blyton book Noddy. I knew then that he loved me, and I adored him, a fact I would forget in my teenage years, when his handsome charm was lost to the bottle and I simmered in silent rebellion against his authoritative dominance.
Meanwhile Marj was doing all the things a good mother does; dressing my brother and I up for the fancy dress ball - me as a good fairy, my brother as Errol Flynn's Robin Hood; decorating our bikes and tricycles with crepe paper for the local parade; making us believe that the snow on the Xmas tree was real snow, not talcum powder. These were happy days, with Chassa-boy always singing around the house, practicing for his role for a local production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado.
But an event occured toward the end of our Shepparton stay that sits in my memory so vividly it overshadows the rest. In the middle of a cold winter's night the house filled with black thick smoke and we were bundled out of our beds to stand shivering in our pyjamas on the front lawn. Flames were leaping from the chimney and it looked like the whole house would soon be on fire. I felt our vulnerabity keenly as our little family stood huddled together, about to lose everything. I was glad Chassa-boy was not away on one of his cadet bivouacs and as an part-time uniformed man, could stand tall as our protector. If I hadn't known it before, I knew now that this was his job; that a mother was inherently weak and a father, inherently strong. Marj would later rail against this biological imperative but in an era when divorce was considered an aberration, like so many women of her generation she would find there was no way out.
The fire brigade arrived and pronounced it was not the whole house, just old soot in the chimney that had caught fire. Our tragedy had been averted. The smoke cleared and we were able to go back to our beds as if it had all been a dream.
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