CURRENT READING "THE FORTUNES OF WAR

Well now, where was I? It is about 5 months since I last posted anything here.Apologies to my occasional readers.But those who also follow me on Vexilla Regis. Blogspot and FACEBOOK will know that I have not been totally inactive.

I just wanted to wade back into the waters of But Nought and my life story to-day by noting that last night I finished my fifth reading of the Patrick O'Brian novel " The Fortune of War" in the Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin series concerning the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic era. ( How effective British image making has been - we say "the Royal Navy" as if there could be no other " Royal Navy" yet we have in our own " Royal Australian Navy").

"The Fortune of War" ends with the victory of H.M.S. SHANNON over the U.S.S. CHESAPEAKE, ending a series of four humiliating defeats in a row, of Royal Navy ships at the hands of the fledgling United States Navy in the Naval War of 1812 - " Mr.Madison's War as many Americans called it.

As usual the writing has been superb and Patrick O'Brian has inserted his characters into a very factual account of the very real historical events with consummate skill and minimal effect on the historical record. Throughout one is given his customary education on ship -handling in the days of sail, naval tactics at the time, dress at the time, foods, medicine, society, politics and on and on. It is a joyful education to read his books and the accuracy of the many and diverse aspects of them we know give us the confidence to accept those we haven't known. And whenever one checks what he says, it is exactly right.  

So, a salute to Patrick O'Brian! And now to begin again "The Surgeon's Mate" next in the series!

I am also reading Chinua Achebe's " The Arrow of God" and have quickly gotten into once again enjoying the great man's writing style and his delving into the riches of Igbo culture , which he respectfully opens for our instruction and writes about for our enjoyment as well.

My current Spiritual reading at the urging of a dear friend, is "Christ is Passing By" a collection of homilies by Saint Jose Maria Escriva. They are excellent material, insightful and easy to read because they are written more or less in our own time.

That is all more than enough to occupy my steady reading time - quite apart from the casual reading done on the Net!

JUST LIKE TO-DAY - IT WAS A TUESDAY

YOUR MOTHER NEVER KNEW

ARMENTIERES - THE BATTLEFIELD _ GERMAN BUNDESARCHIV PHOTOGRAPH


On this cold and cloudy Aussie morning
I recall that other 14th May, ........95 years ago,
and on the other side of the world:

IT WAS A TUESDAY, WASN’T IT BILLY? JUST LIKE TO-DAY

                 - TUESDAY, 14TH MAY, 1918

Private James William“BILLY”Wilson   Service No. 5659

17TH Battalion, Australian Imperial Force

KILLED IN ACTION Near / Armentieres FRANCE In the course of repelling the German Forces, whose attempt to reach the Sea had already failed.

Did you know it was Tuesday, or in that Hell around Armentieres, blasted to Kingdom Come for miles and miles - did you really care what day it was?

THE ICONIC AUSTRALIAN SLOUCH HAT

They didn’t tell your Mum how you died - blown to pieces by a German shell blast .But your Superior Officer took the trouble to tell my Grandma and Grandad – your Sister Louisa (“doll’s eyes” you called her) and her German husband Ted .

Louisa was distraught at losing her only brother. She loved you so much. In due course, the Army provided your Mother with a Certificate of Burial for which Ted made an ornate carved wooden frame with all the flags of the Allies around its edges. (I guess he inherited that skill from his Grandfather Carl Dopmeyer whose sculpture and wood carving gained him fame in Germany in the second half of the 1800’s.

We don’t seem to have a photo of you Billy, which is strange for your time. But we know a little about you:

You enlisted on 16th November, 1915. You were said to be 27 years old and 3 months, of dark complexion weighing 119 lbs. and 5 Feet 3 ½ “in height. So you were a little bloke by Aussie standards but true to your English born parents’ physique. You had no distinguishing marks on your body. You were a Laborer.

But what’s this? You were Discharged just over a month later on 22nd December, 1915. Because you had insufficient teeth to masticate!

17th Battalion A.I.F. (AUSTRALIAN  IMPERIAL FORCE) COLOUR PATCH

But you can’t keep a good bloke down, and on 24th February, 1916 you enlist again! By now you have a “Fresh” complexion, Brown eyes, Brown Hair, your height is the same but at 27 years and 6 months you weigh in at 116lbs And you have acquired a scar at your Right eye, on your Right thigh and inside your Right knee. Did this happen during your initial enlistment? An accident? All the injury was on your right side and the inclusion of a scar behind your right knee doesn’t sound like a fight!

Whatever the case, the lack of teeth , (stated to have occurred over the 10 preceding years due to cavities)– perhaps you had obtained dentures (?)- did not stop you being accepted again.

You appear to have been buried initially at Fouilloy and later exhumed and re-interred at the great Australian War Cemetery at Villers- Bretonneux.

"

The sun shining down on these green fields of France

The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance

   The trenches have vanished long under the plow
    
    No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now    
    But here in this graveyard that's still no mans land
    The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
    
    To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
    And a whole generation were butchered and damned
      Did they beat the drums slowly ?
      Did they play the fife lowly ?
      Did they sound the death march, as they lowered you down? ?
      Did the band play the last post and chorus ?
      Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest ?

     (The Green Fields of France - Eric Bogle)

The Australian War Memorial at Villers Bretonneux

On 4 th February, 1919 your Mother received from the Army your personal effects – you know how pitifully few and pathetic they were. You had made your Mother your Next of Kin because your Father had died previously.

 

CONCLUSION

I’m sorry Billy, that I haven’t yet got more information about you and the War you fought, but I am on the job and will set the record straight as best I can.I do now have your official Army records in facsimile. I am still striving to locate a photograph!

You and your comrades, who already went through Hell on earth in France, are in my daily prayers for the repose of your Souls. And we who live our lives to-day are forever grateful to you.

 

A BOUQUET OF MOTHERS

SATURDAY, MAY 12, 2012

A BOUQUET OF MOTHERS

My Dad's Mum - Eleanor Margaret "Mag"Dixon - taken 1911

My dear wife Robyn,with our  three children : Marianne, Justine and Matthew at Mount Wilson - Autumn  1980 (?)

My dear Mum Elsie Georgina Beckmann (R) and her Mum Louisa Beckmann (Standing) with Grandad Edward Beckmann and sisters Charlotte (L) and Ernestine "Kate" (centre) in 1910 - 1911

Our daughter Justine with 2 mths premature son Daniel (born 1st June, 2009) now a charmer & picture of robust  good health

Here I am surrounded by a pictorial  bouquet of Mothers !( I think "bouquet"is a suitable collective noun for a group of Mothers!) Each one of them I have had the privilege and joy to share my life with, and each one has been a remarkable example of love and kindness in action, even in the gravest difficulty. The pictures are in no particular order. Obviously the first Mother I knew was my very own dear Mum,who led a life of self- sacrifice , love and loyalty in the most adverse circumstances.Her love was generous and kind, never in the least demanding. She was the ideal example of her Father's philosophy that love and respect go hand in hand : if you have not got love you will show no respect, if you show no respect, you have no love. Grandad hit the nail on the head, and my dear Mum had absorbed the lesson and lived it out.

 Next I got to know my Grandma Dixon who lived on the next block one street behind us. Hers was also a tough life coping with a difficult husband and who gave herself to helping many human strays in the family orbit. She was very loving in her treatment of me and in early primary school days I used to walk home via Grandma's place, where she would always be seated on the verandah - waiting for me with a One Shilling piece( with its Merino Sheep Head image on it) clutched in her hand which she gave to me for treats. I can still recall its warmth from her hand, to-day.

My Mum's Mother, Grandma Beckmann, was a very special lady too. She was more self - confident and outgoing within the family group than my Mum or Grandma Dixon and her love was open-hearted and generous, her hugs big and strong. She was totally devoted to her husband "Ted"Edward Beckmann and in the family circle she would refer to him as "Daddy"( they had 9 children!). When I knew him his health was failing, and though she would firmly proclaim that "Daddy and I are going to live on into the (Biblical) Millenium", looking back ,I can see her anxiety that he was slipping away. She was a wonderful example of love and affection and that ,constant and reliable.She had had a tough life with never a lot of money around , and when some windfall occurred an adverse development would sweep it away. She suffered a lot for marrying a  "German" especially in World War I as did the older girls, reproached for being "Germans".I recall her unconditional love of me ,and those strong, generous hugs to-day.And, as she lay close to death in Hospital  , I can recall her calling out "Mummy" - my Grandmother, at the end of her life - calling out for Her Mother!

Then we come to the full colour Mums. My dear wife Robyn and those three beautiful children, what fun we had that day in the bracing air and rich autumn tones of Mount Wilson! What fun we have had over all the years - and how much of that is due to Robyn , loving loyal, devoted wife and Mother. I guess we have had more good times than all the predecessor Mothers and their families combined and yet we have had a ton of tough times, but Robyn has been a constant source of love and loyalty through thick and thin, and even thinner!No - one could ask for a better Wife or ,the children, a better Mother.

The latest Mother in the family blood line is our dear daughter Justine, Mother to Emily, Christopher and Daniel. Words nearly fail me (nearly! I always have a few left!) As parents we could not be prouder of this thoroughly modern Mother. She is an exemplary model of love and devotion in effective action , handling even the strain of tiny Daniel's birth when this tiny literal handful of life seemed to us too fragile , she brought him to the fullness of healthy life with dedication and love, without skipping a beat in the care of Emily and Christopher and husband Paul.And like her paternal Grandmother she is a stalwart strength for her parents.

So Mothers of mine, I salute you and honour you , but most of all, I love you unfailingly.

TWENTY ONE TO-DAY - BUT NOT WHAT YOU MIGHT EXPECT

JOHN JOSEPH DIXON (L of Photo) around 1911
WITH HIS MOTHER, ALBERT (R)
AND BABY BROTHER BILL WHOM DAD GREATLY ADMIRED

To-day ,Saturday 11th May, 2013 is the Twenty First Anniversary of my Father's death just three weeks short of his 85th Birthday. He survived the death of my Mother by almost 21 years .

Sent to work at age 11 years in a metal foundry, he had a pretty tough life.

HERE, IN 1927 DAD LOOKS LIKE THE TYPICAL YOUNG BANKER OR CIVIL SERVANT
WHICH HE WAS NOT, HE ALWAYS WORKED IN BLUE COLLAR OCCUPATIONS

His life experience together with his local social network, made him a lifelong Labor Party voter. He persevered in this even after he said he was convinced that the Labor Party was riddled with Communists whom he despised - he just could not bring himself to desert the "working class party". And in fact he did see the world and the nation in those Victorian era Class terms.

My Dad was born a Catholic and educated in a Convent School, but for long periods did not practise his religion. Yet when his "kind eyes"won the heart of Miss Elsie Georgina Beckmann a petite and beautiful,modest girl from a devout Evangelical Protestant family , he required that they be properly married in the Catholic Church. Miss Beckmann was instructed in the Faith and duly became a Catholic, and they were married in 1927.

To-day's cynicism might suggest that he was being hypocritical. But in those days people were honest about doing wrong  - he knew it was wrong not to practise his religion, but he also knew that there are absolutes of such importance that you don't abuse them : he would not betray his Religion, even if he did not practise it - that Truth was bound to him for life.

When I was born, Dad was 32 years old ,he was never unkind to me, but not outgoing or physically demonstrative of his love. ( The Poet James Macauley writes powerfully of his own Father's inability to physically express any affection.) He worked on the construction of the great Garden Island Graving Dock, for the Navy. This was a protected employment category, which stopped him being sent on labour battalions to Darwin when he received the call-up. He could not be in the regular forces because of faulty eyesight resulting from an accident at the Foundry when he was about 13 yrs old.

As I grew up, all my interests were largely alien to my Dad except Politics, and even then we were on opposite sides of the fence!Only after many years did  I hear that Dad was very proud of my progress in Banking  and in other areas and used to regale his regular drinking mates at the hotel in Lidcombe with my latest efforts. We almost never got to talk at any length on  any subject , conversation being limited to brief exchanges of statements never pressed too far lest the heavy crunch of disagreement should wreck things.

Dad worked hard all through his life, and for most of my life after the War, he worked in the hot dirty atmosphere of Potts Hill Water Pumping Station , which he rode to and from on a bicycle in light and dark ( for he was a shift worker) and in summer heat and driving rain.It was about a twenty minutes bike ride each way.

In my twenties and thirties , I could of course, perceive all my Father's faults with clinical efficiency, whilst making every allowance for any tendency  to deficiency on my part. As the years went by my Dad evolved, particularly after he came to see the devastating effect on my Mum's fragile mental health following a Hysterectomy. He came to see in time how cruel was the effect of stubborn,sullen silences - sometimes lasting 3 days - over some exaggerated "offence"on someone so vulnerable. He was transformed.

He also returned to the practise of the Faith which was very pleasing to see and took great delight in his three grandchildren, Marianne, Justine and Matthew and never ceased urging me to look after my wife!

But still he could not freely and easily communicate either emotions or ideas.Whether or not this disability stemmed from the treatment he received from his brutish and drunkard Father, I cannot say for sure, but if I were a betting man......

Dad's later years were plagued by troubles with his heart - suffering from an "enlarged heart"which caused recurring build-ups of fluid around the heart, these required repeated hospitalisation to relieve them but there could be no cure.

In fact he had just successfully completed one such routine and was about to be released when he suffered a heart attack and died. The Catholic Chaplain to the Auburn Hospital where Dad died was quickly on the spot to minister to  his poor body and pray for his soul. His name was Father Stephen Swift and I was most impressed by the card he left endorsed with all that needed to be done to ensure a proper Catholic burial - for he knew nothing of the family.

We were living in Brisbane at the time and I received a call from my Brother Pat telling me of Dad's death and saying that the Hospital  wanted to perform an autopsy. I was on the first plane down next morning and went straight to see the Doctor in Charge -  a young Asian gent. He was prompt to offer condolences and almost as prompt to proffer a form authorising an autopsy for signature. When I objected that they clearly knew the cause of death, and that  this was unnecessary, the form quickly disappeared into the pocket of his white coat. I informed him that after the long periods of my Dad's health problems, I did not want his body used for training purposes. This is a matter which I believe the Hospital handled very badly to say the least.

1947 WITH MY DAD IN PITT STREET SYDNEY

So John Joseph "Jack"Dixon I love you dearly and hope we have the opportunity to understand each other far better in Paradise.My prayers for the repose of your soul and of Mum's are daily made, because time is irrelevant in eternity.

THE CAMERA AND THE TRUTH

1947  - ME IN KHAKI SHORTS WITH MUM & DAD
AT THE BACK OF OUR WEATHERBOARD HOME

When I retrieved this photo at the time I commenced this Blog, I found it to be very revealing. Now, I was already quite familiar with it. It had been around and accessible since the film had been developed ( how quaint that sounds in the era of the digital camera and the computer!). But now I really looked at it - as if for the first time!

We were "poor"! God bless Mum & Dad - I never knew it. At that time we rented the house at 22 Second Avenue, Berala. Although Dad had re- painted it internally, externally he left it as the owner kept it. The house was not very old, dating from the immediate pre-Depression period. It was completed as I understand it,  in early 1929 and I believe Mum and Dad and my elder brother Pat were its first tenants.

But "poor"or not, Mum and Dad had that fierce working class self-respect of the time, that ensured that we always "scrubbed up "well when we went out - as the picture of me and my Dad in Pitt Street, Sydney also in 1947 shows. We were photographed by one of the many street photographers who, with their trim Leica 35mm cameras, abounded in immediate post War Sydney.

With my  Dad in 1947 outside the Metropolitan Water Sewerage and Drainage Board's  Head Office in Pitt Street Sydney. Note my Beach Bucket(tin) with the image of the "Queen Mary"on it and Dad's Gladstone Bag 

Either photo, taken by itself would tell a very different story.

Again, when I look closely at the first photo , I am distressed to see how completely worn and even ill, my poor Mum looks. She may in fact have been suffering the problems that led to her having a hysterectomy in about 1951. I knew nothing of these things  until Mum was hospitalised at Saint Joseph's Hospital in nearby Auburn for the operation.

Later still in 1954 the owner of the house died and  the Real Estate Agent came to our home to tell us that the place was to be auctioned. I was there and I can recall Mum being quite upset thinking that we might have to move. The Agent wasn't a bad fellow . He carefully explained the process , stating that he would be standing at the top of the steps on the front verandah, and that bidders would be at the bottom of the steps - "Don't worry he said , there might not be many and I will not call out too loud!"

As it happened, the market then was very quiet it seems. Although there were a few curious neighbours , there were no bidders and the property was "passed in"at auction. So Mum and Dad were able to negotiate to purchase the place for 800 Pounds with the aid of a loan from my maiden Aunt Nell to whom Mum and Dad had always been very kind.

In due course Dad, now a home owner set to work and, totally through his own labour, transformed the property: clearing the blackberry infestation from the Northern side and laying a concrete driveway from the new wrought iron gates he installed,replacing the front fence ,  adding a new kitchen and laundry, closing in the rear verandah , re-furbishing the bathroom and installing first a gas heater at the bath and later a hot water service for the whole house  and finally he opened out the Lounge Room onto the Dining Area freed up by the new kitchen. It was an extraordinary effort for a part time amateur. In the course of those works over the years we went from an Ice Box  to a gas Refrigerator ( Silent Knight brand) to an American Crosley Refrigerator. And the hand operated wringer on the Laundry concrete tubs gave way to a barrel shaped Simpson Electric Washing Machine ( Agitator type) later replace by a Hoover. And finally the clothes lines stretched across the backyard gave way to a Hills Rotary Hoist which was ultimately supplemented by a an electric Clothes Dryer. He also re-roofed the house and re-painted it externally.There seemed to be no practical project he would not put his hand to, and he never failed to achieve a good result. Well done that Dad!
Alas the "practical genes"did not get through to me!

Most of this transformation took place in the second half of the 1950s - a time of great prosperity in Australia as the country found its feet and recovered vigorously after the War under the brilliant Menzies Coalition Government  which ruled for 23 years. The Great Depression and Wartime Austerity were shaken off completely and a new self- confident era  evolved.

In this period we were certainly no longer "poor"  by anyone's standards, rather we had become inhabitants of the burgeoning lower middle class in our lifestyle, and as I came into my 20s I felt few direct inhibitions to my progress in life. Though it must be noted , that given their own backgrounds, my dear Mum and Dad were not so well placed to advise me.Not that it would probably have been possible at that age , when I of course knew everything.   

*AUSTRALIA DAY !

To-day I re-post with some minor amendment, some thoughts on AUSTRALIA DAY which I posted last year. Since our readers come from many corners of the globe , it seems appropriate that they should know something about the Country that has nurtured this Blogger, the product of Irish, German and English ancestry, and his feelings and beliefs about it.

AUSTRALIA

"CORE OF MY HEART, MY COUNTRY"

To-day is Australia Day! I thank God for bringing me to Conception and Birth in this remarkable Country.

Not the most beautiful country in the world, not the strongest country in the world, not the leading country in the world. You can have all that.

My Country is a place of real freedom, of real peace, of frank and trustworthy folk, whose friendship isn't feigned. An open, generally trusting people who are nevertheless not too easily fooled. They abhor pretension and if they have a fault it is a desire to ensure that no-one rises too high - it is called the "tall poppy syndrome" - tall poppies get cut down to size!

AUSTRALIANS GATHERED AT ANZAC COVE GALLIPOLI  -   LEST WE FORGET

Australians are a pragmatic people, no doubt a product of the sometimes harsh extremes of weather, and the lack of almost everything except land in early colonial days. As a result public discourse is not big on principles, but more on what will work. Our political system and legal system are born out of our English colonial origins. Our independence was sought and given, rather than fought for and won. We remain a constitutional monarchy, with the British Monarch's Governor - General (appointed on the recommendation of our democratically elected Government) as our Head of State, but our pragmatic nature makes the majority of Australians see that we are really and factually independent and advocates of a Republic have been unable to gain traction. The system works, the pragmatists don't need to fix it.

AUSTRALIAN ICONS

Politically, we are fairly evenly divided between political Conservatives and a Labor based group. The latter have a fragile balance of power in the Federal sphere at present, but seem certain to be rolled out of office at the next election. There is an underlying small "c" conservatism in the Australian psyche, which, combined with pragmatism, kills off such ideas as a Republic, identity cards, or anything that excites modern radicals.

One of the best summaries of Australia, the land, is contained in Dorothea Mackellar's 1904 poem "My Country”. It is a fine piece of work, addressed to many of the British citizens of Australia who, at the time it was written, would still speak of "home" and mean England! So it begins:

"The love of field and coppice,

Of green and shaded lanes,

Of ordered woods and gardens,

Is running in your veins.......................

I know, but cannot share it,

My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains............

Her beauty and her terror,

The wide brown land for me!

AYERS ROCK

An opal - hearted country,

A willful lavish land -

All you who have not loved her,

You will not understand,

Though Earth holds many splendors,

Wherever I may die,

I know to what brown country

My homing thoughts will fly!

AMEN to that!

Yet another lady, this time English - born Caroline Carleton, wrote in 1859 the Song of Australia which was set to music by the German Carl Linger. It won a competition sponsored by the South Australian Gawler Institute, for a patriotic song. It also has things to say, which merit attention, despite some of the flourishes of its time. It begins:

"There is a land where summer skies

  Are gleaming with a thousand dyes,

  Blending in witching harmonies, in harmonies;

  And grassy knoll, and forest height,

  Are flushing in the rosy light,

  And all above in azure bright-

  Australia!

BOUNTEOUS CROP IN WAKE OF DROUGHT BREAKING RAIN

........

  On hill and plain the clust'ring vine

  Is gushing out with purple wine,

  And cups are quaffed to thee and thine-

  Australia!                

  .........

  There is a land, where floating free,

  From mountain top to girdling sea,

  A proud flag waves exultingly,

  And freedom’s sons the banner bear,

  No shackled slave can breathe the air,

   Fairest of Britain's daughters fair,

   Australia!

I love it!  - Australia, Yes - But the Song of Australia too! Oh, I know it's more than a little over the top! But it has the spirit of my country. And any lady who can write about "gushing out with purple wine and cups are quaffed to thee and thine" has got my vote!

There is another patriotic song by Father Maurice Reilly C.M. Which is more subtle and substantive, which I also love, and which I first heard in First Class at my Convent School in 1946:

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL HYMN

God bless our lovely morning land!

God keep her with enfolding hand

Close to His side.

While booms the distant battle's roar

From out some rude, barbaric shore.

In blessed peace forever more,

There to abide.

............

Land of the dawning! Lo! At last,

The shadows of the night are past;

Across the sea,

Is spreading far the purple light,

The lonely mountain peaks are bright,

And visions crowd upon the sight,

Of days to be.

"THE WARM OF HEART AND STOUT OF HAND"
CREW OF HMAS PERTH - LOST IN THE BATTLE OF SUNDA STRAIT
DEFENDING AUSTRALIA FROM THE EMPIRE OF JAPAN

The future is thine own, loved land,

The warm of heart, the stout of hand,

The noble mind,

Shall build a Nation truly great,

With Christ for King; where love not hate,

Shall be the charter of the State

To all mankind.

There is much more, all warm with faith in God and belief in Australia's promise.

PATRONISING  ENGLISH VIEW AT THE TIME OF FEDERATION !
THE AUSTRALIAN COMMENTS MIGHT HAVE SURPRISED THE CARTOONIST AND EDITOR

In fact, at the time of Federation there was a widespread confidence in Australia's unique character and mission to show the world a new way of true freedom and peace and justice for all. It was a heady idealism, which sadly seemed to be overwhelmed by the tragedy of the First World War, the Great Depression, and the crusade of the Second World War. It still survives in wisps of spirit which are caught here and there. But is largely lost to the national consciousness.

Let's not get too analytical - it is a day for Fair Dinkum CELEBRATION. With a very great deal to celebrate! We can save the “cerebration" for another day!

And so off to a Movie with my dear wife - “AUSTRALIA!” as Caroline Carleton would have exclaimed.

ZEROING IN - 1955 and 1956

It seems that the protracted cold referred to in my last post in July, last year(!!) froze my processes of recollection! In the last few days, a blast of heat reminiscent of my childhood years in 1944 and 1945, has however administered a jolt to the memory and summoned up the will ( it has also started the alleged "Global Warming" fanatics lifting their heads out of the long grass) .

So where was I , before I froze? Doesn't matter - I choose to resume by peering back to 1955 and 1956, come with me and see the cast of student characters assembled at Marist Brothers' Darlinghurst that was.

Marist Brothers Darlinghurst which was soon to be converted into expensive Apartments and a Town House

1955 4TH YEAR CLASS
ZEROING IN 1955 - MY BEST FRIEND AND FUTURE BROTHER-IN - LAW TONY HANNON EXTREME LEFT BACK ROW 

ZEROING IN 1956 TONY HAS MOVED TO THE RIGHT A LITTLE IN THE BACK ROW, WHILST YOUR SCRIBE HAS MOVED DOWN TO THE FOURTH ROW DOWN THIRD FROM THE RIGHT - AND HAS OBVIOUSLY BEEN WATCHING TOO MUCH LENI RIEFENSTAHL!

The photos above are now 57 and 56 years old respectively. It is interesting that what they do in my mind is summon up a series of brief thumb-nail sketches of a remarkably diverse range of rapidly forming personalities.  I can't share them all in full and one or two might be deemed libelous in any case, so I shall confine myself to a very few.

 It needs to be borne in mind, that the majority of the Class were longtime students of "Darlo"as it was affectionately known, but in the year I transferred in on my own, a group of boys from Marist Brothers Bondi, which had closed in an Archdiocesan Schools rationalisation, came to Darlo. I think about 10 of them were in our class, including Tony Hannon (now my Brother-in-Law). Tony and I  shared many interests in common, but especially History and movies and Goon Show humour. We frequently went to the movies together and bushwalking, and in later years each had a bewildering succession of cameras and cars. Zany humor was the order of the day and the Goon Show was the ideal grist for our mental mills. Here was a friendship that was to last through the decades and I would anytime trust my life to Tony.

I guess I was rather reserved with most people in those days , so I did not form close friendships with  students other than Tony - living 12-14 miles away to the West didn't help in that regard. I was always coming from, or going to, a different place to everyone else.

 I got to know a little and to like, the irrepressible Roger Constable, an engaging fellow, who delighted in projecting himself as a daring sort of rogue. He was a good guy with no harm in him that I saw. We ended up together in both Class Photographs above( he standing to my right as we look at the photo) and in 1955 the slight inclination of the head and my slightly contorted mouth show that he had just muttered one of his gags and I was trying to repress a laugh. By 1956 my Leni Riefenstahl training had overcome any such risk!

Considering the diverse make-up of Australian society to-day we can see  a very few indications of what was developing. The few Chinese students were affable fellows, super whizzes at Maths. The last of their number to arrive spoke almost no English and certainly had a very hard time as he began his 4^th and 5^th Year Studies!!He was very popular because of the way in which he struggled on in the face of this impossible adversity, and was always treated kindly in a jocular fashion becoming known as “ Curly” in that perverse type of Aussie humor!

An interesting phenomenon which I only realise now, as I write, was the fact that the subjects we took and the formal activities we engaged in, began to determine the possibilities of forming friendships, much more so than in earlier years of schooling. Thus school began to provide a foretaste of life in tertiary institutions and, indeed, life itself.

As I look on the photos now, I see those who went on to become a Solicitor – mover and shaker, a Barrister, a Doctor, a Dentist, several Teachers, and a briefly famous Merchant Banker. Strangely enough in all my years since school, apart from Tony Hannon for obvious reasons, I have only ever met two of those former fellow students. Considering the variety of circles in which I have moved, in The Commonwealth Bank, in the French Bank, in the Australian – American Association, in the Royal Australian Naval Reserve and in the Church in various places, that seems to me to be very unusual, and quite surprising.  But out of all of us, as far as I am aware, there was not one Priest, though I know at least 5 had considered the possibility, and I was briefly in the Minor Seminary in 1956. I often wonder what became of them all.

All too soon real life was to take us “cogs” up in its gearbox, and schooldays and their concerns and joys and pains would swiftly disappear in the rear vision mirror, as life moved into Top Gear whirring us away all over the place.