by David Vernon
He looked down the dusty vista of Carlton Street hoping to see Ned Fletcher coming his way — for where there were women Ned would surely be following after, if he was able. Besides, they’d had a prior arrangement to meet in the Stonemason’s after five o’clock in hopes to find a friendly mate with enough cash in his pocket to stand them both a glass of KB.
He had been to the Labour Bureau in Princess Street that morning — along with a crowd of other men who were out of work, or, like him, only partly employed. He found himself attracted to the bright recruitment posters for the Australian Imperial Forces. The image of the heroic Aussie standing tall was a sight that stirred him deeply. The very phrase, ‘The Trumpet Call’, blazoned across the poster in red, made his heart leap, as if it was satisfying some thirst inside.
“Later on then, Blondie,” said a familiar chirpy voice, and up, at last, came Ned himself. He’d have been chatting to the girls all along Carlton Road, Johnny supposed, using his usual torrent of bluster, half charm and half insult. This particular girl was thin with strikingly blonde hair. Ned hovered around her patting her irreverently on her backside as she walked on.
“You keep yer ʼands to yerself, you cockroach!” she said pushing him away with a grin and running to catch up with a friend.
“Alright, Johnny?” said Ned, following the blonde girl with his eyes. “A nice tart, eh?”
“You’re late,” said Johnny.
“Makes no odds, mate — unless you’ve got some tin in yer pockets,” Ned added hopefully.
“Not a penny,” replied Johnny.
“Many in?” Ned said in disappointment, nodding at the pub doors.
“Packed, Ned. We’ll get away with it if anyone’ll stand us a pint.”
“Any mates?” Ned asked.
“A couple. Neville and Red,” Johnny replied.
“Neville, eh? Well he owes me one for not telling his bride I saw him out with Ada Brewster on Sunday night. Come on, we’ll tap him for a beer!”
Reluctantly Neville Shultz, who had steady work in the agricultural store, stood them a middie KB each and they fought their way through the smoke and the sweaty, raucous drinkers to a corner settle, at that moment just vacated.
Johnny put his tobacco and book down carefully on a dry spot of the table and took a long pull on the cold beer. Both young men were silent for a moment in contemplation of their liquid pleasure.
Suddenly Ned Fletcher looked at Johnny with amusement, flicking the edge of his book.
“Still got yer ʼead in a bloody poetry book! Blimey, cobber, that ain’t gonna do yer any good, is it? Didn’t stop Mary McCluskey rooting with Harold Mountjoy, did it?”
“Shut up about Mary — and keep your hands off my flamin’ book!” Johnny said, suddenly angry.
“Alright mate, reel your neck in!” Ned exclaimed.
“Books are the only things that keep me sane, Ned,” said Johnny more calmly. And they became quiet for a moment.
“Hardly ‘the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended’, is it?” said Johnny, after looking around at the crowd of sweating men. They were all tired and begrimed by their eight hours of mindless work, all drinking heavily to forget their toils, though the day was still young, and all destined to go home to overcrowded houses in overcrowded, ill-planned, unhealthy, sprawling suburbs.
“What’s that, cobber?”
“Just a poem, Ned,” smiled Johnny.
“Won’t help our plight, mate! We’re desperate and I’ve never heard that you could eat and drink a poem!”
“Will you join up then, Ned?” Johnny said, blurting it out at last.
“What, to fight the Hun, Johnno? Why, what’s he done to me?”
“You know what I mean!” Johnny said, irritated, for it had taken a good deal of nerve to brace himself to ask the question.
“It’s all that bloody poetry you been reading, mate, it’s addled yer brains,” Ned mocked.
“For the honour of Australia, our mother,
Side by side with our kin from over sea...”
Johnny recited aloud. The words came to his mind involuntarily. They were from one of his favourite poems by Banjo Patterson. They spoke to him now almost prophetically.
Ned contemplated Johnny with mocking amusement again, about to speak — but Johnny continued quickly, “It’s a promise of adventure, Ned, the chance to see something of the world.”
“More like the promise of a bullet in yer neck and a bayonet in your guts!” Ned said.
“Good money too!” Johnny countered.
Ned’s eyes lit up at the mention of money. “How much?” he asked.
“Six bob a day.”
“Blimey, mate, that's over two quid a week!” exclaimed Ned.
“And a chance to visit the old country on leave.”
“England? You can keep that, mate! All fog and rain as I've heard!”
“Think of it though, Ned — Europe. France. Adventure … all those Mademoiselles. The girls like a man in uniform, they say.”
“Fair dinkum?” Ned asked.
“Fair dinkum, cobber,” Johnny said with a smile.
“Well, let’s give it a burl then, eh, Johnny? When do we sign up?”
The facts:
My father was born in 1917, in London, the illegitimate child of an Australian soldier (who we know almost nothing about). We think the soldier may have been in England, presumably because he had been injured or on leave in 1916. In ‘The Trumpet Call’ I am imagining my grandfather’s past in Sydney at a time of pre-war poverty where he considers joining up with the AIF, as many young Australians did — an act that, of course, has had consequences for my family down through three, and soon to be four, generations.
Peter Cooper is a lost Londoner living in Yorkshire amongst sheep and hens, dreaming of alleys, courtyards and the city lights. He is the author of one published novel, Inspector Bucket and the Beast (Dahlia publishing, 2012) as well as several short stories. The Trumpet Calls is an excerpt from the work in progress for his next novel about the experiences of a wounded Australian soldier in England during the First World War.
In Search of Africa
— Marie Therese Kay
In Grade Two we learned the seasons. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. We had Summer holidays and Noel had to start school. He’d tricked them all last year, but this year he must go or he’d become a ‘pick’n shovel man’ they said, and everyone knew he was not strong enough for that. So now he is Grade One and I am Grade Three and I look after him. We always play together. He will not play with the boys, nor even sit with them. He sat beside me and if Sister tried to move him he hung onto the seat with hands and knees, and snake his skinny calves around the desk legs. His blue eyes shrank to pinpoints of black, his cheeks flamed and his fair hair nearly stood on end. And he screamed and screamed till I said boldly: “Leave him alone! I’ll teach him to write,” and so they left him. We were partners. Noel knew mischief and I knew cheek.
Our sort-of cousin Carmel was in my class for a while. Her father was a magistrate and my father’s cousin. Carmel was the youngest in her family and liked the idea of having a little brother so we three stayed together at playtime. We each took a hand of Noel’s and ran up and down with him, racing and yelling battle-cries while the boys hit balls about and the girls skipped to rhymes. Now that it was Autumn he was getting more used to it and wandered off to the boys ground, some days bringing a bag of marbles.
Dad liked to show us things at breakfast so we’d learn a little and also to make porridge more fun, especially for Noel who needed ‘building up’. Porridge was reputedly the best way to start the day. “It’ll stick to your ribs,” Dad always said heartily.
Dad dug a path through his own porridge and let milk run along the channel he’d dug.
“I’ve made a river!” he’d announce. “What’s yours?”
“Mine’s a island.”
“Make a cape on your island,” he directed and then he trickled syrup on a bit
of it and said, “There! You’ve got a bay with a beach!” He widened and fiddled with his river till it was a billabong or a lagoon.
Noel objected to the island and said it was a continent.
Dad spooned a bit out and asked “Which continent?”
Pat and Peter were doing Africa at school so it was often Africa. They did all sorts of things with their breakfast, eating away two sides and announcing “India!” or “Italy!” Then they left little blobs and declared, “Sicily!” or “Sardinia!” or “Java!” Lots of little bits made an arch-i-pel-ago like Japan. We captured and treasured all the long words and giggled at Sardinia where we reckoned they made sardines for Mum’s afternoon-tea sandwiches for when other mothers visited.
We picked up lots of learning from breakfast having overheard exotic names like Christopher Columbus, Dirk Hartog and Vasco Da Gama. We giggled and added, “Couldn’t find a pyjama.”
Captain Cook provoked a chant —
“chased a chook all around Australia…
The chook turned back
and chased old Cook right around Tasmania.”
We knew ships: The Endeavour; the Tom Thumb, and pairs of explorers, Bass’n Flinders, and Burke’n Wills. Hume’n Hovell was good for a guffaw, echoing as it did the distressed laments of the household help who tackled the mess we left before virtuously rushing off to school or church.
Ours was a small school with classes combined. Grades One to Three were all taught by one nun with part-time help from one of the ‘big girls’. Our three rows of desks and faced east. Grade Four and Five faced west, Grades Six, Seven and Eight were next door, the room having folding doors that concertinaed onto the walls for special occasions. Much was taught by rote and the chants from older students filtered into the minds of the little kids who gained a nodding acquaintance with a surprising number of unconnected facts. Snatches of Shakespeare mingled with heights of mountains, population data, and dates of disasters, all of it whirling around and landing on the blotting paper of our brains, absorbed but useless.
This Autumn or Indian Summer brought Easter holidays, days where the midday sun shimmered silver on the stubbled paddocks where sheaves stood in rows waiting to be gathered for sale or built into haystacks that looked like little houses in a distant country. Ibises pecking for grain stepped daintily around like householders intent on preserving their property.
The mown paddocks gave the impression of vast distances. They gave Noel the idea that we should be explorers. Noel, frail and frightened in crowds, had an adventurous streak that never flunked a challenge, and always fired me up with enthusiasm as his lieutenant.
Dad had taken Pat and Pete fishing with Hec McLennan, so we were free to make our own plans.
We gathered our provisions. Peter’s borrowed leather schoolbag easily held a loaf of bread, with room for some scones and jam to be pushed into the corners. It was bigger and easier to carry than Noel’s little grade bag. My old hand-me-down bag from Margaret held a jar of milk, a few apples and plums, two carrots and an orange each. True explorers often ran out of food. We never left home without a billycan, knife and string and some sultanas in our pockets. And since we were going to explore Africa we’d need matches and a candle stub. And a notebook and pencil. We could leave documents and maps to attach to trees for those that would follow our journey. I liked play-acting and had suggested a Dick Whittington shoulder bundle on a stick but Noel said, “No! That’s story-book stuff — proper bags hold more.”
Sneakers on bare legs, sou’westers pulled down on our foreheads and flapping against our necks we shrugged into our bags and with billycan and cooking-pan on our belts we found a good stick each and were ready.
The cooking-pan was proper explorer stuff from the war Dad had been in. It folded down into a sort of tin-box and clipped closed by its handle.
Through the back gate, out into the blaze of yellow gorse on the common, around the dam, across the boundary road, through the fence into the sunburnt stubble paddocks glittering in the strong sun. After that it was all unexplored country. We squinted under our sou’westers and pulled them low on our foreheads. We licked our pencils to mark our secret hieroglyphics, as befitted serious explorers, to record the changes in the ter/in. ter/ /ain. in the land. We hacked little signs on trees, picked weeds here and there, and since our school was strong on botany we’d heard of Banks, so knew by osmosis that that was the thing to do.
We came upon a rabbit and threw an unsuccessful stone, regretting that we had no shanghai. Peter always had a pocketful of useful tools like that but he would never have joined an expedition without parental permission. A patch of mushrooms was another thing entirely, easy, too easy. I sneaked up on them pretending they were food animals.
We ate a scone and an apple to make room for the mushrooms in our kit. We whiled away an hour or two at a dam vainly digging for yabbies but it was just a small newly-scooped depression to water cows and had insufficient mud to provide a living for yabbies.
The afternoon sun was fierce enough to drive us to the shelter of the pine forest to eat our second picnic, then a snooze on the cool fragrant needles we piled up to make a soft bed. Noel woke me by dropping cones and making Tarzan noises interspersed with monkey chatters.
Trees can be anything. We used them as houses, as pretend planes, as a pirate ship, one of us in the crows-nest the other in the prow scanning a too close horizon. So we extended our fantasy to become submarines with improbably advanced engineering and sound systems that glutted our imaginations. We radioed the trees, the bushes and the galaxy in non-terrestrial language and noted responses for posterity on our little branch-shaped machine that was typewriter and telephone combined, as used by Dick Tracy.
The breeze sprang up. As dusk doused the daylight we scooped up pine-needles to start a cooking fire for our mushrooms. We told each other as our mother did that there was nothing in the dark that was not in the daylight and found strength in that deceiving adage. We would have a good sleep and press on to Africa in the morning.
Mushroom and pine mingled pleasantly.
“We should have brought a blanket,” I worried.
“Doesn’t matter. We’ll get a beaut coloured one in Africa, maybe even a skin one.”
“We’ve got no money,” I reminded him.
“We’ll take mushrooms and pinecones. They’re sure to trade.”
We woke to a sharper smell than the cooking fire, or was it the crackle of small explosions that woke us?
Flames blinded us. Our pinpoint pupils stared immobile on the rioting flashing crackling fury confronting us. We stretched tentative shaking hands toward each other. When flesh touched flesh we grasped, clung a moment, turned and ran without thought. Sneakered feet sliding on the smooth needles, we pounded on stumbling, gasping, gulping air. Hands locked we ran as one almost to exhaustion to the edge of the stand of pines.
Running towards us was a line of men and boys with torches and lanterns.
They’d been calling. We heard nothing except the whistle of our own breath. In the distance came the clarion call and lights of the fire-engine and still the crack of the exploding little needles of oil. The searchers had seen the flames maybe ten minutes ago. Our father was grey and speechless with rage and relief. He shivered all over, reached forward and grabbed us both, shook us, slapped us both on the head and held us against him hard as a tree.
Our neighbour, Jack Neate, later said he hadn’t seen Dad so upset since a year or two ago when Phar Lap died.
The facts:
This story is part of my memoir which is devised as a social history of life in Victoria in the depression years. In those days, mid-thirties, no-one worried much about children. They’d been taught to pull their weight in the household, observe economical routines and help with tools and chores almost as soon as they could walk. This was their pride and also their independence. Our adventures show our lifestyle, our lacks and our triumphs over penurious circumstances. AND we did set the pine plantation
alight.
Marie Therese Kay grew up in the Great Depression, in mid-Victoria, a middle child in a family of six. As such, rarely noticed, she followed her own fancies, learning to write with chalk on a home blackboard, trying to record the bedtime stories her mother told each night. Later as a pharmacist she worked and travelled throughout Australia, collecting characters and circumstances for a memoir in progress.
The Summer We Moved House
— Janeen Samuel
The house is on the south side of the River. We are buying it between six of us — not counting the baby — because none of us on our own can afford a deposit. And because this is 1974 and communes are in the air. Even the steamy, stultifying air of Brisbane.
Geoffrey is buying the house unseen. He was in Asia when we made the choice. From Singapore he sent a long list of instructions, ending with, “Get hold of a map of the 1893 flood and make sure it’s above that.”
So we’ve done that. We have consulted builders, bankers, a lawyer. Settlement is to be on the Wednesday after the Australia Day long weekend. We’ll all move in on the weekend after that. David and Val and the baby are flying to Melbourne but they’ll be back by then.
On Friday before the long weekend it begins to rain. It’s been raining on and off all summer but this is serious rain, even for Brisbane. There seems hardly air enough to breathe between the raindrops.
On Saturday — Australia Day — Ken and I stay at home. I find the boxes our wedding presents came in and repack them. Listening to the radio while I work, I hear reports of flooding in low-lying areas.
Late in the afternoon, the phone rings. “Er, you might not remember me. Mike Bennett?” My brother’s friend Mike. He was a small boy last time I saw him. Now he’s a university student, on his way home to Adelaide from Cairns. He’s just flown in, intending to spend a few days with friends. But they live in a suburb further up the River and the road is cut. I tell him to get on a train and come to us.