The Pencil Case
by Lorraine Cobcroft
Copyright, Lorraine Cobcroft
Brisbane Australia, 2013
All rights reserved
ISBN 978–0–9805714–1–7
Smashwords Edition. Published by Rainbow Works Pty Ltd. Print copies available
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What readers are saying about ''The Pencil Case''
…a confronting account of a disgraceful time in Australia’s history.
From the 1900s until around the mid-1970s, government policy across the nation was to remove children who they considered to be “at risk” in their home environment. This welfare legislation was enacted by people who were untrained and institutionalised themselves, people who were unable or unwilling to distinguish between genuine abuse or acknowledge that lack of money did not mean a bad home life…
A great deal has been written about the indigenous children who were taken from their homes and fostered – sometimes adopted – by white Australian families, but white children who were similarly torn from their parents were not and are still not adequately acknowledged by the Australian government.
THE PENCIL CASE is a deeply emotive story of one family’s tragedy,…
Mrs Cobcroft has crafted a story which illustrates the beauty of the human spirit, the ability of a strong person to rise above the circumstances which, through no fault of his own, dogged Paul Wilson’s life.
There is nowhere to hide, emotionally, physically or historically for perpetrators or victims in this memoir.
A must read for those who care.
Diana Hockley
…a very powerful story…a story that should be heard.
M.A. McRae
CONTENTS
PART 1
PART II
PART III
PART IV
ENDNOTES
GLOSSARY
AUTHOR'S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
DEDICATION
QUOTE: E.E. CUMMINGS
QUOTE: NAPOLEAN BONAPARTE
BACKGROUND AND DISCLAIMER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER WORKS BY THE AUTHOR
PART I
1: COURTROOM BULLSHIT
OCTOBER, 1956
“Bullshit!”
Frederick Wilson thrust a handful of torn paper towards the bench and stormed from the courtroom. Outside, he spat in the gutter, wiped sweat and tears from his face, slung a worn coat over his shoulder and stumbled down the street.
Slumped shoulders reduced his height to a neat six feet. His tie hung loosely now, its knot slightly askew. A narrow belt drew shiny, oversized trousers in to fit a scant waist, but the creases were sharp. Despite its fraying collar, his shirt was crisply starched and snow white.
At the corner, he hesitated and glanced back uncertainly. Suited men emerged from the courthouse. His children must be still inside. He remembered how they looked as he passed them, leaving: little Jenny, tearful, trembling, gripped that grubby doll like a lifeline; Paul, white–faced, lips set tight, stood tall and glared defiantly at the judge.
“A chip off the ol’ block,” he thought with a surge of pride. “He’ll survive. He’ll take care of his sister too, if they let him.”
Another terrifying thought ripped through his being. He faltered and almost fell.
“God, don’t let them separate them,” he mumbled.
Righting himself, he stared for a brief moment at the group congregating outside the courthouse.
“Bastards!” he screamed. “Curse you lousy bastards!” He turned the corner and was gone.
JUNE, 2010
“It’s been over 50 years now,” Paul said, his tone more reflective than wistful, “but I remember me well. I was a bright, confident, happy–go–lucky kid --- like my dad, Fred, if war and bullshit hadn’t beaten so much of him out of him. Like my brothers. Sure, they’re bushies --- a bit rough around the edges. But they’re decent, hard–working, and smart in their own ways. Their skins fit comfortably, and they wear she’ll–be–right–mate grins and answer ‘You bet’ to every ‘Can you?’ question. That was me, too, until I was eight.” Ern shot Paul Wilson a sympathetic smile as they bounced through the entrance to the desolate property. Paul parked by the scant remnants of the old shack, and they climbed out of the sleek Rolls–Royce Ghost, now thickly coated with powdery–pink dust and showing faint red sweat stains on its plush dove–leather seats.
This case was challenging Ern’s allegiance to professional principles. Of course he was aware of the tragedy of the ‘Stolen Generation’, and some of the victims’ stories had moved him. But interviewing the players in Paul Wilson’s saga had affected him on an emotional level, and he struggled to maintain an acceptable level of detachment. Confronted, now, with a mental image of a black car transporting terrified children away from the familiarity of this bushland home and into a foreign universe, his intellect acknowledged the logic and valid intention of removal policies, but his emotions resisted. He took several deep breaths and ordered his stomach to be still, but it was miserably upset.
He sniffed the air and listened to the sounds of the bush, snapped a million images of nothing and scribbled copious notes. He felt and smelt the dust, the blades of grey grass and the eucalyptus leaves. Paul had told him how his dad predicted rain by observing the changing colour of tree bark, and now he peeled away the papery–white bark on the tree trunks to examine the red and yellow hues beneath.
He was thorough, but Paul had come to expect that of Ernest Stanley. He was the consummate legal professional. He’d become, over the past few months, a trusted mate. By now, Ern knew much of Paul’s story, but he wanted to fill in the gaps in intricate detail. He wanted to understand the world Paul came from, and what drove him. He wanted to get to know the man Paul Wilson was, and the man he might have been.
The colours of the land had begun to soften and the shadows of the sparse scrubby trees lengthened as they started for the town, wheels crushing spiky, low, blue–grey grass flat against the hard, red earth. The sun’s hot fingers painted streaks of burnt orange and brilliant red–gold over the distant horizon.
Paul pulled into the parking lot of the quaint little country motel, climbed out of the Rolls and thrust the keys in his pocket. Ern gathered his papers.
Paul phoned his wife, and Ern warmed in admiration as he listened to the one–sided conversation. In the area of relationships, at least, Paul had beaten the odds. He was resilient too. Ern had probed beneath his armour, seen the wounds and scars and the furious yearning for justice. But Paul presented, publicly, as a man content with his lot in life. He was equipped with a delicious sense of humour and a firm conviction that, one way or another, things would always eventually turn out all right. He was a survivor, not a victim, and that presented Ern with a challenge he embraced with vim.
They made selections from the mini–bar, switched the television on, and sank into the sighing depths of a worn cotton–covered sofa. In the morning, the reliving of Paul Wilson’s saga would begin.
~~~~
2: A BUSH HOME
1948 TO 1956
I guess the bullshit really started when I was about five. I was born in ’48, so it would have been 1953. We were living in a bush town in western New South Wales. A toff came to visit us, demanding money.
The man wore a crisp white shirt and a dark tie and was clean–shaven, with oiled hair slicked back from a pale forehead. He held a zippered leather folio with gold embossing on the front in his soft white hands. He shouted at Mum until she cried.
My dad was thin, but muscled from hard work and his hands were big and rough. The man looked no match for him, so it shocked me to see my big, strong father tremble in his presence. Dad swore at the man, but the colour left his face, and afterwards he sat at our kitchen table with his head in his hands. Mum said for once she wished he had money to go to the pub and drown his sorrows.
Dad spent a good deal of time in the pub, especially in shearing season. All the shearers were heavy drinkers. It was punishing work in those stinking hot sheds, lifting and throwing sheep and bending over them with blades, pushing those heavy clippers as fast as their hands would move. There was no automation, and shearers were paid piece rates, so they went at it hard. Dad was a gun shearer. He averaged more than 200 sheep a day.
When he wasn’t shearing he went droving, broke horses or helped with planting or harvesting on nearby farms. It was hot, thirsty work. A few cold beers at the end of the working day was a well–established tradition among Aussie workers, but Dad often had more than a few. Mum complained bitterly when he came home ‘full’, as she put it, but I liked that it put him in a cheerful, joking mood. He was often moody and glum when he was sober.
We lived in a little white cottage on the edge of town, close to the river. It had running water and electricity and a neat little garden edged with a white picket fence. I think it must have been the first home Mum and Dad ever shared. They lived there when I was born, and when Jenny arrived. They lived there when their first–born arrived too. He only survived a year. They laid him to rest under a mound of dirt on the riverbank.
When I was three, Mum brought Ian home to that house. She made a little bed for him in a drawer removed from the dresser. I was jealous of him at first, and annoyed that he seemed to cry all the time. My jealousy passed as he grew older and learnt to play. A year later, another brother, Robert, was born.
A few weeks before that toff came, Dad fell from a horse and hurt his back, so he couldn’t work. A week after that visit he hitched his horse to the old wooden cart, loaded some stuff in it, and we left that house for ever.
He shifted us out to a shack on the edge of a big grazing property a few miles out of town. It used to be a worker’s cottage, but a fire had blackened all the walls so there were hessian bags hanging where the windows used to be. There were only three rooms, and no bathroom. We washed ourselves, our clothing and the dishes in a huge tub outside the door that we filled with water dragged by bucket from a dam.
It was biting cold in the shack on winter nights and damp in the wet. When my brothers were old enough to sleep in a bed, I had to share with Jenny, because there weren’t enough beds for four of us kids. I didn’t mind really, because on cold nights we could cuddle close to keep each other warm. On hot nights, we put as much distance between us as possible, but everyone swam in sweat anyway and an extra body in the bed probably didn’t make much difference.
Seemed like it was nearly always hot and dry out there. When folks weren’t praying for rain, they were ploughing ankle deep in red–brown mud --- the river cutting off access to town --- and it would seem like the rain’d never stop. Then, for a little while, the paddocks would be all soft and green and the sheep would fatten and the river would run clean and clear, but it wouldn’t last long. The sun was merciless, and it’d quickly burn the grass and lift the red dust again.
The dryness made it hard to grow stuff, and the dust made it impossible to keep a home clean, but Mum scrubbed the big black stove and swept the floors. She placed up–ended packing crates beside the beds, covered them with little cloths, and set treasured ornaments on them.
I helped her plant a vegie garden, and we picked berries and mushrooms in the fields nearby. We caught fish and craybobs. Sometimes she shot a pigeon or a rabbit. Now and again, Dad brought home a sheep or calf. “Road kill,” he called them. Run over by a car or bit by a snake or something, he reckoned. We knew most were not.
I pinched fruit from local orchards. Got caught often. The owners would clip my ear and send me packing, but I don’t think they minded really. Sometimes they’d give me fruit to take home to Mum.
After I started school, I scrounged cordial bottles and cashed them to buy bread. I loved the soft kissing crust, and I’d always pick at it on the two–mile walk home. I was nearly always hungry.
We had no money for several months after Dad’s fall, but when his back started to heal, he started making whips and selling them. Everyone who bought them said they were works of art. I loved to watch, fascinated by the way he sliced and plaited the leather. I loved the raw smell of the cowhide and the coarse warmth of the leather between my fingers. I wanted him to teach me, and I dreamt of being a whip maker one day.
One time, before he started making those whips, he gave Mum a few bob. She gave some to me and asked me to walk to town to buy bread and cigarettes. We’d been living on thin onion soup for a week, so she was excited by the prospect of having bread to go with it. The thought of it had me salivating all the way on the long walk into town.
I passed the little white cottage that was my first home and thought wistfully that we’d never been hungry or cold when we lived there. Then I passed through the government housing estate. It was crowded with tiny fibro cottages with a single smoking brick chimney rising above each little tin hat. In their dusty, wire–fenced front yards, the screeches of frenzied mothers competed with yapping dogs and bellowing kids. There were about five styles of cottage, repeated in patterns across a dozen streets. I wondered why we couldn’t live in one of those cottages.
At the end of the main street, I stopped at Petracca’s newsagent to look mournfully at comic books and wish I could afford to buy such treats. I couldn’t read, but I liked looking at the pictures. I continued on past Spiros’ Milk Bar to Comino’s General Store. All the stores seemed to be owned by Greeks. They always had plenty of money. So did the toffs who owned the grazing properties scattered around the countryside, and the shearing contractors. It was only the shearers and farm workers who were poor. Of course, the Aborigines were poor too. They lived in metal humpies in a settlement on the edge of town and wore clothes the toffs and shearers’ wives discarded. The old men grew long beards and sat about smoking and drinking methylated spirits. The women sat in the parks with their legs crossed, watching snotty– nosed kids playing. Some of the younger men worked on farms and their wives helped out in the homesteads of the wealthy graziers. They were good workers, but they’d go walkabout for weeks or months on end, sometimes just when they were needed most. They were a friendly lot, but they didn’t mix much with the white folks. Police would move them on when they sat about the street corners.
Mr Comino ladled some milk from a drum into a shiny tin billy, pressed the lid on, and passed it to a lady wearing a wide–brimmed sun hat and high–heel shoes. She thanked him, placed sixpence in his hand, smiled down at me, then clicked across the floorboards and down the wooden steps, dangling her milk pail from a gloved hand.
“G’day, Mr Comino,” I said, sidling up to a huge wooden counter and dropping my coins on it.
“Yez tiz,” he replied. “Wadda I get for you?” His accent always amused me, but Mum said it wasn’t nice to laugh.
“A loaf of bread, please. And Mum wants some cigarettes. She said you know which ones she likes.”
He fetched a loaf from a glass cabinet and placed it on a sheet of tissue paper on the counter, wrapped it carefully, and put a piece of sticky tape across where the ends of the tissue joined. He pulled a packet of cigarettes from a high shelf, and I held out Mum’s string bag for him to put the bread and smokes into. Then he pressed some keys on the cash register and it rang a bell as a drawer popped open. The drawer was filled with money.
How nice to o
wn a shop and have all the bread you could eat, and sliced meat, and sweets, and ice cream and all that other stuff, and a drawer full of money as well!
He picked up the money, dropped it into the drawer, then passed me four pennies in change. As tempting as it was to spend it, I put the change carefully in my pocket to hand it back to Mum. It was hard to resist the sticky, sweet smells from colourful jars of jelly babies and caramels on the edge of the counter and the rich silkiness of the ice cream in the big, silver drums that cooled the front section of the store, but Mum would check the change carefully.
On the long walk home, I set the bag down and crouched to remove some burrs from my socks. When I stood, I noticed a dark–coloured snake slowly forming a wide circle around me. I froze. My heart pounded at the ground and my legs went woozy.
“Snakes’ll bite if you annoy ’em, son,” my dad had said. “But they’re much scareder of you than you are of them. If you leave ’em alone, they’ll get away quick as they can. If you see one near you, don’t move. Movement frightens them. Jes’ stay still an’ it’ll go away.”
Somehow, remembering those words didn’t reassure me greatly, but I was far too frightened to do anything other than follow his advice and stand stock still and silent. The scaly green–brown creature slithered through the dust, circling my feet. It raised its head slightly to look at me through beady black eyes, exposing a creamy underbelly. I was unable to identify it, but I was sure it must be a deadly variety. Any moment now I would feel its poison fangs sink into my leg, and its venom would surge through my veins. What should I do then? Movement after being bitten was fatal, but there was no–one within earshot to help. I was surrounded by vast grazing paddocks and the odd desert bush or gum tree. Behind and ahead lay miles of soft red–dirt road. Over a mile home, almost a mile to the first lonely cottages on the outskirts of the town, and at least half a mile through the paddocks to the nearest homestead.
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