‘On the way back he got slightly waylaid, stopping by the river for a spot of fishing and to check his rabbit traps,’ my mother told me with a smile. ‘He left the scapulars in the bushes whilst he had a swim. When he got home to the post office empty handed I’m afraid I was furious and sent him back to find them, which he eventually did, after hours of searching.’
Needless to say the prayers that went with these holy pieces of cloth were added to our rosary each night. The time on our knees was now getting longer and longer. Today my knees are not as good as they should be. I’ve no doubt that the endless hours of praying in my youth contributed to this greatly.
However, God must have heard our prayers. For before too long a house became available in Condamine Street in the suburb of Turner in Canberra’s northern suburbs, belonging to fervent Catholics who were going overseas on a diplomatic posting. Fortunately for us they’d told their kindly Irish parish priest, Father Lynch, to find a deserving Catholic family to fill this house in their absence. We were the deserving Catholic family and a very grateful one at that. It seemed to me at the time that the only real estate agents in Australia were the priests. After all, had they not found us the last two homes to live in?
Before moving to Canberra, we undertook the long journey back to Morriset to have Christmas with the Frosts. Again we children were packed into the back of the Holden, together with Porky and Viv’s cat. For some reason only known to Viv she stuck her head in the pressure cooker we were taking to the Frosts and it took forever to get it out. When we returned to Reidsdale we borrowed an old truck, packed all our belongings (which was not much) and moved lock stock and barrel to Condamine Street, a castle compared to our two other houses in Australia, but still a long way removed from Drominagh or Clonmoylan. Built of red bricks it had three bedrooms, a small living room, a minute kitchen, and one tiny bathroom. Sitting on a green mowed lawn, amidst a thick row of tall fir trees, it positively gleamed compared to the ramshackle post office at Reidsdale. Needless to say it wasn’t long before my father started a vegetable garden and built a chicken run out of wire meshing, making it feel more like home.
Although it sat slap bang next to the Baptist church we, of course, went to the Catholic church up in Braddon, where we were all paraded in our Sunday best, Eugene in long socks and shorts and the mandatory tie, my father in his best attire, my mother dressed to the nines with her green hat and donkey brooch.
Our friend Vince Thompson, who was an altar boy with Eugene, remembers, ‘Your parents always paraded you right up to the very front seat. I used to get the giggles watching you.’
I can still remember the embarrassment of that long walk to the front. Was it because the nearer to the altar we were, the closer to God we’d be?
Across the road from our house was the Turner Primary School. Father Bateman, a gentle Australian priest, whose job was to go into the public schools to coax Catholics back into the fold, roped my mother into teaching catechism to classes of unruly students here.
‘They had little interest in what I was teaching them,’ my mother said, ‘but if you were a Catholic, classes were compulsory.’
Dibs didn’t spend much time at Condamine Street, for she was now ensconced as a boarder at Rose Bay Convent in Sydney, run by the same order of nuns where my mother had gone to school, and her mother before her.
‘I decided to take the bull by the horns, driving down to Sydney to talk things over with the Reverend Mother, who kindly offered Dibs a position in the school under special paying arrangements,’ my mother told me. ‘She was now sixteen and I felt she needed to have some sort of stability in her life.’
Sadly, Dibs packed up and left us in the last few months of living at Reidsdale for her new life in the big smoke, where she braved it out for eighteen months, but was not particularly happy. She told me that this was a traumatic time for her, trying to adjust to a new country, and coping with a totally different education system, whilst being desperately homesick at the same time. Being fifteen when we arrived in Australia, she was more affected by the cultural and emotional changes than we younger ones were.
‘I remember the nuns ringing me up in a fluster,’ my mother said. ‘Dibs, whilst doodling in class, had drawn a pair of spectacles on a photo of the Queen on one of her exercise books. To the nuns this was no less than treason. Dibs could see no reason why the Queen shouldn’t be so adorned. Eventually, the nuns decided to let things rest, but not before Dibs was given a strong reprimand and I was made to feel as though our family should be deported back to Ireland for ridiculing the Royal Family.’ She laughed. ‘Although I was beside myself at the time, thinking they might expel her, I must admit I thought it quite humorous.’
In the meantime Eugene continued at St Edmunds. Being an Irishman, but worse still, an Irishman with an English accent, he soon developed two accents – a good Aussie twang for school and outside our home, and his normal voice for inside the door of our house to appease my parents.
One must remember this was long before the time of mass multi-culturalism and political correctness in Australia. Migrants were not as numerous as they are today.
Only recently, Eric, a great Chinese friend of ours from New Guinea,, told me that he was often referred to in the 1950s as Ching Chong Chinaman at his private school in the elite Eastern suburbs of Sydney, where he was brought down from New Guinea by his father to commence his education. He took it all in his stride, for he was after all the only Chinese boy in the school and as such was regarded as quite a novelty.
One day, the captain of an opposing team from another elite private school called out to his team mates on the rugby field, ‘Kill the little Chinaman.’
Imagine the furore if that was said in today’s society.
Gill at nearly fifteen was the fashion queen, discovering beehive hairdos, flowing floral dresses with large wire hoops, and rope skirts, which were all the rage. We couldn’t pass her in the narrow hallway in one of these contraptions for fear of being entrapped. Fortunately hoops didn’t stay in fashion too long, although rope skirts remained around much longer, long enough for me to inherit one from Gill, which I adored.
Socialising at this stage was mostly at parties in peoples’ homes or the local church hall where the girls sat around the walls hoping to be asked to dance and feeling humiliated if they were left a wallflower. It was even worse for a pimply faced youth rejected when he’d taken an age to work up the courage to walk across the acres of floor to ask a girl to dance in the first place. There were also ‘barn dances’, held in farmers’ shearing sheds or hay barns. Little alcohol was served and many of the Catholics of the day had taken what was called ‘the pledge’, meaning they didn’t have a drink until they turned twenty-one. A few years later at one of these dances I won my first kiss. We were playing the heady game of the time ‘spin the bottle’ and the bottle ended up pointing at me. I must say, not only was he extremely easy on the eye, he was a darn good kisser.
It was difficult for Dibs and Gill. My parents expected that they should not go out with anyone who wasn’t a Catholic. Unfortunately this was a belief held not only by my parents. Social intermixing between religions was still frowned upon, particularly on behalf of the Catholic Church, though other churches could be just as biased. They were also not supposed to go out with anyone who ‘wasn’t of our class’…slightly difficult when we were living in one of the less affluent areas of Canberra. An Aussie twang was also a ‘no no’.
This caused us all to lament, ‘Why on earth did they bring us to Australia if that’s what they insist on?’
Now my mother can see the unreasonableness of such requests. ‘I think we were trying to hold on to what we had left behind,’ she said remorsefully. ‘In hindsight this was ridiculous and very hard on Dibs and Gill.’
This attitude of my parents limited Dibs and Gill’s scope of boyfriends considerably, becoming an awful bone of contention within the family. There were many heated arguments with raised voices, whi
ch I tried to avoid by hiding in my bedroom. Today Dibs and Gill tell me it was indeed a traumatic time for them both as they tried to come to terms with our parents’ demands. Many a boyfriend was given short shrift and hearts were broken.
By the time I started dating, my parents realised that raising teenagers in Australia, where Catholics were far from the majority, was a different kettle of fish to Catholic Ireland and they became more lenient.
Canberra was established in the early part of the twentieth century. Hence even in the 1950s it was still relatively small with a population of only about 40,000. Being the planned capital of Australia from the very beginning, the first Parliament house was built there in 1910. Designed by Sir Walter Burley Griffin, Canberra was really only accessible by motor car, train or aeroplane. There were two distinct areas in Canberra at this time: North and South.
South was definitely the side to be on if you wanted to be part of the social set. For here the embassies, large homes and ‘old money’ were to be found amidst the wide tree-lined streets and avenues of Yarralumla, Deakin, Forest and Red Hill. There was no Lake Burley Griffin then, just the meandering Murrumbidgee River flowing under Commonwealth Bridge and forming a definite border between the southern suburbs and the less fashionable northern suburbs where we lived. The Capital is set bang in the middle of hundreds of acres of sprawling sheep country, nestled into a stunning mountain range, known as the Brindabellas. Dry and incredibly hot in the summer, it becomes icy cold with heavy frosts in the winter. Running along the horizon, the rolling hills of the Brindabellas are an artist’s palette of ever-changing colours, with the spectacular evening sunset disappearing behind the peaks in a crimson blaze, as if it is a glow from a monstrous bushfire. Forward thinkers planted every variety of deciduous tree throughout the city, making autumn a sight to behold, as the brittle leaves turn a burnished gold before covering the ground in a luxurious carpet.
Long before Lake Burley Griffin became a reality, my parents took us on picnics to the small rivers and streams that originated from the mountains and snowfields. The Cotter Dam, where we often swam, was the collection spot for the Murrumbidgee after it joined the Murray River system. A popular spot with swimmers and sunbakers, it had a number of shaded river beaches ideal for setting up camp. As this was virtually the only swimming hole within close proximity of the Capital it was the ‘place to be seen’ and definitely a meeting spot for the young of the time, where lithe brown teenage girls would parade in itsy bitsy bikinis trying to outdo each other, and the young men would leap off overhanging branches into the gushing river, trying to impress.
Wood collecting in the 1950s was an essential pastime, but one I enjoyed. Often we made a day of it, packing a picnic lunch to devour hungrily as we sat on a log in an isolated paddock where a farmer was pleased to have the fallen branches from his hordes of gumtrees carted away. One of the best spots for wood collecting was near the small village of Collector on the way to Lake George, at that stage full of water, unlike today. Sadly a number of Duntroon cadets drowned in the lake in the mid-fifties and I remember my father and Eugene joining in the fruitless search.
John and Betty Collins, retired rubber planters from Malaya, had a sprawling homestead, Euralie, outside Yass, with hundreds of acres leading down to the picturesque Murrumbidgee River where we often went to picnic and water ski. Betty, (who later changed her name to Liza as it had far more class to it) whose family came from Ireland, knew of the Esmonde family and she and John were a wonderful source of inspiration for my parents, introducing them to many of their friends. For quite a few years we had memorable school holidays at their rambling beach house at Whale Beach, north of Sydney. Situated on the lower side of the road, just near the small corner store, it had a steep access down a rough track and onto a sandy beach where we all learned how to surf in the tumbling waves and fished off the rocks. For hours we’d sit playing cards on the deep verandah at the front of the house, with a bird’s eye view of the ocean, or otherwise muck around in the courtyard to the rear – where I’ve a photo of us all holding the fish we’d caught that day. I’ve never been an avid surfer, yet I love the beach. My husband, Rob, having been brought up at Manly in the northern suburbs of Sydney, where surfing was a religion, adores it. If the surf was up, classes at Manly Boys High were given a miss. In fact, he and his friend, Max, assure me that during their last summer at school they quite often only attended classes on a Friday, but both managed to pass the Leaving Certificate with flying colours.
Back in Condamine Street, we were rarely short of friends, for, within a short distance of our house, at least ten children were going to the same schools as us. (In Gill’s case St Christopher’s Good Samaritan Convent in Manuka, Eugene St Edmunds, and Viv and I at Our Lady of Mercy in Braddon). I sometimes excelled in drama and Viv was captain of everything imaginable, including the softball team. At an eisteddfod at the Albert Hall, I recited ‘The Man from Snowy River’ where to my amazement I won first prize.
These were the days when a bottle of milk was compulsory. It was warm as it was delivered to the school grounds and left in the sun until lunchtime. It was also when we had to line up for hours waiting to receive the painful jab of a polio needle, which put the fear of God in us all.
The Sisters of Mercy were a kind and down-to-earth lot. On many occasions they’d roll up their flowing habits, take off their shoes and enjoy a game of softball…unlike the strict Sacré Coeur order I went to later on. It was a great honour to be asked to ring the school bell for recess and I must have done the posting of letters at some stage, for just last week Gill sent me a holy card she’d found from Mother Ignatius, the kindly headmistress, dated 1957, thanking me for ‘being her little helper posting the mail’.
With the holes in my cast-off shoes filled in with cardboard, I remember the bitter cold of the classroom with no heating whatsoever – bad enough for those of us who could move around, but unbearable for a sweet girl, Clare, confined to a wheelchair after suffering a horrendous bout of polio. However, on the whole, life was simple. We played with our hoopla rings, threw coins in hopscotch squares, flicked marbles across the street, sucked the fizz from sherbet bags, licked sticky toffee apples or ate soggy tomato sandwiches. If we were lucky we were allowed to order sausage rolls and fairy bread from the canteen as a treat. We entered announcing competitions on 2CA, the local radio station, where Steve Liebmann, who years later was to become the anchor for the national Today show, judged me as the winner one week, with the grand prize of a bottle of Coca Cola and a new yo-yo. But best of all we discovered Mrs Lew’s riding school at Acton, a tranquil refuge, where we spent most of the next years of our life in a horsey heaven.
Mrs Lew was, in fact, Bobby Llewellyn, a tiny formidable lady, who was always immaculately turned out in cream jodhpurs, a sparkling white shirt with a bright tie adorned with horses’ heads, and highly polished riding boots, her neatly tended blonde hair encased within a hairnet. With her kindly face always beautifully made up, she was never less than spectacular and she had a heart of gold. Being so short, but, it seemed, always riding the largest horse in the stables, she’d carry a heavy metal bucket or a stump of wood to the side of the horse, using it to mount and dismount.
Mrs Lew had the best riding school in all the world as far as we were concerned, the horses’ paddocks being under the weeping willows below Commonwealth Avenue Bridge right in the very core of what is now Lake Burley Griffin. The actual stables were situated between the Australian National University and the Canberra Hospital amidst groves of thick pine trees, where the heady aroma of chaff, saddle soap, horse sweat and fresh manure filed the air. The quaint timber cottages fronting the stables sat in a neat row, all built well before the war, with small porches to the front and rear and narrow gardens leading down to the yards. No one house seemed more glamorous than the next, although some gardens were tended better than others. None of the inhabitants seemed to complain about the flies or the smell of horse manure, or if they did, t
hey never managed to change things. In fact many of the residents became our friends, often enticing us to pull up on our horses at their back door for a yarn, where they’d give us a cool drink and a piece of cake. The stables remained in that spot until they were relocated adjacent to the pine forest on the Cotter Road when Lake Burley Griffin was about to become a reality.
We usually walked to Mrs Lew’s and back, some two miles from Condamine Street, stopping in Civic Centre for fish and chips wrapped in newspaper at the Seven Seas or for a milk shake at the Blue Moon Café. If it was very hot we’d drop off at the new Olympic swimming pool complex where Viv and I often competed in races or lay on the hot cement with our bodies covered in coconut oil, trying to develop suntans like the Aussies, much to my mother’s horror, who assured us we would live to regret it – which of course we have.
Mrs Lew kindly allowed us to ride whatever horses were free if we helped with the catching, grooming, and saddling for lessons. My favourite was Goldie, a fourteen-hand gelding. I just adored him, dreaming of his white splashed face day and night. Viv, had Danny Boy, a small black pony, lent to her by Dib’s boyfriend at the time, Kelvin. Viv and Danny Boy managed to win most of the cross-country and show jumping events at the time.
‘One day,’ my mother told me,’ I remember coming to watch. I didn’t go often, as I got too nervous in case you fell off. This time I was horrified to see Danny Boy caught on the top of a monstrous high jump he was attempting to clear, swinging backwards and forward with Viv’s legs dangling in mid-air, before, much to my relief, they were both rescued.’
Well after Viv had given up riding him because she became too tall, Danny Boy and I won the ACT Cross Country Event, riding up scrubby dales and down steep glens in the basin of what is now the lake. There have been few achievements in my life that have surpassed this moment of glory, particularly as I tended to live in the shadow of my older sisters in the riding world.
Can My Pony Come Too? Page 11