Can My Pony Come Too?

by Rosemary Esmonde Peterswald

  What was blatantly obvious was they’d had a riotous trip home to celebrate the end of their tour of duty. And why not?

  We spent a few days in Sydney for Rob to catch up with his family, before heading off to Wangi on Lake Macquarie for a month’s leave. This was not far from the Esmondes’ first Australian house at Bonells Bay in 1954. We visited the tiny matchstick bungalow and felt amazed we’d all survived there those years ago. From memory it looked much the same as it did in 1954, although even smaller than I had envisaged. One evening we met William Dobell, the famous artist, at the local RSL Club, where he’d sit for hours at a table in the corner wearing a black beret.

  Our little cottage at Wangi was right on the shores of the lake. I found it through an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald. It proved to be what the advertisement described: quaint, remote and right on the water. Just what we wanted.

  The owner of the cottage, a spritely lady, with a mass of floaty grey hair and wearing a green woollen twin set, a tweed skirt and a set of shining white pearls, alarmed us somewhat one sunny morning when she arrived at the front door to announce: ‘I’ve come to collect my husband.’

  Rob and I looked at each other in consternation. ‘Your husband?’

  ‘Yes. My husband. I left him behind.’

  Rob shook his head and cast his eyes into the house and then back to the lady. ‘I’m afraid we haven’t seen him. Where’s he likely to be?’

  ‘On top of the cupboard in the bedroom.’

  ‘In the bedroom we’re sleeping in?’ I exclaimed in horror.

  ‘Yes, the room overlooking the lake.’

  With this startling piece of news she rushed inside, whipped a chair from the kitchen, carried it to the bedroom and removed a cardboard box full of ashes from on top of the cupboard. After a cup of tea, during which time she told us the poor man had fallen out of a tree in their daughter’s back garden and broken his neck, she bade us farewell and left with her husband safely tucked under her arm.

  After a few days in Port Macquarie, Vera and Colin came back down to stay with us. We enjoyed a couple of weeks’ swimming, fishing, cooking up feasts and playing cards, with the odd vino and beer to keep us lubricated. At the bottom of the garden we had a small wooden rowboat we’d take out on the lake. One day we caught the largest crab anyone had ever seen, later cooking it over a makeshift fire by the water’s edge. Charlotte spent hours feeding the ducks and swans scavenging within the tall rushes, and there was a huge weeping willow to swing off at the end of the garden and a leafy gumtree to picnic beneath. We had meals at the Wangi pub and I went to the Wangi church for mass on Sunday, almost feeling part of the local congregation.

  Like Cloneen, this cottage was what people hope to find at the end of a journey. Or could it have been that it was the beginning of our journey together as a family after Vietnam that made it so special?

  Yet it wasn’t all roses. Charlotte was taking time to get to know Rob. She was often furious to find I had this strange man in my bed and refused to believe he was her father. Up until then, she’d understandably thought my father was hers too. But after a few weeks, things settled down as they got to know each other and became the apple of each other’s eye.

  Only recently Rob and I returned to Wangi where we spent the night in the Wangi Pub, not much changed over the years. The beds we slept in were definitely from a time gone by: lumpy mattresses and rickety legs. There was even a 1950s’ walnut dressing table and wardrobe ensemble with a tarnished oval mirror and an orange chenille bedspread. Before driving on to Gill and Colin at Tamworth, we searched for our little cottage on the shores of the lake. We thought we found it. One of the few still remaining much the same as it was in the sixties. Or were we romanticising? Maybe it had long since gone the way of others and been replaced by the smart new lakeside mansions. We also hunted for the house I’d lived in as a child in Bonells Bay, but alas it was not where I remembered it. Stopping to change a flat tyre, we chatted with a couple of locals who told us the new high school was built on the same site as the one-teacher school I went to all those years ago and that the St John of God Brothers’ home for the disadvantaged boys was now an upmarket housing estate.

  As with most things in life, time moves on and waits for no-one.

  Chapter 24

  Adjusting Again…Kapook

  Our first posting after Rob returned from Vietnam, was to Kapooka Army Camp ten miles from the town of Wagga Wagga in the Riverina district of New South Wales. Kapooka was expanded during the Vietnam War to be able to give initial military training to all regular soldiers and national servicemen before continuing to their corps training.

  Rob was happy to secure a position as Major Training, soon becoming involved in his job, preparing the new recruits for Vietnam. After the initial euphoria of having Rob home, I felt at a bit of a loss. I was left on my own with Charlotte and without a car for hours on end in our tiny fibro married quarter amidst rows of identical quarters sitting side by side with little privacy, about two miles before one reached the barracks. It was an odd set up, as most army camps were in those days. It seemed to be government policy to isolate defence personnel in settlements on the outside of towns, making mixing or socialising with the local community difficult. Now the government tries to integrate everyone within the community. As in New Guinea, the officers at Kapooka lived up one end and the other ranks down the other. In the middle was the inevitable canteen. Unlike New Guinea, we went into the town of Wagga to the doctor and dentist.

  During the time Rob was in Vietnam I’d become more independent. And now suddenly to be stuck at home was depressing. Being brutally honest I was jealous of Rob. He was able to go off to work, have a drink at the Mess with his fellow officers, and arrive home in time for dinner, whilst I had many hours to fill in on my own with Charlotte. There were other wives of course, but many of them didn’t have children and worked during the day as well.

  There was also a dreadful drought, causing the worst mouse plague in the Riverina’s history. If one opened the knife and fork drawer the blighters ran up your arm. They’d also play the fiddle on the end of the bed, eat their way through the linen and frighten Charlotte out of her wits in her cot, even nibbling on her toes. Nothing could be done to stop them coming in droves from the parched fields looking for water.

  Mere mousetraps were not up to the job. So Rob set up an ingenious trap. To a chair in the kitchen he attached a broom with a piece of cheese at the end, under which he placed a bucket of water. The mice, and sometimes the odd rat, would run up the broom handle to get the cheese and fall into the bucket. We caught hundreds this way, yet there seemed to be thousands more. It was probably rather cruel but we were desperate.

  In the summer it was stinking hot; in the winter freezing cold. Yet it wasn’t all doom and gloom. We made good friends and played lots of golf. Rob broke his wrist when playing rugby and had to play golf one handed. He even became quite good. When he got his second hand back in use, his game never recovered, his balance being all out of kilter.

  Our house was a typical army married quarter with a small living room to the front, basic kitchen with lino on the floor at the rear, three tiny bedrooms and a bathroom and laundry. The floorboards were bare, with the inevitable boot polish mark around previous inhabitants’ carpet squares. Worst of all it stank. One day, when I was entertaining a girlfriend in the living room, I pointed with a broom to where I felt the smell was coming from in the corner and accidentally tapped the ceiling. In a second it collapsed down around us with many of the dead mice from the plague falling into our laps.

  At weekends we went for long walks and drives into the countryside. As usual we had numerous dinner parties (after we were moved to another house) and functions at the Officers’ Mess, where, I believe, Susan Peacock, the wife of Andrew Peacock, our then Defence Minister, did a famous dance on the table. The Mess here didn’t have the character of the one in Port Moresby, but it was a good place to have a party or a bar
beque in the grounds. I also found a horse to ride on a sheep station nearby and after a couple of months Charlotte had a few little friends to play with. One, unfortunately, slammed the door on her finger, cutting the top off, whereupon we rushed her to the doctor with the missing bit on ice. However, there was nothing he could do, apart from watch her father, the brave Vietnam vet, nearly faint on the floor. Fortunately it’s hardly noticeable today, although she’s had to adjust to using another finger for writing.

  One scorching day I arrived home to see all the rubber hoses we owned on the roof, sprouting water in all directions, Rob’s new ‘air conditioner’ at work. Not popular with the army, but it gave us slight relief. In winter we huddled around the small open fire, our only form of heating. Colonel East, a small, genial, dapper gentleman with a great sense of humour was Rob’s Commanding Officer. For some reason he made rather a fuss of me. One evening at the mess, as I performed my officer’s wife’s duty and enthusiastically welcomed the new Commanding Officer to replace him, Colonel East pulled me over and said, ‘The king is dead, Rosemary. Long live the king’.

  I was mortified, missing him enormously when he went.

  The Catholic padre was also an interesting character. I believe he’s now back in Ireland married. I’m glad about this, as we spent many a night around our fire at Kapooka discussing the lonely plight of the Catholic priest. Being Irish he was a great party man, enjoying the odd tipple. He was also rather a hit with the ladies, so I’m sure he leads a much happier life these days.

  It was fascinating watching the new National Service recruits arriving at the barracks with long shaggy 1970s’ hair, and then to sit at Mass on Sunday and see them walk up the aisle with basin cuts, having been to the barber the day before. I felt sorry for them on the whole, for they seemed so young to be going off to the war. Yet a lot of them were looking forward to the challenge, in some cases even getting quite excited. And a number who I’ve since met up with have told me they enjoyed the comradeship of the other recruits and still do, although I know there are many who were irreparably damaged.

  I used to get rather distracted at Mass on Sundays, watching the new recruits taking communion, and wondering how the padre was managing to conduct the service without some obvious discomfort, after such a party in the mess or one of our houses the night before. I can only imagine the altar wine was a good ‘hair of the dog’.

  The National Service recruits were not there by choice. They were there purely because their date of birth came up in the draw. Rob’s job was to turn them from soft civilians into hardy soldiers in an obscenely short space of time. It was not an easy job, but one he enjoyed and was good at.

  It was a long drive from Wagga to Canberra and back, with Charlotte usually dreadfully car sick and Gunga Din sitting up in the back slopping everywhere. We passed the Dog on the Tucker Box at Gundagai umpteen times on the way to visit my parents and catch up with friends back in the Capital. Often my mother hopped on an alarmingly small airplane to visit us, a couple of times with Gill’s Andrew in tow. I remember feeling so lonely when they went home. Rob was studying, finishing his degree by correspondence, so spent a fair bit of time with his head in books. In those days one didn’t graduate from Duntroon with a degree, as one does these days. I desperately wanted to get a job. Yet with Charlotte at such a young age, and being so far out of town, it was difficult to think of anything I could do, so instead I immersed myself in the garden and started a correspondence course in creative writing.

  One morning, when I went to get Charlotte from her bed she had disappeared; Gunga Din too. After much panic, we discovered them both ambling along the road about four blocks away, Gunga Din in front, Charlotte attached to his lead at the rear. He was so gentle with her, but terrified the milkman, postman and anyone else who called.

  Anzac Days are of utmost importance in Australian country towns. It was Rob’s job to speak at remembrance services around the Riverina area. I accompanied him, helping the Country Women’s Association afterwards with lunch. Later, Rob would play two-up with the men and I gossiped with the ladies, discovering what life was like living in a country town or on remote sheep stations, for some of the women had travelled many miles to proudly watch their returned soldiers march.

  Yet one of the things that irked both Rob and me was that although he’d just returned from Vietnam he wasn’t welcomed into a Returned Soldiers Club, a dreadful insult to all those who served in Vietnam. I remember the indignity when we were refused entry to one RSL club down the south coast.

  ‘Sorry mate, you’ve got to be a member,’ a smart-looking fellow wearing a tweed coat and sporting a neat moustache informed him.

  Rob gave him a generous smile. ‘I’ve just come back from Vietnam. Could someone sign me in perhaps?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  Oh boy! Did I feel like giving him a piece of my mind!

  Instead we left meekly.

  The RSL had been less than welcoming to any Vietnam Veterans – a bone of contention for many years. Now, of course, many of the RSL clubs are full of them, which is a good thing as many of the older veterans have sadly passed away.

  Two things happened during our time at Kapooka. I fell pregnant with our second daughter, Georgina, and my parents dropped a bombshell by announcing they were returning to Ireland to live. We were over the moon with the forthcoming arrival of our new addition to the family, but were sad to be losing my parents.

  For many years my father had had a hankering to return to his beloved Ireland. Now the opportunity had arisen. He loved Australia and had built himself up a good business in Canberra with his Braddon Flyscreens. Yet he assured us all that unless he died on Irish soil it was unlikely the Good Lord would find him and welcome him through the gates of Heaven. We all believed him and my mother certainly wasn’t going to be the one to put it to the test. After all, my father had been over fifty when we came to Australia so most of his life had been spent in Ireland. We were all settled in Australia, or New Zealand, apart from Viv, who was now married to Tim in Wales. Gill and Colin were still at Beechborough. Dibs was living with Peter on the remote archaeological dig on the south island of New Zealand, and Eugene had finished his second tour to Vietnam and was living in Brisbane.

  As I mentioned before, my father’s brother, Jimmy, who had run the gift shop in Glendalough in Co Wicklow, had died. Wheelchair bound for many years, he’d managed to run the shop during the Irish summer, and holiday in Spain during the Irish winter. This sounded perfect for my parents when the opportunity was put to them to take over the shop. They could live in Glendalough for the Irish summer and come to Canberra every second Christmas to look after my father’s business when it was at its busiest in the summer months. (He took on a partner to run it when he wasn’t there). It would also give them plenty of time to keep in touch with their grandchildren, who they were sad to leave. If it had been left to my mother I don’t think she would have gone at that time.

  So with mixed feelings one early autumn morning we saw them off at Canberra Airport, bound for the Western Provinces of Kenya to catch up with my father’s brother Donal still a missionary there. It was seventeen years since they’d seen each other. Flying via Mauritius and Nairobi they were met by Donal at Kisumu beside Lake Victoria. Later Donal took them on to his mission at Eregi amongst the Balluylia people, who’d accepted him as their Mukhulundu mukhali Muno (clan leader), where they viewed the Church of Pius X he’d had built and dedicated to his brother, Eugene Esmonde, VC, DSO. In 1957, he saw the need for a new church in Muloli to cater for the fast growing Catholic community. He laboured tirelessly, writing letters of appeal for funds from his large group of friends and benefactors in Europe and America. My parents spent a couple of weeks helping Donal in the mission and visiting outlying villages where he was erecting small brick buildings to serve as meeting places and schools. Donal’s mission covered about 10,000 square miles, so as you can imagine he was constantly on the go.

  Leaving him
at the airport at Kisumu, my parents hopped on the same tiny Cessna that had brought them in, flying to Nairobi and on to London and eventually Dublin. When they arrived in Ireland my father knelt down and kissed the ground.

  He wrote: …it proved to this exile at any rate, what the poet, Goldsmith, meant when he wrote: ‘Lives there a man with soul so dead who never to himself has said “this is my own, my native land.”’

  When I next saw my mother it was in the far top corner of Papua New Guinea in the Sepik, where we were stationed at Moem Barracks outside Wewak.

  Chapter 25

  Wewak in the Sepik

  ‘We’ll have a holiday when we get there, and I can be with you for the birth,’ Rob said.

  I should have known better.

  The idea was that we’d arrive in our new posting before Rob started work as a Company Commander with the 2nd Pacific Islands Regiment at Moem Barracks. I could have the baby, with Rob there to help look after Charlotte.

  When we arrived at Moem Barracks, Rob was soon sent on patrol near the Indonesian Border, leaving Charlotte and me on our own to cope with the arrival of Georgie. This I did some six weeks later in the Wewak General Hospital set on the peninsula of Cape Boram.

  Rob didn’t set eyes on her until she was nearly three months old.

  On the 21st March I awoke in the middle of the night, knowing I was in labour. Shoving Charlotte in the car I drove to some friends’ married quarter up the road at Moem.

  ‘I need to go NOW,’ I exclaimed to a startled Kate when she opened the front door in response to my frantic banging.

  Without wasting a minute I bundled Charlotte inside the door for Kate to look after and Jim, her husband, kindly drove me into the hospital at Boram, driving off hurriedly after dropping my suitcase inside the front door.