White Butterflies

by Colin Mcphedran

  WHITE

  BUTTERFLIES

  WHITE

  BUTTERFLIES

  COLIN MCPHEDRAN

  A NewSouth book

  Published by

  NewSouth Publishing

  University of New South Wales Press Ltd

  University of New South Wales

  Sydney NSW 2052

  AUSTRALIA

  newsouthpublishing.com

  © Colin McPhedran 2002

  Foreword © Ian McPhedran 2017

  Afterword © Verona Burgess 2017

  First edition published by Pandanus Books in 2002

  This edition published 2017

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry for this title is available from the National Library of Australia website at www.nla.gov.au

  ISBN: 9781742235387 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781742242668 (ebook)

  ISBN: 9781742248127 (PDF)

  Design Josephine Pajor-Markus

  Cover design Sandy Cull, gogoGingko

  Cover images shutterstock / weedezign (main photo); shutterstock / Zadiraka Evgenii (birds)

  Printer Griffin Press

  All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The author welcomes information in this regard.

  This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Maps

  Foreword

  PART I: THE TREK

  1 The Beginning, or Was It the End?

  2 Maymyo

  3 To Myitkyina

  4 At the Airstrip

  5 The Walk Begins

  6 The Last Outpost

  7 To the Patkoi Range

  8 Monsoon

  9 The Naga Village

  10 Looking Back

  11 Moving On

  12 White Butterflies

  PART II: MOTHER INDIA

  13 Hospital

  14 Calcutta

  15 Getting Away

  16 Bangalore

  17 Family Life

  18 Growing Pains

  19 A Fresh Start

  20 School Days

  21 War Is Over

  22 White Flowers

  23 Out of India

  PART III: EAST TO WEST

  24 Father’s Land

  25 My Father’s Other Life

  26 Bound for Botany Bay

  27 Australia

  28 Another Hill Station

  Afterword

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing down this register of events in their order of time has caused me some anguish. What helped me cope were the memories of the span of good times which preceded and succeeded the sad times.

  There were moments in my struggle to pull myself out of the quagmire of depression when I would ‘fog up’. Unlocking and revisiting events of the past led me to experience flashes of sadness, but also to experience sheer joy.

  I once heard a speaker describe life as a craft. That being so, I believe I have served my apprenticeship, enjoyed the process and earned a certificate of trade.

  Along the way I was assisted by some fine tutors: the gentle and kind Indians who nurtured me, the Christian family who fostered me, the burly Scottish tea-planter who pulled me from the mud on the trail and would not let me give up and die, and my mother, whose love has enveloped me throughout the years.

  There are many people who have helped me in the publication of this account of my life. I would like to acknowledge a few of them: my daughter-in-law Verona Burgess whose editing made it happen; Penelope Layland for her fine-tooth comb; Anthony Hill for his writer’s eye; the late Ron McKie whose idea it was; Kay Jones and Joanna Gash for the typewriter and the hospitality; Dora Burgess, Jenny Corvini, Mac Cott, Olivia Kent and John Knight for their feedback and my brother Donald who filled in some gaps; and Ian Templeman and the team from Pandanus Books, Emily Brissenden, Duncan Beard, Ann Andrews, Julie Stokes and Peter Fuller, who believed in it.

  Colin McPhedran, 2002

  Foreword

  Ian McPhedran

  My father, Colin McPhedran, passed away peacefully at his daughter Lynne’s home in Perth, surrounded by his family, on 3 June 2010.

  Dad’s extraordinary life was over but his story lives on.

  He became a new Australian and in 1955 he married a local girl, Laurel Hales. They had five children – the eldest, Col’s stepdaugh-ter Cheryl, myself, Shaun, Lynne and Jane.

  He played cricket, golf and soccer, raised a family, ran small businesses, sat on the local council, hospital and tourist boards, helped countless people and met and endeared himself to hundreds of strangers.

  Dad lived most of his adult life in Bowral in the New South Wales Southern Highlands and his latter-years were divided between the Highlands and Perth where Lynne, Jane and Shaun lived.

  He was deeply involved in community life and was an enthusiastic unofficial ‘researcher’ for his great mate Mac Cott, then editor of the local paper, the Southern Highland News .

  He was honoured in 2005 with the unveiling of a plaque on the town’s commemorative wall paying tribute to his contribution.

  Once the first edition of White Butterflies was published in 2002 Dad was inundated with requests to speak at functions and events around the country. He loved this aspect of the author’s lot. Meeting new people, hearing their stories and searching for a common thread with his own narrative was his idea of bliss and his natural empathy ensured that he was constantly adopting new friends.

  I received many excited phone calls from him telling me about his latest discovery and how a person he had met was possibly a distant relative via some obscure family link in Burma or Scotland. He loved the prospect of expanding his network.

  There is no doubt that White Butterflies, written soon after our mother died, was his way of dealing with a sadness of such incred-ible depth that he had been hardly able to speak about it. It was simply too painful, and even revisiting events during the editing process became unbearably emotional for him.

  Just as his life had been divided quite literally between east and west so Dad’s final farewell was divided between the Christian Church and a Buddhist Pagoda.

  Hundreds of mourners gathered at St Jude’s Anglican Church in Bowral to farewell one of the town’s favourite adopted sons. The service included both Christian and Buddhist messages.

  Dozens of people then drove out to the Sunnataram Forest Monastery at Bundanoon for the spreading of Dad’s ashes.

  As the monks chanted and Col’s children and grandchildren scattered his mortal remains in the beautiful bush setting overlooking Jervis Bay in the distance, a currawong swooped overhead and flew away down the valley. It was a fitting end to the life of a remarkable man.

  February, 2017

  PART I

  THE TREK

  Chapter 1

  The Beginning, or Was It the End?

  I remember the moment. We had disposed hungrily of our school breakfast of porridge and limp toast thinly coated with Palmboter, a dairy substitute made from palm oil. We waited silently for the white-sheeted Brother of the Sacred Heart Order to finish his meal.

  It was December 1941.

  Brother Fulbert sat on a dais at the end of the refectory eating his traditional breakfast of German sausages and fried eggs.
Then he mopped his tobacco-stained moustache and beard and looked up.

  In a gargling voice, typical of the German brothers at St Paul’s, he announced, ‘All students are summoned to the courtyard for an important announcement by the principal Father.’

  I turned to my closest friends, a Burmese boy named Alfie and an Indian Muslim called Huq, who shared my misery at boarding school in Rangoon.

  ‘What’s this all about?’

  They shrugged their shoulders. It was not unusual for the principal to appear on the balcony to address the school. He loved the sound of his own voice. The dining room emptied and we took up our positions to march in Indian file to the courtyard. One thousand thoroughly bored students stood, eyes fixed on the head in front, and waited for the proclamation from on high. I looked about and noticed a few of the favoured boys – the teachers’ pets who sneaked about the school gathering information on the rest of us – looking upwards in anticipation of a stimulating announcement from the principal master.

  It seemed an eternity before he strode out on to the balcony. The proceedings began with everyone chanting the customary, ‘In the name of the Father…’ and crossing our chests. He talked about the dedication of the brothers and teachers, then rambled on about the war.

  ‘You are all aware that the war being waged in the peninsula south of the country has taken a turn for the worse. Now we are informed by the military authorities of the threat of a Japanese invasion of Burma, and the probability of air raids over Rangoon.’

  This grabbed our attention. We all knew that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbour, in Hawaii, on 7 December. Two days later, the pride of the British navy, the battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse, had been sunk in the Straits of Malacca, off Singapore.

  ‘In view of the present situation,’ he said, ‘we have decided to close the school. Your families have been informed.’

  A huge cheer arose, but I couldn’t help glancing quickly in the direction of the favoured boys. I nudged Alfie.

  ‘I get the impression they aren’t displaying quite the same enthusiasm as the rest of us,’ I whispered.

  Then I realised that this meant the end of my worst experience of schooling. The world was being torn apart but I, aged 11, was simply overwhelmed with the joy of escaping St Paul’s and going home.

  The school was known to every school pupil in Burma as the ‘chota [small] gaol’. It was strict and regimented like an army bar-rack. The slightest freedom of speech or action was never tolerated. The rules seemed designed to produce zombies. The school also pandered to wealthy parents, with boarders segregated into three distinct classes.

  My older brother Robert and I were first-class boarders, the privileged ones with separate dormitories and dining rooms. The meals were of poor quality and anybody who complained was spoken to sternly. I felt sorry for the boys who were less fortunate than we were. Boys in the second and third classes often had to put up with eating our leftovers. They pleaded with us to eat everything in our dining room.

  ‘We’re so tired of being fed on stale bread and reconstituted curries. If you eat all yours, they might give us something fresh.’

  The most loathsome aspect of St Paul’s was the ritual of the morning bath time. The ablutions block was a long tin shed with a concrete floor. In the middle, a trough full of cold water stretched from one end to another. Each boy was supplied with a tin bucket.

  Every morning, even in the coldest weather, we had to line up naked and at the sound of a whistle from the priest overseeing all the naked boys, we dipped into the water and wet ourselves. Another whistle and we had to stop and soap our bodies. The last whistle permitted us to dip into the trough and wash the soap off. Any boy going beyond the whistle was punished. It was a ridiculous and cruel ritual, and we were helpless. The priest in charge leered at our naked bodies as he regulated every movement by the whistle.

  Our class mistress was an Anglo–Indian lay teacher called Miss Stevens. She had a sharp tongue and I was often the victim of her broadsides. I suffered her barbed criticisms of my work, but most of the time I let them go over my head and drifted along with my schoolwork.

  Having two good friends in Alfie and Huq made my life just bearable. Boredom overwhelmed me most of the time. The only time I was happy was in the playground.

  My brother Robert was an adaptable person and had settled in to the school much better than I. He seldom complained. He was a top student and the family was justifiably proud of him, as was the school. Since the exams in the higher grades were public, the Protestant and Catholic schools competed to produce the brightest students. Robert was a prize as far as the Catholics were concerned and they showed him special attention. The fuss did not concern him at all. He did what he had to do.

  One day when he returned from a public scholarship exam I asked, ‘What was it like?’

  ‘It was as easy as pissing off a bridge,’ he told me and my awed friends. He did not mean to brag, but he did truly find school lessons easy and interesting. Robert was held in high esteem by the priests.

  ‘Why can’t you be more like your brother?’ they asked me.

  I did not like the constant comparisons, but I was never jealous of Robert’s achievements. I was proud of him and looked up to him.

  WE DISPERSED ENTHUSIASTICALLY, without waiting for instructions from the grim-faced wardens who had lorded it over our very souls. As the three of us walked back to the dormitory together I had a premonition that our lives would change forever. Yet I would have laughed in disbelief had anyone told me that the day’s events would lead me to live my adult life and raise a family in Australia, a country I knew only as part of a geography lesson.

  I did not think about the fact that history was being made or what the war meant for our country. My spirit rallied. I would soon be reunited with the person I loved most – my mother – and the many friends I had been forced to leave behind in Central Burma when my father had decided arbitrarily to move Robert and me away from our mother’s influence to the strict jurisdiction of a Catholic boarding school.

  Born in September 1930, I was just 11 years and three months old when the school closed down. I had been at St Paul’s for just over a year.

  We were an Anglo–Burmese family. Our father, Archie, was a Scot who had come to Burma in the 1920s with the Shell Burmah Oil Company. Soon afterwards he married my mother, Daw Ni, a young, educated woman from a scholarly and well-regarded Burmese family whom he had met through the strict Plymouth Brethren church, to which they both belonged.

  At first the family had lived in Insein, a suburb out of Rangoon, in the south of Burma. The oil company frowned on European employees who had native wives and families and did not permit them to share the company houses at Syriam. This was the company’s base across the river from Rangoon, where there was a huge oil refinery.

  Donald was the eldest child. Ethel was second, Robert third and I was the youngest. After I was born the family moved to Maymyo, a hill town about 3000 feet above sea level in Central Burma, not far from the old capital of Mandalay.

  Maymyo was the summer seat of government, an affluent hill station where the British governor and his officials went to escape the heat of Rangoon summers.

  Jamshed Villa, the house our father bought in Maymyo, had once been the summer residence of an Indian industrialist, Tata, whose business was based in the Indian city of Jamshedpur.

  It was a comfortable brick dwelling, surrounded by beautiful gardens and with a sweeping curved driveway. There was a big oak tree at the front, and purple bougainvillea trailed over a shelter a little way from the house. Canna lilies, African daisies and Arum lilies grew like wildfire, and I remember dahlias flowering every year. My mother’s pride and joy was her rose garden, where she cultivated many species. She always said, ‘I love roses the best.’

  My father remained living and working in the south. He travelled the 400 miles to the Shan States several times a year to see us. We visited him in Rangoon at least once a y
ear. The arrangement did not seem to worry my mother and I never questioned it.

  ‘I prefer to be away from the social scene,’ she always said. ‘I am content to raise my family with the country people of my home province.’

  Before marrying my father, she had graduated in Arts at the University of Calcutta. Pushed to decide on a career by her two cousins, one a lawyer and another an academic at the University of Rangoon, she had chosen to go into education and, as she put it, to ‘help the masses’.

  She thus followed in the footsteps of her forebears, the Mon tribe, who for centuries had been the educators in Burma. Although she gave up her job with the Department of Education when Donald was born, she never really stopped teaching. In her spare moments she gave English lessons to her servants’ children and those of her less well-off relatives.

  My father, on the other hand, never stopped learning. He was a compulsive student of languages and spoke and wrote in many. It was in expressing himself in the spoken Burmese that he had the greatest difficulty. Whenever he spoke at a Gospel service in the native tongue, even I had a problem grasping everything he said. It was no fault of his that the burring speech of a Scot did not suit the soft tonal sounds of Burmese. Their most pronounced consonant, ‘R’, does not feature in the Burmese alphabet.

  ‘If you had been born a Welshman, we would all understand you better!’ my mother used to say.

  He was single-minded and loved setting benchmarks in achievement for those around him, but whether he set the same standards for himself was another matter. Early on he had mapped out the future careers of his children and he kept closely in touch with our development by correspondence.

  ‘Och, Donald will become a doctor,’ he used to tell people. ‘Ethel will go into education and Robert will join the Foreign Office.’

  I had been left out of the calculations until I grew older.