As it was possible to store these sin-cancellers, we kids spent much time ‘doing’ our signs of the cross in readiness. All this at an age when we weren’t yet aware that some sin might be well worth braving the hot-seat for.
The nuns threatened us with the fires of purgatory if we neglected our prayers. Before lights out in the dormitory, we knelt in our pyjamas before an elevated statue of the Virgin Mary holding her child, all pastel blues and gold, her gaze benevolent and gentle. Her plaster foot was placed firmly on the neck of a serpent, its shiny black scales paradoxically aligned to the glory above.
From where I knelt, the serpent’s eye caught mine with an evil penetration, and I often requested an extra shake over my bed from the holy water dispenser to quieten my nervousness. Children of the old Outback like me, who had spent so much time with the lubras and piccaninnies, knew the legends and felt the magic, our naughtiness held in check by nursemaids with dire threats of debil-debils.
After our prayers were said and holy water liberally sprinkled on our beds, the dormitory lights went out. Some of the older girls would then climb the high Convent walls and spend the night in dubious pursuits around town, returning in the early hours, removing smudged lipstick and delivering such terrifying threats to us little kids if we dared tell that not a word passed our lips.
The nuns were well aware of what they were dealing with. They were exceptionally strict and did their best to educate us all and make good Catholic, God-fearing girls of us.
Every Saturday morning a large tumbler of Epsom salts was downed under supervision—and if it made you sick, you were presented with another.
On the odd occasion I wet my bed, I was sent in disgrace to the laundry; with sheets billowing up and around my ears, I dabbled my hands about in the suds in an attempt to wash them. How I missed Bet-Bet, who retrieved my clothes and everything else I cast about.
One of the most curious practices I encountered at the Convent was an accessory to our modesty, the so-called ‘bath dress’. A sarong-type garment made from heavy calico, it was tied around the waist in an effort to protect little girls from gazing upon one another’s naked loins. After use it was discarded in a wet heap by the last wearer, then wrapped cold and clinging around the nether regions of the next in queue, before she slid off her knickers in an action that would arouse the envy of any striptease queen, then took her turn in the tub. Same bath water for all, of course, but we were too young to find this distasteful.
My children refused to believe this quaint gem from the Convent bath ritual until I met Joan Peterson, a charming lady who lived in Katherine, and my credibility was restored, for she too had taken her place in the bath queue of old.
I also have fond memories of the excursions we took, which were unlike those of other schools. We had our own large and sturdy lugger, the St Francis, manned by a Catholic brother, Andrew Smith, who’d been in the navy during the First World War. Brother Smith would sail out of the harbour and take to the open sea, sometimes dropping anchor at Shell Island, a small cay composed of tiny sun-bleached shells. We’d shovel them into bags and take them back to make dazzling paths around the church.
As a non-Roman Catholic I felt quite left out when my schoolmates emerged from church arrogantly sin free after making their confessions. So when a visiting priest arrived for a time, my friend Geraldine and I thought it an opportune moment to purify our souls too. With a little tutoring as to procedure, I went forth alone—for Geraldine had chickened out, as they say.
For me it went thus: ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,’ then when it became apparent one’s sins must by enumerated, I became tongue-tied with nervousness and could only recall that we—heavy emphasis on the we: it was necessary he realise that Geraldine was steeped in this sin too—had purloined Sister Mary Xavier’s large and baggy checked bloomers from the clothesline, and hidden them in the kitchen wood-box.
‘Unholy child! I absolve you of your sin. Ten Hail Marys and one Our Father, and off you go now.’
What a relief, but a certain disappointment too, for I had envisioned the Holy One behind the screen, waving a hand over my sinful brow, and in a great flash of heavenly light retreating from His presence, pure and beatific as the angels in the painting above the church altar.
In a superior attitude of holiness, I saw to it that Geraldine joined me in the Our Father and made sure she said five of the Hail Marys.
We Convent boarders were always on the prowl to supplement our diet, usually with the odd mango from trees within the grounds, or perhaps a coconut or two from the derelict plantation just a short walk down Smith Street from the Convent. Can you imagine an unkempt coconut plantation in Darwin’s Main Street? We could also earn a few sweets from the nuns, if we caught and plucked the fleet-footed, free-roaming chickens for their dinner table (but never a taste).
Sadly they never did come within a fragrant whiff of our refectory. Maybe the heavy, medieval, all-encasing habits they wore in 50-degree heat affected their attitude toward their charges, or perhaps it was just the times.
Pocket money, provided by our parents, was doled out by the nuns at one penny each week, and we were encouraged to head straight on down to the rectory—or Bishop’s Palace, as it was called—where Father Henschke would do his best to sell us a ‘holy picture’. But if we were quick and applied a little cunning, we could evade capture and make a dash for the store—quite out of bounds, of course—and spend our penny on delectable lollies.
For years, Father Henschke was our resident priest, and I have the clearest image of him still; to my child’s eye he was tall and rather stooped about the shoulders. He was a solid man with bushy, untidy hair, big grey teeth and rimless spectacles. As he strode about, his soutane flapped and flowed around him like black wings. We kids crowded onto his huge boots—as many as possible in our bare feet, clustered one upon the other—and he would amuse us by attempting to walk slowly along with us clinging like bats to his robes. He was gentle, kind and vague, and sang very melodiously in a fine soaring baritone during his mass, which is more than can be said for other priests whose mass I attended.
Another marvellous old fellow was a Dutchman, Edwin Verberg, known to everyone as Daddy Verberg, who had a market garden at Adelaide River. Laden with all manner of luscious food, he came often to the Convent to visit his two daughters, Ada and Madeline. We eagerly awaited his visits, not entirely for altruistic reasons. Poor man, we fell in behind him in Pied Piper fashion and gave him no peace, fixing our beady eyes on his bags of goodies. But he seemed happy to entertain us and was always generous. A bridge over the Adelaide River bears his name today and reminds me of his visits and the largesse he dispensed to us voracious Convent kids.
One of my fellow boarders, Madge Gaden, spent much of her childhood in the camps of swampy buffalo country, where her father hunted with the Hardy brothers, my father and Tom Cole. After Madge contracted leprosy, she entertained us by piercing her toes with needles and declaring no pain; we found this trick quite riveting and unsuccessfully tried it ourselves. A talented pianist, Madge was sent from the Convent to the leprosarium on Peel Island, off the Queensland coast. A Darwin business house presented her with a piano to help fill her lonely life on the island.
Eileen G., also a talented pianist, was an attractive and popular young woman whose white father had taken her from her Aboriginal mother’s camp and placed her in the Convent School to grow up with the nuns. After she completed her education, she taught for a while at the Convent. Eileen was a special friend to me; she taught my class and rather spoiled me. I have included a photo of us together. When I knew her, she was always stylishly dressed in the fashion of the 1930s. Later she married a successful businessman and went to live in Adelaide. A happy ending for one who could quite easily have spent her life in the Aboriginal camp, living on the periphery of traditional tribal life, perhaps to become one of the wives of an old man. It would have been tragic to leave her there.
In the end, I regret
to report that I wasn’t one of the Convent’s successes on the religious front. After years of praying to St Anthony to retrieve lost possessions, to St Jude as a fix-it man who dealt with a higher authority to right lost causes, and to St Christopher to ensure I had a safe trip home at holiday time, any Christian inclination I may have had disappeared entirely, and I remain forever bereft of the comfort of religious conviction.
CHAPTER 17
Leaping Lena
‘I do not believe that I shall live to see a railway made from Adelaide to Port Darwin, or even that younger men than I will do so.’
ANTHONY TROLLOPE, 1875
In 1877 a resolution moved by A. Landseer in favour of a rail line from Palmerston to the Pine Creek goldfields was accepted. Built mostly with Chinese labour, the line was completed on 13 June 1889.
Eight times a year for five years I travelled this line to and from boarding school in the 1930s. Am I the last person living who travelled so frequently on this old line? The train I took was officially named Sentinel, but to her passengers she was Leaping Lena because of the violent lurching one endured. More than once she leaped clear off the tracks and ploughed into the bush. But each week she busily huffed and puffed, jolted and rattled along at 30 kilometres per hour amid great clouds of soot, taking a full day to cover the distance from Pine Creek to Darwin.
There were two passenger carriages, each with long continuous seats facing each other across a passageway. Then there was the guards’ van, manned by Len Scott. Known to everyone, he passed along news and delivered packages of the newspapers and books that were shared around bush settlements. Our Aboriginal workers on walkabout sent letter sticks with him to deliver to my mother for rations, which he brought to them on the return trip. The markings on a letter stick conveyed little: the accompanying spoken message said it all.
The third carriage was the ‘blacks’ carriage’, and here a wide-eyed Aboriginal man sat with a tight grip on his bucking seat, uneasily taking in the scene through the window, passing faster than he could ever have imagined. Behind this carriage was a prison van, then a leper van when one was needed.
Leaping Lena was the only train on the bush line, and need not make way for anyone. She could make an unscheduled stop anywhere, if hailed by a horseman or someone sick who required transport to a hospital. There was never a rush.
Lena always stopped at Adelaide River for lunch when travelling north—the iron refreshment room was right alongside the line. Of supreme interest to me was a tiny patch of green lawn at its entrance with ‘Adelaide River’ cut into the growing grass; Pine Creek was undersupplied with green lawns, especially ones with writing.
Inside the refreshment room, tables were set for lunch: sparkling silver and glass, and snowy starched tablecloths with ornately folded damask serviettes. A punkah fan cooled the entire room, operated by a ‘punkah wallah’—a bored Aboriginal boy who sat on the floor by the kitchen, pulling the rope with his toe. Sometimes the arrival of travellers distracted him and the big old fan slowed almost to a stop, whereupon a light poke from the toe of a passing waitress caused a burst of action and the fan flew enough to make the soup flutter.
While lunch was in progress, Leaping Lena took on water from the canvas ‘elephant trunk’ that hung from the high water tank. If passing by the stationary engine, a loud, unexpected and forceful burst of steam could shoot out at your feet from somewhere within her iron-clad belly, as if she were a living angry thing.
When ready to depart, a slow grinding grumph, a final exhale of steam, a laboured gathering of speed—off to Darwin and back to school. Without any cooling system in the train, it was a temptation to lean from a window for a whiff of fresh air, but soot from the engine soon put that out of mind; rarely was the trip completed without something in your eye.
A family of railway sleeper cutters worked along the line just out of Darwin. Several were women; big hardy women, well able to wield an axe as well as any man. Working in the heat, they did as the men did—removed their shirts, baring their large pendulous bosoms, without any thought other than to keep cool, which was unusual public exposure for white women in those days. They were of great interest to travellers on the train, which slowed down and gave a toot of its shrill little whistle in passing. In their baggy khaki bloomers, the sleeper cutters stopped work, leaned on their axes and good-naturedly waved to passengers craning from windows, often with cameras busily clicking. Perhaps there are photographs in far-distant albums of these sleeper cutters along the old Territory rail line.
Convent-indoctrinated child that I was, this cheery scene brought to mind Sister Annunciata—she who ruled in the Convent bathroom and policed the bath-dress ritual. This state of unashamed undress would not sit well with the good Sister, I was sure of that. I once almost told her about it—and that I didn’t ‘cover my eyes’ either—but courage, always in short supply in the presence of Sister Annunciata, deserted me entirely, and she never did hear of it.
My mother once rode from Pine Creek to Darwin in ‘the Quad’: a small, flat, roofless wooden platform on wheels, propelled along the line by the slow back-and-forth pumping of a long handle. It was used as a means for railway workmen to travel the line; I can’t recall the emergency that called for Mother to undertake such a journey, for it was extremely uncomfortable and the last thing for a ‘lady’.
For Mother’s journey, a straight-backed chair was placed on the Quad, and manpower for its slow, jerky progress was provided by two sturdy railway workers. She sat there all day in the savage heat until, at sunset, they rolled rather grandly into Darwin Railway Station, Mother still sitting sedately on her chair, holding her parasol aloft.
Today is 5 March and I am 86 years old. Just as bush Christmases remain in the hidden nooks of the mind where the best memories are kept, so do special birthdays. My eighth birthday shines in my memory as if it were yesterday.
My father made a special trip to Darwin on the train, and charmed Mother Superior into allowing me out for the entire day. He took me down to the Chinaman’s shop and bought me a shiny new Malvern Star bicycle, then off to the Botanic Gardens to learn to ride it. Along these shaded paths, he met a mate from his police days and they decided to take me to the old Vic Hotel for dinner, but first I must have a party dress, for ‘Didn’t all little girls like party dresses?’ Of course they did! Off we went to buy one.
I was in school uniform, so a new dress seemed a good idea to me too. But the pink voile creation, with stiff, wide-tiered frills from waist to hem, was perhaps an unhappy choice. Of course, my father and his friend were thoroughly pleased with themselves, especially when the saleslady kindly adhered a large pink satin bow to my straggly hair, rather like the star atop the Christmas tree.
We headed on down to dinner—me pushing my bicycle, which I was very proud of and not about to let out of my sight for even a moment.
Dinner was a happy time of reminiscences between these two troopers of the old Mounted; memories warmed by a gentlemanly intake of liquor. After dinner, a walk, they decided, to clear the head, and off along the less-travelled paths of old Darwin town we went.
When we passed by a small wooden gate, part-hidden by tropical shrubbery, this seemed to trigger old memories in my escorts. They paused awhile, exchanged a few brief words, and we turned back and entered into a small garden lit with Chinese lanterns that cast a soft shadowy glow among the trees from which they hung. We were met at the door by an elderly Chinese lady dressed in sleek black silk trousers and high-necked jacket, her hair severely pulled back in a bun. With her long cigarette holder and silk fan, which she languidly waved, she remains clear as a photograph fixed in my memory.
She appeared to know her visitors, but cast a stern eye on the eight-year-old apparition in wilting pink frills that ended abruptly above scuffed, knobby knees and heavy school shoes, a pink bow like a tired butterfly drooping over one ear—and could she believe it, pushing a bicycle!
She took my father aside for a whispered confere
nce, with much headshaking and agitated waving about of the cigarette holder—then abruptly she nodded and held open the door: bicycle outside, please.
The room was small, adorned with the Chinese decor with which any Darwinite of the day was familiar: inlaid chests, hanging scrolls, much red and gold. There I was left with four young Chinese girls with flowers in their hair, dressed in long qipaos—a dress with mandarin collar and butterfly buttons. Very pretty, I thought.
At first they seemed unsure, but soon warmed to the novelty of a small visitor, giggled and clustered around, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed. I took them outside to see my new bicycle, rang its bell, and made quite sure they were aware of the skirt guard—coloured netting across the back wheel.
I told them it was my birthday; I was eight years old. This brought forth much clucking and fuss. I was given a colourful paper fan and familiar Chinese sweets. Sitting amid my attentive audience, unwrapping my salty-plums, I told of the purchase of the party dress, which appeared to engender sympathy rather than the expected admiration. They retied the pink bow and threaded the red ribbon of good luck through my hair.
They seemed to know my father quite well, which was nice, I thought.
They came to the door when we left; fluttered their hands and farewelled us in soft girlish voices while I wheeled my bicycle off through the garden. I had enjoyed myself immensely, as would any child when the centre of attention.
I asked my father if I could return sometime, but never did. A child of those times learned many things; dark stories came with strange men out of the bush. One learned early to be circumspect, or as my father succinctly put it, ‘Learn to keep your mouth shut.’ I emerged out of my early years much enlightened, quite unscathed and feel I had a rather wonderful childhood.
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