Digging Up a Past

By John Mulvaney

Known as a historian, conservationist, leading public intellectual, and, most famously, the “father of Australian archaeology,” John Mulvaney is renowned for uncovering the depth of Australian human prehistory. This insightful and illuminating memoir traces Mulvaney's life from his childhood in rural Victoria to his revelatory excavations in central and northern Queensland and his securing of Australia's first World Heritage listings. Digging up the layers of his past and cataloguing the artifacts with the historical rigor and humanity that have defined his remarkable professional life, Mulvaney exposes the personal details of his struggles to have his work recognized and tells the stories of the inspirational people he has met along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: May 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781742240688

Book preview

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1

A COUNTRY YOUTH

In 1925, the year of my birth in the south Gippsland town of Yarram, Vere Gordon Childe, one of Australia’s most influential expatriates, published his pivotal The Dawn of European Civilisation. The Dawn was an archaeological landmark; it synthesised Europe’s human story before the Romans and set a new standard and interest in prehistory. In 1969, I published The Prehistory of Australia, the first account of Australia before the arrival of Europeans. Unlike Childe’s European story, my attempt had little influence on white Australian understanding of the Indigenous past. Four decades later, the mists of ignorance and prejudice are dispersing.

The following recollections, which combine family happiness and fulfilment with a varied and rewarding career, are only as reliable as my memory. Albert Facey stole my title, for mine has indeed been a fortunate life. For decades I have found quotable wisdom in Sir Thomas Browne’s 1658 meditation on death and burial on Hydriotaphia, Urne Buriall. As he reflected, ‘Tis opportune to look back on old times, and contemplate our Forefathers’.

My father, Richard, migrated to Australia from Ireland in 1908. He married my mother, Frances Siegenberg, on Boxing Day 1924. Born on 26 October 1925, I was the eldest of their five children. From 1924, Dad taught at State School No. 1, Alberton. The school’s singular number followed the 1872 Victorian Education Act, when the prime alphabetical classification went to ‘ALB’. Its actual centenary was 1958, when I was honoured to speak at a ceremony on behalf of my late father, who had taught there for an eighth of the school’s history. Also present was the Victorian director of education, Major-General Alan Ramsay, godfather to my wife, Jean Campbell. The ceremony was marred by the fact that, en route to Alberton, our baby daughter Clare was carsick over Jean’s best dress, so the celebrity luncheon beforehand had its moments.

Opening in 1892, Alberton State School was a towering red-brick edifice of pseudo-gothic architecture consisting of an enormous room divided by a partition for infant classes. Then populous, Alberton soon lost its demographic and commercial battle with Yarram, which became the railhead. Like Alberton’s elaborate Victoria Hotel, erected during the late 1880s and optimistically equipped with 27 guestrooms and an attractive wrought-iron tracery balcony, the school was designed for extension. The school and adjoining house were demolished some years ago, while the hotel survives, starkly shorn of its balcony, and with a hideous ‘modernised’ ground-floor interior.

For ten shillings weekly, which was deducted from my father’s annual salary of about £250, we lived in the red-brick schoolhouse (demolished in 1999, previous to my return visit to inspect it). Its central corridor gave access to three rooms set on either side. This passage was heavily curtained beyond the front rooms, presumably allowing gloomy privacy in the living areas down the passage. A front verandah that was covered with climbing roses darkened the already confined and cold front rooms. The lounge walls were covered with a flowered wallpaper in shades of black, grey and pink, which did nothing to brighten the room behind the obligatory blind; illumination was provided by a kerosene lamp. With the spacious school grounds and a gorse-covered paddock adjoining our house, where pupils left their horses, we were as isolated from neighbours as was any farmhouse.

By the time that we departed Alberton at the end of 1936, I had two brothers, Richard Francis (born 1930) and Joseph (1934) and two sisters, Frances (1935) and Mary (1936). As I was five years older than Richard (always known as Dick), to a large extent I amused myself, especially by reading. For some years, until he left for grade 7 at Yarram, my playmate was Ron May, whose family lived in an old house with a verandah on three sides and cypress trees around the fence. Their mulberry tree was a feature in season. Sometimes I stayed there overnight and enjoyed reading from a series of illustrated Bible storybooks.

Christened Derek John, people then knew me as Derek, or more usually Derry, a name that I detested. It was an unusual name so, in those times, rural kids made fun of it. I made it clear to my parents that I did not like being called Derek and wanted to be known as John. From the date that we moved to Rainbow, I became John. Why my parents named me Derek I have no idea; all the names of my siblings have family associations, as does John, which was the name of my maternal grandfather.

Noting the equipment and parental effort needed to entertain my grandchildren, I marvel at the simplicity of our childhood amusements, and the expectation by our parents of our self-reliance. We had devoted parents, but we largely entertained ourselves. Normally, a few wooden boxes or tea chests were arranged into a house or a ship, supplemented by elementary toys. We did not even own a tricycle for some years. When my parents visited neighbours for afternoon tea, it provided a welcome break. It required a walk, of course, because my parents never owned any form of transport.

I was largely responsible for the domestic upheaval of leaving Alberton. By 1937 I had completed grade 6 and required secondary education, but no transport was available to facilitate my attendance at the Yarram school, only eight kilometres distant. So, my father sought promotion to Rainbow, 650 kilometres away in the Mallee. Its Higher Elementary School assured my education to grade 10.

My parents had been happy in Alberton, where that conservative community had accepted them as friends. The move proved unfortunate for my mother’s health; summer heat, combined with housework and caring for three infants that were born since 1934, placed undue strain upon her heart. Across the 17 years left to her until her bedridden death in 1954, she was frequently hospitalised. Probably, access to current medical expertise could have prolonged the quality of her life beyond her meagre 59 years.

My father was born in Navan, Ireland, in 1887 and, following some years in a seminary, he migrated to Australia in 1908. He joined the Victorian Education Department and, after brief training in Ballarat, he taught at various one-teacher Mallee schools until his marriage at the relatively late age of 36. From 1916 he served in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in France and, while troops were waiting for embarkation home at Le Havre, he was promoted to sergeant and taught French to the troops.

Dad proved an unorthodox teacher. Presumably because he spent a few years training for the priesthood, he was fluent in Latin and French, qualifications hardly needed amongst Alberton’s 30 or so pupils. Most of them left school in grade 8 at the then legal age of 14, equipped with a Merit Certificate. Even that was hardly needed for those whose future involved working on the family farm. Dad taught all classes from grades 3 to 8, while a young, inexperienced ‘sewing mistress’ cared for the infants.

My memories begin around 1929, a year before I started school. A year here or there scarcely mattered, however, for our social conditions then were those typifying rural life for decades past. I am very familiar with the many now exotic and obsolete rural appliances traversed in Geoffrey Blainey’s Black Kettle and Full Moon (2003). With hindsight, it was an uncomplicated, routine existence and expectations differed vastly from modern assumptions. Yet, life progressed happily enough.

Except for Bland’s overcrowded and aromatic wooden general store, with a single hand-operated petrol pump outside, the nearest shops were in Yarram. Kerosene lamps supplied home lighting. The copper not only served to boil clothes, but it heated water to be bucketed into the metal bath. Naturally, it proved preferable and more usual to wash hands and feet inside the house in a basin, with water drawn from the black kettle on the wood-fired kitchen stove. Out the back, under a huge cherry plum tree, stood the dunny.

I ventured daily to Harper’s farm for a billy of milk and an occasional sixpenny jar of cream. This latter was kept fresh by a drop of iodine – quite often more, for Dad was heavy handed. At times, the iodine flavoured the cream and what it did for the consumer’s health is unexplained. Still, goitre was a common local ailment, so the iodine may have proved beneficial.

The butcher, baker and an occasional fishmonger all drove their respective unrefrigerated horsedrawn carts to the front gate. There, the butcher carved the required meat, while fish were selected from a box that was packed with ice. Strangely, we always lacked that rural standby, a Coolgardie safe. Our meat was stored in a wire-mesh meat safe suspended from the ceiling which, like the doily-covered milk jugs, stood near the open pantry window. Three rainwater tanks in that wet and windy climate sufficed for water, although ‘grey’ water from washing often sustained garden plants.

Dad was a keen gardener, both at home and around the school through the gate in the dividing fence. He gardened perpetually with great success, flowers usually winning over productive vegetables. I was always expected to help him, despite my contrary wishes at times. I am grateful to him now, because gardening has become my lifetime leisure interest.

Helpful neighbours, particularly the Tuckey family, sometimes drove Mum and me to Yarram for shopping. I remember this with some pain, because I so often required a visit to the dentist. ‘Gas’ used for extractions always made me ill for a day or two. Miss Crombie, the dentist, was a family friend, already venerable because she was one of Victoria’s earliest female qualified dentists. More pleasurable was an ice cream, served in a glass dish at D’Astoli’s Café. Quality service did not save them, however, when Mussolini entered the war and their shop was attacked, even though D’Astoli’s son was in the AIF. The Yarram Co-op was a huge store, or so it seemed then, with canisters of dockets and money speeding along overhead wires to the cash desk. It had a tea room on the first floor. The co-op delivered orders weekly, always a treat because of the gratis bag of boiled lollies.

The Tuckeys’ farm sustained a large Ayrshire dairy herd. Their old wooden house was completely covered, roof included, in faded red paint, and hidden by a cypress hedge. It proved a modern marvel despite its exterior. Their electrician son, Charles, generated their own electricity (one benefit from bitter winds) and they milked their cows with machinery. A great asset was a huge short-wave wireless set; I recall hearing Bradman score 304 runs at Headingley in 1934, while the elders played bridge. Cornish-born, the Tuckeys subscribed to Punch, which entertained me when my parents visited them for tea. But best of all, their red spoke-wheeled Lancia transported us to Yarram, as though in a racing car.

Sometimes Charlie Tuckey took me to Yarram’s new Regent Theatre, where I was enthralled by The Last Days of Pompeii, amused by Mussolini’s posturing on newsreels, laughed at Laurel and Hardy, but was psychologically disturbed by Boris Karloff as The Mummy. Thereafter, that mummy haunted gloomy corners in our house, together with an aggressive gorilla, a terror that I conjured from an image viewed in a book at Tuckey’s.

Leisure time for my parents involved card playing. Friends visited regularly from local farms, together with Yarram professional people such as Miss Crombie and Dr Rutter, our family doctor. They played bridge or solo, my parents descending to euchre only when visitors lacked higher refinements. Around 11 pm they were regaled with a splendid supper. Mother was an excellent and celebrated cook and the quantity and quality of food was much enjoyed. Even during the card game, a plate of homemade sweets sat on the table. Meantime I played or read in the gloomy corner by the fireplace, presumably imbibing my lifetime aversion to cards, while reading in the shadows ensured that I wore glasses before my tenth birthday. And I remember my visit to Melbourne for eye testing – Aunt Rose took me to the King’s Theatre to be intrigued by Dante the Magician, Aunt Adelaide took me to the Capitol Theatre to see Bing Crosby in Mississippi. It was the grandest building I had ever seen. I would like to say that was my introduction to heritage, but I did nothing when the vandals moved in to destroy the Capitol in the 1960s.

I enjoyed reading and often reread my few books, Grimm and Anderson being favourites. Fortunately, my parents bought me comics, beginning with Bubbles and Tiger Tim, graduating up to Triumph and the Pilot by 1935. Friends lent me Pals and Chums – vast volumes of British adventure set in miniscule print. All these comics portrayed such a different lifestyle (and different schools!) that for me their present was indeed a foreign country, but one to be desired and envied. When I reached Britain in 1944, I had been so preconditioned that I felt that I had come to my spiritual home.

I must have been aged about four when Aunt Olive passed on five bound and illustrated tales, which my cousin Bill Carroll had outgrown. They provided The Picture Story of … Dutchy Rabbit, Freddy Foal, Guinea Pig, Huntsman Noah and Cock Robin. The complete series included Naughty Neddy, which I have spent a lifetime unsuccessfully seeking in second-hand shops. Published in Glasgow by Millar and Lang, the books must date from around 1920. I read them so often that I knew them by heart. Later I read them with nostalgia and verve to my own children, who seemed interested. I have them before me now, disappointed that my grandchildren find them boring, even though they purport to be written by ‘Cousin Ken’, and they have an Uncle Ken.

Our life was enriched during 1935 when, through Tuckey initiatives, we acquired a battery-powered wireless and an aerial that extended 30 metres from the chimney to a tall post. The ABC radio station at Sale provided most of the listening, but the clarity of reception across Bass Strait from Burnie in Tasmania offered alternatives.

My birthday present that year was a small-wheeled (24 inch) second-hand bike. This allowed me adventurous rides to Yarram for which I became useful to my mother and father as a shopper and also as the selector of books from the two commercial lending libraries that were located within Anderson and Knox newsagents on the main street. My parents read avidly, my father sometimes consuming a detective story overnight. I got to know their favoured authors – the covers helped – and it assisted Dad’s selection criteria to provide ‘Crime Club’ titles.

During our Alberton years, vacations seemed rare. I recall three joyful Christmas holidays at Port Albert, where we rented houses between (probably) 1931 and 1933. This meant the excitement of watching the New Year’s Day regatta on the harbour. The first occasion was memorable for our means of transport; together with our luggage we scrambled onto the tray of a horsedrawn wagon, with time to enjoy the scenery on the eight-kilometre journey. Then, sheer delight, our rooms were above the bakery (built in 1856), with the constant aroma of baking bread.

Port Albert during the 1930s visibly boasted its former prosperity, its impressive structures then largely derelict. Decaying piers and sunken wrecks marked the shoreline, while buildings which are heritage properties today were then sinking into ruin. Yet, some Alberton families maintained joyful holiday shacks on a foreshore eroding ever closer to their destruction. We sometimes were taken for a day’s drive to the Christensens’ neat cottage, next to Stockwell’s amazing accretion of timber and galvanised iron. These have all long disappeared. Rutter’s boat shed remains, but only the ghost of his large yacht, Mystery, is housed there. Rutter sailed around Cape Horn in a windjammer and I remember his lantern slide lecture in the Port Albert Mechanics Hall on the thrills of the voyage, probably in 1932. I wandered often to a sandy bluff east of the shacks and jumped over the small cliff, with only screeching seagulls around. No trace exists of this happy spot today as it has eroded, like the foreshore where the cottages stood. Our Port Albert holidays ended by 1934 – presumably because the rapid increase in our family made it too difficult for our mother. I cannot recall the entire family ever again going on a vacation.

The Depression must have dominated those lean 1930s, just as it ravaged Port Albert. Our Alberton house was close to the recreation reserve, which was frequented by swagmen seeking shelter in its shed. They seldom passed without knocking on our door requesting ‘work’. Despite their numbers they were never turned away, receiving a meal and a coin for some nominal task, such as chopping wood or sweeping out the open brick drains.

One day a tall, well-spoken Scot knocked. During his meal my parents gathered that he was a decorated former Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter pilot, an exiled member of the Perth (Scotland) aristocracy, now a ‘remittance man’. Mr Motherwell stayed in our home for weeks, caring for house and children when my sister Frances was born. As an expert card player, he joined in the regular guest evenings with our friends. My mother recalled his fine manners and manicured hands. He became such an asset that he could have remained as a family member. One day, however, he announced that he needed to visit Melbourne urgently and walked off. He died a few days later. Evidently he knew that he was ill, though he never referred to any condition, leaving us so as not to cause trouble. His was a human tragedy that touched our family deeply, and fortified Dad in his conviction that charity was the ordained way of life. For that reason, and because our family ate well, we remained in a perpetual state of church mouse poverty.

The three Rs formed only part of our school routine, narrowly fixed as it was within the confines of the nationalistic Victorian Readers, Charles R Long’s Stories of Australian Exploration (1903), the monthly School Paper and copybook handwriting. I was so attracted to exploration that, at about the age of 10, I started writing about the explorers in an exercise book, long since lost.

Dad took an informal approach to learning and told moralising stories, usually with a sense of humour. He wrote and staged three plays in the early years. They proved popular, but the dramatics ended following Guy Fawkes Day, 1930, when a rocket (presumably) ignited Alberton’s massive mid-Victorian mechanics hall. The hall was near the school, but I missed that spectacular fire; we had gone shopping to Yarram and returned to smouldering ruins. I was in the cast of the last play, as one of Snow White’s dwarf retinue. The audience found my unscheduled line amusing – ‘Daddy my [cotton wool] whiskers are tickling!’

Although he could not swim, Dad was determined that all children should learn. Down by the bridge across the Albert River, and within walking distance of the school, was a dressing shed and a small wooden platform (now vanished). With an adult swimmer present for safety, Dad tied a lengthy rope around the learner and immersion commenced, sustained above water with inflatable ‘water wings’. When trouble loomed, the learner was hauled in like a fish. He succeeded in teaching many swimmers, but the reeds, oozy knee-deep mud and the cold temperature of the water rendered me a poor learner. Possibly this contributed to my dislike of swimming, for I always felt cold, and I last swam in 1970, in warmer Mauritius waters, a subject of great family amusement.

My Alberton schooling produced very average results, but I was an avid reader. Annual events proved landmarks in an otherwise uneventful education. Such was the Gould League bird day, when the school trudged some distance to a wooded and grassy picnic spot where Brewery Road crossed a creek. (Alberton once boasted several breweries and many pubs, but the score in my time was no breweries and one pub). Another outing, involving several schools along the railway, was a special day trip by train to Melbourne’s zoo. Tiring enough for children, that day must have proved a prolonged ordeal for the teachers. The arrival of Wirth’s circus, pitching its tent in Yarram, was another youthful attraction.

I saw my first aircraft in 1931. Following the loss of the Southern Cloud, two biplanes flew slowly past on their vain and misdirected search, because the plane had crashed in mountains far distant. A year later, in March 1932, in an attempt to recoup losses from that disaster, the Southern Cross landed in a paddock near Yarram, from where Sir Charles Kingsford Smith flew his famous plane on joy rides. Harry May, elder brother of my school mate, Ron, drove us to view it. Then, Harry generously purchased us both five-shilling tickets for a flight. So, Kingsford Smith piloted me over Yarram, as I marvelled at the antlike people and the toy cars below, but I remember nothing else.

Thrills were deflated once I returned home. My angry father claimed that my life had been put in jeopardy by this unsanctioned action. Even worse, I dared to accept Harry’s charity! While Dad always gave too generously for the family’s good, he always seemed oddly insulted when hospitality was returned. In the midst of the Depression, when proffered a five-pound note by Jack Stockwell for what Dad regarded as the voluntary coaching of his daughter, he threw it in the fire!

Dad’s Irish Catholic faith was fundamentalist and writ clear. It perhaps is fortunate that he died in 1955, before the changes wrought on the church since the Vatican II council. He spent about three years in the seminary at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth before, at the age of 21, abandoning the priesthood and Ireland. At Alberton we lacked both private and public transport, so he deeply regretted missing Sunday Mass in Yarram. Occasionally, the curate held a service in the Port Albert Mechanics Hall and he collected us on the way to swell the tiny congregation. His earthly reward was breakfast afterwards at our home. For the same reasons of transport, I never attended the Yarram Catholic school; indeed, until I completed grade 10, I remained a pupil in my father’s schools.

My father was 36 when he married, and that must have caused angst, for he wed a non-Catholic, Frances Siegenberg, whose Jewish mother was a prominent Melbourne restaurateur. They met sometime in or before 1923. My grandmother owned various popular restaurants in Melbourne’s Block Arcade over the years, including the Wintergarden and the Chicago. My grandmother’s parents and uncles were Danish Jews who arrived on the Bendigo goldfields during the 1850s. They prospered from liquid gold, as Cohn Brothers became brewers and hoteliers of note. Mother’s father was a Jewish immigrant from London, whose tobacconist shop was adjacent to the Block, presumably on Alston’s Corner. He died when Mother was only three years old, the youngest of five sisters. The Wintergarden prospered under my grandmother and her eldest daughter, Aunt Adelaide. It was there that a Polish migrant waitress, Helena Rubinstein, was permitted a corner table upon which to sell her beauty potions. During her days of fame, Rubinstein never acknowledged that initial and invaluable career step.

Mother’s marriage caused rifts within her family and, in my memory, Dad seemed intolerant of his in-laws. Mum rarely saw her mother and sisters. Alberton life must have provided stark contrasts to the comfortable urban-middle-class routine she left behind, particularly as she was a beautiful woman and a minor socialite.

Following our transfer to Rainbow in 1937, the family regularly attended Sunday Mass but, even there, Dad encountered problems from a surprising quarter. Before his marriage he had taught at various Mallee schools and Father Woods, Rainbow’s parish priest who was based in Hopetoun, had known Dad then and vigorously opposed his marriage. Dad never forgave him. Late in her life my mother converted to Catholicism, which must have brought joy to my father, who then was dying from cancer – having been a lifelong chain smoker.

Rainbow district exploited the environmental margins for wheat farming in the state’s northwest. It was then a town of about 1000 people. For an 11-year old it offered exciting contrasts to Alberton village. We had electricity and piped water supply, although our tanks provided drinking water. The bathroom offered the convenience of a primitive chip water heater. A full range of shops lay within walking distance and the Mechanics Institute stocked a surprising range of book titles available for borrowing.

Most attractive of all, however, was the Mecca picture theatre which screened films every Saturday night. Dick and I were frequent patrons at tenpence admission each, with twopence left for sweets. Those were the days of thrilling serials, featuring heroes such as Flash Gordon or Wild West desperados, so we hated missing any Saturday screening.

Our parents settled into a routine of bridge or solo, but with a diminished circle of visitors. Saturday always was cards night. The traditions of a lavish supper continued, so boys returning from the films sometimes benefited. Often the curate, over from Hopetoun on Saturday for Sunday Mass, was entertained on Saturday night at a card evening.

Rainbow’s chief parental disadvantages were several. Although our family now numbered seven, the wooden house was smaller than our Alberton home. We three boys shared a tiny room. Like a ‘Queenslander’ the house was constructed relatively high above ground level, so the steps were an added burden for Mum, who was stressed by the Mallee’s high summer temperatures. Those were years of environmental degradation, in summer the region becoming a dust bowl. A few kilometres away a shifting sand dune promised to obliterate Rainbow, a fate avoided by post-World War II tree planting and other conservation measures. Dust storms were so thick and stifling that I recall occasions at school when all the doors and windows were closed, with the lights on all day. Even so, next morning, dust lay thick upon the room.

During the late 1930s, railway sidings throughout the district were being equipped with their landmark wheat silos. While the Rainbow silo rose slowly, traditional wheat bag stacks were required. Spilled grain from the bags attracted mice and there was a mouse plague around 1938 during which our kitchen swarmed with mice at night. I set traps and always collected a rich harvest. An alternative device proved a success. I fitted an old sock over the base and main body of a beer bottle, leaving the neck uncovered. A tempting piece of cheese was inserted into the bottle top and heated with a match to enhance its aroma. The bottle was laid on its side on the bench with the baited neck projecting over a bucket of water. The ravenous but unwary mouse scampered along the sock, plunging into the bucket once it slipped on the glass. The bait remained intact, while many mice perished.

We lived a contented but isolated existence. Mother never left the vicinity during our four years in Rainbow and only once did Melbourne friends visit her. On one welcome summer weekend, Dad and I were taken by the postmaster for an excursion to the cooler Grampians mountain range but, otherwise, Dad remained housebound. During 1937 I spent two weeks in Beulah with the Huntsmans, chemists, where Dad had boarded when he taught in Mallee schools from 1909 to 1924. I was in Beulah when the coronation of King George VI took place, while newspaper headlines excited me about the fiery destruction of the Hindenburg airship.

Our school occasionally challenged Hopetoun or Jeparit schools in football or cricket. The entire team piled onto the tray of a truck and were driven dusty miles to meet our opponents at the end of bumpy gravel roads. No seatbelts or other safety devices then; fortunately, no casualties resulted from what now would result in charges of criminal negligence.

I might have travelled further afield if I had passed the examination for training as a navy midshipman, which I sat unsuccessfully in 1938. Given my scholastic record it is small wonder that I failed, and later experiences of dire seasickness underlines my good fortune.

My bike allowed me more mobility than had the rest of the family, particularly my handsome blue Malvern Star with white tyres, which was my 14th-birthday present. Riding a Malvern Star then conveyed status, because Hubert Opperman rode one to international fame. I was not to know that, four years later, ‘Oppy’ would teach me aircraft recognition in the RAAF at Somers Initial Training Camp on the Mornington Peninsula.

Following our memorable purchase of an ice chest, I rode regularly to Dawson’s freezing plant and returned with a shilling block of ice, balanced in a sack between the handlebars. In summer, the ice needed to be replaced more often because so many fragments were chipped off the block to provide the luxury of cool drinks for the family. These were hot and thirsty times.

Dad continued gardening with great success, even including vegetable growing. In addition to assisting him, I supplied all fuel requirements for the household by splitting mallee roots, a task that I enjoyed, blissfully unaware that these were better left holding the sandy earth together. Dad and I also attempted the subterfuge of making both the home and the school seem cooler by covering the internal walls with green kalsomine, a water-soluble paint.

Our wireless continued to supply much evening entertainment, while the ABC (via Horsham) and 3DB (from 3LK Lubeck) became our standard fare. Every morning commenced with presenter Daybreak Dan. Although I was never good at any sport, and thoroughly disliked football, I listened avidly to Sheffield Shield cricket and became a fan of first-class cricket on distant ovals.

When war broke out I was at home recovering from an appendicitis operation (in those days it seemed to be an epidemic). I therefore heard Neville Chamberlain and Robert Menzies declare war on my behalf. I remember that we had purchased a case of juicy oranges from a truck driver direct from Mildura and I was eating one at the time. So many local men enlisted during the next few months that social ‘send-offs’ became regular features at the mechanics hall. They proved a source of envy for underage youth.

The Rainbow Higher Elementary School taught pupils from grades 7 to 10 but, as fewer than 50 were enrolled, my class by grade 10 consisted of three boys and five girls. In my final year it is not surprising that I was captain of one of our two ‘Houses’, because only boys were so empowered. In order to field two teams for a cricket match, every boy was pressed into action.

During my first year at the school in 1937, my mother suffered her first heart problems, so I lost several weeks of schooling in order to help in the house. We arrived in Rainbow when Mary was only several weeks old, Frances was 21 months and Joe was under three, so Mum’s life proved to be busy. This was accentuated by our return home for a cooked lunch, followed by afternoon tea. There always were iced cakes, sponge and home-cooked biscuits, which proved popular with favoured school teachers whom Dad often invited for afternoon tea, without first informing Mum. Sometimes, the entire school staff of three enjoyed Mum’s fare.

Absence from school probably contributed to my curious examination results that year. These ranged from eight per cent for Arithmetic and a fail in Algebra, to 95 for English and Geography and 100 per cent for History. In retrospect, I already had no hope in mathematics or science and seemed preordained to pursue history.

My second year accentuated that interest, when Norman Higgs joined the staff. A recent graduate in history from the University of Melbourne, he was an enthusiastic and encouraging teacher. While he stimulated my interest, he alarmed the local citizenry. Gossip spread that the post brought him red-covered volumes from the Left Book Club, probably making him Rainbow’s only consumer of such ‘radical’ stuff. Whether or not that explains his regretted departure at the end of the year, I have no idea. Fortunately his successor, Gordon McCrae Williamson, was a fine and sympathetic master, though no radical. I still treasure historical novels which he gave me. Consequently my exam results in History, English and Geography were high each year, while my results in Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry – hateful subjects – were weak. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to those dedicated teachers.

French, the only foreign language offered, was never attractive. It was well taught by my father, who otherwise supervised both the primary and secondary schools. It proved a disappointment to him that I was a mediocre student of French. I suspect, however, that no child of a headmaster should be taught by him, for peer pressure is cruel and parental expectations too high. In later life my rule was, as far as practical, to avoid teaching my own children. I suspect that Dad felt greater devotion to France than to his natal Ireland. He certainly had no respect for Eamon de Valera, then prime minister and later president of Ireland. They were traumatic days when France fell to Germany in 1940. For a few days Dad banned even listening to the radio news. A position as unhelpful as a Rainbow friend (Mr Hackett, the saddler) who, when Japan entered the war, smashed every piece of Japanese crockery in his home!

I obtained my grade 10 Intermediate Certificate at the end of 1940 and could progress no further at Rainbow. The nearest high schools were some 80 kilometres away, so it was time for Dad to seek a transfer, which nobody but himself regretted. In the event, he was appointed as headmaster at Cranbourne primary school, 50 kilometres from Melbourne; our house was on the bus route to Frankston High School.

Soft rain added sparkle to the green trees on the day we arrived in Cranbourne. In the paddock which belonged to our school house the bush grew thick and colourful on the rich sandy soil. This environment felt so welcoming and cool after Rainbow’s near aridity. The bracken fern which flourished along our fence provided me with a recurring pleasurable exercise in slashing it. The flowers in our fertile sandy soil soon surpassed Dad’s previous horticultural efforts. For some years Mum’s health improved and she welcomed easy train excursions to Melbourne shops and visits to us from Melbourne friends. These early wartime years were quiet but happy domestic ones. My leisure involved gardening and wood chopping, both physically and mentally rewarding, and reading many novels with historical themes.

One definitive cultural awakening may seem jejune but it was personally crucial. That involved the showing of the film, The Great Waltz, in the local hall one night during the winter of 1941. I was then unaware that the original music of Johann Strauss had been doctored by Hollywood to sentimental schmaltz, and found the music really moving. I had never before heard so much concentrated music by a composer and, for many years, Strauss remained my favourite. I subsequently graduated to more sophisticated things and