Rod Stinton: A Boy from Brisbane

By Rod Stinton

A story of 1940's Brisbane history, familial recollections and tongue-in-cheek observations. Be prepared to laugh at the candid and politically incorrect childhood memories and thoughts of MD and Psychiatrist, Dr Rod Stinton.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483588728

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1

Two Bob to Slope Off

Listen Yank, who said you could come onto our farm? Do you know you’re trespassing on our land?

That’s OK then. You can stay here, but I’ll tell you what. If you give us two bob, we’ll slope off.

Good on you Joe. You’re a mate.

Two people in a partial state of undress, a Yank and his girlfriend, a Greenslopes Hospital nurse, looking for privacy and willing to pay two bob for it, accosted by a couple of little kids who were always on the lookout for some way to earn a little moolah. In the 1940’s, when the Japs were ready to invade Australia, the Americans built an Army hospital at Greenslopes, Brisbane; bordering the Ardill’s Dairy Farm, our farm, and our land.

The Yanks were very popular with the girls here, but hated by the Australian men, who were jealous of the Yanks’ money, charming nature and generous ways. The Yanks were affluent, personable, and had the gift of the gab. They were generous with material gifts of cigarettes, silk stockings, candies (lollies), chocolates and Army paraphernalia (caps, badges, hats, etc.). Little boys and Australian girls loved them. The average Yank was very good at charming most girls right out of their pants. It’s not hard to see why the Aussie men hated them.

But if one wanted to canoodle with a girl in those days, how did one get any privacy with no cars, no motel rooms, strict parents, etc? The answer of course was the thick bushland right beside the hospital, and on our farm! Our gang (us kids) was namely my brother Keith, three years older than me, and Lennie and Willie Ardill, also older. I was seven years old, living on a farm and the youngest of seven children. At seven, I had already swallowed the dictionary, so I knew all the facts of life (ie. bonking) before I even started school. I had seen bulls, horses, dogs, cats, roosters, and even people, bonking many times. I had seen calves, pups, kittens and goats being born.

My Grandmother Stuart, who lived next door, was the local midwife. I had listened to many conversations around the kitchen tables about difficult deliveries, and about who was ‘up the duff ’, etc.

I listened to my older brothers’ conversations and talk about girls and who was a good root, etc., and had seen their girlie magazines hidden under their mattresses. I could read when I was three years old. The Old Man was a womaniser, more randy than a Tom Cat or Tom Cruise, or even Adam Sullivan. For the women-folk in our family, their main gossip was complaining about what the Old Man was up to, and the latest biddy he had been chasing. I would sit unobtrusively and quietly in the background, taking it all in. Often, while working on the bread run with the Old Man, I would have to beep the car horn when he was spending too much time in an abode, where he was obviously ‘knocking off ’ the lady of the household.

Anyhow, we would keep a weather eye out for courting couples in our bushland, and we would saunter up to make friendly conversation. We’d be a bit noisy on our final approach so as not to embarrass Romeo and Juliet too much. They would always give us money to go away. What a nice little money earner; money for jam. Money was always on our minds. Kids didn’t get any money given to them in those days unless they earned it in some way. So we were always on the lookout for ways to get some moolah. This was one of the main themes shaping my early life.

A second theme shaping my early life was the loving care and warm nurture given by the females of the household; a lasting legacy of security for all my life. Grandma Stuart, who lived next door, two sisters much older than me, Aunty Jube Jube and Aunty Rosie, and especially my Mother. My Mother seemed like an angel; a loving, caring mother with her heart devoted to her children; warm and loving, helpful and protective.

Run. Get out of there. The ducks will get it. My Grandma yelling instructions from her back landing, when I was two years old, my earliest memory. She died while I was still two. With only a singlet on I was chasing the backyard chooks and ducks.

Keep your pants on all the time, she called advice. If only I had heeded this good advice in later life, what trouble and strife it would have saved me. My girlfriend, however, dismisses this story with this comment: So that’s what happened to it. As Dickens said, The best of times. The worst of times.

A third theme in this story is that life is not all beer and skittles. As Aunty Rosie would often say, Everyone has their problems.

From my main problems in early life I learnt that life can be hostile, and that we all live in a hostile universe. My present and looming menace was that I had two ogres in our family - the Old Man and Tightwad Tad - both of them cruel and sadistic, pathologically so. Wicked to small children.

And the Japs were coming!

And what did Mum have hidden in the bathroom cabinet?

2

Ogres

1942 was a very scary year for Australia. The dirty little Japs were making steady progress in their advances towards the invasion of Australia. The war in Europe seemed a long way away.

The wireless radio and the newspapers were full of propaganda stories of the Japanese atrocities in Manchuria, the Rape of Nanking, the Philippines, New Guinea, Singapore, bayonetting Chinese babies, starving prisoners, etc. Wars are full of atrocities on both sides. The Germans gassed millions of people, and don’t forget all the atrocities that the British settlers in Australia committed against Aboriginal men, women and children.

So in 1942 we were very worried about the imminent Jap invasion. One day, our mother lined all us kids in the bathroom and showed us a bottle of fluid in the bathroom cabinet. She warned us not to go near it as just one drop would kill many people, and even smelling it would be lethal. This was to be administered to us if the Japs arrived. This never happened. The Japs were completely defeated, culminating in two atomic bombs annihilating two of their cities. One thing that annoys me is that most of the monsters that start the wars and commit the atrocities never get punished. For political reasons, mainly because the Americans were scared of Russia and other Communists, most of the German and Japanese bad guys went unpunished. But how the civilian populations suffered! Most German cities, and Hiroshima, Nagasaki and large parts of Tokyo were annihilated.

That will teach the idiots who showed blind obedience to Hitler and Hirihito. But what about the many innocents among the 60 million people who died in World War II?

I just can’t understand why so many people show blind obedience to silly religious superstitions. Look at the obsequience given to the Pope, and by Jewish and Muslims. They have no idea how silly their beliefs are, and that there is no ring of truth to their ideas. For example, when one group in California committed mass suicide and said they were going to be transferred to a space vehicle hidden by a comet and the moon, the Catholics scoffed at them and called them a cult. Yet, the Catholics have no insight that they are themselves a cult. Their own beliefs are just as silly. They have these beliefs and faith because they have been brainwashed as children. If you grow up in Ireland, you will tend to be Catholic, in Arabia a Muslim, in Thailand a Buddhist, etc. Brainwashed as children into accepting what their elders tell them. Have you ever thought how much of the world’s troubles are caused in the name of religion?

Just as an aside, with the troubles in Northern Ireland with the Catholics and Protestants killing one another, and setting bombs in pubs which blow off the legs of small children, an Irishman said, Imagine how bad it would be if both lots weren’t Christian.

So the Japs were routed and soundly defeated and the cyanide never needed to be used.