Turn Turn Turn

By Mike Berry

Wars, pandemic, and the Great Depression. This is a novel about personal triumph against adversity in a rapidly growing suburb of Melbourne Australia, during a time when the nation’s very existence was in peril.



The narrative flows from World War I through a global pandemic, the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War. The Jenkins family, their friends and neighbours confront world-shattering events from the cocooned existence of an isolated island dragged into a global present. Not only must they deal with the intimate realities of domesticity, the conflicts, the anxieties and the fears, their lives are buffeted by forces beyond their control and comprehension.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Conrad Press
• Release date: Jul 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781839783067

Book preview

Autumn

May 1920

Last night I dreamt of a time long past. Before the bulldozers. Before the cars. Before the hustle of city life. I saw again the sweeping plains to the edge of the world where the hills rose up towards the sky. I saw the sun glinting on the blue-grey bay, heard the birds singing. Then I woke with the pre-dawn chorus still echoing.

As the grey light crept down the road, other life began to stir. Young Jim from number 32 was out and about, striding stiff legged up the hill towards the local shop that sold many things, including the daily newspaper that he devoured, starting at the sports section at the back, and reading forward until he reached the front page which he read several times before grunting and throwing the paper on the kitchen table in disgust.

‘Bloody useless idiots, wouldn’t know a fact if whacked them in the eyes.’

It was never clear who the idiots were. There were so many. Jim had a very poor view of his fellow man. Local shopkeepers, nosey neighbours, noisy kids, bank tellers, estate agents, used car salesmen, gossipy women, tinkers, rabbitohs, bread carters – and their draught horses – politicians. Above all, politicians. Self-servers, shirkers, stayed nice and safe while sending good men off to war. Wouldn’t know their elbow from their arse, useless in a fight. Cowards, every last one of them. Made a packet along with their business mates while he and his mates slogged through the mud and gore of Northern France. Peronne, that bloody fortress town on the Somme where he lost seven mates before the Fifth finally threw the Boche into the foul waters.

The only ones he trusted were men like himself who had, against all odds, survived and returned home. Survived! Ha! What did he and his kind come back to? A people that looked the other way when he limped past. A community that silently grieved for those who lay unknown and unloved in the mud and blood of Flanders – and rushed to forget. A boss who refused to give him his old job back. ‘Sorry mate, you just can’t manage the lifting. I’d like to help but times is tough, what with the taxes and the weather.’ What the hell did the weather have to do with it? No, the boss did all right out of the war. Sitting back and supplying the AIF with bedrolls and canteens. Bloody idiot, no bloody idea!

In the house two doors down and opposite from Jim, Elsie was bustling around her kitchen. A sprightly seventy-year-old, Elsie Hubbard had plenty in her cupboard. Enough to regularly take Jim a home-cooked meal. Have to keep the poor man alive, all skin and bones he was when he came home from over there. ‘Over there’ was a vague concept in Elsie’s mind. Vague and altogether unpleasant. So many foreigners, bloodthirsty lot, they were, taking our boys.

She had known Jim since he moved to the street with his widowed mother twenty years before. So sad, Mrs. Johnson, barely forty when she died the day before Jim’s thirteenth birthday. Poor lad. Went to live with an uncle until old enough to come back to his mother’s house. A lively, cheerful boy. A bit cheeky but no harm in him and his mates. So proud they all were when they joined up. The whole street came out to wave them off. Tommy, John, Trevor and Billy. Only Jim returned. But not to a joyful reception. Every time a parent saw him, it was a reminder that their son did not come home. So only Elsie, childless spinster, looked after Jim.

Elsie stood a little over four foot ten inches and weighed little more than six stone. She had grey-blue rinsed hair courtesy of the local hairdresser Ginny who acted as the distributor of tasty titbits concerning the recent tribulations of her clientele. Elsie presented an incongruous sight when standing next to Young Jim, all six foot and twelve stone, though his war wound caused him to bend forward, even when stationary, somewhat blunting the height and bulk contradiction. His sandy hair contrasted with dark brown eyes, eyes that seemed to be ever vigilant, as if on guard, waiting for the next German attack by men or shells or gas.

He had been lucky, if that epithet could ever be bestowed on those who went ‘over there’. He and his rotation had been on respite behind the lines at Ypres when the chlorine gas had first rolled over no man’s land, to burn and terrify unsuspecting diggers. By the time he had returned to the frontline, initial defences against the lethal clouds had been instituted, inadequate as they were. He was saved for later sacrifice. He didn’t even hear the shell that burst though the flimsy wooden ramparts and took half his leg with it. They later told him that they found his boot buried in the chest of another digger who’d been crouching next to him.

Up the road in the other direction the household was stirring. Ted Jenkins was busy finishing his morning ablutions. His wife Betty came into the bathroom, stood back and examined him critically. He was a tall, slim man of average though athletic build, with a full head of dark brown hair, parted on the left and combed back from a wide forehead. An adolescence dominated by sport had instilled both confidence and a competitive drive. His wife was petite, but her small stature belied a spirit of determined mission in life, focused on her husband and only child.

‘You’ve dropped egg all over your tie, you silly man. Here, let me, you’ll only make it worse.’ Betty skilfully wielded a tip of her apron and despatched the offending stain.

‘It’s no good, you’ll have to change it. Another addition to the wash. I don’t know how anyone can be so clumsy.’

‘Haven’t time, old girl. Can’t miss my train. It’ll have to do.’

Ted grabbed his hat, picked up his lunch carefully packed into a brown paper bag by Betty, and shoved it into his briefcase. With a quick kiss on Betty’s rosy cheek, he leapt out the front door, bounded down the pathway and through the front gate. Without breaking stride, he raced up the road, turned right and slowed to a fast walk. Should be at the train station in time. Wouldn’t do to be late at the office. That bastard Ron Reilly would be only too glad to point up any laxity on his part. In the struggle between them for promotion to level 3 in the state public service, any tactic was in play. By rights of seniority, he, Ted, should be a shoe in. But Ron was clever, assiduously planting doubt in the supervisor’s mind about Ted’s ability to do the job. Pity about that small arithmetic mistake Ron had picked up in my last report on the inventory costs. Got to be more careful, old man. Eternal vigilance. That’s what the new returned serviceman’s league insisted. Can’t let the enemy sneak up on us.

He heard the train whistle just as the railway station came into view. Breaking into a run, Ted climbed the steps two at a time and dashed across the overpass. He arrived on the platform in time to see the engine chug into the station, followed by the soot coloured carriages. Thank God, the old steamers would soon be replaced with electric locomotion. Pretty soon all of Melbourne’s boom-time rail network would be electrified and copping an eyeful of cinders and coming home with filthy hands and coat would soon be but a distant and distasteful memory. Pondering the wonders of modern technology, he walked along the platform until he found a carriage slightly less crowded and clambered aboard. Wedged between an old man holding a large bag on his lap and an even larger woman who was busily chatting to the lady sitting opposite, Ted leaned back with a sigh and opened the morning paper he’d grabbed from the letter box as he departed the family home. Now for a bit of peace.

Back at number 24, Betty had finished clearing away the breakfast remains and turned her attention to her other charge.

‘Patty dear, time to get dressed for school.’

In a small room at the end of a corridor, seven-year-old Patty Jenkins groaned. She put her doll Daisy carefully back into her small pram, laying her on the soft sheet embroidered by Aunty Dot. There followed a well-practiced process of covering Daisy with a second sheet, also courtesy of Aunty Dot, precisely tucked in in the manner Patty had seen her mother carry out daily on the big beds. Finally, a special blanket with fancy crocheted edges was laid on with small, loving hands. Patty stood back and surveyed her handy work with pride.

‘There, Daisy. You be a good girl while I’m at school. If you are, I’ll take you for a long walk when I get home.’

‘Patty!’

The little girl grabbed her blue and white checked tunic and pulled it over her head. Socks and shoes were quickly added.

‘Come here dear and I’ll do your hair. Have you cleaned your teeth?’

Betty brushed Patty’s long red hair in slow practiced strokes, parted it and expertly wove the two strands into tight plaits.

‘There, you look very nice, just like Anne of Green Gables.’

‘Oh Mummy, why didn’t you call me Anne,’ Patty sulked. ‘I don’t like being a Patty.’

‘Patricia is a perfectly good name. Why it’s your Grandmother’s name and you love her.’

Patty had to admit to the second part of her mother’s judgment but still reserved her right to dispute the first. Secretly, she was an Anne. Indeed, she rather thought that she’d found her Gilbert in the class ahead of her!

‘Make sure you keep your coat buttoned up, dear.’

Betty wrapped her arms across her chest to keep out the chill wind and watched her daughter skip down the path and out the gate, trailing her school bag behind her. Patty ran the three doors to her best friend Frieda Dunkin’s house and disappeared through the front gate. It was Frieda’s mother Monica’s turn to walk both little girls up the high street to the small primary school that had been recently opened by the Premier in answer to the rapid growth of the new suburb. Betty would, in turn, pick up the girls at going home time and join in their excited chatter all the way home. How fortunate she felt. Mother to her precious little girl and married to a wonderful man.

She had set her cap – as her spinster Aunt Edith had put it – on Ted the first time she had seen him. Her father had taken her, somewhat against her will, to watch a football game. The local eighteen were playing a team from over the river. She had immediately been struck by the athletic appearance and obvious sporting talent of the centre. She asked her father who the player was. ‘Why that’s Ted Jenkins,’ he replied. ‘They say he’s good enough to play for Richmond one day.’ But, although Ted did play for Richmond seconds for a season and on one occasion was selected to sit on the bench for the senior team, he never made it onto the ground, nor into the army, as it turned out. His sporting career finished abruptly thanks to a broken elbow collected when a ‘specky’ went wrong. By then he was courting Elizabeth Golding.

Betty rose, walked to the sideboard and picked up a framed copy of their wedding photo. Ted with his grey double-breasted suit, looking like the up and coming public servant that he had become, she, wearing her mother’s wedding dress and grandmother’s train. The ceremony was held at Ted’s family’s church exactly a year to the day before the assassination of an obscure central European aristocrat set in motion the worst war in history. The reception was held at Ted’s parents’ house, where the young couple lived for the first two years of their marriage. Patty was born a year and a month later. Betty glanced into the mirror above the sideboard, turned a little to the right and wondered, would he marry her today? She brushed a strand of hair from her forehead and answered in the affirmative – ‘not bad, even if I do say so myself.’

It was true, Elizabeth Jenkins, nee Golding was a fine-looking woman. Small but not too small, nicely rounded with a fine bone china complexion, she still drew admiring glances from strangers in the street, especially men. Her naturally blond hair was regularly and carefully tended by Ginny, and she was skilled with needle and thread, so that she and Patty always looked more fashionable than their ordinary lot in life otherwise decreed.

Across from the Jenkins and two down, Ricky Barrett walked from his back door to the single garage perched perilously to the side of the weatherboard house. Neither structure had seen much loving care since before the Great War. Ricky was fifteen, small for his age but just beginning to display that rapid growth spurt that nature provided to bring late bloomers up to maturity. He had jet black hair, carefully brushed back from a wide forehead, leaving a distinctive V-shaped coastline that accentuated his long sallow face, a face that was saved from ugliness by a strong, prominent chin and unnaturally bright green eyes. His was a face that, once seen, was not forgotten.

The paint on the garage was peeling, and Ricky had to tug hard to move the door ajar. The hinges complained, almost as loudly as Ricky.

‘Bloody door, why doesn’t the old man get off his arse and fix it.’

His father Barry, as if on cue, stuck his head out of the kitchen door and yelled, ‘Make sure you close the bloody door this time.’

Yeh, Yeh, muttered Ricky to himself, far too shrewd to let his father hear. The old man was a devil when he lost his temper, especially after a trip to the pub with his mates. Ricky had learnt early to avoid head on confrontations with his father, an art he’d acquired from his mother Beryl. Of late though, Ricky was becoming more inclined to speak up, mainly in defence of his mother. He had even managed last week to prevent his father from administering a customary whack to Beryl, but only at the cost of copping one himself. Nevertheless, he could sense the balance shifting, ever so slightly. It won’t be long now, he ruminated grimly. A few months, a year and he’d have it out with the brute. Time was working on his side. Every day he felt stronger. Every binge brought his father one step lower, one step closer to the thrashing that he richly deserved.

With that warming thought in mind, Ricky removed the tarp from the old motor bike that he had rescued from the tip and lovingly restored to working though noisy order. Wheeling it out onto the gravel driveway, he propped it against the house and turned to drag the garage doors shut. He jumped onto the bike, adjusted the throttle and violently kick started the ancient machine. A little choke and two more attempts and the engine roared to life. Easing back on the throttle, he slammed the bike into gear and let out the clutch as he opened the throttle again.

The noise was gratifyingly ear-splitting. A dog yowled and Mrs. Brown’s cat dived under the house. By then Ricky was flying down the road quickly approaching its end at the creek. Just before he reached it, he leaned expertly left and guided the machine towards a dirt mound. Opening the throttle further, he sped up the rise and launched himself into the air feeling the familiar exhilaration of flying, before landing on the other side of the creek in a squeal of tyres and a choking cloud of dust. Off along the excuse for a road he sped, dodging in and out of trees and stumps, leaving two local urchins who had witnessed his derring-do open mouthed.

‘That boy will end up in hospital or worse,’ said the mother of one to the mother of the other. ‘Mark my words.’

All this and the sun not up for two hours. So different to the endless past, before the white people came, before the dark people came, before the birds and the animals, when only the land, the ancient land and its spirits prevailed. Before the Dreaming, before the before. So long ago that even I am having difficulty recalling the peace, the all-pervading calm. Now my view is hemmed in by the houses creeping their stealthy path along my piece of earth. Roads are cutting through the ancient landscape, fording the creek, removing the hillocks and flora. Houses and humans dotted irregularly before me cover at least half the spaces that used to form my immediate realm. Like the jawbone of a long extinct animal, gaps – empty spaces – connect the dots. It’s only time, short, short time before the spaces are all gone, mine too.

August 1920

‘O ver here, mate.’ A man with ruddy complexion and massive forearms signals to two younger men. A van with the sign ‘Barlow Master Builder’, painted on one side stood half on and half off the road next to the plane tree that marked the middle of the building allotment.

‘Start at this corner and mark the boundaries.’

I can see two men carrying a strange looking instrument. They place it on the ground. One man retreats and holds a striped pole. His mate peers at it through the instrument, motioning with his hand. The first man, Robbie as I soon learn, makes small adjustments to his stance and stoops to mark a spot on the ground. This goes on for an hour and a half. Several other men join the first three, carrying lengths of timber and wheeling bricks.

‘Smoko,’ yells the boss. As if by some invisible signal, they all sit down on upturned buckets and reach into their satchels, pulling out small tins that they prise open. Pieces of fruit, bits of cake and in one case, a can of sardines appear. A couple of men roll and light cigarettes. The youngest of the crew had already stoked an open fire and boiled water in a tin can. Into it he tossed a handful of rich dark leaves. They floated on top of the bubbling brew. The boss stepped forward and with a large dirty cloth wound around his hand, grabbed the handle and lifted the tin. He then stepped backwards, and arm held stiffly quickly twirled the can and its contents in two complete revolutions. Looking into the can he expressed satisfaction.

‘Teas up mates.’

The rich brew was carefully poured into the procession of battered enamel mugs eagerly held towards the proffered vessel.

‘Aarrh, nothing like a good cuppa.’

Several of the men reached into their dilly bags and pulled out tobacco pouches. Cigarettes were rolled, matches struck, and a collective inhale unlocked the nicotine shock that regulated their day like a clock. General murmurs of appreciation punctuated the peaceful scene with only the distant rumble of lorries and carts along the high street providing a backdrop to the closer and more melodic choir of magpies and the insistent hum of bees going about their work in the open spaces between the nearby houses.

Winter is lingering but fighting a losing battle. Spring is pushing, pushing against the dying dance of Jack Frost across the lawns and gardens of Ross Street. Several doors up the street, the first buds are just emerging in Mr. Juliff’s carefully curated front yard. A suggestion of leaves graces the first of the plane trees planted by the Council, part of a plan to add a tree in front of every house in the street.

The men ate, smoked and drank until, again by some instinctual response, all rose and began to pack away their cups and containers, and stubbed out the fag ends, tossing them onto the ground to be stamped into the foundations of the house that would rise like the autumn mushrooms festooning what is left of the surrounding countryside. The men stood around the fire warming their hands until the boss tossed a billy can of cold water on the dying embers.

For the next few hours, they moved purposefully around the land measuring, marking and hammering stakes into the ground. Lengths of string were produced and tied in no pattern that I could discern joining some of the stakes. This went on all day until the boss yelled ‘Pack up time. Move it. Mind, Robbie and Mack, pack away that theodolite in the shed.’

Until then I had not noticed that a small tin structure had been sunk into the earth at a point behind the majestic gum tree that marked a corner boundary with the house abutting from the street behind me. Obediently, the two men carried the instrument and a series of other implements to the shed and stored them inside. Once they were satisfied that nothing had been left outside, they closed the door and snapped the heavy padlock in place. I could hear them laughing as they walked together up the street.

As they left, a group of school children ran down from the opposite direction, laughing and yelling their delight at their regained freedom. They were kicking a rolled-up ball of rags along the dusty, unsealed road. The modern marvel of sealed bitumen was years away from joining the high street. I was then left alone for two hours until the lights newly installed on the high street came on and fathers began to drift home after the day’s labours.

And so, another moment in the endless march of time passed, to be repeated in the following weeks, as bit by bit a structure began to rise on my earth.

At the beginning of the fourth week, a man in a suit and hat appeared on site. The boss dropped his hammer and went to greet him.

‘Morning Mr. Gibbs. Welcome to number 37 Ross Street.’

‘Thank you, Mr. Barlow. Let’s get started. I have several properties to check this morning.’

‘Right ho. As you can see, the foundations are firmly in place and we’re ready to begin to lay the floor.’

There followed a dual dance in which Mr. Gibbs bent and minutely scrutinised each foundation block. The boss followed close behind occasionally offering quiet comments. Every now and again Mr. Gibbs paused, reached into his waistcoat and took out a tape measure that he used to check the height from the ground. He then consulted a plan held by the boss.

‘Who the hell is this geezer.’ The questioned was uttered by one of the labourers, a stunted Londoner newly arrived from England.

‘Shut up, mate’ whispered another. ‘He’s the man from the state bank. The people buying this house don’t get the money from the bank until he’s satisfied with the job we’re doing. And if they don’t get the money, we don’t get paid. So, belt up and make sure you don’t get in his way. And put that bloody fag out!’

After an hour Mr. Gibbs appeared satisfied and went on his way.

‘Well done lads, he’s happy.’ The boss looked relieved and told the youngster to boil the billy.

November 1920

Mr. Gibbs returned regularly, tape measure and plan in hand, over the next few weeks as a house rose towards the sky. He was a man who looked like he had pressing business elsewhere but one whose iron-clad sense of professional duty required that no stone be left unturned, literally. He was of middling height and build, with a prematurely balding head that looked a little too large for the rest of his body, an embarrassment he hid by wearing a wide-brimmed hat, not at all the style normally chosen by professionals or businessmen. This apparent anomaly he explained as due to doctor’s advice to shield his fair skin from the ravages of the antipodean sun.

Towards the end of the month a man and woman with a small child arrived just as the men were finishing smoko. A weak sun shone down just bright enough to cause the man to shade his eyes as he critically surveyed the site.

‘Hello Mrs. Mattingly, Mr. Mattingly. And is this little Brian? What a treasure.’ The men looked at each other, puzzled. They had never heard the boss speaking so gently. Then their curiosity turned to the newcomers.

‘The proud owners,’ said one of the older workers under his breath. ‘Come to see their new home.’

Robert James Mattingly was dressed in a smart city suit with Melbourne Cricket Club cufflinks. He was about forty years old but looked older, thanks to the air of gravitas and self-confidence he habitually radiated to the world. Jet black hair was Brylcreemed back from his forehead in a severe plastered sweep. His wife Vivienne, as I soon learned, was a year younger, a late and unexpected mother of three-year-old Brian, over whom she fussed and fretted, somewhat to the annoyance of the boy’s father.

Her quiet and shy demeanour belied a fierce commitment to hearth and home. She was determined to make their new home into the haven of love and peace that had eluded her own disrupted upbringing. Growing up in a violent household from which her father had eventually decamped, leaving her mother to raise two difficult boys and herself, she saw her husband and child as her mission in life and this house as its firm foundation. She was a little shorter than her husband and wore her brown hair cut short in the modern way. This accentuated her slender neck and directed the eye to her eyes, hazel with grey flecks and to her high cheekbones. She was wearing a long slimline brown skirt and matching short jacket. This made it difficult for her to step up to the front door and over the board placed at shin height to prevent unwanted night-time visitors. Her husband hoisted her onto the hallway floorboards.

For the next hour the couple walked around the partly finished house. Even with limited walls and no ceiling they could see the layout and get a sense of what living there would be like.

‘Oh, Bob, It’s lovely. And to think that it’s going to be our very own.’

‘Yes, ours and the banks, Viv.’ Her husband laughed but was clearly as enamoured as his wife. Only three-year-old treasure seemed underwhelmed.

‘Now Brian, don’t do that, leave that filthy rag alone,’ said his mother.

‘Let the boy alone Viv. He’s only exploring.’ As if granted permission, Brian scuttled away and soon found a discarded can, full of nails and other interesting objects.

‘There’s nothing dangerous on site, Mrs. Mattingly,’ cut in the boss helpfully. ‘Boys will be boys and a bit of dirt won’t hurt.’

Mrs. Mattingly looked doubtful but let it pass. That was all very well for the builder and Brian’s father, but it would be her who has to clean and mend his clothes and console him if he gets a splinter.

However, the visit passed without incident and the trio departed happy. The boss too was in a good mood and let the men off fifteen minutes early. More drinking time, they chortled as they hurried off.

February 1921

‘T his bloody heat will be the death of me, I swear.’ The boss reached into his overalls and withdrew a large, dirty handkerchief. Mopping his brow, he continued, ‘What a summer, hundred in the shade, day after bloody day.’ Mr. Barlow spoke with a slow drawl that betrayed his origins in country Victoria.

‘Going to be a stinker, all right,’ replied one of the men. ‘They say, it’ll be one of the worst bush fire seasons for years.’ The staccato rattle of the speaker likewise betrayed its owner’s origins in Fitzroy, an inner suburb, the first to be developed outside the original city grid after white settlement eighty years before. Fitzroy and Collingwood down the hill had quickly deteriorated into a dumping ground for the rapidly growing city’s population, refuse and night soil. The river passing by Collingwood masqueraded as an open sewer. Diseases, vice and crime proliferated, so that, understandably, those who could afford to looked beyond to the new suburbs further out.

The boss paused. Bush fires. Yes, he knew all about bush fires, grew up in East Gippsland, that bloody great expanse of land heading up to New South Wales. Millions of acres of forests, nothing but trees that burnt like hell itself. Bush fires, the reason he’d ended up in Melbourne. His father was a timber worker, a great bull of a man with huge shoulders and an even bigger laugh. Well, one day he went out with his mates to fight the fires. None of them came back. You can’t beat the fires, not when they get a hold in the gullies. The laughter stopped and his mother brought the three boys and Maggie to Melbourne to live with his Nan and Pop. A small tear of memory fought to invade his craggy cheek.

‘You all right, boss.’

He quickly recovered, smearing the rag across his face.

‘’Course I’m all right, just the heat. We’d better get a leg on. The bank man comes tomorrow, and I want sign-off for lock-up.’

Mr. Gibbs duly showed up the next morning. He took extra care this time. Looking, pushing and poking. Measuring and tut-tutting quietly. The boss and his gang stood back, anxiously watching and waiting. If the assessor was satisfied the bank would release a large payment and the men would receive a small bonus from a cashed-up boss.

Mr. Gibbs looked almost disappointed. ‘Well, I’m satisfied.’ Smiles all around. ‘A few small problems – but…’ A collective intake of breath. ‘… easily fixed, you’ll have my report tomorrow. I can’t see any obstacle to releasing the next payment.’ The smiles return.

‘Thank you, Mr. Gibbs, I’m sure the Mattingleys will be delighted when they turn up this arvo to look over their new home.’

Mr. Gibbs nodded and turned to leave; his job now completed. He would only need to return twice more before the final inspection. He hoped the Mattingleys realised what a fine house they were getting, courtesy of the bank and his professional eye. Having ‘a bank house’ was indeed a great thing. None of this speculative rubbish being thrown up in some suburbs, he snorted.

Victoria was not founded and built over the last decades to reproduce the hovels of the mother country. Good sturdy, well-constructed abodes. That’s what the citizens of this great nation deserved, especially after the terrible sacrifices of the recent past. Australia had come of age, proved herself to the old world. Sound finance and good Christian morals would help the Mattingly’s – and Gibbs – of the nation build a new Jerusalem of the South. Wasn’t Australia the first to give women the vote? New Zealand too, of course.