Through My Eyes: And to the Best of My Memory

By Peter Leis

In 2001, the author of this book suffered a stroke that left him partially handicapped. It became necessary to do what he could to learn to live with the aftereffects and limitations of the stroke. This book is the result of advice from his doctor to write down some of his earlier memories to see if he had suffered any long-term memory loss. In the writing of these memories, he gradually became confident enough to keep on writing until he had enough stories to put together in a book. The writing of the stories has given him back his past, and now he has a base to build his new life on. For him, it has been like opening a new door, and now, rather than be held hostage by the restriction imposed by the stroke, he can confidently build on that past and plan ahead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Mar 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514446331

Peter Leis

Peter made a start in screen printing in the early 1960’s. He moved around the industry to gain experience, working in point of sale printing followed by wallpaper printing and then a position as production manager in a pressure sensitive and decal printing company. Eventually he became a teacher of screen printing and finally he established a supply and services business for the industry.

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1

The School Story

An introduction to the story.

This is about my last years at school when I was at Holy Cross College Ryde in Sydney. It was run by an Irish order, the Catholic Patrician Brothers. They taught in the name of God and caned in the name of discipline. As a young student, I feared them, but in time, I got to know them better. I slowly grew to admire them.

I see this story like a play. The teachers are the actors, the college the stage and the students the audience. I can remember only one performance, the one I attended. The applause is in my mind, and it is still continuing.

While I was at this school, there were some words that we used that might not have the same meaning today but were in the vocabulary of the time. We addressed the brothers as bra, which was spoken without the emphasis on the a. It’s hard to put it into phonetics. It might have been as bru, but it was a real word in everyday use. We never used the word brother, although I did hear it a couple of times. It sounded like those who used brother were ‘crawling’.

The students were known as the kids. They weren’t the younger or older kids; they were most certainly the little kids and the big kids. I know as I write I might be guilty of using words such as students, brothers, children, older, or younger. There have been many years in between then and now, and I have become sloppy in the use of my words. To the kids both big and little, I can only apologize.

As to the hardware, the buildings, and the grounds, although we went to school, I think we always called it the college. There were many places around the college grounds in which we were not allowed unless we had special permission. I refer to them as no man’s land.

As for me, I remember myself being addressed as ‘You’ or ‘You, Leis’ or just ‘Leis’. I answered to them all. What was more important was the pitch of the call or if it was a shout and whether the cane was being waved around with the address. In such a case, I would decide if I wanted to acknowledge it or not.

Now read on.

The Actors

This story may be biased as it’s only about my experiences at Holy Cross College around half a century ago. There may be hundreds of stories that could be written about the college; they could be good or bad, frightening, sad or happy. They all could be true and, at the same time, an enigma.

I was twelve years old, and we had spent the summer season in Forster while my father and mother managed a private hotel there. It was about April or March 1951 when our family left Forster and returned to Sydney. Dad had no particular plans on what his next move would be. At that time, he was looking at relief hotel managing, which meant he would manage a hotel while the manager or licensee took a holiday. In an effort to solve the problem of schooling for my brother Bobby and myself, we were put into boarding school at Holy Cross College, where my cousin Billy Stanley was already a boarder.

It was a quick decision. One week we had been living in an idyllic private hotel, the Tudor, at Forster, and we went to an informal state school where there was no set uniform and we could go barefoot if we wanted. A week or two later, we found ourselves in a school where every minute seemed to be controlled in the severest ways without reason or compassion.

It was where I cried myself to sleep the first few nights. It was a difficult time for me as I was not accustomed to such regimented discipline. However, this story is not be read as a criticism of the school, but it is a reflection of life there through my eyes, and much of what happened in those days has influenced me in many ways over the years.

To put some perspective on the times, it was in a time only a few years after World War II, a war in which something like 26 million died, and we were in this country still settling displaced people from Europe. In the state of Victoria, they were still hanging people as a way of correcting society. We lived in a country that had the White Australia Policy in place, and Aborigines were not considered citizens. It was a time when I was to find myself in a school where teaching and control were by punishment and punishment alone, which I still look upon as possibly one of the last vestiges of Victorian rigidity.

Today as you drive by the college and look up at that old edifice of a warm sandstone building on Victoria Road at Ryde called Holy Cross College, you are looking at the shell of something from past times. When you compare the college of today to the college of my time, it is now an outpost of the state education system. Gone are the boarders, the country kids, the Irish and their nuances and influences, the echoes in the great hallways, the rosary after dinner, the chants of litanies in the old chapel before bedtime, the rush of feet down the grand staircase in the early mornings. For better or for worse, it is no more.

To recreate the atmosphere of times past is beyond simple words. I can selectively recall some of the leading actors and the environment in which we lived and manipulated. Our teachers were predominately Irish, but it might be more correct to say the Irish were predominately our teachers. This was by any measure a bonus over and above the norm. Sure, there were a couple of Australian-born teachers there, but the Irish were memorable.

The school was part of a grouping of Catholic colleges that had come into being at about the same period. There was St Joseph’s College, staffed by the Marist Brothers; Riverview, by the Jesuits; and Holy Cross, by the Irish Patrician Brothers. If there was ever a contest between them in their heyday, Holy Cross probably withdrew early in the piece.

The Irish were more intent on bringing their Irish Catholicism to the not-so-elite Catholics. It’s a fact that even today if you watch news where people are seen in the most desperate of circumstances, you will often find an Irish accent there. So it wasn’t surprising to find around Sydney they had schools in Redfern, Forest Lodge, and Waterloo. In my time, these were the slums of the day. Later they opened schools at Granville, Fairfield, and Blacktown.

The rumour was that Holy Cross was a poorer college where many country people had sent their boys in the hope of a big city education but with little prospects of being able to pay for it. This was particularly related to the period of the war and just after. I know my fees were never fully paid. I offered to pay them many years later, but I was turned down as I had been by then helping the school with my signwriting and screen-printing for some time.

When we started as boarders in the middle of the first term of 1951, it was for my brother Bobby and I a little traumatic after the life we had been used to. The first thing we had to adjust to was what seemed to be the complete surrender of our freedom and the complete cut-off of our contact with the outside. There was no television in those days or transistor radios, and we didn’t have newspapers. Occasionally, one of the older boys would buy a Sunday paper, or some students would have visitors on Sunday and might score one. We were virtually marooned in this big city, in a much regimented environment.

The principal of the college was Brother Aloysius; he was known to the students as Ally. He was an Australian in a contingent which was predominately Irish. Ally was getting on at that time and was probably a little out of touch with reality. He had very white hair and moved around slowly compared to some of the younger teachers. He didn’t use the cane so much but could when he wished.

‘Come on out here, lad, and I’ll give you a couple of Aloysius’s best,’ he would say. He didn’t have the firebrand attitude that came with the Irish; he was older and more pliable. We used to play on this a bit; this for us students was part of the learning process. For the boarders, he ran the Legion of Mary.

We had a meeting each week; I think it may have been on Sunday nights. As part of our religious commitment and development, we were given little jobs, like cleaning the playground and emptying the wastepaper baskets. For anyone having a quick look around the playground, sometimes they could tell you that no one was heading for heaven in any hurry. I remember that Aloysius took us for English in my second year of high school. I definitely wasn’t his best pupil, and my memory of him is that he was a nice old guy but you had to be a bit wary of him.

Another brother in a similar age group was Brother Anthony, known as Jew by the playground; the names were not meant to be disparaging but were the schoolboy names of the time. Anthony looked after our spending money. When our parents gave us money to spend, we’d deposit it with him. He kept a book, and when we wanted some money to buy something, we saw him at recess or at lunchtime. He used to sit on a bench in the schoolyard, quite often with his shillelagh. He was the only Irishman I’ve ever seen with a shillelagh. We would gather around and ask for 3d. (3¢ approximately). If you asked for more, you would need to have a good reason, but it was possible. He was notably very stingy with our money.

Brother Anthony took us for art classes on Saturday mornings. Yes, we had classes on Saturday, and while most day students didn’t turn up, it still went on for the students who were boarders. Brother Anthony might be remembered for not using the cane so much; instead he generally had a broom handle with him that he would bash us on the shoulder with, and it would hurt.

It’s ironic because, at this stage, I had already been offered a job because of my drawing (which after I left school I took up), but here was an Irishman, in art class, bashing me over the shoulder because he didn’t like my work.

As for the broom handle, the students learnt quickly to put books under the shoulder pads of their suit coats. It neutralized the broom handle’s effect, but the class took on the look of a class of American footballers. That was the lesson we took from art class. Putting aside his broom handle approach to our education, Anthony was okay; you gradually got to like the Irish in them all.

That was in sixth class in 1951. He moved on the next year, and I think he became principal at the school the brothers had in Redfern. He may have been the last principal there as Redfern closed down a few years later. We never saw Brother Anthony again.

Then there was Brother Paul. Everyone knew Paul. He was tall and thin; he walked around with a look of expectancy on his face, and he didn’t have a very pleasant mannerism about him. ‘What do you want?’ ‘What are you doing here?’ A little gaunt-looking, he always seemed to carry a cane with him and looked empty-handed if he didn’t have one.

Brother Paul had the nickname Bug, and outside of any formal use of his name, it was the most common word around the playground. It was Bug this and Bug that. He knew of the name as it had come out accidentally on a couple of occasions. I don’t think he liked it very much at all, but it was part of the playground vocabulary. Paul’s specialty was maths. I believe he had honours from the University of Sydney in mathematics. It seemed important to some, but his credentials were lost on me. Paul was Australian, and besides not having a likeable personality, he wasn’t spontaneous like the Irish, with their fearsome temper one minute and Irish humour the next. When Paul used the cane, he took it seriously. I can remember him teaching us geography and maths only vaguely. My cousin Billy Stanley always had great praise for him.

At that time in the early 1950s, the outside toilets at the college were deplorable. Paul got some cement brick moulds and press-ganged students into making bricks. He then organized the building of a new toilet block; it took a long time, maybe two or three years. In that way and around that time, he was remembered more for his toilet block bricks than his mathematics. To his credit, he did get in and do something that needed doing and made it happen. I would have been happier not to have been in his class.

There was Vienne, Vienne, and Vienne, a wild-looking Irishman if you were ever looking for one. You either loved him or hated him or both. I liked him, but I don’t think he liked me much. ‘Leis, you!’ he would shout in his strong, gravelly Irish accent, pointing his finger at me. That distinguished me from my brother Bobby, whom he would address as Robert.

Vienne’s unofficial name was Snotty. He always looked untidy, even dirty maybe. He used to pick his nose in class or wipe his nose on the sleeve of his soutane. He was a short, round-faced, roly-poly Irishman with a ruddy complexion that went even ruddier as his Irish temper rose. He didn’t have a lot of hair and had terribly badly decayed-looking teeth, which he showed a lot as he was always smiling and laughing. He used a short cane; it started off long, but he caned so hard that it would break in no time. A big smile would show on his face when he caned you.

We hated him while he caned us and loved him when he told his Irish stories. He talked about the Black and Tans; he defended the leprechauns, and I’m sure that he could have told a story every day for 500 years if you would let him. I can remember Vienne was teaching Latin in my second year of high school. He had a system of throwing you out of the class if you didn’t do your homework; I lasted three days. Considering what my education was up to at the time, it was a relief. One of the class’s brighter students, Ivor Karlov, did see the year out. Ivor and I were friends at school and are still friends now near fifty years later. Ivor eventually became a doctor and now lives in Melbourne.

Vienne took us for some other subject. It could have been history; I’m not sure. What I remember is, it was easy to get him off the subject and on to a story. It went like this a bit: Someone would make some statement, such as ‘There are no leprechauns’. Vienne would come in. ‘And how would you know? You’ve never been there. I tell you—and I am not joking now—honest to God, I’ve seen them with my own eyes, and don’t you be doubting it now.’ And so another lesson would be lost. We could do it every day.

That was the part of our Irish education that I enjoyed most. Vienne also ran the tuck shop at the time. It was open at recess, lunchtime, and after school for a while. It was the students who worked it with Vienne, who would go into the shop now and then to hassle things along a bit. He let me work in there occasionally; you could help yourself to something to eat when you were finished, and that was great.

Then there was Brother Norbert. Norbert seemed to come as part of the furniture at the college. I don’t remember what he taught except he was teaching maths in my second year. I remember him overseeing the junior study at night when I was in sixth class. He used to sit high on a stool at a rostrum in front of the first year students and look at the backs of our class, which meant for us that we could do almost anything we wanted as he couldn’t see what we were doing.

Comic reading was a pastime enjoyed by some. This was from 5 to 6 p.m. each night before dinner. He would quietly read in his office and not worry anybody. Nobby—as we called him—could conjure up the nicest happy smile on his face when he was in a good mood. His short Irish accent was a bit quick and a little hard to understand at times. He had the title of provincial in my time. I didn’t know what it meant, but it seemed that he was in charge of the congregation overall, though it certainly wasn’t us the students. He had the Irish gift of being able to cane hard, but he didn’t cane often. I think Nobby was like Aloysius; he was a bit out of touch, and we thought we could put things over him easily. It could have been that after a lifetime of teaching smart kids, he was just ignoring us.

Then there was Brother John. We had always called him Johnno. Towards the end of World War II, the Germans were building huge new Tiger tanks, which if encountered would be fearsome. It wasn’t long after World War II ended that Ireland sent John Gallagher to Australia. John was the ‘big gun’ in our schooldays, and they didn’t come bigger. He only had to look in your direction, and you would internally haemorrhage. He was tall, broad-shouldered, a man of a few words, and he could cane like bloody fury. Tiger tanks had nothing on John.

A special relationship developed between John and me. This relationship between him and me was of teacher and student or more to the point of John Gallagher and Peter matching wit for wit, and eventually, we became lifelong friends. John was to become principal at a later date, but in my time, he was the science teacher and ran the school cadets like it was his own army.

Different students would remember John in different ways. My cousin Billy remembered him by the cane, at six at a time. Ivor the doctor thought he was cruel in the way he used the cane. Peter Evans, who became a brigadier in the army, when he heard John had passed away, he said it was the end of an era.

I can remember one night there was a near riot in the playground. Nobby was in charge, and it was getting out of hand. The big gun was rolled out. Not a word was said. He just stood there, and the noise and ruckus dissipated in the blink of an eye. It melted away as if a fist of iron had clamped down on the whole shemozzle.

Everyone would remember him as a strict disciplinarian, but he had a lighter side. I remember catching him cheating when he was playing snooker with me years later. He was a straight-faced liar. He could put on a good facade, and I’m darn glad I met him along the way. What I learnt from him wasn’t academic, but to try to commit it to words would be too limiting. To my surprise, even as a short-pants kid of thirteen, I managed to call his bluff and took his measure. From then on, we were friends.

It was only his image that was fearsome. In retrospect, if they had taken one look at him, the Germans would have said ‘Oh, shit’ and buried their Tiger tanks.

There was Brother Magellan. Maj, he was known as. Maj taught fourth and fifth classes in primary school. They were held in the basement of the old school building. I never had him as a teacher, but my younger brother Jimmy was taught by him. My connections with Magella were more after I left the college and started my trade. I used to do some signwriting for him. Magella looked after the junior dormitory, which was located above the refectory building at the school.

At a later date, he stopped teaching and became the bursar for the college. He travelled to Hong Kong and Asia to drum up funds and students for the college. Each year for a number of years, I helped him with signs for the school fete and a few other small jobs. I remember being with him in his workshop at the back of the college one day when he lost his cool and went into an indescribable rage with some students. The students hadn’t done anything to annoy him, but it was a sign of a sickness developing.

I left school when I was fifteen and married when I turned twenty-eight. Magella was the best man at our wedding in January 1966. Over the years, Magella’s illness worsened, and finally he returned to Ireland. When my wife and I were visiting John in Ireland in the 1990s, John took us to see Magella in hospital. When we got there, he was sitting quietly in a chair, rocking gently back and forth. There was no conversation or recognition. It was said these had long left him.

John was trying to make him aware that I had come to visit him and was saying, ‘Peter Leis has come to see you. Do you remember Peter Leis?’ There was a drawn-out silence, and then he said, ‘Peter Leis, tech teacher from Rozelle.’ He recalled that much. A bell then rang, and he said ‘Tea time’ and got up and hurried off.

It’s hard to put into words, but here was the man who once was the engine of Holy Cross. Nothing moved unless he okayed it. Nothing happened unless he financed it. He was a busy little Irishman who had quick answers and made decisions in what was most probably a very difficult period for the college. It was hard not to be choked up or hold back the tears as he scampered up the path to the dining room; the end was in sight. My wife stood beside me and John behind me; there were no words needed.

There was Brother Pius. He taught us in some classes. I remember him in second year, and it was algebra. Pius was much quieter and more reserved. He wasn’t as flamboyant as the other Irish, but he was still very Irish in his temper, and he could cane hard. I met Pius in Ireland in his old age during the same trip as I had seen Magella for the last time. On my next trip to Ireland, his grave lay just a few feet from Magella’s at a place called Ballyfin.

There was Brother Xavier, who was an Australian. He taught us for a while, but he left the brothers when I was in second year high school. It’s hard to recall anything about Xavier.

Brother Malachy was an Irishman who didn’t teach our class while I was there; he was known as Sad Sack then. I can only remember him by his swift striding walk and his thick Irish accent that I couldn’t understand at the time. He was tall with square shoulders and always immaculately dressed. He wasn’t around with the students much and kept to himself. I know I was told to stay out of his way as he could cane particularly hard. I think I had more conversations with him in his twilight years at Holy Cross than I did in my schooldays forty-five years before.

The Stage

Those were the actors at that time, and now for the stage.

The college was made up of a collection of buildings, a lot of which have now been replaced with new buildings, and it is in these new buildings where the classes are carried on now. However, in the 1950s, most classes were in the main building. Fourth and fifth were in the basement area on the eastern side of the building. Sixth class was on the ground floor on the western side of the building, and first year of high school were in the same room as sixth class but at the back of the room. In those days, this was called the little study.

The second year classes were in a building out by itself to the western side of the main building. It was a small building which was built like a federation house. It had two rooms; one was the science room, and the other was the second-year classroom. It was a unique little building that was demolished to build the new chapel years later. The high school classroom for third and fourth year was located on the ground floor on the eastern side of the main building, and this was always known as the big study. Fifth year, which only had about eight students, was in a small square room located off the main hallway in the centre of the building.

In those days, many students finished school at third-year level (the intermediate certificate) and only a few went on to fifth year (the leaving certificate). These were generally students with university in mind. People who left before third year were considered school dropouts. I left in second year when I was fifteen.

The upper floors of the main building were mainly dormitories for the older boys. On the first floor, starting on the east side, was where the eldest resided. Then the west side was for the next age group down. The upper floor was for the younger students, and the youngest had their dorm over the refectory, which was at the back of the main building.

The school had about 110 boarders and 30 day students around that time. It was a little overloaded with boarders, and beds extended beyond the normal dormitories. The hallway at the top of the main stairs had about ten beds located in it, and one of the square rooms was used also. There was an annex—a timber building now demolished—on the main building’s eastern end; there were beds on the top floor of it and a washroom and toilet on the first floor below, and there were music rooms on the ground floor below. There is a larger new-looking brick building on the site there now.

The basement had a classroom on the eastern end where third and fourth classes were taught. There was also a large shower room in the centre of the basement; the rest of the area was used for storage. One small room right under the front main hallway was the store for the cadet equipment. With a peak through the somewhat old door, with the dim light filtering in, you could just make out rows of rifles. They were .303s with .22 bores. There were also Bren guns and, for a while, a Vickers machine gun. The old building was fully used in those days.

In the 1950s, the college was unique in some ways. It was mainly a boarding school in the city; however, the majority of the students was predominately from the country. The lord mayor of Sydney at the time was a former Holy Cross boy. There were also other important ex-students, including some politicians. Its pass rate in the leaving certificate was high; I recall ten out of ten passed one year while I was there. Looking back, I suppose losing me early in the piece would have been a plus for the school’s reputation.

There weren’t many Catholic boys’ high schools in the area at the time. The Marist Brothers had a small day school in Hunters Hill as well as their large Saint Joseph’s College (where all were boarders) towards the inner city. There was the Christian Brothers at Rozelle and at Balmain, and to the west, there was the Marist Brothers at Parramatta. To the north, there was the Marist Brothers at Eastwood (where I attended at an earlier time).

Holy Cross was, after World War II, in a position to take on day students from the local area as other schools were filling up. I remember in Eastwood Marist Brothers when I was there, we had seventy-four students in fourth class in the primary school, and there were over eighty in fifth class. As the post-war boom got under way, the housing commission was developing heavily in the surrounding areas, and there was pressure on Holy Cross to change its role from a boarding school to a day school catering for local students. This did happen over time until it ceased to be a boarding school altogether.

I had been at the college as a boarder and a day student and had seen it from both perspectives. As boarders, our day was all planned with little opportunity to do our own thing. We lived under the continuous surveillance of the teachers, from when they clapped their hands together to wake us early in the morning until they switched out the dormitory lights at night.

Our day in boarding school went a little like this: We were woken at 6.30 a.m. and had to hurriedly make our beds. We weren’t allowed to just pull them up; we had to strip them fully, then make them and do it neatly with no creases in the blankets. A close eye was kept on us. If we tried to take shortcuts, like just pulling the bedclothes up, we would find ourselves in trouble and making the bed all over again.

Still in our pyjamas, we would go for a wash. The water pressure only went to the first floor in those days, and if you were in the second-floor dorms, you went downstairs to the first-floor washrooms to wash and to clean your teeth. It was a spartan wash in wintertime as there was no hot water. We had to wear our slippers while in the dormitory; we weren’t allowed to go around barefoot. We also weren’t allowed to talk. We did talk, but the art of not getting caught was more the norm.

After washing, we dressed and went downstairs to the weather shed at the back of the school. At one end of the shed was a room where we kept our shoes and polish. We changed from our slippers in the morning and put our shoes on for the day. By now, it would be about ten minutes to seven, and we had to move fast, the whole 110 of us. We then marched four abreast down Victoria Road to Saint Charles Church for morning mass. We went rain, hail, or shine, and in winter, it was still dark and cold. We would be back from mass about ten minutes to eight.

Breakfast was at eight. We would be feeling hungry by then, so we’d go into the refectory for breakfast and back outside around 8.30 a.m. The schoolday started at ten minutes to nine. We had the usual break around 11 a.m. and would be back into school until 12 noon, when we would say the Angelus, and be off to the refectory for lunch. I have to say the food was pretty terrible at the time, and to score something to eat off the day kids was a bit of a treat. After we had lunch, we had about thirty minutes in the playground and then would go into school again for the afternoon. Classes went until ten minutes to four, nearly three hours; for me, it used to drag out, and in the warmer weather, staying awake was a bit of a problem. But of course, there was the cane, which helped a bit.

Out of school at ten minutes to four, we then had about an hour outside and go in to study at 5 p.m. for an hour. Then at 6 p.m., we’d say the Angelus again and then go to dinner, which took about half an hour. Next we would go to the weather shed and don our slippers and then into the big study for Rosary. We would all crowd into this large classroom. It was cramped and uncomfortable. That was the price we paid to be good Catholics. I felt sure Mary appreciated it all and when I got to heaven, I would be rewarded with a kneeler. It would certainly be a more comfortable way to say prayers.

With the rosary said, the little-study boys would go to their rooms and spend another hour doing homework or reading and then pray and go to bed around 8 p.m. The big-study boys would go on until 9 p.m. and then up to the chapel on the first floor for prayers, which more often than not would include a litany of prayers. Oh boy! If that didn’t knock you out enough, then a second one might be said.

I have never heard a litany since I’ve left school; maybe God has put a blanket ban on them these days. Today many people turn to prayer in a crisis, but in those days, I think we were our own crisis. If you don’t understand what saying a litany is like, then pray it stays that way.

About twice a week, we had showers in the basement before we went to bed. When you were in the big study, of course, you had your showers later. Quite often, all the hot water was used up by then. Many people think a cold shower is good for you, and I won’t disagree that it might be good for them. My memory of having a cold shower in wintertime in the basement of Holy Cross College excludes any good part. What I remember was a brother walking along the cubicles, with a cane, belting you on your backside if you were not under the shower. It was like trying to drown yourself in a bush fire. If you can imagine it was only freezing, try thinking of another word beyond that. You gave up breathing while you had that cold shower; even the soap used to hide.

As day students, my brother Bobby and I travelled from a number of suburbs around Sydney to the college each day. This was while Dad’s work was in the city or around the suburbs, and it was only when he was required to go to the country to work that we would end up in boarding school. During the times when we lived in Sydney, we found ourselves travelling from Cronulla, Woollahra, Sutherland, Auburn, Leichhardt, Rozelle, the city, and finally, Paddington. I guess we were the most experienced suburban travellers at the school. As day students, we wore a navy suit, school tie, and hat. I carried my hat most of the time because I didn’t like wearing it.

My brother Bobby and I were boarders for a good part of 1951 when we were in sixth class of primary school and again in the first year of high school in 1952. It’s a bit hard to remember, but I think we spent 1953 as day students. In and out of jail was what I called it at the time. Relatively, it seems it was only yesterday in my mind, and some friendships I made at that time still endure.

Ivor Karlov (Vic as he is known now) and his mother, I knew from those days. There was Peter Evans, who was in the school cadets with me. There was Denny Fiorio, who was a good friend of my brothers. There was a girl by the name of Judith who went to Saint Charles convent school across the road from Holy Cross. I met Judith on an afternoon bus going home; she was the entertainment in the upstairs of a double-decker bus while it travelled between Ryde and Drummoyne. She was forward and funny with bright fiery-red hair, not your usual convent schoolgirl at