A.B. This Is Your Life

By John Smith

The book is of my life, reflecting all the things that happened to me, since I was 4 years old……to present day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jul 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669830641

John Smith

John was born in Norwich, Norfolk from a merchant family. He made his first dives among the wrecks on the east coast of the North Sea. For few years he worked on British oil rigs and then moved to Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt where he worked as an underwater guide. After he moved to Thailand and then to the Philippines. He now lives in Florida where he is a diver and writes novels. His articles on diving and marine biology have been published in many magazines

Book preview

1955

Migrated to Australia in April, 1955 (under the Columbo Plan) costing 10 Pounds for the whole family, aboard the maiden voyage of the Iberia (scuttled 2 years ago). I remember we had eggs and toast for breakfast. At 3 3/4 years of age when we crossed the equator King Neptune came over the side of the ship and they filled up one of the swimming pools with ice cream, and threw some of the adults and children into the pool. I was so scared that I hung onto my mothers skirt for grim death.

When we reached Ceylon (which is now Sri Lanka) the children treaded water and if you threw a coin over the side of the ship they would dive for it. The traders came out in small row boats selling all sorts of goods including watches, rugs, handbags, jewellery and shoes.

Mum and Dad went ashore, and were late coming back. We were so relieved to see Mum & Dad coming back to the ship. At 3 3/4 years old age, my sister at 6 years old and my other sister at 7 years old, we thought that we were going to Australia alone. They missed the last boat and had to pay the Pilot boat 10 pounds, because they were so tardy.

We continued onto Australia and arrived in Perth some 6 weeks later after we left England. The food on the Iberia was good. How they could keep food fresh e.g. eggs and milk etc. for days on the big liners must be a real challenge. Nowadays there is long life milk and preserved orange juice and other commodities, but 60 years ago there wasn’t anything like that.

1955

When I started school the teacher took the keys to a model car that my Uncle had bought for me, so I told her I was going home to tell my Mum & Dad…(who were at work) so at 4 years of age I spent the whole day at home alone. I attended Berala Public School and at 8 years of age I had a toothache and after school I went down to the Dentist at Berala and he took it out. I told him my father would pay him later that day…which he did. Went to Sefton Co-Ed High School, in year 7 I came first in grade (of 215). Played up in year 8,taking 3 months of school.(I couldn’t understand how Algebra / and or learning to play the piano was going to help me in future years. In Science I used to tease the Mexican jumping fish by getting them to bite on my wooden ruler. I got my two sisters to write notes for me forging Mum & Dad’s signatures to tell them I had all sorts of things wrong with me. Mr Wackett my maths teacher used a wooden triangle to belt you on the bum and one day I put a book down my pants to soften the blow. When he realised it he gave me 4 more for my endeavours. One Saturday we were playing around near the school and I wrote on the 1.2 metre storm water pipes with enamel texta that Mr. Smith, the deputy headmaster was having it off with Miss Conway the cooking teacher and the school administrator was a jerk. Even though it rained on the Sunday the writing was still there, on the Monday and because it was raining the workman couldn’t work. The 3 teachers were understandably not impressed and called me into a meeting in the Deputy Head Master’s room. He gave me 6 cuts of the cane with his left hand which hurt more than his right hand. Because it rained all week the workman didn’t work and on the Friday afternoon Smith said just get rid of it by Monday or else!!

I scrubbed it with several detergents, but it just smeared it. Fortunately the workers came in on the Monday morning and put the pipes into the ground.

We used to buy a shilling (10c) train ticket and go out to Casula and play with the red belly black snakes, which we found out later that with a decent bite they can in fact kill you. And we went fishing in the river and we joked around with each other that this was the life!!!….. better than sitting in the classroom learning to play the piano or cutting up rats.

1960

As a 10 year old I put a sign up the front of the house…. GENUINE 100% HORSE MANURE…no BULLSHIT…and for sale tomatoes, chokos, eggs and other vegetables, that my parents grew. My Dad used to get the horse manure from the stables, and we had the best soil in the street. I used to follow the bread cart around and when the draft horses did their thing I used to shovel it up and take it home to sell it for 10c a bucket. One day a police car came down the street and I was so petrified because I thought that they were going to take me to prison for having the sign and selling the goodies. The road wasn’t tarred it was cobblestones. They in fact bought some tomatoes and some horse manure and came back a couple of week’s later and bought some more. At a young age I learnt to make money the easy way. I started to do odd jobs for old ladies by buying their groceries. I built a billy cart and because my father had bought some lino tiles to glue to the Kitchen and Laundry floors I put three on my billy cart and polished them to the point where I went down the hill at New Street, Auburn and the billy cart went one way and I went the other. I grazed all my bum and couldn’t sit down for 3 weeks.

1960

I continued to do odd jobs, to earn some pocket money including painting fences, creosoting some flooring for a builder that was building houses at the back of us and other boy scout type jobs. We used to make bows and arrows out of timber pieces we found in the scrub. I had a paper round selling 200 papers every afternoon. The 2 papers were the Sun and the Daily Mirror. I also sold papers etc. at Berala Railway Station every Sunday morning (waking up at 4 a.m. and recall one morning a guy was following close behind me, so I went home and my father drove me to Berala) and every week I bought a matchbox car for my brother Bruce. In fact I bought the whole set (50) and then started buying the bigger ones for him and others. It included the semi trailer and other larger ones.

We used to go over to Flemington Railway station to watch them bringing sheep and cattle down from the country to the abbatoirs.(the holding yards were where Flemington markets are today). On the way down they packed the sheep in very tight so that they didn’t fall over….they kept them upright. On a trip down the ewes had a baby lamb and we asked the drovers if we could have the lamb. We took the lamb home and had to put carbon (by burning a small piece of timber) in the milk for it. We actually took about 4 home, 2 survived. One in fact lasted about 3 years until the next door neighbor threw half a loaf of bread over the fence and because of the protein the sheep’s stomach was swollen up double it’s normal size, and it died. When we got the sheep shorn we were able to get droplets of lanolin from the wool. They bought several train loads of sheep down to the abbatoirs and they had to cross Parramatta Road. Sometimes it took ten minutes to get them across and the traffic was banked back for kilometres. There were 4 stockman on horseback to protect the cars being hit by the cattle, and the dogs used to do most of the work to get them across. We used to go over there to buy some meat and you needed to put a bed sheet over the meat. Some of the guys there that bone out meat said that their quota was 100 sheep and 10 bullocks per day.

1962

There was a train wreck at Berala Station, when a diesel train came off the rails on the Sydney side of the track, it took 10 men 6 hours for them to repair the line …8 were holding their shovels up and only 2 were working. They had to get 2 giant cranes in to move the diesel engine. It buckled the train line and caused a lot of damage.

Went up to the suburbs of Newcastle with Sam, Paul and myself, we bought 2 kilos of prawns. As we were going along the road there was 2 horny girls that were hitch hiking and we gave them a lift and asked them if they wanted any prawns, so we gave them the prawns and when we dropped them off they had eaten nearly all of them. So we made a pack between Rick / John and myself that we would not pick up hitchhikers anymore.

1962

We had a water fight when water wasn’t charged for on a litre basis, and we threw water over everybody. All the kids in our street participated in it. When our parents got home they went crook on us for wasting so much water….. there was water everywhere. On cracker night the fire brigade used to come and put our bon fire out. The fire trucks in those days didn’t have duel cabins, so 2 firemen used to sit on both sides of the truck. We used to shoot roman candles at them and they were not impressed. There was a bull mastiff dog that used to let double bungers off in it’s mouth. Once he saw the lit firework he would chase after it and let it go off in it’s mouth. We couldn’t stop him.!!The penny bungers measured a five cent piece round and 80 mms long and double bungers measured a 20c piece round by 125 mms long. The roman candles were either 10/20/30/ shots. One night Stewart Brooks had 3 double bungers in his back pocket that burnt the backside of his pants. It left a black mark and he had to go to Auburn Hospital casualty department, to have padding and antiseptic on his backside. We wore old clothes and John Moore chased me down the road with a 30 shooter. It put 5 holes in my jeans, but we wore old clothes and anywhere below the neckline was fair game. The authorities put so many restrictions on the fire works because it got to the stage where so many people were going to hospitals with burns and lost fingers they banned cracker night completely.

Caught my first fish at 12 years old. We went on a boat that Randall a friend of my Dad owned, fished underneath the Hawkesbury train bridge and I caught a 34 cms long dewfish. It took me about 5 minutes to play with it, slowly winding the reel in on the rod that my father had given me the previous Xmas. We also saw 2 large sea turtles in the water there and cut some oysters off the rocks. It was a great day out.

1963

I had glandular fever for 7 weeks and the doctor came and gave me 6 penicilline needles, one in the left side of my bum and the following day one in the right side. I had to sleep on my stomach. The white cells in my blood had wiped out the red ones and it took some weeks and eating good food and more vegetables, apples and oranges, to recover.

I wagged school for 3 months. The station master at Berala Railway station said you kids (10 of us) can’t be going to a sports carnival every day for 3 months. We came up with as many excuses that we could. One day he even called the police, who came down but we caught the train to Casula and there was a Truant Officer out there looking for us, but we noticed him before he noticed us. Some days we would ride our bikes down in the storm water canals so people didn’t recognize us, to tell our parents. We knew how to get from x to z without going on the roads. The canals took us all the way down to Parramatta Road at Silverwater.

All this came to an end when my father came home early one afternoon and got the mail from the letterbox. In the mail was a letter from my school. I saw my father get the mail and I could tell that he was furious, because he slammed the lid down hard. I went out the back door and went to Robert Coleman’s house and that night we hid in the roof of his garage because I was so scared to go home. About 1.30 a.m. the next morning the police came into the garage and we were scared stiff!!! We got down and went home. My father was furious. He never hit me, he just asked why I did a stupid thing. The next day Dad took me to school and found out that in fact Brenda & Maureen had been forging Mum and Dad’s signatures…. he said cripey’s you got your 2 sisters involved too. From then on I had to get the headmaster to sign a book every afternoon before I could leave the school.

Settled back down in year 9. Had full intentions of going onto year 12,but a teacher told me I was to run in the marathon tomorrow!! I said you have got to be joking…. it’s too hot this time of year. When he insisted I run I told him to stick it!! and would leave school. I went home and told my father who said you should go onto year 12 but it is your life and as you made you bed you lie on it. I left school the next day, with a conceded Intermediate Certificate. I got good passes in Mathematics, English and Geography.

1963

We had two dogs, one was a black and white cocker spaniel named patch (which I think got run over by a car) & another dog named Princess who was an alsation, which I believe died of old age. One night she bailed up a guy down the driveway and my father had to go out and discovered that it was a guy who was either drunk or on drugs. She died of old age.

She was very faithful and