The Silver Poplar

By Edmond Smith

This timely publication is set around the Sutherland Homes for neglected children near Melbourne in the 1940s and 1950s. The Silver Poplar delves into the issues of abandonment, adoption, and the fostering of children, issues which are now in the news as governments around Australia begin to apologise for the hurts suffered by the ‘forgotten Australians’.

At times sad, it brings to the forefront the reality of the fear and loneliness children experience when abandoned. It is 1948. Edmond arrives as a frightened six year old at the country place of the Sutherland Homes for neglected children near Melbourne. He is to live there for the next eleven years. Here in The Silver Poplar, Edmond traces his life up to the time when as a late teenager he encounters in himself a surprising work of God.

The silver poplar at the Boys’ End stood for all that promised to be enduring, even when the inmates were forbidden to climb it. The book is nostalgic as well as awakening the reader to the ever-present issues of abandonment, adoption and the fostering of children. As an afterword Edmond recounts how several decades later he was to discover the past that did much to explain the struggles he faced when at the institution. It concludes radiating with hope.

About the author
Edmond Smith (BD with honors, University of London) is a retired Primary school teacher and Baptist pastor. He is the author of 'A Tree by a Stream' (1995); the autobiographical 'The Silver Poplar' (2009), winner of the Australian Caleb Prize for a work of nonfiction;' Mirrors in Mark' (2014); 'The Scandal of God's Forgiveness' (2017); and 'Unexpected' the sequel to The Silver Poplar (2022). He lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife of more than fifty years, and together they have three children and seven grandchildren. He continues to preach and teach in the church community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edmond Smith
• Release date: Mar 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215335321

Edmond Smith

About the authorEdmond Smith (BD with honors, University of London) is a retired Primary school teacher and Baptist pastor. He is the author of 'A Tree by a Stream' (1995); the autobiographical 'The Silver Poplar' (2009), winner of the Australian Caleb Prize for a work of nonfiction;' Mirrors in Mark' (2014); 'The Scandal of God's Forgiveness' (2017); and 'Unexpected' the sequel to The Silver Poplar (2022). He lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife of more than fifty years, and together they have three children and seven grandchildren. He continues to preach and teach in the church community.

Book preview

First printed 2009 © Edmond Smith

ISBN: 9781921589102

Cataloguing in Publication Data:

Smith, Edmond.

The Silver Poplar / Edmond Smith.

9781921589102 (pbk.)

Smith, Edmond.

Sutherland Children’s Home (Vic.)--History.

Orphans--Victoria--Biography.

Children--Institutional care--Australia--Biography.

305.23086945092

Cover design and layout by www.initiateagency.com

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Trees

The Yellow Bird

Dear Old Golden Rule Days

The Stuff Of Legends

Walls

January’s Joy

Boys & Girls Come Out To Play

The Exit Of Pascall & Falconer

Gravel

Squirrel

Gradual-LEE Fading Away

Pearls Before Pigs

Lord Of The Limits

Winning The Spurs

To The Blue Hills

Cream

Little Boy From The Home

August To June

Fine Feathers

Crossing Over From Death To Life

Afterword

Wisdom leads us back to childhood

Pascal

Acknowledgments

My heartfelt appreciation goes out to my wife Kerryn, who patiently typed the manuscript and encouraged me with the belief there was a story worth telling widely. Also gratitude is expressed to Dawn Volz, whose kind and professional help in editing made the manuscript more presentable.

Introduction

The Sutherland Homes for children were established by their founder, Miss Selina Murray MacDonald Sutherland, who arrived in Victoria from Scotland in 1881. She set up a series of homes for ‘the rescue of neglected and destitute children from their neglect and moral peril, and the suitable provision for their future’. The country home for such children was situated on the Yan Yean Road, between Greensborough and Diamond Creek, roughly 20 miles north-east of Melbourne. It lay on 40 acres and was the country part of the body incorporated that helped to foster the care of more than 3,000 children, up to the time of Miss Sutherland’s death in 1909.

The Sutherland Homes did not receive government aid, nor was it supported by any church denomination. Miss Sutherland’s work was viewed as a fine example of Christian charity, but she held to the simple belief that enough benevolent people in society would help her to maintain the work of caring for neglected and destitute children by their support.

‘Neglected and destitute’ was an umbrella term for describing children who found themselves at Sutherland’s country home, which I entered in 1948. Hardly a child was there because they were orphaned. They mostly came to Sutherland because of the death of either parent, because of parental illness, broken homes and school truancy. Some of them after a short while returned to relatives. Some were even adopted after a time.

The work begun by the ‘fearless, strong-willed but great hearted and good woman’ continued long after her death, through a well-organized group of people comprising not only an able committee and superintendent, but through over 100 life governors, many of whom were well-to-do figures in society. All this, as well as the countless companies and Freemason groups and churches that proved to be regular benefactors in providing activities and gifts for Sutherland’s inmates.

The Homes’ annual report faithfully acknowledged all donations for the preceding year. Such bodies as Carlton and United Breweries, Spotless Cleaners, the Vacuum Oil Company, various Shires, the Ampol Social Club, Ye Old English Social Club, National Bank of Australia, Sunshine Wagon Wheelers, Felt and Textiles of Australia, The Knitbees, the Masonic Masters Association, W.D and H.O. Wills, Moran and Cato, Merri Creek Quarrying Company, the Country Women’s Association, Heidelberg Golf Club, Lodge of Moderation, Wealth Worlds per the Herald Newspaper, were among the many upholding the cause of Sutherland’s Scottish founder.

Numerous people left money in trusts and estates.

Still, the running of the country home had its difficulties. Shortage of staff and the high cost of living meant everything was done in bulk.

One of the honorary doctors of the institution is said to have taken pride that in his time of providing care for the children over a period of 44 years ‘not one child under (the care of him and his son) had been lost’, suggesting the treatment of our ill-health was set against factors that did not guarantee security of life. Epidemics loomed ominously for the 50 or more children, many of whom had entered Sutherland already impoverished and weak in health, and who lived in close quarters to one another. As children we were blissfully ignorant of such a threat, though the striking down of one girl through polio particularly bred fear amongst us, as in early days it was thought only children were susceptible to polio, and that it always ended in paralysis.

Sutherland Homes had a history of 90 years. A large reunion in 2000 was held on what had been the property of Sutherland, but in 1994 the property came under the control of the two agencies of Sutherland and Berry Street, which as an agency had also served Victorian families since 1877.

Only a little visibly remains on the 40 acres nowadays to remind one of what was unique to the country home of the Sutherland Homes, but for me what will long remain is the astounding outworking of providence that eventually linked the abandonment of a baby boy on a doorstep in the city in 1883 with a most memorable day for a teenager in 1958. Both the baby on the doorstep in its time and the teenager 73 years later became children that were taken under the wing of Miss Sutherland. The abandoned little one in 1883 became my ‘Uncle Charlie’ and I was the teenager. The death of ‘Uncle Charlie’ and its life-changing outcome for me is eventually unfolded in the story of ‘The Silver Poplar’.

The names of almost all people associated with the events that are mentioned in this book – except for those referred to in the Afterword - have been changed to protect their true identities.

Trees

The Yellow Bird

The boys brought me before the tree.

‘This is where Donkey broke ‘is arm this mornin’.’ Someone had shouted this in the wind. ‘Donkey came down the Escapo and fell to the ground before he could grab at the branch of the peppercorn.’

I did not ask who Donkey was, what the Escapo was. Instead, I gazed up at the magnificent, outspreading tree as the autumnal wind shook its thick limbs. The ocean of air tore at the branches and sent spinning to the ground countless yellow leaves, which hissed at the feet of the boys standing there. One little boy pulled at a poplar sucker to uproot it but ‘mother and child’ resisted his efforts of destruction. The wind did not cease to toss around the hair of the frustrated little boy as he gazed up with the others at the immense silver poplar.

It was not so much Donkey’s mishap that led the others to bring me to the tree. Every new boy, be he little or big, had to see the inner sanctum of life at the Sutherland Homes and eventually feel its life by climbing. And then by straddling and swinging on both the solid and the leaner springy branches, it was the ambition to climb to the highest point possible and carve one’s initials in the bark proudly with a sharp stone. The initials were designed to weather the years, turning from juicy white to a lasting grey-black. It was mostly big boys whose initials were high. Many little urchins with big eyes could only look up and dream of the days when they too could overcome any fear and climb precariously to immortalise their name at the greatest height.

Several boys began climbing and looked at me as if to beckon me to follow. Immediately I fell on my knees, as if I were gazing at some object on the ground. Luckily a beetle appeared. The tree was forgotten. In the wind a growing cluster of little urchins gathered around the black glaced, frantic creature.

At six years of age I came to the Sutherland Homes that afternoon of May 18, 1948 in a taxi. The driver had a yellow plastic bird dangling from the rear vision mirror. From the time I had been dispatched for the Homes, I had watched in travel the bird swing back and forth on the mirror. The plastic bird swung violently when the taxi pulled up at the gate. A hand pulled me out of the car and the disappearance from my sight of the yellow bird dismayed me.

I went from one hand to another, until a noticeably gentle hand took me through the entrance to the Homes. I finally looked up at the ageing, small and frail lady who, despite her appearance, seemed to have authority in the place. She smiled with her crinkly face. She squeezed my hand with affection and said she was Matron Eden, the one in charge.

Then, just as I was warming to Matron Eden through the assuring grip of her hand, another hand took over—cold, hard, vice-like. I turned and Matron Eden had disappeared. The new hand jerkily pulled at mine and led me from Sutherland’s entrance hall into another hall, with strange echoing young voices becoming louder. Down one, two, three, four, five, six steps of dark red lino and there stood before me what seemed like a multitude of boys in a long corridor.

‘Boys, this is a new lad who has come to live with you. His name is Edward Smith. Now, some of you big boys take the little boy and look after him. I have work to do.’

The assistant’s shoes clattered back up the red-lino steps and were gone.

I waited for one of the inmates to speak. After a short silence, a relatively tall, handsome boy spoke.

‘I’m Gene Hay. Come with me.’

As soon as he said that, most of the others broke away, while a number followed Gene and me, introducing themselves as we walked down the corridor and into the washroom. At a large window Gene hoisted me up without a stated reason under the armpits so I could see blue hills beyond a place Gene called Diamond Creek. Blue hills? I had never seen blue hills before. Someone asked me where I had come from. When I replied that I did not know, then someone else asked where my father and mother were. Once again I replied I did not know.

‘Oh,’ said Gene, ‘you are an orphan then.’

‘What’s an orphan?’ said one of the others.

‘Someone who does not have a mother and father,’ answered Gene. ‘Yours have died, have they?’

‘I think so,’ I said.

‘I only have a mother,’ said one of the boys.

‘Come on,’ beckoned Gene, ‘and we’ll show you outside.’

‘Hey! Don’t new kids get initiated?’ called one a little taller than me.

I felt uneasy though I hardly knew why, and looked at Gene. His dark eyes fastened on the boy. He did not answer the question but turned to walk outside, his jet-black hair cascading over his forehead as he went. Summer had long gone but his skin was brown. He was not the tallest of the boys but he appeared to be the strongest.

We headed toward what was the playing area of the boys’ end. Down past the old concrete well we sauntered and stopped on what looked like an abandoned tennis court. Four grey wooden poles stood at each corner, made grotesque through the absence of wire joining them. A long dark-green cypress hedge suggested the boundary line of the Homes to the left of us. A long wooden building stood erect alongside the cypress. The building consisted of three parts: a machinery shed, a hay shed and a milking shed. Out of the northern end of the building plodded one or two cows, which joined the rest of the herd that slowly lifted their hooves out of the mud of the cow yard and made their way down the lane to the Homes’ paddocks.

The boys followed Gene beyond the abandoned tennis court. They ran while I self-consciously walked. Then they all looked at me as I came towards them, until we all looked at the sight before us.

There stood the silver poplar.

I felt an uneasiness in the presence of the boy known as Jeff Jenkins, the one who had spoken of ‘initiation’.

It was while many seemed to beckon me to climb, and when Jeff Jenkins looked coldly at me, that I had fallen on my knees and the beetle had appeared. Fascination first gripped many, but then an urchin known as Bandy pulverized the beetle with a heavy twist of his boot to some short protest, after which the boys all dispersed. Some took to chasing the spinning yellow leaves of the poplar and thrusting them down the pants of each other, some ran up the embankment and stomped amidst protest on the smallest boys’ make-believe villages in the dirt, while some spoke of who would dare them to go out of bounds and into the paddocks.

Just when many of them were becoming aggressive, a bell rang. Suddenly all the boys went running in from all directions towards the creaking steps of the back verandah. They flew up the steps and disappeared. Confused, I followed.

Following echoes of voices I tracked down two lines of the urchins side by side at the top of the red-lino steps and outside the closed door of the dining room.

Eventually the door opened and in ran the youngsters. ‘Boys, go back and walk in properly.’ The voice belonged to a woman equally as old and as frail as Matron Eden. Mrs Grace was second-in-charge, dressed in a light blue cardigan and a dark blue dress. She had a slightly hunched back.

‘Now forward, boys.’

Mrs Grace spied me and said, ‘Ah, Edward, the new boy. You sit over here.’

Slowly Mrs Grace extended her gnarled hand etched with blue veins, to a certain chair, with her other hand prodding me in the small of my back. I sat down with eight other boys at one of the tables near the northern wall.

‘Ssh, Matron!’ said one or two.

Matron Eden appeared and while she waited for the noise of all the children to cease, I saw for the first time how many youngsters belonged to the Sutherland Homes. Boys and girls sat at separate tables. Just when someone told me there were 52 boys and girls, Matron Eden, who was dwarfed by some of the tallest boys and girls, had us standing up ‘ready for Grace’. I looked at old Mrs Grace, wondering why Matron simply called her ‘Grace’. Ready for Grace? As I looked, Matron spoke some strange words to which all the children chorused, ‘Amen’. Chairs clattered and we all sat down.

To my relief I was not formally introduced at my first meal.

That night the boys walked or ran from bed to bed to see which bed I would occupy in either the ‘Edward Naylor Ward’ or the ‘Edward Wilson Ward’. A windowed door separated the two wards. The windows of the Wilson Ward faced the front verandah of the boy’s end while those of the Naylor Ward faced those of the back verandah.

The first morning at the Homes found me waking to the sound of bumping and the sight of a few figures grappling for clothes in semi-darkness. Some boys were delegated to help the farmer, Mr Betts, milk the eight or nine cows. There would be just enough milk to give Sutherland’s urchins regular glasses, as well as provide an ingredient for milk recipes. The regular breakfast dish in particular required much milk. ‘Bread and milk’ was staple diet, made by warming a large pot of milk, with broken pieces of bread left swimming around in the pot for an hour or so before we ate.

That first full day so happened to be ‘the Sabbath’, when all were expected to walk to church, with the bigger boys and girls walking two miles either way to Diamond Creek and the Church of England, while the younger ones would walk a little less than a mile to Plenty and its little wooden Methodist church. The boys assured me that while it was hard to endure the forced sitting down on wooden pews to hear a loquacious and monotonous old man preaching, if one could avoid the annoying prodding of a member of staff along the way to church, there could be stone fights with any blue-grey road screenings we could find, could be some climbing up the orange-yellow embankments by the road, or a quick dash into the bush when not being observed.

Some groaned about the tripe we were served once we all returned after church for the midday meal. Nevertheless, many out of sheer hunger took the dish and devoured it like a dog. Others ate it reluctantly or slyly passed it on to owners of greedy eyes for ‘seconds’. Such owners ate the ‘seconds’ in seconds and then sought even more. While at the table, Jeff Jenkins looked at me as if anticipating some future pleasure. He nudged Bandy who was sitting next to him, but Bandy was too preoccupied with consuming the remains of perhaps a third or fourth dish of tripe to notice the nudge. As I slowly ate my first serve of tripe—more out of duty than delight—Jenkins tried to catch the attention of one or two others, but all in vain.

Within an hour of leaving the dining room that Sunday afternoon, Jenkins drew towards me when he caught me out talking to myself.

‘Ha, you talk to yourself!’ he taunted.

I stood there speechless.

‘Y-yes,’ I stammered.

‘So you don’t have a mother,’ he said as he stretched out at full height.

‘N-no.’

‘So you don’t have a father?’

‘Er, no.’

‘I have a father and a mother,’ he taunted. ‘Hah, you’re an orphan.’

I began to turn away, but he grabbed me by the arm and swung me around to face him. He pushed me to the ground and stood over me saying, ‘I said that you’re an orphan. Get up.’ Numb, I pushed myself up with trembling hands. I felt the wind of a misdirected fist to the face and fell to the ground out of fright.

Suddenly, when I gazed up, there were Matt Easton and Jenkins on the ground, rolling around in clouds of playground dust, rolling over and over until Matt pinned Jenkins’ arms to the ground in sustained triumph. But then my view of Matt Easton and Jenkins was obscured by a swarm of spectators. The little boys had arrived first because they were relatively close by: Bandy Foote, Malcolm Gibson, Francis and Edgar Drinkwater, Tim and Tony Carver, and others. Then in came the bigger ones. The two skinny weasel-like brothers were there: Peter and John Brown. Peter Wolfgang ran in and pushed aside the juniors to get a better look and in so doing opened a way for others to follow. Donkey Humphries as he followed raised his plastered arm to avoid damage to his broken limb. Mervyn Duncan, John Johnson and Gene were the last to arrive.

When Gene arrived, he pulled the two fighting boys apart, despite some murmur of protest from the freckle-faced Wolfgang. When Gene demanded to know what was going on, after some confusion numerous fingers pointed in my direction.

‘Did Jenkins call you an orphan?’ Gene asked.

‘Yes,’ I answered.

‘Righto Jenkins, did you?’

Jenkins said in defence, ‘I only said he was an orphan. He is an orphan, isn’t he?’

‘Were you picking on him?’

‘No,’ said Jenkins.

‘He was, he was,’ chorused almost every boy.

‘Listen, Jenkins,’ warned Gene, as he grabbed the ragamuffin and screwed up his jumper at the chest, ‘I am warning you: if you call him an orphan, I’ll bash you.’

Jenkins stepped and stumbled to the ground.

‘I’ll bash you too,’ said little Matt Easton cockily, as he stood over him.

‘Don’t worry about being an orphan,’ Gene said. Looking at Jenkins he continued, ‘Jenko’s father and mother never come and see him. He’s as good as an orphan himself.’

‘Yeah, and you ought to see his sister—she’s cross-eyed!’ jibed Matt Easton. ‘Come on, Edward, and I will show you.’

The boys laughed.

I learnt much about Matt Easton in the next few days, as he and others saw themselves as my protectors from Jenkins and as they embraced me in their bid to impress me with their exploits in the poplar. Matt possessed a sheepish grin and dimpled face. In the eyes of many of the boys, it was thought Matt was the most daring and in the eyes of the staff he was the most disobedient of all at Sutherland. Oddly, next to Gene he was the most liked by a good number of the eight staff. Matt was frequently punished, but he amazed many with his ability to endure the feared strap and his grin rarely left his face.

I could only look up with adoring jealousy at the ways of the boys inside of what was the ultimate of trees for them. In a wider walk around Sutherland one discovered there were other climbable trees of some size. For instance, at the girls’ end and at the southern entrance to the Homes there were the two English oaks. They stood on either side of the entrance. Upon my arrival the leaves had fallen off those two trees. Then, near the beginning of the driveway that wound around to Sutherland’s southern entrance, there was the high cypress pine, taller than the poplar, but not considered all that climbable; its lowest branches were high above the ground and all the branches were too far apart to leap from one limb to another. The poplar was the lady of them all.

Dear Old Golden Rule Days

The frail old matron assured me that I would find Miss Buxsom an agreeable teacher and I concluded ‘agreeable’ must mean ‘likeable’ since she told me with multiplied crinkles in her smile.

On the way to the Homes’ school we had to pass through the girls’ end for sleeping, where Nurse Carver, who had pulled me along by the hand on my first day, was pushing some of the girls off to school from the girls’ back verandah. Jenkins and I suddenly became friends in adversity as the subject turned on the bad temper Nurser Carver possessed. Jenkins laughed when Matt declared that one day he hoped to pinch Nurse Carver’s strap and drop it in the round concrete well at the boys’ end. The strapping procedure was explained to me by Matt: The strap was ‘a l-o-n-g piece of leather’ Carver used when she either took your pants down and belted you on the backside, or when she impatiently hit you on the arms or legs ‘because she couldn’t wait to get your pants down’. There was some relief to learn Nurse Carver had far less to do with the boys than the girls.

On the way to the Homes’ schools at the southern end of the Homes we passed what was known as the Middle Building, so-called because it stood between the Homes’ schools and the large brick dwelling for the living quarters of the boys and girls. The Middle Building served as a storage place-cum-recreation area for special occasions. The boys’ eyes lit up when they spoke of the cellar underneath it, which could accommodate a medium-sized boy in a standing position near the door where one entered it and which grew narrower as one moved westwards towards the front part of the Homes, till there was a clearance of only a few inches. Sometimes boys held contests, it was said, to see who could go farthest in the cellar in the westerly direction in the darkness and the dankness and the dirt.

Of the two school buildings, the first one we met was the large wooden structure with steps leading up to the verandah that went completely around the three rooms that comprised the place. In the most southern room the children of the infant grades were taught. The next building was a red brick one for the upper grades and bore an Education Department number on the side facing the road that wound down and around to the township of Diamond Creek. Although the boys’ and girls’ ages gave a hint as to what grade each youngster was in, there was not automatic promotion from grade to grade. Some were teenagers and still in grade five.

Mervyn Duncan was aged 13 in grade four. No inculcation of tables or phonics lifted him out of his predicament. In the eyes of not a few inmates, his dull-wittedness was confirmed by a strange somnambular habit—in the dead of night Mervyn would clumsily climb out of bed without waking and taking dusters (rags) from the cupboard, could flump down on his knees in the hallway outside the two dormitories and polish the floor in energetic circles without waking. Fortunately, the age of 14 spared the likes of Mervyn further shame and ridicule, since all youngsters were compelled to leave Sutherland once they reached that age.

Winter stole in. Winter clothes were few. Children had to share each other’s belongings and hoped their parents would visit them more regularly than they did for newer clothes. Winter became colder when I learnt I was the only orphan.

All the other children were the offspring of parents who had cast them off for various reasons. Sutherland was a home for ‘neglected children’. Some were there because their parents were separated, with single parents not able to afford to keep them. There were also reasons no child knew nor understood for them being in the Homes. Some romanticised about their origins but one question brought them down, ‘Why are you here at Sutherland?’ I tentatively came nearer to the opening of the cocoon Jenkins had wound me in. An orphan? Others were neglected and were orphans, though not in name.

In late winter and early spring during his relatively brief stay at Sutherland, Darcy became the new focus of admiration. Darcy Stark, Gene’s stepbrother, was older than Gene, probably by two or three years. Why he was staying at Sutherland we never discovered. Slighter in build than Gene, he appeared to be more handsome because he was taller. Like Gene he had a tanned complexion. He came and went quickly, all of which added status to Gene in the eyes of most: Darcy had found work.

Rumours began to spread that both the dear old ladies, Matron Eden and Mrs Grace, would retire at the end of the year. It was then that the hook-nosed Nurse Carver seemed to acquire a more prominent place in the affairs of Sutherland and this struck fear into the hearts of the boys. Nurse Carver strapped Matt frequently for going out of bounds or causing disturbances among Sutherland’s inmates and he became determined to make her pay.

Nurse Carver’s boys, Tim and Tony, reappeared at Sutherland after having gone away for a time. Was it a sign that Carver was becoming the matron?

One day, while I wondered at hearing Matt had dared to enter the staff’s dining room and had done so without being noticed, he was seen leaping down from the grey domed well at the boys’ end in obvious triumph.

‘What were you doing?’ some asked.

Matt’s cheeks displayed his engaging dimples.

‘Oh, I