Port Augusta in the 50's
Without Prejudice
The first recollection I have of Port Augusta is the house, the smell of heat and dust and sun and too many humans forced to live together in a commission house that was too small. God knows, what my pseudo aristocratic Mother thought of it after leaving a post war Britain. My Dad couldn't have cared less, he had no delusions of grandeur. He was just a Dad, a Muso, a small time con man, a Mason, ( a fact of which he was inordinately proud) and a refugee from post war Scotland.
I can remember the dirt in the road and how kids older than me would write words and sums in the road and I was so jealous I didn't know this written thing, but knew I was fascinated. Dave was just a baby then, dressed mainly in nappy and singlet and I thought he was the most adorable creature ever. Staying home with Mum on school days when my noisy siblings were gone was lonely, hot and boring.
One time I bought a tame galah home on my arm, stray kittens, pups, you name it I would find it and bring it home for rescue. My brothers found out I was eating water melon and swallowing the pips. They told me dark tales of the seeds taking hold in my stomach and growing tendrils out of my nose and mouth. From then on I threw them out of the open window and was astonished they didn't sprout.
Shortly after that I started school at Wilsden Primary School. My older siblings were well established there already. The first day was hot and dazzling, we preps didn't have to attend morning assembly. I stood at the window and cried and the kindly Teacher escorted me back to the mat where the other little kids sat, behaving themselves.
I was to do the same behaviour at each school I went to (17), although as I got older I could hide my tears a little better. Choosing at one school, Southport State School on the Gold Coast to faint instead.
Maybe I hadn't eaten breakfast or the sun was too hot on the Assembly Tarmac, but I remember everything going white and feeling a pounding in my head and I crumpled. I was lucky to be helped by other school mates. It was a shame as I was awarded a prize for being Top Girl and I was laid out on one of the long timber seats in the classroom.
I was Top Girl, 3 times that year. I won all the exams and was placed at the top of the classroom in Top Position, next to me was placed the Second Top Child. A boy that could have auditioned for Tom Sawyer and won. He was the filfthiest boy I had ever seen, he never wore shoes, (This was Ok at the school ) and it was the 60's.
But he had ingrained dirt on his hands and heels and his ears had globs of wax and dirt in them. And his ear was mainly what I saw sitting next to him. I was fascinated at such dirt on a human being, but he was intelligent.
So very intelligent.I had a tough time beating him at Maths as I really found Maths boring, but English fascinated me. I lived in my imagination and read voraciously and wrote endlessly. I
n the style Of Enid Blyton who I adored. I won 11 shillings and sixpence for my first story published in The Brisbane Courier Mail. I was surprised and delighted. I had always wanted to be a writer, or a Marilyn Monroe look alike, or an English Teacher, whichever came first
Back to Port Augusta, hot, dry, surrounded by foothills, sand hills, dry clumps of Spinifex holding some of the shifting, slippery sand together. My brothers loved it there. Dad started running a business In Port Augusta, he had the honour of being the first business with it's own neon sign. Dressing gown and slippered we were taken to see it in the velvet warm night. Things financially began to get better and better.
We moved to a house in Jervois street. My Parents, Natalie and Ernest joined the local Presbyterian Church, Dad was quickly made an Elder of the church, Ian a Sunday School Teacher and Mum a welcome addition to the social circle. Dad and Mum would leave us at home and we would sneak out and run down in great fear the darkened streets to the Church. We would watch them through the window, having fun, so we snuck in, shamefacedly at first but were also made welcome and copped a stern ticking off from our parents for being out in the dark.
Mum was struggling to bite into an apple to join in the fun of making a face, as all the other people there from The Presbyterian Social Circle. We helped her out biting out chunks to make eyes, nose and teeth. Mum had lost all her teeth at 19 and wore dentures. She was elegant and skinny with bright burning blue eyes that could bore into your very soul. She could be disparaging in ire directed at Dad or us.
She expected the best from her children, was intensely proud and very very ill. we didn't know it at the time but during the war she had seen her fiance's plane shot down. She worked in The RAFF and tracked planes in the sky, plotting flight routes, while she was on duty. One night, so the story goes, her fiance was shot down, she recognised the plane. I'm not sure if it was that night or another and it was "Brown Out" during the blitzing of London, that she was pedaling back to the barracks in the dark and was strafed by a dive bomber, came off her bike and gashed her knee to the bone.
We have heard various tales over the years of what happened then. Mum would never ever speak of her experience during the war, Dad only his experiences. But supposedly Mum was found wandering in London, some 3 months later, not knowing who she was or where she lived. She was sent back to Yorkshire and was in hospital for a period before she met my Dad. My Auntie Betty, my Mother's oldest sister, said that Mum was psychotic round that time. Schizophrenia reared it's ugly head then, but she was more Post Traumatic Stress disordered, I think.
Mum and Dad met at a dance, I think Dad was in the band, that was playing that night. Dad had already been married for a year to a woman. He was 18. Dad and she had a child my half sister Joyce. Apparently Dad had returned from the war and found his new wife in bed with another man. The wife was a bit nutty, a self proclaimed psychic, shame she didn't sense my Dad standing at the end of the bed when he alighted on the courting couple in his bed.
He said he pulled out his dirk from his sock, he was in the Black Watch and sliced the man's balls clean off. I am not sure if that story is true. But Dad had to go back to the war so he told my Granny Bruckshaw, his Mother, to keep an eye on this woman and Joyce. So Granny did.
One day, a bitterly cold day in Winter, so the legend goes, My Granny was walking past the open window of the flat this woman, Edith, lived with Joyce. Edith was whirling around the room like a dervish, starkers, and Joyce was leaning out the open window, also naked and granny scooped her up and took her home. And that was the end of that.
She obviously contacted the authorities and was able to keep Joyce and her and Grandad Bruckshaw brought Joyce up to adulthood. When I questioned Joyce what that was like she said Granny Bruckshaw was a real lady and Grand dad was very strict and a real Scot. Dad had two sisters, Marion and Gladys, who grew up with him and played and sang with him. There was also a brother, my Uncle Ian, who was not musically gifted.
My Dad often told tales of his immensely strong Father. He was a wrestler and so strong of a man apparently, once holding a car up on his own while a man trapped underneath was scooped out to safety. But Dad vowed one day to never be like his Father, because he could be handy with his fists on his children.
Dad said the word fuck at the dinner once and was belted across the face and avowed right then and there he would never be abusive to his own children and he never was, ever. Grandma Bruckshaw died while we were in Port Augusta and I remember dad leaning against a wall and crying, sobbing, his hands to his face and I cried too, never having seen my Dad cry before. She died of sinus cancer my sister Jackie said, I thought it was lung cancer, remembering the fact for some reason that she never smoked.
Love Janette
The first recollection I have of Port Augusta is the house, the smell of heat and dust and sun and too many humans forced to live together in a commission house that was too small. God knows, what my pseudo aristocratic Mother thought of it after leaving a post war Britain. My Dad couldn't have cared less, he had no delusions of grandeur. He was just a Dad, a Muso, a small time con man, a Mason, ( a fact of which he was inordinately proud) and a refugee from post war Scotland.
I can remember the dirt in the road and how kids older than me would write words and sums in the road and I was so jealous I didn't know this written thing, but knew I was fascinated. Dave was just a baby then, dressed mainly in nappy and singlet and I thought he was the most adorable creature ever. Staying home with Mum on school days when my noisy siblings were gone was lonely, hot and boring.
One time I bought a tame galah home on my arm, stray kittens, pups, you name it I would find it and bring it home for rescue. My brothers found out I was eating water melon and swallowing the pips. They told me dark tales of the seeds taking hold in my stomach and growing tendrils out of my nose and mouth. From then on I threw them out of the open window and was astonished they didn't sprout.
Shortly after that I started school at Wilsden Primary School. My older siblings were well established there already. The first day was hot and dazzling, we preps didn't have to attend morning assembly. I stood at the window and cried and the kindly Teacher escorted me back to the mat where the other little kids sat, behaving themselves.
I was to do the same behaviour at each school I went to (17), although as I got older I could hide my tears a little better. Choosing at one school, Southport State School on the Gold Coast to faint instead.
Maybe I hadn't eaten breakfast or the sun was too hot on the Assembly Tarmac, but I remember everything going white and feeling a pounding in my head and I crumpled. I was lucky to be helped by other school mates. It was a shame as I was awarded a prize for being Top Girl and I was laid out on one of the long timber seats in the classroom.
I was Top Girl, 3 times that year. I won all the exams and was placed at the top of the classroom in Top Position, next to me was placed the Second Top Child. A boy that could have auditioned for Tom Sawyer and won. He was the filfthiest boy I had ever seen, he never wore shoes, (This was Ok at the school ) and it was the 60's.
But he had ingrained dirt on his hands and heels and his ears had globs of wax and dirt in them. And his ear was mainly what I saw sitting next to him. I was fascinated at such dirt on a human being, but he was intelligent.
So very intelligent.I had a tough time beating him at Maths as I really found Maths boring, but English fascinated me. I lived in my imagination and read voraciously and wrote endlessly. I
n the style Of Enid Blyton who I adored. I won 11 shillings and sixpence for my first story published in The Brisbane Courier Mail. I was surprised and delighted. I had always wanted to be a writer, or a Marilyn Monroe look alike, or an English Teacher, whichever came first
Back to Port Augusta, hot, dry, surrounded by foothills, sand hills, dry clumps of Spinifex holding some of the shifting, slippery sand together. My brothers loved it there. Dad started running a business In Port Augusta, he had the honour of being the first business with it's own neon sign. Dressing gown and slippered we were taken to see it in the velvet warm night. Things financially began to get better and better.
We moved to a house in Jervois street. My Parents, Natalie and Ernest joined the local Presbyterian Church, Dad was quickly made an Elder of the church, Ian a Sunday School Teacher and Mum a welcome addition to the social circle. Dad and Mum would leave us at home and we would sneak out and run down in great fear the darkened streets to the Church. We would watch them through the window, having fun, so we snuck in, shamefacedly at first but were also made welcome and copped a stern ticking off from our parents for being out in the dark.
Mum was struggling to bite into an apple to join in the fun of making a face, as all the other people there from The Presbyterian Social Circle. We helped her out biting out chunks to make eyes, nose and teeth. Mum had lost all her teeth at 19 and wore dentures. She was elegant and skinny with bright burning blue eyes that could bore into your very soul. She could be disparaging in ire directed at Dad or us.
She expected the best from her children, was intensely proud and very very ill. we didn't know it at the time but during the war she had seen her fiance's plane shot down. She worked in The RAFF and tracked planes in the sky, plotting flight routes, while she was on duty. One night, so the story goes, her fiance was shot down, she recognised the plane. I'm not sure if it was that night or another and it was "Brown Out" during the blitzing of London, that she was pedaling back to the barracks in the dark and was strafed by a dive bomber, came off her bike and gashed her knee to the bone.
We have heard various tales over the years of what happened then. Mum would never ever speak of her experience during the war, Dad only his experiences. But supposedly Mum was found wandering in London, some 3 months later, not knowing who she was or where she lived. She was sent back to Yorkshire and was in hospital for a period before she met my Dad. My Auntie Betty, my Mother's oldest sister, said that Mum was psychotic round that time. Schizophrenia reared it's ugly head then, but she was more Post Traumatic Stress disordered, I think.
Mum and Dad met at a dance, I think Dad was in the band, that was playing that night. Dad had already been married for a year to a woman. He was 18. Dad and she had a child my half sister Joyce. Apparently Dad had returned from the war and found his new wife in bed with another man. The wife was a bit nutty, a self proclaimed psychic, shame she didn't sense my Dad standing at the end of the bed when he alighted on the courting couple in his bed.
He said he pulled out his dirk from his sock, he was in the Black Watch and sliced the man's balls clean off. I am not sure if that story is true. But Dad had to go back to the war so he told my Granny Bruckshaw, his Mother, to keep an eye on this woman and Joyce. So Granny did.
One day, a bitterly cold day in Winter, so the legend goes, My Granny was walking past the open window of the flat this woman, Edith, lived with Joyce. Edith was whirling around the room like a dervish, starkers, and Joyce was leaning out the open window, also naked and granny scooped her up and took her home. And that was the end of that.
She obviously contacted the authorities and was able to keep Joyce and her and Grandad Bruckshaw brought Joyce up to adulthood. When I questioned Joyce what that was like she said Granny Bruckshaw was a real lady and Grand dad was very strict and a real Scot. Dad had two sisters, Marion and Gladys, who grew up with him and played and sang with him. There was also a brother, my Uncle Ian, who was not musically gifted.
My Dad often told tales of his immensely strong Father. He was a wrestler and so strong of a man apparently, once holding a car up on his own while a man trapped underneath was scooped out to safety. But Dad vowed one day to never be like his Father, because he could be handy with his fists on his children.
Dad said the word fuck at the dinner once and was belted across the face and avowed right then and there he would never be abusive to his own children and he never was, ever. Grandma Bruckshaw died while we were in Port Augusta and I remember dad leaning against a wall and crying, sobbing, his hands to his face and I cried too, never having seen my Dad cry before. She died of sinus cancer my sister Jackie said, I thought it was lung cancer, remembering the fact for some reason that she never smoked.
Love Janette
