Arthur and the Movies
Without Prejudice
I hated movies when I was a little girl. Mum and Dad would take us to see them at the cinema and Drive In Theatre. The Drive In Theatre was a new concept in the 50's at Port Augusta and we would be all dressed up in pyjamas and dressing gowns, beslippered feet to go. I always remember the tomato soup and toast we were allowed to buy and the clip on car door speaker which we regularly left attached when it was all overand it yanked us back in rememberance.
I can't remember one movie I saw there. I do remember at the cinema at Port Augusta Mum and Dad's name coming up on the screen as apparently our car was on fire. The old Humber Super Snipe, I can remember Mum losing a lit cigarette in the car just before we went in. And the cockroaches that ran across the floor at home when we returned. I would always pretend to be asleep so Dad would carry me in, so I didn't have to see them.
I was a timid little thing and never more so than at the Movies. The Ten Commandments I spent watching through peekaboo fingers and eventually when they whipped the slaves I hid down under the seats. Not looking at all and the Movie was interminably long. There was another that involved a bank vault and a little boy accidentally locked inside. They only had 24 hours to get him out before he ran out of air. I agonised with the boy and the parents and once again sat on the floor not looking, just peeping sometimes.
The movies must have been heaven to my parents then, cool and dark, an escape for the mind and the body from the Adelaide heat. We had arrived in Australia in the Summer of 1954 and I was only two. The Hostel was a hot nasty place, our accommodation a tin Nissen Hut as hot as an oven. One bare bulb hanging from the middle of the room, casting scary shadows over the walls and the stifling beds were we lay.
Port Augusta cinema was also a refuge from the heat and we had moved there when I was about 4. I remember escaping my Sister in Woollies and dashing across the road there to go to the "loo" and saw I was not going to make it when a Car tried to slow and hit me. I will never forget that feeling of inevitability, the car seemed monstrously large and time stood still as I realised it was going to hit me. It smacked into my leg and I fell down in the road.
My sister ran out of the shops and grabbed me and we apologised profusely to the concerned man in the car. Jackie and I agreed not to tell Mum and Dad as Jackie would get in trouble and so would I for running off from her. That night the man rang our house to see how I was and we were busted, big time. But Mum and Dad were more concerned than anything and I still fear crossing a road to this day. I have to grab an arm of who ever I am with and then cross, I refuse to do it on my own.
I remember loving all the Tammy movies with Debbie Reynolds and when I think back I realise it must have cost Mum and Dad a small fortune to take us 5 kids and themselves to the movies. But it was a favoured past time. George, my brother and I would eventually go to the Saturday afternoon flix and watch serials that would always end on a cliffhanger moment. Tarzan, mostly and I tried to be brave as I watched crocodiles and snakes and the bad men in black hats. Tarzan yodelling, swinging on vines and Dad told me Johnny Weismuller was a former swimming champion who had a buff body and became an actor.
Mum hated Victor Mature with a passion and would not watch anything he was in. She thought he was a greasy "wop" and would say so loudly, so everyone could hear. I quite liked him as he was usually playing a sheik or something and seemed to fit the part really well. A lot of the movies we saw were B Grade flix but we didn't know that and once again I would hide under the seats, sitting on the floor till the gory, scary bits were over.
George would tap me on the shoulder when the bad bits were over and I would sit back up and disappear again when the going got rough. We knew of kids that snuck in the exit doors for free but we were never game to try it. There was world news and we would gasp at things going on overseas and be suitably thrilled at the same time. It cost a shilling on Saturday afternoons and we would beg the money from Mum and Dad and run to the pictures. The Dress Circle upstairs was more expensive and was only for high days and holidays.
Kids who could afford it would drop missiles from above, usually Jaffas and we would run to pick them up. Sometimes we had a little money left over and would buy Coconut Quavers in a box or Fruit Pastilles and we would never waste them by throwing them at others. We were well brought up little British kids and tended to feel superior to all the other boisterous children. We were never ever allowed out on our own. We always had to take a sibling with us for protection which usually involved "dobbing and tattle tale telling" on each other unless we had begged the other for leniency and to keep certain things from our parents.
We always had each other to spend time with anyway and had no need for outside friends. We were "enough". George was a bad boy and tended to roar and shout and get rid of companions anyway. He was Mum's "blue eyed" boy and could do no wrong as far as she was concerned and Jackie and I tended to think he was a spoilt little shit and clouted him regularly when Mum's back was turned. Dad only ever smacked George, we were angels in comparison and we made the most of Dad's rule that girls could never be hit, ever.
Ian said he grew up hating "The Girls" as we also were spoiled and self centred and by the time I had spent 6 months in Prep I was a "Genius" as far as they were concerned. I had been railroaded straight to Grade 1 half way through the prep year and taught other kids to read. I read expressively and was soon made "The Announcer" and read over the Public Address System every afternoon, stories, for the "Little Kids" to hear. I may have been timid but part of me was a natural born showoff and I loved to show off my braininess.
Jackie was the pretty sister and I was the nerd and gave not a damn for how I looked. I would never brush my hair or even look in a mirror. I ran with my brothers playing Cowboys and "Itchybums" and I was always Annie Oakley with six shooters. George and Dave wore raccoon hats a la Davey Crocket and we would chase each other around the yard, killing each other and lying down dead as the game demanded. We had caps in our guns that would strike and go off with a strong sulphuric smell.
We didn't go to the movies much after Jamie died. We stayed with a former teacher for 3 months who lived in the Adelaide Hills while Mum kept David with her and rested. We didn't seem to go out in public much after his death and ever after we began a succession of moves.Sydney first, Camperdown Caravan Park, near Liverpool and then Avalon at the top of a hill. I hated the schools we went to in Sydney, the kids were unfriendly and formed cliques that did not contain us, "strange lot"
Then we moved to Canowindra on the other side of the Blue Mountains and there was no cinema there, just a magnificent pool where we spent days and days swimming and sun baking. Jackie taught me to swim at last and I was about 7, the right age to do so. When I found out I could swim I then had to be the best at it and would practice for hours endlessly. Jackie would make me swim lengths of the Olympic Size pool with a kickboard, just kicking with my ankles. My hair turned from blonde to a virulent shade of green from the chlorine.
I swam in the Family relay team on Squad nights and we trounced the opposition, winning pennant after pennant. Dad said I had a certain style which was to plonk dive in and never lift my head for breath, just plough through the water with my head down, all the way. Eventually I was taught how to breathe to one side and keep the other swimmers in my sight. Guided straight by the bobbing lane ropes and the lines on the bottom of the pool.
I was picked for the State Championships in Sydney at 8 and I was excited and nervous all at the same time. Mum and Dad took David and I to Sydney for them and I made only 5th in my heat, diving off a huge step and thrashing through the water. All the other girls seemed so large compared to me and I had cried a little with nerves before the race. I was outmatched and I knew it but did my best as that is what my parents expected.
They then took David and I to the Gold Coast immediately and we all fell in love with the place. We returned to Canowindra and in a short time we moved again, this time I think as we owed money everywhere and had to flee. We ended up in Wentworthville in 2 very different house, one a housing commission which we all hated with it's "outhouse" loo. It smelled vile and had a dinky wooden seat on top of it which was cracked and it bit your bum when you sat on it.
There was another house we moved to, an older style house near the railway station. I won a scholarship to be trained by a coach for swimming and caught a train and a bus to get there all on my own. Jackie no longer interested in swimming had once again discovered the movies and Elvis. She became one of his number one fans and we went to see his movies over and over. Blue Hawaii we saw 14 times and we could utter just about every line of dialogue in the end.
I saw all the Elvis movies and Jackie discovered me in the bedroom once singing an Elvis song and shimmying around the room, a hairbrush as microphone in my hand. She thought I was hysterically funny and told the whole family what I was up to. I could not really sing a note, Jackie was the singer of the family. I was backup only. We moved again and this time to the Gold Coast. We stayed longest there. We had a flat at first in Main Beach above a butchers, near the Caravan Park.
We went to Southport State School, George, David and I. Jackie to high school. She kicked a Maths Teacher in the shin one day and walked out and from that day she went to work as a housemaid, she was 14. She was sweeping the floor one day in our house at Main Beach in Mountbatten Avenue and asked me to sweep up the dirt with dust pan and broom. I said and I quote,
"You do it, you're the maid around here" and she clouted me.
The movies in Southport were on the pier. The chairs were canvas slings almost and beneath our feet in the holes in the boards on the floor you could see the ocean. I saw Lorna Doone there with the school and sat next to a boy I fancied, Ross someone and he held my hand. We spent a lot of time there and once Dave and I had to chaperone Jackie as she was out with a "Man". We had spent the day with him and Jackie sailing in his Catamaran. We knew he was trying to impress her so we remained largely unimpressed.
We watched Doctor No that night while Jackie and her beau necked passionately and I could not take my sideways glancing eyes off of them. I was totally revolted by the whole thing but the Movie made a huge impression on me. It was quite rude in bits but I kept my eyes on the screen as much as was possible. The alternative to watching my Sis and her revolting older boyfriend slurping it up. Urgh !
I was all of 11 by then and Top Girl at Southport State and vowed and declared after that night I was Not having a boyfriend, no way, no how. I instead turned my attention to my studies and story writing and was lucky enough to be published in the paper. I also wrote gloomy poetry which was crap and I knew it. I had only just began to develop a womanly body and as far as I was concerned that was crap too as I didn't want to grow up.
But I had to and had to go off to the Department store on my own and buy a pair of bathers that had a bra top built in which made me look like an adult and caused me no end of bother. I leaped from scrawny child to voluptuous woman it seemed like within hours of turning 11 and I hated it. I felt like I could no longer run with the boys and had to be lady like and Dad then started brushing my unruly messy hair.
I watched so many movies at Southport and once at Surfers where I found a 5 pound note and treated David and George to a day of long icy poles, called Slippery Sams. We played Monopoly acroos the road with the richer kids and Meccano and for sixpence could swim in a pool across the road as well. I will never forget the hot summers spent there and the feel of our cossied bodies lying on the hot concrete to dry off. I finally learned to dive properly there and once split my lip on the bottom and Mum thought it would have to be stitched. But it healed over and I still bear a tiny scar to this day.
We began to notice there how depressed our Mum was, taking to her bed in the cool darkness and not coming out. Dad had become a bankrupt and signed a cheque and was jailed, I believe. We kids weren't let in on that fact, we just knew, somehow by Osmosis, especially when the power was cut and we played charades by candlelight. Ian managed to explode his bedroom there when an experiment went wrong and I had a case of cystitis so severe I fainted from the blood and pain and passsed out on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor.
As per usual I didn't tell Mum and Dad and the bout passed, no doubt caused by a germ or a million from the crowded small pool. The school we went to Southport State was the best school I ever went to apart from Thornes House Grammar and I was voted Top girl again and again. It was funny as I knew so much of life from books and hardly any from real life.I was so very protected, which is not always a good thing as I was to find out later in life.
Within months Jackie had begun working in the Family buisness. a Music shop in the Lido Arcade, Surfers and she was also joining Dad on stage, entertaining. She met The Brothers Gibb who came into the shop for guitar strings and Barry Gibb asked her out. Dad played with the Maori Hi Five who were so funny and irreverent and they came to the house often. By then we had moved to 484 Marine Parade Labrador.
The house was a highset with a whole world of living underneath. Downstairs had a shower and for a while we had some of the "boys" from the Maori Hi Five staying there. I also had my 11th birthday there, a Hawaiian themed party and we all wore grass skirts and leis around our necks in a mutitude of colours. My best friend Linda Sumner and I spent a lot of time together.
I was allowed to sleep over at her house and it was the first time ever in my life I was on my own. She and I made jam drops and she insisted we bath together and she showed me that she had begun to gro hair in certain places and I was wildly jealous as I hadn't. Her Mum and Dad took us out boating on the Nerang River and that night took us to see Atari, the movie, at the Drive In and we missed most of it as suntanned and exhausted we feel asleep in the back of their station wagon.
Within months we had left the Gold Coast and arrived in Mount Martha near where my Brother Ian was based at Balcombe Army Barracks. We were broke, beyond broke and Ian brought us rations from the kitchen hidden in his Army greatcoat pockets. Mum began work as did Jackie at Clarks shoes factory, which Mum said was a "shit" of a job. George was at Mornington High and I was at a tiny little school called Darcy State School. The Headmaster was a man called conveniently Mr Darcy and he had a house on the School grounds.
He liked the way I recited poetry and called me to recite Mulga Bills Bicycle, hands locked in front of me to the class. They of course thought I was a nerd of the highest order and a swot, Teachers Pet as well and mainly ignored me as best they could. David and I would walk home through the Ti Tee bush together and run to the cliffs of Mount Martha and sometimes the main beach. We "Wandered lonely as clouds " there, clambering over rocks and finding paths and caves.
I loved the nature walks there, but soon we were moving agin and this time Jackie was forced to follow Dad in a car and she had no licence and desperate times call for desperate measures. She just followed Dad closely and prayed for the best. We arrived in a house at Unley, it was as hot as we had ever imagined and the cold of Victoria was quickly forgotten as we sailed on Popeye down the Torrens river once again.
Mum took to her bed and we took off to new schools and Jackie worked at David Joneses. I am not sure what Dad did then as we saw not a lot of him. Mum was like a shadow once again, lying in the coolness of her room. Jackie gave me a bra of hers and told me to start wearing it. The kids at school noticed straight away and one girl said,
"About time ! "
We were not to be in Adelaide very long, just a few months and then all of a sudden we were moving home to the UK. A home I didn't remember at all. But I was delighted we were finally going to be meeting some relatives at long last. My Aunty Betty and Mum had a falling out years before, shortly after James had died. Granny Bruckshaw had died and Dad had leaned against the wall and sobbed in Port Augusta. I was only to see my Dad cry 3 times in his life, once for Jamie, once for Garndma Bruckshaw and once for Lauren. He didn't cry so much when Mum died as by that time it was a blessed relief after years and years of illness.
We caught a bus back to Melbourne and we boarded a ship that night headed for the UK. Dad had sold everything that was on hire purchase to afford the fares and he breathed a huge sigh of relief when we sailed out of Australian Territorial waters as he thought the Federal Police were on his tail. He had sold all the furniture and the cars and it was criminal at that time to sell anything on hire purchase and we thought Dad would be arrested at any time.
We were all sick from vaccination fever as we set sail and George had almost had to have been hospitalised as he fainted in the lift at Myers in the city that afternoon. I can still recall the nightmares we had from the vaccinations for smallpox and diptheria, vivid and frightening as they were. But we managed to board the boat without vomiting and took to our bunks for a few day until we felt better. Dad had somehow managed for us to be in a suite on one of the top decks with a porthole view.
George, David and I began to recover and explore the boat and palled up with other kids whose parents were rich and we pretended ours were too. There were so many kids activities to do and we crawled all over The Ellenis in discovery and wonder. There was a cinema that played movies in a continuous loop and we watched the same ones over and over. One was a cheap budget movie that was all about Vampires and we scared ourselves witless as we watched it over and over again and never grew less frightened.
One Movie with Richard Burton that Mum loved and we hated. The cinema was once again a safe refuge from the heat on board and was always usually empty except for us kids in the daytime and we made the most of it, hiding under the stage and playing "Hide In The Dark.". It was eerily spooky under there and we could hear the Ocean slapping against the boats hull. Cleaners would come in and we would hide from them. trying not to giigle and be heard.
After our arrival in the UK, the first movie I went to see was Poor Cow, with Mum. It was her pick for her and me and the beginning scene was of a baby being born and it was pretty full on and I turned my head at the worst bits and wondered why Mum had brought me. I think she was trying to give me a gentle bit of sex education without having to talk about it. I had no idea even then where babies came from and at 14 announced in front of my class of second formers that they came out of your bum.
When the boys told me otherwise I didn't understand how that was possible even though I had seen the movie Poor Cow. Obviously by turning my head I was missing the real stuff but I was blessedly ignorant of all things fecund and continued to be blessedly ignorant for a long time to come. I had seen Hard Days Night with the Beatles and though I was a big fan I thought the movie was stupid. I took David all by myself to see Mary Poppins and we sang all the way home. That was more my style.
In london once to see my Half Sister Joyce I saw Help and also thought it was stupid, but the record of Help by the beatles was the first 45 I ever bought and then I bought Sergeant Peepers and loved it and my siblings thought it was crap. I then beacme a huge Monkees fan and saw their Movie and fought George tooth and nail to see The Monkees Series on Tv. It just had to come on at the same time as Doctor Who. David insisted I take him to see the movie and ever after he signed his letters as Dalek Dave.
Living in the UK for us little Ozzies was magic and so very different from everything that had gone before. There was heaps more socail life and things to do. The public transport system was excellent and we could catch buses and trains all over West Yorkshire and did. Most of the Movie Houses then had turned into Bingo Halls. But the ones that were still open played Movies over and over on a continuous loop and you were allowed to smoke in there. Imagine that in this day and age ?
But of all the movies I have ever watched the one I love the most is ARTHUR with Dudley Moore. The one liners, the humour gets to me time and time again. I use the quotes and have made firm friends by doing so.
"Forget, the moose for a moment"
Dudley to screaming lady as she says'
I have a gun"
"You probably do Madam and for all I know it went off as you were screaming"
"I'll have another drink and would you like another fish ? "
It's witty and Arthur is a flawed character and an endless drunk.
Sir John Gielguld as the butler Hobson was an inspired choice.
Arthur: "I think I'll have a bath"
Hobson: "I'll alert the media!"
As Arthur leaves the room,
Hobson: " Do you want me to wash your dick for you, you little shit"
Arthur: "I feel unloved"
Hobson: Everyone is unloved Arthur, but just in case, I love you"
It is a Blake Edwards movie and he also did the Pink Panther movies, the ones with Peter Sellers, not the new awful one. I have never laughed as much in my life as at Peter Sellers, the man was a genius of comedic timing. His portrayal of Inspector Clousea is classic and timeless. I love the scene where he is dressed as a pirate with a blow up parrot on his shoulder. Watch it and laugh out loud.
The movies have been my form of escape and delight all my life and I give thanks to the writers and actors, directors and the teams that bring a movie to fruition. They at times probably wonder why they do it, but I love them for doing so as they entertain, move me to tears and delight. Casablanca I can watch time and time again, Rebecca too, the Godfather One and Two and Sea Of Love with Al Pacino.
Thank God for actors, the good ones and thank God for the visionaries that bring them to the screen.
Love Janette
I
I hated movies when I was a little girl. Mum and Dad would take us to see them at the cinema and Drive In Theatre. The Drive In Theatre was a new concept in the 50's at Port Augusta and we would be all dressed up in pyjamas and dressing gowns, beslippered feet to go. I always remember the tomato soup and toast we were allowed to buy and the clip on car door speaker which we regularly left attached when it was all overand it yanked us back in rememberance.
I can't remember one movie I saw there. I do remember at the cinema at Port Augusta Mum and Dad's name coming up on the screen as apparently our car was on fire. The old Humber Super Snipe, I can remember Mum losing a lit cigarette in the car just before we went in. And the cockroaches that ran across the floor at home when we returned. I would always pretend to be asleep so Dad would carry me in, so I didn't have to see them.
I was a timid little thing and never more so than at the Movies. The Ten Commandments I spent watching through peekaboo fingers and eventually when they whipped the slaves I hid down under the seats. Not looking at all and the Movie was interminably long. There was another that involved a bank vault and a little boy accidentally locked inside. They only had 24 hours to get him out before he ran out of air. I agonised with the boy and the parents and once again sat on the floor not looking, just peeping sometimes.
The movies must have been heaven to my parents then, cool and dark, an escape for the mind and the body from the Adelaide heat. We had arrived in Australia in the Summer of 1954 and I was only two. The Hostel was a hot nasty place, our accommodation a tin Nissen Hut as hot as an oven. One bare bulb hanging from the middle of the room, casting scary shadows over the walls and the stifling beds were we lay.
Port Augusta cinema was also a refuge from the heat and we had moved there when I was about 4. I remember escaping my Sister in Woollies and dashing across the road there to go to the "loo" and saw I was not going to make it when a Car tried to slow and hit me. I will never forget that feeling of inevitability, the car seemed monstrously large and time stood still as I realised it was going to hit me. It smacked into my leg and I fell down in the road.
My sister ran out of the shops and grabbed me and we apologised profusely to the concerned man in the car. Jackie and I agreed not to tell Mum and Dad as Jackie would get in trouble and so would I for running off from her. That night the man rang our house to see how I was and we were busted, big time. But Mum and Dad were more concerned than anything and I still fear crossing a road to this day. I have to grab an arm of who ever I am with and then cross, I refuse to do it on my own.
I remember loving all the Tammy movies with Debbie Reynolds and when I think back I realise it must have cost Mum and Dad a small fortune to take us 5 kids and themselves to the movies. But it was a favoured past time. George, my brother and I would eventually go to the Saturday afternoon flix and watch serials that would always end on a cliffhanger moment. Tarzan, mostly and I tried to be brave as I watched crocodiles and snakes and the bad men in black hats. Tarzan yodelling, swinging on vines and Dad told me Johnny Weismuller was a former swimming champion who had a buff body and became an actor.
Mum hated Victor Mature with a passion and would not watch anything he was in. She thought he was a greasy "wop" and would say so loudly, so everyone could hear. I quite liked him as he was usually playing a sheik or something and seemed to fit the part really well. A lot of the movies we saw were B Grade flix but we didn't know that and once again I would hide under the seats, sitting on the floor till the gory, scary bits were over.
George would tap me on the shoulder when the bad bits were over and I would sit back up and disappear again when the going got rough. We knew of kids that snuck in the exit doors for free but we were never game to try it. There was world news and we would gasp at things going on overseas and be suitably thrilled at the same time. It cost a shilling on Saturday afternoons and we would beg the money from Mum and Dad and run to the pictures. The Dress Circle upstairs was more expensive and was only for high days and holidays.
Kids who could afford it would drop missiles from above, usually Jaffas and we would run to pick them up. Sometimes we had a little money left over and would buy Coconut Quavers in a box or Fruit Pastilles and we would never waste them by throwing them at others. We were well brought up little British kids and tended to feel superior to all the other boisterous children. We were never ever allowed out on our own. We always had to take a sibling with us for protection which usually involved "dobbing and tattle tale telling" on each other unless we had begged the other for leniency and to keep certain things from our parents.
We always had each other to spend time with anyway and had no need for outside friends. We were "enough". George was a bad boy and tended to roar and shout and get rid of companions anyway. He was Mum's "blue eyed" boy and could do no wrong as far as she was concerned and Jackie and I tended to think he was a spoilt little shit and clouted him regularly when Mum's back was turned. Dad only ever smacked George, we were angels in comparison and we made the most of Dad's rule that girls could never be hit, ever.
Ian said he grew up hating "The Girls" as we also were spoiled and self centred and by the time I had spent 6 months in Prep I was a "Genius" as far as they were concerned. I had been railroaded straight to Grade 1 half way through the prep year and taught other kids to read. I read expressively and was soon made "The Announcer" and read over the Public Address System every afternoon, stories, for the "Little Kids" to hear. I may have been timid but part of me was a natural born showoff and I loved to show off my braininess.
Jackie was the pretty sister and I was the nerd and gave not a damn for how I looked. I would never brush my hair or even look in a mirror. I ran with my brothers playing Cowboys and "Itchybums" and I was always Annie Oakley with six shooters. George and Dave wore raccoon hats a la Davey Crocket and we would chase each other around the yard, killing each other and lying down dead as the game demanded. We had caps in our guns that would strike and go off with a strong sulphuric smell.
We didn't go to the movies much after Jamie died. We stayed with a former teacher for 3 months who lived in the Adelaide Hills while Mum kept David with her and rested. We didn't seem to go out in public much after his death and ever after we began a succession of moves.Sydney first, Camperdown Caravan Park, near Liverpool and then Avalon at the top of a hill. I hated the schools we went to in Sydney, the kids were unfriendly and formed cliques that did not contain us, "strange lot"
Then we moved to Canowindra on the other side of the Blue Mountains and there was no cinema there, just a magnificent pool where we spent days and days swimming and sun baking. Jackie taught me to swim at last and I was about 7, the right age to do so. When I found out I could swim I then had to be the best at it and would practice for hours endlessly. Jackie would make me swim lengths of the Olympic Size pool with a kickboard, just kicking with my ankles. My hair turned from blonde to a virulent shade of green from the chlorine.
I swam in the Family relay team on Squad nights and we trounced the opposition, winning pennant after pennant. Dad said I had a certain style which was to plonk dive in and never lift my head for breath, just plough through the water with my head down, all the way. Eventually I was taught how to breathe to one side and keep the other swimmers in my sight. Guided straight by the bobbing lane ropes and the lines on the bottom of the pool.
I was picked for the State Championships in Sydney at 8 and I was excited and nervous all at the same time. Mum and Dad took David and I to Sydney for them and I made only 5th in my heat, diving off a huge step and thrashing through the water. All the other girls seemed so large compared to me and I had cried a little with nerves before the race. I was outmatched and I knew it but did my best as that is what my parents expected.
They then took David and I to the Gold Coast immediately and we all fell in love with the place. We returned to Canowindra and in a short time we moved again, this time I think as we owed money everywhere and had to flee. We ended up in Wentworthville in 2 very different house, one a housing commission which we all hated with it's "outhouse" loo. It smelled vile and had a dinky wooden seat on top of it which was cracked and it bit your bum when you sat on it.
There was another house we moved to, an older style house near the railway station. I won a scholarship to be trained by a coach for swimming and caught a train and a bus to get there all on my own. Jackie no longer interested in swimming had once again discovered the movies and Elvis. She became one of his number one fans and we went to see his movies over and over. Blue Hawaii we saw 14 times and we could utter just about every line of dialogue in the end.
I saw all the Elvis movies and Jackie discovered me in the bedroom once singing an Elvis song and shimmying around the room, a hairbrush as microphone in my hand. She thought I was hysterically funny and told the whole family what I was up to. I could not really sing a note, Jackie was the singer of the family. I was backup only. We moved again and this time to the Gold Coast. We stayed longest there. We had a flat at first in Main Beach above a butchers, near the Caravan Park.
We went to Southport State School, George, David and I. Jackie to high school. She kicked a Maths Teacher in the shin one day and walked out and from that day she went to work as a housemaid, she was 14. She was sweeping the floor one day in our house at Main Beach in Mountbatten Avenue and asked me to sweep up the dirt with dust pan and broom. I said and I quote,
"You do it, you're the maid around here" and she clouted me.
The movies in Southport were on the pier. The chairs were canvas slings almost and beneath our feet in the holes in the boards on the floor you could see the ocean. I saw Lorna Doone there with the school and sat next to a boy I fancied, Ross someone and he held my hand. We spent a lot of time there and once Dave and I had to chaperone Jackie as she was out with a "Man". We had spent the day with him and Jackie sailing in his Catamaran. We knew he was trying to impress her so we remained largely unimpressed.
We watched Doctor No that night while Jackie and her beau necked passionately and I could not take my sideways glancing eyes off of them. I was totally revolted by the whole thing but the Movie made a huge impression on me. It was quite rude in bits but I kept my eyes on the screen as much as was possible. The alternative to watching my Sis and her revolting older boyfriend slurping it up. Urgh !
I was all of 11 by then and Top Girl at Southport State and vowed and declared after that night I was Not having a boyfriend, no way, no how. I instead turned my attention to my studies and story writing and was lucky enough to be published in the paper. I also wrote gloomy poetry which was crap and I knew it. I had only just began to develop a womanly body and as far as I was concerned that was crap too as I didn't want to grow up.
But I had to and had to go off to the Department store on my own and buy a pair of bathers that had a bra top built in which made me look like an adult and caused me no end of bother. I leaped from scrawny child to voluptuous woman it seemed like within hours of turning 11 and I hated it. I felt like I could no longer run with the boys and had to be lady like and Dad then started brushing my unruly messy hair.
I watched so many movies at Southport and once at Surfers where I found a 5 pound note and treated David and George to a day of long icy poles, called Slippery Sams. We played Monopoly acroos the road with the richer kids and Meccano and for sixpence could swim in a pool across the road as well. I will never forget the hot summers spent there and the feel of our cossied bodies lying on the hot concrete to dry off. I finally learned to dive properly there and once split my lip on the bottom and Mum thought it would have to be stitched. But it healed over and I still bear a tiny scar to this day.
We began to notice there how depressed our Mum was, taking to her bed in the cool darkness and not coming out. Dad had become a bankrupt and signed a cheque and was jailed, I believe. We kids weren't let in on that fact, we just knew, somehow by Osmosis, especially when the power was cut and we played charades by candlelight. Ian managed to explode his bedroom there when an experiment went wrong and I had a case of cystitis so severe I fainted from the blood and pain and passsed out on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor.
As per usual I didn't tell Mum and Dad and the bout passed, no doubt caused by a germ or a million from the crowded small pool. The school we went to Southport State was the best school I ever went to apart from Thornes House Grammar and I was voted Top girl again and again. It was funny as I knew so much of life from books and hardly any from real life.I was so very protected, which is not always a good thing as I was to find out later in life.
Within months Jackie had begun working in the Family buisness. a Music shop in the Lido Arcade, Surfers and she was also joining Dad on stage, entertaining. She met The Brothers Gibb who came into the shop for guitar strings and Barry Gibb asked her out. Dad played with the Maori Hi Five who were so funny and irreverent and they came to the house often. By then we had moved to 484 Marine Parade Labrador.
The house was a highset with a whole world of living underneath. Downstairs had a shower and for a while we had some of the "boys" from the Maori Hi Five staying there. I also had my 11th birthday there, a Hawaiian themed party and we all wore grass skirts and leis around our necks in a mutitude of colours. My best friend Linda Sumner and I spent a lot of time together.
I was allowed to sleep over at her house and it was the first time ever in my life I was on my own. She and I made jam drops and she insisted we bath together and she showed me that she had begun to gro hair in certain places and I was wildly jealous as I hadn't. Her Mum and Dad took us out boating on the Nerang River and that night took us to see Atari, the movie, at the Drive In and we missed most of it as suntanned and exhausted we feel asleep in the back of their station wagon.
Within months we had left the Gold Coast and arrived in Mount Martha near where my Brother Ian was based at Balcombe Army Barracks. We were broke, beyond broke and Ian brought us rations from the kitchen hidden in his Army greatcoat pockets. Mum began work as did Jackie at Clarks shoes factory, which Mum said was a "shit" of a job. George was at Mornington High and I was at a tiny little school called Darcy State School. The Headmaster was a man called conveniently Mr Darcy and he had a house on the School grounds.
He liked the way I recited poetry and called me to recite Mulga Bills Bicycle, hands locked in front of me to the class. They of course thought I was a nerd of the highest order and a swot, Teachers Pet as well and mainly ignored me as best they could. David and I would walk home through the Ti Tee bush together and run to the cliffs of Mount Martha and sometimes the main beach. We "Wandered lonely as clouds " there, clambering over rocks and finding paths and caves.
I loved the nature walks there, but soon we were moving agin and this time Jackie was forced to follow Dad in a car and she had no licence and desperate times call for desperate measures. She just followed Dad closely and prayed for the best. We arrived in a house at Unley, it was as hot as we had ever imagined and the cold of Victoria was quickly forgotten as we sailed on Popeye down the Torrens river once again.
Mum took to her bed and we took off to new schools and Jackie worked at David Joneses. I am not sure what Dad did then as we saw not a lot of him. Mum was like a shadow once again, lying in the coolness of her room. Jackie gave me a bra of hers and told me to start wearing it. The kids at school noticed straight away and one girl said,
"About time ! "
We were not to be in Adelaide very long, just a few months and then all of a sudden we were moving home to the UK. A home I didn't remember at all. But I was delighted we were finally going to be meeting some relatives at long last. My Aunty Betty and Mum had a falling out years before, shortly after James had died. Granny Bruckshaw had died and Dad had leaned against the wall and sobbed in Port Augusta. I was only to see my Dad cry 3 times in his life, once for Jamie, once for Garndma Bruckshaw and once for Lauren. He didn't cry so much when Mum died as by that time it was a blessed relief after years and years of illness.
We caught a bus back to Melbourne and we boarded a ship that night headed for the UK. Dad had sold everything that was on hire purchase to afford the fares and he breathed a huge sigh of relief when we sailed out of Australian Territorial waters as he thought the Federal Police were on his tail. He had sold all the furniture and the cars and it was criminal at that time to sell anything on hire purchase and we thought Dad would be arrested at any time.
We were all sick from vaccination fever as we set sail and George had almost had to have been hospitalised as he fainted in the lift at Myers in the city that afternoon. I can still recall the nightmares we had from the vaccinations for smallpox and diptheria, vivid and frightening as they were. But we managed to board the boat without vomiting and took to our bunks for a few day until we felt better. Dad had somehow managed for us to be in a suite on one of the top decks with a porthole view.
George, David and I began to recover and explore the boat and palled up with other kids whose parents were rich and we pretended ours were too. There were so many kids activities to do and we crawled all over The Ellenis in discovery and wonder. There was a cinema that played movies in a continuous loop and we watched the same ones over and over. One was a cheap budget movie that was all about Vampires and we scared ourselves witless as we watched it over and over again and never grew less frightened.
One Movie with Richard Burton that Mum loved and we hated. The cinema was once again a safe refuge from the heat on board and was always usually empty except for us kids in the daytime and we made the most of it, hiding under the stage and playing "Hide In The Dark.". It was eerily spooky under there and we could hear the Ocean slapping against the boats hull. Cleaners would come in and we would hide from them. trying not to giigle and be heard.
After our arrival in the UK, the first movie I went to see was Poor Cow, with Mum. It was her pick for her and me and the beginning scene was of a baby being born and it was pretty full on and I turned my head at the worst bits and wondered why Mum had brought me. I think she was trying to give me a gentle bit of sex education without having to talk about it. I had no idea even then where babies came from and at 14 announced in front of my class of second formers that they came out of your bum.
When the boys told me otherwise I didn't understand how that was possible even though I had seen the movie Poor Cow. Obviously by turning my head I was missing the real stuff but I was blessedly ignorant of all things fecund and continued to be blessedly ignorant for a long time to come. I had seen Hard Days Night with the Beatles and though I was a big fan I thought the movie was stupid. I took David all by myself to see Mary Poppins and we sang all the way home. That was more my style.
In london once to see my Half Sister Joyce I saw Help and also thought it was stupid, but the record of Help by the beatles was the first 45 I ever bought and then I bought Sergeant Peepers and loved it and my siblings thought it was crap. I then beacme a huge Monkees fan and saw their Movie and fought George tooth and nail to see The Monkees Series on Tv. It just had to come on at the same time as Doctor Who. David insisted I take him to see the movie and ever after he signed his letters as Dalek Dave.
Living in the UK for us little Ozzies was magic and so very different from everything that had gone before. There was heaps more socail life and things to do. The public transport system was excellent and we could catch buses and trains all over West Yorkshire and did. Most of the Movie Houses then had turned into Bingo Halls. But the ones that were still open played Movies over and over on a continuous loop and you were allowed to smoke in there. Imagine that in this day and age ?
But of all the movies I have ever watched the one I love the most is ARTHUR with Dudley Moore. The one liners, the humour gets to me time and time again. I use the quotes and have made firm friends by doing so.
"Forget, the moose for a moment"
Dudley to screaming lady as she says'
I have a gun"
"You probably do Madam and for all I know it went off as you were screaming"
"I'll have another drink and would you like another fish ? "
It's witty and Arthur is a flawed character and an endless drunk.
Sir John Gielguld as the butler Hobson was an inspired choice.
Arthur: "I think I'll have a bath"
Hobson: "I'll alert the media!"
As Arthur leaves the room,
Hobson: " Do you want me to wash your dick for you, you little shit"
Arthur: "I feel unloved"
Hobson: Everyone is unloved Arthur, but just in case, I love you"
It is a Blake Edwards movie and he also did the Pink Panther movies, the ones with Peter Sellers, not the new awful one. I have never laughed as much in my life as at Peter Sellers, the man was a genius of comedic timing. His portrayal of Inspector Clousea is classic and timeless. I love the scene where he is dressed as a pirate with a blow up parrot on his shoulder. Watch it and laugh out loud.
The movies have been my form of escape and delight all my life and I give thanks to the writers and actors, directors and the teams that bring a movie to fruition. They at times probably wonder why they do it, but I love them for doing so as they entertain, move me to tears and delight. Casablanca I can watch time and time again, Rebecca too, the Godfather One and Two and Sea Of Love with Al Pacino.
Thank God for actors, the good ones and thank God for the visionaries that bring them to the screen.
Love Janette
I
