Poverty Struck and Parish Damned
Without Prejudice
In the 50's and 60's there was no family that was poorer than ours. Mum always used the expression that we were Poverty Struck and Parish Damned. We were a big family of British immigrants. Stayed in a hostel in Adelaide on our excited arrival after six weeks at sea. My Mum and Dad gaining a nid from the Australian government via the Ex Service Men's assisted passage.
We weren't poor then and being Scottish and British, my parents and us kids thought we were way above the other nationality immigrants, Poles, Hungarians, Germans, Italians. They didn' speak the Queens English for a start and they all fought amongst each other after dark. We heard knives were produced in arguments. Mum and Dad made sure that us kids didn't mix with the other nationalities.
Only Ian at 12, jumped the fence one dark hot night to see what all the fuss was about. Jackie and I didn't tell even though our hearts were in our mouths with fear he would be stabbed. He came back with nothing to report. All quiet in the hostel front that night. The accomodation was awful. Tin Nissen huts and thin grey itchy blankets. The heat was incredible. We survived it.
Things suddenly improved for all of us when after our period of stay ( 2 years ) we were allowed out of the Hostel. I often look at asylum seekers these days and think of the Monty Python sketch, " You were Lucky". My brother Dave said he saw a show on British immigrants when he was in his 20's. It was a 70's documentary. When the interviewer asked the Brits what they thought of living in a Hostel, they replied
" It's going to be a bit like Butlins" ( A famous chain of fun Family holiday Camps in the U.K.)
"Sucked right in ", commented Dave as he fell about laughing.
We gained a commission house in Port Augusta and moved in, holus bolus. In those days all commission houses were in clustered estates, that immediately classed you as poor. The Aussie kids we met there soon put us back in our box, with our upper class accents and different ways. We fought to be accepted. We lived in a few commission ghettos as kids. Thin fibro walls that could be punched in, chain link fences at the front. Pastel coloured on the outside in blue, cream, green. An outhouse out the back.
Dad started a panel beating business, Erns Panels, and things started to improve. They bought a house, joined the Presbyterian Church. Mum was in the Presbyterian Ladies Association, Dad was an elder there and gave the readings. He was also a Mason, which in those days did him no harm in Business. Jackie and I were in Ballet and we all went to Sunday School. Ian was a Sunday School Teacher.
And then Jamie died. He and his best friend, Wayne, killed in a sand cave in accident. And our lives went to shit. Mum had a nervous breakdown and us kids were sent off for 3 months to stay with a female Teacher in the Adelaide Hills. Big, fat and lazy, God knows why she had volunteered to look after us. She always reminded me of Ma Kettle and smacked me if I misbehaved. I had never been smacked in my life up to that point.
Jackie and I paid her back, however, we pulled out all the cords from her switchboard and the phone lines were in chaos. When my Mum arrived with Dad to pick us up after 3 months, Jackie told her Auntie Peggy Basson had been smacking me and there was hell to pay for the poor woman. I don't think we ever saw her again.
They say a child's personality is formed by the time they are 5. I was shy and anxious and wholly protected by my older siblings. I can remember hiding behind my Mother in the hostel if visitors came. And no amount of coaxing would bring me out. Jackie, Ian, Jamie and George were much bolder and I ran with them, only in a crowd, never alone.
I am only speaking of it now as I am in therapy at long last for my fear of Men and finally to have grief counselling for Lauren, my youngest daughter, who drowned, 23 years agp, aged 12. The past has to be dealt with in order to move forward, and I am stuck in place at my age after raising an entire family as a single Mum, for the last 23 years. My ex and I split after Lauren died and there was a horrendous bitter divorce and years of me "Saving" my girls from more damage. Now it's my turn to be "Saved"
I knew that after Jamie's death things were never the same. Mum and Dad sold up in Port Augusta and bought a caravan and we moved and moved. Trying to escape the past. Jamie we could no longer speak of Dad said, as it might upset Mum, who was already mentally fragile from the War.
I always thought my childhood was happy, a myth, the therapist told me. I may have felt loved and cared for but my childhood was neither stable or secure. Up to the age of 5 he pointed out, I had moved countries, moved homes, four times and had a mentally ill Mother, who was as brittle as glass and required hospital visits which were never explained to us.
She had fugue states where she would just disappear, running from something, always.I can remember running after her once at 4, hysterical, and she finally let me go with her. Dad found us bith somehow, we were at the night Trots, and Mum was fashioning me a purse out of an empty Capstan cigarette packet. She chain smoked and her hands shook, always. She was attractive and was being paid attention by many males there. Dad said nothing and took us home.
After Jamie died my parents never again had the successes financially that they had had in Port Augusta. We lived in the Caravan (green and round) for ages. First in Sydney, near Liverpool. Camperdiwn caravan park, new school, then we moved to the North shore,Avalon. Then Dad disappeared for months. I found out later he was in prison for selling a guitar from where he worked.Allens music store if I remember rightly. We were starving then, literally starving hungry.
My proud mother would die rather than accept charity and we were to tell people that Dad had gone to Melbourne to do some "shows" like I.M.T with Graeme Kennedy. When he came back home we moved again, this time to Canowindra in the other side if the Blue Mountains. A sleepy country town where Dad had not just a panel shop but a dealership in the middle of town selling Triumph cars. Mum ran a milk bar cum cafe with hot meals.
I was 7 by then and had changed schools so many times it was dizzying. The town was small and insular to strangers. Especially to upstarts like us, with our fancy way of talking and secrets we kept. We all excelled at swimming and that was a big no no. But attitudes changed when I won a place in the Nationals in Sydney. These lived behind the cafe for a while and moved again to a commission house estate. Nightmare kids lived next door, the Urens, and us kids were always at war with them.
Then inexplicably we were back in Sydney at Wentworthville, another commission house another stinking outside loo. Dad found a big poo on the back lawn, one morning, and demanded
to know who had perpetrated such a heinous crime. We all looked at George as he was usually the scape goat for most things and it Was a big fat poo. He denied it, of course. It could have been any of us.
The outhouse stunk of pee and shit and was hot, airless and covered in flies. I used to run in, hold my nose, do my business and run out. It was truly disgusting. Once a week a man came to empty it, balancing it in his shoulde, his arm covered in excrement. We stayed up one night and watched him. And were suitably horrified. We played in the canal at the bottom of the hill and I cut my foot in a broken bottle. It flooded in the rain and we heard horror stories of people being swept away in it.
We moved again to another part of Wentworthville and then to the Gold Coast.
In the 50's and 60's there was no family that was poorer than ours. Mum always used the expression that we were Poverty Struck and Parish Damned. We were a big family of British immigrants. Stayed in a hostel in Adelaide on our excited arrival after six weeks at sea. My Mum and Dad gaining a nid from the Australian government via the Ex Service Men's assisted passage.
We weren't poor then and being Scottish and British, my parents and us kids thought we were way above the other nationality immigrants, Poles, Hungarians, Germans, Italians. They didn' speak the Queens English for a start and they all fought amongst each other after dark. We heard knives were produced in arguments. Mum and Dad made sure that us kids didn't mix with the other nationalities.
Only Ian at 12, jumped the fence one dark hot night to see what all the fuss was about. Jackie and I didn't tell even though our hearts were in our mouths with fear he would be stabbed. He came back with nothing to report. All quiet in the hostel front that night. The accomodation was awful. Tin Nissen huts and thin grey itchy blankets. The heat was incredible. We survived it.
Things suddenly improved for all of us when after our period of stay ( 2 years ) we were allowed out of the Hostel. I often look at asylum seekers these days and think of the Monty Python sketch, " You were Lucky". My brother Dave said he saw a show on British immigrants when he was in his 20's. It was a 70's documentary. When the interviewer asked the Brits what they thought of living in a Hostel, they replied
" It's going to be a bit like Butlins" ( A famous chain of fun Family holiday Camps in the U.K.)
"Sucked right in ", commented Dave as he fell about laughing.
We gained a commission house in Port Augusta and moved in, holus bolus. In those days all commission houses were in clustered estates, that immediately classed you as poor. The Aussie kids we met there soon put us back in our box, with our upper class accents and different ways. We fought to be accepted. We lived in a few commission ghettos as kids. Thin fibro walls that could be punched in, chain link fences at the front. Pastel coloured on the outside in blue, cream, green. An outhouse out the back.
Dad started a panel beating business, Erns Panels, and things started to improve. They bought a house, joined the Presbyterian Church. Mum was in the Presbyterian Ladies Association, Dad was an elder there and gave the readings. He was also a Mason, which in those days did him no harm in Business. Jackie and I were in Ballet and we all went to Sunday School. Ian was a Sunday School Teacher.
And then Jamie died. He and his best friend, Wayne, killed in a sand cave in accident. And our lives went to shit. Mum had a nervous breakdown and us kids were sent off for 3 months to stay with a female Teacher in the Adelaide Hills. Big, fat and lazy, God knows why she had volunteered to look after us. She always reminded me of Ma Kettle and smacked me if I misbehaved. I had never been smacked in my life up to that point.
Jackie and I paid her back, however, we pulled out all the cords from her switchboard and the phone lines were in chaos. When my Mum arrived with Dad to pick us up after 3 months, Jackie told her Auntie Peggy Basson had been smacking me and there was hell to pay for the poor woman. I don't think we ever saw her again.
They say a child's personality is formed by the time they are 5. I was shy and anxious and wholly protected by my older siblings. I can remember hiding behind my Mother in the hostel if visitors came. And no amount of coaxing would bring me out. Jackie, Ian, Jamie and George were much bolder and I ran with them, only in a crowd, never alone.
I am only speaking of it now as I am in therapy at long last for my fear of Men and finally to have grief counselling for Lauren, my youngest daughter, who drowned, 23 years agp, aged 12. The past has to be dealt with in order to move forward, and I am stuck in place at my age after raising an entire family as a single Mum, for the last 23 years. My ex and I split after Lauren died and there was a horrendous bitter divorce and years of me "Saving" my girls from more damage. Now it's my turn to be "Saved"
I knew that after Jamie's death things were never the same. Mum and Dad sold up in Port Augusta and bought a caravan and we moved and moved. Trying to escape the past. Jamie we could no longer speak of Dad said, as it might upset Mum, who was already mentally fragile from the War.
I always thought my childhood was happy, a myth, the therapist told me. I may have felt loved and cared for but my childhood was neither stable or secure. Up to the age of 5 he pointed out, I had moved countries, moved homes, four times and had a mentally ill Mother, who was as brittle as glass and required hospital visits which were never explained to us.
She had fugue states where she would just disappear, running from something, always.I can remember running after her once at 4, hysterical, and she finally let me go with her. Dad found us bith somehow, we were at the night Trots, and Mum was fashioning me a purse out of an empty Capstan cigarette packet. She chain smoked and her hands shook, always. She was attractive and was being paid attention by many males there. Dad said nothing and took us home.
After Jamie died my parents never again had the successes financially that they had had in Port Augusta. We lived in the Caravan (green and round) for ages. First in Sydney, near Liverpool. Camperdiwn caravan park, new school, then we moved to the North shore,Avalon. Then Dad disappeared for months. I found out later he was in prison for selling a guitar from where he worked.Allens music store if I remember rightly. We were starving then, literally starving hungry.
My proud mother would die rather than accept charity and we were to tell people that Dad had gone to Melbourne to do some "shows" like I.M.T with Graeme Kennedy. When he came back home we moved again, this time to Canowindra in the other side if the Blue Mountains. A sleepy country town where Dad had not just a panel shop but a dealership in the middle of town selling Triumph cars. Mum ran a milk bar cum cafe with hot meals.
I was 7 by then and had changed schools so many times it was dizzying. The town was small and insular to strangers. Especially to upstarts like us, with our fancy way of talking and secrets we kept. We all excelled at swimming and that was a big no no. But attitudes changed when I won a place in the Nationals in Sydney. These lived behind the cafe for a while and moved again to a commission house estate. Nightmare kids lived next door, the Urens, and us kids were always at war with them.
Then inexplicably we were back in Sydney at Wentworthville, another commission house another stinking outside loo. Dad found a big poo on the back lawn, one morning, and demanded
to know who had perpetrated such a heinous crime. We all looked at George as he was usually the scape goat for most things and it Was a big fat poo. He denied it, of course. It could have been any of us.
The outhouse stunk of pee and shit and was hot, airless and covered in flies. I used to run in, hold my nose, do my business and run out. It was truly disgusting. Once a week a man came to empty it, balancing it in his shoulde, his arm covered in excrement. We stayed up one night and watched him. And were suitably horrified. We played in the canal at the bottom of the hill and I cut my foot in a broken bottle. It flooded in the rain and we heard horror stories of people being swept away in it.
We moved again to another part of Wentworthville and then to the Gold Coast.
