The Journey begins

Many Professions were being affected by men and women enlisting in the services and no doubt teaching had to be a protected service for there was no change to my teachers during the next three years. 1940 was not a good year once again. I seemed to miss many days from school and quite a few of these absences were because I played the truant or “wagged id” from school. My grandmother from Parramatta had given me a scooter for Xmas or just after Xmas. I think that this was because she had learnt that my cousin Bruce Peacock had received a nice big scooter for Xmas. With my father gone from Gladstone Dairy I used to walk the six miles from Eastwood across to the dairy occasionally and started renewing contacts with (17) my grandmother and aunts an uncles. They were always pleased to see any of us who came over. It must have been about this time also that grandma Collett gave Mother a radio. This was the first radio that we had ever had that I was aware of. Uncles Jed and Rex brought ti across one day on the back of their truck. That radio was great for then we were able to listen to Dad and Dave  etc etc. But as said, I missed a bit of school and didn’t do so good at lessons, consequently I was required to repeat 1st form in 1941. That was a bitter blow to my self esteem until I became used to the fact. But unfortunately for me the damage was done and I lost interest in school and learning. (I expect that I must have become a real G.A. kid) but my mother did not seem to take much interest in my schooling and nobody else did, so again I started to play truant. There were a group of us at the time who did this. We would pedal our scooters down to Meadowbank Baths on the Parramatta River or down to the Lane Cove river and we did this for some time always being back by 3:30 or 4:00 pm, until the truant officers from the schools caught us out and we were fronted before the headmaster Mr Clout, individually and threatened with the Mittagong Boys Reform School if we didn’t stop the truancy bit. Of course that wasn’t much of an option, because no one wanted to go to Mittagong (after the style of the English Borstal Schools I think) and so we attended school from then on. I’m sure that they woke up to me from the types of notes (18) that I had been handing to the teacher supposed by from my mother giving the excuse why I was not at school also the poor attempts at forging my mothers signature. There were a few characters at that school during 1940-43 Boaty Fericks, Johnny Noyes, Bidgee Devlin, Kelvin Hogan,  Morlie Davidson, Big Bole Egar ( teacher Arthur Knight used to think twice about giving this lad the cane after a while, for Bob would catch the cane in his hand and pull if from the teachers hand) Mick Slavin Thomas and Allan Crocker a few of the names that come to mind. Those teachers all knew how to hand out punishments with the cane and on the odd occasion when we were sent to the headmaster for punishment it was always “six cuts of the best.” That really made the hands sore. I had a cane about ¾ of an inch thick and if you pulled you hand away on the down stroke, he would get you on the back of the fingers on the up stroke. But they all do that. It was also during 1940 that I got my first paper run. This was out walking the streets in the evening on a set run with a great load of newspapers “The Sun” under the arm, carried in a leather strap over the shoulder and a leather money bag on a belt around the waist. We were each given so much change and so many papers and of course had to account for papers sold and money when we got back. If the bag did not check out then any loss was taken out of ones earnings. I would walk several miles (19) through the streets on my run up around the North Rude area and from memory my first weeks wages at this was about 10/60 (Ten shillings and six pence.) It must have been about 1941 or 2 that the Daily Mirror came out on the street and with the advent of the Mirror I was able to graduate to a hand cart as we just couldn’t manage all of the news papers and it was difficult keeping them dry in the rain. Also my run took in the North Ryde Soldiers Memorial Hospital and I was able to take some magazines one afternoon a week. So my earnings used to get up about 1.0.0 pounds per week sometimes. This made things a bit better for Mother as I was able to give her some money then. I remember that I bought my own first pair of long trousers. I expect that I was able to buy some other things as well. The news agency in Rowe ST Eastwood was owned by Mr. and Mrs John Jackson. I don’t know what Doreen was doing at this time, if she was working. By now I think Jean was working in Sydney for a firm of solicitors. I was starting to spend some of my money on milk shakes and sweets by now and finish up with the shelf under my desk at school full of toffee papers etc. We were buying the odd packet of cigarettes also. You could buy a packet of five “Wild Woodbines” in those days for sixpence. But we didn’t smoke much. However 1941 went by with the repeat of 1st form and they couldn’t keep me there for another year and so I had to go on to 2nd form in 1942. 1942 was a “nothing” year forme as far as school work went. They tried to teach boys (20) like me shorthand of all subjects, for half a day a week we had this. A lady teacher used to come across from Parramatta for this lesson. I don’t know if anyone else learnt anything of it, but I didn’t. From memory also 1942 was when the Japanese shelled Sydney and there was fear of fear of air raids. All schools throughout Sydney would have had to have their air raid shelters I expect. Eastwood did in the form of air raid trenches and it became the lot of the boys in second form to dig them. So we spent a good deal of time throughout the year digging six foot deep by two foot wide trenches in the school grounds. The children were to take shelter in these trenches in the event of an air raid. I helped with some of the digging on direction from the teachers but I don’t know who would have filled them in. So throughout 1942 there were many distractions away from schoolwork. I added to these distractions by taking on two additional jobs outside of school as well as my afternoon paper run. John Jackson the newsagent gave me work on the newspaper bookstore on Eastwood railway Station in the early morning. My job was to get to the station by 6am and lug all the bundles of newspapers that had been unloaded from the train up the stairs to the bookstall. I was doing this to help the man who usually operated the bookstall for the Jackson’s news-agency. I would continue to assist him with the sale of newspapers and magazines until about eight when I would go back home, have breakfast and then go to school. After school I would do my afternoon paper run return (21) home for tea and then after tea go off to the local fixture theatre where I had a job selling ice cream buckets and sweets at interval. We were employed bu the owner of the milk bar next to the theatre. Johnny Garrett was the other boy who had a tray at interval and it was he who helped me in getting the job. Having this job had a fringe benefit associated as it also gained us free admission to the theatre. So there I was spending my nights at the local theatre which usually closed up between 11:00 and 11:30 pm. Home to bed 9 then up in the mornings to sell news papers. All of this work didn’t amount to much income in those days. Newspapers were two pence each when I started a large malted milk shake was about six pence and so on. With my jobs I certainly wasn’t doing any homework and I started going to sleep in class. Algebra was my worst subject and essentially I refused to do it because I could not understand the theory. Mr Whirter gave up on me eventually and during Algebra I would read a book of some description. I certainly don’t look back on those years of schooling with any degree of pride. Quite the reverse and I have often wished in hindsight to have been able to have my time over again. Leaving age from in those days was fourteen years and eight months. I had it worked out to the hour when I was that age and I recall clearing out from school at lunchtime and not going back in the afternoon. Nobody missed me and I was finished with school. However I’m (22) sure that there were plenty of lads about like me. My brother was away at the war then and I wanted to get there with him. After leaving school I worked full time at the Jackson’s Newsagency. John and Judith Jackson were a nice couple, mid thirties and no children and I think that they must have had pity on me and generously gave me a job. It was quite a large business in those days and employed several people. I couldn’t understand though why I couldn’t have the school holidays off at the end of the year like all of my old school friends. But I soon realized that those days were over. Just around the corner from where I lived in Clanwilliam ST there had been an engineering factory, Joplins where they mad Joplin car jacks and other items. They had recently moved to much larger premises at Ermington, across near Parramatta. Mr. Joplin used to come to the newsagency to buy papers etc and one evening I asked him if he would give me a job at his factory at Ermington. Two of my friends Thomas and Alan Crocker worked there at the time. In any case he said yes, there was a shortage of labor of course, and so I left Jackson newsagency and started work at Joplins. By then I had a push bike and we used to ride our bikes from Eastwood across to Ermington to start work by 7:30 AM. We used to work until 5:00 PM in those days I think. My job there after I had graduated from sweeping the floors, was to stand at a drill stand all day drilling holes in cast metal jack bases. I don’t know how long this went on for and then I started to whistle whilst I worked to (23) break the monotony. People complained about my whistling and one day I just didn’t go back. This was early 1943 and I was fifteen. I was still sharing the bedroom with sister Jean. by this time also Jean had joined the WAAAF (Womens Australian Auxillary Air Force) and commuted daily to her work whenever she was not away in camp, training. Doreen joined the AAWAS (I’m not sure that they are the correct initials, but the women counter part of the army as was the WAAAF to the RAAF) but I am not sure when she joined or where she was based. Jack was coming home on shore leave when his ships were in port. The navy was doing a great deal of convoy protection work across to South Africa where the troop and cargo convoys were picked up by the British navy. It was at this time that I attempted to join the navy. The Australian navy would take a certain number of fifteen year olds in as cadets. They would be provided with cadet training for three years or until eighteen when they would be posted to sea duty. Sad to say I was not successful with any application. I recall sitting for an examination in Sydney, obtaining character references etc and was successful in these endeavours only to be rejected by a panel of naval doctors because I had flat feet. I was of course bitterly disappointed with all of this any personal decision that I made or action that I took through those years, I made and did without consultation with anyone. I mention that because if I made wrong decisions they were always of my own making. Obviously many decisions to date had been wrong ones, and (24) I would go on making them for a while yet. At that time also I was doing quite a bit of reading, with a liking particularly for books by Australians about Australia. One book in particular influenced my future life, and this was ‘Gather no Moss’ by Frank Clune. The philosophy was that the rolling stone gathers no moss and from memory related to the outback or country of Australia. Like most boys I expect, I had a yearning to “go bush” not knowing of course what that entailed. I remember one night Jean came in late and waking me. So I waited until she went to sleep and Mother and Doreen as well. Then quietly I got out, dressed, rolled a few clothes up in a raincoat, and left home. Must have had a spare shirt and pair of socks or something like that. But I had no money and no food and of course carried no identification. I walked almost to Parramatta before having a bit of a sleep in a paddock along the way. At daybreak I was off again and walked right through Parramatta out the Western Highway through St Mary’s and Emu Plains and was headed up the slopes of the Blue Mountains quite prepared to walk to wherever it was that I was going. That destination I did not know. Those wrong decisions. I had been out the Western Highway before on my scooter. I recall that there was a large camp of ? Troops out by St Mary’s and I had been out there once before having a look at it all. They may have been Australian troops. I’m not sure but there was a large military camp out there.