How Can Every Job Be A Good Job

I paused at the corner the other Sunday morning to contemplate which direction I would take for my meandering walk through the neighbourhood; should I tackle the uphill uneven footpaths first or keep them until midway through my amble. It was a beautiful late summer morning; the sky was clear and blue, and the sun was just starting to warm the day. I settled upon a route that I don’t take all that often; the curving narrow road running through part of the nearby golf course. Halfway along the curving narrow road, a pedestrian crossing leads to a downhill path that runs alongside a tee off and then past a small pond, with a concentration distracting water geyser before it empties into Elmwood Park Road. Elmwood Park Road feeds into AKSARBEN Village, my usual halfway point when I walk the uphill uneven footpaths first. I do the golf course route once every couple of weeks. I distract myself when I’m walking the fringes of the fairways by looking for golf balls. It doesn’t take much searching; if I didn’t pick up the balls I would trip over them. I wonder how golfers can lose so many of their balls.

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After walking a couple of blocks to reach the street corner to turn onto the curving narrow golf course road I came to a hesitant stop. I was besieged by runners and walkers; surrounded by a flood of coloured tee shirts, vibrant hue running shoes, and earbuds. People of all ages and shapes were emblazoned with numbered race bibs. I was in the middle of the 2017 10K and 2 Mile American Lung Association Fight For Air Omaha Corporate Cup; walking the wrong way without a race bib. There was a water stop by the pedestrian crossing, where runners and walkers were snatching yellow cups of water to hydrate; the water stop volunteers were verbally pushing the runners and walkers into the back half of the race with cries of Good Job. As I started down the downhill path alongside the tee off I could see a sea of walkers and runners on the back half of the race, pacing themselves along Elmwood Park Road.

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And once again I became part of the Corporate Cup; this time walking the right way, but still without a race bib. When I sauntered past the Elmwood Park Road Cheer Station a chorus of Good Job chants, together with a thumping sound of muted clapping greeted me. The Cheer Station volunteers were slapping together two-foot tubes of solid foam rubber to cheer me on. I was now at my halfway point when I tackle the uphill uneven footpaths first route, so I walked on the footpath as I usually do; alongside the Corporate Cup participants and towards the finish line. The footpath ahead was packed with spectators so I stepped onto the roadway; it seemed that with every step I took I was greeted with shouts of a Good Job and fist pumps. As I walked to the side of, but past the finish line I could still hear the cries of Good Job; I felt a surge of pride.

You hear a Good Job a lot nowadays. It seems to be the go-to praise phrase for most mums and dads. Telling their little ones every time they hiccup Good Job; Good Job when they blow their nose, Good Job when they put their plastic water bottle in the recycle bin, Good Job when they put their coat on, Good Job when they eat all their fries at Macca’s, Good Job when they finish colouring outside the lines of a kiddie restaurant placemat, Good Job when they eat their broccoli, Good Job when they wake up from having a little nap, and Good Job at pointing Percy at the porcelain. No task is too small or too large for doling out a few Good Jobs.

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If only mum and dad had told me Good Job. I would have followed my own success plan for my future self; I could have chosen any of my dream jobs of the seventies

Fitness Instructor: always surrounded by flocks of beautiful women. You didn’t need to know what you were doing; aerobics and nautilus equipment was so new that nobody knew anything about them anyway. Airline Pilot: more beautiful women than you could shake a stick at; and they were still called stewardesses. Office Boss: before the revolution so every day your fighting off beautiful women. Politician: John F. Kennedy shagged Marilyn Monroe; say no more. Gough Whitlam was Prime Minister and he set out to change Australia through a wide-ranging reform program. You’d be in like Flint if you were a labour polly. Student: librarianship. Bartender: sitting in the driver’s seat of The Decade of Decadence; the height of the sexual revolution. Truck Driver: an anti-establishment figure; beautiful women like bad boys.

instead, I wandered Europe and the Middle East along the ill-defined hippie trail searching for inspiration and idealism in the ordinary.

image source:jmcadam

Back then, if what has been your biggest failure was a question asked at job interviews, my answer would have to have been

I’m not exactly sure what my biggest failure is. Everything I’ve ever done and everything I do is a failure; I’ve never been afraid of failure. Nobody has ever told me Good Job. I think failure is good for success.

Shut the front door.

The spare room was an unfinished room in the back of our house. There was a door from the dining room to the spare room and a door from the spare room into the back fernery. The spare room had two windows; one looked out onto the small sideway, and the other into the fernery. The sideway led into a back gate that opened into the fernery; a door from the fernery opened into the backyard. The kitchen back door also opened into the fernery. I don’t remember what bad deeds warranted what punishment; sometimes a simple slap of dad’s hand across the back of the legs was enough, other times several whacks with the leather belt across the back of the legs was enough, and at times being locked in the dark spare room was enough, or being locked in the dark spare room after being whacked across the back of the legs with the leather belt was enough. The spare room was stacked with boxes, and old household things that mum didn’t want to throw away; she might use them again sometime. The spare room was also the nighttime refuge for our collection of pets.

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Each night the white cockatoo was put into its cage, and the cage was draped with a towel and placed between the boxes; the guinea pigs cage was carried into the spare room and put on top of the boxes, the white mice’s cage, and it always seemed to have a litter of squirming babies, was also carried into the spare room and put on top of the boxes. When we were locked in the spare room for punishment we sat with the animals in total darkness. Sometimes the cocky just wanted to enjoy the company, and would start talking; rapidly repeating its word dictionary and thesaurus of sayings, hoping for some sound from the boy sitting in the darkness. I never knew how long I had been sitting in the spare room when the dining-room door was unlocked, but I knew I had done a Good Job of sitting in the dark and refusing to talk to the cocky. If only dad had told me Good Job when I walked out; I may have become a fitness instructor.

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After an uncountable number of times sitting alone in the dark and listening to the cocky, I started to plan my escape from the room. I experimented with how to get out, and back into the spare room undetected. One night I discovered the key was always in the door to the fernery; the door from the back of the fernery opened into the backyard, and it was easy to climb the small backyard wooden fence into the sideway. There were many nights that I escaped from the darkness of the spare room, and the cocky’s never-ending favourite sayings. I walked the dark, and sometimes rain-drenched, streets of the neighbourhood. About five houses up from our house was a small somewhat overgrown park that led into the road that ran parallel to our street. A rough, uneven asphalt winding pathway crossed the park; I walked that moonlit path many times. Most times when I escaped from the spare room I was barefoot. On that moonlit night, I knew the gash between the heel and toes on the sole of my foot was serious. I reached down and picked up the bottom of a broken glass milk bottle; one of the jagged, thrusting blades from the side of the bottle was covered in my blood.

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I limped home leaving a trail of blood down the footpath. Mum opened the front door and panicked; mum and dad drove me to the Williamstown Hospital for injections and stitches. And now when I run my finger along the faint scar on the underneath of my foot I think back to the Good Job I did with the slow and painful hobble back home. If only mum had told me Good Job when she opened the front door and saw the blood draining from my foot and pooling onto the veranda I may have become a bartender.

Dad and granddad did a Good Job fixing up the spare room; they lined the walls and ceiling with sheets of masonite, put in a new louvred glass window that looked into the fernery, replaced the two top wooden panels in the door to the fernery with glass, and carpeted the floor. And the spare room became my bedroom. I wonder if they knew they did a Good Job.

image source:jmcadam

Before long, the morning sun will no longer be able to warm the start of the day; the winter cold will send me back to Westroads Mall and my old walking mates. They’re not really mates; I never talk to any of them and I don’t know their names. I just give a slight head nod or an indiscernible move of the index finger as we pass. I think when I return I will replace my head nod with a high spirited shout of Good Job.

 

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I still remember the closing process on our house; we sat opposite the closing agent, who sat surrounded by a mountainous pile of paper. On some cue, known only to her, she started feeding the papers to us. As each paper slid its way across the table she asked; “any questions on this one”. After the tenth paper had glided across the tabletop the conversation went something like

Agent: Any questions on this one Me: What happens if we don’t sign some of the papers. Agent: You don’t get the house. Me: I don’t have any more questions

And so for the next hour or so, we signed papers.

image source:jmcadam

Our house, built in the early thirties, would be described as a charming two storey revival brick Tudor. When we moved in thirty-plus years ago it still had the original exterior architecture, and the interior was as it was built. We were the second owners of the house. The main living area was cooled by two window air conditioners. A giant octopus gas furnace in the basement heated the house in winter; it was called an octopus because large circular ducts spread out in all directions from the huge heating vessel. There were no moving parts to the octopus system; the air was heated in the vessel that sat on the basement floor, causing it to rise and drift through the ducts into the upstairs rooms. A small vent, hidden in a cramped closet, fed the entire second floor with warm air. The vessel had been converted from coal to gas-burning at some time in its life.

The first upgrade we did to the house was to install new electrical wiring, and a new circuit breaker panel to replace the screw-in fuses. The second major upgrade was to replace the octopus system and the two window air conditioners with a heating and air conditioning system.

image source:halcoenergy.com

Ever since the HVAC system was installed we have paid a yearly maintenance; entitling us to two no-cost annual inspections and preventative maintenance visits, and no charge for repairs to the system. The HVAC technician came the other day for an inspection and maintenance visit of the gas furnace, and shared the same concern the air conditioner specialist did six months earlier:

HVAC Technician: You know your system is getting so old that it could have serious breakdown problems soon. Me: It was the Cadillac of furnaces when we had it installed. Technician: True and it still is; but we could buy out your maintenance agreement by giving you a discount on a new system. Me: But doesn’t the maintenance agreement that we’ve being paying for twenty plus years provide no cost repairs. Technician: Yes, but your system is getting old

Although the passageway thermostat is set at seventy-four degrees the temperature in all of the first floor rooms varies somewhat. The windows in the two front rooms capture the summer and winter sun, and are always the warmest rooms in the house; the kitchen receives the summer morning sunlight, and the back bedroom receives little warmth from the sun. I retreat from walking the neighbourhood streets in the extremes of summer and winter to the Westroads Mall. It has a constant mid-seventies temperature, low humidity, and no breeze; similar to our house. So I should think about walking around the inside of our house in summer and winter instead of retreating to Westroads. The other day I did a quick once around the kitchen, dining room, lounge room, passageway, bedroom, and TV room; it took about eighty normal walking steps to complete a circuit of the rooms. My average step is about a yard so I would have to walk seventy-plus times around the rooms to equal the five times I do around Westroads.

image source:pixabay

I remember summer in Melbourne sometimes starting in early November; before the summer school holidays and when we were still wearing our winter uniforms. The temperature would sneak into the eighties; we sat in our long trousers, shirts unbuttoned at the neck but still with a tie, and a long sleeve jumper or jacket. We sat squashed two to a desk in the hot classrooms at Williamstown Tech. The school didn’t have any heating or cooling so on early summer hot and humid days the teacher would open the classroom windows, but the cooling southerly breeze only arrived in the late afternoon; the air was stifling. We sat silent and unresponsive, always glancing up at the large octangular speaker in the corner of the room, waiting for the headmaster’s announcement to be broadcast into every room; “boys, you may remove your jackets and loosen your ties”.

image source:grafenwoehr.armymwr.com

It was around late November when the summer school uniform could officially replace the winter uniform; and we were permitted to wear shorts, a short-sleeve shirt without a tie, and summer socks.

Back when, summer in Australia would truly begin around the start of the school holidays. I can remember many a Christmas Day with temperatures in the high nineties. January always was the hottest month; there were days on end when the temperature nudged the century. My childhood house didn’t have HVAC; we endured the Melbourne summer temperatures without any mechanical relief from the heat or humidity. Mum made salads during the summer months. The kitchen gas stove and oven were used as little as possible; it was her way of preventing the house from heating up. She always opened the front door and kitchen back door, and the side windows to catch whatever breeze there was; the flywire screens on the doors and windows kept the blowies out of the house. If there was a hot northerly blowing the doors and windows stayed shut. Our house was a block from the Port Phillip Bay foreshore and mum always promised the house would cool down with the cool change; a southerly that would blow off the water of the bay. We slept with the bedroom window open, on top of the bed in our lightweight summer seersucker pyjamas; sometimes without the top and only wearing the shorts.

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In winter we wore long trousers, slippers, and woollen jumpers around the house. It seemed that most of the long dark nights were either damp from a pea-soup thick fog or cold and wet because of the rain carried by the frigid southerly blowing off Port Phillip Bay. The kitchen was the warmest room in the house. Mum let the leftover heat from the gas stove and oven after they cooked our tea heat up the kitchen, and the kitchen always had an electric radiator in the corner. Even though the dining and lounge rooms had fireplaces I don’t remember a fire ever being lit in either room. If we were expecting visitors, and the room needed heating mum would carry an electric radiator into the lounge room before the company arrived; the door was closed and bob’s your uncle. Just before bedtime, on especially cold winter nights, our bedroom was warmed with a radiator; but mum would never let the radiator stay plugged in overnight. She covered the bed with heavy woollen blankets and an eiderdown, and sometimes a water bottle was put into the bed to warm the sheets.

And the cars didn’t have heating or cooling. In winter the windows were kept tightly shut; dad would continually wipe the condensation from the inside of the windscreen with the back of his gloved hand. We sat with our woollen gloved hands between our knees, and our coats tightly buttoned. We always wore a jumper under our coat. Mum knitted a wardrobe of winter clothes; jumpers, cardigans, scarves and gloves as well as making our summer clothes on her sewing machine. Summer in the car was the opposite of winter; all of the windows were wound down and the two front vent windows were turned to angle any breeze into the car. We grimaced whenever we approached a red traffic light or stop sign because we knew the breeze and ventilation flowing through the open windows were going to let up. A few car owners would mount a small bakelite electric fan on their dashboard.

image source:automoblog.net

The red train carriages had small bench seats running across them; wooden partitions divided the carriages into small spaces, and the spaces were divided into compartments. Each aisle of seats had its own door and window. On hot stifling summer days every door, and window, was opened to move air through the carriage; men would stand propped in the open doorway with their back up against one edge of the doorway. “Stand Clear of the Closing Doors Please” was just a promise of the future. The Williamstown-Melbourne railway line crosses the Maribyrnong River just after the Footscray Station. Back then a complex of tanneries was nestled between the river bank and the housing commission flats; our childhood imagination had horses entering at the abattoir end, passing through the boiling down works, the bone mills and skin-drying sheds, and then finishing at the soap, candle and glue making sheds. The water beneath the railway bridge was a flowing, swirling cesspool, and the damp pungent smell of the tanneries hung in the air. Every train door and window was slammed shut as soon as the red Tait was halfway across the Maribyrnong River bridge; you could feel the perspiration starting under your arms, and the salty sweat forming on your lips, but the doors and windows stayed closed until after the South Kensington Station.

image source:arhsnsw.com.au

In the early seventies when I went searching for inspiration and idealism in the ordinary I first settled in London. My Aussie travel companion had lived in London not all that long ago; we just settled into the Tooting Bec terrace that he had shared with four English lads. It was nearing the end of the London winter; some days were cold and crisp, and others were being warmed by the gentle heat of spring sunshine. The two-story brick terrace still held the cold of winter. It was the early seventies, and I think most London houses were still warmed by fireplaces in the main rooms or the gas stove in the kitchen. Our gas meter was coin-operated and had to be fed threepences, sixpences, or shillings for a measured amount of gas; today’s concept of pay as you go. On cold nights we all sat in the kitchen huddled around the gas stove with the oven door open; feeding sixpences into the meter before the gas ran out. And I slept in my goose down sleeping bag.

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And now I’ve grown used to HVAC; walking into air conditioning out of Omaha’s oppressive humid, corn sweat July heat, is akin to stepping into a perfect April afternoon. Escaping into a heated house from a winter Omaha blustery chilling subzero winter wind, that bites at your skin, is not unlike stepping into a perfect April afternoon.

Today the temperature is sparring with the humidity and the heat is even finding itself trapped in the shadows. I think I will sit outside for a few hours to prepare myself for some HVAC.

 

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It’s not that I don’t have faith in US news sources, but ever since I’ve been hanging about in the US I’ve persisted in reading Australian newspapers and at one time even The Times of London. After spending my first few years in the US in Nebraska I moved to Springfield, Illinois. It took a little time to gain employment in The Land of Lincoln, so to avoid my anguish of collecting food stamps, and the empty fruitless days of searching for a full-time job, I visited the Springfield Library one morning a week and sat at a reading table with The Times of London and the Australian Age. It was the golden days of print. The newspapers were folded over long wooden holders hung on a newspaper rack. I would carry the large wooden stick newspaper holders to a reading table and spend the next several hours consuming the latest, three weeks old newspapers. And now I hold my reading table; each morning I scan the Melbourne Age, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation news, the HearldSun, and the News Corp Australia on my smartphone or tablet.

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The other morning as I started my digital skimming of the Melbourne Age I was jolted from my somnolence into a critical reading mode. I fell back onto the sofa and stared at the headline. I wondered if the writer’s sound judgement had been replaced with a rhetorical wordplay to create the striking headline; Second Melbourne council to vote on ending Australia Day citizenship ceremonies.

On January 26th, 1788 Captain Arthur Phillip guided the First Fleet of eleven British ships, into Sydney Cove and raised the Union Jack. Six of the ships were convict transports. It was the start of white colonisation and British ownership of Terra Australis. For the Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, it was the day of mourning; they were dispossessed of their land and culture. Invasion Day. January 26th is the official national day of Australia and a public holiday; Australians come together as a nation to celebrate what’s great about Australia and being Australian. Australia Day is celebrated with community events, Australian of the Year Awards, the announcement of the Australian Honours Awards list, speech’s from the Prime Minister and Governor-General, and citizenship ceremonies.

image source:australiaday2017.com

I don’t remember Australia Day growing up. The tradition of Australia Day started in 1935 but nobody cared about it because most Australians were committed to celebrating Commonwealth Day; cities and towns came to a standstill as the citizens listened lovingly to the Queen delivering her Commonwealth Day message. And as young lads, our social studies classes groomed us to be unswerving in our duty to the Commonwealth.

Our social studies teacher at Williamstown Tech, Mr McDevitt, taught the history of Australia as it was taught in all Victorian schools; Australia, a triumph of the Empire, was built upon the courage and strength of British explorers and adventures. Our Mr McDevitt was different from most social studies teachers; he was a master of the blackboard. He described the sweeping grandeur of Australia’s colonisation with colourful chalk panoramas; Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth crossing the Blue Mountains, Hargraves flying his box kites, and Burke and Wills perishing on their return journey, after crossing Australia from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. The blackboards were Mr McDevitt’s Sistine Ceilings; with deft and swift movements of his coloured chalk, the voyages of Bass and Flinders, or the journeys of any of the British adventurers who explored Britain’s new colony would appear on his blackboards.

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Sometimes Mr McDevitt created his blackboards before class, and as we lined up in two rows outside of the room, we would marvel at the sweeping colourful tableau on the boards; as we marched single file into Mr Devitt’s room all eyes stayed fixed on the chalk reproductions. Mr McDevitt filled the parts of his blackboards not covered in coloured chalk with sentences describing the courage and determination of the sons of the Empire as they colonised Australia. We dutifully copied the blackboards into our Social Science exercise books; our coloured pencil drawings were mere untidy scribblings of fourteen-year-old boys.

The valour and heroism of Arthur Phillip and John McArthur were how Mr McDevitt’s blackboards summarized Australia’s convict era; nothing about the thieves, trollops and charlatans that were the true founders of the country. By the end of transportation in 1868, around 162,000 convicts were sent to the colonies of New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land, and Western Australia. Until recently being a descendant of a transported convict was a source of shame for Australians. An estimated one in five Australians has convict ancestry. I am a third great great grandson of the convict Thomas Raines, sentenced to fifteen years transportation for stealing sheep. I am a descendant of Australian Royalty.

In the sixties, every Victorian School had a Monday morning assembly. At Williamstown Tech they were held on the asphalt quadrangle used for bat tennis games during recess and lunchtime. The flag pole stood alone on one side of the quadrangle. The teacher leading the assemblies stood on a small raised platform in front of the boys. The fifth, fourth, and third forms to the left, and the second and first forms to the right; we stood at ease, lined up alphabetically in descending form order, with caps on.  And every Monday morning the boys of Williamstown Tech mumbled the Creed.

image source:bbc.com

School AAA-TEN-SHUN. And we snapped from our legs apart, hands clasped behind the back at ease stance, to hands by the side and legs and feet together. Caps OFF and FAAA-CE the flag. The assembly turned as one and swiftly removed their caps. REEE-PEAT after me. I Love God and my country I honour the flag I will serve the Queen And cheerfully obey my parents, teachers and the law School SALUUUU-TE the FLAG. And on cue the national anthem, God Save the Queen, played over the PA system. School FAAA-CE the front and caps ON. STAAAA-ND at ease. If there were no school announcements or a snap uniform inspection, the call was music please. School MAAAAA-RCH off.

Each year through primary and secondary school we were told about the victory of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps not being defeated at Gallipoli and Anzac Cove. The Australian and New Zealand forces landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula on April 25. They were fighting for King and country and the Empire; the mother country. We were told about Simpson and his donkey, and the heroism and courage shown by the ten thousand Australian and New Zealander boys who died on the Gallipoli peninsula; they gave birth to the ANZAC legend and spirit. ANZAC Day is April 25 and Australians recognise it as a day of national remembrance.

image source:sligotoday.ie

Since 1979, the federal government began promoting an Australia Day that was less British and more Australian, and in 1994 Australia Day became a national public holiday on January 26. In Victoria, Commonwealth Day celebrations were moved to the same day as the Queen’s Birthday public holiday.

I think Australia must be one of the only countries that celebrate its national day on the date it was invaded and colonised. The British colonies of Australia federated on January 1, 1901, creating the Commonwealth of Australia. America celebrates its national day on July 4; remembering its revolutionary war with the British, and its Declaration of Independence on July 4 1776, rather than honouring the landing of Christopher Columbus in the New World. January 1 would seem like a good date for an Australian public holiday; a day when people could come together to share and celebrate unity. A day for celebrating Australian traditions and for those who call Australia home to reflect on what they have achieved.

Nothing is more traditional in Australian culture than the great backyard barbecue; throw a few snags on the barbie, slap them between two pieces of bread, add a dollop of tomato sauce, and eat the sangos while your throwing down a few ice-cold beers, or wine, with your mates. The backyard barbie is about sharing and mateship. It’s all about emptying the tinnies from your ESKY into the host’s fridge. And if you leave early, the host can assume ownership of the few beers you’ve left, so anyone who’s consumed their own tinnies can take up the generous offer of the host to have one of theirs. And when you throw your chops or steak on the host’s barbie it’s no longer yours; anyone can choose the juiciest and best for themselves, or feed whatever they want to the host’s dog.

image source:.dailymail.co.uk

Maybe Australia Day should become Snag On The Barbie Day. It wouldn’t have to be celebrated on January 1 or 26. Victoria and most states in Australia already have the following public holidays.

Holiday	Date
New Year’s Day	Monday January 1
Australia Day	Friday January 26
Labour Day	Monday March 12
Good Friday	Friday March 30
Saturday before Easter Sunday	Saturday March 31
Easter Sunday	Sunday April 1
Easter Monday	Monday April 2
ANZAC Day	Wednesday April 25
Queen’s Birthday	Monday June 11
Friday before the AFL Grand Final	TBD
Melbourne Cup	Tuesday November 6
Christmas Day	Tuesday December 25
Boxing Day	Wednesday December 26

image source:.australiantimes.co.uk

Snag On The Barbie Day would need to be squeezed between the current holidays; sometime in summer, January through March. Snag Day would have to be celebrated on a Tuesday, and it would need to be a Tuesday each year, so every Australian could chuck a sickie on Monday and enjoy a four-day weekend; a long weekend of sharing snags, and a few ice-cold beers or wine, with your mates; even a game of backyard cricket. There is nothing more Australian than gathering around the backyard barbie, with a few mates, celebrating what’s great about Australia; with an ice-cold tinnie or stubby, and committing to making Australia an even better place for the future.

I think I should nick out the back and throw a few snags on the barbie. Crisp on the outside and spongy and juicy inside, and then wrap them in a thin slice of white bread and smother it with tomato sauce; with a squirt of fat when you bite into it. Nothing like a sausage sango to kick off Snag On The Barbie Day.

 

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The last few days in Omaha has seen the temperature pushing into the nineties, with the humidity matching the air temperature; and summer officially begins in a week. Maybe the corn sweat has launched early this year, or maybe global warming caused July and August to start in June. After heaving the lawn mower around the backyard, and oozing with sweat, I pushed back into the green resin stack-able patio dining chair that I had put in the garage; even with the door open it’s the coolest place in the house during summer mid mornings. My head lolled forward and the resin chair became a bold and beautiful folding deckchair. I didn’t try to interrupt my eyes closing and I was soon back playing a game of beach cricket and trying to eat a paddle pop before it melts.

image source:johnmcadam

Back when, my summers usually began in November; the temperature began creeping into the eighties as we sat in our winter uniforms, squashed two to a desk, in the hot classrooms at Williamstown Tech. On those hot days the teacher opened the windows but the cooling south breeze only arrived in the late afternoon; the air was stifling. We sat silent and unresponsive, glancing up at the large octangular speaker in the corner, waiting for the headmasters announcement to be broadcast into every room:

boys, you may remove your jumpers and loosen your ties

It was around late November when the summer uniform replaced the winter uniform. We were permitted to wear shorts, a short sleeve shirt without a tie, and summer socks.

image source:picturevictoria.vic.gov.au

When I was a young teenager drifting into adolescence it seemed as if I spent every day of the school holidays at Williamstown Beach. I would leave my bike resting against the chain link fence of the Life Saving Club with the towel that I always wrapped around my shirt and shorts lodged under the bike below the pedals. The Life Saving Club was at the end of the promenade that ran alongside the Esplanade; a low curving blue stone wall separated the sand and water from the promenade. Back then, the sand ended just before the Life Saving Club; a rock wall arched around past the club. There were two sets of steps inset into the wall that led into the water. Past the steps were the rockies. There were no steps down to the rockies. You clambered down the wall onto the rocks. At different places the rocks had formed openings and the waves and tidal water gushed into and out of these deep grottoes. Only the brave went there to swim; only those enduring a rite of passage, or answering a dare. The rockies were the first time I swam starkers.

image source:errantries.com

I don’t remember dad driving the family to the Gold Coast on holidays but I know that he did. I remember looking out over the Blue Mountains at the three sisters; I don’t remember Sydney. After leaving Sydney we would have driven up the two lane Pacific Highway to the New South Wales border town of Coolangatta. The thin strip of road connecting Coolangatta with Surfers Paradise snaked through the small sleepy, Gold Coast beach towns. I don’t remember Surfers Paradise. I think we stayed in the Tweed Heads caravan park. I would have gone swimming in the surf at the beach. Mum had a couple of strict swimming rules; we could only go as far out into the water where we could still touch the bottom, and the most enforced rule was we could only go into the water an hour after eating. After every meal, or snack, mum would hold court and warn us of the severe consequences of swimming immediately after eating:

your stomach will cramp up and you will sink to the bottom and drown

It took until young adulthood for me to go swimming straight after I had eaten; and I never once got stomach cramp.

image source:johnmcadam

My second visit to Surfers Paradise was in the late sixties; it was still the land of meter maids and Mini Mokes. The re-built Surfers Paradise Hotel anchored Cavill Avenue and it’s Birdwatcher’s Bar was crowded with males of all ages downing a few cold ones: you staked out a drinking spot by the glass windows to watch the girls in their bikinis saunter past. New motels and hotels, towering five stories into the blue sky, were carving out the new Surfers Paradise skyline. The beer gardens were a welcome retreat from the mid day sun for the holiday makers. Constant rounds of  beer and mixed drinks, and a good counter lunch were the norm. The Bee Gees grew up in Redcliffe, about 70miles from the Gold Coast. The holiday makers paid scant attention to the young boys when they sang their way through the beer gardens. One night I was putting away a few cold ones, and mum had never said anything about waiting an hour after your last drink before going swimming, so I decided I should be swimming at Surfers Paradise beach. I could just make out the breaking waves from where I was on the moonlit sand but I peeled off my clothes and ran towards the breaking waves. I swam starkers in the Surfers Paradise surf.

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I was young; I didn’t know danger. It was only a couple of years since the Australian Prime Minister, Harold Holt, mysteriously disappeared while swimming alone at a beach near the ocean-side town of Portsea. Maybe he went swimming without waiting for an hour after eating.

When I first went searching for inspiration and idealism in the ordinary in the early seventies I used London as my homeland. I worked as a life guard during a long hot summer at an outdoor swimming pool that was nestled in the corner of Brockwell Park. Brockwell Lido was a drop kick from the Herne Hill train station, or a short bus ride away from the Brixton tube station; sometimes I would endure the long walk across Tooting Bec Commons and through parts of Streatham. The Olympic size pool was surrounded by asphalt and concrete, and a ten foot high brick wall. On each side of the pool were the dank, dark, subterranean men’s and women’s changing rooms. A high diving platform was at the deep end of the pool and a large concrete water fountain towered over the shallow end. The life guard changing room was behind the fountain and the room shared a wall with the first aid room. The changing room and the first aid room had an outside door to the park.

The pool and it’s surrounding concrete provided a welcome respite from the sweltering summer heat to the people of Lambeth and South London. Five of us: Peter the university student, John the part time criminal from Herne Hill, Mick the Irishman sympathetic to the troubles and a supporter of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, The Young Londoner, and the Aussie searching for inspiration and idealism plucked quite a few little ones from the shallow three foot end of the pool, and were regarded as hero’s by their young mums; we also dragged a few teenagers and adults from the deep end after they jumped off the high diving board and discovered they couldn’t swim.

image source:johnmcadam

We often worked until after nine during the weekdays but finished earlier on Sunday evenings; sometimes different combinations of us would stroll over to one of the local Herne Hill pubs to sink a few pints after work. Last call was around eleven. A collection of uniformed first aid volunteers would show up on the weekends. It was an early Sunday evening and a couple of the young uniformed first aid lady volunteers agreed to join us for a few rounds at the local. It had to be after eleven when we; Peter the university student, John the part time criminal from Herne Hill, Mick the Irishman sympathetic to the troubles and a supporter of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and the young uniformed first aid lady volunteer lurched out of the pub and headed towards the Lido. We had decided to go swimming.

image source:heartsonfire.co

We lifted Mick the Irishman onto the top of the wall and he in turn hoisted John the part time criminal from Herne Hill onto the wall. They let themselves into the first aid room with the key the young uniformed first aid lady volunteer had given them and unlocked the outside door to the park. We all swam starkers, in the moonlight, at Brockwell Lido. As I think back it was fortunate that we had consumed only pints of warm English bitter and not snacked on any of the Scottish eggs available from the bar; waiting in the moonlight for an hour after eating may have proven to be a little tiresome.

The Thailand I remember was a county transitioning from a rest and recreational retreat from the Vietnam War into a tourism mecca. In the mid seventies Chiang Mai was a sleepy country town nestled among the forested foothills of northern Thailand close to Asia’s infamous Golden Triangle; the meeting of Thailand, Burma and Laos and the center of the infamous opium trade. Our back packers hostel was a collection of buildings surrounding by trees and foliage; they ringed a small delightful courtyard. Five of us intrepid travelers set off from our hostel on a two day hike into the mountains and villages of the Golden Triangle. A friend of our guide dropped us off at the entrance to a rough track into the mountains. We dragged ourselves along mud trails, skirted countless opium fields, and trekked through small villages and into and out of Laos and Burma.  I wondered if the opium farmers guided their donkey caravans along these old jungle trade paths. It was late afternoon when we arrived at our overnight mountain jungle village.

image source:sports.vice.com

Before eating and sleeping we were encouraged to cleanse the dried mud and sweat from ourselves in the nearby stream. I think the rivulet was the fresh water supply for the village. I wandered along the stream, downstream from the village. I sat naked in a cold mountain stream in Asia’s Golden Triangle.

Nowadays you can relax during a scenic drive through the countryside in air-conditioned comfort and stop off at attractions such as the Hall of Opium Museum and the Mae Ka Chan hot springs, where you can soak your sore muscles in three natural pools and let tiny fish nibble dead skin from your feet. Which makes me wonder if fish have to wait an hour after they eat before they can go swimming.

I haven’t been swimming for years; maybe I should go swimming in a sand pit. I will probably need to go out and buy a pair of bathers.

 

What In The World Is Corn Sweat

Brockwell Lido

History Of Surfers Paradise

I Look At My Clothes To See What I’m Wearing

The other day when I was resting on the fringe of the women’s section at a WestRoads department shop I slowly became aware that I was surrounded by racks of women’s clothing that had parts of their shoulders, or the complete shoulder removed. It appears that leaving part of the shoulder exposed, or the whole shoulder and upper arm exposed, is the must-have look for 2017. The cold shoulder look is everywhere; dresses, jumpsuits, bridal gowns, and even bathers. And surrounding the cold shoulder displays were racks of Hippie Laundry label smocked off-the-shoulder tops, tie-dye popover tops, and destructed shorts.

image source:johnmcadam

As the sales associate wandered by I turned to her and with a slight smile said

If you can remember the sixties, you weren’t really there.

The sixties welcomed tie-dye shirts, long flowing gypsy skirts, fringed vests, and peasant blouses; I learned that women had shoulders. The associate was staring off into the display of cold shoulder clothes and answered

I had a halter top sundress and a batik tie dye halter top.
I wouldn’t wear the cold shoulder; it’s for the young ones.

I don’t remember going shopping for clothes back when. Mum made most of my clothes until I was in my late teens. It’s impossible for me to forget the blue blazer and grey long trousers that she made for me; I was maturing into a teenager and it was time for me to wear grown-up clothes. The blue blazer and grey long trousers were about twice the size they should have been, but they were made for me to grow into; maybe the loose, baggy fit was some cool early sixties look that I didn’t know about. Mum said that the blue blazer and grey long trousers were to be kept for best; they were my going out clothes.

image source:pinterest

On school holidays mum and nanna would take me with them when they went into town on one of their shopping days. Like everybody back then they would wear their best dresses, and sometimes gloves when they went into town. I would wear my loose, baggy blue blazer and grey long trousers going out clothes. We would stop at Hopetoun Tea Rooms in the Block Arcade and I would sit with mum and nanna, and the other shopping ladies enjoying their sandwiches or if it was later in the day scones and a cup of tea; they were all in their stylish suits or dresses. I was in my loose, baggy blue blazer and grey long trousers going out clothes.

If you looked closely into the dark night you could just make out the glow of the new landscape that television was carving out across Melbourne. But it was still a time when going to the pictures in town on a Saturday night was a special occasion; a special night out and you would wear your best clothes. Dad would wear a suit and tie, and mum her best Saturday night going out dress. I wore my loose, going out clothes; my baggy blue blazer and grey long trousers.

image source:considerthesauce.net

I was a young teenager when I first caught the train to Yarraville to take learn to dance classes at the Universal Dancing Classes Ballroom. I was expecting the debonair Pat McGuire and his wife Marjorie to turn my two left feet into dancing sensations; I would glide across the floor showcasing the pride of Erin, foxtrot, and the evening three-step. Mum was so happy that I wanted to learn to dance; I was so happy for the opportunity to meet girls. Mr McGuire would walk the boys through a dance, and Marjorie did the same with the girls. When he thought it was time to practice the dance he had the boys line one side of the hall and the girls the other. Most of the time it was boy’s choice so you had to invite a girl to dance. The girls didn’t know if you had mastered the dance steps or not; I’m not sure they cared because they were at the Universal Dancing Classes Ballroom to meet boys. I know it wasn’t my pot cut, I was growing my hair into a long sixties style, which caused the girls to turn down my invites to step onto the dance floor. Every week the refusals repeated themselves and I would spend the night sitting in front of, and leaning against, the boy’s wall. As I sat in front of the boy’s wall I searched for the reason why the girls refused my invitation to join me on the dance floor; the only common denominator that came to mind was that my loose, baggy blue blazer and grey long trousers going out clothes made me look like a dork.

image source:pinterest

I stopped going to dance classes at the Universal Dancing Classes Ballroom and I never wore my loose, baggy blue blazer and grey long trousers going out clothes again.

I remember when The Beatles invaded Australia as part of their 1964 world tour. We all wanted a Nehru collar jacket. A year later Jean Shrimpton shocked Melbourne when she wore a mini skirt to Derby Day and caused absolute silence in the member’s lounge at Flemington Racecourse. It was five inches above the knee and her legs stopped a nation. And that was the first time I appreciated women’s fashion. I learned that women had knees and thighs. I was neither a mod nor a rocker but I did take charge of mum’s electric sewing machine and peg my jeans to produce a stovepipe effect. I turned the legs inside out and sewed a new tapered seam alongside the original seam; creating a small opening at the bottom of the legs that I could just squeeze my feet through. Even though I was rewarded a new freedom when I became a college student at Footscray Tech I still needed mum to provide food, shelter, and clothing. I wanted to shop for my own clothes; the closest I got was telling mum what I had to have. It was the late sixties and cool college students rejected the hippie fashion of tie-dye, leather sandals, flowers and peace signs, and beads and fringes; that would all come later.

image source:leonidgurevich.blogspot.com

Our uniform was corduroy pants and desert boots. I did persuade mum to buy me a paisley shirt. It was a time of conflicting idealism, protest, rebellion, and freedom of choice. We could choose to be hippie, bodgie and widgie, mod, skinheads, or surfers; and I became a little of each depending on what I could persuade mum to make with her sewing machine. A bottle green duffle coat, navy blue reefer jacket, a green jerkin, tapered jeans, bell bottoms, and black ripple sole shoes were the only constants as I brushed up against the late sixties and early seventies subcultures. I remember owning a suit. I left the suit in Australia when I set out in the early seventies on my first hallowed rite of passage searching for inspiration and idealism in the ordinary. Mum would have kept the suit, but I never wore it again.

Carnaby Street was on the cusp of its heyday when I was living in London. In the early sixties, it was the birthplace of Swinging London, the home of mods, skinheads, and punks. It was the place to be if you were creative and in search of inspiration. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Kinks made Carnaby street a legend; in the early seventies its rebellious reputation was fading.

image source:pinterest

The fashions of yesterday in the leftover menswear boutiques were making way for the emerging punk culture. I resisted becoming a dedicated follower of fashion during my search for inspiration and idealism in the ordinary; my journey started and ended in jeans. When I returned to Australia after wandering Europe and drifting through the Middle East and into India along the ill-defined hippie trail, I left my jeans on the bedroom floor for mum to wash. I wore my Indian kurta shirt, harem pants, and scarves the first few times I walked Douglas Parade.

And as I sat back resting on the fringe of the women’s section at a WestRoads department shop I started to ponder why is fashion only for the skinny, gap-tooth smiling, youthful young ones and why is fifty plus the age that makes us no longer style conscious.

If fashion designers refuse to create daring, provocative, everyday fashion that allows all of us fifty plus to flaunt an intense, emotional street style image then we need to create our own. Every pop culture that we travelled through defined itself by the clothing and fashion they established and left behind; hippies, bodgies and widgies, mods, skinheads, surfers and punks wore their individual clothing in a collective way. I think we need to forget about the 50 and older sections in clothes shops that are stocked with age-appropriate clothing and just shop in whatever section we want. Ours is the right to create a mix-and-match wardrobe.

image source:johnmcadam

But there is a place for the trousers with an elastic waistband that straddles the back of our waist and needs to be positioned just above where our stomach starts its bulge. We need to lower them so they sit low on the hip, below the waist, and below the waistband of our brightly coloured, patterned boxer shorts. We need to reveal our underwear. Sagging shouldn’t be the exclusive fashion of Justin Bieber.

Fashion predicts that hipsters will combine clothing styles. Hipster chic street styles will be a mix of grunge and hippie must-haves such as matching button-ups, knee-high socks, polka dot tights, cool striped crop tops and big floppy hats. So it’s time that we reach into our wardrobes and storage boxes and reclaim our skinny jeans and trousers, the corduroy jacket with the leather patches on the elbows, the leather sandals, tie-dyed and paisley print, and shirts decorated with beads and fringes, bell-bottomed jeans, Nehru collar jackets, and the duffle coats and refer jackets of yesteryear.

For the last thirty years, I have headlined floral print shirts year-round. And I bought shorts from Australia and wore them before they were popular in the mid-west; before the united parcel delivery driver or postmen wore shorts. Mum would only let me take a little from each culture; pegged jeans here and a paisley print there so my wardrobe is bare. If only I could wear my loose, baggy blue blazer and grey long trousers going out clothes one more time. This time with a floral print shirt and I would glide a partner across the polished dance floor in my own maverick style.

 

Sixties’ model Jean Shrimpton shocks world with first miniskirt

Carnaby Street: 1960 – 2010

The Beatles let it be in Australia: 1964

A House With No Name

You wouldn’t know if it’s springtime or what season the outside world was grappling with when you’re walking the upper level of WestRoads in the mornings. Inside the mall, each season has the same prescribed climate; temperature is maintained at a constant mid-seventies, there is no breeze, and the lighting is never darkened by clouds or the threat of rain. Because spring has dismissed winter, I’m walking throughout the neighbourhood in the mornings instead of WestRoads. The three laps of the upper level and the two laps of the lower level of the mall have become a meandering one hour stroll through the streets where I live.

image source: jmcadam

Some mornings I have to wait for the spring harsh rains to become a soft gentle shower; when occasional droplets are falling on the sunshine that is breaking through the clouds. It’s that perfect time of the year. Mornings are being warmed by the gentle spring heat; the tight buds on the forsythia and dogwood branches are straining to open and the trees are sprinkled with leaves and blossoms. I vary my walking track each morning. Sometimes I tackle the uphill uneven footpaths first off and other mornings head in the opposite direction to keep the hills for midway through my amble. The other morning I set off before the rubbish trucks had wandered through the neighbourhood so the bins, plastic bags of rubbish, green recycling tubs, cardboard boxes stuffed with paper and plastics, yard waste bags bursting with grass clippings and leaves, and bundles of branches tied with string were all in disorganised chaos on the footpaths. It was easier to leave the footpaths and walk the roadways; I fell into a pattern of long and short strides and my thoughts went back to when rubbish bins lined the nature strips of my childhood.

Like most people back then we only had one galvanised rubbish bin. Once a week on rubbish day the bin was put out on the nature strip to be emptied by the rubbish man or, as we all knew him, the garbo. One bin was more than enough because most people burnt their rubbish. Our incinerator was an old 44-gallon oil drum in the back of the yard. I don’t know where it came from or how it got into the backyard. There was a cut out rectangular hole, about ten by six inches, at the bottom of the tin so the ashes from the burnt rubbish could be culled and thrown onto mum’s garden.

image source: jmcadam

When I think back I wonder if it was the ever-present incinerator in the back yard and the ashes being scooped out from the fire and smoke that caused me as a youngster to close my eyes whenever we drove past the Springvale Crematorium on the way to Aunt Peg’s. Mum’s sister and our cousins lived in the country town of Dandenong; a 20-mile drive from Melbourne in the Austin A40 down the Princess Highway. The crematorium was a silhouette across the fields. I silently ached for the A40 to accelerate and leave behind the incinerators that burnt bodies.

Before meat, fruit and vegetables, groceries, and bread and biscuits were wrapped in plastic you’d just tell the shopkeeper how much you wanted. Items were weighed on a shop counter scale and then wrapped in paper, or put into a paper bag, to be carried home in a string bag or a shopping jeep. And the paper and food scraps became food for the incinerator. Our rubbish bin was filled with glass bottles, tin cans, and anything that wouldn’t burn in the incinerator. I remember the small horse-drawn rubbish cart; green with large wheels on each side. The cart’s shape was a large drum cut in half; curved metal, sliding coverings on each side formed the top of the cart. The horse stopped, slowed down, and started without a command. The rubbish tins were the equine traffic signal.

image source: adelaiderememberwhen.com.au

The garbo lifted the metal tins onto the side of the cart and dumped the rubbish into the cart, and when the cart was filled he would slide the coverings closed. I remember the rubbish trucks replacing the horse-drawn carts. In summer the garbos would run up and down the street, dressed in footy shorts and a singlet, banging the rubbish bins on the sides of the truck as they emptied the rubbish into the truck. At Christmas, mum and dad would always leave a few bottles of beer out on the footpath for the garbos.

Aksarben, where I now live, is a quaint suburb of Omaha. Bordered by Elmwood and Memorial Parks, it embraces an array of homes, from brick Tudors to Craftsman-style bungalows, and the streets are lined with mature trees. It’s a suburb where you would expect houses to have front fences and a name. I amble a different way through the neighbourhood each morning searching for a front fence; a French Gothic picket, a row of dense evergreen hedge plants, or a low stone front yard wall. But my front fence searching is in vain.

image source: google

No one is gonna call a house a real Australian house unless it has a front fence, front yard, and a name. The front fence and front yard are part of Australian history. I think the front fence has remained part of The Land Down Under suburban house because an Aussie wants privacy from the street and a place where their little ones can safely play.  There are some, though, that maintain a fence in front of a house adds nothing to the appearance of the house or street. Many different styles of front fence lined the street where I grew from a young boy through early childhood and then, to a fledgling adolescent. A relative of ours had a large concrete scalloped fence. Our house had a high wooden picket front fence; in time it transformed into a low square picket fence and then into a scalloped picket fence.

image source: jmcadam

During the fifties and sixties, many picket front yard fences were restyled into unique statements by Greek and Italian immigrants. Melbourne still has a few traditional front yard fence styles; wooden picket, low stone or masonry pillars interlinked with thick chains or rods, woven wire, squat brick veneer with a touch of decorative wrought iron, or tea tree.

It is said that every house built in Australia before about 1930 was christened and given a name by its architect, builder or first owner. After the Second World War, the Australian government committed to a vigorous and sustained immigration program and house naming was once again in vogue. British, Italians and Greeks were the first to arrive in large numbers to The Lucky Country, and when they secured their first home they named them after the counties, Italian towns, Greek regions, and English parishes they came from or where their families lived. If a house didn’t have a name then its name became who lived in the house; the Tillerson’s, the Bate’s, and the Ashford’s houses made up part of our street.

image source: google

Our house was named Montrose; a lovely little dark coloured plaque with curly and fluid gold lettering was attached to the weatherboards by the front door. Montrose is a small Scottish coastal town nestled between Dundee and Aberdeen. The McAdam name stems from the Scottish Gaelic McAdam clan, which originated as a branch of Clan Gregor. Clan Gregor is a Highland Scottish clan famous for the legendary Rob Roy MacGregor. Back in the late forties and early fifties I don’t think Mum and Dad would have so admired Rob Roy that they would name our house after a small Scottish coastal town 100 miles from his birthplace. Maybe the house was already called Montrose and, because I’m a descendant of Australian Royalty, a third great-grandson of the transported convict Thomas Raines, the house chose us.

image source: google

The immigrant Lebanese family, the second owners of the Milk Bar on the corner of Douglas Parade and North Road, only knew mum as Mrs Montrose. The shop was only a block away so whenever we ran out of milk or needed some bread, mum would duck over to the corner shop instead of going to Mrs Worms on Melbourne Road. She would be welcomed as Mrs Montrose; whenever mum was in the middle of something and I went over to get the milk whoever of the Lebanese family was serving at the time would ask, and how is Mrs Montrose.

As I saunter through the neighbourhood I also look for house names. So few houses have a name. They only have numbers. But there are a few houses with the same name; Huskers and Big Red. And that makes me stop and think; a house shouldn’t have the same name as another house in the neighbourhood. A house should be named for a geographical feature, a type of tree or plant or flower, an animal of the area, the seasons, an event or period of local history, a memory or desire of the person who lives in the house.

Our house also doesn’t have a name, just a street number, so I think I need to give it a name. If the house had a name it might help the postman deliver letters and it would ensure the butcher, baker and milkman made their deliveries to the correct address; a trend already redefining the retail grocery trade is the convergence of online shopping and home delivery. Coming up with a name for a house should be an enjoyable and pleasing experience so I need to think about a name in the backyard over a few cold ones; I’m thinking The Beer Drinkers Arms, The Malt Shovel, or The Stagger Inn.

I should probably also start leaving a few bottles of beer out on the footpath for the garbos at Christmas time.

 

How Do I Trace The History Of My House

Rob Roy Scottish Outlaw

Shit brick fences of Melbourne  Facebook

No Dramas, No Worries

I sat alone in the waiting area anticipating the return of the associate from the service centre workshop. Why is it that you can go for years without a puncture and then you have flat tyre after flat tyre. Omaha was caressed by a gentle soaking rain the other day so all of the nails and screws that were resting in the gutters were washed onto the roads by the rain water gushing down the overflowing gutters. But how does a nail or screw lying on the road puncture a car tyre

1. a car in front of you runs over part of the nail or screw and cause it to
stand upright ready for you to run over it
2. you drive over the nail or screw and your front tyre flings it up
and into the path of the back tyre
3. the nail or screw is sitting pointed head up on the road and it’s nestled
into your tyre as soon as you run over it

I expected the associate on their return to tell me the tyre couldn’t be patched because a nail or screw had lodged in the sidewall. I focused on the waiting room tyre wall display and was soon musing over common causes of punctures; jagged pieces of wood, screws and bolts, knife blades, sharp rocks, potholes, stiletto heels, or indoor tv aerials, when a sign hanging from the ceiling caught my attention. A bearded smiling mechanic was staring out at me and to their left was written; tightening, torquing, wrenching. As I stared at the sign the words faded and became; tightening, torquing, spannering, and I was soon singing along.

I think it’s safe to say that if you own a car in the The Lucky Country then your going to have a small tool kit in the boot or glove box; a spanner set, a couple of screw drivers, pliers, that sort of thing. You never know when your motor might go bung and you need to do a quick fix under the bonnet to get to the nearest servo. And when you ask where’s the nearest service station your probably going to be told; there’s a servo another two clicks up the road; if you get to maccas you’ll have to chuck a U-ey, you’ve gone too far.

And it’s not just the way Australians spell and pronounce words, or the slang they use, that make up the little differences that are the The Lucky Country.

image source:excelle.monster.com

Australians keep their knife and fork in their hands when they eat. Food served on a plate comes with a knife and fork; it can be a meat pie and sauce, full roast with veggies, fish and chips, or grilled steak with salad, or anything in between, and it’s eaten with a knife and fork because it comes with a knife and fork. If the pie, dimmie, chico roll, or fish and chips is ordered as take away forget the knife and fork; it’s eaten from the bag or the paper it’s wrapped in. You’ll never see anybody forking food separately; different foods are combined on the fork at the same time. A plate of roast lamb and mixed veggies is worked on by cutting the brussel sprout into bite size pieces, and keeping the knife and fork in both hands cutting a chunk from the roast potato, and then a bite size slice of roast lamb. And with the lamb still on the fork, collecting a piece of brussel sprout onto the fork tines with the lamb, and then loading some of the peas and a chunk of roast potato onto the back of the fork. The knife is used to help move food around the plate and to push food onto the fork. No one cuts up food and then puts the knife and fork down and then picks up the fork to bayonet the just cut up foodstuff; and no one would ever use a fork to cut up food. There are no appetisers in the The Lucky Country; the entrée comes first, followed by the main course and then dessert. And a salad is served with the main course, not as an entrée.

image source:johnmcadam

Coffee comes in a cup. It comes as a flat white, long black, short black, latte, or cappuccino; good luck finding the bottomless cup of percolated or drip brewed coffee. At a cafe or restaurant no one is going to bring a coffee carafe and cup to the table and leave the carafe after pouring a cup of coffee. And you won’t see a commercial pour over coffee maker behind the counter. Order at the counter, pay, take a number with yourself to a table, and await the cup of coffee and refreshment to be carried to your table; if you want a refill of coffee, repeat the process. You won’t find a one cup coffee drip maker or single serve brewer in a hotel or motel room. Rooms are equipped with an electric kettle to boil water, a supply of tea bags and sachets of instant coffee crystals, sugar or sweetener, and milk in the mini fridge. In the morning boil some water, empty a sachet of freeze dried coffee grounds into a cup, stir with a spoon, and BAM!!; good morning coffee.

The Lucky Country decimalised on the 14th February 1966. The national currency is the dollar, and fifty plus years later the dollar comes in denominations of $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes; coins come in 5, 10, 20 and 50 cent and one and two dollar denominations. You’ll always get a $1 or $2 dollar coin as change whenever you buy anything; they add up fast in your pocket.

image source:johnmcadam

There’s no better way of getting rid of those little gold nuggets than ducking into the nearest pub for a glass of the amber fluid. Walking up to the bar in any pub and announcing I’ll have a beer mate will get you a cold one; but ordering a beer isn’t that easy. The size of a beer varies in each state and territory and each size has it’s own name. Most but not all states use schooner as a name for the large size, but the name for a small beer could cause confusion; its a half-pint in the Capital Territory, a middy in Western Australia and New South Wales, a pot in Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania, sometimes a ten in Queensland and Tasmania, and a handle in the Northern Territory.

Bartender: G’day mate ya right?
Me: G’day, schooner of New and a middy of VB mate
Bartender: Sorry?
Me: Schooner of New, middy of VB
Bartender: Sandgroper mate?
Me: Freo
Bartender: (holding up a pot and a glass) Which one mate?
Me: (pointing to pot): The middy
Bartender: No worries(placing pot on bar) Cheers
Me: Cheers

image source:chicagotribune.com

You don’t need money in the The Lucky Country for tipping because there is no tipping; but you can if you want to. Tipping isn’t a substitute for a persons salary; it’s not part of the The Lucky Country culture. Australian workers are guaranteed a minimum wage by law. Depending on the industry or the job they work penalties and allowances could increase their minimum wage; currently the basic minimum wage is around twenty dollars an hour. However you need cash when you eat out with friends; splitting the bill is not an option. Most staff will act more like your mate than your server so don’t ask what they recommend for an appetiser or request they spend their time organising your bill and figuring out who ordered what. Work it out amongst yourself, throw what you owe as cash onto the table, and then one person goes to pay.

image source:pixabay

It was nine o’clock on a Monday morning and I was in a hotel room just a stones throw from Streets Beach at Brisbane’s South Bank Parklands. I was starting on me second cup of instant coffee and Karl and Lisa had just signed off from The Today Show, so I started channel surfing. My thumb hesitated, and I stared; Atlanta Falcons were leading the Green Bay Packers. I was watching American Football, live, in a Brisbane hotel room. Now it’s safe to say that Australians love sports and it’s also safe to say no one really cares about the New England Patriots winning the Super Bowl. The Lucky Country has Australian Rules Football; players don’t wear padding and helmets, and are not running off the ground every few minutes to take a rest and put a towel over their heads. It’s summer in the The Lucky Country when US football is broadcast on Australian television, so it has to compete with cricket.

image source:beingindian.com

Cricket is played between two sides, one out in the field and the other in. Each man that’s in the in side has to be got out; men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in, and the next man in goes out and goes in when he’s out. When all of the in side is out, the out side goes in and the out side that’s been in goes out, and tries to get those coming in, out. When both sides have been in and out, and if there is still enough time, then each side gets to go in and out again. The side who scores the most runs wins; sometimes after five days there are men that are still in and not out so the game is a draw. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the in men are out. Cricket is the national summer sport Down Under; it allows sports fans to showcase their passion and excitement for the five days of play that make up a test match.

The associate returned from the service centre workshop and told me that I must have driven over a small nail. And he started to explain that because of the rain showers the other day the nails and screws that were resting in the gutters were washed onto the roads by the rain water gushing down the overflowing gutters.

After the puncture was repaired I drove to Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers and ordered a Chicago Dog Freddy’s Style.

 

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I’m Still Spewin’ Over Last Night’s Footy

The other Saturday afternoon the sun was streaming through the front window; I was stretched out, head back with my eyes closed, listening to Way With Words on National Public Radio. When Martha and Grant were giving the closing, could not have made this program possible without spiel, it sprung to mind that I had just spent an hour doing nothing else but listening to the wireless. I tried to make a mental list of other times I had just listened to the wireless; driving all day, brisk exercise walking, sitting in a dentist’s waiting room and long-haul aeroplane flights didn’t count.

image source: jmcadam

I would head straight for the dining room as soon as I got home from school, and sit glued to the wireless listening to the Air Adventures of Biggles, Superman, Adventures of the Sea Hound, Tarzan, Hopalong Cassidy, Robin Hood and Hop Harrigan. Mum would bring my tea into the dining room so I could listen to the cliff-hanging end of the last serial. Back then the only vegetables I would eat were peas and potatoes so she would carry a plate with a couple of grilled lamb chops or cutlets, boiled peas, and mashed potatoes from the kitchen into my world of mystical adventures and danger.

But there came a time when I was no longer distracted by the Air Adventures of Biggles and the Sea Hound, or Hopalong Cassidy. Perhaps I was just growing up, or maybe I lost interest in the serials because a His Master’s Voice television became part of our lounge room furniture. But I didn’t desert the wireless. The kitchen wireless was my retreat from the cold and rainy Saturday afternoons for the next couple of Melbourne winters.

The city would come to a stop on Saturday afternoons. All Victorian Football League football games were played on Saturday afternoon and supporters invaded the six sacred grounds where the twelve teams were playing; North Melbourne’s home ground was Arden Street, Carlton’s Princes Park, Hawthorn’s Glenferrie Oval, South Melbourne’s Lake Oval, and Footscray’s the Western Oval, and the other seven teams had their own hallowed home suburban footy ground. There was little choice about what team you barracked for. If you were born and raised in the working-class Western suburbs you barracked for the Footscray Bulldogs. I barracked alone in the kitchen; it was cosy and warm.

image source:westernbulldogs.com.au

Brownlow Medallist John Shultz, and Ted Whitten, led the bulldog boys into battle at the wind-swept, wintry, hostile enemy grounds and the adoring Western Oval. It must have been the young boy in me that decided to ride the coattails of a winning side; I drifted from barracking for the Bulldogs to barracking for the Geelong cats. It was the heyday of Polly Farmer, Bill Goggin, and Doug Wade. The distraction from the Bulldogs only lasted a couple of years and the wireless dial once again was tuned to the boys of the Bulldog breed.

And there was the Victorian Football Association as well as the Victorian Football League. Association games were played on Sunday afternoons. The Williamstown VFA team was the Seagulls and they played their home games and trained at Point Gellibrand Oval. The grandstand was at one end of the ground and a grass mound stretched from just past the grandstand to the Morris Street gate; the old lighthouse, seagulls, and unpredictable waters of Port Phillip Bay flanked one side of the oval. Watching the ships entering and leaving Port Melbourne, and the Melbourne docks was a welcome distraction when the cold, saltwater-laden, strong Port Phillip Bay winds kept the ball at the far end of the ground away from the grandstand. And trying to stay on your bike as you free-wheeled down the grass mound was another distraction.

image source:slv.vic.gov.au

Halftime and the end of the games were the meaning of footie; you headed into the dressing rooms with the boys as they walked off the field. At half-time, you watched in amazement as ankles were re-bandaged, and you became intoxicated by the suffocating scent of the liniment that was splashed and rubbed into every inch of bare skin. And you were mesmerised by the coach’s passionate speech; it was inspiring and rousing whether the boys were winning or losing. At full time you were with the boys when they dropped onto the dressing room’s benches as they were unlacing their boots; the room was filled with the incredible scent of sweat, liniment, cigarette smoke and beer; the proud fragrance of the football brotherhood. As the coach followed up his halftime rousing address the caps were popped from tall bottles of the golden amber the boys were celebrated.

image source:pinterest

As I entered into the world of change and uncertainty that was the sixties and seventies I lost interest in the kitchen wireless and riding my bike to Gellibrand Oval. During my first journey of searching for inspiration, and idealism in the ordinary I found myself at an afternoon game of soccer in Edinburgh. I stood among a crowd of passionate Scotsmen; passionate for their team. When I was overheard confessing I didn’t know the rules of soccer because I was a boy of the Bulldog breed, a boy who only knew Victorian Rules Football, a nearby passionate Hearts supporter reached into his inside coat pocket and produced a flask of whisky and proclaimed

Now I’ll be telling ya what’s happening and we’ll all drink whisky and
you’ll be a Hearts supporter.

On a cold, dank Scottish winter afternoon, surrounded by cigarette smoke and Scottish whisky, I stood together with the proud brotherhood of football.

On cold winter Saturday afternoons I stood on the sloped terraces in front of the Whitten stand with the familiar faces; the veterans sat in the front two rows of the Whitten Stand stand; their sandwiches were wrapped in greaseproof paper and a thermos full of hot tomato soup rested in their lap, or at their feet. We ambled to the Western Oval turnstiles after a few starters at either the Rising Sun, The Plough, or the Buckingham carrying a thin paper bag with a couple of bottles of the golden amber under each arm.

image source:foxsportspulse.com

We drank our beer and cheered the boys on with a selection of affectionate obscenities and insulting encouragements; we could reach out and touch Gaz, Bernie, Laurie, Sockeye and Bazza: there was only red white and blue on the ground; they could do no wrong. As committed one-eyed barrackers we encouraged the umpires to make the right decisions with indecent and threatening support. The last quarter was greeted with the tribal ritual of a pie in one hand and raising a beer in the other as a salute to the sounding of the siren to start the final onslaught; the four n twenty would either be hot enough to burn the roof of your mouth or more on the cold side of warm. On a cold, dank, Melbourne winter afternoon surrounded by the smell of meat pies and tomato sauce, and cigarette smoke and beer, I stood with the proud brotherhood of football.

I went back to teaching when I returned from my first journey of searching for inspiration, and idealism, in the ordinary. Wednesday afternoons at Victorian Technical Schools were sports afternoons; usually football in the winter and cricket in the summer. Each Technical School had a football or cricket team cobbled together from the best of the best senior boys in the fourth and fifth forms. Neighbouring schools would play against each other on Wednesday afternoons. Someone at a school I was teaching at decided it would be a good time for the boys if they could watch a football match played between the teachers and the school football team. On a mild winter’s Wednesday afternoon, I ran out onto the school oval with the teacher’s team. The entire school, form one through form five all wearing the school uniform of grey pants, grey shirt with tie, and maroon jumper lined the oval.

image source:wikipedia

I closed my eyes and the boys became a cheer squad, dressed in their duffle coats covered with badges of their favourite player names and jumper numbers. And they waved their floggers; six-foot-long sticks with massive amounts of streamers taped to the ends. The teacher’s team had four players who were better than any of the senior boys in the school footy team; two physical education teachers, and a couple of teachers who played for Williamstown’s AFL reserves team. Our plan was to play keepings off; four teachers against eighteen boys. The cheer squad welcomed me onto the ground with a chorus of barracking. It was just a few minutes into the game when my excitement caused me to forget about the plan, so I jogged towards the corridor, and then the ball was kicked my way. I heard the roar from the boys lining the oval fence and then I was lying on the oval ground gasping at the air; it seemed to take forever for the air to return to my lungs, and for my eyes to focus.

I had been shirt fronted by one of the man mountain teachers that played for the Williamstown reserves. I spent the rest of the match standing alone on the half-forward flank. A few of us went to the local after school; the lounge was soon filled with the incredible scent of sweat, my liniment, and cigarette smoke and beer. We were the proud brotherhood of football celebrating the victory of a heroic, stout-hearted, sweat-stained battle.

Australian Rules Football is now a national competition; Melbourne provides ten teams, and Sydney, Queensland, and South and Western Australia two teams. Melbourne games are no longer played at the old suburban footy grounds but at the MCG, Etihad Stadium, and Geelong’s Kardinia Park. Smoking and floggers are banned, and no alcohol can be brought into the grounds. You can’t use indecent or obscene language, or threatening or insulting words toward the players or umpires, and you can only get rid of your rubbish in a receptacle provided for that purpose.

image source: jmcadam

And the Footscray Bulldogs are now the Western Bulldogs; some say that the local magic of the game has been lost.

Sons of the ‘scray,
Red, white and blue,
We will come out smiling if we win or lose.
Others build their teams my lad, and think they know the game,
But you can’t beat the boys of the Bulldog breed, that make ol’ Footscray’s name!

I think I should take a class in gesturing hypnotically just like Mandrake the Magician or attempt to uncover a Tibetan mystic who can pound into me the secrets of ancient magic so I can stand once again on the sloped terrace in front of the Whitten Stand; a four n twenty pie in one hand and a beer in the other, raised in a salute to the proud brotherhood of football. Or perhaps I can just watch the replays of the footy on YouTube.

 

Australian Football League

Radio: National Film and Sound Archive of Australia

Western Bulldogs

I Can See What I Say Now

Sometimes when I’m driving down Dodge Street heading to Westroads for my walking the mall activity I close one eye and read the outdoor advertising signs. Dodge Street is Omaha’s major East West thoroughfare and is the same as every other main street in every other mid size American city; it contains a kaleidoscope of street level and rooftop signs, and towering billboards. At each stop light I close my left eye and squint into the distance to see which is the furthermost sign I can clearly make out. If the light is still red I switch to closing my right eye and repeat my streetscape visual acuity test. Sometimes I start to second guess myself

m …… a ……c ……c …… a ……s

only to discover when I get closer it was McDonalds. From time to time I do the squint reading thing at the Mall. But it’s not a ritual I do every time I round a corner; it could be days or weeks between when I do it. I did the squint almost daily before I had cataract surgery.

Mr Fraser our fifth form science teacher at Williamstown Technical School would perform experiments at the science bench in the front of the room. When he finished the experiment he would recreate the assembled equipment in coloured chalk on one of the front of the room blackboards. And using only white chalk he would write detailed descriptions, observations and measurements, calculations, and conclusions on the other two front boards. We neatly copied that blackboard notes that spelt out scientific laws, theories, postulates and principles into our science exercise books. As the fifth form year wore on I had more and more difficulty reading Mr Fraser’s blackboards and so I asked if I could move from the third row bench to the front row. I was again, without error, able to copy the blackboards. I didn’t tell mum or dad I had had trouble reading the board. Three years later at Footscray Tech I confessed I had trouble seeing the board. And so I got glasses. I wouldn’t wear the glasses in everyday life. I would wear them to read the boards and take them off as as soon as I left the room. I don’t remember my world being blurry and smudged or ever being asked why are you squinting. It was the late sixties and nobody admired glasses for cultivating a mischievous and cultured look.

image source:memegenerator.net

My education was nearing an end at Footscray Tech; it was an early Sunday morning when I knew that I would wear glasses for the term of my natural life. I drove Andrew Lambrainew’s Ford Fairlane in the blackness of that early morning. I remember squinting but the street lights persisted as smudged blotches and the suburban streetscape continued as an out of focus polaroid. Fortunately the city was still sleeping; trams hadn’t started to run. I was alone driving through the blurred streets. I looked back at the reflection in the windscreen not knowing how my life was going to change. A few years later I set out on my journey searching for inspiration and idealism wearing rimless metal frame glasses. As the years flowed on I became tied to the apron stings of my glasses.

The National Gallery of Victoria is the oldest and most visited gallery in Australia. The gallery’s new St Kilda Road building opened in 1968 and no one could resist running their hand along or through the streaming water flowing down the glass window that formed the arched water wall by the entrance.

image source:commons.wikimedia.org

And some could not resist sticking their tongue into the falling water; and some could be heard to say:

Don’t know why they bothered it looks just like a big fish shop window.

Once inside, and before entering the Great Hall to admire the world’s largest stained glass ceiling, the curious would walk over to the water wall and linger; watching St Kilda Road from behind the cascading water. And some could be heard to say:

I wonder if the green smudge is a Holden or a tram.
Is that a bus or people queueing for tickets

What they saw was sometimes my world; rain meant foggy, smeared, wet glasses and hot humid summer days would produce sweat blotched and fogged up lenses, and glasses that slid down your nose.

image source:buzzfeed.com

Wearing glasses has advantages; by pointing to your glasses you can thwart any invitation to go biking and thus ward off wearing spandex shorts. Glasses can also circumvent accepting invitations to participate in triathlons. I’ve tried to imagine but just can’t envisage how I would perform a full body shave in the shower without wearing glasses.

At the same time Mr Fraser’s chalkboards became blurry swimming at Williamstown beach became risky. It seemed as if the tides and water currents carried every Port Phillip Bay cluster of seaweed and jelly fish into the beach. The water was as fuzzy as the blackboards so I would swim into the masses of floating gelatinous jelly fish blobs. I couldn’t avoid hitting them with my head or arms; and the more I hit them, the more my arms flailed. The jelly fish were chopped and diced and I was buried in a churning gelatinous broth, unable to avoid painful jelly fish stings to my arms and legs.

image source:pixabay

Cairns is the gateway to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world’s biggest single structure made by living organisms. Endless coral formations provide shelter and a home to over fifteen hundred species of fish; an aquatic landscape that has to be admired and appreciated close up. The catamaran was bobbing and floating lazily with the current and the Reef was below the water line; deep enough for a snorkel dive without having to wear a lycra body suit or stinger suit. I drifted with the other snorkellers. All I could see beneath me through the snorkel mask was a fuzzy shroud. You can’t wear glasses with a snorkel mask. I took a deep breath and duck dived. The reef was just a couple of inches from my snorkel mask, I was holding my breath and my chest was wanting to let go, and I squinted. I didn’t see a bed of coral; the reef was a blurred, shadowy, waving carpet.

image source:pixabay

Sometimes I wonder why you can’t wear your glasses when trying on new frames. You pick out a few eye catching frames and then it’s time to see how they suit you; will they provide you with a mischievous, carefree, and cultured look. You sit or stand in front of a mirror wearing a pair of the potential new frames but without lenses. Your nose is almost touching the mirror so all you see is the bridge of your nose, or the top or the lower half of the potential new frames. When you turn to the associate they inquire:

And how do we like them, they make you look quite distinguished.

I only remember getting frames at an Omaha trend setting opticians. I became known for my funky unique frames that caused people not to notice that I was wearing glasses but wearing cool frames. And I had the three, four-day, just shaved beard look. Not too wild not too neat; somewhat similar to the rebellious and free spirited hippies of the sixties aka as hipsters.

image source:johnmcadam

Shaving is not easy sans glasses. All you see of yourself in the mirror is a soft, fuzzy face. All it took to maintain the messy but clean look was running an electric trimmer over my face and then putting my glasses back on to pay attention to the upper cheeks, beneath the chin, and around the neck with a razor. I’ve always thought that wielding a shaving razor around your face could be hazardous so I use a 90 degree pivot head disposable four blade cartridge razor; something that would turns and doesn’t damage the skin.

When I did community theatre none of the characters I played wore glasses. I would wear glasses during rehearsals, run through, and tech week, but starting opening night my glasses stayed in the dressing room. For the run of the play fellow cast members would display strange nervous mannerisms, rituals and behaviours, or just withdraw and stay silent waiting for their cue to walk out on stage for their first entrance. I didn’t have to deal with crippling stage fright, or worry about being less than perfect, because I couldn’t see anyone or anything. All I saw on stage were fuzzy blobs. And the audience was a sea of soft fuzzy blobs.

image source:pixabay

Whenever I went to the ophthalmologist the large E on the top of their Snellen eye chart was a soft fuzzy smudge. As the associate asked phoropter questions, the smudges slowly focused into letters of the alphabet.

Can you please read the first line
p …… e …… d
Which is better one or two
two
Which is better one or two
one
Which is better one or two
they about look about the same
Are You Sure ……. One or Two
umm two
Two or One
one
Let’s Try Again ……… One or Two
p …… e…… c …… f …… d

And then it was time for the tonometry test. After my eyes were numbed with a yellow liquid and the tissue in my hand became streaked with yellow liquid I would rest my chin in a plastic chin rest; and look straight ahead and focus to the left of the bright slit of light. The tonometer grew larger as it moved slowly towards touching my eye. Back when, nanna developed glaucoma and cataracts, so my ophthalmologist was monitoring the cataracts that were developing in my eyes; forewarning me that surgery would be part of my future. And then the future became the present; she removed my clouded cataract lenses and replaced them with monofocal synthetic lens designed for distance vision.

image source:pixabay

A few days after the surgery on one eye I remember opening it when she removed the dressing; I saw colour for the first time since as long as I could remember. And after covering my non corrected eye the E on the top of the Snellen chart was clean and crisp. I spent the rest of the day looking at the colours I had only seen through opaque, frosty, fogged up eyes.

I wear glasses for; reading, cooking, scanning labels on the cans in the grocery aisle shelves, cutting vegetables with a sharp knife, and watching the seat back entertainment when flying. I don’t wear glasses for; daytime driving, reading alarm clocks in the morning, getting out of bed after waking up in a dark hotel room, watching television in bed, finding soap and shampoo just before getting under the shower, walking in the rain, and drinking cups of hot tea or coffee. I wear sunglasses and I’m no longer afraid getting hit in the face with a cricket ball.

 

National Gallery of Victoria

Free Eye Chart

Overview Cataracts: Mayo Clinic

It’s Elemental Mr Priestley

I had to go on hiatus from walking Westroads because Christmas time at the mall means Hickory Farms pop up kiosks; and that means holiday gift baskets filled to the brim with summer sausage and fresh cheeses. I refused to let fate find a way to my taste buds. And now I’m back walking the Mall five mornings a week. The other day I forgot to charge my Walkman so I spent my five times circling the perimeter looking for a mental distraction; I’ve grown accustomed to the window displays and the mall has lost it’s uncertainty of what’s around the next corner. So I started to think about the things I learned in school and have never used. In fourth form I spent a lot of time memorising basic cloud types; I began to silently chant: nimbus, cirrus, stratus and cumulus; nimbus, cirrus, stratus and cumulus. But then I paused and tried to think of the last time that I wondered if the clouds in an overcast sky are cirrus or nimbostratus. And then I thought about the Geometry and Algebra theorems that Mr Baldwin tried to instill in us; I couldn’t call to mind the last time I had to prove that two triangles were congruent, or to perform matrix multiplication, or to solve how long it takes train B to catch up to train A, if train A leaves the station travelling at thirty miles per hour, and two hours later train B leaves the same station travelling in the same direction at forty miles per hour. I think I was starting my third time around the mall when the elements of the periodic table, sorted by atomic number, started to flash before me.

There were three science rooms at Williamstown Technical School; they were alongside each other on one side of the central, long section of the school. The art room, clay room, and Mr Morrow’s accounting room were opposite the science rooms and they shared one end of the long section with the science rooms. Hundreds of lockers reached to just below the classroom windows and stretched the length of the building; they formed a long passage from which doors lead into the rooms. The science rooms had long wooden benches with gas taps for bunsen burners; and we sat ten to a bench, in a straight line, on lab stools. And how we delighted in those lab benches and stools; they released us from being jammed two to a desk. There was also a long bench around two of the walls; they housed sinks with curved taps and extra gas taps for bunsen burners. The middle science room had an inside walkway into the other two science rooms; it was the way into the two small equipment and supply storage rooms between the rooms. The science rooms always seemed to have a pervasive chemical smell.

image source:bastow.vic.edu.au

Mr Fraser introduced us to fourth form chemistry in the middle science room. We watched Mr Fraser perform experiments at his teacher’s front science desk; and he would diagram the assembled equipment and experiments in coloured chalk on the front boards; along with detailed descriptions, observations and measurements, calculations, and conclusions. We neatly copied his chalkboard journal into our science exercise books. If the lesson didn’t deserve an experiment then Mr Fraser, with his back to the class, would fill all three boards with chalk written scientific theories, postulates, and laws. As the year wore on I had more and more difficulty reading Mr Fraser’s chalkboard journals. I asked Mr Fraser if I could move from the third row bench to the front row; and I could see once again to copy his chalkboard journals. I never did tell mum or dad that I had had trouble reading off the board. It was close on three years later when I was at Footscray Tech that I confessed that I had trouble seeing; and so I eventually got glasses. If only I had worn my glasses back then; that air of sophistication I had from smoking Kent cigarettes would have been enhanced by a somewhat mischievous and cultured look. Nowadays I wear classic tortoise shell Ray-Ban Clubmasters.

image source:johnmcadam

I think the most intriguing postulate that Mr Fraser wrote on the board was: atoms make up elements and atoms can neither be created nor destroyed. Back then my squinting had become the norm so I hurriedly copied into my science exercise book

athens is made up of elegance and elegance can neither be cheated or destroyed

And it wasn’t until my final year at Footscray Tech, and after what seemed a lifetime in the chemistry labs and classrooms, that I figured out what Mr Fraser had written on his science room chalk boards.

I was starting my fifth and final loop around the mall and I thought about air; that air was made up of a mixture of gases. Mr Fraser told us that gases were either compounds or elements. And I knew that elements contain only one type of atom. I had my epiphany; nobody uses all the oxygen they breathe in, and because atoms can neither be created nor destroyed I was breathing in oxygen that others have exhaled. I have other person’s exhaled oxygen in my blood; oxygen that was in their brain neurons absorbing their neuron attributes was pulsing through and soaking into my brain neurons.

image source:pixabay

Whilst growing up and living the The Land Down Under I would have inhaled an incredible amount of oxygen that at one time was carried in blood as it flowed through the brain neurons of a crowd of commanding Australians; Richie Benaud, Reg Grundy, Germaine Greer, Greg Norman, Albert Namatjira, Slim Dusty, Errol Flynn, Edward Hargraves, Barry Humphries, Dame Nellie Melba, Cathy Freeman, and Robert O’Hara Burke to name just a few.
But how do you decide who are the great Aussies; and then whittle that back to the great among the greatest in Australia’s history.

I inhaled oxygen that once percolated through the brain of Cyril Callister. Cyril was a food technologist and is known as the man who invented Vegemite. In 1922 he was asked to make something from the left over waste yeast from the Carlton & United Brewery; to which he added celery, salt and onion and came up with a black sticky paste that looked like axle grease. It’s not because Australians are fed Vegemite from the time they are babies that causes them to travel the world with at least one small jar of Vegemite in their luggage, it is because we have inhaled oxygen from Cyril’s brain.

image source:pinterest

I’ve had Errol Flynn’s used oxygen coursing through my brain neurons. Errol was born in Hobart, Tasmania and was known for playing the freedom loving rebel, a man of action who fought against injustice, a man who won the heart of many a damsels. Even when he wasn’t acting Errol was a spirited womaniser who gave the world the expression; in like Flynn. It is claimed that the doctors who examined his body when he died at the young age of 50 said it bore the physical ravages of someone who should have been 75 years old. And that would describe the average Australian male.

image source:cloudpix

Innovation, ingenuity and entrepreneurial flair comes naturally to Australians; it’s accepted as a way of life. I’ve sucked in some of Lance Hill’s second hand oxygen. Even though Lance didn’t invent the rotary clothes hoist he demonstrated true blue Aussie creativeness by using metal tubing salvaged from the underwater boom that hung under the Sydney Harbour Bridge to catch World War II enemy submarines to make his clothesline. And he came up with a simple winding mechanism to hoist his big metal tree up into the breeze. The Hills rotary clothes line became an icon of Australia suburbia; the wind spinning the clothes around in the backyard. I think all Aussies have a little of  Lance Hill in them; who wasn’t told by mum to get off the clothes line. When she wasn’t looking you would hang from the line and spin each other around until you became so dizzy that you couldn’t walk. Every great backyard had a Hills that was always tilted at a weird angle and with the clothes lines stretched and saggy. Thank you Lance.

image source:pinterest

I lived in the sixties and grew up in the seventies. When the Beatles toured Australia in June 1964 and the Rolling Stones a couple of years later Melbourne was maturing as the epicentre of Australian progressive music. Berties, Sebastian’s, and The Thumpin Tum would become nationally known discotheques. You danced to what would become classics of Australian music every Saturday night. Harry Vanda and George Young formed the Easybeats in the early sixties and Friday On My Mind, the first international hit by an Aussie rock band, escorted you up the stairs and into Berties; a three story building of Edwardian opulence on the corner of Spring and Flinders Streets. And soon after, George’s two brothers, Angus and Malcolm, were in a new band called AC/DC; and they guided the new bands future by producing their first five albums. I must have taken in oxygen expelled by Harry Vanda & George Young; I can’t think of any other reason why I still wear my old Williamstown Tech school tie.

image source:johnmcadam

I remember the streets of the old historical neighbourhood of Athens being lined with small pastry shops, old men playing backgammon, nightclubs, and street vendors selling what I though was the best ever pita wrapped souvlaki. I walked and climbed the twisted hilly narrow streets of the Plaka to wander freely and sit alone among the Acropolis stones; sometimes using one as a back rest to watch Athens endlessly stretching out below. On other days I sat inside the curved outside pillars of the Parthenon and mused over the irony of Greece; the birthplace of democracy and the Olympics: And now a country under military rule, a dictatorship of repression, torture, and grief. And I remembered what Mr Fraser wrote on the board

athens is made up of elegance and elegance can neither be cheated or destroyed.

Just as I completed my fifth and final time around Westroads I remembered that the symbol for oxygen is O; it has an atomic number of eight and is a member of group 16 in the periodic table. We were fortunate that Mr Fraser’s didn’t mess around with developing our self-control, motivation, focus and resilience skills but instead focused on creating chalk boards of notes detailing scientific laws and principles; to be neatly copied into our science exercise book.

 

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