When we sat down to talk, I asked if she felt strong enough to listen to more of the story that followed Mr Khan’s death, for she was still clearly upset by what I had told her.
‘Of course I want to hear the story, all of it. When I went home last week I felt very sad about the Afghan hawker you spoke about and it took days to get over it. But I am ready.’
I was curious, ‘Where is home exactly?’
‘I go home to Angaston on the train when I have several days off together. That’s where my mother and father live. My father used to be a publican there, but since he’s retired, they live on the edge of the town where they raise poultry and a few animals.’
‘When you went home, did you tell them about me?’
‘Not Father, but I did tell Mother when we were alone. After you told me about Mr Khan I had to talk about it. I was very upset about that, Mary.’
‘I wish you hadn’t but I understand your need to share this sad story. What does she think about you knowing me?’
‘She told me to be careful.’
We looked at each other and laughed.
‘Really …’
‘Yes, but I told her you were very sick and you had no strength to raise a carving knife to me.’
Again we shared laughter, the mood was almost lighthearted as I continued.
Not long after Mr Khan’s death, Father demonstrated a serious act of violence on a neighbour’s farm. It took place during a child’s birthday party at Mr Blenkiron’s house, less than half a mile from our house. I was invited to go with Bertha, August and Willy and while we were enjoying the party one Sunday afternoon, several Sedan lads appeared uninvited and started disturbing the peace by throwing stones onto the roof of the house and howling like wolves. It transpired that one of them hadn’t taken kindly to being rejected by one of Mr Blenkiron’s attractive daughters and wanted revenge of a sort. They went around Mr Blenkiron’s property rattling the fences and shed doors, banging them with their long sticks, like a drum.
The gang was made up of Carl and Hermann Hartwig and their chums the three Radomi brothers. Their noisy behaviour frightened Mrs Blenkiron and terrified the younger children who ran indoors crying. When Mr Blenkiron strode out and faced the boys, shouting at them to go home, they laughed and jeered at him and threw a mass of little stones at the windows of his house. The gang of boys were well-known troublemakers in the district. They pulled up noticeboards, and removed and opened gates to let stock run loose. They rode recklessly through the streets of Sedan on half-wild horses churning up clouds of red dust. No one seemed able to stop their behaviour.
To start with we were pleased that Father could put his violent temper to good use to protect us all. But when he took the matter into his own hands, he went too far. The whole matter ran out of control and much to our horror ended up in the Adelaide Supreme Court.
One of the boys at the party crept out the back door of the farmhouse and ran over to our farm begging Father to come and help sort out the situation. He grabbed his loaded rifle and hurried over. When he stood in front of the larrikins they laughed in his face and threw bigger rocks. One thrown by Carl Hartwig hit Father on the side of his head and instantly drew blood. He never flinched as the blood streamed over his face and beard, but marched to one of the boys and poked him with the barrel of the rifle. When one of the boys ran to his brother’s rescue, Father told them, ‘If you don’t leave I will fire.’
One of the other boys dared him, ‘Fire away then, old man.’ So Father did.
Although he fired at the ground to frighten them, the ground was so hard that the bullet ricocheted and hit Carl Hartwig in the leg. He fell to the ground groaning and bleeding heavily. ‘I’ve been hit, don’t let me die,’ he pleaded, but the four remaining boys, now frightened by the shooting, ran for their horses and galloped away. Father and Mr Blenkiron carried the still-bleeding boy onto the verandah of the house.
One of the children left to fetch Dr Pullen who came some hours later and attended the wound. But when he arrived so too did the local policeman who promptly arrested Father and took him into custody. When we went home without Father we had to explain to Mother what had happened. ‘What do you mean, Father has been arrested?’ she screamed, wringing her hands and then babbling unintelligibly in Wendish. She knew well enough what Father’s violence was like and though it was meant to be only a threat, she admitted that this time he had gone too far and could end up in prison.
But he didn’t. A month later Father appeared at the Supreme Court in Adelaide charged with having ‘feloniously and unlawfully and maliciously at Towitta shot Carl Hartwig with intent to do grievous bodily harm’. Father was lucky, the judge recognised his attempts to protect a group of law-abiding citizens and was sympathetic. Nevertheless, he let him know that larrikinism must not be quelled with guns. He also stated ‘it was an unlawful act to fire off a loaded gun in a struggle, and if the jury believed the facts as presented then the prisoner, although a very respectable man, had no right to fire the gun, and was guilty of unlawfully wounding’. Although the jury found Father not guilty, the judge gave him a caution. ‘If Hartwig had been killed, Mr Schippan, you would be standing trial for his murder.’
Father was acquitted but he was humiliated for being arrested. He believed he had acted reasonably to protect innocent people in danger from a threatening gang. After he returned home, humiliation gave way to fury. Inevitably, he took out his rage on the elder brothers, Frederick and Heinrich. He saw the two elder boys as friends of the gang and cruelly stepped up his tyranny over them. He tormented them, delving out harsh beatings, but one day when attempting to horse whip them for a minor indiscretion they turned on him and whipped him instead. Before he had recovered from the thrashing they dashed into one of the nearby wooded creeks where they hid for some days before heading to the farm of Mother’s brother in Eden Valley.
But the violence did not end there. Early one January morning, a few days before I went to live in Adelaide, another hawker, Fred Struckmeyer, was found dead in Sedan. On several occasions he had risked visiting our farm after Mr Khan’s death. The policeman, William Burgenmeister, found him on the roadway and believed he had been killed in a fight for his skull was crushed in as though attacked with a blunt heavy object. The findings of the inquest were different. The cause was unconfirmed, but it was believed he must have fallen from his cart and been crushed by the wheels. At the time his cart was fully laden with new stock and this would have added to its weight making it capable of crushing his head.
Sister Kathleen must have been growing accustomed to the bizarre aspects of my family stories. She looked neither shocked nor stunned but just seemed to breathe deeply and shake her head. Then she eagerly looked up, anticipating the next instalment. Whenever I suggested we should call an end to the storytelling, she pleaded with me not to stop.
‘So that all happened just as you were going to live in Adelaide. My goodness, I’d have been glad to leave all that behind too. Perhaps you could tell me of what happened to you in Adelaide when I next come. It can’t be for a few days, as we are short staffed because some nurses are away with this terrible flu that’s going around. We have also had quite a few new patients admitted. It would not be exaggerating to call it bedlam.’