CHAPTER 34

Melbourne and the Great Robbery

Dad continued flying because he didn’t want to leave the air force where he had been living the life of Riley. One leave he told us what fun his crew had dropping empty beer bottles on the dirty Japs waiting to surrender on the Pacific islands. He said the bottles made an awesome screeching sound as they fell and terrified the Japs.

Eventually we went back to Melbourne and I was re-enrolled in good old North West Brunswick State School. No nuns like at Tocumwal, the word Catholic was never mentioned. Better than Manly too. Strangely, Mum was hooked on the meat-free Friday, the fish ’n’ chips being the lure. More particularly, the takeaway aspect of fish ’n’ chips, and they were good with beer.

My mate Laurie had grown considerably bigger than me during my absence. We used to be the same size, but now he’d shot up 2 inches and I didn’t like it one bit. However, I had a new trick – when Laurie bent over, I gave him a good kick up the bum. I had learned this at the Manly school and I thought myself pretty clever introducing it to West Brunswick. But Laurie didn’t like this innovation. ‘You mongrel,’ he said, and thumped me. We wrestled in the long grass of the nature strip, on the footpath and finally in the gutter. He gained wonderful purchase on my big feet and almost twisted my left leg off. I broke free and ran, grabbing suitable stones which I started hurling at him.

Spinning around to throw another yonnie, a shadow crossed over the sun. It came with the speed of a meteorite and knocked me senseless. After all the years Laurie and I had thrown stones at one another, we finally made a serious connection. Laurie copped me a bloody beauty smack bang in the middle of my right eye and I went down like a ton of bricks. Out like a light. When I came to, Mum was dabbing my head with a wet washcloth. Laurie had told her I’d banged my head, then buggered off home for safety. He had never been in our house and wasn’t going to get too close to my mum. I could only imagine the tales he’d heard about her. I reckon she was famous on our street.

I soon recovered and Laurie and I developed a new game with fly sprays. Houseflies were a serious nuisance in those days: most homes had flywire doors on their kitchens. We practised the Great Australian Wave as we brushed flies from our eyes. In cafes and many homes, they used strips of sticky paper to catch them. ‘They look disgusting,’ my mum said. ‘I wouldn’t have one in the house.’

But when the Women’s Weekly reported that ‘a wonderful new insecticide called DDT was being snapped up by housewives as it appeared in stores’, Mum had to have some. There was an advertisement: ‘The Spider tells Miss Muffet: Shelltox makes a dead cert of flies. Spray ’em and Slay ’em with Shelltox and sweep ’em up dead’.

Soon we all had pump action fly sprays and what fun Laurie and I had spraying one another around his house. We’d be wet with DDT spray and laughing our heads off in a cloud of the cooling mist. We thrilled at the science of DDT, just like the X-ray machine in the shoe shop. These X-ray machines disappeared from our shops after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and the effects of radiation were realised. How many other kids have bent toes like me? It was in Grandpa’s Time magazine that the shoe-shop X-ray machines were one of the 100 worst inventions of the 20th century.

Leading up to Guy Fawkes and Empire Days, building a bonfire became our major project. Laurie and I canvassed the neighbourhood looking for fuel. Mainly it was garden rubbish, but once we got a car tyre that burnt for hours and made a wonderful smell. We couldn’t afford fireworks, but our parents would usually give us a potato to cook. Only trouble was the fire would be so hot we couldn’t get near it and had to look for our spuds going to school next morning, only to find they’d burnt to nothing.

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There was a huge housing shortage post war; even the swampy land at the bottom of our hill was built on. When the builders finished for the day, we would play games of chasey across the floor joists. The excitement of the chase was increased by the real risk of falling through the gaps and ripping skin off our shins and knees, sometimes crashing down in agony on our balls.

Laurie and I remained firm friends even though I now had to share him with a new mate from school called George. They had become friends during my travels and I was a bit jealous. Mum would have thought him common had she ever laid eyes on him – he lived near the shops on Albion Street and his father kept racing pigeons.

With George, Laurie and I undertook a robbery that was to haunt me for years. While Laurie’s mum was at the doctor and his father at work, we got the big stool from the kitchen and took it into the bathroom. George and I held it steady while Laurie climbed up to the top of their medicine cupboard and reached a big biscuit tin full of money. The banknotes were not bundled up neatly like in the movies, there were wads of them mainly folded in half. Lots of them. We took a blue five-pound note and carefully replaced the tin. Of course, Laurie kept the money. It was his father’s after all.

At school next day we discussed sharing our haul. Five pounds represented 100 shillings and the figure was almost beyond our maths. A bit like the distances of stars from earth. Big beyond belief. Another day passed, then Laurie took us aside to discuss the money again. He was excited. He realised that he needed to take four shillings off the top for some expense he had incurred that we needn’t worry about. With our eyes firmly set on the main prize, George and I ignored Laurie’s blatant bulldust. But our mathematical ability got the better of us and we readily accepted the logic of splitting 96 shillings three ways. Far simpler than dividing three into 100.

My beautiful share of 32 shillings was a splendid green one-pound note, a brown 10-shilling note and the not inconsiderable silver florin. These riches set us off on a binge of sweet shop buying that would surely have excited comment had we not carefully distributed it among district shops. How many milkshakes and double-headed ice creams can a small boy eat? In addition to the treats, I bought two cowboy revolvers with pearl handles and twin holsters. And a huge supply of explosive paper caps that mostly went off with an impressive bang.

Our pleasure was tempered by the need to keep our loot hidden, only enjoying it down at the creek. There, a big concrete stormwater drain came out from under the ground. It made a beaut reverberating sound when we hollered into it and even better when I did a twin-handed quick-draw and let the good old pearl-handled 45s spit their explosive fire.

The drain led to a labyrinth of tunnels. With the help of matches and candles, we would explore underground for hours, going from small to big to absolutely huge tunnels that drained Melbourne. There was the delicious danger a thunderstorm would trap us. Worse, we would lose our way home. It was amazing how upset big people would get when we would crawl up a narrow tunnel to a street and cry for help. Adults were appalled to hear our tiny voices coming out of the drains and we were barely able to stifle our giggles as they promised help.

There was a sequel to our Great Robbery. Kids are never supposed to get away scot-free.

My air force hero, Ray from the Murray River camp at Tocumwal, was back in civvies and had bought a business with his deferred pay from the air force. Not just any business, Ray had bought Toc Cordials, the Tocumwal soft drink factory, and he invited me to come up for a visit during the school holidays. ‘Wow, can I go Mum?’

As the train left Spencer Street station, my ears were still ringing from Mum’s farewell. ‘Don’t lean out the train window. Don’t get dirty. Don’t stay up too late. Be good. Help Ray and Jude. Don’t be a nuisance.’ She went on and on while I dutifully agreed.

I had never been on a train alone before and the prospect of an entire day by myself was wonderful. Also, I was wearing a pair of jodhpurs, the first pair of long pants I had ever owned, and they were deliciously warm on my legs. They weren’t real long pants. They had been made for riding horses – baggy at the top and very tight around my ankles. I usually put on my socks and boots immediately I got out of bed on cold, frosty mornings. However, today when I tried to pull my jodhpurs over my boots, they were too tight. But I persevered. I didn’t want to waste all the effort I had put into lacing up my boots. So, I struggled and struggled with the jodhpurs and managed to get them half on before I heard a little noise like fabric ripping.

Bugger, what have I done? I could hear Mum. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve ripped your new jodhpurs, you ungrateful wretch.’ I could feel blows raining down on me as I struggled to get them off again. I really needed help, but who could I ask? I rolled around on the bed trying to pull the damn things back over my boots. It was a nightmare. Any moment Mum might come in and catch me and I would be trapped. Fortunately, I finally got them off without getting caught. The terrible ripping I’d heard was only a little split in the leg seam that Mum wouldn’t notice. I never forgot again – jodhpurs before boots.

Mum had given me two shillings for my holiday, but she didn’t know that I still had fifteen shillings and sixpence left over from the Great Robbery. There I was locked in the men’s lavatory on a train bound for Tocumwal, smoothing the 10-shilling note into my wallet and feeling like the King of England. Not only rich but travelling interstate to NSW on a train by myself. So many stops at railway stations selling pies, cakes, soft drinks and lollies. There were sandwiches, but why bother with them when there were ice creams. A lovely day of leaning out the window enjoying the speed and noise and motion. And not caring about a bit of soot on my clean clothes.

The soft drink factory was a big disappointment. Sure, there was plenty to drink, but no sleeping by the river, campfire cook-ups or exciting boat rides. Bottling soft drinks eight hours a day was tedious, Ray and Jude were bored and didn’t have time for giggly afternoon siestas.

On Saturday night, I went to the pictures by myself, which was special. I’d often gone to matinees on a Saturday arvo alone, but never a movie at night. I bought a ticket in the cheap front stalls. Aborigines sat in the two front rows, and I was happy to sit right behind them. I’ve forgotten what the movie was, but I do remember walking home along the shiny railway track under a full moon, and putting myself to bed. It must have been way after 11 p.m. I felt so grown up.

Back in Melbourne I found my mother distraught about not having any money and concerned about what we would eat. Being generous to the point of stupidity, I offered her my unspent 10-shilling note. Instead of being grateful, dear old Mum proceeded to interrogate me about the money. Finally, I broke down before she twisted my ear right off and I told her about the Great Robbery. Struth, you wouldn’t have believed it. My mum, who demanded I steal lemons from our neighbours for her breakfast tea, was immediately out the door and across the street telling Laurie’s parents. It was the first time she had ever spoken to them let alone visited them in her whole life, and now she was dobbing in her own flesh and blood.

Next day Laurie looks like he’s taken a helluva beating and he wants to know why I’d snitched. I couldn’t admit I had volunteered the information, so I told him Mum found the 10-shilling note and forced a confession, which was sort of true. My kindness in offering Mum money had backfired. For years after she’d say, ‘Well, we can’t trust you any more, can we? You’re just a little thief.’ Or, ‘If I ever see you near my handbag, I’ll break your bloody neck.’

Having been severely throttled and shaken by Mum for relatively petty matters during my war service, I took her new threats with the seriousness they were intended and I never offered her anything again.