"A LIFE ENJOYED."
        "O-EIGHT-TO-NINE-O"
        (Being a Grandfather's several letters to his Grandchildren)
        FOREWORD
While I was languishing in the Royal North Shore Hospital after open heart surgery in January, 1984, I received a letter from my daughter-in-law, Carol, in which she suggested that, to relieve the boredom I could write down "some of my acquired wisdom" for the benefit of my grand-children.
In my dictionary the definition of "wisdom" is :- "Knowledge practically applied to the best ends."
The little knowledge I have has been acquired from experiences; so, on the 2nd. of April, 1984, I started "writing down" all the "experiences" I could remember.
Little did I think that it would take nineteen long letters and over seven years. I suppose I should have known that you can't live eighty three years without something eventful happening; although, at the time, most "experiences" seemed to me to be very uneventful.
The "experiences" I have related and the "opinions" I have expressed will, no doubt, set good examples and bad examples for my grandchildren; I hope that they will be able to distinguish between the two.
When you come to think of it, life is just one decision after another. One of the first decisions I had to make after I learnt to talk was how to distinguish between my two adoring grand-mothers. Because I was influenced mainly by size, my father's mother became "Grand-ma," and my mothers's mother, "Little Nan." Our grand-children had to come to a similar decision, and that decision means that when you are introduced, in the following pages, to a person affectionately known as "Jean-ma," you will be reading about my loving wife and partner.
        J. R. S.
        31st. July, 1991.


        Chapter One
        1797-1922
        Lane Cove.
        2nd April, 1984.
To my dear grand-children, (all eleven of them.)

When you reach my age you will no doubt get the urge to find out where you came from - if you have convict blood in your veins - or if you have royal blood - or a bit of both. You may wonder who, over the centuries, has contributed to the family of genes your body is, at present, giving shelter to.
I got this urge a few years ago and, whilst my research since then has been most interesting, it has high-lighted one thing, how little I know about my grand-parents, despite the fact that they were still alive during my lifetime.
So that my grandchildren won't suffer the same disadvantage I propose putting to paper as much as I can remember of the happenings to me since I first laid eyes on this wonderful world.
To start my story I'm going back, further than my grand-parents to the year 1797, for 'twas in that year that William and Flora Shorter were blessed with a baby son; and on the 14th. May, in the Parish of Wokingham, in Berkshire, England, he was christened James.
Now James grew up to be a very strong and athletic young fellow. His forte, however, was not running or jumping, and tennis or volley-ball by then hadn't been invented. No; his forte was skating. Had there been Winter Olympics in those days he was destined to represent his country. But alas fate intervened.
One winters day while practicing his figure eights on a frozen pond on his grand-fathers farm near Newbury in Berkshire, he went too close to the thin ice, which crumbled under his weight and plunged him into the icy waters. He would have drowned were it not for a floating log nearby.
James was convinced that the log had been placed there by God to whom he thereupon dedicated his life. By 1821, at 24 years of age, James was married and ordained as a preacher in the Baptist Church. In 1827 he too had a son, also christened James, his three earlier children had been girls, Mary, Caroline and Naomi.
By 1843 he had his own church in London, the Wilderness Row Chapel, where he laboured as a "highly honoured servant of the Lord Jesus Christ," until his death on the 28th. July, 1861. Over 600 attended his funeral and a pamphlet was printed at the time the front cover of which read as follows :-
        "A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE
        LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH OF THE LATE
        JAMES SHORTER
        MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL AT WILDERNESS ROW LONDON
        TO WHICH IS ADDED EXTRACTS FROM HIS CORRESPONDENCE ETC.
        AND HIS FUNERAL SERMON PREACHED BY
        MR. BEARD OF MALMSBURY
        ON SUNDAY EVENING, AUGUST, 4TH, 1861.
        AND THE ADDRESS AT THE GRAVE.
        C. Hardy, Printer, 32 Castle Street, Holborn Hill.
        Price Two Shillings."
The two shillings was "to assist the family of the deceased."
My cousin, Mary Hellard, nee Shorter, of Bottom Pond Farm, Owslebury, Winchester, in Hampshire, has a copy of this pamphlet.
James' correspondence deals mostly with his "Blood of the Lord" sermons, but occasionly he refers to his family; references to "my daughters C---, N--- and Mary, poor frail afflicted one," and the "great disappointment in my life," which I have presumed to have referred to his only son, who left home at 25 years of age, sailing for Australia on the 7th. August 1852, on the sailing ship "Ballarat" and was described on the ships manifest as a "Wine and Spirit Merchant," hence the "great disappointment". James, the son, kept a diary during that voyage and it also is in Mary Hellard's possession. I have so far been unsuccessful in persuading Mary to have these documents photocopied for me, but I live in hope. They could be of great interest should one of you, one of these days, become interested in researching the Shorter family tree.
James arrived in Melbourne on the 4th. November, 1852, some three years later married Mary Annie Beckett, and in 1857 whilst living in Mickleford, near Castlemaine, in Victoria, their first child was born, a son and they named him (no prizes for guessing correctly) James, the third, - my grand-father.
My paternal grand-mother was Inez Maude Travers, who was born on 31st August, 1856 on Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St.Lawrence, Canada. She must have come to Australia with some of her family because William Bruno Travers was one of the witnesses at her marriage to James Shorter at Emerald Hill in Victoria on the 9th November, 1881. My Aunt Gert once told me that Uncle Bruno was buried in Perth W.A.
My maternal grand-father was Edward James Witt, who was born at Islington, London on 22nd July, 1858. We have a family heirloom in the shape of a silver tray, on which is engraved the Witt crest - a left hand over a baton. Unfortunately another heirloom, a signet ring with the same crest, was lost during a burglary 2 years ago.
My maternal grand-mother was Florence Jane Gloster, born in London April, 1857. Edward and Jane were married in the Parish Church of Christ Church, at Southwark, Surrey, in England on 2nd June, 1877.
On 20th January, 1879, Edward sailed alone on the SS "John Elder" to Australia - port of destination, Melbourne. On 31st May, 1881, Mrs. F. J. Witt and 1 year old son Edward Henry sailed on the SS "Garonne" to Australia - port of destination, Sydney. Their second child, Florence Isabelle Witt (my mother) was born in Paddington, N.S.W. on 4th December, 1882. Sometime after this at the suggestion of his brother Henry, Edward Witt changed his name to "de Witt". In 1895 he became a Major and District Paymaster of the Australian Military Forces stationed at Victoria Barracks, Paddington.
James and Inez Shorter's first child, James Wallace (my father) was born at Emerald Hill in Victoria on 30th July, 1882.
I don't know how James Wallace and Florence Isabelle first met. In fact I cannot find anything about the Shorter's movements between 1882 and 1907 but I can remember my mother pointing out a 2 storey stone house in Hunters Hill and saying that the Shorter family once lived there, before she was married.
James Wallace Shorter and Florence Isabelle de Witt were married at All Saints Church Woollahra, N.S.W. on 2nd January, 1907. The bridesmaids were Miss Mabel de Witt and Miss Gertrude Shorter, - the best man was Mr. William Shorter (twin brother of the groom) and the groomsman was Mr. Wilfred Wenborn, (Gertrude's fiance).
On the 2nd July, 1908, I was born at home, a house in Glover Street, Mosman. Edward the Seventh was still on the throne of England. (I have a faded photograph of me on my mother's lap, taken in the backyard of the house in Glover Street.)
There I was, blinking in the bright sunlight, and thinking, "What on earth was that contraption my Father was holding in his hand.?" - "Watch the birdie," he said. - "Good God," I thought, "that box is much too small to hold a bird." - "Wipe the dribble from his mouth," my Father said.
An eau-de-cologne scented hankerchief passed across my mouth, there was a clicking sound from the box, and at last I was put back in my pram to continue kicking to my hearts content.
The business of having your photo taken in those days was a very complicated affair. There was no such thing as a "Pentax" camera with automatic focusing and light-metering; no built-in flash-lights or zoom lens, and none of those supersensitive films.
Before I saw the "little birdie" on that far off occasion, my Father would have labourously set up a tripod, on to which he would have fixed his camera; a black box fitted with a sliding leather "concertina" at the end of which was fixed the lens and a shutter operated by a rubber tube and bulb. After inserting a frosted glass screen at the back of the "box," my Father would have opened the shutter, and, with a black sheet over the camera and his head, peered at the screen, and moved the lens until a well-focused picture of me appeared. The glass screen would then be removed and a negative photographic plate inserted in its stead. As soon as I produced a satisfactory smile, he would squeeze the rubber bulb, and, Hi Presto!, my picture was made for posterity.
Had this photograph been taken in a poorly lit room, my poor Father would have had to manipulate a crude form of flashlight; comprising a piece of metal shaped like a "T" on the top of which was sprinkled a highly inflammable powder which was ignited at the same time the shutter was opened. As I said, there was no automatic built-in flash-lights in those days.
In a letter dated 10th. July, 1908, James Shorter, my great grand-father, from Glenferrie in Victoria, wrote ;- "My dear Wallace, yesterday I received a Sydney Herald which on perusing I found announced the birth of a son and heir to you and dear Florrie, upon which good news I desire to congratulate you both with my warmest love, and to assure you that the same comes from the very bottom of my heart. etc. etc."
Five weeks later, on the 18th. August, the old chap passed away at my Uncle Sid's home in Mosman. He was 81 years old and was buried in Gore Hill Cemetry.
My family soon moved to another house in Mosman, in Spencer Road, - I have a very well preserved photograph of this place. What has stuck in my memory about this house has been firstly, a colourful leadlight bow window in the front room, and secondly, it was from this house that I went to my first school, at three and a half years old, a Pre-kindergarten run by a Miss Hettie Yarnold and her sister in Raglan Street, Mosman. I have a school group photograph (including myself) taken at a 1914 Christmas Re-union Party after we had moved from Mosman to Bayswater Road, Roseville.
On the 19th March, 1913, at Roseville (to be precise Nurse Large's Private Hospital) I was presented with a baby sister, Isabelle (my mother didn't believe in second names for girls.)
Three months later at age five I started my education in earnest. Firstly, one week at Lindfield Public School; a school of rough older boys my mother strongly disapproved of. So I was enrolled at the brand new Roseville Public Kindergarten School (on Arterial Road, East Roseville) strictly ruled by Headmistress Miss Fanny Pickering assisted by kind, sweet Miss Macourt who was my first teacher heart-throb. I was left-handed in many things, including writing. I can remember my mother telling Miss Pickering about my left-handedness and Miss Pickering saying on no account would she try to change me for fear of turning me into "a psychologically mixed up kid", except that she didn't use those exact words. From our home at the bottom of a steep hill in Bayswater Road to the school in East Roseville was, as the crow flies, one and a quarter miles, but up hill and down dale it would have been closer to 2 miles and there were no school buses in those days. Granma de Witt (my Little Nan) now lived in Clermiston Ave., a block away from the school so I was able to have my lunch there, but there was always the 2 mile walk home later in the afternoon.
In 1982 the P. & C. Association held a special "Back to Roseville" Day to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the (now fully Public) School. To my horror, out of the hundreds there I was the only 1913 to turn up (maybe still alive.)
As Roseville was still only a Kindergarten School my stay there terminated in December 1914. The following year, Lindfield Public School still being taboo, my mother managed to get me enrolled at Gordon Public School - Headmaster Mr. "Cocky" Fry. In those days "Gordon" was regarded as THE school on the North Shore. It was a lovely old stone building, built in 1871 as the original Lane Cove Public School; that part of the country was then part of the Borough of Lane Cove. Instead of 2 miles I now walked 3/4 mile to Roseville Railway Station and caught a steam train to Gordon each day.
For my first 2 years at Gordon I had for my teacher a Miss Fanny O'Dea, a 5 foot martinet who breathed fire and frightened us into being the best class on the North Shore at "reedin, ritin and rithmitic." I can still see her glaring at me through her steel rimmed glasses when I faltered during my 9 times table. This period was not one of my best. On 15th October, 1915, I lost my favourite grandmother when "Little Nan" de Witt died at Clermiston Avenue, Roseville.
In 1917 I went into 3rd Class under the guidance of dear Miss Laws. She most likely taught us the 3 Rs. too, but I only remember her for her talks on History, Nature Study, The War, Civic Duty, Geography - and her wonderful nature study excursions into the bush around Gordon and St.Ives. She started me off with a fine collection of dried native flowers and a love of things historical.
Unfortunately those good times and 1917 had to come to an end, but not before I was given a brand new baby brother, Ernest Travers, born 2nd November, 1917.
The years in Bayswater Road were full of events that, to this day, are still indelibly imprinted in my mind.
For instance there was the rail strike, - I remember my Father driving a bone-shaking T-model Ford up to Pymble each morning to pick up his boss, Mr. Stobo. Gordon Road (now Pacific Highway) was then a succession of blue metal potholes. I used to get a ride to school and shanks pony got me home.
Then there were visits to the city. - I remember shopping with my mother at Civil Service Stores (on the east side of Pitt Street between King and Market Streets) and afterwards those lovely ice cream sodas next door at Washington Souls soda bar. We used to make home made ice cream with runny custard in a churn bucket of ice and salt-petre, but Washington Souls ice cream was ever so much better.
In those days Department Stores used to have a unique method of handling the cash received for sales made. After we'd had our ice cream sodas at Washington Soul's my mother would decide that she'd like to buy some hankerchiefs, so we'd come out of the fragrant coolness of the soda bar, cross Pitt Street to the western side and contemplate giving our patronage to Hordern Brothers, or Ways, or McCathies and finally deciding on Joseph Farmer and Company on the corner of Market Street (now Grace Brothers). Mother would seat herself on a Austrian cane chair in front of the hankerchief counter and a sales-girl (always dressed in black with a white lace collar) would show her several boxes to select from. The sale completed, a docket for "two and thrippence" would be made out and Mother would hand over a halfcrown piece (two shillings and sixpence or twenty-five cents), whereupon the sales-girl would enclose the coin and docket in a container on a wire stretching from the hankerchief counter to a cashier in an elevated box in the centre of the floor. The container would then be catapulted, like a minature flying-fox to the cashier who would, by the same method, return the docket with the thrippence change. Instead of the "flying-fox", other stores had a system of tubes which sucked the money to one central unseen cashier. - Just a little different from the "Target" or "K-mart" check-outs of 1984.
There was a holiday at Barrenjoey; spent in an old stone cottage called Woodleys Cottage at the foot of a steep track leading up to Barrenjoey Lighthouse. - To get there we had to row from Gows Wharf at Palm Beach, Pittwater. In those days Palm Beach and Cronulla were regarded as far enough to go for a holiday; but on one occasion we let our hair down and rented a cottage at Wallarah Point, Tuggerah Lakes, reached by launch down the creek from Wyong. I can still taste the succulent prawns we used to catch there.
Incidently, the stone cottage under Barrenjoey was one of three customs cottages built in 1862 together with a substantial stone jetty.
The customs station had been established there prior to this, in fact in 1843, as a result of the increased smuggling in Broken Bay. As early as May 1846 the Commissioner of Customs in London reported that the Custom Station at Broken Bay had been "successful in checking smuggling."
Prior to the first World War transport to the Peninsular and Palm Beach in particular was, to say the least, difficult.
Proceeding from Circular Quay one took a ferry to Manly, then a horse-drawn streetcar to Narrabeen where a ferry crossing was made of the lake. A sulky continued the journey to Church Point and finally one took another row-boat ferry to Palm Beach.
At the time we were there, the Summer of 1919/20, transport had improved to the extent that we were able to travel by launch from Newport to Palm Beach where a small wharf had been built at Gow's boat-shed, immediately south of Observation Point. From there we proceeded by row-boat to the old Customs Jetty.
At that time Palm Beach Telephone Exchange had only 14 subscribers, and the Barrenjoey Lighthouse was still lit by a kerosene lamp consuming 4 gallons of kerosene each night.
I'm not sure how my parnets came to choose a Barrenjoey custom house for a holiday but I have a vague recollection that it was through their friends Ma and Pa Shimmels who was superintendant of Prison Farm Homes for Juvenilles at Mittagong. Many a time we returned from a visit to Mittagong loaded up with fruit and vegetables.
When I was about 8 or 9 I can remember proudly taking off on my own from Roseville Station, steam training to Milsons Point, then by "jumping-jack" tram to Lang Street, Mosman (cost one penny) where I visited my Aunty Gert, Aunt Eva (her lady help) and cousins Clem and Ivo. My mother also had a lady help. Her name was Madeline Cooper, an ex-nurse from the Childrens Hospital. We kids loved her very much and mutilated her name to "Kewpie."
I remember a certain historic day when we stopped boiling the bath water in the copper, at Bayswater Road, and installed in the bath-room a chip heater which enabled us to have a hot bath on Wednesday nights as well as Saturday. The novelty of listening to the "woof woof woof" of "old Faithfull" every Wednesday and Saturday never wore off.
There were Saturday afternoons at the pictures. - The "Arcadia" Theatre at Chatswood would be full of us screaming kids, drowning out the poor pianist, as we encouraged "Elmo the Mighty" (the current serial) or William S. Hart (the Western idol) or Douglas Fairbanks SENIOR. In between features, pimply kids, with boxes strapped around their necks would prowl the aisles, shouting "peanuts, lollies and chocolates." To-day's "pimply kids" work at McDonalds, and tell you to have a nice day. Alternatively I would be at Roseville or Chatswood Rifle Range scoring for my father, who was a real hot-shot. Many, many years later on the same rifle range I was to completely upset army regulations by insisting that I fire left-handed at a V.D.C. shoot. What made matters worse was the fact that I top scored.
Back to Roseville where my playmates (just for the record) were Clem Hall, (next door) and next door to him, Rosie and Katie Keogh (whose father was a policeman), Tom Woods, "Boy" Dean and the Dietrich boys. - We used to raid the chinamens gardens which backed on to our back fences. "Rabbitos" used to call, selling a pair of rabbits (known as "underground mutton") for sixpence (5 cents), skinning them on the spot. Other callers were the clothes-prop man, the butter and ice man and the Chinese greengrocer. Incidently Tom Woods had an adoring mum and maiden aunt (Miss Ryan) and they dressed the poor kid in velvet suits like Little Lord Fontleroy. My mum dressed me in knickerbockers (or poop-catchers, as the kids at school called them). In my day we changed into long pants much later in our career. The day we did this was almost as important as the day we turned twenty-one. Picnics in those days were confined to runs in the "Tmodel" to Frenchs Forest via St.Ives. - We never went up "Tumble Down Dick" hill without boiling. Thermos flasks were either unknown then or we couldn't afford one, because we always boiled the blackened billy when we wanted a "cuppa" tea.
My first experience of the live theatre was a visit to a pantomine with my Aunty May, - "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." It was reported that I caused a furore in the stalls when I stood on my seat and loudly advised the hero that the villians were hiding in the big jars at the back of the stage. My second theatre experience was "Chu Chin Chou." Listening enraptured now to the "Cobblers Song" takes me back to those wonderful days - I've loved live theatre ever since. There was another rather unique theatre I sometimes was taken to. The "Dreadnought" open-air pictures on the corner of Victoria Avenue and Archer Street, Chatswood, long since pulled down.
My Uncle Sid (Dad's brother) worked for Thomas Edison Inc. in York Street, Sydney. Through him we became possessed of an "Edison" phonograph. This contraption played cylinder records and introduced me to the golden voices of Caruso, Melba, Peter Dawson (singing "My Old Shako") and Harry Lauder (rendering "I belong to Glascow") as well as "William Tell" Overture, "Ballet Egyptian", "In a Monastry Garden", etc. etc. But this wasn't the only music heard in our home at Roseville. My father was an accomplished pianist, although he mostly played by ear, my mother had a good contralto voice and she loved singing "I'll Sing Thee Songs of Araby", "A Perfect Day", and "Little Grey Home in the West", whilst Great Uncle Henry de Witt, who was amongst other things, a song writer, used to lift the roof with his baritone rendition of "The Holy City". My contribution was "Yip I Addy I Aye I Aye" and "Polly Wolly Doodle". Uncle Henry's wife, Aunt Fanny, used to intrigue us kids. She claimed to be a mystic, which might have been partly true because she was born in India of Indian Army parents and raised from birth by an Indian amah. They never missed having Xmas dinner with us and brought us lovely presents.
My Uncle Sid was a fanatical follower of the North Sydney Rugby League Football Club- "Norths" as it was known then, the "Bears" had not then been invented. I can remember being taken along with my father and Uncle Sid to North Sydney Oval to barrack for Herman Peters, Cec Blinkhorn and Harold Horder. You'd have thought that Uncle Sid had won Tattersal Sweep, when "Norths" won the 1921-22 Premiership.
And I must not forget my introduction to the world of surgery. It seems that I started to talk through my nose and Dr. Brierley (I think that was his name - he lived on the corner of Hill Street and Roseville Avenue) diagnosed that I had adernoids which he decided to take away from me. The breakfast room was turned into an operating theatre, the deal kitchen table scrubbed with carbolic soap and covered with a blanket and white sheet. I watched in trepidation all this preparation and when the time came to put me on the table I fought like a wild-cat and ruined one good pair of pyjamas. It seems that chloroform was not strong enought to put me down so a substantial whiff of ether was administered. I woke up minus my adernoids and two tonsils, and plus a very sore throat and a ghastly feeling of nausea. Thank goodness anaesthetics nowadays are less discomforting.
Whilst at Bayswater Road I must make some comment on the subject of sanitation.
It wasn't until we left Lindfield that I enjoyed the luxury of an "inside the House" toilet.
In the backyard at Roseville we had a 6 foot by 3 foot wooden structure "with a gable roof" which our parents called the "W.C.", but we kids called it "The Dunny." Around it was a trellis, for which a passion-fruit and choko vine fought for possession, and inside was a bench-seat with a large sandpapered hole in the centre. Under the hole was deposited a 1O gallon tar-painted metal can, the repository of the family night soil. Once a week, in the middle of the night, my slumbers were voilently disturbed by the noise of clashing metal as the nightman called to take away the full can and leave a freshly painted empty one.
What happened to us if we had a "nature call" during the night? you ask. Well, under every bed was a chamber-pot which was duly emptied into the slop-bucket each morning. These chamber-pots determined what class you belonged to. Under working class beds there were enamel pots, generally chipped, under middle class beds plain china pots and under upper class beds china pots with roses painted on them. We had plain china. When you think about it, the old dunny and nightcart system worked pretty smoothly. Although we rarely met our "pan man," once a year we communicated with one another. Just before Christmas we would find on our dunny seat a card bearing a cheerful Christmas greeting in verse; to which we would respond by placing on the same dunny seat, a Christmas gift, usually a bottle of wine enclosed in the traditional Christmas wrapping.
I can remember our "pan man" once calling at our neighbour's house during a back-yard New Year Eve's party. It was very late and the guests, brimming with seasonal bon-homie, insisted he have a drink. He smiled, plonked down the brimming can and accepted a beer. It could only happen in Australia.
For some reason unknown to me it became necessary for my family to move from Roseville to a flat at Bay Road, now known as Waverton. (1st. Rail Station after North Sydney). To ease the move I was sent off to live for 12 months with friends of the family in Newcastle, Mr. and Mrs. Louis Hill (Uncle Lu and Aunty Tot) and their daughter, Alice and son, Herbert, who was my age. Together we attended during 1918 Hamilton Superior Public School. The Hill home was in Dumaresq Street, Hamilton. From it we could see the horses running on the Newcastle Jockey Club's Racecourse. Hamilton Superior Public School considered me too bright for 4th class so I spent my time there as a 5th class student. It appeared that Gordon was holding back their students so they would more likely become eligible for entrance to the selective North Sydney Boys and North Sydney Girls High Schools. By a strange coincidence Jean-ma, when she was the same age, had a similar experience. With her mother and grandmother she lived for a short time with relatives in California and went to school at Berkley near San Francisco, which prompts me to quote from one of Jean-ma's rare nostalgic literary efforts when she wrote:-
"This brings to mind so many things - my school days at North Sydney Girls High - the strict head-mistress - those long black stockings - gloves at all times outside school gates - all the rules and regulations - never eating or chewing in the street and never never standing on corners talking to boys. Then I can remember the night travelling home on the McMahons Point ferry, watching the old vehicle ferry Benelong sinking after a coastal vessel had ploughed into it. Crew members cutting horses free and our ferry picking up survivors. This, of course was before the bridge was built.
And that brings to mind the terrible "Greycliffe" disaster on 3rd November, 1927 with so many lives lost. Children, returning home from school, trapped inside the ferry as it sunk. I think what makes this so vivid in my memory is because the ferry was run down by the R M S "Tahiti". I always identified with that ship and followed its history because that was the ship I travelled on when my grandmother took me to America when I was 10 years old. These days with planes flying all over the world children seem to travel everywhere and all are so familiar with foreign countries. But in 1923 not very many 10 year olds travelled overseas and my experiences at a Californian school are very clear to me now.
I stayed with my Aunt Kit and Uncle Frank Stibbens. He was a doctor and they lived in a comfortable shingle two storey home at 567 Forrest Street, Oakland - it was built that way because of the frequent earth tremors - my mothers sisters weathered the 1906 San Francisco earthquake when they first went to U.S.A. Uncle Frank and Aunt Kit had 2 daughters, Winnie (the younger) who I adored, and Marjorie - both a little older than me.
I look back with nostalgia to this memorable and impressive period. Our maiden Aunt Rene also lived there and Ivy came down from Canada with her adopted daughter, a rather spoilt brat who didn't get on with the rest of us kids. So you see it was a very full household with 10 of us - the four sisters Kit, Rene, Ivy and Olive (my mother, the youngest), the 2 Stibben girls, my grandmother, myself and someone whose name I can't think of. I often wonder how my dear Aunt Kit coped with us all for that six months.
We used to skate to school at Berkeley and come home for lunch daily. For breakfast we had waffles and I tasted cornflakes for the first time. At school I was amazed by the children of different nationalities - first time I had ever seen Japanese - I was intrigued with a Spanish girl, Mercedes - I thought that was a beautiful name - I guess Phillipa is lucky I grew out of that. The children at school found me an object of interest - puzzled that I was not black - wanted me to speak aboriginal. They were terribly ignorant of any geography - Australia was not included in their syllabus.
On returning to Australia my mother decided the local school wasn't good enough for her much travelled and darling daughter whose mind had been broadened so much by overseas experience, and I was sent to Chatswood Primary where actually I did rather well and was dux there at the end of sixth class. From there I went to North Sydney Girls High School which even then was selective. The going there was much tougher and I don't think I distinguished myself expecially except in the Art classes. However that is another story." So much for Jean-ma's American interlude.
Probing my memory cells on my Newcastle interlude these experiences come to mind:-
Being sent to church each Sunday morning and on one occasion, with the thermometer touching a hundred, having to sit through a full Litany service.
Saturday morning visits to Arnotts's biscuit factory at Cooks Hill to buy three penny worth of broken biscuits, which was more than enough to fill a large Kelloggs cornflake carton.
Visits to a one-teacher bush school at a village west of Fassifern, where Uncle Lu was relieving, and where we learnt "how the other half lives, - and learns."
Playing in deserted coal-mines - learning to ride a push-bike - and learning to swim in the rock baths near Nobbys, the southern headland of Newcastle harbour.
Learning about the facts of life. - One evening Uncle Lu and Aunty Tot (they were both school teachers) called Herb and I and Alice (she was 2 or 3 years older than us) into the parlour and gave us a very elementary talk on the "birds and the bees". This was the only sex education I ever received. At school the subject was absolutely taboo and my parents, like so many others at the time, avoided it like the plague; other than telling me that babies were found under cabbages.
Herbert Julius Hill later became one of the top executives of the Muswellbrook Coal Company. Now retired, he lives at 124 Hill Street, Muswellbrook.
Towards the end of 1918 I returned to the bosom of my family at Bay Road, just in time to wildly celebrate the end of the Great War to end all wars, by joining the crowds at Circular Quay, bashing kerosene tins, singing, cheering, shaking hands, kissing and hugging perfect strangers, and reading over and over again the peace news in bold type in the "Sydney Sun". We didn't have radio or television or satellites in those days. But the fun was soon over and once more the stark realities of growing up had to be faced.
The "kerosene" tins referred to above were actually benzine (petrol) tins obtained from an East Circular Quay garage that serviced the company car my father drove. "Petrol", in those days, didn't come from bowsers; it was supplied in square 4 gallon tins, 2 to a wooden case. Hence the term "kerosene case;" and these cases made wonderful billy carts.
It is Christmas 1918, I am ten and a half years old and a very important decision has to be made. A decision that will have an effect on my whole future.
In North Sydney there were two secondary schools. The newly established North Sydney Boys High School, which provided a five year academic course culminating with the Leaving Certificate or University of Sydney matriculation exam. The other school was first known as North Sydney Commercial High, then North Sydney Boys Intermediate High, then after my time, North Sydney Boys Technical High. It provided a three year commercial course finishing with the Intermediate Certificate exam.
If I had returned to Gordon Public School I was going to be made to repeat 5th class, sit for the Q.C. (Qualifying Certificate) Exam a year later and most certainly finish up at North Sydney Boys High School (the selective school) and matriculate at the age of seventeen and a half. I would have liked to have done this, and then follow up at Sydney University in the Faculty of Architecture, although I also had a "yen" for journalism. But all that would cost money. Only the very very brilliant students won the very very few bursaries available in those days.
My father was a regular "Mister Nice Guy" but as a business man he left much to be desired. My mother was a very intelligent and capable woman and was actually a working girl (R. H. Gordon & Co. Ltd.) before her marriage, but her capabilities could not be applied. The times decreed that a married woman's place was in the home. The family fortunes were never that healthy that they could afford to send a budding architect to university.
So the decision was made. My goal was to be the Intermediate Certificate examination which I should expect to pass by the time I was fourteen and a half, when I should be capable of earning my own living and helping to support the family. To this end I was enrolled, in January, 1919, in 6th class at Greenwoods School.
Greenwoods School later to become North Sydney Public School was situated between what is now Pacific Highway, Miller and Blue Streets, North Sydney. It was a picturesque stone building with a high pitched church-like roof and a bell tower; an old Gothic revival building now under preservation. It first housed the St.Leonards Public School and it was built in 1877 by Architect George Allan Marsfield; I presume the Epping Highway suburb was named after him. He was a leading architect of his day responsible for many of the school buildings erected in the 1870s and 188Os throughout Sydney. Greenwoods School was named after Nimrod Greenwood the most famous headmaster of the St.Leonards School. In my day, as well as the primary section Greenwoods School included three years of secondary education which became North Sydney Boys Intermediate High School under the headmastership of Mr. W. Carey Taylor, a fanatical exponent of English Grammar.
Sixth class was in the hands of a Mr. Denning who quietly injected into us enough knowledge to enable us to pass the Q.C. examination, and to write legibly. My one and only entitlement to fame at this time was the fact that I was top of the class at mapping. My coloured maps of Australia and many other lands decorated the walls of 6th class for at least twelve months and maybe much longer.
Early in 1919 Sydney had an influenza epidemic, when everyone had to be inoculated and wear white cloth masks. I was done at old Chatswood Town Hall and was very disappointed that I did not get big scars on my arm to boast about to my friends.
Whilst living at Bay Road (now called Waverton), the family had purchased a block of land in Marjorie Street, Roseville; part of the "Firs Estate." They were in the throes of negotiations with the old Government Savings Bank and a "spec" builder named John H. Park, when the local alderman, Croft by name, persuaded the Ku-ring-gai Council to resume the block, and a number of others, so that Roseville Park could be enlarged.
The family must have been generously reimbursed because late in 1919 they purchased from Mr. Park a three bed-room house at 22 Newark Crescent, Lindfield, where I was to become sensitive to the fact that we still lived "on the other side of the track." We didn't have journalists in those days who wrote articles analising the different stratas of society, nevertheless it was pretty obvious to all that, on the Upper North Shore, the wealthy families lived on the eastern side of the railway line, whilst on the western side lived the "battlers."
When we moved to Lindfield I started my daily train rides to Milsons Point where the northern pilon of the Harbour now stands. Although I had a students pass which entitled me to free tram rides, just for the exercise, I occasionally walked to school from Milsons Point, up Alfred Street, passing, on the corner of Paul Street, Charlie Waterhouse's hotel, which had an intriguing name, - "Lily of St.Leonards." Further up, on the other side of the street, was Dind's Hotel, and at the top of the hill, the appropriately named, "The Rest Hotel."
My Mother had told me to always steer clear of all public houses because "nasty men" lurked there, but I just couldn't understand how an establishment with the charming name of "Lily of St.Leonards" could be as menacing as she made it out to be, and I often stood on the foot-path gazing at the swinging doors labelled with the mysterious gold letters "Public Bar," and wondered what went on behind them. It was some years before I found out.
Sadly, "Lily" was murdered by a man with a jackhammer to make way for a mass of concrete and glass; and the grass of Bradfield Park now grows where "Dinds" once stood. But cheer up!, a hotel still stands at the top of Alfred Street hill, and it is still called "The Rest."
I passed the Q.C. exam and commenced in January 1920 three very full and enjoyable years of my life. At high school I stepped into a new world, work became a hobby, everything seemed to be a fascinating challenge.
Mr. Waddington taught Maths One and Maths Two and he had the knack of making algebra and geometry entertaining. One actually got satisfaction from reaching the Q.E.D. of a theorem (quod erat demonstrandum - Euclid's words not mine - we called it Quite Easily Done). Algebra was a novelty to us and it's mysteries just had to be solved. He also turned the dry subject of geography into a "jet-set" tour.
Mr. Reid was the Science Master who taught Physics and Chemistry (stinks). As well as understanding Archimedes Principle, we learnt how to make gunpowder.
Mr. Wyborn taught Business Principles, Book-keeping and Shorthand. As I had ideas of one day becoming a newspaper reporter the shorthand lessons could not come quicker or often enough for me.
Last but most certainly not least, there was Mr. Greentree, our most un-orthodox English Master. He used to read us short stories by O. Henry and then make us write our own version with a local setting. We studied English as written in "The Fifth Form at St.Dominics", as written by Dickens in "Great Expectations" and by Shakespeare in "Twelfth Night", and we performed the plots on the classroom stage before our critical classmates. These performances were often interrupted by the Head barging in and giving an impromptu lesson on English Grammar (parsing and analysis etc.)
Mr. Greentree also taught History, also in a most unorthodox way. We learnt the reasons for wars, and revolutions, and changes of prime ministers (instead of the dates of English Kings and Queens) and we studied the life stories of men like James Cook, Arthur Phillip, William Bligh, Ned Kelly, John Macarthur, Peter Lawlor etc. as they related to Australian history. We dramatised his subjects to such an extent that his classes just couldn't help paying attention.
During my first year at High School I spent a short time in hospital (St.Lawrences's Chatswood) after a football accident when I broke two front teeth on my left knee. I think I would have been better off had the Doctor not operated. I still have a weakness in the left knee and I've never played football since.
I used to receive half a crown (two shillings and sixpence) a week pocket money to cover my lunch and replacement exercise books - text-books were supplied by the Education Dept. and school-children travelled free on trains and trams. To supplement this pocket money I used to contribute stories, poems, sketches and photos to the Childrens Page of the "Sunday News." I started doing this with the Hill children when I was in Newcastle. I wrote under the Nom-de plume "Sarsaparilla" (native flower names were popular at the time - two well known Herald correspondents wrote under the nom-de-plumes "Waratah" and "Redgum".) It was a bad week when I didn't receive a five shilling postal note from the cashier of the "Evening News" whose offices used to be where the State Theatre now stands.
When we came to live at Lindfield I started building my circle of life long friends, closest of which, at the time were, Colin Marr, next door, and Ron Rae, living a street away. In conjunction with these two and per medium of Sunday School Picnics, Tennis Parties, Dances, Birthday Parties etc. I became firm friends with the Dunnicliffs (Mark, Bill and Beryl) the Popes (Dick & Jean) the Sheads (Ann, Gordon and Newell) the Harris family (Charlie, Clive and their many elder sisters). In addition to these there was the Willoughbys (Eddie, Alf and Walter) who lived at Roseville. Mrs. Willoughby had been a friend of my mother before she was married.
The first girl I ever took to a dance was Colin's sister Beryl. Many, many years later at Col's funeral I met Beryl (Mrs. John Price) who introduced me to her forty odd year old daughters, as her first boy-friend, so I suppose Beryl was my first girl-friend.
After the Great War the Australian Government became very conscious of the need for defence and introduced compulsory military training for all males starting at fourteen years of age and finishing at twenty-one. C. J. Dennis the "ocker" poet supported this by a little ditty published in the "Bulletin" which went something like this:-
        Fellers of Australia, blokes and coves and coots,
        Shift your bloody carcasses, move you bloody boots.
        Get a bloody move on, get some bloody sense,
        Learn the bloody art of, self de bloody fence."
Dennis is of course, best known for his Australian classic "The Sentimental Bloke" featuring "The Bloke", "Gorstruth Doreen", "Ginger Mick, the Rabbito" and of course, "The Straw 'at Coot."
I lived in terror of turning fourteen and being sent to Liverpool Military Camp for training. I'd heard terrible stories of trainees in Liverpool being fed on maggot infested meat, so when a Naval Recruiting Chief Petty Officer called at the school seeking naval trainees in lieu of military, I was the first to sign up. On 2nd July, 1922, I became a member of the Royal Australian Naval Reserve and spent my Saturday afternoons for the next seven years learning to be a sailor.
1922 dawned and we started twelve months of intensive serious study for the Intermediate Examination - play acting was given away and even sport was curtailed. My school friends started discussing what we were all going to do when we left school - Keith Johnston, Reg Crispe, Barton Bridle, Jack Wills, Alf Lamacraft, Max Woods and Robin Macdougall, who was an American boy and my first personal contact with a "foreigner".
I finished my third year winning second place in the class (dux in English and 3rd. in History). I was beaten for Dux of the Year by my pal Reg Crispe.
At last the fatal day arrived and we traipsed off to the high school in Falcon Street, there to spend a week or so under the watchful eyes of the examination "bull-dogs". I was more than satisfied with my answers to the papers but several days later to my horror I realised that I had mis-read two questions in each of the English and History paper. I had read "or" in italics as an "and" and answered twice as much as I needed to.
I spent my 1922 Christmas holidays in Moree where Granpa de Witt who had retired from the Army had bought a bakery business. This was my first journey to the country. I left Sydney Central Station at 4.30 p.m. on the North-West Mail in a box carriage that depended on metal hot water bottles on the floor for its heating. I had a meat-pie tea at Gosford R.R.R. (Railway Refreshment Room) and another tea at Newcastle pressed on me by Aunty Tot Hill and family (the train stopped there for 20 minutes). There was another 20 minute stop at Werris Creek at 2.30 a.m. where everyone burnt their tongues on R.R.R. hot tea. A lot more rattles and then Narrabri. I can still see the sun rising that morning over Mount Kaputar while we ate our R.R.R. breakfast at Narrabri. I arrived at Moree at 8.30 a.m. covered in soot. Never have I enjoyed a swim so much as when I jumped into the warm Artesian Baths at Moree that afternoon.
It was while I was in Moree that I learnt that I had obtained my Intermediate Certificate, passing in Maths I, Maths 2, Science, Geography, Business Principles and Short-hand, but I had failed in my two best subjects, English and History - so much for external examinations.
In January 1923 I returned to Sydney and home and the problems of existing. I decided to try and obtain a cadetship with one of the Sydney newspapers, The "Daily Telegraph", the "Sydney Sun" and the "Sydney Morning Herald" were only interested in boys who had an "A" pass in English in the Leaving Certificate or University Matriculation Exam. However, the Editor of the "Evening News" gave me a very encouraging interview, but still told me to come back in two years time. It seems that my age (and size) were unsurmountable handicaps.
In the meantime I had to eat, so I started my career, most unromantically, as a message boy for Mr. Ray Vaughan, an insurance broker in Bulls Chambers, Martin Place; my salary was one pound per week. He was a rifleclub friend of my fathers and at that time there was some talk of them going into partnership. They actually did some years later but, for some reason unknown to me, they parted company after only a short time together.
My father's official occupation was "Insurance Inspector". During the period of his work in this capacity he had built up a large clientele of "Chinese" insurance business. During my last years at school I used to spend my Saturday mornings with him while he visited his Chinese merchant clients, mostly in the Haymarket district. They were a very friendly lot and thought the world of "Mista Chorta", and bestowed upon me many little gifts of preserved ginger, nuts, (my first contact with "lichees") fire-crackers etc.
A month later (on Mr. Vaughan's advice presumably so I could get more insurance experience) I obtained a position as junior clerk - at thirty shillings a week - with the Federal Mutual Insurance Company, 129 Pitt Street, Sydney, much to my mother's disgust. She contended that one member of the family in that awful insurance business was more than enough. Out of my thirty shillings I paid one pound per week board to my mother, and I was quite happy to continue paying board until the day I was married - when I changed land-ladies. Fortunately I was never out of a job. With my first pay I opened my present cheque account with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. There were no building societies in those days paying twelve per cent on your savings. For the time being,
        Lots of love,
        Pa.
        Chapter Two
        1923-1929
3Oth September, 1984. My Dear Children,
During my job-seeking period I learnt a few very important things. If you wanted a really good job you needed a University Degree or Diploma or a G.P.S. schooling or very influential friends. As I possessed none of these I decided that the next best qualification must be a super enthusiasm for whatever job was available (preferably a secure one) and the ability of making oneself as near as possible indispensable.
In those days the common conception was that Australia "lived on the sheep's back." Therefore, I decided, a job in the wool industry must be a secure one. These were my thoughts as I answered an advertisement for a junior in the wool-brokering firm of Schute Bell and Company Limited. They must have judged me as meeting their requirements because they acceded to my demand that I be paid five shillings per week more than their normal starting salary. On the 23rd. October, 1923 I commenced work at 44 Bridge Street.
Schute Bell's office on the corner of Young and Bridge Streets was housed in a very old terrace house (nowadays if it hadn't been demolished it would have come under the protection of the National Trust or Jack Mundey). It had once been a doctors residence and surgery, and it comprised a caretaker's basement (once the stables ), ground floor (clients reception rooms), first floor (main office) and top floor (records and storage, and once upon a time the doctor's operating theatre). Only the very seniors sat at tables and on chairs; everyone else sat and worked at high desks on high stools in true Dickensian fashion. THE FIRM owned a wool store in Harris Street, Pyrmont and a skin store in Mountain Street, Ultimo, in which I was to become deeply interested, a few years later.
The directors were Frank Dillon Bell (Chairman), Eldred Moser (Client Relations and Senior Wool Auctioneer), Jim Mylecharane (Wool Valuer), Reg Ruwald (Accounts). - Arthur Schute had been killed in a road accident a few weeks before I joined the firm, - they were all ex-employees of Goldsbrough, Mort and Co. The staff comprised Bob Richardson (Accountant) and his clerk Cec Cornwell, Bert Ashe (Chief Clerk) and his assistants Geoff Hosking, George Lambie, Oscar Ledez, Eddie Arnold and an accounting machine operator, Miss Mimi Berquist. Besides myself there were two other juniors, George Matterson and Ken Gilkes; and two Skin Department clerks, Reg Moore and Ernie Cruikshanks. The switch-board operator cum receptionist at the front door was the vivacious Patricia Hayes. There were also two Assistant Auctioneers cum Wool and Skin Valuers, Horrie Davis and Herb Gibson, and Wool Travellers (business getters) Johnny Walker, Jack Ward, Prince Wood, Tom Sisson and Brooks Lloyd. Last but not least there was a mystery man called Jimmy Girdwood, who sat amongst the packing cases and filing cabinets on the top floor and bashed out on an antique type-writer all the firms outward correspondence.
        The wool selling season lasted from August to March.
Part of my job was to deliver wool catalogues to the offices of the wool-buyers before each sale every two weeks. On sale day "all hands and the cook" carried out the work of invoicing anything from 500 to a thousand lots to the buyers, and advising our country clients the results of their sales. No one left the office until the sale was "balanced". There was no such thing in those days as payment for overtime worked. We were each given (including the bosses) one shilling and sixpence tea-money. Fortunately near the office in the Circular Quay area there were a number of little cafes where we could buy a three course meal for one shilling and threepence - soup, roast beef and vegetables, and apple pie and custard, plus a cuppa tea and bread and butter - and after all that a profit of thrippence - enough to buy a beer. When we wanted to save another thrippence, we ate with "Fred", the genial host of the "Cafe de Fairfax", a horsedrawn pie-cart on the curb, outside the old Sydney Morning Herald building on the corner of Pitt, Hunter and O'Connell Streets. Dear old balding Fred in his fifties dispensed hospitality from behind two high shelves on each side of the caravan where one was served a pie with gravy on a plate plus knife and fork for one shilling (ten cents) with a cuppa tea poured from a huge tea-pot. Peas were tuppence extra. Fred extended instant credit to unemployed or "before pay-day" workers and drunks. He made no credit enquiries nor did he enter the transaction in a book.
"Sister Olive", named after a Melbourne Cup winner, was probably the best-loved horse in the city of Sydney, during the twenties, thirties and early forties. As she quietly stood in front of the cafe graciously accepting homage by way of piecrusts, apples and sweets from admiring fans. She made no distinction between white-tie-and-tails-garbed guests from viceregal functions, shift-workers, journalists, tram-guards, drunks or dead-beats, who saw the cafe as a Mecca between the hours of eight and dawn on Mondays to Saturdays.
During those winter nights there was a plethora of balls held at Farmer's Blaxland Galleries, David Jones, Mark Foys and Grace Bros ballrooms. No reveller's evening was complete without being rounded off with a visit to the "Cafe de Fairfax". Throngs of white or black-tied boys with girls in evening dress frolicked and sang under the benign eyes of "Fred" and "Sister Olive" during the early hours of most winter mornings.
Alas! This eating place was eventually banished by the City Council, and the nearest thing we have to it now is "Harry's Cafe de Wheels," a flourishing curb-side business in Wooloomooloo.
Another job that broke the monotony of recording and totalling and cataloguing ad infinitum bales and weights and qualities (no pocket calculators those days) was my weekly trip to the wharves to pay the freights and wharfages. The North Coast and Illawarra coastal vessels were then still carrying goods and we received many hides and skins and some wool from places like Bega, Ulladulla, Taree, Grafton and Coffs Harbour. Also then there was still a passenger service between Sydney and Newcastle every night. If your stomach was strong enough it was a much cheaper and cleaner trip than the train ride to Newcastle. The fleet comprised the S.S. Hunter and the S.S. Gwydir.
Some months after I joined the firm I met Frank Dillon Bell for the first time in, of all places, the office urinal. As he buttoned up his fly, (zippers hadn't been invented then) he looked at me quizzically and said, "You must be the new boy?" To which I answered in the affirmative, telling him my name. "Well Shorter," he said, "I suppose your ambition is to have my job." I was taken aback, but still answered "Y e s s s, sir" - doubtful like. "Well," continued F.D.B., "you can take it from me, Shorter, being the boss is not all beer and skittles." Actually my ambition by then had not gone beyond being the chief clerk. I had found out that Bert Ashe was the recipient of the princely sum of seven pounds per week.
Several months later Frank Dillon Bell committed suicide. He must have found the job of running the firm without the help of his old partner, Arthur Schute, too great a strain. I was to remember his words forty-four years later when I was appointed manager of Schute Bell Badgery Lumby Limited on the 1st. February, 1967.
As an employee of a wool-brokering firm I came in continuous contact with a class of people I had, up till then, (except for one short visit to Moree) no experience with, - the good old sunburnt slow-speaking country bloke and his down to earth wife and family. He worked hard on his property amongst his sheep and cattle and after a good season and a bouyant market when he had some spare cash, he generally invested it in some good horses. So it was inevitable that a wool-brokers office became a pool of hot information concerning the winning chances of it's clients racehorses. Schute Bell was no exception to this rule and I was soon initiated into the nailbiting experience of "backing the neddies." I had my doubts about the wisdom of this and kept a note-book record of all my wins and losses, eventually learning to distinguish between good and bad information. This supplementary income never reached a high level as I rarely bet more than two and six each way. However, my wins and losses at poker which always seemed to level off, were much greater. For half an hour each day the staff lunch room on the top floor was the scene of some exciting and memorable jack-pot games. Hence my love of a good game of cards, especially when it's contract bridge.
        When I was 9 or IO years old one of my Xmas or birthday
presents was a No. O Brownie box camera and photography became one of my pet hobbies. I used to develop my own films and print my own photos, very professionally in a dark room with red light etc. The "No. O" kept me interested until 1923 when my Grandpa Shorter died and left me his post-card size Kodak folding camera - it had a very superior lens. Although the films for this camera cost a bit more, with it I was able to build my own enlarging equipment. I have been able to resurrect most of the photos I took during my early years and they have helped remind me of some of the events I am recording; but unfortunately only a few photos bear dates, so from now on I'll have to resort to writing about periods rather than years, and the first period will be from 1923 (when I started work) to 1929 (when we began to feel the "great depression" - and when I turned 21) - the period we lived at 22 Newark Crescent, Lindfield.
When we moved into this house the grounds were in a very rough and virgin state, so for the first year my father and I laboured hard at laying out a garden, and levelling the back yard into a grass tennis court. We just had sufficient room - sideline and backline space was very sparse, but there was enough. We had many enjoyable week-ends on that old court. The staff of the British Traders Insurance Company, where Dad now worked, were always ready to organise a tennis party, generally led by Fred Grey, who had been a very close friend of my parents since they were married. "Uncle Fred" married Dorothy Bloore, who was a senior typist in the Federal Mutual when I was there. The last time I saw the Greys was when their son, Bruce, was born. (and he'd have to be nearly sixty now.)
The tennis court gave both Isabelle and I the opportunity of bringing our friends home. Isabelle's group included Barbara Dean, Leah Wilkinson and Audrey Birks, who, on one afternoon, brought along her "best friend" a girl called Jean Hill (reputedly a red-hot tennis player.) On this occasion Jean Olive Hill made very little impression on me. After all she was only a child; actually five years younger than me, and at the time I was much more interested in a Chevrolet tourer I had just bought for twenty-five pounds. It had a fierce cone-clutch which nearly jolted your innards out as it started. However, I did condescend to drive Audrey and her friend Jean up to the railway station, or it might have been all the way home. (I think petrol wasn't much more than a shilling a gallon in those days.)
At this stage of my life I wasn't taking girls too seriously - I couldn't afford to. When I got talked into going to one of the "in aid of a charity" dances at Killara Memorial Hall (now Marion Street Theatre) or Roseville Hall or Farmers Blaxland Galleries, I generally asked Beryl Dunnicliff, or Connie Ford, or Betty Gribben, but mostly Jean Pope, to go with me. I think it was Jean's barbed wit that attracted me, and of course, brother Dick was my pal and was always included in the party.
Our social life was, more often than not, confined to parties at our home, or the Dunnicliffs, or the Popes, or the Marrs, or the Andriesse's - Jimmy and Dietje Andriesse were Dutch - their parents owned plantations in Java (now Indonesia) - very intriguing.
One of the girls had a mother who was a leading light in the Royal North Shore Hospital Auxilliary and she talked three of us (me, Ron Rae and a friend of his, Les Matthews) into running a Charity Ball - in aid of the hospital - in Roseville Hall (now Roseville Cinema). I persuaded a wool-buyer friend of mine who ran the "Black and White Dance Orchestra" (Bruce Dunbar - Roslyn's father - played banjo in it) - to supply the music - the auxilliary did the catering - and we three the promotion. The ball was a terrific success both socially and financially; in fact the papers declared it the North Shore Social Event of the Year. It was the first and last time I featured in the social pages of the Sydney Morning Herald.
Another memorable dance was the Hawkesbury Agricultural College "End of Term Ball" at the college at Richmond. Col Marr was a student there and he commissioned me to bring up a car load of partners for himself and several other students. I think I had six girls in the car and for the life of me I can't remember the name of one of them (they say there's safety in numbers). I brought them all safely home by 3 o'clock the next morning much to the consternation of their parents.
As soon as I'd turned 17 my father had driven me up to Hornsby Police Station where I applied for a driver's license. The police-constable asked me to drive him up the street for a hundred yards, back into a side-street and then back to the station. He asked me one question - "Which side of a stationery tram should I pass?" Despite the fact that I answered "Right side," when I should have siad "Neither side," he gave me my license and I've held one ever since.
When I see how keen and interested my grand-children are in computers, it takes me back to the time when I was their age, and my age-group were madly keen to become involved in another new-fangled idea called "Wireless Telegraphy." At that time Sydney had one transmitting station at Pennant Hills, transmitting in morse code to ships at sea and interstate. There were also a number of amateur transmitters such as Otto Sandel's 2 U W and Charles Maclurcan, who owned the Wentworth Hotel. At Lindfield our neighbour next door was a Mr. Charles Marr, who had help build the Pennant Hills station after the first World War. His knowledge of wireless telegraphy has been acquired whilst serving as a Signals Officer in the Australian Imperial Forces in Mesopatamia during the War. Major Marr's son Colin and I were pals with a common interest in building wireless receiving sets. We used to haunt the wireless shops in Sydney, such as W. Harry Wiles in Pitt Street, opposite Anthony Horderns, buying bits and pieces which finally ended up as receiving sets. We were studying also so we could obtain a transmitting license, but we never passed the exam. At about this time audio transmission commenced and two broadcasting stations started, one by Farmer & Co. (2 F C) and one by Broadcasters Limited (2 B L) whose announcer was the popular "Uncle George" Saunders. The year is 1922. Our receiving sets comprise a couple of coils of enamelcoated copper wire, a galena crystal, with "Cats Whisker", and a set of ear-phones, which enabled us to hear the music and talks broadcast by these two stations and various amateur "hams". The higher and longer our aerials were the better the volume and clarity of our reception. My aerial stretched the whole length of the tennis court we had built in the back-yard. Shortly after this, when I had saved up enough to buy some more wireless parts, I built myself a one valve receiver using a Western Electric peanut valve and dry battery, and with this equipment actually listened to the programmes broadcast from 3 L O Melbourne. Later still with Dick Pope's help I built my first wireless set operating a loud-speaker, all contained in a homemade Jacobean cabinet.
Working together in Schute Bells, Kenneth Alexander Gilkes and I became close friends, because, I suppose, of a number of common interests, one of which was live theatre. Others were literature (we liked good books) and sport (we both had played cricket and tennis at school).
Live theatre in those days (and up to the fifties) was mostly presented by the J. C. Williamson group - the Tait family - in old theatres such as "Her Majestys", where the Centre-point Tower now stands, the "Theatre Royal" on the corner of King and Castlereagh Street, the "Criterion" on the corner of Pitt and Park Streets and the "Grand Opera House" facing Belmore Park at Central Railway Station. There was also in Castlereagh Street between King and Market Streets, two vaudeville (music hall type) theatres, the "Tivoli" (later the "Embassy") and the "National" (later the "Mayfair") where you could see "Stiffy and Mo," Sadie Gale, Fred Bluett etc. in lurid music hall acts. The "St.James Theatre" in Elizabeth Street opposite Hyde Park was built at about this time, and opened with Elsie Prince and Jimmy Godden in "No No Nanette". Who can forget those catchy tunes like "Tea for Two", "No No Nanette", or "Take A Little One-step", or "I Want To Be Happy." Later in this theatre we saw Gladys Moncrieff in "Rio Rita."
The lay-out of these theatres was all the same;stalls at stage level, with the dress circle above. If you went in the dress circle you paid up to seventeen and sixpence for your seat and were expected to wear evening dress. Above the dress circle was the balcony, steep rows of hard wooden benches from which you looked vertically down on the to the stage. This area was popularly known as "the gods" and you could book a seat there for one and sixpence to two and sixpence and you were not expected to wear evening dress. Ken and I always sat in "the gods."
The most popular shows were the musical comedies and they all followed a similar pattern; - a flimsy plot interspersed with catchy songs and choruses presented by a very pretty actress and a hero (generally known as a matinee idol) both with good voices, and supported by a comedy team, chorus and ballet, to which was sometimes added speciality dancers like Madge Elliot and Cyril Richards.
In those days the "top of the top twenty" was always the hit tune from the current Williamson musical, so that when "Floradora" was playing at Her Majestys, everyone was whistling "Tell me pretty maiden" (are there anymore at home like you?)
My first pin-up actress was Dorothy Brunton, and Alfred Frith my favourite comedian. He only had to walk on to the stage and I'd start laughing (so did the rest of the audience). Prior to this my experience of stage humour had been limited to the antics of the "dames" (always men dressed up) in Xmas pantomines such as "Cinderella," "Jack and the Bean-stalk," "Dick Whittington and his Cat" etc., when Miss Amy Rochelle nearly always was the principal boy.
From the hard seats of "the gods" of various theatres, I watched and "drooled" over shows like "The Belle of New York", "Going Up," (it's chorus went like this - "Going up, going up, like a rocket gone insane. Sailing in an aeroplane.") "Sally", "Rose Marie," (whose comic character was Hard-boiled Herman - "Herman the he-man, quick to dis-agree man, Herman the hell-cat of the hills.") "The Desert Song," with Lance Fairfax, and "The Merry Widow," with Gladys Moncrieff.
"Sally" was a waif working in a rich man's kitchen and the rich man's son falls madly in love with her. Before the happy ending becomes too obvious she sings this song which stayed top of the "top twenty" for nearly twelve months :-
        "Please don't be offended if I preach to you awhile.
        Tears are out of place in eyes that were meant to smile.
        There's a way to make your very biggest trouble small.
        Here's the happy secret of it all."
        Look for the silver lining,
        When ever a cloud appears in the blue.
        Remember somewhere the sun is shining
        And so the right thing to do,
        Is make it shine for you."
        "A heart full of joy and gladness
        Will always banish sorrow and strife.
        So always look for the silver lining
        And try to find the sunny side of life."
I can remember to this day little "Sally" (Josie Melville was the actress's name) in the centre of the stage singing that song, because, I suppose, it's philosophy just seemed to appeal to me. (I must have been down in the dumps at the time). I included it in one of our club shows two years ago - "The Good Old Days" - and it went over well.
Ken and I also became interested in straight plays and when Dion Boucicault and Irene Vanbrugh toured Australia in the twenties we sat through every one of their shows in the "Criterion's" balcony, but the Criterion presentation that intrigued us most was the first mystery play we saw - "The Ghost Train," with it's realistic sound effects. We were convinced that they had a real railway engine at the back of the stage. Following this show, mystery plays based on Edgar Wallace's "who dunnit" books became very popular and we missed very few of them. It was at the Criterion Theatre that I saw my first "naughty" play; it was called "White Cargo" and could have been the reason for the setting up of the Commonwealth Censorship Board. This scandalous (my Mother's description) play was set in the steamy hot African jungle and the plot rests on a tempestuous affair between the two main characters, a white hunter, played by Leon Gordon, and a sensuous, sultry half-naked dark lady named Tondaleo. By to-days standards, however, I suppose it could be acceptably played by fifth class students at Lane Cove Public School.
At about this time a well known Sydney bookmaker named Rufe Naylor decided to invest some of his ill-gotten gains in the entertainment industry, and he built the Empire Theatre near Sydney Central Railway Station. His first show was a muscial called "Sunny" which was voted A 1 by Ken and I when we viewed the opening night from the "upper circle." Not so long ago the old "Empire" was refurbished and became the new "Her Majestys" Theatre.
Ken Gilkes played first grade cricket for North Sydney with such famous cricketers as Bill O'Reilly and Austen Punch. Very humbly, I played Junior Cricket in the Northern Suburbs Association with a club called Ashley United conceived, spawned, captained and managed by Charlie Harris. But I sometimes acted as scorer (clerical only) for the North Sydney 1st. grade side. Ken and I also played competition tennis together, so it followed that for one of our annual holidays we planned a fortnight at the Hydro Majestic - it had two championship courts in the grounds overlooking the Megalong Valley. I remember my mother being very amused when she received a call from Ken's mother who was concerned that I might be leading Ken astray - it appeared that this was his first time away from home without his parents. As it turned out, we were both lead astray by a Miss Phyl Edwards who introduced us to the Hydro Majestic Super Cocktail "Morning Glory" at one and six a pop.
At the Hydro we teamed up with a wonderful group of people including Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Kellaway, 2 "A grade" tennis players. Charlie, of course, was the Australian allrounder who toured Great Britian with the same test side as Charlie Macartney. Another couple, Mr. and Mrs. O'Callaghan, were later to become neighbours and very close friends of our "in-laws", old Bill King and Judy.
On another occasion I acted as scorer for an Easter touring cricket team (including Ken) playing Mittagong, Bowral and Moss Vale, and finished up with a week at "The Knoll", Bundanoon, run by the then famous Ma Wilcox.
Ken and I once decided to sample all the reasonably priced luncheon restaurants between King Street and Circular Quay. I think we visited thirty without patronising the same one twice. Finally we settled on "Julie Rasborsaks" which was reached down a long passage-way in a Pitt Street building where Prouds now stands. From then on each mid-day we became two of a "world's problems solving" group presided over by Alan Kippax, another cricketer who represented Australia.
Later, in the mid 3Os, we occasionally patronised an eating spot in the basement of the Royal Exchange. It was called a "bistro", and was run by a delightful character named Johnnie Walker, (no relation of the famous whiskey purveyor) who was to become an identity in the city of Sydney.
In the mid 2Os, at the age of 21, "JK", as he was affectionately known, was running the Lord Roberts Hotel, on the corner of Stanley and Riley Streets in East Sydney, a very rough part of the town. There he connected the beer pipes to his wine casks and began serving 12 ounce beer glasses of red wine for fourpence a glass.
Ten years later we find him converting the old Royal Exchange wine cellars into his first bistro, buying one of the first expresso coffee machines and making up a small menu of spaghetti, salami and cheese, coffee and wine.
Lunching in those days, in the "posh" restaraunts like Romanos and Princes, was a very expensive and formal affair. There were white tablecloths, head waiters in tails, and you literally had to tip five pounds just to get a table - even though the restaurant might have been empty.
Johnnie Walker created a revolution. For a few shillings, a large bowl of superb spaghetti bolognaise, with crusty French bread and a glass of red wine, - and back at work in an hour; after a farewell smile from his hostess. the unforgetable Rita.
One of his problems in the early days had been the office girls. At sixpence per capuccino they'd sit for an hour over lunch taking the place of somebody who could have spent five to ten shillings. "JK" was forced to put the price of a cup of coffee up to ninepence. The secretaries disappeared and the businessmen became regulars.
I can remember well the first time I walked through the doors of his Royal Exchange Bistro. It opened up a new world for me. In the years that followed I was, on odd occasions, one of a legion of followers who savoured the delights of the bistro in Angel Place, and the Angus Steak Cave in Abercrombie Lane. Every meal was an experience to be relished and remembered.
Ken Gilkes, who has remained a good friend of mine all my life, later had a school-teacher son named Ian. It is a small world, they say, and I must agree for my grandchildren later became his pupils.
Pursuing my policy of having a go at everything and making myself indispensible, when any of the office staff were sick or on holidays, I volunteered to do their job. So it was that I became a temporary ledger-keeper, a temporary store wages clerk, a temporary catalogue clerk and a temporary produce clerk. I never got to becoming a temporary director or a temporary woolvaluer, but I tried hard for the latter by spending 3 years 2 nights a week at the East Sydney Technical College. Before I obtained my Wool Classers Certificate fate intervened in the shape of a "peter tickling" employee.
The Produce Department (it's full title was Station and Butchers Produce Dept.) was the "cinderella" of all woolbrokering firms and Schute Bell was no exception. It organised the disposal by auction of by-products such as sheepskins, hides, calfskins, tallow, horsehair, hooves, horns, as well as the skins of rabbits, kangaroo, wallaby, fox, water-rats, crocodiles and domestic cats, (feral).
One day (I was about 18 at the time) Mr. Moser, who was now the chairman, called me into his office and advised me that the senior clerk in the Produce Dept. had resigned (I discovered later that he had been found out dipping into the petty cash box). As his assistant was thinking of resigning also and as I'd had some temporary experience in the department, the directors had decided to give me two months trial in the job. Eldred Moser was an eccentric old batchelor who wore a panama straw hat and outlandish clothes and lived with a spinster sister named Mildred. They had a holiday cottage at 40 Sunrise Road, Palm Beach on Spinsters Hill, and often had groups of the office staff down there on week-ends, - I had been included in one such party in 1929.
Spinsters Hill, overlooking Palm Beach Golf Course, was the locals' name for Sunrise Hill; so called because, when the area was subdivided for sale, nearly all the blocks were bought by women. Eldred Moser bought his house from Dr. Lucy Gullett in 1917 and named it "Four Winds."
He was a foundation member of the Golf Club and President of the Surf Life Saving Club from 1933 to 1935; something I find hard to believe. Not by stretching my imagination to its limit could I picture Eldred Moser as a bronzed Aussie lifesaver. Mildred Moser kept a daily diary of events, written in a household note-book, which is a family treasure. In it there is a record of the roof blowing off in a storm in 1928, and the decision to re-name the house "Jeeda." It was inherited by Eldred's niece, Mrs. Bobbie McIlroy and since her death is still in the possession of the family.
When my 2 months trial was up I was permanently installed as "Manager"of the Station Produce Department and given a pound rise. I was now earning two pound twelve and sixpence per week and in effect in charge of the firm's unwanted child. (Herb Gibson was actually senior to me but he was only interested in the auctioneering.)
At this time there were ten wool and produce selling brokers operating at the Sydney Wool Exchange and we had the smallest station produce turnover of them all. I couldn't help regarding this as a challenge. One day while I was contemplating how to go about meeting this challenge, a fellow walked into my office and asked for a job. He was an out-o-work commercial traveller named Peter Howard; old enough to be my father but still fired with the enthusiasm of youth, which attracted me to him. Between us, during the next couple of weeks we concocted a plan to blitz the country butchers and skindealers. This plan I duly presented to the directors and much to my surprise my proposition, with a few modifications, was accepted. Peter Howard was engaged as a Produce Traveller ("traveller" meaning, one who solicits business) at three pounds a week plus a commission on the business he could influence. We bought him a twelve month all lines rail ticket and packed him off to the bush.
Two years later Schute Bell's skin sales in size compared very favourably with our strongest competitor, and the Produce Department's figures at certain times of the year made the Wool Department look like the "cinderella" department. Feeling a bit like Professor Higgins, for the first and only time in my life, I asked for a rise. As a result my salary was lifted to four pounds five, which was the current basic wage (I was just about to turn 21 anyhow).
The Produce Department projected me into a much wider field of commercial life. As well as the wool industry, I had to have some knowledge of such industries as tanning, hat manufacturing, furriers, soap manufacturing, exporting and industrial chemistry. It was just another case of being a "jack of all trades" and master of none, but nevertheless very stimulating; and at 21 I was only just starting. No one seemed to be envious of me when I got my new job. Nowadays the Mountain Street Produce Store would be condemned under the pollution laws - it's smell could be described as a cross between a tannery and a boiling down works - it was to prove to me the truth of the old Yorkshire saying "there's mooney in moock."
The success of Peter Howard prompted me to recommend the employment of another traveller to concentrate on the country butchers. Firstly we tried out a Mr. Rupert Milligen regrettably with less that moderate success. After Rupert resigned we engaged an ex-hide-merchant named Fred Somers and part of the deal was that he supplied his own car. Incidently, one of our wool travellers, Jack Ward, supplied his own horse and sulky, which were stabled at Bathurst.
I remember well a trip I did with Fred Somers when we called on, it seemed to me, all the butchers between Taree and the Queensland border. This was long before the time when large abattoirs despatched packaged meat by refrigerated transport to country super-markets. Then, every country town of any respectable size had at least one butcher who had a shop with a cool-room in town and a slaughter-house of sorts out in the bush where he "killed" his meat, salted his hides, dried his sheepskins, rendered down his tallow and stored his bones, hooves and horns. It was our job to see that these by-products were being prepared in a manner that would give him the highest return, and then convince him that Schute Bell and Company was the best selling-broker to do the job for him.
This was my first visit to the North Coast of New South Wales, and I still have a very clear picture in my mind of a day spent, amongst the flies at various slaughter-houses near Woolgoolga, Glenreagh, Dorrigo, Bellingen and Urunga, impressing on slaughter-men the advantages of punching off hides rather than cutting and then the careful application of the salt to preserve their good leather quality; the even stretching of sheepskins whilst drying, and the advantages of keeping impurities out of their tallow and the disadvantages of over cooking it.
That night we stayed at the Urunga Hotel, facing the sea, and before tea Fred and I walked out on the break-water into the evening "nor'-easter" just to get the smell of blood out of our lungs. The most vivid picture, of course, was next morning watching the sun rise out of the ocean.
Another early morning cameo that comes into focus is a picture of snow-capped Mount Kosciuski as seen from underneath an eiderdown on a verandah bed of a Corryong pub. With Pa Hill for company, I had made a P.R. trip visiting my Southern rabbitskin clients, which included Harry Duproy in Yass, John Mather in Tumbarumba and finally Alan Kerin in Corryong; in the beautiful Upper Murray Valley. The only accommodation available was a couple of beds on a wintery verandah facing a July sunrise. Hence our early morning sighting of Kosi.
At Schute Bells we got three weeks annual leave. When April-May came around each year I made a bee-line for "Wayholme", Moree, where my Aunty May and Uncle Charlie Spilsbury now lived. They had married in the early 1920's.
Charles Albert Spilsbury was one of natures gentlemen; a rough diamond (pure white) if ever there was one. At the age of 15 he became the family breadwinner when his father died or went walkabout (I was never sure which). To keep the wolf from his mother's door, which sheltered 3 (I think) younger sisters and brother Clyde, he worked as a station hand and drover. Henry Lawson could easily have had him in mind as he wrote "The Ballad of the Drover" which I use to recite at school :-
        "Across the stoney ridges, across the rolling plain,
        Young Harry Dale, the drover, comes riding home again.
        And well his stock-horse bears him, and light of heart is he,
        And stoutly his old pack-horse is trotting by his knee.
        Up Queensland way with cattle, he travelled regions vast;
        And many months have vanished, since home-folk saw him last.
        He hums a song of someone, he hopes to marry soon;
        And hobble-chains and camp-ware, keep jingling to the tune."
When I first met Charlie he was courting my Aunty May and he had just won a 5000 acre block in a land ballot. Five thousand acres of near virgin scrub country, subject to flooding, adjoining the Talmoi section of the New Zealand Land Company's "Midkin" Station - 30 miles north-west of Moree, it was watered by drains running from the Talmoi artesian bore. With the timber growing on the block, practically unaided, with his own bare hands, so to speak, he fenced it and built his wool-shed and home, which he called "Wayholme". I was to spend many enjoyable holidays at "Wayholme", some of them shared with Charlie Harris, Dick Pope and my young brother Trav (Short for Travers). I experienced about every seasonable condition possible - flush season, floods and drought; and I shared with the locals, the ecstasy of listening to rain on an iron roof at the end of a prolonged dry spell. During these holidays, as a city slicker, I got terrific enjoyment by helping with the fencing, the burning off, the mustering, the branding, the lamb-marking, the scrubcutting, the shearing, and best of all, the droving. On one holiday during a drought, those cattle still alive having been sold, Charlie took his sheep on the stock route into Queensland looking for feed, and I went with him - just the two of us with 2 dogs and 2 horses. At night we generally picked a water-hole (fed by a bore or government wind-mill) to keep the sheep together, hobbled the horses and made camp under a coolabah (or black-butt or wilga). It was during these nights by the campfire that I learnt Charlie's down to earth philosophy. Don't aim beyond your station - work hard for what you want - expect to get knocked down occasionally - but when you do get up, work a bit harder and remember what cannot be done to-day can just as easily be done to-morrow. I'm sure that on some nights I saw the ghost of Henry Lawson sitting in the shadows; for Charlie was surely a character from one of his poems.
Each day Charlie rode on ahead looking for grass and the next night's camp site and I was left with 3 to 4 thousand sheep and a dog to help me look after them - plenty of time for meditation in the saddle. Fortunately before my holiday was over it rained and we turned for home. I'd have felt very guilty leaving him on the road on his own; but no doubt he'd have managed.
In his typical country drawl, Charlie loved to chat about his experiences as a drover in his bachelor days, and many a yarn was spun around those camp-fires. Despite the fact that I suspected that there were occasions when he was pulling my "cityslickers" leg, I looked forward to that time each night when the last bit of salt meat was washed down by bore-drain tea and he was starting to roll the inevitable cigarette. One story comes to mind that I think bears repeating.
Charlie was bringing cattle out of the Territory into Queensland and one night he camped just outside a little "onepub" town many miles from anywhere; and for the moment I'm darned if I can remember its name.
On the day he rode into the town a funeral was in progress and Charlie was, to say the least, very amused at the form this funeral took. It appeared that the hard-drinking residents of this district had a unique way of carrying out the "ritual of the last rites."
When somebody died the locals from far and wide flocked into town and got to work. They'd dig a grave and fashion a coffin, generally from an old packing case. Next day they'd all congregate in the small church-cum-dance hall and someone would get up and say a few words and offer a few prayers. They'd then load the deceased into the back of a utility and, as the cemetry was only a hundred yards up the road, they'd all adjourn to the pub and the ute would do a lap of the town. Each time it passed the pub the mourners would leave the bar and stand, bare-headed and with hands on heart, on the pub verandah.
This would go on until nobody bothered to come out. Then the driver and his mate would take the dear departed to the cemetry, slide him in, fill the grave and quickly rejoin the other mourners at the pub.
Your standing in the community was measured by the number of laps you got. A real popular bloke could score ten laps; but if you'd been a "proper bastard" it was a case of - WHOOSH! - out of the church and straight into the cemetry.
Charlie got the impression that the fellow, whose funeral was taking place during his visit there, must have been a fairly popular bloke, because six times he, Charlie, had to carry his partially consumed beer out onto the pub verandah.
Charlie's brother, Clyde, was a butcher in the town of Moree. He had a little shop with fly-screen doors and windows, a cool room and saw-dust on the floor, He also had a small slaughter-house a mile outside the town where he killed his meat. As a city slicker, I'd heard the word "pole-axe" used and remembered it, I suppose, because it rolled easily off the tongue; but it wasn't until I helped Clyde one day at his "abattoir" that I learnt what it was and what it was used for. Clyde's "abattoir", like most country town abattoirs, had an enclosure into which the bullock was driven and locked. Above the enclosure was a plank on which the slaughterman stood armed with the "pole-axe," which he drove into the beasts head. Death was instantaneous. It was rather a shocking experience for me at the time. I suppose I was being educated. During my career I was to see many more cattle slaughtered but the methods were to become far more scientific and humane.
My amusements at "Wayholme" were confined to kangaroo shooting (I made a beautful rug for my verandah bed), wild pig hunting (I never came home without a sucker for the table), many games of cribbage with my Grand-pa de Witt and visits to their nearest neighbours, 2 miles away - the Arthur Coppocks. Ted Coppock was my age and we became great friends - once a year. Sad to say he was killed by a German bullet during the A. I. F. withdrawal from Greece in the 1940's.
Naturally Schute Bell and Company handled the CAS/WAYHOLME woolclip, but it was many years later before I personally did the selling of it.
Our first visitor to 22 Newark Crescent was the Reverend Leslie McDonald, Rector of St. Albans, Lindfield. He was one of the few parsons I took a liking to, and I think it was because he had a sense of humour. He had recently conducted a scripture exam at the public school and was very amused with an answer he received to a question on Christian marital conditions. "Christians," one little girl had said, "are only allowed one wife, they call it monotony."
I started attending St. Albans Sunday School, and being taught a lot of things that puzzled me very much. How could anyone, no matter how omnipotent He might be, construct the whole world in six days? - you only had to calculate the time it took for a seed to germinate and grow into a tree, to know that a six day world would be impossible, (the first clash of evolutionism verses creationism) - and again - how on earth could anyone feed a multitude with only a couple of loaves of bread and a fish? - or was it in reverse? If this fellow God, I thought, was allpowerful and watched over everyone, how come He allowed those poor little children in India and Abyssinia to starve to death? I decided to believe in God with reservations. To me it seemed that God's laws could only be effective if they were accepted in conjunction with the laws of Mother Nature who said the strong shall survive, and the weak, if unaided, will surely fall by the wayside, and whose displays of power such as earthquakes, typhoons and those American "twisters" and Darwin "tracys" just cannot be ignored. After all it takes all sorts to make a world, and sometimes "might" just could be "right."
Having been baptised into the Church of England, I went through the ritual of confirmation and in later years actually became a church-warden, but this didn't mean I had become a religious person. On the contrary I believed that the world would be a better place without any religion. Had this been the case there never would have been, a Spanish Inquisition, the slaughter of the Huguenots, burnings at the stake, horrifying religious wars and riots, Belfast murders or Belsen death ovens, etc. etc. If I have a religion at all, it has to be "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Although I was never a Boy Scout, I have to agree with their founder, when he declared to his boys:- "That man should serve God, act in consideration of others and develop and use his abilities to the betterment of himself, his family and the community in which he lives."
When I succumbed to the solicitations of the Reverend McDonald and chose St. Albans as my Sunday School, I felt as though I'd backed a loser. All my friends went to the Methodist Sunday School and I soon found out that they had a much better social life than we did and their Sunday School picnics were ever so much more interesting than ours.
A popular spot for Sunday School picnics in those days was Fairyland Pleasure Grounds on the western bank of the Lane Cove River, about two miles up from Figtree Bridge.
I can remember, as a nine-year-old and a pupil of Roseville's St.Andrews Anglican Sunday School being taken to this delightful spot, a grassy flat with a fringe of she-oaks. It had once been one of the many orchard farms that flourished, during the 18OOs, on and near to the banks of the Lane Cove River.
At the time of that picnic "Fairyland" and the Upper Lane Cove River was still being serviced by two steam ferries, the "Native Rose" and the "Nellie," whose skippers used to nurse them as far up as Killara Wharf; better known as Fiddens Wharf. In the very early days of the colony the river was the "North Shore Line" of the "Land Across the Water."
The best known of the orchard families was the Jenkins, who farmed till 1938 and at one time boasted an orchard of 7OO trees. One of the industrial chemists I was to work with in later years, at Paint Industries Pty. Ltd., was Peter Jenkins, a grandson (or grand nephew) of the Lane Cove River family.
By the 192Os the ferry service had ceased to operate, so that the Lindfield St.Albans Sunday School picnicers had to travel by a decrepid old bus, with solid rubber tyres, over the new Fullers Bridge, built in 1918, to the top of the hill behind "Fairyland," and scramble down a rough zig-zag path. After a heavy afternoon of wheel-barrow races, sack races, etc., lamingtons, toffee apples and ginger beer, the climb back was, to say the least, exhausting.
In 1938 a weir was built across the river opposite Jenkins farm and a large area of bushland above the weir became the Lane Cove National Park. Now, on the upper eaches of the Lane Cove River, instead of the "S S Nellie," a paddle-boat carries tourists past delightful grassy picnic spots where row-boaters, canoeists, and ducks abound.
Behind our place at Lindfield lived another man of the cloth, the Reverend Ferguson, a Presbyterian clergyman who was also a wealthy man; something that puzzled me greatly. I imagined up till then that all parsons were poor and penniless and childless, like the monks. The Fergusons had a family (Ian, the eldest, was a bit younger than me) and they lived in a grand house set in the middle of about two acres of professionally landscaped gardens, a tennis court, a circular drive with a car to match, and a tradesmens entrance. The mystery was solved for me when I learnt that Mrs. Ferguson was the daughter of Robert Fowler whose pottery produced glazed stoneware jars, earthenware pipes, tiles, laundry tubs, bricks and crockery; but it became best known for the famous Fowler flushing lavatory cistern. As Sydney's sewerage system expanded in the late 19th. century, so did the profits of the Fowler pottery and the fortunes of Robert Fowler, - and the Reverend and Mrs. Ferguson.
Recently a permanent conservation order was placed on an Italianate villa, named "Cranbrook", built in 1879 in Australia Street, Camperdown, for Robert Fowler Esquire. This was the birthplace of our neighbour, Mrs. Ferguson, and it is now classified by the National Trust.
On 31st May, 1923 my Grandpa Shorter died. He looked like a larger edition of King George the Fifth, except that his eyes were forever sparkling, whereas the King always looked sad. When I was with my Grandpa things were always merry and bright. I remember seeing a photo of him (and I wish I had it now) taken just before he went off to a fancy-dress ball dressed as "Chidley." Chidley was an odd character who wandered about the city streets dressed in the clothes he advocated all Australian men should wear, - a safari jacket and shorts, made in "tussau" silk, plus sandals. He was a dress reformer living 50 years before his time.
Grandmother Shorter lived at Wentworhtville with my Uncle Sid and Aunty May and their tribe of eleven kids; the "pill" had not been invented then and the "birth control" works of Doctor Marie Stopes I'm afraid never graced the shelves of Uncle Sid's library. I didn't see much of my eleven cousins because my mother strongly disapproved of the way my father was periodically and alcoholically led astray by his younger brother; consequently she did not encourage family visitations. I don't think she admired Uncle Sid's breeding habits either. However, looking back now I have to admire him for the way he looked after Grandmother Shorter, firebrand that she reputedly was, during the declining years of her life.
Grandpa Shorter, on the other hand, lived half his time at the Commercial Travellers Club, and the other half, in an apartment in a terrace house in Elizabeth Street, Sydney, before Martin Place (then Moore Street) was pushed through to Macquarie Street. The house would have stood where Nicholas Whitlam's new State Bank building stands to-day. The apartment was owned, or rented, by a lovely lady called "Em", who showered us kids with presents of "Mary Pumpkin" confectionery whenever she saw us. She was the "Baby-wear buyer for David Jones. I think my mother turned a blind eye to the shame of having a father-in-law who took unto himself a mistress, because she (my mother) was very fond of Grandpa Shorter, and he, in turn, was very fond of her. In fact he was very fond of all pretty girls; and my mother was indeed a pretty girl. Grandpa Shorter was a typical old time commercial traveller, despite the fact that he had never read "The Psychology of Selling" etc. etc. He was James Watson and Company's number one metropolitan sales representative and each Saturday Morning held court with his favourite customers in the "sample room" of their city office, where, on a number of occasions I can remember being proudly displayed as "the eldest son of my eldest son". After which I was enthusiastically toasted in "No.10" scotch whiskey, the best scotch in Sydney town.
On the night that he died I sobbed myself to sleep in my bed on the verandah at 22 Newark Crescent.
        And Speaking of verandahs!
How many homes are built these days with verandahs? Sun-rooms, yes, but verandahs, no.
How many children breath, as they sleep, as I did, the pure night air that wafts around them on an open verandah.
        And its origin?
The first primitive wattle dwellings of the first fleeters were followed by sandstone masonry homes, built in the English style - two-storey square buildings with no protection to doors or windows. These did not suit the hot Australian summers so balconies and verandahs became part of the local architecture. However another unsung benefit not usually associated with the verandah lay in the proliferation of large families in our colonial days and the lack of bed-room accommodation for them all. The verandah became a dormitory and, on wet days a playground.
As the eldest of the family, I was relegated very early to a bed on the verandah from where, in feather-mattress comfort, I have memories of watching shooting stars, vivid lightning and sunrises, and hearing the predawn crowing of roosters and the warbling of mag-pies.
At one time, an early morning walk down a city suburban street would reveal dozens of verandah sleepers, many only a few yards from the foot-path. In these days of thuggery and rape, who now would take that chance! So for that reason, together with the tendency to much smaller families and to air-conditioning, plus building costs, the humble verandah has been largely eliminated from Australian architecture.
Sleeping on an open verandah had one drawback. They were about one centimetre long, had four wings and six legs and they buzzed. When they bit you, itchy lumps appeared on your skin.
Pressure-pack insect repellants hadn't been invented in those days, so, to avoid giving the hungry mosquitos a feast of your good blood while you slept, in season, mosquito nets were hung over all beds, and the atmosphere remained unpolluted and D.D.T. free. It is sixty years since I slept under a mosquito net!.
        Because my Father was an "outside" man he invariably
had a car as a "fringe benefit." One such car was a "Buick" tourer with a camping body. That meant the back of the front seat dropped down to form a double-size bed. We had as well an auto tent and sundry items of camping gear. On holiday weekends when the weather was good we would shoot off to the country and camp in spots like Upper Burragorang and the Megalong Valley. I well remember a visit to Aunty Tot Hill entailing a road trip to Newcastle long before the Hawkesbury Bridge was built at Kangaroo Point. We went via Wisemans Ferry and the Mangrove Mountain Road and camped near Catherine Hill Bay. If we'd wanted to we could have made the trip in one day, but only just. It was a rough dirt road all the way. We spent the second day in Newcastle and the third travelling home.
Another memorable camping trip during a Christmas - New Year break, was our first call on the Young family at Bamarang. We had camped in Kangaroo Valley the first night and noticed on our tourist map a third class road skirting the south bank of the Shoalhaven River, west of Nowra. Next day after visiting Cambewarra Lookout we made a bee-line for the Shoalhaven and found Bamarang; a dairy farm run by Laddie (Harold) Esther and Grace Young - all elderley un-marrieds - their mother was still living with them at this time. They lived in a wooden verticalslab farm-house that was papered with 1870 Sydney Morning Heralds. This hospitable family allowed us to camp on their property on a lovely grassy river bank under whispering she-oaks, and welcomed us back with our friends for many other Christmas and Easter holidays. The Pope family, Charlie Harris, Keith Hopkins, Jack Vallender and Newell Shead all shared this delightful spot with us on different occasions.
Across the river was the Mackenzie farm with its twostorey home "Bundanon," built by Doctor Kenneth Mackenzie in 1866. Just a few months prior to our first visit, Ken Mackenzie (the Doctors grandson) and his 12 year old daughter were accidently drowned in the river. "Bundanon" is now a National Trust building owned by Mr. Arthur Boyd, the celebrated painter, who has fully renovated the building and property.
This idyllic spot as a camping site had one drawback, the cows were too friendly and persisted in walking under our hammocks (while we were in them), whilst two Jersey bulls made life interesting snorting at one another most of the night. But I suppose one cannot have everything - after all there was a lovely sandy beach to swim from, cockney bream and perch to catch, rabbits to trap, picturesque walks to take and a very interesting country family to entertain us.
In addition to camping at Bamarang, I spent two of my annual holidays as a guest of the Young family. One of these holidays was shared with a friend of the Youngs, Robin Biddulph; a member of a family who had been their neighbours, but were now living in Bega, Several generations back the Biddulph family had pioneered the Shoalhaven Valley; their original home, "Eeree" like "Bundanon", is also under the protection of the National Trust.
Away back in 1857, Tregenna and Bella Biddulph were married in Taunton, in Somerset, and soon after they migrated to Australia, settling in the Shoalhaven district; an area opened up 3O years earlier by Alexander Berry and Edward Wollstonecraft, who, by the 185Os, held 64OOO acres and employed 15OO men.
Tregenna's cousin Rachel Henning who lived in Sydney, in 1862, visited the "Shoalhaven" Biddulphs. It was no comfortable car ride down the Princes Highway for Rachel; instead, a hairraising trip by sea from Sydney to the mouth of the Shoalhaven River, where, because of the sand-bank, she was transhipped to a river steamer, that chugged up to Nowra, where she faced a 25 mile journey on horse-back. Three days to get there and three days to get back to Sydney.
As a rower and a keen fisherman, Robin Biddulph made my Bamarang holiday doubly enjoyable. It needed two to catch the lovely fresh-water perch that lurked under the shady banks of the Shoalhaven River, one to guide the boat, the other to cast the spinners in-shore. This was one of my few successful fishing experiences. We never came home without a feed.
Strange to relate, prior to this particular holiday, I used to play Junior Cricket with a Reg Biddulph, a member of the legal branch of the family.
Not all camping trips were successful. I can remember one Good Friday night being literally flooded out by Easter cyclonic rains when we camped at Robertson. We were still drying out at home a week later.
In 1927, as a naval reservist, I did my first compulsory 17 days continuous training on board "H.M.A.S. Sydney". We messed with the regular crew and were fed like fighting cocks, but table manners were definitely not on the curriculum. We never left our mooring in Sydney Harbour and I spent most of my days swinging in a bosuns chair painting the side of the ship.
Next year I was assigned to the torpedo-boat destroyer "H.M.A.S. Swordsman" which also stayed put off Potts Point. By now I was A. B. Shorter, (Torpedoman 3rd. Class). On the "Swordsman" I learnt how to service and fire a torpedo, and how to eat, work, sleep and generally live inside a match-box.
In 1929 I spent my 17 days aboard the mine-sweepersloop "H.M.A.S. Marguerite", and this time we up'd anchor and set sail for Broken Bay. By the time we reached Sydney Heads eighty per cent of the crew had turned green, which meant that the remaining twenty per cent (including myself) did all the work and so were too busy to get sick. Incidently the ship was ninety per cent manned by reservists. We dropped anchor off Brooklyn in the Hawkesbury River and the locals immediately organised a civic reception for the crew, which included the cricket match I shall never forget. "Marguerite's" team was dressed in their bell bottom white ducks. Brooklyn did the right thing by donning their cream flannels and cricket caps. On the village green by Hawkesbury waters, they batted first and scored a little over a hundred. Our skipper was a chap named Jack Fingleton who opened the batting and, despite the handicap of bell bottomed ducks, was still at the crease when mullet started hopping as the sun went down. He was, of course, later to become one of Australia's opening batsmen.
Our next port of call was the Royal Australian Naval College at Jervis Bay. During the trip down the coast we had depth-charge practice. The cook couldn't bear seeing so many stunned fish going to waste in the sea, so a boat was lowered to pick up the evening meal - and, as usual, yours truly copped boat crew duty.
After this seventeen days tour of duty I weighed the heaviest I'd ever been, or was to be, eleven stone and seven pounds.
I had my 21st. birthday on 2nd July, 1929, but it wasn't a very joyful occasion. Things were starting to go very bad with the family fortunes. My father had left the British Traders Insurance Company to take on the managership of the Australian branch of a New Zealand insurance company, - Mercantile and General. It could not have been a worse time to change jobs, - with the great depression looming on the horizon. The Mercantile and General only lasted a couple of years and my father became one of the many unemployed.
My parents did not make a habit of taking me totally into their confidence, but I imagine what happened was that mortgage payments could not be met and we lost the house; because early in 1930 we were living in a flat at Hepburn Court, Lavender Bay, owned by John Park from whom we had bought the Lindfield house.
One of my father's ventures in an effort to keep the wolf from the door during the depression, was a gold mining syndicate which included a mining-surveyor friend, Norman Bennett. They had the lease of a mine at Nerrigundah, in the hills west of Bodalla on the South Coast, which actually produced gold (I held in my hands ingots which to-day would have been worth a fortune, but then could little more than cover expenses.) From a top floor flat overlooking Lavender Bay I started living out the Depression watching the two arms of the Sydney Harbour Bridge come together.
When I think about that time of my life - my 21st. birthday and the birth of the great depression - I am reminded of the horrifying shock I received when I first realised that my Mother had ceased to "love, honour and obey" - and to respect - my poor Father. During a fit of the "blues", she dropped her guard and voiced her dismay that her husband was content to allow his children to carry the burden of "bread-winning" for the family.
It was an incident that disturbed me greatly at the time, and it all sprang from a casual remark that my Father made at the breakfast table. He was the sort of person who always saw a silver lining in the darkest cloud, and his comment was that we were better off than some; at least one in our family had a job - me. He was right, you know, - we knew several families who were one hundred per cent unemployed.
I knew that he, poor fellow, was trying his hardest, but it was a year or so before he obtained a clerical job with the Manufactures Mutual Insurance Company and so regained some of his self-esteem. But the hopelessness and dispair of those months of idleness left its mark, not only on him, but also on my Mother - hence her outburst - and also on me. Our characters,our ambitions, our very natures were detrimentally changed by conditions over which we had no control.
For the rest of our lives we were to carry subconsciously that awful fear of insecurity. If I am ultraconservative now; if, in later years I showed a lack of initiative, a reluctance to "have a go," it can all be ascribed to the scars left by those dreadful years.
I often wonder now what sort of person I'd be to-day if my 21st. birthday had been celebrated on the 2nd. of July, 1949, instead of the 2nd. of July, 1929. To start with I'd be writing to a different lot of grand-children; - and I just wouldn't like that at all. Neither would you. - I hope.
        from your loving,
d Pa.
        Chapter Three
        1930-1934
        Lane Cove.
29th March, 1985. My dear children,
So now we're in the thirties. Before they claim my attention let's look back awhile at the previous decade.
During the "Roaring Twenties" I watched the "Charleston" and "Black-bottom" craze come and go, - had my first bet on "Phar Lap" (Siamese for lightning) and won, - watched "Boy" Charlton training in Manly Baths, just before he beat the Swedish champion, Arne Borg, - watched thousands of bales of wool go up in smoke one morning in 1921 (for some strange reason the P.F.A. had built a wharf and wool-store on the waterfront at Kirribilli; it made a great bonfire to watch as I dawdled to school). Little did I know then that 30 years later I would be selling wool-clips with the same brands as those burning before my eyes; - and that Mr. Andrew Charlton would become a wool client.
During the "Roaring Twenties" I watched, from Bradleys Head, H.M.S. Renown bring the Prince of Wales through Sydney Heads, - I quaffed ice-cream sodas at the "Golden Gate" after the Head of the River races, - I watched bodies from the ill-fated "Greycliffe" being landed at Circular Quay, - I watched Nellie Melba parade up Pitt Street on the first of many farewell tours, - I listened to Billy Hughes' fierce rhetoric before Stanley Melbourne Bruce pinched the Prime Ministership from him, - I watched Beryl Mills, the first Miss Australia, parade through the city, - I watched Don Bradman score one of his early centuries at the Sydney Cricket Ground, and I watched Charles Kingsford-Smith fly over Sydney in his beloved "Old Bus", the Southern Cross, after his first Pacific crossing. Of such events is history made.
As I push my trolley around a 1985 supermarket buying all our wants under the one roof, I cannot help thinking about how we went about our shopping in the 1920s. We bought our meat from Mr. J. Hammond, the butcher, on Gordon Road, Roseville - (he had an abattoir in the bush somewhere, but I never found it). However, there was one exception to this practice. When my mother cooked for a special dinner party, my father always bought the meat from "Grubbs," a high class butcher whose shop stood in George Street North close to where the Regent Hotel now stands. We kids used to joke about eating meat from a "grub". Bembrick and Parker of Lindfield were our grocers, where biscuits were kept in large tins labelled with a "cocky" pictured nibbling one of Arnotts Famous Biscuits. It was a "SAO," which stands for Salvation Army Officer. A very thin member of the Arnott family was a captain in the "Army" which accounts for one of their other soda biscuits being called "Thin Captain." Sugar was ladled out of a "C S R" hessian bag and weighed on scales on the counter, as was plain flour, after we'd bought a tin of baking powder to make it rise. Our fruit and vegetables were generally bought from the Chinamens garden in Clanville Road, Roseville. Butter, bacon and eggs came from the Ham and Beef Shop (now called a delicatessen). Gartrells, the baker and pastrycook, delivered daily, as did the milkman who had a herd of cows not far away. Mr. Sinclair was the Lindfield Chemist who dispensed paramedical advice, whilst Mr. J. W. Davies supplied our stationery and newspaper wants. If we needed some screws or a garden fork they were bought from Mr. J. W. Nunn whose ironmongers shop was situated on the corner of Bent Street. Whitchells, the drapers and haberdashers of Chatswood, was my mothers favourite shop for dress materials, cottons, knitting wools etc., whilst Gowings, in the city, made "to measure" the suits worn by the Shorter males. Footwear was never thrown away until it had been half-soled and heeled" at least three times.
So you can see in those days we weren't troubled by "Storemen and Packers" strikes emptying the supermarket shelves. Instead of being an everyday way of life, strikes in those days were a historical event; a miner was actually shot by the police at Rothbury during a strike riot in 1927. Instead of the A.C.T.U. we had the I.W.W. - International Workers of the World, or more commonly known as the "I Wont Works."
Again as I watch my 1985 neighbours fill their shopping bags with frozen lasagnes, pizzas and quiches; Chinese take-away food, Kentucky fried chicken, and skewered lamb kebabs; Sara Lees apple or cherry Danish and frozen cheese cakes, I cannot help wondering whatever happened to those dishes of the 1920s. Good old Irish stew, corned beef and carrots, boiled mutton and caper sauce, pea soup and snippets, tripe and onions, Shepherds pie, suet dumplings, blancmange (out of a mould), lemon sago bread and butter custard with those juicy sultanas at the botton; and that lovely baked milk rice pudding with the rich creamy brown skin on top; but enough of gastronomical reminiscence.
Back in the days when I was an early twenty, it was the custom for the girls to organise parties to attend the many charity dances held on the North Shore. In June 1933 (I think), Audrey Birks, who was currently receiving some special attention from a chap named Norman Day, invited me to make up the number in a party she was taking to a dance at the "Shore Tea Rooms" at North Sydney. Had I declined this invitation you might have had a "Mary-ma", or an "Ann-ma" or even an "Elizabeth-ma", instead of a "Jean-ma." As it was I accepted and had my second meeting with Audrey's "best friend." This time she definitely made an impression. Apart from being 4 or 5 years older than when I last saw her, she was a "good looka", intelligent, and had a sense of humour; besides she played a good game of tennis and was a super dancer. In fact she was very attractive company. What more could a young man ask for? During the evening a fox-trot competition was held, not a "winner out of the hat" event, one properly judged by a panel of experts. One by one the pairs were eliminated, until only one couple remained. You've guessed it, - Miss Jean Hill and Mr. Rus Shorter. After that Audrey ceased playing her role as "Cupid" and I started pressing my own suit.
In those days, to be socially acceptable, one had to be reasonably proficient performing the fox-trot, the one-step, the waltz, the rhumba and so on, and you had plenty of opportunity to demonstrate your talents because there were many venues dispensing the dance music of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, such as the "Palais Royal" with Jimmy Davidson's Band, David Jones Ballroom, "The Ambassadors" in the Strand, Farmers Blaxland Galleries, and later the famous "Trocadero," whose ten piece band was under the baton of Frank Coughlan, the man who "knew everybody's favourite tune," It was a sad day for Frank and his followers when the "Troc" was demolished to make way for the Hoyts Theatre complex. On the 3rd. April 1984, the 48th. anniversary of the "Troc's" opening in 1936, a new "Trocadero" opened in Military Road, Cremorne, catering for a new generation of fox-trotters and one-steppers.
Jeanma's mother had suffered a stroke early in her married life and, following a later relapse, was given a life expectancy of a few months. Jeanma's High School career, consequently, was cut short when she came home to nurse her mother, who miraculously rallied and turned a "few months" into eleven years.
Mrs. Hill loved company, and a game of Mah Jong; and she was an addict of penny poker. So it came to pass that each Wednesday night a poker game was organised in the back parlour at Gamma Road, Lane Cove, to which I got myself invited. There I matched my poker wits against those of Henry Hill, one of my rivals, George Durham, Doss Kersey, Nell Richarson and, of course Olive Hill. I'd been told that the shortest way to a girls heart was through her mum's. You must have seen that girl on the television screen, telling everyone that - "she can do without her motor car, she can do without her boy-friend; but she just cannot do without her Mum." ("Mum" being a popular de-oderant)
Having made "my marble good," I then proceeded to "blot my copy book" by leading their dear little Jean astray when I lent her a book written by John Galsworthy called "The Forsythe Saga," which had as one of it's main characters, a hussy named Irene. A woman who actually had an affair with a man who wasn't her husband. How thankful I was that Germain Greer hadn't started writing books by then. I might have ended up being thrown out of the Hill house lock, stock and barrel, and "The Female Enuch" thrown after me.
When you fly over Sydney's suburbs nowadays the most noticeable features of the scene below are the red rooves and blue swimming pools. In the twenties and thirties instead of blue swimming pools you would have seen yellow clay tennis courts; - that is, if you'd been a joyrider taking a Sunday afternoon flip in a Gypsy Moth, at a pound a flight. On hundreds of these back-yard courts, tennis clubs were run and they competed in the various district hard-court competitions each year. These were the halcyon days of tennis. No wonder the following decades produced so many Australian world champions. A contemporary named Jack Crawford played at Killara Tennis Club & in 1933 won the coveted "Wimbledon" singles.
I belonged to one of these back-yard clubs in Roseville, the Narara Tennis Club, - and one year, with Frank and Marie Cooper and Mimi Hicks, I actually reached the final of the Northern Suburbs "C" grade Mixed Competition. The Archbold boys, Gordon and Stan, Charlie Harris, Bonny Orton, Bill and Enid Lemon and Alf Holmes were also members at Narara. (Wilson's tennis court in Narara Avenue, Roseville.) The following year, with Jeanma, Ruth Burley and Ken Gilkes, I played in the "B" grade without achieving anything spectacular
It is interesting to note that these tennis matches were played on courts situated anywhere within an area bounded by Lindfield and Newport in the north, Sydney Harbour in the South, Manly in the East and Lane Cove River in the West; and no one in the team had a car; yet we always managed to get there on time by public transport and "shanks pony", and thought nothing of it.
Later Jeanma and I joined Chatswood Tennis Club, (four courts where the Bowling Club's No. 3 green and car-park are now situated) where we teamed up with Lorna and John Martin, brother of Bobby Martin with whom we were to become close friends after we were married. Chatswood Tennis Club was the centre of our social life for a number of years. As well as tennis we became involved in many club dances and card evenings, and other social functions with people like Thelma and "Oky" O'Connor, the Deluceys, and Secretary "Father" Green and his delightful French wife.
I suppose the highlight of my stay at Chatswood was when I was given two promising juniors (12 year olds) to play nurse-maid to - Mary Bevis (later Hawton) and Bruce Small. With them we won the 1938 "B Reserve" Mixed Fours (Northern Suburbs). Unfortunately I didn't have Jean-ma as my partner in this team, - she had been promoted with Dot Travis, Rawdon Miller and Fred Cook, to the "A" grade and had made a name for herself when a sports jourmalist wrote her up as "Biff" Hill. Mary Bevis later played in the State Junior side and was a junior contemporary of John Newcombe, whose parents later became our Square Dancing and Bowling Club friends.
My Grandpa de Witt was a very keen freemason, and my father although not quite so keen, had been initiated in Lodge Corinthian by his father. So it's not surprising that I found myself, on 28th. January 1930, being initiated into Lodge Corinthian No. 100 by my father with my grandfather proudly looking on. Grandpa de Witt took me under his wing and coached me in all the things a freemason is supposed to do, including standing up in front of a lot of people proposing toasts and responding etc. etc. I sadly recollect that he died 8 months before I was installed as Master of the Lodge in June 1939 when I'm sure he would have been quite satisfied with the results of his handiwork.
Edward James de Witt died on 22nd. October 1938, in Moree, at the age of 80, and the editor of the "North West Champion" really let his head go when he sat down to write Grandpa's obituary. I was a beneficiary under his will to the extent of the machine on which I am typing this letter, and two blocks of land in the "City of Port Stephens" Estate (just near the proposed Central Railway Station of Henry F. Halloran's dream city). Until just recently the Estate comprised acres of coastal ti-tree scrubland, - it now boasts a number of holiday cottages, - maybe sometime in the 21st. century the 2 blocks will become saleable, - no wonder we called them "Grandpa's Folly."
My life at Schute Bell, during this decade, was uneventful except that, to hold our jobs, we had to accept a ten percent cut in salary. This was common practice in private industry during the depression years. If it could be done now there would be less unemployed. In those days you had to work for the dole, generally on projects beneficial to the community such as establishment of parks, laying down of foot-paths etc. Outside Hill's house Gamma Road was re-levelled and surfaced by a gang including out-of-work professional men who were on the dole. There was no chance of anyone receiving the dole then, and spending their days on a surf-board at Noosa Heads or Moonee Beach.
One day I was summoned to the office of our Chairman of Directors, Mr. Eldred Moser. I was told to sit down, and I thought of all the things I'd done wrong. Eldred, looking over the top of his glasses, said, "Shorter, do you own a dinnersuit?" To which I proudly replied, "Yes, Sir," thinking, if he knew I was a Freemason he'd know I had a dinner-suit.
Eldred went on to tell me that he'd received a letter from a grazier client, Mr. Reg Shepherd, (Stuttering Reg) of Wheeo, Crookwell. It appeared that Mr. Shepherd's daughter, Una, was going to be presented to the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester at a Debutantes Ball at the Sydney Town Hall, but Una didn't have an escort. Eldred looked at me over his glasses again. "Shorter," he said, "would you like to be that escort, - all expenses paid?"
My first thought was:- "How was Miss Jean Olive Hill going to re-act to this?" Then my next thought was :- "Well after all it was my boss who was asking me and when all is said and done, business is business, - my very career might be at stake." So I said, "If it is your wish, sir, that I escort Miss Una Shepherd to this Ball, I will be pleased to do so."
So it was that I had my first and only contact with the Royal Family of England. (the Royal Family of Persia came later)
Col Marr's father, Sir Charles, escorted the Duke of Gloucester during the Duke's first tour of Australia, thus earning his knighthood. The two corresponded a lot after the tour ended. Charlie used to show us the Duke's letters, and I remember thinking what a poor grip of the King's English the Duke had and what a lousy speller he was, not to mention that his hand-writing looked like that of a ten year old.
While I was at High School our English Master, Mr. Greentree, made us carry a note-book in our pockets and when we came across a word we didn't know the meaning of, we had to write it down with the dictionary definition alongside it. Competition was keen within the class to produce the most exotic words for discussion. My "piece de resistance" was "tintinabulation" meaning "a tinkling sound, as of bells." I had to wait over ten years before I got the opportunity of airing my vocabularic masterpiece, when I used that word to describe the dulcet notes of the bell birds I encountered during a canoe trip through the gorges and gullies of the Upper Shoalhaven River, in December 1933.
This trip was the first of many travelling-camping holidays I undertook during the 1930's.
I joined forces with a chap I'd met on the Bamarang farm, Bill Allen, who was employed by the Young family. I had built a wooden and canvas-covered canoe, - 12 feet long - the "Naiad" - in the back-yard at Turramurra from a plan I's seen in a copy of the "Boys Own Paper," - my Wenborn cousins, Clem, Ivo, Bruce, Owen and Geoff, living opposite were building a launch at the same time.
After manhandling all our camping gear down the mountain at Tallong, Bill and I put the canoe in the river at Badgery's Crossing, and spent two glorious weeks rapid shooting and paddling back to Bamarang; not without some duckings but no broken bones or other physical damage. We lived mainly off the land; that is, on braised rabbit and wallaby, fried fish, stewed parrot and mutton; - yes, mutton. (A frightened long-tailed sheep with 2 or 3 years wool on it, fell off a precipice and we had to put it out of its misery). We had intended finishing the trip where th Shoalhaven meets the sea, but the river went into a high flood while we were at Bamarang, so I took the canoe back to Sydney by train.
I wrote a full page article on the trip which was accepted by the "Sunday News" magazine section and I received seven pounds ten shillings for it. I still have two copies of that full page. Before we left on the trip "Cinesound News" had agreed to accept any movies we made with our own equipment but movie cameras were just a bit beyond the reach of our pockets, so I failed in my first and only attempt to become a movie star.
I have been writing these letters in a rather rambling and un-orderly fashion, relying entirely on my memory, which, if I may say so, isn't too bad; except for events that happened yesterday. However, I would have liked to have had the time to spend on research, and thus substantiate some of my recollections. Take for example transport. There must be lots of books written on how early Sydnians moved from place to place. Nowadays we hop in the car, or a public bus which is never far away, or, if its Melbourne we want to go to, a plane that gets us there in an hour or two; not so in the roaring 20s.
Whilst I was living in Newcastle I remember one day going on a picnic with Herb and Allie Hill to Mount Sugarloaf, near West Wallsend. Surrounded by virgin bush, "Mount" Sugarloaf was actually a large hill with a cluster of very large cubeshaped rocks at the peak, hence the name. However, the significant part of this picnic (of cheese sandwiches, Arnotts broken bisciuts and Marchants lemonade) was that we travelled to West Wallsend in a steam tram. At that time the transport authorities were just starting to electrify the Newcastle trams.
Sydney also still had some steam trams. When the family holidayed at Cronulla we travelled by steam train to Milsons Point, then by steam ferry to Circular Quay, electric tram to Central Station, steam train to Sutherland, and finally by steam tram to Cronulla. It generally took up the best part of a whole day.
I have another faint recollection of my first visit to Parramatta by public transport. My Mother and I embarked at Circular Quay on the Parramatta River ferry, and disem