From Early Years

November 21, 2015

Chapter 3: Family matters, part 1

Before I get into ghost towns, gold and nickel mining, Herbert Hoover, and growing up amongst it all, I’ll shed more light on the family lineup and chat about some very interesting ancestry. To start with, the crazy side: my father’s.

My father’s parents were an unlikely couple. She was from Malta, he from Wales, and how they connected is anyone’s guess. The bigger mystery is how they stayed together. They fought constantly. Pop, the Welsh coalminer, was an angry, short-tempered, stubborn old man who had no time for anyone, and less time for their opinions. I was never close to him. He and Dad fought as well, long-winded arguments about politics in particular. Pop was a socialist in his thinking, borderline communist according to Dad, and Dad more-or-less leaned conservative. If Pop wasn’t arguing or enjoying a plate of tripe, he’d be watching television or sitting alone out on the front porch with his cigarette and newspaper. He also painted, which I wasn’t very much aware of; his studio was a little shed up in the far corner of the back yard, which was strictly off-limits to me. We shared initials, VW, which he signed to each painting, some of which hung about the house. His name, Ven, was short for Venerable, supposedly named after one of many British battleships of that name.

Nana was quick to the boil as well, feisty and pushy. Her fights were with the adults; she generally doted on us kids. She was particularly protective of Dean, my brother, and monitored our playtime carefully. She babied Dean as if her own son, which contributed to my confusion about him, thinking he actually was her son (and therefore my uncle). As I mentioned earlier, we didn’t look alike. There were reasons for her obsessions over Dean: her youngest son, my Uncle Francis, died at around 19 from a blot clot. It had apparently formed after he dropped weights on his foot and eventually made its way up and killed him. This happened when I was a baby, so I have no recollection of him. Nana was forever despondent about Francis’ death, and blamed Dad for it. Many arguments between Dad and his mother leaned towards those accusations. Dean’s middle name, Francis, was chosen in his honor (Dean was born after Francis died). Our visits to Perth to visit Nana and Pop were few, and I looked forward to visiting “Uncle” Dean. After bitter arguments between Dad and his folks, we often left early. It really was a wonder that a family arose from all this.

If I did get to share some quiet time with Dean, it was to sit and draw, and play trains. He was particularly fond of military history, probably prompted by Pop, and drew characters dressed in various uniforms of past wars. He was quite good. I was keen to play trains, which were his babies, and that often ended badly, and Nana would jump to action and sequester me away in another room. If I was lucky, I was allowed to go across the street to the large park, and play on the apparatus at the far end. Dean was never allowed to come with me; he was barely ever allowed to leave the house. I could remember hearing him cry at the doorstep when I went to the park, which was no doubt followed by arguments between Dad and Nana about why Dean wasn’t allowed to go.

I last saw Nana, Pop and Dean in 1986, the last year I was in Perth. Dean had confided in me that he was studying Zen Buddhism, and eventually took up martial arts. I last spoke to him in 1996; he had married but didn’t have kids, furthered his martial arts and Zen Buddhism trainings and study, and as far as I know maintains a Buddhist temple somewhere in Perth. Pop later developed diabetes, no doubt helped along by his awful diet, and eventually died blind and legless. Nana lived on to at least 90, as far as I know.

I have very little information about Dad’s side of the family. He has another brother, Peter, who we would occasionally visit while down in Perth. I have no contact with him and his family now, and wouldn’t know where to look (the names are too common). There was Uncle Joe and Aunt V, who have since passed on. I recall visiting them one time. I was fascinated by a scar that Aunt V had on her leg where cancer had been removed. It looked like a cube had been removed, like in Minecraft. I couldn’t stop looking at it.

There was Nana’s mother, who lived alone close to downtown Perth. She was the tiniest and sweetest little lady. She had a cute little Maltese, and several cockatoos in the back yard, where I’d spend most of my time. The inside of her house looked like a museum from the early 19oo’s, old furniture and other things I was reminded not to touch. I did like going over there, although I think we only did two or three times in memory. On one occasion I vaguely remember getting into trouble over something, and Dad taking me into a bedroom and applying the belt to my rear end while little Nana protested outside. Seriously, it happened so often that any such occasion seems a blur, one incident running into another.

I ran away from Nana and Pop’s on one occasion, wandering up the street a ways until I stumbled on some kids playing in their back yard. I invited myself in, and everything seemed fine and great until Dad finally found me. I was dragged back to the house, and secured in a bedroom alone. Outside the door, I heard arguing between Dad and Nana; he wanted in to give me a good thrashing, and Nana wasn’t about to let him. I sat there in the room, staring at some old religious-themed painting on the wall, until I fell asleep.

Running away from home was a fantasy I held for quite some time. We lived 500 miles away from Perth, and I often wondered about how I’d go about getting to Perth on foot. Out there in the desert, with nothing between, I wouldn’t have lasted too long. I’d stare at the horizon in the direction of Perth and contemplate it all the same. I had everything memorized: I knew every street and intersection from Greenmount on the outskirts of Perth to Nana’s house in Wilson, an inner suburb. If there’s anything I know well, it’s maps and directions.

So why did Dean end up growing up with Nana and Pop, and not with me? The story Dad told me was that he was left with Dean and I after our mother left, and being unable to care for both on his own, left Dean with his parents. Since I was older, he took me along with him. I heard only his version for almost all my life. My mother’s take on things is quite the opposite: he was extremely abusive towards her, and took us boys away from her, and threatened to kill her if she made efforts to see us again. Dad went galavanting off out in the countryside looking for work, me in tow, so I never got to see her. He left Dean with his parents, with the intent of coming back for him. This never happened; Dean grew up entirely within Nana and Pop’s household. My mother was initially allowed to visit Dean on occasion, but was eventually told that she wasn’t welcome anymore. I’m not particularly clear on the precise details, and since reliving the ordeal even today is upsetting for her, I figure it’s history best left buried.

Which version do I believe? Given my father’s extreme temper, irrationality and penchant for tall tales, I lean towards my mother’s version.

For Dean, growing up with Nana and Pop was a grueling ordeal. He grew up resenting Dad for leaving him behind and never coming for him. By 1995, when I renewed contact with Dean, he had since left the house and was married. A lot of the details surrounding our early days were still unavailable to me, so I tried acting as a sort of neutral mediator between the two of us and Dad. It didn’t go well. Heated accusations flew immediately; Dean would call Dad’s house and unload on anyone who answered. My involvement with Dean didn’t go over well with Dad’s family as a result. To top it off, Dean suggested that I was taking Dad’s side. I was taken aback by how angry he was then. By early 1996, he opted to not pursue a relationship with me, and that was the last time we spoke. In years since, as I came to know more about things, I understood better why he was that angry. I’ve searched for him in hopes of reestablishing contact to perhaps open up some kind of discussion. While I might have an idea where he is, there has been no response to calls or mail.

Some years before, Dean had confided in me that he was pursuing martial arts and had converted to Buddhism. Nana, in particular, was never to know about it. During our brief conversations in 1995 he talked more about martial arts, how he’d progressed, and had become an instructor himself. His Zen Buddhist faith was still strong, and as far as I know, maintains a temple in Perth. I don’t know much about Zen Buddhism, but something tells me his anger to family and years of bottled up resentment seem contrary to the peace and tranquility I might expect a Buddhist to adhere to. There’s a part of me that hopes that one day, if we are to reconnect and settle differences, that he might find that “inner peace” he strives for. Again, I don’t know how that works in Buddhism, and it’s probably altruistic on my part to think it could work one day. The bottom line is that I miss him, and if I had any kind of sibling relationship with him, it would be the only one as the half-siblings wrote me off after 1996. (I should add that the debacle between Dad, Dean and I at that time was a tangent to the real reasons all contact was cut off between Dad, his family, and I. That’s worth a book on its own).

Back now to my early days with Dad: He and I were not alone. Dad had a girlfriend, and she went on to become my stepmother. The redheaded one I mentioned before, who I grew up to think was my real mother. The Dutch one, which made me think I was Dutch as a result, until later. She was young, around 16 or 17, when my father entered her picture. How all this transpired is fuzzy at best. There was some mention that Dad, Mum and I lived in a caravan across the way from FR and her folks, and FR was somehow brought into the scene to babysit me when either of my folks were out of scene. FR’s parents did not care for my father, a fact I became aware of on my own when I was old enough to figure some things out for myself.

FR’s father (CR) was an engineer, and was able to find plenty of work in Western Australia during the 1960s. Both he and his wife (GR) were Freedom Fighters in the Dutch Underground during World War II. The family arrived in Australia by ship in the early 1950s. During the years I was secluded away in the desert goldfields with Dad and FR, FR’s parents moved to Queensland and settled in Slack’s Creek, an outer suburb of Brisbane. They had a huge lot on Kingston Drive, and built their own house, which they dubbed “This’ll Do.” It sounded like “Thistle Do” to me, and as such, I never understood the name during the one visit there. GR worked for Australia Post for many years and became active in politics, rising into the local ranks of the National Party (which during the 1970s was also known as the National Country Party, then eventually just the Nationals, always leaning center-right).

I had no recollection of FR’s parents when I was little. When FR, Dad and I settled in Gwalia in 1971, her only contact with her parents was by phone or mail; there was only one phone booth there in the town, so FR would amass a collection of 20¢ and 50¢ coins for the once-in-a-blue-moon phone call to Queensland. If I got a chance to say hello, it was for only a few seconds. This was how I established a knowing relationship with FR’s parents, who I would come to know as Grandma and Grandad. Grandma’s accent was still heavily-Dutch influenced, and it was sometimes hard to understand her. She did all the talking when I spoke to her. I first heard Grandad’s voice when we finally met face to face, in 1976 (I was 10).

In June of 1976 we made the trek from Western Australia to Queensland to visit Grandma and Grandad. My stepsiblings were now on the scene; HJ Jr. was 5, and AJ was only a few months old. We drove across the Nullarbor Plain, highway 1, which at the time was unsealed for several hundred miles. The experience was like no other, braver souls would hastily pass on the idea of driving that road. I read somewhere that AC/DC’s Bon Scott’s inspiration for “Highway to Hell” was that particular road. Hundreds of miles of finely ground dust (called bulldust) and corrugations test the patience of drivers and the mechanical integrity of vehicles. Imagine hundreds of miles of teeth-knocking boredom with one of the most irritable people on the planet at the wheel. To make matters worse, we had to come back.

Those corrugations in the road, created over time by wearing vehicles and weather, are the bane of the Outback Australian road.

Next episode: More family history, this time my mother’s (a tad more interesting).

November 13, 2015

Welcome to Gwalia.

After leaving Laverton, we relocated 90 miles back to Leonora, back to the sealed road. There was no nickel find in Leonora, but the town was a hub for rail and road traffic to the north and east. The railway stopped at Leonora, from Kalgoorlie in the south. Nickel from Mt. Windarra to the east was trucked to a railway siding in Malcolm, a dot on the map between Leonora and Laverton that was once a thriving gold-mining town. Nickel was also trucked to Leonora from Leinster to the north. Leonora existed as a Shire seat and hub for the sheep and cattle industry around it. Nothing grew out there. Leonora’s population during the 1970s was somewhere about 1,000. Someone might even look at that number and consider it overly generous. It was, though, the biggest town around; the next largest was Kalgoorlie 150 miles south.

Leonora, 1899. On the horizon is Mt. Leonora, named in 1869 by explorer (and Western Australia’s first Premier) John Forrest after a relative. Gwalia is to the right of the hill.

Two miles south of Leonora, off the main road, sits the ghost town of Gwalia. The name “Gwalia” is, as far as I can tell, an old Welsh word for Wales. The town emerged from the desert mostly as a shanty town, home to miners working the Sons of Gwalia gold mine. The “Gwalia” was a major find in the area, established in 1897, and grew to become the largest gold mine in the state outside Kalgoorlie. Leonora was established up the road from the mine, into a normal looking town with regular streets and commerce, while Gwalia started out as a mix of shanties and huts arranged in no particular order. There was a rivalry between the two towns, such that Leonora wouldn’t recognize Gwalia as a “town,” but finally had to gazette it as such in an effort to control a rampant growth of unregulated saloons (called “sly-grogs”). The state’s first government-run hotel was opened in Gwalia in 1903, and still stands today as a popular photo subject.

The “Pink House,” a miner’s shanty typical of the sort built in Gwalia, mostly from corrugated metal, wood and hessian for walls. The house is small; most people have to crouch down when walking inside.

The Gwalia State Hotel, built 1902; a popular tourist attraction today from the outside only (the building is closed to the public).

Back in 1897, when Kalgoorlie and the surrounding Great Victoria Desert was abuzz with gold-seeking activity, there were a few larger companies looking to stake a claim. One of them was a British company, Bewick, Moreing & Co. They hired a young American geologist by the name of Herbert Hoover to travel into the West Australian scrub and represent their interests. He made a few moves around Kalgoorlie and eventually took management of the Sons of Gwalia mine. Part of his strategy was to hire mostly cheaper European workers; the town of Gwalia became a melting pot of Poles, Italians, Czechs and Slavs, among others. Hoover built a house here which still stands and operates today as a bed & breakfast and museum. Hoover was soon called away by his company to explore interests in China, and of course eventually went on to do a few other things around the world, including become President of the United States.

Hoover’s house in Gwalia, currently a bed and breakfast.
http://www.gwalia.org.au/hoover-house/accommodation/

The Sons of Gwalia mine operated almost continuously until December 31, 1963. Practically overnight the town emptied, dropping from several hundred to a few dozen. Buildings and shanties were abandoned, and for almost a decade most stood silent, succumbing to the heat and dust of the desert. During the early 1970s and on into present day, restoration efforts got under way to preserve the few significant structures left behind.

When we arrived in Leonora, we somehow ended up taking residence in one of the abandoned houses on Manning Street, Gwalia. It wasn’t a shanty, but a more substantial structure built to normal scale, but it was still in need of considerable reconstruction. The way I understood it, Dad purchased the house from the Shire for $50, on the proviso that he bring the house up to code. When we moved in, there was no running water, no electricity, and the toilet was the standard Aussie dunny (outhouse) up in the corner of the back yard. This was 1971 (give or take), so there was also no television. The only telephone available to us was a public phonebooth up on the main street, Tower Street, outside the old Mazza store building (long closed and boarded up).

A standard old house in Gwalia, an upgrade from the shanty. Our house was this style, albeit in somewhat better shape. I don’t have a photo of it, as it is still occupied today. The road in front is Tower Street, the main drag through town. To the left (quarter mile) is the mine, and to the right (two miles) is Leonora.

The house was a standard structure with typical layout: across the front was a verandah. You would step in to a hallway that ran the length of the house. The first room on the left was the living room, and on the right, a bedroom (which became Mum and Dad’s). Further down on the left was the kitchen, and on the right, another bedroom (which became mine and siblings that came later). You would step out from the kitchen into the back “patio” area; on the left was the bathroom and beyond that, the laundry. Next to the bathroom was an open room which became one catch-all for Dad’s crap (he had more than one). Once outside the laundry, you were in the backyard, with not a scrap of green grass anywhere, just dirt. Out here clothes were hung out to dry.

The main four rooms of the house were done up first to make habitable; Dad did up the main bedroom in plaster, which kept it relatively cool in the 100°+ heat. The living room and kitchen were opened up to become one large room. My bedroom was largely untouched. The floors throughout were wood, and walls were flat sheets of fibro cement, except my room, which had the original hessian wall coverings. This was a standard material used in the early days, painted over to stiffen the material and make it look half presentable. I had a window out to the side, which I made a habit of climbing out of to scurry away somewhere, until it got nailed shut.

The kitchen had a wood stove with cast-iron top, standard for the old days. The living room had a fireplace, topped with a tin tube chimney. Once we got water supply to the house, it would have to be heated on the stove or fireplace for a hot water bath, laundry or dishes. For lighting at night, we had carbide lamps, the same kind the miners used in the depths below. The smell is fresh in my mind to this day. We also had kerosene lamps, and the refrigerator was an old kerosene-powered kind.

Dad was quite handy with things mechanical, and managed to get an old Crosley engine to work. The thing was an ancient cast-iron block with the top open for fuel, and large flywheels on both sides. To start it, a crank handle was inserted into the hub of the flywheel and turned with all might and strength, in hopes that a single POP would cause the engine to catch and fire up. A belt ran from the engine to a generator to bring in a meager supply of power. There was a certain comfort lying in bed at night listening to the random POP and chug of the old engine. Eventually power from the town supply was fitted to the house.

Water still had to be heated the old fashioned way, on the stove or fireplace. The bathroom was a ramshackle room with little privacy and too much ventilation to the outside, with holes in the walls and roof. The bathtub was a leaky old tin kind with feet, similar in look to the old-style ones that seem to be all the rage these days, but not near as charming. Dad had to try to seal up the leaks on a regular basis, which left little beads of tin along the seams, poking your behind and making the experience very uncomfortable.

Eventually Dad built a boiler alongside the house near the back, encased in brick. We would scour the old building sites around the town collecting bricks, chipping off the old mortar. The kind of mortar they used in the old days was flimsy at best, breaking away from the brick with little effort. It was one of my chores to set a fire inside the boiler and get the hot water going. The water wasn’t connected to the house supply, so if you wanted hot water, you had to go to the boiler to get it.

The toilet was the old outhouse kind, the dunny as it is known in Australia. The weatherboard structure with corrugated iron door was not a comfortable commode, the inside reaching well above the 100° temperatures outside. You would simply get in, do your business, and get out. I could sit there and watch the redback spiders in the corners. Dad would spend forever in there, reading, despite the heat.

Below the bench was the collection bucket, accessible from behind the dunny. Once a week the town outhouse collection service would be by to remove the full bucket, load that up onto the back of the truck, and put an empty one in its place. Dad referred to him as the “turd burglar.” It must have been a thankless job.

I draw from time to time. More on that later.

I didn’t seem to mind chatting to the guy until he had to move on. I was quite a chatty kid in the beginning, talking up a storm to anyone who dared listen, without much mind to whether they were keen or not. I got that from Dad, without question. He could talk paint off a wall. He was opinionated and knowledgeable, never wrong about anything, an expert on everything, and he would talk away at some poor sop until either both got hungry, wives were fed up, or the sun had disappeared. I might have been a talker as a young kid, but having to sit around and wait for the old man while he yammered on was torture. Funny though that if I chatted up the turd burglar, I’d be scolded and told to leave the man alone.

Eventually the day would come when the dunny would be retired and an actual flushing toilet had to be installed. It probably came about as a result of a few coinciding factors: the retirement of the turd burglar service, constant pressure from Mum to quit making her use the dunny, and code upgrade requirements. A septic system had to be put in as there was no sewer service out there. The new outhouse, a modern, slightly-larger kind, was built at the back of the house. It was large enough to accommodate a shower, which was essential since everyone was tired of getting their butts punctured in the bathtub.

The shower was set up before the toilet was functional. It was a pull-chain kind, basically a filled bucket hoisted up to the ceiling, used sparingly by pulling a chain to release a dose of water. Along with firing up the boiler, it was my job to fill the shower bucket before use. If Mum or Dad were in the shower, I’d have to stay close by in order to pass a full bucket of warm water through the partially opened door. The shower would be filled, then hoisted up and tied off.

Putting in a septic tank turned out to be harder than anticipated. The ground out there in the desert is rock hard with little to no topsoil. Dynamite was required to loosen the rock. It took weeks for Dad to finish digging the hole and putting the tank in.

One of the strangest things we ever encountered happened when Dad was digging the septic tank. Buried a few inches underground was a seemingly perfectly preserved fruit cake, the Christmas kind that traditionally gets passed around but no one wants. It was a mystery as to how the cake got there, and for how long. The house had been vacant for years before we came along, so it had to be there for at least seven or eight years. Plus, it was under some inches of rock, still in its plastic wrapping. While everyone pondered its existence and origin, the dog gladly wolfed it down, with apparently no ill effects.

The day came when finally the septic was in and the toilet was ready for use. Behind the toilet, standing high above, was the vent pipe. On top of the vent pipe was supposed to be some sort of cap, and there it was sitting on the ground. The toilet was incomplete without that cap inserted into the top of the vent pipe, and the pipe was firmly installed and not coming out. The answer was to have me climb up on Dad’s shoulders while he stood on the roof of the toilet, and I would reach up and slip the cap into place. The procedure went without a hitch, but I can recall every moment of it, panicked as I held on to the pipe with nothing between me and the ground, which I was reminded not to look down at (I did).

The last little tidbit about the toilet involves pumpkins, which began growing behind the toilet, evidently fueled by nutrients from the septic tank. We had no problem chowing down on these pumpkins, but there was one night when Dad took a bite into a slice of pumpkin and immediately spewed it out in disgust. Either he suddenly realized where it had grown, or perhaps there was more nutrient in it than normal. It’s hard to say, since I had no trouble with it. From that day forward, Dad never touched pumpkin again, of any sort, from any location, on any plate.

Next: An in-depth look at the town of Gwalia (my playground), and its inhabitants.

November 12, 2015

Bouncing around the State.

I experienced my first earthquake when I was about two years old. Of course I have no recollection of it myself, but I heard all about it later. It was October 14, 1968, in Meckering, a small town about 130 km east of Perth. The 40-second quake measured 6.9 on the Richter Scale and basically destroyed the town. We were there then, in a caravan in town. Dad was off working somewhere. I was with my mother in the van; she recalls that the van started rocking back and forth, and at first she thought it was a few goons playing some kind of joke. She got irritated, ran outside to confront the goons, but was instead shocked to find the ground moving about in waves, buildings swaying back and forth. Photographs of the aftermath show considerable damage, including railway lines offset several feet and vertical faulting as much as 9 feet. I was apparently unaffected by the whole thing. I’d have to wait another 20-odd years before I’d feel another earthquake — in California — and remember the experience.

Railway tracks after the Meckering quake. (1)

As mentioned earlier, Dad followed construction work wherever it could be found, and there was plenty of it in the wake of mineral exploration in the state. In addition to iron in the Kimberly’s, there was nickel to the south around Kalgoorlie, a town built on gold discovered there in the late 1800s. Nickel mining brought a much-needed infusion of life to the economy of the area. Gold was the original source of prosperity for the Eastern Goldfields. There are a few significant finds that weathered drops in the availability or the price of gold, notably Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie. Alluvial gold petered out quickly and men went underground for more. Literally thousands of gold mines didn’t survive their initial jackpot, and the various small towns that popped up around them faded into obscurity, dissolved back into the desert. Nickel discoveries around Kambalda, Leinster and Mt. Windarra (near Laverton) brought hope of prosperity back. We were in Kambalda for a time, then eventually found ourselves north to Laverton.

Lancefield, a few miles out of Laverton, taken 1910. One of many mining towns emerging during the Gold Rush of the 1890s. The town no longer exists. You might be lucky to find a brick or an old glass bottle nowadays, but nothing else. (2)

Laverton started out as a gold mining town, and old closed mines could be seen as you drove the road from Leonora into Laverton. After the gold and before nickel, Laverton barely survived beyond being the Shire seat. The area supported a pastoral industry, mostly sheep. Getting to Laverton meant driving the sealed road north of Kalgoorlie 150 miles to Leonora, then turning east for another 90 or so miles. The sealed road at the time, around 1971, stopped just outside Leonora, so the rest of the way was gravel. Beyond Laverton is very little but desert. The Outback Highway begins here, a route made up of several highways which are a essentially dirt tracks and gravel roads, extending out across the middle of the continent to Winton, Queensland. The first leg beyond Laverton is the Great Central Road, the main thoroughfare from Perth to Uluru (Ayer’s Rock), about 700 miles. In that distance there are only a handful of fueling stops, and permits are required (for traveling through Aboriginal lands).

Great Central Road near Tjukayirla Roadhouse, about 4.5 hrs drive east of Laverton. The road is passable by most vehicles. Traveling in the Outback involves long distances requiring patience, plenty of water, fuel and supplies, and occasionally permits to access Aboriginal lands. (3)

The way I understood it, Dad was going only as far as the sealed road would take us, and since there wasn’t anything in Leonora at the moment, headed east, and stubbornly continued on to Laverton. Since there wasn’t anything beyond Laverton that involved work, this was as far as we’d go.

My uninterrupted memory timeline began about the time we arrived in Laverton. I was about 5 by then. We still had the little caravan, with bunk beds up the front and the double bed in the back, separated by a tiny kitchen. I mostly slept on the bottom bunk, although I preferred the top bunk, but I wasn’t allowed to sleep up there after I rolled off to the floor below a couple of times. The caravan was parked inside a huge shed that had once been a maintenance facility for nearby gold mines. The outside walls were mostly open, with just the roof providing some protection. Inside the shed were remnants of the old mining days, steam-driven cast-iron pieces of equipment the size of cars. There was also a maintenance pit in the ground, which Dad often used to get under the car to fix it, and which I was reminded many times to stay clear of.

Across the street from the shed was the Laverton Hotel which still stands today, first built around the early 1900s. We became friends of the proprietors. While Dad was off working somewhere, Mum spent time chatting with the lady of the hotel. In the rear was the kitchen, where we spent most of our time. I wanted to explore the hotel but wasn’t allowed beyond the kitchen and the adjoining dining area.

Laverton Hotel, since renamed the Desert Inn Hotel. (4)

It should be noted, and perhaps it’s already obvious, that I was a bit of a terror as a kid. I was always in trouble for something. I was precocious, always fiddling with something I wasn’t supposed to be, and constantly in Dad’s line of fire. With my non-stop tantrums and Dad’s red hot temper, home life was a tinder box, ready to erupt at any given moment. I would seek solace from Mum, but she had a bit of a temper as well, and it wasn’t always a guarantee that I’d find an ally.

I had an early penchant for running away, sometimes after one of these outbursts. The furthest I ever made it away from the caravan was the kitchen of the hotel. There was one night I’d made it that far, and the hotel lady took me in and made me something to eat, something that included raw onions which I didn’t care for. I wanted to sit in the dining room so I wouldn’t be seen from the side window, but the dining room was closed and I had to sit in the kitchen. It was only a matter of time before I saw Mum walking by the window and I was blown. I was glad it wasn’t Dad, but I knew I was still in a heap of trouble. I didn’t get to eat anything before being dragged back to the van.

Beyond the hotel was the Laverton Primary School, grades 1 through 7, population less than 50. There were two main buildings, an older one in front and a newer one behind, next to the playground. The older building catered to the younger grades, 1 through 4, and the newer one had the older kids and the staff room. I think I was still too young to be in 1st grade, so I must have been in some kind of kindergarten class. All of the kids were together in one room; each grade sat in a clump of desks mashed together, so there were four or five islands of desks in the main room. I made work hard for the one teacher managing all four grades (a dozen or so kids in all), never sitting still, always trying to see what the older kids were doing. It looked more interesting than what I was doing, anyway. If my temper flared and got too out of hand, I’d be put into the storeroom off the main room and left to chill for a while. The storeroom was technically another room with a window looking out, so it wasn’t a closet. It was dusty and drab. I was never happy being in there, screaming my lungs out and getting increasingly agitated when kids would come by the window to stare in at me. The more I screamed, the more entertained they seemed to be, and the more they showed up to gawk at me the more I screamed. There were a number of times when Mum or Dad would have to come and get me out of school, mostly Mum. I feared the days Dad would show up, because it meant I was in for it at home. He had no patience for being called away from whatever he was doing, especially to cater to some screaming kid.

I recall vividly one occasion out on the playground, which was a gravel area with a basketball hoop on one end. I was dared by some kids to take a leak against the basketball pole. That was easy, I simply whipped it out and peed happily away, for all to see and cheer. Within seconds I was snatched up by a teacher and sent off to the storeroom to wait until collected. I screamed myself to sleep.

We weren’t in Laverton for very long. I’m not sure why, because a lot of the new construction (including a new school) was yet to happen. Either way, we ended up on the road again, this time back to Leonora. We got there around 1971, and would be there for the next eight years.

When I did some research on family history a couple of years ago (2013), I was surprised to find that there were family members that had lived in Laverton before, way back around 1902, when the town was fresh and new. I’m preparing all this info for a separate post, because it deserves its own, and it’s fascinating.

It might be worth noting (if not already clear) that growing up in the bush with a temperamental father and distant mother, and a temper of my own, wasn’t all fun and games. However I don’t always think back to these days with dread, wishing perhaps that I could forget all this. I had an experience growing up that was quite unique. Not every kid gets to grow up in a ghost town. Maybe for some that doesn’t have a particular appeal, especially the isolation, heat, flies and angry home life. Angry home life aside, I wouldn’t change anything about those days out in the bush. I reminisce more about my time growing up in Leonora (and specifically Gwalia, which I will introduce shortly) than with any other place. Our time in Leonora/Gwalia was relatively short, just the span of time that I was in Primary School, but I believe it defines me more than anywhere else. It’s now 2015, and I was last there in 1979; it’s been 35+ years since we left the town. I’ve not been back because I didn’t want to, it simply wasn’t possible for various reasons. I’d go back in a heartbeat, at least to visit, certainly to look about at what I grew up around, and more than anything to show my family now (wife and kids) what it was like.

Next, I will introduce you to Gwalia, and begin a recounting of life in a ghost town.

Southwestern Western Australia (click to enlarge) (5)

Photo credits:
1. http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/hazards/earthquake/basics/gallery
2. http://www.maps.bonzle.com/c/a?a=m&m=sp&p=287&sc=p&most=p#&ui-state=dialog
3. Public domain, via Wiki Commons.
4. http://www.panoramio.com/user/631231?with_photo_id=9056082
5. Google maps, edited by me in Illustrator

November 7, 2015

A first memory, or two.

Things are vague in the beginning, as one might expect trying to remember back to when you were two. I’m not sure how old I was when the memories that stuck began, perhaps about three or four. It’d make sense, given the timeline in my parents’ life.

I was born in 1966 in Perth. The state of Western Australia, always a magnet for mineral discoveries of one sort or another throughout its history, was in the midst of another during the late 1960s. Iron ore had been discovered in the Hamersley Ranges in the far north-west, another remote area of the state that few of fair skin had seen. The findings were significant, and mines popped up all over, along with the towns that supported them. Places like Newman, Mt. Tom Price and Parapurdoo appeared out of nowhere, remote towns built from scratch, usually a number of miles away from the mines. There was work to be had, particularly in construction. Dad was quick to jump on the bandwagon, and worked on many new homes in the region, most notably as a roofer. In those days the roof material was corrugated asbestos sheeting, used in great numbers before the dangers of asbestos were eventually realized. He would carry one or two of the corrugated sheets up a ladder to the roof to fix into position. This implies that he was quite strong, and indeed he was. He wasn’t necessarily tall, about 5’10”, but his stocky frame supported incredible strength.

My first memory is of somewhere out there in the desert area, near one of these new towns. Dad, Mum and I are in a small caravan, parked off the beaten track, away from town. The sandy ground is bright red, like my hair, and pockets of dry spinifex grass dot the area. Spinifex is a harsh desert grass, prickly, spiny, not at all the soft lush kind you can run your hands through. It is very hot, being out in the desert, and I’m out playing in the scorching sand with my favorite toy, which at that time was a horsey-truck. It was a brown big rig, a Matchbox toy or similar, and the trailer was the horse trailer kind. There might have been plastic horses to go inside it, but I only remember the truck itself.

Skip to another memory, and this time the caravan is parked amongst others on a construction site in one of these new towns. New homes were popping up around us; I could literally watch Dad carry sheets of corrugated sheeting up the ladder from our caravan. This meant that I was close enough to try and climb the ladder myself, which I did, with horsey-truck in hand. I made it up several rungs before slipping and falling to the dust below. I recall all sorts of commotion around me, adults springing from all directions, but my only concern was finding my horsey-truck. I wasn’t hurt, apparently. There’s a lot of angry yelling at the base of the ladder, no doubt a lot of it coming from Dad, pissed off at me for trying to climb the ladder. I will introduce you to an understatement: Dad had a temper. This will become a recurring theme.

Me getting into trouble is another recurring theme; they will run hand in hand. There were some kids in another caravan who had the greatest collection of Tonka toys imaginable. They were very protective of those toys, and I wanted badly to play with them. More than that, I wanted badly to have them, so one day I snuck the lot of them away and hid them under our caravan. I didn’t hide them very well, as they were quickly discovered, and I was once again in a pile of trouble. More yelling. I wasn’t allowed near those kids or their Tonkas from that point on.

Somewhere around the same time, I would guess, we occasionally visited Point Samson on the coast. Dad enjoyed fishing and would at any opportunity. Point Samson is a small seaside town, population about 250, located about 18 km from Roebourne (which itself is between Karratha and Port Hedland). I recall a jetty off which people would stand and fish. On one occasion I stepped into the blood and guts of a stingray that lay out on the deck of the jetty, which was cause for more angry yelling from the old man.

The most notable memory of Point Samson was the day I was with Mum, walking and playing about the rocks along the shore. Dad was fishing from the jetty, over there to the left about a few hundred yards. The sea water splashed about the rocks, which were heavily encrusted with barnacles. I must have snuck away unnoticed, I can only assume, and wandered about the rocks watching the water gently swirl in and out with each wave. I was wearing thongs (which are known as flip-flops everywhere else, it seems) and one of them came off my foot and landed in the water. I reached down to grab it, but it playfully bobbed up and down just slightly out of reach. I figured I should perhaps sit on the rock and try to get my foot into it. As I maneuvered myself into a sitting position, I slipped and fell, landing firmly in a seated position on top of barnacles. The backs of both knees were sliced open. I remember screaming, Mum showing up in a panic, and blood. Lots of blood. Dad is eventually summoned to the scene, and I’m laid out in the back of the station wagon on a blanket or something.

It’s quite possible I passed out, having lost quite a bit of blood, and having to be transported a long way to a hospital capable of dealing with this injury. I don’t know if that was Roebourne (18 km), Karratha (58 km) or Port Hedland (over 200 km). I can guess it might have been Karratha. I remember waking up in the hospital, Dad and a doctor looking over me, and some big machine-looking thing in the room. I imagined it as some sewing machine that had stitched up my legs. Apparently I came close to bleeding to death, and I still have the scars to remind me. Another recurring theme: almost getting myself killed.

October 29, 2015

Chapter 2: The beginning.

I’d like for this blog to work in a timeline fashion, starting with the early years at the top (just as you’d start at the front of a book), but that’s not how blogs work, so I’ll have to deal with it.

Where shall we begin? Why not the beginning? Does every autobiography try to shy away from the standard “I was born on this date and time, roughly this long, weighed this much, and so forth”? If a life is to be talked about, that seems a pretty significant detail. So here goes.

I was born April 6, 1966, at St. Anne’s Hospital in Perth, Western Australia, right there on the banks of the Swan River (in 1996, St. Anne’s was renamed Mercy Hospital). I was 7 lbs., 7 ounces. I arrived around 4 in the afternoon, according to my mother who, on one occasion a few years ago, waited until then to call me to wish Happy Birthday. That’s when she told me the specific time, and so it made sense then. Through the day up until that moment and explanation I was thinking that she’d forgotten. I’ll admit, I like birthdays, I enjoy the moment, and I’m a bit of a grump if someone forgets. That often is the case at work, wherever I’ve worked, but I suppose it would only seem reasonable for people to wish a happy birthday if they first knew when it was. That’s my problem. I like the greeting, but I’m not comfortable about advertising it, although I’m doing one heck of a job right now. Facebook has taken over and now advertises for all of us (if desired), and the flood of well-wishes coming in April 6 is quite nice.

Yours truly, around 1967. The next photos of me will appear around age 10.
I have none from the years between.

In 1978, when I was 12, it was announced that I would not be having a birthday that year, in response to some naughty stuff I did earlier. The day came and went and no one said a word. It goes without saying that I was devastated. Who does that to a kid? Well, my stepmother and dad, specifically, and they had a reason: aside from me being naughty (which I’ll get to eventually), there was my half-sister (AJ) who was born April 18. They decided to combine our birthdays a week later somewhere between our birthdates, but didn’t mention it until that day. AJ was turning 2, for Pete’s sake. Would she even know the significance? This only added to a growing irritation towards her birthday, established when she was born Easter Sunday (1976). Rather than celebrate hers on April 18, it was done instead on Easter Sunday, which jumped about all over the calendar each year, sometimes before April 6. It irritated me to no end that it wasn’t celebrated on April 18—THAT was her birthdate! Unfortunately, my insistence and irritation was perceived as resentment and jealousy. My stepmother already didn’t care for me much, and this fight surrounding her little baby girl didn’t help my popularity with her one bit. AJ and I got along for the most part, at least in the early days when we were in the same vicinity; that would all go to heck much later, and had nothing to do with birthdays.

When I initially began the idea of writing a book, I was hoping to keep the reader in suspense along with me for the first number of years; when I discovered the “big reveal,” I would write about it and have you discover that reveal along with me, somewhere about a third of the way in. In thinking about it, it became difficult to write without giving clues to situations and events that needed the “reveal” explanation.

So I will provide the reveal here. I grew up with my mother, father, brother and sister (me being the oldest of the kids). Then one day I was informed that my mother was not in fact my mother. My parents split when I was about 2 or so, and Dad remarried. I knew nothing of this until I was 12. This meant that my siblings were in fact half-siblings, and the kid living with my grandparents who I thought was my uncle, was in fact my brother. My stepmother was a redhead like me, so it made sense to me (and apparently everyone around us) that I was her child. Admittedly, as a curious 8 year old, I pondered her age and figured she’d have been about 17 when I was born, which raised a question in my mind as to whether that was possible, because I didn’t know any better.

I was told all this by my father while we took a quick road trip from Brisbane to Noosa in Queensland to see my “aunt.” I was to stay with her and start high school while Dad and the rest of the family moved about and settled somewhere. The “aunt” turned out to be my real mother, of course. It was an awkward experience hearing all that, and it raised a million questions that have only partially been answered. I’ll gladly discuss the specifics in greater detail as we venture into this “autoblogography.”

It also made sense of a lot of things. It explained the animosity felt towards me by my stepmother, especially after her own kids were born. It explained the birthday thing clearly; AJ was her child, I was not, and it made no difference to my stepmother, FR, when mine was or how I’d feel about missing it.

I was ecstatic to learn that my “uncle,” Dean, was in fact my brother. The main reason that it never occurred to me earlier is because we look NOTHING alike. I apparently picked up the English/Scottish side of the family, and he got the Maltese side, with the darker hair and different complexion. He definitely got Dad’s side, and I got my mother’s.

Dean (left) and me, Perth, 1986. This was the last time I’ve seen him in person; I last spoke to him by phone in 1996. He still lives in Perth, and wants nothing to do with anyone in the family. We’ll get to that eventually.

The news meant that certain beliefs I had were not true. My stepmother, for example, was Dutch, arriving in Australia with her brother and parents in the early 1950s. All along I thought I had Dutch ancestry. I don’t. I knew about the Maltese and Welsh already, and there was talk of English and Irish thrown in for good measure. It was only a couple of years ago (through Ancestry.com and other relatives) that I found that were was no Irish, but in fact most of the lineage goes back to Scotland, and there’s even a far-flung ancestor entombed in Westminster Abbey. There’s a Russian woman in the lineup as well, early 1800s, but I have no information about her.

So now that the “reveal” is out of the way, I can get to the story in context, and not confuse anyone along the way. Least of all me.

Next, we’ll go into the early years. I’ll discuss ghost towns, gold and nickel mining, Herbert Hoover, and growing up amongst it all.