Falling in the canal Sometime in the autumn of 1956 my two infant brothers and I were living in a little housing commission house in McFarland street Bacchus Marsh with my young parents. Life was proceeding along nicely and I was attending a local kindergarten for my first year. I was three. One lunchtime I came home and there was much fuss. My mother had become dangerously ill and was taken by ambulance to hospital, eventually going to Fairfield infectious disease hospital. Shed been a vibrant twenty six year old and now she was gone. Someone was trying to explain to me that shed caught a germ and that she was very sick. I tried to conceive of something so small that I couldnt see it. Naturally I was distraught at the idea that my main care giver had been taken away. Both grandmothers quickly arrived on the scene from Melbourne to help out with Evan and Rhys as well as me. Evan wasnt even six months old and Rhys couldnt talk. I cant remember how long it was before I went to Elwood to stay with Nana but Id been there before when my brother Evan was born. Aunty Cath took my brothers to look after. Shed been a nurse during the war and she was extremely capable and generous. Thats what people did then. I cant imagine what horror dad went through but it must have been really tough for him, a young bank teller with three young boys. Nana was almost like my mother and I loved her and trusted her. She was a rock, not quite sixty, shed been born in rural Queensland in 1897. They dont make them like that anymore. So Elwood 1956- I kept hearing stories of how the year previously the canal had flooded and you had to wade to the outside dunny through ankle deep water. This was a little maisonette of really only one bedroom in a little dead end street off Rothsay avenue. Nana had bought this after moving from Wattletree road in Malvern after her husband died. Although only a relatively narrow block of land, it had a fully self contained bungalow out the back where Nana moved into when she generously allowed my family to move into the main house. Fragments of life then come back to me including trips to the Village Bell to go shopping at the StKilda market and regular smaller trips around to Tennyson street, which was quite close. Around a couple of corners in Scott st there were two milk bars, a peters nearest the state school,and a Sennitts with the polar bear light closer to Tennyson. I was sent to the Scott street kinder on the corner of Tennyson next to the church. There an ancient Miss Johnson would pound the piano as if she hated it. Dad must have moved from the Marsh because he got a job at Western branch which was in Spencer street and one of the main offices of the SSB. I sort of recall the family slowly coming back together as mum was allowed to come home for visits when the danger of infection had passed. She would be wheeled out into the sun on the front grass for short periods and a visiting nurse would look after her. This was the winter of 1956. My brother started calling Aunty Cath mum as hed been there for months in Bentleigh. By the time of the Olympic Games I think we were all back together and Dad, a trained classical singer, sang in the choir at the opening ceremony. We got to know our next door neighbours, the Wolfs. They were Jews from London originally and Minnie was Zelman Cowans cousin. Herman was a short balding man with big ears and a wicked sense of humour. He used to call my Dad St Davids boy. Haha Their youngest son Rob, apparently and perhaps ironically was our Santa Claus, who used to come in and eat the fruitcake and drink the drink wed left out for Santa. Next to the Wolfs were Scottish Jews from Glasgow, the Goodalls. Ill leave you to make the jokes. Elwood then was the recipient of many migrants and refugees from war torn Europe with many being Jews from Poland, Hungary, Germany itself and anywhere else that had been over run with either Nazis or Russian Communists. You could walk to the synagogue. I guess I received an education in Judaism with the Wolfs, who were quite liberal, but observed the Passover etc. I made my first friend that year. A boy my age from Rothsay avenue whos name was Dennis. There were still others just around the corner and we formed a little street gang as kids do. The older boys took us down to the park in Mitford street and we named the trees that we used to play on. The canal was only a step beyond this............. We were forbidden to go near it and the first time Rhys and I breached this order we were spanked. So called friend Dennis was quite a disturbed and violent little boy and I can remember him hitting me over the head with a number two iron golf club and bottling my brother Rhys with a broken Marchants bottle in the face. He still has a scar to this day. Years later during a nasty fight I managed to punch Dennis smack in the nose which drew blood and he never did it again. As we grew older and started school, we ranged further afield. By the time we left Elwood in 1961 we were going as far as the beach at StKilda and the Elsternwick golf course where we would find balls and get money at the pro shop. A good clean one was worth two bob. That was a weeks pocket money right there. I was absolutely fascinated by the cash system at Hattams store in Glen Huntley road Elsternwick where I would be taken for new clothes. They had a series of little flying foxes on cables which zoomed across the ceiling to the cashier and back with the change. It was still there about ten years ago. The forbidden canal of course became an attraction and I can still smell the fennel that grew along the banks. Upstream it became the Elster creek and downstream it widened out after Glen Huntley road and runs into the sea between Point Ormond and the marina. Before the marina was built I can still remember dark stocky Calabrian men filling potato sacks with mussels that theyd scraped off the rocks along that stretch. We thought they were weird. Luna park was full on in the late fifties with bodgies showing off to their girlfriends at the pull down punching bags and thousands flocking to the the rides. The ghost train, giggle palace, the rotor, the scooter boats and the giant slides were my favourite. The Big Dipper and the scenic railway were a bit scary for a kid but my cousin Jill took my grandmother on one of them. They were game. In Elwood I first heard rocknroll, saw Sputnik, first saw TV, went to school, had my first fight, cracker night, ate avocado, went to the pictures, went to Sunday school, traveled to Sydney and learned to swim (kind of) We moved to our very own house in early 1961 in the very middle class suburb of South Caulfield on a full sized quarter acre suburban block. We missed Elwood.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 01:29:58 +0000
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