Memories
by Raymond Boyd Dunn
Copyright 2012. Raymond Dunn
Smashwords Edition
Contents
1. A Boy's Memory of War
2. Give it to Dad!
3. The Telegram Boy
4. Discipline - Then and now.
5. Inherited Traits.
6. There's one born every minute.
7. I remember the day I was born.
8. The Bush Fires.
9. My First Car.
10. Home is where the Heart is.
1. A Boy's Memory of War
I was nine years of age when Australia followed England into what became the Second World War, and fifteen years of age when peace was declared.
It didn't mean much to me at the beginning because, with the confidence of the very young, the outcome was never in doubt. In fact, for a boy it was a great adventure. The primary school yard had a long zig-zag slit trench which was the source of much fun during air raid practice, which occurred regularly. My father dug a trench in our backyard which was put to great use in our games with wooden guns. I lost count of the number of the enemy that I eliminated.
Our Headmaster was a Gallipoli veteran who lost an eye during that campaign, and often forgot to put in his replacement glass eye before coming to school. Someone would be sent across to the school residence to fetch it. He was easily distracted from the lesson in hand. All someone had to do was ask a question about the Great War of 1914-18, and the lesson would be forgotten as he told us about the huge gun, Big Bertha, or some other reminiscence.
As members of the Boy Scouts, we went on several forays into the bush with the Home Guard. We were the enemy and had to hide while the men of the Home Guard flushed us out. Once I hid un-noticed in a tree, and dropped down behind two of them as they passed. "Bang! Bang! You're dead!" I shouted gleefully. "No, we're not!" they replied, and chased me. I can tell you it is hard to run in loose sand - unless you are being pursued by two men with fixed bayonets.
I spent 1943 and '44 at boarding school in Rockhampton. There was a huge contingent of American troops based outside that city, and as school cadets we sometimes went on marches and war exercises with them. One particular incident I remember was when the army was demonstrating the use of mortars on our oval.
Through a misjudgement, the Corporal doing the demonstration put a dummy bomb through the roof of the Chemistry Lab. The school is on the range overlooking the aerodrome, and on three occasions I saw planes crash, - once the actual crash on take-off, and the others shortly after the crash. On another occasion, going home on holidays a couple of us got on the wrong train, and found we were in a carriage full of American soldiers. It was a troop train about to head north, while we wanted to go south. We found out in time to disembark.
When peace in the Pacific was declared in 1945, I had started work in a Bank. After the initial rumour was confirmed, the Bank staff was given the rest of the day off. There was much celebration - singing and dancing in lines up and down the main street. After lunch, about thirty of us clambered aboard a cream carrier's truck for a trip to a nearby centre to help them celebrate. Unbeknownst to most of us the driver was drunk, and before long rolled the truck down the centre of a gravel road just outside town. No-one was killed, but all except four or five needed medical treatment. My injuries were a head wound and a piece of split timber in my back and a liberal covering of blood - mine and others! So Victory in the Pacific Day was a "Day to Remember!"
I didn't realize it at the time, but now I know what a worrying time it must have been for my parents. Especially when invasion seemed a distinct possibility and the Brisbane Line was mooted.
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2. Give it to Dad!
This happened when I was a young boy, and before we owned a refrigerator. At one dinner-time there was a dubious-looking piece of meat on my plate. My mother, without malice aforethought said: "Don't eat that, Boyd. It looks a bit 'off'. Give it to Dad!" It became a standard joke in our family. After that, if anything looked a bit "off", someone would usually say:" Don't throw it out, give it to Dad!"
We had no dining room and we ate all our meals in the kitchen of our low-set Queenslander in Monto, Queensland. There was a wood stove, an ice-chest, a large standing cabinet, a sideboard, a table and four chairs, all in the current "in" colours of dark green and black. As there was no built-in sink, washing up was done in a basin on the kitchen table, with tank water heated on the wood stove. There was no electricity. Basic though this may have been it was quite luxurious when compared to my grandmother's detached kitchen at her tiny house in Mount Perry, Queensland.