HONEY, my dog.

ONCE UPON A TIME, IN A MORE PEACEFUL, CAREFREE BRISBANE,

I lived alone in a little Queensland cottage I had restored (not ‘renovated’) in a peaceful Kangaroo Point.  The house had required major repairs and rebuilding, and was on loan to me courtesy of a finance company charging  18%. Needless to say, I had to get out as soon as a buyer could be found.

It would be a very reluctant sale. The simple, pretty cottage with its level, virgin plot, its new paint, its veranda facing the lane, very soon became a home, with lovely neighbours, mostly kindly old folk who had lived their entire lives there. We visited each others houses for cups of tea and gossip. It was a pleasure to be part of such a community.

The City was almost within walking-distance over the Storey Bridge, the pub two lanes away, with a few necessary shops and bus-routes, and a phone-box. I could park my car anywhere; off the lane, in the lane. There were no restrictive signs, and few neighbours had vehicles: what need|?

Other than the threat of horrendous re-payments, there was one sad situation that niggled at my peace-of-mind.

In full view over my new back fence was a little brown dog, sitting on its box of a kennel, and regularly, if quietly, with head down, emitting a moan. It was chained to its box all twenty-four hours and was fed and watered once a day by a man otherwise absent.

I talked to this dog every day over the back fence. Silly. But to see its ears prick up and its tail wag at my brief attention was so endearing. The owner noticed this, eventually, and we chatted. A surly bloke; there was a wife in the house I had never seen: it’s her bloody dog, he said.

She doesn’t want it. I got it for her, but it jumps up all the time so we have to keep it out here. Do you let the dog off the lead? No, it just goes mad and runs away. What, in your yard? It jumps over the fence. Spent hours getting it back once, so we chain it up.

What’s it’s name, is it a dog or a bitch? (I couldn’t see from my place).

It’s a she: doesn’t have a name.

And so the weeks passed.

Then one day: do you want our dog? What?

We’re getting rid of it. The Pound. Do you want it?

My first thought was No. What could I do with a dog in my life as a carpenter? She was so cute, small, brown, short hair, smiley face when attended to. Then I thought of tradie’s dogs I had known. Roof-tilers’ Jack Russels, which scampered up ladders and ran around roofs. (But had to be carried down!)

She could be my work-companion: not out of the question.

So next day, I said yes, I’ll have your dog, but under my restrictions.

One: she stays on her box for a while, a week maybe, but I feed and water her. I’ll come over the fence. Two: from now on, you keep away, don’t approach her. Three: later I’ll move her box into my yard and feed her. Again, you keep away.

Of course, now someone was interested in the dog, he couldn’t keep away, and I caught him feeding her as before, and remonstrated. Do you want the dog? No! Then stick to our agreement. Which he eventually did.

So one day, after acclimatising herself to me and my back yard, (and we were already the best of mates), it was time to release her from the box, the chain and her isolation. It was to be a neighbouhood event. The previous owner was asked not to appear, but did, of course: it’ll run away, you’ll never see it again……well, I said, it’s none of your business now, unless you want her back…….No, no, it’s your bloody dog now, I want nothing more to do with it………

So as the neighbours sat with cups of tea in the back yard, Honey (her new and only name) was released!

Without one look back, she jumped the fence and bolted.

The neighbour appeared. Ha. Told you so, you stupid bugger.

Minutes later, she raced past my gate in the opposite direction. I opened the gate, but she was out of sight. The neighbour laughed.

After fifteen minutes little brown Honey ran into my yard and flopped at my feet, panting and happily exhausted, and buried her face in the water-dish.

There were withdrawal symptoms. She occasionally forgot where she lived and turned up at the neighbour’s back door. Foolishly and annoyingly, he fed her. YOUR bloody dog’s come back. Well, she might if you insist on feeding her! I thought you’d finished with that? So after a few week’s settling-in, Honey became my partner in carpentry and runs at Mt. Coot Tha, and at the beach, and on my boat (not happy!) She was a fixture on my ute and on the job, and a favourite with my clients and their families, where she quickly made herself at home.

Altogether a happy relationship of many years, and fond memories, and I’ll leave my life with Honey there. Me, my ute, the smiley little brown dog in the back, everyone’s mate, but mine especially!

On Ulysses, having read Ronan McDonald’s ‘The Consecration’, The Monthly, June 2022.

I still have my over-derelict copy of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’  from the last year of high-school, called grammar school in the grim Merseyside of the 1960s.

My reading then as ever, had no advice, no guidance. I read what I found curious. I had just finished two readings Lawrence Durrell’s Black Book of mysterious provenance, with much curiosity and excitement, and discovered  Ulysses soon after: where? How?

That book took me an age to finish, because I found my ability to read had slowed to a conscientious crawl, re-scanning almost every sentence with avid interest, then galloping whole tracts with exhilarating abandon.

To my surprise, I found the hero to be a Jewish resident of Dublin, born and bred. There were peripheral heroic-characters appearing everywhere, but Leopold Bloom was, is, the the hinge on which the story hangs, along with his live-in love, Molly, a flamboyant singer of opera, uncouth, sexually prolific, but with talent, tutored by the erudite Leopold in pronunciation.  Two opposites, living in punctuated harmony. Molly finishes the book with an immense, very personal monologue.

But if my synopsis is found wanting, that is but a tiny fraction of the story; a mad ramble through the hearts, minds, and real places of Dublin during twenty-four hours, guided, or miss-guided by every thought and conversation of each character.

Revelations come with every re-reading. Once is pathetic; most inferences will be missed, or misunderstood. Every consecutive reading will reveal more. Every reading will bring the joy of realization previously missed. I was primed for this effect somewhat by Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet with its four books of parallel life-stories, but Ulysses is in another category. It is a journey through exotic paths, each turn with too much detail to absorb in one trip, or a dozen. Try it!

Since then my reading has been strictly informative; Stephen Jay Gould, Tim Low, Steve Jones, Jared Diamond, Tim Flannery, Simon Winchester. The shelves sag under their weight, but battered Ulysses is always within reach

As a very young man I treasured the mine of story-telling. Every year or so I’d start again at the martello tower. I must have read the book, what, seven, eight times, the last a few years ago. Now at 78, I’ll start again. See what I missed.

BOSCH HYDROPOWER on-demand hot water systems: problems and fixes Australia

THERE ARE CERTAIN CONDITIONS in parts of Australia which render these on-demand systems (those with no permanent pilot flame) inoperative, two of which are described below, and their solutions.

1) INSECT (MOSTLY NATIVE BEE) INGRESS. This damage becomes immediately noticeable as a drop in water temperature, partially-lit burners, and black smoke-deposits from un-burned gas.

THE CAUSE:  Small bees find their way to the air-gas intake ports and lay their eggs etc. in the tubing, blocking the gas. This causes a yellow, smokey flame, or none at all, from the gas jets affected, and black carbon deposits from the chimney.

THE SOLUTION: Remedially, to dismantle and clean the gas-mix tubes affected: a job taking one hour. Permanent, to screen all air ingress and egress with flame-proof wire- mesh suitable to exclude the insects concerned, mostly small bees, though there may be other insects involved. The manufacturer may be concerned that this action may affect air-flow, particularly if any screening becomes blocked over time, so regular cleaning may be necessary.

2)  INTERNAL CONDENSATION.  There are certain weather conditions, particularly in elevated areas, which result in a TEMPERATURE-INVERSION, usually at night. During these situations, which may be quite common, the internal cold metal parts of the BOSCH HYDROPOWER attract copious condensation as warmer, saturated air surrounds the system. This renders the piezo  spark inoperative, soaked as it is during these periods. This effect takes place entirely WITHIN the casing of the BOSCH HYDROPOWER.

THERE IS NO SUITABLE SOLUTION to this problem, unless a position sheltered from the effect of the TEMPERATURE-INVERSION  can be found for the heater. A desperate measure is to light the pilot manually whilst the piezo is operating; quite safe, but requiring some considerable manipulation not within the capability of the home-owner. An easier solution is to give the piezo and pilot a quick spray with de-watering fluid prior to turning on the hot water: still a painful exercise, as the cover must be removed.

All complaints to the local Australian distributors of these hot-water systems are brushed aside as being without foundation, and it is possible that considerable money is wasted by home-owners, ignorant of the true cause of the problems,  in fruitless repairs. The frustration of cold water from the hot tap is unfortunately at the worst times of day; late night and early morning.

MEMORIES

MEMORIES

 I was sure, when I was a little boy, that I could remember a time when I was in the big old pram with a fringed sunshade. The fringe undulating in any breeze, the pram parked on the tiny patch of daisy-speckled grass called the ‘front lawn’. I remembered that fringe and its movement, though my mother said that was impossible.

It was a big house, rented, that held us. Mum and Dad, Gran, big Sister, and an occasional pet. I said I was born there, 80, Mount Pleasant Road, Wallasey, but actually it was in the hospital at Liscard; not far away.

The environment of a little boy expands exponentially as the years pass, but in the beginning was only the house and two gardens: front and back. Semi-detached, as were they all in the mostly land-locked estate. My first twelve years were spent  there.

There was no access for any vehicle, even a motorbike had to mount the kerb and squeeze between the houses to the back gate: once inside, turning around was a back-and-forth struggle.

I was forever irrationally in fear of that house, except when everyone was home, or there were visiting convivial rellies. There was a long flight of lighthouse-like stairs leading to an attic, where I braved my terror with a beating heart, to run back down to the safety of the kitchen below. There was an immense drop from that attic landing, down the huge open stair-well, and in the room three low doors opened onto the black-dark roof space, the source of my fear, for it was there that the headless, armless, legless body lay. My parents knew of my fear, and its cause, for I had explained, and they wondered at my imagination, but years later some repairs to the cistern in the loft brought light into the dark recesses, and revealed a filthy, debris-covered dressmaker’s dummy in a corner, jammed under the roof-pitch. I remember the amazed call of my father, to see this artifact, the cause of my years of terror. The first sight of it renewed my horror, until it was pulled out and its purpose demonstrated. My sister Doreen later cleaned and used it: her size exactly! But the mystery remains: how did I know that limbless corpse was there?

One small window in the attic looked out to the neighbour’s roof and chimneys, and down the chasm between, but one day my mother said, look, you can see the sea from here. There, by leaning out and sideways, braving the chasm, could be seen  a small yellow strip of beach at Leasowe and the Irish Sea: a view I often gazed at in fascination. A strange child.

So, the front garden and its lawn. I suppose it was twenty feet square, and seemed ten times as big, hedged on three sides with dwarf privet which occasionally grew beautiful aromatic racemes of cream flowers, but needed constant clipping with wooden-handled shears. (A note from the distant future in Queensland, Australia, the discovery of the insidious Tree Privet at my place, a plant which, unbeknown to Australians, will one day obliterate all the land, the farms, the bush, and the suburbs. It may take a few generations, and right now it could be stopped but won’t, and our time will be known as a criminal neglect of the environment. So what’s new?)

A gate with Number 80, a path with tiled edging to the front porch, and castor-oil plant under the bay window of the lounge; the frontage of our house and all the neighbours’, of sooty grey pebble-dash. The lawn, smaller than most carpets, and its lovely seasonal daisies, was mowed with a cast-iron push-mower, the cylinder of blades free-wheeling after each forward surge, with a noise forever associated with the English Summer, the metallic whirr repeated across hundreds of lawns like steel cicadas.

To the left of the front yard was the shared narrow canyon between the semis; indeed the three storeys of brickwork towered skyward. Mr. and Mrs. Duckworth and their daughter had the back gate on the left at the end. Old Mr. and Mrs Boston lived on the other side, our two front doors separated by one column. We seldom saw them, both being shy and very reclusive. Mr. Duckworth was fun to me; our contact discovered, my parents banned future visits. But he had the tools I desperately needed for all my projects, and was willing to share and help, and I saw no ulterior motive ever: a kindly man who would have liked a son, and who had an outrageous and evil habit or two. My father was, for a draughting engineer and future works manager, very impractical: he had no tools of any sort. Our neighbour had the tools and the advice and occasional materials, and certainly wasn’t a deviant character: as I said, kindly. Ah; a fine line, to be observed with open-minded caution; as kids we discovered plenty of rather gentle homosexual men, destroyed by war, and suffering a lonely, shell-shocked peace.

The daughter, Miss Duckworth, as a young teenager, had a strange affliction, and a limp. The medical industry in the 1950s was primitive, and with slowly-emerging technology she was x-rayed with the new equipment, revealing a dislocation of the hip-joint which had apparently happened two years prior. Her leg was in the process of creating a new socket in her pelvis. Two years with a dislocated hip and no memory of the event that caused it! Within a few days she was back to normal; amazing.

Mr. Duckworth showed me one of his secrets, to my startled fascination. All the neighbours had trouble with roaming cats. Our dungeon-like outside wash-house, toilet and coal-shed stank of catshit. Catshit everywhere: to go there after dark was asking to return with shoes caked with unutterable filth. Hosing-out once a day had no effect.

Our back gardens were all separated by eight-foot high brick walls; cosy wind-breaks with sunny corners, but cat-highways. On top his wall my adult neighbour had fixed two copper plates wired to the mains, and a switch and lookout-chair at his back bedroom window.

Before my parents sadly and mysteriously banned visits, we watched patiently for hours, it seemed, to spring the trap; staring each way up and down the endless wall, waiting for stinking pussy. Once, only was the switch thrown. A cat! Approaching with unhesitant curiosity, sniffs at the metal, steps cautiously on one plate, then the other, then: The Switch! No sound; the cat leaps and falls into the opposite yard. Was it dead? We didn’t know, but they kept coming, and our wash-houses kept stinking. Mr Duckworth unplugget the device, the wall was safe again.

I used that wall for my own highway later, balancing easily on the wide bricks as I took short-cuts to the three surrounding roads, ignoring irate neighbours. Amazing what could be seen in folks’ back yards.

Just down from our house, at the corner of Elm Park road, was a posh place with a young family. Becoming more gregarious at the age of seven or so, I knocked on their door to enquire whether anyone would come out and play with us. My offer was politely rebuffed, though I was watched from inside by two children my age, which I found strange and rather disturbing; why wouldn’t they come out and play?

My parents were rather shocked that I had called at the Jewish house. They won’t mingle, said my father, and was rather worried and annoyed that I had been so forward. To this day I wonder at the isolation attitude. There seemed to be a great mystery concerning Jews; romantic outsiders who lived and looked like the rest of us, yet were apart, embedded aliens. Strange how tribal history can create non-existent difference: genetically we’re all identical, Jews and Palestinians alike, and little boys from Wallasey

It was a cautious revelation to find other children lived nearby. Before my venture to the Jewish house, at the age of four or so there was the hesitant, innocent discovery of  Babette and Richard Black in a grand house opposite, Kevin O’Toole nearby, and Stewart Robertson up the road a bit: all within a hundred yards. Those first meetings were never to be forgotten. I wonder if they remember me?

Very young children wandered around the streets then. Exploring, discovering friends and curiosities with complete freedom, talking to anyone, young or old. No fear, no guilt, no hovering parents. Yet there were deviants abroad then as now; just no fear: parents and children took their chances. I wonder how the conversation would have gone had someone suggested fear of freedom? Once, at about yes, four years old, my mother asked me to get a loaf of bread from the bakers up the road. On the way back I idly chewed off the corners, which stuck out of the thin wrapping-tissue. I was shocked at the anger this caused. Even younger, crawling, I have another shock memory; I was near the front door, Mum was also on her hands and knees at the other end of the hall, with a dustpan and brush; what did I do? What did I say? Something I did triggered sudden anger and the brush was hurled at  me to crash against the door. It missed, but the shock has stayed, over seventy years later.

I think I understand, now. I was, like most in those days, an accidental baby, and certainly unwanted at first. My sister was nearly ten years older than me. Ten years: then the sudden burden of unexpected, life-interrupting pregnancy. No wonder my mother was pissed off. But it was just that once She would have been horrified that I remembered: a lesson in parenting.

Another shock, literally, to all concerned, occurred in the kitchen, under the hinge-out little work table. There was a power-point on the skirting for the iron. I was crawling, playing with a piece of wire, which I had bent into a U-shape, and was inserting into the socket. Bang! Really it was a huge explosion; I was thrown back, unhurt, all the family were in the kitchen at the time: consternation and real shock. What a stupid child. That sort of memory lasts forever, from tiny crawling babyhood until the end.

Kevin O’Toole, two doors down, was younger than us, very Irish, and his father insisted we included him in our games. He was a menace. If there was a ball involved, he would kick or throw it down the hill and laugh at our annoyance, as all play stopped to retrieve it from miles away. The street often echoed with the father’s yells for or at his son: Kevun, Kevun!

Directly across from our house was a grand mansion in a huge rambling garden, surrounded by the ubiquitous high sandstone walls with pointed capping. At least, writing now, that is my memory. It must have been the classic introduction; we lost our ball in the undergrowth and knocked on the door for permission to search.

Old Mrs. Gould was a treasure. Alone in her huge house she was always so pleased to see us when we called to ask if we could play. Our game was always ‘Block-one-two-three’. A garden seat was the base, and a coin was tossed for who was first to be ‘it’. ‘It’ would count loudly to a hundred, eyes covered, so we could all hear whilst we hid. At a hundred we would watch from our hiding-places for an opportunity to touch base while ‘it’ was searching, hopefully without being seen. Once base was touched we were ‘safe’, and could help catch the others. Anyone caught away from base was the next ‘it’.

Mrs. Gould must have been keeping a eye on us, for at the change of ‘it’ she would call us in for lemonade or orange juice, cakes and biscuits. What a lovely thing to do for the neighbourhood kids. She would show us around her fine old house with its wainscots and paneling, and huge moulded ceilings. I wonder now what I might think of the place, not seen for seventy years. Is it still there? Flats, maybe, or demolished.

I remember bare rooms in our house; no carpets or furniture in the so-called dining and lounge, and a primitive table and chairs in the kitchen. There was one old leather couch lonely in the dining room, its back peppered with shrapnel from a German bomb. The couch had been in a previous rental flat nearby, before I was born, and had been placed against french doors as a precaution against that very event. Many years later, when the old couch, called ‘the settee’, was finally scrapped, I cut off a piece of the leather to cover my old clarinet case, which I still have: an artifact of a distant me.

One early birthday I was given a very old little tricycle, which I rode in endless clockwise circles on the bare boards of that dining room: it was years before any furniture filled it, and even later for the lounge, called ‘the front room’. Eventually outdoors, I found it difficult to steer anti-clockwise, or widdershins. Much later, my cousin’s bicycle became a birthday present of fear and pathetic frustration.

As time passed the house became more sociable as the parents established small incomes, and with that furniture, carpets, crockery and a full pantry: a small, high, tiled cubicle with shelves to the ceiling and a tiled benchtop. Suddenly relatives and neighbours appeared for ceremonious christmasses, new years, and first-footing, with many superstitions imported from Geordie homelands.

When I was perhaps three years old Mum’s sister Flo, husband uncle Alan and son Gordon also made the trip west from Geordieland, and rented a flat down the road from us, opposite Captain’s Pit. I remember little about the place except stairs and lovely visits. My parents and I would walk down to spend the evening with them, and I would, as usual, be put to bed there on arrival. But then later, I would be woken, and picked up, and carried back home by my father, through the starlight and quiet street, and the moon would be pointed out, and the Plough, and Orion’s Belt. There was a loving good humour, a aura of peace on those night-time walks in Dad’s arms. I suspect the parents were gently pissed, as every adult seemed to be on social occasions. And why not?

Before and during these gatherings I was sent to bed, and was comforted by distant sounds of singing and laughter, the front door continually opening and closing on visitors .It seems my presence would be an annoyance to family celebration. But if they were happy, I was happy, if excluded.

During this childhood the grandmother, mother’s mother, was a background of mysterious illness and confinement to bedroom, from whence came awful asthmatic wheezing and coughing. By the time I could associate with my grandmother she was no longer a free agent with her friends and full social life. My father struggled with the anchor of her existence in ‘our’ house, though I suspect her finances paid the rent for years. I was a nasty rude boy to her, perhaps feeding off my father’s irritation, until one strange day, when I suddenly thought to myself how horrible I was to my old granny, and instantly swapped character to a kind, helpful grandson. I wonder if anyone noticed? From that moment  I tried to make up for years of obnoxious behaviour. Perhaps the father had his frustrations. I remember clearly a very loud, angry shout from him, echoing down the stairs to Mum: “your bloody mother’s left a blummin great jerry in the toilet again Molly”. I ran to look, and yes, a giant un-flushable turd reared out of the bowl like a submarine, which Dad broke up with a stick before it would disappear.

The asthma killed my granny, and also aflicted me badly, on and off for twenty years. There was a period of another illness where I only have a memory of strange bed-ridden delirium, and hushed visits from the doctor. I have no idea how long that lasted, or what it was, but I must have been away from primary school for many months, and frightened the shit out of my poor parents. I remember only strange oppressive feelings of the space in my little bedroom closing on me, and being transfixed in bed, unable to move. As if an invisible suffocating balloon was expanding, filling the room and pinning me down. If I lay supine and frozen I could avoid its threat, though I seemed to drift in and out of reality. Whatever it was, it ended, and I lived. Mysteriously, forty years later, on stage with the band, in mid-performance, I experienced just a slight and ephemeral memory of that feeling; the first and only time since the illness.

A further shock to my poor parents was the discovery that I was savagely allergic to fish: a frequent family dish. The problem was the delayed action of the allergy; perhaps an hour or two after eating. I liked fish, but oh, then my throat would start swelling, breathing and swallowing became so difficult, my face would also bloat and redden. Altogether most oppressive for me and probably worse for the parents. Only after many occurrences was the connection made: no more fish for Andrew.

Meanwhile, there is the tiny back garden, my playground. Although much space was taken up with the stinking outhouse, there was room for another tiny lawn, and a veggie-patch at the back of the laundry. I had an early attack of conservation caused by that disgusting little building, which comprised a coal-shed, toilet, and wash-house with copper and work-bench. I seemed offended by the filth, and emptied the toilet of all its rotting wet sacks, rags, newspapers and cat-stink; scrubbed and hosed-out the entire room, and fixed the cistern, its leak, and operation. This at the age of six; an early sign of the urge to restore and fight dilapidation. (Futile, in a universe tending to entropy).

That little garden with its seven-foot enclosing walls was a lovely sun-trap; the bricks absorbing the weak northern sunshine and radiating heat into the yard. Clockwise from the back door, alongside the outhouse, was a bed of tiger lilies and lily-of-the-valley, then the empty patch on which Dad later erected a very second-hand wooden greenhouse. This patch had a low wall which dropped the seven feet to Mr Duckworth’s garden, as our houses descended the hill. Under the far wall, rhubarb, then loganberries, goosberries, the corner, then roses, sweet-williams, pansies, wild tropaeoleum we called nasturtiums (nasturtium is watercress: a real mix-up by simple folk who eat both as one), and at the end, back at the house, a lilac tree and tiny rockery, and steps up to  a concrete area outside the dining-room french doors. Really a little paradise for a toddler.

All this garden was the work of some previous tenant or owner. Generally, as a planter of virgin soil, I have only recently inherited someone else’s hard work: an old garden of massive trees and delightful discovery. I give thanks to the planters who give joy to future inhabitants.

I have a distinct memory of sitting on a little seat made of two bricks and a piece of wood, nestled amongst the rhubarb leaves, with my back against the warm wall, playing with many different paper planes made by my Dad. Some five years later I took over that garden; digging, mowing, weeding and planting, and cutting the edge of the lawn to a string-line with a sharp spade. Very neat. Again, that urge to restore.

Dad’s new-old greenhouse was assembled, I remember, with difficulty. All the old glass had to be made to fit and puttied, and many new panes bought to replace the missing, but we both loved the strange green and warm ambience, and the powering aromatic tomato plants in tin cans. Later, a mystery. Dad fumigated the greenhouse. The tomatoes were full of good fruit ready for picking, but this smoke-bomb was lit which filled the little house with opaque whiteness and killed all the tomatoes. Nevertheless, we ate all the toms, toxic or not.

Slowly, I was growing out of the house and garden, my nursery and cocoon. There were children neighbours, and a road up the hill outside, from Liscard to New Brighton, and a whole suburb to be explored gradually: no walls or fences between me and the entire planet, which later I took advantage of. But then, our neighbours and the road for a hundred yards was sufficient, until the day arrived when I went to primary school at the age of four-and-a-half. Except for the first day, I walked the four miles there and back on my own.

Mount Pleasant road, Mrs. Gould’s, and Richard Black’s house opposite were our playgrounds. Richard’s garden was full of neglected fruit trees which I fed off in season: no-one else was interested in the free apples and pears and gooseberries, strangely. Between our front yard and the road was a strip of land with trees, a low sandstone wall by the road which made parking impossible, and a wide pavement with gas-lamps. A paved area in front of our house gave access to the road, and had two long park-benches. One day I was balancing on the top of the back-rest, tightrope walking, when someone pushed the seat, making me fall, to hit my head and lose consciousness and blood. To this day I wonder if I ever really recovered. A bad memory, and another, when local young thugs of the same ilk stoned the owls which roosted in the holm-oaks overhanging those seats, driving them away for ever.

That strip of land up hill from our house was all sycamores; opposite and downhill were young hollies, with some larger ones. The holm-oaks in between, and at the Elm Park road junction a beautiful, massive copper beech. In the humus under the hollies I pulled out old spikey leaves with all substance rotted, leaving a fine network of veins within the spikes. At Christmas we raided the hollies for bunches of berries to decorate the house. I queried the usefulness of the berries, for, despite folk-lore, birds never seemed to touch them.

My tiny front bedroom, with its little bay window, looked out on the hollies, and there was a winter event never forgotten: the first sight of snow ever seen by a young person. One morning the room was strangely lit; brightness on the ceiling and walls, the window-panes opaque with ferns of frost inside from my night-breath, and beyond, all gleaming whiteness. A hot penny melted a peep-hole on the glass, through which I saw a wonderful view of pristine landscape. Snow and frost, at the same time; marvellous.

Although somewhat house-bound by youth, this first snowscape was fascinating to a small person; the strange quiet, all life muffled, the beautiful cleanliness and obliterating gleaming whiteness of the usual outdoor features. Every hedge piled with a pure capping of snow, the trees, the footpath, the road utterly new-white and mysteriously silent; no wind, flakes falling softly from the low, dark sky. Tentative first steps on the soft pristine cold carpet, either powder-crisp or soft-damp, was a wonderful experience. To look upwards into the softest of falling flakes, boundless, no edges or beginning, just the movement downwards to my face! Mysterious and peaceful and gently icy. Then, in a year or two, the full enjoyment of exploration, and sledging, and snowballs and snowmen, and the trick of rolling a certain texture of snow like a carpet, forming a cylinder suitable for a snowman: the more you rolled, the bigger and heavier your cylinder became. But with the variability of our climate, that series of white Christmasses came to an end, replaced by occasional slush and freak brief snowstorms in March.

But that series of beautiful winters were a joy to the little schoolboy, who towed his satchel on a tiny home-made sledge, making the distance to school and back a challenge; the downhill speed, the uphill trudge, the fun of joining friends on the way. One winter, a remarkable and unexpected present: a classic Swiss toboggan of fine craftsmanship. It could seat two small people, or carry any load, but the snow had to be perfect, and I found, disappointingly, that my tiny old sledge was faster and lighter, the winter fore-runner of the now-ubiquitous scooter. That tiny sledge could be carried in one hand, and permit a running jump on a downhill slope, supporting just chest and hips, and could be steered like a modern surfboard, and do three-sixties on an icy surface. Portland Street in New Brighton was and is the steepest. It had the advantage of both being seldom used by traffic, and leveled-out at the bottom, to the promenade; perfect for sledging, and after school a crowd of fifty kids would be in constant motion there, trudging up one side and flying down the road. The surface became glassy, and the ice-track lengthened across the level to the promenade. All this snow-experience took place in darkness lit only by street-lamps; the winter days in the north of England are short; when school finished at four o’clock the gloom was already descending and within half an hour there was night in snow-weather.

One year on Portland Street a broken hip, one year, a farcical attempt by the council to destroy our fun. A truck containing crushed rock-salt, used to keep main roads ice-free, arrived at the top of Portland Street, four blokes with shovels in the back, spreading salt. Crazily, it turned onto our sled-run and immediately became a free-sliding juggernaut, the four men terrified and gripping the tail-gate. It hit the bottom sideways-on and slowly spun for a further hundred yards. We had won. The boos turned to frantic cheers. There was no return of authority.

Meanwhile, the bicycle. It belonged to my cousin Gordon Calvert, and as usual in the days of poverty, it had been re-cycled, ha ha, into my possession. It was my birthday, July the Twelfth, mid-summer, perhaps age ten. Being a pathetic, fearful child, I couldn’t ride it. I’d had it for a week, and couldn’t ride it. My brain told me it was obviously impossible to support a load on two points: three, yes. I saw folk riding on two wheels, but that was magic I didn’t have. My birthday friends and I went to the park, me pushing the polished and treasured bike. An older, bigger,  obnoxious ‘friend’ grabbed the bike from me in the street and rode off laughing and returned after too long, at speed. He hit the curb next to us, went over the handlebars, wrecked the front wheel and his face, which was only fair. His parents had to be called to pick up their obnoxious, screaming son. Meanwhile, alone with my bike for which Dad got a new wheel, weeks of effort and paralysing fear resulted in some small two-wheel ability, in the park, on soft grass, for I couldn’t stop or start properly, but could grasp the possibility of motion. Falling down carefully to stop, and disbelieving wobbly starts eventually gave me the courage to take the circus act onto the public road, though on arriving home I would calculate the best place to fall. Soon after, I’d stop at a vertical surface to lean against, then finally, success, stopping and putting my feet on the ground. Since that day two wheels have been my pleasure, motorised and leg-powered.

The years at Mt. Pleasant Road are packed with formative memories, from birth, to primary school, to grammar school and the start of puberty. So much happened in that short span. Since then, time accelerated detrimentally, memories blurred, there were vast changes year after year for decades, and even now time is racing past as I sit in the garden day-dreaming. But back to the haven of my birth-home.

Gran died. I remember little about the circumstance. In hospital, I think, of asthma. I wonder why there isn’t a strong memory of her last weeks. She had been with us in that house all my life, yet I remember no conversations with her, no stories, no information regarding her life. She seemed to remain a sort of lodger, there was absolutely no grandson-bonding, though I did love her in the last years once I stopped being a brat. She was part of the female detritus of the first world war, a young widow along with thousands of others, then, yet more war, and the Woman’s Voluntary Service, then that strange decampment with my parents, from the east coast of England, Sunderland, to the unknown of Merseyside, where Dad avoided the fate of coal-mining to work in engineering drawing-offices around Liverpool.

My sister Doreen, who as I said was a decade older than me, must have started her life on the east coast, though again, I know no details, and now never will, as she died some years ago at over eighty; the longest span in my known family. Such a non-committal family; no stories or details from the past ever reached me, despite my vocal curiosity. I can only assume that the decampment from the home-town was somehow an escape from some distasteful circumstance. I do remember persevering with questions regarding ancestors; father, it seemed was the youngest of thirteen children, mostly male, so I have, or had, a vast family of relatives just from that source. My curiosity was stifled when I asked about my paternal grandfather: ‘we don’t talk about him, he was a layabout, wouldn’t work, a good-for-nothing’. Then; ‘he just spent all day long in his garden growing vegetables for the family, wouldn’t go down the pit, didn’t earn a penny’. Well, that sounded wise and admirable. Then; ‘he played cornet in the town silver band’. Ah, a treasure; how I would have loved to have met him. But there was some stigma attached to my dad and his family; years later my sister proudly showed me the result of her researches into the ‘family tree’: no mention whatsoever of father and his family. Very strange. So, out there somewhere, all these years later, is a vast tribe of relatives, all completely unknown. I did daydream of visiting Geordieland and putting adverts in the local papers: ‘Andy Jenner, son of Robert (Bob) Jenner, wishes to meet his relatives……..’  I lost interest in that exercise long ago, having discovered that chosen friends are a better bet than unavoidable relatives. Though who knows; perhaps there is, or was, a related soul-mate out there.

Before the age of five I was enrolled at a tiny embrionic private school, St. Aidan’s in Mayfield Road, about two miles from home. Only later in life did I realise the significance of my parents’ expense and hope for my future. I could have gone to St. George’s School nearby for free, and perhaps learned to fight there, or worse. It couldn’t have cost much, though, for there were no qualified teachers at St, Aidan’s; a venture of two single ladies, in a large old house. Our ‘headmaster’ was Mr. Ross, a dour young Scot with thin sandy hair and colourless tweedy clothes, a classic, seldom given to smiling, never a laugh, but kindly, patient, with an interesting curriculum which kept us busy and rapt. I never remember any misbehaviour at that little school, nor any bully. It was a perfect learning experience, where knowledge just seemed to seep in without effort, and every day was anticipated with pleasure and interest.

Years later there was a surprise; the Ladies introduced a new Mr. Ross: the same man, but in cap and gown, transformed into a real headmaster, having somehow achieved his degree in the meantime, and bearing a rare shy smile. Despite seeming to absorb the essentials of education; the miracle of reading and writing, the insight into the sciences, there was much extraneous learning which has stayed with me my whole life. Songs, we learned: ‘Where the bee sucks’, and ‘Who is Sylvia’. How did that happen? There was no piano that I remember, or instrument. Plays we acted, in a vacant garden a few houses up Mayfield Road. Shakespeare, adapted. My mother made me some Elizabethan togs for the performance, and parents came to watch. We were putty, being gently moulded, absorbing interests and insights into an esoteric life, a tiny taste of Culture, to lighten the grind of reality. Perhaps why, at this moment, in old age, I’m writing this. Such a lucky start in life, and I never thought to thank my impoverished parents for their effort and cash sacrifice.

But the easy absorption of knowledge came to an end with the looming threat of the Eleven Plus; the educational watershed which unfairly and randomly shuffled poor children into a permanent life-situation regardless of talent, or hard work, or enthusiasm. It was a lottery which cast un-formed brains into irrelevant boxes from which escape became difficult, and academic achievement the prize of the lucky few, not the deserving few. I, of course, fell down the inadvertent crack: winning the lottery but losing the prize!

The wise parents foresaw this watershed. A very simple solution: cheating. Legally. The Eleven Plus examinations had papers, of course, a history of a few years. Simply accessing these old tests was the key to the trick of passing them. I was sent to a lovely old ex-teacher up the road in New Brighton, making a few quid out of his exoteric knowledge. While he smoked packets of cigarettes through a bristly, stained moustache, with yellow-tinted fingers, in a room with tobacco-coloured ceiling and walls scented with essence of nicotine, he led me through these old questions. Ah, once you knew the trick, and it was trickery, the unfairness became apparent immediately. If all children were revealed the trickery, all would pass the 11-plus: what a scam! I believe it was actually illegal to have possession of these old exam papers!

I passed the exam. I was set for the local grammar school, the top rung of that flawed ladder, the climbing of which led to university and the upper stratum; respect, career, income. The parents were delighted; their effort had apparently  paid off. But it was not to happen. However, while I set out each day to the new school, from the last year at Mt Pleasant Road, all looked full of promise. A respite before reality and inadequacy descended.

The promise of success survived a little longer. Survived the amazing move from my birth-home, and survived the O-levels, those first real examinations. Meanwhile, back at base….

I went fishing, Merseyside-style. Huge rods, designed for beach-casting, but used from the towering concrete battlements of the sea-wall, which stretched from New Brighton to Harrison Drive at Wallasey Village, built to withstand the huge tides and German invasions. The sea defences onwards to  Leasowe were tank-traps and barbed wire, which disintegrated quickly after the war, in the harsh North Sea environment. There were few fish to catch in those industrially-polluted waters, and virtually none in the Mersey estuary, but we loved the lore, and were ever-hopeful. Our long rods cast paternosters far out from the wall; a hundred yards was usual. The paternoster consisted of three, sometimes five hooks on  traces, hanging from horizontally suspended wires, and weighted with one single heavy anchor-like lead weight at the bottom. You needed the strength and knack to swing that weight back and forth, gaining momentum, before whipping the massive rod over and out to sea, weight and hooks flying savagely. We regularly caught seagulls on the wing. Our bait was lug and rag worms dug from the filth of the Mersey mud at Egremont: a pastime of ancient craft. Rag worms were red and centipede-like, busy movers, from six inches to a foot long. Lugs were more disgusting, mud-coloured and slow, with an ugly head which would invert if teased,  to reveal savage pincers. The worms were dug at low tide, where the flats were pock-marked with generations of fishermens’ spades. When sufficient bait was dug, it was carried up the beach for the ritual packing. A suitable soft red sandstone rock was pounded to sand back on the bedrock by the sea wall, and the worms rolled and packed in that sand for the day’s or night’s fishing.

Our paternosters were baited with those worms, one threaded on each hook. The catch, if any, was usually small flat-fish of indeterminate species: no-one seemed to know, but one eye of each fish was rotated to the side of the other. No matter how small, they were kept for the pan. Being allergic, anything I caught was for the family. We, that is, myself and three or four friends, fished at night, from about midnight til three or four a.m., after sleeping earlier in the night. Setting off on my bicycle with my gear and the long rod in two halves strapped to the frame and projecting like a lance in front, I rode through the deserted streets to the promenade. So keen, for so little result but the experience and hope. Still, to return home in the dark early morning with a few little flatties for Dad’s breakfast was sufficient reward. A shock for Mum one morning; I had filleted the little catch, and the result was on a plate in the ‘larder’, (no refrigerators in those days). When she dropped the first fish into the hot frying-pan it jumped out again and flapped on the scullery floor: so recently alive, perhaps the galvanic reaction of the iron pan. Her scream woke me from my late pre-school sleep.

The Pub as vital employement agency.

What would I do without the Public House?

My very first earned income came from a local pub, where I waited on tables at night, and worked hot dog vans on the beach at New Brighton through the day, during holidays from Art School in Wallasey, England.

Skipping many years, bar work was a lifesaver. Every pub seemed to need staff: start immediately young man. New Brighton, Weymouth, Guernsey, Suffolk, Australia.

As a life’s work, carpentry and music kept body, soul and family together and fed, and the rent paid. But the pub furnished the opportunities, inspiration, and employment of a different kind: music.

On Guernsey, for example, where life was a touch fragile, whenever I found myself unemployed and rent looming, I would dress in style. I owned two rather good suits then, and shirts with crisp collars, and a beard of romantic trim.  I would wander to one of my favourite and delightful pubs in St. Peter Port, sure to meet acquaintances and friendly drinkers, where during conversation I would number my talents and need for employment. What a labour exchange! My friendly stranger invariably became a source of info and leads and certain employment.

I’m not saying that this would be the case today, but not much has changed, really, at the Local. Nevertheless, the pub has, indirectly, kept my family in funds, and fun, for a lifetime.

To Australia; a life-change, almost a different planet. To a ‘job’ selling houses for Ray White’s at Stones Corner in Brisbane. There was no work in those days. No carpentry, no music for me, no work of any sort listed in the Courier Mail. A quite severe depression, though we didn’t realise it at the time.

After a terrible period of no income, saved only by my kindly boss Rene Rankin, things looked up. The pub on the corner was our five o’clock meeting place. All local business staff assembled without fail; bank staff, solicitors, salesmen, shopkeepers; all the locals. Such business went on, in the most convivial way. Leads from solicitors, saxophones acquired by the music shop, instruments at the antique shop, even enquiries from from friendly neighbouhood real estate agents.

All this pub interchange became a delightful and lucrative society which grew over the years and consolidated mutual trust with an eye to business. To have been T-total and shunned the pub, would have been to isolate oneself from job-offers and friendship, and mutual benefice.

Life without The Pub would have been a dreary existence; anti-social, cut off from friendship, conversation, even income. Later, hotels became eager venues for bands and music; more income and employment, lucrative too in the early days, a situation now ended.

So, thank you all publicans out there, for your support, your hospitality, and your supply of good cheer, conversation, conviviality in good times and bad. And The Pub; home from home, meeting-place for all, uncritical, welcoming, and offering employment to young lost souls.

 

 

THE IMPOVERISHED AUSTRALIAN ENVIRONMENT. Second essay

The impoverished Australian environment.

We look around at our vast country island, and see, for the most part, horizon to horizon, stunted trees, desiccated ground bereft of topsoil and ground-cover, and great deserts.

A few small areas support rainforest and vine forest, where rainfall is more reliable, and in the midst of a desolation of gum trees there will be the occasional small range of hills with mixed deciduous forest and tall native conifers.

Sometimes a deep cleft in a hillside or valley-bottom supports a tiny remnant of lush green ancient forest, even the Wollomi Pine, orphan of a very distant era. Why? Why these remains, in a wasteland of ragged scrub?

The obvious reason for these remnants seems to have been overlooked until recently………….they are the islands of diversity never reached by fire. Fire will seldom burn downhill, especially to deep gullies in windless valleys. These green islands may be seen hanging-on as tiny vestiges in the vast greyness of the bush. In the wet tropics and on the high mountains original vegetation survives, but now at risk during long droughts. Keep fire away, and these islands will expand to eventually re-claim all their lost territory.

FIFTY, SIXTY THOUSAND YEARS AGO, the island we know as Australia was a very different place. There were perhaps no humans. There were giant herbivores and carnivores. The few creatures we now know, wombats, kangaroos et cetera, had enormous relatives then. No doubt our poor koala is the last vestige of a substantial, brainy tribe with a varied, nutritious diet.

THE GIANT HERBIVORES OF THAT TIME created a mosaic landscape of forest, jungle, and grassland that supported a vast number of now-extinct creatures. Their remains have be found both as more ancient fossils and actual bones. Remains of marsupial “lions” have been found intact in lava-tubes and sink-holes, along with those of many animals non-existent now.

Climates do change, no doubt. Surely Australia has seen many phases of growth and dearth. But look to the hills, and to the tropical north: huge forests still exist, and thrive, despite droughts that desiccate the surrounding country. Those forests are the remnants of once-vast areas, and of sixty-thousand years ago, and aeons prior even to that. They have survived all the droughts then and now, and thrive yet.

PERHAPS OUR REMNANT TROPICAL AND SUB-TROPICAL FOREST AND JUNGLE ARE NOT IDENTICAL TO THOSE OF THE PAST, BUT THEY DO EXIST TODAY, to show what once was, before. Before! Before what?

BEFORE FIRE.

PICTURE THIS ISLAND CONTINENT BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF MAN. Perhaps, though it’s unlikely, there was an actual indigenous tribe in Australia, of which no record exists, prior to 60,000 years ago; however, that group had no effect on the fauna and flora. We guess humans arrived around that time, almost certainly from islands to the north, and in tiny family groups or possibly multiple vessels. The Polynesians have always been magnificent navigators. There was no single group which we later refer to as ‘indigenous’, but possibly many separate landings by canoes and dug-outs from many disparate islands, of many different peoples and languages, as in fact there are today under one flag.

These tiny groups of unrelated peoples would have settled wherever they landed, and in this huge country may have been undiscovered by other arrivals for generations. There was an unimaginable time scale available. Consider: the Americas, bereft of humans, were populated from the extreme north to the extreme south within only 11,000 years. Nevertheless, the meeting of other groups of settlers was essential to sustain a healthy birth-rate, and those isolated for long periods would have suffered from in-breeding.

Whatever the outcome, the new arrivals found a paradise of food-on-the-hoof, and readily neglected their carefully-conserved canoe-creatures; the story of all arrivals on uninhabited lands. And, as in every similar situation, the human invaders ravaged their virgin paradise.

EVERY HUMAN INVASION OF VIRGIN LAND RESULTS IN THE STRESS  AND OFTEN ERADICATION OF 90% OF THE ORIGINAL FAUNA AND FLORA.

If we didn’t know this fact at first-hand from the recent example of the settlement of the New Zealand islands and the extermination of most fauna, and the consequent death of all the creatures and flora which depended on that ecosystem, science and archaeology have revealed exactly the same outcome from numerous lands. No place is exempt; even delightful Hawaii lacks its pre-settlement plants and creatures.

Australia certainly suffered from the invasions of island peoples all those thousands of years ago; sufficient time to result in massive disruption of the original biodiversity and the staggering impoverishment of the environment.

FIRSTLY, AND WITHIN A RELATIVELY SHORT PERIOD, THE INVADING HUMANS ELIMINATED THE LARGE ANIMALS TOTALLY.  These creatures were unafraid of man, having never experienced such an enemy, and were easily killed. The few carnivores must have been intimidated by the invaders. In New Zealand the local wildlife was exterminated in a very short time. By eliminating the major grazing beasts and smaller tame animals there was a cascading effect on the entire ecosystem; raptors and carnivores succumbing as their prey disappeared.

With the major animals slaughtered, particularly the grazers, the environment underwent drastic change as whole ecosystems were completely destroyed. So, here’s a country now offering no easy, tame food, and rapidly losing its original variety of vegetation.

AT SOME STAGE, THE HUMAN POPULATION RESORTED TO THE MOST DEVASTATING HUNTING OF THE SMALL REMAINING ANIMALS, WITH A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION; FIRE.  THE MOST ANIMAL FOOD, CAPTURED WITH THE MINIMUM OF EFFORT.

For modern generations of Australians, we accepted the term ‘FIRE STICK FARMING’ with equanimity. It seemed a reasonable practice. Now the full horror of bush-burning is only too obvious. Having destroyed the majority of native creatures, perhaps thousands of genera, the remaining few succumbed to fire, along with every scrap of diversity, fauna and flora. EVEN TODAY, THE POOR EMACIATED KOALA IS NEAR TO EXTERMINATION BY FIRE.

FIRE IS AND HAS BEEN THE SCOURGE OF AUSTRALIA, ELIMINATING THE LAST OF THE FOREST AND GRASSLAND DIVERSITY, AND COMPLETING THE INITIAL SLAUGHTER OF THE ORIGINAL MEGAFAUNA.

When we see our country of endless, sterile scrub, great leafless deserts, and fragile climate, know that all this wasteland was created by man. What we are left with is the detritus of a once-magnificent island paradise. Humans have created these wastelands in many parts of the planet; we must finally be aware of the desolation we see around us and ban all romance from the hideous eucalypt weeds which now fester in every handful of sand.

THE EXISTENCE OF THE NORTHERN RAINFORESTS AND THE MOUNTAIN SUB-TROPICAL FORESTS MEANS ALL IS NOT LOST, PROVIDED FIRE CAN BE PERMANENTLY ELIMINATED. THE EXTINCT FAUNA IS GONE FOREVER, BUT OUR FEW REMAINING INDIGENOUS CREATURES COULD BE SAVED.

However, the burning continues. The tree-weed species, the fire-loving weeds continue to thrive, the patches of ancient rain-forest shrink with each conflagration to this day, despite having survived human pyromania for aeons. We see graziers and farmers castigated for clearing the bush to open the land for cattle and crops, but look at the bigger picture. What farmers are bulldozing is not virgin original diverse forest species, but the endemic weeds remaining after aeons of ‘fire-stick farming‘. We hate to see this massive clearance, but in reality the real clearance was committed thousands of years ago, and repeated time after time. What we are left with is the worst possible species and the consequent nutrient-deprived land: a sterile waste-land. Native grasses at least are an improvement, should they survive grazing by introduced cattle.

All over our planet, ecosystems have been altered for the worse by humans, but Australia alone has suffered, and is suffering from a double scourge. The first was the extermination of the original grazing fauna: the systematic killing of those huge creatures that created and fertilised the clearings of dense jungle, thereby maintaining a diverse landscape inhabited by thousands of animal species.               The second was the introduction of fire on a huge scale, and repeated constantly; fire after fire, for unimaginable generations. Small groups of humans, setting fires downwind; mass destruction of unstoppable conflagration. The minimum effort, the maximum effect: picking-up the charred corpses for further cooking. And the waste! The horrendous waste. Fire-stick farming?  How many fires, over how many generations, before nothing is left but a wasteland.

THIS IS WHAT WE SEE TODAY, OVER VAST TRACTS OF AUSTRALIA: A WASTELAND. Not the romantic bush of Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson. We now know the ancient history of the creation of our bleak landscape, from lush forest to sterile scrub.

Reclaiming this sterile land is very difficult. Easy to destroy, almost impossible to recreate. Quick results take an enormous effort and cost. Time, and generations of human endeavour, and the permanent eradication of fire, will regenerate the magnificent rain-forest; perhaps even alter the local climate for the better. Start with the nodes of extant rich diversity on hilltops and in gullies, and allow them to expand over the charred waste. Easy to say, and easy to do, if fire was easy to keep at bay.

The awful recent fires, the droughts, the Corona virus and its resulting economic stagnation, all these depressing events push landscaping far to the background of endeavour. If we cannot even keep fire out of our back yards, how will it ever be possible to re-claim our wonderful forest from the fire-weed species? There seems to be no solution, either now or in the future.  But there is one important and surely obvious step that can be taken, which will both safeguard lives and property, and that is to clear our yards and suburbs of the eucalypts and wattles and fire-prone species. This CAN and must be done. Formulate lists of fire-proof rainforest species for re-planting and set plant nurseries to work. This CAN be done. Start at home, in the outlying suburbs, in the rural suburbs: clearing, planting, establishing wide fire-breaks. This CAN be done to keep the horrific wild-fires at bay from our living space. How much more can be safeguarded is a plan for the more secure times in the future. Local councils responsible for opening and maintaining fire-breaks as a priority, and here is the point: the wild-fires that leap from scrub to scrub will have little chance of establishing in a well maintained rain forest. Not no chance, but a definite resistance. It can be done.

IF ENGLAND WERE IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE……..

Shift Britain down under! WHERE WOULD IT BE?

You may be surprised!

Have you heard of Heard Island? The southern hemisphere, latitude 53 degrees South.       North Wales in Britain is on the same degree of latitude in the northern hemisphere, along with the cities of Derby and Nottingham. 53 degrees North.

SO?

Well, Heard Island is 80% covered in ice, has an active volcano called Big Ben, with a two kilometre lava flow. It’s in the middle of the Southern Ocean, the middle of nowhere, between Australia, South Africa and Antarctica.

If you shifted England to its same latitude down south, say near New Zealand, Where would it be?

Ok, say you are setting-out from the southernmost tip of the South Island of New Zealand, traveling South, you would have to cover over THREE HUNDRED KILOMETRES of ocean to reach Lizard Point in Cornwall. The South Island also has glaciers……..no skinny-dipping advised in the vicinity!

The Lizard, being the southernmost point of Britain, would become its northernmost point in the southern hemisphere. So you’d have to go MUCH further south to reach Scotland!

The North and South hemispheres of our planet are very different places, with very different climates. Tasmania, shifted north, would be in the middle of Spain, but does not have Spain’s climate; there’s very little sunbathing in Tassie, and not much swimming, though I did get into a mountain creek just for the experience……….30 seconds!           Mount Wellington can have snow in the middle of summer……

So; did you know that? I was unsure, and surprised!

A parliament of hares

Has anyone seen the leaping hare                                                                                            Or of it did you hear?                                                                                                                 I was so lucky, I was there                                                                                                        When through the trees did peer                                                                                              To find out what had caught my eye                                                                                          As I drove past whilst on my way                                                                                              To Liverpool from Southport gay.                                                                                               Curious! But what? And why?

It was twenty years ago, at least; I was driving from my sister Doreen’s house in Southport to lodgings in New Brighton, and was on the outskirts of Thornton. You know how hard it is to stop the car mid journey. Remember the kids in the back, desperate to stop for the toilet, or something fascinating they’d seen? And would you stop? No. Not until threatened with instant urine or worse.

So I was well on my journey with no intention of stopping, when out of the corner of my eye, to the right of the road, I caught a glimpse. The most fleeting hundredths-of-a-second subliminal flicker of something ejecting from a field. What could it have been, I considered as I drove past.

A great effort of will stopped the car a mile past. If I don’t go back and look I’ll never know, and for the rest of my life I’ll wonder what it was that I saw. Or might have seen. So I did a Uee and parked by the field.

There was a sandstone wall a yard high with a typical triangular top, beyond which was a small field of say two or three acres: a meadow of overgrown grass bordered by a hawthorn hedge. Houses were nearby, and the traffic pottered past. Nothing to see, but I waited.

Then, Yes! Again, from a different part of the field, a leap! A leap from the covering grass! Into the air the height of a man, a hare! Up, then down and hidden. Then another! From a cricket-pitch away! A wide circle of hares, unseen on the ground, but briefly visible as they took random turns to become skybourne.

Somewhere in that ancient ritual were doe-hares in the centre of the circle; the males (I guessed twenty or so) mysteriously displaying their energy and power. But could the does see anything in the long grass? Who knows what does know, ha, a mystery!

A Parliament of Hares; a once-in-a-lifetime sight that I never thought to witness, and half considered to be a myth. So glad I turned back. I stayed for half an hour as the traffic noise and fume staged an incongruous background to a fabulous, mythical natural event, right there in front of me. And no-one else stopped to look! I felt strangely honoured to have been present at an animal-ceremony that so few have seen, and rather shocked that the hares were there in numbers, performing their ritual virtually right in the suburbs.

The hare is a peculiar, homeless creature, of solitary mysterious ways. How it survives in our unwelcoming environment, and even today stages its parliament despite the confines of urban sprawl, is a wonderful thing. Perennially persecuted, it persists.

RESTORING THE QUEENSLAND HOUSE, Grand Designs

YESTERDAY I WATCHED yet another copy-cat or franchise version of a successful tv show. So depressing, as I actually have some knowledge of this particular category.

There was featured the very sad remainder of a typical Queensland colonial house, with insufficient structure to warrant restoration, let alone inappropriate raising on inappropriate 75mmSHS posts.

The poor builder was in a cleft stick; it was a lost cause, and committed to construction. He quite rightly, and perhaps too late, explained that the ‘restoration’ was going to cost three times that of demolition, and a new building project.

The enthusiastic owner, oh dear, was showing a visitor around the initial construction. The visitor, a young woman, represented I believe, the heritage department of the local government. I could be wrong, for I watched in horror the blind leading the blind and had to turn off the tv before I smashed the screen.

The two women wandered around the elevated ruin of a once respectable utilitarian colonial house. Not a wall, a partition, a ceiling or floor remained complete, great sections having been excised or butchered to oblivion.

The critical focus and major architectural brace of the old house was totally missing: the brick chimney, along with its foundation of ashlar, laundry copper hearth, upper kitchen fireplace and range: all gone except the negative evidence of holes in floor and ceiling.

Very sad; an old house can almost be re-built around the chimney-breast with its foundation.

The heritage representative had absolutely nothing to impart, but was led like a lamb. She appeared speechless either through ignorance or fear of the camera. She smiled and offered ludicrous small remarks.

She should have been severe, outraged; her anger at the depredations of multitudes of previous owners obvious. Her presumed but obscured knowledge of colonial architecture and restoration, the point of the entire show and her part in it, offered absolutely nothing: worse, she seemed to condone the proceedings and marvel at the sad and irretrievable ruin.

The builder was quite sensible with his opinion, but way off the true situation. This project and the program it supported, purported to to be a ‘restoration’. No chance. I once heard a bloke say of a clapped-out car, ‘It wouldn’t pull a greasy stick out of a dead dog’s arse’. May as well clad the Taj Mahal in aluminium-styrofoam as restore this place.

Maybe I should have watched the entire show. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

Queensland House restoration regulations.

         The building regulations as applied to domestic construction in Queensland occupy a massive volume.  Even the type, size, gauge and metal of every screw, bolt, and nail is specified.  However………….

         There are no requirements whatsoever regarding the quality of repairs, alteration, or enlargement for the traditional Queensland house.

          There are no standards whatsoever concerning trade work on historic housing.

        There is no inspection process protecting indigenous Queensland housing, even for dwellings over 100 years old.

          The protection of the historic domestic architecture is left entirely in the hands of the owners, who may commit any act of destruction by way of alteration on their property.  Of the number of these owners, a great proportion have no idea, education or concern regarding the value of their houses.

           A few famously historic residences are supposedly protected by a small band of dedicated Heritage custodians, which has little power in most cases, and none in others, where, for example, arson permanently erases all responsibility, with no redress.

             Every year, for the last fifty years, traditional Queensland houses are legally demolished under zoning laws passed decades ago.  These lost dwellings were in most cases among the very first houses ever built in this state. And the very first buildings ever to be built on the land they occupied.  Any other country would treasure its pioneering architecture; in Queensland the householders alone are the only protectors of the state’s heritage.  This heritage is being demolished for unit blocks, the slums of the future, a use-by date disaster.

            The recognition of domestic architecture of a locality and era, as being valuable by its individuality of style and construction, is a matter of education and political consideration.  In most countries traditional domestic buildings are strictly protected to preserve the character of those villages, suburbs and cities where they exist as a majority.  In Queensland one would assume that the trashing of the wooden house is welcomed by authority, thus freeing land for development.

             Even in a street of exquisitely-preserved housing, those owners have no recourse if one house has its facade obliterated by a rabid designer.  The tales of desecration are endless, the numbers of fine houses diminishing every day, the nineteenth and early twentieth century inner suburbs of our towns and cities being moth-eaten by neglect and ‘development’.

            Admittedly the policing of work on Queenslanders is problematic, but given the choice of decay or restore, most owners in this era of temporary affluence would choose restoration. Advice for extending old timber houses is simple: there should be no obvious sign of new work.    

               Political will is the priority; a most unlikely circumstance in this mining-mentality governance.

                An endemic problem is amateur repair and maintenance seen in almost every case where work has been done.  The current building ‘trade’ has no training for carpentry as applied to historic dwellings, consequently so-called tradesmen botch every attempt at repair or replacement of 100-year-old craftsmanship.  The result of this inadequacy is the costly repetition of decayed work and the general defacement of the original structure.

                Among the hundreds of carpentry and joinery details required in historic timber housing, (which need to be taught as an essential qualification before a license to work is granted), the most important is the eliminating of decay on external fixtures.  With suitable maintenance a house built in the 1890′s survived intact for 50 to 70 years or longer, whereas ‘modern’ repairs often fail within five years.

          Housing built today under the current building code is notoriously guaranteed a life-span of only twenty years; not even one generation.  As the use-by date approaches, the ‘monocoque’ type of construction becomes impossible to repair, as there is no basic frame surviving to hang new work on.  An analogy with cement-and-steel boat-hulls is apt; immensely strong and cheap initially, but to be scrapped after a decade or two.

        There will be no protection of the remaining original housing in the state of Queensland unless there is a movement to educate owners of the value of maintaining and altering their properties to to a quality of tradesmanship equaling or bettering that of the original builders.  Legislative interference by council and government are unlikely to occur until Australia catches up with the conservation measures taken by European countries to preserve their national domestic architecture.  At present the opposite is happening: with cash to influence town-planning, any historic building may be razed, desecrated or surreptitiously burnt.  Within the last month a magnificent building, supposedly under the care of a prominent Brisbane club, was burned ‘beyond repair’, clearing the way for the club’s tremendous vision: a car park.

             Many, too many, owners of fine old Queensland homes fail to recognise the excellent quality of work, timber, design and construction of the very house they live in.  Perhaps their years of occupation render them oblivious; familiarity certainly breeds contempt.  It takes a young purchaser to actually recognise the style and value in an old, butchered home, and wish care and careful attention had replaced jerry-built alterations.  Even now the vandalism continues; self-inflicted: owners ruining their own homes. The list of disasters is long, but here are a few……………..

  1.                 Decks arbitrarily tacked on.
  2.                 Skillion roofs ditto.
  3.                 Verandas enclosed.
  4.                 VJ partitions cut through or removed.
  5.                 Visible timber stumps replaced with 75mm SHS.
  6.                 Unconsidered raising.
  7.                 Unmatched cladding.
  8.                 Hoop pine floors sanded and polished; exposed to hard footwear.
  9.                 Water-based paints used on exposed timber.
  10.                 Unmatched joinery.
  11.                 Internal and external cladding covered over.
  12.                 Modern roof ventilators that pollute ceiling-space.
  13. Historically inaccurate, badly-made and fitted steps, balustrades, post-mouldings, brackets, capitals, veranda deck fascias.

                           The above may require explanation, but most points are obvious.  Non would be pemitted in a Heritage-listed building.  Here is an analogy.                                            On the farm, in a shed, covered in a shit-shrouded tarp, is a dilapidated but valuable vintage motor car.  It was made in 1923.  The owner had long died, the farm changed hands.  Kids got it running, cut off the saloon and turned it into a ute.  Later replaced the engine with a Ford, which failed.  The original engine and body mouldered in a paddock.  A collector retrieved all the rusted parts, and the ute, and for $50 towed the lot away.  Five years later, the restored car is immaculate.  Expert and time-consuming labour has uncovered the treasure, which sells at auction for $150,000.  Just a car.   Too many owners of vintage houses are like the kids with the old car.  They should learn, and to their benefit.  Beautifully restored and enlarged Queensland houses sell to young people for lots of money; they can see the value, and will protect their investment.

              The Burra Charter is a wish-list for the protection of iconic sites.  Its definitions and principles are a mass of semantics and bureaucratese, most admirable and well-meaning, and very much at arm’s-length from the rot and maltreatment of the ubiquitous Queensland house.  For the relevance of the Charter to the humble but also iconic wooden dwelling it may as well be written in hieroglyphics.  Were a carpenter, looking for work, to quote from the Charter to the owner of a 1903 cottage in Buranda, he would be considered mad.  Yet, one day, with luck, in a hundred years or so, the few remaining old cottages may shine like beautiful museum exhibits in a sea of ticky-tacky where once was a whole suburb of distinct domestic architecture.  Too little, too late.

                 The protection of the old suburban heritage lies solely with the individual householders.  This can be seen in streetscapes where a node of fine restoration has spread from neighbour to neighbour and wise influence and perhaps advice has passed from dwelling to dwelling.  To buy into such a street and further the reclamation should be the aim of anyone who has realised how style and value go hand-in-hand.  A cherished street may encourage a neighbourhood and perhaps a suburb.  This is how heritage may be saved: without regulation but with example and education.


 

 

Restoring The Queensland House: heritage-listed carpentry Brisbane

We have been restoring and enlarging heritage houses in Brisbane since 1975, and are sticklers for quality and historic accuracy.

Our aim, given owner’s support, is to leave no sign of recent interference on a fine old house; not always possible given the necessities of modern living, but that aim must certainly apply to roof-lines, joinery, cladding, etc., and all internal mouldings for VJ or BJ partitions, belt-rails, skirtings and scotias.

From stumps to ridge-capping we have expert knowledge and construction techniques, supplying plans for council and advice for owners.  We are hands-on carpenters and builders, working with fellow-tradesmen to complete a project, building stairs, steps, balustrades, kitchens, bathrooms as required, with particular attention to the character of the existing home.

Please refer to the second edition of ‘The Building of the Queensland House’ for useful advice regarding this type of work.

For information, contact me, Andy, at  andrewljenner@gmail.com                                                                           or Rupert, at  jennerrupert@hotmail.com 

Photos from a recent job follow……….some  serious carpentry on Queenslanders:

step stringers Qld. house

Rupert cleaning out checks in stringers with a granny’s tooth.

For an external set of steps to a one-off design, with a particular going and rise, using massive iron-bark, it takes very little extra time and expense to work on-site, where the measurements are!

 

newell, landing and stringer, Qld house

Finished stringer in position on landing, rot-treated, painted, and showing rebates for treads and risers, and hole for 18mm step-bolt.

All external timber is coated with copper napthenate and oil-primed, including all cuts, rebates and joints, prior to assembly.  Unfortunately, using lead paint in joints and housings is illegal, though the best protector of timber. Copper is next best available.

step landing Qld. house

Detail of step landing frame.

Using a traditional technique to build the landing is pretty, and very strong, and the new CCA-treated stumps are foolproof.

steps Qld. house

Bottom flight in position, strained to landing.

There is a trick to making external steps with risers: the treads have a slope of 2mm down from front to back, for security of use, and a 5mm gap between the back of the tread and the riser to drain off rainwater.  Seldom seen but necessary.

Qld. house steps

Steps with risers, newels and banisters

steps Qld house

Steps and balustrades in progress.

Balustrades are built as separate units; the ends of the rails slot into rectangular hardwood pegs set into the posts. There are no nails, screws or bolts into the posts, a regular cause of rot.  With a bit of effort and a lever-bar, a section of balustrade may thus be removed to hoist in a grand piano.

Qld veranda detail

Detail of veranda deck construction, joists checked into diagonal bearer.

All deck framing is CCA treated, and joints with copper napthenate.  Trip-L-grips, where not seen, are an irreplaceable fix, though not kosher, and oversize sections take out the bounce.  A veranda must be safe and secure.

Veranda bearer, Qld house

Bearer and joists prior to new roof.

 

Post, Qld. veranda

Detail of  veranda post, showing rebate and double joist to take edge-board. (inside)

Edge-boards, painted with the balustrades, take the weather well, unlike the projecting end grain of the decking, which deteriorates very quickly. The edge-boards slot neatly into the rebates in the posts, covering the top of the fascia, and sheltering all susceptible timber from sun and rain.

Qld veranda construction

Finished veranda, showing exposed rafters, purlins and hip, simple balustrade, edge-board and deck.

Well, not quite finished: the brackets and capitals for the posts have yet to be chosen.  The purlins, in the old style, are checked-in flush with the tops of the rafters and hip, which have a broad section taken off the lower arris. This construction was designed by the owners to be seen, not covered. If you look carefully, the near-left post and section of un-painted head are all that is remaining of the original small veranda, for forensic sake: absolutely every other part is new.

Warning: Over the years we notice relatively new external carpentry has rotted to a horrifying extent, causing great worry and cost to owners. Why this is so is due to a few causes. From the time of building, a Queensland house would survive at least 50 years without damage, why not now?                                                                                      1) Inferior timber (sapwood, ‘treated’ pine, blackbutt, etc) used                                      2) No permanent rot-proofing used in joints (lead or arsenic-based oil paint)              3) Water-based paint applied at any stage to external timber                                No.3 is the worst offender, despite advice to the contrary from painters.  100-year-old cladding exposed to the elements will start decaying from the day it is coated with plastic paint; moisture that has penetrated can not dry out, causing  fungal attack.  Take note, painters. Oil-based paint or no paint is the rule.  Yes, modern plastic paints are excellent, and superior, but never on exposed timber. What is the point of installing expensive external carpentry and joinery if it is to be ruined by the misguided application of plastic paint?

Here are some more work-photos of jobs both heritage and contemporary around Brisbane, thanks to considerate owners who want the best in building practice for their beautiful Queensland houses.  Andy and Rupert have constructed all the new carpentry and building that follows……….

 

tie-down bolts

Tie-down bolts on old-to-new construction

repairs to lych-gate

Repairs to lych-gate

restructuring

Some re-structuring here……..

carpentry

during…………

carpentry

Completed, not painted yet to match existing. Click on and you can see the detail on the new gable.

andrew l jenner

Andy at the bench, with very clean Volleys. Do carpenters have benches any more?

gazebo

New gazebo

Building the gazebo was fun, using very large sections of cypress pine for all construction; cypress is a rather neglected timber, however, it is harvested from our native self-generating forests, and has many excellent properties: it is virtually rot- and termite-proof, resisting all weathering-decay.  It needs no painting or preserving with poisons, and has the most beautiful smell.  We try to use it for all exposed situations where finish and strength are a secondary consideration, but it will outlast all other timbers.

carpentry

Whole rear of Queenslander extended, with concertina doors and large inside-outside deck.

The frame for the external part of the deck is all Queensland cypress, from Womble Bank.

deckink

Multi-level decking.

steelwork

Steelwork on a non-heritage job; we do all our own on-site welding.

steelwork

More steel construction.

An hour with the welder is worth two day’s carpentry; there’s the rub. It ain’t pretty but it’s quick and strong.

decking

Rupert fixing a gun-barrel deck; notice the new posts, joists and edge-board, rescuing a previous disaster.

It's not all work; Andy and electrician mate Mick Hoelscher.

It’s not all work; Andy and electrician mate Mick Hoelscher.

We rely on the other trades in our projects; many are now old friends with invaluable knowledge and reliability.  Our trust in their work makes life easy

work

Pondering the lifting of an unwieldy length of flashing; we fix all our corro, but draw the line at roof-tiles and slate. Rupert, Andy, and Kevin.

balustrade

Retro balustrade and steps.

roof

New roof and onlooker.

repairs

Tricky repairs to inaccessible bay roof.

Here are some illustrations from the second edition of ‘The Building of the Queensland House’, available from many independent bookshops. Google the title for details.                                                                                                                              John Braben is the artist; his drawings show carpenters at work on Queenslanders over 100 years ago, when the carpentry trade was a real craft, a craft Rupert and I continue to this day.

playing a saw

His Master’s Saw.

vj ceiling

Secret-nailing a VJ ceiling.

propeller wedges

Chopping propeller wedges.

auger work

Boring out the housing on a newel-post with a fettler’s auger.

the artist John Braben

The Artist, John Braben.

John has a list of artistic credits as long as your arm, and in ‘The Building of the Queensland House’ he has many more fine drawings of early Brisbane carpentry, including the landscape of Red Hill which wraps the cover.

Veranda post detail

Veranda post detail

25th June 2014  Rupert and I have decided to do a letter-box drop locally, targetting those beautiful old Queensland houses  that are missing all the intricate veranda detail that makes them so attractive; this is what we’re saying…………

There are so many beautifully preserved old Queenslanders on our streets, except, that is, for the finishing of the veranda.  I don’t know why this is so. Can the owners a) not want it, b) not afford it, c) not realise it is missing, or d) not care?

Bracket for double post

Bracket for double post

When the house next door is immaculate in its historic finery, it is hard to believe the lack is deliberate.  Anyway, we have been gently pointing out in our unsolicited junk trash mail that the staggeringly fine houses in question are missing their vital post brackets and capitals, the replacement of which would increase the value a thousandfold, and be the envy of the neighbourhood……….to no avail so far, but we’re hoping for a job or two for the effort.

Seriously, once the veranda decorations are applied, it does make a huge difference to the aspect of the facade.  There are many styles of many eras to choose from; it would be a mistake to put 1890 brackets on a 1930 house, for example, but the original builders would never have left off those details.

We are particular about all replacement carpentry and joinery in heritage houses.  There are important points to be aware of, even with a simple fixture like a post bracket…..             1) Brackets must be cut ‘on the bias’, the grain running diagonally.                                        2) The finished piece must be treated all round with CCA or copper napthenate.                  3)  Oil primers and paints only must be used.                                                                          4)  The brackets should be painted the same (light) colour as the posts and the capital mouldings.

Some brackets

Some brackets, and their position relative to the work.

We have good reasons for all the above, even no. 4.  Brackets are often seen painted a dark colour, even charcoal-grey. May as well not have them, being invisible.  The post fixtures represent a form of classic column, being an intrinsic part of the post, and must therefore be painted as one.  You wouldn’t paint the spokes of a wheel in different colours.

Brackets drawn from Brisbane houses 1880-1930

More Brackets drawn from Brisbane houses 1880-1930.

Many of these brackets were popular in different periods. The two  similar patterns on the left of the top and middle rows were common over a 40-year span.  As fashions changed, styles became more simple until, in the 1940s these brackets were replaced by very plain curved or angular sweeps across the veranda-head from post to post.

As a footnote, and supporting other blogs concerning the Queensland house, it must be apparent  that the state has been losing its heritage constantly over the last forty-odd years as zoning regulations literally clear the way for multiple-dwelling development. 

             Whole inner-suburb blocks in Brisbane now have but a few of the original houses, and I use the word ‘original’ explicitly, because, in every case, the houses being demolished were and are the very first to be built on their sites. Historic documents show open paddocks and bush where no previous architecture has ever existed. 

           The Queensland house was a pioneering project, and is now part of our history.  Local planning treats this invaluable heritage as ‘slum-clearance’ with the crass bravado of third-world gluttony for the New.  The only safeguard for our indigenous domestic houses lies with the householders themselves. 

              It is essential, if our towns and cities wish to retain any last semblance of the historic credentials of the pioneer settlers, that the fortunate present owners  recognise the treasure they possess.  Each stump, each vee-joint board, each piece of hoop-pine or spotty-gum tongue-and-groove flooring, was cut from the surrounding scrub, processed in a bush sawmill and machine shop, and assembled by expert carpenters who were themselves New Chums.  To treat these houses with disrespect is a crime and an insult to the battlers who created our communities.