Friday 9 September 2022

My FSH Journey

 

Born in the middle of last century my life was one big adventure rolling endlessly from morning into night. A bag of skin and sinew, always a bit slower, a little weaker and believing my peers considered me less intelligent, made me determined to succeed.

There would be no question as to my career path, I wanted to join the family motor business and become a racing driver. Well, a boy could dream. My heroes were men like, Lex Davidson, Jack Brabham, or NASA astronauts.

Never questioning my strength, I found it hard to understand why everyone around me could run further, swim faster and whose hand/eye coordination seemed like it was God given. In essence I considered myself a dork and, if I wanted to get to the Grand Prix circuits in Europe had better be a bloody good mechanic.

Back then, I never understood about the effect girls would play in my post-pubescence. One kiss from a blonde bombshell at a netball game on a steamy, starlit, summer’s night knocked my boyhood ambitions for six.

The girl, now long gone, woke me to a different set of priorities and for the next thirty-five years I won and lost at business, never having enough time to question my health, or why my stamina failed me when others worked on.

My business world was crumbling during the recession we had to have and, I felt as if I had been building sandcastles before an incoming tide. I couldn’t make anything last. However, determination and perspiration are strong allies and our family business held ground until a buyer could be found.

Moving to Melbourne, I worked in a number of sales positions, which took me across Australia and overseas. In my sixties and considered a fossil by HR folk, I took a job as a parts picker at AGCO, a company selling Massey Ferguson tractors. Considering myself unfit, I didn’t take a lot of notice of the aches and pains, but my right shoulder began drooping even more and occasional numbness travelling to my fingers worried me.

So began a never-ending roster of specialists who, while they thought they could relieve my pain, never offered confidence enough to let them operate. A referral to rheumatologist Dr. Wendy Stevens led to a biopsy and an overnight stay for wine and bickies in St Vincent’s. Luckily, before going to surgery, she thought a second opinion might offer a more accurate diagnosis.

Introducing herself as Dr. Katrina Reardon bustled in. ‘Now look straight ahead and purse your lips,’ she said. ‘Hmm, now whistle?’

Doing my best to imitate a botoxed catfish, a breathless wheeze escaping my pucker.

‘As I thought,’ she said, while casting a knowing eye over my Mr. Men like physique, ‘you can’t pucker your lips.’

‘I’ve had no complaints to date,’ I replied.

My smartarsed comment withered, dying the death it deserved, Katrina asked me to remove my shirt and as I responded to her diagnosis commands, she checked my drooping right shoulder and soft froglike midriff.

Dr. Reardon had been with me only a matter of minutes before offering her suspected diagnosis, FSHD. Recommending the biopsy be sent for genetic testing to confirm her verdict, Katrina explained how my life could change over the next few years and my need to give up working as a furniture delivery man.

 

At home my wife Ruth and I began sorting out the ramifications of this change to our lives. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

‘Might write a book,’ I said

‘But you don’t read,’ she laughed.

She was right. I didn’t read novels, but being in sales I could tell stories, I just needed to make a yarn last.

Fast forward two years and we were sitting among writers from across Australia at the 2103 National Literary Awards where my debut novel KUNDELA received a Commended.

Since that night Voss, The Price of Innocence and Gillespie’s Gold have also been published. With a growing list of novels, biographies and self-help stories gathering dust on my hard drive while I search for a publisher, I continue to write and learn my craft.

Who would have thought this no longer skinny kid from Orroroo in South Australia, could find his books in many libraries around the country? Not me.

Terry


Sunday 12 December 2021

Just a boy from Burraboi

 

Just a boy from Burraboi

 

Not a lot of money for luxuries

Yet ample time to spend,

Lost in routine, a farmer’s daily grind

Praying the drought would end,

Dreaming an outback boy’s day away

Escaping the loneliness of Burraboi

Running from the Wakool line


 


Friday 25 June 2021

Orroroo Sunset

I reworked a poem I wrote on Tim Frolling's Facebook page after he posted a photo of a sunset, please leave a comment as
I would be very interested to know what you think.

You posted the picture of a sunset
And it took me straight back home
Clouds red and hanging lazy over Morchard’s rolling Hills
To a place where time was always friendly
And innocence made us free
When life had more questions
To who or what we wanted to be
When we didn’t care about our answers
For in that blood red sunset
We had faith its mystery would unfold
Running close to new days of our future
Were not of big concern to me
Then depending on the season
For less than just one hour
Our backs on warm and fresh cut lawn
Gazing skyward in the purple of the twilight
We would wait for twinkling stars
Sneaking skyward over Black Rock Peak
Fat and golden our full moon would spread its glow
Laying still scanning that wide familiar cosmos
For the joy that jolted through you
When you witnessed Sputnik make its rounds
Back when yellow of the street lights struggled
To feebly penetrate the dark
Our eyes adjusted, and ears sharpened to the silence
As the Milky way lit up our night
In all those wonderous minutes of our innocence
We couldn’t feel it slowly slipping by
Times hands have washed the muscles from my frame
Even though the wrinkles on my face
Declare the time I’ve won
Inside I feel just as I did in nineteen sixty-one

So, Tim, thank you for the photo
And taking me back home
For showing me the shadows of those wonderous hills
Where as a boy with bicycle and rabbit traps
Around them I would roam
With cousins Doug and Geoff and John,
Our mates Placey, Paul and, Spider too
Oh, as lads we had a time, I tell you
A time when freedom knew us well
As in that short bright flash of youth
We lived as kings, in good old Orroroo


Comment

Friday 18 June 2021

Sally

Rollin down an old dirt road

Dust hanging onto the back of the truck

Radio beating out an old country song

An angel singing beside me, bringing me luck

Slappin her hands in time on the dash of my car

Singin on pitch,  knows every word

Seems to me, there’s not a song Sally hasn’t heard

 

Give her an old church hall or a public bar

She's got a head full of dreams and songs to play

Doing her dues and making it pay

Someday soon she’ll be on her way

A crowded bar, or empty barn

All she needs is a place for her to sing

So, turn up that amp, girl -- and make it ring

 

Six new strings on an old guitar

Scuffed Williams boots and tight blue jeans

Tapping feet and swaying hips

Eyes of fire, hold a wild girl’s dreams

Killer smile on forbidden lips

Stuff another greenback in her old tip-jar

Help like yours will take her far

 

I remember Sally slappin her hands

On the dash of my car

A head full of dreams and songs to play

Thinking someday soon she’ll be on her way

Doing her dues and making it pay


No longer playing old church halls or a public bars

It’s Opera house and Stadiums

No longer dreamin of fortune and fame

My little girl’s a superstar

Now this old world knows her name

Thursday 17 June 2021

A Conception Conspiracy

 Way back in September 1948

Time was pressing it couldn’t wait

And our mothers, the sisters three

Hatched a plan, or so it seems to me

Something my cousins and me

Called the conception conspiracy

 

If such a plan had been discussed

The birthday dates preferred were June

And with many factors to consider,

Husbands to coerce would be a cinch

A kiss, a cuddle, a loving pinch

A little human to create

 

Doubled over and throwing up

Each sister thought with banging head

She should have bought a pup instead

Encouraged by Grandma saying something great

Like, “It’s your first, I had ten.”

No sympathy from our Nan, she’d say,

“Now, out of bed and start again.”

 

And as June 1949 came around

Through the moaning and contraction slug

Auntie Aileen gave birth to Doug

I was next with Edna pushing hard

My father banished to the yard.

Last was Beth bringing cousin Geoff to life

 

But there we were cousins three

Doug and Geoff and little me

June’s babies born eighteen days apart

A bond soon formed and as we grew

Through our scrapes our fights and fun

Some battles lost some battles won

 

Now sitting here soon seventy-two

I think about our shared history

Our mothers, fathers and siblings too

Of Nannie Symes, those sisters three

and I am convinced, there had to be

A planned conception conspiracy

Wednesday 16 June 2021

DAVE THE SLAVE


Dave, everyone thought him slow
And, because at school his grades were low
Teachers gave him extra work
But when it came to jobs outside of school
Dave bent his back and sweated hard
Doing the crap no one wanted to
Became a target for the high school jerk
But Dave was a thinker, strong and kind
Taking all those rotten jobs, he never had a care.
At fifteen Dave left school, failed without a pass
But Dave had a plan to outdo his peers
All those jobs others just would not do
For a price he’d clean a drain, or pick-up shit
Some old red paint, and flattened tin, he made a sign
That read:
‘Dirty, smelly jobs, not for you?’
Give Dave a call and I’ll make them mine’
And below number painted in bright red,
Free to call of course, is what it said.
At first the townsfolk thought him a joke
Called him Dave the Slave
When his name they used
But that was always part of young Dave’s plan
Cleaning gutters, raking leaves,
There wasn’t a thing he wouldn't do.
Gave the pubs a miss when his day was done
No-one he had to sit and yarn
With this drop-out kid from a busted home, on the edge of town
After counting his cash by lantern light
Dave stashed it down tight in an old milk can
And while the town was having fun
It was Dave the Slave who counted his cash
HIs twenty first, no birthday bash
For Dave’d be cleaning the toilets at the local hall
No invitations ever came his way
For weddings, church outings, birthday parties, or such
So, unseen but watching Dave cleaned it all
A life’s ambition had been to save
And now a master stroke he played
That horrid name, no longer was a joke
Our man Dave now changed his brand.
And Dave the Slave, he franchised out
His company’s growth it didn’t stop.
He bought pavilions, generators and polished floors
Now rented out to those who'd teased
He took their cash and walked away
He bought a block on the side of town
Built a strip of shops and factories too
Fast Food joints along the highway faced
And soon the shopping strip was full
A Hardware chain called and asked him
To build
A warehouse large for them to fill
Dave’s wealth and influence continued to grow
No more the small town laughing stock
Dave bought the farm one of his bullies lost to the bank
Only contempt he had for Dave
With little left that the family owned strapped to their truck
In desperation, the bully’s wife gave Dave a call
So with fading light and choking tears
Between them both they worked out a plan
She'd keep the house where she’d raised their kids
Her husband still would work his family land
New machinery from Dave now filled the sheds
The bully, his attitude had changed
And the sense of privilege that he once knew
Had disappeared like morning rain
They struggled hard his wife and him
Until they saved enough to buy
That same land his forebears had worked for years
His lesson learned; his pompous nature gone
A better man now like a chrysalis emerged
No longer propping up the bar when there was seeding to be done
The farm a show piece for all to see
He’d tell his admiring friends when they came to stay
None of this is because of me
It was Dave the Slave, who set me free.

Monday 14 June 2021

Was the Imperial Hotel Really Fire Bombed in 1969?




 Gillespie's Gold:     Chapter Forty-Nine 

 

Sam went with her father to shift the pivot irrigator. She knew it was a ploy to talk about mining and something she would rather do than grocery shopping with her mother. There was something about being on the farm that eased her mind, the rattle of tools on the tray of his four-wheel-drive was comforting and the incessant barking of the farm dogs riding in the back reminded her she was home.


‘I’ve been thinking about the Gillespie place,’ her father pointed for her to open the gate.

‘Yeah?’ Sam climbed out and waited until he drove through. There was no stock in the paddock so she left the gate open and ran back to the vehicle.

‘I remembered something an old scratcher told me back in the seventies, reckoned he’d been done out of a claim, years before. He bragged about a reef that would make Lasseter envious.

‘Scratcher?’

‘Something my dad called people who scratched a living out of prospecting.’

‘Where was this claim? And who was he?’

‘I just knew him as Mad Charlie,’ he eased the irrigator over the pivot point, ‘here, jump out and pull the drawbar pin, eh,’ he rocked the vehicle back and forward until he felt the pin loosen, ‘then it would be a big help if you could give me a hand to set up.’

As they worked, Sam’s father told her the scratcher had worked a claim at Waukaringa in the early days and asked Les Gillespie to back him. For years they combined to make the claim work and, like everyone else around there, they sent their ore to the battery in Peterborough. Rumour had it there’d been a card game at the Imperial Hotel the night it burnt down. Les Gillespie and Mad Charlie were the last players standing and the stakes were high.

‘Everything had been fine between Gillespie and the scratcher until the night of the pub fire in Orroroo. It was around September ‘69 and the licensee often promoted a card game to boost his takings. However, that night was a big one, a poker championship, something he wanted to become an annual event.’

‘I can’t see how that would have been legal,’ Sam said.

‘It wasn’t, and his idea was scotched by the local copper and most of the town’s wowsers, but he got around this by putting up stake money for the people who objected.’

‘Yeah,’ Sam knew her dad loved a story, but the mix of truth and fiction in his yarns could always be called into question.

‘Two hundred dollars was a lot of money to most in the district, but Bert saw it as an investment that would pay dividends after the tournament. Five percent from each winning pot meant his plan couldn’t fail and commercial travellers who were regulars at the hotel would soon spread the word.’

‘So how did it work?’

‘Bert capped the number of players at sixty and on the designated evening, thirty serious and twenty-six novice gamblers registered for the championship.’

‘That many?’

‘Yep, professional players deposited ten thousand dollar stakes, amateurs gamblers put up two thousand. Mug punters, for whom he had a waiting list, thrust their two hundred dollars at him.’

‘You’re making it up,’ Sam said, ‘that would never happen in a place like Orroroo.’

‘You can scoff young lady, but I’m told at the gala dinner that night a red pyramid of notes built on the table as each gambler pressed forward to register their stake and before the soup arrived two hundred and ninety thousand lay before them. Bert and his wife stood behind the cash and as a photo was taken to record the occasion, Bert held up another ten grand.’

‘A photo, really?’

‘Yes,’ Clive sounded indignant, ‘I even had one somewhere.’

‘Bet you can’t find it now,’ it felt good to laugh.

‘It’s in the wardrobe at the back of the motor-shed, I think.’

‘That’s lost then,’ they both laughed this time.

‘Anyway, he puts the ten thousand on the pyramid, declaring this the richest poker tournament in the State’s history. After dessert, he puffed himself to full height and rapped on his glass. When he had the attention of the diners, he told them the games would begin at nine o’clock and asked the players to open the envelopes in front of them. He waited and they fidgeted. Each envelope held a card, a red number to tell them their table and the blue, their seating position. He wished them luck and said the match steward would call them at eight forty-five pm and the doors would close at nine until the first refreshment break at midnight.’

‘It’s a good story Dad.’

He passed her a couple of spanners and pointed at the toolbox. ‘The mug punters took to their rooms where some tried to sleep while others flexed their fingers with a card deck and at eight fifty-five, the dinner gong sounded, and players were called to take their place at the tables.’

‘And they had to stop at midnight?’

‘Yes,’ he rocked on a tyre and watched a wave of movement ripple along the irrigator’s length, ‘anyway, when tournament master called time, the gamblers returned to their rooms and the mug punters who’d lost went home to explain the unexplainable. Others sat outside in their cars and cried like babies. Only the winners were happy and twelve hours later those left in the tournament gathered again in the dining room, a scene more sombre than the night before.’

‘How did anyone go to the loo?’

‘They didn’t, anyway it went on just like the night before until time was called. By then the room stank of cigarettes and the sweat of desperate men and the remaining players adjourned to their rooms for a shower and a change of clothes.’

‘Dad, forty hours is a long time and even with scheduled breaks, how did the players rest?’

‘It is a long time but think, everyone would be going over the other players’ faces in their mind, trying to remember flinches, smiles, searching for anything that might indicate their next play.’

‘But what has this to do with the Gillespies?’

‘If you have some patience, I’ll tell you,’ he turned the key and started off again, ‘Mad Charlie didn’t like his last hand and called for a new deck. On the table, over two hundred and seventy thousand dollars in cash and bonds sat before them. Only four hours earlier he’d won the deed to the John Billings’ farm. John sat in the corner drained, he couldn’t go home. He had no home,’ he waved his hands to emphasise the tragedy of it.

'Really?’

‘Yeah, Bill Simpson had folded a broken man and the title to his engineering shop added to the pot. Together these two upstanding citizens owned only the clothes they stood in. Only Charlie, Les Gillespie, two other players and the dealer remained. There was still a lot to play for.’

‘I’ll bet there was.’

In the swing of the story, her father pressed on, ‘Charlie reckoned he had a better gold find than the legendary Lasseter’s Reef and pulled a map out of his jacket and put it into the pot. Les Gillespie called and raised with the deed to his own property and the two other players at the table folded and left. Everything to play for was now between the scratcher and the squatter.’

‘So is that what I am Dad, a scratcher?’

He didn’t answer and pressed on with his story, ‘having matched and raised Charlie’s bid, Les then drew three gold bars from his jacket pocket. The scratcher folded. He couldn’t call or raise. He was out of options and Les had beat him.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘Not quite, but yeah. Mad Charlie demanded to see the cards, but Les just laughed. I’d heard he was mean bastard, but mean enough to laugh when he turned over his hand, that’s a whole new level of low. The bugger had nothing and he’d bluffed Charlie out of everything.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Charlie had the better hand, but Les had more to bet. His only gamble was that Charlie had less to play with and it worked. Les Gillespie got everything and it pissed Charlie off.’

‘I’d be pissed too.’

‘That’s how it works with poker, so be careful who you play with.’

‘So, the guts of the story is, Charlie hated Les because he believed a Gillespie cheated him out of his,’ she used her fingers to make speech marks, ‘better than Lasseter’s reef and their farm too.’

‘Yep and that’s why I never play cards.’

Sam loved her father’s yarns but she dismissed it as a myth, something drillers in bush camps tell each other to pass time.

‘Bigger find than Lasseter’s, yeah?’

‘So, the scratcher said.’

‘Which we can’t prove because neither has been found.’

‘Yep.’

‘So, the Gillespies have Mad Charlie’s mine, if the map to its whereabouts didn’t go up in the pub fire, and you believe that?’

‘Nope,’ he tightened the last clamp and straightened up and put his hands in the small of his back and stretched, ‘the only bit I believe is that the pub burnt down.’

‘So, you just told me a whopper to cheer me up?’

‘You used to like my stories,’ he feigned hurt.

‘Of course I love your stories, but what I want to know is why Charles is so dammed positive the Gillespie land has gold on it.’

‘I dunno love. Your former boss and Mad Charlie could be related, still carrying the grudge. Charlie told anyone who’d listen that Les had blown the entrance of his mine to stop people raiding it. He maintained there was an underground rift, or fissure, millions of years old running east west, on a line from Burra to Roxby, somewhere between the Walloway Hills South of Eurelia and as far to the north-west as Lake Torrens. If the reef does exist and is on Gillespie land, then it’s probably on that line.’

‘There’s not much evidence on the surveys to support that.’

‘Well, he was a bit of a crackpot. He reckoned if you knew where to look, you could grow gold.’

‘Yeah?’

‘So, he said. He also reckoned that the inter-plate fault line has smaller fissures, fault jogs he called them. Anyway, these lines can have several mini earthquakes a minute and if you know where they are, you can literally watch gold grow.’

‘And you believe him?’ She wondered if her father was winding her up with another yarn.

‘Nope, and like you, I never found anything to substantiate his ravings,’ he laughed.

‘You bastard, Dad. You’ve sucked me in twice. I come down here for some respite and all you do is take the piss.’

He was falling over himself with laughter, ‘Google it if you don’t believe me. C’mon let’s get Mum and take her to the pub for lunch.’

‘Fault jogs?’

‘Google it.’