Chapter 12: Bendigo and romance on the dance floor

I had a couple of girlfriends in my first year in Bendigo. They were both very nice, but the relationships were not likely to end in marriage. Then I met the lovely Rosemary Batson one Saturday night at Carlos & Rosita’s Ballroom in Bendigo.

The exotically-name ballroom owners, Carlos and Rosita, were in reality the more pedestrian Jack and Margaret Hunt who taught ballroom dancing during the week, thus generating customers for their Saturday events.

It was an immensely popular ballroom as you can see:

Somehow in crowds such as these, Rosemary and I found each other for two dances, our second and last dance for the night being the Modern Waltz.

I asked if I could drive her home to the suburb of Spring Gully and she delighted me by agreeing. I guess we must have had a kiss and a cuddle before she went inside, having agreed that we should meet again.

Rosemary’s parents, Valerie and Alexander George “Jim” Batson, weren’t all that thrilled to know that their only daughter, not long turned 18, was establishing a relationship with “an older man”. And who could blame them. I was 24. Eventually, as the relationship became serious, they judged me to be okay and welcomed me into the family.

We made several trips to Charlton to see my mother and step father, Rena and Bill Wood, and they were most impressed by my choice of a future daughter-in-law.

Arguably the most fashionable place for youngsters to hang out in Bendigo in the 1950s/60s was Rechter’s Cafe and American Sundae Bar, decorated in the American diner style. It offered a huge range of delights such as milk shakes, ice cream sundaes and hamburgers.

Rechter’s also had a pinball machine and a juke box that could be operated remotely from the tables:

Another place to be for youngsters was Des Duguid’s coffee lounge. Des was a prominent entertainer and former amateur boxer who represented Australia in the light welterweight division of the 1960’s Olympics.

Not to be forgotten for youngsters with access to a car was Bendigo’s Golden Drive-In Theatre. The films could be watched or ignored, depending on how good they were or what else you had in mind, and it was also possible to have a hamburger and malted milkshake delivered to your car from the drive-in cafe.

For the older folk, a hugely popular eating place was Favaloro’s in the main street, Pall Mall. It offered a whole range of meals. It also had many types of drink at the soda fountains. A particular attraction for out-of-town visitors were the meat and three veg lunches.

Among our possessions is a cup-and-saucer from Fav’s. It was given to us by Bendigo friends. We didn’t enquire how they came by them:

My friend and one-time boss, David Horsfall, was not just a prominent and hugely admired journalist (Radio 3BO Bendigo and Bendigo Advertiser), he was also a historian, having written books about Bendigo’s past, all now sadly out of print. However, we have two of them: March to Big Gold Mountain and a slim volume Everything You Wanted to Know About Dragons.

In addition, David was a wildlife enthusiast. One of his favourite wildlife spots was the Whipstick on the fringes of Bendigo. He sometimes stayed there overnight. And did he take a tent? Not at all. David was happy to lie on a groundsheet or mattress in the open air.

David had a walk-in aviary in his back garden in the Bendigo suburb of Kangaroo Flat. It was home to a great variety of birds. He pushed at the boundaries of legality for a while by housing a wedge-tailed eagle, a bird that must have had a wingspan of more than two metres. He probably told me how such a bird came to be in his possession, but I now can’t remember. He also had a smaller eagle named Nelson. It had one eye and one leg.

It could be argued that it was more a mini zoo than an aviary because it accommodated other creatures including a goanna, an echidna, a turtle and a blue tongue lizard. David died in June 1998. His bird and animal collection was returned to the wild.

Bendigo’s annual highlight was the Easter Fair with the parade led by a Chinese dragon. Bendigo has a close link with the Chinese, dating back to the mid-1800s when they arrived in large numbers, seeking riches from the huge gold deposits on which the city was founded.

Bendigo had an extensive public tram system for decades. This was closed down as too costly in 1972. It was replaced by buses. Just one tourist tram was kept on.

One of the main attractions in Bendigo was the Central Deborah Gold Mine, which has been kept open for tourists, even though it long ago stopped producing the precious metal. The guided tours of the tunnels deep under Bendigo are popular.

Let’s end this chapter with a return to my time at Radio 3BO Bendigo. Over the years I’ve met some weird people, but few would have been weirder that the 3BO announcer Rick Perry who was probably the least talented on-air person in the station. Among other aspects, he refused to read the news when the main studio light was on, insisting on using a desk lamp. Fair enough, but when one of his mischievous colleagues slipped his hand through the studio door and switched on the light, Rick abandoned the broadcast and charged around the building attempting to discover the guilty person. No-one confessed and eventually he returned to the studio and explained the silence as being “due to a technical fault”.

On another occasion Rick was about to take over in the studio and announced to the staff that he had forgotten to bring a condom and would need to go home to get one, which he did. This meant that he didn’t take over in the studio from the earlier announcer for close on an hour. It was never explained why Rick needed the condom. In his dreams, perhaps? I don’t think it was long after that he resigned from 3BO and went to a radio station in Darwin after changing his name to Rick Radford. I imagine he is now long dead.

Another announcer in my time at 3BO was Brian Whetstone who was talented and very pleasant. He eventually moved to London for a few years and worked as a DJ for the pirate station Radio Caroline that broadcast from a ship anchored off the coast of England. As Caroline was judged to be illegal, Brian changed his name to Jon Sidney, a name he kept when he returned to Australia to work as a singer and actor. He died aged 59 in 1998 in Hobart, Tasmania.

Commercial radio was required by the Australian Broadcasting Control Board to carry a specified amount of religious programming. This varied over the years, but in my time at 3BO the programs were mostly provided by American evangelists. Arguably the most aired program was The World Tomorrow presented by Herbert W. Armstrong or his son, Garner Ted Armstrong. Another one was Back to the Bible. For an atheist such as myself, I thought these programs were dreadful, but they were profitable both for the radio stations and the evangelists. The radio stations were paid well to broadcast them and the donations to the evangelists were often much larger.

Next chapter: My move from Bendigo to an exciting life with Radio Melbourne 3AW.

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