Chapter 4: Charlton - becoming a teenager

Our family — John and Rena Richardson and four children, Jeffrey, Ruth, Alison and me — moved from the Wylie’s Building to 10 Peel Street on the corner with Mary Street in June 1950. I was then 12. We grew to love that house and I was able to develop my friendships with John O’Brien, John Hopkins and Max Biddlestone who all lived just a few doors away in the same street.

The house had three bedrooms, a loungeroom, dining room, bathroom and kitchen. Outside was a separate sleepout/bungalow where Jeffrey and I slept, a dunny (toilet), a ramshackle shed and a chook (domestic fowl) yard and shed. In addition to a spacious vegetable garden there were 13 varieties of fruit. This may seem an exaggeration but a few years back my younger sister, Alison, and I were able to list them all. None of the fruit went to waste. Some was given away to friends, but most was preserved by Mum in a Vacola fruit bottling kit:

The sleep-out with fibro-cement walls was very basic . There was no glass in the windows, just wire screens to keep out the flies and mosquitoes and wooden shutters to keep out the wind and provide some darkness when we were in bed.

The sleepout was very hot in summer and bitterly cold in winter. To reduce the number of times we had to get out of bed, I rigged up a box suspended with a conveyor rope between our two beds so that Jeff and I could swap books and comics. And here’s the house seen from Peel Street:

What is missing from this photograph is the Cyprus hedge that was where the front fence is now.

I like cats, but don’t care to be in the close proximity of dogs. This is because I used to deliver newspapers around Charlton on my bicycle for newsagent Lil Klunder. Many of the residents had working sheep dogs that would chase me and bite my ankles. Dad discovered that Miss Klunder was rewarding me with cinema tickets she had been given for displaying posters for the Rex Theatre outside her shop. He told her this was unacceptable and that she had to pay me actual money which she did, although I doubt that it was very much.

One of my several hobbies over a couple of years was breeding silk worms. I have no memory of how this interest came about. The moths laid their tiny eggs inside a shoe box and when the eggs turned into the next generation of worms, I fed them with leaves from the mulberry tree in our back yard. Eventually the worms spun a cocoon of silk around them before emerging as a moth at the end of the cocoon. And so the cycle went on. My sisters and I tried unwinding the silk onto cotton reels, but eventually got bored with this. We did wonder how many silk worms would be needed to create a silk frock. Many millions I would guess.

My mates, siblings and I loved catching yabbies (freshwater crayfish), which was much more successful than catching fish. We would make a net from one of my mother’s discarded stockings and a re-shaped wire coat hanger. The local butchers were only too happy to give us some discard meat as bait. The smellier the better. We would tie the meat and a weight — probably a nut from a bolt — on the end of a long piece of string. The bolt would take the meat to the bottom of the dam. It wouldn’t be long before we felt tugging on the string which mean yabbies had taken the bait. We would then gently lift them closer to the surface of the water and sweep a net under them. It was not uncommon to get a bucket full in one session. The best spot for yabbies was the railway dam from which the steam locomotives would draw their water. Those yabbies were usually a reasonable size — about 10 or 15 cms — whereas the ones in the Avoca River were mostly too small to eat.

Our yabbie catches were dropped into a pot of boiling water and when they turned red, we knew they were cooked. Once they were out of the pot and cold we would eat them dipped in vinegar or lemon juice.

In July 1951, Dad moved the Tribune and job printing business to 58 High Street, which was its original location, having been establish there in 1876, more recently by the partnership of Henningsen and Klunder. Astonishingly, the original foundations of the printing machines were still there.

This wooden building was later replaced by a brick-front shop which was a considerable improvement on the Wylie building. It had a photographic darkroom, an office and a front area with a counter and room for all the stationery to be nicely displayed.

Having moved to the Higher Elementary School, I was expected to be more involved in sport. I was good at swimming, but anything with a ball was a no-no. I was the last to be chosen for the cricket, tennis or Australian Rules football teams. With good reason. I hated cricket. I was seriously inaccurate at bowling, a terrible batsman and hopeless at catching the ball in the field. I was also hopeless at Aussie Rules. I never did get the hang of the drop kick which required me to kick the ball exactly at the moment it touched the ground. Tennis was another game for which I showed minimal skills. I did try golf later but that is for another chapter.

Despite being an embarrassment for not being good at sport in a sports-mad town, I did have a wide number of friends. In addition to those already mentioned in Peel Street, there was Gavin Beanland, son of the Charlton Shire Secretary, Rex Luth, son of the owner of the Luth’s stores, Graeme Crossley who was killed in a car accident, and lifetime friend Ron Winsall, who became the best man at my marriage and a high-ranking policeman. There was also Ken Wright whose family owned a farm at Yeungroon (pron: yoo-en-groon) and who took the school bus each day into town. I stayed with him and his family several times and we caught lots of rabbits which we sold to Cllr J B Cook’s ice works for six pence a pair. Cllr Cook always gave us a receipt addressed to Wright and Wrong.

Rex Luth was an exceptionally clever lad. Among other skills he was able to make model aeroplanes that actually flew. Rex had a small motor with a propellor powered by kerosene. The planes were made of lightweight balsa wood. Rex was able to construct the planes without any any plans. We lost touch when his parents sent him away to boarding school. Gavin Beanland was older than me but we had a mutual interest in photography and gadgets and spent quite a time together.

Cubs and Scouts were always a big part of my growing up in Charlton, and I spent periods as leaders of both:

The jamboree in Sydney in 1952 was good fun, but not without its drawbacks. Our train journey via Melbourne and Albury-Wodonga went on forever. No surprise considering that we travelled at the mighty speed of 30mph most of the way. The locomotives and the carriages, particularly in New South Wales, seem to have been provided by a museum. However, once there, Ron Winsall, Graeme Crossley and I had a wonderful time meeting scouts from around the world.

Barry Hopper, my brother Jeffrey and I also attended the jamboree in Wonga Park on the outskirts of Melbourne in January 1956. The plus side was a shorter train journey, but the downside was the heavy rain that turned the site into a mud bath. The full details are HERE in the article I wrote for the Tribune.

This wonderful photo was held by the Crossley family in Charlton.

I got on quite well with the teachers in the Higher Elementary School. The headmaster was Eric Allison, his deputy Eric Bryant, the French teacher Sheila Hernan, the woodwork teacher John Hopkins, the science and maths teacher Bernard Molloy. Eric Bryant stood out as a fine fellow, chiefly for one reason. During a school assembly he laid into us for some terrible sin, the details of which I’ve forgotten, but at the next assembly he apologised, saying that he had made a mistake. It was most admirable that he’d had the courage to apologise. Few teachers would have. He was also memorable for pacing around the glass as he dictated lessons to us with his hands on both pockets. He would stress his main points with his hands still in his pockets, with the result that his buttoned trouser flies would sometimes burst open revealing his underpants. We tried not to laugh.

Sheila Hernan did her best to give the Higher Elementary School pupils a reasonable grip of French, but she was handicapped by never having been anywhere near France and possibly not even to a French restaurant. That said, most of the pupils did take on rudiments of the language. Not so Ron Winsall and I who did so badly in the exams that we were encouraged to drop the subject in preference to a history subject. The two being taught at the school: History of the British Empire and History of Asia and the Pacific. I can’t remember what Ron and I chose. Whatever it was, I remember we achieved a pass.

Maths was also a struggle. I was okay with basic arithmetic — you know, two and two makes four etc — and could parrot the 12 times table, but I never did get to grips with algebra, trigonometry and geometry.

There were two teachers called Richardson at the school for a little while. One had a drink problem and would sometimes be seen pissed at local football matches; the other was rather aggressive and went off to do something at the Bendigo Prison. Bernie Molloy was a good teacher but with a short temper. In his spare time, he built a caravan in the school grounds. Here’s a photo my father took for the Tribune. As you will see, Bernie looks hardly older than his pupils:

The school had separate outside dunnies (toilets) for the boys and girls. The girls one had a group of cubicles so they could all sit down. The boys one had a couple of cubicles and an open-air urinal behind a corrugated tin screen. Boys being boys it was always a challenge to see if any of us could manage to pee over the screen. As far as I remember none could, but it was worth a try.

As I moved into my teens and my sap began to rise, my embarrassed father thought that I should be aware of what was euphemistically called “the facts of life”. He handed me a slim book that spelt out in a very circumspect way how babies were made. I’m not sure I learned much from it and my father and I never felt able to discuss the contents. Back then the word “sex” was avoided as much as possible by adults. Schoolboys, on the other hand, were always talking about it, mostly from the position of near-total ignorance.

Somehow — and I have no idea how — Jeffrey and I managed to get copies of Man Junior, a soft porn magazine. I doubt that it was on sale in the local news agents. In truth, we didn’t learn much. From memory, women displayed in the magazines appeared to have grown up without nipples or pubic hair. More interesting were the racy Carter Brown Detective stories with the heroes spending more time bedding women than detecting.

I don’t know what the situation was with girls, but from what my mother later told me, menstruation was rarely discussed until it happened. I remember one female classmate getting up from her desk with the back of her dress displaying a large patch of blood. Her embarrassment must have been huge, but we insensitive boys just went into a huddle and giggled.

About this time, I had a vaguely-sexual encounter with an “older woman”. I’d become friendly with a girl in a school class or two above me. The Cyprus hedge at the front of our house was deep enough to have an area where we kids and our mates could climb inside to chat about things that mattered to us at that age. The “older woman” and I went into the hedge one day and she told me that she would show me the modest beginnings of her breasts if I would allow her to see what I had in my shorts. I suspect I proved a considerable disappointment.

Most boys at the Higher Elementary School had a nickname. A few examples: I was called “Ike” because of the similarity of my name to the long-standing town jeweller, Ike Richards. Ken Wright was called “Joe” after another Wright in the town. Ron Winsall was “Plugger” after his father who was also known as “Plugger” for unknown reasons. The most confusing situation arose when brothers Ken and Keith Lynas swapped names. I remember them both being keen sportsmen with their successes frequently mentioned in the Tribune. But which one was it mentioned in the sports reports? Ken or Keith?

In my early teens, I became friendly with a “swagman” who set up camp under a tent beside the Avoca River near the low wooden bridge. “Swaggies” were often former Second World War soldiers who were homeless or who took to the road for a variety of reasons. They carried a “swag” which was a waterproof bag usually containing a thin mattress, blankets and a few very basic cooking implements.

I’m told the “swaggie” was known as Cobber. He made me what was called for some strange reason a "shanghai". It was in reality a catapult, put together from a forked branch of a eucalyptus tree, a length of a bicycle inner tube and a bit of an old shoe. I loved using this, mostly trying to hit tins sitting on the top of posts. Cobber also taught me to fish for red fin in the river with moderate success. The friendship didn't seem to bother my parents, but I can't imagine this happening these days.

Most of the time I got on well with my parents but I fell out seriously with my mother for a period when she refused to allow me to wear long trousers, rather then shorts. Eventually she gave in but I found it hard to forgive her that I was the last boy in my class at school to wear long trousers.

My mother made most of our clothes, even to knitting our swimming togs (bathers). In my case, the bathers covered the whole trunk of my body like something from the previous century. They soaked up large quantities of water, making swimming difficult. I hated them and rolled them down to my waist and tied them in place with string.

My mother and my sisters were mostly outfitted with homemade clothes, even the hats sometimes. Mum would have also have made the shoes, if she could. In this example everything but the shoes and pearls were made by my mother:

When we kids weren’t outside doing such things as attending school, swimming, exploring the neighbourhood, catching yabbies or playing cowboys and Indians, we would play Monopoly. The board was laid on the floor in the front room and each game could last for days. Checkers was another board game we liked, but Chess never interested us.

The old swimming pool in Charlton wasn’t chlorinated and was a serious health hazard. The water was changed just once a fortnight and towards the end of each period it would have scum floating on the top. When the water changeover came, the pool was drained into the adjacent Avoca River. It was then swept clean and lime was sprinkled on the bare concrete. Fresh(ish) water was pumped in from the channel that supplied the town with its undrinkable tap water. (The new chlorinated pool was opened in December 1960.)

I did learn to swim in the old pool. I was fitted with a harness at the end of a pole held by the instructor. As I gained confidence the instructor would lower the pole until I was eventually able to “dog paddle” without its support.

Much of each summer we avoided the old swimming pool, preferring to splash about in the pool immediately below the old weir on the Avoca. Better still, we would get on our bikes and ride out the Donald Road to the Wooroonook Lakes.

I had two after-school and Saturday jobs. The first was with Arthur Hibbert who had a shoe repair shop next to the Wylie Building. I don’t imagine I was much help, although I may have been permitted to repair heels on men’s shoes. This limited contribution didn’t stop me from creating a sign “Richardson and Hibbert” which I stuck on the front door. The business didn’t survive long, mostly likely because of Vic Arundell’s well-established and popular shoe repair and gossip shop further along High Street.

My next job was in 1953 with John Woods who set up his watch repair and jewellery shop next to the Tribune office. John, who was also a scout master, was fun to work with and he left me to fix many of the alarm clocks while he did the clever stuff repairing watches and making jewellery. I was all set to become his apprentice when Dad took him aside one day and convinced him that I was needed to become a Tribune apprentice when I left school that year. I was not to know that Dad was increasingly ill after having a testicle removed. While I was disappointed not to become a watch repairer, I did enjoy being a printer, especially a Linotype operator. I was also allowed to make my first ventures into journalism.

On the subject of health, it was considered that children should get many infectious diseases “over and done with”. It was considered important to catch mumps, chicken pox, measles and German measles at an early age. I remember there were gatherings that were deliberately intended to spread these diseases. These events even included children passing around boiled sweets to suck. Three exceptions were diphtheria, tuberculosis and polio, which were recognised as life changing and often fatal. I’m sure that I had mumps, chicken pox and one or both types of measles.

My father was a keen photographer, going back to when he had a Box Brownie as a young man. He bought a second hand Speed Graphic camera of the sort often seen being used by press cameramen in old black-and-white films. It came with a detachable cartridge carrying two quarter-plate glass negatives. It also had a flash gun that took single-use flash bulbs that would light up a huge area. Dad soon replaced the cartridge with a more practical one that contained 12 sheets of film. Later he swapped the Speed Graphic for a Kodak Retina 35mm camera that could take 36 pictures on a roll. The cameras were not just for his personal use, but to take pictures for the Tribune. He claimed the Tribune was the first rural weekly in Victoria to frequently carry photos of local events.

In February, 1954, I attended a show in the Victoria Hall by the South African hypnotist Van Loewe. As I watched the performance I thought to myself, I can do that, which I did achieve some years later. That was an extraordinary thing for a teenager to think. Boastful even. But don’t forget I was also honest about my many failings at school and elsewhere. If you look towards the bottom the advert in the Tribune you will see “Touring Manager: Desmond Tocchini”. Not long after the Charlton show, Van Loewe retired and Des Tocchini took over the performances using the name Ronricco. There was absolutely no way that I would know that less that 10 years later Des and I would become colleagues and lifelong friends or that I would be his manager for a couple of years, or that I would become a skilled hypnotist. (Lots more on this in an upcoming chapter.)

In April 1954 my father died in Melbourne after a very unpleasant deterioration in his health, but we were never told from what. He had gone from being on the chubby side to being skeletal as he was taken to Melbourne in an ambulance, accompanied by my mother and me. His last words to be as he lay dying in hospital were “Look after your mother”.

I have an undated hand-written letter to my mother from my father while being treated in Melbourne some time in 1953. It included news that he’d had an X-ray and the doctor had told him “Nothing to worry about, fella - just an arthritic condition”. This couldn’t have been further from the truth. He had testicular cancer that had spread and been poorly treated, or not treated at all.

My brother, Jeffrey, was brought to Melbourne for the funeral and burial, but my sisters, Ruth and Alison, were left in Charlton with an aunt who could often be relied on to do the wrong thing. Having initially assured the girls that their father was fine, she suddenly, without preamble, she declared that he had died. They were shattered. When my mother returned to Charlton from Dad’s funeral, she found all his clothes had been packed away. My aunt said she did this so that my mother wouldn’t be upset seeing his clothes in their usual place in the wardrobes and drawers. My mother was more upset by their absence. Deeply upset, in fact.

That’s a very sad note to end this chapter on, but there is a limit to the length of each chapter. The next chapter will focus on how the death of my father changed all our lives and the adventures and misadventures that ensued.