The Goanna
It wasn’t that long ago when I would be given the task of putting my kids to sleep at night. What started off as a bit of fun quickly turned into standard practice and I realized I had created a rod for my own back when I realized that my kids friends would come over for sleepovers just to be part of this ritual. “The Ritual” involved telling my kids a story before bed time. Once my kids were past kindergarten they didn’t seem interested in being read a story – they could “do that themselves” they explained. They wanted me to tell them a new story. So my stories to my kids started out as biographical stories of my childhood and were generally interspersed with fictional tales involving pirates, treasure and magic. Interestingly when a close friend suggested I document and publish these stories, the ones I can recall are the largely biographical ones and the tales of Captain Claw, Pigsfoot, Dogstail and Trumpet Bum have receded in my memory. The following tale is one of the biographical tales I told my own kids when they were of a similar age. It is set around the same time as “The Fishing Trip” which followers may have read.
In the late 60’s and early 70s, my brother Tom and I would spend a great deal of time in Kuring-gai Chase. We lived in a fantastic place called Mount Kuring-gai which was on the northern train line, north of Hornsby. Mt Kuring-gai was a small place, surrounded by bush. It was unlikely to get bigger on the eastern side of the railway line because you couldn’t build in the national park. In my youth I knew which family lived in every house in Mt Kuring-gai. We went to Mt Kuring-gai Public School, we played football for Mt Kuring-gai Football Club and the greatest thing that had ever happened to us was winning the U9s Premiership undefeated in 1966, the same year that England won the World Cup. My brother and I would often marvel at this coincidence and in our heart of hearts tell ourselves that it was more than a coincidence, it was a sign that we were destined for great things. I have, since my childhood often wondered why it is that the best days of your life are often interspersed with the worst days of your life and my time as an 8 year old boy was indicative of this. Whilst on the weekend we were playing football, winning and celebrating with our team mates. During the week we would attend Mt Kuring-gai Public. We lived about 50 meters from the school and at Lunch Time we were allowed to go home for lunch. Neither our Mom or our Dad would be at home during the day so the thought of going home for lunch was appealing as we could make whatever we wanted for lunch – Toasted Sandwiches was a particular favourite. The problem we had was our older brother Ian. He was three years older than us and would often invite his group of friends around for lunch. It was not unusual for Ian to have 4 or 5 of his peer group over for lunch during school days and Ian would demand that Tom and I make him and his friends lunch. Following initial refusals and the subsequent beatings we would get from our brother and his friends we complained to our parents who refused to believe that Ian would be party to something like that. After a few weeks it became clear that our parents didn’t believe us and felt it was just younger kids being jealous of the older kid. Meanwhile the beatings continued and when they escalated to being burned with cigarettes, Tom and I decided to take matters into our own hands and stop going home for lunch. This appeared to work for a couple of weeks until Ian told the teachers that our parents expected us home for lunch and for Ian to supervise us but that we were not coming home for lunch. The Teachers allowed Ian to pick us up at Lunch Time and escort us home – the beatings continued. It was about this time that my brother and I concocted a plan to avoid Ian and his henchman. 5 minutes before the period before lunch came to an end we would ask to be excused to go to the toilet, whereupon we would leg it into the national park. The National Park was just across the road from the school and given the amount of time we spent in there exploring and walking, once we reached the National Park Ian would have no chance of catching or finding us. This plan was successful till our brother went to high school. It would be a further 8 years till the issues arising from those beatings in primary school were finally resolved when Ian was taken to hospital missing his two front teeth and with a few broken ribs.
