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Opinions And Comparisons

Smithfield Hostel was outwardly more austere and primitive than Glenelg, but despite – or perhaps partly because – of that, I loved it even more. We had moved to Smithfield after a couple of weeks in Glenelg because we had been promised a house in nearby Elizabeth West. It was also much more convenient for Dad, who had begun working at the Holden’s factory in Elizabeth.
If the set-up at Glenelg had resembled a holiday camp, Smithfield, with its green-painted hut complexes perched six feet above the ground on stilts, was more like an army encampment deep in some faraway tropical rain-forest – except that the surrounding terrain could scarcely have been less jungle-like. For one thing, there were hardly any trees, and, apart from the lime green of the camp huts themselves, the predominant colours were various shades of yellow and brown. It was – as I would later recite with captivated glee – ‘a sunburnt country’, a land still almost wholly in tune with, and in submission to, the elements.

Which, I somehow felt (if not quite thought), was how things ought to be.

When my dad complained, as he was wont to do, that everything was depressingly barren and parched compared to the lush green foliage of the English countryside, I somehow felt my feelings vindicated. Perhaps, at some level, I was beginning to rebel, but I like to imagine that I was beginning to see that most things in life were open to interpretation, were matters of belief not assurance.

My dad believed that green was an inherently more attractive colour than yellow and brown, whereas I could see beauty in both. However, there was a freshness and a novelty about the scorched Australian landscape that somehow rendered it, for the time being at least, more appealing.

The Allen Brothers

It was while we were staying at Smithfield Migrant Hostel that I first met the Allen brothers, Michael and Richard, who hailed originally from Nottingham. Michael – tall, and solidly constructed, with a grimly sardonic smile almost permanently contorting his features - was eight, but seemed much older. He had already resolved, to his own satisfaction, most of the major philosophical and practical quandaries of life, and tended to be openly impatient, and at times scornful, of anyone with differing views. He found my self-proclaimed belief in God particularly preposterous, and spent much time endeavouring, without success, to disabuse me of it.

The younger brother, Richard, was not quite six, and he and I hit it off immediately. We shared the same vigorously questing imagination and exploratory zeal, and many a happy hour was spent pursuing and inflicting temporary captivity – or worse – on small, comparatively defenceless invertebrates, racing one another across the nearby scrubland or sheep paddocks, or acting out scenes from our favourite cartoons. Much smaller and wirier than his brother, Richard evinced a lithe fluidity of movement that put one in mind of a cat, but in almost every other respect – playful ebullience, sociability, desire to be liked – he was more akin to a puppy dog. Carrying both comparisons further, he was adept at anything requiring guile or subterfuge, but was also prone, at times, to over-estimating his own ability, and to thereby pushing himself beyond his limits. This particular weakness was something Michael was all too often able to exploit in ways which reinforced the brothers’ already glaringly lop-sided pecking order.

The Allens, it emerged, were going to be our near neighbours in Elizabeth West, and Richard would go on to be my longest and, although it was not a term I would have used at the time, closest Australian friend. As time went on, our interests and passions evolved and developed in almost perfect synch, sometimes in ways that made almost everybody else seem like aliens. In seven years, I cannot recall a single harsh world being exchanged between us. It was in all respects a friendship made – and ultimately obliterated – in heaven.

As for Michael, however, he would go on to become something quite other than a friend.

The Milk Of Human Kindness

When I was seven years old, living in South Australia, I attended Broadmeadows Primary School for a few months. My class teacher there, Miss Jackson, was a singularly wonderful human being. In contrast to the overwhelming majority of teachers I was to come across in life, she actually seemed fond of children. Moreover, she appeared to understand us, to be interested in and empathise with our fears, desires, uncertainties and needs.

One day, as I scampered across the school playing fields in response to the morning bell, I tripped over and careered headlong into a large and extremely deep, muddy puddle. Coated in mud from the neck down, I could see no alternative but to slink back to Smithfield Migrant Hostel, where we were staying at the time, for some maternal reassurance and compassion. What I got instead was a severe scolding, followed by a hurried wash and change of clothes, and an injunction to “be more careful this time” as I was all but flung physically out of the door and back to school.

I reached my classroom more than an hour late, in a condition not far short of apoplectic terror, convinced that Miss Jackson was going to kill me. She was sitting at her desk, and everyone in the class had their heads down, writing. She turned her head to look at me as I entered the room, but said nothing. I shuffled across to her, and stutteringly tried to explain why I was late. “Come here,” she said, and with immense reluctance I moved closer, whereupon she swept me up in her arms, pressed her fragrant cheek against my still somewhat grimy one, and said, “That must have been awful”. Literally choked by a compound of unfamiliar emotions, it was all I could do to nod my head and splutter “Yes”.

“I bet you could do with some milk now, couldn’t you?” she asked and, not waiting for an answer, got to her feet, took me by the hand, and led me out of the room, along a succession of corridors, then out across the playground to the staffroom, where our morning recess cartons of milk were stored when they first arrived. She sat me in an armchair, brought me milk, and said, “You stay here and rest until recess, OK? Then, if you’re feeling better, you can go outside and play.”

After receiving a second carton of milk during recess I ventured out into the playground on limbs grown light with exhilaration and relief.

Miss Jackson’s attitude and reaction should not really have surprised me. Looking back, I cannot recall her ever admonishing one of her pupils. If we did something inappropriate, wrong or inadequately she never told us we were ‘bad’, but she had a subtle way of conveying her disappointment, and this was usually sufficient to get us to amend or improve our behaviour. Her love of learning (and of us) was such that we felt energised and inspired, and most of us genuinely wanted to learn, both for the obvious senses of joy and fulfilment it yielded, and out of a wish to please Miss Jackson. Most of the teachers I was to encounter in life appeared anxious to suppress the natural vitality and exuberance found in the overwhelming majority of children. They were motivated, in the main, by fear, distrust, and the desire for a peaceful life. Miss Jackson, on the other hand, regarded our inherent joie de vivre as genuinely precious, as something to be cherished, cultivated and harnessed. It was obvious that she had retained her own inner sparkle to a much greater extent than most other adults, and perhaps this was partly why we tended to respond to her so positively.

On the afternoon of my final day at the school she called me up to the front of the class and, with her arm around me, spent about half an hour talking about various things: my family, where I was going to live, what I wanted to be when I grew up. She asked me whether I had enjoyed being in her class, to which I of course said “Yes”. Then she gave me a final squeeze and said, “I won’t forget you. I hope you won’t forget me.”

I doubt very much that Miss Jackson, or whatever she is known as today – if, indeed, she is still alive – can remember more than a small percentage of the children to whom she proffered those presumably standard words of farewell. (They were definitely standard while I was there, at any rate, because I had witnessed the same ritual enacted on several occasions with other children before it became my turn.) I, however, still think of her occasionally, and her memory is a welcome antidote to the peremptory bouts of cynicism by which I find myself so frequently assailed.