The book group I belong to will be discussing 'Elephant Bill' on Tuesday evening - it's Saturday morning and I still have a way to go to finish it!
Reading Elephant Bill has caused me to reflect on my experience of elephants. Earliest memories are of the elephants from the circuses which came to the new suburb of Clayton when I was little. my parents had received a war service loan and had built a home there in the late 1940's. It was surrounded by paddocks, and the area where the Clayton Town Hall now stands was a paddock with a large pine tree at the front - this was where my earliest memories of elephants seem to be set, though later I remember them being located to a paddock on which Woolworths now stands in the street behind the main shopping centre.
The circus came to Clayton at least annually, and as I moved there when I was two or three, I remember going many times. I suspect Mum loved the circus too!
My older brother John and I adored the elephants. I was particularly fascinated by them and can picture them looming quietly as they grazed in the paddock behind the big tent. Of course, they were hobbled.... reading Elephant Bill has reminded me of this.
There's a family story that early one evening John and I took off to the circus on our own, and Mum, desperately worried, found as looking at the elephants. (We didn't have to go far - we lived about ten houses 'up Clayton Road', though the now Clayton Town Hall field was across the road!) I suspect we 'got into trouble' which may have affected my memory, though somewhere in its recesses there is an adventure involving going to see the elephants when the circus came to town. If ever I went, or go, to the zoo, the elephant enclosure is always one at which I could sit for hours.
There was a break in 'My life with elephants' ...until I travelled to Malaya in the mid 1970's - John was stationed with the RAAF there - and also Thailand, where friends Tim and Geraldine were with the diplomatic service. In both settings we would go out into the countryside at weekends. I can still remember the 'rush of joy and elation' I would feel as working elephants emerged out of the vegetation, magnificent and powerful, surrounded by keepers and agricultural workers. I haven't been to Burma, but somehow this experience made the book resonate with me.
Over recent years, I do revisit elephants as I drive past circus tents in country towns, more often than not imagining that they are there. If there is a documentary on television about elephants I will always watch it to learn more about them, and invariably find myself crying at stages and being in wonderment at the role of the mothers and aunties so well described in Elephant Bill. Not so long ago Phillip Adams did a wonderful interview about the history of the elephant on which Disney apparently based 'Jumbo' (which I'm sure engaged me as a child); and then just yesterday that 'Elephant Bill' himself was used as a consultant by .... circus owners as they attempted to retire an elephant, at the time in musth, from their circus.
I still have much to read of 'Elephant Bill'... and am looking forward to it!
Reading/listening:
'Elephant Bill' Penguin Books
Stroud, Peter 2002 'Elephants in Captivity', Perpective ABC Radio National. Transcript accessed 4 April 2015 at http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/perspective/peter-stroud/3511258
Adams, Phillip etc 2014 'Jumbo the Elephant', Late Night Live. Podcast accessed 4 April 2015 at: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/jumbo-the-elephant/5375760
Reading Elephant Bill has caused me to reflect on my experience of elephants. Earliest memories are of the elephants from the circuses which came to the new suburb of Clayton when I was little. my parents had received a war service loan and had built a home there in the late 1940's. It was surrounded by paddocks, and the area where the Clayton Town Hall now stands was a paddock with a large pine tree at the front - this was where my earliest memories of elephants seem to be set, though later I remember them being located to a paddock on which Woolworths now stands in the street behind the main shopping centre.
The circus came to Clayton at least annually, and as I moved there when I was two or three, I remember going many times. I suspect Mum loved the circus too!
My older brother John and I adored the elephants. I was particularly fascinated by them and can picture them looming quietly as they grazed in the paddock behind the big tent. Of course, they were hobbled.... reading Elephant Bill has reminded me of this.
There's a family story that early one evening John and I took off to the circus on our own, and Mum, desperately worried, found as looking at the elephants. (We didn't have to go far - we lived about ten houses 'up Clayton Road', though the now Clayton Town Hall field was across the road!) I suspect we 'got into trouble' which may have affected my memory, though somewhere in its recesses there is an adventure involving going to see the elephants when the circus came to town. If ever I went, or go, to the zoo, the elephant enclosure is always one at which I could sit for hours.
There was a break in 'My life with elephants' ...until I travelled to Malaya in the mid 1970's - John was stationed with the RAAF there - and also Thailand, where friends Tim and Geraldine were with the diplomatic service. In both settings we would go out into the countryside at weekends. I can still remember the 'rush of joy and elation' I would feel as working elephants emerged out of the vegetation, magnificent and powerful, surrounded by keepers and agricultural workers. I haven't been to Burma, but somehow this experience made the book resonate with me.
Over recent years, I do revisit elephants as I drive past circus tents in country towns, more often than not imagining that they are there. If there is a documentary on television about elephants I will always watch it to learn more about them, and invariably find myself crying at stages and being in wonderment at the role of the mothers and aunties so well described in Elephant Bill. Not so long ago Phillip Adams did a wonderful interview about the history of the elephant on which Disney apparently based 'Jumbo' (which I'm sure engaged me as a child); and then just yesterday that 'Elephant Bill' himself was used as a consultant by .... circus owners as they attempted to retire an elephant, at the time in musth, from their circus.
I still have much to read of 'Elephant Bill'... and am looking forward to it!
Reading/listening:
'Elephant Bill' Penguin Books
Stroud, Peter 2002 'Elephants in Captivity', Perpective ABC Radio National. Transcript accessed 4 April 2015 at http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/perspective/peter-stroud/3511258
Adams, Phillip etc 2014 'Jumbo the Elephant', Late Night Live. Podcast accessed 4 April 2015 at: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/jumbo-the-elephant/5375760
