It happened on a sultry,cloudy afternoon. We sat on the back verandah considering if it was going to rain, or if it was worthwhile going out to weed the garden. Out of the blue came  the brightest flash of lightning, followed immediately by a deafening crack of thunder, the loudest I’ve ever heard. I darted for the door! I’ve had an unreasonable fear of thunderstorms since I was small, and we slept in our wired-in  verandah in summer, often enduring summer storms.

The lightning felt so close we thought the house may have been hit.  But there was no smell of burning, and the phone was still working, in fact it was ringing. Our worst nightmare was confirmed—a neighbour was calling to tell us our hayshed was alight. Our shed full of large clover hay rolls.

The lightning had struck an old pine tree, causing it to explode,  sending branches far and wide, but worse, the lightning had  raced across the ground in three directions. One lit a small grass fire, another went toward our neighbour’s shed leaving a mark on the wall, and the third travelled about 100 metres to the end of our hayshed, igniting the end bales.

We had that sinking feeling that it would be very hard to extinguish, and we were right! The fire truck seemed to take ages to arrive,  having  gone to another lane with a similar name. Fences needed to be cut, and everything seemed to be in slow motion, except the fire which raced up the side of the stack, and into the gap between the hay and shed roof. This acted as a wind  tunnel that sucked the flames through,  and spread the fire rapidly. We could only stand by and watch helplessly. The bales had to be dragged out and saturated with water and detergent to extinguish them, which sadly rendered them useless for cattle feed.   
                                                                                                                                                          Next morning as we surveyed the sodden hay and twisted metal of the shed it gave me a small inkling of how people must have felt after bush fires ravaged their houses and property. I wondered how they coped with so much loss, and mess to clean up. Ours was insured, but losing your home and possessions must be soul destroying, even if it is insured.

Strange how something happening ‘out of the blue’ can cause so much damage!


Margaret Nelson
​September 2020

It came out of the blue.  Not something I was expecting.

Normally if my manager wanted to talk with me, he would come out of his office and talk at my desk.  It would often be about when the next software release was due, or how it was progressing.  If we were meeting in his office it was a scheduled catch up.  Occasionally it would be because I had an issue to talk through.  So I was a little surprised, wondering if there was some sort of problem that I had missed when he rang me and asked me to meet him in his office.  His office was about five metres from my desk.  A phone call was not a usual event.  When I went into his office, he closed the door.  Oops!

Firstly, for some background for people who are not familiar with recruitment processes in the Public Service.  You did not get a promotion without a formal process where the job was advertised, open to all, often to the public as well as serving officers.  If there was a temporary vacancy while someone was on leave, then another officer would be asked to do the job on an “acting” basis.  This was usually to be able to provide authorisations.  For example to approve leave applications or, rarely, necessary expenditure   If that vacancy was for more that 2-3 weeks (for example, planned long service leave) then it would have to be advertised as a fixed term acting role.

So, now for the meeting with my manager (a Senior Executive Service Officer band 1, the lowest of the highest level of officer in the Commonwealth Public Service).  He started by informing me that due to some major problems in another part of the organisation, he was being transferred for several weeks.  It was out of the blue that I was to fill in – “act” in his job for the period.  No advertisement to fill the job temporarily.  There was no time.  This was Friday, and he was moving to the new role on Monday.  The administrative process for me to act in his job would be actioned immediately.  No advertisement of a vacancy, no recruitment process.  Just a meeting on Friday to take up the job on Monday.  So you can see why this was an “out of the blue” experience.

I ended up working in the job for over seven months.  It was one of the most rewarding roles I had while working in the Australian Public Service.


Joy Shirley,
September 2020

“Wake up Beverley! We’re going to Phillip Island in a taxi.” My startled face emerges from beneath the covers to greet the grey of a Melbourne morning. Within half an hour, the black taxi glides away from the curb of our suburban home.
​
When Mother decides to act she doesn’t let the grass grow under her feet. She calls it following her hunches, in which she has great faith.

This latest hunch is for a farm advertised as rich agricultural land with the paddocks running down to the sea. She sent a message to Father who is logging at Flowerdale. He didn’t receive it. – She agonized all night, and then decided that she must go herself.

In 1948 the South Gippsland Highway is a narrow ribbon of bitumen stretching into the distance. Land’s end is the small, sleepy fishing village of San Remo, at the entrance to Westernport Bay.  A few drab houses, a hotel and a couple of shops and half a dozen trawlers moored to the jetty.  We drive over the long, part suspension bridge onto Phillip Island. Sunlight sparkles on a pale blue sea. The tide is out, green seaweed adorns the rocks. On the Island tall sand dunes reach up towards the blue sky. We drive past green paddocks with grazing cattle and sheep to Cowes to pick up the Estate Agent, J. Harold Smith.  A small, thin old woman emerges from the office. She is wearing an old fashioned black coat that reaches down to her ankles. Smelling of camphor moth balls, it has small buttons all the way down to the hem, above the thick stockings and small button up boots.  This is J. Harold Smith!

Approaching a property, J. Harold Smith instructs the driver to turn in at the gate. A long drive way leads to the house which nestles beneath a steep hill that protects it from the elements. The sea views out across Westernport Bay are superb.

The owners are waiting out on the driveway to greet us. They must think we’re loaded, arriving from Melbourne in a taxi! No wonder they’re smiling. Mother inspects the house. They look dubiously at her high heeled shoes and suggest a change of footwear for walking across the paddocks. She declines, “No, my husband will be here on Sunday, he can do that.”

On our return home she says, “Beverley, I don’t know how I am going to convince your father to go down there on Sunday. I am relying on your help.”

Father says he will not add to the madness by driving to Phillip Island on Sunday! All the dreams of a twelve year old are being dashed. “If you don’t go you will miss out on the best fishing grounds in Victoria.” He spins around, “What’s that Beverley?”

On Sunday, the weather on the Island isn’t kind to us. Skies are grey and a cold wind blows off the sea as we walk across the undulating paddocks towards the coast.

On the edge of the cliff top a cypress tree stands sentinel beside a grave, its branches twisted in one direction by the prevailing wind. What a lonely place!  

Mother and J. Harold Smith are toiling somewhere in the rear, hampered by wire fences, high heels, old age and a five year old.

We learn that J. Harold is in her eighties and considered unstoppable. She opened her estate agency in her late seventies using her deceased husband’s name, because, “In this day and age no one is going to buy land from a woman.”

On our return to the farm house, the vendors, J. Harold and Dad retreat to another room. After a while J. Harold comes out and says, “Well, your husband has bought the property.” It’s Mother’s turn to look startled. After seeing the grave and a dead sheep, which she took as bad omens, she had changed her mind!

It’s autumn before we put Mickey the cat in a box in the back of the car and head for the Island, for the future that will change all our lives forever.


Beverley Morton

​I’m out. It is early September and that used to be Spring.  It is so blue outside and warmish, maybe it is Spring.   So, I’m out in the blue, in the garden, wondering what I should do first. It is a bit of a mess, well it’s always a bit of a mess because that’s me. I rang the handyman and he was busy, and the next one and the next one --- all were busy. Lockdowns must be good for handyman businesses. 
 
I have a newly created shady area along the fence that I want to plant Bergenia in. Bergenia is a very old-fashioned perennial with glossy heart shaped leaves and pink pannicles (pannicles... yes looked it up) of flowers that last forever on the plant and in the vase.   This little plant is one of my earliest memories and, as I can see the last of my memories approaching, for whatever reason, and a bit too rapidly I think, maybe it would be a nice thing to plant in the vacant space in my garden. Echo of the past sort of thing. 
 
About 1953, or maybe 1954, or about the time of the Queen’s Coronation (I remember that because Dad brought home a book about it), our family lived at the rear of a carpentry shop in Glenferrie. It was small, just a few rooms, dark and always smelled of timber and wafts of beer from the three stories of Hotel next door. The narrow yard was brick walled on both sides and we used the rear entry from a cobbled laneway for access. There was no front access. At the bottom of one wall was an open gutter running out to the lane and either side of it was planted with pink flowering Bergenia. It is the only brightly coloured memory I have of that time. 
 
I had just started at Glenferrie Primary school, probably two blocks away, through all the lanes and backyards. My nana taught me the short cuts. The longest shortcut was through what we called the brickyards. All of Glenferrie was built in red brick I’m sure, but they made briquettes there. My mum said I had to put a briquette in my schoolbag every night when I came home. I asked why and Nana said, “Because it is good for your posture young lady”. 
 
One of the highlights of my life then was the weekly outing to the Glenferrie Library. We got dressed up a bit and all of us, Mum, Dad, sometimes Nana, my baby brother in the pram and me trooped out the back into Luton Lane and made our way to the Town Hall on Burwood Road. What a building! To me it looked like a giant castle and it wasn’t red brick!
 
The library was next to the Town Hall. So many bright lights. The children’s books were all on the bottom shelf and it was here my lifelong love of books and the value of reading began. We needed the pram to get all our books home.   Often, on the way home, at the front of the hotel was a very smelly old lady with a bigger pram than ours. She was selling bunches of violets from it.  Sometimes, if it was “payweek”, Dad would buy some for Mum. 
 
Back to my gardening efforts. Up to Mitre 10, buy a few pots of Bergenia and back home to digging in my memories. 
 
I cannot help but notice the spelling of Bergenia on the label is incorrect.  What is the world coming to?  The plant, named after a German botanist and physician Karl von Bergen in 1794, appears to be native to Siberia and similar areas.  That’s a bit like where I feel I’ve been during our various Covid-19 lockdown states! Go Karl!  I figure if Bergenia can bloom in the Siberian winter, it will grow here for me and keep some tiny remnants of colorful memories alive.

Judy Perry
​September 2020

In 1962, having worked for the VPC (Victorian Producers Co-Op) for in excess of twelve years, I was summoned to the Managing Director’s office in Melbourne. “Out of the Blue” he notified me that he was transferring me back to the Benalla Branch.

Many, many years later, I was notified that the  manager of the Benalla office, Kevin Donnelly, had requested my services. I had , some seven years earlier, been working at Benalla  so had had some experience working with Kevin. Obviously he had been pleased with my workmanship.

Happily I returned to Benalla  as I had many friends and acquaintances in the area. I also had the Hernan family, who, when I was just a youth, had provided me with the home that I had never before experienced.

I contentedly worked with VPC in Benalla for another five years, although I felt that I was not achieving my full potential. In an attempt  to better myself I transferred to the Producers and Citizens Insurance co. which was a disastrous move. I was not cut out to be an insurance representative. In desperation I contacted Jim Smith, a Chartered Accountant in practice in Benalla, to ascertain if he had any client looking for an employee. He knew that I had worked at the VPC and so sought a referral from Kevin Donnelly.

On my follow up call to Jim, “out of the blue” he  asked me to work for him. This offer changed my whole life and was consequential to the fulfilment of a neurologist’s advice to me to study accounting and to work for myself.

This all took me another six years but resulted in me becoming  a partner in the Chartered Accounting practice of Smith O’Shannessy and pursuing a successful business career.
My “out of the blue”  experiences have served me well.


Ray O’Shannessy.  OAM. ,FCA., CPA.

Unlike many of our neighbours and friends, when I was growing up, my family had no interest in politics. Political talk was all around us. Even the children at primary school talked of the ‘Black and Tans’ and their horrendous deeds. How they had been notorious prisoners released from gaols in England and let loose on the Irish people. It was as if it had happened recently, not at a time before our parents were born.
 
Then there were the activities of the IRA and the legacy of the IRB. My parents told my sister, brothers, and me not to engage in any discussion about these organisations. They said ‘You don’t know where people’s sympathies are and it’s best to not get involved.’ This was good advice then. As a result, I grew up uninterested in politics.
 
When we bought out first house in Australia, we had insufficient funds for a full deposit. We needed a house where the owner was prepared to offer a second mortgage. The Real Estate Agent found such a person and we bought this man’s investment house.
 
Once we had moved in, he came round to meet us. He told us he had to sell the house to fund his political campaign. He was a candidate for the fairly recently formed Democratic Labour Party (DLP). This passed over my head but I wished him luck. I knew nothing about State Government and Federal Government elections. I have no idea which election he was contesting but I do know he didn’t secure a seat in government. That was that, and I still had no interest in politics.
 
I became good friends with an older woman. Her husband was a friend of Vince Gair, who had withdrawn from the Labor Party and established the DLP. They had attended Nudgee College together. By this time I was on the electoral roll and not having any political leanings voted for the friend of a friend. I can’t remember the outcome of that election.
 
A neighbour who worked in the taxation office car-pooled with a young man who had decided to stand in our electorate for the Liberal Party. I saw him most mornings as he called for my neighbour. On Election Day I voted for him. I had no idea who the other candidates were and I didn’t bother to find out. It was simpler to vote for someone I knew somewhat than for a complete stranger. He won and I continued to vote for him until I moved to a different area. Casting my vote had nothing to do with political parties, nor the abilities of a candidate.
 
For the next election he changed from his original electorate to the one where I now lived. That suited me. I cast my vote as I had previously. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.
 
Then we were moving again. We bought a house and randomly selected one of the two local solicitors to do the conveyancing. The one we selected told us he was standing for the National Party and after determining we had no political leanings asked if we would help him with his campaign. This was something new to try. We agreed.
 
What stands out in my mind from the first meeting of this man’s political helpers was an older woman asking me if I was working for the National Party or for Gavan (the candidate). It was a very practical question and one that should have more relevance in politics.
​
Gavan didn’t win. The then unknown Wayne Goss, who was the other local solicitor, was the Labor Candidate (and future Premier of Queensland), defeated him. I wonder if we had selected him to do our conveyancing would we have become involved in the Labor Party.
 
The point of my story is all these political opportunities came out of the blue. I never sought political involvement but becoming involved is something I don’t regret. It was a wonderful learning curve. Looking back on my disinterest and lack of knowledge of the political system and knowing there are so many voters that are as indifferent and ill informed as I was makes me question compulsory voting. I believe voting is a privilege and if someone wants to access that opportunity, they should have to demonstrate a credible level of knowledge of the electoral system. ⁑


Elizabeth Kearns
September 2020