My Cobbers tried to teach me how to play Aussie Rules football. That didn’t go down to well. “Mark it you pommy bastard” they would yell at me. That meant catch it, the ball.
In soccer, my old game, unless you were the Goalkeeper, you never tried to catch the ball. You caught the ball in Cricket and in Rugby. Yeah, that’s it. It’s the same as Rugby. “Bullshit” a bit more of Aussie English, ”that’s what they play in Sydney, this is Victoria. We play Aussie Rules. A proper game”. It turned out to be a good game, to watch. I’m still learning how to play it.
Getting back to Northcote, we were starting to enjoy getting along with our house mates. We had about 10 boys in our unit. The same number in most of the houses I believe.
We would spend three weeks in our own unit, then a week in another vacant unit. This was to give our aunt a week off. All the units worked the same way.
We would all meet for breakfast in the big hall, so we eventually got to meet other kids and our other siblings. We had a bit of time after school and at weekends to spend time together.
We went to Sunday School, and we had Boy Scouts at Northcote.
I heard things about the scout leader that I didn’t like, so I refused to go on any weekend camps. We didn’t have to if we didn’t want to. Since we were the Pommy kids we had certain liberties, but the Aussie kids, the wards of the state and the orphans, they just did what they were told.
The unit I lived in was for the older boys, about 12 to 15 years old. Our Aunt was the wife of the man that picked us up from the Airport. They also had their son living there. He was about my age and thought he was much better than everyone else, and he was. He was the boss’s son. They all lived under the same roof as us, but their area was separate to ours. They probably had proper beds and bedrooms.
The son came home one day on the weekend from a sleepover. A kid said to him, “it’s alright for you to go away for a night”. The son said nothing and went inside. Next thing his dad came to the door and called the boy that spoke to his son. He went up onto the decking. The boss grabbed him round the throat and pushed him up against the wall. The kid’s feet were even off the ground. He bashed him against the wall a few times yelling at him. I felt sick and nearly cried. Other kids just stood there and watched and said nothing. They said later that it was nothing new.
I had to get out of this place. I told my parents about what had happened the next time I saw them. They said there was nothing they could do, but dad said, “it better not happen to you”. I wondered though, if it did, would I tell him, it could make things worse, or dad would be on a murder charge.
...To be continued
Phil Hughes
September 2023