Barry was already famous for his skiing abilities. John D’Maginic, a wonderful skier and a great bloke, gave Barry the title of ‘The Mighty Atom’. He was only little, but boy, could he ski. He went in the open and chewed it up. They announced the winners that night. First was a tall, lanky guy from Europe who was a ski instructor, second was a bloke called Graeme Bookalil who trained Olympic hopefuls in downhill and slalom. Third was Barry Jarratt! They carried him shoulder-high to collect his trophy. A couple of years later, Barry was the only kid with enough guts to ski the Olympic Jump at Perisher. Just before he jumped he was in tears, he was so scared. He won every cup from under-thirteens down.
Life with Dad hadn’t changed. He was still yelling abuse, still hitting and still drinking. There were many instances and I don’t want to bore you with them. One stands out as different to the rest, it was so bizarre. He’d bought a run-down, four-berth wooden caravan from Uncle Ben. He virtually rebuilt it. He was having trouble with the frames for the cupboards and got me to give him a hand. He was building a corner piece close to floor level. There was a two-by-two corner post with two horizontal two-by-one pieces meeting on top of the post. So Dad had to hold those two pieces onto the post while I screwed a brass screw through them and into the post. Dad drilled a guide hole and wood-glued everything and held everything in place. The screw was very hard for a skinny twelve-year-old to screw in. It kept slipping out of the slot, and as it was brass, I was burring the slot up. Dad was yelling his guts out at me, which made it worse. The more I fucked up, the more enraged he became. He couldn’t let go or the whole thing would fall apart and he’d have to start again. He really wanted to hit me, but he couldn’t, so he leant forward and bit me! He drew blood and I squealed like a stuck pig. Mum came running out of the house.
‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong?’
‘I bit him.’
‘You bit him?’
‘All right, all right, we don’t want the whole bloody street to know.’
She said, ‘John, come inside,’ and to Dad, ‘You, stay outside.’
Dad had crossed the line and he knew it. It was a backhanded victory for me. I’d been bitten, but I kind of felt like Mum and I had won for a change.
Dad’s drinking still reared its ugly head, until one horrendous night. Dad came home drunk and he was yelling at Mum in the lounge room. We were sent to our bedroom. Mum was in her early thirties now and she’d learnt to fight back. Dad had never laid a hand on Mum and Mum felt secure in that knowledge. So they were both yelling and Mum actually had the upper hand as she wasn’t in the wrong. Dad had lost it, and he was also losing the argument. So how did he react? He got angrier.
By this stage we three boys were standing just outside the lounge-room door. Suddenly Dad started hitting Mum hard. I went to go into the room, and Barry and Brian held me back, so I started screaming, ‘Leave her alone!’ He stopped hitting and in the very same moment decided to quit drinking. Thank Christ for that! I often wonder if we’d stayed in Wongawilli, whether Dad would have hit Mum, knowing full well that her big brother Charlie would stick Dad’s head up his arse. Charlie would have got him, there’s no doubt about that.
Life in Island Bend was a bit better with the old man off the sauce. I was still enjoying school and at the end of my final year in primary school, I came third in my class. It was the best I’d ever done, way better than my years at Dapto Primary.
The high school was in Cooma, 60 miles away. Twenty miles of it was driving down the mountains. The students were taken by bus every day, about a three-hour round trip. If you had a girlfriend, you’d sit up the back of the bus, arms and hands delving everywhere and a whole lotta kissing.
I had the hots for this girl from Jindabyne. We got talking and things were going very well. I sat there one day and gingerly put my arm around her, and she snuggled in straight away. The boys noticed this and came over to encourage us to go up the back with the rest of the gropers. Like sheep, we did as we were told. We went up the back and sat down, I put my arm around her and we resumed the position. The boys stood around like petting instructors. ‘Put your hand on her tit.’ My girl just sat there cool as a cucumber. I slowly put my hand on her breast. She didn’t flinch. I cupped it and slowly squeezed it. It was fantastic.
High school was okay. I thought I’d be in 1A, because I’d come third in my class. But that wasn’t taken into consideration. The whole of my Island Bend class went into 1B. This had a profound effect on me. I thought, I finally tried hard at school and they do this to me. What is the use of bloody trying? And I didn’t: I went back to jerking around and playing the class pain in the arse. At least I got laughs and I was popular.
Dad thought the time I was spending on the bus was too much. I came home one day and he informed me that I was going to his old boarding school, All Souls School in Charters Towers, north Queensland. This was the most idiotic decision my father ever made. I could have gone to boarding school in Wagga, Canberra or even Sydney. But no, let’s get traditional and send the boy to Dad’s old school, 1500 miles away.
Arse Holes School
Dad and I flew from Sydney to Townsville and then took a steam train to Charters Towers. Yup, diesel hadn’t made it that far in ’65. This was my first flight. We flew in a Viscount Electra, the pride of the fleet. I had a window seat. We flew above the clouds and I looked down on them for the first time. Big, fluffy cumulus clouds.
‘They look like the froth on a milkshake.’
‘When you get to my age it’ll look like the froth on a beer.’
All Souls School. We were directed to the headmaster’s cottage. A tall, slim man with silver hair in a long black cassock greeted us with a posh accent. This was Brother Mattingly. He ran the joint with an iron fist and a smooth tongue.
Two prefects were delegated to show us around. We dropped my bags near my allocated bed in the Grade 8 dorm and then I was taken up to my classroom and introduced to the class.
I shook Dad’s hand.
‘All the best, son, see ya later.’
He turned on his heel and walked off with a complete lack of any sort of emotion that I could detect. I thought I’d feel relief that I finally could live without that cranky bastard, but instead I felt as lonely as hell and was sucking in tears. I realise now that in spite of everything, I loved the cranky bastard, and deep down in my subconscious I knew he loved me so much that he’d die for me. His problem was that he never really grew up, and what’s more, as bright as he was, he didn’t have a clue about emotions, didn’t know what to do with them, so he buried them. Except anger, because that’s manly, and humour, because that fed his large, very confident ego.
I’m finding it hard to write about the boarding school as I hated the joint. I’ve managed to block it out of my life. I have a knack for that. If I don’t like someone or something, I delete them. I’m very much a don’t-look-back person. I’m not a great collector of memorabilia. If it wasn’t for my mother, I would have bugger-all of my career photos from the seventies, eighties and nineties. Digital cameras and mobile phone cameras have taken over where she left off. So I’m sorry, dear reader, but I’m going to get through boarding school very smartly.
I can’t tell you many positive things about it. I’ve always been a rebel, always told it like it is. Which is probably why I got into a lot of fights, arguments and trouble. The prefects took an instant dislike to me and I to them. I was a bit like Dad and his catchcry of ‘I joined the war to fight Japs, not to call you “Sir”.’ I felt the same way about prefects. In this school they were given far too much power. If they caught you with your socks down, you’d be on report, one hour pulling tussock grass out of acres of useless land belonging to the school. You’d finally get to the end of a 10-acre paddock and the grass had grown back at the other end, so back you’d go and start again. In the year and a half I was there, I never got a day off from report. Saturday meant hours of pulling grass. The prefects would stand around like jail screws, yelling, �
�Bend your backs!’ You couldn’t bend your knees, so they were fucking our backs up at an early age.
The prefects liked to hit us. I’d smack them straight back, fair in the mouth or nose, knocked a few over. I was only thirteen. Always in trouble.
Once I had the flu really badly and I was in sick bay most of the week, so for once I didn’t go on report. I remember standing there and not have my name read out. Next thing I was down by the tank stand with the nerds and fairies who were never on report. I was so happy. Next thing, ‘Wombat’ the school captain found me. ‘Jarratt, we made a mistake, you’ve got two reports.’ Bastard.
We were woken by a horrid clanking bell at 6 a.m. Fifty boys would race naked to the showers (there were only three showers). Then to breakfast, followed by church for half an hour. After that, school until 3.30 p.m. One and a half hours of play (unless you had to train at some sport, Scouts or cadets). At 5 p.m. another half an hour of church. Dinner at 6 p.m. From 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. was homework, back in the classrooms. Lights out at 9.30 p.m. Week in, week out. Saturday on report, Sunday day leave, if you knew someone in Charters Towers to visit. I did!
Nanna and Chook Hanafee – a beautiful old couple in their seventies. Dad used to go to their house twenty-three years earlier. They were friends of my grandfather from his days in Hughenden. I can’t remember what Chook used to do for a living, but he was definitely working-class. He was seventy-six and every Saturday he’d get on his pushbike, ride a couple of miles to an old people’s home and give the men a shave and a haircut with his hand shears. ‘Poor old buggers, can’t afford a haircut.’ He was an old bugger himself!
I’d walk from the school to the Hanafees’. They had this beautiful low-set Queenslander hugged by huge mango trees and palms. The house had been made bigger by enclosing the three-sided verandah. Out the back, off the kitchen, Chook had built a covered outside area, typical of Queensland at the time. They tended to live in that area until the TV came on at about 5 p.m. Real down-home country folk, they only put their teeth in on special occasions. Nanna Hanafee was a plump woman, about 4 foot 10, salt of the earth, with a heart of gold. They were soulmates and a joy to be around.
Nanna still cooked everything on a wood stove, and what a great cook she was. A massive plate of meat and veg, followed by a home-cooked dessert and a mug of tea. Then you’d sit around like a python that just ate a goat. By about 3 p.m. you’d have to make room and go to the toilet. Unfortunately, you couldn’t hang on until you got back to school and a flush toilet. The Hanafees’ toilet was a long-drop thunderbox model. Once you’d finished your business, you’d have to wipe your bum with newspaper strips, carefully prepared and hung on a nail by Chook.
Chook loved to tell stories about the gold rush in Charters Towers. There were big sandy-coloured mullock heaps all around the town. They were the waste from the goldmines. The one outside the Hanafees’ house had a flat top. You’d climb about 20 feet to get there. It was so big that Chook and I could kick a football to each other. He was a fit old bastard. At four-thirty it was back to prison for six o’clock mass. We went to church fourteen times a week.
The problem with an all-boys school is the testosterone. A bunch of boys between twelve and eighteen equals a whole lotta wankin’ goin’ on! After dinner a large bunch of us would go to sick bay. You’d rummage through a lot of cough medicine bottles to the one with your name on it, take a huge swig and replace it. It had a substance called dextromethorphan in it, which was a sedative. Made you feel really cool, man. Next stop, the dunny block.
There was a long queue to get into the toilets. There were about ten cubicles. When it was finally your turn, you’d go in, lock the door, have a wank and head up to the homework class. Nobody ever admitted to wanking, but we all did. Some kids would wait for an hour after lights out and have a wank when they thought we were all asleep. The guy next to me used to do that. His thing was humping his pillow. He’d start out quiet enough, but when he got close to climaxing he’d throw caution to the wind. His bed would clang and squeak and rattle to a point that you’d think it was about to collapse. I got sick of this waking me most nights, so I came up with a plan. I spread the word and when his bed started squeaking, we all crept quietly around the bed.
‘Hey, Smithy. Having a good time there?’
Poor old Smithy rolled over to see a sea of boys leering at him with stupid grins on their faces. He jumped out of bed (with no pants on) to fight me. Poor bastard lost out there, too. To top it off, the dorm master came out, grabbed us both by the ears, dragged us into his office and strapped us. Poor Smithy got it on his bare bum.
All this talk of paedophilia that’s constantly raising its ugly head these days was carefully brushed under the carpet back then. Boarding schools attract these low-life mongrels. There were two boys in particular who were preyed upon by a maggot I’ll call Brother Pervert. Everyone knew he was sexually interfering with those boys. We all shrugged it off that they were nancy boys and that’s what they did. In retrospect, no matter whether they were nancy boys, no child deserves to have an adult prick shoved in their orifices.
These childfuckers are supposed to be a step away from God, but instead they are indulging in the most evil act on the planet. It’s worse than adult rape or murder. It’s more evil than a suicide bomber. So what happened to Brother Pervert? One day he ran his hand up a boy’s shorts and the boy thumped him in the head. There was a hell of a to-do about it. Brother Pervert’s punishment was that he was sent to another school and told to behave himself. I’m a peaceful man and I try to be understanding of most things. If someone needs to be removed from my circle for some reason, I try to move on and forget about them. But if I caught someone sexually abusing my child, I’d most probably kill him. It’s always a him, which makes you sad to be a man sometimes.
I was sexually assaulted at that school. I was in the cadets. We were playing this cadet game called ‘ambush’. You had to creep up on other cadets and ambush them. I was allocated to an eighteen-year-old ‘sergeant’; he was a big lanky guy. He got me to hide with him behind a tree in the crevice of this mullock heap. He suggested we take a piss. I didn’t particularly want one but he insisted, saying he didn’t want me caught short in an hour’s time. So we both were standing there with our dicks out to take a piss. He reaches over and starts caressing my dick. I tried to take his hand away and he threw me down and started rubbing my genitals. It hurt like hell and it was not at all stimulating. He had his forearm over my throat and I couldn’t breathe properly. He kept saying, ‘Calm down, calm down, enjoy it, this is nice.’ He was way too strong for me; I was thirteen. I decided to just lie there and pretend I was enjoying it. Finally he let me go and tried to come on to me in a more sexual way. I pretended to respond, and as soon as I felt he was off-guard, I made a break. I was running, trying to pull my pants up and button them at the same time, because he’d managed to unbutton them.
Thank Christ he didn’t chase me. He came up to me back at the school and threatened to break my arms and legs if I said anything. Years later, when I was eighteen and living in Townsville, I ran into this piece of shit in a pub. I walked up and said, ‘Remember me?’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Jarratt,’ and he went white. Then I punched his fuckin’ head in.
I’m grateful I had the opportunity to belt him. If I hadn’t, I may have turned into a shattered man over it, because it really screwed me up. I feel so sorry for those guys in their forties who haven’t got over some sexual monster priest tearing them apart physically and mentally as a child.
The teachers were a great bunch. My dorm teacher was weird. He was an ‘old boy’ of the school. At night he used to wander around the beds after lights out and just stand beside your bed for ages. Sometimes he’d walk around with an obvious hard-on in his shorts.
If you got into trouble you’d get the strap. Usually two hits across the arse with specially made straps. They were about 3 foot long and scalloped at the top to grip it properly. The end that struck your
arse was double thickness with pennies stitched in for extra sting. The bruise on your arse had the round marks of the pennies. What possessed these motherfuckers to have things specially made up to belt boys with? The dorm master loved hitting you with these things more than twice. One Sunday morning we had inspection. Your little cupboard beside your bed had to be neat as a pin. Just before inspection I went to the loo. I came back and some bastard had turned my cupboard over, it was obvious.
‘Who turned your cupboard over, Jarratt?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Of course you know. If you don’t tell me, you will take his punishment.’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘You don’t know? Right, let’s count the articles on the floor, hmm, eleven items. Still won’t tell me who did it?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Into my office now!’
He always left the door open so the other kids could watch. ‘Bend over, Jarratt.’ He hit me on the arse eleven times. Fucking pervert.
There must have been some good times but I can’t remember them. I know that some kids loved the joint, sporting and academia types. That place was like an alien planet to me. One great event I can remember was changing from pounds, shillings and pence to decimal currency. As the song went, ‘On the fourteenth of February 1966.’ New coins and small, strange ‘paper money’.
Up until this point I’ve been writing in imperial measurements, but from here on I’ll go metric.
The Bastard from the Bush: An Australian Life Page 7
