Her next-door neighbour was a lady called Tessoula who made exotic Greek dishes. The delicious aromas wafting from her kitchen made me want to repack my holiday case and move right in! This was a far cry from Howard Place, where the most exotic waft from next door was that of tinned spaghetti.
Tessoula gave me my first taste of something called moussaka. Initially I was a bit apprehensive about it being made out of moose, but my first mouthful had me a convert.
Melbourne, with its enormous Greek community, seemed like another planet compared to suburban Sydney. Tessoula’s family were having a party and Juliette and I were allowed to have a look-in. I don’t know what the occasion was, but it sure was different to any barbecue I’d ever been to back home. These people were playing instruments and dancing around the Hills Hoist. Juliette joined in very quickly – she’d clearly done it before. I was more interested in the lamb turning on the spit, but Juliette grabbed my hand and it ended up being great fun.
I was fascinated by their amazing grapevine trellis and by some of the women there being dressed all in black with a black head scarf. I thought they must be nuns. When we said goodbye, one of them gave me a little cake unlike any cake I’d ever seen, or tasted! It was a delicious pastry with sweet syrup and crumbled nuts that made a simple cupcake now seem plain and boring.
Favourite Foods
We weren’t like other families in Howard Place. They got junk food on a regular basis. We were bought Kentucky Fried Chicken once. And my father ordered peas. The bastard. Once in my life and he gets peas. We wanted chips and gravy and that peppery-sweet bean salad that squeaked in your mouth as you chewed it.
We weren’t like all the other Catholic families in Epping. There were plenty of them, just in some distant part of Epping, the part where you got my birthright, Catholic fish and chips every Friday night.
The trouble with the food my mother served was that it was so bloody healthy. Other kids came to school with Space Food Sticks, Twisties, Moove flavoured milk and Cheese Sticks. My first Cheese Stick was also my last because they were revolting, but they’d sure seemed more exciting than my wholegrain bread with Vegemite and celery and water from the bubbler. Though I did discover chip butties! These were a whole pack of potato chips crushed between two halves of a white, buttered roll. You could make them yourself in the playground and Mum would never know! Until the fateful day when the Sixth Class girl who towered above me said you could no longer buy anything at the tuckshop for six cents, the cost of a pack of chips and a roll. Inflation was the economic issue of the age and it hit us kids hard.
Steve loved Space Food Sticks, and got them, the lucky devil. Never went without them. Also plenty of Kentucky Fried Chicken! When his parents went out for a night, Steve and his sisters got either fish fingers or KFC, so they’d always be begging their mum and dad to go out. All I got was Kentucky Fried peas.
The first jam doughnut I ever saw was Juliette’s. I wasn’t offered one, I just marvelled as she squeezed the jam out of it. I don’t think she actually ate it, but she sure relished squeezing it.
One treat I did get to enjoy at Juliette’s home was ‘Coke spiders’, a glorious drink made from Coca-Cola and ice-cream. It’s little wonder to me that the first time I ever saw these and the only time I was ever offered one was in ‘exotic’ Melbourne. About the most exotic thing I ever had in Howard Place was squeezing the Vegemite worms through Vita-Weats.
One of my favourite foods, if food it be deemed, was processed cheese slices. And I actually got them at home. I was passionate about them, which is strange considering they tasted like soap. I used to take great pleasure in unwrapping the plastic from each individual slice, though Frances once grilled some on toast for me without removing the plastic. It didn’t matter; they tasted just the same …
The first time I ever went to McDonald’s was with the parents of an early school-friend named Jethro Smith. I never went with my own parents. I was damn lucky the Smiths took me there, frankly, as Mrs Smith’s mashed pumpkin was like hospital slop. She took a perfectly good vegetable and converted it into this watery, orange gunge as if it never occurred to her to drain the water away properly after boiling it. On the single occasion that family ate with ours, Frances offered something from the table to one of Mrs Smith’s boys and she declined it on his behalf. It was something radically exotic like a potato with sour cream and chives on the top.
‘Mine don’t eat that,’ she said.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ fielded Frances. ‘They’re allergic to something?’ ‘No.’ Frances paused before continuing. ‘They’ve just all had it before and all didn’t like it …’
‘No, they haven’t,’ pressed Mrs Smith with a firm smile.
Frances seemed stumped. ‘Then how do they, ah … know?’
‘Mine just don’t eat that.’
Not On Bread Alone …
One day during summer school holidays, I found myself wishing, for the first time, that I wasn’t a child anymore. I was sitting down in the gutter of Howard Place with, in addition to other kids from the street, my first ever object of actual desire.
One Miss Genevieve Guerlain …
There we all were, just sitting there as it was too hot to move. Frances was in her late teens and, walking home up the street, stopped to talk with us kids for a few minutes. I remember her pronouncing to my family later that day, as the relative cool of evening enveloped us, that that Genevieve had a ‘style’ way beyond her years. Genevieve was a slim, naturally beautiful brunette, graceful of movement, gesture and voice. On that memorably sweltering day (‘memorably’ as we always seemed too at one with the universe to realise how boiling it was), my secret love had this Bali-esque multicoloured wrap around her young form. Without a word, she stood up, went back into her house and floated out again with a tupperware jug of cool cordial for all us kids and a smile on her face that said she quietly knew who she was already. I was nine. Genevieve must have been about eight. And by God, in that moment I wished, and quite consciously, that we had been ten years older apiece. For, if we’d been born within a Tolkien novel, that girl would have been an Elvin queen. I have ever wondered what she went on to become …
Chapter Six
Epping, Epicentre of Nowhere
Ronald Biggs evidently thought so. Yes, Ronald Biggs of ‘Great Train Robbery’ fame.
Having run from the British police all the way to the other side of the planet, he moved in nearby and sent his kids to my school. It seems he thought nobody would ever think of looking for him in Epping. South America was merely his last resort. True story. So, how come he fled Epping for South America? Well, if my mother knew about it, Sister Stigmata must have also. Perhaps a group of girls had dobbed …
‘Well, Biggs. Burning ants with a magnifying glass, eh? What does your father do?’
‘Robs trains, Sister.’
‘I see.’
Maybe the kid was the ambitious type.
‘Well, Biggs. Great Train-Set Robbery, eh? Nice plan, but you’re nicked, me old beauty.’ ‘Yes, Sister, and it would have worked too, if it hadn’t been for these meddling kids.’
‘Maybe so, Biggs, but your paternal role-model adherence was your undoing. Take young Sheedy here – picking his nose like that all the time, it’s digusting!’
As a matter of fact, it stands to reason that Howard Place, North Epping, had once been selected as the site for Australia’s largest fireworks factory precisely because the place was so far from anywhere. Presumably, the joint could have blown up one night, left a crater a mile deep and few would have been any the wiser.
News flash:
In the wee hours of this morning, Sydney residents were awoken by the noise of a ‘very large explosion’ emanating from unexplored territory to the north-west. Measuring somewhere in the region of fi fty-seven on the Richter scale, CSIRO scientists are as yet baffl ed.
‘This was what we scientists call a “very large” explosion,’ reported one spokesman. ‘The troubl
e is it was such a long, long way away.’
Updates on the mystery will be announced when and if they come to hand.
Of course, it didn’t feel like nowhere to us …
Sunday Afternoon Parties!
It seemed every second weekend some kid was having a birthday party. These events were orgies of sugar madness, on offer a cornucopia of chocolate crackles, toffee apples, strawberry-iced birthday sponge cake with cream, pink coconut ice, lamingtons, meringues, party pies, sausage rolls, cocktail frankfurts in tomato sauce, all washed down with too much red cordial or GI green! The massive sugar/monosodium glutamate content in all this sent us veritably berserk. Indeed, these afternoons made nowhere feel very much like somewhere.
There were wonderful games! Pass the parcel, pin the tail on the donkey, blind man’s bluff, tunnel ball or just running insanely around. I steered away from the ‘oranges and lemons’ game – less said the better – yet as night fell and coming home in the Valiant, brain chemistry completely altered, you always had a coloured cellophane basket of lollies and squashed birthday cake down the back of the seat. Bliss.
Juliette’s favourite thing at birthday parties was wrapping paper. In fact, she didn’t care so much what was actually in the wrapping, she just loved the wrapping. Oh, and she loved cake and blowing out the candles. Anyone’s candles, really, particularly my candles, which she now had full access to; her family had recently relocated to Sydney.
No, they are not your candles, Juliette. It is not your birthday this time.
Just to keep her sweet she had to be allowed to open some of my presents.
My Birthday
Hijacked birthday parties aside, each year my birthday involved two separate celebrations. Regardless of the day of the week on which my birthday fell, the party with my friends was always held on the next Sunday afternoon; however, no matter how excellent this might be, for me the most special part of the whole thing was the family-only dinner which my parents always put on for me on the night of the actual date. For me this occasion rivalled Christmas.
As my birthday is in late July, this night was always a cosy winter one. My stomach would be filled with butterflies for the whole school day leading up to it. I would walk home from school as if on air, feeling so perfectly happy, so grateful I could burst. And no wonder. My brother, sisters and grandmother would be waiting for me, after Dad got home I would be given presents and Mum would serve up my special ‘party tea’. This would involve all my Margaret Fulton favourites. For starters, perhaps bright purple beetroot soup with a spiral of sour cream floating in the middle; for main, lamb Cumberland (a roast leg of lamb coated with plum jam and toothpicked with slices of lemon). Yes, Mum’s cooking was evolving.
But the best part was dessert. No matter whose birthday it was, at the Sheedy home it was always a ‘mouse cake’. Unique to the Epping Cake Shop, this was a yellow sponge cake with chocolate icing, so named for the white ‘artificial cream’ mice sitting on the top, red sugar crystals for their eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more completely loved than on these nights, with all my family around me.
My most cherished birthday party tea of all was the time my parents took me to the Summit. On this bright, cold winter’s Friday morning, I awoke to discover, for the first time in my life, I was being given the day off school! Mum and Dad took me into the city, our destination a secret, bought me a beautiful metal Spitfire with a battery-powered engine and took me up in a lift. As the lift doors opened, our destination was revealed: a magnificent restaurant atop a skyscraper overlooking the city. But most magical of all, it revolved! And there was a buffet, my first ever, and you could go back as many times as you liked! Better yet, the buffet was in a different part of the restaurant each time you did!
It was one of those really crisp Sydney winter’s days, the view so remarkably clear – all the way to the Blue Mountains. With my Spitfire sitting on the chair next to me, I gazed down on the city panning majestically all around us and thought: my life is going to be wonderful.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Yes, in 1977, Juliette and her family moved to Sydney. The firebrand bane of my existence had moved into West Epping, an easy bike ride from Howard Place.
Directly after their arrival, I rode over to have a look at their house. The place was a shambles with furniture in disarray, packing cases everywhere plus, I noticed, Juliette’s old dolls strewn about. And no, I didn’t play with them. Jesus, I didn’t want to anyway; they had arms and legs missing, some were headless and the ones not yet decapitated had texta marks all over their faces, hair all cut off – frightening, really. There were some on the floor of her room, some down the hall, a few in the sandpit. Like there’d been a war. Either that or her mother had persisted with the idea that Juliette actually was a girl, bought her a dress and Juliette had taken it out on the dolls. In any case, she told me she was finished with dolls.
She had invented a new form of ‘chicken’. She invited me to play it with her. All I had to do was get on my bike, ride down the street and turn around. She’d do the same in the opposite direction. Then we’d ride as fast as we could back towards each other and the last one who swerved to avoid the other won the game. Easy.
‘Me and my brother play it all the time! And he’s smaller than you!’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘You’re lying.’ I knew she wasn’t.
‘Oh, you’re a baby. Look, I’ll show you.’
She shanghaied her brother and rode off down the street, little Pete the other way.
Their head-on collision unfolded before my eyes in a sort of slow motion, at least that’s how I remember it. Somehow Pete got off with minor scratches. Juliette was less fortunate. This delicate flower of a girl had to wear a neck brace for the next six weeks.
While she was recuperating, I had a good look at her bike, an old second-hand one with lots of scratches in the paintwork. From the scratches, I could see she’d first hand-painted it in red and white stripes but had then spray-painted over it in dark blue. (She spray-paints her bike. My father couldn’t even spray-paint the car!)
Steve was a smart kid for his age. He was polite to Juliette but held her at arm’s length to begin with, a wry smile on his face the first few times we hung out with her. It was a look I’d never seen before, sort of ‘You’re kidding me. (Pause.) You’re not kidding me’. He wasted little time before confiding to me in private: ‘Um, do you think we really oughta ride with her?’
Compared to riding bikes with Juliette, with Steve the emphasis seemed more on the actual riding, less on simple survival. We rode ‘down the creek’ more often now whereas Juliette preferred the streets. Whether this was mere coincidence or a quiet, conscious decision on Steve’s part, I’ve often wondered.
North Epping was a suburb of giant hills and though I never had any serious accidents while riding, one afternoon my presence was requested at Steve’s house as he’d been pretty badly injured. From his bed, he told me what had happened: Riding down a hill on the way to school, an Old English sheepdog on one side of the road saw a cat on the other side, raced across the road and hit his front wheel, sending him bodily over the handlebars and down the road on the side of his face. With blood pouring off it, he got up, got back on his bike and continued riding to school.
His account was rendered doubly impressive to me by the bandages through which he managed to give it.
Drink It, Freddy, Drink It
All this bike riding was thirsty work. And if a million suburban mothers couldn’t keep their kids from nearly killing themselves on a daily basis, they could at least keep them hydrated. We never seemed to drink water as such; it was always heavily flavoured with cordial. Also, ultra-cheap ‘fizzy’ drinks of many colours came around to Howard Place on a truck. These were consumed through transparent, squiggly drinking tubes called ‘Crazy Straws’. And there was ‘Tang’! It seemed every household in Australia bought a jar. Fifteen years later, at the back of every household
pantry in Australia, was a single unfinished jar of Tang. Similarly, creaming soda sounded nice but yuck, you want this? Sarsaparilla was equally awful, unless you were partial to gulping cough medicine.
Just as we never drank straight water, we also never drank straight milk. That would have been unthinkable. It was flavoured with chocolate Milo, best not mixed in too thoroughly, rather, left all undissolved and crunchy on the top. Better still, sometimes I dispensed with the milk entirely and just gobbled spoonfuls of the stuff from the tin.
I’m not sure what ‘Spactavite’ was. It tasted like thinly sugared dirt. Sarah White swore by it, but then again, Sarah was the only kid I ever knew who could put chokoes into her mouth without being held at gunpoint. Chokoes, a favoured vegetable of grandmothers in the 1970s, are now extinct from the Australian diet. And happily so as they tasted like what farts would taste like if you could eat farts.
Moove flavoured milk was very big at the time and marketed to a hip youth market. I felt ‘groovy’ just by drinking it. Along with every kid in the playground, I eagerly anticipated the arrival of a new flavour, ‘peach’ Moove, as heralded by a major advertising campaign at the time. We counted down the weeks, the days, the hours, until the morning it was finally available at the school tuckshop. I spat out my first and last mouthful. It was completely disgusting, resembling no known fruit, let alone peaches, and was never seen or heard of again.
I think the king of them all was Nestlé’s Quik. The TV ad for it was a hoot, a ridiculously stern male voice explaining that, indeed, kids would rather be dead than drink milk neat. ‘Go on, Freddy, drink it. Drink it! Drink it!’ But Nestlé’s Quik transformed a glass of milk from a ‘big, white vitamin pill’ into a big, chocolate one which kids could imbibe without gagging. We imbibed it by the metric shit-load, and in many other flavours, all delicious. All except for ‘lime’ Quik. At least, that’s what it claimed to be on the tin. The company was clearly operating on the assumption that kids will drink anything as long as it’s not straight water or milk. By the spoonful, lime Quik tasted even worse. Maybe it is still sold wherever chokoes still are.
Goodbye Crackernight Page 8
