Scraps of Memory - Raymond
illustrated with photos of our childhood
Famous Five
All five
The Crooke children before Annette.
Ron, Val, Raymond, Alan, with Dianne in front.
[I wrote this piece about my childhood a few years ago. Initially I tried to be honest and to deal with some issues that I had some difficulty facing up to. However my nerve failed me and this is a censored version. It leaves out certain parts that I decided were too traumatic to be included and some parts that I was concerned could cause offence, though not intended to. Even in its present innocuous form it stills reveals a few things that I have never spoken about.]
4 months
Baby Raymond
Baby Raymond
Dad with four-month-old Raymond
9 months
9 months
Nine months old
11 months
11 months
1 year old
Eleven months old
beach baby
One year old
First birthday
First birthday
Baby at the beach
20 months
Raymond's first birthday
Two years 4 months
Two years 4 months
Twenty months old.
3 years 1 month
Two years four months. The lemon tree was a popular background for many photos.
Throughout my childhood I lived in a little world of my own creation, only occasionally interrupted by objective reality. My fantasies were within my control, unthreatened by the autonomy of the other lives that impinged on mine.

I remember looking up from ground level at two giants. The angle was unfamiliar and I could barely recognise them as my parents.

One day we drove away from home and when we came back everything was changed. I suppose we had moved house, but it felt like it was all just back-to-front and inside out.

There was a pond at the end of Smith Street. Val and I would make the long trip there to scoop wriggling tadpoles from the murky water into a glass jar. I saw Smith Street again when I visited Ballarat many years later, but this time it was very short and there was no longer a pond at the end.

I remember only one thing about kindergarten. One day several colourfully-wrapped chocolate eggs appeared spontaneously outside, barely concealed behind tufts of grass and in corners of dolls' houses. According to the teacher, the Easter Bunny had been. I remember searching every day for a long time after that to see if he would come again, but he never did.
Three years one month. Raymond's tricycle
Raymond 4 years 4 months
Val 2 years 2 months
On my first day of school I remember being in the classroom with my mother. I saw a struggling child screaming and kicking his legs in the air as he was being pulled apart by two adults. Was this what school was all about? I remember I felt only minor trepidation. I did not translate the apparent torture of another child into any threat to myself.

Miss Hawe used to read stories to us as we sat on the mat. I enjoyed them so much I would hum as she read. I remember she disapproved of my accompaniment. Did she smack my hand with her own, or only threaten to? This was the usual punishment she applied, but I can't remember whether it ever happened to me.

Miss Hawe taught us many things. She told us that the world is round, like an orange. She showed us a large globe, with blue and red and many other colours. My understanding was that we lived inside such a sphere, the lower half filled with earth, the upper half coloured blue, this being the sky. I did not question how the people inside the world, living on the flat surface, could know about the coloured patterns on the outside. Adults just knew these things.

I remember her talking about boats. She showed us pictures of yachts sailing on the ocean. The thing that stuck in my memory was that sometimes these boats can blow over in a strong wind. The boats I knew about were the ferries on the still waters of Lake Wendouree. The next time my father took us on a picnic to the lake, I begged him not to take us out on the ferry for fear that it would turn over.

I remember my father rowing me in a small boat on the lake; I don't know whether it was before or after the period when I was fearful of boats. He was singing "Toorali-oorali-addity. We're bound for Botany Bay."

One day a boy asked me what my father did. I told him my father went to work. The boy did not seem pleased with my answer. For the first time it occurred to me that I knew nothing of this place called Work. I had always taken it for granted that it was a building fathers go to instead of school. I had no curiosity about what they did there. Eventually I was able to tell those who asked that he was teaching teachers how to teach.
Three children
Alan 1 year 6 months
Val 3 years 8 months
Raymond 5 years 10 months
Lemon tree
That lemon tree again
I used to gather up hairpins, rubber bands, matchsticks, pins, paper-clips, washers, wires and various other useful bits and pieces from the dusty asphalt of the school grounds. I would combine these parts together intricately to make a wonderful invention. In front of the whole class and, especially, Miss Hawe I would place it on the floor and wind it up, expecting it to move around the room like a clockwork toy. It never did.

After I completed prep grade we moved to Maldon, where we stayed for a while with my grandparents. Then we moved to the Apple House. The girl next door taught me to suck the sweet nectar from the honeysuckle and to hold buttercups to my chin to see if I liked butter.

At the Apple House we played Teddy's Milk. We would take all the toys from the big wooden toy box and line them up according to colour. The line started against the wall so that the coloured milk would flow into the wall to be stored there for Teddy to drink.

Teddy was not as plump as most stuffed bears. At some stage he lost half an eye. The most traumatic experience for both Teddy and myself was when I accidentally left him at the sand hills and could not collect him until the next day. He had aged a lot overnight and looked more pathetic than ever. I cuddled him every night and had long one-sided conversations with him until I was much too old to be taking a stuffed toy to bed with me, and my parents put more and more pressure on me to give him up.

Behind the back garden of my grandparents' house there was an old haunted house. We were forbidden to go up the stairs, but we could climb in the window and explore downstairs. The big rooms were deathly quiet and cobwebs and possum droppings covered everything. One day we saw a dead animal in one of the rooms. Most of the flesh had rotted away, and little remained of the body but bare bones. However, the face was mostly intact and the eyes seemed to stare right at us. It was a long time before we dared to enter the haunted house again.

On one of our regular walking routes we came across a dead fox hanging from a tree. We named it the Stinker. The putrid smell lingered in that area for months.

We used to go and climb the Mulberry trees just down the road. One day Val and I were stuck up in a tree for what seemed like hours because a herd of cows came and started grazing under the tree. These large beasts with their threatening horns were also our main source of anxiety when we climbed up Tarrengower hill to the tower. We were children of the city residing temporarily in the country.
On my first day at Maldon State School the teachers decided I was too big for Grade one. I was taller than the other children, but not older. This was the only reason I was given for skipping a grade, which resulted in my being the youngest in the class all through my school life.

Mr Barkis had a knotted stick which terrified me. Recalcitrant boys were made to bend over and touch their toes in readiness for its painful blow. (Girls would be sharply struck on the calves with a ruler.)

I remember the morning fingernail inspections. I always passed, as did most of the children. But the children from the D- family failed with monotonous regularity to appear with clean hands and fingernails, no matter how many times they felt the knotted stick. The D - s were a large family who lived on the fringe of the town. I suppose they were Maldon's equivalent of Maycomb's Ewells. There were rumours of various insalubrious and generally unnamed activities, some of which resulted in members of the family spending time in "homes".  I once walked home from school with Raymond D -. I found him a lively and interesting companion, not least because we shared the same name, but made the mistake of telling my parents, who forbade me to associate with him or any other member of that family. I still remember the stale smell and pale skin of these children.

I remember the musty sugary smell of a certain shop where we used to buy sweets. I have never come across quite the same odour before. I would know it immediately if I smelt it again.

One playtime, a circle of girls were holding hands, playing ring-a-rosy. I wanted to join their game and tried to enter the circle by bending down and attempting to go under their linked hands. I was angrily rejected, and wandered off to more solitary pursuits. Back in class I was startled by Mr Barkis calling me out to the platform and even more shocked to learn the nature of my crime. The girls had reported me to the teacher, accusing me of attempting to look up their skirts at their panties. Too confused to defend myself against the unjust allegation, I submissively touched my toes as directed, eyes already brimming with tears, awaiting the dreaded blow I had always avoided until this time. To my surprise and relief it did not come. I had never known Mr Barkis to fail to administer the knotted stick once the victim was in position, but on this occasion he changed his mind and sent me back to my seat admonishing me to avoid such acts in future. Did he have some doubts about the girls' tales? Or was he being understanding about the curiosity about the opposite sex which is natural to young children? I was pleased to avoid punishment but being forgiven for a crime I did not have the slightest intention of committing did little to remove the shame I felt at being thought capable of such a deed.

Another embarrassing event: one day I was on the way back from the Shire Gardens with Val, when I felt an urgent call of nature. We started to run home but then I stopped and said I could not make it home. Nobody was in sight. I quickly squatted in the large drain hoping I was not visible. Suddenly two girls from our school appeared from nowhere. "How disgusting!" said one. "Just like the gypsies." The urge suddenly disappeared. I pulled my pants up, covered in shame, and we continued on our way home. My sister's presence did not bother me, but the public humiliation haunted me for many years to come.
Raymond's first bike
Raymond's first bicycle.
Val and Alan
Alan, Val and a bit of Dianne
Some time during second grade we moved back to the city, and I went to Ashburton State School. I had a girlfriend for the first time. Joy was smaller than most of the girls and had dark hair, brown eyes and dark skin. I found her delightfully exotic and I loved her name. A few years later, when I was in love again I did not tell anybody about it, least of all the girl herself, but at six years old I was a bit less inhibited and I made no secret of the fact that I considered Joy as my girlfriend. Unfortunately it was very one-sided. She rarely talked to me and refused to accept the role I had given her, except on one occasion. One day I had enough money to buy chips for lunch at the nearby fish and chip shop. When I returned to the school with the salty treasures wrapped in newspaper she came running up to me. She said she would not be my girlfriend any more if I did not share them with her. I can't remember whether I agreed to do so or not, but I did learn something about women that day.

We had a set of big books showing exotic scenes from all around the world. We called them Mr Modrell books, presumably because somebody of that name had given them to us. There was a map of the world. My parents showed me the route that Maman had taken to France. There was also a picture of a burnt-out tram, victim of an earthquake in Tokyo.

The wireless had pride of place in our lounge room. More than just a wireless, it was a gramophone. It would play up to six records one after the other, 78s or microgrooves. It was a large piece of furniture with cupboard space on both sides for storing the records. Much of what came out of its speakers meant little to me, but once a week the whole family would gather round it and laugh at the adventures of Daddy and Paddy.

I learnt the hard way about the sanctity of material possessions. Curious to see what scissors could do beyond cutting up paper, I poked them against the soft material covering the wireless speakers. This resulted in a hole in the cloth. It was only a small hole, not a lot considering the overall bulk of this piece of furniture, but enough to earn me a severe spanking. The only response I could think of when I became aware of the enormity of my crime was to vehemently deny responsibility for it. This had little effect, given that I was caught with the scissors in my hand, except, no doubt, to make the punishment even worse. I already knew the unbearable pain that could be caused by my father's hand. A smack from my mother could be tolerated, especially as it was usually followed shortly after by a forgiving cuddle. The intense pain delivered by my father was another matter entirely. The only possible relief was to run to my mother, who would "rub it better" for me. On this occasion, she refused to give such relief, thus reinforcing the message that I had seriously transgressed the boundaries of acceptable experimentation. I knew not to scribble on walls. I had been told that, and assured that I could have as much paper as I wanted to draw on. But nobody ever told me that I should not stick scissors into furniture. If I had been specifically told the rules, I would never have broken them. I found out that I had to work out some of the rules for myself.
saw
Spanking
Acting out domestic scenes with Val, Alan and Dianne
We used to play Monopoly. I was always the bank, and I always won. I made sure of it. I also liked playing school. I was always the teacher and my siblings were always the students.

Waiting for a haircut at the barber's shop, I used to hum to myself. The barbers called me "Bing".

I learned about the joy of malted milkshakes. When I was fortunate enough to have a spare shilling I would go and spend it at the Nice Lady's shop. It was the Nice Lady's long after the nice lady herself had sold out. I tried chocolate, strawberry and blue heaven, but my favourite was caramel. One day I tried banana and it made me feel sick. I have never liked bananas much since that time, which is rather unfair as there was probably no real banana in the flavoured syrup.
Rolling pin
Alan
Alan and Ron with billy-cart
Alan and Ron with the billy-cart
Grade 3
My Grade 3 Class
My third grade teacher was the notoriously "crabby" Miss Cooper. Allan and I became "teacher's pets". We used to wait for her after school and walk with her to the train station. When she got angry she would go around the class slapping pupils on the back indiscriminately. Once she slapped me, despite our special relationship. I did not wait for her that afternoon. I can't remember why I forgave her; she must have shown some remorse. We were friends again, until she left at the end of the following year. In fourth grade, I was given the responsibility of looking after her class for about an hour during a weekly absence which I do not remember the reason for. She arranged for me to be excused from my own class. I had to write down the names of any pupil who spoke or otherwise misbehaved, and she would punish them on her return. At the end of the year she gave me a present - a little book telling the story of Moses, which I treasured for many years.

I remember Allan and Ian on either side of me, arms around each others' waists as we walked about the school - the best of friends. I wondered why my parents seemed to worry about my friends. I tended to avoid rough company, boys who pushed and fought and swore, who seemed in the majority. The friends I felt comfortable with were the sensible and sensitive boys like Allan and Ian and Stuart.

It was Allan who told me about the children's program on the wireless with the daily serialisation of stories, usually by Enid Blyton. I became an addict. I was already familiar with these stories from readings by my teacher, but now they were brought to life, with appropriate voices for each character. The adventures of Bessie, Fanny and Jo and Moonface and Dame Slap became an important part of my life. I started borrowing books from the library at a few pennies a loan. Then the free library arrived. It was contained in a bus, which visited the local area once a week. I read voraciously everything I could get my hands on - provided it was by Enid Blyton. Sometimes the radio serial was not an Enid Blyton story, and it did not have the same magic, but I listened anyway.

We also listened to records. I would play songs by Burl Ives and act them out with Val and Alan. "Oh, Dear, she's Wonderful, Beautiful" was one of our favourites, on the other side of "Noah Found Grace in the Eyes of the Lord." Another was "Frankie and Johnny". And on a ten-inch microgroove there was "Barbara Allen". We practised them over and over, performing them for our parents or just for ourselves. I copied down the words and learnt to sing them.
I decided that I was the King of Fairyland, and let Val and Alan into the secret. Every night, after the lights were out I told them stories of life in Fairyland. I made them up as I went along, no doubt stealing ideas from The Wishing Chair and the Magic Faraway Tree in the process. They were told via an imaginary device called The Microphone, which enabled me to incorporate theme music and funny voices. Each night I kept this up until either they or I drifted off to sleep.

There was a Topio under our house in Ashburton. We used to peer through the slats into the darkness and terrify ourselves with glimpses of the elusive creature. I don't know how my siblings envisioned it, but I imagined the beast as looking something like a tapir, which accounts for the name I gave it.
Alan and lemon tree
Alan's turn at the lemon tree
Grade 4
My Grade 4 Class
In Grade four, my teacher was Mr Pitt, who played the squeeze-box and the guitar. He must have sung us many songs but the only one I remember learning from him was the Mockingbird Song - "Hush little baby, don't say a word; Daddy's going to buy you a mockingbird." Mr Pitt used to take students out to the porch and administer the strap to them. Normally, they would go out obediently, preferring to be spared the embarrassment of public punishment. But when Stuart was caught in some misdemeanor and ordered to the porch he resisted. He was terrified of the strap, as indeed was I. But, whereas I would have gone obediently to my doom, had the occasion ever arisen, Stuart fought back. I still remember the terror on his face and the futile tearful threats of "I'll tell my parents on you" and his screams as the strap flailed at him, much to the enjoyment of the class, with the exception of the few of us who understood his fears.

Unlike my other friends, I don't think Stuart was particularly intelligent. Otherwise he too would have kept himself out of trouble. A few years later I heard that he had choked on an apple and died.
Hose fun
Colleen and Colin
Cousin Colleen and our Grandfather visiting from Coffs Harbour. Colin Taylor, left, was, I think, the son of the Baptist minister.
Val, Alan and Dianne cooling down in summer
Colleen
Sydney
guinea pigs
Val, Colin and Colleen with guinea pigs
Val in Sydney with Nana, Grandfather, Auntie June and cousin Julie.
Cousin Colleen
Grade 5
My Grade 5 Class
The only time I got the strap was in Grade 5. The class was taught by a nice lady who never, in my memory at least, used corporal punishment. However, once a week, the boys used to go next door to Mr Ilton's class for Handwork. I did not enjoy this class as I was very much afraid of Mr Ilton, who was bad-tempered and very quick to use his strap. One time as we lined up for his class, I was roughly pushed out of the queue by a couple of the boys. I don't think I fought back at all. I probably went to the end of the line to avoid them. When Mr Ilton got us into the classroom, he demanded that all the boys involved in the disorderly conduct come out to the platform. As some of the boys went out, he asked who else was involved and, heartlessly, they mentioned my name to him. He looked at me and ordered me to the platform. I went to the front, hoping he would give me the chance to explain that, while technically I was involved in the incident, that involvement consisted merely of being pushed out of my place in the queue. No such luck. We were asked to put out our hands and receive a stroke of the strap. It was painful, but far worse was the ignominy of being classed with the type of students who were regular receivers of such punishment. I had wanted to survive primary school without ever being subjected to what I saw as a grave humiliation. I never mentioned the incident to my parents and never forgave Mr Ilton. Years later, when my father was principal of the school, I visited him there as a trainee teacher. Mr Ilton was still there. I remember my father telling me what a good sort he was. I shook his hand and was cordial to him, but I could never erase from my mind the image of the ogre who had destroyed my unblemished record as a model student.
Grade 6
My Grade 6 Class. Ian is front row,  third from left, Allan on the extreme right. Irene is extreme right, second back row.
I remember there were foreigners and other people who were different. There was Irene, the little girl with glasses who had to leave the room when we had Religious Instruction and go to the library. She must have been the only Jewish child in the school's almost totally White Anglo-Saxon Protestant environment. And there were the children from the Catholic School down the road. They might as well be foreigners. None of us knew any of them personally. But we heard rumours of endless prayers and brutal treatment by the nuns. Even more foreign were the refugees who lived in an enclosed area of tin sheds that we walked past on the way to school. We heard people speaking in strange languages. We had no clear idea where they had come from or why they were here among us. Then there were the Italians, such as the Capras, who used to deliver boxes of fruit and vegetables to our door. They were accepted so long as they kept to their role as greengrocers and didn't move into our street. There was the Catholic family that moved in across the road, who turned out to be no different from anybody else, at least in any way that was discernible to us. Maybe a few foreigners would have been handy at school. It might have diverted some of the teasing I faced as the only redhead in the class 

We used to go to the Civic theatre every Saturday afternoon for the matinee. It didn't matter what film was showing. We would watch anything. We particularly liked the cartoons in the first half. Our favourite was Cartoon Carnival, when no feature was shown and both halves were made up of cartoons. One time Alan was upset by a cartoon during the first half of a Cartoon Carnival and wouldn't stop crying. We had to abandon the show and take him home. Such is the lot of the older brother and sister. We probably made his life more difficult for a while after that.

We had to wait in line for tickets, but this was one of the best parts of the event. We would spend the time swapping comics. Everyone had a bundle of comics they had finished reading and we would exchange bundles and pick out the ones we wanted. If the other person wanted five of my comics I would choose the five of his that I most wanted. One time the theatre management introduced a two-for-one swap. Perhaps it was for charity, but I found it difficult to see the point of it, as such a system would eventually wipe out my collection if I made too much use of it. On the other hand, the theatre management had no idea of the relative value of comics, so I could get away with giving them two old Phantom comics for a new Tweety and Sylvester. I suppose we must have actually purchased comics at some stage, but most of what we ended up with seemed to be through this Saturday afternoon swapping.
Dianne and tricycle Alan climbing
Alan practising his climbing skills
Dianne and tricycle
Jenny
wheelbarrow
Val and Ron investigating a wheelbarrow
Jenny helping Alan with his yoga
models
stockings
Val and Jenny wearing stockings
Models - Val with Jenny Ginn, her friend from across the road - and owner of the dog that killed our cat!
Models
Dianne joins in
Cage
Nick, Alan and Ian
Studying a bird cage
Ron and cars
Nick Gammon, Allan Gyngell, Ian Crawford, Timothy Gammon and others
Ron the road-builder
Dianne and towel
Dianne relaxing
Dianne and scooter
... and trying out Ron's roads
Allan and Ian
Allan Gyngell with sister Kathy and brother, Kim. Ian Crawford and, maybe, his sister.
The brightest secret of my childhood: the blue-eyed fair-haired girl I adored. I used to collect pictures of Hayley Mills from women's magazines. I cut them out and pasted them in a scrapbook. I saw "The Parent Trap", starring Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills. Was I in love with Cheryl because she looked like Hayley or was it the other way round? I never gave her the slightest hint of my feelings. I remember one of the rare times we were alone together and she gave me the sweetest smile I had ever seen. I was in heaven. I knew all I wanted out of life was to grow up and marry her someday. She went on a bike ride one day with my sister and me. At her mother's house, she came into the room wearing a white petticoat. I was shocked that her mother would allow her to be in such a state of undress, but the image of this white angel stayed burned into my mind, the essence of purity. On the way home from our outing, I ran my bike into the back of a parked car and buckled the front wheel. Maybe I was distracted by the exhilaration of being in her presence for so long. She remained my secret love almost from the moment I first met her until the end of her tragically short life.
Cheryl and Val with Dianne
wheelbarrow
... and Ron
Cheryl and Val with Dianne
Val's friends
Cheryl Noden, Jenny Ginn with Val and two of the Spears girls - the Catholic family that moved in across the road.
Ross
Ron, Mark Hales (next door neighbour), Dianne and Ross Noden
We had a number of pets during my childhood. Most of them came to a bad end. In those days before political correctness any cat or dog that happened to be black would be called either Blackie or Nigger. I remember our first cat, Nigger. My father delivered her in a sack, a tiny kitten which quickly grew up and occasionally disappeared for short periods. One day she disappeared for too long and we found her mangled body in the main shopping street, the victim of a hit and run accident. Our next cat was killed by Sooty, the big dog from across the road. We actually witnessed the chase, which concluded with Sooty hurling Blackie across the yard, breaking her bones beyond repair. Mr Ginn, Sooty's owner, put Blackie to sleep with the exhaust of his car. Sooty was also responsible for the death of our two guinea pigs, which disappeared on two consecutive nights. It was a while before we were ready to have any other pets. The last one was a black dog, named, of course, Nigger.

Nigger loved being taken for walks. When I took down his chain from where it hung near the back door, he would run to me and jump up and down so excitedly that it was difficult to attach the chain to his collar. The other enjoyment he had was to be given a dog biscuit to eat, but the walk was the highlight of his life.

I kept a large collection of comics in a chest in the cubby-house. One morning I found several of them torn up and scattered around the yard. I was very angry with the obvious culprit and tried to communicate to Nigger the reasons for my anger. All he understood was that I was no longer his friend. I put a dog biscuit just out of his reach on a tree and watched him jumping for it in frustration. When, at last, I relented and went to take it down, he bared his teeth at me and threatened me for the first time ever. It was only when I shook his chain later in the day that our relationship got back to normal, and I more or less forgave him for behaving as dogs are expected to behave.

We had to get rid of Nigger, because his barking at night disturbed the neighbours. On our last day together he shared my sadness, whimpering in sympathy with my mood, unaware that his imminent departure was the cause of my sorrow.  I was told he would be taken to the country and released to run free, that he would be happier that way. I always suspected that his destiny was not so rosy.

Perhaps this was the end of my childhood. Or perhaps it was when I was cleaning up and found Teddy, thin and scruffy, one and a half glassy eyes staring blankly out of his small face. For many years he had been my best friend. It was a long time since I had held him in my arms at night, but could I bear to part with him permanently? I made the decision. Unceremoniously, I tossed him into the incinerator, and managed to suppress the pang of loss that I felt at his departure.
The Crooke Family Page
The Crooke Family Tree
Raymond's Travel Page