Richmond Childhood by Derek Kosbab

My family, mother Doris, father George, me Derek and younger brother Michael arrived in Australia as ten-pound passage immigrants from post-second world war Britain in 1952. After an adventure-filled 18 months in Fingal Tasmania in the care of our Australian sponsor, we made our way to Melbourne.

Our first house purchase was in Alban Street Richmond. Alban Street was not bituminised, simply roughly graded, and was a delivery laneway for the shops that fronted Bridge Road. There was only one house in the street: ours at number 4. On one side of the house was a vacant allotment overgrown with weeds used by a local builder to store the useful remains of demolished houses. On the other side of the house was a vacant allotment used as a turning area for the large delivery trucks that frequented the street and as a car-parking area for Alexanders Menswear and Coles employees.

The weatherboard house at number 4 Alban Street had two bedrooms, a lounge and a kitchen. Attached to the kitchen at the rear was a laundry with a copper under which wood-fires were lit to heat the water, and small bathroom serviced by a wood-chip water-heater. In the concreted one-metre wide back area, tucked in the corner was an outside toilet. Whatever underpinning existed for the house when it was built had long since rotted. The house sat on the uneven dirt ground underneath. Consequently, the floor in each room sloped unevenly in different directions.

When the house was purchased, Doris and George could barely manage the deposit required. There was no money left for furniture. So, we slept on mattresses on the floor. Kitchen furniture was four suitcases as chairs and a trunk with a tablecloth as the kitchen table. With time and savings from their employment at Pelaco, a huge shirt and pyjama manufacturing factory atop Richmond Hill, Doris and George were able to eventually purchase second-hand furniture from the Bridge Road auction house.

During one purchase at the auction house, George bought a job lot. This was some furniture that he wanted together with some miscellaneous items that he did not really want. Among the odd items was a large locked tin trunk without a key. From the weight of the trunk, it was clear that it contained something but no one knew what. When the furniture and trunk were delivered, George set about with a crowbar to break the lock. When he opened the trunk George found a car-jack in working order, a carpenter’s spirit level, a large folded tarpaulin, several rusted tools, a roll of wire and a large egg: later identified as an emu egg.

The car-jack and spirit level became the central points of focus in George’s life. For the next two years as he walked home from Pelaco, he would take a different route. Along the way, he would find a brick or a piece of discarded timber that he would bring home. Then using the car-jack and spirit level he gradually lifted the entire house off the ground and supported it with the detritus gathered from Richmond streets. When the job was completed, the entire house was two-feet off the ground. Then, using timber from Pelaco’ packing cases he constructed a front-veranda just inside the white wooden picket fence. Eventually he plastered the inside walls, and painted the house inside and outside. The front door was painted yellow.

Doris and George both worked at Pelaco for more than twenty years. Pelaco had two important social events: a, Annual Darts Championship and the Annual Pelaco Ball. George won the darts championship for fifteen years in succession. The championship was abandoned when insufficient competition could be found. One year, Doris was crowned Pelaco Belle of the Ball.

Part of the grounds surrounding the Pelaco factory where George and Doris worked was once bituminised tennis courts. However, the tennis courts had fallen into disrepair and were used during school holidays by local children for a version of British Bulldog, played on bicycles. The game would begin on a given signal. Each boy would ride his bicycle within the tennis court lines still visible on the broken and uneven surface. The objective was to use legs and feet to knock other boys off their bicycles. The winner was the last cyclist still upright on his bicycle. The injury toll was substantial on bodies and bicycles. Grazed knees, fingers and elbows were common, as were wheel-spokes that were bent by entangled feet and legs. Often, the remainder of the day was spent nursing injuries and repairing broken bicycles.

One year, during school holidays, a school friend, Phillip, noticed that Pelaco was replacing their industrial sewing machines. The old machines were being dumped in the grounds behind the tennis courts. In the dumped machines was electrical wiring, which when stripped, contained copper wiring. We spent a week stripping and collecting the copper wiring that we then put on the back of our bicycles and took to Star Junkyard in Swan Street. At Star Junkyard, they weighed our loot and paid us in cash: quite a lot of cash as I remember it. I last heard of Phillip when it was rumoured that his parent’s house was flooded following a rainstorm. Apparently, for some time, Phillip had been removing the lead lining from the roof and guttering of his parent’s house and selling it to Star Junkyard.

Family life consisted of us kids walking to school and Doris and George working at Pelaco five days a week. Saturday morning was spent shopping at the local market at the back of the football ground in Highett Street and doing housework in the afternoon. Saturday night was spent with the family in the lounge, listening to the horse-trotting races broadcast on the wireless. Between races, George would walk up the back lanes behind the hotel on the corner of Waltham Street and Bridge Road to place small bets with the illegal short-price bookmakers. On Sunday morning, Michael and I attended Sunday school and church at St Stephens, a little church next to St Ignatius, the imposing catholic cathedral next door. On Sunday afternoon, the family walked west along Bridge Road and south down Punt Road to the playground equipment in the park next to the Richmond Football Ground where we would play on the swings, monkey bars and seesaw. When we arrived home we had a light tea: usually something on toast. In particular, I remember hating grey coloured boiled minced meat that contained huge amounts of inedible gristly substances.

My birth day is 5 November, which in 1950s and 1960s, before the sale of fireworks was legislated against, was still celebrated as Guy Fawkes night, or more commonly as fireworks night. For several weeks prior to 5 November, on a large vacant allotment in Berry Street, local residents would dump unused timber and flammable goods in the centre of this vacant allotment. Usually, by fireworks night, there was a mound of flammable materials exceeding ten feet in height. In addition, someone always made a ‘Guy’: a sort of scarecrow figure made of old clothing stuffed with straw meant to represent Guy Fawkes. The Guy would be placed on top of the bonfire mound.

Towards dusk, residents would gather and as soon as it was dark the mound would be ignited and people would begin lighting their fireworks. There were lots of penny-bungers that were let off in fire-cracking bundles or singly to make everyone jump in fright. Someone usually hung a cartwheel on a fence and it made everyone ooh and aah as it spun around. The feature fireworks of the evening were rockets. Rockets were expensive and there were usually only three or four sent into orbit. There was always a performance associated with rocket firing. First, the rocket was removed from its cellophane wrapping and a suitable bottle found to hold the long-stick that protruded from the bottom of the rocket itself. Then, the bottle holding the rocket was placed in a prominent place aware from the fire, in darkness, so that ignited rocket could be seen blasting into the night sky. All watchers were ushered as far away as possible from the firing since rocket firing was an inexact science and one could never be certain in which direction the rocket might travel once ignited. Then, the moment of ignition followed by a rapid retreat by the igniter was followed by the interminable wait as the flame crept along the wick. There were three common rocket events: first, nothing happened. When the flame reached the rocket ignition point it just fizzled out while everyone waited anxiously. Second, the rocket exploded out of the bottle, but instead of flying up into the sky, did a series of circular loop-the-loops and crashed into the side of a house or onlooker. Third, the rocket took-off as expected, reached a dizzying height of ten feet, fizzled out and fell onto a house roof in darkness. The event ceased and everyone went home when the huge bonfire reached and burnt the Guy.

Acrylic on canvas: 1015mm x 1015mm