'Dream Angel' - Page 9:
[tab=30][tab=30] The Personnel Officer, Mr Robinson invited me into his office. He sat behind a large deck with papers neatly piled on either side. I sat across from him. He asked me what I wanted. I felt confused and nervous. I didn’t feel confident and muttered if there were any positions for an apprentice fitter & turner for the forthcoming year.
He told me there were three positions available. I wanted one. I don’t know where the courage came from to speak but I sold myself. He looked at the sliding bevel and asked many questions about how I made it. He asked about my school marks. I didn’t have a report card to show him but I reassured him I was doing fine at school. It was a little white lie. What he didn’t know didn’t hurt him I thought. I left satisfied he would keep me in mind.
When the letter arrived at home with my indenture papers to become an apprentice fitter & turner Dad couldn’t believe it. I’d done it on my own and it felt great. He wanted me to be a lad porter on the railway but the apprenticeship was more important. The following year I commenced work as an apprentice and it pleased my father.
Shortly after my sixteenth birthday my parents left Queensland to live in New South Wales. By this time, our family had grown to six. I now had another sister and I was homeless. I moved in with my Uncle Vivian and Aunty Mickey and their family. Aunty Mickey is Mum’s younger sister.
Uncle Vivian’s father trained thoroughbred racehorses and I loved going to the stables to help clean the horse boxes of manure and urine and wished one day I would own a racehorse. The thoroughbred is an elegant, muscular animal standing tall always alert. It was an exciting time in my life, especially as a teenager.
Saturday was race day and I went to the races. I loved the sport. Thoroughbred racing is the best sport in the whole world. The year was 1967, the event The International Stakes at Eagle Farm Racecourse in Brisbane, the horse Prunda and jockey Lester Piggott. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth 11 visited Australia and was present for the race and would present a trophy to the winner. I was excited and ready. I loved to bet on the horses. I think it was a gene I inherited from my mother’s side of the family...

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[tab=30][tab=30]I again developed problems with study. I could read the literature but I couldn’t understand what all the words meant although I enjoyed making things when I attended manual training. In a metalwork class I made a sliding bevel which is an instrument used to measure a mark an angle on a piece of wood or metal.
It was at this time my English teacher Mr Imoff gave me a pat-on-the-back and the words he said at the time has had a profound affect on my life. After he’d read a composition I’d written, he said you have a gift for writing. I didn’t understand what he meant. I thought at the time the word gift meant I didn’t need to learn English.
He went on to say you are unique, you write the way you speak and it is a gift. I didn’t understand if I should have been excited about what he said, or think I possessed a gift. I often think back to the time and wish now I did understand more of what he told me and learned to write and understand literature more at the time. It wasn’t to be. It was a time when I knew I wanted to become a policeman and nothing else mattered.
Was the timing, right? Should I experience more in life? Was I ready to fulfil my dream? I hate to admit the fact but when I look back in time now, I think my father made the right decision for me not to join the police at fifteen years of age whether he wanted to or not.
After the banishment from Dad to not allow me to join the police force, I returned to school bewildered and disappointed. A student at school told me Olympic Tyre & Rubber Company at Geebung was looking for students who wanted to be an apprentice as a fitter and turner in the forthcoming year.
Instead of going to school I rode my bicycle from Deagon to Geebung about 10 kilometres. It was August and I didn’t have a report card to show the Personnel Officer only the sliding bevel I’d made at school...

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[tab=30][tab=30] Roma was a great town to grow up as a child, a country atmosphere where everyone knew one another and my life was trouble free. I was in grade 6 when my parents sold their home and moved to Brisbane.
Dad worked as a storeman for Queensland Railway Department at Redbank workshops. I’ve always wondered why we left at this time of my life. Was it my destiny? Or was it a time in my life to move onto the next place?
We lived at Graceville a Brisbane western suburb. Graceville State School became my new school. I had problems at school. It was scholarship year, grade 8 and I must admit I didn’t like school. When I look back now with a wiser mind and more life experience, it wasn’t I didn’t like school it was more I didn’t know how to study or understand what I needed to study. To progress onto High School in those times you needed to pass scholarship. I was lucky and passed with 52%. How I passed, I do not know.
High School I remember well. My mother came with me to work out which subjects I needed to study. There were the usual academic subjects and at the time three courses to choose from: academic, industrial, or commercial.
At 13 years old I wanted to be a policeman but there wasn’t any set course for the profession. The closest course was commercial only girls did to prepare them for office work. My mother chose industrial course of woodwork, metalwork, and trade drawing. I spent one year at Corinda High School in sub-junior.
The following year our family moved to Deagon, a seaside suburb. I was in junior year at Sandgate State High School and did not cope well. What was it about school? ...

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It was fresh from the oven and the smell of freshly baked bread produced an odour of sweetness slithered through the nostrils, into the membranes of the mind to satisfy any taste bud. The temptation to eat the dough was overwhelming. I’d eat the dough, from inside of the loaf, it was soft and tasted good and left the crust. Life was so simple back then. After I arrived home with the outer crust with no middle my mother wrapped the strap on the back of my legs for eating the dough. It was worth the beating.
One Saturday afternoon I’d been to a boy cub meeting and walking home along Bowen Street from the den when a police car pulled up beside me. I was dressed in my cub uniform.
‘Do you want a lift?’ A policeman called out. I knew he was a policeman because he was driving a police car and he was wearing a policeman’s uniform. I’d never been in a police car before and I didn’t know what to say until he said, ‘It’s all right. I’ll take you home.’ He leaned across and opened the door. I slid into the seat beside him and closed the door and sat upright. He looked across at me. ‘Where do you live?’
‘8 Bowen Street,’ I said and looked straight ahead. I didn’t know what to say to a policeman. He stopped in front of my home. Dad stood at the front gate and watched me get out of the police car.
‘I gave your lad a lift home. It’s too hot to walk in this heat.’ The policeman called out when he stopped the car.
‘Thank you.’ I said and he drove away.
‘What’s this all about, coppers driving you home?’ Dad said as I walked past him.
‘He gave me a lift home.’ His face changed to a doubtful look with his eyebrows drawn together as if he didn’t believe me. It was my first experience with police.
There was another time a couple of years later when they came to the house across the road from my home and took a girl away; she’d swallowed poison after a fight with her boyfriend. She died. I was about eleven years old and still remember the police coming to the house and taking the girl away. There was a lot of talk around the neighbourhood about the fight she had with her boyfriend caused her to swallow the poison...

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[tab=30] He threw the tin into the drum. I heard an explosion and saw a puff of smoke emit from the drum, and thought he was 'laughing. Flames exploded from the mouth of the drum into Jimmy’s face. He covered his face with his hands. His hair was on fire. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t breathe my throat felt it was clogged with something; I felt scared. I realised he wasn’t 'laughing but screamed in pain.
I called at the top of my voice to his mother and ran to the back of the house. He followed still holding his hands over his face. His hair stopped burning. I smelt his hair burning. Jimmy’s mother ran from the house and grabbed his hands. They were black and the smell of burnt skin and hair slithered through my nostrils. I will never forget the smell. He screamed and I couldn’t do anything. I felt helpless. His mother rubbed something onto his face and hands. I don’t know what it was but it helped.
Somehow, we got him to the hospital where he stayed for a couple of days. I had nightmares and relived the moment I saw Jimmy’s face and hair on fire and couldn’t get the smell of burnt skin and hair from my mind. How my life was spared I do not know. Why wasn’t I burnt?
When we talk about the action his mother took, whatever she placed on his face and hands saved him from any scares. His hair grew but he was left with a small cowlick in front of his forehead where his hair burnt to remind us of the time so long ago.
We re-live those times when we played together as children and reminisce about our childhood of how two bobs, which is twenty cents in today’s currency paid for us to go to Saturday afternoon matinee. After we paid one shilling and threepence, thirteen cents in today’s currency, for admission, we had nine pence or nine cents left to spend on ice cream and lollies.
They were the good old days when a loaf of freshly baked bread cost one shilling or ten cents...

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[tab=30][tab=30][tab=30] My childhood was happy surrounded by aunts and uncles and my parents. In those days families lived together until each found his or her own home. My parents lived with Grandfather Wilson and Mam at Ascot until they found their own home and moved to Zillmere, a northern Brisbane suburb.
Our family grew to five over the next couple of years. I remember my parents taking me to the emergency department at Brisbane General Hospital. I was five years old; my chest felt tight and it shrunk inwards and found it difficult to breathe. My voice sent out a wheezing sound. After a doctor placed a small white tablet under my tongue; presto I breathed normal again. I suffered from asthma.
In 1954 Dad, Mum, my two sisters, and I left Brisbane to settle at Roma. It’s a town about 400 kilometres west of Brisbane. Dad was a dry-cleaner and Mum a tailoress. We lived in half-a-house what is now known as a duplex.
After about six months we moved to a permanent home at 8 Bowen Street where we lived for the next six years. I started school; joined boy cubs and holiday time was a joy. It was a time when there was vocational guidance. My sisters and I went to holiday sessions at Roma School of Arts Hall played and had fun.
I was six years old when I met Jimmy who was a year older than me. Jimmy and I were inseparable. One Saturday afternoon we played in an old shed at the back of his home. We scrummaged around and Jimmy found a small rusty tin with a lid on it. He unscrewed the lid and found it contained gunpowder. His mother was in the house.
‘Look what I’ve found. It’s gunpowder.’ He said excited to find it.
‘What’re you going to do with it?’ I wondered.
‘We’ll throw it in the drum and see what happens.’ He opened the tin and walked toward an open forty-four-gallon drum. I followed but stayed well back...

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[tab=30][tab=30]When Mam turned fourteen years old, she worked as a kitchen maid on ‘Wirragen Station’ at Eulo. Eulo is a small town forty-two kilometres west of Cunnamulla and ‘Wirragen Station’ is another forty kilometres west of Eulo. She remained there until she was seventeen years old and returned to Cunnamulla.
It was shortly after World War 1 when she met Grandfather Wilson who returned home from the war. Shortly after meeting they fell in love and married and had seven daughters. My mother Ruth was the second eldest.
Both the Ritter family and the Wilson family were close friends often visiting one another at their homes to enjoy each other’s company. The children went to Cunnamulla State School and ran up and down the sand hills surrounding the town. It was a constant worry for the parents any of the children may be buried in a sand hill if it collapsed.
Feral goats roamed in from the open plains and ate the washing on the clothes lines. This was a constant problem. Mam told me a story when she caught a nanny goat with a kid and milked the nanny to supply milk for the family. When I listened to this story, the picture of Mam’s wondrous and exciting storytelling developed in my mind, I saw her grab hold of the goat, hold onto it while she milked it.
Listening to her stories I knew one day I had to visit Cunnamulla to see for myself and hopefully relive some of those stories she told me. I was only a child but it was real and believable. I never forgot her stories.
Over the years both families worried about the non-growth of the west and their children’s future if they remained in Cunnamulla. In 1932 both families left Cunnamulla to settle in Brisbane. Grandpa and Momma Ritter lived in Spring Hill and Grandfather Wilson and Mam moved to Ascot. They continued to visit one another. My parents fell in love and married. I was born in 1948. The journey began...