'Dream Angel' - Page 7:
[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? ...

'Dream Angel' - Page 6:

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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'Dream Angel' - Page 5:
[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...

'Dream Angel' - Page 4:
[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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'Dream Angel' - Page 3:
[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...

[align=center][size=150]'[b]Dream Angel[/b]'[/size][/align]
- Page 1: Chapter One

[tab=30]Dad sat in his lounge chair and stared at me. His eyes rolled back and forth. The whites shined against the contrast of brown pupils. Foam formed on his lips and seeped. Spittle flowed like a waterfall. Wrinkles changed to rage. I honestly thought he was going to have a heart attack. His mouth opened in one movement, ‘No son of mine is going to be a copper.’ He screamed.
Judgement day arrived; I wanted to join the Queensland Police Force as a police cadet. My boyhood dream was to become a real-life detective. Was I any different to anyone else to want to fulfil his or her dream? There must be a reason why Dad didn’t want me to become a policeman? Over and over he said, once a policeman, never a man. You’ve got to swear to arrest your own mother or father.

Cunnamulla, aboriginal meaning ‘long stretch of water’, is a small country town which lies on the Warrego River in south-west Queensland, 206 kilometres south of Charleville, and 950 kilometres west of Brisbane.
[tab=30]Dad’s father, my grandpa, moved to Cunnamulla in 1896 to work as a shearing contractor, his name Peter Ritter.

'Dream Angel' - Page 2:
[tab=30]Dad’s mother’s family settled in Cunnamulla from England, her name Daisy Sharpe. Grandpa and Momma Ritter (that’s the name we’d known her by since I can remember as a child) married in Cunnamulla and had eleven children, seven boys and four girls. My father Frank is the second eldest.
On my mother’s side, her mother, Hannah Ryan (we’d known her by the name Mam), was born in Cunnamulla in 1903. Mam attended Cunnamulla State School. Mum’s father, Grandfather Wilson moved to Cunnamulla before World War 1. He fought in the Great War and served in France. It’s fascinating how both of my grandparents, on each side of the family met and fell in love and married in Cunnamulla? My parents were born in Cunnamulla six months apart.
Grandfather Wilson and Mam had seven daughters, my mother being the second eldest. When I was growing up, I remember Mam told me stories of the early days of Cunnamulla when she rode in Cobb & Co coaches; and battled the heat and flies. Her storytelling filled my mind with visions of how people lived and worked in Cunnamulla. I devoured each word to instil into the library of my mind and never forgot them.
Mam’s father, Joe Ryan, my great grandfather worked as a shearer in the town. In 1891 the shearers in Cunnamulla took part in the Great Shearer’s Strike, which lasted five months. Great grandfather, Joe Ryan joined 500 other shearers to fight for better wages and conditions.
Mam’s childhood was tough and lonely. When she was ten years old, her mother died while giving birth. Great grandfather Joe Ryan couldn’t cope with the loss of his wife and gave his children away to different families in Cunnamulla like a ‘litter of pups’. Mam went with a family who owned the drapery store. Two of her sisters went to other families in the town and her youngest sister went to live in Warwick with relatives....

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'The Proposition' - Page 156:
[tab=30][tab=30]‘It’s two more races to go. We should have enough time for our meal before it’s on. Are you having a bet?’ He whispered back to her.
‘I don’t think so – it’s stretching my luck a bit too far.’
After a hearty meal, the next race on the programme was Queensland Championships. All through the meal everyone shared their thoughts and anxieties of knowing Peter Clayton would at last be found. Mary was excited and kept looking toward the parade ring to see if she could see her son.
‘Mary, Peter is driving ‘High Class Investigator’ in the next race. The horse is carrying number two saddle cloth.’ Bundy beckoned to Mary by showing her his racebook.
‘His name is not Peter Clayton – it’s Peter Peacock.’ She looked at the page and astonishment covered her face.
‘Obviously, he used your maiden name instead of his name.’ Bundy explained. ‘They’re coming out onto the parade ring – look, number two white with purple spots and purple sleeves.’ Bundy pointed.
Mary gazed at the horses and immediately saw her son she hadn’t seen for more than eight years. Tears filled her eyes, she wiped them with a tissue, leaned over to her mother and said, ‘look Mom – it’s Peter – we’ve found him.’ She gave her mother a hug.
Each horse and driver were announced to the crowd as they left the parade ring to enter the racetrack. When the announcer spoke the words ‘High Class Investigator’ driven by up and coming Peter Peacock, Mary stood and clapped and told her friends, ‘that’s my son driving that horse’ and promptly sat down.
Each horse made their way to the starting barrier on the opposite side of the track. Bundy, this time had bought his binoculars, placed them to his face, focused on number two horse and driver. In his mind he saw the horse looked fit, actions smooth, whilst the driver calm and focused. Immediately he understood why Ralph had asked to wait until the finish of the race before telling him about the DNA test result...
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