Tuesday, July 9

With our breakfast, we've been watching videos on YouTube.  As our travelling days are over we look for videos of places we haven't been and this morning we watched a young couple from South Africa called Shev and Dev, and they were in Shanghai.  We have been to Beijing, probably 14 years ago, but Shanghai is another thing entirely. Shanghai is a beautiful city and the people look so prosperous and content.  If anybody has any doubt about the place of China in the world, they need to look at the reality and, if there really is race between USA and China for leadership of the world, the US has to do a lot more.

Today's story is 'Colin' and I was influenced by hearing about Marilyn's father, Bill Lofting, who spent a bit of his childhood in Woolloomooloo. 

COLIN

He was the third child in the family and the first boy, so he was named Colin for his grandfather who had arrived from England in 1876.  Grandfather Colin hadn’t travelled far from the wharf where he landed, settling in Woolloomooloo, where his descendants still lived.  At that time, Woolloomooloo was a run-down, rather seedy home for petty thieves, con-men and others struggling to get by on the wrong side of the law.

Nowadays, of course, Woolloomooloo is one of the most prestigious addresses in Australia’s largest city.  The Finger Wharf, near where Colin’s grandfather landed, is now the site of luxury apartments available only to the most wealthy.  The Victorian cottages, once dirty and rat-infested, have been renovated and now house young, upwardly-mobile professionals who work in the city. 

By the 1920s, when Colin was born, Woolloomooloo was still regarded as a working class area, home to the dockers and wharf labourers who toiled around the Sydney shoreline.  However, it had also become a haven for artists and writers who appreciated the ‘bohemian’ atmosphere.  The Sydney P.E.N Club met there, often in the home of Hilary Lofting and Margaret Fane, well known authors. Dorothea MacKellar travelled from her home in Point Piper to attend the meetings and other notables such as AB Paterson and Henry Lawson were frequent visitors.

But Colin’s family wasn’t invited to the meetings.  Even in Woolloomooloo there was a class divide. Colin’s father worked hard on the wharves but spent too much of his paltry pay-packet in the Old Fitzroy Hotel. Colin’s mother struggled to put food on the table but Colin and his brothers and sisters were never really hungry.  In any case, the teachers at the Plunkett Street School made sure none of their children missed out on something to eat at lunchtime.

Colin had been born with a hair-lip; this affliction and the fact that his speech was affected by it, set him aside from the other children at the school.  Some took it as a sign that he was unintelligent although they would never have used that word.  ‘Colin is simple’, they would say.  Children, being children, didn’t make allowances for Colin and he was ostracised in the playground. Some of the children made an effort to include Colin in their games from time to time but soon learnt that, if they wanted to be part of the bigger group, they needed to shun Colin. Sadly, even some of the teachers treated Colin as someone whose difference meant he couldn’t be expected to understand the work.

But Colin did understand, even if he had trouble spelling words aloud and answering questions verbally.  Somehow, the fact that he always got his sums right was discounted by the teachers who only gave credit to those who could speak up for themselves. It was rare for Colin to enjoy a day at school but there was one treat he always looked forward to.  Another boy in the class had an uncle in America who was a famous author.  Often, he would send a copy of one of his stories to his nephew who would bring it to school and read it to the class.  They were wonderful stories about a doctor who could talk to animals.

Apart from the occasional tales of Doctor Dolittle, Colin learned that school was not an enjoyable place to come each day so, more and more often, he just didn’t go.  It was called ‘wagging’ in those days and Woolloomooloo provided plenty of attractions for a young boy looking for an excuse to avoid attending school.

You might have expected that Colin’s teacher would have complained to his mother that Colin was wagging school but it is likely that he didn’t even notice that Colin wasn’t there.  Colin never spoke up in class, never volunteered to answer a question, and had learned to blend into the background so well he was almost invisible.  In any case, children were always missing school for one reason or another and nobody bothered to let the school know when this happened.

Colin was also clever at keeping out of the way of other people on the days he was not at school so it was months before anyone even noticed that he was not where he should have been.  And, of course, when his teachers discovered they had been fooled, there was a cry of righteous indignation.  “He must be punished,” they said.  “He’s a criminal in the making.”  The other children, though, started to regard Colin as something of a hero.  The teacher had been reading The Scarlet Pimpernel to the class and suddenly the children could see the connection with the quote from the novel.  “They seek him here. They seek him there.  Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.”

It would be nice to say that everything changed for Colin and he lived happily ever after but life’s not like that.  His ‘wagging’ exploits made him an overnight sensation but just for a fleeting moment in time.  The children’s interests soon moved on to other things and Colin retreated to his own familiar loneliness.  The teachers, somewhat embarrassed by being bettered by a child, watched him more carefully and made a little more effort to include him in class activities, but it was too little, too late.  

Colin left school at 14 and his father arranged a job for him on the wharves.  He was still very conscious of his appearance and his speech, so was regarded as a loner.  Perhaps this was a blessing in disguise because he was the only labourer who didn’t go with his mates to the pub on Friday afternoon.  He finally married a widow who had been left with two children and he proved to be a good husband to her and, very importantly in those days, a good provider.  And, after all, what more can be expected.