I was four years old in 1955. That was a magical year with songs like Rock Around the Clock from Bill Haley and the Comets and The Platters released Only You. There were the popular TV shows such as Gunsmoke, Alfred Hitchcock presents, I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, and the original Adventures of Robin Hood all premiered in 1955.

In post war Australia, we hardly knew of all those things though. I was only 4 years old and we would not know what television was for many years. I remember 1955 for other reasons because on the night of 5th November of that year I had severe tinnitus installed, the actual bang and rising zinging in my ears I clearly remember and still suffer from to this day.

Traditionally known as Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes Night was an annual celebration on the evening of the 5th of November every year in Australia. This was, of course, mostly due to the fact that Australia was a British colony and so much of the traditions of England were af course celebrated in Australia. Every year my family, being very much so influenced by the traditions of our grandparents, would celebrate Guy Fawkes night along with the greater community and these celebrations were considered part our heritage. Here is a somewhat brief synopsis of that historical beginnings of this tradition.

The Gunpowder Plot

Guy Fawkes and about a dozen other conspirators set about a massive terrorist plot in 1605. They decided they would eliminate the King and the Church of England parliamentary establishment in one terrible blow and by doing so would trigger a popular uprising by Catholics.

However, on 5 November 1605 Guy Fawkes was discovered guarding barrels of gunpowder that had been stashed underneath the House of Lords in London in a Catholic plot to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of England’s Parliament by the King on 5 November 1605. This terrorist action was to be the prelude to a popular revolt in the Midlands during which King James’s nine-year-old daughter, Princess Elizabeth, would be installed as the Catholic head of state.

The authorities were warned through an anonymous letter apparently from one of the plotters who had a brother in law who would have been hurt or killed by the explosion so wanted to warn him to stay away. This was enough to warrant a search, and so the plot was foiled and Guy Fawkes entered history in infamy and even having a special day named after him, but not to honor him, but to celebrate that he was found and very severely punished.

Celebrations and ceremonially burn a man to death

Later in 1606, the British parliament established 5 November as a day of public thanksgiving. Guy Fawkes Night (also referred to as Guy Fawkes Day and Bonfire Night) is celebrated annually across Great Britain on 5 November in remembrance of the Gunpowder Plot. Villagers and city residents light bonfires, set off fireworks and burned effigies of Fawkes to show their contempt for such an audatious and murderous plot.

The story of Guy Fawkes was taught to us in the early 1950s in Australia, such was the tenacity of the story and how the British authorities liked to perpetuate the memory of this perhaps to illustrate to we in the colonies that those who sought to harm the establishment were doomed. In the very early 50s children were encouraged to make an effigy, a roughly made representation of a person, declare that this was Guy Fawkes and celebrate his suffering as he was tossed onto the bonfire to be consumed in the flames, such was the outrage at his hideous plan. And this was 350 years later! We never thought it strange at the time, but it sure sounds weird now looking back!

So, lets get back to 1955...

The Happy Family Outing

This story starts out with a very traditional outing for families in the early 50’s in Australia and an outing that was very much looked forward to by the children of the era. Myself being the youngest of the family and went along for a night that promised to be nothing but fun and excitement; one of joining in with the entire community in a celebration that we little understood but certainly enjoyed as only children can.

Fireworks were big business especially at that time of year and available
everywhere quite cheaply and for unrestricted sale to anyone even children,
and in any amount they wanted and could pay for.

In that time fireworks were not viewed as anything more than a great source of fun and enjoyment for the whole family. I can clearly remember the shops being stuffed full or all kinds of gunpowder products all of which were sold as a means of providing fun and exciting entertainment for all the family. There was absolutely no restriction on the sale of fireworks, and children of any age could buy what ever they wanted if they had the money to pay for them. It is to be remembered that TV was not even heard of in Australia at that time and even such things as radio plays were still struggling to get an audience with the wider population. It is quite understandable that outings where the whole community joined in for some kind of celebration or entertainment was something that we all looked forward to and made preparations for a long time.

The traditional way of celebrating this very historic occasion was for families to go to some public parks or other outdoors place and to set up a bonfire, lay out blankets and pillows and generally set up for a wonderful night of entertainment and family involvement fun. Food was mostly in the form of sandwiches made by mum during the day and drinks were sweet cordial for the kids, and thermos flasks of tea for the adults. Without internet, television, and the radio providing only music, some entertainment, and basic news broadcasts, there was no way that the messages about the dangers of the activities could be distributed. Actually, the dangers and casualty figures were only just beginning to be compiled so there was no way that people generally could form any opinion other than from what they actually saw with their own eyes, and of course, that was very limited.

This is a typical scene on "Cracker Night" or formally "Guy Fawkes Night" with
family bonfires everywhere in parks and almost any open space.

At the night of November 5th 1955 I remember being very excited because the much awaited Guy Fawkes night had finally arrived. We had talked about this upcoming event for a long time and excitedly prepared for it. My parents were as enthusiastic as was the rest of the community about the great festive night that were all about to enjoy. We had saved up our pocket money for months so that we could buy “crackers”, the generic name for fireworks of all kinds.

And there were many varieties of crackers that we could buy. Sky rockets on long sticks, jumping-jacks, sparklers, catherine wheels, and of course the real crackers, or those things that just went bang after you lit the fuse. All great fun but the greatest fun for children was the biggest cracker of all. This one we called the “tuppeny bunger”. It got the name because it cost two pence “tuppence” for one and was a huge explosive that was later found to be about the power of a quarter stick of dynamite. We really did love those things because of the power and the awesome noise that they gave off when “let off”. As children will always do, we had experimented with these things and found that the loudest noise could be extracted from these when they were exploded in the air rather than just letting them off on the ground. So, the holy grail for us children at that time was to let off a “tuppeny bunger” as high in the air as you could. To do this, you had to light the fuse, then hold it until the fuse burned down almost completely, then throw that thing as high into the air as you could. Depending on how good your guess was about how far to let the fuse burn down, and how strong your arm was for throwing it up, the results varied quite considerably.

This boy is holding some tuppenny bungers (as we called them). These things
actually had the power of about a quarter of a stick of dynamite and often
used back in the day by mischevious kids to destroy letter boxes and rubbish bins
and launch tin cans hundreds of feet in the air.

The much awaited night finally arrived and my family gathered together all of our much treasured fireworks which were the product of our savings and careful selection over many weeks. Of course, mum did her duty (remember, this it the mid 50’s) and packed all the needs for the family for the evening including the picnic basket with the sangers (sandwiches) and drinks. We all excitedly got in the car, a very large, quite old, black Pontiac sedan, and headed off for the seaside where we could have our bonfire and “cracker night” fun.

In those days, it was not a crowded scene as it would be today. We could drive along the bayside and enjoy the fresh air while watching many other families set themselves up. We selected a nice spot, and set ourselves up for the evening's activities. Much of the fun was to watch the other families having fun as it was for us to enjoy our own celebration. Sky rockets consisted of a small firework attached to a stick. This would placed in a bottle, usually an empty beer bottle, pointed toward the sky, and the fuse lit. It would just woosh off leaving a trail of sparks and we all clapped and thought it was just wonderful. We could watch everyone elses skyrockets as well as set our own off for mutual benefit and enjoyment by everyone. There was even a tree nearby where we could attach our catherine wheels and set them off for us to enjoy watching as they wizzed away with their gun powder powder… oh so much fun and so excitement for a four old child.

Of course, we had to have our own bonfire, without which it would just not be traditional. And my family had our bonfire and this was the source of ignition of most of the fireworks that we, as a family, came to “let off” as part of our celebrating Guy Fawkes night. Now, if you could take out the danger, you could only see this as post war community coming together in a spirit of family fun and togetherness. Certainly it had that feeling about it, and I can still feel that and understand the reason why this was such a popular festival time in that era.

The down side, and the reason why it was ultimately banned, was the numerous injuries and property damage that resulted from the play with explosives and fire generating toys. The keeping of statistics, which at the time was only beginning to take shape, showed the awful carnage that this celebrating was causing. So many burn victims, so many unnecessary fires, so much property damage, so much distress to the community had only just started to be realized. I was, at the time, a silent victim of this problem, the statistics of which can never be fully documented.

The memory of the event

Now the story gets a bit dark. I remember seeing many fireworks being set off, and being thrilled so much and of course, caught up in the spirit of the celebration. There was no thought given very much by anyone at the time about the dangers of what we were playing with as it was all considered only to be great family fun. There was not even a lot of parental supervision going on as far as control of the fireworks or how they were being handled by the children because that would probably have been thought of at the time as restricting the kids fun. As mentioned, dangers were not well publicised or even considered.

I remember the night getting late, and there were still some crackers to let off, but I was mostly overshadowed by my elders – I had an older sister and brother and being the youngest I was left out of most of the older kids fun. Of course I wanted to show that I was as much of the group as anyone, so I thought that I could let off my own cracker to show them all that I could do it too.

A small child, a box of fireworks, a bonfire. What could possibly go wrong?

With a bag of fireworks just sitting there and available to me, of course I selected the biggest one……….. a tuppeny bunger…… and set about lighting the fuse. By this time our bonfire had burned down to just some glowing coals so lighting the fuse turned out to be not quite so easy. A tuppeny bunger always had two lengths of fuse hanging out, the reason for that I still don’t know. On the one that I selected, it had a long one and a much shorter one. By holding the thing near the fire, I was draping the fuses on the glowing coals trying to make them light. The first one to light was the shorter one, and I mistakenly thought that if both fuses were not lit the thing would not work. So, I lingered there trying to get the long one to start while the short one burned down very quickly. Finally the long one started to burn, and I turned and held it out at arms length getting ready to throw it with all my strength.

The Big Bang that I still hear

It was at that moment that it exploded in my hand and I clearly remember two things that happened simultaneously. The explosion snapped my hand open and I felt the shock wave from the explosion on all my body. At the same instant, the sound of the blast was like a sledge hammer on my head and my ears started to “ring” so loud that I could hardly hear anything else. Of course, the entire family ran over to me and started to comfort me and checked for physical injuries. Everyone focused on my hand but amazingly I did not have any burn or obvious injury at all. Everyone was nicely relieved that no harm had happened, and while I was a bit shaken up I seemed to be fine after a short time. What no one could ever know, and I did not understand myself, was that there was this loud screaching noise in my ears that was very strange and more than a little unsettling.

Children do adapt to things really quickly, and that must have been the case for me because I don’t remember ever complaining about the ringing in my ears to anyone. It became normal for me and so I just lived with it never realizing how much of a problem this could really be. The ringing has never stopped since that night so long ago. In the years since, I have had problems with infections in my ears many times, and while those problems are not directly associated with the first accident, these infections did serve to make the ringing louder.

Today, I have to be very careful about any chance of getting infections in my ears because of the additional problems that this can cause. The tinnitus is still there and will be there forever but I have managed to live with it okay enough all my life, so I guess that it will be okay for the rest. I have hearing loss to about 60% in my right ear and only about 80% in my left ear. One other problem that the tinnitus causes is that I cannot differenciate sounds like most people with normal hearing can do. That is, if I am in a crowded noisy room and trying to have a conversation with someone standing very near, I cannot pick out their voice from the background noise. I am told that a hearing aid would sort out all these problems, but I have not gone that far yet. I guess that living with the problem seems to be better than living with a hearing aid. Maybe someday, it will come to that but I guess that I have to consider myself fortunate that I do still have reasonable hearing enough to function normally.

Be nice to people with impared hearing

Hearing disability, being so much a hidden problem, causes other difficulties, even in relationships. Often I have had someone talk to me, or call out to me from a distance away, but I have not heard them at all. Then they think that I am being deliberately rude, or ignoring them. Not so much of a problem if the people know about the disability that I have, but for those who do not know, sometimes they get the wrong impression, and I have been many times not aware of it happening.

Final thought……… Guy Fawkes and his mates plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament on 5th November, 1605 and exactly 350 years later to the day I become hearing impared and suffer with tinnitus for the rest of my life as a direct result.