It is 1956 and I have started school and in those days we were expected to man up when the going got a bit scary as it did all the time for a 4 year old. So you don’t cry and you don’t show affection to family members. That would make you a sook, a baby, a sissy. We were being raised to be brave Anzacs like our fathers, and we had a big image to try to live up to. We would hear often of the heroic struggles and super human effort made on our behalf to prevent the Asian hordes from overrunning Australia. It was only by their sacrifice that we were not now eating a bowl of rice a day working for our Japanese task masters. And we had to show our appreciation by being strong men ready to proudly raise the flag and build the country.

The only day my mother actually took me to school was the very first day. I am only 4 years old and walking toward the school gate with mum by my side but not holding her hand, of course. I saw all the other kids walking around the school areas and I stopped, turned and looked up at my mother. “What’s wrong?” she asked with concern, thinking that I was not wanting to go in. I just said, “Its okay, I can go from here myself.” She sort of smiled, and looked like she was going to kiss me goodbye. I practically ran away and through the gate and never looked back. With all those other kids looking, having my mother kiss me was just not how I wanted to start my school days. I would be ridiculed and laughed at for being a sissy and a mummy’s boy.

After this first day, I had to make my own way to school on the bus. It left from across the road from the corner store that was the family home and business, and either mum or dad would watch as we crossed the road to board the bus. They never actually walked us over the road, just stood at the door and issued orders like “Look both ways” “Mind out for cars” and the one that she always said and helped so much was she would call out, “Be careful”. “Yeah, okay mum, what does that mean?” but she never heard me actually say that.

This is identical to the buss that took me to school for those first few years.

The bus did not actually stop at the school gate, and we had to walk down the street to the gate and make our way over to our classes. It is a good start, right from day two of schooling. But this was normal, all the children did it, and no one thought much about it. Was the world really was a much safer place than it is today.

To get home again, I would walk up the street to a place called the Civic Centre where there was the bus stop for our ride home. The Civic Centre was a row of small shops and local government offices, and in front, there was a small pond with water plants and small fish. One of my very first days in school was over and I had walked up to the Civic Centre to wait for the bus to come along. Then I sat beside the pond and spotted all the fish. They were only tiny things but I was quite fascinated as I had never seen anything like it. They were just mosquite fish, but to a 4 year old who has never seen such a miracle of life, these were fantastic. With some practice, I found that I could catch the small fish just in my bare hands. Amazing, and I was very excited and wanted to catch some fish and take them home to show mum.

I must have been a little bit resourceful because somehow I managed to find a glass jar, like an old jam jar, and it even had a lid. What a bonanza. Not only was I smart enough to catch some fish to show my mother, but I found the perfect way to carry them home. I had washed out the jar and was now totally absorbed in the job for quite a long time until I thought that I had finally caught enough fish. They looked wonderful swimming around in my jam jar and I was just so excited and was sure that mum would also be thrilled to see all these wonderful fish that I had caught.

Time to go, but then I looked up, and there were no kids hanging around the bus stop. I got up and looked around for anyone and to my great consternation, I realized that I was now totally alone, my bus having gone without me long ago, and it was even starting to get later in the afternoon and I should have arrived home already.

Checking my options, I realized that I would have to walk home. The distance is about 1.6 kilometers, or about a mile which for someone little more than a toddler, it was a very long way. And it was a long way for the fish in the jam jar too. The jar being held in my hand was getting warmer, and the fish were gradually looking less and less energetic. They were getting kinda slow, and all wanting to swim at the very top of the water in the jar. I didn’t know exactly why they were doing this but I knew that it wasn’t good; they don’t do that in the fish pond at the Civic Centre.

As I walked along I was getting more and more worried about the welafare of my fish if they might die before I got home for my mother to see them and praise me for being so clever to be able to catch them. I started to try to figure out how I could help this situation, and I received an answer from above. I had always been sent along to Sunday School lessons at the church, Church of England of course, and we had been taught to say our prayers every night before sleeping. It seemed that god needed us to check in every night before going to sleep, sort of like a bed check in a dormitory I guess. Our prayer at night was “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take. God bless mummy and daddy, Margaret and Bob, and all the men and women and all the children. Amen”

This had to be learned rote and so early in life that I don’t ever remember not knowing it. And I was pretty good at rattling it off word for word and very quickly on cue. However, I think I was nearly 12 years old before I figured out what “now-a-lay-me” and “if-eye-sha-die” really was. Silly, like misheard song lyrics. During the learning process these had just blurred into one word and I had no idea what it meant but didn’t want to look stupid in front of mum or god that I didn’t know what they were talking about. The words were just blurted out as I had heard them, and when I made those sounds, even though they made absolutely no sense at all, I said them every night when my mother wanted to listen to me saying my prayers, and it made her happy. So, how could I argue, and how could I ever ask her what the hell it was that I was saying?

Back to the fish, they were dying fast, I was picking the dead ones out and throwing them into the gardens as I walked along the way and hoping that there would be at least a few alive when I arrived home. No amount of praying seemed to be doing my fish any good at all. I couldn’t work out why god was not pitching in here to help out. I had been a good boy, said my prayers, gone to Sunday School every week, and this was the first time that I had ever asked for a favor. What was the point of god creating these really nice looking fish, then making me smart enough to catch them, if he was just going to let them all die before my mother got to see them and talk about how clever I was? Very strange, but then the minister did say that god moved in mysterious ways, and I could certainly agree with that now. God sure didn’t seem to care that I was very sad about the whole situation of the fish all dying long before I got home.

I even threw the jam jar into a garden in total disappointment when they were all dead and I still had about 5 blocks to walk to get home. It was getting really late now, I was really tired, and I should have been home a couple of hours ago. I had no idea of the actual time, but it did seem that I was really late, and now I was feeling pretty miserable. The bus and all the other kids left without me and didn’t seem to even notice or care. I had to walk all the way home, and I didn’t even have any shoes on. In fact, I didn’t own a pair of shoes until I was 7 years old. I was always barefoot at school and everywhere else for that matter. Shoes were expensive so considered not necessary. I guess I would have only taken them off somewhere and lost them anyway. I had prayed and had been told that god hears prayers, especially those from children, but the fish died anyway. In fact, they seemed to die faster once I started praying than they did before that.

I finally arrived home, and no one seemed to even notice that I was late. I didn’t bother with the story about the fish because it just would have showed that I was not that good at keeping the fish alive long enough for mum to see them and even god didn’t want her to see them, so the whole story was pointless. No one seemed to be too concerned when I was not on the bus as I should have been. When I said that I missed the bus, they all just thought that would be about right and the long walk home would teach you to be more careful and not to miss the bus in the future.

It is tough when you are not yet 5 years old and starting to realize you are all alone.