When the Fox got the Roosters

One year Mum bought 12 male chickens with the aim of raising them so she could sell them at Christmas time. A lot of care went in to those chicks. An electric lamp to keep them warm, a feeding trough with individual feeding holes, a carefully made pen. As they matured they were each injected with a pellet - probably growth hormone - to make them grow.

As Christmas drew near Mum took orders for these fine, plump, birds. But the project came to nought. Fred Fox was also taking a keen interest in Mum's little project. One morning we woke to find that Fred had chewed through the wire netting surrounding the rooster pen and then chewed the head of each rooster. I can't recall if he ended up eating one or not.

We need a little magic

I remember the day well, but not how old I was. It was Christmas morning and I had walked over to my Grandparent's place to help milk the cows. On the way home I looked up into the sky that with the exception of a few wispy white clouds, was clear blue. Now I don't know what I expected to see that morning, perhaps reindeer tracks, but it dawned on me that this day was no different to any other. Reality hit home that day, and something in a little boy died.

We all need a little magic every now and then.

My Pioneering Family

History was my favourite subject at school. Explorers, wars, the English Empire, how I soaked it up. I learned of squatters, bush rangers, pioneers, the Eureka stockade and selector farmers. There was, in Maclean, a monument (it may have been a bridge but memory fails) to the pioneers. But there was a connection I never made till many years later. I would have been in my late forties, if not fifties, before it dawned on me that my own forbears were part of this history.

John Marsh and Mary Anne Parkinson were married in Gedney Marsh, Lincolnshire, before immigrating to Australia. In the early 1860s they took up a selection of land at Palmers Channel. The area, I believe, was originally known as Townsend. The town of Maclean was laid out and officially named in 1862, the site being known as Rocky Mouth in the 1850s.

I have often wondered how hard it must have been to clear the land and plant those early crops, but it may not as been as hard as I have thought. The Lower Clarence was opened up in the 1830s by cedar cutters, so the trees at least may have been removed before the land was available for selection. Not that that would have made life easy as the stumps would have remained and there would have been some regrowth. All that clearing done with hand tools, burning, and the use of horses – and possibly oxen.

My forebears were mainly Anglo-Celtic. Life in this country would have been vastly different to what they had left behind. I remember my Aunty Alma, maiden name McLennan, telling me that her grandmother broke down and cried one day, asking her husband how he could have brought her to such a God-forsaken place as Grafton.

My great-grandmother, Ellen Searle (Mum’s side) was the first white child born on Esk Island on the Lower Clarence, close to Iluka. Here the family had to clear the bush to eke out a living on their selection.

Sugar cane came to the Clarence River around 1862. In those early days there a number of small mills on the River. John Marsh operated the first sugar mill on Palmers Channel. I don’t know how long the mill operated as the Colonial Sugar Refining Company Limited (CSR) began operating on the Clarence in the early 1870s. Despite some early opposition from small mill operators if eventually became to sole mill operator on the Clarence, Richmond and Tweed rivers. Harwood sugar mill remains the oldest continuous operating sugar mill in Australia since it commenced in 1874.

In 1974 CSR decided to close the three mills on the Northern Rivers. This would have had a devastating effect on the economy of the region. Don Day, who married Dad’s cousin Marie Davis, was at the time the local Member of Parliament in the NSW Legislative Assembly and Minister for Decentralisation in the Wran Labor Government. Don worked hard to save the sugar industry and, largely as a result of his efforts, the farmers on the three rivers established a cooperative that kept the mills in business.

There was a dark side to the sugar industry, the use of what were known as Kanaka labourers. The term today is largely seen as pejorative. The original Kanakas were Hawaiian and therefore Polynesian. Most Australian Kanakas were Melanesian from places such as the Solomon Islands, Tonga, the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and other South Sea Islands. Although legally classed as indentured labourers they were little more than slaves, with some being kidnapped and brought to Australia. They provided a cheap source of labour for the Australian sugar industry at a time it was struggling to compete with overseas producers. While they may have been used more extensively in Queensland than Northern NSW, Mum recalls South Sea Islander cane cutters on Harwood Island. These were more than likely descendants of the original South Sea Island labourers and therefore paid a better wage as the practice ceased in the early 1900s, well before Mum was born.

My great-great grandfather, William Orr, had arrived on the Clarence from Toronto, Canada, before October 1867 when he married Sarah Avis Hutchins. He was, according to family history, an engineer on the first steam ship to enter Sydney Harbour, though I doubt the veracity of the claim. In 1882 the Orr family moved to Fiji for a few years where William managed a sugar plantation. On their return to Australia William purchased a farm on Palmers Island. Dad told me once that William was the first to take horses to Fiji, but again, that may have been an embellishment of the fact that he did take two draught horses with him.

Some years back I visited the Maclean Historical Society’s museum. In one display Albert Marsh, my great-grandfather, was named as a pioneer of the millet industry on the Clarence. Joe Marsh, my grandfather, had a reputation for supplying the best brooms in the district and I had known that he had worked in a broom factory operated by his father on the Channel. I had always assumed that this was a skill that had been brought to Australia by John Marsh, but my Dad’s cousin Alvin told me one day this was not the case. It was a skill Albert and his sons had learnt in this country.

There was a real skill in broom production. Pa always had a paddock dedicated to the growing of broom millet. The millet was harvested and it had to be dried. I remember the millet hanging in the barn to dry when it was not possible to dry it outside. It was then a matter of sorting the millet, carefully selecting the right piece for the right place in the broom.

In reality millet was terrible stuff. I didn’t have to work with it for long before I began to itch like crazy.

Pa would soak the millet selected for the broom in water before shaping it around the handle in a press. There he would sew it together before painting the handle. This was a relatively simple task. He had a piece of tyre rubber which he dipped in paint and then ran the rubber up the length of the handle as it was slowly rotated. Simple but effective, leaving a pleasing design on the handle.

Joe was once approached to set up a broom factory in Lismore but he declined the offer. Instead, he recommended his brother Bertie who, at the time, was living in a dirt floored hut. Bertie took the offer and never looked back.

Bertie once spent a night or two in gaol for a matter of civil disobedience. The government insisted that cattle be dipped in a solution of arsenic to kill cattle ticks. Many of the farmers objected to the practice as they considered it cruel. The solution burnt the cow’s udders. Tick inspectors were appointed to examine the cattle for ticks and ensure compliance with the law. The farmers accused the inspectors of carrying ticks in match boxes, then claiming to find these on the cattle as a precursor to forcing the farmers to dip them. Bertie refused to comply.

Years later, when the community became more environmentally aware, these cattle dip sites were declared contaminated owing to the level of chemicals in the soil. The farmers, who had been forced to build the dips, were then left to meet the cost of decontamination.

All my great-grandparents were born in Australia as it has become known. I have but glimpses of their stories, some recorded by others, others recollections of stories told by my parents and grandparents. As time passes I may learn more. I may never know why they came to these shores but I am thankful that they did. And I am thankful for the hardship they endured, their ingenuity and hard work that helped build the nation we have inherited.

Palmers Channel Public School

 Palmers Channel Public School was more than a place of education. It was a central part of the local community. It opened in 1913. Dad and his younger sister Aileen were both students. My grandfather, Joe Marsh, turned 12 the year it opened so he may have been among the first group of students. The following story may have been from those very first days.

Palmers Channel School 1935. Dad and his sister Aileen
were students at the time

One day the pupils, including Joe, heard the first car in the district coming down the road. All the boys ran to the window to see it. The teacher, of course, could not tolerate this breach of discipline, so all boys were promptly caned.

My student days began in late 1956 after Mum made an arrangement with the teacher that allowed me to attend for a while prior to my starting 1st class – or grade 1 as we know it today – in 1957. I don’t know how common this was but Neville Carr started at the same time. Neville was a few days younger than me and we ended up exchanging birthday presents throughout our primary school years. Neville died many years back from skin cancer.

The school had two rooms and a veranda. Part of the veranda was enclosed in my third or fourth year to make a library. The two rooms were divided by a fold away petition and the rear room had a stage from where we presented the annual Christmas tree concert.

There were two lunch sheds – one for the boys and the other for the girls. These provided shelter from the weather and were well separated.

Enrolment was probably a little short of 30 with the six classes being under the control of one teacher. Most of the children had some family connection to the Marsh family, it being by far the largest family on the Channel. We sat at desks in neat lines, all facing the front, the teacher and the blackboard. Corporal punishment was in vogue in those days and a call to the front often meant a smack or two across the back of the legs with the teacher’s ruler. Boys were frequently called to the front but I can’t recall girls undergoing the same discipline. There was obviously discrimination against males.

I had three teachers over the six years, each for two years, Misters Folkard, Keating and Lee. Mr Keating was a Catholic, a thing that people noticed in those days and Mum expressed her delighted surprise when he turned up at the annual Sunday School concert. He obviously earned a few brownie points with Mum for that. Mr Lee had been in the air force during the war and Mum has always blamed him for me wanting to join the RAAF, but I suspect it was a steady diet of Biggles books and history articles of the glorious days of the British Empire.

The teacher lived in a house next to the school. His yard was out of bounds. At morning tea and again at lunch time he would disappear into his sanctuary, only to emerge at the end of each break to face the mob. This meant we were unsupervised during breaks. Today teachers are rostered on during recesses and children well supervised. Lack of appropriate supervision has resulted in many costly litigation cases.

There was no playground equipment. We played tag, hide and seek and other games. A couple of the big boys in my early years invented a game that was rather character building for us smaller ones. One would hold us down with our legs apart and the other would direct a medicine ball at our groin.

The school was on a few acres of land with a creek through the middle. The grass on the side the buildings were on was kept well mown, not so on the other side. We played in the creek, creating dams, waterways and other construction projects, unlimited by our imagination. Shoes were unheard of in summer so there was no problem with getting them dirty. Mum insisted I wear shoes in winter, much to my disgust, but I regularly came down with bronchitis so it was probably for the best.

Once I made a periscope, copying the pattern from a magazine. It came in handy, so I thought, playing hide and seek. We hid in the long grass on the other side of the creek but, unknown to me, my new toy was a bit of a give-away.

Back then the Government provided free milk to primary school students. Looking back, this made little sense in a community where every family milked. But policy was policy. The milk was delivered early each morning and placed in the shade of a large camphor laurel tree next to the school gate. In summer particularly this had probably started to go off before we got to it at morning recess. It came in a small bottle, probably around 400 mL with an aluminium foil lid. We had the choice of plain, chocolate or strawberry. While I could handle the strawberry in particular, I though the plain was absolutely revolting. It was nothing like the fresh milk we got from the cow each morning.

The milk was pasteurised, but not homogenised, permeate free, permeate added, skim, low fat, calcium added or anything else. The cream floated on top so you could scoop if off if you wanted fat free – not that anyone worried about stuff like that then – or give it a good shake before opening for the full cream taste.

We did some activities on the veranda. One I remember was basket weaving. Basket cane was soaked in buckets of water to make it flexible enough to form into the basket. On one such occasion I was sitting too close to my friend Neville as he was using a knife to cut the cane to size. It slipped and I still have the scar in my right knee. When I got home Mum was rather upset that I hadn’t been taken to a doctor as she felt it should have been stitched. I don’t however recall her taking me.

These were the days of White Australia, God, Queen and country. One ritual I remember well, while I cannot be certain as to frequency. I would guess weekly. The school lined up in front of the flagpole, which was located in a well-kept garden barricaded with a white fence to keep us out. There, we recited the pledge of allegiance before marching into school: ‘I honour my God, I serve my Queen, I salute the flag,’ or words to that effect.

Two palm trees stood proud, about a meter and a half apart, at the rear of the school – although one always did look a little healthier than the other. These had been planted to commemorate the fallen – I assume WW1. There was a well-worn track between these as we often ran between them playing tag. The district’s honour board, remembering those who had served or fallen in our wars was displayed in the School’s rear room. Out of respect for those men and possibly women I hope that board is still retained in a suitable place.

Community movie nights were held at the school. I remember Dad, who was quite good with his hands, making a cabinet to house the projector and its accessories. It was fitted with castors to enable it to be moved around and double as the projector stand. In my last couple of years they also built community tennis courts on the other side of the creek.

The highlight of the school year was the Christmas Tree concert, again a community event. We sang carols, presented skits, and those who could presented musical items. One year, probably my last, we did a play ‘The Wedding of the Painted Doll.’ This involved all the kids in the school. Our mothers spent weeks, if not months, making costumes. I played the minister. At home somewhere I have a picture of us in our costumes with me standing head and shoulders above the other kids.

The Wedding of the Painted Doll

The school has long since passed. Last time I visited the Channel it had been converted to a house. Can a house stand as a memorial to a bygone era, a way of life that no longer exists? As much as I would like to think so I don’t believe it can. Some of us have memories of those days, but as we pass so will the memories.

There is one transcript I would like to add. Keith McLeay and I started in first class at Palmers Channel in 1957. At the end of 1966 we both left Maclean High, having shared 10 years of schooling. The following year I joined the air force.

Keith, I believe, started an apprenticeship in Newcastle. I remember looking him up once after I got to Williamtown. Keith was called up for two years national service – he must have been one of the last intakes. He stayed with the army, completing over 20 years’ service.

Two boys from a one teacher country school who completed their school years together that gave a combined total of more than 40 years to their country in military service. The older I get the more I wonder how often that has happened.

The Sandon

The Sandon, located at the mouth of the Sandon River, in the Clarence Valley, was a favourite holiday spot for the Marsh family. My grandparents told tales of their holiday adventures at this place, of eating mouldy bread stored in sugar bags, and fishing tales of the one – or more precisely the ones – that got away.

The story is told that one day Dad rode his bike to Brooms Head and then walked the beach to the Sandon to deliver voting papers to his parents who were holidaying there at the time. This in the face of a cyclone and it may have been in the war years. Some years back I walked this same beach from the Broom (as Brooms Head is known) to the Sandon and back before breakfast – a good hour to hour and a half walk.

While we stayed in tents at the Sandon Nana and Pa Marsh had some friends who had holiday shacks there that have now been demolished because they were built on crown land. It is now part of the Yuraygir National Park. One belonged to the Biddles and, if memory is correct, Jim and Mary Orr owned another – Jim Orr being my great grandmother’s brother. There may have been a few more, but there were not many.

In the early days there was no ‘road’ to the Sandon, just a number of sand tracks that wandered over the hills. The trick, it seemed, was to pick the right one. I remember more than one car bogged in the sand with tree branches and other stuff placed under the rear wheels in an effort to get some traction to enable the car to move forward, assisted by a number of bodies pushing from the rear. This may have been the reason Dad took us on holidays one year with Mum, David and myself seated on a trailer packed with all vacation necessities towed by the grey Ferguson tractor. It was more suited to the ‘road’ conditions.

One challenge at the Sandon was timing the arrival. The camp ground was on a knoll separated from the mainland by sand spits, and as the tide came in these became impassable until the tide receded. This was not always a problem. I remember once we went to the Sandon for the day with Dad’s sister Aileen, husband Stan and kids. We had a great time swimming in the river waiting for the tide to fall.

The camp ground was basic. No electricity. We may have been able to buy ice from the local fisherman’s cooperative shack, but possibly not. No showers and the dunny (toilet) was of the pit variety – supply your own newspaper. There was a communal rain water tank and, of course, one could always raid the water tanks attached to the few houses. Powdered milk was the norm and other stuff we needed to keep cool – and possibly out of reach of creatures is search of a meal - was placed in a food safe hung from a tree.

Not that we needed to keep much fresh. Like most of our holidays, the Sandon was about the beach, swimming and fishing. We had a small, flat bottomed row boat. Mum and David always sat on the seat at the back, Dad did the rowing and I perched on the seat at the front. Fish – bream, whiting, and flathead – were plentiful so we never went hungry.

While we fished in the safety of the river, others fished off the rocks on Plover Island. Plover Island was at the mouth of the river, accessible across the sand spit when the tide was out far enough. We used to roam over the island – not that it was all that large – and play on the rocks. My grandfather, Joe and his brother Kelvin would fish from here sometimes – I remember talk of Jew Fish and Snapper, so I assume these were what they caught.

Kelvin married Connie Orr, daughter of Jim and Mary whom I have mentioned above. They must have stayed in the house when they holidayed there.

One day Joe and Kelvin were fishing from the rocks. So far as I recall, the only thing they caught all day were snags. I have always remembered their discussion that day. Both agreed that the ideal way to go would be standing on the rocks reeling in a catch. One was adamant that he wanted to see the fish before he breathed his last, the other would be satisfied knowing he had something on the line. Sadly, neither got their wish.

A small ocean going fishing fleet operated from the Sandon. Some of the fishermen lived in houses on the side of the road just before the sand spits we had to cross to get to the campground. Others lived on the other side of the river. Access to these houses was from Minnie Water along the beach. One day I recall a trawler in serious trouble crossing the bar, but I can’t recall the final outcome of that episode. All I remember is the trawler rolling about, immobilised, with waves washing over it.

Another memory is of fishermen walking into the surf, pulling their nets out and circling back into the beach with their catch, mullet I think. I clearly remember this one day the waves were full of mullet for as far as the eyes could see. It seemed there were more fish than water. Only once have I seen this but I guarantee the like has not been seen for years.

 It is a few years since I last visited the Sandon. As I said above, it is now part of the Yuraygir National Park. The campground remains, but it is still fairly basic. There is still no electricity if I remember correctly. The fishermen’s houses remain, silt has changed the course of the river, and you can access the campground anytime day or night. But it retains in some ways the simplicity of former years.

More than a Meaningless Ritual?

I grew up in a simpler place and time. We did not need Facebook, Twitter, Messaging or the Internet to connect – we had family and a broader community where people had time for one another, to stop and talk and listen. When we did get the telephone it was closely monitored to make sure it was not used unnecessarily. Phone calls were a cost that had to be controlled.

Dad was a farmer whose formal education ended when he left primary school. Mum did three years high school. Our connection to the outside world was through the Newspaper – the Grafton Daily Examiner which had a few stories of world, national and state importance but was primarily a local paper – the radio and eventually television. So we were largely unconcerned with what happened outside our small community.

We went to Church, as did most of our neighbours, when it was our turn. The Palmers Channel public hall had been built to cater for the Protestants in the area, with a different denomination attending on each Sunday of the month. Faithful Catholics were forced to travel to Maclean or Yamba.

God was a given. There was no debate about whether or not He existed. People – or at least most people – married young, no one lived together before they got married, and there was probably nothing on the planet much lower than an unmarried pregnant woman. And if you were Protestant, more likely than not you voted for what was then the Country (now National) Party and Catholics voted Labor.

We always ate together as a family and, before a knife or fork was lifted we would say grace. I can still remember Dad: ‘For these and all other mercies may the Lord make us truly thankful, Amen’. I can’t recall ever pausing to reflect on what those words might mean and I wonder if anyone else ever did. It was just part of the family ritual.

As I moved out into the big bad world I came in contact with people who didn’t go to Church and when I was invited into their homes they didn’t say grace. Mind you, by this time I had largely given up on Church attendance, but I always felt uncomfortable when grace wasn’t said for no other reason than it was a signal to start eating. It is a discomfort that remains to this day.

As I returned to faith so I returned to saying grace. The words may have changed: ‘Thank you Lord for this good food, bless it to our needs, Amen’. Or perhaps; ‘Thank you Lord for this good food and the hands that have prepared it. May it make us strong that we can serve you, Amen.’ But I wonder if anyone gives those words any more thought than I did as a kid.

It dawned on me one day that for me it was nothing other than a meaningless ritual. Simply rattled off without any thought so that I could get my knife and fork into that appetising – or perhaps not so appetising - plate in front of me. Actually, I tell a little lie. There have been times when I have wondered about asking God to bless us and give us health to serve Him when I know that most, if not all, of what has been prepared fails every good nutrition test known to human kind – but that is another story.

As I thought about it I realised what it really meant to give thanks. Of course there is the sun and the rain, the soil and the seed, and the miracle of life. But it’s much more, especially for those who live far removed from the site of production.

The farmer is a given, but what about the agricultural scientist, the truck driver that takes the produce from the farm gate to market. Then we can add on the process worker in the canning factory, the electricity worker that supplies the energy for food production, the miner, warehouse workers, those that pack the shelves in the supermarket and the check-out chick. If it were not for these and a myriad of others I could not do the things I do and live the lifestyle I have chosen.

I am part of a community and I depend on the community for life. We are interdependent and the quality of life we enjoy is dependent on others. So when I give thanks for the meal in front of me, regardless of how simple it may be, I am not only giving thanks to God, the life-giver, but for the community He has placed me in. And that acknowledgement that I am dependent upon others should create in me a sense of reciprocity – that of giving back to my community. For the health of the community is dependent upon the willingness of all to give and a recognition that we should take nothing for granted.

Douglas’s Store

Mr and Mrs Douglas ran a produce store in Maclean. It was on the side of the road that led in from Yamba along the river bank not far from where it turned to head into the main street. Mum and Dad would often shop there. They always came across as a friendly couple. To a young boy they seemed old and that may have been the case as I can’t recall if they had sold out before I left home. I am however certain that they were not running the store for all that long after I joined the RAAF.

Douglas’s sold some groceries but not the full range of things the family needed. They also sold other stuff that came in useful on the farm, such as food to supplement that which was available on the farm to feed the chooks and pigs.

I feel certain that Nana Marsh sold eggs to Douglas’s. I remember specially made boxes that allowed eggs to be stacked row on row in cardboard packing somewhat similar in appearance to today’s egg cartons, but laid flat. There must have been a couple of dozen to each row. Nana also supplied eggs to neighbours and others that would visit her to buy eggs. This was in the days before regulation decreed that no one could sell eggs to anyone but the Egg Board. Disgusted, Nana vowed she would throw her eggs in the creek before she would sell them to the Board – and I don’t recall them getting any of her eggs.

Stores like Douglas’s don’t exist anymore – unless you find them in historic villages. Mr and Mrs Douglas stood on one side of the counter and the customer on the other. This was not self-service like Coles or Woolworths. Mum would stand there with her shopping list. ‘A pound of flour please’. And Mr or Mrs Douglas would weigh out a pound of flour from the flour bin into a brown paper bag and place it on the counter. ‘And I’d like two pounds of sugar thankyou.’ And so the process would be repeated until the list was exhausted and the transaction completed in Pounds, Shillings and Pence. The way the Douglas’s did it was the way other business did it.

Thursday evenings in either Coles or Woolworths tripping over boxes and pallets, trying to shove shelf packers out of the way to find product, or trying to find where they’ve put it this week, often brings back memories of Douglas’s and other stores like theirs. Then there’s the hours I must loose every year trying to find a favourite product after the marketing department has decided they need to change the packaging. Modern supermarkets offer an array of products Douglas’s would never have dreamed possible – 11 varieties of baked beans, tomatoes with chives, parsley or 8 other combinations of herbs, frozen meals, fruit and vegetables from all over the world and more. The world to us in exchange for a swipe of our credit card.

The modern supermarket may offer much but it is so impersonal. On those Thursday evenings as I manoeuvre around the assistants who are not so much there to serve as to replenish the shelves I feel I’m in the way. I don’t feel like a customer – it’s more about keeping the flow of goods moving from the storeroom to the shelves to the trolley and through the all-important check out. And now they want me to scan, pack and pay myself without any contact with the check-out chick. The ultimate shopping experience – walk into the store, load my trolley and pay for my goods without any human interaction whatsoever.

This is progress? At what cost? Mr and Mrs Douglas were part of a community where people had time to stop, talk, interact and get to know each other. I’m certain that they never dreamed of taking over the world, of forcing their competitors out of business. While the spin departments of Coles, Woolworths and other large companies may spend megabucks on promoting themselves as good corporate citizens giving back to the community we know that ultimately they exist to make a profit for their shareholders. And where that goal conflicts with the interest of some remote community in which they operate their business it will be the community that ultimately suffers.

Always pack a spare pair of undies

I don’t usually travel light, feeling more comfortable taking a bit of extra stuff ‘just in case’, or some exercise gear in case I have the chance to fit some in. Sometimes, if I am only away over a night or two it’s a matter of throwing a bit of extra in the bag just to stop the other stuff floating around.

Twice I have carefully planned, making sure not to carry one unnecessary item. This is about those times.

The first was a planned weekend at Grassy Head on the NSW mid-north coast. This is on the coast about 10 kilometres off the Pacific Highway just south of Macksville. I had been invited by the North New South Wales Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church to participate in a training weekend for Pathfinder leaders. The best way to describe Pathfinders for those unfamiliar with them is to say they are similar to scouts or guides. They are boys and girls aged 10 to 15 who dress up in a uniform, do crafts, drills, camps, abseiling, canoeing and the like. My job was to present in the area of safety and risk management.

Shortly after breakfast on the Sunday morning with the task completed I packed the car and headed for home. As I turned on to the highway the car ground to a stop. The NRMA attended, diagnosed the problem and arranged for the car to be taken to the nearest authorised repairer – the Holden dealer in Macksville. With the car parked safely in the car park I booked into the motel across the road and settled in to wait for the dealer to open in the morning.

Macksville is a picturesque little town. With nothing else to do I thought I would walk around and look at the sights. After about half an hour I had seen them all so I went around again – and again. This was a Sunday, and none of the shops were open. Things have changed of recent years.

Former Bank of NSW, Macksville

 Monday morning I was told by the mechanic that the needed part would have to come from Coffs Harbour. There was no guarantee it would turn up that day. So the next stop was the local clothes shop as, you should realise by this time, I had run out of clean undies. As it was, all turned out well. The part turned up, I hit the road around 4 pm, and ended up doing an extra night in a motel at Bulladella.

Sometime after that I was asked to go to Fiji. This was a fly out Monday fly back Friday trip, which meant I could fly direct to Suva and return without transiting through Nandi – things may have changed a little since then. This time I was participating in a teacher development program organised by the Church’s Education Department as well as doing a survey of Fulton College. I flew Air Pacific which, as I found out during the trip, was also known as Air Pathetic. Fortunately I had some reading for the trip so I did not have to watch the inflight movie – one of the early Harry Potters. As it worked out, I had ample opportunity to view this on the way home.

One thing I will always remember was the security check as Suva on arrival. One of the security officers took my biro, removed the refill, raised it to the light and peered into the cylinder. No doubt he had seen too many Maxwell Smart shows.

Now I had been to Fiji before so I knew what to expect – weatherwise at least. So again, no need to worry about cool weather stuff, so I had been careful to pack the bare minimum.

Friday morning, task accomplished, I turned up at Suva International Airport for the trip home accompanied by two work colleagues Don and Ingelese.  We did all the normal departure things, took our seats and the plane taxied out for take-off, only to turn around, taxi back to the terminal and shut down. ‘This doesn’t sound good’ I said to my travelling companion, a Fijian national.

Then came the announcement, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have a slight technical problem and are having it seen to’ – or words to that effect. We weren’t allowed off the plane as we had already been cleared out of the country. That wasn’t a problem as we were more comfortable in the air-conditioned cabin than we would have been in the unaired-conditioned terminal. For our entertainment they screened the in-flight movie – the same Harry Potter that I could have watched on the trip over – and for our comfort they served the in-flight meal. While I doubt that we are the only travellers to have enjoyed all this in-flight hospitality while sitting on the ground I suspect we are a rather elite group.

After some hours we were informed we would fly to Nadi so the necessary repair could be completed before flying to Sydney. Suva to Nadi is not a long flight so we were somewhat bemused when, just before we landed, we were told that we would be spending the night in Nadi as the crew was out of hours. We were duly herded into buses and taken to a motel of questionable standard. The next morning passengers were complaining of thin sheets, unchanged sheets, poor quality towels and general cleanliness. The Fijian national I was sitting next to on the flight home told me that she had phoned her husband the previous evening. He was dining with the owner of the motel so she gave him some customer feedback.

I spent a few minutes in my room unpacking a few things before I met Barry downstairs. With plenty of time to fill in we went for a long walk along the muddy streets. On our return to the motel Ingelese told us that the airline were trying to contact us as they could get us on a flight home that evening. Upstairs, throw everything back in the bag and off to the airport with great haste.

‘Sorry,’ they said. ‘You’re too late. We don’t know when we can get you home. There’s a flight coming through in the morning but it’s fully booked.’ Fortunately for us Barry proved a much more persuasive talker than I am. ‘Okay, we’ll get you on in the morning.’ And they did – no doubt at the expense of other longsuffering customers.

Saturday morning saw us winging our way to Sydney. For the second day in a row I got to enjoy Harry Potter, only this time I was wearing sweaty shorts, shirt and, yes, stale undies.

I felt sorry for Ingelese. Her family had arranged a child dedication at Church that morning after hours of negotiating with family members about a suitable date. As for me? Well, twice I have packed exactly what I felt I needed, and twice I have got caught. So now I always carry a spare pair of undies.