WWW Book 4 - Italia Joe

§ Adapting to Home-Made Chaos

Explanation of ‘chaos theory’ in the scheme of things to be in the future. The example is given from personal experiences.
Father and Zio make life decisions without proper consideration of the effects on their families.
Discourse expanded to the Gattuso immigration experience as a means to introduce the range of social issues that evolved for men, separated from their wives.
Gattuso family history adds a knowledge base to the pre-war immigration. The war almost makes separation permanent. An illegitimate child is born of those events providing intrigue for us entering their sphere of farming influence.
Geroloma, the Gattuso wife left behind in Italy, gave birth after her husband had left. Another child is adopted and eventually makes for a complex family get-together in Cobram.
Our sister, Caterina fills in the gaps of the life being lived in Francavilla. Childminding included ad hoc stays at the beach near the ‘Pontana’
Aberrations appear in the child Caterina, in the form of separation anxiety; circumstances force the need to have her stay at a summer camp. Work on the farms needed to go on. Mother’s frugality, possibly overdone, monies being remitted from Australia could have been better used for family comforts. Our comfort in Australia was not any better.
Doing time on the Cavallaro farm required distractions. Commanding an army of chickens would make George Orwell smirk. But what’s ‘Time’ for a child? Was it something like Einstein’s ‘Theory of Relativity’ and implemented in Dr Who’s ‘Tardis’^[1]?
End of the 1957 school year party background to the iconic photo opportunity of my being in Gypsy costume. Then it was back to the fruit farm in Cobram.
Simonetti expand into share farming supplying tomatoes to the ‘Kia-Ora’ food products brand. The venture leads into a humorous horsey story of Zio, Father, me and the draft horse.
Our living conditions are comparable to Mack and the boys of “Cannery Row”.^[2]
Shopping for food staples opens opportunities to use the loose change to buy comics and small toys. Also, a lead into a descriptor of the town layout.
The pub sessions indulgences by the grownups, become the bane of my having to do the shopping.
I’m taught to prep the pasta sauce for the evening meals using a kerosene camp stove.

Transitional Social Patterns

A brief ‘Who’s Who’ of Anglo Cobram is extracted from Harold G Martindale’s book “The Plains Turn Green”. These people would form part of the Simonetti social mix in the future. One of these, Patrick Duffy will sell his sheep farm to Father and two other Italians.
Nicola Gattuso’s immigrant settler status in Cobram provides a glimpse of the progress being made to better oneself.
The town’s father-to-son doctoring history forms part of the Vogel’s story. Another town doctor with possible historical connections, by the name of “Schubert”will in future years provide medical support services for the birth of our sons Adam and Damien.
Early Cobram orchardists include the Quick family. I will compete with its progeny for the affections of two girls, one of whom I married.
R J Cornish’s main orchard was on Cottons Road up the road where we lived on the Gattuso farm. His son Geoff becomes a pivotal character in my grade 5 and 6 school years.
The layout of the Gattuso farms sets the scene for the ongoing narratives of our communal involvement.
Personalities that make up the social mix with whom we become involved are introduced.
A walk-through descriptor narrative of the fateful enrolment at the Catholic School for the 1958 school year and how I decided against it.
Crunch time at the State School came to assess my competency in basic literacy. By age, I should have been in grade four, but I ended up suitably in grade three.
The status of Cristiano Spiller, the pre-war immigrant from the earlier discourse is updated to include his family with whom I shall interact.
During my after-school days and weekends, I became a roustabout in the packing shed. The ‘devil made me do it’ scenario of my toying with the flywheel of the fruit grader unleashes contempt for my pitiful existence.
Father is deemed a ‘gun picker’ making him extraordinary amongst his peers and bosses.
Share farming sees me needing to pitch in with tomato picking. It was to be the beginning of my becoming a contributor to the family’s economic welfare.
Pre-descriptor narrative of the tomato industrial complex and its demeaning effect on the human psyche but unavoidable to building the cash stake.
Introduction made to the Raco complicated family structure for the upcoming narrative to my being billeted in its care, when Father goes to the asparagus harvest.
Hazards of swimming in irrigation channels are a feature of rural living.
The need to describe our homes as a class exercise makes for a rounding off on the living conditions in the shack. The consciousness of social standing is awakened within me.
Father decides not to return to Mossman for the cane season. We remain in that inhospitable shack for the winter. The upside was that I got a raincoat and gumboots.
Building the new farm dunny involves crossing paths with the Vogels.
Father’s status in the Italian community gets a boost from his skills in grafting trees, but with minimal financial reward.
Winter on the farm makes for a wonderland of frosty scenes and uncomfortable nights in a shack without insulation or heating.
Making my toys from the top of a paint tin, and another from the steel ring insert forming the seal between the lid and the 44-gallon drum.
Father sets trends in pruning techniques from his experience in Italy.
The gathering at the other farm hut of earlier discourse, in which the intellectual discussion of brigands and other esoteric mutterings by the grownups, is put into the timeline.
Zio Pietro returns from Mossman with news that the Galati family was planning to relocate to the Gattuso orchard.
The plastic toy truck chance find, floods my existence with troubled waters.
My firsthand experience with the traditional methods used to make the irrigation channels. Factual narrative citation: Harold Martindale^[3]
Oral history provided by our sister-in-law Glenys Vogel (né McKinley) of her parent’s role in the construction of the main irrigation channels in the 1930s. Ernie McKinley was an Irish immigrant caught up in the Great Depression and one of many sent to the Cobram district to earn ‘susso pay’.^[4]
Henry Lawson’s poem ‘Faces In The Street’ of the city folk doing it tough in Australia is quoted. His interest in revolution is compared to Italian Communist Palmiro Togliatti a generation later.
Anglo-Australian’s xenophobic tendencies towards Italians put into perspective. Australia’s growth in GDP ameliorates Lawson’s call to arms; the growth is attributed in part to the growing population, of which Italian immigrants featured prominently.
Ernie’s death in a car crash in town leads to other deaths experienced by migrant families. The tragic death of a mother and four children close to Cobram provides an opening to introduce the notion of organised crime existing alongside law-abiding Italian immigrants.
Simonetti’s become aware of Josef and Veronica Vogel at Gattuso Orchard No 2. Granddaughter Erica Vogel provides an oral history of the discord underlying that event.
Simonetti’s begin to interact socially with other Italians.
John Steinbeck’s characters Mr and Mrs Sam Molloy’s^[5] entrepreneurship is compared to the Galati family arriving at the Gattuso orchard and being accommodated in the newly built chemicals storage shed,
A class photograph of the St Joseph’s grade 4, has the three girls Monika Vogel, Mary Galati and Maria Kraljik all smiling, oblivious as to how they will be influencers through my teens.
Another share tomato crop fails to get a supply contract and is abandoned.
The Galati family moved into the purpose-built home on the orchard. Simonetti’s upgrade to the hut which has electricity connected.
The tragedy of my being causal to damaging Zio’s mandolin.
Headaches and migraines begin to affect my health. I would need to take analgesics. Anecdote of a migraine attack at school causing unbearable pain. There was no remedy and Father could not be contacted. Geoffrey Cornish looks out for me on the school bus to make it back to the hut.
The 1959 season ends, Father is to head off to Gundagai for the asparagus harvest; I’m billeted out to the Giuseppe and Margarita Raco’s care. I hustle Father for worldly goods.
Tommaso Galati provides an oral history background to Giuseppe Raco and his 1930s pickup truck.
Background to the soldier settlement established with the POW huts being repurposed for homes on the farms, brings up interesting coincidences. I lived with the Raco Family in one of these. Factual narrative citation: The story of Cobram – A Social History.
Memoires of the experience elucidate aspects of my time with the Raco family. I became shy and self-conscious of the social difference. Sisters whom I would catch the school bus surprised me with their kindness, they gave me a small bag of cherries.

Life Stuff – That’s Serious

The topic of sexuality, generally taboo is introduced through my recollections as far back as school days in Francavilla. Girls’ difference from boys leads to the childish scenario of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”which never happened. Such innocence led to my reporting back to family at mealtime that in exhibition of bravado, joined in the idle chit chat with my announcing that that I had, had sex with a girl after school. It did not end well, lessons learnt are explored.
Introspective of my playing with friendly Anglo children for a brief afternoon in Mossman becomes a reason to miss Mother and siblings left in Italy.
Tendency to become attached to a ‘pretty’ girl at school leads to the introduction of ‘puppy love’ affections for Julie Davies, Mary Galati and Christine Manser.
High school offers continued scope to cast eyes over girls, Maria Kraljik stands out in my mind’s eye.
If my emotional needs, those of a child, needed attention, then how were the young men in their prime of life handling their privation? To find an answer, without having an intention for a full study, the circumstances of several persons in our social sphere are explored.
Why the men leave their families, whether for wars or immigration and including celibacy is headlined for the discourse at hand. Nicola Gattuso’s story leading to a child being born from a relationship with Jean Goodwin is explored.
Giuseppe Raco’s three-way family including a de facto Margarita and a wife in Italy is pieced together from oral history notes. There is an unravelling when the Italian wife eventually comes to Australia.
Father and Zio were on their own for months at a time. I was left alone in the shack only once.
Mother and Zia Barbara left in Italy with young children struggling to keep the farms productive and maintain discipline and security for the children left in their care. Father and Zio should have come to grips with the separations but procrastinated.
Our experience is held up against other close families with whom we interacted, planning more effectively. America was still an option if Father and I had returned to Italy.
Mother makes the call to end the original plan, it was not working.

§ Steps Back To A Normality

‘Rithmatic Flint Sparks Catalytic Social Synthesis

Narrative picks up events from the 1959 grade 4 school year onwards, at a time when my English skills had improved. Zio returns from Mossman. I’m prepared to go in front of the class to show my skills in arithmetic.
Update on the Galati family’s whereabouts on the farms. Simonetti’s routine resumes for the coming fruit season.
School classes for grades 5 and 6 are located at the ‘Old School’. An exercise to write a story of what we did on the weekend indicates that there is still some way to go to fit in socially. Anecdote of the attempt to express coherent sentences by resorting to phonetics and ‘Italglishisms’. Still excelled in arithmetic.
Methods for mental fortitude begin to be developed to assist with coping with the anguish being caused by the quite evident social differences.
New girls and boys, child characters, who would become my peers are introduced, angels and devils amongst them. The Francis brothers had a definite beginning as ‘devil’ tormentors; a solution was found.
Jump forward to 2012, Leane Baker lays out the girl’s take on the desirable boys of early high school, quite ego-boosting stuff had I known that in the ‘60s, but then again, I think I knew that something was at play; anecdotes of Pam Cornish and Kathleen Mathews narrated.
Fisticuffs near the toilet block between Kenny Graham and newly arrived immigrant Svetislav
Father heads for Gundagai leaving me in the care of the Galati family, I continue at the State School and the Galati siblings go to the Catholic school. Another cohort of influential characters is introduced. These children will have influence, leading to childhood friendships, competitiveness amongst boys and in my future, the ‘first kiss’.
Geoffrey Cornish and I established ‘best friends’ status even though there was a tattered appearance around me, heralded by the awful sandshoes I wore day in, day out.

A Place to Call Home

Father buys a house in town. The dwelling was built from leftover material from other jobs during a downturn in the industry. It was in part built by the Vogel brothers, then working for Lou Walker.
Descriptor of the home and the need to have it furnished, is a lead-in to describe the township and the who’s who of our neighbours including a town shire councillor. We had inadvertently stepped into the realms of the middle class.
John Vogel owns the block next door and interacts with Father.
Father takes in boarders, fellow travellers in need of somewhere to live.
Zio wins a transistor radio at the Cobram Show. I need to get home to listen to the next ‘Lone Ranger’
The International Community of Europe stirring into action will spell trouble for Australian farmers.
Father gets his driver’s licence and eventually buys a second-hand 1958 Holden FC Special Sedan.
Geoffrey Cornish comes-a-visiting whilst Father is at work. I offer him a sip of ‘Marsala All ‘Uovo’.
There was something different about Scottish, Kenneth Sweeny, character portrayal. His imported bicycle and demeanour sets him apart.
Boys talk ‘cars’ but I have my heart set on getting an air-powered slug gun. ‘Sparrows beware’ narrative diverges into Mao Zedong’s ‘Great Leap Forward’
Ken Sweeney facilitates my getting an after-school job at Lou Walker’s Hardware store, then managed by Franz Vogel Jr.
The after-school job eventually clashes with my need to work with the family’s share farming tomato crops.

§ Mother does not come with a User Guide

Mother and siblings were ready to come to Australia, we needed to refresh our recognition of my sister. Father gets it wrong; he shows me a photo of our cousin.
Father’s Catholic morally based ambitions compared with those of Joe Kennedy, whose bootlegging was used to buy the Presidency for his son. Father thought it a good idea to have his son learn to play a piano accordion.
Need for firewood provides for a timeline introduction to Cristiano Spiller and family.
We head for Melbourne to reunite with Mother, Caterina and Aurelio, arriving by ship from Italy.
Antonio Prestigiacomo, who worked with Father’s cane-cutting gang in Queensland, had by then an extended family structure in Melbourne. His brother Giacinto and his wife Bettina extend hospitality to our need to have a place to stay for a few days.
Descriptor narrative of our taking the tram to Station Pier, the atmospherics of the ship at port, anticipation to get the first glimpse of the Mother existing only in memory. Talking to a sister and brother for whom the recognition factor had faded.
Social ambience of friendships extending back to Italy and the present reuniting in our host terraced home Brunswick just north of the city of Melbourne. Other related friendships were brought into the fore to give an expansive view of the network forming in Australia and America.
The Gattuso family lends its assistance to facilitate the transfer, of the reunited Simonetti family, to Cobram.
Mother had lost her child and got a teenager who had experienced for good and bad, supervision freedom.
The new plan was to mean that all that was left behind in Italy was, to be in practical terms ‘written off’, these could not be used to support applications for a bank loan.
Anticipation grows for goodies from Italy filling the trunks accompanying the family entourage. The luggage arrives separately as freight to the Cobram Train Station.
Mother’s fine crockery and haberdashery accommodated amongst the Laminex and other ‘Australiana’ home furnishings.
Introduction to Caterina’s and Aurelio’s schooling and friendships left behind, and sacrificed. Caterina will have to carry the suffocating bourdon of Calabrian cultural etiquette.
Siblings positioned at the Catholic School against the backdrop of notable children with whom we shall interact in the future.
Caterina is disadvantaged by her leaving a caring school structure in Francavilla. She unwittingly comes into contact with the petit ladies of my child’s past and adolescent future.
Mother has a take ‘no prisoners’ mentality to Caterina interacting with boys from the street. Her oral history rings of sadness from such Calabrian intolerance.
Caterina’s friendships with neighbours Stella and Mimma Oliva make for exploratory opportunities for Aurelio and me. We naively set out to find out, at separate interludes, how the ‘birds and bees’ narrative may work.
Time was up for Caterina; she did not return to school in 1965 and began to work at a greengrocer, a mixed business.
That Mother liked to haggle goes back to my recollections at market day in Filadelfia. Her antics came to haunt me as the anointed English speaker to translate on shopping days.
My becoming a musician had been written in the stars once the piano accordion arrived, and was surely the making of a comedy skit. Reality hit home that an ad hoc approach to learning was not going to cut it. The need to work on the tomato crop won out in the end.
Creating wealth was all-encompassing, fortunately, underwritten by Mother’s and Father’s good health and propensity to be efficient at the work which faced them. There was no alternative to my needing to work alongside them, whether it was the tomato crop, or picking oranges during school holidays.
It is inevitable that family social opinions would be challenged by our exposure to the wider community. There was a legacy effect from my independence which Mother and I needed to reckon with.
Reflection on my youth and how the quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde that “Youth is wasted on the young” applied to my circumstances.

§ Rebrand Rendering Work In Progress

The backdrop of my teen years between 1961 and 1965 is narrated by the pressing need to create wealth through shared farming ventures at various locations. Memoirs of my working alongside Father and Mother.
Father and I become a job lot for becoming Australian Citizens.
Zio Pietro takes steps to have his family join him, but things fall apart when the Australian immigration system fumbles with the documentary procedure.
Zio Pietro’s and Zia Barbara’s family structure suffer from isolation the same as our family; perhaps a case of Robert Burns: “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men…”, Discourse leads into similarities with John Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’and Henry Lawson’s writings providing an Australian context about people facing extreme circumstances. Zio’s mental health over the nine years of separation is contextually explored.
Father and Mother used their farming know-how to begin share farming on various farms, the first of which was on the outskirts of Cobram, on fallow land.
Historical Cobram blended in with current events becoming part of the tomato crop enterprises. The Spiller family bridges pre-war and post-war Italians settling in the district.
Descriptor narrative of the irrigation techniques for the tomato crop.
The labouring schedules at the ‘coal face’ have breaks for straying to a Coca-Cola vending machine across the highway, located at the VW dealership.
The tomato plant physiology is a curse for those picking its fruit. Cultivation by hoe just adds to the miserable experience.
Picking and transport of the tomato crop.
Fear of Pellagra leads to making acquaintance with Matteo Orsida when Father pays for a course of vitamin injections to be administered by the farmer’s wife.
My migraines are put through the superstition mill and I am subjected to ‘mal’occhio’ exorcism for the first and last time.
The after-school job, working with Frank Vogel was the making of riches for a short while. I’m exposed to people other than farmers and gaining a level of street smartness.
Frank Vogel provides an oral history of his moonlighting as a loader of tomato crates during harvest.
The Orsida share farming experience adds new characters Giuseppe Caridi and his wife Brigida to the Simonetti social network.
The debilitating effects of migraines are explained in terms of the Hubble telescope’s blurred images. Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Alone” is an illustration of the dilemma I faced when left alone and suffering from a migraine. The poem is analysed in retrospect, using the skills accumulated in a life lived thus far. Why drink alcohol, a known trigger of migraine attacks? Human frailty at its best!
Father’s bush carpentry skills are put to the test when building a makeshift lunchtime shelter to provide shade for the scorching summer sun.
My fledgling ego is nearly derailed by Matto Orsida’s offer to school me in replacing an implement to the back of the Ferguson tractor.
Why I hate early morning callouts goes back to the need to protect tomato plants from fungal black spot disease. The dusting needed to be performed in the moonlight from around 3 AM onwards.
What’s worse picking or cultivating a tomato crop? The narration gives light-hearted explanations based on scaled relativities. The weeds win every time.
Something goes bang at the packing shed. A visitor with a shotgun lets loose on the peppercorn tree teeming with noisy sparrows.
We casually meet the Spiller family at the Orsida packing shed, soon after the mother dies.
The summer of ’63 –’64 came to an end, leasing the Jack Gattuso orchard based on Zio Pietro remaining in Cobram rather than returning to Mossman for the cane season.
It was the same farm worked by the Galati family and had spent time there. Character introductions university students Roy and Fred Gattuso. The Tallotta family visiting make our acquaintance, their son Alfonse a worthy play friend.
Orchard husbandry is different to tomato cropping but more prestigious. Hazards posed by agri-chems are disregarded and begin the slow deterioration of Mother’s health.
Boys making bows and arrows.
Early callouts ‘take two’; need to set alight oil cans to ward off the frost from the apricot paddock.
Christmas is synonymous with apricot harvest. Preparing for both entails allowing time to slaughter and pluck the chickens. Mother and Caterina work in the kitchen to prepare the traditional dishes and bake biscuits.
It’s all in the taste test. Fruits from Italy are compared to similar varieties grown commercially in Australia and how genetics play a role.
The fresh fruits sales cycle and the processing for the canning industry at a time of oversupply leads to conflict between the farm owner and lessees.
Father uses what cash the family has to participate in a three-way plan to buy the Patrick Duffy sheep farm.
The reason why the plan hits a snag relates to earlier decisions to buy land in Italy, now considered worthless as collateral for a bank loan. Banks have an eye to events unfolding in the setting up of the European Common Market, it would have been beneficial to the Simonetti’s had they regrouped in Italy.
Father’s solution was to borrow some of the money needed from his sister’s family. The resulting unprecedented family politico: how it put our Aunt in a difficult situation is explored.

§ Dance Me to the Edge

The backdrop of my teen years between 1961 and 1965 is narrated from the need to lead a fulfilling life. Leonard Cohen’s lyrics of the 1984 song “Dance Me to the End of Love”, form a retrospective ‘life markers’ list of expectations.
Need to move on to somewhere, having more promise than the bleak existence of the five years before Mother, Caterina and Aurelio joined us.
Cobram High School’s beginnings were only marginally better than Henry Lawson’s ‘The Old Bark School.’^[6] Both school and ‘me’ the pupil lacking any educational provenance.
Curriculum offers an opportunity to excel, inadvertently drawing teacher attention.
Cobram-born Harold G Martindale’s bio has him at Melbourne High School; in the due course of time, our eldest son Michael will also attend.
Headmaster seeks out Father for a quiet word about his son. The episode became the seminal follow-up to my fateful decision to renege on my Catholic School enrolment.
Descriptor narrative of the rural town setting and its historical makings.
Monika Vogel becomes embedded into Cobram mesh as a marching girl, photos of her putting the Vogels into the timeline.
The Cobram pubs, parks and sale yards and their locations form part of the town’s history.
The Murray River and its beaches made Cobram different. Steamers were the backbone of Cobram’s economy.
Neighbours: John Vogel’s vacant block of land is purchased by the empty nesters, the Thompsons. On the other side, another empty nester couple were the Fry’s. These together with the Rice family make for basic social integration of the Simonetti’s with Anglo-Australians.
The World Wars and what these meant, once the Simonetti’s had to relate to patria Italia and patria Australia. Factual narrative citation: quotes from C J Dennis’ “The Moods of Ginger Mick”. Recall made to the misadventures of Giolitti, Mussolini and the discourse of errors made by the British.
Darryl Rice’s grandfather enlisted in both wars.
Fill-in character depiction of Darryl Rice, he is the boy with whom I attend the sermons by the visiting missionary to Cobram.
Friendships made with Scot, Ken Sweeny and German, Uffa Reinecker who lived with their families in Housing Commission Estate, explore our teenage escapades in the townscape still crisscrossed with irrigation channels.
The troubles caused by using slingshots to fire at grandads’ collection of radio vacuum valves, as targets.
‘Heaven awaits’ sermon by the preacher from ‘Sant’Antonio di Padova’ of earlier discourse put into the timeline.
Railyard, wheat storage sheds and the sheep shearing shed, next to the Bottom Pub were stamping grounds for Darryl and me to use up playtime. References were made to the sites’ relative histories to the town’s development.
School scorecard facilitates a friendship with Kenny Graham ‘leader of the pack’ at the ‘Old School’.
Mother’s social circle enables me to become friends with Frank Iudica.
Snakes pose danger in the bush of the Murray River flood plain doubling up as playgrounds.
Fank Iudica and I practice being little men doing men’s work, shovelling and axing in our backyards. Muscle building on the cheap using a cobbler anvil and a punching bag filled with corn cobbs amuses little brother Aurelio.
Additional character profiling of Kenny Graham to bring his skills in sport. Our friendship was strengthened by our being invited to Margo Lundie’s ’63 summer party at the family home. We go to the Orisida’s vineyard for Ken to get his fill of grapes, a bit tricky given that I had not cleared the idea with Father.
Talking with Frank Iudica about girls and the testosterone-fuelled growing pains needing to find relief.
In the left field were Julie Davies and Christine Manser whilst ’63 Maria Kraljick made an entry from the right field, what to do? Ken Sweeny is willing to cause mischief.
The day of reckoning was the school dance where Darryl and I were ignorantly offbeat, taking, truly an empty plate, as specified in the circular.
’62 and ’63 Speech Nights settings reinforced the possibility of my continuing school to Year 12.
Margo Lundie and I are invited to the Rotary Club’s Annual Dinner. Additional character profiling of Margo’s sport, academic abilities and her family’s connections in the Cobram community.
The Rotary Dinner was held at the ‘Bottom Pub’, Margo and I formally spoke after dinner.
It’s not all a sugar and spice existence, immaturity causes regretful fumbles fuelled by alcohol irrespective of knowing the consequences being migraine attacks.
Toying with explosive powders was an exercise in crass attention-grabbing. Robert Banks-Smith’s and my fascination compared to Robert Jordan^[7] and Francesco Crispi’s exploits with explosives.
Frank Vogel was reintroduced to the narrative via our playing in a basketball competition. His employment with the Walker Hardware business comes to an end when the business closes. He is influential in the Denson brothers extending their hardware business.
Nazzareno (Tom) Bisogni makes a dramatic entry into my existence but unclear as to what ends, other than an after-school job at the hardware warehouse associated with his building interests.
The who’s who, of the Vogel family network picks up the thread of that family’s settling into Cobram.
A light-hearted review of getting into the pictures and antics Cobram Agricultural Show. Ken Graham spars sexual innuendos with Fay Kirby. We’re attracted to the girls gyrating their wares in the ‘dance off the seven veils’adults-only tent. Daryl comes good with centrefolds from Playboy magazines.
Margo Lundie’s family move into town and have a second teenager party. The same girls from primary school looked and acted differently making for wow moments with walks along the path meandering through scrub behind the house.
Ken Sweeny’s hyperactivity, a sign that his character had a tragic component that sat at the end of the spectrum compared to others, me included.
Academic pursuit was much more difficult than it looked. There was a need to take heed of the components observed to be deficient, compared to those pupils, my peers, who were truly talented. Our family resources were lacking.
What is ‘intelligence’ is explored. By finding out where I’m positioned on that scale. Factual narrative citation: Research by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon; Jordan Peterson.^[8]
Character and personal description of Steven Gilbert and reasons for tipping my hat to his extraordinary intelligence. The realisation that I needed assistance to improve my knowledge base led me to ask for Steve’s and Leigh Astbury’s input on how to get started.
For purposes of objectivity my progress slips into a ‘third person’ narration of how progress was made in personal development. Factual narrative citations: John Lennon, Luc Ferry, Andrew Marvel and Lucius Annaeus Seneca.
Remedial catchup projects, undertaken in the late ‘60s, later formed the base to build on the street sense, gained from extensive business international travel.
Individuals’ physical and mental attributes provide each of us with advantages; peers are inclusively reviewed, adding character points of interest.
The Astbury family arrives in Cobram for the 1965 school year, the father Barny, was to be the Headmaster and the mother, Neta was to teach English.
In an after-class discussion Neta strays into the economics of ‘good looks and athleticism’. Joseph revisits that chance discourse via his study of economics. Factual narrative citations: N Gregory Mankiw^[9], Daniel S. Hamermesh and Jeff E Biddle.[10]
A run-through of anecdotal memories of Cobram High School; the way it was, a mix of the ‘good’: excursions the ‘bad’ teachers living on school grounds let their hair down. Then there were those raunchy exchanges between teacher and pupil!
Margo for Kenny or Joseph; a light-hearted opinionated, recall of the walk home from the beach.
Rounding off the competitors in the sweetheart stakes and where all the sweethearts go!
Adieu Kenny Graham for now, we did some silly things.
Joseph and Caterina duo, do the baptism circuit for Italian families, thus extending family connections in the platonic ‘Godfather’ way.
Aurelio covets the pouch knife which Joseph acquires with the help of Frank Vogel.
The Beatles and The Rolling Stones sweep across the ‘60s youth psyche The tempo manifested by boy-girl yearnings, harmonised by the Beatles and the ‘Stones’,capturing the raw sexual emotions driven by cultural liberalism.

[1] Time and Relative Dimension in Space

[2] Short Story by John Steinbeck

[3] The Plains Turn Green Page 15

[4] Australian slang for ‘sustenance or welfare payments

[5] Cannery Row Chapter VI

[6] Poem by Henry Lawson, 1897

[7] Book: For Whom the Bell Tolls

[8] Jordan Bernt Peterson is a Canadian media personality, clinical psychologist, author, and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto

[9] Principles of Economics, 1998, Pages 405 -6

[10] Research Paper- “Beauty and the Labour Market”.