Table Cape — 1966–1968

Back to Tasmania

In early 1966, Mum, Dad, Jenny and I left Victoria and moved back to Tasmania. I had turned five in January and had only been at school in Victoria for a week or two before we moved.

Our new home was on Table Cape, the spectacular flat-topped headland overlooking the sea near Wynyard. At five years old, of course, I wasn’t particularly interested in the scenery. Table Cape was simply where we lived.

Dad started working at the APPM paper mill in Burnie, universally known locally as “The Pulp.” His father had worked there for many years as well. Dad worked rotating shifts — 8am to 4pm, 4pm to midnight, and midnight to 8am — changing shift each week.

For the next two and a half years, Table Cape became my world.

Our Little House on the Farm

We rented a small two-bedroom cottage on Tollymore Road that belonged to the dairy farm next door. I believe the cottage had previously been used to accommodate farm workers.

It was certainly basic. Jenny and I shared one bedroom and Mum and Dad had the other. When Joanne came along, she slept in Mum and Dad’s room. There was no hot running water and no toilet inside the house. The toilet was outside, a short walk from the back door.

Once a week Mum heated water in the copper for our baths. We shared the bath water. Washing clothes involved an old washing machine with a wringer that squeezed the water from the clothes before they were taken outside and hung on the line.

It sounds primitive now, but to a five-year-old it was simply home.

Behind our house were paddocks full of dairy cows, with the working dairy next door. I often wandered over to watch the cows being milked. One of my jobs was to take a one-pint billy can to the dairy, have it filled with fresh milk straight from the vat, and carry it home.

The farming family next door had three children — an older girl, a younger girl and a boy about my age. I became good friends with the boy, although I can no longer remember his name. We spent a lot of time climbing trees together.

Jenny and I created our own adventures too. One day we disappeared to a nearby dam to go “fishing.” My fishing equipment consisted of a box tied to a piece of rope, which I threw into the dam. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t particularly successful.

Mum was considerably less amused. She couldn’t find us and became increasingly worried until she eventually discovered where we’d gone.

I was in trouble for that one.

Everyday Life

Some of my clearest memories of Table Cape are of very ordinary things.

Bread was delivered to the house. I remember a loaf costing 19 cents, and Jenny being allowed to keep the one-cent change.

I never thought that was fair.

Breakfast was usually Weet-Bix, Corn Flakes or Rice Bubbles, or toast with Vegemite, cheese or honey. Dinner was often lamb chops, sausages or chicken with mashed potatoes and boiled vegetables.

Mum frequently made dessert. Apple pie, bread-and-butter custard, golden syrup dumplings and hot jam pudding were some of the favourites I remember.

We had an old television and could normally watch the ABC or Channel 9. The house had a large aerial that could be rotated, and occasionally we could position it so that we picked up television from Melbourne.

We also had a record player. Mum owned quite a few records, and music became part of my childhood. I loved The Purple People Eater, and we had an album of songs from Mary Poppins.

But my prized record was a children’s 45 called Flick, The Little Fire Engine.

Occasionally we were allowed to bring a record to school to play for the class. My choice was remarkably predictable.

Flick came with me almost every time.

More than sixty years later, Mum still has the original record.

Wynyard Primary School

Each morning I walked down to the corner to catch the Table Cape bus to Wynyard Primary School.

My enrolment wasn’t completely straightforward. I had already started school in Victoria earlier that year, but apparently there was some question about whether I was old enough to start in Tasmania. I still remember parts of the conversation between Mum and the deputy principal before I was allowed to continue.

At the end of each school day we lined up for our buses. Mine went back to Table Cape. Another went along Deep Creek Road. Reg Bassett, who would become one of my good friends much later in life, was at Wynyard Primary at the same time and caught the Deep Creek Road bus, although I don’t remember us being friends then.

I collected football cards and remember having one of the biggest collections in my class.

I also learnt one of my earliest lessons in diplomacy after I pinched a girl in kindergarten.

I was kept behind after class and made to apologise to her. That created another problem: the Table Cape bus wasn’t going to wait for my rehabilitation.

I remember having to rush to catch it.

A New Baby Sister

On 30 December 1966, my younger sister Joanne was born at Wynyard Hospital.

I remember Dad going inside the hospital to see Mum and the new baby.

I wasn’t allowed in.

I had to stay in the car.

It is one of those remarkably small memories that has somehow survived when much bigger events have disappeared.

A Stay in Hospital

In 1967 I found myself at Wynyard Hospital with pneumonia. I was quite sick and remember spending several days under close care before being moved to the children’s ward.

My strongest memory of the hospital isn’t of doctors, nurses or treatment. It is of the nightmares. I became convinced there were Indians in the room across the hallway. It frightened me enough that, nearly sixty years later, I can still remember it.

I was back at Wynyard Hospital again in 1968, while I was still in Grade 2 and living at Table Cape. I suffered from frequent nosebleeds, which were thought to be caused by unusually large blood vessels in my nose. My adenoids were removed in an attempt to solve the problem.

I also remember a girl who had been in the children’s ward with me. Some time later we met again and she recognised me and said hello. For reasons I can no longer explain, I pretended I didn’t know her.

I remember thinking she was pretty, too.

Life Beyond Home and School

Nan and Fa lived at Yolla, and we visited them regularly. They lived a fairly simple life in an old house, and one of the things I remember particularly well was their telephone.

It was still connected through the local exchange, so making a call involved speaking to an operator. I remember when they eventually changed to a rotary-dial telephone like the one we had at home. At the time it was simply a new telephone. Looking back, I had watched a small piece of an older Tasmania disappear.

Nan and Fa were quite religious, and they would come to our Sunday School celebrations. Sunday School on Table Cape wasn’t held in a church, but at one of the larger farms. I don’t remember it belonging to any particular denomination.

One of the highlights was the annual Sunday School picnic at Boat Harbour, when our group joined families from other Sunday Schools.

Mum had her own activities in the little Table Cape community too. I remember her playing badminton at the local hall, although I have few specific memories of going there with her.

And then there was Mr Whippy.

A family friend drove a Mr Whippy ice-cream van, and one day he arrived at our house in it. I was offered an ice cream and immediately decided this was my opportunity to have something I’d never had before — a double cone.

I had to settle for a single.

Moving to Somerset

By Grade 2, another change was approaching. Mum and Dad had saved enough to leave the rented cottage on Table Cape and move into a brand-new home they had built at 66 Lyon Street, Somerset.

Before we moved, a girl from Somerset Primary School temporarily joined my class at Wynyard. She was only there for a few weeks or months, but I developed what I now recognise as my first crush.

By then I already had a Somerset school jumper, and I started wearing it to Wynyard Primary. When we sat on the floor for class activities, I would manoeuvre myself a little closer to her, hoping she might notice me.

Eventually she returned to Somerset.

When we moved and I transferred to Somerset Primary midway through Grade 2, there were two Grade 2 classes. The principal asked me which one I wanted to join.

I had only one piece of information I needed to make that decision.

I got lucky. She was in the class I chose.

Nothing ever came of my first great romance, but it is the earliest memory I have of being interested in a girl.

The move also represented a big change in our family’s life. We were leaving the little two-bedroom cottage, with its outside toilet and weekly bath, for a new home of our own.

For me there was another important improvement: for the first time, I would have a bedroom of my own.

I was already a devoted St Kilda supporter, following the team my uncles supported. Uncle Brian had even been at the MCG when St Kilda won the 1966 Grand Final. My new bedroom was allowed to reflect that allegiance — red, black and white.

After two and a half years, my life on Table Cape was over.

Somerset was about to become home.