I well remember to drive from wherever Perth airport was then (probably about 1949) to Brookton. It was a canvas-topped car with no windows and in winter, so I froze but it was exciting. Perth to Northam and then to Brookton (no direct road then) and took hours.
I think we initially moved into a residence behind a shop, which was accommodating. Elsa moved next door with Madam – a woman she had known for years (I don’t remember how she got to Brookton). They incessantly played cards, Madam never had a rollie out of her mouth, and they constantly made sponge cakes using up hard-to-get eggs (often inedible).
Bill initially assisted Jack to run Cootes Motors but then he got the Starting Price Bookmaker’s licence and opened up in the shop in front of where we were living. I have no idea if he was successful but he sold to Les MacMullen and got the licence to the Bedford Hotel so we moved into the pub. Very commodious – many rooms, big kitchen, lots of outhouses with chooks and a paddock with a cow.
Bill was a good publican. Blacks could get their drinks out the back – against the law then – and the whites in the front. He never got shut down. Betty held soirees out the back in the beer garden – they drank a lot of sherry then. Farmer’s wives would gravitate to the Bedford on Thursdays and much noise and alcohol followed. Many the crashed Buick or Pontiac on the way home but wool was around $4 a kilo and they were rich.
I went to the local primary school, which was backward. We made gumnut bombs and filled .303 cartridges with gun powder and crackers and fired them at each other. Maureen Collard would beat up anyone who called her a boong. I liked Maureen as she punched anyone who threatened me after school. I especially liked her after the teacher threw a duster at her for some inconsequential error and she got up and threw it back and hit him. She was then expelled but we never lost touch. Those Collards were strong people.
The new school on the other side of the town was no better and I left as soon as soon as I turned 14 – the legal leaving age then. I worked as a farm hand driving trucks, bulldozers, working sheep, harvesting wheat and oats – all quite interesting jobs. Driving a truck loaded with wheat into Brookton at 15 was illegal but the local policeman (Stan Wall) didn’t mind.