Johnny Walker
I was 26 when I left my work as a country parson to take up the prestigious position as the Minister Cheltenham Church of Christ Victoria. This Church had the reputation of being a very large and alive Church. But that was a mirage. The reality was quite different as this young country parson was soon to discover. The life of a suburban Minister has some real surprises.
The Cheltenham Church of Christ had very extensive properties in those days when I ministered during the nineteen sixties and seventies and we had wonderful programs which filled our properties day and night with hundreds of young people.
One important part of our training program for youth in those days lay in the field of alcohol education. This was an era when people thought it was smart to smoke cigarettes, to drink alcohol and drive cars simultaneously. There was very little being done to promote the dangers of drunken driving – there was no random breath testing, no compulsory wearing of seat belts, and no .05 level of conviction. In fact in the nineteen sixties the tests of whether you were drunk or not was to walk along the white line in the centre of the road. A person had to be unable to walk along the white line and to be virtually falling over before they would be charged with drunken driving.
Only the Churches campaigned strongly against the evils of alcohol. Only groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Temperance Alliance spoke out strongly for the need for responsible living without using the social crutch of alcohol.
The life of a suburban minister meant that we would be responsible for alcohol education particularly among our secondary school students whom we taught each week at the Cheltenham High School and the Mentone Girls High School and in our Youth Club work.
Looking back through a 1970 weekly church paper I see that we had had an evening of alcohol education attended by more than two hundred and fifty teenagers at which a most gruesome film was screened showing the effects of alcohol on driving produced by Ansvar Insurance Company. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union had organised a magnificent supper demonstrating to young people that they could have a full party of beautifully presented eats and drinks on the table without having to resort to beer and spirits. The two hundred and fifty young people were impressed by the film, listened politely to the police as they gave a talk on responsible driving and thoroughly enjoyed the supper.
Alcohol Education was a standard part of our Church Youth Programming and it is to be regretted that once strong Churches for the Temperance cause like the Methodist Church have seen their standards drop and that even ministers, whom you could count on always being abstainers within the Methodist, Baptist and Churches of Christ are now likely to enjoy alcoholic beverages.
Just round the corner from the Cheltenham Church of Christ was the Cheltenham Arms Hotel. It was a source of many problems to the Church. It’s car park backed onto the Church property and many inebriated people came home at night taking short cuts through the Church property at the time when we would have many young girls around. Some abusive young drunks would hang around our netball courts as the girls completed their training making comments about their legs and short netball tunics.
Then every Saturday night I had to expect the filthy mess drinkers would leave on the beautiful lawns of the Cheltenham Church of Christ. On a summers night, when the pubs closed large numbers of rowdy drinkers would come around to the Church, sprawl all over the Church lawns and leave behind bottles, cans, hamburger and chip papers and chiko roll wrappers. The first job I had each Sunday morning before the first service was to clear up all the filth left behind by the Saturday night revellers.
We solved that problem quite by accident.
The Church was on top of the hill and the lovely lawns were most inviting. We had the idea about flood lighting our Church front so that the tens of thousands of cars that went past on the Nepean Highway each night would see the Church. We arranged with the State Electricity Commission for three big floodlights to be erected on the top of the power poles facing the Church and those floodlights bathed the Church and the lawns in a beautiful white glow all night. It did mean that in our manse next door to the Church you could sit up in bed with the blinds closed and still be able to read a book without turning the lights on. However, the Church became a landmark for the community and once the lights were installed the revellers and drunkards who used to lie on the lawns drinking now did not arrive. They avoided the floodlit area like the plague and our lawns were kept clean. We had not realised the truth of the words of Jesus that deeds of darkness hate the light.
Another problem from the Cheltenham Arms Hotel was the constant blaring of its burglar alarm. Apparently at night there were always drunken people who tried to get into the hotel for a drink or who ventured into areas that had been alarmed, or who used to rattle the doors on the bottle shop hoping to attract attention and get someone to open up for late night purchases. Any of these activities would set off the alarm and as most of the staff would have gone home including apparently the only person who had keys to turn off the alarm, the alarm would sometimes go for hours. Consequently when the alarm went off one night and kept going for sometime no one took any notice.
It was only when the Moorabbin Standard News came out the following week and we read about a very large robbery of bottles of alcohol from the bottle shop by the car park that we realised one of those alarms in the previous week was a genuine one. The theft of such a huge amount of alcohol was not a matter that distressed us at the Cheltenham Church of Christ very much at all.
About a month later just as darkness was falling I was doing my usual nightly walk around the Church properties checking that doors had been properly locked and gates locked in those areas that would not be used for evening programs when I noticed a large van parked at the back of the Sunday School Kindergarten. That rear part of the car park was adjacent to the hotel car park and it was most unusual to have strange vehicles parked near the kindergarten at this time. I walked across the car park walking on the grass and noticed that the side sliding door of the van was open. There was no one around but as I stood there I heard two men talking. I looked everywhere and could not see the people who were talking and yet the voices were only a matter of a few yards from me.
It was then that I realised that the two men speaking were actually under the kindergarten floor. I thought this most strange as we were not having any work done on that part of the property at all at that time and wondered whether it was someone trying to break into the building in order to steal some of our new amplification equipment that we had just installed in the kindergarten.
I was thinking this as I stood beside the open door of the van that was backed right up to the rear corner of the kindergarten where we had a cyclone chain fence and gate. Someone with bolt cutters had cut the chain and lock from the gate and it was open allowing access from underneath the kindergarten to the van. Standing at the open sliding door of the van I lent in a pulled out the van keys and just hid them under the van seat. At least it would take them sometime before they could find the keys and get the van mobile.
I walked back across the grass making sure that I did not walk on the gravel driveway which would give away my presence up past the primary department hall, the main brick Sunday School hall, the gymnasium, the tennis courts, the office block and the Church property around to our manse and then came back down past the Church buildings in the rear section of the Church property which was all lawn and fenced off from the Hotel car park. This lovely open back lawn area behind all the Church buildings was used by our children as a play area and also as an area where our animals from time to time – chooks, duck, a goat, a sheep, cat and dog – always had plenty of free area. Up the back near the old kindergarten was a set of brick toilets no longer used except for storage. I stood inside the doorway of the disused toilets listening to the conversation of the two men. I could see now what was happening. The two men under the kindergarten were passing bottles to each other and the one closest to the rear of the kindergarten was passing the bottles out onto the lawn where he was stacking up a long row of them. They had torn off a couple of baseboards along the bottom of the kindergarten to allow access under the floorboards. I watched for sometime as the one nearest the outside kept passing out bottles of alcohol and stacking them ready for removal. Perhaps two hundred or more bottles of alcoholic beverage were stacked on the lawn. I heard one man say “Well that’s about it, only another half dozen and then we’re finished”.
I decided I should do something and rather foolishly, instead of ringing for the police, I decided to tackle them myself.
This was really a stupid decision but it was done on the spur of the moment and I must say that I was indignant that the men had been violating our property and storing the stolen proceeds from the robbery at the Cheltenham Arms Hotel underneath our kindergarten. I walked up to the pile of bottles and stood there with my arms crossed and feet apart and in my deepest and loudest voice called “Righto you two – out from there. Come out slowly one at a time, stand up against the wall facing the wall. Now move!” To my surprise the first man came out covered with dry dirt, leaves and cobwebs and meekly stood up against the wall with his hands behind him. Then the second man muttering and cursing came out as well. I continued in my authoritative voice, “out there slowly, stand up, put your hands behind your back. Move!”. Both of them stood side by side. If they had any wits about them they could have turned round and punched me, run out the side gate and jumped into the van. However, they just stood there.
I felt rather like a kelpie dog that had a habit of chasing cars along the service road beside the Nepean Highway. He would chase after the cars as they started off from the lights rather slowly barking at their wheels all the way and snapping at their tyres. Laddie used to drive us mad with this habit of chasing cars and biting their wheels. But the dog was silly enough that even if he had caught one of the cars he would not have known what to do with it. Here was I having caught red-handed two thieves beginning to clear away their hidden loot that they had stashed under the kindergarten and now I didn’t know what to do.
I walked over and grabbed an arm of each of them and pushed it up their back in the form of a half Nelson. The holds that I had learnt in my days of wrestling at the YMCA were coming in handy. With a firm grip on each I twisted the arm further up their backs making each man bend over as he walked. I told them to turn round and to walk up the rear part of the Church and to my surprise they did. I moved them, both with their arms still twisted, through the back fence and into the manse backyard, where opposite us was our small outside laundry with the key in the door. I marched both men over to the laundry and told them to bend over with their heads in the wash trough. With them face down in the empty trough I pushed their arms further up their backs so that they were held in a pretty secure position and called out to my wife. Beverley came out and wondered what on earth was happening with two men bent over the double trough looking for all the world as if they very both vomiting except for the strong grip I had on their arms twisted up their back. I told her to shut the door turn the key in the lock and go and ring the police. Locking the two criminals and myself in the laundry, she did it. There was no way in which any of us could easily get out of the laundry.
Beverley raced to the phone and quickly rang the Cheltenham Police station. I don’t know what she told them but it had quite an electric effect upon the duty sergeant and the few constables who were sitting around in the station because within a matter of sixty seconds I heard two sirens from across the highway and I could tell from the sounds of the sirens that the police cars were driving against the traffic flow across the Nepean Highway and up into our drive. Before the wail of the sirens had even ended I could hear the running feet of police up our back concrete path and to the laundry door. The door was unlocked and three burly policemen came in and took the two culprits from my hands and marched them one at a time back to the police car.
It was only when the Sergeant was talking to me and mentioned the fact that it was not often they had a civilian arrest that I realised what had happened.
I took this Sergeant around the back of the Sunday School and showed him the kindergarten with the boards off, the bottles of alcohol stacked neatly along the lawn, many of them still in expensive boxes, and the van with its sliding door open, the rear door open, and quite a number of large cardboard boxes of alcohol already stacked inside. The Police Sergeant made the obvious comment “This is probably the loot from that Bottle Shop robbery at the Cheltenham Arms over the fence, the other week. We never caught those fellows but I will bet anything you like that these are the proceeds from the Cheltenham Arms Hotel.” The Police Sergeant congratulated me on apprehending the robbers but gave me a stern warning that next time I should ring the police immediately and keep right out of the way.
Later that night the phone rang, it was my friendly neighbourhood Police Sergeant once more. “I want to thank you for what you did tonight. One of those fellows you caught has a record as long as your arm. I am very surprised he did not try to belt you. You would have been in real trouble if they both turned on you. Maybe he has been inside so long that he just automatically does what he is told when an authoritative voice directs. But anyway you’ve as much guts as a football team and we want to thank you.”
Later on I received a letter from the Police Inspector responsible for our district and of course George Coote from the Moorabbin Standard News wanted to come along to get a photograph and a first hand story about how a minister had tackled two robbers and caught them single handedly, locking them in the laundry until the police had arrived. It made a good story on an otherwise dull week in Cheltenham.
It was then that the Publican from the Cheltenham Arms Hotel came round to thank me. He promised a cheque for Church activities in appreciation for clearing up the Bottle Shop robbery and for the recovery of their loot but as an act of personal appreciation – he delivered into my hands a beautifully wrapped box – “I would like to give you this small token of our thanks”.
I thanked the Publican. It was the first time I had really said anything pleasant to him since our arrival. If only he had known how frequently I used to mutter about his patrons when I had to clear up the rubbish from the front lawns. After he left we opened the present. It was a box containing a bottle Johnny Walker Black Label Whisky.
I found out later from connoisseurs that this very large bottle of Black Label Johnny Walker Whisky was indeed a very expensive gift. But what does a teetotal Minister of Religion do with a bottle of Black Label Johnny Walker Whisky. I certainly would not keep it.
Should we give it to Arthur, my alcohol-loving brother-in-law? No, we would not give alcohol to anybody because it would only confirm them in their drinking habits and possibly lead to further alcoholism. Should I give it to the police? No, that would only encourage them to be involved in drinking and here we were lecturing young people about the dangers of alcohol and driving. Who could we give it too? There was no one whom I would give a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label Whisky to.
There was only one thing to do and that was to put it where it would not harm anybody. So for the first time in my life I opened a bottle of Johnny Walker Whisky and had great joy in upending it in the kitchen sink and letting it all run down the drain.
Later when certain members of my Rotary Club learned what I had done with the bottle of Johnny Walker they expressed profound grief almost as if some dearly departed loved one had left. I certainly had a number of offers to have taken over that bottle but as we watched it gurgling its way down the sink we felt we had struck another blow in the Temperance cause.
That night in my study I spent some time writing up my journal and looking out of the window at the never ending stream of cars stopping at the traffic lights at the corner of Nepean Highway and Chesterville Road, that wide intersection that was dominated by the lovely white Church with the high white tower noting down the events of another day as a suburban minister.
GORDON MOYES