Running Away to C.
In those days at the end of World War II when I was a boy in my old home town of Box Hill, the discovery that I could read opened up an entirely new world for me. Like every other child I had been taught the basic elements of reading but somehow or other in some unusual act of compensation, the fact that I could not speak well was compensated for by the fact that I could read omnivorously.
Everything that came my way I read.
Miss Perry started giving me books from the earliest days and I very soon found that in spite of the degree of difficulty and the size of the books I enjoyed them thoroughly.
I have before me now a number of those books. In the years between seven and ten I read scores of books, large books, books with hundreds of pages and very small print. The earliest ones were adventure books for boys. I still have today “The Adventures of Robin Hood”, “Robinson Crusoe”, “Huckleberry Finn”, “Tom Sawyer”, “The Dog Crusoe”, “Spike of Swift River”, “Deerfoot”, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, “South With Scott”. This latter book was to awaken an interest in the Antarctic that has continued to this day. “The Water Babies” was read over and over again and tears would flow as I read of the boys being stuck half way up narrow chimneys while their cruel masters lit fires beneath their feet. It aroused in me a passionate sense of social justice and I was determined to be a reformer.
I possess today about thirty volumes in the “Biggles” series written by Captain W.E. Johns. Last summer, I took down some of those original Biggles books and looked at them forty years on. How racist Biggles was! But we never thought of it in those days of the War.
I have before me the worn editions of “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn”. I read those books so many times that even to this day, I can open at almost any page, start reading a paragraph and know precisely how that paragraph will finish. The words all fit into a familiar pattern.
But one of the books that inspired me most was Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Kidnapped”. It was given to me by Aunty Mabel and in her handwriting it still reads the 17.11.1946, which was my eighth birthday. I read that book from cover to cover many times. How I envied young David Balfour and his wonderful adventures to find his rightful estate. In my mind I could picture the flight across the heather, the mysterious silver button, his friendship with Alan Breck, the mysterious red fox, and the streets of Edinburgh.
How I wished I could go to Edinburgh. Edinburgh was the gateway which would open to me the mysteries of the highlands of Scotland. They were indelibly in my mind.
In the very small house in which my mother and father lived together with us four children was my “Little Nana”. She was called Little Nana to distinguish her from my other Nana who was “Big Nana”.
Poor old Little Nana. She lived entirely in the past. She was not aware of anything that was happening in the present but her mind, in its rather demented state, lived in a happy environment of Scotland where she had been the only daughter of a Scots Duke from Northumbria she said.
She loved her childhood in Scotland and told me the stories over and over again. I would often sit on her knee in the narrow rocking chair she had before the small grate in which a coke fire burnt. She would be looking up at the mantelpiece where there was a big pictures of Robbie Burns surrounded by pieces of heather she had brought with her. She always had a favourite broach which had the mysterious word “Ebenezer” upon it and spelled out some mystery of God’s protection of her in days gone by.
She loved her Edinburgh. Often while I would be sitting on her knee cradled in her arms before the fire, she would recite long lengths of Burns’ poetry. I can still hear her saying to me as I snuggled close to her:
“Til all the seas gang dry my dear, and the rocks melt with the sun, I will love ye yet my dear, While the sands of life do run.”
She would vividly describe to me the streets and alleys of Edinburgh, the shops, the hotel where she stayed on her honeymoon, the castle on the rock with the mysterious room where a royal baby had been sealed up in a wall.
Some time shortly after reading “Kidnapped” I determined that Box Hill was really a very dull place and that a boy who wanted adventure would need to leave such a place as Box Hill and run away to sea.
I determined then and there, not to waste one more day. I decided I would run away to sea and sail to Edinburgh!
Instinctively I knew what to take. My reading of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and David Balfour and Robinson Crusoe had prepared me well. I went to the box beside my bed, with the tartan lid, in which all of my treasures were stored and took my best marbles, a silver cigarette lighter which I had found somewhere, some cord and a whistle that I had from attending cubs, and the pocket knife that had been my Grandfather’s which he gave to me before he died, with its large blade up one end and a very short sharp blade up the other which he told me he used for “fixing tom cats”.
I realized that when you are running away to sea a man must take provisions and fortunately nearly everybody who ran away to sea mentioned the same provisions. Coming from a bakery shop it was not difficult to get half a loaf of bread. I filled a bottle with clean water. I raided the ice chest to get a thick piece of cheese with rind on it. We did not have that kind, so a piece of Kraft cheese which was wrapped in silver paper would do.
I could not find a red checked ‘kerchief in which to tie the provisions onto the end of the stick, but I took a tea towel and tied everything up on the end of a conveniently long stick.
With the provisions over my shoulder I walked out the front gate and shut it firmly behind me that summer afternoon. I took a last look at the house. It was better if I did not say goodbye to everybody. They would miss me before long anyway. I was now on my way, running away to sea, to Scotland, to fame and fortune.
I remembered Keat’s poem and recited it proudly, over and over:
“There was a naughty boy, and a naughty boy was he. He ran away to Scotland, the people there to see.”
I stood in the centre of the road and pondered which direction I should go. I was not sure where the sea lay. For some reason or other I thought the sea would be further away from the built up area so headed off due east up the lane opposite our house. The lane ran parallel with Whitehorse Road as it headed towards the Dandenong Ranges.
I had never been to the end of this lane. Soon the houses became sparser and there were more paddocks. The lane went up a long, steep hill and at the top the cobblestones which formed the lane ceased and only a dirt track continued. I followed the dirt track quite some distance. I reasoned that I was miles away from home by now. Mother probably had a police search party out looking for me. Maybe they had called some black trackers in from Darwin to try to trace my footprints. I realized that Mother would be crying. Little Nana would be crying too. They would be all wanting me back home and missing me terribly.
Eventually I came to a high picket fence. I recognised the picket fence. This was the Box Hill cemetery. They called it the dead centre of town but in fact it was on the boundary of the municipality. I walked along the fence until I came to a place where one picket was missing and squeezing through walked into the cemetery.
Walking into the cemetery alone, even on a summer afternoon, was a very brave thing to do. I was in the older part of the cemetery. Many of the grave stones were covered with weeds and moss and some had been broken. Occasionally there would have been a re opened grave with a mound of earth on top of it and dead flowers. In those days towards the end of the War when there was a shortage of cement the grave stones were not laid or sealed for some considerable time. I wandered up and down the rows looking for one which bore our family name where my grandfather was buried.
Some of the graves were beautiful. Others were derelict. I stopped in front of one which simply said:
C.J. Dennis “The Sentimental Bloke”
and I realized that I was facing history. Just nearby was a huge marble cross and at the bottom two hands reaching, as it were, out of the grave and clutching the base of the cross. The words said, in faded gold:
“Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling.”
I pondered at the meaning and felt a cold shiver. A few rows further on there was a most moving gravestone. The whole top of the grave was in white marble which had been chipped and finished unevenly. Carved out of the white marble were two skis, one of them broken. It told the story of a young boy lost in the snow and who perished far from his family and friends.
I sat down on the adjacent grave and opened up the tea towel. I ate most of the bread and some of the cheese and drank some of the water which was warm and not very nice.
Running away to sea was great. This was the life. Fresh air. Open road. No school. But it was rather boring. In fact running away from home was not nearly so interesting, especially as I had not found the sea and the bread, the water and the cheese were not so good. Apart from that I thought it would be getting dark soon.
So I determined to head home.
Back through the cemetery I went with my footsteps quickening towards the fence. Through the picket fence and down the lane. Strangely enough the down hill run did not seem to take anywhere near as much time as coming up and very soon I ran out into my home street and to No.5 Miller Street. There were no search parties about. Nana was still in her rocking chair in her room in front of the fireplace and I found Mother scrubbing clothes by hand in the stone wash trough of our wash house down the backyard. She looked at me very casually and said “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you for about an hour.”
I decided that it would be better not to tell her that I had actually run away to sea. She never realized that given some more time I could have been a cabin boy on my way to Edinburgh. The only “sea” that I saw was the “C” in the world “cemetery”.
Thirty years later I did visit Edinburgh. I travelled with my wife Beverley and we came up on the Flying Scotsman. As we got out of the train at Waverley Station, a most unusual feeling came over me. I said to my wife “We will go up the stairs at the end of the station and when we come out at the top, ahead of us we will see the Walter Scott Memorial and the old loch now filled in with beautiful flowers. Over to the left will be the cliffs and castle rock with Edinburgh Castle on the top and to the right will be Princes Street. To the left will be the spire of St. Giles and a bridge. Not far from the railway station, over to our left will be the Carlton Hotel where Grandmother had her honeymoon.”
We walked out of the station and the city was stretched before in precisely the order I had pictured it, the picture that had been given to me before I was ten years of age when my Little Nana died. This was the Edinburgh she loved.
I had not run away to sea, but I did get to see Scotland, and her beloved Edinburgh but with better company and with more than bread and water and cheese.
But that was a long way off from those days when I used to walk home up Bank Street, along the railway line to the top of the hill, and to No.5 Miller Street, Box Hill, a great city which was only a village where the adults were kind and where the children grew up responsibly.
GORDON MOYES