CROSSED MY MIND

As I previously mentioned, there was not much development around us in my early years, there being many paddocks which were dotted by clumps of bush. A thickly vegetated area though, was that between Stoney Creek Road and the future East Hills railway line, which in those days terminated at Herne Bay (Riverwood). Along that line, between Kingsgrove and Dumbleton, ran the railmotor, or “tin hair” as we affectionately called it, and whose progress we sometimes observed from behind the bushes and natural small watercourses while we waited to see what effect the train wheels had on the pennies we placed on the railway lines. In those days, the sound from the train plying between Kingsgrove and Dumbleton (changed to Beverley Hills in 1949) was very distinctly heard at home, particularly in the evening, due to the lack of any substantial intervening development. Beyond the verge of “The Bush”, as we knew it, the fields were open, and rose to where Moorefields Road is now, and I suppose was then. At the top of the hill, and a necessary destination if one ventured beyond the railway line, was a big, ugly, concrete derelict building that we always referred to as the “dunny works.” It was pretty much gutted, but it still had a distinct atmosphere of eeriness. We delighted in scaring each other, by jumping out of any one of its numerous bunker type cells and screaming at the top of our lungs. There were steel ladders and remains of rusted long-abandoned machinery, and boilers from which we either climbed or explored to our hearts’ content. And no matter how many times we visited the place, it was always an adventure. I don’t know who owned it, or what it had been used for, but it was hardly likely that its purpose was for that which we conveniently named it. Apart from the rats and similar occupants of the dunny works, there were pigeons of all varieties. There were blue bars, chequers, flighty pies, reds and all those other varieties whose names I cannot remember after all these years. They perched in great numbers along the railings, rusted steel catwalks and the sills of the enormous gutted windows that encircled the building, and when we entered the building and screamed our lungs out, we were enveloped in a great storm of beating wings and a snowstorm of feathers. It was these birds that attracted one of our mob, Colin Tibbetts - a good-looking blonde-haired kid, who was a bit senior to me - to the dunny works, because except for football, girls and particularly himself, pigeons were his greatest love. He claimed to possess the best homing pigeons in the district, and this was probably because his fondness of pigeons never inhibited his inclination to wring the necks of those unfortunate birds that fell short of his perceived idea of perfection. Nevertheless, he trapped many pigeons during our visits to the dunny works, and never did he return home birdless. At some later stage the dunny works became a storage facility for copra or dried coconut and one night it mysteriously caught fire. We roared up Kingsgrove Road past the gasworks in the Cowley to witness the event. It was pretty exciting because people and cars came from everywhere. It was a successful trip, for when the fire was contained we managed to collect many pieces of copra and despite the risk of breaking our teeth, it was quite palatable or perhaps better described as “chewey”. We kids visited the gutted building a few times after that, but it didn’t hold the same interest and in any case it wasn’t too long before the remaining structure was demolished to make way for the rapidly increasing residential development. Sometimes when we were short of things to do, Bill and I would rig up a wild bird trap to capture any of those that foraged around in the fowl yard. The device was not our invention because I think every boy must have captured birds by the same means. It was just a cardboard box with a rock on top, propped up by a stick with a scattering of bread or wheat under it for bait. We tied the end of a length of string to the stick and with us taking turns holding the other end and hiding on our back verandah, we watched and waited impatiently. We usually caught a few sparrows, which of course we always released, but nothing much else. However, one day I reckoned my luck was in because with great dexterity I snagged a dove and since my immaturity was a good reason for stupidity, I ventured to think that a dove was pretty close to being a pigeon and so with a bit of training it could be made to do similar things, like leaving home and coming back. I was very excited because Col Tibbetts had recently convinced Bill that he should share his interest in pigeon breeding and that being the case, with a little help from Dad and me, Bill had just erected a really big loft obtained from a kid that Col knew. The structure was delivered in about one hundred pieces, like an unassembled jigsaw puzzle and I think that the vendor didn’t do Bill any favours when he managed to get rid of it. It was a mini-skyscraper that looked a bit like a clock tower It’s no wonder that there was no happy ending to this story because the poor dove fluttered to a corner of the cage and was absolutely ignored by its fellow feathered inmates, although they were a bit of a motley collection in this early stage of my brother’s new-found hobby. After a few days the little puffed-up bird was beginning to look pretty wretched and didn’t eat. Bill didn’t have much trouble convincing me that it should be released so that at least it could be wretched in the company of its similar species. I know that my brother was going easy on me and one day soon the dove would have gone missing. When we let it go, it didn’t come back which proved that doves aren’t like pigeons even if they look similar. .