Today I attended Mick’s funeral with Dennis Coleman and our wives Sue and Karen. Mick had endured very poor health for many years and regrettably I had not seen him since Dennis’ 50th. when we were all in our prime. Where have the years gone? Dennis and I started at Darlo in January 1958 at the age of 7 and 8 and walked away in December 1967 at the age of 17 and 18, in my case straight into the Army despite being rejected as a cadet at Darlo. We grew from boys to men in the shadow of World War 2, Vietnam, Bondi, Moore Park, the spiral staircase and Kings Cross, Palmer Street and the cane. Ironically, I met Rosaline Norton in the Bushranger Hotel on the outskirts of Canberra in 1968, while AWOL from Duntroon. An interesting lady also known as the “Witch of Kings Cross” who did “study trips” to Canberra occasionally with a harem of young Gothic girls.  During this ten year period at Darlo our class comprised a passing parade of students, many of whom joined in 1962 from St Anne’s at Bondi, to complete their secondary years. Mick was one of these having moved to Bondi from Mt Isa with his family some years prior. A friendly, tough but gentle bushie character who was good at sport, ensured Mick quickly became popular in the class culminating with him being school Vice-Captain in 1967.

My helter-skelter life, no doubt like many Old Boys, ensured my Darlo dayze memories were placed in a remote file and largely forgotten. Army, early marriage, kids, jobs, jail, (trying to stay out of it), more Army, more jobs, businesses, then the Use-By Date arrives and we are on the scrap heap, if we are lucky enough to avoid bad health and death along the way. Darlo memories for me are very vague and few, however the complete set (1958-1967) of old Blue and Blues that my Mum saved and which recently emerged from the attic, have enabled a few dusty old files to be retrieved. Sadly we have lost a few mates along the way, Dennis Casey, Peter Lynch and Mick Potter, perhaps others. Despite the best efforts of the OBU, our class did not maintain strong bonds or attend regular reunions. Perhaps because the old school closed the year after we left, perhaps because many school memories weren’t all that happy, perhaps because we were all consumed by the demands of modern life, our class drifted apart and most saw little of each other.

Looking back our class was a microcosm of Australian society in the 1950s and 1960s. From Retro to the Hippie era, from Menzies to the emergence of Gough, from FJs to the Kingswood, the GT Falcon and the Mini Cooper. Seeing four big coppers trying to squeeze into a light-blue Mini outside Darlo Police Station one afternoon, even distracted me from the life drawing class I was studying through the windows of East Sydney Tech, as I walked to the underground toilet at Taylor Square on the way to catch the bus to Bondi. Also along this route, we passed the laneway between the jail and the court house containing the high, heavy, black, timber beam containing two or three ring bolts, where ropes could be placed for multiple hangings in the early days. Convict markings could clearly be seen on the sandstone blocks of the old jail on our way to Confession at the Sacred Heart Church, along the section known as “The Wall” opposite Green Park, where fallen boys plied their trade (maybe still do). Our multi-cultural class had boys from Ireland, Germany, Ukraine, Greece, Italy, Malta, China, Hong Kong, as well as such far-flung places as Tamworth, Mt. Isa and Bondi. We had a one-armed Gallipoli veteran school teacher named Steve “Patience” Gould, who had as much patience as a live grenade with the pin pulled out.

Steve became a pacifist, following his First World War experiences. His son Bob ran the Third World Bookshop in Goulburn Street and later King Street Newtown. ASIO Agents had the shop under surveillance in the early seventies and copies of Mao’s “Little Red Book” could be bought there.

Sadly leaving O’Brien Street Bondi and the Jewish neighbours with the Nazi Concentration Camp numbers tattooed on their wrists, I moved to Mount Colah, just south of the Hawkesbury River. Mick moved to Ashfield about the same time, so after school we both walked down Liverpool Street to Museum or Town Hall Station, past the Tradesmen’s Arms Hotel favored by the Razor Gangs many years before. Opposite were exotic ladies standing in little terrace house doorways right on the footpath advising “a fiver for me and a quid for the room, luv." No good to Mick and I, as we were lucky to get two bob a day, pocket money. As the Darlo sex education classes were limited to bees and pollen in those days, I doubt we would have known what to do, even if we had the money.

  Also en route to the train station was Sargeant’s Pie Factory where we could get a free left-over pie from the pie trucks returning from their daily run.  Past the Emden Gun into Hyde Park, we frequently ran into the old gardener who loved to tell us dirty jokes. Occasionally we ventured into the Anzac Memorial to view the sculpture of the bronze, dead, naked soldier supported on his shield by three bare-breasted ladies. Maybe it was a good thing I was barred from the Darlo Cadets. Off to Town Hall Station and a quick free look at the Pix and Post magazines at the news stand before jumping on the train home. In later years Mick and I did lunch time excursions to Kings Cross news agents to peruse more exotic magazines but were frequently told to “piss off” by newsagents, obviously concerned about our moral wellbeing.

To be continued………..