On Reminiscence

“I’ve these dreams of walking home

Home where it used to be

Everything is as it was

Frozen in front of me

Here I stand, six feet small

Romanticising years ago...”

~ ’83’, by John Mayer

from this album “Room For Squares”, 2001

The house where I grew up was in a quiet corner of Dandenong, Victoria.  Actually, it was in essence a quiet corner of a quiet corner, which worked out just nicely for me.  I quite liked being tucked away, geographically speaking.  I’m not sure if Dandy West’s location informed the enjoyment I find in solitude or if it simply suited the way I already was.

The City of Greater Dandenong is quite the sprawling urban metropolis, one of the most multicultural areas in Melbourne.  It wasn't too much different in the 'eighties.  Dandy West is bordered by the Pakenham railway line in the south west, the Princes Highway to the north east, Potter Street in the east and, close to our home, the Dandenong Creek in the west.  Over the creek was Yarraman Park, itself a secluded corner of Noble Park.  Mum didn't get her license until I was in high school so it was a march to and from school in the morning.  I've driven that way since and been amazed at how much shorter the mammoth suburban blocks have become.  Even my alumnus, Dandenong West Primary School, seems less like the spacious sprawl it was in my youth.  I was recently shocked to hear that it schools less than three hundred students, as it did back in the day. It always seemed so busy to me.

My grade six class was located in a portable in the north east corner of the campus, and when my dear Mum worked at the local kindergarten, she would often be seen from the classroom window riding her bicycle along Birdwood Avenue, much to the amusement of the teacher.  He used to set us homework sheets during the year, one of which consisted of a map of the school.  Our task was to map out everywhere we walked in the school during the day with a dotted trail.  When I got the corrected page back it had an amendment: a swaggering, spiraling trail in red ink labelled "Mum's Bike".

He was quite the teacher, my grade six teacher.  A ruckman for the St Kilda reserves in the 'sixties (he was "The Flying Dutchman" long before Paul Vander Haar), he was an imposing figure in the schoolyard.  His favourite trick was to sneak up on misbehaving children, spin them around and holding them by the arms, silently lift them to all of his six-foot-four height and glare at them.  Fridays were his typical yard-duty days; they were also typically quiet.

High school felt very much like a graduation, the much larger campus of Dandenong High School (which proudly held on to the name ‘High School’ a long while after ‘Secondary College’ was in vogue) dwarfing the primary school not too far away.  A longer walk but still only a few kilometres from home.  The footbridge that crossed the Princes Highway linking Hemmings Park and the high school was narrow and high enough to make it a serious proposition for anyone afraid of heights.  Even though the sturdy rails would take quite a vault to clear, they were very easy to spit over at the traffic underneath.  Not that I ever did such a thing of course.

We lived pleasantly close to parkland and the scrub down near the Dandy Creek was a frequent haunt for my friends and me.  A friend's father fashioned crude (but heavy!) guns from metal scrap, and we delighted in patrolling our local area in our camo garb, as our favourite GI Joe characters.  The blackberry brambles that grew wild and untamed along the creek would be sprayed every year or so, so eating the blackberries was an unwise practice at least some of the time.  Unlike my friends, I disliked eating fruit and was relatively safe from whatever concoction with which they were doused.

Down near the footbridge that linked Dandy West from Yarraman Park, there was a path that ran alongside the unkempt horse paddocks to Fotheringham Reserve and the cricket oval therein.  It was at the oval that my mutt Scrappy used to run manically off her leash on our walks.  There was a steep rise on one side of the oval that lead to the rear of the factories, workshops and used car dealers along the Princes Highway.  From my high perch, I had a perfect view of the Pitch-and-Putt course off Heatherton Road, as well as the brambles and rabbit warrens along the creek.  Scrappy would chase the rabbits madly and unsuccessfully and, when she was spent, she would come and pant next to me.

Downstream and over the railway line was Greaves Reserve, where I used to go for football training.  It took me three long years of playing for the underperforming Dandenong West Blues, from under-elevens to under-thirteens, to realise I had no footballing talent whatsoever.  I got a game each week because I was diligent in my training, which is to say I turned up.  I was sadly scrawny and pathetically unskilled.  I did have one highlight, against the imposing Clayton Magpies.  Finding myself in space, I ran down the wing, received a kick and marked it without breaking stride.  I kept running my allotted distance (the flying Dutchman would have been so proud!) and kicked with all the might my chicken legs could muster into our forward line... and into the waiting arms of the only Clayton defender in space of his own.  They kicked about thirty-six goals that day.

Once a year, Greaves Reserve also held the Dandenong Show.  All of us Dandy West boys knew each and every break in the fence that separated the park from the railway line, so getting in free was a cinch.  Even when they mended the holes one year, there was always a passage through the drains that allowed the Dandenong Creek under Railway Parade and the railway line itself.  Right in the middle of the drain was a little scary, always pitch black with a perfect circle of light at each end.  

For several years, my Dad would mow lines in the primary school oval at show time and sell off the space as parking.  Made a killing for school fundraising.

From age eleven (I was apparently a mature eleven!) I did a paper round for the local newsagent in Hemmings Street, just by the school.  I enjoyed the mostly solitary nature of the work, often before the sun rose, and I’m sure it has contributed to my inability to really have a good sleep in.  I think I was a pretty good paperboy, as I often made a killing in tips and gratuities each Christmas.

Things change.  Neighbourhoods shrink, people come and they go, buildings disappear and new ones spring up in their place.  Progress is progress.

Dandenong High retains its name but has now merged with Cleeland Secondary College and Doveton Secondary College to form some sort of über-school.

Fotheringham Reserve is much smaller now.  The Dandenong Creek is a concrete tube underneath the behemoth Eastlink tollway, three lanes of sleek bitumen in each direction.  The blackberries are no longer a problem.

Dandenong West Football Club has ditched the navy blue and adopted a red and blue similar to AFL side Melbourne and calls itself the Dandenong Demons.  I’ll bet anything they don’t even miss me at all.

My last boss at the newsagent, a quiet Greek gentleman, tragically died of a heart attack following an armed robbery at the shop in 2003.

Things change.  Our memories remain.

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