Herbert Opperman was a very different character to his brother. He either lacked Dolph’s unquenchable need for adventure or had worked hard to suppress it. Duty, he found, came in a variety of forms. He chose not to enlist and devoted himself to caring for their ageing mother. Although a more domesticated man, when his blood was up, Herb showed the same steely resolve that ran through the family veins.
In September 1915, the Department of Defence received a report that Herbert’s nephew, Carl Opperman, had been experimenting in wireless telegraphy. Suspicion instantly fell over the rest of the Opperman clan, particularly those over military age who had not enlisted. Local police were directed to call at his residence in Glen Iris to ask about his nationality and parentage. Edith happened to be the only one at home at the time, but answered all the officer’s questions and endured his inference that they probably didn’t ‘take much interest in the war.’ The constable also queried why they kept the front gate locked. Incensed, Herb wrote immediately to the Commissioner of Police expressing his displeasure at the presumption of the family’s disloyalty. He explained that Carl was, in fact, studying telegraphy by correspondence in order to qualify for a position in the Naval Department. As for the front gate:
I’m sure I do not know what significance he attached to that, considering that we have a garden, and there are always cows and horses wandering around looking for a chance to get in; if he had gone to the side gate, the most convenient one, and the gate most used, he would have found that one unlocked.12
The suspicion and side-ways glances lasted as long as the war. In July 1918 Herb felt compelled to formally take an oath attesting to the fact that his ‘sympathies [were] with the British Empire – most decidedly.’13
Hubert attended Armadale State School. Each day he walked to the tram along Spring Road, then walked or ran at the other end to school. A picture from 1917 shows him dressed as a court jester for a school production, his adult features already unmistakable in the adolescent child, his ears already protruding from under his hat.
As an adolescent, Hubert had energy to burn. He was a member of the football, cricket and cross-country running teams. When classmate Frank Smith brought his bike to school, Hubert was the only one able to ride the heavy, gearless machine all the way up the steep hill from Toorak railway station to Kooyong Road. His friends stood in open-mouthed wonder. News of the epic feat soon made the rounds at school.14 During a game of playground football one of his schoolmates started calling him ‘Oppy’. It stuck. In 1917, with anti-German feeling still high, the nickname had the added benefit of removing all vestiges of his foreign heritage. This is not how his mates remembered it, of course. Opperman only became Oppy ‘because it was much shorter.’15
Still captivated by bicycles, he started borrowing his uncle’s Red Bird bicycle without asking. One weekend, while being ‘dinked’ on the handlebars by a school friend who did the pedalling, Hubert’s foot swung into the front wheels. Caught between the spokes and the front forks, his foot acted like a brake. They crashed and buckled the wheel. Unable to conceal the damage, to himself and the bike, Hubert was forced to confess. He received a ‘ticking off’ and paid for the necessary repairs. The crash had one enduring legacy. In every long-distance ride he attempted, the first signs of fatigue would show up in his permanently weakened right foot.16
After he turned fourteen, Hubert reached merit level and suddenly became a disruptive influence at school. When the schoolmaster caught Hubert hurling a medicine ball about the classroom, he banished him to a separate room for the remainder of the term. Was it a combination of youthful exuberance, hormones, and the realisation that attendance was now optional? Or was a deeper inheritance beginning to emerge?
As the war ground to its end news about Dolph was infrequent and brief. Last report was that he had been the victim of a gas attack that left him seriously ill, but alive. Herb and Wil did not know when – or if – he would return to Australia. It was left to them to help Hubert negotiate the next phase of his life.
With his school-leaving certificate in hand, they encouraged him to take the public service exam. Uncle Herb had held a steady job with the Postmaster-General’s Department since he was twelve. Grandma Wil had also worked as a postmistress. The pay was only adequate, but barring any serious breach, it brought a salary for life. A job as a telegraph delivery boy might be just the ticket for an exuberant lad looking for a respectable, steady career path. Hubert had hitherto shown little interest in book learning, but he studied hard in preparation for the competitive test. Some 1200 people sat the exam at the same time. The family were overjoyed when he gained one of the much sought after positions.
In his short life, Hubert had already been exposed to a range of environments and people outside the experience of his urban-dwelling peers. He had come to understand the contrasting personalities in his own family; the dominant and destabilising influence of his charismatic father, the unquestioning loyalty of his mother, and the heroic stoicism of his grandmother. Yet, for all their differences, the Oppermans were a family united by a faith in perseverance and a rejection of fatalism.
Of course, Hubert’s grandmother and uncle wanted him to find more than just a good job. In the boy, they already saw the shadow of the man. The physical and temperamental similarities to his father were obvious. They worried that without direction and application, Hubert’s talents might fail to find a productive outlet. What Herb and Wil really wanted was for the young man in their charge to find the certainty and stability that, up to now, he had been denied.
_________
1 The Farmer and Settler, 13 October 1914.
2 Hubert Opperman, Pedals, Politics and People (Sydney: Haldane Publishing, 1977), p. 10; Hubert Opperman, Interview with Mel Pratt, 1975, NLA.
3 Opperman, Interview with Mel Pratt.
4 Hubert Opperman, Interview with Adam Ashforth, 1983–4, NLA; Opperman, Pedals, pp. 13–16.
5 The North Eastern Ensign, 3 May 1912.
6 Benalla Standard, 18 July 1913.
7 Benalla Standard, 25 July 1913.
8 Opperman, Pedals, pp. 11–12.
9 Opperman, Interview with Mel Pratt.
10 Opperman, Pedals, p. 11.
11 Service Record, NAA: B2455, OPPERMANN ADOLPHUS SAMUEL FERDINAND.
12 Opperman to Chief Commissioner of Police, 29 September 1915,NAA: MP16/1, 1915/3/1307.
13 Opperman, Oath to the Commissioner, 22 July 1918, NAA: MP16/1, 1915/3/1307.
14 Opperman, Pedals, p.17.
15 Sporting Globe, 24 January 1940.
16 Opperman, Pedals, p. 17.
Chapter 2
Malvern’s rising star
River Street, Richmond, Melbourne, 11 December 1918.
The blare of an alarm signalled the imminent arrival of the fire brigade. But it was too late. Shortly after 3pm toxic gases flowed into the sewer system at River Street, in the centre of Richmond’s tanning and starch manufacturing precinct.1 Edward Swannock was inside a maintenance shaft tarring the ladder when a rush of fumes from below took his breath away. Gasping for air, he fell some thirty feet to the bottom. His workmate, William Aldridge, who had been keeping guard at the entrance to the manhole, called for help at a nearby hotel. He then descended into the shaft, only to be similarly overcome. Losing his grip he too fell into the blackness.
Local tanner, John Quinn, witnessed the commotion. Unaware of the danger he immediately entered the hole and went down about twenty feet. Suddenly he was ‘stupefied by the poisonous gas’.2 His head jerked back and his arms stretched out as if gesturing for assistance. Collapsing against the ladder, a small ledge jutting out from the side of the shaft saved him ‘from falling to the black depths where the other two unfortunate men were huddled together’.3 Yet another man volunteered to descend. Samuel Mills, a tannery employee, tied a handkerchief around his mouth and head