only descended a few metres when he gave the signal to be hauled to the surface. Although brought up quickly he was unconscious, but alive.
Three firemen arrived at the scene. Believing that they were responding to a fire, they had not come equipped to ‘counteract the deadly sewer gas’. Walter Griffith donned a smoke respirator and ‘with this inadequate provision’ decided to go down. He reached Quinn and put a line around his waist. Then, to the horror of those on the surface, he too was overcome. His arms shot upwards as he fell back against the ledge. The workers above hauled Quinn to the surface, but it was too late, ‘some thoughtful person closed the dead man’s eyes’.
A properly equipped team finally arrived from the Eastern Hill Fire Station. Wearing smoke and fume headpieces two men climbed down and first recovered Griffith who was rushed to Melbourne Hospital. Aldridge and Swannock were then brought to the surface. Efforts to revive them proved futile.
A young boy stood among the crowd of spectators, each craning for a view. He watched as the lifeless bodies were drawn to the surface and laid gently on ground. He observed their faces, frozen in a distorted grimace. He stayed until their covered bodies were loaded onto a wagon and taken to the city morgue. The moment never left him.
* * *
Opperman, now fourteen years old, had arrived to the harrowing scene with Herald newspaper crime reporter Tom Kelynack. He had taken a temporary job at the paper while waiting to start his public service career. One of a dozen lads working at the paper – a motley crew of ‘quick witted city gamins, respectable suburban dwellers, country innocents and shrewd larrikins’ – he worked as a general dogsbody, shuttling messages, picking up results or information and running errands. After showing himself to be both quick and reliable, Opperman was assigned to Kelynack as a news spotter.4 Early in the piece, he gave Opperman the somewhat macabre, but routine, task of visiting the city hospitals and police stations to scout for news of incidents or accidents that might make for a good story. If Opperman got wind of a lead he would race back and tell Kelynack who would swing into action.
Working at the newspaper proved an exhilarating introduction to the world beyond school and the suburbs. It exposed him to the unvarnished life of the city, its tales of fatalism, cruelty and courage. It also connected the young man to other people’s daily lives as well as to great moments in history. Towards the end of 1918, Opperman was thrilled to be sworn to secrecy as the first news of an armistice in Europe came through to the newspaper, a secret made more exciting because it meant his father would soon be on his way home.
Opperman enjoyed the sense of immediacy that pervaded the newspaper, as journalists and editors rushed to meet their daily deadlines. He marvelled at the vitality of the print room, the click of the linotype, the smell of ink and the great roar as a new edition sprang from the printing presses. He thrived on the camaraderie and fraternal atmosphere, the shared purpose and the good fellowship that bound people committed to a common goal.5
After six months with the Herald, Opperman finally received notice that he would begin his public service career in the vast Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG). Responsible for postal and telegraph communications in Australia, it employed over 40,000 people across the nation. He was assigned to the Malvern Post Office, not too far from his home, and he started at the bottom, delivering telegrams and letters, clearing letter boxes, stamping and sorting mail.
To his delight, much of his work involved riding a bicycle. The standard issue postal bike, however, was a workhorse designed to give robust and reliable service over many years, rather than make the life of a postman less physically demanding. Yet, Opperman relished his time astride the sturdy machines and enjoyed the special licence granted to PMG officers to ride on the footpath and mount the kerbing. He pedalled the heavy bike up to fifty kilometres a day, six days a week. The days were long. He started at 7.30am, had a two-hour midday break, and finished with the so-called ‘goodnight’ delivery round by 7pm. The weather was irrelevant. When it was wet, he wore leather leggings and a rain cape. When it was hot, he wore a cap – and sweated.
Opperman grew fit and strong. As his body responded to the load the riding became easier. He found that he had plenty of time to daydream during his long rounds. Stories of the American frontier in Westerns or the serialised fiction of the ‘penny dreadfuls’ did not fire his imagination. Rather, he was captivated by true tales of exploration and adventure, the daring record-breaking flights by the early aviators, the physical endurance of forced military marches, or the courage of men who knew the cannonade and bayonet charges of Europe’s wars of Empire. He liked the classical legends of ancient Greece and might have distracted himself on the long delivery rounds by imagining himself a Malvern Pheidippides, running from the Battle of Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over the Persian army.
As he had at the Herald, Opperman responded to the shared dedication to public service that motivated many of his post office colleagues. When an urgent telegram came in from Roma in central Queensland, Opperman raced to deliver it, reaching the recipient in around six minutes, bridging the gulf between that unimaginably remote town and suburban Melbourne to under ten minutes. With the in-house competitiveness conducted in good spirit, Opperman enjoyed the boyish camaraderie of other lads and looked forward to their fortnightly ritual of shouting each other ginger beer ‘spiders’ (a popular and delicious mix of soft drink and ice-cream).
Opperman’s fitness and willingness to push himself set him apart from the other delivery boys, who were content to get the job done by expending the least amount of energy. He dreamt of riding longer, riding further, and delivering more telegrams than the others. One Christmas Eve he volunteered to ride from the post office in Malvern to the city depot twice in a single day to collect messages that could not reach Malvern over the choked telegraph lines. On the return journey he dropped messages to the post offices at Toorak and Armadale, a few kilometres out of his way. The shift took seventeen hours and he finished at one o’clock in the morning. News of his feat spread around the post office, with a few of the older staff claiming it was impossible. Opperman’s earnestness was leavened by a cheeky irreverence. Naturally curious, if still a little shy, he routinely left his rounds late, caught up chatting with the more worldly of the post office staff. So fast had he become on pillar box clearing duties, he could leave at what would have been considered late for an ordinary rider, only to arrive precisely on time with his extra surge of speed. PMG regulations were strict, however, and he earned a fine for ‘loitering on duty’ from an egalitarian supervisor who believed that rules needed to be applied to all staff members without favour.6
For all his youthful energy, young Hubert showed sensitivity beyond his years. Just as his early years working on farms or delivering supplies to miners had been, the daily social world encountered by delivery riders was an adult one with adult concerns. As the bearer of news, he often saw people experiencing extreme emotions. In 1919, in the aftermath of the First World War, the Spanish flu epidemic tore through the staging camps in Europe as troops waited to be shipped home. Death came quickly to many of its victims, often in less than thirty-six hours. Opperman’s satchel contained condolence telegrams and, although sealed, they were instantly recognisable to the postal staff. He knew of the ‘catalytic effect’ each message would unleash once delivered. He altered his rounds accordingly, granting the recipients a few more hours of blissful ignorance before they opened the tiny envelopes of heartbreak.7
With bike racing among the most popular of competitive sports, Opperman eventually found himself in the company of racing cyclists. When his work bike broke down, he took it to the service yard and discovered that one of the PMG bicycle mechanics was none other than Harry Thomas, track hero and winner of the famed Austral Wheel Race. After his competitive career ended, Thomas helped keep a considerable fleet of cycles in good order. Opperman regularly found minor faults with his postal machine, pretexts for visits to the mechanic, who regaled him with tales of past triumphs, adjusted his handlebars and advised him on the best race posture and gear selection.8 The young lad, of course, yearned for more speed. Thomas reluctantly gave in to Opperman’s persistent request for bigger gears.
Opperman was thriving under Grandma Wil and Uncle Herb’s stable home life when Dolph returned from the war. Like thousands of other Australian soldiers who desperately wanted to serve their country, his war did not turn out to be especially