who loved girls. My mother wanted me to be a doctor.
Our next move was to Ballarat, where we stayed for four years. This was a record. Usually S.A. officers were sent packing every one or two years. The reason may have been to save some of them from becoming involved with female parishioners - an unworthy thought. I went to Ballarat High School - a four-mile bike ride around Lake Wendouree in winter, boiling water having been poured into the handlebars. All my academic excellence left me. There were, horror of horrors, male teachers as well as female and each subject had a different teacher. After a few weeks, the headmaster, another impressive man, called together the whole school and announced: "The four worst boys in the school are Wooster, Beck, Hume and Penberthy." All but Hume were sons of Salvation Army officers. In those years I was no higher up in the class than twenty-seventh.
I was in love with Lenyss Wass and Alice Stone as well as with my own girlfriend. Her name was Isobel, her figure was like that of the Venus de Milo and there was nothing missing as far as I could see. She had red hair, a lovely voice and freckles. At the age of fourteen, she exuded warmth and passion and was constantly loyal to whoever was her current boyfriend. When we arrived from Bendigo to the prettiest city in Australia, Ballarat, my mother elected to teach the fourteen-year-olds in Sunday school. One day about seven of us were sitting on Salvation Army forms in a special enclave, when the curtain was pulled aside and there Isobel stood. I stopped breathing but it was soon plain that currently she favoured Lindsay Brown. Lindsay was a small tough muscular character, who could fight and play the cornet better than anyone else around, except for me, of course. I took one look at Isobel, plucked up courage and in no time I'd taken her away from Lindsay Brown.
I soon discovered that Isobel was also in my class at Ballarat High School. I carried her school case home around Lake Wendouree for three weeks without my father catching me at it. In the fourth week Isobel left school to take a job at the North Ballarat woollen mills. From then on, I saw her only in Sunday School and on Thursday nights, when she came to our house to visit my mother with another Sunday School teacher, Elima Oates.
Isobel's closest girl friend was Rita, the daughter of the Salvation Army's divisional commander. Sometimes they would come to our house together and I would take them to my room where we were supposed to be learning our Sunday School lessons together. Rita and Isobel told me all the things that Salvationists were supposed to know. In hot whispers, they told me that they really wanted only to talk about sex.
My gang at school consisted of Harold Shore, who taught me boxing, Alan Shields, who was my minder, and Gordon Mackie and Maurie Gallagher, who taught me nothing. The biggest influence on me, however, was Hector Wood, who lived with his grandmother, rang the bells at the Church of England and told me the best collection of dirty stories I have ever heard. Hector was a real man, a hero. He was expelled twice, reinstated twice and later made a corporal in the A.I.F. I was in the school orchestra on flute, learned to pole-vault over the school hedge, was first cornet in the North Ballarat Corps band and played half-back for the North Ballarat Football Club. I was also captain of the Scouts' cricket team. My weekend friends were mostly Salvation Army boys, who played cornet or euphonium on Sundays.
Occasionally, on a Saturday, we would all go adventuring in the Black Hills area of North Ballarat, among mine shafts and caves.
One Saturday Isobel was invited to join us, so off we went to Black Hill. After some walking and exploring we came to the entrance of a dark cave. The young Salvationists had a debate about who would take Isobel into the cave. Finally I was chosen and, when we came out, Isobel was breathing heavily and we all ran excitedly down the hill towards Ballarat. I fantasised about what had happened in the three minutes in the dark and immediately became a hero, but I gained the impression that my friends thought that I should not play the cornet in the holiness meeting on the following day.
Having snatched the affections of Isobel from Lindsay I was somewhat out of favour with him - even more so some time later when we were at a Scout camp at Daylesford, the mineral water capital of Australia. Lindsay got into difficulties in the deep waters of the lake and I rescued him, right in front of his current sweetheart. I was a hero and received a medal for my brave act. Lindsay never spoke to me again. Eventually he married the lass who was temporarily infatuated with me and they lived very happily until one dark night over Coffs Harbour, when they died together in a plane crash.
Those years in Ballarat were among the happiest of all. It is an ideal place for the young to grow and have adventures. Lake Wendouree was the main attraction, a fine place for swimming. I became the best swimmer in our gang and could struggle right across. Rowers cut lanes through the reeds and the north bank was a good place for fighting. One afternoon, a mate of mine offered to fight two of the rival gang's larrikins, at once. They flattened him. In my own imagination, I was superior in almost everything, but Max was braver.
Every afternoon after school, I would stop at Harold Shore's place and box with the gloves on. Harold's big brother was acclaimed the best boxer in the school. Everyone knew this, so by my association, I could pretend to be untouchable. One day, behind the locker room, I took on a little chap named Leask. He belted me on the nose and won the fight with one hit. My friends had told him: "You can't beat him. He boxes round at Harold Shore's place." Harold's prowess had not rubbed off on me and Leask apologised. Harold was a born fighter but he was one of the first killed in World War Two.
I was late for school every day of my Ballarat years and every day, Jerry Waters, the Headmaster, was at the school gates waiting for me. "Why late, boy?" he would intone and authorise my punishment. I was not prepared to tell him that my mother was late cutting my egg sandwiches. Even when I managed to get threepence for a meat pie, I was still late. Riding a bike and playing speedway games on the way around the lake was more fun than school. The slippery leaves, fallen from the trees, made a perfect racetrack.
After three years of academic degradation and shame, I was faced with the Intermediate Certificate examinations. Any teacher would have given one hundred to one that I wouldn't pass. For a few months I gave up everything and studied far into the night, every night. Everyone was surprised when I was among the only four who passed. [This seems unlikely.]
My father started nailing down packing cases again and soon we were back in the queen city of the south, Melbourne. We settled in Thornbury and I enrolled at Northcote High School. In 1931 James F. Cairns [later a member of the federal parliament] had left, so had Ron Todd, the best forward the V.F.L. ever had. My career went curiously parallel with that of Jim Cairns for years and he and his wife, Gwen, became close friends. Cairns was still a hero at Northcote High for many years after he left. He was a champion athlete, captain of the Melbourne Harriers, leader of the school's team and already a humanist. When I left Northcote High School, I joined the Melbourne Harriers, Australia's oldest athletics club and thus became associated with Cairns.
Later, we fought a few minutes of the war together in Morotai, but before the war I'd been out with him on one or two of his detective cases, while he was in the police force. We would hide behind a hedge or some other shelter and keep a house under surveillance, mainly chatting about athletics and the correct running style. Jim was head of the police force's debating team. He was promoted fast, resigned just as fast and never went back after the war. Cairns studied by correspondence while he was in the armed forces and got a very good economics degree. After demobilisation he became a lecturer in economic history at Melbourne University. He was working on his Ph.D. while I was studying at Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. I'd been at Olympic Park the day our club president introduced him to his future wife, Gwen, the girl from Blue Knob near Nimbin, N.S.W. [Gwen had two little boys and had been left in some difficulty. Almost immediately Jim said; "I'll look after them" - and he did. I was in their house a lot - I know how caring for Gwen and the boys Jim was. I never saw the slightest suspicion of a glance at anyone else.] Much later on, [after the Juni Morosi affair] when we were standing together at the easternmost point of Australia, Byron Bay, Cairns grabbed me by the lapels and shook me. "I'll tell you about love," he said. "You don't have to tell me," I replied, "I don't want to hear." So we changed the subject.
Jim Cairns is one of the great humanists, an excellent economist and an exceptional lover of all that is pure, sane, intelligent and moral. The trouble with the world is that great humanists, great economists and exceptional lovers are vulnerable