Hello everyone, must be time for a story,
this is a story that my sister asked me to write and share with you from a long time ago. It was that far back that Firecrackers in Victoria were still legal .
I’ve written a story on this subject in the past and I’ve written lots of things in the past that are hidden away deep my Facebook profile so hopefully one day Facebook will release all of that to me and you and everyone can then read it for themselves .
There is a lot of different stories in there and also political stories that I’ve written at the time.
I’ll have a guess that I was around 10 years old.
I was still at St Joseph’s Wonthaggi primary school.
It was getting close to Guy Fawkes night and that’s super exciting for everyone .
And It was sort of like the build up to Easteris now, when you got eggs earlier on and you collected them all up . They will come out in the shops for at least a month before bonfire night and all of the kids will spend every spare cent they had on fire crackers.
You were going into your local milk bar or to the shops and the whole counter was full of them instead of lollies and they sold like hotcakes penny bungers , bangers skyrockets and Catherine wheels you name it they have a lot sparkles my favourite thing was penny bangers and small bottle rockets to aim and shoot , which are little I used to put the end of the stick in the hole in the zip part of my pants poked through a hole in a fence to and aim them , and then set them off that way towards my target using a cigarette to light them or just using a lighter.
With our camping crew from flat rocks we would all gather at one of the campers farms where a bonfire had been prebuilt by their kids and friends over a few weeks. Special prize for the fire was an old car tire to throw on the bonfire to make thick black smoke and it billowed into the night sky you could see the haze of other bonfires in the skyline as a light glowing in the distance as they were absolutely everywhere around town .
We would start at the house and all go there probably 10 families to have a barbecue and get together ., and then wait patiently for dusk then one of the men would get a torch which was a stick with hessian wrapped around it, and they would set it alight , then they would lead the way through the paddocks in the darkness to the bonfire.
All of us kids will be clutching our bags full of fireworks , so excited that the moment was finally here. The men would lite the bonfire while using diesel fuel to start it all from around the bottom and soon it was a blaze in no time flat , so then with the heat of the bonfire you couldn’t go anywhere near it you have to stand back 20 m metres from the fire because of the intense radiant heat.
So everyone will start letting off their fireworks until there was nothing left in the bag,
I always had some extra 22 shells and shotgun cartridges in my pockets I’d pilfered from dad , they still went off with the bang in the fire, but they weren’t actually dangerous because they have no barrel to compress down and gain velocity so they were just like a fizzer with a pop.
Soon enough the bonfire was receding and dying Off and all the kids had let off all their crackers completely ,it then was time to head back to the house again then to the car and then home all of us stinking like fire and all us kids needing a shower before bed but all as happy as a pig in poo.
A few weeks later, old man Curly was making some sinkers out of melted lead in the backyard at home next to the clothes line .
He had a 20 Litre steel bucket on a small fire on the ground and he was melting the lead inside the bucket in a steel ladle to pour into his hot sinker moulds.
It was getting late in the afternoon and all of us were out there except mum and dad as he had finished making sinkers so the girls asked Dad if they could use the fire to boil us all some eggs, he said for sure go and get the eggs off your mother and the way you go. He left and went inside.
Now because my dad. Was a truck driver we had bulk fuel stored at home on the ground in the backyard we had I guess 5000 L petrol tank with a hand pump. Up above that in the air would’ve been a 10,000 L diesel tank with a hand trigger.nozzle
The eggs were going along well, when I had a brain wave or so I thought.
I remember seeing a hessian bag in the back shed, so I thought I’d make my own torch and copy the design of the one I saw at the bonfire nights few weeks back .
So I went down to the shed and found that bag I found a nice size garden stake to attach to so ,
I wrapped it round the stick and then wrapped some wire on the top of it to hold it all in place.
I went back to the fire where the girls were still cooking the eggs and I stuck the end of my torch into the flames. and I waited and I waited and I waited. I pulled out the torch and there was no flames. I couldn’t understand it so then had another brain wave to go over to the petrol bowser where I knew there’s still always a bit of petrol left in the hose, so I didn’t have to pump it just tip the nozzle down to the bottom and pour it onto the hessian part of the torch. That get it going I thought.
Well, I didn’t notice until the last second when I started pouring the petrol out of the hose that there was a solitary spark I saw sitting on the hessian from the fire, So you can imagine what happened next .
Wooomph
Fire absolutely everywhere all over the hose all over the outside of the tank where I spilt it getting the hose out. And dropping it as the flames ran up it towards the nossle sprayed even more fuel .
The flames quickly grew and spreading and they started started licking up towards the diesel Bowser above us.
The girls were screaming. so loudly but Mum and dad thought they just wanted them to have a look at the eggs as I could hear them screaming even louder in the end until Mum and Dad came out and both saw the fire.
Mum got the big hose and doused water on it., Well Dad grabbed a blanket from off the ground. The girls were sitting on and beat the fire and smothered it until it was completely out.
I had never been this frightened in my life.
I knew Dad was angry with me and I don’t blame him. He looked at me and he picked up a massive branch that fallen off the big gumtree that had branches all over the end , I tried to run but it was no use , and flogged me with it until he thought that he had punished me enough.
I don’t think I never cried so much just mostly for the act of having my father beat me it was enough to shatter me.
I was told to get inside and have a shower and get straight to bed with no tea and I’ll be dished out my punishment in the morning.
The thing was between the two tanks of fuel. They would’ve been enough in an explosion to flatten the whole of McKenzie Street down to the main street so it was a bit of a tough lesson learned,.
I woke up sore all over, but
I’m happy the next morning to have to go to school just to get away from the house,
I will say that this for the record this is the only time my father ever hit me and I deserved it because it could’ve been a huge disaster , I think today with our youth they don’t get punished at all so they never learn their lesson. There’s never any ramifications from their actions.
Somehow this needs to change. If our kids are going to have any respect for the elders or other citizens here because there’s no punishment to fit the crimes. They know the law and their play by it and even if they’re taking a court the judge can’t sentence them with anything decent either.
I don’t for one second condone family violence at all, but there is a difference between punishment and abuse.
That’s when the line crosses pass. It gets a bit crowded. We do have a lot of problems socially with a lot of our youth and it stems from the rules in the whole of their life and the different rules at school nowadays and anyway it’s food for thought or something.
We need to have a public debate On this issue and plenty of other issues, but this is a good start because things aren’t that good on the street, things aren’t that good for some of our youth and we can’t just shut our minds and think it goes away we have a responsibility and a duty as a adult to them of course and always be that bad egg in amongst them they end up in jail and that’s where there right at home.
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s story. I remember it like it was yesterday, if I happened to use the diesel hose instead of the petrol one there would’ve been no drama.
I would’ve run around the backyard like an idiot with the torch on fire, but them of breaks I didn’t understand the complexity is the fuels back then like I do now.
So the moral of the story don’t play around wit fuels as the flames may night you
Cheers xxx
Curlyg