Published: 31 Mar 2025

Mareeba was always Kevin’s favourite place of abode and in later life when asked where he came from, he would declared Mareeba to be his hometown. There is a song by Graeme Connors that states, home is not where a man is born but where a man is prepared to die becoming the bookmark to Kevin’s untruth. Even so he always followed up with he may have been born in Dandenong but Mareeba was the town his heart returned to and Mareeba was his mother’s favourite. Besides the adage if a sparrow was born in a stable it wouldn’t be a horse, gave him gravity to claim Mareeba rights.

Living with Edith for the umpteenth time proved difficult as Kevin was now a young teenager with developing individuality and for the first time he was attending school in Mareeba. Edith was a woman closing in on fifty suffering bouts of depression with a husband she didn’t appear to love and a son who had been a difficult birth after a number of miscarriages. Edith’s answer to fear she would also loose Timmy to bad health was to apply him with food, until be became a little pork barrel with attitude.

Mareeba in the nineteen sixties was a dusty cattle town neither Gulf Country nor part of the Atherton Tableland with a population of a little more than five thousand. Mareeba did have some industry, growing tobacco, cattle sales yards and abattoir, also boasting the claim of having the first Mosque in Australia, servicing immigrants from eastern European countries such as Albania.

Entertainment was two picture theatres, a drive in theatre, town hall dance nights while not forgetting the four hotels with busy bars. At any time of the day you would find cattlemen rubbing shoulders with tobacco farmers and tourists up from the south in search of sunshine. As Mareeba was considered the closest town of any size to the far northern cattle country it had privilege of supporting one of states best know rodeo events bring riders from as far away as America.

There was another obvious in the early sixties being the developing rebellious nature of Australia’s youth, possibly a little late if compared with America but with those born during the war years and those born to the thousands of returning soldiers now becoming teenagers they wanted a little more than what satisfied their parents. With work in abundance came a lust for freedom, expression and buying power. Never before had the youth held so much sway over music and fashion. The hat was thrown into the creek, the collared shirt became a tea shirt and the tie delegated to bank officials and public servants. Jeans were the go and the tighter the better, the more you had the more you showed and if you didn’t have it to show you improvised.

Also the fifties and sixties teenagers were becoming mobile and with the war machine turned to producing affordable vehicles they were on the move, with a multitude of makes for choice as General Motors and Ford commenced to make models locally, America’s GM by purchasing a local company Holden becoming GMH.

With the influx of industry favour was quickly turning its eyes from British made to North America. Even so there was a new kid on the block and slowly but surely Japan was gaining influence and reputation for initiative and reliability. It is strange how quickly yesterday’s enemy becomes today’s bedfellow.

Picture night was the main entertainment and if there was a popular film it would be a full house for a number of showings. American fashion was all the go with teenagers attempting to emulate their celluloid heroes or heroines, although with a distinctive Australian flavour. In the southern cities there were Mods, Teddy-boys but in the north it was Rockers with stovepipe pants, white shirt and black tie turned to display the shorter length, not forgetting the periwinkle shoes and hair infused with so much California poppy oil to hold the so described duck-arse style, it dripped down your neck staining shirt collars to permanent yellow – now you were ready to hit town.

The younger teenagers found their bent in cafés slurping malted milks, eating hamburgers, fish and chips, potato scallops (cakes) or sausage rolls while selecting their favourite tune on the juke box headers at the top of each seating bay, as they ogled the girls and bragged about imaginary success. To support boasting of their imaginary conquests would be the display of a distinctive rise in the thin leather of a wallet being proof of activity, after steeling a franger, rubber, condom or whatever was your choice of name for prophylactics, from an older brother.

Kevin became a teenager in sixty-one but with his constant changing of school and town he missed the bonding that most lay down during those troublesome years. We now find him at a new school in a new town.

True Kevin had spent many holidays in Mareeba during his first internment at Herberton’s Hostel but this time he was a town’s boy and a proud Mareeba town’s boy at that. Little did he know his time in Mareeba would be short, no more than the passing of a single school term. In later years while reminiscing those dusty days, he found it difficult to recall his time at Mareeba’s school. It was as if changing schools so often he had unconsciously whipped it from his memory.

What was memorable was the fear of epidemic during that year, firstly it was polio meningitis then came a flue epidemic, followed by that of tuberculosis. The government did the rounds of schools with immunisation for Polio and Tuberculosis and it was with TB that Kevin’s testing showed positive. While waiting for a second test Edith took to isolating the lad. He had his own plate, cup and cutlery while kept distant from her precious Timmy.

Eventually Kevin’s second testing proved negative but he had been in contact with tuberculosis building his own immunity and shock and horror it was through Edith’s younger brother Arthur. Previous to Kevin’s testing Arthur had come to stay with Edith for a number of nights and as there wasn’t a spare bed he shared head to foot with Kevin, later on it was Arthur who was found to have the disease and well advanced.

No apology was offered.

Town life was interesting for Kevin as he had befriended a native boy Rex Gordon from his class, spending many weekends at the pensioner’s housing estate, if a short row of two room huts on stilts could be considered an estate, where Rex lived with his uncle, or on the Granite Creek railway bridge diving into the murky water.

Even with Rex as a mate Kevin found difficulty making friends as he had little previous history of town life to share and in the most Mareeba kids weren’t interested in his Melbourne stories, it being a place too far to contemplate and notorious for having foul weather. Also anyone further south of Rockhampton was considered to be Wetbacks or Mexicans, borrowed from the American vernacular, therefore the fact that most of Kevin’s time had been in the north was disregarded and he remained a Wetback.

During Kevin’s time in Mareeba he was separated from his mother who had taken employment as housemaid on a cattle station near Georgetown at a distance of more than two hundred and fifty miles. Kevin was again boarding with Ivy’s friend Edith and her roly-poly kid with attitude but after what he believed to be a good deed towards a stranger it was obvious his stay at the Refreshment Rooms was becoming untenable.

Edith and her husband Graham were avid lawn bowl players. Most Sundays would find them at the bowling club then after a few ends of bowls, a few beers it would be back for Sunday roast. Edith was a marvellous cook and her meat and mashy-pea pies made for the rooms were renowned. Possibly that was the reason why young Timmy was so rotund.

Whenever Edith and Graham left the house which was attached to the refreshment rooms, they would lock-up both the shop and house. In doing so Kevin would be locked out as they had an aversion towards anyone having keys. This Sunday Kevin was charged with watering the extensive garden and the numerous pots of ferns gathered in shade under a broad mango tree. Being locked out of the house did bother Kevin, as it referred a measure of distrust but in reality it was more from fear of him losing the keys than anything he may do while alone inside.

During the watering Kevin hears a call coming from the rear door. On investigation he discovers a man in his early thirties.

“Graham, are you there?” the stranger again calls as Kevin turns off the water and approaches.

“They are at the bowling club.”

“I’m Neville I would think Graham has spoken of me.”

“No.”

“I’m supposed to pick up my guitar and I have only half an hour before I catch the Chillagoe train.”

“It doesn’t run on a Sunday,” Kevin infers.

“It’s a special goods and I know the guard.”

“They won’t be back until after five.”

“Could you get it for me?”

“I don’t have a key.”

The stranger is a handsome man with a happy expression and Kevin had an appreciation for a handsome face, especially a lean man in country attire.

“As I said I don’t have a key. I could run over to the bowling club and ask Graham to give it to me.”

“I wouldn’t wish to take them away from their entertainment, there is a partly open window in the kitchen, and a thin nimble lad like you could climb in and get it for me.”

Kevin hesitates, it would only take a moment to go to the bowling club as it was almost adjacent to the refreshment rooms but his wish to please and be the hero of the moment takes preference over common sense.

Even so Kevin hesitates, “I dunno’.”

“Go on lad, otherwise I can’t get back until the end of the month and I promised to play at my sister’s wedding next Saturday.”

Kevin had often seen the guitar resting against the wall in the spare bedroom and he weakens, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”

The entry is a struggle as the window is high and narrow therefore a small step ladder is used with Neville manhandling Kevin’s arse and legs towards the gap.

Eventually Kevin is inside and finds the guitar, for a moment he hesitates as common sense prevails, should he hand it over to a stranger but he soon overrides common sense with the need to do a good deed. Returning outside he finds Neville waiting on the steps.

Kevin passes the guitar to Neville.

“You’re a lifesaver,” Neville praises, “next time I’m in town I’ll teach you how to play.” As Neville speaks the sound of the Chillagoe goods can be heard steaming up. “Better go, or I’ll miss my lift.”

Kevin leaves the back door open as he returns to his watering, moments later the Chillagoe goods departs.

With the watering almost complete and Kevin feeling pleased with his Samaritan act, he hears Graham and Edith returning through the side gate, Edith appears to be in one of her depressed moods and Graham keeping to his usual silence. Approaching the open rear door they become concerned believing they had been burgled.

Kevin approaches.

“What’s going on?” Graham demands as Edith goes to check the money float in the shop.

“Neville came for his guitar and I got it for him.” Kevin is now not as assured with the sensibility of his deed and begins to stress.

“How did you get in?”

“Neville lifted me in through the open kitchen window.”

“You silly boy, Neville owes me five quid (ten dollars) and the guitar was held as collateral, it is a certainty that will be the last we see of him, or the money.”

“Sorry.”

Edith returns; “nothing is missing,” she reports with relief.

“No, Neville was here and the silly boy got in through the side window and got the guitar for him.”

“That will be the last we see of the money.”

“Sorry,” Kevin repeats with sincerity as it wasn’t the first time an act of kindness had dropped him into the dunny (toilet), “sorry,” he again repeats, his tone low and stuttered.

Graham is a man of few words unaccustomed to rage. Possibly many years being married to Edith with her ever changing mood had made him that way. This instant was no different and although he was displeased he simply shakes his head, leaving Edith to amount reprimand.

“There is only one thing for it lad. You will have to pay back the money,” Edith huffs.

“I’ll get a part time job,” Kevin enthusiastically announces hoping that would lighten his despair.

“In this town,” Graham quashes.

“I’ll do something.”

Neither is prepared to allow Kevin’s lack of judgement rest and it is Edith who arrives with a remuneration plan, being to have Kevin leave the comfort of his bed at six on frosty mornings then with an old sugar bag over his shoulder, go into the town to collect empty bottles. The little he made from returning the empties would be given over to Edith, until she considered payment had been addressed. Kevin soon induces at twopence for marked bottles and threepence for clean-skins it would take the rest of the year and well into the next to reimburse the money – even longer – if ever.

Day one of bottle collection;

The going into a crisp morning with the sun still sleeping wasn’t as painful as the lad envisaged, the frosty air stimulated his senses and he observed Mareeba in a different mood, seeing things usually hidden from sight by the steady influx of people and vehicles, also hearing the birds as they began to greet the new day. There was also the multitude of cane toads as they hopped about chasing bugs and beetles before finding somewhere cool and damp away from the rising sun.

The cane toad had been introduced into Australia in nineteen thirty-five from Central America to eradicate the native cane beetle. Unfortunately the toad didn’t think much of the beetle and lacking any local threat soon spread across the tropical north, in time becoming accustomed to cooler climate even as far as northern New South Wales.

What made the situation more pressing, the toad excreted a poison that if eaten killed native wildlife. There was a further problem being in darkness they hopped about by the dozen becoming squashed by passing traffic and with the heat of the day began to stink, with their squashed gizzards a danger to pets and wildlife. At one time a bounty was offered but the toads were so prevalent it hardly lowered the threat. There was one consolation, over time it was possible to find dead toads on their backs with their stomach missing as crows and other animals became cleaver enough to avoid the poison glans situated on the toads back by rolling them over.

After a couple of hours with his sack of clanking bottles Kevin headed for home as the council workers arrived to open the fire hydrants to flush the gutters along Byrnes Street, then with boisterous attitude they encourage drunken natives to vacate their nightly rest under the mango trees along the centre of the street. There is much protest and a mixture of language as they depart. Then as if by magic the first of the daily drudge commences with shopkeepers sweeping and watering down the dusty footpaths, while the paper boy departs Brown’s newsagency on his squeaking bicycle. Kevin knew the lad and offered a wave.

Being mango season tourists arrive to stand on the bonnet (hood) of their vehicles to reach the fruit. For the southern tourists mangos remain a novelty with the city markets lacking any hint of the tropical fruit and Byrnes Street had a row of trees dividing the two lines of traffic. Some years later the Bowen Mango was produced being more palatable than the local stringy verity sometimes called turpentine. In time the Bowen and its descendents became the fruit of choice in the southern capitals but for now, stringy or not, the local fruit remained a novelty.

Eventually with his bag full Kevin calculated his day’s collection, realising the dizzy sum of one shilling and nine pence (18cents in today’s reckoning) and even with his limited understanding of mathematics, it would take close on fifty frosty mornings to repay the debt. Another mathematical problem arises that being diminishing supply. Eventually he would have gleaned the immediate area of discarded bottles having to broaden his search. If he halved his sack he would double the time to repay the debt and as the numerical process pondered, Kevin envisaged he hadn’t enough mornings left in his life to meet the required amount.

After a week Kevin realised he wasn’t making enough money from his bottle collecting and even without Edith enforcing the issue he wished to atone for his faux pas with the guitar and as quickly as possible by canvassing the local shops for part time work after school but what little there was had already been taken up by town’s boys.

Friday and with school done for the day, Kevin had instructions to go to Williams the butcher on his return to collect the weekend’s pie mince for the refreshment rooms. Problem being the butcher was on the far side of town from the school and having delayed too long after class he need to run to get to the butcher before closing.

Kevin made the butcher with little time to spare, so he took a leisurely stroll home following the railway line through a vast expanse of railway property often leased to travelling carnivals. As he approached Kevin could hear music and was surprised to see a carnival being set up.

At last a chance to make some money, as carnivals often hired local lads for all kinds of work. If he could find a part time job for the few nights the carnival was in town he should be able to quickly repay Edith, therefore he bravely approached the first stall that happened to be a knock-em-down, offering prizes by hurling three soft balls at a stand of coloured tins.

“Hey mister any work?”

“Can you sell shots?”

“What are shots?”

“You have to go into the crowd and force the balls into punter’s hands and take their shilling.”

“I reckon I could do that.”

“Then come back at seven tonight and you’re hired.”

Seven o’clock couldn’t come quick enough and an eager Kevin soon approached the knock-em-down stall, then without being told what he would be paid for his nightly chore he was quickly handed a bucket of balls and told to do his best.

Best?

Kevin tried but found forcing people to compete wasn’t as easy as he envisaged and after a number of failed attempts the store holder took hold of his bucket of balls and passed them to another boy.

“You’re fired,” the stallholder roughly declared.

“But I haven’t had a chance yet.”

“You’ve got no balls kid, you have to force them into peoples hands not flaming well offer them like some school girl apologising for her politeness.”

Kevin returned home feeling most rejected and with the morning it was again the six o’clock rise with his bag and too the street for bottles. If there had been on consolation being with the carnival closed there was lots of discarded bottle for his collecting.

After a further month of bottle collection with most of Kevin’s debt remaining and the end of term’s exams approaching, Edith took pity on the lad cancelling the debt, even so she made him keep to his bottle collecting believing it would give him a measure of responsibility and for the first time since returning to Mareeba Kevin had coin in pocket. Little maybe but enough for Saturday matinee also Saturday night’s main feature, even for seating in the dress circle, possibly extra for a hamburger and a milk shake as the local café had given up on adding his favourite malt powder to the mix.

Living in Mareeba was becoming enjoyable, Kevin scraped through his exams, had made a small click of school mates while learning how to avoid Edith’s ever changing mood swings. To add to his joy Kevin received a letter from his mother, she would be down to Mareeba the week of school break up and he would be returning with her to Forest Home Station for most of the long Christmas holiday. At last station life was on the horizon and the chance for horse riding a possibility.

During the final term of Sixty-one, Kevin remained friendly with Rex Gordon the aboriginal lad from his class. Most weekends would find Kevin at Rex’s house where he became acquainted with many of Rex’s lot the Muluridji people, or what was left of them after eighty years of so called civilization and mixing of blood. The Gordon’s were a happy bunch even if they were inclined to hit the booze much too often and loved tobacco. Old Harry, Rex’s uncle, never had a rollie out of his mouth, long and rolled thin to save the ‘bacca, (tobacco) that stuck to a large cancerous sunspot on his bottom lip as he spoke.

As Kevin had reinstated the Gladstone bag he used as a school bag while in Melbourne, the natives found humour in such a small lad carrying his books in such a large container, often when about town he would hear the distinctive cry from a native, hey-ya’ doc (doctor). Kevin liked the name but once gone from Mareeba it changed. After leaving school while living in Atherton he became Boots, in relation to the Cuban heeled riding boots he wore, giving him that two inches extra hight; retiring them many years later when they fell apart. As for the Gladstone bag, Kevin used it for a time on returning to Herberton until some unthinking mongrel cut a rectangle of leather from it to make a pouch for a ging (shanghai – slingshot), Kevin then dumped the bag.

Spring was turning towards summer as the heat and humidity built towards monsoon season. Far out in the Coral Sea the first cyclone of the season was forming with promise it would pass through Torres Strait and miss most of the north. Usually Mareeba and the Tablelands were cyclone free but there were occasions when one would form out in the Arafura Sea and sneak in through the back door across the flat grasslands of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Back in Mareeba with the end of the school year and the weekends hot and hazy, you would find Kevin with Rex swimming in the Granite Creek, using the railway bridge as a diving board while being cautious not to hit the bridge supports on the descent, or lifting the many attempts by town boys at making canoes out of corrugated iron, only to quickly return to the depths from bad workmanship and the numerous nail holes in the iron sheeting.

It was now only a matter of days before Kevin’s mother returned to take him back to the cattle station, when during a burst of exuberance following one of Edith’s many depressive moods she related what could only be horrific news.

You mother won’t be coming down; she has run off with one the station’s stockmen.

Did Kevin believe Edith?

No.

Even so there was that spark and Edith did convey the news with a measure of sincerity.

As the refreshment rooms lacked a telephone, Kevin waited until Edith was at the bowling club before sneaking up town to the post office to place a trunk call (long distance call) to the station. The only money he had was two shillings and a few pennies saved for Saturday afternoon’s matinee but peace of mind was more warranted that seeing a John Wayne western.

Making a trunk call to the station in the sixties was no mean feat; firstly it was the excessive expense, then you spoke to the local operator who plugged the call through to the Georgetown exchange some two hundred miles to the west. The Georgetown operator would dial along forty miles of copper line to the property, often strung between trees, as the white ants (termites) would eat out the telephone poles as quickly as they were replaced. Once the station connection was made, that is if anyone could be found, the local operator would instruct the placement of coin in the slot and press button A.

If for some reason the line was bad or no connection could be made you were instructed to press button B for a refund – that is if the button B worked, if not your loss.

A few anxious minutes passed before the local operator speaks with upsetting words, “I’m sorry lad; the line is down between Georgetown and Forest Home, there was an electrical storm in the area and lightning has brought down the line, you could try again tomorrow.”

What brought about Edith’s cruel lie regarding Ivy’s absconsion with the unnamed stockman was not apparent to Kevin until some years later. It appeared his mother had become acquainted with a local man building a friendship, to which Edith was jealous and during one of Edith’s downward spirals she told Ivy, Kevin would not be welcome to live with her during the following year. Edith’s excuse being they would be giving up the refreshment rooms and there wasn’t any certainty where they would be living.

There was to be a second sting in the tail of Edith’s decision. Before Ivy arrived back in Mareeba she had already arranged for Kevin to return to Herberton’s hostel in the following year but that little surprise wouldn’t eventuate until towards the end of the Christmas holiday believing it was better to allow her son a stress free holiday before reality struck.

Eventually Ivy arrived but as there wasn’t room at Edith’s she stayed in town. Unknown to Kevin she stayed with the friend she had earlier met, Bob Ferguson a Malay-Chinese man with an English grandfather and an Australian father. From the moment Ivy arrived she and Edith acted as they were the best of buddies and Kevin for now put aside Edith’s story about his mother’s intrigue with the unnamed cattleman. If it were true then it would be a good thing for his mother, as she had bugger all except hardship for most of Kevin’s life and even with his tender years he understood her sacrifice to keep him educated and free of official interference.

There was a time when Ivy approached Kevin on that very subject, admitting she had been a bad mother. Kevin would have none of it and said so.

“What about being at the hostel?” Ivy had asked.

“It wasn’t all that bad.”

“And I was never around for you.”

“I do understand why.”

“But you never had presents like other boys.”

“I had enough.”

So ended that conversation.

In truth the lack of presents hadn’t been an issue with Kevin, as he wasn’t envious of what other’s had, besides during the early days most kids he knew were no better off than he, so what the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve.

Almost as quickly as Ivy had arrived it was time for her with Kevin to return to Forest Home. For Kevin it was a dream come true; for Ivy it was more isolation and hard sweaty work as the station’s housemaid. Even so she did have a few days in Mareeba as a short holiday after twelve months on the station, cut short as she agreed to work over the usual down time so she could have Kevin with her.

Gary’s stories are about life for gay men in Australia’s past and present. Your emails to him are the only payment he receives. Email Gary to let him know you are reading: Conder 333 at Hotmail dot Com

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