The Donnellys lived like country folk at Cheltenham Rd Burwood. Old Eric was a retired builder and his wife the matron and owner of a nearby convalescent home. Their house was a large single story with a real pantry wherein could be found gross packages of breakfast cereal and whole rounds of cheese. The back yard was home to Jeddah, an ageing Alsatian, and a Cockatoo who was reputed to be over a hundred years old, had few feathers and occupied its time digging vast holes which we suspected were potential graves.
In a typical side drive to garage at the back were a constant row of cars whose ownership though nominally allocated to different members of family seemed overall to be common property. The abiding rule seemed that if you needed one you took the last one in avoiding disruptive re-movements. Thus it was possible that Eric junior, my mate, might be driving any of up to five or six cars amongst which I recall the Fiat, the ute and especially the MGA which had been tuned to race by his brother Wall but was now abandoned in favour of a Turner You quickly learned not to park your own car in this drive where the best you could expect was to be blocked in, the worst might see it go missing for a week as it sorted its way through trips and parkings till once more it turned up as first off the rank and you were there to witness it.
Eric was a great friend to me at university where my Studio Attendant job in the Faculty of Architecture kept me back till nine PM each night. Eric would while away the hours pretending to study but mostly playing Chess in the round house where often he’d be joined by Dave Reynolds, Richard McEvoy, Duch and others who all seemed loathe returning to their family homes. When I joined them we would drive in convoy to the Donnelly home to sit, drink tea and yarn in the big kitchen eating grilled cheese on toast by the loaf
Most often it was in the apple green MGA that we took part in this convoy come race back to Burwood. Bored out, head shaved, port and polished with race cam it was a punk amongst cars. I well recall tearing along Gardner’s Road from Kingsford on a quiet week night through the sharp left right into Rickety Street which I travel through now on my way to work. Sometimes I change down to relive the grunting traction Eric loved to feel as he changed down and up and down again thrusting as fast as possible through these sharp bends but its not the same in the front wheel drive Daihatsu with no a tail to wag. Little compromise was shown for the back streets of St Peters and Marrickville as he proceeded to give this beast its head and it’s a real wonder that we and those around us survived. I was lucky to have this good friend’s benevolence and he and I were lucky that I had long since resigned myself to an early death and possessed no active adrenal gland to prevent me being the best passenger.
Low revolutions (idling) were an anathema to this ironically green beast. For a brief period after its closure as a stately department store, Anthony Hordern’s, Brickfield Hill, was turned into a ‘sow’s ear’ of multi level parking station. I’ll never forget leaving from the fifth floor, at peak hour when the process of winding from floor to floor took about twenty minutes of roaring and revving in this enclosed space through an exhaust system that, you guessed it, was also race trimmed. The problem it seemed was to keep the plugs from oiling and this was only possible with revolutions over 5000 and the accompanying crashing crackling din accompanied by sporadic backfires.
Eric kept a dinner suit in the leaky boot of the apple green MGA. Just like a legion of James Bonds then beginning to turn up at our cinemas he knew that a man should be prepared for any occasion. The occasion was a ‘Ball’, an event that differed from today’s rage or dance party only in the formality of dress. No the suit wasn’t in a suit case; it was just there with the jack, wheel brace, quart of primer and a rusty pliers. Eric paid as much respect to his suit as we did to the concept of the ball. Balls with their genesis in the parties of the privileged class were once the occasion for so much protocol, etiquette and formality that participants could be either the darling or outcast for the least slight or facial tic. By our time ‘balls’ were much more like dressed up bacchanals. Some were in fact called Bacchanals and all the dress up required was a sheet. I recall going once dressed in a pillow case that reached only to the lower end of the panty line and for a special effect strung two oranges framing a cucumber just below this line.
The university Union and various faculties would put on balls at the Round House that in their conception seemed to enshrine many of polite society’s protocols to the extent that even a pastoralist mum could be proud that her daughter was invited. An hour later, two at the outside it would be a frenzy of grog dancing and passion that might be mistaken for a port full of pirates. No slight was possible for slight would require memory and all memory of these events was certainly fiction. One night Eric suggested that rather than go home we should crash a ball and very soon wearing his dinner suit, he the bottom shirt and tie, me the top with hand tied crepe paper bow tie over the semblance of white shirt, maybe a napkin, were climbing over the upstairs balcony looking for doors left open by snoggers. Security pursued us for a while but in those days when we still had a white Australia policy and Pacific Islanders were certainly not white, security was probably a few rugby boys who would soon have succumbed to drunkenness themselves.
Fine memories of the apple green MGA, melted cheese on toast impossible to remember balls and the good friendship of Eric who used to leave this sign about the place, one of which has turned up recently on the side of a house in Stanmore.. ,
In a typical side drive to garage at the back were a constant row of cars whose ownership though nominally allocated to different members of family seemed overall to be common property. The abiding rule seemed that if you needed one you took the last one in avoiding disruptive re-movements. Thus it was possible that Eric junior, my mate, might be driving any of up to five or six cars amongst which I recall the Fiat, the ute and especially the MGA which had been tuned to race by his brother Wall but was now abandoned in favour of a Turner You quickly learned not to park your own car in this drive where the best you could expect was to be blocked in, the worst might see it go missing for a week as it sorted its way through trips and parkings till once more it turned up as first off the rank and you were there to witness it.
Eric was a great friend to me at university where my Studio Attendant job in the Faculty of Architecture kept me back till nine PM each night. Eric would while away the hours pretending to study but mostly playing Chess in the round house where often he’d be joined by Dave Reynolds, Richard McEvoy, Duch and others who all seemed loathe returning to their family homes. When I joined them we would drive in convoy to the Donnelly home to sit, drink tea and yarn in the big kitchen eating grilled cheese on toast by the loaf
Most often it was in the apple green MGA that we took part in this convoy come race back to Burwood. Bored out, head shaved, port and polished with race cam it was a punk amongst cars. I well recall tearing along Gardner’s Road from Kingsford on a quiet week night through the sharp left right into Rickety Street which I travel through now on my way to work. Sometimes I change down to relive the grunting traction Eric loved to feel as he changed down and up and down again thrusting as fast as possible through these sharp bends but its not the same in the front wheel drive Daihatsu with no a tail to wag. Little compromise was shown for the back streets of St Peters and Marrickville as he proceeded to give this beast its head and it’s a real wonder that we and those around us survived. I was lucky to have this good friend’s benevolence and he and I were lucky that I had long since resigned myself to an early death and possessed no active adrenal gland to prevent me being the best passenger.
Low revolutions (idling) were an anathema to this ironically green beast. For a brief period after its closure as a stately department store, Anthony Hordern’s, Brickfield Hill, was turned into a ‘sow’s ear’ of multi level parking station. I’ll never forget leaving from the fifth floor, at peak hour when the process of winding from floor to floor took about twenty minutes of roaring and revving in this enclosed space through an exhaust system that, you guessed it, was also race trimmed. The problem it seemed was to keep the plugs from oiling and this was only possible with revolutions over 5000 and the accompanying crashing crackling din accompanied by sporadic backfires.
Eric kept a dinner suit in the leaky boot of the apple green MGA. Just like a legion of James Bonds then beginning to turn up at our cinemas he knew that a man should be prepared for any occasion. The occasion was a ‘Ball’, an event that differed from today’s rage or dance party only in the formality of dress. No the suit wasn’t in a suit case; it was just there with the jack, wheel brace, quart of primer and a rusty pliers. Eric paid as much respect to his suit as we did to the concept of the ball. Balls with their genesis in the parties of the privileged class were once the occasion for so much protocol, etiquette and formality that participants could be either the darling or outcast for the least slight or facial tic. By our time ‘balls’ were much more like dressed up bacchanals. Some were in fact called Bacchanals and all the dress up required was a sheet. I recall going once dressed in a pillow case that reached only to the lower end of the panty line and for a special effect strung two oranges framing a cucumber just below this line.
The university Union and various faculties would put on balls at the Round House that in their conception seemed to enshrine many of polite society’s protocols to the extent that even a pastoralist mum could be proud that her daughter was invited. An hour later, two at the outside it would be a frenzy of grog dancing and passion that might be mistaken for a port full of pirates. No slight was possible for slight would require memory and all memory of these events was certainly fiction. One night Eric suggested that rather than go home we should crash a ball and very soon wearing his dinner suit, he the bottom shirt and tie, me the top with hand tied crepe paper bow tie over the semblance of white shirt, maybe a napkin, were climbing over the upstairs balcony looking for doors left open by snoggers. Security pursued us for a while but in those days when we still had a white Australia policy and Pacific Islanders were certainly not white, security was probably a few rugby boys who would soon have succumbed to drunkenness themselves.
Fine memories of the apple green MGA, melted cheese on toast impossible to remember balls and the good friendship of Eric who used to leave this sign about the place, one of which has turned up recently on the side of a house in Stanmore.. ,
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