My Early Years
- Born 24th November, 1951.
Parents Ross Thomas Stirling and Peg Stirling (nee Margaret Dick Grieve.)
Correspondence school for David taught at “Placilla” by a governess.
I used to butt in and to shut me up I was started on correspondence school at age 4.
After a year of Correspondence bicycles arrived, one was a Malvern Star and the other a Runwell and probably came from Jack Halfords Sports Store in Pittsworth about 1955 and David and I learnt to ride them and it was off to North Branch one teacher school.
It was 3 miles of peddling over rough gravel roads. We would try to pick a smooth track each to ride on and one day a Ute roared in between us at high speed. It was Negley Porter and he told someone it was funny to send his Ute between the Stirling boys at 60 miles per hour.
My mother found out and was not impressed. Negley was from the Porters on “Whylara” which is the property that had the North Branch school on it.
We always had young lady teachers at the school so Negley would often turn up at 11 am little lunch to chat them up.
Sadly Negley died in 1973 of complications from measels when he was only about 32 years old leaving his wife Lorraine and 2 children.
He was a really good bloke but pretty wild in his young days with a reputation for riding his horse up the steps and into the bar of the Southbrook Hotel and also into the Sunkist Café which was owned by the Dago’s, the new migrant Mylomas family who arrived in about 1960 and have become a very respected part of Pittsworths community.
There were lots of Joppich families around and at the school and one day during lunch hour it was cowboys and Indians and me being the littlest I had to run away from the big boys. A spear was thrown by one of the big Joppichs and it went through my lower right leg and broke of with a 100 mm x 20mm bit of wood planted in my leg. The teacher tried to pull it out but my leg kept lifting up in the air when she pulled it so eventually my Father was summoned and it was a trip to Dr Bill Morrison’s doctor surgery where he cut it out and put in 4 stitches. For years after it kept getting infected and lumps of wood kept emerging from the wound.
One day David and I were heading for home from School flat out on our bikes when David’s front wheel hit a stone and down he went. I was traveling at a rate and with nowhere to turn ran straight over his neck and launched into the air and came back down on my wheels in one piece. David was a mess and I can’t remember who rescued us and how we got home. I remember Mum getting a lump of gravel out of David’s forehead and it left a scar that is still there today.
Other times we got attacked by magpies and there were many other accidents and incidents before the school closed down in 1958.
Dad had a workman Bill Fryer. Bill was another 10 Pound Pommy migrant and was a big strong bloke who had grown up tough. He was a frogman in the Navy in the second world war and said how they had to work underwater in freezing temperatures to do all sorts of work. One job he told me was stacking bags of concrete around piers to hold them in place to make temporary wharves for “D” day landing.
His son Lindsay was in my class as was Karen Porter ( Gail Simpsons sister) who died soon after from an ongoing problem. I forget who was in David’s class but older pupils were Bruce Muirehead and his sister Dianne. Several Joppich boys including Glen and Graham, several Porter boys and girls, Dennis Proud and several other pupils. Each morning we had to assemble before the flag with our hands over our hearts and sing God Save the Queen before going into class. In winter there was a small chip heater in the corner which maybe kept a small amount of heat in the room. In summertime it was hot. One day a dingo had been sighted next door, so a dog drive was organised, and all the locals gathered with horses and cars and guns and spent the morning charging around the nearby hills. I got into trouble for looking out the window but they eventually shot the dingo.
5 or 10 years before I attended North Branch school the Lee-Archer family had their son Brian and his sisters attending the school and they had black soil roads that became impassable after rain.
Brians father Ernie bought the only 4 wheel drive vehicle in the district which was a second hand Army Duk, a large amphibious Army truck and at a very young age Brian would drive it and his sisters to school in this monster truck. No problems for a country boy.
Around 1958 North Branch one teacher school closed and we caught a school bus to Pittsworth Primary School. |