Read Online The View From Connor's Hill by Barry Heard - Free Book Online

started to go to the Saturday-afternoon movies with my older brother and some mates.
    The movies, called ‘the matinees’, were held in the town hall in the centre of Ringwood. They were a treasure, featuring characters like Superman, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, and many others. Every week, there was a serial. If we missed an episode, the kids at the school kept us up to date.
    The move to Ringwood was great. My enjoyable memories of Smith Street, Collingwood, soon faded now that we had more freedom, choices of entertainment, good grandparents, bigger meals, and then, of course, school. It all seemed to agree with us three boys.
    Then, suddenly, our family changed again. First it had been a new father; now I had no older brother. I often asked my mother, many years later, what happened to him. To me, he just seemed to completely disappear. Mum was reluctant to talk about him — I guess it was too painful for her. In years to come, other extended family members spoke about him in glowing terms. They said he was very energetic, had a paper run before school, and other errands as well. However, the one thing they all emphasised was his role as the older brother. Apparently, he devoted a lot of time to being a good eldest brother, and Robbie and I adored him.
    Ian was born in 1942. In July 1952, he was killed in a hit-and-run accident one afternoon. He was riding his pushbike home, having just finished his weekend job. It was his pocket money that he would use to take us to the matinees. All I recall about what happened is a phone call that my parents received at a friend’s house, telling them the sad news. My Uncle Cliff said there was a very moving funeral down Whitehorse Road in Ringwood. The Boy Scouts and Cubs apparently formed a guard of honour along the road in his memory, yet I remember nothing of it.
    For me, something changed. I can’t describe exactly what, but even at that young age I sensed that a difference had come over our family. We must have coped somehow by not mentioning his name, or the accident, but I just didn’t understand. Perhaps the only way Mum managed was to never talk about him at all. As for me, I remember nothing of my lost brother.
    About fourteen months after his death, we left Ringwood, and Melbourne suburbia, for the wilderness. It was just before Christmas 1954 — the year that Queen Elizabeth II visited Victoria. I caught a glimpse of her at the rear of a special train as it moved slowly through Ringwood.
    It was another move for us. At first, I thought we were going on a holiday or the like, as Mum said nothing about a move — just about us going on a ‘big trip’. Having travelled little in a motorcar, I thought Warrandyte was a really big trip, but this turned out to be a seven-hour drive from Melbourne. It was a very long day. Robbie and I were in the back of the Chevy ute, so we couldn’t ask, ‘Are we there yet?’
    The final stretch of the trip from Bairnsdale to Tongio was mainly gravel — dusty, and heavily corrugated. It was dreadful. It was a winding, rumbling trip that, even a decade later, I never mastered. I got carsick every time I went on that road until I finally got my driver’s licence.

chapter three
    Entering the wilderness
    NO MATTER HOW I TRY TO DEPICT IT, I ALWAYS RETURN TO THIS description: our move to the bush in late 1954 was a shock. Overnight, my world changed to a district 20 times bigger in size than the entire Ringwood area, and 10,000 times bigger than Wilana Street.
    We moved to a shire — not a town, a street, or a road, and not really a home, but a district. Every house had a name. For instance, we’d say, ‘That’s the Giltrap’s joint’, or ‘That’s the Harding’s joint’. Families were ‘bloody Micks’, ‘Methos’, or ‘Pressies’. Every man of the house had a label: ‘bloody good footballer’, ‘top