78 It’s a Long Way from Lancashire to Here - Part 4: 1 November 2024

The photo below shows an aerial view of Fisherman’s Bend hostel.  Our hut J 3 faced the intersection of the two dirt roads.  We had a close up view of the chain link fence topped by barbed wire.  Once we climbed the fence, we were free to play in the swamps immediately in front of our hut.

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The photo above shows the Nissen huts at Fisherman’s Bend Hostel.  We lived in hut J 3 for 4 complete years from December 1952 to December 1956.  At Fisherman’s Bend, most the “streets” were unpaved dirt, goat tracks - muddy slogs in winter and dusty ordeals in summer.

The photo above shows the inside of the hostel laundry.  I don’t know who the lady is in the photo.

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Life at Fisherman’s Bend hostel was so very hard.  Life in Liverpool must have been ghastly if Cliff and Josey thought life in Australia was an improvement.

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At the start of 1953, Bill started school at Saint Joseph Primary School in Port Melbourne.  I attended the Hostel “kindergarten”; it was located in one of the Hostel buildings which happened not to be a Nissen Hut.  At age 5, Bill took the bus to school unaccompanied by any designated adults.  He endured “Bubs” (now called Reception) in 1953 and started Grade 1 in 1954.  I started “Bubs” in 1954 and graduated to Grade 1 in 1955.

Saint Joseph was located on the corner of Rouse and Bay Streets, Port Melbourne, one block back from the Port Melbourne waterfront.  Saint Joseph moved to Stokes Street, Port Melbourne in the early 1960s.  Although Saint Joseph no longer exists, Saint Joseph Catholic Church is still located at Rouse Street, Port Melbourne. 

Saint Joseph was operated by the Brigidine Sisters.  The Brigidines are an order of nuns founded in Ireland.

The Brigidines running Saint Joseph Primary School in the 1950s were sadistic, cruel and heartless women.  I attended Saint Joseph’s from 1954 when I was 5 until the end of 1956 when I was 7.  Like all boys at Saint Joseph, I was often strapped with a leather strap that all the nuns had with them all the times.  Perhaps the most vicious of this bunch of extremely vicious nuns was a woman called Sister Peta.  Sister Peta was short and fat and always nasty.  Once when she strapped me, she left a welt that lasted a week.  It was shaped like a question mark, it crossed the palm of my right hand, then it crossed my wrist and ran up my forearm.  I was age 6 or 7 when Sister Peta did this. 

All the boys at Saint Joseph were treated the same way and I was not singled out for any special treatment by the nuns. 

Neither Cliff nor Josey seemed to think being viciously strapped by Sister Peta was unusual in any way.  Luckily for me, they never complained to the school about this behaviour.  My punishment by the nuns would have been much worse if they had complained.

After we left the Hostel we were taught by the Sisters of Mercy, who most definitely showed no mercy at all to any of the children they taught.  No matter how harsh the Sisters of Absolutely No Mercy were, the Brigidines were noticeably crueller.  The Brigidines made the Sisters of Mercy look as if perhaps they might perhaps have had a tiny bit of mercy in their hearts.

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The number of children in the classes at Saint Joseph was huge.  This photo of the 1957 Grade 3 class contains 56 children.  All of the children in this photo were in my 1956 Grade 2 class, but the 1956 Grade 2 class was larger than the 1957 Grade 3 class.

I remember the boy who is positioned third from the right in the op row of the photo.  He was big, heavy and very aggressive.  He tried to beat me up one and I fought back.  Sister Peta strapped me as well as him.  I cannot remember the name of the little thug but I think he was from Malta.  Because I was so much smaller, he thought I would let him do what he wanted.  He misjudged me.

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This photo of the 1957 Grade 2 Grade 2 class contains 65 children.  Because my classes at Saint Joseph had so many children in them, I taught myself how to read and write.  The sister wrote the alphabet across the top of the blackboard and I taught myself by writing one complete page per letter for every letter in the alphabet.  The teacher ignored me unless she felt the need to strap me.

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Because Saint Joseph’s was a Catholic school, we all had to be taught how to be good Catholics.  I am certain neither Cliff nor Josey were asked if they wanted this to happen.  Their views – if they had any – were irrelevant.

On Friday 26 October 1956, all members of our Grade 2 class – most of the children shown in the Grade 3 class photo above - had to have their first Holy Communion.  This involved several weeks of specific instruction from the nuns on how serious the ritual was, its miraculous significance and the precise manner in which we had to accept the communion wafer.  We were forbidden from touching the communion host with our fingers.  We had a rehearsal before the big event where we had to line up in the Church, walk solemnly to the altar rail, pretend to receive communion and then go back to our Church pews.

I was fidgety while waiting in line at the rehearsal, so the nun running the rehearsal slashed me across my bare legs with the wooden handle on her feather duster.  Wearing short pants was compulsory for us at Saint Joseph, so my legs were an easy target.  I had red welts across my legs as I walked up to the altar rail to practise receiving my communion host.