Childhood

Childhood.
Rose and Joseph Plibersek (Rosalija Repič and Pepi Jože Pliberšek) bought their block of land at 3 Carvers road, Oyster Bay in 1957. For ₤750. They built their house slowly, living in it as soon as it had a roof and walls. It wasn’t painted, inside or out. The only furniture was an old metal table and banana boxes for chairs.

Oyster Bay was a bush suburb filled with fibro and weatherboard cottages and returned soldier housing. The roads were unpaved. Kids played in creeks, catching tadpoles and riding their bikes. Few families had television sets or cars until much later. Mum washed by hand, with a scrubbing board. The copper, and eventually a wringer, were great labour saving devices. The baker and milkman called daily.

Rose and Joe's first son Ray was born in 1957, followed two years later by Fred Phillip (who later changed his name to something less embarrassing – Phillip Fred). Ten years later the daughter they waited so long for was born. (She was NOT an accident.)
The boys were active and mischievous; pretty frightened of their mother’s slipper connecting with their bottoms when they crossed the bounds of civilised behaviour. That’s why they kept most of their adventures to themselves.

Example - adventure # 1.
Ray and Phillip were expert bombmakers – making effective explosives out of firecrackers. They systematically blew up every letter box in the street, then realised that the fact their own letter box was unexploded was suspicious. They blew it up too to throw the feds off the case.

Example - adventure # 2
Phillip picked his little sister (me) up from school in the heavy rain, piling me onto the back of his bike. The brakes failed in the rain, and Phil had to tell me (then 6) to jump for my life. Messy but spectacular.

Phil was experienced at both physical and psychological torture. When Mum and Dad told me my favourite tree was to be cut down Phil watched the wailing with a bemused expression and offered to take his four year old sister outside. He lifted me up to hang from the bottom branch (to ‘say goodbye’) and then walked slowly away. My arms tired quickly – I called for him to get me down. The pleas for help didn’t move him. “I want to see how long you can hang there before you fall,” he said with his most dispassionate, scientific expression. He often experimented on me: physical endurance, and Pavlovian behavioural experiments.

Phil wanted to see how many times I would do his bidding without reward. He would give me 20 cents and his lolly order (liquorice bullets, spearmint leaves, choccos, or sherbet fountains depending on his mood) and tell me if I got his lollies he might give me one. Sometimes he would, sometimes not. If he didn’t give me one twice or three times in a row I would refuse to go the next times. It was a delicate balancing act.

Why didn’t I just steal a lolly or two on the way home? Because he would punch me in the arm. Or poke me in the ribs. He habitually poked me in the ribs when we passed each other on the stairs, until I learnt a contorted defensive position which covered both my head and sides.
But it wasn’t all physical torture and mind games: Phil made the best paper aeroplanes and could usually be tempted from his study to do it. He told good scary stories – so scary that I am still frightened of vampires (he told me there was one under his bed. I was sitting on it at the time.) Even as a child, his mischievousness was one of his most fun and attractive qualities.