bentleigh

After three months at my grandparents’ house in Alphington, we move to a rented house at 31 Marston Street in Bentleigh. Neither my mother nor father has ever lived in Melbourne’s sprawling south-east. My father grew up at 551 Heidelberg Road, my mother in Best Street, Reservoir.


Surrounding street names lodge in my brain: enter from Jasper Road via London Street; Vale and Geel Streets are at either end of Marston Street; Wilma and Roma Streets run off it. I have my first fight in Wilma Street. Memory tells me several kids have a go at me but does not tell me the reason.


I am shocked at age eight by the sheer fury of my retaliation. I beat off all the attackers, frightening them and me. I realise that I might do real damage with my anger. I don’t want to feel that again. 


Having barely started grade 2 at Fairfield, I make a new beginning at Bentleigh West State School. The main building is impressive solid red brick, but I finish grade 2 in a portable. 


I catch a bus to school. Kids dribble gobs of spit down the window panes: last to the bottom wins. Each bus ticket has a number and the driver nominates a winning ticket at the school gate. Combinations like 2525 or 6111 win and the lucky ticket-holder gets their fare returned. It’s never me.


Each class at Bentleigh West lines up after lunch and marches back to its room to the rat-tat-tat of boys beating kettle drums. I so want to play those drums. My mother buys me drumsticks, my first participation in a fad. I practise on every surface, horizontal, vertical or oblique, but when my after-lunch turn finally comes, I am hopeless on drums.


At the very back of the school is a thick patch of buffalo grass alive with a frenzy of grasshoppers. Boys pounce like cats, fill their pockets, and release the dazed hoppers in sleepy afternoon  classrooms. I am one of them. 


I remember one friend: Roger. He lives blocks away in Fromer Street. Roger’s family take me to Brighton beach. My mother sews me a pair of racy silver bathers in stretchy material.


The year turns. I start a new grade at school, upstairs in the big brick building, only to be whisked away once again. My parents buy a solid red-brick house two railway stations closer to the city in Ormond.


Rock on.