The Town I Loved So Well

 

I think everyone has a special feeling for the town in which they grew up.  Most of us can bring to mind warm memories of special people and specific places, and of good things that happened there.  It’s hard, though to tease out what it is about that place which evokes such positive thoughts.

My family arrived in Gwynneville in the summer of 1952.  We had not long arrived from Scotland and were excited to move into our house in a new subdivision , one of many which were being thrown up to accommodate the huge influx of migrants from Europe after the Second World War.

The subdivision was built in a rough square, bounded by Northfield Lane and Murphy’s Lane on two side, the posh estate, Glennifer Brae, on another side and the paddocks of Mr O’Leary’s farm on the fourth. The clear boundaries gave my parents their cue: ‘Don’t go beyond …”  and we knew what our limits were, and that is always reassuring. Because our house was one of the first to be finished, there were few other children and my brother and I developed a sense that this was our domain.  We were the incumbents who welcomed, or otherwise, new children as they arrived.

School, of course, is an important anchor for a child and, if the school experience is positive, everything else falls into place. Everything certainly fell into place for me. Gwynneville Primary was a new school which had been hurriedly established in a couple of prefabricated classrooms which, I discovered later had been built by the Bristol Aircraft Company of the UK.  I was not one of the incumbents here but those who had been there longer made me welcome.

Gwynneville, itself, was an insignificant suburb of the City of Wollongong. It was small enough that someone of my age could feel confident he would not get lost but big enough to have an oval, some tennis courts and a playground. There were a couple of corner stores and a butcher shop.  The most popular shop with the children was a little general store which called itself Martin’s Corner. We thought it might be named after a long-running radio show which was playing at the time and the owner, whom we called Mr Martin, was popular with the local kids because he would sell us a bag of broken biscuits for 3d.  In those days, there were no packets of biscuits.  They were delivered to the shops, packed in large tins and the shopkeeper would carefully transfer them to paper bags for sale to the customer. Inevitably, some were broken and careful housewives refused to accept them, knowing their husbands would expect a whole biscuit with their tea when they came home from work.   

There were two churches: St Brigid’s, built of warm honey-coloured brick, and a less-impressive weatherboard Church of England.  My parents, staunch though non-attending members of the Church of Scotland, decided that the Church of England was the lesser of two evils and we were packed off to their Sunday School every Sabbath.  We never objected; it was good to meet up with our school mates in another setting and the annual Sunday School picnic was always great fun.

Overlooking our town was Mt Keira and, in the foothills of the mountain was a large house called Glennifer Brae, surrounded by extensive grounds, which had an irresistible attraction for the local children. On the edge of the property was a narrow strip of trees and untended scrub with a creek running through.  The trees were particularly good for climbing so were popular with most of the boys. 

Nowadays, this area is the home of the Wollongong Botanic Garden and it is always perfectly groomed and sanitised - disappointing, in many ways when you think of what it once was. 

Opportunities for play were endless. There were several creeks on the boundaries of our domain and they were regular haunts of the children.  Mr O’Leary, the farmer, was tolerant of trespassers on his land so we roamed his paddocks looking for inspiration for new games, or just another bit of harmless mischief.  Traffic was light around the town and Street  Cricket was a popular pastime, particularly on the warm summer evenings.  The beach was only a twenty-minute walk away.

I spent a lot of time at the local Scout Hall, first as a Cub and then as a Scout, until I was lured away by more grown-up pursuits.

They say that it is too easy to look back on childhood through rose-coloured glasses and I’m sure I am in danger of doing just that.  However, the totality of my childhood experience in the town I loved so well, has been positive.  Of course, there were disappointments and even the occasional tear, but in the wider scheme of things, these setbacks are insignificant.  My memories are built on the important foundations of home, school, church, and friendships and I am pleased that I can look at all of these in a positive light.  My childhood, overall, was a happy one, and I believe I was fortunate to be brought up in a town which helped me to develop independence and resilience and a sense of what’s worthwhile in the world.