The Town I Loved So Well

 18 MARCH 2022

 

I worked out that it has been more than sixty years since I last walked down the streets of Claymore.  The main street hasn’t changed much.  It is sealed now, of course, and I wonder if my memory is correct in telling me that it used to be dirt which turned to mud in the wet season.  The shops still have their old-fashioned verandahs, with hitching rails.  I can’t imagine the locals still bring their horses into town and suspect the rails are just a throwback to less mechanised days and some local dignitary has decided they should remain, adding a touch of nostalgia. 

 

There might be some tourists who are attracted to that sort of sentimentality but there are towns like Yackandandah and Beechworth in Victoria which do it so much better.  Maybe it’s just laziness or lack of funds which keep things as they were.

 

There’s Coogan’s Store, the mullioned windows just the same as I remember with the frames now painted a dark, gloomy green.  The painting has been a sloppy job and the tradesman, if I can call him that, hasn’t bothered rubbing back the previous coat so the finish is uneven and certainly won’t last.  There’s a collection of stuff behind the dirty glass: dusty toasters, and other electrical goods at one end and various items of kitchen bric-a-brac at the other.  The door, set back from the windows is shut, and is not very welcoming.  I might have gone in for a browse but I am discouraged from turning the handle and stepping in.  No doubt, opening the door would ring a bell to alert a shop assistant and I’m not ready to talk to anyone yet.

 

There isn’t much happening in the town at this time on a weekday morning.  It might become busier around morning-tea time when people are looking for their coffee hit but, looking at the deserted street, I would not be surprised if they don’t have a rush hour.

 

This shop here is where Mr Cartwright made boots for the local gentry.  I can still picture him with his bald head, red face and stained leather apron.  I remember he used to line his boots up on racks on the pavement outside the shop.  Nobody, in those days, would have dared to touch them.  His name is still on the window, in gold letters ‘JH Cartwright: Bootmaker’. The shop still sells shoes and boots, I notice, but they are piled up in the shop in cheap cardboard boxes with Chinese writing.  There’s a large basket filled with odd shoes and a hand-lettered sign ‘All half-price.  This week only!’  There’s nobody in the shop but a depressed-looking young girl, carelessly waving a feather duster about.

 

Here's another empty shop with a Real Estate Agent’s sign in the window and next to that is the local library.  That’s new. I can’t remember what was in this spot but the library is a typical 80’s brick veneer building.  The only library I can remember as a kid was the couple of shelves at the back of the Year 6 classroom, with a sparse and tattered collection of books which we were encouraged to borrow.  The library is clearly open, with a light showing through the window but the door is shut, no doubt because of the air-conditioning. 

 

I’d lived in a small house a couple of streets back from Morris Street, the main drag, as we called it. My Dad was the Headmaster at the local school and we had come here looking for a quieter life.  In those days, I saw the town through rose-tinted glasses.  I relished the freedom that a small country town offered. I remembered the swimming hole and the oval where we kicked a football about at the weekend.  I remembered learning to ride a horse – an elderly draught horse called Radish - and setting rabbit traps, and picking blackberries in the summer.  I remembered the girls at the country school, with their shining hair and unbounded self-confidence, riding their horses to school, horses with names like Kitty and Jenny, who would spend their days in the school paddock, waiting to carry their precious cargoes home in the afternoon.

 

We only spent two years at Claymore and then Dad was offered a head’s job at an inner-city school in Sydney. Banjo Paterson summed that suburb up: ‘the foetid air and gritty, of the dusty, dirty city’.  However, I made new friends there and went on to become the adult I am today.  I can’t help thinking, though, how much I owe to those two years in Claymore, a town I loved so well.