Lismore Reunion

An impressive pile of bricks still. I use to get my lollies at this BP



Yes a bit like 'On The Beach' which I revisited courtesy of 'The Lismore City Motel's Cable TV'



Trevans salute to our class



Kay is second from the right foreground with the lairest top and to her left is my date




In the fifty years I've waited for this reunion much has changed in Lismore. There are no longer flocks of bicycles coursing the block. I saw only one cyclist and one parked bike in my five days. Spinks park is much the same except for the obvious coffee shop and a chest high sturdy stone wall along the riverside, part of the levy system no doubt. The library has become the museum, the high school has become the library and conservatory. The suburbs have expanded to the east and a university has grown in the south east. Large car parking lots have sprung up all over. The Riveria ballroom is gone. The trains don't stop here but the station still stands serving as the drop spot for the feeder bus to Casino. St. Josephs Marist Bros. and St. Marys Presentation Nuns convent have amalgamated into a co-educational institution called Trinity College. Lord knows what has become of Mother Carmel, Sister Pascal or Brothers Julian and Conrad.

On the other hand much has stayed the same. The cathedral still stands though swathed in scaffold for maintenance. The Recs / Recreation grounds lay there as green and soggy as ever. There are no new pubs in the area I covered. I guess most would agree there were always enough. Some have sharpened themselves into chromium and stainless replicas of our Darling Harbour hostelries that have come to be the plague template of Sydney. Most however are just as they were though some have grafted on drive through bottle shops. The big old pub on the corner between the two bridges has ceased to trade and become some sort of half way house run by an ex school mate whose name along with its escapes me. My Mate Wayne is very dirty on this development as it was his favourite and the only live venue in town. He has a conspiracy theory that it is the contrivance of rich plantation owners who need cheap labour for their backbreaking picking work.

Every time I left my motel the 'Lismore City' on Magellan Street opposite a car park that was once the playground of Lismore High I was gobsmacked once more by the vacancy, the unoccupied space, the width of the street, the absence of cars or indeed humanity. On Sunday morning 9.30 I took photos from the corner of Keen and Magellan in four directions of the absence of life. Some have suggested that everyone was at church but I found that a little farfetched

Shopping centres have come to blight Lismore just as they have everywhere else in the last fifty years. There's one just a block south of the block towards Trevans which is still there and seemed with its promotion to be saluting our reunion. Uh! Sorry, Trevans was and is still the local Ford dealership where Alan Lowe worked when he and Nanette stayed with us on the farm. There's another shoping centre a few blocks east of the recs and much bigger. As I walked around the parking lots of both looking for the entrance I realised they were flood safe with all retail on the first floor and nothing but parking at ground level.

All my friends who have moved here in these past fifty seem comfortable if not prosperous even though the only employer for their group is Centerlink. Here apparently once over fifty five there is no demand that you seek nonexistent work but you are encouraged to engage in voluntary pursuits like the community vegetable garden where Marcus spends some time. Bunnings it seems is just for younger folk.

As best as I could intuit my old school mates had fallen mostly on their feet. I heard no complaints from those who had stayed in the area though Sore Toe Sonego whose address was given as a South Lismore caravan park was not in attendance. The ones who had got away went mostly on teachers scholarships and they were kicking up their heels beachside on their indexed State Super.

I recognised without prompting a couple of old mates, Peter Duncan the runt mascot of the class was unchanged, Mick Davis was still playing, for old times' sake, the bully role he knew so well. Others became familiar over night but a great many remained unfamiliar by name or face. There were of course a vast number of us, almost eighty names here on this list of addresses they handed out, I'm sure there were always more than fifty in the class.

Delightfully it was the unanimous opinion of the company, that our education and the school itself was crap and that wasn't just my take on the state of affairs. Nobody here was lauding the school and my overall memories of the brothers and incidents proved sound though ownership of the fart machine, my invention, was in contention.

Most exciting was to meet up with Kay Boland, now Hanrahan (is that Irish enough). Although I knew the girls class from our sister school St Marys were invited I had been so isolated from them during my years in Lismore spent mostly on the farm and in my all boys class that I knew not what to expect. I knew Kay as the sister of my best mate and neighbour Rex. I had a big crush but somehow although she travelled to school on our bus and wore a St Marys uniform I had no knowledge then or memory now of her school life or year. Added to this I had the impression, created by my mother, that she was far away which turned out to be true. She has lived in Perth for almost forty years. She looked good, and she sounded even better. Her eyes still clear, keen and blue, her skin still fair though finely lined, and her hair natural grey unlike almost one hundred percent of her peers. She was a great beauty at fifteen with raven curls and the fairest complexion. It was wonderful to find much of this preserved and an inner intellect still radiant.

I would gush on as you know I am prone to but for the knowledge that one day soon Kay may read this and I have no more desire to embarrass her any more than I could embarrass myself. I have already passed on via email my Rokstump and Hugh's Huggystump addresses. More than enough embarrassment there.

There were group photos, slide shows of memorable moments, finger food, a main course, deserts and all we could drink till many were inebriated. All this for fifty dollars a head and according to Toby Daley more than a hundred dollars left for charity. It was surprising to note that only a few men had lost their hair. In fact the predominant image that the group photos reinforced was of much white hair, dandruff, bright luminous pink flaking skin, scar tissue remnant of removed melanomas and giggly paunches on these sons of Irish immigrants. So strong was this trend that the few sons of Italian migrants had grown to look exactly like us.

Late in the night, sitting for the first time, at a table predominantly occupied by girls I was addressed by one across the table who on reading Robert O'Keefe on my name tag announced "you were my dance partner". Now by my time the brothers and nuns had realised that whilst keeping boys and girls separate they were able to keep sin rates down they did so at the expense of creating social aberrance. Hugh only three years ahead recalls no dance. To counter this they organised an event and undertook to teach us The Canadian Three Step, The Pride of Erin, The Barn Dance and Waltz. In the later stages of this training we were taken to the Apollo Ballroom in Keen Street for more formal lessons where in the absence of girls we were especially careful not to learn the girls part. We were allocated partners by names out of a hat no doubt and we boys had to take a corsage to this partners home, ask her parents' permission, take her, dance with her and take her home all before eleven PM.

My date who had now recognised me demanded to know did I remember her and her friend demanded even more so. "she had a big gap between her front teeth, very sexy, you remember". Um! " It was really sexy, she got a dentist to fill it, I loved it, do you remember" I could not recall this detail but I did recall that she was fair, not much help as every female here besides Kay was. Then I remembered she was tall, maybe even taller than I and this girl fitted that statistic. I searched my mind for other detail and remembered the area of a still then unfamiliar Lismore where I had picked her up. At this her friend clapped it settled. "from there it could only have been her or me" and she was still only five foot tall. We consummated our relationship started so long ago with a hug and you'd think I'd remember her name but short term memory being what it is I don't.

Sometime around one we were falling into the street and promising to do it again- in five years-sure. Some of the out of towners were coming for breakfast the next morning and I foolishly joined them. Without name tags I could name only one of these bedraggled bloodshot crew and I wound up eating too much bacon and eggs at a table with a bloke and his wife who looked far too young and had a nasty political line to spin. It's better not to have too much of a good time but ever so difficult to make clever decisions about portions.

That Sunday Wayne picked me up and drove me to Byron for lunch via Bangalow where we stopped for a beer. Bangalow teemed with a country hip crowd who left no space at the restaurants. Byron by contrast was quiet. We had the inner dining area of the Railway hotel to ourselves for a fine feed of fish. That evening Bill Doyle was able to gain relief from his four under eight year old feral charges long enough to come to dinner with us at a Thai place.

By 2PM Monday having observed the 10AM checkout and paid my respects to Woodley, Marcus, Robbie and Wayne one more time I found myself waiting aimlessly for the 6.40PM bus departure to Casino. Whiling my wait away over a glass at The Rouse and reminiscing on events of the week past I pulled out my pocket diary in which I had taken details of various contacts. What a disaster. So many emails that bore no relation to anyone I recognised. Chief in importance to me, that of Kay Boland could have been any of these dot coms and I began in mind to draft the cover Email that would solve these identity problems. Then I recalled that Kay had said she was returning by cab to her sister Pam's place on the home farm above the night paddock on the border of our two old farms. This seemed preposterous and would have been unthinkable in our day but on reflection the fifteen to twenty kilometre trip would not bear second thought in Sydney. I decided a call to her would solve my problem. Doh! She was married and her number would surely be in her husband's unknown name. One wine later I reflected that Richard Macney, the chairman of all four major clubs in Lismore, the social supremo would know Pam's husband's name and Hugh would know Richards number. I called Hugh, I called Richard, of course he knew but because I'd asked it slipped his mind. He promised to text me with it and did so including the number but by then I was on the train.

Back home I called and resolved this problem which is fortunate for it has produced these gems. (i) That the news of Nanette's death came on the occasion of one of our house parties and on receipt of it all Catholics (would there have been any other kind?) withdrew to pray. (ii) That Christopher refused to walk home alone from Bolands because of a marauding tiger that could have been a bear. (iii) That I once preformed the remarkable feat of riding a tricycle to Bolands. Any comments.