(Y) Kilmore (7) Social life and winding up

When I got back to Kilmore from London with the Zambia job in the bag I was in great form. I was full of life again -so full of it in fact that I pulled a calf muscle playing football with the kids! This brought me into contact with Dr. X who in fact was very helpful to us in our latter days in Kilmore. He didn’t like the W’s.

One of the things I did for the school during this six months was to interview for staff in Lusaka. I interviewed several staff and appointed two or three teachers. Meanwhile, our social life in Kilmore picked up a bit: Since all my colleagues from the school had abandoned us I was forced to make new contacts: I got to know B L very well. He was a former CEO at the school. He and his wife L, who had been Bursar had worked for RW before RS had arrived at the school. In those days R W and C W didn't work at the school. B told me some incredible stories -so incredible they were almost in the realm of fantasy. I’ll mention just a couple:

B told me he was working at the school before there there were students in it. He was setting up the Academic programs. The W’s had assured him there were Japanese students ‘on their way’ from the Japanese Ministry of Education. After a long time B became suspicious, and in spite of RW's  continued reassurances he insisted on going to Japan to meet with the Ministry officials. RW actually accompanied B on this trip to meet the officials. B says that through an embarrassed interpreter it was clear that the officials from the Japanese Ministry of Education knew absolutely nothing about a so –called list of students destined for the Kilmore International School ! After the meeting RW had to come clean with Be and admitted to him that the list was in fact entirely fictitious!

When confronted with this by B RW merely whined “I’m sorry! I just didn’t want to upset you!”

What a soap opera!

But incredibly, RW wasn’t finished with the ‘list’ yet! He later boasted to B that he had used the same fictitous list and presented it as a passenger list, forged on ‘Qantas’ letterhead to persuade the bank to extent his credit on his overdraft!

How much NC ever knew about all this I don’t know. Eventually B  got fed up and RW and CW started to manoueuvre to get themselves on to the premises. When they were ready they accused B and his wife of incompetence. ( I remember NC referring to this this at my own interview in London) RW ran B and his wife off the premises after inspecting their briefcases.

NC bought RW's  version of events, hook ,line and sinker and disappeared from view back to Melbourne.

I think it was all just really an excuse to get into the school and take it over. RW and his wife , I believe, always did want to be in the school.

But B was to have revenge of a sort. They sued RW successfully for wrongful dismissal and the latter was ordered to pay compensation. He refused of course and by this time B's wife’s health was suffering so B settled out of court for a much smaller sum than was originally awarded.

The strain of the court case had taken it’s toll. The two families lived in the same road and had to see each other almost every day during the lawsuit. B told me that at a critical stage in the court case one night they were wakened by the headlights of a car shining into their bedroom. It was RW. He returned on several nights. There was a sinister side to RW which he was not afraid to express when he needed to.

There was also a sinister side to CW. When I came back from London I found Marie in a very distressed state: she said she had heard a noises at night near the clothes line. The next day she had found one of our son’s ‘T’ shirts thrown on the path of the house with a hole cut out of it in the shape of heart. The person had clearly used a scissors to do this. My son was three at the time so it was not a message from an admirer. We surmised that  the person with the scissors was CW.

Social life in Kilmore

We were friendly with John and Linda W and their family. They invited us as guests to their farm in northern Victoria for Christmas. It was a great experience to see the outback complete with flies and huge huntsman spiders in the bedroom! Maria and Linda were great friends.. Their children were wonderful and all got on well together.

We are disappointed though that they didn’t keep in touch after we left Kilmore. But that's life-people don't bother to keep in touch. We went on numerous trips with them to the surrounding areas of Kilmore which were beautiful.

We were also great friends with the M's.  E was a good mate of mine. I found it hard to relate to Australian males. His family had come from Carrigart in Donegal. They were a typical Irish Australian Catholic family and very proud of their Irish roots. We used to go to Mount Disappointment for Barbecues with them regularly in the forest surrounding Kilmore. I think these visits and this friendship kept me sane during my trials and tribulations as Acting Principal of the Kilmore International School. I spent a lot of time in E’s House. They are some of my best memories of Australia. They were a great family - the salt of the earth and I hope we meet them again some day.

Sadly that friendship was put under great strain subsequently by a regrettable incident: we went to the Gold coast in April 1994 to have a break. This was just before I left Kilmore to go to Zambia. I asked E to look after the house. As usual I left things lying about the house. E must have seen my cheque book and been tempted. When we returned I noticed one of my cheques had been removed from my chequebook. I went to the bank and they found the cheque had been cashed-it was only for a hundred dollars.

By a complete coincidence I met E in Town as I was leaving the bank and I told him what had happened –not suspecting for a moment that he would be the culprit!

When I told him what had happened, to my total astonishment, he confessed and begged me not to go the police! I felt very sad - just kind of empty and sorry for him. E had six children and was not in regular work. There is an even sadder ending to this. Linda W told us later that eventually E did get a Government job and he was stupid enough to put his hands in the till. I understand he was in jail for two years. What a tragedy for that lovely family. I have not been able to contact him although I tried several times through Linda. He was such a generous and open fellow E. He was open-he didn't have that awful reserve the English and the Australians have.I really liked him–and can easily forgive him his faults. I just hope the family have recovered again. He is one of a few, along with Linda, the F's and Ann L that I would like to meet up with again.

Our neighbor at Bindley Court Ann H was also a very kind person. She had a great interest in local history. She was very forgiving about the golf balls that used to arrive in her front garden from her golf addicted neighbor! - and she eventually visited us when we moved to Brisbane. Her son Michael used to lend us his lawn mower which I drove with great relish around Bindley Court and Sutherland street! We also kept in touch with the N's - Arrumugan and Pram from South Africa for a while but unfortunately again they failed to keep in touch in the end.

No account of Kilmore would be complete without a mention of the fish and chip shop which we frequented once or twice a week . The owner was a cheerful Dubliner called Lewis who served us extra large portions of chips to honour the Irish connection!

Post script.

This chapter in my life has left some scars. It is of course impossible to see oneself as one really is. I can only guess how I must appear to others. But I am probably safe in saying that I have always been introspective and have been trying to second guess my self for the best part of my adolescent and adult life!

Perhaps an objective observer might ask why I feel the need to seek friendship and intimacy all the time. Why are my expectations of friendships and people so high? (For I suspect that indeed they are). I certainly don’t know. A biographer might look for some deep Freudian explanation for this thirst for intimacy. Perhaps there is one –but I have certainly not been able to explain it to myself with any satisfaction.

Why am I writing? Or perhaps more accurately -To whom am I writing? Who is my audience? My children/grandchildren? –as I often claim to myself? To the people involved in this story? Although I will never see them again there are possibly some who I would still would like to read it. Maybe it is just the cathartic outspewings of a neurotic mind.

There is nothing of a traumatic nature in my childhood to explain it. I was not dropped on my head by my mother! On the contrary I had caring and responsible parents – and there was nothing that could even be remotely thought of as abuse. I had an unexceptional childhood most of which I cannot even remember.

My impressions are those of my adolescent years when I became aware that I had a very sensitive nature. This hypersensitivity has lead to a tendency to overeact in both private and professional relationships. That is what I see as a possible source of anxiety attacks. But it is only a descriptive phrase isn’t it? It is not an explanation–what does it mean?

I do not believe that one can ever 'move on' from some experiences. One just tries to live with them-uncomfortable although though it may be.

I still awake on many mornings at the witching hour –the hour before dawn and play through scenes from Kilmore in my mind. I am not in control of this –it just happens on most mornings of my life-even now- nearly twenty years later. Indeed I am writing this now at the witching hour! Writing this may help me to accept some of the disappointments – I don’t know –there are times when I think it might be better to forget entirely-but I can’t seem do that. I have certainly tried. Sometimes I have even wished I had had a frontal lobotomy just to erase the memories!

But there were many good memories too. In spite of my regret at the mess I made of some of the relationships, there were many good ones too. I don’t think the F's ever realized how important they were to me. For me, we had no friends in a very strange and not particularly friendly environment.

To them no doubt I/we were no more than a passing ship in the night. Just another naive migrant family. They must have wondered why in the hell would we have come to a place like Kilmore. But to me, the F's were the embodiment of all that was good about Australia. They alone were justification in itself for coming to Australia. It was to make such friends that we had come.

I still like to remember the warm reception Pete F would give me on a Saturday morning as I knocked on the door of the house to call in for a chat. With a broad smile and a handshake he would ply me with coffee after coffee as we exchanged yarns about the weeks events at the school or I gave him my first impressions of Australia. Perhaps he was humouring me and was too polite to tell me what he really thought of my Irish habit of dropping in. A quite often didn’t arrive into the kitchen until I was leaving as she liked to sleep in on Saturday mornings! It was great crack – as they say in Belfast!

In recent years I have come to realise how similar the English and Australians are. They are both very reserved. They are closed and I feel lonely among them.

The Irish,of course, are not reserved. I may be introverted but I am not reserved. I am open. I found Africans and South Americans not at all reserved -and very open -that is perhaps why I feel a certain affinity with these peoples when I am living among them. I feel a 'Joie de vivre' which I just can't feel in Australia or England.