The big day came. New uniform, new bus stop, new faces, new school.

It’s pretty much a blur, really. It was then, and is now but more so. Too many things to take in all at once, confusion, random authority figures giving instructions, missed messages, getting lost, feeling bewildered and excited and trying to see it all with big round eyes.

So many cool kids. Or kids trying to be cool, anyway. I’ll bet the new Grade Nines weren’t impressed at the little fish in the big pool, and the freshly promoted Grade Twelves wouldn’t even have noticed our arrival.

Two images really stand out in my mind. The first is of Alex Moutsatsos. He was one of those Calamvale Primary kids picked up in Danny’s bus, and he was beginning Grade Eight, just like me. He was tall and skinny. Taller than just about everyone else in the year, especially those for whom the glands hadn’t quite kicked in yet. Like me.

His Calamvale schoolfriends called him Stalky, so Stalky he was. And of course, being a sensitive, socially adept, emotionally intelligent young lad, I made all sorts of silly jokes about his appearance. At one stage our group was parked in one of the “tunnels” through Block 1, and as we sat, leaning against the brick wall, I noticed that the triangular space under Alex’s gangly knees could be seen as a kind of tent, and I attempted to move in. Yeah, I had a great sense of humour in those days.

In the years to come, he and I would become firm friends. We’d sit together on the schoolbus, recommend books and music and movies to each other, talk about teenager stuff for hours on end…

We later went to university together, wound up in the same workplace, and he was best man at my wedding.

Strange. We’d lived only a few hundred metres apart, literally around the corner from each other, for years and years, but because he was on a different bus route and went to a different school, we never met. Not until that first day at Sunnybank State High.

Another memory is of someone who faded out of my life rapidly. For the first days we were grouped into temporary classes and the first lessons weren’t heavy on the academicals. They were more getting to know each other sessions. One teacher – it may have been the freshly-married Mrs Podevin, who as Miss Hanson the previous year had absolutely won my big sister’s heart – went around the classroom, getting each student to introduce themselves, say a few words, where they had been born, what they wanted out of high school. The usual break the ice guff.

Painfully shy, I stammered out a few words about my tiny primary school and the huge high school, and sat down gratefully, but other students made a better job of it. One student seized the opportunity and made it her own.

Lyn Slamon. Forty years to the day and I’ve never forgotten her name. She stood up, introduced herself and sang Born Free, the theme song of the film about orphaned lioncubs in Africa rescued and returned to the wild. No music, no nothing but her beautiful pure voice. I was enchanted.

Lions – photo by zwartkops

Born free, as free as the wind blows
As free as the grass grows
Born free to follow your heart

What a song! The way Lyn delivered it, you could feel the classroom walls falling away and the lions romping across the boundless plains, the deep African sky above, the freedom and limitless space opening up as her voice soared high and deep. We applauded with genuine enthusiasm as the last notes faded.

“Encore!” someone called. It may have been Mrs Podevin, as delighted as everyone else. And Lyn obliged.

Second Hand Rose was her encore, now that I think on the day. Barbra Streisand’s quirky song about being the daughter of a second-hand dealer.

It’s no wonder that I feel abused
I never get a thing that ain’t been used
I’m wearing second hand hats
Second hand clothes
That’s why they call me
Second hand Rose…

My younger brother must have felt like that sometimes…

Lyn just belted it out. Barbra Streisand without the nose:

Even Jake the plumber, he’s the guy I adore,
he had the noive to tell me he was married before…

High school was really coming alive!

Lyn was one of those kids who had a talent, trained it up and made the most of it. Sends you down a different career path, opens up more opportunities, and gains you more fame and fortune than the shy guy in the corner.

Lyn didn’t last in Sunnybank. She faded out of my view fairly soon, finding new opportunities elsewhere, but I remembered her thrilling first day performance. Years later, I saw a mention of her in a newspaper. More than a mention really, as it included a photograph. Quite a big photograph actually, on page three of the Brisbane Telegraph, and it showed rather a lot more of Lyn than I’d ever expected to see. I suppose she must have turned eighteen out in the real world.

So that’s it – the only two memories of my first day at Sunnybank High that I can really be sure of, and both involved people.

– Peter Mac

Australian Top 20 – 31 January 1970

	this week	last week			weeks in
	1.	(1)	Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head	Johnny Farnham	8
	2.	(8)	Down On The Corner/Fortunate Son	Creedence Clearwater Revival	7
	3.	(6)	And When I Die	Blood Sweat & Tears	9
	4.	(7)	Take A Letter, Maria	R.B. Greaves	9
	5.	(9)	Holly Holy	Neil Diamond	6
	6.	(3)	Suspicious Minds	Elvis Presley	11
	7.	(5)	Picking Up Pebbles	Matt Flinders	17
	8.	(4)	SOMETHING/COME TOGETHER	The Beatles	13
	9.	(17)	SMILEY	Ronnie Burns	7
	10.	(2)	Penny Arcade	Roy Orbison	15
	11.	(10)	Arkansas Grass	Axiom	9
	12.	(16)	Jam up and jelly tight	Tommy Roe	4
	13.	(12)	Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday	Stevie Wonder	8
	14.	(11)	Tracy	The Cuff Links	11
	15.	(14)	Hey, Western Union Man	Max Merritt & The Meteors	8
	16.	(13)	I’ll Never Fall In Love Again	Bobbie Gentry	14
	17.	(19)	Oh Well	Fleetwood Mac	7
	18.	(25)	I Thank You	Lionel Rose	4
	19.	(18)	Try A Little Kindness	Glen Campbell	9
	20.	(32)	Think About Tomorrow Today/A Dog, A Siren & Memories	Masters Apprentices	3

Pete’s Jukebox

Although I was barely aware of it, the Vietnam War was creating all manner of ripples and undercurrents in American and Australian culture. Anti-war films and songs were popular, often themed on previous wars although the message was clear and relevant to Vietnam.

Oh! What a Lovely War and M*A*S*H, dealing with the First World War and the Korean War respectively, were huge hits of that time. Bright bouncy songs intercut with doomed soldiers going over the top, and humour in the bloody wards of a front-line surgical hospital. The contrast in emotions could not be starker. And of course both got the viewers thinking about the folly and waste of war.

Consider the borders of nations at the beginning and end of the Twentieth Century. They are virtually identical, apart from the largely peaceful demolitions of the colonial empires in the middle of the century, and the dismembering of the Soviet empire at the end.

Europe, in particular, is virtually unchanged, despite two long and bloody wars. The nations of Europe are friendly. France and Germany share a common currency. And so I wonder what the bloody hell was the point of it all?

Vietnam was a big commitment for our small nation. Then, as more recently, we followed the USA into war. We had to resort to conscription to fill the ranks. Although our involvement in Vietnam was winding down, and by the time Whitlam was elected in late 1972 there were only a few embassy guards and the like remaining, in 1970 there was always the thought amongst we young male teens that our birthday might be picked when the time came.

Smiley was John Farnham’s contribution:

Yesterday there was laughter and songs to sing
Yesterday we had loving to burn
Yet today there is a war and there’s peace to pray
When will they learn?

Smiley, you’re off to the Asian war
And we won’t see you smile no more

Out in Park Ridge I was closer than most. My bus stop on Middle Road was on the direct route to the Army camp at Greenbank, and the firing ranges stretched for many kilometres. There would often be military truck convoys, each full of green-clad troops holding rifles or machine guns between their knees.

Truck after truck after truck. Sometimes the soldiers would wave to we kids standing by the side of the road, and sometimes we’d wave back.

On sleepy afternoons there would be the distant rattle of small-arms fire, or now and then a vast metallic bang, as if someone had slammed a mighty door. Another crater on the demolition range.

Years later I’d be one of those soldiers, spending weekends and holidays with the university regiment, but for now the whole military thing was a grim mystery. The firing ranges were beyond a belt of doleful bushland, warning signs guarded the fences, and the gates were patrolled by sentries.

There weren’t any merry songs about jolly soldiers for the Vietnam War. No patriotic airs for the brave troops. Just anti-war songs in various disguises.

Arkansas Grass was another Australian song, despite its American Civil War theme. This one was far more direct, aimed squarely at the “General McAllisters” of the US:

So gaily we marched with the Grey and Red,
To lick ‘em first time like the good General said,
With nary a thought that so very few would go home,

If it weren’t so wrong for a soldier like me,
To throw down his gun, to run to be free,
Then all of us here with the fear in our eyes could go home,

It’s hard for a soldier. Patriotism, pride, mateship, loyalty. So many things keep him in uniform, doing his duty, firing his rifle at the enemy – a band of people just like him. The folly and waste of war are readily apparent. Even the most one-eyed of patriots can hardly fail to be aware of the stupidity of it all, the sheer bloody crime of combat, but you are in it to the hilt. you are part of it.

The American Civil War put the united states of the ex-colonies into battle against each other. Families were literally divided. Likewise in Vietnam. And here we were doing our best to keep one cultural group split into two. They spoke the same language, they had the same history, they were one people, far more than the Americans of a century earlier.

Maybe the politics seemed clear enough in those days, but now my daughter has toured Communist Vietnam and I’ve poked my nose over the border into Shenzhen in Red China, and guess what? They aren’t evil. They are friendly and smiling and happy to pour you a glass of green tea.

We’ve got all those legends about Gallipoli, when we invaded Turkey, but fifty years later we invaded Vietnam, and there’s bugger-all patriotic pride about it. Just a long list of names in the Australian War Memorial and an aging generation of sorrowing mothers and sisters and wives, fathers and brothers and children grown to adulthood.

Maybe, if it hadn’t been for the Smileys and M*A*S*H’s and Arkansas Grasses of those days, maybe the support for the war wouldn’t have waned and maybe my days in uniform, instead of being part of the Queensland University Regiment Social Club where I met my wife, I might have found myself wading through a paddy field or strapped onto a stretcher or sealed in a grey plastic body bag.

So, thank you John Farnham and thank you Brian Cadd and thank you everybody else.

We need you again.

–Peter Mac

Related posts:

1. 1 January 1970: Rose-coloured glasses
2. 7 March 1970: Popular leaders
3. 28 February 1970: Learning curves