The Bush Orphanage by John Hawkins

Author:John Hawkins [Hawkins, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoir
ISBN: 9781877006319
Publisher: Port Campbell Press

Every Saturday and Sunday evening, I would go to watch Tommy’s heavily censored pictures, along with the Aboriginal boys and girls from the Pallottine Mission. Accompanying them was a handful of young female lay helpers, mainly from Victoria. One night, one of the children handed me a heavily perfumed letter from one of the helpers, so beginning a regular correspondence via hand-delivered mail that lasted several months. We couldn’t be seen together as it would lead to her instant dismissal, so we waved and smiled at each other from a distance.

She invited me over to meet her in the mission kitchen at midnight one evening so we could have coffee and a chat. I parked my ute about a kilometre away and walked quietly to the mission in the dark. She was boiling the kettle for our second coffee when we heard a noise. She pushed me behind the door and the mission manager, Father Eddie, walked in and shone his flashlight around the room.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, shining the torch on the two empty cups.

‘Just having a late coffee, Father,’ she said as she turned the gas off.

Eddie slowly moved the torch around the room until he spotted me standing very upright, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible behind the half closed door. He left the room abruptly without saying anything. The next day Brother Foley approached me with a sheepish grin, ‘I have just been asked by Father Eddie to inform you that John Hawkins is forever banned from the mission’. The young lady was sent back to Victoria in disgrace and I never heard from her again.

Brother Foley was sheepish because one of the older lady helpers had taken a shine to him and the pair could be seen strolling together while the picture was showing. After serving four years as principal, Foley left the Brothers in 1968 before his six-year term was up and moved to Canada, where he married and settled down. Brother Bruno Doyle, who had gained a fearsome reputation at Clontarf, replaced him.

I turned 20 in March 1967 and tuned in to ABC radio to see if my number had come out of the lottery barrel for national service. Like all other young men at the time, I had compulsorily registered for conscription and, if the number chosen from 1 to 31 matched the date of my birthday in March, I was headed for the Australian Army. One number came perilously close but, thankfully, I was spared the ordeal of serving in Vietnam.

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