I caught up with an old friend of my Dad’s on the weekend and told him that we’d recently switched the Small Child to the local Catholic school and we chatted about some of the positive changes we had noticed over the last six months.  My Dad and Frosty are products of a Christian Brothers style of education which means they got the ‘cuts’ for so much as farting out of turn.  They’d get the cuts for not doing their homework, they’d get cuts for not knowing the answers in class,  they’d get the cuts for being too noisy in the playground… hell they got the cuts for just about everything,  In fact I remember my Dad once telling me a story that one of their teachers (all of whom were Catholic priests/brothers) lined his whole class up outside the classroom on a cold Toowoomba morning and gave each and every child in the line the cuts on the way into class for ‘the things they were going to do wrong that day’.

Can you imagine educators getting away with that crap now?  And we thought we had it bad with Sr Mary Gabriel.  I’ve lost the plot again….  anyway back to Frosty’s joke:

Little Johnny was doing rather poorly at the local State School, in particular his Maths skills were atrocious and his concerned parents decided to enroll their little pride and joy in the local Catholic school in the hope that they might have more success.  After a term Little Johnny got his first report card and his Maths grades had improved dramatically.  His parents asked him “What’s the difference?  How come you can do Maths now but couldn’t get it at your old school?”

Little Johnny replied “I saw that guy that was nailed to the plus sign … and I knew these guys were serious!”  🙂
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I’ve been working with my Mum on a  project over the last few days and it’s been great to hang out with her.  She certainly seems to be much more like her old self… like she’s given herself permission to laugh again.  We’ve even been able to have a few laughs about Dad and some of the nonsense he used to inflict on us…. like refusing to eat canned meatballs even though it was all we had to sustain a family of five for two days!

I was 10 at the time and Mum and Dad had pulled us out of school for a term.  They packed up the old G60 Nissan and decided to ‘head bush’ to the Northern Territory and Western Australia for a three month camping holiday through Kakadu and Ayers Rock etc.  We pretty much went from National Park to National Park, climbed and hiked all over the place and found many an isolated campsite down dirt tracks that went God knows where.  We had a number of interesting experiences on that trip… there was the cursed shop at Roper River Bar (long story but I’ll try to remember to tell it at one point), another occasion where Big Sal got handed the tail of a kangaroo that Dad had shot and it scared the living shit out of her… another interesting interlude that saw my Mum in salt water croc territory water trying to catch massive king prawns using her bare hands with a torch in her mouth and Dad keeping an eye out for the crocs!  Basically if you can picture the 70’s dodgy Leyland Brothers minus the letters from viewers and without the annoying ocker accents…. well that was us.  🙂

But on this occasion we were at Katherine Gorge in the Northern Territory and dear old Dad decided we ought to go canoeing up the Gorge.  The gorge itself is particularly picturesque and is actually in several stages between which there are rapids or if you’re traveling up the gorge, rocky sections that the canoe has to be carried over in order to continue further up the gorge.  At the time you couldn’t get up to these areas by car, though I’ve no doubt that tourism would have come to Katherine and you can probably access much more of the place by vehicle these days.

Anyway we went paddling off up the gorge, Mum, Dad and three kids (12, 10 and 6) each with a small bag of clothes, change of shoes and some bedding and of course a back pack full of food.  We were gone from the car which was left in the campground for a few days.   We got as far up the gorge as we could and on the last day, left our belongings in a cove and went as far as we could that day.  When we returned to our little camp at the end of the day we discovered – much to our disgust – that a couple of crows had gotten into our back pack and had eaten EVERYTHING in there that wasnt in a tin!  Fruits, bread, crackers, cereal…. the lot!   And we were left with some hideous sausages that had the temerity to call themselves ‘hotdogs’ and a tin of what was effectively ‘spaghetti meatball surprise’ (the ‘surprise’ is that they could call this shit food that is!)  My Dad point blank refused to eat the stuff and we had three days of paddling to get back to civilization and supplies.

We managed to catch a few catfish which helped the whole no food thing, but three hungry annoying kids on a canoe trip in the middle of nowhere couldn’t have been fun.  Mum was asking me this afternoon if I remembered the snake that fell of the top of the rock face of the cliff and landed about two foot beside us as we canoed along…. and I admit I remember that particular incident well and even as a young kid remember feeling relieved that it hadn’t landed IN the canoe given that 9 out of the world’s 10 most poisonous snakes are all to be found in Australia (a fact that most Aussie kids are taught very early in life!)

When we finally managed to get back to the Katherine National Park Ranger’s office and were telling the National Parks and Wildlife guys about our misadventures and lack of sustenance for the second half of our trip – they replied with a laugh and said “Oh yeah… we know those two crows… we call ’em Heckle and Jeckle they steal food all the time!”

Nice that they warned us!!!

I dont know what possessed us to do it.  But we went to the shopping centre today.

For my part in the fiasco, I was looking for a new pair of bathers (yes I know stupid thing to try and do as winter is upon us and the stores are full of winter clothing and there’s hardly any togs to be found) and for the guys?  Well they were there doing what every other male in town was doing today… racing around like headless chooks trying to find something… anything… to buy for their mothers – for tomorrow is Mother’s Day.

The centre was full of somewhat harried, slightly desperate looking Dads who were herding small children around in a manner quite obviously unfamiliar to them… which means it felt like there was ten times more unrestrained and unruly children around than usual.   Though in truth I doubt their numbers were increased, they were just running amok for Dads unaccustomed to having to venture abroad with small children underfoot!

Back when I worked in retail while I was at Uni I remember quite vividly the reluctance and slight fear these men had about them.  They are a not uncommon breed of men who let their womenfolk do all their gift shopping for them.  Which means that they themselves only hit the shops approximately three times per year – Mother’s Day, the Missus’ Birthday and their Wedding Anniversaries (if they know what’s good for them).

My Dad was one of ‘those’ men who used to leave all the gift giving in the family up to my Mum.  She’d take care of all the Christmas presents and Birthday presents year round for her family and his.  Mum was the one who’d also be stuck doing all the obligatory ‘occasion’ gift shopping as well – you know the engagements, weddings, house warmings, graduations and all those other Hallmark fucking occasions that require the giving of superfluous and often unwanted gifts.  And my Dad would either A) con his daughters into selecting a gift for Mum on his behalf at Christmas and on her Birthday* or B) have to suck it up and face the shops twice a year.

I remember once when I was working at the Disney Store at Garden City and my Dad turned up there on Christmas Eve during his lunch break.  He’d come out shopping for a gift for my mother and had managed to find something he thought she would like and just before he left the shopping centre he popped in to see me at work… because he couldn’t find the carpark he’d parked his car in!   Unfamiliarity with the often convoluted car parks – a sure sign of a Hallmark Shopper if I ever saw one!

*Personally I think Mum was happy to have us girls choosing gifts for her from Dad… his track record wasn’t great – one year he gave her a lawn mower for her birthday!.