Professional Documents
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The Outback Songman Chapter Sampler
The Outback Songman Chapter Sampler
Page 279: ‘Shelter’. Words and music by Eric Bogle © Copyright Happy As Larry
Music Publishing Pty Ltd. Print Rights administered in Australia and New Zealand
by Hal Leonard Australia Pty Ltd ABN 13 085 333 713 www.halleonard.com.au
Used by permission. All rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction is Illegal.
Back cover image (right): Jeff Carter, Ted Egan singing with a beer-carton
instrument, Kiama Folk Festival, New South Wales, c. 1995. National Library
of Australia. PIC/11536/9.
Set in 12.5/18.5 pt Adobe Garamond Pro by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press, part of Ovato
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into the city every day, seeking jobs at the Labour Office, but was
often ‘on the dole’. Our house was mortgaged to the State Savings
Bank of Victoria, where Pop had managed to do a deal: he’d pay
off a mere sixpence each week, just to ‘keep in touch’.
When I came into the world, I had three sisters: Patricia
(Pat), aged nine, whose birthday was St Patrick’s Day; Margaret
(Peg), who was seven; and Shirley (Sal), who was almost two.
Mum was Grace Brennan, born at Banyena, in western Victoria,
on 8 March 1901, the daughter of Peter Brennan, an Irish-born
farmer who’d married Martha Williams, a ‘native’ of Australia,
as white people born in this country were then classified. My
dad, Joe Egan, was born at Timboon, in western Victoria, on
26 January 1898. Throughout his life he thought his parents
were John Egan—born in Tipperary, Ireland—and Ellen Hogan,
another ‘native’; years later we learned otherwise.
Our neat little suburban house was built of weatherboard,
with a galvanised-iron roof. It had two bedrooms, a lounge room
and a dining room—which was, in fact, a spare bedroom for the
many relatives who visited regularly. There was a bathroom, but
we didn’t have reticulated hot water; when it was bath night we
would carry buckets of hot water from the washhouse, where
Mum had a wood-fired copper. We had a good-sized kitchen,
with first a wood stove, and later a gas one. We didn’t even have
an ice chest until 1941. There was a dresser for storing food-
stuffs, and a Coolgardie safe with wet hessian walls, where butter
and meat were kept cool.
For all of my childhood I slept on the back porch, adjacent
to the washhouse. In the backyard was a lavatory, fortunately
SO MUCH HAPPENED
IN ’39
My sisters Pat and Peg were both teenagers, and got jobs at
the Royal Arcade Hotel in the city. Pat was a bar attendant in the
ladies’ bar, and Peg was a secretary/typist. In their different ways,
they participated in the hectic social life that swirled around
all the servicemen and women. They both took up smoking,
which was novel for women but de rigueur for young men. Peg
loved dancing, while Pat was not so keen, but together they
attended socials and dance parties, commanding the attention
of many young swains, as they were both good-looking and very
smart dressers.
The cigarette companies had us all by the throat. The people
promoting smoking on the wireless and in posters were, ironically,
the world’s leading singers. They assured us that the ‘smooth-
ness’ of the cigarettes was the reason they sang so beautifully.
Smoking was permitted in cinemas; I found it fascinating that
every time Spencer Tracy lit a cigarette for Katharine Hepburn,
the audience would all light up and puff and cough in unison.
Later, soldiers became the models in cigarette advertising, telling
us to pack Craven A fags in their ACF (Australian Comforts
Fund) parcels.
I began to compile quite comprehensive ‘war books’ based
on the daily wireless reports and the movements of our many
cousins who joined the armed services. That knowledge was
given a boost when, late in 1941, I began, at age nine, to sell
evening newspapers. My stand was on the corner of Bell Street
and Sydney Road, Coburg, in front of Brown’s Pub, right at the
Coburg tram terminus—always a busy spot, but teeming with
people now that the war was in full swing.
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which lists parentage and many other details. Joe had never trav-
elled outside Australia, so he never had a passport. But at age 74
he applied for the age pension and was required to produce a
birth certificate.
The shock was profound. He immediately developed the
shakes and became distressed. We, his children, were thrilled
to bits. Our wonderful Auntie Nora was our grandmother! We
laughed as we reminisced about the happy times we’d spent
together. All Mum said was: ‘Best-kept secret in the Western
District.’ She had known all along!
But it was the end of Pop. He died a couple of years later; the
doctors diagnosed it as Parkinson’s, but there was much more to
it than that. I know the intense level to which my father would
have reviewed every event in his life and the lives of his various
family members. Having met them, I also know the extent to
which Joe was loved by the people he thought were his brothers
and sisters, all of whom would have been sworn to secrecy—
with the dire Catholic warning that to break their oaths would
send them spiralling into the Eternal Flames of Hell.
I have, over many years now, tried to consider the circum-
stances of my father’s conception and birth. Probably a one-off
roll in the hay for seventeen-year-old Nora, with the young chap
named on the birth certificate. Then the agonising awareness of
her pregnancy, by a girl who probably had little knowledge of
the facts of life. Discovery by her strict Irish Catholic parents.
The recriminations.
‘Off to confession you go, my girl! Abortion is out of the
question. You will stay on the farm, out of sight, and when this
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TIMOSHENKO AND
THE YANKS
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