Number Nine, Number Nine…

This Kitchen Tape Recorded on 21 April 2018

GM:  OK, today is Saturday, 21st of April, 2018 and I’m with Trenna Mahney.  Tren, you were going to tell us a bit more about Craig House, I think? 

THM:  Alright.  The main house – I was talking about the kitchen and the back enclosed…  well, I guess, in a way it was a bit of a pantry, where it had the fruit cupboard, and all that. 

Sleeping Arrangements

That leads into the rooms where all the girls slept.  In all, there would be 14 or 15 girls who could stay there at one time.  If there was an overflow, which later on there was, they would sleep in the annexe.  

Earlier, the annexe had been made in 1962 to house the boys and then in the mid ‘60s another building was built on the site.  That was a very ‘60s square or oblong building that housed the boys, and a flat for the house master and house mistress. 

Prior to that the boys had lived next door at the Bonnerup’s house.  The girls’ rooms,  there were two, two-bed bedrooms, one at the back of the house, one that had a window that looked onto the back enclosed porch.  That held two girls. 

I guess if more girls came, bunk beds could be used, but we didn’t tend to have bunk beds at Craig House. 

The beds were all wooden.  

At the very centre of the house there was an intersection that had a passageway which went down to the kitchen, and to the front door and Matron’s room, and the one that had come from the back door. 

In the very centre there, there was another bedroom which held two beds and it had a window.  It was a strange sort of thing.  I think initially it was a bedroom with a large window looking onto the outside room with all louvers – the  sleepout.  

It had been slightly more enclosed in that a window remained.  Well, there was a window frame.  I don’t think it had any glass in it so it couldn’t be shut off. 

I may be wrong, but I don’t remember it having any glass and what was still there at the end of that, and behind that window was the sleepout which still had louvers. 

That was the head girl’s room. And at one end of the room were built-in cupboards which were from floor to ceiling.  That’s where all the linen was kept.  I think it was all the linen, all the sheets,  not only for the girls’ rooms but also for the boys’ rooms as well.  

And then, just before you got to that room, on the right side, which was the room behind Matron’s sitting room, was the now refurbished pink room, which had been the blue room. 

That held 5 beds, so that was the most dorm-like room in the girls’ quarters.  All the girls had individual cupboards that lined the wall that Matron had had the fireplace burn through to.  So I guess they made sure that it wasn’t going to burn through to the cupboards again. 

The beds we’re all made [constructed] for the girls.  They were actually really good. 

They were wooden beds.  They were low, they had two large drawers under the bed so you could store stuff, actually in the bed frame, it was under the bed though. 

There was no need to sweep under the bed as it went right down to the ground.  The bedhead was built as a frame which had a bookshelf, or a shelf, and a side table where we could put something on top. 

It had a drawer, and in between the drawers, a little thin pull out desk, like just a slab of wood that was used as a homework desk, although we didn’t really do homework there.  We might have written letters home or done any sort of drawings or stuff. 

Under that was a little cupboard which had a shelf in the middle so you could store some of your items. 

Matron would inspect every so often without warning to make sure that everything you owned was hung correctly and folded properly and kept in order.  If it wasn’t she would spare no pity, and would upend whatever she could, or pull out whatever she could, and you had to put it away properly. 

Beds had to be made first thing in the morning before we went to breakfast.  They always had to be made with hospital corners so they were neat and you never left your bottom indentation from sitting on the bed. 

Personal Items

The bed had to be alway brushed down so it was nice and pretty to look at.  You were allowed to have personal items on the bed, and while I was there I had my doll that my dad had won for me, or got for me at some sort of fair or Christmas party or something he attended.  I loved her. 

It was not a doll where you could zip it open and put your pyjamas in as some of the other girls had.  They had dogs or something like that and you could zip them open to do that. 

Mine was just lovely.  She had a pink plastic dress which had all layers starting small and coming out as tiered layers of pretty pink, with a floral pattern on.  And she sat there as a plastic doll with arms that could move, and long hair, and she had blue eyes, and you could move her head. 

She was very pretty, and it was good because it was the Pink Room because the walls were painted pink and she was pink. So it looked really nice, and she sat on my bed all the time that I was at Craig House.

I do think that was really the only thing that I had from my Dad as far as I know.  Except for, I thought I had a red grand piano that was only about 12 inches square.  It may have been blue.  

Dad had bought one for Barb on her birthday and she knows that she was playing that when our mum had a turn in 1959. 

It was something that Mum wouldn’t recover from.  That’s when she was taken off to hospital and passed away at St John of God Hospital. 

Barb said she was playing her piano.  I don’t know if I got her piano because she no longer wanted it, or whether I had been given one as well.  I have a memory of there being a light blue piano and a red piano. 

Anyway, I loved to play that little piano, whether it was mine or hers.  Those two things are the only things I remember having from Dad.   

Although I did tell a lie to Matron one day when she pulled everything out of my cupboards because they were in a mess, which was unusual for me because I was a very neat girl. 

But she was “in one of those moods”, as we would say, and she would just pull everything out just for the hell of it.  I think to show you who was the boss. 

It upset me so much that when a china mug broke into pieces I started to cry and said that that was the only thing I had left that my Daddy had given me. 

I never did apologise for lying to her, but she got one of the boys [long pause as Trenna tears up.  She then continues in a broken, pained voice] to glue it back together again.  [still in a shaky voice] I felt terrible for doing it, but at the time I didn’t, I thought I was one up on her and she deserved it.  [as she thinks of the next thing to say there is another long pause, and  she continues in the shaky, tearful voice]  Later on I would learn that her father had taken his own life, but I didn’t know that as a child. [more crying and another long pause] 

Sharing with Barb and MPD

[recovering her composure] Anyway!   When I first went to Craig House I had stayed in the annexe with Barb, which she hated apparently.

I have no memory of it, other than I knew I was there, and I was so happy to be there.  In later years, in more recent years, in my 50s she apologised a number of times about how much she used to scream at me because I would touch her belongings. 

The belongings that she was talking about where that she would have picture cards, I don’t know where we got these picture postcards of pop stars, but they were actual picture cards not just cut out of magazines.  

There were also fan magazines of all the boys in bands that she liked. 

Like MPD, Mike, Peter and Danny who were a band who made it big.  They got a number one song called Little Boy Sad. 

[You can hear it here.]

Barb and Nance and Marg and Madge belonged to Pete’s Rock House or Clubhouse which was a groovy thing to belong to from one of the pop music radio stations, and she got to know the boys from MPD.

It was Danny who liked her, and they actually did go out. 

Later, Danny did become an item with and married a very famous Australian singer … Coleen Hewett.  Also Mike from MPD wrote a very famous football song called Up There Cazaly.   

Barb was Danny’s girlfriend and he was in love with her, and I think to this day she still has letters from him. I think either she was too young to continue the relationship or she moved on to other men or boys in her life. 

Then her life took a change which meant that she wouldn’t have been hanging out with pop stars anymore.

But, back to the annexe. In there for the girls there was a bedroom that held two beds, and I think there were two other bedrooms that held two beds. 

The bedroom at the end of the annexe held one bed and a senior person would always get that room.  At one stage that would have been where the house master slept, when it was the boys’ quarters when Craig House first opened. 

There was an exit to the outside in that area.  Just a door and a step that allowed you to get out that way.  Otherwise you went to the front of the annexe where I think there were double doors. 

There was a bathroom which may have had two showers and two hand basins, or maybe just the one shower and a toilet but I’m not sure if it had a toilet because there was a toilet just outside in the laundry, and I think that was the toilet for the annexe. 

we would always muck around and see how far we could run down the passage to get to the door to the homework area without our top on or something

You had to go outside to get to the toilet and then go into the laundry.  

Before the laundry in that area was what was known as the rec room, the Recreation Room.  It was full of study desks and was where the boys used to study. 

The girls studied at the dining room tables.  Study for homework commenced at 7:30 every night and went to 9:30.  Everybody had to be ready for homework at that time and you did it whether you had been given homework or not. 

The younger children like me would be sent to bed I think at 8:30 or 8 pm.  Later, when Helen was there, when we would go to bed we would always muck around and see how far we could run down the passage to get to the door to the homework area without our top on or something, as a dare. 

We thought that was hilarious. 

There were a number of times we got caught.  Matron would sometimes do the rounds to make sure we had gone to bed when there were a number of younger girls later on, when the Crossings came.  

The older girls, and I think that was anyone who had turned 15,  were allowed to stay up after homework and they got to have a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and a biscuit. 

Quite a bizarre thing, really, I can only presume it was a power struggle over being told to do something

We didn’t get those things when we went to bed, we just had to clean our teeth.  However, we were very good at going to the n^th degree to make it look like we’d cleaned our teeth, as for some unknown reason cleaning them was abhorrent to us. 

I don’t know whether we had really bad tasting toothpaste or whether we just didn’t like the task, but we would have to go to the bathroom and wet our toothbrush and we would wet our face so that we could wipe it on our towell so that it looked like we had cleaned our teeth. 

Quite a bizarre thing, really, I can only presume it was a power struggle over being told to do something, or that the toothpaste had a very bad taste.  

Scarred for Life

As I’ve said before, the new boys’ quarters were built at the back of the block. I don’t know how many beds there were in there.  It was off limits to the girls, except for on one occasion. 

I did get to go into the boys quarters and it was a time when I had been into hospital to have eye surgery.  Matron had a strange thing about my eye surgeries because she would consider that I wasn’t sick. 

I would always be in hospital for about 9 to 10 days, something like that – quite a period really.  When I left hospital I was always given two weeks as a minimum off school. 

On this occasion I was given a small pair of plastic sunglasses, very dark sunglasses to wear, which I had to return to the hospital or to my doctor at my next appointment. 

I didn’t get to keep those so I didn’t wear them after I had my surgery. I had to wear sunglasses because I suffered very badly from the glare of the sun, it blinded me.   

So I was off school recovering from the eye surgery. Matron had decided that Tuesday, being laundry day, well I think Monday was laundry day, but we would get the dried and folded laundry on Tuesday, that all the laundry had to be distributed to the end of the beds, towels, sheets, etcetera and their clothing. 

We knew whose clothing was whose because everybody had name tags sewn on their belongings, and that was one of the girls’ jobs –  to sew the tags on. 

It was a Tuesday afternoon job after school, which we all hated with a passion.  We would have little white tags made up with our name. 

Sometimes I’m sure Matron would be particularly cruel to me, and she would get my name tag made and it would have “Trenna Seckington” written on it, which happened to make it a very long tag. 

This meant I had to sew my tag on my clothes. I think everybody would have known who “Trenna”  was as there was only one of us at Craig House. 

Sometimes I did get “Trenna” but I did get awfully upset having such a long name tag.  I’m quite surprised she never put “Trenna Helaine Seckington”.  So we got to do those jobs.

On this particular occasion, where I got to go into the boys’ quarters, I’m not sure which year it was, I was still at primary school. 

I had surgeries in 1969 so I’m presuming it was one of those surgeries in 1969.  I had been ordered to deliver the boys’ towels and put them on each of their beds. 

I had done that alright but as I came out of the front door, which was a glass sliding door with a floor to ceiling glass panel window, you walked out onto a small platform and then it had two steps down to the grass. 

I went to walk out, and even with my sunglasses on, was totally blinded by the sun.  And when I say blinded, I mean not only that I could only see black, but it hurt my eyes, like I had been stung by a bee. 

It was very painful so I had to put my hands over my eyes, and I stood in front of where I knew the door was. I tried to walk a straight line one foot after the other so I could walk out the door. 

But at some point along the way I had got off that straight line and I had hit the glass window pane. I would have weighed less than four stone because Matron and I had a bet going on to see if I could hit four stone [about 25kg] before she could by the end of the year. 

So I was under four stone and skinny-as, but then maybe I was boney. 

I walked straight through the glass, there were shards everywhere – it was obviously not reinforced glass. 

I came out terrified at the trouble I will get into.

I didn’t know where the steps were so I just took a jump off the little porch that was there because I didn’t know where the steps were. 

I know that the cook, who I think was still Mrs Malski, but it could have been Mrs Schmitt who replaced Mrs Malski once she had to stop working for us as our cook, who I adored immensely.

Anyway, the cook came running out to see what was happening and when she saw me she collapsed on the ground.  And then other people came.  I had glass in my knee, and by the time I got into the house… So I don’t really remember being in the house, so I was probably only on the back porch, that I saw that I had a hole about the size of $0.20 piece or more, but the bone that was there was sticking out of my leg and it was bleeding all down my leg.

I knew I had to go to the doctor. 

I know Matron took me to the doctor’s and that was the Southern Clinic just up the road from where I now live.  There was a doctor there called Dr Greenham, and he said he would have to put stitches in it, and the only way he could do that was by putting a needle into the hole of my knee, but that would make it go to sleep and I wouldn’t feel any pain. 

I went from hero to idiot in one day, and I managed to do all of that with my eyes shut!

But I certainly felt the needle go into my skinny, boney knee.  I had, I think, eight stitches and I still have that scar on my leg today.  

When I got home from the doctor’s everybody had come home from school, and the younger ones who had got home from school earlier, ran with great excitement up the back laneway to tell everybody.

As the high school kids who were getting the bus home from Kent Street, or whichever school they attended. They were saying “you should see!  Trenna walked through the glass door, and there was blood everywhere!” 

I was a bit of a hero for the day, but I also found out later they thought I was a bit of an idiot. 

So I suppose I went from hero to idiot in one day, and I managed to do all of that with my eyes shut! 

But I did get out of delivering all the rest of the linen, and I actually got out of doing the mending that afternoon!

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