Recorded on 15 April 2018

Primary School Days

GM:  OK, today is Sunday, the 15th of April 2018, I’m with Trenna Mahney, and she’s going to continue telling us about her memories of her past.  Tren, last time we were talking with you you were on your way to school …

THM:  I was talking about that slightly in the future, when Helen had arrived, I think. But I should go back to when I first came to Craig House. 

The Great Sherbies Heist 

I went to East Vic Park Primary School.  I made friends there.  One of my best friends was Irina, a Greek girl.  

“It was a big bag of Sherbies”

I had an eye operation at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH).  It was very scary, and I was in Ward 2 as I would always be, as I went in for a further 10 times for eye surgery – not always receiving the surgery. 

Irina came to visit me and she brought a bag of my favourite lollies, Sherbies.  I was so excited.  She wanted to put them in my metal bedside cupboard but the nurse said that she couldn’t put them there because I was going to be fasting, and that the nurses would look after them, and put them in the staff room and give them back to me when I was no longer fasting.  

It was a big bag of Sherbies, much bigger than I would ordinarily order by myself because they would be too expensive.  

I think that was the last time I ever saw Irina.  I never saw East Vic Park Primary School again, and I don’t recall any of the other students who they were, their names or anything like that.  

I know I had a sad thought when I was leaving there.  I had been learning to play the triangle for the school band at the end of the year.

I thought I had been picked for the triangle because I was particularly good at it.  I think I was picked because it was the most simple instrument to use.  I was at the back of the band.  Not seen by most of the public, and I was asked not to sing. I was percussion.

GM:   Excuse me Tren, I don’t think you said what happened to the Sherbies.

THM:  Like Irina, I never saw them again! 

The nurses ate them.  

Although that’s my story.  They just said they weren’t there and they couldn’t find them.  So I can only surmise that they feasted on my Sherbies, and I never got them.  

I just had to suffer the consequences of an operation which had gone wrong, although I didn’t know it at the time, and I had to lay very still in bed on my back, with small sandbags on either side of my head.

A New School

So, here I am at Craig House going to a new school.  I don’t remember if I was taken by Matron to school on the first day, or whether I walked to school, as I did every other day from then on.  Although, I do think we were able to catch the bus on rainy days.  

Nevertheless, I arrived at school, and the school was in Forrest Street, South Perth.  I was very shy and I was going to be in a joint grade 3 and grade 4 class.  I was in grade 3.  

It was July so people had been at school and everybody knew each other, and I didn’t know anybody.  I was particularly thin and I had been given much thicker bifocal glasses to wear after my eye surgery.  

By this stage, I think, my hair had already been cut.  I had very long hair, but I don’t think it remained long much after I arrived at Craig House. 

I think it got cut by a hairdresser in the city, above Zimples Arcade.  It was a very, very dramatically ugly hairdo. Short fringe, short sideburns that I wore in front of my ears and behind my ears, and it came to just the nape of my neck.  

I had very bad teeth, partly not helped by my loathing of cleaning my teeth , and my love of eating lollies.  Having Marfan’s Syndrome gave me a mouth full of teeth that were all crossed over each other because of my high arched palate.  

I was going to be a child from then on who would be a target for anybody who was going to make fun of me.  But I was prepared and I coped with most things that were flung at me whilst I was at primary school. 

I became a little toughy, even though I was skinny. 

I don’t remember the name of my teacher [in 1965]  I know it was a lady, a young lady, and I have very little memory of that first year and a half of school. 

I barely remember the class at all except that there were coir or seagrass squares that we would sit on.  I feel like there was resting time, but that sounds like I was too old for that, so I guess they were for the younger class being separated from the older class at times. 

There may not have been enough chairs to go around so the littlies might have sat on the floor mats for a good part of the time.

I do remember that there was a reading program called SRA or something like that, Reading Programme. Which were boxes of colour coded cards, which told stories, factual and fiction. 

Then you were asked a series of multiple choice questions.  I don’t recall if there was anything other than multiple choice.  

I hated those cards because you had to go and choose either a topic or a colour, and I found that very hard to do from a standing position, because all my reading was done very close to my eyes.  

I do recall my friends.  My best friend was Jenny Phillips.  She was a tall gangly girl and she loved Scotty’s – western highland terriers.  She belonged to a club, and she had two.  She was just crazy about them.  

She lived opposite the top oval of the school, which was opposite the school on one corner, and opposite the Anglican church on the other side of the road. 

We went home to her place during the day.  I don’t know if we went every day.  Sometimes there were things that Jenny had to do like let the dogs out, or feed the dogs.  She had little jobs to do.  

Her grandad lived at a house at the back of their house, which you could get to by going through a gate which went into a workshop, and then out into his house.  I don’t remember his house.  

She had a below ground swimming pool, so that meant she was very wealthy. 

I do remember the workshop because it was very cluttered and dark in there.  And I remember that I walked into an overhanging iron, which was on a plastic coated iron stand which I didn’t see. 

I walked into it and knocked it off the stand.  He got extremely angry at me because he had been working on it to fix it, and he told me to get out and never go there again.  

He was very awful and scary, and I never did go there again.  I was always terrified from then on about going to Jenny’s in case he came over, and if he did I would want to hide.  

I do remember that occasionally we had a swim.  She had a below ground swimming pool, so that meant she was very wealthy. 

I don’t remember if we ever ate anything over there, and I never recall seeing any adults.  It was just us going over to her house.

She loved dogs, I love dogs, but I did prefer big dogs like the one Matron had.  Her dog was called Amos.  A big black dog who had long hair, but I think it was her dog by default, because I think it was a stray and had come to Craig House from Haddon Hall, a grand home in decay that was a couple of doors along the street towards the Narrows [Bridge] from us.  

I loved him, and he was what I thought a dog was.  The little dogs were yappy. 

And then being in a club she (Jenny) had to always brush their hair, and they had to stand in a proper way, and I didn’t like what she did.  But Jenny and I were best friends.  

My second best friend was a girl called Marie Kelvington. Marie lived down Angelo Street. 

We went down Angelo Street past the bus stop to go home, past the block of flats and then there was this street to the right.  Her home was a few houses along from that.  

“but she was still rich because they could afford to buy Heinz spaghetti”

There was something about her house that told me that she wasn’t as rich as Jenny, but she was still rich because they could afford to buy Heinz spaghetti, not just no-name spaghetti.  

She would offer Heinz spaghetti for lunch, but we weren’t allowed to use anything in the kitchen except the toaster, so we would eat spaghetti.  

I don’t remember eating toast, I just remember eating spaghetti with a spoon straight out of the can, and I loved it cold.  But I do remember we sometimes made sandwiches, spaghetti sandwiches.  They were my favourite type of sandwich, but very messy.  

Marie and I were good friends but I think Jenny was a bit brighter than Marie. 

There was also a group of other girls who were friends in my class, and I don’t know when I picked them up along the way.  Whether it was right from the start or whether it came later. 

But those two, I know for sure, where my friends before Helen came along.  

Helen may not have known Jill Collins and Janet Abbott and Nola, who all hung around together.  They may have been there but I’m not sure. 

Later on Leanne McManus and some of the other girls I knew were friends with Helen and me.  

I loved the area where we sat when we were having our morning tea, which was undercover.  It was just a big shed with rows of wooden slatted benches where you could sit and eat your lunch. 

But we would play games running from one seat to the next.  Jumping, it was my favourite thing to do.  I loved to run and jump, and I guess it was a favourite because I was always the best at it.  

I didn’t think I was particularly competitive.  I was competitive with myself, so I always ran to see how quickly I could go, and whether I could jump two legs at a time or one leg at a time or whatever.  

Or I would sort of dislocate my thumb so that it went back to my arm and all the kids would go “errrrhhh!”

There was a school playground area.  That was mainly bitumen and concrete.  There was a small area of unkempt grass under the trees, and there were monkey bars which I could manipulate myself very well on.  

Having Marfan Syndrome I was double-jointed, and I could cross my knees and walk on my knees and amuse everybody no end.  That was my party trick and I would always willingly show people how I could do that. 

Or I would sort of dislocate my thumb so that it went back to my arm and all the kids would go “errrrhhh!” or not want to look.  

I thought it was great fun that I could do it and they couldn’t.  I wish I hadn’t done those things now at age 60 I’m paying the price.

I loved playing in the playground, particularly using the skippy rope.  I was good at that. Particularly with the two girls twirling the rope and two girls jumping in from either side and taking over from each other.  

Same with “elastics”, same sort of thing.  I also loved playing with your own skipping rope, crossovers and backwards and doing Elastics tricks.  I was good at all of that sort of thing.  I was always doing that during play-lunch.

We had a tuckshop which was at the corner of the school and attached to some other building which I think was an old house.  Then later a hall was attached to the tuckshop. 

And we would go to the tuckshop. Well, not me really because I think we didn’t get pocket money to go to the tuckshop. 

I think we mainly had sandwiches which the girls at Craig House had made in the morning.  The older girls were making them at that stage.  I don’t think I made them at that time.  

There was an oval, and I loved all sorts of athletic sports.  I wasn’t good at team sports. I didn’t like the idea of playing netball, I think that came later. 

I was a good little athlete. I could run or sprint very quickly.  

I wasn’t good at long distance running but I was a sprinter and hurdler, although hurdling I don’t think came until I went to high school. 

I did high jumping at primary school and at some point I became the school champion for the girls when I broke the four foot record.  I jumped 4 feet 1 inch.  

The style of jumping was different to today where your back is arched and you fall on padded ground on your back.  I used to jump from the side so that my legs kicked up from the side and you landed fair and square on your bottom.

I think we had a mat to land on, so I don’t know that I helped my scoliosis at all.  

Their house was big and it had a big veranda, but there were about 8 kids and they were everywhere!

But in those days children with my condition were never told to not do certain sports, and all the sports I liked were the ones that probably did the most damage.

I know that there were toilets at the back of the school.  There was a road that led down and one of the girls that was at the school, Lynette Graydon. I don’t remember from what year I knew her, but she was a sort of a friend, and she was important because her father [Bill] was a politician.  

But they seemed to be poor.  Their house was big and it had a big veranda, but there were about 8 kids and they were everywhere! 

She had extremely long hair, and I think it was long and frizzy.  At the time I thought it was very ugly hair, but I never said anything because I thought they were too poor to cut it for her.  

I wasn’t a girl who liked boys at that stage.  I don’t remember if I played with any boys, but I was the only child from Craig House who was at the school.  

I know I also had a friend Lauren Richards.  I think it must have been early in my life, but I’ll find out from Helen.  She lived in a very run down area that was called Judd Street, which ran parallel to Mill Point Road, and was near Hardy Street.  

We used to go to her place and that’s from where we actually knew that people were poor.  There was all sorts of clothing in piles, just out on the front verandah not being looked after, and the veranda had missing floorboards. 

There was also a bed on the veranda where someone used to sleep.  I don’t know who slept there but I think Helen might remember.  We also knew that she wore very old clothes. 

I remember that when I was very young and still at Mofflyn Homes I was put on a bus to go somewhere.  I thought it was Kalgoorlie, but I think my Child Welfare, or Mofflyn Homes records detail it as another place.  

[GM: I checked some papers from the Mofflyn Homes records. There is a copy of a telegram dated 18 December 1964 (Trenna would have been 7 years old) addressed to “Mrs Field, “ROSEVALE”, Upper Kalgan”. It reads

“TRENNA ON BUS. PLEASE MEET. ARRIVES 4:30PM TODAY.

CHILDREN’S HOME”

So, it was probably Kalgan, not Kalgoorlie.

Mr Smith from Mofflyn put me on a bus by myself to go on a long bus trip.  There was a woman in front of me in the queue to get on who Mr Smith asked if she would keep an eye on me. 

Her name was … it’s just slipped my mind.  She was an older woman, and I sat with her and she talked with me, and I liked the ride up to this place which turned out to be a farm.  [GM: In a later recording, The Kitchen Tapes No. 13 Trenna remembers the woman’s name to be Mrs Angrove.]

Many years later, when Matron had sent me to the butcher in Mends Street, that same woman recognised me.  I didn’t know her and then when she said her name I remembered her.  

From then on I kept in contact with her because she was sort of eccentric.  She lived on Mill Point Road, or rather, she lived near Judd Street and she had a very cluttered little house.  

When I went there she would always offer me something to drink.  It was always something called dry ginger ale, which I had never heard of at the time and I found it really horrible to drink.  I never told her that.  

She then moved to Mill Point Road where she lived in a duplex that was side-on to Mill Point Road.  It had a much more attractive garden but also a very cluttered house with strange things in it.   

She smoked and drank and had a very hoarse voice, but she was always very nice and had time for me.  

“That story, which I thought was very good, caused Matron to consider my seeing a psychiatrist”

I do remember later on, when I got into my writing phase, I set a terribly gruesome murder at her place and the flats next to her place because it was such a good setting for such a thing.  

That story, which I thought was very good, caused Matron to consider my seeing a psychiatrist.  I don’t know if I actually did, but I do know that I talked to Sue Crossing about it.  She said that they would show me blotting paper and I would have to tell them whether I could see pictures in it.  I thought if I saw pictures, that would mean I was mad.  

I don’t know if I ever went to the psychiatrist but I still thought my story was very good, but I do know it was particularly gruesome. 

I enjoyed writing the bits about knitting needles through the eyeballs and someone being killed by a hot iron being placed on their face until they died.  

I think I might have had some Agatha Christie overload from reading her instead of doing homework.