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LOCATE AND CEMENT

1966 – 1969

Along with the ‘war toys’, in every toy shop were racks of ‘Airfix’ models. These were among the first plastic model aeroplanes, assembled using Airfix’s proprietary pungent, corrosive glue, which came in a blue and white tube. ‘Are you right for glue?’ was on the lips of every shopkeeper when a child or parent appeared at the counter with their latest purchase. A ‘Series 1’ kit came in a plastic bag stapled to a paper flap which, on the front, showed a thrilling image of the subject aircraft, usually shooting or dropping some form of projectile, and information with facts and figures about the real thing on the back. On the inside were the instructions: the classic ‘locate and cement’ written directions, in English only, which accompanied the drawings.

There were no pictograms or multiple languages as most model kits provide now. I learned some of the language of aviation – ‘nacelle’, ‘tailplane’, ‘cowling’ and ‘aileron’ – through the solemnly worded assembly sequence of an Airfix model. My construction of a single seat fighter usually commenced with liberal coatings of glue applied to the backside of the pilot to attach him to the seat. Eventually the model would be complete, its polystyrene pilot almost indistinguishable through his canopy under smears of hardened glue. The model would be embellished with those decals that had not floated away or became wrapped around my fingers and broken, but oh boy! Another sleek fighter for the collection.

I began to live and breathe aircraft. During meals, the Observer’s Book of Aircraft was always beside me and, because I was often bored and causing trouble, this was tolerated by my parents; it kept me quiet at the dinner table. I borrowed books on flying from the Wagga library, many of them quaint British hardbacks printed on shiny paper. One urged me to construct a primitive control column and rudder pedals to practice the movements, which I duly did using Meccano. I was given a copy of Paul Brickhill’s The Dam Busters, which I read and reread. I could quote tracts from it. My bicycle was named after Australian pilot Micky Martin’s Lancaster bomber, ‘P for Peter’ which he had nicknamed ‘P for Popsie’. I didn't know what a ‘popsie’ was until I was much older. I gave ‘lectures on flight’ to anyone who would listen. Silhouettes in the Observer’s Book were memorised; any appearance of an aircraft on the television news was accompanied by a shout from me as to what type it was, only to be shushed by my parents who would be concentrating on the television news of the day, after a life of gleaning world events from newspapers, cinema newsreels and the wireless.

Later in the sixties, the new City of Wagga Wagga prospered, as did my father’s ‘turf club’. Money became available for some basic house improvements, and an annual holiday additional to the visits to the respective grandparents in the Melbourne suburbs of McKinnon and West Footscray. Long drives interstate were made over successive summers in an un-air conditioned car containing three restless and occasionally fighting young children. In the Gold Coast in Queensland, our family visited an attraction called Gilltrap’s Auto Museum. Although not particularly interested in cars I enjoyed it, and even more so when I noticed a sleek green and yellow aeroplane suspended from the cavernous roof.

‘Look, that’s a de Havilland Moth Minor,’ I told anybody who would listen.

Hand in hand with my fascination for aircraft was my interest in space exploration. The Gemini program was near its conclusion and the Apollo lunar missions were imminent. I was allowed to stay up once more to watch some of the Saturn launches that lofted the Apollo crews into space, including that of Apollo 11. Many of my contemporaries and I clearly remember where we were when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. Unfortunately our teacher, unlike that of the class next door, was punctilious enough to keep us doing schoolwork rather than watching the black-and-white images on a television set up for the occasion. After school I hared home and caught some of the fuzzy images transmitted from the lunar surface there. I dressed as an astronaut and as the ‘narrator’ for the end-of-school year play, in borrowed white overalls and papier-mache helmet, I tried to replicate the astronauts’ lunar gait in full Earth gravity. I had asked my mother to sew the top of my swimming pool snorkel, a ping pong ball trapped in a plastic cage, to the side of the overalls to depict some sort of valve.

I joined the Australian Air League, of which Wagga had a squadron, essentially Boy Scouts with aeronautical education and military-style drill. Younger than most of the boys, my enthusiasm stood me in good stead, but some of the subjects were just too advanced: Mr Adams, who taught navigation, had actually been a navigator in RAAF Lancasters during World War II, and his diagrams of ‘heading’, ‘track’ and ‘wind’ produced on dark sheets by an old spirit duplicator were a bit too much for me. Still, I listened intently while he described missions over Europe, on one occasion being told to come up from his curtained navigator’s station to ‘Come up and have a look at this flak!’ However, I was also made to attend football training, Police Boys’ Club and confirmation classes, all of which were requirements that, particularly the last, distinctly lacked enthusiasm from me. Perhaps, my parents thought that my attending these would make me more ‘normal’.

Although a voracious reader, interested in science, with no problems with English and spelling but only fair with maths, I was ‘young’ for my age, and I also suffered some physical problems, notably recurring severe headaches and asthma. I may have been on the autism spectrum, and I was timid and easily bullied. I was just hopeless at sport. I was young for my class group, and my immaturity and behaviour lead to the strict but kindly principal of Kooringal School, Mr Potter, determining that I should repeat Sixth Class.

Despite some of the scary stories about high school, I took it for granted that after Kooringal Public I was going to attend the nearest government secondary school, Mount Austin High. I was in a band that had been organised by a classmate, John, who was old for his years and a musical prodigy. We played jazz and I used a music case as a drum until my maternal grandfather, who was musical, passed a primitive drum kit on to me. But one day in 1969, after arriving home from school and running noisily into the wooden-floored house in Grove Street as usual, my parents were waiting.

‘Mark, we’ve got some news,’ my mother said. ‘We’re moving to Melbourne.’