1. Themes
  2. A to Z

My Melbourne: Running for the Tram

1936. Half a block from Collins Street, on a corner, an aged building of two levels: No. 99 King Street. One room wide and several rooms deep. Victorian, I imagine. They were everywhere.

There my employers were the Brelaz brothers, Noel and Guido. Noel judged at the Royal Melbourne Show. His picture was in the papers, wine glass in hand. Shocking.

Upstairs, at the rear, in a deep white sink as hard as bluestone gutters, I washed masses of laboratory glassware as fragile as new-laid eggs. It was a relief to run errands, though I ran myself almost to a standstill. I'd shot up 'overnight' by a foot at least.

At fifteen, this was my second job. Forty-three hours over five and a half days for twelve shillings and sixpence. A 'permanent' job acquired on the good word of my temporary employer of the year before, the then Council for Scientific and Industrial Research at East Melbourne, offering, after lunch, restful views of the Fitzroy Gardens across Albert Street. Gardens through which I came to race, groaning, with errands.

Those former employers and my new employers in King Street were jointly interested in the scientific concerns of the wine industry, and when not scrubbing at beakers or retorts, I often ran with 'communications' between the two, or about the city mile and down side lanes into cellars owned by or affiliated with the vineyards of the Murray and beyond.

Take note: I was a 'junior' Rechabite. We met weekly in a hall at Surrey Hills to recite the pledge and ogle the girls. I was reared in a rigidly Methodist household at the crest of the next hill, my father a lifelong abstainer, mother the secretary of the local Woman's Christian Temperance Union! As for me, the new job was a bewildering collision of principles, destined to be endured for fifteen months.

Down into those cellars of iniquity, those clattering bluestone lanes, descending into heavily laced alcoholic glooms, striving not to breathe. Were my gasps for survival breaking the pledge? Bursting back into the open, gulping for air, galloping off to the next confrontation. Running. Always running. But not, as my employers supposed, for the next tram. How could they have been unaware of it? They never pinned me in a corner. But did I spend the savings on myself or did I spend them to keep me running?

My widowed mother's income of a pound a week and my twelve shillings and sixpence did not allow for pocket money. I made mine by running; by pacing the tram at least one way on each errand; by weaving through pedestrians; by going with the tram through lights and beating it across country through parks and gardens, even from King Street to the CSIR in East Melbourne, groaning for breath, even double up with stitches. Keeping the fare for buying salted peanuts and chocolate frogs from the little man with the barrow at the corner of Collins and William, across from the Rialto.

True. I knew every alley, lane, short cut, subway, turn, twist. What didn't I know? It was my city, my big place for my chocolate frogs and salted peanuts. Now I'm pushed to find my way through the shadows of the towers.

Ivan Southall