It was many moons ago when a particular old school house was purchased at auction for a very good price. It sat on a half acre and the building was quite good and appeared stable. The country town of course had a local pub where the locals got together in the watering hole. The agents realised dollar signs had escaped them as they tried to re-list the property. City folk had got hold of it now and being an exciting buy. A working bee was quickly formed where we all would work over a weekend or two or three. It was such great fun for all of us as we bonded greatly together.

     As the night would grow dark there would be noises and alert city ears especially the girls would freak out at the tap of a window screaming could be heard. Then laughter it was her own boyfriend at this time who had given her a start. We would eat well as there were adults and teenagers together, we had our supervised sleeping arrangements. We the lads returned from the local singing a union support song.” You can’t get me I’m part of the union” 3 times “till the day I die 2 times” Well, it was fun when it lasted until payback time in the morning when the girls came into our sleeping quarters and sang with the same gusto to us. The work involved mainly a good painting as the building was weather board and they were mainly bare of the coating. We needed to give a primer and undercoat before a top coat. There was even a cross on the roof which I painted prior to one of the three sister coming up to help.

      There was another amusing incident where there was a stoutly built gentleman who came to our property in the dark of night armed only with a kerosene lamp. “Can I help you” asked mick ? he replied I’ll f… help you in a minute. We could all see the funny side I think except one who had personal issues with me in pattrticular, still that was his problem. I can always recall in the early morning where all were still asleep and I woke to see a Kookaburra perched on a fence stump laughing away as they do. There was an incident that I can never forget, I was the driver of my own car. We were returning from the river that was not far away.

     I had approached a skull and cross bone intersection of which I came to a complete halt. Being an intersection such as this it would be deadly. I looked at both sides and when it was clear I proceeded to cross and suddenly in the distance a car was speeding to me at the rate of great speed. I quickly flattened my foot to the accelerator and being an automatic transmission it kicked back to second and I sped through the road. I saw the other car closing on me and only missed hitting us by one foot. I further saw the passenger the mouth was wide open as if screaming in fear. The driver must have been traveling at 100 miles per hour in my estimation. I could see he was unable to come to a stop or slow down as it would have been a tragic end either way it could have spelled the end for all of us as there were five passengers in my car as well.