60 in 60. #9 Geelong
I am reflecting on the last 60 years, and writing 60 blog posts in 60 days. 30 about people and 30 about events and experiences.
Time to change it up a bit and write about a few places, events and happenings.
I was born at PANCH (Preston And Northcote Community Hospital) on June 21 1961. I always hated it when I was a kid that my birthday was on the shortest day of the year. When I was 5 Dad got a job as a BP rep and we moved to Geelong.
We lived at 119 Aberdeen St Newtown in a two storey house that we loved. Many adventures and memories centre on that house and I have been back a couple of times to home opens when the property has been on the market, just to reminisce. Olive and her husband lived behind us and our football ended up in their garden so many times they built a ladder on the fence for us to climb over and retrieve it. I remember playing Solitaire with marbles on a beautiful wooden board at their place.
Next to them on the side street lived Marjorie and Mrs Wooten who we befriended and would drop in unannounced for afternoon tea. Marjorie was a nurse who lived with her elderly Mum and they were both lovely, always making the Holt children welcome.
We played in our backyard a lot but our favourite place to play was the carpark at Aberdeen House, a reception centre on the corner two doors down. It made a great football ground but there was a problem: The Arch Enemy! The manager did not like us playing there and would kick us out whenever he found us playing in the car park. We recognised his car when it appeared and would race home to get away from his scaldings. Mum always knew when the Arch Enemy had showed up by the four children whizzing past the window. The escape plan failed one day though when the footy landed on the roof and I climbed up the drainpipe to retrieve it. At that very moment the Arch Enemy arrived and my disloyal siblings all deserted the scene, leaving me stuck on the roof, afraid to move for fear of being caught.
We went to Newtown State School on the corner of Aberdeen St and Shannon Ave. My first teacher was Mrs Digby. Kids I remember were Andrew Scott, Tim Mitchell, Mark Lane and Bruce Gray-McIntosh with whom I had frenemy relationship. We lived and breathed football and every day a game was played on the gravel schoolyard adjacent to Skene St. Two teams were picked and invariably all the best players were on one team and I was on the other. I wasn’t popular but my footy ability gave me a certain amount of credibility. The first quarter was at morning playtime, quarters 2 & 3 were at lunchtime and the final quarter was played during afternoon recess. They were titanic battles and far more engaging than the schoolwork we did in between quarters.
The girls I remember were Gayle Matthews- the first girl I ever kissed, a peck behind the shelter shed in grade one-, Robin Bust who forgot to wear undies one day, a fact only discovered when the girls started doing handstands against the school wall, and Belinda Ferris-another crush- whose parents owned the dairy on Skene St and delivered milk by horse and cart early each morning. I can clearly recall the sound of the horse clip-clopping along the street beside the bluestone gutters.
There was a milk bar up the side street at the next corner where we bought lollies or packets of Rothmans cigarettes for Dad back when cigarettes could be sold to children. 5c worth of mixed lollies was a treasure trove of sugary sweetness, aniseed balls, raspberries, musk sticks, cricket balls, packets of fags, choo choo bars, liquorice straps, buddies, freckles and cobbers/mates- hard chewy caramel coated in chocolate. Most lollies were four for 1c. 5c worth of chips was a meal from the fish and chip shop across the road and you burnt your fingers after tearing the top of the packet open and diving your hand in to get at the salty treats inside.
On Friday nights we went to ‘Club’ at the Police Boys club in Geelong West, dressed in our uniforms of white shorts, yellow T-shirts and white runners. All the neighbourhood kids would pay their weekly 5c fees and spend the next couple of hours playing games, jumping on the trampoline, swinging on heavy ropes or boxing in the gym. I remember my favourite leader was a man called Fred. Each year the club organised a camp at the Toc H camp site in Point Lonsdale and it was fantastic fun, climbing the giant sandhill (no longer there, having been planted over), swimming, playing games and always culminating with a treasure hunt on the beach where we dug for 2c coins and marbles which could be redeemed for prizes or money. At the end of each year there was a presentation night and my big brother Alan was not impressed the year I won the prize for ‘Best Behaved Boy’ instead of him! I got a pencil torch and Vicki won the ‘Best Behaved Girl” prize, a snow globe. That was the last time my behaviour would be adjudged good for many years!!
I loved footy, playing it, watching it, listening to it, the pattern was established early, giving rise to my maxim- “Too much football is just enough”. I lived for playing little league footy on a Saturday morning in the YMCA Geelong West comp. I played three seasons for ‘The Terrifics’, in yellow jumpers with red collars and cuffs, coached by Eric Nicholls who played for Geelong but missed out on the 1963 premiership. As a kid I had no idea he had played for the Cats. His two sons played in the team but the star player was Grant Sutherland. The other teams in the under 9 league were the 'Dazzlers’, ‘Corkers’, ‘Rippers’, ‘Scorchers’ and ‘Beauts’. With those monikers there was no disguising their motives to build our confidence and self-esteem!
The highlight of my football career came in 1969 when we beat The Dazzlers in a gripping Grand Final, 4.3-27 to 1.6-12. I kicked 2 goals and was named in the best players in the paper. The story described it as our best performance of the season, helped by inaccurate kicking by the Dazzlers. When I moved up to under 11s I played for the ‘Capris’ in a league based on car names, ‘Monaros’, ‘Falcons’ and ‘Valiants’ were some of them.
My football career was put on hold for a while when I broke my leg. I ran across the road, smack into the side of a car driven by a poor bloke who was driving home for lunch for the first time ever. I spent 6 weeks in plaster and could fairly motor on crutches, I wore out two plaster casts. Three days after getting out of plaster I was riding a bike in the back lane behind Nan and Pa’s house in Northcote when I crashed into a fence, and broke my leg again! Another 6 weeks in plaster followed!
As a pre-schooler I had favourite players in the VFL, Wes Wofts (Wes Lofts) Carlton, Barrel Baldock (Daryl Baldock) StKilda, Hassa Mann Melbourne and Teddy Whitten Footscray but once we moved to Geelong I was 100% a Cats fan. I loved Doug Wade, #23, a champion full forward and I saw Polly Farmer play along side Billy Goggin. Dennis Marshall, John Sharrock, John Scarlett, Wayne Closter, Geoff Ainsworth and Gareth Andrews were all playing for the Cats and in 1967 they made the Grand Final against Richmond. It would be the first of many heart-breaking losses for me and Geelong. I sometimes went down to Kardinia Park after school to watch them train and one night a newspaper photographer got me to pose with Billy Ryan, comparing my little hand with his big hand- he had taken 22 marks in a game against Hawthorn a few days earlier. The picture was printed in The Geelong Advertiser and we got a print of it signed by Billy a couple of weeks later.
After Mum and Dad divorced we moved to a new house, Lot 11 Wiggs Rd Moolap and I went to Moolap Primary School. The only names I remember are my friend George Haas, and Robert Abotangelo who was Indigenous. We played a lot of football on the oval and I represented the school in games against Leopold PS. I remember the Principal, Mr Treweek chastising us for calling out “Abo” when playing footy with Robert, thinking it was racist, but it was just typical Aussie kids abbreviating a name, like “Tommo” for Thompson.
Our favourite place to play was the Drive-in theatre on the corner of Wiggs Rd and Moolap Station Rd. There was a gap under the fence and we loved exploring, playing on the swings and slides, and climbing up inside the screen which was hollow and huge. One day while climbing inside it an owl swooped down from its nest high up in the corner and scared me silly. Playing during the day was fun but the real adventure came when we would sneak in at night and watch a movie. If we turned up the speakers in the front row there was enough sound to hear the movie as we watched from the swings. If we were feeling daring we would climb up inside the screen while a movie was playing and peep out through tiny holes, imagining that people could see us from their cars. There was an old ute parked next to the kiosk that was used for cleaning up the rubbish each morning. One day we climbed in it and turned the key, causing the ute to lurch forward! We had no idea about using the clutch but we were enjoying kangaroo hopping along the asphalt when to our horror the manager arrived and chased after us as we fled for the safety of the hole in the fence.
My best friend was Anthony Long who lived next door and we played together all the time: footy, soccer, racing our bikes, riding his mini-bike, climbing trees and building cubby houses. I have Anthony to thank for a life-changing event but I’ll save that story for another chapter.
My last year in Geelong was 1973 when I went to East Geelong Tech to do form 1. It wasn’t a particularly happy time for me. I was getting into trouble and homelife was unsettled and difficult for a few different reasons. I played footy with Anthony in a team called the ‘Monarchs’ in the Eastern Colts little league. I had a paper round, delivering papers on my pushbike around the streets of Newcomb early in the morning. I liked earning some money but I hated getting up so early- nothing’s changed!
At the end of 1973 we packed up and moved to Western Australia.
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