5th November

As an adult I discovered T S Elliot's poem The Hollow Men -

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.

As a curly headed, impulsive 11 year old it was the Guy that intrigued me, that other man of straw and stuffing, born out of labour and love with old trousers and a well worn shirt, still grubby from its last wear but saved from the bin by a kid's insightful comment ' please mum, save that for the Guy'.

Each year this night was anticipated with eager delight by myself and my friends. It was about many things: the collecting of wood during the year, the lugging of fallen tree branches, the making of the Guy and the frenzied saving of pocket money to buy the fireworks. Amongst the mothers in the street there was always someone, identified by the kids as a real mum, who was willing to make the Guy.

The making of the Guy was essentially simple: an old feather pillow or cushion was shaped into a head and a face painted on it.  An old pillow was also used for the body. The shirt and trousers were tied at the ends to keep the stuffing of rags and newspaper from falling out.

If the Guy was finished early enough he became a travelling celebrity - he was bundled into an old pram and paraded down the street, pulled backwards up the steps of front porches or wheeled up driveways accompanied by a handful  kids chanting 'a penny for the guy', 'a penny for the guy'. Any forthcoming money was eagerly taken and pooled to buy fireworks.

In the fading light of the November evening, the life-like effigy,  tied to a pole and carefully placed on the pyre drew sounds of admiration from the assembled kids. Instinctively the ritual began. 'Burn the Guy', 'Burn the Guy' , Burn the Guy', was the chant sung by the ring of excited kids impatiently circling the unlit bonfire. The word floated into the into the coolness of the evening, eventually etching themselves in the night air, the graffiti of a forgotten rebellion.

Built with the hands of both children and adults, the pile of material now standing proudly in the vacant block had, as its focus, the Guy. Earlier in the evening he had been tied to a wooden pole and carefully placed at the top of the pyre, his feet partially covered by those last dry branches,  randomly thrown, a final  offering to Vulcan, a sort of insurance to guarantee inflammability.

During these preparations no one gave much thought to the possibility of fires, despite the fact that there was plenty of bush ready to receive that small spark, the precursor of a raging fire! This was suburbia in young Australian, a place not yet clearly defined, a place with ocean boundaries, but the psyche of the nation still not completely contained; an element of the larrikin associated with  good fun and freedom still lingered.

So, in the early fifties, each year on November 5 Dante's Inferno came to Andrew Street Scarborough a suburban outpost on the fringes, considered by many Perth residents to be a significant distance from Perth and nothing much more than a beach settlement.

A liberally sprinkled cup of petrol and a well directed match was all that was required. Very quickly, after the initial whoosh accompanied by gasps from the adults and yelps from the kids, the diligently collected garden trimmings, lopped tree branches, wooden crates, cardboard boxes and other inflammable household waste, became food for a monster that was beyond stopping. Within minutes its flaming fingers reached hungrily out for the Guy, hesitantly caressing  his outer clothing  before raging into a sudden furry, devouring its captive with a shower of sparks and lashing him with blue tongued flames, insatiably feeding on itself, quickly morphing into an inferno.
Very soon the radiating heat threw up an impenetrable boarder, forcing everyone to find refuge in those cooler pockets of night air on the outer perimeter. All stood and watched in awe. Unrecognised echoes of the past drifted with the smoke filled air; soon, corroboree-like, we ran, jumped and danced our way around this insatiable beast while

Ghost-gums dimly stand at the edge of light
Watching corroboree.
Eerie the scene in leaping firelight...(Corroboree, Oodgeroo Noonuccal)

As the fire burned, men, glasses of Swan Draft or Emu Bitter in hand, earnestly talked about the upcoming cricket season while also bemoaning the fact that during the past footy season more top WA players had gone across to Victoria to play in the Victorian Football League - there was a sense of outrage, why would you!

Other excited voices elbowed into the ebb and flow of conversation to approve the passing of the Television Act allowing for TV to soon commence in Australia, although most of those around the fire didn't expect to have a TV. Some discussed the possibility  that sets might be hired for holiday times like Christmas and perhaps even for longer periods. The idea of Colour TV was not even a thought bubble in the context of 1954.

But the kids were not interested in the snippets of conversation that caught their ears as they skylarked around the fire; their focus was on the more important things, the fireworks. Each kid had brought a cardboard box or paper bag with their treasures in it: Chinese Crackers, Tom Thumbs, Penny bombs, Catherine Wheels, at least one  Mt. Vesuvius, Jumping Jacks and Skyrockets - the most expensive and treasured, always left till last.

The ritual lighting of fireworks was accompanied by shrieks and laughter followed by mock shock by the girls, strutting  bravado by the boys and enthusiasm by all, enjoyment not dulled by the occasional failure. This excitement was the culmination of the previous week or two.

Armed with a  bunch of of Chinese Crackers (a string of about twenty small bombs which were joined together and consequently ignited one after the other) a few of us, just as dusk was settling,  met quietly. We quickly ran to the pre designated house which had been chosen because of its partially rusted and rickety tin letter box standing, one legged, and waiting open-mouthed to receive letters, bills and the occasional postcard. Our task was simple: lift the lid, light the fuse, thrown on the fizzing Chinese Cracker, close the lid and run.

Alternatively, the fiery little bombs were hurled with enthusiasm onto a friend's front yard, the sound of fireworks and the barking of dogs shattering the still evening air.

Inevitably, at this time of the year, there was trouble at school because there was always someone who brought in Penny bombs and set them off in the galvanised iron garbage bins or threw them into a circle of demure girls waiting for the school bus; but the result was always worth the consequences. Strategy was important for success in these situations. At school it had to be done the day the bins were empty and before first bell when most teachers were busy preparing for class.

Throwing a penny bomb into a group of unsuspecting girls called for some skill and a dare devil attitude because  it was most effective if, when the fuse was lit, the firecracker was held for as long as possible in ones fingers so the explosion occurred just as the firecracker landed at the feet of the unsuspecting group of girls.

It is a wonder more kids were not injured by fireworks or the bonfire and its embers. In fact, it was the embers of the following morning that were most dangerous with kids running through the bush and wanting to re-light sticks and the many dead branches left lying around. Health and safety probably got it right in the seventies when fireworks and 5th November bonfires were banned. But the memory, the fun and the excitement is not extinguished from my mind.

The Collective Unconscious

Clouds brood; the atmosphere is heavy; there is a sense of impending rain. The afternoon is moving into twilight. Small New Holland honey-eaters knowingly flash their bright yellow wing-patch as they scoot just above the lawn to play hide and seek in the trees and shrubs only to reappear moments later.

A few drops of rain make their noisy presence heard on the zincalum roofing. There is stillness in the air. It occurs to me that this act of consciously knowing and observing is a distinctively human attribute. In pondering this idea I am also reminded of the collective unconscious, that part of the mind which we are not aware of, that hidden storehouse of memories, instincts, and experiences common to all humankind that each of us inherit at birth. I recently experienced this as I sat with thousands of others waiting for Carols by Candlelight to begin on a beautiful warm, still, Perth evening, the meandering Swan river barely a hundred metres away, its history hidden somewhere in the tide of geological time.

I wait for the music to begin; a new river of light is slowly emerging, sourced by candles. Naked candles, I notice, are now things of the past; little battery charged candles whose flames change colour are the things of the present that swell the new awakening river. I sense I am more than simply a part of a crowd, I sense an affinity - the real but abstract idea of humanity: babies, young enthusiastic parents, ageing grandparents, all gathering to celebrate something. Is it an idea? A belief? Is it something more?

I am aware of people with their rugs on the ground, hampers open, food being passed around for sharing. My mind suddenly catapults to a scene on the banks of a river in a fictional world where people gather and picnic…the whole restless mob of us spread out on blankets...in a good world in the midst of our living.

As evening settles itself quietly around us, with the singing and gentle movement of people around me, a new frame of reference emerges in my consciousness, I hear the murmuring of everlastings and see them proudly waving their yellow, pink and white flags against a backdrop of stylised gumtrees, many shedding their rabbit-like skin, daring to greenness against a dry red earth above a blue sky broken by tufts of white cloud.

The landscape opens up further to the broken bones of dead trees that lie scattered across the dusty red carpet, home to scurrying ants and lazing lizards. A post and wire fence, leaning forward in places as it succumbs to age and weariness, boards the paddock. A land of extremes, geologically fascinating, crossed by hundreds of song lines, the pathways of the creator-beings of the Dreamtime, unseen, but nevertheless real, criss-crossing this vast continent.

A dryness hovers across the landscape, there is a hint of a mirage on the bitumen that runs parallel to the fence, a dark scar across this countryside; a landscape changed forever, but it is the roads that throw a lifeline between small farming communities. Further along, the brooding water of a dam lies still as it ponders its history - a part of a 'civilised' landscape that has been divided, re-shaped, parceled out and now packaged for tourists. The sudden applause of the crowd drags me back to the sea of waving candles and the familiar sound of a well-known Carol.

I have often felt the force of this shared experience, especially in those moments of mindfulness, usually when the air is still and even noise becomes a part of the silence... sitting on a beach, beneath a brooding sky pondering the approaching cyclone over a thousand kilometres to the north, with dark and ominous clouds above me.

The waves crash, sand is churned, the water becomes a course sandy mix with shards of swirling seaweed blasted to freedom by the naked power of the ocean. I instinctively know this swirling water is not a place to be despite its calling, Siren-like - daring me to attempt that dive into its washing machine frenzy.

I remain still on the cool sand, contemplating the awesome power of this ocean and suddenly feel my insignificance against this recognisable force. I instinctively move further back from the shoreline. I wonder if those present along the coastal shoreline of Australia over twenty thousand years ago also sensed the approaching might of nature as the great rising of the seas began. Witnessed by generations of coastal Aboriginals, the rising water flooded the coastal plains and valleys, severing Australia from New Guinea in the north and Tasmania in the south. This massive event shaped the site of what was to become every capital city except Canberra. 

As I continue to remain motionless I recognise that shared feeling of human experience – a sense of awe. Through what has become an archetypal idea, millennia become the present moment; the now becomes greater than itself.

Dusk is approaching when I turn my back on the ocean, now calmer and more at peace with itself. I walk across the cool sand towards the buildings and shops, a landscape changed from my childhood, but still holding familiar lines. Shadows of past buildings impose themselves on my imagination.

As I climb the steps to the broad walk and join others and ease myself back into suburbia, I glance back at the darkening sea comfortable with the Fish Lamb’s idea in the novel Cloudstreet that we all battle in the same corridor that time makes for us.