Peter was born in suburban Melbourne on a hot summer day in 1967 . . .
When Peter was not quite one, his mother Ruth acquired Hepatitis. She was told she could not have children in her home, because she was so contagious. Ruth's mother Marj took Peter in. She bought him this suit and took him to sit for professional photos. By the time Ruth recovered, Peter was calling his grandmother "mummy." His grandmother loved it, but Ruth was less than pleased!
Peter was the fourth child born to Syd, an accountant with the railroad, and Ruth, a school teacher. At birth he was 7 pounds, 2 ounces. He joined his older sisters Jem and Deb on February 3, 1967. (Another sister, Beverley, died shortly after birth.)
His mother reports that he was a very good baby. Peter was born at the Dandenong Hospital. In keeping with the times, his father was not in the delivery room, but was waiting at the hospital while Ruth's mother, Marj, watched the older girls. Syd was so excited to have a son, he stopped the pub to celebrate before he even told Ruth's that Mum and Bub were fine. Worried, Marj convinced herself that Ruth had died, and wondered which family members could take in the older girls. Years later, when Marj told this story, Syd would scoff, "As if I couldn't take care of my own children!" Peter's parents wanted to name him Darryl; but instead, one of his aunts and uncles gave that name to their own child shortly before Peter was born. Instead, they chose the name Peter, and gave him Darren as a middle name.
What's in a name? Peter didn't mind his name - although he said there was always at least one other Peter in his classroom, and so he always went through school as "Peter A" instead of simply Peter. As it turned out, he married a woman with a very unique name - Quimby. I never minded my name, although I was sometimes teased for it as a child. My parents always told me they chose unusual names for us because we were unique. Peter liked this idea, and wanted unusual names for our children, too. But because my middle name is very common - my parents always said it was so that I wouldn't hate them if I hated my first name - he followed suit, and insisted that both of our children have more traditional middle names. When Ruth was released from hospital, she and Peter returned to their home on Gretana Street. This is where Peter lived for the next eight years.
Syd and Ruth had their house on Gretana Street custom-built for them and their family. Alas, they couldn't choose their neighbours! Their next door neighbour ran a brothel out of her house. She was, by all accounts, a very nice woman. Peter was too young to realise what was going on, but he did remember that women were always sunbathing topless in the back yard. He remembered looking at them thruogh the fence and thinking it was all very funny.
Peter with his sister Deb at their house on Gretana Street, Dandenong. When Peter was a baby, his family was in a pretty serious car accident. Peter was in a car seat - not up to today's standards, it had a toy steering wheel built into it; but it still offered him some protection. However, during the accident, his car seat hit his older sister Deb in the head, injuring her.
Another time, when Peter was perhaps two years old and Chris not yet a year, Ruth was making herself a cup of tea. Somehow Chris managed to climb up to the counter and knock down the kettle, scalding his stomach with boiling water. Peter's arms were also scalded. Peter was terrified he'd get in trouble, and as he howled in pain, he kept saying, "Bubby did it, Mummy. Bubby did it, not me!" Syd and Ruth bundled both boys off to the hospital. Chris was treated promptly, but the nurses must not have realised that Peter was also seriously injured. One nurse kept telling him to stop being such a sook. Ruth was furious when she found that out.
Peter had very bad asthma as a child. When he was two years old, he was put on very high doses of steroids. Within two weeks he had gained 15 kilograms. For a two year old, that would have doubled his size. I am positive it was these high doses of steroids that led to his life-long struggle with his weight. When he was a toddler, the doctors put him in an oxygen tent to try to help him breathe. It must have been terribly uncomfortable. When his mother entered the room he cried out, "Help, they're trying to cook me!" Peter was also a very clever child - perhaps too clever for his own good. Ruth was a substitute teacher. Sometimes she was given very little notice, and sometimes she had to take Peter in with her. On those occasions Peter would sit quietly at a desk and colour, and his mother would say to the other children, "Look at Peter, he's much younger than you are but he is behaving so nicely!" Peter would sit up straight and beam with pride. He told me later that he knew he was being obnoxious to the other children, and that was part of the enjoyment.
There were times, frankly, when Peter rather enjoyed being obnoxious. One day his little brother Chris locked him out of the house and taunted him by sticking out his tongue and putting his fingers in his ears. Peter punched him through the glass on the door, and a piece of glass lodged itself very close to Chris's eye. Their parents yelled at Peter and sent him to his room, while rushing Chris to hospital. Peter's fist was still bloody, and because he thought the entire incident was Chris's fault, he felt the full injustice of this punishment. To get back at his parents, he started drawing on the wall above his bed with his bloody fist.
That left a small scar under Chris's eye. Peter, for all the rough-and-tumble of his childhood, only acquired two scars from it: one on his chin, from falling out of a car when he was a toddler; and another on his leg from driving a motorbike into a barbed wire fence when he was a teeanger.
Peter always had a head for figures and a knack for money-making schemes. As a 1st grader at Dandenong South Primary School, which he started in 1972, he started a betting ring on the Melbourne Cup. Because he didn't really understand what he was doing, he offered the same odds - 10 to 1 - on every horse. When his teacher found out about it, she decided the best punishment would be to make him go through with it. That year, a long-shot horse won, so he broke even.
When Peter was a kid, you could open a bank account at the post office. To encourage savings, each bank account was automatically credited with 50 cents. Peter worked out that there was nothing stopping him from opening multiple bank accounts, and so he'd go down, week after week, to open a new bank account, each time collecting the 50 cents. Eventually the post office put a stop to it.
He would also include his siblings in his business schemes. Peter felt it was unfair that he was spending his pocket money on comic books, but all of his siblings were reading them for free. He tried to charge them for the privilege, arguing that he could then use the money to invest in even more comic books, to the benefit of everyone. His siblings didn't see it this way, and tattled to his parents that he wasn't sharing. He was forced to share his comics freely after that.
Peter's sister Deb remembers him as "intelligent, funny, adventurous, kind and always trying to get the most out of life."
Because Peter's father worked for the railroads, he was always given a free family pass on a sleeper car, anywhere in Australia. But Syd was, in his heart of hearts, a farmer. He had a small potato farm in Yaragon, and would usually choose to spend his holidays there, while Ruth wrangled the children across the country.
Maybe this is where he developed his passion for travel.
Later, Peter would devote a good portion of his life to traveling. When I met him, he was one year out from a gap year that had lasted 7 years and taken in over 60 countries. Later, we traveled often as a couple, and then as a family. He was planning a retirement full of travel too; his dream was to buy a boat in Turkey and slowly make our way back on it to Australia.
Ruth said that her children were always very good travelers - that they were so quiet, people were often surprised to learn they were in the same train compartment, or hotel. She remembers always visiting at least one art museum, because Chris loved art. I think that's quite impressive; getting Peter to visit an art museum with me always took a fair amount of arm-twisting.
Peter always talked about a trip to Green Island, just off Cairns. We went as a family, and now the crossing is easy, in a large catamaran. But back then it was rough, and apparently on the day they went, it was especially rough. Peter and his siblings had all taken motion sickness tablets, but they must have been the only ones. While all the other passengers turned green, they were at the top of the boat singing the jingle for a popular dishwashing detergent at the top of their lungs.
Peter didn't remember much else about those trips. He just remembers the dirty looks the other passengers gave them, and how it encouraged them to sing even louder.
For as long as Peter could remember, his father had had the farm at Yaragon. It wasn't much, just a potato field really, with a shanty that was probably not technically habitable. Sometimes, Syd would take Peter and his siblings to the farm for the weekend. They would eat military rations - Peter always swore they were from WWII, and were little more than grey, tasteless sludge - and sleep rough.
Meanwhile, Peter's asthma was getting worse.
It was around this time that his asthma got so bad, the doctors told his parents that he would likely not survive his childhood. Syd and Ruth agreed that the best option would be to move away from the pollution of the city, and get a place in the country.
Syd had always wanted to be a dairy farmer. Syd and Ruth had been discussing this for some time. They had first looked into farms in New South Wales, but they did not want to invest there, because at that time, many of the farms in New South Wales were set up so that you never owned the land, you merely owned the rights to the land for a set time-frame. Syd and Ruth wanted to know that the land was theirs.
One weekend, Syd and his brother - who also fancied the idea of becoming a dairy farmer - took a trip up to Northern Victoria. They found a nice farm at Lake Charm, with two houses, one for each family. They decided on the spot to put down a deposit on the farm.
One hiccup - Syd hadn't included Ruth in this decision. And the money he used for the deposit was money Ruth had saved from her teaching days, before they'd had a family. Ruth wasn't exactly happy with this turn of events; but she went along with it. She knew it was important to Syd, and she felt that the move to the country was best for Peter and the other kids, too.
Peter always loved the land.
When we were newlyweds, he told me he wanted to buy a house in the country. He liked the idea of having space around him, of not being on top of his neighbours. I was rather partial to city life, myself, but most of all I was partial to Peter and wanted him to be happy. When we first moved out to the bush, I thought he'd want to turn it into a farm. But he wanted no such thing. He just loved the bush - he loved the wildlife, the bird songs, the peace of it. He loved watching the changing of the seasons. He wanted a quiet life, lived on his own terms, connected to the land he loved.
Peter and his family moved to Lake Charm in October 1975. Ruth remembers that it had flooded that week. The water was so deep, to get to school the next day the kids were jumping from one high patch of ground to the next. They jumped onto one high patch of ground only to discover there was already a snake on it! They jumped off very quickly.
The Lake Charm school was quite small, and Peter and his sister Deb ewre in the same class. They were fierce competitors academically. Years later, Peter was still proud that he'd bested Deb in a spelling test. He prided himself on his spelling, which I always found amusing - I don't think I'm very good at spelling, but I was constantly correcting his!
Lake Charm was directly across from their house. Peter told me they used to cast nets in the morning, and then in the evening when they'd pull them up, they'd have hundreds if not thousands of fish. Peter's mother would fillet them and coat them in flour before frying them up. They'd have fish for dinner quite often; but they'd also freeze them, and sell them to neighbours. Peter wasn't overly fond of fish while we were together. I was never quite sure if it was because he'd eaten his fill as a child, or because it wasn't as fresh as the fish they had on Lake Charm.
The farm on Lake Charm was a joint venture between Peter's parents and Peter's uncle and aunt. But soon Peter's parents decided to strike out on their own. They found some land in Kerang and moved there instead.
This was a smaller house, with not enough bedrooms inside for everyone. Peter and his brother slept in a covered-in porch. This was quite pleasant in the summer, but he told me it was rather cold sometimes in the winter!
I believe this is the house that Peter nearly burned to the ground. The kitchen had a kerosene stove. He was told in very strict terms that he was never to light it - that was a job for his parents, or for his sister Jenni. But Peter had seen them light it a hundred times, and day, he decided he was old enough to light it himself. So he grabbed the tin of petrol, put it in the oven, and lit a match. Whoosh! Just then his sister came in. She raced through the flames to grab him and pull him to safety.
They were at that farm for a couple of years before moving to the farm on Peerman Road in 1977, which is the only farm I knew. Peter's parents lived there in a Victorian home. This is the house that burnt down shortly after I met Peter. By that time, they were living in a second home on the property, so my understanding is that they mostly lost things that were in storage, including most of the family photographs.
Peter must have enjoyed his childhood in the country, because he wanted to give our children the same sort of upbringing. I think Peter liked the quiet of it; the fresh air; the freedom to move about without feeling hemmed in by people and buildings.
As a country kid, Peter worked on the farm and in the house. When he was around 8 years old he was given the choice of bringing in the cows for milking or making dinner for the family. As often as he could, he chose to make dinner. He told me this was so that he could keep watching TV. But as a result, he became a very good cook.
When he was a child, Peter also enjoyed hunting. He always told me he got this out of his system when he was a kid; as an adult he could never stand to kill any animal. Even on those rare occasions where we went fishing, he was strictly catch-and-release. But as a kid he hunted, mostly for rabbits. He had a ferret which he used to chase rabbits out of the hole. He'd send the ferret down and then wait with a net over the entrance of the burrow to catch the rabbit as it came up. One day the ferret didn't come back. He was upset about this, and went home disappointed at having lost his ferret. The next day he went back out to look for it. He still couldn't find it. He gave it up for lost. Two days later it came running up the road back to the house. The ferret had walked over a kilometre to get back home to Peter.
For all of that, Peter was never cruel to animals. He only hunted or fished what they intended to eat. He could never tolerate being mean to or killing animals just for sport. One day, some cousins were visiting. Two of his older cousins were trying to goad a younger cousin - the son of another aunt and uncle - into shooting at the parrots in a tree. At first he refused, but eventually, as their bullying continued, he agreed, and shot at a bird. He didn't mean to hit it, but as it fell out of the tree he was overcome with remorse. He went to Peter and confessed. Peter was inconsolable. "How could you do that?" he said. "How could you hurt an innocent animal, just for fun? I was going to give you one of my pigeons, but I can't now. I don't trust you." Already, Peter was becoming the gentle, kind man I came to love.
Peter might have been kind to animals; but it was a different matter with his siblings. Once he used his rifle to pin his brother behind a stand of hussock grass. He told me it was perfectly safe, as he was only shooting at his feet! Another time he somehow convinced his brother to recreate the story of William Tell. He told Chris to stand against the wall with an apple on his head, and bragged that he'd be able to shoot the apple off the top of his head. I think someone must have put a stop to it, because Chris lived to tell the tale.
His sisters weren't spared from his antics. When Peter was a child, he raised racing pigeons. He loved those birds. His sister Jenni was terrified of birds. Peter always claimed he didn't teach the pigeons to fly at her, but they would, and he was always amused at her response. He also used to take the foot of a dead chicken, place it on her shoulder when she wasn't paying attention, and pull the tendon so that it would claw at her. He thought that was quite funny too. Jenni, for some reason, did not.
Peter also had a dog, Rocky, aka Rocky the Wonderdog. Rocky was one of three siblings born to a mother who was half-dingo - Rockerfeller, Aristotle, and Maximillian. Aristotle, or Arry, lived a very long life; I met her when I first visited Syd and Ruth in Kerang. I don't know a lot about Rocky, just that he was, in Peter's words, a good boy.
Peter and his siblings had all sorts of animals - Daddles the Duck, who was the only one out of a flock of ducks to survive the foxes. Daddles did this by convincing the dogs that he was actually the alpha dog. Then there was Baatty, a lamb who was brought inside because she was nearly dead of exposure. Peter's mother made up bottles with milk and rum to warm her up and fed her on bottles and biscuits. When Baatty was old enough she returned to the field with the other sheep, but would always come running at the shake of a biscuit tin. Arnold was a pig, the runt of the litter, who was brought inside so that his brothers and sisters wouldn't crush him. He was hand-reared and thought he was a dog. He used to mark his territory like a dog. When he was very small, and waiting for his bottle to be made, he'd climb up Syd's pant leg. He'd also chase cars and chew at their tires. A couple of times he followed them to the school bus, and at least once he actually climbed on to the school bus with them. "Whose pig is that?" the school bus driver asked. Peter found that rather embarrassing. But the entire family loved Arnold. He was finally sold when he was about a year old. Peter's sister Deb had slept with Arnold in her bed when he was a piglet, but as he grew into a full-grown pig, there was no room in the bed for her. That's when they decided to sell him. But they were so worried they might accidently eat him, they all avoided pork products for the next year.
Later, I suggested to Peter that we should get a pig. After all, Peter loved talking about Arnold; he was obviously very fond of his pet pig. Peter vetoed the idea. He said, "Pigs have too much personality. It'd ruin bacon forever."
Over the years Peter and his siblings raised many different animals. For a while they raised goats, attempting to breed them into cashmere goats. These goats were a menace to everyone who visited! They'd often jump on the roof of cars, which was frustrating to any visitor who had a fairly new car. (Peter's family always had old cars, so they thought it was funny more than anything.) One day Peter's Aunt Val visited with her new husband, Steve. After dinner, while Peter was doing the dishes, a goat came, climbed on to the kitchen table, and started eating the cigarette butts left behind by Peter's father. Mortified, Peter's new uncle said, "There's a goat on the table eating the cigarette butts." Without missing a beat Peter turned around and said, "Well, you didn't want them did you?"
Peter and his siblings were also often given other animals to raise. I believe he named a calf after his aunt Andy, but it might have been a pig. Peter was very fond of Andy, and thought it was a great honour to name this animal after her. He called her and excitedly shared the news. Far from being honoured, she was insulted. A couple of days later she called him back to announce she had bought a parrot and named him Peter, because he just would not stop talking!
In addition to having an indoor pig, taking in sick lambs, and occasionally, the odd goat eating off the kitchen table, Peter's family often had a number of cats inside too. Peter told me once that if anyone left the butter out, they'd always have to scrape the top layer off, in case the cats had licked it. Most of these were the off-spring of Mum Cat, a particularly fertile feline. She was never exactly a pet; she just took up residence and refused to leave. To hear Peter tell it, she must have had hundreds of kittens. Peter's dad was always trying to get rid of Mum Cat. One time he drove her miles away, twisting and turning down various roads, and then left her there. He was certain she would not be able to find her way back, and would have to rely on the kindness of another farmer instead. On the way home he stopped at his brother's house to celebrate his achievement. Mum Cat was waiting for him when he got home.
Peter loved talking about his childhood. He loved the freedom they were given on the farm - freedom to explore, to create, to make their own fun. One time he found some old shotgun shells and decided to empty out the gunpowder, making a trail of it to an old drum of petrol. He set it alight, hoping to see an almighty boom, but the gunpower was too old and wet to cause the explosion he was after. Another, he fashioned some arrows out of stiff grass. When his father bent over he used his bow to shoot an arrow into his father's backside. That was perhaps the only time Syd lost his temper at his son.
Peter and his siblings built a tennis court in their yard. Another time, he and Chris was practicing their golf swing when one of them hit a ball through the window of the house. Syd came out and both boys were terrified; they were sure they were going to get in trouble. Syd growled, "Who did that?" and the boys pointed at each other, trying to avoid the punishment they knew was coming. Instead Syd said, "It's about time one of you hit the ball off the ground!"
Some of Peter's naughtiness was a secret from his parents. I asked him once if he'd ever gotten in a fight at school. His answer was vague. Apparently, another boy - a known bully - had tried to get physical with Peter. Without meaning to hurt the other boy, Peter threw up his arm defensively, accidently knocking the other boy in his face. He never bothered Peter again.
But for the most part, Peter diffused situations with humour, not anger or violence. He was a funny boy, and a funny man. He loved comedy - sketch TV shows like Hale and Pace or The Late Show; sitcoms like Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm; movies like Groundhog Day, Good Morning Vietnam, and Top Secret. When we first met, I teased him for having low-brow tastes. He believed that comedies are underrated but that a good comedy is just as artistic as a good drama or art house film.
Peter and his siblings had an almost competitive drive to outdo each other with their humour. Jenni remembers once bringing a friend home from uni. The friend sat there, her head moving quickly between the siblings as they came up with quick retorts. She said, "Now I know where you get it from!" You had to be quick with a comeback in Peter's childhood house. It was a trait he carried through his entire life. In our married life, Peter and I would often try to outdo each other with quick and witty retorts to whatever was happening in the world around us, or in the movie or TV show we were watching. There was always this sense of pride when I could get him to laugh out loud with his full-bodied laugh, which filled the entire house with happiness.
When we took a trip to Kerang after Peter's death with his mother, Ruth told me about a time some boys that Peter was hanging out with were accused of shoplifting at a local store. Syd raced down to pick Peter up and told him he was not to hang out with those boys any more - he didn't want Peter tarred by association. I told Ruth about the one and only time Peter shoplifted. He was around 8, and he was curious to know if you could get away with shoplifting if you bought something, left the store with it, then went back with your receipt and walked out with the exact same item. He did this successfully with a cricket ball, and felt so guilty, the ball stayed in the back of his closet for years. Ruth was shocked to learn that Peter had once shop-lifted!
Peter never told me much about Christmases and Easters growing up. He talked about how, when the family was still living in Melbourne, his mother used to take them to Carols by Candlelight. He always thought it was boring and usually fell asleep long before it was over. As an adult, he hated watching it on TV. One Easter story was shared regularly. Syd was a heavy smoker and as such, didn't have much of a taste for chocolate. One year he lined all of his Easter eggs up along the mantle. He did it in part because he wasn't interested, and in part to tease his kids, who wanted those eggs but didn't dare touch them. The weeks and months passed, and one day he decided he'd like an Easter egg. So he took it down from the mantle, only to discover that a mouse had eaten it - and all of the others! There was very little chocolate left, but the foil wrappers were left perfectly intact from the front. That year, the kids got the last laugh - at least they'd enjoyed their chocolate eggs!
For the most part, though, Peter was a good kid - a bit rambunctious sometimes, and always up for mischief, but never mean-spirited. He worked hard in school, excelling in most subjects (although his favourite, I guessed later when trying to hack his MyGov account, was lunch.) He didn't have many close friends, but got along with most people.
Peter spent the first few years of high school at Kerang Tech. Then, when Deb left for uni in Melbourne, his parents decided he'd have a better shot at a good future if he went to Melbourne High. Peter told me his parents really wanted him to be a doctor - something that didn't interest him in the least. But he was 16, and not at all opposed to living in Melbourne, so he took the entrance exam. He filled out all of the questions he could, but left early. When his parents asked why, he said, "There's just no point. There was a lot on there that I didn't know." He was sure he would never get accepted, and that guessing was wasting his time. The school called back to say that he'd gotten 100% on everything he did, and that they could teach him the rest. He had to do summer school to catch up with the other kids, but he had a place for his final year of school at Melbourne High.
That summer, there was a transport strike. He had booked a taxi for his last exam. The taxi was late. The driver had picked up several other passengers along the way, and left Peter waiting for over an hour. Then he dropped off all of the passengers in the order he'd picked them up, leaving Peter for last. He missed the test, but the taxi driver still insisted on charging him full fare. Thankfully Melbourne High understood the circumstances - Peter was far from the only student stranded because of the strike - and gave him a pass.
Because Peter was only at the school for one year, everyone else already had friendship groups in place. Peter ended up primarily hanging out with the Greek kids, who were not as accepted as the Anglo-Saxon kids. As a result he became very fluent at swearing in Greek. That was about the only thing he learned that year - other than how to get into footy games for cheap. He was 16 years old, staying with his sister, who really didn't want to play babysitter, so he spent very little time studying, and most of his time at the MCG. It helped that one of Deb's best friends was the son of a prominent footy player, so he coudl always get Peter tickets to the games.
Peter told me that, in hindsight, he probably would've gotten better grades if he'd stayed at Kerang Tech. But he enjoyed his time at Melbourne High - all except for the dress code, which was enforced (blazers and all) even on public transportation. At least his blazer fit. Mostof the other kids had had their blazers since 7th grade. They were far too small for their year 12 post-pubescent bodies, but their parents refused to buy them new blazers for just one year of school.
Peter's exam grades weren't high enough to get him into medicine; but then, he never wanted to be a doctor anyway. Instead he earned a place in Science at LaTrobe - Bendigo. But he wasn't there for long . . .
If you grew up with Peter, or have any stories or memories you'd like to share from his childhood, please get in touch! Use the Comment button below or go to the Contact page to submit your stories.
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