Jack Johnson is the author of When The Clock Strikes, a fascinating account of growing up in Dandenong, his years tending to the city’s pipes and drains as a plumber and bringing up a family with wife Frances in their beloved home in Macpherson Street.
AS SMALL kids we loved it when a circus came to town and when the Dandenong Agricultural Society staged its annual show.
On this particular day, we were sitting with some of my brother Nipper’s mates on the edge of the empty produce market stalls in Clow Street, lamenting the fact that we did not have the money to gain admittance into the showgrounds where the show was in full swing.
At that moment Spiv, one of the bigger kids from Dandy West, came past on his way back to the show.
He was called Spiv because when a circus or carnival came to town he could always talk himself into a paid job or a part in the show, or get something for nothing.
He stopped, looked at the glum faces and said: “What the bloody hell’s wrong with you lot?”
On getting the sad story, he said: “Why don’t you go up to the side of the fence of the showground, opposite the loading ramps of the calf and sheep pens?
“There’s a hole under the fence where some kids got into the show earlier this morning.”
And with that, off he went to continue with his job at the show.
With renewed spirits we walked up the roadway between the two markets and the showground and found the hole.
It was near a large pair of gates in the high corrugated iron fence and beneath the red gum plank baseboard.
It had obviously been dug by a dog getting in or out of the showgrounds.
One of the kids who came from Dandy West and always seemed to wear a brown checked overcoat, rushed up to the hole and dived in head first and became wedged under the fence with his face in the dirt.
Nipper, Tommo and Spidgy grabbed his legs and dragged him yelling and moaning from the hole, leaving him spitting dirt and laying in the gutter by the roadside.
The sounds of the show could clearly be heard from outside the fence.
Mr Williams was announcing over the public address system what horses and riders were going over the jumps course.
The more we heard these sounds the more urgent our need to get into the show became.
One of the kids suggested he could run home to Dandy West and get his old man’s spade to enlarge the hole but Buck or someone said: “You bloody idiot. By the time you do that the show will be over.”
Another kid got a small piece of gum tree branch and started to dig the hole wider, but the ground was too hard and the stick kept breaking.
Spidgy sneeringly said: “Shit! My ferret could dig faster than that.”
For those still clustered around the prospective entry hole to the show, this access was becoming desperate.
I suggested that it may be easier to get through the hole by lying on our backs and wriggling through with our arms by our sides then once we got through to sort of jack-knife under the fence.
Nipper, on hearing this reverse-entry idea, was the first one up to the hole.
There was a sublime expectant hush that came over the group as we waited for that spindly pair of legs to vanish under the fence.
Suddenly the moment was shattered by a shrill panicky yell from Nipper.
He wriggled back out of the hole with the speed of a tiger snake that he just been whacked with a piece of number eight fencing wire.
At the same time someone inside the show ground banged loudly against the double gates and as the yell still echoed and gates rattled one of the kids panicked and screamed: “Shit, they’re onto us. They’re coming out the gates.”
In panic, we took off at great speed and did not stop until we reached the bridge over the open drain in McCrae Street.
We all listened intently as Nipper told us what had happened on the other side of the fence.
He said he had just pulled his arms through the hole and was reaching to pull himself up when both his hands were seized by two large black hands and he found himself staring up into the bearded leering face of a savage jungle head-hunter who was trying to drag him out of the hole.
We all listened in amazement and Bricky suggested it was probably someone from one of the sideshow tents trying to frighten him.
“Pig’s arse. I know a bloody head-hunter when I see one,” Nipper said.
