Wooloowin was the name of the suburb I grew up in Brisbane in the 50s. Now that’s not to be mistaken for Woolloomooloo, Woolloongabba or Woollongong. Our indigenous Australians have certainly made their contribution to many a trivia question and spelling contest, not to mention giving a uniquely local flavor to our place names. Who needs those overdone European letter constructions anyway. Well, whatever it was called, it was a great place to grow up as kids. The time-honed geography of the suburb may have provided the landscape and the vegetation, but it was always David that found the adventure possibilities in these landforms. Like the time when he turned our childish game of roll the tyre into an inventive vehicular transport system. This involved him physically squeezing us into the empty space found at the centre of any car tyre. Then, after all the fleshy bits were tucked in tight, he would launch us down the backyard slope rolling A over T, A over T, A over T as we went. Given the ball like contortion we had to achieve with our young flexible bodies, it was actually possible to literally kiss you’re a*** goodbye before the launch, as it was only ever inches from your face. Well now, most of the time we just rolled over once or twice and then flopped sideways – or one body part would be ejected by the centrifugal force causing the locomotion to come to a messy and sprawling end. Still, every so often it worked! Down the back slope we spun, picking up a little bit of pace as we went. I know what your thinking . brakes? Well folks, that’s why we had a back fence. Bang – Bounce Flop. Try as you might there was no standing upright for quite a while after that little trip. Any attempt to do so was met with that angled sideways sliding fall. Now apart from our sloping back yard, the ancient geology of the area also delivered a wonderful play area under our house. It was a large area of dirt – fine ground, black and compacted. As for it’s taste you will have to ask Pip, cause he seemed to eat bucket loads of the stuff. I always thought it was a great place for building matchbox roads for my metal dyecast matchbox cars. David on the other hand saw it as a fisherman’s paradise. You see, dotted around in the dirt under the house were all these inverted cone-shaped dimples. They were in fact the home and food-trap of a weird insect with long pincer jaws. David had figured out that by delicately dangling a fine piece of cotton at the bottom of the impression he was able to induce an instinctive response from this pincer insect. The dull-witted insect thought that the struggling movement in the fine loose dirt was being causes by another equally dumb fallen ant and so it would launch an attack on its lunch. What a surprise it must have had to find itself just holding David’s cotton line and dangling upside down whilst being surrounded by the hoots brought on by another successful catch. Pip must have been impressed because him and David still do the same thing on the rocky headlands of Point Lookout to this day. The other old historical landmark that I remember at Woolloowin was Mrs Mullins and her corner store. The peeling weathered cream exterior, the rusty corrugated red top and the elaborately adorned antique front, fittingly describe both the shop and Mrs Mullins herself. Us kids were regular visitors to the lolly counter of her shop and I remember her doing everything she commercially could to fill our lolly bag, given the few copper pennies she held in exchange. Some afternoons Margaret would come home from the shop with a broken heart. See Mrs Mullins would give her a metal tin with some of the un-saleable broken Hav-A-Heart ice creams. Only Mags, with her generous spirit, saw to it that the contents of the tin were shared between us all. Had wise old Mrs Mullins given the tin to any of Margaret’s other siblings, then I am sure that there would have been more broken hearts at our place than those that were contained in the tin.
