Motorcycling and An Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD)

The horse startled and Mum was dazed on the ground. She would get on her horse and ride to the end of the road and when out of sight of her mother would get off the horse and walk the horse the rest of the way to school. It was the Great Depression and outside of Queanbeyan was a little mining town, Captains Flat. Mum was kicked by the horse, and many years later the consequences of this accident were realized. Mum loved horses and in particular trotting harness racing, she would not bet but find her way down to the horses before a race, and like the horse whisperer, would ‘talk’ to them.

As a young boy I have fond memories of Mum when she was well, and when years progressed, as did her condition, I would often talk about horses with her. You could see the expression on her face change and I could see the youngness in her eyes and smile, the chuckle she would make and of course ‘Mum, what did the horse say?’ She would look at me and wink and nod her head ‘he was a good horse….’

Mum was one of four children, born in 1928, at Delegate, New South Wales, and way down the bottom of the state on the border with Victoria. And like the 1954 movie ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’, I think it was three of my grandfathers generation married three of my grandmother’s generation. I recall as a young lad staying with my uncle, Mum’s younger brother, at a Country Roads Board Depot and in a blink you would miss it, a place called Bonang, south of Delegate and across the border. The Bonang Highway, well a dirt road back then, and I would not be surprised if it still is, wound its way between the Snowy River National Park and the Errinundra National Park out to the main Princess Highway and the town of Orbost. On the ‘highway’ from Bonang to Orbost was yet a speck in the eye a place called Goongerah, where the ‘highway’ crossed the Snowy River. Uncle pointed to a dilapidated building, all you could see was the rusting roof – your grandfather and grandmother had the opportunity to buy the Snowy River/Goongerah Hotel and that’s what’s left of it. Uncle was born in 1932 and during a few years in the Depression Mum and her siblings lived with their mother in Victoria. Mum went to school at Bairnsdale just near Lakes Entrance. I took Dad up through Bonang to Bombala, Canberra and Sydney in the 1975, he was amazed at the bushland and we both talked of the fire dangers in the whole region….

Mum’s father was in the Australian Light Horse and at Gallipoli and France. After the War he was a carpenter. He helped build the first Parliament House in Canberra and the McKillops Bridge across the Snowy River in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

Mum’s oldest brother served with the Australian Army in Africa and Papua New Guinea, and like many Diggers suffered extreme post traumatic stress. Her younger brother served in Korea and as well as the dirt Bonang ‘highway’ retired from the Victorian Country Roads Board having been manager of highway sections that included Cann River and the Monaro Highway, the South Gippsland Highway out of Dandenong, and finally the Benalla to Shepparton Highway. His job was not pretty, he would be called out at anytime day or night when there were serious and fatal accidents to assist in looking at road conditions at the time of the accident and any contributing factors eg. gravel.

Mum’s parents separated, I think during the Depression. I recall flying with Mum to Brisbane on a DC3, I must have been four at the time in the 1950’s. We had some phtographs of grandfather one of him holding a koala bear, and the other with a snake around his neck, and one of him, mum and me. I think it must have been before the WWII they separated, as I recall Mum’s younger brother saying when the war started he was sent down to stay with his uncle in Delegate. When I last visited him, in 2001, I spoke of trip to Brisbane, he replied: ‘The first time I saw my father was in Delegate, he heard I wanted to join the Army and go to Korea, he came into town to see me in the pub and signed my enlistment papers. I didn’t know who he was until then.”

During WWII my grandmother had only Mum (older brother was in Africa, and older sister in Queensland, and younger brother down in Delegate) and they were living at Rozelle in Sydney. That house I will never forget. Years later, my parents and I were living their with Nan, when a double-decker bus came careering through the upper front fence on Robert Street and almost landed down in the front lounge room – I was not at home at the time.

Mum’s older sister was the Florence Nightingale of the family and my God Mother. She married an Australian Airman during WWII. Years later after I was born she was a heaven sent angel and looked after our welfare, all of us.