Tinkering with Yesterday. [A Diary of Holidays in SA 2017]

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1 Tinkering with Yesterday. [A Diary of Holidays in SA 2017] The last days of May 2017 took the form of an interstate/adelaide, then South Australian country tour to renew long friendships at Tumby Bay, Hawker, Balaklava and Salisbury in South Australia. It was a long over-due journey to Adelaide and then to Eyre Peninsula, the birth place of our public ministry (1970) in the Methodist, then later Uniting Church. While we did not reach further west to Streaky Bay, the path to Tumby Bay retraced the road once well-travelled past Cowell and other early preaching places. From Tumby Bay we headed north to the frontier town of Hawker for the opening of the mega Arkaroola Panorama at the Jeff Morgan Gallery. The overnight stay seemed like an insult to the awesome beauty and magnificence of the Flinders Ranges but travelling south we worshipped at Balaklava, our millennial home church. From there we journeyed to Yorke Peninsula to Hardwicke Bay where we were joined by daughter Lorinda. After worshipping at Minlaton Uniting Church, it was back to Adelaide for a few days to assist Lorinda before returning after three weeks away to Langwarrin in Victoria. Warning: The holiday story unpacked here is embellished with memories, sentiment and poetic nostalgia. Adelaide Friday 19 May With bags packed and a full car we drove to South Australia to enjoy the hospitality of Neil and Debbie Brown, life-long friends living in the leafy suburb of Black Forest. Lorinda s belongings at Edwardstown were in the process of being dismantled in readiness for her relocation to NSW and we were looking forward to lending a hand. We usually travelled to SA to attend the Cornish Kernewek Lowender and this year there had been talk of a Curnow family reunion but this had not come to pass. A History Festival was also running from May 1 to 31 but we had concluded that this year would be different. We would take a more personal direction to visit friends. The red, yellow and brown leaves of Adelaide s autumn were falling like confetti and over the next few days we were charmed by the intimacy of the smaller city, the restored stone homes, buildings and

2 2 infrastructure of Black Forest, Unley and Prospect. On Saturday morning Debbie treated us to a visit of the Adelaide Central Market. I learnt that the original hectare of the market property facing Gouger Street was purchased in 1869 and the Market itself was opened on 22 January Prior to this, small markets had operated on a Town Hall acre at the Council s O Conner Street depot site. A visit to the Adelaide Market with its low cost, two level, car park run by the Adelaide City Council seemed like a great idea. Having parked the car, we hopped on a single width escalator to take us to the market floor. As a visitor from mega Melbourne I couldn t remember the last time I had stepped onto such a narrow, one person escalator but what Adelaide lacks in size is made up for with ambiance and atmosphere. Six rows running north to south, divided by pedestrian ways and colourful stalls full of fresh produce make for an exciting place of colour, smells and frantic activity. The variety of stalls included Spanish Paella, Russian Piroshki pie, Algeria Le Souk, Mexican cactus and chilli. You could purchase three pomegranates for $5 or Octopus tentacles and there were free cheese and metwurst tastings. As we sat enjoying coffee and vanilla slice people were pushing trolleys while other families enjoyed an egg and bacon breakfast. Amid this dynamic business atmosphere Beryl bought special, long sought after, orthotic shoes, originally priced at $299 for just $115 and on the eastern wall I found a gold mine of early SA history in Michael Treloar s Antique book stall. According to Debbie, at 2.30 pm tables are usually erected and spruikers raise their voices and lower their prices to the delight of international students who fill their bags with supplies and goodies. Small may be beautiful in Adelaide but according to the Advertiser paper, 19 May the headline announced that South Australia needed to, Populate or Perish. The company De Lotte Access Economics had released a report, Make it Big Adelaide that showed a surging jobless rate of 7.3% to be the worst in Australia. Adelaide had 1.3 million residences and fewer 15 to 34 year olds than it had in the mid-1980s. Many of the young were leaving SA seeking a future elsewhere. It said that to grow and thrive SA needed to double its population. Bone shaking stuff indeed but it didn t spoil our enjoyment of the State. Salisbury Sunday 21 May. We worshipped with Neil and Debbie at Christ Church Wayville. It was an elderly, more academic, culturalconscious, congregation, typical of the old Parkin Wesley College site it is located on. We peeked at the unit where we lived at the time of Lorinda s birth. In earlier times the church had required me to spent two years in theological college in order to shape my ecclesiology and probably to moderate my previous three years at Bible College. It was also here at Parkin-Wesley that I finally conquered the Greek 2 Paper and gained my Lth (Licence to theologise) from the Melbourne School of Divinity. Early afternoon I hopped on a train to travel the Adelaide-Gawler line. It was the line I had travelled during part of my technical schooling and working days. The character and infrastructure of the various rail stations had disappeared. The signal boxes, waiting rooms and ticket

3 offices had been replaced with bare concrete platforms surrounded by barb wire fences. I headed to Salisbury, place of my birth and upbringing. The Salisbury District Historical Society was conducting a History Walk and it was time to tinker with yesterday again. My boyhood playmate and neighbour, Mr Des Brown was now President but it was a primary school peer Mr Terry Sloan who was leading this current walk. The story about the area in the Australian paper 22 May was not good. Salisbury-Elizabeth and Elizabeth Park were regarded as one of the worst welfare areas in the nation chewing up $435,684,000 between them. Long gone were the days of the country town atmosphere where farmers and orchardists lived along the banks of the Little Para River! As early as 1952 the Salisbury newspaper reported, In recent years until now there is talk almost universally of this town evolving to the status of a city in the not far distant future. A kind of civic revolution is in in the process. Where once, as a small boy I had wandered off from home, visited a butcher s shop in John Street and asked for an ice cream, now it was a commercial rabbit warren for business and enterprise. It is a gross understatement to say that since the years of my boyhood overwhelming change had birthed a different Salisbury. The walk commenced from the old Police Station where Tom my brother and myself had acquired our first driving licence. Opposite the old station Grandma Wright s well painted weatherboard home still stood, now a business premise. We walked to the tiny, old St John s church and class room then passed the sturdy stone school room built in 1877 where, with some reluctance, I was introduced to reading, writing and arithmetic in grade one. I recalled the Institute building opposite the school being used by after-school visiting magicians and entertainers. It was where Mrs McGregor tried to control noisy kids during picture shows and where Tom and myself had enjoyed the heady days of performing as clowns during the mega-special Sunday School concerts. A rather amazing moment occurred when the Salisbury Uniting Church minister and his wife, whom I had never met before, showed me a picture of my son on their phone. Through a Conference they attended in Melbourne they recognised the Curnow name and connected me to my son Marcus. It is not unusual in Melbourne for me to be identified as Marcus Curnow s father, but I was somewhat shell-shocked when I realised the irony of this happening. Even here in the town of my birth someone actually felt they knew me, not because of my local roots or heritage, but because of my son in Melbourne.!!! 3

4 Eyre Peninsula Tuesday 23 May 2017 We headed west for Eyre Peninsula. Although not frequently revisited, the West Coast still holds important and formative memories related to both our early days of marriage and years of ministry. Within weeks of our marriage in 1970 the Methodist Home Mission Department sent us to the tough, isolated farming community of Cowell. At that time Cowell seemed so distant and isolated it could have been regarded as a foreign overseas mission. This time however we were heading for Tumby Bay to spend a few days with Trevor and Rosemary Kemp. Trevor had been an Elder during our early days at Streaky Bay. Rosemary (nee Morris) had been a fellow student and trusted liaison person during our courtship days in Adelaide Bible College when romance between students was discouraged. In return for the encouragement that Rose had offered during that rather delicate time I later had the privilege of marrying Trevor and Rose! As we travelled north beyond Port Pirie once again we were aware that we were entering a different world. With the magnificent Lower Flinders Ranges on the right, the roadside mallee gave way to open horizons and salt bush. Blue sky and white puffy clouds occupied two thirds of my windscreen vision. We called at Crystal Brook where explorer Edward John Eyre had had found crystal clear water. From my Bible Christian research, I had also learned that the Bible Christian Methodist had established a work at Crystal Brook and they had held revival meetings on local creek banks. The transition of energy sources became obvious. Tall wind turbines dotted the Barunga Range and the familiar chimneys of the coal fed Pt Augusta power station that once dominated the landscape had been replaced by what appeared to be a high tower light. The tall tower was the result of an enterprising Dutch initiative, called Sundrop. I learnt that the high tech, secret horticultural project uses a mixture of concentrated solar power, desalinisation and water nutrients to grow tomatoes. I was told they supply the Coles chain with 2,000 tons of tomatoes a week across Australia. We arrived at Whyalla, another city caught in industrial decline similar to Salisbury and Elizabeth. This time the Iron Triangle is struggling due to China s lower grade, cheep steel production. The once proud steel smelter and ship builder is now crippled with the city having 800 deserted homes. The Advertiser of 30 May stated that the steel works Arrium had gone into administration last year but there was also a cautious optimism. The Mayor was looking forward to a successful, although a difficult future. We discovered just one lone Shell service station here on the highway providing petrol and a self-serve coffee to travellers heading to lower Eyre Peninsula. As we drove south we lost phone contact with the world and the road ahead narrowed to a thin pencil line that disappeared over the horizon. At that moment it was just us, the car and the open road. I clicked the car into the cruise mode and gave it its head (a term used for letting a horse have free reign) The car wasn t a horse but it seemed to enjoy chewing up the open road beyond the clutter of Victorian freeways! We passed the Lucky Bay turn-off where we had gone flounder fishing and once shared an evening of drag-net fishing with the Tonkin family. As we arrived at Cowell the memories came flooding back. On our arrival in the 1970s a well-intended local had warned us of the Open and Closed Brethren Sects. A previous missioner had left the Methodist cause and joined the 4

5 opposition. The local Brethren groups were described as an octopus that would reach out to get us!!!! Cowell was the birthplace of our first son Marcus. Then there was stubbie the singing dog, not to mention the room in the large manse that we concluded was actually haunted!! Names such as Hornhardt, Clothier, Schiller, Maxted, Simms, Zibbel and Edwards came to mind. As we headed off I realised how itinerant our lives had been and what a privilege it had been to share our lives, our faith and family with so many. Passing Elbow Hill and the church that overlooks the Cowell Plains I recalled the family names of Story and Horne. On one occasion during a drought year I had preached from Habakkuk Chapter three, Though the fig tree does not blossom and there be no fruit on the vine. We passed the Port Gibbon turn off that leads to the towering sand dunes hugging the blue coast line. It was at Pt Gibbon that a pregnant Beryl had horrified a parishioner by sand skiing down a giant dune at break neck speed. Then came Arno Bay another early preaching place where I competed with a mouse! During my preaching, a cheeky mouse entertained the congregation by climbing a stalk and eating a wheat head in a flower arrangement by the pulpit. I recalled beach missions and preaching in the local wheat shed during the holiday season. The names of Preiss and Smith came to mind. The Advertiser paper 24 May announced a proposed graphite mine near Arno Bay with an 87-million-dollarb processing plant. Perhaps it was time for Arno Bay to rise to fame although the beach front had had a significant makeover. Tumby Bay, May The pretty Bay of blue water is the haven for retired Eyre Peninsula farmers. Brian Taylor, another Salisbury identity and friend of the Kemps since 1974 was also staying with our host Trevor and Rosemary Kemp. We had a wonderful time checking out the garden, visiting the island, touring Pt Lincoln and chomping on a leg shank meal at Pt Lincoln. I recalled preaching at a youth service on one occasion at Pt Lincoln on, Jesus or popcorn. We yarned about ABI and revisited stories about Streaky Bay days. It was an enjoyable, timely visit that was concluded on the morning of Friday 26 May when we headed for Hawker. Hawker 5

6 The afternoon opening of Jeff Morgan s new Arkaroola Panorama at his Gallery became the next goal. We met Elaine Hewson at Quorn not far from the old Mill. Beryl accompanied Elaine in her hire car to Hawker. We had holidayed in the Flinders with the Hewsons in 1993 and Winston and Jeff had formed a founding partnership. We had watched the gallery and faith of the Morgan s mature over the years and now a larger, spectacular, panorama gallery was to be opened by the Federal Member for Grey, Rowan Ramsey. After enjoying the excitement and loading the camera with pictures the one night stand was soon over. 6

7 Balaklava 27 May We left our friends realising that our short stay was madness with such beauty on the doorstep. The enduring Flinders Ranges in their pastel blue dresses were left behind as we travelled south stopping near Melrose and for a Golden North ice cream at Laura. Before long we were surrounded by the rustic gold leaves of the Clare Valley. At Watervale another centre of early Bible Christian revivals we turned off to follow the Skillogolee tourist route. The pretty drive through river gums and grazing sheep had been a favourite during Balaklava days. On arriving at Balaklava we dined at the Royal Hotel with two friends Margaret and Heather. It had been 14 years since we left this productive wheat belt and early Bible Christian area for ministry in Cornwall. It seems the Balaklava Congregation had become the evangelical flagship of the Lower North and Yorke Peninsula. On Sunday familiar faces and farming families nearly filled the church. It was a strange feeling to be an observer where for years I had been something of a performer. Small children had become adults. The intimacy and parochial feel of the country community where grandparents worshipped with their younger generations spoke of a healthy solidarity missing in larger and most Victorian Uniting churches. Like places on the Yorke Peninsula, the Balaklava church had adopted a more independent stance. While this made for freedom and flexibility, the danger and threat of independent networks are never far away. Balaklava is a unique country community with seven different churches, a large Christian School and a Christian camp site that contributes to the Christian feel and character of the place. A privileged community in its isolation and family heritage but also in danger of living in an unreal world. The names of Chapman, Goldney, Cunningham, March, Anderson, Marriot, Taylor, Veitch, Manuel and Tiller remain. Hardwicke Bay Andrew and Merridy Manuel s seafront shack we had stayed in during 2015 awaited us. The shops at Minlaton were selling mouse traps and the sand hill behind the shack was honeycombed with mouse holes. We caught 30 in a bucket trap during our stay but they were no problem. Nothing like the plague we had encountered at Pinnaroo 7

8 during the 1970s. A local friend of the Manuel family (Deb) who had been arranged to check the traps visited us. She was an active Christian lady who knew Nathan Paul. The Paul family (David and Karen) were part of our Parafield Garden s Congregation and I had baptised Nathan in Nathan had now become an employed farm manager on a large local property. Next day the strapping 26-year-old called on us and again in a present moment the past confronted us. Nathan attended the Eternity church fellowship run by the Whittaker family north of Minlaton. We enjoyed our sharing of faith together. The blue waters of the Bay with its sandy foreshore stretched the width of our shack window. The sea birds and the buzz of tractors as farmers launched their boats announced that seeding had finished and that the harvest of the sea was plentiful. The bay is a fisherman s paradise and a cluster of pelicans usually stand as observers wishing fishermen farewell and signalling their interest in the prospect of a meal on their return. On Wednesday 31 May, we dined with Margaret and Heather again at Pt Turton and Lorinda from Adelaide joined us later that afternoon. We cooked sausages on an open fire in the evening and watched the sunset to the sound of the lapping, high tide. As Hardwicke Bay was under a regular national and international flight path Beryl had much fun checking out the Flight radar app on her iphone announcing who the planes were and from where they were coming or going. KI, WA, Middle East, Pt Lincoln, Flying Doctor etc Silent, Sacred Solitude. The spot on the Peninsula is an idyllic getaway. The swallows darted, twisted and turned in the evening twilight, skimming lower over the water gathering their evening meal. The sun like a gold marble dropped below the horizon and the glaring light became a soft glow dividing the vista panorama into a vast orange sky and a dark shimmering ocean. Next evening, we sat around the open fire and as the drift wood burned we soaked up the warmth as the darkness deepened and the air 8

9 assumed a cold edge. The hot embers provided hot toast with tea or coffee. To the left the twinkling lights of Point Turton on the other side of the bay denied us any total escape from the outside world. There was a special stillness in the darkness and the warmth of the fire. Without the bleaching lights of the urban suburbs the black velvet sky displayed its own special beauty, a star speckled sky and a half moon that flooded the ocean surface as if to attract and tease its rivals in the sky. Moon light lit the stretch of white sand and the high tide sent a gentle, rhythmic sound of waves lapping the shore line. Only the motion and sound of the sea that moved from left to right broke the silence. It was a moment saturated with the beauty and intimacy of the natural creation, a sacred moment that no ticket could buy or director could reproduce. We sat amid the sandy sounds and I wondered about the things of this life, not wanting the moment to end, but end it would. The Bible anticipates an even a greater revelation when it speaks of a new heaven and earth. The Old Testament declares that one day, The earth will be filled with the glory of God and the waters will cover the sea. The very next day on the evening news the President of the United States announced that America would withdraw from the international Paris Environmental Agreement. The Adelaide Return Saturday 3 June. Lorinda journeyed back to Adelaide and we followed next day after worshipping on Pentecost Sunday at Minlaton Uniting Church. Minlaton Uniting Church, like Balaklava is another ACC congregation, a hub to the Lower Peninsula churches. Pastor Rob Morgan, a lay minister is spread across 10 small country churches. Our return to Black Forest, Adelaide would see us assisting Lorinda to pack for NSW. On 6 June we had a new windscreen fitted to the car. (the result of a passing massive grain truck) At 2pm I met my brother Tom and we drove to the Salisbury Central and the Primitive Methodist cemetery. On the history walk I noticed a dark, dry mould covering the headstone of our great grandfather s grave. In Tom s words, we gathered a bucket and brush in an attempt to give our ancestors a face-wash. Thomas (Jnr1) and Elizabeth Curnow had been buried in Plot 63. During a visit to Leigh and Ros Duffet I made a significant discovery. In a record penned by Mr N. R. Brown, opposite Plot 63, Plot 50 was also allocated to Curnow. It was an unmarked plot with a huge gum tree now occupying the space but doubtless this was the burial site of our original pioneer and my great, great, grandfather Thomas Curnow (Snr) and his wife, also named Elizabeth. In addition, an eight-year-old child, Eliza was also listed as buried in the cemetery. I suspect she was a child of Thomas (Jnr1) who had also been interned in Plot 50, the grave of her grandparents. This made 9

10 sense because we know that great grandfather Thomas (Jnr1) and Elizabeth had struggled through financial hardship. Thus Thomas (Jnr1) was probably unable to afford a headstone for his father s grave. Tom and myself also visited our grandparents grave at Burton and enjoyed a rare opportunity revisiting our forefathers. Another Birthday. 7 June 2017 Another day of packing at Edwardstown and a 73 rd birthday meal with Tom and Lorinda at the Grand North brought our holiday to a climax. We arrived home at Langwarrin on Saturday 10 June, (having viewed the newly painted Coonalpyn silos) on our way home refreshed and grateful for the many mercies of God. E. A. (Ted) Curnow tedcurnow.wordpress.com 10