What do Neil Harvey and my father have in common?

Not much, really. Firstly, a few pieces of seemingly unrelated family trivia.

My paternal great-grandmother was born in North Melbourne in the early 1870s. The only time in her entire life that she ever left the Melbourne metrpolitan area was when she took a train to Sydney to check out the family of my (prospective at that stage) grandfather. He was born in Redfern in 1894 and was a grocer by trade. I use the word 'trade' advisedly as in those days you had to serve an apprenticeship to become a grocer. He became a grocer because his family weren't all that well off and you didn't have to pay your master for the privilege of working for him like you did in the first year of being apprenticed to other tradies like carpenters and painters.

Not long after he was married my grandfather enlisted in the army and got the shit shot out of him in Europe. When he came back he had shell-shock. If he had been in WW2, Korea or Malaya, he would have had battle-fatigue. From Vietnam onwards they called it post-traumatic stress disorder, which is a much murkier phrase that requires some deciphering, but it has four times as many syllables and therefore imparts much greater authority to anybody using it.

Upon his return he established a small grocery business in the town of Warragul. He went bust during the depression and he moved the family to Donvale. At the time Donvale had eight (8) houses scattered through the apple orchards.

During this period he would, to use my father's phrase, get a bit snaky; which meant that Dad and his sisters would camp at a neighbour's for a night or two. Whilst at Donvale, my father was playing with one of his sisters on the roof of the chookshed, she pushed him and he slid off the roof. One of the roofing nails had worked its way out of the timber about an inch or two. This nail ripped the back of Dad's leg open from his ankle to his arse. Seventy years later the scar is still visible.

His Dad got a bit snaky and pulled the chook shed down.

Which marks the end of the preamble.

As I was driving the tractor the other day I was listening to the ABC and they had an interview with Neil Harvey. He was rabbiting on about playing cricket as a kid in the cobbled laneway behind his house and how the uneven surface caused the ball to leap about erratically off the pitch, which improved his reflexes and eye-hand co-ordination. The interview was cut short to broadcast a one day match between Queensland and the Sarfies. Which disappointed me. Neil's yarn reminded me of two things; firstly a time when some people stole all the paving from a laneway in Parkville and secondly and unexplainably, a trip to Undera speedway I made with Dad.

I was living in Edithvale at the time, about two blocks off the end of Edithvale Road. Dad picked me up and we headed up Edithvale Road, which turns into Springvale Road at some stage after it crosses the whatever it's called Freeway. Eventually, it crosses Mitcham Road in Donvale, which turns into Doncaster Road, which is the direction we were taking. We were approaching this intersection when Dad changed from the left lane (the one to be in to go the way we were headed) to the right lane. "I'll show you where I got that scar on my leg." he said.

At the Mitcham Road intersection (I think) there is another, smaller road going off at an angle to the right down a hill to a creek. It was lined with sixties era brickveneer delights - except for one block, which still had the twenties weatherboard jobbie on it. Next to this house was a pile of rusty tin. Dad started laughing uncontrollably. When he got his breath back he pointed at the pile of tin and said "That's the fucking chook shed."