Have you ever been lost?

When I was a child I had a great fear of getting lost. I inherited this fear from my Mother. She was constantly fearful of getting lost. If my father drove along a road she was not familiar with she was always concerned as to where this road would take us. Did he know where he was going? She absolutely hated going to Melbourne because she had heard people were always getting lost. Her own mother had once got lost in Melbourne. She refused to allow my father to drive her around Melbourne - she always insisted that someone else drive her when she was in Melbourne. She had grown up in the north east beside a railway line. She liked railways. She trusted railways because they always told you where they were going. She had no trouble traveling around Melbourne by train. You always knew where the train was going she would say. Once you got off the train and left the station was where trouble started. . You didn’t know where you were.

She had a dislike of being away from home. But she wasn’t frightened of railways.

One day I did get lost. It remains fixed in my mind. I must have been 3 or 4. It happened in Wangaratta. It was in the afternoon.

I was in Wangaratta with my parents. They were always stopping to talk to people in the street. I was with my mother. I had to wait while she talked to someone she knew.

Suddenly I was on my own. I could not see my mother. I looked around concerned. There were groups of people but she wasn’t in any of them. I felt  myself panicking. I was lost. What was I to do?

I saw someone on the other side of the road. Was that my mother? Some people were going across the road so I went with them. This was before there were traffic lights or pedestrian crossings in Wangaratta. Halfway across the road I could see that my mother was not in the group of people waiting on the other side of the road. This only increased my feeling of panic. I really was lost.

Somehow I made it back to the side of the road I was originally on. I saw a woman I thought was my mother and I ran to her. But when I got to her it wasn’t her.

By this time I felt utterly alone. I stopped walking.

Suddenly my mother came from behind me and appeared in front of me. I did nor know where she had been. She indicated with her hand I should walk with her. She didn’t know I had been lost.

My relief was palpable.
​

A few years later my brother went missing.  This was much more important and much more potentially dangerous. Suddenly he was nowhere to be found. He was nowhere.

He was lost for about 5 minutes. But it seemed like hours. This time he was really lost.

We lived on a farm in the country. Our house was on the bank of an ancient river system. There were lots of waterholes close to the house.

My brother was a toddler. He wasn’t in the house. He wasn’t in the Dairy. He wasn’t in the cattle yards. He  was nowhere to be found.

My mother was on the verge of being hysterical. How could he go missing so quickly?

Luckily we had some casual workers on the farm and they quickly fanned out to search the area. Maybe he had gotten into one of the waterholes. They literally ran to look. My mother was extremely worried and could not stop crying. Where is he! Where is He!

A yell came from one of the men who were by this time out of sight. We’ve found him he called.

The man was about 300 metres from us. He had found  my brother at the bottom of a gully. He came up from the gully holding my brother.My brother was crying at being held by an adult he had never seen before. He was very distressed at being taken by this stranger.

The relief was palpable.

My brother had somehow got through several fences. He had skirted two water holes and had walked along a gully. He was at least 300 metres away from the house. And out of sight.

We lived on an ancient river system and had lots of waterholes within reach. Luckily he wasn’t drawn to water.


Neville Gibb
​August 2025

When my parents moved to Queensland in 1979, a lot of items that had been part of my life went with them.    Yes, maybe they owned them, but I would have liked to be asked if there was anything I may have liked.
 
As the years passed, I looked through my possessions for copies of the photographs my Dad had taken whilst overseas during the 2nd World War.  He had put them into an album, along with photos of my parents when they were younger.   I remember photos of my father’s mother and her home in Bentleigh, photos of my brothers and I as babies, and so on.  I had nothing to show my children of their past and family members.   Grandma Greaves was just a name, without a photo to give her a being.
 
When my parents passed away, these photos were in the hands of my younger brother. I thought “We will never know where they are”, as we do not know where he is.
 
In 2016 I travelled to England to catch up with my second brother, Les, after 40 years, and mentioned that I regretted not having photos of our past.   He did not appear to be interested and I felt that I may have been dwelling on something that was not important after all.
 
Not long after I returned home to Australia and settled back into my lifestyle again, I received 2 CD’s from Les containing many photos of our past life, copies of the photos in the World War 2 Album my Dad had put together, photos of my Mum and Dad when they were married, and photos of other members of the family.   

I was so happy to have copies of our past again.  It appears that Dad had sent him a large parcel one day containing books, photos, and 8mm tape and some letters.  
 
What a lovely thought from my brother to seek them out and send them to me. 


Heather Wallace
​August 2024    ​

​I never thought I’d be nostalgic for the ‘60s, white bread, white skin, “speak English will ya. You’re in Australia now”.  The sixties was the era of suburban deserts and city centres that died on week-ends and daily after 5.30.  The sixties were the years I spent at school – primary and secondary.  I loathed, hated and detested school and can only describe my school years as a twelve-year sentence, made bearable by a small scattering of inspiring teachers, and the ability to finally choose my subjects in form five and six.

I remember how excited I was on my first day at school. I was born in Rome. Our primary school uniform was either a white, dark blue or black smock with an accompanying floppy bow. The larger the bow, the higher the status. On my first day, I threw all my nibs away. As they were all split along the middle, I assumed they were all broken. It was a portent. The enthusiasm of day one had dissipated by the end of the day.

On my second day, and for the rest of the week, I had to be carried kicking and screaming to school. A neighbour nicknamed me the siren.

The  big change happened when I was in grade three and my family, consisting of my mother, my sister and myself, migrated to Australia. This was 1960. For my cosmopolitan mother,  Heidelberg 1960 came as a bit of a shock. It did not take her long however, to discover Carlton, and within a year we had moved there.

In the 60s, Carlton aka Little Italy was an aberration. By the 1970s multiculturalism had become the norm, supported by virtually all sides of politics. This acceptance that migrants could not be expected to abandon their roots began in the sixties.

Similarly, even though the sixties saw the escalation of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war, it also saw an ever-growing opposition to it, encapsulated in the moratoria. Never will I forget the energy and the idealism of that first moratorium;  the huge number of participants, the endless line of marchers starting at the top of Collins Street peacefully heading down to the Botanic Gardens. To add to the optimism were the office workers shouting encouragement from their open windows. Twinned with the revolt against the Vietnam war, was the increasing protests against conscription. How fair was it that 20- year-olds could be sent to possibly die in war when they had no vote?

The sixties, again from the perspective of a progressive leftie, saw the rise and rise of Gough Whitlam and the Labor Party. He promised the end of the war,  the end of conscription, free education for all, and the dismantling of the White Australia Policy. I had skin in this. In 1971, my boyfriend, a talented artist and cook; a person of utmost integrity, was forced to return to Hong Kong when he failed his final exam as an industrial chemist. For me, the end of the White Australia policy could not come soon enough.

I miss the energy of the sixties; the promise of a kinder, more tolerant Australia. In the twenty first century, where are idealistic and talented politicians in the Liblab party? Where are the Fred Chaneys  and the Moss Casses? Or the Tom Mitchells, whom I hosted at a book signing when I had a new bookshop. He deprecatingly introduced himself as Elyne Mitchell’s husband. It was a wonderful afternoon. In 2024 would he stand, like Helen Haines, as an Independent?

We are a nation of migrants. We were forced to migrate because of poverty caused by an unequal society, often underpinned by corruption, by racism, and often by all three combined. Education, once the great equaliser, has now become the entrencher of privilege, University fees either crippling or unaffordable; there is more government money devoted to private schools rather than to public ones; house ownership and fair wages have become a thing of the past. At the same time, we have incompetent CEOs earning obscene wages while systematically destroying functional companies.

In 2024 the world looks bleak: climate change; insecure employment; dangerous leaders and  the use of racism as a political card, not just in Australia, but globally. My political certainties of the sixties - Labor good, Coalition bad – no longer apply.

Hope is what I have largely, if not totally, lost.

 
Delfina Manor
August 2024
 
A subtitle for ‘Paean to the Sixties’? ‘A joyous song or hymn of praise, tribute, thanksgiving, to the sixties’ (Meriam-Webster Dictionary)
​

This is not so much a story of ‘found’, but ‘returned’. When my first marriage ended I ‘lost’ a number of personal items and historic photographs. I was led to believe that many of the original photos had been destroyed. It appears that this was not the case. Some 25 years later, my eldest daughter visited one day and presented me with an old photo album, which contained images and certificates from my early childhood, through to my later days at secondary school.

To my delight the album still contained many of the early photographs that had been taken by myself, and other family members. Of significant importance to me were two school certificates, one being my Intermediate Certificate and the other my Leaving Certificate. ​

Were we once as fond of our horses as we seem today to be fond of our cars?  I suppose one thing was that 80 or more years ago few of us could afford to own horses, so we simply did not have the opportunity to expend that emotion on a means of transport.

But we all have a car and often cars and we become more or less attached to them because of the freedom and mobility they give us.  I've never been one to name my cars, but my former wife and several of her friends and relations did so quite regularly.

When I first went to England in 1963, I bought an Austin Mini ute from my cousin who was just then returning to Australia.  I drove it around the UK for the couple of years I was there, then had it shipped back here for the princely sum of 80 pounds. 

A couple of years later when I managed a farm at Rose River between Mount Buller and Mount Buffalo, in its toughest role I used it to cart four or five cans of cream at a time to a Milawa milk truck pick up point five or six kilometres away.  I believe it was the only mini ute in Australia, but in the mid 1970s it simply wore out and my father, using a bulldozer, buried it on his farm east of Benalla.

While that was a case of found and lost, a 1984 Mazda coupe I bought from my former wife when we split up in the early 1990's reversed that concept at one stage.

I was living in a flat in Sydney's Paddington around the turn of the millennium and was parking the Mazda most of the time in a slightly off street space at the rear of the flat.

Over a couple of years it was so regularly broken into that eventually I left it unlocked to avoid having windows broken, as thieves usually gained access to it using a steel bar or rock.  So while I lost a few things I certainly didn't find them again.

In the meantime I was every four or five weekends driving the Mazda 1300km or so to see family and friends around Benalla.  As well, during the week, I was using it to deliver newspapers around Paddington.

But one morning thieves had removed the whole car.  I duly reported the matter to the police thinking that would be the last I would see of it.

However, just a couple of days later Kings Cross police station rang to say they had spotted my car parked illegally in one of their residential streets, only a couple of kilometres from Paddington.

So I walked over to the address given me by the police and found the car sort of skewed in towards the kerb with its doors slightly open.  Apart from a flat battery it was entirely undamaged.

After some jumper lead assistance from the NRMA, I drove it home and continued to enjoy its company for another decade or so.  By about 2012 it had clocked up well over 500,000 km and I sadly delivered the old faithful to a mechanic friend for wrecking.  In that 500,000 km the car had been utterly reliable.  I think for most of us non petrol head that is really all we want.

So, I suppose for me with both the Austin and the Mazda, it was more a case of found and found than lost and found.  They were two great cars to which I became much more attached than all but one of the horses I have ever ridden.

In the last week or two I have seen an absolutely pristine 1984 four door Mazda 626 for sale at the Lowen Lane wreckers.  It has 161,000 km on the clock and a sign which says "$600, neg",

Anyone for a top second hand run about?
 
David Palmer
29/7/2015
(Revisited on 19/8/2024, nearly ten years later!)

I can still picture in my mind every corner, every single nook and cranny, of my grandparent’s home at 11 Testar Grove, North Caulfield.  Triggers abound relating to loss– and here is one of them; found recently while cleaning out an old filing cabinet in my shed--a lonely folder containing my notes for ‘Economics 101’, studied at Monash University in 1966.  (Arch folders weren’t the go ‘back in the day’.)

To further set the scene for the loss, some treasured photographs of my grandparent’s house – my grandparent's house at 11 Testar Grove; my grandparents in front of the closed in back verandah, my grandfather holding my brother, just near the bungalow where my parents lived after the war before moving to their war service home in Clayton; also in the backyard, my grandfather clipping the back hedge, not far from the shed, the compost heap, and also - take note - the incinerator! ​

​The incinerator at 11 Testar Grove was used for many purposes for almost 60 years; and in early 1977, while I was overseas, was the scene of an event of great personal significance. 

In late 1976, my beloved, widowed grandmother, increasingly frail, moved to live with my mother, and her home at 11 Testar Grove North Caulfield was prepared for sale.  My mother accepted the well-intentioned offer from Leila and May, friends from the War Widows group at the Clayton RSL, to help her clear and clean the house ready for inspection.  I can just imagine the scene, my mother taking Leila and May out to the back yard, showing them the bungalow and asking them to clean it out.

To further set the scene, the bungalow contained boxes of my belongings.    At the time of my grandmother’s passing, I was living in Spain.  Although unsure that I would return to teaching, I had stored my valued university notes and the teaching resources from my first five years of teaching in the bungalow until my return. 

The ‘long and the short of it’ - Leila and May, bless their hearts, with apparently little understanding of how the notes might be of value to me, took the boxes out to Poppa’s incinerator and burnt the contents in Poppa’s incinerator! 
 
A ‘book burning’ of quite some significance to me!

For some unknown reason, perhaps it was elsewhere at the time, ‘Economics 101’ survived and was found.  And it was probably my least favourite subject!  I would love to be able to read through later years Economics subjects, and my Dip Ed notes, even today…

Back to the present! I am currently clearing out my house at 61 Monds Avenue, ready for inspection. Almost fifty years later, I’m facing the decision, what to do with my old ‘Economics 101’ notes.  Is it ‘time for them to go’?  Should I take them with me to my independent living unit at Cooinda? 

You may understand my dilemma, given the unresolved grief I still appear to have for the ‘lost and not found’, incinerated boxes of my university notes and teaching materials in 1977!

There hasn’t been an incinerator at 61 Monds Avenue for a long time, so I can’t physically incinerate the folder and its contents.  My other options?  To take it to my sister’s farm at Molyullah to be burnt on a fire, to bury it in the garden in a ritual laden ceremony, or to put it in the next Yellow Bin.

At this stage, while resisting to the end, I’m leaning towards the Yellow Bin as my preferred option - at least the paper might be recycled!
​
 
Bev Lee
August 2024

​Many years ago, my husband and I had taken some leave from the RAAF to holiday back in WA with my family. We had the simple task of babysitting a 3-year-old boy. His mother, my sister, was having some medical tests done. Now you would think, two ADF personnel could handle one small boy.  Wrong !!!
 
We had taken him for ice cream on the foreshore before going into the nearby shopping centre for a look around.  We walked past the toys where he showed a great deal of interest. I had been holding his hand till he sat on the floor looking at a big red fire truck with considerable interest. I was looking at other toys for his older sister’s birthday, while Paul looked elsewhere.
 
After 10 minutes or so, I looked at the time and selected my purchase, ready to go and pick up my sister.  Horrified, I turned to find our adventurous 3-year-old had vanished.
 
I joined Paul to see if he was with him, no luck. Panicking we both left in opposite directions to look for him. We searched the store with no luck. We advised the help desk, who put out an announcement. We scanned the mall outside and Paul raced out to the parking area in case he’d strayed outside. I did another run around the store.  We both dreaded the task of telling my sister we had lost her son. We even tossed a coin to see who got the scary task of telling her.
 
Not to be beaten, the store manager and I commenced a systematic search of the store, reasoning that he could not have gone far in such a short timeframe. He had to be exploring somewhere! We even saw other customers looking inside kennels, behind displays and any other place a little boy could hide. After all, his favorite game was hide and seek, he was good at that.
 
With an amused look on her face, another customer pointed out some stock lying on the floor in two or three spots.  We followed this trail of chaos. Perhaps he had been rearranging things?  No, the offender was a rather precocious little girl.
 
Then the call came over the loudspeakers, “would the parents of a little blond boy in a blue track suit, approximately 3 to 4 years old, please come to the Garden Centre”.
 
A ray of hope!
 
We approached the garden centre where a rather amused shop assistant pointed out a little boy, covered in potting mix, happily pulling plants out of their pots and carefully placing them into the ornamental pond.
 
I was overcome with a sense of relief that he was safe and well, but was horrified at the state of him, and the destroyed displays. Very embarrassed, we offered to pay for any damages and explained our situation.
 
We decided to buy him a new outfit and to race into the nearest public loo to clean him up before returning him to his mum.

Alas, she caught us!  She had finished early and was walking towards the coffee lounge where we had arranged to meet.

​Fortunately, she saw the funny side of the situation.
 
​
Heather Hartland
August 2024