Connie Ellement

[[../authors.ellementconnie.html|Connie Ellement]] & Ron Davidson 1987, The Divided Kingdom, FACP.

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I was taken to the kitchen at the back of the house, where a varied collection of men was seated around a long pine table. These were my mother’s boarders and they were waiting for our return and their dinner.

There was a butcher, Bill Moran, who worked at Wyndham in Western Australia’s north during the killing season; a master candlestick-maker, Old Coles, who worked at a North Fremantle soap factory. Instead of the baker of the nursery-rhyme, there were numbers of lumpers (wharfies). These included my new stepfather, ‘Pa’, who had been introduced by my mother as ‘Uncle Jack’ on a visit to the girls’ home. My real uncle, Len, who seemed to be the embodiment of everyone’s idea of what a Viking looked like, was also a lumper. ‘Uncle’ Dick, a tall, kindly and physically attractive man, was a seaman. With Pa looking like an early version of Clark Gable, it was an extremely handsome collection of males.

The exception was an ex-jockey, Harry Turner, a little man with bitter twisted lips. Because he was too small to lump heavy bags of wheat around ships’ holds, he usually had the job of unhooking the cargo nets.

My arrival interrupted the flow of conversation only long enough for Dick to make a brief speech of welcome: ‘I hope you’ll enjoy it here, Connie. Old Coles says there’s everything one could ever want.’ Then he added for the benefit of the adults: ‘Bed and breakfast here, the Duke of York and the Blue Haven almost in our back yard, Mary Ann’s a little further down the next street, and Arthur Davies up on the comer’.

All those seated around the table laughed and laughed. I couldn’t have known that the Duke of York was a hotel; that Mary Ann’s and the Blue Haven were Bannister Street’s notorious brothels; and that Arthur Davies was the local funeral director.

Meanwhile, the talk flowed. Bill Moran, the tall weather-beaten man with giant hands, began thumping the table. ‘This country is going to wrack and min for want of a bit of neglect’, he announced. I was to hear that assertion many times over the next few months.

Next, Mother was praising the king hit Pa had delivered that morning. ‘The rat never saw it coming’, she said, trotting out part of the definition of a king hit. ‘And once he hit the deck, he didn’t move.’ The definition was now complete.

‘The rat’ was a former wharf foreman who, in previous years, had given Pa a hard time at the pick-ups, where the bullring system operated.

Like all foremen at the time, ‘the rat’ used to stand on a box and pick men for specific jobs from those ringed around him. This one, however, had often made a point of picking the men all around Pa and leaving him standing alone. That morning, he had made the drastic mistake ...

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... band music and hymn singing which I heard moving along Market Street and down Bannister Street some Saturday evenings. Since the Salvationists always fought where sin was strongest, I wondered which particular sin flourished in our back street. The music also reminded me of my duty to evangelise whenever the opportunity presented itself.

‘Who’s going to say grace?’ I asked one evening as Pa raised the first spoonful of soup as a signal that the rest might start eating. All were silent for a moment, then Pa said, ‘One word’s as good as ten. Bog in. Amen.’ The laughter which followed was loud and sustained. I vowed that, in future, any prayers would be private.

One evening when I heard the band playing, I could no longer resist the temptation to sneak a look at my previous life. I quietly left the house and edged along Market Street and into Bannister Street. I didn’t want to be recognised, as I was well aware that my environment was far from ideal from a Salvationist’s viewpoint.

From the shadows, I saw unfold a scene I knew well — hymn singing, Scripture readings, a call for sinners to kneel at the drumhead. But there were two marked differences from the meetings I had known. Firstly, noisy men were streaming past me and the Salvationists’ circle, heading for one or other of two houses. One had a distinctive blue verandah; the other two large date palms growing in the front yard. One was the

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Blue Haven, the other The Palms.

Youths standing on the Blue Haven’s verandah shouted some derisive remarks about 'the Salvos’.

‘Shut up, you silly young bastards’, replied an older man from the footpath. He added something about the trenches and the Salvos always being there when needed.

The other difference was in those being saved. I was accustomed to seeing Matron or some of the other officers or one or two of their charges come forward; or someone like Sister Peters, the scarred victim of a bottle attack who used to attend the Clyde Street Citadel.

Here, the repentant sinners, an elderly man and a middle-aged woman, were decidedly the worse for wear.

I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable about watching all of this and was relieved when the commanding officer gave an order. The group snapped to attention and marched off with the band playing. The two who had been saved marched with the others to the Fremantle Citadel in Henderson Street: to hot baths and substantial food.

They seemed to know the ropes. I imagine it was not the first time they had knelt at the drumhead.

References and Links

Ellement, Connie & Ron Davidson 1987, The Divided Kingdom, FACP.

Freotopia

This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 21 October, 2020 and hosted at freotopia.org/authors/ellementconnie.html (it was last updated on 26 October, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.