Chapter 6 – Run over by a tram – 1947

I was eight years old in 1947 and in Grade three at Parkside Primary School. My brother Maynard would have been in his 2nd year at Adelaide Technical High School and Charles would have been in his first year at Unley High School. Graham was my only sibling still attending Parkside Primary School.

During the last quarter of 1947 I had an accident that caused me to have both of my legs in plaster for six weeks. This meant that I was unable to join in any of the games or sports that my friends were playing. I was very miserable and I hated having to explain to everyone who asked what had happened and why my legs were in plaster. Well, this is how it happened.

On Sunday mornings Mum and Dad used to go to the morning meeting at the Adelaide Halifax Street Temple and leave us children at home. We all had chores we had to do so that when Mum and Dad came home everything would be ready for us to have lunch together before Dad took us to Sunday School. We had to chop some kindling for the chip heater, peel vegetables for dinner and put them in water in saucepans ready to be cooked when Mum and Dad got home. Mum would put a roast in the oven to cook whilst they were away. We had to run the water in the bath and take it in turns to bath in the same water. Then we had to get dressed and all this had to be done by the time Mum and Dad got home. What actually happened was a little different from this regime. Maynard and Charles did a “time and motion study” of all of these tasks so that each of us knew exactly what we had to do to get the jobs over and done with in double quick time. This gave us enough time to take our bikes and ride to the South Parklands to play football for an hour or so. We always made sure that we were back home again before Mum and Dad returned home from the meeting.

We would ride our push bikes up Glen Osmond road towards Park Terrace, now called Greenhill Road, and inevitably, we would have to pass the house of the Wallis family. The Wallis family were members of the Adelaide Ecclesia and some Sunday mornings if Mrs Wallis did not go to the meeting she would take it upon herself to keep an eye out for us kids. If she caught us passing her house we knew she would tell our parents what we were up to and we would be in big trouble. We had a choice in passing the Wallis’ house. We could ride past their front gate or down a side street and past their back gate. Mrs Wallis knew “our tricks” and sometimes she would watch for us at her back gate and not the front gate. It was a bit like “Russian Roulette,” because we never knew whether she would be at the back of her house or the front.

On this particular Sunday morning we successfully passed the Wallis’ house without encountering Mrs Wallis and my brothers were riding some distance in front of me along Glen Osmond Road. They all put out their hands to signal a right turn and crossed over Glen Osmond Road and then got off their bikes to wait for me to catch up. When I was almost opposite them and about to make the right hand turn to cross the road, I checked behind me and saw that there was a tram coming up Glen Osmond road. My brothers all began to yell at me. I thought the boys were saying, “Hurry up,” whereas what they were actually saying was, “Stop! Don’t come!” I didn’t stop. I kept turning, right into the path of the oncoming tram.The bull bar of the tram hit my bicycle first and my bike was dragged under the tram. I fell in front of the bike and became entangled in its handle bars and was dragged along the road until the tram ground to a halt. I heard a voice screaming, which, in actual fact, must have been my own.

I don’t remember anything after that. I was told later than an ambulance took me to hospital and two policemen went to Halifax street and fetched Mum and Dad out of the meeting and took them to the hospital. What a shock Mum and Dad m must have got to find that the boys and I were not safely at home having our baths and preparing the Sunday lunch. I don’t remember any of us getting into trouble with Mum and Dad over this incident. I think they were just too grateful that I hadn’t been killed.

Some years later Mum told me she was travelling on a bus into the city when the conductor came up to her and said,

“Excuse me, are you Mrs O’Connor?”

“Yes, I am,” said Mum

“Do you remember me? I am the tram driver who ran over your little girl!”

He then told Mum that he had come to see me in hospital but I had refused to see him. This had been so devastating for him that he gave up his job as a tram driver and had been a conductor ever since. When Mum told me this, I felt bad because the only reason I hadn’t wanted to see the tram driver was because I felt so ashamed of myself for causing the accident, not because he had been the driver of the tram. While I was being dragged along by the tram my legs from my knees to my ankles were almost completely “skinned” and so for the next six weeks I had my legs in plaster and had to walk with a stick. When my legs healed and I once more had skin on my legs and nothing was permanently damaged I was so relieved and happy.

During my Grade 3 year my main school friend was Pauline Viney. She lived on the other side of Glen Osmond road in Main street Eastwood. She was a shy girl and always seemed to have a “hang dog” look. I think we became friends, mainly because I felt flattered that she seemed to like me so much. She had a gentle face, long thin plaits and brown eyes with yellow flecks in them. I am afraid I was not always kind to her and bossed her around a lot during our time together. She was such a faithful friend but clingy and at times she irritated me, but I remember I had the flu’ once and she visited me every day after school and brought me little gifts to brighten my day. She was a much more loyal friend to me than I ever was to her, I am afraid.

Towards the end of grade three I made another friend, Avis Wallis. She was the daughter of my brothers’ nemesis, Mrs Wallis, the lady who would tell our parents on us if she caught us passing her house on a Sunday morning. Avis and I became close friends but then to my dismay at the end of Grade 3, her family exchanged their house on Glen Osmond road for a house in Frederick Street, Unley. I thought this was a very odd thing to do at the time, even though the new house was not on a main road and had a beautiful garden and a pool full of big gold and red goldfish. What did affect me was that Avis would be leaving Parkside Primary School and going to Unley Primary SchooI in the new year. I decided I could not live without her and so I begged my mother to let me go with her to Unley Primary School. My mother protested that this would mean that I would have to ride my bike some four or five miles to school each day, rain or shine, instead of walking to school as I did now. If I had been my Mum and my daughter had made such a request, my answer would have been a resounding ‘No,’ but my Mum’s answer was ‘Yes.’  So in my Grade 4 year I commenced school at Unley Primary School.

In those early years when we lived at 12 Kenilworth Road, I don’t remember Mum and Dad having many visitors. Life was hard and most of their energy was spent just surviving. Mum was often sick and Dad spent his time and energy working to keep the family afloat. The Adelaide Ecclesia provided most of the social contact that our family enjoyed. We went to all the Ecclesia’s meetings, events and activities. Dad and Mum attended the memorial meeting at Halifax street each Sunday morning and then there was Sunday School in the afternoon for us kids. The reason Sunday School was held in the afternoon in Adelaide at that time was because trams and buses did not run until the afternoon on a Sunday morning and so it would have been too difficult for children to get to a morning Sunday School. When the boys got older they began attending the Sunday night lectures at the Adelaide Ecclesia. They would go with Mum and Dad if they were attending Adelaide or catch a tram or bus if going to another Ecclesia for the Sunday night lecture.

Mum and Dad had friends that we really liked who used to visit us at 12 Kenilworth Road. Their names were Olive and Doug Tweedie. Uncle Doug loved to entertain us and he taught us to speak two “secret” languages. One was called “Pig Latin” and the other “Dog Latin.” Pig Latin was spoken as follows: To say “You are a silly fool” you would say,”Ooyay reeay a-ay illysay oolfay.” In Dog Latin, you would say “Yarpoo arpar arpa sarpilarpee farpool.” We mostly used Dog Latin because we felt it was more sophisticated than Pig Latin. We found it very effective and could speak it very fluently. My brother Charlie used it whenever he wanted to “tell me off” in company. He would smile as though he was saying something very nice to me, but what he would really be saying would be something not so very nice, maybe something like “Fay, you are going to be in trouble when you get home!” Charlie loved languages and one year he decided that we should all learn to speak Deaf and Dumb signing. I remember we all had to get dressed up in our best clothes one evening and he took us to the Deaf and Dumb Institute on South Terrace in the city. We attended a number of their meetings. Charlie learned to sign without any trouble at all and then taught it to the rest of us at home. He used it in High School when I was in first year and he was in 5th year during Religious Instruction. He would sit at the front of the room and sign to me when I was sitting in the back of the room. Our teacher used to get very angry with us. Charlie was always thinking of ways to disrupt this class. My brother Charlie was a very dominant and controlling member of our family. I was always being “told off” by him and spent a lot of my time in tears.

Adelaide Ecclesia used to hold picnics at Belair National Park at least once a month and hire tennis courts there for the parents and young people to use. I loved the picnics and the sports afternoons. All the children around my age and younger used to play around in the creek beds. We used to play all sorts of “pretend” games. We’d divide up into groups of “Goodies” and “Baddies” and chase each other around up and down the creek beds. Tea meetings were held at regular intervals during the early years in the Adelaide Ecclesia. Marquee’s would be set up at the back of the hall in Halifax Street with trestles laden with food. Gordon Wauchope and his family owned “Balfours” cakes and pies and and they used to donate most of the food for the tea meetings. The “tea” part of the meeting would be followed by a special evening afterward which would be held the main hall of the Temple in Halifax Street. During these meetings some of the teenagers would  gather upstairs in the Temple and look after all the young children. They would organise games such as “The Farmer in the Dell,” “Oranges and lemons,” “Lucy Locket lost her pocket,” and many other similar games. This was a tradition that had been an institution for many years in the meeting and so all the Young Folks knew a score or so of these games and were expert at looking after all the young children and keeping them happy and quiet whilst their parents attended a meeting. I can remember being one of the children playing the games and I loved it. I not only loved the games themselves, but I especially loved the interaction with all the teenagers who looked after us. I can remember coming home from meetings or outings utterly exhausted and having Dad carry me inside and put me to bed. I think I have said this many times already in my story, my dear father was always there to do anything, fix anything and always caring for me and keeping me safe. They were good days and good traditions that held the fabric of our Christadelphian community together.  They were Utopian days. Looking back I appreciate so much the culture and traditions of the Adedelaide ecclesia, many of which are retained only in my memory now.

During our family’s early years, family holidays were a rare thing. Dad’s business took so much of his time that getting away for a break was pretty hard to achieve. One year, however, we did go on a holiday, a memorable holiday from my point of view. Dad took us to the Kingston Park Caravan Park where he erected a large marquee-type tent which became our home for ten wonderful days. I would have been about 8 years old at the time and that one holiday has stayed in my mind as a high point in my young life. Dad was very much into fishing and in no time at all had discovered who were the “real” fishermen staying at the camp and arranged for them to take him out fishing. Dad has always seemed to be able to catch fish when no one else could,  so we had fresh fish almost every day. We kids roamed the park, the beach and the stairs that wound up the cliff face to the houses above. We swam, built sand castles and played with all the other children in the park. I was so happy the whole time we were there. Our family all have olive skin and by the end of our holiday it would have been hard to distinguish us from the original occupants of the land.