May 2014 — a decade ago! Cannot believe it!

The not so merry month of May

Such was my header for the entry of 31st May 2014

Posted on May 31, 2014 by Neil

Of course the idea it should be is an inappropriate legacy from the Northern Hemisphere, though the changing weather pattern we appear to have experienced – in retrospect in twenty years or so we will know for sure that it was indeed part of climate change – has been confusing our flowers into thinking autumn is spring, or it is still summer, or something. “Sydney’s remarkable spell of warm weather has been so prolonged that any reversion to long-term averages will feel almost chilly.”

Yes, it is the month that saw the passing of my last surviving uncle, though that was balanced by it occasioning a meeting with some of the generation now in their 20s – and that I found encouraging. Took me back to Sutherland too, and that I did rather enjoy in itself.

M, whom I have visited several times in Surry Hills of late, is off to the Northern Hemisphere next week – very far north, in due course. And speaking of M – those who know us will get the connection – do watch Foreign Correspondent in the coming week.

They had front row seats to one of the most shocking, violent and oppressive dramas to unfold in modern China. The Tiananmen Square massacre. They were the men and women stationed at Australia’s embassy in Beijing. Over the space of weeks then days, they saw the very best and the very worst of human behaviour. Now, 25 years on and for the first time, Australia’s eye-witnesses to that dark chapter tell how they hid from gunfire, harboured and helped key targets and focussed wider attention on the outrage by smuggling defining image out and into the global spotlight. A Foreign Correspondent exclusive.

Nicholas Jose features in that.

Last week’s episode, Pakistan – The Polio Emergency, was sad and brilliant. It also reminded me of how short-sighted it is for the current crackpots in Canberra to be divesting themselves of our international television presence in the region, more than likely in deference to the pockets of Rupert Murdoch. Programs such as this are much more likely to be made by the ABC or SBS, and that they should be made available in South, South-East and East Asia through the Australia Network is absolutely brilliant. But not to be for much longer, it appears.

Then we have The Pyne’s latest curious lack of conservatism: I say that because I would have thought conservatism involved the preservation of all that has painfully evolved in society and proven of worth, rather than taking the axe or the bulldozer to everything in sight. Well, having it appears been rebuked on the question of pursuing student loans beyond the grave, he has stuck his little cockscomb up again…

…During the week I had an email from a student I taught at Wollongong High in 1975, now a mathematician at the University of Oxford. I was pleased to note his contempt for C Pyne and all his works: “How is it possible that this irrational, babbling idiot is the Federal Minister for Education?”He has followed up recently:

Your classes, however long ago,  are difficult to forget.

I am unsure why, except 1975 was a productive year, marked among other things by that quite wonderful residential conference at Katoomba. In 2007 I wrote:

Thirty-two years ago The Poet and I both attended not a Summer School but an Easter School, residential, at the Carrington Hotel in Katoomba, and it was intense, brilliant, and also fun. We had local and UK leaders in our field running the thing, and it was government funded. Teachers from state and private schools were there, notably Paul Brock, then a Marist Brother. No $5000 carrot was dangled in front of us. We were there because we cared about English teaching.

Well, Jeff of 4E4 1975, it turns out I still have a book in which I pasted now fading photocopies of student work from that time, including from your class!

Another of those teacher moments…

Posted on May 29, 2014 by Neil

Today’s email delivered this from the University of Oxford:

I think you taught me English in 4th form at WHS in 1975; a long time has passed and all I remember about those lessons is Evelyn Waugh’s  ‘The Loved One’, a book which I didn’t much like at the time and still haven’t read properly to this day.  You did, however, encourage me to read books by serious authors and for that I’m very grateful; since then I’ve read many; Aldous Huxley’s are still my favourites.

I went on to do PhD in Maths, in Australia, take a post doc position in the Mathematical Institute  at the University of Oxford and then a lectureship there. I’m still at the University of Oxford.

How did I find your blog? It turned up after a Google search for Christopher Pyne; I regard Christopher Pyne with complete and utter contempt and I’m *very* angry about what he’s doing!!!

For example and for heaven’s sake, how can someone come out with “If an elderly person passes away with a HECS debt, they wouldn’t be able to say to the bank, ‘we’re not paying back our mortgage’”  and expect to be taken seriously! Dead people can’t talk and what has a mortgage got to do with HECS? Beyond belief.

I will forgive him about Evelyn Waugh: Year 10 may have been too soon for that, but  it being 1975 and my first year at Wollongong High I may have drawn the short straw in the textbook room!

So long ago!

Wollongong baths 1975

My last Uncle

I was drawn back to Sutherland by a solemn occasion in May 2014.

Ian and I have just run out of uncles

Posted on May 18, 2014 by Neil

That may seem flippant, but it is not at all. I have just got off the phone from my brother Ian in Tasmania, having let him know – thanks, Russell Christison — that our Uncle Neil passed away this morning.

This morning in fact I had spent an hour or so checking stories about him.

Neil Christison 1924 – 2014

RAAF

During 1944 I was a member of an Airforce Signals Unit. In April of that year my signals unit did a landing in  Aitape, New Guinea. We were the communication unit for the  airfield construction squadron who repaired airstrips and built new ones. The same operation occurred on Morotai Islands. On Morotai Islands I shared a tent with a Fellow NCO. His name was CPL Jim Christensen from Queensland and I was CPL Neil Christison NSW and this was somewhat of a novelty because of our surnames.

To our great joy another esteemed gentlemen by the name of L.C. Faulkner spent his time with our unit in our tent. He was a very interesting person. During 1944 censorship was very strict and as you read his article published in the local paper he could not mention my location. Because of my constant movements my parents often did not hear from me for some time but when this came out in the paper they kept the article. Also we had another distinguished guest in our tent, an official air force photographer. Early one morning he was in one of our planes, which had been shot down by the Japanese and he and the pilot were rescued by one of our PT Boats.  The Halmahbar Islands, not far from Morotai, were occupied by the Japs and they used to occasionally pay us visits with bombing raids.   When this photographer returned to our tent he was covered in dye but still smiling and he returned back to Australia shortly after.

With the passing of time over the last 66 years sadly I lost his name because since I married in 1950 we have moved several times. My darling wife is now in an aged care facility as a result of Parkinson’s disease and on the 8th of July 2010 we celebrated our 60th wedding anniversary.*

MAKING THE NEWS BACK HOME
By Neil Christison

* Fay passed away the following year.

http://www.kincare.com.au/sites/kincare/files/Veteran_Handbook.pdf

Yes, that is me on the right — Canberra 1955 — Uncle Neil, Aunty Fay, a friend of Neil and Fay — Judy? I appear to be in my Sydney High uniform.

Uncle Neil is survived by Janine and Lloyd and their families/circles.

A conversation with my brother Ian

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Neil

So I had lunch at the Sutherland United Services Club in East Parade, pretty much just around the corner from Vermont Street where I lived 1952 – 1955 and again around 1963-64. Oddly, this was the first time I had been inside the club, though my brother Ian, born 1935 and now living in Tasmania, recently told me he used to drink there at one time with the late Reg Gasnier (1939-2014) of Rugby League fame. (I have been trying to work out when exactly this was…*)

I made a point of ringing my brother to tell him where I was – his heart was very much with yesterday’s real mission. And of course I rested and read a while, and had a red wine – a concept my Uncle Neil would surely have endorsed, if not the particular wine which was a touch ordinary…

My cousin Lloyd did a masterly summary of his father’s life and achievements yesterday. It drew me back in mind to Auburn Street, which I didn’t revisit yesterday as I had on a previous gathering of the clan when my Uncle Roy died.

The house in Auburn Street. I lived there 1943 to 1952, and we shared with Neil and Fay in the early 1950s. For years I was called “Neil James” to distinguish me from the uncle whose name I shared – though it appears – so his daughter Janine told me yesterday – that he remained “really” Nelson all his life. I knew he had been named Nelson, but preferred “Neil”, and I was told he changed his name by deed poll when he enlisted in the RAAF. I see he was “Nelson” officially at Sutherland Intermediate High in 1940.  But  apparently he never completed the process.

So am I really Nelson Whitfield? Well, obviously not…

* Ian rang me while I was writing this post so I now have some idea – and a few other names well known in Rugby League in the 50s and early 60s were also mentioned. It was indeed Reg Gasnier.

Anzac Day images and songs — 1

Family and more

… and SBHS

My Dad’s cousin — from Wollongong

On 1st February 1917 Norman was awarded the Military Cross. The citation reads: ‘For conspicuous gallantry in action. He displayed great courage and skill in siting a communication trench under heavy fire. Later, he carried out a dangerous daylight reconnaissance. He has at all times set a fine example.’
Source: ‘Commonwealth Gazette’ No. 116; Date: 25 July 1917.

On 29th September 1917 he was wounded in action but remained on duty.

On 17th June 1919 he was awarded a bar to his Military Cross for action on 29th September 1918.

The citation reads: ‘Near Bellicourt, on 29th September, 1918, he led his company through a heavy covering barrage to their allotted work, and was responsible for the initial success of the day’s operations. Later, when the enemy held part of Bellicourt, he took forward a portion of his platoon, under heavy machine gun fire, and drove the enemy out, thereby enabling the road to be got through. Later again, in the absence of infantry, he organized a party and silenced a machine gun, and also dispersed the crew of an anti-tank gun. His marked courage and devotion to duty were an inspiration to his men.’

See also my posts One hundred years ago or thereabouts…, 22 – Whitfields 1915.

And there are more….

c 1943 — RAAF Richmond. Bottom left — Jeffrey Noel Whitfield, my father.

Lest we forget. Anzac Day 2024.

120 years of teaching in my family

And even more of carpentry, blacksmithing and rural arts

My brother inherited the bush and carpentry gene, and I the pedagogical one… Carpentry etc. is a Whitfield thing going back close to 200 years here in NSW, but I managed at 11 to even mess up making a teapot stand! So the Christison gene of teaching passed from John Hampton Christison, self-appointed but often successful “Professor” of Scottish Dancing and Etiquette — he even wrote a book on these subjects — to his son Roy Hampton Christison, to his grand-daughter, my Aunt Beth, to me and to several of my cousins.

A picture on the Facebook Shellharbour History Page prompted this chain of thought today.

Long Trek – Kids riding their horses to Shellharbour Public School in 1930.

I commented: “My mother would have been able to identify them! Her father Roy Christison was Headmaster in 1930.” Indeed, that is when he commenced his appointment.

Grandpa Roy and Grandma Ada, Shellharbour c. 1932

He began his career in 1904 as a pupil-teacher — the training method in those days — at Plunkett Street Public School in Woolloomooloo. That must have been interesting!

Bloody annoying when they do that! But do go and see. I wonder what Grandpa would make of it now!

His first appointment was to Spencer Public School on the Hawkesbury River, in those days accessible only by boat. The story goes he built the first toilet in Spencer and the locals thought this was a bit crazy given the nearness of the river, but I can’t document that story! See also On my grandfather Roy Hampton Christison and his career and More tales from my mother 1 — Spencer, NSW.

So there you have it — 120 years in the teaching game!