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Dunno about that [beer story] Ian, even today without the effects of war people in my generation find binge drinking a solace too.  Agree that it’s an unfortunate thing which diverts people from the real hope of Jesus.

Today’s service at my church was well done:

- It was the last service of my interim pastor
- The choir I was in sung a stirring farewell song called ‘Friends’ by Michael W Smith
- The worship leader (which varies from week to week) nearly cried Joel Osteen style in his congregational prayer, overcome by the emotion of how good the interim pastor was
- The sermon was a call to vigilance as it was on the return of Christ
- Bi-monthly coffee cart afterwards, and
- New pastor Albert Garlando coming in next week.

Hi Arthur,telling my story as a 10yo it is really hard for me to give any other than the way my 10 yo eyes saw it .My story is not that different from heaps of other kids who knew their Dads mood changed drastically after a bottle of beer.I had an absolutely wonderful child hood growing up in Alamein and my Dads drinking was just the few drops of black paint that discoloured the whole 20 litre container of white paint. But I also was lucky enough to be instilled with an unshakeable belief that something much bigger than me was looking after me.I dont understand where this feeling came from And to tell you the truth I dont try to to understand it,But I never stop appreciating the fact that I have it. GOD?? whoever whatever She He is has certainly played a huge part in the way my life is unfolding.Sorry mate eyesight is playing up come back in an hour or so.
               
                  Cheers Ian Lawther

Hi is luke out there somewhere.Luke lizzie Moore who Ifelt was a constructive contributor to the Sydney Anglicans forum has been trying for a couple of weeks to get her registration accepted for this forum can you help please.
              Cheers Ian Lawther.

Arthur Lee - 27 July 2009 09:31 AM

- Bi-monthly coffee cart afterwards

Bi-monthly coffee Arthur ?  Surely that’s a long time between drinks ;)

i Arthur , sorry about the lay off I am trying hard for some voice operated software then anything I write will be punctuated automatically and that will put me in a wonderful frame of mind when I am writing. I would hate any body reading this to think POOR Ian his Dads drinking wrecked his child hood because it did not, It actually gave me a lot more freedom than other kids in the street had. I went for a 50k ride on the tandem today rode down around Alamein checked out all the old stamping grounds the Big Tree ,the site of the submarine hut , gardiners creek, all rock beached and concrete channel now ,not a sign of a water rat any where and filthy water Iwould not bother to turn a car roof upside down in, certainly no longer fit for swimming in. I walked over the submarine hut sight and I am amazed we got away with it.Cant imagine any oval or park to day where 20 kids could turn up with shovels and start digging . 60feet to the port side of the sub you can still see the outline of the cut we did in the slight rise up to Markham ave so we could have a cricket viewing room . We even cut benches into the sides for comfort. The roof was framed with old bridge timbers from the tip and old corrugated iron
Was placed over the top it was dusted with dirt old leaves and gum nuts and was invisible from every where but the oval .Certainly the bloke who drove his brand new F.C.
Holden on to the roof did not see it.
  I heard him say to the police he got two frights one when the front of his car disappeared and one when nine kids ran out from underneath his car. Once again our enterprising spirit rose to the challenge and we had new iron on site for the re roof before the tow truck arrived to pull the F.C. out . We did put warning rails up but 3 weeks later the council deemed it unsafe and dismantled it. Once again NO body hurt. Nobody will ever convince me GOD was not smiling on the Markham ave kids that day. The most precious memory I have of my Dad is as a 7yo I was helping him plant Tomatoes in the back yard , a beautiful sunny day our half whippet black dog Jet just behind me carting his usual half brick with him me walking behind MY dad a pun net of tomatoe seedlings in my hands and so glad to be working with Dad I thought I was going to burst. Twelve months later reality struck home and I knew it was unlikely to happen again. But to this day I treasure that memory and I store it on top of all the other Dad memories in the Dad box in my mind and when ever I Go to the Dad box this tomato memory is the first one I take out and the last one I put away. Call me strange but for me it works . The other good thing about my Dad was he taught me how not to treat people. And believe me that has been a very valuable lesson , sort of like the Johnny Cash song ‘A Boy Named Sue.’Dad also inadvertently led me to a very influential man in my life , Fred Kelleher, he was my teacher last half grade four all of grade five . Mr Kelleher came up to me one morning and said ‘Ian I know your history I want you to drop around my place tonight I have some things to show you’ Now the ‘Your History’ bit I gotta tell you had me worried the only thing I could think of was that my brother Alan had told him abouy the “found
Golf Balls” 
  I went around to his place and he showed me some of the most sickening pictures that I had ever seen . Then he told me this is what alcohol does to your heart, lungs, liver, kidneys , brain and arteries Shocking stuff I can assure you .
  Turned out Mr Kelleher was president of the local branch of the Independent Order Of Rechabites a temperance society and it was their aim to educate the public on the dangers of legitimate drugs like tobacco and alcohol. He Invited me to do the course two nights a week for 12 weeks and then they would    
Ask me to swear on the Bible that I would not smoke or partake of any alcoholic beverages until I was 21.
  Their thinking being if they could keep a person off the drugs till 21 they would probably be clean for life.
  So I did the course took their             pledge and to this day my annual alcohol consumption would not average one Bacardi and Coke every 3 yrs. Yes Arthur you are right Alcohol is a social Problem and what I learnt about it is that to try drinking your problems away is like estapoling over a scratched bit of timber the scratches dissappear while the estapol is wet but as soon as it attains its natural gloss their they are again more prominent than ever and all you have done is poisoned your body depleted your wallet and got no where with your problems, So there it is Arthur a few good things that have happened to me in my life and there are many many more that I will share later in my Journey . I just wonder are there still I.O.O.R. branches or the like still around .
  Cheers Ian (cheap shout)Lawther.

Morning Ian,

That sure was an interesting read before sunrise ( it’s still dark outside ). Brought back a few memories of my own. Regarding the Rechabites, I believe they finished here in 2002. ( Read “IOR health fund goes into administration” at :    http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/stories/s671994.htm    )

My grandfather was the local secretary for the Mascot ( Sydney ) branch around the time of WWII - but I’ll need to write about that at a later time. Gotta get moving !

Cheers,  Kevin

I’m aware that the Salvos are still heavily involved in alcohol rehabilitation schemes.

As for the bi-monthly coffee cart, we have weekly coffee but it was suspended for the 5mth Building Extension Project (nearly done now).  In the interim, we’ve had to resort to boosting the coffers of Kogarah’s local coffee places!  Or having brunch at Hurstville.

Thanks Arthur nice to know someone is trying.But I was head hunted in the school yard do do you know if that would happen now?
    Thanks Kevin nice to meet some one who knows the word Rechabites the usual response when I mention the name is Whaaat???,Unfortunatelt I have damaged at tendon In my foot .Gotta go for an Ultra sound back with more later.
                                                                  Cheers Ian Lawther.

A partially torn archillies tendon,which happened when I stepped off the kerb to cross the road has kept me out of action for two weeks and also kept me off the tandem. My last ride down around the old stamping ground served to confirm what an incredible child hood I had and just how fortunate a life I have led.When I stood in the middle of the oval iswear I could hear all the markham ave boys riding their bikes building a t ree hut higher than the last one Dogs barking a roof being tomahawked of a car ready for the next expidition down Gardiners creek so many wonderful memories.As I looked out over the tip site I was dragged back into the pruning season when truck load after truck load of tree branches would be dumped at the tip.Back shortly have to go over to a word document before cyber gets another feed off me.

Now this virtually endless supply of cubby materials led to an amazing array of cubbies and probably the most enterprising were the ones when fifteen or more kids would descend on the heaps and start pulling branches out to make tunnels into them .We would pull a heap of branches out and with corrugated iron and other materials from the tip we would construct a roof across two heaps of branches then we would get a truck driver to dump the next loads at the ends to give us a fully enclosed room.
  All the branches extracted for tunnels would be thrown over the roof for camouflage. The roof sheets would be arranged in such away to allow daylight into the room and thanks to the generosity of the tip there was always a table and chair set to be had One very lucky day we even scored a full lounge suite for our branch house. There was always a down pipe periscope in any room we built this was a necessity because invasion from the Ambon st kids was always a threat. We would spend all day in these cubbies and would take it in turns to man the periscope .The longest entrance tunnel to one of our rooms was about fifteen   meters. Some times these heaps would contain an absolute rabbit warren of tunnels running in all directions and any change in direction necessitated a periscope for illumination .The average life span of one these cubbies was about two weeks but once we got the tip man to leave a big one alone for two months. This was accomplished by keeping his firewood supplies up and countless trips up the street for him. Nearly every Saturday night there would be five or six kids sleeping in these cubbies and we would all emerge at the sound of the milkys horse and cart and we would all run around the block beside him delivering the milk into the houses. For this chore we would get a couple of pints of milk and half a pint of cream to share between us. So back at the cubby we would brew a big batch of porridge and what a wonderful breakfast that porridge and fresh cream made, yum might go and make some now. 
    Cheers Ian Lawther.

Mate feeling better?  Torn tendons must hurt so much!

Are we talking about tunnels in the tip itself, next to the tip or somewhere else altogether?  If the first, it would’ve been a disaster waiting to happen!

Hi arthur,you are right mate they hurt but I am lucky they were only torn not broken. But there is more pain in trying to covince my wife that knocking up the K’s on the tandem had nothing to do with it.When I think how lucky I have been to find a front rider who is as keen to ride as I am and having to say I cant ride two weeks in a row and going along with my theory of HAPPY WIFE HAPPY LIFE it will probably (sorry it will be) three weeks.I can assure you this is where the real pain is.
    THE TUNNELS??Were made in the piles of branches there was no real danger unless we upset the tip man who was known on more than one occasion to drive the bulldozer over the top of our cubby. But with our strategically placed periscopes there was nothing went on in our tip that was not known about.
                      Cheers Ian Lawther.

HAPPY WIFE HAPPY LIFE eh?  I’ve gotta get the first step done before getting the second haha!

Torn tendon broken toes and heaps of Eye trouble have kept me away for quite a while I am very glad to see the story hasn’t been scrubbed.Through all that I have THANKS BE TO GOD I have always been upright and warm.I just need a day or so to farmilirise myself with this computer and Iwill Continue with my
story.
    Every time I start to berate my self about my lack of computer skills I remind myself that my Grandmother would never use the gas stove unless some one else lit it,so it makes me feel better to think of this computer as just a new fangled Gas Stove,Back shortly.
            Cheers Ian Lawther.

Welcome back Ian - I always look forward to hearing your tales from growing up - and I have missed reading them.

Cheers, and Happy New Year, Kevin

They should have waited till all the OLD people died before they bought in all this electronic stuff how ever it appears to be working so we will see how we go. been doing a whole lot of tandem bike riding and have been past a lot of the places where I went to church/Sunday school and the BIG pipe . Now I will have to gather my thoughts together on the church thing so I will go on with the BIG PIPE.(B.P).
    The B.P is approx 10 feet round (3metres for any one who is not old enough to remember imperial) and about 770 feet long(700 meters).  And is found like this get 3 or 4 kids together in Markham ave and help each other across Gardeners creek with the bikes wait patiently for the bloke on the tractor to go past . this bloke is paranoid if he sees kids on bikes on the golf course, thinks were going to ride all over the greens ,this only ever happened once and that was only because he kicked us off the golf course once AND confiscated our golf balls which we found .O.K he’s gone so we throw the bikes up on the edge of the golf course and pedal as if he is chasing us , we have come to Scotsman’s
Creek and his line of sight is broken we cross the little bridge and turn right to get to the creek 60 meters on we stop at the apple tree but unfortunately it has been a busy week on the golf course and all our apples have been knocked of e easy spots by the golfers but we don’t really mind cos we probably got some of their golf balls fair trade we reckon , so we have to climb for the sustenance we need for the B.P excursion ,unfortunately Ma and Pa Maggie don’t like boys in their tree so with two boys climbing and two with sticks and cans to make a racket just as they near the tree and upset the dive we get our apples and its 500 meters to the pipe. Now this pipe runs from gardeners creek under the golf course under Waverley road and the Monash freeway(gunna go check it out shortly the noise from the freeway must be horrendous) and comes out between Bruce and Hyslop st EastMalvern ,no free way when we were kids.
      We reach the Big Pipe and find our way into the middle of a big clump of black berries leave our bikes and take our socks off because there is no way in without wet feet——-if your lucky———if not you are all wet but we have apples and we got black berries. Sorry my eye has packed it in for now we will go in the pipe tomorrow.
                          Cheers Ian Lawther .

Cheers Ian Lawther.
Now the BP sticks about two feet (600mm) out into the water and the only way into it is to jump from the side into the pipe at a 45degree angle and be prepared for the wet feet part.the water in the bottom of the pipe was always about 450 mm wide and we could travel up the pipe by jumping from side to side at an angle. About half way along the pipe there was a manhole with a big grate on that ran across the fairway on the golf course and after discussing the fact that if the grate was turned 90 degrees to the fair way our golf ball yield from the Big Pipe would definitely increase .Gotta tell you that grate was incredibly heavy and it took every bit of strength 4 9yo boys could muster the grate was only tampered with about 4 times then big brother alan delivered the salvo captains sermon about found and stolen golf balls. And here again comes the as ye sow so ye shall reap reap comes in because I have never had agame of golf and not lost several balls I only hope the kids who found them had as much fun on the golf course as I did as a kid. This man hole had a fixed ladder in it that we would tie ropes to to keep our rafts and 4 gallon steel drums from floating out the mouth of the pipe. The drums were used to light fires in for illumination while we were playing in the pipe. The raft was used to give us a bit of safety if the water started to rise in which case we would just float out of the pipe and get off where ever we struck land in which case we would leave the raft and come prepared to build another next time we came to the big pipe to play, that was the beauty of having our own tip what a wonderful resource centre it was for young boys . Now that big pipe drained a huge area and the water could go from ankle deep to belly button deep in seconds if it started to rain and in hindsight it can only be by the grace of god that no one was ever hurt in the Big PIPE. matter of fact I reckon that perhaps god enjoyed playing with the Markham ave kids.