Chapter 3 — Behind the Chronicle

Teenage years at The Yea Chronicle: printing, machinery, sectarian loyalties and the events that brought my apprenticeship to an abrupt end.

The Chronicle

I was still a teenager when I worked at The Yea Chronicle.

Looking back, it was a curious place in which to learn a trade.

There was the public face of the newspaper — customers coming through the front door, printing jobs, local identities, business, conversation and good humour — and there was another world behind it.

Tom Dignam, the editor, could be a wonderful character when people were standing in front of him.

There was plenty of friendliness, local banter and business.

But I began to notice that things could change almost as soon as somebody walked out the door.

At the time I did not necessarily understand the larger structure around what I was seeing.

I was an apprentice.

I was learning printing.

And I liked machinery.

The Chandler & Price

One of the machines was a Chandler & Price hand-fed printing press.

It had originally been operated by foot treadle but had been motorised. We used it for jobs such as wedding invitations and other smaller printing work.

One part of the machine had been badly neglected.

There was a cast-iron cam roller, perhaps three inches across, that had not been properly greased or oiled.

Instead of rolling normally along its track, it had apparently been sliding.

Slowly, over time, it had ground away a substantial part of one side — perhaps three-quarters of an inch.

Something had to be done about it.

I was given the job of working on the machine.

I serviced it, removed components, repaired what I could and eventually took the damaged roller across to Castle's Garage.

Tony Hutton built the missing area back up with bronze.

Then the roller was put into a lathe and turned until it was round again.

The repair cost very little. My recollection is that it was around ten shillings, or certainly less than a pound, despite the brazing and lathe work involved.

I brought it back, refitted it, and the press worked properly again.

I was pleased with it.

Then Tom Dignam returned.

I showed him what I had done.

Instead of being pleased that the machine had been repaired cheaply and successfully, he became furious.

The problem was not the repair.

The problem was who had done it.

Castle's Garage was not Catholic.

There was also, in Tom's mind, an association with the Masons.

He objected strongly to my having given the work to them.

So strongly that he wanted the repaired part removed and the bronze ground away again.

I remember going back across to the garage and Laurence Castle coming over.

His response was essentially:

Don't be a bloody fool.

The machine had been repaired.

It worked.

But I was beginning to understand that the mechanical system was not the only system operating around me.

After the Front Door Closed

There were other examples.

Bill Purcell was, as I remember it, Grand Master of the local Masonic Lodge.

The Lodge would sometimes have printing done at the Chronicle, including invitations associated with the installation of new members.

The material was supposed to be confidential.

It might sit on the table while the job was being arranged.

Bill Purcell would leave through the front door.

Then, as I remember it, Tom Dignam would be on the telephone.

He would speak to Jim Desmond at the local post office and tell him the names of people involved.

Jim Desmond was associated with the Knights of the Southern Cross.

So was Tom Dignam - he was the head of the local chapter og the knights.

At the time these were relationships I observed in a small country town.

I did not yet have the wider context in which I would later understand some of them.

What I did see was the difference between what happened while somebody was standing in the office and what happened after the door closed behind them.

What Was My Apprenticeship?

Even the nature of my apprenticeship became uncertain.

I remember beginning as a hand and machine compositor.

At some point the description appeared to change into something involving the Linotype and mechanical work.

I am still not certain precisely what happened formally.

Neil Garlick had refused to continue teaching me for a period.

My recollection is that he believed I had not had sufficient formal education for some aspects of the work.

He went to Alexandra for quite a few months before matters eventually settled.

Whatever my apprenticeship may have been called on paper, I was doing real mechanical work.

I learned machinery by working on it.

If something malfunctioned, I wanted to understand why.

If something could be repaired, I wanted to repair it.

That included the Linotype.

Under the Linotype

I had refurbished the Linotype keyboard.

One of the problems I was working on was preventing a keystroke from releasing two matrices when it should release only one.

I was underneath the machine adjusting the mechanism.

That put me effectively out of sight.

Tom Dignam was at the keyboard above me.

Then Bill Allison came in.

He was a policeman and he was in full uniform.

I remember him taking off his hat and folding it beneath his arm.

He moved around the opposite side of the Linotype from where I was working.

Then he went down on one knee.

The words I remember were something like:

My lord.

or perhaps:

My liege.

I remained underneath the machine.

Then I heard what he had come to report.

My recollection is that he spoke of having visited a number of people who had complained of being raped or sexually abused by the priest.

I remember something about this being the fourth complaint, or perhaps the fourth place he had been.

I cannot now be certain of the precise count or wording.

But I understood enough of what was being discussed.

I stood up.

And I asked whether my sister was included among them.

The Question I Was Not Supposed to Ask

What followed happened quickly.

My recollection is that Bill Allison dragged me away from the machine.

He put me into a chokehold.

I was forced against the wall.

I sustained injuries to my nose and teeth.

And I left.

I never went back to work at The Yea Chronicle.

I had not completed my apprenticeship.

I believe I may have been only a matter of months from whatever certificate would have marked its completion.

Whether that certificate would ultimately have been of much value to me, I do not know.

But there is a distinction that matters.

I did not leave because I could not do the work.

I had been underneath a Linotype, making it work properly, when the conversation above me changed everything.

Bill Allison Had Been There Before

Bill Allison was not a stranger in the larger history of my childhood.

My recollection is that he was associated with the Knights of the Southern Cross and that he had previously been sent to Yea to “investigate” circumstances surrounding the occasion on which I was shot by my brother.

That history is complicated and belongs elsewhere in this book in much greater detail.

What matters here is that, from my perspective, the earlier process had not resulted in me being understood as the child who had been harmed.

I came out of it as the problem.

That pattern stayed with me.

Only much later did I begin trying to understand the networks, relationships and institutional loyalties surrounding some of these events.

The View From Underneath

There is something almost too appropriate about where I was positioned when that conversation took place.

I was underneath the Linotype.

Out of sight.

Working on the machinery.

Above me, two men were having a conversation they apparently did not expect me to hear.

One of them was the editor of the newspaper.

The other was a uniformed policeman.

I was not investigating anybody.

I was not looking for evidence.

I was repairing a machine.

I happened to be there.

That distinction matters when I look back at it now.

Some of the most consequential information in my life did not arrive because I went looking for it.

I encountered it while doing something else.

What I Knew Then

It would be easy, writing this many decades later, to give the teenager under the Linotype the understanding I possess now.

That would not be accurate.

I did not stand up from beneath that machine with a theory about institutional networks, sectarian power or the protection of clergy.

I knew much less than that.

But I knew what had happened within my own family.

I knew enough to recognise that the conversation mattered.

And I knew enough to ask:

Does that include my sister?

The question came before the later analysis.

That is an important order to preserve.

What I Understand Now

Decades later, I have looked back at the newspaper office, the Masonic printing, the telephone calls after customers left, the Knights of the Southern Cross, the policeman kneeling beside the Linotype, and the conversation I was never expected to hear.

I understand those pieces differently now.

Some of that later understanding comes from documents.

Some comes from subsequent events.

Some comes from memories that have returned or changed context over time.

And some remains uncertain.

That is why I do not want to pretend that the interpretation I hold today was fully formed in the teenager who experienced those events.

It wasn't.

He knew something was wrong.

He knew enough to ask a question.

And then he learned something else.

Sometimes asking the question carried a price.

The Apprenticeship I Left Behind

For a long time the unfinished apprenticeship was almost a side detail.

Looking at it now, I see it somewhat differently.

The work itself had been giving me things.

It had given me mechanical confidence.

It had taught me how printing worked.

It had put me around words, newspapers and information.

It had taught me to dismantle something that was not functioning, work out why, repair it and put it back together.

Those habits did not disappear when I walked out of the Chronicle.

They travelled with me.

Much later I would work with computers, information systems, websites, records and eventually an Evidence Map.

I would spend enormous amounts of time asking essentially mechanical questions of information:

Where did this come from?

Why is it behaving this way?

What connects this part to that one?

What has been damaged?

What is missing?

And can it be made to work properly?

I do not want to make that connection too neat.

I did not leave the Chronicle knowing where any of those abilities would eventually lead.

I simply walked away.

I never went back.