Chapter 22 — Herbie

Herbert Kemp, the safe place he gave me as a child, the protection and future he tried to provide, and the events that ended with his death in 1962.

The House That Arrived

I can remember when Herbie and Maurie came to live up the hill from us.

Their house arrived on the backs of two semi-trailers.

It seemed almost to appear overnight. One day there was no house there, and the next there was a small bluish-coloured house sitting farther up our street.

Herbie was Herbert Henry Kemp.

His brother was Maurie. The family names included Maurice, Mascot, Fridlington and Kemp in combinations which I still want to check against the documentary record before treating the exact arrangement as settled. Their father was Maurice Mascot Fridlington Kemp, as I presently remember the name, and Fridlington was part of the family naming.

The family had also had a property at Kerrisdale.

Neither Herbie nor Maurie married.

They became friends of our family and were well known throughout the district.

Eventually they became something much more important to me.

Herbie and Maurie

Both brothers were members of the Knights of the Southern Cross.

The meetings were held across the road from our house around the presbytery, and there was supposed to be something secretive about them.

If somebody asked Herbie where he was going, he would give an indistinct sort of answer:

“Um ... yeah.”

Somebody turned that into “Oomya”.

After that, the Knights meetings became the “Oomya's”.

As children we could see the cars arriving and knew perfectly well that something was happening across the road even if the adults regarded the organisation as private.

The name remained in the family as something almost comic.

Much later, the relationships between individual members of those meetings would become considerably less amusing.

The Morris Oxford

Herbie drove what I remember as a 1932 Morris Oxford which had once been a furniture van.

That vehicle was probably where I first began learning how gears worked.

I would sit beside Herbie and move the gear lever while he operated the clutch.

When he drove us to picnics and other events I watched what he did and, little by little, began to understand the relationship between the clutch, the engine and the gears.

He liked children.

He would sometimes put a child on his lap and let them steer the vehicle up and down the street while he remained in control of the pedals.

He was always ready to play.

For me that mattered because adulthood was otherwise very often associated with authority, punishment and danger.

Herbie could be physically enormous without making his size frightening.

A Very Strong Man

Herbie was big, powerful and extraordinarily hirsute.

He worked at the local ASH soft-drink and cordial works as their boilerman.

Physical strength was simply part of who he was.

His daily exercise, as I remember it, included doing thirty chin-ups while carrying a full-size anvil together with the substantial wooden block to which it was fixed.

At local shows, gymkhanas and similar events he was well known as an anchor man in tug-of-war teams, often teams assembled by one of the hotels.

He also performed feats of strength.

One I remember involved a bar across his shoulders with chains supporting two full forty-four-gallon drums.

He would lift them and walk carrying the load.

To a small child, Herbie seemed almost impossibly strong.

What distinguished him from some of the other strong men in my childhood was what he did with that strength.

The Fighter

Herbie told me that when he and Maurie wanted to travel overseas with a theatre company, he fought bare-knuckle fights to earn money for their journey.

I remember the company as the J.C. Williamson theatre company, although that is something I would still like to confirm from records.

Years later, when Herbie was trying to teach me how to punch and how to stand up for myself, he and Maurie would sometimes begin bantering about those fights.

Maurie might call him a “brute”.

Herbie would respond by complaining that Maurie had failed to throw in the towel when they had agreed he should.

From those exchanges I gathered that winning was not always the most profitable outcome. Apparently there could sometimes be more money in allowing a fight to continue or in not winning.

How much of that was serious recollection and how much was the two brothers performing the story again for my benefit I cannot now know.

I loved listening to them.

The World Beyond Yea

Herbie and Maurie had travelled.

That alone made them extraordinary figures in my childhood.

Herbie told me stories of London and New York, of theatre and Broadway performances.

He talked about Paris.

He told me about Britain and visiting places connected with Shakespeare.

He spoke about travelling on fast steam trains.

I remember stories about travelling through the Panama Canal when it was still relatively new.

He also told me that they had missed an opportunity to travel on the Titanic and about a woman he knew who had been aboard the Titanic and survived.

I cannot independently establish all of those stories from memory alone.

But their importance to me was not dependent only upon whether every detail could later be documented.

They showed me that Yea was not the whole world.

There were oceans, theatres, enormous cities, ships, trains and people doing things very different from anything I could see from our front gate.

The Theatre Voice

Herbie retained something of the theatre in him.

He would recite Shakespeare in an enormous, strong theatrical voice.

It could fill the room.

He also had a collection of stereoscope photographs.

We could spend evenings looking through them while Herbie told me about places, people and things he had seen.

Those evenings expanded the world available to me.

For a child who later developed such an interest in geology, travel, science and places far beyond where I lived, that was another important part of what Herbie gave me.

He did not merely provide somewhere to hide.

He showed me that there was a much larger world beyond the one in which I was trapped.

Home Movies

Herbie and Maurie were also keen amateur movie makers.

They had an 8mm camera and projector and filmed local weddings and other events.

They also had commercially produced reels, including cartoons such as Mickey Mouse and Popeye.

They would bring the projector to our house.

We would put up the screen, organise and rewind the reels, darken the room and have our own little cinema.

Before television became part of everyday life, having a projector arrive at the house turned an ordinary evening into an event.

The films themselves were interesting, but so was the machinery.

There was the projector, the light, the reels, the rewinding and the anticipation before the picture appeared on the screen.

Herbie and Maurie were well known throughout the district for things like this.

Friday Afternoon

There were ordinary pleasures as well.

On Fridays the workers at the cordial factory were apparently allowed to fill a sugar bag with soft drinks.

Herbie would often come by our house and share some of his allocation because ours was a large family.

Friday was also the day when Mum might send us up to Chooka Hanneberry's grocery store for a bag of broken biscuits.

Biscuits in those days arrived in tins.

Inevitably some broke during transport and handling.

The grocer collected those pieces and sold them cheaply in paper or potato bags.

We might buy one, sometimes two, six-pound bags full of broken biscuits for about two shillings a bag.

There could be almost every sort of biscuit mixed together.

The greengrocer had something similar called “specks” — fruit which was marked, imperfect or becoming over-ripe and therefore sold cheaply.

Those things belonged to the economics of a large family.

They also belong to my memory of Herbie because the cordial, broken biscuits, children around the house and Friday afternoon sit together as part of ordinary life.

Not every memory of childhood is an incident.

A Safe House

From somewhere around six or seven years of age, Herbie became one of the few adults in my childhood whose presence meant safety.

That is probably the simplest way to explain his importance.

Before Herbie there had been another refuge with Doug and Shirley McClean. Eventually Robert found me there and that safety was compromised.

Herbie's house became different.

At first I had a bed in Herbie's room.

Then Maurie moved his bed into Herbie's room so that I could have Maurie's room to myself.

I remember how extraordinary that felt.

I had a room of my own.

More importantly, I could stay whenever I wanted.

I stayed there often enough that I considered myself to be living there.

There was a key hidden beneath the back steps so that I could get into the house when I needed to.

I did not first have to persuade an adult that I was sufficiently frightened.

I knew where the key was.

I could run there.

When Maurie Was Gone

Maurie's death changed the household.

After Maurie died, Herbie would often come down to our house for dinner.

Afterwards I would go home with him.

I use the word “home” deliberately.

Herbie's house had become a home to me.

He was a safe person.

That did not mean he indulged me.

We played chess.

Herbie never deliberately allowed me to win.

In his words, if I wanted to beat him, I had to do that myself.

There was affection in that, but there was also respect.

He expected me to learn.

The Box of Books

Herbie gave me a wooden box filled with books.

I remember titles including The Last of the Mohicans, The Man in the Iron Mask, Gulliver's Travels, Tom Sawyer and a Boy's Own manual.

Those books mattered.

My relationship with my own father had badly deteriorated.

The beatings and later the shooting had created something he seemed unable or unwilling to deal with.

My understanding was that Bill Allison was somehow supposed to sort the problem out.

Instead, Herbie engaged with me.

He played chess.

He gave me books.

He told me about travel.

He showed me photographs.

He talked about theatre and science and the world beyond Yea.

He answered questions.

He expected me to think.

Those things supplied some of what was absent elsewhere.

After the Shooting

After Robert shot me, Herbie became involved in trying to make me strong again.

He made me exercise.

Some of those exercises seemed extremely hard.

He also tried to teach me how to punch properly and how to defend myself.

That was when some of the stories about his fighting emerged in the banter between him and Maurie.

There is an important difference for me between Herbie's attitude to strength and the violence I experienced from other adults and from Robert.

Other people used strength against me.

Herbie wanted me to acquire some of my own.

Diabetes

Herbie was diabetic.

He injected himself every day.

As a child I simply accepted that as one of the things Herbie did.

It became more significant later when questions arose about his health and the circumstances surrounding his final hospitalisation.

But during the years when I knew him, diabetes did not define him.

He was the enormous man doing chin-ups, anchoring tug-of-war teams, playing with children, driving the old Morris and telling stories.

He Believed Me

Herbie was one of the adults to whom my mother spoke about what was happening to me.

I spoke to him myself.

My recollection is that he did not simply listen and then leave the matter alone.

He tried to act.

Herbie wrote to the bishop in Melbourne about my experiences.

As I remember it, doing that caused considerable reaction against him.

He would not withdraw what he had raised.

Both Herbie and Maurie were members of the Knights of the Southern Cross, so this was not criticism coming from somebody outside the Catholic community.

It was a challenge coming from within it.

The Division Around Him

My recollection is that Herbie's refusal to back away contributed to both brothers being shunned by parts of the local Catholic community.

Among the people I remember as being on the other side of that division were Tom Dignam, Jim Desmond, Bill Allison, members of the Coonan family and others.

I need to be careful about exactly what each individual knew, said or did. Those details should be tested against whatever records can still be found.

What I remember as a child was the division itself.

Herbie had raised what was happening to me.

Other adults defended the nuns and rejected what I was saying.

One of the ways my account was dismissed was through a description of me as sexually dangerous or already a sexual abuser.

That language reversed the relationship between child and adult.

The child reporting sexual conduct by adults could be transformed into the sexual problem.

Herbie did not accept that reversal.

A Catholic Who Stood Up

That is why I resist writing the Catholic community around me as though it were one undivided institution.

Herbie was Catholic.

Maurie was Catholic.

Both were Knights of the Southern Cross.

Yet Herbie challenged people within that same world when he believed a child was being harmed.

There were alliances, political differences and divisions which I could see as a child without understanding their complete structure.

Herbie's position appears to have cost both brothers socially.

He held it anyway.

Arrangements for My Future

My recollection is that Herbie worried about what would happen to me if he was no longer there.

At one stage he sat with my mother and me and explained that arrangements had been made intended to assist me later.

I remember discussion about education, money and opportunities to travel and see some of the places that he and Maurie had seen.

There were arrangements concerning other children as well.

At some stage I was sent to bed while Herbie and Mum continued talking.

I tried to stay awake because I wanted to hear what they were saying.

The next morning I asked Mum what else had been discussed.

Her response, as I remember it, was that I knew what I needed to know.

What eventually became of those arrangements is another question.

For this chapter the important point is that Herbie was thinking beyond the next night or the next crisis.

He was thinking about a future for me.

Saturday, 17 March 1962

I can now place the main incident involving Janette and the visiting priest Des Cameron much more accurately.

It was St Patrick's Day.

Saturday, 17 March 1962.

That was the day Janette broke away from Des Cameron and ran home distressed.

It was the day Herbie became involved.

My mother sent for him.

That says something about the place he occupied in our family.

When something involving the church had become serious and somebody was needed who would actually confront it, Mum called Herbie.

He came down.

He spoke with Mum and Janette.

Then he went across the road towards the presbytery.

Across the Road

My recollection of what followed contains several different kinds of information.

There are things I saw.

There are things I heard.

There are things I was told afterwards.

They should not be treated as though they are all the same kind of evidence.

I remember Herbie making repeated attempts to deal with what had happened.

Men gathered inside the presbytery grounds.

There was conflict around the gate.

Eventually there was a violent confrontation.

I was not standing beside the men watching each action.

I heard the disturbance.

Later I crept down the pathway between the church and the presbytery.

I saw Herbie lying in an awkward heap on the verandah beneath a window.

Men were nearby.

Then I ran.

Five Days

Herbie was taken to Yea Hospital after the events of Saturday, 17 March 1962.

For many years I carried a recollection that he had remained in hospital for about eight days.

I no longer think that can be correct.

Herbie died on 22 March 1962.

Once St Patrick's Day is fixed as Saturday 17 March, the calendar gives a much firmer chronology.

There were five days between the main incident and his death.

I do not know where the figure of eight days entered my memory.

This is precisely the kind of correction the documentary layer can make without requiring me to discard the event itself.

The same chronology also corrects another error I carried for years.

I often described myself as fourteen when Herbie died.

I was thirteen.

With my birthday falling near the end of December, that is the kind of age miscalculation which can become attached to an old memory surprisingly easily.

The Hospital

During those five days the expectation around us was that Herbie was recovering and would come home.

Mum prepared clean clothing for him and I took the parcel to the hospital.

When I entered his room he was sitting in a chair while a nurse shaved a large area of his body.

Herbie was so hairy that the enormous bare patch looked absurd to me.

He saw my reaction.

He laughed.

He told me it would grow back.

It is one of my favourite small memories of him.

In the middle of everything that had happened, he was still able to see the humour in the expression on my face.

What happened shortly afterwards involving Bill Allison, me, the hospital foyer and the glass doors belongs more fully in the next chapter.

Words That Remained

There is another memory associated with Bill Allison which still returns with considerable force.

I remember him shouting at me from the doorway of the police station and expressing the wish that I had suffered the same kind of horrific internal injury which was associated, in the accounts around me, with Herbie's death.

I find it difficult even now to translate his words into their most direct form.

I do not need to reproduce the expression literally for its meaning to be clear.

What remains with me is that an adult policeman was directing that wish towards a thirteen-year-old child.

Sometimes I have to use different words in order to write about something at all.

The altered wording does not make the remembered meaning less serious.

Then He Was Dead

We expected Herbie to come home.

Instead, he died on 22 March 1962.

A later counselling report records Herbert Henry Kemp as having died at the age of seventy-two and as being buried at Yea several days later.

The dates now give me a clearer sequence than the one I had carried for many years.

Saturday 17 March: the incident involving Janette and Des Cameron, followed by Herbie's intervention.

22 March: Herbie was dead.

Five days.

I was thirteen.

These are useful corrections.

They do not replace the memory of what happened.

They give the memory a firmer place on the calendar.

The Word I Have Used

I have often described Herbie's death as his murder.

That word reflects the conclusion I reached from the events and accounts as I understood them.

It is not the same as saying that a court established that Herbie was murdered.

There remain questions about the injuries he suffered, what happened during his hospital stay, how and why he was subsequently moved, the explanation given for his death and what happened to his possessions and arrangements afterwards.

Some of what I know about those matters comes from what I was told rather than from things I witnessed myself.

Those questions deserve examination using whatever records can now be recovered.

They should not overwhelm the more fundamental fact of who Herbie had been to me before any of that happened.

The Man Before the Death

For much of the time that Herbie has appeared in my writing, he has entered the story close to the moment of his death.

That gives a distorted picture.

Herbie was not primarily the man I saw lying beneath a presbytery window.

He was the man in the old Morris Oxford.

He was the man who let me move the gear lever while he worked the clutch.

He was the man who put children on his lap and let them steer.

He was the boilerman bringing soft drinks on Friday.

He was the tug-of-war anchor.

He was the man who could apparently carry two forty-four-gallon drums suspended from a bar across his shoulders.

He was the theatre voice booming Shakespeare through the room.

He was stereoscope photographs of a world outside Yea.

He was London, New York, Paris, steam trains, the Panama Canal and stories of the Titanic.

He was an 8mm projector, Mickey Mouse and Popeye flickering on a screen in our house.

He was chess without being allowed to win.

He was a wooden box of books.

He was hard exercises after I had been hurt.

He was the man who wrote to the bishop when others wanted what I was saying to disappear.

And he was the man who made sure that there was a key beneath his back steps.

The Key

Of all those things, I keep returning to the key.

A child in danger did not have to knock and wait.

I did not have to explain myself through a closed door.

I did not have to prove that this particular beating or fear was serious enough.

I knew where the key was.

I could let myself in.

There was a room for me.

I considered that I lived there.

That is what safety looked like.