PAGE SEVEN: my first piano

In September, 1959 Nanna, my mother's mother, helped my parents to buy my first piano, which was an 85 note W H Paling iron frame black upright, which had been made late in the 1890s, I think.

The price was 90 guineas. Nanna said she would pay the 90 pounds if Mum and Dad paid the 90 shillings.

Mum and Dad bought the piano in a private sale from someone who lived in Marks Point, Lake Macquarie. The piano removalists couldn't get the piano down the stairs, so they had to lower it on ropes from the balcony. Mum was worried it would drop and be destroyed in the attempt!

When it arrived at Lot 33, York Crescent, Belmont North my brother Malcolm said

When Daddy comes home, David can show him how it goes!

On 29th September, 1959 I had my first piano lesson from Mrs Joy Walton at Melody Lodge in Albert St, Belmont.

I was a very nervous child and Mrs Walton was just right for me. She was kind and easy-going and I enjoyed every lesson from my Florence Wickins piano tutor.

I thought playing the piano was the greatest thing and never had to be told to practise. So it is not easy for me to relate to students who don't automatically want to practise, but I do try to understand.

I'm very grateful to my Nanna for her part in setting me on the road of discovering Music. Rachmaninov was surely right when he said

Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for Music.

table of contents

PAGE FOUR: a girl with a piano

My father used to love quoting Thomas à Kempis' observation in his book, The Imitation of Christ,

Man proposes, but God disposes.

I think Dad meant that you can make your plans, but things may not turn out in quite the way you thought they would.

After finding himself working in Newcastle for a couple of years, while we lived in the Sydney suburb of Russell Lea, he bought a house in the Lake Macquarie area so that we were living close to where he worked. It was 46 Macquarie St, Belmont. And he paid cash for it.

Very shortly after we moved, Dad was transferred to Port Kembla!

I soon discovered that there was a girl called Dianne living a few doors up the street. And she had a piano! I loved going to her house and tinkering on it. Dianne told me she could play God Save The Queen and proceeded to demonstrate, but it didn't sound quite right to me! Sometimes she could get as far as

God save our gracious Queen
Long live *!?

where it started to sound wrong. Then she'd start again and only get to

God save our #@$!

I don't remember her ever starting on C and thus being able to complete the whole song on the white keys. At that time, I didn't have a clue about those mysterious black keys, and so couldn't have solved the problem myself ... but I knew there was one.

table of contents