Why Read The Old Testament?

A church which discards the Old Testament does not achieve a true meeting with Christ.
Jean-Jacques Von Allmen

Dedication and foreword

For Joan
and for
Daniel, Justin, Cathy and David
and
Jerome, Hamish, Reggie, Hilary and Mackenzie


Foreword

When Spike Milligan's friend asked if he wrote forewords, he gleefully pressed a homophone into service and wrote:

Please
buy
this
book!

But this book is free.



I began writing it on Friday, 17th August, 2012, sixty days before my sixtieth birthday.
I've enjoyed the time spent remembering so many joys, times of fun and odd things that stick in my mind.
The greatest joy has been getting to know Jesus, my Lord and Saviour and Friend.
God's great kindness in bringing Joan and me together (and I say Joan and me deliberately) has resulted in so much love and happiness and fun and in our being favoured with nine descendants to share the joys with.
Aren't I the lucky one?

table of contents

PAGE FORTY-EIGHT: a different sort of church

When we arrived in Narromine, we discovered there was no Baptist Church and no Church of Christ, in this little town of only about two thousand people.

But the people in the Narromine-Trangie United Parish were friendly and enthusiastically welcomed our family of three. They loved having a young family with a baby, and when Danny grew and began wandering up and down the aisles, they didn't bat an eyelid.

In the church I grew up in and the one we attended after we were married, there was no printed liturgy. We may have occasionally said The Lord's Prayer, but we did not say any creeds or read from a prayer book.

However, although there are not set prayers, in actuality there can be a lot of repetition in the supposedly informal churches. And sometimes the oft-repeated things can be a de facto liturgy, except that it has never received the care that has been given to the written-down liturgy in the formal churches.

I was surprised when I found myself enjoying saying the creed and the order that results from a liturgy. Our second minister in our time at Narromine was Rev Joe Eddy. When Joe led us at The Lord's Table, he often said something like the following words to us:

Come, not because you are strong, but because you are weak
Come, not because you love the Lord a lot, but because you love him a little, and would like to love him more.

Then, in saying a prayer to help us to confess our sins to God, he would say something like this:

We have treated those closest to us in a way that we would never treat a stranger.

Joe also had his fun side. In one service, he colluded with Laura Forrest, the organist, and had us singing a well-known hymn to an alternative, but very well-known tune - but none of us could figure out where we had heard the tune before. It was maddeningly familiar, but what was it? After the service was over, he revealed we had been singing God's praises to the tune of The Pub with No Beer!

Danny with Grandad Sims

Our minister in our first year at the church was Rev Barrie Wright. He was very kind to us when we needed to get Danny to hospital quickly. One day when Joan was changing his nappy, she turned around for a moment to get something and found he had rolled onto the floor in that split second of time.
He seemed to be fine, and went to sleep, but the next day, he was in pain and Joan wasn't sure what to do. I was at school, and Barrie came to the rescue and very kindly drove Joan in to Dubbo for Danny to be looked at the Base Hospital.

The medical staff discovered that Danny had broken his collar bone. He healed quickly and everything was soon back to normal. But apart from his kindness, what impressed Joan was how Barrie observed the speed limits, shall we say, religiously. He was scrupulous to slow down to the speed on the next road sign a little before he got to it. The roads would be a lot safer if we all drove like our minister, who modeled the life he recommended to his congregation.

In the Narromine-Trangie parish, there were lots of little churches, as well as the two main ones. Dandaloo, Eumungerie and ... I forget the others. To cope with these demands, the minister had some lay preachers, both men and women.

Although I had been brought up with conservative views on lady preachers, (and still have conservative views) honesty requires that I record that the women in the parish usually did a better job! Their talks sounded prepared and interesting, whereas the men's talks were often rambling and sounded like they needed some work. 

table of contents

PAGE FORTY-SEVEN: are you new here?

It wasn't long before I discovered that the Narromine High School song had been written by the headmaster to be sung to the famous Ode To Joy theme from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Unfortunately the way it had been fitted to the tune made it sound like the above representation. I wonder what Philip Percival, the Christian songwriter who taught there after me, thought of it?

We had a few funny experiences in Narromine. One day we went into a milk bar and asked for some creaming soda. The man behind the counter asked if we wanted

crim - a - SOH - nuh, 

or

a- CRIM - a - SOH - nuh

which both sounded the same to us.  I think he meant

Do you want creaming soda, or crimson?

But I'm not sure.

Then, we were driving along a country road and came to a flock of sheep in the middle of the road. We stopped the car, and waited. A farmer came over and yelled:

Are you new here?

We discovered you can drive through a mob of sheep, if you do it slowly and don't disturb them as you move through.

And when we took our growing boy to Dundas Park, we were delighted to see him walk and walk and walk all around the big park. He was loving the freedom.

And Danny loved to play with Gran and Grandad's tennis equipment, when we went back to Newcastle for a visit.

In those days, children used to visit their parents. Parents also visited their children, but it worked both ways.

I haven't yet worked out why so few young folk travel home to visit Mum and Dad, as was done in the past.

Someone told me it's because the trip from Sydney to Bathurst is much further than the trip from Bathurst to Sydney, but it seems to me to be more than a crossing the Blue Mountains thing, because this is the experience of many parents in many different circumstances and places of residence.

Another possibility is that children whose parents have left the home they grew up in are disinclined to visit a house and town they are unfamiliar with. What do you think?

table of contents

PAGE FORTY-SIX: super revelations

I made two discoveries when we went for our medical check-ups for superannuation, just before we received our first postings to schools:

1. It isn't easy to pee at call!

It was the first time that I was given a jar and told to provide a urine sample. We gathered in the canteen at Newcastle CAE and drank lots of soft drink. Others also found this a bit daunting.

2. I was born with cataracts on my eyes.

When I went back to my ophthalmologist and asked him why he hadn't mentioned it to me, he told me that it wasn't significant, and I hadn't needed to know.

Now where do you suppose students were hoping to be sent to, after they left college?
I had spent 19 years in Newcastle, and was interested to see where the Department of Education would post me. But some students, particularly those who had grown up in Newcastle, had their hearts set on staying there. I was looking for a bit of adventure!

As it turned out, my first appointment was at Narromine, which I'd never even heard of! Narromine had been a central school (combined primary/high school) and had only just been upgraded to be a dedicated Years 7-12 High School. The town's population was 2,200 and the high school had about 400 students. The principal, Bernie Gallagher, had come from being deputy at Broken Hill High School, where there had been 400 in Year 8!

I was the only Music teacher, and had to teach Music in a science lab. I don't recommend it: there are too many temptations for kids to play with. Even if the teacher turns off the central gas tap, someone will find a way to distract you, and their accomplice will turn them on again.

I was very relieved when I was given my own classroom.

We had an appalling old green record player, issued to P E departments, for dancing classes. The sound was so bad, the kids confused the sound of the french horn with the sound of the violin. On that old monstrosity, they did sound the same!

Joan and baby Danny, 22 Sixth ave, Narromine

One day, 11th November, 1975, I went home for lunch with Joan and baby Danny and heard on the radio that the governor general, Sir John Kerr, had sacked the prime minister, Gough Whitlam. I went back and reported this in the staff room I shared with the Science department. The head teacher told me that I was mistaken. It was impossible and could never happen.

But when we came back to school the next day, did I get an apology? What do you think?

Speaking of Gough Whitlam and the Labor Party, early in my time at my new school, the Australian government gave small grants to every Music department in Australia, which was a part of an Arts grant they made. We got $2,200, which seemed like a lot of money. It was meant to be spent on musical instruments, and we did spend most of the money on some guitars and trumpets and clarinets and other instruments I thought I might be able to help students learn on.

But we also purchased a decent record player and cassette player. It made a huge difference to be able to play the music through a decent amplifier and speakers.

In 1975, Paul Hogan was very popular: mostly through his larrikin Winfield cigarette advertisements, which used Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony as their theme, with the punchline:

Any'ow, have a Winfield!

So when I attempted to play my students some Beethoven, they called him Bate Hogan, as if he were Paul's brother. I could never tell if they were serious, or were pulling my leg.

Abba was at the height of their fame, and the students enjoyed watching black and white videos of Abba's Australian TV special. So when I managed to get a choir together, their first song was SOS.

After we got the kids to sing at a school assembly, the deputy principal commented that they sounded out of tune. Thanks Noel!

table of contents

PAGE FORTY-FIVE: for the want of an essay

 In the week before Joan and I got married, my Dad's sisters, Ruth and Trixie, came to stay with our family. I was busy getting an assignment finished on my very ordinary typewriter. I used to make almost as much mess typing as I did with my handwriting, and often had to tear up the page and start all over again.


When my aunties heard I had an assignment to complete, they hounded me relentlessly until I finished it.  They never let up:

David! Have you done your assignment yet?

Oh, the agony! But ... I got it done.

Moving forward  a year, I had a little essay to do. This time, I didn't have anyone nagging me. Joan was not, and is not, a nagger. I wonder how many men can say that, after thirty-nine years?

So I'm lucky to be in this photo, because at the end of 1974, I had an essay that I hadn't handed in. We had something else on our minds: the impending birth of our new baby.

But when we were getting our correspondence from Newcastle College of Advanced Education regarding our graduation, I did not get a letter telling me I was to receive a Diploma in Music Education, but one telling me I would be paid as three year trained, certificate attainments. And instead of being paid a mighty $10,000 per year, my pay would be about $8,000. (If $10,000 sounds small to you, it sounded astronomical to me. The prime minister in those days was paid about $50,000 per annum, if you want something to compare a school teacher's salary with.)

But, I'm in the photo, because when I got the message that I had failed fourth year for the want of an essay, I was able to make up my own essay topic, quickly write it, send it to Nigel Butterley, my lecturer, send off letters to the Department of Education, and get my back pay. Phew!

All of the people in the graduation photo above, except one, met with a few of my other lovely classmates in December last year for a forty year reunion of our first year class. I have mixed feelings about reunions and wondered what it would be like.

It was a relaxed, friendly get together. It was so nice to see our old friends again. The photo at left, of Christine, Sue (the Art student who preferred the company of us Music students) and Catrine, captures the informal, pleasant afternoon well, I think.

table of contents

sixty: table of contents

sixty

table of contents

cover

dedication and foreword

page one: smugglers

page two: how I got hooked on Music

page three: tucking in at Tuckey's

page four: a girl with a piano

page five: school

page six: sisters

page seven: my first piano

page eight: when Grandma came to visit

pagenine

page ten: the best house in the world

page eleven: the school on the hill

page twelve: church

page thirteen: going to camp

page fourteen: a new beginning

page fifteen: quantum potero

page sixteen: a big family

page seventeen: parties, Paul and Peale

page eighteen: becoming a conman

page nineteen: a chat at the bus stop

page twenty: inspiring pastors from the church I grew up in

page twenty-one: music in our house

page twenty-two: my father's diaries

page twenty-three: great expectations

page twenty-four: piano with orchestra

page twenty-five: third form

page twenty-six: my first piano students

page twenty-seven: a cheap education

page twenty-eight: how things have changed

page twenty-nine: it started with a ferry ride

page thirty: an unexpected solution

page thirty-one: singing

page thirty-two: Maths and Science

page thirty-three: the B haitch P 

page thirty-four: just the beginning

page thirty-five: Dad to the rescue

page thirty-six: meet the family

page thirty-seven: new discoveries

page thirty-eight: from girlfriend to fiancée

page thirty-nine: Illawarra Bridal College

page forty: two weddings, a gig and a funeral

page forty-one: a new home

page forty-two: new church

page forty-three: new piano teacher and new baby

page forty-four: the worst day of my life

page forty-five: for the want of an essay

page forty-six: super revelations

page forty-seven: are you new here?

page forty-eight: a different sort of church