Homebush Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

clones of Christian Brothers’ buildings the world over.
    Years later, I would visit one drear Irish afternoon the founding house of the Order in Waterford, and find its nineteenth and early twentieth-century buildings were like prototypes of Strathfield. Both empires, the British and the Irish, knew what architecture was appropriate to them. So you had august British court houses in the bush, to match the august, plum-red brick convents.
    The Christian Brothers, like the best generals, preferred hills, and St Pat’s was strung out on one flank of a hill they called Mount St Mary’s.
    To me, the line of school buildings seemed in some ways a defence against the haze of ennui which hung over the pleasant gardens, the brick bungalows, and the Federation-style meekness of the suburb of Strathfield, preferable though it might be to Homebush. Mangan and I were united in a purpose to redeem these streets by astounding and as yet unselected acts. One of them for me, however, was to work with Matt until he became amongst the sighted world the athlete he already was by nature.
    Mangan had no crass sporting ambitions though, so he was the Celestial of Celestials. He and I appropriately were both doing Honours English and Honours History.
    This year had given us a new version of History. We had, until now, believed that history had ended with the Federation of Australia on the First of January, 1901. But suddenly, there were all these books, given us by Brother Dinny McGahan from a press normally kept locked at the back of Fifth Year Blue’s classroom, which dealt with the twentieth century. The twentieth century, the hem of whose garment Australia had touched at places like Gallipoli and Pozières, on the Kokoda Trail and at El Alamein! Brother McGahan had made me wonder about my father, who had spent those years keeping the Empire’s ground either side of the Suez Canal. Did my father know about the Lateran Treaty between Mussolini and the Vatican? Did he know about the Anschluss , and the Brenner Pass? The two beasts of Fascism and Communism ground the century with their hooves. But, my God, how dramatic!
    These were aspects of history worthy of discussion by Celestials such as Mangan and I, and by Matt and occasionally by the very scholarly Dan Larkin whom Dinny McGahan described as ‘a natural historian’. We would discuss 1930s appeasement on the way up the hill, or go through Pass History stuff like the unification of Italy say with Matt. When we uttered dates, Matt would repeat them, searching out with his white stick the kerb or the cracks in the paving. ‘Yes, now. 1864, Garibaldi captures Naples.’
    The 414 bus would usually come grinding up the road, green and yellow. It operated from Homebush to Strathfield by way of that well-paved hinterland. My little brother was on it, snappy in his lovingly tended grey uniform. He had my father’s liking for dapperness and shiny shoes, and he was a sensible kid, and good at all the things I wasn’t – maths and sciences. He didn’t need long walks through quiet streets to gear himself up for greatness.
    â€˜There’s your brother, Keneals,’ other little buggers in short pants and laundered blue shirts would call out to him, and I would pretend not to notice too closely.
    I had the renown of being Matt’s offsider and was one of the school’s minor athletes too. Though nothing like Peter McInnes from our class, an athlete known Australia-wide. John Treloar, the Australian 100-yard champion, has said Peter would be the greatest Australian Olympic sprinter. 1956, said Treloar, when the Olympics might be held in Melbourne … look out for McInnes. No question that Peter would be the first member of Fifth Year Blue to slide into fame. Even if I were to publish something brilliant early, Peter would already be a member of the national sprinting team.
    I imagined being there in Melbourne, perhaps in the company of the