Photos: Geoff Ellis
At a clearing sale in the hills, an old piano sings to Frank Coldebella of other days.
 Jim McDonnell had a succession of dogs called Pluto. Photo taken near Jim’s hut, 1980s. By Frank Coldebella
THE mounds of shells dotted along the Bass Coast are evidence that these have been relaxing and bountiful gathering places for millennia. On meeting Australia’s original coast campers, Captain Cook noted “They live in a tranquillity … and are far more happier than we Europeans … They think themselves provided with all the necessarys of life … they seemed to set no value upon anything we gave them.”  Tree planters camped with their families at Tank Hill while they planted 3000 street trees around Wonthaggi in the early 1910s. Years after houses replaced Wonthaggi’s tent town, many old people remembered their camping times as the best days of their lives.
Seventy years after the end of the Second World War, many local people are still haunted by personal experiences of war.
 Cartoon by Natasha Williams-Novak "Australia is not a country that goes looking for trouble,” Tony Abbott said recently, but our history tells a different story.
 The 1960s finally came to Wonthaggi in 1968, writes Frank Coldebella, with a contingent of young teachers who didn’t use abuse, bullying or violence as teaching aids.
 Health and Education Party, anyone? Handing out how-to-vote cards on election day provided plenty of opportunity for Frank Coldebella to contemplate voters, democracy, free speech and obesity.
 Graham Street, Wonthaggi, 1963 All over the world, 1968 was a revolutionary year. Frank Coldebella was in year 9 and watched the spark of revolution reach Wonthaggi.
 It started with a clothes line, a peg, an electrical cord and some cobwebs, and pretty soon a couple of grey fantails had crafted a fine home in a Wonthaggi garage.
 The author, aged 10 In his years at a Catholic primary school, Frank Coldebella never saw or heard of sexual abuse. What he does remember is a daily ordeal of fear, brainwashing, guilt and boredom. The miracle, he writes in this four-part memoir of life at St Joseph’s Primary School from 1959-65, is that any of them survived it.
 On a sunny winter day, a mob of kangaroos takes it easy near the mouth of the Powlett River. Picture: Frank Coldebella  Reed Crescent, 1960s, with No. 76 at left. Frank Coldebella looks back on a Wonthaggi childhood where neighbours taught by example how a good society operates.
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Frank ColdebellaEssays Archives
August 2017
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