Robert V J P Varman Ph D
Here is Ma (left), me (back), Tante Nieke (mid) , Uncle John (Oom John - right) with my niece Brieëlle and nephews Joshua and Tristan, about two years ago. Uncle John took his family to Australia a little after we arrived, they played a big part in my life when I was about the same ages as the children here.
Goin' to the Pictures
I was going to write about my fascinating (!*s*) religious background, the usual father was Catholic and mother Protestant type of thing, and me ending up having known the best of both worlds but it is raining and I'm cold, so will write about a popular institutionalized form of 'escape'...the picture theatre, otherwise known as going to 'the pitchas'.
I'm fairly sure that I never saw a single movie when we were still in the Netherlands, although I knew the word for it, 'bioscoop'. I probably heard parents, uncles and aunts, grandparents talking about it. Then there was the terrible incident I heard about when my mother and her sister Ann, in their teens sneaking out one day to see the film Mata Hari (late 1930s?) and their mother found out. That was the first and last time they defied Oma's wishes. Ma's father took his six children to the bioscoop for the first time in the 30s to see Trader Jim, the three girls had to wear hats and he made a huge fuss about them, very proud of them. Oma (that's my grandmother) didn't go, she wouldn't be seen dead in public with her six children (she said so and kept to her word).
The first big screen I saw was in the 'Skyfield' Camp, a place which to parents must have seemed like a POW Camp--it was really a temporary stop-over for migrants to adjust to Australian conditions. The screen was in a small timber and fibro hall but that piece of white cloth I held in awe--just magic (though I sort of knew that the strong light from the square hole at the back of the hall had something to do with it, I was four years old going onto five then).
The start of a film, anywhere in those days, always began with the National Anthem, 'God Save the Queen'. The Queen rode on a horse looking really smart and in charge. There were two versions, one was better than the other. Anyway. We all had to stand for God Save the Queen. My brother Peter had warned me about it but he didn't mention that we actually had to sing it as well. I was astonished when everyone stood up after they were already comfortably seated and I wondered if we had to stand for the duration of the movie. I couldn't sing along because I couldn't even understand English, let along sing it. Brother gave me a thump on the arm and glowered down at me and informed me tersely that if I didn't sing I'd be turfed out of the hall. I sang but what words I used, I can't imagine... probably just 'na, na, na, na, na-na, na na....' (la-la s were too obvious). He said that we had to sing as load as we could. He used to have me 'on' a lot. Luckily I could always pick up a tune easily. I had to pick up the words from those about me, so for years after I loudly sang 'God save our noval Queen.......Santa Victoria, Happy in Gloria...' No one ever noticed, even in later years, because the Australian kids didn't have the words right either. We always muffled the last part into something like '...Long to nane-oven-nus, God Save the Queen'. It was only in High School that we were shamed into getting the words right. We learned four of the verses there--fighting words like '..confound her enemies..'
I liked the sound of the National Anthem and the look of the Queen right from the start. By the very late 50s and early 1960s, it gradually became custom to not have to sing but you still had to stand of course. On one of those final days brother had to restrain me as I began to bellow the Anthem. That was it for singing in picture theatres.
Going to the pictures was a real treat in every way. Entertainment, people to look at, drinks and jaffers or those hard caramel chocolates with lives of actors on the wrapper. People clapped a lot in those days, during and at the close of a film. From the time we moved to Collaroy Plateau in 1957, it became more difficult to go to the pictures and my brother became less inclined to let me tag along. I ended up seeing films with parents on rare but memorable occasions, so goodbye cowboy films. (Did anyone see the one where Barbara Stanwick got shot in the heart when wearing a white blouse?-that was different!!)
The most striking and shocking films then which I saw were Oklahoma. I liked the girl who couldn't say no but couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. The men singing about their adventure in Kansas City definitely had shock value (although I was probably a little conservative even then; I'm the only one I know who actually walked out of 'Cabaret'-- though some 14 years later). Then there was March on the River Kwai which haunted me for a few years even though I missed out on the gruesome bits when the bridge was blown up over the river 'Choir'. The 'King and I', with it's I whistle a happy tune and other songs ran through my mind for years then--really magic. I was fairly obsessed with succulents and cactai at the time and even now when I look at such plants, 'King and I' themes come back to me. I probably shouldn't admit to actually having liked the 'Pyjama Game', I thought Doris Day really interesting, couldn't understand why parents were so disapproving (even these days the name riles my mother). Writing about all this now, I'm surprised that I took so much interest then. These days you couldn't drag me to a musical or cinema if I was tied to a team of draught horses.
In the '50s people went to 'the pictures' and for that you'd go to the picture theatre. The local lads would say "Wairya goin' mate?", the reply might be "Wi'r goin' to tha pitcha theerda", or the more broad speakers might say "Wir gunnada pidjas" and the reply would be "Fair dinkum?" Dead set, everything was fair dinkum in those days. The saying fell into disuse when Australian actors began to speak 'authentic' Strine (Australian English = 'Strylyan = Strine). The word is gaining currency again, fair dinkum.
Suddenly around 1960 people stopped going to the cinema, cinema businesses went broke all along the Northern Beaches though the big cinemas at Manly held on. Besides, Manly had the wharf (good fishing a diving for coins), great beaches, a fun parlour on the wharf next to the ferry wharf and even an aquarium. The reason was that just about everyone had a television by then. It was mostly shows from the USA and many were mortally afraid that we would all develop American accents. In retrospect, and it could never have been predicted, most new linguistic changes to the language came from Britain, thanks probably to the pop culture. In recent years the flow has been the other way, thanks to the popularity of Aussie soaps.
Our television arrived in 1960 and the first show we ever was was Band Stand, a local rock & roll programme determining the top 10s or was it 40s. I wasn't interested but brother was; he and his future wife Paddy appeared in the background of one of the shows once. That was local fame.
Band Stand was compulsory viewing until brother married Paddy in 1964. So we got to find out about the Beetles. They were sort of slightly listenable to me because there was a bit going on in the construction of the music. At last they were to come to Sydney, Australia. Uncharacteristically, I got caught up in the media hype.
On the morning the Beetles arrived, I decided to watch their arrival on the television--it may have been at about 6.30 or 7. I didn't particularly like their music but was impressed by the excitement the visit was causing, even among the newsreaders who were usually fairly humorless. Even parents were vaguely bemused by it all for days beforehand. Delays, more delays and finally the plane landed! I just had to let parents know. I rushed into their room, "They've arrived!!!, the Beetles have arrived!!!, quick........"
All I heard were some very stern words in reply and I was out of that room faster than the speed of light. All I saw was a pile of blankets but it didn't take long for me to work out that an act of procreation might have been taking place. Those father and son sessions were true after all. There was no one I could share the incident with, though foolishly I did tell my old friend Phillip but strangely enough he's always been fairly sympathetic about it and to this day hasn't used it as a feature topic at some dinner party. I was mortified for at least a year and it took three years for me to get to like the Beetles.