Skatey...The life of Les Skate

Skatey
The Life of Les Skate
By the time I got to, I think it was eighth grade, Kerang
I suppose having the family High School in Victoria, (about 20 kms away from
around me I got a bit of selfeducation.
Barham) was taking students from the school. They
had a little bus run out there. I don’t know where
Mum and Pop got the money from to send me there.
Not that it was very expensive or anything but you
had your costs. But I did go there for two years and the first year I was pretty good.
New South Wales was always a year ahead of Victoria and I went there and I breezed
through what they called in Victoria, The Merit. The next year, might have been Proficiency
or something like that, I found that pretty hard. You got Algebra and French and they
weren’t my thing. Maths and Geography, luckily, I could understand. I’m glad I did because
in later years I got into the building trade and I could then see where all that sort of stuff
come from.
During school years I’d say, I was about nine, I was pottering around with Pop’s tools and
the saw jumped. Put a little cut in my hand, nothing much. My sister Val and I were always
wrestling and mucking around. I remember out on the back lawn this day her fingernail got
in this cut and that’s what caused blood poisoning. The red line started to go up my arm. In
those days for infection you used what they called hot foments. You got a bread and butter
poultice … hot! (or there was one for when you had congestion on your chest.)
But it was probably the bread and butter one,
straight out of the boiling water. I thought ‘Uh oh
somethings happening alright!’ And up comes this
blister. It was like half an egg. We pierced it and that
didn’t do any good and then the poison got into that.
And up comes this blister. It
was like half an egg.
The red line was creeping up my arm and I got this big lump under my arm. They put me in
the hospital, more to monitor it really. They didn’t have anything to use. They started
ringing around and were told there was a serum up at Cohuna, which was fifteen miles
away on the Victorian side. On an old sandy road. They had to get it quick.
Well in about fifteen minutes
he was there and back! 100
mph up a sandy road.
Now a relative of Pop’s family had this flash Ford car.
A ‘38 model. It was a car but you put the hood back
and it was wide open. He used to do 100 mph out on
the big plains chasing kangaroos. He had made this
documentary and it’s been filmed all around the world. Tommy Board was his name. So,
Pop got straight onto Tommy. Well in about fifteen minutes he was there and back! 100
mph up a sandy road. Anyway, that saved me.
But it was a long time before it healed up. The burn had taken the flesh right down to the
bone. It was all juicy and that. And all they used to do, because they didn’t have the right
balms and things I suppose, they’d just put the gauze on it and wrapped it up. The next day
they’d just rip the gauze off and the scab would all come off. This went on for ages and
ages before it finally healed up.
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