When I was Seven I Escaped from a Government Institution
A Memoir
1974. My first escape.
When I was seven I was in a government boys home called Brougham. Brougham was in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra on the corners of Nelson and Wallis Streets. I stayed in Brougham for about three years. At any time there might be fifty or so orphans or unwanted boys in Brougham.
Brougham was run by a husband and wife team who we will call Mr. and Mrs. Magran which is a pretty close approximation of their surname anyway. Mr. Magran was quite insane I think. He was a product of the British armed forces and the horrors of World War Two.
Mr. Magran insisted on being called ‘Sah’ in a high clipped tone by all the boys. He had this weird thing where he would put his finger in his mouth and bite down while his head shook. He would do this when he was angry or excited about something.
Mrs. Magran had a thing where she would grab you by the hair in front of your ear where the sideburn starts. She would lift you onto your toes by this hair, which was extremely painful. Then she would march you around like that while she babbled on in her very cultured English accent about your latest offence and how you were a ‘horrible type of child etc’.
Anyway, these two probably shouldn’t have been running a corner store let alone a government institution filled with children, but there they were and it is pointless to care now. Some things happened in Brougham though, that I think are worth writing down.
I had been shipped to Brougham with my two older brothers Joey and Peter some time in the last six to eight months I suppose, and had made some friends there by now. On the weekends we would get dressed in the morning and go out the back into the enclosed park lands to play until breakfast. We were surrounded by a white wall out there. After breakfast which usually consisted of semolina paste in a bowl as cereal and stacks of cold toast with hot chocolate to drink, we would return to the back park.
It was a cold Saturday morning after breakfast and I was sitting under one of the big Norfolk pines (which are still there) with my brothers Joey and Pete and another two boys who I will call Larry and Mark. Larry was an islander of some type and had very dark skin and tight black curls. Everyone said Mark came from Mexico and that his parents were dead but I don’t know either for sure.
So we’re sitting there talking and poking things with sticks and Larry speaks up. “If I bolted would you boys come with me?” he says.
We all did the staunch thing and swore we would because we were like brothers etc and so on. It was easy to say when the event itself was nowhere in sight but was just a story.
So Larry stands up, looks around to see where the staff are, and says, “Come on.” He walks away across the grass to the slippery dip as we called it but it was just a large metal slide.
We all followed. I was expecting some sort of game to be played with the slide involved somehow. I was almost right.
Larry grabs the slide at the ladder end and says “Grab hold boys.”
We all took hold here and there and soon caught on to Larry’s brilliant idea. The grass was covered in dew and the slide, as big as it was to us, slid across the grass like it was on ice. When we got it to the wall we saw that the top of the slide was level with the top of the wall.
“Let’s go,” said Larry with a now low and excited voice. He started climbing up the slide to the top of the wall.
It was cold so we all had our Dunlop Beachcombers on and we had good grip on the dewy slide with our rubber soles. Larry and my two brothers went first then myself and Mark. Mark said he would go behind me because I was the smallest.
When I got to the top I was too scared to jump and Mark told me to lower myself and he would hold my arms and help me drop the last half of the wall. When I hit the footpath it felt like my left ankle broke and I was crying.
All the boys did this ‘you can take it Shane. You’re tough bro’ sort of thing and I stopped crying about it. Then my brother Pete and Larry took one of my arms each over their shoulders and we started off down the street. I was hopping.
When we got about half a block away Larry got brave and did the two finger salute back at Brougham. “Up yours Mr Magran,” he screamed.
We all did the same and moved on down the road. I was very proud because it was my first escape and I wasn’t afraid because all the other boys were there too. After a while, I was told that I would have to hobble about on my own because no one was going to carry me any more.
The only boys among us that had escaped before were Larry and Mark but it was Mark that knew his way around. We went to our own school first, which was Paddington Public School. We all knew our way because we would go on foot to school sometimes. After we poked around there for a while Mark led us away to a big park called Centennial Gardens.
In Centennial Gardens there were a type of pine trees on grassy hills that were like Christmas trees with branches here and there that you could climb like ladders right up to the tops of the trees. There was a large army barracks there called Victoria Barracks. We went down to the big gates to stare at the two soldiers who used to stand there at attention for hours at a time.
We took two large cardboard boxes from a stack near the army barrack’s gates and tore them up for grass sleds. We had a great morning sliding down the best hill there. It was like the biggest playground in the world for us I guess.
About the middle of the day or so, we went for a walk to a train station but I can’t remember which one it was. My older brothers had the idea of stowing away on a train going south.
Then we would miraculously arrive at our mother's address which we did not know. Then our mother would welcome us and her two new sons Larry and Mark with open arms. Then, we would live happily ever after because our mum would never send us back. It was a stupid plan. Anyway, we decided that we would stay in the park for the night at least, and see about going home tomorrow.
So we had a cold night curled up together under a tree in the park then in the morning, Mark showed us how we could steal hot bread and bottles of milk for our breakfast from the front of the Victoria Barracks when the trucks dropped it off. We ate our breakfast and then went wandering again. This time we ended up in Kings Cross. We walked around in The Cross for a while and then the older boys had an idea to get money. I was the idea.
The other boys told me that because I was so small people would give me money if I asked them for some. All I had to do was give them a good reason to hand over the cash. So that was how I got the very first kick up the ass that I can ever remember getting.
We were near the fountain in Kings Cross which is quite famous now. The other boys were hiding in among some shrubs. There were a few people around, walking to and fro. I zeroed in on a tall thin man in a grey suit with a briefcase of some type. I stalked him like a wolf across the fountain plaza.
Finally, I was right behind him and jogging a bit to keep up. “Excuse me, Sir,” I said in my best lost waif’s voice.
He stopped and turned. “What do you want,” he snapped.
“I’m lost and I need twenty cents for the train Sir,” I said sadly.
“I’ll give you twenty cents you little bastard,” said he and lunged towards me.
I was too slow and his foot caught me up the backside and lifted me in the air a bit. I ran for my life and, when I got back to where the others were I was holding my bum and crying and they were all laughing really hard at me. The next time I did it a lady gave me fifty cents and we bought lollies with it at a shop.
We jumped a train at Kings Cross station and got off at Central Station. Then we jumped on another train and finally arrived at a place called Blacktown. We had been hiding in the toilets and Joey said to get off or someone was going to find us. So there we were in a place where even Mark was lost.
We hovered around outside the station for a bit then Mark disappeared back inside. When he got back he said he needed our help with something. Back in those days most of the stations had rows of metal lockers. People would leave stuff in them and go to work or whatever I suppose.
Mark had found a locker with the corner of the door bent outwards a bit and said he could see a wallet and other stuff in there. He needed someone to hold the bent locker door out a bit so he could reach in and take the wallet. So we went along and Joey held the little locker door open a bit and Mark took the wallet.
The wallet had a lot of stuff in it and a single fifty-dollar note. It was the first fifty-dollar note I can remember seeing and I probably didn’t see another one for years either. Mark said no one would know what happened if we put the wallet back so that’s what he did. Then we left the station.
We stopped up the road a bit and everyone got a look at the fifty-dollar note. We were all very impressed and my brother Pete got his sage face on and said we would have to be careful with our money so we would have enough to eat on the trip home to our mum’s house.
We went to one of those vans that sell hot food. It was on an overpass. We got pie floaters and cans of Coke. The Coke was another first for me but I had eaten pie floaters before in Brougham. (A pie floater was just a meat pie on a bed of mashed green peas.)
The man in the pie van was a bit curious about us because we were all dressed identically with identical haircuts and he asked us where we were from. Joey said we came from Paddington and our mum and dad were waiting up the road in the car. He just smiled. We sure didn’t look like we were all brothers.
After we had finished our pies we had a discussion about the money we had left over. Back in those days a pie floater and a can of Coke were probably thirty cents all up. Joey who was the oldest there said everyone should get a share. I ended up with a five-dollar note and had it taken off me later when I was observed trying to blow my nose on it.
So now we went back to Blacktown station. Pete said that we had to go back to Central Station so that we could jump a train to Melbourne and find our mum. So the older boys got us onto a train going back to the city. The trains back then were the old ‘red rattler’ type and we could all fit in one single toilet to hide from the ticket men.
There was a small window in the toilet and we were all crammed up against it to see everything going past. We stopped at I don’t know what station and the train was there for a bit too long. Then there was a knock on the door.
“I know you’re in there. Open the door and get out here,” said a man’s voice.
Joey being the oldest had the good sense to know that the jig was up and unlocked the door. There were three men in railway uniforms outside the toilet and they looked very surprised to see five boys pile out of there. They took us off the train and into an office along the platform somewhere.
So they sat us down and asked us where we were from and Joey told them that we were Gubbos (government kids) and that we came from a joint called Brougham. He said we didn’t like it there and were trying to go home to our mother’s house. They called the police.
Anyway, two police officers turned up to take us back to Brougham. Of course, there had been a missing persons report out on us they said. And that was the final part of our adventure. We got to ride in a police car. It was a Chrysler highway patrol car and we all said it was a hot rod.
So we arrived back at Brougham after my first escape and were in for a hard time from Mr. Magran. Our money was confiscated. We got belted and lost privileges for a while but later on, when we talked about it, we all said it was worth it.
Anyway, that’s a little bit of what my life was like when I was seven.
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