Last drinks : the Star Hotel, Parkes

 

It's a cheerful-enough looking place now, and well-reviewed through Trip Advisor for its good value 'country style pub meals'. And whoever looks after updating its Facebook page, does a good job at maintaining and extending this positive vibe. Physically, it looks well maintained, if a little bland and somewhat stark now that the upper verandahs have been removed. No doubt they were removed years ago, as age and rot took their effect.

My dim recollection is that the verandahs were in place in 1968, when dad was the publican for a brief few months. And it was a run-of-the-mill country pub, true to type with lodgings for longer-stay and shorter stay travellers and a layout and 'vibe' that I was all too familiar with. But why was this pub the latest, and last, to enter into our family story?

Following the sadness and debacle of the Terminus Hotel at Pyrmont, in mid 1964 we had moved to Maroubra. Mum had bought a 3 bedroom apartment in a newly built complex on the northern hill looking back down onto Maroubra Beach. In every way, this was the best family home we had ever lived in, as 1960s apartment building responded to the need for bigger family living spaces, internal laundries, more bedrooms, external patios, storage and garage areas. And it was NEW. Neil and Helen spent most of their Secondary school years there, and I lived there in 1966 and 1967 when I caught the bus daily at the bottom of our street to my work at an Insurance Company in the city, and lived the beach culture of our seaside location.

So, where did it all go wrong?

We were still living there when I moved out in January 1968 to re-join the MSC. More of this in another post. There had been some difficult times at home in the previous two years, and I was grateful to be there and be a support to mum. "Difficult" perhaps doesn't come close enough to explaining some of those times. 

I'm not sure now where dad was working in those years, but after leaving the Terminus Hotel in 1964, he had returned to his trade as a motor mechanic. He drank heavily and was dis-engaged in much of our family life, not attending family weddings or school events for any of us. At one stage, I argued with him that he should move out and go and live with his parents at Murrumburrah, which he briefly did. One memory that stands out is my holding a bucket as he vomited a combination of alcohol and pills. Was it an attempted overdose of prescription and other medication? I don't know for sure, but for reasons I can't now recall, this is what I believed at the time.

So there were significant elements of disfunction within our family home. For all this, we still got on with family life and it was our mother who kept things together. Mum worked at this time in one of the swanky bars at the Hotel Australia, a beautiful art-deco building in Sydney CBD, long since a victim of the demolishers wrecking ball. There was always a cooked meal at night.

This was the situation when I left in January 1968. All the family, including dad, came to visit me at Douglas Park a month later, and everything seemed as normal as could be. Regular letters from home indicated nothing of concern, although mum would never burden me with details of her worries.  So it was enormous shock to me to find out, in June or July, that mum had sold the Maroubra Beach unit, that she, Neil and Helen were renting a 2 bedroom flat on Malabar Road in South Coogee, and that dad was now a publican again, at the Star Hotel in Parkes. He had moved there after signing the lease on 14 June. The "buy-in" cost for this was $8500, with a weekly rental payment of $100.

Clearly, for dad to make this move he needed cash from the sale of our apartment. It's not clear to me who was the registered owner of this apartment, whether it was just mum, or jointly owned between them. I can only assume that dad argued for his 'share' of the money, to go off to Parkes. Or perhaps the tension at home had grown too much, and mum wanted him moved out. Whatever the causes of this move, to me it was catastrophic. Although this was not now my home, and never would be again, I knew what a good investment it was for mum, and I knew what she had put in to make this our home. And now she was renting a flat at the front of an old building on a very busy and noisy road.

I was able to make a phone call and speak with mum, not knowing the questions I really wanted to ask. How are you managing? How are you feeling about the loss of your home? Why did you do it? And already I knew that my father would not make a success of this move. I had absorbed the lessons of Nowra and Pyrmont, which I have discussed in previous posts here. He was simply not cut out to run a pub, and certainly not on his own. It was delusional on his part to think he could.  Perhaps this shows more clearly than anything, the level of personal despair he carried, but I can only speculate on this.

I knew I had to go to Parkes, immediately. There was no problem arranging this with the Novice Master, a train ticket was arranged from Douglas Park to Strathfield, and I was given money to buy a return ticket from Strathfield to Parkes and extra cash to see me through.

There were a few hours to fill in at Strathfield, and I took the opportunity to walk up to my schoolmate Tony Wilson's place. I knew the house well, having been there many times over my years at Joeys, and occasionally in the past few years as well. Tony wasn't home, being required at a practice for his wedding tomorrow. That was a surprise, and after a good feed from Mrs Wilson, best wishes all around, I was back to Strathfield station and onto the overnight train out west. Those overnight trains had names like "The Western Mail", the name indicating the dual purpose of the train for passengers and freight, especially taking the mail to far flung post offices.

Travelling Second Class, it wasn't the most comfortable trip and I slept on and off on the overnight journey, arriving at Parkes on a clear, sunny, winter morning around 8am. A taxi took me to the Star Hotel. Knowing my way around pubs, I found a way in through an unlocked back door, and it was easy enough to work out where the owner's accommodation would be.

Star Hotel, as it was in 1968

To say dad was surprised to see me, is an understatement. He was still asleep. A worker in the hotel was asleep in another bed, and we made awkward introductions. In the next few days I was there, the funny thing is I don't remember having a conversation along the lines of "what on earth are you doing here?" "Why have you caused mum and the kids to sell our home, and move into a cramped flat?" I look back at that time now, as I have many times over the years, and wonder what I thought I would accomplish being there.

The only answer I have ever come to, is that I needed to see that my father was alright. I needed to check for myself that his mental and physical health was ok. I had had arguments with him in the previous two years about the damage he was causing our family, and I hadn't come here to argue now. Perhaps I should have. What did he think about the effects of his selfish decision on his family, who had lost their home? But I didn't say this. I didn't know if mum wanted him moved out at any price, if she now had a measure of domestic peace, even if at a cost of financial stress again. My visit here was simply to see how he was.  We manage the complications of family life in many ways, at times inadequately, at times with searing insight, at times in blind faith.

I stayed a few days, saw that he looked well. I didn't see him drunk or out of his depth managing a hotel for the first time on his own. But of course, I didn't see everything. Mum and Helen also visited later that year, and mum quickly picked up on the problems.  I will let Helen tell the story with her recollections of that time.

"Mum said she was selling our Bona Vista Avenue apartment as dad was buying a pub in Parkes. I was not happy about moving from a place I loved living in but the deal was done. Mum, Neil and I moved to 1/212  Malabar Road, South Coogee. I was still at Brigidine and Neil was working at the Registrar General's, mum was also working full time. I remember money was tight and any coming from Parkes had dried up. Mum needed to go to Parkes to 'see what was going on' so Debbie (Furner), mum and I caught the sleeper train to Parkes.

What a mess she found. The cook was feeding her family all their meals at the hotel free of charge plus helping herself to grocery items bought by dad. There were unpaid bar tabs. Alcohol was stolen. People were taking advantage of dad who in an inebriated state was shouting drinks to who knows who. Mum told me dad had fallen asleep drunk, in his room, and the safe containing all money from sales was next to his bed and left open, all money inside was stolen.

Dad looked thin and unwell.

He was given a little dog that only had 3 legs, he named him Whisky. He told me over and over again 'he won't grow much bigger'. Debbie would laugh at this repeated statement, I remember feeling sad as dad was a mess.

Mum said one day she was thinking of buying one of the Units under construction at the rear of our rental flat, she asked me to go and look at it with her. We did so and she decided to go ahead and purchase. Dad moved back in, Parkes was gone and I suspect he didn't have much money to contribute to the purchase. He was really unwell, still thin and  trembling. It was really noticeable when he would try and drink a cuppa, constantly spilling it down the front of his clothes  At some stage mum had him move out, his drinking was out of any control. He moved into a hotel in Redfern, I know I was really worried about him. I asked Gerard if he would take me to see him, I'd asked mum the name of the pub and that I was going there. Gerard clearly recalls it was a shocker of a hot day with a really hot wind blowing. I can still see dad sitting on his single bed in this drab room, wearing trousers and a white singlet. I asked him would he come home and please not drink like he was, told him Neil and I missed him. He said it was up to mum, she was rightly angry with him.

Mum did ask him to come back and things were slightly better for a time."

It's a heart-rending story, and I feel ashamed that I was living my closeted life in a Novitiate, unaware of the stress and misery of my family. I have had to ask myself 'why am I telling this story now'? Some in my family see no point in this and say what does it gain? I can't argue against this great concern.

I'm publishing it because in taking us to uncomfortable truths, it is only a small part of all our lives at that time. This is not the story of my father - it is one short chapter in a lifetime. Not the first sad chapter, and I do not lay blame at his feet. Quite the opposite. My hope here is to paint a picture of a man who had his flaws, as we all do, and to ask 'why'? And to search for some answers to that question. What I believe is that we will never know what sort of a man my father would have been if not for his war service. Through all these pieces of writing about 'a life in pubs' and other pieces about my father, I am not only searching for him, but to understand my own relationship to him.

As regards Parkes, by 24 January 1969 it was all over. Helen has described what came next. The next time I met dad was at that new apartment mum had bought, on 1 March 1969. A happy occasion for me, being the day of profession of temporary vows in the MSC, at the church in Randwick. Celebrating at home afterwards, I was oblivious to what had so recently happened. My blindness is where the shame really lies here.