MY LIFE STORY by PETER BRACKEN

I was born on the 19^th of June 1931 at Yass, NSW.

My parents were Francis David and Amelia Bracken, and I was their ninth child; after me my brother Tom was born.

My brothers and sisters were:

Francis David (Chunda)
Therese Millie (Tibby)
Paul Joseph (Sammy)
Mary Aloque
John William
Joseph Aloysius
George Thomas
Peter Patrick (me)
Thomas Augustine (Tossa)
Another brother Tom had passed away as a child at 11 months.

We were all reared firstly at a small home in Rossi Street and we later moved to a larger home at 33 Dutton Street. At Rossi Street we were one vacant block away from the local birthing centre, which must have been pretty handy for my Mum, as she had all of us over a period of 20 years.

 

Growing up in this large family as I remember was pretty good. I was told that we did not have much money but we made do. My Aunt Dot (Mum’s sister), told me later in my life that while we never had a lot of money there was a lot of love. I asked Mum about this and she agreed, but I asked her how did she feed and clothe us and she replied that nobody at that time had any money but all the neighbours and friends helped out when it was required. They were the good old days in Australia!

I started school at the Catholic kindergarten run by the Nuns in Meehan Street. I think I liked school at this age and can’t remember anything drastic occurring.

I was baptised in the little old Church adjacent to the school and later moved to the Boys’ School opposite our home in Dutton Street probably in Grade 3.

Boyhood in Yass was pretty simple for me; rabbit trapping and swims in the river or the local pool. I was not much of a swimmer at that time and have not improved up to the present day.

One of the interesting things that occurred at our Dutton Street home was that we were situated on the road to the gasworks. The horse and carts which carted coal to the gasworks passed our home and whether it was by accident or prior arrangement with my Dad, we somehow always had enough coal for the fire.

An annual event for us all was to go up to the cemetery and clean up the family grave where all the deceased members of Dad’s family were buried. This entailed firstly a walk of about five miles, and then the job of cleaning up the grave sight.

My maternal Grandma from Sydney used to visit throughout the year. She had left Yass many years before after having been a resident for a long time. We all thought she was a cranky old devil (or maybe it was just me who thought it!). Her name was Sara but we always referred to her as Quark.

My Dad had trained as a surveyor but did not practice his profession. Instead, he took over the tailor’s job on the death of my Grandfather who I never knew.

Mum’s family were old Yass residents and lived in Shaw Street. Grandma was a great lady and an excellent cook. Her brothers were drovers and lived a hard life, mainly camped on the roadside with their dogs after a long day droving sheep.

As the family got older, Frank was the first to marry and move on, followed by Trixie who went to live with Grandma in Sydney. Paul, who was an ambulance attendant was posted to Goulburn and he later married a girl from their. Over time, Mary and John moved on also.

In 1939 the war started and a short time later, Grandma in Sydney passed on and Mum and Dad decided to leave Yass and take up residence at Grandma’s old place at 2 Barden Street, Arncliffe; taking along Joe, George, Tom and me. This meant starting at a new school for all of us except for Joe who was older and had to find work.

School for Tom and me was with the Nuns in Forest Road, Arncliffe. This was pretty uneventful and two years later, I started at Marist Brothers at Kogarah. Life there was fine for the first year but in the second year, when I was in Grade 5, things changed for the worst. I crossed swords with the teacher who was totally unsuitable for the job of teaching children. I have to admit that I went off the rails at that time because of this person. One day, he literally flogged one of my classmates, causing his legs to bleed. I have never forgotten that day and from then on I caused my Mum considerable grief as I took to playing truant. Since my Dad had died in May 1942 Mum had to deal with the problem.

Finally my mother took me out of that school and sent me to St. Patricks at Church Hill which my brother George had attended in the city. This, I remember as the happiest schooldays of my life; my grades improved and in my final year, I was Dux of the School. All of this change in me came about because of a totally different attitude of the teaching staff at my new school.

My sister Mary had promised me she would buy me a pushbike if I performed well at school and true to her word, she bought me a brand new Wynall at Tom Diamond’s bike shop in Yass for the sum of twelve pounds which was a lot of money in those days.

Thinking back, I am extremely sorry to have caused Mum so much pain and only wish that it had never occurred, but at that time I did not realise what a proper little b….. I was. Sorry Mum!

A year after my Father’s death, my brothers Paul and John were drowned when the Hospital Ship – CENTAUR – was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine off the Queensland coast. Mum had endured all this agony during this time and I did not make it any easier for her. Sorry again Mum.

The Centaur was finally found in 2010 and declared an official war grave site.

At St. Pat’s I became interested in rugby league, playing in the School’s competition. This led to some interesting developments in my life which are described elsewhere.

While I was at school I had jobs as a paper boy and grocery shop attendant but on leaving school, my first job was as an apprentice fitter and turner at Hytest Axles at Alexandria. I immediately knew that toolmaking was not for me and this job lasted only one week.

My Uncle Bill, one of Mum’s brothers, was a retired Navy officer and worked at Garden Island as a personnel officer. Uncle Bill helped me get a start at the Island as an apprentice boat builder and within a few days I knew that I had found my calling.

I started working at Garden Island early in 1946 and at this stage of my life boats were a big unknown to me. In the boatshed my trade master was a fellow named Lou Morrisey. He was a great man and an excellent tradesman. He took an interest in me and helped me learn the ins and outs of small boat building.

After two years in the boatshed, I had acquired a real liking for the trade but it was the Garden Island rule to move apprentices to another sector of the trade. For me this entailed working on large ships as a shipwright, however, this was not as interesting as working on small boats and I felt that I was just wasting my time there. Fortunately for me, my old trainer realised that my real ability was working in small boats and luckily he had a boat builder friend named Tom Fisher who he arranged for me to meet. Tom agreed to take me on and after a lot of problems were solved with my Uncle Bill at Garden Island and the Apprenticeship Commission, I went to work with Tom at the rear of his home at Lillis Street, Cammeray in North Sydney.

At that time, Tom was building an eighteen foot racing skiff for a client named Herb Morton, who was the owner of a clothing company called “Top Dog”. Consequently, the skiff was called “Top Dog” and successfully raced on Sydney Harbour with the Sydney Flying Squadron, Sydney’s oldest open boat sailing club.

Tom moved his boat building business to Lyons Boatshed at The Spit in Mosman where we continued to build boats – one being “Farewell”, a sixteen foot skiff built for John Rosenthal which John sailed at the Middle Harbour Skiff Club.

This was my introduction to sailing as I was the fifth hand or bailer boy in the crew on that boat.

At this time I was still living at home with Mum at Arncliffe and public transport was the only means of getting to work, so travelling to work in those days occupied quite a lot of the working day.

Tom had a connection with people by the name of McClung who owned holiday cottages in Nambucca. They wanted him to build some rowing skiffs as an attraction for their clients and Tom was planning to take me along to help. He was not really keen to go, so his Dad Bill, who was a well known identity in the world of custom built wooden boats and also President of the 18 Footers League in Sydney Harbour, filled in for him and took me along with him. We built a couple of skiffs and then Bill went home and I was left alone to build the rest. I built one more but it was pretty lonely for me in Nambucca so I came home for the weekend (or so I said; I took my tools home with me).

Bill Fisher built wooden boats and also operated the ferry service between La Perouse and Kurnell along with his brother Jac, his son Jimmy and a local Aborigine named Gussy Sherett.

While at home on a Saturday morning I went out to La Perouse where Bill had his boat building and ferry operation. During the course of a conversation with him, Bill (“Father” as everyone called him) said to me “You don’t want to go back to Nambucca do you?” and I agreed. So I started work with him on the following Monday morning, completing my boatbuilding apprenticeship with him over the next two years.

It was a great time at La Perouse; interesting work, great people, building trawlers, ferries and island plantation boats. It was never boss/worker; always just nice people working together, communal eating and lots of fond memories.   I tried to use this approach in my later business career; it was great training for my future.

While I was at La Perouse, my main means of travel was again public transport which entailed catching a train at Arncliffe to Erskineville, a bus from there to Moore Park and then a tram to La Perouse. This took up quite an amount of time. On many occasions I would ride my push bike across the main sewer pipeline from Arncliffe to Kyeemagh, past the airport at Mascot onto Botany Road, out past the paper mills and Bunnerong power station and then through Botany cemetery to the boatshed at La Perouse.

Money was always a concern for me as I never ever seemed to have enough to do the things I wanted to do. This was mainly due to the wages paid to apprentices in those times. My first year wage was 19 shillings and sixpence (which is equivalent to one dollar 95 cents) a week for 44 hours of work. The hours of work were reduced in the first year of my apprenticeship by 48 minutes a day and the 40 hour week was born; a great victory for the working man.

My first experience as an independent businessman made me realise that there were harder ways to make money than boatbuilding. A local fisherman, Georgie Rogers, used to shoot a net for mullet at a particular time of the year when the fish were doing their annual migration. On one occasion, he sold me a bag of undersize fish for threepence each. I carried them home in a sugarbag on my bike and when I got home washed and cleaned them with Mum’s help. I took them up to Arncliffe Pub and sold them for double my money. While this was a nice profit I only ever did it once.

In 1950 I met a girl at the local movie house who was with some girlfriends of my mates. Her name was Val Mansell. She was a new girl in town as her parents had bought the local newsagency after having moved to Arncliffe from Maroubra. Little did I know at that time that we would get married some five years later.

Our courtship was at times a bit turbulent. She was an apprentice hairdresser serving her time at a salon at Randwick, and also had to do quite a bit of travelling. Perhaps this was something we had in common to talk about.

In 1952 I went to Jindabyne to play football. I talk about my football career separately.

Returning to Sydney from Jindabyne, my old boss Bill Fisher (“Father”) took me back on at La Perouse and I worked in the boatshed for all of that summer and 1953. Bill gave me a job to build a 60 foot trawler for fishermen named Robinson from Palm Beach. This entailed working on a block of land that Bill owned at Prince Charles Parade, Kurnell behind the old boatshed. The Fishers had transported the old boatshed from Berry’s Bay in Sydney Harbour and erected it on the foreshore at Kurnell. This then became my base and I worked out of there for the next 12 months.

Kurnell at that time had no made road into it, only a winding track through the sand hills. The only other way in was by ferry from La Perouse. I still had my car, which I had bought when I was in Jindabyne, at that time so I used to drive out to La Perouse, catch the ferry across the bay, work all day and ferry ride back in the afternoon, making a pretty long day.

Some days I would row a skiff across; a bit scary if a fair sea was running!

Other times I would camp over in a shack in a group of humpies that fishermen used. At these times Hazel Fisher, Tom’s wife, would feed me as they and their two children were living in the boatshed at the time.

Later I bought a two stroke motorbike and rode out through the sand hills to get there.

The Kurnell oil refinery was started during this period and if I stayed over at Val’s parents’ place (they were now living at Lakemba above a shop they had put Val into), I was able to hitch a ride on a workers’ bus which used to pick-up project labour on Canterbury Road and transport them all the way to Kurnell.

The old boatshed in Kurnell was where I later established my own boat building operation, again made possible by “Father” Bill.

At this point football again intervened and I went to Parkes for several months.

After football at Parkes I came back to Sydney with my wedding coming up in five months and went back to work at Fishers.

Val and I were married on the 12th February 1955 and had a couple of weeks honeymoon at Tweed Heads. I remember having to telephone my new father-in-law to ask for a loan of ten pounds until I got back to work, and I duly repaid him as soon as I could.

During this time I continued to work at Fishers Boatshed.

I now had a better motorbike and was able to ride to Kurnell and catch the ferry across to La Perouse. A couple of years went by then “Father” gave me the opportunity to set up on my own in his old shed at Kurnell for the weekly rent of two pounds. He also provided my first client, Jack Curtis, for whom I built a 30 foot fishing boat. After that, things rolled along. A 24 footer was my next order for another old customer of “Father’s”, Maurice Perronet, a Frenchman who had a copra plantation in the New Hebrides and for whom we had built some copra boats.

I stayed in the old shed for about 4 years and then bought a block of land in Ward Street on Bonna Point at Kurnell. Bill Dare built my own shed, originally 40 by 30 foot by 10 foot high. Over the years, this was extended to eventually finish up at 60 foot by 120 foot with a wall height of 22 feet and capable of accommodating four large boats at the one time. These were my headquarters for the next 20 years and in this time I built many boats of all sizes and shapes.

During the late seventies I built a 300 passenger ferry named the Royale for Charles Rosman, who had a ferry service on Sydney Harbour for many years. Charles was an old man who in his younger days was known as a Water Man. Before the Harbour Bridge was built he used to earn a living rowing people across the harbour from Milsons Point on the north side to Dawes Point on the south side, approximately where the Bridge is now situated.

He was of the old school and our business dealings were all done on a handshake; no written contract. That ferry today would cost in the vicinity of $2 million.

Trust on both sides was paramount and he was one of the world’s true gentlemen. I later built another ferry for him named Regal which was licensed to carry 200 passengers. Charles passed away in 2008, aged 106.

My initial contact with Charles was through the naval architect Warwick Hood, who earlier was the supervising architect on the “Norman T Allan”, a 60 foot search and rescue vessel that I built for the NSW Water Police.

I had previously built three 32 footers for the Water Police, Falcon, Stackpool and Windsor, all designed by Edwin Monk of Seattle. Another Monk design was a 66 footer for Keith Storey and because of this contact I was lucky enough to travel to the USA in 1972 to organise the plans for the job. While in Seattle I was able to visit Vancouver on a crisp spring day. It had a very pretty harbour with snow clad mountains in the background.

I also had the opportunity to visit some historic sights such as the Missouri, the ship that the document to end the war with Japan was signed on; everything was still in place as it was on the day of the surrender. On the way to America I also got to see the War Memorial at Pearl Harbour, the Arizona, which is a most moving place to visit, maintained as a virtual tomb. Travelling to the States was a most interesting experience.

In my boatbuilding days I employed some great tradesmen, none better than Ken Gervens, my foreman and right hand man; loyalty and integrity – Ken had it all. No task was too difficult for him. He passed away at the age of 70 years, far too early. He had earned retirement and deserved to have some time for himself.

Another was my old mate Cec Dobell, my painter for many years. He was an old navy man, an excellent tradie and a real character. Ron Bezette, Jerry Whyllie, Keith Oldrey, Garth Hopkins, Peter Brown, Wally Fuller, Max Toohey, Glen Gallaway, Don Nielsen, apprentices John Taper, Bobby Mostyn Milton, John O’Connell, Steve Miller and many others, that I just can’t recall names at this moment. I’m sorry if I’ve missed you out.

My crew were a great bunch of fellows and remembering my days at La Perouse I think I treated everyone at Kurnell in the same manner that I had been treated there. This led to a most harmonious situation with the best coming through in every man. One thing that I never ever did was ask a man to do a job that I couldn’t do myself.

My ambition when I went into business for myself was to be equal to or better than the top boat builders in New South Wales; the Halverson’s. It was setting the bar pretty high to expect to attain that level of acceptance in this particular field. If I didn’t get there, I think I got pretty close as the number of my boats distributed throughout the boating world grew over the years and I was the dominant builder of Game Fishing boats in NSW for quite a few years. We built custom timber boats, boats of all shapes and sizes, mostly designed by me. It is estimated that around 150 boats were built at my shed and the above people and many more had a hand in building them. Without them, there would not have been a Peter Bracken Boatbuilding Company, and I am very thankful for their support.

It was a very satisfying trade and I enjoyed every minute of my working life, but towards the end trouble loomed. In the 1970s a tariff reduction introduced by the Whitlam Labor Government caused my order book to start drying up and over time I was not able to keep all of the men on so a gradual decline began. This also coincided with the replacement of timber as the dominant boatbuilding material with plastic, aluminium, steel and even concrete. A mould could turn out a plastic boat hull in a short time but I could see little beauty in it.

As things were going downhill, one of my previous clients proposed that we build a cruising restaurant together to operate on Port Hacking, to be based at Cronulla Boatshed in Gunnamatta Bay. This sounded pretty good to me, so in 1979 I began another venture, the TSMV “Bass and Flinders”. Plans were drawn up and construction began on the 200 passenger charter boat at the old boatshed at 3 Ward Street Kurnell. This was the end of my boatbuilding career. The Bass and Flinders was the first and only metal boat that I ever built – my preference had always been timber as a construction material. It is definitely a much kinder material to work with.

On completion of the Bass, we took up operations on Port Hacking and the business powered along for a couple of years. We ran breakfast cruises on a Sunday, conferences, charters, wedding receptions, jazz cruises, lunches and all of the other functions that were carried out at restaurants or reception centres. The main attraction for the cruises was the beautiful Port Hacking River which we were able to navigate deep into the Royal National Park to Audley. It was all new to me but I soon adjusted to the new way of life. At times it was pretty hectic; in the first Christmas period that we operated we carried out 62 charters in 42 days.

Unfortunately the Port silted up and we were no longer able to navigate the River so we made the decision to relocate to Sydney Harbour and secured a berth at Rushcutters Bay. At the time, Sydney was saturated with Charter Boats and it was tough to keep the boat operating viably, so we finally made the decision to sell. Fortunately, a buyer, Ian Ford came along and took her off our hands, returning her to the Georges River and Botany Bay where I think she still operates today.

I had a great working life and am now retired and living happily at Mollymook on the NSW South Coast.

The Talmud teaches

Just before a baby is born,
An angel shows it everything there is to know and learn on Earth.

Then at the moment of birth
The angel touches the infant’s upper lip,
And the child forgets everything.

We spend the rest of our lives remembering
What the angel showed us.
I wish that when my time comes the angel will again touch my lip and I will get to do it all over again.