ABOUT ME

Stuart High School

Firstly I will introduce myself. I am Malcolm Lack 40 years old and I live in Fulham, South West London, England. London has been my home for the last 10 years.

My birthplace is Crewe, Cheshire in the mid north of England. This was my home until my family emigrated to Australia in 1967. My dad found employment with the BHP (Broken Hill Proprietry Co. Ltd), a large industrial and mining organisation. We were given a house in a small town called Whyalla, which at the time was a young booming city with a large migrant population. The house we lived in was on the edge of town and we had no hard roads, just dirt tracks. Their were no lawns in the gardens and the end of our street was bush (the outback) The climate is very dry and every time there was a slight breeze on a hot day we suffered from whirlwinds. (miniture tornadoes). These whirlwinds just threw dust everywhere, it was like living in the Sahara Desert. My mum tried in vain to keep the house clean, but every day saw a fresh layer of dust. Just to make matters worse the land all around was very sandy and loose. We called it BULL DUST. It was a hard life for my mum. As kids myself and brother found it a great adventure, my sister was only 3 at the time so she spent most of this time indoors. Dad was at work every day so he saw little of the tough life at home. Mum was upset because she left her friends and family in England and when she wasn't fighting the dust she was crying to go home. A lot of people who came with us on the ship had only lasted a few weeks before packing up and going somewhere else. Mostly back to their country of origin. My brother and I started going to school. We went to Scott Street Primary School which was modern and it had airconditioning in the classrooms. It was a great relief to get out of the heat, which was quite often in the 40's celsius.

On weekends my brother,our mates and myself would venture out into the bush. This was not bad going considring we were all under ten years old. We would always come back with lizards and other unspeakable creepy crawlies that used to give mum the shivers. We would keep the lizards in the laundry (utility room) and feed them insects and baby food. After a couple of years we managed to by one of those above ground swimming pools with plastic liner. This was great until the liner perished. mind you, we put the wall of the pool to good use. It became our reptile pit - much to my mums horror. Instead of just bringing lizards home we started bringing snakes aswell. My dad was like the local snake catcher/destroyer. Because of our proximity to the bush we always had snakes in the garden. One particular day my mum went out the front door and as she opened the flyscreen door it knocked a brown snake (deadly poisenous) off the front porch. Fortunately dad was home so it met a timely death. ( before any of the family did)

ARIAL VIEW OF WHYALLA - LOOKING EAST

When I was 13 I went to Stuart High School. This was a brand new school and the first high school in South Australia to be built with airconditioning. Unfortunately the year it was supposed to be open we had nearly 8" of rain in a couple of days and it was flooded out. The annual rainfall for the area is about 10". Consequently the school had to have major repairs and this delayed our attendance. By now mum had settled in and my grandparents - on my dads side had moved over from England aswell. They lived just a few streets from us. My uncle was only 3 years older than me so we hung out together. This included our forays into the bush. One day were were riding our bikes along a dirt track just outside the town when we came across this Emu (large flightless bird, similar to an Ostrich) It was jus minding its own business grazing on the scrub. So being boys we started throwing stones at it. Every now and then it would just look up but on the whole it just ignored us and carried on eating. That is until I hit the thing on the beak. It started making an awful sound (much like blowing down the neck of a bottle) To say the least the bird was upset. I could swear its eyes narrowed before it made a thundering charge at us. These birds have got massive claws and you don't really want to mess with them. We broke all land speed records getting the hell out of their, I'm sure. By the way it didn't catch us.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT - THIS IS A BRONZE WHALER SHARK

On weekends myself and few mates used to go swimming in the shipyard basin. There were lots of rocks and the water is very clear and deep. South Australia is known for its sharks and we used to get our fair share of sightings. Particularly around the shipyard. They would follow the ships in feeding off the slops thrown over the side. One Saturday afternoon we went fishing for snapper (a nice eating fish) We set our rods and then went snorkling. It was a hot day so we spent a lot of time in the water. We decided to get out and check our lines. We hadn't caught anything and were taking off our flippers and masks when one of the gang saw something in the water. We all looked on as a large silvery shadow glided by not more than 10 feet from where we were standing, and only a few feet beneath the surface. We all decided it was a Bronze Whaler shark about 8' long and that none of us would go back in the water. We had no idea it had been in the vicinity but we certainly didn't catch any snapper that day (the sharks favourite food). I think our timing to check our lines was spot on.

Another place we used t go was Mount Laura, a large hill just to the north west of the city. As always it was bikes that provided the transport. The hill had a steep track running in a big curve down its side, around a dis-used chalk quarry. We would push our bikes up to the top and freewheel down. An exceedingly dangerous passtime but also great fun. Another source of enjoyment was taboganing down the face of the quarry on sheets of corrugated iron. We always went home with various sorts of minor injuries and torn clothing. As usual I think the biggest danger was facing mum when we eventually did go home. Mount Laura provided a great source of reptiles for our reptile pit. In fact we got so many up there we nicknamed it Lizard Valley.

On Sundays if dad wasn't working we used to drive to a place called Pt. Lowly. There is a light house there and lots of fishing shacks. Again because of the nature of the place it was teaming with sharks. However, that never seemed to put us swimming. We could catch big snapper from the rocks, many weighing over 16lb. We also caught some small sharks. The big ones just ripped your line and took the bait.

When I was 16 years old some of my mates were leaving school and getting apprenticeships at the BHP. They were starting to earn money and buying cars and motorbikes. This was a difficult time for me because I couldn't decide whether to stay at school or get a job. I was offered a job as an apprentice mechanic at the BHP but I decided against it. I was interested in joining the navy. I had lived close to the sea and and I loved boats but I still couldn't decide. Then out of the blue two recruiting officers for the South Australian Police showed up at our school. We watched a couple of short films and they told us what a great life we could have as police officers. That did it. I was hooked and as soon as I was 17 I joined the Police and moved to Adelaide.

More recently I have become more interested and actively involved in the Avian area (Birds) I am actively involved in a rescue center for tropical birds in the United States. It is a Home run Centre Sir Orville & Kate's Zoo & Sanctuary. You can link there directly via the header graphic below