Remembering Agnes

Agnes emigrated to Australia from Scotland in the 1970s. She was single but she had been in a relationship with someone called Bob. She knocked several years off her age and obtained work as a chambermaid at the Windsor Hotel, yes a posh Melbourne hotel and it still is. 

Mid 1970s she joined the tramways as a conductor at South Melbourne tram depot where she and Ray met and they became life long friends.

She spoke with what I now know as a posh Scottish accent, and it was magical to hear her speak. 

She lived in a rented flat in a block called Cremorne Court on the extremely busy Punt Road, Richmond.

She and Ray eventually became assistant conductors, boarding busy trams to assist with collecting fares, but they managed to sneak time off for coffee and shopping, never being discovered missing by their supervisors Misters Jekyll and Hyde, as they called them. In the afternoon they would be stationed in Russell Street to sell tickets to the queues waiting to board tramway buses towards Doncaster and Templestowe.  They carried a machine that dispensed tickets with the wind of a handle. This meant the buses could quickly load as the driver did not have to take fares, and the bus would be smartly away. Rinse and repeat for the a couple of hours.

She retired at government pension age, then perhaps 63 for women and at the urging of the union, received compensation for her chest and breathing issues caused by inhaling diesel fumes from the the buses, never mind that she smoked forty cigarettes a day. Along with the then retirement gratuity scheme, she had enough money to buy a modest flat in Murrumbeena. 

We helped Agnes move, and she was a hoarder and a voracious reader. There were even books stacked in her toilet. We got rid of so much of her hoardings, but I can't remember how. 

She was very happy in her Murrumbeena flat, and unless someone invited her out, she was content at home with her cigarettes and books. She did stop hoarding once she moved. She had less opportunity to do so where she now lived as there weren't all the Richmond shops nearby. 

At our home in Prosper Parade, Glen Iris, we were hosting a family barbeque, with us all sitting out on the timber decking under the shade of the massive jacaranda tree, growing in our neighbour's back yard.

We had to come together to celebrate my birthday. Simultaneously, the fat in the barbeque caught fire with flames a metre high and the telephone rang. Ray answered the phone while I and my step father dealt with the fire. 

The phone call was from a neighbour of Agnes, who remarked that he hadn't seen her around for a couple of days and she wasn't answering her phone. Ray called the police, who forced an entry and Agnes was found dead in a lounge chair with a book on her knee. 

Ray had met Agnes' sister, who lived on Bribie Island off the Queensland coast.  The sister immediately cranked up when informed and said, Agnes has a will and her money and property are left to me. I know Agnes had a sister still in Scotland, so I am not sure why she wasn't due something. But isn't that just so sad that it was the first thing the sister said, and she was very aggressive towards Ray, as if he was going to steal from Agnes.

I think that would have been about 1991.

Along with her friend, Pat O'Haire, who lived in a lovely flat overlooking Hedgeley Dene Gardens in Malvern, Ray and I scattered Agnes' ashes in the rose garden at Springvale Crematorium. Pat was a very funny woman and there was much hilarity as Agnes' ashes were thrown into the wind, rather than downwind.

So here's to Agnes, and wouldn't you like someone to compose almost an OB about 35 years after you died. I found all these when sorting through Ray's stuff after he died. 

With George Harvey, a Mormon and not gay as the church would have disapproved, but he was as camp as a tent.