Some seventeen years ago I wrote about my time at Barton House here, closing with the words, "If you were at one time or another an 'inmate' of Barton House and have pictures and memories to share, please email me this very moment at riverbendnelligen@mail.com! I shall collect all comments and snaps on this website which, hopefully, will grow as time goes on."
Seventeen years is a long time to wait but it has paid off handsomely with this very witty and insightful reply from another former "inmate":
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Dear Peter, I was looking on line to see if there was anything on Barton House and I read with great interest and amusement of your memories of your time there back in the late sixties. [click here] I arrived there in early 1972 as a 19-year-old and departed in 1975 when the announcement was made that the place was closing. Like all new arrivals I had to share a room with another bloke for three months before I earned the right to a single room. My first three months was in room 3 sharing with a bloke who never washed his clothes. He had one pair of trousers, five Pelaco shirts, all different colours and a couple of pairs of socks which were rotated one day on, one day off. The off-day pair was methodically hung by pegs on a coat hanger in front of the open window, and if the wind was blowing in, the room stank like a dead polecat. The shirts were also rotated Monday to Friday and repeated week after week. I pitied his workmates, because I only had to put up with the smell of sweat before the shirt was hung up in the cupboard. I remember all-night euchre card games for 5c a winning hand which we would play in the meeting room across from Peter Chek's office, usually about a dozen of us. We'd start about 8pm Saturday night and adjourn for breakfast on Sunday morning. We would rock up to the Wello with a $2-note, which was enough to get a 19-year-old pissed and still have enough for a pie with chips and peas.
 If you got on the right side of Luchio and Bosco, the chefs, you could get a second piece of sponge cake. I didn't like cake, but an old lady who I shared the lunchroom with at work did. When I walked in she would say, 'Where's my sponge?' Full board was $17 per week, which included three meals per day, clean sheet weekly and electricity included. The communal toilets and showers could be a problem because people upstairs had hot-water issues and would use the bathrooms downstairs. You would have to wear thongs when showering to avoid tinea and you would have to crouch on the toilet seat to avoid being attacked by the crabs which they said could jump quite a long way. I always had problems in the TV room; if it wasn’t some sheila trying to crack onto me (it was relentless), it was the fixation with Channel 7. Everything that I liked was on Channel 3. So I was forced to run over to Lawley House to watch 'Are you Being Served' on a Thursday night because the public servants seemed to share my type of humour. But it was a very happy three years, and I have many fond memories, which will stay with me for ever. Yours sincerely Paul |
Well, Paul, today being Thursday and just in case you were too busy with the sheilas in Barton House's TV lounge and missed it, here's episode 1 of season 2 of your favourite show "Are You Being Served?"
Thank you for sharing those memories with me and my readers, Paul. They will stay with me forever as well - especially those rotating socks.
P.S. Paul, who still lives in Canberra, has since phoned me at my hide-away on the banks of the Clyde river at Nelligen where I've lived since my return to Australia. It felt as though we had known each other all our lives. We haven't! I left Barton House in 1967 - and once again, after a short stint, in 1969 - before Paul moved into Barton House in 1972 to have his life irrevocably shaped by the experience just as it has mine.
