Alf Taylor spent his childhood growing up in New Norcia Mission, Western Australia, and upon leaving he worked around Perth and Geraldton as a seasonal farm worker, before he joined the Armed Forces. After a marriage, seven children and a divorce, Alf found his voice as a writer and poet.
Today, we have an excerpt on the blog from the new memoir by Alf Taylor — God, the Devil and Me — which tells of the life and desperation of the young children forced into the care of the Spanish Nuns and Brothers who ran the New Norcia Mission. Read on …
Alf Taylor
At the Door
Another incident involved a few of us boys falling through a door – choo, that was shame. This brother invited ladies into his office and we were at that age when we knew that when a man and woman get behind closed doors, it does not necessarily mean they were about to talk of Jesus, the weather, Mother England or even Mary, Jesus Christ’s Mother. I just happened to walk around the corner and caught this boy peering through the keyhole of this brother’s office door, a double door that swung inwards towards the office. I knew he was up to no good as I crept towards him and put my hand on his shoulder, which startled him. He realised it was me and put his finger to his lips to be quiet and indicated by his hands that they were muntjin’ inside. I peered inside through the keyhole and couldn’t see them. There was a lounge suite blocking the view and this other kid had the better view; he and I were jostling for a better position, bumping our heads together and snarling into each other’s face with no words being spoken. The next minute, there were five or six boys all pushing at each other to take a peek through these keyholes.
Eventually me and this other kid got a keyhole each and this other boy put his hands on the doorknob. Well, I couldn’t see nothing but there were four other heads pressing into our heads. I don’t know how it happened but these two big doors just flung themselves open and there were six of us boys all lying on top of each other and trying to get out of the office together. Choo, pandemonium was everywhere – the brother, and his lady and us kids trying to get off the floor, onto our feet and make a bolt for it, which we eventually did and headed way up the back. Questions were flying thick and fast – all I heard was, ‘You see him muntjin’?’ or ‘Um, sure he was muntjin’ her’ or ‘I dunno, everybody fell on me.’ When I was asked, all I said was, ‘I never saw a thing. I just wanted to get out.’
At teatime we were given six cuts across the hand for being silly little boys. But the yarns that were flying around the Boys House were rippers. One boy said he saw legs in the air but he didn’t know whose legs it was in the air. Another said he saw the brother on top of this lady. Another saw this lady run naked from the office. I couldn’t offer a story of any kind even if I made one up. To be quite honest, I didn’t see a thing.
I mean, those were the things we had to put up with during our adolescent years. In the eyes of these religious people, we were still children, but to us, our bodies were changing. We were caught, or should I say, I was wanting to stay in the eyes of God as one of his little children. But as you approach your teens, your body has a mind of its own. I know, because I nearly shit myself when I found out that I was growing pubic hair on myself. We weren’t told of these things, and when I’d take a shower with the rest of the boys, I would hide myself, thinking I was unnatural or it was God’s way of punishing us for all the sins we’d committed against him and for beginning to take notice of the girls, and that something was happening to their bodies too. That was to become very frustrating and also very confusing. We had no one to talk to about the changes in our bodies, and girls were forever in my mind. Gone were days of rescuing my ebony maidens from the blazing castles – now I was making hot passionate love to my coffee-coloured beauty on the highest cloud in earth’s atmosphere with the lightning and thunder exploding in our young bodies.
—God, the Devil and Me by Alf Taylor (Magabala Books) is out now.
God, the Devil and Me
In this unique and highly entertaining autobiography, Alf Taylor chronicles his life growing up in the infamous New Norcia Mission, north of Perth in the fifties and sixties.
At once darkly humorous and achingly tragic, God, The Devil and Me tells of the life and desperation of the young children forced into the care of the Spanish Nuns and Brothers who ran the Mission. Their lives made up of varying degrees of cruelty and punishments, these children were the 'little black devils' that God and religion forgot...
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