Thanks Bill enjoyed that I suppose identify with it -we used as kids get a 
job of collecting up deckchairs on beaches and always tried -sometimes 
successfully found coins in the sand !!

-----Original Message----- 
From: Bill Wootton
Sent: Tuesday, July 5, 2016 11:34 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Not there any more

The olive paint-flaked weatherboard house was
wedged between St Pius Catholic Primary School
and East Ivanhoe State School number 4386.

Old Mr Wakeman lived there, wild-haired,
grumpy state school caretaker
whose son John was in my grade.

Imagine now someone suggesting
building attached premises to schools
for live-in caretakers and their families.

But it worked. We all knew Old Wakeman
had eyes over the whole property.
Maintained it, kept it clean.

Metal bins full of lunch scraps he'd empty
into the 'burner' as we termed the brick
incinerator on school grounds between

the wooden library/tuckshop building
and Wakeman's backyard. Smoke
billowed each night.

Come morning recess we'd pounce.
Three or four of us regularly. Down
on our knees with sticks, raking

ash from under the burner,
slow sifting for careless treasure.
Coins. Mostly pennies, halfpennies.

But sometimes the odd little threepence
or sixpence with its kangaroo/emu
coat of arms. And once, John Bright

hit the jackpot with a blackened shilling,
that distinctive ram's head silvering up
nicely with a bit of spit and hanky rubbing.

The coins cropped up because slack kids
failed to check for change in paper bags
with their tuckshop lunch orders.

The best you could hope for was change
from a two-bob bit. Especially if
they only ordered one thing.

Old Wakeman knew what we were up to.
And he'd come charging out to shoo
us away, hating the strewn ash piles

we left on the concrete apron in front
of the burner. Sometimes it was lumpy
stuff. Best was fine, powdery ash,

so available of quick coin reveals.
Some tuck-shop ladies turned up
their noses at our black bounty.

But most clanked our coinage
and served us Chocolate Royals
which we promptly smashed

on our foreheads before peeling
off chocolate to reveal marshmallow
on top of jam biscuit. Or Sunnyboys,

sweet orange cordial in a tetrahedonal
tetra pak, also available frozen,
the better for lasting longer.

1966 saw decimal coinage take over
but no one slipped a new silver fifty
in their lunch order as far as we knew.

Not that it stopped us trying to suck
in gullible burner newcomers:
'Uh huh, a shifty schent shit!'

Both schools still exist, on Robin Hood
Road, East Ivanhoe but in between,
where the caretaker's house stood,

gleams a massive steel stadium,
a facility perhaps shared. And who
cleans it is anybody's business.

bw