This is a story about my cousin and how much he loved Mount Crosby. Steve was a couple of years younger than me and the second of two boys that lived in the second house on the left. He liked bicycles, climbing things and anything causable of giggles.
We spent our early school days in search of these before school, at lunch time, and after school, eventually getting good at finding them before the bell called time or I had to go home. One lunchtime, shortly after the department built a new four strand wire fence around the school’s perimeter, we found that the combination of the newly tensioned top-wire and nearby jungle vines (probably Parsonsia straminea or Cissus antarctica) practically invented a game by itself. We could spring out from the fence and swing back to roost in a way that seemed hilarious at the time. In fact, it was so much fun that time stopped for us and we kept on swinging and giggling well after all the other children heeded the bell and settled into something unfunny, like copybook or spelling.
About half an hour after we were late, relativity was restored by the appearance of a grade four kid seconded to a search and recover mission by the headmaster (about twenty percent of grades three and five had gone missing).
To be honest, I don’t give that grade four beadle too much credit for finding us – I mean we were making jungle calls like Tarzan and laughing so heartily that the top-wire had become our little world – until we saw the headmasters proxy arrive and everything seemed suddenly quiet and uncomfortably late.
“You guys are in big trouble”, said the beadle in a most discouraging way, considering the offence was just 30 minutes of unscheduled laughter over a period of seven years. Anyway, Sir wished to see us in the office, according to the scout. And that would be in the same office as the cane and a million extra spelling words, I supposed.

Now, I had walked and skipped and run my cheerful way up from the furthest end of the school grounds about a thousand times without the slightest effort, but this time the walk was a lamentable regret. My heart, which moments ago had revelled in the serendipity of wire and vines, dropped so hard it talked my stomach and legs into not working properly. There were a lot of steps and each one was taking me closer to something a lot less funny.
Along the bush path and up the steps went the accused. Along the verandah and into the office, at which point our guide removed himself to the classroom and the headmaster sat looking straight at my cousin and I. Our mouths were as straight as a ruler. We weren’t going to find any giggles in here.
A few very long seconds passed and then a kind thing happened. The headmaster, gauging no one else could hear his verdict, gave us a knowing look and raised his arm to point at the classroom and, as he lowered it, patted my spiky head as if to say “nothing”.
After school, we slapped our backs and giggled about how this must be kept a secret.
On other days we climbed trees, made cubby houses, played tennis, rode our bikes and I suppose you remember the drum roll. We went through the grades and these good-humour days peeled away, without us knowing that one day Steve would show us how much it all meant to him.
This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of North Pine Dam and water treatment works; the first major expansion of Brisbane’s water supply separate to Mount Crosby. It’s also the fifty-second anniversary of the top-wire and vine du solei that marked, I think, the high-tide of our Mount Crosby days, because his dad had taken a job where the new plant was being built and they upped stumps and moved to Kallangur in ‘74.

Now I have no disrespect for Kallangur but it wasn’t Mount Crosby and it certainly had no vines. I’m sure Steve noticed this, too. He was about eleven years old and in a strange place. Well, at least he had his Malvern Star and the flat bitumen roads were good for riding. I imagine it was while out riding and finding how freely he glid, that he formulated an epic plan.
At Mount Crosby, fifty miles away, it was a sunny weekend afternoon. No business was planned for that year, the shop was shut, and leaves and litter rustled in tune with the wind. There was nothing to suggest anything special was going to happen until “jink-a-dink” Steve’s bike rolled into town, no gears, no water bottle – and what’s more, Steve was on it, no hat.
He was headed for Stumers Road (there’s a lot of vine down that way) and he probably hadn’t much of a plan after that, so a call was made to my uncle Herbie on the northside and he worked out his plan for him. I didn’t see the next part, but I hope when my uncle saw Steve, he gave him a stern look as he raised his arm to point at the Kingswood and then rubbed Steve’s spiky head, before transporting him back to Kallangur.
I saw a lot less of Steve after that.
*Sir is like the phantom - there are generations of Sirs. This one is the venerable Mr John St Pierre, who was responsible for many advances at the school, including creation of the National Park in which vines grew aplenty, awaiting Steve and I]. The image is courtesy of Mrs Marion Mahoney nee Miss Bourke, schoolteacher and idol to many.
A request: If you have old Mount Crosby school photos (or old Mount Crosby photos of any type, really) the Historical Society would love you to send a digital copy and get yourself preserved in the Collection.
Great tagline Colin.