Aitken Ray Muriel
The outstanding life of
RAYMOND AITKEN
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Memories of growing up in Nyabing
by Jenny Beahan (Nee Aitken) – Oct 2005
Dorothy Hewett, that quintessential Australian poet and writer, once commented that even though she had spent most of her adult years living away from Western Australia, still everything she wrote was somehow infused with the Western Australian landscape and with a Western Australian sensibility.
For me, nothing will ever take the place of the Salmon Gums with their long sleek trunks, wandering limbs and clusters of glittering leaves which shine in the sun like cut diamonds. I also vividly remember Nyabing’s big skies and vast horizons. As children we played in amongst the Salmon gums, watched ants scurry underneath them and parrots and lorikeets flit from one to another. They always seemed alive. The excitement of finding mushrooms the size of lunch plates, growing under the stand of gums just beyond the school-house yard is permanently etched in my visual memory.
In the mornings and on weekends we would all pick arms full of Hakea Laurina, their delicate pink and cream pin cushions, the bush’s very own sea anemones. Some of these were brought to school and put in a vase on the high ledge which ran around the back of the class room. This would be our daytime habitat, the nectar a source for George, our pet Purple-Crowned Lorikeet.
At home in the school house, George went to bed each night in the pocket of my father’s old khaki army jacket, always hung on the hook on the back of our kitchen door. George used to snuggle down in the pocket and make delightful little throaty noises when we wished him goodnight on our way to bed. At school he was everybody’s pet.
Muriel Aitken at Nyabing Primary School 1954
I have planted a Hakea Laurina on my street verge and am transported straight back to Nyabing each time it flowers. (Never as good or as loaded with blooms as Nyabing’s though)
Once, when the school superintendent was visiting, my father called on one of the class to demonstrate bird calls for our official visitor – amongst them of course, the trill of a Purple Crowned Lorikeet, with George performing superbly on queue. This subterfuge was much encouraged by my father, who forever after revelled in recounting how he and his clever Nyabing pupils, (aided and abetted, of course, by George), outwitted the Education Department’s Superintendent.
These were the days when the Principal never knew when the “Super” would swoop down and make a surprise inspection of the school. Being ready was important, as teacher and school were marked and scored This information was fed into a detailed report to the ‘Powers that be’ back at Education Department’s headquarters in Perth.
My parents, Ray and Muriel Aitken (Muriel Agnes Drake), both very committed teachers, always received straight A marks throughout their education careers. But like all teachers in the system, they were apprehensive nonetheless They hoped that there school and teaching efforts would be favourably received. More important to them, however, was invoking in their students, a love of knowledge and in interest in the world around them, including the students’ own local environment.
There was of course a ‘bush telegraph’ which operated between country towns on the progress of the inspector as he was then called. Tracking him involved quite a bit of collusion between the co-op manager, the post master’s office and the petrol station (all one and the same in the smaller country towns). They would pass down the line the tip-off that the ‘dreaded inspector/Super’ was on the way and had arrived in a particular town. School Inspectors were not, according to my mother, hard to spot. They were like like travelling salesmen and were in the habit of wearing a grey cotton dust coat, not unlike a traditional doctor’s coat. There was, of course, occasional confusion between school inspectors and salesman.
We town kids sometimes envied those living on farms, particularly when we knew that farm children knew how to drive cars and tractors or had horses. Most impressive of all, however, they watched sheep and cows giving birth. They ‘knew stuff’ but we were protected innocents; pretty tame I think the farm kids thought of us.
Children divining water besides school in 1954 with Ray Aitken
However we town kids made our own fun and some of it quite thrilling to us. In summer, on Sunday mornings we would creep out very early, before our parents were up and crawl along the drain pipe together into the government dam. My brother Craig was chief of operations and he always took with us a long rope. Once inside the perimeter of the dam he would rope up a tree, then to his waist. He would unfurl a further length and tie it around each of us in turn. One by one he would lower us into the dam. This was the closest thing to a swimming pool Nyabing had and even though none of us could swim, we gained huge fun from this dangerous Sunday ritual. We would squeal with cold, chase each other up and down the banks which were gritty and slippery and dangle our legs in the water between turns on the end of the rope. None of us could really swim properly.
Nyabing School House
It all came to a sudden end, when one day, we emerged on our hands and knees from the pipe to find the policeman (I am afraid I have forgotten his name, but his children were, of course, part of this expedition) in his uniform and my father next to him. He was whisking the school cane threateningly in the air and shouting at us that if we ever did such a dangerous thing again we would ‘KNOW ALL ABOUT IT!” The Implication to us was that we could even be locked up. Being quite young, we scared easily.
This was not our only dangerous pursuit, occasionally we would climb into the wheat silo and slide down the mountains of wheat which felt like silk – or was this Dumbleyung?? I think we did it in both places, but got sprung when my brother Craig’s eyes started to stream.
Nora Orht lived next door, across the way from the schoolhouse and could talk anybody into anything – she convinced me to jump off the roof of her chicken shed to see if I could fly. It didn’t work and my bruised and grazed knees proved it. These days our lives intersect quite regularly. I work in the area of arts and cultural policy and amongst other things, have established WA’s Public Art Scheme. Nora is the director of Perth Galleries and Sotheby’s agent in WA, so we regularly bump into each other at art openings and cultural events in the course of our works and often reminisce about our shared childhood in Nyabing.
Probably a lot of you who were at school at around this time will recall how at recess time my father would sometimes divide us up into two teams – cowboys and indians and let us loose in the bush surrounding the school. He would sit on a fence post, roll a cigarette (those were the days before smoking in front of children was outlawed) and adjudicate disputed over who had shot whom. Our guns and bows and arrows were imaginary – no real flying missiles were allowed as I remember it. He also did the final count of the ‘dead and alive’ and announced the winning team immediately after the bell to end recess was rung.
He taught the boys taxidermy and sent some of the specimens, mainly but not only, birds to his friend Glen Storr a Curator at the Western Australian Museum. Years later when I worked there I always meant to go down and check out the collections records with the terrestrial vertebrates’ curators, for specimens from Nyabing. I have no doubt that they are still there if someone were to check.
We were very proud; I remember a stuffed fox which adorned one of our classrooms for many years, the handiwork of one of the ‘big boys’. Someone, years later, reported to my father their dismay that a new Headmaster with no sense of history had thrown it out. I wonder if the amateur taxidermist who was so rightly proud of his handiwork and the principle in charge of the clean out, are at the reunion. If so, hello to both.
As I was a very competent reader I used to go to the school with my parents on particular evenings to ‘listen to reading’ and help with the English classes provided for people newly arrived from other countries.
My father had friends from all over the place and as a lover of exotic cuisine and diverse cultures, was quickly swapping recipes with many of the adult students. My mother found amongst them lovers of art and classical music. She had grown up with two sisters and a mother who had their own little chamber ensemble together with a neighbour, each playing a different musical instrument – piano, violin and cello. We have a lovely sepia photograph of my mother’s mother playing her cello in a musical group. She was a teacher and a great enthusiast of the power of knowledge.
Because of this background, and because my father couldn’t carry a tune and was virtually tone deaf, my mother was in charge of all things arts and cultural in the schools at which they both taught. She (Muriel) produced the plays, taught the singing and my father (Ray) confined himself to handicrafts of a practical kind, overlayed with heavy lacings of natural science and propagation techniques for crops and plants about which, he was highly knowledgeable. ‘Habitat’, the Australian Conservation Foundation Publication published a charming profile on his lifetime contribution to conservation.
One of the great fascinations of my childhood in Nyabing was seeing the newly slaughtered meat still jumping on the hooks in the shop. As a very little girl this made a deep impression on me. I also bought with my brother at the Co-op, a ceramic pepper, salt and mustard set in the shape of a lettuce, tomato and onion. This grand purchase, for which we saved for weeks, was for a birthday present for our mother and I note with some fascination that these and other similar objects are part of a ‘retrospective’ exhibition on Wembley ware shown at the Art Gallery of Western Australia [2].
Once I was hospitalised with severe tonsillitis on the Katanning Hospital. It was a traumatic event for me, as it would be for any four or five year old. I remember sobbing when my mother left because not only was she going to be so far away from me, I was terrified of one particular nurse who used to smack me because I refused to eat ice-cream. I was allergic to milk as a baby, but a four year old rarely has the vocabulary to explain this. What a relief when I was well enough to go home.
As we didn’t have a car of our own, a trip of this kind was quite an adventure. I still recall with fascination journeys to and from Nyabing to Katanning and the way the trees on either side of the road seemed to speed by us and making cathedral arches over the top of the moving car.
Most of all, I remember a lot of laughter, big splashes of sunlight, picnics in the bush, masses of orchids and making them into daisy chains (to be greatly frowned on today!), visiting friends on farms, lying in the scrub with my father watching curlews which always seem to have such beautifully made up eyes, mallee fowls building mounds, Mrs Tees talking parrot, which used to say “Got a bad cough old girl?” and then cough profusely itself, roos and rabbits in their hundreds, rainwater tanks and the company of happy and carefree children, for whom both the bush and the town were an endless playground.
Dick Hobley at a Mallee Hen’s Nest
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EULOGY
Man of many talents had adventurous spirit
The West Australian (Perth)
August 8, 2005 Monday METRO
By Len Findlay
RAYMOND ALEXANDER AITKEN
Born: Cloverdale, November 1915
Died: Perth, July, 2005
Xanana Gusmao
To our mate Ray Aitken, Digger, Comrade and Friend.
You go with our love and eternal gratitude.
May you rest in peace.
Xanana Gusmao, President of Timor-Leste,
and Kirsty Gusmao
That the above, from the President of Timor-Leste, was read out at Ray Aitken’s funeral says a lot about the man. At least, it says a lot about one dimension of him, for Ray Aitken was a man of many parts and much loved for all of them.
A teacher, remembered 60 years on by students. A soldier, admired by colleagues. A friend to East Timor (Timor-Leste). An ornithologist. A naturalist. A conservationist. A businessman. Ray Aitken was all of these things. He was also a man of great generosity and a philanthropist, a fact he never wanted or needed acknowledged.
Daughter Jenny Beahan said that a thoughtful friend had suggested he was like a butterfly flying free. “But a butterfly might be a smidgin too quiet and not quite enough flash and dash for such a spirited and larger than life man,” she replied. “Perhaps a voluble wattle bird . . . or a brilliant 28 parrot – a chatterer, a seed cruncher and a group gatherer . . . flashing across a big Australian sky.“
Ray Aitken
He was also a brave man, in the fullest sense of the word. Having served in Timor as a commando with the 2/2nd Independent Company during World War II, Ray spent much of the rest of his life trying – with others – to aid the new country of East Timor gain independence and then flourish.
Last September, three days after surgery and accompanied by Jenny and friend Graham Williams, he insisted on flying once more to East Timor. He was 88 but unstoppable. Little wonder he was asked to stay with the President and his Australian-born wife, who like their country folk, called him Raymondo.
Ray Aitken’s background was Scottish-Irish. His father, Andrew, was one of five brothers who were born in New Zealand to Scottish parents and moved to Western Australia in the mid-1890s. His mother, Lydie Lillian Osborn, was from Irish stock.
The pair had three daughters, Margaret Alice, Jean Frances Lillian and Doreen Pearl, before Ray arrived, on November 7, 1915. Ray’s uncle Alex, his father’s brother, introduced him to a lifelong love of the bush and its flora and fauna.
Ray attended Perth Boys School where he shared a desk with celebrated WA writer Tom Hungerford and the pair both served, though not together, in New Guinea in 1944-45 after Ray’s stint in Timor.
The Binjarab people used to camp on the Cloverdale open spaces near the Aitken home and his parents allowed them to take him to Pinjarra for a few days.
When he was teaching in the Wheatbelt (and later as principal at Coolbinia Primary School), he would take the whole school out to the bush and have contests to find honey, yams, the first possum sighting or animal tracks. The indigenous pupils regularly won these and would return as the heroes of the trip.
One of his pupils, Rodney Chandler, was taught by Ray back in 1937 and said: “My three and a half years being taught by him left a lasting impression on me. His zest for teaching us the things that would have a lasting impact on us was remarkable.
“Ray was a great storyteller. He told us stories of his time with old school mates Harry Butler, Vincent Serventy and several others.“
His school won first prize for its display at the Perth Royal Show two years running, the entry being guided by Ray. He served on many committees and boards, using his natural gifts as a botanist, scientist and educator to conserve species and improve standards across a range of fields.
It was in 1935 that he met Muriel Agnes Drake at Claremont Teachers College and the pair married. Daughter Jenny was followed by son Craig, who with his wife Sandra, have won a gold medal for the first vintage of their wine. Ray, who loved a good wine, would have approved. Jenny shared Ray’s passion for education and has been innovative in education and the arts.
Ray’s friend and fellow educator, Ross Latham, said: “He was a dynamic force in the education world. He was a gifted teacher and an outstanding administrator and education leader. Many of us who have an abiding interest in native plants caught the bug from Ray Aitken.”
He was always a most approachable man but never suffered fools gladly as any overt monarchist or opponent of his campaign to have the Australian Government repay what he saw as a war debt to East Timor, found out.
His great friend, writer, scientist and curator of history in the WA Museum, David Hutchison, said: “On the last occasion we were with him . . . he spoke of his disgust with the way the Federal Government was treating the East Timorese over the sharing of the oil beneath the Timor Sea.“
But he also remembered: “He was a large man in every sense: large of frame, large and generous of heart and mind.“
After the war, Ray returned to civilian life and education. He took on a position as a district superintendent but would not make it permanent because he wished to stay close to practical work with schools. He was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for his efforts.
He founded the Wildflower Nursery at Wanneroo with good friend Les Wende and it became the largest of its type, employing more than 100 people at one time. Ray served on many committees in this area and was awarded the first life membership of the Royal Association of Agriculturalists and was a life member of Birds Australia.
The only drawback to his expeditions in the north of WA, as he sought new species, was that his radio reception would drop out during his beloved cricket broadcasts.
So respected was he as an ornithologist that Ray was chosen to guide the visit of the celebrated Sir Peter Scott when he visited WA.
Birds Australia, the Gould League of Bird Lovers, WA Wildlife Society, WA Naturalists Club and the Australian Conservation Foundation were some of the organisations which benefited from his expertise. He was also an active member of the 2/2nd Association [2].
He died on July 10, five years after Muriel, leaving Jenny, son Craig, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. All love nature and great-grandson Connor, just six, already is showing signs of studying plants.
Grand-daughter Kate Beahan, Jenny’s daughter who is an actress, is in Canada and the US filming The Wicker Man with Nicolas Cage. She remembers how her grandfather introduced her to exotic foods and laughed when she tried curries that were too hot for her palate. “But he loved anyone who attempted the adventure,” she said.
Ray Aitken tried more adventures than most.
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