By KATH GANNAWAY
FRANK Colverson set out to write a book about, and for, his family.
What he wrote is much more than that.
Being Frank, which was launched at his Yarra Junction home in June, is a beautifully interwoven story of family and community life in Yarra Junction from the ’50s through to the current day.
The sub-title, Recollections of Life in Yarra Junction, sums it up.
Born at the local bush nursing hospital in on 22 April 1946, Frank has seen the town from the perspective of a boy growing up in a rural mill town, working on the local council and on the Upper Yarra Cemetery Trust, and as a highly respected and long-service CFA volunteer, including many years as captain of the Yarra Junction Fire Brigade.
He grew up with his parents Frank and Jennie, sister Eileen and brothers Bob and Jim.
Another sister, Jennie, died at around five-years old, just three months before Frank was born.
Frank started the book in 2007, writing by hand, and detailing as much as he could about his parents and then his own life journey.
“During the process of writing, I realised that my story would also become a story of Yarra Junction and its community, and would serve as a contribution to social history,” he said in his introduction to the book.
He was warned at the beginning, he said, that he would have to bare his soul a bit.
“I thought, I can’t see that really,” he said with a knowing smile, “but you get into something like this, you realise you have to say some things about yourself, and it’s a bit frightening at times,” he adds.
His story is in many ways typical and in many ways unique.
Frank shares the triumphs and the tragedy in his life, and in the community, with compelling frankness and engaging insights.
Covering topics as varied as his family history and a happy childhood, school days and rabbiting, teenage years, marriage, family it is broken up into mini-chapters with titles such as The Day it Snowed, Home Life, Food in the Fifties, Explosions, Fires, Dad’s Work and Other Interests, Guns and Near Misses, People and Places, Swamps and Possums, Hikes and Bikes, The Demon Drink and Taking Risks, Community Attitudes, Politics Again, Sandra Lynch (wife to be), A New Baby, A Tragic Day, Winds of Change, Ash Wednesday, Warburton Bushfire 1991, Social Life at the Depot, Daniel’s Death, An Award, and a Shooting Trip with Comforts.
There are many, many more with equally enticing titles.
On almost every one of the 600-odd pages, photographs, newspaper reports, maps and documents are reproduced to compliment the stories and add a visual dimension.
Frank said researching and writing the book was an enjoyable and rewarding process, and often an emotional process as well.
“It was an emotional trip, even going back over the good things,” he said.
The death of son Daniel in 2004 is written, as Frank recalls, with many tears and a heavy hand.
It’s a powerful recounting of an experience too many families have experienced over the years.
Of growing up in Yarra Junctin, Frank says ‘freedom’ is the word that best sums up an era when it seems there was less of everything, but somehow more of what made for a carefree childhood.
“We would wander up and down the roads, go down the street, get home a bit late to “where have you been”, but your parents knew where you had been, because everyone used to look out for you,” Frank said.
“There were less houses, less people, more bush, people stayed in the townships a lot longer, so most people knew their neighbours and everyone knew the local post master and you knew the local coppers.
“I think it was a lot safer environment then.”
If there was a downside, it was for those who dared to be different.
“It was difficult to be an individual.
“If you were slightly different, that was the end of it, but if you were where within the boundaries, it was all right,” Frank recalled.
Being Frank is self-published and available at Yarra Junction Post Office, K.G. Thomas Insurance in Warburton and at Upper Yarra Museum in Yarra Junction.
