Hanging with Brett Whiteley – a boyhood idyll
This edited extract forms part of a memoir written by John Wilson. John grew up in Longueville and later raised his family there. John eloquently recounts growing up in the area alongside his childhood friend Brett Whiteley.
In the Longueville of my childhood – a Sydney harbourside village in those days – Brett Whiteley, my closest friend, was a tiny legend. For years, people told stories of his mischief . . . like the time he kidnapped a neighbour’s cat and sent a ransom note demanding money for its return. The Longueville of the 1940s and 1950s was placid, quiet, secret. Nothing much ever changed. But then, one day, another scandal erupted. Down on Mary Street, Mrs Aspinal went to collect her daily loaf from the kitchen servery to find that most of it had gone. Someone had scooped out the warm centre to leave behind a hollowed crust. 8 TVO MARCH 2019
Brett in the billycart made by his father Clem, which was ‘just like a real racing car’. Photo: Ian MacTavish
The next day it happened again. Same theft, same MO. Mrs Aspinal was determined to catch the thief so next morning, concealed by a kitchen curtain, she lay in wait as the baker arrived. Slam! went the servery door as he left the new-baked bread. In minutes, as his van purred away, a child with a topping of Pre-Raphaelite golden curls crept from hiding, lifted the loaf and quickly disappeared into the bushes. Five minutes later, the cherub reappeared and replaced the nowhollowed shell. Mrs Aspinal had her thief.
Brett was the wild child over whom the district’s mothers tut-tutted, worried – and fed.
That night she wrote a note in large letters and left it in the servery: “Dear Brett, Please do not steal my bread. If you would like some, knock on the door and I will give you a piece. Mrs. Aspinal.” The next day the note was gone and another left in its place. In childish hand, it read: “It wasn’t me Mrs Aspinal.” Funny, outrageous and, for someone so clever, spectacularly naive. That was Brett, the same child who thought the goldfish in neighbours’ ponds were made of real gold and if you caught them, you’d be rich. He was the child who would set alight the letterboxes of people he didn’t like and who had the district in a panic when he disappeared and was found riding the ferry wash under the wharf in a stolen canoe. “God, he was a handful,” said my mother.
