It was on one of my extended retreats from the Eastern States, back to the real Australia in the West, that I began to write about my life. That was in the early eighties. By the time I got up to about Chapter Eight, I thought: "This unhappy man has had a very happy life - God has been very good to this Godless man." So I filed the manuscript under "G" and forgot about it for nearly ten years. Suddenly a co-author appeared with the cybernetic instruments and the inspirational discipline to make the rest of my story possible.
As I have looked forward and backward over my life to this moment, I have revealed some of my secrets, my irregular successes and failures. I have been embarrassed, humiliated, inspired and torpedoed. Still I continue to bounce between East and West and treat the rest of the country as though it doesn't exist. One thing is certain, however. Whatever lies between the two extremities of our land, the pieces of it I know convince me that there is no place like Australia and it's too late for me to worry too much that we stole it.
Memories of Youth
My father's father was Cap'n “Jack” Penberthy, who shipped to the Moonta mines on Spencer's Gulf, South Australia, some time in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Cornish copper mines had been worked out and, as a result, Cornish miners migrated to Australia and formed almost the entire population of Moonta, Kadina and Wallaroo. Every man was a Cousin Jack and they were more Cornish than those who had stayed in Cornwall. The manager of every pit was a Cap'n and Cap'n Penberthy's sons worked in the mines with him. At the age of fourteen my father pushed a barrow of rocks, five days a week, eight hours a day, his skinny legs buckling under the load.
All this hard work was alleviated by an abundance of music. The Cornish were very artistic. My grandfather played the violin, Uncle Charlie the tuba, Uncle Harry the trumpet and Aunt Lydia the organ. These were the children of Cap'n Penberthy and his second wife, Mary. When his first wife died, the mining captain married the maidservant. Mary was my grandmother.
I have every reason to believe that Grandma was part Aboriginal, so perhaps I have some real Australian blood in my veins. Grandma had skinny legs and a far-away look in her eyes. She was dark and at the age of 83, when she had lost her memory, she'd go walkabout for twenty-six miles almost every day and always found her way home. The children of the first marriage became wealthy, those of the second remained poverty-stricken. The genes we inherited from our grandmother were possibly the better.
My father was Albert Sidney Penberthy, the favourite of his mother. He was darkly handsome all his life. When young, he looked a bit like Laurence Olivier. I thought he was extraordinarily good and kind as well. His harmonious marriage to my mother may have accounted for some of his good nature. It was strange that a man so handsome and attractive should be gifted in many other ways as well. If Leonardo da Vinci was a universal genius, so was Albert Sidney Penberthy. He succeeded brilliantly at everything he attempted.
His best talents were in music and preaching. One of his relatives was the English actor, Henry Irving. I doubt that Irving was more talented or better looking. My father had every worthwhile attribute and yet he died poor and comparatively unknown, except in the Salvation Army - and they soon forgot him. They wrote no books about him.
A band march, which he composed, is still in their music books; his many songs are never sung. He was the most talented musician I have ever met but he was self-trained. He was an electrician, an inventor and a builder, a skilled gardener, nurseryman and orchardist. Every time he preached, the biggest Salvation Army halls were packed and at the climax of his sermons, many women and some of the men were known to weep.
My father played the clarinet, the saxophone, piano, organ, strings, brass and all sorts of wind instruments. He spent much of his small pay on musical instruments and the house was full of them. It is not surprising that my sisters and brother were influenced. Before he left Moonta he could play the clarinet louder and faster than anyone else in South Australia, according to Uncle Charlie. At the prime of his life, he was recognised as the world's best exponent of the big English concertina. He met Alexander Prince, the king of concertina players. They played for each other. "You are the best in the world," Prince said.
He could make one weep with either his concertina‑playing or his preaching. Sometimes he would put his two outstanding skills together - at a Sunday night Salvation Army meeting - right at the spot where sinners are invited to come to the "Mercy Seat". He talked about the "Rich Young Ruler" who came to Jesus and knelt before him. He would run forward, pretending to be the young ruler, drop to his knees and implore: "What must I do to be saved?" Then he would stand up and take the place of Jesus, look down with great love, turn to the congregation and say: "And Jesus loved the young man for he was beautiful" - pause and go on: "Give all thou hast to the poor and follow me". Eloquent silence. Then Jesus - I mean my father - would look down sadly, pause again and say: "And the young man walked away. His name is never mentioned in history again." Next, longest pause of all, one could feel the choking sobs, Dad would turn to the Congregation: "My friends, will you follow Jesus, or will you turn your back and walk away?" Finally he would grab his huge English concertina, let organ-like emotive sonorities echo through the hall and lead the congregation in one or other of the Salvation Army's most moving choruses.
At the Army's Adelaide congress in 1925 six-hundred people used to crowd in to hear him preach every Sunday night. Strangely enough, my mother could produce the same effect. She too was a fine preacher but did not have one note of music. My father once said: "Mother dear, you must have much music in you, because none of it has ever come out."
Why did such a brilliant man join the Salvation Army? The short answer is that it gave him what he wanted - music, colourful dramatic opportunities, the chance of professional goodness and service to others in safety. Most of all, he wanted to escape from the Moonta mines and, as a result, embarked on a quest for safe music. He summed up that subject very succinctly. "Jimmy," he told me, "music is a beautiful art but a terrible profession." I didn't listen.
He was afraid of the questionable associations of music. He avoided every form of art which was not bound up in the safe arms of religion and goodness - particularly a religion which allowed the ultimate in drama and was confined in the strictest bonds of purity, goodness and service. By taking this option, he was grossly exploited; and escaped most earthly rewards. The Salvation Army took all his talent for granted and he gave all he had.
It was only at the end of his service that he realised the Salvation Army knows very well all the structures of a highly successful commercial enterprise.
Exactly how did Albert Sidney Penberthy, Moonta town bandsman and son of a good Wesleyan Cornish family, join the "Salvoes"? My father, for all his virtues and talents, though seemingly courageous, was desperately afraid. He knew fear when he was living and when he was dying. He was not saved by the Salvation Army but by the matchless love of his wife - my mother. How did he join the Army? How did he join the Moonta Mines Corps at fourteen and rise to the rank of brigadier and command a whole State of Australia - a Salvation Army bishop, no less. The answer is: "He met the devil."
One hot Sunday evening in 1894, he went for a run up the dusty main street of Moonta. The sound of the Army band met his ears and, through the dust, came the marching bandsmen, followed by uniformed lassies beating timbrels. Albert followed them into the brown wooden hall. It was all colourful. He sat on a back seat. It turned out to be more colourful than he bargained for. No sooner had the meeting commenced than the Captain's lieutenant burst into view from behind a blood and fire curtain above the Mercy Seat, dressed in red tights and bore the horns of the devil on his head. The "devil" leapt from the platform and ran straight up the aisle towards young Albert, who ran for his life through the front door with the devil in hot pursuit - or so he imagined.
When he got home, he told his mother, who said: "Albert, next week we'll both go and see about all this nonsense!" And so they did. Within a few weeks her tall skinny frame was dressed in the long-skirted uniform of a Soldier and her strong grim face was wreathed in an enormous Salvation Army bonnet. A few years later her son was in the Officers' Training College near the real fire brigade at Eastern Hill, Melbourne.
Because