When young blokes just wanted a bang

I LIVED in Mittagong during my primary school days and for us 24 May was right up there with Christmas as the most exciting day of the year.

For weeks leading up to Empire Day we would drag tree limbs from Mount Alexandra down Louisa Street past Reg Boswell’s old house to the vacant block beside the scout hall where a massive bonfire was built. Huge it was as a team of kids led by the Goulder boys, Don Talbot and others headed up the hill after school armed with axes to get more fuel for the fire. I suspect these days that sort of activity would quickly attract a procession of police cars followed by environmental protection agency officers with Larry Whipper close behind, but back then building big bonfires was just the done thing in every local community.

EXCITEMENT grew as cracker night drew closer. Some of the older lads stood guard the night before to ensure that kids from Welby didn’t sneak around and prematurely torch our bonfire. Then as darkness set in on the big day someone important would be given the job of lighting the fire. These days you’d need at least 20 people to light a bonfire - one to strike the match and 19 to fill out the risk management assessments, OHS briefings, permit applications and other paperwork.

As the bonfire began to burn, a huge cheer would erupt and it was game on. All the lads had pockets stuffed with bungers and matches, while the lassies had pretty stuff like Roman candles, sky rockets and Catherine wheels. The girls went ooh! and aahh! as their colourful crackers burst into dazzling displays, but the blokes just wanted a bang - the bigger bang the better.

As flames licked high into the night sky, bungers went off everywhere, while other incendiary devises burst forth with spectacular beauty. Then someone dropped a fizzing packet of Tom Thumbs in Lynden Taylor’s gumboot and he hopped around a bit. Everyone laughed, even Lynden, who wasn’t sizzled too badly. Actually I can’t remember anyone ever losing an eye or getting killed - bloody miracle when you think about it.

THE next morning Mittagong would be shrouded in a pall of smoke - it was a bit like Robert Duvall’s immortal, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” line in Apocalypse Now, as the frosty air was filled with a lingering waft of gunpowder.

We would be up early to search the bonfire for unexploded bungers then it was off to school to talk excitedly about who had the best bang on cracker night.

THERE were some terrific stories, like the yarn about a couple of brothers who decided to drop a bundle of tuppenny bungers down their outside pit toilet. Apparently the bungers were a tad more effective than they imagined and the boys suffered the indignity of standing on their front lawn stark naked while their mother hosed them down before sending them off to school with a change of clothes.

Others discovered that a big red fizzing bunger dropped into a more modern toilet bowl under a closed lid often did amazing things to the porcelain.

AT SCHOOL my fourth grade teacher, Graeme Phillips, even used bungers to help us learn our arithmetic.

“How many tuppenny bungers could you buy from the newsagent if your old man gave you two bob?” he would ask the class.

I think that’s why blokes like Barry Andrews and Vic Isedale became so good at mathematics.

YEP the old tuppenny bunger was pure poetry. Occasionally a letterbox would be blown up, but mostly they were just used to make a lot of noise. It must be a boy thing - the bigger the bunger, the bigger the bang.

Way back then, bungers were our currency, our measure of worth and an object of great beauty through the eyes of any adventurous young lad.

In fact bungers were held in such high esteem that when older boys would see a good looking girl walk past they’d solemnly whisper to their mates, “she’d go off like a fire-cracker.”

I never knew what they meant, but I guessed they really liked that girl - she was special, just like a tuppenny bunger