Humor: Milk teeth and milk chocolates

Milk teeth and milk chocolates

I was born in the Queen Victoria maternity hospital in Launceston at 8am on October 6, 1958.

I should have been born on October 5, but the obstetrician had something much more important than me to attend to and gave my mum something to stop the contractions.

Little did I know on October 6, 1958, that my future wife, Katherine, was also born in the QV, as we called it. Our paths would not cross for 22 more years — in London, England. We would not marry until 15 years after that.

I was 6lb 14 oz and 19 1/2 inches long at birth. My hair was dark but my complexion was fair and my eyes were blue.
I was the third child in the Martin family. Therese was born in 1952, Kate in 1955. My youngest sister, Sally, came 18 months after me.
My mum, Grace, was a born-and-bred Launceston girl.
My father, John T, was an Englishman who ran away to sea at 17 and jumped ship in Australia and hid from authorities after World War II. Yes, he was an illegal immigrant who arrived on these shores in a boat. He made his way to Tasmania and some years later got Queen's Amnesty and became a legitimate Australian and solid citizen.

When I was born, dad was a bush reporter/jack of all trades at the North-Eastern Advertiser at Scottsdale, in a verdant valley 70km north-east of Launceston along the Tasman Highway and across a low mountain range via a narrow, winding rollercoaster of a road called the Sidling.

Dad did not yet have a car so he used to hitch-hike into Launceston to see me and mum in the QV.

I spent the first year and a bit of my life in Scottsdale where my parents rented a farmhouse on Mount Cameron Road. My father later acquired a Model T. Ford which made traversing the Sidling a little easier, but not much.

Scottsdale was where a lot of important early stuff happened to me:
I first laughed there (four weeks);
I ate my first banana there (five months) and apparently loved it;
I babbled my first words there ("ma-mam" at five months, followed by "ma-ba" at 5 1/2 months and "da-da", spoken with my tongue out, at six months);
I got my first tooth there (7 1/4 months);
I had my first chocolate there (nine months) and apparently loved it even more than bananas; and
I learnt to walk there (14 1/2 months)

I was baptised by Father Peter Noonan in the Scottsdale Catholic Church on New Year's Day, 1959, along with two of my cousins, Craig Jarman and Paul Nas.

Some years later that church was pulled down. Apart from being a blow to my ego, it made me wonder if I should go and get re-baptised in case the first one was not official any more.

At 15 months, I had a convulsion on a bus returning with my mum to Scottsdale from Launceston.

The driver turned the bus around to get me to a doctor.

It must have been a horrible fright for my mum.
Many years later, my own son had a febrile convulsion so I know how frightening it can be with all that sudden and unexpected shaking, rolling of the eyes and gurgling noises

It does not seem to have done me any long-term harm.

They still refuse to put the church back up though.

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it