Keep Up the Good Rowing, Argonauts
The Argonauts’ Club
3/10/17
wendy
Keep Up the Good Rowing, Argonauts
In 1949, when we moved from Harbord in Sydney to Warkworth, outside Singleton in the Hunter Valley, our village boasted a one-teacher school (which first opened for business in 1859); a hall built by the Temperance Society, circa 1889; St Philip’s Anglican church (1856) a beautifully-crafted stone structure and Jack Smith owned a butcher-shop, which, sadly, did not recover after the big flood of1949, which coincided with the year we arrived. There were around half a dozen houses dotted about and Jack Smith and his family also ran the post-office.
No-one had ever heard of Warkworth, maybe Warkworth in England, or Warkworth in New Zealand, but certainly not Warkworth in the heart of the Hunter Valley, 12 miles from Singleton.
When I was 5 years old I enrolled in the white-washed one-teacher school, down through a pine grove and under a fence from home. There were twenty nine of us in one, big room and most of my companions were children of orchardists or and dairy farmers, many of whom were descendants of pioneers of the region.
Keep Up the Good Rowing, Argonauts
I loved school. I loved my friends and the games we used to play, like Marbles, ‘Ring a Ring a Rosie’; ‘Red Rover Cross Over’; ‘Drop the Hanky’; ‘Oranges and Lemons’; ‘What’s the Time Mister Wolf’; ‘Hide ‘n Seek’; ‘Hop Scotch’ and ‘Rounders’.
Somewhere along the line I discovered the ABC Children’s Hour, of which the Argonauts’ Club was part and instantly became an ardent fan:
Old Mother Hubbard and Jack and Jill and Tom, the Piper’s son,
Leave your troubles, forget your school, we’re going to have some fun,
The wireless says to hurry and run; to leave your games and toys,
The wireless says the time has come, for all the girls and boys,
So come with a hop, a skip and a run, It’s time for the Session, it’s time for the fun
And it’s hello from Mac(Athol Fleming) and Gina (Gina Curtis)and Jimmy (John Ewart) and John(John Appleton) and Barbara (Barbara Frawley) and Sue (Sue Newton).
Keep Up the Good Rowing, Argonauts
This theme song was the signal every afternoon at five o’clock for me to run to the Bakelite wireless in our lounge-room and fling myself on the floor to listen intently to the Children’s Hour, which was transmitted from five o’clock until five minutes to six.
It seemed magic to me that those voices emanating in far-away Sydney could actually find their way into our lounge-room at Warkworth, which was, let’s face it, no more than a miniscule dot on the map.
The program featured singalongs; serials like Ruth Park’s ‘Muddle-Headed Wombat’ and fabulous science fiction stories written by GK Saunders. There were serious discussions on a variety of subjects every day but the great attraction for me was the stimulating world of the Argonauts’ Club, introduced by a song which began:
Fifty mighty Argonauts,
Bending to the oars
Today will go adventuring
To yet unchartered shores
So bend with all your might
As we sail into the night
Argonauts, Row! Row!, Row!
Keep Up the Good Rowing, Argonauts
It’s hard to describe the ‘Argonauts’ Club’ for the uninitiated but its name emanated from Greek mythology, ‘Jason and the Argonauts’, a group of talented sailors who set out in a quest to find the legendary Golden Fleece, encountering various adventures along the way. On joining the club each new member received a ‘ship name and number’ to become part of Jason’s team and was encouraged to contribute by submitting stories and poems, which, if they were good enough, would be read out on air. I was constantly contributing articles under my pseudonym, Lynceus 50, hoping this would happen and the day it actually did I was beside myself with excitement. I am still the proud owner of a moth-eaten Blue Certificate ‘for special mention’.
Experts in various fields of the arts were employed to offer us the benefits of their wisdom and I’d write copious short stories to ‘Argus’ (John Luscombe), send paintings to ‘Phidias’ (Jeffrey Smart) and stories of my natural history observations around our little farm to ‘Tom the Naturalist’, played by Sydney University lecturer, Alan Colefax.
Keep Up the Good Rowing, Argonauts
Standing in front of the Parthenon on the Acropolis one windy morning in Athens a lifetime later, I learned that this magic, ancient building was designed by none other than Phidias, Greek sculptor, painter and architect. His statue of the God, Zeus, at Olympia, is considered to be one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. I felt I knew him.
Thanks to my mother’s leather-bound book ‘The Myths of Greece and Rome’, which once belonged to my grandfather, I knew that Lynceus was one of the fifty sons of Aegyptus whose name means ‘lynx-eyed’.
I still have my metal badge of the good ship ‘Argo’
My favourite personality on the show was Jimmy, played by John Ewart, the youngest member of the team, who became an acclaimed film and television actor later in his career. One night, having strayed from the 2NC for once, I listened to an episode of ‘Police Files’ on a Newcastle commercial radio station and encountered the unmistakable voice of John Ewart in the cast, at the end of which he was pronounced to be ‘an habitual criminal’ and was sentenced to life in prison. Oh no, what a terrible state of affairs. I wrote to ‘Jimmy’ to commiserate and was thrilled to receive a hand-written letter in reply, assuring me that it was alright, he was only acting in a play.
Keep Up the Good Rowing, Argonauts
In 1956, while visiting my brother in Adelaide, I was in seventh heaven to actually come face to face with my heroes at the Agricultural Show. There they were, all-assembled - Gina, Jimmy, John, Mac, Barbara and Sue and I joined a milling throng to stare at them through the goldfish bowl of the glass studio, created especially for them at the showground.
What a shame I was far too overwhelmed to ask for autographs.
Contrary to popular belief, it was not the arrival of television which killed the Argonauts’ Club for me, but instead I was seduced away by the music of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley, who invented rock and roll. After 1957, the ABC no longer dominated the air waves in our house, much to the chagrin of my mum and dad, but I had switched allegiance to 2KO, a commercial radio station in Newcastle, where I could listen to John Laws playing hits of the Top Forty to my heart’s content.
Keep Up the Good Rowing, Argonauts
How callously I had abandoned my first great love. ‘The rocking-horse days of my childhood were obviously slipping and sliding away’, a new era in my life was beginning. The year 1957 also happened to be the year I started high school in Singleton. I was almost a teenager.
Exactly one decade later, when I landed a job at the ABC in Radio Talks at 171 William Street, Kings Cross in Sydney, I found that if I scratched the surface of many of my colleagues I found an ex-Argonaut. The ABC held a magnetic attraction for all of us, thanks to our individual and collective childhood membership of the brilliant ‘Argonauts’ Club’.
In 1949, when we moved from Harbord in Sydney to Warkworth, outside Singleton in the Hunter Valley, our village boasted a one-teacher school (which first opened for business in 1859); a hall built by the Temperance Society, circa 1889; St Philip’s Anglican church (1856) a beautifully-crafted stone structure and Jack Smith owned a butcher-shop, which, sadly, did not recover after the big flood of1949, which coincided with the year we arrived. There were around half a dozen houses dotted about and Jack Smith and his family also ran the post-office.
No-one had ever heard of Warkworth, maybe Warkworth in England, or Warkworth in New Zealand, but certainly not Warkworth in the heart of the Hunter Valley, 12 miles from Singleton.
When I was 5 years old I enrolled in the white-washed one-teacher school, down through a pine grove and under a fence from home. There were twenty nine of us in one, big room and most of my companions were children of orchardists or and dairy farmers, many of whom were descendants of pioneers of the region.
Keep Up the Good Rowing, Argonauts
I loved school. I loved my friends and the games we used to play, like Marbles, ‘Ring a Ring a Rosie’; ‘Red Rover Cross Over’; ‘Drop the Hanky’; ‘Oranges and Lemons’; ‘What’s the Time Mister Wolf’; ‘Hide ‘n Seek’; ‘Hop Scotch’ and ‘Rounders’.
Somewhere along the line I discovered the ABC Children’s Hour, of which the Argonauts’ Club was part and instantly became an ardent fan:
Old Mother Hubbard and Jack and Jill and Tom, the Piper’s son,
Leave your troubles, forget your school, we’re going to have some fun,
The wireless says to hurry and run; to leave your games and toys,
The wireless says the time has come, for all the girls and boys,
So come with a hop, a skip and a run, It’s time for the Session, it’s time for the fun
And it’s hello from Mac(Athol Fleming) and Gina (Gina Curtis)and Jimmy (John Ewart) and John(John Appleton) and Barbara (Barbara Frawley) and Sue (Sue Newton).
Keep Up the Good Rowing, Argonauts
This theme song was the signal every afternoon at five o’clock for me to run to the Bakelite wireless in our lounge-room and fling myself on the floor to listen intently to the Children’s Hour, which was transmitted from five o’clock until five minutes to six.
It seemed magic to me that those voices emanating in far-away Sydney could actually find their way into our lounge-room at Warkworth, which was, let’s face it, no more than a miniscule dot on the map.
The program featured singalongs; serials like Ruth Park’s ‘Muddle-Headed Wombat’ and fabulous science fiction stories written by GK Saunders. There were serious discussions on a variety of subjects every day but the great attraction for me was the stimulating world of the Argonauts’ Club, introduced by a song which began:
Fifty mighty Argonauts,
Bending to the oars
Today will go adventuring
To yet unchartered shores
So bend with all your might
As we sail into the night
Argonauts, Row! Row!, Row!
Keep Up the Good Rowing, Argonauts
It’s hard to describe the ‘Argonauts’ Club’ for the uninitiated but its name emanated from Greek mythology, ‘Jason and the Argonauts’, a group of talented sailors who set out in a quest to find the legendary Golden Fleece, encountering various adventures along the way. On joining the club each new member received a ‘ship name and number’ to become part of Jason’s team and was encouraged to contribute by submitting stories and poems, which, if they were good enough, would be read out on air. I was constantly contributing articles under my pseudonym, Lynceus 50, hoping this would happen and the day it actually did I was beside myself with excitement. I am still the proud owner of a moth-eaten Blue Certificate ‘for special mention’.
Experts in various fields of the arts were employed to offer us the benefits of their wisdom and I’d write copious short stories to ‘Argus’ (John Luscombe), send paintings to ‘Phidias’ (Jeffrey Smart) and stories of my natural history observations around our little farm to ‘Tom the Naturalist’, played by Sydney University lecturer, Alan Colefax.
Keep Up the Good Rowing, Argonauts
Standing in front of the Parthenon on the Acropolis one windy morning in Athens a lifetime later, I learned that this magic, ancient building was designed by none other than Phidias, Greek sculptor, painter and architect. His statue of the God, Zeus, at Olympia, is considered to be one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. I felt I knew him.
Thanks to my mother’s leather-bound book ‘The Myths of Greece and Rome’, which once belonged to my grandfather, I knew that Lynceus was one of the fifty sons of Aegyptus whose name means ‘lynx-eyed’.
I still have my metal badge of the good ship ‘Argo’
My favourite personality on the show was Jimmy, played by John Ewart, the youngest member of the team, who became an acclaimed film and television actor later in his career. One night, having strayed from the 2NC for once, I listened to an episode of ‘Police Files’ on a Newcastle commercial radio station and encountered the unmistakable voice of John Ewart in the cast, at the end of which he was pronounced to be ‘an habitual criminal’ and was sentenced to life in prison. Oh no, what a terrible state of affairs. I wrote to ‘Jimmy’ to commiserate and was thrilled to receive a hand-written letter in reply, assuring me that it was alright, he was only acting in a play.
Keep Up the Good Rowing, Argonauts
In 1956, while visiting my brother in Adelaide, I was in seventh heaven to actually come face to face with my heroes at the Agricultural Show. There they were, all-assembled - Gina, Jimmy, John, Mac, Barbara and Sue and I joined a milling throng to stare at them through the goldfish bowl of the glass studio, created especially for them at the showground.
What a shame I was far too overwhelmed to ask for autographs.
Contrary to popular belief, it was not the arrival of television which killed the Argonauts’ Club for me, but instead I was seduced away by the music of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley, who invented rock and roll. After 1957, the ABC no longer dominated the air waves in our house, much to the chagrin of my mum and dad, but I had switched allegiance to 2KO, a commercial radio station in Newcastle, where I could listen to John Laws playing hits of the Top Forty to my heart’s content.
Keep Up the Good Rowing, Argonauts
How callously I had abandoned my first great love. ‘The rocking-horse days of my childhood were obviously slipping and sliding away’, a new era in my life was beginning. The year 1957 also happened to be the year I started high school in Singleton. I was almost a teenager.
Exactly one decade later, when I landed a job at the ABC in Radio Talks at 171 William Street, Kings Cross in Sydney, I found that if I scratched the surface of many of my colleagues I found an ex-Argonaut. The ABC held a magnetic attraction for all of us, thanks to our individual and collective childhood membership of the brilliant ‘Argonauts’ Club’.
I will leave this short story in the Readers Contributions for the time being.
I will move it in with The Argonauts page after I refurbish that section with new information and items I have found. There are hopefully more stories forthcoming from members of the ABC Argonauts Club.
Ian
I will move it in with The Argonauts page after I refurbish that section with new information and items I have found. There are hopefully more stories forthcoming from members of the ABC Argonauts Club.
Ian