Night of the Trapdoor

In my first year of college I stayed in residence at the Gillies Street campus, surprisingly I was part of an experiment in co-ed housing on campus.  Traditionally this residence had been all-girls until I showed up in early 1977….(crazy is it really that long ago???)   And an experiment it truly was, having only one set of showers and toilets made it a rather interesting situation for me as well cos’ in those days I was a shy country lad who got embarrassed if a girl so much as spoke to him let alone run into them in a shower or going to the toilet! 

I can still remember waking up extraordinarily early (like 5:00 am early) each morning to have a shower before anyone else as I didn’t want to either embarrass myself or anyone else in the process.   To say I was nervous taking my three-minute shower each morning was a massive understatement – in and out and back to my dorm room with footprints down the hall.   Wow, it would be a rather different tale if I knew then what I know now - but that’s another story.  :-)

It was in these halcyon days that I met my best mate Craig – as its been well documented in previous blogs.   Craig and I got on like a “house on fire” from the first and over the course of the year became lifelong mates.  

Clunes to St Arnard is about 60 miles apart 

As our first year was winding down he asked me if I’d given any thought as to where I was going to live in second year, he explained that his older brother Alan had been accepted into the School of Engineering the following year and that they were going to get a house and wanted to know if I wanted to join them.   I jumped at the chance and readily agreed.  

The school year in Australia is from February to December with our summer holidays being over the Christmas & New Year break, so when school finished I went home to work on one of the local farms as did Craig who lived in the town of St Arnard some 60 miles from Clunes as the crow flies.  

In those days communications was much more tenuous that today, as an example we didn’t have a telephone at home when I was growing up and if we needed to make a telephone call you had to go down the street to the local Post Office (about a mile away) and call from the red phone box.   The operator would connect you to the central exchange or town you were trying to get in touch with…. “ancient times” but not that many of the people I knew actually had a telephone at home.   It’s impossible to fathom given the connectedness of world only 35 years on.

Craig and I worked in our respective jobs all summer long without communicating, but toward the end of January I received a letter from him saying that he would come by my place in Clunes and pick me up on “such & such” a date so we could go find a place to rent for the coming year.   True to his word he and Alan picked me up on our way to find our house rental as per his letter.

By the end of the day we had secured a large three-bedroom house - 507 Norman Street which was relatively close to campus… with an underground garage no less!   Not that I owned a car, but both Craig and Alan did and so with a large driveway and spacious house we felt more than prepared for the year ahead and from that point onwards we became affectionately known in College circles as the “Norman street boys”.

507 Norman Street - as it looks today.  There was no
fence in 1978, but other than that it looks the same

I can't remember how we chose who got which bedroom but  Craig ended up with the master bedroom with a wall-to-wall built in wardrobe (so very stylish even in those days), I was lucky enough to get the front bedroom which was reasonably large and particularly bright and Al taking the smaller third bedroom.  Now you might feel a tad sorry for Al being the much older  brother (we still rib him about his "advanced age" even today!) and that he got the short end of the stick (in reality I think its only 3 years difference in age) but given Al’s soon to be legendary nocturnal habits he hardly ever slept at home anyway.

Al was one of those guys that would go to a house party and eventually fall asleep, once asleep he was out cold and almost completely un-wakeable so we’d often leave him find his own way home which was generally the next morning.

The other interesting fact about our place on Norman street was that it was directly across the road from the Cemetery….which had a large stand of tall pine trees surrounding the grounds.   At night the wind would make the trees sway and groan which to be honest used to make my skin crawl especially late at night after a big night out.

I remember it was about mid-year and Craig and I had been studying hard but Al (notoriously distracted with anything to do with school) had decided to head out to a party or “visit” one of his many admirers.   Craig was a bit of a night owl and so would often work late into the wee hours before going to bed, whereas I would get cranky if I didn't get at least 8 hours a night.  

I was sound asleep but was woken by a blood curdling scream, I initially thought I was dreaming, but then there was another more forceful scream emanating from Craig’s bedroom as I got up and bolted down the hall towards his door.  The light was on and Craig was continuing his tirade as I tentatively entered the room not knowing what to expect.  There was Al standing in Craig’s bedroom, the wardrobe door wide open and he looking rather sheepishly down at his feet.  Craig's palor was a ghostly white, clearly with a mix of fear and rage as he continued to curse Al "up hill and down dale" in a tone reminiscent of a cheering football fan - yes it would even make a sailor blush as I recall!

Craig explained that he had been woken when he heard a door creak open, looking up  sleepily expecting to see the bedroom door open with either Al or me framed in the doorway.  Nope still closed, strange he thought as the creaking continued, his eyes and ears trying to focus on where the sound was coming from, however he now noticed that wardrobe door was slowly swinging open and that a white silhouetted hand was emerging from the darkness…this is the part where he sat up and had involuntarily screamed.  

I was completely confused as to what the hell was going on until Al began to fill us in…Craig was finally calming down as Al cheerfully (him seeing the funny side of this only made Craig madder) explained why he was coming out of the wardrobe in the first place during the middle of the night.  


Al apparently had lost or misplaced his house key (again) and rather than wake us, had decided to enter the house through the trapdoor in Craig’s wardrobe.   Okay, clearly not the best option, but that was 100% Al.

What trapdoor we said almost in unison?   Al was laughing hard as he explained that he had been rooting around in the garage the week prior looking for something for his car when he had discovered the trapdoor, being inquisitive he had opened the door to find that it exited  directly into the built in wardrobe in the master bedroom.   Al had then failed to pass on this info to either of us, until he got the bright idea of using it in the middle of the night.   

It took Craig a few days to see the funny side of the “night of the trapdoor”, but now that night lives squarely in the folklore of our Norman Street days.   Man those were fun days and I really can’t believe it was that long ago now….cos’ to be honest it feels like yesterday!