Hockey: Not Your Average Joe Read Online Free

north shore real estate agency. Joe would stay with his grandmother Rose, or Sitty as he called her, tag along with his parents or be left in Juanita’s custody at home. He often found himself lonely, but now and again he’d rope his brothers, Colin and Michael, into a game of cowboys and Indians. They’d always tire at the same point: when Joe decided to be Abraham Lincoln and deliver a lengthy monologue.
    Joe would tag along to elocution lessons with Juanita sometimes, eventually joining in – a decision that provided a platform in later years for a swag of debating awards. But mostly, as a youngster, Joe found himself in adult company and it was around the kitchen table in Northbridge, where the family moved when he was four, that he would find himself talking politics. Beverley was Liberal to the bootstraps, just as her parents were before her. Richard barracked strongly for Labor, believing it had provided both migrant friendships and networks. He served on the Chatswood branch of the Labor Party, at least until Beverley convinced him of the error of his ways. But at home, no rancour tainted political discussions, and Joe would often parrot them in the schoolyard, keen to see what others thought.
    Whitlam’s 1975 dismissal polarised voters across Australia, and Sydney’s north shore was no different. Many parents made significant sacrifices to send their boys to St Aloysius’, and their politics could be heard in the chatter of their children at lunchtime. Some parents were breaking open the champagne at night, their children revelling in their parents’ joy. Others wanted to load up cars and head to Canberra to start an insurrection. Joe was fascinated by it, and kept raising it with his friends. Most of them had heard their parents talk about it, but that’s where their knowledge and interest ended. ‘He understood what that meant,’ Lewis Macken, who joined Joe at St Aloysius’ as an eight-year-old in 1974, says. ‘To me, he was just a prime minister.’
    Damian Burton, another friend, says he remembers Joe, aged ten, wanting to talk about the implication of Gough Whitlam’s sacking. ‘From Year 7 it was just a known fact that he would go into politics and it was a discussion point that he would one day be the prime minister,’ he says.
    The Jesuit education, derived from the Society of Jesus, which was founded by Spaniard St Ignatius Loyola, came to Australia in the mid-1800s and encouraged questioning in a boisterous atmosphere. Joe did well enough at school, but mainly in those subjects where his passions lay, particularly history and English. Maths wasn’t his strong subject.
    Misdemeanours, ranging from recording less than 15 out of 20 in spelling in Mrs Kath Collins’s Year 3 class, to talking during quiet time, were dealt with by a visit to the primary school principal Father Geoffrey Schneider’s office. Mrs Collins, whose daughter Clover Moore would go on to become Sydney’s first popularly elected female lord mayor, was particularly strict and Joe would often find himself, on a Friday, joining his friends on the long walk down to Father Schneider’s office. There, the principal would open a drawer and let the boys see the straps all neatly folded. Father Schneider had names for each of them. ‘Pick a strap, boys,’ he’d say. ‘And we’d pick one and he’d do it,’ Joe recalls.
    He was in good company. Classmate Michael Delany, who went on to represent Australia in swimming, remembers being strapped across the hand and the elbow. John Tully, who has gone on to do big things in business, and Lewis Macken, now a top Sydney intensive care specialist, lined up behind Joe, too, although their punishment was usually for minor disruptive behaviour, not spelling. Joe didn’t stand out from the pack, though, as Father Schneider aligned the number of strokes to the number of spelling mistakes and the severity of their misdemeanours. ‘He came in with a crowd that came in for their