We didn’t have any black kids in Rosewood State School. Our school photos until Yr 7 were all white. Black and white, but the kids were all white. Nobody, until Yr7, had even seen a black person apart from Australian Aborigines. Our parents, except for those who went overseas for World War 2, had never seen a black person, apart from Australian Aborigines. Kenny Kendricks claimed he’d seen all sorts of things, including black kids, but nobody believed Kenny. Then, in 1967 Peter ‘Batti’ Bartholemew arrived at Rosewood State School.

Peter was Ceylonese. He was immediately named ‘ Batti’ after the only other dark skinned person we knew about – a Fijian rugby league player who played for South Brisbane named Sia’afa Battibasaga. Ceylonese, Fijian – it made no difference to the Rosewood lads. Batti was the most exotic and exciting person we had ever met.

He could speak three or four languages – not ‘useful’ ones like French or German, rather Tamil, Hindi and another dialect plus English of course. He had actually been to other countries apart from Ceylon and Australia. He said his father was a type of doctor, but not of medicine. We found this hard to believe until Steve Clark, our go to guy of all things Anglican, informed us that the new priest was black, and called Reverend Dr Matthew Bartholemew, and was from Ceylon.

Batti soon became one of us in a Rosewood kind of way. His footy was crap, but he could bowl a leggie when Summer came round. He was always too well behaved, but after all he was the son of a priest. He even made it on to Rosewood’s ‘It’s Academic’ team – a quiz show for Year 8 students as our expert speller. (He did attempt a few spellings without success, but it was his answer to the question ‘What animal would you find in an apiary?’, that is most memorable – ‘Apes’ was his confident answer. Our teacher on the bus home said at least he wasn’t asked what you would find in a seminary.)

Batti was, I think, part of the inspiration for a much younger Cunnington-Smythe to begin exploring Her Majesty’s empire. He made me realise there were more exotic places than Southport.  I began to understand that there was a world out there that would require travel further than the rail motor would take us.  And there were more Battis worth meeting and talking to – even if they were crap at footy and knew absolutely nothing about bees.

Better let you go Scotty

Farley etc.