Piano Music

00:10 This podcast was recorded at State Library Victoria on Aboriginal land, the land of the Wurunjeri people of the Kulin Nations. It discusses events that occurred on the lands of the Whadjuk Nyoongar and Dja Dja Wurrung peoples. We pay our respects to their elders past and present.

00:30 (piano music)
PENNY: Hello Christina, welcome back to In Those Days.
CHRISTINA: Thanks Penny.
PENNY: Yep, we're going to talk about yesterday's newspapers today.
CHRISTINA: Yes.
PENNY: And one of the fun things that I like to do in Trove is when there's, like, a current event happening, I like to look up past events that have happened and like compare
CHRISTINA: A bit of comparison.
PENNY: And contrast. So, yesterday we had King Charles III's coronation.
CHRISTINA: Yes we did.
PENNY: Did you watch it Christina?
CHRISTINA: Look, I did until I got quite tired but I pushed through until the crown was on his head and then I had had enough.
PENNY: You're like, it's okay, it's done.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, I just liked watching the horses on the way in.
PENNY: There's not going to be a revolution today so, switch off.
CHRISTINA: I didn't see Camilla get her crown but, I'm sure it was similar.
PENNY: Followed through. So, I had a look in Trove for some information on past coronations. That is a massive topic. Too big.
CHRISTINA: Okay.
PENNY: Narrowed it down. I was quite inspired by Charles and Camilla's quiche.
CHRISTINA: I mean, there's nothing more inspirational than a quiche.
PENNY: Exactly. So I looked up coronation recipes from the past. Now, Coronation Chicken, famously. Do you know what it is?
CHRISTINA: No.
PENNY: It's like curry sauce on chicken. It's a
CHRISTINA: Why is everything so disappointing for this? Isn't it a big day in your life? Don't you aim high? Not 'I'll have a sandwich thanks'. It's like people who go out to lunch and order soup. Don't bother. Just.
PENNY: Oh, absolutely.
CHRISTINA: Just, no. That's not an ordering out meal. That's a sad Sunday night meal at home.
PENNY: Mixing some Keen's Curry Paste through some mayonnaise. Anyway, so the coronation chicken, it's called, it comes from Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, however, it was named well after the coronation. At the time it was just called...
CHRISTINA: Chicken Surprise.
PENNY: It was called Chicken Qu
CHRISTINA: Chicken Elizabeth.
PENNY: It had a French name, I can't say it. There's a lot of articles though in the paper, not necessarily official coronation recipes, but saying to people 'This is what you could have for coronation party'. Did you have a coronation party or attend a coronation party yesterday Christina?
CHRISTINA: No, no.
PENNY: I had a croissant. To celebrate the guillotine. Anyway.
CHRISTINA: I did think about scones a lot yesterday. I didn't eat one, but I did think about them and, I guess that moment past. But I did think about it at the time.
PENNY: But, had we been more organised we could have looked up and planned a coronation menu
CHRISTINA: We could have had Union Jacks galore.
PENNY: Exactly, and there's some really good ones. I'm not gonna read out this one but there is a recipe that a reader sent in, this is for the coronation of King George in 1937. And it was Coronation Pigeon Pie.
CHRISTINA: Ew, again.
PENNY: And, what it is, a bed of steak with three pigeons on top.
CHRISTINA: Have they taken the feathers off? Or just crisped them.
PENNY: Yes, it says you have to clean and prepare 3 young pigeons.
CHRISTINA: How do you know old a pigeon is?
PENNY: That's a good point, I dunno.
CHRISTINA: You look at a whole flock and you're like, 'There's the young one.'
PENNY: 'That one's sprightly. That one seems a bit woke!' And I was like, oh well, it was the Depression maybe. And then I realised it's on a bed of steaks, they've got six hardboiled eggs.
CHRISTINA: I don't like this mixing of proteins. I find it - I know I don't eat meat - but even if I did
PENNY: You wouldn't put a pigeon on a bed of steak?
CHRISTINA: What this steak needs is a pigeon on top.
PENNY: But, in a slightly more friendly one we've got an article that was 'Three Coronation Cake Recipes'.
CHRISTINA: I feel like the sweets is where it's at for coronations.
PENNY: And this one was published in the Australasian on the 15th of May 1937.
"In the British Isles they are serving special Coronation cakes. Why not here? These three are suggestions for your Coronation cakes.
GEORGE AND ELIZABETH CAKE: A Very Rich Cake"
CHRISTINA: Is that it?
PENNY: Yeah, no, no, we're going to get to it. And it's a fruit cake. So it's a very rich fruitcake, which, I mean
CHRISTINA: It's a bit of a metaphor.
PENNY: It's for George and Elizabeth, but it could be any of them.
CHRISTINA: Yeah.
PENNY: And it says:
"Half the mixture will make a fair-sized cake."
PENNY: And it's got you know the flour the butter, the sugar, the citron the currents. And it's go 18 eggs.
CHRISTINA: Right.
PENNY: And it says:
"Warm the butter and beat it to a cream. Break in the eggs by degrees,
PENNY: That should take several hours.
"with the fruit and sugar. Add the flour last. Keep on beat ing and do not discontinue"
CHRISTINA: Do not!
PENNY: "till you are satisfied the mixture is thoroughly mixed. Bake about three hours."
CHRISTINA: God, that's a long bake.
PENNY: Repent at leisure. So there you go. I know it's too late, but let's face it Charles is not gonna last that long.
CHRISTINA: No.
PENNY: So we've gotta start planning for the next one.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, I'm gonna plan ahead and I will bake scone next time goddamn it.
05:46 (piano music)
05:54 PENNY: Hello, our guest here today is a returning guest, this is the third time he's come back to the podcast, it's my dad Peter Tangey.
PETER: Thank you very much, Pen. Thank you Christina for putting up with me again.
CHRISTINA: Third time lucky.
PENNY: So, last time Dad was here we talked about Pen Hall, who was a very nice lady who was a friend of the family and lived in Newstead.
CHRISTINA: And you're named after her.
PENNY: Yes. That was the big reveal at the end. So that was episode 5 if you want to go back and listen to that. But, when we were talking about Pen Hall, we were also talking about her partner Chorkles Nellie Louisa Kasner Moss. And she lived in Newstead with Pen Hall for a long time. And Dad you got to know them when you went over to do odd jobs every Saturday when you were growing up.
PENNY: Brother Bill used to do odd jobs on a Saturday morning for them and then he got too old for that. We were at church one day and I said to Dad, 'Can I go and ask Miss Moss if I can have a job?' And I was about 12 at the time. He said, 'Oh yeah, go and ask her.' And of course I was on the payroll after that.
PENNY: Oh, that's fantastic. What was Chorkles like when you knew her Dad?
PETER: Look, she, she was a person who dressed like a man, swore like a man, behaved like a man, but who was very concerned about all aspects of society. They'd buy every paper that existed. She was always very, very nice to me but there was one rule 1. Rule 1 is, you did it exactly the way Miss Moss wanted it done. Whatever job it was. I remember one, there was a big drain with Cooch grass in it that run out into a yard paddock and that Cooch grass had to be cut with a knife that was about 2 inches long.
PENNY: So it took you all day?
PETER: Yeah, well, it might have taken me 3 weeks. Could have got a shovel and done it in 1/4 of an hour.
CHRISTINA: Would have started growing back by the time you finished it.
PETER: Yes it did. And I think it might have been a way to keep me employed too.
PENNY: And how much do you know about her early life? Did she ever talk to you about where she grew up and things?
PETER: No. She certainly didn't speak about that to me. I got little snippets of information from Dad but I really didn't know, and at that age, I didn't care. I was too wrapped up about myself.
PENNY: Yeah, fair enough. You don't really think of, I have to say I never asked any questions about what Pen Hall did when she was growing up when I knew her when I was 10.
PETER: There was one disappointing thing about Chorkles was that she wasn't interested in me playing football she never even asked about the football.
CHRISTINA: That's very disappointing.
PENNY: Did she ever ask you about tennis?
PETER: No, not that I recall.
PENNY: Interesting. Okay. Chorkles early life, I've actually managed to find out a few things about her growing up. Her father was Matthew Kasner Moss and he seems to have been, had quite a big personality and he was fairly well-liked. And he grew up in Melbourne and then he studied Medicine at Melbourne University, became a doctor. He was very good at rowing and representing Victoria and Western Australia in the rowing. So quite sporty. Was Chorkles sporty?
PETER: No. No. Definitely not.
PENNY: She might have got more of the academic side.
PETER: I did recall that her dad was a doctor. But that's about all I ever knew of him.
PENNY: Right, so she didn't mention. There were no photos of him or anything around?
PETER: No.
PENNY: Any photos of her family at all?
PETER: No.
PENNY: And it's interesting that you said that you saw Chorkles at church. Because her father was Jewish and his father was Reuben Moss and if you remember back to the Pen Hall episode there was that portrait of Reuben Moss that was donated to the Jewish Museum. And Reuben Moss was an optician and he had a shop in Melbourne that was called Kasner Moss. They made like binoculars and all kinds of things. But he died in 1903 and then Matthew Kasner moved to Perth for the first time. And there was a bit of controversy because then he, I think he got sacked from the hospital where he was working but it was like a bit controversial about. He was defending himself in the papers and the papers, the hospital were saying 'He knows why he was sacked'. And he kept saying 'I don't know why I was sacked.'
CHRISTINA: Tell the media!
10:35 PENNY: So after he got sacked from Perth he moved back to Melbourne and then I found this article from The Argus on the 24th of February 1909;
“MOSS—COX.—On the 28th December, at the office of the registrar, South Yarra, Matthew Kasner Moss, son of the late Reuben Moss, of St. Kilda, to Ada Nellie, eldest son (sic) of Arthur John”
So that's his wedding notice where he married Ada Nellie Cox. And it's in a registry office. So, it's not a religious ceremony.
PETER: Right.
PENNY: I really don't know if he kept practising his religion or not. Did you hear that her, that Chorkles family had Jewish background?
PETER: No, it wasn't discussed. All I know is that she converted to Catholicism. Now, I didn't know what from.
PENNY: But I think, probably she wasn't brought up Jewish. Matthew Kasner Moss he was often reported about in the, you know, the Jewish Melbourne papers and then once he goes to Perth, nothing. But people did still sometimes refer to him as having 'co-religionists'. They'd say that there were two 'co-religionists', meaning that they were two Jewish people.
CHRISTINA: Wow, okay. I thought that meant that you were following two faiths simultaneously.
PETER: Right. Yeah, that's what it sounds like innit.
PENNY: So was Chorkles very religious when you knew her?
PETER: She went to Mass every Sunday. Pen Hall didn't go with her. It was only Chorkles who was a Catholic. Apart from that. I dunno how religious she was.
PENNY: Yeah.
PETER: Put it this way, I never saw her reciting the Hail Mary.
CHRISTINA: Just under her breath.
PENNY: It's really hard to know, isn't it. Because obviously her, like, the fact that she was living with a woman and dressing as a man doesn't in my head really match with the Catholic Church and how strict they are on hierarchies and men doing certain roles, particularly in the 50s and 60s and also women living together as partners, little bit frowned upon.
CHRISTINA: Sounds like a lot of internal conflict for Chorkles.
PETER: Well, see Pen was always home. So the parish priest didn't see Pen.
PENNY: Yeah, I guess that's right. So it wasn't really a conflict.
PETER: And Chorkles had such a strong will. And a strong belief in her own capabilities and what she believed in that, bugger 'em. I'll do what I want to do.
PENNY: And who's gonna tell her to leave.
PETER: Well, that's right.
PENNY: And if she had, cos she was quite good friends with other people in the community.
PETER: She was always recognized as different, eccentric, yes. But respected because it was mostly a farming community and she was able to assist people with their sick animals. And if a cow was crook or had trouble calving, people'd ring up Chorkles. Pen'd answer the phone
CHRISTINA: Secretary.
PETER: And Chorkles would yell out. 'Who in the bloody hell is that, Pen?' 'Oh it's Bill Butler, he's got a cow down with milk fever' or something. 'Tell him I'll be there in half an hour.'
PENNY: So I guess that, being that part of that community like that, people needed her and she sort of found a way to fit in.
CHRISTINA: Was she actually a vet, or she just gave it a go?
PENNY: We'll kind of get to that. Going through her education it is a little bit confusing. I would say that she's not formally qualified as a vet.
CHRISTINA: Bit like myself.
PENNY: But you have a crack.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, I give it a go.
PENNY: Willingness to try is often what counts with veterinary science.
CHRISTINA: Or Google furiously.
PETER: I can remember one of Chorkles' remedies, you know. 'It'll have to be shot. It'll have to be shot.'
CHRISTINA: Well that's not really solution focused.
PETER: She didn't like animals suffering.
14:52 PENNY: No, oh really. I'll go back in time now. We're going back to the 30th October 1909 in The Argus again. There's a notice that says;
“MOSS.—On the 17th October, at "Carmona," The Avenue, Windsor, to Dr. and Mrs. M. Kasner Moss—a daughter.”
And that's Chorkles.
PETER: This is when Chorkles was born.
CHRISTINA: And is she actually born as Chorkles? This is what I don't understand?
PENNY: Thank you Christina, this is exactly what I wanted to address. I know that when, by the time she was 6 she was already called Chorkles. And Dad, do you have any idea why she was called Chorkles?
PETER: I have never heard of that as a Christian name before.
CHRISTINA: No.
PENNY: I looked it up. I thought you never know, maybe it's got some origin in her Jewish background or something but I could not. I reckon she probably just had a lovely laugh as a baby.
PETER: Yes, it could have been too.
CHRISTINA: Not a chuckle, a chorkle.
PENNY: I dunno. But it certainly really became her name. Her school results, her university results, every time in the paper she's always 'C Moss'. She's got all those different names, so variations of her middle names and surnames would be used, but her first name was always, started with a 'C' and was Chorkles. When we did the Pen Hall episode I posted it on the Newstead Community Facebook page and someone in there said, 'Oh Chorkles once told me how she got her name.'
CHRISTINA: Oh.
PENNY: And I said, 'Oh, how interesting. Please, do tell me.' And the person said, 'It's a long story.' And then refused to elaborate.
PETER: I reckon they're fibbing.
CHRISTINA: Yep. That's right up there with 'I'm in hospital. Oh no.' And then people say, 'What's wrong?' and no response.
PENNY: Or, she's planning her own deep dive podcast.
CHRISTINA: I think she is.
PENNY: And at the end she's gonna reveal the story.
PETER: It could be.
CHRISTINA: Keep an eye out for that one.
PETER: But Chorkles, it's in her nature you know. She might have named herself that.
PENNY: Possible.
PETER: She might not have liked her first name. Whether it's Nellie, and then said 'No, I'm gonna be called this. And that's that. Like it or lump it.'
17:04 PENNY: I do really like that theory. That sounds about right. The family moved to Echuca where her dad was like a country doctor. And there's quite a few articles from that time about patients that he was treating. Because no-one cared about privacy.
CHRISTINA: no. Everyone loves a medical drama.
PENNY: Exactly. And look, he, it was gross. And there like cow horns stabbing people in the face. Circular saws chopping off arms. Someone's foot that got burned and looked like a boiled ham. So he was pretty busy. He's a busy, busy man but it's hard to tell, but from what I found I reckon he was a very involved father. Quite a creative man and I found in the National Library of Australia, they have an unpublished manuscript that he wrote. Which is called 'Chorkles Book of Rhymes'.
PETER: Fascinating.
PENNY: He wrote this in 1915. And it's a handwritten book.
PETER: So she's 6 then.
PENNY: Yeah. And so that's how I know she was called Chorkles when she was 6. He's done illustrations as well and so I ordered it from the library and I was like 'Oh, not sure if this is gonna be worth it.' And it's so good. I was so happy with it.
The start of it is these little rhymes and this is one of them;
"See saw surgery door
MacWilliams shall have a new needle
Chorkles shall watch
While yells out in Scotch
And kicks up his legs like a beetle."
And there's a picture of the doctor giving the
CHRISTINA: That's a very large needle.
PETER: It looks like an umbrella. And Dad's done the illustrations.
PENNY: Yeah, he's done the whole thing. And I thought, you know, it was going to be some really old scrawly handwriting and whatever but it's all really neatly written calligraphy.
PETER: Is it copyright?
PENNY: No. Because he died in 1947 and it's 70 years after you die, things go out of
PETER: Could I be your manager?
PENNY: Yeah, well I reckon some of it
PETER: And we'll cut Christina in too.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, yeah. Just a third.
PENNY: And then the other reason I think he probably wasn't very religious is that he wrote this rhyme;
"Here come the wowsers
To sit in their pewses
And here comes old Whiskers
To bite off their shoeses."
And that's their dog, they had a dog called Whiskers and he's drawn people going off to church.
CHRISTINA: They look a little bit Dr Seuss those drawings.
PENNY: Yeah, yeah and he calls them wowsers so I think he probably wasn't going to church.
PETER: What's your definition of a wowser? Younger generation.
PENNY: Isn't it someone who's kind of always going on and pretending to be virtuous and lecturing other people? And being boring.
PETER: Yes, I'd put that into context too. Like, it's basically anybody who doesn't like other people having fun.
PENNY: Yes.
PETER: No gambling. No drinking. No partying.
CHRISTINA: None of the good stuff.
PENNY: So that's Matthew. I reckon Matthew was probably quite fun.
PETER: And traditionally the Methodist people were called wowsers cos they very much frowned on those things.
CHRISTINA: That's right they didn't dance of sing or do anything fun.
PETER: They sung.
CHRISTINA: Yes, but tedious songs.
PENNY: Might have been a very specific sledge. So then after the little rhymes there's also longer stories that he wrote. There's one that I think's very funny and it's about Chorkles and a Wicked Rhinoceros who's always trying to eat Chorkles. This is a section where the Wicked Rhinoceros has kidnapped Chorkles and taken her back to his house. They're back at the Rhinoceros's house.
"His house was made of fur, and had a merry-go-round on top. The Wicked Rhinoceros used to catch people and put them up on the merry-go-round and at night-time they would go to sleep and fall off like ripe fruit and the Rhinoceros would pick them up, all squashed, and cook them next morning and eat them.
CHRISTINA: Ew.
PETER: Oh, this is wonderful!
PENNY: "And he put little Chorkles up on the merry-go-round and went inside his house and there was his little baby Rhinoceros and the baby Rhinoceros said, 'What did you bring me home for my New Year's Dinner' and the big Rhinoceros said 'I'VE BROUGHT HOME DR MOSS'S CHORKLES FOR YOUR NEW YEAR'S DINNER'. And all the time there was poor Chorkles on the merry-go-round on the roof holding on and going round so fast that she couldn't get off. But all of a sudden she heard feet going pitter-patter over the grass and leaves and she looked down into the Rhinoceros’s garden to see who it was and there was Ettie."
Not sure who Ettie was, it might have been their maid, or could have even been her sister Dorothy, I'm not sure.
"And Chorkles called out to Ettie to climb up and take her away and Ettie said she would but there was old Mr Trebilco on the merry-go-round as well. The Rhinoceros had caught him a long time ago but he wouldn't go to sleep or fall off in the night. He just sat there and got tougher and stringier every day and the Rhinoceros said perhaps he would get tenderer in time, but he didn't. And the little Rhinoceros used to play its mouth organ to him to soften him, but he wouldn't."
CHRISTINA: Ew.
PETER: This is a pretty great effort.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, it's very dark.
PENNY: It's very dark. I mean Chorkles always gets away in the end but this Wicked Rhinoceros. But Mr Treblico was the librarian in Echuca. And so I think the stories are also just filled with people that they didn't really like or that they laughed at or something. I think MacWilliams the guy who got the needle, I suspect he would come in for a needle and make a fuss.
CHRISTINA: Cause a scene.
PENNY: These stories were like obviously a lot of work and he was a busy man.
CHRISTINA: It's his side-hustle.
PENNY: Yeah, and I'm assuming he was reading them to her in the night. And to me it just seems like he was probably very involved.
CHRISTINA: Yep.
PENNY: Although, I will say this
PETER: Was there more than child?
PENNY: Yeah, there's Dorothy as well. But she's not really in the books.
CHRISTINA: That's uncomfortable. There's a bit of favoritism going on there.
PENNY: There's not Dorothy Book of Rhymes.
CHRISTINA: No the Wizard of Oz?
PENNY: There's no. Well, I don't think he wrote that.
CHRISTINA: It's a bit strange to have a whole host of books about one of your children and not the others.
PENNY: We don't know if there just maybe didn't get collected by the library. Maybe it was damaged or it wasn't kept or something.
PETER: Perhaps Dorothy didn't really want to listen to stories about being eaten.
PENNY: Yeah, you know that's the other thing, maybe Dorothy had a bit more delicate nature.
PETER: Does Chorkles' mother appear in the Rhymes?
PENNY: Yes, there's one, this one's about Chorkles going missing;
"Sing a song of Chorkles
Nowhere to be found
Four and twenty pussycats
Searching all around.

When they couldn't find her
The cats began to Meow
'Doctor Moss's Chorkles lost
Won't there be a row.

Mummy in the bedroom
Very nearly dyin'
Daddy in the surgery
Roarin' like a lion"

PETER: This is good stuff.
PENNY: "And he's got like a picture of himself with little lines going 'Me cheeld. Me baby infant. Me baa lamb. My little Chorkles'.
PETER: Oh dear.
PENNY: So I don't know whether this is based on an incident where Chorkles ran away.
CHRISTINA: They're actually quite eerie drawings aren't they?
PENNY: Yeah, they've got big bulgy eyes.
CHRISTINA: Quite creepy. I like the cats. But the humans look scary.
PENNY: But this is well within you know the tradition of dark children's stories.
CHRISTINA: Like that Strudel Peter? Or whatever it's called.
PENNY: Yeah, yeah, that one.
CHRISTINA: That was petrifying.
PENNY: It really inspired a lot of writers. I will say.
PETER: And was, the cartoon stuff of the drawings. Was that common in those days?
PENNY: Well I don't, I don't really know. You'd have to talk to someone who's like a
CHRISTINA: It's a bit Roald Dahlesque as well.
PENNY: Well, it is. And it makes me think though that it was really involved with her and like a really caring father but then there is also the A.A. Milne example. You know how he wrote Winnie the Pooh about Christopher Robin it was about his son Christopher Robin and then Christopher Robin when he grew up was like 'My dad was not nice to me.'
CHRISTINA: Like Enid Blyton. Hated children. And didn't spend any time with her own but captured the imaginations of generations.
PENNY: You kind of imagine it like you making up fox stories to read, to tell our kids and then writing the down, which is lovely, so I just imagine that it's the same for Chorkles and her dad, that it was this nice thing that they did together.
PETER: Like it's nice to think that at, you know, at 8'o'clock at night when it's time for Chorkles to go to bed, Dad's come home and they've got the kerosene lamp going and in the dark he's reading these quite scary
CHRISTINA: Petrifying stories. Sleep well.
PETER: Now you go to sleep dear. And don't tell me you've had any nightmares.
PENNY: Call Ettie if you have any troubles. So at some point the family moved back to Perth so I'm not sure exactly when but it was in about 1921. And he, Matthew Kasner Moss did much better in Perth the second time around and he became a very prominent doctor. He was President of the British Medical Association and he specialized in anesthetics I think and invented some of his own devices and one of his anesthetic devices is in the Western Australian Musuem. And he also worked a lot at the Claremont Hospital for the Insane.
CHRISTINA: Excellent.
PENNY: Probably wouldn't call it that now. And you know, post-World War I they were getting a lot of work.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, a lot of insanity.
PETER: But then would that perhaps, would that have voluntary too?
PENNY: Ah, he was on the Board of Visitors and he, some of it might have been.
CHRISTINA: Some of them might have been okay until they read the Chorkles stories and then took a bit of a turn for the worst.
PENNY: Imagine him coming around
CHRISTINA: Creating work for himself.
PENNY: 'I've got a story for you. There's this merry-go-round. It's like a fridge.'
CHRISTINA: And there's a rhino with a hairy house.
PENNY: It's made of fur.
PETER: This insane stuff is, it's it's quite arguable really. There was a chap who used to live in Newstead who had various stints inside institutions and he'd go up to people in Newstead and he'd stare at them and look them in the face and say 'Are you sane?'
PENNY: It's a good question.
CHRISTINA: Depends on the day.
PETER: Someone comes up to you and say that, 'Yes.' 'Well, where's your piece of paper? I've got a piece of paper to prove it.'
CHRISTINA: I'll have to invest in one of those.
PENNY: That's a good point.
PETER: You've gotta have your piece of paper.
PENNY: Yeah and there was one article I found that was a bit sad that Dr Kasner Moss was saying that Claremont needed more funds and they couldn't have charity drives like the other hospitals because people were so ashamed of mental illness that they wouldn't want to be associated and they wouldn't want to donate. This was one stat that really demonstrates that. So the Claremont hospital averaged less than one visitor per 10 patients each week. So only one in ten patients is getting a visitor. Whereas the Perth Hospital patients averaged 5 visitors for every patient each week.
PETER: I think too, you didn't give any dates there but raising funds for the hospital it would be in the depression too.
PENNY: Yes. Absolutely.
PETER: So, pretty tough.
PENNY: Yeah, not a lot of money around but an awful lot of people with mental health issues particularly
PETER: Well you'd think, you know, 12 years after the First World War. A lot of things are gonna come out in that time.
28:59 PENNY: It's kicking in. So, Chorkles mother. So her mother was in the paper a lot. Sometimes just his medical stuff but also just going to the races and stuff like that. Her mother Ada Nellie Kasner Moss, she's in the papers a lot but it's very difficult to get any impression of. It's just her name, going to Bridge parties, going to the races, what she wore, that sort of thing. I can tell you that she did go through a phase where she wore a lot of green. And then she went through a phase where she wore a lot of blue.
CHRISTINA: Same colour area.
PENNY: That's about all I know about her.
CHRISTINA: Well you're wearing all green today Penny, is that a homage?
PENNY: I hadn't thought about it like that. It's a homage to my friend Nerida because Nerida often wears colours, all the one tone and she says she gets a lot of compliments for it. Cos she reckons if you wear all the one colour you look like you've made an effort.
CHRISTINA: That's a solid theory.
PENNY: She does have very nice clothes as well
CHRISTINA: Good job Nerida.
PENNY: So, Chorkles and her academic career. She went to school in Perth and she did quite well. In 1926 she got a distinction in her French Exams. And Dad I think you mentioned that Chorkles gave Aunty Bert French lessons. Is that right?
PETER: Yes. My sister Bernadette used to go up to Pen and Chorkles and Chorkles would give Bernadette French lessons and after year 10 Bernadette shifted down to Melbourne to live with my grandparents and of course she studied French and that was because of the grounding that Chorkles had given her.
PENNY: Did you learn French? I thought you did.
CHRISTINA: Oui. Yes. And my dad was a French teacher as well for a very long time so there wasn't a lot of choice or options.
PENNY: Did he help you?
CHRISTINA: Well this is the thing, Dad did help me but it always ended poorly. So Dad had actually written a series of French textbooks that
PENNY: Well, you don't want to listen to him. He sounds
CHRISTINA: That I felt were outdated by the time I needed to have that information. Even though obviously the language is exactly the same.
PENNY: Yes the French language notorious for changing a lot, isn't it?
CHRISTINA: Yes it's constantly evolving so it never ended very well when Dad tried to help with my French.
PENNY: So when she finished high school she went on to the University of Western Australia and she studied subjects, she did Arts so she studied English, Logic and Philosophy and Biology as well.
CHRISTINA: Gosh she does sound like me Penny. I know it's not all about me, but there's a lot of similarities going on here.
31:40 PENNY: Yeah. Then in 1929 we've got in Perth Truth this little note;
“Miss Chorkles Moss, elder daughter of Dr. and Mrs. M. K. Moss, of Hay street, West, who has passed her second year in the Faculty of Arts at the recent University Examinations will leave for the Melbourne University in February.”
And this is the article that has the photo of Chorkles that I showed you last time, the one where she's wearing a dress. There she is. So at this stage, she's looks like a fairly conventional young lady of the time and she stayed at Janet Clark Hall. And this was the same, her dad also studied at Melbourne University. So while she was at university her mother used to go and visit her sometimes.
PETER: From Perth?
PENNY: Yeah, from Perth.
CHRISTINA: That's a commitment.
PETER: She catch a boat over or?
32:29 PENNY: Yeah I think they probably did, and then Chorkles would come back just for the summer holidays. And I did find one article where they mentioned that she was studying Medicine but I don't think she was. I think it was Arts. Because then when she graduated it said that she was studying Arts.
Now, I think Chorkles did do a bit of writing too when she was at University. I found this piece that was published on the 17th of January 1931 and it's quite long I won't read the whole thing. But it's called "Mondayishness". Mondayishness. So she's made up her own word, which is a good start. There was a little picture of like a heart rate trace, you know that you see the up and down. And it's by "C. Kasner Moss".
"At the head of this article is a pulse tracing. ' i.e., 'a graphic representation of the rise and fall of the pulse, ergo of the work of the heart. The upward sweep corresponds to the cardiac systole or contraction, the lower plane to the 'diastole' or relaxation. The whole graph is dominated by the upward sweep. In like manner is the whole week overshadowed by Monday. It is this sudden transition from the quiet idleness of Sunday to the towering activity peak of Monday which sharply wrenches and jars the brain of man and beast."
CHRISTINA: Is she okay?
PENNY: "There is a mutinous gleam in the tired eye of every newly-harnessed horse, a faint longing to kick over the traces, or clamp the rein firmly under its matted tail and bolt — away from the city, out of Monday, back to Sunday."
CHRISTINA: Woah.
PENNY: And she carries on like that for quite awhile.
CHRISTINA: That's a metaphor laden writing.
PENNY: So, it seems like she did enjoy writing it also seems like she kind of, she's interested in science, she's interested in medical background things that she's using that metaphor.
CHRISTINA: Absolutely.
PENNY: So even though she was studying Arts it feels like she was
CHRISTINA: There was a pull
PENNY: She was kind of getting into other things more broadly and maybe, maybe she would have done science if she had of, maybe it was less acceptable to do Science for a woman.
CHRISTINA: Maybe she was just sitting in the back of Vet Science lectures just hiding. Absorbing the information.
PENNY: Tennis. Chorkles played a bit of tennis. The problem with, like, you're looking into the archives at these articles and you're getting like little snapshots of people, I think. You don't want to draw many conclusions but I think I am prepared to call it how I see it and say that Chorkles was really bad at tennis.
PETER: Look, when I knew her, I thought she'd be alright. She was good people she didn't like a serve.
CHRISTINA: Nice.
PENNY: I'm just gonna give you some scores. This is from the 24th of June 1924:
“Jean Loton and Barbara Murray beat Rita McGibbon and Chorkles Moss 6-1. 6-1”
CHRISTINA: Ooooh. Embarrassing.
PENNY: Now Rita McGibbon is actually a family friend who was mentioned in one the Chorkles Book of Rhymes stories.
CHRISTINA: Is she?
PENNY: Yep.
CHRISTINA: Is she on the merry-go-round?
PENNY: No.
PETER: That's a very good point. Beat her at tennis, off she goes!
CHRISTINA: Off she goes to wait it out and get tough.
PENNY: So and here's another one from the 26th of April 1926;
“Nancy Davies beat Chorkles Moss 6-0. 6-0”
CHRISTINA: Oh, Chorkles.
PENNY: And from the same tournament;
“Muriel Broom and Erica Hall beat Chorkles Moss and Dorothy Parr, 6-1, 6-1”.
CHRISTINA: Oh dear.
PENNY: So you played a bit of tennis Dad.
PETER: Yes, I did. In Newstead there was only, there was tennis and there was football. Didn't even have a cricket club.
PENNY: Oh, I didn't know that.
PETER: And the girls they only had tennis, they didn't have anything to play in the wintertime.
CHRISTINA: That's when they formed gangs and roamed around.
PETER: I think, it was very good the tennis because it taught us pimply faced obnoxious boys that we had to be nice to the girls so that they'd play mixed doubles with us.
PENNY: Excellent.
PETER: You can't
CHRISTINA: That's a life lesson.
PETER: You can't be nasty to them.
PENNY: You had a bit of success with that. Not with the girls obviously but with the tennis. Didn't you and Naomi Sewell win the mixed doubles?
PETER: Yes, I think that Naomi and I played together and there was other people I played with too. But we won in the Castlemaine Lawn District Association, but we played on hardcourts. We won the Juniors, then we won the C-Grade, then we won the B-Grade all in a row.
CHRISTINA: Wow. You were on a bit of a roll.
PETER: We thought we were pretty crash hot. Until we started to play some of the people who were a lot better than us.
PENNY: In A-Grade? You went up to A-Grade?
PETER: We went to A-Reserve and I think we made the finals but that was it. And then I think that was when I went to Melbourne so, that was enough tennis.
PENNY: Did you play tennis Christina?
CHRISTINA: I did a little bit. I used to have to go to school early a couple of mornings a week because I had tennis lessons.
PENNY: And how were you at it?
CHRISTINA: I don't know.
PENNY: Better than Chorkles? Somewhere between Chorkles and Dad.
CHRISTINA: I don't think I was amazing. And I was just really disappointed because the guy who ran the classes selected your tennis racket for you and then your parents bought it and mine was grey. And everyone else had really fun colours and mine was just really dull and I kicked up a bit of stink about it and Mum's like 'No, he's selected that, that's the one you're having.
PETER: Aluminium frame?
CHRISTINA: Yeah and it, the only way I could jazz it up you could buy like almost like a bandage wrap and change the colour of the handle. So I had a bright green handle.
PENNY: What did you play with Dad? You would have just had some bits of string wrapped around a
PETER: Early days it was a bit like that but Dunlop Maxply. They were a wooden-framed racket. With cat gut.
PENNY: Ah, genuine.
PETER: And they were a pretty good racket for the time. There are other different.
CHRISTINA: I thought that was a myth the cat gut.
PETER: Oh no, no, no. That's what we called it anyway.
PENNY: Was it actually made from cats guts?
PETER: I think originally it might of been. You know how you might have the nylon strings or whatever they are today. They either break or they don't break. The cat gut strings like a rope in a sense, you could peel, when the strings were starting to go you could peel strips off tiny bits of string.
PENNY: That sounds like a bit of fun, I'd love that.
PETER: You couldn't get your racket wet because that would, the cat gut would start to go off. Apparently.
CHRISTINA: Get the cat gut inside!
PENNY: Got a little umbrella for your cat gut.
PETER: When your cat's guts go off you're in trouble. Put it outside.
39:43 PENNY: So, Chorkles about from playing tennis, she was part of the social scene in Perth and she went to events with other family members. And I remember you saying Dad that Chorkles she said that when she wore her deb dress she never felt more naked in her life.
PETER: She told that story to my father who relayed it to me.
PENNY: So I reckon, she probably felt a bit uncomfortable at some of these events. But she did go and I have this description of her from the Daily News, 27th of January 1930:
“Miss C. Moss, lemon, ciel and rose floral crepe de chine with shady straw hat of ciel blue”.
And then there's this one from Perth Daily News in 1931 when she was back in town for the summer holidays:
“Miss Chorkles Moss was distinctive in a gown of black crepe de chine, with cape finish in deep V of white crepe de chine, and similar finish at wrists, topped by a charming hat in black balibuntal”
Don't know what most of those words mean.
CHRISTINA: That just made me think of a busby. Maybe cos I watched the coronation last night. I don't know.
PENNY: But I will say, I think, I have a suspicion that the word 'distinctive'.
CHRISTINA: Was what the hell is that?
PENNY: Might be code for 'she looked a bit weird'.
CHRISTINA: Eccentric.
PENNY: And she also had to go to bridge parties sometimes. So this was reported in Perth Daily news on the 28th February 1930;
“Miss Kasner Moss entertained a number of friends at an enjoyable bridge party at her mother's home in Hay street on Thursday evening. Mrs. Moss received the guests in a graceful frock of black georgette arid lace. Miss Moss wore mauve crepe de chine allied with patterned ring velvet, and Miss Dorothy Moss"
Which is her sister
"chose powder blue silk lace. The room in which bridge was played was decorated with bowls of beautifully shaded roses.”
Did Chorkles play cards when you knew her dad?
PETER: No not that I
PENNY: I feel like she would have been being forced to go to these events to be honest.
CHRISTINA: Sound a bit tedious.
PETER: Well her mother way back in the early days was having bridge parties, playing bridge.
PENNY: She was at bridge almost every week.
PETER: It's just like in a family, if that's what a family does the kids want to learn how to do it.
PENNY: Yeah, but I think it was the thing that it had to be her party, not just her mum's. I don't know. This is a photo that someone in Newstead, who lives in the house that Chorkles Moss and Pen Hall lived in.
CHRISTINA: Oh wow.
PENNY: And I visited them. They showed me a photo of Chorkles when she was a fairly young lady.
CHRISTINA: Oh, that's good.
PENNY: It's Chorkles, she's wearing jodhpurs and a shirt and she's next to a horse.
CHRISTINA: I'm into it.
PENNY: And I'm suspecting that she was feeling a lot more comfortable in that, in that get up.
PETER: Yeah. That's much more like a photo that I would recall of Chorkles.
PENNY: Rather than in the crepe de chine, whatever that should be.
CHRISTINA: Sounds like it'd crease.
42:57 PENNY: So we're now getting into an exciting part of the story because after uni the next time Chorkles is in the paper is on the 20th September 1932 in the Perth Daily News. And there's this little snippet;
“Mrs. K. A. Hall, of Mount-street, has taken a cottage at Roleystone for several weeks, and is accompanied by Miss Kasner Moss.”
They've met each other by then.
PETER: And no indication of how they met.
PENNY: No. I have no, and I've tried to kind of look at, look for events that they might have attended together and I haven't found that yet but I assume they would have just met, they were both going to Perth social events so they were probably moving in the same circles. And we know after this they went on to live together for maybe 40 to 50 years.
CHRISTINA: Wow.
PENNY: Pretty significant meeting. But we don't know what their relationship was at this time. We have.
PETER: And yeah, it's fascinating really that it'd be reported in the paper.
PENNY: Yeah, well but maybe that was a way of making it, I mean, it's all above board. It's perfectly fine to go with a fem-, and it's also saying that Mrs Hall is not alone she's with someone else so it's all safe there's nothing, you know.
CHRISTINA: The community at large can rest.
PENNY: Nothing going on.
CHRISTINA: Nothing to see here.
PETER: Well who knows whether there was anything going on.
PENNY: Well there may not have been. That's the other thing this may be how they actually met. That Chorkles needed somewhere
PETER: People have flat mates.
PENNY: Chorkles needed somewhere to stay and they, and they knew each and it was all. So then on 11th of April 1933, which is about 7 months later, the Daily News has this bit;
“Mrs Hall, who, with Miss Kasner-Moss, has been at Roleystone for nearly a year, intends coming to Guildford, where she will be joined by her husband, Captain Hall.”
So she's been living apart from her husband for quite awhile but
CHRISTINA: They're giving it another go.
PENNY: They're back together. And then in 1934 we had that article, which I won't read again, but do you remember the one where Miss Moss and Mrs Hall were in the car. Car crash.
CHRISTINA: And they had a dog.
PENNY: Dog ran to get help. Very exciting.
CHRISTINA: Very Lassie.
PENNY: And they were at that time, by that time, they were running a kennel together. They were breeding cocker spaniels. Mrs Hall and Miss Moss. Business partners.
CHRISTINA: Yep.
PETER: Well, as you know Penny. You know what happens to flatmates sometimes.
CHRISTINA: Well, yes. This is very true Penny.
PENNY: Yes, I did marry my housemate.
CHRISTINA: There's nothing wrong with that.
PENNY: Although plenty of people did tell me not to. Not, to not. Plenty of people when I mooted the idea of getting with housemate said, 'No, no, you shouldn't do that'.
CHRISTINA: I was very pro.
PENNY: You were pro. And I think that was the thing. People who had met Lincoln were quite pro.
CHRISTINA: Well, I'd been served a lot of coffee and biscuits by Lincoln. It wasn't about me, it was clearly about you but I was on board and I benefitted from that. Never met someone with so many varieties of coffee whilst living in a share house. It was all Jasper.
PENNY: Yeah it was. We used to always go to Jasper to get the beans. Happy times.
CHRISTINA: Do you still drink Jasper coffee.
PENNY: No, we don't.
CHRISTINA: Oh, can you two reignite that please. It would make me very happy. And the kookaburra biscuits. I was disappointed when it was down to just the lemon. I really liked the jam.
PENNY: I used to get them all the time because they were good value actually cos they were quite a filling biscuit.
PETER: Are they the biscuits that were made in Donald?
CHRISTINA: They're very yellow.
PENNY: Very yellow and then you can get them chocolate covered as well. In Donald.
CHRISTINA: You never had the chocolate ones.
47:01 PENNY: Yeah, they were probably more expensive. So Chorkles is, there's another article on Chorkles from Perth’s Daily News from the 21st of April 1933. And it’s about women doing unconventional jobs. And it's titled “OUT-OF-THE-RUCK JOBS FOR WOMEN". It's second line is; "Sex a "Club of Queer Trades"".
CHRISTINA: Oh dear.
PENNY: I don't think queer meant the same thing then as it does now. But they were on the right track.
"TINKER, tailor, soldier, sailor . . ." the young girls used to count their cherry stones to find out whom they would marry; but nowadays there would be little difference if they counted their cherry stones in that way for their own walk in life."
CHRISTINA: Bloody cherry stones.
PENNY: "It is mostly the depression that has done it. Women and girls are venturing on all possible, and hitherto impossible, professions, trades and commercial walks of life. In Perth alone there are women doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, journalists, editors, professional pilots, commercial artists, managers of big businesses, research workers, authors,"
CHRISTINA: This is outrageous.
PENNY: "estate agents, and dog, cat and rabbit breeders, chauffeurs and even gardeners."
CHRISTINA: I don't think you have to do much to be rabbit breeder. You just put two rabbits in a room. Done.
PENNY: "A mother said to her daughter in that half jocular, half-desperate, tone known so well nowadays, "I'll have to apprentice you to a trade. What will you be?" And in all seriousness, the girl replied, "An aeroplane mechanic."”
CHRISTINA: What was she thinking?
PENNY: This article lists a whole lot of women, lawyers, doctors etc and then it says;
“The breeding of rabbits for wool and of pedigreed dogs is quite a common job for women. Miss C. Kasner Moss, a University graduate, is among the dog breeders.”
CHRISTINA: Yes.
PENNY: So good on her she's being mentioned in this article of these
CHRISTINA: With her cocker spaniels
PENNY: High flying women doing their jobs.
CHRISTINA: Lawyers, dog breeders. They're on a par.
PENNY: Pilots.
CHRISTINA: Wish that had been offered as a course at uni. I probably would have done that.
PENNY: It makes you realise how limited it was for them, the things that they were expected to do. So, you know, at this point they're business partners, they've lived together at some point but we don't know, you know, in what way. And Pen Hall was still married, she did moved to Melbourne and then got divorced in 1937 and then we know that they lived together in Welshman’s Reef for a while and then they lived in Newstead for many years. The thing that really interests me when I think about this is that we don't know how her family reacted to her unconventional life.
CHRISTINA: It doesn't sound like there's much evidence of them once she reaches a certain point, is there.
PENNY: Yeah, that's right. And she doesn't, she stops going to the social events that she used to go to. Or, if she goes, she's not mentioned in the paper. And at that time homosexuality would have been regarded as a mental illness. That's interesting when you think about her dad's job at Claremont and what he thought about it. And her sister Dorothy got married in 1938 and Chorkles wasn't mentioned as attending the wedding and she didn't go to the kitchen tea either. But we don't know if she went to the buck's night.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, if you're banished from the kitchen tea, it's all over.
50:49 PENNY: Dad's, you know, he's just absolutely pestering me now again. 'What did the bride wear? What did the bride wear?' Dad, come on.
CHRISTINA: Calm down.
PENNY: He's kicking me under the table. 'Come on Penny. What did she wear? What did she wear?'
PETER: Now this wedding was in 1938.
PENNY: It was.
PETER: Well, I wonder whether the fashions have changed from the early descriptions of what people wear.
CHRISTINA: Crepe de chine.
PETER: Crepe de chine.
PENNY: It's not crepe de chine. Does anyone want to guess what the wedding colour was? It's not white. She's chosen a different colour.
PETER: Apricot.
CHRISTINA: Blue.
PENNY: Okay. You're both wrong. I'll read it to you. Okay.
“The bride was given away by her father, and wore a smartly-tailored frock of brown French"
CHRISTINA: Oh, Christina, you speak French. Oh god I'm under pressure. Roubaix. I don't even know what that is.
PENNY: "Roubaix touched with gold.”
CHRISTINA: Touched.
PENNY: Yep and I will just say there was another adjective used to describe the shade of brown, which I'm not going to say because it's racist. And they used to use it a lot to describe that shade of brown, I found it in heaps of articles.
PETER: Brown's brown.
PENNY: Well I, there are other things that you could use
CHRISTINA: As a reference point.
PENNY: Chocolate, that sort of thing.
“The skirt was cut on pencil lines and the long sleeves were slightly high on the shoulders. The cut-away bodice showed a suggestion of gold satin in front, and the high neck was lacquered at the back"
CHRISTINA: Lacquered!
PENNY: "with gold thread and finished in front with a gold satin bow. Her 'something' brown velour hat had a large wide front brim and was upturned halo wise and edged with lacquered gold and across the front was a gold lacquered feather. A neck posy motif of brown and gold flowers,"
What shade of brown were they? We can't imagine this.
CHRISTINA: We can't.
PENNY: "and carrying a sheaf of berries, all in tonings of rich red browns shading to palest gold, completed her attractive bridal toilet.”
CHRISTINA: That just sounds hideous.
PENNY: The bride wore brown and I don't know.
CHRISTINA: And set the tone for her married life.
PETER: It suggests that this must have been a very expensive wedding dress.
PENNY: I think so. That is a very long description of a wedding dress. They're not usually that long.
PETER: And that somebody from the social pages was there with the description. Yeah, you don't get that for every wedding.
CHRISTINA: What's with the brown flowers as well? That's something that we've discussed in previous episodes.
PENNY: We've discussed the brown dahlias.
PETER: Chocolate lilies.
CHRISTINA: It must have been a real trend at the time. I've never seen them.
PENNY: I don't know, but I've got a photo.
CHRISTINA: Oh good.
PENNY: She looks quite good I think. He looks
CHRISTINA: Oh, she does look good.
PETER: It's a pity it's in black and white. I can't see what brown it is.
CHRISTINA: No. He looks a bit surprised. Probably cos she's in brown.
PENNY: I've got a joke I can't say because my dad's here.
PETER: Thank you.
54:03 PENNY: Now, it is possible that Chorkles was there and just wasn't mentioned in the paper or that she didn't feel comfortable going but she had a nice event with her sister at someo ther time. Like, we just don't know. Matthew Kasner Moss died in 1945 and his death notice in the West Australian 25th of June 1945:
“MOSS - On June 28, 1945, at St John of God Hospital, Subiaco, M Kasner Moss, of Hay-street West; much-loved husband of Nellie and loved father of Chorkles and Dorothy. No flowers by request."
So, I kind of hope that the fact that she was named in that notice means that
PETER: They had dealings with each other as a family. And don't forget that, were they all in Western Australia then, or not? Hadn't Chorkles moved
PENNY: Yeah, Chorkles may have been living in Melbourne as well. Whether she was there in 1938 I'm not really sure when she moved over to Melbourne. Yeah, that's a good point too.
PETER: It's a long way to swim.
CHRISTINA: Exactly.
PENNY: There was one notice from 1949 of her sister coming to visit her in Ballarat.
PETER: 1949?
PENNY: Yep.
PETER: Well that certainly suggests they kept in contact.
PENNY: Yep. Did she ever have family come to visit her Dad? Because Pen Hall was an only child. But Dorothy got married and was Dorothy Carew-Reid and she had kids so Chorkles would have had nephews and nieces and things. Did they ever come to visit?
PETER: I can't remember them visiting when I was there? But I do know she might have had a nephew or a niece or a cousin. I knew she had some relatives and that might have been Dorothy's children. I don't know. Did you find out whether Dorothy had any children?
PENNY: Yeah, she did.
PETER: I would say that that's what I remember.
PENNY: So yeah it would be really interesting to, to know what the kind of relationship was. It would be so nice to think that they did keep talking to each other.
CHRISTINA: Well, you'd hope so.
PENNY: Particularly when you go from those stories that her dad wrote for her where he really seemed to celebrating her being a bit of a quirky, odd, strong-willed child.
PETER: How were those stories kept again? Who kept them and why did they get to the National Library.
PENNY: I don't know why, I can see why. At first I thought the National Library's just kept it because he was a prominent doctor, or they might have kept all his papers. But this is the only thing they've got of his. And I think they've kept it because it's amazing example of writing for children from that time and probably if you studied you would probably go, 'Oh, that's influenced by this. But there like really good. There's a few things where I think he needed an editor. For a like a first draft
CHRISTINA: Minor details.
PENNY: For a first draft that he wrote by himself.
PETER: And writing not for publication too.
PENNY: Not for publication and also it feels really original and derivative, not derivative to me. Like, having a merry-go-round on your roof where you put your future meals. You know, I haven't, I'm not aware of having heard that before.
PETER: It's a bit Tree-houseish.
PENNY: Well Andy Griffiths is very influenced by that Strumpeter book.
CHRISTINA: Was it Strumpeter?
PENNY: Yeah, he read that growing up.
CHRISTINA: Or am I calling it strudel and just hoping that's what. I don't remember but I've got a really strong picture of the front cover.
PENNY: Of the boy with his legs spread out.
CHRISTINA: So scary. Mum used to read it to me all the time. Very disturbing choice.
PENNY: There is a whole other chapter of Chorkles life that I would like to talk about but I think we need to make that a separate episode. So Dad if you would be able to come back another day that would be really good.
CHRISTINA: He's had enough. He's quite frankly had enough Penny.
PETER: I think you two are quite patient to have me here and we'll put it into the 'let's see' basket.
PENNY: Thanks so much dad. And I'll just say at the end that if you do, if you listen to the podcast and you like it, it would be really helpful if you could rate and review.
CHRISTINA: So helpful! Come on.
PENNY: Cos it helps other people find it, and that helps me want to keep making it. And to be fair, I do not need much encouragement.
CHRISTINA: No. She really doesn't.
PENNY: To get into Trove, like, not much at all. But a little, you know, it always helps.
PETER: This is not a paid political announcement, but you're allowed to rate Christina and Penny. Please don't rate me.
CHRISTINA: They might drag us right up though.
(Piano music)
PETER: Good job there's an edit button.