‘Croak’ feels right at home
• Graeme Casboult with a certificate illustrating just one aspect of his life – 29 years a volunteer with the Scottsdale Fire Brigade.
By Tony Scott,
September 29, 2021
Like more than a few lifetime residents of the North-East, Graeme Casboult has never seen the reason to live anywhere else.
Indeed, once offered a crack at the big time of football, he admits to feeling a bit homesick before leaving home … so he didn’t.
He has few regrets from his 88 years lived in Scottsdale.
But one of them might be the final period of his formal education.
“I went to the modern school for two years.
“It was at the high school, but we didn’t have a teacher for two whole years.
“Someone would come in and write something on the board about what we were supposed to do, but we’d rub it off and just entertain ourselves.”
He left school behind aged 14, but his first couple of forays into the workforce were not too successful either.
“I made up cardboard boxes for the butter factory (now Nutrien Ag Solutions) but I got jack of that after a month or so.”
Then it was a stint as telegram boy for Scottsdale Post Office.
That not only involved delivering them on a bike, but taking them down on the phone, which did not always have the best of reception.
“When we got telegrams from the Flinders Island Post Office it sounded like they were talking underwater.”
Fearful of incorrectly transcribing something important he broached the subject with the post master, who thought it best for young Graeme to find some other line of work.
About that time his father, generally known as ‘Duff’ Casboult, was in the process of leaving his manager’s job with Dinham’s Garage (now Darby Norris distillery) to set up on his own.
Graeme had also acquired a nickname – Croak, abbreviated from Little Croak in deference to his older brother’s moniker.
Now 15 years old Graeme helped transport the concrete bricks and build what was to become Casboult’s Garage (now Eastside Motors).
And having helped build it he spent the next 46 years working there as a mechanic.
“There were no apprenticeships in those days. It was just get in and do the work and learn alongside my father and brother.
“There were no hoists either, so we had to dig the inspection pits and had a bit of laugh when people fell into them.”
His football career started around this time, when practically every hamlet fielded a team in a local competition.
He started with the Scottsdale Rovers, but soon after the Scottsdale Magpies joined the NTFA in 1948 and he was recruited to join the higher level competition.
He remembers the arrival of renowned hard man Bob Chitty from VFL club Carlton to coach Scottsdale.
“He was a good footballer, hard but fair.”
On the forward flank, the wing and later in the centre ‘Croak’ quickly became an integral part of the Scottsdale line-up and was well enough regarded for his skill that Essendon approached him for a try out in the VFL, the sport’s pinnacle.
The invitation coincided with some work changes at the garage and he decided not to accept.
“I didn’t really know that I was good enough to make it anyway,” he conceded.
“And I suppose I thought I might have got a bit home sick.”
“I was always a home boy.”
Instead he played on at home for 13 years all up and clocked up more than 200 games with the Magpies.
Exactly how many was lost in a fire at the clubrooms.
“But I’ve got my name on a board over there (for life membership).”
He also coached the reserves team, but stopped abruptly in 1961 when the pressure was getting to the young family man.
“They wanted me to come back to play in the seniors.
“But it was a lot better football in those days and the pressure of expectation around the town was too much.
“That’s nearly all the community thought and talked about was how the footy was going.”
Graeme was putting his efforts into other community service through his membership of the volunteer fire brigade.
“The fire station used to be in Alfred Street and when they rang the bell that used to be at the top of a tower, I’d run from the garage to get in the fire truck and away we’d go.
“It’s a good thing I had a bit of football training in me.”
“We only had an old Fargo ute and not a lot of equipment to fight the fires, but we did our best.”
One that he remembers is a blaze in the top store of a shop at Bridport.
“That was in the days when the road was still gravel and there wasn’t much of a fire brigade at Bridport, so they called us to go down.
“The policeman asked if he could get a lift down with us.
“But he didn’t want a ride back.
“He reckoned I was a crazy driver going too fast and sideways around the corners.”
He also recalled the fire at the Softwoods mill at Tonganah, the biggest he witnessed.
“It was one of the biggest fires in the state up to that time.
“There wasn’t much water and what there was we had trouble getting to, so we couldn’t do much more than watch it burn and stop it spreading.”
He’s proud of his 29-years’ service certificate from the Tasmanian Fire Service and remembers being asked to take over from Kevin Haas as the chief of the Scottsdale brigade.
But work commitments had him suggest an alternative.
That was in the late 1970s and the alternative was Bob Barrett, who continues in the role more than 40 years on.