PHOTOS (L to R): John Suter, Ernest Suter, Bunny Suter

“I remember life as being very tough,” said Bunny. “I would scale the fence of the old Shambrook factory and then would sell the few soft drinks in my possession to the Boyd Brothers for a feed of mullet. A friend, Darby Ploughman had a father who was a baker, and he would supply us with some bread and cake.”

Bilambil’s teacher Horace Garratt who was to instil in Bunny his love of sport. “Mr Garratt taught me to play cricket,” Bunny said. “We always played cricket during the lunch hour. One day when I bowled him out, he said, ‘Okay, we have to go back to the classroom now’ ”. “My grandmother would send me off to school with a pancake for lunch. I would eat that on the way to school and that was it for the day. I was always pretty bright at school. When the inspector came I was the one sent up to the teacher’s house to get the lunch for the inspector and Mr Garratt. I was good at arithmetic and history and I was often called on to answer the questions when the inspector was there.'

Punishment was fairly frequent for Bunny, who remembers Mr Garratt as “knowing how to use the cane.”“If you pulled your hand away as the cane came down, he would bring the cane back up and get you on the way back. One of my biggest chastisements was when I broke a school window. The cricket ball went in through the open window, which I broke when I tripped as I was climbing back out. And then I got a good talking to from my grandfather when I got home. We were not supposed to go in the classroom when Mr Garratt was at home for lunch. But Harold Kempnich and I went in to have a smoke and Harold said that ‘Bunny had made me do it’, so I got the cuts.”

A near drowning incident was another cause for hefty punishment for Bunny. “One lunch hour we all went down to the creek for a swim. We took off our shirts and were with our shorts and braces. I was the only one who could swim across the river, but this day Matt Prindable suggested I should take Marty Coghlan across with me. We got to the middle of the creek and Marty panicked. He grabbed my braces and we both nearly drowned but we made it across the creek. But then the only way to get back was to walk right around the flat and back along the road to school. I got the cuts for the effort.”

Life out of school was a busy one for Bunny - herding and milking the cows before and after school.

“There was no motorised transport. Grandfather had a horse called Petta and a sulky, which he would take to Murwillumbah now and again for supplies. He would only have to tap on a butter box in the sulky and Petta would take off. I would hang on for my life but the horse always knew when we were home because it would come to a sudden halt. Grandfather would give me threepence to spend in town, unaware that grandmother had called me aside and slipped me sixpence. That kept me in lollies all day in Murwillumbah. Grandfather would buy some beers and invite Dan Prindable around. They would chat for a while and then Grandfather would say: “I think we’d better have one.” I used to wonder what this beer tasted like. I took a bottle one day, had one taste, thought it was terrible and threw the bottle away. Grandfather never questioned me about the missing bottle.”

Bunny left his school days behind at the age of 12 to help on the Suter farm.