Alessandro ‘Alec’ EPIS ‘Kookaburra’
by Tony De Bolfo – Aug 2006
Alec Epis never married or fathered any children, but he’s never been lonely. That he says is the legacy of his Italian upbringing in one of Australia’s most inhospitable environments. “They were hard days but they were happy days”, Alex said of his boyhood years on the West Australian Goldfields, “Mum used to say they were the best years of her life”, and I’d say ‘why’ and she’d say;
“Because we were all together and we all needed one another.”
I never felt isolated, but it’s probably why I’m a bit of a loner now. I learned to occupy myself, and I never really needed people around me. The Epis family links with Australia were first forged in 1893 when Alex’s great-grandfather, Giuseppe BORLINI, left the zinc mines of Gorno, 30 kilometres outside of Bergamo in Italy, in search of gold. But the move would bring tragic consequences. Giuseppi came to Australia to work in Coolgardie, but he fell down a mine shaft and was killed, leaving twelve children behind him in Bergamo.
Alec Epis – Image Free Social Encyclopedia.
“Then my mother’s father, Angelo, was forced to leave the law and go to work to support the family. Then the 1914-18 war came, and he was forced to go and fight. He was very young, but he survived, and when he returned from the War, he also migrated to Kalgoorlie. He came for the gold because he’d heard about it from one of the others who had worked in the zinc mines in Italy.
At the same time, my father’s father, Alessandro Epis, also migrated because he and Angelo were best mates. After their arrival, they lived in a hotel in Boulder, but they couldn’t go out together because they only had one suit, so they had to take turns wearing it. Dad told me once that the only argument he ever had with my mom’s dad was over this suit. One day they both needed to go out, but they only had one suit and both needed it. So when they got a tip on a horse, Dad put all his week’s wages on it and it lost! He reckons they hardly ate for a week and never spoke for a month.
My dad’s father was already here by then and was working in the mines. Dad was only 13 years old when he came out in 1924; he was the only one of the children who was Italian born. He had a younger brother, Mario and a younger sister, Tessie. Mario, who later was a gold prospector, was educated at Aquinas College, but my Dad wasn’t sent to school. He spoke very broken English throughout his whole life.
He used to call Essendon ‘the Bompers’ and Hawthorn ‘Haw-bloody-torn”.
In 1935, Alec’s father, Virgilio, married Giusefina Borlini in Collie, 203 kilometres south of Perth. Not long after the newlyweds returned to Boulder, where they lived with Virgilio’s brother Mario, sister Tessie and mother Lucia. There, Virgilio and Giusefina’s father Angelo, worked as gold prospectors.
Alec and Ena with their father Virgilio Epis and trusty dog Pippi outside the family home with its cloth walls at Yilgangi Queen mine c 1947 – Image Alec Epis.
It was during this time that the Epis family was drawn into the infamous race riots which erupted in Kalgoorlie/Boulder after two men named Claudio Mattaboni and Edward Jordan came to blows at the Home from Home Hotel on the Australia Day weekend of 1934. The mobs came from everywhere and burnt down many houses.
At this time, they lived on Dwyer Street in Boulder next door to a one-armed Irishman called Paddy Coffey. They had been very good to him. They used to invite him over for dinner and generally look after him because he had nobody. So when the mob and the rioters approached my grandparents’ house, Paddy stormed out and stood in front of the house and said, “You’re going to have to shoot me to get in the door, you’re not touching the house of the Epis’s,” and the mob backed off.
Alec and Ena Epis at Yilgangi Queen in the two-room house on the site of the mine c 1949. Note the bough shed on the left made from the boughs of a gum tree to provide welcome respite from the oppresive heat – Image Alec Epis.
In the end, things were so bad that police reinforcements were brought from Perth and after a while, the Italians had to leave. Many went bush to a place called White Hope, about 20 miles out of Boulder. Some of them lived in the caves out there for up to three months. The Salvation Army used to go out to them every few days with food and water, and I know that over the years my Mum and Dad always gave to the Salvation Army.
Alessandro ‘Alec’, the only son of Virgilio and Giusefina Epis was born in Boulder in 1937. Alec and his older sister Ena later attended St Joseph’s Primary School, with Alec furthering his studies at Christian Brothers College, Kalgoorlie, for two years from 1947. It was a baptism of fire for the little blokes. “The brothers were a bit hard, they used to belt you a bit”, says Alex. “I used to come home and whinge to Mum, and she would say, “You must have deserved it, and if I hear from you again, you’ll get another one from me” There was no sympathy from Mum.
In 1949, Alec and Ena were both placed into boarding school when their father sought to stake a claim at an abandoned gold mine at Yilgangi Queen, 193 kilometres northeast of Kalgoorlie. The mine was located at what was once known as ‘Heppingstone’s Find’. It had been mined before and was owned by Western Mining Corporation. It was abandoned, so Dad and three other men got a lease from Western Mining and went out and had a look. He found some good stone down the 300-foot shaft and gave a percentage of whatever he found back to the company.
Dad was there from 1954 until 1966. He and I used to go down the shaft by ladder. He drilled all the holes into what we call the drive. I’d put the dynamite in the holes, and then I’d put the fuses in and regulate all so that the one in the middle went off first. We then lit the fuses and ran from the shaft into this big bucket to be hoisted up, and moments later, you’d hear boom, boom, boom. It was Alec’s dream to work with his father, but first he had to finish his schooling at New Norcia (a Marist Brothers College) for three years from 1949. Every three months, we would go home for holidays for two weeks at a time.
I did miss home, a lot of kids at the boarding home came from farming areas not far away, and every week their parents would visit them, bringing chocolates and cakes….. I had nobody visiting me, so it was quite lonely, but then again, I got used to being lonely, and that’s what gets me through now because I don’t need a lot of people around me. I was lucky that my sister was at the nearby St Joseph’s Girls College.
It was at boarding school that Alec came to the realisation that he was blessed with a genuine athletic prowess. I could run like a gazelle, and I was fairly good at most sports. I played footy, along with cricket, tennis and hockey. I really didn’t know that I was very good at it, I just thought I was like everyone else, having a go at sport.
Alec also recalls matches against Central Magumber, a little town near New Norcia. The ladies would supply afternoon tea. They would bring in sponge cakes and scones and all sorts of stuff that us kids in boarding schools never got. The footy there was terrific and I loved it. I always loved my Italian background, and there were lots of Italian kids around, like my mate Joe Fanchi. When I was going to school at Saint Joseph’s in Boulder, there was a State School next door. We had a big influx of Croatians and Slavs, and they were our best mates, so we won the war with the kids at state school, and they left us alone from then on. The kids there used to yell out
‘Italian dogs jump like frogs in and out of the teachers’ gobs’
It would take Alec and his sister over an overnight train trip to make it home from boarding school for the holidays. They would get to the station at six in the morning and jump straight onto the truck and head off to the mine, which was reached about one in the afternoon. Mum and Dad were very happy to see us back home. At home, we lived off fresh meat, bread and ice cream delivered once a week. Every Friday at 1 o’clock, the old truck would turn up and we could hear it coming for five miles away, so we used to run down to meet the truck and hop onto it. When we were living out in the bush, my job was to shoot a kangaroo and two rabbits, and if I could get a goat or a wild turkey or a pigeon, then that was a bonus. Back in Boulder, we all used to help make salamis and cheeses, too. Alex said that the family all conversed in Italian at home. When I went to school, I couldn’t speak any English, but then I started to learn, and later on mum began to speak English as well.
Alec at CBC Kalgoorlie Sports Day Oct 29 1948 – Image Alec Epis
I remember once we went to town from the mine in the big Chevy truck and I said to Dad “why are we going in the big Chevy?” he said “shut up and mind your own business and get in the truck and take the guns” which was the shotgun and the revolver and I used to hold them as we drove. We were about 200 kilometres from town, and we had to go through these cattle runs where you had to slow down. On this particular day we hit a cattle run and as we turned around the corner two cars came out and tried to hold us up, this was in the 1950’s, my dad said give me the gun and as he planted his foot and drove straight through them, they fired a shot and it flew across the roof of the truck.
Dad always had a big bumper bar, and I found out later that he even had the side doors lined with steel; that’s why we always took the gold in the truck. Today, Alex still has the gun, which he also used to guard the battery, where they crushed the ore. It’s a constant reminder to him of another place and another time when I used to come home for school holidays, and dad would get me to guard the gold while he slept.
Alec was 15 years old when he returned to Boulder from boarding school for good. It was 1952, and he then went to Boulder High School. “Mum came into town to look after me, and it was then that I joined Mines Rovers, my dad’s football team, where all the Italians played. It was terrific.” Alec had already won a handsome reputation as a junior footballer before making his senior debut with Mines Rovers in 1955, still a few months shy of his 18th birthday. For Alec, 1955 was a dream year, not only did he take out the Fletcher Medal for the Fairest and Best in what was then the Goldfields National Football League, but he also contributed to mines Rovers 44-point victory over Kalgoorlie City in the Grand Final, it was to be his only season in the GNFL.
Angelo Borlini – Image Alec Epis
Alec’s maternal grandfather, Angelo Borlini, left Kalgoorlie for Collie to work on the coalfields. he later acquired a 200 acre farm there and settled with his wife and children. He was 6 ft 4 in and as strong as an ox. In later years he was stricken with gangrene which forced doctors to amputate his leg but he never complained. He said “Plenty worse off”.
In 1956, Alex sought a clearance to Essendon Football Club in Victoria, but the WAFL kept me out of football for two years because they said I’d been lured by Essendon. It was well worth the wait, for Alec gave outstanding service in the 180 VFL games over the next eleven seasons.
“A lot of other teams got interested initially, and in the end, Essendon wrote to me and invited me to train with them. They didn’t offer me anything, they just told me to catch the train to Melbourne, second class. My father was devastated; he started crying and said he’d buy me any car I wanted if I didn’t go, but I wasn’t tempted. I’d followed the WAFL, and to go to the VFL was a dream come true. I wasn’t thinking about Dad and Mum, all I was thinking about was going over there to play the VFL.
It was an adventure, the chance to do something.
When I arrived, I found a welcoming committee from the club at the station and was taken to a boarding house, which I lived in with three other young blokes for two years. The old lady who ran it was a terrible cook, so we would go down to the milk bar to buy pies before we’d go home, where we would sleep out the back in bunk beds. Not long afterwards, Alex commenced his National Service at Puckapunyal and he had a lot of trouble getting out to practise games. “There was a Lieutenant there who was a mad Essendon supporter who would take me in once a week. As I was a butcher at the camp, I had to give him a big eye fillet steak once a week as payment. I had actually worked as a butcher in Boulder when I was 16. When I came to Melbourne, I worked as a butcher for Frank Cappicchiano at Moonee Ponds until 1962. To get to footy training, I had to work at the butchers through my lunch hour, and also worked the Saturday mornings before a game.”
Alec is both fiercely proud of his Italian heritage and Australian homeland, and is only too happy to recount how his chirpy nature earned him the nickname of one of his nation’s greatest icons, “Kookaburra”
We went away with the Victorian side to Perth to play and came back via Adelaide. We stayed in a motel there and were sitting around telling jokes, I was killing myself laughing, and Mick Aylett said I sounded like a Kookaburra, so they gave me that nickname and it’s stuck ever since. Alec’s parent were not there to see their boy complete his senior VFL debut against the Hawks, but used to make the trip to Melbourne at intervals of two or three months to see his progress. They loved it; it made up for the sorrow of seeing him leave WA.
Alec back at Yilgangi Queen – Image Alec Epis
Alec proudly declares that, so far as his League football is concerned, he achieved more than he’d ever set out to. Contrary to what a lot of people think, I never dreamed that I could play 180 games, including four Grand Finals. It’s not something I talk a lot about, but when you think about it, it was a great achievement for a kid from the bush, and the only kid from Boulder.
One of my greatest regrets is that I didn’t spend more time with my father because Dad was a wonderful person. I loved him, and I got on with him really well. It’s not so much that I couldn’t get back to Boulder, it was more that circumstances took me away, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. I did get back to see him every year for holidays, and I also saw him in Melbourne when he came across. However, while the mine brought financial reward to the family, it probably killed Dad in the end.
He had two partners at the time, but he used to take on a lot of the work himself, which put a strain on his heart. He died in 1964 when he was only 53. Mum died in Kalgoorlie about 15 years ago, in 1991. I was in Melbourne when he died suddenly on his way to Perth, it was 1964. I was playing then, and I went home for the funeral. I was really upset with the Essendon coach when I returned because he dropped me to the seconds for missing a week’s training.
Alec’s sense of morality and his core values of respect later saw him serve at the now-closed Pentridge prison as a voluntary social worker for 23 years until the 1980s. I mixed with a lot of murderers and robbers, but also met some terrific blokes there. I helped build a boxing ring as well as an Olympic-sized swimming pool for the inmates. Alex now spends his days between his Moonee Ponds home, not far from the old Windy Hill ground and his vineyard at Woodend. It would have been wonderful to have married and had a couple of kids, but it wasn’t the hand that I was dealt in life.
I played Australian Rules, I’ve got my vineyard, and I still make my salami, my cheese, my prosciutto and my olives because I love the traditions. My Mum and Dad went without. Dad worked hard in the mine, and Mum used to do ironing for five shillings an hour to try to help us get through school. She reckons she never bought so much as a new dress for over two years. We didn’t know it then, but we were very poor. In the end, Dad did alright, but before that, we were living in the desert like Arabs. I realise now how good it was,
we were all close, we never wanted for anything, and we were never envious of anybody.
I was given a lot of great things in my upbringing for which I’m really appreciative, like good morals, great family values and respect for people. I love the Italian culture, I love the Italian mentality, I’m an Aussie and I love all those great Australian qualities as well, but I say you to young Italian kids, be thankful you’ve been given the European legacy of having respect for people, particularly older people, because they’ve done all the hard work for us.
I’m big on customs, I’m also a traditionalist, and I love the Italian side of my family. As soon as I’m with someone who’s Italian, I’m at home. I know I’m only first generation, but I feel as if I’m Italian-born because I grew up with so many of them. At the same time, I’m very appreciative of Australia for giving my father an opportunity, and as he always said,
“Never forget what this country has done for us and never ever let this country down.”
Alessandron Angelo ‘Alec’ Epis.
Born: Boulder, WA – 27 Aug 1937
Height 187cm – Weight: 88 kg
Recruited from the Mines Rovers Football Club
Guernsey number 28
Nickname: Kookaburra
Games: 180 for Essendon – 1958 to 1968
Honours: Essendon premiership player 1962 & 1965.
Victorian Representative 1960 & 1963.
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