Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

119 Chapter Six From Kalamunda to Sydney After 1955 Keith’s main contact with the WACA was to watch John Rutherford bat. But ‘after I was out,’ recalled Rutherford, ‘he’d usually go home to Kalamunda.’ It was in that hills suburb of Perth, 25 kilometres from the WACA ground near the City centre, that the Carmodys lived, eventually in a house Keith built in a street he carved from the bush with one of the two bulldozers that provided his main income from the early 1950s. Whether he had prior experience or learned to handle such heavy machinery on the job is another mystery. But it provided work not only in Kalamunda and Lesmurdie, both small communities expanding into areas previously occupied by weekend holiday homes, but also in establishing dams and orchards in areas further away from Perth. While steep terrain meant hazardous work for Keith, fire was a threat to the whole community. On 1 February 1952 The West Australian reported: ‘a fierce bushfire swept through the Orange Valley and Kalamunda district yesterday with the speed of an express train. … Flames leapt to the top of giant redgums and jumped from tree-top to tree-top’, travelling ‘more than a mile in a few minutes’. As it destroyed over 2,500 acres of ‘heavily- timbered country, one week-end cottage was razed and dozens of other homes narrowly escaped destruction from the searing flames on the outskirts of Kalamunda’. Three hundred ‘volunteer firefighters battled to check the flames and on many occasions retreated to safety only when their lives were endangered … on one occasion [the fire] threatened the home of the State cricket captain (Mr Keith Carmody). He fought alongside other volunteers.’ At this early stage the home was rented from teammate Lester Charlesworth while Keith was building his own. That was now a much more important part-time job than cricket, its slow progress a source of amusement to some contemporaries but necessary because of the priority of his paid work. Although Jill points out that the house wasn’t completely finished in her father’s time, his