Chapter 15 Trips and Tantrums

                                                 Chapter 15   Trips and Tantrums

Winters in the Burnett were bitter, especially when the westerly winds blew. We learned at school the wind blew across the land from the west, causing it to be dry and cold, and in milder weather the trade winds blew from the south-east or north-east from across the sea. These ocean winds were warmer, and were the ones that brought the rain.

 It was not unusual for the taps to freeze up until ten or eleven in the morning in winter. Water left in the copper in the yard overnight from washing the day before, was often frozen solid by the morning. On arriving home from town, the first thing Mum did was light the wood stove to warm the kitchen.

 One day in winter when I was about five after one of these outings, I had on a pretty pink organdie dress with a fluffy gathered skirt and a big bow at the back, Mum sat me on a chair in front of the open fire to get warm. Suddenly, I thought of something I wanted to say and turned around to speak to her, the loose ends of the bow brushing the open firebox and picking up a spark from the crackling fire. It ignited the dress which burst into flames. Mum was close by and in an instant she had smothered the fire with her hands and had the dress off me in a flash. Neither of us was burned, but she made sure I never wore organdie again.

 Occasionally my aunt and uncle came to stay and Mum made a bed for me on the lumpy lounge, because they slept in my double bed. I was quite put out about it. I was warm  enough; Mum saw to that, but the wind whistled through the cracks between the slabs and made the whole house cold.When I walked on the linoleum my feet almost hurt with cold.

 One of the compensations in winter time was that the dairying only had to be done once a day because the cows produced less milk. So wintertime was the best time for a trip away, leaving the farm to a neighbour’s care.

 I turned six years old on our first big trip to Brisbane to visit my grandparents. Dad  put a mattress in the back of the1937 Ford utility for Larry and me to sleep on for the first few hours. We had 300 miles of rough narrow dirt road to travel, so we left at 2 AM to  get there in one day. The most frightening part was the winding, narrow and dangerous Binjour Plateau range. A  young motorbike rider had gone over the range on his bike some months before and was killed. It was a shock to everyone in the district. I overheard details of how he had been pinned to the ground by the bike and how the grass was torn away where he had tried to escape, and there was talk of burns on his body, probably from the exhaust, etc.

On the day of the trip we set off in the pitch dark of an early frosty morning, and I was fine travelling while I was asleep, cuddled up under blankets on the mattress in the back, but as daylight broke and Larry and I sat up, it wasn't long before I became carsick.

 Larry leaned over the side of the cabin, “Dad, Dad , you have to stop. Giddy’s carsick!” he yelled.

 After the third interruption to the trip, Dad’s disgust at the weakness of his offspring  bubbled over. “Aw, shit! Not again!” He didn’t go to church much, but he called on Jesus Christ frequently to explain why he had been so accursed–why he had been singled out for such aggravations as a car sick child!

I felt such guilt because I was causing this delay to the trip. Not only that, but I had to squash in between Mum and Dad in the front seat until the nausea abated. When I felt well I could get back in with Larry, but soon the sickness came on again. I'd hold out as long as possible, but sometimes was reduced to vomiting on the side of the road by the time I spoke up.

 When darkness fell I was allowed to sit in the front seat. About 8 p.m we drove over the hill into Chermside, and were greeted by a sea of city lights. We still had to travel to my Grandma's house at Tennyson on the other side of the city. At the time, Chermside was the outer-most suburb on the north side of Brisbane, and the tram terminus. The glorious sight of the lights took my  breath away.

From Chermside on through the city, Dad had to deal with tram lines and trams, and  once again he called on Jesus Christ to be accountable. Not used to driving in the city, he was tense and nervous, as evidenced by his frequent swearing and the jerking of his foot on and off the brake. No one else spoke during our city driving experiences. I swear I didn’t even breathe!

While we were staying with my grandmother, Dad decided to take us all one night to the pictures. I had on a pair of green woollen gloves. The traffic was heavy in the city, it was drizzling rain, and the lights were dazzling on the windscreen. I was upset because I was made to sit in the front on my mother's knee, and grandma sat in the middle.  I wanted to sit in the back with Larry. The back of the old Ford utility had large metal bulges or covers over the wheel sections, and Larry and I, when we travelled in the back, sat one on each side, leaning up against the relevant hub.

Suddenly Dad was blinded by lights coming straight for our car. He tried to dodge the on-coming vehicle without success. Quick-thinking Mum yelled at me to put my hands over my face, which I did, and a loud crunching noise followed. A large truck had hit our car, neatly removing the whole right side. Thank Heaven Dad didn’t have his arm out the window, and thank Heaven I was in the front and not the back.

Dad yelled frantically, "Are you all right, Boy?"

"Yes Dad, I'm okay!" Phew!

Had I been in the back we would have sat one on each side. None of us knew which side Larry was on.

Once again however, Dad showed naiveté. The truck driver, under the influence of alcohol, pleaded with him not to report it to the police, making all sorts of promises to fix his car and pay all expenses etc. He gave Dad a false name and address, supposedly where he could be contacted the next day. Of course Dad never found him.
 
A few days later Mum, Larry and I returned to Green Springs on the train, while Dad remained in Brisbane to see about fixing the car. Two weeks later Mum contacted him by telephone making her feelings obvious and within days he was back on the farm too.

The next trip we made was to Bundaberg, about 120 miles east, where Dad’s sister and her husband lived. Part way over the hilly Mt Perry Road, the Ford broke down, and at a garage later in Bundaberg it was discovered that somebody, probably a mechanic in Assville, had installed a Chev cluster gear and it kept breaking a tooth which had caused the breakdown. As it was such an old vehicle, my father decided to buy a new car, and he chose an Austin Somerset A40 sedan. He really wanted a Holden, which was the car everybody was buying at the time, and less money, but there were none available on the spot and he would have needed the car to get home again. Not only that, but Dad was such an impatient man that once he’d made up his mind on something he couldn't rest until it happened. He made the choice between the Austin and a Mayflower, a squarish-looking, black sedan. 

The Austin was the first sedan car we had owned, and I thought this was the most wonderful thing I had ever been in because I got to sit in the back seat, which was so close to the front seat But still I could not travel far without getting carsick, and I would have to get into the front seat until the sickness left me. Travelling on rough, dusty roads probably made the car sickness worse. Still, the promotion to a sedan car was joy indeed. Sadly, this little car, proved to be an endless thorn in my father’s side. 

His constant lament, "You've only got to spit out the window and the bloody thing will stop!" was repeated often.

In the middle of any stretches of water, he would end up vainly trying to restart the stalled engine. Unsuccessful, out he’d get with a piece of cloth, after he’d removed his shoes and socks and rolled up his pants, and dry the distributor. This scenario was repeated so often that he kept a piece of rag in the car especially for the purpose. 

 Valiantly we foraged on, and Dad planned a trip to Brisbane, as usual to visit Grandma Jorgensen. Larry stayed home to manage the farm. This time Dad packed a box of day-old chicks for his mother and they were on the floor in front of the back seat. His habit of driving faster than necessary often caused him to brake too quickly, and some hours into the trip, as we rounded a bend, we suddenly came upon a water-filled culvert caused by recent rain. The car slid to a sudden stop and I flew forward, jamming my foot into the middle of the box of chickens!  (No seat belts!) It seemed Jesus Christ had again slipped up, and Dad called loudly for an explanation!

 On ordinary day-trips out to Assville, if Mum and I were with Dad, he'd always say, "I'll have to go to the pub and cash a cheque for change." Mum and I walked up and down the street for hours, nearly mad with boredom, while we waited for Dad to ‘get change.’ 

 He loved to yarn, and he bent the ears of any unsuspecting patrons for as long as they could stand it. To salve his conscience he brought out two tall glasses of cold double sars (sarsaparilla) to the car for Mum and me, especially if the weather was hot.  At the top of the town in a side street, there was a small weatherboard ‘house’ belonging to the QCWA which, for the convenience of travellers, was never locked. Mum took me there to get drinks of water and use the toilet, which of course was an earth closet in the backyard. Later on when she had another baby, she would take us there to change his nappy and perhaps give him his formula.

Unfortunately, Dad's temper led to violent rows, especially if he'd been to town drinking. Sometimes the cause was one of his schemes that he’d dreamed up for making money on the farm. Mum was super cautious and usually threw cold water on the ideas, especially if Dad was showing signs of drunkeness.

 “Aw, Jesus! Disaster Annie strikes again!” he would throw back sarcastically, as he stomped off to sulk.

His bad temper didn't always need alcohol to fuel it into fire. I’ve seen him become so beside himself with rage, he’d dance back from the engine he was working on like a boxer, lean back to get maximum leverage, and then hurl the offending spanner or whatever tool he was using, as far away as he could. There he’d be hours later after he had calmed down, searching through the long grass and weeds for the discarded tool.

One time he was working on an engine just out in front of the house, and it burst into flames. 

He screamed out to Mum, "Bring water, Peg. Bring water!"

 Mum ran out of the house to see what was happening and when she saw the fire she bent down and scooped up a handful of sand and threw it on the fire, effectively smothering it. Dad nearly threw a fit!

 Spluttering and blaspheming he yelled, "Jesus Peg!  Look what you've done! You’ve ruined my bloody engine!"

Mum calmly replied, "Well you wanted the fire out, didn't you?"

   

Chapter 14 A whole lot of Bull

                                     

                                                       Chapter 14  A whole lot of Bull

 The fear I always had of bulls started back before Anthea and her family left the farm, when she drove Mum and I to Assville one-day for a shopping trip. Nearly home and on a narrow dirt road beside a farm, the car broke down. We were stranded, the day closing in. Sitting in the front seat of our Ford utility after a passing motorist agreed to relay a message to my father, we started singing.

 Happily enjoying our singalong, we were startled by the sound of a bellowing bull in a nearby paddock which rose above our voices and raised the hair on the back of our necks.  Possibly feeling threatened, (maybe he thought it was the opposition,) he was on the warpath. Mum and Anthea were scared and I was terrified. We switched off the radio, Anthea climbed into the back of the utility and lay down flat, and Mum and I crouched down quiet and still as little mice in the front. I was so scared I hardly breathed, and gradually the bull ceased his roaring, lost interest and wandered off.

 Bulls caused me no end of stress and anxiety, and I had many nightmares of being chased by a bull. In my dreams I could never run. I strained with every fibre of my being, unable to move, and of course as the bull was almost upon me, I woke up, greatly relieved that I was safe in my own bed.

 Dad’s habit of napping on our settee after the evening meal caused another bull drama. He maintained he was listening to the radio, an old-fashioned upright model at the foot of the couch. On the evening in question his red, Illawarra bull started bellowing, and it wasn’t long before the noise of the bull grew louder than the radio and the noise of Dad’s snoring.

 When Mum shook him awake he irritably replied,  "Oh, don't worry about Bully; he won't come near the house." A rock sank lower in my stomach.

 The angry bull continued to rage; Dad continued to snore. There was a fence from the road to the dairy which passed within 100 yards of the house and enclosed the dry paddock, and the bull was out there. Apparently he took exception to the noise of the radio, because he was soon forcing his way through the fence. Mum woke Dad again, but still he wasn't concerned. I was trembling. 

 At the time, we had a netting wire fence around the house, and soon the bull began pawing at that fence. I was thankful Mum had firmly closed the front door. In my heart I knew that Dad would not let the bull into the house, but I waited with my heart in my mouth.  Mum became angry, waking my dad again. 

 Fed up, he flew into action, grabbing his shot gun. At the front door he fired over the bull's head. The bull turned, and as he fled Dad fired again at his rear, peppering his backside with lead shot.

 "I'll teach the bugger!” he declared. That bull never troubled us again!
   
 Yet again, when we had a pretty yellow and white Guernsey bull, Dad had a run-in with him too. This bull was quiet compared to some and my dad considered him a pet; and this day 'the pet' was again out in the dry paddock. The shed, with a big window at the back, formed part of the fence line. The window was just a piece of ply which opened outwards and could be propped open with a length of wood paling. You could look out the window into the dry paddock. 

 Dad was out there teasing the bull, saying, "Come on bully, you're a good bully aren't you?"  and things like that.

 Mum was behind the fence near the shed. “Leave him, Alec! Leave him alone... he’ll charge you!” The bull put down its head and pawed the ground.

 Dad should have taken the warning.

 Larry was standing in the shed with the window pushed open, watching the performance, As the bull charged Dad turned to run, at the same time realizing he had no time to make it through the fence, and like lightning, he went through that window, landing in a heap, but safe and sound. He took a long time to live that one down!

As I grew older, I usually had the job of bailing up in the dairy.  This involved walking out into the yard of cows, selecting the nearest one and guiding her into the bail, putting the chain around her and attaching it to the hook on the post to stop the cow from backing out. This was a fairly straightforward job until it rained. In wet weather the yard became thick with muck and mud. I was always barefooted on the farm, but in wet weather I  wore rubber boots. The mud in the yard could become quite deep depending on the amount of rain we'd had. Sometimes, the sticky goo would close in around my boot and as I tried to step forward my foot came out of the boot and there I stood, trapped, with my boot sticking up from the mud behind me, and feeling the cold black, goo clinging round my foot and oozing between my toes.

Dry weather was preferable in the cow yard, although even then you had to be careful to avoid fresh cow-pats and puddles of pee. After the cow was milked it was necessary to slide back the wooden rail, opening the gate to let her out.

 There was usually a bull in with the cows too, and I was never quite comfortable walking around amongst the cows with the bull present, although I dare say he had things on his mind other than me!

 Dad grew sorghum, ground it in a hammer mill, and in winter fed the cows with the cereal to improve milk production. He bolted a large tub, made by cutting a 44 gallon drum in half lengthwise, to the top of the rails; and then emptied in a sack full of the cracked grain. A large jam tin served as a scoop and the cows had a feeding trough at the front of the bail. Before bailing up, I placed a scoop of the grain in the feeding trough. This encouraged the cows so much they often came into the bail voluntarily.

Another hazard for the bailer-upper was the kickers. If the cow was inclined to kick, as young heifers often were, she had to have a leg rope applied; otherwise she could easily kick over a bucket of milk, or, use her back hoof to paw away the teat cups. Applying a leg rope had to be done with special care so as not to cop a kick in the jaw.

 If the cow indicated that she was about to defecate by raising her tail, you had to be quick smart in grabbing the shovel. Catching a fresh cow pat with the shovel before it hit the concrete, could save a lot of work later. The thing I hated most was when the cow peed in the bail, because it inevitably spread across a wide area. I had to clear out pronto to avoid cow-pee splashing up my legs. Then I had to watch out for the swishing of the cow’s tail as she brushed away the flies, because it was probably wet with smelly cow pee.

The cow would have the teat cups applied and when most of the milk had been extracted, Larry or Dad would change them to the cow in the opposite bail. After the teat cups, the cow would be stripped out. In other words the milker would sit down on the milking stool and extract the last of the milk from the cow by hand into a bucket.

 I started bailing up when I was about seven, but after a few years, Larry and I were left alone to manage the dairy when our parents went away.

Whenever we were alone, Larry couldn’t resist teasing me by squirting my legs with milk. Flies were always a hazard in the dairy but when my legs were smeared with  the warm sticky milk the flies became a nightmare. I’d get so angry with Larry I’d have cheerfully throttled him if I could have! Thank goodness we were only left alone on a couple of occasions.

Milking was done twice a day, and once a day in winter, when fewer cows were being milked. The trouble was it had to be done every day, rain, hail or shine, so sometimes, the constancy of it became depressing. Even Larry, who loved the farm so much, got fed up with the dairying at times.


                

Chapter 13 Father Rules

Chapter 13 Father Rules

Unlike Larry, I found the farm boring. Mum had been a city girl and also found the farm hard to cope with at times. She disliked the bush and all its horrors of snakes, frogs, goannas, and savage bulls. Being a girl I spent most of my time with my mother in the house and naturally, I grew to dislike the same things and to be very frightened of many bush things.  Larry and I were seven years apart in age and so were never good play companions. Larry loved to tease and I was never a good sport about it.

I was a shy little girl and that shyness stayed with me well into adulthood. Dad never ever laid his hand on me when disciplining, but his voice could be harsh and frightening.  Sometimes in the evenings I guess I chattered a lot, because if my father wanted to say something, he barked at me with a sudden rebuke. Although he swore roundly I never heard him use the F word, ever. 

 He was a big man of six feet and he towered over all of us. His skin was olive brown from the sun and his large weathered hands were well formed and strong. I trusted those smooth, long-fingered hands. He always surprised me the way he could build barbed wire fences, sink posts, and cut down large trees. Once during my childhood I noticed the hands of a doctor, and thought how pale and soft they were, because I was used to seeing my father's big brown, sturdy hands. While I trusted him implicitly, I suffered a lot of fear from his temper.

 Once on a holiday with Aunt Lu in Brisbane, she said to my mother, "Peg, you'll have to stop Alec shouting at Gayle; she's a nervous wreck!"  When Mum took notice, she realised every time my father spoke, I jumped.

    I was lonely and bored most of the time, and occasionally I’d beg Mum to allow me to walk up to the caves beyond the ridge. It took a lot of begging though, because she worried about my safety.

 “You’ll hurt yourself.” or “You’ll walk on a snake!” or “You’ll get lost!”

I’d whine. “No I won’t, Mum,” until she finally gave in.
The caves must have been a couple of kilometres away, but I knew the way well. One thing I had to be careful of was large cobwebs strung between the trees, which usually contained a big St Andrews Cross spider in the middle, patiently hoping to catch his lunch as it flew by. The much smaller redback spiders were also around in small cavities, and were more dangerous, though not fatal.

I walked half a kilometre from the house, making my way up the stony face of the ridge until I reached the top. The walking got easier then as it plateaued out level. The eucalypts weren’t too thick, and grass was sparse on the grainy pale ground. A kilometre across, the land slowly tapered down to the caves.. They were only small caves, maybe 15 feet across, but I could see where wallabies and bandicoots had left paw prints in the fine white dust. All sorts of creatures must have sheltered there out of the elements.

 I’d sit for a while, daydreaming about hiding from mysterious 'invaders.' On the walk back I perched at the top of the ridge and rolled the ancient grey and maroon rocks down the steep face, watching them tumble and bounce, chocking and knocking against tree trunks and big rocks stuck in the sand. While I played I daydreamed about ancient volcanic eruptions which might have spewed out these very rocks.

Life on the farm was often lonely and difficult, but we had our fun times too.  For all his harshness, Dad loved a joke. Once during a hot summer he came home from a visit to Assville with some plastic water pistols, and couldn’t wait to try them out. He shot everyone in sight with a spray of water until, in an effort to get the better of him, we all joined in.

Mum had just mopped the verandah floorboards and she implored us, "Oh come on, stop this, you’re getting water everywhere!" Her words went unheeded in the joy of the moment.

"I've just mopped the verandah!"

After a while we graduated from water pistols to cups of water. My Dad gave as good as he got. We were all laughing uncontrollably, and throwing water at each other. Mum tried to intervene and for her trouble copped a dousing herself! In the end Mum was laughing as much as the rest of us, and she finally trapped Dad with the hand basin full of water. The tanks must have been full that summer.

Every summer that verandah became the centre of our lives. We ate out there; we sat on the steps and talked in the dark after dinner; and when I was little I lost many a teaspoon down between the floorboards after raiding the old kitchen dresser for something delicious like peanut butter or Saunder’s malt.

When Mum found the teaspoons in short supply, Dad jemmied the floorboards up and retrieved the missing culery out of the dirt and cobwebs.

One evening I insisted on sitting in my baby brother’s highchair. I must’ve been seven, and I only just fitted, the sliding tray fully out and hard up against my stomach. Suddenly Dad spied a brown snake out on the grass. We had only two steps, and the table was too close to the lawn for comfort. Everybody rose from the table at once, but I couldn’t move. I was stuck in the high-chair, panic stricken and terrified the snake would gobble me up! (After that I lost my desire for the high chair.)

When my parents first took over the farm some fences had been built and the dairy of course, but my father built many more fences over the years and spent long hours cultivating the land. Sometimes Mum and Larry, (and me if I wasn’t at school,) worked alongside, gathering up small pieces of wood and packing them against stumps. Dad got a few fires burning, then he’d take a burning piece of wood or a shovel full of hot coals from one fire and start another, and so on.

One piece of land on the side of a hill was visible from the house. Sitting out on the verandah that cool dark evening, the whole hillside was a sea of fires, resembling a night-time view of the city. I loved the smell of wood smoke that hung in the air as the evening cooled. After dinner we walked up the hill, taking cobs of corn and slices of bread to toast over the coals. We used long home-made toasting forks; and while we were there Dad shovelled coals from burning fires to heaps of wood that weren’t burning so well. It fascinated me the way a fire smouldered its way down into the ground until all the roots of a stamp were burnt out and only ash remained.

 Dad had the ability to work in the fields for hours, return home, soundly catnap--now called a power nap--for half an hour on his couch, then be up, refreshed, and off back to work. I never knew him to be anything but a hard worker. If he was in a good mood, he’d take me with him to watch whatever he was doing.  Once he was blasting large stumps out of the ground with dynamite.

I was there too and he told me, "Go over behind that tree and don't move." Not for anything would I disobey Dad. 

I felt important knowing he trusted me, and I waited with excitement as he lit the fuse about 50 yards, (or metres,) away. Then he ran back and joined me behind the big tree. We held our hands over our ears until after the explosion. I marvelled at my father's cleverness.

I enjoyed the phenomena of the bottle trees, typical in the area. Easily distinguishable by the unusual bottle shape, they stood dotted amongst the eucalypts and grassy paddocks like forgotten beer bottles. Because of the moisture in the trunk you could sometimes see damage done by lightning after a storm. The white spongy trunk of the tree would be shattered to pieces, its whole narrow leafy top gone completely. Also because they were full of water, old bottle trees often simply rotted away and collapsed into a spongy white heap.

 Electrical storms were frequent during my childhood, and Mum still held fast to some old wives tales about lightning. She doesn't do it now, but on the farm she covered the windows with blankets and put away the knives and scissors. One night we listened fearfully as a tremendous storm raged and cracked. Jagged streaks of lightning whipped across the sky, and suddenly, Mum screamed as a blinding fireball raced through the house. The crack of thunder was deafening, and I was fearful that the house would be struck and burn down, but gradually the storm abated and we all went to bed. The next morning we could see the damage. About 200 yds from the house there had been a tall dead spike of a tree. It was an old dead trunk with hardly any limbs and it had been struck by that bolt of lightning and shattered into splinters the size of fence posts. Some were just outside the front door.

Chapter 12 Getting Educated

                                                      Chapter 12  Getting Educated

For my sins I have been given a long memory of my first day at school, embarrassing my grade-seven brother by wetting my pants! I still remember the pool gathering on the wooden floor boards under the school form that I was sitting on. The truth is I didn't know what to do about going to the toilet as no one had told me, and I was too shy to ask. After that the teacher made sure I knew though!

My moving from baby-hood to schoolchild caused some other embarrassments for Larry too. At home on the farm, cars going past our house were quite a novelty, and drovers meandered past taking big mobs of bellowing cattle in long morose lines on their way to market further south. Anything like that was an event not to be missed, and when a car drove past the school I got out of my seat and went to the window for a look.

I remember Larry’s utter shock, “Mum! She got up and went to the window!”

 Anyway, school protocol took no time at all to be firmly instructed into the minds of us little novices, and my embarrassing first day faux pas was soon forgotten.

 At the beginning we were each given a slate and a slate pencil to write with. A slate was just that: a piece of slate a little smaller than an exercise book, enclosed in a wooden frame. Dropped on the floor, a slate could shatter, and many did. The short slate pencil, only the thickness of a knitting needle, was pointed like a pencil for writing. The slates were cleaned with a damp cloth or piece of sponge, and some of us had nice little sponges in a square tin, which could be kept damp. Still, one little girl, stuck for something to clean her slate with, simply picked it up and licked it clean with her tongue! I was horrified and wasted no time in reporting the matter to my mother. If our slate pencils became too blunt or broke, we were sent downstairs to sharpen them on a rock.

Ater the Gilman Creek School closed in 1948, parents from Upper and Lower Gilman got together to discuss where their children should then go to school. A farmer from Upper Gilman was willing to use his truck as a school bus so it was decided that he would pick up the children from Upper Gilman and take them in to Green Springs School. He wasn't willing to travel to Lower Gilman however, because of the extra distance.

Discussions became heated and one of the Upper Gilman mothers declared, "I don't care if the children from Lower Gillman never get to school!"

This left the parents of Lower Gilman in a dilemma. For the rest of 1948 the children were put on to correspondence classes. In 1949 one boy was sent to a convent in Brisbane, and in March of that year Larry went to live with his uncle and aunt in Bundaberg, a large regional town 120 miles away, to attend school, where he stayed for a year and did very well.

 Naturally in time, older children began to leave Green Springs School, and numbers on the bus again dwindled. It became parents from Upper Gilman who faced the  problem of how to get their children educated if the bus ceased to run. They finally decided they would have to approach the parents from lower Gilman to arrange a bus for the whole area. Larry returned from Bundaberg, and a convent somewhere in the city lost its newest boarder.

     The same farmer eventually agreed to continue to run the bus using his farm truck, which also doubled for taking his pigs to market. Apparently, he just removed the seats, which were all in one piece--long boards attached to a metal frame--to put the pigs in. So on sale days, without time to return home and clean the truck out after the pigs were sold, he drove straight to the school via a local creek where he stopped to throw a few buckets of water through the back before calling at the school. As he hadn't had time to replace the seats, the children stood up for the journey home. Another difficulty with this bus was that there was no entry gate or side door. The only way in for the children was to clamber over the rail at the open back of the truck. Workplace Health and Safety was not even a twinkle in a unionists eye!

Although they got away with this system for a while, one day one of the boys arrived home smelling badly of pig manure. Jackie, the bus driver, had obviously been a bit casual in his approach to cleanliness that day, but the boy's mother took a dim view of finding pig manure on her son’s school clothes and she made a complaint to the bus committee. Who could blame her?

It was around this time that Dickie and Molly Jorgensen were purchasing the lease of Daisy Deckle’s shop in Green Springs. Again, the parents fell into heated discussion with the school committee, and the decision was made that Dickie Jorgensen would run the school bus from his shop in Green Springs, collecting the children from Upper and Lower Gilman and bringing them in to Green Springs School. It would be approximately a thirty mile round trip over rough, narrow dirt road. Dickie purchased a new Commer truck. My father and grandfather helped Dickie remodel the truck into a school bus by building a wooden frame with a canvas cover for the back. Out of an old iron bed head, which he cut in half with a hacksaw, Dad made a little gate to fit the side of the bus, and a step where the children could enter. He soldered hinges on to the gate and fashioned a catch to hold it shut. They built wooden seats along the sides and across behind the truck’s cabin for the children to sit on during the long journey to and from school.

It was a tiring run for the children, as it travelled over a roughly circular route of winding hilly country road before it reached the school. Dickie left home in the bus at 6.30a.m. and the children finally got to school soon after 8:30 a.m. It travelled ponderously along the narrow circuit of unsealed dirt. Singing was a popular pass-time and some favourite songs were Goodnight Irene, Waltzing Matilda, A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts, and McNamara’s Band.

The older boys were noisy and disruptive on the bus and often sat in the seat behind the cabin, blocking the view through the window from the front seat, so that Dickie couldn’t see what was going on. But he soon woke up to their deviousness, and one day he stopped the bus, ordered everyone off, and admonished the culprits sternly. I stood fearfully watching with other small girls.

Wet weather was very popular with the bus children. The bus slid around on the greasy roads accompanied by shrieks of the excited passengers, and sometimes became bogged. Then everyone got out onto the road and the bigger boys pushed. We all arrived at school barefooted, mud-spattered and a little the worse for wear. The later the bus arrived the happier we children were. We marched into school late, feeling like adventurers returning from famous exploits.

The teacher, ill-humoured by the delay, barked and waved his arms, "Hurry up everyone and get into your seats!"

He was sadly mistaken though, if he thought we were going to be persuaded into a mood for working after an adventure like that!

A couple of the older boys usually travelled in the front seat with Dickie, and there was always a  mad head-long dash to see who could squash in first. In the early stages of Dickie's bus driving it could be quite exciting, as Dickie carried a rifle up behind the front seat, and if he came across a snake on the road or saw a kangaroo, he’d pull up, aim the rifle across in front of the boys, and fire. It was not unheard-of for him to throw a dead kangaroo up into the back of the bus with the kids. He’d take it home and skin it, tacking out the hide on the side of a shed or other outbuilding. Sometimes he’d drop off the dead ‘roo at the farm and Larry would skin it later. 

Dingo scalps fetched one pound each at the time, kangaroo hides sold to the tannery for about three shillings each, and carpet snake skins would bring in about twelve shillings each. Larry often made pocket money for himself by accumulating hides and skins, and sending them down to the tannery in Brisbane on the train.

In Larry's scholarship, or grade 8 class, he had only five classmates, and he was the only boy. One day he and the girls were playing tennis when the first bell rang to go in to school. Taking a shortcut, Larry ran to the net and tried to leap it but unfortunately caught his foot in the net and fell headlong. One of the girls giggled so hard she wet her pants on the court! All respective mothers gained years of fodder from that little event.

Larry had a very hard final year at school as Dad insisted he work in the dairy before he left in the morning and again when he got home in the evening. At the back stairs we had a large trellis covered in a thick green vine which bore gourd-shaped fruit we called calabash, and the top of this trellis was visible from the dairy. Mum hung a towel over the top of the trellis half an hour before Larry was due to catch the school bus in the mornings, to let him know it was time to come home, but Dad always kept him a little longer. I was always fearful that Larry would miss the bus. In that time he had to eat breakfast, wash, and dress for school. He sat up late at night trying to finish his home work and he told me that he never completely read the class novel. That was partly due to lack of time and partly due to Larry’s  dislike of reading. He was just lucky that the scholarship question on the novel was something they had studied in school. His novel was "Bush Holiday," about an English boy holidaying in the Australian bush, and Larry loathed it. Nevertheless he managed to get through scholarship with a pass of 72%.

Dad declared he was happy for Larry to go to high school, but only at Gatton Agricultural College. For his part Larry felt he knew enough about farming and couldn't stand the thought of studying it at high school as well, so in the end he went nowhere, but simply retired home to the farm to work. Mum had no say in the matter, and in any case she knew Larry loved the farm.

As we grew, Larry delighted in shocking me, and I know he tried cooking a little piece of carpet snake flesh one day, and telling me afterwards that it tasted just like chicken!

Chapter 11 Joy to be Had

                                                         Chapter 11 Joy to be Had

Larry and his cousins were similar in age, but older than me, so I guess I was just a big nuisance to them. When I did manage to infiltrate the group, it was more than one small step for mankind!

 The boys built a billy cart which we called a trolley. From memory, it epitomised the word contraption. Basically just a wooden box on wobbly old pram wheels, it had a rope to steer the front wheels but no brakes. One boy sat in the box holding the rope at the top of the hill, while a couple of the other boys, bent over double and giggling, gave him a push off. Away went the trolley, rattling down the hill and gathering speed. It was delicious fun, but the only way to stop the cart was to steer into the gutter. The greater the momentum of the trolley and its occupant, the more likelihood there was that it would tip over at the bottom when driven into the gutter. The hapless, hysterical occupant would be spilled out onto  the gravel. The memory makes my knees and elbows hurt! 
 

The boys tried hard to get away on their own, but I usually sensed they were leaving and tore out of the house after them. I loved riding in that trolley, but running across the paddock trying to catch up, I frequently fell over in a patch of prickles, screaming for the boys to come back and pull them out of my feet, knees, and hands. The boys would slowly turn around and come back to rescue me, patiently extracting all the prickles, and resigning themselves to having me join their game. Poor Larry often got stuck riding in the cart with me.
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Curiously, no bathroom had been included in the house. This was probably due to having only one tap indoors, leading from the tank into the kitchen. Personal hygiene was carried out in one of the bedrooms, or outside the back door, using an enamel hand basin on a rickety bench.  A tap at the bottom of the tank was also used for drinks and for filling buckets. I suppose the space outside the back door could be called the laundry, because it was roofed over and had a set of concrete washtubs.

Hanging on a nail on the faded grey weatherboard wall outside the kitchen, was an enormous–I thought it was enormous–galvanised bath tub, which Mum brought inside for me to bath in. She poured in cold water from a saucepan or other vessel and then hot water from the simmering kettle. 

I am renowned for bath-time in my early childhood. One evening I stood watching as my mother poured boiling water into the bath from the kettle. Fascinated by the smooth twisted column of water, I suddenly stuck out my hand with the  palm upwards to find out what it felt like. Mum yelled...but too late! I screamed in pain. She flew into action covering my hand with butter, followed by a thick layer of bicarbonate of soda. I can't remember the burn ever being much of a problem, although I doubt the treatment was the operative factor in the healing!

 To keep me warm in winter, Mum often put the tub behind the stove. When I was finished washing myself one night, {I only did this once,}I stood up and bent over, burning the cheek of my bottom on the stove. Again I yelled blue murder and suddenly found myself head down over my mother’s lap, while she patted the burn with Rawleigh’s Antipain, a pink solution from a bottle. Once more, the burn healed without incident.


                            Mary Mack, dressed in black,
                            Silver buttons down her back,
                            She loves coffee, she loves tea,
                            She loves sitting on a... Chinaman’s knee (No PC in those days!)

 Our cousin Cathy loved to visit the farm. She was a bit older than my brother, and she spent many happy holidays riding with Larry, or hanging out in the dairy while he was working, but I loved her and looked up to her because she treated me like a little sister. Cathy and Larry were so gentle with the cows that some of them became pets. The photo below shows Bright Eyes, a Jersey with beautiful big black eyes and long eyelashes. She patiently tolerated all our hugging and patting. 

Cathy was a most valuable help to Mum at my bath time, and she muses about Mum reciting nursery rhymes to distract me when I was screaming my protests. My favourite rhyme was Mary Mack. It went: Mary Mack, dressed in black...Silver buttons down her back.. but Mum would say, “Green buttons down her back." 

I’d scream out, "NOOOO! SILVER buttons down her back!" I’m surprised I survived my childhood!

Apparently this tactic was repeated until I was washed and dressed with my hair brushed. Everyone must’ve heaved a sigh of relief when that little pantomime was over.

I never received many presents for Christmas and birthdays. Children didn't in those days. Luckily, besides the present my parents gave me, I always got something in the mail from Aunt Lu. One year she sent bath salts, and the day they arrived, I demanded my mother let me try them. I nagged until she filled the tub with water and sprinkled in some of the scented bath salts. What a disappointment! As soon as I sat down in the bath it felt like I was sitting on course sand. I decided that bath salts were highly overrated!

A favourite anecdote of Mum's resulted from when I was two or three years old. A couple on a property some miles away came to visit for the day. Betsy and Mum were in close conversation, when I came up to them with a pair of my shoes that no longer fitted. 

"Mummy, why won't these shoes fit me?"

"They’re too small."

    It wasn't long before I returned . "Mummy, why won't these shoes fit me?"

"They're too small."

Yet again I interrupted Mum and Betsy’s conversation.

 The third time Mum replied, "Your feet are too big!"

"Oh," I said, apparently satisfied, because I never returned.

 Betsy was thoroughly amused at Mum’s insight, repeating the anecdote more often than required!

 At three or four I moved from a cot in my parents room to a double bed with tall wooden ends, feeling very small. Most nights on the farm were pitch black and I lay in bed feeling lonely and frightened out of my wits. Plagued by a terrible fear of African animals, I  imagined they were there in the room with me. I stared into the  shadowy darkness, imagining huge creatures looming over me.

I knew if I walked right through them, I would be safe, but it took a while to gather enough courage to strike out on my own, and when I finally negotiated the dark, there I would stand silently beside my sleeping mother, too shy to disturb her. After a few minutes,  with a sharp intake of breath, she would wake and put her arm out and lift me in beside her, where I would snuggle in happily and sleep peacefully for the rest of the night. Dad was okay with it if he was not disturbed, so Mum took care to keep me very close, between her and the edge of the bed.

Mostly, as I ran around the farm playing, I had bare feet. The cleared area between the house and the dairy still contained some tiny stumps in the ground, and this was the main area where I ran and played. Frequently I kicked one of my toes on these little stumps and the skin of the top of one toe would be partially lifted off. I screamed in pain and limped home to Mum, holding up the front of my foot as blood dripped from the injury. 

Mum became an expert at bush first aid. Old worn singlets were never thrown away.  After they'd been washed and hung in the sun to dry, she cut them into long bandages of different widths, rolled and stored them away. Her favourite cure-all to bathe wounds was potassium permanganate, or Condy’s Crystal. I sat on the back step with my foot in the enamel basin of warm water.

Mum sprinkled in a few of the crystals and urged me to: 'make the water pink.' It worked to distract me from the pain. If it was bleeding profusely, I would be encouraged to make the water red by letting it bleed, thus reassuring me that the bleeding wasn’t a bad thing. Following warm bathing, she would dab on acriflavin, a bright yellow antiseptic, and to finish off, MAC, her favourite ointment, would be smeared on, before the dressing and a bandage. She swore by this treatment and cured many a wound with it.

The acriflavin dyed the skin bright yellow. I’ve since learned its counterpart was probably mercurochrome, about which two friends have told me funny stories. When one was very small, she was riding on the back of a three wheeled trike, standing on the platform at the back while some other child peddled. Her hard-soled shoes slipped off the back and she fell, but she didn't let go and was dragged along in the dirt, grazing her face. For six weeks she was forced to go to school with her face red with mercurochrome, and soon earned the nickname of 'Red Indian.'

The other girl related that when she was 15 and wanted to dye her hair, her mother refused to allow it so she did the job herself with mercurochrome! I must have been a very dull child, because nothing so adventurous ever entered my head.

Anyway, thanks probably to the cod liver oil in good old MAC, my singlet-wrapped toes always healed in a few days. Mum was a coper, not a groper, and she faced many a hardship with common sense and  conviction.

     When I reached three or four I was allowed to ride on the slide. Many farmers used a slide on their property in those days. Dad made his using two heavy wide boards, about eight inches by two inches as runners, and then bolting six inch wide boards, across the top to form a platform, about six feet long and four or five feet wide. A steel pipe was used as a spreader under the platform and Dad utilised the steel tyres from an old disused buggy on the property to line the runners.  The slide was pulled by a draught horse harnessed into collar and chains. The huge collar on the horse was made from leather packed with horsehair. The chains were attached from the outsides of the collar to the slide using a stick as a spreader to keep them off the horses’ legs.

  A handy adjunct when farming, slides were used to carry all sorts of things like bundles of firewood, drums of water, and pieces of machinery, from place to place, and Larry or his cousins were often sent on one of these foraging trips to collect firewood.  A horse and slide could penetrate quite a way through the bush, and could negotiate over small stumps without incident. We had an old draught horse called Maud who was particularly quiet, and later another called Olga. Olga was so obliging that if the slide encountered too large an obstacle, she would simply stop and wait for an indication to move again. 

One day, when Larry and his cousins were out on the slide, they were managing a steady pace until suddenly the slide hit a large stump. The boys were all sitting except Larry, who was standing up in charge of the horse. When the slide came to an abrupt halt, Larry was flung forward into the horse’s legs, but faithful old Olga merely stopped and waited for him to extricate himself.

 Eventually Dad’s ingenious slide simply wore out from hard work, and he, like many other farmers, made a new one out of the forked limb of a tree. Dad was a great reader of  Jollife’s Saltbush Bill comics and it wouldn't surprise me if he picked up a few ideas from there, and when I got a bit older, I relished reading some of my dad’s comic reading material.

He had a huge collection of tools, inherited from his father's engineering shop built on the Brisbane River at Tennyson. A qualified fitter and turner, he made good use of those tools as he worked to build up the farm. I remember him greasing lengths of steel around the ends with soft dripping (beef fat from the kitchen,) and casting with dyes to make nuts and bolts. I was fascinated watching the little spirals of steel fall off the end of a steel rod held firmly between the jaws of the vice, as he ground the thread on.

He also had a blacksmith's area set up under a roof at the side of the open slab shed. Feeling important at five years old, I helped him by turning the handle to pump the bellows of the forge until the red hot coals glowed. Then I’d watch enthralled, as he hammered the glowing hot steel, bending it over the anvil. He made hinges for gates and horseshoes etc, using long steel pincers and big heavy hammers. I was in awe of the ringing crash of bouncing steel hammers on the iron anvil. Finally, the glowing hot steel was plunged into a four gallon tin of cold water to cool, where it sizzled and sputtered and shot off clouds of steam. It all impressed me.

One morning I reported to the teacher at school for morning news that, "I turned the forge for Daddy." Today the kids have 'show and tell.'