Chapter 9 Tough Initiation

 Chapter 9   Tough Initiation

When Mum first arrived to live with her sister at the farm, the country was enduring a drought. The washing had to be done by hand, and in bore water, and without warning it stained all her beautiful white babies' nappies, (diapers,) yellow.

 Molly offered no assistance to her younger sibling, “I had to learn the hard way,” she said, and giggled scornfully.

 “You were walking and starting to investigate everything,” Mum told me. “Oh, I was  horrorified one day when I discovered you staring in wonder at a huge line of long-haired caterpillars which had made it’s way up onto the veranda.”

 Molly was a keen sweet-maker, producing toffees, honeycomb and coconut ice, which she boiled on her wood stove. I soon came to know Aunt Molly always had lollies to offer, much to my mother’s distress. Without delay I became a sweet tooth, and to my mother's eternal angst, flatly refused to eat vegetables. As a consequence I lost a lot of my good chewing molars early in life.

Surprisingly, although they were far from the city, the adults in the family did enjoy some social life and sports. There was a little bush school which had been built at Gillman Creek within walking distance of Molly and Dickie's house, and on Sundays the four adults met there with the local tennis club to play tennis on the school's ant-bed tennis court. The ladies wore modest white tennis dresses, white canvas sandshoes and white socks, while the men were dressed in white trousers and white cotton, front buttoned shirts. At the side of the court at one end of the net was a little hand-built wooden tower with a ladder and a seat on top for the umpire.

 Molly and Dickie's children walked up the hill along the narrow, country road to that same little school, and when Clarence came to live at Gillman Creek, he walked up there with his cousins.

 When Anthea got to grade 7, her parents persuaded her to leave school to work on the farm.

 Mum was appalled, “I tried hard to convince her to stay at school and complete her final year. She wanted to, but she left to work on the farm. Poor Anthea,” Mum went on, “She was always sorry she didn’t do her scholarship, but she thought she should obey her parents.”

 Mum loves to recount stories of how she spent her time making little dresses for me, and she'll still say, "I sat and worked little cherries all arou the hem of one."
       
Another outfit she muses fondly over consisted of a little cream pleated skirt which she skilfully made for me out of an old pair of cream trousers of my father’s. “I knitted a little pink top and matched it with a sweet pink tam-o-’shanter. You wore it to voting day up at the  school. Everybody loved you, You were as fair as a lily," she says fondly.

The photo at right shows me in
front of the little trees where the men
tied up their horses.


In the background is the
tall dead trunk later
struck by lightning.


   

But it wasn’t always peace and tranquillity on the farm for Mum.. Loving everything about the land, her eldest child was a keen horse rider from day one. At age nine, out riding on his own one day, his little chestnut pony came home, snorting, jittery, and dragging the reins. Larry and the saddle were missing, so my father set off down through the trees to find him. He came upon his son lying on the ground groaning and semiconscious, the saddle with broken girth not far away. Larry had been dragged some distance, which left him with a scar on the back of his head.

      My mother raged, “You’ll have to get the child to a doctor, Alec!”

     “Aagh! he’ll get worse than that before he’s finished,” was my’s father’s philosophical answer.

Nevertheless, he made sure Larry had new riding boots and wore them whenever he was riding with the saddle.

 Dickie had a heart condition and was not well enough to do much work, and it wasn't long before discontent grew between the brothers. In the end it was agreed that Dad would take over the farm, and he paid Dickie for his share. It was also agreed that Dickie could have the money from the dairy herd and after unsuccessfully share farming for a few months in the area, Molly and Dickie leased Daisy Deckle’s shop in Green Springs.

 After Mum and Dad first took over the farm, Mum went to the dairy to help with the work, but it wasn't long before she developed a severe eczema which covered her hands and arms. This condition became so severe that the doctor advised her to go to hospital. Mum wouldn’t hear of it, saying she had a little girl to look after. So the doctor gave her drugs and strict instructions for her care. He told her to do exactly as he instructed or else she would be admitted to hospital. The treatment included drugs which made her sleep, and she was not allowed to wash with water, only treat her skin with olive oil. I was only two or three at the time, and later I learned how she would wake up from a sleep, panic stricken that I may have wandered off. Fortunately I was always nearby and never went off by myself. The whole three months that she was under treatment, my father did the washing and cooking etc. Eventually the eczema cleared, leaving no trace behind, but to Dad’s disgust, Mum never again returned to the dairy to work.

My earliest memory is of the day before I turned four. I can clearly see my brother, washing the milk and cream from the separator disks at the dairy wash-up trough.

When he asked me, “How old are you going to be tomorrow?” I held up four fingers.

I remember him smiling indulgently. Well I think it was indulgently, but I must say, indulgence didn’t last forever between sister and brother. At the time, he would have been eleven. Gamely brash, it was his nature to defy the odds. Juggling the heavy separator bowl into its position above the separator machinery while preparing the dairy for the milking one morning, he let it slip out of his hands. His little toe was squashed flat and necessitated a hospital trip. His poor hapless fleet suffered many and varied traumas, and in the end he had a hole in his toe through which he could thread a fine straw!  He loved doing it and it was his party piece.  I was often shocked by Larry’s larrikin antics.

  He was a natural horseman, and along with Dad, befriended an old ex-drover who knew horses and thought the world of Larry and the family. But alcohol was Jackie Sully’s folly. He  often  rode up the track to the farmhouse in the early hours of the morning on his way home from town. He took a shortcut through the property to his own place, and fortunately for him the horse knew the way home. Jackie had a heart of gold which presented its own  problems, for he rarely forgot to bring a treat for me.

Drunk or not, out of his pocket would come a crumpled paper packet of lollies, "For the little girl." Mum couldn't wait to get them out of my hands as soon as Jackie was out of sight.

But she always said Jackie was a decent man, for one evening he arrived at the farmhouse, knowing  my father was away, and tied his horse to the 'little trees.' (three little trees growing in front of the house where the men always tied up their horses.) He  sat down on the ground, where he stayed into the early hours of the morning, waiting for Dad to drive in. When he knew Dad was home, Jackie got on his horse and carried on. He always knew my mum was frightened, especially after dark on her own in the empty house.

 It was Jackie who gave Larry his first pony, the beautiful chestnut that Larry called “Chesty” because of the white flash on his chest. As it happened, Larry was the only one who could ride Chesty, as he had a low tolerance for strangers upon his back, and usually bucked them off quick smart.

 When Dad wanted a riding horse, he went to Jackie who advised him to buy Pal, a tall black mare. Dad rarely rode any other horse. Pal was beautiful, with an easy loping gallop, but as I found out in later years, it paid to remember that she had been a camp-drafting horse, otherwise she’d be off after straying cattle so fast that the hapless rider could be left to scramble back from halfway over the side of her neck!