We were fascinated by Mum’s stories, and excited when the Aboriginal stockmen came to do musters for Dad. To bring in the stockmen, Dad had to fill in ‘Aboriginal wage forms’ and tell the government the men were working for us. At the time, the wages for Aboriginal stockmen were lower than for the white stockmen, which made me ashamed when I grew older and learned this, but it was the way things were done back then. Dad was new to working with Aboriginal men but he respected their skills and was glad to have them.
On the day, Dad would be the last to mount his horse. Once in the saddle, he’d turn and wave to us with a grin, before leading the team out through the wide homestead gate. Mum held our little hands as they cantered out and probably wondered when and if she would see Dad again.
With Dad away, our axis moved, tilted, and Mum took a huge load of responsibility. But she was happy to be back in Central Australia, and strong, which was lucky, given the amount of work that fell daily on her slim shoulders.
Dad’s work was the station itself. Mum did everything else. She looked after us and the homestead, and cared for everyone. Her workload was enormous. The years of drought were marked by terrible dust storms, which would arrive from the south, blanketing the sky with red and black and leaving everything coated with thick, red dust. Mum spent hours scrubbing and sweeping out dust, which turned out to be a thankless task, because the dust storms only continued.
It seemed to me that Mum was constantly washing.
Every day she gathered up piles of Brett’s dirty nappies (all towelling cloth), right through to filthy men’s clothes, covered in bulldust, and headed to the laundry. Perched just outside the kitchen, the laundry was open-air and used by everyone on the station.
In the corner sat a crumbling, rusty copper into which small amounts of precious water was poured and then boiled to wash the clothes. A fire was lit underneath and during the summer it was unbearably hot within a good thirty-yard radius of the laundry. Mum’s curls would cling to her forehead with sweat as she chopped wood, lugged it to the laundry, lit the fire, boiled the water and washed the never-ending filthy trousers and shirts of men. Just the boiling of the water alone could take hours and I stayed well away from the whole washing process.
Mum wasn’t always so joyous on those days.
Apart from the endless cleaning of house, clothes and children, Mum made food for the many men who came and went on the station. There were not only those who lived there, including Ross and Colin, but an endless stream of dam builders, fence builders, stock agents, bank managers and neighbours from other cattle stations. Ten to twenty at any one sitting was not unusual.
The Hayes were a large, local family from several stations that bordered us: Undoolya and Deep Well to the south. Old Ted, as Mr Hayes was called, knew the country backwards. His sons, Jimmy, Mickie and Billy, were great riders and bush men. Sometimes they’d ride over (a day-long trip from the boundary fence through rough country) to say g’day and see how the ‘new kids on the block’ were faring.
The Goreys lived on Yambah Station to the north and the Turners on The Garden Station to the east, and each family welcomed us from the beginning. As did Aunty Dawn and Uncle Bill to the west. Mum was often saying, ‘Aunty Dawn taught me this …’
Providing so much food for so many people was a big job for Mum. Dad shot a beast every month to provide meat for the station. It was called a ‘killer’ and we ate beef three times a day. Even in the summer when temperatures exceeded forty-five degrees, Mum worked over an ancient Aga stove, cutting up the huge slabs of meat that Dad hung in the meat house to ‘rot’ in the open air for tenderness.
She also found different ways to add variety to our diet. When the beef was fresh, she would bake, roast or grill it, then salt, crumb and curry it as it got older. At night, it was accompanied by potatoes and pumpkin. If it was a special occasion, we had tinned peas and carrots. But it was hard to do anything very creative with such limited options.
Every meal came with huge chunks of damper and jam from tins. The bread was invariably dotted with weevils that lived in the huge sacks of flour, but Mum always said cheerfully, ‘Weevils don’t eat much.’
When Dad kickstarted the little 32-volt generator at about 5 a.m. (or Mum did, when Dad was away), Mum would whip up steak, onions, gravy and toast for the men’s breakfast by the poor light, and use the power for cleaning, washing, ironing and whatever else she needed to prepare for the day. Then the engine would go off about 9 a.m. and the still hush of the bush would descend upon the house for the day. Mum did the same tasks in reverse during the evening when the power came back on again before dark. Once night fell, however, it was difficult to read or write because the light was faint, so bedtime for everyone was early. Eight p.m. for the grown-ups was considered a late night.
The Aboriginal people, when hired for mustering, didn’t usually eat with us. They preferred their own community and food, up in the old huts on the hill. Sometimes they brought their families. They caught kangaroo, goanna and snake and often went walk-about, too.
I remember Margaret, a tall, skinny and stately woman, who sometimes visited, and took us with the other women and Aboriginal kids for walks.
Those were wonderful times. We looked for wild honey and birds’ eggs in the trees, and dug for grubs. M’Lis, Brett and I would be gone for hours at a time looking for bush tucker. The women walked in bare feet and carried big sticks. They spoke a smattering of pidgin English, enough to point to tracks in the dust and say, ‘Big perentie,’ and, ‘Long snake’. We trotted along behind them—down the creek, up the hills, over the flats—and they carried Brett on their hips when he got tired.
Mum was just happy we were in their capable hands because it freed her up.
From Margaret and other old ladies taking me into that country at such an early age, I acquired a deep love for wandering through the bush, taking in the sky and the trees and the landscape, and feeling utterly safe there. Those ladies helped me develop a feeling for this place; in my skin, bones and heart. They gave me a head start in learning to understand this wild, new country in which we had arrived.
Such a precious gift.
The land would soon shape the way I felt and thought and lived. It was like an anchor deep inside, holding me fast to the rocks and earth and hills around me.
‘I belong that country,’ I often heard Aboriginal people say, and my whole being would vibrate, Yes, I know.
5
Dick and Dora, Nip and Fluff
In 1968, I was five, and it was time for me to start school.
‘Time you stopped running all over the station barefoot, with wild hair and no education,’ said Mum, but I was ready and hungry to learn.
I spent hours flicking through Dad’s encyclopedias, even though I couldn’t read a word. But I longed to. They were almost bigger than me, and when I lifted them unsteadily to my nose, they smelled exciting. Old, musty, full of mystery. I laid them flat and traced my fingers over the letters, hungering to know what they meant. They held an air of promise, and I was drawn to pages and the letters on them, more than to anything else.
Besides, they belonged to Dad, and therefore they must be important. That was another reason to learn to read. Without even realising it, I wanted to do things that Dad considered of value.
Fortunately, Mum knew exactly what was needed for this next step. A governess to teach me Correspondence School, and support me on School of the Air.
Mum now completely understood why Aunty Dawn had needed her. A bush woman’s workload was all consuming. Mum still managed to dispense hugs and kisses whenever she could, patched up scratched knees and elbows, and found time to tell us bedtime stories—but the demands of her world took almost all her time. If she had any spare moments, she opened up her old-fashioned Singer sewing machine and made us clothes. She mended and darned everything, including Dad’s socks, which always had holes in them.
Mum’s only concessions to herself, as far as I could tell, were the Au
drey Hepburn trousers and pretty blouses she made on the Singer. And she never came to dinner without lipstick on.
If Mum had any other spare time, she tried to fix up the garden. The decade of drought had destroyed it, but following the rains, Mum planted oleanders and jade and succulent pigface, determined to bring some colour and beauty to the homestead. The water was so harsh and heavy with calcium it was difficult for anything much to grow—certainly not vegetables or flowers—but she persisted with what she could. Gardening was her solace and escape.
Papa Parnell stayed with us often in those early days. He had what Mum called ‘a green thumb’, and he helped her in the garden, which was a lifesaver. Our isolated home also offered Papa space and quiet to deal with his illness and trauma. I recall him as a stooped, silent man, carrying his kit bag with his beer inside, and a face and eyes filled with the sadness of what he couldn’t forget. He had his own quarters and lived mostly there. If visitors ever came to Bond Springs, he’d say to Mum, ‘Don’t introduce me, I don’t want to see people,’ and hide away.
Years later, M’Lis wrote a song about Papa Parnell’s eyes and the grief he carried from his war memories. I think Mum and Dad were very glad to be able to offer him time at Bond Springs to recover a little.
And his presence gave Mum that extra bit of support.
In the meantime, a governess couldn’t come soon enough, so Mum put an advertisement in the Stock Journal.
By now, I was desperate to learn, and M’Lis needed more of Mum than she was getting. She would trail around behind Mum all day long, sucking her thumb, gazing at her imploringly, waiting for Mum to finally stop running and working and rushing so that M’Lis could climb into her lap and be loved.
Luckily, Nana Parnell, whom we adored, came up every now and then to help Mum. When she did, Papa Parnell would return to Orroroo. We loved it when Nana visited because she gave us all her undivided attention.
M’Lis soaked up Nana’s kindness, and spent every moment possible with her. Nana read Brer Rabbit to us, her glasses perched on the end of her nose, and we—M’Lis especially—basked in her attention and love. When Nana eventually had to leave, M’Lis would be inconsolable, and as she got older she started saying that she wanted to live with Nana. It was her way of saying, ‘Mummy, I’m sad because I’m not getting enough of your time or attention.’
Brett was also becoming increasingly naughty, which was his way of trying to get Mum’s attention, too.
Mum was nearly beside herself. She didn’t have enough hours in the day for everything and everyone.
One day, when M’Lis was trailing behind Mum, pleading for the two-hundredth time that she wanted to live with Nana, Mum realised she had to do something.
‘Come with me, M’Lis darling,’ she said, gently, and led her by the hand into the sitting room. She then turned the knob on the door of Dad’s bar. M’Lis’s eyes widened. No one was allowed in Dad’s bar. That, and his office, were strictly off-limits to everyone but him. But Mum needed to go where they wouldn’t be disturbed and it was the only properly private room in the house. Dad was out in the stock camp, so it was a safe bet he wouldn’t discover them.
The bar was a beautiful old room off the sitting room. It had a built-in bar, which we thought terribly grown-up, and French doors that opened out onto a jade-fringed patio. It was there that Dad went after dinner, when he was home, to recover from the day and think about what he had to do the next day, and the next and the next …
Mum didn’t have a room of her own, despite the sprawling many-roomed structure of the homestead. So, she opened the bar door and led M’Lis in. Mum sat on a chair, looking very serious, and pulled M’Lis into her lap. M’Lis gazed up at her.
‘M’Lis,’ she said, ‘I know you love Nana. But we love you too and you are a part of this family. This is where you belong. This is the place for you. You can visit Nana, but this is your home, and this is where you must live. Because we love you.’
M’Lis continued to gaze back at her. Eventually, she smiled.
Mum hugged her and kissed her and said, ‘Good! Now, let’s go and find Tanya and Brett to play with, shall we?’
And after that, M’Lis was just fine.
And the lovely Lesley Clarke came to be our governess.
And everything got better.
‘Miss Clarke’, as we called her, moved in as though she had always been part of our family.
She came from the Flinders Ranges, very close to where Dad grew up, and he knew her family, who lived on a sheep station there. She was young and sensible, tall with a beautiful smile. We loved her immediately.
Miss Clarke was like a younger sister to Mum and Dad. Mum was happiest around people, and she’d always had lots of girlfriends. She never complained about missing them but it must have been such a relief when Miss Clarke came.
‘Come along, Tanya, M’Lis and Brett, time for a bath,’ Miss Clarke would instruct briskly, and we’d trot along after her, adoring and obedient.
I couldn’t have had a more wonderful teacher to start my education. I wanted so much to learn and Miss Clarke was eager to teach.
At the start of 1968, we were at Witchitie for shearing, so that was where I started school. Mum and Miss Clarke cleaned out a little outside room next to the laundry and put fresh lino on the floor and bought two desks, one for me and one for Miss Clarke.
I remember the smell of lino—delicious, unlike anything I’d smelled before—and the thrill of being given my very own books for writing and reading. In my writing book, I learned to copy the letters—a, b, c—and from my reading book, I learned how to say, ‘Dick and Dora, Nip and Fluff ’. Bit by bit I worked out what the words meant.
Once I could pronounce them and put letters together and make other words, it was a breakthrough moment for me, a sense of knowing and excitement. I was later absorbed by the story of Helen Keller, whose governess traced words with Helen’s finger under a water tap and the moment Helen realised the movements of her fingers meant letters and then words and then speech, followed by understanding and freedom.
But school brought one big downside for us.
M’Lis, Brett and I had never been apart, having only each other for company, except when we were with our grandparents.
On my first day of school, poor M’Lis was inconsolable again. She sat outside the school door, staring broken-heartedly at the meat house and creek, waiting for me to come out. She sat by the door for days and then weeks. My faithful, beloved sister. Mum couldn’t move her. Eventually Brett managed to persuade her to come and play in the dirt with him. And Dad would sometimes pick her up in his arms and take her off with him in the Land Rover for a bore run. But once she was back, she would come running as soon as she heard the door open. I would re-enter her world, blinking and heady from the day, and everything would return to normal.
When it was time to head back to Bond Springs, Mum and Miss Clarke cleaned out a stone building near the old Sidney Kidman cottage.
They painted it and put in three desks: one for me, one for Miss Clarke and one for M’Lis, who was nearly ready to join me. The schoolroom, as we called it, was freezing in winter and boiling in summer, with just one tiny window. We would start at seven-thirty each morning, rush out at ten when Mum rang the huge smoko bell, return to school at ten-thirty and then finish at one for lunch.
M’Lis did not enjoy school anywhere near as much as I did, and once she started, it was poor little Brett’s turn to be inconsolable. However, Dad had other ideas for his young son. He thought that Brett was ready to start learning about his responsibilities. From the time he could walk, Brett had to go everywhere with Dad, learning about tanks and bores and fencing and cattle and stock. He would often be gone for hours on end and Mum would worry about him out in the heat and cold, but he always turned up, covered in dust, his blue eyes looking out for her, throwing himself into her arms when he arrived back.
In the meantime, I was absorbed by this glorious thing called school
.
My lessons came once a fortnight from the Correspondence School in Adelaide, just as they had when Mum was a governess on Hamilton Downs. They covered the three R’s (reading, writing and arithmetic) and every student had one teacher. Mine was Mrs Layton. I couldn’t see her but she sent back my lessons with gold stars on them and ink-stamp imprints of little animals and wrote encouraging words. I thought she was wonderful.
At the end of my first year, the Correspondence School sent out its annual magazine. It was filled with stories and photographs of students in South Australia and the Northern Territory, all of whom were station kids, and occasionally some in mining camps or Aboriginal communities. Inside the magazine were photographs of all the teachers.
I quickly scanned down the little black-and-white photos until I reached the name Mrs Layton. Smiling back at me was a middle-aged lady, with glasses and hair set in waves. She looked like a very serious teacher, perhaps like a headmistress.
She was an important lady, I could tell.
A report card came with the magazine. Miss Clarke and Mum read it and then I was allowed to see it. I gazed at a two-page card brimming with sparkling gold stars and top marks.
‘This is wonderful, darling,’ said Mum, beaming. ‘Dad and I are so proud of you.’
I felt a rush of something new. I felt proud of myself. Sometimes I’d feel those feelings when I looked after M’Lis and Brett well and Mum was pleased with me. Or when I’d done a job for her that made her happy. But this was something more. This had come from my own work—my very own being—and I stood back and was amazed at what I’d achieved. So, I soaked up Mum’s hugs and praise.
‘Does Dad really think so?’ I asked her, again and again. Dad was in the stock camp, so I wasn’t sure when he would have had time to look at it.
An Alice Girl Page 5