We earn our pay whichever way we can. Mummy usually gets work up town or out in the bush stick-picking or felling trees. She can work as hard as any man, if not better. Other times, to earn a quid, we do different things like going resin hunting or copper-wire hunting. We mainly do that if Daddy’s home or if someone can drive us to places to look for it ’cause we need a car to take us out in the bush. All Mummy’s money is spent on feeding and clothing us kids. That’s the most important thing to her. We always gotta have a feed in our bellies and a roof over our heads.
Today, we’re going resin hunting: to get the sap from the gum trees. We go out along the road, then we head off on foot into the bush so that we can find lots of it. Us kids split up in all different directions but the rule is, we always gotta stay within cooee of each other, otherwise we’d get lost. But Mummy always said, ‘If you got lost in the bush at night, you only gotta follow the evening star and that will lead you home’.
Us kids are armed with a tin and knife. We scrape the resin from the tree and put into our tin so that Mummy can sell it to the chemist. He makes medicine from it. Today, we’re really lucky: the trees have lots to give and we gotta get a lot, otherwise we don’t get much money.
We love being out in the scrub because we can play and look out for goannas and blue-tongue lizards, too. When we get close to the goannas, they run up the trees away from us but we follow and check them out—they can be really big. Watching their powerful bodies making their way up into a tree is a beautiful sight indeed, and some are so big. I reckon I seen one that was nearly as big as Daddy, and that’s big.
Kevin nearly gets bitten by a blue-tongue lizard one day. He was tormenting him, poking a stick at him; the blue-tongue was getting angry and sticking his frill neck out at Kevin and hissing. He’s lucky Mummy didn’t catch him. She would’ve been angry at him for teasing the lizard; she won’t let any of us be cruel to animals (not that we would be). She says that this is where they live and we have to be respectful of that.
When we’re out in the bush, we gotta keep our eyes out for snakes, too. Mummy makes us wear our school shoes out here; if we got bit by a King Brown or a red-bellied black, we’d know it for sure. We’re lucky when we come out here in the bush: it seems all the animals and even the birds want to put on a parade for us. Above us, we hear the cockatoos screeching their messages to the world and we watch the galahs playing and preening. Sometimes, we just lie on the ground and watch them all fly over, thankful for the wonderful land we belong to and for the gift of nature—life, birds, trees and us.
It’s wonderful to be here in the scrub. The leaves rustle with the wind and the gum trees reach right up to the sky. Sometimes, I am that goanna, climbing the tree right up to the top where it meets the blue of the heavens.
It’s the same when we go copper-wire hunting. We go out in the scrub and anywhere else that people have dumped old cars and rubbish, looking for the wire and old batteries. We even find some on the side of the road where someone’s car has broken down. We make sure that we grab every little piece; it all adds up to get money for us. Even if we find any little bits as we’re walking up the street or anywhere, we put them in our pocket and bring them home.
We earn most of our money doing the fruits. We’ve always gone to pick the cherries in Young and Orange but we do the other fruits, too, like the oranges in Leeton and the grapes in Griffith. Usually, we do most of our fruit-picking during the school holidays but now that the house is burnt down, we gotta travel more to pick whatever fruit’s in season.
Things have changed, though. When we’re out in the paddocks now, us kids go to school during the week and do picking on the weekend. Sometimes, if it’s not too late or dark, we’ll pick more fruit in the afternoons after doing our homework. Not having a proper house means Mummy’s working harder than ever before. It’s real important to keep us fed and housed but even more so now: living in the hut and the bus is a big problem—the Welfare man told Mummy we gotta have a house in six months’ time or else he’s taking us kids away. But he never gave us no help in getting one!
When he told Mummy that, she called a family conference. She told us four kids that we would have to go picking a lot more so we could stay together. We need to live in Leeton, not just visit when we picked. Us kids, small as we were, were determined to do what needed to be done to keep the family together. We knew the importance of being together, and the fear of the Welfare was always in our minds.
The terror of the Welfare splitting us up is the biggest problem in my life but the Welfare man isn’t the only problem. In one place we were living in, big sister Maureen is living with her husband, Sam.
One day, I gotta go somewhere with Sam and I don’t wanna go. I have to sit in the front seat of the car, next to him. Maureen is standing on the lawn, the white house in the background behind her, and one of the boys on her hip as we’re leaving. I watch my sister from out of the passenger-door window, my face and hands clinging to the glass, hoping she can tell I don’t wanna go with him. She watches us drive away.
He takes me to a building and we go around the back under the floor boards—it’s built high in the air on stilts. He pulls my pants down and says, ‘I’ll tell Joyce and she’ll send you away, and the Welfare will come and get you’.
Afterwards, he takes me back home. I don’t say nothing to anyone but I hurt and I feel funny. Me and Lynnie are always scared to be alone with him, but no one can save us, not even Mummy, ’cause he’ll tell them we were bad and the Welfare will come and take us away.
22
The school’s racist
We’re going to do the prunes at a little place outside of Young. It’s just Mummy and us four kids. Picking prunes isn’t so bad. You gotta shake the tree to knock all the plums down to pick them up from the ground and fill your case that way. There’s a big shed here on the Boss’s property where they take the plums and dry them out, then make them into prunes. The boss is pretty good here and there’s not many other pickers.
You name it, we can pick it. We’re all good pickers, even Paddy, although we reckon he eats more than he picks, sometimes. As seasoned pickers, we pack our stuff up and go onto another paddock, another fruit. Even though we work so hard, especially Mummy, we all have fun telling jokes and laughing real loud. I love it best when we have smoko and have a spell from the picking, sitting under the tree having a good yarn. Mummy always brings us good food to eat, too.
Mummy sends us to the primary school that’s located in the town. It’s a little one, kindergarten to sixth class, and only one teacher who’s also the principal. But we don’t go to class all the time. One day, the principal tells us four kids to sit on the front verandah instead of being in class. We’re happy, the other kids— the white kids—they gotta stay indoors and do schoolwork but we don’t have to.
We just sit outside and do nothing; we’re so lucky and we’re even luckier still because we don’t have to pick prunes till the weekend. It’s kinda fun; it feels like we’re having a bit of a holiday! But it sure can get boring. We don’t tell Mummy about the principal not letting us into his classroom with everyone else. She would go after him, wanting to know why. After a while, we tell Mummy we don’t wanna go to school; we wanna help her pick ’cause getting a house is more important. In our hearts, we knew that was never gonna work though because, no matter what the Welfare demanded, we have to go to school wherever we are. Finally, we finish the prunes and head back to Condo again.
The families are excited we’re home again and Meryl asks us what the paddocks were like. We tell her about the principal and how we sat outside most of the time. She’s pretty angry and yells out to Mummy, telling her what the principal did, that he didn’t want us at his school. Mummy’s real upset and swears we will never go to that school again. Years later, we go back to doing the prunes but we never went back to the school.
23
Decimal currency in Sydney
In 1966, we move to Sydney for work, near
Granville where Uncle Raymond lives. Our new house; it’s big and bright and has plenty of room for us to play. It’s Easter time and so Mummy puts all our Easter eggs beside our beds for us to wake up and find. During the night, our dog, Blue, came along and ate each and every one! He’s old and spoilt so nobody really goes crook on him. We laugh and call him a pig—we hope he gets a bellyache.
I’m nine and in class 3A at Punchbowl Primary School. Lynnie’s gone to a different school over in Bankstown. I miss having her around but I love my new school and the kids. I play elastics and I’m really good at it. Punchbowl’s a good school and the teachers are nice; I’m happy I’m in 3A.
Mummy is working in a factory and she gets our grown-up step-cousin, Sandra, to look after us. But Sandra’s mean and does really bad things, too. She makes us stand against the wall all the time. We have to stand with our hands above our head and our elbows touching the wall, and we’re not allowed to move an inch. She tells us, ‘Aunty Joyce will send you away. You’ll go to the homes. I’ll tell her you was bad and the Welfare will come and get you.’
The Welfare.
My skin crawls when I hear that word and I feel my belly tie itself up in knots. I hate the Welfare man. I hate him more than anything in the world. I’ve got this fire burning inside me with all my hate for him. If he couldn’t take me away, things would be different. I could tell Mummy what’s happening and she wouldn’t let me get in the car with Sam anymore and she wouldn’t let Sandra look after us kids, neither. But I can’t tell her ’cause they said they would tell Mummy I was bad and she would send me away. Bad girls go to the homes with the Welfare man. They said Mummy don’t love bad girls.
It’s hard in Sydney being all at different schools. Us Condo kids don’t belong here. The kids at Paddy’s school pick on him, especially. Each afternoon, we all wait for each other and, nearly every day, a gang of boys will be chasing Paddy, wanting to belt him. Lynnie stands beside him ready to fight them. Kevin and me have rocks in our hands, ready in case they decide to attack us all. We stand together after school threatening them to come a little bit closer but they never do. We turn around and walk away, laughing, calling them chickens. They call us names like Abos, boongs, coons and niggers.
On the weekend, my cousins come over and we play football together. My cousin Joe, he plays in a football team so we gotta help him train. I’m a tomboy and I love footy nearly as much as I love fishing. I go to catch the ball and slip in a hole; I twist my ankle but I don’t say nothing ’cause the others would tease me. When it’s Monday morning, I can’t put my school shoe on so I’ve gotta tell Mummy. She takes me to the doctors at a big hospital and they wrap my leg up in sticky tape plaster, right up to the knee. The doctor gives me a lollipop and sends me home.
It seems we just don’t belong in Sydney: Kevin gets hit by a car and is in hospital with a bandage around his head. Mummy’s really worried. We go up to the hospital to see him and are thankful that he’s not too bad. We tease him about getting outta school—trying to make him laugh, make him feel better. Soon he comes home and Mummy tells us to look after him to make sure he’s all right.
Now I hate Sydney and I wanna go back to the Island, even if our house isn’t there. I wanna feel the dirt between my toes. I wanna play ‘pick up sticks’ and ‘Simon says’ out on the road, and I wanna see if our spirit is still there. I wanna go back to the Island so bad I feel myself bursting inside, right down to my belly button from wanting it so bad. I wanna go home and be happy.
I guess, looking back now, Mummy knew we just ain’t city people and needed to go home where we belonged. And we all missed our Condo family so much. Sydney’s just too far away from everyone; and my two big sisters and Beryl were all gonna have babies so we had to be home for that. After about eight months in Sydney, we packed up and headed home to a house in Condo in Orange Lane, just across from Meryl’s. It’s not the Island but at least we’re back in our old hometown.
We’re back. We run and kiss everyone, excited to be where we belong. All the family come over for a big feed and to find out how Sydney went. Hooray! We’re home; we belong in the bush. I think about the things we used to do on the Island. I remember my big sisters when they wore their long dresses, with petticoats everywhere, singing their songs. I start to sing.
‘Some day, I’m gonna write the story of my life…’
I feel better already.
Maureen has another baby boy, Steven, and Beryl and Johnny are expecting one, too, and so is Meryl. It’s August: Beryl’s in hospital and the Condo Show is on again. We all go to the Show dressed up in our pretty dresses and the boys looking real good in their shorts and pants.
We have lotsa fun at the Show and, after we’ve spent all our money, it’s time to go home. We’re loaded up with Tiki dolls and stuffed toys. Paddy and Kevin are real good at winning things— sometimes, Paddy gives his prizes to us as well. Now and again, they’ll distract the man and put the hooks on the stand when he’s not looking. We saved enough money to call the hospital from the public phone, and when Lynnie rings, they tell her Beryl’s had a baby girl, but we’re not allowed to go to the hospital—they say no kids are allowed. So we save up all the things we won at the show and wait for the baby niece to come home. They call her Narelle.
In October 1966, I turn ten and, in December, Meryl has another baby girl called Jasmine. Now we’ve got three handsome nephews and two beautiful nieces.
Daddy comes back from the railways and is living with us again. It’s good to have him around but he’s real strict, making me and Lynnie have our school uniform only six inches above the knee, just as the school rules say. He makes us sit on the floor on our knees and Mummy has to use the ruler to make sure it’s a perfect six inches. We’re real cheeky kids. As soon as we’re out of sight of home, we hitch that uniform a little bit higher. Daddy soon has to head off back to work again. We miss him but it’s pretty good, too, when there’s only us four kids and Mummy together.
It’s great being home at Condo, even if we ain’t on the Island. We go and visit over there but it’s not the same since our house burnt down. All we have now are our memories of playing in that red dirt and all the fun things we used to do. We’re back at school and everything is good. We still go and do the fruits when they come on but now it’s mainly over the school holidays and Christmas as we can’t really miss too much school. Mummy still always has to look over her shoulder in case of the Welfare; she can never relax.
24
Back to the paddocks
It’s time to head back to the paddocks; this time, it’s over to Leeton to pick the oranges. The paddocks are hard work but we tell jokes and sing songs, too, and have a little play around. We really work hard. Mummy works the hardest—even harder than Daddy. He’s not with us again on this trip.
Sometimes, it’s real hot and all you wanna do is sit in the shade of the tree and do nothing. But we know we gotta make a living. Some of the trees are really big and have lotsa fruit on them. Mummy always tries to give us kids the side with the shade, when she can, but no matter how you try to fit your body into the shade of the tree, the sun always seems to find you. Mummy’s always standing on a ladder, picking the fruit off the top of the tree. It’s the hardest job. The bigger kids pick the sides of the tree—that way, it’s easier for them to reach the fruit. And me, I’m the smallest, so I gotta crawl into the middle of the tree to get all the ones inside. That’s my job and I’m pretty good at it; I never leave any behind.
Oranges are fun but you gotta watch the spikes on the branches; you can get lotsa scratches if you’re not careful. So we all wear long-sleeved shirts, even if it’s boiling hot, and we even wear gloves ’cause the thorns scratch you to bits. Mummy always wears a floppy old canvas hat and an old man’s long-sleeved flannelette shirt, otherwise she’d be burnt real bad. She tries to make us kids wear a hat, too. Each morning, as we leave the hut, our hats are on our heads but they don’t last there too long.
When I’m c
limbing in the middle of the trees, I really do like feeling important helping my family although I always worry a little bit about scratching my face. Some days, when it’s really hot and the sweat is dripping off you and your body is all sticky and wet, you really don’t feel like picking. Then, Mummy will give us lotsa spells. In the morning and afternoon, when it’s time for a spell, Mummy sings out ‘smoko’. Quick as lightning, we flick our buckets from around our necks and sit in the shade. We all know we can sit and rest for twenty minutes. Us kids tease Mummy. We ask her if we can have a smoke, too, since it’s called ‘smoko’ and she has one. She laughs with us and tells us ‘no’ and she hopes we never pick up ‘the dirty things’.
Mummy has a cup of tea and us kids get a cold drink from the water bottle. We got two: one filled up with water and the other with cordial. It’s just what you need to cool down and we always have something to eat, too—biscuits or cakes. We have little spells, too, but we gotta wait for smoko for a big spell.
When it’s lunchtime, Mummy sings out, ‘Tuckertime!’ Then we have lunch underneath the tree that we just finished picking. We got a tucker bag filled with bread and butter, Vegemite, tomatoes and onions and even a can of baked beans. If the paddock is close to our hut, Mummy will send us girls down to turn the jug on and to start making sandwiches for everyone but that doesn’t happen too often because, most times, the paddocks are too far away.
Picking fruit comes in pretty handy, too, if you’ve done something wrong, because Mummy can’t get to you to give you a smack. She’ll just tell you off; but sometimes, if you did something that’s real bad, she’ll wait till smoko and get you then. Usually, her telling you off is good enough. I think all our energy, especially Mummy’s, is taken up picking the fruit and climbing the ladders so she never worries too much on wasting her energy trying to catch us.
The Cherry Picker's Daughter Page 9