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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780702250262 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Queensland Press |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2012 |
| Series: | David Unaipon Award Winners Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 103 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
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The Sausage Tree
By Rosalie Medcraft, Valda Gee
University of Queensland Press
Copyright © 1995 Rosalie Medcraft & Valda Gee,All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7022-5026-2
CHAPTER 1
The early years
Join us on a trip down memory lane as we recall the Great Depression and its aftermath when our parents struggled to raise their seven children. Journey with us through our memories of growing up in a different era — a time when ethics were strictly adhered to, punishments for us for misdemeanours were harsh and the ability to enjoy ourselves depended on our initiative and imagination.
We grew up in Lilydale, a small country township whose inhabitants made a living from timber milling, dairying, apple orcharding and small mixed farms.
Our father worked in the timber industry, firstly camping away on the slopes of Mt Arthur where he worked as a bushman felling giant trees with a cross-cut saw and an axe. This was always referred to as "bushing". The logs would be collected by a man driving a team of horses and dragged through the bush to the mill a few miles away where it was sawn into timber of varying lengths and thicknesses ready for sale in Launceston.
Dad would leave home at 5.00a.m. on Monday morning with his food carefully packed in a fine jute sugar bag slung on his back like a backpack. His change of clothes were in another bag, shaped like a bed-roll and balanced on the handlebars of his pushbike which he rode from home and up the mountain to his work. The pushbikes in those days didn't have gears so had to be pushed up all the hills. To save the brakes on the downhill ride, Dad cut a small sapling and tied the trunk to his bike, so that the drag slowed the speed as he rode down the rough stony road. Dad was gone from Monday through to Friday in the colder months staying in his tiny one-man hut which was made of rough sawn timber and had a bush fireplace with the chimney made from timber. The only light was from a candle and the fireplace where Dad cooked his potatoes in a tin billy can hung over the flames. Another tin billy was used to boil the water for his tea. Bedtime came soon after teatime. The bed was made from spars strung together and covered with hessian and a mattress was made from dry bracken fern. Wrapped in a grey blanket with more on top for added warmth, Dad slept the sleep of the just.
During the summer months Dad came home on Wednesdays for fresh food because in hot weather even the bread went mouldy before the five days were up.
Some years later he moved down to the lower slopes of the mountain to work in a timber mill closer to home and this enabled him to be home every night.
* * *
Dad was a Tasmanian but Mum was from Victoria. In 1922 when Dad was sixteen he left Tasmania because work in the timber industry was not available for single men. He and his older brother had been working in a sawmill since they were eleven years old. They worked with their father, walking six miles each way through the bush to work, but unfortunately both had been "stood down" in favour of married men and so they went "over the other side" (mainland Australia) looking for work. Dad and Uncle Ern found work in a timber mill in Wonthaggi in Victoria, but after a while Dad thought it was time he moved on.
He wandered the countryside for a while, working in various sawmills until in 1925 he settled in the tiny timber milling settlement of Noojee. The mill was owned by William Harrison (our grandfather) who remarked "that although George (Dad) was touched with the tarbrush, he was a good worker and worth his money".
Life was tough and rather primitive in Noojee, and the only people who lived there were the mill workers and their families. There were no shops. Grandfather's house was larger than the workers' cottages which were mostly three or four rooms and a lean-to at the back where the washtubs were and the firewood was kept during the winter. The single men were housed in little rooms joined together in a long row. These men ate all their meals at the "big house" with the family. Set apart from the houses was the school that was also used for social occasions and, like the houses, was built with timber sawn at the mill.
Every two weeks one of the men set off with a team of six bullocks and a wagon to bring all the stores and mail from Nayook which was the nearest town. The track was very rough and the journey usually took three days to complete.
For five months of the year Noojee was completely isolated by snow from the rest of the world. Sometimes if the weather broke early the track became almost impassable with the team up to their bellies in mud and slush, straining to pull the heavily laden wagon through the bog.
Huge quantities of sacks of flour for bread, potatoes and sugar, wooden crates packed with five-pound (2kg) tins of jam, sides of bacon and four-gallon (20L) tins of kerosene were the main items stacked on the wagon and covered with a tarpaulin for the long trip that could take a week if the rains began early.
The majority of the goods were stored in a special store-house that was managed by Grandma Harrison who was responsible to see that all the housewives ordered sufficient stores to last the long, cold winter.
Early in 1927 Dad married Grace Harrison who was eighteen at the time. After their wedding they travelled to Melbourne and set sail for Tasmania. Dad was taking his bride home to meet his family who lived in the Nabowla district in the north-east where he hoped to find work again.
Their first child, a son named Geoffrey, was born in 1927. Unfortunately work was still hard to find and after the birth in 1929 of their second child Joan they decided to return to Victoria. This time they headed straight for Noojee to Mum's family where they were sure that Dad could get work and a place to live. In June 1930 their third child Valda was born — another mouth to feed.
Because the settlement at Noojee was closely surrounded by densely timbered forests, bushfires caused by either lightning strikes or spontaneous combustion were not uncommon during the summer. As a safety measure Dad dug a hole in the ground about four feet deep and large enough to hold three children and Mum. At the top three sack bags hung on sticks so that snakes could not hide beneath them. The bags were to be taken into the hole to sit on if we had to escape from a bushfire. Near the edge at the top was a large sheet of galvanised iron that Mum was to use as a cover after we were all inside. Dad made a little ladder that we could use to climb in and out of the hole.
One time when all the men were away in the next gully fighting fires another one started. in the opposite direction and the women and children were caught in a ring of fire. Fortunately the wind turned before the fire reached the houses and the mill. There was no running water, but the high rainfall provided sample tank water for their daily needs.
However, tank water was no help if a house caught fire — as happened to our home in 1933 when a log rolled from the fireplace while Dad was asleep on the couch. In a desperate effort to save what he thought was a drawer containing important papers, Dad grabbed the wrong drawer and all he saved was a lot of old socks. Fortunately only Dad was home at the time as Mum had taken Geoff, Joan and Valda to Melbourne with her where she went to have the new baby. Instead of one baby there were two. The nurse wanted Mum to call them Sarah and Sue, Mum wanted Lynette and Lorraine but Dad didn't like those names and named them Barbara and Rosalie. They were always referred to as "the twins".
The family was now destitute — no home, furniture, clothes or money. While Mum was still in hospital she was approached by the almoner with the proposition that, in view of the situation she was now in, the twins be adopted out. Of course Mum would not agree. Next she was told that there was a couple willing to pay a hundred pounds for the babies. This was a large sum of money for the times and would have been a great help in getting the family on its feet again. Mum and Dad considered all their options and their financial position but decided that no matter what, they could not let their babies go.
A house was found for us in the Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh and sustenance money of thirty shillings a week was granted from Social Services, of which twelve shillings and sixpence was paid in rent. With donations of a few basic items of furniture and clothing we once again had a home. We children were very excited when we found a big pile of toys in one of the rooms. Santa had been before we arrived! Wasn't he clever to know that three children and two babies were going to live there.
It was now at the height of the Depression and Dad could only find two days work a week. When Geoff went to school he found that a free cup of cocoa was given to all the pupils at recess time and at the lunch break there was a cup of free soup. Although Joan was only just four, Mum sent her to school, and when Valda turned four she also started school.
We stayed in Oakleigh until late in 1935 when one of Dad's brothers and a sister came from Tasmania on a visit. Uncle Bob had won a lot of money in Tattersall's lottery sweeps and offered to pay our fare home to Tasmania where work in the timber industry had picked up.
CHAPTER 2Returning to Tasmania
We set sail in the SS Nairana early in 1936. What a nightmare that trip was. Only Dad, Geoff and Joan were not seasick. The dreaded travel sickness was to plague Valda and the twins until we were well into our teen years. When the trip was finally over Geoff remembers thinking to himself that this couldn't be much of a place we'd come to because the wharf was very small and in need of repair.
Twenty years later when Joan went with her husband to the wharf to fish for eels, she recognised Goderich Street with the trees down the middle as the wide street we had driven down away from the wharf and into Launceston. Valda was too sick to remember anything, and the twins were too young.
Prior to going to visit us in Victoria, Uncle Bob had bought Granma and Grandad a big house in George Street in Launceston. Before the move from their isolated country home, they sold their furniture to other families living in the district, then carrying the rest of their meagre belongings they walked eight miles along rough unmade roads into Nabowla railway station where they caught the train and travelled to Launceston to begin a new life.
We stayed with Granma Johnson until we were all over the seasickness and Mum and Dad could search for a house for us. We were all so young and timid and we were frightened of the houseful of dark haired people; they seemed to be everywhere. At the time we didn't know that Granma and Grandad had Aboriginal heritage. There were at least fifteen to twenty people in the house (including seven of their eleven children) and it was quite daunting for us to live in the same house as so many other people. How she fitted us all into her home with her large extended family is still a mystery, but she never seemed to be worried. In fact we can never ever remember her being cross during our stay.
Dad's brothers had found him work "bushing" on Mt Arthur near Lilydale, but we went to live in a house in Oxford Street near the East Launceston State School. Because there was an epidemic of infantile paralysis in Melbourne, we children were in quarantine for six weeks after we arrived in Launceston. While we were in Oxford Street a girl who lived opposite us died of the disease and we were all very frightened. We stayed in Launceston until August 1937 when we moved to Lilydale to be nearer Dad's work.
* * *
The picturesque small township of Lilydale nestles beneath the slopes of Mt Arthur and Brown Mountain. During the winter months Mt Arthur is snowcapped and the weather is wet and freezing cold and frozen water pipes are not uncommon. In contrast, due to the locality of Lilydale, the summers can at times be stifling hot.
When the Second World War broke out in 1939 all Australians were still suffering hardships caused by the Great Depression. Dad was called upon to attend the army recruitment drive and was relieved when he was rejected because of his asthma and also because he had too many children to support. Our family wasn't well off monetary wise, but we weren't the poorest family in the district. We were clothed, fed and housed.
We find it hard to believe that we were loved because we were subjected to the most severe hidings for what to us seemed trivial misconduct. Mum and Dad believed that they had to be cruel to be kind and that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. In our house the rod was either a stock whip or Dad's razor strop doubled in half. The child that was to be given a hiding was grabbed and tucked between his legs as Dad dealt out our punishment. We children used to yell in anguish "Please don't hit me, I'll be good" but the hiding kept on until Dad deemed one had had enough and then started on the next one to be punished. As we grew older we realised the futility of crying and beseeching and endured the punishment as quietly as we could, only to be afflicted more than before. Only when we cried loud and long did Dad think we'd been sufficiently punished and the hiding stopped. Toys were almost nonexistent, but we all had fertile imaginations that we used to keep ourselves amused.
We were very fortunate to live in a rural area where we learnt many elementary farm skills. We not only watched a myriad of activities, we were able to participate in some tasks.
We saw how hay was cut, stooked and made into chaff. We learnt how to milk a cow, to feed and care for poddy calves and bottle-feed orphan lambs. On the farm over our back fence was a blacksmith's shop complete with anvil and forge. We helped work the huge bellows so that the coals in the forge glowed red hot and then watched while the farmer shod his draught horses. Rosalie has one vivid memory of she and Barbara watching while pigs and sheep were slaughtered for meat. It was very unpleasant and they wished that they had gone home when they were told.
CHAPTER 3Settling in Lilydale
Uncle Bob had bought a motor car and he took Auntie Merle, Mum, Joan, Valda and the twins out to the new house at Lilydale. We were horribly carsick and Uncle Bob stopped on the side of the road beside a big rainwater puddle and cleaned us up as best he could. He was always a gentle, caring man. Auntie Merle, one of Dad's younger sisters and about sixteen at the time, travelled with us to help Mum get the house ready for the furniture and to stay until after the new baby was born at the end of October.
The house had been empty for some time and was very dirty inside. We can still remember our disgust that someone, on more than one occasion, had used the kitchen and the front passage as a toilet. We children were sent outside while Mum and Auntie Merle used cold water and scrubbing brushes to clean all the floors in the house. We were a little frightened to go outside into the yard because the grass was so high that Valda and the twins had already been lost once. Mum and Auntie Merle were still cleaning when the furniture van arrived carrying Dad, Geoff and all our possessions.
Not long after the furniture van had gone we heard a "yoo-hoo" at the back verandah and in walked Mrs Brooks our landlady. She was a small lady and carried an enormous tray that held cups, a big pot of tea, sugar, scones and cake and a big jug of milk for us children. The look of appreciation on Mum's face will never be forgotten. Mum and Mrs Brooks became lifelong friends calling one another Johnnie and Brookie and that "yoo-hoo" was their greeting as they opened each other's door on a visit.
We children in later years disrespectfully called her Old Mother Brooks because she always seemed to be on the lookout to catch us misbehaving. When we heard her rapping on her kitchen window we knew we were in trouble because she would waste no time hurrying along a well worn track between the two houses to report us to Mum. This resulted in us being thrashed and we still think she must have been a sadistic person. Who else would instigate the dreadful punishments we received? It was just as well she never had children of her own. They would have had a miserable life. We will never understand how the same woman could be so concerned as to ring the RSPCA about a local farmer who regularly whipped his draught horses until they screamed in pain and fear. The noise was frightening to hear. Apparently working horses meant more to Old Mother Brooks than children being treated in a similar way.
We were again quarantined for six weeks because the infantile paralysis epidemic had spread to Tasmania and we had moved from Launceston which had been proclaimed an infected area. When the new baby arrived she was named Wilma for Mum's father William, and the chosen second name was Merle after Auntie Merle who had been so very good to Mum. Mum stayed three extra weeks in Launceston when Wilma was born because due to the paralysis epidemic all bus and train transport had been suspended.
* * *
The three older children missed a lot of schooling during 1936-37, but, as young folk most often do, we soon caught up on the lessons. As time went by this proved to be true with us as we were all high achievers at school. When we finally went to our new school we thought we were special. We'd come a long way, travelled in a big ship, lived in Launceston and had such a lot of holidays. All the other children hadn't come from anywhere; they'd always been there. In reality the first three years at that school were horrible. The other children used to beat us up and many times we went home with our clothes torn, sometimes almost irreparable. As a result we were once again in trouble at home. Mum was quite sure that we were the instigators of the fights.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Sausage Tree by Rosalie Medcraft, Valda Gee. Copyright © 1995 Rosalie Medcraft & Valda Gee,. Excerpted by permission of University of Queensland Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,The Sausage Tree,
Introduction,
1: The early years,
2: Returning to Tasmania,
3: Settling in Lilydale,
4: Our war effort,
5: The terrible twins,
6: Struggle and strife,
7: Christmas — our style,
8: Fun and games,
9: Work and play,
10: Highlights of our year,
11: Our pets,
12: Our resourceful Dad,
13: More of the twins,
14: Out and about again,
Epilogue,
UQP BLACK AUSTRALIAN WRITERS SERIES,
Copyright,