cream were served with this.
After lunch, we went to the beach. But because of the belief that people who swam shortly after a meal drowned, we were not allowed into the water for half an hour after we had eaten. So we played on the sand with our buckets and threw sand at each other, and I would continue screaming, ‘Look what Tucker has done to me!’
Tucker has an incredibly long memory. Like an elephant, we would say. Sometimes, long after some event, he would suddenly lash out at one of us when we weren’t looking and strike with a tremendous blow. When I asked why he did that, he would remind me that some days earlier I had done something that he had not liked. He had just been biding his time.
As we fought, our parents sat on the sand under a canvas awning and our mother sewed. On very hot days they would enter the water wearing woollen bathing costumes. Our father’s bathers were maroon and had a moth-hole high up on one buttock. These were never replaced and neither was our mother’s black one-piece. They had these bathers until they died.
Our mother swam with a languid ease, as she did everything else when her husband was around. It may have been natural to her, or it may have been that his presence meant she felt she should never look urgent orvigorous. She opened and shut a car door with the same leisurely movement.
Sometimes we shared Christmas with our aunt and uncle. Eva and Ken Brinkworth lived on their farm outside Port Lincoln. Their daughter Fay was about my age. Fay had Down’s syndrome and as she sat serenely on the sand after lunch, we fought, hurling the sand around her. Our mother cried, ‘Won’t you children ever stop fighting?’
By dusk we were bathed; the sand had been removed from our bodies; we had eaten cold meats, beetroot, hot mashed potatoes and a finely sliced lettuce salad with a mashed boiled egg dressing; and we’d been put to bed to dream of revenge.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Water
S urrounded as we were by water, my childhood was one of measuring it out, if not drop by drop, at least bucket by bucket. Our house faced the bay, which stretched to the eastern horizon, and as far as we could see, to islands on the south end of its extremity and to desolate diminishing sand dunes at the northern end. It seemed that we never looked inland. We looked to that blue horizon.
Our water tank held all the water the family had, year in, year out. With a rainfall of only fourteen inches (355.6 millimetres) annually, water was precious. At the tap above the sink in the kitchen there was a metal wash basin. When the washing-up was done, the suds were taken out and tipped onto the tomatoes or whatever was growing in the vegetable garden. Seaweed was gathered in our wheelbarrow and piled thickly round the tomatoes as mulch. There were, I think, never any flowers apart from Californian poppies, which were my father’s specialty. They needed almost no water.
Each evening before bed, one of our mother’s helpers bathed us. Two by two we went into the bath, which was heated with a roaring woodchip heater. Lit, dangerous and explosive, it seemed exciting and I liked the sudden transformation of cold water into hot that seemed to happen instantaneously. A flare and a roar and it was off.
As the first two children climbed or were lifted, depending on their age, from the bath, the next two were lowered into it. We were already fed, so now we were ready for bed. It was still light.
The bathwater waited, growing cold for our parents, who bathed later. Our mother took the next bath, and finally our father. I always felt sorry for him because by then the water must have been cooling, as there was a limit to how much water they felt they could afford to use for the bath on a single night. But he said he didn’t mind, so I stopped worrying.
None of this water was wasted either. It, too, was bailed out and ladled onto the garden.
When my brothers and I weren’t playing our game ‘Sheep’ with quandong
After lunch, we went to the beach. But because of the belief that people who swam shortly after a meal drowned, we were not allowed into the water for half an hour after we had eaten. So we played on the sand with our buckets and threw sand at each other, and I would continue screaming, ‘Look what Tucker has done to me!’
Tucker has an incredibly long memory. Like an elephant, we would say. Sometimes, long after some event, he would suddenly lash out at one of us when we weren’t looking and strike with a tremendous blow. When I asked why he did that, he would remind me that some days earlier I had done something that he had not liked. He had just been biding his time.
As we fought, our parents sat on the sand under a canvas awning and our mother sewed. On very hot days they would enter the water wearing woollen bathing costumes. Our father’s bathers were maroon and had a moth-hole high up on one buttock. These were never replaced and neither was our mother’s black one-piece. They had these bathers until they died.
Our mother swam with a languid ease, as she did everything else when her husband was around. It may have been natural to her, or it may have been that his presence meant she felt she should never look urgent orvigorous. She opened and shut a car door with the same leisurely movement.
Sometimes we shared Christmas with our aunt and uncle. Eva and Ken Brinkworth lived on their farm outside Port Lincoln. Their daughter Fay was about my age. Fay had Down’s syndrome and as she sat serenely on the sand after lunch, we fought, hurling the sand around her. Our mother cried, ‘Won’t you children ever stop fighting?’
By dusk we were bathed; the sand had been removed from our bodies; we had eaten cold meats, beetroot, hot mashed potatoes and a finely sliced lettuce salad with a mashed boiled egg dressing; and we’d been put to bed to dream of revenge.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Water
S urrounded as we were by water, my childhood was one of measuring it out, if not drop by drop, at least bucket by bucket. Our house faced the bay, which stretched to the eastern horizon, and as far as we could see, to islands on the south end of its extremity and to desolate diminishing sand dunes at the northern end. It seemed that we never looked inland. We looked to that blue horizon.
Our water tank held all the water the family had, year in, year out. With a rainfall of only fourteen inches (355.6 millimetres) annually, water was precious. At the tap above the sink in the kitchen there was a metal wash basin. When the washing-up was done, the suds were taken out and tipped onto the tomatoes or whatever was growing in the vegetable garden. Seaweed was gathered in our wheelbarrow and piled thickly round the tomatoes as mulch. There were, I think, never any flowers apart from Californian poppies, which were my father’s specialty. They needed almost no water.
Each evening before bed, one of our mother’s helpers bathed us. Two by two we went into the bath, which was heated with a roaring woodchip heater. Lit, dangerous and explosive, it seemed exciting and I liked the sudden transformation of cold water into hot that seemed to happen instantaneously. A flare and a roar and it was off.
As the first two children climbed or were lifted, depending on their age, from the bath, the next two were lowered into it. We were already fed, so now we were ready for bed. It was still light.
The bathwater waited, growing cold for our parents, who bathed later. Our mother took the next bath, and finally our father. I always felt sorry for him because by then the water must have been cooling, as there was a limit to how much water they felt they could afford to use for the bath on a single night. But he said he didn’t mind, so I stopped worrying.
None of this water was wasted either. It, too, was bailed out and ladled onto the garden.
When my brothers and I weren’t playing our game ‘Sheep’ with quandong
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