trout. They were used as bait.
Our dinghy was anchored in shallow water. One afternoon, my three brothers were playing around the boat. While my mother sat sewing on the sand where I was playing, one of the boys untied the anchor rope. The tide took the boat out to sea. When our mother looked up, the boys were heading out into the bay with the oars resting on the benches and not locked into the rowlocks. While Tucker knew how to row, he was too young to get the oars into the rowlocks, so the boys had no method of stopping the boat. The swelling tide took the boatful of boys further out. Our mother, shrieking, dropped her sewing and ran into the sea. She managed to reach the boat and drag it back to shallow water.
Somebody ran up to Elder Smith’s office and fetched our father. He drove us home, our mother dripping wet. Tucker said to a neighbour later, ‘Mum got wet – right up to where she feeds the baby.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Aeroplanes
I was twelve before I ever rode in a bus or a train. If we weren’t driven in a car, we flew. Port Lincoln had an airport and it was from there our family caught planes to take us to the city. The plane held about eight passengers. With six of us, and May or Gertie or Jane to help my mother, we took up almost all of the seats.
The air-hostess wore a navy blue uniform and a smart cap like an envelope opened out, sitting jauntily aside her head. Her legs in stockings and high-heeled shoes disappeared down the aisle. She handed out glucose sweets before we took off and before we landed.
The journey across two gulfs included a stop or two at airports along the coast. By the time we got to Whyalla, all three of my brothers were vomiting. Brown paper bags were placed in a net on the back of the seats. On one trip my mother said triumphantly to a friend after we had landed, ‘We used up every paper bag!’ (The friend was there to collect us from Parafield Airport with its longwhite wind socks flying aslant, mysterious as Tibetan prayer flags.)
We were driven to the city where we were taken in to see Nanna Brinkworth. Sitting up in bed, with a tray across her thin knees, her hair piled up in a full, floppy silver bun, pins awry, wearing a fine pink knitted bed jacket, Nanna would greet us mockingly. Living on a diet of burnt toast, bananas and milk tea, Nanna would sometimes arise and dress in dark, elegant clothes. The burnt toast was not an accident; it was burnt deliberately because she had been told that charcoal kept heart disease away.
When our visit to Nanna was over, we were driven to the Barossa Valley to stay with Granny Shemmeld at Angaston. There the house was filled with the aromas of German yeast cake, Brasso, wood smoke, tea and brandy. The whole town smelt vaguely of yeast.
When the holiday was over, we took the plane again and the vomiting and the counting of brown paper bags began again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Minlaton
J aundice was the disease that helped save our grandfather at Gallipoli (he was evacuated sick from the 11th Light Horse in October 1915), and then, in the next war, it was the one that his son, our father, contracted.
This time, jaundice marked another departure: my family’s from Tumby Bay. None of us, I think, had ever considered that we would leave.
The reason our father became jaundiced was that, at this time, because of the war, there was a petrol shortage. As a result, Elder Smith managers had charcoal-burning gas-producers placed on the back of their cars.
My mother wrote in her autobiography:
These dirty things had to have bags of coke tipped into them. Sometimes when Brink arrived home he looked like a black minstrel. It was at this time that his health became poor. Once, when I was returningfrom Adelaide, Brink met me at the airport near Port Lincoln. He looked so ill I thought he was dying. He then developed yellow jaundice and became an awful colour. He was put on a very strict diet, with all food having to be boiled.
Elders eventually
Our dinghy was anchored in shallow water. One afternoon, my three brothers were playing around the boat. While my mother sat sewing on the sand where I was playing, one of the boys untied the anchor rope. The tide took the boat out to sea. When our mother looked up, the boys were heading out into the bay with the oars resting on the benches and not locked into the rowlocks. While Tucker knew how to row, he was too young to get the oars into the rowlocks, so the boys had no method of stopping the boat. The swelling tide took the boatful of boys further out. Our mother, shrieking, dropped her sewing and ran into the sea. She managed to reach the boat and drag it back to shallow water.
Somebody ran up to Elder Smith’s office and fetched our father. He drove us home, our mother dripping wet. Tucker said to a neighbour later, ‘Mum got wet – right up to where she feeds the baby.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Aeroplanes
I was twelve before I ever rode in a bus or a train. If we weren’t driven in a car, we flew. Port Lincoln had an airport and it was from there our family caught planes to take us to the city. The plane held about eight passengers. With six of us, and May or Gertie or Jane to help my mother, we took up almost all of the seats.
The air-hostess wore a navy blue uniform and a smart cap like an envelope opened out, sitting jauntily aside her head. Her legs in stockings and high-heeled shoes disappeared down the aisle. She handed out glucose sweets before we took off and before we landed.
The journey across two gulfs included a stop or two at airports along the coast. By the time we got to Whyalla, all three of my brothers were vomiting. Brown paper bags were placed in a net on the back of the seats. On one trip my mother said triumphantly to a friend after we had landed, ‘We used up every paper bag!’ (The friend was there to collect us from Parafield Airport with its longwhite wind socks flying aslant, mysterious as Tibetan prayer flags.)
We were driven to the city where we were taken in to see Nanna Brinkworth. Sitting up in bed, with a tray across her thin knees, her hair piled up in a full, floppy silver bun, pins awry, wearing a fine pink knitted bed jacket, Nanna would greet us mockingly. Living on a diet of burnt toast, bananas and milk tea, Nanna would sometimes arise and dress in dark, elegant clothes. The burnt toast was not an accident; it was burnt deliberately because she had been told that charcoal kept heart disease away.
When our visit to Nanna was over, we were driven to the Barossa Valley to stay with Granny Shemmeld at Angaston. There the house was filled with the aromas of German yeast cake, Brasso, wood smoke, tea and brandy. The whole town smelt vaguely of yeast.
When the holiday was over, we took the plane again and the vomiting and the counting of brown paper bags began again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Minlaton
J aundice was the disease that helped save our grandfather at Gallipoli (he was evacuated sick from the 11th Light Horse in October 1915), and then, in the next war, it was the one that his son, our father, contracted.
This time, jaundice marked another departure: my family’s from Tumby Bay. None of us, I think, had ever considered that we would leave.
The reason our father became jaundiced was that, at this time, because of the war, there was a petrol shortage. As a result, Elder Smith managers had charcoal-burning gas-producers placed on the back of their cars.
My mother wrote in her autobiography:
These dirty things had to have bags of coke tipped into them. Sometimes when Brink arrived home he looked like a black minstrel. It was at this time that his health became poor. Once, when I was returningfrom Adelaide, Brink met me at the airport near Port Lincoln. He looked so ill I thought he was dying. He then developed yellow jaundice and became an awful colour. He was put on a very strict diet, with all food having to be boiled.
Elders eventually
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