The Sausage Tree by Rosalie Medcraft Page B

welcome and tasty addition to our usual food. The money from selling the skins was most important as the wages were too low to allow Mum to put much aside for the lean winter months.
    When Dad came home with the skins we kids had to put the rabbit skins on bent wire shapes and hang them to dry. There could have been a hundred or so at a time. While we were doing this Dad cleaned, then stretched the possum and wallaby skins and tacked them to the outside of the shed to dry in the sun. When setting his snares and traps, Dad always took his rifle with him in case he saw a kangaroo. When he brought one home for food, he tied string around its back legs and hung it from the clothes line to mature. Mum made delicious patties from the meat and lovely kangaroo tail soup that never seemed to last long enough.
    The rifle was kept on two leather loops nailed to the wall above the kitchen cabinet. We were not allowed to touch it. When Joan was about fourteen she asked Mum how it worked. Mum took the rifle from the wall and as she went through the procedure, she explained what she was doing and why. The barrel of the rifle was pointing towards Joan and Mum said, “When my father taught me to shoot he warned me never to point a gun at anyone whether it was loaded or not”. With that she pointed it towards the window and pulled the trigger. There was a thunderous noise and we got an enormous shock! A bullet blasted in to the window frame and ricocheted across the room, missed us all and went through the door. Mum was very upset as she could have easily shot Joan. She had been assured by a neighbour who had borrowed the rifle that he had cleaned it before returning it. When Dad came home he was also upset and very, very angry about the carelessness of the neighbour. We often wonder if the hole is still in the door.
    When we moved to Lilydale we had very little furniture. Because the cost of transporting it from Victoria was very high, most of it had been sold when we left Oakleigh. After we had settled in and Dad had made a few basic but necessary improvements he set about making some much needed furniture. He didn’t have any fancy tools, only his handsaw, chisel, hammer and his grandfather’s plane. Dad was completely self-taught and let nothing beat him; he was sure he could master any task he set himself. First he made Mum a big chest of drawers to hold all the linen, painted it bright green and put it in the kitchen. This was always referred to as “the green thing”. Next came a kitchen cabinet, as the one we had was not big enough to hold all our china as well as our food. Although we had enough beds we had no storage for our clothes so Dad made a wardrobe, dressing table and a small chest for the girls’ room and painted it the twins’ favourite colour, blue. The timber he used in all his furniture was made from pieces of wood he found on the mountain when he worked there. The backs of the chests and wardrobe were made from plywood that Mum ordered from town and was delivered by the bus driver.
    Dad became very ambitious with his furniture-making, so tackled the task of constructing a bench to hold a small circular saw that was driven by a canvas belt that went around a huge six foot wooden wheel that he built. The only thing wrong with the masterpiece was that Geoff had the job of turning the wheel at just the right speed to drive the saw. Dad built and sold several pieces of beautiful furniture, each having the doors inset with what he called “figured-wood” that he had brought home on the handlebars of his bike down from the mountain. Dad’s self-taught craftsmanship was shown to advantage in the polished figured wood sewing and handkerchief boxes that he made for Mum.
    One sideboard he made especially for Mum and on completion it was French polished. Mum bought a book with instructions how to make and use French polish, bought the materials required and made the polish. She then read