Early Years, Mundubbera.

Early years

I was born at the hospital in Mundubbera in Queensland. My parents wanted a boy, but I was the third girl, and that was a disappointment. The doctor couldn’t see that it should be, he had boys and no girls! I think my mother may have prayed for a boy, because after me there were four boys, the youngest one, Neil, born when I was thirteen years old.

I don’t remember it, but when I was two my mother, my two sisters and I had a holiday at Scarness. Marion and Jean built sandcastles and I knocked them down, so I was not very popular. On the way home to the farm at Mundubbera my mother heard that the second world war had begun. 

As a child I had no memory of “before the war”, and thought of it like the dream time, and “after the war” was even more fanciful. To me there had always been a war, and so there always would be.

My father was an asthmatic, so was not even eligible for the home guard. The war did not impinge very much on our lives on the farm except that some things were hard to come by. Toys, for example, were not commercially manufactured. A lady called Janet Arthy made toys for all the children at the one teacher school and these were presented on breaking up day, when the school closed for the Christmas holidays. I remember Marion getting a set of doll’s table and chairs, and I was given a soft toy cat which I called Felix. I also had a wooden wheelbarrow which my father made and a soft toy elephant which my mother made from scraps left over from an overcoat which she made for me.

We had a trike from “before the war”, but it had lost it’s rubber tyres and was almost impossible to ride on the dirt or gravel. (There was no concrete area available).

I remember watching Nonnie arrive in his utility. His real name was Mr Norman, and he collected the cans of cream and also brought mail. He always had lollies for us children.

My sisters rode a pony to school. Her name was Tot. I pleaded to have a ride and was helped aboard. No one told me what to do when I got up there, and Tot wandered off to eat some grass. I seem to remember my sister laughing at my uselessness. I am the only one in the family who didn’t learn to ride a horse. Tot was too old, we were told, and by the time I went to school we all walked. After we left the farm she had a foal called Tiny, so she really couldn’t have been all that old.

          We had a dog called Woolly, an English sheep dog, who was a real child’s pet. Dad had a cattle dog called Barney and wouldn’t let us play with him. He was a working dog, and definitely Dad’s. Dad often brought in the cows in the dark in winter time, so as to get and early start on the day. One night he had occasion to go to the outback toilet during the night. In the morning he found all the cows in the yard and Barney sitting in the gateway waiting for Dad to put up the rails.

          We used to play in the horse paddock which was full of milk thistles. One day we dared to creep through the fence into the bull paddock. We sat there in the long grass trembling until we heard a noise then raced back under the fence again. The bull was a big black Jersey called Peter, and we were right to be scared of him. When Jean left her coat on the fence another time Peter tossed it in the air with his horns, stamped on it and gored it. Just as well there was no child inside it!

          Marion and Jean found some jelly crystals on top of a high cupboard and we took them up to the horse paddock and had a picnic on them. I got upset over something and ran crying to Mum, jelly crystals from ear to ear. Jean and Marion were in trouble but not me, much to Jean’s disgust. Mum reckoned I was too small to get the jelly crystals from the high cupboard, so I was not at fault.

          Dad had built a herring bone type dairy. The cows were on a higher level to the workers, and the one set of cups reached four cows, two on each side. It meant that a whole shed full of cows were milked then the big doors opened and they all came out at once. One day I was in front of the doors when that happened and was terrified when they all headed out towards me.

          Dad had decided to build a house on the back of the farm and then sell off the front paddock and existing house. We went out there a few times and played hide and seek in the bush while the men worked on the house. We walked up a bottle tree which had been cut down. It was possible to climb up on the top end and walk up to the cut end. It seemed very high when we looked over the edge.

          One Saturday when the men were not around and the car was missing, Jean, Ian and I set out to walk out to where the new house was being built and get a ride home in the back of the utility. We got there only to find the place deserted and had to walk all that long way back. It was dark before we got home and Dad met us with a push bike. The men had been in to town to vote. Jean had been carrying Ian, and Dad put him on the bike to wheel him home. I remember being very, very tired as I trailed along behind everyone else.

          We had a cat called Slippers because of her white feet. This became Sippy to the children. Sippy was a great cat. Jean had climbed onto a fence post and was afraid to come down, but was too far away for Mum to hear her crying. Sippy went to get Mum. She just meowed until Mum followed her.

          The teacher at the school was pregnant and got leave. There was no one to take her place and the school would have closed down, but Mum took on the job for a while. So when I started school Mum was my teacher. I think there were six children in my class. Some were McDonalds from the next farm to ours, some were Mallets, and there was a Jimmy Christian. Christians had the farm on the other side from McDonalds. I got teased for walking home from school hand in hand with Jimmy Christian.

          Dad had a fall while working on the new house, and ended up in hospital. Because of his asthma, the doctor recommended that he give farming away. The farm was sold to the McDonalds on terms, so that we got payment in dribs and drabs.

          The years in Maryborough will be a separate blog.