Category: Calling Australia Home

A turning point in my life came in the last year of primary school. David Booth was different – a teacher who made school fun, who breathed life and excitement into works of such as Kipling, C.S. Forester and Shelley, who introduced us to the Australian classics of Patterson and Lawson and delighted us with the tales of Crooked Mick of the Speewah. For the first time since I was seven, I felt respected by a teacher. He made me begin to believe in myself and he encouraged my art. At the end of the year, the whole of Grade 7 was tested, but this was a test of a different kind and when the results came out I was put into the top class for high school. From that moment on, I gained confidence, and school became more than just an escape from home.

In 1960 the old forts on top of Mt Clarence were nothing like the tourist attraction of today. At best, it could have been described as a curiosity of a bygone era when the British provided the guns to protect the port, which no one else ever seemed to want. As my friend’s Grandma said, ‘Too bloody far away from anywhere.’

The discovery that our first year of high school was to be spent at the forts brought deep disappointment. I had looked forward to attending the beautiful campus on the other side of Mount Clarence with its cloistered architecture, secluded courtyards and topiary hedges tended by the school gardener, Mr Colgate. In 1960, the number of baby boomers must have caught the education department by surprise. The school couldn’t accommodate us all. The top two forms were sent to the old wooden buildings on the hill. We were given a pep talk about how we were the clever, reliable students, trusted to be away from the supervision of the main campus. Little did the teachers know. Each morning, looking the picture of innocence, dressed in our blazers and boaters we were bussed up to the forts and spent the days mostly in the old barracks doing our lessons, but at every opportunity, we melted into the bush and ferreted through the forbidden tunnels and bunkers. The walls of these dark shelters whispered rumours of sexual exploits, and we deciphered the graffiti with glee.

Albany Senior High School

ASHS, for me, was a happy place and I remember all the teachers fondly, although that didn’t stop us from giving them a hard time. Domestic science was for girls only, which was one reason for disdain. Most of us were from working-class backgrounds; cooking, sewing and laundry were already part of our lives, and not a part we felt any passion for. We escaped this subject during our first year at the forts but in our second year, the cooking of a lamb chop or the ironing of a hanky was met with derision. During some of our classes, the usual patience of Mrs Dixon went up the chimney along with the smoke from our burnt offerings.

 Each morning, I met my friends in town and we walked passed CBC yelling to the boys on the way with such taunts as ‘Catholic dogs, sitting on logs’, then up the crusher track to school.

            At times, the boys were herded up to the pine forest and the girls to the quadrangle, a grassed space made private by the perimeter of tall Cyprus-like trees. There, the blue-stockinged, Miss Becket would both shock and amuse us, in her posh English accent, by giving such advice as to how to dispose of sanitary items.

         ‘Now gels, discretion, please. Heading for the toilets, twirling Modess around in the air is not the done thing.’

She also warned about boys. ‘Remember what they say, gels: Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.’

My English continued to be appalling but I needed it to matriculate and worked hard at it. At one stage Mr Trenberth encouraged me to send a story I had written to The Woman’s Weekly but I dismissed the idea as lunacy. Now I wonder at my the lack of self-confidence.

The stand-out for me was Mrs (Heather) Parry, our music and art teacher. With the help of other staff members, she organised a stunning production of The Mikado, which filled the town hall. Most of the senior students were involved in one way or another with costumes and scenery as well as the operetta itself. Reared on opera, I was overwhelmed with admiration for the voices and talents of many of the staff and students. I remember being especially impressed by the rich tenor voice of Mr Gregson, our deputy-head. When the curtain came down on my first experience of a live performance, it was a shock to find myself in the theatre with other mortals instead of the world into which I had been transported.

The Mikado

Mrs Parry also encouraged and fostered my art for which I will always be grateful. Our only point of conflict was her love of gladioli’s, which she produced ad-nauseam for the plant-life component of the curriculum. I hate gladioli’s to this day.

The town had two beautiful art-deco picture theatres: the Regent and the Empire. Most Saturday mornings we caught the bus to the matinee. Later it was Friday nights unless we were saving our pocket money for the Albany Show, the circus or bonfire night. We got our money’s worth at the pictures in those days. Firstly we sat through all the advertisements and took turns to ‘bags’ them. Next came the Movie-Time News, with the same urgent British male voice who made every news item sound like a revelation from the bible. I don’t remember any previews, but there were always two full-length pictures (the American word movie was adopted much later). An interval separated the screenings when we would go to the counter, or buy ice-creams and chocolates from an usher who came around with a little tray hanging from her neck. We could also get a pass-out and run up the street to the cafe where the sweets were cheaper.  When I look through a list of 1940s and 1950s movies there weren’t too many that we missed. Our favourites were the light and frothy from Hollywood where we could escape with June Allyson or Doris Day, but there were many memorable pictures that moved us to tears like The Red Shoes and Lassie Come Home. When my Grandmother returned from a visit to Scotland in the late 1950s and told us about how people could watch pictures in their lounge rooms via something called television, I couldn’t comprehend it.

 

An ‘Usherette’ at the ‘Pictures”

 My friend Val and I were conscientious students, both keen to gain good results for the Leaving Exam, both keen to gain a bursary for a teachers’ college in Perth. She lived close to town so we often studied at her house, occasionally creeping out of her bedroom window and down the Middleton Beach Stomp. Many of our classmates came from country towns, most of them boarding at The Rocks or The Priory. A couple of the country boys in our class had their own house down at Middleton Beach which we named The House of the Rising Sun, after the Animals hit that came out that year. In 1964 that house rang every weekend with the new pop music of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and others. The neighbours must have sighed with relief when our childhoods ended with the exams in November and we drifted in different directions towards the rest of our lives.

Art remained part of my life and led me in many directions. Later in life, I decided to explore something that had puzzled me since childhood. Our mother was an inspiring, courageous, talented woman with a wicked sense of humour but underlying her strength was something else, something unspoken, something too hard to identify. I decided to explore back through four generations of my matrilineal line. When I did this I found much that had been left out of the family stories, I found a history of dire poverty and trauma. Could this have been the cause of the underlying fear and shame that I had sensed? I found the reasons for migration to Australia on the far side of the world and I found my great-grandmother Agnes. Agnes grabbed me and demanded that her story be told.

After I had completed my exhibition Connective Tissue, I followed her footsteps around Scotland. I retold her story in The White Apron, a novel that describes the strength and resilience that was needed for a working-class woman to survive the industrial revolution; a time when children died too often in an age deemed the slaughter of the innocents.

Gradually Agnes led me away from art and into writing, and exploring the lives other forgotten women.

 

 

 

 BATTLING

For it is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing, but the fear of death and hardship.                                                                                                           Epictetus

While the rest of the house was being built we lived in the back two rooms. Dad had the stumps in place and a stockpile of material salvaged from the demolition sites, but we needed more money for the rest of the dream. The Commonwealth Bank was the place to go for a loan. It was the only bank in those days so the manager, who was close to God as far as my parents were concerned. He promised 10 000 pounds on the condition that they put the roof on first. They were stony broke, so this was not going to happen any time soon.

In those tough times, one kindness was never forgotten. The owner of the town’s department store, Drew Robinson, stopped Mum in the store one day. He asked how they were getting along. She tried to crack hardy but admitted that cooking on one small primus burner was no fun. With that, he ordered her to go and pick herself out a stove. When she protested that she couldn’t possibly afford it, he told her he wasn’t asking her to pay for it. A Metters wood stove was duly delivered and made all the difference to our lives. Dad was able to repay Drew by doing repairs to his boat

Dad often worked on boats. His family had been carpenters and wheelwrights in Bushmills, Ireland for generations. The skills he had learned in Ireland such a bending wood to make the barrels for Bushmills Whiskey came in handy. He also had the skill of cutting shingles and got the job of re-roofing part of St John’s Church in York street.

Disaster struck. Dad cut off his finger in the buzz-saw at work. He couldn’t work for weeks, but his boss stuck by him and he was paid. He also received a hundred pounds in compensation through the carpenter’s union, and so we got our roof. Mum said later in life that she felt guilty about being pleased for this windfall. With the roof came the loan and with the loan came more stress. This time it was Dad who was stressed. He hated owing money, especially this unbelievable amount. It was paid back at four pounds a week out of a twenty-pound wage packet.

In what was one of the saddest moments of my life, Dad decided to sell his precious accordion and for a while, there was no music in our lives.

Well no music to speak of. We had an old His Master’s Voice radio, made of brown, wood-grain, bakelite, which had an emblem of a little Jack Russell with his ear cocked to a phonograph. I don’t think Albany had a local radio station in early 1950,s but the ABC with its BBC voices was our one flimsy connection to the outside world. Dad arrived home just after 5 PM. By 5.30 we were eating our evening meal (tea we called it). The conversation was always lively, but it was stopped mid-sentence when the news came on at 6 o’clock.

My Grandmother, Christina Wilson listening to the radio

My friend, Maxine’s parents also liked music. It was mainly big band music because Mel played the cornet, but he and Molly, his wife sang My Blue Heaven over and over.     

                  Just Molly and me, and baby makes three                                                                               

               We’re happy in My Blue Heaven                                                                                   

It’s still etched into my memory. It’s a late 1920’s song.  Like many of the men, Mel had come back from the war. I think people were just happy to be in a place that was happy and safe. Everything came later to most of us in Australia than it did in Europe, especially in the country. In those early days, nostalgia limited my parent’s music tastes to the classical, and opera, and of course their beloved songs from home.

A few years later when the wage packet had grown and the mortgage had shrunk John bought another accordion and learned not to miss his finger or a beat. He also bought a turntable and made a walnut cabinet for it in Art Deco style with curved corners. I can’t describe the love that went into that cabinet! It was French polished with seven coats of shellac and fine sanding in between each coat before he was satisfied. We bought two EP’s, extended playing records, which meant they had two pieces of music on each side. One was Beniamino Gigli and the other the soprano Maria Callas. Rachmaninoff with his Prelude in C Sharp Minor was a gift from an aunt. We were all enthralled by this modern wonder and Gigli, Maria and Rachmaninoff competed for our rapt attention.

Music was a big part of Scottish culture. When folk gathered there was a Ceilidh, and it was mandatory for everyone to perform in some way. No one was judged on the quality of their voice or their ability with their instrument. It was enough that they wanted to sing or play, recite a poem or tell a story. My mother and father were both blessed with fine voices. Dad had a good strong tenor voice. Mum could hold a complex melody with ease. I have old tape recordings to testify to that. When there was a gathering in our house, which usually happened when a Scottish ship arrived in port, Dad played his accordion, and often his mouth organ. We had several fine singers among our friends, but most of all there was dancing. The mat was rolled up, the couch and chairs were pushed back and our small lounge room would be alive with couples Stripping the Willow or doing the Eightsome Reel. And all this was done without alcohol. We couldn’t afford it in those days. Perhaps the only time was Hogmanay – New Year’s Eve when a cup o’ kindness would be shared. A few years ago, when my sisters and I went back to Scotland, I tried to capture the wild energy of a wedding ceilidh. 

Dad with my sons and his accordion.

 

You can read more about growing up in Albany in Part 3.

 

 

 

‘Albany will never change much – it is a pretty town, but vague. It seems to exist only in a somewhere-on-the-horizon sort of way; I like it all the better for that.’ Henry Lawson 1890

Lawson wrote for the Albany Observer newspaper in 1890 and he was right. Albany is a pretty little town. Snuggled between two mountains on the south coast of WA it looks out onto a spectacular natural harbour, and beyond that to the islands in King George Sound. My parents said the Scots would have called the two mountains hillocks. But hills and mountains are in very short supply in Western Australia, so we were proud of Mount Clarence and Mount Melville. The twins with their bushy girths and baldheads of shiny grey granite were part of our playground. Mount Melville was the closest to where we lived. We rode our Malvern Stars up the tracks until they became too steep, and then dumping the bikes we scrambled up the smooth rock in our bare feet. Up there we could see forever over the harbour and the south coast, and we were free.

On my second-hand Malvern Star bike

Just below us on the harbour-side of the mountain in Vancouver Street, lived Minnie, Maxine’s Grandmother. When we were hungry we ran down the mountain into Minnie’s back yard and through the back door that was always open. Minnie was home. She was always home, and always in exactly the same place. She was plump and welcoming, always smiling. She shocked me and thrilled me with the way she swore.

“You lot, bloody back again?” she would cackle with mock horror. “Well bloody well wipe y’re flamin’ feet. I’m buggered if I want a floor to wash.”

But I never saw her wash the floor. I never saw her get out of her chair. It was permanently jammed between the Metters stove and the end of the kitchen table. I may remember her waddling down the little path to the dunny in the back yard, almost hidden in the tangle Morning Glory but it’s more likely to be my imagination.

Everything about this old house with its old people fascinated me. Minnie sat with her ample breasts and doughy thighs covered with a floury apron. She beat eggs, sliced apples, kneaded dough and spooned biscuit mix onto trays. She could turn from the table where she’d been rolling out pastry, moving only her upper body to reach into the oven with her floury oven mitt and bring out a steaming pie or a batch of Anzacs that filled the air with their biscuity smell. If she needed anything that was not within her reach Dickey was there to fetch it for her. Dickey was the lodger, just part of the household. He was unfailingly jolly and was rarely seen without a cat draped around his neck. In my childish mind, he was closely related to Dick Whittington. We were quizzed about what was happening at home and school. Her response would always be: “Well, I’ll be buggered.”

We felt free to tell her anything. Far from feeling censured, we were rewarded with a chuckle. The best thing about Minnie’s house was her enormous dress-up box. She was quite a gal in her time if the discarded clothes were anything to go by. There were sequined ball gowns, elbow-length gloves and fabulous hats. We dived into that box and into our imaginations until Minnie grew tired and shouted out. “Its time yous bloody kids buggered off home.”

Dress ups

Growing up in Albany you couldn’t help but be imbued with its history. There were ancient Aboriginal fish traps mysteriously still clinging to the shallows of Oyster Harbour. Albany was the site of the first white settlement in Western Australia in 1826 and many of the town’s buildings are old. The history that most saturated my childhood was that of the two World Wars. Albany was the collection point for soldiers from around Australia and New Zealand before they were shipped off to Gallipoli. For many heading out of the beautiful Princess Royal Harbour was their last glimpse of Australia. People like Minnie and Dickey talked about those times and the men that didn’t return. There is a shady, green park overlooking the harbour and the Deep Water Jetty with several old cannons pointing across the harbour and as we played there it was not hard to feel the ghosts of the young men who had never come home. Above the park, high on Mount Clarence is the old forts that were first built by the British government in 1893. There are old tunnels leading to the huge guns that were installed in bunkers hidden in the side of the hill overlooking King George Sound. They guarded the entrance to the harbour, but Albany was never threatened. “Too bloody far away for anyone to worry about,” Minnie would say.

The house in Vancouver Street where Minnie used to live. 

 

                       

Then let us pray that come it may,
as come it will for a’ that …

That man to man the warls o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that       

 

My parents were drawn to Albany, on the south coast of Western Australia. With its stunning scenery and pristine beaches, it reminded them of home. The town beach was Middleton where we kids spent half our lives in the summertime. It had waves for bodysurfing, a pontoon to swim out to and a jetty to dive from (I don’t think you can do that now – the water seems to have become more shallow). The fine white sand, in places, covered in seashells squeaked when you walked on it. We could rock-hop all the way around to the harbour or walk in the other direction to Emu Point. I don’t remember any shops in those days.

Middleton Beach

At primary school, for a myriad of reasons my self-esteem was low. I thought myself ugly as well as stupid. Confirmation of my lack of brains came once a month after class tests when my results were usually amongst the lowest in the class. Classroom seating was according to our test results. Top marks gained you a seat at the back of the classroom while results like mine saw you seated at the very front. My youngest sister Laurain was born at the end of my sixth year. Mum and Dad were too preoccupied to notice that I was struggling. They both believed that I was doing well and I hid my shame from them by burning my test book in the school incinerator when I couldn’t ignore requests for my parent’s signature any longer. When Laurain was born, as was usual in those days, Mum was in the maternity hospital for about three weeks. I was kept at home to manage the household. Helen was only four years old and not yet at school and my Grandmother Christina, who walked over from her cottage each day had to be watched as her anxiety disorder was beginning to make her unreliable. One of Mum’s friends helped out with a casserole or two, but I cooked and shopped and did my best to keep the place clean. I remember appreciating for the first time that there was a skill in washing a floor as I struggled to soak up a flood of water with the stringy, grey mop. My last year of primary school was darkly coloured by my mother’s depressive moods, which had been increasing with the birth of each child. There was never any doubt that she loved us but she struggled with the limited and isolated life of a stay-at-home-mum I was heartbroken to be told that now that I was eleven I was too old for childish games with my friends after school and was expected to be home to help with the housework. After tea, as we called the evening meal, I escaped into my back bedroom and into books, but never school books.

On the side of Mount Melville, which faced away from the harbour was what my father called a disgrace. The reserve was a piece of land still heavily wooded. I don’t know any white person who ever went there. It was where the Aboriginal people lived. For my friends and I, Mount Melville was a favourite place to explore. On our rambles through the bush we glimpsed tents. It looked miserable. Albany could be so bone-chillingly cold. But I was flat-out trying to fit in as the child of migrants, or New Australians as we were called and I gave very little thought to the  Aboriginal people. I was only confronted with my own snobbery and racism when I was about ten or eleven. Dad had bought a car, a second-hand Ford Prefect. He was so proud of it.

Owning a house and a car was something my parents wouldn’t have dreamed about in Scotland. What Dad had, he shared. Every time we went to town, whenever we passed the reserve, if there were any people waiting for a bus or walking to town, he stopped to offer a lift. The reserve’s most famous residents were a couple who were seemingly inseparable and also the butt of some of the town’s jokes. They probably weren’t very old, younger than I am now but they seemed alien and ancient in their old army greatcoats and beanies pulled down on their furrowed brows. My father seemed to love this couple and showed his interest without patronizing in any way but I was mortified when he picked them up. I shrank as far down into the cracked leather seats as I could and hoped to hell that none of my friends would see me as they chatted all the way to town. Now when I think back on those times I am so proud and full of love for my father who didn’t just talk about socialism and equality. He lived it.

At primary school, I only knew two Aboriginal children, both boys, and if memory serves me, unreachably shy. Because of my parents, one of those boys (now an elder) and his family remain in contact to this day, but now I find myself wondering what his childhood was like. Mine was weird enough with several teachers that were mentally cruel, physically abusive and one exploding into frequent psychotic episodes that included chasing his (probably autistic) son around the class, over desks and out the door brandishing a long thin cane and bellowing like an enraged bull. When we were only seven, one headmaster came at regular intervals into our grade two class. The whole class would freeze including our sweet little teacher Miss Stutley. We all knew what would happen next. He always found a pretext to pick out one of the boys, who then was put over his knee with his pants pulled down and spanked on his bare bottom. Nobody ever talked about this. Corporal punishment, usually six cuts of the cane on the hand was accepted as normal, even boasted about by the older children. It was as if there was a conspiracy of silence about something we sensed was wrong.

A turning point in my life came in the last year of primary school. David Booth was a surprise – a teacher who showed an interest in me, especially my art. He made me begin to believe in myself. At the end of the year, the whole of Grade 7 was tested, but this was a test of a different kind. It measured intelligence, and when the results came out I was put into the top class for high school. From that moment on, I gained confidence and a belief in myself, and school became more than just an escape from home.

Later Dad used to say:

“You girls can do anything you want in life. Anything a man can do, you can do as a woman.”

I felt very secure in my father’s belief in me. I had no idea that society might think of me as lacking because I was female. When I eventually did sense the injustice that was perpetrated on my sex I began to understand Dad’s stance with Aboriginal people. He didn’t believe, like many of his Australian workmates that to be white and male was supreme. He saw the injustice of the treatment of people of a different colour, race (he had no time for creed) and gender, and I think he feared for his four girls.

Circa 1960: Mary and John McCaughan with Christine, Eilean, Helen and Laurain

Away to the westward, I’m longing to be
Where the beauties of heaven’ unfold by the sea

As Dad promised, our new house in Albany did go up fast. He had several mates who lent a hand. For Mum, the small primus stove continued to be the only means of cooking. Washing was done in the open in a copper perched on a rough brick fireplace. One large galvanised basin served for rinsing and another one for starch. The washing line was strung from the backyard dunny to a post set in the ground. A wooden prop held it up in the middle because it would sag dangerously close to the ground when it was hung with the heavy dripping washing. Wringing was done by hand. On several occasions, I remember Mary’s frustrated rage as she picked washing off the ground covered in dirt. Electricity was several years away and even water was not yet connected to the block. My father fashioned a yoke from wood, which he could lift onto his shoulders. There was a hook on each end for two galvanised buckets. Each morning before he rode his bicycle to work, he would make several trips to the main road and bring enough water back for washing, cooking and baths that day.

After my father had cycled off to work in Albany,  I can only imagine how alone my mother must have felt, at this stage left with two small children, never seeing another soul unless she walked to the main road and caught the bus into town to do her shopping. She remembers people always being kind. There were very few migrants down that way and she said they stuck out like sore thumbs. One kindness was never forgotten. The owner of the town’s department store, Drew Robinson, stopped her in the store one day. He asked how they were getting along. She tried to crack hardy but admitted that cooking on one small primus burner was no fun. With that, he ordered her to go upstairs and pick herself out a stove. When she protested that she couldn’t possibly afford it, he told her he wasn’t asking her to pay for it. A Meters wood stove was duly delivered and made all the difference to our lives. Dad was able to repay Drew by doing repairs to his boat.

Every evening it would be my job to walk up to the main road and leave the billycan for the milkman. The next morning I would walk back and collect the billy full with milk. The repetition of this chore made it tedious. When it rained the puddles on the rough track that led to our house almost joined to become a river. One morning, after heavy rain, a large red clay coloured puddle had formed right across the track. This did not present a problem for me in my Wellington boots, but the intensity of the colour fascinated me and I had a sudden urge to see what the white milk would look like against this vivid orange canvas. I gave into my urge, and after feasting my eyes on the patterns as they swirled around and gradually faded, I was filled with the enormity of what I’d done. I ran home sobbing to tell mum I had spilt the milk. I do remember feeling guilty as she tried to comfort me.

One morning I was jolted out of my tedium by a vision in pink sitting on a pile of planks on a block on the main road. There sat a small girl about my age all alone. I found out later she sat waiting patiently for her father to return with more building supplies. I was so excited I grabbed the milk and ran home to tell Mum, but when I returned a few moments later she had disappeared. I was heartbroken. I hadn’t yet started school and hadn’t met another child in over a year. However, before long the Docking’s house was being built and Maxine and I became best friends.

The house that Dad built – Lurline Street

Once the main house was built, we had an inside toilet and my mother begged my father to get rid of the old dunny from the backyard.  I think to she wanted to show the street that we had gone up in the world, but much to her frustration Dad was in no hurry until suddenly one day he took a rush of blood to the head and demolished the dunny with a few swings of the axe. However, he neglected to notice it was still attached to a line full of washing. It is an understatement to say that Mary was not happy.

The rest of the land around us was gradually settled, mainly by migrants. There were Poles, Yugoslavs, Ukrainians, Macedonians, Italians and Dutch, but for some reason, we called them all Dutchies. I think I deliberately never got to know any of the other migrant children very well. I wanted desperately to be like the other Australian kids. Our Polish neighbours turned up with such things as liver sandwiches for school lunch, or after school were found sharing a bowl of cold meat jelly, reeking of garlic and exclaiming in delight over the occasional bit of meat. We either ignored the two bigger boys and their little sister or had wars with them, each side thinking up mean and sometimes dangerous tricks to play on each other.

At the end of our street, there was a short cut through a cow paddock to school. In the middle of the cow-paddock grew an enormous fig tree. During fig season we climbed up and have a feast on our way to school. One morning after we had been particularly mean to the Polish boys, Eilean, and Maxine and I were up in the fig tree. Suddenly we became aware of Sluffco and Johnny quietly working down below. To our horror, we saw that they had completely covered the tree trunk, all around, with big soft cowpats. I don’t know whether I was more horrified by our predicament or the fact that they had done this with their bare hands.

I don’t remember the fathers of the migrant children, but my mother was always kind and ready to help the women. Unlike us children, she would have understood the reason for their haunted faces. Perhaps they were grateful to be able to come to the land of opportunity, but I don’t remember seeing any joy in their faces. They would have missed their homeland as desperately as my mother, and they had the added obstacle of not being able to speak English very well. As children, we grew hearing stories, but never really understanding the lives out parents had led. Scotland was always referred to as “home.” There was a constant reference to the war. Such and such happened before the war, or during the war, or after the war. There were also references to the First World War, the flu epidemic and the Great Depression. All this was beyond our comprehension, as we grew taller, browner and stronger than our parents had ever been. We didn’t have a lot in the way of material possessions, but neither did anyone else. We took having enough food and clothes and a warm bed for granted. We grew up as little Australians and my father would often shake his head in wonder as he listened to our broad Australian accents.

My mother has always been a wonderful cook and still was until the day she died aged over ninety. She seemed to have an inbuilt knowledge of nutrition. We had a three-course meal most nights: soup, main course and sweets and she battled to give us variety. I was always ravenous and ate anything, but she got little appreciation from my more finicky sisters. Mum scorned the use of such things as polony, meat pies and other processed food as rubbish. Her own mother had made delicious meals out of offal, but when she tried to feed us tripe or liver there were long faces and untouched plates. It must have been disheartening to be creative with a tight budget only to have turned up noses. One night, as we sat down to eat, Eilean exclaimed, “Not that again,” and the next moment the plate was upturned onto her head. One Sunday, lunch roast lamb was on the menu. I was told to watch the joint while the gravy was being made. As I tucked into my plateful I spied a maggot squirming on my meat. To draw attention to it would have caused a storm and perhaps the end of the lunch. It was my fault for taking my eyes off the joint. I shut my eyes and swallowed it.

At least once a week we would go fishing. This wasn’t a sport, but an enjoyable necessity to top up the larder. On the weekends we might all go, Eilean in her pram, but most weekends were spent working on the house. My mother and father sometimes went down to the wharf, or the deep water jetty, usually on a Thursday night, so that we would have the traditional feed of fish on a Friday. Eilean and I were left asleep in our beds. Later in life, my mother shook her head in disbelief that she left us like that. There was no doubt they took a risk, but she couldn’t go fishing by herself, and after being alone with two small children all day she was desperate to get out. Perhaps parenting comes easier to some people, but I can fully understand Mum’s need. As a young Mum, I often felt the same.

The terraced hillside overlooking Middleton Beach: Our favourite picnic spot.

I remember my parents were delighted when they caught a feed of small fish that they called mackerel (I think they were mullies) and yellowtail, but the locals scorned these as baitfish, and only fished for ship-jacks or King George whiting. During the salmon season, my father would ride his bike around the south coast to the Salmon Holes. A wild beautiful beach near the mouth of the outer harbour, where salmon chased the herring into the bay and were sometimes trapped in the reef. He would often fish all night, and return in the morning with two huge salmon and perhaps some herring. I once hounded him to take me. The eleven-mile ride in the dark on the crossbar of a bicycle is not for the faint-hearted. I spent the night untangling my line or huddled in a blanket cold and bored. I never asked to go again.