Sawdust (3 page)

On another occasion, while they were still staying with us, little Grace did something really naughty, something apparently so naughty that it made her mother unstoppably livid, and she began to repeatedly slap her little girl’s legs.

‘Don’t you dare touch that child!’ Dad strode towards the action and put an end to the lathering, his head hovering like the world’s tallest policeman. He looked at Lyn as though asking how anyone in the world could treat a child like that. ‘I never want to see that in my house again,’ he ranted.

But I remember mostly from those days the smell of burning dung and mosquito coils; it was always so hot and the soil so dry and dusty, and of a night the mosquitoes would have a field day on our white skins and pink blood.

While we children always shared a room, Mum and Dad slept in their own bedroom. They had a large white net like an ornate regal canopy hanging over their double bed. From a distance they looked like they were very important, like a king and queen.

From that bed would come us, their princes and princesses. It was sacred ground. And yet for Dad... for Dad maybe that bed and its hallowed nature didn’t make any difference. Time – and expediency – would be the judge of that.

The first thing I can recall remembering in my life was my younger brother Sam coming home.
I know it could be by association of stories of that time, but I can see it so clearly in my head. I was two years and four months old and he was barely a couple of days. I was so excited I thought it was like a new toy or better still a new puppy had been brought home. And it was all for me.

Way back then it was common for family and extended family to have exactly the same first name. You would think we’d get confused but for some strange reason we didn’t and knew exactly who was who. Anyway, the point of mentioning this is that Dad’s second oldest cousin, Glad, not to be confused with Dad’s Mum, Glad, was in our living room standing in her black chunky shoes with their hard square heels.

She was rocking our new little brother backwards and forwards with such vigour that a diminutive two year-old without shoes on like me, eager as a bandicoot to see as much as I could of my adorable little brother, had no chance but to be swallowed under her feet, so to speak. Inevitably, Cousin Glad rocked heartily backwards at one point and one of her big chunky shoes crunched straight down into my teeny, soap-sized foot.

‘Ooowwww!’ I cried. And then cried some more.

It was so sore I thought my whole foot had been broken. But no one seemed to hear. And that was my first memory of my little brother Sam. It was, in a way, my first memory of all things. Something of a bewilderment, something of a shock, something of a painful scream. Things I could not quite pin together. Things no one would really hear.

Dad should have been “snipped and tucked”, as they say, after Sam because four kids was more than our household could bear. But he refused, believing it was unmanly to do so, and Mum was promptly put on the Pill which she then blamed for a weight gain that was already well and truly beginning to entrench itself. I think she resented Dad ever after that.

Many years later, for some reason he did eventually agree to have it done, but that only brought more arguments to the fore, seeing as poor Mum had to have a hysterectomy not long after the deed was done on him. I remember them fighting over the fact that he believed she had tricked him into getting the despicable “unmanly cut”, which was now unnecessary. All I can say is thank God he had the operation when he did.

It may seem strange, but even from the age of two and a half, I had something maternal in me. I always wanted to cuddle and hold little babies; I loved their sweet baby smell and their blubbery softness. It was like warm potato chips to my flesh. And not even Cousin Glad’s big chunky shoe on my toe was enough to put me off.

It was the same with Nana’s little girl. Yes, Mum’s Mum had a little girl, my Auntie Beatrice, who was younger than me! All I ever wanted to do was pick the chubby, little brown-eyed ball of cuteness up. I remember clearly one day leaning over the cot, barely old enough to be walking myself. Somehow I had managed to get the baby in my arms and was trying to figure a way to get her over the sides of the cot.

Nana walked in at that moment and instead of helping me out, as I believed she definitely would, once again my dreams were dashed, this time by a loud Nana voice, shrieking: ‘No, no! Silly girl! You just put that child down, now!’

Shocked, I immediately dropped the baby, of course as gently as a small girl could. Nana had one of those looks on her face like it should be the last thing on my mind, wanting to pick up her baby, but the incident never in any way put me off the idea of one day having my own little child to pick up and cuddle.

Dad never seemed to be around much at those times. He was a hard worker, the bills had to be paid and the timber cutting had to be done. Mum was mostly around in the house, telling us kids to keep out of her way as she had so much to do.

But I do remember on occasions her singing around the house, so there were pockets of happiness from her, and love. But the reality was it was never long lasting and it wasn’t long after each child was born that she would be back on the tractor behind Dad, doing the snigging.

It was soon after Sam’s birth that we also moved to the other side of the highway, which was the left-hand side. It was a slightly bigger house and Dad began to grow crops as well, something that would become a much bigger thing once we moved to the big property on Perenjora Dam Road.

As soon as we were old enough, and that wasn’t very old at all, we were all put to helping with jobs and chores around the house. Cleaning floors, feeding the chooks, peeling potatoes, fetching and chopping wood, the older ones helping to look after the younger ones – which was in descending order, Jim looking after me as far as he could, me looking after my little sister Marge as far as I could, and all of us looking after little Sam.

But there were occasions when we obviously didn’t do such a good job of looking after Sam. Such as the time when Sam was about two and he decided, come hell or high water, he was going to chop firewood by himself. The only problem was that he was using an adult Tommy axe and it wasn’t long before instead of hitting the chunk of wood he was aiming at on the chopping block, he hit his big toe and split the thing right through the middle. Blood pumped and squirted everywhere, something that seemed to be a recurring theme in those days.

Mum thought he’d hacked his toe clean off. She was yelling and screaming, and we kids were yelping and crying even louder than she was. Sam, not to be outdone, and I guess the one feeling the pain, screeched the loudest of anyone.

Eventually Mum must have calmed down a little, because we were all thrown in the car, Mum with the zip of her green pleated dress only half done up, showing her Bombay bloomers and faded torn bra for all the world to see, and off we sped to the hospital in Gladstone.

We were rushed into emergency and, after a flurry of white activity around Sam, the toe was saved. Sam, to this day, still has a dodgy looking big toenail, which gives the grotesque appearance of his nearly succeeding in removing the unsightly digit.

Since we kids were born pretty much within five years of one another, it wasn’t long before we were all basically looking after ourselves. There seemed to be no end to the amount of help that was needed around the house. We were busy from almost the second we woke up until the minute we went to bed at night.

By the time we got to school each day we were already pretty well exhausted. Rather than schoolwork, we were ready for sleep. As a young girl, I’d also be responsible for milking our lone cow, Totty. Because of the early hour I had to get up in the mornings, it didn’t exactly help me stay awake at school either.

Often on weekends or in the days we were not at school, while Mum and Dad worked in the paddock, we were left somewhere outside the house to fend for ourselves. Just sort of left there, without toys, without games, without anything to stimulate us. So, instead, we created our own games and got up to all sorts of mischief.

One of our main games, something that would become a big thing in my life later on, was sitting inside an old car or truck wreck and pretending we were driving. I just
loooved
to drive, and in fact, to be useful around the property, Dad taught us all to drive by the time we were twelve or thirteen. There was nothing I would not do to get a chance to drive.

But in the very early years, one of the things I remember doing while Mum and Dad toiled away, was building a “cubby” with my older brother Jim. It was really quite an innovative job we performed, a cubby-house built out of new growth saplings and tree branches, and it looked like a real Aboriginal humpy.

There was only one problem: we built the cubby on the banks of a creek that ran through our property, and rather than innovative, a piece of clever if not ingenious handiwork, Dad saw it from another perspective.

We should have known,
he lectured, once our cubby had been found out, how dangerous it was to play – let alone build – a cubby on the banks of a creek. A creek that, at times, with heavy rains, swelled to overflowing and flooded the area around it. We could have drowned.

So rather than praise, Dad dished out a hiding for that. On this occasion it was across our backsides and upper legs with a finger-thick ironing cord he often used for the purpose.

But it was better than getting a belting with another weapon he used on us, known as a switchy-stick, a ripe twig cut from a tree that felt like a cat-o-nine tails must have felt to the early convicts. Both instruments of punishment hurt, but a switchy-stick
really
hurt.

Both Dad and Mum were strict, and, in those days, with lots of kids around and no help, control and discipline had to be maintained. I suppose, if nothing else, lacking the know-how, it was practical.

On another occasion, near our old pile of rusted out cars and things, there was this really old wooden caravan that had been there forever. It stunk of dusty cobwebs and mould, and animals like possums and snakes and bats lived in it by night. There was an old electric stove inside, and my brother Jim and I decided to use it – to make glue. We were going to use a recipe we had learned about at school, which was basically heating flour and water and stirring them together.

The first thing we did was carry the heavy stove out of the caravan. Then we put together a series of power leads from Dad’s work shed, which was about fifteen metres away. Once the old stove was connected, with plenty of Mum’s precious flour, which we had snuck out from the kitchen, we set about boiling our mixture on the stove, in a big rusty pot.

As the potion bubbled and steamed we stirred it with an old plank and stuck our fingers in to feel if the glue was sticky enough. Our hands went red and burnt from the heat, but the pain aside, we thought we were doing a great job.

Just when we thought we were about done and had achieved the beginnings of our new glue factory, Dad arrived. Yet again, while we thought our idea was quite ingenious – and at least did not involve the horrendous cruelty of making glue out of horses hooves which he himself often told us glue was really made of – he had a completely different way of looking at it.

Convinced we were going to set the property alight – something that was, I suppose, quite easy to do in the tinder, dry conditions – and seeing the amount of Mum’s flour we had used, he yelled at the top of his voice: ‘What the fuck d’ya think you’re doin, you little bastards?’ He often called us that – ‘you little bastards’. And then ranting some more, he yelled to Jim, as the eldest: ‘Come here, you little boofhead!’

He gave Jim yet another heavy flogging with the ironing cord. I got it next, but not quite as hard. Years later, retelling the story, he did admit that he always thought it really was quite a clever idea – our glue-making. But at the time that was the end of our “glue business”.

The caravan, yes that old wooden caravan, would remain around for other things...

I remember once also, I was just about ten, and with my younger sister Marge and the two Grove kids from next door, we decided to try cigarettes. Since Mum only had the occasional sneak smoke because Dad was dead against smoking, we had to wait for the appropriate time to steal a couple of butts from her new stash of Alpine Menthols which she hid behind the breadbin in the kitchen.

Dad thought smoking was the filthiest, most disgusting thing anyone could ever do, and in retrospect I think Mum smoked mainly to try and prove a single point – that she had some control over her own life. Strangely enough, he never seemed to mind if any of his mates made a “rollie” or a “durrie”, as self-rolled cigarettes were known in the day.

Interestingly, too, Grandad and Nana, Mum’s Dad and Mum, were chain-smokers. Nana always, even with a baby clasped in her arms, would have a fag dangling from her lips. In her case, a beer in the hand was often the case too. But there was not much Dad could do about that.

Anyway, me, Marge and the two Grove children stole a couple of cigarettes from Mum’s stash. We hid ourselves outside the house in a small corrugated iron water tank that was all rusted out with holes in it.

Immediately we lit up and began to puff away. Even though the smoke burned our throats like thick, hot charcoal, the menthol gave a cooling and somewhat weirdly pleasant sensation as we drew in and swallowed down.

Outside the drum we suddenly heard a knocking. We caught a massive fright, only to find it was just Sam. We hadn’t allowed him to be with us because he was far too young in our opinion to be smoking. The oldest amongst us was the Grove boy, who was about ten. But there was another thing about Sam and smoking: it was well known that our little five year-old brother had terrible asthma.

Seeing what we were doing, and despite the fact that we were spluttering and coughing away like sizzling, over-heated pork chops, Sam stood defiantly outside the water tank and begged to be let in.

Repeatedly, I yelled at him, ‘No, no, you’ll get sick! Get the hell outta here, Sam. Leave us alone!’

Obstinate as hell, he cried back, ‘I’ll dob on yers. I’ll dob on yers t’ Mum an’ Dad if ya don’ let me in!’

I could just see that irresistible frown on his little round face. And so with no choice, and rather than face the ironing cord or the switchy-stick again, we gave in.

Sam hauled himself into the tank, and sitting right in the middle of us, in the middle of the little Indian smoke-pyre we had already created, he took a few puffs on one of Mum’s Alpine Menthols.

It was only moments and the little bugger’s eyes began to water profusely and his throat to close and choke. We were convinced he was going to die. Coughing and scared for his own life, he climbed out of the tank as quickly – and awkwardly – as a baby scrub turkey and we all held our breath and waited.

Next thing there was an enormous racket against the tank that we thought was a storm rolling in from the sky above us. Or World War Three. We all looked up, but the noise continued to give off a sound like the heavens were caving in and our eardrums would burst.

The banging was eventually followed by a deep voice: ‘What the bloody hell do you kids think you’re doing in there? Get the bloody hell out, this minute! And you, Debbie, you should know damned better!’