The Sausage Tree (10 page)

For months the ladies of the church sewed and knitted all sorts of useful things for sale on the stalls. There was the cake stall that made one hungry just to look at it; a sweet stall complete with that old favourite, toffee apples; there was lemon twist toffee, baker's toast that is also known as honeycomb—and lots more, too many to mention except for the coconut ice that Mum turned out as if her kitchen
was a factory. There were vegetables and fruit, jams, pickles and chutneys. The lucky dip for the children was always affordable and so very popular. We children spent most of our money on lollies, fruit salad and biscuits. Dad used to say that it was no wonder we were skinny; we wore ourselves out carrying around all the food we ate! (We were so scrawny that Mum dosed us with Doctor Williams Pink Pills for Pale People.) The only fruit salad we ever tasted was covered with very thick dairy farm cream which was poured over the top. It cost sixpence a bowl and tasted wonderful.

Then there was the afternoon tea room where you could get a plate with two sandwiches, a cake, and half a scone and a cup of tea. There was always someone having afternoon tea and the men and women could be assured of a good gossipy chat.

The hall where all this went on was nearly opposite our house and we were always involved in the preparations for the fair and the concert that followed at night.

On the day before the fair we would be right in the thick of the activities, helping in the general confusion created by men, women, children, trestle tables and crepe paper. We needed long, thin pliable pieces of timber to make archways over the front of the stalls that the men erected, so off to the mill we'd go to get just what was needed. The men hammered the slats in position and then we set to the serious business of decorating the stalls with rainbow colours of crepe paper and balloons. We vied with each other to see who could make the prettiest stall and we must have been a mixed blessing to the adults. All the activity began after school and had to be finished by 5.30 so that everyone could go home and have tea before the concert participants went back to the hall for a final rehearsal.

When school started in the new year we began practising with Mrs Bardenhagen for the concert. She chose the items and then matched the children to them, and as she was well
aware of their abilities, this wasn't too hard a job. There was group singing, solos, action songs with colourful costumes that mothers somehow found the time to make, recitations and some really witty skits the adults wrote and acted. These were usually about people around town who always laughed at the way they were portrayed.

One year when Peter was about eight years old Mum chose Banjo Patterson's poem titled “Frying Pan's Theology” for him to recite at the concert. For weeks Mum coached Peter until she was satisfied that he knew it all and could recite it just how she thought it should be. We were all so proud of Peter that night. He presented a wonderful performance that brought the house down.

On concert night the hall and supper room had to be cleared. All those stalls we took so long to decorate were dismantled in about fifteen minutes and taken outside and long seats brought inside and arranged in rows in the hall. The afternoon tea room was used as the dressing room and divided into areas by the simple method of draping sheets over ropes that were strung across the room.

The concert was always a sell-out with some people travelling quite a long way for an evening's entertainment. Tickets were sold around the town by the two eldest children in each family. The one who sold the most tickets would get a small prize and as sales were rather limited one had to be very fast starting and lucky in whom one approached.

When the twins were twelve it was their turn in our family to sell the tickets and Rosalie kept her tickets and money in an old tobacco tin for safekeeping. One day after school she only had two tickets left and didn't want anyone to know she had nearly finished selling her twelve. Before going inside for her tea she hid the tin and by the next day had forgotten where it was. Dad and Mum were quite convinced she had stolen the money and spent it at the shop. Poor
Rosalie got the hiding of her life over that but still she couldn't remember where she'd hidden the tin. Seven years later when Dad was renovating the house after buying it, he found a very rusty tobacco tin on part of the old foundation under the house. Inside there were the tickets and the money. Even though so many years had passed Dad and Mum were very upset and felt guilty that Rosalie had been so severely punished for a crime she had not committed. The money was taken to Mrs Bardenhagen who put it into the Sunday school funds. Rosalie is still hiding things and not finding them.

One year, just before the concert was to begin, because one of us children had done something that Mum deemed as bad behaviour, the four older girls were told that they weren't going. On many occasions we were threatened with a similar fate, but this time she meant it. Mrs Bardenhagen talked to Mum and pointed out how disastrous it would be, especially for the other children in the concert, if we didn't take our places in the program. At the last minute Mum relented and we were allowed to go, but it wasn't a happy night.

11

Near the big shed was a large cage that housed four budgies and it was the twins' responsibility to care for them. They became quite distressed as one by one the birds died, so decided that the budgies should have a decent burial. The twins set about making the funeral arrangements. After gathering small slithers of wood from the woodheap they tacked them together and made a tiny box and lined it with cloth from the ragbag. The deceased was placed in the coffin and the lid tied on with string; hammering in tacks would make a noise and seemed irreverent. Friends were invited to the funeral and the service was held at the back of the house behind the kitchen. The birds were farewelled with the reverence befitting the dead as we all sang two of our Sunday school hymns, “Jesus Bids us Shine” and “Jesus Loves Me”, and read from the Bible.

Being very caring and considerate, the twins buried the budgies near the kitchen chimney so they wouldn't get
cold. Little crosses were made to mark the spot as it was feared the budgies might be dug up when preparations for another funeral were being made. Flower buds placed on the grave completed the service and then, making the best of the company of the children who had attended the funeral service, it was off to play, the dead budgies soon forgotten.

Later on we had a yellow canary that Mrs Brooks gave us. One day it landed in her garden and when she picked it up she saw that it had no eyes. She looked after it for ten days, then realising that it wasn't going to die, she gave it to us. Dickie had the most beautiful whistle and, as he was in a cage outside our bedroom window, we usually heard his trilling song quite early each morning. Being blind was no hindrance to Dickie; he lived a long and happy life and was still singing his beautiful songs long after we had left home.

Sometimes we played hopscotch, but woe betide us if we didn't change into old shoes first. Too many times we'd felt the agony of Dad's doubled-up razor strop on our backsides so we'd search through the old black cupboard for an old pair of shoes that would fit us. We'd get charcoal from the dining room fireplace and draw the lines and circles on the road. There were very few cars on our road, the main traffic being about three loads of logs a day going to the mill. We weren't allowed to play on the road, but we had plenty of warning when the trucks were coming as they were very noisy and we had time to get off the road.

Dad was now driving a log truck and when we knew that his truck was the one coming, we wouldn't be anywhere near the road by the time he came around the corner. Like good little children we would be standing inside the fence, a picture of innocence, waving to Dad as he drove by. Sometimes we forgot to rub out the charcoal lines and we'd be in trouble any way because Dad would walk over them on
his way home from work. Other times we were very lucky and he didn't notice them at all.

We would follow him inside hoping he'd left some jam sandwiches or cold black tea that he took in a glass cordial bottle, and trying to create a diversion, we'd offer to unpack his bag. Why we were so keen to eat dry jams and wiches and drink cold black tea is still a mystery. It couldn't have been because we were hungry because we always had plenty of food to eat.

One day when we opened the lunch bag we saw a strange item in there. Dad had found what he called “blackfellow's bread” in the bush. We don't know how he knew about it as it was not eaten as general bushmen's food. The bread had a brown-black outer crust and the inside looked like an off-white sponge cake. The bread is a fungus and is usually found at the base of a rotting tree. We are not sure what species of tree he found the bread under, but we thoroughly enjoyed eating every scrap.

12

Mum was a very good cook and Dad's garden kept us supplied with lots of fresh vegetables. He grew everything we needed in our large back garden. The first of the spring vegetables to be ready were the broad beans, but before they were fully grown and to make a change from cabbage, Mum picked the tops out of the stalks and boiled them up for greens. The last pickings of beans Mum cooked in a delicious curry sauce. When we had a surplus of grown beans we had to pick them, pack them in bags and send them into town to the vegetable market. How we came to hate that garden.

For extra income Dad planted two large beds with carrots and parsnips, which when grown were sold to the vegetable market in Launceston. When Dad deemed the time to be right and the seedlings were barely out of the ground, we had to crawl along the long rows and “thin them out” to make more space for the ones left to grow. Unfortunately
that wasn't the end of it as until the vegetables were ready to pull, we had to keep the rows free of weeds.

The worst part of the saga was when the vegetables were ready for market. At least once a week, before we went to school, we pulled the carrots and Mum dug the parnsips, and then we washed them under the cold water tap until they were clean. When they were dry enough we carefully packed them into sack bags, and using a bagging needle and twine, sewed the tops together and placed them outside the gate ready to be picked up by the bus driver who delivered them to the market. We did this in the winter time and our hands were red and blue with the cold by the time we had finished. The last thing that we did was to hang a red flag (material tied onto a stick) on the gate post as this was the signal for the bus to stop.

Dad's excellence as a gardener was widely known and during the summer people came from miles around to purchase his lettuces which he sold for sixpence each (5 cents). Dad would go into the garden patch early in the morning, select the lettuces that were ready to cut and cover them with a damp sugar bag to keep them from going soft in the sun.

When Dad planted the vegetable seeds in his garden we would set about building a scarecrow to frighten the birds away when the little seedlings came through the ground. We would try really hard to make sure our scarecrow was as lifelike as possible but hardly ever succeeded. We dressed our masterpiece in clothes from the ragbag and proudly stood her in the garden. It is debatable whether or not she served her purpose but while we were busy creating our scarecrow we weren't getting into mischief.

Dad was a good provider and worked hard for his large family. When he was camping away on the mountain he spent many hours making snares to catch possums and walked many miles to set them, as well as traps to catch
rabbits. Sometimes when the weather was too wet the sawmill closed for a while, which meant no work, no pay so the meat from the game was a 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 the instructions to Dad who had no trouble following the recipe. We children used to help with the final buff by using the polishing pads Mum made from old pieces of rag. The sideboard which was used to hold Mum's best dinner set, sewing materials and patterns is now one of Valda's most prized possessions. Dad made a big table for the dining room that seated all of us in comfort, and it was also French polished to a high gloss. Mum and Dad later gave the old table to a large refugee family who had arrived in Lilydale after escaping from Russia with only the bare necessities of clothing.

One particular piece of furniture we remember very well was a beautiful kitchen cabinet with pretty leadlight upper cupboard doors which had to be sent away on the train. We kids went over to Mr Harry Brooks who had a handcart that we could use. This was a low cart with iron bound wheels and a handle across the front so that it could be easily wheeled by one man or three or four children. Dad and Geoff loaded the cabinet onto the cart, then we very proudly wheeled it to the train station and waited for the train to come so that we could tell Dad that it had really gone and that we hadn't broken it on the way. Dad made Mum another cupboard to use as a pantry and able to store the many bottles of jam and relish that she made.

When Dad was using his plane on the timber, long curling shavings fell to the floor. Some of them were used as kindling but we girls saw a great possibility in them. They made the most wonderful curls when attached to our hair with bobby pins and were an important item in our dressing-up games. Mum always cut our hair and in her attempts to make both sides even, we ended up with very short hair,
so we thought we looked beautiful with our long goldy-coloured curls hanging all the way down to our shoulders.

Dad was a very hard-working man with many hidden talents; he could even knit. When the twins arrived there were five children to knit for and Mum was always racing against time to make enough garments, both knitted and sewed on the sewing machine, so she taught Dad to knit. He became very adept and could follow almost any complicated pattern. The only thing he couldn't do was fix a pattern when he made a mistake, but Mum was always able to help him out. Dad was very shy about his unusual ability and if anyone called for a visit while he was knitting he quickly pushed it under a cushion.

When the twins started their Home Arts lessons at school they had to knit a baby's singlet. Barbara somehow fell behind with hers and Dad decided to give her some help, so one evening while she was busy washing up, he knitted a few lines of the little pink singlet. He did it very well, except that through working with green timber for so many years the sap stains from his hands left an inch of dirty work. Barbara's Home Arts teacher wasn't impressed and didn't believe her truthful story about how the stain got there.

Another of Dad's hidden talents came to light when one day an old family friend from Nabowla came to visit and brought with him a button accordion. He was entertaining us with his wonderful music when Dad asked if he could have a turn. We were all really surprised that he could play a tune. Although he made a few mistakes there was no doubt that he was playing “Home Sweet Home”. None of us children had previously seen an accordion, but apparently Dad had owned one many years before and it was one of the casualties of the house fire at Noojee.

Although there was plenty of work the hours were long and arduous, the wages were low and the average working man and his family suffered many hardships during the 1930s and 1940s. Economising was an everyday way of life that left no room for any little luxuries of any kind. In our house we never ever had bought biscuits or cakes; if Mum didn't make it, we didn't have it. The same applied to nearly all our clothes.

Mum always bought the plain flour in 25lb (12kg) calico bags which when emptied were carefully unstitched, washed and then made into panties for us girls. The strong thick cotton from the bags was carefully saved and used to mend our white cotton socks. Nothing was ever wasted; Mum could always find a use for everything. It's no wonder we are a family of hoarders who find it very hard to throw away even the most useless things imaginable that might come in handy “one day”.

Sugar was bought sixty pounds at a time in fine jute bags which when empty, were opened out and made into aprons for Mum and the girls to wear when washing the clothes and scrubbing the verandahs. Hankies were made from old sheets that could not be mended any more, and were often unhemmed. Nothing was ever wasted and hand-me-down clothes were thankfully received and remodelled for another child to wear.

One year finely striped mattress ticking (covering) was selling very cheaply at the general store, so Mum bought some and made a dress for Joan to wear to school. Joan hated that dress and no amount of hard wear made any difference to it; it was indestructible and seemed to last forever. When it was washed it was so stiff it was almost impossible to wring the water from it and was so heavy that only Mum could hang it on the line.

Both Joan and Valda were the skipping champions at school. Every year we were all allowed to go to the shop and
buy enough rope for each of us to make into a skipping rope. A lot of time was spent at home as well as school skipping for as long as we could without missing a step, and as we skipped we chanted “Mrs Mason broke her basin into little pieces, one piece, two pieces, etc.” until we reached double numbers when we just counted as we skipped. Another chant went “My mother said I never should—play with the gypsies in the wood. If I did she would say—naughty girl to disobey” and then the counting would begin.

All this skipping was very healthy exercise and kept us fit but it was disastrous on our shoes. We always wore holes in the soles long before the shoes were too small for us. When we could feel the ground through the hole we traced around our shoes on cardboard from the Weet-Bix packet, and put that inside the shoe and hoped it would last until the weekend when Dad would have time to mend them. Mum bought leather half soles and the tacks from the general store. Dad had a shoe last to put the shoes on while he mended them and we were once again well shod skippers.

Behind the vegetable garden, near the back fence, Dad built the chook house. The dozen or so hens kept us supplied with fresh eggs which were mostly used for cooking Dad's daily breakfast and our Sunday breakfasts. Every Saturday afternoon Mum spent in the kitchen cooking cakes and biscuits for Dad's lunches the following week. Amongst the goodies she cooked was a big fruit cake and a big sponge cake. Every Sunday afternoon one of us children would eagerly whip thick cream, direct from the farmer's dairy, and spread it between the two layers of the sponge cake and place it carefully on the special cake stand. After careful inspection the cake was then gently pressed down with one hand until the cream oozed out from between the layers of the cake. Then because it looked untidy a finger
was wiped around the cake to “tidy it up”. This was, of course, the real reason why we looked forward to our turn to whip the cream! At teatime the cake adorned the centre of the table and was always left till last before Mum ceremoniously cut it into twelve pieces. We seven children thought we were kings and queens having such a large piece of cream cake to finish off our tea. Dad had two pieces for his tea and the last two were kept to be put in his Monday morning's lunch.