The Sausage Tree (7 page)

Peter, circa 1949.

The twins pole-jumping off the wood heap.

A favourite summer pastime was making mud pies. This wasn't just mixing dirt and water together, but the real thing. It was a mud pie extravaganza
with Mum's flower
garden being neatly decimated for decorations. We would mix the mud to just the right consistency using a flat board as a base to work on. Next, using more boards (from the wood heap, of course) as plates, we shaped that mud into all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes, all smoothed to perfection with our hands and placed into the sun until they were “cooked”. While this was happening we raided Mum's garden for small flowers to use as decorations. We made exotic patterns on the tops of our cakes with petals from roses, daisies, wallflowers, foxgloves and delphiniums. When the cakes were finished we would troop into the house and ask Mum which one she thought was the prettiest and the best. She was very diplomatic and always said that “as they were all very nice it was too hard to choose”. Our cake-making business would quite easily occupy us for most of the day.

Another outside game we played was called “Film Stars”. We'd spend endless hours searching through Mum's magazines hoping to find the name of some insignificant star. We each had a little notebook to write the names in and before game time would try to memorise as many as we could. We would all stand in a line and then one person was chosen to stand in front of us and quote the initials of a star. Everyone else would try to guess who it was without any clues being given. If we guessed who it was, the person in the front had to be ready to run to the fence without being caught. It was a memory-testing game so we weren't allowed to look in our books during the game. The lesser known stars' names were handy to know because that way we stayed out the front longer.

Towards the end of summer was the time for picking blackberries. We walked miles carrying our billies and a long thick plank that we had scrounged from the mill. We leaned the plank against the black berry bushes so that every last luscious berry could be reached. It's a wonder we didn't fall into the prickly bushes as sometimes we were quite some distance from the ground. Maybe through all our escapades our guardian angels were working overtime. Local residents must have thought that we were as thick as the plank we carried when they saw the tribe of kids marching across the paddocks, but our efforts were rewarded by eating the delicious black berry pies, tarts and jam that Mum made.

8

As summer faded into autumn our thoughts turned to gathering mushrooms. Our family seemed to have a built-in radar system that told us when to go mushrooming. We never ever went too early. Before the days of the widespread heavy use of artificial fertilisers all the paddocks around where we lived grew the most delicious mushrooms we have ever tasted. When Dad was away Geoff would borrow the alarm clock and set it for 4.30a.m. and unless we were unlucky enough to be caught, we were already dressed when he woke us up having gone to bed the night before in our clothes, then without anything at all to eat we were ready to set off. The night before we would set out our special tins and small knives so as not to waste one precious minute getting away. We were very particular about the knives. We believed and strictly adhered to the story that if the mushrooms were pulled instead of being cut, there would be none the next year so we were taking no chances.

We walked miles over paddocks wet with heavy dew and too far away was never too far when searching for “mushies”. Those early morning walks were magic with spider-webs damp with dew, the fine gossamer threads hung between the wires of the fences shining like many jewels in the rays of the rising sun and the birds singing their dawn chorus. This was something we only heard at this time of the year because mostly we hated getting out of bed.

Everyone got excited when a fairy ring was found. What luck! We believed them to be something very special. We imagined that was where the fairies had danced in the moonlight the night before and the magic dust from their tiny toes had created the perfect circle of button mushrooms. The lucky finder was entitled to stand in the middle and make a wish, which even now must not be told or we'll have bad luck. The amount of mushrooms gathered was irrelevant, it was the time that mattered.

The sawmill blew its starting work. whistle at 7.30 and could be heard all over the district. When we heard it we knew it was time to go home as fast as we could as Mum would have the stove alight and the frying pan ready for the mushies. As soon as we had peeled them and they were starting to cook we got ready for school and after each one had eaten a fair share it was off to school, youngest first because they had the smallest legs. It was just as well that school went in at 9.30 because we needed every second there was so that we would not be late.

The cooler weather saw the end to many of our activities as we switched to other well tried games which we could play in the shed where, besides Dad's tools, timber and lots of other junk, was a box of old clothes. Some of them were dresses, coats, hats and shoes that Mum had brought with
her when we moved from Victoria. We would all delve into the big box hoping to grab the very best items before someone else found them. We dressed in the clothes and prepared everything we needed to play shops. For some weeks before, we would rescue all the cartons and packets from the kitchen before they could be burnt in the stove. We would scavenge on the rubbish heap looking for tins with labels and any other saleable items until we had a large variety of goods to sell.

We also gathered leaves from the “sausage tree” in the front garden. Our sausage tree was a laurel tree and it had wide shiny leaves and we reckoned the leaves looked like fat sausages so to us a laurel tree was, and will forever be, a sausage tree. Our green sausages were arranged on pieces of broken plates (which along with other items had come from the rubbish heap) and then placed very carefully on the plank that we had set across a stack of wood in the corner of the shed.

At last it was time to open our shop and the designated shopkeeper would stand at the shed door and callout “Come and buy, come and buy”. The customers, dressed in their rag-bag finery, would come from all directions of the yard, wobbling precariously in high heeled shoes, to purchase the groceries from the wide range on the shelf. The cost of all the items would be added up very correctly and the money changed hands.

In preparation for our shop, money had been made in the evenings by running a pencil over paper under which were real coins. We cut out and pasted the tracings onto cardboard and cut that out so that we'd have plenty of cash. We also made paper money and put our own fancy writing on the notes. All the money was shared equally and we were quite wealthy. As we paid for our purchases the shopkeeper said “Ding”, imitating the bell on the cash register at the corner store, as she opened her imaginary till. We all took
turns at being the shopkeeper and we often had arguments about the prices we had to pay. They were changed as often as the shopkeeper after all it was her shop and her groceries so she could please herself what she charged.

We played house and, depending on the weather, this was either in the shed or we would set out our “toys” in the yard. We used bits and pieces of crockery we found on the rubbish heap behind the dunny. Everything was neatly set on our table which in reality was a box. Different shaped sticks from the woodheap were used as cutlery. The garden, the yard and surrounding paddocks provided a never ending supply of “food”. Dry dock heads were used for tea, plants, weeds and flowers were all used as food, and then there were the “sausages” from the sausage tree. Our mud pies were put to use and one of them usually adorned the centre of the table which was draped with an old curtain. We always fried the “sausages” on our non-burning stove erected on the woodheap. Before playing house we would once again be dressed in the clothes from the ragbag and at times we combined playing “shops” with “setting up house”. The laurel tree which was also a good place to hide in, must have played a big part in our lives because the entire family always refers to it as “the sausage tree”.

If we promised not to take him out of the yard and onto the road, Peter would let us dress him in girls clothes and hat and wheel him around the yard in the old twin pram. One day after pushing him around the house and the yard for a while we decided that was too boring so we went onto the road, running as fast as possible so that he couldn't jump out of the pram. We looked up and there was an elderly lady who lived further up the road. She stopped us to see who we had in the pram, bent over and said “What a beautiful little girl” she was and stated that she had never seen such beautiful brown eyes before and asked us who she was. Quick as a flash one of us told her that it was our
cousin Betty who had come to stay. We didn't have a cousin Betty but we felt sure that if we did she would have been very flattered over the praise of her beauty. However, Peter wasn't at all impressed and that was the end of that pastime; he flatly refused to get into the pram after that.

As winter followed autumn our outdoor activities slackened and finally ended as the rain and the cold drove us indoors. Our house was not very big and seven children inside around one fire was rather crowded and sometimes a bit of a nightmare. However, Mum was very inventive and we can see now how we came to have such active imaginations and the initiative to amuse ourselves. There was nowhere else to go and no-one else to play with because no-one ever wanted other children besides their own, cooped up inside their house.

Mum was a wizard with a piece of newspaper and a pair of scissors. She showed us how to fold and cut the paper to make a chain of men joined together by their hands. The longer the chain of little men we could cut out, the more puffed up with pride we were. We could also cut paper into patterns that looked like paper doilies. There was only one rule; we were never allowed to touch Mum's sewing scissors.

Another game that Mum taught us to play was for us to find as many Christian names, animals, trees or flowers that started with the letter A, working our way through to Z. The purpose of this game was to find the longest name possible as each letter was counted when we had all finished at the end of the time limit set by Mum. This game had many more variations and was an ongoing favourite as we vied with each other to show how smart we were. We played a lot of noughts-and-crosses (today's tic tac toe) and dots-and-dashes.

Sometimes we would draw a head on a piece of paper and then fold it over and pass it on to the next one until a figure was complete right down to the feet. Sometimes people parts were joined to birds or animal parts. We concocted some weird and wonderful beings. Board games were definitely out because we argued like you'd never believe.

Banishment to a cold bedroom to cool down soon saw us back in the warm dining room subdued and ready for another game, even if it was only “snap” with the cards. Then of course there were always newspapers to be cut into squares and threaded on string ready for use in the dunny.

Mum always gave us plenty of encouragement to read and we can be forever grateful to her. Although money was very scarce we had “Boofhead” comics and “Humour” books which were full of jokes and riddles. We were member sofa club that was run in one of the women's magazines. We also had our books that we collected as prizes at Sunday School. We were avid readers and we gradually and systematically worked our way through the books in the school library.

As the dark cold days of winter warmed and turned into spring our thoughts turned towards kite flying. The strong gusty winds that blew on fine spring days had us itching for this outdoor exercise. No doubt about it, Mum would have felt the same way as she always helped us make our kites and they always flew high in the sky.

Small slithers of wood were made and cut into the exact size as approved by Mum, one small crosspiece and one large one made the frame. These were firmly joined in the middle with a fine tack and finished with a crisscross of string. More string was fitted tautly around the four points
of the frame, all under close supervision by Mum. Then came the crucial part. Thin brown paper was pasted firmly to the frame, the paper being folded over the outside string. As every parcel of meat and drapery was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, we always had a good supply of both. The paper was carefully folded and put away in a top cupboard and the string rolled and tied in a bow and stored in the “string tin”. A lot of string was wound in a special way around a stick of wood that fitted easily into our hands and the exposed end of string was attached to a central piece of string on the back of the kite. Lastly a long tail made of paper tied onto string was attached to the bottom of the kite. Now we were ready to go and fly our kites.

It was Mum who made the paste, supervised five kites being made and then sent us off into the paddock behind the house to fly our kites high in the sky. She must have been glad to see us off and away from the house. It was very disappointing to spend hours making our kites only to find that the wind had dropped, but when the gusts came the kites danced high in the sky, ducking and diving and nearly pulling our arms off as we guided them clear of other kites. We never had a failure and all flew high and wide.

In later years, no matter how hard we tried and used the same style, not one of us could make for our own children a kite that would fly like the ones Mum helped us to make.