Mother of Ten (4 page)

“Yeah,
old Bluey thought we had a ghost in the bush,” someone called out. Someone else
started to sing a line from the song.

And
his ghost may be heard, as you camp by the billabong.

The
others joined in for the last line.

You’ll
come a waltzing Matilda with me.

“Scared
the daylights out of Bluey, did Matilda.”

“He
was all for packin’ up camp and goin’ back to town.”

“Too
right, I was,” said Bluey. “I wasn’t sleepin’ out here with some ghost roamin’
around in the bush.”

Everyone
laughed. Bluey grinned across at me and winked.

“How
did you know it was Matilda?” I asked.

“Well,”
said Bluey, taking a long gulp of his tea. “She started singing other sounds,
like the wood chopping we just heard and other birds’ songs. When she mixed
those up with
Waltzing Matilda
, we figured out it was a lyrebird. That’s
when we gave her the name Matilda. See?”

I
nodded.

These
days, many people believe that if you hear a lyrebird expertly mimicking sounds
it must be a male. However, it was documented as early as 1908 that the female
lyrebird is also an excellent mimic. On 5 October, 1908 the Adelaide newspaper
The
Register
reported that ‘Mr A. E. Kitson, a thoroughly competent observer
and one who has a unique experience of the birds... put on record the fact that
the female also is a great mimic’. The newspaper went on to list the ‘curious
assortment’ of sounds one female lyrebird had produced in the presence of Mr
Kitson.

It
was one of my childhood dreams to see a lyrebird in the bush but, although we
managed to find the mounds of lyrebirds I never managed to actually see one.

Lyrebirds
and other bush creatures featured strongly in our lives out on the Bonang. For
us, the days opened and closed with the sounds from the bush. When the morning
light dawned, our rooster competed with the calls of currawongs, bellbirds,
kookaburras and magpies.

In
the evenings, the night air brought us the rumbling growl of possums, the
chattering of nocturnal insects, frogs calling across the dam and night owls
hooting ‘mo...poke’ through the trees. Our natural amphitheatre was vast and
yet the crisp, clear sounds wrapped us in a sweet intimacy. Sometimes as I lay
in my bed listening I would pick out a particular sound and smile, sure it was
Matilda the mimic.

The
year 1956 in Australia saw Liberal Prime Minister Bob Menzies secure in his
fourth term of government and the country in the grip of Olympic Games mania.

The
Olympics were to be held in the city of Melbourne; the first time in the
southern hemisphere. In fact, it was a year of firsts: the first time Australia
had hosted such a large event, the first time the Olympic Games included a
closing ceremony and the first time Australia’s Postmaster General had issued
full-colour stamps. Another significant first that year was the introduction of
Australia’s national television service.

However,
it would be a very long time before my parents would be able to afford a
television set. Their new family was expanding at a rapid rate. My mother was
expecting another child to add to their brood of five: Bobby, Maxie, me and the
twins, Georgie and Kevin. There was no money for luxuries such as birthday
presents. Birthdays were not even mentioned in our house probably because it
was easier to forget about them altogether than to struggle with the problem of
finding the money to buy presents. What money Mum and Dad could put aside went
towards trying to buy Christmas presents. Mum also saved the labels on the
packets of Lan Choo tea and redeemed them for various items. Our grandparents
bought us simple Christmas gifts and sometimes the local shopkeepers donated
goods. I remember Mr Orme Andrews, who owned a toy shop in Orbost, arriving at
our place one Christmas with a bag of toys for my brothers and me. My gift was
a large doll: the largest doll I had ever seen.

Feeding
a growing family must have been a gruelling challenge for Mum. However, like
most mothers of her time, she was resourceful and constantly found new ways to
make a little go a long way. Potatoes were cheap because we grew our own. They
were excellent for filling our tummies, especially when mashed with a little
butter and milk added to make them fluffy. A mound of mashed potatoes made our
plates look overflowing with food.

Meat
was expensive to buy but considered important at every meal. Sometimes we got
sheep from the farm which my father, with his butcher training, was able to cut
up expertly. Rabbit stew was often on the menu. Rabbits were plentiful; in fact
they were a pest in Australia at the time. All Dad had to do was go out and
shoot them and skin them. When Mum did buy meat from the butcher, it was always
the cheapest cuts. She would make minced meat ‘go further’ by mixing it up in a
bowl with a beaten egg, breadcrumbs made from stale bread and chopped onions.
This mixture was flattened out, cut into squares and fried. We all loved Mum’s
minced meat rissoles.

We
also loved her patty cakes. These were little cakes baked in corrugated paper
cups. She would bake at least one enormous tray full of those little cakes in
the capacious oven of the old wood stove almost every day. When they were cooked
she would protect her hands with a thick tea-towel and remove the heavy iron
tray laden with hot cakes, releasing the tempting aroma to waft through the
house. Like eager little mice ever on the alert for a new source of food, my
brothers and I would materialise in the kitchen. Surreptitiously, our hands
reached out. By the time Mum had placed the tray on the table, gaps had
appeared in the evenly arranged rows of cakes but she never gave any indication
that she noticed. Before too long, there was going to be another pair of hands
to steal her cakes away.

I
knew that when this new baby arrived, Mum would have her Box Brownie camera
out. As soon as possible after the birth of a new child, she took a family
shot. Dad must have managed to fulfil his promise to buy her a camera and she
used it to snap pictures of us at every opportunity. I wonder if this was
prompted by a deep rooted fear of losing her children. She had no photos of
Bertie, Audrey and Noel and must have wanted to make sure that if anything happened
to us she would have our images on record.

I
once came across an old cardboard box with many small packets of undeveloped
films; the hundreds of photos of us that Mum took but could not afford to have
developed. I am surprised that she managed to afford to have as many of the
films developed as she did. Most of the photos have now been lost but there are
enough there to demonstrate what must have bordered on an obsession for my
mother.

While
Mum snapped photos of new additions to the family, Dad celebrated by singing
and whistling. He was always delighted at the prospect of being a father again.
I found out later from my brothers that he was ecstatic when I, his first
daughter, came along. Apparently he went around for days whistling and singing
Jeannie
with the Light Brown Hair
. I never did find out how I came to be called
June and not Jean. After me, came the twins which gave my father further cause
for pride and jubilation. “It’s a double-yoker,” was his response to those who
offered their congratulations.

He
was just as excited about the expected arrival of his sixth child. He often
lifted his old navy beret from his head, threw it into the air and caught it on
the way down yelling, “I’m gonna be a dad. I’m gonna be a father again.”

My
mother’s reaction was understandably more restrained. Each pregnancy would have
stirred the ghosts of sorrow: memories of her first three pregnancies and the
loss of those children. This must have dulled the joy of anticipation and added
to the physical burden of pregnancy and childbirth. I think she also felt the
weight of financial hardship. 

She
would sigh and say, “Another mouth to feed.”

Apart
from money worries, Mum still had the stress of having to cope on her own for
up to two weeks at a stretch each time my father went out to the woodcutters’
camp. The absence of a husband who wrapped her in love and warmth and cherished
her with unabashed abandon must have added a sharp edge to her isolation.

Although
financial commitment to his family was limited by circumstances, Dad’s
emotional commitment was seemingly endless. He loved being with Mum and did all
he could to spend time with his family. One of my favourite memories is evening
picnics on the Snowy River. Dad would catch a few big bream with a simple fishing
line, scale and gut them and cook them directly on the hot coals of our fire; a
truly delicious meal.

He
taught us what to do if we encountered a snake in the bush and showed my
brothers how to chop wood and fell trees. He was patient when he encouraged us
to climb up on the back of our old draught horse, Nugget, for bareback rides
around the yard.  Old Nugget used to be part of a team of horses that
helped haul logs out of the forest.

Drives
through the bush were regular family outings. Dad stopped along the way to
allow us to explore creek beds and climb trees and to teach us what he knew
about the bush; pointing out various trees so that we learned to recognise a
yellow stringybark from a mahogany or a messmate. Sometimes he took us out to
the bush after a bushfire. An empty and silent forest greeted us. The scorched
black ground was bare of scrub, dried leaves and undergrowth which had been
burnt away. In the stillness, a battlefield of leafless trees stood like tall
black sentinels. From time to time smoke sizzled from smouldering cinders on
the ground but apart from that there was no sound and no forest smells.

Bushfires
were pretty much an annual event in the Orbost area.  Fires often raced
through the forests around the town. Our home out on the Bonang, being
surrounded by bush, was in a dangerous position. Just prior to bushfire season,
Dad, with the help of some of the woodcutters, conducted controlled burns,
known as burning off, in the strip of forest that bordered our paddock as well
as the bush along Duggans Road.

It
was not unusual, in the summer, to see billowing clouds of smoke on the horizon
or rising above the tree tops.  The sight of fires sweeping along the
hills was a source of delight for us kids. We were fascinated by the smell of
burning eucalypts and the changing red and orange colours of the flames. In
fact, Maxie and I were so inspired by the fires we witnessed that one year we
won first and second prize in a school art competition for our paintings of
fires, even though neither of us had demonstrated any particular artistic
talent before.

Despite
our poverty, Dad sometimes bought each of us a small treat (usually the
cheapest available chocolate bars) when he made a trip into the township of
Orbost. He would usually buy at least one bag of lollies such as Minties which
he kept aside to be shared around over a period of several weeks.  He
sometimes gave me an extra lolly when the boys were not around. He would wink
at me as he offered it to me and say, “Don’t tell your mother.” Mum did not
like us eating too many lollies.

“Lollies
are bad for your teeth,” she used to say. “Why do you need lollies when we’ve
got fresh fruit growing on trees?”

I
doubt that Dad kept these ‘secret’ treats from my mother. I think it was just
his way of making me feel special. He succeeded. I adored my father. No, I
idolised my father. Although he was the symbol of authority in our family, he
was, at the same time, the one who initiated fun, laughter and adventure. When
he was away working in the bush I missed him terribly. I have no doubt that
this was what caused me, one day when I was around six years old, to allow
myself to be lured into one of the most dangerous situations a child could
face.

It
was a weekend and my two older brothers had, probably as a result of stern
instructions from Mum to include their little sister, taken me with them on one
of their regular jaunts to the local rubbish tip. I rode in the cart that Bobby
had on the back of his bike. On the return journey it would be filled with various
bits and pieces but I would find a crevice to squeeze my skinny body into.

We
trundled along the highway and turned into the track that led to the area in
the bush that had been set aside for the locals to dump their rubbish. The
steamy smell of fermenting organic matter coalesced with the bracing scent of
eucalyptus. When we arrived, I hopped out of the cart and ran toward the
entwined piles of twisted metal, garden scraps, broken furniture, children’s
unwanted toys and other assorted and ‘assaulted’ junk. Bobby leant his bike
against a tree. Maxie’s bike fell to the ground and lay sideways, one wheel
still spinning as he raced his brother to the waiting trash. We were all tense
with excitement at the thought of potential treasures waiting to be found. My
brothers whooped and yelled whenever they found a piece of machinery or bits of
old cars.

“Hey!
Look what I found.”

“I
found a whole steering wheel. Look!”

 They
examined and compared each other’s discoveries. Some items were thrown back onto
the piles of rubbish and some were carefully placed in the cart. I searched
only for books. I always found some. It never ceased to amaze me that people
could be so rich as to afford to throw books away; ‘perfectly good books’ as my
mother would say.

There
was one other person there that day. He was a little distance away from us
picking his way through the rubbish. When I first noticed him, I stopped what I
was doing and made to walk toward him because, for an instant, I thought he was
my father. He wore similar work clothes, with sleeves rolled up over brown
muscular arms. He had the same thick black hair and his face was, so it seemed
to me, the same dark brown as my father’s deeply suntanned face. Something
stopped me from going to him; perhaps the rational part of my brain
acknowledged that if he were my father, Bobby and Maxie would have recognised
him. Yet when the man turned, possibly noticing my movement, and fixed his dark
brown eyes on me, I saw my dad’s eyes and I projected my father’s features onto
the man’s face. He smiled at me. Part of me was sure he was the father whom I
was missing dreadfully because he had been away working in the bush for over a
week.

As
I lost myself in my illusion about the man, I became less aware of my brothers
who continued their noisy discoveries.  The man gradually moved closer to
me. I was mesmerised. I wanted so much for him to be Dad. He said nothing but
smiled at me from time to time as he picked over bits of rubbish. My brothers
moved further away, determined not to overlook any new piles of rubbish that
might have arrived since their last visit to the tip. I had already found
several books. Clutching them to my chest, I concentrated on watching the man
who was my father and yet was not my father.

When
my brothers called to me, their voices reached my ears as though from far away.

“Come
on, June.”

I
ignored them.

“Come
on. We’re going now.”

I
could not leave this man. I could not bear the thought of being separated from him.
He had his back to my brothers and seemed to be still sifting through rubbish
but he inclined his head in my direction, smiled and spoke softly.

“Want
to ride on my bike?”

I
nodded. My brothers had mounted their bikes and rode over to us.

“Hop
in the cart,” Bobby said to me. “We’re going home now.”

I
said nothing.

“All
right,” said Maxie. “We’ll leave you here if you don’t get in the cart in five
seconds.”

They
both counted.

“One.
Two.”