The Sausage Tree (8 page)

9

Our life was by no means all fun and games. We had some hard work to do. One job that we had to do in the spring was to cut the grass in the front yard. This did not mean we had a lawn mower and a lawn, we just had grass that had to be, cut and we seemed to be always sat it. We had an old pair of sheep shears and an old pair of scissors. It was hard work and no sooner had we finished cutting than it was time to go back to the start and begin again. The handles of the shears caused us to suffer plenty of blisters but we'd tie a strip of rag around our hand and keep on snipping. We were determined to show that we weren't to be beaten at anything.

While the grass was short we looked for the corbie grubs that often infested the ground and fed on the roots of the grass. We made hooks on the end of long pieces of wire and carefully put it into the small telltale holes made by the grubs. When other kids asked us what we were doing, we
told them we were fishing for corbies. They then wanted to know what for, so we told them Mum was going to make us a corbie pie for tea and showed them the old pie-dish we used to put them in. We were only having them on but they looked as if they believed us.

Because of the very real danger of snakes, keeping the grass cut was very important. Our first encounter with a snake was just after we moved to Lilydale, when Geoff was helping Dad pull up an old slatted wood path between the front verandah and the front gate. Geoff bent down and picked up what he thought was a piece of old bark. When it moved and he saw that it was a snake the poor boy nearly had a heart attack and so did Dad. Luckily the snake was still in hibernation and was very sluggish.

The next time a snake gave us a scare was when Valda lifted up the small washing tub that was upside down on the grass near the back door and found what she thought were two lizards asleep. Recalling stories she had heard that if you held a stick on a lizard's tail and pushed hard the tail would come off and it would grow another one, Valda went looking for a stick to use when Geoff decided to have a look as he thought it would be most unlikely that two lizards would be asleep together. It was just as well he did because the lizards were in fact one three foot long copper-head snake that Mum immediately killed.

That same year Dad shot a huge black snake near the big gate. The next year in the summer Joan was sweeping the front verandah when a big snake crawled out of a honeysuckle plant and over her foot. She screamed and screamed and Valda who was going out the front door to talk to her was so terrified by the noise that she began screaming too. Poor Mum rushed from the kitchen calling “What's wrong, what's wrong?” Valda, still screaming, managed to tell her “I don't know, but Joan's screaming” and then continued screaming. No-one was bitten but we were heard as far away
as the shop and people appeared from everywhere to see who was being murdered!

The fourth episode happened one day after school when Mum was in town and we saw a big black snake in the front garden. At first we didn't know what to do but when we saw it slide under the front verandah a decision was quickly made, the snake had to be killed because it could easily bite one of us and Wilma and Peter were only little and had to be protected. We all donned our gumboots and Joan went for the garden spade. Next, we very carefully and cautiously, with our eyes on the snake, prised up and removed the verandah boards that were directly over the snake. Joan thrust the spade as hard as she could on the snake's back just below his head. Now we had him but what were we going to do next! Valda had the bright idea that as we had lit the stove and the kettles were boiling, we would pour the water on him! We did and he died, then we hooked him out and hung him on the big gate because we'd been told that snakes don't die till the sun went down. Anyway, we had all seen dead snakes hanging on fences so that was the right thing to do.

When Mum came off the bus she nearly had a fit when we proudly told her we'd killed the snake. She wanted to know why we hadn't gone for Mrs Brooks and we truthfully told her there hadn't been time.

Another snake episode involved Rosalie. One evening she was crossing the bridge that spanned the ditch that ran along our side of the road when a snake suddenly appeared. When she saw it Rosalie ran up the road with the snake chasing her. The baker who lived across the road ran from his house to see what all the screaming was about. He quickly grabbed a hoe from his garden, ran onto the road and killed the snake. For weeks Rosalie had “snake” nightmares. One night she dreamed that she climbed onto a log to get away from a snake. She was sitting on top of Barbara
who woke her up and told her to get off as she was being squashed!

On the outskirts of town were old deserted farmhouses that belonged to people who lived in town. In spring the old houses were surrounded by masses of beautiful daffodils and were a picture to behold. They were, to quote William Wordsworth “a host of golden daffodils”. Some old farms didn't even have houses or sheds to show that someone had once lived there, all that remained were the daffodils and sometimes a lonely chimney stack.

One particular farm we walked to was about five miles from home and was owned by our landlady and her husband. We always let Old Mother Brooks know we were going there because if we didn't we were sure to get into trouble and that always meant a hiding or castor oil and that was almost too unbearable to even think about. The old house on that farm hadn't been lived in for years and years. At one time it had been quite beautiful; there was still some pretty blue flowered wall paper on some of the walls. The doors and windows were gone but to us it seemed much bigger, and probably was, than the one we lived in. The remains of the garden were still there and over the years the daffodils had multiplied so that every spring there were hundreds of lovely golden flowers spread all over the ground.

Three or four of us would pick as many as we could carry and take them home. All this would take us about four hours. After a rest and some lunch we'd go to the shop and ask for some cartons. We were always shown a great heap and told to help ourselves. We knew exactly the sizes we needed. From paddocks closer to home we gathered more flowers. After standing them all in a bucket of water
overnight, we would be up early the next morning to pack the flowers very carefully into the cartons.

By eight o'clock we'd be standing outside the gate on the side of the road with two shillings clutched tightly in our hands, waiting for the bus to come along. We'd pay the driver the freight and ask him to deliver all the flowers to the Launceston General Hospital to cheer the sick people who had no flowers to brighten their wards. After the second time we sent flowers, the driver delivered them free of charge. On one occasion we received a lovely thank-you note from two ward sisters on behalf of all the lonely patients who never before had received any flowers. Barbara, Rosalie and Wilma continued sending daffodils into the hospital until 1951 when the twins went to town to work, Barbara as a telephonist on the Launceston exchange and Rosalie as a trainee schoolteacher.

Never at a loss for games to play outside, we could invent a game to play with almost anything and have fun. Many hours were spent playing on the woodheap as this was something quiet that wouldn't worry Mum. Everyone in the town used waste mill wood for their stoves and open fires. The wood came in two lengths and was delivered by a man with his draught horse and tip tray during summer and autumn. This was a highlight for us but was overshadowed by the knowledge that we children had to stack all the wood—but before the horse and dray left we would be given a ride out the gate and halfway up the road to the mill. We weren't allowed to go any further. This was the limit Mum set, but we thought we were made; this simple act meant so much to us.

Stacking that wood was not easy; our poor hands used to get very sore from handling the green sappy wood. We
didn't have to stack the loads as they came, but we were expected to keep at it and stack a little each day. There must have been about twenty ton, because there was always at least twenty loads. With our imaginations running at full speed ahead we made the most of the piles of wood. There is a real art in stacking wood properly, and so that the wood we stacked didn't fall down we built a square stack at each end. Sometimes we built a hollow square big enough to hide in, which was handy when we played hide and seek with the neighbouring children. They never did find that secret hidey-hole.

Playing on the woodheap was made to last as long as possible and as we stacked wood from the dumped pile, one of us would be over in the middle throwing wood out to make a big hole which was turned into an imaginary bus with flat pieces of wood positioned for the passenger seats, and long thin bits for the gear stick and hand brake. The steering wheel was imaginary but there was nothing imaginary about the loud buzz-buzzing noises we made as our bus laboured up the hills on the way to the beach or town. There were six or seven of us all imagining our rickety woodpile bus was real. We would be coasting the dusty country roads exploring where we had never been in real life, as happy as can be for hours, stopping to pick up passengers no matter whether they were real or imaginary.

We had seen many pictures of the row upon row, acre after acre of the beautifully scented, purple flowers which grew at the North Lilydale lavender farm. Our magic woodheap bus transported us there as, carried by the soft summer breeze, the lingering scent of the lavender drifted from the rolling hills over the town. Regrettably, we would soon be brought back to reality by Mum calling out, “Someone bring me some wood for the stove”.

Six pieces of mill waste formed our wickets for cricket and one especially selected piece was used as our bat after
we shaped the handle by using Dad's axe. We always managed to have a soft ball to play with. Hitting the ball over the fence was four runs, across the road six, and on the roof out. Retrieving the ball from the roof was a breeze as one of our more daring pastimes was a game we called “keep the pot boiling”.

To play this game we ran around to the back of the house to where Dad had built the “copper shed” alcove, scrambled up onto the roof, ran across to the side of the house and jumped off. Once on the ground we had to run back to the start and climb back up so that someone was always on the roof ready to jump. We only played “keep the pot boiling” after school on the days that Mum went to town. Through more good luck than good management no-one was ever hurt, not even a small sprain. The unlucky part was when we were seen by Old Mother Brooks, who would knock-knock on her kitchen window—we knew that another hiding was imminent, but the next time Mum went to town we would be on the roof again. We often wished that the knock-knocking on the window would cause it to break and one day we were thrilled to bits when the pane of glass cracked from top to bottom.

With our overworked imaginations we found it very easy to amuse ourselves in our own backyard where Mum could hear us and know what we were up to. We thought we had invented a game played in the long grass but later found out that our ancestors had used this method to help them catch game and that their children had used it in the same way as we did. At the time we could not see why Dad “went off” at us when he found out what we had been playing. Looking back, we were probably very lucky that someone didn't break a leg.

Before Dad made all the big backyard into garden, the grass grew long and thick and when it was nearly dry we would grab two handfuls of it and tie it into a knot, making
what we called grass traps. Next we would climb the back fence into the paddock and do the same there. The real trick was to get someone to chase us, usually not too hard to do as we were very good at annoying other kids. We would run through the yard, jump over the grass traps, climb the back fence and run like the wind still dodging traps. Our poor victims, thinking they were gaining on us, would suddenly disappear from sight. A surprised face would appear above the grass. The best time of day for this game was just on dusk when it was nearly impossible to see where the grass was tied. Sometimes the trick backfired on us as we would forget where all the traps were set and we were the ones on the ground. We really were terrible kids and, just maybe, we sometimes deserved that castor oil.