A Most Unusual Era

A Most Unusual Era

by Effie Munday

A Most Unusual Era

Copyright © 2014 Effie Munday

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The information, views, opinions and visuals expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the publisher. The publisher disclaims any liabilities or responsibilities whatsoever for any damages, libel or liabilities arising directly or indirectly from the contents of this publication.

A copy of this publication can be found in the National Library of Australia.

ISBN: 978-1-742844-04-6 (pbk.)

Published by Book Pal

www.bookpal.com.au

Acknowledgement

Humbling, heart-warming, exhilarating, and inspiring (praise to my Divine Guide) has been His provision of our talented Jenny Wilson …without whose help, the several books made in my widowhood, could never have happened.

Thank You, God for this precious boon!’

Endorsement

It is a pleasure and a privilege to write this endorsement for A Most Unusual Era. In an age when things are complex and fast-moving, it is soothing and reassuring to be so warmly invited into these stories and their characters’ lives, and to reflect on times gone by.

Effie Munday (together with her husband John) has long been a champion of education and fostering the connections between faith, formal schooling, and life.  She grew up in a time when faith in God was almost universal, and concepts like community, friendship, courting and obligation were both practical and recognisable.  It was indeed, as she observes, a most unusual era.  This has no doubt shaped her convictions and her story telling; but I am sure there is much contained in these stories for the current-age reader.

Effie’s tender recollections in these short stories are testimony to how different the world is now but how little people have changed.  The characters’ longings, desires, obligations and challenges are those faced by people today.  But in contrast to the over-sharing and over-exposure which so often accompanies contemporary life, her characters conduct themselves with an elegant restraint and selfless respect for others.

Effie offers these vignettes of life with warmth and understanding.  She explores the nuances and complexities of relationship with humour and skill, and without judgment points the reader to another way of contemplating life.  Her faith is central to her understanding of the world and underpins many of the characters’ choices.  This makes for a moving and, at times, challenging read.

Effie’s writing is filled with grace and depth.  I trust you will enjoy this ‘trip down memory lane’ as much as I have.

John Sweetman (Principal, Malyon College)

Introduction

Iam just an ordinary woman who was fortunate enough to live her life through extraordinary times.

When I was born, Agatha Christie was becoming known for her murder mysteries, silent movies made a household name of Charlie Chaplin, and work had begun on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. What is amazing to me is that I have lived through the creation of not only the television but also the radio! I am older than Mickey Mouse and although a child, I survived the stock market crash of 1929 and lived through the Great Depression.

My childhood years were happily spent in the country of southeast Queensland with mountain ranges and green pastures and community life of the country. The Second World War came and changed everyone. No longer did every mother and wife have a cheery word to say; anxious days were spent with neighbours hoping and praying for the safety of family members fighting overseas.

Yet for a teenage girl, it was all just a bit removed. I spent a lot of my childhood and youth with chronic health problems and therefore was more housebound than the average teenager. In one way I didn’t mind, as my greatest passions were reading and writing.

I look now at my innocent stories and I am glad that that was my time to live my youth. It was a most unusual time for everyone and I got to see it through a young writer’s eyes. Everyone was a potential character or story to me.

Now at the twilight years of my life, I have decided to see these stories published. They hold within them something that can never be reclaimed, innocence, a romantic heart and hope for a world that promised so much.

I know of many who talk of the ‘good old days’ without acknowledging the wonder of today’s technology. As for me, I love this electronic age, where I can sit at my computer and use the ‘copy’, ‘paste’ and ‘delete’ buttons as much as I like. I remain in close contact with loved ones through the internet and I keep current with what is happening concerning my passions and interests.

I have lived my life knowing God and in my formative years, a faith in God was almost universally accepted in Australia, especially country Australia. So I make no apologies for the Christian references made throughout the stories, as that was ‘life’ in that most unusual time where most people actually were ‘good’ and always did think the best of others.

My hope is that you will enjoy these snapshots of a past era enough to recommend this work to others. I believe it is a time that should not be forgotten and how better to keep the memories than in their written form?

Effie

Contents

She Waited for Poly

Aunt Agnes, ‘Mt Arno’ and Me

The Hills of Home

He Loved Us Both

Crocheted Doily

The Fragments that Remain

A Child’s Career

Cream Cheque

Never Say Goodbye

Goodbye Petie

Keeping a Husband for Holly

Saved FROM EASTERN Mysticism

A Seller of Dreams

Grandma Meg

The Lure of the West

The Shearer’s FIRST CHRISTMAS

An Australian outback christmas Story

An Old Man Looks Back

The Old Count’ Von Dohren

Freedom for Josie

A Vow Renewed

Open Your Heart to Love

She Waited for Poly

(A Love Story of the Australian Bush in a day long past)

(I wrote this story in the days when I longed to be trained as writer, reporter, or teacher, any work that would help give vent to my thirst for knowledge of the arts, history, etc. The cottage I described I would see whenever I rode the railmotor to Ipswich.)

The tiny hamlet, with a small township called The Crossing nearby, was scarcely a hundred miles from the growing metropolis of Brisbane – but believe it or not - Poly still used bullocks to haul his logs from the steep mountain slopes of a peak in the Great Dividing Range where he felled his timber for sale.

They called him Poly as they called his father before him. Poly was like his father, just as these bullocks were like those his father drove up and down the rough mountain track ‘under the lash of his green-hide thong’. Tall, lean, with ginger hair, his manner was careless, slouching. He wore his hat over one eye, affecting not a jaunty air, but a somewhat stupid one which belied his true nature, serious and cautious.

Poly lived with his tiny, frail mother in a cottage beside the railway line running through their hamlet to the township. It was a small dwelling with separate kitchen like many bush homes of that period, its weather boards never having known the feel of oil, much less paint, though those walls felt the clinging tendrils of Antignon with its splash of pink each spring. At its base straggly sword ferns grew, trying it seemed to soften the scene. Broken panes in a small kitchen window had been mended with brown paper. The front of the house faced the railway line.

Poly’s mother’s only contact with the outside world was a glimpse of passing goods trains, and the passenger rail-motor chugging noisily by each day. Her son Poly was the centre of her life. She considered him the pattern of every manly virtue and grace. He was wise in her eyes, because he wanted to learn wisdom, studious because he read anything he could lay his hands on, industrious because he never complained about how hard he worked, and loving because he faithfully cared for her as he’d promised his dying father he would.

Yes, there were two things this little old woman loved: the crucifix of her faith, and her son… the burden of most of her prayers! She would kneel before the crucifix, fingering her rosary as she prayed. How she longed that her son would marry! And sometimes she told herself that she must release him from that promise to his dying father, when as a boy of fifteen, as they had held hands across the bed watching him die, he vowed ‘to provide, care for and stay close’ to his mother.

She went on living for him alone, and strange to say never asked the reason for the house stumps he hauled to the empty block next door. Had she asked she’d have learned they were to be the foundation for her son’s house of dreams to which he’d bring his bride!

In winter, the cold winds from the open plains below swept up their hillside, chilling her to the bone. Sitting by the fire in the black, smoke-darkened kitchen, she would knit socks for Poly, her eyes peering and the needles trembling in her hands. She would think of him, swinging his axe in the mountain forests, and pray for his safety.

Though now the ripening age of thirty-five, considered a confirmed bachelor, and kindly ignored by the young belles of the district, Poly was not without his regard for the opposite sex. For ten years he had courted Priscilla Grant, a buxom woman who lived with two unmarried brothers on their farm near a neighbouring township. Whether Poly postponed marriage for his mother’s sake because of the promise to his dying father…or for lack of funds…can only be wondered at. It’s likely he could not fully explain it, himself.

Secretly, his mother yearned for grandchildren to teach to lisp a prayer at her knee and fill the old, silent house with life and laughter. Her faith staunch in his wisdom and good sense, she bided her time. As for Poly, he never broached the subject with her.

Sad to say, in this secret on-going friendship/romance with Prissy Grant there was a disturbing element. Priscilla was a Methodist and as we have seen, Poly was a Catholic. On Sunday mornings she drove to her church in a nearby township in her sulky, unlike her brothers who had done with church years before, when they left Sunday School as strapping lads.

* * *

After some years of visits to her home courting Prissy under the suspicious eyes of her brothers, Poly preferred to see her anywhere but at their farm. After walking home from Mass with his mother, for the Catholic Church was close by, he saddled his horse and rode away to meet Prissy on her way home from the Methodist Service!

Under a shady Jacaranda tree they would sit together in the sulky, holding hands and chatting about their lives, while his horse, tied to a nearby tree whisked the flies away and rested on three legs.

It was seven years since they’d decided to be married ‘when Poly had built the new house next his mother’s’. Prissy had been so happy preparing for her new life, sewing for months on end and blithely suppressing her brothers’ complaint about finding them a housekeeper.

‘Can’t you get wives? Can’t one of you find a wife?’

Their retort would always be, ‘But you wouldn’t leave us to marry a Catholic, Prissy…would you?’

At this Prissy’s mouth would set in a firm, stubborn line as she marched out of the room.

Each week she waited, happy and expectant… for news of the new house.

Each week she would say ‘Goodbye’ to Poly, when he rode away, leaving her disappointed once again that no progress had been reported.

* * *

In time…she stopped asking. She also stopped working on embroidering tablemats and runners. There were plenty now in her hope chest anyway! But though sad and hurt, she never reproached him and never ceased to love him. She would be so lonely and lost without their great friendship and understood that it would be like that for him. It was either the money, yet he worked so hard now, he couldn’t work harder! Or was it his mother …and his loyalty and love for her that wouldn’t let him make her unhappy by taking home a wife of whom she could not approve… a Methodist!

So Priscilla lived on, patiently (most of the time) waiting… until her brothers no longer mentioned a possible housekeeping problem. And they still did not go courting!

* * *

One Sunday, when Priscilla reached the jacaranda tree she was dismayed to see there was no Poly watching for her arrival. Anxiously she waited, clutching her coat more closely against the chill westerly wind. It was a dreary day and soon hot tears stung her eyes. She flicked the reins and the old bay mare moved off. There was nothing to do but to go on home.

‘Perhaps this is where I finish ‘waiting’ for Poly O’Reilly!’ she told herself firmly.

She drove slowly, wishing to lose any trace of tears or sad looks before facing her brothers. She was feeling deeply hurt.

Next morning as she swilled the pot stick around the clothes in the hot copper water, Pam Anderson rode in as usual with their mail. She showed great inclination to stay and talk, to Priscilla’s annoyance as she was hurrying to get the last of the washing on the line.

‘They say old Mr. King’s rheumatism is real bad this winter.’

‘The poor man!’ Prissy commented.

‘Say, Miss Grant, did you know old Mrs. O’Reilly is real sick? Nobody knows what’s wrong but Poly hasn’t had the bullocks up the mountain for a week, so she must be pretty bad.’

Priscilla bent low over the