QUONDONG PIE by Lexie Dun

WONDERLAND!

I grew up, the youngest child of three, in a working class family in the nineteen forties and fifties. My brother and sister were quite a few years older than I was, so by the time I was five years old, my brother had been working for some time and my sister was in her final year of school. My childhood companions therefore, were the children of the surrounding neighbourhood. And what an amazing place it was! We had very few possessions and our entertainment was not handed to us on a platter. In fact, it was not handed to us at all. What we lacked materially, we more than made up for with inventiveness and imagination.

The glorious tapestry of life that we wove as children came from within. It had to; there was no other way.

And we were enriched!

PREFACE

Our home faced into Morgan Street.

It was on a very large block of land which was said to be part of an old dam site so our tiny house, where I lived with my mother and father and my older brother Ken and sister Maureen, was overlooked by four beautiful old River-gums. Their creamy trunks reached high into our ever-blue sky and the spreading grey-green foliage dripped a mantle of shade, protecting us from the searing heat of the inland summer. There were three trees at the back of the house and one at the front, near to the gate and the letter box, where my mother would sometimes stand chatting to the postman as he propped his bicycle up against the fence and delved into his canvas mailbag. The trees also provided a cool sanctuary for the many birds and other creatures that came to visit, and they made a lovely backdrop for the stage where the story of my childhood was played out. It was there that my young dreams were formulated, and where, for a moment, time stood still and precious memories were etched into my soul forever.

A high corrugated iron fence ran across the front of our house and down one side of our block. It was set with our big wire gate, which was painted plum red to match our roof. The fence separated us on the left from the Kearns family, Mr. and Mrs. Kearns and their daughters, Joan and Margaret.

On our right but one, on the corner of the street, lived our Auntie May. Not only Auntie May, although sometimes that was the impression, but also her husband Alan, and my two older cousins Margaret and John. Uncle Alan was a gentle giant of a man. He seemed to potter around unobtrusively in the quiet corners of the Grant household, while Auntie May, the younger of my father’s two sisters, ruled the roost; crowing, squawking, picking and scratching her way through life until, at eighty something, she finally fell off the perch.

Good riddance to the ‘old chook’ one might think?

Mrs. Packer would have thought and said so!

My father’s family was of hard-headed Scottish extraction; (with a good pinch of Viking thrown in somewhere along the way) so short tempers, feuding, fussing and penny-pinching were, as my mother would say, ‘in the blood’ and only to be expected. The family had made their way overland from Victoria by bullock train in the eighteen nineties, to make a new life in our prosperous mining town. Here they set up a horse pound and eked out a meagre existence in their little stone cottage on ‘the flat’.

Grandfather John, or ‘Scotty’ as he was called, was a well- known local sportsman of his day but he died at seventy, two years before I came into the world, and so for me, he remains a shadowy figure of the past. His only legacy was his nickname, which was handed on to my father and so in turn to my brother Ken, but when Ken left home at twenty two, ‘Young Scotty’ went with him and for many years they both virtually disappeared from my life. My Grandmother ‘Ma’ however, lived well into her eighties.

I see her now; a tiny woman in a long black dress, her curly greyish hair drawn back into a bun, and straying wisps framing her small face with its thin lips set with a stony expression. I see her with her walking stick, stubbornly stomping her way across the flat in no uncertain manner. She had been an Australian Champion side saddle horsewoman until an accident had ruined her hip, her career, and her demeanour. Mum said that she was a ‘Wallis’ (whatever that meant!) and that was the real reason for her ill humour!

I always believed my father to be the second of four children, but in fact he was one of seven, two other sons having died in early infancy and the first born, Edwin, dying accidentally at nine years of age after a fall from a horse. This accident also deeply affected ‘Ma’ and she seemed to lose interest in the rest of her children after that and became bitter. The family members barely communicated with each other, (except in anger) let alone the rest of the world, so the details of Edwin’s demise are rumoured and rather sketchy. As for little John and Cyril; they were never mentioned. The four remaining children however, certainly did exist!

Uncle Allen, the youngest, fled the scene quite early. After marrying, he went to live in Adelaide, so he didn’t feature too much in the story. The eldest, Rosamund (Rose) was rather sweet and kept out of the way, and so more or less out of trouble. However, Auntie Rose quite enjoyed a bit of backbiting when the other two weren’t around and when she could find a sympathetic audience. As time went by, she became a little eccentric and began to hoard things. (That trait was also in the blood!) When she died at the grand old age of eighty-nine, her garden shed was found to be stacked from floor to ceiling with every copy of the town’s daily newspapers for twenty years or more. According to my father, who was known for his pyromanic tendencies, they had to be disposed of; and so, along with the lice, mice and anything else that had taken refuge in the rubbish; the papers, and a whole mini history of our town, went up in flames.

My father I suspect, from within his family, was ruled with an iron fist. Occasionally my mother’s girlish sense of humour would bubble up to the surface and pop out for an instant, and she would tell a friend, with a little self-conscious laugh, of how he, at twenty-six years of age, had to sneak out at night to court her! Her own family was very different.

The Morris family lived in a nice home on the other side of town and was more affluent and a little more ‘refined’ perhaps, than Dad’s family. Grandfather Henry held a prominent position on the staff of one of the mining companies and he owned a motor car, which was a luxury for the very few in those days. If there was a class division in our town at all, the line was drawn there, between the workers and the management and staff of the companies. When my mother married she seemed to get caught between the two worlds; and that is where she stayed.

For a time, she would visit her own family on a regular basis. She would catch the bus to Railway town where they lived and Grandfather would drive her home in the late afternoon, but there was no return visit to our home on any occasion. Her own family was kind to her over the years, but always in isolation. They gave her some lovely items, helped a little financially, and took care of her in times of real need, but they couldn’t provide her with the happiness that she seemed to lack. When I was old enough to notice, I could see that underneath my mother’s gentle, naive and easy going exterior, there was a very sad and lonely lady. An admirer had once said to her, ‘Delcie you are a princess and should marry a prince.’ But there were no princes in my father’s family. She chose him anyway and the rest of her life seemed to be something of a compromise.

There were two older brothers, Colin and Keith. Colin also moved to South Australia when he married, leaving my mother and Uncle Keith to wave the family flags. But for some reason, when she left home, my mother stopped waving. Perhaps it was a sign of the time. A time when women upon marrying gave up their independence, their names, and most of their identity, to become Mrs. John Brown or Mrs. Jim Jones or whatever. Men and women had very defined roles then, which were accepted without question. That’s just the way it was.

When, at just twenty years of age, my mother married and moved into our tiny cottage, the only thing that she brought with her, apart from her nice manners and a little of her family pride, was her sewing machine. There was little room for anything else. The sewing machine was to prove a valuable asset in the years to follow, especially during the long hard years of the Depression. Then she would revamp old clothing and hand-me-downs, undoing seams and reversing the fabrics to make them appear new. She worked tirelessly to keep up appearances and to keep the family, not only adequately, but also very smartly dressed. She would never admit to being on ‘assistance’ and she glowed with pride when on one occasion, during a bus ride into town, a teacher tapped her on the shoulder and told her that my sister was ‘the best dressed child in the school’! For my mother, at that time, there would have been no greater compliment.

My mother did have cousins in the town and after her marriage, she would make a point of visiting them occasionally, particularly ‘Uncle’ Leslie and ‘Auntie’ Nancy, who lived within a reasonable walking distance from our home. But return visits from them were also rare and in time, this situation became the accepted mode of behaviour. Auntie Nan and Uncle Les might have called on us on several occasions when I was very young, but those times are not easy to recall. I do however, remember our many visits to their home.

I think of them when I see beautiful china displayed in a store or when I am served tea from a lovely old silver teapot. I think of them when I sip the tea from an elegant, flower-painted teacup; and I particularly remember the visits when I am in a rose garden or smell the fragrance of Lavender or Jasmine. This was Aunty Nancy’s way. She was a porcelain lady, as fragile and as pretty as her china tea set. She was pale skinned, pink cheeked and as soft and as sweet as her name.

And these things evoke other memories. Memories of pleasant evening walks along to the end of our street, then around the corner and up to the lane on the side of the hill where Auntie Nan and Uncle Les lived. Memories of delicate perfume as Auntie Nan greeted us at the front door and of antique furniture and old lace curtains as we entered into the living room. And there I see a small round highly polished table with cabriole legs, covered with a hand-crocheted lace cloth and set with Auntie’s very fine china. Waiting on the table were dainty cucumber sandwiches on a silver tray and a feather-light sponge cake with jam and cream in the centre, sitting on a pink cut-glass cake stand. At suppertime, the cake would be cut into small wedges, served to us on little plates and eaten with tiny silver forks.

Perhaps Uncle Les made the cakes? He was a baker. He also earned a fine reputation as a cake decorator and in time, when my sister was to be married, he accepted the honour of making her three-tiered wedding cake. The result was magnificent!

This was the world that I came into, the world of my earliest memories, and the setting for the wonderful adventure that was the beginning of my life.

A DEAR FRIEND

Mrs. Brice was Mum’s special friend. She was there when my mother and father first moved into our little home, living with her husband and eventually, with eight children, on the corner of the lane and next door to the Stone family. She was older than my mother was and so she had a good deal more experience of life, and she was warm, generous and welcoming. So when my mother arrived on the scene, very young and uncertain, she took her under her wing and became her mentor and her shelter from the storm.

Mrs. Brice’s babies arrived quite regularly, about one year or so apart. She treasured each one and there was always room for one more. She would simply open her arms a little wider and squeeze them all in, always with a bright smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye. And she opened her heart to others as well.

My sister and brother were three years apart, and in age, fitted somewhere among the small army of Brices, either a little younger, or in one or two cases, a little older. Jack, Blanche, Daphne, Gloria, Connie, Wally, Felicity and Eric Brice were the friends of their childhood.

When, after nine years, it became an established fact that I was on the way, my father was furious. ‘We can’t have this baby,’ he roared. (It was Mum’s fault of course!) ‘We can’t possibly afford it. Two children are enough!’ My poor mother fled in distress into the already crowded arms of Mrs. Brice.

‘He doesn’t want this baby,’ she sobbed. ‘He says that we can’t have it...That we’ll never manage...Whatever shall I do?’

‘Of course you can have it my dear,’ she said kindly, ‘and there’s nothing to be done.’ (Even if there had been, my mother would not have done it.)  ‘You go right ahead and have this little baby and have it happily, and pay no attention to anyone else.’ And so she did, and she didn’t. And I was born, some months later, at the local hospital not too far from home.

This seemed to me, a rather ordinary place to begin one’s life. I liked my brother’s story so much more.

Mum said Ken was placed by a large bird with ‘long legs and a pointy beak’, already wrapped and labelled for delivery, among the Iceland poppies in the garden outside of her bedroom window. ‘He was crying his little heart out,’ she said ‘to let us know that he had arrived and was hungry.’ I sometimes thought about this story and on one or two occasions a small shadow of doubt crossed my mind, but it made such a lovely picture and was not at all ordinary, so I decided to let it be.

Sometime after the second World War had begun, two of the Brice’s precious sons were called up to fight. First Jack, the namesake of his father, was conscripted into the Army and then sometime later; Wally joined the Navy. One afternoon, when my sister was over at the Brice’s house playing with their girls, the family received the terrible news of Jack’s death. Maureen was sent home, and for a time, the usually happy household was wrapped in a blanket of sorrow. It was nineteen forty-one and young Jack had been killed in action at the Battle of Trobruk. My sister was twelve years old. Jack, even though he was the eldest of the Brice children, would not have been much more than a boy.

But life went on. Eventually, the large family decided to move house to a rambling bungalow in another part of our town. It was there that I came to know them. My mother would visit her dear friend from time to time and usually with me in tow. Mum and Mrs. Brice would have a cup of tea together and chatter away, with Mrs Brice always laughing and joking. One would have thought her to be the happiest soul in the entire world, but she never got over young Jack’s death. Sometime after they moved, she also lost her husband to silicosis or ‘dust on the lung’, as it was known. This was a disease, which in those days claimed many a miner’s life. Mrs Brice went on smiling. She went on laughing and joking, but on just one day of the year – Anzac Day – she allowed herself to grieve. She drew the curtains over the windows, locked the doors and then disappeared into herself; and everyone, with the utmost respect, left her to her private grief. The next day she would open up her house once again, pull back the curtains, let the sunshine in, and then go happily on with her life.

Many years later I saw a photograph of that lovely lady in our local newspaper. At the time, she was acting as compare for the town’s ‘Matron’s Concert’. There she was; somewhere in her late sixties, dressed in Top hat, White tie and Tails, with a cane under her arm, an obvious spring in her step, a twinkle in her eye, still round and jolly, and still smiling for the whole wide world to see.

Dear friend. Dear Mrs. Brice.

MATTERS OF SURIVAL

Billy lived in the house behind us on a block of land that faced into the lane. Most lanes in our town had names that corresponded to an adjacent street and quite a few of them had houses fronting into them on both sides. Thomas lane was one such lane and was a little social world unto itself.

Its residents, especially the women, were creatures of habit, as were those who lived in the street, but the close proximity of the lane dwellers made contact with one’s opposite neighbour almost inevitable. When the postman arrived, at the same time each day, the women would be at the letter box waiting in anticipation, hoping for a few words with the postie and for quite a few more perhaps, with their neighbours. There was no need to leave home; one could pass the news across the lane. So on any weekday, if you chanced to walk through at the appropriate time, you would see a few heads dotted here and there, and hear a babble of voices ebbing and flowing from one house to the other.  They would be there until such time as the mine whistles blew announcing midday. That seemed to be the signal for those who still lingered at