§3. Life According to Me

It was now 1946. My father was fully employed by Stan Foran and long periods of travel were part of the gig. My mother was resigned to keeping house and caring for her daughters, now aged aged seven, five, and three. 

When the family had arrived at the Springwood property two years earlier, Jan, my elder child, was immediately enrolled at Springwood Primary School. Though only four years old, such was the need for my mother to gain relief - from what was little more than a primitive childcare centre the shabby little house had become - that off the little girl went, alone through bush across the nine acre farm and a mile down the dusty road to a distant neighbour who daughter would escort her a further mile to school.

While that took care of one, my two other sisters, Kerrie and Lynne, were handful enough without the hardship of the primitive home. But eventually, along 50 metres of freshly laid pipe, town water flowed from household taps and electricity was soon connected. Domestic radios cost a week’s wages, so the family was starting to enjoy some surplus prosperity. The house was clawing its way into the 20th century.

And just when Bon was getting a grip on matters, along came me to shatter the peace, in January of 1947. 

Compared to sister Jan, my recall of those early years at Springwood is sparse indeed. But then, I moved away with the family when I was five years old. 

A two mile (3 Km) walk to school along a dusty bush road, no doubt complaining to my sisters all the way. Richard Bunker (if that was his name), a kindergarten lad with dirty wax-laden ears that, aghast, I reported back to my mother who thereafter cajoled me about his when mine needed soap and water. Playing with sisters on an uprooted tree, which grew more surreal in shape with each recall.

Pursuing my father into the farm bushland to fell a tree with a bees' nest for the honey. My sister Lynnette, youngest of the three, told to share the hose, whacked her baby brother over the head with the brass nozzle. I screamed and she was scolded - a vivid moment without pain or grudge. She lived with the guilt of that memory, as did I, but conversely by having seen how I inadvertently punished my sister. The seeds of empathy were born.

Toddler-level troubles. An adventure under the house that earned a bite from a creature unknown, thence bedridden and seriously ill. The kindly doctor Ernest J. Baxter (Telephone: Springwood 56)  gave me little glass vials to play with. Fevers during which, as the world spun and terror overcame, my hands felt to be shrinking away to nothing - a common feverish hallucination of my childhood. A dash from the outhouse, pants around ankles and screaming in panic, with an indecisive stool blocking its fellows; poor mother, in all too well-practised readiness, reached for the syringe and deftly supplied a watery enema. I blame my fibre-free diet diet of cow's milk and white bread!

Occasions beyond our fence-line were more animated than the still-framed images around the home. A rare visit to the cinema in town introduced me to the magic wonder of “pictures” (as we called them throughout childhood). That is but an image, but the drive home I still replay at will. In the car’s front seat, head on my mother’s lap, I lay entranced by new type of cinema: treetops, ghostly lit by the headlights against a starry sky, flowed silently by in kaleidoscopic procession. That might have been the first time I felt wonder at the world and my place in it.

A brief visit to a neighbour’s house. While adults attended to affairs, leaving me in the hallway. I had never been more startled when two boys about my age ran to me like excited puppies, but more naked that any furred creature. I was agog at the sight of two tiny penises, as though I’d never seen one before. It still makes me wonder if I’d ever seen mine, I felt so embarrassed. The results of living in a tiny shack with four females with, effectively, no paternal presence. 

A nearby “Mrs Figtree” (a family name? - it’s possible) and presumably a large fig tree, with most likely lots of ripe figs and plenty of fig jam. My first girlfriend, Robyn, granddaughter of Mr and Mrs Harry Nelson who tended a superb backyard vegetable garden. Robyn and I were such great friends we were known to even share hugs. Being an unworldly chap, I’d no idea girls were not to be hugged, or even befriended. This fond memory is supplemented with photographic evidence.

My grandmother (Winifred Stepto) lived on Burns Road closer to town, as did Desiree (Aunty Des), her daughter, a bit further along. Bert Stepto was Nanna’s second husband and Desiree’s father, along with a much younger Albert. 

 Apparently I had a weakness for wheelbarrows. Aunty Des was married to Neville Watkins, and through them I gained three half-cousins, Michael, Christopher, and Grant. ‘Des and Nev’ lived in what I saw as a pretty new white house on Burns Road’s western side where it climbed a hill. Dragged along by my parents on their occasional social calls, utterly bored, I forced myself to admire the mantel piece oddments. One was a model wheelbarrow made of polished, lacquered wood. It was the exact toy that I insisted on having - a claim callously rejected as often as I asked. Often.

My first lesson in the pleasures of watching others work occurred at Nanna’s when Step (Bert Stepto) and Dad built a shed, mixing concrete by shovel and wheelbarrow, with my supervisory assistance. Not so pleasant were hot summer afternoons playing with Step’s son Albert and his new cowboy toys. Especially the Colt 45 water pistol (which seemed a big as a Winchester rifle). Uncle Albert, with forgivable childish sadism, treated me as an ‘injun’ and ceaselessly chased me around the yard to spray water into my eyes. One of my first self-conscious memories is, in reaction to his torment, some ingrained empathetic trait (I’ve since always deployed to smooth the way) made me pretend to be having fun so as not to “hurt his feelings.” If I’d complained, he’d have been punished. I knew that without realising. Perhaps the hose nozzle on the head incident taught me a different lesson along with that intended by the punisher.

And that is pretty well my inadequate first-hand knowledge of Springwood. 

To end this chapter, some observations. I’ve spent a lifetime idly wondering how or why things happened that altered the future of our family. Writing this involved making many disparate facts into a storyline, during which unrelated events suddenly corroborate to offer a reason why something might have been so. 

Thus it is with Springwood, and why the young family moved there and why we left. I can’t explain many of the major decision of my own life. If my parents were sitting before me now and were asked why they chose Springwood, they might not be entirely sure. The reasons we cite aren't always the reasons we act.

There would have been conscious justifications at the time. Apart from constraints and imperatives that limited their options, I think this is what directed them: 

For my father’s chronic sinusitis would have been of great concern and “mountain air” was traditionally prescribed for diseases of that sort. My mother’s family was re-establishing at Springwood, which would naturally have swayed her - misgivings were to come later. Finally, why buy a farm with a tiny dilapidated house, and not a normal house and yard? My father had studied agriculture by correspondence at Sydney Technical College and we perhaps imagined “living off the land.” Or was it was just the cheapest, if not only, affordable property in Burns Road, and Burns Road was where her family had resettled.

As for the decision to leave Springwood, these reasons were far more clear cut:

In the space of seven years, three bushfires threatened the homestead and the children. My mother hated the place and felt humiliated by her situation - she almost literally was The Drover’s Wife. 

Most probably, my father’s work from 1951, as a newly-appointed Caltex contractor whose territory encompassed Northern NSW, required a more central base of operations. We spent a year or so at West Pennant Hills, and then his work led our family to settle in Newcastle where my destiny played out, and still awaits its few remaining years.

One final personal note. 

My mother's life would likely be reaching a pivotal stage in her life. With my arrival, the surfeit of daughters was arrested and two relieved parents realised they need not grow the family any further. Work was plenty for Dad with Stan Foran (my maternal grandfather) and settlement of the loan for the Burns Road property would be on the horizon, if not already paid. 

The sad little household was dragging itself into the 20th century with connections to utility water and electricity, and the acquisition of relative luxuries, such as an electric spin dryer in the laundry, a radio receiver in house, and presumably by now, a kerosene-powered refrigerator in the kitchen to replace the almost useless ice chest. I clearly remember the old Silent Knight with its the small flame burning away fed from a large long black tank at the bottom. 

And although I can't remember any times at all when we, Mum and I, shared a close relationship (sister Kerrie took on the mothering and comforting role), as the photograph below shows, she was a caring mother to me and the dozens of times she attended to my emergencies, enquiries, and needs, comprise a large collection of reassuring memories.

Pictured ~ My mother and me with our dog, that might possibly have been called Trixie.