The Sausage Tree Read Free

baby. Instead of one baby there were two. The nurse wanted Mum to call them Sarah and Sue, Mum wanted Lynette and Lorraine but Dad didn’t like those names and named them Barbara and Rosalie. They were always referred to as “the twins”.
    The family was now destitute—no home, furniture, clothes or money. While Mum was still in hospital she was approached by the almoner with the proposition that, in view of the situation she was now in, the twins be adopted out. Of course Mum would not agree. Next she was told that there was a couple willing to pay a hundred pounds for the babies. This was a large sum of money for the times and would have been a great help in getting the family on its feet again. Mum and Dad considered all their options and their financial position but decided that no matter what, they could not let their babies go.
    A house was found for us in the Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh and sustenance money of thirty shillings a week was granted from Social Services, of which twelve shillings and sixpence was paid in rent. With donations of a few basic items of furniture and clothing we once again had a home.We children were very excited when we found a big pile of toys in one of the rooms. Santa had been before we arrived! Wasn’t he clever to know that three children and two babies were going to live there.
    It was now at the height of the Depression and Dad could only find two days work a week. When Geoff went to school he found that a free cup of cocoa was given to all the pupils at recess time and at the lunch break there was a cup of free soup. Although Joan was only just four, Mum sent her to school, and when Valda turned four she also started school.
    We stayed in Oakleigh until late in 1935 when one of Dad’s brothers and a sister came from Tasmania on a visit. Uncle Bob had won a lot of money in Tattersall’s lottery sweeps and offered to pay our fare home to Tasmania where work in the timber industry had picked up.

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Returning to Tasmania
    We set sail in the SS Nairana early in 1936. What a nightmare that trip was. Only Dad, Geoff and Joan were not seasick. The dreaded travel sickness was to plague Valda and the twins until we were well into our teen years. When the trip was finally over Geoff remembers thinking to himself that this couldn’t be much of a place we’d come to because the wharf was very small and in need of repair.
    Twenty years later when Joan went with her husband to the wharf to fish for eels, she recognised Goderich Street with the trees down the middle as the wide street we had driven down away from the wharf and into Launceston. Valda was too sick to remember anything, and the twins were too young.
    Prior to going to visit us in Victoria, Uncle Bob had bought Granma and Grandad a big house in George Street in Launceston. Before the move from their isolated country home, they sold their furniture to other families living inthe district, then carrying the rest of their meagre belongings they walked eight miles along rough unmade roads into Nabowla railway station where they caught the train and travelled to Launceston to begin a new life.
    We stayed with Granma Johnson until we were all over the seasickness and Mum and Dad could search for a house for us. We were all so young and timid and we were frightened of the houseful of dark haired people; they seemed to be everywhere. At the time we didn’t know that Granma and Grandad had Aboriginal heritage. There were at least fifteen to twenty people in the house (including seven of their eleven children) and it was quite daunting for us to live in the same house as so many other people. How she fitted us all into her home with her large extended family is still a mystery, but she never seemed to be worried. In fact we can never ever remember her being cross during our stay.
    Dad’s brothers had found him work “bushing” on Mt Arthur near Lilydale, but we went to live in a house in Oxford