The Sausage Tree Read Free Page A

Street near the East Launceston State School. Because there was an epidemic of infantile paralysis in Melbourne, we children were in quarantine for six weeks after we arrived in Launceston. While we were in Oxford Street a girl who lived opposite us died of the disease and we were all very frightened. We stayed in Launceston until August 1937 when we moved to Lilydale to be nearer Dad’s work.

    The picturesque small township of Lilydale nestles beneath the slopes of Mt Arthur and Brown Mountain. During the winter months Mt Arthur is snowcapped and the weather is wet and freezing cold and frozen water pipes are not uncommon. In contrast, due to the locality of Lilydale, the summers can at times be stifling hot.
    When the Second World War broke out in 1939 all Australians were still suffering hardships caused by the Great Depression. Dad was called upon to attend the army recruitment drive and was relieved when he was rejected because of his asthma and also because he had too many children to support. Our family wasn’t well off monetary wise, but we weren’t the poorest family in the district. We were clothed, fed and housed.
    We find it hard to believe that we were loved because we were subjected to the most severe hidings for what to us seemed trivial misconduct. Mum and Dad believed that they had to be cruel to be kind and that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. In our house the rod was either a stock whip or Dad’s razor strop doubled in half. The child that was to be given a hiding was grabbed and tucked between his legs as Dad dealt out our punishment. We children used to yell in anguish “Please don’t hit me, I’ll be good” but the hiding kept on until Dad deemed one had had enough and then started on the next one to be punished. As we grew older we realised the futility of crying and beseeching and endured the punishment as quietly as we could, only to be afflicted more than before. Only when we cried loud and long did Dad think we’d been sufficiently punished and the hiding stopped. Toys were almost nonexistent, but we all had fertile imaginations that we used to keep ourselves amused.
    We were very fortunate to live in a rural area where we learnt many elementary farm skills. We not only watched a myriad of activities, we were able to participate in some tasks.
    We saw how hay was cut, stooked and made into chaff. We learnt how to milk a cow, to feed and care for poddy calves and bottle-feed orphan lambs. On the farm over our back fence was a blacksmith’s shop complete with anvil and forge. We helped work the huge bellows so that the coalsin the forge glowed red hot and then watched while the farmer shod his draught horses. Rosalie has one vivid memory of she and Barbara watching while pigs and sheep were slaughtered for meat. It was very unpleasant and they wished that they had gone home when they were told.

3
Settling in Lilydale
    Uncle Bob had bought a motor car and he took Auntie Merle, Mum, Joan, Valda and the twins out to the new house at Lilydale. We were horribly carsick and Uncle Bob stopped on the side of the road beside a big rainwater puddle and cleaned us up as best he could. He was always a gentle, caring man. Auntie Merle, one of Dad’s younger sisters and about sixteen at the time, travelled with us to help Mum get the house ready for the furniture and to stay until after the new baby was born at the end of October.
    The house had been empty for some time and was very dirty inside. We can still remember our disgust that someone, on more than one occasion, had used the kitchen and the front passage as a toilet. We children were sent outside while Mum and Auntie Merle used cold water and scrubbing brushes to clean all the floors in the house. We were a little frightened to go outside into the yard because the grass was so high that Valda and the twins had already beenlost once. Mum and Auntie Merle were still cleaning when the furniture van arrived