by Kim Hodges
*
Our parents repeated a relentless mantra to all of us from primary school age onwards. We were provided for until we finished the School Certificate at sixteen. If we chose to complete the Higher School Certificate, then we had to have a part-time job. If we secured a job locally after leaving school, but wanted to continue to live at home, paying board would be compulsory. “The day you turn eighteen, you are on your own,” both parents frequently stated this to us individually and collectively. There were no grey areas; it was set in stone. The day we turned eighteen we had to live independently and support ourselves. To leave at year ten, we had to have an apprenticeship, such as hairdressing or plumbing, or a good, stable job. My mind was made up. I was not going to be a hairdresser, babysitter or a shop assistant. The world was waiting for me. There was no doubt in my mind that finishing year twelve would give me more choices.
*
Our entire family would crowd into our large Ford Falcon car to go to a sporting event, or to visit a friend on a property. My parents sat in front and we four kids sat on the long back seat, claiming our individual spaces. If a part of my body ventured past the imaginary boundary line, one of my brothers would hit me very hard. I engaged in this teasing game, believing I was quick enough to retrieve my hand before retribution was served. Too many hits, or boredom, saw me instead turn away to look out the window.
Car trips to Dubbo and Tamworth for a shopping outing were made more bearable by being able to explode out of the car as soon as my father cut the engine. The longer school holiday car trips were torturous. The journey to our annual holiday on the coast at my grandmother’s house took seven-hours. It took five hours to get to Sydney to visit my mother’s sister and my father’s side of the family. I lay on the car floor to avoid carsickness, or sat up and played games with my brothers. It was guaranteed that on every trip, our niggling and teasing would turn quickly into fighting, yelling and screaming. My mother would join in on the hysteria, begging my father to do something. He would give us only one warning, before he would stop the car, drag one or two kids outside, and belt us around the legs with his trouser belt. It hurt, but it made for a quieter trip. If I had been hit, I sulked for hours, looking out of the car window and feeling utter dislike for both of my parents. These feelings always dissipated as we approached our holiday destination.
*
Aside from her part-time job at the school, my mother worked in the home throughout my childhood. She often stated her desire to pursue a career as an enrolled nurse, but felt that she could not do so because she had four children who “came first.” She worked in our kitchen cooking roasts, boiling veggies, baking cakes and slices. She made jams and chutneys from home grown fruit, or boiled up home-grown beetroot—dressed in an apron and gloves to contain the purple spillage. She vacuumed our home, mopped the floors, and cleaned windows. My father mowed and raked leaves in the yard and he attended to the vegetable gardens. My mother’s routine also involved cleaning out the fridge and freezer for the fortnightly grocery shop and then filling it up on shopping day, while hoping that it would last for the fortnight. In the evenings, my mother ironed: school uniforms; casual attire; my father’s shirts; hankies; pillowcases and tea towels. She relaxed in her dressing gown and slippers, sitting on the couch in front of the television, while her hands worked knitting needles or a crochet hook in a frenzy. She created beautiful jumpers and bed socks for her children. Her domestic duties involved a huge volume of tasks, completed cyclically, with no gaps in between. I noticed the hours these tasks consumed.
My mother also participated in the annual community play performed in the town hall. She was allocated major roles as she loved to perform and her acting and singing skills were put to use. Our family attended, as did everyone in Coolah. Proudly, we sat admiring her costume and acting ability on the final night. This was her time out from the domestic routine and family responsibilities, although she always cooked dinner before she left for the night.
*
My mother was rigid about bedtimes. Based on her work at the local school, she would frequently claim to us that the majority of kids that came into the sick bay were just plain tired from staying up too late at home. Her first question to a child who presented as sick with no scratches or scrapes was, “What time is your bedtime?” Many kids responded with “I don’t have a bedtime.” Convinced that kids who went to sleep too late could not concentrate on their schoolwork, she would happily phone the children’s mothers to inform them of this. The sick bay gave overtired kids a chance to catch up on sleep.
*
During my last year of primary school, after my running training, I loved to spend an hour in the bathtub. I would sneak in after dinner and lock the door behind me. Soon the bangs on the door would start. “Time’s up,” and “Get out now,” and “You’ve been in there too long,” bellowed my brothers. Knowing the door was locked, my response was always the same. I would lie back in the bath, tilting my head until my ears filled with water, but with my mouth still above the water line.
“I can’t hear you. My ears are under water,” I would say calmly, but loudly.
My water-drenched ears would hear a blurred bellowing sound in response. My frustrated bellowing brothers would eventually go away.
“Time to get out of the bath,” I would hear my mother say.
That would jolt me out of a dreamlike state. By then, the water temperature would have cooled considerably, so I would swiftly get out of the bath and wrap myself in a towel. Sometimes I deliberately let my three brothers shower before me. This guaranteed some lazing time in the bath, immersed in the water, without brotherly interruptions. I would time these baths based on dessert. If ice cream and flavouring was on, rather than a homemade dessert, I would choose extra bath time. I lay in the bath with my ears pricked up until I heard the magic words, “Dessert is ready.” I would use my nice voice to ask my mother if I could please have the ice cream in the bathtub. “Not tonight,” was often the answer. If I was lucky, a minute later she might simply knock on the door to say, “Your ice cream is here.” I had to take two steps out of the bathtub to unlock the door, say thanks, relock the door and then commence my ritual. Balancing the bowl of ice cream in the water on my thighs and then gently moving my legs to make little ripples in the water, seeing how long I could do that for, was blissful. The ice cream melted in front of my eyes as the ripples got bigger. Eventually I would watch the water spill into the bowl. I would then empty the runny white water into the bath. I would watch the blurry white water dissipate into the bathwater. Then I would commence the ritual anew. Once the ice cream had all melted, I would sit up to eat it and then lick the bowl clean, before immersing it in the water. This was one of my fondest memories, partly due to it being the only exception to the “eat at the table rule.”
*
Luckily, our toilet was separate to the bathroom. There was often a line and always a chorus of “Hurry it up,” “I’m busting,” or “I can’t hold on any longer.” My brothers became impatient and would sometimes go outside to pee on a tree. But I always had to wait, being a girl. As my father walked toward the toilet with a magazine one of us would yell out “Everybody! Dad is going to the toilet.” It was a pact we kids had with one another. We would all stop to think if we needed a pee now, or in the next hour, and then run in front of him to the toilet. He spent forever in the toilet. After half an hour, my mother could not contain her irritation any longer and would eventually yell out, “Hurry up you dirty old bastard”. My mother always used colourful language—we would laugh and say, “Mum has gone off again!”
*
My mother had finally acquired a home, but her yearning to be closer to her family never ceased. Luckily, my father’s work gave us access to a two-man Telecom office and free telephones, a real perk of my father’s job. My mother frequently went there to make long distance calls to her mother and her sisters. Mostly she remained strong-willed, stoic and resilient, during those calls,
but occasionally she would crumble and express her dislike of Coolah on her return home.
“I want to go back to the coast,” my mother would snarl, knowing it was not an option.
“We are going back at Christmas for a holiday, Princess,” my father would reassure her.
“I mean get out of this shithole for good!” she would blurt out.
My father knew it was best then not to respond.
“I hate it here,” she would snap at thin air.
*
Mr Cunnings, my running coach, ran cattle and sheep on his land on the edge of Coolah. He offered my father fresh lamb, for a small amount of money, whenever he had an oversupply. This bought our family joy and the opportunity was never refused. When I was twelve, my father invited me to watch a lamb being slaughtered for our family. I went along for the first and only time. My father was the off-sider and I was the spectator. My eyes were wide open. Mr Cunnings placed the lamb in its final position and asked my father to pass him the knife and hold the lamb down. In a swift motion Mr Cunnings cut the lamb’s throat—blood spurted out, while the lamb wriggled and shook, its eyes rolling back, gulping its last breaths and struggling for life. I had witnessed our lamb chops in the making. I wondered if the lamb had known that the end was near when it was placed onto the cement slab for slaughtering.
“Is it alright?” I inquired.
“It’s just the nerve endings, mate,” was Mr Cunnings’ response. Blood trickled out of its mouth, its eyes had crossed, and its limbs had ceased to move as the lamb succumbed to its death. I watched its chest move with its last inhalation and exhalation. It was dead forever. After what had been an intense couple of minutes, I began blinking and breathing again. I felt sick in my stomach. The lamb lay there lifeless, with blood slowly dripping out of its neck and mouth. I was speechless. I was now a vegetarian. The dead lamb was lifted into the boot of our vehicle, in a blood-stained white container. We drove to Mr Cunnings’ cooler room in his backyard and he hung it onto a giant hook. In three days’ time, the lamb would be ready for cutting up. I completed my spectator role by playing in Mr Cunnings’ yard whilst the tomahawk swung and smashed through bone. I declined an invitation to go inside and help to bag the lamb’s meat.
The arrival of a whole lamb always excited our family. A couple of days before its arrival my mother had an additional burst of energy as she cleaned out the deep-freezer with determination. Many plastic bags full of chopped up meat arrived, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that together made up the whole lamb that I had seen alive earlier. I was struck by how the animal was alive one day, and then on our dinner plates a week later. The animal had no say or control over its longevity. Humans really do control animals. My father always mentioned at the dinner table, if the lamb on our plates was one of Mr Cunnings’. My mother would tell us how much money we had saved—as an entire lamb cost only twenty dollars. With money always being tight, the joy of obtaining a bargain was inculcated in me from a young age. My parents’ self-respect was firmly intact given that they always waited until asked to buy a lamb from Mr Cunnings, never once asking for one. I became a vegetarian for three days. My family laughed at me when I asked my mother to serve me only vegetables. I wanted to be a vegetarian for longer, but had justified not doing so to myself by reasoning that if I ate meat, and did not witness the slaughtering, that was better than eating meat that I had witnessed being slaughtered. I made a conscious decision to never watch another animal being slaughtered.
*
My father knew a bloke and his wife and kids a few kilometres out of town. Kenny had been to Alice Springs on a personal pilgrimage and walked five camels back to Coolah, accompanied only by his dog. Kenny kept the camels on his farm and he adored these animals. Occasionally our family was invited to a barbeque lunch and day of table tennis, shooting roos, going bush-bashing in hotted up cars and riding camels. Kenny had an affinity with camels and kissed them, called them sexy and so on. They adored him, as they never once spat on Kenny, but freely spat on newcomers, the vet and anyone else they held a grudge against. My father on the drive there and back stated, “We’re so lucky to have Kenny as a friend. It’s good for all of you kids to learn to shoot a gun. It’ll make a man out of you boys. We can’t do that in our backyard.” I never used the gun, but I loved the bush-bashing and the camels intrigued me.
*
When my father took us four kids to the tip to fossick, we always dropped off a load of rubbish. We never went there just to fossick around. Our family visits to the tip were more acceptable than other people’s visits were because we had driven there in a car and went to dispose of rubbish. Plus we were dressed in neat, clean clothes with closed-in shoes, and we scrubbed our hands immediately afterwards. This is how our parents justified scavenging at the rubbish dump to us. We tentatively waved to other people at the tip, but we kept a safe distance from them.
“Go and tell your mother we have to drop a load off at the tip,” my father would say to one of us.
“Don’t dare bring anything back home,” my mother would reply in a tone that brooked no compromise.
“Okay,” he replied. We would have a belly laugh with our father about that as we drove off. Bringing treasure back was the whole purpose of our tip outing.
If my mother was even slightly irritable, my father would deliberately bypass her and we would just sneak off to the tip. “Jump in,” my father would whisper to us. The car was already loaded. We would get in as he cautioned us, “Don’t tell your mother.” With the engine off, he would roll the car gently down the sloped driveway, turning the ignition key when the back wheels hit the gutter. Tip fossicking was adventurous, exciting and fun. My mother’s absence gave us a sense of freedom. We were all fascinated with other families’ discarded items. The unspoken rule that my father had taught us was that the moment another car pulled up at the tip, we had to pretend to unload the car. We did so proudly. As a respectable Coolah family we had to camouflage our scavenging, which was frowned upon. Once home, three of us retrieved our newly acquired treasures and snuck them into the garage, while one of us diverted our mother’s attention. We loved the secrecy of it.
chapter six
THE IMPORTANCE OF FOOD
Apart from the unvarying time at which dinner was served in our household two other things were also certain. Firstly, there was always potato. Secondly, that we never went hungry. Left-over vegetables for second helpings were always on offer. Food was plentiful in our home and my mother rarely wavered from the home-cooked meal. I noticed some other families placed less importance on it as I visited their homes or had the occasional sleep over.
Dinner was freshly boiled vegetables and grilled or baked meats. This included carrots and pumpkin for the orange vegetables, green vegetables like beans, broccoli, peas, and brusssel sprouts. The white vegetables included cauliflower, turnips and of course potatoes. These differing combinations of vegetables were boiled gently in salted water and then served. My mother never deviated from that cooking method. Once she had perfected it, she stuck to it. The meats ranged from lamb chops, beef, or sausages to mince. It was either cooked in a frying pan or roasted in the oven. In control of the small kitchen, my mother shooed out intruders, telling them to wait for dinner, rather than snack. My father never cooked—this was the role of a mother. Day after day, week after week and year after year: potato, three vegetables and meat.
The superior vegetable, potato, held the pole position amongst the full range of vegetables that was served to us five nights a week. A big pile of mashed potato sat up high, forming a rounded peak on everyone’s plate. Boil the potatoes, mash them and add salt, butter and milk. My mother managed to get each pile looking the same day in and day out. She told me it was the action of the spoon and how it was scooped out of the saucepan. My mother had it down to perfection. Bored one day, just before I left home, I calculated the number of times that she must have mashed potatoes for the six of us. Five nights a week for ten years she had ma
shed potato. This equates to 1825 potato-mashings in one year or 18,250 times in ten years. Most nights, any extra vegetables and meat were eaten in the second round of dinner offerings. If everyone was full, then the leftover meat and vegetables were refrigerated. One night a week was “left-over night,” when those meat and vegetables were fried in margarine to make bubble and squeak.
The drill was the same every night. One of the kids would set the table, based on the chore allocation. As the meal was being served, everyone had to wash their hands and then sit at the table, while my mother served out the meal. “Wait for your mother to sit down before you start eating,” my father said, every night. Once she sat down, we dug into the food. The eldest brother, who was younger than me, ate the most loudly. He would shovel the food in and make grunting noises, when eating and breathing proved too challenging. He was always asked to stop grunting. We were all constantly told to watch our manners and to appreciate the dinner that our mother had cooked for us. This brother also willingly ate peas, but never liked cooked beans. For years, my father told a white lie and said, “They’re mountain beans, not normal beans.” It sometimes worked, prompting him to eat them up quickly. At other times it didn’t. My father always responded with “If you can’t eat all of your meal, then you must leave the table and go to bed without dessert.” We all knew that that was the rule and there were no exceptions. The eldest brother learnt to hold his nose and somehow get the beans to the back of this throat, before washing them down quickly with cordial. The rest of the siblings ate the yucky vegetables, with meat and mashed potato added to end each mouthful with better tasting food. My middle brother struggled with peas, so he would pierce a few with his fork, before covering them with mash potato. If the pea taste still outweighed the potato taste, he would screw up his face and quickly scoop more potato into his mouth. I ate everything, but I also had my own routine. I ate the least liked veggies first, then the nice tasting veggies, and then onto the mashed potato and finally the meat.
