I didn’t swim much at Tallangatta. The water near the shore smelled and tasted of motorboat fuel fumes, and I was too frightened of the dead trees to want to swim from Uncle Ken’s boat, or even Dad’s Ena. In my camp stretcher I had nightmares about snakes swimming out from the dead trees to the shore and crawling into the tent I was sharing with Indi and Jenny Burnside. I wouldn’t go to the loo at night for fear of stepping on a snake.
The mirror that either Jenny or Indi had attached to our tent pole was too high for me, not that it mattered as I was too much of a scruff to be interested in looking at my reflection. With Mum not around I could get away with not brushing my hair until I became so dishevelled that even Dad noticed. All the same, I watched with interest as Indi and Jenny did their hair and put on creams. I was the kid sister who was a bit of a nuisance, curious about things I had seldom seen, like bras. Even when we changed to swim at Indi Island, Mum modestly concealed herself with a towel and kept her back to curious eyes.
While we were at Tallangatta, Mum stayed at home with Granny – if she was at Towong Hill – to water the garden and feed the cats and dogs. John stayed back to feed his chooks. Sometimes Mum and John came down to Tallangatta for the day, so I was able to go back and forth with them. Harry enjoyed boating and the waterskiing, but as he slept in the boys’ tent I didn’t see much of him.
I can’t remember Mum enjoying those trips as much as Dad did. There seemed to be a distance between Mum and the Burnsides, just as there seemed to be between Dad and Wendy. It was as if the two wives were outside the friendship, not having shared the years as POWs. It must have been difficult for both women. While the men were great friends and always hoped that their friendship would radiate out through their families, the week or two at Tallangatta was never sufficient for me to bridge age differences and cement relationships. Uncle Ken became one of those special people I wished I had known better. He was a saviour and a giver, and I thought I had nothing to give back to such a great man. At the very least I should have said thank you for looking after Dad, but Uncle Ken died before I had gathered sufficient adult confidence to get in touch with him again.
During one of those summer holidays Mum fell and broke her ribs while waterskiing. She had already broken her right leg badly in late 1938 when she and Dad were skiing in Austria, and then again in 1940. Broken ribs sounded the death knell for housework in the weeks that followed. It didn’t matter until the Archbishop of Melbourne unexpectedly called at Towong Hill. Having surveyed the mess of toys and games on the sitting room floor, he remarked, ‘I wish my wife could take everything in her stride like this.’ Mum was horrified. Appearances belied the reality – beneath a relaxed, welcoming façade, Mum hadn’t taken it in her stride at all! To make matters worse, when she showed the Archbishop to the upstairs bathroom, a pair of lacy knickers was stretched out to dry across the screen on the window. After recovering from her embarrassment she recounted the story at her own expense with wry amusement.
The filling of the Khancoban Dam in the late 1960s added another venue to the possibilities for summer outings. Jenny Mackinnon kindly used to phone Mum to invite us to go waterskiing with them and other friends. While Mum was always happy for us to join the Mackinnons, she had become more selective about her own risk-taking, saving it for alpine skiing, which she enjoyed much more than waterskiing. Broken ribs had been quite enough. Mum was also too busy to sit and talk to other parents who didn’t waterski, preferring instead to take advantage of the peace and quiet back at Towong Hill to do a few chores or continue with some writing. She had sufficient belief in what she was doing to feel she could pick and choose when she wanted to be sociable, but I believe I would have enjoyed our family outings more if she had regularly joined in.
22
Another World
In 1963, when I was ten, the parents of a friend I had met while skiing the previous September invited me to stay with them in Sydney. In their modern, new-smelling brick house, I saw through a chink in the bedroom door a double bed and realised to my amazement that my friend’s parents shared the same room and the same bed. I couldn’t imagine Mum and Dad sharing a bedroom, let alone a bed, without arguing. What was more, it was the nicest bedroom in the house. Men, I thought, had sharp toenails and you might be scratched if you shared a bed with them. This family used a different brand of shampoo to us – we used Tarfoam at Towong Hill – and they had toothpaste rather than the tooth powder that we had.
With my friend and her parents a whole new world started to unfold from the moment they picked me up at Thredbo. They couldn’t believe that I had never been to Canberra or even heard of Lake George. I was fascinated when I saw the fence posts and vehicle tracks vanishing into the ghostly rippling waters of Lake George for the first time on the way to Sydney. I was beginning to feel like a real country bumpkin who knew absolutely nothing, or like someone who had been asleep for a hundred years, completely unaware of what had been happening in the world.
I knew enough not to let on that I hadn’t realised that most parents slept together, but generally I felt too shy and gauche even to pretend I knew anything much at all. If I felt inadequate at Towong Hill, in Sydney I felt it even more acutely. But there was no denying a surge of excitement when I saw the Sydney Harbour Bridge and other Australian landmarks that everyone else seemed to know well. One day we looked for starfish and shells in the rock pools near Bondi Beach. When we chucked ugly lumps of seaweed at a boy who was following us, I found I wasn’t very good at throwing any distance; I had never tried any ball sports at Towong Hill. The boy walked off laughing, and I wouldn’t have minded wiping some of his smirk off with seaweed.
On another day Aunt Margaret asked me to spend the afternoon at her house in Bellevue Hill. I wore my best pink gingham shorts with a matching blouse. I can’t remember how I travelled there, but I remember my sense of relief when I found that the house looked much the same as I remembered it from when Mum took me there some nine years earlier. Aunt Margaret didn’t give me much time to note the changes in the house as she had invited relatives to meet me and they were all gathered by the swimming pool, waiting to be introduced. Despite their warm smiles I felt they were all studying me for family likenesses and that they would ring Mum to report their observations as soon as the visit was over. What would they say, I wondered?
Later on I went looking for linen to make Mum a handkerchief, to take home as a present for her. ‘The best present you can give is one you have made yourself,’ Mum had told me before I left for Sydney. ‘I was about your age when my grandmother told me that.’ Around Bondi, all I could buy were ready-made handkerchiefs. When I tried to explain what I wanted, shop assistants looked at me as if I was from another world – apparently not many girls my age made handkerchiefs for their mothers. I was too naive to know that I needed to start with a fabric shop selling fine linens or go to a department store in the city, so it seemed a handmade gift was not to be. Not only was I finding out that married people slept together; life beyond the boundaries of Towong Hill was overwhelmingly different.
By the end of the week I was feeling the magnetic pull of home, and I was happy to return. Feeling quite grown up, I flew to Albury where Dad met me. Back at Towong Hill I set to work, drawing in lead pencil the outline of a skier that I then inexpertly embroidered in plum-coloured thread on a pale blue linen handkerchief I had made from Mum’s stock of material. I tried to hem it on the treadle sewing machine but, not knowing how to adjust the tension, the cotton knotted up. I was able to cut the handkerchief loose without damaging the material, but I couldn’t unravel the cotton knotted around the spool. I was unaware of the trouble and time it later took Indi to sort out the mess I had made until Mum called me in to the front hall to speak to me. She told me I was not to use the sewing machine until I was older and knew how to do so properly. I knew that I would be in more trouble if I asked her how I was supposed to learn to use it properly if I wasn’t to touch it. I didn’t tell her I’d been trying
to make her a present, as I’d wanted it to be a surprise.
I had forgotten all about the incident when I found the handkerchief in Mum’s cupboard in the linen room after she died. I kept the handkerchief even though the memory of Mum’s displeasure still hurt. The embroidery wasn’t bad for a ten year old.
23
Visitors to Our World
There were some visitors of whom I have no recollection except the family talking about them. In the early 1950s Dad took an interest in helping a European family come to Australia. As I was a newborn baby at the time, it wasn’t initially convenient to have them at our place so they stayed first with Aunt Honnor and Uncle Moreton at Blowering before coming on to Towong Hill. Much later Mum told me that after they had left, Aunt Honnor phoned and warned her that Dad might need to ‘keep his trousers welded on’. I never discovered what had happened to provoke such a remark, but the vision of Dad being permanently stuck in his trousers struck a note of irreverent amusement.
Among the few other relations to visit during the 1950s and early 1960s were Mum’s brother Edward Chauvel and his wife, Aunt Margaret. Mum said Edward was her dearest brother, and after Edward and Margaret spent part of their honeymoon with Mum at Towong Hill in 1944 they all became close friends. While out riding with them during that 1944 visit, Mum said she saw a Spectre of the Brocken – ‘the shadows of figures standing on a clear summit, thrown on the mist by the level rays of the sun as it rises or sets’1 – for the first and only time in her life. The moment was magic, she said: ‘Projected on to the mist, circled in colour, were three shadowy horsemen…the rainbow nimbus, the solar “Glory”, transformed the image to something utterly strange.’2 Uncle Edward and Aunt Margaret’s engagement and wedding and the sighting of such a rare and thrilling natural phenomenon were the high points during the war for Mum, and she both talked and wrote about them.
For Edward and Margaret’s visit in the summer holiday early in 1960 a treat – a day out in the mountains – was arranged. Dad and Mum loaded the family into Sirius, their old short-wheelbase Land Rover, and took us up to Dead Horse Gap. (By then the US army disposals jeep called Iris in which they had crossed the Alps was largely a farm vehicle.) Sirius was named after one of the ships in the First Fleet. Not aware of the historical association, Harry, then aged almost ten, mispronounced the name as Serious. In a sense he was quite right. It was a serious vehicle with a serious role in our lives, for it enabled us to extend the boundaries of our daily routine – up into the hills and further afield into the mountains as it carried our supplies and picnics. Sirius had a canvas canopy and in summer it was dusty if well ventilated, while in winter it was seriously draughty and shockingly cold.
Once Harry unlaced part of the canvas canopy as we climbed the hairpin bends on the Geehi Wall. We were lucky not to lose some of our supplies down the precipitous, bush-covered hillside towards the Devils Grip Gorge. Even Dad and Mum were serious about this episode. But they were less serious when they heard that Jack Hobbs, a distinguished former RAAF pilot who owned the local store in Corryong, had been changing a wheel on the Geehi Wall when he lost his grip and the wheel went leaping and bouncing down the steep hillside between the trees before it vanished, never to be seen again. It was just as well that Jack, who was very rotund, didn’t bounce down the hillside in its wake. I never heard how he got home afterwards.
During Edward and Margaret’s visit another outing – a bushwalk – was planned. It was one of the most organised walks in which I have ever taken part. Our expedition was top-heavy with Big Knobs, or grown-ups. Aunt Margaret was a keen, very competent Girl Guide leader (she later became Girl Guide Commissioner for New South Wales), and from Dad’s perspective the war had ended only the day before and might well start again tomorrow, so we had to keep up with military-style drills where he was the officer commanding. He was keen on issuing orders and found it hard to understand that his enthusiasm was met with equal quantities of bemusement and reluctance. Providing us with maps and whistles, just in case we got lost over the ridge top, Dad drummed into us the danger of a sudden mist coming up and losing our way, despite the fact that there was not a cloud in the brilliant blue summer sky. He then divided us into groups with a parent leading each. Dead Horse Gap, Paddy Rush’s Bogong, the Brindle Bull, the Ramsheads and Crackenback River were all known to us, not only from our reading and chats with Mum about The Silver Brumby but from our winter ski trips to Dead Horse Gap. It was easy for me to imagine Thowra galloping across that eerie, snow- and grass-covered landscape and vanishing into the weird, wind-shaped snow gums.
‘Where is the Secret Valley?’ I wanted to know. Mum just pointed in the general direction. Secret meant secret, even to close family.
‘Can we go to the Cascades?’ I pestered.
‘It is too far. We’ll go when you are older.’
Even though I was only six at the time, I was already fed up with adults using my age as an excuse for not doing things and going places. At the time I was disappointed not to see any other landmarks from The Silver Brumby. Above all, on that day trip with Uncle Edward and the family, I wanted to see a real, live brumby, but my legs were short and the white bread and strawberry jam I had indulged in for too long finally caught up with me. I huffed and puffed along behind everyone else, and I would never have made it to the Cascades.
Meanwhile, Mum had gone rather quiet and was bristling with irritation. She didn’t like being organised, least of all by Dad and particularly in front of her beloved brother and sister-in-law. Dad’s military-style orders appealed even less to Mum than they did to us children; as a general’s daughter she had her own views about leadership. Despite his military training and highly disciplined life in the army and as a POW, Dad’s style with lots of noise just didn’t wash with her.
Mum’s sense of humour came to the fore when the adults began exchanging Morse code messages. Judging by the gales of laughter following each ‘message’, Mum’s input was mischievous and rather cleverly defused the over-serious atmosphere. Recognising the possible uses of Morse code in the bush, Dad had taught Mum all he could before he went to Malaya in 1941. Little did he know that his careful instruction might one day backfire on him, but he would have enjoyed the repartee nonetheless.
In the early 1960s Mum’s sister, Eve Maberly, brought her family to stay at Towong Hill. Up until then she had been a shadowy figure of whom Mum and Granny often spoke fondly, but who was never around. Eve was nine years younger than Mum and their resemblance was striking. They both had high cheekbones, dark brown wavy hair and were a similar height. There were differences, too. After living in Kenya for a time, Eve’s speech had become a little more clipped. Her face spread into an easier smile, she had a fuller, more comfortable-looking figure, she was chatty and she had a very mischievous laugh. The sisters were close to a point, but Eve had her own views. While she was always careful not to cause upset, she was strong and stood by her opinions.
During the Maberly visit I caught whooping cough. James, the eldest of Eve’s boys, kept surprising me by putting frogs of every size, and the slimier the better, in my pocket or down the back of my neck to make me cough. Then I would thrill all the children by coughing till I was sick, so James kept the supply of frogs flowing thick and fast. It certainly didn’t make me feel any worse, and I don’t think I minded if I was sick or not – up and out it came on a cough and it was all over. Mum minded very much: she followed me with a spade to remove the vomit and got cross with James when she found him with more frogs in his hand.
Once an extraordinary woman with a deep, booming voice came to lunch at Towong Hill and said, ‘I see you only have white bread on your table. Your children would be healthier if they ate brown bread.’ Mum looked sheepish. We often ate the vegetables Mum had grown in the vegetable garden and, understandably, she thought our diet was healthy. She didn’t really like bread, except for the crusts, which she baked in the oven and then ate instead of toast. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed that I ate
too much bread liberally spread with butter and strawberry jam. Mum did notice, however, that I was overweight for my age.
I had never tasted brown bread and thought it, along with a healthy diet, sounded scary and horrible. I can’t remember Mum’s reply to the woman with the booming voice and I don’t think we had any brown bread afterwards. Until I was about ten, white bread and butter and strawberry jam was about the only thing I liked. I didn’t like mutton chops or roasts with over-cooked vegetables, and sometimes I had to sit alone at the huge oak dining table until I ate or found some other solution for the increasingly unappetising meal in front of me. If they were around, the twin white cats were always willing to help with a little bit of meat.
One good thing about having a mother who was a writer was that she soon lost interest in supervising a reluctant eater. A rose bed had been recently dug over outside the dining room window and, providing the noisy dining room door was open and the flywire door didn’t scrape and squeak, it was easy to bury some unwanted pieces of meat and vegetables with a knife and fork. The only risks were that someone might see and tell tales, or that Mum or Dad might spot a magpie or kookaburra in search of an easy meal digging up the evidence.
‘All food is good food,’ was Dad’s maxim. ‘You just don’t know what it is like to starve. Our mouths watered when rats ran along the rafters. We ate everything – snakes, cats – anything we could get hold of in Changi, and it was good, too!’
‘If all food is good food, Dad,’ Harry said during breakfast one morning, ‘you could eat my fried egg!’ Harry was holding his plate of fried egg and bacon beside Dad’s chair at the head of the table. By mistake he tipped the plate and the egg slithered onto Dad’s lap. Dad was lost for words, and he bounded from the room. It might have been funny if Harry hadn’t been in a bit of trouble once Dad had changed his trousers. We never heard how hot the egg was – Harry would have liked it to have been scorching and I didn’t blame him!