Chapter 2. Bolting Down Breakfast, And Grandma’s Sandwiches
Our home was on the east side of the Todd River. This too is flat country, though of much smaller area than on the western side. Only half a dozen houses were there during my childhood but these days it’s a fully developed, mature to aging Alice Springs suburb. Not surprisingly, it is now known generally as “The Old East Side”.
Back then much of the land on our side of the river was dense acacia forest, all of which we pretty much regarded as our own exclusive domain. Over time we’d developed a maze of bicycle tracks through it and, in some of the more dense thickets, hideaways – their locations known only to us.
Saturday mornings we’d bolt down a plate of cereal and then ride off on our bikes, sometimes to play in the dry creek sand or climb the river's gum trees, but mostly it would be to disappear into the secret thickets of our own private “Sherwood Forest”. Hours on end we’d spend there during the warm weather – days even, had we been allowed.
No one ever worried where we were or what we might be doing, and as long as we were home by sundown we weren’t asked to account for our time. In fact, on reflection, I suspect our parents were happy to get us out of the house and have the place to themselves for a while.
Nor did we always go home for lunch. Instead we’d ride around the streets collecting discarded soft drink bottles. Threepence each they would bring (about two and a half cents). A pie and sauce cost two shillings (20 cents), which was eight bottles, so it wasn’t hard to feed ourselves. And if we couldn’t find enough bottles there was always pedalling around to Grandma’s place and cadging something there.
Grandma was from Germany. Ottilie Hoffman was her name, before she married old Johannsen, but by this time she was a widow.
Gran had a special secret minced beef recipe called gehacktes, which was not unlike a rissole mix but was eaten raw. And whenever we turned up there she’d make sandwiches for us: fat crusty slices cut from her own home baked bread, spread thick with butter and gehacktes. And they were just indescribably, drop-dead delicious.
Early on there were only four of us eight and nine-year olds living east of the river and one had a seven-year old brother, so it was only natural we should band together. And we saw ourselves as a cut above our town-side schoolmates, too; tougher, smarter and better generally – and especially tougher and smarter than any of the Convent School kids.
Then one day a new boy and his family moved to our side of the creek. He also joined our class at school and so, after getting to know him, we decided he was okay to join our gang. But it wasn’t just a matter of saying: “Okay, you’re one of the gang.” Some means had to be devised by which he could prove himself worthy; a test of some sort he would have to pass.
Then I had an idea. We could take him around to Grandma’s for a sandwich without telling what would be in it. And when Gran started spreading the red-raw mince onto the bread we’d push him to the fore.
On first seeing the gehacktes he turned a strange colour, just as my other mates had done on their first encountering it. But we were all watching closely so he had to show that he had the fortitude to eat it, as backing out would have meant a substantial loss of status (and us having to find another acceptable test). And, like my companions before him, our new friend was pleasantly surprised by the flavour.
We then had a good laugh and went outside to demolish the rest of the plateful Grandma had made for us, along with the jug of orange juice from the fruit of her bountiful navel orange tree – honour having been served and a (new) tradition upheld.