Auntie Doris's Story

LIVING IN THE NINETEEN THIRTIES

by

DORIS STANDRING (NEE MIOSGE)

born 5^th September 1927

On the 3^rd January 1931 my mother died. My brother Frank was eighteen. My sisters were Gladys fourteen, Lila twelve, Irene ten, Edna eight and I was three.

Before Mum died Gladys stayed home from school on Monday to wash and on Wednesday to do the ironing.

My father sat on the verandah for a fortnight. Then he called Gladys to help him sew the clothes that Mum had cut out.

Aunty Emma and Uncle Charlie said they would look after us until we were old enough to look after ourselves. Of course it was too much for her. She was expecting her fifth child in eight years. Uncle Charlie had been wounded in the 1914-1918 war.

We lived in a three bedroom house. The boys belonging to Aunty Emma and Uncle Charlie slept in one room. Our cousin Kathleen had a bed and Gladys had a bed. Lila, Irene, Edna and I slept in a double bed. It was very cramped.

Gladys was carrying a boiler of boiling water down the stairs and tripped and was very badly scalded. She landed in hospital. At the same time Auntie Emma had her fifth child. Gladys really knew the meaning of hard work.

Uncle Charlie sat Gladys down and made her write a letter to Dad because we were making too much noise. He said we would all be put in an orphanage if she didn't keep the children quiet. He never posted the letter.

Lila was picked to play basketball against Brisbane and Auntie Emma wouldn't let her go. Lila and Irene were sitting for scholarships.

My sisters went to school with bread and syrup sandwiches. No butter.

My cousin and I lit a fire under the house. Aunty Emma really belted me. She didn't hit my cousin at all and he was the one with the matches.

Lila told the schoolteacher how unhappy we all were. He gave her a stamp and an envelope and she wrote to Dad telling him how unhappy we all were. Dad came and took us in his Willys Knight car to St George in South Western Queensland. Lila and Irene stayed in Toowoomba to finish their schooling. I remember how happy we all were.

We spent the night under the bridge in Goondiwindi. Edna dropped threepence in the fire and didn't she yell.

My father was a shearer and Frank worked with him. Dad had rented an orchard. The house consisted of a front verandah, a kitchen a bedroom with a pit toilet outside. Dad and Frank slept on the verandah. We bathed in the river.

Dad took Edna and I to school and expected us to find our own way home. So we got lost. We saw some goats and climbed a fence. It was moonlight and we saw a man on horseback. We told him where we lived and he took us home.

Our neighbours were a black camp and a Maori woman with a tattooed face. She had escaped from a sideshow. The other neighbour was a Chinaman by the name of Sam Long. They were good neighbours and we liked them.

Dad went shearing and left Frank in charge. Frank had done some work for a farmer and hadn't been paid. So he went looking for work. That left Glad Edna and I alone. I don't know how Glad felt but Edna and I thought it was a lovely time.

We came home from school one day. The police had rounded the indigenous people up with guns and dogs and put them in the back of trucks and taken them away.

I remember three old ladies came to visit us. Glad made them a cup of tea and home made biscuits. Granny Kelly said “Girls of today are useless, they can't shear a sheep or ringbark a tree” Then she got her pipe out, filled it with tobacco and lit it. We were fascinated and talked about it for ages.

Dad came home and went to the council. With all the people out of work they gave him a job.

We shifted into a house called “Welcome Home”.

Dad had promised Mum that he would send us to the nearest Protestant church. This was the Church of England. The minister's name was Mr Leak, so he was referred to as 'Old Springa'.

He told Dad that he had to go to church. So we went to the Presbyterian church.

It was Christmas time. Dad made a Christmas cake with and emu's egg in it. Lila and Irene came home. Irene was the youngest person to pass the scholarship ever. What a marvellous Christmas! Edna got a book. She had already found it and read it and put it back in it's hiding place. I got a doll.

Our neighbours were the Blands and the Websters. The Bland's house was unlined, so Mrs Bland lined the walls with Women's Weekly paper. Edna loved to read and she spent a lot of time over there reading the walls.

There was an eccentric named “Jack the Fisherman”. Timmy Webster was giving Edna a double home from school on his bike. They both yelled out “G'Day Jack the Fisherman”. He shook his fist at Edna and called her a whore. Edna asked Gladys who was still only sixteen what it meant. Gladys said “I'll look it up in the dictionary”. So they looked up hoar frost.

I was climbing over the canvas top of Dad's car and went through it and really scratched my leg. Gladys put kerosene on it.

The electricity was only in the main part of town. The power house was near the Presbyterian church and was powered by wood.

Irene and Lila did twelve months commercial work at the convent. The Irene had to leave school at thirteen. Lila was fifteen.

Lila got a job at the Australian Hotel as a waitress. Irene worked for a Mrs Davison. Her daughter came home from school and asked Irene to clean her shoes. She was the same age as Irene. They had an argument and Irene won. Mrs Davison was very amused and said nothing to Irene. Mrs Davison told the neighbours about it.

Dad bought land and built a house for us. It was built on stilts and had a verandah around it. It had two bedrooms, a dining room, a kitchen and a bathroom. The bathtub was tin and had a hole in the bottom, so he cemented the bottom. We had bore water that was hot and a rainwater tank. Dad made most of the furniture, including a Coolgardie safe which kept the butter hard and you could set a jelly in it.

Our neighbours were the Tebbs. I can remember Dad saying “Mrs Tebb is a good woman. She never leaves the house.” He wasn't joking.

The Tebbs' house had a lot of rooms in it as they had thirteen children in the family. It had a dirt floor that Mrs Tebb watered with a watering can. Edna Tebb was the same age as Edna. Coming home from school she called Edna “Teacher's pet”. Edna didn't like her at all.

My good friend was Maggie Tebb.

Frank came home and he was starving and his shoes were flapping. He brought a yellow dog named Tripe. He followed Frank up the steps. Frank threw him down the steps. Irene hit Frank for being cruel and the dog flew up the steps and bit Irene. Not a fair world.

Glad was washing which consisted of soaking the clothes overnight, lighting the copper and everything that was cotton got boiled. Then it had to be rinsed and blued and starched. Washing was a full day's work.

Dad and Gladys made the soap. I know it had lots of fat and caustic soda and kerosene in it.

We sang hymns from Sankeys Hymn book. Lila was singing “There is one who finds us and that one is Jesus”. I said “Jesus didn't find us when we were lost, Neville Sting did”

We had a grape vine, passionfruit vine and watermelons.

Glad got first prize at the show for her carnations. I was so proud.

Dad made ginger beer. Dad didn't drink or smoke.

The school consisted of four rooms and an office built in the Queenslander style. Two children with switches brushed the flies off our backs as we marched up the steps.

Sandy blight was rife and we marched over to the doctors to get brown drops in our eyes.

Mr O'Carrol had been gassed in the 1914-1918 war. On Anzac day we were loaded into the back of a truck (no seat belts) to put flowers on the graves of the returned soldiers. On the eleventh of November we were stood out in the blazing sun while Mr O'Carrol remembered. He would wheeze and say “I remember so and so. He was only sixteen. He shouldn't have been here and there he is lying dead”. He remembered every dead person in his squadron. So many kids fainted but he didn't care.

When the river went down the sand flies were terrible. In every classroom there was a kerosene tin with holes punched in the side. There were stones and dried grass and cow dung. It didn't smell so hot but it kept the sand flies away. It was lit and smouldered away all day.

It was Monday morning and Gladys was washing. The porridge boiled over so Edna picked up the handle with one hand and it was hot so she used the other hand. She went to school and her hands really hurt, so she was sent to the doctor to get them dressed and the doctor drove her home.

Dr McDonald employed the Weatheralls. They were black and lived somewhere at the back of the doctor's and they were never taken away and were sent to school. Two big boys were teasing Daisy Weatherall, a little five year old. Edna got upset and went and told the teacher. She said “they were calling her a black gin'. He said “Well she is” and did nothing about it.

Evelyn Tebb was blind – she had meningitis when she was thirteen. Edna wrote away to the blind society and Evelyn learnt braille. Edna was thirteen at the time. Evelyn was an adult.

After school, Edna read to us. Evelyn was one of the Tebbs that always listened to the stories. One afternoon Edna and I were alone and there were about four of the Tebbs listening as she read Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Edna was bitten by a centipede. She said “I've been bitten by a scorpion and I've only an hour to live”. She jumped up and down and yelled “I'm going to die” at the top of her voice. She helped Evelyn over the fence. Mrs Tebb put vinegar on the bite and said “It's only a centipede, you'll be all right.”

Dad bought a book called “All Quiet on the Western Front”. It was about boy soldiers in the 1914 war in Germany. It got to the part where the officer was in hospital and his wife came to see him. They put a screen around the bed and the wife got into bed with her husband. Dad said “That's enough” and took the book off Edna. It was the greatest anti-war book ever written. Edna never read the book. I did the first chance I got.

I remember the galahs at sunset. They would fly home to their nests and the white cockatoos and the green parrots and the whole of the sky was filled with birds.

It was a time before vandalism.. There was a pepper tree and underneath it was a bowerbird's bower. It was swept clean with a circle of broken glass. Castor oil came in a blue bottle and neatly arranged was a bit of blue glass in the other glasses with green glass. Maggie Tebb and I never touched anything. Sometimes when we looked he would be hopping along.. he ignored us.. we ignored him.

Lila got a job at Krolik's butcher shop. One of the butchers told Lila that Mr Krolik had taken money out of the till and was up to something. Mr Krolik called Lila into the back room of the shop and told her that there was money missing from the till and if she went to bed with him he wouldn't go to the police. Lila said “If anyone's going to the police it will be me” she called him a dirty old man and said she was going back to work at the pub where she was always treated as a lady and she did.

I can remember there was an old tyre for a swing and a bit of rusty wire broke off and went through Edna's finger. Gladys yanked the wire out and put kerosene on it.

At night time we slept on the verandah. The evening primrose grew wild and the scent off the primrose and the sound of a mouth organ playing sent us to sleep in our own beds.

We go on holiday

Frank did some work for a farmer and was paid in a car engine, so Dad and Frank built a utility around it. We left home in the middle of the night. We arrived at Dirranbandi just an sunrise and across the river were thousands of brolgas dancing all in time. There were no such things as caravan parks or motels. We followed the stock route where there was a cold water tap. The bitumen was only in the main street of town. All the rest of the roads were dirt.

The first stop was Collarenabri. The next West Wyalong, where there were derelict houses from Wyalong to West Wyalong.

We went to Auntie Olga's. She called Dad a rolling stone. Uncle Will took us to Wagga and introduced us as Max and Hannah's children while Dad and Frank built haystacks.

We went to Auntie Elsie's where she gave us ten shillings each and said don't tell your uncle. Uncle Colin gave us ten shillings each and said don't tell your aunt.

Both Auntie Elsie and Auntie Olga wanted Lila and Irene to stay with them. They didn't want Edna or I.

We went on to Uncle Alf's who was just an older look-a-like of Dad, then on to Dad's sister at Milbrulong.

The next night we camped at the railway station at Yass. Dad said he was magic and could burn stones, but we all knew it was coal. The trains at that time were all steam trains.

We left the ute at Fairfield and went into Sydney by train. We stayed at The Peoples Palace for two nights. We walked over the bridge and went to the zoo. We went back to the ute and went on our way.

It was raining heavily when we got to Mount White and a farmer said we could use his shed till our clothes dried. They had several children and we picked flannel flowers and Christmas bells and sold them at the side of the road.

We went on to young and bought cherries, then on to Orange where a box of oranges had fallen off the back of a truck.

The Roberts' lived across the road from us. Dick Roberts had a garage near the hotel. The people who worked with him said Lila was good looking, was he interested? He said “It's her sister that I'm interested in and I'm serious”

Mrs Brown, the hotelier asked Gladys to come and work for her. She said she would if she could bring me with her. Gladys couldn't understand why all these men were being very polite and wanted an introduction to her.

When I was nine and Edna was fourteen, she boarded with friends in Toowoomba to finish her education to be a schoolteacher. She had passed her scholarship. At this stage Lila and Irene both worked at the hospital. So when Lila had days off I stayed with her at home. When Irene was off, the same thing happened.

Dad deemed us old enough to look after ourselves and went shearing. So Dick Roberts drove Gladys home from work and on the fifth of March 1939 they were married. I continued to live at home until the third of September when Mr Menzies gave a speech on the wireless that war had been declared and we were at war. So that was the end of an era.

Dad sold the house and gave Gladys the money to look after me. She deserved every penny of it.

Lila went with friends to work in the munitions factory and Irene stayed home and lived at the hospital.

It was a time of freedom. There were no road rules, no permits to build a house and I was never cold or hungry.