Another lady who came to the door wanting my services was Mrs. Lyster Foster from ‘Rosedale’, Campbell Town. Mum said I could go, and the job again was cooking plus looking after their daughter Elspeth. I only saw Mrs. Foster in the morning when she handed me a slate, with the meals written on it that she required me to cook. If the maid was away, and I had to take the meals into the dining room, I also saw her, and her husband, then. I had to dress Elspeth in the morning, but she led me a dance because she would get under her mother’s bed, then under her father’s, with me in pursuit—never once scolded by either to stop. The home was a gracious white, two-storey stone and handsome brick dwelling—once described as a chaste Italian villa—set in sloping green pastures high on the banks of the Elizabeth River, about 2½ miles west of Campbell Town. The raised verandah was set with heavy stone flags, and so was a truly delightful place from which to enter the home. The windows had solid cedar shutters on the inside, which could be closed across on the inside very quickly in the event of attack by aborigines or bushrangers. The drawing room with its high ceiling had an elaborate hand-made and hand-carved plaster feature, like lace on it. The room was adorned with beautiful rosewood and mahogany furniture. The upstairs rooms were never used but I was required to vacuum and dust them every week (although I wasn’t told that until I arrived there). At first it was a pleasure, then I became absolutely sick of vacuuming a clean room, so in the end I set the cleaner going, sat down on a chair and knitted for half an hour and no one was any the wiser.
On the property lived a Mr. and Mrs. Claude Standaloft—Claude doing all the chores that were required to be done around the property—and they were very friendly and it was only a minute’s walk to their home. One night when the maid was away, the Standalofts were going to have a party and asked me to go over fairly early and help, so I thought I’d serve dinner a quarter of an hour early, because as well as taking in the dinner and waiting on table, I had to wash up afterwards. So, in I went with the soup at 6.15 p.m. and was smartly told, ‘Take that back to the kitchen and return, as I want you,’ by Mrs. Foster. They were sitting by the fire and were ready, but ‘Rules are rules,’ she said. I returned to the dining room and was ordered to stand facing the fireplace at the other end of the room (there were two fireplaces) and stay there until 6.30. I did. I’d like to see anyone tell me to do that now. I’d tell them what to do with their job. The Standalofts just couldn’t believe it, and neither could any of their guests. However, one day when the Fosters were going to Melbourne for a holiday, she said my services would be no longer required after they returned, as I didn’t sound my h’s and she didn’t want Elspeth speaking like me when she grew up. I was petrified, as I had to face Mum now, with the sack, so I asked Joyce Woods, the maid, to come home with me, which she did, and it helped soften the blow, although Mum couldn’t believe anyone could sack a person over not sounding their h’s. Later Mum rang her, and Mrs. Foster told her it was the truth. She also said that I was a good cook and clean worker so thankfully, that was the end of it. But, sadly, Elspeth died a few years later, suddenly. ‘It’s nice to be important, but it’s certainly much more important to be nice.’ ‘God doesn’t pay debts with money.’
Later, a Mrs. Crosby Lyne from ‘Riccarton’ (a property a mile east of Campbell Town), came to our door and asked Mum if I could go and cook for her, and Mum agreed again, but I had to be in by 10 p.m. every night. The housemaid was Maff Oakley who thought she owned the place, because she had been there that long and the shepherd, Tom Brown, was her boy friend—he had been there equally as long. The yardsman was Bill Barwick and he lived on the property; the milkman, Bill Blackwell, and his son Cliff, looked after the horses. The Lyne family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Lyne (Crosby and Nora) and three children, Ronald, Noreen (Bay) and Kathleen (Bub). When I went there Ronald was nine, Bay five and Bub three. My first instructions were, ‘Call Ronald, Master Ronald, and the girls Miss Bay and Miss Kathleen.’ That will be the day, I said to myself, when I’ll call a three year old Miss, and I never gave any of them those titles all the time I was there. The first few months I often found a sixpence or a shilling under place mats, vases, etc, put there to test my honesty, but they soon tired of that.
I was told I wouldn’t last there long, as cooks came and went, because they couldn’t tolerate the jealousies of the pimping maid. You dare not speak to Bub or she would quickly take her inside to the dining-room. She was ‘hers’, so no fondness was allowed by others, but I took no notice of that, I made doll clothes, bought a doll and dressed it and gave it to her one day when Mrs. Lyne was in Hobart. The maid found out, bounced into the kitchen, passed me with shut eyes, then turned abruptly on her heels and slapped me across my face, because she said I had kicked her when passing. I said, ‘I’ll give you kick, my lady!’—and I took hold of the top of her long white starched apron and see-sawed her backwards and forwards till suddenly the apron split right down the middle. She was as furious as I was then, so, ‘I’ll tell Mrs. Lyne when she comes home’, was all she could squawk. I replied, ‘I’ll tell her first, as you started it’. I didn’t get the sack, she did.
When I smacked Bub one day for kicking me, the maid quickly reported it to Mrs. Lyne, and if the dinner was five minutes late, she’d go to the dining room and tell Mrs. Lyne, ‘It’s not my fault that the meal isn’t on the table but Marjorie’s.’ Then out would come Mrs. Lyne to see what I was up to. The maid would say to Mrs. Lyne in front of me, ‘When I’m cooking the meal, it’s always on time, isn’t it Mrs. Lyne?’, and Mrs. Lyne would just mumble ‘Yes’. ‘A boaster and a fool are two of a school.’
The boy friend was just as paranoid as she was. One day he asked me to get up at 5 a.m. to get his breakfast, as he had to go round the sheep early. I told him it was my day off, so he’d have to get his own breakfast. I got up at eight that morning and I was going to cycle to Ross for the day. When I walked out to the back verandah where the men had their meals, the boy friend was still sitting there waiting for his breakfast. When Mrs. Lyne came out to make some breakfast for herself and Mr. Lyne she asked him why he wasn’t around the sheep and he told her that he wasn’t going around the sheep until he had breakfast, and that I had refused to get it for him. So Mrs. Lyne went in and told Mr. Lyne. Out he came, and asked the shepherd outside, and there they had a first class row—Mr. Lyne praising me up, the shepherd running me down. Then he was sacked on the spot as Mrs. Lyne had joined them by this time and she told him I didn’t have to get his breakfast that morning.
Some of the things that went on at ‘Riccarton’ I did not agree with. If I was there on my day off I was given sheets, or similar items, to mend. When cream went sour in a sponge cake, I had to scrape it off, fill it with jam and give it to the men to eat. All left-overs the staff had to eat—such as cold meats, made into a curry or stew. When poultry, or a leg was cooked for indoors, I had to cook a shoulder of mutton for the kitchen. I had to cut the sheep down too, a job I hated. One time I burned my leg badly with the stopper of the hot water bag whilst sleeping. Why I didn’t wake up I’ll never know, but the burn was deep set and wouldn’t heal, and in the end I had to go to Doctor Webster. He saturated a piece of cotton wool with some lotion and pushed it in the hole and it cleaned out the pus, then the wound started to heal. There was a dent there on my right leg for many years, and the mark still shows.
Another time on a windy, wet night when I was washing up, there was a loud explosion and the light globe burst, the glass going everywhere. I ran towards the door (as I thought), screaming, and ran into the oven. Mrs. Lyne came running out with a torch, took me upstairs and put me to bed, then brought me up a cup of tea. Mrs. Lyne was a nurse before she married, so knew just what to do as I was in shock. It seems that lightning had struck the transformer that was in one of their paddocks.
Mrs. Lyne used to have an aunt stay there quite often, and as I was very taken with her I did her many favours. On one visit, when she left she gave me two pounds and I bought an antique china mermaid from Mrs. Paget in Launceston with the money. Mrs. Lyne said it was a waste when she saw what I had bought, but it is beautiful.
I received a pound a week wages at all my places of employment, and the first I received from Mrs. Lyne went on a down payment on a wireless for Mum. The next present I bought her was a pair of plush doormats for the hall, and then I bought myself a winter coat with a large grey fur collar. I thought I was made. When I was at ‘Riccarton’ Mr. Lyne was the Warden of Campbell Town, and after the Town Hall was built, Mr. Lyne paid the bill for the afternoon tea on opening day. That was all right but I had to do all the cooking!
They went to Hobart for the weekend prior to the opening so I could spend all the time cooking cakes, and one order was for twelve sponge cakes—all different. It was easy cooking the plain, the chocolate, the orange and so on, then it became difficult after the usual run of sponges. However I disguised them with fillings, icings, coconut or corn flour. I had to cook small cakes as well. Lil Graham (now Mrs. Cocker) was the house maid then, and we were both asked to wait on tables as well. No one gave us a tip, nor did I get any extra for doing all the cooking! (The Campbell Town Hall was cleared of debt on January 1965 after 25 years.)
Another time when Mr. and Mrs. Lyne went away for the weekend they asked Bill (Cliff’s dad) to kill a turkey, and me to cook it. I cooked it alright—black! When I put it in to cook, Bill stoked up with coal and the oven became too hot. However, he buried that, killed another, and I cooked the second one perfectly. I also burnt a fruit cake once, buried it, and cooked another. Bill always put too much coal in the oven. He wouldn’t be told, he knew. At that time I was cooking in a new Aga stove that had just been installed, and I was getting used to the different heats. I soon picked it up, and the cakes started to turn out perfectly, so Mrs. Lyne encouraged me to enter some in the Campbell Town Show.
The first thing I entered was a pound of butter, in 1937. I won a first prize which was the blue ticket, and two shillings and sixpence, the latter being kept by Mrs. Lyne, as it was her butter. Mrs. Lyne told me I stayed the longest of all the cooks she had ever employed, and I even helped out occasionally after I married. We were very compatible. Her favourite morning tea was hot toast spread with dripping and pepper and salt added.