In no time at all, our house became inundated with pets. Cats, dogs, budgies, rabbits and, of course, the chickens — any stray creature found a home with us. When our cat population hit thirteen, Mum decided it was too much and found homes for half of them. Then, my white rabbit escaped, one of the dogs was run over, and another cat went wild.
The dog we lost had been an old and treasured member of the family. I decided we needed another dog to replace him, so I persuaded Mum to look around some local pet shops.
‘We won’t buy one, Mum,’ I confided, ‘we’ll just look.’
‘No more animals, Sally.’
‘I know, Mum, I know, but can’t we look?’
‘All right. It’ll be an outing for you kids.’
A pet shop nearby had six kelpie-cross pups, all of them adorable. We all huddled around their cage in awe as they licked our fingers and looked at us appealingly.
‘That one,’ I said to Mum, as I eyed the largest pup. ‘We’ll take that one, Mum.’
‘I’m not buying a dog, Sally. I’ve hardly got enough money to feed what we’ve got without adding to it.’
‘That one’s older than the others,’ interrupted the shopkeeper. ‘No one seems to want him.’ It was the best thing he could have said.
‘You see, Mum, no one wants him. What’ll become of him if we don’t buy him?’
‘Can I take him out of the cage and hold him, Mum, it might be the only cuddle he ever gets.’
‘Good idea, little lady,’ said the storekeeper enthusiastically as he opened the cage.
I lifted the pup out, he was gangly and awkward. ‘Isn’t he beautiful.’ I held him up to Mum.
‘Oh my God, look at the size of his paws, they’re huge.’
‘I’m sure his mother was only a corgi,’ said the shopkeeper quickly.
‘More like an Alsatian. No, Sally, not now I’ve seen his feet. He’ll be a big boy when he’s fully grown.’
‘But Mum, we’ve never had a big dog.’
‘Please, Mum,’ pleaded my brothers and sisters.
‘We-ll,’ Mum sighed as the pup gave her a lick.
‘Be a good guard dog, Mum,’ said Billy.
‘I’ll let you have him for half price,’ coaxed the storekeeper.
‘Oh, all right,’ Mum groaned, ‘we’ll take him.’
‘A real bargain, Mum,’ I smiled.
We named the pup Blackie, because he was mostly black. A few weeks later, we renamed him Widdles, because of a tendency he had that we didn’t seem to be able to train him out of.
One night, Mum complained about this new name. ‘I feel silly calling out Widdles when I want him to come for his tea, the neighbours are all laughing.’ So, while we all continued calling him Widdles, from then on, whenever Mum wanted him, she shouted out, ‘Here Widdees, here boy.’ The neighbours still laughed, but, in Mum’s mind, it made some sort of difference.
The only pets we weren’t allowed to keep were wild ones. Goannas, tadpoles, frogs, gilgies* and insects all had to be returned alive and well to their natural habitat. Nan influenced us greatly when it came to our attitudes to the wildlife around us.
Our lives revolved around her, now she kept the home fires burning while Mum worked three part-time jobs, two with a florist and one cleaning. Nan did the cooking, the cleaning, the washing, the ironing and the mending, as well as chopping all our wood and looking after the garden. The kitchen had become her own personal domain, and she disliked us kids intruding. ‘You kids get out of my kitchen,’ she’d yell as she flicked a tea towel towards us. Even when we offered to help, she scolded us and sent us outside to play.
Nan fostered our interest in the local wildlife by showing great concern for any new creature we brought home from the swamp. Frogs and goannas seemed to be her favourites.
One afternoon, I discovered a big, fat bobtail goanna curled up under a bit of rusty tin that leant against the wall of our chook shed.
‘Jill, come quick, look what I’ve found.’ We both lay, stomach-down, in the dirt and stared into its glassy eyes for ages.
When Nan found us, she said, ‘What are you kids up to?’ According to her, we were always up to something.
‘It’s a goanna, Nan. Bobtail, and a beauty. Look.’
‘Oooh he’s fat,’ Nan exclaimed. ‘Now you kids leave him there. He can live there if he wants. Don’t you go hurtin’ him.’
‘Course we’re not gunna hurt him,’ I said indignantly. Nan would never forgive us if she thought we’d been deliberately unkind to wild creatures.
‘Can we feed him, Nan?’ I asked.
‘No need to, he’ll find his own tucker.’
I thought that was a bit mean. I decided I’d like to tame that goanna, so that night after tea, I crept out with an old bit of stale cake. I slid it under the tin, and then, in a quiet voice, I let the goanna know who had put it there. After all, I didn’t want him palling up with someone who hadn’t even gone to the trouble of feeding him.
The next morning, my friend had disappeared. Nan came over to check on him and found me squatting in the sand with a puzzled expression on my face.
‘Naah, he’s gone. Where do you reckon he’s gone? I wanted him for a pet.’
‘I bet he’s hiding further back, he doesn’t want us to see him. Look out, I’ll move the tin along a bit.’ I slid back in the dirt and Nan slowly moved the tin. No goanna.
‘How did this get here?’ Nan asked. In her hand was the stale bit of yellow cake I’d put there the night before.
‘Thought he might be hungry,’ I replied guiltily.
‘Told you he could get his own tucker. You’ve scared him off, now.’
Nan explained to me that it wasn’t the right kind of food for a goanna.
I just nodded. I was convinced he’d had a nibble of Mum’s cake and crawled away to die. I felt awful, it was a terrible thing to have the poisoning of a goanna on your conscience.
The highlight of 1961 occurred when I was walking home late one afternoon and happened to hear an urgent call coming from the bush nearby. I stopped dead in my tracks and listened intently. There it was again, a frantic Cheep! Cheep! I walked carefully into the bush until I came to a small clearing; there, at the base of a tall, white gum tree was a tiny baby mudlark. I stepped back and looked up at the branches high above me. Amongst the moving leaves, I could just glimpse the dark outline of a small nest. I knew there was no chance of returning him up there, it was far too high, and, even if I did, the mother might smell human on her baby and kick him out. I’d heard of animals doing that, birds might be the same. There was only one thing I could do, take him home.
When Mum saw the bulge in the pocket of my dress, the sighed, ‘Oh no, what have you got in there?’
I showed her the bird. ‘I’m going to call him Muddy,’ I said optimistically. I knew Mum was fed up with me bringing home strays.
‘No more pets, Sally. I told you, no more pets. You kids bring them home and I’m the one that ends up feeding them.’
‘But he’s only a baby. I promise I’ll look after him.’
‘What have you got there?’ Nan said as she entered the fray.
‘It’s a baby mudlark, Nan, fell out of a tree. Mum wants to kick it out.’
‘Sally, I do not!’
‘Then you’ll let me keep it?’
‘Oh … all right, but you have to look after it. I’m not having anything to do with it.’
‘Aah, ya better with dogs, anyway.’ Mum had a natural rapport with dogs.
‘You know, Sally, there might be something wrong with that bird. I’ve heard of mothers getting rid of babies for that reason. He might not live, he’s very small.’
‘Hmmph, he’ll be all right,’ said Nan, ‘bit of food, make sure he’s warm at night, that’s all he needs.’ Nan loved birds, no one was allowed to say a word against her bantam hens, and even when her favourite pink and grey galah bit off half the top of Jill’s finger, it was Jill’s fault, not cocky’s.
I devised my own method of feeding Muddy. I simply placed a small piece of meat on the end of my finger and then stuck my finger down his throat. The technique seemed to suit him, because in no time at all he’d grown into a fine, healthy bird. I was his mother and he was my pal, and while our greatest adventure together was no more than running errands to the corner shop, in my mind, we experienced far more exciting escapades. About that time, I was into reading Famous Five books, and Muddy fulfilled the role of Timmy, George’s dog.
At night, Mud slept on a chair in my room. Jill didn’t like him much.
‘Don’t put him next to my bed, he might poop on me, and if I’m asleep, I won’t be able to wipe it off.’ She flung herself under the rugs, leaving me to study her lumpy figure in resentment.
I wonder if I could make him poop on her, I thought. I glanced at Mud, he was perched in his usual place, his feet entwined around the narrow rung across the chair back next to my bed. Better not encourage him, I decided, Mum would never forgive me. Still, I could always claim it was an accident. With that thought, I yawned and snuggled down. ‘Night Mud,’ I whispered. He stared back, his eyes and beak intense. I often wished birds could talk. I was considering trying to teach Mud some sign language. My eyes grew heavy and gradually closed. I smiled. Mud raised his left claw twice. Yes! Twice for yes and once for no! I knew he could do it. That night, I dreamt of all the tricks I would teach him. What a show that would be, Mud and me, stars!
The next morning, I awoke to silence, I yawned and stretched. Normally, Muddy’s shrill, hungry calls disturbed my sleep; this morning, there were none. I glanced at his chair, Mud was hanging upside down. I half smiled. What’s he doing, I thought. Must be a new trick.
‘Birds just don’t do tricks like that, dear,’ Mum explained to me later.
I felt terrible that Mud had hung stiffly upside down, not because he was concentrating, but because rigor mortis had set in.
He joined a host of past pets buried under the fig tree in the far corner of our yard. I felt that some of my own personal status died with him. Now, when I ran errands to the corner shop, no one commented on the wild mudlark perched precariously on my shoulder. There was just me, a scrawny, pigtailed kid wearing grubby clothes and a sulky look. Adventures, even in your imagination, were no fun on your own.
The swamp behind our place had become an important place for me. It was now part of me, part of what I was as a person. When I was in the swamp, I lost all track of time. I wallowed in the small, muddish-brown creek that meandered through on its way to join the Canning River. I caught gilgies by hanging over an old stormwater drain and wriggling my fingers in the water. As soon as the gilgies latched on, it required only a quick flick of the wrist to land them, gasping, on the bank. I imagined myself as an adventurer, always curious to know what was around the next bend, or behind the clump of taller gums that I glimpsed in the distance.
I loved to think of the swamp as a very wild place. Every summer, our neighbours caught at least three or four large dugites and tiger snakes. It was strange, because, in all my forays into the bush, I never encountered any. Of course, I sensed they were about, but as long as I stayed out of their way, they seemed happy to stay out of mine.
Jill and I had many fun times down there. And we were always carting home some new find to show Nan. Once she’d inspected our prizes and we’d discussed what they were and how they lived, she’d make us return them to the swamp.
But there was no need to visit the swamp during winter, because our backyard invariably flooded with water teeming with tadpoles and small fish. Normally, the water rose to just above our ankles, but after a really good rain, it would get as high as halfway up our lower legs. Such days were greeted with squeals of delight as we splashed boisterously about, squeezing our toes into the muddy bottom and flicking up sand at one another.
‘We don’t need a swimming pool, do we, Mum?’ I laughed as I splashed towards her.
‘No, not only have we got water, but fish as well!’
Nan had a less optimistic nature, especially during winter. Her view of the physical world was a deeply personal one. And when she wasn’t outside chopping wood or raking leaves, she was observing the weather. Her concern with atmospheric conditions was based on a rather pessimistic view of the frequency of natural disasters. Even though she avidly listened to weather reports on the radio, she never put her complete faith in any meteorologist’s opinion. Nan knew their predictions weren’t as reliable as her own.
Daily, she checked the sky, the clouds, the wind, and, on particularly still days, the reactions of our animals. Sometimes, she would sit up half the night checking on the movement of a particular star, or pondering the meaning of a new colour she’d seen in the sky at sunset.
On rare occasions, Mum was called in for consultation. It always amused me to see them standing at the end of our footpath, arms raised upwards, as if in supplication — Nan pointing out various dubious cumulus formations, and Mum nodding and muttering, ‘Yes, yes. I see what you mean.’ Then, they would both test the wind direction with a wet finger. Nan’s catchphrase at such times was, ‘You never know, Glad. You just never know what the weather could bring.’
Since Dad had died, Nan had developed various emergency routines to cope with what she considered likely natural disasters. For earthquakes, she instructed us to run onto the oval opposite our house, avoiding the electric light poles as we went. If we were unfortunate enough to have the earth open up in front of us, we had to jump as high as we could, and hope that by the time we came back down, the earth had closed up again.
While the threat of a major quake was considered extremely remote by the rest of our neighbourhood, Nan had convinced us that it was one of the hazards of daily living. I used to have nightmares where I’d picture myself running onto the oval in my pyjamas as electric light poles crashed and thundered around me.
Besides earthquakes, Nan feared storms the most. Lightning and thunder, her old favourites, never failed to trigger her panic button. Tearing through the house like a whirlwind, she swept us up in her arms and deposited us in a jumbled heap in the hall. Then she raced to the back verandah and dragged in a box of firewood. Hurrying back, she thrust a large, splintery piece of wood into each pair of reluctant hands, with the cryptic instruction, ‘Don’t you kids let go of those or you’ll get electrocuted.’
We were so frightened we didn’t dare move. While we sat, panic-stricken on the floor, Nan hurried from room to room, switching off lights and throwing sheets over mirrors, crockery, cutlery, the bath and even the kitchen sink. Once this was done, she dashed to the meter box and pulled out all the fuses.
In Nan’s mind, lightning and electricity were one and the same, both dangerous and totally untrustworthy. She removed the fuses because it meant the electricity, inspired by the raging storm, couldn’t escape and harm us. She threw sheets and blankets over anything shiny, because it was common knowledge that there was nothing lightning loved better than a shiny surface.
If we were lucky, the storm soon passed, but there were occasions when we sat on the floor all afternoon, clutching our chunks of firewood.
‘Can’t we get up now?’
‘You just sit still,’ Nan said tersely, glowering over us as she guarded the door to the kitchen in case one of us should make a bid for freedom. ‘You kids don’t know what storms are. I’ve seen them up North. Terrible, terrible things. People have been killed.’
When Mum returned from work, we would still be sitting there, our limbs numb with cold.
‘Oh get up, you kids,’ Mum said in exasperation as she threw Nan a disgusted look. ‘God Nanna, I bet you’ve had them there all day, they must be frozen stiff.’
‘Better cold than dead.’
Mum replaced the fuses and lit the fire and Nan stormed off to her room in a fit of rage. She considered Mum was totally ignorant when it came to child safety.
‘Stupid old bugger,’ Mum muttered as she made us some toast.
By the time teatime came around, Nan had cooled down. She would emerge, grumpily, from her room and begin to peel potatoes, the whole time complaining about the weather in a low-pitched monotone. We knew then everything was back to normal.
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* gilgies — a small freshwater crayfish. (Known in most parts of Australia as yabbies.)