Under The Mallee Bough

The passing of the amateur. If I consult this little pencilled in book of a shopping bill from a Mr. D. Lambert & Son, general store and victuals supplier of Towitta, for the fortnight in February 1936, I see that a packet of Yo-Yo biscuits was a mere 7 pence, and while the entire shopping for that bill was a total of 1/14/7 (one pound fourteen shillings and seven pence) there was deducted for 4 dozen eggs and 6 pounds of butter as barter for a total of 9 /6 pence taken off the bill….and then Mr. Lambert would continue on his way in his horse and sulky delivery wagon to the next family farm to repeat the procedure…a round trip he did once a fortnight to deliver the grocery list and pick up bartered exchanged produce. A congenial and fruitful arrangement of the times. These casual trades between shop-keeper and households were common fare in the times…there is also record of an Indian dry-goods trader used to do the rounds, selling or trading cloth and ha

  Joyce Delivers the Flowers. “Joyce Hartingdale .. Secretary” the writing on the triangular wedge of wood prominent at the front of her desk was written in bright, gold paint. It was there the first day she came to the job at the office situated at the front of the “Shoebridge Furniture Factory”. A job she had come all the way from Manchester, England for…well…it was not just the job, but she had applied for the secretarial job while home in England, fresh graduated from the secretarial college where she had seen the advertisement seeking young ladies to come to the Australian colonies for a bright, fresh life…or at least that is how Joyce saw it… and she took it. The telegram from her mother back in Manchester sat on the passenger’s seat of the Morris Minor 1000 sedan she was at that very moment driving out to the country town of Kanmantoo so as to attend the funeral of an obscure uncle who had just passed away. “ Uncle Stan has died”. The telegram starte

  A Quiet Little Corner of the World.   A  respectable tradesman I have known for many years told me of when he was a young blade, he and some friends rented a flat above a funeral director’s office and “workshop”. If they were busy and short-handed, they would call on him for some work. He didn’t mind as it helped pay the rent. In the early days the old hands would play jokes on him, with a sort of “black humour”. But sometimes he was roped into the more mundane activities of the industry. He told me of this little “event”…of course, I have taken the usual liberties with the story-line. It went like this: A Quiet Little Corner of the World. The van slowed momentarily in the driveway as Andy and Sam waited for the roller-door to open. A large sign embossed in black on the right hand side of the door said “TIMOTHY & SON Funeral Directors.” Sam pulled the van up inside the cavernous building. They had just opened the back door and were reaching in to tak

  The end of stories. I can remember exactly when that feeling came over me that here was one of those moments when, through some “native intuition”, you can feel that it is the ending of an era…a passing of a moment in time when something important is being lost… I was at my aged mother’s house doing some regular maintenance..I am a carpenter and her house, built by my Italian father just after the second world war, was a hotch-potch of scrounged materials and added-on-as-needed rooms that now, some sixty years later was a veritable endless loop of patch-up and maintain. My mother was quite old at the time…she is deceased now..and I was there having a small lunch after doing the jobs..and it was at the moment when I was spreading some honey on a bit of toast that I remembered something.. “Mum….do you remember telling us about that old chap back there in your Mallee days, who used to raid those honey-bee hives in the hollowed trees and he had a big square

  The Rose and The Plough.   In the back-blocks of the mallee ‘Neath Mrs. MacFarlane’s sill, Grew a rose bush many years ago, (I ponder it’s there still?).   “ ‘Twas planted for my Louise When she was newly born. I mark the contrast of the rose: The blossom above the thorn!”   MacFarlane ploughed the dry soil of that block With machines tended of sweat and tears. While Louise blossomed with the rose All through her growing years.   But age slowly wearied him, The years of labour took their toll. So young Tim Brey that season worked the plough And a bumper crop did sow.   Creeping fingers of evening shadow Edged ’round mallee scrub and tree, As Tim drove through the station gate And Louise, he did suddenly “see”.   One warm evening ‘neath a mallee tree, With the harvesting finally done, The “old man” grumbled toward the house While Tim and Louise talked on alone.   A silence fell after all was talked about With dusk thru’ dust aglow. Tim c

Rowboat from Renmark to Mildura This article originally appeared in the "Riverlander" March 1958. The author, Therese Hocking (now deceased), did the trip with her parents in the depression years, when work and money were very scarce. It shows the determination of the hardy souls in those times. It was published in a magazine that promoted Murray River and associated articles of interest in those days, with an objective (as was the common theme of the Menzies fifties) of presenting a “homely image” of the family and times…along with so many cover-ups of the damaged returned soldiers from the 2 nd World War. So there is a certain amount of edited out realities not presented in the original anecdote …How do I know of such things?..because the author was my mother. Row-Boat from Renmark to Mildura. By Therese Hocking. Have you ever thought of travelling by river? Not in a comfortable steamer, but in an open boat. My father and mother, my sister and I, tried it som