Circa 1960

My mother Marj, circa 1960, as she sits at the grey laminex table in the kitchen after dinner; dinner cooked, dishes done,  happy reading, listening to the radio. I can still remember the lemon bolero she wore with that purply patterned shirtmaker dress, the winged glasses of that era, permed hair, dark lippy..

We were living in a Victorian town called St Arnaud which sits on the edge of the dusty Wimmera wheat belt, home to the Grampians mountain range and its queen, Mt Arapiles.

The splendid house we occupied for the brief three years of our stay is the one we all remember most fondly. It was my father's first posting as High School Principal, having worked his way around the state from geography teacher to senior master to boss of the school. As if befitting his new title, the Education Dept had bought or leased a grand old house, set on a huge block backing onto the showgrounds, belonging to a former dentist. There was even an old dentist chair in the garage for us kids to play rides on.

 A tall, fat cyprus hedge afforded privacy to the wide raised front lawn, the terraced vegetable gardens with its rose arbour and blossom trees, a small back lawn and aviary, with outhouses and rainwater tanks clustered around the back, and an overgrown paddock sized tennis court sloping down to the showground stables.

Generous verandahs surrounded the pale green weatherboard house on all sides, some enclosed as sleep-outs, like the one attached to the girls bedroom which had a dress up box filled with Marj's dresses from the 30's and 40's; gorgeous lace and floral silks with heavy satin trains and mosquito net wedding veils. My friends and little sister  and I would spend hours burrowing into the old tea chest of treasures, dressing up for the shows we would perform on a stage with a curtain slung over a pole between two wardrobes. Or dragging it all outside to make cubbies and tents on the lawn, engaging in mock battle against our big brother and his gang hiding out in their favorite treehouses.

Each Xmas the grandparents would come. That's Jeanie - Nana Gingell, on the left, whose husband Jim died a few years earlier; then Papa Roley, the trickster, the one grandparent we felt truly loved by. Chassa Boy is recovering from a bout of hepatitis, and his mother Deanie, who loved to smoke as much as she liked to dress like a lady. Pip my older brother, always the adventurer and Marj.
In front, me in my red speedos next to my cute sister Sally Ann with our new puppy Susie.

There were lots of golf day, tennis club, patio party, horse riding, sports carnival, bike riding, tree climbing, happy times in this town, too numerous to mention here; it seemed as if all was well..

But we didn't know then why Chassa Boy started cooking on the weekends, how he built a special kind of barbeque from half a kerosene tin with welded legs on wheels, for cooking up our Saturday lamb chops and sangers. How proud he was of the huge pots of hearty vege soup he would cook up on the old wood stove, to keep us filled with hearty warmth as we slammed in and out the back door on route to all our outdoors adventures.

And why in this photo Marj isn't there.