childhood in the bush

My Childhood in the Bush

In many ways, I consider myself fortunate, to have had my early years living in the bush, a period in time that forged my personality in the crucible of life and left me with such vivid memories.

 I don’t know if it’s true for all people, but I have very clear recollections of my life from the time I was just over 2 years of age. Come to think of it, given some of those memories I sometimes think I’m fortunate to have survived at all! It is hard to imagine what a modern day parent would think if a child of this 21st Century got up to the mischief that I did. The modern day parents would probably have conniptions and need counselling for a few years. Here are some of those memories. To me, they are as fresh as if they were yesterday. I hope you enjoy this little trip down memory lane with  me.

I started school at the age of 4 years, my birthday being in January, so this little adventure was pre-school for me, so at the very most I was 3 years old. I knew I was heading off for school after the coming Christmas period and I was keen as mustard, I remember the schoolmaster coming to the post office to collect his mail, where he and mum discussed the possibility of my attending school in the coming year, even though I was a little on the young side. At the time I reckoned it was my ability to give a credible performance of “doing the twist” that swayed him and secured my attendance. The fact that a special dispensation from the school authorities was needed, because there weren't enough  kids enrolled to justify the school’s continuance, had bsoloutely nothing to do with it. Nope! That little fact had nothing to do with it. Regardless of the circumstances, I knew I was off to school, wow!  I was looking forward to that day.

Well, I wandered around the place rapt with the prospect of hitting the big time and going to school. I pestered mum no end, insisting that she should help me brush up on my reading skills in preparation for the big event coming in the next few months. Mum was an educated woman and also a very capable tutor, I recall many nights sitting by the fireside listening to the tales of Billy Bunter, Biggles, White Fang, Robinson Crusoe, The Old Man and the Sea, not to mention the full collection of Tarzan of the Apes and The Gorilla hunters. I was into science fiction, Jules Verne’s 20,000 leagues under the sea, his Journey to the Centre of the Earth, the adventures of John Carter, the bloke that kept slipping back and forwards to Mars.

 To me, these stories were the bee’s knees of literature! For me, the pièce de résistance was the fact that I had read, understood and enjoyed Isaac Asimov’s I Robot, well before the Christmas break! I read like a little demon, didn’t matter what it was, I’d find something to read, although mum did draw the line at my trying to read all of the mail that came through the place. However, she would let me practice, by reading to who they were addressed and from whom they had been sent. School reppresented to me the opportunity to go somewhere that would allow me to learn everything about everything that ever been recorded by the written word and put into books!

Newspapers, magazines, anything I found laying about the place, I must admit I did often have trouble getting some of the magazines back into their little paper rolls without getting caught. I used to smuggle them out of the post office and have a read of them in my pretend school room (half of an old corrugated iron water tank out in the paddock), most of them made it back to the post office generally unharmed, but well read. Unfortunately, I soon found that the majority of prep grade readers that were part of  the school curriculum that had been loaned to mum by the headmaster/teacher, were definitely somewhat a little on the lack lustre side. I never did work out why people made such a fuss about how good the John & Betty books were. Honestly? I mean why would John and Betty have a terrier dog, yet never speak of it tearing rats to bits, or even chasing rabbits? It was just one of lifes little bits of a dissapointing reality I suppose. But I made up for it on my own time, by reading everything else I could get my hands on.

This was the period of my life when mum played along and let me “take myself to school” and go "on nature walks", these activities were based out of an old rusted out, half water tank in the  back paddock. Generally a reasonably safe place, and in view of the house. Other than for the odd time I had to evict the odd King Brown snake that had moved in for a bit of warmth from the hot iron. I usually achieved this (if they weren’t too big), by standing back and throwing rocks at the tank or beating on it with a big stick. I wasn’t game to tell mum, or I would have been banned from “taking myself to school” for sure! Other than the odd snake, it was a pretty good place.

Mum used to make me a cut lunch, usually consisting of a vegemite sandwich and a home-made jam sandwich on crusty home-made bread all tossed in an old brown satchel bag, where I also kept all of my special stuff for carting about when I went "walkabout" (that's another story). To this day, I still find myself in a dilemma of which to eat or make first, even at sixty years of age. It's always a difficult decision as to which I will eat first. In fact, I still tend to eat them one half of each, alternating between the two.  Maybe that’s why I like baking bread and cooking these days. Fresh bread making day, was a favourite time in my life, in our household, it meant fresh bread with lashings of churned butter and enough honey from our own beehives to satisfy even Winnie the Poo, also another character I didn’t understand, I mean how could a carnivorous bear, be best mates with a tiger and a silly bloody donkey! The rubbish they expected kids to read astounded me even then. However, Winnie the Poohs and his love of honey, although in my opinion it was his only redeeming feature. Pooh and I did share some common ground, I certainly loved our beehives and our bees, so he wasn't that silly after all, I supposed.