By The Banks Of The Lachlan 7
Without Prejudice
Our stately entry into Huntington in the Vanguard was a quiet one, it was just 6 am in the morning and a mist rose from the Belabula making the town look colder than what it was. The sun would soon warm up the old streets and give a reason for us kids to look forwards rather than backwards. Backwards to Sydney, 4 hours away over winding roads that climbed ever upwards making our ears pop.
We hadn't been well behaved, bored in the car, we had sung our voices out with The Dog sitting on the tucker box and the Great American Railway, played our hang man and eye spy games. Dad had to turn around, red faced a few times with threats of physical abuse and we knew he never would, but you just never knew. At least none of us had been left beside the road, shivering and terrified the car would not come back to collect us and vowing better behaviour next time and not intending it for a minute.
Dad sometimes let us pretend to drive, sat on his lap and steering. Also this time, we hadn't had to hock Mums marquisette watch for petrol on the way so finances were definitely a little better. Mum was intending to run a cafe and Dad open a panel beating shop and have a Triumph dealership in a showroom in the middle of town. Why he thought that a money spinner in a small country town miles from anywhere in the back blocks of NSW was a triumph to his positive personality but in practical terms was doomed to failure.
We were children that kept secrets, secrets that were to become more and more serious as time went on. Huntington would contain in us secrets that were never to be spoken of again. Just absorbed into our psyches setting up nervous disorders, phobias, neurosis's that would plague us the rest of our lives and yet such is the resilience of children that we somehow made them work for us, as well, very well.
None of this we were to know as we crossed the rickety old bridge into Huntington proper. We had no idea of what awaited us, envy, jealousy, open hostility to strangers, theirs not ours, nor that we would gain much in rich life experience in this dowagers brooch of a town. A dowagers brooch set in a dress of green dancing fields of grasses, pussy cat willows and weeping willow trees that mourned into the river, their branches skimming the water and dipping into the cold, icy waters.
Our stately entry into Huntington in the Vanguard was a quiet one, it was just 6 am in the morning and a mist rose from the Belabula making the town look colder than what it was. The sun would soon warm up the old streets and give a reason for us kids to look forwards rather than backwards. Backwards to Sydney, 4 hours away over winding roads that climbed ever upwards making our ears pop.
We hadn't been well behaved, bored in the car, we had sung our voices out with The Dog sitting on the tucker box and the Great American Railway, played our hang man and eye spy games. Dad had to turn around, red faced a few times with threats of physical abuse and we knew he never would, but you just never knew. At least none of us had been left beside the road, shivering and terrified the car would not come back to collect us and vowing better behaviour next time and not intending it for a minute.
Dad sometimes let us pretend to drive, sat on his lap and steering. Also this time, we hadn't had to hock Mums marquisette watch for petrol on the way so finances were definitely a little better. Mum was intending to run a cafe and Dad open a panel beating shop and have a Triumph dealership in a showroom in the middle of town. Why he thought that a money spinner in a small country town miles from anywhere in the back blocks of NSW was a triumph to his positive personality but in practical terms was doomed to failure.
We were children that kept secrets, secrets that were to become more and more serious as time went on. Huntington would contain in us secrets that were never to be spoken of again. Just absorbed into our psyches setting up nervous disorders, phobias, neurosis's that would plague us the rest of our lives and yet such is the resilience of children that we somehow made them work for us, as well, very well.
None of this we were to know as we crossed the rickety old bridge into Huntington proper. We had no idea of what awaited us, envy, jealousy, open hostility to strangers, theirs not ours, nor that we would gain much in rich life experience in this dowagers brooch of a town. A dowagers brooch set in a dress of green dancing fields of grasses, pussy cat willows and weeping willow trees that mourned into the river, their branches skimming the water and dipping into the cold, icy waters.
