Two---By The Banks Of The Lachlan 2
Without Prejudice
I was told that advertisements in the paper were what attracted my parents to Australia. A smiling sunburst promised sea, sand and sky, a new start, a fresh start, a warm new life. My parents were living in Edinburgh where I was born, cold mean streets of iron grey. Around the corner from where Robert Loius Stevenson had lived and wrote, Treasure Island. I was born in West Pilton Crossway Leith, Hospital.
While Mum was busy giving birth to me Dad had to place the other kids in a childrens home. One night he gathered them up to take them en masse to see me, their new baby sister and on the way home in the clear cold night Dad pointed at a star high in the heavens. All my siblings looked up at the star,
" See that star", he said
"Thats Janette's star"
I remember nothing of my birthplace, my Sister Heather said we lived in a cold flat on the top floor of a terrace tenement and on the hand rail at the top was a flaking piece of paint that resembled the shape of a Scottish Terrier. I remember the film of Greyfriars Bobby held a special significance for me and Heather and we cried when we watched it.
At the Queens coronation we apparently watched it on a rented TV, (Invented by John Logie Baird, a fellow Scot ) and the whole neighbourhood came in to watch. There was celebration in the air but must have been cold in February 1953. I would have been 5 months old by then and Mum remarked that Lachlan went under the table where I was in a basket and drank my bottle and then put it back empty.
My oldest brother was constantly ill with chronic cattarh and that was one of the resons my parents decided to emigrate, leaving all their family and friends behind. Following that bright yellow sun to their new home. In those days it was a six week sojourn on a passenger ship, the SS Otranto. I can recall nothing about the journey. My siblings do.
The three boys were dressed up for the fancy dress parade as Scots Porridge Oats. All in their kilts, with sashes of crepe that said Scots Porridge Oats, Lachlan was Oats and climbed a pole in celebration afterwards and showed the ship what a Scots man really wears under his kilt. Nothing. His bollocks flapping in the breeze.
I remember the trip from the ship, to the Hostel. Its is like a window opens up in my mind and all I can see is hot streets and sun, it was the first memory I was ever to have and that excitement at a new place stays with me still. We were all on a bus taking us to our new home for two years, the Endeavour Hostel in Adeliade.
Memories come back to me in flashes then, it was 1954, December, Summer in Australia and I dont recall the heat, just the sun. There was a canteen where we were fed and Dad said shark was on the menu, which we promptly refused to eat and tomato soup that wasnt the revered Baxters Cream Of Tomato but a mix of tinned tomaroes and tomato paste. Woeful.
The accomodation was Army Nissen huts, bare bulbed and tin, hot in summer and freezing in winter and we were there until we had paid back the Government Conditions for Assisted Passage. There were fights between the other migrants, Hungarians, Poles and knives were produced. It was not that long since the end of the War and tensions were still rife.
My oldest brother went out one night dressed in black, jumping the back fence that protected us, supposedly, from the rest of the migrants and I watched him heart in mouth. All I could see was silver knives flashing in the dark and him being killed, but I didnt tell. He would have killed me if I had. We were always a Family of secrets some bigger than others but were always told to keep things close to our chests and being stiff upper lipped Brits, we did.
My Mother had been "War damaged" and was prone to nervous afflictions, she was classified as "Highly Strung" but Heather called her a Tartar and I had no idea what that was. Andrew was born there in Adelaide and unlike other Brits my parents were not whingers and just committed to their new life, their new country. As far as they were concerned we were now Australians and that was never to change.
Mum and Dad worked outside of the Hostel and I who had never been away from my parents was terrified to go to the Nursery School. Heather would drag me there every day, me, crying and Lachlan would run ahead, dying to get there. I held firm on the place and hated it and Lachlan loved it,
He was rowdy and strong and bullied the other kids and was expelled for bad behaviour. I was aloowed to stay and stubbornly refused to use a potty as I was used to a toilet. My Mother said I was toilet trained from the time I was 11 months old, but whether that was just her memory or true it saved washing nappies.
They tried to feed me but I would eat nothing but Milk Arrowroot biscuits and Orange juice that came at morning tea. I would eat nothing after that and would not sleep at nap time either on the thin blue flocked matresses lain on the floor, but lie there hot and bored, wide eyed and cross. I watched all the other kids eyes closed and murmuring and would be soundly jealous at their easy ability to sleep.
One day I was in the cinder block of toilets and the cleaner not realising I was there in the cool darkness and quiet opened the door of the unblocked cubicle with the spray of a hose and I was doused from head to toe. I still refused to use the potty at the nursery school and gained a prolapsed rectum which required a Doctors visit and Mum bought me a cane dolls pram as a reward for being a good girl.
Heather gave one of her friends a black eye and was soundly ticked off by the parents and our parents and said to me she wasnt sorry and would do it again given the chance. She was made to apologise, of course, the sullen large girl giving a sly smirk at the apology but Heather was unrepentant and said that the girl had insulted Mum and that was that. Already we had begun to protect our brittle as glass Mother and that would continue all our lives. Not that she wanted it.
She tried to so hard to be normal and kept her illness hidden as long as she could.
I was told that advertisements in the paper were what attracted my parents to Australia. A smiling sunburst promised sea, sand and sky, a new start, a fresh start, a warm new life. My parents were living in Edinburgh where I was born, cold mean streets of iron grey. Around the corner from where Robert Loius Stevenson had lived and wrote, Treasure Island. I was born in West Pilton Crossway Leith, Hospital.
While Mum was busy giving birth to me Dad had to place the other kids in a childrens home. One night he gathered them up to take them en masse to see me, their new baby sister and on the way home in the clear cold night Dad pointed at a star high in the heavens. All my siblings looked up at the star,
" See that star", he said
"Thats Janette's star"
I remember nothing of my birthplace, my Sister Heather said we lived in a cold flat on the top floor of a terrace tenement and on the hand rail at the top was a flaking piece of paint that resembled the shape of a Scottish Terrier. I remember the film of Greyfriars Bobby held a special significance for me and Heather and we cried when we watched it.
At the Queens coronation we apparently watched it on a rented TV, (Invented by John Logie Baird, a fellow Scot ) and the whole neighbourhood came in to watch. There was celebration in the air but must have been cold in February 1953. I would have been 5 months old by then and Mum remarked that Lachlan went under the table where I was in a basket and drank my bottle and then put it back empty.
My oldest brother was constantly ill with chronic cattarh and that was one of the resons my parents decided to emigrate, leaving all their family and friends behind. Following that bright yellow sun to their new home. In those days it was a six week sojourn on a passenger ship, the SS Otranto. I can recall nothing about the journey. My siblings do.
The three boys were dressed up for the fancy dress parade as Scots Porridge Oats. All in their kilts, with sashes of crepe that said Scots Porridge Oats, Lachlan was Oats and climbed a pole in celebration afterwards and showed the ship what a Scots man really wears under his kilt. Nothing. His bollocks flapping in the breeze.
I remember the trip from the ship, to the Hostel. Its is like a window opens up in my mind and all I can see is hot streets and sun, it was the first memory I was ever to have and that excitement at a new place stays with me still. We were all on a bus taking us to our new home for two years, the Endeavour Hostel in Adeliade.
Memories come back to me in flashes then, it was 1954, December, Summer in Australia and I dont recall the heat, just the sun. There was a canteen where we were fed and Dad said shark was on the menu, which we promptly refused to eat and tomato soup that wasnt the revered Baxters Cream Of Tomato but a mix of tinned tomaroes and tomato paste. Woeful.
The accomodation was Army Nissen huts, bare bulbed and tin, hot in summer and freezing in winter and we were there until we had paid back the Government Conditions for Assisted Passage. There were fights between the other migrants, Hungarians, Poles and knives were produced. It was not that long since the end of the War and tensions were still rife.
My oldest brother went out one night dressed in black, jumping the back fence that protected us, supposedly, from the rest of the migrants and I watched him heart in mouth. All I could see was silver knives flashing in the dark and him being killed, but I didnt tell. He would have killed me if I had. We were always a Family of secrets some bigger than others but were always told to keep things close to our chests and being stiff upper lipped Brits, we did.
My Mother had been "War damaged" and was prone to nervous afflictions, she was classified as "Highly Strung" but Heather called her a Tartar and I had no idea what that was. Andrew was born there in Adelaide and unlike other Brits my parents were not whingers and just committed to their new life, their new country. As far as they were concerned we were now Australians and that was never to change.
Mum and Dad worked outside of the Hostel and I who had never been away from my parents was terrified to go to the Nursery School. Heather would drag me there every day, me, crying and Lachlan would run ahead, dying to get there. I held firm on the place and hated it and Lachlan loved it,
He was rowdy and strong and bullied the other kids and was expelled for bad behaviour. I was aloowed to stay and stubbornly refused to use a potty as I was used to a toilet. My Mother said I was toilet trained from the time I was 11 months old, but whether that was just her memory or true it saved washing nappies.
They tried to feed me but I would eat nothing but Milk Arrowroot biscuits and Orange juice that came at morning tea. I would eat nothing after that and would not sleep at nap time either on the thin blue flocked matresses lain on the floor, but lie there hot and bored, wide eyed and cross. I watched all the other kids eyes closed and murmuring and would be soundly jealous at their easy ability to sleep.
One day I was in the cinder block of toilets and the cleaner not realising I was there in the cool darkness and quiet opened the door of the unblocked cubicle with the spray of a hose and I was doused from head to toe. I still refused to use the potty at the nursery school and gained a prolapsed rectum which required a Doctors visit and Mum bought me a cane dolls pram as a reward for being a good girl.
Heather gave one of her friends a black eye and was soundly ticked off by the parents and our parents and said to me she wasnt sorry and would do it again given the chance. She was made to apologise, of course, the sullen large girl giving a sly smirk at the apology but Heather was unrepentant and said that the girl had insulted Mum and that was that. Already we had begun to protect our brittle as glass Mother and that would continue all our lives. Not that she wanted it.
She tried to so hard to be normal and kept her illness hidden as long as she could.
