Dead Bodies
Without Prejudice
I was five the first time I laid eyes on a dead body. I thought he was just sleeping. He looked so peaceful and as my Dad held me up to look I wanted to make the crying people happy.
" He's just asleep " I said to the throng that surrounded him..
" Just asleep"
I thought they were all silly to be crying, mistaken and I was the only one that realised. After that I felt better and climbed back in the Humber Super Snipe quite happily. They had left me there and told me I couldn't go where they were going. I made sure my little brother was asleep and ran across the road. Something I was usually terrified of as I had been knocked down at 4 by a car in the Main Street.
I will never forget the slow motion effect that happened that the car when I realised the car was going to hit me. I had dashed headlong into traffic so I could go to the cinema toilets. My older sister still shopping in the department store had grown impatient with my " Chinese bladder " and refused to take me.
I hesitated at first to cross the street but then took a deep breath and dashed into the slow moving traffic. Cars had running boards outside then and little orange lights that flicked out from the sides for indicating. Crank handles on the front and canvas bags for water.
I remember the car coming towards me and it knocked me down, hurting my leg. I saw the driver, a man in a hat that came to see if I was O.K. Bending over me and setting me upright. My Sister arrived then, furious with me that I had run off.
She was four years older than me and supposed to keep an " eye" on my welfare, the impatient little Sister. On the way home along Jervois Street that seemed so long to 4 year old legs, one now injured, we made a pact to not tell our parents. We didn't. It was our first secret together.
That night the man in the hat rang my parents to see if I was O.K. " I hadn't given him my name so how did he know who I was and where I lived?", I remember wondering.
I was too young to understand the reality of a small country town, as Port Augusta was then. A nothing, a cypher, a dot on a map. To the South lay Port Pirie, (the big smoke) and hours away the capital city, of Adelaide.
Around Port Augusta lay hot arid land, the town surrounded by salt and sand hills. Oa Sunday only, the roadhouse on the Highway was open for Petrol or a cool drink of Fanta. We drove on Sunday afternoons after Church. Dad launching his brood out into the vastness of South Australia, driving to Quorn where one shop was open that sold Sugared Almonds and Coconut Qivers.
As we came home singing like the glee club or playing I Spy or beating the shit out of each other in frustration at the heat, despite the open windows, we passed trees that were beautiful with pink and white blossoms. As we passed galahs would fly up in flight from the trees revealing them to be dry and un blossomed after all. I would gaze in delight at the birds flying up in their mad frenzy envying them their flight and freedom.
I was five the first time I laid eyes on a dead body. I thought he was just sleeping. He looked so peaceful and as my Dad held me up to look I wanted to make the crying people happy.
" He's just asleep " I said to the throng that surrounded him..
" Just asleep"
I thought they were all silly to be crying, mistaken and I was the only one that realised. After that I felt better and climbed back in the Humber Super Snipe quite happily. They had left me there and told me I couldn't go where they were going. I made sure my little brother was asleep and ran across the road. Something I was usually terrified of as I had been knocked down at 4 by a car in the Main Street.
I will never forget the slow motion effect that happened that the car when I realised the car was going to hit me. I had dashed headlong into traffic so I could go to the cinema toilets. My older sister still shopping in the department store had grown impatient with my " Chinese bladder " and refused to take me.
I hesitated at first to cross the street but then took a deep breath and dashed into the slow moving traffic. Cars had running boards outside then and little orange lights that flicked out from the sides for indicating. Crank handles on the front and canvas bags for water.
I remember the car coming towards me and it knocked me down, hurting my leg. I saw the driver, a man in a hat that came to see if I was O.K. Bending over me and setting me upright. My Sister arrived then, furious with me that I had run off.
She was four years older than me and supposed to keep an " eye" on my welfare, the impatient little Sister. On the way home along Jervois Street that seemed so long to 4 year old legs, one now injured, we made a pact to not tell our parents. We didn't. It was our first secret together.
That night the man in the hat rang my parents to see if I was O.K. " I hadn't given him my name so how did he know who I was and where I lived?", I remember wondering.
I was too young to understand the reality of a small country town, as Port Augusta was then. A nothing, a cypher, a dot on a map. To the South lay Port Pirie, (the big smoke) and hours away the capital city, of Adelaide.
Around Port Augusta lay hot arid land, the town surrounded by salt and sand hills. Oa Sunday only, the roadhouse on the Highway was open for Petrol or a cool drink of Fanta. We drove on Sunday afternoons after Church. Dad launching his brood out into the vastness of South Australia, driving to Quorn where one shop was open that sold Sugared Almonds and Coconut Qivers.
As we came home singing like the glee club or playing I Spy or beating the shit out of each other in frustration at the heat, despite the open windows, we passed trees that were beautiful with pink and white blossoms. As we passed galahs would fly up in flight from the trees revealing them to be dry and un blossomed after all. I would gaze in delight at the birds flying up in their mad frenzy envying them their flight and freedom.
