The night cart job was to go door to door. At the back of the toilet was a door that was big enough to pull the full can out and push the new empty one back inside. Tom would have a potato bag slung over his shoulder and he would hoist the full can onto his covered shoulder and carry it back to his truck. If the can did not have a lid on it or was a bit full, it would slop over onto Tom’s head and shoulders, though Tom always wore a hat. This smell would permeate everything and when home on these days, Tom was only allowed on the veranda, not inside the house. As a side note, if the cans were full before the night cart man was due to come back, then the house holder would dig a hole in his back yard to bury the muck and this made good ground for growing vegetables later on. Tom said often someone would be sitting on the toilet and he would greet them with a, ‘Good mornin darlin,’ if a woman or ‘How ya going mate?’ if a man. If he did not know the sex of the occupant, he would say a cheery ‘Good mornin.’ In a town the size of Dirranbandi, everyone knew each other and quite possibly, someone knew their bowel habits too.
There was no toilet paper in those days for the “poor folk” so they would cut up newspapers and magazines into four inch squares and place a corner of it onto a twirl of wire that hung on the back of the toilet door within easy reach or on the side wall of the “dunny” as it was called in the bush. A luxury we never had was to gather the soft tissue paper wrapped around apples and pears and use that. Quite often a vine of some sort would grow over these small buildings and it would become a haven for snakes, frogs and any living creature that fancied a warm or cool spot, depending on the weather. Most of the time the dunny door was kept closed, if not any animal could go inside. Often as you entered you would be greeted by some creature wishing to get out! If it was in the dark of night it was very frightening for kids and women. There was rarely any privacy going to and from the outside dunnies and neighbours would have a natter with you while you were trying to have a quiet pee.
Tom had a large council paddock on the Noondoo Road where he buried the sewage waste. The day before collection he would dig large holes in this paddock, much like a corner post size and the sewage cans were tipped into these, then filled in with dirt. One day Tom decided to bring his boys and the Kemp boys to help. With the truck filled with cans, the boys sat on top of it and yelled, cooeed and yahooed all the way as Tom drove out to the paddock. The first thing Tom said to the younger boys was, ‘Don’t run around, you will fall over and get hurt.’ Tom carried a can and tipped it into a hole. Col and John carried cans between them. Les never listened to anyone and ran around the paddock, jumping over filled and empty holes in the ground. He tripped over a pile of dirt and splat, went head first into a newly filled sewage pit. He let out a scream, stood up and shook himself like a dog, with brown slime and pieces of paper dripping off him. Tom glared at him. ‘I bloody well told you not to run around. Now see what you’ve done.’ He went to the truck and retrieved a potato bag, wrapped it around Les and sat him down near a truck wheel, refusing to pander to him by not taking him home immediately. Mum was not amused when he arrived home in that state.
At that time Lonnie Donegon’s song, My Old Man’s a Dustman, was popular on the radio and we all knew the song off by heart and when driving into town to visit with the Crumblins we lustily sang it. I am sure we could be heard leaving the campsite about two miles out of town. We had a transistor radio at that time that we called a “wireless” and it could only be used on very rare occasions. Dad listened to the news occasionally, any boxing matches that were being broadcast and the Melbourne Cup. If he was not around and we could get reception, Mum would sometimes let us listen in.
When it was rubbish collection day and Tom came home for dinner before dropping the full load off at the tip, we would jump up on the top and have a good rummage. This scared Mum silly as she was frightened we would fall off and hurt ourselves. The younger ones were banned from getting on the truck, but I am happy to say that no one ever fell off in our foraging.
While John, Arthur and Les were rummaging around one day, John found a big doll fully dressed. She had a lovely printed pink frock, a waist band, real hair and a pair of little shoes. John dusted it off and threw it down to me. What a treat! He had a sister not much younger than I was, but of course she was at school. Mum was never too impressed with our rummaging as she was afraid of diseases but we loved it and lots of good stuff was found.
I loved John Crumblin and wanted to marry him when I was older. I always wondered why the doll had been thrown away like that, as it seemed brand new. Sad to say the doll went like the rest of our toys, lost, worn out or just plain forgotten and left behind at a campsite. Often one of the older brothers would tease us younger ones by holding our prized possessions out of reach for us to try and grab or they would pull the toy apart for a “tease”, so we never had anything precious for long. We two youngest ones were small and the older boys, when we tried to attack them in revenge, would just put their hands on our heads and hold us at arm’s length so we could not reach them. I would get so wild I would cry, then go to a quiet corner and suck my thumb.
Tom and Merle’s house was on the Balonne River bank and they offered us the use of their yard to camp in, which Dad accepted a couple of times. At this particular time, the river was in flood and John, Arthur and Col insisted on swimming in it. Merle got into a ripe old temper. She screamed out, ‘If you get yourself drowned, don’t come crying to me.’
We thought this was hilarious and crowed about it for years. I remember her turning to Mum one day when she was very annoyed with her brood and saying, ‘You got one boy, you got a boy; you got two boys, you got half a boy; you got three boys, you got no boys.’ That puzzled me for years but eventually I understood the truth of it.
One day Tom upset Merle dreadfully. In front of us all, she stood on the front veranda and threw 20 pounds of potatoes at him – one at a time. She did not hit him once. We all thought it very, very funny, which enraged her even more. Another time we were there for dinner and Merle made a pot of tea. Tom took a mouthful of it and spat it out as it scalded his mouth. He complained, ‘What did you do Merle, boil this water?’
We kids were taught to tell the truth but we learnt that telling the truth to an adult was not always a good thing. Merle made a cake and it was a bit doughy, but as we rarely had cake, we all ate with great gusto. When he’d finished eating, little Mike said, ‘Thanks for the cake, Mrs Crumblin. The tea was nice but the cake was a bit soggy.’ That got him a slap from Dad for bad manners.
Another time Merle gave her younger son Tommy, a hiding with bamboo and he got a big splinter in his hand as a result. Dad tried to take it out but it would not move. So Dad volunteered to take him to the hospital to get it removed and before they left Merle said to Tommy, ‘If you tell them I flogged you with bamboo, I’ll kill you when you get home.’ At the hospital, the first thing Tommy said was, ‘She flogged me with bamboo.’
Tommy always wanted to please and Dad was a real scrounge who took anything offered to him that might come in useful. One day Tommy found a washer that he thought Dad would like and offered it to Dad, saying, ‘Mr Tent, do you want a squasher?’ Washers became “squashers” for many years after that in our family and Kemp quickly became “Tent”. Being little blighters we would call Dad Mr Tent to get a reaction, which was mostly a light kick up the bum or clip over the head.
John Crumblin whipped up a homemade canoe and we all got in it. He placed a drum each side of the canoe and held it together with a rail about two inches thick to balance it. Getting into the canoe was an art in itself. John and Col were at each end and the rest of us very gingerly stepped in. As it was a tight fit, the older ones sat with their bums on the edge and their feet in the canoe and we smaller ones sat in the middle. Mum saw us out in the full flowing river, the canoe wobbling madly, and she called us in. So with great disappointment and trepidation we paddled back to the bank. We all received a good hiding for doing that as half the Kemp kids still could not swim at that stage. Merle locked her kids in the chook pen to punish them. We all considered Mum a real “spoil sport” and that we were allowed no fun.
In the Crumblin’s large yard they had an old empty tank on a high stand and we enjoyed climbing into it to play. It would shake and rattle and it’s a miracle that