We often camped on the reserve some two miles out of town. Mum much preferred living there as it gave us more freedom and Dad and Mum more privacy. Mum was a screamer and she had the liberty to shout at us kids to her heart’s content.
The Culgoa Common was a camping spot for drovers and swaggies. It was a good place to camp as there was shade, water and grass for the horses and we did not have to worry about the dogs barking and being a nuisance to anyone in the township. Nearby was a farming family called Dean, we could shout across the river to them and they would come over and play with us. When the river was low in water and there was a tree that had fallen over we could walk across for a visit. As Mum kept a tight rein on us, the Deans had to do most of the visiting to “our” side of the river. They were very friendly and any drovers who camped in this common got a visit from the Deans. The two Dean children still living at home, Leithy and Leroy used to ride their bikes to school in Dirranbandi. When we had stock, our camp was right near their gate and it was great to meet these kids and have a chat before they biked to their house up the road a bit. They were in the older kids’ age group, but we all enjoyed their company. We looked forward to camps like this as we met so few kids our age group. The family had two Alsatian dogs Pedro and Kim and a horse called Tony that Leithy rode. When the Dean family heard we were fairly close on a trip with stock they would travel out on the stock route for a visit and the adults would play cards into the night and we kids would play games in the dark.
Their Dairy was called Riverside and it was a couple of miles out of Dirranbandi on the Bollon side of town. Mrs Dean carried the milk into Dirranbandi every day with a horse and cart and after a while they bought a secondhand ambulance that their daughter Mackie drove for them. Neither Mr nor Mrs Dean could drive.
Mackie was thirteen and worked for the Pippos who owned the local Café Deluxe in town. Our parents would often go into the café and Mackie would serve them their mixed grill. We would be out in the back of the truck and after they finished their meal they would buy a large serving of hot chips, which was wrapped in used newspaper, for our meal and the drive back to the camp. Col would get his share. He never seemed to mind being left behind to mind the camp but then he didn’t really have a choice. At this stage he would have only been about ten years old.
In the earlier years, Mackie, Leithy and Leroy would ride their horses to and from school. The local Aboriginal children who lived near the Deans on the opposite side of the river had to walk to and from school, having no other mode of transport. After school was over there was a wild rush to get to the horses. Whoever got to them first, got to ride them home. When the Aboriginal children rode them, they would gallop up near the bridge, tie the horses to a tree and walk the rest of the way home. The Deans would walk to where their horses were tied and ride the rest of the way home.
Many years after this incident I met up with Leroy and he told me fondly, ‘The little black bastards would pull us off our horses and gallop home to their humpies, if we were lucky, they would not bash us up.’
No grudges were ever held, he who ran the fastest got the horse. Eventually, the teachers got cunning and would let those riding home leave school early, cutting out the wild dash to the horse paddock.
Being on the Culgoa Reserve we could paddle in the water and Col, Les and Emmie learnt to swim there. The Culgoa River was a muddy water hole most of the time and was full of leeches. One day Dad and Mum went shopping in Dirranbandi with all the kids except Col, who was always left at the campsite to mind it, in case someone came along to steal things. We called in at the Crumblins for a visit and Merle asked us all to stay for dinner. Mum said no we could not stay as Col was waiting for dinner out at the camp. So Merle told John to race out and get him and John did that and they both then jogged the two miles back into town. It proves how healthy they were. John had one of his big toes missing, he had accidentally cut it off while chopping wood for the family stove at a young age. The whole family wore thongs and he adapted by having his second toe in the thong between his second and third toes.
We all loved lying in the truck on our parents’ double bed. This was the prime viewing spot and we fought over it all the time. We did not believe in dibs. First one in got the spot and quite often us little ones had to share with the bigger ones until we got bored and moved on to playing a game of some sort. If we had an old pack of cards we would play cards or “I spy” or make up silly jokes.
We were camped at our usual spot on the Culgoa Common and we had to go to a job for the APC. Before we left any camp we always cleaned it up – our mess and other people’s, in case anyone thought we had left it behind. This particular time, I was in the back of the truck and I had to get down onto the ground. Instead of stepping down onto the empty kero drum that was used as our step, I tried to jump over and past the drum. As I jumped, my long dress got caught on something in the truck and I fell face first onto the drum edge, knocking out all my front teeth. Mum quickly grabbed a clean tea towel and placed it over my mouth to help stem the flow of blood. With the truck all packed up they drove me to hospital where I had several stitches to my gums, bottom lip and down my chin. I clearly remember looking over Dad’s shoulder as the doctor and a kindly nurse fussed over me and quietly assessed and reassured me that I would be all right. I spent several days in hospital while the stitches healed.
My parents and siblings went off on the droving trip but not before visiting their friends Keith and Agnes Brummel. One of the family visited me on a daily basis, bearing gifts of some sort and I soon had a collection of pyjamas, singlets and panties. How spoilt I felt, and how grateful. After I was let out of hospital I went and stayed with Mr and Mrs Brummel and their family: Don, Lynette and Shirley in Dirranbandi.
Mr Brummell was a returned soldier from the Second World War and he was bed ridden most of the time. His legs were partly paralysed and he was dreadfully white, painfully thin and of course had other problems as well. Their children were quite a bit older than I was. They had a large vegetable garden out the back and chooks and dogs and a fluffy white cat I could play with. I stayed with the Brummels for several weeks. The worry was I would break open the stitches and living in dirt as we did would not bode well for me. With the flies, horse and sheep poo, heaps of dust, not to speak of dogs being more than happy to jump up and give you a lick or three as a greeting, it was safer for me to stay where I was with the Brummels. I quickly learnt it was a nice way to live!
I had my own bed, three nice meals a day and if there was pumpkin on the plate I was not forced to eat it like Mum made me do. I was treated how I thought royalty would be treated and they were a very kind and loving family. They loved paddy melon jam and on Mr Brummel’s good days someone would carry him out to their car and with his wife and me, we would go tripping down the road looking for paddy melons. Mrs Brummel would take a picnic for us. Although I was excited to get back with my family, I was a spoilt brat by the time I returned to the bush. I missed the luxury and the spoiling of the Brummels, but that was quickly knocked out of me.
The Brummel’s son Don went on a couple of droving trips with us and one day Dad bought a horse in Dirranbandi and it had to be taken some miles out to the camp. The distance was too far to lead the horse with the reins out the side window of the truck, so Dad asked Don to help him load the horse into the back of the truck. Dad backed the truck into a deep table drain so the horse did not have far to jump. Then Dad hopped into the back of the truck, holding the reins in his hands, and tried to pull the horse in. Don was supposed to gee him up from behind, and this was not too successful so they swapped places. Don was in the back of the truck and Dad was outside with a rope around the horse’s backside and heaving on it, the horse was shying back and trying to escape and rearing a little. Don could not quite get the knack of how to pull the horse in with brute force so Dad yelled to Emmie, ‘Hit the bastard on the arse.’ She grabbed the loose end of rope and gave the horse a huge whack on the bum. It smartly jumped onto the back of the truck and Don just as smartly jumped up onto my parents’ bed, away from the horse. A great feat of agility for a young lad.
While in this district, we all got “sandy blight” or conjunctivitis as it was really