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Contributed by jonquilcottage
on Wednesday, 22nd March 2006 @ 10:46:22 PM AEST
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Mum left home when she was sixteen for her first job orange packing at Mundubbera, Qld. Her friend, Marion, picked her up in a VW Beetle and they had it packed to capacity with frypans, electric blankets, toaster and all the things to make their life easier over there. Mum said that if there was one more thing in there the tyres would burst.
When they got to Mundubbera they found their quarters consisted of two rooms. One room was the kitchen/dining and the other the bathroom. They had to share the laundry and bathroom with all the other tenants.
The other people that lived in the quarters were a colourful crew. First there was Alec the alcoholic that lived next door to them and was often heard chasing pink cockroaches around his room. Then there was the Pakistan family that thought they could marry mum and her friend and take them back to Pakistan. Up one end was a family of eight who all worked on the farm. Up the other end was a girl from New Zealand, a newly married couple and a couple of worn out cowboys.
Mum and her friend had lots of fun there. Mum learned how to cook rosella jam and also learned not to cool it on glass louvre, the outside wall stayed a nice pink for weeks. She also learned how to put on a sari and how not to leave your washing on the line overnight when it gets so cold that the clothes are stiff with ice.
The kiwi girl had her twenty-first birthday there and mum made her a cake and a special dinner for her, as she had no family or friends over here in Australia. Bushbashing down the rows of the orange trees was another favourite pastime on the weekends. Everyone became good friends over the five months.
There was also times when they used to do terrible things to each other like when the boys threw a riled up bearded dragon (that mum said was the biggest one she had ever seen) into their bedroom one morning while they were in bed and they couldn’t get out until someone came to their rescue. But they got their revenge when they discovered that their backdoor key fitted everyone else’s back door but no one else’s fitted theirs. Mum and Marion sneaked into the cowboys kitchen when they weren’t home and put Epsoms salts into their beer and then returned to their room. Now the boys toilet entrance was just outside mums kitchen doors and they had great delight in watching all the boys dashing too the toilet all the time and to make matters worse there had been rain and they had to run across a narrow plank to get to the toilet block. Sometimes what was funniest was they would come out of the toilets get halfway across the plank and discover they had to go back. Mum said they laughed about that for days.
Some of the nicest days were when mum and Marion would go down to the river to have their own little church service. They would sing some hymns and read some of their bibles and then sit and watch all the quietness of the bush. Some nights, seeing as they had no radio or television, they would sit and sing some songs in their room and when they stopped the old drunk would bang on the wall and tell them to sing that one again. Then at two in the morning they would get some of the blokes knocking on their door asking for a hot Milo and wanting to tell them all their troubles because most of their families lived a long way away.
Mum says she remember this time in her life with much affection as she was so young and met so many different types of people and it was a time of trustfulness and good honest fun.
Copyright © jonquilcottage
... [2006-03-2210:46:22]
(Date/Time posted on site)
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Re: ADVENTURES AT SIXTEEN
(User Rating: 1)
by smile4mesweety_17 on Sunday, 7th May 2006 @ 01:51:36 AM AEST
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This story is so sweet, I wish I was growing up in those times too! |
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