The Kitchen Tapes No. 10

Recorded 22 April 2018

Early Years at Craig House and with the Andersons

GM: OK, today is Sunday 22nd of April, 2018.  We are with Trenna Mahney.  I think Tren you wanted to talk a bit more about the early years at Craig House.

Craig House

THM:  Right.  I don’t really remember getting to Craig House. I knew I was getting excited to go to where my sisters and brother were, and when I got there I didn’t have any real concept of what life would be like. 

I had been there earlier, the previous year, when there was the fire.  I think that was to see how I would go with the older kids.

I initially slept in a room with Barb, because Barb said she remembers that she used to scream at me all the time, and apologised [in later years] for that.

I don’t know if she asked, or if it was decided that I was to move out of that room which was in the annexe and come into the main area where I could be more easily supervised by Matron. 

I don’t know how much my health had any impact in those days.  I did have my eye surgeries whilst I was there, so I don’t know if that was part of it.  

I do recall that Nancy slept at the end of the annexe and she stayed on a bit after school because she went to Edwards Business College.  She was there for a little while doing that until she got a job. [GM: For a short time before she left Nancy was the Head Girl, and had the Head Girl’s room.] 

Family

I think she left and she moved in with her friend Madge, and a little while later Madge’s sister, Margaret.  Their parents owned a property in Bassendean which the three of them rented from the parents. 

Later on, their brother came to stay at Craig House for a while.  His name was David Ammis.  Anyway Madge and Margaret were Nancy’s friends. 

 Nancy and I don’t seem to have had any connection really during the Craig House time.  I don’t remember doing anything at all with her.  Her life was all about her and her friends, and basically preparing to leave and go out into the world. 

She left not long after I arrived. I’d come in July 1965, and I think by the end of the year she had gone.

My sister Barb stayed a little longer, but I need to check with her when she left, because I think she left to go on and stay with Nancy and Colin, who had already left. I think he went next, and then Barb.  

They all went and lived at the Bassendean house, so they actually did live together as a family, but also Marg and Madge were there. 

All of them were very big into pop music, and I loved it when on some occasions I was allowed to go and stay with them, and it was such good fun.  I slept in a big bed, often I slept in the same bed as Barb. 

I don’t remember if I ever shared a bed with anyone else.  Also on a couple of occasions Helen was allowed to come with me later on.

We went to a couple of movies with Barb and Nance, which were pretty inappropriate movies.  We went and saw The Happening and they were definitely groovy drugs and teenage stuff – stuff we didn’t really understand. 

[GM: I’m not familiar with the movie “The Happening” from 1967, but I gather it was …like…wild! Here is a link to YouTube which has the trailer for the movie. https://youtu.be/NmdgQ_a3z2k It was Faye Dunaway’s first movie and the Supremes had a smash hit with the title song.

I remember Helen falling asleep during one movie.  But anyway, before they left, my time spent with them I don’t recall it ever as being a sort of together family thing.  You know we never did things together as a group. 

Colin always did things either by himself or with the boys, Barb would do some things with other friends.

Just a Trim

Occasionally I think she would… well initially when I first went there I had long hair which she did the rag ringlet look for me, until Matron went and did the pudding bowl cut, tricked me into having a cut which I hated with a passion. 

My hair was beautiful and blonde, and from the day it was cut it turned from blonde to brown.

GM:  Tren, why do you say Matron tricked you?

THM:  Well, she said it was going to be cut just to neaten it up a bit because it was so long.  It took Barb a long time to do and I wasn’t old enough to be able to put my hair into plaits, and that Barb didn’t have time to do that. 

Now, I don’t know if that came straight from Matron, or whether Barb complained about having to do it.  That I don’t know. 

But she in no way said it was all going to be cut, and when I saw it all on the floor I remember crying.  And the man said “it will be really good, and nice and cool in summer”.  I hated it. 

I had a fringe that was really, really short and it made my glasses stick out, and I just hated it. I never  trusted Matron again when she said we were going for a haircut. 

Sometimes she would tell me, and whomever else, like Helen, that our fringe was too long, and she would cut our fringes, and without a doubt they were so short and always crooked. And always at school we were made fun of with our pudding bowl haircuts. 

But, we did go to a professional hairdresser as a rule, although it never looked much like anything particularly that I’d want done to my hair.  

But anyway, back to my family.  I don’t think any of us knew what family meant.  Yes, we were all together, and as I would learn along the way, my sisters and brothers went away on holidays and stayed with people in country farms and in neighborhoods.  They would go together and they wouldn’t be by themselves. 

The Andersons

There was a family called the Andersons who decided to take me out for a weekend.  I don’t know how I got to them because I didn’t think Mr Anderson was a Legatee. 

But then again, I don’t think I always went to people who were Legatees.  I often went to places that were farms. 

So I went to the Anderson’s, and they lived in the suburb of Ardross.  He was an architect and he had built his own home and it was very modern for the 60s, but very small. 

They had two sons and two daughters, and I would sleep on the top bunk in the girls’ room so there were three of us in the girls’ room, which was a very small room.  One wall had had doors that opened to the front porch, but there was a bed against the front porch and … 

[Recording is interrupted (reason unknown), then resumes.]

Now Ian, Sue, Dave and Margaret were the kids, and they were all 2 years apart in age. Ian was one year older than me. 

When I went there I was only about 7 or 8, probably 8.  I went there from then until I left Craig House, on school holidays, and for some reason, you were allowed to be away from Craig House for three weekends of each term, but no more. 

I don’t know if that was so that we could mix with the other kids, or whatever.  I was always sent to the Anderson’s and on rare occasions got to go to Nance and Barb’s, but that was not very often. 

I don’t know if it was their (Barbara and Nancy’s) choice, that they didn’t want me there very often because they were still young and going out, and you know, wanting to do their own thing, and me being an eight-year-old, well, them having to be a responsible adult. 

Or it might have been that they were only allowed to have me on one occasion every term.  But I don’t think it was that often.

In hindsight, the Andersons probably were the family that gave some stability to my life. I thought of them as wealthy people because he was an architect.  But they weren’t really. 

Camping …

They loved camping, and Christmas time was the best time of all because we would always, after Christmas Day, and the giving of presents up in Perth, we would go down to Meelup,  just after Dunsborough. 

There was very little housing down there.  It was country land with a lot of cattle, and cows, but we would know when we were there….  I wasn’t a good car traveller.  I couldn’t handle the strobing of the tree shadows as we went down with the sun getting low in the sky. 

I think we would always go when Uncle Frank finished work,  because quite often we travelled at night time, and we would get there when it was sort of either dark or getting dark, and we’d have to put the tent up pretty quickly, all together. 

We would then shove all of our clothes inside our pillow slips and that’s what our pillows were. 

We would sleep on, I’m not really sure, I can remember there were little beds, little fold out stretchers which were very low, but I don’t know if everybody had them, or whether it was just Mrs Anderson, or whether any of the kids got them.  I don’t really remember.  

I don’t remember much about being in the tent, probably because I never was.  We had complete and utter freedom and we would, from the moment we got there. 

It was the most beautiful and clearest of seawater that was a real aqua.  And you could see the seabed and there were big rocks along each side which was just perfect for children to go on adventures. 

We were allowed to camp there, and there were all trees that we would camp amongst.  There was a toilet block with a cold shower. 

I don’t know how we managed it, but we seemed to always get a similar camping spot every year except for one or two years.  On those occasions we had to camp in the areas that we considered, you know, they were a bit second best.

But usually we got near where the shower blocks were, which was also where the start of the lawn was.  There was just a small bit of lawn and then we would hit the beach.  

And did we hit the beach!  We swam all day long. 

Mr Anderson built a beautiful canoe, but he also had a tinnie.  He also knew people who went there, so they did go out fishing together. 

Uncle Frank loved collecting sea life.  He had a cabinet in the dining room.  It was a glass cabinet that displayed starfish, sea urchins, and sea anemones.  There were fish, but the best of all were the seahorses, they were just magnificent.  

He was also a collector of gemstones which he would polish.  There was a tumbler in his workshop at the end of the long bench.  He would produce beautiful coloured stones.  

But the starfish and the sea urchins and all, they were dead, but preserved. I didn’t think of them as dead, I just thought they were what they looked like until I got to be able to go snorkeling. 

Now, I was very poor eye-sighted. I was a skinny little thing, but I could run like a mountain goat.

I could jump over things that I couldn’t see. I had no capacity to see where the rocks started and ended, but I never fell over. 

I just knew how to jump from one thing to the other.  It was instinctual.  I never fell down the cracks.  I would know the rocks to jump from, and you needed to jump from them because quite often they were wet. 

Others were dry and would have creatures like spiders and stuff like that.  The wet rocks would have small crabs that you didn’t want to put your foot into those crevices and get grabbed by something.  

We would always make it our goal to run particularly up the left side.  That was the most interesting because there was a rock, which was a large rock, and you couldn’t get to it unless you could swim. 

for such beautiful girls they had pretty ugly hairdos

But you wouldn’t be able to get to stand on it because it was a high rock, and I know we had a name for it.  That was our marker for where we were allowed to go to.  

But as we got older, me and Ian in particular, Sue did a bit, but Sue was 3 years older than me.  She was my friend.

Margaret was already too old for playing around with children.  I only ever remember Margaret as being a teenager, and going to stomps and balls, and having boyfriends. 

She was a hairdresser and she would learn to set all the neighbours’ hair, and she had a machine (that I now know was a sort of hair dryer) that had like a hose attached to a shower cap. 

You would put it over your head and she would turn it on and it would make a racket.  They would sit under it and she would put curlers in their hair, and it would set their hair. 

And they would come out with old lady hairdos, which everybody loved and thought she was terrific at doing.  

I thought they were ugly and looked like old biddies, so I don’t know if she just did old lady hairdos or whether everybody had their hair done like that. 

Bunker Bay was a joke … just a toilet, which was completely full of blowflies and newspaper, and you could smell the poo a mile off. 

When I look back at some of my photos of my cousins and their hairdos I must say that they must have been done under those machines, because for such beautiful girls they had pretty ugly hairdos. 

I think in the late 60s and 70s, that saw much better hairstyles come into play.

… and Exploring

Anyway, as Ian and I got older, and I’m sure we picked up kids from the camp sites, as we got older we ventured further along at the rocks where we would get to very overgrown beaches. 

The next beach along I think was Bunker Bay.  Bunker Bay was a joke because there was no bay.  There was just a toilet, which was a toilet completely full of blowflies and newspaper, and you could smell the poo a mile off. 

I don’t know how often it was looked after, if it ever was. I think they just hoped the sea would come up and wash it away because they did have rocks.  

There was a rock face and in the rocks there were caves.  They were really exciting because we used to think that they were homes to dragons and snakes and stuff.  In there it was quite scary. 

So although we got to the mangroves and all of that, it was a place that sure stank, and was horrible. 

Finally, when we were able to edge along very narrow and dangerous rocks we clung to the wall, to its surface, and that would get us to Eagle Bay. 

That was an even worse area, and really was just overgrown old rotten trees that hung out of the side of big boulders and, in fact, weren’t all that exciting.  

I say it was ugly, but the danger was exciting. 

We knew about the tides, and we knew when the tides came in,  and if the tide started to come in when we were still up at Eagle Bay the only way of getting back was to swim. 

Ian might have been strong enough but I certainly wasn’t.  The waves would crash up there. 

The water was not like Meelup was, a protected beach where the rocks had formed a natural groin that provided safety from big waves.  Children could swim in that area.  

Mr Anderson quite often didn’t stay with us, he had to go back to work.  When he did stay it was quite good because we would go out on the boats. 

a smaller rock was used to smash the living daylights out of these things until they were soft enough to eat

Although he caught fish, it was mainly tailor, which I think was a fish that suited adults more than children.  It had quite a strong flavour which I didn’t like, so I ate the cans of spam and whatever else that was in a can that we would have for our dinner.  

He would also come back with abalone.  Abalone was a shellfish which not a lot of people knew about in those days.

It was a funny sort of shellfish and could only be eaten once prepared. It didn’t even look like a fish, you had to use your pocket knife to get it out, and we didn’t have pocket knives but Mr Anderson had a diving knife. 

He would take the abalones out of their shell and put them in a bucket of water.  Then the kids’ job was to get a rock and there was a large rock near the shower and toilet area and a smaller rock was used to smash the living daylights out of these things until they were soft enough to eat. 

And I remember eating those with a heap of tomato sauce and I thought I liked them.  But I can’t honestly say that I knew that they had flavour, other than I liked abalone with tomato sauce.  

They were definitely the most exciting times of our lives.  There were only farms around there, and the only shop was the general store. 

We loved to go to the general store and it would be our first port of call when we arrived.  Us kids would buy a tube of condensed milk, very sweet. I can see my last condensed milk I ever bought, so I would have been about 15. 

It cost 19 cents, and we would get it, and immediately open it, and just start sucking it.  It was absolutely sweet-as, but we were also meant to save some because if we wanted milk in our drinks that was what we used. 

But I don’t think we drank anything other than some sort of cordial.  I don’t think there were any cool drinks bought.  That’s really all I remember buying from the shop, but loving going to the general store.  

You could go to the farms in the area  and they had horses and sheep and stuff like that, but they also sold fruit out the front of their place. 

There were various types of fruit that we would pick up.  I sort of remember that it was mostly stone fruit.  That was what was available at the summer time of the year. 

Further Afield

The only other time we went camping that I remember somewhere else was I did go on a trip to Geraldton.  We made friends with people at Geraldton. 

It was very different from Meelup.  Maybe that’s where they learnt that Geraldton was a bit too far for me to travel, and so when the next time they were going to go to Carnarvon I wasn’t invited along. 

[For those who are unfamililiar with Western Australia, Meelup is 254 km South of Perth (the state capital), Geraldton is 415 km North. Cararvon is another 478 km beyond Geraldton. Even when you have travelled that 900 odd kilometers to Carnarvon you are still nowhere near half way up the Western Australian coast!]

Or they weren’t going to go camping, I don’t know what that story was. 

But we went to Geraldton and I know we did make friends there because there was someone who tried to give me some puppies to take home.  I said “OK”, but I got into trouble for getting the puppies.  

We stayed at a caravan park and that was very different to being at Meelup camping, because camping was just tents.  I don’t remember there ever being caravans there.  It was just everybody camping on the ground amongst the trees. 

I thought Geraldton was really good.  I think it was because I was getting older and thought that I might meet boys.  I think that might have been about the last year of my camping.  

The time that they went to Carnarvon without me was when I went and stayed at the Hubbards, and that was organised by Child Welfare.  It was a completely different style of holiday, which I also loved.

One more thing about the Andersons is that Barb did go to the Anderson’s too.  She went there …if I was 7, she would have already been 13, actually I think she went there from about 14, on a few occasions. 

She never liked it.  She did like Dave Anderson, she thought he was a bit of all right and she met a couple of his friends, Shorty, and another guy. I can’t remember clearly but I know Mrs Anderson never liked Barb. 

She never liked her and Mrs Anderson told me never to grow up like my sister, and I got really angry, and said that “I want to be just like her, because she is beautiful.”