Recording #2 of The Kitchen Tapes 10 April 2018
GM: OK we’re recording. It’s the 10th of April 2018.
Mofflyn
THM: Right. We’re back at Mofflyn Homes, some more things have come to my memory.
In our cottage the older children looked after the younger children. They had responsibilities.
Younger children had to be bathed by someone. I know that we shared bath water, which was a common thing to do in those days, so it’s no big deal.
“I went to kindergarten for three years“
I do remember being scrubbed sometimes because we were so dirty. Although the boys and the girls would be bathed separately a boy may have been in the bath just before you, and then you got into the bathwater after him. It wasn’t particularly pleasant.
I also recall that I was there from when I was three, so I guess everybody was at school all day and there wasn’t much that could be done with me other than to put me into the kindergarten with the other kids who were from the Home.
It was an open kindergarten and people from outside would come, and I guess that’s how the Mofflyn Homes collected money. I went to kindergarten for three years.
I know at times I was naughty – but it may have happened to other children – I only remember it happening to me, and that was that it used to be common to have children in harnesses, and that you would take them walking whilst wearing a harness.
Quite often I would be put in a harness and tied to the handle of the Hills Hoist out the front of the kindergarten, and I would stay there for a period of time. I know that there was no sun protection there, but I don’t recall whether I suffered badly from it. I just know it happened as a punishment. For how long and how often I don’t know.
I also remember when I did get to go to primary school, and although I was at school for more years than I remember at East Victoria Park Primary School. My memory only has me there for one year, and I think that’s a consequence of my dad dying in 1963, the year I turned 6.
That would have been my first year of primary school. He had commented in a letter [which I saw many years later] that I had done very well at school. That’s how I learnt that he thought it might be as a result of 3 years of kindergarten. He said I was an “A” student. [GM: This was in a letter dated 14 May 1963 from Trenna’s Dad to his friend, Carmel.]
I don’t remember any of my schooling from this period apart from which I may have spoken earlier, like wanting to play in the band. I don’t know if I actually did get to that point. It was going to be at the end of the year and I never stayed to see that come to fruition.
I know as I became older, I’m not sure when this happened, but money came into my world. I seem to have got pocket money, perhaps. I don’t know how I got this money, but it was me and the other kids and we could take a hike, just down the road, on to Kent Street where there was a shop which sold lollies.
I’m sure I bought all types of lollies. I know I loved sherbies which were bright orange on the outside, and white zingy, sherbety flavour on the inside.
In particular the thing that I would buy, and sometimes it may have been the only thing that I bought, was something called a cough drop, which was the size of a small round can, a biscuit size, it was the size of a small biscuit, and it was a pinky brown colour, and it had a line down the middle, like it was a tablet.
It was called a cough drop and it had an unusual taste which children either liked or loathed. It was my favourite lolly. I think that was not only because I liked the taste, but also because it was so big and lasted the longest.
I would love buying cough drops and it was only when I was at Mofflyn Homes that I think I ever bought them. As I got older I moved on to the more exotic lollies. I don’t know if they went out of fashion or whatever.
I also recall that we would go away on holidays, and I guess this was school holidays. When my dad was alive I did go home and stay with him on weekends, but I don’t know about extended holidays.
So, I’m not sure from when I went on holidays but they would be to foster homes, I guess. They were people who would take children from … well, actually, I don’t know whether they were church people or foster people.
But I would go to all sorts of places, predominantly in the country but also in the outer suburbs.
Helena Valley is a place I know I went, and I have images of it being cold so I would have to feel that it would be the earlier school holidays, in May. I would stay with a family, and it was clearly a place that was not doing so well financially. They were people who were living in quite run down homes, which I considered highly exciting – like cubbies, but for homes!
There were hessian walls and there were thunderbox toilets outside. I do think I have mentioned this previously, but there was one place I stayed and I was told to not look in the box at the side of the toilet. But of course we did, and it was not a locked box so it was easy to look into.
In there there were magazines, they were obviously magazines we shouldn’t look at because they had girls with no bra on, and I presume they were for Mr Whomever I was staying with to look at. We just thought they were funny, and when I say “we”, I don’t know if that was someone from the home or if it was another child who was there, or another foster child, or an adopted child.
We would have freedom to run wherever we wanted, and I remember the bright red soil of the Helena Valley and the very rich green colours of overgrown nasturtiums and weeds. It was hilly and there were valleys we could go into, and go and explore derelict houses that had been left to decay. We went without fear to these places.
Mofflyn was a Methodist Church run home and religion played a high part in daily life. Particularly the older children had to do Endeavour classes, and every Sunday we would go on the bus into the city and we would go to the main Wesley Church in the city.
The younger children would go across the road where the church owned property there, and it was a large property, or so it seemed. You would go in the door and there would be large rooms with staircases that went to more rooms, and more rooms.
There was a theatre type room which had a stage but no permanent seating, and we would do our Sunday school lessons over in that area, whilst the older children attended the full church service. Whether they came over later, I’m not sure.
I don’t remember much of the actual Sunday school fun things we did but I do know that we had to sing hymns and learn hymns. They were always dreary hymns, they weren’t songs for children, and we would get on the stage and sing.
I would always stand at the back and muck around with probably Susie Island [or Ireland?] and Vanessa, my friends from Mofflyn Homes, because none of us wanted to do this, and we had to sing these songs.
So, I’m pretty sure it was me who started to do this, which got us all into trouble in some way or another. I don’t remember being caught out, but I would sing like an old lady, and I would do the, you know, croaking of the voice and the kids would be giggling and we would be told to stop.
We were asked who was messing around and everybody would say “no”, but we would get great amusement out of doing this regularly.
The Bus Driver Incident
Also, when I went to school, we walked down Kent Street where we got to an intersection where there was a service station on the corner of Berwick Street. Sixty years later there is still a service station there and just before the service station was a bus stop.
“and the bus driver got out and came and gave us a really good tongue lashing“
We decided it would be really funny to wait for a bus and flag it down, or look like we’re running because we had missed it, and then just, you know, start laughing. We thought once it stopped it would just carry on its way.
We thought that would be a great joke, except the bus stopped, and the bus driver got out and came and gave us a really good tongue lashing. So much so that I wet my pants.
I wet them well and truly so that wee was running down my leg onto the ground. I was terrified to go to school, and I couldn’t go home because if I went back to the Home I would be caught out.
I don’t remember the outcome, but I do remember I never flagged the bus down again.
The Mofflyn Homes had events on that they did in conjunction with other places. I know that once a year there was a man, that’s all I knew in those days, who had a train that children could sit on.
And he would bring that big train along, and it had a number of carriages. I don’t remember how many carriages, but in my mind’s eye it was like a proper train and there were at least five or six carriages that were very small. No taller than an adult’s knee and that would go around the tennis court, and it was really great fun to do that.
We would go on this train, and I think it just went around and around. [GM: Trenna believes this train came from what is now known as the Castledare Minature Railway.]
There may well have been other events associated with it because we had an oval, and the kids played football on the oval. But they were all older than me and I think the amusement of the train was as far as it got for me.
I was still interested in very young child things. Someone at some stage bought me a walky talky doll which was considered a very flash doll in those days. It was quite a good size and I could make it walk around the wall of the flower beds of the Home. I loved that doll, and I don’t think I was good at sharing her with anyone else.
I also know that I was given a gift of Japanese or Chinese pyjamas that had a teal patterned top and white silk or satin pants. I thought I was like a princess [this is also mention in the recording of 9 April 2018]. I think that was in my younger days, but all of my timeline is muddled there.
Have I spoken about the yellow sandpits across the road? [GM: I nod at this point.] Those were our most fun!
I know that we also were taken to the movies on occasions with other church institutions. The kids would all lineup and we would each be given a little tub of Peter’s Ice Cream, and we would also get popcorn or lollies.
But, the films were always Christian related like The Ten Commandments, although I do feel I went and saw Jiminy Cricket. [GM: This might have been the Disney movie Cinderella]. I don’t know if I was taken there by someone who was taking me out on holidays.
The Mofflyn Homes did also have parties at Christmas and you would do fancy dress or some little games that you would do in the hall. I remember winning occasionally.
“I didn’t think of adults as kind, they were figureheads of authority, and I was usually scared of them.”
As a Christmas present you would get a soap that usually was in the shape of the Virgin Mary or Jesus on the cross. That was the present you got, and you were just happy to get a present.
I don’t really remember how I spent my time other than running around the place and getting into general mischief.
I do remember liking the kitchen staff in “the main”. They were the women who were the most kind. I didn’t think of adults as kind, they were figureheads of authority, and I was usually scared of them.
In the time that I lived there I don’t recall any of my living blood relieves, my aunties, coming to visit me. I would see them I think when Dad was still alive and I would go home to stay with him, or with them.
Other than that I don’t know who I saw and I lost identity with what a family was. Everybody was a “mum” or an “aunty”.
Men were people you just obeyed. It was definitely a sense of “them and us”. We were the children, they were the adults. It was our task to out whit them and we thought we often did.
“Men were people you just obeyed. It was definitely a sense of “them and us”. We were the children, they were the adults.”
I don’t recall having jobs to do, except I have a memory of getting the belt for not sweeping the passage floor properly, but my older sister has said that didn’t happen to me, it happened to my sister Barb, so that may be a muddled memory.
I also very much wanted to be a part of what Barb and Nancy were doing. As they were older than me they did Christian Endeavour classes at night, on a particular night of the week.
I really wanted to know what they did, so I wouldn’t go to bed when I was told to. I would go to bed but then I’d sneak up and listen through the door because they would all sit around the lounge room and talk about Bible stories.
I got caught once and was made to stand in the corner with my face to the wall and listen, because that’s what I wanted to do, and it was so boring. It was a good enough punishment to stop me wanting to hear Bible stories ever again.
For some reason there was an occasion when our dad did stay overnight. I remember this because he got one of the side rooms which I think only held two beds. There was a bigger bedroom which had, I think, about 5 beds in it.
It might be 5 beds on one side of the house for girls and 5 beds on the other side for boys. I moved that night into the bedroom that had 5 beds [GM: presumably from the 2-bed room, to allow Dad to have the bedroom] and Dad was in bed. But the beds were children size beds, and he was a tall man, well I thought he was, and his legs hung over the end of the bed which I thought was very funny.
No matter what they did they couldn’t keep me in my bedroom. I kept on sneaking out of the bedroom to go and look at Dad and laugh at his legs hanging over the bed.
Why he was there, I don’t know, but that’s a sort of happy memory, although in reality, it might not have been a happy reason why he was there.
Cut !
[GM: That is where that recording ended, one of the shortest of the collection.]