Table of Contents
Editor’s note vii
Prologue 1
1 · Crybaby 3
2 · Horses, buggies and steam trains 6
3 · Please give me a penny, sir 8
4 · A King George V childhood 12
5 · No more flowers 18
6 · More tears 25
7 · ‘How is the little boy?’ 29
8 · No time for kisses and cuddles 30
9 · Boots, beards and braces 38
10 · Messages to the terminus 42
11 · Roast lamb, jam, baths and Methodist Sundays 48
12 · My father the bushie 51
13 · Simple pleasures 55
14 · An intrepid ten-year-old 58
15 · The Pommie invasion 61
16 · Cynthia, school and me 64
17 · The big lie 68
18 · Wilhelmina, the lost love 74
19 · Whatever happened to Cynthia? 81
20 · Tom, my starstruck brother 87
21 · The prettiest girl in Mayfield 90
22 · ‘I suppose you must all love babies?’ 100
23 · Bedbugs and breech births 108
24 · First love 112
25 · No one left to be proud of me 117
26 · A second-class railway ticket to a new life 121
27 · Who’s in charge here, you, me or Doctor Wheatley? 125
28 · Getting to be part of the “in” crowd 131
29 ·
The doctor, his wife, the chemist, the dentist, the
hospital sister and me 137
30 · Married life in the “place of wild honey” 143
31 · “Tall, healthy and with their own teeth . . . ” 150
32 · Messerschmitts, Spitfires, Dunkirk and childbirth 153
33 · The terror of the Japanese 159
34 · A barbershop, two rooms and a bathtub 162
35 · Babies and the Battle of the Coral Sea 166
36 · The end of the War and soldier settlers 173
37 · After the surrender — civil war at home 175
38 · Strains in the family 181
39 · Forbidden romance 186
40 · Living and partly living — a hard-won partial happiness 190
41 · Movement, turmoil and misery 200
42 · The tarot reader 214
43 · Return to Bull Street 219
44 · So . . . 223
Epilogue 226
Index 228
