Post-Publication Contextual Note: I was born in in March 1968.
In August 1970 Sally was born; I certainly don't remember that. But I remember the smells of baby formula and rubber Nuk nipples for milk bottles. I remember trips to the Clinic for check ups on The Baby; they put The Baby in a big bowl on a set of scales and calculated the weight by sliding different metal weights up and down. I thought it was very strange. I think this was the Clinic, in lower Alexander St.
1971 We had a concrete slab in our backyard in Burnie, behind the garage. I must ask why we had a concrete slab. I don't remember it being poured but I remember it being new. I was riding a blue Dinky tricycle around it while dad stacked firewood. For some reason I have always remembered this and being 3.
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| Mine was something like this. |
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| The slab behind the garage. |
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| This is mum and I years later, probably 1978 as I have a World Series Cricket shirt on. I think I got glasses in 1976 but I'm not wearing them, I was not a fan. |
1972 I went to Child Minding which was in Charles Street close to Burnie Primary School. I guess Jacki was enrolled in Grade 1 there so it was convenient. I remember a girl named Stacey, I remember having a favourite quiet corner of the verandah, and I remember eating playdoh there.
1973 I went to West Park Kindergarten, next to West Park football ground and the Burnie bowls club on one side; and the train line and West Beach on the other. I remember many things about kinder.
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| This was the original Burnie High School, built in 1929. West Park Kinder operated out here in my day. It burned down in 2007. |
- Flavoured milk in translucent white plastic sachets. Banana, chocolate, strawberry.
- Doing maths on a slate with chalk. The slate was green, in a wooden frame. I don't remember doing writing on slates, just maths.
- My teacher was Mrs Ingram and she was oldish and very kind.
- Excursions to Burnie Park over the highway. Mrs Ingram and another teacher would hold up traffic for us to cross which sounds mad but possibly there were no traffic lights then? Like everything when you are little, it just was.
- There was a (disconnected) olde tyme phone on the wall, the kind with a separate talking tube and listening piece.
- There was a collection of bikes with training wheels and scooters and we would parade around the path on these.
- I remember "painting the shed" - there was a playhouse in the yard and we would paint it with pots of water and big brushes.
- Car pooling. There were five kids, and our parents would take turns to collect us all and drop us off. There was me, Andrew McLaren and Julie Docker, Elizabeth from Paraka St and someone else. Julie's mother had a blue 2-door sedan and I often tripped over the seat belt when clambering out of the back. I think Macca's mum had a yellow Beetle.
- There's a photo of Macca and I and about ten other kids bouncing on a big tractor inner tube; and that has kept alive my memory of some of the kids who were there. Within a few years of starting primary school it was hard to remember wh0 you'd known before and who was new.
- We also went to a sort of family daycare, just around the corner from home at the top of Bay Street. It might have been called Auntie Pat's or something like that.
- Baby Sally fell one storey onto concrete at the Health Glo squash centre, but she wasn't seriously injured. She was upstairs with other kids, a lady was supposed to be minding them while mum and dad played squash downstairs. There was a gate at the top of the spiral stairs and Sally just crawled under it and straight down through the central space. It must have been so dreadful for anyone who saw it.
- I also did a plummet and got away with it; off the steam train in Burnie Park onto the concrete surrounds.
- Hanging around the grass tennis courts when they were down in Avon St just off Burnie Park, while mum and dad were playing.
- Making friends with Andrea Viney while our fathers played for the Burnie High teachers' cricket team. There was a big ditch around the outside of the boundary and we were ditch pals. As we are to this day!
