the front veranda and threw 20 pounds of potatoes at him – one at a time. She did not hit him once. We all thought it very, very funny, which enraged her even more. Another time we were there for dinner and Merle made a pot of tea. Tom took a mouthful of it and spat it out as it scalded his mouth. He complained, ‘What did you do Merle, boil this water?’
We kids were taught to tell the truth but we learnt that telling the truth to an adult was not always a good thing. Merle made a cake and it was a bit doughy, but as we rarely had cake, we all ate with great gusto. When he’d finished eating, little Mike said, ‘Thanks for the cake, Mrs Crumblin. The tea was nice but the cake was a bit soggy.’ That got him a slap from Dad for bad manners.
Another time Merle gave her younger son Tommy, a hiding with bamboo and he got a big splinter in his hand as a result. Dad tried to take it out but it would not move. So Dad volunteered to take him to the hospital to get it removed and before they left Merle said to Tommy, ‘If you tell them I flogged you with bamboo, I’ll kill you when you get home.’ At the hospital, the first thing Tommy said was, ‘She flogged me with bamboo.’
Tommy always wanted to please and Dad was a real scrounge who took anything offered to him that might come in useful. One day Tommy found a washer that he thought Dad would like and offered it to Dad, saying, ‘Mr Tent, do you want a squasher?’ Washers became “squashers” for many years after that in our family and Kemp quickly became “Tent”. Being little blighters we would call Dad Mr Tent to get a reaction, which was mostly a light kick up the bum or clip over the head.
John Crumblin whipped up a homemade canoe and we all got in it. He placed a drum each side of the canoe and held it together with a rail about two inches thick to balance it. Getting into the canoe was an art in itself. John and Col were at each end and the rest of us very gingerly stepped in. As it was a tight fit, the older ones sat with their bums on the edge and their feet in the canoe and we smaller ones sat in the middle. Mum saw us out in the full flowing river, the canoe wobbling madly, and she called us in. So with great disappointment and trepidation we paddled back to the bank. We all received a good hiding for doing that as half the Kemp kids still could not swim at that stage. Merle locked her kids in the chook pen to punish them. We all considered Mum a real “spoil sport” and that we were allowed no fun.
In the Crumblin’s large yard they had an old empty tank on a high stand and we enjoyed climbing into it to play. It would shake and rattle and it’s a miracle that it didn’t ever topple over and kill us. The yard backed out onto open spaces and kangaroos often came in and when they did the boys would run like mad to try and catch them. One day Les caught one by the tail and he flew one way and the roo went the other way… who got the biggest fright is debatable.
We often camped on the reserve some two miles out of town. Mum much preferred living there as it gave us more freedom and Dad and Mum more privacy. Mum was a screamer and she had the liberty to shout at us kids to her heart’s content.
The Culgoa Common was a camping spot for drovers and swaggies. It was a good place to camp as there was shade, water and grass for the horses and we did not have to worry about the dogs barking and being a nuisance to anyone in the township. Nearby was a farming family called Dean, we could shout across the river to them and they would come over and play with us. When the river was low in water and there was a tree that had fallen over we could walk across for a visit. As Mum kept a tight rein on us, the Deans had to do most of the visiting to “our” side of the river. They were very friendly and any drovers who camped in this common got a visit from the Deans. The two Dean children still living at home, Leithy and Leroy used to ride their bikes to school in Dirranbandi. When we had stock, our camp was right near their gate and it was great to meet these kids and have a chat before they biked to their house up the road a bit. They were in the older kids’ age group, but we all enjoyed their company. We looked forward to camps like this as we met so few kids our age group. The family had two Alsatian dogs Pedro and Kim and a horse called Tony that Leithy rode. When the Dean family heard we were fairly close on a trip with stock they would travel out on the stock route for a visit and the adults would play cards into the night and we kids would play games in the dark.
Their Dairy was called Riverside and it was a couple of miles out of Dirranbandi on the Bollon side of town. Mrs Dean carried the milk into Dirranbandi every day with a horse and cart and after a while they bought a secondhand ambulance that their daughter Mackie drove for them. Neither Mr nor Mrs Dean could drive.
Mackie was thirteen and worked for the Pippos who owned the local Café Deluxe in town. Our parents would often go into the café and Mackie would serve them their mixed grill. We would be out in the back of the truck and after they finished their meal they would buy a large serving of hot chips, which was wrapped in used newspaper, for our meal and the drive back to the camp. Col would get his share. He never seemed to mind being left behind to mind the camp but then he didn’t really have a choice. At this stage he would have only been about ten years old.
In the earlier years, Mackie, Leithy and Leroy would ride their horses to and from school. The local Aboriginal children who lived near the Deans on the opposite side of the river had to walk to and from school, having no other mode of transport. After school was over there was a wild rush to get to the horses. Whoever got to them first, got to ride them home. When the Aboriginal children rode them, they would gallop up near the bridge, tie the horses to a tree and walk the rest of the way home. The Deans would walk to where their horses were tied and ride the rest of the way home.
Many years after this incident I met up with Leroy and he told me fondly, ‘The little black bastards would pull us off our horses and gallop home to their humpies, if we were lucky, they would not bash us up.’
No grudges were ever held, he who ran the fastest got the horse. Eventually, the teachers got cunning and would let those riding home leave school early, cutting out the wild dash to the horse paddock.
Being on the Culgoa Reserve we could paddle in the water and Col, Les and Emmie learnt to swim there. The Culgoa River was a muddy water hole most of the time and was full of leeches. One day Dad and Mum went shopping in Dirranbandi with all the kids except Col, who was always left at the campsite to mind it, in case someone came along to steal things. We called in at the Crumblins for a visit and Merle asked us all to stay for dinner. Mum said no we could not stay as Col was waiting for dinner out at the camp. So Merle told John to race out and get him and John did that and they both then jogged the two miles back into town. It proves how healthy they were. John had one of his big toes missing, he had accidentally cut it off while chopping wood for the family stove at a young age. The whole family wore thongs and he adapted by having his second toe in the thong between his second and third toes.
We all loved lying in the truck on our parents’ double bed. This was the prime viewing spot and we fought over it all the time. We did not believe in dibs. First one in got the spot and quite often us little ones had to share with the bigger ones until we got bored and moved on to playing a game of some sort. If we had an old pack of cards we would play cards or “I spy” or make up silly jokes.
We were camped at our usual spot on the Culgoa Common and we had to go to a job for the APC. Before we left any camp we always cleaned it up – our mess and other people’s, in case anyone thought we had left it behind. This particular time, I was in the back of the truck and I had to get down onto the ground. Instead of stepping down onto the empty kero drum that was used as our step, I tried to jump over and past the drum. As I jumped, my long dress got caught on something in the truck and I fell face first onto the drum edge, knocking out all my front teeth. Mum quickly grabbed a clean tea towel and placed it over my mouth to help stem the flow of blood. With the truck all packed up they drove me to hospital where I had several stitches to my gums, bottom lip and down my chin. I clearly remember looking over Dad’s shoulder as the doctor and a kindly nurse fussed over me and quietly assessed and reassured me that I would be all right. I spent several days in hospital while the stitches healed.
