Dad's House

I spent a lot of time growing up in a house that didn't have an indoor toilet. It was right down the back of the yard. If it was raining we would all go together, put on raincoats and Dad would walk us down with the torch and an umbrella, because it was too scary to go alone.

Our bath was in a room not much bigger than the bathtub itself, which was adjacent to the kitchen. There was a hole in the fibro wall with Dad used to talk through to Doran and me when we were in the bath and he was cooking dinner. One day in winter he bought a water pistol and squirted us through the hole by surprise when we were in the bath. The water was freezing.

After dinner Dad would make us hot chocolates in these tiny white and maroon china mugs with a picture of a blackface bellhop on the side. They were the perfect size for kids. Later he bought Doran a bigger yellow mug with the Flintstones on it, and me a blue one with a teddy bear wearing an eye patch.

After Dad started renovating the house, we the developed the tradition of asking him, as we arrived on a Friday night, “are there any changes?” (pronounced “chaaaaaaaaynges?”) Dad would answer yes and we would run around the house trying to figure out what had changed. Often it was something obvious but sometimes we just couldn’t see it, even if it was a new wall where a doorway once had been. It would take us nearly crashing into it as we tore through the house to see it there. Sometimes, when a really big change had been made, like when the fireplace was torn out, I was pained by the deep sense of sentimentality only a child can feel about inanimate objects. I felt the same sadness when Mum sold the green Subaru we grew up with and excused myself to say goodbye to the car while my brother was inside the shop, wildly excited by the new one. While the house was being renovated there were lots of great crawlspaces and opportunities to climb and hide up high in support beams on the wall. We were also allowed to draw on the bare gyprock walls. Some of those drawings never did get painted over.

During the summer we would play in the bush; pack picnics for the day or swing on the plank of wood Dad had hung which seemed to swing right out over the valley. We had apple trees that always had sour fruit, but the plumbs were pretty good. One day we decided to host a backyard Olympics, and piled plastic pots from the shed up with a broom across them for a high jump. Dad mowed the empty lot next door, cutting mazes into the long yellow grass. At Christmas a Santa on the local fire engine would drive down the street with a megaphone and throw cheap lollies out to kids. We would eat them as we jumped over the sprinkler, trying to stomp on the rainbows. Once, there was a massive flock of orange butterflies that flew up from the valley.

This was the new house. The old house was on the highway and surrounded by a rambling plant with little pink flowers. We didn’t have beds there, just mattresses on the floor. There was a paddock next door with a horse Dad told us was called Henry. We thought he belonged to us, but we couldn’t ride him because he didn’t like it. Once a month the car rallies would drive up the highway and the three of us in scratchy woollen dressing gowns would sit at the top of the steep driveway, eating porridge out of little china bowls, and watch the cars that looked like toasters and lobsters. The old house had an old milk shed out the back with lots of big, white, smooth rocks. I loved pretending they were eggs that I could collect.

Sometimes we would go for drives, to the pool or to Uncle Barney’s house in St Mary’s, or on various gallery errands. At 3 o’clock we would pull over and listen to the Goon Show. Dad could do a good Eccles.