Stinker’s History: Life on Marsh Road part one

THIS is a recollection of growing up on Marsh Road in the 1950s, as told by Patricia Hawkins (nee Maslin).

AFTER five years of waiting for building supplies, caused by shortages after World War Two, my father Eric Maslen and mother Doris abandoned their plan of building their house on my grandfather Herbert’s property.

They bought Eric and Jean Robinson’s unfinished home on the roadside on the other side of the wind break of what is now the Barramundi Farm.

We had a primitive life in the early days.

We must have had a house warming because I have a very early memory of lots of happy men, women and children filling our house, sitting on the floor, backs against the wall or standing around – we would only have had six chairs.

I can remember an enormous flathead in the laundry tub.

Dad had fisherman friends from Nelson Bay and mum often scored a lobster.

We had electricity but no refrigerator.

We had an ice chest so when Dad took produce to Newcastle he would come home with a big ice slab.

We had a meat safe hanging in the laundry which kept perishables slightly cooler at other times.

After about a year we did get a President refrigerator and Mum could make ice cream.

Our lavatory was about 20 metres from the house with newspaper hanging on string for toilet paper.

When the can filled, a hole was dug and the contents emptied.

Mum had a copper and a scrubbing board to wash our clothes, along with a hand wringer.

Our copper also heated our bath water.

Our bathroom was on the other side of the house so had to be carted through in buckets.

There was a fuel stove in the kitchen for cooking and also for sitting around and keeping warm in the winter.

All the properties were surrounded by drains, with floodgates attached, leading out to Tilligerry Creek.

These were created and maintained by the farmers, as was the levee bank along the road.

We used these drains as play areas, catching tadpoles at low tide, or endeavouring to float canoes made from roof iron. Dangerous when the drains were full.

I can remember hanging on to my brother John and screaming for mum – we used to jump the drains and sometimes did not make it across!

We had a couple of flooding events in the 1950s where water lapped our floorboards.

We were fortunate as Aunty Lorna and Uncle Kevin lost everything at their home in Raymond Terrace.

They lived with us for a while until they could get back on their feet.

After the war, a lot of European refugees came to Australia and had to find somewhere to live.

I don’t know how it came about but we had a mother, father and daughter Sonja living in the deserted dairy on grandfather’s farm.

The father John used to travel to Newcastle to work at BHP.

There was another family in the dairy at Anderson’s farm next door.

Going to school was an adventure.

The road was tarred to one car width, which was fine until a car suddenly appeared and we had to take to the gravel or reeds on our bikes.

My knees remained scarred for many years and I still have one on my eyebrow.

The school at the end of Marsh Road was two or three miles from home and many times we walked, pushing our bikes because of punctures.