Almanac Memoir: A Mallee Christmas
Wycheproof Swimming Pool [Photo: local government website]
Last day of school we are despatched by the Mercy Nuns at Saint Michael’s without fanfare or best wishes for the holidays. Perhaps they are hoping a good number of us won’t survive the Christmas holidays so they never have to deal with us again. School buses take the farm kids towards Nullawil or Wycheproof South or Glenloth or Narraport and they are dropped off at the farm gate. We town kids skip home to five weeks of freedom.
A week to go before Christmas, harvesting – depending on the season – is just about finished. In a bumper year, though, it’s in full swing with Christmas Day is seen by some cockies as an annoying interruption to the main task.
The Mallee sun is relentless and the swimming pool is a blessing for the town kids. We are there for most of the day, every day, courtesy of family season passes. Sunscreen hasn’t been invented and hats are nowt more than an elective fashion accessory. If we get lucky there might be a truck laden with watermelons or grapes on its way from Mildura to the Footscray market stopped in front of one of the cafes while the driver has a feed. A few watermelons or grapes aren’t missed from a truck that big and no doubt it’s the driver’s choice to turn a blind eye .
Christmas Eve is upon us and it’s the Lions Club Christmas party on the Shire Hall lawns. Santa makes an appearance via the Lions Club train and hands out lollies. The Lions put on a sausage sizzle with ice creams and soft drinks for the kids.
Midnight Mass is compulsory attendance for the five Kelly progeny and their mother. It’s a packed house listening to the booming Irish tones of Father Dan O’Brien and it’s not a great night to be rostered on as an altar boy as Dan is intolerant of altar boys who mess up particularly when he is playing to a big house. Thankfully for the town kids, the farm kids get the Christmas Eve gig. Lots of men are full of good cheer and mid Mass invariably a few of them nod off and commence to snore loudly. Their tiredness is more likely to be a result of their consumption at the Terminus or the Royal Mail than the rigours of harvest.
So it’s home to bed and to await whatever Santa provides in the morning. The reality is we are all past believing in Santa with the possible exception of the youngest, Bernadine. Three boys in one bedroom and two girls in another would do their best to get to sleep albeit I do recall pretending to be asleep and after the presents were put on the end of the beds swapping a few around while my brothers slept. Oh dear, Santa was extremely good to me some years!
Christmas morning dawns and five Kelly kids excitedly unwrap the presents their hard working mum had gone without to provide. No arguments, no whinges about what we may have wanted but didn’t get. Breakfast finished, it might be a quick game of cricket if a new bat had arrived.
My mum’s brother Jack arrives in his ute and the three boys travel in the back and Mum and the two girls are in the front for 36 mile trip to Berriwillock for the O’Bryan family Christmas at Gran and Pop’s. Of course, it’s a stinking hot day. It wouldn’t be a Mallee Christmas if it wasn’t hot. The O’Bryan family is a large Irish Catholic mob and typically there are around 20 adults and circa 40 grandkids in attendance. Sensibly, hot meat is out, so it’s cold pork, turkey and ham all from the family farms with hot vegetables and salads. Christmas pudding, trifle , pavlova and Jack Gook the Berriwillock baker’s magnificent bread. Oh the joy if you get lucky and score a threepence from Gran’s pudding.
Adults talk and drink and the grandkids amuse themselves. Invariably a game of cricket takes place on the back road across from Gill’s and Blight’s. The red Mallee dust makes for a great cricket pitch and there is no shortage of fielders as other Berriwillock kids join in. The sun shows no sign of relenting.
Not much to eat for dinner perhaps a turkey sandwich and some more sweets. As the sun starts to set its back into Jack’s ute for the trip home. We arrive perhaps around 9.30 and sink into bed exhausted, probably with feet covered in rich red soil and sleep the sleep of contented millionaires.
Five weeks before we go back to school. Holidays away from the town are a thing of fiction so it’s five weeks of swimming, riding bikes and playing cricket in Bell’s paddock.
How good is life! It just couldn’t get better for a kid than having Christmas in the Mallee. You wouldn’t be dead for quids .
Regards
Hayden Kelly
Read more terrific memoir from Drizzle HERE
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Loved it Hayden, enough references to bring back memories of my own childhood. The extended family of my childhood (33 cousins across 7 families) was too large for a collective event, but Christmas Day in the country was always memorable.
Very enjoyable read. So much to relate to here. Post sunset exhaustion especially.
Enjoyable read with an internal glow increasing with each para Hayden. There was only me and my slightly younger sister, who got real sick of playing cricket with me. Occasionally a few cousins would be involved. For me it was more looking forward to visiting both sets of grandparents who lived many hours drive away from wherever we were living at the time.
Great read Hayden. Much the same south of the divide at Winchelsea but about 5 or 6 degrees cooler. One major change though. Father Frank Casamento loved his music therefore big events like Christmas were always a marvellous chance to show off a bit. In such a mood he would always be much more forgiving of altar boys including your author with spilt cruets and clumsy Latin syntax.
Very nice reminiscing, Hayden.
Roger
Father Frank sounds a bit more forgiving than Dan who was known to punch an altar boy on the arm mid mass if he messed up . We loved Dan anyway as he was just a larger than life Irishman who was a big part of our community . Subsequently we have all loved Dan more as he never took holidays and the relieving holiday priest circling every Parish around us was the infamous Gerald Ridsdale .
There but for the grace of God …..
Grand read. Thanks again Hayden.
There is a hierarchy to country towns. Bigger, richer ones have a racetrack. Smaller, poorer ones have a trotting track. Same with swimming pools.
Growing up – Kadina had a trotting track and a swimming pool; Renmark had a swimming pool; Yorketown had neither.
If you haven’t got a penny; a ha’penny will do; if you haven’t got a ha’penny; then god bless you.