for a âpieceâ for us both. A âpieceâ was a thick slice of white bread, which his mother would spread with Nestles condensed milk. Our stay overloaded the three-bedroom house but nobody seemed to mind, especially the Whitrods, for this stay gave us an opportunity to have a decent hot bath. The Boushallsâ new house had a chip heater. In Murrays Lane, the residents boiled hot water in the outside copper and carried it by hand bucket to a large tub in the lean-to extension at the back. Other domestic facilities were equally primitive.
I remember meeting my fatherâs mother when I was about six. She was living with her youngest daughter, Alice Dixon, and my father and mother visited her. She must have been about seventy and, to my young eyes, a very old lady. She died when I was fifteen years old. My father and mother would take me to visit her on a Sunday afternoon, about three times a year. The Dixons lived at Kilburn which was quite a walk, perhaps 2 miles [3 kilometres], from the Enfield tram terminus. My uncle, Lionel, was a slaughterman at the nearby abattoirs, and in regular employment. He shot quail in the nearby stubble fields and kept a trotter in a stable in his backyard. On our visits, we always had to inspect the mare before we were offered cups of tea. Lionelâs horse never won a race. The drivers of the trotting rigs were notorious for deciding beforehand who would win. They never decided in Lionelâs favour â but he probably never realised how artificial his run of bad luck was. The Dixons did not return our visits.
My brother Frank was born late in 1923, by then I was eight and in second grade at the nearby Convent School. My mother had decided that the Sturt Street state school was too rough and that I would get a better education at the Catholic school. This cost her sixpence a week. The traditional Catholic-Protestant rivalry was alive on the streets, and on the way to the Convent the Sturt Street kids would chant âCatholic frogs jump like dogs, in and out the waterâ. There were two other non-Catholic students at the Convent. We were excused from mass and would sit out in the yard reading books. The Sisters were tolerant of our heretic status and never tried to convert us.
Soon after my brotherâs birth, my parents moved out of Murrays Lane. I donât know why. Perhaps the earlier departure of the Jacksons to a War Service Home at Ovingham, then the Boushalls to a Tram Trust home at West Croydon, and then the Hardys to somewhere I have forgotten, may have influenced them. It was 1923 and it turned out to be a bad year for our family accommodation-wise. We moved first to Wellington Square in North Adelaide, but the house was full of white ants.
From there we went for a short stay with my grandmother, now living at Torrensville. I remember Clara as a small, wizened old lady who had begun to suffer from dementia in her seventies. She was often difficult to get on with and I think my mother had a hard time trying to prevent Claraâs more determined eccentricities, especially her habit of wandering away from home. But one thing I do remember with fondness is that Clara never forgot how to prepare potted meat in the old Birdsville style. This involved boiling down a shin of beef for some time â days perhaps â and then placing a plate with a rock on top of it on the cooling mass. A basic necessity in her day when meat prepared in this way would last without refrigeration far longer than fresh meat. We had it often in Torrensville and I found it delicious. We then moved to Ovingham to mind the Jacksonsâ home while they went back to England for a few months. From there we moved into rooms on the Parade at Norwood, and then finally to 318 Halifax Street in the city. So that year, for short periods, I attended new schools at North Adelaide, Cowandilla and Norwood. I should have moved from the Norwood school to a city school, but my mother