LIFE IN THE FIFTIES in a small Country Town

The movie "Calamity Jane' was what stated me wanting to be a cowgirl. The love of horses was in my blood from generations back. My mothers 3 brothers were jockeys, one a top jumps jockey in SA and then a race horse trainer in Adelaide, Dave Kelly. Her great grandfather was also a jockey. My older brother John wanted to be a jockey but grew too big and ended up a race horse trainer and breaker.

I grew up in a small seaside town in South Australia, Port Kenny and also Venus Bay. Venus being the nicest as it had lovely beaches. My father Douglas was a fisherman as was his father Harold. We lived in Venus Bay when I was very young and even lived for 6 months in a tent on the beach. My parents were very poor and didn't have enough money to buy a house so my Nana and my mums sister bought a house in Port Kenny, where we eventually moved and lived. My mother had 4 children about 18months apart, a boy, girl, boy, girl. as did her sister Mona whom she was quite close to.
We lived next door to to my fathers sister Brenda and her husband Len who had 9 children. Then next door to them was a cousin of dads, Dudley who had 4 children. It was a very small community and had a General Store, Post Office, Hotel, Police Station and a Primary School.
As we didn't have television in those days we had to make our own games up and often played marbles, hopscotch, hyacki, knuckle bones, cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers and circuses.

It was always a big event when the Circus came to town, so exciting! One day we all had to stay inside as they elephants were loose and walking around town feeding...a bit scary as we thought they were wild. My older brother would always head to the grounds and help out as like me he had a love of horses and animals. I wasn't allowed as I was 'a girl'. One time at the circus they asked for some children to ride the horses and stand up on them bareback with a harness on. Well my brother had his hand up and was picked to my envy. He was just standing up on the horse while it was cantering around the circle when they whisked him off in the harness to the ground, he was hanging on for a while to the surcingle  with his bum in the air as he really wanted to stand up, but had to let go, it looked quite funny and everyone clapped.
Another show to come to town was the bucking horses as a sort of rodeo. My uncle Robert used to ride and do well. We also had the Buddy Williams Show (singing) and Slim Dusty. There were also dances held occasionally but we never went as my parents weren't interested.

My mother taught me to read before I went to school so that when I went I knew quite a bit but was much better at English than maths. I was usually in the top 3 in the class. I was quite good at running and high jump and would win the cup at sports day. To tell you the truth I was quite competitive too. I often used to win the three legged race with June my friend. Sports days at school was a big day for the children and we would sometimes compete against the next small school Mt Cooper. We had a horrible head teacher at the time he would sometimes grab us by the chin and shake our head. My brother and I used to think up ways we could stop him like dribbling or licking his hand haha. I was once called to the front is assembly as I was late for school ( I had to put our horse Billy back in his yard as he escaped) He made me stand in front of everyone, so embarrassing for a quiet country girl.

When I was about five I was running back from the toilet (the backyard dunny) and fell over and cut my leg on a piece of glass. My parents had to drive me to Elliston about 60km away to the doctor who stitched it up, 12 stitches and gave me an orange for being a good girl. :-) I have the scar still.
My mothers sister Mona used to come and visit often and bring our cousins John and Joy, then Anne and Kenny so we spent some happy times growing up with them. My Nana would sometimes give us a tube of condensed milk each and we would head to the sandhills and lay around sucking on our tubes hahaha. yum. We also spent a lot of time in my childhood with my Nana. She had her old homework book and was a beautiful writer in cursive and decorated her nights homework with wonderful drawings, which we would try to copy when we did our home work. She owned the local store and Post Office and sometimes I would help behind the counter serving which I thought was a wonderful priviledge. We would occaisionally get a free icecream or lolly for helping.
Often she would give us a fishing line and some bait and burley and we would head to the jetty for a days fishing, coming home for a quick lunch, then back down again. Our reward was fresh cooked fish, trevally or whiting. Nana was the best cook for fish.