The Sausage Tree by Rosalie Medcraft Page A

we made as our bus laboured up the hills on the way to the beach or town. There were six or seven of us all imagining our rickety woodpile bus was real. We would be coasting the dusty country roads exploring where we had never been in real life, as happy as can be for hours, stopping to pick up passengers no matter whether they were real or imaginary.
    We had seen many pictures of the row upon row, acre after acre of the beautifully scented, purple flowers which grew at the North Lilydale lavender farm. Our magic woodheap bus transported us there as, carried by the soft summer breeze, the lingering scent of the lavender drifted from the rolling hills over the town. Regrettably, we would soon be brought back to reality by Mum calling out, “Someone bring me some wood for the stove”.
    Six pieces of mill waste formed our wickets for cricket and one especially selected piece was used as our bat afterwe shaped the handle by using Dad’s axe. We always managed to have a soft ball to play with. Hitting the ball over the fence was four runs, across the road six, and on the roof out. Retrieving the ball from the roof was a breeze as one of our more daring pastimes was a game we called “keep the pot boiling”.
    To play this game we ran around to the back of the house to where Dad had built the “copper shed” alcove, scrambled up onto the roof, ran across to the side of the house and jumped off. Once on the ground we had to run back to the start and climb back up so that someone was always on the roof ready to jump. We only played “keep the pot boiling” after school on the days that Mum went to town. Through more good luck than good management no-one was ever hurt, not even a small sprain. The unlucky part was when we were seen by Old Mother Brooks, who would knock-knock on her kitchen window—we knew that another hiding was imminent, but the next time Mum went to town we would be on the roof again. We often wished that the knock-knocking on the window would cause it to break and one day we were thrilled to bits when the pane of glass cracked from top to bottom.
    With our overworked imaginations we found it very easy to amuse ourselves in our own backyard where Mum could hear us and know what we were up to. We thought we had invented a game played in the long grass but later found out that our ancestors had used this method to help them catch game and that their children had used it in the same way as we did. At the time we could not see why Dad “went off” at us when he found out what we had been playing. Looking back, we were probably very lucky that someone didn’t break a leg.
    Before Dad made all the big backyard into garden, the grass grew long and thick and when it was nearly dry we would grab two handfuls of it and tie it into a knot, makingwhat we called grass traps. Next we would climb the back fence into the paddock and do the same there. The real trick was to get someone to chase us, usually not too hard to do as we were very good at annoying other kids. We would run through the yard, jump over the grass traps, climb the back fence and run like the wind still dodging traps. Our poor victims, thinking they were gaining on us, would suddenly disappear from sight. A surprised face would appear above the grass. The best time of day for this game was just on dusk when it was nearly impossible to see where the grass was tied. Sometimes the trick backfired on us as we would forget where all the traps were set and we were the ones on the ground. We really were terrible kids and, just maybe, we sometimes deserved that castor oil.

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Highlights of our year
    Every Sunday morning we went to Sunday school. Dad didn’t believe in anyone sleeping late so we were always up at the usual time. By eight o’clock we would be sitting down having breakfast, which on Sundays was a boiled or fried egg and toast made in front of the fire in the stove. Weekdays we had Weet-Bix or