Living in Boulder (WA) and the third of six children was a fairly secure experience. When I was about twelve years old my father mortgaged our house and bought machinery to mine for gold. Unfortunately this venture ended in disaster, with the mine caving in on top of the machinery and no means left to dig it out. After selling everything we moved to Lithgow in NSW in early December of 1949, with little in the way of material assets.

My father purchased a fairly tattered marquee tent whose wall (or skirt) came only half way around. After choosing a spot at the edge of town, and at the foot of a mountain   and just beyond the mine in which my father had secured work, we set about the job of making a home. With the help of my fourteen-year-old brother, Dad managed to get the three pylons upright and under the canvas roof. This latter piece of equipment proved to have many holes and so an old six-man tent was pitched inside for us six kids to sleep in. My parents had to sleep in a dry area with the sight, sounds and wonderful aromas of a leafy mountain and a creek rippling by.

By Christmas 1949 we were quite settled with our mother sewing school uniforms for each of us on her treadle machine.

Late morning on Christmas eve a sudden strong wind blew the whole marquee over. My youngest sister was asleep in an iron cot and one of the pylons landed across it. We all crawled out from under, and set to work to re- pitch our home. I can still see my mother ¢â‚¬â„¢s hair flying back, along with the bowl of those chocolate things which were made with copha and cocoa and rice bubbles.

Nevertheless we all survived the experience and next morning  ¢â‚¬“ Christmas day – was celebrated joyfully. My mother had managed to buy a gift for each of us. Mine was a blue fountain pen, because I was soon to start High School. I thought I was the luckiest girl on earth and I treasured that pen for the rest of my schooling. Our Christmas dinner was chicken (just one between all eight of us with beans and potatoes) and cooked in an old iron oven out in the open. My father had picked it up from some junk shop.

We lived there for six months until June in the mountains proved far too cold.

During that time we kids revelled in the excitement of living on the edge of a mountain. We two older   girls knitted our own jumpers and those of our two younger sisters. We never had rain coats or even lots of blankets, but our bodies adjusted to the climate and we all remained healthy. Late in life now, my siblings and I speak with pleasure about that experience.

Our wonderful mother never could!