17.3.11 – Squeaky doors (Tailem Bend, South Australia)

17.3.11 – Squeaky doors (Tailem Bend, South Australia)

Tailem Old Town

Memories can come flooding back vividly and at the most unexpected of promptings.  Bill’s boyhood, spent in Australia, leapt back into life today at the Tailem Old Town Pioneer Museum.  Dusty winding dirt streets, little clapboard houses and shops, old rusty cars and trucks, a dentist’s leather chair and equipment, a pharmacist’s rows and rows of different shaped bottles and jars, a milliner’s brightly coloured hats – feathered, purple satin, plain green felt, a dressmakers, lace wedding dresses looking ready to buy.  But nobody about – the town seemed to be hushed, waiting and wondering where its inhabitants were.  Surely a lady in a long skirt would soon emerge from the little corrugated iron town hall, surely a man in a wide-brimmed leather outback hat must be just about to jump down from that lorry, outside the garage with the glass topped petrol pumps, surely we would soon hear children laughing as they played on the verandas with the little wooden rocking horses, or a mother in a 1950’s flower patterned dress must be about to walk down her garden path through the rusty metal gate, pushing her baby in that wicker work pram.  But nobody came. 

We wandered in and out of the houses and shops, pushing the light wooden fly-screen doors open as we went.  They squeaked and banged behind us.  And that was the trigger for Bill’s memories of hot dusty childhood days, when he would run in and out of the house, or go cycling to shops just like the big emporium we saw, where the money was taken, placed in small containers, attached to wires and fired off to the bookkeeper who sat in a high booth in the centre of the shop – the ‘Flying Fox’ they called it, and there it was.  Then there was the rickety house with kitchen in which was a wooden cupboard which he instantly recognised as an ‘ice box’ – the precursor of the fridge.  It looked like a small china cabinet, but the top opened to reveal a metal lined box with a hole in the bottom.  Below was a little door, which opened to reveal a small metal lined cupboard.  Bill could remember the man who came in a little van, with huge blocks of whitish ice which he lifted with large tongs and transferred, as rapidly as possible, to the box in the top of the cabinet.  Every day he came, and throughout the day, the ice melted, keeping the food cool.

Like the Baker's van

There was the old fire hydrant, just like the one to which the baker used to tie his horse, when he came to deliver their bread, wicker basket hanging on the crook of his arm, big, fragrant double loaves protruding from all sides.  Bill and Margaret used to wait for him to trot along the road, and then they would run out to pet the patient, gentle animal as he waited in the sun.  Then came the day when the horse came no more, as the baker had bought a shiny new van, just like the one we saw today, now rusting in a shed. 

Austen Major

Bill’s mother, returning home one day with eggs she was most anxious not to break, miscalculated as she reversed into the drive, and had an altogether too close encounter with that very same fire hydrant, which scraped its way along the side of Bill’s dad’s pride and joy – the pale blue Austen Major, very similar to the one in the little old car showroom in Old Tailem Town. 

Little church

Then there was the little corrugated iron church, dusty wooden floor and glass arched windows, that reminded him of the Baptist Church where once he sang and listened and wriggled on the hard wooden pews.

But most evocative of all was the little corrugated iron shack, somewhat ramshackle, with red roof and pale green walls, a hard-packed earthen floor within, a verandah outside.  Once again he was back in the first home they had had in Whyalla, when he was just six years old.



Bill outside the little shack