Last Monday, cooking
grape jam on a blistering 40 degree Celsius day, over a hot stove, but with my
air-conditioner running, my thoughts and memories went back to my mother
cooking grape jam on a wood stove in a wood and fibro house in over 100 degree Fahrenheit heat with no cooling, and before that my
grandmother bringing up eight children in a tin shack out at Bilbarin in the
Western Australian wheatbelt, and her mother before that in the 1800s in
Jeparit in Victoria. They certainly didn't have the luxury of an
air-conditioner or even a fan!
My maternal grandmother and grandfather, May and John Jackson, were married in 1912 in Narrogin. In 1919 my grandfather moved the family, by this time including five children, from their comfortable home in Narrogin and went out bush as he wanted to "make a go of it" at farming.
"Their first temporary home was tents set up on a rabbit warren where the ground was hard and bare, making good flooring. A small home was soon built, typical of the bush homes of those days – bush timber, corrugated iron roof and walls, lined with bags split open and white washed, and with an earthen floor." You can see some of the house in this picture above. The smaller child is my mother.
My maternal grandmother and grandfather, May and John Jackson, were married in 1912 in Narrogin. In 1919 my grandfather moved the family, by this time including five children, from their comfortable home in Narrogin and went out bush as he wanted to "make a go of it" at farming.
"Their first temporary home was tents set up on a rabbit warren where the ground was hard and bare, making good flooring. A small home was soon built, typical of the bush homes of those days – bush timber, corrugated iron roof and walls, lined with bags split open and white washed, and with an earthen floor." You can see some of the house in this picture above. The smaller child is my mother.
