Kid summer memories - we have this plant we called "plum pudding", it has a tiny magenta star flower and grows in the lawn. The young seed pods of this plant are sweet to chew. I remember one Friday sports afternoon a few weeks before Christmas (the last weeks of our school year, before summer) I was sitting in the outfield of our softball game (like baseball) knowing the batters were useless and I didn't have to do any fielding. I was harvesting and eating plum puddings, and stuffing the pockets of my sports tunic with them. It was hot, I was thirsty, and these juicy pods (about the size of my little-girl fingernail at biggest) were the only way I had to quench my thirst. There was no carrying of water bottles back then; just a push and shove for the school bubblers, most of which did not work properly and you had to suck the water out, ignoring that all the other kids did the same thing and you were all sharing germs. And the water was always warm and tasted of ants...
Later that afternoon at choir practice, the church was blessedly cool inside. I was nibbling the plum puddings in my pocket when the choir mistress saw me. She sent me outside to throw them away; but I went to my bag and put them in my lunchbox. I felt guilty when I came back in and she asked me if I had thrown them away and I said, "Yes". I told a lie - in the church!
In summer - we made daisy chains. From what I know now, the daisy we use is an African daisy, it's a weed here. A pretty yellow and black weed, though. I used to go fishing for tadpoles, climbing the old willow trees on our property, walking with friends, and trying to find ways to keep cool. Also in summer - the Sydney southerly buster would arrive every afternoon at 3.20 pm. After a searingly hot, humid day where the sweat from our arms pooled on the desk under us and our bottoms stuck to the seats and grabbed the skin painfully - we had the choice of running home fast, in the heat - or waiting a little under shelter until the southerly buster hit, burst its furl on the buildings and turned the street into a white mist of spray for a short while. Or we could walk home in it and get saturated. If the day had been really hot, we would often choose to walk home. Often after the storm passed (they lasted about ten minutes and afterwards the air was fresher and more comfortable) I would walk home with the rainwater gushing in the gutters beside the path. I would carry a few pop sticks to float down the gutter, playing my own version of "poohsticks".
Summer on the weekend and in the holidays - for a special treat we would go to the beach. Where we lived at the time, the beach was up to three hours' drive away. Such a long drive was not to be wasted, we would pack a picnic and the whole large family would shoehorn into the car (before seat belt laws) and rattle our way to the beach. We'd spend the entire day there burning to a crisp. Sometimes we'd hear a shark alarm which meant everyone had to get out of the water and wait until they sounded the all-clear. We'd come home with blistered skin covered in salt. I remember being unable to sleep with the pain of it, but I fared better than my fair-skinned sisters. At school we were warned of the dangers of bad sunburn but my parents always assured me that ours was not bad sunburn. From hat I know now - it certainly was. I am amazed I've had no skin cancers! But we did what everybody did back then. There was only one effective sunscreen - "Pinke Zinke". It was greasy and smeared everywhere including over your towel, I hated to use it.
When I was 11 and about to go to high school, I spent three weeks of the summer with my best friend, at a beach shack. No amenities - an outdoor pit toilet, an outdoor cold-only shower fed from the rainwater tank, one tap in the kitchen fed from the rainwater tank into a sink which emptied over the lawn. My friend's mother accidentally washed her contact lens down the kitchen sink - it emptied onto a lawn covered in fish scales, form all the fish my friend's father had cleaned! Amazingly, we did find the contact lens.
We bathed in a bucket, played cards, sunbathed, swam - but because we had a bolthole, we were able to get out of the sun if we'd had enough. That was the summer of my first real, lasting tan.
It was a wild beach - still is, last time I dropped in. I felt like a character from a book - "The Age of Consent" by Aussie author Norman Lindsay. A classic, but it also describes the wild beaches and the lifestyle of the NSW South Coast. A bit racy (a bit? A lot!) and not a book I should have known about at age 11...
That was also the summer I discovered the joy of sand-modelling. While we waited for my friend's parents to come back from their often all-day fishing trip, my friend & I would work on whales, mermaids and other shapes in the sand. One day we visited a beach a little way up the coast - the sand there was fine and full of mica dust, so the detail we were able to put in the sculpture was amazing. You could walk on that beach and not leave a footprint except in the softest, driest sand near the carpark.
So there you have it - some Aussie summer childhood memories. The sounds - the throb of cicadas, pounding a rhythm. Finding cicada shells and sticking them onto our clothing. Swatting mosquitoes, burning mosquito coils every night. The smell of the soft wet earth as we watered the garden in the evening. Picking peaches off the trees in the orchard. My mother staking props under the peach tree branches to stop them from braking under the weight. Peeling mountains of peaches in the back veranda, peach fuzz filling the air, shafts of sunlight visible in the motes. The itch of peach fuzz inside the shirt that not even a shower could wash away. The taste of fresh peach sandwiches (with a sprinkle of sugar). Bliss!
Enjoy!
Marg