Once Upon a Time in a Backyard

I am the nosy neighbour with her twitching lace curtains peering into my ancestor’s back yards trying to pull apart the shades of history.

The back yards of these great Federation houses were hives of activity in comparison to the front where swards of manicured green were interrupted by gravel driveways and shady date palms broadcasting their empire reach, planted from souvenir seeds from Egypt and South Asia. Out of sight were clothes lines and bubbling coppers, vegetable gardens and chooks, ducks and the occasional rabbit. These old houses were almost self-sufficient with roast chicken on Sundays and soup from the bones on Mondays and the baker and his cart horse delivered fresh crusty bread on weekdays. Eggs were used in children’s teas with their army of Vegemite soldiers or poached on a bed of fresh-harvested spinach. (Yes,old-fashioned children did not spurn their greens!) Cakes and tarts were afternoon tea highlights to be served after the household had risen from their ’camp’ or siesta.

We can see there is a new baby in the house so it must be 1920 when my mother, Judith, was born at “Lucknow”, Alice and Howden’s house on the Swan River in Claremont, Perth.....all Howden’s houses bore Anglo Indian names. Born in Madras into a family of the Indian Civil Service, Howden, now a West Australian pastoralist, was my grandmother’s second husband and Judith was their first child.

Who wandered these back yards with their Box Brownie recording the simple domestic chores of a large household, recording a little girl, my mother’s half sister, Pat, dressing up in nurse’s uniform or proudly pegging the baby’s garment to a low clothes line? Or in another image Howden is watering the tomatoes while behind him in a window we catch a glimpse of a women cradling a baby. It is hot we know and close to Christmas because Howden wears cool linen clothes and hats are de rigeur for adults and children alike. The ubiquitous tank stands sillhoueted against the skyline , its presence a necessity in this dry state and sometimes a windmill drives it.

Wandering around to the front, our Box Brownie correspondent chats to the gardener and asks him to pause. His neat formality proclaims ‘old school’ traditions perhaps lost to the young but who are now lost themselves in the Great War. His pockets bulge with small tools of his trade and his friendly tobacco pouch.

I leave with regret this busy backyard overlooked by its gables of differing roof lines, knowing them a little better but greedy for more.