User:Cheryl Trewin
I was born in a little town(then!)called Maffra in Gippsland in Victoria, Australia in the same hospital as my mother Dorothy. ............ My father Peter was a wanderer.He liked going walkabout too much and dragged his family all over the state. ............. We lived in ninteen houses between 1960 (when they were married )to 1979 when they divorced(more about that later).And,some of them weren't even houses-they were sheds and caravans. .............. My Dad was a mill hand when I was born,but,did a variety of jobs as we moved from one place to another.Eventually we were joined by my two brothers David and Paul. ................ Sometime in the late 60's we arrived in Bendigo and not long after,Dad fell in love with another woman and left Mum,taking my eldest brother David with him.
Life was hard.Mum had to work in a mill to bring in money and keep food on the table. We probably went without alot of things, but,I was not conscious of this.
I can remember living in a back-to-front house(the rear faced the road and the front a bush block on which boy scouts would camp).There were trees to climb,paddocks all round and a horse called Honey. I can remember riding Honey bareback up the road to the house with my brother Paul, turning in through the gate and both of us falling off! ............... Another incident and a more serious one was when I had a spike from a rake head actually enter the top of my head. It happened while a neighbour was babysitting us and my brother had the rake- I had a shovel,we were gardening and somehow the spike entered the top of my head,but,was't discovered until two days later as mum was doing my hair. I remember siting up in a hospital bed (this was long before the last renovation of the children's ward on the old site of Bendigo Health) with a big bandage on top of my head,playing a boardgame with another child patient that involved flipping tiny pillows over a barrier,the ward bath that I swear was big enough to swim in and my most humiliating moment,having to go home without any underwear on because mum had forgotten to pack some!
Golden Square at the time was mostly horse paddocks or so it seemed to me.Lots of trees too,which I climbed as a youngster-this was long before helicopter parenting or cottonwool kids.We were allowed to roam unsupervised and yet still be home before dark.I miss those days!
Because Mum didn't have car/license to drive or money for a ride on the tram,we walked alot-even into the Bendigo CBD,all the way in and all the way back.How we managed this as youngsters I still don't know-I guess because it was all we knew that we tolerated that long double walk. At that time also the trams weren't for tourists,they were everyday transport for those of us who could afford to travel on them.