In the religious calendar of my early life there were three important rites: Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation.
 
The Baptism Certificate [redacted] was an essential document; as important as a birth certificate is in civilian life.
​
It still has currency. Recently I overheard a parent explaining,
               “ We are having our kid dipped so we can get him into the Catholic school.”
 
In the mid 1950s, my younger brother was baptised at St John’s in Euroa. The ceremony was conducted around a font at the back of the church. The priest sprinkled water over the the baby’s head three times; in the name of the Holy Trinity. Like many babies before him, my brother woke up and protested loudly at the indignity. The priest intoned prayers in Latin and baby brother became fondly known as Bernardus Gerardus.
 
My three school friends and I chose different paths regarding the baptism of our children.
Tess, the only one who married a Catholic, had her children baptised in a traditional ceremony.
 
Murph was devout and decided to become a nun - for a very short time. A few years later, I heard she had married an unholy trinity: a Protestant, an Englishman and - in a registry office!
 
When Murph came back to Australia, and started having children, her mother was concerned because an unbaptised child can never enter heaven. In the absence of a priest, a layperson can perform the baptism so Mrs Murph would encourage her daughter to sit and relax with a cuppa while she took the baby out to the kitchen and baptised it over the kitchen sink.
 
I married a Protestant in a Catholic Church; anywhere else would have been a bridge too far for my parents, but my kids were not baptised. I’m guessing my parents never asked in the interest of family harmony. Whether I saved or deprived my children will depend on the reader’s beliefs.
 
Another school friend had her first child later. In an ecumenical ceremony conducted by a Presbyterian minister and a Catholic priest, baby John was welcomed into Christian life in the backyard of the family home.The Presbyterian minister remained in his tailored grey suit and white collar, sipping a cup of tea with guests. The priest discarded his embroidered religious garment and became indistinguishable from the male guests. Dressed in casual clothes, he  joined the jovial group gathered round the bbq.
 
Communion and Confirmation were also steps that integrated children into the Catholic community.

My First Communion, at 7 years of age, was in Mansfield. The girls dressed like mini brides and boys wore suits. ​

​​The entertainment one afternoon on our recent trip to New Zealand is a shearing demonstration. There’s an audible gasp as a shearer reaches through swinging doors and drags a sheep out on its bottom, the underbelly in view and its front legs held firmly in place under its armpits. The shearer explains to the audience that it is the safest hold for the animal and its human handler. I recover from being astounded by the audience’s ignorance and enjoy the nostalgic experience of watching a familiar task.

​Days later, while I'm chatting with the tour guide, we discover a shared skill from our past; fleece throwing.

We reinforce each other's delight in recalling the steps involved:

​​Handling the fleece and sweeping the floors was a job for the roustabout in the bigger sheds, but on smaller properties kids like us often helped out at shearing time.  
​
​Farmers with smaller acreages in areas around the north east of Victoria often went shearing themselves as well as employing shearers. One of my earliest memories is battling a wave of nausea. The air hostess offers a paper bag that looks too thin for the purpose. It is just before my fourth birthday and my mother, baby brother and I are flying to Tasmania. Dad is already there shearing .

​This photo, from the early 1950s, records the wool from our farm loaded on the truck ready to be taken to Melbourne.  It’s parked outside the house before the Eildon Weir flooded the lambing flats and covered the house site. Also prior to the shearing shed being moved above the water line to its present location.

​​As I prise open a door to the abandoned shearing shed, a whiff of lanolin takes me back in time. Ghostly and derelict, there is a drift of wool piled in one corner, the swinging door through which the sheep were hauled is unhinged. The slatted wooden skirting table went in the clearing sale, along with two wool presses.

​A dust covered hand piece rests silent on the floor but I can hear the buzzing sound it would make.

​I recall that down in the house fresh scones are cooling on a rack, the cast iron kettle steams on the wood stove. As the buzzing ceases at 9.30am for morning smoko, Mum is frantically packing scones, biscuits, sugar and cups into a basket. Then a large pot of tea and a billy of steaming water is prepared. Someone appears to help take the morning tea up to the hungry and thirsty shearers.

​There’s no time to rest down in the kitchen as lunch has to be on the table by 12.30 when Dad and the shearers come down to the house. They would be served either a lamb roast
or corned beef and vegetables. A steam pudding usually completed the meal.

​While the men were finishing their lunch, the farmer’s wife was usually mixing up a cake for afternoon smoko at 3.30 pm. Dad and his mate, John (also a farmer), went shearing around the district when they were young and would chuckle over their culinary experiences. They were especially amused by the housewife who provided delicious meals but while mixing the batter for the afternoon smoko, regularly gave the dog a lick of the mixing spoon. The shearers settled for ‘just a cuppa’ that afternoon.

​
Anne Stewart
June 2026

The word is out. They’re expecting a baby. By two months all the inner circle is in the know. By three months the exciting news has spread in ripples through the community. At 5 months the grandmothers, aunts, friends gather for coffee and cake. They laugh at themselves playing party games and gather in a circle as the mother opens gifts for her child to come. It will be the best dressed baby in Melbourne.

There’s a hush in the nursery, the silence broken by mechanical beeps and the soft footfall of nurses. Screens emit ticker tape graphs and a red light flashes in the corner. The silent babies, their little chests heaving, struggle to keep breathing. A mother, in a wheelchair, puts her hand on the Perspex cot and stares intently at her baby. A father puts his hand through the porthole and lightly touches the minuscule perfectly formed hand. The baby wraps her hand around his giant thumb. We talk in hushed tones.

The paediatrician dispenses a solemn smile. He roams the room, checking charts, peering into cribs. His ponytail is held in check by a Pooh Bear scrunchie.

Light as a feather she floats away, unshackled from the tubes and strings and confines of the humidicrib. She is clothed in tiny doll size garments, lovingly created for prem babies by hospital volunteers.

The mother’s rich soprano voice soars around the gothic arches as she farewells her daughter. The father, in his heavy black coat, is weighed down by the tiny white coffin balanced on his shoulder. He leads mourners down the aisle. A large hearse is waiting outside. The tiny coffin is smothered in flowers.

She is in there, our first grandchild, 8 days old.
​
 
Anne Stewart
May 2026

​Hi everyone,

I’ve been inspired by April’s topic to consider what to do with my collection of pre WW1 postcards. Why didn’t I think of this solution before?

I won’t be able to attend April’s meeting but you are welcome to share the pdf below if appropriate.

These cards are associated with Johnnie, my ‘de facto’ grandfather. He was a neighbour, mentor and friend to my father.

It has prompted two ideas for memoirs;
- biography of Johnnie and
- role of women at shearing time on local farms that generally had two shearing stands.

The cards have prompted my brother to go down a rabbit hole of research and we may do a road trip to Jerilderie. It would have been a long trip by horse from Bonnie Doon  - the Kelly’s managed it for more nefarious purposes!

Hope you are all keeping well

Cheers,

​Anne Stewart
​April 2026

If this isn't clear to open on your device, click on the image below - it will take you to Anne's document:-

​If I could lift the lid on the washing machine of my life, there would be a tangle of intertwining and conflicting influences. I might struggle to sort out which is me/myself, how much is inherited family traits and behaviours, how much is social pressure and circumstances. Out of this mix of influences, am I some kind of hybrid or a unique individual?
 
Swirling around in my early years, I see the social boundaries fencing my life;
parents,
a network of grandmothers, aunts, uncles and cousins,
Sunday church and
the ABC’s ‘Kindergarten of the Air’.
 
Physical boundaries extend up over the hills and down into the river flats to the creek, a natural division between our farm and the neighbour’s. I assume everyone has a shearing shed in their yard - or, like the cow cockies on my mother’s side, a milking shed. I also believe in Santa Claus. Perhaps it was a possum, but my parents share the excitement of Santa’s sleigh landing on the garage roof.
 
The main occupations traditionally pursued in my extended family were farmers, teachers, engineers. Perhaps there was some inevitability that I became a teacher, my brother a surveyor and the other brother a farmer with a fencing business.
 
Sometimes, however, we go in different directions, influenced by other forces. My parents were devoutly religious, but my ethical beliefs are philosophical rather than religious. My mother’s devotion to the Hawthorn football Club was passed to one brother and her horse racing interests to another. I was a ‘WAG’ (football wife) once but my interest in football was always superficial. None of us achieved the bike riding feats of our father, but two of us have covered significant kilometres on our push bikes, each in our own manner. The other brother was, until recently, a legend on the quad bike.
 
Visits to the grandmothers happened at random intervals. Both were strong women, widows who kept their respective farms out of debt while managing large families. One Grandma kept fearsome turkeys in the same paddock as the outside dunny. The other Grandma had a garden of roses, veggies and giant sunflowers.
 
Having a sweet tooth is a family trait I share with others. Grandma’s sister, Auntie Lila, set a high standard whenever visitors arrived. Seated in her front parlour, we munched on salada biscuits topped with Kraft cheese and salted tomatoes. Auntie Lila and Mum would disappear out to the kitchen and reappear with a trolley laden with homemade biscuits, sweet slices, small cakes and fruit cake.
 
Sunday church was the routine social outing of the week. A microcosm of the broader world, the second-row seat indicated our place in the social hierarchy of the small community. The front row family established the sliding scale of monetary value, acknowledged by the priest on the Sunday after Easter, when he read out the ‘Easter dues’ donated by each family. There were other children my age, but they were boys so after Mass, I stood around with the adults listening to discussions of too much rain or no rain, lamb sales and the price of wool. I was becoming an observer and listener, absorbing and pondering about what I was seeing and hearing.

Family and social influences were already beginning to amalgamate before more life happened and more people, places and events tossed around the person who became me/myself.


Anne Stewart
​March 2026

Memories about the day I went to the Olympic Games with my parents are hazy. After all, it was nearly 70 years ago. The one Olympic event I remember clearly is being surrounded by shouting adults as Betty Cuthbert flashed by on the running track.
 
We left Euroa early in the Holden and the smell of diesel fumes, as the Hume Highway morphed into Sydney Road, signalled our arrival in the ‘big smoke’. My parents had multiple day tickets to the Games and regularly drove the Hume to the MCG where the 1956 Olympics were held. My brother and I were at school most of the day and, after school, joined our younger brother at Mrs Anderson’s for biscuits and cordial.
 
There’s still a ticket to the Olympics somewhere in the archives but I can’t find it despite an intensive search. From the old photos I can see what interested my parents; John Landy competing on the running track, the Olympic flame, flags of multiple nations fluttering on top of the MCG and grainy images of bike riders competing at the velodrome. There’s also a slide of the royal yacht Britannia. Dad joined the crowds viewing it in dock at Station Pier, Port Melbourne. Like most people, he was disappointed not to catch a glimpse of the Duke of Edinburgh.
 
My mother often mentioned John Landy, a popular Australian runner at the time, famous for having breaking the 4 minute mile running record earlier in 1956. Dad was excited to attend bike races at the velodrome. Although he had been a road racer before the war, he continued to follow all forms of bike racing. However, some of Australia’s best bike riders, such as Sid Patterson, had turned professional so could not compete at the Melbourne Olympics.

​Considering that I was 9 years old, I’m surprised I don’t remember more about my day at the Olympics. The photo of me standing outside the MCG between my parents documents that I was there with our own cushions to soften the hard seats. I couldn’t tell you what other events I saw, except the one in which Betty Cuthbert flashed by, a blur of white singlet and blonde hair. We were quite close to the running track and excitement surrounding the event built to a crescendo of noise. I’m guessing it was the relay I witnessed, not a sprint event. Cuthbert, the ‘Golden Girl’, won two gold medals for individual sprints and another gold for her speed in the relay. My brother Adrian, 5 years old at the time, also only remembers one aspect of his day; sitting with Dad near the Olympic flame and the heat coming from it.
 
The rest of the day was more memorable. I inspected the intricate carved figures on the fairy tree in the Fitzroy gardens, wandered around Captain Cook’s cottage, became overwhelmed by the bustle of people on Swanston Street. Then - the giant Santa peering down from the Foys building at the corner of Bourke Street. Now that was impressive.

Anne Stewart
​February 2026

​'Envy'  

If only ... they hadn’t swapped me at birth with Princess Anne. I might have lived a life of luxury.   But . . . that terrible brother. How embarrassing! Don’t get me started on the sisters in law.

'Disappointment'

If only ... Dad and I had arrived at the ABC studios a few minutes earlier, I might have found my voice on Kindergarten of the Air. We ended up at the top of the ‘losers’ queue. Thank goodness; a shy, introverted country child would have been mute in the presence of the bright lights and cheerfulness.

'Jealousy'  

If only ... I’d been a boy, I might have got a Meccano set for Christmas like cousin Philip who grew up to be an engineer. The Coronation doll seemed a poor substitute until little brother ran away with her head after a tug of war over possession. Finally a trip to the dolls hospital put Queenie back together and I regained possession.

'Immunity'

​If only ... I hadn’t caught whooping cough when I began school, my lungs might be stronger. Then again, if I hadn’t taken up smoking . . . Some children contracted polio. Most of us passed around chicken pox, measles, German measles, mumps.
 
If only, modern parents had seen and experienced these events.

'Protection'  

If only ... I had stayed out of the midday sun, the pathology reports would not refer to ‘sun damaged skin.’ Like spit roasts, we basted ourselves with coconut oil and adjusted position to attain a golden crust.

'Dislocation'

If only ... the Eildon Weir had not flooded our valley, creeping over the sheep yard flats and up the hill behind the house, seeping into the backyard, dislocating our lives.
 
If only ... Dad had come home with the title to a block of land in Benalla, as he intended, instead of two blocks in Euroa. Looking into that mirror, life looks the same but different!

'Wishful thinking'

If only ... I’d been able to get past Saucepan Man and Dame Washalot, I might have reached the top of the faraway tree and been transported to another land. Would there have been a way back? Would I have wanted to return?

If only ... I had learned to fly a plane, I might have performed daring feats like Biggles. However, after experiencing the G forces of a Pitts Special aerobatic plane, my preference is to stay upright with two feet firmly planted on the ground.
 
'Fantasy'

If only ... it was true that Paul McCartney was waving at me personally from the balcony of the Southern Cross Hotel ...

Anne Stewart
​October 2025

Retirement. Sometimes challenging, sometimes the best time of life. In the early years I lamented, “Nobody’s given me a timetable.” There was no longer a predictable rhythm to the year. I also developed a long list of grievances against Centrelink, Aged Care and Telstra on behalf of our 3 living parents.
 
Finally, after 12 years, retirement is the ‘new normal’. I can sleep in if I’m tired, I can make up my own timetable, try new activities, make new friends, watch the garden bloom.
 
Prior to permanent retirement, I stepped off the promotion roundabout, resigned and accepted two contract teaching jobs; one in the city after hours, the other also part time and close to Melbourne CBD. There was freedom and flexibility in the ‘unusual’ hours and the stimulus of dealing with two very different student groups. My husband also worked in the city, above the Block Arcade, a prime location but the hours demanded and the payment of his invoices were erratic. He couldn’t wait to retire after more than 50 years in the workforce. When he pulled the plug at 67, he never looked back. I usually look back on my working life with fondness but sometimes, in dreams, students wander off in different directions and I cannot get them to return.
 
In another dream I return to our classic Federation house in St Kilda and enjoy a stroll through the rooms and out into the garden. But we ran out of time and money to complete the renovations it deserved. We made the sensible decision to sell up, pay off the mortgage, buy a new car and move into an almost new apartment close to the Elwood beach. No renovations. That was our first retirement plan.

We were still working part time, when we had the opportunity to try out life in the country. The idea hadn’t been on our radar but we gradually took Mondays off, then Fridays. We found ourselves literally and figuratively moving north from the sea to the country. No going downstairs for supplies, it was a 6 kilometre drive to a service station for milk and 23 kilometres to the supermarket.
 
The poor old fibro and the garden were in a bad state. We were back into renovations, both internal and external. As we laboured on the first of many renovation projects, Jimmy Barnes belted out “Working Class Man” from across the lake at the Bonnie Doon pub, the music echoing around the hills. The first job involved pulling up the white ant infested floorboards in the back room, filling in the wombat holes underneath before laying new flooring and painting the walls and ceilings. Bathroom renovations followed, carpet replaced lino, old carpets we’re placed by polished floorboards, a new kitchen emerged during Covid. Mostly we moved forward despite setbacks, such as when the white ants renewed their guerrilla attacks on the floor boards. We finally completed the external painting of the house this year - by employing a professional painter.

​There’s so much more to say about retirement but as many retirees retort when asked about what they do all day,

“Never been busier. There’s not enough hours in the day.”


Anne Stewart
​September 2025

​Perhaps Dick Tracy’s two way wrist radio gave us a glimpse of the future but, even in the late 1950s, it seemed a far fetched fantasy.

​Dr Who’s phone box was blue but the real ones were red and scattered around towns and suburbs. My parents always had a home phone. In fact, my Dad said a phone was installed in his house on the day his father died in 1929. Our home phones were initially fixed to the wall in the passage. Later the phone remained fixed but had its own dedicated furniture; a seat for the person making or receiving calls; a small tabletop for the phone, notepad and flip up index for frequent numbers; a shelf underneath stored the white residential and the yellow business directories.

​The difficulty of reading numbers in the telephone book and squinting at the street directory, finally lead me to the optometrist and my first pair of glasses. Middle age had arrived. Now the street directory is in my phone and talks to me as I drive to a destination. The bulky white and yellow telephone books have been replaced by contact numbers stored in my personal hand held phone. No longer confident to answer, “Hello. This is Anne speaking”, I check if it’s a known caller before answering or wait to see if the unknown caller leaves a message. I can’t remember when separate message machines increased our connectedness to each other but now spoken and written messages (SMS) arrive daily in my ‘smart’ mobile phone.

My phone also contains mail that would previously arrive as a letter or postcard. The pesky door to door salesman who accused me of being a bad mother for not buying his encyclopaedias has been replaced by scam phone calls. I don’t remember telegrams being corrupted but SMS messages often contain dubious offers of friendship and assistance.
 
First lessons in geography came from my mother who had been a telephonist with the PMG (Post Master General) before marriage. Upotipotpon was a favourite, even though I was a bit vague about its location. Tangambalanga and Koo Wee Rup rolled off our tongues and Poowong created a giggle, accompanied by the holding of noses. Poowong was somewhere near Bunyip where we visited relatives on our way to Briagalong. Apart from warning about the danger of a neighbour ‘listening in’ when phoning someone with a party (shared) line, Mum never gossiped about her time ‘on the line’.
 
Some social interactions have changed. Nobody under 40 years of age talks on the phone. Even everyday arrangements or queries must be in writing. It can be time consuming to exchange messages when a quick phone call would be sufficient. I witnessed another downside of personal devices recently. A group of guys at lunchtime were seated in a circle of chairs. Eyes fixed on their phones, they were enjoying a break from work in companionable silence.

​However, most of the time I enjoy the freedom and convenience of having my own personal communication device. I just have to work out how to download an accumulation of photos. Not only is my device a phone, street directory, answering machine and encyclopaedia, it’s also a camera. Not even Dick Tracey’s creator imagined such a device.
 
Anne Stewart
 
July 2025

While the Anzac Parade in Melbourne has its traditions and draws large crowds, Victorian country towns, have developed their own local customs. Small towns have a dawn service or mid morning march. Larger towns have both. Dawn services are often rounded off with a gunfire breakfast; originally soldiers added rum to black tea before battle. These days a sizzling sausage wrapped in white bread is washed down with coffee generously laced with Bundaberg rum.
 
As the sky begins to lighten in Merrijig, a bevy of horses rise up the road towards Buttercup Lane, their riders holding large flags that billow in the breeze. In the semi darkness of a Bonnie Doon dawn (and often shrouded by fog), each local man who gave his life in the service of country, is named. A bell tolls and a wreath is laid in his memory.
 
In recent years, I’ve attended the Anzac Day ceremony in Alexandra where it seems that the whole town, including school children, participates. Once again, my husband Warren is rehearsing the New Zealand national anthem in our house. This year the Alexandra U3A singing group is performing it in Māori - haka not included! The irony of it: Warren’s Scottish ancestor was discouraged from landing in New Zealand by a Māori unwelcoming party and settled in Sydney instead.
 
The National Archives of Australia have progressively digitised the records of men and women who served in the Australian armed forces during wartime. Initially, I explored the heartbreaking war records of local men who served in WW1. There were Lone Pine casualties, men missing in action on the battle fields of France and men who returned but not necessarily to their home town. WW2 records are now completed and can be accessed at naa.gov.au
 
My curiosity about Private Oliver Edwin Williams was triggered when I had the responsibility of laying a wreath in his honour at a Bonnie Doon dawn service. My search of the national archives revealed that 5 foot 41/4 inch Oliver enlisted in January 1915. It was a big year for the 22 year old farm labourer from Merton. By May, he was on the Gallipoli Peninsula. In June, suffering bronchitis, he was transferred by a fleet sweeper to Malta before being admitted to a military hospital in England in September.
 
From January 1916, he was transferred between Australian bases in England until the 1st August when Oliver ‘marched in France.’ He had less than 3 weeks left of life. He was reported missing in action between Poziers and Moquet Farm on 18 August 1916.
 
In the aftermath of Oliver’s death, the anguish of his mother Grace is evident in her exchange of letters with military authorities. Although her son was reported missing in August 1916, the finding that he was killed in action was only confirmed nearly a year later. Despite receiving Red Cross reports of the circumstances of his death, the official position in March 1917 was,
 
“. . . No report that this soldier was killed in action has reached this office to date . . . “ Finally, in July 1917, a Court of Enquiry confirmed her son was killed in action.
 
Even though Grace was nominated by her son Oliver as next of kin on his enlistment form, authorities questioned her right to his silver star of service. Was there any closer next of kin? I can almost hear her note of exasperation in her second letter of clarification;

Aug 20.20
 
Dear Sir,
 
Sorry my information was not sufficient about my son pvt O.E. Williams1844, 4 Batt. no his Father is not alive and there is no one else
 
Yours faithfully
 
Mrs Grace C . . . . .
 
Lest we forget


Anne Stewart
April 2025

For a short period of time the air is clear, the roads uncluttered, the sky blue. The lake remains glassy smooth all morning, until a gentle breeze produces small waves on the surface. A pelican glides along leaving a v shaped ripple in its wake.
 
Cackling kookaburras seem to be sharing a private joke as the hills are silhouetted by the rising sun. In the treetops a discordant chorus of baby galahs demand to be fed. A tomato sauce rosella showers itself with water in the bird bath. A dark coated fox creeps through the grass towards the empty caravan park. Two large raptors spread their wings and circle around each other, gaining height until they disappear from human vision. As dusk descends the cockatoos settle into their roosts and cease their raucous shrieking. At night the ‘more pork’ owls call across the valley.
 
As Summer progresses kangaroos graze in the front yard, tugging at the dry grass through the night. Guttural grunts erupt. Perhaps it’s a quarrel between two mature males but the spotlight reveals they are shouting at a large wombat. As the wombat freezes under the light they attempt to sneak past but one slips, its paws clattering on the bitumen. The wombat turns and begins to charge.
 
A possum galloping across the carport roof stirs the dog into a barking frenzy.
 
Then the serenity is over. Diesel and petrol fumes fill the air. White streaks of vapour cross the sky as jet flights resume. Shiny cars, some towing equally shiny boats or caravans reach the end of the bitumen and turn around in our driveway. I wonder about the legality of installing a toll gate. Some drivers tentatively steer their cars up the dirt track; an expensive short term rental has opened for those who “value privacy and stunning views.”
 
Draped with camping gear, a convoy of camouflage green utilities churn up the dirt road and high rev their engines up the hill. Fifteen minutes later they return, hitting the bitumen in a cloud of dust, still searching for a camp site.
 
In the early morning the kookaburras fall silent as the holiday houses fill. From a gumtree a group of cockatoos shriek at their mate to get up off the road. But it’s too late. He lies still and silent, white wings fanned out on the asphalt.
 
For the second weekend in a row, raucous shouting and thumpetty-thump music bounce across the water and roll around he hills. When they start letting off fireworks, an irate neighbour threatens to call the police. The fireworks stop but the music continues.
 
All the cabins in the caravan park are occupied. Caravans and tents are squeezed into every piece of exposed dirt. Children shriek happily and music plays till 10pm. Then it’s quiet, as if a cone of silence has descended.
 
The stars twinkle in the black sky and a chorus of frog song floats down from the dam


​Anne Stewart
March 2025

​Before starting school in Mansfield, the words Mum, Dad, Brother and Grandma were familiar. I was also aware we had relatives, lots of them. Some were called Aunty or Uncle, others were addressed by their first names. Everyone else was Mr or Mrs Family Name.

On the first day of school, two new words were introduced into my vocabulary; ʻcousinʼ and ʻsisterʼ. I stared at the girl who was introduced as ʻyour cousinʼ. She looked familiar, but I couldnʼt see how she was much different to the other children sitting in rows behind little tables. Later I learned that ʻcousinsʼ were a subset of ʻrelativesʼ.

The ʻsisterʼ who steered me into the classroom was an adult dressed in a long black costume. Wooden beads hung on a string from her waist and they clicked in tune with the rustle of her long skirt as she moved. As I craned my neck up towards her face, I could see a huge white bib fastened around her neck, even bigger than the napkin Dad tucked into his shirt at tea time.

There were a number of sisters who keep a watchful eye on us and showed no mercy for transgressions such not eating all our dinner even though the custard was lumpy and the plums sour. The after school sister was especially vigilant about little fingers who tried to skim off the slimy film that settled on top of the hot milo.

Mid way through primary school, after the Eildon Weir swamped half the farm, I went to school in Euroa. St Johnʼs was run by the same brand (order) of nuns, the Sisters of (no) Mercy. Sister Evarista was admired by many of the parents but a source of terror to anyone who didnʼt know their times tables. I did my homework and kept a low profile in Grades 3 and 4.

​Two friends and I must have thought we were invisible as we caught the train into the city to see Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. On our return we were greeted with the dreaded, “Mother Marg wants to see you.” During our temporary expulsion, we somehow realised that the misdemeanour of wagging was exacerbated by the vulgarity of spending an idle afternoon watching a popular Hollywood movie.

I didnʼt know it then but now I realise that Mother Marg was not a sister or a mother but an educator who taught us to value strength, courage and learning.


Anne Stewart
March 2025