Here's a short excerpt—a section I wrote yesterday.
In 1962, we moved to Goolwa after G had looked around for another job. Mother was close to her employer, who owned a 'holiday park' there made up of old trams bought from the Glenelg line. His workmen ripped the interior partition walls out of the beautifully appointed, interior walls lined with gleaming wood, so they formed a bedroom each end and the living space in the middle. We moved in to one of the cabins, opposite the central 'store', where we sold supplies to the holiday makers. Grandma lived in the house at the entrance and mother visited every now and again with her employer, R.
I enjoyed the relaxed lifestyle, living in a cabin with my new baby, who was a happy child. Most days, I would take him to the Murray River's edge close by, where R owned a boat shed. Sometimes, we'd dip in the water. Both of us had a good tan. Back then, I didn't know I should protect a baby's delicate skin—and mine. Wearing short shorts, I'd stroll to the main township with Kym in his beautiful cane pram, styled like the prams of old. The locals called us hippies but we weren't practising free love, we were married.
In 1963, We took over the house where Grandma lived. She moved into one of the owner's many houses in Adelaide. The days at Goolwa were long and lazy with Graeme on call to fix anything that went wrong for the visitors and give a hand with the team of builders who worked in R's main house close by. Kym would crawl around the floor and I'd leave him where he slept rather than lift him into his cot. But then, I found I was pregnant again. This time, I wasn't so resentful about the pregnancy and G was overjoyed.
Later that year, the tourist business must have been slow because he decided to move close to his brother in Victoria.
The first place we stayed in when we moved out of our host's spare room was an old farmhouse, smelling of rat droppings and completely decrepit. I slept a lot, leaving my toddler to roam free in the house. It's a wonder disease didn't kill him. We moved as soon as possible.
We rented a house on the Hume Highway, the main route out of Melbourne heading North. Beveridge, as it was then, was close to the place the infamous robber Ned Kelly lived with his mother. Now, the town is gone. I found a mother-and-baby group at the farmhouse opposite and the children would play together while the mothers chatted. To earn money, G took on farm work picking up rocks from a field, but it didn't suit him. He was marked out for a different job, and he knew it.