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Waddamana

 

I cannot remember arriving in Australia and our stay in the transit camp. Eventually we sailed from Australia to Tasmania and to a small place in The Outback called Waddamana.

We stayed with Grans' (Elizabeth Guy) brother- in law and his wife Uncle Arch and Auntie Madge. (Mr and Mrs Archibald Guy). They ran a Guesthouse mainly for the men who worked on The Hydro Electric Dam.

My Dad got a job Working for The Hydro Electric Company and Mum and Gran Worked in the guesthouse.

Mum and Gran did not like working for them so they left. Gran went off to Hobart and got a job as a cook. Mum, Dad and myself lived in a small shack in Waddamana. I  can remember being not very happy to be parted from my Granny, and my bedroom in the shack was very basic. There was a small bed and a wooden box to put my clothes in.

There was a shop in Waddamana which opened in the afternoon and a bus came once a week. I can remember travelling in a bus and looking out to see a wallaby hopping along .

We went to Hobart one day and you had to stay because it was a long way from Waddamana. Mum Dad and myself stayed in a small hotel and the blinds at the window would not stay pulled down in our bedroom. I thought that was very funny , but Mum kept telling Dad to sort the blinds out.

Then all of a sudden we were back in The Guesthouse Uncle Arch and Auntie Madge had left. The company who owned it asked my Gran to take over.

Now I started to spend a lot of the time playing on my own Mum and Gran were very busy but they made a real go of it and were very popular. Grans cooking was very well liked especially full Christmas Dinner on Christmas Day.

Mum with the help of a local girl called Margie, did all the washing and cleaned the rooms. Dad helped out when he got back from work.

I had a lovely red three wheeled bike for my third birthday (which I still have). Wearing a red fez which was bought in Suez I used to ride around on my little bike.

We had tennis courts and one day Mum and Dad were trying to play a game of tennis. Guess who put a stop to that. I can remember saying that I wanted to play and Dad getting cross.

Gran took me for a walk one day to see Waddamana’s  outdoor swimming pool. I was very excited as I really wanted to have a swim. When we got there it was empty and I told my Granny it was a stupid swimming pool without any water.

 

One day I decided to go to school as I was very bored and wished to meet other children. Children started school then age 6. I climbed over our gate and walked to the school. The door was open I peeked around the door . The teacher was talking to the children as they sat at there desks. No one took any notice of me so I sat down on a chair at the back. All of a sudden the teacher and children were looking at me ,the children began to laugh and the teacher told me to go home.

The local girl who helped Mum was called Margie. I was told that she lived in a house along the road as you turned right from our gate. I walked what it seemed to me for miles but I could not see a house so getting scared I turned round and walked back home. When I told Mum she was very cross and told me not to keep wandering  off.

 

Because of my wandering Mum arranged for me to play with another little girl about my age. It was across the green from my house. I played for a bit and then decided I wanted to go home. So I climbed over the gate and walked across the green to home. Mum said "What are you doing here and that grass you have walked in is full of snakes".

Because Mum did a lot of washing I had my own little wash tub, washing line and pegs. It kept me amused for ages as I washed my dolls clothes and pegged them out to dry. One day it was windy and my washing line full of dolls clothes had blown over the fence close to the river. This was a raging torrent of grey bubbling water. Mum came out  of the house ,could not find me and thought I had drowned in the river.

 

I used to hide under the house. It was a single storey building on (stilts). I can visualise Mum and Grans worried faces peering at me and pleading with me to come out. There were snakes under the house.

One day there was a snake hunt. Somebody had spotted a dangerous snake and all the men got together with guns to hunt and kill the snake.

On another day Mum and I went into the lounge and on the wall above the fireplace was a spider the size of a dinner plate. I could feel the fear from my Mum as she was holding my hand and so I became very frightened. We backed out of the room and it was ages before we would venture there again. The spider had come out of the wood box which was at the side of the fireplace. Recently I have met my cousin Gary and he said you can spray these spiders into nothing now so that's ok.

Another item that used to fascinate me was the telephone. It was attached to the wall and Mum used to take bookings or place orders. She had to speak loud and it was a black box on the wall with a wire coming from it and it had a joint hearing and mouth piece. Very old fashioned but it worked and we thought we were it with our own telephone.

Then Mum became pregnant with my sister Janet. She felt unwell with all the work at the guest house and so Mum, Dad and Gran tossed a coin and decided to come back to the UK.

That must have been towards the end of 1952 as Janet was born in March 1953.

The journey home was traumatic as I can remember to this day that on one occasion my Dad nearly got left on the quayside, whilst Mum me and Gran were on board the ship.

What happened was Dad had to pay some money for or journey home. We had assisted passages out at £10 each and had to pay the government back plus our fares back to the UK. We waited on board ship .The first gangplank was taken off , then the second, and so on. Only the very last gangplank was left which was used for the galleys and Dad was seen running along side the boat Mum and Gran were crying and also shouting out "Come on Jim". So I felt really frightened and started to cry because I did not want my Dad to be left behind without us.

We arrived home in the UK and stayed with my grandparents at West-Harptree Somerset. Samuel and Frances Wyatt. I can remember contracting Measles whilst at my grandparents age 4 years.

Years later my daughter Julie and her husband Ian Woods went on a round the world holiday. They visited Tasmania and went to Waddamana. The guest house had burnt down and all that was left were the two gate posts. The hydro power station has been made a museum and an education centre.

Shirley.