Semaphore

When I was eight  Mum and I moved to Semaphore.  At first Mum worked as a housekeeper as she always done before, but later she became a cleaner.  She would clean one or two homes a day and still be home for me to come home from school.  We lived in an old fashioned group of maisonettes on the Esplanade opposite the old bandstand.  This was wonderful during the summer as there would  concerts there and we could watch them from the front verandah.  I do not remember whether they had a concert on every night in the summer.  I now know that the compere of the concerts was a young Kevin Crease.  All the dancing schools around the area had their little pupils dancing and singing at these amazing concerts.  The crowd surrounded the bandstand and sat on a sloped grass hill that reached the Esplanade.  These concerts played to large crowds and raised money for different charities.  Mum had always trained me not to comment on people's appearance.  One of the nights we were down amongst the crowd and there were some really ugly women dressed quite strangely and collecting money.  I finally said, "Mummy you know those ladies, they are not very nice looking are they?"  Everyone fell about laughing as the strange looking women were actually men dressed in drag.  There you go, you try to be polite and then everyone laughs at you.  I think Mum should have been pleased that I was trying to be so polite. 

Before we moved to Semaphore we had gone to the beach every weekend so it was great to actually live there and get to spend lots of time playing after school.  That was in the days when kids got to go and play and not be packed in cotton wool as they are now.  It was an innocent age and therefore safe for us kids to do what we wanted until we heard our Mum's calling us for lunch and tea.  I loved to walk along the beach and pick up shells and stones and bring them home.  We also went periwinkling and came home with a feed.  All we had to do was soak the periwinkles in water and then boil them.  We always served them with vinegar and it was always a battle to get all the sand out of the shells as gritty sand did not make a good feast.  Lets face it sometimes it was all we had to eat.

Mum did not get paid very much for her cleaning so sometimes I didn't get to have a birthday.  One year we celebrated with two bush biscuits and a bottle of lemonade.  I knew that we were poor but as I was used to it, it didn't really matter.  Most of the time she was able to get me something for my birthday.  I always received ten shillings from the doctor where Mum had worked years before when I was four or five.  I loved to get this money because then I could buy Mum something for her birthday which was three days after mine. 
As my birthday was often at Easter I usually received an Easter egg from a lovely lady who was the doctor's washer woman years before.  Auntie Dossie would always give me something.  Now I look back I get mad because I only got the Easter egg.  Birthdays at Easter are like birthdays at Christmas you always get one present for two things. 

While we were living on the Esplanade I contracted rheumatic fever and was kept in bed for three months.  While I was ill I had to stay home by myself as Mum had to go to work.  I spent my time listening to the radio and reading any magazines and books Mum brought home.   My literacy improved in leaps and bounds as I mostly got to read the Readers Digest.  I was a great fan of It Pays
To Increase Your Word Power.  As we lived on the first floor when I was finally allowed to get up I could only go down the stairs two steps at a time and wait for about five minutes between each step.  We walked across the Esplanade to the top of the lawn and sat on the grass for a while and then went torturously up the stupid stairs one step at a time.  By the time we got up the stairs I was exhausted.  The reason I did not go to hospital for the whole of my illness was because the Children's Hospital had some kind of measles epidemic and it was thought I might catch it and get even sicker than I already was.  Once I went back to school I could only go until recess time and then come home in the first term.  In the second term I was allowed to stay until lunch time and finally stay for the whole day.

After I got better I could always get out of going to school by telling Mum I had a sore throat.  When she let me stay home I would get dressed and buzz off down to the beach and fossick around the piles of the jetty.  There was always a deep hole around them and sometimes I would find the best shells there.  The best time of course was to go to the beach after a storm because I never knew what I would find.   I would always have to back in bed before Mum came home and she was never the wiser.  I wonder why she was not suspicious when there were strange odds and ends of shells and bits of drift wood but I suppose I hid them under the bed. 

When I was eleven we moved further down the Esplanade where there were a few families with children.  We often played in the sea weed that washed up in huge drifts.  We made forts and used the jelly fish we picked up to pelt each other and then dive for cover into our possies. One of the times Mum had let me stay home I ran down to the beach in my chenille dressing gown and jumped down into our latest fort.  One of the strappers from the Hayes stable, (Hayes had a stable in one of the back streets in Semaphore) who excercised the horses along the beach rode back to me because he thought I had fallen and hurt myself.  There you go I had a knight in 'shining' armour and I was too young to appreciate it.  During the winter I used to walk back from the train on Semaphore Road and along the seaweed on the beach.  One time I sunk down to my waist in the sea because the sea weed that I thought looked stable was actually a trap for silly people like me.  Mum was less than impressed especially since she always thought I would get sick again and getting thoroughly saturated in the middle of winter did not please her. 

On one day I got out of bed and went down to the jetty to play.  There used to be a ramp on the side of the jetty to tie  up boats and it was extremely slippery with green slime.  I walked down the ramp and my feet slipped out from under me and I rapidly slid down toward the water.  As I couldn't swim I had to bring my knees up and crash into the fence across the bottom of the ramp.  I had two massive lumps on my shins which went black and then purple and later a lovely green.  Of course I couldn't say anything to Mum and had to try and keep my injuries hidden.

One of the places we lived had a sleepout with sliding wooden shutters and lattice.  At night in the middle of winter I would pull back the wooden shutters and then jump into bed with the bedclothes up to my nose and listen to the sound of the waves.  It was very cold but I had plenty of blankets so felt as 'snug as a bug in a rug.'  I wish that I could go back in time and sleep in that lovely old house.  It has been knocked down now and the house that is there is valued at over a million dollars.

We lived in around Semaphore for many years and I only left for a while when I was married.  During up and downs of marriage and living interstate I was always pleased to move back to the only place I feel at peace.  I long to live at the beach again but the poor have been dispossessed and can no longer live on the Esplanade.  I know that if I win the lottery I will be back where I consider my home to be.  It will be on the Esplanade with the tangy smell of the sea, the sound of the waves and the different and beautiful faces of the sea and sunsets accompanied by the call of the seagulls.  I want to watch the sun go down and the moon light making a path toward me every night and when I die I want my ashes scattered at Semaphore beach at sunset or when the light of the moon strikes the waves.