Childhood In The Bush

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30278, 2 November 1963, Page 3

Childhood In The Bush

Childhood At Bindabeila. by Mlles Fraklin. Aagus Sfltfl JWbortßwa. Ififc pp* Miles Franklin, the Australian novelist who died io 1934. spent the* Aral 10 years of her life in the pioneering bush settlements of Gouiburn and Brindabelta, New South Wales. In her biography which was completed shortly before her death. she described growing up in what was then an unspoiled and Idyllic corner of rural Australis. Hera was a singularly happy childhood. Although strictly brought up in accordance with middle-class VM'xx’wn pircpnie-t es sue was fortunate in having the affection of a tight-knit family community which included her parents, sisters and brothers, grandparents, and numerous uncles and aunts. AH were hard-working, good living folk, generous and warm-natured. AM, too, with the possible exception or an irascible, red-bearded uncle in whose opinion little girls who played practical jokes should be “kicked clean out through the back gate,” were unwavering in their affection for the child. Her grandmother, in . particular, was a strong character, and a great organiser, who managed her own station as well as ruling a large family. On Sundays she conducted a church service in the drawing-room, complete with sermon, psalms, and collects. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might,” was the text she lived by.

It the human environment was a benefleen - one. the natural surroundings were also a source of companionship ard delight. Round her home were acres of wild orchids, daisies. violets, clematis and sweet-briar: bush and farm swarmed with lyre-birds, koalas, and goannas and the grotesque native cats, “long-snouted and bloodthirsty, with dark, soft coats dotted with white like bail-stones.” The streams were filled with plump native trout and murray-cod; and in her

grandmother’s orchard, fruit trees wruch had never Known spray were laden with unblemished fruit. Domestic animals were plentiful and obliging. Sometimes, Miles bedded down with a litter of kittens or piglets, whose mothers had no objection ";o a cuckoo of abnormal sixe.” Thus, to the awakening consciousness of the young child, the world appeared a benevolent place. Even unhappy experiences, like the death of ao infant sister, did not deeply disturb the feeling of security. Such security, she realised later, mode her eventual adjustment to the outside world crueller than it need have been. "For one thing,” she writes, “I had no knowledge of evil either as sin or vice, nor any understanding that ill-will and unfriendliness could exist.” Nor. apparen’-y. was she exposed to the harsher rigours of outback life. That life was indeed sometimes hard for her parents, she hints more than once. Little of this touched the child, however, ant r Franklin has been careful not to falsify her childhood vision by presenting too comprehensive an account of station life. Nevertheless, within their seif-imposed limits, these childhood remin-‘»recc*s vividly recreate a graceful way of life long since vanished from the Australian scene.