The town that was:
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Houses in the Village Mum had a peculiar way of laughing which was inherited from her mother and who knows how many generations before. It was best seen when she was in her house clothes. Women wore house clothes when they were relaxed and intent on doing house-work. She wore a long loose fitting floral dress with socks and sturdy leather shoes. The dress had short sleeves, leaving her arms and hands free for the many jobs around the house. Her arms told a lot about what she was thinking. Mostly they were busy, but it was a time to be careful when they were crossed under her ample bosom. If she was really angry she tended to point a lot. If she was happy, her arms were by her side and she laughed with her tummy. When she was really really happy her tummy bounced up and down, her face screwed up and tears came to her eyes. Not much noise came out and she would busily look for a hankie. When she was dressed up it was hard to know when she was laughing. I suppose it was the corsets holding everything together. Dad was different. He just smiled. In fact he almost always smiled. He often compared mum to women who cackled. All the women at Butlers were married with children. There were a few old men scattered about doing the cleaning up and working in the cook-house, but no old women. The wives and mothers each kept busy in their individual houses. They all had much to do and were never seen to be tired. On the rare occasions that we had cause to knock at the open door-way of anyone’s house, the woman would be predictably busy at one of the regular jobs that women did. They worked hard all day, never resting until going to bed in order to get up and do it all over again. They tried as best they could to ‘get their house in order’. This was never ending and ‘a woman’s work was never done’. The men were each individually proud of their wives. The children always knew almost exactly where they would be and what they would be doing. The women were not unfriendly to each other, but liked to be seen to be busy. Things were thought to be going well if they did not have to ask anyone for help. The position that the married men held in the work-force on the dam-site, was reflected in the position of which house they lived in. At Butlers, the area for the village had been cleared beside a long straight stretch of the canal. The lower area contained the football ground and the hall. As this consisted of heavy clay soil and swampy parts, the houses extended upwards towards the top of the surrounding hill which protected them from the prevailing cold winds. The higher up the slope you lived, the better the position of the man when at work. Except for the school Headmaster and the male hospital attendant, the only married men who did not live in these houses were the engineers. They had their own private road in a small valley over the hill from the main village. All land was Government owned. The Hydro designed the village to be temporary but as comfortable as possible within its own guidelines and budget. Families made the best they could of their homes and treated the rented properties as their own. This became the responsibility of the women as the men all worked for six days a week. There was unrest and industrial upheavals in the workforce, but this took place at the dam-site and the women relentlessly strived for the comfort and stability of their families. The houses of the ordinary married families were all very similar. Most of the vertical timber dwellings were two-bedroomed unless the man became a Leading Hand or Foreman and was therefore able to move higher up the slope into a three-bedroomed house. The green vertical boards tended to warp, making gaps for icy winds to enter. Rolls of brown tar-paper known as sisalcraft were tacked on he inside walls in an attempt at insulation. The exterior was painted with brown sump oil. So not only did the houses look much the same, they smelt much the same as well. Each house had a lounge room, kitchen, bathroom, toilet, porch and an outside wash-house with copper and a woodshed. There was a clothes line with prop and wire or wooden pegs, but clothes usually had to be dried inside by the open fire.(insert frozen washing elsewhere) Roofs and chimneys were made of corrugated galvanised iron. Dangerous chimney fires were common. Noisy roaring flames billowing black smoke and glowing sparks of creosote. Kids loved it when the fire occurred at night time. Someone would climb on the roof and cover the top of the chimney with wet bags so that the fire would choke in its own smoke. The inside of the homes stank with the putrid smell, but they rarely burnt down. There was always a Hydro lorry with water tanks and pumps on standby. Whenever there was any emergency, a loud air-raid siren whined across the valley.The Hydro allowed extensions to the houses such as extra rooms or fences, if done in your own time and at your own expense. Windows opened outwards, so small gardens in window boxes were common. Pansies were the best survivors. Herbs were rare or unknown except for mint. All houses sat on wooden stumps so that after the snows, the water could drain away. The whole village area that was cleared from trees and swampy plants, consisted of mainly yellow clay. Crushed gravel was scattered over walking paths. Gardens were impossible and grass was either eaten by wallabies or eliminated by snow and ice. Mum managed to grow blue Lupins and man-ferns. Except for passing rosella parrots and black cockatoos warning of approaching storms, the only bird-life were the very common black jays. With a wooden box, a long piece of string and a stick, we were able to catch the jays using bread. This served no purpose whatsoever and we just had to let them go again. Long rows of houses extended from the bottom swamp upwards in rows of two towards the top of the hill and had a road on either side. The only ones with a view of more than one roof, were those towards the higher ground. Along the road across the top, houses were occupied by foremen and their families. They had a view of the whole village, the oval, the canal and all the surrounding tree-covered hills.
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