Autobiography of My Mother by Meg Stewart Read Free Book Online

got out and went across the road. He was a clever pony, as well as wicked. He opened the presbytery gate and ate the priest’s garden. Everyone in town knew about that when it happened. Nicky was one of their favourite characters.
    The park in North Yass was full of pine trees. We used to gather fallen pine cones and eat the sweet nuts out of them.
    Down by the river was a garden belonging to John, the ‘Chinaman’. John supplied fresh vegetables for the town, bringing them around in a cart. When one of our cats had kittens, Mum did a deal with him.
    â€˜Do you want a cat, John?’ Mum asked innocently.
    John was delighted; he loved cats. Mum handed him a basket, inside which she had packed the cat and her kittens.
    John came back the next day, ecstatic. On the way home, he told us, the cat had had kittens. He had six cats now, instead of the one he thought he had. John was overwhelmed with happiness. In gratitude he brought a giant watermelon up to Rossi Street.
    The pitiful collection of tin shanties where the Aborigines lived was down on the river, too. The Yass Aborigines, who were very tall and fine-featured, used to work around town. My grandmother had a gardener named Caesar, a very tall old man who tended her persimmon trees.
    Mrs Nelson, another Aboriginal, was in demand by everyone to do washing. I remember my grandmother talking about Mrs Nelson’s kitchen. ‘It is only a tin shanty,’ Grandma used to say, ‘but Mrs Nelson has it so nice. She has a beautiful lace cloth over the table, she makes you a cup of tea and cooks you a cake as good as anyone’s in town.’
    The queen of the blacks was called Julia. She often appeared at our kitchen door dressed in an amazing array of cast-off finery from the whites; a brightly patterned silk coat, a hat bedecked with artificial roses, a feather boa.
    Julia was immensely old, upright, regal and very black, though a rumour persisted round the town that her father had been a white man of God, a minister.
    A great fuss was made when Julia paid us a visit. Afternoon tea would be served in the kitchen with one of the best cups and a slice of cake. Then for a silver coin – sixpence for children, a shilling for adults – Julia would tell fortunes. She told the most exciting fortunes, full of romantic promise and exotic places: ‘A tall, dark, handsome stranger will come, you will visit faraway lands.’
    A couple of shy Aboriginal children sometimes accompanied Julia. She would proudly introduce them as her daughter’s child or her son’s son and ask if we had any old clothing for them. Julia must have had many grandchildren, because the same child rarely came with her twice.
    Three miles out of town the river ran through a gorge, at the end of which it took a bend. This was called Hatton’s Corner and fossils were found there, seashells millions of years old. An artist who did pastel sketches was a familiar town character who haunted Hatton’s Corner.
    Miles Franklin lived nearby at Brindabella. They used to talk about her and about her book My Brilliant Career a great deal when I was young, because Brindabella is so close to Yass.
    I loved books. I could read before I was five. I liked books I could weep over; I pored over The Little Mermaid , the saddest story by Hans Christian Andersen. But Thumbelina was my favourite and I longed to find a tiny friend for myself.
    The boys had the Boys’ Own Paper , and my sister had copies of the Girls’ Own Annual . We also had the works of Australian balladists such as ‘Banjo’ Paterson in our bookshelf, as well as a good selection of Dickens. I read David Copperfield and Oliver Twist . I agonised over poor Oliver; the illustrations of the fierce Fagin in the condemned cell were the most terrible things in the world to me.
    My father never read to us, but he recited, rehearsing for his theatricals. My mother sang us songs like, ‘I Wonder Who’s