Easter

Hot Cross buns weren't available immediately after Christmas, as they are these days, when I was growing up. I remember standing in a massively long queue with my mother on the Thursday before Easter outside the bakery at Mosman Junction, mouth watering in expectation of the rare treat. When the buns were finally bought I would open the bag and inhale the fragrant spicy scent deeply and look forward to breakfast the next day. It never disappointed.

We weren't a religious family but would often go to church on Good Friday all dressed up. As usual it was a social event where we caught up with people who were regulars and those who were occasional visitors such as we were.

Followers of my blog will know that I grew up in Sydney in flats called 'Clitheroe' and that most of the neighbours were surrogate uncles and aunties, particularly before any other children arrived at the flats. As all our relatives were in Germany it was wonderful having all these delightful people living around us.

Clitheroe was a two storey L shaped construction facing on to a lawn and garden. On Easter Sunday my parents and the neighbours hid chocolate eggs for me around the garden. I would be sent out with my little basket and the neighbours who were all leaning out the windows would clap and cheer whenever I found an egg. It was a very exciting day for a little person. I would then go inside, break up some of the eggs and go around the flats sharing the chocolate.

When other children arrived at the flats this little ceremony ceased and each family had their own Easter egg hunts inside. I guess things would have become a bit too complicated. Some of the neighbours still used to come down to our place and say the Easter bunny must have made a mistake because he left some eggs at their flat.

As I grew older I used my pocket money to buy Easter eggs for my parents. My friends and I would go to the shop of choice, Woolworths, to select the prettiest, best value eggs we could afford. In those days a little chicken was often stuck to the egg so that made it even more appealing.

One year after a long consultation with my friends I decided on what I thought were the two best eggs with the cutest chickens, handed over my carefully hoarded shillings and gently placed them in my Globite school case. I carried my bag home and nonchalantly strolled past my mother with the treasures hidden safely in my school case. She wasn't supposed to know that I had even bought Easter eggs. I had planned to hide them and make my parents search.

I went into my room, opened my bag and horror of horrors the eggs were squashed flat. Even the chickens were looking sad! My heart sank. I could never work out what had happened because there wasn't anything else in the school bag that could have squashed the eggs. I didn't have any money left so couldn't buy any more. What to do? I cried and sobbed the story out to Mutti who gave me a big cuddle and said that the chocolate would taste just the same and that she and Vati would love them particularly as they had been bought with love. It consoled me a bit.

I felt ashamed to hand over the squashed eggs on Easter Sunday. I had resurrected the chickens somewhat. My parents immediately opened the foil, tipped the chocolate into a bowl and made a big fuss about how extra specially delicious they were. My father smoothed the foil out and exclaimed about the beautiful patterns and colours and how carefully I had obviously chosen the best two eggs. By this time I had also eaten plenty of chocolate so I was feeling a whole lot better.

We had some friends who would pick us up from Mosman and drive us the very long one lane Ryde Road to their place in Epping which was 'out in the sticks' in those days. Mr and Mrs T had a son and had always wanted a daughter so they spoiled me rotten, just like our neighbours did. We were often invited to their place at Easter time because it gave Mrs T great pleasure to buy and then hide Easter eggs in the garden for me to find. She would get carried away and I would leave their place laden. Searching for the eggs got rather embarrassing when I got into my teens so I convinced my parents to invite them rather than going to their place. They would bring a huge beautiful egg in a box surrounded by chocolates and that was always was a thrill.

My mother always decorated the house for Easter. We had tablecloths which my aunt in Germany had embroidered with spring flowers, Easter bunnies and colourful eggs and on the table she put little pale green chickens which she had had since she and my father married in 1939. Eventually those chickens really showed their age and were replaced by nice plump yellow chickens which had featured on foil covered chocolate eggs.

For breakfast on Easter Sunday we ate boiled eggs. In those days commercial eggs were always white. Mutti would tie brown onion skins over the eggs and they would be a nice brown colour when they had been boiled. We sometimes dyed eggs and hard boiled them and they would be part of the decorations.

We always had a festive lunch, usually chicken, which was an expensive treat in those days. I don't know that there was dessert because we would visit our friends or would have guests over in the afternoon for excesses of cake and other sweet treats.

I have kept many of the Easter traditions taught to me by my mother (apart from going to church) and my daughters also decorate their place with chickens and beautifully decorated imported papier mâché eggs. When the girls were little we always had an Easter egg hunt which was great fun. I was never good at keeping count of the eggs and every so often we would find a little chocolate egg hidden in an obscure place ages later.

One tradition I haven't yet mentioned and don't even know the origin of, is 'grün Donnerstag' (green Thursday) which is the Thursday before Easter. My mother served up boiled potatoes, spinach and fried eggs. I hated the meal, particularly the slimy top of the fried egg and the glop of sloppy spinach. For sentimental reasons I insist on 'grün Donnerstag' but serve up a yummy spinach quiche instead.

Every generation establishes new traditions. Ours' is coming to the family coast house. We eat quiche on Thursday night, Easter buns on Good Friday, have Easter eggs on Sunday and watch corny religious movies during the day. It is really enjoyable.

Happy Easter everyone.

Dolls

I loved dolls when I was young. Before I had a doll when I was about 2 1/2 my mother took me down to the swings at Reid Park where there happened to be another little girl who did have a doll. The girl's mother said we should share the doll and so I was allowed to have a hold. When it was time to give the doll back I didn't want to, screamed blue murder and bit the little girl, much to my mother' great embarrassment. I can't remember this incident but my mother told me years later and still shuddered with horror when she recalled the bite marks on the arm of the then also screaming other little girl.

My first doll Hansel I received when I was three ( I think). I played with him a lot and think that he was 'the baby' when John and I played mothers and fathers.

John's sisters Pam and Joan had the most beautiful dolls with china faces and real hair. They wore exquisite dresses and I would have loved to play with them but they were 'looking at, not touching' dolls which sat up on a shelf.

My father had two Swiss friends who were on the same boat as him when he came to Australia. These two young men came to our place for meals regularly and when I was about 4 they gave me a doll for Christmas. Onkel Herbert and Onkel Emil couldn't have given me a more wonderful present.

I had opened the gifts under the Christmas tree and was sitting with my mother on the couch when it was announced that there was another present. The Onkels hadn't wrapped the doll but she was in a box, the front covered with clear cellophane. She was wearing a bright shiny yellow dress with a wide skirt edged with green rick rack braid and I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I immediately named her Susan because I thought that was the most beautiful of names.

That night Susan sat on my bedhead and I kept waking up to touch her just to make sure she was still there. On closer inspection the next day I discovered that her bodice and undies were glued on and part of the attraction of having a doll was the dressing and undressing, so my father gently peeled the offending pieces of clothing off and my mother hurriedly sewed a few clothes for her.

I loved Susan very much but occasionally she would have an accident such as having the various internal workings break so that her arm or leg would fall off. Also I think one of her eyes got pushed right inside her head. When this happened she would go to the dolls' hospital to be repaired and I would have to play with Hansel.

Eventually someone dropped Susan and her entire head split open. I guess I could have got another head but she had already been repaired several times so got thrown out. I cried and cried. It must have been close to my birthday because I received another doll. Susan had had reddish hair and so I'm sure that's why Mutti chose a doll with short curly red hair but unfortunately the new Susan had the most distressingly bright pink skin so I didn't like her although I was polite and played with her briefly.

Two years in a row relatives in Germany sent dolls. They were baby dolls, both boys obviously, because they were dressed in blue. I named the first one Michael. He had brown eyes. The second doll was blue eyed and I named him Karl Heinz after a friend of ours'. They were real baby dolls with bandy legs and hands that had the thumb sticking up so you could turn their heads and put the arms up so they could suck their thumbs. Their thickly lashed eyes closed and both would say "Mama" when you tipped them over although I believe Michael became mute after a while. I played with them a lot.

Barbie dolls came out in 1959 when I was 8 and were an immediate hit. Some lucky girls at school had Barbies and I envied them and was grateful to be allowed to hold the treasures for a while. These dolls always had large wardrobes of clothes and we would spend an entire lunchtime changing the outfits and making up games. I begged my parents for a Barbie but my mother declared that Barbies were ridiculous, not real dolls and that you couldn't play with them properly, not like a baby doll.

Someone gave me a black doll wearing a hula skirt and lots of beads at some time. She was called Sabrina. I didn't play with her very much and can't remember what happened to her.

I was going to German Saturday school in the city regularly by this time and for a while our classes were held in the YWCA building in College St Sydney. One Saturday there was a fete going on in the hall downstairs from our classrooms and of course during our morning tea break we went down to investigate. As usual there was a raffle and the prize was a doll. She was a bit like a tallish Barbie with long legs and boobs but with a girlish face with long lashed eyes that opened and closed. She was dressed as a harem lady with a sparkly bikini type outfit with pale blue organza leggings and veil. I stood and stared and hoped and prayed that she could be mine. The lady selling the raffle tickets saw the longing in my eyes and saying the tickets were free, gave me one. That was so kind, especially so because I won her! I came home from school one day and there she was. They had rung my mother who had immediately got on the ferry and then the bus to pick her up for me. I felt like I was the luckiest person alive.

Because she looked exotic I named my new doll Isabella after consultation with the neighbours at the flats, because I thought that a pretty fancy name. I made her all sorts of clothes as did Mrs Hummerston (our neighbour). At the German Bazaar that year I was wishfully looking at dolls' clothes and the lady at the stall generously gave me a beautiful beige satin outfit which fitted Isabella perfectly, so I was doubly lucky.

As time went on I became less interested in dolls and spent a lot of time reading so the dolls sat in the cupboard languishing. Young friends played with them when they visited and when someone pushed Isabella's eyes in she somehow disappeared and I didn't really miss her.

As I was an only child and spent a lot of time alone, my dolls were real company. They all had their own personalities and I had lots of conversations with them. We had tea parties and I baked them biscuits and made them clothes, took them for walks and loved them dearly. They were an important part of my life.

To my surprise I found a cheap little doll which we had bought at Woolworths and which I had dressed as Elizabeth 1st for a project in sixth grade, in a cupboard I was cleaning out not all that long ago. I was surprised at my sewing and decorating skills, if I do say so myself.

Hansel, my first doll and Michael and Karl Heinz who are 'Turtle' brand dolls and probably quite valuable, still live in a cupboard at home (somewhere) wearing the original outfits they came with. The poor things have been unloved for a long time.

Canberra's centenary - reflecting on the last 40 years

In January 1973 I stood in the driveway of my then fiancé's parents' house crying my eyes out as T set off for his new job with the Australian Customs Service in Canberra. In those days the government was daring and innovative. Computers were the new thing and a recruitment drive had been held to choose suitable bright young people to man the brave new world of information technology. T had already shown his aptitude as a computer programmer in a couple of workplaces and was snapped up.

I wrongly thought I wouldn't see him again because he would be seduced by Canberra and find someone he preferred to me at his new home, Lawley House. Devotedly (bless him) T drove up every weekend to Sydney until we married in the September of that year except for two weekends when I visited Canberra.

In those days public servants flooded in from all over Australia. It was an exception to find a born and bred Canberran. There were a whole lot of hostels which provided accommodation for the large influx. T lived at Lawley House for about two months until he could no longer stand the restrictions imposed by the management. As well he had made some friends who also didn't like hostel living and a group decided to rent a house together in Weetangera.

I had been to Canberra by train for a day years before with my parents. All I remember was that work was being done on the still empty lake which was full of bulldozers. There wasn't much else to see that I could remember. The next time I came to Canberra was when I was about 15, on a day trip from the coast. I have a photo of me in front of the War Memorial. Again I can't remember much about the visit.

I did come to visit T when he was at Lawley House. Members of the opposite sex were forbidden to visit the rooms of the residents - sitting in the communal area was alright until about 9pm. We broke the rules big time! I stayed the night! Shock! Horror! I held on but finally had to use the loo. T had to peer out, check that the coast was clear before I dashed out. It was all very furtive and exciting. Doesn't that sound archaic now! That's how it was in those days. If we went on holiday together I wore a 'wedding' ring or it was possible that we wouldn't have been allowed to stay at a hotel.

We married on 1st September 1973 which was the middle weekend of the school holidays. It was my first year of teaching. As T had just started work in the Public Service he couldn't take any time off so our 'honeymoon' was the drive from Sydney to Canberra. He had organised a fully furnished flat for us in a long grey building in Mawson called 'The Wall of China' by the locals thanks to its lack of architectural merit. I hadn't seen it at all but as T carried me over the threshold carrying a basket containing bread and salt (good omens according to my mother) I was as happy as could be. We unpacked the piles of wedding presents from the car and set up our little home together.

In those days you could see the twinkling lights of the tiny Woden town centre from our balcony at night and during the day you could see waving golden grasslands filled with birds from the bedroom. Those grasslands are now filled with town houses and an aged care village.

I started teaching at Pearce Primary School the next week. It was a beautiful new school. When I first walked into the building to introduce myself I felt like I had arrived in heaven. Everything was shiny and new. I had been teaching in an old inner city school in Sydney where the paste was full of rat droppings, the windows were opaque because of pollution from the nearby factories and where my chair went through the floor one day when I leant back due to the dry rot. At Pearce School many of the staff were about my age and I immediately made lots of friends.

In those days you really had to make your own fun in Canberra. I can remember having to catch the bus back to Sydney on a Sunday night from Garema place in the city and you could have fired multiple cannons down the main street and not hit anyone. It was VERY quiet and dark. Compare that to the vibrant city life these days!

In the 70s we had masses of dinner parties where we would actually get dressed up. We also went to enormous trouble when providing the meal, aperitifs such as brandy Alexanders and whiskey sours were favourites followed by multiple courses with accompanying wines concluding with a selection of liqueurs.

After a while 'progressive dinners' became all the rage. Great crowds of us would go to someone's house for entree, someone else's for main course and move again for dessert. This entailed piling into cars and driving around in an increasingly intoxicated state to get to the various locations where the next course was being served. There were no breathalysers in those days. Usually Sundays were a quiet recovery day.

T and I shopped at 'Southlands', a new shopping centre close by and outraged some friends with our extravagance. We would spend up to $20 EVERY WEEK on our groceries which included luxury items such as fillet steak, strawberries and avocados.

We had bought a townhouse in Holder in 1974 when house prices started to rise. It cost $19,500 and we had to borrow money for the deposit from T's father and then go to the bank manager cap in hand to get a loan for the rest. We had mission brown tiles laid in the entrance and beige shag pile carpet laid in the living rooms. The furniture we bought was brown, beige and orange and throughout Canberra other young couples embraced the same colours. We bucked the trend a bit by having white bench tops - lime green, bright yellow or orange were much flasher and very popular.

We bought a catamaran and sailed on the lake and watched as new public buildings grew up around it's shore. We felt proud of our city when we showed off the new buildings and beautiful surrounds to interstate visitors.

In 1975 I started teaching in another new school, Holder, which was very close to our new home. One day T and I went for a drive along Namatjira Drive to where the bitumen ended at the top of Fisher. We could see down to the Tuggeranong Valley. A small section of Kambah had just started being built but the valley was a sea of green fields, grazing cattle and sheep and the odd farmhouse.

Another favourite activity at the time was to go on picnics en masse. Popular destinations such as the Cotter dam, Kambah Pool or Lanyon homestead were quite long drives down dirt roads. Every so often we would go to the coast dragging the catamaran and join up with friends who had similar interests.

As time went by we added two to the population of Canberra. We built a house in Kambah on 'mortgage hill' in the Tuggeranong Valley which was called 'nappy valley' at the time.

Having children did somewhat curtail our social activities but our street was full of young children so we would have the occasional street party or street cricket matches. The kids would roam as a mob and have marvellous adventures around the neighbourhood. Everyone would be looking out for everyone else and there was a sense of freedom that I don't think was still around in larger cities such as Sydney anymore.

Our girls eventually went to the Grammar School and we toyed with the idea of moving closer to the school for a while. I mean it did take almost half an hour to get there!!

Canberra has grown. When we moved to Kambah friends from Belconnen (north of the lake) would say they needed to pack a lunch to get to our place! Now we are very close to the physical centre of the city, Canberra has spread out so much. I guess it would take about an hour to get from the southern most suburb to the northern most now. How fabulous is that. Sometimes that is how long it takes just to get three suburbs away in Sydney, if there is a traffic jam.

We love Canberra. The public institutions such as the National Art Gallery, the National Museum, the National Library, the War Memorial, the National Archive, the Canberra Museum and Gallery, not forgetting Parliament House are places of interest which hold contents of significance for all Australians. We regularly visit and enjoy the experiences offered.

We love the four distinct seasons this area of the country has, each bringing with it visual delights. We love that our backyard is filled with wild birds that visit to be hand fed. We love the fact that cattle graze just beyond our fence line and that kangaroos occasionally bounce down our street or have a munch on our lawn.

We love the fact that Canberra is a sophisticated city where we can enjoy quality theatre or concerts, dine in world class establishments or just go for a walk around the lake enjoying nature.

These days you could participate in several organised activities every day, if you had the energy. Canberra is a vital, interesting city which most Australians know little about.

The sense of community, I feel, is what sets Canberra apart from other large cities. We've had a few bushfires in the years since T and I moved here but it was the devastating bushfire of 2003 that really showed the heart of our city. We lost about 500 houses and lost 4 precious residents. Just about everyone knew someone who had had suffered some loss. People collected money, donated clothing, furniture, gave time and effort to help those who had lost so much. We stood shoulder to shoulder and became one. Although it was horrific it unified us as a real community and I felt proud to be a Canberran. I still am.

Going for walks with my parents

On the weekend, usually on Sundays but sometimes on Saturdays as well, I would go for a walk with my parents. In Germany in the area my parents came from (we're talking before WWII so I'm sure everything has changed) it was quite a social thing to do. You'd go in the afternoon, after your afternoon nap, wear something nice and nod greetings to various acquaintances who were doing the same thing. Nothing like when I go for my walk wearing tracky dacks, T-shirt or sweatshirt and joggers.

My parents and I would head off looking neat and tidy, my father often wearing a tie and a casual jacket, my mother in a dress carrying a handbag but because it was an informal occasion, no hat. We wore our everyday shoes as joggers didn't exist then and my parents weren't serious hikers so we didn't have hiking boots.

Sometimes we didn't go very far when I was very little, just down and around Reid Park which was near Clitheroe flats where we lived. There was a beautiful gully where we would sit and talk. There was also a large hole, that had on reflection probably been a wombat hole, but my parents decided that a fox lived there and we would always peer down to see if it was there. Once I didn't want to go home as I was having such a lovely time throwing little stones into the water. My parents wanted to leave so my father said, "You'd better come quickly because the fox is behind you!" I didn't look behind just ran screaming to my mother shaking with fear. He was so upset he never forgot and told me many times how sorry he was that he had frightened me so badly. He never thought that I would react like that or that I would have nightmares about foxes for ages afterwards.

Even if it was raining we would go for a walk and I would wear my little blue rain cape. There was a long sloping path beside the trees and bushes at the end of Reid Park that led up to another section of the suburb and when it rained the water would rush and gurgle its way beside the path. My father always carried a Swiss army knife in his pocket and he would pick up a piece of bark and quickly carve a little boat for me. Sometimes we would even fix a gum leaf as a sail and send the 'boat' rushing down the stream of water. I would run along beside my little boat until it disappeared into the storm water drain that went under the park. My father would make up the most wonderful stories about the adventures that my little boat would have on its journey to the sea.

When I was older we went for longer walks, from Mosman Wharf to Cremorne Point, on a path that wound its way beside Mosman Bay. We passed very few people even though there were houses along the route but they were set far back and it was almost like walking through the bush. Sometimes we would catch the ferry back but usually we would walk.

Vati (the German version of Daddy) would make up stories as we walked along. There was a huge boulder which he told me was as a tiny pebble to the giant Pumphut who had sat down and shaken it out of his shoe many years before. Also when the ferries went past and would reverse away from the wharf creating a big white froth from their propellors he said that it was the sharks shampooing their fins. I absolutely loved the stories and would say, "tell me again!" never getting tired of the same stories at the same part of the walk.

When we got to Cremorne Point there was a playground and we would have fun, particularly on the seesaw. Also Vati would push me really high on the swing so I would shriek with delight and Mutti would nervously tell him to be careful.

In later years when we had a car we would drive to different places from where we would walk. Balmoral beach was favourite destination and we would walk along the promenade and go up on the 'island' which overlooked the netted swimming area. My father always adored looking at boats, having learnt to sail in a huge four masted training ship on the Baltic Sea way back in the early 1930s, so our walks were mainly beside Sydney harbour.

Bradley's Head with its fortifications into which I would run and hide and the huge foremast from the WWI Cruiser HMAS Sydney as well as the stunning view of the harbour was yet another favourite walk to which we always took overseas visitors.

Even in old age my parents enjoyed going for walks. Their retirement village at Allambie Heights in Sydney happened to have a road that went nowhere beside it. Perhaps the council had planned to sell the land there but never got around to it. The road is only about 300 or so meters long, but when you are in your late 70s or 80s, there and back is quite a stretch. Luckily there is a bench at the end of the road and someone has created a pond with a bit of a garden, so the residents can have a sit and rest before going home. I accompanied my parents on that little walk many times, pointing out the lovely wild flowers on the way.

I still love going for walks and, especially if I'm by myself, I build castles in the sky. I wonder if that's thanks to the wonderful stories Vati told me all those years ago.