Life in the new house

Kids at that time had to make there own fun as we didn’t have many toys. The toilet was right up in the far corner of the yard with none in the house. In the winter it was very cold and sometimes very scary.
We would nearly always go with each other. I had to take the little kids. Our bathroom was also out in the yard. It was not very nice. It had a dirt floor with a very large cement bath that looked like a horse trough in the corner. There was a copper. Mum had to make a fire under the copper to boil water to do the washing and get water for our bath.
She had to fill the bath with a bucket and it always got cold very fast. Mum had had another two kids in the years after we’d moved to Balmain, a son, Norman, and another daughter, Gwen. Mum used to put us three girls in the bath together and Norman was put in after us.
In the winter we had our bath in a big tin tub in the kitchen. We didn’t always have money to buy wood for the copper. It was always fun in the tub and good to have a big pot of hot water poured over to finish off on very cold nights.
We had an open fire in the fire place in the dining room, which was our living room and only room other than our hall and bedrooms. So after a tub bath we would wrap up in a towel and dry off by the fire. It was wonderful and cozy.
Living at number 48 was very good. My grandparents lived down the street at number 101. Mum’s mother, Minnie, and father, William Watt - pop to us kids.He was a fun man, tall with white hair, and he taught me all about football as foot ball was a big part of the Watt family life.
Mum had three sisters and four brothers. I must tell a little about the boys. George Watt played for Balmain and then for Australia. The youngest boy, Neville played for Balmain too. They were both hookers.
Pop used to take me down to Birchgrove Oval in my football jumper and teach me how to play the ball and tackle. He always said grab them around the ankles - they can't run without legs - and all this to a 4-year-old girl.
I was the first-born grandchild. I think he would have liked me to have been a boy but I loved him very much. He also sang great old songs to me as he bounced me on his knee.
He was a good husband to my grandmother. He used to do all the washing for her and I never saw her do any work. She was always off to town. I don’t know what for.
Pop worked at Morts Dock for as long as I remember. When he got too old he still worked there as a cleaner. He died there on the job. when they used to drain the dock he would catch lots of fish and mussels and we would have a feast.
They moved from 101 to 123, just down the street, and stayed there until they died. One of my mums brothers’, Jacky, and his wife and children, lived at number 125 next door. Lily, one of mums sisters’, lived not far away in King Street.
We had lots of other cousins all over Balmain. The Watts family in Short Street was very close to us, Aunty Lilly and Uncle Archie, and all the girls and Alan. Aunty Lilly did a lot for my mum when she was a girl - made all her clothes for dancing classes. Aunty Lilly and Grandma Minnie were step sisters. That is a story on its own but I will come back to it later.

All was well at number 48. The war was full on and then dad joined the Navy. It was January the eighteenth, 1943 and I was five. My sister, Eileen, was two. Dad went away on a train at Central Railway and we went to see him off. I remember waving to him and mum crying.

Everyone on the station seemed to be crying. It was so sad and I can still remember it today. When dad finished training he went onto the HMAS Kanimbla, a troop ship and off he went to war.

There is more to this story.