Esmerelda Jones...  Author of Vintage and Victorian Fiction

The fragrant summers of the Australian bush arose in me the earliest passion for the pleasures of life. Romance, beauty and love are arts to be courted, and in all these matters I write what I have experienced in the senses.

My childhood bedroom, a watercolour lavender, was heady with ambrosial writing, further spiced by desire and a "seeing" sense.

It is for those wanting to languish in fully ripe life that I write. They will find in the daily rush and bleakness there exists a private boudoir of the mind; where vivid silk and subtle satins defuse our stress, and problems are eaten like fat mangoes.

My grandparents romanced life like Ma and Pa Kettle. Delighted with previous visits to Australia, they decided to set up camp here in the 1940's, purchasing cheap land on the fringe of Perth, Western Australia. They had met and married in India, Granny having an exotic background and gypsy looks.

Grandfather, a classic eccentric Englishman, preferred the wilds to civilization, craving independence and solitude. Crackly old photographs show him posing in safari hat and khaki shorts, laughing called at the time “Bombay Bloomers”. He hammered together their three-room Aussie bush shack, and as his sons and daughters (with their children) arrived after the war, they were accommodated in and around this astonishing ramble. Fried bread was a regular breakfast greeting in the tents.

Mum, dad, twin sisters, and brother came as ₤10 "specials" on a rusty English migrant ship drudging out its last trip in 1950. By then the shack in the dandelions had been named Jamayla Mansions (Grandfather’s humour matched his temper). During the summer madness of December, 1951 I was born.

Time spread itself vastly, allowing mindless days for lolling around. Everyone would settle on the verandah, finding a space on the overstuffed lounge; or a wonky cane chair; or maybe just snooze on the rough grass under the flame tree, gazing up at the scarlet parrot flowers. I still see Issic the orange cat; frisky lizards; bursting pig melons and a sky that drew faery tears.

Life demanded labour; everything had to be done pioneer style. Women lathered up the laundry in a cement trough with a bar of cracked yellow soap. Whites were scalded in the copper boiler, lit with bush twigs. Our clothes swung beneath the banksia trees on a length of rope, fluttering in the windy freshness. We washed in an enamel bowl using a flannel and a tin mug to rinse off. A piece of laundry soap was chopped off for this, and we also lathered up our hair with it. Granny's wood stove kept going day and night as she turned out butter cakes and pots of stew to feed the clan. We ate where we pleased, with a fork and tin plate.

The great laugh of our week was the dunnyman who came to exchange our overflowing dunny bin with an empty one (the dunny is the famous Australian outback toilet). It was always situated at the end of the backyard path, and guarded by redback spiders that were also legendary -- for puncturing your bottom as you relaxed on the wooden seat. No push-button flushing and no tissue paper; just squares of newspaper threaded with string hanging up behind the dark door. Needless to say, the stinkhouse had its friendly gathering of flies. The unfortunate dunnyman got joked at as he trudged back to his truck slopping the bin contents over his back. We were rude little kids, but he is pasted into our album of memories.

Of course, this life is hard to shake off. You run all through bush tracks, unafraid, spying on goannas and birds with the ravishing aroma of wattle and native flowers mesmerizing your mind. Barefoot you go, never knowing what fashion is and never needing to be entertained, for all the secrets are out there for you. Beneath the fronds, betwixt the crimson sprites…

When I was three, we got our own council house on a tenant's estate just a skip from bush life. Now we could boast of a blue enamel icebox, topped up weekly by the delivery man who carted a frozen block between great pincers. His knees bent comically under the weight. The days of sour butter had passed.

A regular bread cart brought us balmy, high-crusted loaves wrapped in paper. I can still smell the unbridled fragrance of horse sweat and bread. Ripping into a new loaf was my passion –- a slab of butter hastily went on top and then I would slink away to eat it in peace and savagery under the grapevine. I could never share that moment with anyone –- it was too magnificent to have less of.

Everyone elbowed around the Italian man’s fruit and vegetable truck. Such things were precious and he was an absolute convenience. Creaking along the road, the streaky red truck  stopped here and there, allowing us to dart outside to view the latest display. Steel scales dangled from the canopy and we watched his rhythm in weighing, wrapping and change-giving.

John’s corner shop, a stiff mile away, enticed us with modern life. Bars of chocolate, so easy to have; milk in glass bottles with the coveted cream on top; expensive pink cakes for tea; blue icy poles and bricks of vanilla ice-cream. All you needed was money. The beautifully bowed glass cabinets were polished to a magical gleam. How we lingered… staring, hoping. We promised obedience for lollies…. anything to partake of dreamland.

In our “continental” bathroom, a frightening chip heater hissed and spat out a boiling trickle of bath water. It was not to be trusted. Hard soap got us clean and served as shampoo. No conditioner; no hair dryers; just snarled hair and the dread of “hair day”. Wet curls dried out in summer sunshine, but during winter, we bent our heads before the fierce wood stove. Toasting forks skewered with stale bread plunged into the embers and we feasted on butter-slathered slices until swollen. We brushed each other’s hair with mean, nylon combs. Later on my sisters earned  money sewing in a shirt factory, and one of their first luxury purchases was a hair crème from the city called “crowning glory." This fat, orchid bottle was a mystical marvel.

Three of us slept in one double bed under a chenille bedspread that draped over us like an pea-green omelette. The world of ensuites and private bedrooms waited in the starry future… meanwhile, we thought we had it made.

Days of innocence floated on as we ached for Christmas, birthdays and holidays.

I forced porridge down my dolls' pouting mouths, believing they would be well fed. Like a proud Indian I wore bull-ant necklaces and kept a zoo of grasshoppers and beetles. Blacky our cat endured sessions of dress-ups, to be wheeled merrily in a royal pram around the backyard. His passive eyes strained from under the tight bindings of a frilly bonnet. What a gracious cat he was. Most of his nine lives were used up by the local naughty boys in such stunts as trapping him in an airless cabinet, though he defied them all, being released on his last breath. Years later, we marked his grave with a strip of asbestos, which was all we could find. I drew a simple flower under his name. Only a child could name a black cat Blacky.

Every Sunday we went for afternoon tea visits to my grandparents, where I headed for the horizon with my cousins. Pirates and adventurers lived in the pulse of our blood… treasure chests were no lie, and Peter Pan did sit pertly on our windowsills at night.

I could have been Huckleberry Finn's girlfriend. Alas, my Mississippi was a swamp in the bush of Australia and I never did find Huck among the juicy lilies that bunched out around its edges. Nevertheless, I secured a unique freedom that only came from youthful Australia in the early 1950's. That boundless vitality and my deep well of imagination guided me to pursue knowledge, wisdom, refinement, and appreciation for all the beauty and culture that the spirit of joy loves.