I remember when I was a kid on Misery, Dad was away a lot of the time, shearing or rabbiting. He'd only come home once a week or fortnight. With Dad being away so much I was running the bloody farm by the time I was ten. Doing the ploughing, milking the cows, looking after the poddy calves, fencing, breaking in horses, carting water, chopping firewood and all the other jobs that had to be done. Mum had a lot of work to do, too. I can't recall her ever sitting down doing nothing. Me eldest sister, Marie, was making the bread for the family when she was only seven or eight. It was a hard life but a good one. Life on the farm is what you make it, and we made it fun. I was always doing something stupid but it didn't matter as long as you got a laugh out of it. We used to have great fun. Mum would always read us Cowboy Charlie comics of a night. Or we'd play hide and seek, but there weren't many places to hide cos the house wasn't real big. We'd play cards as well. We never had a bed time. We could please our bloody selves when we went to bed. The little fellas went to bed when they got tired and we went to bed whenever we wanted to. Mum and Dad didn't give a bugger as long as we were up at daylight the next morning. Sometimes we'd sit up playing cards till all hours. No wonder I've got trouble sleeping now. We always had to do what we were told but I don't remember ever being told to go to bed.
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