We were  working class poor.  For most of us,  working class poor was just  where money was a bit tight, new clothes were special and Mum always seemed to have a  struggle to make the ends meet  She was magical like that – making the dollar stretch, making the old new again.

It was just the way things were.  Working class poor meant houses with interior hessian walls covered by layers of aging wall paper over the top of decade old newspapers; outside toilets (emptied once a week and which explained one extremely fertile corner of the backyard), tank water only; boiling a copper on Sunday for the weekly bath; using a 32 volt generator for electricity (how the district celebrated when huge poles and long black cables announced the arrival of electricity) and when that failed, kerosene lamps; swapping mended clothes and school books with other families because recycling was a product of economic necessity, not environmental concerns.

It was a way of life: screws were kept in old jars and tins, nails sorted, straightened, reused; timber examined and stacked, corrugated iron reused. Beer and soft drink bottles were stacked for return and reuse; clothes were dried using solar and wind power; brown paper and string squirrelled away. Working class poor embedded a range of views and attitudes that never leave you, that remain, ever so slightly, in the shadows. It never leaves no matter what twists and turns your life takes.

There were poor families, and we knew they were poor because they had home haircuts – we had barber haircuts – short back and sides – ( there’s only a week’s difference between a good and bad haircut the old man used to say).  Such is the unconscious acceptance of the relative poor and the small things that define your place on the social ladder. Growing up isolated honed the skills of introspection – and self reliance.

It taught you to be comfortable with your own company. It also developed an independence of action.   Going ferreting kept you occupied and at the same time provided the sense of isolation that nurtured the imagination. It helped fill in those long school holidays. It also kept you out of the old man’s view – he had this terrible habit of finding things for you to do and invariably that involved work.

Ferreting was much more fun. for those who have not had the experience, it involves using small stoat like animals to flush rabbits from their burrows into nets. For me, the only available transport was the push bike ( which was painted by my brother as a birthday present) and which was beautiful in its simplicity, no brakes, no lights, no gears, no helmet. No one seemed too concern if you left in the dark and came home in the dark. There you were, miles from anywhere, no mobile phone, no iPad, no GPS, no technology besides a mattock for digging; a pocket knife, a bike and empty sweeping paddocks.

Ferreting provided both excitement and money. The excitement was the rumble of a rabbit bolting in fear from its burrow before becoming entangled in the  nets followed quickly by breaking their necks and gutting them – without a thought or hesitation –  country morality is far more black and white than its urban counterpart.

Sometimes – not often – but occasionally you would be hit with an epileptic seizure and wake up in the grass with a few extra bumps and bruises, the object of curiosity for the sheep.

Sometimes, lying under the sun surrounded by nothingness, you would curl into a ball and sleep for a while. Other times,  you would just get yourself underneath a gum and sit and dream – indulging in fantastic adventures in faraway places where you were ‘normal’, waiting for the tiredness that followed a seizure to ebb away and your strength return.  These were not experiences for sharing with the family. It set a pattern for the rest of my life.

Some years, out of shearing season, the old man would go rabbiting  and sell them to the local  cool room, who in turn would send them to the city. When money was a bit short, well, you ate a lot of rabbit. Its never featured on my menu since.

Occasionally you felt the loneliness, on those hot summer’s days  where the sky was wide and cloudless, with the sound of the crows as your only companion and  where the hot northerly winds ripped the moisture from your lungs.  Sitting with your knees hunched under your chin, listening to the sound of the petrified rabbit bolting in its darkness, sharing in its excitement and fear; waiting for it to make its last lunge out of the darkness; knowing its death was seconds away.

Decades later, lying in the darkness of a hospital ward, wondering what the real impact of a broken back was going to be, I am damn sure I could still hear those rabbits bolting.