Well I am on a roll so will continue with my story.
Our Dad had a lease on a salt lake, it was an amazing thing. It had seasons where it would make salt, it was a shallow lake in a natural depression, not very large, when there was little water in it a red cloud would form and move around the edge of the lake, in the water, like the water was colored red, and it would move continuously around, you could keep up with it by walking around the lake. When this happened, usually in the summer, the lake was producing salt, very course crystals 2-3 millimetres in size.

My Dad would then use a tractor and grader and pile the salt up in long rows in the lake, and then with a front end loader fill up trucks and bring it to the shore, where it was piled up into high mounds to later be bagged up into hessian bags (12 bags added up to a ton) and loaded by hand onto trucks.

It was very hot, hard work. As kids my Sis and I would often work there in the School Holidays, filling bags and sewing them up. We were quite happy to help and it certainly built good work endurance in our personalities.

Dad also leased land were he planted crops, although I don,t recall that they ever came to much, My Sis and I, keeping in mind that I was about 11 and my Sis 14, we each had an old tractor and were left alone to plough the paddock, how different things are now, we as Kids had the privelege to be able to do things children today are considered unable to do.

Well Hi it,s been as usual a long time, now where was I, Oh yes, Ten years old and the 1956 Olympic games and little Lake Boga which recently by the way has been drained of it,s precious fluid and people living around the lake, our old house included, right on the lakes edge, are now looking at a very large black hole in the ground, by now I guess grass has probably started to grow in it, how very sad, gone are the sail boats the speed boats and water skiing fishing swimming, and everything associated will such a lovely body of water surrounded by gorgeous willow trees which are all now dead!!!!!!

Lake Boga was a great place for children to grow up, we had a lot of freedom, as very little was likely to happen to us.
We spent hours on our Horses around the back of the lake finding aboriginal relics, even found a human skull once, apparently we had come accross an old burial place and not knowing these things are sacred,and took it to the local police station!

The Wheat silo,s were another place we loved to play, but that was dangerous, we didn,t know it at the time, but we could easily have drowned in the wheat, it had happened before we found out later.

I was 10 when we moved to Lake Boga it was the year of the 1956 Olympic games and as kids we were a bit overawed with it all. I could remember only living in country areas and this was the first time we lived in a "town" I thought it was really something, I still remember clearly how I wanted to dress up because we were in a "town" not to matter that the "town" had about 300 residents!

Our house was by the train tracks and as kids we used to love to put a penny on the tracks and wait for the train to come and squash it flat, sometimes it would stick to the wheel for a few turns, sometimes we never found it again.

There were not many hills where we lived, but the town water supply was at the top a small hill about 2 miles from the house, on the top were also a copse of Peppercorn trees, my sis and I would climb to the top and they were big, and swing down through the branches like tarzan, scratched all over by enormous fun.

When I was 19 I moved to Melbourne to live with a girlfriend and her family, I left on the last steam train, after that they were diesel, I loved steam trains and I still do, there was something romantic about steam.

Well it has been a very long time and no doubt anyone following my blog would by not have given up! But here I am again and will try as one of my many new year thingies, to keep it going.

From the house off the Highway at Kangaroo lake, we moved to our next home at , a little township called Lake Boga.

Our house was very old, the lining on the walls consisted of hessian bagging pasted over with newspapers. As kids we thought this was fantastic as we could read the walls while in bed! but in fact it was obviously very hot in summer and very cold in winter. It had two bedrooms a short hallway and a kitchen, quite large, and a ramshackle bath room, the toilet (with a pan) was way out the backyard with the back facing the lane as the toilet truck came once a week to take the full can and drop off an empty one, they were the days!

The lake was right out the back fence across the lane, a wonderful life for kids. I was 10 years old when we moved there in 1956. Imagine 5 kids 2 parents and 2 Grandparents in that small home, but we managed, very different to how people manage today.

Dad eventually built on a lounge another bedroom, fixed the bathroom and put on a small sleep-out-and even built the toilet against the back of the house with a septic tank, what an amazing man, never had any building experience, and also lined the rooms, yes it was still an old house but was always homey.

About the cows

We had two cows, as I remember one was soft brown and I think her name was Daisy, the other is not so clear anymore, but was taller. It was my Sister and my job to milk the cows before and after school.
Considering we had four miles, that is about 8kms to ride our bikes, or if we got a puncture, walk to school for punishment, (our fault, as we usually rode 'off the beaten' track) but that is another story..
Any way whatever the weather the cows had to be milked, and often they were a fare way from the house. One day we had a long way to walk and for some reason I decided I was going to ride my cow home. My Sis had some rabbit traps ( another story..) in her hand and wacked my cow over the rump with the traps, and she took off like a rocket with me on top and nothing to hang onto. You know I carn,t remember if I fell off! But I do remember I was pretty mad. Bit blurry not you get the idea!

Fun Times

We were such fortunate kids compared to children today, we had such freedom to roam and things to do.

When the wheat fields were well grown, so quite high, we used to make little tunnels, flatten out the wheat, and every here and there, flatten little rooms, it was such fun! Our own little world of labyrinths and mazes.

In the out season, farmers used to run sheep on the harvested wheat fields around our house, and if a ewe had a set of twins, we were allowed to take one raise it with bottles (we had two cows, that's another story) of cows milk, sadly it had to be put back in the next years flock, but then there was always another one. This countryside is pretty much what the land looked like where we lived.

Funny things that happened

Still at the house I last wrote about, as children my older sis and I had pretty free reign, and wandered quite extensively. There were a few small hills probably 4 kms from our home in the middle of the wheatfields, and we used to love to go there as there was a small rubbish dump where the locals (not many of them) dumped their rubbish.
We used to find all sorts of interesting things there, one one of our travels in between the two hills was a small valley, and in the valley was a field of bright red poppies.
We were amazed of course, but never realized till years later that it was an illegal opium poppy field, quite hidden away from everyone as no-one ever ventured there.
One of our trips, we were fossicking in the little dump, which was out of sight of the valley, there was this weird huge white thing that suddenly rose from behind some bushes. Well, we never ran so fast, literally jumped over fences, the whole 4 kms home, and oddly never told our parents about the poppies or what happened. We didn,t go back.