Read Online The Sausage Tree by Rosalie Medcraft - Free Book Online Page B

jewels in the rays of the rising sun and the birds singing their dawn chorus. This was something we only heard at this time of the year because mostly we hated getting out of bed.
    Everyone got excited when a fairy ring was found. What luck! We believed them to be something very special. We imagined that was where the fairies had danced in the moonlight the night before and the magic dust from their tiny toes had created the perfect circle of button mushrooms. The lucky finder was entitled to stand in the middle and make a wish, which even now must not be told or we’ll have bad luck. The amount of mushrooms gathered was irrelevant, it was the time that mattered.
    The sawmill blew its starting work. whistle at 7.30 and could be heard all over the district. When we heard it we knew it was time to go home as fast as we could as Mum would have the stove alight and the frying pan ready for the mushies. As soon as we had peeled them and they were starting to cook we got ready for school and after each one had eaten a fair share it was off to school, youngest first because they had the smallest legs. It was just as well that school went in at 9.30 because we needed every second there was so that we would not be late.

    The cooler weather saw the end to many of our activities as we switched to other well tried games which we could play in the shed where, besides Dad’s tools, timber and lots of other junk, was a box of old clothes. Some of them were dresses, coats, hats and shoes that Mum had brought withher when we moved from Victoria. We would all delve into the big box hoping to grab the very best items before someone else found them. We dressed in the clothes and prepared everything we needed to play shops. For some weeks before, we would rescue all the cartons and packets from the kitchen before they could be burnt in the stove. We would scavenge on the rubbish heap looking for tins with labels and any other saleable items until we had a large variety of goods to sell.
    We also gathered leaves from the “sausage tree” in the front garden. Our sausage tree was a laurel tree and it had wide shiny leaves and we reckoned the leaves looked like fat sausages so to us a laurel tree was, and will forever be, a sausage tree. Our green sausages were arranged on pieces of broken plates (which along with other items had come from the rubbish heap) and then placed very carefully on the plank that we had set across a stack of wood in the corner of the shed.
    At last it was time to open our shop and the designated shopkeeper would stand at the shed door and callout “Come and buy, come and buy”. The customers, dressed in their rag-bag finery, would come from all directions of the yard, wobbling precariously in high heeled shoes, to purchase the groceries from the wide range on the shelf. The cost of all the items would be added up very correctly and the money changed hands.
    In preparation for our shop, money had been made in the evenings by running a pencil over paper under which were real coins. We cut out and pasted the tracings onto cardboard and cut that out so that we’d have plenty of cash. We also made paper money and put our own fancy writing on the notes. All the money was shared equally and we were quite wealthy. As we paid for our purchases the shopkeeper said “Ding”, imitating the bell on the cash register at the corner store, as she opened her imaginary till. We all tookturns at being the shopkeeper and we often had arguments about the prices we had to pay. They were changed as often as the shopkeeper after all it was her shop and her groceries so she could please herself what she charged.
    We played house and, depending on the weather, this was either in the shed or we would set out our “toys” in the yard. We used bits and pieces of crockery we found on the rubbish heap behind the dunny. Everything was neatly set on our table which in reality was a box. Different shaped sticks