Listening to all these stories, it becomes tempting to describe the family as poor and leave the matter there. Yet poverty, while accurate, does not tell the entire story. Poverty explains the circumstances but not the outcome. The more important story concerns what those circumstances produced.
When people talk about growing up poor, they often do so through the soft focus of nostalgia. The years have a habit of polishing memories until the hardships become amusing anecdotes and the sacrifices become family legends. Listening to Kerre tell stories about first Orange Street and then Alldis Street, however, it became obvious that beneath the laughter and the retelling sat a much harder truth. This was not simply a family that had less than others. This was a family of thirteen children trying to survive on resources that were never quite enough.
Before Aldis Street can be understood properly, my mother, Janice herself has to be placed within the story, because she was not some distant figure floating at the edge of family memory. As noted she was my mother, although even that name came with one of those family stories that sounds too ridiculous to be true and yet somehow carries the ring of complete truth. She was apparently meant to be called Janice, but somewhere between intention, argument, paperwork and whatever mood existed between her parents, Connie and Cyril, better known as Snow, the name that appeared on her birth certificate, Patricia, bore no resemblance to the name everyone thought she was going to carry.
The family explanation has always allowed room for several possibilities. Perhaps Connie and Snow had a disagreement, and the birth certificate became one more battlefield in the ordinary domestic warfare of young parents. Perhaps Snow, as has been jokingly suggested around the family for years, simply could not spell Janice and produced something entirely different when the official moment arrived. Whatever the real explanation, the result was pure family folklore, because the girl who might have been Janice became Patricia in the record books while remaining part of a family tradition where names, like so many other things, seemed to develop their own stubborn lives.
That small naming story matters because it says something about the world, much later Kerre was born into. Life was not always neat, decisions were not always tidy, and families often carried forward mysteries without ever bothering to resolve them properly. In that sense, my mother entered the world already attached to a story, and perhaps that is fitting for a woman whose life would later become part of so many stories told by her children, her siblings and the generations that followed.
It also says something about the generation that raised her. Snow belonged to a world that modern Australians can glimpse only through old photographs, fading memories and films such as Sunday Too Far Away (1975 – Village Roadshow). It was a world of sheds, stations, horses, dust, hard physical labour and men who often spent more time working than they did at home. Life revolved around seasonal work, particularly shearing, and families adapted themselves around the realities of an industry that could pull fathers away for weeks or months at a time. The work was demanding, the money uncertain and the lifestyle often harsh, yet for many men of Snow’s generation it was simply what they knew.
By modern standards, Snow would probably have been considered an absentee father. He was frequently away chasing work wherever it could be found, leaving Connie to manage the practical realities of raising a growing family. Looking at it through contemporary eyes, it would be easy to judge him harshly. Yet doing so would ignore the realities of the era. Men like Snow did not leave because they wanted adventure or independence. They left because mouths had to be fed, bills had to be paid and opportunities were often found hundreds of miles from home rather than just around the corner.
What strikes me listening to Kerre’s recollections is that despite the absences, there was very little bitterness in the way she spoke about her father. The stories she chose to tell were not stories of disappointment. They were stories of moments. Small moments perhaps, but the sort of moments children remember for a lifetime. She remembered the times she spent with him. She remembered the excitement when he returned home. She remembered the feeling that came from having his attention, even if only briefly, because attention from a father who was often away carried a value all of its own.
Children have a remarkable ability to measure love differently from adults. Adults often count hours, commitments and consistency. Children frequently remember experiences. A day spent with their father could outweigh weeks of absence. A shared joke could survive long after the details of everyday life had faded. Looking back, many of Kerre’s memories of Snow seemed to fall into that category. They were snapshots rather than chapters, but they were treasured snapshots nonetheless.
There was also a certain mythology attached to men like Snow. The shearing sheds, the travelling, the stories from distant stations and the practical skills they carried all contributed to an image that was larger than life to young children. These men belonged partly to the family and partly to the bush. They arrived carrying stories, disappeared again with the changing seasons and returned with new tales and experiences. In many ways they were both fathers and characters in an unfolding family legend.
Perhaps that is why the naming story feels so appropriate. The confusion surrounding Patricia’s name captures something of the organised chaos that surrounded the family from the very beginning. It reflects a household where life happened quickly, where practical concerns often took precedence over perfect administration and where stories mattered far more than official records. Long before Kerre entered the world, the family was already creating the kind of anecdotes that would be retold around kitchen tables for generations.
Those stories became the currency of the family. They connected children to parents, grandchildren to grandparents and later generations to people they had never met. The details sometimes changed and the explanations occasionally became more colourful with each retelling, but that hardly mattered. What mattered was that the stories survived, and through them so did the people who first created them.
The remarkable thing about Alldis Street was not simply that the family was poor. Thousands of Australian families struggled during those years and somehow found ways to make ends meet. What made this story different was the sheer scale of the challenge. Feeding thirteen children was an achievement, clothing thirteen children was an achievement, and finding room for thirteen children under one roof was a logistical exercise that would test the patience and ingenuity of even the most organised parents. Although there was never 15 under the same roof, what with early deaths of the original twins and the lives moved on within the realms of the times to early marriages and lives shaped by necessity.
Today children often expect bedrooms of their own. They expect personal space, privacy and a level of comfort previous generations would have regarded as almost unimaginable. Alldis Street operated under a different set of rules. Space was shared because there was no alternative, privacy happened accidentally rather than intentionally, and every child learned very quickly that family life involved compromise.
The sleepout became one of the solutions to a problem that never really went away. There were simply too many bodies for the available rooms, and as children grew older and larger, they overflowed into whatever spare space could be found. The sleepout was not luxurious, nor was it intended to be. It was simply another place where a child could put their head down at night and claim a little patch of territory in an overcrowded household.
Looking back through adult eyes, the sleepout sounds uncomfortable. It would have been freezing during winter and unbearably hot during summer, with every gust of wind announcing itself and every storm sounding as though it were happening directly overhead. Yet children have an extraordinary capacity to adapt to circumstances. What adults would describe as hardship often becomes normality when there is nothing else available for comparison.
The same principle applied to bathing. In a family of thirteen children, a bath was not a leisurely experience accompanied by warmth, privacy and relaxation. It was a production line. Hot water was precious, time was limited, and there was always another child waiting for their turn.
Nobody lingered unnecessarily because lingering inconvenienced everyone else. Water was reused because wasting it was simply not an option, and the process was efficient rather than luxurious. Nobody spent much time questioning the arrangement because it was simply how things were done. That acceptance became one of the defining characteristics of growing up in the household.
At the centre of the operation stood Connie, trying to manage a household that seemed permanently stretched beyond its limits. The older I become, the more fascinated I am by mothers of large families from that era, because they possessed organisational abilities that would put many modern executives to shame. They managed food, clothing, schedules, illnesses, arguments, finances and household maintenance with little assistance and even less recognition.
Every meal represented a mathematical exercise. Every shopping trip required planning, and every cent had to be stretched far enough to feed mouths that seemed to multiply faster than income could accommodate. Looking back now, it is difficult not to admire the sheer determination required to keep everything moving forward. Poverty may have been the condition, but organisation was the only thing that prevented it from becoming chaos.
One of the symbols of those years was the wood-chip stove. Modern households rarely think about heating beyond adjusting a thermostat, because warmth arrives at the touch of a button and few people spare a thought for the process. In Alldis Street, warmth was something that had to be created, maintained and carefully managed. It was not automatic, and it was certainly not taken for granted.
The heat from the stove occupied a central place in family life during the colder months. Children gathered around it because warmth naturally attracts people together. Stories were shared near it, arguments occurred near it, and countless family conversations unfolded in its presence. The heater was not merely a source of comfort, because it was also a reminder that comfort often required effort.
The bedrooms reflected the same reality. There was no possibility of everyone enjoying their own private sanctuary, and there was no room for the modern mythology of personal space. Beds were shared, rooms were shared, and belongings were squeezed into whatever spaces remained available. Individual territory was measured in inches rather than metres.
What those arrangements lacked in privacy, they often compensated for in connection. Siblings learned each other’s habits whether they wanted to or not. They knew who snored, who talked in their sleep, who stole blankets and who woke first in the morning. Lifelong familiarity was not something that developed gradually, because it was imposed by necessity from the very beginning.
Among the stories Kerre told was the memory of ironing Donnie’s shirts. Donnie was Kerre’s brother, not her father, and that distinction matters because the story belongs inside the world of siblings helping, annoying, depending on and serving one another in a house where everyone had a role. On the surface it sounds like a simple household chore. Yet within the context of Alldis Street, even a task as ordinary as ironing carried deeper significance.
The family survived because everyone contributed. Children were not merely consumers of food, clothing and shelter, because they were active participants in the running of the household. If Donnie’s shirts needed ironing, someone ironed them. If younger children needed supervision, older children stepped into the role, and responsibility arrived early because circumstances demanded it.
Modern parenting often delays responsibility. Children are encouraged to focus on themselves, their interests and their development, while adults carry much of the practical weight around them. The children of Alldis Street did not have that luxury. They learned that family worked best when everyone carried part of the load, and while that lesson may not have been enjoyable at the time, it served many of them throughout their lives.
Then there was the famous story of the chook tied by the leg. Every large family develops its own folklore, and certain stories become so deeply embedded that they survive long after many other memories have faded. The image itself is amusing to modern ears. It sounds like something from a rural comedy rather than the hard practicality of a crowded Australian family household.
The chook, ready for the kitchen table, becomes befriended by the youngest child. A pet for a moment or two before meeting its fate and becoming Sunday dinner. It’s that transition, one faced multiple times over her life that creates all sorts of funny anecdotes, demonstrating the difference between commercial and personal interests.
What the story reveals, however, is the practical mindset that shaped everyday life. Animals were not always viewed through the sentimental lens that often exists today. They had purpose, they provided food or eggs or some other practical benefit, and the line between pet and utility was often blurred. Survival rarely leaves much room for sentimentality, even when children later turn the memory into a joke.
The shopping stories perhaps reveal more about the family’s circumstances than anything else. Going to the shops was not an opportunity for impulse purchases or personal indulgence. It was a mission, and money was allocated carefully before anyone left the house. Expectations were clear because there was no room for error.
Shopping began long before anyone walked through the doors of the local supermarket. Connie would sit with the weekly advertising catalogue spread across the kitchen table, studying it with the attention of a military strategist planning a campaign. Specials were not interesting curiosities designed to attract customers. They were opportunities. Every penny saved on one item meant a penny that could be directed towards something else the family needed. In a household with thirteen children, those pennies accumulated into something meaningful.
The shopping list was not simply a collection of things the family wanted. It was a carefully calculated document built around necessity, affordability and value. Each item had earned its place on the list. Bread might be purchased from one special, meat from another and vegetables according to whichever retailer happened to offer the best value that week. The catalogue was not advertising. It was a planning tool.
When one of the children was entrusted with the responsibility of shopping, they were not merely carrying a bag and a handful of money. They were carrying the product of hours of thought and calculation. Every purchase had already been identified. Every item had a purpose. Every expected price had been considered. The task was not to make decisions but to execute the plan exactly as it had been designed.
That responsibility extended right down to the change. Before leaving the house, the shopper often knew not only how much money they were carrying but approximately how much should be coming back. Upon returning home, purchases would be checked against the list and the remaining money counted. The accounting was sometimes more thorough than that performed by some businesses. If there was a discrepancy, questions followed. Not because Connie was suspicious, but because the margin for error was often measured in cents rather than dollars.
To modern ears, such scrutiny might sound excessive. Yet when money was scarce and mouths were many, financial discipline became an essential survival skill. The children learned that money did not simply appear. It represented hours of work, sacrifice and compromise. Every coin had value because every coin contributed to feeding a family that was permanently larger than the household budget wanted it to be.
Looking back, those shopping expeditions were teaching lessons far beyond arithmetic. They taught accountability. They taught planning. They taught respect for resources. Most importantly, they taught that good management was often the difference between having enough and not having enough. In many ways, the kitchen table where Connie studied supermarket catalogues was the first classroom in financial management that any of the children would ever attend.
Children quickly learned that change belonged to the household, not to them. If money was provided for shopping, every cent had to be accounted for upon return. Questions were asked if the numbers did not add up, and explanations were expected if there were discrepancies. Financial discipline was not taught through lectures, because it was taught through practice.
At the time, some of the children undoubtedly viewed the scrutiny as unfair. Most children would prefer freedom to accountability, especially when a few leftover coins might seem like an opportunity rather than a responsibility. Looking back, however, it is obvious that those lessons were more valuable than anyone could have understood at the time. Money represented effort, effort deserved respect, and waste threatened the fragile balance that kept the household functioning.
The power-cord stories carried similar lessons. Like many family legends, the details varied depending upon who was doing the telling, but the underlying message remained consistent. Nothing was discarded if it could still serve a purpose. Nothing was replaced merely because something newer or shinier existed somewhere else.
Those same lessons extended well beyond physical possessions. They applied equally to money, trust and personal responsibility. In fact, one of the stories that remained vivid in my own mind involved my Aunt Julie and a scorching summer day when temptation got the better of good judgement.
Julie had been sent to the shops with money and a list, much like every other child in the family at one time or another. The purchases were made, the bags brought home and the task appeared completed. Somewhere along the journey, however, three cents had found another purpose. Faced with the irresistible attraction of a water ice block on a blistering hot day, Julie had decided that three cents was a small enough amount that nobody would notice. After all, it was only three cents.
What Julie underestimated was that in Connie’s household, the amount was irrelevant. The issue was never the money itself. The issue was the trust attached to it.
I can still remember hearing the story and, years later, seeing the amusement in the faces of family members as they recounted it. There was certainly humour in the retelling, but there was also admiration for the lesson that followed. When the shopping was checked and the change counted, the discrepancy was discovered almost immediately. Connie knew exactly what had been spent, exactly what should have been returned and exactly how much was missing.
The interrogation that followed was not about recovering three cents. Even in those days, three cents would hardly have altered the family fortune. The real lesson concerned integrity. Julie had been entrusted with a responsibility and had chosen to alter the arrangement without permission. The fact that the decision involved an ice block rather than something more serious was almost beside the point.
As the story was told around the family, Julie received a lesson that day she never forgot. The missing three cents became evidence not of theft, but of accountability. Connie’s position was simple and unwavering. If money had been entrusted to you for a specific purpose, then every cent of it either needed to be spent according to instructions or returned. There was no middle ground and no allowance for self-appointed commissions along the way.
Looking back now, it would be easy to laugh at the severity of the response. Most modern parents might have dismissed the incident as harmless or even understandable given the heat of the day. Yet that interpretation misses the point entirely. Connie was not raising children to survive childhood. She was raising adults. Adults needed to understand that trust mattered, that accountability mattered and that integrity was not measured by the size of the amount involved.
The lesson clearly worked because the story survived. Decades later, family members could still recall the infamous three-cent ice block and the consequences that followed. Nobody remembered it because of the financial loss. They remembered it because it perfectly captured the standards that governed life in the household. In Connie’s world, character was revealed not by how people behaved when large amounts were at stake, but by how they behaved when only three cents separated right from wrong.
Broken items were repaired, worn items were reused, and objects were expected to deliver every possible ounce of value before being replaced. Modern society often treats possessions as disposable, but Alldis Street treated possessions as investments that needed to earn their keep. That attitude was not romantic or fashionable. It was simply the way poor families survived.
Listening to all these stories, it becomes tempting to describe the family as poor and leave the matter there. Yet poverty, while accurate, does not tell the entire story. Poverty explains the circumstances but not the outcome. The more important story concerns what those circumstances produced.
The children learned resilience because resilience was required. They learned responsibility because responsibility was unavoidable, and they learned cooperation because cooperation made life easier for everyone. Most importantly, they learned that family was not simply a collection of individuals living under one roof. Family was a team whose members depended upon one another, even when they were arguing, teasing, sulking or fighting over space.
None of this should be romanticised. Growing up poor was difficult, and it involved sacrifice, disappointment and constant compromise. It meant going without things that other children considered normal, and it meant parents carrying worries that children only understood decades later. The fact that the stories can now be told with humour does not mean the hardship was imaginary.
Yet there is a reason these stories continue to be told. The memories survive because they reveal something extraordinary beneath the hardship. Against considerable odds, Connie and Snow raised a family that functioned, however imperfectly and noisily. They kept children fed, clothed, disciplined and connected in circumstances that offered very little margin for failure.
That, more than the sleepout or the baths or the wood-chip heater, is the real legacy of Alldis Street. It was a place where scarcity was constant but determination was greater. It was a place where thirteen children learned lessons that could never be taught in a classroom. It was a place where a family discovered that wealth is not always measured by what you possess, but by what you endure together.
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