‘Would you kids shut up! We’re trying to sleep!’
I was about 10 years old and my brother and sister and I had arrived earlier that day at my uncle’s house on the Gippsland lakes where he ran an isolated guesthouse accessible only by boat. The three of us and our three cousins had the whole summer ahead of us, largely left to our own devices, and we were so excited that we had been talking until the early hours in the room we were all sharing: two bunk beds containing three beds in each. The cousins lived a good 10 hours’ drive away and we only saw each other once or twice a year, so we had a lot to catch up on.
During the days we would wake up early and help ourselves to ‘snack pack’ sized packets of Special K, Cornflakes or Rice Bubbles – a rare treat – and then spend the day canoeing to an island 200m away and amusing ourselves there; playing and swimming on the 90-Mile Beach that the guesthouse abutted; making use of a one-roomed shack that my very talented 12-year old cousin built us out the back to play in; and generally doing whatever we wanted with minimal adult presence. One of my favourite activities was exploring the large guesthouse, including its crumbling ballroom, and crawling with one or two others through the roof cavities and (I’m sorry to say) spying on others. There was no TV.
Holidays like these and time with these cousins encapsulate for me the memories of my adventurous childhood, far from the discipline of classes at an academic school, long car and bus commutes and extra curricula activities in music and sport. My cousin Jessie is the same age, and we used to write to each other during the year: the town mouse and the country mouse swapping stories of our daily lives. While I grew up in Canberra, she lived in rural northern NSW with her brothers and mother for most of the year, and was always very creative, enterprising and artistic in a way that I found inspiring and invigorating (I still do).
I lived with Jessie and her first son and (then) partner during my honours year at uni. She asked me to be one of her birth partners for the birth of her second child when we were twenty four (I lived in a different city at the time, without a telephone, and didn’t make it. I was relieved as I had felt a bit squeamish at the prospect). Of all of my seven cousins, Jessie is the only one I am in touch with, who I talk to on the phone every two or three months and see two or three times a year (we are only a nine-hour drive away from each other these days). She has just had her fourth child, just under two years after the baby’s older sister, and Lara and Rhea are getting to know these second cousins now too.
Lara and Rhea themselves have six cousins now, and we spent most of January with five of them and their families at Steve’s family’s beach house, a few minutes’ drive from a spectacular piece of coastline. The cousins range in age from 14 down to four (which in cousin Lola’s eyes is much older than her baby cousins who are a mere three-and-a-half). There is also a bunk room – a bit more stylish than the one we terrorised our parents from.
We spent most of our days with Lola and her mum, with occasional outings with Lola’s six year old brother Louis or one of the older cousins. There was a pony-riding outing, sessions at the wonderful community arts centre, supermarket trolley rides during shopping trips, a game or two of tennis, and rides at the tiny summer fair. There was a speedboat ride, playing with Lola’s toys and the older cousins’ two-wheeled scooters, picnics by the playground, hair-braiding and beach time. One day we sat and watched two small seals playing and sunning themselves near the rockpools. The next day the girls examined a small, dead seal at the same place.
I know Rhea and Lara enjoyed their holidays because they were singing all the time. Their favourite song has been ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ from a book with CD that Louis was given for Christmas.
Puff, de magic dagon, lives by de sea
And fwolicks in de autumn mist
In a land called Honalee
I can foresee future summers where the three girls, just like Maggie, Jessie and I, spend long sunny days together, with us gradually playing a smaller role.
They won’t be as wild as those summers of my childhood. The beach house is ensconced in affluent bush suburbia and it’s a hilly area so everyone drives to the beach of their choice, hence parents are always attached. In any case children are watched over more closely than they were thirty years ago in western countries like ours. So these cousins will do different things and be connected to technology in a way that we were not.
It will be interesting watching their relationship develop over time and distance, with these summers perhaps cementing a connection for this new generation too.
Lola and Lara were having a cuddle and a giggle one day last week when I heard Lola say: ‘I love you. Do you love me?’
Lara didn’t reply.
But she has talked about Lola with affection since we’ve been home.
