The Land Before Avocado by Richard Glover

The Land Before Avocado by Richard Glover

Author:Richard Glover
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC Books
Published: 2018-10-03T16:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER SIX

Making Our Own Fun

We made our own fun in the period 1965 to 1975. Much of it involved the burning of rubbish. In fact, burning your own rubbish was the main source of entertainment in Australia until well into the 1980s. The PlayStation hadn’t been invented, Google didn’t exist and sex was a just rumour from America, yet to be proven. So incineration – usually done in a 44-gallon drum up near your back fence – had to take up the slack. Most families would stick at it throughout the weekend, as a result of which the suburbs were always full of smoke. The Australian poet Bruce Dawe, in a work from 1969, described a householder he called Homo suburbiensis: ‘He stands there, lost in a green confusion, smelling the smoke of somebody’s rubbish.’

Incineration would begin first thing on Saturday morning, the children gathering, their small, entranced faces illuminated by the glow provided by the remnants of Friday night’s fish supper. Saturday afternoon would yield the chance to burn boxes, newspapers and garden waste. By Sunday morning, the father of the household would be incinerating anything he could lay his hands on – chop bones, piano stools, the children’s ‘Explorers of Australia’ project. The whole family would then rake any fallen leaves into a pile in the front gutter, before approaching with a match.



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