It is the first week in July in Tasmania in 1996. A year of record rainfall. The sun is at its lowest angle especially in the morning. Before 9 am colours are intensified by the glancing rays of the sun, and shadows are etched into the dampness of the morning.
On the way to my bus stop I pass a silver birch. The trees are holding their leaves this year maybe because of the wet autumn. The leaves are silver, gold and green. The tree is covered with dew. As the early sun glances between the houses the tree sparkles like a giant Christmas bauble. And I remember the silver birch outside the sitting room window when I was a child.
In the next street two large maples are glowing, red and gold and green in the early sunshine, like huge magic lanterns. In your letter you will find a piece of a magic lantern for yourself. When we were children we made magic lanterns out of last year's Christmas cards to hang on the Christmas tree in the house with the silver birch.
We lived in this house near the local aerodrome for over ten years. The window in the sitting room facing west was a large bay window with comfortable window seats curving beneath. As children we sat at a table in this bay, cutting out and colouring in, and making magic lanterns. My mother grew wallflowers beneath the windows and the perfume in my own garden on a summer's evening tosses me back to childhood without warning.
One day while I was working in the sunshine, I pushed my brother out through the open window near the silver birch. It seemed a long way to the ground. He was older than me so I must have been quite cross with him. He had some scissors in his hand so perhaps he would not give them to me. I can't remember him crying but I can remember there being a lot of blood on the bricks below. I think there was a problem locating my father and my mother was unable to deal with emergencies. I went away and hid because I thought I had killed him with the scissors. Later they said it was a superficial wound and he had two stitches. The family since has never mentioned this incidence.
This was at during the of the Second World War. At that time they were extending the local aerodrome to the edge of our paddock. Only the creek and the paddock separated the house from the end of the new-runway. My sister says that we had to cut down a lot of beautiful gums in the paddock to make it safe for the planes to land. I don't remember this but it makes sense.
My brother and I would fie in the garden on our backs and the planes would fly over us at less than fifty metres. We recorded for some time the letters and numbers written under the wings of the planes. They were mainly Fockers and Bristol freighters. I can remember being on a plane alone when I was quite young, probably about six, and the air hostess filled my coat pockets with barley sugar. I had to chew briskly to stop my ears hurting. My brother says they were DC3s not Fockers. Oh well...
The house I lived in seemed tall with burnt orange tiles on the roof and tall chimneys with chimney pots, and still exists behind the hospital at Wynyard. My mother worried about a plane hitting the house as they flew so low to land and take off. There were probably two planes a day but sometimes they had air pageants. After the Second World War these were very exciting. I can remember small planes called Spitfires that darted and wove through the clouds but I don't know if that is really the name as my sister remembers a different plane.
One hot Saturday when I was about six, I went with my mother the other children no doubt, up to end of the aerodrome to watch an air pageant. It was too far to walk through the town to the Airport proper on a hot day. We watched from the point where the railway line enters the aerodrome. Yes I had forgotten that the railway line still runs straight through the aerodrome (like the train runs through the middle of the house). At that stage they had a man managing a signal box stationed at the end. When planes were coming in he put the red signal up to stop the trains.
I think his name was Mr Flight but my, sister thinks it was something else. My mother was a bit of a lady in those days, and always let people know how gracious she could be to people who were 'common'. As we watched by the signal box Mr Flight offered my mother a chair and a cup of tea. He could see I was a lady my, mother said later. And as she told people, she drank that tea, strong and black and laced with sugar like a Christian.
As everyone knew she took her tea weak and white - with no sugar.
It was about this time that I realised that my dad was more than someone who went to work and meetings and was Father. One day a plane flew dreadfully low and clipped the top of the silver birch tree that grew right outside the sitting room window which my father had refused to trim when they extended the aerodrome. As a child I thought the tree was huge. My sister agrees it was very tall, and old silver birch. I can't remember witnessing the incidence of plane clipping tree, but I can, remember the talk later. It was a beautiful tree, an elegant shape and a haven for birds, a cool oasis in summer and a picture in autumn. Maybe that was my father speaking.
Proper men, no doubt aviation engineers of the time, came to visit and with my father stood and looked at the tree, hands in pockets, heads thrown back. The tree remained outside the window, maybe with just a little off the top.
My sister tells me that it wasn't the silver birch that got clipped by a plane. It couldn’t be, she said, the house would have been hit - it was the yellow plum down the back. The Chinese plum I asked. No, she said. It was originally a seedling. It didn't have a name. The one with the big yellow juicy plums I asked. Yes she said, but they were so sour, I can still taste them.
I could feel her face screw up over the phone. Like my mother's as she drank her tea, black and laced with sugar. But my brother says they were red skinned and yellow inside and tasted sweet but then it was all so long ago it is hard to remember.
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