Beginnings

We lived in a caravan for a year, with a porta-potti outside surrounded by hay bales. No roof, so you got a bit damp if it rained. When we moved into a house, you couldn't drink the water from the taps. Drinking, cooking and clothes washing water had to be brought in by bucket from a rainwater tank on the side of the house. The telephone was a crank telephone; you picked up the receiver, wound the crank (which rang a bell in the local post office) then told the operator which number you wanted. The next house had lovely water in the taps, but no electricity. Candles and kerosene lanterns, woodburning stove for cooking and heating lukewarm water. At Christmas time I would spend two days chopping wood so there was enough keep the oven hot enough to roast a turkey.

Snippets to come

• Dugites, thongs and snakes on the clothes line
• How peeing on a grasstree can teach you to levitate.
• Is having a horse fall asleep on you really funny, Dad?
• Dugites down a well
• No lights, no water, but we have a wind-up phone

In 1970, a family of four travelled to Western Australia. Dad was to run a cement factory, aiming to save up enough money to go back to England and buy a leasehold on a small farm. Instead, he stayed in WA and bred racehorses out there. Small to start with, then moving up to the big time. An uneducated young lad who started out working as a shepherd, and became a major figure in the history of West Australian horse racing, chairmen of a raceclub, breeder of champion racehorses, trainer of champions and advisor to the state government. This blog isn't going to be a diary of day to day happenings or opinions, it's going to be snippets from the childhood of one of that man's sons, me, Alastair Dent. Snippets from a childhood that was flies, horses and heat.