He was usually called Ces. She was usually called Kath. I was born in Charters Towers in Three of my family were born in Charters Towers: my brother Ces, he was the oldest; then two years later there was me, Mary Kathleen but I was known as Kath ; then my sister Lily. Mum and Grandma taught us school. We had chairs and a little table and we had school at Manfred. When Mum finished her boarding school education she went back to Manfred and worked at the hotel for her father.
Dad was a fencing contractor working on stations around Manfred, and that's where he met Mum and that's where they got married. When Grandfather was killed, around , the hotel passed to my parents. I lived there until I was nearly 7. There was no town at Manfred, just the hotel. Our companions were mostly picaninnies. The dark lady who looked after us, Mary was her name, she lived at the Aboriginal camp on the river bank in a shanty made of timber and tin.
I think she had a little boy too, but I can't remember much about him. The black kids never wore a lot of clothes and Grandma reckoned it wasn't right that little girls, or little boys, didn't put clothes on. Nothing for little picaninnies to have no clothes. So when the Afghan came on his camel, she'd buy a roll of floral material, cretonne they used to call it, and she'd make dresses for me and my sister and Mary's two little picaninnies; all the same, the four of us.
Mary used to walk us to the river - we didn't live far from the Flinders - and Grandma would make out that she couldn't tell us apart because of the dresses, each with a frill around the neck and a sash around the middle. She'd shake her head: "Oh, those four little girls. I can't tell the difference".
And two as black as ink and two little white ones. Black Mary had a store of native folklore. Whirlywinds were common at Manfred. They'd swirl and roll, move around and go anywhere, picking up grass, leaves and dust.
