I can fondly remember Auntie Phyllis, my father’s auntie (Nana’s sister). I always thought of her as a kindly old lady who loved me almost as much as my Mum. I can remember that she used to come over to our house on certain days of the week, perhaps Thursdays, and help Mum with cleaning house and looking after the tribe of kids. I would wait for Auntie Phyllis to come off the train at Eagle Junction station and walk up the hill to our home at Listen Grove. Sometimes I remember waiting, sitting on the top step, for what seemed like an eternity for her to appear in our street when I would run down the footpath to greet her. Perhaps some of the fondest memories of Auntie Phil was the role she played in protecting us on the night of the “big fire” (see the Big Fire story) and the rub-a-dub-in-the-tub routine. At bath time it was Auntie Phyllis’s job to get us out of the bath, dried and clothed in our pyjamas and ready for bed. Usually there were all three of the boys (Sam, Tom and Pip) all in the bath together (by that stage David must have felt way too grown up to get into the bath with his little brothers). We would usually be mucking around, as small boys do, when Auntie Phyllis would appear at the door with a towel and instruct us, one by one, to get out of the bath so she could dry us. Once we emerged from the soapy water, Auntie Phyllis would stick one end of the towel between our legs and pull it out the other side and progress to move it backwards and forwards like a polishing cloth between our legs. She obviously was oblivious to the gear-and-tackle of any young boy and we had to endure this treatment while the other brothers would look on with more delight than pity. Once dry, it was into the “jarmies” and off to bed.
