Bathtime at Kaboora on Stradbroke Island in the 60s, was a time of great dilemma and trauma. See – there were two choices. There was the tub or the shower. No drama here surly, says the comfortable 21st century person – a dilemma, a trauma? Well, let me explain. See if privacy was your concern then the shower behind the plastic curtain on the back patio was the better choice, because the tub had to be located on public display by the stove in the family kitchen/lounge/dining room cum bedroom area. Then again if heat and warmth was more your style then the tub was a must, because the pump action shower was so cold you would have to pry your fingers off the wooden lever when your time was done. Still if you had no longing to embrace those cool coastal breezes coming thru the back patio wooded slats as you dried yourself, then it was back inside to the protection of the house with its four solid fibro walls. However, not everyone thought that sitting in 3 inches of water and pouring cupfuls of warm water over your body was proper Aussie bathing. So the shower was the prime choice for those souls intent on a full body wash. This choice was most times accompanied by those wha! wha! wha! wha-ing sounds that usually come from a tortured, frozen and jiggling body. This experience was traumatic enough to drive a person back to the tub option the following night. Sadly, there was still trauma to be had there as well. Now sitting on course sandpaper is not the usual thing associated with bathing in a tub except when the bathing takes place after a day at a Stradbroke beach. I also have no problems with the concept of recycling but when it is applied to serial communal bathing it can have its drawbacks – as the third, forth and fifth in line would soon discover. There was also the difficulty of mum adding the fresh batch of boiling water from the top of the wood fired stove. See every pour would create little tidal waves of hot steaming underwater flows which would engender the usual yelps and stand up reaction as it met the delicate parts of one’s anatomy not a good look not a good sound either! There you have it. What to do? For me the choice was easy. Neither! Well until the sand built up in my pants so I walked more like a man who had just spent 20 hours in the saddle, or until the salt built up on my skin like scales on a fish, or until my brother David could no longer stand my earthy aroma and he would make the obvious choice for me the shower treatment of Alcatraz.
