Who still has an original Hills Hoist clothesline in their back yard?
Mine is at least 45 years old and loaded today with washing from my AirBNB.
If only she could talk what a story she’d have to tell. Kids playing under the sprinkler and swinging on her while Mum yells to ‘get off the bloody clothesline’. White towelling baby nappies and home- made children’s clothes, with Dad’s threadbare work clothes and Mum’s aprons and cottontail knickers.
Blazing sun, raging winds and pouring rain she was weighed down with weeks of washing after the 1998 Katherine flood. A gazillion bats have flown over her. Eclipses, blood moons, the southern cross and the Milky Way is her ceiling at night.
She looks over a garden bed that is a pet cemetery and now shares her space with two red hens, a black cat and the cry’s and laughter of the children next door. Three generations have had their lives hung out on this old girl who never complains. A little creaky, bent and stiff she is an Australian icon that is now being replaced with retracting nylon lines under verandahs and electric driers hidden in sterile laundries.
I love hanging the washing out with the lovely fresh smell of Omo/Surf and then folding and stacking piles of linen and clothes back into cupboards, just to do it all again the next day! No driers in this household and the washing gets hung to dry in the shed in the wet season.
I think she will see us out at this house and I will survive to tell a lot more stories.
