It’s been bitterly cold in Adelaide of late and when I went to the loo the other night I remembered our outdoor dunny at Flaxley where I grew up and thought how grateful I am for an indoor dunny. I haven’t been able to find a photo of just the dunny but here is one of the house.

Our house at Flaxley, South Australia

I remember my Mum saying if it has to be outside I’m glad it’s a flush toilet and not a ‘long drop’. It wasn’t far from the house but it backed onto the cow paddock and the cows would stand near it and chew their cud or eat grass but all you could hear, whilst enthroned, was their chomp, chomp, chomp which was most disconcerting to us young ones. Possums would sometimes climb on the roof and stomp around too. I remember many a night tearing back into the house scared of some real or imagined creature!

I was 7 years old here

The front room of our house was the local post office, you can just see the post boxes on the wall in the above photo. I won’t go into more detail about the post office now, I’ll save that for another post.