The following is in excerpt from Maleny author Patty Beecham’s recent early memoir, Growing up Rocky, based on her family life in Rockhampton and Central Queensland.
Kemp Beach
The tiny cone shells on Kemp Beach are everywhere, and no matter how deep I dig, they still keep coming. I fill my small bucket with them and run back to the car, to tip them into a large bucket.
The chooks in Kent Street will love them! We’ve already walked under the Causeway in our thongs, and on the outgoing tide, becoming stuck on the concrete with suction. We laugh until we fall over, and it’s a race to see if the suction breaks before our thongs unplug and become useless.
We’re staying at the old church camping area in Yeppoon, near Lammermoor beach. The toilets are full of green frogs. There must be at least ten frogs peering out in each toilet. Carolyn and I scream and shout for Dad. Finally, he comes, looks at the frogs and then at us, and simply says, “hover and then flush.” This is no help to me. I have no idea what ‘hover’ means, and I am not peeing on any green frogs that are preparing to launch themselves at my bare bottom. For the first time in my life, I am disappointed in my father; the man who is teaching me to write my own name, PAT, and who can crack open apples with his bare hands. I have no idea what to do and I need rescuing. Carolyn and I peer into the white and green toilet bowl in dismay.
Mum and Dad prepare to go out for dinner, leaving Carolyn and I alone at the camp. “What will we eat?” we whine.
“Go to the beach and get some pippies,” says Mum, and we dutifully walk by ourselves bush-bashing through the thick scrub, slightly lost, until we hear the sea, and we run, run with bare feet flying past the scratchy acacias, past the beach vines that threaten to trip us up, until we spill out onto the beach. There is no one around, it’s just us, and we sit on the warm sand at the shoreline and begin to dig for our pippies. After a while, we fill a small bucket of them, and we make our way home, crossing the main highway back to the camp. Mum and Dad have long gone, so it’s just us and the frogs. We both widdle on the grass, dodging the cane toads, which leapt about threatening to give us warts! There’s no way we are going to the toilet and it’s crowded, blinking, web-toed population.
Carolyn washes the shells, and we place them into an electric frypan. No oil, no herbs or spices, no sauce, instead, fresh seawater we had carefully carried up through the scrub, and across the highway. When they open, we are delighted! Look how grown up we are! Look what we have accomplished by ourselves. The pippies present their purple interiors, and we sit down to eat, carefully picking out each tiny shellfish. Unfortunately, they are as appetising as a piece of old chewing gum! Not even PK! Glumly, we look around for something else for our dinner. We are starving!
Carolyn finds the hidden tin of Sunshine Milk powder, which she has to have because of her dairy intolerance. Scooping out a good plateful each, we sit back and enjoy eating each spoonful, carefully scraping the remaining powder off the roof of our mouths.
In the early evening, dozens of fireflies light up the trees to the rear of the property. We watch them as once again we widdle on the grass, our bare backsides turned towards the sea and the inedible pippies. We are in heaven.