Did your mother and father work outside the home when you were a child?

I love this blog prompt - its about time I recorded some memories from the early 1950's. I grew up on a wheat and sheep farm in Western Australia. Mum and Dad both shared the farm work. My grandparents also had a farm next door to us and my uncle had a farm across the main road.

I often used to pack my "case" and run away to my grandparents. It was 2 paddocks away and was safe unless the bull was in the paddcok. He frightened me.

I spent many hours of my early childhood riding in the farm vehicles (the 'ute') with my grandfather. I slept when I got tired on the seat and drank water from the canvas waterbag my grandfather always carried.

We checked the sheep, chased the sheep and counted the sheep. We opened gated, we closed gates, we checked the water and the levels in the tanks.

I also spent hours on the tractor with my father or chasing sheep with my mother. I chased rabbits down their burrows and put my hand in the burrow to get the babies - once a snake was in there and I jumped in fright.

During shearing time, if not at school, I was in the shearing shed, chasing sheep into the pens, counting sheep, sweeping up the bits of wool lying around. I was driving when I was 10 years old around the farm which came in handy during a huge bushfire once when the only people left to move the sheep away from the fire was me (driving the car, aged 12), my non driving grandmother telling me what to do and my 5 year old brother. That was just the way life on the farm was.

My photo tonight is another one of the beach on the Cook Islands