How did you manage as a single mother of 5?

The mothers today complain about having to walk their children to school because they can’t use the car - Margaret was just telling me about hearing this lady on the news, and she said ‘I thought to myself, that’s what Mum did with us.’ I had to walk five children everywhere for years! There was no driving to school and clogging up the roads putting little darlings up to school in the mornings.

My kids had to walk from my place to Sandy Tech in the morning, run home at lunchtime because I wouldn’t have had enough bread for their lunches, then run back to school and home again after. They were the best at running at school because they were the fittest!

When it came to clothes and shoes, you had to be creative. I had Dad’s little shoe repair thing in the shed with various sizes - a children’s size, a woman’s size, and a man’s size. Sometimes the kids would come home saying ‘the tacks are coming through the sole of my shoe and sticking in my foot.’ So I’d take the shoe off their bloody foot - and it was a real bloody foot! - take out the bent tack, put another one in, fix it with a bit of glue. That was their ‘new’ shoe.

With the child endowment money, I had to be strategic. I’d look to whoever had the biggest holes in their shoes - ‘Who’s got the holy sole for the month?’ Being good Catholic children, they got the joke. The one with the biggest holes would get new shoes, that’s all I could manage for school. F

or clothes, I’d cut down Jack’s old Fletcher Jones pants when he wore them out and make them into boys’ sizes. They just had elastic in the waist because I couldn’t manage zips - I don’t know what they did about going to the toilet, just had to pull them up and down like girls!

When it came to food, you had to be resourceful. I’d go down to the market around 5 to 12, because that’s when they’d be clearing off their stalls. ‘Right-o ladies, half a box for two bob!’ There’d be a little baby face peering out among all the fruit and vegetables I’d be taking home for the week. I’d be cooking up huge amounts of fruit for their sweets. People today wouldn’t know how to do that. They just sit down and say ‘I can’t use the car, I can’t drive to the shops.’ They can’t work out alternatives like we had to.

You know what’s really different? Now there’s all this help for parents, but back then, there was nothing. I was mother and father both - the happiest day was when Brian gave me a Father’s Day card because he said ‘Well, you’ve been a dad as well as a mom.’ Having five to look after totally by myself, that was pretty hard. But it shows you what you can do when you have to. That’s what made us strong - we had to be innovative, we had to make do, we had to work out how to get by with what we had.