Mum and Dad (Sandra and Clive Ingram) are fab parents who have been taking us on antique shopping trips for as long as I can remember. The day trips however always seemed to turn out to be weekend trips, very long trips, extremely long trips when you are young, and we travelled far and wide from towns in Victoria to places way up north to Home Hill, and out west to as far as Charters Towers. The way that mum and dad sold these trips to us was “you can have Maccas when we get to Toowoomba”. In those days Maccas was only at Bundaberg or Toowoomba, and we didn’t live near any of these places! Our famous saying back to them was “are we there yet” or “how long now”. These were tortuous times indeed!
As youngsters we didn’t appreciate any old stuff or old houses for that matter, and I remember one time when we pulled up to our new home in Maryborough Queensland, my brother saying out loud “we’ve lived in dumps all our life!” He was only about 10 years of age at that time. Yes, it did seem like our parents were punishing us kids for some reason!
We never invited friends back to stay to our place, as we were embarrassed by all the old stuff everywhere. Our friends had lovely homes, new beds, modern furniture, and some even had built-ins. Our house was old, the beds were old, the cupboards where old, even the loo was old and downstairs! I can also remember on a number of occasions coming home to find I had a new bed or a new chest of drawers. They were maybe new but still old! Mum and dad had sold the bed from underneath me! Can you believe it! I can dramatize things a bit, and when in fact this was quite exciting for a young girl. I’d feel like a princess jumping up high to get onto my new (old) lovely big double wrought iron bed!
Yes, I’ve got side tracked a little, back to talking about the house – after some TLC and a fair bit of painting the house did come up trumps! We made a lot of friends there and we were sad to leave, but ready for the next chapter. Actually, I don’t think my brother was sad to leave that house, he never did feel that comfortable sleeping in his room, and we never did tell him that an old lady had passed away there!
This is a current google maps image of the house in Maryborough. It is looking a little out dated so I’ll dig around and see what I can find from when we lived there.
Okay – this ‘about us’ page looks like it is turning into a book, so I’ll create a special ‘memories’ page for anyone who is interested in reading about our journey through the years. You may even find a paragraph or photo or two about you!
Love the memories!