Every night, my mummy says to me: “Wash as far as possible, and then wash possible.”

I always feel the redness in my cheeks. I have to stand in the concrete trough in the wash house. Mummy puts soap on a flannel and rubs my face, my arms, my back, my legs. Sometimes the water’s too hot; sometimes the flannel scratches.

There are lots of chooks in our chook pen. Dad lets me help him collect the eggs. Sometimes the chooks sit on the eggs in their hatches, and when I try to take the eggs, they flap their wings. Daddy says not to drop the eggs. I hold them with both hands. Sometimes they are warm to hold.

One day my daddy killed a chook. He chopped the head off and the blood sprayed all over the chopping block, and some went on my mother’s sheets that hung on the clothesline, and the chook ran backwards around the yard till it fell down dead. Then dad ran boiling water over it for ages so he could pluck it. When the feathers came out, the skin was all goosebumps.

Our toilet is out the back, beside the sleepout where the men live. The men are Mr Pearson and Mr Pitfield. They work at the Lincoln Mill, and they live with us. Mum cooks and washes for them, and they eat tea with us at night. The sleep in the bungalow. The toilet is old and made of wood. When dad goes to the toilet he leaves the door open, and smokes while he’s sitting there. There’s a hedge in front of the toilet, and the leaves are green and yellow. The seat of the toilet is made of wood. Dad cut a telephone book in half, and it hangs by a string, on a nail. When I go to the toilet to do grunts, I have to wipe my bottom with a piece of paper from the telephone book paper. One day, when I was little, I fell back through the seat and got stuck and dad had to come and pull me out.

At night there’s a pot behind the door in mum and dad’s room. We all use the pot at night; it’s too dark and cold to go outside to the toilet. I have to kneel down so I don’t miss the pot and wee on the floor. Or I can sit on the pot. If I have to do grunts, I have to sit on the pot. I don’t like sitting, because mum and dad wee in the pot too, and when I do grunts, it splashes me. And it smells. I wet the bed sometimes. Mum said the doctor says that I’m highly strung and that’s why I wet the bed.