I woke up to the sound of white cockatoos screeching their good morning message to us.

It was only five am but with these beautiful birds perched in a large red gum tree just outside our bedroom window, there was no need for alarm clocks.

Rita turned over and pulled the blankets back over her head, “Shit! Somebody should shoot those bloody birds. Don't they know it's Saturday and sleep-in time?”

If I didn't have to go to the bathroom to pee, I would have stayed in bed snuggling up to my older sibling but I don't think she would appreciate a wet bed.

I decided to stay up and have a shower which was in separate room to the toilet. At least the toilet was inside the house and was hooked up to a septic tank in the back yard. The old toilet, called a ''dunny” a little outhouse in the yard was now used for storing gardening tools. Anyway me being me, I clean forgot to take any clothes with me and had to wrap a towel around me to get back to the bedroom. Of course I wrapped it around my chest like I saw Rita do it, I was after all a girl in training, and I didn't want to mess up if this was going to work, or I could be in real trouble if some red-neck boy discovered my little secret.

On my way back, I had to go passed mum's room and tried to tippy-toe past her door down the hallway, when the door opened and mum was talking to someone back in her room. She hadn't seen me right away, and she stopped half-way out of the door and gasped as she saw me standing there like a scared little girl wrapped in a bath towel, “What are you doing up so early Carla?”

I said “Um the cockies woke me up and I had to pee.” I asked her who she was talking to, and before she could answer Bill was standing behind her looking very sheepish with a red face.

“Sweetheart, why are you running around just wrapped in a towel?”

I said “I had a shower and forgot to take any clean clothes with me Mum.”

She was avoiding telling me why Bill was in her bedroom, but I knew all about the birds and the bees because there were lots of books kept at River Downs, and some of them were medical books, probable because Tom Granger's wife was a nurse before she married him. Had she been home at the time of my birth, my late twin sister Jean might be here with me today.

“Bill just brought me in a cup of tea seeing he was up.” she said. But Bill was standing behind mum and I could see he was only wearing a pair of undies.

“You better go and get dressed and get your sister up to get you some breakfast young lady.”

When she said that, I knew that if I didn't go mum would be cross with me.

I hurried back to Rita who was already up, and about to go and have a shower.

When I said “Better not go past Mum's bedroom for five minutes.” she said “Why not? I have to pee now.” So she opened the door and almost ran to the toilet right past Bill going back to his room in his undies. Mum was standing at her door with a silly look on her face.

I thought I’d better get dressed or I'll be in trouble, so I went through my new second-hand clothes, and selected a denim skirt and sleeveless white blouse with flowers printed around the breast area, I was brushing my hair out to try and get it to dry a little quicker when Rita walked back in to the room, she was still in her nightie and hadn't had a shower.

Rita asked, “What was Bill doing in mum's bedroom in his underpants”?

“I told you to wait five minutes before you barged out the door didn't I? Mum told me Bill brought her in a cup of tea. Yeah right, likely bloody story, in his underdaks?* Anyway it's Mum's business if she wants to be friendly with Bill, I really like him” I said.

Rita said that at least he's around, not like our dad the arsehole.

“You better not let Mum hear you talking like that” I said.

“Yeah, well it makes me so mad that Dad left like that. Anyway it looks like we might have scored a new one.”

Then Rita grabbed her clothes and went to have her shower, so it looked like I would have to get my own breakfast or wait for Mum to come out of her room. I went to the kitchen and got myself some Vitabrits* and some fresh milk from the fridge .

Mum walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove. It was a slow combustion one that had to be kept alight all the time. It used coking coal not wood, and if you wanted it to get hotter you had to put more coke in the fireplace, and pull a lever on the side to let more air into the fire box. Anyway, Mum sat down beside me at the table and said she wanted to tell me about what I saw earlier on outside her bedroom.

“Carla, me and Bill have been very lonely for long enough, and have decided to be more than just friends.” Then she explained how Bill and her had so many things in common that it made sense to take the relationship a bit further. Rita was standing behind me by this time so she heard what Mum had said. Rita asked Mum if she loved Bill. Mum said she probably would in time because Bill was a real nice man and treated her with respect which is more than our father did. Just then Bill walked in, all dressed in slacks and blue shirt with his name sewn on to one of the pockets. He had had his shower in the the one next to the outside laundry.

“Good morning ladies. Um — has Donna -- um your mum explained about this morning? We both nodded our heads in unison. I kept quiet, but Rita said she liked Bill but didn't want Mum to get hurt again. Bill said there was no way he would hurt any lady and he had a hurt look on his face. That's when I went over and hugged him, and looked into his clear blue eyes and said “Now that you and Mum are together can I call you Dad or Uncle Bill?”

Before he could answer me, Mum said I should call him Uncle for now, because it would be hard to explain to people that knew Bill, where two girls came from out of nowhere wouldn’t it?

After Mum had her shower and breakfast, we got into Uncle Bill's FJ Holden* sedan, and he drove the couple of miles to his garage to see how the repairs to mum's Land-rover were going. It was parked outside of the garage and looked all clean. While Rita and I stayed in the car, Mum and Bill went to talk to Henry the mechanic who said it was all set to go, so Mum collected the key from the office and came back to the car with Uncle Bill and we went into the town shopping centre. There were no shopping malls in those days, just joined shops on either side of the road.

Rita and I wanted to go for a swim in the river, but we'd never had swimsuits because back at River Downs we swam in the nude. Out there it didn't matter because the dams we swam in were half a mile away from anywhere. So while Bill did some grocery shopping, Mum and her two daughters hit the small town's clothes shops. I felt myself getting all tingly again as we started looking through the shelves for some swimsuits for all three of us. The lady that we met at the charity shop the the other day, owned the shop we were in, and she looked surprised when she saw myself and Rita with mum in her shop. I think she thought we were out of towners, and were too broke to buy anything in her shop.

I turned to Mum and said “Mum this is the nice lady that wouldn't take any money for the clothes that that we got from her the other day.”

Mum said “G'day. I'm Donna White and these are my two daughters Rita and Carla. We've come to buy some swimsuits so we can go for a swim in the river after lunch.

The lady said “Hello I’m Mary Winton. I own this shop,and I volunteer at the charity shop one day a week.”

Mum said “How much did it cost the other day when my girls bought all those skirts and things, because I will not take charity away from someone that really needs it”? I was feeling guilty now for not telling the truth about why we were buying all those clothes , Mary was taken aback with mum's abruptness, and said she felt sorry for me and thought she was doing the right thing by not charging us for the clothes. Mum said that she must have misunderstood me and gave Mary a ten pound note for the charity shop.

Mary said “I'm sorry I misunderstood your daughter Donna. I'm a bit of a softy where kids are concerned.”

Mum said “That's o.k. Mary. We'll just go over to where the swimming gear is and see what we can find for the three of us. ” Mary then said if we needed any assistance to just sing out.

Country towns didn't have a lot of range in swimsuits,but the ones they did stock were mainly ones that were worn by teachers and school kids going to school swimming carnivals, so they were not high fashion items. Mum picked out our size and told me and Rita to go into one of the fitting rooms and whispered to me, “Make sure you tuck you know what between your legs and get Rita to check before you come out to show me o.k?”

Rita stripped off naked and told me to do the same. Being naked together didn't bother either of us because there were no secrets between us and besides I was supposed to be a girl now. Rita was well on the way to becoming a woman. Her breasts would have been a C cup and now that we were going to be living in town she would have to get used to wearing a bra. She was already getting lusty looks from the boys we passed going into Mary's shop.

I was eight going on nine and as I’ve said before I looked like a stick insect, but 'puberty hadn't started thank God' I thought to myself as I pulled the one piece swimsuit up my skinny body, making sure my little piece of skin was tucked away. It was so small that I looked the same as Rita down there.

Rita said “My God Carla it's not going to be to hard to make you look like my sister. I can't see anything showing down there at all.”

Mum said “Come on girls I want to see what you both look like.” We opened the door and Mum had her swimsuit on and Mary was standing beside her. I was a bit reluctant to come out at first, then Mary said “Well young ladies, don't you look good?” Mum had damp eyes when she looked me in the eyes, but because Mary was there she bit her tongue. Mum was wearing the same type swimsuit as us, only if Bill saw her now he would start to stutter which he did when he got excited.

So Mum told us to change back into our clothes, and we would go and find Bill and have some lunch down by the river. I walked back into the cubicle with Rita and stripped off to change back into my skirt and blouse and the frilly panties that Rita gave me for my last birthday. We just wore thongs5 on our feet, We were both standing there naked when I started to feel all trembly and had that feeling I get when my my late twin sister Jean, seems to want to communicate with me.

Rita saw it happening and said “Close your eyes and listen in your head to what Jean is trying to say to you Carla.”

All I could hear was a tiny voice saying 'I love you' over and over till I opened my eyes and then it stopped. By this time mum and Rita were holding me in a hug. I was still a little shaky so Mum helped me to get dressed while Rita did too. Mum paid for our purchases at the counter where Mary was standing and said we would be back in or week or so to replenish our wardrobe. We left to find Uncle Bill down the other end off town where we found him next to his car talking to an older man, and he said “Barry, this is my adopted family Donna, Rita, and last but not least Carla”.

“Very nice to meet you all. Bill has had no-one to look after him for a couple of years now. It's nice to see him smile again.”

We said goodbye to Barry and got in the car, and Mum said we had better take the groceries back to the homestead before the butter melted and the meat didn't need cooking, so we went home and put everything away. Then Mum made a picnic lunch to eat down by the river. She told me and Rita to put our swimsuits on and our clothes back on over them so we wouldn't have to change down by the river where we were going to go for a swim. Lunch was packed in an ice box, and towels slung over our shoulders. Uncle Bill walked out to the car in a pair of cut off old jeans which was what he swam in and an old khaki shirt and thongs* on his feet.

We arrived at the picnic area and there were already quite a lot of people there, having their lunch, sitting on blankets on the freshly mowed grass. Mum need not have worried about us changing at the swimming area ,because there were changing sheds at the swimming area, so the three of us went and took off our clothes in the sheds. I was glad that I didn't have to strip because there were three other girls in there in varies stages of undress, so I was a little bit shy and kept close to Mum and Rita. we walked back to the car and put the clothes in the boot*. Bill was sitting on the blanket getting the food ready to eat when he saw Mum in her swimsuit and as I said before when he gets excited he stutters.

He said “M my G God um Donna wha what are yo you tryin' t t to d d do to m me?”

Mum said grinning “Bill get used to it. You have three ladies living in your house now, so you're going to see a lot more than this!”

We did go go swimming after lunch, and yes there were boys around, but I will tell you about that in the next chapter.

* underdaks Aussie slang for underpants. DAKS is a menswear and womens-wear company.

* Vita Brits, a breakfast cereal.

* FJ Holden, an early Aussie built car by General Motors Australia.

* Thongs Aussie for flip flops.

* Boot Aussie for the car trunk.

To be continued.