Nan’s stories

Betty sewed her own dress the week before the 1962 Camperdown dance, working at night so no one would see. The fabric came from Miller's in Colac, paid for out of three weeks of egg money.

“I didn't tell my mother — she'd have said it was too much fabric for one girl.”

She wore it with her sister's good shoes, a size too small, and walked the last mile so the mud wouldn't reach the hem.

Tom asked her to dance twice. She said yes both times.

The winter of 1956 the creek came up overnight and took the back fence. By morning the paddock was a lake, and the sheep were stranded on the rise behind it.

“Dad pretended not to see him under the table. We all pretended.”

Bluey the kelpie swam the flooded paddock twice to bring them in. Nobody sent him — he just went, the way good dogs decide things for themselves.

Her father never said a word about it. But that night Bluey ate at the table, and nobody at that table said a word about that either.