I was far from pretty blue plumbago as I walked with my grandmother through a world of concrete and cement, brick and asphalt, macadam and corrugated iron. Even the gardens looked sickly and grimed with dirt — Rose Street seemed far away.

The bulk of the gas-works loomed over everything; its scent was everywhere. It drifted through Bowden from First to Seventeenth Street; merged with the reek of the tannery by the river; mingled with the fumes that crept from the Southwark Brewery. Gas soaked the walls of houses, turned the sunlight sour, clung to my skirts, settled in my hair.

There was a Salvation Army citadel where people marched with flags and brass trumpets on Sunday. There were yards of sand and gravel and scrap metal; advertisements for Ipana Toothpaste, Woodroofe’s Lemonade, Amgoorie Tea. There was the Kindergarten with its drive lined with Norfolk Island pines.

I was quite happy the first morning until my grandmother led me to a strange lady who was the headmistress. She gave me flowers to arrange, and when I looked up from their redness Nan had gone. Abandoned — I cried. Yet, in the afternoon when she came to claim me at the gate, I was taken unawares. I had almost forgotten her.

I became a number, a name, a picture in the Kindergarten’s files. The antiseptic fingers of a doctor probed and poked me. I was stood upon a pair of scales and weighed and measured; taken into a room where I was photographed without my clothes.

There was a lavatory with a row of cubicles and washbasins. I liked to sit and see how long I could pee for, listening to the other dribbles and tinkles and gurgles about me. I was happiest when I was a spy, a voyeur, an eavesdropper. I thought it strange to hear the boys’ voices outside — how funny it would be if the wall wasn’t there.

After lunch we rested. Best friends went next to each other — clasped hands and giggled before they fell asleep.

I came home and at night I could not sleep for thinking of the next day. Each morning the excitement mark on my cheek tingled, burned red.

We finger-painted, grew wheat in saucers, cut chains of figures with blunt-end scissors. We shook dewdrops onto our tongues, hunted for lucky clovers, found daisies in the lawn. We frightened ourselves on the slippery-dip, flew through the air on chains, calmed ourselves on the swing.

There was a sinister wooden tower that I watched others climb. There were books with buttoned covers and felt pages. There were dressing-up clothes, and I longed for the black and white Pierrot; the ones who climbed the tower got it first.

(I dream of the Kindergarten children still: Joan Stott, born on my birthday, who wet her pants at the Botanic Gardens; Betty and Joan Smith — the Twinnies, whom you couldn’t tell apart; monkey-face Stanley Oliver, whose sister pulled out her hair; Brucey Neighbour, who lived in a house with a hedge dotted in berries I put in a matchbox; Daphne Ring, whose dress was embroidered with egg.)