hello,

Please see another instalment to my new story. I'd be interested to read your comments.

Thanks for your time.

cheers

Gen

Chapter 1

 

Sandhill Cove, which got its name from the sand dunes that stretched a half-mile south along the beach, was a small seaside town that time forgot. Somehow it grew out of the national park surrounding it, a single road connecting the town to the highway. Folks from the highway towns referred to Sandhill Cove as a one dog town since the trains stopped running to the timetable. While the station-master (as he still referred to himself, despite the closing of the line) Mr Edwards, called it a two-dog town; his and the local butcher’s. Bruce Lindsay, the publican preferred to think of it as a one-horse town, it didn’t have the ring of abandonment as suggested by the one-dog handle.

The Education Department had already transferred the older students to the high school in Nowra, while retaining the primary school. Annual threats to close the school were usually averted by the arrival of a new family to the district; providing that it included at least one school-aged child. The town welcomed Mo and Dave with open arms.

By 1958, the high school students were mini bussed to Dusty Flats where they caught another to Nowra High School. Since the Armstrong’s arrival, many families had migrated back to Sydney or Canberra. The reality of commuting for work failed to compensate for an easy beach lifestyle at weekends. Many families abandoned their dreams of home ownership in the housing estate at the rear of the shops. The school, providing basic primary level education, was barely occupied, with a number of ghostly classrooms that previously teemed with youngsters.

Next-door to the school, a small, pretty church with adjoining all-purpose hall sat at the crossroads where Main Street met Beach Road, the only escape route out of town. The minister was a distant memory, the small number of parishioners couldn’t sustain the man and his ever-increasing family.

Miss Maud Hungerford, a stalwart of the Church of England, taught Scripture at the school and was the mainstay of a Bible study group which met in the church hall every Wednesday. Her sister Maisie gave piano lessons and played for the children learning to dance. The hall rang with dob-dob-dobbing of the Scouts, on Saturday mornings, as well as being used for the children’s annual dancing and singing display.

Once a month the stilettos and full circle skirts whirled the length of the hall, aided by sawdust laid specially to allow the girls to show off their dancing skills, all the while being observed by the Hungerford sisters who were the self-appointed chaperones.

The church was kept for special occasions such as funerals and weddings; while the Christmas and Easter celebrations, saw a visiting clergyman lead the services, but an ever-decreasing population meant that this tradition too, would soon be a thing of the past. 

In winter the dunes had once been a playground for the thrill-seekers who risked life and limb by flying down the steep hills on flattened cardboard boxes, until a tragic accident in 1959. A constant reminder of the death of one of the Cove’s children, a sign hanging on the barbed-wire fence, warning of the dangers lurking in the unstable dunes, forbade the youngsters from entering. Some teenagers, while not riding carboard boxes, nevertheless still frequented the dunes for other risky nocturnal activities.

A straggling grid of unfinished streets behind the shopping strip where homes, built post-war for veterans and their young families, were within walking distance to the Cove, a Mecca for board-riders of the district, drawn to the point break at the base of the headland. Between the northern end of the beach that the surfers claimed for themselves and the upturned fishing boats, was reserved for body surfers and grommets, despised learners who sometimes got in the way of the older boys by dropping in on waves that were already taken. A mistake made only once by the grommets of Sandhill Cove.

Sandhill Cove wasn’t only forgotten by time, it was forgotten by the local council too, who still collected rates from the residents, but failed to provide even the most basic services such as a kerb for the footpath outside the shops, or funds to upgrade the pot-holed Beach Road leading out of town. At two previous elections, Council promised a paved car park at the beach, it still hadn’t eventuated.