Blankets for June



Blanket purchased by Roland Doe

  I was handed the blanket. There it was, wrapped in a plastic bag, with a cake of scented soap to keep the musty odours away. It's yours. "Oh," was all I could say. Old, faded and worn into holes, wrinkled edges fraying into loosened threads, it did not look like something one would value. Then came the words, This is the blanket that Nan sent Pop out to buy ....................to bring the baby home from hospital, in the pony and cart when your mother was born. Suddenly, this worn set of fibres had new meaning. I connected. It did not look at all like a baby blanket, pink, blue and fluffy but it certainly had a purpose.

June in Tasmania is cold and the birth took place at Latrobe. A trip home on the Wilmot road would have been long and wearying. Even in the fifties when I first travelled its surface, it was rough, unsealed and potholed. Uncomfortable in the latest Holden, we looked forward to the end of the trip. In 1923, baby June, named after the month in which she was born, was wrapped cosy and warm in the folds of this blanket as she was carried about 30 miles up through Gentle Annie between the tall gums growing along the edges of the deep gorges of the Wilmot Road.



June Doe and Ivy Doe
at Lower Wilmot

Another photo and another time.
"Why is Mum wearing gumboots?" I asked. Over 20 years later, baby June was grown and had come home for the weekend. The coat was for warmth on the same Wilmot Road. The boots were for riding a horse. Mum was working at Chudleigh and had travelled the last part of the journey, from Forth by horse. It is hard for me to imagine my mother riding a horse but that was the mode of transport at the time. The horse was hired at Forth and upon arriving at the destination 18 miles later, it was turned around to face the direction from which it had come, given a whack on the rump and it took itself back to the stables.

Mum never learned to drive a car. Apart from walking, this was the only time she was in control of her transport. It was so for so many women. They rode horses and drove ponies and carts but with the advent of the motor car, transport became  male dominated and for a generation of women dependancy on menfolk became the norm.