Broken Hill and Other Adventures

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This is a square from a memory box that I published photos of in June of this year. I promised to tell the story of any square people asked me about, and then welched on my promise, so here I am atoning, albeit a few months too late. If you want to see the entire memory box, go HERE, then return to this page to hear the story of this box.

The tin of quinine pills were in the box when my sister gave it to me, but she may have foreseen my trip through the Panama Canal forty–some years later, as quinine is a medication for malaria, which we had to be inoculated against–or perhaps she intuited all the times I would have to drink quinine water to rid myself of the arm and leg cramps that have frequently attacked me at night for my entire life. Come to think of it, I haven’t had so many attacks in the past year after I stopped drinking Diet Coke and using aspartame. If I drink even one Coke, however, I am plagued by cramps again—sometimes as many as four times a night and sometimes both arms and both legs at once. The water I drink instead of the Coke probably helps, as well.

As for the pins, the “Peace on Earth” pin was my grandma’s–one of the “prizes” she gave me whenever I went to visit her. Above it is my pledge pin for XO, my college sorority and below it is my Tasbureau pin from a trip to Tasmania. My friend and I left the bus tour part way through and rented a car and saw the rest of the country alone. All of the other members of the tour group were much older and although they were nice, they cramped our style a bit. They didn’t seem to hold it against us, though, for one of the men later came to visit my parents in Arizona! By then I was traveling through Southeast Asia or living in Africa. After a slow start growing up in a tiny town in South Dakota, I had an exciting life in my twenties and thirties.

When I lived in Australia in the early seventies, three friends and I drove from Sydney to Broken Hill to Adelaide in my tiny Morris mini car. In Australia, there were very strict rules about no women being allowed in the men’s bar of the Leagues Clubs. There was a lounge area women could go into, but when my friends and I went there for a meal, we were spied by the guys in the bar who invited us into the men’s bar and made us honorary members of the Broken Hill Leagues Cub. I still have the pin to prove it right here in my memory box in this square.

The material in the back was a large tablecloth I purchased in India and gave to my sister to make a robe for me. Instead, she made something for herself out of it and used a few pieces of the remnants to back up a few squares in this box. Sisters! I have to forgive her, though, because if it hadn’t been for her, we would have had no photos of our early life–including a number of the photos in this memory box.

Again, if you want to see the entire memory box, go HERE.

21 thoughts on “Broken Hill and Other Adventures”

  1. Pingback: Memory Box | lifelessons – a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

      1. integratedexpat

        Well, that explains your surname, then, which is what made me think it might be Dutch. I was writing my own little story in my head about how your relatives put their bags (bag is ‘tas’) in the tasbureau (maybe an archaic name for the luggage drop) and then… fill in an adventure of choice.

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        1. lifelessons Post author

          No doubt that happened. Unfortunately, my grandfather died before I was born. My grandmother lived to the ripe old age of 96 but I don’t remember any of her stories, I’m sad to sat–just storie about her.

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    1. lifelessons Post author

      I used to keep a bottle of tonic water next to the bed. That was the only thing that relieved them–that and a hot shower, but sometimes they were so bad I couldn’t make it to the shower. I haven’t had aspertame for a year now, or Coke, with a few exceptions. Whenever I have one, the cramps come back. Or if I get really dehydrated. Switching from rum and Coke or Coke alone to gin and tonic or water is small payment for the tremendous relief!

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  6. Patti

    I hadn’t heard most of these stories before, including the one of our older sister and the fabric. Perhaps we need to explore each other’s memory boxes in addition to each other’s memories!

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  8. Pingback: 1956 Club: Erle Stanley Gardner and Ian Fleming, Bonding over diamonds – Market Garden Reader

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