Third bit from the right

When we were young Dad decided, out of the blue, to build us a dolls house. I’m not talking about some lame, scaled-down replica you dump your Barbie dolls in or a pokey, crawl-in box suitable only for three-year-olds. No, ours was adult-size – with stumps, wooden framework, glass windows and a corrugated iron roof. Big enough to rent out to a small family.

It’s a significant part of the family history, at least for me and my two younger sisters. The trouble is no one ever took any photos of it. When did Dad build it? What did it look like exactly? When did it eventually get pulled down? Was it standing for 5, 6, 7 … years? Important questions but, frustratingly, no definitive answers.

At a recent family birthday lunch I decided to ask probing questions and take exhaustive notes. Please refer to Exhibits A and B below (click to enlarge). OK, so my notes are a touch sketchy; we’d had a few drinks and everyone was talking over the top of each other. I did my best. And I see this as only Stage 1 of my investigation.

Guess what? Once people get a bit older they don’t remember much about their childhood to a degree that would be useful to, say, a historian. I present the following sample pieces of evidence:

• Someone said the dolls house was clad in weatherboards; Mum said it was old floorboards
• Someone said the boards ran horizontally; I said they ran vertically (I admit I could be wrong)
• Maybe it was built while the garage was in its original position, maybe it wasn’t
• Maybe it was pulled down before the garage got rebuilt at the bottom of the back yard, or maybe it happened after

Exhibit C, taken in April 1976, clearly shows that the dolls house was gone by then. It stood between the lemon tree on the right and the bare tree against the fence. (Or did it?) It also shows Dad taking a rare rest. (Where did that bed come from anyway? And what was it doing in the backyard?)

Mum stated with great certainty that Dad simply decided one day he was going to build it. She can’t remember what his motivation was. I suspect it was all that stuff stacked up under the house. Maybe he thought: “How do I make more room for my ever-expanding collection of excellent old car parts and the piles of second-hand timber I’ve been scrounging for years that just might come in handy sometime, if the space is crammed with dolls prams, dolls kitchen dresser, small wooden table, fours little chairs, bedroom dressing table, dolls cot, wooden toy storage box, barbie dolls, Singer treadle sewing machine and piles of fancy dress clothes?”. He had a point. And he did like a project.

I’m going to dig through family photos and see if I can create a bit of a timeline that will help pin down the dates for the dolls house. And perhaps I’ll attempt a better quality drawing than the one below and overlay it on a photo of the back yard to put it in context. This might all take a while. In the mean time if any of my siblings have any photos showing the driveway or old garage, please let me know!