Don McDouall was evacuated from London during World War II when he was five years old. He was sent to the small country village of East Hanney to live with Grans and Grampy at a house called Tamarisk. When the war ended nobody came to take him home and he was sent to a children's home. When the children's home closed he was given the choice of returning to Tamarisk or to live in another home, he chose Tamarisk. He now lives in Australia.

It was only a few weeks before I was to leave for Australia and I had given up my work. I could see no sense in wasting the last few days of my life in England. When I wasn't with Marion, my girlfriend, I would get myself into the habit of retracing all my childhood steps around East Hanney.

I would ride my bike to a certain point then walk alone shrouded in my own turbulent misgivings for the future. I remember cycling to the old barn. Roy and I had often sheltered in that same barn when we were young evacuees and I noticed the barn owls that had used it always as their home still lived there.

I followed the railway fence down to the line and remembered a soldier who had come home from the war and placed his head on the railway line some moments before an Express train came by.

I visited the meadow that played host to our summertime cricket games and the girl's rounder's. This small meadow was often my refuge when I played truant because I didn't want to go to Friday woodwork lessons in Wantage.
I hated those lessons. The main woodwork task was always to plane a bit of 'Yellow Deal'. The master would say 'Plane it level'. Well my bit of timber just got smaller and smaller, but never level!

I went to the farm where I had worked and visited the farmers rick yard. I could hear the constant clatter of the threshing machine. I wondered at that moment if they had threshing machines in Australia?

I walked slowly between the allotments down to the American patterned windmill that sat guard over the water bore. The bore was the entrance to the ground water that gave both villages their domestic tap water. I can still remember the fuss that was made in 1943 when they found the man who maintained this water utility hanging dead by a leg from the windmill head!

I found myself in Grampy's shed and there up in the rafters was a cricket bat. I can only remember ever getting one birthday present as a child, it would have been on my tenth birthday. Grampy made me this cricket bat out of a solid piece of Bat willow wood.

It was well made but completely useless to me. It was too big and far too heavy and being of solid construction if you did hit a cricket ball the shock of hitting bat on ball went right through your hands. I grasped it one last time remembering how excited I had been at first to have my own cricket bat and how disappointed I had felt when all the other kids made fun of it.

Nearby was an orchard with two huge and very old walnut trees. We raided these all the time as kids and became experts at knocking down walnuts. The mess we would get in was unbelievable. Walnuts have a thick green covering, a husk that leaves a very dark brown stain on anything it comes in contact with. You can't wash this stain away with ordinary soap. I lost count of the hidings I got from Grans Lyford from going home with my clothes and self covered in walnut stain.

I would miss East Hanney and all the memories it contained.

Don McDouall, Australia, 2001