The Adams family was the last to live in the old homestead at Bush’s Beach. As I was one of the six children in that family I would like to share with you some of the happy memoirs of the time we spent there.

Until the early 50’s there was a homestead on the shore of Bush’s Beach on Kaiaraara Bay. I understand that the Busch family built it as a guesthouse but I have no idea when. In the early days, before our time, people would stay at the property and boats would moor in the bay using the large jetty to get ashore.

The property was made up of a house, a bedroom annex, outside bathroom and toilet, another small one-room building used as a schoolhouse, boatshed and jetty, smokehouse, milking bails and several paddocks.

At some stage the Busch family sold the property to "the Forestry". Keith Adams joined the Forestry just after the World War II as a clerk and was sent to the Barrier in about 1947. At that stage the family comprised Keith and Danny, Aunty Lannie, Erin, David, Gabrielle, Acushla and Simon. Dinah arrived a bit later.

I remember that the house had a very large kitchen with a big wood stove that was used for cooking and water heating - I also remember that with it, the house was very cosy in the cooler weather! Then there was a huge lounge room – at least it was huge in my eyes - with a wooden table almost the width of the room as its main feature. There were three bedrooms. As I recall Mum and Dad had the main room, Aunty Lannie shared the second bedroom with Dinah (the youngest at that stage) and Gabrielle and I had the third room. The rest of the family slept out in the annex. There was a verandah at the front of the house, then a grass verge of a few meters, and then the beach! At really high tides the water would lap the bottom steps.

There were four bedrooms in the annex and it had a verandah all around it. The bathroom was out side between the house and the annex.

In the late 40’s rationing was still in force with coupons still being used and this made us become as self reliant as possible. A good vegetable garden and fruit trees helped and much to everyone’s delight a bounty of fish and other seafood became our main diet – fish, oysters, pipis, mussels were all to be gathered not far from our front door.

Being so close to the water we shared the house with a colony of penguins that lived under it. Many a night they would waken us as they settled noisily. Having had a good feed of fish they would waddle up the beach and back under the house. Cute little creatures but when one decided to come through a hole in the floor and nest in the pile of stove kindling it created some problems. The telephone was directly above the nest and when someone wanted to use the phone all hell broke loose as the penguin protected "its territory"! After a few days of this, Dad eventually captured it, put it back under the house and fixed the floor.

As well as nature’s animals we had a menagerie of our own: Jack and Dinah the horses, Ferdinand (of course) the bull, Marion a black sheep, two cows, a pig, ducks, chickens, dogs, cats and guinea pigs.

Marion the sheep had an identity problem and always insisted on going with the cows to be milked – she would enter the bail and once her tummy was tickled she wandered off, quite pleased with herself.

Stories about Dad – Memories by Acushla Murdoch (nee Adams)