‘The summer fruit picking adventure that became our family’s favourite story’

When I was very much younger we use to drive into the hills to a relatives’ place and pick fruit. Cherries was one of my favourite things to pick.

My father would lift me high into the cherry tree to pick the fruit that as near to the top as he could get. I had an ice-cream container that had ribbon on it so I could hang it round my neck and my hands were free to pick fruit, when my container was full I would hand it down and it was emptied and I would start all over again.

I loved the adventure and I also loved being able to eat as much fruit as I liked, often getting yelled out from the ground crew. “More picking, less eating,” they would say.

I loved our summer fruit picking drives up into the hills catch up with cousins. We’d eat so much fruit we were often sick.

On a hot summer Saturday before Christmas one year, Mum, Dad and I drove into the Adelaide Hills to my uncle’s farm for the first crop of ripe cherries. I loved the cherry season, I loved cherries and I loved climbing the trees.

Mum and my aunty would make cherry jam and preserve cherries and also make cherry pie. The smell from the kitchen was amazing and the fruit being cooked on a wood stove was a smell you just can’t replicate on an electric or gas stove.

I was up a large cherry tree picking and eating fruit, my father was yelling at me to stop eating so much and get picking, but I was high up the tree and Dad couldn’t get me so I was just eating, then he yelled at me for spitting the seeds down, so that’s how he knew I was eating the fruit. At age seven I decided to be tricky and stop spitting the seeds out. Instead, I was going to swallow them. Surely that couldn’t hurt …

It didn’t hurt and I thought I was quite clever. We packed our car full of fresh cherries and cherry baked goods. It was very late in the afternoon when we started to head home.

Dad had driven his brand new car to my uncle’s house. It was a Ford and had vinyl seats and vinyl floor covering, so it would be easy to clean, according to Dad.

Heading home the road was clear and my dad decided to put his foot down and see what his new car could do. We went down the hills road that zig and zag round the hills all the way back into the city.

“Dad, I don’t feel well,” I said.

He thought I had eaten too much and should lay on the back seat and have a sleep. I did as I was told. I woke up in fear, sat upright and yelled, “I am going to be sick.”

Dad kept on driving. I yelled again. Again Dad made no attempt to stop the car.

Mum was yelling at him but Dad was not listening. I sat bolt up right and leaned forward and threw up all over the front seat over my dad’s shoulder and into his lap on the floor. It was cherries, cherry seeds and — to my surprise — even a few stems!

Dad pulled over and jumped out of the car, his white shirt was now stained a lovely shade of maroon. Seeds sloshed back and forth on the vinyl floor and Dad was angry. It was his new car after all.

Mum came to the rescue and yelled at him that he should of stopped when I first said I felt sick. Mum and Dad both looked at all the seeds, stems and whole cherries and burst out laughing and realised that I had still been eating cherries while I was on the job.

We continued our journey home. I got to sit in the front on the bench seat between Mum and Dad, and all the way was the sloshing sound of cherry seeds rolling from one side of the car to the other with each turn of a corner. My father’s cherry-coloured shirt was his reminder that he should allow me to eat the fruit in future.

Thankfully the car cleaned up well and looked as good as new. Almost 50 years later, we still tell this story at our family gatherings and have a laugh.

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