Chapter 1

Keith and Sharon Morgan started the 1990s by welcoming a baby girl into the world, and they finished the 1990s in the same way by having another baby daughter.

On the morning of Monday, 8th January 1990 Keith had driven his heavily pregnant wife to the hospital when her waters broke sending her into labor, and after a nervous morning spent pacing up and down the waiting room, Keith was invited into the maternity ward and introduced to his new baby daughter, the young couple naming their first child Stephanie.

Their second daughter Hannah was born at the same hospital nearly a decade later when Sharon went into labor during the morning of Tuesday 2nd November 1999, and with no problems delivered her baby in less than two hours to the relief of the obstetrician, who was keen to watch the Melbourne Cup horse race later that day.

Keith and Sharon's home was Jacaranda Tree Farm on South Australia's scenic Fleurieu Peninsula, about an hour and a half's drive from the capital city Adelaide. It was in a perfect location to capitalize on the tourist industry in the area due to the proximity to the mouth of the iconic Murray River, popular coastal towns such as Victor Harbor, the McLaren Vale wine region and on the way to Kangaroo Island. 

The farm's name was taken from the many jacaranda trees that lined the driveway that lead to the homestead, and which from October to December each year produced stunning purple blooms as the trees flowered. The farm was a stop on many tours that passed through the region, and private travelers from overseas, interstate or South Australia itself could also stop there either on day trips or longer holidays. The activities carried out on the farm were diverse, and included an apiary, a vineyard that produced table grapes, fruit trees, vegetable gardens, a large number of free range chickens and ducks, sheep, goats, pigs and dairy cows. Horses were also kept on the farm, and there was even a small native animal display of kangaroos, wallabies, cockatoos and emus.

Tourists of course were keen to see Australian animals, watch demonstrations of sheep shearing and milking cows, feed bottles to lambs and goat kids and watch the collection of eggs laid by the chickens and ducks and buy the honey, fruit and vegetables produced on the property, so Keith and Sharon's business was highly profitable. Keith's younger brother and his wife ran a small café at the farm that served lunch and morning and afternoon tea, which added to the profits significantly. With Keith having grown up on the farm and Sharon on another farm not far away, both were highly experienced with agricultural practices and sound financial management, so they did not rest on their laurels and worked hard every day to ensure that their farm ran to perfection with not even the slightest detail overlooked.

Strong work ethics ran in the family, as did a firm Roman Catholic faith. Keith and Sharon were childhood sweethearts, but until the day in 1988 that Sharon walked down the aisle and exchanged her marriage vows with Keith, the only thing to go into her vagina was a tampon. Making love on their wedding night was the first time the attractive young couple had ever had sex, and Sharon's sisters likewise were virgins when they married their husbands. 

Stephanie and Hannah had inherited their mother's good looks, their parents' love of the farm, their strong country work ethics and their Roman Catholic faith. Eldest daughter Stephanie was now married to her childhood sweetheart Darren, and the couple lived in the second house at the property adjacent to the main homestead with their two kids, Ella now aged three, and 15-month-old Matthew. Like Sharon years earlier, Stephanie had walked down the aisle with her virginity intact, and nothing more than a tampon having gone into her vagina.

Hannah at 18-years-old was of course not married; she had only just graduated with straight A's from the local Catholic high school but she had a serious boyfriend Jamie, a childhood sweetheart much like her older sister. Hannah's boyfriend had of course never seen what her clothes covered, and as was the case with her mother and older sister before they married, the only objects to enter her vagina were tampons and she and her boyfriend had done nothing more than hold hands and kiss. When Hannah's panties came down, it was only because she was undressing or because she needed to sit on the toilet.

Stephanie and Hannah were not an example of a two sibling family with a sizable age-gap between the children. The two Morgan sisters were the book-ends of the family, as during the 1990s Keith and Sharon had produced three sons; Alex in 1992, Mark in 1994 and Dale in 1997. 

The differences between the sisters and brothers were not merely in gender. Their daughters had embraced life in the country working on a farm, it was obvious from early on that Alex, Mark and Dale's eyes were on the bright lights of Adelaide rather than their regional home town, and as they grew up each of them left the farm and made their life in the South Australian capital. 

While the family's Roman Catholic faith was so important to Stephanie and Hannah and Keith and Sharon never had any trouble getting their daughters to go to church it was a very different story with their sons, and it was obvious that Alex, Mark and Dale did not want to make the trip into town every Sunday morning and none of the boys got any special credits for religious studies at the Catholic high school all five kids attended. Youngest son Dale was particularly troublesome about attending church on Sundays, and as a young boy took to reading a medical book to find illnesses he could feign to get out of the church ritual. Although Dale probably should have read the medical book more thoroughly as his claim one Sunday morning that he had smallpox was not believed by his parents any more than his claim another time that he had problems with endometriosis.

A major challenge for Sharon and Keith raising kids in the 1990s and 2000s was keeping them away from literature and the associated movie works about magic, witchcraft and vampires, very popular with kids and teenagers during these decades. It was a problem shared with Keith and Sharon's siblings raising their own children. While some of the books seemed relatively harmless at face value, Keith and Sharon and their extended families were concerned that their children would grow up falsely believing one could solve one's problem with magic. It could also lead to bigger problems when the kids got older and start dabbling with practices such as Ouija boards, or thinking that the vampire subculture was acceptable. So all such books, TV shows and movies were banned from the Morgan household.

As usual there were no problems with Stephanie and Hannah, but Alex, Mark and Dale were more defiant of their parents' rules, youngest boy Dale especially. One Saturday when Dale was in his mid-teens Sharon became suspicious that the movie Dale said he was going to see with his friends wasn't the film that they were actually going to watch, and followed him into town. Sharon's suspicions were confirmed when she saw her son and his friends enter the cinema where the latest Harry Potter movie Dale was banned from watching was playing. The first Dale knew of his mother's presence was when she discretely entered the cinema, shone a powerful torch into her son's face and ordered him out, a direction that the red-faced Dale only reluctantly followed when Sharon took his cup of cola and poured it all over his head to punish him for his defiance of her authority. As Sharon drove Dale back to the farm after this, there was a dead silence between mother and son in the car.

Now that their sons were adults and living in Adelaide, Keith and Sharon had little choice but to let them live their own lives and make their own mistakes, but when they came back to the farm to visit as all three were for Christmas 2017, they had to abide by their parents' rules. This wasn't something that the boys particularly liked and definitely not well-received by the boys' girlfriends.

It was quite unusual for all three sons and all three girlfriends to be staying at the farm at the same time, and it wasn't something Sharon and her two daughters were looking forward too. Sharon, Stephanie and Hannah were positively dreading the arrival of Mark's girlfriend Bethany and Dale's girlfriend Kayla during the Saturday afternoon but at this particular moment none of the three had much time to think about Bethany and Kayla. They were having afternoon tea in the kitchen with a most tiresome house guest, in the form of oldest son Alex's girlfriend Cathy.

Dark-haired Alex, tall and handsome with the rugged country good looks of his father was the best of the three sons with regards to an interest in agriculture and work ethic, and would often drive up to the farm on the weekends to help out with large jobs such as the grape harvest or installing fire breaks at the property. The family were usually glad when he came alone, and Cathy remained in Adelaide. But at Christmas, they could hardly tell Alex to leave Cathy at home so now they were stuck with her and counting the days down to Boxing Day on Tuesday, when they would return to the city.

Keith along with Darren had made good their escape on some job in one of the far paddocks, taking Alex and Stephanie and Darren's two young children with them. At the farmhouse their mother, aunt and grandmother sipped at their tea and maintained a polite façade while Cathy talked and talked, then after taking a brief breath would talk some more.

Cathy stood out from her boyfriend's mother and two sisters by her red hair and green eyes, which contrasted from the light brown hair and brown eyes shared by Sharon, Stephanie and Hannah. Also while the mother and her two daughters drank standard tea, Cathy had insisted on bringing along her organic vegan green tea, of which she took sips in between talking.

Apparently the organic vegan green tea was of great value to Cathy's health, and assisted her in keeping her bowel movements regular. Whenever Sharon, Stephanie and Hannah went to the loo, they would close and lock the bathroom door behind themselves, pull down their panties and sit on the toilet, and when finished never discuss when went on in there. They also were of the firm opinion that Cathy's toilet habits were none of their business and they would have been happy to have no discussion on the matter, but Cathy obviously thought differently. 

Taking a sip of her tea, Sharon discretely watched her eldest son's girlfriend as Cathy prattled on and on, this time about veganism and the special organic ingredients that comprised the pre-prepared vegan meals she had brought with her for this stay over Christmas. Sharon thought to herself that the admittedly very pretty Cathy, who looked so nice in her summer dress and sandals with her long red hair back in a pony-tail, didn't really look like the vegan eco-warrior type. Cathy maintained a very mainstream look with no weird facial piercings and awful hairstyles common on these left-wing types. Her job was as a website designer, not really the type of occupation one would associate with environmental activism. But she was definitely vegan, something she reminded everybody about at every chance she got. Cathy might as well have worn a shirt with 'I am a vegan' inscribed upon it every day, which might have assisted in getting her to shut up once in a while.

Cathy continued about how she had some success with converting Alex to eating vegetarian, but not to full vegan although she was hopeful of achieving full conversion in the future. Cathy had however trained her pet dog, a very large German Shepherd that had accompanied her and Alex to the farm this Christmas much to Sharon and Keith's displeasure, to eat vegan with special dietary supplements. However, the vet had advised that it was medically unsound for their cat to be converted to veganism, so the cat ate regular cat food. The cat did not make the trip to the farm for Christmas with her owners, she remained in Adelaide and was staying with Cathy's gay brother Fritz and his boyfriend, who did not celebrate Christmas as it was not inclusive of all religions and cultures.

From what Sharon had been told by Alex and Cathy, Cathy had been born in 1993 in Germany close to the Denmark border in the north which accounted for her red hair, and had emigrated to Australia at the age of eight in 2001 with her parents, brother and sister. Emigrating at such a young age Cathy's German accent was not overly strong but was still evident in her speech patterns, and she and her parents, who had travelled back to their home country to see relatives this particular Christmas, often spoke German when together.

Alex and Cathy had apparently met when seated next to each other on a flight back from Melbourne, Alex having been there for a geology workshop and Cathy on a similar work trip, and it had been love at first sight for the young pair. Sharon found herself wondering if the reality was different. Perhaps Alex had been at a swap meet in Adelaide one weekend and purchased a vintage 'Chatty Cathy' doll, possibly as a gift for one of the young girls in the family? But instead of remaining as a toy, the doll changed overnight into a real adult woman that Alex fell hopelessly in love with, despite its ability to talk incessantly in both English and German.

"So remember when I visited at Easter and I had my period, and I showed you the reusable cloth menstrual pads that I use when it's my time of the month?" Cathy asked.

"Yes," said Sharon, trying to keep exasperation out of her voice. She wished she hadn't heard about Cathy's menstrual cycle at all, much less that her eldest son's girlfriend wore cloth pads to absorb her period, which she then placed in a wet bag and washed the blood out of the used napkins when she finished her cycle that month. Sharon also wished that Cathy hadn't shown both she and her daughters her collection of cloth sanitary pads - mercifully the clean ones and not the ones Cathy had soiled during her current period - and tried to convert them to the benefits of using reusable menstrual products.

"So, have you thought any further about using cloth pads during your own periods?" Cathy asked the other three women, as casually as if she was asking them if they had tried a particular brand of washing up liquid or laundry detergent, not about their personal feminine hygiene habits.

Stephanie and Hannah exchanged a glance. The two sisters were quite happy about using disposable sanitary napkins and tampons to manage their periods. When they removed their used pads from the saddles of their panties or changed their tampons, they were most content to throw the soiled feminine hygiene products away and never have to deal with them again. Washing their menses out of cloth pads after finishing their period each month didn't appeal at all, it sounded really gross. Washing blood out of their knickers when they had any menstrual mishaps was bad enough.

"I um, don't think that's something that really appeals to me," said Stephanie.

"Me either," agreed younger sister Hannah, like her sister and mother trying to sound neutral.

"It isn't my thing either," said Sharon, wondering not for the first time how Cathy's mind worked. Given Sharon had started her periods aged 12 back in 1977, had been having them every month for over 40 years save for the times she was pregnant and had used disposable pads and tampons for all that time, she seemed an unlikely candidate for 'conversion'. At 52 she would soon be going into menopause, but showed no signs of it so far, receiving a visit from her monthly friend every four weeks without fail. And given how irritating this was at the best of times, washing her menstrual blood from cloth pads was an inconvenience she did not want or need.

"Well, it isn't for everyone so it's your own choice, I'm sure you help the environment in lots of other ways," said Cathy, Sharon and her daughters able to detect the passive-aggressive response in Cathy's reply. "But as I'm staying in your house this Christmas, I thought I should tell you about another strategy for an eco-friendly lifestyle I now use."

Cathy reached into a bag at her feet, and as Sharon, Stephanie and Hannah watched pulled out a number of cloths which she placed on the table. The cloths were square in shape, roughly the size of a handkerchief and were in a variety of different light pastel colors - white, pink, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple and brown. There were also a couple of white cloths that had floral print, with blue, red and yellow flowers adorning the fabric.

"One day I was sitting on the toilet and thinking about how many tress get sacrificed to make toilet paper for humans to wipe their bottoms with," said Cathy. "So I did some research online and found out about family cloth, or reusable cloth toilet paper. I went straight out to a textile store, brought some fabrics and made these up in less than half a day. I've got heaps more at home. So now when I go to the toilet, I use these cloths instead of regular toilet paper, and I know that I am helping the environment."

The eyes of Sharon and her daughters went wide at the mental images of this, Sharon unable to prevent herself from staring at Cathy's reusable toilet paper that sat on the table cloth, in a place where people ate. Sharon resolved to wash the table cloth thoroughly - very thoroughly - with lots of disinfectant. Sharon was also glad her husband hadn't heard anything about this, as Keith would have freaked so much he would probably have run so fast he would now be on the Nullarbor, halfway to Perth.

"Reusable toilet paper is so good," Cathy continued. "It's so soft and strong and absorbent, much better than regular toilet paper. You should give it a try, you'll wish you'd started using it earlier, trust me."

"Um, no thank you Cathy, I think we're good the way we are," said Sharon, unable to keep herself from looking at the cloths and wondering just what unpleasant substances they had wiped away from the private areas between Cathy's legs. While Sharon had used cloth nappies for all five kids when they were babies and Stephanie had done likewise with her kids, the thought of cleaning reusable cloth toilet paper was horrifying to her and her daughters. Toilet paper was disposable tissue, and designed to be flushed away down the lavatory after use.