Bill is my big brother, although he’s not as big as our younger brother Henry or as tall as our baby brother Robert (no longer a baby but a fireman, musician and piano tuner). There have been times in my life when I’ve bemoaned the fact that I’m the middle child of five children – not the wonderful firstborn, not the beautiful first daughter, not the cherished baby of the family – I didn’t even have to speak very much until I went to school (believe it or not I was an extremely shy and quiet little girl… with a quick temper). I didn’t get to do anything first – nobody fancied the plain, flat-chested twelve year old at Bill’s fifteenth birthday party – and the youngest two gave me none of the kudos or respect that the eldest two took for granted. I was just the middle one – and the artist in the family.

I have been staying here at Bill’s place in Tingalpa, Brisbane, the past week; and, owing to the heavy rain, yesterday I was painting in his front porch (rather apt for a Porch person). Now when I’m painting I get rather engrossed and forget about eating and drinking, so after a couple of hours or more in my own little world the front door opened and Bill popped his head around.

“I thought you’d like a nice cup of tea,” Bill smiled and placed the tea beside me on the arm of a chair before going back inside to watch “Judge Judy” (we Porch siblings all like “Judge Judy”).

I smiled to myself. The cup was a bit big but I did fancy a cup of tea now that I came to think of it. And I while I drank my tea I considered what a wonderful big brother Bill has been to me… He always came to my rescue. Whenever I cried as a child he would whisk me off to our tree-house – the one he made with Dad – and he would cheer me up with tickles. When, as a five-year-old on the way home from school, I had accidentally cut a boy’s head open in a stone fight Billy took me and the boy to his mother’s door, and I didn’t have to say word…

“I want to apologise on Sally’s behalf,” Bill said, “she didn’t know what she was doing.”

Athletic as a boy, Bill could walk on his hands and do chin-ups on the door frames; he could drive at fifteen and bought a beach-buggy – we all used to jump on and scream with delight amid the smoke and the roar of the engine (in the garden, of course – he got his license on his seventeenth birthday). First he loved bicycles, then engines, then engines and girls. He grew up to be handsome and muscular, with dark curly hair and lovely bowed legs.

Bill is still handsome. His hair is white now, but remains thick and curly (when he allows it to grow); he wears glasses, which detract slightly from his sparkling brown eyes and long lashes, but they give him a kindly look. He loves his garden, and making and fixing things.

My big brother is your Australian macho “can do” male but with improvements over former models – he is modern. I have noticed he helps Lita clear dinner things from the table and he makes his sister cups of tea… Ah, dear Bill – my hero – still coming to the rescue. It’s quite nice being a younger sister.

I carried on with my painting and soon I was too engrossed to think about anything but the fox cub on the canvas…