THERE'S an old shearing shed on the block next door to the building site.

I had to sneak over to plug in my cordless drill the other day. Where would we be without shearing sheds, I thought.

Actually it got me thinking about power. Using tools without the power on reminds you how completely used to having it you become.

We even had a bit of power in the bush well before we became beneficiaries of Sir John Monash's grand scheme to connect every family to the SEC.

We had a grand total of two power points that would surge with a whole 24 volts of red-blooded electricity whenever the generator was going.

One was in the bathroom to run the wringer-washing machine and the other was in a rather ostentatiously central position in the kitchen.

A lovely black bakelite job above the bench, with the only possible application for it being to run the cake mixer.

I can't recall a lot of cakes being mixed with it but it made a great play thing, a grouse, rotating helicopter-ray-gun, albeit with a playing range limited by the cord length.

Anyway, the good thing about the system was the position of the generator, a little green Villiers motor made in Ballarat.

It lived, connected to the genny by a frayed and presumably dangerous V-belt, under the tank-stand outside our bedroom window.

It provided a dark little grotto covered with a banana passionfruit vine and, like most things in childhood, the spot had a particular smell.

Looking back, it was probably all green and mouldering because the tank leaked.

But the great beauty of the set-up was the noise.

The general idea was to put enough petrol in it to see us through the evening but if it looked as though we were all off to bed we'd always ask Dad to leave it on to run out by itself, a request that, petrol being cheap and he probably being in his socks, he was happy enough to oblige.

The homely chugging of the little engine acted like the most sublime of lullabies to us and I can't think of any night where I was aware of it finally stopping, such was its soporific power.

The mains got to us eventually, with a pair of wires strung across the lake to us in a huge span. I was watching four swans one evening sounding those gentle honks as they flew home after work and one flew smack into one of the wires.

"Well there you go", I thought.