Sita Walker

Pretty harrowing.

Well, she didn't want anyone to put the evil eye on me.

And the evil eye is sort of just anyone who might look at you in a way that is jealous, perhaps, because she thought that I was so wonderful.

That of course, of course, why wouldn't people be looking at me in a jealous way going, oh, she's so beautiful and clever.

Of course, we would want to cast wickedness upon her.

So my grandmother would take an egg and it's actually called umansi, but she never called it anything.

And she would run the egg up and down my arms and around my head, circle it around my head.

And the egg is meant to draw the evil eye out of a person.

So draw any evil

any wickedness that's in there that someone might have cast upon me you know draw it up out of me and then she would take the egg to the back steps and Bridge Street was a big old Queenslander on stumps and we had a long set of steps going down to the backyard and there were some pavers there that John always liked to weed and make sure that they were really neat and tidy and that they're and

Dolly would throw the egg off and it would smash on the pavers because it's very important that you smash the wickedness out of the egg, break the shell.

How did your dad, John, feel about this?

He did not like it at all.

He was highly irritated by the vanquishing of wickedness on the back pavers.

He would come out with the hose.

He'd hose it off.

He'd say, this is ridiculous.

It's superstition.

It doesn't mean anything.

Hmm.