When it was my turn to leave home, my family gave me a send off dinner at Thornton Hotel Motel, a few miles out of Alex. I wore my best summer dress — a lime green, halter neck, bubble cotton mini with my new Roman-style gold leather sandals. My brother wasn't present, he was off adventuring, so just the four of us sat down to eat our solemn steak and chips with an occasional joke thrown in. My parents who seemed old to me then, were only fifty; I was seventeen and my sister ten. She was to have a less complicated life with Marj and Chas, living most of her life in one country town not five as I had. By the time she was a teenager it was the 70s and Chassa-boy was letting his strict ways slip; he grew his hair moderately long, sported a beard and hung out with the arty-crafty-macrame crowd. He even took up wood turning as a hobby, setting up a shed in the back yard of a new house they finally purchased, with lathes and tools, churning out salad bowls and goblets that are still in use today.
Marj was quiet as we posed for after-dinner family photos and Chassa-boy gave me one piece of advice for entering the adult world - 'when you go to a party, stick with beer — spirits are too strong for a girl your age.' I followed his instructions faithfully although there weren't so many parties in that first year away from home.
I was living in an all girl teachers college hostel in the well heeled suburb of Armidale, Melbourne, where the doors were locked at a certain hour and you had to sign in and out wherever you went. If you broke the rules you had to face the wrath of Matron. I know that wasn't her title, but she was a matron to me, and definitely a spinster. I ended up in her lair at the end of the year for a severe dressing down when a friend and I were caught coming in late via the fire escape. We had been doing it for a while before we were sprung.The Matron informed us we were to be expelled from the hostel at the end of term.
I was delighted. Finally I was free. Chassa-boy's plan that I would stay in the hostel for two years, then be posted out teaching, was falling into disarray. It was further shaken when I failed most of the subjects of my secondary teacher's course (except for Speech and Drama for which I received an HD from drama tutor Max Gillies). I was continuing my passive rebellion against my fathers will, but like all great pacifists had no great plan to replace it with. All I knew was that I had found my great love— theatre, and I wanted more. I signed up for a summer school run by the iconic dancer Margaret Barr and Australia's golden boy, Jim Sharman. There I met other theatre obsessives; mime artist Joe Bolza, director Doug Anders, Carol Porter, Alison Ware and more, and together we started our own experimental performance group, Tribe.
Meanwhile Chassa-boy was busy pulling strings with his Ed Dept cronies and managed to get me into the primary teachers course at Melbourne Teachers College in Grattan St (where he and Marj first met). I knew I didn't really want to teach, but to keep everyone happy and have a wage in my pocket, I agreed. With Tribe I was rehearsing weeknights and weekends so I was doubly busy and more than doubly happy. I was 18 years old.
I think Marj was secretly happy too with all my goings on. I don't remember discussing my problems with her which seems odd as in her later years we were able to talk about anything. That breakthrough was yet to come; perhaps up until then I had just confided a censored version of my thoughts. In my final years of school I had little sympathy for her plight. I didn't know why she took to her bed so often as there was no physical illness to explain it and I judged her inability to stand up to Chassa-boy as female weakness.
The moment I did understand was surprising. My friend and fellow hostel escapee, Robin Hood (yes that was really her name) had found a flat over a shop in Swanston St opposite the State Library. It was a bedsit with a tiny kitchen, no bathroom, just a shower in the corner, and an outside toilet at the bottom of the stairs. The entrance was via a locked gate in the fittingly named Drury Lane. We had two single beds, a kitchen couch and little other furniture. Robin and I painted the kitchen wall bright red and sat beneath it, sipping wine in tall glasses, nibbling olives and cheeses we bought on Saturday mornings from the Victoria Markets a few blocks away. We thought we were the height of sophistication.
Chassa-boy was silently horrified at my new bohemian digs and travelled down from the country to put double locks on the back door. He was more concerned when Robin moved out with her boyfriend and I stayed on alone, although I soon had a boyfriend too, a fellow college student JV, who lived with his Italian parents in a small house in Fitzroy, covered with tomato trellises and grape vines. I was experiencing the deliciousness of Italian food and culture first hand and together JV and I were exploring the wonders of S-E-X. It was a bit of a fumble at first and didn't come naturally to me as i'd expected.
The moment I finally figured out the workings of the inner pelvic muscles and hit the orgasm jackpot was somehow the same moment I understood my mother. How or why that happened, I have no idea, but I wrote to her soon after telling her that as a fellow woman I sympathised with her plight and I would be there for her no matter what. So marked the the beginning of a correspondence by letter that would continue for the rest of her life.
Marj was quiet as we posed for after-dinner family photos and Chassa-boy gave me one piece of advice for entering the adult world - 'when you go to a party, stick with beer — spirits are too strong for a girl your age.' I followed his instructions faithfully although there weren't so many parties in that first year away from home.
I was living in an all girl teachers college hostel in the well heeled suburb of Armidale, Melbourne, where the doors were locked at a certain hour and you had to sign in and out wherever you went. If you broke the rules you had to face the wrath of Matron. I know that wasn't her title, but she was a matron to me, and definitely a spinster. I ended up in her lair at the end of the year for a severe dressing down when a friend and I were caught coming in late via the fire escape. We had been doing it for a while before we were sprung.The Matron informed us we were to be expelled from the hostel at the end of term.
I was delighted. Finally I was free. Chassa-boy's plan that I would stay in the hostel for two years, then be posted out teaching, was falling into disarray. It was further shaken when I failed most of the subjects of my secondary teacher's course (except for Speech and Drama for which I received an HD from drama tutor Max Gillies). I was continuing my passive rebellion against my fathers will, but like all great pacifists had no great plan to replace it with. All I knew was that I had found my great love— theatre, and I wanted more. I signed up for a summer school run by the iconic dancer Margaret Barr and Australia's golden boy, Jim Sharman. There I met other theatre obsessives; mime artist Joe Bolza, director Doug Anders, Carol Porter, Alison Ware and more, and together we started our own experimental performance group, Tribe.
Meanwhile Chassa-boy was busy pulling strings with his Ed Dept cronies and managed to get me into the primary teachers course at Melbourne Teachers College in Grattan St (where he and Marj first met). I knew I didn't really want to teach, but to keep everyone happy and have a wage in my pocket, I agreed. With Tribe I was rehearsing weeknights and weekends so I was doubly busy and more than doubly happy. I was 18 years old.
I think Marj was secretly happy too with all my goings on. I don't remember discussing my problems with her which seems odd as in her later years we were able to talk about anything. That breakthrough was yet to come; perhaps up until then I had just confided a censored version of my thoughts. In my final years of school I had little sympathy for her plight. I didn't know why she took to her bed so often as there was no physical illness to explain it and I judged her inability to stand up to Chassa-boy as female weakness.
The moment I did understand was surprising. My friend and fellow hostel escapee, Robin Hood (yes that was really her name) had found a flat over a shop in Swanston St opposite the State Library. It was a bedsit with a tiny kitchen, no bathroom, just a shower in the corner, and an outside toilet at the bottom of the stairs. The entrance was via a locked gate in the fittingly named Drury Lane. We had two single beds, a kitchen couch and little other furniture. Robin and I painted the kitchen wall bright red and sat beneath it, sipping wine in tall glasses, nibbling olives and cheeses we bought on Saturday mornings from the Victoria Markets a few blocks away. We thought we were the height of sophistication.
Chassa-boy was silently horrified at my new bohemian digs and travelled down from the country to put double locks on the back door. He was more concerned when Robin moved out with her boyfriend and I stayed on alone, although I soon had a boyfriend too, a fellow college student JV, who lived with his Italian parents in a small house in Fitzroy, covered with tomato trellises and grape vines. I was experiencing the deliciousness of Italian food and culture first hand and together JV and I were exploring the wonders of S-E-X. It was a bit of a fumble at first and didn't come naturally to me as i'd expected.
The moment I finally figured out the workings of the inner pelvic muscles and hit the orgasm jackpot was somehow the same moment I understood my mother. How or why that happened, I have no idea, but I wrote to her soon after telling her that as a fellow woman I sympathised with her plight and I would be there for her no matter what. So marked the the beginning of a correspondence by letter that would continue for the rest of her life.
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