At School

One evening while still at school I had my first vomiting experience due to alcohol. We had a party in the Dandenong Ranges house under the house, in a bottom flat where Sebastion slept, as a kind of farewell to the house. I drank scotch and coke and still remember that smell in my throat and the total feeling helplessness in the face of pure physical annihilation. The bottom flat of that house was free for us to use after we moved to Box Hill, and I spent some weekends there on my own or with Stephen, before it was rented out. The flat consisted of two living rooms, a tiny kitchenette, and a bath and washbasin between both rooms with a third door going under the main body of the upper house opening into the base of a dark stairwell with a locked door at the top. A shower, toilet and laundry were in this area under the house, next to a garage area with closed double wooden doors where the light seeped under, and where Jason had slept on his visits.
For a short time, Sebastion and I would come down those stairs after breakfast to use that shower on a daily basis when we were living there. But Dad told us not to because the tank water would run out. We had two large tanks at the side of the house. We had to buy water, which the fire brigade delivered, two years in a row.
While still living there, once when we were catching the bus to school, one of the popular girls with high blonde pigtails and a short, neatly creased summer uniform sat down next to me on my bus seat just to hold her dress next to mine for comparison. The white squares between her blue checks were white and smooth. My white squares were brown mottled and wrinkled. She stood up and walked away down the bus, leaving me none the wiser as to why she looked so good and why I didn't.
After we moved to Box Hill Mum worked in the city in a railway cafe serving and cleaning tables. Stephen and I would visit her sometimes if we had a reason to go into the city.
After school I would catch the train to Box Hill and walk home. In the evening Mum would arrive with a cooked chicken in a bag, and some coleslaw.
Later she changed to an office job and loved it. She bought some very smart pants suits and took alot of time over taking care of them.
I discovered an antique shop on the walk home from Box Hill railway station. I bought a brass vase there then took to calling in every day after school. At first I'd look around then leave, then I started going in there and sitting down, waiting for the young man who ran the shop to engage me in conversation. Then he started to avoid me by retreating into the back of his shop when he saw me coming, through the front, plate-glass window. So I stopped calling in.
Our rickety, weatherboard house backed onto the railway line. I could look into our backyard going to and from school. Trains thundering by on their embankment and the rattle of kitchen windows soon became a part of our lives as we grew used to the place. I had my own room; second door on the left off the hallway which led into the lounge and the beyond that, the kitchen. A linen closet and beyond that, a bathroom opened to the left off the lounge. The boys had rooms as did mum and dad. Sebastion was still living at home but would soon be travelling and then getting married.
The house had two fire places backing onto each other. The one in mum and dad's room wasn't used. Their window opened onto an open front verandah which was hung with fancy wrought iron lacework. We fed the lounge room fire with brown coal briquettes from Gippsland. A pianola stood in the lounge. We would take it in turns to pump the pedals, holding on to the wooden frame beneath the keys as they moved by themselves. It was a strenuous exercise. We would all sing along, reading words printed next to the wind holes on the old rolls of paper. Sebastion's friends loved coming to our house to sing along to the pianola and pump its pedals. They also played alot of card games with us in that lounge room. One of his friends enjoyed kissing me but it never went any further than that. Then another friend enjoyed kissing me. The third friend went further than kissing, but I was seventeen by then.
Standing in front of the narrow strip of mirror above the mantlepiece I cut my hair off once. Stephen hovered behind me anxious to help, but not knowing how. It didn't matter. I just wanted a new, more individual style.
Around that time I discovered the teen magazine Dolly at the newsagents. I read that magazine from cover to cover and felt I had a friend, then lived and longed for next months edition.
Most weekends I would go back to the Dandenong Ranges to stay at a friend of a friend's house. I never classified her as a friend because she was younger, and we just fell together. We would walk the cold, forested, winding roads late into the night singing loudly 'It's one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready....blue swede shoes.'
Everyone called my friend's friend by her nickname, Lizard. Lizard had boyfriends. Sometimes we would walk five kilometres or more to meet up with them. I wasn't interested in having a boyfriend.
One older boy decided he liked me. We were in a group at Olinda and some of us were going to get a taxi. An older women with us pointed out his obvoius liking of me. I ignored it. Then the boy took off his heavy coat and insisted, despite my objections, that I put it on over my light jumper and jeans. I didn't want to wear it, but reluctantly luxuriated in its warmth for a time. The taxi hadn't arrived yet and the boy was starting to shiver uncontrollably, rubbing his bare arms and bending forward making hissing noises from his mouth. I took the coat off and handed it back to him. The taxi arrived and even inside the taxi he couldn't stop shivering. Cold, black, windy, wet and about minus two degrees celsius is how I remember the Dandenong ranges during Autumn, Winter and Spring.
During Summer though, when we lived there, we would swim at the Olinda pool. I owned a beautiful yellow bikini swimsuit and loved meeting kids at that pool wearing it. One local boy kept holding me down under the water until I fought him to get to the surface and catch my breath. Another time he grabbed me forcefully from behind and insisted on us doing rude things together. I fought him off again, but felt soiled and unhappy.

My schooling ended after semi-satisfactorily completing year eleven. Later in the next year I would start nursing training. To fill in the next ten months I found work in a clothing factory in Box Hill. I left that job to work for the railways. Then I left that job to pack meat in a supermarket.
I visited Lizard on the weekends. Her family moved down from the mountains into a rented house in Upper Ferntree Gully. We would buy alcoholic apple cider and take it to a vacant block to drink it. Later in the night her motorcycle riding friends would turn up. We'd go back to her place, taking over the lounge area. If any one of the guys talked to me I would get cross and go to bed. I slept on a top buck in the set of two in her room. I woke up one night, looked over and down and saw her boyfriend lying on top of her under the covers of the bottom bunk opposite . They both froze, looking up at me. I turned over and went back to sleep. The next day she said that I had caught her at it. But I didn't actually feel that I had because I didn't actually see anything happening.
Lizard lived with two older brothers and a Mum and Dad. I asked Lizard once about the bruises she always had on her thighs. She told me that her Mum said that she bruised easily. So I thought that maybe she had a blood complaint of some sort. Once Lizard told me that she was the one who burnt down the gymnasium of the Tech school along her street. There had been a huge fire and thousands of dollars damage. I refused to believe her. She ranted at me that it was true but I just wouldn't believe her.
We wore dark mascara, eyeshadow and lipstick and disdainfully scorned the boys who took us into a local pub and bought us a drink.
We walked out on another boy who had invited us into his home when his parents had gone out because his music collection wasn't up to our standards.
We hooned around in a car with some boys chasing a terrified cat through bushland, refusing to say one word to the boys in the car.
Lizard and I were drifting apart by the time I started nursing training. After orientation I was no longer guaranteed of weekends free.
Mum decided to move again. They bought a home in Williamstown. By then I preferred to stay in the nurses residence and when I moved in with three other nurses into a rented terrace house I hardly saw my family.
The orientation for nurses took place away from the hospital. I was bunking in with a religious girl. She lead a group of us for a run around a nearby oval. This exersion had me nearly collapsing, out of breath and totally flushed on all fours on the ground. I took a liking to a girl in one of the other rooms. She was a bit older and had the appearance of experience. I tried to hang out with her and tolerantly, she didn't turn me away. Orientation finished. We moved into the nurses quarters at the hospital. Six months later I moved into a house with her and two other nurses. By then I drank as much and whenever I could, smoked cigarettes and pot and experienced several trips on Lsd.
I passed exams without studying; completed ward shifts; shirked the responsibility of getting experience by doing procedures that had to be ticked off on my record.
My woeful slowness at making beds drew comments from patients. I broke thermometres when shaking them by accidently hitting them on the end of the bed. I would hide in staff bathrooms to have a cigarette, return to the patient and expect her to still want her back washed with the bowl of water, now gone cold, I had left there twenty minutes previous.
Before night shifts I would drink two large bottles of beer which really annoyed my house mates. "Go and drink it in your bedroom, one would say, not out here." I would often end up with the lounge room all to myself and my housemates hiding away from me. At work, with a hangover, I'd disappear into the ward kitchen for ice cubes to suck on for my thirst.
On one social occasion a group of us decided to go out to a restaurant. I wasn't going to go because I didn't want to spend money. One very friendly girl called Ruth encouraged me to go along. She offered to pay for my meal. We all sat around a big table. I didn't know what to order, and in spite of many suggestions I ordered a lobster meal. Seafood was always raved about by my mother especially lobster, prawns and oysters. Mother was the only person that mattered in the universe of my home. So I ordered something that she would like. The girls looked at each other and one mumbled to Ruth "I'll help you pay for it."
Another time I joined a breakfast with a group of friends and was very hungover. We were all seated on the floor in the living room of a terrace house. Effort had been made to serve cut grapefruit with glace cherries, among other things, like toast and eggs. I was very thirsty and tried to get hold of more grapefruit. Ruth very kindly gave up her grapefruit for me.
After eighteen months of training I failed an exam. The Nursing of Children exam. I just couldn't see why I would have an interest in the care of children and refused to take the topic seriously. I was given two weeks notice. One tolerant tutor whom I had taken for granted completely as being a pushover, came up to me on the ward with the instruction to take down the hem of my dress and apron. It was disgusting. It occurred to me that she had never liked me all along.
I had taken up the hems myself so that they were very short. I didn't turn up for work again, but was only rostered on as an extra anyway. My nursing career came to an end. I also moved out of my room in the terrace house. My housemates were glad to see me move out judging by the way they avoided me especially in my last days. I moved back home to the house in Williamstown and a room of my own.