Melbourne

Plans were being made for us to move to Melbourne. I moved back into my bedroom but by the end of primary school we were on a train and going to Melbourne. We left our house and most belongings behind for the relatives to pack up for us. I was almost glad to be leaving because I could sense that the transition to high school for me was going to be friendless and challenging beyond my capacity to cope.
The relatives in Newcastle pointed out to Mum later, in a letter, and she passed this onto me, that my room had been swarming with fleas and this had caused alot of discomfort for those packing up the house ready for sale. These comments re-inforced my already entrenched feelings of shame and inadequacy.
In Melbourne, we were at first taken to Grandma's house in East Brunswick; a little, old, corner house with shop front, dark and heavily draped windows, heavy tablecloths, stuffed furniture and red carpet, but clean inside. My mind's image is of an aloof, smiling, big bosomed, long skirted old lady in a long, white apron; her thin, grey hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, and not very tall.
We stayed there then moved in with the Aunt and Uncle who had visited us in Newcastle. They ran a guest house in the Dandenong Ranges. We had visited them once before on one family road holiday, when they ran a guest house in Healesville.
We were put in dark, cold, clean rooms, separated from Mum and Dad who had their own bungalow. We helped with chores like drying up the dishes and were made to eat stewed apple and rhubarb which caused me to dry-retch. I liked to stay inside in my bedroom, possibly due to fear and anxiety about not knowing what to do, but the Aunt often chased me outside.
I joined the primary school, repeating my last year because of the different systems between the states of NSW and Victoria. We walked to school with our male cousins; one of them I fell in love with. The feelings I had for him were petrifying. He must have felt something for me too because he asked me to go off with him to the bushes when we were hanging out at the Recreation Reserve, but I couldn't. Trembling inside, I pulled my hand sharply out of his when he tried to drag me away. I stayed with the others. He kind of deflated and gave up on me. Much later he was killed in a traffic accident.
I tried to be good and I tried to please. But my unfortunate personality caused me to be either ignored or treated with disapproval and disdain. I loved Sunday school.
Mum took us to church every Sunday, and this continued when we moved into a house of our own, even though it was further for us to walk. School was further away as well. Stephen and I walked the couple of kilometres every day. Then I started high school and caught the bus with Sebastion.
My bed was in my parents room at first. Then a space was partitioned off for me in the lounge room. The boys each had their own room, and when Jason came to stay, he had a bed in the garage area under the house.
I played netball for a time, but it didn't work out. I was the least skilled on the team and usually a reserve; I didn't practice. My red spotted uniform was not regularly cleaned or ironed, I didn't bring cut up oranges for half-time when I was supposed to. But probably I 'knocked' all the other girls if they tried to excel. In the end the fat coach stood up for the other girls and sent me away. I recall a vague, unpleasant feeling of walking away into the recreation reserve, away from the hostility, in my polka-dot uniform.
In our house excelling was taboo so I tried to stop others from excelling as well.
I joined the girl guides. As a leader for a short time I tried to encourage other girls to bring money so we could buy cigarettes for our walk through the bush.
We became friends with other children in our street. My brother Stephen had a crush on my girlfriends sister. We all used to hang out at the Recreation ground, the 'Rec'. She asked me to tell Stephen that she only liked him as a friend.
I told him that she hated him and why would anyone like him anyway, that nobody would. I laid into him, trying to destroy and crush any feelings of self-worth he may have contemplated having. Later, the girl asked me what I had said. I told her and she became shaken and tearful, understanding why Stephen was now seriously avoiding her. He was not the type to challenge anyone. He just tried to be acceptable by being quiet and not attracting attention to himself.
We caught the bus to high school, or walked if we missed the bus, but we weren't each others allies. Once, for my birthday, Stephen gave a friend of his some money for a record for me. The friend took the money but didn't give over the record. I yelled and screamed at the friend to hand over the record but he didn't give it to Stephen until months later.
I was vomiting one afternoon before getting on the school bus, I couldn't stop vomiting so the bus driver stopped every hundred metres so that I could get out to vomit or dry retch.

After school and on the weekends we would go chestnut hunting. We'd open the spikey pods using the heels of our shoes, spend hours walking and collecting big bags of them then weigh, bag and sell them at our roadside stall on the weekends. Mum always said, put a little more in than less. I always put alot more in and our price was very reasonable. I secretly thought that nobody would really want to buy our chestnuts. As with daffodils. A girlfriend and I had a daffodil stall and she couldn't understand why I wanted to give two bunches for the price of one, but she let me do it and I felt exraordinarily low in her eyes, also depressed and unworthy to be asking anyone to buy our daffodils. She didn't feel the same way and didn't like me for it, but she was younger so didn't challenge me.
I was walking along the main road with a huge bag of chestnuts I had spent a long time collecting when a car pulled over and asked to buy the bag for one dollar. I didn't really want to hand it over because it hadn't been weighed and I suspected it was worth alot more. But the man, an Italian I guessed, was very persuasive so I handed him my bag and took the dollar. That day I felt real rage.
All my hard work for a dollar, then deprived of the slim pleasure of weighing up the chestnuts and seeing how much they were really worth. I pictured them weighing in at about three dollars. I seethed, walking home with empty hands and nothing to do when I got home. I fantasised about having a wonderful father; one who came along just when I needed him and told the Italian guy to F-off and leave me alone.
While we lived in the Dandenong Ranges we experienced snow two winters running, and then bushfires two Summers running. One year we were evacuated from high school because of the fires. The sky had turned black. I really wanted my parents to collect me from the evacuation centre, but instead a neighbor took me home when the emergency had passed.