Читать книгу A Girl Called Tim - June Alexander - Страница 12

At 15 years of age, I didn’t look thin. I mean, I didn’t look like I had a food or weight problem. I played tennis and hockey, enjoyed cross-country running, went to dances and worked on the farm; I ate most of the meals Mum dished up and, when visiting the homes of friends, I ate the meals there, too. This avoided many embarrassing moments, but I began to feel uneasy because I wasn’t developing like other girls.

The breasts that had distressed me when I was 11 had disappeared and my chest was flat. Mum, concerned that I’d not had a period for almost three years, took me to a doctor in Bairnsdale. He wrote a prescription for tablets and said to take them for three months.

My girlfriends did not know about my secret. Totally outgoing, they were starting to socialise with boys and encouraged me to keep up with them. Several were joining the Glenaladale Young Farmers’ Club and persuaded me to go along too. With 62 members, this was the largest and fastest-growing Young Farmers’ club in East Gippsland, and one of the most active in the Victorian Young Farmers (VYF) organisation. Aged between 14 and 25, the members met at 8pm on alternate Thursdays, in the Glenaladale Hall. The club calendar was full of cultural, agricultural and social events—including dances, rabbit hunts, progressive dinners and debating competitions—which attracted young men and women from miles around. Some, like me, were still at school, but most were working—usually the young men were on farms and the girls, while living on farms, had secretarial, teaching or nursing jobs in town.

Within three weeks of taking the tablets prescribed by the doctor, my periods returned. I was relieved and so was Mum. Now that I was growing up she didn’t call me Tim or Toby, and she encouraged my budding femininity by meeting me after school one day to shop for some teenage clothes: a pink jacket, a dark green tartan winter shift, a light blue pair of jeans, a pair of dark blue sneakers and pink lipstick.

To top it off, Mum bought fish and chips for me to eat on the way home. I was looking forward to finishing those tablets because although they had fixed me up and my breasts were filling out, they had made me gain weight. In 14 weeks I had gained about 7kg, making me 55kg. I was unhappy about this and tried to suppress growing unrest by helping on the farm and keeping fit. Sometimes on weekends, I milked the cows to give Dad a break, and I did more jobs on the tractor now that I had learnt how to change the gears. Running helped me feel stronger and happier and, being a member of the school hockey team, I regularly ran up the river and back for practice. All was going well but, after finishing the tablets, I missed another three periods. Mum took me back to the doctor and the news wasn’t good: ‘Becoming normal will take time, but don’t worry. Take these tablets for another six months,’ he said. ‘I hope I won’t get fat,’ I said. Within a month my periods resumed and I felt relieved, having feared they might not come again.

The medication was stirring my hormones and desire for independence. My parents would not allow me to go on a date until I was 16 but a friend, Rodney, wanted to escort me to a Young Farmers’ meeting. The VYF organisation was often referred to as a marriage bureau but I didn’t think the regular Thursday-night meetings should count as a ‘date’. However, Mum was adamant. ‘No,’ she said. She kept me on tenterhooks for several days before delivering this blunt judgement. My anxiety compounded to the point where I exploded, ‘Why not?’

‘Things happen,’ Mum said, ‘and I’ll tell your father if you keep on about it.’

My courage failing, I blurted, ‘Why haven’t you told me about the facts of life? Why haven’t you explained how babies are made?’ During lunchtime at school my girlfriends had whispered about ‘intercourse’, and laughed when I asked what the word meant. They explained and, feeling repulsed and horrified, I took their suggestion and borrowed a book on procreation from the school library.

Despite growing up on a farm, where I saw bulls mount and enter cows that were on heat, and nine months later watched the same cows giving birth, I remained ignorant and naïve about this wondrous act.

Feeling increasingly stressed, I began to wonder what those tablets were doing to my hormones. For the first time in three-and-a-half years I began to count calories, allowing myself no more than 1500 calories a day, to give myself a sense of control and security.

I am on a diet! I want to lose 3kg.

I was progressively eating less and exercising more but Mum occasionally had some pull, usually when she made chocolate crackles. The sight of those rice bubble crunchies made me forget my diet. Momentarily. Eating sugary food was pleasant but guilt quickly kicked in and I would have to go for a long run to regain my sense of control. Being outdoors and being physically active helped me feel good within myself.

At home we were becoming more modern, the latest update being hot water from a tap. A Lindenow tradesman installed a hot water service and a new slow-combustion stove that, besides being used for cooking and baking, heated the water. Hot- and cold-water taps were fitted in the bathroom and our big cast-iron bath with claw feet was boxed in. I was pleased, as our bath had looked horribly old-fashioned with its feet on show. The copper and our big firewood box were taken out of the washhouse, making room for a shower to be installed.

Dad had the first bath using the hot water system. Until now water for our bath had come from kettles carried from the kitchen stove, or buckets carried from the washhouse copper or the briquette heater at the cow-yard. I had the first shower; I’d envied friends who had a shower in their homes. Until now I had used a dipper to wash my hair, bending over in the bathtub. Now, I stood as a continuous spray of warm water washed the suds from my hair and down my body. This was bliss. I hoped the household improvements would help me feel more like my friends. Something was preventing me from connecting with them—I was on the periphery, rather than within, their friendship circle.

Academically I continued to achieve and in October The Examiner newspaper in Tasmania sent a letter announcing I was the Victorian female winner of a 1500-word essay competition on the ‘Apple Isle’. Dad was in the dairy when I told him and he left the cows alone for a moment to give me a big kiss. The prize for the boy and girl winner from each State was a week-long tour of Tasmania. This was exciting but, feeling anxious, I climbed high into the branches of the loquat tree outside our back door and ate bunches of the small yellow fruits, dropping their shiny round brown seeds on the ground below, until I felt bloated and sick.

At the end of the school year, just prior to Christmas, I joined other mainland essay winners and flew, on what was my first flight, from Melbourne to Launceston. From there we travelled with a chaperone in a bus around the island. We explored the former penal settlement at Port Arthur and, having recently read For the Term of his Natural Life by Marcus Clarke, I felt for the convicts at this isolated outpost, far from loved ones in England. We ate sample chocolates from the Cadbury’s factory at Claremont, and went to the drive-in theatre, our bus parked sideways so we could see out the windows. By now I had a crush on Philip, the Victorian boy essay winner, from Portland. We sat together and Philip introduced me to French kissing; I remember nothing about the movie.

The next day we donned hardhats to learn about lead, zinc and copper mining in the towns of Zeehan, Queenstown and Rosebery. In Launceston we visited the huge Paton and Baldwin’s spinning mill, which used power from Tasmania’s hydro-electric scheme.

For me, the best was left until last, with a tour of the The Examiner newspaper press and printing rooms in Launceston. For the first time I began to think of journalism as a career, and boarded the plane for home feeling more sure about my life goals.

Philip and I planned to meet again over the coming summer holidays but, within a few weeks of returning home to celebrate my 16th birthday, between Christmas and New Year, another boy won my heart.

The first Saturday in January 1967 began like any other. After reading a book until 2.30am I had to get up at 6am to help in the dairy and, although I pleaded tiredness, Mum and Dad were adamant that I accompany them to the dance that night at the Glenaladale Hall.

Supporting the local community by attending dances was important to my parents. Adults who didn’t dance played a card game, euchre, on trestle tables in the hall’s meeting room; at midnight, the dancing and card-playing ceased and the trestle tables were carried into the main hall where everyone gathered for a sumptuous homemade supper.

As soon as I entered the hall that night I was glad my parents had insisted I go along. The three-member ‘old-time band’, comprising pianist, saxophonist and drummer, had never sounded so good. This was because George Coster, a member of our Young Farmers’ Club, asked me for every dance. George, who lived on a dairy farm at Sarsfield, 40km away, not only danced with me but also sat with me. His twinkling brown eyes, framed by long curling eyelashes, brown wavy hair and sideburns, acted like a spell. My heart began to hop, skip and jump. George was 18, softly spoken and easy to talk to. Slightly taller than me, he was of strong and stocky build with biceps as big and hard as huge potatoes. We danced as one, as though we had been dancing forever, and had eyes only for each other. Mum and Dad had to remind me it was time to go home, and George walked me to their car.

This was the first time I had been escorted out of the hall by a boy. My parents had a strict rule that I wasn’t to leave the hall during the evening, except to go to the toilet. About a cricket-pitch length from the Glen hall’s back door, the women’s toilet was cocooned in a rickety weatherboard structure that doubled as a home for spiders. There was no light and my girlfriends and I yelled if we touched a cobweb, and raced back inside. My mother regularly warned me not to leave the hall for any other reason because ‘things do happen’. She would not elaborate but I guessed she meant that nine months later a baby might appear, and lives might be ruined. This train of events had happened to some of my girlfriends, who were sent away until their babies were born and adopted out. Falling pregnant when single meant shame for the girl and her family. Somehow the same stigma did not apply to the father of the child, who was free to get on with his life. George walking me to the car was okay, because my parents were walking with us. No time for even a quick kiss!

Now that I was 16, however, I was at the magical age at which I could start dating. Reminding my parents of this took courage. They probably did not dream that I would meet a boy within two weeks of my 16th birthday. Already I could hardly wait until the next Thursday night when I would see George at Young Farmers.

Tactfully, I asked Mum, and then Dad, if George could take me to the local dances and Young Farmers, and succeeded in getting ‘yes’ as an answer. I rang George and we talked for a whole hour. Mum was about to knock my block off but honestly George didn’t stop talking. He was delighted with my negotiating success and said he’d pick me up at 8.45pm the following Saturday to go dancing.

A month later I spent Saturday morning picking a bucket each of beans and tomatoes down the paddock for Mum. I helped in the house too, trying to get her in a good mood to ask if I could go with George to see the movie Dr Zhivago at the Moondale drive-in theatre in Lucknow, near Bairnsdale but she said: ‘No. You are not to go to the drive-in until you are 17.’ I thought two rejections in a row would be too much so, while milking the cows that night, I asked if I could go to Warragul with George in April to the Young Farmers’ State Achievement Day, and Dad said ‘Yes’! Warragul was a three-hour drive from home and the Young Farmers were booking rooms in a motel to stay overnight. I gave Dad a big hug.

My heart sang as I returned to school in February to start Year 11—happy because of George and because I had finished those pills that made my periods come back—this time successfully. The prefects for the new school year were announced in our school general assembly. Seventeen were from Year 11 and three were chosen by popular student vote from Year 10. Out of more than 100 students, I was one. ‘I must be normal,’ I thought, thankfully.

The school year had hardly started when I read a circular on the student notice board about an American Field Service Scholarship Scheme, offering a chance to attend school and live in the United States for a year. My imagination worked overtime. A fan of author Zane Grey, I saw myself as a cowgirl on a Texas ranch—riding a horse, cracking a whip and lassoing runaway calves. Dad liked that image too and said to me encouragingly, ‘You won’t know unless you have a go.’

The thought of pursuing a big goal like this helped to subdue my growing obsession with food. My days were increasingly defined by good days, as in being-in-control-of-food days, and bad days, when I ate until my mind was numb and my stomach about to burst. Farm work, and running along the river to Lambert’s Flat, helped to ease my anxiety.

Trying to maintain a sense of control by counting calories was a constant challenge: one day I ate 10 apples. Clearly that was a bad day, because the apples were just the start. George said I was ‘nice and cuddly’. This meant I was round and fat and I hoped I wasn’t that bad. Another day, Mum had school canteen duty and brought home some leftover salad rolls; I restricted my school lunch to raw fruit or vegetables and had been in control all day, counting every single calorie, but in a weak moment I grabbed two of those delicious rolls and gobbled them down in two minutes flat. That’s how long it took to break my false sense of security. Guilt was immediate and so was my punishment—I ran up the rocky river track and back twice, a total of 6km, in the dark.

One morning I arrived at school to discover my period had come early. I felt sick in the stomach but no wonder, because the night before I’d eaten a tray full of rich White Christmas slice and a large bag of grapes—after the evening meal.

Bulimia nervosa, the cycle of bingeing followed—in my case—by compensatory behaviours of exercising and fasting, was settling in. I did not know I had an illness. I thought I was weak for not coping. I wanted to be carefree like my friends but did not know how.

Amazingly, George seemed oblivious to my struggle. Going home after our latest date, a dance, he whispered in my ear as we cuddled in his car: ‘I love you, and I mean it.’ Not knowing what to say, I said nothing. I felt overwhelmed. This was the first time anyone had said to me: ‘I love you’. Although I didn’t feel worthy of his love, with George I could push my tormenting thoughts aside for a while and be myself; he became the centre of my world. He represented a rock-solid anchor that I could hang on to, against the pull of my eating disorder.

But I felt a growing urge to escape my nagging void within. I could not settle. Six months after George and I began dating, I mailed my application form for the American scholarship. Dad sent his confidential report too. I hoped that was not the last I’d hear of the scholarship because my eating problem was seriously sapping my ability to cope with the pressure of schoolwork, especially the twice-yearly examinations. While studying I either starved or gorged myself with food, food and more food. One evening I ate an entire 500g packet of sultanas after tea!

Sometimes I studied for seven hours and ate for seven hours. Then I would switch to stringently counting calories, thinking: ‘If I control what I eat, everything else will be manageable’. I felt happy, momentarily. I wished I had more time to help Mum and Dad with farm work and to ride Nipper. I also wanted to know if I should consider careers other than journalism.

Surely nobody could be as muddled, jumbled and undecided as me. I feel split between two worlds: I could leave school at the end of Year 11, live at home on the farm and work in Bairnsdale, or do Matriculation in Year 12 and go to Melbourne to university and get a really good job like teaching. The latter option is scary—I would surely get stressed out with study because I would feel I had to learn everything. I hope to win a scholarship to the United States to defer worrying for a while.

Controlling food intake was easier when the exams were over and I could catch up on some social life. George and I continued to go dancing every weekend and on our way home parked in the scrub off the Princes Highway, or up a seldom-used bush track, in his two-tone blue Holden. We had our favourite parking spots. Mum would have been impressed if she knew the effort I exerted to convince George we must not ‘go all the way’ because ‘things do happen’.

But she seemed to resent my freedom and happiness. One Sunday morning, after I had three consecutive nights of coming home after midnight, she opened my bedroom door at 7.30am to remind me the cows were being milked and Dad needed help. She didn’t care if I’d been out all night, saying, ‘Get up and help your father, you know how tired he is.’ Farm work was never-ending. There was no point saying, ‘But I’m tired,’ because her retort was swift: ‘Your father NEVER complains.’

The following Sunday morning, I went to bed at 2.20am, and again Mum opened my bedroom door at 7.30am, calling ‘Get out of bed. You know your father needs help in the dairy. You are either out with George or studying, you don’t help on the farm any more, and you know how tired Dad is.’

This time my temper flew as I headed to the dairy: I slammed the back door, didn’t say good-bye and left the front gate open, not caring if the chooks came in to the house yard and scratched for worms in the flower beds. However, Mum and I were back on good terms by nightfall. I felt guilty for not filling the role of a son, and guilty for being happy with the life I was starting to create with George.

I lived for the Saturday-night dances. My troubles were swept aside when George took me to the Sale Memorial Hall, where there was a large, polished floor and a band providing both old-time and rock ’n’ roll music. We hardly missed a dance and looked forward to our cuddle on the way home. These were the days before seatbelts were mandatory in cars, and George drove with his arm around me until pulling off the highway into our haven in the tea-tree scrub, and switching off the headlights. It was here one night that I eventually said: ‘I love you’. Once the words were out, I repeated them. George had already told me about 10 times, and now that I’d told him we both felt very happy. I told him things I had wanted to tell him for ages, including about my struggle with food, and while George may not have understood, he was comforting.

We were devoted to one another. Then, a letter came. There it was, leaning against the vase of flowers in the centre of our kitchen table when I arrived home from school. Mum had placed it there for me to open. Nervously slitting the envelope, I gently pulled out the sheet of paper and began reading from the bottom up. The American Australian Association was inviting me to attend an interview for an American Field Service scholarship!

Mum and Dad shared my excitement. The AFS had started an international student exchange in 1946 to promote cross-cultural understanding. Since then, thousands of students had been exchanged and now I had a chance of being an exchangee too.

I told George but made light of it—if I gained selection, which was surely doubtful, many months would pass before my departure.

Dad drove me to Melbourne for the interview. I wore a new bright red wool dress with a belt and polo-necked collar trimmed in white. There were seven girls in my group and we were all nervous. We were asked to discuss two topics among ourselves. Then we were called individually to face a panel of six interviewers; two were ex-AFSers. I was asked many questions: about why I wanted to go to the USA, about Australian and American politics, Vietnam, home and social life. I wished I could speak more clearly but was heartened by the panel’s interest in my essay-writing success and parting words, ‘Expect a letter within two weeks’.

The letter came. I slowly opened it and then, as my eyes raced over the contents, yelled, ‘I am being considered for a scholarship.’ Mum and Dad were pleased. My Texan-ranch visions were becoming more real. There would be a home interview and later a group interview. The following day, a Health Certificate form arrived from the American Australian Association. Its many questions included one about nervous breakdowns and psychiatrists. ‘You have seen a psychiatrist,’ Mum said, ‘but we will ignore that question.’

My family preferred to think I was fine and I tried to appear fine because I didn’t want people thinking I was strange or weak, but waves of torment were building within. One evening, nine months after George and I had started dating, I felt like howling when we had our first misunderstanding. I was at fault. He came for tea, and I was ready in my red dress to go dancing at Sale, when he said he had to visit some extended family locally instead. I didn’t mind, but all we did was sit and listen and talk. Mum and Dad had gone out that night too and we were home before them: at about 11.30pm. I wasn’t in a kissing mood and all sorts of things—the sudden change in plans for the evening, uncertainty about my scholarship application, essay deadlines, and the thought of no entertainment for the next two weeks while my exams were on—added up to make me very quiet and not altogether pleasant. Mum and Dad arrived home and George departed without kissing me goodnight. This was the first time he’d done that.

I could think of only one way to calm my anxiety.

After my parents went to bed I crept to the kitchen, opened the fridge door and ate an entire plateful of buttered drop-scones that Mum had brought home from her evening out. By now the time was 1.50am and, wide-awake, I read some magazines and listened to the wireless to calm myself. Next morning I didn’t eat breakfast and with each new hour of not eating, began to feel happier. I didn’t know what Mum thought about all her drop-scones disappearing. Wisely, she didn’t ask. My spirits lifted further when George visited in the afternoon and I apologised for my rudeness. I loved him yet acted as though I felt the opposite. I didn’t know what was wrong with me.

Another invitation arrived from the American Australian Association to a meeting in Melbourne, this time to meet other scholarship applicants still in the race. Seventy-five per cent of us would be placed with suitable families but final confirmation would not take place for another four months.

Uncertainty began to feed my waves of depression and I was grateful to my sunny-natured girlfriend Helen Edwards, who lived on a sheep grazing property at Fernbank, near Glenaladale, for keeping my spirits up. I called her ‘Helen Eddy’ to differentiate from my other best friend, Helen McLeod, who lived in Bairnsdale. I’d been friends with each since starting high school. Helen Eddy and I travelled on the same bus to school. Her strengths were the sciences, whereas mine was humanities. We were always concerned about our weight and joked about our diets, and how much we had eaten the night before. Helen Eddy was outgoing and more than anyone else encouraged me to join the Young Farmers’ organisation. Boys and schoolwork were our main topics of conversation. Helen was of Swiss heritage and had long and glossy straight black hair, high rosy cheekbones and sparkling Sophia Loren eyes. She was beautiful, in both nature and looks. She was highly sought-after by boys and, at 15, had dated George before dropping him for one of my cousins. I had thought George was handsome and encouraged Helen not to drop him. Now, however, I was glad she ignored my suggestion, because six months later he had started dating me. At times Helen and I laughed so much on our way to and from school—sharing descriptions of our romantic parking adventures—that our bus driver threatened to put us off. We studied hard and our giggling fits left us weak and let the tension out.

However, my anxiety was increasing and I’d been feeling black for two days when Mum collected me after school one day to go shopping.

My depressed mood grew today and reached its climax when Mum picked me up from school at 2pm and went down the street. I ate some raisins (how fattening!) and bought an ice-cream—ugh! And on the way home I started to cry and I don’t know why … Mum doesn’t either, I’m sure. I told her I was sick of rushing everywhere. Anyway, I gorged myself on apples and oranges when we arrived home and Mum made me eat all my tea and I also drank a litre of lovely pineapple drink that I bought. I’m out of my mood now and I am NOT going to gorge myself again, no matter how depressed I get.

A letter the following week confirmed my name had been sent to New York for an AFS scholarship, and only one step remained—that of being matched with a suitable family. I told Mum and Dad that if I received a placement, I’d prefer to stay home and work locally when I returned, as I wanted to get married at the age of 21. Mum said: ‘It will be a wonder if you aren’t married before then!’ Mum and Dad liked George, and also his parents, Charlie and Marion. Already they visited each other, and community and farming were common bonds.

Knowing we might be separated for 12 months, George and I made the most of our time together. On Saturday afternoons we played tennis with the Young Farmers’ Club and, after milking the cows and eating tea, we dressed up and went dancing, usually at Sale. I wore a dress, stockings and squat heels, and George a shirt and tie, maroon sports jacket and dark sports trousers. We loved rock ’n’ roll and old-time dance music equally and were on the floor from 9pm until the band stopped at midnight. We twisted, rocked and swayed with hit songs by Johnny O’Keefe, Col Joye, Normie Rowe, Elvis Presley, the Bee Gees and Buddy Holly. We sneaked a kiss and held each other tight in the slow Foxtrot, swung around in the Evening Three Step and looked forward to being in each other’s arms on completing the circle in the graceful progressive Pride of Erin. I forgot my troubles while dancing; especially one night when in a romantic moment George whispered, ‘I want you forever.’

I whispered back, ‘You can have me.’

He said, ‘I’ll be waiting for you when you come back from America.’

This assurance was comforting but, a month before my end of Year 11 exams, dark moods swept in. I pitied everyone who came near me. The effort of trying to subdue my urge to eat so I could study was debilitating. Passing a subject was never enough—I had to do my very best and felt guilty if not constantly studying. Fearful of failure, I stopped playing tennis and curtailed seeing George. I memorised every page of class notes.

Stupid schoolwork; I am absolutely sure these will be my last exams, even though the Year 12 co-coordinator is insisting I go to university and do an arts degree.

George had left school at 16 to work on his father’s dairy farm. He played tennis in summer, football in winter and participated in the Young Farmers’ Club, and I wanted to be settled and content like him.

He influenced my decision making, because he was saying, ‘We are going to be together for always.’ George was already like a rock in my life. He was as steady and sensible as I was vulnerable and naïve. When he said we would be together always, I believed him, but still I was not happy with my body size. I’d lost 3kg in a month and he said: ‘I like you as you are and don’t want you to get an ounce heavier or lighter.’ But I wanted to get thinner yet.

On weekends, in warm weather, I took my books down to the river’s edge and sat on the rocks with my toes in a rock pool, soaking up the sun’s warmth on my back, and feeling pacified in the peaceful setting. Such peace was short-lived. One day the sun got too hot and, returning to the house:

I ate and ate—and am not eating excessively again! I ate so much my stomach was turning somersaults: with peanuts, Twisties, ice cream, oranges, apples and dry biscuits. What a mixture! I thought I would have a feast seeing as the scales registered only 52kg when I weighed myself yesterday, but I can’t say I was eating because I was hungry—must be tension.

Next morning on the school bus, I confessed my loss of food control to Helen. She had eaten a lot too, but surely nowhere near as much as me. We spent nearly all day laughing at anything, but mainly at the size of our stomachs. We’d eaten so much they looked as if we were having babies, and that wasn’t exaggerating. Again, we couldn’t stop ourselves laughing. Tears streamed down our faces; it was one way of letting the tension out, I supposed. Nerves, that’s what it was.

I’m going on a diet starting tomorrow. I feel that sick from eating. Ugh!

With three weeks until my first Year 11 exam, determined to gain control, I adopted a strict routine, eating raw carrots and limes for my school lunch—the lime tree in what we called the ‘old orchard’ on the farm was loaded with fruit, and Dad grew the carrots, so there was plenty of both. Neither could be eaten quickly—the limes were sour and the carrots hard—so sucking on the lime and chomping on the carrots filled my lunch hour, if not my stomach. And the calories were easy to count. I looked at my friends happily eating salad rolls, meat pies and pasties, cream buns, vanilla slices and Paddle Pop ice-creams—all available at the school canteen, and marvelled at them eating such calorie-loaded food without being overwhelmed with guilt.

A few days before the exams began, Mum and Dad saw my principal, Mr Dyson, about my study options for the following year. Mr Dyson said I could start my Matriculation in February and, if I went to the USA in July, finish it when I returned home 12 months later. I didn’t agree—I knew I’d be a nervous wreck.

Studying for the Year 11 exams was hard enough. One night my control broke. I tried to silence my anxiety, devouring a 300g packet of peanuts in less than an hour.

That was just the start. I ate enough to fill the world’s largest elephant.

Amazingly, when the exams were over I weighed only 54kg in my school uniform. My relief was supreme and I looked forward to my 17th birthday. George and I celebrated this by doing the ‘in’ thing and going to the Moondale Drive-in to see a movie—well, part of a movie because we were distracted much of the time—snuggled up with cushions and rug in the comfort and privacy of his two-tone blue Holden.

We went to Lakes Entrance, a 45-minute drive from the farm, on New Year’s Eve. In East Gippsland, this coastal town was the place to be on the eve of January 1, with two dances and a carnival in full swing on the Esplanade. As the night wore on, the crowd became merrier, yelling ‘’Appy New Year’, to anybody or nobody, and motorists hooted and tooted.

At midnight George and I sat on the edge of the sea wall, the lights and the roar of the carnival behind us, and watched colourful fireworks shoot above the sand dunes on the far side of the channel. Afterwards we met up with Joy and her boyfriend Ray and squeezed around a table in a small, crowded café for a milkshake and hamburger with the lot—I figured I had danced enough to earn this treat. I was enjoying my hamburger until I went ‘crunch’ and realised the chef had served the eggshell too! George and I departed Lakes Entrance at 2.30am, stopping to cuddle for an hour in the scrub, and we crawled into our separate beds in adjacent rooms at his parents’ house at 4.35am.

Sometimes I almost felt normal.

The year 1968 began with Joy and Ray announcing their engagement. I’d expected this for a long while and was delighted for them. Ray, a carpenter with a Bairnsdale builder, asked Dad’s for consent down at the dairy after an evening of milking, and was so nervous he lit his cigarette at the wrong end.

In February I began my ‘Matric’ Year 12, studying English Expression, English Literature, French, Australian History and Biology. There had been no news about my American trip and I tried not to care. Just as I was going up the pole waiting, and Mum was about to topple off, the letter arrived. Encouraged by its big size, I tore it open to find a letter of congratulations on being selected as an exchange student. Almost a year had passed since starting the application process and I’d been afraid to think about going in case I wasn’t selected. Now I could allow myself to feel excited. I ran to the dairy and tell Dad; he gave me two big kisses. Mum seemed to have mixed feelings. Joy was happy. I rang George at 8pm. He answered the telephone and as soon as I said ‘Hello’ he knew the letter had come. ‘It has come, hasn’t it?’ he asked. ‘I can tell by the sound of your voice that you are going to the USA.’ He made me tell him that I’d won a scholarship and then he fell quiet.

I would miss George but my dream was coming true. Well, almost. My host family did not live on a Texas ranch. They lived on a Hampshire hog farm in Missouri.