MEMOIR

It was back in the summer of 83 when leaded petrol cost fifty-nine cents a litre and the family could afford to go on the ‘Great Australian Road trip’. The ‘true-blue, go-to’ for a Christmas vacation period. Dad would check us into a Flag Inn Motel and reappear with a small, free carton of milk and the key to both our abode and our sheer excitement for the night. And breakfast. What a luxury! When the knock came on the door in the morning to collect the breakfast trays, we’d scramble to dress and sit to eat our small packets of corn flakes and rice bubbles washed down with pineapple juice. Mum would always complain that the toast was overcooked and insist Dad complain to the manager. We used to laugh when he’d return with an actual toaster, compliments of the management, and Mum would make the toast herself.

Nineteen Eighty- three was the year I started high school and Australia was in the grip of El Nino: The Big Drought. The heat was scorching, and the flora reduced to a dust bath. We were living with stringent water restrictions when shower time was short and reduced to ‘flicking the flannel’ as washing oneself was reliant on the soaked water within a single face wash. The conservation was both time-consuming and mentally straining. Not to sound stinky, but I’d rather just read my novels. This didn’t really sit well with my parents, however, as my Trixie Belden book would come out of the shower a pulpy mess while I’d be miraculously dry. I never saw the point in taking showers back then.

Many of my friends’ parents had gifted them with the trip of a lifetime before they were to start high school. You know, the saliant trip to Fiji or New Zealand. However, my parents thought it would be a good time to visit the extended family up in Cobram and Deniliquin, both small regional towns along the Murray River in Australia, though, I can’t recall what specifically prompted the urge. Sure, people visit family. Families go on family holidays. In other countries, parents take their children on a ‘coming to age’ vacation to Disneyland or the Colosseum in Rome, and I imagine wearing cute knitwear and drinking hot chocolate. But not us. No, we were to have an experience in the outback, in a small pocket of isolation that would later hold the world record title for parking as many utes as they could in a single paddock. A ‘ute’ is a ‘utility truck’ for those who need a translation from Aussie.

I don’t think Dad had ever visited his sisters in the country. I know I’d certainly never been before when the invitation was extended; it seemed like a good time for a family catch up. I didn’t know this side of the family well except for the occasional family celebration at my grandparents’ home back in the outer suburbs. All that I knew was that I might need a chiropractor on arriving home to address the wrench in my neck on my 5’4 body as it tried to relate to all my six- foot-plus relations. That holiday, I was given the nickname ‘shrimp’ which I still carry today even though I am over the age of fifty. Maybe it was the constant ‘put downs’ (pun quite intended) of my height or the fact I had nothing in common with my country cousins, that made me reticent to experience their hospitality. We didn’t really connect back then as we had nothing in common.

It was the trip to Deni itself which opened my eyes and has stuck with me all these years later. It was a traumatic start to a supposedly fun summer holiday. As my dad’s blue Mazda 626 sped down the Conargo Road, my eyes widened in dismay at the number of dead sheep laying on the ground, their carcasses bleached white and plagued by bushflies. For a twelve-year-old – who had only ever seen fluffy, fat healthy sheep at the Royal Melbourne Show or bottle fed the baby lambs at a petting zoo, this was akin to Ovis Aries Armageddon.

I tasted the bile in my throat and fought hard to keep those rice bubbles down. The high bleats from the surviving sheep were distressing as they wandered listlessly around the car.

Dad slowed the car to the crawl then stopped. Both my sister and I glanced at each other.

“Keep your windows wound up, girls,” he yelled from the front.

I could just make out Mum’s pursed lips from her side profile as she stared ahead.

Curse my height!

I couldn’t see over Dad’s towering head at what had caused us to stop. Mt sister, being those precious inches taller than me, gasped in dismay.

And then I saw it.

The road in front was littered with dirty, skeletal sheep, bleating for us to water and feed them. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I watched them hover between life and death. There were so many and suddenly it was clear why my father had issued his warning. My sister looked at me, determination wavered in her eyes. My fingers went to lift the lock on the door when Dad yelled,

“Don’t open those doors, girls!”

My eyes blazed. Of course, I was going to open the door and together, my sister and I would stuff as many struggling onto the back seat as we could. We’d tether them to the roof rack if we had to. Mum just shook her head.

“There’s nothing we can do.”

We spent the rest of the trip to Deni in silence, out childlike minds fuming over the injustice and inaction of our adult parents as they listened to Bananarama play on the radio. It was indeed a ‘cruel summer.’

We reached the cousins’ farm mid-afternoon. My stomach churned as I recalled the last time we played ‘family catch up’ at my grandparents’ farm. We’d been playing tag and my cousins scapegoated me into taking the punishment for climbing onto the stable’s roof to avoid capture. I still choke up when I remember my grandfather catching me by the scruff of my neck. His face turned purple, and I believed he was on the verge of a stroke. (I later took perverse delight when his ride on mower would only work in reverse, and he had to mow the paddocks backwards).

We jumped out of the car, grateful to stretch our legs and breathe the fresh air even though the dust had dried up all the spit in our mouths. Our parents were greeted by my aunt and uncle. The male cousins had formed an impenetrable scrum around us, scowls etched on their faces as they obviously didn’t relish ‘babysitting’ a couple of girls from the ‘big smoke’. I stayed back canvassing for possible escape routes before realising the driveway to the farm was longer than any cross country run I’d been on.

I gulped. The next couple of days were not going to be fun.

Suddenly a flurry of skirts caught my attention as my sister, and I were enveloped in a perfumed hug. Our one female cousin seemed happy to see us but still managed to dwarf us with her 5’8 height. She was a delightful spray of confection, a contrast against the bull-headed male family members who looked like they’d rather stick us girls in a bucket of sheep dip. My stomach would churn again, and my nerves were at the point of hysteria when the nervous tension bubbled up within me and I giggled. As though my chuckle was forbidden, the boys’ death stares reminded me of a poodle we once owned who struggled to pass a poo the size of a pea when Mum had placed the poor creature on a vegetarian diet. I remember the animal needed a stool softener. Maybe that was my cousins’ issue too, and a laxative would solve their irritated facial expressions.

Once settled, we joined the family in the kitchen for a cup of tea. Not quite ready to embrace the rural lifestyle, Mum had already boiled the water twice, much to my aunt’s amusement. I’m not sure what she thought would crawl out of the tea pot, but I knew she’d have a pack of wet wipes and a bottle of Dettol to deal with any hygiene emergency. I was surprised she didn’t make me line the loo seat with toilet paper when I had to go. She did, however, make me sing ‘Happy Birthday’ while I washed my hands, making sure my fingernails were scrubbed clean and the germs were ‘all gone’ as well as the top layer of my skin. I stared at my red, raw hands, reminding myself they were a small price to pay if I avoided Mum’s continual fuss and bother. She did however ask auntie why the water from the pipes looked brown. By this point, it must have been obvious to everyone we had no idea how septic and water tanks worked out in the bush.

Suddenly, the flurry of skirts returned−her face smeared with cream and raspberry jam from the scone she just devoured.

“You wanna go for a walk and see the cows?”

My sister and I nodded. I had no idea what ‘going to see the cows’ would be like but thought it could be no more traumatic than ‘seeing the sheep.’ In my naivety, I was already conjuring an image of friendly Friesians munching on emerald, green grass while Bach’s ‘Sheep may Safely Graze’ wafted from an imaginary speaker in the background.

“That sounds nice, dear,” my aunt said as she poured the tea. “Just make sure you don’t get too close to them”.

“And make sure you keep clean too,” Mum chimed in. “You only have two pairs of jeans, remember.”

I rolled my eyes. Of course, she’d say something like that. She was still cranky with me for packing more Trixie Belden books to read than clean pairs of undies.

Just as we walked through the backdoor, one of the male cousins yelled out,

“Stay away from Bruiser or he’ll get ya. He’ll have you weeing your pants.”

The last comment was greeted with loud guffaws and then the resounding thwack of someone getting a clip around the ears.

Bruiser, indeed.

So, us three girls set out on our adventure, grateful to be out in the sunshine and away from the taunts of the boys who’d shared their tale of a carpet python that had been stuck in the air conditioning vent in the family room. They’d almost convinced me that as soon as I’d turn out the light and go to bed, the carpet snake would coil itself around my throat and squeeze. “Carpet snakes hate little girls, especially the annoying cousin variety,” they’d sneered. While we were staying here, I would make sure to sleep with one eye open just in case.

I reckoned we’d walked a fair distance as my throat felt dry and I desperately wanted a drink of lemonade. My sister and cousin had turned red in the face, and I noticed the increasing wetness under their arms. None of us thought to take a hat let alone slather ourselves in sun block. I looked up at the harsh and unrelenting sky where there wasn’t a cloud to be seen. I’d begun to feel lightheaded and achy. All I wanted to do was to lay down, preferably on a soft pillowed mattress with whatever air conditioning was available blasting on my body and my imaginary lemonade now sporting one of those fancy paper umbrellas.

As we were about to sit on the dirt, a moo reverberated around the paddock. My heart thumped and as I looked at my sister and cousin, the sunburn leeching from their faces, I turned to what had startled her and felt the warmth trickle down my leg.

And there he was. Bruiser. In all his unfettered glory and his bulky balls flapping haphazardly in the breeze. My throat seized up as I took in his lowered head and hunched shoulders. He pawed the ground sending dirt flying behind him, then he rubbed his horns along the ground in what I would later learn was a display of pure male aggression.

For a moment we suffered from ‘deer- in-headlights’ and then, well, you know how if you come across a dangerous animal such as a snake and you’re told to stand still and not make a noise? That wasn’t us.

“RUN!”

My cousin didn’t have to tell me twice. I was off like a shot, as fast as my stumpy legs could carry me. I sprinted, desperate to catch up to my sister and cousin, whose longer legs carried them away quicker than mine. I silently prayed that if Bruiser had to pick someone, he’d pick them, not me. I could hear several moos behind me and wondered if Bruiser had brought some uninvited mates to this party.

My cousin turned back; fear etched on her face.

“We’re gonna have to jump.”

Wait!

What?

Jump?

Where?

And as quickly as I internalised that question, the answer quickly approached. A water irrigation channel. There was no way my short legs were going to clear it. In a blur, I watched the other two sail over it, skimming the water like gazelles and then SPLAT! I felt the muddy liquid slosh around my neck as I face planted in the water. I forgot to close my mouth and tasted the brackish wastewater from the crops and animal refuse. I spluttered as my head broke the water’s surface.

I heard laughter coming from the other side of the bank.

“I said, jump not swim!”

I lifted out of the water, the sludge in my Dunlop Volleys squeaked as I walked back to the house. At least there was a silver lining−I didn’t need to worry about wet pants as there wasn’t a part of me that was dry anymore.

My aunt was sympathetic and offered me a cup of lemon barley cordial, but it was Mum’s screaming that made me wish I was sitting back in the irrigation channel. The humiliation! She reminded me that I had no clean clothes to change into and that she’d be scrubbing the muck from my jeans for the next couple of hours. She even managed to convince me that I was going to die from some obscure bacterial disease or at least have a rare fungal infection from the incident. Dragging me into the bathroom, she continued to yell whilst, unsurprisingly, saturating the shower recess with Dettol.

My only solace was the Trixie Belden book I snuck into read while I pretended to wash. Even though my shower time was restricted, I was at least determined to at least finish the chapter and maybe even the whole book.

And to think, I had Bruiser to thank for the peace and solitude. I propped myself with pillows and opened to the first page of Chapter One.