the verandah, I was back sleeping on Mum and Dad’s bedroom floor while my cousins took over my room. Luckily I had a water bag, filled from the kettle on top of the stove, to keep me warm for at least the first part of the night.
I set my traps again and fed the calves while my cousins, as usual, slept in. One morning I was busy in the yards with the calves when Alicia, one of my girl cousins, bounded down the hill to the dairy, calling my name.
‘I’m over here in the calf pen, look where you put your feet,’ I yelled back.
Some of the calves developed scours from upset tummies while adjusting from their mother’s milk to my powdered brew and they squirted smelly yellow ‘custard’ all over the place.
I had been treating the worst-affected poddies, holding them in a corner of the dusty yard, opening their mouths and stuffing pink scour tablets inside. This was a messy job and I was not in a good mood.
‘Ade’s reading your diary,’ Alicia said, with telltale glee.
I saw red. I opened the pen gate, shooed the calves out and raced up the gravel track towards the house. Ade was coming down to the dairy. Younger than me, but a good 15kg heavier, he was laughing but not for long. I met him halfway.
‘Have you been reading my diary?’
Ade thought this was a joke. ‘Yes,’ he grinned.
I sprung and pounded his tubby chest with my fists. He fell backwards into the grass on the side of the track. I rode him to the ground, sat on him, pressed his hands above his head with my feet and continued to pummel him. He was crying now.
‘Don’t-you-ever-tell-anyone-what-you-read, and don’t-read-my-diary-again,’ I said, punching home every word.
Alicia, who witnessed these proceedings, was crying too.
‘Ade’s not moving,’ she wailed.
I paused in my pounding.
She was right. I’d winded him. Now I’d be in trouble.
I patted his face.
‘Ade, Ade, come on Ade.’
Ade stirred and I heaved him into a sitting position.
We reached agreement: I wouldn’t punch him any more in return for him forgetting what he read in my diary, and not telling anyone I’d whacked him. We were quickly best of friends again.
I gained 7kgs in three months and was doing well at school, becoming more outgoing and making new friends. Both classmates and teachers said, ‘June, you are coming out of your shell’.
Following the subsidence of my anorexia, I had emerged from being the quietest to one of the most bubbly students in the class.
Unaware that this was the calm before a storm, I was enjoying the freedom of being me.
On Saturday, November 23, the USA was in the news again. I was helping Dad clean up in the dairy after the morning milking when we stopped to listen as the news crackled over our shed wireless.
I had not heard the word ‘assassinated’ before but wrote in my diary as best I could:
Very history-making day.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY OF AMERICA WAS SACINATED IN DALLAS IN TEXAS. VERY SAD! TERRIBLE.
Everyone is sad, as Mr Kennedy has done a great good many things to the world. He was only 46. He was shot in the head, died 35 minutes later.
As I trudged up to the farmhouse a short time later, carrying a billy of milk for breakfast, I wondered why some people were cruel.
One month later, I celebrated my 13th birthday with a big slice of birthday cake. I weighed 55kg, almost 18kg more than 12 months before, and was 160cm tall. Almost free of food thoughts, I embraced my summer holidays. Straight after Christmas, Aunty Carlie and Uncle Roy took me to Adelaide, South Australia, a 15-hour drive from home. My aunt and uncle had been providing regular cultural enrichment since my first holiday with them at the age of seven. In Adelaide, they took me to the art gallery, museum, zoo, botanic gardens, port, airport and Barossa Valley wine-growing region. When I arrived home, Dad had a surprise waiting in the paddock—a chocolate-coloured horse, 13 hands high. This new equine friend replaced my white Shetland pony, Tommy, who I’d been riding since the age of nine. The newcomer quickly earned the name of Nipper because he nipped my backside whenever he got the chance. I rode Nipper to fetch our cows for milking and to collect our mail from the cream-can letterbox around the corner.
Completing a great holiday, Corinella, who ran the children’s page in The Sun newspaper, invited me to her annual party. Invitations were issued to children who won the most points in drawing and writing competitions throughout the year. The party included a ticket to a pantomime in Melbourne, and this was a big cultural treat for a bumpkin like me. I travelled on the train and my Great Aunt Della, who lived in the suburb of Elsternwick, looked after me.
Life appeared wonderful, and I strove to ignore niggling thoughts that something was wrong. In the past 12 months I had not menstruated and during the summer holidays had gradually—so that nobody noticed—dropped 7kg in weight.
In February I began the new school year, in Year Eight, a much happier, more outgoing child than a year before when I was withdrawn and frightened to speak. Classmates elected my friend Helen, who lived in Bairnsdale, as class captain and myself as vice-captain. Weekends were spent swimming, horse riding and helping on the farm.
Joy turned 16 in March and enrolled at a hairdressing academy in Melbourne. She had wanted to be a hairdresser since she was three. She often practised on me and one day had fed Tommy the Shetland a cup of sugar from the pantry while giving his beautiful long mane a crew-cut.
With Joy leaving home to board with our Aunt Marion and Uncle Alf for the next 16 months, I had our bedroom to myself.
The age of 14 was a period of stability, when I suppressed the nagging feelings and was pretty much free to be me. Home life seemed less stressful and I was happy—developing friendships, doing well at school, and helping my parents on the farm.
My weight stabilised between 46kg and 47kg; I won a Junior State Government Scholarship, was dux of Year Nine at school, was in the school hockey team and won a school cross-country race. One day my mother was called to the post office to collect a telegram from Sydney. It announced I had won a bicycle for having the most articles published during the previous six months in The Australian Children’s Newspaper. I was chuffed with the award but, as my old bike was more suited to our gravelled and corrugated roads, Dad and I decided to sell my prize to a bicycle shop. I received $27, enough to pay for a 10-day trip with the Young Australia League (YAL) to Sydney and the Blue Mountains, more than 700km from home, during the next summer holidays. I was excited by the chance to travel and make new friends. Writing was starting to provide opportunities outside the valley but the farm was my major source of inspiration and contentment.
During this time I was conscious of my food intake, but managed to control it. If I wanted a chocolate bar, I would walk for an hour so that I could eat the chocolate as a reward. Anorexic thoughts remained, but I thought I was in control, turning to them as needed to supress anxiety.
Thanks to my father, I was even starting to think life had possibilities despite my gender.
