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’.
