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
