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
