Girl on the Edge Read online

  *

  I first met Mr Cunnings, Coolah’s running coach, half way through year five. My father and I were invited to his home to talk about running. As we walked into the hallway, a crucifix caught my attention. The near-naked Jesus nailed on a cross was the only decoration. As he led us to the lounge room, the basic furnishings merely highlighted the sparseness of the room’s decoration. Mr Cunnings told me he ran because he loved it and that running was in his blood, actually his family’s blood. His brother, Tony Cunnings, had won a silver medal in the Steeplechase in the Commonwealth Games in 1972. Mrs Cunnings, his wife, was a schoolteacher at the Catholic primary school. They had two sons and all four family members loved to run.

  Mrs Cunnings appeared from the kitchen. As I was introduced to her, I froze when I saw her face. My new twin friends had told me all about her. She was a disciplinarian and I imagined the cane in her hand. She was renowned for her sour face, and on this day and every day forward I looked for a smile but never saw one. I accepted a glass of water and my father a cup of coffee. I agreed to commit to six days a week of training and to try my hardest. On the way home, my father told me that Mr Cunnings was deeply religious and had never had a drop of alcohol in his life. Although my father differed greatly from Mr Cunnings in his idea of what was a pleasurable pursuit, he respected that about him.

  I joined Mr Cunnings’ running group the next day. My father and I drove up to his house for training from 4.30 P.M. to 5.30 P.M. Mr Cunnings and my father loaded other neighbourhood kids into both cars and then drove to the training venue. A week later, Anthony joined the running group. I had a feeling it was to be near me, rather than for a career in running. He always ended up in the same car as me, looking over and smiling at me. When we ran, he kept up with me for about the first four hundred metres and then he ran out of puff. With my accelerating legs and strong torso combined with my determined, competitive mind I always left Anthony for dust. I outran everyone, except Mr Cunnings, for the next four years. On Sundays, we ran in the morning, to fit in with the evening mass that Mr Cunnings attended at Coolah Catholic Church. On other days, sometimes every day of the week, he prayed at the church. On holidays, he located a local mass. Mrs Cunnings was a dutiful wife and I got the impression that she saw her role as subordinate to the man of the house. My mother and father confirmed that not only had alcohol never passed his lips, he had not smoked a cigarette, or danced, in his entire life. I was curious as to why Mr and Mrs Cunnings were like that. I feared Mrs Cunnings. Every time I saw her sour face, I imagined a cane in her hand.

  *

  I feared Sister Edna even more, whenever I walked into the Catholic School for piano lessons. It was the only place in Coolah to learn music. My mother saved up, determined to create an opportunity for her children to learn an instrument. I started to learn the piano when I was twelve years of age and I was still twelve when I retired. Before then, I had perfected the art of drawing music symbols in my theory book and I practiced the piano daily as requested. In the lessons my fingers tried to locate the correct keys at the right moment. If I hit a wrong note Sister Edna swung her ruler down hard on my knuckles. I stopped playing while I rubbed my sore fingers. When I resumed playing I anticipated another crack from the ruler. Terrified of my teacher, the piano and of my fingers inability, I held back my tears. They burst forth when I opened the car door, declaring to my mother that I was never going back. Sister Edna had turned me off learning music altogether. Over time my confidence was eroded; I lasted six months. Four years later one of my brothers learnt to play the piano. With an ear for music, a new nun as his teacher, and no ruler, he enjoyed playing the piano and did so for many years.

  chapter four

  THE TOWNSHIP OF COOLAH

  Growing up in Coolah appeared easy for most, but it was not for me. A sense of belonging seemed to be shared by my peers, but I felt uncomfortable. However, I was unable to pin down why it was that I felt this way. I wondered if I really was the only kid who felt this way. The town was small and remote, so everyone knew each other, which did provide me with some sense of safety and protection from the outside world—the same world that I also yearned for.

  Partly, I had felt as if judging eyes were constantly upon me. My mother’s eyes looked me up and down and the townie women noticed me. The grazier families ignored me, as they did all of the other townie kids. But generally, a sense of surveillance hovered over me. At times I felt exposed, with nowhere to hide. When riding my bike to school, or just walking the streets, I often felt as if someone was watching me: a passer-by or someone peering between the curtains of a lounge room window.

  Coolah appealed to my parents because it provided secure employment for my father, which supported their dream of home ownership. Most of the people who had been born and bred in Coolah spoke of it as the centre of Australia. A job contract, work in the mill, or a marriage also bought other new people to Coolah. Many townie families also moved on as employment dried up and welfare dependency came to replace it. I would have been surprised though if anyone ever woke up and decided that they wished to live in Coolah. Sea changers picked coastal towns. Coolah was in the middle of nowhere.

  Coolah was a six hour drive from Sydney. On official maps, the name Coolah was often missing—the town represented only by a small black dot. The Scenic Tourist Route maps blessed the Black Stump with a name and dot, but bypassed the name Coolah. I knew this because I had searched for it on maps in the school library, and in our home, to fill in time. The first road sign as you entered Coolah stated that the speed limit was 60 km, the next that the Coolah Population was 900, and that it was the “Home of the Original Black Stump.” Local knowledge disputed at least one of these signs: the nine hundred included the outlying properties therefore the population of the town itself was actually fewer. The less than nine hundred people in Coolah included our six family members.

  It took two minutes and thirty-five seconds to drive from the sixty kilometre sign to the next one hundred kilometre speed limit sign, travelling at sixty kilometres an hour. I knew that because as a child I had begged for my parents to measure it. Later, as a teenager driving in a friend’s car, we would measure it again to pass the time. You passed through the town in a long blink of an eyelid.

  Binnia Street, the town’s main street, had a large general store that sold groceries, provided a newsagency service and stocked women’s and men’s clothing and hardware supplies. Across the road was a two-aisled supermarket. The other single story shops that stood between the two iconic landmarks of the Top Pub and the Bottom Pub included a cafe, a video store, a bakery, a gift shop, an arts and craft shop and a hairdresser. Both pubs were two stories tall, with walls filled with stuffed animals, old rifles, rugby league and rugby union paraphernalia, dartboards and pictures of young ladies in swimwear. All directions by locals were in relation to these two landmarks: “It’s well before the Top Pub.” Or, “Turn left two hundred metres past the Top Pub and you’ll see it.” Everyone knew of any goings-on in Binnia Street, but private family homes were a different story. Beyond the main street with its two significant landmarks was a golf club, a bowling club, a council swimming pool, a motel, a garage and mechanic shop and a petrol station. All were within four hundred metres of each other. A government school and a tiny Catholic school, a hospital and the doctor’s surgery were within eight hundred metres. The nearby large regional centres were Tamworth, a two-hour drive away, and Dubbo, a ninety-minute drive, if you kept to the speed limit. These provided commodities and services unavailable in Coolah, such as washing machines, coffee percolators, specialist medical services and, the most frequented by our family, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a drive-in theatre.

  *

  My mother drove my brother and I to school for our first year at Coolah Central School. The youngest two brothers were too young for school. As we pulled into the car park, my eyes would search for livestock in the adjoining paddocks. These paddocks featured scattered trees and long grass f
or miles and miles. The fenced paddocks disappeared into the rolling hills. My eyes scanned for cows, sheep and horses, the main livelihoods for the local farmers. The animals in question remained oblivious to my arrival, their heads lowered to munch on grass. Kangaroos differed in the inquisitiveness of their piercing stares, aimed directly at me. Even as their bodies faced away from me, their heads always turned towards me, ears pricked up, senses on high alert at my arrival. The kangaroos and I acknowledged one another by making eye contact before I headed off to the school assembly area.

  The subtle differences between the townie and the grazier kids constantly caught my eye at school. The general school uniform for boys was a light blue checked material shirt with grey shorts and for girls, a dress of the same material. However there were differences between the townie and grazier versions.

  All of the mothers of the townie girls bought the simplest and cheapest of the dresses available at the local Coolah shop. They were straight up and down, shorter dresses that were more like a potato sack. The grazier mothers had their daughters’ school dresses made up from patterns by dressmakers, so that their dresses were tailored and old fashioned. Their uniforms were curved and pleated, longer, and smarter, as well as being made to fit the body of the grazier daughter. Matching navy-blue ribbons were used to tie back the grazier girls’ hair. The townie boys wore Stubbies, grey shorts that were purchased very cheaply from the Best and Less shop in the next big town. The grazier boys wore longer school pants, with deep pockets, also tailored and smart. The grazier sons and daughters all wore navy socks above their black, buckled school shoes as part of their uniform. The townie kids wore white socks. Some townie kids presented as unkempt, raw, and rough around the edges. My mother proudly ensured that we shone with cleanliness of sleeve and face. She insisted on neat hair and school uniforms that had been ironed until they were creaseless when we left for school every day. We were townies, but respectable townies.

  The grazier kids attended the first four, five or six years of primary education with the townies kids at Coolah Central School and then they went to boarding school. Boarding school was supposed to provide a better education and maintain family traditions. I felt poor around the grazier kids in late primary school, whose families could afford boarding school fees that the townie families could not. Also, my mother had told us that the grazier kids thought that they were “better than the townies kids.” On the other hand the townie folks, including my mother, would say how sorry they felt for those young grazier children sent off to boarding school. Those children would be sent off to a boarding school at as young as nine or ten years of age.

  “It is bloody ridiculous sending young children to boarding school,” she would comment. She would often back this statement up with others such as, “Children need to be home with their parents and be provided with a home-cooked meal each night,” or that “Kids will do well in any school.”

  Schooling was the key way that the differing degrees of wealth within the grazier and the townie communities could be displayed. A boarding school was often selected based on where the parents themselves had attended as boarders. The really rich grazier families sent their girls to Ascham School and their boys to Kings School, both prestigious Sydney schools. Money for school fees had often been put aside, or even a trust fund set up, by these children’s grandparents. Boarding fees increased the annual bill to double that of a day student. The boarding fee for a child per year was huge compared to the average yearly salary of a townie. The fee was inconceivable for my parents. As all of my family members knew, there was no money to spare once the mortgage, food, utility bills, clothing, kids sport and the occasional outing for four children was paid for. The grazier families obviously earned a lot of money, or relied on large family trust funds.

  *

  The principal and teachers of Coolah Central School constantly reminded students of how fortunate the school was to have been categorised as both a “disadvantaged” and a “central” school, as this meant additional funding and resourcing. The recently erected new classrooms, library and administration building, plus the sheltered walkways stood out. The shiny new bricks of those buildings tried hard to blend in with the old bricks, but failed. The new structures were edged in a green that was a fraction of a shade lighter that the existing edging, so that several distinctions between new and old were visible. That categorisation as disadvantaged had been based on the income levels of parents. In order to receive state government funding in the 1970s for school-based programs, buildings, resources, excursions and additional teaching support, the majority of the school community had to be in a very low-income bracket. The left-school-at-year-ten box had to have been be frequently ticked in the surveys distributed to households by the school.

  I assured myself that I was fortunate to be growing up in the country. Teachers told us that many city kids had their views blocked by buildings, parked cars and busy streets. Some city schools had cement playgrounds with no grassed areas. This was inconceivable to Coolah kids. As I daydreamed, I wondered whether city kids lost more skin due to those concrete playgrounds. Were city kids more cautious? Were we free compared to city kids? Were city kids really that different to Coolah kids? I was yet to meet a city kid, or to visit Sydney, so I remained unsure of the answers to my questions.

  *

  At the end of term, I had a habit of riding my bike past the villas where the teachers lived, to watch them pack up their cars for their holidays. I had nothing else to do. Many teachers packed up for a Friday afternoon escape. Arriving at school on the last day with their car and roof racks packed allowed them to leave directly from the school car park as the final school bell rang. Some teachers left before then if they had a free lesson. Everyone at Coolah Central knew who left before the bell, after the bell, or on Saturday. The usual slurs circulated in the last week of school: “Can’t they even wait until Saturday morning,” or “Couldn’t even wait for the bell to ring.” Or “She hates it here.” Even less kindly were comments like: “Why can’t they spend one school holiday here, just one?” and “They think they’re too good for Coolah.” The chatter flowed in the playground, in the staff room and down the main street, but always behind the teachers’ backs. Some teachers escaped very early on the Saturday morning. When I rode past the villas’ car park mid-morning on the first day of the school holidays, it was empty. Guaranteed every time. No teachers were anywhere to be seen for the entire school holidays, until the day before the next term.

  Like a lot of the other townies my mother didn’t think much of the teachers. Once a month, my mother attended Parent and Citizen school meetings and came home mouthing-off about the “dickhead principal” and “stuck-up teachers” on staff. She disliked them and regularly told us, “They think they are in a class of their own.” I rarely heard about the agenda items.

  On the Sunday before school resumed, I would again ride past to watch teachers unloading their cars in the afternoon and into the night. Many other townie kids also walked or rode bikes around town looking for something to do. Everyone assumed that the teachers had all visited Sydney, the big smoke. I asked the teachers where they had spent their holidays. They answered with “Sydney” or “Staying with my parents,” or “I went to the coast”. What was it like to live in Sydney, or near the coast, I wondered? Townie residents told me that “Sydney is horrible,” and that “The best place on earth is Coolah.” I yearned for people who were different to those that I had met in Coolah, people who lived in cities, even in different countries; people with different priorities to those that held sway in the only town that I knew. There must be more to life than this.

  Years later, when my illness slowly took charge, no-one in Coolah saw the symptoms and signs. Not my family, friends, a teacher or any of the townies. I felt like no-one was on my side. My body was screaming out for help, but noone was looking out for me. Not one person out of eight hundred and ninety nine.

  chapter five

  FAMILY
RITUALS

  On every second Thursday, my mother would empty two pay packets onto the dining room table and organise the contents into piles: mortgage pile, bill piles, food pile, pocket money piles (for my father and for the kids) and other miscellaneous piles. The money had to last from fortnight to fortnight. On Fridays she banked any left over money. The money often ran out towards the end of the fortnight and when I started babysitting and earning money, she borrowed from me. She always paid me back the following Thursday.

  “Why do you manage the money?” I asked my mother.

  “Because your father can’t—he has no idea how to manage money,” she replied.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “If he was in charge he’d gamble it away and spend it on alcohol. I make sure the bills are paid and you’re all fed each week. If your father was in charge this wouldn’t happen,” was her reply. Well that certainly answered my question. Maybe she was right. Could he learn to budget, and get better with practice, or not, I wondered? My father’s fortnightly pocket money was his drinking and gambling money. He was allocated twenty or thirty dollars. If he was short on money, he borrowed from a mate, gambled at cards to try to increase it, or asked me for a small loan. I snuck it to him, as he always paid me back. It was our little secret. My mother told me to never lend my father money, as he would only drink it away. Other than this open display of making ends meet, our parents’ discussions of business and money matters were never held within earshot of the kids. This was called “adult talk.” Our parents ceased talking if they sensed one of us kids was listening. I sometimes eavesdropped from an adjoining room, until the boredom of the conversation outweighed the exhilaration of getting away with doing the wrong thing. This was my forbidden ritual.