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What Can I Say? - Story of a Photo

"Don't you dare write about us!" they shrieked in unison. "OK OK already yet," I replied in my new New York voice". "Promise!! Promise us!" they repeated as I turned away, a smile on my face.

I didn't promise, but I'll be fair to my two old friends who recently came to New York to see me, and Manhattan. I'll be quiet.

Two days later: a bunch of Australians Abroad members were chatting in the site's cyber pub. We were joined by a new chatter going by the name of "Latashana aka LaLA" - obviously a young kid wagging school. As we 'talked' it became apparent to her that we were not of her generation. "How old are you?" she asked. We each typed out some large numbers. Her reaction of pure horror came through cyberspace, 'You guys is scary,' she typed. 'Old people don't use computers'. And so on.

Later, while talking to one of the online oldies I experienced a sense of dejà vue. " Don't write about getting old!!" I was ordered.

Enough already. But it was to happen again. "Don't write about having no friends - it is too close to home, two upsetting," said by several people in response to a topic I started - "I am the Friendless" on my website.

OK ladies, I get the picture. I will not talk about my Melbourne friends holidaying in New York, about getting old, or about being friendless. At least not this week.

Instead I'll remember Australia and talk about a photo I came across today.

Bendoc
Bendoc is a very small town on the border of NSW and Victoria. It is not on the Murray which divides most of the two states, but on the dotted line that you see on the map. below.

I spent twelve months and had my first child there. I'd just come back to Australia from London and so it was some culture shock.

Bendoc may have changed, but in the seventies it was comprised of a police station, a small Forestry Commission Office, the obligatory pub, a rural school with adjoining teacher's residence, and a small shop which sold very little and was only open a couple of hours a day.

The closest hospital was in Delegate across the border, but I gave birth to Ebon at Bombala which was a two hour drive away, but had more facilities.

Whilst my husband taught next door at the school which had fifteen students ranging from bubs (pre-school) to grade six, I stayed home with the baby. I couldn't drive - I'd never needed to, having lived in the inner city of Melbourne and in London in my early adult years. There was no public transport. No other young mothers. From memory there were only three other houses within walking distance.

I'd shop in Delegate once a week. All I can remember of Delegate is that I was once naive enough to ask the greengrocer there, if he had any broccoli. "We don't have wog food here" he said, and from then on I was a persona non gratis.

I do remember having a TV that only received sound and one channel. I remember the monthly visits from the visiting Rural nurse service. The Rawleigh man. And later a hippie family.

The hippies, Bob and Debbie, lived halfway down the dirt road on the way to Orbost - a two and a half hour drive - in an area called Goongerah. They had bought half a hill and lived in a house precariously sited dead center up the precarious slope. They had a baby too, Sammy.

Unfortunately I only met them in the last two months of my stay in Bendoc. They 'found' me when rumours of another 'city couple' moving in, reached the local pub.

Oh what a different life that was. Clean air, bright blue skies, no people, absolute quiet except for the sound of magpies and the rustling of the leaves in the gumtrees. I used to wash the clothes by boiling watter in a copper - can you believe it? - and poking it around with a heavy wooden stick. Memories of Henry Lawson's "Drover's Wife" ...

I'd hang the washing out on the rotary clothes-line in the backyard, and was frightened by the magpies that swooped around my head. A city girl in the Australian bush.

I cannot imagine it, unless I look at the photo of a much younger me, sitting in the backyard of the schoolhouse. Just me and Ebon and the husband who took the photo.

Did I feel isolated? A bit, but on the while I enjoyed the experience. I'd married a man who loved the bush and who was not too keen on people. Nevertheless he promised to apply for a school in a more built-up area, after the one year assignment at Bendoc.

Sitting at the kitchen table in the schoolhouse at Bendoc, I'd imagine a new life - I imagined mixing with other young mums, having my Melbourne friends visit, learning to drive, taking trips to Melbourne by myself, joining a library, buying broccoli ...

Was it to be? You tell me.

Here am I at my next place of residence. Baby Ebon is now a toddler. And I am an experienced mother, just pregnant with our second child.

Well so much from reminiscing. Here I am living on the other side of the world in crowded Manhattan. A totally opposite life to that of life in the Australian bush, now a distant and happy memory.

And I'm pretty proud of myself - I have not said one thing about feeling friendless, getting old, or what my two Australian friends got up to in New York.






Kate Juliff
New York
October 2005