THE FIRST TIME I SAILED IN AN OCEAN LINER…..

 
I was nine years old, standing on the dock at Sydney Harbour.   Wrapped in a theatre-like cocoon of darkness, unaware of any of the figures about me,  I focused solely on the brilliance of the lights ahead.  From pointed prow to stern the ship’s lights played on the decks, bobbed and teased in its bed of sea.  I had been aboard and had seen for myself the magical world behind the portholes:  the vast expanse of foyer from which a grand staircase fanned, then narrowed to a world of such glamour I could envisage Ava Gardner herself descending in a golden gown and jewels.
 
“Next time”, I whispered from a new depth, “next time, I will be on the deck, not the dock!”
 
It took 11 years.
 
Back in Sydney after five years or so in Melbourne, aged 19, sitting in a small, beige room, with a scatter of beige women clicking on black typewriters, dully lit from a mean ceiling height window, with more impetuosity than planning, I took flight (and fright) and reached for a ‘phone:  “I don’t care if I travel in the hold … with sheep!”
 
I was earning a pittance (female!), share/renting two rooms in a house in Rose Bay, being incredibly thrifty (probably stingy, actually) yet only a year later I had saved the one-way fare to Durban.
 
Wearing a silly grin and home-made dress, I walked up the gangplank of the Southern Cross on January 17, 1963.     At last, this was really me standing on the deck crowded with equally starry-eyed passengers, all juggling for a good possie from which to wave hands and streamers at the upturned faces on the dock.   Elation smothered any sadness or realization of who and what I was leaving for heavens knew how long.    Departing from Melbourne, where I’d spent a week saying adieu to family and friends, it was to be two weeks before we sighted the headland at Durban (and probably still would, by sea).      The journey was an adventure and you really knew you were going to the other side of the world, a far cry from the hours of cramped, anti-social, topsy-turvy time zones of today’s flying.  
I had absolutely no qualms about travelling alone; I was self-assured and living my dream.   And I wasn’t the only one: this was an era in which a diaspora of young Australians fled their isolated island in droves to broaden their horizons, literally and figuratively.  They were mainly women, as most young men, post school, were having to seriously establish a career or study, and they were usually headed for Earl’s Court, aka Kangaroo Valley, in London, to help the likes of Rolf Harris ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down.’   I didn’t take this path, as I had been lured to discover South Africa by the stories of childhood friends, books and a current offer to meet, greet and guide.   But that’s another story altogether.
 
The Southern Cross, like its sister ship, the Northern Star, was ‘one class’, in that a passenger was free to explore and share the length of the ship.   However, there were two distinct areas of decor and music: one chintz and classic and the other modern and juke box.     I spent most of the nights in the latter and sought refuge to recharge many an afternoon in the former.
 
Three other ladies shared the four-bunk cabin with me.     All middle aged (definitely over 40!) they were kind and took a motherly interest in me.     They were probably concerned one so young was travelling alone and spent so few hours off the dance floor!  I remember a hand basin and small cupboards, so the bathroom would have been down the passage.   I had a top bunk and decided it was definitely the best spot.   To this day, I still say, apropos of many situations in life: “I’m a top bunk girl!”
 
The days were full with deck sports, swimming, reading, chatting with new friends, and especially finding quiet moments to just ‘be’ and soak up the sounds, smells, movement and textures of ship and sea, a lasting love.   Evening had a special buzz: dressing for dinner and the dance to follow; meeting friends for pre-dinner drinks.   The dining room was large, glamorous, and where waiters glided from table to table with delicious platters of food, there was a genteel clink of cutlery, glasses and voices … and phantoms to clean and transform for breakfast.
 
This was an era where the male of the species was always expected to pay for the pleasure of female company.   Amongst we young singles on board this aspect of etiquette was quickly abandoned.   Most of us were in the same boat (pardon the pun), having scrimped and saved for the fare, not knowing how long our meagre purses would have to last, especially those of us who didn’t have employment lined up.  We were a friendly, well-behaved group, unlike stories we hear about about the behaviour of some people on modern cruise ships.   I’m sure the difference is between having a holiday and setting out on a dream-filling adventure, needing to mature and develop a sense of responsibility quick smart!  Yes, we had our brandies and shandies, danced and laughed at inanities, but we also spent many hours talking seriously, sharing stories of our diverse childhoods, discussing plans and dreams; strangers becoming friends.
 
The ship stopped in Adelaide and Fremantle and as we sailed out of this last Australian port, I wrote in my diary at the time: leaning over the rail, watching the docks and fingers of land glide into the distance until they were mere smudges on the horizon, I felt the first pang of reality – a mingling of trepidation, joy and expectancy.   No turning back; I have seen the last of my homeland and from now on all will be foreign: soil, language, currency, a new life and friends.
 
A group of us woke early and went on deck in the wee hours of the last night.     Durban is a similar latitude to Brisbane, so on January 31 the pre-dawn air was balmy, and we stood silently watching a splendid sunrise cross from the ocean horizon to warm and waken Durban.   For most of my friends this was the half-way point to London, but for me it was disembarkation to an amazing new day.
 
Footnote:   This was the first of four such sea voyages between Australia and South Africa, and two on the Holland Africa line England/South Africa.    The last, aboard the Marconi in March 1974, brought me home to Australia to settle permanently.  Actually, because of the oil crisis, it was the last ship from the Cape for some time, and I believe that was the beginning of the end of sea voyage as we knew it.

TRAUMA

There was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead.   When she was good, she was very, very good and when she was bad, she was horrid.

Frances was considered quite a beauty in her youth.  She had shoulder-length, wavy, titian coloured hair, a creamy, flawless complexion, blue eyes which sparkled with wit and humour and a fairly tall, slim, but shapely figure.  She was also very stylish, ambitious, intelligent and a snob.      

And she was a narcissist.

Narcissists are usually in control: be it of a situation; a room; a project; other people.   They will be attentive, caring, ready to assist, to solve your problems, guide you from dark to light, their light!    This is usually for the benefit of onlookers and yourself, of course, to elicit praise and gratitude.    However, they are also fragile, with a low self esteem hidden away beneath the layers of chutzpah.   No greater example of this is the storm unleashed should you be foolish, ungrateful or honest enough to reject their advice, to question their opinion, to appear in any way to spurn them, albeit unintentionally or imagined.

Over the years I had learned to watch for the signs, to try not to take the insults personally, to praise when praise was due.  Still, not being obsequious by nature I often found myself  ‘sent to Coventry’.   The slam of a severed ‘phone call, the icy, dismissive glare, and it would be months, often years, before she would sail back into your life again, with the rustle of silk, the waft of French perfume, all smiles and intimacy.   You were forgiven (for what, you rarely knew) and it was known your deeply ingrained sense of propriety would ensure Frances was welcomed as though there had been no break.

You had an obligation to play this game, to enjoy the good and ignore the ‘horrid’.   Such a relationship is wearing, nonetheless, and you and she both knew there was a wariness on your part, a stepping back, a layer of self protection.   Not only were you protecting yourself, but as time went on, husband and children.   The former would be tolerant for your sake, but the children were scarred, not understanding that their crime was their existence.  Frances, in turn, could not understand why we weren’t all in awe of her, extremely grateful to be connected to such a dazzling creature.   Surely we desired nothing more than to live in the shadow of her success, both business and social.  Surely we were proud of the glamour and trappings of success?   Affection?   Well, perhaps a proffered cheek; otherwise, don’t touch!

It was also important that you did well in some non-competitive (with her) field or other, so that your achievements could be extolled, with more than a hint of just who you had to thank for your talent or guidance.

I was either interstate or out of the country for about 14 years, which would have served her well, my existence being something to be either ignored or exaggerated.

What a disappointment I was: not a beauty (plastic surgery should be considered when you’re older); didn’t marry money or position.   Poor Frances!
How harsh this all sounds, yet I assure you that for the most part, from a very early age, I set about to try and understand the nature of this woman whose life was so intertwined with mine.   It was so important to make excuses for the bad and find as many examples as possible of the good.   I really do owe much to her tutoring on such things as etiquette and what constitutes ‘good taste’.   On quite a few occasions, particularly when young and travelling, I found myself whispering a ‘thank you Frances’ over my shoulder.   The only time she let me down was when I found myself the only woman at a table of Frenchmen confronted with the implements for eating snails!   The men, of course, would not begin to eat until I, as the woman, picked up said implements.   

My husband tells me I have a tendency to analyse situations and people, philosophising too much.   I know he’s right, and I’m pretty sure I know where it started!

Thus the years passed for us both, either intertwined or with me in Coventry.   During the former times we worked together, as I assisted her with her business, and socially.   One thing we had in common was a love of entertaining and I rarely had a luncheon or dinner without including her, and for the most part my friends delighted in her company.   In fact, Frances embraced many of my friends into her own circle, which I have always thought should happen when people are introduced.  In this case it was a mark of the narcissist’s need to scheme to set the stage for future play.

We thought that she would outlive us all; still be the vibrant matriarch in her 90’s.   That wasn’t to be: suddenly and sadly she had a stroke in her 70’s and shed her mortal coil at 80.  She spent her last years in a nursing home, an indignity which would have been insufferable for her.

No, I haven’t forgotten the title of this episode is ‘Trauma’, not diatribe! As Frances aged, there were signs of early dementia, which in turn exacerbated her narcissistic behaviour towards me.     Narcissists, you see, have no sense of guilt; their mistakes in life are the fault of someone else, someone less perfect, usually someone of the same gender.  In Frances’s narrative, the finger pointed directly at me, and so she set about to warn friends and family.   With her judgement no longer razor sharp, some of those she targeted were outraged and consequently these accusations were repeated to me.   Still, albeit bewildered and hurt, this was not traumatic, or so I thought. 

No, the coup was her death, for, like Miss Haversham, she had groomed someone to be the instrument of her revenge, to ensure that my punishment would continue long after she could no longer mete it out.

At last, the dam and my heart and spirit broke.   She had won.

Yes, I mended, and yes I forgave, but not until I understood the nature of this woman’s psychological illness.   It wasn’t her fault, you see, she was ill.   The real Frances was the one who was very, very good.     When she was, she was my friend, my teacher, my mother.

MAN PLANS - GOD LAUGHS

Nowhere have I seen the bitter irony of ‘Man Plans – God Laughs’ more graphically demonstrated than in bushfire-prone Victoria.     A small State, country Victoria offers to the city-weary, oases of green and peace.   These can be simply weekend escapes, retreats for conferences, or dramatic life-style changes for the daring or retired.  They can also be deadly.

While bushfires are a feature of all States of Australia, I don’t recall them being a news item when we lived in Sydney, where ‘catastrophe’ usually meant the havoc wreaked by Southerly Buster storms.    So it made a lasting impression on me when my parents described how they watched in horror, from the safety of their Melbourne backyard, as a wall of fire zigzagged up the slopes of the Dandenong Ranges.   “It was so fast”, my mother said, “nothing could have escaped!”

I was only about 20 at the time, but made a firm vow never to live in a vulnerable area.     I know plenty of people, however, who did – and do, and through them have tasted the tragedy of their ill-fated choice.

Shortly after I returned to Australia in ’74 I caught up with an old school friend, who, in turn, introduced me to a retired couple living in Woodend (who were to become my in-laws ten years later!) and a young South African couple who had just arrived.   All three families were to be affected by fire.

I’ll start with my school friend Barb, who, in 1983, was living with her husband and very new baby in Narre Warren, in those days considered country, not an outer suburb of Melbourne.   They had built a rustic cottage on ten acres of paddock and woodland. You could sit on the verandah with a mug of tea and watch the three or four horses they agisted, turn your head to look over the flourishing garden snuggling up to the house, or admire the gums which lined the long driveway – “a wick”, Barb was to cry, “I planted a wick.”    Idyllic, their dream, and it all disappeared in a flash of fury on Ash Wednesday when a fireball exploded along the driveway.      Her husband at work, Barb and the baby had taken refuge elsewhere from the intensity of the heatwave.   How many of us lay awake all that long night, numbly hearing some disconnected voice on the radio list seaside and country towns as they fell, sacrificed on a demonic fiery anvil.   I didn’t hear the name Narre Warren, but I knew, just knew.  They have never again left the protection of suburbia.

The Campbells, who had built a lovely home on five acres of gardens and forest at Woodend, escaped any great damage, but only because a fire crew were having a ‘Smoko’ break nearby when the flames, ever hungry for fuel, started spot fires on their property, which Murray was struggling to extinguish with a knapsack.   Not all their houses were so lucky, but more of their story later.

The young South African couple bought a block of land at Ferny Creek, way up high in the Dandenongs.     We were all full of admiration as they built their first house, much of it with their own hands.   The driveway was very steep, the road to it was unmade and very narrow.  “Wouldn’t want to try and get out in a hurry”, I used to think.  What’s more, it was on a north-western slope of the mountain, which we locals knew to be a fire-prone position.   They were often overseas during summer and we wondered amongst ourselves if they were fully aware of the dangers of Melbourne’s hot, north winds?     Fortunately, they were, and when their children were born, decided the risk was too great and moved down the mountain to the foothills.   On the day they moved we were helping them pack, along with one of their friends.   She was a petite red head, with an Anne of Green Gables infectious enthusiasm for life.     Throughout the day, she was excitedly telling us about the house she had just bought in the street above, fulfilling her life-long dream to live in the Hills, with 'kindred spirits'.    In 1997, an arsonist lit separate fires around the base of the Dandenongs, which surged up the mountain slopes on all sides.     This woman was one of the three who perished that day.     As did the house our friends had originally built, and which had hosted so many parties, dinners, chats around the fireside.   Ross and I first met around that dining room table.

From my office window, a few suburbs closer to the city, I often scanned the skies anxiously on those wretched north wind days, hoping against hope there would be no tell-tale smudge on the horizon.   On the few times there have been, while our friends have had a few scares, they haven’t been seriously threatened … so far.

The Campbells, my peripatetic in-laws, moved quite a few times over the years, always to a country town and always creating a splendid garden for posterity.     One of their moves was to Marysville.  Their daughter and her builder husband were also in this pretty village and had helped her parents build a beautiful, white-washed cottage.  Marysville was a favourite choice of mine for conference venues for our management team.     Autumn was particularly beautiful and I remember being delightfully distracted from the facilitator by a large Liquid Amber filling the conference room window.   I only had one qualm: my in-laws’ house was smack up against the forest, and what if there were a fire?   Well, as it turned out, it wasn’t from that forest the fire struck that incinerated Marysville on Black Saturday, sparing only three buildings.   Fortunately, the family had been lured to another town or two by the time of this momentous tragedy; however, nothing remains of their cottage or its lovely garden but  photos and memories. 

Toowoomba has been our idyllic retreat from the wilds of suburbia, but certainly not from life.   It’s our piece of paradise and we do hope the Gods don’t find it funny!

RESIDENCES, of which there have been many….

Like so many of my era, I left home at 18 and ventured into the world of rental ‘digs’: flats (apartments); boarding houses; rooms etc; until finally the First Home!  That was also rental, come to think of it; the bank owned all but a wee share of it!

Up to that age there were five residences, three of which were quite unmemorable or unremarkable: accommodation from baby to toddler in suburban Sydney and the house my parents bought in Melbourne where I spent my teenage years.    In between, however, from ages five to 12 were two magical Sydney homes, one in McKenzie’s Bay and the other at Tamarama.   They both overlooked surf and towering cliffs of grey, cream and apricot, sculpted and smoothed over millennia by the Pacific Ocean.  Marvellous for climbing and exploring.

Tamarama was one of four ‘flats’ in the building.  Ours was upstairs on the ocean side, the prize spot.  I have very early memories of slipping out of bed to lean on the windowsill, able to discern the sea through the inky blackness when moonlight caught wave crests.  I loved to listen to the timeless rhythm.     Back then, in 1940's Sydney, families often ‘swapped’ apartments by advertising in the newspapers, as we did our house in McKenzies Bay for the flat at Tamarama. It had three bedrooms, one bathroom, kitchen and L-shaped lounge dining, standard for the time.  The laundry, by the way, was a communal one downstairs, with large coppers and hand wringers.   I can still see my mother winding the wringer, her face enveloped in the steam from the copper.   One of our neighbours bought a washing machine, such a mod con!     The refrigerator was actually an ice box.    The delivery man shouldered the large blocks of ice wearing a hessian bag fashioned into a hood and shoulder cloak, with a mean looking hook sunk into the ice.   The baker made his deliveries in a horse-drawn van, while the paper boy trundled his load in a rough wooden cart, with two wheels and a handle, which he lugged up the steep hill, or miraculously managed to prevent from careening down it.   The beach was a flight of steps and dash across the road away; an idyllic life.

The block still stands, all privately owned and well maintained.    I wonder if the laundry is still communal?  Does anyone act out plays in the back yard these days?  Come to think of it, the flats would probably only suit a modern, childless couple!  And they would be worth a squillion!

When I first married, I had returned to Sydney from Cape Town and we rented a fully furnished apartment in Double Bay.   (As we planned to return to South Africa, we didn’t want to be laden down with furniture.)    The landlord’s idea of décor required a good sense of the ridiculous from his tenants.    The lounge suite was avocado green vinyl with rose patterned cushions, clashing decidedly with a carpet of yet more roses.  “What are we going to do with that monstrosity?”,  said he.   “Why, give it a name, make a friend of it”, said she.    ‘Herb’ was an unsightly chrome trolley, which quickly endeared itself to us.     With a vase of Gladdies on top and a cluster of alcoholic beverages below, he was the heart of any party.

It had three bedrooms, lounge, large kitchen, complete with an enormous, lino-covered table, and a bathroom.   Ah yes, the bathroom.   Its namesake had recently been painted, which we discovered when the groom ran a large, steaming bath.   Sighs of contentment while he lay still and squeals of shock and pain when he tried to extract himself.    The paint, doubtless inappropriate for the task, had reacted to the heat by moulding itself tenaciously to his nether regions!    Collapsed in a heap of uncontrollable mirth, I wasn’t much help, I’m afraid.     Showing such lack of sympathy and problem solving was probably not a good start to the marriage.   The chastened landlord, who owned a delicatessen, regularly delivered packets of pumpkin seed to the door, which we thought were his way of atonement.     We learned they were considered good for fertility!   

The laundry was a Laundromat, conveniently situated between the trendy local wine bar and hotel, turning this household chore into a social occasion.   Again, we would have to be squillionaires to live there now, chrome trolley and all.

During my years in South Africa I lived in various apartments with friends.   In Johannesburg, where I lived for a year, the first was in up market Lower Houghton, where I was accused by a local matron of turning the neighbourhood into a ‘kaffir location’, because I encouraged native children to play for us in the gardens!  They were brilliant, of course, accompanying their dancing with a tea chest and string instrument and tin whistle!    This innovative, wonderful music was only just being discovered by the outside world.

One of my favourites as a single girl, was an apartment carved out of the basement of a pretty, white washed, Cape Dutch style house in Sea Point, Cape Town.  On a hill, my friends and I could watch the ships come and go in the harbour, or look across to the mountain, which looms like a protective guardian over this beautiful ‘Tavern of the Seas’.   Having its own garden, front and back (such luxury) I was even able to have a dog.

Like all these apartments, my friends and I added our own touches to the basic furniture provided, making our own curtains, bed spreads and settee covers.  It’s amazing how a lick of paint, piece of silk and wads of cotton wool can transform a cheap and nasty stool into a Hollywood style boudoir seat!  I still cover chairs and make curtains, so the skills acquired during my impecunious, peripatetic youth have lasted a lifetime!

Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end….but they did, of course, in the wilds of staid suburbia.


Robyn Gayfer Campbell