Beyond Alice
Praise for Alice to Prague
‘Tanya writes beautifully and honestly about the highs and lows of her expat life … A thoroughly enjoyable read, especially for all of us who dream of living in another country.’ Good Reading
‘A wonderful story—I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys an autobiography with heart and history: Alice to Prague has it all.’ Glam Adelaide
‘Full of bright, changeable energies and emotions.’ The Newtown Review of Books
‘Engaging and inspiring … a truthful, emotional and meaningful memoir.’ Mrs B’s Book Reviews
Praise for An Alice Girl
‘Tanya’s story glows with love for family and the rugged, wild outback land that never leaves her heart.’ Toni Tapp Coutts
‘… refreshing honesty and humour … a fascinating and moving story of an unusual childhood.’ Canberra Weekly
‘A gentle memoir about a tough but enjoyable childhood … it will resonate with all those who have grown up in rural and remote Australia, and be an education for those who haven’t.’ R.M. Williams Magazine
‘An Alice Girl is written with love for the land and the people of outback Australia, and it is a fascinating account of a childhood most city-bred Australians could hardly imagine.’ The Newtown Review of Books
‘Tanya’s moving story brims with extraordinary confidence and optimism and is nothing short of inspirational.’ The Chronicle
Tanya Heaslip was raised on a cattle station in Central Australia during the 1960s and ’70s and learnt about the outside world through the Correspondence School, School of the Air and storybooks. She spent many hours dreaming of the overseas lands depicted in those stories. Her life changed at age twelve when she was sent 1600 kilometres away from her outback home to boarding school. Tanya went on to become a lawyer but never stopped dreaming. In between practising law, she travelled to many of those lands. She has since written about her love affair with Prague in Alice to Prague (2019), and about growing up in the outback in An Alice Girl (2020). Tanya lives back in Alice Springs with her husband. She is President of the NT Writers’ Centre.
Website: www.tanyaheaslip.com.au
Facebook: @TanyaHeaslipAuthor
Instagram: @tanyaheaslipauthor
First published in 2021
Copyright © 2021 Tanya Heaslip
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone:(61 2) 8425 0100
Email:info@allenandunwin.com
Web:www.allenandunwin.com
ISBN 978 1 76087 965 5
eISBN 978 1 76106 174 5
Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Cover design: Nada Backovic
Cover photos: Tanya on Blaze, 1979 (front); Tanya off to MLC, 1975 (back); iStock (background)
To darling Mum—for everything
Contents
Prologue: SOS from Down South
1 ‘If You Can’t Cope, Find Another Way’
2 Why Am I Here?
3 Sink or Swim
4 My Dream
5 What Kind of a Place Is This?
6 Mum Makes a Phone Call
7 Song and Dance
8 Go the Boarders!
9 Home at Last!
10 So, So Cold—the Winter Freeze!
11 Glenroy Exeat
12 Off to the Stock Camp!
13 A Bush Christmas
14 First Night Back
15 ‘Let Me Be There’
16 ‘They Don’t Know How to Run’
17 Snakes in Summer
18 A Year of Firsts
19 To Pash or Not To Pash
20 Drama at Our Doorstep
21 The Sting!
22 Impossible Things Before Breakfast
23 Grease Is the Word
24 Ode to Shannon
25 Amburla Campdraft
26 Wiggling Bottom
27 Travel or Career?
28 Mount Wedge
29 ‘So Long, Farewell’
Epilogue: Looking Back, Looking Forward
Acknowledgements
Prologue
SOS from Down South
Late March 1975
It was a hot March morning in Alice Springs.
By 8.30 a.m. the sun had already spread its tentacles far and wide across the baked landscape, turning the light hard and white, and causing the leaves on the old gum trees surrounding the Royal Flying Doctor Service buildings to droop, as though exhausted by the heat to come.
Merrilyn McIver brushed the flies and dust away as she entered the RFDS. She sighed with relief as the big fan inside swung low and slow from the ceiling, moving the air above her.
Merrilyn was one of the radio operators who transmitted news, telegrams and advice out to the remote communities and cattle stations. Starting out as a glamorous Ansett air hostess, she’d fallen in love with Alice on her travels and was snapped up for the radio operator role when the RFDS learnt of her flying work—and, importantly, her knowledge of the ‘aviation alphabet’.
‘Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta …’ she’d recited to them, and that was it.
The operator’s role was to preside over ‘traffic skeds’—the two hours of morning telegram exchanges that ran from 9 until 11 a.m. People called in to the operator with their telegrams to send, and the operator read out the telegrams the RFDS had received. It was the main form of communication for everyone out bush, and a greatly anticipated time of day. There were afternoon traffic skeds as well, but mornings were always the busiest.
As Merrilyn headed towards the studio with her pile of yellow slips, another operator raced out the door behind her.
‘We’ve got an emergency,’ he shouted. ‘Bloke fell off his horse, 600 kilometres out to the west. Sounds like he’s broken his back. Been on the ground for a long time now, so he’s in a bad way. I’m organising the RFDS plane and about to head to them. Good luck with Traffic this morning. Everyone on there will know what’s happened.’
Merrilyn nodded briskly. The RFDS was a busy place, with the Traffic studio on one side and Medical on the other, and these kinds of emergencies were common. She preferred her role in Traffic, as it involved interesting conversations and fewer traumas.
Most of the telegrams she dealt with were requests to and from the stock and station agents for more fuel, horse feed, swags, drums of flour, fencing wire and parts for bores that had broken down. Often requests were specific to truck tyre shops and for electrical goods, and during the mustering season there was a regular flow of instructions and updates to the trucking companies that drove hundreds of kilometres to transport cattle off to market. It kept everyone up to date with everyone else’s lives and was fascinating to a city girl like Merrilyn.
This morning, however, she had received a telegram that she knew would undoubtedly cause pain. She had to adopt a professional approach to push it out of her mind and focus on the usual morning’s work.
Sitting down in front of a bank of large wirelesses, she turned a couple of knobs, allowed the static to flood the studio, and then in her best and brightest voice clicked on her microphone and said, ‘Good morning everyone
, this is VJD with Monday’s Traffic. Please call in if you have telegrams you wish to send. Over.’
The voices of people from hundreds of kilometres away crashed through the static, shouting out their call signs, while Merrilyn scribbled them down, checking the map above her that linked the call signs to station names. The louder ones from Aboriginal communities or mining camps usually won out; the weaker signals were last, and she felt bad for those who struggled to be heard and had to wait up to two hours for their turn.
Slowly and methodically she worked her way through the call signs. As people read out their telegrams, she typed them up on yellow slips of paper before reading them back for accuracy and giving the price. Each word had a cost, so telegrams were usually as short as possible. Then she read out telegrams the RFDS had received that morning for each of those call signs. The morning wore on and she smoked cigarettes between calls, fighting off the anxiety building inside her.
Towards the end of the list, Merrilyn reached the telegram that was causing the anxiety. She couldn’t put it off any longer.
She cleared her throat and began. ‘Good morning, Jan Heaslip at Sierra Victor Uniform, do you read me? I have a telegram for you. Over.’
Through the static came a bright, cheerful response. ‘Good morning, VJD, yes, this is Jan at Sierra Victor Uniform, reading you loud and clear. I don’t have any telegrams to send this morning so please go ahead with yours. Over.’
Merrilyn took a deep breath.
‘Dear Mum Stop I Am So Sad And Lonely And Homesick Stop I Hate It Here Stop Please Let Me Come Home Stop Please—’
Merrilyn paused and looked down at the telegram.
There were so many pleases following the first one that she had to put her finger on each one to make sure she got them all.
She’d already re-counted them once to make sure. Fifteen in a row.
She couldn’t imagine the cost of the telegram.
Taking another deep breath, she continued.
‘—Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Can I Come Home Stop Love Tanya Stop.’
Merrilyn clicked off the microphone. Static filled the studio. She waited. No response came. Eventually she clicked the microphone tab down and said, trying to keep her voice level and professional, ‘Did you read that, Sierra Victor Uniform?’
There was another rush of static.
Then, finally came a low voice, barely cutting through. ‘Yes, thank you, VJD, all okay. Over and out.’
Everyone listening within a 1000-kilometre radius had heard the telegram, and it took Merrilyn a moment to compose herself before she could begin the next one.
Outside the sky was a vivid blue, the red ranges were creases of burnt and bent ridges, and the thin saplings along the side of the road hung in limp folds of khaki.
Central Australia remained hard and unchanging.
1
‘If You Can’t Cope, Find Another Way’
First Year, February 1975, nearly two months earlier
A row of grand, sand-coloured stone buildings fronted a grand old school.
Built in the late 1800s, the buildings were steeped in history. Methodist Ladies’ College—MLC—swept in during the early 1900s and, from the outset, enjoyed a fearsome reputation. Academic excellence reigned. The college buildings were covered in dense ivy and wisteria; and graced with carved balconies, turrets and spires, imposing pillars, and high, oval-shaped stained-glass windows. I thought that they could have come straight out of any English boarding school story.
The difference was that this school wasn’t nestled in fields near a charming wood or coastline. It covered several outer-city blocks, and sat behind a forbiddingly high, impenetrable brush fence, which was so thick it hid the bulk of the buildings behind it from the outside world. Drivers and pedestrians on the busy main road beyond would barely have known what went on inside. Apart from the back lawns and tennis court, it was a world of stone, stone, stone—and concrete—with occasional glimpses of sky up between the rooftops.
Inside that enclosed world, at 9 a.m. one morning in early February 1975, a procession of girls in uniforms made their way towards one of those buildings, Gillingham Hall. They walked in groups, carrying hymn books. Each group was led by a teacher, who directed them into the Hall through big doors. It was a lengthy and proper process, because in every respect this was a Methodist Ladies’ College, make no mistake about it.
Seven hundred girls in total.
One hundred and twenty-six of whom were boarders.
Fifteen of whom were First Year boarders.
One of whom was me.
It was our first day of school, and our first Assembly, in a setting as far away from my isolated cattle station home in Central Australia as I could imagine. The empty kilometres of spinifex plains and wide skies, ancient ranges, and as much freedom as a girl could ask for, might well have come from a dream.
The interior of the Hall, when we finally made it inside, was vast. The ceiling seemed to reach to the heavens and the walls were heavy with Honour Boards that glittered like gold. Looming over the hundreds of girls taking their seats was a high platform with a lectern and carved chairs, and a serious-looking girl sitting at a grand piano. She looked straight ahead, focused on the pages of music in front of her.
It was also stifling. My uniform itched. I’d never worn anything like it before. I’d never been in such a room, either, with so many girls, so many people. My palms were sweaty; my head hurt.
‘This way, girls,’ directed a teacher, pointing our group to several rows of wooden pews. ‘Come along, quickly now.’
We’d barely sat down when the girl at the piano started playing music that I didn’t recognise and everyone in the Hall rose to their feet—pews scraping, papers rustling.
A group of senior teachers slowly and solemnly came through the door, climbed the steps to the platform and stood next to their chairs.
The last person to reach the platform was a diminutive figure, tight faced and bespectacled, wearing a black cloak that billowed behind her. She marched to the lectern, put her hands on it and slowly looked around the room.
The Headmistress.
She’d been a scholar at the school herself, and I’d seen a photo of her: serious, focused.
It was now hard to tell how old she was, but she was certainly old. Maybe a hundred?
She held up her hand and the room fell silent.
‘Please be seated.’ Her gaze was sharp as everyone rustled back into their seats. We First Years were right up the front, and she scrutinised us all as though we were specimens that needed examining. I felt like an insect in a lab. Her eyes landed on me and I squirmed, glad when her penetrating gaze moved elsewhere.
‘Girls.’ Her voice was as sharp as her eyes. ‘I wish to welcome you to the first day of school, and to introduce you to the importance of what lies ahead, especially for you First Years. You are privileged to be here in our wonderful school. We expect you to be involved in achievement and not cry “boredom”. To face difficulty and not slide out on a “dislike”. To work at relationships. Our motto is “To learn the numbers and measures of true life”, and I trust that our school will prove worthy and alert to the guidance of Him whom we serve.’
I took a deep breath. What did ‘learn the numbers and measures of true life’ mean? The whole sentence was a riddle. The only thing I knew was that I was way out of my depth.
‘If things are difficult’—here she paused, as if reading my mind—‘then you must gather yourself up, find another way, rise above it, and learn to cope.’
Up until then I hadn’t found anyone who was as intimidating as my father; everyone called him ‘the Boss’. But the Headmistress was. It hit me, stinging like a stockwhip. She was the new ruler, the new ‘Boss’ of my life. But how could I cope with this?
Thinking of Dad, Mum, my family and home—and of spending five years at school—made my heart hurt so much that I thoug
ht it might fall out and down through my stomach. So far, I’d only lived a little more than two lots of five years. That already felt like a very long time. How would I survive five more in this place of stone and concrete? I screwed up my eyes to stop the tears leaking out. I missed my home so much that every part of me hurt, like I’d been thrown off a horse and badly bruised.
‘Are you alright?’
There was a whisper from the girl next to me. I looked up. Her name was Treena and she had an oval-shaped face and shining brown hair that fell neatly to her shoulders. I knew her name, because her bed was next to mine and her classroom desk was next to mine, as everything at the college was done in alphabetical order, and both our surnames began with ‘H’. She seemed very organised and, luckily for me, had looked after me since we had both arrived the previous night.
As she spoke, I touched the bands of hair I’d plaited roughly and inexpertly that morning, all the while thinking of Mum’s gentle hands that had plaited them for most of my childhood. I knew I looked dishevelled. My underarms were damp, as was my forehead. If Mum had been there, everything would have been alright. But she wasn’t; she was more than 1600 kilometres away to the north, and I was only twelve, and I didn’t know when I’d see her again, and going home seemed a lifetime away. I knew I was meant to be brave, but I wasn’t. The tears leaked out anyway.
‘Finally, girls,’ the Headmistress intoned, ‘you are alphabetically placed in our four School Houses: Corinth, Delphi, Nemea and Olympia. Later this year we will have our own sports day, interschool sports day, swimming competition and choir competition. May the best House win!’
The hall erupted into cheers.
‘We’re in Delphi and our house colour is yellow,’ Treena instructed me, when it was all over. ‘Follow me.’
I’d learnt she was from a farm in country South Australia, in the state’s mid-north. She told me she’d been to a real school during her primary years, one with classrooms and teachers and other students, so I guessed that’s how she knew what to do. Like almost all the other boarders, she understood this schooling stuff.