Learning Womanhood

More answers to questions raised by Brooke Medicine Eagle. (See also the earlier post, Girlhood as a Social Construct.)

Womanhood. ---- Look at your models for the qualities of the feminine eg.

Nurturing – renewing life – receptivity – harmony – creativity –
gentle strength – spiritual powers --- any other.

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• Name the women in your life who best reflect these qualities.

My first great role model, and indeed my first great love, was my Nana, my Mum's mother. She was a warm, soft lap to sit in, a safe, generous bosom to rest my head against, a sweet voice singing. She told me that gentle Jesus loved me, and I believed it without question because she was so sure. She herself exuded love. I was the first grandchild – though I have to say she adored the later ones just as much. Somehow, without promoting competitiveness, she made each of us feel extra special. She loved animals too, and had several dogs that used to follow her around. Luckily she lived in the country, with plenty of room for them, and for cats as well, which the dogs didn't chase. And she loved plants; she made beautiful gardens. She died when I was four, but by then she had left an indelible impression and many memories which are still vivid 73 years later.

Also there were the stories about her, which I heard at family gatherings when I was growing up. How strangers would spontaneously tell her their whole life stories – like the day she went to answer a knock at the door and came back half an hour later, saying, 'That was the milkman. Oh, the poor man, he's had such trouble with his family! His wife's very ill....' etc. She had been a nurse, back in India where the family came from. She must have been a very good one.

Everyone loved her. Although she was Anglo-Indian with exotic dark colouring, she had never been a beauty by either Indian or British standards, even in her youth, and by the time I knew her she was old and fat. I saw her as beautiful, though, when I watched her brush out her long hair before bed and then wind it up again. Like a fairy queen, I thought.

She was attractive to men all the same, and had several lovers before she finally married. My Mum said that when she (Mum) was a young woman, her boyfriends would sooner talk to her mother than to her. Perhaps it was that ready ear and sympathetic nature. My Dad, who loved Nana dearly, remarked that she also had an exceptionally beautiful voice – meaning not a singing voice but her speaking voice.

My Mum, by contrast, was not very huggy or cuddly. It wasn't entirely her fault. She was told by a male doctor not to pick me up every time I cried, and to feed me strictly by the clock. She told me, many years later, that as I cried with hunger she used to cry herself, waiting until the permitted time.

We didn't bond. Although there was love, we were never close or demonstrative.

My next warm, nurturing mother figure was my Aunty Ev, who I went to live with as a university student, after finally getting away from a vicious, insane stepmother who gave me two years of hell.

Aunty Ev was kind, warm, affectionate, and did plenty of hugging. She was also very practical. She was the one who taught me the best way to poach eggs, and how to use lemon juice and salt to clean a copper kettle.

• Name any men, animals, or natural forces that have shown these qualities to you in your life.

My Dad was a nurturing father when I was little, though he disappointed me later. He was great for playing games, carving me wooden toys, and reading me stories. He was the one who would sit up with me if I had nightmares.

He made me a swing which hung from the bottom branch of a huge willow tree. In Spring and Summer I loved sitting on my swing surrounded by willow fronds, in my own green cave. I spent many hours there, swinging, gazing at the sky, dreaming.... That tree was like a nurturing presence for me, a safe haven.

When I got older there was another tree, a black wattle with a wonderful nook in the lower branches where I could sit comfortably against the trunk and read my book. (There was always a book.) I felt nurtured and guarded by that tree, too.

Living in Launceston, I was surrounded by mountains. They seemed to me like beautiful guardians. The mountains here feel the same way. So did the Andes when I was in Peru, and so did the craggy mountains in Scotland.

Tasmania itself, a beautiful island where I grew up delighting in the natural world, was itself like a mother to me, embracing me and sustaining me. I don't feel nurtured in cities, despite the joys of theatres and art galleries.

My Grandpa – my Mum's stepfather and the only father she knew – used to take me for long walks from an early age, pointing out all the beauties of nature.

As long as I lived, he gave me wonderful, classic books every birthday and Xmas: Dumas and Dickens, all the Brontes.... He wrote me letters, advised me on what clothes suited me (and got it right) and when he died when I was 9 he left me his typewriter in his will because he knew I would be a writer. That was very special nurturing, not just a of a grandchild but of ME, my individual self.

Neither Grandpa nor Dad was a man's man. They were bookish rather than sporty. (Also Dad had a crippled leg from the age of 10 so he didn't have much choice.) It meant that they showed me what gentle men could be like.

Also they both had a firm belief in the equality of women, even though they were blind to their own social conditioning which went against it in some ways – so I learned from them that womanhood was a matter of gender, not behaviour, and didn't have to be the subject of rules.

• When did the responsibilities of womanhood become obvious to you?

Perhaps not until I had my first child. Before that, I saw what responsibilities women usually took on, and I didn't particularly want them. Also I didn't see why they MUST be done by women. Nor did I see why men couldn't cook and clean. Well, I was raised in a feminist family, where dinner-table conversation included remarks such as that men make wonderful chefs. Nevertheless, most people in that family adopted traditional roles.

When my first child was born, his father and I automatically stopped having the 'equal relationship' we'd been so proud of up until then. It was just more practical for me to stay at home and do most of the child-rearing and domestic stuff, while he went out hunting for food ... er, earning a living. And I wanted to be with my baby anyway.

I don't know that I thought it was necessarily a woman's role, though. I probably would have said that a man could do it as well, if necessary. Not breast-feeding of course – but then, I was unable to do that anyway.

I just felt it was a human responsibility to look after the young, or anyone in need.

• What have been the special joys of this period of your life?

I was never much good at domesticity but I did enjoy my children. Unlike most mothers, who complained about school holidays, I loved having my boys home and spending time with them, at any age.

I took the role with them that my Dad had with me, playing games with them, reading to them, taking them sightseeing, having great conversations. Their father did some of that too, but often worked long hours with early starts, so he wasn't as available.

I also enjoyed my creative life, with my various arts and crafts – but that's been lifelong, not specific to one period.

Sex was a particular joy during this period, too. It still was as I got older, but nothing beats all that wonderful rush of falling in love, and then exploring what bodies can do, which is so intense and exciting in those decades of youth through middle age. I was only in my fifties when I married Andrew, so I'm counting him in here too. Over the course of my adult life I've had three husbands and several lovers, and also some unconsummated but deeply emotional romances. I'm lucky enough to have been rich in love, and to have experienced, I think, every kind of love possible between women and men. I have no need to feel I've missed out on anything.

I belong to an online group which writes erotic haiku. When people assume I'm writing from present experience, I tell them my tools are memory and imagination.

• Take special note of where and how you are learning the qualities of womanhood from your experiences now.

I am learning from my women friends – my Goddess sisters in particular. We have so many varieties and shades and expressions of womanhood amongst us, it's easy to see that beauty is richly diverse and that love can be demonstrated in many ways.

• Thank your teachers.

Thank you all.

Love and Marriage (1)

Holidays in Tasmania were always glorious. Mum and Jack (our stepfather) were very happy together and enjoyed life. They were keen to give us a good time when we were with them – everything from parties in their lavish home (Jack playing his piano accordion at some point, and Mum the piano), dining out at the swankiest spots in town, movies and theatre and even the races … to seaside camping trips with caravan and annexe and a little runabout we used for fishing.

From my childhood on, my Dad’s nickname for me was Mary Rose. My favourite uncle, Tommy, adopted it too when he came to stay with us when I was little, and used it the rest of his life. I loved it from both of them: a special name from my two favourite men, exclusively.

My Dad was jealous and bitter towards Jack, and didn’t want my brother and me to like him. But we did, and soon loved him too, as he did us. If we had the worst stepmother in the world, we had the best stepfather. I remember Stepmother saying one time, about my brother – who had supposedly spoken to her cheekily, which in fact he would have been much too cowed to do – ‘Maybe old Abbott [my stepfather’s surname] can lam some sense into him.’ Charming, huh? I didn’t bother telling her it was the last thing our stepfather would do. He was a very masculine man – and for him that included being protective towards women and children, not brutal.

He never used my father’s name for me in conversation, but when he built a new and better runabout, he called it the Mary Rose. I loved that too.

He taught us how to steer the boat, and how to fish – including gutting and filleting our catches. It was play fishing for him. He was a keen angler (fly-fisherman) and loved to fish the Tasmanian Great Lakes for rainbow trout with his mates – standing in the water wearing long waders and a macintosh – or the famous Shannon Rise, where at a particular time of year a prolific swarm of caddis moths would hatch and the water would boil with hungry fish. (The Shannon Rise was a popular spectator sport too; I’ve watched it from land a few times.) Dropping a line over the side of a boat and hauling in flathead, or trawling for perch, was no great challenge for him, but it was fun for us and he enjoyed our enjoyment.

Mum told my Aunty Katy years later, when she asked what Jack was like, ‘He showed us a different way of life.’ It was an adventurous way, a way full of gusto and joie de vivre.

I also kept in touch with my old school friends in Launceston, and as I got older went to teenage picnics and parties with them. To some of the local boys, I was the glamorous visitor from the Mainland! (Particularly after I started living in Melbourne.) There were a few dates, a few kisses, a few fumbles, but I had to return to the Mainland before long, so these were not lasting relationships. As I recall, all parties were shy and stilted anyway, trying to make a good impression instead of relaxing and being ourselves.

A student from Singapore, whom I met in the Evangelical Union, got a crush on me. He was definitely not the sowing-wild-oats kind of Asian student, but a very lovely young man who surprised me with the gift of a book, a treatise by a Christian author. He wrote sweet but chaste protestations of friendship on the flyleaf. I was always convinced I was not very attractive and it didn't dawn on me until later how he really felt. (Dumb or what?)

He even went to Launceston during one long vacation and got a job in the local bookshop. Perhaps it was impulsive; he didn't tell me beforehand of such a plan. He told me in a letter afterwards, explaining that he had looked up all the Robinsons in the phone book (my surname) but couldn't find me.

Of course I was staying with my mother and stepfather, who had a different surname. Obviously, the romance was mostly in his head as he had not even talked to me enough to know such basic facts about my life. Still, I felt sorry I hadn’t known he was there. My family would have made him welcome. Fate! I often visited that bookshop when I was home, but not that time. Ah well, he was a devout Christian and we wouldn’t have suited. I wrote a reply explaining, but after that we both let things fizzle out.

The best times were when my cousin Anne came to stay, when we were both in our late teens. She was one of ‘my cousins from Burma’ as I always referred to them collectively. My Grandpa brought them out to Tasmania from Burma on an assisted passage scheme, when I was seven. They were related to Nana, who was dead by then. The lady I knew as ‘Aunty Irene’ was my Mum’s first cousin. That made her my second-cousin and her children my third-cousins. They were Anglo-Indian like my Mum, but ‘Uncle Leo’, a tall, handsome, intellectual man, had been employed by the Burmese government for his brilliance as an engineer.

Aunty Irene was by no means his intellectual equal, but he loved her for other qualities. She was the oldest of a tribe of siblings who had been orphaned when she was only in her teens. She became a mother to her younger brothers and sisters, and apparently did a wonderful job of looking after them all until they could make their own way. He admired her selflessness. It surely didn't hurt that she was a good Catholic girl, and Uncle Leo was a devout Catholic. We all came to love her for those other qualities too – her huge, warm heart; her playfulness; her fund of fascinating stories, both family stories and folk tales. We loved Uncle Leo for his wisdom and gentleness, and for never talking to us like children.

It was very exciting when they all arrived, fresh off the boat. The whole extended family was there at Grandpa’s home to meet them. It was after dark when the taxi finally turned into the long driveway. They had the exotic dark looks of our Anglo-Indian heritage, which I longed for and didn't get. I fell in love with them collectively, but particularly with my cousin Leo, the second son – ‘Little Leo’ as he was known, being both younger and shorter than his father. He must have been about 14 then, a very handsome boy with a lovely nature, and brainy like his dad. He was nice to us younger kids, not dismissive as many older children would have been. I sat on his knee and told everyone, including him, that I was going to marry him when I grew up. I hung on to that intention for at least a couple of years.

They were excited to meet us, too, and eager to get to know their new environment. I remember us all piling into a couple of cars one night to go to nearby Devonport to see the musical Meet Me In St Louis with Judy Garland. John, the older son (probably 16 then) was particularly thrilled to be able to see it and was the leading instigator of the expedition. I remember him trying to explain to me on the way there why it was such a great opportunity, but I didn't get it. I understand now that Judy was the pop sensation of her day. The big deal for me was being allowed to go to a movie at all with my older cousins who seemed to me so grown up and sophisticated. I did enjoy the outing, and still get a small, sentimental thrill if I ever hear the title song.

We saw a lot of them, both at Grandpa’s and when they visited us in Launceston. My Dad considered all religion superstitious nonsense, but had great respect for Uncle Leo in other ways and they became friends. It was Anne, the youngest, who became my particular friend, being only18 months older than me. We had a lot in common, not least our love of reading, and became close confidantes.

But they found Tasmania too cold for them, and eventually moved to Ingham in North Queensland. I suppose that Uncle Leo must have sourced work there. They left behind their eldest, Joan, a beautiful, joyous, sweet-natured young woman who was courted by a Launceston man. He had a dreadful reputation; no-one wanted her to marry him, but he knew how to seduce a girl. Even so, he wasn’t going to get this girl without marriage, but why wouldn't he have wanted to marry our Joanie? He turned Catholic to do so, and I remember the interminable wedding mass which was very tedious for a child like me.

They went on to have three children quite quickly, while he broke her heart slowly and she eventually left him. But that took some years. Meanwhile Aunty Irene and Anne both came from Ingham to visit her from time to time. Her husband didn’t make them very welcome. It became easier for Anne, whose visits were more frequent, to stay with Mum and Jack, who loved having her. She made some extended visits and found secretarial work while she was there. When I was there for my holidays, she would take holidays too. That was the icing on my cake. Mum and Jack began referring to us as ‘the girls’ and arranging for us to be there at the same time. We all looked forward to that.

One year she wasn't there, but her brother John was. I think he must have stayed with Joan, but we saw a lot of him. He was in the Air Force by then, taking some leave. By then I was 18 and he was 27. His brother Leo was in Melbourne visiting Aunty Irene’s brother Noel, who had migrated to Australia separately, married a lovely girl called Norma, and become a father. After visiting Joan, John was going to Melbourne to see Leo and the rest of the family there, crossing Bass Strait on the Taroona (known to locals as the Tub). Mum and Jack thought it would be nice for me to travel back with him. Perhaps they thought he would look after me like a big brother. But I had very different ideas.

We began quite a serious flirtation on the boat. Luckily neither of us was prone to sea-sickness, even crossing the notorious Bass Strait on the equally notorious Taroona. I’m not quite sure who started it first, but I’m sure I made it clear he wouldn't be rebuffed. I mean, I was a virginal 18 and here was this drop-dead-handsome older man in uniform. AND we were already acquainted – family, but not so close as to be taboo. We were both sharing same-sex cabins, and we couldn’t get up to too much on deck, but we certainly wanted more.

I was still living at Aunty Ev’s. I’d been home maybe a day when I got a phone call inviting me to a barbecue at Noel and Norma’s. John and Leo both arrived in Leo’s car to pick me up. Leo was just as much a darling as ever, and just as good-looking. He lived in Melbourne for some time after that, and we saw a bit of each other, but only as affectionate cousins. He was the one who adopted a big-brotherly role towards me, and kindly included me in his own social life. (Possibly John asked him to keep an eye on me, but he never made it seem a chore.) He had a girlfriend for a while, who didn't seem to mind me tagging along, and I became friends with her too.

I no longer wanted to marry my cousin Leo; I’d fallen passionately in love with his big brother. It was entirely reciprocated and we made no secret of the fact. Our family members were surprised, but could see how we felt. The more romantic ones hoped for wedding bells; others were cautious. I remained virginal – but only just. In fact he was a wonderful lover for an inexperienced girl, gradually and considerately teaching me to know my own passion. By which I do not mean to suggest that he was lacking in passion himself! Far from it. I’ll be forever grateful he was my first lover, even if not quite ‘all the way’.

John had to return to duty of course, which was in North Queensland. We wrote loving letters for many months. Finally he came to Melbourne again. By that time I was boarding at Mrs Duncan’s house in Caulfield, a leafy suburb. That was my next home after letting go the shared house in Carlton.

My cousin Anne was in Launceston then, at Mum and Jack’s, for the usual wonderful Christmas vacation. She’d got work in Melbourne and would be returning at the same time as me. We’d both be looking for a place to live; what could be better than finding one together? She was the one who found Mrs Duncan, a widow with a daughter our age, who took in other young women as boarders – full board with meals, washing and cleaning all taken care of, at a reasonable price.

We thought to stay there temporarily, giving ourselves time to look around and find a flat. We moved in on that basis, sharing a big bedroom. There were two other boarders besides us, as well as Mrs Duncan and her daughter. We all clicked and it was like being in a family. Mrs Duncan was just motherly enough, in a kind and practical way, making sure we had healthy food and didn’t stay up TOO late. It was early days of TV in Australia, and we had great fun clustering in the living room to watch shows like Bonanza and Maverick.

Anne and I liked being there so much, we decided to ask if we could stay on. When we did, Mrs Duncan yelped with delight, saying, ‘I was just saying to [her daughter] that I wish those nice girls didn't have to leave.’

Anne did leave though, eventually, for a better job in Sydney. I think it was a promotion within the firm she was already working for. But before that we enjoyed our time together in Melbourne. For some months, on top of our daytime occupations, we got temporary work as programme sellers at one of the picture theatres in town. It was showing a Royal ballet film: Fonteyn and Nureyev. We had to dress up glamorous, and afterwards would sometimes go to dances in the city with the usherettes. They knew all the good places that were still open late.

I stayed on at Mrs Duncan’s after Anne left, but when John paid an extended visit to Melbourne again during one of my vacations, I spent a lot of time at Noel and Norma’s house where he was staying. He did take me out on dates too, as in the photo below (complete with photo bomb from random child):

He usually came to fetch me from the Caulfield house, and met Mrs Duncan and the girls. We started tentatively exploring the notion of marrying each other. His Catholicism was a stumbling-block for me. I was firmly agnostic by then. The Virgin Birth seemed particularly preposterous, and I couldn’t come at the idea of praying to Mary, as I knew Catholics did, asking her to ‘intercede’ for them. My landlady, Mrs Duncan, who was Catholic, tried to help.

‘Mary,’ she said emphatically, ‘is as real to me as my own mother!’ This didn't strike me as a very convincing argument against my intellectual doubts. However I was willing to entertain the possibility of converting, if I could reconcile myself to the beliefs. I was studying Philosophy at the time, including Logic, and the two systems of thought were not very compatible. But I knew I could 'take instruction' from a priest, and hoped to meet one who would be a man of ideas. I wanted to be convinced.

Then Aunty Irene and Uncle Leo came to Melbourne to visit Noel and Norma – who had an old house with several bedrooms and ’sleep-outs’ (semi-enclosed verandas) which could accommodate a number of visitors, and were generous with hospitality.

I look back and wonder if they also came to observe first-hand the romance between John and me. As John had already pointed out to me, for Catholics there is no divorce; we had to be very sure. I of course, 20 by then, thought, despite my intellectual stumbling-blocks, that love must conquer all.

I guess my own parents must have had misgivings, though they were tactful. I do recall Jack making dreadful jokes about a future in which I’d be tied down with lots of kids, slaving over a hot stove and living on potatoes. But I couldn't take that seriously.

Aunty Irene loved the idea of having me for a daughter-in-law. I think she was also desperate for her older son to settle down. They were already a little worried about his liking for alcohol. I look back now and realise that about 4 in the afternoon, every afternoon, he’d get a little edgy until he had a beer. Then he’d have some more during the evening, but he never seemed particularly drunk. Later he became a full-blown alcoholic for many years, until at last he kicked it with the help of AA. Late in life, finally sober, he married for the only time, a woman with whom he was 'happy ever after', and I’m glad he found that happiness.

I never had any rancour towards John, but for a time I had plenty towards Uncle Leo. He was always sweet and kind to me, and we had some lovely conversations during that time. It was only after he and Aunty Irene went back home that John told me his father had advised him not to marry me, on the grounds that our thinking was too different – I was an intellectual, and would eventually want more than John could give me. It wouldn't be fair to me, Uncle Leo argued. He convinced John to break it off with me. John was sad but resolved. Uncle Leo must have been very persuasive. (And he was, when you came right down to it, the patriarch of his family – the wise elder whose word, if not law, was still taken very seriously.)

He was right of course. John was like his mother and his sister Joan – very sweet-natured and by no means stupid, but no, not intellectual, not bookish, not given to deep reflection. Anne and Little Leo were more like their father: good people too, and with keen intellects. It was Little Leo and Anne I could have long, confidential talks with. John and I were always much too busy otherwise for deep conversation!

I didn’t see it that way at the time and was furious with Uncle Leo, but I lived to be very grateful. How sad it would have been to spoil that first girlish passion by a disastrously mismatched union. How dreadful if we had come to hate each other instead of remembering each other kindly for the rest of our lives, and always with a little bit of lingering ‘first love’. (I believe I was his too, though by no means his first lover.) Oh, and imagine our families caught up in it all! No doubt there would have been children involved as well. What a mess it would have been.

I never saw him again. His beloved wife died when they were both in their sixties. (I sent him a sympathy card via my cousin Anne, who gave me the news when I lunched with her in Sydney in 1994 to introduce her to my newish third husband, Andrew.) I expect he has died too by now. I lost touch with that branch of the family after my Mum died. I spoke to my cousin Anne on the phone to break that news, and she said loving things. Soon afterwards she retired and moved to the Blue Mountains to be near her sister Joan. Anne was a successful career woman who had some long relationships but never married. She fell in love young with someone unavailable and could never quite get over him enough to ‘settle for second-best’ as she put it.

Little Leo became an engineer like his dad, worked for a while in Coober Pedy – or was it Mt Isa, or both? – married the young schoolteacher there, moved back to Queensland, had six children, a successful career and a long and happy marriage, saw his children grow up and do well, and died of illness some years ago.

Noel and Norma moved to a better suburb, and ended up with three children, all of whom went on to live successful, happy lives. As a very young man in Burma during the Second World War, Noel escaped the Japanese invasion by trekking through the jungle, nearly starving, with some other men including Americans. He rather fell in love with the idea of America, and was delighted when one of his sons ended up living and working there, especially when he and Norma made the big trip to visit. Apparently it lived up to his dreams.

As for me, I went on to marry someone who was a bigger disaster for me than John would ever have been, in a very different way – but it was a lot easier to get out of.

Learning to Fend for Myself

(With a little help from my friends and relatives)

My brother and I were soon, and forever after, glad that we ended up in Melbourne instead of Hobart for our university years, due to the fact that we finished our schooling in the State of Victoria. I don't say it made the two years under our Stepmother's roof worth it, but it turned out to be the one good outcome of our father's desire to have custody during school term.

Nothing against Hobart Uni (which I know very little about) but Tasmania as a whole was quite parochial in those days. It was a wonderful place for a child to grow up in, but would have been stifling for an adolescent.

I loved my island, and still do in memory and on my increasingly rare visits. If something about Tasmania comes up on TV or in a movie, I'm riveted to the screen, I drink in the images. But it's interesting that when I lived there I used to sit in my classrooms gazing out the windows and dreaming of 'over the hills and far away' – listening to the planes leaving Launceston to fly across Bass Strait to what we called The Mainland. I pictured them landing in Melbourne, the closest capital city. That city – only vaguely imagined – was the focus of my daydreams. Not being there, not what might happen there, but just arriving there. I saw a glorious but undefined future opening up like a golden sun once I went to live there.

For us it was The Big City. Hobart wasn't that. We went to Hobart quite often as kids, to visit our cousins. It was a small city, not much bigger than Launceston, and even colder. Melbourne, though, seemed huge, dangerous, exciting. After we settled in and learned our way around it (or around some parts of it anyway) it became another dear, familiar home while simultaneously retaining the Big City edge. In many ways, too, it was a beautiful city. I loved it dearly for decades.

I was often pathologically shy and self-conscious during my university years, but for the most part concealed it fairly well. I think I might sometimes have seemed aloof. Nevertheless I enjoyed my time there, and became on friendly terms with some other students.

My stepsister Merrie and I had gone through a religious phase while living under the Stepmother's roof, largely for social reasons, but also falling in love with Jesus for a while. We had joined the local Methodist Youth Fellowship, and met nice, boring boys who dreamed of becoming ministers or missionaries. This phase didn't last! At university I joined the Evangelical Union briefly, but found I had too little in common with the other members and couldn't get excited about their events and activities. I certainly felt no call to try and convert anyone. (But I have stayed a little in love with Jesus, despite not following a Christian path and utterly repudiating the churches created in his name.)

Merrie was living in Melbourne by the time I got there, doing her nursing training. (She never did put that finishing school to good use by marrying a wealthy grazier or corporate baron.) She got over her churchiness too. With big-sister concern for my social life, she took me to parties of nurses and wealthy (male) Asian students who were sowing their wild oats whilst away from strict parental eyes. My Aunty Ev was dubious about me going to parties with folk she didn't know and couldn't vet, but after the first time Merrie arrived to collect me in a friend's car, she relaxed. 

'Merrie's so reassuringly wholesome!' she said.

In fact she was right to be worried; however I came to no harm. I looked back later and realised that those parties always ended with couples pairing off and finding semi-private corners as the hour got later and the lights got lower. It was assumed that everyone would stay the night. I used to find a spot on my own to fall asleep, usually with others who hadn't got lucky. In my case I was blithely oblivious. Once a young man tried to roll on top of me, and I pushed him off the high bed to the floor, laughing loudly as I did so. I hadn't even taken him seriously. And in fact it was a very half-hearted attempt. He got the message and slunk away.

I look back now and wonder that I came unscathed through what were almost orgies. Innocence was its own protection, I guess. And let's face it, I wasn't even trying to look sexy, only pretty. Socially, I was gauche. I wouldn't have had much attraction for young men who were looking for 'fast' girls. But it got me out of the house and made me feel that I was having a life.

I enjoyed living with Aunty Ev and Uncle Tommy for a year, experiencing warmth and something like normality. But it wasn't very practical. I was quite far away from the university (University of Melbourne, the only one that city had then, though later it acquired two more) and spent long hours daily travelling back and forth. I wasn't so far away as the crow flies, and in these days would get there much faster, but roads and public transport were both more limited then.

Eventually Uncle Tommy wanted the use of the room I was sleeping in. Aunty Ev booked me into the Salvation Army hostel for young women, in the city. My brother stayed with them a few more years, attending a local school. He says now that Aunty Ev wasn't as warm to him as she was to me, and that may be so. But she was a lot better than the Stepmother. She was kind, practical, and a good cook, and had a basic wish for our wellbeing.

She always used to tell the story of how, after we first arrived, she found him lugging his sheets out to the laundry in the morning and asked what he was doing. He told her he'd wet the bed and was going to wash his sheets.

'Oh, don't worry about that,' she said. 'Give them to me and I'll put them in the washing machine. If you don't want to wet the bed, just don't have anything to drink after 4 o'clock.' Problem solved! I loved her for that as well as everything else. She couldn't fathom that such a big deal had been made out of something so simple, or that anyone could be so unkind to a child.

I found hostel living quite strange, but tolerable. There were some strict rules, such as being in by 10pm unless you had special permission for a very good reason. The doors were locked at that time, and if you were later and had to knock, you'd better have permission! The threat hung over our heads of being thrown out for failing to comply with the rules.

The rooms were small, occupying several floors. There was a huge communal dining room, a cold, old-fashioned laundry in the basement with coin slots to start the machines, and a roof balcony with views over the city.

Many of the girls were students like me, including Asian students from Malaysia and Singapore. Others were girls from the country who had found work in Melbourne. Then there were the unmarried mothers. They were working for their keep, scrubbing the floors and washing the linen.

The staff, all senior Salvation Army officers, were cold, stern women who seemed to think we were all naughty children. At least they were frostily polite to the paying customers. They treated the handful of unmarried mothers like slaves, speaking to them scathingly and working them hard. Those girls themselves had a crushed, hang-dog air, never looking anyone in the face. I know the Salvation Army is famous for its good works, but that first impression of them stays with me. I tell people that's where I first learned the meaning of the expression, 'cold as charity'.

As for the rest of us, we were in some ways naughty children.

I made some friends. Two of them became important friends in my life, and one of those I'm still in touch with today, nearly 60 years later. Some of my friends encouraged me to ask for a transfer from my ground floor room to the floor they were on. They knew a room near theirs was coming vacant.

The transfer was granted, which made it easier to spend giggly nights crammed into one or other of our rooms, drinking alcohol and cooking chips on our tiny methylated spirit stoves – both of which activities were strictly forbidden.

Two of my friends, chafing at the restrictions of hostel life, invited me to join them in renting a house in Carlton, near the university. Rents were cheap there, and although they were both wage earners, not students, they weren't earning much. It was close enough to their places of work by public transport, as well as being ideally situated for me.

My father came to Melbourne and spent a day with me, buying furniture (at auction) for my room and arranging its delivery. It was a companionable day, in the course of which we saw an art exhibition advertised, wandered upstairs and were shown around a studio by the white-haired man who lived there. The paintings were by his friends. Dad remarked how much he'd like to be able to paint like that.

'You can!' said the man. 'Look at that horizon. That's just a line. You can draw a line.'

That made such an impression on my father, he soon started to paint landscapes, first with acrylics and later oils. He continued for the rest of his life, sold many paintings, and some are in the Art Gallery where he lived. I have several hanging on my walls, and love them. Mine are of Tasmania.

He and my stepmother used to travel on vacation to various places including Tassie, avoiding anywhere they might run into Mum or any of Dad's old friends from his earlier life. They couldn't avoid it entirely, and stories came back to Mum of old friends rushing up to hug him warmly, only to be frozen out by my stepmother's icy manner.

He was unable to hold down a job in his new environment, and ended up being kept by his wife in return for odd jobs around the property. It was also clear she'd turned off the sex pretty soon. Ironically, this former womaniser, terrified of his second wife and her nasty tongue, and without money or free time, lived the rest of his life celibate. But at least he got to travel to some good places, and he made himself a life as an artist.

In the Carlton house, life was enjoyable and frugal. We learned the usefulness of the local pawn shop, and seldom redeemed our goods. We walked places as much as possible. But we liked the new freedom. One of the others painted a mural on her bedroom wall. I got myself a cat. Every week I bought a lettuce and sixpence-worth of mincemeat (quite a large amount back then). I lived off that, sharing the mincemeat with my cat. One of my flat-mates had a big sack of oranges sent from her country home, and we shared those too. I still visited Aunty Ev sometimes, at weekends. I didn't do so just because I'd get a good meal – but of course I always did get one there. The student café was fairly cheap too. I didn't starve.

My other favourite Aunty, my Dad's sister Kathleen, aka Katy, who never married and was a favourite with all her many nieces and nephews, worked in a big bookshop called Robertson and Mullens. She got me holiday jobs there (in the short vacations when I stayed in Melbourne) which I enjoyed very much. I had won a Commonwealth Scholarship which paid my university fees but provided only a meagre living allowance. When I was still living with Aunty Ev, she encouraged me to advertise, by notices in the local store, for jobs baby-sitting and ironing, so for a time I was able to augment my income that way. After I moved from her house, the work in the bookshop was a godsend. I lost my shyness in that situation, and liked interacting with people, helping them to find what they wanted.

While I was living in Carlton I applied for, and to my surprise got a job at Victoria Market, Melbourne's biggest market, right in the city. I assisted on a toy stall run by an old German couple who were very sweet to me. I enjoyed that too, working weekends and public holidays.

At the end of the year, though, two of us went home to our families for Christmas – the 'long vacation' in my case, lasting three months. We couldn't afford to keep renting the house while we weren't in it, and the other lass couldn't keep it on by herself. Sharing a house had polarised us anyway, as it so often does. One of the others was a somewhat older young woman, who found me and our third irresponsible and tiresome. (The third and I were kindred spirits who remained close friends for a number of years.) Abandoning our rental suited us all by then. I found another loving home for my cat, and joined my brother on a flight to Tassie.