Many years ago a girl called Kate lived with her mother and brother Ned in a cottage on O’Dea’s Road, near Upper Ryan’s Creek, between Benalla and Wangaratta.   Kate’s mother told the children that they lived in “Kelly Country” and that many years ago another ‘Kate’ had ridden with her brother Ned along O’Dea’s Road, which is about twenty kilometres from Glenrowan.

Every school morning Kate would ride bare back to school on her pony, Goldie.  Goldie would graze with Ned’s horse in the paddock next to Molyullah Primary School until the children ran out at the end of the day, free again for a few hours until it was time to do their chores.The children always rode home chatting about the day until they reached a valley with a long straight stretch of pasture.  Kate would give Goldie a nudge with her heels and Goldie would pick up speed, galloping happily alongside Ned’s pony until they reached the bend just before Dr Henry’s Gully.

Dr Henry’s Gully is a sheltered grassy corner bordering on a creek bed and rocky, gum treed hills.  The children would sometimes surprise a group of grey kangaroos; an echidna, or a sleepy old wombat there.

One afternoon they were very excited to catch sight of a little black faced wallaby hopping away from them through the rocks up the hill.Over the next few days, when they reached Dr Henry’s Gully  the wallaby would hop quickly away as soon as she saw them. After a few months the wallaby didn’t run away quite as quickly and often seemed to be waiting for them to arrive.  They loved seeing her there. 

Some months later when they turned the corner into the gully they saw some rabbits, but the wallaby was nowhere to be seen.  They were quite disappointed.  The next day when they rode around the corner, they saw the sleepy old wombat, but they couldn’t see the little black faced wallaby anywhere.  This went on for over a week – they saw three kangaroos, a huge lizard in a tree, they even saw two young deer; and of course the very sleepy old wombat who lived in a cave he’d burrowed in the side of the creek. Two weeks went by and there was still no sign of the wallaby.  They were very, very worried about her.

A large 4WD ute outside the house with two large rifles in the back was parked outside the house when they set Goldie free in the paddock after getting home from school a day or two later.  A visitor was sitting at the kitchen table.  Who was this man, and why did he have guns in his ute? 

Their mother introduced him, “Ned and Kate, this is Bill Fox, who everyone calls “the wild dog man”.  He’s been in the bush hunting wild dogs which have been attacking baby calves and lambs near Dr Henry’s Gully."

The children looked at one another, wide eyed.  Kate turned to the wild dog man.  “Mr Fox, did you see a black faced wallaby in the rocks near Dr Henry’s Gully?”  They looked thoughtfully at Mr Fox, scared that he would give them bad news.

“No Kate, but wallabies are very shy.  She probably became frightened at the sound of the guns and hopped away to find somewhere safer to live”.

Months later, during the spring school holidays, Kate and Ned asked their mother if they could walk to Lex's Falls a few kilometres away.  It had been raining and they’d heard there was water rushing over the falls into Sam’s Creek. 
    
“Yes, you can go”, said their mother, adding, “I think I’ll come too.  It’s such a beautiful spring day”.

They walked through gum tree lined Sam’s Creek valley along a path animals used to get to the water hole at the bottom of the waterfall.  They scrambled across rocks, sometimes stumbling, until they came to the bend just before the falls.  They could hear the sound of water tumbling down the rocks.  Just as they turned the corner, Ned turned around and said to them quietly, ‘Shhh…. Shhh….there’s a wallaby in the rocks!’   

​They tip-toed towards the rocky waterfall where a little black faced wallaby was quietly standing, watching them, just as the wallaby had come to do at Dr Henry’s Gully before hopping away.  She waited, looking at them for a few seconds, before hopping up the rocky bank beside the waterfall, out of sight.   Kate looked at Ned, “Ned, I think that’s the wallaby from Dr Henry’s Gully, don’t you?”Ned said “I think it is!  I think it is!”  They both looked very relieved!
 
Suddenly their mother exclaimed, ‘’Did you notice something different about the little wallaby?”  “No”, they said in unison.  Their mother looked at them with a big smile on her face and said ‘She had a joey in her pouch!”
    
Kate laughed.   “Next time I see him I’ll tell the sleepy old wombat at Dr Henry’s Gully we found the black faced wallaby near the waterfall, and that she has a joey to keep her company!

A memorable test of courage which involved facing fear occurred just over fifty years ago at the end of my  ‘Leaving Certificate’ year at Malvern Girls Secondary School.  After a year as Head Prefect I was due to give a Speech Night address at the large and rather beautiful Malvern Town Hall in Glenferrie Road. 

I found myself struggling with writer’s block.  Draft after draft seemed unformed, poorly structured, long and just plain boring.  (In retrospect, my speech was probably supposed to be 500 words!  And, as my writing workshop peers well know, I do have trouble sticking to 500 words, let alone 750 and even 1000! )

I sought out the Principal, Miss McGibbon, who clearly fully occupied, sent me to see the Vice-Principal, Miss Smith, for help.  Miss Smith, busy in her little office behind the windowed hole in the wall leading to the bookstore,  shooed me away, saying I’d be fine!  I remember waiting to ask my recently widowed Mum to read it, but she returned late from her office job suburbs away and looked so tired.   Desperate, I gently interrupted her napping by the television, but she also shooed me away, saying I’d be fine. 

It was the night of the speech.  My mother and grandparents were in the audience.  Malvern Town Hall was packed with students, parents and grandparents.  I had sung ‘Ave Maria’ in Latin with the choir, danced with the corp de ballet, then reuniformed ready for the speeches, still feeling enormous trepidation about mine. 

I  remember standing at the microphone looking out at a sea of faces in the stalls and upstairs gallery.  I can’t remember much about the contents of my speech, but can remember feeling tongue tied, that it seemed formless and to be going on and on, that I was rambling.   The speech eventually came to an end,  Trying to keep smiling, I returned to my chair on the stage.  I vaguely remember hearing polite clapping, certainly not rousing applause! 

I sought out my mother for reassurance – she gently conveyed that it could have been better, did go on a bit long, however she was still proud of me.  Occasionally over the years I asked her to tell me ‘honestly, what my speech was like’-- she always responded in the same way!

It was a test of courage faced and largely failed.  The only saving grace was that I didn’t have to be carried off from the fetal position on the floor I felt  so close to finding myself in! 

I went on to become a high school teacher for twenty years, and after a break as a social worker, a TAFE teacher for over a decade.  I’ve attended numerous speech and graduation nights and have at times had to speak on the stage.  Such occasions have always reminded me of the Malvern Town Hall fiasco, so I’ve always been well prepared.   And, if ever a student has asked me for help in preparing for speech or graduation night I have never, ever shooed them away!  

I’ve been lying awake most of the night, cringeing.    Godfrey and Carole both shared stories on the topic ‘Cringe’ at yesterday’s Writing Workshop.   Defining ‘cringe’ to begin,  Godfrey vividly described a cringe worthy moment in his batting career; Carole two almost cringe worthy moments in her life involving the closely allied feelings of humiliation and embarrassment.   

I wasn’t planning to write on the topic ‘Cringe’, but decided to do so when woke up just now, realizing I was still  ‘cringeing’.
 
What was I cringeing about you might ask?  Well, it has to do with yesterday’s ‘Writing Workshop’.  It wasn’t really what David said about my overuse of the word ‘little’(which was true!), or that no one else commented on my bed time story.  It was about the fact that this mattered to me!

I’ve woken up with new empathy for creative people who expose creative works which matter to them  to the opinion of others, works often years in the making.  ‘The Little Black Wallaby’ bedside story mattered to me – I felt happy while writing it; looked forward to getting back to it and found myself smiling as I thought of something to add to it.   I enjoyed researching wallabies in North East Victoria;  looking for images of a wallaby; driving out to ‘O’Dea Road’ to take some photographs at Dr Henry’s Gully.  Writing this story drew on happy moments in my childhood;  it was enjoyable crafting it.   And no one said anything!
 
The fact that once again I had written well over the 500 word limit also proved cringe worthy yesterday!  Everyone else seems to have written within 500 words at least once, and Carole has done so on all but one occasion.    I cringe because I’m embarrassed.  A divergent rather than convergent thinker,  It has always been an effort for me to compress my thoughts.  I’ve experienced many cringe worthy moments related to this in my life.   A particularly memorable example… a doctor once described me in a referral as a ‘verbose historian’…(triple cringe!)

Clearly David was quite right about my overusing ‘little’ .  Still cringeing, I’ve counted – 24!   And 969 words!

So, ego seems to have a strong relationship to ‘cringeing’!  Values do too.  I cringe when things which matter to me aren’t valued by others.  I became quite familiar with cringeing every time Tony Abbott made a ‘captain’s call’ which conflicted with my values; I chronically cringe about the dreadful treatment of refugees on Nauru and Manus Island because my citizenship of this country implicates me in it. 

Cricket mattered to Godfrey;  politics mattered to Carole.  Having people enjoy my bedtime story mattered.. to me!

Perhaps I have achieved something meaningful from this latest cringeing episode, not just to please others, but because doing so matters to me!   I have only used ‘little’ four times in this story, and at last count, have written -- 480 words! 

​‘Share your story of a long term romantic relationship and what kept or has kept you together.  How did it start?  What did/have you learned through the ups and downs?’ ‘For Better For Worse’?  

At first I felt I could’t write on this topic – a retired spinster school teacher and erstwhile blue stocking with limited experience in  long term romantic relationships to draw on, I felt I couldn’t do it justice.
 
I’ve decided to write about my relationships with place instead.  After all, places can be romantic! They can also be just bearable, and sometimes be disasters.   I have lived in romantic places, London; Madrid; mid western British Columbia in Canada; and had extended stays in others including Mexico, Portugal, Thailand  and the vibrant cities of Vancouver, Montreal and New York. “Melbourne”, a place with which I had a number of long term relationships, had its romantic moments—but Benalla?

My relationship with Benalla began over sixty years ago when I would travel with my family from Melbourne to  Benalla during my father’s three or four week work break.  We didn’t have a car – so travelled on the ‘Daylight Express’, stopping at Seymour - “Where you see less!”, according to my father, who had been stationed at Puckapunyal during the World War II.  I remember looking forward to a sandwich and cup of tea at the then fully operational dining room when the train pulled in to Seymour Station.  After Seymour, the train stopped at small stations including Avenel, Longwood, Euroa, Violet Town, Baddaginnie before approaching the outskirts of Benalla through rather dreary paddocks later developed to become the Monds housing estate.
 
The best thing about arriving the Benalla Station was always watching out for the Land Rover of my Uncle Lex, a soldier settler with land on bush covered Tiger Hill who share farmed in Molyullah, milking cows for the Hill family.   I loved getting up early in the mornings to ‘help with the milking’, riding the neighbour’s palomino pony and attending the little Molyullah Primary School for a few weeks.  I met the children of families such as the Hills, Paynes, Ryans, Clarks, Murrays, Beards, Glazebrooks, Johnston’s, Ramsden, Rutty’s and more –meeting up with them again over the years at the annual Molyullah Easter Show which featured the running of the Molyullah Gift equivalent of the Stawell Gift; trotting races with bookmakers on site; Highland Dancing competitions; barrel racing ponies,  spinning wheel; children’s egg and spoon and sack races, and more. 

Molyullah was romantic to me, Benalla just an after thought - the place we came into or left from on the train; or where we enjoyed a pie or pastie at Hyde’s Bakery when in town to pick up supplies.  

Despite visiting my uncle often over the years,  I resisted applying to teach in Benalla when I could easily have done so; resisted my Uncle’s suggestion that I perhaps build a little house on a block he would set aside for me on the Tiger Hill Road.
 
It took another thirty years – after teaching in a range of country and city schools;  travelling and living overseas, and changing career from teaching to social work – for me to commit to living in the North East.    In 1998, not long after selling my miner's cottage in Daylesford and starting employment as a social worker at Centrelink in Wangaratta, I fell in love with and bought a house in Monds Avenue Benalla - a cathedral ceiling recovered brick house built on the same dreary paddocks I remember travelling through as the train slowed down to enter Benalla.
 
My relationship with Benalla faced many challenges as my hopes for living close to family were tested.  My sister and her husband, who had moved to the North East to become partners with my uncle in running his farm, weren’t (and I suspect still aren’t) quite sure why I decided to move to Benalla.  While ‘there for one another’ at times of need, we live largely independent lives.  

My loved uncle, seventy four with angina and needing new knees when I relocated, rarely came into Benalla, and when he did, rarely drove further in to town than the Tower Milk Bar to collect supplies. A roast dinner could very occasionally entice him to Monds Avenue!  Eventually a patient in the Morrie Evans wing at the Benalla Hospital, he passed away five years ago  leaving me an unexpected bequest – even after seventeen years when I explain to older locals that my uncle was Lex Devitt–I’m accepted without question!

My mother, though happily staying with me in Benalla for weeks at a time for over a decade, (always religiously visiting Miller’s Drapery Store during her visits), decided against moving from Melbourne to Benalla until coming here in 2010 as a high care resident at Alkoomi before passing away in 2014 at 101 years.  

So, despite moving to Benalla in 1998 to be connected to family, I find myself seventeen years later,  stoically ‘sticking it out’ alone in Benalla …. ‘for better for worse’. 

I’m still enjoying living in Monds Avenue, though am finding retirement financially challenging.  I didn’t prioritize planning for retirement  in my youth– leaving jobs taking my super with me to travel overseas, living ‘in the moment’ rather than thinking about the future.  The result - my part pension is significantly more pension than part!   While I own my own house, house values in Benalla are such that there aren’t many places where I could afford a house as pleasant as I have here.  So here I’ll stay!  I’m learning to manage on the pension, have lots of interests which don’t cost a lot of money and always have plenty to do.  A new world has ‘opened up’ for me in Benalla during my retirement to enrich my life, and I always have the ABC!

My body is also a challenge!   Recurrent asthma and rising blood pressure continue to be treated by the doctors at the Carrier Street clinic while knee damage in 2002 from a fall on uneven road in Nunn Street has precipitated worsening mobility and the looming prospect of knee replacements. Fortunately it’s relatively easy to park close to any building in Benalla –an enormous plus!   In early 2013 ‘in sickness and in health’ assumed new meaning when I was diagnosed with breast cancer only  three months after retiring from teaching.  A public patient at Wangaratta Hospital, I received impressive levels of care and recent test results were thankfully clear.  

In conclusion, I would have to say my long term relationship with Benalla as a place hasn’t been a passionate one, but it has been a gently romantic and supportive relationship.   I  feel settled, safe, comfortable and peaceful in Benalla.  I have many interests and many friends with shared values – in education; reading; the environment; arts and crafts; politics and more.  I have good friends living nearby, vigilant neighbours who watch out for me and am thrilled to have vegetables planted by a wonderfully willing older worker (or ‘wower’) now thriving in my fertile Monds paddock backyard. 

‘For better for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health’!   It seems highly likely now that I will stay in Benalla until ‘death do me part’, perhaps joining my mother and uncle who have adjoining graves at Moorngag bush cemetery.   The care they received in Benalla in their fragile ‘Fourth Age’ has given me heart that perhaps Benalla will do the same for me one day—and Moorngag’s bushland cemetery would certainly be a beautiful place for my ashes to settle.  

September 21, 2015

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