We sailed from Hobart on January 12th. 1991. This was an expedition cruise organised by Dick Smith to the Ross Sea area of Antarctica where we hoped to visit Douglas Mawson’s hut at Commonwealth Bay. Our ship, the Frontier Spirit, was brand new and on its maiden voyage.

These were unsettled times. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had been accused of hoarding weapons of mass destruction and had promised terrorist attacks in unexpected places. We may not hear of these events as radio reception would not always be possible.


After a few days sailing we approached the Sub Antarctic Macquarie Island and anchored off the Australian research base at Buckles Bay. We spent the first day exploring the coast of the island and visiting king and royal penguin rookeries and dodging huge elephant seals.

On the second morning we zodiaced ashore to the base situated on a low lying isthmus. The fact that we were the first tourists to ever visit the Island had caused great excitement amongst the Island’s expeditioners. They had been preparing for this for months, painting T shirts and making souvenirs to sell us. I bought 2 stone flagons of Macquarie Island port for presents and stowed them in my backpack. Then I noticed that the flags over by the coast were flying horizontally in a very stiff rising gale and hurried back to the beach.

Buckles Bay is treacherous and the seas were rising to a critical level. There was an urgent scramble to get everyone back to the ship. Having a heavy weight on my back that could take me straight down to Davy Jones Locker I had to counter balance it when seated on the edge of the zodiac.


By evening with the wind gusts increasing to 40 knots it was decided to leave the Island for the safety of open water. After I was flung from my bed by the pitching and rolling ship and awoke in mid air, we slept tied down to our mattresses on the floor.

On Macquarie Island the storm blew all their communication masts down.


By morning the west, southwesterly gale had increased to 60 knots. The ship was pitching and rolling violently and was making very little progress.

Being enthusiastic Australians we managed the storm very well. Through the portholes we could look down into great caverns of water as the ship rode the crest of waves that were 12 to 18 metres high. As we were not allowed to venture to the front of the ship at this time, we couldn’t see the huge waves that were breaking over the bow. This continued for two days and was quite a novelty for us passengers.


The first icebergs were sighted and when we reached the pack ice we entered calmer waters. With high anticipation we approached the Antarctic mainland. There are no guarantees with expedition tourism that you will reach your destination.

We were woken at 4 a.m. when the ship arrived at Antarctica and within half an hour the first zodiacs were leaving for Commonwealth Bay. Every advantage had to be taken of calm weather as Douglas Mawson found he had built his hut on the windiest place on Earth. He called it, “The Home of the Blizzard.”

In Antarctica some winds are known as katabatic. This is a powerful low gravity wind that flattens the sea and can suck it up into high water spouts and dancing water fountains. It has no mercy on anything in its path. After visited Mawson’s hut and the McKellar Islands we sailed on.


To celebrate Australia Day it was decided to re-visit Mawson’s Hut and in fine weather we altered course for Commonwealth Bay. This is when the katabatic wind struck! It appeared to rise out of nowhere and tore at the ship, blowing heavy deck tables and chairs and anything on deck into the sea.

There was an open bridge policy and most of us had dashed up there to see what was happening. We were being blasted sideways towards a small rocky Island! The Captain shouted. “No one speak. The ship is not answering the helm!” We all held our breath as a woman burst through the bridge door exclaiming excitedly and the Captain shouted “Quiet!”

The Frontier Spirit continued to resist any attempt of steering until we were almost aground and the katabatic blast subsided. That was too close and we were the only ship down there.
​

Australia Day evening was celebrated with great enthusiasm; each of us enjoying the company and thankful that we were not huddled like emperor penguins on a bare rocky Island.

When we docked in Hobart we were surprised to find the ship’s berth was gated off from the docks and tight security surrounded us. The world had changed forever.


Bev Morton
​September 2023

My senses are heightened as I drive to my final nights work. The road is long. "Oh please may there be no fog!" The freeway is well marked and orderly, so different now from the narrow roads through thick fog and floodwater and fire in 1973.

As is fitting Leanne hands over to me; she is from my past, from other work places. She says, "Enjoy your night." and I do.

There is no sadness in leaving. There is pride in a good career of 48 years nursing, carried out with as much integrity that I can summon. The years come flooding back. What was the best? That's easy, it's my time spent in theatre, casualty and acute nursing.

Good times? They would be hard to find. That's not what it's about. There were triumphs in lives saved. At the same time there were traumas that took you to the wire, and all of this against the backdrop of your own personal life.

When we were young everything was great and we thought we would live forever. Then fate dumps a dying friend in your care and you walk the line between nurse and friend.

Over my last few years of nursing in Aged Care I’ve met some rich characters; that is, rich in wisdom in their final years. What flowed through them was tranquillity, a quiet endurance and knowledge of themselves and their world. This takes them well into their nineties before life's spin of the wheel catches up with them.

What has been the importance of my work? It's to keep my patients in a pain free, comfortable, peaceful and secure environment and to see a smile on their face. When a little old lady looks up at me from her snug warm bed and says, "It’s so nice to see you again." I know I have done a good job. That's enough, that's the good times.

It's my last night as a nurse. I am on a high. This is the same feeling as when I found I had passed my final exams. It’s 1965; the results are in the evening papers. The Matron rings the hospital reception. "Thelma, are the results out yet?" "I don't know." "Well, has anything unusual happened?" Thelma tells her that I have just come bolting down the stairs and have run out of the building!" "Thank you Thelma, the results are out then." She knew us well. I walk on my rounds tonight enjoying every step.

When the morning staff arrive I tell them it's my last handover to them. They look at me dumbly, they think I’m joking. I give them a thorough handover and then count the drugs for the last time with the new Indian nurse who is in charge of the morning shift. There is none of the old crew to say, "Take care. We'll miss you." They have retired long ago.

​I open the glass front door into the rest of the world and as the sunlight hits me in the face I am struck with a feeling of sheer joy. Now it's my time in the sun. I sing all the way home.


​Bev Morton
August 2023

It was an early Sunday morning and I was head down in the rose bushes, methodically deadheading spent flowers.

She made a bee line for me from the other side of the road where she had been taking photos of our silo art.

She said, “I have just heard on the radio that if you trim them back you will get more flowers.”

From my muffled, bent over position I said “That’s what I’m doing.” and emerged to see a smiling, very well dressed woman beaming at me from the deserted street. Our conversation started with my rose garden. Then we discussed many things, life in general, the Covid 19 pandemic in depth, anti vaxxers, demonstrations, and the fact that people hadn’t really had anything to demonstrate against since our involvement in the Vietnam War.

She said we had been privileged to be comfortable during lockdown but it must have been so hard for people in poorer circumstances who only spoke English as a second language and couldn’t understand.

There is something special about communication with a stranger who you will never meet again; the ‘ships that pass in the night.’  We could exchange our opinions honestly and be listened to without prejudice.

She quietly asked the leading question. “Did you work here in this small town?”  “No, I was a nurse.” She gave a delighted shriek and also pointing to herself, said “I knew it!  I knew as soon as you spoke

Our conversation switched to nursing and back to Covid again. I said the conditions of home schooling were not as bad for children as they were for us in the Second World War. I spoke of silent school children being marched into the trenches. We sat quietly in the dirt in air raid shelters with wooden clothes pegs in our mouths for an hour during Melbourne’s weekly air raid practise. Of fathers being away for years and of not knowing when we left home each morning if we would see our Mother again that day. Plans were in place for the school to be evacuated at a moment’s notice if there was an air raid. Life was very uncertain for us, but we were happy and resilient and accepted it without question because it was all we had.

She asked where this was. When I said the Melbourne suburb of Black Rock, there was another delighted shriek. She had also been a child at Black Rock. We knew where each other had lived. We lived in Middleton St which is off Bluff Rd. Her great grandparents had settled in Black Rock when Bluff Rd was just a dirt track.

She had lived in Red Buff St. I laughed and said “I nearly drowned off the Red Bluff when I was seven. We had been told not to swim there because it was dangerous, so of course we never told our parents what had happened!”

In an instant we were transported back to our childhood days. She was younger than me and we were there at different times. Now for both of us we were young friends in a meeting of childhood minds.  We had swum at Half Moon Bay. We went to school at Black Rock and Sandringham
 
It was a case of do you remember. Do you remember the chook farm?  Yes, it was in Tulip St.  Her daughter trained as a nurse at the hospital in Sandringham where she had also worked. My mother worked as a volunteer at a small stall at Sandringham station to raise money to build that hospital.

She told me how happy she felt whenever she thought of her childhood at Black Rock. Her husband approached looking a bit bewildered. When he heard that we both spent our early years at Black Rock he understood.

Reluctantly she left, exclaiming at our chance meeting and I smiled for the rest of the day. I have no idea who she was. Life is like a jigsaw puzzle and the older we get the more pieces fall happily into place.


Bev Morton
November 2022

High above in the bright blue sky a glider drifts on thermals of warm air. Hovering like a giant eagle with wings outspread it seems almost motionless.

The sun beats down on the Benalla airport. Overhead I hear a long drawn out "Swish-sh" as the glider descends and makes a swift but perfect landing on the grassy swathe.
​
"I will never fly again, never!"  Or so I vowed years ago, after an attempted night's sleep on a flight to England. Amongst the sleeping bodies in 'cattle class,' I sneaked my window shade up and looked out. There against the curve of the Earth, I saw the Earth's shadow. A band of a deep blue grey topped by 'The belt of Venus', a dusky pink band blending to a bright apricot that heralded the dawn. The distinctive upward angle of the tip of the Qantas planes wing was darkly etched against the pink strip and I was forever hooked; hooked on flying, hooked on astronomy and on all things natural on this planet and beyond.

A cool breeze eddies around the astronomy pad at Winton Wetlands. The distant hills and mountains recede into the gathering dusk. As night falls a myriad of jubilant frogs raise their voice in ecstasy of the waters of the newly filled lake.

Overhead we view the wonders of the night sky. Planets Jupiter and Mars; star clusters, the red star Antares in the constellation of Scorpius and the rings of the planet Saturn. We view galaxies so far away that through the eyepiece of a powerful telescope they are but a mere smudge.

One freezing cold night on the deck of a small Russian ship in the Greenland Sea, I asked our guide to show me the Pole Star. This central star indicates north, around which all other stars appear to revolve on their nightly journey.

Long ago when the great navigators steered their ships by the stars, the early explorers sailed into the unknown seas of the Southern Hemisphere. Far away from land and beneath unfamiliar stars it was a whole new ball game!

The poet John Mansfield wrote:

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky. 
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.   

In his book “Carrying the Fire,’ Michael Collins, the pilot of the command module for the Apollo 11 space program, wrote of taking a fix on the star Capella to check his position when he was orbiting the Moon.
 
In 2011 an Atlas rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, California. Its very special payload was a NASA space craft named Juno after the mythical Roman goddess, wife of Jupiter the chief Roman god.
 
About nine hundred people built the space craft and launched it. It took approximately another three hundred people to care for it on its 2.8 billion kilometre journey to the planet Jupiter.
 
The Juno project hopes to uncover the secrets of the early solar system. It’s thought that Jupiter may have been the first planet formed and thus influenced the formation of the other planets.
 
Juno spent two years circling Earth before getting a sling from Earth's gravitational field to increase its speed. Arriving at the giant gas planet on time after a five year journey, the burners fired to slow the spacecraft and place it into orbit, as programmed. It was one second late!

On board are three specially constructed LEGO mini figures; Jupiter holding a lightning bolt, his wife Juno, holding a magnifying glass to search for truth and astronomer Galileo Galilei holding a telescope. It’s hoped that the inclusion of these LEGO figures will increase children’s awareness of the space program.
 
Will our quest for adventure and knowledge someday take us far away from our home here on Earth, using the old practise of navigating by the stars with the Earth as a reference point?
 
In a musty old autograph book, I found an inscription scrawled in ancient handwriting "Two men looked out from prison bars, one saw the dust and the other saw stars." 
 
Man is an explorer, forever pushing the boundaries and seeking new horizons.
​
In everything we do may we always have the far sight and cooperation to work together and plan for the future and a very bright star to steer by.
 
 
Beverley Morton  ​

Watching a u-tube of the 10 biggest waves ever recorded I realised I was homesick for the Southern Ocean!

On my study wall there is a picture of the inscription on the back of Antarctic Explorer Ernest Shackelton’s grave stone. It reads, “I hold that a man should strive to the utmost for his life’s set prize.”
 
Returning from Antarctica after visiting Scott and Shackelton’s huts we encountered a very bad storm and realised what the early explorers went through to achieve that goal.

From my diary: February 25th 1995

We are 23 passengers on a small Russian ship. In the past three weeks we have sailed through the southernmost latitudes of the roaring forties, the furious fifties, the screaming sixties and the shrieking seventies, otherwise known as ‘The second circle of Hell’.

There is an old seaman’s saying, “At Latitude 70 degrees South there is no God.”

My bunk has become my haven; . . . a place for reflection, contemplation and peace.   A place where I can turn myself off from the continual pitching and rolling of the ship beneath me and the incessant high pitched shriek of the wind.

There will be no opportunity to wash today. The rule is no longer one hand for yourself and one hand for the ship as when we are standing it is now ‘two hands for the ship` and all dressing and personal tasks must be managed in your bunk.

After breakfast we return to our bunks for the rest of the day. It’s just too dangerous to stay on our feet.                         

​A day of wild motion; the blue curtains around our bunks swishing wildly back and forth on their tracks like crazy pendulums. My jacket swings horizontally in an arc from its hook on the wall.

We lie and listen to the sounds of the afternoon; the creaks and groans of the ship as it labours in the heavy seas. The waves being driven by the west wind as we travel north are hitting us side on. At times a rogue wave that has welled up from a deeper ocean current and is out of sync with the others, hammers into the side of the ship, making a slamming, screeching noise like something jagged being dragged along the steel hull. …  Occasionally the sound of vomiting blends with the crash of the waves and the shriek of the wind!         
​                                
Juhan Smuul wrote of the voyage through the Southern Ocean, while returning from Antarctica with a Russian expedition in 1957.  “Waiting; a barren void. Yesterday is left behind. Today, nothing more than the threshold of tomorrow and that tomorrow on which everything hinges is elusive and full of uncertainty.”   
 
I lie here on my bunk waiting for tomorrow, but perhaps tomorrow I will still be lying here feeling the ship cresting the waves and as Shokalskiy drops vertically beneath us experiencing a couple of seconds of being suspended above the mattress, before gravity takes over and it feels as if we are heading straight down to Davey Jones locker, until the whole sequence begins again.

I venture up to the bridge this evening. I have more respect for Shokalskiy now. She can right herself after a 52 degree roll, with the starboard side of the ship nearly going under the water. The crew say that 60 degrees is the point of no return! 

I stay on the bridge until late trying to comfort a very frightened Japanese cameraman. He says. “Very frightened, very frightened; there is great danger!” I tell him that I have been in worse seas than this. He looks at me incredulously and says. “Where on earth are you from?”  Then, “Ah Austraria! I rike it there. I have filmed at Cairns, very beautifurr!” He is happier now that we are talking about the tropics. I am thinking, `we are very different, you and I, right now I would rather be here.’

The crew link hands to form a chain, to get me off the bridge when I leave.

Four days later.

This evening in calmer waters we are all on the deck on top of the ship, searching for the loom of the land of New Zealand. We think we can smell land; the grasses and pollens and trees and all things that are precious and familiar to us. Ingrid is ringing her mother and she is crying tears of happiness. Collis is bowing, arms outstretched saying ‘thank you’ for our safe return. The Chinese film crew, who kept to themselves for most of the voyage, are now with us. We are all smiling and laughing.  Tomorrow morning we will wake up beside the wharf at the port of Bluff.


Bev Morton
​September 2022

Our family’s move to the country had been delayed and I was stuck between primary and secondary school. Seeing that I had missed the first term, I was sent to the small one teacher country school with ten of the local farmer’s children.

The teacher turns out to be a larrikin who loves to play outside with us and is averse to teaching lessons of any kind. He has nicknames for the boys, Nitwit, Bombhead, Dimwhit, etc. and loves to tease them. He has a small stick that he has been whittling to a point. He swishes it through the air. “This would shave bacon!”

One morning he says, “Okay, all you mugs, outside and I’ll challenge you all to a game of alleys.” He supervises the preparation of the marbles pad and the drawing of the poison ring in the sand. School requisites are now your lunch and a bag of marbles as we play most of the morning.

One wet Monday morning at the weekly flag raising ceremony, we stand at attention around the flag pole in the rain and salute the flag and recite. “I love God and my country. I honour the King. I salute the flag”, etc. It’s considered too wet today for lessons, which means too wet to play outside, so we clear the desks from the school room and play cricket indoors. King George the fourth, whose picture is still on the wall, cops a blow to the head as it is struck by a ball hit by the teacher.

“Sir”, as we respectfully call him, spends one whole day sitting in the top branches of a tall gum tree, wearing an army camouflage coat and reading a book.  We play outside as usual. We know where he is, but don’t let on. Every hour we wander about, avoiding his tree, calling with mournful cries, “Where are you sir?” When it’s time to go home he lets us stew for a bit longer before he climbs out of his tree.

As a city kid coming from a girl’s school, I have never played football and cricket. I inwardly cringe every time we play football as I am the oldest in the school but will be the last one chosen for a team. I am trying hard to fit in.
 
For me, things take a turn for the better when the news on the grapevine is the inspector will arrive unannounced next week!   Karma has caught up with us. A hurried first lesson on decimal fractions for the three older classes turns to disaster. We are told to go to lunch and after the break we will all be caned for being dumb!
​
Lunch is a silent affair with none of the usual banter. Then Laurie asks, “Bev’ley, have you ever had the cuts?” “No.”  They teach me how to relax my left hand while supporting the hand and wrist with my right hand. I get explanations of the motion and force of the stick at different heights and the height that my hand should be held so that I won’t get the full force. The hand should not move. Do the wrong thing and you will get a second one.

We file silently into the classroom and lineup with a supported outstretched hand. When the teacher comes to the older girl at the end of the line he hesitates. Then he sees that I’m smiling and I cop a beauty! My stinging hand is a badge of honour. I have been treated as one of them.  

One warm afternoon in a rapidly failing English lesson teacher says, “Okay you mugs! Get out your bikes and meet me down the beach for a game of cricket.” He leads the charge on his motor bike.

Playing on sand today, the rules are full toss of the ball, hit and run. I am always bowled out for a duck and as usual I have been chosen last.  Laurie Dixon says incredulously, “Bev’ley’s their leading bat!” This is different, I’m standing in deep sand and they are throwing a cricket ball at my head. I bash it away in self-defense, throw down the bat and run before they can throw another one at me. I clock up a good score and the underdogs win.

Arriving back at school there are draught horses confined behind an electric fence to eat down the excess spring grass. “Beverley, have you ever had an electric shock?” “No, I haven’t” There are delighted shrieks of “Come on then” and “Laurie, grab the wire.” They line up holding hands and I am put on the end to receive the full charge. I am now accepted!

The result of all this non schooling was boarding school in Melbourne, but that year is what I call ‘my gap year’.  I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.


​Bev Morton

An expired passport and the current world political climate evoked memories of years past and an attempted landing on an Arctic Island with a NATO Base, from a small Russian ship.

”Sailing from the port of Longyearbyen on the Island of Slavbard, latitude 78 degrees 13’ north, our attempted destination is Scoresby Sund in North East Greenland. The Greenland coast is land locked by fast ice for most of the year. There is only a short window of time when it may be possible to reach N/E Greenland. This is a very heavy ice year.  Our ship is ice strengthened but it’s not an icebreaker.

The second day at sea is spent slowly poking into a curtain of thick fog. Visibility forward is reduced to no further than the bows of the ship. The radio crackles, “This is Danish navy ship Theseus. Do not proceed any further, wait for us and prepare to be boarded.” For an hour our ship is stationary, wallowing, “dead in the water.”

The Captain is watching the radar; he says quietly, “They are here.” A ghostly grey shape of a navy ship looms up behind us and then disappears again into the fog.  A bright red zodiac with four red clad crew members is speeding across the rough sea and the ship is boarded with navy precision. An officer examines the ships papers while the other crewmen check for sea worthiness. We are advised that the area we are heading into has a 9/10ths covering of sea ice 50 nautical miles from land.  After some time we are cleared to continue on into the ice.

Early on the third morning we see a thin band of light on the horizon; it’s “the ice blink”, the reflection from dense pack ice.

Anticipation runs high as we approach the pack ice. On the bridge the crew is very intent and unsmiling. No one speaks.

Our expedition leader sits silently at the bridge window. He picks up the microphone, “As you can see we are approaching the ice edge. At the moment we are taking on sea water for ballast. The ship will lay deeper in the water so that the most strengthened part of the ship can be used for sailing through the ice. We will head north so we will have head winds which will make the ship less vulnerable. The ice here has been broken by the waves and the situation looks promising but when we have travelled some nautical miles it may be different, we’ll see.”

We enter a field of broken chunks of ice on a rolling sea. The ice is banking down the wave action. The further we sail the larger these floating ice missiles become.

At this point we are twenty nautical miles from the nearest land. The idea is that we will proceed into the ice with a heading north, while the stream is setting us to the south. The result will be that we sail in the direction of the mouth of the fjord.

The broken ice eventually becomes large pancake ice, heaving in an icy sea.  The captain has his binoculars trained on the ice searching for open leads. We charge straight into the ice. There is no open water, just huge lumps of ice, white, blue and the dirty brown of moraine. The further we go the worse the situation becomes. The ship slows to .03 knots. The pack ice becomes a solid field of ice. We can no longer make any headway and are being swept south in the East Greenland ice current. Our speed is one and a half knots backwards!

The sky is leaden and the wind keens across the ice field. There are no open leads. We are not going to Greenland, but the problem is will we get out of the ice? The Captain's face is inscrutable as he paces to each side of the bridge surveying the ice. The danger is getting ice damage to the propeller. After an hour of skilful manoeuvring we retreat south along the ice edge.

In open water we meet large waves head on and the spray is flung up over the bows and drifts back over the ship.  To keep our spirits up, we are told that we are in for a special treat. We will go to Jan Mayen Island.

Five hundred kilometres to the east the towering rocky cliffs of Jan Mayen loom up out of the mist. We have been refused permission to land as there is a NATO base here and we are on a Russian Ship. We unobtrusively cruise the rugged coastline, keeping close to the shore.

Loren C was established for long range radio navigation in 1961. A Norwegian territory, the Island is uninhabited save for a small military presence.

The Mountains are wreathed in low cloud and then a window opens in the cloud and reveals sunshine on snow clad Beeranberg, the most northerly volcano in the Arctic.

An Irish Monk, St Brendan the navigator is believed to have sailed in this area in the sixth century. He reported a terrible noise and a black Island that was on fire. He thought he had discovered the entrance of Hell.

We sail around a rocky headland and there in the cove is a sleek grey gunboat!

The radio crackles ominously. The Captain takes this call in the radio room. He has been caught red-handed!

We are ordered to leave at once and are now under the control of the gunboat. We retreat carefully; the Captain at the helm.  We are guilty of breaching their three mile exclusion zone!“


Bev Morton
​July 2022  ​

We only meet on Dark Nights
 
We meet on dark nights, well away from towns and civilization.

Nights when the moon is a mere sliver somewhere distantly in the dark sky overhead where its light cannot reach us.

We avoid light of all descriptions, turning away from harmful light rays that can wreck our night vision.

As the light fades from long summer evenings, we battle mosquitoes and midges and low flying dragon flies that inhabit the low vegetation that surrounds our habitat. 

In the cold brief dusk that follows the winter’s day, rugged up against the chill crisp night we pray for low humidity.  

A dog barks in the distance, a satellite sails overhead.  A strange light blinks on a faraway hill.

We survey the wonders of the night sky.   

We are astronomers.   
                                                                                                         

Bev Morton
May 2022

On the outbreak of World War two my father enlisted in the army. My Mother, older sister Maureen and I found accommodation with a Swedish woman at Black Rock in Melbourne. Our landlady is a lonely woman who likes to walk on the cliff tops at Half Moon Bay and stand looking out to sea. Maureen and her new school friends are convinced that she is a German spy. They are doing their bit for the war effort by observing her from the ti tree bushes that line the coast. “There she is again, looking for shipping!”

Some mornings Mother calls, “Beverley, come along, we are going into the City.” This is exciting. At a moment’s notice we jump on a tram. At Sandringham station we quickly negotiate the high step from the platform onto the train. I sit with my nose pressed to the window pane trying to memorize the names of the stations. At Flinders St Station we rush up the ramp; it’s easier when you hurry. It’s obvious that its war time, the crowds are all women and children.

Sometimes we emerge from the station to find Swanston St blocked off to traffic. Mother says, “Quick Beverley, there’s going to be a march.” We rush across to take our place at the barricades as platoons of khaki clad soldiers, heads held high, eyes straight ahead, arms swinging, feet pounding the road in perfect unison sweep past. We clap and feel very proud of them. Then the barriers are removed and the City resumes its usual bustle.

Draught horses champing at the bit and blowing steam through their nostrils stand impatiently at street crossings, waiting for the traffic lights to change. Amid strong smells of horse sweat and leather harness I watch huge iron shod hoofs and long white hair flowing from their fetlocks as they mark time, anticipating the change of lights and activity. These are proud powerful horses pulling heavy drays, some laden with beer barrels. Wizened little men perched on high seats on the drays, handle the reins. Lighter horse drawn carts are delivering food to restaurants. There are very few motor vehicles on city streets.

When the lights change big green trams clank their bells as they move off.  We avoid stepping in horse manure as we cross the road.

We pay the gas bill at the Gas and Fuel building in Flinders street, where the continually revolving doors are a challenge to small children. Visit the department stores of Foy and Gibson, Buckley and Nunn and the Myer Emporium. Have lunch at a nice restaurant with a tall glass of lemonade in a thick heavy glass.

The flower stalls along the footpath in Swanston St are very busy. The scent of huge bunches of violets fills the air.

On a corner of Swanston Street outside the State Savings Bank there is always a man selling toy furry monkeys attached to a stick with a string. This is where I put the brakes on and usually go home with one.

Dad comes home on final leave before leaving for the war in Europe. He brings presents and it’s great to have him home again.

He is leaving tonight and he’s going to show me the train, the “The Spirit of Progress.” He says it’s the best train in Australia. The ‘Spirit’ has been reserved tonight as a troop train. The platform at Spencer St Station is packed with families and young women embracing and kissing soldiers in uniform. Emotions run high.

Dad, wisely defusing the situation, carries me down the platform to see the engine which is getting up steam. I only have eyes for the train, until he is gone

.
Bev Morton
March 2022

On December 26th 1991, the once powerful Russian dominated Soviet Union comprising 15 republics was disbanded; the Russian economy had collapsed. The President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev said in a broadcast to the world “We have been involved in a social experiment that has failed.”

The ‘Professor Molchanov’, a small Russian ice strengthened ship from the Meteorological Institute of Murmansk, had just been chartered out as a tourist ship. The crew were at the other end of the world in Antarctica when the news reached them.

The engines were shut down and the ship stopped alongside a large ice floe for a small ceremony. It was a very solemn occasion as the red Soviet flag with the hammer and sickle was lowered from the mast head. The ship’s Doctor Ludmila KoValskaya had a sewing machine and had made a new flag of white, blue and red material. The tricolour flag that was used by the anti communist white movement during the Russian Civil war was slowly raised to the masthead. The hammer and sickle on the ship’s funnel was also painted over with the new Russian flag.

The crew members felt very insecure. They didn’t know what the future held; they hadn’t been paid for months and couldn’t support their families. Even the names of some of their home towns had been changed. They were a long way from home
.
Eighteen months later we are on a night flight across Russia on an ancient prototype Ansvair 74 cargo plane. The government authorities in Moscow think it’s parked in its hanger, but it’s on a black market flight across 8 time zones to the isolated City of Cherskiy in far Eastern Siberia. The cargo, old tyres and vodka and of course our party of 12, the self loading cargo.  

We are an International group of mainly ornithologists who have been permitted to enter Russia on science visas.  

Two days later we are sitting around the walls of a large orange helicopter for a flight north to Four Pillars Island in the Bear Island group. The engines rev to an incredible level, but still it can’t get off the ground. We have too much weight onboard to lift off and need to taxi to become airborne.  Our packs and supplies are piled high in the middle of the helicopter. I remark that I can smell petrol and am told there are cans of aviation fuel under our packs as they need to carry it for the return journey. I ask if that’s dangerous if we crash and I’m told that it’s not a problem, if we come down no one will get out anyway!

We fly north across the small lakes and polygon pattern of the tundra to the dense pack ice of the East Siberian Sea.  A rocky Island appears beset in a sea of white ice. The helicopter lands on a hill behind the living quarters of a Russian Meteorological Station that has seen better days.  The heavy wooden door that weighs a ton is designed to keep out the wind, snow and polar bears. The red hammer and sickle flag still flies above the building.

After a late tea we are invited to spend time with the leader of the base. Valeriy is an aerologist who has been here on this lonely island for 10 years. There were formerly 23 people stationed here, now they are only 13. They used to test for pollution from Chernobyl but that’s been stopped. They haven’t been paid for months and they all look very thin and gaunt.

Beyond a flimsy curtain the midnight sun shines brightly on the frozen sea and a few large seals frolic nearby. There’s a television set in the corner of the room. From this distant outpost Valeriy has been watching his country fall to pieces and he’s anxious for outside news. What trade is Russia doing with other countries and how is Russia regarded in the west?  He doesn’t like Gorbachev, and says they were better off under Leonid Brezhnev. We are privileged to hear a lengthy discussion of real Russian politics and events, which are very different to the brief opinions reported on our news.

The vodka flows with the Russian custom of many toasts. After a few hours we switch to aero vodka!  Don’t go to Siberia unless you have a cast iron stomach.

The members of our group are of seven different nationalities. Valeriy exclaims, “Tonight, the whole world has come to my door!”  He is searching for an insight into each of our countries and our way of life, comparing them with Russia. He has to decide where his future lies.

In the early hours the midnight sun reaches its lowest point above the horizon and an eerie silence in what should be night, settles over the High Arctic.  At this far flung Russian outpost where the red hammer and sickle still flies, it seems fitting that at this moment in time the low rays of the sun reflect a deeper orange light and cast sombre grey shadows across the sea ice.

​
Beverley Morton
​February 2022

There are some things that become indelibly burnt into your brain. Like the towering green bull bar of a greenfreight log truck coming at you on a sharp bend of a mountain road; or the huge legs and paws of a polar bear sweeping it along as it races across the snow at your sledge. Although they are memories that will live with me forever they were quickly dealt with, therefore not really a matter of courage.

It’s the insidiously little things that lurk in the back of your mind. One of my first memories is my sister saying that she was frightened of heights. I know that for me it’s not natural to be uncertain of my ability to handle heights. Its irrational learnt behaviour and I don’t know when it will strike.

It came into my adult life unexpectedly.  After a freezing cold night camped in Victoria’s high Alps we were sitting in the sunshine on top of a range they call ‘The Crosscut Saw.’ It was just a narrow path with a drop on either side. I was happy, until I stood up and froze on the spot. My companions said “How did she get up here, if she can’t get down?” It was irrational.
​
Irrational fear of heights presents itself suddenly when balance and confidence are required, like having to walk carefully across a narrow plank to board a ship that is anchored on the far side of another.

At Oban in Scotland, the tide had gone out and it wasn’t possible to use the gangway to board the ship. They called up to me from about three metres down in the bows, “You will have to Jump.”  There was no time to think, just do it and land like a baby elephant.

But be careful of what you say, it will come back to haunt you.  In North East Greenland I was known as an experienced dog sledge traveller, but the rot set in when I travelled with Jonas Pike. He was a lithe young hunter with a good team and he could place those dogs anywhere.

I made the mistake of telling him that his sledge was a magic carpet and for the next week he did his best to prove it. We would stop for our lunch break on the top of a small island frozen in the pack ice of the Greenland Sea or beside a steep drop onto the fjord below. The other sledges would be facing the path down again, but Jonas’s team and sledge would be facing a cliff.  “Why aren’t you eating all your lunch?” I would answer that I was not really hungry!

When we leave Jonas leaps onto the back of the sledge to balance it. The dogs need no urging, they have no fear of heights. With a sudden burst of speed they propel themselves joyfully out over the edge. Bodies tense and twisting in mid air, tails held out for balance, legs and feet reaching for the snow below.  The fast moving sledge is propelled horizontally until gravity takes over and we glide down behind them. Paws taking hold and the dogs are away, racing downhill.  
​
One memorable occasion occurred when we were going to board a helicopter that was out on the sea ice. “Bev, go with Ziggy.” I get on the back of the skidoo and he heads for the cliff edge! He stops and says “I don’t think I can do that.” That was close!


Bev Morton
October 2021

 “Australia rides on the sheep’s back,” was the catch cry in the nineteen fifties and wool was bringing record prices.

On Phillip Island we changed our sheep flock from crossbreds to plain bodied merinos. As its heavy carrying country we graze four to six sheep to the acre. We have other paddocks leased across the Island and it’s my job to drive the sheep to their current pastures and keep an eye on them.
​
Spring arrives later down on the coast than to inland Australia. It brings sunshine, less wind and a sparkling blue sea. In the paddocks bees buzz around at ankle height pollinating strawberry clover flowers. Yellow flowers bloom on gorse bush hedges. Horses and cattle are losing their rough winter coats. A light breeze blows across the land, rustling through the tops of the tall rye grass that is coming to seed in the paddocks that have been locked up to be cut for hay.
 
Shearing and hay time always seem to coincide for us and it’s the busiest time of the year.    I bring the sheep from the paddocks to the shearing shed. The bleating of sheep and the frantic rattle of their cloven hoofs on the wooden slats of the floor as they are forced into the catching pen, blend with the thump of the generator and the whine of the shearing machine as the shearers push the combs and cutters through the thick fleeces. The smell of wool grease permeates the air.

My sister is doing the picking up; gathering the fleece and throwing it on the wool table and carefully skirting it of any stained or coarser wool. Father works on the wool press and Mother runs a tight ship at the nerve centre, the farm kitchen, preparing baskets of morning and afternoon tea for the wool shed and the hay crew out in the paddock and cooking the midday dinner for the shearers.

I am also on the hay crew and drive the tractor pulling the ancient hay rake. It’s the harvest, and for me, watching the swathe of rye grass and thick mat of clover curl away from the tynes of the rake is almost spiritual. There is nothing like the sweet smell of perfectly cured hay. The sun seems to be smiling on us and we hope it will continue to do so until the baled hay is safely in the shelter of the hayshed.

Stud Poll Herefords have been added to the farm menagerie. They are a delight; except for Brewarrina Cora who is bloody minded at the best of times.

We have a great crop of young bulls to prepare for the Stud Bull sales. Cora’s life never goes smoothly; her calf has a black patch on his neck! He will not make a stud bull.  Brother John and I train the surrounding hair towards the patch to make it look a bit smaller. This bull is sold separately at the Dandenong sale for unregistered bulls. John leads him around the sale ring and he brings a good price. But Dad looking down from the stand can see what we have done and is irate and in front of the other cattle breeders he accuses us of being crooks!  Regardless, “Black Patch” is voted best beef sire in the Mildura district for several successive years.

The Ventnor Park Poll Hereford show team is proudly added to the horse truck for the Gippsland shows and wins many Championships in individual classes and beef cattle groups and a senior champion bull at Melbourne Royal Show.

At Korumburra Show, a tall thin old man sits on a rail fence nearby watching our cattle being prepared for the show ring. The washing of white tails and white legs, oiling hoofs, grooming and putting rows of curls in their thick red coats. When I finish he says, “I love to watch you working with the cattle. Are you coming to Mirboo North Show next week?  If you do you’ll win.  You have the best cattle and I’m judging.” We find that he is also the judge that day at Korumburra!

With John home from school we need more acres and Father has always wanted to get back over the Great Dividing Range, “One mouthful of grass there is worth more in stock feed than four in Gippsland,” he always says. The search for land brings us to Borambola in Goomalibee. It’s fathers dream that we will all live there together, but fate always has other plans.

In a café in Melbourne, a young woman I have never seen before sits down at the table beside me and says, “Your name is Beverley, isn’t it?” 

I’m surprised! “How do you know that?”  She says “I’m guessing. Have you ever thought about going nursing?  I tell her that I will think about it.  Although farming will always hold a piece of my heart, times are changing and I know it’s time for me to move on.
 

Bev Morton
August 2021

​After three hard years of training and study I was a young nurse who had just graduated from Gippsland Base Hospital at Sale. I was invited to join the staff and after my annual holidays returned to work on the Male Surgical Ward.

My life never seems to run smoothly and this time was no different. We were short staffed. There were only three fully trained nursing sisters to supervise staff and run the ward; just enough to cover all the shifts if we worked solo. Thrown in at the deep end I was transitioning from Indian to Chief with no supervision.

The nurse’s station was at the top of the stairs and the wards were entered through a nearby door into the main public ward where there were thirteen beds around a central point. The private rooms were down a passage beyond that. I was not used to just having the supervisory role and I was still doing some of the nurse’s work on the most critical patients as well.

We will call him Jack. Jack was an elderly man who had a leg amputated above the knee. He had not been given a prosthesis or crutches as it was thought that his balance and strength were not good enough to handle them and he would be likely to fall and injure himself. He spent every day just sitting quietly on a chair at the foot of his bed.

On this particular evening the main ward was full with men recovering from surgery. We were beyond our usual capacity, frantically busy and there were extra beds and patients everywhere.
​
My help was needed with a man who had been run over by a bulldozer and as I passed Jack I could see that he was getting restless. I asked him not to go to bed by himself. All the nurses were busy, I would be back later.

On my return through the ward I found Jack sitting up in his bed! I was horrified! He could have fallen. I said, “Jack, I told you not to go to bed alone!” He smiled mischievously and said “Sister, I could see that you were busy and I didn’t think you were ready to come to bed yet!” Twelve men roared with laughter. With a red face I bolted through the nearest door to the Nurses Station. Curses! This was the wrong direction. Mustering all my dignity I had to go back through the ward again! They were still laughing and Jack was a hero.

I still say the wrong things at times. It doesn’t bother me now. I just smile and get on with life.

Bev Morton
July 2021

In Australia, autumn progresses towards winter. The Desert ash trees are losing their leaves. My white cat has a thick winter coat. She reminds me of an Arctic fox.

In the early spring of 2006 I was in the wilds of North east Greenland, travelling with the hunters by dog sledge.

Memories of lying in a little green tent at Kap Hoegh in the soft twilight that follows the midnight sun, listening to the hoarse bark of an arctic fox high up on a hill, as it summons its mate to a meal of nesting little auks. Katherine who is sharing the tent with me says, “That’s a vixen, she has a different note.”

Everyone else is sleeping in a hut safely out of reach of marauding polar bears that are also looking for a meal. We have the dogs tethered nearby who should alert the hunters if one should come our way. But my experience of Greenland hunters is they sleep as soundly as tired sledge dogs!

I ask why there is a very large hunting knife placed beside the musk ox skin that I‘m lying on.

Katherine says, “Jonas left it for us in case we have to kill a polar bear in the night; isn’t he sweet.  I will get out quicker than you will so I‘m leaving the knife with you.”

This is serious! I decide to swap the knife for a rifle.

I go to find Scoresby who understands me as he learnt English when watching the Australian TV show ‘Neighbours’ during an enforced stay in hospital.

I tell him we have been left a knife to kill a bear and ask, “What is the best way to kill a bear, do we have to cut its throat?” He says, “Yes, but the bear will be coming for you on its hind legs, waving its paws at you. It will be taller than you so if you are going to kill it you will have to be very quick and get in between its front legs, then reach up and push its head back and cut its throat. As most bears are southpaws chances are it will lead with the left paw. If you want to live a few seconds longer just dodge to the other side.” No, he won’t part with his rifle.”You might shoot Katherine.”

So we doze on and off in our little tent with the hunting knife  between us and the night filled with the incessant cries of little auks returning to their nests in the rocks, punctuated by the snores of the Greenland huskies and the bark of the arctic fox.

Two nights later we are again lying in our flimsy little green tent while everyone else is sleeping in a hut. This time the dogs are tethered out on the ice, nowhere near us. Suddenly there’s a thumping scratching noise on the wall of the tent beside me! … Our hearts stopped.  . … But it was only the wind.

Katherine said “Your eyes were huge!”  So were hers, we thought we were about to be eaten! 

The next morning we found a very large polar bear nearby.


Beverley Morton 
​May 2021

​Anzac day in Goorambat was always a solemn occasion, the ex-servicemen would go to Benalla to march at 10.30 a.m and to attend the R.S.L. service at the cenotaph.

Back in Goorambat, I was instructed to raise the flag that was flying at half-mast to the top of the flagpole at 12 M.D. as per the Anzac Day instructions in the Australian flag book. Then on their return they would gather for an hour or so at the Goorambat Hotel.

But in 1982 Anzac Day fell on a Sunday and the hotel would be closed! The publican said he would open unofficially for an hour just for the ex- servicemen.  We sat quietly behind closed blinds and doors while they had their own private reunion.

I observed the quiet close bond between them. On that day they had unspoken private memories that we who had not experienced those times could not share. It was their day.
Then someone suggested they should each buy a bottle of whisky!

My friend Flo looked at me in alarm. “We’d better get back to your place quickly and start cooking. They’re going to need a lot of food.“

The close band of merry makers arrived an hour later at peace with the world and radiating goodwill but their numbers had grown. Amongst others we had the publican and friends. A family who had moved to Goorambat that day who we didn’t know occupied the couch smiling at us, while an ex digger wearing an army  slouch hat sat asleep on the floor under a large pot plant for a couple of hours.

Flo and I passed food around frequently, hoping to preserve the equilibrium. The Anzac spirit prevailed and the afternoon was full of smiling unspoken mateship and quiet good cheer.

I don’t know how many people fell off the front veranda when they left. Just walked out of the front door and kept going and measured their length on the front lawn, each one saying, “I missed the step!” There were no steps there!

The stragglers stayed on for tea but didn’t seem hungry by then and the last one, a younger man who had seen active service in Vietnam left reluctantly at 3 a.m.

Those days are long gone and things have changed.

This year, Anzac Day in Goorambat has a different flavour. The flag flies at half mast at Victory Park as usual and no one bothers about a flag book.

The memorials to those who lost their lives in the two World Wars and Korea have been given a face lift and small white crosses have been placed along the path for the occasion.  I notice tourists who have come to admire the silo art wandering in there and standing solemnly for a while.

After midday there are several cars in the park and as the last post rings out from my neighbours TV, a small group of people are sitting on chairs around the memorial having their own private service.

Next door to the Park lunch is being served in the new Diggers Wife’s Café that is run by the Goorambat Veterans Retreat based at the closed Goorambat School.

Those Goorambat World War veterans are no longer with us and Anzac Day now belongs to the people.

On Anzac Day 2021, I am proud to think that I was given a special insight into that original day of remembrance and what it meant to those who had given so much to preserve our way of life.      
                                                                                                     
Bev Morton
​April 2021

​My father warned me that we could be buying into a ghost town.  It was a bit ram shackle and a couple of the original houses needed to be demolished.  

Seeing that we couldn’t afford to live out in the bush where I would have the peace and quiet that I craved, Goorambat was the next best thing.

For three years we had enjoyed lived in the farm cottage by the banks of the Broken River.  In 1973 with the sale of the family property it was time to move on.

Don was a high-level quadriplegic from a diving accident in years past, so he couldn’t help with the move. The people we were buying the house from were in the same boat. The husband was recovering in a Melbourne hospital after open heart surgery, so we were two women managing the best we could.

It was evening when we moved into Main St Goorambat. Gwen still had open topped boxes in the living room, so I put my boxes alongside. I was tired so just threw my purse into one of them. Don also tossed his wallet into one of the boxes without looking.

“What’s for tea?”  I told him I had only brought enough food for a light tea and breakfast, and I would shop in the morning.

The night was almost consumed with juggling furniture around. After midnight the ancient Queen Anne bed was still on the floor in pieces. Don said, “Go and get Ray from next door to help you.”  “No, I’m new in town and I’m not going to be a nuisance.”

At three a.m. I was looking forward to a nice hot bath with water that wasn’t straight from the Broken River. Horror, this was worse, it was dark brown with mud from the Broken Creek!

At 5 am we were woken by an unholy racket; it was the twice a week goods train stopping opposite the house to unload supplies and barrels for the Pub.
 
In our tired state we had no idea which boxes contained the money.  At lunch time Don said, “Just go to the store and ask for credit.” “No, I’m not going to have anyone think that we’re going to be a nuisance in this town.”

The sun was setting when we found the wallet.  I still remember the intense joy of that moment. We said, “Let’s go to the Royal for tea to celebrate, we can pick up the cat from the cottage on the way back.”

We got used to the early goods train and the grain trucks being loaded from the silos at three in the morning, with the slamming of lids and the crash of each rail trucks buffers colliding as they careered down the track after being filled.

Most people in the district were related and were proud of their family connections. I soon found that the quickest way to be accepted was to have knowledge of the extended family trees.

With the early 1970’s drought, farmer’s sons were moving away for other employment. The small mixed farms surrounding Goorambat were about to be swallowed up by larger acreages. Small towns were struggling, but social division of the sexes was still alive and well.  In the town there was men’s work and women’s work, and no one crossed the line. But the winds of change were blowing.

Victory Park was looked after by the local members of the R.S.L. who were mostly farmers. When Don returned home with a request from the men for me to cut the grass in the Park, as they were busy with the harvest, I knew there would be trouble.  It nearly caused a revolt from the town’s women who wanted to know why I was doing the men’s work.

When Don passed away, I inherited his position as Goorambat Football Club Treasurer. When I also became the Secretary, there was another bunch of very indignant women to deal with and I found the first nails placed under my car’s tyres!

At the Presentation Night I was awarded the Best Clubman trophy.  When it was asked if it should be ‘Club Person’, the men said “No, she belongs to the men’s committee” and I got more nails in my tyres.

I treasure my Clubman of the Year trophy.  There was no ‘person’ nonsense then. I was appreciated and it was not long before I was considered a local.
​
Times and attitudes have changed.  It doesn’t matter if you are a newcomer or whether you are male or female. Now we all work together for the good of the community. 
 
Bev Morton
March 2021

​​In 1993, I spent three weeks in Siberia with a small group of International ornithologists. We were invited to enter Russia on scientific permits.
​
"The midnight sun cast a deep golden glow across the Arctic tundra. It's 1.25 a.m. and the Earth is hushed as I walk alone across its soft green carpet. This is a vast remote area with shades of green and brown treeless tundra as far as the eye can see. The deep golden light of the low angle of the sun spreads gently across this wonderful landscape.

The predominant feature here is a deep silence. Every brief sound seems subdued at this magical time. The silence is broken briefly by the cry of a distant loon, or the unexpected  splash of a paddle being dipped into the water as two youths clad in reindeer skin clothes row silently across the lake to the conical reindeer skin tents of the Chukchi reindeer herder’s camp.  A faint peel of spontaneous laughter comes from happy children who are still out playing. We have been told that the Chukchi are night people and sleep very little in the summer.

​Heading off into the distant landscape I am often wading through ankle deep water. Wild geese are calling in the distance. On a dry patch of land small mouse like creatures scurry down into holes in the ground. I have disturbed a colony of lemmings!

​We visit the herders and are welcomed into a large reindeer skin tent. There is a fire in the middle of the tent and a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape. One side of the tent is pegged up for ventilation. They are an extended family from grandfather down to a baby clad in a reindeer hide suit suitably padded with moss for a napkin. We sit on reindeer hides on the floor and drink mugs of tea. Our expedition leader is our interpreter.

​It’s a treasured memory on a hot summer’s night. Now it’s only in spirit that I traverse the marshy tundra on top of the world, beneath the golden light of the midnight sun."


Bev Morton
February 2021

​The U.S. Open Golf Championship has been played recently. When I am asked if I play golf I sometimes say, “I’ve played at Royal Melbourne.” The golfers look at me with admiration and ask what my handicap is. Then I explain.

When I was at primary school at Black Rock during World War 2, my friends were Italian children who lived in an old house in the bush up Cheltenham Rd. Their father was a prisoner of war who  worked on farms at Tatura and their mother worked long hours in a factory. I sometimes went home with them at school lunch time.

The Royal Melbourne Golf Club is also at the end of Cheltenham Rd. This is in the days of petrol rationing. The members catch the tram to Black Rock and are picked up by a horse drawn coach that takes them up the scrub lined road to the Club.

It’s on the kid’s way home from school. When they hear the horse approaching at a stately trot they hide in the bushes. When it’s abreast they leap out, calling out in high falsetto voices, leaping alternately into the air. I am given a place in the leaping order. It’s a very impressive operatic performance and someone is always in mid air; great choreography. The horse is a big fiery, half draught chestnut mare. When we leap out she turns her head to look at us, rolls the whites of her eyes, shies across the road and then bolts. The driver is a big man with a red face who wrestles with the reins; he looks as if he has no sense of humour. The coach is completely enclosed in black canvas blinds so the golfers can’t see what’s going on!

We sometimes jump in the bunkers on the way back to school. A running jump over the edge and you’re airborne like a bird, then land on your heels and slide down the beautiful white sand. If the golfers see us they run at us, shouting and waving golf clubs in the air! We don’t understand why they get so excited.

Somehow Mother gets to hear of these escapades. I am sent to a polite girl’s school at Sandringham. It's a culture shock!

Two years later my sister goes to work in the office at the Royal Melbourne Golf Club. The green keeper, who used to burst into the office before important golf tournaments, fuming about those damn kids in the bunkers again, is off work with high blood pressure.

The horse drawn coach no longer runs up Cheltenham Rd. The horse Ginger has been retired because of her dangerous behaviour. She would bolt up the road and into the long driveway to the Clubhouse at flat gallop, and then stop dead on a white line that the coach wasn’t meant to cross, causing the members who were seated in the back to be thrown onto the floor!
I was eight, for us it wasn’t malicious, just a lot of fun and it was only a game. 

Bev Morton
​November 2020

“Wake up Beverley! We’re going to Phillip Island in a taxi.” My startled face emerges from beneath the covers to greet the grey of a Melbourne morning. Within half an hour, the black taxi glides away from the curb of our suburban home.

When Mother decides to act she doesn’t let the grass grow under her feet. She calls it following her hunches, in which she has great faith.

This latest hunch is for a farm advertised as rich agricultural land with the paddocks running down to the sea. She sent a message to Father who is logging at Flowerdale. He didn’t receive it. – She agonized all night, and then decided that she must go herself.

In 1948 the South Gippsland Highway is a narrow ribbon of bitumen stretching into the distance. Land’s end is the small, sleepy fishing village of San Remo, at the entrance to Westernport Bay.  A few drab houses, a hotel and a couple of shops and half a dozen trawlers moored to the jetty.  We drive over the long, part suspension bridge onto Phillip Island. Sunlight sparkles on a pale blue sea. The tide is out, green seaweed adorns the rocks. On the Island tall sand dunes reach up towards the blue sky. We drive past green paddocks with grazing cattle and sheep to Cowes to pick up the Estate Agent, J. Harold Smith.  A small, thin old woman emerges from the office. She is wearing an old fashioned black coat that reaches down to her ankles. Smelling of camphor moth balls, it has small buttons all the way down to the hem, above the thick stockings and small button up boots.  This is J. Harold Smith!

Approaching a property, J. Harold Smith instructs the driver to turn in at the gate. A long drive way leads to the house which nestles beneath a steep hill that protects it from the elements. The sea views out across Westernport Bay are superb.

The owners are waiting out on the driveway to greet us. They must think we’re loaded, arriving from Melbourne in a taxi! No wonder they’re smiling. Mother inspects the house. They look dubiously at her high heeled shoes and suggest a change of footwear for walking across the paddocks. She declines, “No, my husband will be here on Sunday, he can do that.”

On our return home she says, “Beverley, I don’t know how I am going to convince your father to go down there on Sunday. I am relying on your help.”

Father says he will not add to the madness by driving to Phillip Island on Sunday! All the dreams of a twelve year old are being dashed. “If you don’t go you will miss out on the best fishing grounds in Victoria.” He spins around, “What’s that Beverley?”

On Sunday, the weather on the Island isn’t kind to us. Skies are grey and a cold wind blows off the sea as we walk across the undulating paddocks towards the coast.

On the edge of the cliff top a cypress tree stands sentinel beside a grave, its branches twisted in one direction by the prevailing wind. What a lonely place!  

Mother and J. Harold Smith are toiling somewhere in the rear, hampered by wire fences, high heels, old age and a five year old.

We learn that J. Harold is in her eighties and considered unstoppable. She opened her estate agency in her late seventies using her deceased husband’s name, because, “In this day and age no one is going to buy land from a woman.”

On our return to the farm house, the vendors, J. Harold and Dad retreat to another room. After a while J. Harold comes out and says, “Well, your husband has bought the property.” It’s Mother’s turn to look startled. After seeing the grave and a dead sheep, which she took as bad omens, she had changed her mind!

It’s autumn before we put Mickey the cat in a box in the back of the car and head for the Island, for the future that will change all our lives forever.


Beverley Morton

Two wild ducks are slowly crossing the deserted main street in Goorambat. There’s no hurry as there’s no traffic. This is a regular morning excursion for them and portrays life in a very small country town in our second lockdown during this pandemic. They are going to the Hotel that is closed.

With the highly infectious Covid 19 virus worsening in Victoria a “State of Disaster” has been declared.  In regional Victoria we enter another six weeks of stage three restrictions. There are only four reasons to leave home; a medical appointment, brief shopping, work or study and exercise.  We can’t have anyone visiting our homes. On Sunday afternoon there were joyful cries as two women friends met accidently on the footpath.

Life on my corner block has become very quiet. I have only one neighbour who lives behind his seven foot fence. The park and the empty Hall are on the other side and the grain silos opposite.
The tourists who thronged our small town viewing our silo art, no longer visit. There is no one admiring the bright eyes of Millie the barking owl who adorns the full length of a tall concrete silo. No eager tourists with cameras and drones record the lifelike painting of the three working draught horses on the silo opposite my house.

The New South Wales border is closed. The empty V/Line bus that now runs from Yarrawonga and connects with trains at Benalla swishes through the town six times a day without stopping. No one waits at the bus stop, no one gets off. The radio plays the rhythmic beat of the song, “Living in a ghost town!”

Passing the local cemetery I see the stark reality of the pandemic; a funeral where the only mourners are five men in navy suits standing distanced from each other around a freshly dug grave.

A rumble on a rough patch of road heralds a truck going to the silos. Any activity over there has become company. The sound of wheat being loaded onto the truck is of welcome manmade origin!

The most positive experience is collecting our mail from the post office.  Here those who are living alone have contact with other people. We smile behind our masks and greet each other with enthusiasm. Our postmistress radiates good cheer from behind her safety screen.

Bird life is restricted by human activity. With no one around varieties and numbers have increased and the bird song is beautiful.  Brightly coloured parrots lift our spirits. A friendly honey eater is already conning me to share the coming fruit harvest.

Now that we have “Time,” we have no excuse to procrastinate.  All those tasks that we have pushed aside can now be done.

In my quiet corner of the world, peace reigns. This day is mine to mould as I wish. There is no pressure, there’s nothing I have to do, but so much that can be achieved. Friends and family have become even more important. Although they are far away I can sit down with a coffee and the phone for a pleasant interlude.

When I was very young I promised myself that someday I would spend some time alone. In later years I completely changed my mind.  Be careful what you wish for! That time is here; right now.

We look forward to better times to come. 

Beverley Morton
August 2020
                                                                                                                                                      

A thin woman with long grey hair was playing the grand piano at the Galleria Coffee lounge in Melbourne years ago. Alongside the piano was a trolley that contained her belongings, for Natalie was homeless.

The most beautiful music I have ever heard rippled endlessly from her fingers.  I have to admit that I am not a fan of piano music; but this was the music of the angels.  Mesmerised, I sat there for I know not how long.

The late winter’s sun had gone and they were cleaning up in the café when Natalie finished playing, closed the piano and put her things in the old trolley. I couldn’t just walk away. I thanked her for her beautiful music. Her face lit up like a 1000 watt light bulb. She said, “Do you know that I have been on the National television news?’ I told her that I had seen it. She asked me where I was from and about my life in the country and was excited that I had come to Melbourne on a train. She talked to me about her love of music until a young woman arrived and said, “I’ve come to take you home Gran.”

I hailed a passing taxi to take me to the station just in time to catch the 6.01 p.m. train back to Benalla.

Meeting Natalie Trayling was one of the highlights of my life.
 

​Beverley Morton.                                                                    

As young teenagers, Margot and I organized a picnic ride for her Melbourne friends to the coastal village of Rhyll.

She has hired riding school horses for them but has made a pavlova that can’t be transported on horseback. She says, “You can drive a horse. I’ve arranged to borrow a horse and jinker for the day.”

The retired, ancient, white horse, Snowy hasn’t been in harness for ten years. Old Mrs Pickersgill harnesses him up for us, looking worried. I pick up the reins and he bolts around the small paddock. When he settles down, we meet up with the girls.  Margot riding shotgun beside me; we hit the open road through the gum trees for the sleepy hamlet of Rhyll.

Grey skies and a strong cold westerly wind are the flavour of the day. We huddle together behind the monument to the early explorers for our picnic. Anticipation runs high when the pavlova is produced. Unfortunately, the whipped cream is sour, but we eat it just the same. By this time the company is looking miserable. It’s wet and cold and they are not used to riding horses!

All the way home the driving rain stings our faces. There is no escape from the rain in a jinker and our horse is as unhappy as the silent Melbourne girls, who look as if they will be eating their tea off the mantelpiece tonight.
​
As Margot and I drive home like drowned rats we cannot help laughing. We say, “This is a day we will never forget!”
 
Bev Morton
July 2020