by Lorna Hendry
Oscar’s re-entry to school was trickier. The boys in his class closed ranks on him. His teacher said that they had a difficult time the year before, and had been bullied by the older boys. Now that they were the oldest kids in the school, they were repeating that behaviour. Oscar was an outsider, so he was the easiest to exclude.
It took us a while to work out what was happening. When we did, I was more upset and angry about it than Oscar was. One day, when Oscar was talking about Jumat, one of the boys called him a liar. He said Oscar hadn’t really lived with Aboriginal people and didn’t have any Aboriginal friends.
‘But that doesn’t make sense’, I said to Oscar when he told me.
He shrugged. ‘I think he’s just a bit jealous. He’s used to being the one who’s done stuff other people haven’t.’
‘Do you want to take some photos to school to show them you aren’t lying?’
‘Not really. It doesn’t really bother me.’
It bothered me. It bothered me a lot. That year Oscar taught me a lot about bravery and self-belief. He had such a strong sense of who he was that it couldn’t be easily shaken. When things got worse I offered to take him out of school and homeschool him but he wouldn’t consider it.
In the middle of the year Oscar surprised himself, us, and his teacher when he was shortlisted for a program for students with academic potential at a nearby secondary school. In the interview he spoke about his time in Imintji and Lombadina in a very mature and serious manner. Although his left leg was jiggling furiously and he kept licking his lips, he told the principal what it was like being in a class surrounded by children who mostly had very basic reading and writing skills. His nerves were obvious, but he was calm and confident. I was impressed. So was the principal, and a few days later a letter came offering him a place.
The relief I felt when we opened that letter surprised me. I’d spent three years telling everyone, including myself, that my sons were learning just as much from their experiences as they would have if we had kept them in a regular school. I had always believed that education was as much, if not more, about a child’s home life and their relationship with the people around them as it was about what happened in the classroom. I’d even said things like, ‘Kids would learn at the bottom of the well if they had access to books and parents who answered their questions.’ Yet I had been harbouring a fear that I’d been wrong, that we might have ruined their future by dragging them around the country with us and ignoring their schoolwork for months on end.
We will never know with any certainty how those few unconventional years in childhood will play out in their adult life. When older people we’d met on the road said they had taken their children on similar trips, I’d always asked if they could see echoes of that in their kids as they grew up. Every one of them had said yes. Some spoke of adult children who were working in developing countries, helping to alleviate poverty. Others had returned to live in Indigenous communities or were still travelling around the world, not ready to settle down yet. All of them spoke about seeing in their children an appreciation of what they had experienced and a lack of interest in material goods.
Despite that, we only ever met a handful of other families doing the same thing. Of those, Sue and Tim were special and we stayed in touch when we returned to Melbourne. Like us, they never had any regrets about their decision to take their kids out of school and travel. A few years after their return, Sue told me she could definitely see changes in Troy and Kirralee. ‘Both of them have terrific communication skills’, she said. She attributed this directly to the months of camping. ‘If they didn’t speak to the people in the camp next to us, they would have had to play on their own in the dirt.’ As soon as she said that, I realised that Oscar and Dylan were very similar. While some of their friends have trouble making eye contact with adults, let alone conversation, Oscar and Dylan have no trouble chatting with whoever is around them.
Sue said of her kids, ‘Their rooms aren’t filled with rubbish. Kirralee says, “It’s just stuff.”’ I laughed when she told me that, and told her that when we eventually got around to giving the boys their own rooms I had given them both some money to furnish and decorate their new space. Oscar had looked confused and said, ‘But I don’t want anything’ and gave it back. Sue also said that when they were travelling, dealing with the inevitable vehicle breakdowns and plans that went awry, they all learned that sometimes, to get where you want to go, you have to be strong. ‘They have no fear now’, she told me.
Sue, Troy and Kirralee have had to be very strong. Tim fought hard but the cancer eventually won and they lost him, far too young. They hold tight to the memories of their months on the road in their campervan. ‘It was a very precious time.’
On one of the very last days of our trip, we worked out from our maps that the closest you could get to South East Cape, Tasmania, which is the most southerly point of Australia, was somewhere called Cockle Creek. When we got there the rangers said that there wasn’t a track that went the whole way to the cape. We decided to try anyway. It was cloudy and drizzling as we walked out along a boardwalk that stretched, long and pale and straight, over the boggy grassland towards the sea.
Two hours later we sat on a sloping rock ledge above the Southern Ocean and looked at the southernmost point of the continent. It was just a few kilometres away, across a wild stretch of sea and jagged rocks to our right. How many other people have been to all these points of Australia, we wondered. Propping our camera up on the ground with sticks, we set the timer and posed for a slightly crooked picture of ourselves with South East Cape behind us.
We were at the end of our journey. Every step from here would be taking us home to our old lives. But I suspected none of us would ever be quite the same again.
Acknowledgements
Most of the first draft of this book was written at a long wooden table in a house on the edge of the Macedon Ranges, courtesy of Writers Victoria and a Writing @ Rosebank Fellowship. A later draft was knocked into shape in a cubicle provided by a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship and the Readings Foundation. I cannot thank enough all those who played a part in offering me those opportunities.
Many of my fellow students in RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing course read extracts (and sometimes entire drafts) of this manuscript and offered advice and encouragement, as did James Shuter, Nannette Hunter, Tanya Hunter and Leonie Starnawski. Zora Sanders, who published two of my essays in Meanjin, will probably never know how much that helped.
Thank you to Melissa Kayser and Lauren Whybrow from Hardie Grant Explore for taking a chance on a travel memoir and for finding Martine Lleonart to help turn the manuscript into a book.
But well before all that, long before I even imagined that I could ever write a book, there was the wonderfully generous Tony Birch and the writing group that came out of his classes. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Andrea Frost and Sophie Torney for always having faith in me and not being afraid to dish out some tough love when it all got too hard.
To James and Oscar and Dylan, thank you for not complaining when I locked myself away for months to share our stories and secrets with the world. Thank you also for being the best travelling companions I could have asked for. May we always travel well together.
Explore Australia Publishing Pty Ltd
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Explore Australia Publishing Pty Ltd is a division of Hardie Grant Publishing Pty Ltd
Published by Explore Australia Publishing Pty Ltd, 2015
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Text and photos © Lorna Hendry, 2015
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Commissioned by Melissa Kayser
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