by Fiona Lowe
‘Champagne, please, Jon,’ Helen said and linked her arm through Bob’s.
Tara clapped. ‘You’re getting married?’
‘Let it go, Tara.’ It never ceased to amaze Helen why the under-forties crew thought she and Bob should marry. Neither of them needed that piece of paper to convince the other of their love and commitment. And with Bob more financially secure than her, marriage would only complicate things. But she had a sneaking suspicion that after two successful years growing together, Jade and Lachlan might return from Melbourne engaged. If it happened, she’d be first in line to congratulate them.
‘We’re celebrating the unanimous vote for Riverfarm to be the site of a sustainable co-housing project,’ Helen continued. ‘The community garden will be at its heart. It’s everything I’ve dreamed of and worked towards for the last five years.’
‘Congratulations!’ Tara hugged her. ‘You so deserve this.’
‘We still need Hoopers’ sponsorship of the garden.’
‘Goes without saying.’ Jon passed out champagne.
Fiza arrived in a blaze of colour—blue and yellow and green and red—carrying a cake. Clementine and Flynn immediately took off with the twins and the Hegarty kids to watch Lachlan’s magic show. Amal, biceps bulging, lowered an esky to the ground with a grunt.
‘She’s cooked enough to feed everyone, hasn’t she?’ Tara said sympathetically.
‘There’s more in the car.’
Jon slung his arm over the young man’s shoulders. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’
Amal had just completed his first year of medicine at Monash University and was back working in the store for the summer. After his uneasy first year in Boolanga, he’d attacked his final year of high school with determined ferocity. For a break from study, he’d played football for the Boolanga Brolgas under-eighteens. Although his grasp of the rules was a bit hit and miss, his skill with the ball was enviable. There was nothing like helping a team win a grand final to fast-track community acceptance. And back in January, when Amal was the first Boolanga high school student in over a decade to be accepted into medicine and his photo and the headline From Refugee Camp to Doctor appeared in the Melbourne papers, the town had claimed him as their very own success story. The Rotary Club had provided a bursary. It was a bittersweet moment.
There were still troubled youths in Boolanga struggling with social dislocation and the inability to picture a future for themselves. But at least there were now some programs in the school and projects in the community helping to re-engage these young men and women. Tara was proud that two boys had secured apprenticeships with local tradesmen after working on the cottage restoration. Fiza and Jon had also worked together—Fiza acting as interpreter and Jon as a business advisor—to assist a woman from South Sudan with a successful application for a business grant. ‘It is exciting,’ Fiza had told Tara. ‘I no longer have to drive to Shepparton to have my hair braided.’
As proud as Fiza was of Amal, Tara knew she missed him and worried about him being so far away. Just like Tara worried about Jon. When those concerns overwhelmed her, she ran and gardened. She and Fiza now shared an enormous vegetable garden on Tingledale’s boundary that both families called ‘Aussie Sudan’. Fiza had mastered maize and okra and Jon teased her that all she needed now was a goat.
The garden was the place Tara went to think. There was something about feeling warm dirt on her skin, freeing tender shoots from weeds and bugs, and harvesting hard-earned bounty that stilled the mind and allowed for reflection. It gave her time to grieve for losses. But most importantly, it instilled strength. Life was an unpredictable lottery. But surrounded by a community and a garden, the future was easier to face.
And Tara dared to hope.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This novel was written during the uncertain times of the COVID-19 pandemic and its huge impact on health and the world’s economies. As I write these words, we are still uncertain if we will have a vaccine or how our new world will look. So rather than guess, I have avoided it completely. A Home Like Ours is my fifth novel in five years and each time I am struck by how many people are involved in helping me bring a book into your hands.
As always, research plays a big role in writing a novel. Many thanks to the Geelong West Community Garden and Rosemary Nugent for letting me gatecrash their AGM. Please note, GWCG functions far better than the garden in the book! Thanks also to the Diversitat Hope Community Garden and to David the gardener and Liz Yough, a horticulturist and community worker, for welcoming me and answering my many questions.
Libraries have played a special part in my life since I was a child so ‘Fran’ is a thank you to all the librarians who bring reading into our lives. Thanks also to Ilona from the Geelong Regional Library Corporation for enthusiastically filling me in on Baby Time and other library services for the under-fives.
Thanks to the Victoria Police Film and Television Unit for their wonderful advice on extradition laws and general crime information. Thanks to Rowan Swaney for all things hardware-store-related and the entertaining stories, and to Leah Cwikel who keeps me abreast of all things current in baby land. Lara, Emily and Michelle are my ‘go to’ women for everything concerning the ‘young twenties’, and Gabi Mansfield shared her love for, and in-depth knowledge of, all seven Harry Potter books. She suggested Cedric Diggory as the perfect character match for Lachlan. Thank you!
Thanks to Susie Lukis for information on women and homelessness, and to Theatre Works’ powerful production UnHOWsed. I drew on acquaintance connections to research this book and I wish to acknowledge Hilary, Dee and Dianne who put me in contact with some wonderful women. Thanks to Chioma, Senam and Christiana who generously shared and made me hungry with their descriptions of the foods of their homeland. I sampled a wide variety of food at Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market’s African Food Festival and at Khartoum Centre in Footscray. Foodie Trails was also a valuable resource. Meg Upton answered my questions about gyros.
I want to give a huge shout-out to Kubra and Aima, who educated me on the Hazara culture, filled me with tea and spoke so enthusiastically about chives. Although I borrowed their names, the women in the book are fictitious. Special thanks go to my dear cousin Annie for sharing her life experiences.
Although Boolanga is fictitious, the area between Echuca and Wodonga on the Murray River is not. Thanks to Tania Goldman from Burramine for her lovely Airbnb and for answering questions like ‘Is the internet strong enough to watch Netflix?’ My husband and I took one for the team, spending a few days in the district sampling wine, local produce and the best balsamic reduction I have ever tasted. Rich Glen is worth a visit!
The team at HarperCollins do an amazing job reassuring me when story ideas won’t gel, smoothing out my writing, designing wonderful covers, generating buzz and getting the books out into the world. Thanks go to Rachael Donovan, Annabel Blay, Nicola O’Shea, Adam van Rooijen, Darren Kelly and his sales team, and Lisa White for the amazing cover design.
Writers are not always easy to live with—their minds are often lost in their fictional world rather than being in touch with domestic tasks, especially on deadline. Big thanks to Norm for being the support crew, house husband and book-tour/research driver, even if me ranting at him, ‘This plot won’t work’ takes him out on many bike rides. Thanks to Barton for all the banners, slideshows and website maintenance. Thanks to Sandon for always being happy to brainstorm book ideas and plot problems.
And thank you, dear reader, for reading A Home Like Ours. The choice of books is enormous and the book budget limited, so I appreciate the time and effort you expend on my books. I love meeting you on book tours, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and email. Please stay in touch; your enthusiasm keeps me writing.
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
Growing and sharing food as a path to understanding different cultures is a big part of A Home Like Ours. What are your experiences of sharing food and culture?
Displacement is a big theme in the book. Discuss how
each of the main characters experiences displacement.
Racism comes in many forms: overt, cultural, religious, economic and unconscious to name a few. What types of racism do the women in the book experience?
Research on volunteering shows that the volunteer receives more in the way of joy, fulfilment and connection than they give. If this is true, why do you think many voluntary groups struggle to fill positions? What are your experiences with volunteering?
People with a chronic illness/disability often find themselves discriminated against. Does this differ from racism? In what ways?
Homelessness is a human rights issue. Helen can hide her homelessness but Fiza cannot. What do Fiza and Helen share in common? Does this impact on their acceptance in the community?
It’s incredibly challenging to rise out of poverty and wanting it isn’t enough. How many levels of support are necessary to break the poverty cycle? Do you think assumptions are made that well-educated people are protected from poverty?
Tara says in frustration of her friends, ‘If Jon had been diagnosed with cancer, the footy club would hold a fundraiser. If he’d died, our friends would rally around…knowing I’d eventually get back on my feet and there’d be an end date.’ Why do you think chronic illness is treated differently?
ISBN: 9781489298683
TITLE: A HOME LIKE OURS
First Australian Publication 2021
Copyright © 2021 Fiona Lowe
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