by Liz Harfull
Back in Harrow and unhappy with Jesse’s progress, Marnie decided to seek a second opinion. She ended up taking him to several different doctors who all told her the same thing; her son was recovering and although it was going to take some time, he would be fine. However, the nurses at the Bush Nursing Centre were concerned, too, so they pulled some strings to secure a quick appointment with an ear, nose and throat surgeon based in Hamilton. She examined Jesse and told his mother, ‘You need to take him back to Melbourne today.’
Instructing her to go home and prepare for the trip, the surgeon contacted Jesse’s specialist at the Royal Children’s Hospital and explained what she had found. ‘Two hours later we got the call to go to Melbourne, but by then it was seven o’clock at night and it’s a long drive. No-one explained exactly how serious it was so I told them we would come tomorrow.’
When Marnie delivered Jesse to the hospital’s emergency department the next day, the medical team explained that he would need a tracheostomy. The surgical procedure involves making an opening in the trachea, below the larynx, and inserting a tube. The aim in this case was to remove mucus which had been accumulating in Jesse’s throat. Apparently his windpipe had been damaged during intubation. ‘There is a section of his windpipe that is smaller than normal, so when they intubated him, they tore it,’ Marnie explains. As a result, it had become inflamed and his throat was secreting more mucus than usual to smooth the damage. The problem was missed during an earlier examination with a scope because it wasn’t inserted far enough. Now, he was down to just 20 per cent of his normal airway, threatening his life.
Jesse was immediately given steroids to reduce the inflammation, however by the time he went into surgery he was in a coma. The surgeon was extremely concerned, and Marnie and Nathan were terrified. But a few hours later they walked into his room and found him sitting up in bed, talking. As it turned out, the surgeons didn’t need to go ahead with the tracheostomy. ‘The head surgeon called him their Easter miracle,’ Marnie says. ‘He had responded to the steroids and his throat had opened up.’
After weeks taking steroids, Jesse gradually recovered. The treatment temporarily caused his face to bloat and his weight to balloon, to the point where quite a few people back in Harrow didn’t recognise him. Marnie was worried what other children might say when he returned to school, but she was blown away by their response. ‘He walked back in and not one kid said anything about the change,’ she says.
While it would have been much easier to access the ongoing specialist treatment Jesse needed if they had still been living in Melbourne, the community response to their situation was a powerful reminder of why they moved to the country. With the garage to run, Nathan couldn’t always be with Jesse in hospital, and it was an extremely anxious time for him. People dropped in to see if there was anything they could do, delivering casseroles and apple pies, and inundating him with dinner invitations. ‘They even filled up our wood shed,’ Marnie says. ‘And when Jesse was in hospital, pretty much every child at the school wrote him a card, and the town bought him a big bouquet with teddy bears and chocolate.’
For Marnie and Nathan, the hardest thing about living in Harrow is not being close to their families. The nurturing and support they receive from the community helps counteract that. ‘People care and it means so much,’ she says. After just a few years the whole family has a strong sense of belonging. Marnie has even become involved in the Sound and Light Show. She’s part of the cast and responsible for scheduling the year’s program, although she’s still trying to live down the year she locked in one performance for AFL grand final day—a no go, if you want anyone to turn up, including the cast!
She loves being involved in the amateur theatricals, and so do Sam and Jesse who are now cast regulars, shadowing Stretch Penrose as apprentice undertakers. ‘There is something very intimate and personal about it. You really feel like you are part of something. It’s not just a bunch of actors putting on a show for you,’ Marnie says, considering why the event is still drawing crowds almost twenty years on.
Nathan even gave being part of the cast a try, before deciding it was not for him. Instead, he has signed up as a Country Fire Authority volunteer, joined committees for several local events. He loves the relaxing lifestyle in Harrow, and knowing the whole town, although it has an unexpected downside.
Nathan had only ever been to two funerals before he moved to Harrow. In the first two years of living in the town, he attended three. ‘In Melbourne you might see your mechanic when the car needs servicing but here it’s different,’ Marnie explains. ‘Even if people are not customers, you see them all the time. You get to know them. It’s lovely but it’s also maybe a little more heartbreaking.’
While admitting that she liked her privacy in the city, Marnie says in Harrow it just feels right to get involved in the community and be part of other people’s lives. ‘Moving here, you have to make a choice about the way you live. You shouldn’t come just because the rent is cheap. You are not just choosing a house, you are choosing a lifestyle,’ she says.
When she stops to think about it, Marnie is still surprised at how friendly and welcoming everyone has been since the very first day they visited Harrow. ‘I did spend the first six months thinking it was too good to be true. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s going to be huge when it happens,’ she jokes.
11
A BEAUT BLOKE
The success of the Sound and Light Show shifted something in the psyche of Harrow. Now it’s almost as if no idea is too crazy or unachievable to be considered by the town. So when Ange came up with another concept, there may have been more eye-rolling, but the community quickly got on board to expand the idea and make it work.
It started with a conversation over the bar at the pub, just after the annual bachelor and spinster ball. A tradition in many rural areas, most B&S events are all about young people from the bush getting together for a social weekend, which usually involves camping out in swags, music and dancing, and lots of alcohol. Known as the Tussock Jumpers Ball, the Harrow version has been going for more than thirty years and has a reputation for being well run and more orderly than most. It’s held every January in the park on the edge of town, and usually attracts about 700 people, with many of them driving long distances to attend. Run by community groups as a fundraiser, it can generate as much as $15,000 in a single weekend.
This particular year some local lads retreated to the pub, all forlorn, as utes and cars carried away the last of the visitors, including all the single women they had met. One of the young men leant on the bar and whined to the publican, ‘Oh Ange, we need some girls to stay.’ Ange went to bed that night trying to think of a solution.
Like many small country towns, there was a distinct shortage of single, young women in Harrow. Encouraged by their parents, most of them had left the area to go to university and pursue careers in larger rural towns or cities. The young men might go away to agricultural college, too, but they often came back to the family farm, or they just stayed in the area and took up jobs in the rural services sector such as shearing. ‘We had so many gorgeous young men, lovely boys, and no women,’ Ange says.
What really worried her were the deeper social issues at play. She could detect signs of serious loneliness among the pub’s single male patrons, and was concerned about the potential for that to lead to depression and even worse. The media was increasingly reporting that young rural males were particularly at risk when it came to suicide. Ange did not want to see that happen to any of the boys she knew. ‘They needed to have fun in life,’ she says. ‘And I was acutely aware that if these young blokes didn’t find partners, they might leave, and I didn’t want that either. In small communities, you need succession plans, so I thought that we really needed to do something.’
After mulling over the problem, Ange decided the best approach would be to invite eligible girls to visit Harrow for a weekend of organised activities. The program should harness good old-fas
hioned country hospitality and give them a concentrated taste of life in rural Australia, as well as the opportunity to meet some local bachelors. Thinking about how to promote the concept so that it conveyed what was on offer, she resorted to the sort of ‘boy speak’ she heard in the pub, and came up with Beaut Blokes. She took the name and the idea to the blokes themselves and they fleshed out the bones.
It was a simple idea with a simple aim, but the attention to detail in the planning and execution behind the first Beaut Blokes gathering in June 2003 was masterful. Using promotional skills honed in marketing the Sound and Light Show, the community began to spread the word. An interview on a Geelong radio station proved particularly powerful, and before they knew it applications from interested women were flooding it.
Eighty single women aged between twenty and forty paid $175 each to attend, matching the eighty single men who signed up, too. The girls were billeted with local families, who gave them a home-cooked roast meal on the Friday night. Each home provided accommodation for at least two girls, so they had someone on hand who was sharing the experience, and the families were paid for helping out. Beaut blokes and their families were not allowed to host the girls, with them all meeting for the first time at an organised event on the first evening. ‘It was so squeaky clean it was ridiculous,’ Ange says with a grin. ‘We wanted to show the girls the best time, and we wanted them to trust us to look after them. This was about nice girls meeting nice boys.’
Ange is quick to point out that the men involved were not lost causes. ‘There is a misconception that country boys don’t know much about women, but that’s not true at all. They were not having trouble getting and keeping girls, it’s just that there were no girls to get,’ she says.
Before they were allowed to take part, the men had to sign a simple pledge: ‘A Beaut Bloke must be single, love his mum, be kind to his sister and who’s [sic] heart is in rural Australia.’ The statement was a reminder of what the weekend represented, and their responsibility for making sure the women were treated with respect. ‘It was very simple stuff. You wouldn’t want your daughter coming to our town and finding the men are a bunch of hooligans,’ Ange says.
When the weekend came, there was so much media interest that a press conference was called at the pub. ‘It just went viral. There was national coverage,’ she says. ‘We begged them to be kind and careful with us because we didn’t know anything about the media, and they were brilliant. They could have turned it into something really horrible but they didn’t.’
The first time Sherryn Simpson heard about Beaut Blokes was during a phone call from her cousin. Louisa had seen one of the television news stories, and thought it sounded like a fabulous idea, so she made enquiries. Meanwhile, in Harrow, Ange was already organising a second event in response to the extraordinary interest the media coverage was stirring up.
Louisa was keen to attend but Sherryn couldn’t think of anything worse. The only girl in her family, Louisa looked on Sherryn almost as a sister and they were close, but they had a very different approach when it came to finding potential partners. Her cousin loved dressing up and going out to night clubs to meet boys. Sherryn always thought that she would meet the right man in a casual way, maybe when she was having dinner or a drink with friends. She did not want to go to the very public Harrow matchmaking event. She knew how it would end. Louisa would find a bloke and she would be left on her own to struggle through the weekend, a long way from home, with a heap of strangers. The problem was Louisa had already bought two tickets. ‘You’re going,’ she told her.
Come the designated weekend in August, Sherryn packed her bag, still wondering how on earth she had been talked into something she was certain would prove a dating disaster. The two girls drove out of the city on Friday evening, finding their way to the farm where they were staying about fifteen kilometres from Harrow. Wanting to make them feel welcome, their host had even placed chocolates on their pillows. Then she offered to drive them into town for the initial meet-and-greet at the pub, where every girl would be partnered up with a boy, not as a matchmaking exercise but to help break the ice. During the evening, the boy would introduce the girl to other blokes, and the girl would take responsibility for introducing the boy to the other girls, even though she didn’t know most of them.
As they were driving to the pub, Sherryn was calculating potential escape routes. What if her cousin hooked up with someone straight away, leaving her on her own? How could she get back to the farm if the evening turned into a catastrophe?
When they arrived at the pub, their host decided to introduce the two girls to a few of the blokes to get them started. One of them was her nephew, Mark McClure. Sherryn and Mark had very little opportunity to chat before everyone was called to attention so the girls could be given their assigned partner. ‘It was my worst nightmare,’ says Sherryn, who at the time was studying to be a school teacher. ‘Put me in front of five hundred kids and I can sing a song and dance a jig, but put me in front of half a dozen adults and I just freak out. The process happened in front of everyone. We all stood in this room and they called out the girl, and then the boy. Everyone was looking at you.’
The already uncomfortable situation just got worse when Sherryn’s name was called. She steeled herself and stepped forward. Then her partner’s name was called. Nothing happened. The name was called again. No response. Sherryn was mortified. She could feel the eyes of the crowd looking at her, and she was convinced they were all thinking, ‘What a loser!’ Embarrassed by the no-show, the organiser moved on to the next girl, and Sherryn was left standing to one side. She later learnt that the bloke who was meant to partner her was a keen footballer and decided not to attend because he had an important game the next day.
For Mark, it was the most exciting development of the night. He would later tell Sherryn that the moment he saw her, he knew she was the girl for him. He was delighted her partner failed to turn up because it gave him the chance to step in. ‘I’m not certain what happened to the girl Mark was meant to be partnering, but he obviously managed a very big handball of some sort,’ jokes Sherryn.
‘My aunty told me to look after her, so I looked after her, and I’m still looking after her,’ Mark explains later with his trademark dry humour, before going on to admit, more seriously: ‘It was a pretty funny feeling, the first time, meeting a girl that you are keen on, and all your mates are there watching.’
The evening progressed, with Sherryn and her cousin settling into a corner with Mark and his best mate, Shane. Sherryn recalls they were all chatting happily but before long, Louisa and Shane started kissing. ‘It was really awkward because they are right there, and I’m thinking, “Is Mark expecting me to do this?” To me, it was all just about surviving the weekend at that point. I knew that I liked him. I thought he was a nice enough bloke and we were having a good laugh, but I probably didn’t take enough risks that way. I only ever had a small group of friends, and when it came to love, I was very cautious.’
When the pub closed, Sherryn and Mark were among a dozen or so of the meet-and-greet group that went back to Shane’s house for the rest of the night. Known locally as The Castle, it was the place where his mates regularly stayed at weekends rather than driving home after having a bit to drink.
The following morning the boys decided to forgo the next part of the formal program, which involved introducing the girls to typical farm work, such as milking cows or shearing a sheep. Instead they took them mud bashing.
It was a terrifying experience for Sherryn. ‘We all got into utes, and went driving through the paddocks in the mud, then they’d stop and have a beer. I’m a bit of a safety freak and flying around sideways in cars doesn’t strike me as being terribly safe. They were having a wow of a time but I spent most of it clinging to the door.’ Telling the others, not very convincingly, that she was having fun, she was actually scared and just wanted to go home.
On the Saturday afternoon, they reached the part of the program that the
Melbourne girl and sports fan knew she would enjoy—attending a football game. But Sherryn’s relief was cut short when Mark decided that on the way to the game they would call in to the family farm so she could meet his parents. He didn’t seem at all concerned that she was still wearing the clothes she had gone out in the night before and there’d been no chance to freshen up. ‘What a horrible way to meet them,’ she says.
Sherryn was still in ‘survival mode’ at the time, with no sense that the weekend might lead to something serious. ‘I was just trying to make it to the next bit,’ she admits. But she did enjoy the football match. Known as the Southern Roos, the Harrow-Balmoral football club has a healthy following and a stellar track record in the Horsham district league. Like most country communities, Harrow takes its football seriously, and a big proportion of the population usually turns out to watch the game, especially when they are playing at their home ground a short distance north of the town.
A Collingwood supporter, Sherryn grew up going to the team’s training sessions and AFL games in Melbourne. She also watched the occasional suburban game with her father and found they lacked atmosphere compared with the big league. ‘But the atmosphere at Harrow was awesome. They were all yelling and cheering. Everyone was into it,’ Sherryn says.
She was also extremely impressed with the netball games happening on courts right next to the oval. As in many country areas, football and netball competitions go hand in hand in the Horsham league. The matches are played at the same time, usually on the same site, making an all-inclusive great day out for the whole family. ‘The level of competition was really exciting,’ Sherryn recalls. ‘It was full on and I really enjoyed it.’
After the game Sherryn and Louisa returned to their host farm and prepared for the final big event of the weekend—a black-tie dinner at the RSL hall. Sherryn dressed up for the occasion, choosing a short, fitted dress of red silk, which coincidentally matched perfectly with Mark’s black suit and red shirt. More relaxed than she had been all weekend, she started having fun. ‘We just danced and sang and had a great time,’ she says. ‘I was enjoying his company, and I realised that maybe there could be something there.’