City Girl, Country Girl

by Liz Harfull

  Life became easier for her mother when Daljit was about fifteen, and the entire family moved out to the farm. Initially, the brothers and their families again shared the one house, but over time each one built their own home on their own patch of eight hectares, separated by only a hundred metres or so. The families still spent a great deal of time together, and during school holidays the cousins were often joined by more cousins from other places, who came to stay.

  Even as adulthood approached, the idea of going out for the evening with a few friends, like most Australian teenagers would do, was never considered, by either the boys or the girls. But the cousins would often go together to see a movie, chaperoned by Daljit’s mother and her aunties. Movies made locally, with people speaking Punjabi, were particular favourites. ‘But we couldn’t go by ourselves,’ Daljit stresses. ‘Maybe in a big city like Delhi, but where I grew up I didn’t see that sort of thing. Just go to school and come home, and that’s it.’ Looking at the much freer lives her own children have experienced growing up in Australia, Daljit has no regrets. ‘My childhood was really good,’ she says. Revealingly, she adds: ‘I loved my life. I have no trouble. Before I get married I couldn’t understand people with depression, or these sorts of problems.’

  Daljit’s mother may have been content focusing on the traditional role of raising her family, but the Purewals made sure their daughters had a good education. Bawa only went to school for a couple of years and struggled with reading and writing, but Mohinder completed at least seven years of primary education before her family, like the Purewals, was also forced to move from Pakistan to India because of partition. At one stage she was even asked to teach, but it was very unusual for women to become teachers at that time, so her parents refused permission.

  By contrast, Daljit went to a government-run girls’ only primary school, where all of her teachers were women. Daljit loved school. She did well at her lessons, although she was expected to work hard and there was too much homework. ‘In India, if you don’t do the homework at that time, then next day you go to the teacher and get hit with a stick. Even in school holidays they gave us lots of homework to do, so we would try and finish it as quickly as possible and then the rest of the time we can play.’

  After school, Daljit usually met up with cousins and neighbours’ children in the street outside their homes, to play hopscotch or jump skipping ropes. ‘That was really good fun. I still remember that,’ she says. They did not have a lot of toys, so they used their imaginations, and boys and girls all played together. Sometimes Daljit even had a turn at marbles, which was usually the boys’ preserve.

  After eight years of primary school, she moved on to a larger government-run high school in Nakodar for the next two years of her education. She enjoyed her lessons, although she struggled with science until a few months of special tuition set her on the right track and it became a favourite subject. She was good at sport, too, imagining as a child that one day she might become a sports teacher. ‘Then I would go to school and teach, and then when I come home I would have a servant to cook for me and clean for me.’ She laughs now at the idea of having servants.

  Her favourite sports were volleyball and kabaddi. An ancient Indian contact sport with numerous variations, kabaddi sounds a little bit like a grown-up, formal version of ‘catchy’ or tag. The traditional Punjabi game is usually played on a circular pitch about twenty metres wide, with a line through the middle, but other versions have rectangular fields and the number of players on the field at any given time can vary, too.

  In the game that Daljit played, two teams of seven face each other, with one team designated as ‘raiders’. The teams stand on either side of the line, and one at a time a raider crosses over and attempts to touch a player of the opposing team. Once they have touched someone, the raider must flee back to their side of the line before the player they have touched catches them and prevents them from returning. The catching can involve some pretty aggressive rugby-like tackling and wrestling on the ground, even in the women’s version. ‘You have to be quick and strong,’ says Daljit.

  After she finished high school, Daljit studied politics, history, English and Punjabi at a college in Nakodar to gain a Bachelor of Arts. With high education and literacy rates among girls in the Jalandhar area compared with many other parts of India, Daljit doesn’t look on it as anything particularly special or unusual. Most of her friends did the same thing, and her younger sister has a masters degree in political science. Daljit did not get that far. She was only into her second year of a masters degree in the Punjabi language, which she was studying by correspondence, when her parents decided it was time for her to marry.

  16

  TRUSTING YOUR LUCK

  Despite attempts by reality television, it is impossible for most Australians to imagine marrying someone with whom you have never even held a proper conversation. For Daljit, and all the other young women she knew in her town in the 1980s, it was completely normal. In fact, none of her cousins or friends married for love. Growing up, Daljit had always known and accepted that the day would come when her parents would set about choosing her husband. She trusted that they would do their best to find someone who had the means to provide for her and offer her a good life. ‘All the parents, they try to do their best. They are looking for a boy that can look after you, and has good income,’ she explains.

  On the man’s side, the parents want a girl who is well educated. It is a bonus if she can speak English. Daljit could not, but she had a university degree and was obviously smart. For Daljit’s parents it wasn’t important that her prospective husband be well educated. Traditionally, a Punjabi father would have been keen for his daughter to marry another farmer who owned, or was due to inherit, a decent parcel of land. With the vagaries of farming, the more land the better, because it increased the likelihood of a more reliable income.

  However, by the time Daljit was approaching marriageable age, most parents in her community were no longer keen on farmers as prospective husbands. It was too hard a life, with far less security than could be offered by someone earning a regular salary. Or better still, an Indian man in good health, living overseas in a country where the chance of a better life was much greater. The United States, Canada and Australia were favoured options, so when a man they knew in a neighbouring town mentioned that he knew a family looking for a wife for their son in Australia, Daljit’s parents were very interested.

  This is normally how things begin. A ‘middle man’, who knows both sets of parents, hears that they are each looking for partners for their children, and if he thinks it might be a good match, he then approaches them with the suggestion. For the girls that Daljit grew up with, the search usually started when they were in their early twenties, about to finish their university degree. The middle man may know the girl and that she is approaching marriageable age, and start the process. He usually gathers information about both parties and their families and shares it with the parents. If the parents are open to the suggestion, then a meeting is set up so they can talk. If that meeting goes well, another meeting is arranged, with the prospective couple in the room, too.

  That is what happened with Daljit and Paul Sanghera. They met for the first time sitting in a room at her house, under the watchful eyes of their parents. ‘We didn’t talk, just look at each other,’ Daljit explains. Her first impression was that he looked nice. ‘That’s it. I didn’t ask anything. We just trust our luck,’ she says with a laugh. When she was told he lived in Australia and that she would be living there, too, Daljit was excited at the prospect. The idea that she would be a long way from her family didn’t bother her. It all seemed a big adventure.

  A week later they were married. There were no other meetings, with or without parents. No dating. Not even a phone conversation. According to Daljit this was perfectly normal, and besides, there was limited time because Paul needed to return to Australia. They even skipped the traditional Mehendi ceremony, which is usually performed a da
y or two before a Sikh wedding to paint the bride’s hands, feet, arms and legs with intricate designs in henna.

  Instead, Daljit and her mother threw themselves into organising the catering for the reception and a shopping expedition to buy new clothes. High on the list was a traditional Punjabi suit, or salwar kameez, made up of a long blouse or tunic and loose-fitting pants, and a long gold-embroidered scarf, or chunni, to cover her head. There was no time to order a custom-made outfit, but Daljit found something suitable in a local shop, in the traditional bridal colour of joyous red.

  Daljit says she remembers every moment of her wedding, although the main ceremony took a lengthy three hours or so. Her sisters gathered early at her parents’ house to help her get ready. Soon after came the guests, mainly family and a few close friends who lived nearby. Then came the groom’s party, who were formally welcomed by Daljit’s family with garlands of flowers. Everyone sat down to breakfast before the actual ceremony began. Led by a local priest, it was held at Daljit’s home rather than in the gurdwara where the family worshipped.

  The newlyweds lived together as husband and wife for about six weeks before Paul returned to Australia. He went alone because the paperwork approving Daljit’s migration was not finalised—that would take another six months. His parents also lived in Australia, so in the meantime Daljit stayed with Paul’s grandparents. The older couple treated her well and it gave her time to adjust to her new family and get to know their way of doing things.

  When Daljit finally stepped onto the plane for Australia in October 1986, she was very excited. Paul had flown back to collect her, so they boarded the flight together in New Delhi. He was sitting by her side when it landed at Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport on a sunny spring day. ‘I am not imagining—I have no idea how it would look,’ Daljit says of her expectations about Australia. ‘But when I come into the airport and look, it was absolutely different things. It looks very nice but different.’ Paul’s parents were there to greet them, and drive them back to what would be Daljit’s first home in Australia—a suburban house in Epping, about twenty kilometres north of the city centre. To Daljit, all the houses and streets looked the same. ‘For the first few weeks I couldn’t find it,’ she admits.

  Paul had a job working a twelve-hour nightshift in a fabric factory at Thomastown about ten minutes’ drive away. The first night he had to work, Daljit was extremely anxious about being left alone.

  ‘You can take me with you, I can sleep in the car,’ she suggested.

  ‘No, you can’t do that,’ he told her and went to work.

  Sometime later a neighbour knocked on the door. Not knowing who it was, Daljit hid. ‘I was that scared I quickly run from the lounge room to the bedroom. I just hide myself there in the bedroom. I can’t forget this thing. Oh, my God, I don’t know why I was so scared.’

  It is easy to understand that Daljit might have felt overwhelmed. She was in a new country, with a husband she was still getting to know. It was just the two of them living in the house, when she had spent her entire life surrounded by a large, extended family, and she was worried about leaving the house on her own because she might get lost. She couldn’t ask for directions or make friends easily with the neighbours because she didn’t speak English. And she was more than seven months pregnant.

  Becoming a mother was a joyous experience for Daljit. In many ways, having a baby to look after gave her new life in Australia a stronger focus, and her mother-in-law was there to help when needed. However, the birth was not easy. She was in labour for three days in the Preston hospital before the doctors decided a caesarean section was necessary, and Monica was delivered. Her husband spent as much time with Daljit as he could before and after the birth, but when he wasn’t there to help interpret she couldn’t communicate with the nurses, and she felt even more isolated after being placed in a room on her own to recover. ‘I found it very hard experience,’ Daljit says. ‘The nurse would come and I don’t know what she is asking me. I understand a little bit, but I can’t tell her what I want. That was a very hard time for me.’

  It was made even more difficult by the hospital food, although this did provide one of the funnier moments that Daljit enjoys recounting about her early days in Australia and how much she had to learn. At home, she would usually have an Indian type of flat bread for breakfast, with yoghurt or dhal. In the hospital, they brought her a small box of cornflakes. Having no idea how to eat them, she just opened the box and picked them out one by one, chomping on the dry flakes like potato chips. ‘I be honest, I didn’t know,’ she says, laughing at the idea now. ‘I can’t forget that one.’

  Relief came in the form of her mother-in-law, bearing homemade food. She helped later on, too, looking after the baby while Daljit packed shoes in a nearby factory. ‘Everyone else was working and I wanted to go to work as well,’ she says. It not only brought in extra money, but mixing with the other workers gave her an opportunity to practise her English. ‘That’s where I started learning, slowly, slowly.’

  Daljit only worked in the shoe factory for a year or so before giving the job up to have her second child, Tim. She admits he was spoilt as a baby because he was a boy, but she says Monica was spoilt, too, because she was the first child born into her husband’s family since his youngest sister about twenty-three years before. ‘Everybody was excited when she came because long time since the last child, and she was a good girl as well,’ Daljit says. The children were four and two years of age when Paul decided he’d had enough of nightshifts and factory work. It was time to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a fruit grower.

  17

  TO THE RIVERLAND

  Approximately halfway between Loxton and Berri in South Australia’s Riverland, the small rural community of Bookpurnong is part of an area that early settlers nicknamed ‘the waybacks’ because it was so far from anywhere. Officially, it is named after a station that once covered hundreds of square kilometres, extending as far as the Victorian border. The run was one of several large pastoral leases taken up by the enterprising Chambers brothers, John and James, during the late 1840s when there was a rush to occupy new grazing land with frontage on the River Murray.

  The river not only provided precious water for livestock, there were visions of it becoming a major transport route that would open up the riches of inland Australia and make the wealth of property owners and traders along its banks. By the 1850s, the first paddlesteamers were carrying produce to market, and bringing in passengers and supplies. But it was tough country where pastoralists struggled to make a living because of drought, sheep-eating dingoes and plagues of grass-eating rabbits. By the 1880s, Bookpurnong was a millstone around the neck of leading South Australian sheep breeder and parliamentarian Alexander Murray, who was glad to quit the station even though he walked away with nothing.

  The pastoralists’ days may have been done, but another pair of enterprising brothers were about to create a completely new future for people like the Sangheras. Canadians George and William Chaffey were pioneering experts in irrigation who came to Australia in the late 1880s after hearing about the potential of the Murray Valley. Although their initial focus was Mildura, disagreements among Victorian politicians stalled their plans so they turned their attention over the border and worked with the South Australian government to establish Renmark. It became the first irrigation settlement in Australia.

  The Chaffey brothers’ business collapsed within a decade, but the idea persisted of developing irrigation settlements for intensive horticulture. New schemes and towns sprung up along the River Murray’s banks, drawing thousands of migrants seeking a better life. Inspiration even came, in part, from the Punjab, with South Australian newspapers carrying reports in the late 1880s about the extensive irrigation systems found there as a sign of what might be possible closer to home. By then the Punjab already had 6000 kilometres of irrigation canals and 9000 kilometres of auxiliary channels irrigating almost 800,000 hectares of land.

  Among
the men employed by the Chaffeys was Walter Muspratt, who was born in the Punjab and came to Australia in 1891 to work as a civil engineer at Mildura and Renmark. He later took up a fruit block at Renmark, and was engaged by the government to teach soldier-settlers about fruit growing under irrigation after World War I. In fact, from the earliest years, the Riverland drew settlers from India, mainly British soldiers looking for somewhere warmer to live than England after retiring from active service. Families of English descent were even encouraged to invest in fruit blocks by the Punjab’s district superintendent of police who toured the Riverland by paddlesteamer in 1892.

  Others who took up the challenge were retired cavalry officer Colonel Charles Morant, a distant relative of the infamous Breaker Morant, who lived in a house called Bangalore at Renmark; the Wylies, who boasted generations of military men that served in India, including a governor of Bengal and a military secretary to the viceroy of India; Hubert and Monty Woodward, whose father was a judicial commissioner in the Punjab; and Frank Cunningham, whose three great-uncles served with the East India Company. One of them, Captain Joseph Cunningham, published the first history of the Sikhs written by a foreigner, which remains generally well regarded for its cultural insights and sympathetic approach more than 160 years later.