The Tour

by Denise Scott

  Oh, the sweet relief!

  Jim (have I mentioned he was a hippie?) arrived at the farmhouse later that afternoon, having spent the entire night sitting by the side of the road unable to get a lift. We were both physically and emotionally wrecked. I showed him the spare bed, and I headed for mine, and we both slept for hours.

  A few weeks later, I heard there had been an accident at a notorious railway crossing nearby—a young man had died at the scene. He had worked at the local telephone exchange.

  Months later, during some sort of emotional breakdown confession, Mr Right admitted to me that, while he had gone to a beach house that weekend, he had not been with his blokey mates. He’d gone away with a sexy work colleague and her equally sexy friend for a ménage à trois.

  Well.

  * * *

  One hot and dusty Sunday afternoon in 1977, Fleetwood Mac, Santana, Billy Thorpe and Little River Band played a concert at Calder Park Raceway, on the outskirts of Melbourne. I was in town for the weekend, staying with Mr Right, and we went to the concert together. The plan was that after the concert I would head back to Wycheproof on a large tour bus full of locals who were also at the show.

  At the end of the night, before bidding each other farewell, Mr Right and I partook of a joint. I wasn’t used to smoking dope, and this perhaps explains the tremendous sense of peace and happiness I experienced. I could not have been more relaxed as I stood by the side of the highway at about 6 pm and waved goodbye to Mr Right, watching him head off down the Calder Freeway back to Melbourne.

  Once he was out of sight I drifted towards the giant car park, where there were approximately one thousand identical buses lined up, all of them loading and moving out, heading home to country towns all over Victoria. God knows how long I spent leisurely roaming from one to the other, not a care in the world, trying to spot a familiar Wycheproof face.

  It wasn’t until night had well and truly fallen and there was only a handful of vehicles remaining in the car park that I concluded I might quite literally have missed the bus. I headed back to the highway, except this time I stood on the northbound side. I didn’t attempt to hitch—didn’t feel the need. I just stood there, certain the universe would take care of me.

  Cars whizzed passed. So did time. I started to doubt the universe.

  Gee, what was I going to do? I had to get back to Wycheproof that night, no question, because I had to be at work the next morning. And not just any work: glory be, I had to teach drama to children who were going to grow up to be wheat farmers! I just had to be there, because, well, if I wasn’t at school then where the hell would I be?

  Still by the side of the Calder, that’s where.

  ‘Would you like a lift, Miss Scott?’

  It was Barts! Quiet, reserved, handsome Mr Biology Teacher Barts, in his instantly recognisable shiny, bright-green panel van with the gold GT stripe down the side. His housemate, who also taught in Wycheproof, was in the passenger seat. They’d been at the concert.

  I climbed aboard and lay down on the mattress in the back. I’d never taken much notice of Barts, but that night, while his housemate dozed, we talked and smoked Winfield Blues and laughed and listened to music the whole way home.

  Barts had a girlfriend who lived in Melbourne. He told me about her. I told him about Mr Right.

  The following Friday there was a dinner dance at the Wycheproof Shire Hall, with a daggy band playing live music. A few of us schoolteachers went. We all drank and danced. Some of us went back to Barts’s place. Eventually, everyone left—except for me. Barts and I sat on the floor in front of the open fire. I happened to mention my fondness for hot water bottles.

  ‘Then how would you like me to be your hot water bottle tonight?’

  I told Barts I’d like that very much.

  And so Barts and I began a relationship. He bought new red satin sheets for his bed in my honour, and of a night we would lie there smoking Winnie Blues and sharing stories until the early hours. We spent most nights together, because call me crazy but I preferred to be in his bed of red satin than on my own in the farmhouse. In the mornings I had to hide in the back of his panel van, crouched under a blanket, so no-one could see me as he drove me to my house, where I would then get changed and ride my bike to school, a picture of good old-fashioned schoolmarm virtue. Then Barts and I would write poems and letters that we’d leave on one another’s desk in the staffroom.

  Our love affair was a weekday situation, while on most weekends Barts and I headed off to Melbourne, where we stayed with our respective partners. It’s amazing how one can adapt both physically and mentally to such a scenario.

  This arrangement continued happily enough until one Monday lunchtime, when Barts asked me to go for a walk. We sat aboard a steam train carriage that had been plonked in the middle of the local park as a ‘tourist attraction’. Barts told me he’d ended his relationship with his girlfriend. Toot! Toot! All aboard for a rocky ride!

  ‘Why did you do that, Barts?’

  ‘Because I didn’t want to cheat any more.’

  Ouch, that hurt. Was it really necessary to use that word—‘cheat’?

  Barts explained he wanted to be in a legitimate relationship with me, that he loved me.

  I was horrified. Not because I didn’t love him—I did. But I was also still in love with Mr Right. And, besides, I couldn’t be in a relationship with Barts. No way. Even though he was beautiful and kind and loving and fun and we got on like a house on fire and he loved me and I loved him, I could not be in a committed relationship with him because he was too ‘ordinary’. He was content to be a high-school teacher and live in the country for the rest of his life. He wanted nothing apart from the love of a good woman and a few kids.

  But I was still hanging on to my dream of stardom and the bright lights of Hollywood or, alternatively, the bright lights of Melbourne. The last thing I wanted was to settle down to life on the land, baking sponge cakes for my husband and looking after a dozen kids.

  And so, even though I was happier than I’d ever been, living and working in Wycheproof and being with Barts, so driven was I by a compulsion to be extraordinary and live a crazy, non-conservative life that I turned my back on both. I ended my relationship with Barts that day in the park, and at the end of the year I applied for and got a transfer back to Melbourne. My aim: to pursue an acting career and resurrect my relationship with Mr Right.

  chapter seven

  Upping the ante

  By Christmas, my relationship with Mr Right was over. Not that I believed or accepted it: I mean, we were meant to be together forever, right? Of course we’d get back together. It was only a matter of time.

  In the meantime I was living back at home with my parents, sleeping in my Queen Anne single bed with the glow-in-the-dark Jesus on the Cross staring down at me. Even though I’d dropped God and Catholicism a few years earlier, I prayed to him and wept profusely, asking for his assistance to please help me and Mr Right get back together.

  Christmas Day was the usual—an extended-family do, all of us sitting at trestle tables in the garage—baking—the enforced wearing of bonbon party hats causing me to spiral into a suicidal depression. Was this going to be it? Was I going to be a lonely spinster teacher, living with my parents, for the rest of my life? Th e thought made me feel sick.

  As always happened when I stayed with my parents, I feared that somehow I would be trapped there, never able to get out, that my life would come to a complete standstill. That was how my mother wanted to live, but not me!

  Two days after Christmas, like a knight in a shining green panel van, Barts (who had heard of my break-up with Mr Right) arrived at Adeline Street. We’d organised to drive down the Great Ocean Road and have a swim in the sea. When we arrived, we decided to stay a couple of nights. I rang my mother to tell her I wouldn’t be coming home. As usual, she asked no questions, but I felt compelled to give her an explanation and so dutifully I lied. I had to. Now that I was living back under her roof
, I didn’t want to tell her I was staying in the back of a panel van that Barts had reversed onto the top of a cliff so that, as we lay together on the mattress with the doors wide open, we could gaze at the ocean.

  What a night!

  A few days later Barts rang and asked me to go out with him on New Year’s Eve.

  I said no.

  There were a couple of reasons for this. The first was the possibility I might once more be seduced by Barts’s offer of gentle, devoted, stress-free love. What if I ended up staying with him? I needed someone a lot more challenging and difficult, someone whose chemistry, when combined with mine, guaranteed at least some drama, turmoil, and a rollercoaster ride of love and pain that took me from the heights of passion to the depths of fucked-up love gone hideously wrong.

  The second reason I couldn’t go out with Barts on that New Year’s Eve was that I was pretty certain that I would have a great time. All the ingredients were there, and our weekend together at the beach had been exquisitely romantic. But having a good time would really have messed with my head. I felt I hadn’t suffered enough over my split with Mr Right, hadn’t spent enough uninterrupted time wallowing, hadn’t focussed enough on the pain I was feeling.

  And so I spent that New Year’s Eve at home with my parents in Greensborough, and, trust me, that was suffering.

  * * *

  Staying with my parents over that Christmas break had a profound effect on me. It gave me the courage to get on my bike and ride to Adelaide and not look back. Jane, my teaching buddy from Wycheproof, agreed to come with me.

  On the morning of our departure we caught a train to Geelong and commenced our epic journey along the Princes Highway. About ten minutes into our ride we came to a steep descent. I took off at great speed, the wind at my back. Ah, the sense of freedom. Adventure, here we come …

  I woke up in Emergency at the Geelong hospital. How was I to know you were meant to pack pannier bags so the weight was spread evenly between them? Poor Jane had been forced to watch in horror as I flew past her, screaming down the hill on a bike that was clearly out of control, its back wheel fishtailing violently. I was nearly at the bottom when the bike flipped, and I did a somersault of sorts, which, according to Jane, was quite spectacular.

  My mother and father came to pick me up, and so once more I found myself at my parents’ place, this time with my right arm in plaster, my ego bruised and my fear that I would be trapped in Greensborough for the rest of my life gripping me more firmly than ever.

  * * *

  As it turned out, a few weeks later I moved into a share house in North Fitzroy and started teaching drama at Maribyrnong Secondary College.

  I hated it.

  After the tininess of Wycheproof, Maribyrnong was big and overwhelming. More to the point, after being considered a ‘loveable whacko’ in Wycheproof, at Maribyrnong I was a big fat nobody, just another teacher flailing about in a huge institution.

  I didn’t have a boyfriend, and what was I doing about an acting career? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  I still hadn’t learnt that if you want something in life you have to do something to make it happen, not wait for it to come to you. Did I really think that one day Spielberg would just happen to be wandering past my year nine class, that he would peer through the window and see me screaming at a group of fourteen-year-old boys to ‘GET INTO A CIRCLE, PLEASE,’ slap himself on the forehead and exclaim, ‘Oh my God, that’s her. She’d be perfect as the love interest in Indiana Jones’? Sadly, yes. That was exactly the way I thought life worked. It was all about timing and luck, nothing to do with making stuff happen yourself.

  This philosophy on life wasn’t entirely wrong, however; after all, that I finally found the courage to quit teaching and pursue my acting dreams was entirely due to timing and luck. Not that I would call having a head-on car accident exactly lucky, but it did change my life for the better. So much better did my life become, in fact, that I’ve told this story more than a few times before. I’ll keep it brief.

  I had learnt to drive while I was living in Wycheproof, and I wasn’t used to cars coming from the opposite direction. Or perhaps I just wasn’t concentrating. Either way, I was travelling along Heidelberg Road when I veered into oncoming traffic.

  Miraculously, no-one was hurt. But at the point of impact, what I believed was going to be my last ever thought entered my head: ‘Oh Christ, I’m going to die, and I’m going to die a fucking teacher.’

  On discovering not only that the other driver was unscathed but also that I was uninjured and, for that day at least, my ‘final’ thought had been incorrect, I made two resolutions. First, I would never drive again. Second, I would break my contract with the Education Department and quit teaching immediately. It was time to make my own luck.

  chapter eight

  Upping the ante a little bit more

  As soon as I left my teaching job I found work in the Darwin Theatre in Education team—the job entailed flying all over the Territory performing shows in schools and Aboriginal settlements and missions. It wasn’t Hollywood, but nor was it ‘ordinary’.

  I moved into a hippie commune: a real, dinky-di hippie commune in Darwin! There were fourteen people living there and two dogs—one called Black Dog and one called Brown Dog, so named because one was black and one was brown. (And yes, being a hippie commune, there were times when the residents got the names of the dogs mixed up.) I was thrilled. How much further off the scale of ordinariness could I possibly get?

  There were young children living in the commune with names such as Lily Pond and No-Name—the latter being a four-year-old boy whose mother didn’t want to impose a name on him. ‘But surely No-Name is as much of a name as Robert or Bill or Edward?’ was what I wanted to say to No-Name’s mother, but there was no point because she didn’t speak, confining herself to primitive grunting noises so as not to impose adult language on her child.

  We all slept on mattresses on the floor underneath balsawood pyramids that had been handmade by one of the residents. We fermented our own yoghurt in a large jar that lived on the kitchen bench below its own baby-size pyramid. The entire household was vegetarian, except when we went to barbecues, when everyone seemed to suffer vegetarian amnesia and pigged out on hamburgers.

  Given that we were living in a hippie commune in a hot, tropical climate in the late 1970s, everyone walked around in the nude, even me. I still have a group ‘family’ photo of fifteen of us smiling and naked. I’m sitting cross-legged in the front row in such a way that my knees hide my large non-hippie breasts.

  Hippy house goes to Mindil Beach, Darwin, 1978—I’m the one with knees discreetly covering breasts

  I’m fourth from the left

  I wrote weekly letters to my parents about my work, the commune, and Aboriginal people. I had never seen an Aboriginal person in my life until I moved to Darwin. You could have knocked me over with a feather the first time I performed in a show for little Aboriginal kids on a mission settlement. While they all laughed and appeared to be enjoying themselves, they seemed insanely reluctant to do anything I asked, such as sing along or wriggle like a snake or clap their hands. What was their problem?

  ‘You’re kidding me. They don’t speak English?’

  Twenty-four years old and I had no idea that the Queen’s English was not Aboriginal people’s first language.

  I told my parents all about it. I figured they didn’t have a clue, either. They needed to know this stuff, especially about the issue of racism. I was horrified that segregation existed, that white people treated Aboriginals so poorly, that they lived in such poverty.

  My mother always wrote back—it was her job. Dad rarely put pen to paper. Of course, Mum never responded to any of the racism business; no doubt she simply rolled her eyes and shook her head as if to say, ‘God, she carries on, doesn’t she?’ In keeping with being written by a woman of few words, my mother’s letters were brief and to the point, one of her most memorable sentences being ‘I’m just
about to shell some peas for dinner and your grandfather has stomach cancer.’ That was it. No more details were given. I was left to sit and wonder: was my mother going to boil the peas, or steam them?

  * * *

  I decided that as part of my ‘I’m going to be a no-rules, unconventional sort of gal’ mantra I’d give sexual promiscuity a go. The experiment was a total failure.

  My first attempt was with a chap who also lived in the commune. On the first and subsequently only night we spent together, lying underneath his pyramid, my hippie neighbour gazed into my eyes and said something no woman ever wants to hear. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know why, but I just can’t get it up.’ It would be an exceptional woman who could hear those words and not immediately conclude that the limp and lifeless appendage in question was without doubt her fault.

  Next up (and thankfully this time he was up) was a prawn fisherman. I met him at the local pub. He was a beautiful-looking man with whom I had absolutely nothing in common. We had sex on his narrow wooden bunk bed while his sailor mate snored in the bunk above us. It was satisfactory in a ‘who cares if it was any good—at least I’ve done it’ kind of way.

  However, the next morning, when I went to disembark, I discovered that, while the boat was still technically moored, it had moved during the night and there was now 2 metres of water between me and the dock, and no gangplank in sight. I have never been into sport, especially long jump, but when faced with a crisis the mind can make you do extraordinary things. I took a running leap, my short little legs extending like never before as I flew across the sea, and landed safely on the pier opposite.