The dedicated school staff certainly had their work cut out for them, trying to get me to bend to the school’s formalities of dress, speech and conduct. To me the building was like an alien mothership, transported straight out of Scotland with grand steps, a bland, austere brick face, rose gardens and the sound of orchestral music flooding its gloomy rooms. Like many of our British-style dwellings, it was pretending to be something that belonged here . . . but to me it was a trespasser on the foothills of the noble wilderness mountain. That giant bush-covered mountain, kunanyi, which overshadows the city of Hobart, is so rugged, wild and imposing, it haunts us all, reminding us of the people who lived here, before the uniformed man brought his pomp to these shores and named the dolerite-faced mountain after a Duke in Wellington, then plonked buildings like my school at the mountain’s feet. Why was everything in this place named after a dead white dude, I often wondered as a young woman. And why did we have to wear boater hats in summer and tartan berets, complete with brown pom-pom, in winter? We were ‘Straylian’, for chrissakes, not bloody Poms.
At home, my mum had given her best shot at steering me towards more compliant ladylike ways, but the problem was I was a deep-thinking tomboy, who loved all things Australiana – and the grubbier, the better! I was happier in the world of my farming or tradie cousins, and saw no reason why I ought to insert a plum in my mouth so I could join the Hobart who’s who. I had graduated from Slim Dusty on the old cassette recorder to a rougher musical adventure by learning every single Kevin Bloody Wilson song off by heart or quoting the jokes of Rodney Rude. Throw in a bit of John Williamson, some Paul Hogan and a dash of Jeannie Little, and my nasal twang training was complete. Doubling my unwillingness to be converted to a ‘townie’, I also had a passion for all things cowgirl. It stemmed from when I was really little and adored a Little Golden Book featuring a beautiful dreamy horse in western gear. My fascination with the cowgirl was cemented when at eleven years of age my parents took me on a tour of the USA to watch Luella’s mother, Lindy Goggin, play golf for Australia.
The tour took us to North and South Carolina, San Diego, Kentucky and Los Angeles. I recall a party in a country club after one golf tournament, complete with dinosaur-sized barbecue spare ribs, red-chequered tablecloths, the hoedown and collectively stomping boots to a lively fiddle. Happy people with a rich southern drawl were all about me under lantern party lights. It explains why these days I have a ‘thing’ for the cowgirl look and feel, particularly boots, turquoise, cut-off shorts, silver jewellery and country music. I love to combine American cowgirl culture with my own Aussie culture. Even my dream of being a cross between Les Murray and Dolly Parton is expressed in my horse, Archie. He is a half Australian stock horse and half American quarter horse. (There’s some confusing maths in that sentence if you read it the wrong way!) But during that brief trip to the States, I fell even more in love with American country music. Dolly Parton, I idolised. I loved seeing her on the telly in her short skirts, with thin waist, towering blonde hair, cowgirl boots and straight-shootin’ mouth. After reading her autobiography I discovered more than ever there’s a businesswoman’s brain beneath that big hair, and her devotion to giving books to children is something that floats my boat. She tells it like it is. She has unshakeable faith. Behind the sequins there’s a steady class of commitment to being a lady who walks her own path and talks her own way. No wonder I want to be like her.
The trip to the States also gave me a glimpse of a wider world, and I saw firsthand amazing women from all around the world playing golf at a high international standard. At the time Luella’s mum Lindy played off a plus-four handicap, which was the lowest handicap in the world. I was shocked when my mum explained Lindy was an amateur golfer, but even the women who turned professional still had less of a pay packet than their male counterparts. I was stunned that these amazing women, at the top of their sport, were equally as talented and committed as the men to golf, but doubly poor for their efforts in terms of prize money. I couldn’t figure out why, in the late 1970s, Lindy Goggin’s incredible winning blitz of the golfing world didn’t make the papers as much as men’s golf. The gender divide bit hard and early in my life as I watched Lindy’s skill with her teammates bring Australia home in second place by a whisker behind the Americans in the tour. I flew back to Australia with my long blonde hair tinged green at the ends from swimming in so many turquoise-coloured motel pools, and my mind racing with uncertainty about my place in the world as a female. We were lesser. Society was showing me that. Yet, I puzzled, how could that be when I didn’t feel less, when women like those golfers didn’t seem less?
When I started high school, I didn’t know it intellectually, but I could feel the school was culturally layered with social expectations for my gender. Correct hem lengths. The right sort of knickers: beige. Sitting in position that was ‘ladylike’. There was also an unspoken expectation to marry well socially, or go to university and conquer the upper echelons of academic society, squeezing into a man’s domain if you were clever enough, and before you had children. Boring! I wasn’t having a bar of it. No sir-ee! I was happiest in jeans with holes in the knees, a pony tangle rather than a ponytail, and lanolin-covered, thistle-pricked hands from work in a shearing shed, or to be out in the bush bareback on my little dun-and-white patched pony, Tristan, with my cracker friends Luella and Manty.
Heading back to the city after those pony-filled weekends brought a sense of devastation, and I called that time ‘the brown years’. I didn’t realise the privilege of my education until much later in my life. If it weren’t for the teachers at that school, I may never have been given such a foundation in English or had a love for story and novels fostered so well. I may never have become a businesswoman running a company from my writing, and I certainly wouldn’t have got a job on ABC radio as a rural reporter. It was there the speech lessons with the drama teacher paid off! Can you imagine it?
‘Youse are all listening to Ay, Be, Cee raydio.’ I still have a dreadful rising inflection on the ends of my sentences, and a voice that is as light as a pavlova, but thank goodness I can speak halfway correctly if I put my mind to it. Despite my determination to remain ‘unbroken’ at that school, the days passed into terms and the terms into years. I began to sink in my despair and try to unsuccessfully reach my parents with self-harm cuts on my hands and wrists, along with stormy silences or tantrums behind slammed bedroom doors. But no matter what I did, I was forced to remain at the school.
For my parents the school’s location was convenient because I could walk to and from there, they didn’t have to drive me. My father had never had such educational opportunities so maybe in his eyes, I ought not to have been such an ungrateful, dramatic, troublesome teenage girl. ‘Put up and shut up’ is our unspoken family rule and I knew the school was costing him a lot of money. The school also came with a social calling card for my parents, who obviously wanted the best for me, but the more unheard I felt, the more I began to be swallowed and crushed by that school. At home in town, without my $150 saviour pony Tristan, who my Auntie Susie had found for me, I sought refuge in the only animals we had – an obese pet mouse called Soot, an elderly cat called Greebly, and a baby hare, Lenny the Leveret, who Luella’s granddad found on a golf course.
During those angst-ridden teen years, I turned into a dreamer to survive. I believe the poor fit of that school and urban life was what transformed me into an artist and a seeker. I spent the slow ticking minutes of my school years escaping by sitting in assembly creating alternative farming worlds in my mind’s eye, like a film running in my head. In the classroom I gazed out the rain-streaked window, imagining a life beyond tartan kilts and brown school ties . . . a life in denim, flannelette and boots in the bushland I’d come to love so well, riding out on my horse. A creative life, a free life, where you didn’t give a shit what other people thought . . . like Les. Like Dolly.
One day, the universe, as though tired of hearing my misery, answered my prayers. Whe
n I was in Year 10 I was given a glimpse of the possibility of freedom on the other side of my all-girls school prison. I shall never forget the moment when the school bus dropped a cluster of us off at the public Rosny College on the opposite shore of the Derwent River, the eastern shore – the ‘less affluent shore’, according to those from the riverside suburbs on the western river bank.
Like a flock of canaries in our summer yellow uniforms we chirruped our way into a lecture theatre and the teachers sat us down in our flesh-coloured tights and brown shoes to listen to poet Les Murray. It was a wake-up moment for me in life. I saw Les saunter onto stage and was in awe of him. Not because of what he said – he hadn’t opened his mouth yet – but what he wore. The way he looked, walked, stood . . . the way he was.
In my memory I have him in a flannie shirt with a giant home-knitted woollen jumper, threadbare at the elbows and holes in the tummy. I picture him with bare feet, but I know he must’ve been wearing shoes, but I like to think he had bare feet. He was so utterly ordinary and true to himself. He hadn’t dressed the part of a poet as you’d expect, nor did he address the crowd as if he really cared to impress. But impress he did. When he spoke his poetry, oh my Lord, did his words speak to me! As I sat in that audience and soaked up his beautiful word paintings about the Australian way of life and landscape with all its complexities, beauty and conflicted, sometimes tragic, identities, I knew then I had found my path forward for my own self. I knew that there was freedom on the other side of this school life, and that when I grew up I too would be like him. Unaffected by faux society rules. And painting with words.
Years later, fate, the universe or divine trust led me to Sydney literary agent Margaret Connolly. With an offer from Penguin Australia already in my hand for my manuscript Jillaroo, I called Margaret out of a word-of-mouth recommendation to ask if she would represent me. It turned out she also represented my dear treasured Les Murray, and for me, that was a sign from above to follow my new publishing road with Margaret. I’ve been with her ever since 2002 and even though I’ve not met Les personally, I’ve channelled his rebellious true-to-self, bugger-the-academics spirit in all that I do. In my quest to merge my idols of Dolly and Les, I began to find little stepping stones to lead me on the path.
One year at Agfest, Tasmania’s three-day rural exhibition, I had a mutual fan moment with Tania Kernaghan, who came to see me when I was demonstrating working-dog handling and selling books. The next year, two gorgeous girls with long blonde hair and big black hats stopped by to say hi. It was Celeste and Sophie Clabburn of The Sunny Cowgirls. Musicians were dropping into my space. But not just any old music. Country music. The stuff that kept me rolling forward in life. A little while later Celeste got in touch to see if I had a kelpie pup to sell. Without a litter at that time, I sent her in the direction of Ian O’Connell.
Celeste not only got her pup Suey from Ian, but went on to combine her musical talents with farm management and ended up living in a cottage on Ian and Kay’s farm for many years. It’s the cottage where I recently stayed, putting down the finishing touches to this book. Celeste even wrote a beautiful, drifting song called ‘Kelpie’, about the breed’s origin, based on a poem by local fencing contractor Peter Dowsley. It was the same poem that gave me the framework for my tribute to the kelpie in novel form, The Stockmen. Again here was poetry combining with music, and I was more transfixed with the idea than ever about songwriting. I just didn’t know where to start. I had limited musical knowledge but I decided that shouldn’t be a block. Trusting I would one day write song lyrics, emerging from the same stream of trust that I knew I would one day write novels, I set off in life, waiting for the next stepping stone on my path.
That came in 2010, when my Dolly wish was about to come true in a small way . . . I was going to get the chance to write songs. But not just songs . . . country rock songs! With an invitation to open the Bushy Park Show, I loaded up with books and a couple of kelpies and a crazily creative colleague called Helen, and we headed off in my old red ute, winding along the blacktop ribbon road that follows the bends of the increasingly narrowing Derwent River. As I journeyed upstream away from Hobart, past tall fluffy poplars and the remnants of the hop industry, I was eager to experience the tiny little Tasmanian show. It was where my aunties and my Granno Wise used to show their ponies in the forties. We turned off the Derwent River Highway onto a small leafy road, dipped over a narrow bridge and there we were . . . at the Bushy Park Show. We pulled up and looked for someone to steer us towards the area where we needed to go. Lauren, the bright-faced organiser, a country girl with a tonne of heart and enthusiasm, came over to say hello, her giant woolly pet sheep in tow.
‘I hope you don’t mind, but you’ll be sharing a table and a marquee with the band.’
She nodded her head towards a blue-and-white tent that had been begged and borrowed from Roberts Ltd, the livestock agents. Beyond that there was a big truck with the sides rolled up, and on its checker-plate surface were some blokes setting up drum kits, mike stands and lugging big black amps.
‘No worries,’ I said. I was slightly sheepish as I had no idea who ‘the band’ were.
Even when they strung up their black-and-white banner reading ‘The Wolfe Brothers’ I had to admit I hadn’t heard of them. For the past few years, I’d been buried under farm work and raising babies so I hadn’t been part of the Tassie country pub-and-party scene, but judging by the excitement from those arriving at the show, and clustering near, these boys were loved by many. It was a meaningful meeting when, for the first time, I shook the hands of brothers Tom and Nick Wolfe, and their childhood buddies, band members Brodie Rainbird and Casey Kostiuk. Right from the outset, it was like meeting my own clan. They were country boys with creativity in their veins, a rural heritage similar to mine and they were on a road like mine . . . one that has roots in a small place like Tasmania but our artistic branches spreading out across all of Australia and bearing fruit both here and internationally.
We clicked straight away. Once I heard them rock their first song, I was sold on them. It was country rock that had a class to it I’d never heard in this state. I’d been to many interstate events that had brilliant country artists that filled up the dome of the night sky with heart-thumping country music from the back of a truck. From The Sunny Cowgirls at the Deni Ute Muster, to Steve Forde at the Mountain Cattlemen’s Annual Get Together near Cobungra Station, and Lee Kernaghan himself in Omeo, I’d seen my fair share and loved every paddock-stomping moment of our Australian artists. As the Wolfe Brothers ripped through their set, I had to do a double take. Here I was in my home state, watching homegrown talent that matched the best I’d seen on the mainland, their sound even transcending Australian waters to that of the latest music I was listening to out of the USA. Offstage, they were ‘Tassie-as’, and when I offered to look after their merchandise for them when they were onstage, I found they spoke the same lingo. They had an easy grace to them, not to mention the humour that was in tune with my own. As they came offstage and thanked us, Helen said casually, ‘Hey, you should write a song together.’
It was no surprise we kept in touch, became mates, and then, with my Dolly wishes fulfilled, the chance to write songs arrived.
The first song I co-wrote with Nick Wolfe emerged when I bumped into Tom Wolfe for the second time in a row on the same street corner outside the same pockmarked sandstone face of a convict-built pub in Hobart’s Salamanca where I had seen him the previous week.
‘If you’re gunna stalk someone,’ I said jokingly, ‘it’s best not to wear high-vis, Tom.’ I indicated his vibrant, eye-smackingly orange shirt he was still wearing due to his day job as a builder. He laughed and invited me into the dimly lit Irish pub to say hi to the boys. There was Nick, also in his green-yellow postman’s high-vis top, unwinding leads and smiling at me. Looking at them, busy with their pre-gig setup, I said, ‘We oughta write a song about hi-vis.’ And that was that. Soon I found myself at Nick’s kitchen table, with a
cup of tea and an open Bundy can chaser, a black crazy kitten climbing the screen door, a sheepdog sleeping on the mat outside and Nick’s dad’s tractor trundling along the steep face of a hill outside. In this environment, I began my first lesson in the basics of lyric writing. Nick with his guitar and me with my love for playing with words, together we soon channelled a ‘Hi-Vis Anthem’ into the world. The song’s lyrics reflect exactly my journey from all those days ago at my private school, and with Nick’s working-class spin we wrote a fun first-time song: ‘I’ll never have a law degree, that’ll never bother me. I’m working hard and sleeping well at night. You can keep your tie and shirt, I’ll keep my hands down in the dirt. I’d rather wear high-vis to work. Clear and bright. It’s a real good sign.’
Since that first songwriting session, Nick and I joined up again. I was so ‘rock-chick mother’ as I sat in my house sampling a bit of his family tradition home-brew moonshine as we wrote, ‘Got nothing to do and all day to do it’ before downing tools because the kids had arrived at the bottom of the farm road from the school bus. I’d only had one nip, but the fuel of that smooth hard liquor helped the song arrive, if only to settle my nerves at working beside a musician with such talent. In the time I collaborated with Nick I could tell he was as much a muso as he was a poet. Not so much a Les–Dolly cross, but maybe a Les–Johnny Cash cross?
Fresh back from Nashville working on the band’s latest album, Nick held his own with the US greats in songwriting. It’s no surprise they’ve been booked for over thirty American gigs this year. It was on the cards a few years ago when they won second place on television show Australia’s Got Talent, were picked up by Stephen White Management and began touring the country with Lee Kernaghan. On Lee’s ‘Spirit of the Anzacs’ tour, the Wolfe Brothers got to sing songs of real-life Tassie war heroes while behind them on the big screen flashed images of their own grandfather, handsome and young in his navy uniform in World War II. It’s been a privilege to share a small part in the boys’ journey, and as artists they have helped me embrace my Tasmanian-ness.
Down the Dirt Roads Page 14