Chapter 31 Returning Home

                                            Chapter 31   Returning Home

Before the plane landed in Assville, Mum commented to my dad, "I'll bet she's wearing a dress up to her thighs." 

    As I emerged from the plane at the airport she made another comment, "Yes, she is." 

    Miniskirts were in fashion, and in Victoria they were a little shorter than in Queensland. The heat in Assville was a shock when we emerged from the interior of the plane, and I was wearing a navy woollen military-style suit with dusky pink stockings and navy high heels. I’d purchased the suit in an exclusive boutique in Melbourne's Block Arcade and it cost me a packet; but how quickly after arriving back on home turf my fashion details became irrelevant!

    As a student nurse in my fourth year of training I had earned about $50 a fortnight, but as soon as I started midwifery in Melbourne my wage packet doubled to $100 a fortnight. I couldn't believe I had so much money to spend and I regret to say I saved very little.

     Two Melbourne students from our class came with me for a short holiday in Queensland.

     I told Mum on the phone before I left Melbourne, “Meredith’s parents are both doctors, Mum”

     “Oh my God, no!!” Mum nearly flipped.

     Ironically, Meredith was the one who stayed on while the other girl returned to Victoria on schedule. After some weeks, I took her to the Assville hospital to show her where I’d started my training. It was a case of déjà vu, and when we walked out that day we both had jobs.

     We worked there for about three months as double certificated trained nurses, but Meredith had worked extensively at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, and had a hard time assimilating to the scale of things in the small country hospital.

     Neither of us had enjoyed midwifery, but again ironically, she came in for a lot of  deliveries in the labour ward when she worked night duty.

    One day she burst out in frustration, "Why do I get all the stupid births!” (I was just relieved I only came in for two during the whole three months we worked there.)

    About that time Mum and Dad had decided on selling the farm and buying a hotel. At the house in Green Springs Dad arranged an auction sale. It was a huge success, probably because of the keg he laid on! The morning after the sale we discovered that some of the things that had been sold, like tins of nuts and bolts etc, were still there on the ground! The auction sale had been such a merry party, men didn’t care about the goods they’d bought; they just wanted to join in and have a bit of fun. Mum and Dad  made quite a handsome return.

     Mum had told the auctioneer, "That bed is for sale, but not the quilt." 

    Later in the day after the bed was sold, she saw a utility truck leaving Green Springs.
“There goes my bed on the back of a truck, Alec.” As it rounded the corner on its way out, Mum's quilt flapped in the breeze!

     One of the Brisbane girls from midwifery training had got herself a job at an aboriginal mission settlement, and after our Assville stint, Meredith left to go there too.
  
    The Vietnam war had started in the early 60s, but really ramped up after National  Service was introduced in 1965. Injured Australian soldiers were being shipped back in numbers, and Brisbane was the first big army hospital they were brought to.

    Seeing an advertisement in a magazine for the Army Nursing Corps, I decided to apply. Most of all I wanted to see the country and have some adventure. I’d been hankering to join one of the Defence Forces since I was 14, but the length of the initial commitment was six and four years for the Navy and Air Force respectively.

Nursing staff was needed, and I only had to commit for two years if I joined the regular Army. When I had the interview with the nursing director at Army headquarters towards the end of 1967, she asked me, "What do you know about the Army?"
   
    “Aah...not very much, really,” I confessed.

    “It seems very strange to want to join something you knew nothing about,” she commented tartly. Could I say the uniform looked supercool? Perhaps not.

     I waited anxiously for call up, hoping to be posted to Perth or somewhere else equally as exotic-- somewhere I hadn’t been before. Then it came... posted to Brisbane! No further to go than 1 Mil Hospital, in Yeronga. So much for planning to see more of Australia on the cheap!

    In the meantime, Mum and Dad had bought their country hotel, and we all moved 150 miles away in December 1967, leaving the farm forever. The previous manager had given all the staff Christmas off. That meant that it was all hands to the grindstone, as Christmas is a busy period in a country hotel. Mum cooked, we all leant a hand with the beds, and I became a temporary barmaid! I found it nerve racking and I was uncomfortable in the bar in front of all the drinkers. I lost all appetite for food. 

    I did learn to pull a beer though, after some embarrassment. Amid comments about too much or too little head on their glass, I found out beer drinkers are rather a fussy lot.