What Happened to the Girl from the Mallee

By Jenny Date

What Happened to the Girl from the Mallee is the memoir of an only child who grew up on an isolated farm in the Mallee. Jenny Date gained her independence as a young teenager and set out to explore what challenges and opportunities the big smoke and the wider world had to offer.

This memoir offers a glimpse of life in Australia from the 1950s to the present. Detailing events in the author’s life from international adventures to domestic service, from the vibrancy of youth to the complications of aging, and from nostalgia for the past to uncertainty regarding the future, the narrative is one of a life well lived and of concern and hope for the coming generations. She tells surprising, amazing, and amusing stories of more than seventy-five years of travel, career, and everyday life.

This memoir is based within the context of the baby boomer generation and the broad social history of Australia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jun 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9798369496329

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Copyright © 2024 by Jenny Date.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 06/05/2024

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Contents

1950s: Farm Life and Primary School in Mallee, Victoria

1960s: Secondary School, the Big Smoke, and New Zealand

1970s: Around Australia, Welfare Studies, and Employment

1975: Time to Explore the Rest of the World

1980s: Back in Australia and Time to Settle Down

1988: Long Service Leave in the USA

1990s: Career Diversification and Ageing Family

2000s: A New Millennium and Retirement

2010s: Travel, Illness, and an Unknown Virus

2020s: A Pandemic, Ageing, and Beyond

My thanks to:

My friend Sharon who gave me a journal and encouraged me to write.

My husband Matt who passed away recently, but was a living part (for more than forty years) of the stories I’ve shared with you.

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1950s: Farm Life and Primary

School in Mallee, Victoria

As an only child who was brought up on an isolated Mallee farm without electricity, running water, or hot water, I grew up in quite a different environment from most other children in the 1950s. We had quite a self-sufficient lifestyle, growing our own fruit and vegetables, milking a cow, gathering fresh eggs daily, and killing a sheep every two weeks or so. This was years before terms like off the grid, organic, and free range were trending (or even thought about).

We drove ten miles into Ultima or, on livestock market days, thirty miles into Swan Hill, every couple of weeks in an old green Ford utility, travelling over limestone roads with dust and potholes. I sat in the middle between Mum and Dad (long before child seats were invented). I sat low on the seat. My view was of Dad’s lower half driving the car. I watched carefully how the four on the floor gear lever changed gears and how the clutch, brake, and accelerator worked. This was my early driving education. I grew up feeling that I’d always known how to drive, although I had no idea what a handbrake was or what it was for. In years to come, it amazed me how some of my city friends found it difficult to learn to drive.

We sold our produce, including peas, almonds, eggs, and tomatoes, to the local hotel kitchen, then bought a few provisions, such as fresh bread (high tin white) and maybe some sausages or corned silverside. For me a treat was drinking an occasional milkshake at the local cafe or sitting on the high railing fence of the saleyards, with Dad beside me, watching the auctioneer (seemingly yelling in another language) as he sold the sheep or cattle in each pen. I didn’t see or get to know any other children during these visits.

Life at home on the farm was all I knew. Dad would work on the farm from dawn to dusk, come home for a freshly cooked evening meal, then, after listening to the news and maybe a serial on the radio, we’d all be off to bed by 8:00 p.m. Sometimes a highlight for me was taking a cut lunch and a billy of white tea to share with Dad in the paddock, sitting on the ground in the shade of our Fordson tractor’s huge wheel.

We lived in an old corrugated iron farmhouse surrounded by a two-metre-high wire fence protecting the garden from the animals, chooks, and turkeys, who roamed freely outside the garden fence. Two side garden gates opened to the cowshed, windmill, and dam on one side and free-range (although we never used that description) chickens, turkeys, and pigs (in a separate paddock and sty) on the other side. An old mudbrick dunny with a four-gallon drum was built at the far corner of the back garden. In the back garden, established in the early 1900s, were a few old fruit and almond trees and a long, central grapevine-covered archway, as well as a few vegetables.

The back of the house was shaded by a full-length veranda covered in a bridal creeper. The veranda posts were hand-cut pine logs, and there was just a dirt floor. At one end was a rainwater tank for drinking water. Nearby was an underground mudbrick cellar with a corrugated iron roof. This was intriguing to me, as if it were a dwarf or fairy house. Mum wouldn’t allow me to go down the stairs and inside, as she said it was too dangerous. To this day I still have no idea whether there was anything inside that cellar.

Inside the house, the main entrance was from the back veranda into a large oblong kitchen with a dirt floor, covered in a black bitumen-like smelly sheeting. A large wooden kitchen table and chairs were central. A miner’s couch (covered with numerous layers of shellac and paint) was along one wall. Farther along was a kitchen cabinet, a small metal food safe, a large radio cabinet and a worktable. There was one small window and a woodstove at the far end of the kitchen. A Coolgardie safe (used prior to refrigerators and electricity) was on the back veranda. It had flywire sides covered in damp hessian bags that allowed the food to stay as cool as possible.

The bathroom was partly built with a half-concrete floor and a galvanized iron bath on legs plus a cold-water tap, but no plumbed drainage, hand basin, or laundry facilities. We had a weekly bath and emptied the bath with buckets to water the garden.

There were three central rooms in the house. Two of these were a completed sitting room in the middle and a main bedroom with a comfy black iron double bed. Both these rooms were lined with cement sheet but not painted. The third room was my bedroom, with a white plaster ceiling and a floral type of linoleum lining coming only halfway down the walls, leaving the bottom of the walls unlined. As I lay in bed at night looking up to the white ceiling, I would often see a large brown huntsman spider making its way across the ceiling. A cry out to Mum usually brought Dad with a broom to the rescue.

The Date family included Halifax and Isabella (my grandparents born in the 1800s) and four children: Bill (my father), Tom, Frances, and a younger child who drowned as a three-year-old. The family had lived in the Central Victorian gold-mining area, around Inglewood and Laanecoorie. Halifax worked in the gold mines. Remaining work references from his employers praise him for his reliability and responsibility. He saved a little money and was able to buy some farming land in the Mallee in the early 1900s. The farm included five hundred acres and the old farmhouse, but without any farm equipment, stock, or furniture. My father, born in 1900, was a young teenager when his father bought the farm. The family worked hard to get the farm going. They got a government-assistance loan to buy farm machinery. Tom married and moved to another farm in 1933. Frances married and moved away. Halifax died in the 1930s, leaving my dad and his mother on the farm.

Mum and Dad married in 1947, and Mum came to live on this remote, hot, and dry Mallee farm. Mum was part of a large family of twelve children who lived on a farm near Rochester. She went to school in Rochester. When her mother died after her twelfth child was born, Mum worked at home doing all the cooking and home duties. Her brothers gradually married and moved to farms of their own. Mum’s sisters married or moved away to work, leaving Mum to care for her father. He was of Irish decent and had a wild, angry temper and demeanour. When he died in 1936, his will left the farm to the two brothers who still worked the farm, leaving Mum without a home. Even though life was tough for Mum and the large Wilson family, she was used to having lots of people around. She sometimes went to country dances with her brothers and could walk to Rochester if need be.

When she came to live on the Ultima farm, it was a shock. Mum felt lonely and isolated; she didn’t know anyone and didn’t get on with her mother-in-law, who still lived with them in the farmhouse. The family didn’t have a car, and Mum had only a bicycle. The sandy, unmade roads put a stop to her travel plans after she fell off her bike and injured herself during her first outing on the roads.

Mum and Dad were both proud of their baby Jennifer, a healthy black-haired, brown-eyed baby weighing nine pounds, nine ounces at birth. Mum was gentle and attentive, doing her best to keep everything clean. As a first-time mother with no other support nearby, she was anxious about her parenting role. The Mobile Infant Welfare Bus came to measure and weigh me and to provide information and support to Mum. Mum would wheel me in the pram down our dirt track to the farm gate to the bus. Mum was home alone most days while Dad worked on the farm.

While Mum was quite shy and lacked confidence in a number of areas, she had a mind of her own and was known to express her views, forcefully if necessary. Her Irish family background led to lots of verbal arguments and swearing. You knew when my mother was angry. During my childhood, I can remember Mum stringing together amazing combinations of swear words, such as the bloody rotten mongrel bastard!

Dad built an extra kitchen at the front of the house. This included a woodstove, unpainted cement-sheet lining, and a couple of modern louvre-style windows. Outside, a new cement-sheet dunny was built and a large front garden established. The garden was planted with young fruit trees—orange, apple, cherry, and almond. The apples were huge Red Delicious but had a floury texture; they looked much better than they tasted. The new kitchen extension enabled Granny Date to live in the original kitchen while we used the front kitchen. This worked all right for a few years, until Granny moved away because she was ageing and not able to look after herself. Granny died in the 1950s. We then used the bigger, older kitchen as our main kitchen and living area.

I occupied my young self on the farm with a pet lamb, a young poddy calf, and two farm dogs (Lassie and Rover). I helped feed the chooks and bring in the eggs. I’d watch Dad milking the cow and marvel at the number of wild cats that would arrive straight after the milking to a get a drink of warm, fresh milk. There must have been at least ten cats. We never fed them other than the daily milk, and we never saw them for the rest of the day or evening. I’d go to the pigsty and chat to the pigs, especially the two big, inquisitive sows. After one rainy night, I was amazed to discover the next morning that one of the sows had twelve little piglets. (Mum suggested they must have come with the rain.)

The cement-sheet dunny wasn’t a success, as the redback spiders regularly bred and lived under the seat, despite Mum giving them a regular dowsing with boiling water from the kettle. So we pooed in the garden in a furrow, then covered it with soil, and bingo—it would soon become manure for the next garden bed! We had an enamel chamber pot under the bed to wee in at night.

A distant neighbour called in on his way home from the pub every few weeks to buy some fresh veggies. This visit was a highlight for me, as he was keen to have a chat with us. Mum became worried and told me that he was a drunk and I must stay inside when he arrived. I always did what I was told, but I was disappointed and couldn’t see that he was any possible harm to me.

Dad grew wheat, oats, and barley and kept a small flock of sheep and lambs, plus a few cattle and calves. Mum bred turkeys, which she sold locally (killed and dressed ready for Christmas). The farm was enough for one person to manage. We made a reasonable living but suffered in the years of flood and drought. We never went on annual holidays, as most of the other farming families did. I didn’t attend kindergarten or play group or anything like that. I don’t think they existed in the Mallee in the early 1950s.

*       *       *

In 1954, I started primary school in Sea Lake. I was five years old but had no social skills, as I’d never had any interaction with other young children. Our nearest neighbours were a few miles away, and their families were all teenagers when I started school. I was thrilled about the new adventure of starting school, so there were no tears from me. Monday morning began with an outdoor school assembly for the whole school. While everyone stood and listened to the headmaster, I stepped forward and started to do a dance. Mrs. Crisp, the mature-aged, delightful grade 1 teacher, simply directed me back to line again (without any words of admonishment).

I loved school. In the 1950s, classes were large—thirty to forty or more children. After World War Two, the government encouraged people to settle down and have families. (Populate or perish was the slogan.) Families were paid a child endowment of 2/6 a month per child to help with the cost of raising a family. Mum opened her first bank account, and the child endowment was automatically deposited in her account every three months. Mum built up the bank balance and never withdrew any cash.

My father drove me to the school bus stop (one mile up the road) and collected me from there every afternoon. After a year or so, the school bus route was reduced, as I was the only child on the outer limit. The change meant I had to travel seven miles to meet the bus. This was hard for Dad, as he had to leave his work on the farm to come and get me. In 1957, Dad traded in the old green ute and bought a brand-new grey Volkswagen beetle car (these were quite new then). Mum decided she’d learn to drive so she could take me to and collect me from the school bus. She was a slow and nervous learner, but finally she took her driving test with the local policeman. She passed, but the policeman advised her not to drive in town for a while. Mum took this advice to heart and never, ever drove into town! But she successfully managed the school run every day until the end of my schooling. She was always a nervous driver who pulled to the side of the road whenever she saw another car coming towards her (which, on a country road in the Mallee, fortunately wasn’t that often). Doing a U-turn at the bus stop in preparation for returning home was a major challenge! Dad was a competent driver, but it took him a while to realize what the flip-out indicator lights on the side of the car were for. He was used to putting his arm out the window to indicate that he was turning right! After a near accident when not paying any attention to another car’s indicator light, he became a quick learner.

I loved school. Learning to read with the John and Betty reader was very exciting. Learning numbers and tables was great fun too. I always did well at school. I didn’t develop any close friendships (I probably didn’t understand friendship at all). I always felt a bit different to others. I had jet-black hair, I was taller than most in my class, and I was quite tubby, as I loved my food and always went back for seconds if any was left. I had no interest in sport, whereas everyone else seemed to enjoy it and was quite athletic. We played softball and rounders and had annual athletic sports days, on which we competed against other schools in the region in running, jumping, and other events. We also had an annual swimming event (once a swimming pool had been built in town).

From grades one to three, we had small wooden tables and chairs and sat two children per table. The school dentist visited in a big dental bus clinic. We were called one by one to visit the dentist. My teeth were always perfect (as there were no lollies or sweets in our house), so I was happy to visit the dentist (no awful sound of the drill for me). Others were often scared and hated going to the dentist. One year the boy sitting next to me was called by the dental nurse. He stood up, moved his chair back, stepped onto the chair, and climbed out of the window and ran home. We didn’t see him again that day!

Other children had occasional sleepovers and birthday parties (which I was invited to occasionally). I wasn’t able to reciprocate with a return invitation, as our house wasn’t good enough to invite anyone to visit or stay, and Mum wouldn’t have been confident enough to plan and host a birthday party. We also never had any money to spare for such occasions. Occasionally the three of us would go to Swan Hill for the day, to the cattle sales and to do some shopping. On one of those days, we went to the movies and saw Ginger Megs. What a treat—a big screen filled with the red-headed comic strip character (from a regular comic strip in the Sun newspaper, which we bought when in town). This is the only movie I can remember seeing as a child.

We had bus trips from school out to Green Lake (before the town had swimming pools) for swimming lessons as part of the school curriculum. Mum was always very particular about everything. She wouldn’t let me go swimming or to school camps and wouldn’t allow me to get vaccinated when the free vaccinations were brought around the schools. Mum was an anti-vaxxer way before their time! I eventually taught myself to swim in the farm dam. I didn’t really think about vaccinations, so when I grew up I had whatever vaccination was required to travel overseas. At one stage I even did some consultancy work to promote a mobile immunization van which travelled to various municipalities to provide easier access to children’s vaccinations.

In the Mallee we had hot, dry summers and cold winters, with frost at nights and cold mornings until the sun shone through and warmed up the afternoons. Rainfall was low, only four to ten inches per year, so we were always careful not to waste water. In 1956, there was a major flood and the nearby Lalbert Creek flooded with water from elsewhere. The water crossed the road, washing away part of it, and spread across most of our cropped paddocks and right up to the edge of our garden fence. Our garden and house were safe, but we couldn’t get out to go anywhere. Because our land was quite flat, the floodwater was not fast flowing. It spread out and lay there until it dried out. So I was at home and unable to go to school for a few weeks. Dad had wisely moved our stock to a paddock which didn’t flood and had taken the ute to the other side of the creek before we got flooded in. Vehicles regularly got bogged where the flood had washed away the road. Dad took his tractor down and pulled cars and trucks out of the floodwater. Sometimes the drivers gave Dad some cash for his help. Two occasions I still remember include the following:

• A car containing three couples returning home from a ball at 2:00 a.m. bogged down. The passengers, still dressed in suits and long ball gowns, were trapped in their car for many hours until daylight, when they got Dad’s help.

• A sideshow truck moving from Swan Hill to the next scheduled agricultural show got bogged. Dad’s trusty small Fordson tractor managed to get their heavy vehicles out. The carnival matriarch, who was running the show, rolled down her sock and took out a huge roll of money and gave a handful of notes to Dad in appreciation. I’d never seen so much money! She promised to look after us whenever we came to a show. She remembered us every year and often spotted us in the crowd. She welcomed us free for the next ten years or so (every year with a new show, including a three-legged donkey, a talking cockatoo, and a man with three hands).

When the flood receded a little, Dad would piggyback me across to the utility, then drive to the school bus stop. I was delighted to be back at school. We have photos of our chooks on their roosts with a sea of water underneath them and nowhere for them to go. As a result of the floods, Dad applied for and received flood relief funding for the lost crops for that year and for the destruction of the mud brick dunny and smithy’s shed. This cash refund was enough for Dad to buy the new VW beetle car and have a large corrugated iron machinery shed built.

We had a small school bus, and most other kids were farmer families and friends, or kids from the Catholic school. I was the odd one out and often got bullied and roughed up on the bus. I was strong, but I didn’t fight back and didn’t have a fighting instinct. One afternoon I got pushed against the bus window, which broke. Worried that we’d have to pay, I told my parents. Dad met the school bus the next morning and told the driver to make sure everyone kept their seats and didn’t make trouble!

From grade three onwards, I don’t recall much advanced reading or drama classes. I don’t think there was a library at school. There would usually be a nativity play prepared for the end-of-year concert. One year a live Punch and Judy puppet show was held. We were involved in making the puppets and acting in the show. I got the role of Punch. (My female voice must have been similar to a male voice.) I worked hard to learn my lines, and I really loved being involved, but that was the end of my burgeoning career, as no further opportunities arose.

In grade five, Colin Crampton was our class teacher. I liked him and became one of the teacher’s pets. I would bring flowers from our garden every Monday for our classroom. In grade six, we had Tom King as the teacher. Apparently, he had a good singing voice and tried to teach us to sing, starting with Sing C from the tuning fork. I couldn’t sing very well, but I did enjoy sewing and needlework with another teacher. I usually got good results in most subjects every year, but another student regularly got better results. In the final grade-six exams, I was removed from an exam for talking (though I don’t remember doing anything that others weren’t also participating in). I wasn’t allowed to finish that exam. I was really disappointed, but somehow I still managed to get the overall highest marks and therefore was dux of the primary school. I kept it a secret from my parents until speech night presentations. They said they were proud, but embarrassed that they didn’t know.

I was taller than most of the kids in my class. I had quite a loud voice, but I was quite shy. At home I knew that my parents cared for me, and I wanted to make them proud of me, but they never showed their affection with a kiss or a cuddle. We rarely played games or had fun together. I had a few toys and books in my early childhood (maybe a couple of dolls, a couple of books, and a handful of toys); no more than ten in total lasted throughout my childhood. There was no play equipment, such as swings or climbing frames, at home, so I loved going on the slide at school, even though Mum insisted it was too dangerous for me. My parents kept all my childhood belongings. Sixty years later, I got a good price on eBay for some of my antique books, toys, and clothes, including an early velvet-collared overcoat and tiny shoes, as well as a John and Betty reader from school.

We never said please or thank you at home, so I was too embarrassed to say please or thank you or use someone’s name (for example, Mrs. Jones) when greeting him or her. This hesitancy remained with me for years, although I’m not sure it was noticeable to others. They possibly just thought I was ill mannered or not attentive to others. I remember one day at school when I’d left my lunch at home, one of the girls who lived in the town, said I could come home with her for lunch. The family sat at the kitchen table and enjoyed a freshly made sandwich. The girl nudged me and prompted me to thank her parents, but I was too shy and just couldn’t do it! I asked my friend to say thank you for me, but we left without anything being said.

We rarely had a family holiday. Most other farmers would take the family to the beach or elsewhere in the summer once the harvest was finished. We only ever went to stay with family for a few days. Until I was a teenager, I’d never been to Melbourne or any other big city, and I’d never seen the beach or the ocean. When I saw paintings of the sea, I couldn’t understand the white tips on the ocean with ships at an angle on water! I recall two holiday visits we made to Rochester to visit family. Once, as a toddler, I wandered outside the farmhouse to explore my new surrounds, and I fell head-first into a bucket full of cold water. I soon got out, and a wail from me, dripping in water, soon brought Mum and everyone else to the rescue. On the next visit, a few years later, visiting an aunt and uncle, I threw up in the car from travel sickness as soon as we arrived and were being greeted by my aunt. No surprise that my mother found going on holidays with me as a young child wasn’t that easy or pleasurable.

So What Was Happening in Australia During the 1950s?

When I was an infant in the 1950s, Australia was a relatively new developing country with a population of only some eight million. Prior to my parents’ marriage and my birth, there’d been two world wars. During World War I, from 1914–18, over four hundred thousand young Australian men eagerly enlisted to serve their country and travel the world. More than sixty thousand Aussie soldiers lost their lives, and many more were wounded or taken prisoner.

In the 1930s, there was a crash on the US Stock Exchange. In Australia, this resulted in the Great Depression of the 1930s, when many people lost their jobs and were unable to gain other work or income. Australia had a National Labour Government in the 1940s under Prime Minister Ben Chifley, followed by John Curtain, who found it increasingly difficult to support families and grow the economy. Lots of men humped a swag and walked the country roads, looking for work. These men, known as swagmen or swaggies, often called at our farm when I was a young child, seeking food or work.

While Australia was still feeling the effects of the Great Depression, World War II commenced in Europe in 1939, spreading across the world and continuing until 1945. Australia was recruited to help the mother country, England. Almost eight hundred thousand Australian soldiers enlisted to serve in the war, including a number of women, who joined the Women’s Land Army to help in Australia. Nearly forty thousand Australian soldiers died in the war, and many others returned suffering from the horrors of the war they’d experienced. The West won the war, which gave us our freedom. We saluted the sacrifice and contribution of our soldiers (which we referred to fondly as Diggers or Cobber). Since then, our tribute through the Returned Servicemen’s League of Australia (RSL) on Anzac Day in April and Remembrance Day in November has been Lest We Forget.

Even though Australia didn’t suffer the same level of devastation and destruction as many other countries, Australia in the 1940s was a depleted country suffering from a lack of food and clothing and other industrial materials. Rationing of food and clothing was introduced and continued until the 1950s. A newly reformed Liberal