Unwilling Tourists

It was a dark and freezing Tasmanian night when interstate friends of ours, who had been bush walking, phoned for us to pick them up.

My husband and I, newlyweds, drove in our well heated car, out into the night, past the forest.

All seemed well.

The music blared from the car radio.

We chatted, oblivious to the temperature outside.

Suddenly the car hit ice and slid.

My husband struggled to steer the vehicle down the road, as we hit walls or was it cliff rises either side of the road. Bang! Bang! It seemed like invisible giant hands were throwing our car from side to side.

Eventually after flash-before-your- life -moments, the car was slowed and he managed to bring it to a stop on the road side.

Phew, we survived.

Luckily there was no-one else on the road.  Otherwise we’d have been done for in a head on collision.

But our nightmare was in its infancy.

Now our car was battered, undriveable, and we were out in the wilderness without a mobile phone.

We were worried about our friends as we wouldn’t be arriving to pick them up any time soon.  At least they were prepared with their camping gear and warm clothes.

The stars were beautiful, but the situation was scary as anyone stuck in the cold will know.

We waited to flag down a car, snuggled to each other to keep warm, and worried we were going to freeze if no-one appeared before morning.

I remember our hearts skipped a happy beat at the sounds of an engine.  The car stopped.   It was a fisherman on his way home.  He drove us to his home where he lived with his parents.

But they were perhaps even more frightening than the accident.

They were cold, suspicious and annoyed at their son.  He explained what had happened,  drank his cuppa and then waited as his Mum grumpily made up some beds for us.

His parents seemed to look at us funny, especially me.  Was it my colour?  My age? They didn’t even seem to care what had happened to us.  I had to sleep separately from my husband even though we had just been through a trauma.

I was shocked and lonely; we were both in a strange house with people who seemed scared of us, still we had to be grateful; we had nowhere else to go.

The next day they woke us early and rapidly ejected us at a soon-to- depart-tour-bus.

We were unwilling tourists, still emotionally numb, learning all the history about the area in the cold light of day. To make matters worse the minibus drove right past our wrecked car whilst on the way to another regular coach that would bring us home.

We came back to our house via taxi from the bus stop, shortly after our friends arrived.

We began to thaw in the light of our warm hearted friends, who listened and gave real comfort, rather than suspicious glares.

Since then, despite sometimes being taken advantage of, our family have always sought to see the good in others, and help them out when we can, including one time when we had an unwanted house guest who just wouldn’t leave.

We like being well prepared even for short road trips.

Most of the time we help people out and it’s a positive experience, but whatever the outcome might be we help with a smile on our faces and goodwill in our hearts.

First published, ABC Open, 500 Words, A Scary Moment. 7th February 2013

 

Comments from ABC Open

• June Perkins

  Thanks for your feedback Paul, it’s greatly appreciated.

• Paul Tilyou

  This is so wonderfully written. I admire what appears to be an effortless marriage of action with descriptions of sensations, moving the story along, while putting the reader right there. I hope to read more of your contributions.

• June Perkins

  We understood our hosts being scared of strangers who turned up on their doorstep through no fault of their own, but it was also scary to be lost and have to rely on the help of strangers. I don’t judge them for it but it is interesting to observe human behaviour and think now how would I behave if it was me in their position.

• Pam Farey

  Yes the fisherman was the hero and we should not judge strangers who help us in their own way.

• June Perkins

  Thanks everyone for your feedback. Although the story does not say it, we did thank the people who took us in, and despite our shock tried to be as little trouble as possible. However, there is a real difference between people who are kind to others in a willing manner and those who feel put out and who judge. The real hero of our rescue was the fisherman who stopped and took us to his house, despite possibly knowing his parents were not going to be very welcoming.

• Neal

  Thanks for your interesting story.You both could have binjured badly but fortunately everything turned out to be well. The people, who gave you a temporary shelter were suspecious but very hospitable the peopleat the same time. They were scared to be rubbed and killed by survivers. Nevertheless, they let you spend a night there. You should also support and help those people pleasant to you just like in this situation.

• Gail Kavanagh

  I have been in similar situations and I know how it feels. This was very involving,June.

• Joanna Grimmer

  I loved this story, though well aware it was an unpleasant experience for you both, it is visually effective and has a clever nip of tension. Beautifully written, and the ending was satisfying and meaningful to me as a reader. I’ve never been caught out on black ice, but the bitter cold an be very frightening. And then to stay where you didn’t feel welcome makes that coldness permeate further.

• Nana Ollerenshaw

  June, You so often write supportive comments to others. I enjoyed your ‘scary experience’, the worst part being surprizingly the human encounter. We saw the cold, and the isolation as threats too. When in trouble, I always remind myself there is always a resolution. Thank you.

   

  Please note: links to ABC Open will be broken after June 30th 2019.

Family in Press Clippings

Creating a resource for my family in generations to come.

Sugars and Stars

Could Aunty really fit as many sugars in her tea as stars in the sky? We began our counting.

**

The scene is  a visit of Papua New Guinean ladies who are mum’s friends.  She sure liked her sugar.

This could be an opening line, or a memorable line somewhere in the middle.  The scene originally featured in a play I wrote based on memories of growing up PNG in Tasmania.

Yours Truly, The Girl with the Flower in Her Hair

Excerpts from notes for my Memoirs (c) June Perkins

Sandra’s Rainbows

‘Erriba’, Matthew Lawson, Flickr Creative Commons

My first memory is of puppet shows my brother and I would put together behind Sandra’s couch in Devonport, Tasmania. Our family and hers would watch as we unfolded our story. They were for Baha’i children classes.

The next I have is of perching on a small orange car and racing down the extremely steep slope of the driveway of her home. We weren’t supposed to do this, but we did until the parents caught us. My brothers sometimes thought Sandra was too strict, she wasn’t afraid to be like a second Mum when they were naughty, but I liked her for that.

When I first knew her she was a dance teacher, and single mother. At her home was a studio she taught from. I remember when I was little that she always wore beautiful perfume that you could catch the scent of whenever she was near you. She glided along like a dance teacher and often wore vibrant scarves around her head.

She was one of the first Baha’is my family ever knew. She was my first religious education teacher.

She gave us books every year which were for Baha’i holy days or our birthdays. We shared them and read them all. They were often full of important lessons about how to live life, but we liked them because they were so well illustrated and had hard covers.

Sometimes my nearest in age brother and I went to stay with her to give my parents a break, especially when they had a new baby in the house. Our parents trusted her. At those times she played ABBA for us and cooked us fish. I remember having a blue dory at her house and can still taste it even now. We spent a lot of time with her children on those visits.

Her son liked to play violin. Her daughter danced in shows of her mother’s dance school. Her children taught us to play card games like gin rummy. Her daughter when she was older worked at a riding school. She took me there for a treat and I was able to ride a horse for the first time. I thought it was the best day of my life in the whole world, as I was into reading stories like Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty at the time.

We always asked her children, who were a little older than us, to give us dizzy wizzys, where they wizzed us around and around until we felt like throwing up. They were our show rides.

I remember her moving into the mountains to a house in Erriba with a killer tourist brochure view. She had a restaurant there, and my Mum and I went and waitressed there one Christmas to help her out. It was so busy! We slept in the house overnight rather than travelling back to our home. It was a beautiful home made of wood that had a strong and pleasant smell.

I wrote a few poems at Sandra’s Erriba home. The mountain, where that house existed, was often covered in rainbows.

Many years later I saw her again in North Queensland. She was on holidays visiting one of her daughters, who had married an African man and had three children now. We had a long chat about where life had taken us all. My children and her grandchildren were playing and chatting.

At that time she was working at a Baha’i School in Africa, and training teachers in virtues. She was smiling. She had given up most of what she owned and to live a frugal life, but I could tell she was very happy and dedicated to her work.

Just recently I heard her daughter has cancer via facebook. I realise that I need to ask my Mum, who she was always a good friend too if she has heard about this. Perhaps just now Sandra might need a good friend.

 

What Sandra wrote to me after reading this via email.

Dearest June,

I am deeply touched by the story of your memories of me! It is surprising what we remember and forget… the things you remember about me… colourful scarves…perfume… I have no recollection of this.

I remember going to your place in East Devonport to take children’s classes and I remember being so thrilled when you read your first book, “Blessed is the Spot” when you were about 4 or 5. I remember wondering if the first words that a child learns to read are Holy Words, does that have an effect on the child’s developing intelligence?

And then when you were demonstrating a love of language and beauty, I wondered was this a result of early connection with the Word of God. I remember loving you children very much and always being happy when you came for a visit. I remember having picnics at the Devonport Bluff with your family and calling your youngest brother Baby Paul and watching how accurate he was at kicking a football even at the age of two.

I remember going to visit you in that house on West Tamar Road, several times. And I remember when you and your mum came to help in the restaurant in Erriba. Your mum lent me a soda syphon.

That house in Erriba has had several owners since then, The present owners are Ron and Maggie Burns (former entertainers). They have set up a “Appin Hall Children’s Foundation” (check out their web-site) and converted the place into a respite centre for sick children and their carers.
I live next door (about 800 metres away.)

I commend you on this project to record your memories. Perhaps more things will come to you as you write.

Do keep in touch!
Lots of love
Sandra

 

Inspired by the Who Shaped Me project for ABC Open this month’s Pearlz Dreaming blog theme will be about the people who inspire me and there are lots of them!

Today I Remember 2#

Where were you born?
I am often asked that.
What country please?

And if I say Papua New Guinea
the next question is Where?

And I have the village name ready,
‘Maipa Vilage’
and a story about the yellow face paint of the bush mekeo
but no real picture of where it is?
See I left there when I was two.

Sometimes people then want to insist
but you want to go back
don’t you
to understand who you really are
and the next question
is why haven’t you done it yet?

So I try to explain my Papua New Guinea is
my mother’s Papua New Guinea
in snatches of motu
and village language
never deciphered.

My Papua New Guinea walks
around dressed in my mother’s life
which is itself dressed
in experiences of a new land.

She is sometimes Papua New Guinea
missionary raised girl
and other times she is changing
to world citizen lady
whose heart can travel the
mountains and make hibiscus grow in
a cold frozen land.

My Papua New Guinea is married to Australia
and she is in my bones
although she has her origins in England.

I am Tasmanian raised.
If you ask me about that place
then I can answer you.

I can tell of you wallabies
at Cradle Mountain
and a crow stealing my sandwiches
and a cold plastic mattress
slept on with a too thin sleeping bag.

And collecting crabs
with mum and my tall pale skinned Dad
with glasses perched on the end of his nose
and the cracking of the skin
after we boil them.

And meeting English grandparents
visiting from New Zealand for the first time
awkward and strange
and they want to be called by their first names
but we don’t and can’t do that
as my mum would find that disrespectful.

And the times my mum gave me gifts
whenever she was mad at me
or wanted to apologise
she always seemed to avoid words
like ‘sorry.’

Or the times Papua New Guinea saved us
because she was in my mum as she chased away burglers
with a bush knife
and we toasted waffles in
a waffle iron over an open fire place
to celebrate our small victory over oppression.

But my Tasmania is also filled
with memories of people
calling me names
because of colour
and living with a grumbling stomach
because the food has run out
and being told ‘you have to do better to be treated the same.’

My Tasmania is a place where my Mum is lonely
striving to make friends and going back to school
and every time she goes forward
she is tested
and tries to be strong.

She rings Papua New Guinea when I am little
speaking three languages
all in one sentence
punctuated by homesickness tears.

And sometimes I am mean to her
and wish I could take that back
and throw those memories into
the wide river and they
would skip across
and disappear into the ash forest.

But then there is the day she sends
me grass skirts
and I know all is forgiven.

This gift does not mean anger.
This gift means acceptance.

In me Papua New Guinea and Australia
dance.

(c) June Perkins

Walking the past in the present

Time is a culturally bound construct. We may, based on what culture we are born into, think we move chronologically, but in many cultures we carry the memory and ancestors with us in stories, songs and myths and a belief in the presence of spirits.

The past walks with present and the present with the future.

We can use our memory, past, wisdom to assist the present if only we pay attention to it.

In writing of lands I have lived and traveled through in an organic and intuitive process I find connections that make a spiral, even a circle, rather than a straight line.

Whilst we physically can’t change the past our understanding of it can dramatically change based on the patterns we find there.

I like the idea of spirals more than circles because in a spiral you can progress even as you seem to circle back to where you once were, but you are still moving forward.

**

My Papua New Guinea is not a physical memory of a landscape or extended family members, but is carried in the life and story of my mother and precious photographs from an anthropologist.

It is walking beside my brother in a grass skirt with a shell necklace; it is in the culture dance groups my mother starts for her nearby grandchildren and other Pacific friends.  They combine forces as there are not many from any of their cultures living in Tasmania.

I think of my mother listening to the songs of Papua New Guinea, of the Maipa Fakai, and Maipa Angapu, whilst learning the new songs of Tasmania.  I wonder if she has PNG soul bones or Tasmanian ones now and would she only discover how she truly felt if she left Tasmania to live in another space.

**

What is it to be Tasmanian raised? What is it to have her soul bones? I am proud that my generation is the one that saved her wild rivers and saw her become more than the apple isle.

She has come to embrace herself as a tourist destination and yet still struggles with the highest unemployment in the country and is still making peace with her Indigenous inhabitants.

She is a place of beauty, but which many young people leave for opportunity, but which others feel they can never leave.  She reminds me of the Cassowary Coast.  She reminds me of the struggles of people on the Sunshine and Gold Coast, who are also trying to stop development that affects the natural beauty of their areas.

Why can’t we have opportunity and soulful nature’s beauty in one package – is it at all possible to have the package together?

(c) June Perkins, word and images, Extracts from a much longer work in progress

More paper please

A memory of asking for ‘more paper’

Gumboootspearlz

It was so Dickension – the moment I headed off to the paper supply office at my school.

I had gone back into the public system after being in a small alternative school and this was my journey back into the mainstream system.

I was on what was called the ‘free list’ which meant our family was now so poor I was eligible for free paper.

The office shop lady gave me her usual once over disdainful look and said ‘And why do you need more paper so soon? Weren’t you here a short while ago’

After causing her usual amount of discomfort through a quick draw ‘you sure you need this paper’ stare.  She handed it to me anyway, but I went away wondering how to write smaller and squeeze more into less space.

It wasn’t my fault I had so much to write for my assignments.

I was…

View original post 480 more words

Look Don’t Touch

Mum has always loved gardens.  She used to stop and knock on our neighbours’ doors when their gardens had plants with brilliant potential cuttings.   Then she would ask ‘Do you mind if I take a cutting?’

She came equipped with her own garden gloves, shears and buckets.  I wonder what the neighbours thought of her as she harvested their gardens.  I remember being embarrassed, but she did do it with everyone’s blessing.  I don’t remember anyone ever saying no to her.

Mum loved to try and grow tropical plants in Tasmania to remind her of her original home in Papua New Guinea.  She had immense pride when she had success with her hibiscus. She has always been a determined lady in both her garden and other parts of her life.

When we were little Mum clearly told us to stay away from her garden flowers – ’Look, don’t touch.’

We had to water and weed the vegetable patch. Our vegetable garden was vital to our family’s survival as we didn’t have a large income. Our Dad was often away working as a labourer so the garden gave my Mum many hours of happiness.

She tried to make us follow the rules of her garden – things like ‘you are not allowed to pick the flowers or pick the fruit and vegetables before they are ripe.’ But the problem was I loved the delicious scent of Mum’s garden flowers and was keen to make perfumes just like the ones on her dressing table.

There was one plant in particular with a yellow mushy part that you could crush easily into a yellow powder and it made a vibrant paste for not only perfume but for making your own paint.

One day I found myself with this glorious plant busy making my perfume – how I loved  the feel of the soft yellow part of the plant – when my Mum stepped out of the back door and began to yell out and run for me – ‘No, how could you….’  I was sure I turned the bright pink of my Mum’s hibiscus.

I looked up from my perfume making efforts at my Mum’s anguished face, and glanced briefly at the very empty flower bed.  Had I really used that many flowers?

Holding my bowl of flowers forward as if it was now the best treasure of all I managed to squeeze out the words, ‘I made it just for you.’

This can also be found at ABC Open.

Fourteen Summers of Discontent

The photograph is one of June’s collages of a famous mural wall in New Town, overlaid by a girl on a swing.

I had to read it. Fourteen summers of discontent as the big sister came over me.

It was my first poetry festival. Mr Kidd, my English teacher had encouraged me to share some work.

The garden of faces looking back at me included: my short Mekeo Mum and tall Australian Dad, fellow poets looking kind of poetical, people who I assumed liked listening to poetry as well as a few of the town’s local English teachers.

The hall was large with high ceilings, it was the year 12 building of a college I would soon attend, but didn’t yet.

This was my public début. I had never shared my poetry beyond school assemblies before. I had tiny flip flops going on in my stomach, but oddly I felt as if they were giving me more strength.

I shuffled through the poems in front of me. The one that called out ‘read me first’ was a poem titled ‘So I broke the wall.’ It was about a recent fight with my Mum. Could I do it?

Could I read a rebel poem in front of all those people, especially my Mum, and reveal that the quiet studious girl, and recently elected prefect, had one day lost her temper; about her life with three annoying brothers who in her opinion never did their chores but always managed to get out of them and have the backing of Mum; and had gone and put a hole in her bedroom wall?

I daren’t look at Mum to begin with, but in that moment my mind was made up; it just had to be read.

The words welled up like a fire in my mouth and out came all the frustration of being a teenager who felt the world unjust, who felt her Mum and Dad should be fairer, and was sick of being a ‘little mum’.

I was a rebel with a refrain ‘And so I broke the wall.’

I became more confident with each refrain. My audience were with me – clapping me on, and laughing at the situation. I dared a look at my Mum and she seemed to be laughing too. Was she too with me? Was she in my shoes and not hers?

And in that instant I learnt that poetry is powerful, and a lot less annoying than having to replaster a wall.

This story has appeared at  ABC Open 500 words.

Mr Kidds Twelfth Night

Courtesy – Karen Ward personal archives

Riverside High, the early 1980s – I’m dropping my books, and about to head into Mr Kidd’s class.

Mr Kidd is notoriously scary for those who don’t have him as a teacher.

He is seen as the hardest task master in the whole school.  He doesn’t give high marks easily.  He comes across as grumpy.

He is tubby with a big beard and none of us like to bump into him in the hallways.  He bounds along in a way that reminds one of a big ferocious bear.

Together with another teacher, Mr Sparks, he invites our class to be in the play, Twelfth Night.  To my surprise, because I’ve deliberately dropped drama which was compulsory last year, due to overwhelming shyness, I am cast, on the basis of our in class reading aloud activities, in a lead role.

The rehearsals for that play take up many lunch hours and after school.  New friendships are fostered, as members of other grades take up roles both on stage and off to support us.

Some of the boys take every opportunity to diligently practice sword fights with cardboard swords.  Two of our classmates are the most unlikely set of twins you’d ever think of, he is half her height and blond, she is dark haired and has a totally different face, but they are the best actors for those roles, so twins they are.

We see another side of Mr Kidd as he nervously tries to memorise his lines, something many of us are finding terrifying as we head to opening night.   He is reading his lines again and again trying to make them stick.

We have a prompt hidden in something that melds into the stage to help us out on the night.

Some of the drama teachers are sure we were not going to pull the production off, and even try to stage a coup to have the whole production called off, thinking we will put the school into disrepute, with a shocking performance.

Thankfully this doesn’t happen and for two nights we perform to packed audiences of family, friends and community.

I am able to wear makeup for the first time (to look better for the stage).   I have a hooped dress and feel truly beautiful as my character.   Mr Sparks and Mr Kidd need the prompt a few more times than the students.

Prior to opening night, as usual, I am teased heaps about my frizzy hair, and some of the boys call me Animal based on the Muppet’s character who plays the drums.  Partly because of my hair, and also ironically due to my quiet nature, which is the opposite of Animal’s.

Opening night, one of the boys who is like a brother to me (so don’t read anything romantic in it) comes up and says how stunning I looked and how well I’ve done in the part.  I turn a deep purple colour.

Every young girl wants to be thought of as beautiful and talented and Mr Kidd indirectly gave me an opportunity to have that experience at a time when I needed more self- esteem after years of secretly feeling ugly.

I think many students remember Mr Kidd with fondness because of his passion and creativity in the subject he taught.   

I will always remember him because in my youth he believed the most I was going to grow up to be a writer and did everything to make me think that too.

Inspired by the Who Shaped Me project for ABC Open this month’s  Pearlz Dreaming blog theme will be about the people who inspire me and there are lots of them!