“My hometown is Brighton in the UK. It’s the most fabulous town and I was born into a middle class family, post war parents who in England at that time just wanted the best for their kids, the best they could possibly afford. I was born in 1948, 3 years after the war so there were bomb sites still around and places had been pretty pulverised.
My parents decided to send me to a very exclusive and expensive girls boarding school. I’d read a lot of Enid Blyton so I thought boarding school would be great with dorm feasts and all that wonderful girly company, but I hated it. The rules and regulations and the stupid focus on things like….how to lay a banquet table for 20 people. I mean there is some value in that but not for everyone. How to eat an orange gracefully is another one and we’d have to give a talk on that and….are you wearing regulation nickers? We’d have to pull up our skirts and show them. I hated it and I was surrounded by priviliged princesses. My family weren’t wealthy and they struggled to send me there thinking it would be a great education academically. It is now but then not so much, because you were going to marry a Stockbroker or a Doctor, which ironically I did.
I became very rebellious and I couldn’t sleep as I was really stressed. I would sit in the stationary cupboard at night after finding the key in the staff room and I would read all the next years text books. I loved reading. Also the jars of lollies were in that cupboard (laughs). In there I found the back door key to the house we were in so in 1960 at the age of 12 I would let myself out and go for really long walks at night. The school is situated on top of the cliffs just outside Brighton so it has a view right over the channel but behind it is the Sussex Downs and that’s my home country. One night I walked all the way into Brighton which is a very vibrant, steamy town which has the best and worst of everything…gang warfare, cartels, crime and everything cultural and beautiful as well. This particular night I walked right into the centre of town and stood outside the Whisky A GoGo night club, just watching people and listening to music and I realised the sun was coming up so I went back on the coast road and got a taxi. I asked the taxi to drop me up the road hoping I wouldn’t get caught but the taxi driver rang the house mistress who didn’t like me at all and I got expelled.
I became a bit uncontrollable and my mother continuously wanted to send me to these private girls schools with these expensive, extensive uniforms and I just wanted to go to the Grammar School. I was a clever kid and I just wanted to learn. I was expelled from another school and then Mum took me out of another school. I have a brother 5 years old who was totally conventional and loved boarding school. My mother favoured him and my father favoured me. I ended up having private tuition for a while and I left school at 15. I took the basic O level exams and I was out.
I went to Paris to be an Au Pair. I was too young to do it legally but my Dad went over with me and signed all the papers. I was there for 2 years and became fluent in French. I always knew I was going to go into Journalism. My Dad was a Journo as was my Grandfather. When I came back to England I set about getting a job at a Newspaper. There was masses of employment at that time and there was a job going at The Guardian for an Editorial Assistant filling in for someone’s maternity leave. I applied for it and I got it. It was 3 months in the summer of 1964-65. All the best Journalists in the world worked in the London office of The Guardian. My job was to deliver their mail to their desks, make them tea and coffee, run errands and write high tide at London Bridge times every day, moon rise and moon set, and I loved it so much but it was only 3 months.
I nicked a bit of Guardian letterhead paper and applied for a job in Chelsea in West London. It was the post Mercury group of newspapers. I started an apprenticeship as a Journo there and it was great. I was doing everything, human interest stories, women’s stories, fashion, court and I learnt everything. So I was living in London through the 60s as a young Journo with a car and a dog and the wildest social life.
I was always a bit of a hippie so that part of me took me away from London eventually. I wanted to go out into the Provences. I wanted to be a part of a community. I went first to Eastbourne and then up to the West Country and I knew that’s where I wanted my career to be and I also knew I eventually wanted to have children. Had I not I would have gone for the Foreign Correspondent work.
I decided to marry my best friend from way back. His name was Alan. He died 7 years ago and he was a very good friend. We got married in West country. I was a Senior Journalist at that stage and I thought I could change the world through newspaper writing, but I couldn’t so how can I? Ok I’ll be a teacher. There was a teacher training college in the far north of Northumberland and they had a really progressive training college and it was in a castle in Alnwick. Alan and I both decided to do the course. I got through the first year but the second year they sent me prac teaching and put me in a classroom full of kids. I couldn’t do it. I was 22 and they had to call me Mrs Martin. I was Jennie, only a student and I wanted a relationship with the kids, not like that. I could easily be with the kids but I couldn’t conform to the school.
I decided to have a baby and Josh was born in 1973. I had Bonnie in November ’74. Alan and I decided to migrate to Australia. We arrived here when I was 5 months pregnant with Bonnie. We got the cheapest ticket to Australia and that involved a plane to Singapore and then boarding an old Greek rust bucket boat to Australia. We could only afford to get as far as Fremantle. The night before the boat docked all our money was stolen from our cabin while we were at dinner. Being travellers cheques it was restored after a while but we had nothing. We borrowed $10 from a NZ couple which we never repaid because we didn’t have their contact but I do tell their story and bless them everytime. So we had $10 and an orange I’d stolen from the breakfast table on the ship. We got to customs and the custom guy rolled the orange down the counter into a bin and I remember thinking that’s the last Vitamin C I may ever see.
I’m a Quaker so we called the Quakers in Fremantle and they found us a place and we didn’t have to pay until Alan got some work. Alan went to the Sheraton and said he was a Chef. He was a great cook and they said he could start the next day. They used to pat the workers down after work to make sure they weren’t taking any food but luckily bell bottom jeans were in and Alan would stuff Lobster Thermidor and exotic dishes into his socks so we had lovely food once a day for a while.
We bought an old car and drove to Adelaide where Bonnie was born and the Quakers in Adelaide had found us a cottage on 40 acres of plum orchards nestled by a creek. It had no electricity, a pit toilet, kero lanterns and it was just divine. The train driver would stop the train so Alan could just run down the hill to home. It was lovely. We saved and bought a caravan to put on the back of the car. We had studied the atlas to find the best place to live in Australia geographically and climate wise and it was the Atherton Tablelands. We didn’t account for Jo Bjelke Peterson so we didn’t go there in the end. We took the caravan to Melbourne and then we headed north. We were told about Nimbin and we arrived in 1975 and we stayed for 11 years.”
