AUSTRALIA 1975. 9 The Letter

Christmas was approaching and each day the weather became hotter. Then the wind grew. And grew. A cyclone was on its way, due to hit us directly. The boats were moved round to the other side of the island and we were advised to go to bed with our clothes on. I took my notebook with me too, clutched to my chest. I wasn’t having anyone else getting their hands on that.

    The next day we woke to the world as normal. The cyclone had changed direction at the last minute and missed us.

    Having heard all about The Darwin Cyclone (which was presumably a particularly ferocious one as it was talked about so much), I was astonished at how calmly the whole incident had passed. Stalwart people, these Aussies.

 
A single cannabis plant grew outside the cabin I shared with Di. I had no idea how it got there as cannabis was not widespread. Alcohol was the drug of choice. Alan however usually had a stash in the caravan where he and Jayne lived and sometimes he shared it.
    One evening he and I lay outside looking up at the stars and had a cosmic conversation. I was thrilled. I’d been wanting cosmic conversations all my life. Ever since I was six in fact when I became terrified of eternity and wondered if God would make an exception in my case and allow me to be extinguished completely. Goodness knows what was going on there.
 
As the heat grew so did the guest numbers, and I fell ill, waking with dripping sheets every morning. On my third day in bed, Jayne came up to see me and said, ‘I’ve never known anyone spend so long in bed.’ I did feel bad about deserting the other waitresses just when they were at their busiest, but there was nothing I could do.
    When I recovered I’d lost half a stone and was now over a stone lighter than I'd been in London. My weight was almost normal. Without me realising it, it had been dropping slowly throughout my time at Lindeman. This was partly because there was no opportunity to binge-eat and partly because I didn’t want to. And the diet was healthy and simple. Australian beef – there was a whole room filled with carcasses tenderising, fish caught daily from around the island, and salads which we waitresses made every morning before breakfast.
 
For Christmas Day, I spent a chunk of my savings and booked a call home. On the day, I stood in line waiting for my turn at the island’s one telephone. The call woke my parents in the middle of the night but I thought they were pleased to hear from me even though my father passed me over to my mother as soon as possible, as he always did, and my mother spent the whole time crying.
 
After Christmas the rains began. Tiny yellow-green parakeets lay around on their backs, made drunk by the rotting fruit. A landslide deposited several inches of mud at the doors of the staff cabins. Guest numbers started to fall. Staff started to leave.
    I’d been in Australia ten months now. My working-holiday visa would expire in two but that didn’t matter. Many people were working in the country illegally (and a little later the government was to extend an amnesty to them all so that it could bring records up to date). I began to have vague dreams of a little house in the bush. Me writing.
    I had plenty of money now – more than enough to pay my father back for the plane ticket. Probably enough in fact to live for a year without working. So that part of my Australian adventure was done.
 
Then I received a letter.

To be continued . . .