The Goldmine.
  • Spy vs Spy
    • At Fox River
    • Patty and the Tet Offensive
    • Pale and Interesting >
      • More pale and interesting
      • Older, still pale, possibly only interesting to a couple of people
    • The Heckler and Koch Affair
    • Spy vs Spy
  • Peeling the Onion
  • Old unhappy far-off things
    • Wipers and the Ypres League
    • Fanny and Cobber.
    • In Memoriam
  • Slightly Saltirical
    • A Dexter Hand
    • The Boar-Worshippers
  • Taken by the Hand
    • Geranium Days
    • The Lockhart Papers
    • A Martial Aspect
    • O Perfect Love >
      • Sonnets Unplugged
      • Stout Cortez
    • Tea and an Ascot
  • Childe Harold
    • Monikers >
      • The Sandman and Sleipnir
    • Bos Indicus
    • Three things in a field >
      • Dance With A Bull
  • Eureka (Stockade)
    • Two for Joy
    • At the Bottom of the Garden >
      • Coins of the Realm
  • Superstitious Nonsense
    • Leaves of Tea
  • The Best of Times
    • The Space Race >
      • C.P.Snow
  • Sorry luv, I missed that.
  • Valley Girls
    • Britten, B et al >
      • Gammon and Spinach
      • The Blue Flowers >
        • The Beautiful People
        • The girls from 9DY Rangi Ruru >
          • The Fires of Hell and other Works of Art
        • The Cat's Paw and other Feline Fables
        • Flowers in Bloom
      • The Moon and Daisies
      • Snowmaiden Revelry
  • Sitting on Custard
  • The Long White Grass
    • Somewhere...
  • I have pictures
  • The Queen's Cake
  • A Portrait by Hoppner
  • The Iron Fist.
    • Slow twitching gams.
  • Whips and Whatnot
  • Showering with Friends

Showering with Friends

Picture
A tree in Narrandera Park. I may have had a cigarette or two under here.

Picture

It is hard, over one's life, to determine which of the many experiences one seems (somewhat surprisingly) to have had that are truly formative. I think, however, that it is well recorded that leaving home at an early age and then living in a boarding establishment for several years is an experience that may leave a mark. And so it was for me. At the tender age of eleven and a half I left the manifold discomforts of an old farmhouse in the bush and the tedium of going to school on a rural school bus for the strange new world of high school and the Country Women's Association hostel in Twynam St in Narrandera.

I arrived late in the January of 1970, as unworldy a child as one is likely to find, but not without a certain confidence engendered by having been dux of my (small) primary school, and the blood of many Alexanders in my veins. All of my belongings had carefully sewn-in labels, I owned a school hat and a small brown schoolcase, and as such I was ready.