Rebellious Daughters Read Free Page A

get a bike. But my sister Brenda, three years younger, began the same routine and almost immediately father gave in. How unfair this was. I never ever learned really, though when I came to Canberra as a student I did one day borrow someone’s bike to ride to the swimming pool, which considering I’d never done it before was a rather dangerous enterprise.
    Other times my relentless persuasion worked better. When I was in fourth year, as they called it, fifth year being when you did the Leaving Certificate, the school took us on an excursion to Sydney to visit the university. This was Newcastle Girls’ High, a selective school of clever girls and clever teachers. We got shown the beautiful old sandstone buildings, the science labs, the Union, the lawns. I fell in love with it. I wanted it. My father did not really believe in what he called ‘higher education for girls’. We’d get married and it would be all wasted.
    Of course I knew the answer to that claim. The desirability of the educated mother, etcetera. For over a year I argued. He’d suffered through the depression when Thelma died and, at the beginning of it, he threw in his decent job and ran away up north, full of grief. Discovered how hard jobs were to get. I explained that if I had a degree, I would always be employable. And what if I never got married? Since he wouldn’t havea telephone in the house, it was extremely likely that I never would. Three daughters, no telephone, he’d be lumbered with us forever. I’d have to earn my own living.
    The bike didn’t work, but the university did. Not Sydney, alas, money didn’t run to that. But Newcastle University was just starting, so I could live at home. Part of the point was not to live at home, but I didn’t say that. I know he never regretted that I talked him into it. In later years he used to boast how many degrees there were in the family, including his three sons-in-law. This was embarrassing, but it made him proud.
    After four years of university degree I did a Dip -Ed. We had to go to Teachers’ College to do that. DipEds always hated Teachers’ College. It was repressive and childish and deadly dull. You weren’t allowed to wear trousers. But our year decided to be good. We would co-operate, see where that got us. I can’t now work out how we decided these things as a body, but we did. Each year had to do a play, usually some strange anachronistic one-act drawing room comedy. The English teacher gave us a book of these to choose from. No, we said, we are going to do Medea . (These decisions seemed to come as some sort of divine inspiration.) And we did. I wanted to be Medea, but that role went to a girl with a huge head of red hair. I was the leader of the chorus, a fine meaty role, and I was considered to be very good with the words. We had floating muslin costumes thatwe dyed various brilliant colours. It was a great success.
    We were good about sport. I got a tennis umpire’s certificate. Our reward was that we could choose whatever sport we wanted. Golf, we said, in that curious one-voiced way. The teachers blanched a bit, but said okay. They didn’t really honour it, we only got to go twice. And classes were still very boring. I read a book under the desk, a novel. There were two mantras for the teachers of teachers, the first: You can’t possibly teach until you’ve done the method subject, in my case English and history. The other: A graduate can teach anything. The contradictions didn’t occur to us. We weren’t supposed to have any other jobs; the scholarships were generous and all our time was for course work. I was tutoring in the English department at the university, and instead of objecting they would mutter sotto voce to distinguished visitors: One of our girls is tutoring at the university. Hypocritical, I thought.
    At the end of year exams, the psychiatry lecturer told us he would give us a copy of the