Memoir

I visit the Ukraine in 1968

My Travel Journal Continues: “From Paris to Russia and Back”

Because of the events in Ukraine today, I have re-published this post with sadness in my heart at the thought of these memorable days. May the sufferings of the Ukrainian people come to an end soon, and the Russian troops ordered into the country by President Putin back off before more people are hurt and killed. "Old men give orders and young men are killed." And men, women and children of all ages.

Saturday 24th August, 1968 (Day 55 of our journey)

I awoke feeling sick on our 5th day in Russia. So Liz drove us into the Intourist Centre where we asked for a guide, who was sent for immediately. Kiev was a very beautiful city with wide streets, huge buildings, many shops and more western-looking than Odessa. Our chubby, round-faced guide, who said he was not Ukrainian but of Tartar origin, attempted to amuse us with an American-style accent. He was an extremely good guide, and told us many interesting facts about each monument. As if in passing, he also announced the news that Russian troops were currently occupying Czechoslovakia, and said it was to stop Czechoslovakia from moving towards capitalism. We saw the statue of St Vladimir the Grand Duke, who brought Christianity to Kiev: it overlooked the River Dnieper and showed a fine view of the city.

Saint Sophia was next—a beautiful Byzantine cathedral, originally the replica of the one at Istanbul, but very much modified since. Built in the sixth century by Yaroslav the Wise, this church had been repainted since and gold added quite recently to the domes. It was full of beautiful mosaics and icons and there were metal tiles on the floor, with Jewish and Moslem patterns and designs, signifying, perhaps, that Christianity stood above these other religions. We attended a typical Russian wedding, in which the bride wore a short white gown and the guests were either joyful or tearful and carrying flowers. The ceremony was conducted by a female municipal official dressed in a formal and sophisticated manner, with a red band around her shoulder and waist. The ceremony was short, and the atmosphere formal and relaxed, at one and the same time. Afterwards, they would drink champagne with their guests and have a lunch together. There would be no honeymoon. This wedding took place in a building known as a Wedding Palace. We looked at the modern architecture, much finer than in Odessa, but stayed in the car, because it was raining. I noticed that the facades were in white stone over brick, shiny and easy to keep clean looking.

One very surprising monument, especially in the light of the recent events we had left behind in Paris—the Workers’ and Students’ strike, or mini revolution—was the Red University. The charming story behind this building—a little too stark for my liking—was that it was painted red on the orders of the Czar of Russia, whose presence in Kiev in 1842 had prompted student demonstrations against conscription: “YOU, STUDENTS, WHO HAVE NEVER BLUSHED WITH SHAME, SHALL FOREVER BE REMINDED OF YOUR DISGRACE BY THE COLOUR OF THIS BUILDING,” he announced in a speech to the student body at the time.

the-red-university-kiev — The Red University, Kiev

We discovered more recently that this was incorrect information, The legend does not reflect the historical fact, as the building was painted red before WWI, in 1842. Nicholas I of Russia (1825–1855) died long before World War I (1914–1918). Built at the top of a hill, this building has significantly influenced Kiev’s architectural layout in the 19th century (Wikipedia).

As before, we asked many probing questions of our guide, who wanted cigarettes and to drive the car in exchange. He said that there was propaganda against religion in Russia, but that you were free to worship as you wished, as long as you did not try to convert anyone.

“Patience is the motto for all of the people of our great land,” he explained. “The government tells us that in five, ten years, we will have all the things that we have waited so long for.”

I could see that this patience and waiting applied to many fields inside Russia, and that we, too, had been caught up in this in some small way, in the long queues in restaurants and shops. But for the people of Russia this would go on—waiting, waiting , for consumer goods to be produced more cheaply and better, waiting for the economy to improve and to take the people into the modern world, waiting for better clothes, books, houses to be built, waiting, waiting…

In the evening, on the guide’s advice, we decided to eat at a restaurant just before the camp. But when we sat down at a long empty table, we were advised by a waiter it was reserved, and were just walking out, when a man, dark, slant-eyed and sleazy-looking urged us back inside, and sat us down next to two young pleasant-looking men.

We tried to explain to one of the young men that we were unable to pay a lot of money, since we were on a tight budget. Suddenly, Edouard, the dark one, was plying us with dishes and wine, acting the over-attentive host, even cutting up my meat for me. We could do nothing but hope it was not going to cost us too dearly, and actually the meal was excellent, its only fault being that it was too much. By this time, perhaps as a result of the uninhibiting effect of the wine, we were managing to communicate—Liz in faltering Russian—with the other two, Slava and Nikola. I noted that Slava, dark and plump, showed very effeminate traits. Nikola, tall and handsome, made us laugh with his outrageous mimes, particularly when he made gurgling sounds in a rendition of the drowning of the former prime minister of Australia, Mr Harold Holt. I danced madly the jive with Edouard, who by this stage seemed less threatening to my floating spirit. The rather conservative-looking, middle/upper class guests watched us in amused silence. As the evening wore on, I became more and more convinced that Slava and Nikole were camp (the expression of the time, I think, unless you preferred “queer”). Still, we were enjoying ourselves, and liked them a lot, despite the uneasiness and surprise when they would not allow us to pay the bill.

Afterwards, they accompanied us to the bar of the motel to finish the evening off, where we sat outside on the dark terrace and continued, against our will, to be plied with wine by Edouard, who had a vodka too. But despite all this drinking, neither Liz nor I became the least bit intoxicated, and enjoyed the dancing with Slava and Nikola, and listening to Nikola sing.

Nikola told us he was an actor and we could easily believe this. Slava was supposed to work in a television studio, and Edouard said he had been a law student. I wondered if he meant into crime? He was scruffy-looking and not at all intellectual. As my cigarette lighter was finished, I handed it jokingly to Slava, and he took it gratefully, as a compliment, searching for gifts to give us. I was handed a small bottle of perfume and Liz a poetry book signed by Nikola.

We asked them for their address, so that we could send them a thank-you postcard, and the evening was closed. Or so we thought!

Sunday 25th August (Day 56)

We awoke very late and ate a good lunch at the restaurant. Then Liz discovered 100 francs and 9 rubles stolen. I’d had 100 francs taken too, but not the rubles. Immediately, we knew it must have been the three men! Or at least, Edouard, while the other two danced with us. Was it a plot, a conspiracy between the three?

Monday 26th August (Day 57)

The car was making a strange noise but we met two French boys who were able to fix the fan-guard easily enough. After writing in our diaries, we talked and had breakfast, meeting and chatting to some Italian men and a Swiss boy. Then we bought some food and set off: it was late by this time. The day was sunny and the driving good; we even stopped to take some photos and to eat by the side of the road. We drove until 9.30 pm, when we found a restaurant and then set off again. However, we took a wrong turn and were stopped by a drunken policeman who questioned us and flirted with us. By this time the remaining patience we had had with Russian officials deserted us completely and we lost our respective tempers. Liz insulted him about his drunkenness; others arrived to back him up. We were then led to the police station for questioning, taken out the back past long corridors, hearing the key turn heavily in the lock. Then followed more interrogations. Finally we were invited to put our tent up across the road from the station in the middle of the village square.

Tuesday 27th August (Day 58)

The police came and woke us up at 6 am. I noticed peasant workers trudging along the roads on their way to commence their daily grind. They must have been surprised at the sight of our tent pitched there. Perhaps that was why the police wanted us on our way. But the car would not start in the cold frosty morning air. We ate apples that were growing there. The men helped crank the car and tried to push-start us into action. After about two hours, when the sun had come up, the car finally relented, gave a splutter and, much to our relief, burst into life once again. It seemed to me at that moment that it knew the terrible predicament we were in, if it did not make one last effort. In reality, we would probably have had to have it freighted out at our expense if it had refused to start. Apparently, you could not dump a foreign car on Soviet territory.

It was a gorgeous sunny day as we set out once again. For mile upon mile we passed Russian military convoys en route for Czechoslovakia, going to prop up the rebellion there. At one stage we were caught up in heavy troop movement. I especially remember the old-fashioned stove-like contraptions being pulled along behind the vehicles, and the important-looking officer sitting in a side-car of a motor-bicycle. It was like stepping back into history, albeit an unpleasant one, being caught up like this. We arrived in Lvov in sunny weather, and the camp was a good one: we even found a pleasant private spot to pitch the tent. Liz slept but I couldn’t, so I had coffee and wrote in my diary. After lunch we visited the charming town of Lvov; by this time it was raining again. We saw many poor-looking Russians lining up for stodgy food in street self-service stalls. After visiting art galleries, we ate in a fine Intourist restaurant, meeting up with the French boys from the Kiev camp.

We only understood about the invasion of Prague, when we reached Vienna, and read about it in a newspaper there.

We were prevented by the military from continuing on to Prague … so back to Vienna it was. There we read about the true story of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the USSR.

In spite of all our troubles, the memories are forever and the people I met while travelling through the Ukraine stay in my heart.

February 25, 2022 0 comment

Memoir

In Search of a Voice

My writing started out as therapy for a polarised — to be explained later on — childhood. My own background had been stamped indelibly by my not having had a voice within the extended family I was born into. Others in my family had gorged themselves on yackety-yak, thereby filling the void left by my poor little mute tongue….

I wasn’t born without a tongue, so why couldn’t I waggle it?

She’s just shy, they said. There was no ear to lambaste in retort; clever rhetoric evaded my still larynx.

As soon as adolescence got off to its self-loathing, sex obsessed start, I naturally turned to psychology for answers. My elder brother had claimed for himself the super intelligence niche; the second brother was our cowboy clown; my little sisters were clever and pretty. I continued to hide my light under a bushel, which I thought had something to do with native flora; I shared a love of nature with my funny brother Donny.

I’d begun to read Gothic novels about spooks and mysteries, like Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and others. Mum chided me for terrorising myself at night, but I persisted. My scorpionic temperament was pulling me into dark places. But it was the elder James brother, William, one of the early brand of modern psychologists, whom I would ultimately emulate in my search for a raison d’être. Freud, Carl Jung and Fritz Perl also became friendly mentors.

There were many circumferences, I learned, but only one centre. I needed to explore the netherlands of the psyche in my search for self.

Out of the blue, having escaped my family home, a miracle occurred: I started to talk. But friends in the outside world blocked their ears to the tales of woe that poured forth. They couldn’t empathise with my “Experiences of an Empath en Famille “. In any case, they all came from diametrically opposed, maybe just as difficult, perhaps even more so, backgrounds.

I was on my own, like a snail carrying a tightly curled shell of horrors on its back.

Eventually, I would seek professional help, find someone who would listen to me. At a price. The obvious answer was, for now, to write about it.

Starting out from this point of view, my writing naturally lent itself to autobiographical-type genres. I did courses on Life Story Writing, on Memoir and Creative Non-Fiction, all of which helped me a little with grammar, style and structure, if nothing else.

Another problem with writing about the past, is that it can turn out to be as boring as possum piss on a picnic. All those I’s, me’s and my’s can sound a tad narcissistic. Okay, I own up to possessing, like all around me, a dash of self-loving, but it boils down to a question of aesthetics and degree.

Like Sisyphus, I found myself on my own, once again. Researching creative non-fiction and memoir; practising writing it.

Full-time studies, teaching, getting married and having children, these put writing on the back-burner. Of course, all of that is excuses. If I’d really wanted to, and had faced my fears of failure early on, who knows….

I had been trying to get my novel ready for publication, on and off, for quite a while. The writing had improved greatly over time, but the goal of finding an agent or a publisher had remained elusive. Recently, I had come to the realisation that what I needed was a good editor. This was what my writers group buddies were doing. Another failed move on my part. In retrospect, how do you find that peculiar beast — a good editor?

My first attempts to create a readable structure that fitted in with the needs of publishing houses were a dismal failure. Later on I completed a degree in Professional Writing at university and I learnt about narrative structure and creative features, point of view, dialogue and voice. Through feedback sessions in student groups, my writing improved bit by bit. Some of my teachers and tutors were well established writers, and gave me invaluable insights into the craft.

However, I came to realise one day, just as I was about to send in my memoir to an agent, that I might not want my family and self exposed in this way.

So I set about turning the memoir into fiction. There were already some fictional elements, but I wanted to fictionalise the work even more. And to include, in line with creative non-fiction dictums, credible dialogue; this, I found, difficult to do within a memoir.

Turning the memoir into fiction meant that it became a different beast: a hybrid structure, retaining parts of the memoir, with more fictional pieces; these did not always fit in, unfortunately, with the events and actions of the storyline. I was on my own, once again.

According to one editor, the writing was good, but it lacked a consistent point of view and a solid plot line. So this is where I was at: going back to the drawing board to re-fashion the whole mess, and to recreate an authentic narrative out of the ashes. This meant changing setting, disguising characters, omitting the more obvious and sometimes boring ‘real bits’ behind the story, and creating natural sounding dialogue.

And finding an authentic voice.

What I discovered was that, in writing a fictional work based on my background, the story had been transformed into a very different narrative. In my case, it became a similar, yet polarised version of the real story. In psychological terms, this would have been viewed by, say Freud or by Carl Jung, as a sort of ‘sublimation’ of the author’s narrative.

What I didn’t know at the time, was that a ‘manuscript assessor’, who just looks at a few pages and a synopsis, and chats with you, would be much more valuable and less costly for me, than a full-blown editor. I was only just up to the second draft and still had no idea where I was going with this work. I was lucky enough to find a good one. I was on my way….

Now I’m back to exploring creative memoir writing, like the author of In Cold Blood. That was a doozy…

Where will I end up? Fiction? Memoir? Public speaking? Who knows?

February 19, 2022 0 comment

Memoir Short Story

A First Day in Paris

A story about a naïve traveller in a strange land

I open my eyes wide onto a strange world into which I’ve stumbled as if by accident. All is new and filled with an alien glow, muted colours, greys yet beautiful. Hippies are twanging their guitars along the Seine. Flower sellers and precious bookstall owners hawk their wares along the promenades above. The ancient cobblestones conceal the holographs of those trapped forever in bloodstained revolutions. Seduced at every turn. I think that this must be my spiritual home, on the opposite side of the earth to my birth place.

The Frenchman I met while travelling across the Channel offered me the use of his apartment for two weeks. Why not? I thought. My tourist’s trip through the Mediterranean countries can wait. Generous and eccentric to a fault, these French — opposite story to what I’d been told! I find his street in a Michelin Guide book I bought at the Gare du Nord: rue Servandoni, in the sixth arrondissement. One change and out at the metro station near the Seine.

It’s a steep climb up a creaking staircase to the small flat overlooking a courtyard at the back of the building.

Once in the flat, I’m a child released in a magic castle, running to each window and feasting on the Mary Poppins-like scene of rooftop spires and quaint street-scapes at all cardinal points. I’m inside a foreign country in miniature: its smells and furnishings reflect an exotic old-world charm.

Alain has said to use what I want from the kitchen. The cans of food in the pantry, all are new to me. Chestnut jam, a thick, sweet, strange-tasting substance. Something called cassoulet in a tin. Brands that I’ve never heard of nor seen in the shops back home. I’m touching, prodding at everything. I’m swooning from the newness of it all. I’m a child in a toy shop, like the children in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory.

Jam has coated my mouth that feels like the bottom of a bird cage. I want to brush my teeth, but discover too late that the white-tubed stuff is shaving cream. Yuck!

I can’t wait to get downstairs once again and wander around the maze of streets and districts, as I once did around the farm as a small child. On the southern side of the street is the immense Luxembourg Gardens. Walking through them I’m still marvelling at the feeling of being in a dream from which I might awake at any moment. Further on I come to the Boulevard Saint Michel. Crowds of fine-featured French walk or sit in bars and in cafés; African and Arabic-looking student types mingle, laughing and talking gaily. Moroccan restaurants are everywhere.

I’m in the bustle of the Latin Quarter. This place of learning in the classical style. Now taken over by students. I sit in a Moroccan restaurant and order a couscous dish. Sumptuous, unlike anything I’ve ever tasted before. I’m free as a bird and wash the food down with cheap red wine. I look out at the sophisticated, fashionably dressed women. I compare their slight frames and neat coiffures to my ample curves and unschooled locks of long brown hair.

Following the rim of the Jardin back the way I’ve come, I’m able to make my way home to the flat without too much trouble.

For many days I wander, love-struck by difference and by beauty along the streets with their ancient, graceful buildings and perfectly manicured gardens in the classic style. As if in a dream I float up and down the escaliers, past the concierge, and out

To improve my French I recount over and over the story of my life, where I come from, where I’ve lived, and about my family. They always ask what my father does. How to translate ‘grazier’? Fermier? Propriétaire de ranche? Nothing works.

Through a chance encounter, I find a cheap room that once was servants’ quarters at the back of a doctor’s gracious residence. I live here for a while and sense the ghosts from a thousand years around me as I lie in the dark before sleep overtakes me each night. There’s a shared ‘water cabinet’ that I squat over as I used to do when nature called while mustering cattle in the bush. My savings begin to dwindle, I grow tense with anxiety and find a part-time job cleaning rooms in a hotel not far from my lodgings. I wonder about the lives of the single men whose rooms I clean, but whom I never see; only their musk-like scents I inhale.

One night I feel a dark presence invading my tiny room at the top of the fire escape stairs. It’s time, once again, to move on.

Walking back from Irma La Douce early one evening, as twilight caresses me in its dreamlike tones, I find myself taking on the character from the film. Swaying hips, I become Irma and sway along the boulevard, green stockings highlighting shapely legs underneath a tight-fitting woollen dress. Then I am being followed, and feel a rush of fear mixed with elation that makes me quicken my pace.

He starts to quicken his pace too. The man will catch up with me and know where I live. I imagine allowing him to follow me upstairs to my tiny room. He kisses me on the lips. Undresses me. ‘Vous-êtes la vedette américaine, Shirley Maclaine?’ he asks. An Anglo-Saxon body attracts attention here if you allow it to, contrasting with the delicate, petite lines of the French women all around me.

Fate intervenes and takes the decision out of my hands. There’s a fracas going on up ahead on the boulevard Saint Michel that throws me into history, like Stendhal’s Fabrice caught up in the Battle of Waterloo: La Chartreuse de Parme. Not so romantic sounding in English as The Charterhouse of Parma. I read it at uni.

I find myself in the midst of a revolution, young people, students, tearing up paving stones and setting cars alight.

Tear gas is thick in the air and some of the students are crying uncontrollably. There’s talk of the military being brought in by De Gaulle and blood in the streets.

The police move towards the Sorbonne, on the opposite side of the street. Pictures of Marx, Lenin, and Mao decorate the old pillars surrounding the front square. Red and black flags hang alongside the Vietcong flag. Trotsky, Castro and Che Guevara pictures are plastered on walls alongside slogans such as ‘Everything is Possible’ and ‘It is Forbidden to Forbid.’

I’m afraid I’ll be arrested and deported. I slink back towards the apartment blocks and stand inside a doorway. Residents are hanging out of windows. They shower debris on the police and spray soothing water over the students to minimise the effect of the chlorine gas grenades.

A young man with scraggy red hair jumps up on a wall in front of the Sorbonne and cried out to the students to carry on.

‘Qui est-ce?’ I ask a young woman standing smoking Gitanes next to me. ‘Who is it?’

‘On l’appelle Danny le Rouge; c’est l’un des leaders.’ (It’s Danny the Red, one of the leaders.)

I understand immediately, even with my school-girl French—the leader of the student rebellion. And this is how I met Ellie, who’s unafraid of being sent back to Germany. She’s handing out lemon-soaked handkerchiefs smeared with bicarbonate of soda for around the eyes, as well as leaflets on how to protect oneself against tear gas. Ellie is the antithesis of every stereotype I’ve heard about Germans: short with thick dark hair, cerulean blue eyes and pure white skin. She’s a student at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and works part-time as an artist’s model.

At that moment the police move into the Sorbonne and arrest the red-haired man. Students start pulling up paving stones from the streets and hurling them at the police. Then others join in. The police are flailing their batons, demonstrators fall to the ground, police clubbing them, blood streaming from their faces as they lie on the pavement. The youths throw stones, and kick gas grenades at the police, who protect their faces with masks that look like fencing ones.

‘What we are afraid of: le Géneral de Gaulle will set the army on to us,’ whispers Ellie who is pale yet determined.

The students have made bonfires like the cracker night ones back home on Empire Day, only from cars and anything they can lay their hands on, and set them alight. I start to join in, already in too deep, terror and elation mixing in equal measure. I’ve met a sort of soul mate in Ellie, and a potential flat mate. ‘Meet me tomorrow in the Père Lachaise Cemetery,’ she says in between her revolutionary duties. ‘We will talk then.’

I feel like I’ve come home. The strangeness embraces me, and the oddity and aptness of it will follow me and my life in Paris for many days, weeks and months to come. It’s as if I’ve stepped through a veil into a parallel universe of contrasts that has opened my eyes on a reality that was shielded by distance from me before.

But for now…it’s the night of the barricades.

Republished from 2015, written then as fiction in the 3rd person: The Night of the Barricades.

February 9, 2022 0 comment

Memoir

Candidly Yours…

In search of a voice…

My writing started out as therapy for a polarised — to be explained later on — childhood. My own background had been stamped indelibly by my not having had a voice within the extended family I was born into. Others in my family had gorged themselves on yackety-yak, thereby filling the void left by my poor little mute tongue….

I wasn’t born without a tongue, so why couldn’t I waggle it?

She’s just shy, they said. There was no ear to lambaste in retort; clever rhetoric evaded my still larynx.

There were many circumferences, I learned, but only one centre. I needed to explore the netherlands of the psyche in my search for self.

Psychology calling…

I was on my own, like a snail carrying a tightly curled shell of horrors on its back.

Eventually, I would seek professional help, find someone who would listen to me. At a price. The obvious answer was, for now, to write about it.

October 23, 2019 9 comments

Australia Memoir Writing

Moree and Insistent Voices

Moree, with a population of about 8,000, is situated in the north-west of NSW on the Mehi River and at the junction of the Gwydir and Newell Highways. It is famous for its Artesian Spa waters, which were discovered accidentally in 1895 when a bore was sunk in search of irrigation waters. Instead, mineral water heated naturally to 45 degrees spurted upwards flooding the area. For years I had wanted to return to this town, so loved by my father.

January 24, 2018 1 comment

Life Stories Memoir Writing

A Well-Loved Pet

Zac followed my partner along the footpath near our home, one afternoon when Mark was walking towards the gym. An Aussie Terrier, starving and weary. These gym sessions were daily events and sacrosanct at the time. This day, instead of continuing on his route, Mark bent down, picked the skinny runt up in his arms and proceeded to knock on dozens of doors up and down the hills, asking: “Does anyone know this dog?” No-one answered in the affirmative. We rang several vets in the area, looked out for ads and put up notices. Nothing. zac-thirteen

Once the two children saw him, his white coat shot over by a splattering of deep grey and a dash of beige round the eyes and ears, they fell in love. Fast. Two weeks later and our daughter had fallen so madly in love with the little mutt, it started to look as if he was ours to keep. And we had finally settled on ‘Zac’ for a name.

Like many adoptive parents, we dreaded, during the days that followed, the knock on the door, or the phone call that might announce the arrival of the ‘natural’ parent or parents of this undernourished, but otherwise perfect, little fellow. Luckily that never happened, and he fitted into our household like another family member.

He was the gentlest little creature. He put on weight quickly so that I didn’t have to carry him on long walks anymore. He loved chasing the ball that my husband threw almost to the moon.

December 7, 2016 0 comment

Memoir Travel

My 1968 Travel Journal: a metaphor

My European travels in a downbeaten French deux chevaux car, shuffling and chugging through 15 countries, is a metaphor for my earliest attempts at self development. During the months’ long trip, I kept a daily journal, developing writing skills that proved a helpful therapeutic resource later on. After I returned to Australia, I engaged a therapist and began utilising active imagination strategies à la Carl Jung, as well as creative writing and dream analysis, in order to access the deepest recesses of my mind. This represented another sort of journeying, the converse of the outer journeys I’d already undertaken.

I found it difficult, almost impossible, to write creatively while working full-time. My first writings were, therefore, straight journal postings. While travelling around Europe in the sixties, my journal entries ended up being novel length, but would have required skillful editing to be publishable. I lacked the time and know-how to be able to do this back then.

From Paris to Russia and Back
I was living in Amiens, in the north of France at the time. I’d spent the previous twelve months in Paris, working as a clerk at the Australian Embassy, the Air Attaché section, handling secret files labelled “Mirage Jets”. It was boring work, but I’d earned enough money to move on to a more interesting job as a teacher’s assistant in a provincial lycée for primary school teachers. I was also enrolled in the university there: first year of an Arts degree. During my time at the Embassy, I’d made some good friends, in particular, two girls from Melbourne. Liz was studying Linguistics at the Sorbonne, while Kay was writing a thesis on Jean-Paul Sartre. I was an ex-primary school teacher from Sydney with no degree under my belt. At the end of the twelve month Embassy position, instead of saving my money, I’d acted impulsively, as usual, and lashed out on a second-hand car.

It was the start of the summer vacation. I’d just lived through the student and workers’ strike in France, which turned into a near-revolution, with the threat of General de Gaulle’s troops hanging over our heads.

We three friends decided, over a map and a bottle of rough red Moroccan wine, to leave on a voyage in my car, setting out from Paris and heading for Northern Italy, thence southward to the warm Mediterranean countries, then eastward as far as Turkey, and onwards to the Ukraine, behind the Iron Curtain. It was the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. Luckily, Liz spoke a spattering of Russian and we were French/Australians, not Americans. We would travel in a 1960 model French Citroen—a “deux chevaux” (two horse-power) car—through fifteen countries, and get caught up in Soviet troops en route to Prague to quell the uprising there. The car looked like a battered jam tin on wheels, until it moved into action, when it resembled a dazed beetle with the hiccups. It bumped and tottered along. This was the first car I had ever owned.

The First Day
Left on trip at 1.30 p.m. We travelled practically non-stop, without eating, until midnight, when we arrived at Pontarlier, near the Swiss border in France, and were directed to the Youth Hostel. The woman kindly let us in. It was wonderful to wash and collapse on to our bunks.

The Second Day
We set off fairly early, after coffee at a terrace café, and crossed the Swiss border about lunch time. It was exciting to be in our first foreign country, after France, and we noticed the signs in different languages, Italian, German and French. By then, well into mountainous countryside. We were following the route to Lausanne, and the scenery was charming, but the going became harder and harder, the car straining in first gear. Driving along Lake Leman was breathtaking. We stopped about 4p.m. in “Heidi, Girl of the Alps” countryside, flowery and hilly, to give the car a rest; and we drank freezing water from a flowing stream. I picked some flowers and put them in a book. After more climbing and dust, it was like a magic moment to hear the melodious Italian voice at the border, and to find that the mountainous road was over. We made very good time once on the autostrada and were in Milan and at my Sydney friend, Julie’s place by 11p.m. We had to ring for the concierge to let us in, but soon we were in the apartment, talking, eating Italian fruit cake and drinking champagne… That night, we three interlopers slept seven storeys above Milan on a small balcony, side by side in our sleeping bags. I dozed off with the worrying idea that I might sleep-walk, but slept like a log.

My writing development has been a weird ride, not a linear arc at all. Someone aptly likened it to being on a carousel of the 5 stages of grief. In the sixties and seventies, I found little time to write, apart from in journals. I had no idea about genre, apart from “short story”, “novel”, and “autobiography”. I’d read the great classics in English and French, all using the omniscient narrator, all-knowing, standing back from the characters and from the reader.

On returning to Australia, I was still carrying emotional baggage from the past that I wanted to exorcise. Pouring out my feelings on the page was one of the methods I used for this. I began by spewing out bittersweet memories of an emotionally underprivileged childhood. It didn’t matter that no-one else wanted to access my writing. It was something I needed to do at the time. Later on, I was seduced by the aesthetics underpinning creative writing: narrative structure, features such as voice, point of view and metaphorical usage. I wanted to learn more, to become better at it. This would become an obsession for me.

In the eighties, starting a family put paid to any ambitions of mine. My desire to be a good parent, to nurture emotional intelligence in my children, something I felt that I had missed out on and lacked, took precedence over the other “selfish” passion of writing.

I joined a Life Story Writing class in the early nineties, when my children were a little older. The first time I read aloud from my therapeutic outpourings in class, it ended in tears. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was too close to the writing.

My first attempt at what I thought was a novel, “Frogs and Other Creatures”, based on childhood memories, was little different from the journal writing. I was still just narrating events, rather than dramatising them. And it was structured like a collection of short stories, with titles at the head of each chapter. It didn’t matter that my classmates were enthralled by some of the stories, the manuscript didn’t fit into any genre, and I was dissatisfied with it. Publishers and booksellers hate these hybrid genres, as they don’t know where to place them. I was beginning to want more from my writing.

Studying writing at the UTS, Sydney, in the late nineties helped me get a handle on the features of creative writing, and to gain valuable feedback from classmates and tutors. I started learning about, and practising, narrative form through writing short stories, which is a great way to gain knowledge of structure in general. We read “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”. I began to think more and more about structure.

When I retired in 2008, I had more time to practise writing. By that time, I’d learnt about the relatively modern genre of “memoir”. This is defined as “a part of a life”, as distinct from autobiography. At its best, it utilises the same features as fiction, including sequences of events, structure, characterisation and dialogue. Unlike fiction, the main requirement is to pare back the complexity of events in a life through finding an engaging and relatively narrow focus. It must also relate to universal concerns.

This chosen pathway of developing creative writing skills is an ongoing journey for me.

August 27, 2016 0 comment

Life Stories Memoir Writing

Memoir Writing

According to American author Marian Roach Smith’s definition, “Memoirs are selections from your life story, shaped by theme, driven by a few burning questions. So the question the reader brings is: why these bits of your life? The answer to that question will lead you to your opening.”

See her website for more gems about this genre that I love to read and strive to write well.

One part of my life that I enjoyed was the post-adolescent period of adventure, spent in Paris, France, and travelling throughout Europe and into the USSR during the “Cold War” years. However it was the Inner Journeying that I had to set out on after I returned to Australia that forms the important part of my memoir. I now wonder if these two journeys are too much to include in one memoir?

August 23, 2016 2 comments

Life Stories Memoir

River Girl: An Early Chapter of my Memoir in Progress

River Girl

I lived at a place called Waterview, a lush, fertile valley, with a river swollen like a pregnant woman coursing through it. Despite the name ‘Waterview’, the Clarence River was hidden from sight at the point where I was brought up, because of the lie of the land. The irony was that there was water all around us, and yet none to be seen from our place. You could sense the water, though, caught in the humid air that wrapped itself around our bodies, buried deep inside the rich alluvial soil, and trapped inside plants and bulging green tree frogs.

January 23, 2016 12 comments

Memoir Writing

Lambs in Spring

Donny Me Billy

The humid scorching heat of the sub-tropical climate engulfed us; the sun’s rays tore at our skin with ruthless intensity and sent us kids scurrying towards water, even if it was only to the hose in the back or front yard. Sometimes Mum would pile us into the jeep and head for the primitive baths, set in the river bank at South Grafton, a good three miles from our place.

Don‘t go near the river! was a constant ringing in our ears back home. You’ll drown and no-one will hear your cries! There are bull-routs in the reeds at the water’s edge! The Clarence River was just below our backyard

Water, cool and exhilarating in summer, warm and nurturing in winter. All of us five kids learnt to swim at an early age. We splashed around in the creek on Dad’s bush paddock, where we dipped in amongst the gum trees with their roots spreading out from the banks to give us a foot-hold as we jumped in, scattering the frogs and snakes, then felt the clay bed squelchy beneath our feet.

December 8, 2015 12 comments