For a while now I have been writing a memoir of growing up in a single-parent female head of household family in Australia right after WWII. This might be the cover if I ever find a publisher. It's my sister and I at an unknown location and time and an unknown photographer. 

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It was an unusual childhood but one that I don't regret. There was my mother Frances, my grandmother, Nan, actually Martha who turned out to be my step-grandmother, my sister Lucinda, actually Frances Lucinda, a cat named Boofa and me, John Colin. No father. All my friends had fathers but many were not on great terms with them and actually envied me the attention I got from an all female household. 

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The title of the memoir is "I might be a Henderson: A haphazard memory of growing up in post-WWII Australia in about fifty anecdotes". The memoir end about when I moved to the US although there is some spillover. It's haphazard because my memory is very non-linear. I am no Vladimir Nabokov, recalling his youth almost day-by-day in Speak Memory although I understand what he meant by interrogating your memory, as if it were an object. The mystery in the title I won't reveal until I have a publisher. I'm in the photo below in the back row with the taller boys, but you'll have to guess. 

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The School is Aberfeldie State School. The name derives from a town in Scotland, spelt Aberfeldy.  A lot of place names in Australia derive from British places. Others are very clearly aboriginal in origin. The river that borders the district of Aberfeldie to the south is the Maribyrnong River. It might mean “I can hear a ringtail possum” in the aboriginal language, but that is somewhat uncertain. The "-nong" ending refers to a river. 

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After Aberfeldie there was Essendon High School, also six years. We wore uniforms which comprised a pin head gray (which I would have spelt grey) suite, a blue school shirt, a school tie and a cap. I think I wore the same shirt all week. We all detested the cap and wore it as rarely as possible. You had to walk into and out of school with you cap on because a school monitor or a teacher would be watching, but as soon as you got out of sight the cap came off. 

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​​​The girls wore skirts and a blazer. The skirts had to be long enough to cover their knees. Most girls hated that. Female teachers inspected them at weekly Assembly. And white socks. Oddly though, boys were not permitted to wear white socks. They were considered rebellious, something American youth might wear. Black shoes, black socks. I'm in this photo too. Might be easier to tell which one is me. The teacher standing on the right was called a Form Master, we were Form 4B and he was our Applied Maths teacher. I studied Pure Maths, Applied Maths, Physics and Chemistry as well as English Expression, but not English Literature or History--science guys didn't do that. The first class of every week was held in the same room, the Form Room and the Form Master talked to us about how to be good students. Then we dispersed to our various classes. 

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After high school I went to Melbourne University, the second oldest in Australia; Sydney University is the oldest and the oldest city. Both universities are architectural imitations of Cambridge although I didn't realize that at the time having never been out of Australia. Not only the architecture but the educational programs were based on the UK system. My mother and sister attended my graduation. If I wasn't wearing a beard you would see that I have my mother's features. By that time I had grown to be much taller than both of them.

 

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I wouldn't say I had a great time at university. I din't make new friends. In particular, I didn't make girlfriends. Every summer I worked on the Victorian Goods Rail, loading train cars with goods to go upstate. Often entire cars loaded with beer kegs. Beer was made in Melbourne by Carlton and United Brewers and shipped upstate by train. I worked there as a High School student as well. Being tall I could pretend I was old enough to work even when I wasn't. It brought in 15 pounds 17 shillings and sixpence; the basic wage. But it was more than my mother earned at her job at the Telephone Exchange--the basic wage didn't apply to women. It made me more out less financially independent. 

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Summer work is what I remember most about my university days. I also remember the classes and it was there that I became a scientist, although that was pretty much set in High School. The classes I took in first year university were almost the same as those I took in the last year of High School, and fifth year for that matter, except for English Expression. Later I got a Master of Science in Geophysics from Sydney University but it was in absentia while working for the Commonwealth government in Canberra, a city that The New York Times travel section described as a cemetery with lights. Pretty apt.

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The very good thing--possibly the only good thing--about working in Canberra for the Bureau of Mineral Resources is that after a couple of false starts and turning in my resignation twice--there really was no actual work to do--I was sent to Madang on the north coast of New Guinea to join a vessel that was conducting surveys to establish Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone under the Law of the Sea Convention. I ended up doing fourteen cruises on the ship and have visited many ports in New Guinea and all around Australia. I know very little about the interior of the country, no more than a foreigner. 

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