Heads you Win

We moved from England without fanfare, in the same way we had moved a thousand times before - midnight moves made in the dark, without thought once the unpaid bills caught up with us. Dad was a gambler and decided to take a gamble on a new life in another country when he caught mum sleeping with the television man to pay the month’s rental.1

I don’t remember England except it was cold in winter and we had a white Persian that sat on the fence post, summer and winter alike, to greet us as we came home from school. It disappeared during term breaks and one year we found kittens in the coal cellar, sooty black ones until we washed them and they turned out to be snowy white like their mother. When we came to Australia mum found a long white hair on her coat and she cried for weeks.2

I don’t remember much about the six weeks on board the Strathnaver either, but the smells still cling to me. There was vomit and the smell of engine oil and cooking oil, vomit and salt water, vomit and sweaty bodies not used to the tropical heat, which leaked the salt tablets forced on us to prevent dehydration. Then there was the smell of Phenyl used daily to stop us being overcome by the smell of vomit.3

We wore brown coats when we left England, scratchy wool ones that had two rows of buttons done up to the neck. They were the only things we owned that weren’t home made. Uncle John, mum’s brother, had bought them for us as a parting gift. He had also secretly given her £5.00 scrunched up and slipped in when he was hugging her, so dad wouldn’t know. Mum bought us toy camels in Aden with the money. They were bright with plastic beads and had saddles made of some shiny material that changed colour in the sun. When we got to Perth the custom’s man ripped them open and poured out the white sand that stuffed them. I had never seen white sand before, only rocks when we went to Blackpool one time.4

Although we landed in Perth, we traveled on to Melbourne because we had no sponsor. It was raining when we arrived and soldiers in uniforms rounded us all up, tagged us and stacked us into buses until we couldn’t move. Then they drove us to a place called Broadmeadows and unloaded us. We had to wait in line until they called out our names. They checked our tags against their list and sent us off to huts that were home for the next six weeks. The huts were half moon shaped, made of corrugated iron, but they didn’t look happy like the moon and the rain drummed on the roof making them sadder and scary.5

The huts were partitioned into cubicles made of Masonite, six to a room. You could see under the panels and over them but it gave us some privacy. The beds were army cots made up and we were told we were responsible for keeping our area clean. No one was allowed to eat in the hut and we went to the common mess for meals. The mess room was big, it held almost two hundred people and you would think that with that many people eating together it would be noisy but it wasn’t and for the first few days the only sound was the stainless steel cutlery hitting the thick, white, china, plates. 6

My sister went missing one day and everyone in the hut looked for her. We found her, eventually, under the bed fast asleep and that was the day we made friends with the others who shared the hut. We didn’t really make many friends though our lives were too busy. Dad and mum had to look for work and we had to go to school. I was disgusted to learn I was going to be put back into grade two because of my age, not my ability. I had been in grade three in England, as I started at just four. I was fluent reader and loved learning but the classes here didn’t challenge me and I was bored.7

You don’t think of English migrants getting picked on because of their difference but we did, if I said good morning instead of g’day the kids laughed at me and called me a bloody toff; if I complained about the weather or the boredom that called me a whinging Pom. I learned to be quiet and good and to use my outlet for creativity on practical jokes done in secret. 8

In my seven-year-old mind I had resigned myself to the fact that this was as good as it got and I accepted it, as I had accepted so many other changes. 9

Before we left the hostel, dad left us. He took us, his girls, aside and said he had to go away and wouldn’t see him again soon. He said he would try to come for us when he had the money. Tania, who was five cried, but Sharon and I stood there without tears. He made good that promise a few months later and took us to live with him in South Australia. We used to play a game called ‘heads you win tails I lose.’ We loved that game because we always won money from dad. 10

The crying scene was repeated six months later when my mum came and took Tania to live with her and then left Sharon and me behind. Dad gave up gambling then, he said he had lost too much and didn’t have the heart for it anymore. We didn’t play the game anymore either and dad lost his laugh, although he still smiled when he looked at us.11

A year later Sharon and I went to live with mum and our new family. My two stepsisters and stepbrother were as kind as the school had been and I hated them passionately. I lost myself in books as comfort, and I learned much more than they could dream of. On the rare occasions I had the bedroom to myself I tossed a two bob piece over and over and said “heads I win, tails you lose” but it never seemed the same without dad there. We saw dad occasionally on access visits; it was scary because he’d changed. The spark had gone from him and it was like talking to a stranger. He said he’d gambled on a new life and lost big time, now he had nothing more to lose. Then he moved away and I didn’t see him for years, until I ran away from home and went to live with him.12

In his flat he had a stack of exercise books, the kind you buy from Coles and he wrote down his tips, the races they were in and how much he would have bet, won or lost. It seemed his passion for gambling hadn’t left him although I never saw him lay another dollar down. By keeping a record he had found an ace. He had finally learned the gambler’s creed that Kenny Rogers made famous and I think he was content.13