Alison: I was 16 when I met Grahame at the church youth group. He was very different to the other young men in our country town of Hillston. In those days teachers were very well thought of and Grahame drove this lovely MG. This was when kids went to school barefoot, often three on a horse. Everyone looked at Grahame but I never dreamed he’d look at me.
Courting was very formal back then. He had to ask my father’s permission if he wanted to take me out for a picnic. I was devastated when he went to teach in India, even though I knew that’s what he’d always wanted to do. When I knitted him a jumper and he didn’t take it, I thought that was that. I moved to Sydney to get on with my own life but then letters began to arrive from the refugee camp where he was working. Letters went back and forth for about six months until he wrote asking me to marry him. I ran screaming to my girlfriends, I was so excited. But I didn’t have any money to send a telegram back to say yes, so I had to make him wait a while for an answer. I subsequently got one back that simply read: “Pack up. Am coming to get you.”
I’ve still got all his letters. I had to be quite careful with my spelling when I replied: Grahame is very articulate and literary and I didn’t want to embarrass myself. When he was a young man he wrote several school textbooks and just recently he’s completed two novels set in Lightning Ridge.
Grahame could only get a week’s leave so we had to get married in India. My wedding wasn’t exactly how I’d envisaged it but it was certainly memorable: at the foot of Kanchenjunga, the world’s third highest mountain. There were 1,000 people at the ceremony including the local Maharajah but I only knew one person: the man I was marrying. Grahame had arranged the whole thing – even my bridesmaid. It was all a bit much and I wept buckets, but at the same time I just knew it was going to work.
Grahame has always had a great passion for stones – his father had been a miner in Broken Hill. While we were in India he was secretively asked to help recover 30 bars of buried gold bullion that had been hidden by a bank manager from Rangoon when the Japanese had invaded. It sounds a bit far-fetched now, but Grahame went to London to meet a renowned treasure hunter and set up an expedition. It was too dangerous; they’d have had to smuggle the gold out and would’ve ended up getting shot. We think the gold is still there. That boyish fascination with buried treasure has stayed with him, and it’s the reason we’ve ended up in Lightning Ridge. Grahame loves to go into the ground to scratch around while I potter in the vegetable patch. He still thinks we might strike it lucky with black opal.
I don’t. Grahame is the only rock I’m interested in. He’s been an incredible support in the good times and the bad. When our son Jonathan was killed four years ago (aged 32), I really didn’t cope. A loose power cable earthed his house while he was taking a bath, electrocuting him. I find it very difficult to talk about it; my heart is broken. For two years, I couldn’t go anywhere without a tissue and for a long time I felt guilty whenever I laughed. Grahame seemed to deal with it better, but I know he did that for me, to be strong for me.
Grahame: I didn’t concentrate much in those bible classes, I can tell you. I couldn’t keep my eyes off Alison. She had this beautiful peachy complexion, and she was not as brash as all the other girls. It was very hard to leave her, but when I was 24 I had a calling to go and work in India. She was never out of my thoughts though, and while I was running a refugee camp I wrote and proposed. It was torture waiting weeks for an answer.
Teaching has given us a life of incredible adventure all around the world and endless stories to talk over in our dotage. And we talk a lot – which I think has been the key to our relationship. We’ve not got much in material terms but that doesn’t matter to us because we’ve certainly not wasted our time.
It’s been rewarding but not always easy. Jonathan’s death hit us both very hard but we drew great comfort from each other, and people here were hugely supportive. I was angry for a while. The power poles had only just been inspected so that damn wire should never have come loose. My youngest daughter, Sarah, was convinced he’d been murdered at first. At one time Jonathan had hit a rich pocket of opal that he sold for $200,000 – though I think it was worth a million – and some tough fellas were very jealous. Sadly, he squandered the money and got in with some unsavoury types. He’d had death threats and someone had burned down his camp. But in the event his death was just a horrible freak.
As a father, I felt I’d failed him. I felt guilty: I should’ve done even more to help him; I should’ve told him I loved him more often. The whole thing tested our faith, but I think it made it stronger. I have a quiet confidence that we will see him again; Alison isn’t so sure.
We’ve been together for 50 years but we’re beginning to prepare ourselves for life apart, in case one of us should die. We’ve talked about it. Alison is an incredible cook. I do very well out of her subscription to Delicious magazine and her own recipes are famous – especially her curry. She’s teaching me how to fend for myself in the kitchen and I am teaching her how to get to grips with finances and odd jobs. But we’re not ready to go just yet, oh no. We believe it’s better to wear away than rust away. I’ve just built a veranda by hand and I’m currently replacing the roof. We’re also going to and from India at the moment while we set up new schools there through World Schools Foundation, the charity that our daughter Preya and her husband Chris have set up. It’s amazing what we’re learning in order to make the schools self-sufficient – like how to produce methane for power.
I also like to go down the mine and am just about to try a new seam. You never know, we could be sitting on a fortune. I love living here. Lightning Ridge is like a casino town without the casinos – there’s a sense of excitement in the air. Everyone hopes they might strike it lucky and plenty of people have. As far as I’m concerned, though, I couldn’t be any luckier than I am already. It’s freaky how often I am thinking something and then Alison says it. We have become one.
No comments:
Post a Comment