The only plane I had ever been on was a Tiger Moth, on a twenty- minute joyride out of Shoreham, which was only an airfield, not a proper airport.

It didn’t make me feel like Phineas Fogg, more like a descendant of Biggles or the Red Baron. Besides, I was just a kid when I had that first flight.

There’s a world of difference between a hot-air balloon, a biplane, and a Boeing 707. In about thirty-six hours I would be in Sydney, Australia, away from all the heartbreak and temptations that had led to me sitting in a window seat on a jet plane, watching the miserable tarmac pass beneath me.

Goodbye, London. Goodbye England, Good riddance. Why am I crying? Better not let anybody see.

We stopped for refuelling and whatever else in Beirut, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Darwin, each one giving me a glimpse of places which were still exotic to me, even if it was only a different airport terminal. We had enough time at each stop to get off the plane and look around. We were served food on the plane, bland and generic. You ate it because there was nothing else to do.

Did anybody ever tell you that long distance air travel is boring?

Beirut was how I had imagined the East to be, one big bazaar, the counters of the booths full of gold, silver and jewellery, but I didn’t have enough money to buy any of the exotic trinkets on display. Who would I purchase them for, anyway? I did buy some Duty-Free cigarettes at about a quarter of the price you could get them in England.

Sue me. Everybody smoked. My poison was Benson and Hedges.

Bangkok was as hot as buggery, although it was a dry heat, in the middle of their so-called winter. The terminal wasn’t air-conditioned and just a big hall with seats. We were glad to get back aboard. The leg to Hong Kong was a relatively short three hours and our time on the ground there was longer.

That’s one place where you can’t mistake where you are. There’s a stretch of water parallel to the runway called a nullah. It’s an open sewer and smells like shit. I’m not kidding. It permeated the plane when we were taxiing into the apron. Coupled with the unique approach between the high-rise buildings, where you swore you were looking up into people’s bathrooms and kitchens, it was an unforgettable experience.

Fortunately, the terminal’s air-conditioning filtered the smell. Our stop was about six hours. It seemed there were quite a few new passengers heading for Sydney. There were a couple of bars and restaurants, so I got a drink or two to break the monotony and actually had a haircut. Chinese barbers removed every hair from my nose and ears, as well as what I allowed them to crop from my head. I wouldn’t thank them for that in the not-too-distant future.

We took off into the evening sky for the next seven-hour leg to finally reach Australia.

We landed in Darwin in the middle of the night, and it was pissing down rain. They gave us umbrellas to walk to the terminal, such as it was. I had never felt a combination of heat and humidity like that. The huge raindrops hitting my shirt battled with the profuse sweat from my armpits, but both dried and disappeared when I got inside. At least the terminal was dry and had enormous fans moving the air around but it had nothing else going for it.

On to Sydney, where we landed at six in the morning, local time. I questioned the three-hour time passage. It’s a bloody big country. After being sprayed with insect repellent in the plane, ostensibly to get rid of any mosquitos we had picked up along the way, we were allowed to disembark into bright sunshine, just what they had told us to expect. After going through Immigration and Customs an apparatchik from the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation, SMEC/ SMHEA, my new employer (actually their official title was Snowy Mountains Hydro Electricity Authority, but it was rarely used), loaded us into a bus and deposited us in an unassuming-looking hotel in Darlinghurst Road in Kings Cross. It turned out to be a modest hotel with much to be modest about.

There were three other young blokes like me on the plane, destined for Cooma, two hundred and fifty miles further south. Naturally, we had kind of bonded. We were all experiencing our first bout of jetlag, if you wanted to call it that. After all those hours on and off the plane, snoozing on the long hauls, we didn’t want to go to bed. We wanted a drink!

We left the hotel and wandered through the streets of the Cross to an area called Woolloomooloo and came across a pub called The Duke of Bedford, a strange name in the heart of Sydney. We didn’t care. We wanted our first taste of the famous Aussie beer “Fosters” and the bar was open at that hour of the morning.

There were no kangaroos hopping around, as some jokers would have had you believe. There were, however, quite a few drunks lying on the pavement outside the pub clutching two-gallon flagons of some kind of red wine, so we stepped carefully over and around them to get into the bar. It wasn’t like an English place at all. The floor was covered in sawdust and the walls were all tiled like a toilet. They could be hosed down after closing to eradicate the vomit and other detritus left behind by the likes of some of the patrons lying in the gutters outside. This was evidently not a five-star establishment.

The main thing that we were focused on was that there was a bar and a barman, so we upped and ordered four pints of “Fosters” only to be met with a condescending sneer from the Italian on the other side of the counter.

“This is New South Wales. We don’t serve that Victorian piss here. Youse can have ‘Tooheys’ or nussing.”

That was our first encounter of the parochialism between the states.

We all looked at each other and shrugged, a beer’s a beer after all. ‘Tooheys’ would do.

As he turned away to get the glasses we heard him mutter, “Bloody Pommy bastards.”

After that warm welcome to Australia, we drank our beers and decided to return to the hotel. By now the jetlag was beginning to bite. I slept through the rest of the day, waking in time to go down to the dining room for a steak dinner. There was more meat than I could eat, but it was either that or a pork chop which looked like it had come off a giant wild boar. The accompaniment was chips and green peas. Nothing flash about this place.

We were told by a SMEC official to be ready to leave the next morning and were duly collected at eight, after a largely sleepless night courtesy of the jetlag, taken to the railway station and loaded onto a rather dilapidated train pulled by a diesel locomotive. I was eager to see the country but the jetlag claimed me again and I slept for several hours.

When I woke, we were still trundling along at what seemed like walking speed. That train was non-stop, but hardly an express. Outside the windows were scattered gumtrees and scrub. Miles and miles of miles and miles. There was no sign of the eponymous Mountains, just a few rounded hills in the distance, nothing to draw your eyes.

I was a young engineer with a problem. It was nothing to do with my job or profession. Well, I guess that’s not completely true. It was only the fact that work was available in Australia that enabled me to be on that flight. I was what the Aussies called a “Ten- Pound Pom”

That meant that an immigrant from the UK paid ten pounds to travel to Australia at government expense. In return the transportee had to stay in the country for two years. If that condition was not met the individual concerned had to pay for their own return fare and repay the real cost of the original voyage. As I was going to work for a federal agency, I did not even have to pay the ten pounds. They got me free of charge!

How did I get here?

Leaving home was the first step, my childhood domicile was a very modest flat in Brighton (well, Hove actually), mainly to get away from my parents and live my own life. The combination of my teenage rebellion and their disapproval pushing us asunder.

I had been busily applying for jobs since leaving school and had obtained a position as a junior draughtsman with British Railways. In those days that was the first step to becoming a civil engineer without going to university and getting a degree. You did it all by day-release and night classes and ended up with a Higher National Certificate, which was a recognized qualification.

To be honest, the main attraction for me was that it was in London. That city was a magnet for kids like me. This was the age of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and I was far more interested in being where they were performing rather than slaving away at a career. During my time in The Big Smoke I did get to see the Stones but not the Fab Four.

I had taken a room in what you could call a boarding-house, but that wasn’t satisfactory. The woman who ran it was every bit as bad, if not worse than, my parents, a real tyrant. Everything not specifically permitted was forbidden.

After a few weeks, I was desperate to find somewhere else. I even thought about returning home, but that was a step too far and would have meant admitting defeat, something very hard to do for a seventeen-year-old.

That’s when I lucked out, or thought I did, not all at once, but with a light at the end of a tunnel which did not seem like an oncoming train. Seeing that I was working for the railways that irony wasn’t lost on me.

I met a girl in a coffee bar and for some strange reason she seemed to be interested in me. It was she who made the moves. I was pretty naïve and fell head-over-heels in love with her. After a few encounters, call them "dates" if you like, she asked me if I would like to move in with her. She shared a flat with three other girls in Earls Court and one of them was moving out, so they had a spare bedroom. Naturally I jumped at the chance and a week later I was a flatmate with my beloved, Belinda, and her two friends, Amy and Mary. I had my own bedroom, had to share in the housekeeping chores and expenses and pay a quarter of the rent, which was about half what that harridan at the boarding house had been charging me.

There’s always a catch, isn’t there?

A condition of their tenancy was that all the occupants had to be female, so I was added to the register as “Joan”. I was told the landlady rarely visited and they always knew when she was coming, so all I had to do was be out during her visits. Simple.

Everything worked fine for the first eighteen months or so. I only had to make myself scarce twice for a couple of hours. My romance with Belinda blossomed. There were frequent nocturnal trips between bedrooms, and often nights where there were just kisses and cuddles in one room or the other. Needless to say I soon lost my virginity.

In a way I was lucky. There was not too much comment on my appearance. I was a skinny boy and not too masculine in my facial appearance. It was something I didn’t appreciate at the time but I was, in fact, pretty good-looking, if slightly androgenous.

Then our landlady decided that she wanted to meet “Joan”. I think she was curious rather than suspicious, but it gave us a problem. What to do? We had a pow-wow and the girls decided that they could disguise me as a girl. Between them they had plenty of clothing, cosmetics, and even wigs which I could borrow, just for the few hours when I would have to meet the landlady.

I was worried about how I would look. I didn’t want to appear as some parody of a girl, and that would lead to disaster all round. However, after they had finished making me over, I couldn’t tell that I wasn’t female. In fact, I was quite excited with my transformation.

Let’s face it, don’t most boys wonder what they would look like as a member of the opposite sex?

We had a dry run the week before Landlady Day. I saw myself in a nice dress, face made-up, and wig properly fixed for the first time. I remember gasping because I was definitely pretty. Amy and Mary gushed over me, so pleased with their transformation skills. Belinda looked a little dubious. With twenty-twenty hindsight that was the moment when everything started to unravel between us.

They insisted on taking me out that evening for practice and to smooth out any rough edges that would expose me as not being female. I probably enjoyed the experience too much. I felt really at home being one of four girls having a night on the town. My only worry was that my voice would give me away, but with a little concentration on pitch and wording I was assured that I sounded authentic, and a shy smile disarmed potential confrontations.

The next week was back to reality. I went to work as usual and Friday night was again transformed into a girl, ready for Saturday’s visit. I did notice a certain coolness in Belinda but just thought it was maybe due to her period.

We met the landlady in the afternoon, which gave me some extra time to adapt to my new femininity. During the meeting everything went well. I acted shy and said as little as possible without seeming rude and she welcomed me to her house. She did ask to see my room, something which the girls had anticipated. All my male appurtenances had been disposed of and replaced with dresses, skirts, tops, and underwear from their own belongings. They had even put a couple of stuffed animals on my bed to add legitimacy!

She asked what I did for a living.

I told her I was a pay-clerk at the London Electricity Board and often had to work overtime checking that everybody had been paid the right amount, which explained my absences at her previous visits. I also always had to be present late on Fridays to deal with queries because pay-day was Thursday. All-in-all everything went off well and our landlady departed, apparently quite satisfied that I was “Joan”.

It was decided that a celebration was in order so once again we went out on the town, a foursome of girls. Safety in numbers. Heady with success, I enjoyed myself much more than the first time and even got a bit tiddly after visiting our third pub. When we got home Belinda accused me of flirting with one of the boys in The Kings Arms. Of course, I vigorously denied it, couldn’t remember doing any such thing, but she went to bed in a huff.

The other girls thought it was a hoot and teased her about being jealous of her girlfriend, which just made things between us worse. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I was finding being a girl very seductive. It was a real turn-on to see how I looked in a dress, face made-up, and wearing a wig. The way people interacted with Joan, rather than John, was an eye-opener. They were generally much nicer, although I was warned to beware of boys and men wanting to get into my panties.

Friday and Saturday nights became girls’ nights. I didn’t need any encouragement to don female garb. It was only a few weeks later that I went shopping one afternoon on my own, confident in my ability to pass. I bought two pairs of high heels, pumps in basic black and white, so I could use them with most outfits. Marks and Spencer’s got a work-out. With the money I had been saving through living with the girls I purchased several sets of underwear, a couple of dresses, and three or four skirts and tops to go with.

Belinda was not pleased.

I didn’t want to sponge on the girls the whole time and I loved the idea of having my own clothes. I had been washing their undies after every time I wore them but I detected a degree of reluctance on their part to wear the items they had loaned me. I understood, in a way.

The only fly in the ointment was a definite cooling in my relationship with Belinda. She started to avoid me when I was Joan. Not obviously, just little things, like the sliding away of an eye when I looked at her or the withdrawal of a hand when I touched her. On my part I was becoming enmeshed in my new persona and was reaching a point where I hated to go back to being John on Sunday evening. I couldn’t understand Belinda. I still loved her. In a way, she had initiated all this by inviting me to share her flat and starting the imposture by signing me in as “Joan”. Surely, she must have seen where it would end up.

I tackled her about it one evening. “What’s up, darling? How am I upsetting you?”

“You’re not you any longer. I don’t recognize you,” she accused.

“But I’m still the same person and I still love you," I argued.

She looked at me side eyed. “Perhaps you do, but it’s not the John that I met that still loves me.”

“I’m still John, and I DO love you.”

She shook her head, "You love Joan more and you aren’t John anymore, are you? What if I told you Joan had to go? What would you say?”

With those words she stuck a knife through my heart. When I searched inside myself, I knew I couldn’t stop being Joan. I had become more of her than I had realized. I hadn’t meant to lock Belinda out.

My long, awkward, silence told her more than any words I could have uttered.

“See. You can’t give her up. You’re Joan now and I’m not in love with her. I’ve lost you and you have lost yourself. We’re just flatmates from now on. Let’s call us ‘acquaintances.’”

The trouble was, she was right. I did love her, but the passion was no longer there. I was more concerned with how well I applied my cosmetics and whether I was dressed correctly for an evening out. I had my own couple of wigs and loved my heels. My wardrobe had expanded and if you went into my room, you would know it belonged to a girl. Our night-time dalliances had dwindled to nothing.

I had badly wanted to let my hair grow so that I no longer had to wear a wig. I could easily look like one of The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger wore his to the collar. It was only work requirements that constrained me. Anything unconventional was frowned upon. I had even been sent home one day for not wearing a tie.

“Can we at least be friends? I never intended to hurt you,” I tried again.

“I guess I know you didn’t,” her expression softened. “Yes, we can be friends, but only girlfriends. Don’t expect any more rendezvous in the middle of the night. I am not a lesbian.”

That really hurt! “If that’s all I can get, I’ll take it,” I replied with a sad smile.

My heart was broken, but I did my best not to show it. It was my own fault. I had been selfish and inattentive to her needs and feelings, and here I was, a boy in girls’ clothing.

No, it was more than that. I felt like a girl. If I could have had a choice, I would have been a girl. I didn’t know how the realization had snuck up on me.

“Joan” was gradually squeezing out “John” and I was not only allowing it, I was welcoming her in. I did love Belinda, but I loved being Joan,too. I knew that if I stayed here in London “John” would disappear and I would be unable to resist.

I didn’t know what to do. I had no financial support as “Joan”. My career, my job, everything, depended on me being “John”. I was stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Britain, at that time, was still divided by “class” (I was working class) and nobody had ever contemplated female engineers and transvestite engineers to boot. Joan would just be an object of scorn, a target for the newspaper scandalmongers like The News of the World.

Like an icy polar blast, the answer hit me in the face. I had to get away. First, I must finish my course, which would take the rest of the year, and then I must put temptation behind me and go somewhere that would allow me to be John again. I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t see a way forward as Joan. That would consume me.

That’s when I started to apply for jobs overseas, anywhere but Britain, and the ads for The Snowy Mountains were everywhere. I had a couple of interviews at Australia House, and they must have been desperate because I was told that I would have a place with SMEC/SMHEA as long as I passed my final exams. Six months later, that was a reality and I was accepted and given my plane ticket to Australia for January 6, 1966. In exchange, they had my written promise to stay in Australia for two years. The salary was also very much better than I was getting at the time.

Before that I hadn’t put temptation far behind me. Joan came out on every possible weekend. She burned her candle at both ends, knowing it couldn’t last, and I became more and more her on our outings. It was both insidious and invigorating. The last hurrah. There was nothing left between Belinda and me. I told the girls I was going and as soon as I got a date I would let them know, so that they could find another girl to share the flat.

I spent that Christmas with my parents. I reckoned I owed them that much. Then I went back to the flat to pack whatever belongings I was taking with me. I had to grit my teeth and discard everything of Joan’s: the underwear, dresses, skirts, tops, shoes, wigs, cosmetics, everything. It’s amazing what a girl needs to be a girl, isn’t it? I was left with one small suitcase with clothes and toiletries belonging to John.

On the morning of my departure, we had a tearful farewell. I’m sure they were actually saying goodbye to Joan, who had been a much more active part of their lives in recent times.

I was not only saying goodbye to them, but I too was saying goodbye to Joan, and especially to Belinda, who, for a while, had been the love of my life.

It’s complicated.

We finally arrived in Cooma at about four-thirty in the afternoon. The two-hundred-and-fifty-mile journey had been covered at a stately thirty miles per hour. Once again, we were decanted into a bus and taken to a collection of prefabricated huts, which I later found to be typical of their construction camps. We were shown our very basic allotted rooms, pointed to the ablutions block with toilets and showers and to another housing the dining hall. The Corporation was kind enough to provide us with sheets, blankets, and towels. Soap was from dispensers in the showers.

“Dinner is from six thirty to seven thirty. Don’t be late or you’ll go hungry,” we were advised by our obviously underwhelmed escort. “Breakfast is from six in the morning, finishes at seven thirty. Same goes, if you’re late you don’t eat.”

He singled out my three flight companions. “You’re on the plane to Khancoban at eight thirty. I’ll pick you up at eight. Be ready and bring your kit.”

They were all welders, going to the other side of the mountains, where the action was. After the next morning, I never saw them again.

He turned to me. “You’re going to Cooma North, HQ. A car will come for you at eight.”

I was thinking that I might as well have joined the army, the only difference being that I didn’t have to salute.

So I began my new life with three months in SMEC’s design office for acclimatization until I was dispatched to my assigned location in another construction camp. I soon discovered that the book didn’t match its cover. What had been sold to me as an exciting pioneering organization when I was recruited in London was just another civil service bureaucracy. Dozens of jobsworths ambled around with pieces of paper in their hands, trying to look busy and pretending they had a destination. We were clocked in every morning by a man with a roll and a red pencil to indicate if we were on time, or not.

Finishing time had been whimsically set at four twenty-one p.m. A siren blew and there was a thundering of hooves along the corridors in order to hit the outside doors right on the dot. The clock-watchers had it down to a T. They could be at the entrance when the horn blew.

Except that Tuesday night was compulsory overtime until nine p.m. We were allowed to knock off as usual to eat but had to be back at our desks by six. I had nothing to do, so asked if I really had to do it. I was told to shut up and read a magazine or something. Just be there for the headcount and red-pencil notations!

My co-workers were friendly enough and nearly all young apart from some of the European refugees who arrived after the war. One late-middle-aged guy in our office had been a Professor of Civil Engineering in Dresden but all his documentation had been burned to ashes in the bombing raids, so he had nothing to prove his status. However, they did allow him to be classified as an engineer.

SMEC proudly asserted that the workforce came from twenty-seven different countries and had erected poles with flags attached for each of those countries around a green in Cooma’s centre. I thought it was ironic that one of the four sides of the green was the wall of Cooma Prison.

I had no reason to doubt their claim of varied nationalities. One of our weekend pastimes was watching the Serbs and the Croats having a gunfight on the town’s green with each trying to chop down the pole bearing the other side’s flag, while we sat in the relative safety of ‘The Young Australian’ pub's saloon bar with ringside seats. Any bloodshed was taken care of elsewhere.

During my time in Cooma the only Aussie wildlife to which I was introduced were the swarms of flies that would attack as soon as you were outside and sweating. You quickly learned to keep your mouth shut. Other than the damned flies, we saw none of those exotic animals bent on killing you that you may have expected to be around. The town was surprisingly urbanized.

In due course, I was sent to Tumut, although the actual location of our camp was an even smaller place a couple of miles away called Talbingo, where preparations were under way for a major dam, a power station and pipelines connecting the two. I was a pipeline engineer, having been assigned that role upon my arrival in Cooma. It was interesting work and a totally different atmosphere to Head Office. People were keen on their jobs and there was no bullshit. This was the engineering Nirvana I had been promised.

The accommodation was just as basic, prefabbed huts with amenities blocks, but you dropped into bed at night tired out, and you shoveled down the quite adequate but barely edible food before heading to work. It kept you alive.

Tumut was only a village. Apart from the SMEC presence there was little more than a general store and post office, a couple of pubs, a bank, a church, a garage, and a few dozen houses. It did boast a golf course which seemed to be mostly inhabited by mobs of kangaroos and wallabies. I couldn’t tell the difference.

We were warned to leave any ball which went into the rough and hit another, as that was where the snakes were. There were plenty of the slithering buggers on the fairways, but you could at least see them. A two-stroke penalty was better than being bitten.

Wombats roamed the streets, together with echidnas, all completely unafraid of humans, and the eucalypts were infested with koalas. We would be awoken every morning by the mocking laughter of kookaburras.

About once a month a bunch of us would head to Sydney for a little R & R. There was nothing to do in Tumut or Talbingo; they really were what Poms would call hamlets. That eventually contributed to my downfall.

I had settled into life in Talbingo and those weekends in Sydney were a great way to let off steam. We did work very hard on the Tumut schemes, crazy hours, but it didn’t matter. We were building a part of the nation, and we were proud of it, but every now and then we needed a long weekend to relax. The drive to Sydney took about six hours.

Like all young guys a lot of our recreation centred round pubs and drinking but we also went to the beaches where I learned to surf. I don’t claim to be much good, but I could stand up and ride the board when a decent wave came along. I was already a reasonable swimmer, good enough not to be laughed at by the Aussies, who all swam like Dawn Fraser or Boy Charlton. I wasn’t that good but with a little effort I could keep up, just.

When in Sydney we usually stayed in a Youth Hostel in Double Bay. There was a tidal sea-pool next door, so we could exercise and also wash away the excesses of the previous night’s entertainment. Plus it was cheap and close to many of the pubs we liked.

Naturally we went clubbing, too. Most of the night-clubs were in the Kings Cross area, spilling down into William Street and overflowing into Woolloomooloo and Oxford Street. The latter was known as the queer district.

On one trip to the area I made a big mistake, not instigated by me, but one of the other lads reckoned it would be a bit of a laugh to go to see Les Girls, which was a famous drag show. I shouldn’t have gone along with them, but how could I get out of it?

Of course, I couldn’t forget my time being a girl. I couldn't push it right out of my mind, which was why I had come here in the first place. Most of the time I could get by without thinking about it. But I would be lying if I said it didn’t surface on the odd occasion, mostly in the middle of the night, when I was trying to go to sleep without thinking about Belinda and those Friday and Saturday excursions with her, Amy, and Mary.

Suddenly, here I was, watching all these boys and men performing as women and they were just SOOO good. You really could not tell that they weren’t girls except for the occasional comedy act.

I made a point of not being too keen but those “girls” were so alluring, beautiful, and professional that they brought back all my submerged memories. One feature of the venue was that one of the “girls” would come and sit with us at our table, chat for a while to entertain us and have a (presumably harmless) drink before moving on to other patrons. I always had trouble keeping my eyes off them.

I could have coped with that. Over about six months our gang went there a couple of times, and I was enthralled by those beauties. It was fairly obvious to my mates that they had an effect on me. I took some good-natured ribbing about being a Pommy poofter-lover. Our visits were rare enough, though, that they never became really suspicious.

Then came the trip when disaster struck. We were watching the TV News one night at the hostel when an item grabbed our attention. A major bushfire had swept through the Tumut area. We even saw footage of our construction camp at Talbingo being consumed by the flames and what was left of it afterwards. Nothing but the foundations. Fortunately, nobody had died in the blaze, although there were some serious burns.

Everything that most of us owned had been destroyed. I now only had the clothes that I had brought with me, and the Identity Documents that you never leave behind. Most of the others were in the same straits but had resources that were not tied to the location. I was the only Pom amongst us. All the others were Aussies and had homes scattered across Victoria, New South Wales, and even Queensland.

My lifeline was a bank account with the Bank of New South Wales, so I had access to money, at least. The next morning, we had a sober discussion about what to do and phoned the regional SMEC Centre in the township of Tumut. We were advised that reconstruction of the camp would take at least a couple of months and no alternative accommodation was available. There was no point in going back until the rebuild was completed.

Our jobs would be safe but we should all use any accumulated leave entitlements and then we would be put on half-pay for the duration. I guess that was quite a fair offer.

The cars that had ferried us here belonged to others of our group and the Aussie blokes all wanted to go to their various homes, if only to assure their families that they were OK. I couldn’t argue with that, and transport arrangements were made that would deliver each one to his home or to some point close-by where public transport would take them there.

That left me. I couldn’t go “Home”. Australia was home and I had no family or kin here. That was the point of my being here. I didn’t actually mind that much. My losses at the camp were merely clothes and belongings like a radio, nothing irreplaceable. I would go into the nearest branch of the bank on Monday and arrange for access to my account. I would have to buy some new clothes but, so what? I went to talk to the hostel’s management. They knew about the fire and were full of sympathy.

I would be able to stay for the duration, no worries.

The blokes in our party felt quite guilty about leaving me and a couple of them offered to take me to their homes and put me up. Although I appreciated their concern, I refused. I didn’t want to bludge on them or their families for some indeterminate period. You know that old saying about visitors staying past three days smelling like dead fish?

We said our goodbyes and I waved them off to wherever they were going. Then I went about fixing the basics, money first. There were no credit cards in those days. The manager at the local branch of the bank was very understanding. That news about the fire had gone everywhere. My two Driving Licenses were the state one, registered in Cooma and SMEC’s own one, also registered in Cooma, plus I had my Passport with me. A couple of phone calls and the usual four-to-five-day wait was waived, and I was issued with a temporary cheque book, which I could draw from immediately. I guess it didn’t hurt that I had a sizeable balance in my account. There wasn’t much to spend it on in Tumut and especially Talbingo.

With dollars in my pocket (Australia had changed to decimal currency about a year ago, so pounds, shillings and pence didn’t exist anymore) I went searching for new gear. That took me into the city. I had little trouble finding suitable clothing for a young man about town. A couple of trips and I was done. I didn’t bother with work gear yet. I could get that later.

The first several nights I watched some TV, read a few books, and chugged down a couple of Toohey’s before going to bed. After a week or so, I was bored and missing the camaraderie of my mates, so I went to the Cross. I tried a couple of the pubs, but drinking on your own is not the same.

One of the main differences between England and Australia was that Australia, while being much more egalitarian, was far more stratified along gender lines. Women were not welcome in public or saloon bars and were generally relegated to a ‘beer garden,’ so meeting a girl was no easy matter. In fact, a couple of months before, two ladies, Merle Thornton and Rosalie Bognor had made national headlines by chaining themselves to the bar of The Regatta Hotel in Brisbane in protest at not being allowed to drink there.

That segregation between men and women also extended to the work environment. A woman's place was in the home or in one of those 'female' callings, like nursing or serving in a store. There certainly was no concept of women in engineering or the 'heavy' trades.

So the call of ‘Les Girls’ with their cabaret became too much for me to resist. It was a Tuesday night, not one of the nights when you go clubbing or to a show, but when you’re alone and, yes, lonely, you do unusual things. The show captivated me. Sitting watching the ‘girls’ perform was much better than staring into a half-glass of beer.

I booked myself in and sat and watched the likes of Carlotta, their star performer, go through her paces She was a great talent with snappy repartee and dance moves. It was only later that I found out that she was “transgender”, a boy who had undergone surgery to become a girl. There wasn’t even a word for it in those days.

One of the young showgirls came to sit with me at my lonely table. She was one of those who had provided companionship before.

“I’ve seen you in here a couple of times,” she said,” But you were with a crowd of young blokes. Where are all your mates?”

“They’ve all gone to their various homes and I’m the only one left here,” I replied. “I’m surprised you remembered.“

“I always remember the quiet ones,” she smiled at me. “What’s your name?”

I was tempted to say “Joan” but I kept my senses and told her “John”.

“I’m Crystal.”

They all have to have exotic names, don’t they?

“Well, John, why are you here on your own?”

“Did you see the news a couple of weeks ago, about the construction camp at Talbingo burning down? Well, that was my home. I’m stuck in Sydney until they build me a new one. All my mates had homes to go to.”

She laid a comforting hand on my arm. “That’s terrible. You poor boy.”

I didn’t want to be comforted, but I did, if you know what I mean.

“What are you doing about a place to live?’

I told her about the hostel in Double Bay. “I’m all right,” I said. “A room and a bed for the night until they build a new camp. It’s basic but it’s OK. I’ll survive.”

“Look, you come here any time you like. We don’t open Mondays, but I’ll tell the door-bitches to let you in half-price any other day of the week. Just give me your full name and consider it done.”

I shrugged. “Crystal, you’re an angel.” I gave her my details.

After that I became a regular, taking a table at least a couple of times a week. Crystal must have told all of the cast and the floor-staff about my plight because I had their company every time and for longer periods. I soon knew all the girls by name and enjoyed their attention. It not only relieved my loneliness but we soon all knew each other’s stories. Some of them had run away from unsympathetic families or small country towns where their femininity had not been appreciated. Some had just been attracted by the lights of the big city and the alternative lifestyles offered. All of them loved dressing as girls and performing in the cabaret.

Naturally, I did not tell them the truth about myself. All of that was behind me. Wasn’t it? What I related to them was the story of a young man stuck in Britain’s hidebound class-conscious society, longing to get away for a real, meaningful, job in a relatively classless environment. I had found it here until the bushfire cut it short, hopefully temporarily.

My problem was the call that I felt to be like them, which I thought I had carefully concealed. Evidently, I’m not as good an actor as I thought or maybe it was the audience that was more perceptive. Previously I had only acted out my dream to the everyday world and its largely oblivious inhabitants. Here, I was exposed to a team of girls who were very much tuned in to others who wanted to live their lives as females.

There came an evening maybe six or seven weeks into my frequent sojourns in the club when I was given a different invitation. Crystal and another girl, Kendra, asked me to go and have a drink with them at one of the Oxford Street pubs where ‘queer’ people were welcome. No alarm bells went off. By now, they were my friends.

“Listen, Johnno, we’re closed on Mondays, so why don’t we go and have a drink at The Riley, just you, me, and Kendra. It’ll make a change from being here all the time.”

“I’ll check my appointments book, but it sounds OK,” I said, somewhat flippantly. “Yep, I’m free Monday. What time?”

“How about seven? We can get some pub-grub there, too.”

That was settled and we met up at The Riley the next Monday. It was a cut above The Duke of Bedford, timber-floored and pictures hanging on the walls, with proper tables where you sat and drank if you didn’t fancy a stool at the bar. There were no drunks on the pavement outside, although some of the patrons inside were definitely on the flamboyant side.

The two girls came in what passed for ‘civvies’ for them, high heels, short skirts and scanty tops, but they still looked ultra-feminine. Miniskirts had arrived in Australia with a famous appearance by Jean Shrimpton on Melbourne Cup Day last year.

I was there a few minutes before them and had got a table inside. Monday nights were not crowded. I waved when they entered. They came over and both kissed me on the cheeks as they sat.

“My shout. What’ll you have, same as at the club?” I kept a straight face.

They both laughed. “Don’t take the piss, Johnno. You know that’s cold tea. When we’re feeling wicked, we put in a lump of sugar or a slice of lemon. Abe would fire us if we drank the real McCoy.”

Abe Saffron was the owner of Les Girls, amongst other less savoury establishments. He was ‘rumoured’ to be a gangster. I had shaken his hand a couple of times when he graced the show with his presence. He was affable enough with me and sympathized with my plight.

I knew the girls’ drinks were fake. If they had been real they would have been blotto by the end of a night doing their rounds. It made perfect sense that they weren’t allowed to drink while on duty.

“OK, what would you like?” I was serious this time.

“A G & T, a double, lots of ice,” said Kendra.

“Same, please,” from Crystal.

I departed to get their drinks. I was still on Toohey’s. We clinked glasses when I returned and settled in.

“You girls are always so nice to me. I don’t know why. Don’t get me wrong. I love your company, but surely you’ve got boyfriends?”

Kendra replied. “You know what we are. It’s not that easy to find a decent boy, who really doesn’t care. Besides, we’ve got each other and we flat together. We both think that you’re the nicest boy we’ve met in months. You’re polite and quiet, obviously relaxed about our lifestyle and don’t manhandle the girls. We’ll even forgive you for being a ‘Pom!’ What we don’t get about you is why you seem to find us so fascinating.”

I was in a quandary. I couldn’t tell them that I wished I was one of them so I fell back on the excuse that I really liked the show. Being here in Sydney on my own it provided me with entertainment and an excuse to get out of the hostel, and it was a damned sight better than sitting in a pub on my own nursing a beer.

“No, I don’t buy it. I see your eyes light up when one of us comes to your table and sits to chat with you and keep you company. That’s what you come for, the companionship, and that’s unusual. Most of the blokes regard us as a joke. You don’t. Don’t think you can fool us, we’re not just dopey sheilas. There’s something more that you’re not telling us.”

Maybe I went red. I dodged and ducked and dived and weaved with all the skill of a veteran fighter pilot, but I could not shake my pursuers from my tail and I didn’t have a rear-gunner.

We drank more and we had something to eat, I don’t remember what. They kept on circling and eventually wore me out.

“All right, if I tell you the truth will you promise to keep it amongst us three?”

They looked at each other triumphantly. “Toldja,” said Crystal.

“We promise, cross our hearts!” They proclaimed together.

Defeated, I began to tell them the true tale of my time in London. Surprisingly, once I got started it became easy. Everything that had been bottled up for the last couple of years came pouring out.

Maybe confession is good for the soul.

I told them how I had left home and gone to London and ended up sharing a flat with three girls, one of whom I loved and thought she loved me. I shared the consequences of them having to register me as a girl in the flat’s lease and how that had eventually caused me to have to impersonate a girl to satisfy the landlady.

How one thing led to another and I had become enthralled with my impersonation, until it was no longer just that, but was taking over my life and I embraced it, but my beloved Belinda couldn’t stand the change in me and our romance had come to an end and left me with a broken heart, leading to my decision to come to Australia and leave all that behind me.

Now, circumstances had combined against me to bring my desire to be a female back to the forefront. Seeing them and admiring them was turning my world upside down again. My inner Joan was demanding to be released.

“You’re just like us,” exclaimed Kendra. “No wonder we sensed something different about you.”

“Why fight it?” Crystal asked. “You’ve got a home just waiting for you at Les Girls. You can be one of us. We’re always looking for new talent. You’ll fit right in.”

“But what about my job? What if I don’t go back? I’m not good-looking enough to be one of you. You two and the other girls are all beautiful.”

“The job? People go missing all the time. I came from Wagga Wagga and I doubt if anybody is looking for me. As long as I don’t get into trouble they won’t care, and I have no intention of going back. If you don’t try to leave the country neither will SMEC. They’ll just write you off as some sort of casualty. They’ve done without you for over two months now. Somebody will do your job and it’s a big country. What do you want, to be one of us or a wage slave with a broken heart?”

Kendra broke in. “Listen, you passed while you were in London, so you can do the same here. You’ve got nice regular features. We can amaze you with what we can do. You are pretty, you know? You’ll make a beautiful girl."

"Just let your hair down and give it a go.”

“I dunno,” I said, only half convinced.

I want to. I really do.

“Give it a chance. You don’t have to make your mind up now. Come to our place next Monday and we’ll give you a proper make-over. We guarantee, when you’ve seen yourself after we’ve finished with you, you won’t be able to resist.”

I spent the next week dithering. I knew there was no way I could be an engineer in Aussie society and be a girl at the same time. I was torn. I loved my work, but did I want to go back to Talbingo? Could I part with these wonderful girls? Sydney was my London now. I told myself I was still undecided and went to the club and confirmed that I would go to their apartment on Monday. The fateful day arrived and at three in the afternoon I turned up on their doorstep, full of trepidation.

They let me in and got ready to work on me. I knew the drill, having done this numerous times. Soon I was stripped and showered and scented. As soon as I was in the underwear that they provided me I was a goner. The more girly things that they dressed me in the more helpless I became to resist. “Joan” resumed centre stage and by the time they had done my make-up and fixed my wig nearly all traces of John just disappeared.

“Well, what do you say?”

“Thanks, I think.”

“Don’t you feel better like this?”

I had to admit that I did. The girl in me had been bottled up for far too long. “But where will I live, and what will I do for a living?” I protested weakly.

“Go and get your gear from the hostel and come here and stay with us. We’ve got a spare bedroom. Next week, you’ll start at Les Girls on Tuesday. It’s all arranged. We knew you wouldn’t be able to resist. You won’t be up on stage yet, but you can do the table service, hob-nobbing with the customers. You’ve seen enough of that to know how to do it. You’ll just change sides. There’s one downside though, you’ll have to drink cold tea.”

They fell about, laughing.

“And your new name is Jana.”

I’d come halfway round the world to find myself.