The Jillaroo. Part 4 Love and Devotion

We married in Broken Hill with just close family with us. I had flown to his home to pick up his two brothers and had arranged for a friend to fly them home again.

The wedding party was at the Musicians Club and was an open house for all our friends in the Hill. It was a curious mixture of Mums’ school chums, mine, the bike crowd and the flying crowd. I was not sure what Steves’ brothers thought of it all as it got a bit raucous and they were somewhat straight-laced. When we left for our honeymoon we had a night in a local hotel before heading to the airport to fly the Cessna south. We put down at Parafield and took our hired car to the seaside where we just relaxed and enjoyed our own company.

One day we were walking on the beach and he said “Almost the first words you said to me was whether I was OK about adopting, were you serious?” “Of course I was” I answered “I said nothing that night I didn’t mean.” So we made an appointment to see an adoption agency the next day. We sat and answered all their questions and as they realised how much we could give an adopted child and the strength of our resources, they were keen to put us on their list. Just before we finished one of the ladies in the office asked “You wouldn’t consider more than one child, would you? There is a set of triplets in care that lost their parents in a car crash and no-one from the family wants to take them on. They may have to be split up.”

I looked at him and he looked at me and we both smiled. We went to see the babies at the care home and immediately fell hopelessly in love with them. It would take some weeks for all the paperwork to be sorted out so we would have to come back for them with a vehicle as I am sure that a light plane trip would not be good for them.

While we were in Adelaide we went around the car dealerships to find something better that the rattly old Land Rovers we had. We organised a deal where we would bring down a couple of the better old ones from the station and purchased a pair of Series 2 long-wheel-base Station Wagons. When we took one out for a test ride on dirt roads south of Adelaide it was like driving a normal car, the ride was so much less choppy than the old short ones we had.

When we flew home again we got stuck into decorating a couple of rooms for the children, one smaller one that the boy would have and a larger one the two girls would share until they got bigger. My mother was over the moon at the prospect of grand-children and helped us paint the walls. We flew down to the Hill and got ourselves some supplies – cots, blankets, stuffed toys, bottles and nappies. It seemed like ages before we were contacted that the babies could be picked up and my mother drove one Landie while I drove the other down to Adelaide, taking a couple of days to do it as she was not used to long distances.

It was her first time this far from home so I had a couple of days showing her around and picking up our two new vehicles before we picked up the babies. She was immediately into grannie mode and took charge of one of the girls while I took care of the other two. We had them in baby baskets and had enough supplies for a few days so checked out of our motel and headed back home, this time via Mildura as it broke the trip up nicely for the children. In Mildura we stayed for two nights as neither of us had been there before.

While walking around we came upon a Honda motorcycle dealer and was amazed to see them with bikes we could use on the station. I test rode a CL77 bike and handled it easily as it was far lighter than the Matchless bikes as well has having much more clearance. We organised for four, plus spare parts, to be trucked up to the station. The guys were going to be pleased when they arrived.

When we got the children home they were welcomed with lots of hugs and kisses and they seemed to enjoy it, although I think that they were a bit put out by all these strangers. They had already been christened so we kept their first names – Alex, Samantha and Sonya. We got them registered in Broken Hill and signed on to join the School of the Air as soon as they could. Over the years they grew and thrived, Alex following Steve around like a shadow and soaking up the running of the station. He would love to go out with the men, sitting in the cab of the Blitz or up front in one of the Landies, and we could all see that he would be taking over the reins as soon as he was able. The girls learned all they could about sewing and cooking but would also get out with the muster and both loved animals.

By the time they were five they were really lovely children and Steve and I felt blessed to have been able to give them a future. We made sure to tell them that we were not their birth parents and when they were eight I flew them to Adelaide to visit the grave of their real ones. It was not as harrowing as I thought it would be but they did get a sense of where they were in their life. They all did well with their schooling, they all could ride a horse and Alex had even tried to ride one of the bikes but couldn’t reach the foot controls. They were ten when my mother fell ill with problems with her lungs. It must have been hereditary as her parents had both gone a couple of years earlier from complications with pneumonia. We all wished her good health but she passed away in the Broken Hill Hospital in 1975. We laid her to rest next to her parents.

Steve and I got on with running the station. We had done all we could to streamline the cattle business, graded good roads to the muster yards so the cattle trucks had an easy ride, added some more Hondas, this time XL250’s and three XL100’s for the children; and had spent many hours at the wheel of our new tractor contouring the low hills so that we could plant the Bermuda Grass. You need to contour with furrows that stop water from flowing away. This is especially needed in our country as we averaged less than ten inches of rain a year. Parts of the station were now looking quite green.

When the children finished school we needed to let them do what they wanted, so Alex ended up taking the course at Roseworthy, following in his mothers’ footsteps. I flew him down and we bought him a second-hand car to use while he was there. Of the two girls, Samantha wanted to go to University to study the Arts so she was enrolled in Adelaide and both girls were set up in a flat there as Sonya wanted to study nursing at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Eventually Alex returned home with his girl-friend, a lot of new knowledge and a pilots’ license. Both of our daughters found themselves fellows. Alex married Jacquie in Broken Hill and moved into the main bedroom at the station while Steve and I moved to the old room my grand-parents used to sleep in. Samantha got involved with a lecturer she had met at a seminar and moved to his house in Adelaide. They were married and it is in their grannie flat that I now lay in my bed in the sun.

Sonya was the surprise as she finished her nursing studies but then met a musician in a band that was playing in Adelaide. She left her nursing job and went off to sing with the band, becoming quite well known. She brought him up to the station once and he really couldn’t get with the whole scene, being very happy to get back to the bright lights and crowds.

Steve and I now had time to enjoy a bit of relaxation and we spent many happy times flying to various places around Australia, soaking up sunshine and swimming in a variety of places. The old Cessna had done well but we had traded it in on a new 340A in 1978. It was odd not having the wing above you but the extra engine felt a lot safer. It was also somewhat bigger. We got ourselves passports and did a trip to the UK, as well as several to New Zealand as we both loved the South Island.

Sadly, life is never as easy as it should be and Steve fell ill with cancer again, this time it started in his bowel but had already spread to his liver. He lasted another year and died in 1996. I was thankful that we had thirty wonderful years together but needed to be helped by my children as we laid him in the family plot at the station he so loved.

I was still able to carry my own load at the station but I was slowly moved aside by family and the hired help. Jacquie had given birth to twin boys and the running of Kangaranga was assured into the future. I was sent down to an Aged Care Home in Adelaide to live out my life with my thoughts and my books. However, Samantha was appalled at the way they treated the inmates (as she called us) and insisted that I move into a grannie flat behind their house. Here I had the joy of interacting with her three children, getting well cooked meals and not being woken by others calling out in the night. I had to have a nurse in to see me every day as my lungs were going the same way as my mothers.

I wondered, as I felt the sun on my face, whether I would have done anything differently over my seventy years had I actually had been born a girl, or even, what would have happened had my mother accepted that I was actually a boy. I suppose one can ponder but the truth would never be made known.

My life had been a full one and Steve had been a wonderful companion. I had loved him so much and I was just drifting off to sleep when I was sure I heard his voice calling to me to join him as I slid, smiling, into oblivion.

The end.

Marianne G 2020.