Before long, Dan began regularly attending church-organised dances, where he enjoyed lighthearted flirtations with girls and camaraderie with mates. It was during this period that Dan competed in the annual tango competition. When selecting his partner, he didn’t, as one might expect, choose a romantic prospect. Instead, he asked a woman twice his age, with whom he had already danced multiple times. They had already established chemistry as a duo—a chemistry that the judges recognised when they awarded the unlikely pair first place. While there was no silverware for the winners, for many years Dan kept his pointy leather shoes as a souvenir of the victory.

At this time the thought of marriage was still a distant, happily ignored prospect. His mother, however, watched on nervously from afar, disapproving when she heard reports of Dan mingling with ‘lower-class’ girls. Of course, she never hesitated to voice her concerns.

By 1957, Dan had established friendships that extended beyond the office, including one with a man who worked at the docks—a friendship that would soon prove invaluable. This friend really proved his worth when he introduced Dan to some of his friends, namely a couple of  ‘gorgeous’ nurses working in a cancer hospital a few miles from the boarding house.

It was through these nurses that Dan was able to score tickets to the Times of India’s famous 1958 Christmas ball—a British-run newspaper’s highly anticipated event that brought together people from all walks of life. At Dan’s table alone sat nurses, a dockworker, a computer technician, and a family.

Dan focused on one of the nurses in particular. She was pretty and, by all appearances, the model nurse: charitable, hard-working, and kind as can be. Dan found her decency to be a breath of fresh air. She didn’t wear any make-up and seemed to only know how to speak truthfully, without exaggeration or ₹100 words. Her name was Daphne Browne, and as it happened her family was from the Kolar Gold Fields—an industrial area just sixty miles from where Dan was born. To Daphne’s astonishment, Dan knew the place well. He had attended many of their functions held for the workers who lived there (including the prizewinning tango night). He had made friends who would accommodate him when he visited, and they were able to piece together a few mutual friends.

In fact, fate had eluded them on other occasions too, namely when Dan was in the Air Force and every Saturday he and his friends would visit the nurse’s lounge in Bangalore, where Daphne was doing her training. There, someone would play the piano while trainees in uniform paired up for ballroom practice.

Naturally, there was shared disappointment over these close encounters and the proof that providence had kept them apart for reasons that might’ve seemed cruel to two young hearts. But as the night progressed and the band got going, the two of them headed to the dancefloor. Fresh off his tango triumph and his experiences in dancing with women of her profession, Dan was feeling prepared, if not quietly confident. But his classical style didn’t synchronise too well with Daphne’s, on account of her preference for jive—a looser, skirt-twirling dance inspired by the new wave of rock ‘n’ roll coming from the US. At the time jiving was dismissed by some as vulgar, but Daphne had a way of making it seem as graceful as any of the dignified dances. Each bringing their own flair to the floor, Dan and Daphne had a blast creating a fusion between the two clashing styles.

And then there was Uncle Pete.

One of the most vivid memories of her childhood is preparing the house for the return of Uncle Pete. His conscripted service in WW2 meant that the two were more or less strangers for her first five years. Sarah slaved away for weeks to convert the balcony into his bedroom, where he would live until he found his feet in Melbourne. She put up walls, installed a bed and desk, and, with little Rita’s help, painted the room green. 

Throughout her childhood Rita had been seeing soldiers everywhere in Melbourne. They enchanted her: tall, handsome figures, always bearing exotic trinkets and gadgets from their faraway travels—without whom, she thought, Melbourne would’ve seemed quite drab. And so, at the moment she spied Uncle Pete’s air-force blue figure emerge through the frosted glass she grew giddy in anticipation. He was holding a matching blue case. Rita remembers fixating on what was in there: What goodies could he have brought with him from the other side of the world? After the hugs, kisses and necessary pleasantries had been exchanged, Uncle Pete presented his treasures to the family: embroidered tablecloths, ornate candles and mother of pearl. For Rita, and maybe even a few of the younger aunts, this was the first clue into what in those days was euphamstically described as a queerness in Pete’s character. 

During the war he was stationed in Malaysia. He was in the same room as dear friends when they were killed with bayonets. He never truly recovered from this. He considered himself stupidly lucky not to have joined them. When he was staying with Sarah and Rita he’d often wake up in the middle of the night screaming in terror. Because of his makeshift bedroom being on the balcony, Rita could see her uncle through her bedroom window. She would watch as her mother came into his room, placed his head on her lap and ran her fingers through his hair until he fell back asleep.

Australia in the 1950s was a sectarian battleground. The community was almost entirely divided between Protestants and Catholics—Proddies and Tykes. We belonged to the latter camp, subject to all the prejudices that came with it. Dad was quite serious about it, insisting that we receive a proper Catholic education, despite the fact that secular schooling was free. As a family we were good Catholics. And apart from me, pretty well everyone stayed that way. Every Sunday the Thompson clan occupied a whole pew at Mass. In those pre-Vatican II days, women still covered their heads in church. Mum decked us girls out, straw hats in the summer, berets and bowlers in the winter. I particularly disliked the preppy blue bowler. My, how I hated that hat. It was enough to make anyone question their faith.

Memories of my primary school days at Genazzano are fragmentary. I traipsed with my older sisters along the avenue of dark cypress trees from Cotham Road, joining the throngs of girls lining up outside for morning assembly. I think I can smell the memories better than I can see them. The path to the cloakrooms passed a gulley that stank of fat and dishwashing muck. The air of the cloakrooms themselves mingled with odours of wet wool, dirty laundry, apple and banana skins and sandwich crusts, all composting in hidden corners. 

In 1948 I began at Sacré Cœur as a boarder, joining my two older sisters, Annie and Nancy. Generally speaking, Catholic schools went about the moulding of young minds with much severity. The nuns were unsmiling, strict and utterly inflexible in their beliefs, making for a pretty austere learning environment. Nevertheless, from an early age I learned how to think independently; and it didn’t take long for me to decide that I couldn’t believe in miracles like the virgin birth and other things that defied the natural order. The convent routine was regimented and never changed. Up early for chapel, bland breakfast - a slice of white bread, milky tea - then classes all day, interrupted by morning milk and lunch. The milk was provided by the government. It often sat in crates in the sun until morning break and, once sipped, had the tendency of retrieving one’s breakfast. One Lent I had the bright idea of giving up milk and sugar. (A big sacrifice back then!) A few other girls joined me. From then on the non-milkers were supplied with black, unsweetened tea brewed separately in a small pot. I enjoyed it then, especially as it bore the tang of a minor triumph against the nuns. I still take my tea black. After classes we were turned out to play rounders or tennis until supper (more white bread and tea) followed by homework until bed. There was no deviation from this regime unless it was the Feast of the Sacred Heart, in which case we attended chapel twice for special prayers. At school the nuns were enveloped in a solemn black habit from head to toe. In that medieval garb they seemed totally alien to me, totally unsympathetic to my fears and emotional needs.

There were other, more serious incidents of rebellion. In our neighborhood, there was a huge Billboard of a denim-clad Sriram Panda sitting on a motorbike smoking a Cavanders cigarette. He was one of the coolest actors going around in the 80s—girls wanted to be with him, guys wanted to be like him. So one day, two friends and I went out to buy some cigarettes. When we reached the store, the shopkeeper recognised us and asked who they were for. ‘My brother-in-law,’ I lied. It worked. I shoved them in my pocket and we headed straight to our hangout behind the girls’ high school. I lit the cigarette and took a puff. I choked, coughed and tears streamed down my cheeks. My friends then tried. Same results: choke, cough, tears. After finally recovering from our collective coughing fit, we decided to ditch the cigarette and head home. When I walked in the door, the whole family was staring at me, daggers in their eyes. Can they smell it on me?! I thought. It didn’t take long for the truth to come out: a neighbor had spotted us in the shop. And if that wasn’t enough, he actually followed us to the girls’ school and witnessed us smoke it. It’s true what they say: ‘It takes a village to raise a child’.

Nana and Pa helped Dad buy the block of land behind us. The new land was turned into a huge chook run, replete with hen houses and laying boxes. The eggs were routinely collected and taken to St Vincent’s Hospital as part of Dad’s war effort. Several times a year the rat-catcher came to flush out the rats under the shed who were eating the eggs. He pumped poison gas into their holes and out they would flee, only to be pounced upon by a fleet of fox terriers. The rats didn’t stand a chance. I couldn’t help but watch it all unfold. Occasionally a new cheeping box of hatchlings would arrive. I remember looking inside and being delighted to see the mass of yellow fluff, all chatting to one other. To keep them warm Mum hung a lightbulb over the box. They had been sexed so as to ensure we were only getting hens. Occasionally, however, a rooster would get through. It was rather gruesome work when Dad lopped off their heads with his tomahawk. I wasn’t supposed to watch but I did. He then dipped the body in a bucket of boiling water to soften the feathers for plucking. When the chook reappeared at Sunday roast I quickly forgot all about the horror. That was a credit to mum’s cooking. On special occasions she made an upside-down cake for dessert. Despite the rations our family had a good supply of fresh food from the garden—plenty of eggs, plenty of veggies.  The layout of the garden was typical for that time: beds of small flowering trees and shrubs ran along the edges of the property. Out the back was a sizeable veggie patch tended to by Toby, a WWI veteran who lived in a small room below the garage. Toby chopped wood for the stove and looked after the many chooks who, like him, were relegated to the farthest reaches of the garden. I loved hanging out with him. He wheeled me around in the wheelbarrow with the tools and garden trimmings, teaching me the names of all the plants and trees—lemon, peppercorn, apple, deodar, pear, liquid amber… Around the back resided a dense cluster of hydrangeas. It was there, tucked against a side wall, that Toby hid his little bottle of hooch.

In Fred’s case, his entire character was something he had carefully cultivated, like a gardener tends to a rosebush. He carried the old-world airs of a born aristocrat. From the moment he met Cate, he observed out-of-vogue pleasantries such as standing up when she left the room, pulling out her chair for her, or opening her passenger door before he entered the car. He did these things not with flamboyance but the affect that such behaviour came naturally to him. And so, while the fatness of one’s wallet never defines a character, how one behaves with plenished pockets speaks volumes of it.

For Fred Prendegast, wealth was a coat which, for his entire adult life, he refused to take off; a coat which he pretended he’d always had, which he’d inherited from his father. You see, according to Fred, in the club of the elite, there was shame to be had for those who had only recently come into fortune, as though the scent of poverty or manual labour needed to be so distant, so far back along the ancestral line, that its only traces laid in the medieval -smith to a surname, or a scythe in a family crest. Of course, it was a silly idea, but Fred felt the stench of new money on his skin, a stench which he scrubbed furiously by surrounding himself with showy cars and grand houses, and which he perfumed abundantly with his habit of sending expensive champagne to the tables of distant associates. For that reason he personified a strange paradox, blending gentlemanly politesse with vulgar expressions of wealth. Nevertheless, through these acts wealth became an inextricable part of Fred. It was in the deliberateness of his gait, the certainty of his smile, or even those tiny gestures – pulling out his wife’s chair, opening her car door – all of which he performed luxuriating in an unmistakable atmosphere of money.

But it wasn’t faith, tradition or a timid obedience that kept Nanna Jo from moral deviation, but an incorruptible virtue, a boundless kindness that asked for no reciprocity or thanks. When people spoke, Nanna listened, savouring every detail so that when they returned, maybe three months later, she could resume a conversation as though it happened yesterday. ‘And so how was that dinner with Julie? Did you end up wearing that green dress your mother bought you?’

While her appetite for work was immense, her dedication to cleanliness severe, it was little Nanna Jo who unintentionally created the whimsy of Castlemaine for young Anna. Every day, she’d head out the backdoor with her basket and, like some fairy godmother, return with a haul of carrots, beans, potatoes and so on; ingredients to be deposited in her ever-simmering cauldron of soup and served among loved-ones throughout the day. Even the linen that would dance on the line, or the beds that always bore the scent of fresh lemons, seemed the result of some fantastical spell cast upon the entire property. It was thankless, constant work, Anna now knows, but work never substantiated by sweat, sighs or any cries of injustice. Rather, her ceaseless toil was always soundtracked by some faint, cheery song, so that, to a passing observer, Nanna Jo seemed utterly unfazed by her place in the ecology of that little cottage.

The only time Anna remembers Nanna Jo pausing for breath was when she sat at the piano in the afternoon. At this hour, Anna was usually down by the creek with her cousins, playing by the willows where Nanna’s faint songs would reach her in a whisper, carried across the sun-raked fields and past the browsing cattle by a wind no doubt commanded by Nanna herself. She seemed so unburdened by her perennial drudgery, and had emerged so energised from raising eight kids in relentless poverty, that Nanna Jo was, to young Anna, a model of purity. She wasn’t so much angelic (for washing, scrubbing and step-scalding hardly seemed like tasks befitting an angel) but saintly, as though Nanna’s behaviour on earth transcended that of her peers, and recognition and reward justifiably awaited her somewhere down the line.