Some time ago, I was watching 60 Minutes with my three children.
“I used to work for 60 Minutes, you know,” I said casually.
My thirteen-year-old son replied cheerily, with a loving smile,
“You say that about everything, Mum.”
And that’s when I realised he was right.
I often tell my children things like, “I used to model with that actor” while watching a movie, or “I was on assignment with that CNN reporter” when trying to spark their interest in global affairs. I’ve even been known to shout, “I used to go out with that rock star!” when hollering for them to turn the music down.
I can see their eyes roll when I add, in passing, “I’ve been with those gorillas in the mist.”
And when Man vs Wild skydives out of an aeroplane: “I used to do that.”
Then, as Angelina Jolie drives through drought-stricken Africa in Beyond Borders, I can’t help myself:
“I’m still doing that.”
It’s not that my children don’t believe me. It’s just that most of it happened before their time.
When I asked them what they would say if someone asked what their mother did for a living, they shrugged and chimed together,
“I don’t know.”
So, my little babies - this blog is for you… and for anyone else who’s interested.
Thank goodness there was no Twitter, Facebook or blogging when I was a teenager
If my diaries are anything to go by, putting my teenage mind out there on Facebook would have caused endless grief.
I was thirteen when I first scribbled into a secret little book, its page borders gilded with gold and the words “Dear Diary” stamped on the front. Into it, I poured the thoughts of my young, vacillating, self-obsessed mind - much like kids do today on social media.
The only problem was that the only person who ever read my raw confessions was my mother. No matter where I hid my diaries, she knew my room better than I did. There was no such thing as passwords back then.
Today, I can’t see what’s being posted on my children’s Facebook pages - but almost the rest of the world can.
I also want to show my children that I, too, was once a teenager. That some things are timeless across generations: being obsessed with the opposite sex, and being perpetually annoyed with your parents, for starters.
Other things, of course, have changed beyond recognition - language, technology, the pace of life itself.
I hope my children and their friends will comment here, compare notes, and discuss the differences and similarities. I hope they won’t cringe too much with embarrassment, as they do when I laugh hysterically at my own jokes in front of their friends and pretend I’m cool.
And I hope other readers will add memories of their own.
A little background
My mother is a Dutch immigrant. My late father was Australian, from New England stock of long-ago Scottish descent.
After a few years living in London and Holland, my father stashed my elegant and beautiful mother away in the Blue Mountains, where I spent the rest of my childhood with my sister, Jenny.
I was School Captain at Blaxland Primary School. I then went on to Springwood High School, where life ticked over day after day, year after year—punctuated by drama, boredom, excitement, boys, our group, sport, study, and all the rituals of coming of age.
One day, I didn’t win the Miss Golden Girl of Netball competition, judged by model agent June Dally-Watkins. The competition involved submitting a photograph of oneself playing netball. In the photo of me, I looked utterly deformed- like I was free-falling horizontally at 230 kilometres an hour.
But my legs - blurry as they were - got me into the finals.
Then, on another day, after a childhood filled with happiness and harmony, my father announced he had fallen in love with someone not much older than me, who had two little boys, and that he was leaving us.
These two events - and growing up in what is now a UNESCO-listed World Heritage National Park—were the life-changing, character-forming moments of my teenage years.
My diaries became my best friend and confidant.
Although I lost a few important years, most of them survived—until just last year, when some suffered water damage.
The blog posts that follow are extracts from my teenage diaries, beginning in 1975.
