The Queensland Experiment: A Memoir of Childhood Uprooted
It was early 1977, the tail-end of a stinking hot Melbourne summer. My father's eyes gleamed as he pored over the newspaper. "There's a job at a rural town council in Queensland,” he announced. “They’re introducing natural gas.” I lounged by the radio, hanging on every word of the cricket commentary, and wondered if he was serious.
Dad's background made him a perfect fit, but it was his entrepreneurial spirit and experience in local politics that fuelled his enthusiasm. For him, it was a chance to spread his wings beyond a job that had become repetitive and pedestrian.
He was serious.
As the reality of our move sank in, our home became a whirlwind of activity. Goodbyes were said, some harder than others. I entrusted my beloved pet rabbit, Tiffany, to Steven, my best friend, extracting a solemn promise of care. Our house was sold; belongings Tetris-ed into a truck. The five of us — parents, younger brother and sister, and me — squeezed into our tiny Mazda, an air-conditioning-less car that had already carried us on numerous adventures across Australia.
As we set off on the two-day drive north, bound for a place I had never heard of, my body buzzed with excitement. The promise of the unknown lay ahead. We were explorers, embarking on our own Queensland expedition.
Pico Iyer wrote, "We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves." Little did I know how true those words would prove.
Our new home, a temporary arrangement provided by Dad’s employer, stood in profound isolation 20 minutes outside the rural centre. Perched beside the creek that flowed through town, the house seemed to exist in a world of its own. The only signs of life beyond us were occasional passing cars and farmers who would stop to open their property gates before disappearing into the vast landscape.
For those first few nights, I listened to unfamiliar sounds — the chorus of insects, the rustle of wind through unfamiliar trees. The darkness seemed deeper here, more absolute. In Melbourne, there had always been the comforting glow of streetlights, the distant hum of traffic. Here, the night pressed in on all sides, a tangible presence that unnerved me.
On moonlit nights, the looming tanks of the adjacent water treatment plant cast long shadows, a reminder of our unusual living situation. We soon learned of the house's unsettling history — the previous occupants had been poisoned by an issue with the water supply. This revelation added a tinge of unease to our new beginning, especially when townspeople learned where we lived, their faces flickering with discomfort.
Our new daily routine began with the school bus ride into town, a chance to mingle with other children away from our secluded home. But for Mum, left behind without a car, the isolation was oppressive. The remote surroundings left her feeling vulnerable, a stark contrast to the ordered suburban environment we'd left behind. After returning from school, my siblings and I found ourselves equally cut off from the wider world. Our sole connection was a black and white television that received only the ABC—a jarring change from the four channels we'd enjoyed in Melbourne.
Despite these challenges, there was a silver lining. Our new home offered freedom we'd never known in our suburban house. We encountered wildlife in unexpected places, like the frog that made its home in the toilet bowl. We revelled in the extra room to play and explore, even as we adjusted to the eerie quiet and the ominous presence of the water treatment plant.
Less than six weeks into the experiment, tragedy struck. My maternal grandfather passed away suddenly. Our parents rushed back for the funeral and we found ourselves in the care of a local family we'd grown close to.
Now living in town, we marvelled at our first experience of colour TV and basked in the warmth of a family that effortlessly embraced us. Their kindness acted as a buffer, softening the impact of our loss and our parents' absence.
When Mum and Dad returned we threw ourselves into the town's rhythm with renewed vigour, joining sporting clubs and restarting my music lessons. These activities became our anchors, tethering us more firmly to our adopted home with each passing day.
My first taste of Queensland education came at the Central School, one of two state primary schools. To my astonishment, I found myself thrust into the role of minor celebrity. The Stranger was an object of fascination, particularly among the girls in my year level. I practically had to fight them off during weekly square dancing classes. But I secretly enjoyed the attention and the butterflies in my stomach when we held hands.
Not everything was smooth sailing, however. Queensland's insistence on elaborate copperplate script left me floundering, my messy “Victorian Cursive Script” suddenly a liability. I struggled to adapt, motivated less by aesthetics and more by the need to avoid being marked down during spelling tests.
Just as I was finding my feet, we bought a house on the south side of town — carefully selected as the safest place in case of flooding — triggering a change in school.
While classes mirrored that of the Central School, the differences were eye-opening. For the first time, I witnessed kids walking to school barefoot, even during the crisp, chilly inland Queensland winters. It was here, too, that I interacted for the first time with Indigenous children, sharing playtimes and lessons. Missing, however, were the Greeks, Italians, Chinese and others from multicultural Melbourne.
But the glow of celebrity that had warmed my early days in town didn't follow me to the South School. Here, The Stranger became an outsider, subjected to teasing that morphed into relentless bullying. My enthusiasm in the classroom, once a point of pride, now painted a target on my back. A group of boys, equating academic achievement to a lack of masculinity, made it their mission to "toughen me up" through a campaign of mockery and physical intimidation. Playing soccer instead of rugby league only confirmed their crude assumptions.
The sting of their words and the bruises from their fists faded, but the experience left an indelible mark on my psyche. I found myself constantly trying to bridge two worlds—the world of academic achievement that had always been my refuge, and this new world where such achievements were viewed with suspicion. It was a tightrope walk of identity, trying to remain true to myself while navigating the fickle waters of peer pressure.
A year into the experiment, I detected a rhythm to country life that had been invisible to my suburban-trained eyes. This was most evident in the lives of my classmates from farming families.
Their stories of shiny new toys—BMX bikes, colour televisions, cutting-edge VCRs—sparked pangs of envy in me. But beneath the façade of these material possessions lay a deeper truth about rural existence. These were the good times, yes, but there was an unspoken understanding that lean years lurked just over the horizon. Drought, fire, flood—these were not distant threats but inevitabilities, as much a part of the landscape as the endless plains.
Unlike the predictable environment I had grown up in, these people farmed land that retained a wild edge. This constant dance with nature's moods shaped their lives in very practical ways. The boom-and-bust cycle wasn't just an economic reality; it was a philosophy, an essential facet of rural life.
Another year on, the end of our expedition came as abruptly as its beginning. Mum’s isolation from her family became too much to bear, and Dad’s job satisfaction diminished as certain promises were left unfulfilled. On a family trip to Melbourne during Queensland school holidays, my siblings found themselves re-enrolled in our old primary school, while I was thrust into the local high school. Once again, I was a stranger, albeit in a more familiar land—or so I thought.
Here, flirting with girls, not sport, was the favoured break pastime — something I was less accustomed to than my classmates. And wearing shorts was a certain trigger for a beating, so I grudgingly conformed, wearing long trousers all year round, including the baking Melbourne summers.
I was reunited with Steven, who confessed that Tiffany had escaped not long after we left. He had rehoused her in an aviary and the birds had taken a strong dislike to the fluffy white stranger. Like me, Tiffany found the outsider wasn't always warmly received. Unlike her, I couldn’t hop away, and adapted using the resilience built in the north, to eventually find my place.
My Queensland experiment ended long ago, but its impact endured — a testament to how even brief encounters with the unfamiliar can shape us in lasting ways.
Pico Iyer was right. That brief sojourn had given me a new understanding of who I could be. In losing and finding myself in Queensland, I had gained a perspective that would guide me through all the journeys yet to come.