Growing Up in Country Australia

Growing Up in Country Australia is collection of essays by Australian authors which was edited by Rick Morton and published by Black Inc. Other books in this set include Growing Up Asian, Growing Up Aboriginal, Growing Up African, Growing Up Queer and Growing Up Disabled in Australia, also Growing Up in Australia which I read and reviewed earlier this year.

The authors of the essays in this latest collection all shared the experience of growing up in regional areas, however that’s where the similarities in their upbringings ended. Australia is geographically a large country and there are many, many versions of what it is like for somebody to grow up in the country.

Reading Mousepocalypse by Annabel Crabb made me shudder. The realities of the author’s experience of her family living through a mouse plague in the Adelaide Plains while being advised by PETA spokespeople to humanely trap and release the mice elsewhere was laughable. I spent a week on a farm near Yass around 40 years ago while a mouse plague was occurring and will never forget the smell, or the piles of dead mice that were as high as the farmhouse.

Grafton’s Derry Queen by Bridie Jabour reminded me what it was like to be part of community where other people ‘place’ you based on knowing your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. In this case, the author’s mother was a midwife who had delivered many of the district’s babies which meant that others went out of their way to help Bridie out, whether it was giving her a lift somewhere in the middle of the night or tipping generously at the restaurant where she waitressed.

Tony Anderson’s piece, titled Q&A discussed his trip to school on the school bus where the older, cool kids sat at the back of the bus, while younger kids and ‘dags’ sat at the front. Adelaide Greig also commented on the pecking order in the school bus in A Montage of Memories from the Country School Bus, while Edie Mitsuda wrote about the hazards of boys on the bus deciding she might be a suitable girlfriend for one of their number in Prawn.

My own memories of the school bus trip were generally happier. I sat somewhere in the middle with a friend and fondly remember decorating the school bus with paper chain at Christmas.

Territory by Holden Sheppard talked about growing up gay in an area where his options were limited and Pah Paw Pa by Youssef Saudie discussed his family life in Alice Springs as the child of Egyptian parents.

Lech Blaine described his upbringing growing up in a country pub in The Country Club. My dad didn’t drink and he used that if you didn’t drink with your son’s football coach your son would struggle to get a game. Worse than missing out on being picked for a football match, though, Blaine’s essay reminded me that country life is not always idyllic in that murders, assassinations and deaths from drug addiction also occur in the country, along with deaths caused by suicide.

My favourite essay in the collection was The Old Bushblock by Dorothea Pfaff. The author’s father had grown up in a Bavarian village, so bought a bush block when he came to Western Australia and spent years trying to grow pine trees on it to recreate a reminder of his beloved homeland.

The stories in this collection were as diverse as the authors and the places they grew up, but I’m still searching for a story of growing up in the country which is more similar to my own experience.

My purchase of Growing Up in Country Australia continues my New Year’s resolution for 2022 to buy a book by an Australian author during each month of this year (October).

I purchased this book from Rogers Newsagency in Warrnambool.