My Windows, My Views ... My Life and Travels: Stories from a Long Life Well-Lived

By Barbara McCarthy

As a child of a British air force family, Barbara was troubled by the absence of a stable home-life, a difficult relationship with her father, and too many school changes to have a traditional education or make connections and friends. Her fragmented early life became so entrenched in her being that even as an independent adult in Australia, moving and travelling became her life-style, continually leaving relationships, homes and life behind her. With the realisation that she had a story to tell of her survival, of her achievements and successes over a long life, with more than a few missteps along the way, as well as some amazing travels, Barbara began to write her story. In the telling she uncovered layers of herself and her life that had once left her wondering ‘who am I, really?’ She discovered who she is - and that there was a happier side to her story too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Aug 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669830542

Book preview

Contents

Preface

Part One

First Thoughts

About My Big Brother

Marriage—The Early Days

So Who Am I Really?

My Early Years: Stone, Staffordshire

Raf Harrogate, Yorkshire

En Route For The Far East

Raf Drigh Road And Karachi Grammar School

On Leave From Pakistan

Nanna’s House: Stockton-On-Tees, County Durham

My Birth And Survival

Raf Warton, Lancashire

Lake Road, Ansdell, Lancashire

Raf Wildenrath, West Germany

Raf Bircham Newton—Near King’s Lynn, Norfolk

Raf Kirton-In-Lindsey, Lincolnshire

Beaconsfield, Near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire

Aden, South Yemen

Fun In The Sun

Combe Martin, North Devon, On The Way To London

Lee Green: South East London

Rippon Hall Farm—And Apple Picking

St Helier Hospital, Carshalton, Surrey

Part Two

Difficult Times

More Big Decisions

Getting There

Frankston, Victoria And Gould Street

Frankston To Mt. Eliza And Midwifery

A Great Many Changes

Prahran Via Frankston

About Moving And York Street, Prahran

And What’s More . . .

Abbotsford—Not A Village

Kyneton And Tylden

Cowes, Philip Island

Three Big Life Events Down And More To Follow

And Last But Not Least . . .

Part Three

Early Lessons In Holiday Planning

Karachi Reverie

Blackpool, Lancashire

Europe Tripping

The Lake District

Cummango Homestead

Mildura, Victoria

Mombasa, Kenya

China At A Glance

Kirkcudbright

Japanese Idyll

Yamba

Cruising

Hoi An, Motorcycles And Vietnam

Queensland And Surfers Paradise

To Bali—With Love

Travelling Solo

Preface

It seems to me that I have written all my life: newsletters, policy and procedure manuals, newspaper articles, information booklets for new mothers and radio presenters, and film reviews, but I have never written for myself—until now, that is.

My story (My Windows, My Views) is not just an autobiography or memoir but also a historical account of 76 years of a full and eventful life. There are stories of travel with my Royal Air Force family—there are word pictures of my early English life, of Pakistan and Aden in the 1950s and 1960s, and of my own coming of age. It is also the story of periodic family dysfunction and sadnesses that happened along the way. It was as raw and personal for me to write as it is for others to read. This is an adult book.

There is commentary about many cultures, interesting people, and my family included in my writing, but most of all, this is the truth of a life’s journey which I have survived, despite many missteps along the way.

I began my story by asking, ‘Who am I?’ (which became an early working title). I seemed to have had so many reinventions of my life that I became uncertain about my true identity. I asked myself the question and answered it myself as I wrote, allowing my memories to direct the narrative.

There are few really happy stories in the first two parts of my book, so I wrote a third part—tales of travels from my life—as an addendum. Part 3 is in a different writing style and more satirical. It was also much more fun to write.

My whole story is attached here for you. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Yours sincerely,

Barbara McCarthy

The moving finger writes; and having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

I WILL JUST TELL THE WHOLE STORY, my own story, in my own voice, with recollections put to paper as they come into my mind. My memories will just pour on to the page, or they may not. However, there are many fleeting small memories creeping into my mind before I even start, which are impossible to ignore, because isn’t it also the minutiae in life, the incidental happenings, that helps makes up who and what we are and who we eventually become? There are so many things I want you to know about me and what I want to understand about myself in the telling.

I am slightly anxious at wounding others by my introspective reflections as I look through the windows of my life, but these are totally my own memories and my own views, thoughts, and feelings, and I can say with sincerity that I am not pointing a finger at anyone, nor recriminating, blaming, or intending to offend. Nonetheless, I have no doubt that some of my disclosures might surprise some readers.

I have reached out to counsellors occasionally in my life—at times when I have felt that I could not find in myself ways to negotiate the steps to overcome a problem. Invariably, in these soul-searching sessions I have been asked questions, by diligent therapists, about my past, about my place in the family, about my siblings, and most particularly, about my relationship with my parents. I have not ever wanted to go too far into those thoughts, not even on my own and in reflective mood; delving into past memories has often left me with a sense of sadness, of discomfort even, but in the safety of my advancing years and with the freedom to tell all about myself, I will allow my memories to surface as they will, and I will write it here.

Part One

FIRST THOUGHTS

I REMEMBER SOME HAPPY TIMES in my childhood, but I have no clear memory of being warmly hugged, and certainly not by my father. He was never comfortably demonstrative and certainly did not initiate closeness—we were not like that as a family. We were British, and so I thought for a long time in my early childhood that it was normal not to display open affection. If our early life experiences teach us about closeness and connectedness, then it is no wonder that I have never been demonstratively affectionate, and often not easy to emotionally connect with, either.

Because of my position in the family, as oldest daughter of six children—four boys and two girls—my understanding of our family life and times is different from that of my younger brothers and sister. The father they knew as they were growing up had been rounded off over time, and I saw that he was closer with them, more caring, than he had been with my older brother and me; also my mother became less emotional, calmer, and more philosophically accepting of her lot in life as she grew older.

I have no doubt that my mother loved my father; she was certainly always loyal to him, although she was treated badly by him at times. His lack of concern at leaving her alone and unsupported so often as he pursued his own interests both hurt and angered her, and she showed it. She was quite a fragile soul emotionally, and physically fragile too later in her life, and his abuse of her when he had been drinking to excess was unforgivable—whisky in particular made him an ugly drunk.

I was witness to many of their alcohol-fuelled scenes, and once, when I was a teenager, my mother screamed for me to help her as she cowered in her chair under his threatening bulk. I was frightened to get between them, fearing that he would turn on me too, but I did intervene, using my fists on his back to get him off her before shakily retreating upstairs to my bedroom and shutting the door behind me with my heart pounding. This was just one of many instances when no discussion, apology, or explanation followed, and no reference was ever made to this incident that troubled me greatly.

In the last year of her life, my father fractured my mother’s ribs in an argument which she told me about but I didn’t witness. When she described it, I recognised that this assault wasn’t one of their major fights, not a violent attack like I had seen before—on this occasion, he seems to have just pushed her in some trivial quarrel about the smell of garlic on her breath, but her ribs had fractured very easily. In hindsight, this was most probably due to secondaries in the bone from an undiagnosed lung cancer that I hadn’t suspected was progressing so rapidly. I was not surprised by the lung cancer (she was a lifelong smoker), but I was still saddened when she told me she had coughed up blood when she was on holiday in England and I was upset that she would not go to a doctor until just six weeks before she died. She was only 65.

After each of their altercations, their rows, Mother forgave Father always, outwardly at least, and then they reunited behind closed doors and that was the end of it for them, but not for me.

I don’t know quite what I wanted as a child. Just to be acknowledged as a thoughtful, sensitive person perhaps might have been enough, but mostly I think I wanted the warm feeling of inclusion, the group hug, the feeling of being loved for myself, not just for being a helpful daughter—and I wanted to be listened to, and my views heard and acknowledged. Is that what every child wants? Is that what every child needs? Isn’t that what every child deserves?

I had a clear image of the family group I wanted to be part of. I saw it in other families, I saw it in films and read about it in my books—pictures of a different kind of family, where arguments were not part and parcel of everyday life, creating anxiety and solitary retreat, which often brought tears to my eyes as I recognised what I did not have.

There was an often-used expression in our household of walking on eggshells, being careful what one said or did, not to push boundaries so as not to incite or provoke fights. I am not sure whether it applied to just my mother and was said by my father, or the other way around, but I know I spent my teenage years particularly, walking on eggshells around my father, often wounded by the way he spoke to me and his lack of understanding and apparent indifference to my feelings over many issues. As my story unfolds in my mind, it is clear that I spent much of my life as an adult walking on eggshells in personal relationships too, though I didn’t realise this at the time.

I was closer to my mother than my father, although she was also sometimes imperfect in my judging young eyes. She and I could laugh together often to the point of tears for both of us. She rather liked me, I believe, and we definitely shared the same sense of humour, but I see that she wasn’t my ally or my advocate in the difficult relationship I had with my father and she kept her silence when she could have intervened.

Mother liked the help I gave her with the other children, of course, and she could depend on me; later she liked my nursing knowledge, and she encouraged me to be a working mother, although she never was one herself. Her self-esteem was easily shaken, her self-confidence easily undermined, but by most standards of womanhood in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, she could be considered to have had a very successful life. Sadly, in her later years she just stayed home and didn’t expose herself to life’s challenges at all. She once applied for a volunteer job in a community-advice centre and was knocked back. She never applied for anything ever again.

My mother could be flirtatious, and she liked the company of men and they liked her—she had self-assurance sometimes, obviously. One memory I have, as a 5-year-old in Pakistan, is of her outrageous behaviour after social drinking at a farewell party on board a ship which was returning to the UK. I felt embarrassment for her, and for me, as the other guests in the cabin looked on as she cuddled with a man sitting on one of the bunks, and I remember my father’s seething fury at her behaviour. I feigned sleep in the jeep on our way back to our house on Drigh Road, Karachi, with our driver, to avoid the impending repercussions of yet another loud and distressing argument between them.

ABOUT MY BIG BROTHER

DURING MY FIRST VISIT TO THE UK AFTER MANY YEARS, I saw my oldest brother Peter in Blackpool, and he and I were able to spend time talking about some of our shared memories. He reminded me of my fears and how disturbed I had been about my father’s behaviour, events I had divulged to him when he spent his boarding-school holidays with us in Germany when I was 10 years old. When we finally talked about these incidents, I was 58 years of age, and he was 62. It was a very long time not to talk about these things, and I thought he had forgotten, but I had not, and I was so pleased to know that he had not either.

Peter, when he was with his own family, never seemed to talk deeply about anything. They played board games and laughed a lot, walked up and down hills and went camping. His wife, Berny, didn’t like our family very much; she criticised everyone and misunderstand everything that was said to her by any of us. She derided my mother always and warned Peter that I would look just like her when they came to pick me up from the station on this visit. Actually, he told me, he was relieved to see that although there were some similar features, I did not look like her! Berny’s intense dislike of Mother was because on a rare visit my parents had with them at their home, Mother had said that the spread of food Berny had on offer was ‘just like the mess’! This was fine praise from my mother, who had enjoyed culinary excellence in many an officers’ mess and not ‘a mess’ as Berny had interpreted it. Seemingly a very ordinary misunderstanding but as big as mountains to overcome, and Berny never forgave her.

I always wondered what stopped my brother from defending his mother, his parents, his family, in all those years. When we met and shared our stories, he was obviously still upset by past issues, still questioning why he was sent home to England from Pakistan to go to school, and why financial assistance from his father was withdrawn when he was at university. Peter was cut out of my father’s final will too, supposedly because he refused to come to Australia to see his mother, before she died. Through the generosity of Father’s executors, Peter was included again, and although it was not a huge sum by any standards, he received what we all did (less some paltry loan amounts). Peter never knew about his non-inclusion, and I never told him; I think his hurt would have been even greater had I done so, and he didn’t need to know.

I just once expressed an emotional feeling to my father. He had been on an overseas trip to England after my mother died, and he suffered an angina attack which worried the family greatly. Meeting him when he returned, I took his hand as we were walking from the airport and told him quietly that I loved him. He told my siblings about this, and to this day, I feel it was somehow disloyal of him to tell them about this private moment. I realise he was probably surprised by it, and it even seems odd to me now that I said this to him at all, let alone say something so out of character for me. I think that I also thought that this was a life-threatening situation for him and wanted to make my peace with him.

When he died at 81 years of age, remaining conscious and lucid throughout his last hours in spite of his end-stage renal failure, five of his children were with him—his Australian contingent. We made sure he was warmly supported and comforted, and we gave him a fine wake too at his youngest son’s house.

He was not always a nice man, in my view, but as a mannerly British officer to the end, he apologised to us for taking so long.

MARRIAGE—the Early Days

I NEVER MEANT TO GET MARRIED IN 1969. I was only 23 years old. I was establishing my career in nursing and looking forward to the future in a new country. Or, I wonder now, was I really?

I had thought I might return to England after a year or so to do my training as a district midwife and felt a pang of guilt that I was coming to Australia as a ten-pound Pom while harbouring the intention of going back home in the near future.

I cried all the way to Singapore on the plane, but I wasn’t crying because I had left my fiancé behind. I deep-down knew that was a good thing—easier to go to Australia to see my family than to tell him I didn’t think our relationship would work. I was crying because I didn’t know what lay ahead, the uncertainty of a life in another country and reuniting with my family was a daunting prospect after so long.

Alan and I were supposed to be engaged, but we had been on and off for some time. We were not compatible and I knew it, and I am sure he knew it too. His friends made fun of my ‘posh’ English accent and my middle-class English ways (more later on this), and although what they said about me was sometimes quite funny and I laughed along, I still knew that I was not respected by him or them.

After I had been in Melbourne a couple of months, Alan wrote to say he was coming to Australia, if my family would sponsor him. I should have said a categorical no! to his request then. But he came, and I can’t begin to explain what then prompted me to agree to marry him. Did I feel sorry for him because his mother had just died? Would I teach him to treat me the way I wanted to be treated? I knew there were problems in the relationship. Did I think they would be resolved by being married? How silly I was, but also, in hindsight, so very, very young.

So we got