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the road from all of these was the knitting shop, where you could also buy greetings cards. To the left of the T junction was my primary school and opposite there was an untidy vacant lot. I really loved the wildness of that piece of land. I trekked through it every day as a shortcut to school, and there were always surprises. The sticky, paspalum grass often brushed my legs and left me with a rash, but I didn’t care. There would be mysterious rustlings in the undergrowth, and sometimes I’d find a blue-tongued lizard sunning itself across my path. In February, overnight rain transformed the main track into a tiny water-filled gully, topped by soft, ochre mud that stuck to my school shoes. In spring, I might narrowly avoid stepping on a sly snake – they weren’t exactly benign creatures – which would set my heart racing. Even an innocent brush against a shrub might cause my skin to be invaded by a dangerous tick. Yes, I had good reason to be afraid, yet I was sad when it became a Total petrol garage.
    Next to the vacant lot was a sweet shop. That sweet shop was the sugary yin to the salty yang of the fish shop. I still love liquorice – there they had thin, coiled ropes of the stuff, and sherbet we ate from paper bags, white chocolate frogs and the squishy, white ‘milk bottles’ which I still think are heavenly. Even the school tuck shop had donuts. Yes, that’s where my sweet tooth came from. And, partly as a result, I’ve battled with my weight my whole life.
    Help me to understand exactly what you mean by that . . .
    Well, I really like the kind of food that’s not very good for you . . . Once I start eating, well, chocolate, marshmallows, jelly babies or ice cream, for example, it’s very hard to stop. Food definitely equals comfort for me, especially anything sweet with a soft, squishy texture—
    As if you’re cushioning yourself inside?
    Yes! Oh, I’m aware I use food for the wrong reasons. I’ve gone up and down in weight quite drastically ever since I was in my twenties . . .
    What kinds of treatment have you tried for that?
    Everything. Diets, gym, personal trainers, pills, nutritionists, quacks. Now I understand the psychology of eating disorders, and successfully treat them in others, but for me personally it’s just so well entrenched. In those days we drank oodles of sugary soft drinks that seemed to help cool us down – and never considered the sugar content. Hardly anyone had air conditioning in those days and in summer it was difficult for my sisters and me to fall asleep. To try to cool my legs, I would slide them up against the plaster wall beside my top bunk. I envied my school friends who lived near the beach; kids in our neighbourhood simply played with the garden hose whenever they lifted the water restrictions. Most people had sprinklers, which were fun to jump through, but they were considered a particularly wicked waste of water. Occasionally we’d go on a Sunday school picnic to Balmoral Beach where they had a decent shark net (in those days many beaches had those), or attended a barbecue birthday party at Manly, but my parents were terribly busy, even when they were at home.
    You felt they were . . . unavailable . . .?
    Yes, pretty much. Aside from the Sunday afternoon drives, my sisters and I stayed around the house reading, practising on the piano, or studying. There was no movie theatre, shopping mall, bowling alley, or anything like that nearby. Actually, I think there may have been a cinema not too far away because kids at school used to laugh about dropping Jaffas – round orange sweeties with a chocolate centre – on people’s heads from the top balcony, but I don’t remember seeing a movie until I was around eleven. I think Hitchock’s
Psycho
was the first film I saw – at a church fellowship, of all things. What were they thinking? It was traumatic – not so much due to the suspense, but because the boy I was sitting with screamed like a trapped hyena during the