My mother used to say to me, you can do anything you set your mind to.
But there was fine print attached to that statement. Terms and conditions that meant I could only pursue dreams that ensured money and security. Since we had none of those things growing up, they were the most important things a person could obtain. Happiness was secondary to earning enough to put food on the table.
Now, I sit alone in my city apartment. Completing a law degree I thought would make me happy. I clutch paper and pen in hopes that if I write something worthy enough, maybe I can choose happiness over necessity.
Canola fields near Belle’s house. Source: Supplied
I grew up in the country. Far north-east Victoria. In the summer, the hot wind is so dry it sucks the air out of your lungs. Sweat perpetually coats your neck and forehead. Wipe, perspiration, wipe, perspiration. But you persevere. Because that’s what it is to live here. It’s perseverance.
When I visit my old home, gravel cracks under my feet as I walk barefoot. Dust puffs up from the ground with every step. Fields of wheat and canola sway silently in the summer breeze. It’s not green here. This land is gold and brown with hues of orange. Red blood mingles with mud. A dead snake is in the centre of my path. Its muscular body is loose and limp. It does not writhe anymore. I grip its tender flesh and drag it by its tail off the road. The brown scales glisten dully with this final movement. We do this so other animals don’t succumb to the same fate.
“You don’t want to end up like me,” my mother always said. “You need to do well in school and get a good job.”
Belle Ryan. Source: Supplied
This became a mantra in our household.
I told her that one day I’d buy her a house and she wouldn’t have to worry anymore. I’d drag her off the outback dirt road so no one else came to the same fate – alone, coiled up, baking in the summer heat with nothing but the skin on her back.
Growing up here was stifling. A slow strangulation. The sort where it’s so gradual that you don’t realise how hard it was to breathe until you wake up 300 kilometres away.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I rolled the windows down in my beaten-up 2001 Holden Barina on the way out of my dusty town. No air con, crackly speakers on full blast, car filled to the roof with everything I owned. The year was 2017 and I was in the middle of the “gap year” I never wanted to take. I had been working full time in an orchard packing shed to save enough money to move to Melbourne for university.
Belle and her mother, 1999. Source: Supplied
After nine months of back-breaking work, I told my mother I was leaving. I had a retail job lined up in Melbourne before university started. “Okay,” was all she said.
She never pitied me or provided me with sympathy as I struggled. “Welcome to my life,” she’d say. She was too busy surviving to fuss over the small things.
My mother worked jobs that broke her body and soul. We were a single-parent family on government benefits, second-hand clothes, cycling through rentals, with a mother who bought us new school shoes rather than go to the dentist herself, even though her teeth ached.
The packing shed was hard. It was work that other Australians didn’t want to do. Most of the employees were young Taiwanese women. Those on working visas lived in an encampment a kilometre from the sheds. Here, they worked under the fluorescent lights in the scorching Australian heat through to the freezing winters. Cheap labour that never dared complain.
Belle, aged 19, on her final day working at the packing shed. Source: Supplied
Their warm smiles welcomed me. In this factory, I was the foreigner. “Sorry, my English is not good,” they said in perfect English.
The pears rolled down the conveyer belt. I watched the Taiwanese women grab and place the pears in the correct pattern to fit the cardboard box. After five layers of pears and tissue paper they wrote their number (not their name) on their box. Then, they heaved the 20kg box onto another conveyer belt, grabbed an empty box from the belt above, and began the whole process again. Each box was packed in roughly 90 seconds. We did this for 10 to 12 hours a day, five to seven days a week.
The work was mind-numbing. If we spoke too much we were scolded. Breaks were few and far between. My anxiety spiralled, and my depression worsened.
The women packing pears in the shed. Source: Supplied
A woman whose English name was Jenny told me that in Taiwan she was a qualified nurse.
“Why don’t you try to work as a nurse?” I asked.
“Because here they don’t recognise my qualification,” she informed me.
“Oh,” I said, young and naive. “Would you study here?”
She nodded. “I would like to, but it is very expensive.”
I nodded solemnly. Shame crept into me. I didn’t even know how much my university fees were going to cost. While I languished in my situation, others longed for an opportunity like this. A life like mine.
I think of those women often. How Cindy was a schoolteacher and gave that up to pack pears in Australia. How Tam sent all her earnings back home to her parents and siblings. How Linda was saving up to study at an international university. While I was saving to move to Melbourne, she was saving just to cover the fees. I didn’t have to worry about the fees. The government would cover that until I had a “real” job.
When I left the packing shed to move to Melbourne, it felt like I was waking up from a fever dream. I felt like a small child, wiping sleep-clogged eyes, flushed and sticky.
In the city, I’m now on a different conveyer belt. Happiness is tethered to capitalism and consumerism.
The orchard after picking season. Source: Supplied
Most of my new city peers went to private schools and have never heard of my town. None of these people have dragged snakes off the road. Bushfire smoke and cicadas did not underscore their youth. If someone took a gap year, it was usually mixed with long European travels – a year “off”. I’d never had a moment off in my life, let alone an entire year.
I moulded myself to fit in with these new people, even though I felt worlds apart. It was a continual process of shedding and growing new skin.
For a long time, I left my roots behind, buried deep in the bush. I wanted to pretend my past didn’t exist. The city version of myself was who I was now, even though my nails still had the dirt underneath them from the soil I buried my past self in. My mind was in the city, but my body lingered in the dust and blood of home.
Every day I move further away from who I was. A sure and sad process of shimmying out and into new skin. I still writhe, but differently here.
Belle Ryan grew up in country Victoria and now lives in Melbourne where she studies Law and Arts. When not writing, you can find Belle attempting a new hobby, with her friends or with her cat Maggie. You can follow Belle on Instagram
