I adored listening to the distinct English accents – I was a real colonial in the middle of London with my broad Australian twang! My mother had tried to teach me to speak in a more cultured manner, but it was a hopeless cause. ‘There is no such word as “gunna” or “youse”, Mary,’ she would say with her best elocution. ‘Please refrain from using words not in the dictionary.’
Something of what Coralie had tried to teach me would eventually sink in: by the end of my first year, ‘dance’ would become ‘dahnce’ and ‘Mum’ would become ‘Mummy’.
Before we left Rocky, Coralie and Neil George had rather audaciously written to request an interview with Miss Barbara Fewster, the head of the Royal Ballet School, and we went along to meet her on our second day. Miss Fewster was a grand schoolmarm with an imposing slim frame, huge dark-rimmed glasses and a rather large bun on the top of her head. I was quite intimidated. Mum and Dad went into her office to meet with her alone. I became very concerned about the size of Neil George’s stomach, his classic Australian beer belly, and wondered what Miss Fewster’s reaction might be. I had grown up with it and never thought twice about it before that moment. In fact, our family adored Dad’s belly and all eight children would at some stage lie and float on it in the ocean. He loved his beer and had earned his belly. I was relieved when Mum and Dad came out smiling after the interview.
We headed out to Talgarth Road, that noisy main thoroughfare between Hammersmith and West Kensington, and walked one block to our new digs at Mrs Woolf’s. She ran two big terrace houses with rooms converted into bedsits, almost all of which were let out to RBS students. We walked up the small flight of stairs and rang the bell. Mrs Woolf answered the door and led us into her sitting room for tea. She did not seem particularly welcoming. In fact, Sharon and I were terrified of her and her heavy German accent, but the following day we left the hotel and moved in.
Our room was the smallest, at the top of four flights of stairs. It must once have been the attic. Mrs Woolf walked us up with Dad lugging our suitcases. The stairs were very narrow and Neil George was a large man. The room had a sink, a single hotplate, a table, a small chest of drawers and two single beds. The four of us could barely fit and we could hardly stand up straight without our heads touching the ceiling. We had to walk around the table sideways so we didn’t bump into the beds. Mrs Woolf showed us the bathtub, up another five stairs on another landing, which needed 50 pence for hot water, and a small fan heater that also took 50 pence. There was no refrigerator, so Sharon just left her milk outside on the windowsill. We could make reverse-charge calls on a phone on the wall downstairs.
Neil George put our suitcases on the table and then backed out to the landing while Coralie did a quick glance around the room to see what we might need.
While Sharon and I went to the ballet school, Coralie and Neil George hit Selfridges in Oxford Street to buy a kettle, a toaster, plates, knives and forks, cups and blankets, enjoying the history along the way as they passed Kensington Palace, Buckingham Palace and Marble Arch. I didn’t even know you had to have that stuff, but Mum was good at organising a household and happily purchased what I needed. She enjoyed the art of living well and worked at it. Having survived all the children and chaos, she adored making any home beautiful.
Coralie also supplied us with food – mainly eggs, milk, Ryvita biscuits and tomatoes. There was a little fruit shop next to Barons Court tube station, a butcher and a newsagent across the road. It took Sharon and me quite a while to find a large supermarket, as they weren’t common in the 1970s.
I didn’t have a coat or boots for the harsh English winter as I had never needed such things in Rockhampton, so the next day my parents took me to buy a coat. It was a soft greeny-grey, warm and stylish, and doubled as a raincoat.
Finally, I was at the Royal Ballet School. It was a plain brown-brick building on Talgarth Road, a short walk from our bedsit.
My first day was full of butterflies in the stomach. Sharon and I were there at least an hour early, anxious for class to start. We went to a small dressing room crowded with almost forty new students, all nervously changing into pink tights and black leotards for our first class. We were shepherded into the studio and began quietly stretching, awaiting the appearance of our teacher. To my relief Katherine Wade seemed to be the complete opposite of Miss Fewster: young, charming and kind. I liked her from the beginning. She had just retired from professional dancing at Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet.
The class was full of international students, including a girl named Summer-Lee Rhatigan from the USA, Desney Severn from Newcastle, Australia, a New Zealander, a few Canadians, two very well trained girls from Zimbabwe, and some English girls from the north. Within a month we were all quite friendly.
After the nerves eased off that first morning, I felt comfortable, and each day’s routine just rolled on. I was in my element, dancing all day and making new friends, meeting boys in pas de deux classes. I loved my parents dearly and appreciated everything they were doing for me, especially paying the high fees for my tuition, but I was becoming desperate to see them go. Like when I left Miss Hansen, I just wanted to get on with my new life.
When the month was up, we went back to Heathrow and kissed goodbye at the departure gate. As I watched them walk away, for the first time I felt reality kick in. The tears started and I knew I was really going to be here, in London, all alone. I hope I can do this, I thought. I knew London was my future and that Rocky would never have been enough.
Now I was on my own, I had to acquire a few life skills, and quickly. I soon learned how to boil an egg and do my laundry. I also tried hard to budget. I was living on £11 a week, and often ran out of money on the sixth day. In the first month or so we woke to a weak autumn sun, but soon after that we were waking and coming home in the dark. The heater was either useless or we couldn’t afford it. Sometimes I would wear my leotard and tights (and sometimes my dressing gown, too) to bed so I didn’t have to change in the freezing cold in the morning.
I often went without breakfast or stopped at the local shop to buy fruit for the day. My walk to school took me past the few Barons Court shops and some elegant flats with a green garden that felt like a slice of home. We had classes from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., so most shops would be closed when we finished for the day. Getting food was not an easy task as they were also closed on weekends. The local Indian-owned supermarket was the only thing open on the weekend, and it wasn’t well stocked and was expensive. I spent half of every Sunday for the next six years at the laundromat.
One of the things I liked best about the school was walking past its fishbowl studio. This was primarily used by the graduate class: mainly made up of the school’s subsidised White Lodge or junior English students. Us older ones and the overseas students paid high fees and had to find our own lodgings. The White Lodge girls were terribly English – soft, pale and delicate like roses. If you could get into the class with them, then you had a strong chance of getting into the Royal Ballet afterwards.
I was discovering how to grow as a dancer. There were multiple classes with twenty girls in each: we had ballet, Spanish with castanets, pas de deux, repertoire, music appreciation and Benesh notation – where we had to write dance steps in a special shorthand style. The notation class was terribly dull to me. I just wanted to keep moving.