Tr 5.1. JEAN: The Dream (1.12)

Eighty-nine year old JEAN, a former ABC journalist speaking from her home in Wodonga, where she lives alone.

JEAN: It’s the best thing that ever happened to Albury-Wodonga. The Corporation had imagination. They had access to finance. They were responsible. The Corporation integrated people. When we came here … anybody of any importance lived in Albury. People’d say, ‘Where’d you come from?’ We’d say: Wodonga. ‘Oh, Wodonga’. (Laughing) They’d turn their backs on, on you. You weren’t socially acceptable. Albury was the town, Wodonga was a village. The Corporation changed all that. They would build a town at Thurgoona in NSW and a town in Victoria called Baranduda. They sort of made a banana shape around Albury-Wodonga and all that was encompassed within the possible growth centre. They said look, ‘We could build a population of 300,000 here’. They were a very encouraging organisation. And that allowed a lot of people to develop their dreams.

Tr 5.2. BRUCE & JOHN [Audio transcript]: Intros & Expectations (1.47)

Local academic/historian Dr Bruce Pennay and retired Corporation planner John Alker Jones are both in their 70s. They met during the excitement of the Corporation’s early days. They are eating biscuits.

JOHN: Rightio, you’re recording now are you? … Oh, oh, ah okay (laughing). Okay, um, (claps) my name is John, I’m retired now but I was with the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation. Ah, for what I thought was going to be a two-year contract but of course it’s now forty odd years or more and I’m still here. (Laughs) Bruce go on. (Laughs) Sorry. You’ve got a mouth full of biscuit.

BRUCE: Um … I came about ten years after John. And I came because … they were going to establish a, a tertiary institution and I was appointed at the head of that in the first year, an’ I came with great expectations. Everything was telling me it was going to grow, grow, grow. I came down with my ears pinned back, with an expectation that things were going to go well.

JOHN: Ah, some one did a, a calculation on the back of an envelope that, y’know, to achieve 300, 000 people you need so many thousand a year-

BRUCE: That’s right … Yeah.

JOHN: That breaks down to so many thousand a week. Therefore you’re going to have to build so many thousand houses.

BRUCE: Kindergartens … yep.

JOHN: And kindergartens. All those things. And you’d plan for all these things-

BRUCE: Yeah.

JOHN: And you’d think, Where’s the money coming from?

BRUCE: Yeah. The arithmetic was really fantastic wasn’t it?

JOHN: Yep. Yeah.

BRUCE: Yep.

JOHN: There were some brilliant fellows down here. David Bane, he was an economist from Jamaica. And he said ‘Look, we, we’re going to make so much money, ultimately, that it’s going to be embarrassing, but in the meantime you have to spend a lot of money to make a lot of money.

BRUCE: It must have been the year you came, ‘74, It rained money in Albury Wodonga. It literally rained money. They had to spend a huge bucket of money and it had to be spend by the end of the financial year. So they lined up all these properties with farmers to buy. Well, the farmers took the money and sent their kids to university and to boarding school and built a big house and then moaned because The Corporation had taken their life long farm from them.

(JOHN laughs)

BRUCE: That was the big thing wasn’t it?

JOHN: Absolutely right-

BRUCE: I am so attached to this farm that you can’t take it from me. But how much are you offering?

JOHN: (Laughing) Yeah. Yes.

Tr 5.3. JEAN: Environmental Vision (0.36)

JEAN: The Corporation also realised the degradation of the area, from a farming point of view. They established their own nursery and it only grew native things. They planted them in blocks. That were about a mile apart. An-and you will see, all round Albury-Wodonga is this big circle, well blocks of trees. Immediately you- the farm production went up – because the animals had shelter. The Corporation then planted ground covers - and the birds came back. When you bought a block of land in a housing estate in Thurgoona or Baranduda, you had the choice of thirty native trees and shrubs. Free of charge. Now some of those trees are monstrous. Perhaps too small for a big yard but it was the peoples’ choice. The Corporation were social engineering I suppose you’d call it in a way.

ALI is in her kitchen, rocking baby Ruby’s pram and making a caramel cheesecake.

ALI: She comes first. If I had to go my entire life without a career for her, I would. In, all in all, she is my big dream – considering I thought I wasn’t going to be able to have children.

GEORGIE: Yeah, can you tell me about that?

ALI: Uuuummm, when I was … forteen, my mum told me she has Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. And it’s where our ovaries don’t produce, um, eggs well. Weight was a big factor of it. I was a very overweight child. Um, I used to get pains when I was ovulating, and I’d be like, ‘Mum what’s wrong?’ An’ that’s where she said, ‘You’ve probably got it as well.’ And then in Year, the beginning of Year Eleven, it was really bad one day. I thought I had appendicitis. So we’ve rushed me off to the doctor. I’m freaking out. And then I went and got an ultrasound and that’s when they saw, they said, ‘Yes, you’ve got P.C.O.S.’ And at first the doctor just outright said, ‘You can’t have kids ‘cause your mother couldn’t’. Like, my mum had to go on medication to have me. So I pretty much broke down that night. And then, I got with Blake. I told him from the beginning I can’t have kids. So he was a bit down on that at first I think. So we just went about our lives normally. And then, one day, I started getting really sick. I was missing out on school ‘cause I was so sick, and I was just like, ‘What’s wrong?’ I went to my best friend’s baby shower and she said, ‘Look, you’ve got my systems of pregnancy, take a pregnancy test.’ I’ve gone, Alright. Just to prove it’s negative. So I went and took one and the two lines came up within two seconds and I freaked. I was like, ‘Jasmine, what’s wrong?’ She’s like, ‘Okay that looks positive, we’ll go have more.’ And I took about ten of them. I still didn’t believe it, until I went and got the ultrasound and they said ‘Yes you’re pregnant.’ And I was like, ‘Oh’. Told Blake. He freaked out. ‘Cause he’s like, ‘Shit I didn’t think it was going to happen this quickly’. And I was thinking, ‘I didn’t think it was going to happen at all. Where did this come from?’ (Laughs)

GEORGIE: And then, then there was Ruby.

ALI: And then there was Ruby.

☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐

ANJI (23) a student from the Philippines and PING (28) from Malaysia, are on a short study break, outside the library at Charles Sturt University where they both study health sciences.

ANJI: I’m paying thirteen thousand a session. That’s just tuition. That doesn’t even like include books and things like that. Rent, bills, internet.

PING: Yeah.

ANJI: Food. People will go, ‘Oh yeah Anj you study so much.’ Yeah but put yourself in my shoes. You know? I obviously don’t tell that to people, but (scoffs) I’m telling you (laughs) ‘cause you don’t judge me.

Both laugh

ANJI: It’s a, a lot of pressure. Not just for myself, ‘cause I want to achieve .. (deep sigh) getting high distinctions, but I want to make my parents proud. Especially my dad. Especially my dad.

PING: Yeah, I think I’m in the same position: paying so much, and like, my uncle, like sponsoring me. So I’m going [to] pay him back once I [have] started working. So it’s kind of like pressures. And like, every time you have to, you know, limits yourself by not eating that much and then by not going out that much. So you have to cook instant noodles a lot. Yeah, the tuition fees is killing me. And then you don’t know whether you’re going to fail or not. And then when you get tense, at that time, you don’t know how to answer the questions … Yeah it happens to me and I don’t know, I don’t feel good (laughs).

ANJI: Yeah, I can’t afford to fail. ‘Cause if I do, my brother and my dad will make me go back home. And I will be so screwed. So screwed. And I’ll probably have to work in his business. And then once I start working in his business, he’s going to arrange my marriage. So if I do not make all the right decisions now, and it’s all up to me, my successes or my failures are mine alone. I cannot, cannot afford to fail. ‘Cause I will be so fucked. (Laughs) … This is why I really want education … This is my only way out.

PING: Yeah.

ANJI: I have nothing else. Nothing else.

GLADY, NORMA and ALAN are all in their nineties and residents of the Estia Health Aged Care Facility in Thurgoona. They sit with SARAH in the sunroom. A nurse is also present.

SARAH: Just for all of you, what has been like a big dream that you wanted to fulfil? Like, your life ambition, let’s just say.

NORMA: Darling I can’t hear you.

SARAH: I’m sorry. Um, what, what was like your big dream like when you were younger and you had like a vision, like what did you, what was the thing that you wanted to do? Like, what was your biggest, like, I want to do that moment?

NORMA: I don’t think I had any dreams at all. I think of it, just thought, it’s life, you get on with it. You just got on with your life. Um …

GLADY: Just a different era entirely, wasn’t it?

NORMA: Pardon.

GLADY: It was an entirely different era.

NORMA: Altogether!

GLADY: Yes … To what it is now, you know.

NORMA: Different as chalk and cheese as it is now.

GLADY: I mean going back 90 years, is a long way, isn’t it?

NORMA: Yeah, that’s right.

ALAN: Yes.

NORMA: When we were young my parents used to say, you should be doing this and you should be doing that. Well to my way of thinking now, that is gone. Completely. You’ve got a, a, eighteen year old. They make up their own mind, now, and they tell you, what they’re going to do. Now days that’s how things are.

SARAH: But-

ALAN: How old are you?

SARAH: I’m seventeen.

ALAN: Seventeen, yes.

NORMA: Hm.

ALAN: Mm.

SARAH: (To Alan) So, wh-what do you think your biggest dream was?

ALAN: My biggest what?

SARAH: Dream.

ALAN: Dream?

SARAH: Yeah.

ALAN: Oh, I don’t think I had a big dream.

SARAH: Yeah?

NORMA: (Laughs) What did you want to do with your life? When you were younger.

ALAN: I’m blowed if I know … I don’t really know, no.

SARAH: No?

GLADY: Don’t you think in that day and age it was what was thrown at you, you accepted life as it was? You just had to get on with it.

NORMA: That’s right.

ALAN: You got on with it. That’s right. Exactly.

GLADY: Yes, that’s right.

GLADY: Dreams were something you didn’t worry about very much because it was hard work. And you had to work hard. And I don’t think people do (laughing) work very hard today.

ALAN: Yep … Is this getting anywhere for you?

SARAH: Yeah, no, this is really good. Thank you.

GLADY: (Laughs)

☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐

SARAH: [Audio transcript] When, like you guys were in my shoes say, like wh- I, I don’t really know what it was like. So like, would you be able to tell me, like, when you were like, in my eyes, I’d say, I was, I would be pursuing a dream but…

NORMA: Yeah, we-

GLADY: Well I can go back to when I was seventeen and I was stooking hay. For my father on the farm.

SARAH: Oh yeah?

GLADY: Now, that wasn’t easy work.

ALAN: No.

GLADY: And I had to finish school in the meantime. And we took that as natural. You just naturally went to help. But then at eighteen I blew myself up. Petrol line exploded. Two days after I turned (laughing) eighteen. I was two years in hospital. Twenty when I came out. And I was married at twenty-one. And I’ve had ten children. I have twenty-five grandchildren. Twenty-six great-grandchildren. And one great-great-grandchild. (Laughs)

SARAH: Wow.

GLADY: Well to me that’s life.