Gabrielle Upton goes to uni
Five years ago we followed Gabrielle Upton’s wrenching journey from the outback to a city boarding school. It was the making of her.
She’s leaving home. Louise Upton told herself not to cry but there’s something in this second hug from her daughter Gabrielle that feels so right and so wanted that it makes her go all wet-eyed. She knows now Gabrielle is ready for the rest of her life because she must understand people; she must be able to intuit things others can’t. She knew her mother deeply needed this second hug — this better goodbye — even though she was trying her best to act like she didn’t.
Need. Louise has been thinking a lot lately about the dynamics of need in any mum’s relationship with her daughter. She first held Gabrielle 17 years ago in a room in St Vincent’s Hospital, Toowoomba, with her husband Steve standing over her shoulder. The couple had endured a gut-wrenching five-year IVF journey, worked through two miscarriages. Gabrielle was a twin — her sibling died when Louise was 12 weeks into her pregnancy. Louise named her Gabrielle based on the evidence before her: the girl’s eyes, nose and mouth, her working fingers and toes; the fact she even made it into her arms. The baby girl was, evidently, an angel; some impossible gift from the heavens placed in Louise’s care. And Louise was needed by the angel then, never more wholly and primal. But that primal need, Louise later realised, was a shifting emotional glacier that thaws, day by day, because it must.
Five years ago, The Weekend Australian Magazine followed Louise, Steve and Gabrielle through “the long goodbye” that was their journey from home in Charleville, 680km west of Brisbane, to Gabrielle’s first day at The Glennie School in Toowoomba, where the 12-year-old would spend the next five years with 170 other boarders from rural towns across Australia.
Louise could plot the levels of support Gabe required in those boarding years against the hours she spent on various communication devices consoling her child. She could give this graph a title, “The Need Curve”. In Year Eight, the contact was constant. Sometimes three Skype calls a day: before school, after school, before bed. Some nights Louise would sit the laptop at Gabe’s place at the family dinner table in Charleville, beside her younger brothers, Henry and Darcy, and an anxious and homesick Gabe would be soothed by the reliable sounds of her beloved dad, Steve, talking about the poor qualities of the soil in drought-struck western Queensland. But the teenage need curve eventually bends downward and Gabe’s contact with her mum was gradually reduced to one Skype call a day to one phone call a day in Year 11 to a text message every now and then at the end of Year 12.
Louise is not supposed to be crying this afternoon. This is a happy moment. Those years at Glennie handed her daughter her dreams, placed them inside a number on a computer screen that Louise and Gabe nodded approvingly at last December: Queensland tertiary entry rank Overall Position “5”. No more or less than the end-of-school score of Gabrielle’s wildest dreams. Enough to study pharmacy at the University of Queensland; the kind of score that might take her around the world to all those places where the soil is so very different to Charleville’s.
Louise is not supposed to be crying this afternoon but there’s something in the way her daughter loads her bags into Steve’s white utility and then comes back to find her mum, standing by the car in front of this red dirt outback house, and gives her this second hug — this longer embrace than the brief and awkward, too rushed, one they had before — that reminds her how much the need dynamics gradually flipped in their relationship without her even realising. In those five boarding school years that Gabe’s need curve was rushing downhill, Louise’s was rapidly climbing upward. And as her daughter and her husband drive out of the front gate on their way to Gabe’s first day at university, Louise realises she needs her daughter now more than ever, right here and now this afternoon, at the precise moment her daughter is leaving home for good.
Louise and Steve, and the folks at that Toowoomba boarding school, were too good at their job. They raised an independent young woman. Louise can only go on the evidence: Gabe’s smarts, the way she carries herself, follows her own path, solves her own problems, fills out her own application forms, finds her own part-time work, pays for her own driving lessons, builds her own life. All these qualities can only add up to one bittersweet motherly conclusion and it’s this that makes her shed those silly tears: “She doesn’t need me anymore,” she says.
Steve Upton listens to AM radio on long drives. ABC news and talkback. Someone talking on the car radio now about female infantry soldiers on the front line. Steve asks his daughter her thoughts on this matter. He likes talking current affairs with Gabrielle because he gets an insight into what he’s come to consider a mind deeper than his own. The thing that bothers Gabe about the radio discussion is that it started from a place of assuming what women can’t do and not what they can. “Where’s the benefit of the doubt?” she wonders.
Time for Marlon Williams. Steve’s a Dire Straits man but he doesn’t play it much in the car because his kids seem to possess, inexplicably, little appreciation for Mark Knopfler’s stadium- filling 1980s guitar genius. Gabe links her phone to the car stereo through Bluetooth, plays some Marlon Williams because Steve likes the Kiwi country-blues crooner as much as his daughter does. It’s good music for driving. He likes to watch the landscape changing outside his window, though it doesn’t change much from Charleville to Miles, on the Warrego Highway 380km west of Brisbane. Gabe drives some of the stretch to Miles. She’s got her P-plates after a frequently harrowing 100 hours’ driver training with her parents.
Miles is where Steve grew up, raised on a wheat and sorghum farm. Steve and Gabe stop here to spend the night at Steve’s parents’ house. His father John, 79, has cancer in his bones. Lately, he’s been showing his wife, Dorothy, 77, how to do routine tasks that he’s always taken care of himself. The other day he showed her how to fill the car tank with Unleaded 95 because in all their years of married life John has never troubled Dorothy to get petrol. Due preparations. “He’s not going to get better, basically,” Steve says.
That’s the brutal truth. Gabe has grown up with no other kind. Nothing sugar-coated. Death is like summer rain in Charleville; inevitable. When she left for boarding school five years ago, Gabe wrapped her arms around the family dog, Dave, who was going to miss her as much as anyone in the family. Dave is dead now. “He was eating the neighbour’s sheep,” Gabe says. “They shot him.”
She was philosophical. Can’t go eating the neighbour’s sheep. Simple as that. There’s now a new family dog, Leo. “He looks exactly the same as Dave did,” Gabe says. “Except friendlier.”
Gabe admires her grandfather’s strength, how he smiles so wide when he sees her, how news of her educational accomplishments soothes him like a tonic. “He doesn’t ever seem really sick,” Gabe says. “He always seems really strong.” Maybe that’s why he says it’s so good to see her.
When she was 12, Gabrielle pencil-sketched an image of a big brown oak tree with red roots and bushy green leaves and stuck it on her bedroom wall. The tree’s trunk and root system was made up of words that defined the person she felt she was: “Australian. Charleville. Horses. Bush. Mum. Dad. Nanny. Pop.” The branches of the tree were formed from words that defined the extent of her dreams. “Get a good job,” she wrote. “Do well in school. Good home. Live in the country. Finish year 12.”
One thick and soaring dream branch was formed from three words: “Go to university.”
There are roughly 52,300 students enrolled at the University of Queensland and one of them, 17-year-old Gabrielle Upton of Charleville, is asking her dad to park 50 or so safe metres from the entrance to Cromwell College in case people see her unloading her belongings with her old man. She hauls a bag of clothes and a pillow to the entrance path to Cromwell, one of 10 residential colleges on UQ’s St Lucia campus, home to 251 students aged between 17 and 21 from largely rural communities across Australia.
Gabe is greeted by a raucous ovation from a welcome honour guard of third-year students. She smiles nervously, tucks a clump of hair behind her right ear, nods appreciatively. “That’s pretty cool,” she chuckles. She lugs her belongings up the stairs to her room. There’s a message — “Welcome Gabe!” – in a cloud bubble on a whiteboard fixed to her bedroom wall. A beaming young woman named Brodie Johnson, 20, wraps her arms around Gabe. “I’m Gabe’s RA,” she says. “Resident assistant. Kind of like a corridor mum. Her first port of call in case she needs any support.”
Brodie remembers how nervous she was on her first day of uni, having driven herself from South Australia. “College is the best thing that can ever happen to someone,” she assures Gabe, who smiles, relieved by this announcement. “It’s 250 20-year-olds living together. Like. Pure. Joy.”
She puts an arm on Gabe’s shoulder. “Any questions, give me a ring,” she says. “My number’s always on my bedroom door.” Gabe nods. “And we got the list of dietary requirements,” Brodie adds.
Gabe still remembers the looks on people’s faces when she announced she was going vegan. She comes from a farming town, a steak town; her brother Darcy likes to tease his big sis about the belly-filling wonders of a well-cooked slice of cow rump. But there were many reasons for the diet change and some of them related to her first two years at boarding school.
“In Grade Eight, I said, ‘Nope, I’m coming home’,” she recalls. “I said I’d go to Charleville High School. I was so homesick. That’s why I was Skyping home all the time.”
It was a confluence of things. So far from home, so young. It seems so small to her today but she had a bit of acne; she wasn’t so comfortable in her own skin.
“One thing we did right with Gabe was communication,” Louise says. “I’ve been consciously working on that ever since she was born.” You can tell us anything, Gabe. Or you don’t have to tell us anything at all. We’re here either way.
“Year Eight and Nine she was really stressed,” Louise says. “Sometimes I’d just hand the Skype over to Steve and he’d be the voice of reason and that would seem to work. It’s that male problem- solving thing. So Gabe would vent to me and then Steve would try to solve it all.”
“Gabe would be cryin’,” Steve says. “And I’d say, ‘Now listen, Gabe, always have a good book to read. Relax, don’t worry about it. It will be better in the morning. Read your book and go to bed. You need a big sleep.’”
Gabe would always close her eyes on her pillow doubting her dad’s advice. “Then I’d wake up in the morning and realise, ‘Oh, actually, everything is fine’. Around Year 10 I started having a little more faith in myself. You start to realise you can get by being away from home. Then one of my friends who was living out at Barcaldine on a cattle station, she went vegan, and I thought, ‘That’s a good idea’, and I thought I might just try it and then I sort of never thought about it again. It just makes me feel good.”
The diet helped with the acne. The interest in diet led to an interest in health and fitness. Soccer. Running. Long distance runs with Leo the second family dog around the red dirt paddocks of Charleville. “I started being my own person, I guess,” Gabe says. “Just doing what’s best for me. Just making sure I’m happy.”
She found she could grind all her night-time boarding school thoughts down to a single mantra: “If I’m happy then I’m not making anyone else sad.” Suddenly everything was easier. Friendships. Study. The future. “You’re gonna get mean girls but they might be one of 100 girls you could be friends with. Go and find some other girls.”
She got a part-time job in a pharmacy near school, so she could buy the things that made her happy: a new pair of runners; a meal at a fancy restaurant; a dress to wear to the school formal that she went to with that boy from Toowoomba Grammar who was so polite and gentlemanly and made that night feel so special — a memory that makes her think that maybe, just maybe, there’s a gentleman just like that waiting for her at uni.
Steve remembers something else from that school formal night that made his heart soar. “The teacher complimented her on not getting a spray tan,” Steve says. Fine music to the ears of a steak and Dire Straits-loving country dad. His girl was comfortable enough in her own skin.
Steve stands outside Gabe’s college room watching her opening and closing her drawers. He shakes his head. “I remember holding her as a baby,” he says. “Now I’m dropping her off to go seek her fortune.” He sighs. Because sometimes that’s what parents do on these big milestone days. They sigh.
“I think about ageing,” he says. “What scares me is — bloody hell — I just turned 50. Another 10 years and I’ll be 60 and then it’s all nearly over for me. That’s what I’m thinkin’. I’ve still got a bit of a mortgage and I still got two boys at home. I don’t want to get to 60 and still be with a mortgage. I’ll be bloody well worn out, you know. But that 60 mark is just around the corner. Turn around a couple of times and that’s it, it’s gone.”
Gabe unzips a large suitcase, places some clothes in her drawers.
“I don’t know,” Steve continues. “Maybe it’s selfish, but I’m thinking about time meself.” He’s been a regional Telstra technician for 34 years, driving countless thousands of dusty kilometres between communications poles across western Queensland. He worked hard and long so Gabe could one day be here doing this, unpacking her bags in a university dorm room.
Steve and Louise have never travelled overseas. Gabe went on the trip of a lifetime to France with school in her mid-teens. She told her dad what the weather and soil in Europe was like. “I’ve never been overseas because we got married when we were quite young,” Louise says. “Steve’s never really wanted to travel. But Gabe said to me the other day, ‘You know you’ve got a travel partner now, Mum’. We’re constantly talking about travelling together now. That’s what boarding school did for her. It opened her up to so many possibilities.”
Steve and Gabe enjoy a long lunch in the college cafeteria. They talk about the past and the future. Gabe recalls what it was like talking to a French host family about where she came from, exactly what a town like Charleville looks like compared to Paris. When she was 12 she thought she would always move back to Charleville at some stage in her adult life. Her best childhood friends felt the same way.
They don’t all feel that way now. Her closest old friend, Zoe, went to Charleville State High School and received an Overall Position score of one — the top mark. She’s going to study biomedical science at UQ when she finishes a gap year working as a governess in the Northern Territory. But there’s not much call for biomedical science work in Charleville.
“I probably won’t go back,” Gabe says softly.
Steve understands this. “The towns are dyin’,” he says, sorrowfully. “Not many opportunities for you in Charleville.” That’s the brutal truth. No point sugar-coating it. No point sugar-coating goodbyes, either.
“All right,” Steve says. “I’m gonna get goin’.”
Gabe walks her dad to his white utility, parked as far away from the college entrance as he could get it. Steve stops by the college entry sign and turns to his daughter. He knows this is the goodbye moment where he has to be tender and loving and fatherly but he doesn’t quite know how to crowbar all that into one seamless physical embrace. He takes a deep breath.
“Aaah, well,” he says, digging his foot into a patch of grass. “That’s that.”
“Yep,” Gabe says.
“Righto,” Steve says.
Gabe nods, smiling. “Righto,” she says.
He’s still so much taller than her. His daughter grew only a couple of centimetres through those five boarding school years but she grew so much inside, in her head and in her humour. She chuckles at her dad because she knows him so well and it’s Gabe that initiates first contact to put him out of his misery, tucking her head into his chest like she did when she was 12.
Steve rests his head on hers and leaves it there for a long moment. And time doesn’t matter so much anymore because he can turn around and turn around and turn around for decades to come and she won’t be gone. She’ll always be right here in his arms.
One month later, Louise sits by her phone in the Charleville house, 680km away from her daughter. Gabe has settled in well at UQ. She knows her schedule, made a whole corridor of new friends. “She’s all over it,” Louise says. “Right now, I’m working on not ringing her all the time. I really am trying to get better at it.”
I don’t need to call her this morning, she tells herself. I don’t need to call her. She’s all over it.
But she calls her. It’s breakfast time at Cromwell College. Gabe can’t talk right now because she’s having a quick bite with friends.
“OK,” Louise says.
A full day passes and Louise’s phone doesn’t ring. I don’t need to call her this afternoon, she tells herself. I don’t need to call her.
But she calls her. “Sorry, Mum,” Gabe says. “I can’t talk right now, just on the way to the gym.”
Five more hours pass and Louise’s phone does not ring. I don’t need to call her this late, she tells herself. I don’t need to call her.
But she calls. It’s 9.15pm. Gabe’s phone rings and rings and rings but the angel does not answer.
Why is she not answering? Louise can only go on the evidence. A phone ringing out so late in the night. The answer is obvious. My daughter is lying in an alleyway, she tells herself. One of those big city alleyways with poor lighting and upturned rubbish bins. Her heart races and her fingers furiously tap out a text message to Gabrielle: “When you get this message, please call me!”
Minutes later, Louise’s phone rings. “Mum!” says a breathless Gabrielle. “What’s wrong?”
“Well,” says Louise, already sinking into the floor of her kitchen. “I called at 9.15 and you didn’t pick up the phone.”
“Muuuum,” Gabe says, gentle and understanding. “I was just washing my face.”
“Riiiight,” Louise says. “Okayyyyyy.”
Damn it, Louise, she tells herself. She was just washing her face.
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