Goodbye, my child

WHEN Gabrielle Upton leaves for boarding school, it's a rugged emotional ride.

Gabrielle Upton

IF Gabrielle would just stop buzzing around the house then her mother could hold her in her arms forever and every muscle in her body could relax and the universe could pause for eternity because it knows Louise Upton's love for her daughter is a force far greater than something as intangible and uncertain as a child's destiny.

Dear God, do something. Freeze it all right here, with 12-year-old Gabrielle resting on the beanbag next to her brothers' Lego table, home where she belongs, in a red-dirt outback house in Charleville, 680km west of Brisbane. But the girl won't stay still. Louise wants to touch her, hold her, but all she gets is fleeting brushes of arms, brief and tender squeezes of hands, a reassuring rub of her knee, before Gabrielle is off again, packing clothes, wrapping pictures, texting friends. It's only Louise who pauses, frozen in her daughter's bedroom doorway next to a big, colourful hanging "G". G for going. G for goodbye. G for gone.

Country mums can do anything except stop time. This is happening. She knows that now. It's her heavy heart that breaks the news. Gabrielle Upton is off to boarding school. "I'm excited," Gabrielle says, zipping up her violin case on her bed, her mood as bright as the flower prints on her doona cover. She points at her mum in the bedroom doorway. "But I think she's going to cry." Charleville kids learn empathy young. A kid gains a lot from a cow dying in drought, a house destroyed by flood, a family moved on by bankruptcy.

This morning, Gabrielle can't wait to go to boarding school. She has already neatly transferred into her diary all of the events of her first semester at The Glennie School, a 105-year-old private Anglican allgirls primary and secondary school 580km away in Toowoomba, in south-east Queensland's lush Darling Downs, where Gabrielle will spend the next five years of her life sharing accommodation with 170 other boarders from towns and properties in western and northern Queensland and northern NSW. The 832 students of Glennie represent almost a quarter of the population of her home town.

She keeps staring at her diary, at the days reserved for weekend school trips to the beach and to Toowoomba's Sizzler restaurant. She's spent 12 years living in a town with two pubs, a bakery, a Chinese shop and an RSL. She's dreamed about the Sizzler buffet bar the way Spanish explorers dreamed of land. She's excited about the school's music program and the running track that Cathy Freeman once used and the laptop each student gets to call their own. But she knows her mum better than any other human being in this world and she feels her sorrow so she doesn't go on about it all, doesn't rave about skipping town, busting out, breaking free. Her excitement keeps erupting involuntarily in exclamations, though. "All you can eat!" she beams.

Gabrielle moves quickly and Louise moves slowly, padding around a bedroom painted lime green that will sit empty for the next five years. Gabrielle won't be here tomorrow, but her trophy for Warrego Violin Player of the Year will be. She'll leave behind the message on her wall for her mum: "Love, fun, happy, joy, sunshine."

She'll leave behind her family tree. It's a pencil drawing pinned to her wall, a big oak tree with red roots, brown trunk and green leaves. "It's all about me up until the age of 12," Gabrielle says. The tree's trunk is made from words written by Gabrielle's school friends: "Smart. Independent. Fun. Happy." The tree's branches are all the things she wants to grow to achieve: "Get a good job. Live in the country. Do well in school. Go to university. Good home. Finish year 12." The tree's roots form words, all the people and things Gabrielle felt built the tree: "Australian. Charleville. Horses. Pop. Bush. Mum. Dad. Nanny. Uncles. Brothers. Teachers. Aunties. Zoe.

Some days ago, Louise was sitting on the back deck of the house sipping a glass of wine as Gabrielle played in the backyard with the family dog, Dave. Watching her daughter playing in the afternoon light, she realised it was at that time of day she would miss her daughter the most. After school hours and weekends. She wondered how her household would function without Gabrielle in it. She pictured dinner time. She was at the table with the red and white cotton tablecloth and her husband Steve was there and so were her two sons, Henry, nine, and Darcy, seven. But Gabrielle wasn't there. The master conversationalist, the grand inquisitor, the bright spark. Who was going to make pizzas on Wednesday nights?

Then she began calculating the total number of hours she currently spends separated from Gabrielle. She tried to make it easier on herself, subtracting sleep hours and regular hours spent at work as a teacher at St Mary's Catholic Primary School in Charleville. Then she calculated the sum total of hours she would be separated from Gabrielle through the next five years of boarding school. It was an equation of longing, Time plus Distance minus Contact = Pain.

She was determined after that to ensure Gabrielle knew just what an important role she has in the Upton family, no matter how far away her bed is. Time plus Distance minus Contact multiplied by Love = Getting By.

"I miss you already," she says to Gabrielle. And Gabrielle smiles. But she can't know the love her mother has for her, the depth of it, or just how hard it will be for her to let go of someone so prayed for, so truly wanted in this world.

Louise and Steve, a regional Telstra technician for the past 29 years, married in 1992. They had been married for three years when they decided to try for a baby. Louise was 25. It would take five years for her to fall pregnant with Gabrielle after a harrowing IVF journey in which the couple endured two miscarriages and endless hospital emergencies, including one critical incident of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome that saw doctors drain eight and a half litres of fluid from Louise's abdominal cavity.

Gabrielle was a twin. She lost her sibling when Louise suffered heavy blood loss 12 weeks into her pregnancy. Louise and Steve were holidaying in Mooloolaba, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, when Louise suffered another blood loss in which she was convinced she'd lost Gabrielle as well. A baby scan at 10pm that night in Nambour Hospital showed Gabrielle bouncing with life. But Louise grew so nervous about giving birth that she held off from buying baby clothes and nappies. On the day she bought Gabrielle's pram, well into her pregnancy, she told herself: "We can take it back if it doesn't happen."

So angelic her daughter seemed, so miraculous was her arrival, that when she held her in her arms in the birthing suite at St Vincent's Hospital in Toowoomba, Louise named her Gabrielle. She was so beautiful she said her middle name would be Juliet. For the first five days of her daughter's life Louise refused to bathe Gabrielle for fear of harming something so perfect.

When she watches her daughter pack her things - bouncing around barefoot - she sees the whole story. She sees the scar on her right eyebrow from when she fell off a school playground ramp. She sees Gabrielle at five weeks of age, when the paediatrician told Louise and Steve that a heel prick test revealed their daughter had a high chance of having cystic fibrosis. She sees the agonising week-long wait for the test revealing her daughter's perfect health. She sees her first ballet performance.

She sees Gabrielle uttering her first word, "Horse." There were always horses in the paddock for her to ride and Gabrielle was a natural, like her mother. She won riding competitions but Louise was never more proud of her daughter than the day she told her straight: "Mum, I don't really love it like you do."

Lately, she was becoming a friend, an exercise buddy, a confidante, wise beyond her years. They'd talk for hours in the kitchen, Louise at the sink, Gabrielle perched on a bar stool at the island bench. "You can tell me anything," Louise always said. And that will apply more than ever in the next five years when Louise will have to gauge her daughter's mood from the end of a phone line.

"What time are we actually going?" Gabrielle asks. "2pm," Louise says.

The Uptons plan to drive four hours east along the Warrego Highway this afternoon, stop overnight in Roma, then drive four more hours tomorrow to arrive at Glennie for Gabrielle's first day of high school.

After lunch, Gabrielle's gang arrives. The gang of four is Gabrielle, Millee Smith, 13, Charley Peacock, 12, and Zoe Aspinall, 12. Best friends forever.

Gabrielle and Zoe were born four days apart. When Gabrielle was 10 months old, Zoe's mum, Michelle, would babysit Gabrielle so Louise could return to teaching. Gabrielle and Zoe are more like sisters than friends. Bound by the country, bound by isolation, bound by love. They speak in code. WD means "Watcha doin'?" DSN means mum's around so "Don't say nothin'".

Millee, Charley and Zoe will be attending the local Charleville state high school this year. Millee hands Gabrielle a USB stick that she wants her friend to take with her to boarding school. It carries a slide show of the gang's time together in Charleville. Girlsonly camping trips in the scrub behind Gabrielle's house; school dances; bike rides; sleepovers; memories. The girls sit down by Gabrielle's window and click through the slide show on a laptop.

"Awww," gasps Gabrielle. "That's when I got that massive big gore in my leg." Millee and Charley laugh. Zoe is quiet; she forces a smile. Zoe's mum, Michelle, stands with Louise watching the girls from the doorway. Michelle whispers to Louise, "We're gonna miss her so much." Michelle turns her face away as a tear falls from her left eye. She's trying to hide her face from Zoe but, at the window with her friends, Zoe sees her mother crying and rushes across Gabrielle's room. She tucks her head into her mum's stomach, hides her face and sobs heavily. Louise turns away, rushes off down the hallway towards the living room.

"I know," Michelle says, rubbing her daughter's back. "Maybe we can sneak you in a bag?"

Louise sips a cup of tea in the kitchen. "She's gorgeous, Zoe," she says. "I had to walk away. I'd be a mess if I stayed."

This year, about 17,000 students left home for boarding schools across Australia, says Dr Timothy Hawkes, headmaster at The King's School in Sydney and chairman of the Australian Boarding School Association. That means 34,000 parents enduring the deep sense of separation anxiety that comes with every unavoidable year of boarding school.

"It's on the top 10 list of things to talk about when parents get together in town," Louise says. "Send them away? Don't send them away? I think everyone is just trying to make the right decision for the child. For Gabe, hopefully this is the right decision. It seems to be, but it may not be. It really is a dilemma in small towns like this. Many know that when their child is entering high school they will have to move. A lot of families go and that's not good for the town."

She knows the town might lose Gabrielle as well. The thing Louise likes most about The Glennie School - among its "ridiculously qualified teachers" and "extremely polite" students, who ask if you need help navigating the school grounds - is the exposure Gabrielle will have to experiences she'd never have in Charleville. Gabrielle doesn't know what she wants to be in life. At Glennie, she can be anyone. It's the school motto, no less: "All she can be".

"And we must believe that that opportunity overrides the loss that we will feel," Louise says. "Our family life will never be the same again because Gabe won't be here. That's huge. We're going to make that sacrifice in order for Gabrielle to have all these opportunities. So somehow we think that's the way to go."

Steve Upton enters through the back door. He's been riding motorbikes around the family's red dirt paddock with his two boys, both dressed in motocross vests and chest pads. Steve's not a big talker. He likes his job as an outback Telstra technician because it often entails lonesome drives for thousands of kilometres into western Queensland nothingness. When he does talk he unconsciously gives a shy smile, as though he's embarrassed to be offering his observations on life, all of which turn out to be insightful and informed.

As Gabrielle's swirling departure consumes his house, Steve casually mentions a wind change coming across the trees outside. He talks about the newly sealed road running past his house. He talks about how he connected the water tanks on his property with an underground hose circling a house he built from scratch.

He doubts he'll be emotional when he farewells Gabrielle. He's not an emotional man. Not the hugging kind either. In the early days of their courtship, Louise had to train Steve to hold her hand. He was raised on a wheat and sorghum farm in Miles, 340km west of Brisbane. He remembers his first day at boarding school at Brisbane's Marist College. He was farewelled by his parents with little fanfare, then ushered into a boarding house that resembled an army barracks. If he had any detachment issues he could tell his folks all about it on "letter-writing Sunday".

"I just think it's another journey for Gabrielle," he says. "We wouldn't let her go if she wasn't ready."

It's closer to 3pm when Steve places Gabrielle's suitcase, school backpack, pillow, violin and various bags of shoes and belongings on the front porch. Louise scurries through the house. "All right, Gabe, we've gotta go," she says. Gabrielle furiously scribbles her address three times in green felt pen on a lined exercise pad. She tears the page into three pieces and hands a piece to each friend. Miss Gabrielle Upton, Brown House, The Glennie School, Herries Street, Toowoomba. Zoe cups her piece of paper in her fist and hugs her knees to her chest. The girls walk outside. Gabrielle hugs her horses. She looks out past the stables to a paddock dotted with trees making pathways to secret hiding spots only Gabrielle knows. There's one thing out here she'll miss most. "The space," she says.

She calls her dog, Dave, out from underneath the house and squeezes him tight. She hugs her brothers, Henry and Darcy, dislodging their spectacles from their noses. She hugs her grandmother, Pat, who will babysit the boys while their mum and dad journey to Toowoomba.

An ominous dark cloud shifts in from the east. "Maybe it might flood and you won't have to go," wishes Millee. Gabrielle laughs, raises her eyebrows.

The gang of four meets under a tree by the Uptons' front gate. Gabrielle looks at Zoe. She's got her head down, silent, staring at her shoes digging into the red dirt. Zoe rubs her crying eyes with a tissue. Gabrielle hugs her best friend of 12 years. She rubs her shoulders. "It's going to be OK," she whispers. Zoe nods, bravely sucking up her tears, smiling for her friend.

Gabrielle hops into the back of the Commodore station wagon. She winds her window down and waves as the car pulls away. The car's tyres leave a cloud of red dust and Zoe wraps her arms around her mother's waist, closes her eyes and squeezes.

Patchy rain follows the Uptons to Roma, on the junction of the Warrego and Carnarvon Highways, four hours' drive from Toowoomba. Then the flood comes. Ex-tropical Cyclone Oswald bashes the Queensland coast for two days, swamping cities and towns from Bundaberg to Brisbane, from Monto to Mundubbera. The bitter deluge topples buildings, carries homes 400m down floodplains, destroys 5000km of Queensland roads and steals the lives of loved ones. Towns are evacuated, Black Hawks descend from dark grey clouds, vast foodbowls lie ruined, makeshift emergency villages are constructed, a state falls apart - and 12-year-old Gabrielle Upton makes her way to school.

On Monday morning, the first day of the semester, Steve Upton powers the Commodore through hammering rain on the Warrego Highway, dodging potholes, racing flooding roads. But they find themselves trapped in Miles, two hours' drive from Toowoomba, hemmed in by flooded bridge crossings and closed roads throughout the Darling Downs.

Gabrielle misses her first three days of school. It is not until the Thursday morning that she enters her new home at The Glennie School. She is shown to her room in Brown House, a square brick dormitory filled with carpeted levels of small and private bed spaces. Her name has been printed outside the room, above a colourful laminated image of six iced cup cakes. She unpacks her things, decorates her walls with posters of Taylor Swift, Adele, Ed Sheeran and Guy Sebastian. Above her desk she places a portrait of Zoe, Millee and Charley. Between an image of Delta Goodrem and Ricki-Lee Coulter she sticks a photograph of her mum and dad.

That night, the boarders enjoy a welcome dinner with principal Wendy Ashley-Cooper. In the past week she has endured power outages that destroyed food supplies for boarders, and smashing rain and wind that tore up the school's landscaped gardens. "We're still short of around 25 boarders," she says.

The school's director of business development, Henry Campey, has been fielding calls from harried rural parents desperately trying to get their kids to Glennie. "We had boarders travelling from due south all the way from due north," he says. "People from northern NSW, western Queensland, north-western Queensland, all trying to get into Toowoomba which is effectively cut off from everywhere."

But, says Mrs Ashley-Cooper, girls are more resilient than the world gives them credit for. "When my daughter finished school I thought she was a little unready for the big wide world," she says. So she sent her daughter for a year to a multiracial government high school in Cape Town, South Africa, one of the most dangerous cities in the world. "She was distraught, and I said, 'Only one phone call a week for five minutes'. I was saying, 'You have to toughen up', but I kept thinking, 'What have I done to my child?' "Turned out to be the best thing for her, but, yes, I would just go and stand in her empty bedroom and feel absolutely devastated. And I know that all across our boarder houses there are mothers just standing in their child's bedroom feeling devastated, because that's what you do. You're always a lioness. You're always looking out for your cubs and you know you are responsible for your child and you have to give that up and that's a very primal thing. You have to entrust your child to other people who are probably strangers to you. And you have to trust the school, trust that we will do as we say we'll do."

At 8.30am on Friday morning, it's time to say goodbye. Gabrielle emerges from her room, resplendent in her new uniform, a dark blue dress with a wide white collar. She lugs a large bag over her left shoulder. She didn't sleep well last night. Her face is pale. She's quiet. Not smiling or frowning, just thinking.

Brown House is alive with chatting boarders, girls grabbing books, tying shoe laces, rushing to class. It's too busy for a proper goodbye, too frenetic, too rushed. Louise and Steve lead Gabrielle into a room off the Brown House administration office, close the door behind them. It's quiet in here. Silent. Gabrielle sits in a chair half a metre from her mum, sitting opposite. Steve sits quietly to her left. It's the way adults sit in offices, the way grown-ups sit.

"How was dinner last night?" asks Louise.

"Good," Gabrielle says, her head down.

"What did you talk about?"

"Not much," Gabrielle says.

Gabrielle's eyes dart around the room, to a window, to a light in the office, to the ground, then fix upon her mother's face. "I'm upset," she says, big heavy tears flooding her face. And these tears tap something primal in Louise that screws up her face and wets her eyes, turns her cheeks and forehead tomato-red, and she stands up, unleashing a guttural moan as she forces words out of a twitching mouth built up with saliva and salt from her streaming tears.

"Come over here and sit on my knee," she says.

It's a plea from the pit of her stomach to her angel Gabrielle. Just for this moment be a kid again. Let the guard down and let me hold you. Gabrielle stands and Louise pulls her close, wraps her arms around her daughter so tight that her fingers crease the shoulders of Gabrielle's uniform. And Gabrielle rests on her mother's knee and releases a tension brought by flood, by new surroundings, by a future she can't see.

Louise Upton can do anything except stop time. Gabrielle still has a class to get to. She gathers her things and exits the room. Behind her, Louise hides her face as she silently weeps. Outside, students rush to lessons. Louise hugs her daughter once more outside the room.

"Are you OK?" she says.

Gabrielle takes a deep breath and nods.

"We won't delay it," Louise says. "You go. You go."

Steve stands behind Gabrielle, waiting for the right moment to hug his daughter, the right moment to interrupt. But that moment doesn't come. A boarding house master, Gillian Reynoldson, politely ushers Gabrielle and Louise through the hallway of Brown House. Steve stands alone in the foyer, watching his daughter disappear down the hall. Then Louise stops. "What about your dad?" she says.

Gabrielle turns in the hallway and howls, shaking her head as she runs back to her father. She launches her face into his chest and cries. His long, protective arms wrap her tight. "Dad," she says, her deep wailing muffled by her father's polo shirt. And tears flood the eyes of the immovable bush telecommunications technician.

"C'mon," says the gentle boarding house master.

Gabrielle joins a group of girls hurrying down the hallway. A fellow boarder holds her hand tight. Louise follows the group outside. They climb a small staircase to a garden in the school grounds. Gabrielle gives her mum a reassuring smile over her shoulder as the group passes behind a bushy pine tree on a winding brick path, their white school hats disappearing from view. Then stillness. Louise stands watching the empty brick path.

Time doesn't stop. It doesn't rewind. Gabrielle doesn't run back along the brick path and fall into her mother's arms again. She goes to a double period of music. She sits four rows back in class, switches on her laptop and waits for her name in roll call.

"Gabrielle?" the teacher says.

"Here," she says.