We found out we were moving to Australia the week men landed on the moon.
Apollo 11 was a watershed moment for so many people, so many things. For me, a young girl from Dallas, Texas, our family’s journey to the Australian outback would be a small glimmer of what was to come so late in my life. I had no earthly idea how much it would affect me or what it would mean toward the last half of my life.
We knew that there was a connection with what our dad was going to do in Australia and the NASA space program, but those details were well above the paygrade of the 5th grade daughter of an aerospace engineer.
I was eleven years old in 1970 and by the next summer, I had my own horse in the Outback of Australia, and I thought that was far out. I had no trouble adjusting to the weather in this upside-down country, but I found it odd. It’s hot in November and I’m a Northern Hemisphere girl so that’s what is odd to me.
I don’t know why the heat seems to make the flies worse. I do know why they’re worse at a horse stable – that’s obvious. I walked out into the paddock and looped a lead rope around my big horse as I waved the flies away from my face and his. Dollar is a beautiful chestnut color, standing tall at 16 hands, maybe more. He had some Thoroughbred in him and possibly some draft horse. Flies swarmed everywhere in the Outback, especially around horses’ eyes. Poor Dollar seemed used to it but still shook his head to get them away from his face because they bite.
Dollar wasn’t my horse, really and truly, as I only leased him because after all, I’m now only 12, I’m not allowed to buy a horse. My dad had been warned to beware of the hobby that eats so he made me help pay for my own hobby.
My mom had dropped me off here at the stables and I didn't tell her that I was planning on riding Dollar back to the house so I could take him to see my friend, Rana Possington. Rana was in my class at school, she was an Australian Aboriginal and our next-door neighbor.
After the long, arduous horseback ride of five miles through the desert, I turned my horse into the gravel drive of our suburban Alice Springs house. I saw the old army Land Rover sitting in the driveway which meant that my mom was home, and Dad was at work, working days this week. Sometimes he worked weekends and sometimes he didn’t. They had a bus that would come pick up the American men (and one or two single women) to go work at Pine Gap Space Base.
I thought I could use the dog’s bowl outside to give my horse some water. He had worked up a good sweat on his neck but he wasn’t breathing too hard so it would be safe to give him a bit of water. I slid out of the saddle and walked over to the faucet under the kitchen window and turned it on to fill up the bowl that had run low. Dollar didn’t wait for the water to finish filling; he stuck his whole nose down in the bowl and began to drink while the faucet splashed him, sucking water through his teeth. I looked up into the kitchen window just as my mother walked into view.
“Margaret Isla Loch! What do you think you are doing?” she barked and then she was gone from the window’s view. I knew she was coming outside, and she was mad. My mom stepped out of the back door and put her hands on her hips, looking up and down at the length of my horse and then back to me, making it dramatic.
“You take that horse back to the stable right NOW!” she snapped. Mom was standing there in a sleeveless shirt, shorts and sandals. To me she looked like a cross between Elizabeth Taylor and Laura Petrie, but her attitude seemed more Liz to me at the moment.
“But I just got here,” I said, weakly, taking my velvet helmet off my head, my long brown hair in a sweaty tangle, feeling a flush of heat in my round, red cheeks.
“Now!” she said and turned on her heel and went back into the house, slamming the screen door behind her. I don’t know what she’s so mad about, it’s no skin off her nose. I’m the one who had to trudge through the desert, dying of thirst.
“Yeah, Margaret Izzy Loch! You take it back!” I turned to see my younger brother Jackson, standing with two of his friends, wagging his finger at me and laughing. I knew one of his friends, Millbank or Miles or something, but I had never seen the bigger guy before. They had just ridden up on their bikes; the ones with those long Stingray handlebars and the sissy bar on the back. I didn’t get a bike; I had a horse and I got the better end of that deal, even if I did have to use my babysitting money for Dollar’s upkeep. (I’m 12, it’s the only job I could get living overseas on a visitor’s visa.)
“Shut up!” I barked and then turned to make sure my mom wasn’t standing in the window, hearing me say those words. I could get a metal flyswatter on my bare legs for saying ‘shut up’.
“Mare rode her mare!” Jackson goaded.
“Hey, what’s his name,” the new, tall guy said as he walked up behind and to the side of Dollar carefully and put his hand on his rump – to let the horse know he was there, I guessed. He seems like he knows what he’s doing. And this new guy is really cute.
“Dollar.”
“Your name’s Mare? That's cool. My name’s Gerry,” he said, patting Dollar’s neck. I was immediately smitten with Gerry. And he was being nice to me.
What I didn't know was that our first date would have to wait. For fifty years.
Copyright 2022 © All rights reserved. Excerpt from Resurrection: The Dark Chambers of Gerry Frey’s Heart by Mare Loch.
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