Parramatta Girls

Alana Valentine

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781921428739
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Théâtre

Based on the testimony of dozens of old-girls from the Parramatta Girls Training School, this vibrant play is a joyous and harrowing dramatisation of the experiences of eight inmates and their reunion, 40 years later. Interspersed with song and storytelling, this is a tribute to mischief and humour in the face of hardship and inequality.

ACT ONE

SCENE ONE

MAREE, dressed in a Parramatta Girls uniform, sits on stage, amongst the pile of detritus. She exits when JUDY enters.

JUDI addresses the audience.

JUDI: Me and my brother used to build billycarts. You know, just basically a board with wheels on it that we’d nick off old prams or so. One time we used the wheels off of a shopping trolley. And we’d fix them onto the board and there you had your billycart. Once we got some black and painted the board and we called that bugger, it was a big bugger too, we called that the hearse. And, see, we lived up the top of a hill. So the biggest thrill we could get was to get on the cart and just career down the hill. Just fly. I can remember just flyin’ down the road, arms out, the wind makin’ my eyes water, laughin’ and screamin’ with everyone watchin’ ya. Now, at the bottom of the hill was a main road. Which was fine because you’d just, you know, use the rope attached to the front wheels to pull the wheels to the side. Which could be hard when you were at, you know, top speed, but you just pulled hard on one side and spun around to avoid any car that might be coming. So you’d belt down the hill, yank the rope and kinda skid around on a one-eighty at the bottom.

And that was fine, all part of the thrill, you know. And, look, your elbows used to take a bit of a battering and this was before they invented, what are they called, the elbow pads, [tapping her own forehead] thank you. So you used to scrape your elbows a bit, pretty regular. Scrape off a bit of skin, bit of blood. That’s all right, all part of bein’ a kid, isn’t it? But after a while I kinda found that the wounds on my elbows wouldn’t heal. And we didn’t have the money to go to the doctor even if I’d ever thought of asking to, which I didn’t, and I just thought it would heal, you know. But as time went on they just kinda stayed a little bit wet and open, and they didn’t get infected at all, they just sort of stayed raw and painful. And eventually when I got put in the home, they put this stuff on them and they healed a bit. But if we had to do scrubbing or stuff, or laundry, or all the work we had to do because they made us work really hard in there, every now and then they’d just start up bleeding again and I’d have to put this sorta white powder on them which stang, you know.

And eventually they healed, I mean, I still have to be careful with them. Like, they’re...