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October 1987

A large crowd had gathered on the lawns in front of St. Margaret’s Roman Catholic Church in Blackland Street Glen Hartwell to cheer and throw rice as the young couple walked arm-in-arm out through the high-arched doorway.

Although the beautiful bride was dressed in a traditional flowing white gown, it was obvious to all present that she was very pregnant.   A few people in the crowd raised eyebrows at this deviation from tradition — thinking Rowena should have settled for a pink, or blue gown.   However, none were game to speak out, since standing protectively around the young bride were her mother, Samantha Frankland, the groom’s mother, Victoria Singleton, and the matron of honour, Helen Horne (mother of the best man, Brian): three archetypal big-boned farmers’ wives who took rubbish from no one.   Victoria tall and Celtically dark like her son, Ernie, the other two feisty redheads.   There were few people in the area who would dare cross swords with the trio, and none who had attended the ceremony.

At the reception after the ceremony, the women crowded around Rowena, congratulating her.   ”You finally lassoed him,” joked Rowena’s cousin, Gloria Ulverstone, giving her a hug.

“Lassoed is right,” agreed Gloria’s younger sister Holly, nudging her aside gently to give her own hug.

‘The one that didn’t get away!’ thought Rowena, looking across to where her new husband Ernie was in turn being congratulated by his two closest friends, Brian Horne and Danny “Bear” Ross.   For a number of years the six of them had triple-dated, with Ernie and Rowena, Holly and Brian, and Gloria and Bear pairing off.   However, over the past couple of years the other two couples had gradually drifted apart.   Holly moving down to Melbourne to do a B.Sc. in chemistry at the Royal Melbourne Institute of technology in January 1984 had put a serious damper on her relationship with Brian, since she had rarely been able to take enough time off from her studies to make the trip up to the countryside.   Yet despite the completion of her degree in November 1986 and subsequent return to Glen Hartwell, to take up a position with Megarithe Chemicals, Holly and Brian had been unable to rekindle the spark of their once hot romance.   Bear was the one “foreigner” in the group.   Whilst the others had all been born and raised in the Glen Hartwell to Merridale area, Bear had originated in BeauLarkin (a large country town sixty kilometres from the Glen).   Although many of the locals had at first been standoffish, Bear’s friendly nature and warm personality had quickly won them over.   For nearly five years Bear (so nicknamed because of his great height — over two metres — and barrel-shaped chest and bulging muscular arms and legs) and Gloria had dated, seemingly moving inexorably toward matrimony.   But then over the past few months they had started to drift apart, with Gloria beginning to date an American mechanical engineer, Mallory Baradine.   Rowena’s own courtship with Ernie had travelled some rocky ground over the last five years, with Ernie’s initial passion suddenly dimming after four or five months, only to renew itself a few months later, before starting to wane again.   After a four-and-a-half year off-and-on relationship, Rowena had finally settled the matter by agreeing to move in with Ernie in early 1987.   (A move that had scandalised most of the locals, since in the late 1980s most Victorian country folk still frowned on the idea of sex out of wedlock.)   Something that had been possible because after the death of Ernie’s father Gregory in 1980, his widow, Victoria, had moved to a three-room cabin that the Singletons owned just outside LePage, leaving Ernie alone to tend to the running of the Singleton sheep station.   Within a few months of moving in, Rowena had become pregnant, so here they were, finally tying the knot with the baby due in another month’s time.