06. second marriage
I went to study in London taking my child with me and shared a flat with three art student friends.
I began to feel very sick by this time there was no counselling or support for traumatic experience and suddenly I began to feel extraordinarily tired. I continued to study and went to see a local doctor who said “take a cup of coffee girl and go”. I got my postgraduate degree but on my postgraduate course it was full of Australians and they were terrific and they were nearly all males and they liked me and one in particular liked me. A mother and a child can be very attractive to some people I suppose it's the vulnerability of a young mother with a baby was actually quite attractive. I was very fatigued and depressed by that stage and I was morally uplifted by these people and I married one of them. One of them wanted to marry me and I went along with it. It wasn't a very good idea because I was still traumatised.
Anyway I got myself a good job in a teachers training college for technical education. I taught visual education and my job was as an assistant to all the lecturers and the idea of the job was how do they stand up there and teach without just words, what can they do to make it more visually stimulating so that they could understand that vision is an important part of education. That was my job and I was there for three years and I really enjoyed it. And I married this man, he was a graphic designer and I had a bicycle with a seat on the back and took my son to school. Because it was London I choose schools for him with the most ethnic diversity.
Then my husband's father died and he had to come back to Australia because he was an only child he was a much more gregarious person than I was. He came back and he said “I think I have to stay here because my mother is by herself now, so I'm going to stay in Australia”. I didn't really want to come to Australia and I didn't know if it was a good idea being married. I wasn't psychologically ready to be in another marital relationship. Alistair got a job in Canberra and I came to Australia and we lived in Canberra.
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