Our early married life

So there we were, two crazy kids madly in love. What happened next?

What happened next was: We built a life together.

We'd talked about buying a home before we were married. I'd wanted to buy a home as early as 1995, when I got to Melbourne and saw how cheap the homes were. I remember saying to Peter then, "$65,000 for a home? Maybe we should buy a place. That seems like a really good deal." Peter shrugged and said, "It's not like house prices are going to go up in a hurry."

Peter was almost always right, especially when it came to financial matters. But that time, he got it wrong. By the time we were married, house prices in Melbourne were out of reach. I had an inheritance from my grandpa, which we could have used as a down payment; but because Peter was operating his own business, we couldn't get a loan.

More importantly, Peter was a farm boy at heart. He didn't want to stay in the city. He suggested we find a place on some acres, somewhere around Ballarat.

Me? I felt like a city girl. But more than anything else, I was in love, and I wanted to give Peter everything he wanted. I thought that we'd get a place in the country somewhere, and then use it to eventually get a place in Melbourne, once property prices fell.

Well, it's been 23 years, and I'm still waiting for property prices to fall.

For Christmas that year - our first as a married couple - one of the presents I bought for Peter was about buying a home. I remember Peter's brother in law Mal teasing me about it - "Oh, now look, you just got married and already she wants you to settle down even more!" But in reality it was what Peter wanted. He was ready to buy a home; and I liked the idea of having my own space, but mostly I liked the idea of making him happy.

Because we had some money, and because it was impossible for us to get a mortgage, we decided to limit our search to places that we could purchase with my inheritance. Initially we'd hoped to find a place between Melbourne and Ballarat, but eventually we had to look the other side of Ballarat to find our property.

In the meantime, we were living in Vale Street, St Kilda, only a couple of blocks from the internet cafe at 19A Carlisle Street, and just a couple more blocks to the beach. Back then, at least, St Kilda was a wonderful place to live. Sure, we knew people who were robbed every Tuesday like clockwork, so we made sure to live on the first floor and not the ground floor, so that it was harder to break in. And yes, every time I walked to get the groceries someone would mistake me for a working girl and proposition me for sex. It didn't matter how I dressed. I remember once I was sick, and neither of us had done the laundry, and I literally dragged clothes out of the laundry basket to get dressed because we needed food. My face was red and puffy, I had snot running down from my nose, I was coughing constantly, and I hadn't showered in three days. Even so -

"Psst, are you working?"

I just said no and kept walking. But I felt like saying, "Are you kidding me? Look at me! Are you desperate or do you have some weird fetish for sick girls?"

But St Kilda was a community. Everyone looked out for each other. Everyone was friendly. It was on the cusp of gentrification, and had been for years - but it hadn't quite made the shift. It was still rough around the edges - St Kilda has always been a red light district. But that meant that, for the people who lived there, there was an added impetus to watch out for each other.

The people who were moving in hated the seediness, but the renters and shopkeepers, for the most part, didn't mind it. I always thought people who wanted to move in and kick out the prostitutes were in the wrong. After all, the prostitutes were there first. They knew, when they bought in St Kilda, what they were in for. It might be geographically close to the leafy streets of Elsternwick, but it was a world away. Why move and try to change the very nature of the place?

Not all of the shopkeepers liked it. One, a neighbour to the internet cafe, sometimes reacted violently towards them. One night we warned a prostitute about him. She rolled her eyes and said, "He's always doing that." It came to a shock to us, because we'd never seen him behave in that way. It also explained why, out of all the shops on that strip, his was the only one that routinely had its windows broken.

By contrast, the bookseller next to us - a man who everyone considered grumpy, although he was pleasant to us - once left his door unlocked. One of the working girls went in and called him, and waited in the shop until he came to lock it up. Like us, he had always treated them with respect, and so when he needed it, they repaid him in kind.

A couple of weeks after that incident, the shopkeeper who we'd seen chasing a prostitute with a baseball bat came into the shop with a petition demanding the police get rid of the prostitutes. I refused to sign. He stamped and stormed and berated me. I said, "Maybe if you didn't chase them around with baseball bats you wouldn't have a problem with them." He stood over me and yelled in my face that he was going to sue me for defamation. I didn't react. Shortly after, one of the women who was in the internet cafe came over to me, handed me her card, and said, "I'm a lawyer. He doesn't have a case. If he files anything, give me a call and I'll take care of it for you." He never did - he knew I was telling the truth.

Peter and I soon learned that St Kilda was divided into sections. I have no idea if it's the same now; but back then, the call boys worked around the Woolworth's parking lot around Shakespeare Grove; the biological females worked around Vale Street and Inkerman Street, and the trans women worked around Carlisle Street. Most of the women who worked around the internet cafe were in some stage of transitioning, and were doing sex work because it was the only work they could find, and it allowed them to save up for the surgeries they needed. It wasn't uncommon to hear them explain to a would-be john, "I'm a chick with a dick." They were very open about it, and they were all gorgeously presented, with well coiffed hair, perfect makeup, and beautiful nails. I often felt insecure next to them, these towering women walking perfectly in stilettos, their slender legs and large breasts accented in barely-there minis and wrap dresses.

You have to understand that it was a different world back in the late 90s and early 00s. There wasn't the awareness around trans issues that there is now. Most people still regarded them as freaks. Most people refused to use their preferred gender and continued to call them by masculine pronouns. So if you treated them with respect, if you called them by their preferred pronouns and were kind to them, they liked you. They respected you. They'd watch out for you.

Peter and I did that. We figured they weren't hurting anyone; and what did it cost us, to treat them with respect and to use their preferred names and pronouns and to accept them as women? We learned from speaking with a few, who were customers at the internet cafe, that most of them had been disowned from their parents and thrown out of their homes. Some of them had even been kicked out of school. They didn't exactly enjoy the work they were doing, but it wasn't like the world was very welcoming of trans people back then - they had to do what they had to do to survive.

Which doesn't mean we always get it right. I remember commenting one day, "You're so beautiful! It's unfair, I was born with all the right parts and I could never look as good as you!" These days it would be highly inappropriate; but she laughed and said, "Oh, you're gorgeous, sweetheart!"

Over time the working girls learned that we were open late, and that we were a safe place. If they needed to use the toilet we'd let them use ours. If they needed to get a drink of water we'd give them one. If they just needed to take a break they were welcome to sit on the couch for a while, or have a talk. I think to some extent Peter felt protective towards them. They were, at that time especially, underdogs, and Peter always had a thing for underdogs. He felt a sort of moral duty to protect and watch out for others.

This was never done out of a feeling of superiority; Peter treated everyone with respect and kindness. It was done out of a sense of human decency - this was just what people should do. We should all watch out for each other; we should all protect each other; we should all be kind and respectful to each other, and consider the impact of our words and actions. Peter somehow did this innately - it wasn't even second nature, it was a part of his first nature. He had a true appreciation for and belief in people.

One night as he was coming home from work, he saw a prostitute we hadn't seen in a while. We'd both been a bit worried about her, and only a few days before I'd asked one of the girls if she'd seen her around. When Peter saw her he was relieved and stopped to talk with her to make sure she was alright. She was; she'd just come back from having some surgeries in Thailand. As they were talking, another sex worker walked up and said, "Oh, just pay her what she's asking. She works hard!" Quickly, the prostitute Peter was speaking with said, "Oh, no, it's not like that, he's a friend." When Peter told me this story that night, I laughed. I also felt proud on his behalf that she considered him a friend.

Home then was a two bedroom flat on the first floor on Vale Street, one of a block of four flats. They were owned by an older woman who lived in a nearby suburb. I never met her, but her daughter came around from time to time to do minor repairs. Ours was the top floor flat to the right as you walked up the central staircase. The door opened into a small hallway. To the right of that was a kitchen - decent-size, for an apartment, although hideously ugly. To the left were sliding doors that opened into a living room - narrow and long, with a gas heater on one end. Behind the kitchen was a bathroom, small, but large enough to have a tub. Behind that was a small bedroom, and behind the living room was a larger bedroom.

Most of the flat was painted white, and bright and cheery, with sash windows. The bathroom was painted a sort of sage green - a very pretty pleasant colour. The toilet and sink and shower were all a slightly darker shade of green. The kitchen, though - oh, where do I start?

The kitchen was still stuck in the 70s. The cupboards were mission brown, particle board covered by laminate. The countertops were orange. There was an ugly brown and orange backsplash tile. And the walls were bright pink.

The landlord's daughter explained to us how it had happened. The kitchen, she acknowledged, was ugly. One day she decided to go with it, and to paint the walls a sort of funky orange. She mixed the paint herself, squeezing a tube of orange acrylic paint into a tin of white paint. But when she was finished, it was a bright, almost flourescent pink instead! I don't know why she decided to use it, and not go out and buy another tin of paint. But the result was a pink and orange kitchen - two colours that should not go together.

I decided to play up the ugliness and decorate with pink plastic flamingos. They were incredibly difficult to find though - Peter and I had to drive over the Westgate Bridge to find a nursery that was selling them!

Other than the horrible kitchen, though, that flat was terrific. The location was excellent. We could even see the CBD from our bedroom window; and during Moomba or New Year's we could watch the fireworks from there. It was a great place to start our married life.

I'd given a friend of mine, Emma, the key to the flat before we went to Fiji. When we got back we discovered she'd left us a beautifully decorated wedding cake, two champagne flutes, and a bottle of sparkling cider. That was a sweet surprise. After we got back, life continued much as it had before - we went back to working at the two internet cafes (the other was at 87 Bridge St in Richmond), going to the movies once a week, and generally just enjoying life.

Early in 2000 we started looking for a home. As I said, because we both felt Melbourne property was overpriced, and because it was difficult for us to get a bank loan, we decided to look around Ballarat. I remember one weekend we booked into the hostel at Sovereign Hill so that we could spend a Saturday looking at homes. At least, we thought we'd booked into the hostel. When we arrived we quickly realised we'd actually booked into the hotel instead! It was very nice, but also much more expensive than we were expecting!

I can't even begin to count the number of homes we looked at before we found the home we eventually purchased. I remember some of them. One of them had stables. The house itself was pretty ordinary, but I loved the stables. Another had had the ceiling of the living room collapse that very morning. I remember with that one we pretty much walked in and back out. One which was positioned almost backwards on the block, with the back door facing the road, was almost new, but on the market because the couple was getting a divorce. We didn't like the house, but I also didn't like the idea of jinxing us by buying it.

Funnily enough, we dismissed our house out of hand the first time we saw it. Peter's brother Chris showed us a picture of it in the local real estate flyer. We thought it was pretty, but we didn't like the feel of the street when we drove down it. Months later, after an offer we'd placed on another house in Dereel fell through, the agent showed us the house. And this time it was love at first sight.

I knew this was our house, as soon as I walked into the attic space upstairs - the space that is now Deltree's bedroom. I loved the pitched roof. I loved the wide-open feeling of it. It immediately felt like home. Oh, we could both see the house had a myriad of flaws - but we both loved it, all the same. Peter liked the land - back then it was much more open, with far fewer trees, than it has now. He liked the openness of it, and he liked the slope of the hill, and the creek that ran down the bottom (back then it actually had water in it.) I remember we took a walk around the property, and as we were walking around the dam I suggested, "What if we offer $80,000?" At the time the house was back on the market after an auction sale had fallen through; it had sold at auction for $120,000. Neither one of us thought they'd even entertain an offer at $80,000, but we hoped that, with a low-ball offer like that, they might counter-offer around the $100,000 we were willing to spend. Instead, when we made the offer to the agent, he said, without hesitating, "Yep, she'll take it."

Before we knew what we were doing, we had a house.

Of course, my first thought was, "We should have offered lower!" I was curious - and still am -to know what her selling point was. But all things considered, getting this house and its 12 acres of land for $80,000 was a great deal. Only a few years later, 5 acre blocks of land in Dereel were selling for $80,000.

It was around May when we made the offer. In July 2000 GST was coming in, and with it, the First Home Owner's Grant of $7000. Peter figured that would instantly make properties rise by around $7000 and he was keen to buy a home before that went into effect. But he was also keen to take advantage of it. We agreed that we would give his parents the money for the home; they would purchase it in their name; and then on July 1, we would purchase it from them for $1. That way, we could get a discount on the house but also have the benefit of the First Home Owner's Grant. Of course, it also meant we had to pay for two lots of closing costs! So that gobbled up quite a bit of the grant money. Even so, we came out enough ahead that we were able to purchase a round the world ticket for September 2000.

We moved in in late May or early June. We hired a truck from Melbourne, loaded it up (with some help from Dadi Guberman) and drove it to our new home. When we got there, Peter decided that, since the sliding glass door into what was to become his lounge room was slightly higher from the ground, the easiest thing to do would be to back the truck up there and move the furniture out. He asked me to hop out and let him know how he was going reversing the truck. I was worried because there was a water tank near the door, and I didn't want him to hit it. I completely ignored the fact that there was also a glass door there - and he hit that, because I wasn't paying attention. So the very first thing we had to do in our new home was to call a glazier and get a pane of glass in the sliding glass door replaced!

However having a missing pane of glass in the door did make it easier to move the furniture in - although it also made the house colder . . .

We had so little furniture! Initially we just set up our bed and the TV in the corner of what would become my lounge room. Peter threw his back out moving the furniture in, so we couldn't physically get the bed up to our bedroom. I remember our first morning in the house, Peter could barely move because of his back, and we had nothing to eat. So I decided to walk to the local store to pick up some basics. When I got there, I couldn't even get the basics. I think I was able to get some milk and bread, but they didn't have any butter. It was also so much further than I was expecting - I thought it would be a ten minute walk; it was closer to two hours return. I've never made the walk since (which isn't really saying much - the shop hasn't existed as a shop in well over a decade!)

But somehow we managed. That was just what we always did - we managed. Sometimes it seemed like it was the two of us against the world; but the world didn't stand a chance when we were together.

I remember watching ER, a TV series set in an emergency room in Chicago, shortly after we moved in. At one point Peter said, "Shhh, do you hear that?" "Hear what?" I asked, straining to make out the noise. "The siren," he said. "It's only on TV. There are no sirens here!" We were so used to St Kilda, where sirens were a common part of every-day life, that it was a novelty to only hear them on TV.

When we found out Peter's parents were coming for a visit, we hurried out and bought a dining room table. We found one from Bunning's - a small rectangle table and four chairs, all flat-pack. Peter's dad loved sitting around the table having a smoke and a coffee so having a table seemed more important than having a couch; besides, we already had a couch, although it was pretty old and worn out. Later on we bought our first new couch with two matching recliners. They were on clearance because the recliners didn't work. Those were the pieces of furniture we bought early-on; the rest we added gradually.

That September, we went on our first round the world trip together. It was during the Sydney Olympics. We'd gone to Flight Centre to book the tickets, and because of the Sydney Olympics, it took the travel agent eight hours of work to get us out of Asia and into Europe! It also meant we had to have a week in Nepal; but we didn't really care where we went.

We started in Kuala Lumpur. It was my first time in Asia and to be honest, I wasn't very excited about being there. Growing up in the US, Europe was always the exciting place to visit; Asia wasn't the sort of place anyone wanted to visit. But I immediately fell in love. I loved the busy-ness of it. I loved the heat. I loved the crazy clash of cultures. That first time, we stayed in Chinatown, in a private room in a hostel that cost $11/night and had a double bed and a fan. (We couldn't afford a room with air conditioning.) We'd go to the market and buy knock-off DVDs. I also bought a knock-off watch. I was amused as the stall keepers hawked their wares by yelling out, "Genuine fakes!" I remember being absolutely enthralled by a Hindu shrine, the crazy gods climbing all up and down the spire. My love for Kuala Lumpur was immediate, and subsequent trips to the city have only ever made it stronger.

After that we flew to Kathmandu. Well, this was an entirely different experience altogether! Kuala Lumper was bustling and modern; Kathmandu was sleepy by comparison. Our room there also cost $12/night but it was huge! Marble floors, ornate wood, a private balcony - I couldn't get over how enormous it was. Kathmandu was otherworldly to me. Peter had been there before - he'd spent time there waiting for his trek - but to me it was all new. It wasn't all good; there were high levels of street harassment, which is always maddening. But some parts of it were very good. I remember falling in love with an embroidered peasant top, which only cost a few dollars. I also picked up some beautiful handmade paper there.

Kathmandu, at that time, was still clinging to a little bit of its hippie past. There were all sorts of hippie clothes for sale - for me it was very much like Eugene's Saturday Market, but on a different scale. The clothing was much cheaper too! I picked up a beautiful peasant blouse covered in embroidered flowers, and a more simple cream coloured peasant blouse. They were each only a couple of dollars.

We would go to this rooftop restaurant . . . It was September, but it was still not cold, even in the shadow of the Himalayas. The restaurant was only on the roof of the first level, so it wasn't very high up, but I remember from there we could look over the quiet streets, and everything seemed perfect. I would watch the Western tourists as they browsed the shops; the monks in their saffron robes; the Tibetan children as they scurried around; and there was just such a sense of peace to it all.

We visited the temple where the Living Goddess lives. We didn't see her, of course. What an odd, sad life she must lead! In poorer countries, where there is a World Heritage site, or a site of such great importance, it's always very hard to sit there and appreciate it properly, because the minute you sit down you are surrounded by would-be tour guides. But it was really nice being there with Peter, and just letting him brush them all away.

Of course there were challenges in being in Kathmandu too. There was a high level of street harassment. Any time I went out without Peter, I was subjected to catcalls and proposition. And it's always difficult seeing poverty on a large scale. I also remember the meat market too clearly: a couple of streets where they butchered animals, and sold the meat. There was no refrigeration. The meat was chopped up on small tree trunks, and dogs wandered around, testing their luck. The butchers didn't seem to mind if the dogs licked it, but would stop them from grabbing entire chunks of meat.

After a few days in Kathmandu we decided to experience a different part of Nepal. We took the bus to Nagarkot, a small village which, once or twice a year, experiences the world's best views of Mt Everest. The rest of the time, the mountain is shrouded in clouds. Nagarkot is about 35 km away from Kathmandu. It was a two hour journey on an ancient school bus to cross those 35 km. The bus slowly wound its way up the steep hills - at times it seemed we were only inches from the edge of the road, with nothing but a steep drop beside us. I'm not sure how often I breathed in those two hours; it seemed I was constantly holding my breath! But at last we reached the village.

It was decidedly cooler up there, but still not cold. I must have spent hours sitting on the terrace watching the clouds, waiting for them to pass, to reveal the mountain. It didn't happen. But it was peaceful, calm. That is also where I first saw the magic of Peter interacting with children. They clamored around him - they must have known he was safe, because they ignored almost everyone else and focused their attention on him. He laughed and made little jokes with them, handed out pieces of gum, pens, whatever little gifts he had on him. They smiled broad, open smiles and ran off to show their goods, or stayed by his side, basking in his attention. He was so good-natured about it; he never shooed them away. They didn't speak English and he didn't speak Nepalese, but somehow they communicated anyway, through smiles and hand signals and happiness.

Who was this brilliant man I married? After so many years together I was still figuring it out. But I knew how fortunate I was, to be his wife.

From Nepal we traveled to Vienna. We stayed in a hostel, in a private room with bunk beds and a door that didn't lock because it was also the only exit to the emergency escape. I'd caught a cold on the flight from Nepal, so I was pretty miserable in Vienna. But it was a beautiful city, and we both enjoyed exploring it. Peter had been there before, of course - it seemed that no matter where we went, he'd always been there before! But that was a good thing, as far as I was concerned, because it meant he knew the ropes, knew what to do and how to do it.

I remember we went to a cathedral in Vienna. We happened to be there during a Beethoven concert. That was pretty powerful. We also went to a castle, and somehow found ourselves on a tour. The tour guide kept giving us nasty looks, though, as we hadn't paid for the tour, so we quickly realised our mistake and left!

From Vienna we went to London. Peter loved London; he'd spent so much time there, and he felt very comfortable there. I hated it. I think he was disappointed by just how much I disliked London. I thought it was dirty, crowded, and overpriced. We struggled to find an affordable room - they were all dank and dingy and still too expensive. Peter knew London like the back of his hand, and he was a valiant tour guide; but I wasn't impressed.

I liked the British Museum, and I thought the National Library was interesting. Peter showed me the pubs where he'd worked, and I enjoyed seeing those because they had a connection to him. But really, I couldn't wait to leave. The entire city seemed to take itself too seriously.

We decided to rent a car and drive to Cardiff. But when we turned up at the car rental place the next day, they couldn't find our reservation, and swore up and down that we'd never made one. It was frustrating, but there was nothing we could do about it. We ended up taking a bus to Cardiff.

I liked Cardiff considerably more than I liked London. It was a fun, inviting city that didn't take itself seriously at all. We stayed at a backpacker's with a giant dragon painted on the front. We visited the Cardiff Castle, which was great fun - a Victorian interpretation of a castle from the Middle Ages - and we took a bus to Carleone, to see some Roman ruins and artefacts there. After a few days in Wales we returned to London, where we rented another car and drove up to Scotland.