Jean Sharp grew up in working class Mayfield, Newcastle, NSW, in the shadow of the BHP steelworks. Her life spanned the steelworks’ very beginnings to nearly its closure in 1999.

Jean recalls in remarkable detail the big and small events of 20th century life: school during World War I, the growth of Mayfield and Newcastle, domestic and social life, work as a midwife in the slums of Sydney, life in the country towns of Warialda and Moree, World War II, and a rocky marriage bringing up four children.

But Jean’s earliest years in far north-western NSW were for many years a mystery to her. When the silence surrounding that time was finally broken, Jean was devastated. Mayfield Girl is Jean’s brave and honest account of coming to terms with her troubled childhood.

Editor’s note vii

Prologue 1

1 · Crybaby 3

2 · Horses, buggies and steam trains 6

3 · Please give me a penny, sir 8

4 · A King George V childhood 12

5 · No more flowers 18

6 · More tears 25

7 · ‘How is the little boy?’ 29

8 · No time for kisses and cuddles 30

9 · Boots, beards and braces 38

10 · Messages to the terminus 42

11 · Roast lamb, jam, baths and Methodist Sundays 48

12 · My father the bushie 51

13 · Simple pleasures 55

14 · An intrepid ten-year-old 58

15 · The Pommie invasion 61

16 · Cynthia, school and me 64

17 · The big lie 68

18 · Wilhelmina, the lost love 74

19 · Whatever happened to Cynthia? 81

20 · Tom, my starstruck brother 87

21 · The prettiest girl in Mayfield 90

22 · ‘I suppose you must all love babies?’ 100

23 · Bedbugs and breech births 108

24 · First love 112

25 · No one left to be proud of me 117

26 · A second-class railway ticket to a new life 121

27 · Who’s in charge here, you, me or Doctor Wheatley? 125

28 · Getting to be part of the “in” crowd 131

29 ·
The doctor, his wife, the chemist, the dentist, the
hospital sister and me 137

30 · Married life in the “place of wild honey” 143

31 · “Tall, healthy and with their own teeth . . . ” 150

32 · Messerschmitts, Spitfires, Dunkirk and childbirth 153

33 · The terror of the Japanese 159

34 · A barbershop, two rooms and a bathtub 162

35 · Babies and the Battle of the Coral Sea 166

36 · The end of the War and soldier settlers 173

37 · After the surrender — civil war at home 175

38 · Strains in the family 181

39 · Forbidden romance 186

40 · Living and partly living — a hard-won partial happiness 190

41 · Movement, turmoil and misery 200

42 · The tarot reader 214

43 · Return to Bull Street 219

44 · So . . . 223

Epilogue 226

Index 228