The Oval

I predominantly grew up in a little rural town called Ellinbank.
Calling it a town feels weird actually. What constitutes a town? This was (and is) farm land. Dairy and beef farms, mostly. A potato farm for good measure.
There aren’t enough roads to give directions, so we use landmarks. Things like, “Head past the daffodil farm, then you’ll see the church on the corner. Keep going past the church and we’re the first house on the right with the red rooves and the funny looking chook domes in the front yard.”

We had a church. A small school (about 30 kids when I was there). Tennis courts. A badminton hall. And another tiny hall for concerts and playgroup.

We also had The Oval.
Aka The Cricket Grounds.
Aka The Rec Reserve.
Aka The Footy Oval.
This is a collection of stories from The Oval.

I had a friend growing up by the name of Chloe. Even as a kid, she was the loveliest person. Which is weird because we grew up in the 90’s, and 90’s kids were hooligans in retrospect. Chloe lived 1.6 kms down the road from us. In Primary School, we were both obsessed with Trixie Belden books. They were mystery books in which the two main detectives were teenage girls named Trixie and Honey, who hoped to one day open the Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency.
We of course got hooked on the idea of starting the Le Cerf-Wallace Detective Agency (though we never could agree on which name came first). We took this very seriously. We used to spend our summers wandering down the dirt road by my house looking for dead bodies. We searched Wombat Gully and amongst all the trees and bracken on the sides of the road, finding only a torn and dirty old yellow t-shirt which we took as solid evidence that we were on the right track. When school went back, our show and tell was off the charts compelling.

We developed a love of investigating and moved our operation to The Oval. We dug through the abandoned, boarded up old cricket rooms looking for clues, but discovered nothing of interest. Instead we found some old plastic cups and filled them with dirt and water, hoping to prank some thirsty cricketers when they next showed up to play.

There’s a netball court in the same clearing as The Oval and we used to take our roller-blades down there and roll around for hours. We would play games like line chasey, and I hated every minute of it because Chloe was supremely athletic and I read books.

A treetop childhood.

It was at this oval that my sister asked a boy on her cricket team on a date. I didn’t even know girls could do that. I thought she was the bravest person I knew.

When I was on my learners, Chloe and I went to The Oval where she tried to teach me to drive a manual. We laughed a lot, but I ran over my phone somehow and also I still can’t drive a manual.

After we finished high school, I had an audition for a film about football. Chloe comes from what I would describe as ‘a big football family’ and I come from what I would describe as an ‘eurgh football’ family, so she was my first port of call when I was prepping for the audition. We headed to The Oval for her to give me some lessons. When we told her Dad where we were going, he laughed and said it was the blind leading the blind. Luckily I had no idea what that meant so remained steadfast in my faith in her as my football rabbi. I didn’t get a callback, but I did get some feedback that said I didn’t really have footballer posture which sounded pretty positive to me.

I had my 21st birthday in the club rooms there. Our old cricket coach (aka “venus fly trap man” - based on the way he coached us to catch) happened to be on the bar and somehow commandeered the mic during speeches to tell everyone about a mishap I had as a kid. I was 10 years old and had joined the cricket club. One day I was called upon to help pack up the gear and as I was piling it all into the big old musty bag, I found something peculiar and remarked - “What is this? A gas mask?” Then I held the triangular looking piece of equipment up to my face with accompanying Darth Vader noises like the theatrical masterpiece I am.
Apparently the technical term is a ‘box’ and I was lucky to avoid catching some filthy crutch disease on my precious face.

Every year, Chloe’s family get together and organise The Twilight Sports at the end of the summer. It’s as awesome as it sounds. Family races by twilight on the oval, complete with obstacle courses that involve hay bales, tyres and empty feed bags. There’s also the classic ladies gumboot throw which is much harder than it sounds. I know this because I’ve practiced at home. Not because I’d ever attempt it in public. The prize for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place is actual money and the kids love it. The Twilight Sports don’t give a hoot about inflation. Kids are still getting the same $1, 50cents and 20cents that we got when I was a kid. Which is the same philosophy our tooth fairy has and I appreciate the synchronicity of values.
We came a couple of years ago and Jarrod came first in The 400m Gift. We were struggling through the first months of self-employment and he won $15 which fed us for the next few days. The Twilight Sports provide my friends.

This year, three of my sisters participated in the 100m sprint and tried to get me to run too. Chloe’s Dad gestured to me as he was preparing to start the race, enquiring if I was joining, and before I knew what was happening, I was motioning that I was pregnant. Know that honesty is my highest value except only in circumstances where I’m being coerced into imminent embarrassment.

It was such a treat to go this year. Not only to watch Halo’s big grin as she raced.
Or to see Lumi blissfully skip her way through the 2yo sprint.
But for the joy of a well known, intimate community.
To see Chloe and her family running the whole shebango as a service to the community despite the fact they could have been winning every race.
Chatting to venus fly trap man (Pete Felstead and his beautiful wife) - who was also our badminton coach and certified kind man™ in my younger years.
Seeing my very first babysitting clients; one who nearly drowned on my watch after lying and telling me he was going to the toilet and attempting to climb into the pool being built in the backyard. And one who has her own little baby now.
My entire family (getting the band back together).
The friend who ran for school captains with me.
The family who hosted us over New Year’s into the new millenium.
And one of our neighbours, whom I always considered brothers since we never got any.

You know, communities come and go.
People leave. New people come.
Things change.
The Oval has new buildings, but is still surrounded by the same windbreak of cypress and gum trees that have been there for who knows how long. Shielding and protecting. Making the place feel somewhat like a secret.

I first stepped foot on The Oval as a 10 year old learning to play cricket with my friends.
To see those very same people - friends, siblings, parents and coaches alike wandering across the field some quarter of a century later under the mystical cloak of dusk…
With children of our own.
With new worries and insecurities and dreams.
And in some cases, entirely new spirits.
With years of love and loss and lollygagging in between.
Years of new challenges and new interests and new haircuts.
…Is just something wonderful that I can’t quite explain.

We came from a pretty dodgy area before we landed back in Ellinbank. The school we attended was horrid. Stories that would make your hair curl. We all had a pretty rough time of it. My parents had a bad experience with their share farming partner. My sister was bullied into developing serious heart issues. My other sister started acting out on the school bus. And I sense that my anxious tendencies were wildly exacerbated in the toxic culture of that school.

I’ve never thought that perhaps this community in Ellinbank was such a blessing to us all. A resting place after an unsettling time away.
We found friends. Car rides to school. Activities to join in on. Books to share.
We got to go to pizza nights. And sleep on trampolines with friends.
We would whisper to each other as we ran out the school gates “Do you wanna ask?” which was code for “Wanna ask our parents if we can hang out?”
We stumbled upon mentors.
And climbed hay bales.
We searched for dead bodies.
And swam in dams.
We cartwheeled across cricket pitches.
And shivered before Friday night badminton.
We rounded up cows and played mildly dangerous games on the four wheeler.
And we discovered putting chocolate inside bananas on Bonfire Night.

I’m often contemplating what events have transpired to cause my nervous system the dis-regulation it is often in. But today, I think I’m accidentally stumbling across the tonic. A place full of people who feel like home and being known. I was nervous going to the Twilight Sports this year. I thought people might treat me like the little twerp I was when I was younger. I thought they would be snarky and cruel. And I thought I would deserve it somehow.

But a healthy community holds space for growth.
And none of my worst case scenarios came true.
And that’s pretty special to me.

You can move as far as you want, but communities like this get inside your soul.
They build a cove there that you can shelter in whenever you need it.
A place of memories and tall tales. The kind you can’t remember the exact facts about but as the years tick on, you’re pretty sure everyone’s definitely exaggerating.

Memories of first crushes.
Of bike stacks.
Of common unity.

Of roller blades.
And jerky driving lessons.
Of cricket cups.
And Sunday School.
Of the laundry game.
And fresh cream and jam on bread after school.

These little threads of togetherness where your life has been woven with others.
Stories that join you together in a tapestry far bigger than you know.
Stories that become nostalgia and nourish you all over again in new ways…
They’re an almost miss-able kind of magic. The conscious remembering can kind of leave you for a while as you move on into young adulthood and build your future.
But the feeling remains in you. It becomes your biology.

And so tales from The Oval inform my life now in ways I both knowingly and unknowingly live out. Forming values and belief systems.
The search for community.
The desire to let my kids stumble through their boredom, to whatever is on the other side.
The friendships that prevailed despite wildly different skills and talents.
Contemplating what it is to serve when you could be winning.
Having other loving adults in our kids’ lives.
Not putting things directly on my face unless I know exactly what they are.
And the power of shared communal spaces that feel like they belong to you and you to them.

Mmm. *Deep breath*
Life is good.

x
Lysette