Deborah Forster

The beaches in Sydney were  gold and blue and the orange sunsets were probably the best in the world. We lived opposite Wedding Cake Island and the sea surrounded the island like blue clouds. Coogee then was rugged and a bit rough. Mel Gibson had a house two doors up and  he owned the long block running behind us. He was stalked most of the time. Little knots of  females gathered, looking up to his windows. As I was walking Alice in the pram one day, one of them stopped us, crouched down beside baby Alice and said: ‘You’ve got your father’s eyes haven’t you darling?’ I knew what she was getting at and said ‘Yes, she does.’ And then I pulled the pram up the thirteen steps to our house which, of course, was not Mel Gibson’s.

We went to Sydney in 1983 because A had a big job that kept him away from us physically and psychologically. It was not that different, he’d always been a worker, what was different was the loss of my family, my funny smart brothers, my kind younger sister who would come and spend the night and look after Phoebe so we could go out. My mother was working but she was around on the weekends. My father was still drinking as he always would be but as ever, he could be wonderful (or terrible). He was reliable at being unreliable.  Without the family, and their lives, Sydney felt like a distant cousin I’d never met, familiar yet different with strange weather. It also felt very lonely.

Going to parties with a baby was unusual, but I didn’t get that at first. I was relegated to feeding her in dark bedrooms piled with coats. Young women reporters, much the same age as me, would stroll in for a look at this odd specimen of femaleness who’d let the side down by going off the pill. I was twenty-eight, young to have a child in that crowd. I’d stepped outside the role of reporter and become a curiosity. The sisterhood I’d believed in did me no favours. Not drinking also made it harder to fit in, so I gave parties a miss.

One day I went to visit A at work, and he took me to meet the editorial director of Fairfax. Max Suich. Well of course Phoebe at about four months old, needed changing, so I used his couch and managed to get baby poo on it. Still, it was probably mustard, most were then. I cleaned it up and said nothing. Max was planning strategies with A anyway.  They still do the strategies thing, years after though now they go to expensive restaurants.

At first I was wildly lost in rainy Sydney and I wanted to go back to my dry home with its unpredictable weather and excellent football.  But I sometimes had a car and tried to make myself feel the city. I’d pick a destination and aim for it, (map-reading skills are still zero)  and somehow after trailing up and down various roads with names like Military Road and the Eastern Distributor, I ended up in the city  and discovered David Jones. And here was a match made in heaven.

This year the store is 186 years old making it the oldest continually operating department store in the world.  It still trades under the of the name of the Welsh man who started it. I looked it up and found they have a Coat-of-Arms with a dragon and a kangaroo. And their motto is ‘diligent care’. I loved the place; it was like a refuge and not what I expected of Sydney; it was settling to walk around pushing Phoebe and looking at the best the world had for sale.  Beautiful things can be very soothing. I couldn’t afford much, but I did buy a baby dress. I went there often, drifting around with the pram as if DJ’s was a kind relative’s house.

I fed Phoebe in the clean, comfortable rest rooms and going home was always slightly disappointing.

Much later, back in Melbourne, my son Chris, got his first suit at DJs, looking so beautiful and tall, it would break you and my lovely daughters Phoebe and Alice, and I would go there for formal dresses. The colours of those dresses bursting into you.  I bought a dress for Chris’ wedding at DJs and after I paid, the saleswomen said to just wait a minute, and she disappeared to a cupboard and came back with a little white box with some delicate earrings. ‘These will go nicely with the dress for the wedding,’ she said. I was very touched by her kindness.

After Alice had Alfie, her first child, she needed a strapless bra for something, so she went into DJ’s to get measured. A middle-aged woman wearing a  cloth tape measure like a stethoscope, rapped on the fitting room door and seriously measured Alice in that old school way that seeks a perfect fit. She still has the superior bra.

I’ve shopped  a lot over the years and since covid, much of it has been on-line. I’ve been ripped off twice, once was a huge hit of $2500. I was buying furniture for the grandchildren’s room. The company had gone broke but was still trading, so that money won’t come back.  The NSW Office of Fair Trading went into bat for us and have been helpful. And  the other time I was buying jumpers for all the grandchildren. That company also went broke owing us $360, another write-off.

But I’ve never been ripped off by established stores. Maybe paid too much, but the sales are astonishing now and I’ve just ordered myself a coat from DJs with big discounts. I know I won’t get cheated; I know they will change the coat it if doesn’t fit. The strength of a store like that is integrity. Some people have football teams, I have a very old department store.