Clearing out old boxes buried in the back of my wardrobe I rediscovered Margie. It is 30 years (almost to the day) since the photograph was taken. So long ago that she is almost unrecognisable to me. I remember the time vividly now. Midsummer, a big group of friends on holiday together…joking around, being provocative, and posing in what she thought, at 18 years old, was a femme fatale pose. I think the camera was a Kodak Instamatic (it must have been something really simple and cheap, we were all poor students!) and in those days colour film was still too expensive to be used except for special occasions. So pose, point, click and Margie’s 18 year old image is captured forever. A happy accident.

I have lots of memories of that holiday. The old one bedroom shack we rented near a river. There were 12 of us staying there...where did we all sleep?! The walk down the bank through the bush to the river…skinny dipping... but only if nobody else was around! The eccentric couple that owned the shack and lived down the hill…the frequent visitors from the city (boys) and the ever increasing pile of empty beer and wine bottles outside the house. The “longdrop” toilet! Going to the pub en masse (12 girls caused quite a stir) and Margie’s complete and utter surprise when the most handsome guy there picked her to talk to.

The weather seemed perfect all the time. We were all one year out of high school and studying what we thought would be our chosen career paths forever. We had no thought of anything bad ever happening to us. It was all so carefree and certain.

What happened to Margie, I wonder. Now that I look at this photo so many years later I see it differently. A stranger looking at this picture might think she was very self aware and not shy at all, an exhibitionist maybe, someone completely happy with herself and her body. The opposite was true. She was very shy, very modest, very unaware of her looks with no idea of how others perceived her and she hated to be the centre of attention.

I see her potential...the unawakened sexuality, the complete unawareness of her beauty, that kind of gawky girl/woman awkwardness, the humour (she was kidding around in that field) and it makes me sad looking at her now. I wish she had even just an inkling of how beautiful she was back then but as Mr Shaw observed “youth is wasted on the young”.

30 years later, is she happy and self-confident and secure?

Looking in the mirror now, seeing those same eyes staring back at me, I answer...more so than I was then, but I am still a work in progress.

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