* Thanks to http://www.fakenamegenerator.com, and, no, I don't know why either.
1. Ellie Marie is a fifty-two year old Media Director from Glanville, South Australia. She is a Libran who likes 'pina coladas and getting caught in the rain'. If you get her pop culture reference, are into donating B+ blood and shorty chubby women (5'4" and between 85 and 95 kgs—to be coy), call her on (08) 8219 5283.
2. Alannah Devine changed her name by deed poll in 1976 after deciding to do it at a drunken party the night before. She has this part of her that feels she has to follow through when she says she will do something—it's the Capricorn nature. It's the same nature that has seen her celebrate, on her fifty-sixth birthday last year, her thirty-fifth year of nursing—although now she is more on the admin' side of things because of the resulting bad back and knee joints. She doesn't believe in all that star sign malarky though. It doesn't get you though each day and back home to make dinner for her husband and kids on their farmlet in Oombulgurri, Western Australia, clean up, do the chores and back again in the morning. For that, all you need is practicality and boring sensibility and chocolate teddy-bear biscuits. No wonder her tiny 5'3" frame has 'blossomed' recently to over two hundred pounds. It's embarrassing, but if she says she has to do something about it, she'll have to follow through, and some days its seems it is only the biscuits that keep her sane.
3. Alice Bowhay feels like she wanted to be an engineer from the day in February when she emerged from her mother's womb into view of the silver stirrups on the birthing table. This was the humour she used to ensure working with the 'boys' never became a gender issue—which it always did anyway. It was a struggle all through her career. Women have it easy now, she mumbles to herself; making herself cross for thinking it. In my day, she cliches, it was practically unheard of to be a female and an engineer, and she worked three times as hard as any of her male,good-for-nothing colleagues to get half as far. At seventy-four though, they (the 'industry') still consult her occasionally. Teaching was always easier in the end. And now they realise how much she did. At home in Wattle Ponds, she often lets the phone ring out. It's not family. She doesn't want to hear about bad news from friends. And if its about work, well, they had me then and didn't want to hear from me—work it out yourself, she mumbles.
4. Bang, bang! Kaitlyn Weingarth jabs the air with a left and a right: 'When the house came up for rent on Punches Creek Rd in Watsons Crossing I knew it would be mine. I've only been boxing for a year, but I know it's right. You know how you know when something is just right?' The gym where Kaitlyn trains is back in town but cars are Kaitlyn's demoted second love and the thirty-five minute drive in and out, even after she already went home after work finished at three, doesn't phase her at all. It allows her to feel out the engine and make sure it's running at its best twenty-four/seven. She started her apprenticeship at sixteen at Ted's—four years ago. It was hard with all the others being men, but now people ask for her specifically when their 'baby's' come in dented and damaged and in need of tender loving care. The boxing keeps them off her back too. Not that it would matter to much if Darryl wanted to be on her back, but how do you let the wall come down for one of them and still maintain the respect with the others—they talk about their conquests every Monday morning and damned if anyone will ever talk about her like that!
5. There is something about Rachel Fairthorne that immediately puts people on edge. She is too loud for her small frame, but her loudness has a quiet quality—she could deny it if confronted, and you'd find you couldn't argue with her about it. It's social ineptitude with a don't-car attitude, and it has been like that for fifty-one years. But she gets by. Arguably on the fringe. Macksville, luckily, is a poorer kind of town—farmers and fishermen—because city people 'don't bother about trying to fix something, they just buy a new one'. And all these appliances nowadays are so badly made even Rachel despairs of repairing them. But out here people have to make do, and so she is kept in clothes and food and a roof over her head regardless what she calls the 'never-ending flood of crap'. Her 'partner', Jill, is an 'oyster catcher'. Rachel always uses inverted commas, punched into the air like an old typewriter, to describe Jill—after all these years together there is a part of her mind that still believes Jill is 'full of shit'. Last year, when Jill visited her kids in Sydney she found two badges at Smiggle: the sixty-six opening quotation marks, and the ninety-nine closing. She made them into earrings. Occasionally, she'll swap ears and then Rachel knows not to cause trouble because at that time Jill won't take it. They get by.
6. Alicia O'Leary; Banksia Beach, Queensland—that's all she'll give out (don't want some 'nutter' showing up on my doorstep unannounced; at work they are patients, at home they are 'nutters'—born the day after Christmas (great, that's one pressie a year from everyone—and don't try to tell me it is worth twice as much!). Alicia works at the Bribie Island State High School as the school psychologist. At four-thirty every afternoon she goes to her home and she doesn't come out again until she has to do it all over again. She can't work out if she hates the world because of what she has to see at school, or, if she sees what she sees at work because she hates the world. Either way, she gets unhappier every day.
7. Charlotte Tyrrell says everyone in the suburb calls her Chuffy from Duffy because, truth be known, she can count on one hand the number of times she has had to leave Duffy. There was the time the supermarket distributors went on strike for nearly two weeks and you just couldn't get bread and milk. Then there was the time that her maiden aunt in Queensland died. She is Charlotte's namesake, and stayed with her everytime she had to come to Canberra. They got on well. She had to go three times: in the last few days, for the funeral, and, surprisingly, to see the lawyers in Brisbane who told her that Aunt Charlotte had actually left her a large tract of land in Eastern Queensland. She has someone caretaking it now. She had felt so odd being away from home those last three times that she swore she would never do it again. If the supermarket ever runs out of bread again, the neighbour's daughter has a car now and tolerates the odd conversation with Chuffy—she'll just ask her to go.
8. Isabelle Nixon, 12 Meyer rd, Sandleton SA, Jan 23, 44, 67yo, Copy marker, 80kgs, 160cms: For forty-seven years Isabelle marked copy. From the day she turned twenty, the January after she finished her two year TAFE course, until a few weeks ago when someone in the HR department realised she had gone two years beyond retirement, she had sat over text with a red pencil and made corrections, licking at its tip before each corrective stroke. A few years ago they had tried to get her to stop using red. ‘It gives the impression that you are being judgemental’, someone tried to tell her. ‘I am being judgemental’ she replied. ‘Tell them that if they don’t like red all over their copy, they can just send it to me without any mistakes.’ She feels lost now. It was so sudden, even though she knew she was on borrowed time. ‘I’ve got hundreds of years to live Jeannie’, she tells her housemate and best friend of forty-nine years, ‘what on earth will I do with them now?’ She sits on her couch and strokes the cat. Beside her are a box of red pencils and a stack of magazines and books. If she finds more than ten mistakes in any given publication, she walks down to the public library, tackles the photocopy machine and dispatches a letter of complaint to the given publisher. It has made her a little more optimistic about the future—there is nary a day which doesn’t involve a walk down to the library.
9. Anna Leehy, 25 Normans rd, Bringalbert, vic, dec 3, 1971, 39yo, apt house manager, 49kgs, 5’7: It’s like a dream. Anna started working as the house manager at the apartments about a year ago. If you have a mobile and don’t go too far away from town, there is no reason why you can’t do whatever you like, whenever you like. They pay me to water-ski she tells her friends. And she is always on the water. After being brought up on a farm about fifty kilometres from Bringalbert, the little town seems enormous in comparison. There is always someone new to meet. Imagine never having the sensation of the person in front of you being an absolute stranger—that is what life was like. You just always knew everybody around you since time began. Now she strikes up conversations and searches for novelties in strangers whenever she can. It’s her new hobby, and everyone in town seems enlivened by the fact that they, in turn, are seen as something new and exciting for a change. It is like a cool breeze is blowing through town, and the usually still lake is lapping at the shore for the first time in no-one-knows how long.
10. Isabel Reimann, 34 Shirley st, Russell Island, QLD, October 20, 1973, 37yo, Labor Trainer, 86kgs, 5’5: Isabel is in a catch-twenty-two. She moved onto Russell Island to get away, but there is no work and now she can’t get away. What was she thinking? The answer is she wasn’t. It was a matter of move now, get away, go to where he will never find her again. She got there but will it ever get better? She gets by with bartering. Slowly the other people who live on the island are letting her do chores and jobs in exchange for food and items for the house. There is even one seemingly nice lady who stops by Isabel’s fence occasionally and chats. The good thing about having no money is she can’t buy alcohol. It was hard at the start, but now it is like she feels a little stronger and a little further away with each day. Baby steps Izzy. That’s what her mum always used to say. When you have run a thousand miles, it takes a while before you can slow your heart down again, before you can breathe into life again. When her heart beats wildly in her chest, she walks to the end of the island and looks out into the grey Pacific Ocean, and it calms her because she knows that there is nowhere further to run and from here it all baby steps.