A fictional magazine article based on Bruce Dawe

Essay by sungkwo April 2008

download word file, 4 pages 0.0

Downloaded 10 times

One day they may be there, and then with the change of the season, they are gone. Maybe you happened to live in the countryside, and maybe you may have briefly met them or even moved right next to you. If you have, met or neighboured these people, you would know that they are just like a normal family, and yet just as you are getting to know them, they are gone; gone to look for work as a new season begins. Today we will be hearing the story of these families that have always been forgotten until now.

One of the typical “drifters” is the Smith family consisting of Tom the father, Laura the mother, and two daughters, the eldest being Karen and youngest being Jill. It had all started when Tom found out that Laura, his long-time girlfriend back than, was pregnant. “We were not ready to have a baby”, said Laura Smith, in a interview that the Australian Story had done earlier.

“But back then we were so much in love. We thought we were invincible. It seems so foolish that we had done that now”.

When the couple told their respective parents of their plans of being a parent, coming from a strict Catholic religious background, they did not take it lightly; in fact they were thrown on to the streets. Regardless of this chain of events, baby Karen Juliun Smith was born on the 18 of April 1987. However this was the last of good news for awhile“After we had Karen, everything spiralled out of control. Karen actually suffered from post natal depression a few weeks after having Laura. To add to the stress of that I had to work a 70-hour week as a construction worker, to keep the food on the table.