week 9 - karrabin

When I was young I was going to grow up and be a cowgirl. Now not any ole cowgirl, I was going to be Calamity Jane!

I was around six or seven. We were living in “that” house. Being an older house, after coming through the sunroom, through to what would have originally been the front door, you had my parent’s room on the right, my brother’s room opposite. Then came the lounge room on the left hand side with my room coming off of that.

Now if I laid at just the right angle in my bed at night, I could see the television. I had to be careful that my parents didn’t see me otherwise I was in trouble for not going to sleep. This did happen a lot and eventually the door would get closed. But boy until it did, I was in heaven.

Doris Day’s voice was like an angel calling when she sung. I loved horses and I loved Calam. The way she was one of the boys, doing what she wasn’t’ suppose to struck a cord with me. She said what she wanted and did what she wanted. She could throw herself up on a horse and steer a stagecoach. There was nothing that Calamity couldn’t do. She really was my hero back then.

Can you imagine what it was like years and years later to finally see this movie in colour!! It was like falling in love with it all over again.

The other movies that would always have me sneaking a look were the Tammy movies. Debbie Reynolds and Sandra Dee, both singing such heartfelt songs. I was more often in tears watching these movies from the emotions they would bring out.

When I started learning the organ many years later, the first song I asked to learn was the song Tammy. ♫♫ I hear the cotton woods whispering above, Tammy, Tammy, Tammy’s in love.♫♫


I was going to have the singing voice of a nightingale just like my heroes. So in year three at around eight years of age I joined the choir at my new school. Sister Mary would take the choir in a small room under the church next to our school. It was small and filled with musical instruments and just enough room for us to crowd into.

Towards the end of the year there was an eisteddfod coming up and we were practicing lots. We had to sing one night and on that day we were in this room rehearsing. All of a sudden Sister Mary said to stop. That someone was singing out of tune.

She went through each person getting them to sing a note. Everyone was looking around wondering who it could be. I knew it wasn’t me as I had a voice like Doris and let everyone hear it all the time. Then it was my turn to sing the note. The last note I ever was to sing in front of anyone again!!

It was me! I was the one singing off key. Sister told me that at the eisteddfod I had to mime the words and not sing out loud as we would never win if I did. She said I was “tone deaf”.

I was devastated. I didn’t want to go to the eisteddfod that night and I certainly wasn’t going to tell my mother that she would be sitting there watching and I wouldn’t really be singing.

The feeling of standing on that stage trying my hardest not to let a sound come out was one of the worse feelings you could imagine. I had to stand and smile and pretend everything was alright when all I wanted to do was leave. I didn’t want to be on that stage. All those people in the audience watching, looking at me. I am sure they knew. They knew that I wasn’t really singing. That I was a fake!

From that day to this nearly 40 years later no one has heard me sing. Whether at church, birthday parties or wherever, I always still lip sinc.   I am lucky that my thirst for musicals has never wavered and I enjoy going to live performances and watching musical films.

It has also always made me conscious of what things I say to my own children. Singing is one of the truly great joys in life, and I would never want them not to be able to experience the joy it gives them.

At least I did get to experience one of the joys that Calamity showed me; Many years later I got a horse, but that’s another story