“If I move fast, I move fast. I won’t finish last. You know I give in, you know I’d give in.”
BIRTHDAY: January 16th, 1996
HAS LIVED IN MELBOURNE FOR: Grew up in country Victoria, but has lived in the city for the last five years.
She always smelled like cooking oil. Deep-fried batter, y’know? It stuck to her scalp, her skin— clothes spinning on a permanent washing cycle. They didn’t wear aprons, or uniforms. Family business didn’t need that—didn’t hand out nametags (didn’t need them, with their faces all the same), or money in the (piggy) bank come end of pay week. Payment came in ten-hour shift work, and free Dim Sims hidden around the corner from customers.
Small town country Victoria, and everyone knew the Hill’s that worked at, and lived above, the Hooked fish and chip shop. The ten-hour shifts split fair between the three of them – her and her sisters – on the school holidays, and all the weekends in between. Georgia counted those days lucky, with Jessica or Brianna (Jess older, Bri younger) manning the cash register and filling up the fry vats —the days she got to do laundry without having to add anything to the load.
The Hill’s that lived by Sovereign Hill. It was catchy: hooked the locals in every sunny Sunday, reeled the tourists in when they couldn’t pan properly for gold. Potato cakes were close enough, though, right?
The city was never close enough. Ballarat meant public school, and small buildings, and friendship groups that turned and turned like the family washing machine. It was dry. And Georgia would’ve settled for nothing bigger, or better – but if you were smart, you didn’t have to be interesting. It gave her a right to be boring. She never wanted to be anybody else: always had one set goal. Georgia had no real reason for wanting to become a doctor. Six years old, maybe, and always pulling out Operation! Ten years old, probably, and playing Theme Hospital on a box-monitored computer. There was never a shift: never princess to Olympian to astronaut. Always a doctor. While that felt like a normal desire for a child, it wasn’t considered as such in a family of fast food business owners.
Her parents came around. Halfway through high school, and they took a trip into Melbourne for the VCE Career Expo. Georgia with brochures tucked under her arms, and wandering fingers, before she decided on the highest-ranking medical school in Australia. Public school wasn’t going to cut it. She’d seen what college looked like on television, what it looked like in America, and Melbourne Girl’s Grammar was around the corner from Melbourne University. It was in the city, and it was easy. It made everything so much easier. An interview and entry exam, and they got the tuition mostly paid for. Georgia had a uniform now. Less laundry cycles—an entirely new washing machine, shared with a wider family.
There’d always been stereotypes (slurs) about all girls’ schools. She’d heard them before, contributed to them, even—bitches, sluts, lesbians. Educated enough for a scholarship, but ignorance seemed to stick in small towns. Found herself searching through the courtyard for the gay couple that’d always sit hand-in-hand, hand-on-hip, on a bench by the library. At first, she looked out of curiosity—it was something foreign, much like she was. Small fish, big pond. Didn’t know she even felt small, until she realised why—and why she’d always look, or try to find them. College is all about exploration and discovery, right? And it made it easy, being surrounded by so many girls—so many different curves and edges, so much beauty, to finally understand. Had Georgia plucking the Operation! heart out with a pair of tweezers, and examining. A softer cycle: her new setting.
Boarding school paid off: undergrad at Melbourne Uni (a Bachelor of Bio-Medicine) and an apartment with four flatmates at the UniLodge down the road. A community Laundromat, no Hills— only big buildings, and trees that bowed. With her last year of pre-med, Georgia is juggling coursework and studying for the GAMSAT, in hopes of being accepted into the university’s med program after graduation. No more fish and chips on school holidays – only ten-hour study shifts, and flake that’s bought each and every time she takes the tram down to St. Kilda beach. A new normal – her own independent setting.
It’s like she’s nothing more than a grade on a piece of paper. Getting the job done was always expected. Quiet enough to stay hidden in school—validation given by the praise of her teachers, and the report card she’d hang on the shop’s deep freezer. Pick one trait, and it’s always smart. Ironically, it never went beyond that – wasn’t bright enough to identify anything else. Chalk it up to self-esteem, or lack of validation in other areas (beauty, humour, personality). All of her eggs are in the smarts basket, and without it, her sense of self is blurred.
