The O'Sullivan girls

In first year uni I met the very exuberant Melissa O'Sullivan. She was enrolled as a "mature age" student but she really didn't have many years on us 18 year olds. She was in my Italian class and also studying English Lit.

She had quite a bit of sass and really made the Italian teacher work hard with a constant line of questioning about rules and expressions. She loved to learn and Italian would eventually be the language she taught a decade later after a hiatus working for a publishing firm and also becoming a mother when she moved to Queensland. 

She came from a big and I later discovered, quite famous Mallee family, famous enough to be on Australian Story, harking from Patchewollock. She had three sisters and a brother and over the course of time I met all of them.

When I moved to Queensland, Melissa wasn't living there, but she put me in touch with two of her sisters. One was her baby sister Kate and the other was a middle sister Clare. Clare was an exotic dancer in a strip club in central Brissie. I'll never forget Melissa telling me that her relatives went to see Clare perform not really understanding what "exotic dancer" meant and got the shock of their lives. Clare has evolved since then into a masseuse and also a stand-up comedian in "The Valley" in Brisbane. One of my favourite memories of Clare was attending a completely packed out "design your own cocktail" party at her Queenslander in North Brisbane and other strippers were there dressed in the most outrageous skimpy clothing. Clare was dating a completely psycho boyfriend called Paul at that stage and he went off his tree and started a fight.

Kate was by contrast quite demure. Very softly spoken, working for an accounting firm and as the whole family will contest had completely broken the mold. You see, all the O'Sullivan girls were very petite and quite thin and then here was Kate, tall and voluptuous. She gets along very well with Lulla and Moodge. One time it was my job to organise tickets for the Big Day Out at Byron Bay and by the time I remembered to get tickets, long after Lulla and Moodge had booked their flights up to Queensland from Melbourne, the day was sold out so we drove all the way to Byron Bay and just had a normal coastal holiday instead. Anna, Anna, Anna but it was still fun!

The other sister Rebecca has had the most normal trajectory of the girls. She became a nurse and has lived in Melbourne the entire time. I borrowed a bar fridge from her when Fraser and I split up. We caught up many years later at Patchewollock Music Festival, camping nearby, her girls playing with my kids and we just picked up where we left off.