Life As I Know It (6 page)

Dad did many things for us. One of the most important was to teach us to have a real crack at things, to be the best we could at whatever we were doing. He even gave us handshake practice.

‘When you meet someone, give them a good firm handshake and look them in the eye,' he'd say. ‘And if they ask “How are you going?” don't say “Good”, say “Good, thank you”.' He drilled this into us.

Halfway through Grade 6 a couple of teachers from Loreto College came to our school and said, ‘If you're going to Loreto next year, come over here.' I joined the group as that's where I knew I would be going. Mr Morris, the Year 7 co-ordinator, talked
about Loreto, and its history, and how high school was different and what we needed to do to be ready. He looked up and said, ‘Hang on, girls, I've only got four names on my list and there's five of you?'

He knew I was a Payne and he said, ‘Michelle, isn't it? I think it's your name that's missing.' Later he phoned Dad.

‘Paddy,' he said, ‘you've forgotten to enrol Michelle.'

‘Well, yes, she'll just be going along to Loreto like the others,' Dad said. The last of my sisters to go there had been Margie, and that was quite a few years before. There'd been an interlude because Cathy had gone to Rochy High when we lived on The Farm.

‘No, Paddy, it doesn't work like that,' he explained. ‘Getting a place at Loreto is highly competitive these days. You have to fill out all the forms. There's interviews.'

Dad told me he'd work something out, the Payne way.

When I showed up on my first day at Loreto—I'd missed orientation day because I'd been to the races—I went straight to the Mornane lockers. My sisters had told me I'd be in Mornane house because they had been. I went through the list there and my name wasn't on it and so I headed to the office.

‘Umm, my name wasn't on the list in the locker room,' I said.

‘That's okay, we'll find out what's happened. What's your name?'

‘Michelle Payne, P A Y N E.'

‘Mmmm,' said the friendly receptionist. ‘It appears you haven't been enrolled.'

With a little quivery lip and sad eyes, I said, ‘Okay.'

‘Don't worry. We'll give your dad a call and sort something out.' She rang Dad.

‘Hello, Mr Payne, we've got your daughter here and it appears you haven't enrolled her.'

‘Oh, geez, haven't I? Oh, geez, sorry about that. I don't know what happened there. Must have forgotten all about it.' I was eventually enrolled. Dad always had too much on his plate.

Our family was well known at Loreto, and to Mr Morris. Apart from attending school, the girls were often in the news. There weren't a lot of women jockeys around and they were riding really well. The Payne Family had been made (jointly) Racing Personality of the Year in 1994, which was a tremendous honour. Patrick had also become a star. He'd made a name for himself as a naturally talented apprentice. Although he weighed only 33 kilograms then, from the moment he rode in races he was at one with his horse. He'd won the Doncaster Handicap on Soho Square as an apprentice and a string of top-class races on horses like Pontormo, Alcove and Our Pompeii.

A couple of months after Andrew had begun his apprenticeship in 1994, five Paynes rode in a race at Ballarat. Patrick won, leading throughout on the favourite, Titian Moon. Therese finished second on Carajah and Maree made it a Payne trifecta with Caven in third place. Andrew finished fifth on Blatanto, and Bernadette rode Crown of Seaton. That was a big story in Ballarat.

Andrew may not have had as much media as Patrick, but he and Jason Paton, Therese's husband, were famous around the world for a couple of days for an incident known as The Great Jockey Switch. At Caulfield on Boxing Day in 1996 Andrew was riding Hon Kwok Star and Jason was on Cogitate. Jas first came to grief when his mount clipped heels. He fell, safely as it turned out, interfering with Andrew's mount Hon Kwok Star. Andrew also fell but as he toppled he landed across Cogitate's saddle. With lightning reflexes he grabbed hold of the dangling reins of Jason's horse and pulled himself over onto Cogitate's back and finished the race, bringing the horse back to its own trainer unscathed. So he went out on Hon Kwok Star and returned on Cogitate, to the amusement of everyone. It was a remarkable piece of horsemanship.

Racing people had a lot of interest in our family, and I suppose our story was unique and quite interesting to people generally.
Father Joe Giacobbe, a friend of Dad's, wanted to publish a book about us.

A great character, Father Joe was known as ‘The Racing Priest', because, trying to turn a dollar for the Church, he had set up
The Winning Post
, a popular racing newspaper with a comprehensive form guide for the weekend races all around Australia. He knew a lot of Catholics loved a punt and that he had to get the cash out of the punters on Friday before the favourite was beaten in the last at The Valley on Saturday afternoon and parishioners were left with nothing for the collection plate. The proceeds of the paper went to Doxa, a fantastic organisation that supports disadvantaged youth.

Father Joe asked racing journalist Tony Kneebone (another Kiwi) to write a book telling our family story:
The Paynes: The struggle, the pain, the glory
. It came out when I was in Grade 5 and all the money made from the sale of the book went to Doxa. The very last line of the book quotes my dad: ‘This book on the family is probably premature because the little one is likely to end up better than the lot of them.'

Had he noticed something? What did he mean? I wondered.

Being mentioned in a book hadn't made me feel any more confident on my first day at my new school. Landing at Loreto's Dawson Street campus I looked around and wondered how I would survive. I was tiny. I was shy. I was nervous. I was worried. Other people rushed about. They seemed to know what was going on. I didn't.

Our family was also well known at Loreto because we were always late and never organised. Permission slips? Lunch? Parent–teacher interviews? There was more chance of Dad winning the Cox Plate than making an appointment to see a teacher. The school didn't seem too concerned. It was the way we did things,
and we somehow managed to make it to the end of each week. Sometimes the girls would write their own notes. Bernadette's homeroom teacher in Year 7, Mrs Fithall, remembers getting a note in Bernadette's handwriting saying, ‘Sorry Bernadette is late but we lost Patrick down the paddock.'

One of Bernadette's classmates, fed up after being chastised over being late, blurted out, ‘Why don't you ever growl at Bernadette Payne when she's late?'

‘Well,' Mrs Fithall said, ‘the whole family's done half a day's work before your alarm's gone off.'

When I landed in the grounds of Loreto College, I did so with the family's reputation. I only knew a couple of girls, from Our Lady Help of Christians, and they had been placed in a different class. Most of the girls in my class were from a parish school on the other side of Ballarat, St Francis Xavier's, better known as Villa Maria. Thankfully my sister Margie was great friends with the Duggan girls. Steph was the youngest of the six Duggans and she was in my year. The older ones had teed up Steph to look after me when I got to Loreto.

After sorting out the enrolment problems, I was put into Steph's class, 7 Gold, that morning and I'll never forget walking in the door late. Steph spotted me from the back of the room.

‘Michelle, come and sit with us,' she yelled. We have been best friends ever since. She and her friends invited me into their group in a second and I can't be more grateful to have the best friends I could ask for: Bec Ludbrook, Jacinta Bongiorno, Elsie Lardner, Stacey and Jackie Mahar (the twins), Justine Locandro and Liz Francis. That was their nature—they are real characters, lively, bright girls. And so friendly. I felt that being in this school with these girls was where I was meant to be.

We weren't always perfectly behaved but I don't think we caused our teachers too much grief, either. Our hearts were in
the right place. Coming from good Catholic homes that valued education and hard work, we had a go, whether it was schoolwork or sport or whatever was happening at school. I loved maths. I really liked the problem-solving part of it. I also liked debating—I'd had plenty of practice, as you had to know how to argue your case if you were to survive in the Payne family.

Apart from being co-ordinator, Mr Morris was my English teacher. He'd grown up on a grain farm at Sheep Hills in the Wimmera in western Victoria. My sister had once won the Sheep Hills Cup raced at the nearby Warracknabeal track, which was one of the girls' favourites. Mr Morris became a little concerned that I had to go to the toilet so often, especially after lunch. One day, I'd ducked out of a different class and just as he was walking by the Mornane lockers he spotted me. I had my little pocket tranny in my blazer, earplug in, helping Andrew get one home at Murtoa.

‘Michelle Payne!' he called. ‘Michelle. What's going on?'

He knew exactly what I was doing. He knew that racing was in my blood and I just
had
to listen to hear how our horses were going. So we came to an arrangement that suited both of us. At the start of each English class Mr Morris would lay out the form guide on his desk out the front, and I would mark the best bets for him. What he did with that information was entirely up to him. In return for what he called ‘good information', I got to go to the toilet whenever I liked.

You can tell when a school is going well. Teachers really get to know the kids. Kids respond to teachers who are understanding. There is mutual respect. Something as simple as a ‘good morning' as people walk past each other makes for a friendly school. And moments of upset get sorted out. Loreto for me was a good school.

Even in these early days of school I spent a lot of time thinking about things. And, while we had the usual thirteen-year-olds' conversations, our group of girls would talk about stuff that mattered
to us. Rebecca's father had died when she was eight years old and that sense of loss was enormous for her. The youngest of four—the older ones knew my sisters and brothers—she had become very close to her mother. And like Dad and my family, she had faith that things happened for a reason and that everything would be okay.

We played a lot of sport and I loved PE. Although Miss Baird, our physical education teacher and hockey coach, might tell you differently, I have never been a naturally talented athlete. I've simply always been determined and had the will to win. I was fit from all the riding, and the running sessions I did with Patrick and Andrew in Creswick Forest a few kilometres from Home. They were terrific role models, and believed that you just had to be in top condition to be a successful jockey. Patrick was a great believer that you needed to open your lungs up to get fit and he pushed us hard. He usually ran in his sweat gear, not wasting any opportunity to shed a kilo. Then, after dinner—which for Andrew, battling his weight, was a small bowl of pasta with a tiny amount of tomato sauce—we would go for a walk.

We understood it was hard for any of us to play club sport or even participate in school sport as we had so much to do at Home and Dad just couldn't take us here and there. If we could organise a lift that was fine, otherwise it was no go. I would make it into the cross-country team and Miss Baird always laughed at me because she said I was the only kid who could run four kilometres and talk the whole way. When I played netball I was usually centre because I could run around all day.

I also managed a couple of seasons of hockey, which were memorable because I played with that same group of girls who were my friends. One Saturday morning we were up against another school and I got a whack across the nose. I knew it was pretty nasty when, while walking towards me, Miss Baird peeled off her shirt. My nose was gushing; she put her shirt over my face. She rang Home and
Stevie answered, so she had a chat to him and then Stevie put Dad on.

‘I think Michelle's broken her nose playing hockey,' Miss Baird said. ‘I'm taking her up to casualty. Could you come in and pick her up?'

‘She'll be all right,' Dad said. ‘Once she's had the X-ray just put her in a taxi and I'll fix the driver up when he gets here.' I can't remember how much the fare to Miners Rest was.

Miss Baird was a fantastic teacher. She also came from a farm, near Learmonth, and I think she really understood me, and my family. She knew we felt a strong connection to the land, and to horses, and we loved the country life.

They were happy days and important days. Looking back I can now see that the philosophy of the school had an impact on me. My family and the school had the same values, so one reinforced the other. The school really believed in the dignity of all people—that everyone matters—and in the importance of working hard to develop the talents you were blessed with.

It was a great school for the group of strong, articulate young women I went through the grades with, and I reckon Sister Mary Ward, the English Catholic nun who established the Loreto order, would have been smiling on us. As our teachers would remind us occasionally, Mary Ward famously once said, ‘Women in time to come will do much.' The group of girls I was with were certainly going to give it a good shot!