March 4, 2013
When then-jackeroo Rick first met his wife-to-be Alice – who’d run away from the city on the back of a motorbike – he may have thought twice about asking her out if he’d known his underwear preferences were going to become a topic of conversation at Kingaroy Library a few years later.
But he didn’t think to ask … instead he set about “Educating Alice” in the ways of country life.
“A girlfriend should know her place, Alice. First comes the mates, then the ute, then his hat, dogs, horses and last of all the girlfriend. Get that right and you might just stick around. Try to jump the queue and you′re history.′
“Well then, I′ll just have to be his mate.”
“Girls can′t be mates, Alice.”
“We′ll see.”
Budding author Alice Greenup’s first book, Educating Alice, was officially launched at Kingaroy Library last Friday.
As the rain poured down outside, a surprisingly large crowd sat in the library to listen to Alice be interviewed by former DPI workmate Darren Schmidt about her life, her writing and her book.
Alice and Rick Greenup run the cattle studs ‘Cardowan’, at Ironpot, and ‘Greenup Eidsvold Station’.
Rick is a third-generation Santa Gertrudis man; Alice was brought up in inner-city Melbourne.
It’s been a long journey for the girl from Footscray.
“My brother’s best friend said he was going around Australia on a motorbike … and that’s all it took,” Alice said on Friday.
“When you’ve got the wind in your hair on the back of a 1500cc Yamaha, it feels pretty right when you’re 18.”
Inevitably, she ran out of money and ended up looking for a job on a cattle property … the rest you can imagine.
“Educating Alice” is a funny but brutally honest look at country life, and the horse accident that could have killed her.
It was commissioned by publishers Harper Collins in 2007 after someone at the company read a story about Alice in the Australian Women’s Weekly.
At the time she was one of five finalists in the 2006 Inspiring Women Competition, run by the magazine in conjunction with Meat and Livestock Australia.
Alice had a way with words – something her former DPI colleague acknowledged – but she had never written a book.
The manuscript for the memoir went through several drafts before she found her voice.
“You have the real flashes of inspiration and that’s when we start writing a book, and there’s the other 85,000 words …” she said.
However the process hasn’t put Alice off writing.
“My next book is not a memoir, it’s a work of fiction,” she said.
NB. Rick’s underwear preferences were revealed when Alice read an account of the birth of one of their three children … to find our more, you’ll just have to buy the book!
