Life’S Fight, Love’S Might

By Dawn Everson

Lifes Fight, Loves Might is a controversial true story about Lorna, a courageous determined Australian woman whose life was ravaged by the betrayal of her family, her employers, the Christian church, the judicial system and sanctioned abuse by the state and federal governments.

Lorna stood alone against the world thats until she meets Rod, a surfie who sweeps her off her feet. Unfortunately, their fervent love also feels the smack of betrayal, which nearly destroys them both, but ultimately they stand united with trust, love and loyalty.

When Rod enlists, Lorna becomes an excellent army wife. She learns how to compromise, because the army must come first. She becomes independent and resourceful while her soldier is away, supporting him all the way up the ranks to Warrant Office.

Rods postings take Lorna and their two children to Sydney, Papua New Guinea, Canberra and Melbourne.

Lorna finds each posting is fraught with its own kind of agony, with Papua New Guinea being the worst of all. She survives unbelievable traumas, which befall her and her family. Then she faces the failures of the Australian Defence Force and the Department of Veterans Affairs. To the Australian people these two systems appear to be functioning at an optimum for the serving members of the ADF, veterans and their families respectively, but it only appears that they are.

Lorna also gives accounts of how the leadership within the Christian community believes it is above the law of the land, and how the judicial system aides the churchs betrayal of trust.

In the end, Lornas resilience and strength wins through to overcome the impossible, leading her to write this inspiring book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Sep 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483696140

Dawn Everson

Dawn Everson lives in a sleepy village on the north coast of New South Wales with her husband of 44 years. She worked as an office assistant, enrolled nurse, sewing machine demonstrator, parking attendant and served in the army reserve for three years. She learned Japanese and gained an Advanced Certificate in Information Technology in 1993. This is her first book, which she hopes will help others.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

The Early Years

M y unusual story begins with my grandparents and my parents, because they had a huge impact on my whole life. Their influence was mainly negative and based in rejection.

Nana Hawkins, Mum’s mother, was a hard woman. I say that because one day in 1941, when my mother, Gracie, was 18 years old, she complained of severe lower-right abdominal pain. Mum recalled how her mother accused her of exaggeration and almost caused her death.

Instead of calling the doctor when Mum’s pain continued to increase, Nana insisted Mum’s discomfort was the result of eating too much green stone fruit. Unfortunately, as the day progressed, so did the severity of Mum’s suffering. By midday, she was bedridden, and the urgency of her illness became more evident. She developed a fever, beads of sweat formed on her forehead, and the pain became all-consuming.

By evening that day, Nana realized that there was something seriously wrong with her daughter and she finally contacted the doctor. When he arrived at the Hawkins residence, Mum lay on the bed writhing in pain. The doctor, hearing Mum moaning, rushed through the doorway into her room, as she screamed out, It’s all right now, the pain’s gone, to him and her mother.

Instantly, the concerned doctor replied, No, it’s not all right, Gracie. Your appendix has just burst and we have to get you to the hospital now!

He immediately leaned over Mum’s bed, picked her up in his arms, and carried her to his car, which he had parked on the street in front of the house. Gently laying her across the backseat, he rushed her to Bulli Hospital and, soon after, performed an emergency appendectomy.

After the surgery, Mum described how she was strapped to the underside of her hospital bed while her open wound drained, black smelly gloop into a bowl on the floor. She couldn’t remember how long she was in that position for, only that it was uncomfortable.

However, nobody, not the doctor or the nurses, expected her to live, because antibiotics were not available to the general public until 1944. At that time, antibiotics were only available to the military. In addition, medical procedures were barbaric compared to today; also, her insides were drenched in faecal matter.

During that time, six nuns frequently visited the hospital to pray for patients whom the medical profession believed were beyond help and had ‘no hope’. When the nuns learned about my mother, they began to visit her on a daily basis praying for her survival. During her long recovery, the nuns made it their mission to pray faithfully by her bedside.

As she slowly improved, the doctor closed her wound and moved her to the upper side of her bed.

When she was well enough to speak, she thanked the nuns. She also asked them to pass on her appreciation to the doctor who had always visited her with them. They told her that no man ever accompanied them, but she insisted that there was always a man dressed in white. There’s a stark difference between nuns dressed in their black habits and a man dressed in white. Then the nuns told Mum it was Jesus who had visited her with them, because there was definitely no doctor.

‘That was the first time I met God,’ my mother told me.

Eventually the doctor discharged Mum from the hospital, and when she went home, she carried on with her life as if nothing had happened.

The doctor also warned her not to have children for five years, because her body needed time to recover from the trauma it had suffered.

Mum fell in love with and became engaged to Colin, an Australian soldier. However, her heart was broken when her true love died in action somewhere in Europe. I imagine that during the war years, that type of heartbreak was an Australia-wide tragedy, which every community suffered. Actually, it must have been a worldwide tragedy, which touched every nation in some way. I guess some countries suffered a greater degree of devastation than others did.

Instead of her lover taking her away, her father raped her. Disillusioned with her father, Mum told her mother about the rape; she was expecting support, but instead, she got more heartache.

‘Keep your mouth shut!’ was my grandmother’s response. She didn’t want to know about the assault on her daughter, which only added to Mum’s misery.

Mum described to me how she suffered in silence, while her hatred for men grew. I don’t know how many years Mum faced that sort of abuse from her parents, because she didn’t say.

In Woonona, my father was growing up; he was an extremely cruel child. His older sister told me that he used to catch birds in traps. Then he plucked all the feathers from their bodies, except for their flight feathers on their wings and tails. Then he released the poor things to fly away to await an awful fate. He also caught green frogs and put them into empty cans so they couldn’t jump out to freedom. Then he poured caustic soda over them while he watched their green bodies turn red. My father displayed the makings of a psychopath.

After school, Mum worked for her parents in their shop, which was on the Princes Highway in central Woonona. I vaguely remember the old shop. I think it had a red driveway running down the right side of it. The council demolished it to construct a park, I believe.

Dad often went to the Hawkins’s shop to help Mum churn the cream into butter. My father was in love with Mum, except the feeling wasn’t mutual. She told me that she didn’t like him very much. However, when Dad proposed to her, she said, ‘Yes, but I don’t love you.’

‘You’ll learn to love me,’ Dad replied. Sadly, that was the basis for their marriage. I wonder how many marriages have failed because one person thought they could change the other.

To get away from the abuse at home, Mum accepted Dad’s proposal even though she didn’t love him. Their doomed marriage was in February 1943. In addition, it was a war wedding and nothing like Mum had dreamed she would have. With blind love, Dad went through with the marriage even though he knew his bride loved somebody else—something else—a ghost! How could my father compete with an idealistic dream? That’s what he tried to do. I believe the scene was set for disaster, and with all disasters, there are no winners, but there are always victims!

I don’t know if Mum ever fell in love with Dad or not. I do know that he didn’t go to war; instead, he stayed in the safety of Australia. My father was part of the ‘essential personnel’ who worked on the railway, a fact that distressed Mum immensely. So much so that during their vicious arguments, she would throw it up at him. My mother’s words stung like a scorpion and her tongue laced with poison. She cruelly told my father that the man she loved was dead and he was second best.

As well as that, she didn’t take notice of the doctors either, because my brother, John, was born the next year. His birth was within the five-year limit, so as a result, her health suffered. Also during the pregnancy, her kidneys succumbed to the extra load placed on them. She developed dropsy and hypertension. The birth of her first child was difficult too.

When the nurses tried to give Mum her newborn baby boy, she refused to accept him because she had her heart set on a girl. She told me she rejected John because of her dislike for males—all males! It took some time, but the nurses convinced her to take hold of her baby boy, and when she did, she was besotted.

For eight years, John was an only child, resulting in him being very spoilt. I guess that was only natural since he had no competition from other siblings.

In mid-September of 1951, my mother became sick with a mystery illness. The reason for her symptoms baffled her doctor in Clarence, Dr Harris, so he referred her to a physician in Brisbane. The physician was just as puzzled with her illness, so he referred her to a colleague who was a gynaecologist. Mum laughed when she told me how her urine killed all the small animals the doctor used to test for pregnancy. When he did a physical examination, he was surprised to find Mum was four months pregnant with me. The specialist recommended she have an immediate abortion, because in his opinion, all the tests and x-rays my mother had had would have caused me damage. He advised her that he expected me to be born with profound deformities.

I wondered why Dr Harris in Clarence and the physician in Brisbane didn’t know Mum was pregnant. Most probably, because she continued to have a normal menstrual cycle and her womb was open.

Mum refused to have me aborted, so the gynaecologist had no other option but respect his patient’s wishes and put a stitch in her womb.

On 10 March 1952, I was born two months premature at the Runnymeadows Maternity Hospital in Clarence.

Thankfully, contrary to many doctors’ and specialists’ dire forecasts, I was perfectly normal and healthy! Mum told me that due to my great set of lungs, as well as my loud screaming, everybody in the hospital knew I had arrived and that there was nothing wrong with me. Finally, Mum had her little girl. My parents were happy they had a daughter, because I completed their pigeon pair.

Mum’s pregnancy must have been a weird experience because she was consciously aware of my presence for a mere sixteen weeks—that was a very short pregnancy indeed.

The first sixteen weeks of her pregnancy consisted of extensive medical tests and x-rays, both here in Clarence and in Brisbane, when doctors sought answers for the mysterious and unexplained illness that caused her great misery. Then I was born eight weeks premature due to my mother’s dangerously high blood pressure. As I said, ‘a short pregnancy’!

Mum was ecstatic! However, not everyone in the Wilson household was happy with the new addition. My big brother hated me! It wasn’t because I was a girl. He just hated the idea of having a sibling, besides he hated the idea of having to share. He literally threatened to kill me when my parents weren’t looking. Mum described how John nastily yelled, ‘I hate it! I’ll kill it! I’ll kill it!’

My existence was such a threat and so offensive to him that he couldn’t even say my name, even to Mum and Dad.

The realisation of his deep hatred for me must have been of great concern to our parents, especially Mum, so she kept me close, which only increased his resentment. John was no longer an only child, he was no longer Mum’s and Dad’s little darling—I was! My brother felt betrayed by his parents. It was as if they were ‘two-timing’ him with me and he felt the unbearable feeling of grief was overpowering.

Firstly, there was John’s extended, forced separation from Mum and Dad and his home, while he lived with his foster parents, and he felt a deep sense of loss for everything else that was dear to him. When Mum and Dad finally went to collect him from the foster home where he was living, they had a strange baby girl with them. Secondly, his baby sister seemed to take all his parents’ attention and affection. Thirdly, there was a noticeable reduction in the quality and quantity of food. Also, instead of getting ‘two bob’ for his school lunch money, he only received one.

Then, the most devastating loss of all was the huge reduction in the quality and quantity of birthday and Christmas presents that he received from his parents. John described to me how, prior to my birth, he’d wake to find presents piled up to the doorknobs—and the doorknobs were high. They were two-thirds of the way up the doors. He felt sure that I was the reason his presents had halved. He blamed me for all the real deprivation he suddenly experienced, which had an enormous negative impact on his life. Who else could he blame?

He couldn’t know or understand that Dad bluntly refused to increase Mum’s fortnightly allowance as the family grew, or that Dad expected Mum to keep stretching her measly allowance further and further each pay. She had to pay the bills and buy food for her family, which was an almost impossible task. How could an 8-year-old boy understand the negative dynamics of our changing family and what devastating effects they had on his life?

John was quite smug when he told me how he often deliberately stole my bottles and dummies from out of my mouth just to hear me cry. He also told me how clever he felt when he replaced them again, just before Mum or Dad walked into the room to check on me. Eventually, the constant checking on me became tiresome for my parents, especially when there appeared to be nothing wrong. They wrongly believed I cried for no reason and I was attention-seeking, which pleased my brother immensely.

He admitted to me that, when I began to crawl, he found it amusing to deliberately kick my hands out from underneath me and I’d ‘face plant’ into the timber floor.

In addition, mysterious bruises and marks would suddenly appear on my face or body or arms and legs. Mum often found red-band-like marks around my wrists or ankles caused by the painful twists of ‘Chinese burns’. My brother told me that he liked to give me a Chinese burn when there was nobody in sight, because it always had the desired effect—me screaming loudly and there was no real evidence except the unexplained red marks, which could have any origin. It astonishes me that Mum and Dad never caught him at his cunning acts of cruelty.

How should an 8-year-old react when a sibling displaces them in order of importance?

It obviously didn’t occur to Mum that regularly running her fingers through or brushing my blond hair in front of him was actually encouraging John’s jealousy and spitefulness towards me. I had become the spoilt one and my brother didn’t like it!

The colour of my hair was perfect, and Mum wanted it to stay that way, so she always rinsed it with Stay Blonde. Stay Blonde was a product used in the 1950s to keep blond hair, blond.

The only problem was my hair was dead straight, which was a big disappointment for her. She longed for me to have curls at any cost. After Mum washed my hair, I endured many hours of those awful rollers. Now and then, my mother expected me to sleep with them pressed into my scalp and she ignored all my objections. When I was about 8 years old, Mum resorted to the dreaded ‘home perm’! I hated them too, because the perming solution stank beyond description and it caused a raised red rash where it touched my skin. It was much too strong for a child’s tender skin.

However, none of my tantrums or outbursts deterred her. It was obvious the sight of my straight hair pained her so much she had to transform it into something she could live with. It didn’t seem to matter how I felt about the unpleasant process—it only mattered that I look the part!

I mean look the part—I had to look and act as if I was a princess.

About eighteen months before my birth, on the 15 August 1950, Princess Anne was born to Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. Mum was a royalist through and through, following the Windsor family’s activities with great enthusiasm through doctors’ surgery magazines, such as the Woman’s Weekly and Woman’s Day.

My ‘best dresses’ were exact copies—well, as close as possible to those Princess Anne wore in the photographs, which adorned the front page or inside the magazines.

Along with my best dresses and my perfectly groomed blond hair, my mother had her very own little princess to parade in public. I wonder how many other mothers wanted their daughters to look like and act like the Princess Royal.

My ‘best dresses’ were sewn perfectly too, because Mum was an excellent seamstress. She gained her expertise with the sewing machine at the Clarence Technical College. My ‘second best dresses’ and play clothes were mostly second hand, except for those which were given to me as presents on birthdays or at Christmas. I had an awful hatred for those hand-me-down ‘itchy jumpers’ and clothes with ‘lace trims’, which were very scratchy. They irritated my skin immensely, especially around my neck. In fact, I fidgeted, scratched, squirmed, whinged, and carried on until Mum removed the offending garment—preferably off me and into the garbage bin, never to be seen again.

Unfortunately, after I was born, Mum’s health didn’t improve, as it had after John’s. Consequently, in 1954, her doctor, Dr Harris, advised her to have a hysterectomy, which Mum and Dad agreed to, because they had a son and a daughter, and they didn’t want any more children.

Dr Harris suggested that Dad take Mum on an extended holiday, believing that the rest and relaxation would give her the best outcome after major surgery. In the 1950s, a hysterectomy was a ‘big operation’.

Hence, our parents returned John into foster care and they took me to Nana and Grandad Hawkins’s at Bulli so Dad could take Mum on her holiday, then they planned to return to Clarence for the necessary surgery. Of course, at that stage, they had no idea when Dr Harris would schedule Mum’s operation.

When my parents left me behind, I was 2 years old and I didn’t know what was happening or why. I only knew I was very frightened after my parents’ departure. I wanted to go with them and I wondered what I had done wrong. Why didn’t they want me anymore? Why had they gone away without me?

I was confused and devastated! Crying uncontrollably, I threw myself on the floor! I didn’t want to stay with my grandparents. I wanted to go with my parents. Nana tried hard to calm me down but she couldn’t—nothing could settle me.

At first, she tried to reason with me; then she tried cuddles, but I kept pushing her away—I only wanted my mother to cuddle me. In my short life, I had only met my grandparents a couple of times, so they were like strangers to me. However, I eventually settled into my new environment and bonded to my grandparents, just as a child should. They became my parents, and I forgot who Mum and Dad were.

Nana wrote on the back of this photograph, ‘Happy Xmas & New Year to all. From your loving little girl (Lorna) taken in Sydney on the way to the Showboat a week today 3 Dec.’ When I read the message, I wondered why Nana felt it necessary to remind Mum and Dad that my name was Lorna.

Nana bottled all kinds of fruits with her Vacola bottling kit. Every time she opened the linen press, I was boggle-eyed, because high upon one of the shelves were many rows of different types and sizes of bottles, all containing delicious fruits.

While I was living with Nana and Grandad, I had to eat everything on my plate, including mashed parsnips. Boy, did I dislike mashed parsnips! Every mouthful was unpalatable, but I knew once my plate was empty, I could have sweets. That’s where I learned to eat the ‘yucky stuff’ first so I could savour the best-tasting stuff last! I think psychology calls that ‘delayed gratification’. It works, eat or do the worst thing quickly and first so you keep the best until last. Then you can enjoy it much more.

Sometime in January 1955, the whole family faced another completely unexpected yet enormous change. While my parents were on their well-deserved holiday, disaster struck! Mum unexpectedly became pregnant again, and as predicted by her doctor, her health instantly took a dive. Dr Harris was horrified; he advised her to have an immediate abortion to save her life. That was the second time in her life that a doctor advised her to abort the child she was carrying and it was the second time she declined. She was determined to have the third baby even though she hadn’t fully recovered from the previous pregnancy. Nothing was going to deter her, not even the ominous prognosis of her GP—even specialists had been wrong before. I was the proof of that. She thought they might be wrong again.

Even though Dr Harris didn’t agree with her decision, he had no alternative but to respect and accept Mum’s wishes. As a result, he admitted her to Runnymeadows Maternity Hospital, where he kept her under strict medical supervision throughout her pregnancy. She described how she had to eat raw liver and boiled rice. She told me that the raw liver was to boost the iron and haemoglobin levels in her blood, and at the time, doctors believed rice lowered blood pressure. Lamb’s fry and bacon is edible, but raw liver, yuck! Just the thought of it turns my stomach. It makes me wonder what other women put up with for the babies they were carrying.

On 30 August 1955, while Dad was visiting Mum at the maternity hospital, Dr Harris informed him that his wife was gravely ill. The doctor pressed him with a grim, unimaginable choice: ‘Your wife or your baby. I can only save one, which one do you want me to save?’ What a choice! Who lives and who dies—the power of life and death was in Dad’s hands.

It was a choice he didn’t want to make, but there was no other option. He had to choose one, or lose them both. He had no time to think; the doctor was impatiently waiting for a response, because time was rapidly running out for both mother and unborn child. In tears and overcome with emotion, Dad blurted, ‘Gracie. Save Gracie.’ It seemed as if his whole world was about to close in on him. Except for work, the pub, and his visits to the hospital, he had been alone for months. His family was scattered all over the countryside and the one he loved so much was facing imminent death.

I’m sure Dr Harris was not happy about the untenable position he found himself in either. He had to save the life of one and allow the other to die, but because Dad’s instructions were ‘Save Gracie’, his wife, that meant the doctor had to terminate the life of the unborn baby—the baby he had helped Mum to carry for six months. The poor man, how awful for him!

As instructed, the medical termination took place immediately. Prior to the termination, the medical staff had decided the baby would already be dead or would perish soon after. They didn’t think it necessary to examine the extremely tiny body at all. They callously threw the tiny baby into a cold metal kidney tray to be disposed of in due course. It must have been dreadful for the theatre staff too—they were in the business of saving lives, not deliberately taking one.

However, during the hubbub inside the operating theatre and only by chance, a nurse noticed the tiny baby had a thumb in its mouth. Surprised at what she saw, she scooped the tiny body up in her hands to examine it more closely. Against all odds, the baby girl was alive; she was sucking her thumb and shivering with cold, so the nurse wrapped her in a towel.

The medical staff couldn’t believe that a baby so premature could possibly survive. The baby’s will to live was far greater than anybody had first thought.

After the operation, Dr Harris informed Dad that his wife, Gracie, was in recovery and his baby daughter was alive too, but they both had to fight for their lives. Mum was so weak that the doctor believed she had a fifty-fifty chance, but he thought the baby had no chance of survival. He advised Dad to register his baby daughter as soon as possible, so he could bury her with a name.

Mum had chosen the names Tina Louise for a girl, only Dad forgot her choice, registering his daughter as Gloria, because that day was so emotionally charged. Dad told me he chose Gloria because it rhymed with Lorna.

Mum continued to improve, although she never fully recovered from the last two pregnancies.

Before Mum took me to Nana’s, she did the washing by boiling the old gas copper in the laundry and using a wooden pole to stir the clothes in the boiling water, then to scoop the washing out. Mum also scrubbed the dirty clothes against a scrubbing board in the backyard. Dr Harris instructed Dad to buy Mum a washing machine or he wouldn’t discharge her from hospital, so Dad bought her a Pope Wringer.

Gloria’s prognosis wasn’t good, because the doctor was certain my little sister would die. He definitely didn’t expect her to grow into an adult. Dr Harris thought it would be beneficial to Mum’s recovery if she cared for Gloria at home until she passed away.

Mum told me that when she took Gloria home from the hospital, she was only two pounds six ounces. She described my sister as being like a small skinned rabbit—tiny, scrawny, and covered with red flaky skin. Mum bathed my baby sister in oil, because that was the only way to stop her skin from coming off in sheets. In fact, she was so premature that her genitals didn’t have time to form properly, a condition corrected many years later, when medical progress and technology permitted such procedures.

Meanwhile, John was still in foster care and I was with Nana and Grandad Hawkins. My brother and I lived with other families for over two and a half years. I was away from my parents for so long that I began kindergarten at Bulli Primary School, where I made many friends.

While I was living with my grandparents in their two-bedroom housing commission house, I slept on a daybed, which was against the wall at one end of the dining room.

I spent a lot of time with Grandad, because we were mates. He had a large productive vegetable garden in his backyard, and after school, he would take me with him to work it. I helped him pick the vegetables for the evening meal; Nana always told him what vegetables she wanted him to get that day.

Strategically positioned miner’s hats were around the garden, and each one had a handful of snail baits under it. I admit it, I had a morbid fascination with the way the snails frothed after touching the baits. Excitedly I ran on ahead upturning all the hats to see how many snails were there, but Grandad told me that I couldn’t touch the snails or the baits, because they were poisonous. I wonder what sort of poison was in the snail baits when I was a child, because people also used DDT then.

Grandad often took me with him when he went out too. He was a rev-head, who owned a Harley Davison motor bike and a black car, what sort I don’t know. One day he took me to see open-wheeler racing cars. We sat together on the side on a hill at the edge of the woods watching the cars whizzing past us. It was incredible to see the racing cars, because to me, they looked as if they were going at a million miles an hour.

Bulli Beach was one of our favourite places. The beach was beautiful, and he often took me along too—that’s if I was at home and not at school. He would keep watch while I was playing in the sand. Sometimes he helped me build elaborate sandcastles or trenches and we watched as the waves wash them away. Occasionally we would swim in Bulli Baths, but I hated the green weed on the sides of the pool. It swayed back and forth in the salty water and it brushed over my skin as I was passing by. That was a feeling I found repulsive, because the green weed was always slimy and very creepy.

During one of our strolls along the beach, I picked up a balloon—well, I thought it was a balloon. I was so sure it was a balloon, I asked Grandad to blow it up for me. My grandfather became angry with me. ‘That’s not a balloon,’ he shouted. ‘Throw it away, it’s dirty!’

I didn’t understand why he was so angry, so I continued to pester him to blow it up. Of course he didn’t, instead he just grew angrier. Unfortunately, I was an adult when I learned that I had pestered him to blow up a used condom. Yuck! How awful! No wonder he was so angry with me for picking it up in the first place and even more angry for pestering him to blow it up.

Grandad often pottered around in his spare room, as men like to potter around in their back sheds. All kinds of gadgets, paraphernalia, extraordinary objects, and miscellaneous electrical goods were surrounding him. To me it was like entering a fascinating maze, with narrow passages between benches and shelves stacked high. There were coloured wires, together with electrical bric-a-brac everywhere. There were all kinds of things arranged in orderly categories, as well as different-sized coils of wire and things hanging from the benches like lumpy spaghetti.

It was fun finding him in amongst all that stuff! Watching Grandad tinkering with or inventing or improving some useful device for Nana was a thrill for me too. When he concentrated on a task, he always poked the very tip of his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and I wondered why he never bit it. Sometimes I copied him, poking my tongue out just a little.

One of his inventions, well, I think it was one of his inventions, was a remote control for his huge Chrysler television, which was a beautiful piece of furniture. When Gloria and I were older, our family nearly always went to see our grandparents during our holidays. My sister and I fought over the remote control ‘pressing rights’, because it was a novelty for us. Of course, the channels didn’t change instantly as they do today. The remote only had two buttons up and down, so after pressing one, the television made a brrrring sound. Then there was a short delay, as if the TV had to think about what to do next. Then the channel changed up or down, depending on the button we pressed. There was a long cable joining the remote to the TV. Maybe the remote was an accessory, which came with the TV, but I like to think that Grandad invented it.

Our family didn’t get a ‘black and white’ television until years after everyone else, because we couldn’t afford one. The early televisions had knobs on the front, as well as the back of the sets, and they stood independently on legs or as part of a unit. We manually turned the TV on and off, also we manually adjusted the contrast or vertical and horizontal holds. Sometimes the picture would roll up or down; sometimes it rolled from one side to the other. Every now and then, the screen had snow all over it, because of interference from passing vehicles or electrical appliances in our house or at a neighbour’s that would render the picture unwatchable. For many, many years, Clarence only had one channel, with its signal sent from Lismore.

Back to Grandad, he was bald, and I found his head so fascinating that I often asked him why it was so shiny. He would always say, ‘My head sparkles because the flies use it as a landing strip, and when they land or take off, they polish it for me.’ Of course, I believed him patiently waiting for a fly to land on his head, but none ever did.

He was born with a harelip, and when I asked him about the split in his lip, he would tell me, ‘A man hit me with an axe.’ Then he would touch his lip. ‘This is the mark the axe left.’

I wondered what he did to make the man so angry with him and why the axe didn’t cut him in half!

In 1957, Nana told me that my mother, my father, and my sister were coming to take me home. However, I heard, ‘Strangers are coming to take you away.’ I was living with my grandparents for so long, I thought I was already home. That is a normal process for children when they lose their birth parents and are adopted or fostered by new parents. My little heart filled with terror at the thought of strangers taking me away! Who were these awful people? I dreaded their impending arrival!

When the people walked into our house, I hid in Nana’s voluminous skirt and I peeked over the top of the material around me. I thought it was a great hiding place, besides I thought Nana would protect me. I was determined those strange people weren’t going to get me!

Without warning, the woman came towards Nana, only she was looking straight into my eyes. Her outstretched arms bid me to come. I didn’t move but continued peeking over the top of the fabric in Nana’s skirt. The strange woman’s expectations were unrealistic, because she wrongly assumed I would recognize her as my mother and rush into her arms as if I was happy to see her, but I didn’t and I wasn’t. The woman said, ‘Mummy’s come to take you home.’

With that, I shrank even further into Nana’s skirt, pulling the material over my head.

Peeking over the top again, ‘You’re not my mother!’ I angrily yelled. Then I quickly disappeared back into the refuge of the skirt.

To my surprise, Nana twisted around to the side. Then she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out from my hiding place. She jerkily stood me out in front of her. Suddenly, to my horror, I was standing between Nana and the woman.

‘Lorna, you have to go home with your mother and father,’ my grandmother said to me. ‘You can’t stay here!’

I was so distressed that I stamped my feet and turned towards her. Was Nana as distressed about the separation as I was?

‘Nana, no! I don’t like them,’ I pleaded. ‘I don’t want to go with them. I want to stay with you. I love you.’ But I didn’t have a say because all the adults in my life had decided I was going with the strangers!

I wondered why Nana didn’t want me anymore. What did I do wrong? If I fixed it, could I stay? I didn’t understand! Suddenly, I had an overwhelming stomach ache, but I didn’t know why. I just knew I was extremely frightened.

Then the scary man sidestepped around the woman, lunged at me, and grabbed my arm. He roughly dragged me towards him and he nastily snarled, ‘You will come with us when we go home. So you had better get used to it!’ I was stunned. I stood there unable to cry or move. Nobody cared that I felt miserable and afraid, and a terrible stomach ache was overwhelming me. Nobody wanted to hear what I had to say. I was still in their midst, but they were ignoring—except when they were taunting me with phrases such as ‘You’ll trip over that lip’, or, ‘If looks could kill, I’d be dead now!’ What could I do? Body language was the only way I could get my message across to them.

My grandparents and my parents were the adults in my life and my welfare was supposed to be their priority, except it wasn’t—I wasn’t. Because ‘every one of them’ treated me as if I possessed the maturity, the knowledge, and the understanding that they did, but I didn’t. How could I? I was the defenceless child.

It was clear my fate was sealed. All the crying! All the pleading! All the tantrums were not going to change that! The horrible strangers were going to take me away from the only family I knew, as well as all my friends.

For me, the next couple of weeks passed ever so slowly, but at the same time, the dreaded day of departure came around far too quickly.

While I was waiting to be taken away, my parents and grandparents made me feel as if I was invisible. I was among my family except they were acting as if I wasn’t. I found it confusing because Nana and Grandad told me what to do for so long, but suddenly after the strangers arrived, they tried to tell me what to do. I felt a squirmy, dreadful feeling in my stomach and the pain was crippling.

It spooked me to the core of my soul when I saw a row of brown suitcases those horrible people had packed ready for the trip back to South Clarence. I knew time was short. In a panic, I ran through the house, out the back door and up the old cracked cement footpath, past the narrow path that led to the Hill’s rotary clothesline, to the smelly outside dunny house.

Once inside my refuge, I quietly closed the door behind me; in the darkness, I backed into the corner and curled up into a ball on the dirty cement floor. I squished myself tightly into the tiny triangular space between the left and rear walls and the smelly black dunny can. The top of my right arm and my right lower leg were touching the side of the black dunny that I thought hid me. The combination of the dunny can’s offensive odour, together with the strong scent of the deodorant, burned my eyes, but I knew if I left the safety of the dunny house, they would find me. The gnawing, crippling pain in my stomach was crushing me from the inside out, so I tried to ease it by crossing my arms around my stomach and pressing in as hard as possible, but the pain was that intense, I couldn’t soothe it. I wanted to disappear, so with the mind of a 5-year-old child, I thought, ‘If they can’t find me, they can’t take me away.’

Meanwhile, in the distance, I could hear those awful people and my grandparents angrily calling out my name. The strange man’s voice was the worst, because he sounded furious, as he was raging towards me.

Petrified, I quickly moved my arms from around my stomach and covered my ears with my hands so I couldn’t hear him approaching. I was so scared. I tried to shrink into a teeny-weeny ball, as small as I could possibly be. With my knees pulled up tightly under my chin, my elbows squeezing into my legs, and my hands over my ears, I was terrified. I was frightened beyond comprehension!

‘Please go away, please go away,’ I was silently pleading in my mind.

Suddenly, there were two arch-shaped shadows at the bottom of the door. They were the shadows of the man’s shoes that I could see. He was standing just outside the door of the dunny house.

It was as if the horrible monster in my nightmares had come to life and he was about to get me. I felt an enormous surge of prickly electricity rush over my skin like a blanket, it covered me from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. I was trembling with fear! There was a groaning deep down in my being. I wanted to scream but I daren’t make a sound, because I knew I must be as quiet as a mouse. The door flew open with a whoosh and the man, whose silhouette stood like a huge ogre in the doorway, took a step into the dark where I was hiding.

He was extremely angry as he barked impatiently, ‘Lorna, are you in here?’ I froze, too scared to move. ‘We’ve been looking for you,’ he screamed as he violently grabbed my arm, and in one giant swoop with his enormous fingers digging deep into my flesh, he jerked me out of my hideaway into the blinding sunlight. Actually, I felt like a rag doll in the violent grip of a fierce monster.

Instead of care and concern for a frightened child, he yelled at me through his gritted teeth while belting me!

Why were my grandparents and parents so angry with me? Could no one see that I was scared out of my wits? Sadly, my parents never, ever attempted to win me over. From then on, they just decided they needed to punish me, because they acted as if I was deliberately being disobedient and naughty, but I wasn’t.

I kicked and screamed as my father carried me towards the train at Bulli Railway Station. Once on the train to South Clarence, nothing mattered anymore. It felt as if a door had closed on everything dear to me, and another opened into a terrifying place, from which there was no escape. I spent the train trip sullenly looking out through the window. My little heart was broken and the awful people didn’t care!

My sister, Gloria, took all of our mother’s attention, John was in second place, and I was a distant painful third. John’s deep-seated resentment towards Gloria and I flourished even more.

My new life was a living nightmare. In fact, it was far more terrible than I had feared before we left Bulli. I hated everything about it, besides I couldn’t do anything right. My parents ignored my persistent pestering about returning to Nana’s house. It didn’t matter to my parents how sad I was! Instead of trying to woo me back into their affections, I became the family’s easily reachable whipping boy!

I had rejected them when they came to get me, because I didn’t know them. Therefore, they believed I deserved rejection, to wear the blame and punishment in retaliation. My initial response to my parents gave them the motive they needed to maltreat me. That’s how I became my family’s unwilling scapegoat. The cruelty and neglect was about to begin.

My father was a guard on the goods trains. He had worked for the NSW railway since he left school.

He never knew when he had to go to work until a call boy rode a bike to our house to let him know what time to start, what train he was the guard on, and its destination.

One of the things I liked about the railway was the annual railway picnic. Our family, along with many other families of railway workers, caught the special train at South Clarence Station, and at that time, the railway had a large workforce based in Clarence. If you were late, you didn’t get a seat on the picnic train, which was heading to Coffs Harbour.

I think the special train pulled up at Park Beach, where hundreds of families alighted into the park. It was a fun day. I remember my favourite part was the huge green eskies filled with ice cream and dry ice. I often sat near the eskies to watch the white smoke flowing over the top, down the sides, and onto the ground. It fascinated me how it rolled across the ground as if it was a thick fog.

Unfortunately, I only remember my father coming home from work drunk and I would shrink when I heard him come in the front door, because he frightened me so much. I also learned to ignore Dad’s promises, because I was often disappointed, since he nearly always came home too late to take us on an outing. Such as when he promised to take Gloria and I to the Prince George Theatre and he staggered down our street an hour after the movie had started. In addition, he was a horrible drunk. He hit Mum with whatever he had in his hand, such as a piece of steak, and he often pinched her, but mostly he took his violence out on me. I was terrified of my father.

Starting a new school was frightening too. It was nearly impossible to accept my new teachers. It was also very difficult for me to make new friends, probably because it was my second school in 1957 and everybody around me was strange, including my parents, who were horrible. I felt isolated, different to the other kids, and very sad! During recess and lunch breaks, there were kids playing everywhere in the playground, but I was alone.

Mrs Melson was the headmistress of South Clarence Infants School. She was an impatient, cranky, overbearing woman who frightened the ‘wits out of me’! One day she was filling in for my usual teacher, and when I saw her at the front of my classroom, I froze, unable to follow any of her instructions. The class was learning to write a ‘b’ and she was using the illustration of a ‘bat and ball’ to teach us. She instructed us all to draw a bat but not a ball, because the ball would come later, also when both the bat and ball were together, they formed a ‘b’. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? The headmistress intimidated and stressed me so much that I couldn’t even draw the straight line representing the bat.

When she past by my desk, she bent over my left shoulder and seemed genuinely concerned that my page was still blank. She asked for my pencil, which I gave her, and she drew ‘b’. Then she continued to circulate around the classroom, intimidating some students, while praising others.

When she returned to my side, she inspected my work. She was furious! I shrank inside; I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me. Mrs Melson shook me angrily, dragged me out of my seat by my arm as she screeched, ‘I told you to draw a bat, not a ball, and you drew both.’

Jerkily, she dragged me out to the front of the classroom. I was silent, because I was too afraid to say anything. She roughly pulled me to her desk, leaned over, and grabbed her cane. Then she forced me to hold my hand out with my palm upwards. The whistling cane stung as it cut across my hand. It crushed me! I was innocent—I had done nothing wrong, I was just frightened.

With my head bowed, I sobbed as I slowly walked back to my desk. Mrs Melson replaced her cane back on her desk. Then she suddenly turned towards me with a shocked look on her face. She had had the revelation that I didn’t write the ‘b’, she did. She went into damage control as her harsh demeanour instantly dissolved and she changed into a kindly woman. However, I knew different, because she had made an awful mistake and I had paid a terrible price. I felt her sudden concern for me was insincere, besides I thought she was more concerned about herself rather than my well-being.

She gently escorted me into the girls’ washroom and ran cold water over the red swollen welt on my hand, but that wasn’t all—she also tried to bribe me with lollies. But she didn’t have to worry about my parents’ reaction, because I was too frightened to tell them what she did to me. I was more afraid of them, because I was afraid they wouldn’t believe me and punish me again.

By the end of second class, I had finally started to make new friends, but it was not to be. Towards the end of 1959, Mum told me that I had to repeat, but not because I was behind or anything like that. I was one of a few students who had to repeat, because there were too many pupils ‘going up’ to third class. Mum told me I was repeating because my surname started with a ‘W’—one of the last letters of the alphabet. In most schools, repeating isn’t a problem, because the students from different grades can still spend time together during recess and lunch breaks. However, South Clarence Infants and Primary Schools are a few blocks apart, which meant when my friends advanced to third class, we lost all contact.

I found it impossible making new friends in 1959. I wanted very much to fit in, to be accepted, and not always be the odd one out.

During my primary school days, many of my peers were Brownies, so I wanted to be a Brownie too. I went to some of the meetings and diligently learned the creed and the salute. Even though my parents couldn’t afford a uniform, a Brownie leader gave me permission to wear the yellow scarf around my neck until I had the full uniform. My initiation day was exciting. I could hardly wait until school was over. It seemed as if the prefect had forgotten to ring the final bell that day, and when it finally rang, I was out of there.

Brown Owl was away that day, so Tawny Owl initiated a couple of other girls as well as me. It was wonderful! I was finally a ‘Brownie’. I noticed that the girls who were Brownies were also close friends at school. I looked forward to having close friends, because I was a Brownie.

The following week, I was just as excited when I went to the Brownies, but Brown Owl was there and she was extremely angry about Tawny Owl taking it upon herself to initiate the new girls. She harshly made it known to everybody there that the other girls and I were not Brownies. What’s more, she would have to reinitiate us again that afternoon. My excitement and enthusiasm quickly turned to disappointment, because her brash, ruthless manner that day was so intimidating I forgot everything. I felt so distressed by her actions, I never returned to the Brownie hall. I felt as if I didn’t fit in anywhere.

I continued to spend my recess and lunch breaks alone. All of the other kids seemed to be in groups and I watched while they played marbles or jacks, but I couldn’t play, because I had nothing to contribute. I was always on the outside looking in.

My lonely existence at school became more miserable due to some of the older kids. Some of the boys called me ‘weird’. Many times in the playground, the Jackson twins often singled me out. Then they circled me like vultures, ruthlessly hounding and bullying me until I dissolved into tears. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get away. They pointed at me, laughed aloud, and nastily called me names, such as ‘Victor lawnmower’ and ‘Chocolate bikkie’, over and over again. On top of that, I was amazed to see how quickly the twin’s attacks on me spread to the other kids who joined in too. Suddenly a multitude of children was bullying me, instead of only two. Consequently, I didn’t like school much, because it was an unhappy place for me. Still there was one consolation, small bottles of ‘flavoured milk’ at recess on Friday mornings, and delight of delight, I had a choice—‘chocolate or strawberry’.

That reminds me of the Smythes, one of the families who attended the Methodist Church with our family. They owned their own home in Wood Street, South Clarence. Mr and Mrs Smythe had three children too, except they had two boys and a girl. The Smythe children were closer to John’s age, so they were much older than Gloria and I.

Occasionally, Mrs Smythe invited Mum to her house for morning or afternoon tea. It was a joy for me when Mrs Smythe opened her modern fridge door, in her modern kitchen, because there was always a row of about eight small bottles of cold chocolate—or strawberry-flavoured milk on the bottom shelf. It seemed as if she was continually opening and closing the fridge door in front of me. The hardest part was waiting for Mrs Smythe to ask me if I would like one. It was torture, because I knew there was a little bottle of bliss inside the fridge just waiting for me to enjoy it. My drink was always gone far too quickly, which meant I had to wait until our next visit to the Smythe’s house for another one.

I liked visiting, because my mother treated me differently in front of other people. She was much nicer to me when she had an audience who might judge her.

My parents didn’t encourage my sister or me to make friends and they forbad me from going to other students’ homes; our house was out of bounds to other students too. In fact, they didn’t have many friends either and they didn’t encourage visitors to our home. I loved it when relatives came to stay, because home was like holidays, but they always had to leave.

Dawn, who was the same age as me, was the daughter of a nice mute couple who lived in Kennedy Street. Dawn and I became friends because we both felt like outcasts. Our relationship was normal to us, but it only lasted a very short time, because Mum quickly snuffed it out with her extreme prejudice towards anybody with a disability. The fact was it was Dawn’s parents who were different, not her.

I am sorry to say that I actually witnessed my mother cross to the other side of the street so she didn’t have to walk past a man with Down’s syndrome. It may be harsh, but my mother was a ‘two bob snob’. Whether she felt she was better than other people, I don’t know. I do know she sometimes acted as if she was.

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CHAPTER 2

Growing Up

I believe it must have been difficult for Mum, because Dad didn’t increase her fortnightly allowance even though she had two extra mouths to feed. Gloria and I often went hungry, because there wasn’t enough food.

Northern Rivers Sawmills employed John when he was about 15 years old, so he paid board to Mum and she fed him the same way she fed Dad. As well as that, he was more independent and spent more time away from home, so the food issue didn’t affect him as much as it did my sister and I.

Mum sometimes depended on charity—she would ask the green grocer if he had any leftover scraps. Then she would make meals such as ‘pea pod soup’, which had to last us for a couple of days. However, we did eat a lot of seafood, since Dad and John were excellent anglers.

Dad also had a passion for oysters, especially those he gathered from their natural habitat. He opened them on the rocks at the edge of rivers, creeks, and the ocean shore. Gloria and I disliked them immensely, because they felt slimy in our mouths. When he offered them to us, we refused, but he wouldn’t accept our refusal, instead he forced our jaws open with his forefinger and thumb. Then he would forcibly drop the oysters into our mouths. Yuck! We had no alternative except to eat the awful things or suffer repeated ‘force-feeding’.

Now Gloria and I can’t bring ourselves to eat even a single oyster. They may be tasty to other people, but not to me; they mean something very unpleasant! I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to eat another oyster. I also have problems with my jaws, and I wonder if my father’s brutality has caused my discomfort.

Oysters weren’t the only food I didn’t like. Mum, Gloria, and I always had to eat sausages while watching Dad eat steak in front of us. Mum had to buy the highest quality food for Dad, such as canned red salmon, which meant there was less money to buy food for herself, Gloria, and I.

Dad also insisted that Mum count all the food while dishing it onto our plates. He became extremely angry and violent if he found one of us had the same or more than he did. One day Mum had one broad bean more than he did, and as a result, there was a catastrophic event.

Sometimes we ate strange things, such as eel, wild duck, wild pig, and a huge amount of offal. On top of that, Mum always bought ‘day old’ bread from the baker, because it was cheap. She cut the spotty black mouldy crusts off each slice of bread so we had something to eat. At times, the bread was so hard and old that it made a tapping sound when I hit it against the plate or table. It was so dry that when I put it in my mouth, it stuck to my tongue like dry ice, and when my saliva wet it, it dissolved into nothing.

Dry bread was my primary diet, which caused Mum extreme embarrassment when visiting family and friends with Gloria and me. I embarrassed her when our hosts asked me what I wanted to eat and I always answered, ‘A slice of dry bread, please.’ With surprise, they would ask, ‘Don’t you want something on it? Wouldn’t you like some butter and vegemite or jam on it?’ But they would be astounded when I answered, ‘No, thank you.’ Mum was very upset with me when I always insisted on ‘dry bread’.

I didn’t ask for dry bread to shame my parents or anything like that, but only because that was what I ate most of the time. For me, it was normal to ask for it.

Mum told me that her embarrassment dropped to even greater depths in 1959. It was the Friday before the Methodist Church fete, which the church usually held on a Saturday in spring. Fetes were a great ‘money-spinner’ for local churches, and all church families seemed to contribute something. That day, Mum was delivering her contribution to the minister’s wife at the manse. Her donation was usually sewing of some sort, such as aprons made from scraps of material.

I think most women in the 1950s wore aprons to protect their dresses while cleaning their houses or baking.

After knocking on the minister’s front door, his wife invited Mum, Gloria, and I into the lounge room. She was the perfect host, talking with my mother for a short time before offering us refreshments.

While the two women were distracted, Gloria dropped out of sight—they frantically called her name and began to search through the house for my sister’s whereabouts. I was hoping that Gloria would get into trouble, because she was a tattletale who always got me into trouble.

The two women walked through a doorway from the hall into the kitchen and suddenly raised their hands to their mouths. The minister’s wife cried out, ‘Oh no!’ Closely followed by Mum yelling, ‘Gloria, what have you done?’ I slid quietly past both women.

There was my little sister sitting innocently in the centre of the dinner table. Around