The Little Aussie Battler

By Susan Jackson

This is a story written from my journals.

From immigrating as a four-year-old and trying to fit into a different culture to turning away from God in my teens. From a violent marriage doomed to fail and the death of my son, with the repercussions that followed. And yet, also between the lines, there is the joy and reverence for life itself.

Making a lot of mistakes through life, I have learned not to give myself over to another set of values, or to another human being.

It took me a long time to find myself and to love the person I was meant to be. I still have a lot to learn, even now, about love and how we are to address love and forgiveness in our lives. My story is a testimony to "the old truths." To me, it is a reminder not to make the same mistakes. In the end, it turned out to be not only the story of the first forty years of my life, but my spiritual journey as well.

There are still thirty years of untouched journals…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645366782

Book preview

Hundred

About The Author

Susan Jackson is aged seventy and has always kept a diary. She is a mother to six, grandmother to seventeen, and great-grandmother to fifteen. She has been married for thirty-two years and for the second time. She is a survivor against odds that seemed to want to destroy her. She made a lot of mistakes throughout her life and learned not to give herself over to another set of values or to another human being, to be someone who she could no longer live with. It’s taken her a long time to find herself and to love the person she was meant to be. She still has so much to learn, even now, about love and how we are to address love in our lives. She lives these days in a small rural town in Northern New South Wales, Australia, hence the title of her book. She loves to read, write, garden, and do crafts. Her life is simple and quiet for the most part, yet still, with such a big family, dramas manage to find their way into hers. Her memoirs tell of how she has overcome the immense odds of daily life in the first forty years of life. She still has thirty journals she hasn’t touched yet, another book she believes.

Dedication

Dedicated to my son, Shane Robert Robinson

(1971–1982)

Copyright Information ©

Susan Jackson (2020)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales: special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloguing-in-Publication data

Jackson, Susan

The Little Aussie Battler

ISBN 9781643780627 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781643780634 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781645366782 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020902301

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published (2020)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 28th Floor

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my husband who taught me it was OK to be me and loved me anyway.

To my children who shine their light wherever they go and pass it on to all others. As their mother, I can’t be more proud.

To my granddaughter, Penny, who helped me with all of her computer skills.

Synopsis

This manuscript is written from my journals. It starts from birth and encompasses immigrating to Australia as a four-and-a-half-year-old and trying to fit into a different culture. Turning from God in my teens to a violent marriage doomed to fail and the death of a son, the repercussions that followed are full of hardships and trials and yet also between the lines there is the joy and reverence for life itself, a testimony to ‘the old truths.’ It is a reminder not to make the same mistakes. In the end, it turned out to be not only my life story but, to my surprise, my spiritual journey as well.

Prologue

‘They killed my baby,’ I thought as I opened my eyes to a new day. ‘They killed my baby.’ Then I heard a voice from the depth of my being so gentle yet demanding; I could not refuse to listen.

Don’t think like that, it will destroy you, the voice said.

‘God, please give me the courage to face this day. I seem to be in a daze. Things just seem to be happening around me. People calling in to say sorry, I don’t know how to react, never been through anything like this before. Put on a brave face and say thank you. Cry again.’

Chapter One

I arrived on Planet Earth on the twentieth day of June in the year of Our Lord, 1947. An evil force had just finished ravishing the planet in the form of a global war. I was born in the Northern Hemisphere. Both of my parents were British. My father was of German descent and my mother had the blood of the Irish.

Carried within my mother’s womb, I had experienced sound and movement and felt the love between these two who were to nurture and care for me. I was totally secure in this environment, my mind resting and dreaming. After three seasons, I felt the first waves of birth waters. It was time to be born and enter the world. I had no choice then but to pass from one time-space into another. I was more than nervous about this fact, so much so that when I was born, my little body refused to accept my mother’s life-saving milk and so I was fed by tubes to keep me alive. A priest was called in to Baptize me as indicators showed my future was in doubt.

My father left the hospital in a fit of gloom. He didn’t think his tiny firstborn child would be able to survive. My mother, on the other hand, had the upbringing of an Irish Catholic and had faith in God. Every day she persevered to express her milk to take to the hospital so I could be fed. After six long weeks, I was taken home. Much love and tenderness were showered upon me and I grew to be a perfectly healthy child.

Just one week before my second birthday, my mother gave birth to another girl child. I wasn’t really sure about this new addition to our family and sometimes found it hard to understand the fuss that outsiders made of my new sister.

My mother would take us for long walks in the fresh air on Wimbledon Common. Passers-by would stop and peer into the pram to see the new baby. Can we go home now, Mummy? I would say, not liking the attention the baby was getting. It was at this time I took to sucking my thumb. I found it to be very soothing and it became a habit I would foster over the next ten years.

My days were pleasant and comfortable. Like all little ones, I was absorbed with learning all about my environment. I’m told I was a placid child. Totally receptive, I was like a new computer waiting to be programmed. As with all children, I stored multitudes of facts in my mind and, in my own good time, would assimilate them also. Little did I know it would take more than thirty long years before I would understand some of the mysteries of this life I was then about to experience.

As my sister grew, I delighted in having a playmate and our world was secure and happy. Two years later, however, our parents decided on a course that would change our lives forever. My father wanted a brighter future than post-war England could offer. We were to leave the country of our birth and travel 12,000 miles to foreign shores. My world, as I knew it, was shattered.

I left behind the comfy, warm laps of my grandmothers and the cuddles of my grandfathers. I especially loved my grandmothers. They were big, warm, cuddly women. When sitting on my paternal grandma’s lap, I would sometimes get a surprise. She would unexpectedly part her knees and I would fall through them but I was never afraid ’cos I was always saved by the skirt of Nanny’s dress which caught me every time. Nanny’s dresses were very slippery and felt like silk.

I remember she loved music. She used to sing around the house along with the radio or just break into songs whenever the mood took her. I had seen tears in my grandmother’s eyes once while she sang along with one of these songs. I was sad to see Nanny crying, not realizing in my tender years that they could have been happy tears, tears of joy, at remembering a feeling when the words brought back some long-forgotten memories. There is a lot that will remain a mystery to me about my grandmothers but one thing I do know is this; I missed them terribly when we were parted.

My maternal grandmother had a cat and she also played the piano. I was mesmerized by the sound that came from that piano and I was truly fascinated with the cat. The baker in those days had a horse and cart and it was a treat for me, even though it was a bit scary to feed the big horse with a lump of sugar. I also remember one of my uncles used to playfully tease me by pulling my plaits.

I have only these few cherished memories now as I write. The pain went deep as I was torn away from my extended family. As we set sail for those foreign shores, my Irish grandmother told me, We will see each other again.

Chapter Two

The six weeks we spent at sea are still buried somewhere in my subconscious. In the Port of Aden, some man offered to buy my little, curly headed sister. I’m so thankful my parents refused this offer. I would never have survived losing her as well.

Australia was the new land that awaited us, the sub-continent, a land of milk and honey, an island paradise, or so my parents thought. We finally arrived at our destination after the six long weeks at sea. We lived for a time at Neutral Bay on the shores of Sydney Harbor in New South Wales. My dad had the prospect of a better job, so it was not long before we headed south and inland to Mildura on the NSW and Victorian border.

Unfortunately, the hot, dry, dusty weather of Mildura didn’t agree with Dad and he broke out in boils and carbuncles all over his neck. I vaguely remember a scene with my mother holding what looked like a milk bottle on the side of Dad’s neck with the skin being sucked down the neck of the bottle before I was sent packing from the room!

My mum found this area distasteful as well, although for a totally different reason. The only relief from the heat was the river or the local swimming baths. The banks of the river were overrun with big, biting ants. Deterred by them, we went to the pool. Mum hadn’t realized that only white people were permitted to swim at the pool and when she saw those little black faces peering through the wire fence from the outside, she said to us, If it isn’t good enough for them, then it isn’t good enough for us either.

She packed up our towels and belongings and we never went swimming at that pool again. This incident truly upset my mother as she had been brought up to believe we are all equal in the eyes of God. The only other thing I remember about Mildura is that in the backyard of the house we rented, someone had had the foresight to plant a walnut tree and it was here I acquired the taste for these delicious nuts that I have to this very day.

Owing to my father’s health, we once again packed our belongings and returned to Neutral Bay. This time we moved into a block of flats. As with all small children, my sister and I could be quite noisy at times. This seemed to disturb one neighbor on the floor above us, who used to bang on our ceiling for us to be quiet. So once more we moved, this time to a place known then as Punchbowl.

Chapter Three

My dad had a good job with a big firm of panel beaters. The secretary to the boss was a war-widow with three young children. She had a big house with a veranda down one side, which had been closed in and partitioned off. It was a self-contained flat with just a few rooms. She rented out this accommodation to us and it helped supplement her income.

This was a whole new environment for me. We once again had a yard to play in and other children of my own age to play with. It was whilst living there that I started school. One afternoon on the way home from school, I found a big painter’s brush and Danny, one of my friends, pleaded with me to give it to him. I couldn’t see any use I’d have for it, so I willingly gave it up and he was my best mate from that moment on.

The children who we shared the house with were good friends and we played games under the house together in the cool shade. We played with toy cars, making roads in the dirt, and at other times, we would scrape the mortar out from between the bricks in the foundations. It came out like powder and we would hold it in our hand and blow it at each other. When we got tired of these games, we would sometimes play doctors and nurses, exploring our differences as kids will do at some time in their young lives, given the opportunity.

When I was six, I became very ill and had to go to hospital. It was suspected I had polio. The episode is a faint one, although I do remember vividly the pain of the two spinal taps they performed on me to get the fluid from my spine. I screamed and screamed and screamed as they held me down.

Fortunately, it wasn’t polio but a very bad kidney infection and I had to stay in bed, in hospital, for six weeks. When the time came for me to leave, I couldn’t stand up. My legs gave way from underneath me as I got out of the bed. I was frightened beyond belief. I had been in bed for so long, and my legs had become too weak to hold me.

My dad had learned his trade in England where panel beating was a real craft and he was exceptionally good at what he did. He earned a decent wage and a bonus at the end of every month. In time my parents saved enough money to purchase a block of land in a quiet bushland setting. It was situated across the road from the George’s River at Oyster Bay.

Most weekends, as a family, we would go to ‘the block.’ It was a real outing and treat for us kids. Some of the land had been cleared, so a temporary dwelling could be erected. We would have a picnic lunch of sandwiches and of course boil the billy for a cup of tea. The area was very picturesque with lots of gum trees and wild life from kookaburras to bluetongue lizards and of course the occasional snake. It was an adventurous playground to us children after the suburbs of row upon row of houses.

Our land was at least three conventional house blocks long and on a slope that had to be terraced. We kids helped to carry rocks for the retaining walls. The house was built on top of a rock ridge about two thirds of the way up the block. Workmen were brought in to drill and blow away part of the rock face so steps could be made up to the future house site, which overlooked the bay.

By this time our family had grown and there were four of us children. We now had another sister and a baby brother. We moved from the suburb of Punchbowl to Oyster Bay and took up residence in the temporary dwelling, which in time would become the garage. For now though, it was our home until Mum and Dad had enough money saved to start building the house. The shed was divided into two rooms for sleeping plus one for eating and living and we had a laundry room at the back. It was cramped with four children and two adults but we children didn’t notice.

Mum worked hard rearing us four kids. Besides the housework in spartan conditions, there was lots of work needing to be done outside. My parents concreted a pathway and forty-two steps up the block and through the cliff facing to the house site. They also planted gardens; they had lots to keep them busy.

All of the kids were bathed in the cement laundry tubs. Our hot water came from an old chip heater. Mum would stuff it with newspaper and small chips of wood and throw in a match and the thing would burst into life with a roar. Within minutes, bingo, hot water was available.

I remember one night my mum coming inside and she was as white as a sheet. She had almost stepped on a brown snake on her way back from the outside pan toilet. It was a long way away from merry England and the way of life she was used to.

We eventually moved into our new home when my brother was ten months old. Where we lived was prone to heat waves in the summer months but you could mostly count on the southerly wind to blow its way through by eight p.m. each night. It was so different from the old country that Mum still called home. Many a night we would find her sitting on the front steps of our new home just waiting for the southerly wind to come and cool down the house for us all to be able to sleep comfortably. My mother never ever did get used to the heat.

My dad decided that now the shed was vacant, he would do a few odd jobs outside of working hours to earn a few more pounds to give us some home comforts. This didn’t last long though, as panel beating is a noisy business. A neighbor complained to the local council who soon put a stop to it. We were fortunate however. We did have a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs. We were by no means rich but we were what you would call comfortable.

The old refrigerator gave up the ghost and my parents had to get one on credit. It ended up costing them twice as much as the original price because of the interest, so a decision was made in our home not to pay anything else off. My parents chose to save their money and buy with cash no matter how long it took. Consequently, when television came to Australia, we didn’t get a set of our own for a couple of years but this meant there was many a pleasant hour spent listening to the radio together as a family in the evenings.

Chapter Four

I had a wonderful childhood, carefree, with lots of fun spent outside, exploring the surrounding bushland that was slowly filling up with new families. We had a small creek nearby for catching tadpoles. We would keep them in a jar of creek water and watch them grow and turn into frogs.

The river flats were also an exciting place to play. My sister and I had a friend who lived across the road and their land ran down to the water. She knew I was scared of crabs, so she was forever catching and throwing the little baby crabs at me. We would walk the shores of the river to find oysters and chip them open with a rock and feast on this new and succulent food. We sometimes collected periwinkles from the rocks down at the river and boil them in an old saucepan over an open fire and then pick the little creatures out of their shells with a sewing needle; they were also delicious to eat.

I loved the feel of the black slimy mud between my toes, although the roots of the mangroves sometimes hurt our bare feet but it didn’t deter us. Many a day you would find us caked in mud up to our knees, slurping out in it. We were so innocent in those days.

Of course, the move to this new area meant starting at a new school. The first day was painful for me. I was a placid child and very shy. I remember standing in line nervously with tears in my eyes, surrounded by so many strange new children. Why are you crying? one child asked me.

I’m not, I said. The sun is in my eyes.

It is the first time I can remember myself telling a lie; I did it to hide my fear. I wasn’t about to let them think I was a sook. I remember the cruel kids from the other school who had teased me because I spoke differently and used different words to them. They were leftover words from the old country. Vest instead of singlet, knickers instead of pants, mackintosh v/s raincoats, galoshes v/s gumboots – the list was endless. I was determined to speak this new language and soon learned to use their words instead of mine so I wouldn’t stand out as being different. It saddens me today as I think of it because I denied part of my heritage and my culture but as a child all I wanted was to be accepted and to fit in.

I had cried for two full weeks every day when I first started school at Punchbowl. The tears hadn’t worked then, so I was determined not to make the same mistake. This new school, like the other, was a Catholic school and the teachers were nuns; that however was where the similarity ended.

The building itself was very long and divided by concertina doors into three classrooms. It also doubled for a church on Sundays, people then filling the whole of the building.

The school was set in bushland with gigantic rock formations and huge boulders in the back playground. It had a trickle of a creek running through the grounds with a walkway; you couldn’t really call it a bridge that we had to cross to make our way to the toilet block. There were tadpoles in this creek too, just like the one near our home. One day, to all the girls’ astonishment, two of our classmates, boys of course, caught and swallowed whole a big, juicy tadpole each! We were disgusted.

I settled into this new environment, finding it pleasant and much to my liking. It was a much better school than the first one, not hot, with black bitumen playground. Here we had the freedom to explore our surroundings.

I made a couple of good friends who saw me right through school including my high school years. There were only fourteen children in my class at this bush school and my teacher was a kindly nun who was strict but also loving. Sister Mary Raymond left an indelible print on my young mind. She was a second mother to all the children and had the ability to make each child feel very special.

My own parents, I knew, loved me but they did not hold back when we needed to be corrected. Dad was working, so the discipline fell to Mum on most accounts. We were never belted, but a smack on the bottom or hand when needed was never used in an abusive manner. Dad usually gave us a talking to. I preferred a smack; at least it was over and done with and didn’t go on and on.

The nuns were the same as my parents. They scolded at times with words for what was done and sometimes the ruler was used but only on our hand. They were consistent in both discipline and their teaching methods. I don’t remember being in trouble at school in those early years, except for one occasion and that gave me some food for thought.

One day, a parent had come to see our teacher. We had been left alone in the classroom under the instruction of: Don’t talk and go on with your work. After a short time, we all got restless and began to talk, forgetting to do our work, and as Sister Mary Raymond was only outside on the veranda, she was well aware of the noise level rising. When she returned to the classroom, she said, Everyone who was talking will now come out in the front and receive their punishment.

Everyone stood up and began to move to the front of the room hesitantly to receive their smack on the hand with the ruler. To my surprise, one girl continued to sit in her seat. I knew, as well as everyone else did, that this girl had been talking as much as the rest of us. She continued to sit in her seat the whole time and what is more? She got away without punishment. My young conscience at that time wouldn’t allow me not to own up for something I had done, and yet here I learned not everyone did as we had been taught to do – be honest. Here I also learned to not dob on your mates, a cardinal rule of Australian life.

Learning was no problem for me during those years at school. The environment and the nuns drew out the best in me. I did exceptionally well one year, coming first in my yearly exams and my parents bought me my first wristwatch as a reward. I felt so special at that time.

Sometimes on an afternoon, I would go straight from school to a friend’s house to play, knowing I always had to be home by five p.m. There was a lot of freedom for us as children in those days. One never thought of someone taking a child and doing harm.

I wasn’t always the nice little girl. I was quite mean at times. One afternoon my friend and I decided to swap sisters. When I arrived home with this strange child and told my mother she was not impressed with me at all, my mum telephoned the other mother and I was told to put her on the bus that would take her back home. Of course, the same thing was happening at the other end at my friend’s house. Well, my mother may have been far from impressed but at the same time neither was I at losing this newly found sister. Needless to say, I never tried that one again.

Catching the school bus was also a new experience for me. We had always walked to the Punchbowl School. Our bus driver was always abrupt with us Catholic kids and he seemed not to like us, although my young mind couldn’t understand why he would be that way. One afternoon a kindergarten boy was travelsick and this driver put him off the bus a good half hour’s walk from his bus stop. When I told my mother this story, she told my sister and I to be extra nice to people like this bus driver whenever they came across our path so that they had no cause to reprimand us. My sister and I made up a plan that each time we alighted from his bus, we would say, Good afternoon Mr. Roach, and we did in unison in such sweet voices and with big smiles. He never did find cause to put us off the bus or to reprimand us.

Perhaps his dislike was just the fact that we were Catholic schoolchildren. In this area there seemed to be a running feud between the Catholic schoolchildren and the children from the public school. Like my mates I learned to sing the little ditties to these kids, Ding, dong, dell, the publics go to hell. Well, it wasn’t long before this kind of carryon got me into trouble. It was an afternoon I wouldn’t forget for the rest of my life.

Sometimes our class would be kept in because someone had been talking and when this happened, we would miss our regular bus home. At those times we would have to walk up the road a long way to catch a bus on another route. This bus stopped in front of a house where some state schoolchildren lived.

On this particular afternoon, apparently their mother wasn’t home and they took advantage of the fact and began to tease me and call me names. One of them grabbed my school case and the other one took my hat and would not give them back. I didn’t like being picked on and called names. Besides what would happen if I went home without my case and hat, and even worse still, the thought that my parents would find out I had teased other kids was uppermost in my mind. I knew they would be far from happy about that. We had been taught in school, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I didn’t like it when the shoe was on the other foot.

When the bus finally did arrive, the other kids threw my bag and hat towards me and I scrambled to collect them and ran for the safety of the bus. I never did catch the bus at that particular stop ever again. On the days that I missed my regular bus, I chose to walk home by another street and even though it took an hour, I didn’t care if it was going to save me from that torment again.

The bus fare I saved by walking was three pence (two cents), so I got to