Abandoned: My Mummy Ran Away

By Lyne Facey

This is a memoir, recording life in the 1950s and 60s. It highlights the pivotal moment that Lyne’s mother, Gloria left their father, Harry and 3 daughters for another man. The trials of finding a suitable housekeeper to take care of the house and the children. Lyne’s involvement in the Methodist Church, Edithvale Life Saving Club and Primary School. It shines a light on the lack of guidance and mental assistance on offer at this time and the fact that issues were not discussed with children, even if it was to have great impact on them. For all the trauma that Lyne suffered as a young girl (she was 5 years when her mother left), she grew up to be a happy and well-adjusted child, with a great deal to offer to the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jul 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669888987

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Copyright © 2022 by Lyne Facey.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/12/2022

Xlibris

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AU Local: [phone] ([phone] from outside Australia)

www.Xlibris.com.au

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Brenna Facey, Judy Pyke, Leanne Tanis and Garry Richardson for their help with editing.

Deacon Taylor, my grandson for his expert assistance with the technology of making the cover from one of my paintings, to include text.

Without the help from my friends and family the task of getting my book processed would have been much more difficult. I appreciate everyone’s help.

Lyne

To my lifelong friend, my angel,

Beverley Greenslade Cawson (nee Plain, 1951–2021).

Her friendship was her greatest gift to me

and

I will always carry her memory

in my heart.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1     How It Was Then

Chapter 2     Then It Happened – The Pivotal Moment

Chapter 3     Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Chapter 4     My Parents

Chapter 5     My Sisters Denise and Sandra

Chapter 6     The ‘Housekeepers’

Chapter 7     Fun with My Friends

Chapter 8     Marisa and Otto Arrive

Chapter 9     The Incident

Chapter 10   Saying ‘I Love You’ Can Be Hard

Chapter 11   Edithvale Primary School

Chapter 12   Montana Street, Burwood

Chapter 13   Edithvale Methodist Church

Chapter 14   Edithvale Lifesaving Club

Chapter 15   My Broken Heart

Chapter 16   Change in the Wind

Epilogue

This is where the next chapter of my life begins

It was my fifth birthday. This should have been a

wonderful day for the family. But today my mother

would walk out for the final time, leaving my two elder

sisters and I to continue our lives with our dad.

CHAPTER 1

How It Was Then

Growing up in the 1950s, in Edithvale on Port Phillip Bay, had a lot going for it. Life was casual, easy, and uncomplicated. Backyard cricket with neighbourhood kids, games down at the school, lifesaving club carnivals, youth club at the church, netball (women’s basketball then), sports and swimming events at school; riding your bike all over the place, calling in on friends, and staying all day; roller skating, poking about at the spillways behind Edithvale; spending all day at the beach in the summer, climbing trees, falling over, and scrapping your knees; relay races before school, playing marbles; generally pleasing ourselves and mostly keeping out of trouble.

By all accounts, we would have appeared to be a good family with a father, who owned his own business, with a wife who worked alongside him manning the phone and later the wireless whilst raising three young daughters.

Dad would have seen his life planned out and stable. It was a time when the Aussie concept of mateship and helping one another out was a naturally-accepted behaviour. Dad was always doing things for his friends. He would drop everything to help them out if they needed him, so much so that he would neglect those closest to him or what he should have done at his own home.

image1.jpeg

1951: Denise, my mother nursing me, and Sandra

This would have been taken at Station Street,

Chelsea, just prior to moving to Edithvale Road

I feel such nostalgia for so many moments of my childhood. We didn’t have much, but we had what we needed. Most of the families in the Chelsea area, were hardworking and family-oriented. Mothers stayed at home and looked after the house, cooking and washing and caring for the children, whilst fathers went to work. It was a simple formula that seemed to work for most. But women were not really getting their chance to find their place in the workforce other than as shop assistants and typists; a few might have been teachers or nurses.

It was still a time of mothers staying home and fathers earning a living. Even if women were career-minded, there wasn’t the opportunities for them that exist in the twenty-first century. Life could be unfulfilling and sometimes a lonely existence for many women, feeling that they could never reach their full potential in a career of their choosing. World War 2 had ended, and many women who had been part of the workforce in factories for the war effort now found themselves pushed out of their jobs as hundreds of men returned from the fighting. Women in these circumstances would have felt neglected, sidelined, and worthless, not to mention frustrated. They no longer saw their roles as homemakers solely in the home catering to a husband and the children in their families. Women had become more independent, and they liked it. They wanted to earn their own money and feel they were contributing to the community. There would have been a lot of restlessness in these early days after the war. There was a massive increase in the birth rate, and communities were booming. Children born from this time would been known as baby boomers. Housing construction of timber dwellings were popping up all over. The city of Chelsea saw a great increase in population, as did other bayside towns.

We lived in the bayside suburb of Edithvale in Edithvale Road on the corner of Clydebank Road, opposite the Methodist church. It was a great corner position that Dad had selected for his business. First taxis then buses. Dad built a massive sliding gate on the Clydebank Road side to accommodate his buses. Dad’s yard and garage was filled with all things mechanical pertaining to cars and buses, there only to serve as a depot for the buses. Our yard was very rough and scattered with odds and ends, a small section fenced off as our grassed yard, with the clothesline. Not a yard for playing in really, but we managed. We had a ‘mongrel’ dog called Buster, and I loved him. I often sat with my arm around him when I felt moments of sadness for one reason or another. He listened to everything I had to say, sitting there quietly until I would finish. He was a mixed breed of terrier but quite tall. He had scraggly grey hair, but to me, he was wonderful.

The train station, where trains went by at twenty-minute intervals, was a couple of minutes up the road. Do you know we rarely even heard them go by? We were about five minutes walking distance to the beach, which a was wonderful asset. Many days were spent at the seaside during summer, and there would be a constant stream of cars passing our house as families headed to the cool waters of our bayside beaches for some respite after working on a hot day. In the winter, we were warmed by a small kerosene heater or the fitted gas heater. The gas heater was surrounded by a lovely plaster mantel that had the relief of a sailing ship on stormy seas on the front. We had pale pink chenille bedspreads, which everyone seemed to have in those days. There was nothing interesting or pretty in our rooms. They were very basic. For colder nights, we would put candy-striped flannelette sheets on the bed, and that was a ‘toasty treat’. So nice to snuggle up in your bed when it was so inviting. For all the years after my mother left, my bed was in Dad’s room. It was a large room, and there was plenty of room for our beds and wardrobes. I slept there until he was married to Jean Kenna in 1963. I think he just wanted me close because I was so young, and to begin with, my sisters weren’t at home.

Our house was a small weatherboard home on a huge block. There was nothing very homely about it, and on reflection, it looked tired and unloved. Dad didn’t seem to maintain the home as he was too busy with his work, so it just looked a little rundown. It consisted of five rooms that were added to over the years, ending in four bedrooms, kitchen, dining room, lounge (always referred to as the front room), casual eating area, bathroom, and back verandah. At some point, Dad added a self-contained bungalow onto the house. An old friend of his, Jim Dixson, lived in there for many years. It consisted of a tiny kitchen, separate shower and a bedsitter – all-in-one bed and lounge. Dad made a separate toilet out the back for Jim also. We didn’t know anything about Jim, but we accepted the fact unreservedly that he lived here with us. I think he may have driven taxis for Dad at some