by J. B. Rowley
“Stop your nonsense, Dad,” she said.
She laughed off the compliment but I could tell she was pleased. With her long hair curling away from her face and rolled up at the back, she did look a little like a 1940s film actress.
I watched and observed; a silent five-year-old. I loved to study my father, taking note of his every movement as though he were a work of art. I guess it’s a thing girls do at a certain stage of their lives.
He reached into the pocket of his khaki shirt for his packet of tobacco and took out a slip of cigarette paper before returning the packet to his pocket. Holding the strip of white paper in one hand he dipped his free hand into the tobacco, pinched out a clump, placed it on the paper, and spread it along the middle before deftly rolling the tobacco into a cylindrical shape. He then rolled the paper around the tobacco, licking along each edge and pressing the edges together to form a rough cigarette. Reaching into his pocket for his matches he placed the cigarette between his lips then struck a match against the side of the match box. He held the flame to the tip of his hand-made cigarette until the end burned red. Shaking the match to ensure it was completely extinguished, he threw it to the ground and returned the box of matches to his shirt pocket. This procedure was always done in a state of silent concentration so Mum waited. When he had finished, she resumed the conversation about me.
“Yes, she did go overboard and it could have been a lot worse. She needs to learn restraint. She can’t let her temper get the better of her like that.”
My father drew on his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke into the air.
“Don’t worry, Mum. It’s not likely to happen again. I bet Maxie’ll be treating her with more caution from now on, and young Bobby too.”
He grinned at me and winked. “Eh, Brigid?” he said.
Brigid was his pet name for me. I don’t remember him ever calling me June. I thought that Brigid was a name all fathers called their daughters. Funny, the ideas we get in our heads as kids!
I hoped he was right about Maxie and Bobby. Having so many brothers was not exactly a dream come true for me. I had discovered they could be challenging to say the least although my brothers were no different to most young country boys of the day. Living out on the Bonang Highway we were isolated by poverty, lack of public transport and lack of communication technology. Having little social interaction with other families meant I had no girls on which to model myself. Instead, I fought fiercely to be one of the boys.
However, to Bobby and Maxie I was just an annoying little girl they did not deign to take seriously. They often indulged in the apparently hilarious sport of teasing me; their primary goal being to provoke a reaction. Often my response was to run away in tears and hide in the hayshed where I always had a book hidden somewhere in the musty bales. By the time I finished the book and emerged from the hayshed my brothers’ deeds were long forgotten. This was not entirely satisfactory to Bobby and Maxie so they continually sought strategies that might provoke a more entertaining reaction. Sometimes they would achieve gratification when I exploded in a furious rage and cried and screamed and threw things at them. They would laugh uproariously and dodge the stones or sticks that came their way and, satisfied that their sport had resulted in the desired outcome, would wander off supremely triumphant.
The long summer holidays when there was no school created conditions ripe for sibling tensions to simmer. They had simmered to boiling point the day I ‘killed Maxie’s hand’.
Looking back, I think my mother must have despaired of ever moulding me into a ‘typical’ girl. I was a bush urchin with hard soled feet from running around without shoes who loved climbing trees and chasing lizards.
Like the creatures of the bush, I could make myself almost invisible and was often an unnoticed silent observer listening to my parents’ conversations.
“I don’t like you being here on your own when I’m away,” said my father one evening as he and my mother prepared to share a pot of tea. He removed his worn navy beret, once part of his Australian army uniform, and ran his fingers through his thick black hair disturbing curled shreds of sawdust. Tossing the beret up onto a coat hook, he grinned when it landed on its target. As he sat down, he lifted the enamel mug Mum had just filled with hot tea.
“I’m all right,” said my mother. She drank her tea from a floral china tea cup, which had a chip on the rim. My father’s enamel mug was much more practical but Mum liked to drink from pretty china cups, even chipped ones.
“It’s not as if I’m completely on my own. The kids are here.”
“That’s what I’m thinking about,” said Dad. “There’s always some sort of emergency with kids. You have no way of getting into town in a hurry if you don’t have a car here.”
“Stop worrying, Dad.”
Husbands and wives often called each other Mum and Dad in front of their children in those days. I assume it was to ensure the children did not develop the ‘disrespectful’ habit of calling their parents by their given names. It became a habit so that they often forgot to use other forms of address even when the kids were not present or perhaps in large families there was always a risk of children overhearing their conversations.
“It would help if we had the telephone on,” continued my father.
“And how are we going to afford that?”
Dad leant back, moving his shoulder blades against the wooden back of the chair to scratch his back.
“I could speak to Mum and Dad. They might be able to lend me some money. They’ll help if they can.”
Mum released a deep sigh. “You already owe them money. It’ll just prey on your mind if you owe them more.”
“I know. But.....well, it preys on my mind leaving you and the kids here when I am out at the camp.”
“Well, women have managed on their own in the middle of nowhere in this country for years. If they can do it, I can do it.”
Her words were brave, but her tone held an underlying sense of helplessness. Dad reached across the table and touched Mum’s hand.
“You know I wouldn’t leave you here on your own if I could help it.”
“I know.”
Chapter 3
As a child, it never occurred to me that my mother, the woman who so efficiently handled our childhood emergencies, the woman who was a constant nurturing presence in our lives, carried a painful secret buried deep within her. I first came upon her hidden anguish when I was three years old.
The day had turned cool. Mum slipped a cardigan over my shoulders. She helped me put my arms in the sleeves and was about to finish off the process with an embrace when I pushed her away, flinging a defiant look at her. How dare she treat me like a baby? My wrath melted, however, when our eyes met briefly for I was looking into two deep wells of pain.
Mum quickly recovered herself and applied a smile to her face. As the years passed I saw that smile again from time to time. It was not her usual smile which spread easily across her face, radiating to her eyes to linger there like sunlight dancing on an emerald ocean. This smile was a facsimile, a brave attempt at the original that lacked its joie de vivre.
That I have never forgotten this incident is indicative of the impact it had on me although as a kid I did not know why it was significant. I think my child’s instinct told me my mother’s reaction was not only out of proportion to the event but also out of character. Mum was not an emotional person and had a reserve that, apart from the usual mother’s anger at naughty children, was usually unruffled only by laughter.
After that day, my mother never tried to hug me again. It wasn’t until I discovered her secret that I realised why my rejection of her during a normal childhood developmental stage of independence had caused the anguish that was submerged in the depths of her being to charge to the surface.
Before I continue, in chapter five, the story of our lives out on the Bonang Highway, further background information is necessary.
In Whisper My Secret I wrote about my mother’s heartbre
aking forced separation from her first three children; all under the age of five. Growing up in a family of seven kids I always thought of Mum as the mother of seven when in actual fact she was the mother of ten.
As revealed in Whisper My Secret, my mother Myrtle Webb became pregnant in 1938, at the age of eighteen, to Henry Bishop (Keith Dopper). He was an older boy who lived in the house next door to the flat where Myrtle and her widowed mother lived. Henry and Myrtle married in haste. They had three children between 1939 and 1941: Bertie (Kenny), Audrey (Valerie) and Noel (Allan). However, their marriage was not a happy one.
By this time Australia had become involved in World War Two and Henry Bishop was one of the many young men deployed overseas with the AIF (Australian Imperial Forces). Henry’s mother, Agnes (Eva), who did not approve of her daughter-in-law, made up her mind that Myrtle was an unfaithful wife. This woman’s imagination sparked unkind and spiteful gossip. Agnes and Henry eventually used Myrtle’s sullied reputation to have the marriage dissolved. Henry obtained legal custody of their three children but placed them in care. Myrtle was not to be reunited with them. It was during this turmoil that Myrtle and George met.
Despite the tragedy of losing her three children, the trauma of her marriage breakdown and the shame of an unjustly tarnished reputation, Myrtle started a new life and a new family with George in Orbost. Apart from those two, no one else in our family and no one else in Orbost knew about Myrtle’s previous life.
Although Myrtle was a significant distance geographically from her first three children, I am confident her emotional attachment was strong. Having no knowledge of what it was like in the orphanages, she probably took comfort from believing her children were being well looked after. This was a time when it was generally believed that children could be ‘better off’ in a Home. Placing kids in a Home was often seen as an appropriate course of action when times were difficult for families or even simply because both parents had to go out to work.
Myrtle was powerless to change what happened but appears to have done all that she could to maintain contact with her children and let them know she still cared about them. The overwhelming powerlessness to change a situation that robbed her of her right to be a mother to her kids must have deepened her grief at being separated from them.
Other mothers who have suffered similar experiences and professionals who work with them would not find it surprising that Myrtle kept this traumatic event secret. However, that was something that took me a long time and a lot of research to appreciate. When I learned that people suffering shock and unbearable loss develop a survival mechanism called ‘a false self’, I began to understand. This false self is disassociated from the self that experienced the trauma thus enabling the person to remain sane and continue their life. I can see how my mother must have done that, or something very close to it.
The traumatic impact that separation from their children has on mothers has been explored through several recent government Inquiries in Australia and other countries. In the words of Jacki, a mother whose child was taken from her at birth: ‘I thank God that I was one of the stronger mothers who survived the ordeal to go on and have a relatively 'normal' life, devoid of any mental problems, drug taking, drinking, prostitution or suicide attempts. I have, instead, been married for 31 years and was fortunate enough to give birth again...’ (Releasing the Past: Mothers’ stories of their stolen babies)
Like Jacki, Myrtle managed to continue living a ‘normal’ life without succumbing to drugs, alcohol, depression or any of the other tragic consequences often suffered. I believe that the survival strategy of creating a false self, as well as the love and support she received from my father, enabled her to do so.
Ironically, my mother was herself a child whose parents were forced to give her up. This was another secret that my siblings and I knew nothing about until after her death when we found, amongst her papers, the private adoption agreement between her biological parents and her adoptive parents.
Mum was born Millicent Myrtle Mills on January 18, 1920 in Culcairn in the Riverina region of NSW. Established in 1880, Culcairn was not a large town but was an important service centre for smaller towns in the area, such as Walla Walla where Myrtle’s parents were living at the time of her birth.
Myrtle’s biological father, Alick Harold Mills, was a twenty-six year old bricklayer originally from Melbourne, Victoria. He married nineteen-year-old Vera Myrtle Allison Johnson from Rutherglen, Victoria in 1919. I am not sure why they moved to the Riverina. Alick Mills may have been attracted by work opportunities as the region had prospered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries due to the success of its wool and agricultural industries after pastoral settlement by Europeans in the 1830s.
However, the hope of work and prosperity was evidently not fulfilled because less than six months after Millicent Myrtle’s birth in January 1920, Vera and Alick were forced to give up their daughter as they were, according to the adoption agreement, ‘unable to support the [said] infant’.
I don’t know how this situation arose but I assume Alick was unable to get enough work to support his family. Whatever the reason, a legal agreement was entered into with a couple in Lavington, near Albury, NSW: James Jacob Webb and his wife Etti (Antonia Maria). Albury, then a country town, is now a major regional city situated 160 kilometres from the source of the Murray River near Mount Kosciuszko; an area that was once part of the Wiradjuri nation.
The love Alick and Vera had for their daughter is reflected in two of the conditions of the agreement that stated they were to be given access to her ‘at all reasonable times hereafter’, and if the adopting parents were to die while Millicent Myrtle was still a child, Alick and Vera were entitled to custody of her.
So, at the age of four and a half months my mother became Myrtle Webb, the daughter of James and Etti Webb. James Webb was a devoted husband and father who owned a fruit and vegetable orchard. He was twenty-four when he married Etti, five years his junior, in 1905. When they adopted Myrtle, they had been married for fifteen years with no children of their own.
Myrtle’s life as the daughter of James and Etti Webb was, as far as I can find out, a contented one. She attended Lavington Public School and seems to have had a happy childhood and been brought up in a nurturing environment. She developed close relationships with her cousins Henrietta and Lily (Rose), two of the five children of Anne and Reginald Sutherland; Etti’s sister and brother-in-law.
When I met Lily on my quest to discover what happened to cause Myrtle to be separated from her first children, she told me how the three girls would often meet when their parents went into the township of Albury for shopping. Later, as teenagers and young women they attended the local Saturday night dances together. On these occasions Myrtle would stay over at the Sutherlands. The girls would whisper to each other long into the night, recalling the evening’s shared fun. These dances must have been family affairs because the girls started attending when Lily was in her early teens. Although Myrtle was older then her two cousins, there was only a few years difference in their ages so all three girls would have been considered too young to go out without a chaperone. The gowns Myrtle wore to these dances were later confiscated by me as a kid. It must have pained her to see those marvellous taffeta and satin creations, probably made by her mother, reduced to a child’s ‘dress-ups’ but she shared them with me willingly.
Perhaps it was at one of the local dances that my father, George Rowley, first met Lily after he arrived in Albury with the Australian Army. George was twenty years old in March 1941 when he left his hometown of Orbost to enlist. Thousands of army and other services personnel were sent to Albury which straddles the border of Victoria and NSW. About eighteen kilometres from Albury at Bonegilla on the Victorian side was one of Australia’s largest military camps.
As far as I can work out from the hand written records of the Australian Army, George arrived in Bonegilla around August 1941. He was not a man who liked to dance so I imagine he stood aw
kwardly on the sidelines in the dance hall watching the lovely young women and their partners swirl around the floor. Lily told me George ‘set his cap’ at her but she was too young to be ‘serious about men’. Myrtle would not have been attending the dances at this stage, certainly not regularly, as she was already a young mother of two, with a third child on the way. However, when George later met Myrtle his heart was lost and he never wavered in his love for her.
Chapter 4
When Myrtle arrived in Orbost in 1944 pregnant with George’s first child, she was now almost 400 kilometres from Albury where she had been forced to leave her three young children from her first marriage. At this time, her home in Orbost was with George’s parents but, thankfully, her new mother-in-law welcomed her with kindness and generosity. George was still a soldier in the AIF but was desperate to be discharged so that he could go home. His desire to find a way out of the army increased after Myrtle gave birth. His letters to her reveal his distress at being separated from his wife and child.
In a letter dated February 20, 1945 from Seymour, Victoria he talks of ways of getting out of the army to be with Myrtle and ‘young Bobby’. If all else fails, he suggests that Myrtle and Bobby might be able to join him.
It wouldn’t be much for you, love, but everybody else is getting their wife up here, I don’t see why I can’t be doing the same. I mean I seem to be the loneliest guy about here, Myrtle.
He returns to the idea later in the same letter.
I’ll have to try to persuade you to come up here, love, because I can’t live without you, darl. See what you’ve done to me, love, made me love you like that. I never think of going out with another girl. It just doesn’t appeal to me anymore, darl. Yet one time I used to be the biggest flirt going ... all I want in this world is to get home to you and get with you. I’m not worried about home, love, it’s you I want.
On the last page of the letter he returns again, but with less optimism, to the suggestion that Myrtle and Bobby join him in Seymour.