Mother of Ten

by J. B. Rowley

  There must have been some sort of cut off point in our ages when a good hiding was no longer considered appropriate punishment because Bobby was around eighteen or nineteen when he missed out on a hiding despite having committed what in my parents’ eyes was a disgraceful transgression.

  He was working at one of the local sawmills and took his cheque to a local shop to cash it. It was not unusual in those days for a shopkeeper to cash a wage cheque for someone they knew. In Bobby’s case it was more because they knew Dad. Anyway, on this occasion Bobby, who was by now tall, dark and handsome like his father, saw an opportunity to get some more money. Australia’s currency at the time was ‘pounds, shillings and pence’. Bobby had a cheque for nine pounds but he made some simple alterations to the words and figures in the cheque, so that when he presented it at the shop it had miraculously metamorphosed into a cheque for ninety pounds. He might not have intended to keep the money for himself; it is possible that it was a naive effort to get money for the family.

  I am sure he thought it was a foolproof plan without serious consequences. However, being his first attempt at forgery, Bobby’s efforts were easily detected. The shopkeeper called the police and they contacted our father. I can only imagine the shame that Dad must have suffered. He did not have money or status. The one thing he did have was respect. His family on his mother’s side as well as his father’s side had been in the area since the late 1800s and were respected and well known. Dad had carried on the family tradition of respect and honour. His reputation in the community was dear to him. The shopkeeper, probably as a courtesy to our father, did not press charges but Bobby was not home free. He still had to endure Dad’s rage.

  “If you weren’t too old, I’d give you the biggest thrashing you have ever had in your life. You wouldn’t be able to stand up afterwards for days.”

  Those were the words that began a fierce and degrading tongue lashing for Bobby. If my father had only realised the power of his verbal punishment he would probably have used it more often. He had the ability to express the full force of his anger in his eyes and to make his tone so cold that you suddenly felt as if he had cut you out of his life and had never been your father. Bobby hung his head and cowered like a frightened animal. Later, I heard my father talking to my mother about the incident.

  “It’s a good job he got caught,” he said. “It’ll teach him a lesson. He’ll think twice before he does anything like that again.”

  I’m not sure that getting caught and having to face the police was the stronger deterrent in this case. My father’s wrath, scorn and contempt for his actions probably had a deeper impact on my brother.

  The worry of his teenage children growing increasingly recalcitrant, the anxiety of his own illness and the added concern of knowing his mother was ill must have created overwhelming stress for Dad.

  One day in April 1963, Nan became so ill that Mum called the ambulance to take her to the Orbost Hospital. Unfortunately, Nan passed away before the ambulance reached its destination. Although Nan’s ill health was a strain for both my parents, they mourned the passing of this kind and generous lady.

  Chapter 17

  Myrtle was still grieving the death of her mother-in-law and trying to cope with the responsibility of seven lively children while burdened with the knowledge that her husband was unlikely to recover from his illness when she received an unexpected visitor.

  By this time, her first three children Bertie, Audrey and Noel were adults. Bertie was 24 years old, had moved out of home and started work. He had dreamed of one day being a surgeon or a pilot. Unfortunately, the family did not have the money to help him realise his dreams. Instead, he had been enrolled in a technical college.

  Like his brother, Noel also had dreams for his future which he was unable to pursue. He wanted to be a scientist but was told by the superintendent at Ballarat Orphanage that he had to attend the local technical college. Noel stuck it out for eighteen months but eventually left to get a job at Myttons Ltd, a local cutlery manufacturer. Ballarat Orphanage was no longer his home as he had moved into a hostel at the age of fifteen. He still had no inkling that he had a brother and a sister and no knowledge of his mother and seven half-siblings who were living in the same state of Victoria.

  Audrey, now twenty two, had also left the orphanage where she had grown up. At the age of fifteen she became a mother’s helper with the Rodgers family in Albury. She looked after the babies and did the housework but was not treated like a slave. They showed her the same respect and love as any other member of the family. Not surprisingly, Audrey was happy living there.

  When Audrey’s term as mother’s helper to Eileen Rodgers came to a close, Audrey did not want to leave the Rodgers family and return to the orphanage. Had she been sent back she might have stayed at the orphanage as part of the staff for the rest of her life as some of the girls did. Instead, she continued on with the Rodgers family where she remained for approximately four years.

  Eileen Rodgers, who was the closest Audrey came to having a mother, earned a warm place in her heart. However, Audrey’s burning desire to know her family, which had been with her all her life, remained strong. Through her paternal grandmother, she found out her father was living in Ipswich. The Rodgers family did everything they could to help Audrey become reunited with her biological family. Eileen Rodgers’ brother drove her from Albury to her father’s house in Ipswich, a distance of over 1300 kilometres. Here, Audrey was reunited with her brother, Bertie, after more than fifteen years. Neither of them knew about their younger brother, Noel.

  Audrey stayed with Henry Bishop and his second wife in Ipswich although she was not entirely happy there. After a couple of years, she made her way to Sydney in NSW. She was an attractive young woman with an interest in fashion which was reflected in her elegant dress style. No doubt these attributes helped her land a job with David Jones Ltd, a well known Australian department store. In the 1960s, Audrey worked in their glove department and in later years in the shoe department before moving into the hospitality industry. During this time, Audrey intensified her search for her mother. Eventually, she found out Myrtle’s address from Etti Webb and began writing to her in Orbost although Myrtle did not reply to her letters.

  When Audrey set off to travel around Australia with a boyfriend she decided to include the small township of Orbost in their itinerary. Myrtle did not know that her eldest daughter was about to knock on her door. Orbost has only one main street where the shops are located so it was not difficult for Audrey and her boyfriend to find their way around. They asked for directions from the local shopkeepers and arrived at 61 Salisbury Street, which was only 500 metres away, sometime after lunch. I am sure Audrey’s expectations of this meeting were high. All her life she had yearned for a mother. She was about to be reunited with the woman who had given birth to her and nurtured her through her first tender years.

  The conditions were not ideal for this meeting. Apart from being unannounced, Audrey had her boyfriend with her. Perhaps this was a conscious choice to provide her with support for a meeting that must have filled her with apprehension and anxiety. What do you say to your mother after so many years of separation? Apart from the awkwardness of not knowing how to relate to her, she might have feared her mother would reject her. That would have been too great a trauma to face alone. As it turned out, her mother did not reject her. Yet their reunion must have fallen far short of Audrey’s expectations.

  Myrtle invited Audrey and her boyfriend in.

  “Would you like a cup of tea, love?” she said.

  Offering a cup of tea was the usual ice-breaker in country areas and it was familiar ground for Myrtle. I suspect this was her way of coping with what must have been quite a shock. Separated mothers often cannot face the trauma of meeting their children years after they have been taken from them.

  Murray Legro from Ballarat whose mother was forced to give him up for adoption at six weeks of age spent years searching for his birth mother. When he fin
ally located her, the idea of meeting her estranged son as an adult was too much for his mother.

  ‘We had four letters, two phone calls,’ he writes on the website ABC Open: Separated, ‘then her sister rang up and said she can't handle it, so I backed off.’

  Despite the potentially unfavourable conditions, Myrtle and Audrey spent a pleasant afternoon together although no serious issues were discussed. Audrey told Myrtle about her work and her plans for the future. Myrtle listened and laughed and joked with her. It was getting close to 3 p.m. when Myrtle stood up and hinted that it was time for Audrey and her boyfriend to leave because the children would be ‘getting home from school soon’.

  I can only imagine the hurt Audrey must have experienced when her mother said this. She could never have envisaged that the joyous, yearned for reunion with her mother would end in such a way. It also shocked me to discover that Mum could have been so apparently insensitive. I was even more bewildered by the fact that she had not taken this opportunity to welcome her daughter back into her life. I remained mystified until I started to research the lives of other women who had had to give up their children.

  One of the many publications that helped me to understand how Mum was able to cope with her situation was Silent Violence: Australia’s White Stolen Children, a thesis by Merryl Moor of Griffith University. I was interested to read the following quote from ‘a Sydney birthmother and researcher’ in Moor’s thesis: ‘...The loss of a living part of oneself creates in the mother a level of trauma and anxiety so great that the mother must manifest a false self in order to survive. The experience essentially becomes ‘something that happened to someone I used to be’. The mother blocks the experience ... She remains suspended and, therefore, silent unless a trigger event occurs and forces her mind to face her loss.’

  This fits very well with what happened to my mother. The loss of her first three children became something that happened to someone she used to be. With her other self locked away in some lonely abyss, her false self was able to live a full and productive life as a ‘normal’ mother.

  This might also explain why Myrtle discontinued her attempts to keep in touch with her children when they were young. She would not have known where Bertie was after he moved to Queensland and she probably did not know where Noel was but she did know where Audrey was. She was an excellent and regular letter writer. Why didn’t she write to her daughter? Was it because that part of her life had to remain locked away in order for her to cope?

  When the first letter had arrived from the adult Audrey, Myrtle must have had to face her past and the secret she had kept under psychological lock and key. I feel sure that she would have done some soul searching. Her false self must have been threatened. The thought of having to face her loss and having to reveal her secret would have been too traumatic to bear. She would have had to confront the shame and guilt and possibly self loathing she felt because she had not been a mother to her three children. Her feelings would have been similar to other mothers forcibly separated from their children who, in the words of a mother quoted in the Moor thesis, ‘suffered feelings of never being a good enough person or mother to my other children’.

  Another mother, Jenny, whose story is recorded in Releasing the Past: Mothers’ stories of their stolen babies, reflects that she was ‘Burdened by a deep sense of worthlessness, of not deserving or belonging in my own good life, my constant fear was that of losing those I loved — a fear that they, too, would be snatched away.’

  This is a fear Myrtle would have lived with; the fear that revealing her secret might result in the loss of her new family. She risked losing the love and respect of the children she now had. Like Jenny, she probably also had a fear, irrational but nevertheless real to her, that her children would be taken from her as her first children had been. A deep rooted fear of losing her subsequent children was something a separated mother often had to live with.

  Also on the website ABC Open: Separated, is the story of Julienne; a mother whose baby had been taken from her at birth: ‘I lived in constant fear of critical neighbours and teachers who might be instrumental in the removal of the children of my marriage.’

  For all of these reasons and perhaps more, Myrtle changed the word ‘Mother’ to ‘Aunty’ on the letters and postcards Audrey sent her. I found several of them in her papers after her death. Audrey had addressed them as ‘Dear Mother’ but Myrtle had written over the word ‘Mother’ and altered it to ‘Aunty’. This simple change meant that she was able to keep her false self intact without actually rejecting Audrey. I believe that in her mind she became Audrey’s aunty. When Audrey arrived at her home that afternoon, Myrtle met her not as her mother but as her aunt.

  On the day Audrey arrived to be reunited with her mother I was at Orbost High School, only a block away from our house. Yet the sister I did not know existed, had come and gone without me even knowing. Once again, Myrtle proved to be an expert at keeping her secret. My father, by now only doing light duties, was at work the afternoon Audrey came. I suspect my mother did not tell him about her daughter’s visit given his state of health and the fact that her secret was probably never discussed after they left Albury in 1944.

  Audrey continued to write to Myrtle but her mother did not respond even though Audrey pleaded with her to write back. However, when I went through Myrtle’s documents after her death I came across the photos Audrey had sent of herself as well as several slips of paper with Audrey’s various Sydney addresses written on them in Myrtle’s handwriting. Did she intend (or want) to write to Audrey or did keeping her letters, photos and details of where she lived help Myrtle to maintain a connection with her daughter from a safe distance?

  Chapter 18

  During the months that followed Audrey’s visit, my father’s health continued to deteriorate. In July 1964 he was admitted to the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne for tests and blood transfusions. He returned home in August but was readmitted on September 11, 1964 and remained there for almost three weeks. This separation was difficult for Mum and Dad.

  I found two unused Alfred Hospital visitor cards in Mum’s papers. These cards allowed her to visit Dad ‘between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Wednesdays and Sundays only’. However, it was almost impossible for her to visit him. There was no passenger train from Melbourne to Orbost. The line ended at Bairnsdale ninety kilometres away. A journey to Melbourne meant a 60-90 minute car drive to Bairnsdale, perhaps longer depending on the condition of the road at that time, followed by a long train journey of approximately five hours. Even if she could afford it, having young children at home would have made such a journey problematic. Although we did have the telephone on at home, calls to Melbourne were expensive. The best Mum and Dad could do was to write to each other every day.

  In his letter to Mum of September 17, 1964, Dad responds to one of her letters with:

  Yes, Myrtle, I miss you a lot, too, but what can I do? It’s in the doctors’ hands and they don’t tell you much...Now look Myrtle, you want to look after yourself and don’t sit up at night because I’m quite all right. As a matter of fact I feel pretty good, but I still sweat at night and I get a temp now and again. Now, you get some sleep and don’t worry. They’ll probably get sick of me before long. I hope so anyway. I weigh 10:10. That was last Sunday but I think I have put on some now because they are giving me vitamin tablets and I am eating pretty well. I better go now. Keep writing Myrtle. I look forward to your letters. Look after yourself. Love from George. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (10:10 or 10 stone: 10 pounds, is equal to 150 lbs or just over 68kg)

  On September 21 he writes with obvious excitement that he is coming home and asks that Bobby or Maxie meet him at Bairnsdale Station:

  It’s Monday today. Three days and I will be on the train home, I hope, anyway. Dr Paul told me that and Sister also told me, so I think it will be all right.

  He repeats his plea for Mum to go to bed early telling her it ‘does you no good up all night’. The letter continues:

  Got plenty
of money still, Myrtle? Not that I could give you any if you didn’t have but just thought I would ask. Tell Peter I’ll be home on Friday. Funny he should miss me so much.

  My youngest brother Peter was only four years old at this time and missed his father deeply when he was in hospital. Dad’s next letter to Mum was on Friday, September 25, 1964.

  Dear Myrtle,

  I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to Bairnsdale today but it wasn’t my fault - some misunderstanding with the doctors. Anyway, Dr Standish said you rang up and that you met the train in Bairnsdale. You couldn’t of got the telegram telling you I wasn’t coming. Sister said she would send you one this morning but apparently they missed out somewhere along the line. Anyway, I have to get another blood transfusion in the morning and then if the Head Doctor is satisfied with me I will be home about Monday or Tuesday morning so that would be all right. If you have enough money I will hold this cheque until then, but if it’s any longer I’ll have to trust the mail and send it back. I suppose you’re tired after your wait for nothing at Bairnsdale. Well, I was pretty annoyed about it myself, I can tell you. But it’s for my own good I suppose. As long as you lot up there are alright, that’s the main thing.

  The cheque he refers to is a Social Services cheque which was possibly an allowance he received because of his inability to earn an income through illness. It would have required his signature in order for Mum to access the money.

  He goes on to describe an incident in the hospital when the doctors and nurses worked hard for over an hour to save a man but were unable to do so in the end. He praises the hard work of the medical staff saying, ‘They sure work, these doctors.’