Mother of Ten

by J. B. Rowley

  However, she found the resolve to pick up the pieces and get on with her life. By this time Kevin’s twin, Georgie, who had previously left home to work in Melbourne, was now living at home with Mum and in a fragile mental state after the death of a girlfriend. His use of drugs and the death of his twin deepened his depression and increased his unpredictable behaviour. Mum tolerated his moods and tantrums. She would never have considered telling him to move out even though his presence was disruptive and negative and sometimes threatening.

  In April 1984, less than six months after Kevin’s death, Mum was blessed with another granddaughter when Tanya was born. My youngest brother, Peter, by now twenty three years old, was no longer living at home and was in a relationship. One day, Peter arrived on Mum’s doorstep with his baby daughter in his arms. Tanya’s mother had left and Peter was unable to look after the child because he had to go out to work. Mum did not hesitate. She held out her arms for Tanya. From that day on she became Tanya’s mother. She brought her up and nurtured her through her early years, effectively becoming the first mother Tanya knew.

  As the years passed I suggested to Mum that she should request to have the government family allowance for Tanya paid to her instead of to the child’s mother. This would have involved applying for legal custody of Tanya. Mum simply would not entertain the idea. Knowing what I know now, I can well understand why she would not do anything that was even remotely perceived as taking a mother’s child from her.

  Whatever costs came along in the care of Tanya she willingly paid for from her own meagre supply of money and money from Peter. She also gave her time to Tanya willingly and lovingly. With Tanya, she did the same ‘grandmotherly’ things she did with Sally as well all the things a mother would do for her child. She walked Tanya to kindergarten and later to school, made sure she had the right school clothes and books, packed her lunch, helped her with school work and read her bedtime stories.

  Mum was heartbroken when, several years later, she had to relinquish care of Tanya because Peter and his partner resumed their relationship. Of course, Mum was happy that Tanya was able to live with her parents again but this did not diminish the pain of separation. Apart from her natural attachment to Tanya, imagine the painful memories this must have stirred for her. Certainly, Tanya’s cousin Sally recalls that her grandmother was so bereft after Peter reclaimed Tanya that she was uncharacteristically disinterested in Sally for a short time. However, Peter ensured that Mum had regular contact with Tanya. Both Sally and Tanya have treasured memories of Myrtle as a loving and caring grandmother who offered them sanctuary and comfort during childhood calamities. She brooked no nonsense and yet was not above spoiling them and could also be relied on for fun and laughter.

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  While Tanya and Sally were the grandchildren Mum was able to develop close relationships with, she did have others. My older brothers Bobby and Maxie had both married and started their families. However, there was not a lot of opportunity for contact as they both lived interstate. I can recall some of Maxie’s visits with his young children. Mum made the most of her time with them: nursing them, cuddling them and playing with them. There were also the grandchildren she did not know about: the children of Bertie, Noel and Audrey. Did she wonder about them? I am sure that she did.

  Bertie, after he left the technical college, became a printer with the Queensland Times. At the age of 26 he was a tall, handsome young man with a thick head of dark hair, twinkling blue eyes and a quirky sense of humour. He caught the eye of the girls, but his heart was stolen one evening at a barbecue in the 1960s when he met Lea, whom he married in 1965.

  Even on his wedding day, Bertie’s quirky sense of humour could not be suppressed. Standing on the church steps with his new bride he looked at the minister and said, “Right. I’m married. Now where do I go to get a divorce?” The minister did not really understand Bertie’s sense of humour but, luckily, Lea did.

  Bertie and Lea lived in Sydney for a short time when Bertie worked on The Australian Newspaper. When they returned to Brisbane in 1974, Bertie started work at Brisbane’s daily Courier-Mail, where he stayed until he retired twenty years later. Lea and Bertie produced five grandchildren for Myrtle although she never met any of them.

  Bertie, who grew up hating his mother as a result of his paternal grandmother’s brain-washing, had no contact with Myrtle. It wasn’t until the 1960s that he found out, through his sister, what had happened to his mother. Audrey had met one of Myrtle’s Albury friends who was able to tell her the truth about what had happened. Bertie felt a deep sense of betrayal that he had been brought up to hate his mother and been told falsehoods about what had happened and about her character. Although he did not mention it, he must have also carried a heavy burden of misplaced guilt. Perhaps this was one of the things that made him resistant to the idea of getting in touch with his mother despite encouragement from Lea to do so.

  Audrey, in the years that followed her meeting with Myrtle, had decided she did not want to marry. “I like my freedom too much,” she wrote in one of her letters to her mother. She expressed a desire to travel and her itchy feet eventually took her to the United States of America. Audrey worked hard and saved enough money to fund her trip and, together with an Irish girlfriend, arrived in California in 1974. In San Francisco, a friendly local bus driver helped the girls find an apartment for short term lease. One evening, the two girls went to a nearby wine bar recommended by the bus driver. As soon as they walked in, Audrey saw two guys heading in their direction but she did not like the look of them so quickly devised a plan to avoid their attentions.

  “Follow me,” she whispered to her friend.

  Audrey had spotted a young man enjoying a drink on his own at the bar. She now headed straight for him, sidled up, sat down next to him and offered him a warm smile.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said to the astonished accountant from Kansas. “I’ll have a glass of white wine, please.”

  The accountant was bemused but, nevertheless, ordered his new companion with the strange accent a glass of white wine. Audrey’s girlfriend took her cue from her friend and managed to startle another young man sitting nearby who also suddenly found he had an attractive new companion with an odd accent. The two girls had a very pleasant evening with their ‘dates’ and left them to take a cab back to their apartment. The next morning, the astonished accountant from Kansas, whose name was Edward, knocked on Audrey’s door to ask her to go out with him again that evening.

  That was the start of a long and loving relationship. Edward and Audrey travelled all over the world together before returning to the USA in 1975 where they were married. Marriage did not stop their travelling. Edward’s job took him to Saudi Arabia in 1978 where they lived for eight years. From there, they jetted off to exotic destinations every six months. Approximately a year after their arrival in Saudi Arabia, Audrey became pregnant with twins. Sadly, one twin did not survive but Edward and Audrey became the proud parents of a baby boy. Did this slow down the jetsetters? No. Even the birth of their second son, a much welcomed addition to the family in 1984, did not slow them down.

  Edward and Audrey returned to America in 1986 and settled in Houston, Texas. By this time, Audrey had stopped writing to her mother thinking she had long since died. She carried with her into adulthood the feeling of shame and embarrassment at being an orphanage child. This is a sad consequence that ‘care leavers commonly speak of. They felt ashamed because their parents rejected them. Many have never told the families they now live with, would never tell friends or workmates, and regard it as something to be hidden and forgotten, a shameful past that marks them as worth less than other people.’ (Orphans of the Living)

  Audrey’s younger brother, Noel, remained in Ballarat apart from a short stint in Melbourne. He was restless and unsettled and was often involved in fights, being quick to take offence and quick to avenge himself. In retrospect, he describes himself as ‘always looking for something but not knowing wha
t I was looking for’.

  In Ballarat he took room and board with a family that included two daughters. Through these sisters, Noel met Shirley, a vivacious blonde who took his eye and later captured his heart. He apparently ‘swept her off her feet’ although Shirley might dispute that claim.

  It was when Noel applied for his birth certificate to fulfil the legal requirements to enable his marriage to Shirley to take place that he discovered he had a brother and a sister. However, he had no other information and did not know how to contact them or whether they were even still alive.

  Noel became more settled after his marriage, particularly when he became a father in 1966. Like Bertie and Lea, Noel and Shirley produced five grandchildren for Myrtle whom she never met.

  Although Noel was now secure in a strong and loving family environment, his work life was not so settled. He was forced to give up work when, while working at a local car parts manufacturer, he suffered serious injuries after being accidentally run over by a mobile crane. His body was crushed and bones were broken. He endured a long journey back to health but was no longer able to work. Once again he found himself in a fight. This time it was a court battle which he eventually won and was awarded payment for damages.

  He did whatever he could to earn an income to supplement these payments; selling scrap metal, old cars and trailers. Noel was on crutches for a long time. He discovered a crutch could be very useful as a weapon much to the consternation one day of an overly persistent vacuum cleaner salesman who had apparently developed a strong attachment to Noel and Shirley’s front door step.

  In 1982, Noel met his siblings after Audrey tracked him down on one of her visits from Saudi Arabia. In Noel’s mind, he was meeting his sister for the first time as he had no memory of her, or his brother, from childhood. At their reunion Audrey told him about Bertie and passed on their brother’s contact details.

  Later, Noel contacted Bertie and drove up to Queensland to meet him. The first thing their wives noticed was the striking resemblance the brothers bore to each other. Despite not growing up together they shared the same mannerisms, their voices sounded the same and they even finished each other’s sentences. Physically, they were like ‘two peas in a pod’ and shared a likeness with their father. The proof that they were sired by the same man was staring everyone in the face. A relative, who was around at the time that Agnes Bishop was spreading rumours that Noel was not Henry Bishop’s child, saw them together and exclaimed, “How could they have got it so wrong?”

  That question sums it up in relation to every aspect of what happened to Myrtle and her children and, indeed, to what happened to thousands of other children and their parents during the ‘Orphanage Period’ in Australia: from the 1920s to the 1990s.

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  ‘While growing up in the Orphanage, I used to wish for our mother to come and take us home, where we belonged, but she never came near the place.’ This comment was made by Lorraine Rodgers who was at Ballarat Orphanage. Hers was one of over 600 submissions to the Inquiry conducted by the Australian Senate in 2003 and 2004. Submissions were taken from people who, as children, had been in institutions in Australia from the 1920s to the 1990s. The 2009 report of this Inquiry, known as Forgotten Australians, states:

  ‘The Committee received hundreds of graphic and disturbing accounts about the treatment and care experienced by children in out-of-home care. Like the child migrants before them, many care leavers showed immense courage in putting intensely personal life stories on the public record. Their stories outlined a litany of emotional, physical and sexual abuse, and often criminal physical and sexual assault. Their stories also told of neglect, humiliation and deprivation of food, education and healthcare. Such abuse and assault was widespread across institutions, across States and across the government, religious and other care providers.

  But the overwhelming response as to treatment in care, even among those that made positive comments, was the lack of love, affection and nurturing that was never provided to young children at critical times during their emotional development.’

  For many people who grew up ‘in care’ the Senate Inquiry offered them the chance to speak about their experiences for the first time because ‘people are listening at long last’. Up until this time, many care leavers felt the rest of society were not bothered about their experiences and not interested in listening.

  The experiences of those who made submissions to this Inquiry clearly show that children who grew up in institutions were not treated as individuals. There was a lack of personal interest in the child. The children were virtually anonymous. Little wonder these kids yearned for affection and ‘sought caresses from strangers’.

  Children in institutions grew up in an environment that taught them they were not important to anyone. The people they should have mattered most to, their parents, had apparently abandoned them. If your parents don’t want you, the obvious message is: You’re not worth loving, you’re no good. As my sister Audrey put it, they were ‘discarded’ children. In Orphans of the Living, author Joanna Penglase states: ‘When parents disappear from children’s lives, the only way a child can interpret this is that the parent does not want them or care about them.’

  In many orphanages children were told repeatedly by the staff that they were unwanted, no good, unlovable, stupid, wicked and even worse than that. The staff at the institutions often reinforced the message that the children were unwanted nuisances.

  Mim McKey and her two sisters, all under the age of four, were placed in institutions in Melbourne, Victoria. She comments in her submission to the Inquiry: ‘I was told constantly by Home staff, teachers, hosts and my mother, that I was irreparably stupid, recalcitrant, disobedient, totally unworthy of love, and always facing threats that I would be "put away" permanently.’

  Lorraine Rodgers remembers the staff at Ballarat Orphanage telling her she had been put in the orphanage because her parents did not love her and ‘you are not wanted by anyone’. It breaks my heart to think of children growing up believing: ‘Nobody wants me. Nobody cares about me.’

  Children like Audrey and Noel who grow up in institutions enter adulthood without the foundation of family and all that goes with it. They have no recorded history such as milestone memorabilia and photographs. They have no photos of themselves as babies or during their development stages, no school photographs, no photographs with family members. They have no family stories to prompt their memories of past events, to share and laugh about with others. They do not have any way of knowing what happened to them as children except their memories. There is no one to fill in the gaps. When we grow up in a family setting we receive reminders of our life’s journey, of who we are and where we belong; reminders such as photos, siblings retelling stories, parents and grandparents retelling stories and other prompts that keep our memories strong. Institutionalised children are deprived of these precious pieces of the childhood jigsaw that most of us assume as our right.

  Institutionalised children also grow up deprived of sibling relationships and parental role models. They have been robbed of the small daily intimacies that create bonds between parents and children or between siblings. They do not hear the often stated words that strengthen family connections such as: “You take after your mother.” “You look just like your father did at your age.” “You’re so like your brother/sister/cousin.” They have no one to cuddle them and reassure them during childhood illnesses. They have nowhere they can call private; nowhere to keep their ‘treasures’ safe. Therefore, they are unable to accumulate childhood items that they attach sentimental value to; items that might provide a link to a memory, a special occasion or a loved one.

  There is no mother or father to arbitrate in childhood disputes or to make sure the older children do not take the younger children’s things. Children in Homes had no control over and no say in such personal matters as how their hair was cut or what clothes they wore. Clothing was communal. Any gifts sent to the Home by the child’s
parents became communal property.

  Frank Golding describes in his submission to the Inquiry how one day at Ballarat Orphanage ‘we all queued up to get a share of a box of grapes donated by some generous person’. When he reached the head of the queue he was able to read the label on the box. It was addressed to Frank and his brothers and had been sent by their father. However, no-one had told the boys that their father had sent them this gift. In fact, until that time they had thought their father was dead. Frank did not mind sharing the grapes with the others but he was upset that he and his brothers had not been told about the gift and, more importantly, had not been told there had been communication from their father.

  As with gifts from family members, personal possessions also became communal property or were either snatched by another inmate or confiscated by the staff. Even when the children managed to get locks for their bedroom lockers in the hope of stowing some treasured items away, the staff had access to the lockers and checked them whenever they wished. ‘There was no way to keep precious things private. The mind was the only safe shelter that could not be invaded,’ writes Frank Golding in his book, An Orphan’s Escape.

  The very intimate things that a mother or father might do for a child, such as wiping a small child’s bottom after going on the potty, or giving comfort after a fall, are done if they are done at all by strangers and not necessarily by the same person each time.

  Joanna Penglase writes that the children in Children’s Homes lived ‘loveless, desolate lives...motherless and fatherless, isolated from the community, a prey to assault and rape or simply casual and arbitrary cruelty, knowing there was no one to turn to - and knowing the sentence has years to go.’