Mother of Ten

by J. B. Rowley

  As with those incarcerated in prisons, orphanage children were cut off from the wider society and therefore did not have the opportunity to explore and discover the world around them. They were not permitted outside the orphanage gates except for special outings. Most orphanage children went to school on the institution’s grounds. Even ‘going to the movies’ was done within the grounds. For example, at Ballarat Orphanage a donated film projector was set up on Saturday nights. A film sent from Melbourne by rail was shown on a make-shift screen made from a white sheet pinned to the dining room wall.

  Some children, especially at secondary school level, attended schools outside their orphanage grounds but even then they were cut off from the outside community. They were readily identifiable as orphanage inmates by their clothes and the staff members accompanying them. There was a stigma attached to these kids because they did not have a ‘proper’ family. Other children looked down on them and often jeered at them and bullied them. In most cases they were excluded from the usual social interactions within and beyond a school community.

  The education that institutionalised kids received was rarely adequate. In the publication Forgotten Australians: Supporting survivors of childhood institutional care in Australia, The Alliance for Forgotten Australians outlines the ‘Denial of Educational Opportunity’:

  ‘Children in institutions generally did not receive a good, or even adequate, education. Children commonly did the domestic work involved in running the orphanage, cleaning and cooking for long hours. As well, many children were put to work earning income for the institution. Children as young as eight were often put to work on farms or in laundries run by the institution. Additionally, children who are abused or neglected, who have untreated health problems or who are subjected to constant accusations of stupidity and worthlessness find it difficult to concentrate in a learning environment.’

  Children living in Homes often felt ‘shame, embarrassment and secrecy’ because they did not have a ‘normal’ family and were segregated from mainstream society. Ken Carter, who was placed in ‘care’ as a baby after his mother became ill, in his submission to the Senate Inquiry states: ‘You just have this sense of guilt that you, as an orphan, were trash.’

  Like thousands of people who grew up in orphanages, my half-siblings have not shared their deepest feelings about living in these institutions. However, the stories of those who courageously put theirs on public record by submitting to the Senate Inquiry are so similar that we can take their stories as being representative of what happened to most children who grew up ‘in care’. For example, Ray Flett’s submission relates how in 1957, at the age of three, he and his four siblings were ‘forcibly removed’ from their parents ‘by the then child welfare department in NSW’ and charged with being ‘under improper guardianship’.

  In his submission Ray recalls: ‘I had been denied all knowledge of my natural family and indeed had forgotten about the existence of my siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, mother and father. I had no knowledge of the history of my predecessors, who I was or where I belonged.

  I became a loner and distrusted all I came into contact with. I dreamt of having a family and felt so forlorn that I just lived from day to day with no one to love or be loved by, and without purpose. At the age of seven I was abused sexually several times by at least one adolescent boy who also resided at that home.’

  Ken Carter states: ‘The thing that hurt me most of all was that I didn’t know who I was. No one ever told me where I came from or what.’

  We develop our sense of identity through our family, our culture and our community but children growing up in institutions are cut off from all these things.

  Mim Mckey says, ‘...I despaired of ever finding any sort of personal identity, much less a “normal” place in this world.’

  Children were kept under control by terror and intimidation and lived with fear on a daily basis. Consequently, many children learned to be quiet, to repress their personalities, in order to escape notice; being noticed was likely to result in physical, emotional or sexual abuse. Their sense of self was destroyed.

  In his submission to the Senate Inquiry David Forbes, who was placed in a ‘boys’ home’ at the age of eight, writes: ‘We were not treated like children; we were not given any love and affection. We had no dignity. We were made to line up naked waiting for our turn in the shower – summer or winter it did not matter. We had no privacy. We were constantly threatened and made fun of. There were no celebrations – our birthdays were not even acknowledged. We had no Easter eggs – even Santa Claus abandoned us. We were not even allowed any personal possessions – not that I ever had any. We were given very little food to eat and it always tasted yuck. We were not treated like individuals and we were never called by our names.’

  Childhood exuberance was curbed and controlled by a system that was regimented and authoritarian. The children lined up together at the same time each day for activities such as meals, cleaning teeth, going to the toilet and going to bed. A child who tried to deviate from this or to use their initiative in any way was punished.

  Lorraine Rodgers relates how she ‘just went around like a zombie, did everything I was told to. You start to think you are no good, well that is still with me, and it will be with me until I die.’

  Such conditioning moulded who the children became as adults.

  ‘Society continually tells victims to ‘get over it’, or ‘it’s in the past’. I can assure you that the treatment of those of us who survive will not be “in the past” as long as one of us draws breath, for we suffer the consequences every second of our existence.’ (Ray Flett)

  Joanna Penglase wonders how different her life would have been and whether she would have become a different person and still ponders questions she will never know the answers to.

  ‘...I feel as if there is a whole other parallel life ‘out there’ somewhere, the one which I didn’t have with my parents, brother and sister.’

  In a letter sent to Australian members of parliament in 1997, mothers who had their children taken from them wrote: ‘Our children not only lost the opportunity to be loved, raised and nurtured by their own mothers, they have also suffered the loss of their family of origin, their ancestry and heritage. And their families have lost them.’

  Chapter 22

  It is either a miracle or testament to their resilience, determination and courage that Bertie, Audrey and Noel not only survived their childhood experiences but were able to ignore, put aside or bury the baggage they were surely burdened with. Each one of my half-siblings has led a productive life, attracted love and respect, sustained a long term marriage and established a strong family unit. Other adults who were separated from their parents as children, some of whom suffered dreadful abuse, have found life extremely difficult.

  Lorraine Rodgers reported that she has been through two marriages and ‘I still need counselling. I am living in fear, and that is not good for me.’

  Ray Flett suffers “depression, anxiety, antisocial attitudes, and nightmares, fear of people, lack of confidence, lack of social skills and a lack of identity. I have undergone counselling for much of my adult life just so I could cope with living day to day. I cannot hold a job for long; I cannot form friendships and have been unable to complete the several educational courses I have started over the last thirty years. I am currently in such a state that I rarely leave the house for fear of my reaction to any stimuli.”

  Mim McKey in her submission said, ‘Throughout my teenage and adult years I have been dogged with many, many illnesses. Too numerous to mention. Now the anxiety and panic attacks are increasing and I am thinking that maybe they were right and they should put me away, for I thought I was really going insane. Now I am currently undergoing counselling which is costing a small fortune, and my psychologist has assured me that there are many people institutionalised as children now seeking help, male and female...For you see, we cannot forget. I cannot forget. The nightmares won’t
let me.’

  Maree Giles, in her submission states: ‘The experience at Parramatta Girls' Home has caused me a lifetime of depression, low self-esteem, lack of confidence, the inability to trust people, and fear of authority, particularly the police and social services. But worse than any of this, my fear of living in Australia forced me to live apart from my mother. I have not lived in Australia since 1971. I lost my desire to live in my own country, because it let me down so badly.’

  I wonder if Audrey, who still lives in Houston, Texas, had a sense of being let down by her country and subconsciously rejected Australia because of it.

  It was Houston where I met her for the first time. In 1999, I travelled with my niece, Sally, to Texas where we met Audrey, her husband, Edward, and their two sons, Jamieson and Damien. Although Audrey, like Bertie and Noel, shares a physical resemblance to her father, I was astonished at how similar her mannerisms were to Mum’s. For example, the way she moves her hands and the way she sometimes holds her head.

  We met again in 2008 when Audrey, Edward and Damien visited Australia. It was shortly after this trip, in February 2009, that Audrey’s much loved husband Edward passed away; only five months before the birth of his first grandchild. Edward was a gentle man who had the knack of turning strangers into friends in a matter of seconds. His passing was a painful blow not only for Audrey and her two sons but also for Sally who shared an instant rapport with her Uncle Edward.

  Both of Edward’s sons have now produced progeny giving Audrey three grandchildren at last count. She is enjoying her role as a grandmother immensely and relishes having two daughters-in-law whom she thinks of as her own daughters.

  Ballarat is much closer to Melbourne than Houston, Texas so there have been several opportunities for me, and others in the Rowley family, to meet with Noel and his family. Shirley and Noel are also enjoying being grandparents and so far have nine grandchildren to love and spoil. Noel maintains strong, long-term connections with his ‘orphanage family’. In many orphanages children did not form close friendships with the other inmates. Their living conditions were such that they lived in fear of what might happen to them next. This usually meant they were forced to put personal survival above all else. They learned to distrust others. However, Noel felt a sense of solidarity with the other children at Ballarat Orphanage. He established firm friendships which have survived to this day.

  Noel would dearly love to have met his mother but it was not to be. By 1990, with her health deteriorating, Mum had cut back on her involvement with the Salvation Army. Over the next few years my sister, Irene, became her home help. Irene visited her daily, making sure she had food to eat, helping her with the household chores and with bathing. In 1995, Mum was admitted to the Orbost Hospital. She died as a result of ‘respiratory failure’ on April 17. Her good friend, Cathy, was still by her side at her funeral five days later as were many others who respected and loved Mum.

  It was only after her death that I discovered our mother’s secret. I was flabbergasted to think that Mum had a secret of any kind. Furthermore, it seemed inconceivable that this woman I knew so well, whose smile was easy on her face and whose laughter was swiftly stirred, had lived with the pain of past trauma. Yet a school friend of my two older brothers had seen, even as a child, the ghosts in her eyes. “There was always sadness behind her smile,” he told me.

  When I recovered from the shock of finding out that Mum had had three children before she married my father, I managed to track down her first born, Bertie, who was living on Russell Island in Queensland.

  During our telephone conversation he told me that he had not thought about his mother in years but that one night recently, an image of a woman appeared before him. He thought it was his mother and when he described her to me it sounded very much like Mum. We established that the timing of the appearance of the image was very close to the time of Mum’s death. Perhaps it was an imagined image and perhaps it was coincidence, but it seemed to give Bertie comfort to think his mother may have visited him after her death. It is tempting to think of Mum as a mrart offering her first born one last goodbye.

  Sometime after our initial phone contact, I travelled to Queensland to meet Bertie and Lea in person. I discovered that my half-brother was a handsome man with gentleness in his blue eyes and a healthy head of silver hair. Bertie was not able to give me a great deal of information about his childhood. “I don’t dwell on the past,” he told me. He felt unable to talk about his early life even to Lea with whom he had a strong, loving relationship. He told her he had ‘locked it away’.

  “I’ve obviously locked it away for a reason. It must be too painful,” he said to her, “so it’s better to leave it that way.”

  At three and a half years of age he would have been old enough and aware enough to feel the full impact of the trauma of being separated from his mother. Children as young as two feel an overwhelming sense of loss when their mother is taken from them whether by death or separation. Added to this profound loss was the trauma of separation from his siblings. Everything that gave young Bertie security, safety and identity had been snatched away from him. Apart from intense grief, he would also have experienced feelings of separation and abandonment, isolation, confusion and self-blame. Throughout his childhood and probably into adulthood, he must have carried a sense of loneliness and emptiness deep within.

  Bertie was seriously contemplating taking the step of contacting his mother when he received my phone call to let him know she had died. It had taken over thirty years and urging from Lea before he was ready to consider the possibility of reaching out to Myrtle and then it was too late. It is difficult for anyone who has not been in the same situation to understand the complex feelings that might have prevented Bertie from reaching out to his mother.

  Perhaps we get a glimpse into Bertie’s mind through Ray Flett who states: ‘I had consigned many memories to the farthest recesses of my mind.’ Then, without warning, at the age of twenty-nine Ray received a phone call: ‘The phone call was from a person who, after an absence of 26 years, identified herself as and indeed was my natural mother. This event had a devastating effect on my life. It bought back all the memories and pain. My confidence deserted me and my life started to once again disintegrate and I had no one to turn to for help. I was torn apart by the internal conflict of whom I really was and who I had become. I tried to fit into both the world I had been educated in and the world that had been so devastatingly taken from me. I did not know who I had been most disloyal to, my adopted (sic) mother or my natural mother.’

  I am sure that Bertie, who had been brought up to despise his mother and had been cared for initially by his grandparents and later by his step-mother and father, felt torn by divided loyalties.

  Sadly, Bertie is no longer with us. In June 2009 he became very ill and was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. The cancer spread and attacked his liver. With his usual consideration and humility, he made Lea promise not to tell Noel and Shirley who were about to leave with their family for their annual holiday in Bali. Bertie did not want them to cancel their holiday on his account, which of course is what they would have done. On their return from Bali, Noel and his family made the trip to Queensland and were able to visit with Bertie before he passed away in September that year. He left behind his wife, Lea, and their five children who have so far produced for their parents: sixteen grandchildren, ten great grand children and two great, great, grand children.

  My youngest brother Peter also produced another grandchild for Mum but she died before Kade was born in 1996. Kade is a budding young fisherman in Lakes Entrance, East Gippsland where he lives with his father. His half-sister is Tanya, the granddaughter Myrtle mothered and who is now a mother herself with two boys and a girl. Her cousin Sally has thus far resisted the pull of marriage and is establishing herself as a Social Worker. Sally’s mother, Irene, still lives in Orbost and also works in the health sector.

  In September 1998, Kevin’s twin, Georgie, was killed in a
road accident, similar to the accident that killed his brother. Thankfully, this was one loss Mum did not have to endure.

  Mum’s first husband, Henry Bishop, died only two days after my father. He had lung cancer, apparently caused by a grain of sand getting into his lungs when he was serving in the Middle East. By the time he died on January 30, 1965, the cancer had spread to his brain. The extent to which he and his mother went to in order to exclude Audrey and Noel from his life is reflected in the death notice which lists his children but omits to mention Noel. His new wife was apparently not fully informed about her husband’s first family. I suspect Audrey would not have been mentioned either had she not established contact with her father in her adult life.

  Agnes Bishop’s husband, John, was hospitalised in 1971 but refused to allow his wife to visit him and would not talk to her. He died the same year after surgery. Agnes Bishop suffered from dementia later in life and passed away ten years after her husband.

  Mum’s mother, Etti Webb, had remarried in 1939. Her marriage to Ernest Biddell apparently did not last although I was unable to find a record of a divorce. It seems that Biddell simply made himself scarce at some point. Etti was still living in Albury when she passed away in 1970. Mum was unable to attend the funeral, possibly because of her financial situation. However, her cousin Lily wrote to her immediately after the service with a full description of the day.

  For me, the unveiling of Mum’s secret has been a strange, sometimes surreal, experience. For one thing I had to reposition myself in the family. I was no longer third child. I was now sixth child. At first that felt weird. Eventually, I came to the realisation that I was both third child and sixth child. That also feels a little weird but at least it is no longer confusing.

  My sister Irene and I became unsure about how to respond to questions that we once answered with unswerving confidence; questions like, ‘How many in your family?’ As far as accepting our half-siblings, that was never an issue for us. They are Mum’s children and that means they are our family and that is all there is to it. We each experienced deep regret that we had not had the opportunity to grow up with them. It is impossible to have the same sense of connection with siblings you meet for the first time as adults as those you lived with, played with, fought with, cried with and laughed with day after day, year after year.