Here she could see there was no teacher to teach the children how to read and write. There were eleven children between about five and fifteen who lived in this place. So Lizzie started to teach them, at first with no paper and no books. She used a stick and the things around her to teach; she pointed to a tree and drew a symbol of a tree in the dirt. They taught her their word and she tried to write the sound. Then alongside it she wrote her own word for the same thing and made everyone say it.
Each day she made them all learn ten new words and before long they all had a long list of words that they practised. Often the older people in the community came and joined in, and while this added to the fun and laughter she insisted that this was serious and they must do it properly. Then she started on counting, doing it the same way, but also using fingers, with ten people she could get to a hundred.
A month after their rescue, Catherine came to her one day and said. “Mummy, Sophie has been talking to me again. She has been telling me about the people you know and how they need you. Your own Mummy needs you, she has been sad for a long time since you went away, and she wants to see and know me too, and I want to see and know your brother David too. They still live in the house where you lived and where Sophie lived. You need to go back there and see them and bring me with you.
“The second person who needs you is Julie, she has been angry for a long time since that bad thing happened to you. You need to visit her too and show me to her. Then she will really understand how, from that bad thing they did to you, a good thing has come, and she will not be so angry inside. Her being angry is making it hard to be nice to other people, especially to men, as she hates them all for what happened to you.
“The third person who needs you is someone you have never told me about, a man called Robbie who you knew when you lived in Melbourne. When you left you promised him you would write to him, and instead you have done everything you can to put him out of your mind and not think about him. He had been sad for a long time since you went away. He needs you to help him come back to a good place and be happy again.”
Lizzie marvelled at the wisdom of her child, she sensed that her rescue, which brought her to this place was not just a rescue from the desert, it was also the rescue of and from herself; finding what was good in herself and using it. It was also helping her friends and family, who she had neglected for far too long, to find the good in themselves.
She knew her daughter was right; the time for running away was long past. Now she must come back to her friends and give them her help and support, and let them help her too, she must not run away again when trouble came. So she would contact them all, starting with her mother and David, arranging to go and see them or have them visit her, then of course Julie and Becky, the friends who had helped her out in her hour of need, and of course Elena and Alec and those who worked in her business, all giving her the foundations for a wonderful new life in this remote part of Australia. And most of all she must try and find Robbie, it was unfinished business that she must attend to.
She remembered also her promise in the desert, and how she must also do something to stop those bad men who had hurt her, not so much for herself, but she must use her own rescue and new strength to give this same gift of freedom to their other victims.
Chapter 19 – The Lost Years
Robbie lay in hospital, his lower body swathed in bandages. The last month was little more than a blur, he had no memory of being brought to Port Augusta Hospital, and then of his transfer, by airlift, to Royal Adelaide Hospital. He had vague memories of whole body hurting, of people in white uniforms doing things to him, of him being wheeled on a trolley from place to place and of a period when his whole right leg felt like it was on fire.
And there was another image that kept flashing into his mind. It was of Lizzie, wheeling her baby away from the house in St Kilda and just as she vanished he realising, too late, that he needed to go with her; him running desperately after her, glimpsing her turning the corner of the street, rushing that corner only to see her retreating figure turning the next corner, always chasing but never catching. He knew it was a dream. It was so many years since he had seen the real person, but that ache of loss remained as a sharp part of the jumble in his mind.
Then slowly the blurs had coalesced into clear images, particularly an image of his mother sitting by his beside, holding his hand and saying, “You have been babbling about Lizzie when you were unconscious but there is no Lizzie here and I do not know her. Can you tell me how to find her so I can ask her to come here. You would not talk about her so much if she was not important.”
Then his Mum continued, with tears in her eyes. “Oh Robbie, I am so glad to see you awake, looking at me like you know me and that parts of your body are starting to heal. But you need to be strong and brave, there is much yet to be mended.
“They told me your pelvis was broken, you had a ruptured spleen and liver. They thought they would lose you in the ambulance. And your leg is such a mess, broken in so many places. They have tried to put the bits back together, but they said it was like joining bits of confetti. They asked me for permission to amputate it but I said no, not unless you woke up and agreed, or it was putting your life at risk. So they have left it and tried to fix it, but almost no one thinks it will heal properly or that you will ever walk again.
Robbie took a deep breath and smiled. His mind was finally clear; he could feel the weeks of repressed anxiety flowing out of his mother. He knew, through vague memory fragments, that she had sat by his bed, day after day; coaxing him to eat, talking to him, encouraging him to heal his body and his mind.
Now he had his mind back. He surveyed his body and surroundings. He was no longer hooked up to lots of tubes the way he thought he had been, and most bandages were gone. His left leg was covered in a plaster cast that extended from his foot to his hip, with just toe tips visible. It hurt a small bit but really was not too bad when he lay still. His left arm was also in a bandage, and there were still some dressings on parts of his lower body. But it seemed that all the main parts of him were still there and that slowly he was getting better.
He looked at his mother and took her hand. He felt great gratitude for her presence and her support. “You can stop worrying now Mum, I am on the mend and I will get better from here. Most of the thanks for that lies with you. I don’t remember much but I do remember you being here and helping me, day after day.”
Then his Mum said to him, “I am so glad to have you back, the Robbie of so long ago. The last five years have been lost years for us both. You from whatever happened with that girl, Lizzie, the one you seem to be unable to forget, and doing more and more crazy things. Me, watching my only son fall apart, the drink, the anger, the reckless disregard for your own safety, and me by being powerless to do anything to help or protect you, but always waiting for that phone call to come where they would say they had found your dead body.
“Then the phone call did come. They said your motorbike had come around a corner on a dirt road in the Flinders Ranges. It was on the wrong side of the road, and you had gone under the back wheels of a truck. They said it would be probably too late, they doubted you would survive the first night in Port Augusta, while they tried to stabilise you, but if I came I should fly to Adelaide, where they would bring you if they could get your blood pressure high enough for you to survive the flight.
“So I came. Then they thought you would die on the evacuation plane to Adelaide, but they knew it was your only chance, getting you to big hospital where they could try and stop all the bleeding from your smashed liver and broken pelvis. Then, for a week, your life hung in the balance but gradually you started to mend.
“Then them telling me about the mess that used to be your leg, how it had gone under the truck wheels and now had gravel embedded, lots of skin missing and the two main bones smashed in so many places they could not see how to put it back together. The only good news was the blood was still circulating, and that your foot was st
ill pink and not really damaged.
“So I was determined not to let them cut it off. They took you to surgery again and again, three more times, and fixed it as best they could. Now they tell me it is full of wires and screws and if it heals at all it will be at a funny angle and an inch too short. But I am rambling. The doctor can tell you all this in his own good time”
She now sat straight and looked at him directly. “Robbie, I almost lost you and I will not let that happen again. You must tell me about Lizzie, the whole truth. While you were unconscious you must have said her name more than a hundred times. You need to find her, or at least to try, if you are to lay her ghost to rest. Perhaps I can help you. So now you must tell me what you know about her. I know you have mentioned her name once or twice before, a lady with a small baby in Melbourne, when you worked in St Kilda, but that is all.”
So he told her the story he knew of Lizzie, the brave young girl who had come to Melbourne in order to have and keep her child, and how she had come to work with him, how he had held her body and loved her mind. Then that awful final day when they came to try and take her baby away, and that look of desperation and terror on her face as she had fled. How he had made her to promise to write but she never had, even now after more than five years.
How he had known within minutes that, in letting her go by herself, he had made a terrible mistake. How he had realised that all he wanted to do was to go with her and support her. He had asked Rebecca, her room-mate where she had gone, only to be told she left five minutes earlier, leaving by the back gate and pushing her baby in the pram.
How he searched the surrounding suburbs looking for her that afternoon and had gone to the train station that night, lest she try and catch a train to another city, Adelaide or Sydney, how he had seen the officials also checking the trains looking for her, and him knowing he needed to warn her lest she came, but then finding no sign, his only pleasure was that they could not find her either.
Then the first year when he had tried all the ideas he could think of to find her, asking anyone who she might know, going to Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney, looking but finding no sign. Then slowly losing hope, the endless waiting, hoping for a letter which never came, his anger at himself for not taking the chance when he had it, he knew her feelings for him, she had told him she wanted his baby.
But in a strange way through the accident and his dreams of her he had found a kind of peace. He now had this sense that a time would come when she had need of him and then he would go to her. So now he would repair his body and wait until that time came.
His mother said she would do the little she could do, make inquiries with authorities to see if anyone had any contact details, perhaps there was someone who had an address for her mother.
A month later, when she returned to Melbourne, she began her inquiries. She finally found someone who found the file which dealt with this girl. It recorded a complaint by a member of the public, one Jack Mackenzie, that an underage girl was working in a St Kilda brothel in October 1964. It recorded an order issued and the attempt to apprehend the girl and her baby, it had a copy of the letter that the authorities had written to her mother in Balmain, Sydney, seeking to find her and the short reply that came back.
“I do not know where Lizzie is and if I did know I would not tell you.”
So now she had a Sydney address. She thought of writing to Lizzie’s mother, a polite “mother to mother” kind of letter, saying her son had known Lizzie in Melbourne some years ago and was keen locate her again. She contemplated for a while about saying more, she knew the mother may be suspicious, after her past dealings with the authorities and the role another man in Melbourne had played in these.
In the end she decided she must meet the mother face to face. She would talk her as one woman to another, she trying to rescue her son. Perhaps Lizzie had met and married another man and contact with Robbie would be unwelcome, but far better to know. So she caught the train to Sydney and then a bus to Balmain. Now she was standing in front of an old and shabby weatherboard house. She knocked and waited. Then she knocked again and this time heard movement inside. A woman of middle age, standing tall and straight, opened the door and said, “Hello, how can I help you?”
She answered, “I have come up from Melbourne in the hope I could talk to you. I was wondering if I could come inside and tell you about my son who knew your daughter in Melbourne five years ago, just after she had a baby. I am not from the authorities but at my son really needs to find out what happened to your daughter, Lizzie. I am hoping you will listen to my story then you can decide if you are able to help.”
So the lady, Patsy, invited her in and invited her to sit down. She told the story as best she knew it, of Robbie meeting Lizzie with her little baby, how they had become close friends, both women understood what that meant. Then she told of her understanding that the authorities had sought to apprehend her and take her child, and how Lizzie had fled. She told of how her son had been searching for Lizzie for years, without success. Then she told of the accident and how Robbie had endlessly repeated Lizzie’s name when unconscious. Now her son, Robert, was slowly getting better but still needed to know what had happened to Lizzie in order to move on following his accident.
By the end she knew that Patsy trusted her and would help if she could; she just nodded and she smiled encouragingly sometimes. Then Patsy went to a drawer and brought out a letter and a picture, a photo of Lizzie standing in front of a building which looked like a restaurant holding a small girl in her arms, perhaps two years old. “That is my last photo of Lizzie, taken almost three years ago holding her daughter Catherine, she shares my middle name, my granddaughter. It was taken in a town called Broome, somewhere in the north of Western Australia.
“Lizzie writes to me once or twice a year, she says that she works there in a restaurant and is slowly making some money and hopes to visit me soon, and bring Catherine. I am sad to say that Lizzie and I are not very close, as shown by the fact that she went to Melbourne to have her baby. She blamed me, probably rightly, for the death of her father when she was nine.
“But I truly want her to be happy and if your son can help with that I would be so glad. My only address for her is Broome Post Office. I think she does not want me to know about when she worked as a prostitute in Melbourne, but of course the Victorian authorities could not wait to tell me that when they were looking for her. I, of course, did not help them.
“I am proud of my daughter for keeping her child and not ashamed for the choices she made. I just wish I could have been there to help her some more. I also want to see my grand-daughter. But Lizzie has always been fiercely independent, since a little girl, and I do not have the money to go looking for her myself. Perhaps I have also been too proud to just ask her to come home.
“So Lizzie and I also need to make our reconciliation and if Robbie can help bring my girl back I would be so happy. I do not know for sure that there is no other man in her life but think she would have told me if there was. However I think the best thing your son could do, once able, is go to Broome and seek her out. If he does I only ask that he tells her that her mother wants her and her daughter, Catherine, to come home to see me and David, my son.”
As she was leaving the woman gave her the photo. This is precious to me, but it is more important for you son to have, perhaps it may help him find her and bring her home.
Chapter 20 - Life’s New Purpose
For Lizzie, in the desert, life rolled along in a way that had no boundaries. The sun came up and the sun went down, food was found and they all gathered round. They talked, learned, sang and laughed. Sometimes the old men and women talked and the children gathered. Sometimes they danced in the dark, feet swirling in the dust. Sometimes on hot lazy afternoons they made things using the materials in the bush around them, a man carved a spear head from a hard stick, a woman made a basket from woven grass, another painted on a flattened sheet a picture of bark dots and patterns of the movem
ents of the desert.
Twice big storms came and they sheltered and sung rain songs, once the rain came and the big drops splashed through their shelters. The other time it was dust and wind that tore through their flimsy shelters leaving them broken with pieces scattered; soon after they rebuilt them.
It was nearly two months until Lizzie saw another white person. It was a man who had come to see this newly established community and find out what services they needed. He offered to build houses and a store, bring a drilling rig and drill a bore. The people nodded and seemed to agree, but no one really seemed to care. The man went away feeling as if he had done a good thing. He would return in a month and he promised to bring Lizzie a pen and paper so she could write some letters. He said he would also look for a few children’s books with simple words and pictures.
A month later, paper delivered, Lizzie wrote four letters and a month later again the man returned and collected them. It was summer and hot and the rain had come. So most roads were cut, no houses were built or bores drilled.
A further month later he brought three letters back, but one was missing. Lizzie quickly scratched out another letter and gave it to the man to take before he departed. A month later she had three more letters written to reply last month’s letters from Elena, Julie and her Mum. This time one more letter came back to her.
The single letter read.
Dear Lizzie,
Of course I remember you and I am so glad you have made a new life for yourself.
Regarding Rebecca, she left here a year after you did. She met a lovely man who adored both her and her baby boy. He lived in a nice house in Hawthorn. She married him a year later and now has three more children.
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