Saving Zali

by Lisa Venables

  It was not that big a deal to join up, though my grandma was upset. She wondered how I could balance being a police officer with being a single mother of Lachlan, then two. It was a fair point. She also thought I could do better. My mother was not surprised and was glad I had at least picked a career.

  My first ever shift was the night of the opening ceremony for the Sydney Olympics, 15 September 2000. We had been called to a brawl on the street. As we attended, a man who had taken ecstasy and had been watching the brawl had a heart attack. We performed CPR on him immediately while we waited for the ambos to arrive. It didn’t work and he died. From that first shift on, the work was always intense.

  I met Andrew, a fellow police officer, in December 2000 at the start of a hot summer. The night I met him he had pursued a stolen vehicle after observing the driver selling drugs. The pursuit had crossed Parramatta Road, Camperdown, and come into Leichhardt, which was my area. By the time my partner and I caught up with the excitement, the stolen car had crashed because its wheels had fallen off. The vehicle was full of money and drugs, and I helped Andrew count it and put it into exhibit bags. How romantic.

  I liked Andrew immediately. He was a solid, tanned, hardworking man. He had a level of honesty about him that made me trust him, and we bonded over our children from previous relationships. He was from Cooma, where his mum, dad and sister still lived. His two girls, Kala and Danni, from his first marriage, still lived there too, with their mum. My own family had spread out from Queensland, where my mum lived, to Melbourne, where my two brothers lived. I didn’t speak with my father any more, and I lived alone with Lachie. On my working days Lach went to his dad’s and I had him on days off. Andrew and I both loved the inner city and the eastern beaches life we enjoyed with our friends. We started dating soon after we met.

  Gradually, though, over the next year and a half, just like that stolen car, the wheels on Andrew’s life began to get wobbly then fall off.

  While working in Newtown, over a period of about six months, Andrew was first shot at by someone with a shotgun, then six weeks later nearly stabbed in the back by a broken beer bottle. Both escapes had been simply through pure luck and they stripped him of his feeling of safety.

  After these incidents his working life fell into an unfortunate pattern that happens to police sometimes. In every shift for fifteen consecutive shifts, one of his jobs involved a deceased person. He was labelled with the nickname of Dr Death, and no amount of rest days or leave seemed to be able to shake this dark cloud following him.

  Andrew is a beautiful, soft-hearted, country-raised family man. This ugly turn of events began to break him.

  Seeking to escape his run of bad luck, he applied for and won a lock-up keeper job in the small country town of Crookwell, so Lach, Andrew and I moved there. I took the opportunity to do some further study in criminal intelligence while working at the Goulburn Police College. Once there, though, Andrew started to experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and all the complications that go with it, but at the time we didn’t know what was wrong.

  Andrew started drinking heavily to self-medicate, which brought with it a myriad of miserable problems. It wasn’t unusual for him to drink for twelve hours straight. He thought he was funny and jovial while he was drunk, but when he came down from the sugar high, he was an arsehole. We broke up and got back together, broke up and got back together. We got engaged and broke up and then got married.

  We married on 22 January 2005 in 40-degree heat. The wedding was beautiful, at a historic house nearby, and our children were our bridal party. The reception at the golf club was huge, and our guests drank the town dry of rum as a cracking thunderstorm broke the heatwave. A local band played until 3 am and let Andrew have a go at the drums and sing ‘Eagle Rock’ for the last number. He had no previous singing or drumming experience but he didn’t let this hold him back. What he lacked in skill he made up for with enthusiasm. It was a lot of fun and to this day people still talk about it in town.

  The amount of police work in the country was lower, but the work itself was equally heavy. It included dealing with all the problems of the city as well as rural crime. There were a lot more car accidents, mostly involving high-speed crashes on country roads that resulted in serious injury or death on impact. Some of them involved children. One time Andrew had to help the short-staffed mortician with a child’s autopsy.

  There were also violent domestics, drug houses, paedophiles and constant drunken brawls. He was often on his own, and his hyper-vigilance became worse.

  Eventually things ground to a halt. There was no aspect of our life that was working well. We didn’t know what was wrong but we knew life shouldn’t be this hard.

  Thank goodness for Ernie, a seasoned police officer other police trusted. He often relieved in Crookwell as a sergeant, but had been a senior constable for so long that a promotion would have meant a pay cut. Man to man, during a quiet moment in the office, Ernie asked Andrew how he was coping. Andrew told him how he was feeling and Ernie said, ‘Mate, you’ve gotta get on the head wobblers, get your missus and get outta here.’ He meant, that Andrew should get medication and leave town.

  He told Andrew he had PTSD, that it couldn’t be fixed on its own and that it needed medical intervention. He said it was common in the police force; the symptoms were very predictable.

  Post-traumatic stress disorder was the great unspoken in the police at that time. Every officer I knew had worked with someone who was past their use-by date and was demonstrating obvious signs of high stress. Policing is a tough job, especially general duties policing which responds to 000 phone calls. It requires a hardness of mind and the ability to think and respond quickly to changing situations. It’s physical, dynamic and dangerous. There is no space for softer emotions because those soft emotions will get you hurt physically and emotionally. It wouldn’t take much for the despair for humankind to overwhelm an officer and literally send them crazy.

  Andrew and I both knew of a few police who had put their hands up and said ‘My life is not working, something is wrong’. In general, other police and immediate supervisors were sympathetic, thinking ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. But unfortunately the management levels above direct supervisors and peers were problematic in trying to get assistance and there was a lot of red tape wrapped tightly around the systems that was meant to help.

  Post-traumatic stress is expensive to fix and also the hole left in staffing numbers posed a problem. It was hard to convince the powers that be that the officer needed time away from work, with whatever support they needed, for as long as it took, to get well. If the officer could not get well, it was even more difficult to convince higher levels of management to let them go.

  It was easy for an officer whose mind was beaten and bruised from facing trauma for too long, to imagine that once the boss said ‘No’, there was no other avenue for help. Once before Andrew and I had asked for help and an inspector came to our house. They told Andrew to suck it up, there was no one who could replace him that night and that he had to go back to work. By the time we had a name for what was wrong, we were simply so beaten, we didn’t think there was anything we could do.

  After Ernie talked to Andrew, we worked out an escape plan.

  During the time we were in Crookwell I had completed a Graduate Certificate in Criminal Intelligence, which built on my previous experience working in police intelligence in Sydney. I applied for an advertised intelligence officer position at State Crime Command (SCC) Drug Squad back in Parramatta, Sydney. The focus of State Crime Command is organised crime, specialised crime and criminal techniques, and large-scale and commercial-scale crime. They deal with jobs that are too big for a station to manage. It is a very high-status, high-stakes command to work in. As there aren’t a lot of formally qualified intelligence officers in the police, I knew I had a good chance of winning the spot and getting us out of Crookwell. I needed State Crimes’ power to pull us free.

  Thankfu
lly, within a couple of weeks after a face-to-face interview, I won the job, and State Crime pulled me back to Sydney. It was our big break, and I grabbed it with both hands and ran.

  Once back in Sydney, Andrew began to work at North Sydney Police Station while I worked in SCC Drug Squad. We didn’t ask for help for the PTSD. We didn’t think anyone would believe us and even if they did, we didn’t think we would be supported by management. Luckily, North Sydney was a quiet station and Andrew’s condition wasn’t being aggravated.

  We started trying for a baby and I fell pregnant straight away. We bought a house and moved into the close-knit neighbourhood of Kincumber on the NSW Central Coast, four minutes’ drive from Avoca Beach. It was just like living on Ramsey Street from Neighbours. We made close friends with our neighbours immediately. Lachlan started playing rugby with the Avoca Sharks and settled into coastal living perfectly, particularly enjoying time on the beach or riding his bike on the street with his friends next door.

  On 3 November 2007, Zali was born and our household was on a high. Andrew decided on the name – he just liked it. I preferred Daisy or Poppy, but I let Andrew choose. We all adored bubby Za Za. She united us and brought tenderness and hope to our home.

  At the start of 2008, life became super-busy, but I was still on maternity leave, so with a bit of organisation at the start we managed it. Kala, Andrew’s eldest from his first marriage, moved in with us to begin Year 10 at Brent Street, an exclusive dance school. She commuted each day from the coast to Sydney and was a dedicated and focused student.

  Zali seemed to suffer from endless minor health problems. I was taking her to the GP a lot, and was constantly wiping her runny nose and trying to catch up on sleep. Life became very challenging on my reduced maternity-leave pay. There was never enough money or time or patience to spread around our growing family and their various needs. Andrew began to struggle with PTSD again but my time off ended quickly and I couldn’t stay at home any longer and take care of everyone because we needed my pay. When Za was seven months old I returned to work at the Drug Squad.

  We were very lucky with child care. Za had family day care a couple of days a week with the lovely Carissa in her home. Carissa and Za adored each other and of course Zali was her favourite out of the five children she cared for there. I asked her not to tell me if Za started talking at child care because I wanted to feel like I was the first to hear it. After lots of verbalising and copying tones she started to speak quite early, at about ten months old. Once she got the hang of it, Za’s favourite word was ‘broccoli’. She loved to sing ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ with Carissa, wiggling her fingers to the song and belting out ‘chinkle chinkle widdle tar’ while rocking with verve in time with the music. She also loved to sing ‘Ginger bars, ginger bars, ginger ore da way’ to the jingle bells theme. There was no convincing her that there were any other words to the tune.

  I suspect she took her first steps there, because she got so much practice moving, but I was grateful Carissa didn’t tell me that as well. Za’s favourite daycare activity was to ride around on a little bike with jungle-themed animals on the front. She loved the independence and was really quick on it, going as fast as she could across floorboards in the hallway at Carissa’s and using the wall to stop with a bang. She thought the sudden finish to Carissa’s high-speed chase after her was very funny, which made it all the more enticing. Carissa couldn’t bring herself to be too stern with Za about the crashlanding because Za was so soft-hearted she would get very upset if Carissa wasn’t happy about something.

  Za enjoyed painting so long as she didn’t get paint on her hands, which didn’t impress her at all. She would silently hold her hands up to Carissa, waiting for the problem to be resolved. Her favourite snack was hummus and rice crackers, and any other child who tried to steal them would be met with a strong stare indicating the rudeness of such an act. Madame was not amused.

  Carissa was a dedicated child carer. She felt that although Za was thriving, there was something wrong with the constant colds. It niggled at her, the same way it niggled at me. We’d seen lots of doctors in the course of Za’s short life. I would go to the GP, who would diagnose various symptoms as viral. The problems would continue so I would persist and see the paediatrician who would say it was an allergy, or eczema, or a bug, or general poor health. He would take various samples and send them to further specialists who couldn’t tell us what was wrong without further testing. We would see the specialists and their testing would be inconclusive. More often than not we were told it was one virus or another and that it would pass.

  But it bothered me. It really bothered me, so I kept taking Za back to the specialists. Carissa knew Za well and it bothered her too.

  I would drop Za and Lach off to Carissa’s in the morning on my way to work and Lach would stay there for an hour or so then walk to school nearby. This meant that Andrew could come and go from his shiftwork without worrying too much about child care. He would usually pick up Za and Lach after school, and I’d pick up Kala from the train station as I came home from work. I’d get home and tag with Andrew, who would leave to start a night shift. Day shifts were trickier, but somehow, through blind luck, juggling work hours and child care, we managed it.

  As Za grew older, life on the coast on sunny days when I didn’t have to work meant the beach, the garden, our neighbours’ and barbecues. The kids would paddle around in the baby pool or bodysurf under the watchful eyes of local volunteer lifesavers. There was always a sausage sizzle going that was fundraising for a local cause. The air smelt like bacon and caramelised balsamic vinegar from the cafe, and salt and seaweed. Zali should have looked like a sausage she ate so many of them. She was particularly fond of them if they were covered in generous amounts of sauce. Constantly chasing the waves back and forth on the shoreline afterwards, though, quickly worked off all that food.

  The surf was mesmerising, big or flat. We always saw someone we knew to talk to, and we could take the dog down for a social visit too. Lunch was bread rolls with fresh ham and cheese at home on the deck, trying to both enjoy the sun and not get burnt.

  In the afternoons, after Za’s 45-minute sleep, Za and Lach would play on the street, which is a double-ended cul-de-sac. They would ride their bikes, play soccer, play 44 home, and we would talk with the parents on the corner as we watched the children, whiling the afternoon away.

  There was always a kind-hearted older child who would hold Za’s chubby hand while she took her wobbly steps trying to keep up with the rest of the running children. Za was tall for her age like her brother. Though she wasn’t fat by a long shot, she was strong and her legs were long and lean. Her skin was the colour of a light tan, a perfect medium between her olive dad and her pale mum. She had blonde wispy hair and eyes that were the blue of the bright sky on a summer morning. Lachie has eyes that are pale blue like the midday sky in summer. Kala has eyes that are blue like the deep ocean.

  Tyla, seven years older, would always hold Za’s hand and hide with her in the street-wide hide-and-seek games so that she wasn’t the first to be found every time. It never worked, because Za couldn’t stand the anticipation and would jump out and say ‘yah’ when the seeker came close, or she’d say ‘Where’s Zali gone?’ loudly to help them. Za counting to ten consisted of three random numbers being repeated until she got bored, or her watching where everyone was going then following anyway, so poor old Tyla would volunteer to count instead.

  Liam, also seven years older, was Za’s favourite by far. She would sit on the road at the corner of the street with her perfect upright posture, long legs out in a V in front of her, and Liam would sit opposite her and roll a soccer ball back and forth between them. She thought it was hilarious if she pushed the ball a bit harder than usual and he would roll backwards dramatically when it reached him. She would giggle with thrilled anticipation waiting for it to come back so she could roll it again. For her first birthday he gave her his favourite floppy dog soft toy, and she slept with it every ni
ght, carefully crooning to it and patting it before she went to sleep.

  We worked on improving our simple home. I would spend hours in the garden, putting in new vegie seedlings and plants, mowing the newly laid lawn, weeding and spreading sweet-smelling tea-tree mulch. Za loved being a ‘nudie rudie’ in the dappled sunlight of our backyard during the summer heat, and splashing about in the plastic clamshell baby pool. We have plenty of photos of a cute little bottom enjoying the sunshine.

  When it rained, I would watch it roll over the hill and come racing towards us through the valley and national park. It could be hours and hours of light, floating drizzle or quick blasts of heavy tropical rain, which could fill up our rainwater tank immediately. As soon as she was able to move herself, first through crawling, then walking, Za’s favourite thing to do inside, especially on rainy days, was to pull out her books and ‘read’ them to herself, or bring them to someone who would read them to her. Lach copped many hard-edged book corners to the eyebrow when he ignored her request. She didn’t take no for an answer very well.

  Work was intense and I could never completely relax at home because of it, but I did enjoy it. It suited my personality and I had achieved the fine balance of meeting bosses’ expectations and keeping my head low to stay out of trouble. Mostly. The roster was okay most of the time and my workmates were good most of the time. I had a pretty solid outer hardness that could make me fairly uncompromising, which wasn’t a great quality to have under stress at home, but in general the balance was good. I can honestly say that I liked general duties and did laugh a lot. The work hours were always too many and the risks too high inside and outside of work, but it was good.