by Zelie Bullen
Once I’d decided that I would ride my beautiful Andalusian mare, J’adore, to the wedding, I thought that instead of a traditional white gown I’d like to wear a flowing Spanish-style cowgirl dress in bright red raw silk. Tamz and Fred organised their outfits from either side of the country, with Tamzin’s clever aunts making matching riding outfits, complete with a giant wrap that flowed over the rump of their horses in gold raw silk. It was anything but traditional.
I wanted Mum to be part of the arrival party, too, so I asked Donny Ross, a film friend of ours who supplies harness horses and wagons, if he could bring Mum, Columbia and Aura in on one of his old-style country buckboards. I also wanted to involve Tamzin’s and Freda’s kids, and there was room enough to seat them on the hay bales Donny had put in the back of the wagon.
When Mum arrived on the wagon, I was stunned at how beautiful she looked—it blew me away. Mum is a beautiful person inside and out, and on this day she was truly radiant. Her clothes looked beautiful on her, the girls had done a great job with her hair and makeup, and she was oozing with happiness.
Before the wedding, I’d asked Wayne if he would stand at the gate in his pyjamas with champagne and orange juice to hand out to people as they came in. The idea was to take the mickey out of ourselves, because we had pulled everyone out of bed so early. He’d laughed and said, ‘I don’t know if I can do that—I might be a bit embarrassed.’
‘No way! You be embarrassed? You can wear your cowboy boots if you want,’ I said, trying to talk him into it.
He said, ‘Schultzie’s here. I’ll see if he’ll do it.’
Les Schultz is an absolute riot of a character. He’s from the Northern Territory and is as full-on Aussie outback as you can get. Schultzie agreed to do it, but he didn’t own any pyjamas so on the day he was dressed in a pair of borrowed flannelette pyjamas from Wayne’s wife, Rona, who also gave him a little waistcoat to throw on over the top; he put on his beat-up bushie hat and cowboy boots, and handed out glasses to the guests as they arrived. He was only too happy to be the life of the party—he was perfect.
So, soon after six o’clock, my six friends and I jogged past a smiling Schultzie on our horses, and headed on through the paddock to where everyone was waiting. Because I can be a show-off, I thought I’d lay my horse J’adore down to dismount. Then Mum came and took my hand, and we walked towards Craig together.
Our arrival had the tremendous dramatic impact I had wanted, and it brought tears to Craig’s eyes. Afterwards I think he went and punched Martie on the arm and threatened Donny Ross, saying, ‘I can’t believe you kept that a secret from me!’
In between having a manicure before the wedding and having to wash seven horses with the girls, I couldn’t have done it without all their help. Everybody was involved, everyone pulled together, and it was so much fun.
We held the wedding reception at a stunning renovated two-storey Queenslander at the polo club. A band played, and we had a continental stand-up breakfast for everyone, supplied by movie caterer friends. So many people were involved to make our wedding the special day it was, with many only charging us at cost price or not charging at all.
On the night of the wedding, Craig and I decided I would go off the pill. We had been umming and ahhing about having a child for a while. Before Craig I had been terrified, but he made me feel safe; he finally convinced me by saying he knew the joy of having children and he didn’t want me to miss out on that.
CHAPTER 47
Colt, with no regrets
We arrived back from our honeymoon and not long after that I began to suspect I was pregnant. My boobs were swollen, and when I realised I’d missed a period I called Tamzin. I wanted her with me when I took the pregnancy test. I still had mixed emotions about getting pregnant and my old issues revolving around fear and loss had re-emerged.
Yet again Tamzin came to my side, leaving her husband and two kids in Perth. I met her at the airport and we stopped at a chemist on our way home. Back at Maudsland Road, I went into the loo, peed on the stick and came out to show it to Tamz. She smiled her beautiful soft smile and said, ‘Congratulations.’
Oh my God, really? A baby? I couldn’t believe it.
All through my pregnancy I talked to the baby all the time; whenever I started to get frightened about it dying, I just thought, ‘Zelie, you cannot control it,’ which helped to disperse the fear.
Tamz had very kindly said she would be at the birth with me. She had trained and worked as a nurse and then as a midwife in Perth after leaving school, and had later worked at the Gold Coast Hospital as a midwife. I was comfortable booking in there and she arrived the day before my due date. But then she had to hang around for a while, as we ended up being fourteen days overdue.
I had been getting Braxton Hicks contractions for about two weeks, and Cleo had been taking the mickey out of me, saying, ‘That’s not a contraction, love—you wait!’ And she would laugh. She was very excited about another baby coming into the Bullen family. She kept saying, ‘It’s a boy! It’s a boy!’ A very large part of me also hoped the baby was a boy, because I knew I could cope with a boy. I don’t know much about make-up, nail polish and clothes shopping.
When Tamzin arrived we talked about various birth plans and ways it could go. I was adamant I didn’t want drugs—I didn’t want to be out of it when my baby was born. Tamzin had also explained to me about the impact of drugs on the baby. I just wanted to do it naturally, with no intervention if that was possible. I was a little apprehensive, but then I reminded myself that women in third world countries give birth without intervention all the time.
When I was coming up to two weeks overdue, Tamzin held my hand and said, ‘The doctors will now start to pressure you to be induced. It’s your right to say no—you’re a free woman, you can do what you like.’ She talked me through what it’s like to be induced, the pros and cons.
I did get a lot of pressure from the maternity staff and I continued to say no. I know if I hadn’t had Tamz there, I would have listened to them out of fear, because they were the experts.
I now understand why Tamzin is the best at what she does. I think anyone lucky enough to have her guide them through that experience should count their lucky stars. She is very calm and informative, and she instils confidence. I went into labour at home and Craig and Tamzin drove me to the Gold Coast hospital, and were both a wonderful support to me when I was in labour.
During the birth, I remember standing in the shower at the hospital as contractions hit and I was letting the water run over me. Tamz came in to check on me and I asked her, ‘How much longer do you think I’ll have to endure this?’
She smiled, slowly shook her head and said, ‘I don’t know.’
And I said, ‘Wrong answer!’ But it wasn’t much longer after that that he was born.
I hadn’t planned to do this, but during the labour I imagined I was pushing our horse truck up the hill behind our house! And then Colt Stafford Bullen was born. It was a really beautiful birth—as beautiful as it could be with that much agony. It was certainly very peaceful and calm, and ninety per cent of the credit for that goes to Tamzin. She gave us so much useful information during the pregnancy, and she has such extensive experience and knowledge. I love the fact that Colt was born at five minutes past six in the morning and we were going home by midday that day. Tamzin stayed with us for another two days. I had such a feeling of panic when I realised that she wasn’t going to be there the following day, even though Mum was there and Craig and Cleo. She told me I’d be fine with their help, and pointed out they’d all done it before.
Tamzin sacrificed her own life and family to be with us at that time. I remember her being on the phone to her kids on the verge of tears at night, explaining to them she’d be home soon. She is my hero.
Colt was born in July 2006. At the time the ABC was filming the Bullen family for their Dynasty program and they wanted to film Colt’s birth. But Tamzin had said, ‘Zelie, I think that’s a really bad i
dea. You’ll have so much to do in there that you won’t want a camera there as well.’ Thankfully, Tamzin put a stop to it; but they did film Cleo meeting Colt for the first time, which was really lovely. Cleo kindly didn’t tell me until after he was born how desperately she had hoped for a boy. I’m glad she didn’t tell me—I might have felt guilty if we’d had a girl. She said, ‘Finally I get to see the Bullen name live on.’ He is the only Bullen boy in his generation to carry the name. In this day and age it may be considered an old-fashioned notion, but it was still an important one to Cleo.
‘Not a bloody lot to ask,’ she said. ‘I had four kids—three sons. You’d think one of them would have a Bullen boy.’ Even among Craig’s cousins’ children there isn’t a boy who carries the Bullen name, so Colt was the only one in the fourth generation, as Craig’s son Nelson has his mum’s surname.
‘I wonder if he’ll like animals,’ I said to Cleo one day.
‘Of course he’ll bloody like animals!’ she confidently told me. ‘He will—he’ll carry it on.’ I was proud and happy for her, but it was mixed with protective emotions—not wanting to burden our newborn son with expectations. I needn’t have worried; Colt himself would show us soon enough how he felt about animals and performing.
CHAPTER 48
Times a-changing
While I was pregnant, Aura died. Losing her within a year of losing Snoopy was heartbreaking. She was run over on Maudsland Road, which was always very busy.
When I’d gone to the loo in the middle of the night, I let her out for a wee. I went back to bed straight afterwards; I didn’t know where Aura was and I was tired, so I thought she could stay outside.
When I got up the next morning she wasn’t waiting on the doormat like she normally would, and straightaway I had a horrible feeling. Craig found her body on the side of the road while I was searching and calling for her across the paddocks; I thought maybe she had been bitten by a snake. Craig yelled out, ‘Babe, babe, I’ve found her,’ and my heart just sank, simply from the way he said it.
I called back, ‘Is she dead?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, she is.’
The neighbours from across the road had just got two new dogs, and Aura had seen them from the back of the ute when we’d pulled into the driveway the day before. She had such blue heeler loyalty that she didn’t normally go up to the road, but we think she must have gone to introduce herself to the new dogs in the middle of the night, and was hit and killed.
Aura was only six years old and she was taken far too early. She was my dream dog. Snoopy was my best friend, but Aura was that protective loyal dog I had always wanted on the back of the ute. I felt totally ripped off to have lost that dog.
Looking after Colt was all-consuming for a while. I wasn’t prepared for how much time a newborn baby takes out of your day. The lawns were left unmown, and while my horses were fed and healthy they weren’t washed or checked as regularly as I normally liked.
Colt’s birth was such a life-changing event for me. I had been quite arrogant about motherhood, imagining that it would be a piece of cake for me, but in fact I found it shocking at first. My world as I had known it suddenly came to an abrupt end, and for a while I felt angry at others for not warning me. Of course, many of them had, and they reminded me of that later; but I had been too arrogant to listen. I just thought I would take everything in my stride—that, as always, I would cope. In that respect, having a child was a very humbling experience. I could easily have become depressed, even though it was joyful and beautiful at the same time.
When Colt was eight weeks old, I felt ready to take on my first horse job since his birth.
It was only a few days’ work, for Jonathan Shiff, and we used my liberty and riding horses—Bullet, Avatar and Nakota. Mum came along to help with Colt. I have a photo of her sitting on a chair reading a book, just off set and happier than a pig in poo, next to a pram with a little baby Colt asleep in it, with his little baby toes sticking out of the sheet. But even with Mum’s help I don’t think I was really ready to go back to work when I did that job. When it was finished I was glad to go home with Colt again.
And then I lost J’adore. I hadn’t seen her for a day. The five other horses in the paddock were happily grazing within sight of the house, but not J’adore. I said to Craig that I would climb the hill at the top of the paddock to look for her, so he stayed with Colt and I headed off. I found her dead in a gully, having died from a freak paddock accident, every horse owner’s nightmare. I sat down and cried and cried.
I cried for the loss of that beautiful animal; I cried out of guilt, because I felt I had put my newborn child’s needs above my duty to check on my animals more regularly; I cried out of hormonal imbalance. I cried, thinking my heart would break.
Then I called Evanne Chesson, a friend in Melbourne who breeds horses, including Andalusians and Friesians, and whom I have always admired because of her strength and capabilities. I asked her if she had any Andalusians for sale. She said no, but she did have some Friesian mares that she should probably move on. So we packed Colt up in the Chevy and drove the eighteen hours to Melbourne, then drove back again with five new horses. By now Colt was about six months old.
Not long after that, we were asked to do some liberty work on The Ruins, a film being produced by Steven Spielberg’s company DreamWorks. We used the new Friesian mares we had bought from Evanne. I had only recently broken them in at that stage, but we were very careful not to overload any one of them and they did well. It felt good to be back working my horses, and once again Mum came down from Cairns to look after Colt while we were on set.
It was very healing for me to put my time into the animals again. However, I was still struggling to adjust, because I was then tortured with guilt about not being with Colt for two or three hours at a time. It was a difficult process, and it still can be. I still get that sense that I need and want to be with him and have to fight the urge to down tools and go and hang with him for a while. Often I will do just that; nothing is as important as these years when he is growing every day.
The mares in The Ruins were ridden bareback by actors and stunt doubles, and Julie, one of our Friesian mares, had to learn to rear on cue. Evanne gives all her horses human names and I am very opposed to that. We always laugh about it, she says I give our animals freaky made-up or foreign names. In the case of Julie, though, I wanted to keep the name—I wanted it to be in our lives again. Somehow it seemed right—Colt was just born, J’adore had died, and I had a beautiful new horse with a beautiful name. Julie quickly became a nice little liberty horse.
When Colt was about eight months old I was offered a position as the assistant horsemaster on Baz Luhrmann’s movie Australia. I knew it was going to be a much larger job than those I had been involved with in the last six months and that it would be with people I didn’t know. I always strive to do my best at work and I knew that, if I accepted, I would be putting all my energy into this job and there would be stress involved. I was worried about not spending time with Colt. I had a big talk to Bobby on the telephone about it all and he said, ‘Walk away, Zelie, walk away.’ So I turned it down, which was a difficult thing to do; but I felt it was the right thing to do at the time.
Craig agreed. In the end, it worked out well because Evanne Chesson asked Craig to work with her in her background horse department, so he went and worked on the film, while I stayed home with our baby.
One of the fun jobs that came up at this time was another Australian movie, The Black Balloon. It was fun because I managed to get Nelson and Columbia involved. I had wanted to include them in as many family things as possible, especially after Colt was born. I was concerned that they might feel insecure about Colt coming into their dad’s life and I wanted them to be able to get to know their little brother, and he them.
The three of us drove down and met Nelson and Columbia in Sydney for the job. I played a mum driving down the road; I had to brake to avoid hitting an actor as he crossed the road, and then yell out
the window at him. There were to be a couple of kids in the back of the car, played by Nelson and Columbia.
Craig looked after Colt off set while Nelson, Columbia and I went to work. They got to be movie stars for a day: we went to make-up, then wardrobe; we shot the scene and they earned a little money for their day’s work. When they went back to school they could tell their friends they had just been in a movie.
When the movie came out, they were excited when they saw themselves on the big screen. Columbia said, ‘It was so quick!’ after seeing herself on the screen for a brief minute, and we told her, ‘Welcome to the movies!’
One day in August 2007, Cleo rang and spoke to Craig. ‘Well, son,’ she said, ‘I’ve just been given my death sentence. There’s nothing they can do, I just have to sit it out now.’ She had been diagnosed with liver cancer. She was shocked and upset, but stoic to the end.
She had been so happy and energetic when Colt was born. We’d noticed that she’d lost weight, but there was still so much life in her and we thought she had another ten years or more in front of her. When she got sick, though, she went downhill very fast.
Tamzin had explained to me that liver cancer is one of the fastest progressing of the cancers. Once your liver shuts down, it’s all over. And that’s what happened: Cleo barely ate anymore—sometimes she would try to eat, and other times not.
We spent quite a bit of her last months with her. We would go down to Sydney and stay a week with her, and it would turn into two weeks; we would find ourselves thinking, ‘We’ll stay a few more days.’ Before Colt went to bed at night, I would take him in to say goodnight to Cleo. She was in pain and miserable, but he would give her a hug and she loved it, opening her arms and saying, ‘Goodnight, my boy.’