by Ron McCallum
I now use a more advanced small braille computer called the BrailleNote Touch, which is part of the BrailleNote family of computers. Actually, I can Bluetooth the BrailleNote Touch to my iPhone and, when in meetings, I can use the braille display on the BrailleNote Touch to read text messages from the iPhone without annoying my colleagues.
I also use a Victor Reader Stream. It is so small that it can fit into my hand and I can take it everywhere and read novels or legal materials on buses, on trains and of course on long flights. It is all quite extraordinary.
I thank God every day that, as a blind person, I was alive to take advantage of the assistive technology that has come to be. Yet I do miss the closeness of human readers and their voices. Ever since Mum read to me when I was a small boy, I have loved being close to a person who is giving up their time to me. Just to have the sound of their voice, their breathing and the closeness of another person is truly wonderful.
When I was going through the election process for the CRPD Committee at the United Nations in New York in November 2008, it caused me to think about my life journey more deeply than I had done for many years. I don’t believe I had engaged in this type of self-examination since I courted Mary in 1985.
I came to the realisation that, although I had shoved my blindness into the background of my life, I had been kidding myself just a little. After all, I would not be the person I am today if I had not been born blind. When friends were asked about me in my absence, I had no doubt they would say something like, ‘Yes, Ron McCallum is that labour law professor who is blind.’
Those late-night reflections, I now believe, sowed the seeds of this book, which has taken a long time to write. I still feel a little self-conscious about my blindness, my early family life, and how I think and feel about the world around me. As the memories came flooding back I remained uneasy, unsure whether telling my story would lay to rest the ghosts of my past. What I do hope is that my account helps to remove the mystery and misunderstandings about how blind people like me lead our lives.
In talking to people, especially when they are no longer awkward with me, I find that many want to know how I do everyday things, such as choosing my clothes, cooking and shopping. I am often asked how and why I became an academic lawyer. Some questions, of course, are not asked. They relate to things like, how I handle relationships with colleagues, marriage to Mary and the fatherhood of our children.
I hope that in this book I have answered many of those questions in my own voice and in my own time. Despite all of its faults and weaknesses, I hope I have been able to create a book that communicates something of my experience and accumulated wisdom. For what it is worth, it’s my life, my voice, my failings, together with those special joys that enhance our lives with human-ness, with love, beauty and spirituality.
Me and my mother, Edna McCallum, in our Sunday best, c. 1954.
My First Communion, 8 October 1956.
Me (bottom row, centre) with fellow students at St Paul’s School for the Blind, Kew, c. 1960.
Learning new technologies with fellow students at St Paul’s School for the Blind, c. 1962.
My Year 11 class photo, 1965, St Bede’s College, Mentone. I am back row, third from left.
On assignment: me (far right) and fellow reporters at Lord Somers Camp and Power House (‘Big Camp’), January 1969.
Winning the Supreme Court Prize for the Bachelor of Jurisprudence (Monash), 1970. (News-Advertiser, 4 March 1970)
Bachelor of Laws graduation photo with my mother, Edna, 1972.
Queens University streetscape, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 1972.
Me with fellow international postgraduate Nuwe Amanya Mushega at Queens University, 1972.
Monash Reporter, March 1981
Me with Lois Doery on the banks of the Rhine, Cologne, West Germany, 1982.
Me with Edna and my brother Max McCallum at the presentation of my Tattersall’s Award for Enterprise and Achievement, 1983.
Engaged! Me with Mary Crock, 1985.
Reading to children at Monash crèche, c. 1985.
Married! Ron and Mary McCallum, 3 May 1986.
Dressing the boys: me with Gerard and Daniel, 1989.
Me with a very new Kate, January 1992.
Professor Ron with Lois Doery, Sydney Law School, 1993.
First day of the school year: me with Kate, Gerard and Daniel in 1997.
The 150th anniversary of Sydney Law School: me and Mary with Chief Justice James Spigelman, 2005.
Me, as Dean of Law, and Mary inspecting the foundations of the new Law Building at the University of Sydney, 2006.
Me with some of my students at the Law School Graduation Dinner, 2006.
Working the floor: me with the Australian delegation to United Nations Conference of States Parties to the Disabilities Convention, New York, 2010.
Celebrating my re-election with the team at the Beekman Hotel, New York, 2 September 2010.
President Ron and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Committee, 2010.
Accepting my award of Senior Australian of the Year from Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Adam Gilchrist, 25 January 2011.
Me and Mary with Joe Drzyzga and Kate, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), Mardi Gras 2011.
In the Quadrangle at Sydney University with Mary’s portrait of me from the Archibald Prize 2011. (James Croucher/Newspix)
Delivering my TEDx Talk, ‘How Technology Allowed Me to Read’, Sydney Opera House, 4 May 2013. To my right is my 1987 Keynote Gold text-to-speech computer—this was a tremendous breakthrough in assistive technology and allowed me to easily read digital text files. (Fe Lumsdaine/TEDx Sydney)
Mary and me with The Hon Nuwe Amanya Mushega, former Secretary of the East African Community and former Ugandan Minister for Education, Kampala 2013. Amanya and I had attended Queens University together forty years earlier—so much had happened for us both since.
Most of the family, January 2019: (left to right) Francesca May, Gerard, Kate and Ron McCallum, Mary, Jacqueline Crock, Virginia Rockwell and Daniel McCallum (Abs: Sally-Ann Davies).
Acknowledgements
In writing this memoir, my primary acknowledgement is to my wife, Professor Mary Crock. As was aptly described to me by a reader, the centrepiece of this volume is the love story of Mary and myself: our coming together, our lives and work, children and beyond. Mary assisted me by ensuring that my modes of expression captured her thoughts and feelings on our journey together, and I am grateful that she has enabled me to portray her with such openness.
I thank my former student, Mr Julian Morrow who contacted publishers on my behalf. He showed this memoir to Mr Richard Walsh who took the book to Allen & Unwin for which I am truly grateful.
My thanks extend to the members of the Allen & Unwin team for their steadfast work and support: Ms Elizabeth Weiss, Mr Thomas Bailey-Smith and Ms Claire de Medici.
Mary and I thank our families who are mentioned in these pages.
Finally, I thank and acknowledge our children, Gerard, Daniel and Kate and their partners, who have together with Mary, filled my life to its brim.
Emeritus Professor Ron McCallum AO
Further Reading
Chapter 1
On retrolental fibroplasia—David Brown, ‘Establishing Proof’, Washington Post, 19 April 2005. Available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64052-2005Apr18.html?nav=rss_health&noredirect=on.
Chapter 4
On Nicholas Saunderson see Ron McCallum, ‘In Search Of Origins: Blindness in History and Law’, (2010) 33(2) Australian Bar Review, pp. 46–159.
For a biography of Lawrie McCredie see Di Websdale-Morrissey, Blind Optimist: The Life of Lawrie McCredie CBE, AM (Melbourne: Arcadia, 2013).
Chapter 11
See Jodie Kewley and Hannah Lewis (eds), Fathers (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1993).
Chapter 16
Mary Crock, Laura Smith-Khan, Ron McCallum and Ben Saul, The legal protection of
refugees with disabilities—forgotten and invisible? (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017).
