Tammy
So how on earth did you pitch your proposal to the Queensland Government, if you did not have much knowledge of how government works? Most people probably wouldn’t have known who to send the proposal to.
Lesley
I didn’t have a clue either, about what to do. So I asked around town until I was put in contact with a lady by the name of Carol Browning. She was known around the Gympie region as someone who had experience writing applications and getting funding from the government for worthy projects. I was out of my depth and knew nothing about the politics, so I must confess I just gave Carol the information and she did all the work. She wrote the submission to the Education Department and I merely tagged along with her to a meeting with our local member of parliament, Len Stephan, to lobby his support.
A couple of months passed and my hopes were dashed. The minister of education at that time rejected the plan. He said that I was not qualified and had no experience to liaise with Aboriginal parents - whatever that means. Nonetheless, I was gutted. There was no job. There was no money. Willie wasn’t getting any better. It was the last throw of the dice and it didn’t land our way.
The problems at home were now so bad that I had to keep busy. When Willie wasn’t away working, he was at home spending too much time drinking. He no longer resembled the happy-go-lucky person I once knew, the man I had fallen in love with. I needed to distract myself so I didn’t lose hope for the sake of the children. There wasn’t much in my life to look forward to other than volunteering at the school. It was irrelevant that I didn’t have formal qualifications to act as a liaison officer, because many of the Aboriginal parents felt I already was – they still kept asking me to help them and their children. This wasn’t paying the rent but at least it was helping Aboriginal kids to get an education; and it kept me strong.
Sometime in March 1984 Mr Baker asked to see me. I had no idea what it was about.
‘Lesley, come in and take a seat,’ the principal said, ushering me into his office. There wasn’t much chitchat; he got straight down to business.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you were proposing. Even though there are only small numbers of Aboriginal students, it’s still important that we have someone like yourself as a contact person to help the school liaise with the Aboriginal parents.’
‘I-I-I don’t think you heard the news,’ I interrupted. ‘The government has knocked back my application. Th-th-they said I wasn’t qualified and didn’t have the experience.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about the state government,’ dismissed Mr Baker. ‘Now I have been making my own enquiries with the federal government and I’ve just received word that they have approved funding for a twelve-month traineeship as a teacher’s aide. I’ve been impressed by all of the voluntary work you’ve been doing here at the school, so I would like to offer you the position.’
The proposal came as a shock and made me feel disorientated and weak. For the previous eighteen months my body had been fuelled by adrenaline and ravaged by the stress of providing for our family and now …
‘Thank you,’ I said before pausing, trying to think of a way to show him my gratitude. I couldn’t believe that a person like this, who barely knew me, was willing to give me such a chance. My family had come close, so close, to losing it all … and now maybe we could find a way to slowly claw ourselves out of this deep black hole of despair and start living a better life.
Although the traineeship was only for twelve months, I was determined to show Mr Baker that I was worth taking a chance on.
‘I’m gonna give it my all,’ I promised.
‘I know you will,’ the principal smiled.
*
I started work on 26 April 1984, but the job didn’t end our troubles, as I’d hoped. It took the federal government many months to process the paperwork for my job. The whole idea behind securing the position was so we could rely on a regular income to cover the lag between when Willie did his contract work and when he was actually paid for it, but without the bureaucratic tick of approval, I couldn’t get paid. Still, I kept working, even putting in overtime, taking library books home to cover at night and on weekends – Willie sometimes even helped me with the covering.
‘Why can’t people just friggin’ pay us for the work we’ve done!’ Willie would shake his head in frustration each time he’d sort the mail and see that a cheque still hadn’t arrived.
The school’s Parents & Citizens Association (P&C) started lending me small amounts of money, as did Willie’s parents and his great-grandmother GG. Kind as these gestures were, they didn’t amount to enough for a family of five to live on. All we wanted was the pay we were entitled to for our work, not handouts.
As the months dragged on, Willie started to lose interest in the things he’d once enjoyed doing. Not even riding the horses and visiting family seemed to bring him as much joy as it used to. Instead, he preferred to spend hours alone at night, sitting in the dark outside on the veranda listening to Slim Dusty and Charley Pride tapes, with only the little ‘Four-X’ man on the beer label for company. Before this, I’d never given up hope. But I was starting to find it hard to remain positive for both Willie and me.
Then, unexpectedly, six cheques, totalling $1700, arrived in the mail. It was my long-awaited wages, which I deposited into our joint account. This was it! Finally having the money, I believed, would fix everything. The bills could be paid. The pressure would finally be off my husband’s shoulders and we could return to being the happy family we used to be. I couldn’t wait until Willie arrived home to show him. He’d be happy, perhaps ecstatic, like me.
The joy left as swiftly as it came when we realised that the truck’s annual registration, which was overdue, would take up most of what was left after the bills were paid. My efforts to help ease the pressure were too little, too late. Late one mid November evening, after I’d put the children to bed, I walked into the kitchen and saw Willie sitting at the table. In his hand he held a blue pen and, for a moment, he was hesitant to write. To his side was a three-day-old local newspaper opened at the classified advertisements section. I watched him discreetly as I cleaned the dishes. He’d gaze at the newspaper then sink his head into his hands, running his fingers through his hair. His entire body reeked of despair. After a while he scrawled a letter on a blank page and asked if I could neatly re-write it for him. I dried my hands and sat down next to him.
Nervously, I picked up the paper. In response to an advertisement that someone had placed looking to buy horses, Willie was offering to sell three of ours. Oh, not Paddy – the kids’ favourite brown and white pony! My heart sank. Both Willie and I knew the kids would be devastated that their pony would have to be sold. I felt guilty even at the thought of it. The kids had gone without so much; they’d had to pick beans instead of playing, to overhear angry arguments between their parents, to see their father withdraw ever more into his gloom. Lego and their Paddy had been their escape, and now their favourite horse was to be taken away from them.
My husband’s eyes were glassy and bloodshot, tormented by having to make such a decision. In his depressed mind, Willie blamed himself for it, feeling he was the sole cause of all our ongoing misery.
In the early hours of the next morning, 14 November 1984, I discovered my husband’s body. He had taken his own life.
I learned later on, that not long before that awful night, his mother had tried to reassure him, when he told her, ‘Les and the kids are better off without me. I’m holding them back … they deserve a better life.’
III
Resilience and Survival
‘Mummy … am I almost an orphan?’
Chapter 19
Lesley
The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was tell my children their father was dead. They’re words no mother of young children should ever have to say. Our life had been changed forever.
To be honest, I can’t remember exactly what I said; only that when I uttered to my children, ‘Your father has died,’ the horror of our situation finally sunk in for me. I had tried to block out as much as I could. Some people say it’s nature’s way of protecting yourself. The horrible memories immediately after Willie’s death aren’t clear to me to this day – it’s as if some sort of thick winter fog had taken over part of my brain at the time. So the memories are patchy, like a jumbled heap of blurry snapshots.
I remember crying. I cried so bloody hard at times I never thought I’d stop. I cried as my three children – aged eleven, eight and six – climbed into my lap sobbing. I cried for the loss of my husband. I cried for the heart-wrenching pain my kids were feeling. And I cried for the hardships I knew we’d face.
Initially I felt so helpless I didn’t know what the hell to do next. There were so many questions I had to figure out answers to; so many friggin’ decisions people needed me to make: Where were the kids and I going to live? What would happen to our debts? What would I do with the kids’ animals?
I couldn’t even answer how I was going to pay for Willie’s funeral – the coffin, flowers and everything else.
With the help of family, we went back to our house one last time to pack up our belongings. We were helped by my sister Sandra, Willie’s parents, two of his sisters, his brother and their families. For the next two months we lived out of my in-laws’ spare bedrooms while the remaining pieces of our lives were packed away downstairs in their garage until I could find another place to live. Each time we did the washing, I’d have to squeeze past the tower of suitcases, boxes and odd bits of furniture stacked in the laundry. Who would’ve thought my entire thirty-seven years could be packed into one side of their double garage and laundry.
A few weeks after the funeral it was Christmas. For the sake of the children I forced a smile, but it was hard to be happy like everyone else when I was trying to work out how to fill Santa’s stocking for the kids while bankruptcy loomed. How could I make this a good Christmas when it was the saddest one my children had ever had?
Although people meant well, it felt like a slap in the face whenever they wished me a merry Christmas or a happy New Year. I didn’t want to hear cheery carols that reminded me of Christmases past. I kept remembering Willie and me watching the kids, dressed in their cotton jammies, not long after sunrise, tearing open presents. And the smell of the pine sapling that Willie brought home each year for the kids to decorate – in tinsel and plastic Santas from the two-dollar shop. The day after Christmas, the poor old pine would start wilting in the scorching Queensland summer heat, shedding needles and dripping sap into the carpet, all bare by New Year except for the cheap decorations. It wasn’t until I could no longer experience Christmas the way it used to be, with the five of us, that I realised just how much I missed it – even those damn pine needles that made such a bloody mess on my floor!
For our first Christmas without Willie, the Williams family gathered around us like a protective cocoon. It helped distract the kids from focusing on what was missing in their lives. Somehow we survived. The season came and went like a blur, like everything else in my life at that time. I don’t remember making a New Year’s resolution that year but, if I had, it must have been to shed the burden of debt that had overwhelmed my dear Willie. With or without a husband, the bank still wanted me to cough up money for the monthly truck repayments. Fair enough – it was their money we’d borrowed to buy the truck in the first place. But how the hell was I going to pay them back when, even on two incomes, Willie and I had struggled?
To buy time, so that I could figure out what to do next, my brother-in-law John, and Willie’s mate Phil, kept the truck on the road, doing the odd hauling jobs free of charge. It helped pay a few of the bills but I knew the arrangement couldn’t go on forever. This wasn’t a permanent fix to my money problems. Each day the loan grew bigger with interest, and with each day I edged closer to bankruptcy. The only way out was to get rid of almost everything: the truck and trailer, spare parts and tools, the kids’ pets and even the cat and dog – it all had to go. We simply couldn’t afford to hold on to the past.
After selling off as much as I could and using the money to pay off the truck loan, I was left with $1500 – the exact amount of money Willie and I had had twelve years earlier when we started our married life together. Now I had $1500, three small children and nowhere to call home.
I was grateful to Willie’s parents for letting us stay with them, but sooner or later I had to make it on my own. In late January 1985, eight weeks after Willie died, the children and I moved into a small three-bedroom weatherboard Housing Commission home in an area of Gympie called Southside. My sister, Honor, helped us get it through her contacts in the Housing Department. Most people think low-income housing is linked to places with social issues but our neighbours created a supportive and welcoming community where everyone looked out for each other. Our house was a cosy little place – basic and not much bigger than the proverbial shoebox – but it was very much home.
‘Why do they call it Southside?’ quizzed my eight-year-old son, Rodney, ‘when really the suburb is located on the western side of town and not the south?’ There was nothing that got past my boy; he was cluey like his father had been. And like the many things he asked me, I didn’t know the answer to this question either.
After I paid the last of Willie’s funeral expenses, did a grocery shop and put petrol in the car, I was left with $20 to my name. There just wasn’t enough money to get the phone connected or buy school uniforms. We had to make do with what we had and go without everything else.
Tammy
I didn’t realise we had so little then. Of course I knew things were tight, but I had no idea just how little money there was. It really puts things into perspective when I think back on my childhood.
Lesley
Twenty dollars – that’s all I had. Everything I’ve now got in my life, everything you and your brothers have got in your lives, has been built on that measly $20. I think we did all right considering where we’d come from and what little we had after your father died.
The week after moving into our little house, I returned to work as a trainee teacher’s aide at the school. It was difficult knowing that the last time I worked there my husband was alive. Although the staff and the P&C sent a beautiful bunch of flowers to the funeral and offered support, it was obvious some didn’t know how to react. I understood. After all, what do you say to someone whose husband has just taken his own life?
During the early 1980s, depression wasn’t talked about, let alone suicide, especially out in the open. There were some religious members in the community who believed suicide was a ‘sin’, and by association, Willie’s death reflected badly on those of us who had loved him.
‘How could he have done such a thing, when he was raised in such a good Christian family?’ one person wondered in disgust. Others saw suicide as juicy gossip, with the gory details spoken about in hushed tones behind my back. As I walked by, I’d overhear the whispers and see their looks of pity. Then there were the nosy ones. They’d prod and probe for information as if it was their right. You’d be amazed how many people will ask a widow, ‘So how did your husband actually die?’ It’d roll off their tongue as if they were talking about the weather. They’d stop and ask me in the middle of the street, or while I was on tuckshop duty – they didn’t seem to care what I was doing or how it might make me feel.
I hated being asked. I hated having to relive the nightmare all over again simply because some bloody person wanted to know what happened and how it happened. Didn’t they realise I had to think about Willie’s death every time I went to bed alone, or each time I saw the sadness in my children’s faces? I already had enough to deal with; why would these people think I should be further reminded?
People would tell me, ‘It will all get better with time,’ but that didn’t see
m possible when every day felt worse than the last. It was hard to be positive and cheery about my children’s future when I’d have to ask Willie’s mother or Ma and Pa for money to buy enough food. Although they never turned me down, I knew they didn’t have much to give in the first place, so I couldn’t keep relying on them for money week in, week out.
The boys started doing odd jobs during the school holidays –mowing lawns and washing cars and trucks around the house and farm for their aunt and uncle, Lyn and John Harold, in Maryborough. Then later, while they were still in primary school, Rodney, Tammy and I got a casual job cleaning toilets and picking up rubbish after the local Sunday markets. The money we earned made life just that little bit easier and it meant the kids had some pocket money to do activities with their friends. Yet when the bills mounted up, we had no choice but to front up to the Salvation Army for a food hamper.
Borrowing money and accepting handouts from people did nothing for my confidence, especially at night when the world got dark and lonely, and my mind would play tricks on me. In those early hours before sunrise it was hard to convince myself that I was still a good mother when I needed so much help to provide for my children’s basic needs, including from the children themselves.
I didn’t realise it then but when I look back on those years after Willie died, I’m amazed I didn’t suffer any serious health problems from all the stress. However, I did notice that the lack of sleep and constant worry was starting to change my appearance. I was a thirty-something woman who looked more like I was in my late forties, having aged rapidly in just a short space of time. My hair was going grey, my face was worn and my eyes had lost their sparkle. Today some women and men worry about a few wrinkles here and there, but there was nothing Botox could’ve done for me, even if I’d wanted the bloody stuff.
Not Just Black and White Page 14
