by Sue Williams
‘So it wasn’t enough to rip the guts out of South Melbourne by bulldozing the homes; now they wanted to break its heart,’ he says. ‘Everyone knew I was a Collingwood supporter, but I didn’t want us to lose our team. Feelings ran very high about that.’ In the end, however, that was one battle he didn’t win.
Money was always tight at the parish because of the vast array of activities going on, yet the church and the precinct’s building were in desperate need of repair and money to be spent on their upkeep. Father Bob asked the Archdiocese for a loan to fix up the church and the almost-derelict Emerald Hall, but the answer came back immediately: No, not possible. ‘We were caught in a cleft stick,’ he explains. ‘Usually you’d have the parishioners to pay for such things but we no longer had the population we’d once had. The church was poor, too. We discovered in the presbytery a suitcase full of coins left when Monsignor Tom Power died. We also found a few unpresented cheques used as bookmarks over the years. But apart from those, we had nothing like the kind of money we needed for the buildings.
‘I’d been used to being poor and I didn’t mind scrounging money from parishioners. I’d been begging for money all my life, and am still begging. But we had a bit of a skeleton crew so that wasn’t a real possibility for the kind of cash we needed to keep the place going.’
Instead, Father Bob took a long, hard look at the state of all the buildings and realised, with the dwindling congregation, many were hardly being used at all. Together with parishioner Frank O’Connor, he started to draw up long-term plans to make the parish self-financing. The first stage in 1978 was to sell the convent at St Vincent Place, with the proceeds going into a complete renovation of St Peter and Paul’s. ‘I ran the idea of selling the convent building past head office, and they agreed. We had a number of disposable assets that we really needed to dispose of, in order to keep going, and they seemed perfectly happy instead for us to sell some of those assets. That’s what disposable assets are for, after all, isn’t it? Disposal!’
The number of curates at the church and presbytery was also falling, down from its previous peak of four to just Father Bob. After ten years working in the parish, Damian had also left, and later took up a job with the St Vincent de Paul Society in Victoria. ‘But my time with Father Bob was the formative experience of my life,’ he says. ‘Discovering Christ in the company of all those people … It changed my life forever.’
Luckily, the parish was becoming well known for its work and a number of seminarians-in-training would arrive for pastoral experience to help out. Missionaries just back from overseas would also come to stay for short spells. ‘The missionaries in particular fitted in very nicely,’ says Father Bob. ‘They’d worked in the barrios. They understood what we were trying to do.’ Other working priests would regularly drop by too, to offer their services.
Among these was a priest by the name of Father Vincent Kiss. He was a member of the Diocese of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales’ largest inland city, midway between Melbourne and Sydney, but had been seconded in 1983 to work as manager for ANZ Trustees, distributing funds between various charities. He’d just bought a house up the road in Cecil Street, South Melbourne, and was now wondering if Father Bob ever needed any help conducting masses.
Father Bob was delighted. The tall, silver-haired Father Kiss came with impeccable credentials. The son of a housekeeper to the local parish priest in Randwick, Sydney, he first became a fundraiser for a missionary group, then entered the seminary in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains to study for the priesthood, being ordained four years after Father Bob in 1964. He served as a curate in North Albury, then as a priest in Wagga and finally as a missionary in Vanuatu. After two years, he returned to Wagga, and took up a position as the Catholic director of youth, helping with youth camps – the kind of experience very close to Father Bob’s own heart – and in 1979 he was appointed the executive director of the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria. The next year he was seconded by the Diocese of Wagga to become manager of charitable trusts for Trustee Executors. When that company crashed in 1983, its assets were taken over by ANZ Trustees, and Father Kiss was appointed manager, with the discretion to distribute up to $100 000 to good causes. What’s more, Father Kiss, now fifty-one, said that the Open Family Foundation might be eligible to receive some cash from the Trust. Father Bob should just apply and he’d see what could be done.
For Father Bob, this all felt like manna from heaven. It was pretty much his first experience of philanthropy from a large corporation but, ever cautious where his beloved Foundation was concerned, and with that old army discipline deeply ingrained, he decided to double-check on the priest just to make absolutely sure all was as he’d said. He called the diocesan office at Wagga to speak to the bishop. Bishop Francis Carroll, however, had left to become Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn and a successor hadn’t yet been appointed. So instead, Father Bob spoke to a senior official who confirmed Father Kiss was a priest in good standing with the Diocese. Reassured, Father Bob then checked with the Melbourne Diocesan Office that it would be all right to make use of his offer to help, and it agreed. As a result, Father Bob suggested that Father Kiss take a number of masses at St Peter and Paul’s, and happily filled in an application for funds.
Over the next year, Father Kiss proved a popular addition to the church and its work. Parishioners warmed to the elegant, charismatic priest, and enjoyed his carefully thought-out and meticulously presented services. With the funds, he proved as good as his word too. Father Bob applied, and the money did indeed come through. Father Kiss also had his own charitable foundation, sponsoring kids to come over from Vanuatu to Australia to learn computer skills they could then put to good use back home. ‘I thought, “Good on him!”’ says Father Bob. ‘He explained that, for tax reasons, it really helped to channel funds for that charity through Australian charities so we also agreed, along with a number of other charities, to let the funds pass through the Foundation. He showed us letters from the Vanuatu Government about this.’
Father Kiss held masses at St Peter and Paul’s for about a year and a half before he became too busy with his other work to continue. In the interim, he’d become a regular fixture on the Melbourne social circuit, endearing himself to all the most fashionable socialites, and philanthropists. He appeared often on the arms of Lillian Frank, Jeanne Pratt and Lady Primrose Potter as their escorts to functions, and they were always effusive in their praise of him. Jeanne described Father Kiss as ‘like Jesus Christ. He is not priestly, he is saintly.’ Another society matron, Sheila Scotter, said he was ‘an utterly charming man’ who would always support fundraising for cultural causes like the Victorian State Opera. Apart from the Open Family Foundation, other major recipients of his largesse included Lions International, International Social Services and the Fitzroy Community Youth Centre. And no-one, least of all Father Bob, suspected that he was anything but genuine.
The Open Family Foundation was, in the meantime, thriving. More and more street kids had heard of the organisation and, receiving only good reports of the work of Father Bob and Brother Alex, were coming forward to ask for help. A number of new youth workers had been taken on to expand the Foundation’s services, and South Melbourne parishioners continued to put in long hours as volunteers to help keep everything going.
Henry Nissen seemed to be working all hours to help. ‘We had the hostels and the food bus and we were driving around the streets, helping young people in need,’ he says. ‘We’d help them in any way we could, even involving them in football teams, cricket, athletics, boxing … everything to try to give these people a better chance in life.’
The Foundation seemed to be so incredibly busy all the time, no-one really noticed a tiny news item buried on page sixteen of the Melbourne Age. The article on 30 November 1987 was about a middle-aged man dying after being stabbed at a boarding house in Newport, 7 kilometres south-west of the CBD. It seemed the man had gone into his room in the early evening with two women, thought t
o be sex workers. An hour later, neighbours noticed the two women run out of the room, jump into his car and speed off. They found the man staggering to the front porch where he collapsed and died at the scene. The women, a pair of sisters, were later both caught and charged with murder. But thirteen days after the fatal stabbing came the bombshell. A man was now being charged with being an accessory after the fact of murder, and that man was no less than Brother Alex.
Everyone was left reeling with shock. The police were alleging Brother Alex had provided money for the two sisters to leave Victoria, so they might manage to evade capture. He let it be known through his solicitor that he’d be contesting the charge. The Jesuit had often sailed close to the wind, everyone had to admit, but something like this was completely unexpected.
‘Alex had a very troubled life and I think he often identified closely with some of the most desperate people on the streets,’ says Father Bob. ‘You tread a very fine line as a street worker, and sometimes that could be hard. You do get some people who get so close to the street kids, they actually become one of them. They become part of their lives …’
But as the months went by and Brother Alex’s committal for trial was set down for November 1988, Father Bob despaired that his work with street kids, and his treasured Foundation, might all come to an untimely, and ugly, end.
12
A Day in Court
The wait for Brother Alex McDonald’s court case was proving excruciating. Everyone was bewildered about what had happened and, with the Jesuit having such a high profile with the Open Family Foundation, Father Bob worried about what the fallout might be.
The parish seemed to take this latest setback in their stride, however, and rallied round to take up the slack. Reinforcements also arrived in the form of two young men Father Bob had helped a few years before, and who had never forgotten what a difference he’d made to their lives.
Chris Apostolidis had been only fourteen when he’d first met the priest in 1981, and was an angry kid. Born in Greece, but migrating to Australia with his family at the age of three, he’d had his childhood in Melbourne but then returned to Greece at the age of ten. A year later, he was brought back to Australia again. ‘I was confused,’ he says. ‘Apart from the disruption of moving between the two countries each time, I was caught between two worlds: having a Greek background and speaking the language because that was all my parents spoke, then going out into a society that was a whole different culture. What made it even harder was, when we came here the second time, my parents bought a milk bar. But because they couldn’t speak English, I had to be there, literally all day. I could only occasionally go to school; they just couldn’t run it without me helping them.’
At just eleven years old, Chris had to mind the counter almost single-handedly and had a little fold-out bed underneath to sleep on when the shop was empty. Angry at having to be there such long hours, and resentful he was missing out on school and his friends, he’d take pleasure in hiding from customers, then jumping up at the last minute to take them by surprise. ‘I wanted to shock people,’ he says. ‘I’d then stand and just look at them. I was inviting them to do something. I was this crazy kid and the anger was building up and up in me, it was suffocating me. Anyone said the wrong thing to me, I’d jump on them. I was violent. I got to the point where I knew I had to get out of that state, and I took off.’
He wandered around, sleeping at friends’ houses and then, at the age of twelve, he discovered nightclubs. He’d always loved music and, looking much older than his age, he’d get into clubs and stay there all night, dancing. He started entering dance competitions and, mastering the new hip-hop dance craze out of the US, he soon began winning. In between, he’d go along to St Peter and Paul’s where he let out some of his anger, boxing at the gym around the back. There he met another boy the same age, Mem River, who was also going through tough times. Some days, the pair might box or play basketball there, or join in a game of soccer. Father Bob was helping Mem at that stage, and so would occasionally have a chat with Chris, too.
‘Father Bob took a real interest in my dancing, asking me about it and encouraging me,’ Chris says. ‘He suggested I try a bigger variety of arts instead of just the street dancing and helped me experiment. He’d take me here and there and to other schools to introduce me to other styles.’ At the same time, Father Bob was also giving Mem a hand, often taking him along to charity functions and fundraisers. ‘It was like he was providing a one-on-one finishing school!’ says Mem. ‘He’d talk to me about how to behave in public, how to speak, what fork to use for the meal. He was teaching me how to fit in.’
The priest’s help felt, to both boys, absolutely invaluable. ‘He constantly influenced us,’ says Chris. ‘The environment he’d created for us was so important. We were all touched by his influence, his goodwill, the good intent that comes from the heart. It helped far more people than he personally could, one on one. Just knowing he was there, and was supporting us, absolutely made a difference. That helps you organise yourself, it gives you some kind of purpose. And my love of dancing was greater than any other desire. It made me feel liberated, it gave me power, it was phenomenal.’
Mem had also suffered, like Chris, from a culture clash between his daily life in modern-day Australia and his home life, but his family was doing it even tougher. His parents had been members of the Kurdish aristocracy but had their land taken from them and had set up home with their five children in a single room in a Kurdish ghetto in Turkey. When they had the chance to come to Australia, they grabbed it, settling in Melbourne. But Mem’s father found it extremely hard to adjust to their new life and the family suffered.
By the time Mem, the youngest of the children, had hit seventeen, he’d already been on the streets and in and out of boys’ homes for five years, and had been locked up in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide for a variety of offences, including assault and robbery. ‘I was a bad boy, very bad,’ he says. ‘I’d done a lot of drugs, heroin and everything else available, I’d been involved in prostitution myself and pimped myself as well as girls, my brothers were gangsters and I was involved with organised crime gangs. I had so much anger. But I didn’t want to be part of that world anymore. It was all too brutal. I wanted to do something with my life. I wanted to study. It wasn’t in my nature to be involved in the kind of things they were doing.’
A social worker eventually advised him to go to Father Bob’s boxing gym to try to get rid of some of his energy in a safe environment. Over the weeks, the boxing coach there couldn’t understand why sometimes he’d box well, and other times, not at all. When Mem explained that it probably depended on whether he’d had somewhere to sleep the night before and food to eat, the coach took him to meet Father Bob.
‘He sat down with me at the kitchen table, and talked,’ says Mem. ‘Then he offered me a room and took me to see it. I was really suss and I thought, “If this old guy, if he fucking tries to touch me or anything, I’m just going to punch him in the face, knock him out, probably rob him and leave.” I didn’t trust anyone. Growing up on the streets, if anyone wants to give you anything, they usually wanted a lot more back from you. But while I was getting ready to deck him, he goes to a picture of the Madonna and Jesus, and a crucifix, at the top of the bed and takes them off the wall, saying, “You’re not a Christian, you’re a Muslim, you shouldn’t have to look at these all the time.” I thought, “That’s different!”
‘The more I stayed there, the more I began to trust him. I knew lots of the other guys trusted him, and they would have told me if anything wasn’t right as we’d been on the streets together and were pretty open about that kind of thing. Then Father Bob asked me what I wanted to do and, because I hadn’t been at school since the age of twelve, I said I can’t read everything in the newspaper, only half a sentence of things, so he got me tutors who came in to teach me to read and write properly. Then he enrolled me in night school.’
Mem had only one real hiccup, when his
brothers came looking for him and threatened Father Bob, demanding he return their ‘asset’. The priest was cool and calm, and didn’t budge an inch. ‘I may have looked calm, but I was frightened,’ he says now. ‘I thought we were going to be done to death!’ As soon as they’d left, he contacted an old Turkish friend who knew one of the brothers, and asked him to smooth everything over. The brothers then finally, reluctantly, retreated. Mem stayed on, carried on working at his lessons and continued at the boxing gym, where he met Chris and practised breakdancing with him, eventually entering competitions and doing appearances all over Melbourne and interstate.
Chris was also dancing with another five-person crew and they eventually won the Australian Break Dance Competition held by the TV show ‘Countdown’, and were offered a tour of Australia. On the success of that, they were sent on a twenty-day tour of Asia. Chris loved the experience so much, he returned soon after and persuaded Mem to go with him this time. The pair formed a dance duo and, particularly after Mem hooked up with a big Indonesian pop star, were feted wherever they went, dancing, appearing as her support act, featuring in a couple of films, being flown around the country and being written about in magazines and newspapers. Finally, Chris and Mem split up and they both, separately, stayed on in Indonesia. Chris spent time with a family he’d got to know and became very close to them, relishing learning about a culture in which Christians, Buddhists and Muslims seemed so happy to live and work together. After a year, he returned to Melbourne, ready to start a new life back home. Mem, still with the singer, became embroiled in an underground political movement. When things turned nasty, and he was told to get out of the country as quickly as he could, he called Father Bob for help. The priest immediately sent him a ticket.
It was now 1987. Brother Alex was still awaiting trial and Costas was still causing havoc wherever he went. Mem asked Father Bob, now fifty-two, what he could do to help. The priest asked him if he could take over the old World Vision warehouse five blocks east of the church for the Open Family Foundation. He did, and started to get a range of activities going in the space, including basketball, cricket, another boxing gym and karate. When Chris had returned to Australia, he’d rented a tiny office on top of a convenience store, so Mem now asked him if he’d like to rent some space in the warehouse. Chris happily agreed and, when Mem left to study full-time at Melbourne University, Chris worked hard to renovate the building, and to transform it into a useful, and valuable, asset for the Foundation, even starting a deli-cafeteria on the site with his brother.
