by Peter Lalor
Kellett, his mother, Katherine and Melissa hit the road as fast as they could, leaving Barbara lying in the dirt. Mrs Paulger couldn’t believe what she’d just seen. What sort of a family was that? What sort of a woman had her son married? She made them stop at the police station to make a report, in case the men tried to follow them up the road. As they drove they kept checking the rear view mirror, watching Aberdeen disappear into the hills. It was the second time Kellett had made such an escape.
Katherine and David were quiet on the drive back and remained close lipped on the events of the previous few months for the rest of their relationship. It was two decades before she asked him why he left, and while over the years he occasionally heard stories about a baby being put on the railway track, he dismissed them. ‘Kath used to love her kids. She was so protective of them she couldn’t have. I heard about the car. Didn’t she stab a copper?’
They proceeded to the NSW seaside of town of Coffs Harbour where Mrs Paulger was under strict instructions to make sure her daughter-in-law took her medication. Mrs Paulger began to notice odd things about the 20-year-old. She would lock herself away with the baby for long periods of time and it was a while before the older woman discovered what Kath was up to. ‘She had a fixation with cleaning the girl. She was obsessively cleaning her vagina behind closed doors. She cleaned and cleaned and cleaned.’
One time Kath drew blood cleaning the girl’s ear. Her behaviour became stranger. She had to be on her best behaviour around Mrs Paulger but would escape to Kellett’s sister’s place where she would let her guard down and be the real Kath, swearing and yelling and letting off steam. This cunt and that cunt and he’s fuckin’ this and fuckin’ that and that fuckin’ slut cunt. Hell she was angry.
After three weeks Kath and Kellett moved on. He had no intention of going back to Aberdeen where her brothers had sworn to kill him, so they moved up to Woodridge in Queensland to a flat in Pamela Crescent to see if they could make a new start of it. Kellett got a job driving trucks and later Kath got a job at an abattoir near Brisbane. She’d ride for hours every day on a motorbike to get to work.
Kath was apparently glad to have her man back
Even after we were separated sex was just mind boggling. It was a bit like the first time. Every time it was terrific, but then other times it would be: ‘You’re not touching me, I don’t know where you’ve fuckin’ bin.’
Her moods were unpredictable and her anger frightening. Mrs Paulger remembers telephone calls from Kath where she would be screaming abuse about Kellett. Swearing, yelling and accusing him of having affairs. Off her brain with rage. The older woman stopped taking the calls; she was sick with high blood pressure and it was the last thing she needed. That little girl could melt the phone with her acid venom.
Barbara Knight, it seems, dusted herself off and accepted the trio back into the fold. Kellett says she treated him well when they went back to visit. It seemed she was used to getting up out of the dirt and returning to the kitchen. Or the bed. Despite her advancing years, it seems that Barbara’s lot hadn’t changed much.
Her mother had bruises all over her face, black eyes. We’d go down on holidays for a week or two, or long weekends and her mother always put a big roast on for me and I’d say, ‘What happened to ya?’ and she’d say, ‘That old cunt knocked me out again for sex.’ He’d knock her out. Knocked her out.
Life wasn’t all crap for the reunited couple. David was trying his best to keep her happy. In October a mate of his put on a twenty-first birthday party for Kath at his place in Woodridge. The party girl wore her favourite gold dress and had the night of her life. It was celebration of Kath and she loved it. She’d cut her hair and was looking great.
She was so perfect that night, her mum and dad were there and my family and she was the perfect mother, wife, everything, absolute magic, you couldn’t fault her. Didn’t swear or anything.
There’s a touching picture of the pair kissing in the backyard of their friend’s home. Her hair is shorter, a little more sophisticated and they’re wrapped in a Hollywood pash, clutching hands around a pink drink, her right hand grabbing the back of his neck. An above-ground pool, a Queensland backyard. Maybe things would get better. Then again her ‘psychotic ways’ were never far away.
Things turned ugly again one day, just after Kellett had been at the shop buying a newspaper. She went outside ready to go dirt bashing on her trail bike only to find it was gone. Riding the motorbike was her great passion. Her older brother Neville had a big road bike and the rest of the kids got into them after that. Sometimes they’d head off on trips together. Kath was a good rider. She was furious that it was gone. Someone was to blame. She came back up yelling and screaming and breaking things, smashing holes into the wall, accusing him of losing it. Kellett took refuge next door. He had walked to the shop.
It was up in Queensland that Katherine’s love of her work knives took a further disturbing turn. She was already taking them with her wherever she went, travelling with them under the seat of the car. They were always within reach. In Woodridge she put hooks above the pillow and would hang them above the marital bed when they slept. The sword of Damocles suspended by the thin thread of her temper. She had two knives and a sharpening steel and they were razor sharp, you could shave the hair off your arms with them. And every night David could look up and see them. Hanging there.
Mrs Paulger remembers visiting the couple and asking Katherine why they were there. The young woman dropped her head and pouted like a petulant child.
‘Just in case I need them. Or to kill somebody if I have to.’
The quiet little daughter-in-law had changed so much from the meek little thing Mrs Paulger had first met. She told Kellett’s mum she even slept with a knife in the bed. Poor Kellett was under terrible pressure. When she lost her temper, which was happening with increasing frequency, she took to throwing the knives and accusing him of all sorts of infidelities. She may or may not have been wrong, but the first separation had really shaken her and would haunt her for decades to come.
But two could play the infidelity game.
One night the phone rang in their Woodridge flat. The wife of Kath’s union representative from the meatworks was on the line wanting to talk to her. Kellett remembers that she wouldn’t take the call. It didn’t seem that odd at the time. Kath had her moods. The next week Kellett decided to come home and have a sandwich for lunch. He couldn’t park the truck in the crescent so left it at the top of the street and walked down. Kath was supposed to be at the abattoirs. When he got to their place he noticed two motorbikes underneath—she had replaced the stolen one. The truck driver figured she was up to no good and snuck upstairs, grabbing his. 22 rifle on the way. He listened at the door and heard the unmistakable sounds of two people having sex in his bed. Gun in hand, he kicked the door open and caught his wife with the union rep. They had both taken sickies from work.
He says he made the man jump out of the window to the street below. The gun wasn’t loaded but the bloke wasn’t hanging around to find out. Katherine was crying and telling him to calm down, but Kellett was furious and stuffed her clothes into a bag before throwing it off the balcony, telling her to join her boyfriend. He told her he wanted her to go and that it was all over. ‘She cried and was on her knees and I told her things had to change. No more psycho ways or you’re out.’
She was on her best behaviour for the next few months. Kellett got some extended relief. She convinced him that they should have another baby to save the marriage.
The young family then moved on to Landsborough, a small town about the size of Aberdeen, 75 kilometres north of Brisbane on the Sunshine Coast. They stayed there for about three years. They bought a house and he worked hard, sometimes doing three jobs at once, but things were never really back on track. He’d been unfaithful, she’d been unfaithful and everybody had lost faith and face.
At Landsborough he used to play darts in a competition at the local club. If there was
one thing that really sent Kath over the edge, apart from barking dogs and knickers on the outside of the line, it was her men staying out late. The competition was meant to finish at 10.30 pm, she rang at 10.10 pm.
—How long ya gunna be?
—Ten minutes.
—Get home right fuckin’ now.
—I can’t just walk out of the competition.
—Get fucking home!
Katherine could not cope with people being late. It made her so angry. It was another form of abandonment and she became frantic. She could never trust him again and kept thinking he was playing up. For his part, Kellett realised she was having a bad night and in one of those moods, but he kept playing and got home a little after 10.30 pm. Or at least he thought he did.
By the time he got there Kath had gone right over the edge. When he got home and walked in the door she hit him from behind with something heavy. He thinks it was an iron or a saucepan. In a daze he went to the neighbours before collapsing. He was bleeding from the nose, ears and back of the head and was rushed to Nambour Hospital. They kept him there for a week, doing X-rays to check for fractures and doing scans of his brain. He had big black eyes and a swathe of bandages that made him look like a car-crash victim.
He didn’t know it at the time, but she’d also burned all his clothes in the bathroom. When he got out of hospital the walls were stained with smoke. The local cops wanted to charge her with attempted murder but Kellett didn’t want to press charges. They had a young daughter with another on the way and, anyway, she was terribly contrite when he got out of hospital. Bought him all new clothes. He warned her that if she laid another hand on him, he’d pack her bags and send her back to her mum and dad.
Barbara came up to stay with them then and gave Kath terrible grief over what she’d done. The mother-daughter-victim relationship was confused to say the least. When Barbara hurt Kellett she was punched. When Katherine hurt Kellett she was reprimanded. It was like they were taking turns playing good cop, bad cop. Barbara stayed for a month or so.
In an effort to save money and possibly decrease the chances of further trouble, Kellett began to brew beer at home and one day a couple of his mates came back from the pub to knock a few off. It wasn’t that long after he’d got out of hospital. Katherine was obsessively jealous and hated all his friends, referring to them as ‘that cunt’ or ‘those cunts’. She never bothered with their names. Anybody she didn’t know and many that she did were ‘cunts’ to Kath. The world was full of them. One of the blokes that walked down the driveway that evening was a Maori. All of Kellett’s mates thought his missus was a right piece of work, but this day she really turned it on.
—Whose this black cunt ya’ve got with ya?
—He’s a mate of mine. Shut ya mouth.
Kath never knew when to stop and anyway, she’d already gone too far. The bloke was enraged. He charged at her and everyone thought he was going to belt her. She backed off as he approached, but he kept coming until they were toe to toe. Face to face.
—If you ever call me that again, I’ll drive me fist through your fucking face.
Katherine took off and ran for the police, as she would with increasing frequency over the years. She told them Kellett had hired a Kiwi hit man to kill her. She wanted to press charges. It blew over, like all of Katherine’s storms. Poor Kellett just cleaned up the mess and tried to keep his head in one piece.
In March 1980 Natasha Maree Kellett was born in the Nambour Hospital. Kath was now 24 and a mother of two.
Kellett says he never saw his wife mistreat the children, although he heard she became worse over the years. Still, she was a tough mother. He can remember stand-offs between Melissa and her mother over eating chokos, a vegetable of questionable taste. Kath would leave her at the table until she’d eat them and Melissa would sit there long after her mother had gone to bed. Then Kellett would intervene, hiding the offending vegetable and telling his wife the toddler had complied.
Mrs Paulger visited the couple several times and was becoming increasingly concerned by her daughter-in-law’s demeanour. She witnessed repeated scenes where Katherine became uncontrollable, enraged by the slightest incident; a kettle that didn’t have enough water in it would fly across the room, coffee mugs would smash, every second person was a cunt. The ones in between were worse. Kellett would do his best to pacify her, calm her down. Apologise to his mum.
His sister remembers a more disturbing incident. One day she heard terrible screams coming from the bathroom where Kath was washing Melissa’s hair. Kellett’s sister ran in to find her rinsing the tortured child’s hair with scalding hot water, fierce with determination. She pointed out to Kath that the water was burning the girl.
—Fuck off! Mind ya’s own business!
Mrs Paulger found it hard to understand her daughter-in-law and cut herself off from her. The girl was impossible. A danger to herself and everybody around her, including her children and her husband. ‘She used to scream her head off about everything and anything. I started to wonder why I had got her out of that hospital.’
In Katherine’s mind she was always the victim. Her family repeat her version of the marriage and relationships in her life and tell you what violent men they all were. How her self-esteem was low and they treated her like shit. It’s a family songbook and they all sing from it or get excommunicated. Still, Katherine’s never accused Kellett of hitting her and he swears that he never did because he would never hit a woman. Especially one that towered over him like her. Still, she went for the cops more than once during their relationship.
In Landsborough she waved him goodbye one day as he headed off to work at a local windscreen place. Have fun. I’ll see you when you get home. Kellett was a little bit pissed and when he drove the car out the driveway he hit the gate post. Oh well, nothing serious. He kept on his way. She’d been watching and something snapped. He couldn’t get away with that. She went to the local cop who lived in the house opposite but he fobbed her off. She persisted and the police showed up at his workplace.
Kellett gave them a bit of lip, got a backhander for his trouble and a court appearance for driving under the influence. He lost his licence.
Later, in a similarly bloody minded act, she cost John Price his superannuation and his job. She kissed Pricey goodbye the morning she did that too, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
People who have been surrounded by alcohol as children often won’t touch it themselves and while Katherine would have the occasional wine, a cask could last her a year, although later, when she met John Price she began to drink more. There’s no doubt that Kellett drank a lot in his young days and so did all of her boyfriends over the ensuing years. I pick the wrong ones. They were all drunk and violent.
Alcohol is one thing, child abuse is another. Kath was obsessed by it. Without ever having read a separatist text she thought all men were potential rapists. The obsessive cleaning of the girls’ vaginas indicates some trauma, probably from childhood and it’s probably related to the violation by her brothers. Yet there was sex abuse at every turn. Or allegations of it. Partners, brothers and strangers. Perhaps it was just that she was the unluckiest woman in the world, because wherever she went, people were apparently trying to molest her or her children.
After the incident with the police she and Kellett separated. She moved down to a caravan in Dinmore, taking Melissa and Natasha with her, and found a job. She hadn’t been there long when she rang Kellett.
—Git up here. Melissa’s been raped.
He didn’t have his licence thanks to Kath so he had to hitch, clutching a bunch of flowers all the way and worrying about what he had heard on the telephone. When he got there he started to piece together the story. There had been a terrible scene at the caravan park. The police had come and a bloke had been questioned and evicted. According to Kellett the man had only stopped to speak to Melissa and had never touched her. There were never any charges laid, but the man had to take off. Somehow there was
an item in the local newspaper talking about the suspected rape.
Twenty years later Kellett’s phone rang again, it was Melissa wanting to know more details about the rape. She’d just found the clipping in her mother’s photo album alongside the clippings from incidents in her father’s wild youth.
Why would you do that? The poor bloke never went to court. She hadn’t been touched. What does that tell ya? You could put two profiles on Katherine and they’d both be opposite. She could be the most wonderful loving mother and wife—you could not wish for anyone better. And then …
They got back together one more time after that. The flowers must have done the trick and she was on her best behaviour. Loving mother and housewife. Well, for a while at least.
Back in Landsborough Kellett woke one night and got the fright of his life, much like John Price 25 years later. The shock has never left him. He had worked a string of jobs and by this time was driving furniture trucks. That evening he went to bed, the knives hanging over his head, ready to leave in the truck at 5 am the next day, but in the middle of the night he woke, aware of a weight on his chest. Kath was sitting on top of him, pinning his arms down, and digging one of the knives into his throat near the jugular. Sharp as a razor. She only had to move it a few centimetres and it would have sliced right through the artery. The bitch was as calm as could be. Is it true that truck drivers have a woman in every fucking town? Is it? … You see how easy it is, Kellett? I could do y a in right here.
Kellett didn’t need to be told, he knew he was a muscle twitch away from bleeding like the stuck pigs she worked with every day.
I had to talk fast, I can tell you, I was sweating and shaking. I couldn’t even push her off. She had one arm across my chest and the knife into my neck. I thought I was gone. I was shit scared. It was the most horrific memory I have.
Years later Kath would deny this ever happened but there seems little reason to doubt Kellett. He lived through that one, but life was becoming increasingly uncomfortable as she began to attack him more often, flying off the handle and swinging at his head. Always at his head. It was at just the right height and she could really knock you about. Punch like a man.
