Mother of Ten (14 page)

Mum
was heartbroken when, several years later, she had to relinquish care of Tanya
because Peter and his partner resumed their relationship. Of course, Mum was
happy that Tanya was able to live with her parents again but this did not
diminish the pain of separation. Apart from her natural attachment to Tanya,
imagine the painful memories this must have stirred for her. Certainly, Tanya’s
cousin Sally recalls that her grandmother was so bereft after Peter reclaimed
Tanya that she was uncharacteristically disinterested in Sally for a short
time. However, Peter ensured that Mum had regular contact with Tanya. Both
Sally and Tanya have treasured memories of Myrtle as a loving and caring
grandmother who offered them sanctuary and comfort during childhood calamities.
She brooked no nonsense and yet was not above spoiling them and could also be
relied on for fun and laughter.

While
Tanya and Sally were the grandchildren Mum was able to develop close
relationships with, she did have others. My older brothers Bobby and Maxie had
both married and started their families. However, there was not a lot of
opportunity for contact as they both lived interstate. I can recall some of
Maxie’s visits with his young children. Mum made the most of her time with
them: nursing them, cuddling them and playing with them. There were also the
grandchildren she did not know about: the children of Bertie, Noel and Audrey.
Did she wonder about them? I am sure that she did.

Bertie,
after he left the technical college, became a printer with the
Queensland
Times
. At the age of 26 he was a tall, handsome young man with a thick head
of dark hair, twinkling blue eyes and a quirky sense of humour. He caught the
eye of the girls, but his heart was stolen one evening at a barbecue in the
1960s when he met Lea, whom he married in 1965. 

Even
on his wedding day, Bertie’s quirky sense of humour could not be suppressed.
Standing on the church steps with his new bride he looked at the minister and
said, “Right. I’m married. Now where do I go to get a divorce?” The minister
did not really understand Bertie’s sense of humour but, luckily, Lea did.

Bertie
and Lea lived in Sydney for a short time when Bertie worked on
The
Australian Newspaper
. When they returned to Brisbane in 1974, Bertie
started work at Brisbane’s daily
Courier-Mail
, where he stayed until he
retired twenty years later. Lea and Bertie produced five grandchildren for
Myrtle although she never met any of them.

Bertie,
who grew up hating his mother as a result of his paternal grandmother’s
brain-washing, had no contact with Myrtle. It wasn’t until the 1960s that he
found out, through his sister, what had happened to his mother. Audrey had met
one of Myrtle’s Albury friends who was able to tell her the truth about what
had happened. Bertie felt a deep sense of betrayal that he had been brought up
to hate his mother and been told falsehoods about what had happened and about
her character. Although he did not mention it, he must have also carried a heavy
burden of misplaced guilt. Perhaps this was one of the things that made him
resistant to the idea of getting in touch with his mother despite encouragement
from Lea to do so.

Audrey,
in the years that followed her meeting with Myrtle, had decided she did not
want to marry. “I like my freedom too much,” she wrote in one of her letters to
her mother. She expressed a desire to travel and her itchy feet eventually took
her to the United States of America. Audrey worked hard and saved enough money
to fund her trip and, together with an Irish girlfriend, arrived in California
in 1974. In San Francisco, a friendly local bus driver helped the girls find an
apartment for short term lease. One evening, the two girls went to a nearby
wine bar recommended by the bus driver. As soon as they walked in, Audrey saw
two guys heading in their direction but she did not like the look of them so
quickly devised a plan to avoid their attentions.

“Follow
me,” she whispered to her friend.

Audrey
had spotted a young man enjoying a drink on his own at the bar. She now headed
straight for him, sidled up, sat down next to him and offered him a warm smile.

“Sorry
I’m late,” she said to the astonished accountant from Kansas. “I’ll have a
glass of white wine, please.”

The
accountant was bemused but, nevertheless, ordered his new companion with the
strange accent a glass of white wine. Audrey’s girlfriend took her cue from her
friend and managed to startle another young man sitting nearby who also
suddenly found he had an attractive new companion with an odd accent. The two
girls had a very pleasant evening with their ‘dates’ and left them to take a
cab back to their apartment. The next morning, the astonished accountant from
Kansas, whose name was Edward, knocked on Audrey’s door to ask her to go out
with him again that evening.

That
was the start of a long and loving relationship. Edward and Audrey travelled
all over the world together before returning to the USA in 1975 where they were
married. Marriage did not stop their travelling. Edward’s job took him to Saudi
Arabia in 1978 where they lived for eight years. From there, they jetted off to
exotic destinations every six months. Approximately a year after their arrival
in Saudi Arabia, Audrey became pregnant with twins. Sadly, one twin did not
survive but Edward and Audrey became the proud parents of a baby boy. Did this
slow down the jetsetters? No. Even the birth of their second son, a much
welcomed addition to the family in 1984, did not slow them down.

Edward
and Audrey returned to America in 1986 and settled in Houston, Texas. By this
time, Audrey had stopped writing to her mother thinking she had long since
died. She carried with her into adulthood the feeling of shame and
embarrassment at being an orphanage child. This is a sad consequence that ‘care
leavers commonly speak of. They felt ashamed because their parents rejected
them. Many have never told the families they now live with, would never tell
friends or workmates, and regard it as something to be hidden and forgotten, a
shameful past that marks them as worth less than other people.’
(Orphans of
the Living)

Audrey’s
younger brother, Noel, remained in Ballarat apart from a short stint in
Melbourne. He was restless and unsettled and was often involved in fights,
being quick to take offence and quick to avenge himself. In retrospect, he
describes himself as ‘always looking for something but not knowing what I was
looking for’.

 In
Ballarat he took room and board with a family that included two daughters.
Through these sisters, Noel met Shirley, a vivacious blonde who took his eye
and later captured his heart. He apparently ‘swept her off her feet’ although
Shirley might dispute that claim.

It
was when Noel applied for his birth certificate to fulfil the legal
requirements to enable his marriage to Shirley to take place that he discovered
he had a brother and a sister. However, he had no other information and did not
know how to contact them or whether they were even still alive.

Noel
became more settled after his marriage, particularly when he became a father in
1966. Like Bertie and Lea, Noel and Shirley produced five grandchildren for
Myrtle whom she never met.

Although
Noel was now secure in a strong and loving family environment, his work life
was not so settled. He was forced to give up work when, while working at a
local car parts manufacturer, he suffered serious injuries after being
accidentally run over by a mobile crane. His body was crushed and bones were
broken. He endured a long journey back to health but was no longer able to
work. Once again he found himself in a fight. This time it was a court battle
which he eventually won and was awarded payment for damages.

He
did whatever he could to earn an income to supplement these payments; selling
scrap metal, old cars and trailers. Noel was on crutches for a long time. He
discovered a crutch could be very useful as a weapon much to the consternation
one day of an overly persistent vacuum cleaner salesman who had apparently
developed a strong attachment to Noel and Shirley’s front door step.

In
1982, Noel met his siblings after Audrey tracked him down on one of her visits
from Saudi Arabia. In Noel’s mind, he was meeting his sister for the first time
as he had no memory of her, or his brother, from childhood. At their reunion
Audrey told him about Bertie and passed on their brother’s contact details.

Later,
Noel contacted Bertie and drove up to Queensland to meet him. The first thing
their wives noticed was the striking resemblance the brothers bore to each
other. Despite not growing up together they shared the same mannerisms, their
voices sounded the same and they even finished each other’s sentences.
Physically, they were like ‘two peas in a pod’ and shared a likeness with their
father. The proof that they were sired by the same man was staring everyone in
the face. A relative, who was around at the time that Agnes Bishop was
spreading rumours that Noel was not Henry Bishop’s child, saw them together and
exclaimed, “How could they have got it so wrong?”

That
question sums it up in relation to every aspect of what happened to Myrtle and
her children and, indeed, to what happened to thousands of other children and
their parents during the ‘Orphanage Period’ in Australia: from the 1920s to the
1990s.

‘While
growing up in the Orphanage, I used to wish for our mother to come and take us
home, where we belonged, but she never came near the place.’ This comment was
made by Lorraine Rodgers who was at Ballarat Orphanage. Hers was one of over
600 submissions to the Inquiry conducted by the Australian Senate in 2003 and
2004. Submissions were taken from people who, as children, had been in
institutions in Australia from the 1920s to the 1990s. The 2009 report of this
Inquiry, known as
Forgotten Australians
, states:

‘The
Committee received hundreds of graphic and disturbing accounts about the
treatment and care experienced by children in out-of-home care. Like the child
migrants before them, many care leavers showed immense courage in putting
intensely personal life stories on the public record. Their stories outlined a
litany of emotional, physical and sexual abuse, and often criminal physical and
sexual assault. Their stories also told of neglect, humiliation and deprivation
of food, education and healthcare. Such abuse and assault was widespread across
institutions, across States and across the government, religious and other care
providers.

But
the overwhelming response as to treatment in care, even among those that made
positive comments, was the lack of love, affection and nurturing that was never
provided to young children at critical times during their emotional
development.’

For
many people who grew up ‘in care’ the Senate Inquiry offered them the chance to
speak about their experiences for the first time because ‘people are listening
at long last’. Up until this time, many care leavers felt the rest of society
were not bothered about their experiences and not interested in listening.

The
experiences of those who made submissions to this Inquiry clearly show that
children who grew up in institutions were not treated as individuals. There was
a lack of personal interest in the child. The children were virtually
anonymous. Little wonder these kids yearned for affection and ‘sought caresses
from strangers’.

Children
in institutions grew up in an environment that taught them they were not
important to anyone. The people they should have mattered most to, their
parents, had apparently abandoned them. If your parents don’t want you, the
obvious message is: You’re not worth loving, you’re no good. As my sister
Audrey put it, they were ‘discarded’ children. In
Orphans of the Living
,
author Joanna Penglase states: ‘When parents disappear from children’s lives,
the only way a child can interpret this is that the parent does not want them
or care about them.’

 
In many orphanages children were told repeatedly by the staff that they were
unwanted, no good, unlovable, stupid, wicked and even worse than that. The
staff at the institutions often reinforced the message that the children were
unwanted nuisances.

Mim
McKey and her two sisters, all under the age of four, were placed in
institutions in Melbourne, Victoria. She comments in her submission to the
Inquiry: ‘I was told constantly by Home staff, teachers, hosts and my mother,
that I was irreparably stupid, recalcitrant, disobedient, totally unworthy of
love, and always facing threats that I would be "put away"
permanently.’

Lorraine
Rodgers remembers the staff at Ballarat Orphanage telling her she had been put
in the orphanage because her parents did not love her and ‘you are not wanted
by anyone’. It breaks my heart to think of children growing up believing:
‘Nobody wants me. Nobody cares about me.’

Children
like Audrey and Noel who grow up in institutions enter adulthood without the
foundation of family and all that goes with it. They have no recorded history
such as milestone memorabilia and photographs. They have no photos of
themselves as babies or during their development stages, no school photographs,
no photographs with family members. They have no family stories to prompt their
memories of past events, to share and laugh about with others. They do not have
any way of knowing what happened to them as children except their memories.
There is no one to fill in the gaps. When we grow up in a family setting we
receive reminders of our life’s journey, of who we are and where we belong;
reminders such as photos, siblings retelling stories, parents and grandparents
retelling stories and other prompts that keep our memories strong.
Institutionalised children are deprived of these precious pieces of the
childhood jigsaw that most of us assume as our right.

Institutionalised
children also grow up deprived of sibling relationships and parental role
models. They have been robbed of the small daily intimacies that create bonds
between parents and children or between siblings. They do not hear the often
stated words that strengthen family connections such as: “You take after your
mother.” “You look just like your father did at your age.” “You’re so like your
brother/sister/cousin.” They have no one to cuddle them and reassure them
during childhood illnesses.  They have nowhere they can call private;
nowhere to keep their ‘treasures’ safe. Therefore, they are unable to accumulate
childhood items that they attach sentimental value to; items that might provide
a link to a memory, a special occasion or a loved one.

There
is no mother or father to arbitrate in childhood disputes or to make sure the
older children do not take the younger children’s things. Children in Homes had
no control over and no say in such personal matters as how their hair was cut
or what clothes they wore. Clothing was communal. Any gifts sent to the Home by
the child’s parents became communal property.

Frank
Golding describes in his submission to the Inquiry how one day at Ballarat
Orphanage ‘we all queued up to get a share of a box of grapes donated by some
generous person’. When he reached the head of the queue he was able to read the
label on the box. It was addressed to Frank and his brothers and had been sent
by their father. However, no-one had told the boys that their father had sent
them this gift. In fact, until that time they had thought their father was
dead. Frank did not mind sharing the grapes with the others but he was upset
that he and his brothers had not been told about the gift and, more
importantly, had not been told there had been communication from their father.

As
with gifts from family members, personal possessions also became communal property
or were either snatched by another inmate or confiscated by the staff.
 Even when the children managed to get locks for their bedroom lockers in
the hope of stowing some treasured items away, the staff had access to the
lockers and checked them whenever they wished.  ‘There was no way to keep
precious things private. The mind was the only safe shelter that could not be
invaded,’ writes Frank Golding in his book,
An Orphan’s Escape
.

The
very intimate things that a mother or father might do for a child, such as
wiping a small child’s bottom after going on the potty, or giving comfort after
a fall, are done if they are done at all by strangers and not necessarily by
the same person each time.

Joanna
Penglase writes that the children in Children’s Homes lived ‘loveless, desolate
lives...motherless and fatherless, isolated from the community, a prey to
assault and rape or simply casual and arbitrary cruelty, knowing there was no
one to turn to - and knowing the sentence has years to go.’

As
with those incarcerated in prisons, orphanage children were cut off from the
wider society and therefore did not have the opportunity to explore and
discover the world around them. They were not permitted outside the orphanage
gates except for special outings. Most orphanage children went to school on the
institution’s grounds. Even ‘going to the movies’ was done within the grounds.
For example, at Ballarat Orphanage a donated film projector was set up on
Saturday nights. A film sent from Melbourne by rail was shown on a make-shift
screen made from a white sheet pinned to the dining room wall.

Some
children, especially at secondary school level, attended schools outside their
orphanage grounds but even then they were cut off from the outside community.
They were readily identifiable as orphanage inmates by their clothes and the
staff members accompanying them. There was a stigma attached to these kids
because they did not have a ‘proper’ family. Other children looked down on them
and often jeered at them and bullied them. In most cases they were excluded
from the usual social interactions within and beyond a school community.

The
education that institutionalised kids received was rarely adequate. In the
publication
Forgotten Australians: Supporting survivors of childhood institutional
care in Australia,
The Alliance for Forgotten Australians outlines the
‘Denial of Educational Opportunity’:

‘Children
in institutions generally did not receive a good, or even adequate, education.
Children commonly did the domestic work involved in running the orphanage,
cleaning and cooking for long hours. As well, many children were put to work
earning income for the institution. Children as young as eight were often put
to work on farms or in laundries run by the institution. Additionally, children
who are abused or neglected, who have untreated health problems or who are
subjected to constant accusations of stupidity and worthlessness find it
difficult to concentrate in a learning environment.’

Children
living in Homes often felt ‘shame, embarrassment and secrecy’ because they did
not have a ‘normal’ family and were segregated from mainstream society. Ken
Carter, who was placed in ‘care’ as a baby after his mother became ill, in his
submission to the Senate Inquiry states:
‘You just have this sense of guilt that you, as
an orphan, were trash.’

Like
thousands of people who grew up in orphanages, my half-siblings have not shared
their deepest feelings about living in these institutions. However, the stories
of those who courageously put theirs on public record by submitting to the
Senate Inquiry are so similar that we can take their stories as being
representative of what happened to most children who grew up ‘in care’. For
example, Ray Flett’s submission relates how in 1957, at the age of three, he
and his four siblings were ‘forcibly removed’ from their parents ‘by the then
child welfare department in NSW’ and charged with being ‘under improper
guardianship’.

In
his submission Ray recalls: ‘I had been denied all knowledge of my natural
family and indeed had forgotten about the existence of my siblings, aunts,
uncles, grandparents, mother and father. I had no knowledge of the history of
my predecessors, who I was or where I belonged.

I
became a loner and distrusted all I came into contact with. I dreamt of having
a family and felt so forlorn that I just lived from day to day with no one to
love or be loved by, and without purpose. At the age of seven I was abused
sexually several times by at least one adolescent boy who also resided at that
home.’

Ken
Carter states:
‘
The
thing that hurt me most of all was that I didn’t know who I was. No one ever
told me where I came from or what.’

We
develop our sense of identity through our family, our culture and our community
but children growing up in institutions are cut off from all these things.

Mim
Mckey says, ‘...I despaired of ever finding any sort of personal identity, much
less a “normal” place in this world.’

Children
were kept under control by terror and intimidation and lived with fear on a
daily basis. Consequently, many children learned to be quiet, to repress their
personalities, in order to escape notice; being noticed was likely to result in
physical, emotional or sexual abuse. Their sense of self was destroyed.

In
his submission to the Senate Inquiry David Forbes, who was placed in a ‘boys’
home’ at the age of eight, writes:  ‘We were not treated like children; we
were not given any love and affection. We had no dignity. We were made to line
up naked waiting for our turn in the shower – summer or winter it did not
matter. We had no privacy. We were constantly threatened and made fun of. There
were no celebrations – our birthdays were not even acknowledged. We had no
Easter eggs – even Santa Claus abandoned us. We were not even allowed any personal
possessions – not that I ever had any. We were given very little food to eat
and it always tasted yuck. We were not treated like individuals and we were
never called by our names.’

Childhood
exuberance was curbed and controlled by a system that was regimented and
authoritarian. The children lined up together at the same time each day for
activities such as meals, cleaning teeth, going to the toilet and going to bed.
A child who tried to deviate from this or to use their initiative in any way
was punished.

Lorraine
Rodgers relates how she ‘just went around like a zombie, did everything I was
told to. You start to think you are no good, well that is still with me, and it
will be with me until I die.’

Such
conditioning moulded who the children became as adults.

 ‘Society
continually tells victims to ‘get over it’, or ‘it’s in the past’. I can assure
you that the treatment of those of us who survive will not be “in the past” as
long as one of us draws breath, for we suffer the consequences every second of
our existence.’ (Ray Flett)

Joanna
Penglase wonders how different her life would have been and whether she would
have become a different person and still ponders questions she will never know
the answers to.