I was only 10 when we moved from Australia to New Zealand. It was 1971. I can’t remember exactly how my parents knew the priest, Father Len, but he kindly accommodated us at his presbytery, where we stayed for a few weeks until he helped us find a home. Father Len became a good friend of the family. He would visit regularly and, for a priest, he was very keen on amber liquid and pretty women. My parents and the priest were great friends. I remember many a late night of partying.
So it certainly came as no surprise when Father Len was called in by my parents to look after us a couple of years later, when they needed to rush my youngest brother to hospital. Eamonn was only 2, but he was in grave danger. He had something wrong with his back and was put in traction for a few weeks. The doctors feared that he may have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, crippled. I remember seeing his little body lying in the hospital bed and being stretched by the traction. His gorgeous blond hair and his beautiful face had always made him look nearly angelic, but I couldn’t stand to see him in such pain.
While Eamonn was in hospital, Father Len looked after me, Kevin and Gary. It was during this time that an event occurred of which I still retain a very vivid memory. It was Christmas Eve.
He asks me to do a handstand against the wall. I do this. I’m wearing trousers, very fashionable flares, and a little midriff top. Whilst I am in my upside-down state, Father Len tickles my belly button. (To this day, I can’t stand my belly button to be touched, not even by myself.) I felt uncomfortable, so I ran and hid under my bed. Then I recall, like it was yesterday, his white long-sleeved arm pulling me from under my bed, his jet- black hair and his laughter. I was terrified.
I can’t recall anything after that. Everything is blank.
The following day, Christmas Day, Gary went missing. Dad finally found him at the back of the house. We owned two sections, as they were called in New Zealand -- basically, two other plots of land.
I loved playing up in those sections. We had fruit trees, mainly plums. Wild daffodils and jonquils were blooming and clumped everywhere in Spring. The bright yellow faces of the flowers gave me such pleasure! The smell of the jonquils filled me with such happiness! Whenever I smell a jonquil, I am always taken back to that wonderful time of my life. My brothers and I would play on our neighbours’ hedgerows and have so much fun. It wasn’t until I was an adult and an avid gardener that I look back and think of the damage we must have caused to those poor, put-upon hedges!
Next door to us was another section, which belonged to our neighbours. I look back with fond memories of the many hours we spent playing there. The earth was very lush there, and the dank undergrowth smelt divine. That rotten-leaf smell and the ivy mixed together to form a natural perfume that makes me feel so at peace whenever I am privileged enough to come across it now. This playground was made of fallen trees, and it was dark and mysterious. We would climb up the ivy about 20 metres and play on the top branches of the trees. How we never fell and hurt ourselves, I really do not know. I just remember how much fun we had playing in those days and now feel a certain sadness, knowing that I cannot bring that time back again.
Eamonn recovered and was sent home from the hospital. Things pretty much went back to normal, but there was one exception: Gary, who was 10 at the time, changed dramatically. His school marks went from A to C. He became difficult, violent, moody and cheeky. Then his eyesight deteriorated, and he had to wear glasses. They were those thick-rimmed black ones of the 70’s. I felt so sorry for him, because I knew he felt ugly and ashamed to wear those horrendous frames. He bit his nails until they bled, and he developed sciatica.
I remember my mother and I searching the streets for him one day when he had absconded from school after verbally abusing the teachers. No one could understand why Gary acted this way. In those days, it was never even considered that a child could be sexually abused.
One day my other brother, Kevin, had annoyed Gary somehow, and in retaliation Gary threw an iron crow bar -- only missing Kevin by millimetres.
Around this time, Gary buried himself in cartoons and practiced drawing them. He became an excellent cartoonist. As an adult, he had his own syndication published in a local newspaper, called “Alfred Q. Batts.” In my brother’s highly creative mind, “Alfred” became his alter ego, offering his other views on life.
In 1977, my mother, my brothers and I went back to live in Wales. My parents had decided they wanted to move back to the UK. Dad was to stay in New Zealand to finish off some business and sell the house, so we departed ahead of him. I loved my father dearly. I owe so much to him. He has always been a positive person, meeting challenges head-on; he is mentally tough and made me the same way. Dad gave me very strong life skills, and the thought of leaving him was unbearable, but not quite as unbearable as leaving my boyfriend behind in New Zealand. I was 16.
I was madly in love with my boyfriend. He was my first love, and I truly felt that my heart was being wrenched from my body. I did not know how I was going to survive without him. My love for him went beyond “puppy love” so often experienced during those teenage years –- even though I moved, our relationship sustained for eight more years.
I had been so happy living in Dunedin, New Zealand, and at 16, I had many friends. And, as any girl knows, at 16 your friends become your life. No matter how much I protested (and I most certainly did), my parents had decided we were moving, and I had no say in the matter.
My parents informed me about this decision just before my school certificate exams. I was dreadfully upset and consequently failed every single subject. My education took a nosedive, to say the least! Today, I am so thankful for my good upbringing and common sense, which enabled me to achieve so much in my life without a substantive formal or tertiary education.
When the time to depart arrived, we took the long flight to the United Kingdom. In those days it was permissible to smoke on an aircraft. The long flight from New Zealand to the UK, sitting in a closed-in, smoke-filled aircraft was bad enough, but as a heartbroken teenager, all I could do was stare out the window and cry. I remember feeling the depths of despair and every mile the plane flew away from my home, my heart broke and bled more. I felt my first real life experience of unhappiness and despair.
We finally arrived at Heathrow, exhausted. I immediately noticed that because of our accents, people stared at us whenever we talked. We caught a train from London to Cardiff, all five of us exhausted and unhappy.
My Aunty Frances and her boyfriend picked us up at the station. The feeling of this new country, though it was the place of my birth, was foreign to me. Everything was different and I was not comfortable. Already I was homesick.
I hated Wales. Although I was born there, I considered myself to be a New Zealander. We arrived in December, and it was cold and bleak. Each day I would write long love letters to my boyfriend. I can recall how much my heart ached for him. I truly felt I was in hell. I was so caught up in my romantic despair that I didn’t pay much attention to any of my brothers. I didn’t care what they did or where they went, for the most part. Our halcyon days of youth and playing among the damp earth in Dunedin were over, and I was in a “new country,” feeling doomed and depressed.
Only a few incidents stand out during this time in Wales: Gary was once nearly beaten up by some thugs when he was out exploring Cardiff Arms Park. I also remember telling him to ‘Shut up,’ in typical teenage fashion, when he tried to comfort me during one of my crying jags.
My luck was about to change, however. We only stayed in Wales two months! My mother decided to move back to New Zealand. I traveled back by myself first. My parents realised how terribly unhappy I was, and they decided to let me fly ahead of the rest of the family.
A few weeks later the rest of the family arrived, and we got back on with our lives. Kevin, Gary and Eamonn went back to school, but I decided to leave and got a job in a florist. I was sacked a couple of months later for my bad attitude, something that gave me an enormous wake-up call. It was a shame, because I loved the flowers and the morning teas, but my know-it-all, 16-year-old attitude was not tolerated. I am thankful for that experience because I have made a valiant effort to put 100% into every job I have held since that one.
In 1979, my parents, ever the adventurous types, decided we would move back to Australia. I didn’t want to leave my boyfriend again and go through another emotional upheaval, so I insisted I would stay in New Zealand. I was 17, but I was also very independent, and I had a full-time job -- I had secured a position as a secretary at a neon sign factory.
About a year later, I moved to Sydney. My boyfriend, Bruce, came with me. I had really missed my family. Dad even rang me up one night and said that if I didn’t come over to Australia pronto, he would come and drag me back. Bruce and I had visited my parents for a holiday not long before that phone call, and I remember how distraught my mother was, leaning into my father for comfort as we entered into customs. Dad decided then and there that he would make me come back and live in Australia.
Bruce and I married when I just turned twenty, but the marriage was to last only 4 years. I have lived in Sydney ever since.
After Bruce and I separated I moved in with Andrew, my second husband. Andrew was my dream, handsome, tall and extremely polite. He was magnificent and until he reads these words he will never know how much I loved him. Our marriage was to fail after Gary’s death, and to this day I do not know what possessed me to leave.
