Chapter 44 More Changes.

                                                           Chapter 44   More Changes

One day Pete rang me from work to say he was coming home to see the doctor because he was having trouble breathing. I thought he must have had a collapsed lung. We were both anxious, especially as his father had died suddenly at the age of 61 with heart disease.

    The doctor knew instantly what was wrong. "There's nothing wrong with your heart," he said, "Your breathlessness is caused by stress." We were stunned.

    That day he took one of his rare sick days and we sat together and discussed the problem. These days he would be granted stress leave, but no such privilege existed then. He had accumulated nine weeks of annual leave and he took it all to rest and recuperate. During that time we flew to Sydney to investigate a bookkeeping business, because Peter was casting about for something else to do. He felt he couldn't go on the way he'd been going in the ambulance. I was in agreement and supported everything he wanted to do.

    When we flew to Sydney to inspect the business and talk to the franchisor, five other couples arrived in Sydney with us, most of them in different professions, but with similar stress levels. We all wanted the bookkeeping to be a success, but we should have been warned by the signs that seemed so obvious with hindsight. There was no limousine to meet us at the airport as promised, and his office was dingy and not at all what we were led to expect. We should have got back on the plane and gone home again. It turned out to be the wrong time for positive thinking.

    But in the end, determined to turn our lives around, we all bought a franchise. Peter and I worked hard, walking miles and miles doing leaflet drops throughout our territory.

    During the time that Peter managed the bookkeeping business, I supported the family by working whenever possible. Sadly, I was already experiencing weakness in my legs, and suffering fatigue. I worked a lot at the residential centre in St Paul's terrace, a day centre catering for two mothers and their babies each day. I caught the train, alighting in The Valley and walking up the hill to the centre. 

    Almost on a daily basis I was feeling my disability becoming a fraction worse, but I said nothing to anyone and carried on as I had always done, pretending I was okay, struggling to walk up the stairs. (Fake it till you make it!) Apart from gradually increasing weakness in my quadriceps, I had increasing bladder.weakness.
   
    We tried to get the bookkeeping business started while Peter was on his holiday leave, but another jolt was in store for him. When the nine weeks was up and he returned to work, he found that his job was no longer in existence. In his absence the position of District Superintendent had been eliminated, and a work colleague had been put temporarily in charge. The powers-that-be decided that the impostor should stay there and Peter should go and work in rosters. It was the final insult.  (In my opinion, I don’t think he ever really recovered.) 

     Humiliated and crushed, he went to work in his new department. One day Pete's roster assistant answered the phone, and Peter heard a strangled cry. On the phone was the man’s desperately distraught wife, informing him that their son had been murdered. Returning home from work, she found her son in his bed. He had been stabbed many, many times. His throat had been slashed, and blood was everywhere in the bedroom. Because Peter was a witness to the ensuing anguish, he and another senior officer, as well as the officer-in-charge escorted him home.

    Apparently, the 16-year-old son was feeling sick and left school early, returning home. He was lying on his bed when he was disturbed by a group of young men intent on robbing the house. Because the boy recognized one of them, the murder resulted. It wasn't long before the police had  captured the perpetrators and they were imprisoned, but they wrecked a lot of lives that day.

    I don't suppose the man or his wife will ever recover from that sorrow, but after a few weeks Peter and I took them out to a movie and bought them dinner. The movie was Sleepless in Seattle, which started with a graveyard scene, and I remember thinking, 'Oh God, no!'  Anyway, at the end they seemed to enjoy the night out and they probably appreciated the fact that somebody cared.

    Peter stayed a short while in the rosters Department and then resigned from the ambulance to become a full-time bookkeeper. We threw everything we had into it, walking and driving miles to distribute information to promote it. Peter's franchise area covered five busy suburbs. We did everything we could to enlarge our business but unfortunately our franchisor was in the habit of moving the goalposts, imposing unexpected levies for advertising, which we never saw. We had about five constant customers for a while but then one after the other they fell away for one reason or another. Accountants  discouraged their clients from using a bookkeeping service, which didn't help.

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    When we moved into our own house the children moved to the Ferny Hill’s School because it was closer. The school was running adult education classes in the evenings to raise money, but they were desperate for a coordinator. and I thought it would be a good opportunity to get to know people in the area, and get to know my way around the school. I did the job for two years, making endless phone calls to engage tutors, arranging classrooms and class sizes, and supervising mothers who took the bookings. Peter assisted me as security, locking up the rooms after the classes were finished in the evenings.
   
    Peter had kept in touch with some of his friends in the ambulance. Eventually, he decided that he would have to, (in the face of worsening financial problems,) return to doing full-time work, preferably in the ambulance as that was the work he loved. One particular friend kept him informed of available jobs, and eventually he successfully attained a new position called the Duty Officer with a car supplied. In effect, he was manager of the rosters Department and his office was situated in the new location of the Emergency Services building. He enjoyed the work and had no interest in moving up the ladder again.

    At first he managed the Department alone, with the help of two typists. At the time of his retirement 12 years later, the rosters Department also consisted of three administration officers and an assistant manager. During his time there he created new computer programs and new roster systems and was given an award for his work with computers in the ambulance rostering department. It was an Australia Day Achievement award which was to be presented at Government House at an official ceremony. But Peter never really agreed with special awards because he said they never went to the right people. He refused to go.

    He retired on the 28th of December 2007 to be my carer, and by that stage, work ethics having deteriorated so badly, he was very glad to give the job away.

    In Child Health the full-time jobs were doled out according to how the charge sisters had got on with the trainees during their course. I finished training at the beginning of 1983, and with the benefit of hindsight, it is probably fortunate that I did not gain a full-time position because of my deteriorating health. At the time however, I was disappointed, but was assured there would always be plenty of relieving work.

    To be granted relief work at the time though, it was necessary to keep in touch with various centres where I was prepared to work. This meant phoning the sister-in-charge of various centres and asking if there was any work available, and could she ‘keep me in mind.’  If you did it often enough, they gave you work to get you off their backs! 

    Eventually I started getting days here and there. If I was called to work, my conscience wouldn’t let me say no, and I went to some very out of the way places. I ended up  in centres from as far away as Caboolture in the North, the bayside suburbs in the east, Samford in the north-west, and some suburbs across the city just over the Indooroopilly Bridge. I worked in places that were strange to me, like the old, antiquated Fortitude Valley,  where the centre had high ceilings, and large echoing rooms. When I worked at upmarket suburbs like Hamilton, Paddington or Ashgrove, which were old and charming, but now trendy and very expensive real estate, I wandered the streets at lunchtime admiring the antiquated buildings and old gardens. I found the architecture fascinating, and the houses varied according to the era in which they were built.

     I gained a lot of valuable experience at the residential centres of Clayfield and St Paul's Terrace too. I find it hard to believe I had the temerity to drive around in busy places like Hamilton and Paddington, but you do all sorts of things when you are young, well and full of confidence. I wonder what happens to our confidence as we grow older?

    After Pete’s mum moved in with us she took a trip to Cairns in far North Queensland on the train, (pensioners got a free trip once a year on the train to anywhere in Queensland,) and later on with some friends she travelled, partly by coach and partly by ship, to Tasmania. Ater a few years she lost all interest in going away. I had noticed for quite some time that she frequently repeated herself. That had been happening since before she came to live with us.
   
    Peter and I became concerned about her mental health and we made an appointment to see her doctor. We were vastly unimpressed with his response because he never once looked us in the eye, and that never went down well with Peter. The doctor advised us to get her a diary and ask her to keep a record of what she'd done during the day. After we got it I realized it was far too late for such measures, as it had the effect of demoralizing her because she could hardly ever remember what she'd done during the day, and it embarrassed her. I threw the diary away in disgust.

     Although she was happy living in the flat under the house, she got very lonely at times. At first she spent a lot of time knitting or crocheting, but then patterns became too difficult for her to follow. She loved going out and I took her on as many outings as I could, even to Bible study. I worked often which meant that I was coming in and out in the car a lot. 

    When she was still able to go out to the shops, the children went to a day-care mother in the next street. Always involved in lots of activities, the children also went to swimming lessons, piano classes, and speech and drama. I was one of the organizers at Steph’s school fete, but when I was late home, she rang the church, trying to find out where I was. People with dementia suffer a lot of anxiety when they aren't sure what is happening.

    With my work and the children’s activities, she witnessed the car coming in and out multiple times. “That car could go out on its own!”  She was watching a very different lifestyle to the one she’d lived.

    Peter and I delight in using her quaint old-fashioned sayings, such as, "Your hair looks like a yard of pump water!"

    Some of her sayings came from Pete’s father, for instance, "Look at the time, and not a baby in the house washed!" A little imagination soon lets you work out where they came from.

     After six years I realised her fridge contained almost no food. At least, none to speak of, (maybe a small amount of butter and bread, but that's all.) It seemed obvious that she was living on bread and butter and tea, as old people frequently do. At that stage I decided it was necessary for me to cook her meals, so, to her delight, she came upstairs and ate with us. In the end I was showering her too. In all she lived with us for about seven years.

    Typically with senile dementia, peoples’ minds go back to their past. In my mother-in-law’s childhood, most people didn't have a bathroom indoors, or independent transport. This was probably the reason why hair-washing was a three weekly affair. Hair washing was probably a big deal, requiring a lot of effort with  a cake of soap and a  hand basin of water, (or several hand basins of water.)

    Our problem was solved when I devised a plan, persuading her that at this time in her life she needed to be waited on a little bit, and as she could easily afford it, I would take her to the hairdresser once a week. It was a new experience but she loved it. A local hairdresser washed and blow-dried her hair every week, and occasionally trimmed it for her. It worked very well, easing the burden on me.

    At that time I also got her into the Shepherd Centre a few suburbs away, one day a week. It was a respite centre for elderly and disabled. In the first week she accused me of taking her to 'that place,' but after a few weeks, she got to love it and even got dressed to go on the wrong day some times. The Shepherd Centre was situated beside Hillbrook School where Stephanie was in grade nine. Steph included, some of the students went to the Shepherd Centre to do voluntary community work, which is how I became familiar with it. After a while the bus came to pick her up from home in the mornings and brought her home in the afternoons, a wonderful advantage for me as well.

    All during the early 90s I kept working for the Child Health Department up to three days a week. I worked a lot at the Clayfield residential centre, called Riverton, but I could feel my pelvis growing weaker and standing for any length of time became an issue. My bladder was weakened and I often left the wards in a hurry. I started wearing small incontinence pads and at times, (caught out by a sudden overflow,) was desperate enough to use huge wads of paper. For years I said nothing to anyone, muddling through on my own and pretending everything was okay. I discovered that wet patches didn't show too badly on a navy blue skirt, and more than once I had to try to dry off a dampened chair.

    After a while I confessed to some of the girls that I was having problems and explained about the M.S. They were understanding, but I felt I shouldn't be there unless I was fully capable of undertaking the work, and a lot of the time pretended I was fine. The hardest job was tackling the stairs. My quads were weakening, especially on the right leg. I battled on though, fighting fatigue and heavy, lethargic legs. My rule of thumb was still, 'fake it till you make it.'

    Day after day I reached home exhausted, where I still had to prepare dinner for the family, shower Pete's mum, and then clean up the kitchen. I longed for help with dishes, but determinedly wouldn't get a dishwasher. I knew if I tried to explain to the family how I felt it would sound like whinging and whining, and I was determined to try to prove that I could still manage everything.

    At Riverton they often gave me shifts on the phone service where I could sit down answering the phone. Child Health had a 1 800 number for out-of-town mothers to call in for advice. Mums called in from all over Queensland. Although I enjoyed it, in the end working on the phones also became too much. Other staff couldn't understand why sitting down all day didn't suit me. They couldn't feel my weak back or fatigue and they certainly couldn't feel my distress when I had to run to the toilet every hour, tense and worried that I wouldn't make it. I had to switch the phone over to the ward sisters if I left and was embarrassed to do it too often. Not only that, I dreaded the effort to walk. Many a time I went through personal crises, managing to cover it up without attracting attention. Thank God for that dark navy skirt!

    In 1995 I turned 50, and Pete surprised me with a trip to America to see and stay with Ann, my pen friend of 36 years, in Nebraska. We had five wonderful weeks sightseeing and living with Ann. Peter learned to drive on the right hand side of the road, we saw Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills, met all Ann's adult children and visited Boys-Town in Omaha. We all flew down to the Grand Canyon, which Ann hadn't seen before either. In the last week Ann came with us on a trip through the Rockies in Canada before we flew back to Australia. It was money well spent and I managed to get through with only one bladder disaster.

    Back home in Queensland, life reluctantly returned to normal for us. I started to become very environmentally aware and before recycling bins were ever distributed to the community, I did as much recycling as possible. I phoned Sims Metal at Northgate and found out what I had to do to recycle tin cans. By the time the recycling bins arrived from the Pine Rivers Shire Council, I had already put together a carton of clean flattened cans with labels removed. The guy at Sims Metal had told me that if the labels were not removed, more pollution than ever was created when the paper was burnt away before the metal could be reused. If the bins hadn't arrived when they did I would have had to deliver the box full of flattened cans to Sims Metal myself.

    Although it wasn't a rule of the council, I removed the labels from the cans before I put them in the recycling bin. Washing the cans was simple, but it upset Peter when he cut his hand on a piece of twisted metal left after the can opener.

    During this time I was taking hand building pottery lessons, which  I loved, but encroaching M.S. made life too difficult to continue on to wheel work. Clay is heavy, and the extra equipment was too awkward for me to carry around. However, I took some clay into the Shepherd Centre one day to help the carers involve some of the people with something different. We made simple little dishes. They enjoyed creating something unique, and I arranged the firing and glazing.

    My favourite subjects to mould with the clay were figures sitting on seats. I made three similar, (two old men on a seat,) and called them The Politician.) One time my daughter asked me to make a gift for one of her friends out of clay, and I made a copy of the girl and two of her friends sitting on one of the seats at school. The boy in the group had distinctive hair which hung down in his eyes, and I did my best to depict that. I often wonder if the girl still has that gift.

Chapter 43 Another New Start

                                                   Chapter 43 Another New Start

By the end of 1982 everything was happening at once. My training was coming to an end, and Peter's starting date at the State Councl loomed. In early January some of the Ambulance men from our centre helped Pete and I pack our stuff. Pete backed the six ton hired moving van into the backyard and I watched in awe as our heavy home-made bookcase swayed on a rope on its way over the balcony railing. I worked all day packing and was too exhausted at the end of the day to face my scheduled nightshift. I rang work and took two sickies. There is no doubt in my mind I would have been sick if I had tried to work those two nights!

     In many ways I hated leaving the Sunshine Coast, especially the children’s school and all our activities, but if the man of the house is unhappy...ain’t nobody happy! Not only that, but Ashley had become addicted to pinball at the parlour just down the street, and drugs and bikers were moving into the area.

    Our close friends insisted on coming with us to help unpack at the other end. Peter drove. Derek sat in the passenger seat with his wife on his knee. Although the seats were meant to accommodate two people, I sat in the middle, with my  knees pressed hard against the gear stick. The children sat in the well at the back of the seat, gleeful to be in their own little cubby house. They nursed the budgie in its cage, and Snuffles, who sat gasping with his mouth open and his tongue hanging out all the way to Brisbane. Peter had no way of knowing if we were overloaded, and worried all the way to the weighbridge on the outskirts of Brisbane. When we got to it, I shrank to leprechaun size, and our excess passengers stayed quiet under threat of annihilation until we were past the inspectors.

      Peter’s work at the State Council offered some unexpected benefits. Peter had an official car to drive, which left our car free for me to use. He enjoyed the work there and got on well. One of the ladies from the office had a friend in the clothing business who gave her regular access to the warehouse. She liked Peter and wasn't happy until she found out my dress size.

    From then on Peter arrived home regularly with a selection of clothes over his arm. I had never been so well dressed in all my life. Peter insisted on buying them for me because he hated taking them back and disappointing the woman. I had a lovely selection of dresses, skirts, and tailored suits and enjoyed dressing up and going out. I was tall and rather slim.

     What is it they say? “If you’ve got it, flaunt it!”nuary of 1986.

    When we first returned to Brisbane we rented a small, wooden house in Ferny Hills, on the north-western side of Brisbane. We had decided to settle in Ferny Hills to be near Peter's mother at Oxford Park. The rented house was built on the side of a very steep hill with a little bridge to the front door. To put the car in the garage under the house, it was necessary to back down the hill, because if you drove in frontwards you would never get out. Thank Heaven I’d had experience of backing, because the needle reached ‘extremely difficult’ on the backing metre. As I approached the house in the car I drove as close as possible to the left-hand side of the road to pull up, (across the road from the house.)  If I was in the right position I could then back into our driveway which almost immediately dropped away steeply down the hill. Towards the bottom of the driveway, I turned the wheel sharply, backing into the garage under the house.

    One day I had both our mothers in the back of the car. It was the first time they’d visited us since we’d moved back, and for devilment I didn't warn them about the adventure of backing into the garage.  As the back of the car dropped over the steep hillside they found themselves tipped backwards and staring up at the sky. When we were safely in the garage and the engine was turned off, they looked at each other in shock, and I had had my fun!  After that they insisted on getting out before I drove down!

    The steep backyard of that house had been terraced with about three terraces, and one night poor Snuffy must have taken a leap off one of the terraces. Unfortunately, trees planted on the lower levels had been staked with sharp pointed metal stakes.

      “Ooohh, what are we going to do?” wailed the children, as our old cat lay helplessly on the ground with half of his abdominal contents exposed.

     “Well, he’s got a 50% chance of survival,” the vet informed us after his operation.

     True to form, Snuffles never looked back. Within a few weeks he was as good as new.

    In October of 1983, we moved into a house that was purchased between us and Peter's mother.  She sold her house in Oxford Park and came to live with us because she didn't want to live on her own anymore, and we were her only family. The combined finances allowed us to buy a three-bedroom high brick home with room underneath to build a flat. When it was built, Pete wallpapered it for her and she had security grills installed on all windows and the sliding glass doors. The flat had a lounge-kitchenette, and the bedroom had built-in wardrobes. She brought enough of her furniture from Oxford Park to furnish the flat and after carpeting the floors, she was very comfortable, often spending her time knitting and watching TV.

    One day Stephanie and her little friend from next door, appeared at the front door with pleading looks on their faces, and a kitten each in their arms.

     “Mummy, can I have this little kitten... pleeese?? The man said they’re going to be drowned in 20 min if somebody doesn’t take them!”  Heavy sigh. Thanks ‘man.’

      The cat had kittens. One kitten took up residence, (too pretty to give away.) Alma,  Pete’s mum, favoured the new addition, often sneaking little tidbits of food to her at the back door. It gave her companionship, and I often found the two of them sitting in the sun together just inside her back door.

    At the time we bought the house, eight months after moving to Brisbane, I was relieving two or three days a week for Child Health. Pete's mum liked to go shopping, catching the early workers’ train at 8:30 a.m. She window shopped for most of the day, ate lunch out, and then returned home with the workers again at five o'clock. She may have only purchased two balls of wool.

    Six months later I started evening classes at Kelvin Grove High School in senior English. I loved it, even though I was one of the oldest in class. Once again at exam time I was petrified, but to my great delight I achieved a six out of a possible seven score and topped the class. After that, I tried to do ancient history by correspondence. Alas, studying on my own was something I was not prepared for. I lasted until lesson two.

    After three years, Peter became deputy superintendent of Brisbane city.

     When a new progressive superintendent replaced the old retiring boss, Peter enjoyed his job more than ever. In those days the superintendent was answerable only to the Minister for health. People who'd been treated well by ambulance staff during their later years, often showed their appreciation by bequeathing sums of money to the ambulance for specific purposes, such as defibrillators (maybe if they had had a heart attack for instance,) or perhaps a new ambulance vehicle.

    One of Peter's main functions was to deal with staff, hiring and firing. He also dealt with patients’ complaints, and was nothing if not a diplomat. A real Dale Carnegie, when there was a complaint he drove out to the person’s home and interviewed them. As a general rule, before he left their home they would be eating out of his hand. But he never shrank from his responsibility if a staff member required disciplinary action either. I admired his capability.

      Because Queensland had a reputation for being a little out of touch, pilots on flights to Brisbane were frequently heard to announce to their passengers, “We’re now crossing the border into Queensland; please put your watches back an hour, and your lives back 20 years.” Queensland was the only state without daylight saving. Then we became infamous all over Australia as details of corruption surfaced during the Fitzgerald enquiry. Joe Bjelke Peterson, the Premier, spent many successful years as the leader, until that famous turmoil. Perhaps he stayed too long.

      Big changes came at the Queensland elections. The Labor Party won with a 24 seat majority. Wayne Goss was the new Premier and he felt that big changes were needed. (Everybody felt that big changes were needed.) Unfortunately, the Labour Party didn't have a solid plan for change, so they followed the pattern set by New South Wales, when their government changed. It was a pity that they also made most of the mistakes that were made in New South Wales as well. People were put into positions they knew nothing about and told to 'change things!' They were all given budgets to make these changes. When creating the new structure, criteria for the various positions to be applied for were compiled on the spot. I was working in child health at the time and both Peter and I were undergoing similar stresses because of all the changes caused by the restructuring process. I was working casual so it didn’t affect me as much, but I could see what others were suffering.

    Every government department in Queensland went through the same thing: teachers were going through enormous stress; ambulance officers became confused and depressed; I heard comments about similar experiences in the public curators office and in the education system. A man we knew worked in corrective services and came to church stressed about changes he couldn’t understand. It seemed that right across the board government departments were being restructured. (Unfortunately, often by amateurs). The thing to do when applying for a new job, (or the job you were doing at present which you may have been doing for years,) to satisfy the academics in charge, was to have pieces of paper showing a diploma at least, but preferably a degree of some kind. Everybody had to have a degree in something to work at something. When I went to school the lower achievers became shop assistants, nursing assistants, or similar, and did the jobs very well. Now, shop assistants needed a degree in retailing.

    When the labour government took office, the ambulance had millions of dollars in trust funds. In three months they were struggling to find a dollar. It had all disappeared. No doubt most of it went on the higher wages demanded to pay the new hierarchy. We were seeing the building of a huge bureaucracy. Not hard to build when you're hell bent on change, but almost impossible to dismantle in following years. After all, who wants to make a law to do themselves out of a job?

    Peter had started studying a business degree at the TAFE College, and bureaucracies were one of the things they studied.

    “It’s easy to create a bureaucracy,” he told me,”But it’ll take generations to untangle this mess, and many years before common sense is an asset to the job again.”

    Common sense was uncool; political correctness ruled supreme in every walk of life. Fortunately we all became more aware of  racism at this time, one of the better outcomes. It seems to be a worldwide trend; it isn't just Australia.

    In the child health department alone in the early 90s, $4 million was spent on employing a consultant to work out how money could be saved in the department! (It seemed that in some places lunacy ruled supreme!)

    It was widely acknowledged later that despite all Joh’s problems with corruption, he was a master of money management, and left an affluent state behind when he retired. Like many successful leaders he stayed too long, and in the staying, he obliterated the sight of his good management and replaced it with boredom, dishonestly and disappointment.

      Pete’s old boss had been appointed acting assistant commissioner and given power to make changes he was ill-prepared for. When he finally understood how much power he had he became a little heady.

     Staff everywhere were bewildered. University graduates with no experience in the field were making the decisions in many cases. When you did apply for your job, the selection criteria often bore little resemblance to the requirements of the job in hand. To pander to the university graduates’ ravenous greed for challenging rhetoric, it became necessary in a job application to supply reams of paper containing a maximum of new and trendy expressions, and multiple words and catchphrases that were unfamiliar to the workers doing the jobs.

    New words, and as many as you could fit in, impressed the selection panels and became part of our language. Words such as proactive, strategies and synergy, and countless phrases such as lateral thinking were dreamed up and influenced the selectors. Multiple committees were now deemed necessary to run departments. Managers reorganised priorities and staff  gathered together for role play, and needed frequent training sessions. Patients, now called ‘clients,’ played second fiddle while the staff did their ‘trainings’ on long weekends, often staying in plush palaces and luxury resorts; (all paid for by someone with a fat budget or a packet of money they needed to spend.) The modern educators felt everyone was so highly trained, they should be allowed self accountability.

    In the reshuffle, Peter applied and was successful in obtaining the superintendent’s old job, now called District Superintendent. He was in charge of Central Brisbane, which incorporated the City, and five northern suburbs.

    Unfortunately, being the Superintendent of Brisbane did not now hold the authority that it once did. The position was previously looked upon as the head of the ambulance, answerable only to the Minister. Now the suptintendent was at the bottom of a large hierarchy, which, level by level required a large amount of money just to be administered. Of course each level had its own budget (and naturally spent every cent of it in the fiscal year!) 

    Downward pressure to perform, and especially to SAVE money, created dangerously expanding pressure cookers. Above himself, Peter now had the Minister, the commissioner, two deputy commissioners, and the assistant commissioner in his region. Altogether around Queensland there were five assistant commissioners appointed to the five newly formed regions. All these positions were highly paid and it wasn't long before 'head of department' budgets were eating up available monies. Bureaucracies are an expensive commodity. I could see Peter was feeling the tension as his stress levels soared. He arrived home looking anxious, frowning unconsciously. The new Deputy Commissioner accused him of sitting back and letting the world go by, and of not putting his heart into the work. (He was probably right there!)

    In an effort to save money in the nursing world and to support another newly created hierarchy, nurses were cut from the bedside. It was the same in the ambulance, and men were cut from the roadside. So in the end it was the patients who suffered and the staff taking care of them became more stressed as there were fewer of them. Old priorities were tumbling fast.

    The newly appointed Ambulance Commissioner, who brought with him his fancy qualifications, was heard to say one night at a function, "The trouble with Queensland ambulance officers is, they worry too much about their patients." I rest my case!

    In his efforts to save money, Peter discontinued the supply of milk to the men for their tea and coffee in the kitchen. It sounds pathetic, but it is an indication of how desperate he was to find some way of saving money for them.

Chapter 42 Getting Educated

                                                      Chapter 41   Getting Educated

 During our son’s grade one class, though he appeared to be listening to the teacher, because of his daydreaming, she referred us to the guidance officer. He assured us that Ashley was a bright student who should, "be in the top three of any class he is ever in." 

     “He’s very good at maths, too,” he asserted.

    I'm afraid we took him literally, and expected our son to be in the top three of his class, and it was some years before we came to the realisation that it takes more than academic ability to achieve results.

    Unfortunately, we imposed unrealistic expectations on poor Ashley, and no matter what he did at school, it was never quite good enough for us. By the time he reached grade six though, we had read a wonderful book called 'Hide or Seek' by James Dobson, which taught us a lot about the need for a child's self-esteem. I have since given the book to our son who is now a father of three, (and I hope one day he reads it!)

    In grade two they were experimenting with an open class room. That meant there were two grades in the one big room separated only by a curtain. It was okay some times, but if one class was doing music, the other class might be doing maths, and any child with poor concentration had no chance of concentrating. In an effort to improve matters, his teacher sat Ashley at the front of the class where she could keep an eye on him. When she saw him daydreaming, she tapped on the desk in front of him, and pointed up to the blackboard. I was grateful for her assistance and understanding, but then we had another complication.

    Ashley developed night terrors. He woke in the middle of the night, calling out and crying in fear. Peter and I rushed into his room and tried to wake him, but we’d immediately become part of his mind picture.

     Taking me by the arm and pointing up, he’d say fearfully, "Up there, up there!  The board, the board!" Then his arm covered his face as if he was sheltering from the board crashing down on his head. Finally he woke, but almost immediately went back to sleep, and in the morning he had no memory of what had happened in the night. One night Peter and I were just drifting off to sleep about ten p.m., when we heard the front door shut. We jumped out of bed only to find our son returning from goodness knows where. The front door led down the stairs to the street. Without a word he got back into bed and immediately was asleep. Thank Heaven he only did that once (that we know of,) and we’ll never know where he went that night, if anywhere.

    In Grade Three things changed again. When I spoke to yet another young female teacher about his poor concentration, she brushed it aside, saying she hadn't noticed anything.  One day, worried by his poor home work performance, I drove to the school to speak to her again. When I got to the door of her classroom, I found the room in disarray. About half of the children were not at their desks, but were moving around the room in all directions, fooling and playing, while the teacher calmly stood at the board writing with the chalk. I was appalled! And Peter and I felt frustrated and angry by our son's lack of progress and the apparent disinterest of this teacher.

    We had been discussing the possibility of his attending the new Lutheran school in the area. So at the beginning of Grade Four we made the change, and the following year Stephanie started there as well in Grade One. The difference was staggering. If I drove up to the school during the day, everything was quiet and only the birds could be heard over in the bush. With the quiet and peace in the class room Ashley's work improved.

    I was so happy to have them both start there, because we’d encountered problems with Stephanie’s preschool year as well. At three she’d attended a beautiful kindergarten with two loving, nurturing teachers. But at the state preschool where the 4-year-olds went, I found the teacher treated the little ones harshly, and by the third week I had to drag my daughter in to the room as she cried and pulled back in fear. I was incensed. This was a little girl who had always been happy to get rid of me as fast as possible when she arrived at the door of the day-care centre or the kindergarten. I took her out of the preschool that day and was lucky to get a cancellation in her old private kindy preschool class. Stephanie has only pleasant memories of those first two years.

   Peter and I were so happy that she had a beautiful young teacher in Grade One at the Lutheran School who was simply born to teach little children.

    During Grade Three we took Ashley to a place in Brisbane called ANSUA, which stands for: A New Start for the Under Achiever. Specialising in children's development, they enrolled him in a two-year course. As a baby he had spent long hours in a walker and too much time propped in front of the television. This resulted in lack of tactile stimulation which babies spending more time on the floor get naturally. During his assessment with ANSUA they asked him to draw a person, and he drew a figure without hands. They explained that this was because he had a lack of sensation in his hands and so his brain was not aware that he had hands at all. 

    Every day before school we spent half an hour doing cross crawling exercises with him and other tactile things like stroking the palms of his hands and his arms with a paintbrush. At a later assessment he again drew a person and this time the person had hands and fingers. I was elated and cried with joy.

    We did see some improvement, though not a dramatic one,  in his academic results, but the move to the Lutheran School was wonderful. If I drove up to the school for any reason to approach the teachers, I noticed that all was quiet in the school class rooms. The children in Ashley's grade four and five classes sat quietly doing their lessons, undisturbed by noise from outside. His teachers patiently listened to my appeals for help and appeared to fully understand his concentration problem and did their best to keep him engaged with the work. His behaviour also improved. The teachers were encouraging, praising him when he produced good results.
          
                                                                           --0--

    Meanwhile at the ambulance centre things had changed. Two years before, Peter had become very restless and dissatisfied with his life and this led to depression and what we refer to now as his midlife crisis. The family all attended Laurie Power’s chiropractic clinic, and because of knowledge I’d gained, when the children had minor infections or colds, I now restrained myself from taking them to the medical doctor for antibiotics, and I learned to be cautious about handing out analgesics, like aspirin and baby Panadol. For ear ache we used onion juice, which settled the pain and infection quickly. I was learning so much about good nutrition and good health practices generally. 

    Laurie used Kinetics and I sent a hair sample to a laboratory in the USA for testing of heavy metals, pesticides etc, which showed I had an excess of mercury, cadmium, and lead in my body, to name a few, and the pesticide arsenic. Dad had used arsenic on the farm to bait dingoes, and I'd broken thermometers when nursing, inadvertently releasing the mercury. I had also messed about with mercury in the laboratory during my high school days. I'd found it fascinating, watching little balls of silver roll together to form one big blob. It would be some time after that before I learned that anything on the skin is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream, including pesticides, petrochemicals and heavy metals.

    At a clinic visit to Laurie one day I told him about Peter's depression, and his advice was to go downstairs to the bookshop and buy a book called Passages by Gayle Sheehy.                 

    In the Lioness Club we often conducted lamington drives to raise money for charity. We made the lamingtons by ordering large slabs of plain cake from a bakery, cutting it into squares about 3" x 3," dipping the squares into a liquid chocolate mixture which we made from cocoa, water and sugar, then rolling them in coconut. When the lamingtons were ready we packaged them into half dozen lots ready for sale. The whole process took a few hours.

     Just at this time, the Lioness Club was having one of its lamington drives, and I called in to assist on the way home. By the time I had delivered some orders, collected the children from school, and returned to the ambulance, most of the day had passed. As I backed into our car space behind the ambulance centre, Peter came out from his office and exploded in anger because I’d had the car away for so long and he required the tools from the boot. 

    Silently I returned upstairs. I'd had a big day and I burst into tears, throwing the book down on the kitchen bench and forgetting about it.

    When her father returned upstairs, four year old Stephanie remarked indignantly, "Daddy, you spoiled our day. You made Mummy cry!" This had the effect of deflating his anger balloon. 

    He came into the kitchen, picked up the book from the bench top and asked, "Did you buy this for me?"  His remorse was touching.

    The book turned out to be life changing for him, and as he read he frequently  remarked, "This is just like me!  This is just how I feel!”

    I had been accepted to do my Child Health training in Brisbane, beginning in August of 1982, but before I started training I had to submit a medical certificate. A word in the ear of my trusty chiropractor friend pointed me in the direction of a trusty medical doctor.

    After a thorough examination he asked, "Is there any reason why you can't do this training? You look very fit to me.”

     I answered, “I can’t wait to get started.”    

    Towards the end of 1982 Peter got a job in the Ambulance State Council. A new job was enough to change his outlook on life. I felt it was the hand of God. The State Council was the government body which controlled the running and finances of the ambulance for all the centres of Queensland. He would commence the job as assistent secretary in February of 1983.

    My course ran for six months and I lived in Brisbane, mostly with Peter's mother, while I underwent the training and exams for Child Health. We didn't have a second car so I rode a pushbike to work, unless I could get a lift in a car with one of the other students. That meant a warmer ride to work as it was August and I was cold on the bike. Not only that, but the other students treated me like a bit of an eccentric when I was riding the bike, shaking their heads and smiling benignly.

    The six months course would be completed in January of 1983, and until I was officially finished training I was determined my MS would not interfere. No one in our class knew about it, but I stuck closely to my diet and again attracted curiosity because of my eccentric ways. Nevertheless I was healthy and felt well throughout the course.   

    The hardest thing of all was missing the children and Peter. When I had a couple of days off I caught a Skenners’ coach back home. Those trips were the longest two hours I've ever endured. I’d ache to get there, pondering the passing scenery to pass the time, but when we reached the last town  half an hour from home, there was a half hour stop to relieve the madness of the poor addicted smokers. It drove me insane...so near and yet so far! And then the final phenomenon had to be endured before the bus at last pulled out to continue. The smokers out on the footpath deeply inhaled one long, last, sucking breath and as the coach wheels rolled forward, they rushed to stamp out the butts and leap onto the steps of the coach, exhaling as they scrambled for their seats, giving us all a second-hand sample of their addiction.

    On days off I used the time to study for the exams, as well as catch up with things at home. I walked the beach alone, not seeing the beauty, but trying to memorise information about vitamins--where was vitamin E found and what foods contained iron etc. And I memorised commercial formulas,  cows’ milk formula recipes, and how to calculate the calories a baby needed per kilogram body weight per day. It felt overwhelming...so many years since I had studied for an exam!

    As far as possible during my training I stuck closely to the diet, but one day during a toddler clinic, I had to run the gauntlet of the female doctor’s disapproval of my tendency to use honey instead of sugar. 

    I tried to explain about the advantages of raw honey over sugar but she cut me off curtly saying, "Makes no difference!  Makes no difference! It’s still sugar." So I gave up and kept my knowledge to myself from then on.

    When I was within only days of sitting for the final exams my anxiety levels reached a new high. I couldn't eat, but at meal times just drank camomile tea, the only thing that would settle the butterflies in my stomach. The 'system' gave us a pass or fail, no 'in-betweens', and as they used the Bell-curve for marking, there were always two or three unfortunates who failed. Thank God I passed. It hadn't been easy. Because I was 37 I was one of the oldest in the class and before I finished the training some of the more senior staff made it quite clear they thought I was too old for the job. I foolishly let it out that it had been 10 years since I did any nursing and they made derogatory remarks in my hearing about that too.

    I was embarrassed and self-conscious, partly about my age, but also, having to keep quiet about my medical condition. I always felt like an impostor. I tried to keep a low profile in regard to the diet, to attract as little attention as possible. It only worked to a degree. 

    Girls often said, shaking their heads in disbelief, "What do you eat that stuff for?"  Or, "You’re funny..... the things you eat!"

    Or even worse, "Oh yuk!  How can you eat that?"

Chapter 41 Stretching the Horizons

                                                Chapter 41 Stretching the Horizons
  
I’d had positive health results by consulting a chiropractor in the past, both for myself and for our son, and one I told about the M.S who had just returned from America before our last transfer, made a statement that would literally change my life.

    He said, "If anyone can help you, Laurie Power can." Luckily for me, Laurie Power was a chiropractor in Nambour on the Sunshine Coast who had also not long returned from the United States. He had also studied nutrition and other allied health courses while doing his chiropractic studies. He was an holistic healer.

    We loved life at the coast, and living in the fastest growing centre in Queensland in the early eighties, as the population increased, we also saw new doctors arrive to establish practices. Peter and I got to know and like one of these new doctors who set up rooms nearby, and so we discussed the need for me to have a tubal ligation. We had moved to the coast in January and the operation took place in June at the Selangor Private Hospital. Unfortunately, little Stephanie was sick at the same time and ended up in the Nambour General Hospital with a chest infection.

    Both my mother and Peter's mother, Alma, stayed at the ambulance house to help look after the children while I was out of action. One day they took the bus to Nambour from the coast to visit me in Selangor and Stephanie in the Nambour General, and when they left to go home, unfortunately, because it was just after three pm, the bus they had to take was also a school bus. The two of them sat there together in a seat unable to say a word to each other because of the level of noise from the childrens’ enthusiastic chatter.

    Eventually, unable to control herself any longer, Peter's mother stood up, and facing them, yelled in a loud voice, "Shut up!"  The noise ceased abruptly, but almost immediately resumed, and it was as if nothing had happened.

    Astounded by her impulsive actions back at the ambulance house that afternoon, both Alma and Mum laughed often, not only at her stand, but at the uselessness of it! Of course, every time they thought of the incident after that they dissolved into uncontrollable laughter.

    Stephanie was discharged before me and all was normal by the time I returned home.

    But Man later said to me, "Pete brought the little thing home and put her down on the floor and let her walk up those long stairs all by herself! I just wanted to take her in my arms and carry her."  Steph proudly carried her tiny school bag.

     I found Laurie Power’s chiropractic practice in an arcade in Nambour, and I made an appointment.

    On my first visit after a full examination, he said, "Well, we are prepared to accept you as a patient, and we are going to rebuild your body." 

    He gave me a full explanation of his work. A holistic healer, he treated all aspects of the body, not just the spinal system. This included diet and nutrition which formed fifty percent of the treatment, rest and relaxation, spinal adjustments which took care of the nervous system, and mental attitude. He offered to discuss spiritual matters if I wished. Basically, I was hugely impressed and elated. I felt saved! (At least physically.)

    At the time I was very run down. I felt tired and miserable most of the time. I screamed at the children like a fish wife, and Peter and I were having frequent arguments, as I was irritable, impatient and slept badly.

    But when I met Laurie Power I was absolutely inspired by what he had to say and I took the new treatment 100% seriously. At first I wouldn't even eat when we went out on a social occasion unless it was something from my diet sheet. Eventually Laurie explained to me that if I was out I needed to relax and have the meal that was available. 

    "Otherwise," he said, "you only make your life miserable."

    However, although I relaxed about the social occasions, I followed everything else Laurie said to the letter. There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to recover, I knew I was going to get well.
   
    As well as the diet, he prescribed a large number of vitamins and mineral supplements. These were quite expensive, but I gave them top priority. Every day Peter came upstairs for his lunch, and in an endeavour to manage the budget, we ate frugally on many days. Baked beans, sardines, and toasted cheese sandwiches were common lunches. 

    All this time I was learning more and more about nutrition from Laurie, and sometimes went to lectures at his rooms. I soaked up the new knowledge like a sponge. His enthusiasm was infectious and unlike Peter I wanted to spread the knowledge. I shared what I knew and I spoke to anyone who would listen. Unfortunately though, I found many people were not ready to listen and most were not interested in changing their own lifestyles. I couldn't understand why doctors didn't have this knowledge. If I mentioned anything about diet to a doctor they immediately clammed up, and put up an invisible wall. Their manner became restless and their eyes dropped. Sometimes, they stumbled over their words and muttered about knowledge not being proved and the dangers of such and such.

    I gradually came to treat all doctors with suspicion. I couldn't help comparing their lack of insight into the body with the ability Laurie and his co-workers had to assess a health situation.

    When the chiropractors examined the body they saw it like they were reading a road map, but doctors had to operate so they could look inside, or test the skin all over for numbness, or take multiple x-rays. As time went on my dislike of the medical profession grew and my level of trust and respect for them diminished.

    These days acupuncturists have become so popular that they have gained a new respect even from the medical profession. I believe you can get their fees refunded by Medicare. Alternative health is now referred to as 'complementary medicine.'

    The main focus of my new diet was to avoid processed food, refined foods such as white flour and sugar, tea and coffee and alcohol, and refined oils, now called ' trans-fats,' and ‘recently discovered.’of course.

    I bought stone ground whole grain flour and whole grain rice. I learned to bake my own bread from pure wholemeal flour as pure wholemeal bread could not be bought, and the concept of organics was in its infancy. I ordered fructose through a chemist we knew as you couldn't buy it in the health shops at the time and I was a bit of a 'sweet tooth', so I used it instead of cane sugar. But it wasn't long before I learned to use honey instead of the fruit sugar. Honey was allowed, but only natural raw honey, (not processed or heated honey.)

    Although I had never been a chocolate eater, considering it too expensive for me and 'not good for you' anyway, I bought carob instead of chocolate. Eventually I learned to enjoy unsweetened food more anyway, and still do today. While we lived at the Sunshine Coast, one of my favourite breakfasts was cooked brown rice, sprinkled thickly with sesame seeds, coconut, chopped nuts, or any one of a number of other seeds, and moistened with apple juice.

    I loved this new way of eating and enjoyed the new foods tremendously.
Laurie Power didn't know everything there was to know about health, but he sure knew a lot, and he never failed to give me a sensible answer to my many questions. Also he inspired me with the enthusiasm to start reading and learning more about the wonderful world of health. I was totally energised and couldn't get the new knowledge fast enough. I read books, books, and more books.

    Laurie had warned me that my health would go backwards in little slips every now and then but each time I recovered I would go further ahead, feeling better and better until I reached optimal health. The thing was though, I felt so inspired by his knowledge and enthusiasm for this new way of living and embraced my new way of life so diligently, that I started to go ahead in health with no slip-backs at all. 

    Laurie couldn’t believe the speed of my recovery, and whenever he had a new assistant chiropractor working in his rooms he brought them in to meet "our miracle patient."

    With the coming of the new diet, came a new era in my life. I was content and happy, infused with new energy and enthusiasm for living. I’d never felt so well and so full of strength. I woke at six every morning, changed into my bathers and headed for the surf, where I had a short swim. I adored being able to walk just a short block to the beach. When I returned to the house I showered and dressed and by the time the children were getting out of bed, I had their lunches cut for school and packed in their bags, and their breakfast waiting for them.

    I had patience. Gone was the screaming at the children and the fighting with Peter. On weekends when we took walks along the beach, I was the one out in front leading the others.  Sometimes I took the camera and photographed the children on the rocks.

    It wasn't long before Peter became president of the Lions Club, which meant that I was president of the Lions Ladies. In the middle of that year the Lions Ladies became a Lioness club and I was their inaugural president. I also joined Nambour Forum, a very small, friendly public speaking club. Most of the members were there for the same reason and that was to gain some personal confidence. Although nervous, I loved being a part of that club. And, while I was president of the Lioness club, because of the small membership, I was also president of the Forum club. It was a six-month stint which boosted my confidence enormously.

    It sounds an impressive line up but really, the truth is a lot of it happened by accident, and I had very little confidence in myself. 

    At the Lioness meetings I often berated myself in front of the others over some silly little thing, "Oh I'm so stupid!" I often said.

    One of my friends, a dear sweet young woman, always reprimanded me for it, saying, "Gayle!  Don't say that!  You are not stupid!"
            
    Laurie had  said, "From now on your life should be sedentary, not too many highs and lows." But I felt invincible and wanted to take on the world. 

    As well as my involvement with the clubs, I did the usual run around with the children to swimming lessons, calisthenics, and school events. I worked behind the scenes with the Lioness club, making scones and lamingtons for stalls to raise money.

    In fact I had so much enthusiasm for living that I took swimming lessons myself, joining an adult class which I enjoyed tremendously. While we lived there I finally learned to swim properly and could actually manage four lengths of a 12.5 m pool all in one go! One day I scared the daylights out of the instructor by taking it upon myself to dive in. Without realising it at first, I had done a complete somersault under the water and must have come within a hair's breadth of hitting my head on the solid wall of the pool. When I came up for air she was ready to dive in after me and I was banned from diving ever again! 

    Unfortunately I burnt the candle at both ends, lost weight, and in time became run down.

    After three years Peter was not only getting restless but also getting run down. He was the officer in charge with only two staff to assist him and he was on call every night too.  Never a good sleeper, I was more alert to the front doorbell than he was.

      Because of his height, Peter slept from corner to corner of our bed, which meant that I slept in the top triangle. It wasn't common at that time for anyone to have a queen size or king-size bed, and like most other married couples, we had an ordinary double bed. To make matters worse, during her toddler years, Stephanie frequently came into our bed at night. Our bedroom window looked over the footpath, and being a very light sleeper, the noise of passers-by kept me awake for hours. If I heard voices in the street, I’d be wondering if they were going to ring the doorbell. If they paused and had a discussion outside the building I’d often wake Peter, telling him I thought someone needed help. 

    Sometimes they did--sometimes they didn’t. Peter would likely respond sleepily, "Let them ring the doorbell," and drop back asleep.

    Frequently we were woken by Southern or English visitors who had spent too long on the beach. Commonly it would be eleven o'clock or midnight and the pain of a vicious sunburn from a too-long stay in a hot Queensland sun would, by that hour, be unbearable, and in desperation they came to us for help. The ambulance had this 'magic solution,' possibly a combination of methylated spirits and potassium permanganate, which relieved the pain immediately.

    We were not long settled in when an accident occurred at the end of our street in which a young man on a motorcycle had overturned and was badly injured. Within a matter of days there was a second accident in our street, practically in front of the ambulance. A man was driving a backhoe and took the corner too fast, resulting in the machine overturning and crushing his skull under the roll bars. I was a bit shell-shocked, but thankfully this rate of disaster in the immediate vicinity didn't continue. By this time however, we could see that life was never going to be dull here! But unfortunately there would be some very distressing moments.

    Two doors up from the ambulance lived a couple with two small children. I always thought they were a little bit 'hippy' because the mother mostly wore long dresses, wore her hair long and loose, and they ate sprouts and tofu, (very unusual at the time.) One night the bearded husband arrived at the front door in great agitation. He called out to Peter that his baby had stopped breathing and they needed help urgently. Peter climbed out of bed and started to get dressed. I yelled at him to put on his dressing gown and go.

    He couldn't believe the sight that greeted him when he got to the house. The wife was obviously in such agitation that all sense of propriety was forgotten. There she was in the shower with the baby clutched to her chest and not a stitch of clothing on either of them. Apparently the baby had had a febrile convulsion, and after a preliminary examination Peter took them to hospital. I lay awake until he returned.

    On the other side of our street, on a corner, was a fast food outlet called The Chuck Wagon. It opened at all hours of the day and late into the night and naturally was frequented by the younger population, who could not leave the place without squealing their car tyres in a cloud of blue smoke as they negotiated the corner. It often happened when we were in bed at night and I envisaged being stuck at the ambulance on my own and having to cope with a severe car accident alone. I had no wish to test my ageing nursing skills to that extent!

    Another incident occurred, however, which affected me very badly at the time. It was about five o'clock one evening. Mum was visiting and she and I were upstairs with the children and alone at the centre. Peter had taken a patient to Nambour Hospital, and was still away. Mick, the other ambulance officer on duty, was at Kawana Waters, further down the coast, selling lucky envelopes from the little lucky envelope van.

    I heard the front doorbell ring, and leaving Mum in charge of the children, I hurried down to answer it. There I was confronted by a gentleman who was assisting a young man of eighteen with a dreadful wound in his upper right arm, such as I had never seen in my life. Blood was literally gushing out and the first thing the young man said was, "Could I have a drink of water?" Shocked, and needing to gather my wits, I turned and raced back up the stairs where I grabbed a cup of water and flew back down. Although he gulped down the water, it was only seconds before, weakened by loss of blood, he collapsed into unconsciousness, going down onto the concrete of the plant room floor. The colour had drained from his skin, and he lay there pale and still.

    Trembling with dread, I flew into action. First I rang the main centre at Nambaour, trying to find Peter, and was told he was still in the Nambour area, about to return. The senior officer wanted to have a social chat, but eaten up with impatience, I'm afraid I must have hung up in his ear. I knew Peter could not possibly return in time to save the young man's life.

    Next I called the doctor on call and spoke to his wife who told me her husband was somewhere on Buderim Mountain already visiting a patient. Again, she felt bad and wanted to explain at length. It was probably only seconds but it felt like hours.

    About 100 m from the ambulance centre in a new group of shops our family doctor had a practice. We’d got to know him quite well and he also had a daughter named Stephanie. During one of our conversations he had assured me that if ever I was in trouble and couldn't find the doctor on call, I was welcome to call him at home. 

    Like a drowning man clutching for a lifeline, I called his number and was answered by his wife. I think she knew by the sound of my voice that it was critical.

    She made no reply but immediately gave the phone over to her husband and he also wasted no words. "I'll come straight up," he said. (Later, I found out that he and his wife were in the middle of a large Chinese meal with guests)

    Meanwhile, I prepared an IV and cut-down tray ready for the doctor to insert an intravenous drip. A cut-down tray is only necessary if the doctor cannot find a vein, but I thought I should prepare for just such an emergency because of the young man's bloodless state.

    All this time the driver of the car had been crouched on his knees holding a tourniquet above the wound, which was a huge tear through the left bicep. Of course a tourniquet was in vain but it was my desperate effort to stem the rapidly spurting blood.

    The driver gasped, "My back! My back, I've got to stand up, I'm sorry."

    "Yes, of course!"  I said. ”leave it” It had been a vain attempt, anyway.

    To my enormous relief, the doctor arrived within minutes.

    He knelt down beside the still form on the plant room floor.  "He has lost a lot of blood," he said. 

    Then he pulled down the lower lid of the boy’s eyes and found it was quite colourless.  "He HAS lost a lot of blood" he repeated. 

    Then he asked me if we had any S.P.P.S. (serum plasma protein solution,) which is not used any more in ambulances). I wasn't sure and I was unfamiliar with the product, but I guessed it would be in the back of the ambulance if we had any. I raced to open the back doors of the vacant car.

    My eyes flew up and down the shelves of medical supplies frantically and because of my panic, I couldn't identify any of them. With an enormous effort I forced myself to stay calm and look carefully, and almost immediately my eyes fell on the needed SPPS.  In record fast time  the doctor had the intravenous drip set up and let one of the bottles run straight in to the vein.

    Like magic the boy returned to consciousness, and the doctor set up the second bottle to drip in more slowly.

     Just then Peter returned to the centre in the other ambulance car and almost at the same time Mick returned from Kawana. They loaded the patient on to a stretcher and into the back of the ambulance and the doctor climbed in to accompany him to the hospital while Mick drove.

    Peter began the cleanup. A blood stained cement floor and a dinner-plate-sized clot of blood was all that remained of the drama. We spoke to the driver of the car and he explained the story.

    It appeared that he was holidaying on one of the upper floors of a block of  holiday units in Mooloolaba, a leading beachside holiday area just is a to suburbs away  from our centre.  The young lad was also in one of the units with his parents on holiday. He had returned from an outing to find that his parents were missing with the key to the front door. Apparently they were out walking on the beach. With the natural impatience of a young man he had decided to try to climb up the side of the units to an open window. He fell, ripping open the upper muscle of his left arm and severing the brachial artery on the broken wireless aerial of his car, as he fell across it. The injury, a four inch by two inch wide gash, looked like a piece of ragged meat.

     Desperate for help, the boy ran back in to the units, knocking first on one door and getting no answer, and although he got an answer at the second, when the occupant saw the copious amounts of blood, the door was slammed in his face. Luckily for the hapless teen as it turned out, the gentleman guardian angel was looking out over his balcony and saw the whole thing happen. He raced downstairs and bundled the boy into his car.

    We saw the driver again several days later at the ambulance and he told us he had to have a professional cleaning job done on his car to remove the blood from crevices around the seat.

    We liked living at Maroochydore. For me, it was enjoyable from a social point of view and the children enjoyed living so close to the beach, but of course, it could be very demanding on Peter. Working six days a week for four and a half of the five years we were there was excessive, and in the end it was largely due to his own stringent efforts that two days off a week was finally granted to all officers-in-charge in Queensland.  Pete handled the job well but the stress of being on call twenty-four hours a day eventually took its toll. When we first arrived at the centre he had two other staff only. One worked the day shift and one worked an evening shift. However, that still left four shifts a week when they were having their days off which resulted in Peter working alone. In addition to that he did all the night shifts on his own. Because the district was growing so fast, as the population increased, so did the workload at the ambulance.

    There are many other tragic incidents which Peter recalls, some of which he will never forget. Uppermost in his mind is still the case of a little grade three boy, who collapsed in the grounds of the State School just before classes were due to start for the day, as the result of a cardiac arrest. When Pete arrived the boy was not breathing and had no pulse. No one had done anything significant to help him. Peter commenced CPR, (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) and enlisted the help of a teacher to assist. It was obvious that extra help was needed and he called for backup, but the closest ambulance was a long way away. It was so far away in fact, that a bottle of oxygen was emptied and a second bottle was used during the wait. As he performed resuscitation, Pete looked down at a freshly ironed pair of brown boxer shorts that the young boy was wearing – just the same as Ashley would be wearing – and thought of the devastating tragedy developing before his eyes that would soon envelope a loving mother and father and any number of family members.

    Eventually the second ambulance arrived and the boy was transported to Nambour Hospital, the nearest help available. Peter had to continue one man CPR during the trip to hospital as the other officer had to drive the ambulance vehicle. Such was the level of staffing that officers worked alone, leaving no capacity to both drive and care for a patient. Hence it was common to enlist a bystander if possible, but that too was fraught with danger. The dilemma was: should an unknown person be enlisted to drive an emergency vehicle under the pressure of the emergency situation, literally placing everyone’s welfare and even lives at risk? Yet Peter could never see the logic in his just driving the vehicle while leaving a bystander to attend the needs of a patient.

    The poor little boy had no chance. This tragedy was to the forefront of Pete’s mind for many months to come, as the effects on the boy’s family, especially on his mother, ended up bringing her into the care of the ambulance service again. Her burning desire was to be with her lost son. She used to take food to the graveside, as she so sadly failed to cope. Peter knew that her life would never be the same again. The night after the tragedy, Ashley got some extra hugs and attention from a father very thankful and grateful for a healthy active son.

    I recall that there was also a drowning of a little child in a backyard pool while we lived on the coast and the worst of all in my mind was the death of a toddler, a dear little girl. She must have tried to climb up a cupboard in the bathroom and fell, tangling the front of her jacket around the knob on a drawer and innocently hanging herself. By the time the mother found her it was too late to do anything. How those parents must have grieved.

    Another incident that Peter has often recalled, concerns a group of young people, probably not much older than children, but old enough to drive a car. They screeched to a halt in front of the ambulance one afternoon and raced inside begging for help for a young girl lying in the back of the old Kombi van. Unfortunately there was nothing anyone could do. She had been dead for some hours from a drug overdose.

    Drug use was rife on the coast. The old house next door on the southern side of the ambulance building was rented by a large group of young surfers. They lived a charmed life, surfing all day and living on the dole. One day Stephanie lay in bed very sick with a high fever. Her window overlooked that house and the noise from the music was unbelievable. I went next door to protest and it was a challenge just to make myself heard at the door. A young chap who finally came to answer my knock looked dazed and half asleep, but immediately turned the music off after my request to reduce the noise.

    Of course the dramas didn't only involve teenagers and children. One day Peter got a frantic call from the wife of a man mowing his lawn. A broken mower blade detached itself from the mower he was using and became a missile, slicing open the calf muscle of his leg. He was in grave danger from excessive loss of blood, but thanks to the ambulance, made it to hospital in time. 

    And he never forgets the poor lady who got bitten on the bottom by a redback spider. Modesty was never going to be a top priority for her that day, as redback spider bites cause great pain.

    When all the men were out on jobs and I was alone at the centre one day, I answered the bell to be confronted by two fishermen. They'd been having trouble with an outboard motor and somehow one man ended up with battery acid in his eye. As luck would have it, Peter had been talking to me about treatment for acid burns to the eye only days previously. I had great difficulty however, washing out his eye under the taps of our old sink in the plant room, and eventually dispatched him off to the local doctor a short distance away.

    Many, many cases were interesting, and often disturbing, but are too numerous to mention here. There were times when Pete became a bit of a horse doctor, ripping off fingernails, syringing ears, and removing fishhooks from various parts of the anatomy. The ambulance centre became a halfway house to the hospital a half hour’s drive away. It is suffice to say that those five years are, for various reasons, memorable in all our minds.

Chapter 40 The End of an Era

                                                 Chapter 40   The End of an Era

Back at our respective homes, life settled down again after our big holiday. Dad rang me one evening to talk about the movie films he'd had developed and we were all dying to see them. I haven't seen them yet.

    Three weeks after our return, friends from our Lions Club where Peter was now a member, came to see us at our residence. I was in my kitchen talking to the wife when a phone call came through which Peter answered. Suddenly the wife made an excuse for them to leave and she and her husband hurried out.

     Peter looked grave, "Your dad's had a car accident and has a broken arm. He’s been taken to hospital, but they think we should come up."

    I don’t remember the 300 miles, only arriving at my parents’ house. We had the children on board so we must have collected them from school and kindergarten, and I must have packed a bag, but I suppose I was functioning on automatic. As we drove into their yard I saw Larry at the front in his work clothes standing alone, with his arms folded. He had a grim look on his face and as we drove in he slowly shook his head. I probably knew what that meant but refused to acknowledge it. I jumped out of the car and asked the question.

    He took me in his arms, "He's gone love, he’s gone." 

    I was devastated. It didn't seem possible that my father, the head of the family, that strong personality and leader of men, the one I consulted on any subject at any time, could be gone, never to return.

    The whole family had gathered in the lounge room, and our seven-year-old broke the silence with the naked curiosity of a child, "Did he die?"

    After my initial outpouring of grief the story unfolded. Dad had risen early, showered, and dressed to drive the half hour trip to Larry's farm. As he drove along the narrow, bitumen road, a neighbouring farmer in a four-wheel-drive with a bull bar on the front drove out of his farm gate and across the road, battering straight into the right-hand side of  Dad's car.  Owen, arriving first, was shocked to see the driver's seat totally torn out of its moorings and forced across to the passenger side. 

    Apparently the farmer had been preoccupied, browsing through the mail from his letterbox. His brother's farm was across the road and he was in the habit of driving straight across. Probably he rarely encountered another vehicle. Dad had not only sustained a broken right arm, but also a crushed spine and punctured lungs. Owen travelled into the hospital with him in the ambulance. 

    His last words to Owen were, "Look after your mum, Owen ."

    When the hospital casualty nurse called Mum she was only able to relate, "He’s had an accident and he’s got a broken arm," so Mum had taken her time and packed a bag for hospital. 

    She had reassured herself, "I'll be able to look after him, if it's just a broken arm."

    But when she got down to the hospital casualty department, she was asked to wait, and minutes later she heard a quick scuffling in the emergency room behind the curtain. Dad had arrested, and they could do nothing to save him. Ever after, she regretted taking her time like that, because she never got a chance to say goodbye.

    After all those thousands of miles he'd travelled, all the personal battles he'd grappled with, and all the traffic difficulties he'd overcome, it seemed a sad irony that he should die on a straight, bitumen, country road just a few miles from home. He was 67 years old.

    Travelling out to the graveside in the funeral car, I felt as if my whole chest and abdomen had been opened up with a large knife and was exposed. I resented the road workers at the side of the road who stood and watched us pass. At that moment I resented anyone who couldn't feel my pain. People came up to me at the graveside and took me in their arms, saying how sorry they were. But I couldn't respond, I felt numb and sick. And with my brain so fogged with grief, some of them I didn't even recognize.

    At the time Aunt Lulu and her second husband were down in Adelaide and they rushed home for Lulu to be with her younger sister. She made it home to Brisbane where she took ill. She was 77 years old, and the rushed trip home from Adelaide had been too much for her. Three weeks after Dad’s death, Lulu also died. My mother felt so alone. 

    She had lost not only her husband but her closest sister, and she would later say to me, "I just wanted to run and scream."

    Owen and his family had sold their home previously and were living in temporary accommodation, so they moved in with Mum for a couple of months. Eventually though, they needed to move on and find a place of their own.

    Mum set about rebuilding her life on her own, but at first she went through terrible depression, feeling lost and confused by the turmoil of emotions in her head.  One day she went to see Dad's doctor because, ‘he was an easy doctor to talk to.’

    His advice was, "If you can travel, go away for a while."

    Before Dad died Mum had started playing indoor bowls, and some of her bowls friends were joining a large bus tour to Perth in Western Australia, so she decided to join them. She found the trip difficult, but she forced herself to stay interested in what they were doing and to join in any activities. She did enjoy seeing new places and meeting new people, and their conversation helped her through. By the time she got home she found coping from day to day was a little easier.

                                                                            --0--

    Over the years she has talked a lot about the hard times on the farm, but almost always ends up with self recrimination. 

    She says things like, "Perhaps I was to blame too,” (for the arguments and my father's bad temper,)  and then she’ll go on more slowly... reminiscing pensively, "Perhaps, if I'd have supported him more instead of criticising, he'd have been better."

    During the violent arguments that my parents had when I was a little kid, Dad became louder and angrier. He'd lose self control and sometimes say nasty hurtful things about Mum's relatives. Unfortunately he never had a role model of good husband behaviour, only that of bad temper by his father and his uncles. Mum told me once when they were rowing, (before the farm days,) that he picked up a framed photograph of her nephew, (Alice’s  first son,) and smashed it in anger. He was probably a bit jealous of anyone Mum was fond of, and she always had a special closeness with Alice’s son because they had spent quite a few years growing up together.

    The worst row that I witnessed on the farm was when I saw my father put his hands to my mother's throat while he made some threatening remarks like, "I should choke you, you bitch!"

    I screamed out at him, "No Daddy! No!" 

    He sank to his knees and put his arms around me. "I wouldn't hurt your mother sweetheart," he said. Mum snorted disgustedly, and he flew back at her. 

    I was terrified, and in later years told Mum how I felt. But she simply scoffed at me for being frightened and weak. She had a tough constitution and she expected everyone around her to be tough, especially her children.

    She agonises a lot over Larry though, punishing herself for the discipline he suffered at the hands of his father, who often became violent and took it out on Larry, belting him and yelling at him. I think Larry still bears the scar on the back of his leg from where one day Dad  threw a stick at him. She also feels guilty for the workload Larry was expected to carry, riding a horse at eight years old and helping in the dairy from that age on, and then as he got older, running the dairy by himself. 

    For many years as I was growing up, Larry groaned in his sleep. It was the weirdest thing. Sometimes his groaning woke me in the early hours of the morning.  It started on a low note and gradually increased in volume getting louder and louder. It seemed to go forever and how he didn't need to take in a breath in that time is beyond me. It must have been a kind of night terror, because he had no memory of it the next day. Some times to stop the noise I clapped my hands, because a sudden noise seemed to do the trick. 

    But he’d complain the next day, "Don't clap like that, it wakes me up!" The groaning disappeared when he got married.

    There is also another incident in relation to Larry which I know haunts my mother still. One day there was a row involving the three of them. Larry, fourteen or so and probably just as difficult as young teens today, was crying and threatening to walk out. I remember Mum lashing out her hand to slap him. He was wearing the watch they had given him for finishing school and when he put his hand up to ward off the blow, she hit the watch and broke it. Mum never forgave herself for smashing his new watch and took it as a sign from God that she was in the wrong and was being punished. The guilt plagues her today. 

    Larry bears no grudges, "Most of it was my own fault.  It doesn't worry me."

    For Mum, Dad's worst drinking years were also a time when she was weighed down with so much housework, having had her last baby so late. She commenced menopause at forty-five, and there must have been some days when she felt very ill. A typical example when I look back, occurred one day at the hostel where I boarded during high school.

    A few of the girls, who had been up to the hospital to visit a relative, returned and told me, "Your mother is in hospital and she’s very ill." They had seen her just waking up from an anaesthetic. (No teeth in either!)

    I was in a terrible panic and rushed up there the next afternoon after school, only to be told by the charge sister, "No dear, your mother went home this morning."

    Getting permission to make a phone call home on the grounds my mother was ill, I found out Mum had been in for a curette. The girls from the school had jumped to the wrong conclusion. Again she scoffed at me for worrying.

    Her life was further aggravated by debilitating migraines during menopause, too. Sometimes she was in bed for two days, vomiting from the pain. I remember she took tablets that were called ‘Ergot.’ 

    She must have worried about herself because she often said things to me like, "Giddy darling, look, I could die tomorrow.”

     Appalled at the thought, I'd remonstrate, "No you won't, Mum!"

    "No, but if it ever happens, I want you to know what to do," she’d explain. "Don't you sit around mourning and crying. You get my jewellery and put it away, and don't let anyone  come up and take everything!" She was well aware what could happen in such a case.

      I have never forgotten those things, but at the time I didn't really want to discuss the possibility of my mother dying.

    Lulu was Mum’s closest sister, but she, for one, had a habit of cleaning out a family member’s house after they'd left this earth. She didn't want the stuff herself, but overanxious to help, frequently took loads of things to the dump...photos, small furniture, and bric-a-brac, or she would divide the stuff up amongst relevant family members.

    This was probably the reason why I often heard Mum remark, almost to herself, ‘I wonder what happened to that photo of....? ', or 'I always wanted that... I wonder what happened to it after...' 

    And a frequent comment I clearly remember, "I wonder what happened to that photo of us in those Oxford bags we used to wear.” Apparently it was one of herself with two of her sisters wearing very wide trousers called 'Oxford Bags.'

    When Mum first met my father, Lulu was one of his biggest critics, but as they got older, he and Lulu became good mates. They both had a great sense of humour, but my mother found it hard to be amused when she was always stuck in the kitchen waiting on them both while they counted out their respective tablets and discussed their respective illnesses, or Dad sat back in his chair and yarned to Lulu who was an appreciative audience, giggling and laughing at the jokes Mum had heard over and over again.


    Unfortunately for my mother, she received no compensation after Dad’s car accident, being given only the minimum value of the car from the insurance company. The man who caused the accident was not even fined by the police for a traffic violation. Although Mum doesn't bear any real grudge against him, she can't bring herself to speak to him. He sent flowers to the funeral but she never acknowledged the gesture. 




 Just at the time of their lives when they were becoming closer, holding hands as they walked around the street shopping, brought together by a shared lifetime of hardships and joy, the accident ripped them apart.


   Such is life.

Chapter 39 Far Horizons

                                                    Chapter 39   Far Horizons 

Steph was only fifteen months old and Ashley was just over five when we arrived to take up the new job towards the end of January 1978. Peter was the new officer-in-charge and I had responsibility as the wife of the officer-in-charge, which was quite significant in those days. The wife of an OIC in the country was expected to support her husband on the money-raising side of the work, answer phones or radio when necessary, and generally provide support where needed. The Sunshine Coast was the fastest growing area in Queensland at the time. Consequently, the workload of the ambulance was also increasing rapidly. 

    The residence was above the Centre, so it was rather a big house. It had carpets, but no curtains. I bought the cheapest fabrics I could find, and made curtains myself. To combat the harsh western sun shining directly in the kitchen window in the afternoons, we had a pretty Holland-blind patterned with pink apple blossoms made.

    One disadvantage of living in the ambulance residence was the lack of backyard space. Over a small strip of grass outside the downstairs laundry between the main building and the huge shed at the back, was a retractable clothes line. We lived very close to the front footpath which meant that passers-by could take a wander in if they were so inclined. We lost a lot of clothes off the line and kids toys from the yard while we lived there. The massive back shed housed cars, the men's kitchen,  tables and chairs, and other miscellaneous equipment. We parked our car there and I became very proficient at backing the car in between the posts, as that was the only practical way of parking.

    Soon after our arrival, Snuffles also moved in. It was our theory that he had jumped out of a car and run away while on holidays with his family, because he always had a great fear of cars. He arrived on our back porch one day, slinking his large, well fed feline body close to the wall and sniffing the air as he walked stealthily towards our backdoor. I could see at a glance he was somebody's well fed pet so I tried to chase him away. In fact one day I even chased him with the broom. But something about our place must have appealed to him, for after about his fifth visit, I realized we had been adopted.

     "All right,” I made it plain to him, “You can live here, but you'll have to be content to live outside." He seemed happy with the arrangement.

    I had been brought up to believe that animals lived outside. Our cats on the farm had always been allowed in during the day, but spent their nights out. And our dogs wouldn’t have dared set foot inside the house, night or day.

     Snuffles did encounter some hazards though. One day he found some abandoned fish lying around in someone else's backyard and decided to eat it. The trouble was the catch still had the hook and line attached. A couple of the ambulance officers rescued him, wrapped him in a towel to immobilise him, and extracted the hook from his mouth. Then they untangled the line from his body. That cat was always blasé about his nine lives!

    One summer day he was sleeping on the cool concrete in the back shed while I was out in the car. Unfortunately he chose our car space to plonk his body. I came in from shopping and backed straight over one of his back legs. I heard a bloodcurdling yowl, and was horrified to see what I'd done. The car tyre had taken the skin off a large patch on the inside of one of his back legs. Poor Snuffy lay around for days licking at the wound and I was stunned once again at how quickly he healed.

    Sometimes the men moved the cars out of the shed to use it as a lecture room for first aid classes, and with regular monotony they set up chairs and tables during the day for me to conduct 'Hoy.'  This is a card game similar to bingo. The women from the Ladies Auxiliary sat around tables with their cards, while I sat up the front, calling, “One diamond... six hearts...” Eventually one would empty her hand and call out, "Hoy!” Then I’d stand up and carry my little tray of goods to their table, so they could select a prize.

    It was another money raising venture common to small ambulance centres. During the week while I was shopping, I bought things for the prize tray, such as packets of rice, flour, sugar, or other small items like torch batteries, for about a dollar. I also had a supply of little, plastic sandwich bags and I divided up the rice or flour into small lots. The old ladies loved their little treats from the tray, but my mind was preoccupied with the ironing I had to do upstairs or one of the other countless jobs that was waiting for me when I returned ‘home.’

    When we first moved in at Maroochydore, Peter had only two other officers to assist him. He worked six days a week, had only Sundays off and was on call twenty-four hours a day.

    One autumn Sunday soon after we started there, we decided to go for a walk to the beach with the children. They were excited. As we passed the plant room downstairs, the senior officer stopped Peter to talk to him. Ashley refused to hold my hand, and trotted on ahead, ignoring my calls to come back. I had no choice but to keep walking with Stephanie on my hip. When we reached the sand of the beach, I turned around to look for Peter, but he was nowhere in sight. 

    Ashley ran into the water, and within minutes completely disappeared. I was distraught. I kept scanning the heads of the bathers. It was a bleak day and there weren't many in the water. Because it was a Sunday, there were no lifeguards on duty and no flags. There seemed to be about five young boys, all blonde, in the water, but they each had a surf board. I couldn't see Ashley anywhere but thankfully, after what seemed like a lifetime, Peter arrived beside me. The two of us set off hurrying along the edge of the water, searching.

     At last we saw him, about 100 yards ahead, stumbling out of the water. A rip must have carried him away up the beach and from a long way off he staggered up to us. 

    He was almost sobbing, and we will never forget his words. "I was crawling on the bottom! My legs are soooo, so tired."  I sent up a silent prayer of thanks that Ashley had survived yet another brush with the ocean.

                                                                --0-

    The following year, 1979, we decided to take our caravan on a long six-week tour to Melbourne. My parents joined us, travelling in their own caravan, and to maintain communication while we were driving, Dad bought two CB radios and installed them in the cars. It was a wonderful trip. We all set off together in May, via Goondiwindi where we joined the Newell highway. At G. we were told that further south there was a locust plague. A local garage assisted the men to attach mesh in front of the radiators of our cars as a screen.

    Sure enough, a short way down, we met them. We had never seen anything like it.  Thousands of large, brown grasshoppers hitting the windscreen is uncanny. I got the feeling I was on the Starship Enterprise and we were in a meteor shower! Eventually it passed and we travelled between endless fields of yellow sunflowers. It seems very sad to me that those beautiful sunflowers which yielded healthy sunflower oil, have now been replaced by fields of yellow, genetically contrived canola, which yields oil, from my research, suitable only for engines. I believe it is clever marketing that has seen it foisted on the food markets of many Western countries in the form of cooking oil and margarine.

    The highway down through New South Wales was long, flat, straight and at times seemed endless. (unusual on Australian roads.) With the sanity that returns when arriving at a destination after a long hard drive though, we realised it was a fast trip. We stopped at Parkes to view the big dish, the sixty-four metre radio telescope, which was fascinating not only to the children, and which we now know played a vital role in the moon landing, and which featured in the great Australian movie, The Dish.

       Unused to the colours, we delighted in the landscapes unfolding in front of us, in the range of yellows, reds and orange tones of the poplars along the roads, so different to the Queensland landscape.

    We stopped at Gilgandra in the Dubbo shire for an overnight stay in a caravan park, only to discover their huge observatory, so the next evening we took the children and had a wonderful time looking through their big telescope at the stars.

    Crossing the border into Victoria, bathed in the magnificent sight of the gilding autumn forest, we continued south through the Dandenong ranges, fascinated by the splendid  height of the eucalypts, so straight, reaching for the sky.

     Notwithstanding, we were stung by the very severe cold, and the penetrating damp under our feet at the rest area. One question troubled me: why do councils in freezing cold climates persist in erecting stainless steel toilet bowls with no seat on them in public toilets?! It is beyond me! Don't they realize what a shock it is to us heat-hardened Queenslanders?

    However, it wasn't long before we settled into a caravan park in Melbourne and our journey of togetherness and discovery continued. Pete and I loved being in Melbourne, immersing ourselves in nostalgia for a couple of weeks. What we didn't realise though, was that Dad was suffering agoraphobia. He'd always been a bit skitish in cities, sort of claustrophobic. As a consequence, Mum was also suffering anxiety, worrying over him. I guess that's why he loved the farm, wide-open spaces and no one to hassle you. No lawns to mow. No appearances to keep up.

    We also later learnt that my poor father had been a nervous wreck as we drove through cities on the way down. As a matter of fact when we first reached Melbourne, he tried so hard to keep up with us that he became stranded in the middle of an intersection once, holding up all the cross traffic with his car and caravan cutting off the carriageway. Pete wasn't taking particular care to stay with him because we didn't realise how unsure of himself he was. Young and thoughtless! Still, they carried on without complaint.

     One evening Peter and Dad took Ashley, now seven, to an ice skating rink. Mum and I stayed home with Stephanie who was just three and I looked forward eagerly to the return of the boys, expecting to hear an exciting report of the ice skating. However, it seemed to be, from Ashley's point of view, quite underwhelming. On return, Pete reported that our son had no trouble keeping his feet on the ice, but he just walked around the rink all the time, eventually glad it was all over and he could be done with it and go home again!

    After ten days in Melbourne, we drove out to St Andrews, to visit Peter's friends, Brian and Naomi, and their two children. They lived in a huge mud brick house that Brian had built. A building of mudbricks was a novelty, and we all tried our hand at spinning on Naomi’s spinning wheel. In the evenings we sat around their potbelly stove in the middle of the lounge room, Naomi continued her spinning and the men told yarns. On the weekends they took us to the markets, where Naomi sold home-made pies, and Brian sharpened saws to make a few extra dollars. For the most part, I enjoyed my time with them. except the incident when I got a leech on me while squatting amongst the dripping wet bushes with my pants down! 

    They had a few acres of land, were practically self-sufficient, and across from their house was a steep mountainside of tall bush timber. Their house was built amongst trees in  thick bush which seemed to drip moisture constantly from frequent misty rain showers. I was cold all the time. I never seemed to get warm until Pete and I went to bed at night.  Typical Queenslander! 

     Ironically, Mum's greatest concern was that a bushfire would sweep down the range and burn us all in our beds! When the subject was mentioned, Brian maintained that a bushfire moves more quickly up a mountain than down and because of that he felt the risk was minimal. Unfortunately, my mother’s concern turned out to be not unfounded, and not such a silly notion when the conditions are right, which unfortunately came to pass in 2009. Pete and I saw the remains of the house on a TV report of the Black Saturday bushfires. Brian and Naomi have long since moved elsewhere. Unfortunately we lost contact a long time ago.

    After leaving St Andrews, we headed down the spectacular Great Ocean Road and spent an overnight stay at Port Campbell. As we awoke the next morning we all breathed in the bracing, fresh sea-air and felt exhilarated after the confines of the city. Peter and Dad drove up to a local dairy farm where they bought billy cans of fresh cream and milk. Dad wandered along the sea edge, exploring, and the children sat on the lush, thick grass just outside the caravan, throwing crumbs to the seagulls. Even now I still love the snow white and pure grey of seagulls’ feathers. That morning I was struck by the contrast against the rich, green of the turf.

    We carried on slowly, exploring all the inlets of the Great Ocean Road. We stood on ‘London Bridge,’ which has since been partly washed away by the relentless crashing ocean. We admired nature’s famous sculpted, sandstone shoreline known as the Twelve Apostles.

    Apparently at the time of the collapse of London Bridge, some tourists were standing out on the end of it. When the middle fell in, they had to be rescued by helicopter. It must have been nightmarish for them, wondering if the earth under their feet was also going to suddenly give way, and commit them to the boiling surf.

      Further along, we stood and stared down into the Blow Hole, where some young tourists fell down and died just a few years later. There but for the grace of God.......
There is also a photo of Ashley sitting on a crumbling sandstone cliff edge, which must have seemed like a good idea at the time, and it made a great photo.

    But when we saw that palm-sweating image we gasped in horror, and when my father saw it he exclaimed, "God Almighty!  What fools we were letting the child sit there!"

    Eventually we made it to my friend Jean in Warrnambool, down along the southern coast of Victoria, where she lived with her mother. Jean and I had been students in the same midwifery class of 1966 at the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne. They were wonderful, gracious hosts and squired us around the town and tourist spots. I have a precious photo of Dad standing at a vantage point staring at the Brown Lakes, a tourist attraction just outside of the city.

    Before we left Victoria we decided to have a day in the snow, and took a trip up to Mount Donna Buang. Dad and I determinedly climbed to the top of the lockout tower and the cold from the wind was unbelievable, but we stayed there long enough to take a photo. The looks on our faces tell the story.

     Heading home, we drove up the coast of New South Wales as far as Bega, famous for its cheese, where we turned off and slowly ascended Black Mountain. The steep drive was such a hard pull for the caravan, the only reason the car engine didn't overheat was because the temperature outside was so cold. We drove through Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains, admiring the huge Jindabyne Dam, part of the historic Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme. At a caravan park in Cooma for the night, where the taps are plumbed in under ground because of the freezing cold, the locals told us the snow would fall in about three weeks. My hands were red with the cold and refused to warm up, even though I sat in front of our little bar heater in the caravan until my shins burned.

     Every time I hear about a caravan fire I think of the number of times I have sat in front of small bar heaters in small spaces; and I think of the crocheted rug made from nylon knitting ribbon for one of my children. During one northern winter I found it slung over the heater and slowly melting. I must have narrowly avoided a fire. I was one of the lucky ones.

    As we progressed Dad played photographer with his movie camera, over doing it at all the sites along the way, and capturing the family at every opportunity.

    From the Snowy Mountains we followed the road down to Canberra, our national capital, where we stayed long at their famous war memorial. The men loved it, hated leaving, and vowed to go back one day. Then we carried on up to Sydney and stayed there for a few days in a caravan park at Lane Cove. 

    Mum looked forward to a tour through the Opera House, but Dad’s agoraphobia was taking hold again and his confidence deserted him. We only found out later that he would have taken her through the Opera house if we had gone with them, but because we had been before we declined to go, and that meant she missed out too. As a matter of fact Peter and I were feeling a little claustrophobic ourselves and wanted to get away on our own and have a walk around the city. I have regretted that move ever since, because I didn't understand the situation. You do those things when you are young and inexperienced at life. The trouble is you never get that time back.

    As we neared the Queensland border, the weather was noticeably warming up.  Somewhere in the north of New South Wales we stopped at a holiday theme park to give our son a ride on a horse. At that time he had thick, blonde wavy hair which I was reluctant to have cut.

    "Has she ridden a horse before?" asked the manager. I knew in that instant his golden curls would have to go!

     Further along the coast of northern New South Wales we made a brief stop in a tiny town called Pottsville, where Dad browsed in a quaint little art gallery. Eventually he called me to come and choose a painting. I chose one with an old house and a road. He bought us the painting for $100 as a thank you gift for taking them with us on the holiday. It hangs in my lounge room today, a constant reminder of times gone by.