Book: Redemption - Part VIII - Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

A Strange New World

1967 - 1968

1967 began with a blast, especially as a few of us, myself included, decided to sneak out after curfew to attend a New Year’s Eve bash in the city. When we crept back in through a previously arranged unlatched door Mrs O’Connor was waiting. Our punishment was to be grounded for a month. With little else to do for the next four weeks we spent our weekends knitting, crocheting, drawing, sewing, or ironing clothes dry while discussing everything from music to politics. One girl was a beatnik who had a thing for Bob Dylan. She had us in stitches with her own deadpan version of his song Subterranean Homesick Blues. Life continued in much the same vein throughout the summer until the day Lorraine ironed her hair. Fed up with her very long, very thick, very wavy hair, she laid it on the ironing board and proceeded to iron it straight which, naturally, caused the rest of us to shriek and holler. Poor old Mrs O’Connor, she raced in to the room thinking the worst but left with a wry smile on her face.

Most of my weekends were spent making clothes from my own designs by modifying patterns in ways Mum would never have approved of. I was not the hostel’s most talented or innovative designer-dressmaker, though. Jenny was. She was a beautiful part-Aboriginal girl who had the amazing knack of being able to throw a piece of fabric on the floor and attack it with a pair of scissors. She never used a pattern or even a tape measure, yet she was able to produce fabulously original, well-fitting clothes. From Jenny I learned a lot more than radical dressmaking tips. She had led a harrowing life, but she never let it destroy her. When her boyfriend fell foul of the law he fled to Victoria so one day she ran off to be with him. I later heard he was killed in a police shootout. I only ever saw Jenny once after that, but at least I knew she was alright. Jenny was one of three ‘state wards’ I developed friendships with. The other two were Marilyn and Gayle.

Marilyn, like Jenny, had seen horrendous abuse early in her life. Her right foot was testimony to this. It would swell up and become painfully inflamed every winter – a lifelong reminder of the time her alcoholic mother immersed her foot in boiling water as punishment for some misdemeanour. She was only three. Her grandmother assumed responsibility for her upbringing after that, but when she became too ill Marilyn was made a ward of the state. Marilyn was exceptionally perceptive, which came in handy when we hitchhiked to the Gold Coast, which we did all too often, or accepted lifts home from discos. She instinctively knew who to trust and who to avoid. But Gayle was the one I spent most of my time with. As pretty as a porcelain doll, with huge expressive eyes and a lovely smile, Gayle was unlike the other girls who had grown up in orphanages. She was quiet and reserved, but I sensed those eyes had seen intolerable pain. Valmae was the baby of the hostel. She was a ward of the state who had lived with Mrs O’Connor since she was twelve. I never knew the full story, but rumours were rife that they were somehow related. Erin was the oldest. She had a deformed hip, which severely reduced her mobility, but never her lust for life. A seasoned world traveller, Erin could entertain us for hours with amazing stories of life in New York City, London, Paris and her favourite, Madrid.

One Friday evening, on the steps of the Treasury Building, I bumped into a girl I hadn’t seen since primary school. The Treasury Building, now the Treasury Casino, was the unofficial meeting place for Brisbane’s youth in the 1960s. Hundreds milled around the steps and footpath while others spilled over onto the tram stop in the middle of Queen Street. On the other side of the street, yet more filled coffee shops and snack bars while others stood clustered in groups outside. I was working my way through the wall of shoulders when I came face to face with Elizabeth. She was the only one of my classmates to attend a State High School instead of staying on at St Columba’s or going to All Hallows or Lourdes Hill. She was alone and homeless so I took her home with me, knowing full well Mrs O’Connor would never turn a girl out onto the streets. I got an earful in the morning though. She went on and on about Mr Bell’s invention and how she had noticed I was normally able to remember what it could be used for.

Meeting place: steps of Treasury Building, Queen Street, Brisbane

In late March, I received a sad call from Aunty Glady. Her eldest daughter, also named Mary, had been killed in a car accident. Mary was a schoolteacher who was with a group of fellow teachers on their way to a well-earned Easter holiday. Not long after that, I took another call from Glady, this time to implore me to come to the farm because Anne had locked herself in the bathroom and was refusing to come out. I was able to persuade her to open the door, but it was only so she could attack me like a crazed animal. She had started her period and was terrified, poor kid. Another thing she blamed me for. I accept I should have prepared her, but because I assumed Glady would do it, I didn’t. Nothing was ever the same between us, and just like the dream, she was falling away from me.

My relationship with Glady also took a turn for the worst around that time. I was seventeen and dating young men, something she wasn’t prepared to allow me to do without interference. With an uncanny accuracy, she always knew whenever I was getting serious about anyone and she decreed each one in turn as being unworthy of me. As far as she was concerned, as my godmother, she had the right to say and do as she pleased. She was callous and utterly ruthless.  One chap, after having the decency to pick her up from the airport, learned that the hard way. As she got out of his car she turned on him like a rabid dog when she noticed the friendship ring on my finger.

As 1967 drew to a close, a remarkable event occurred. Harold Holt, the Prime Minister of the day, was reported missing after going for a swim in wild seas off Victoria’s southern coast. What happened next brought me face to face with a terror I could not explain - the root cause of my reaction to Kristen’s meddling with the Psychic Circle board decades later. The ouija board was Elizabeth’s. She thought it would be fun to hold a séance to find out if the PM was really dead. The fear that rose from some deep, dark recess of my being ensured I had nothing to do with it. Something inside me warned of grave danger so I went to bed with a pillow over my head. The following morning no one would talk about what happened and shortly afterwards, Elizabeth left, but Mrs O’Connor played no role in it.

At five-thirty one morning, a group of us, having planned to spend the day at Centenary Pool, were waiting impatiently for Elizabeth to wake up. When we could wait no more, we entered her room only to find her gone. I don’t know what made Linda pull the covers back, but Elizabeth’s sheet was soaked in blood. Being older and more sophisticated than the rest of us, she decided Elizabeth had had a miscarriage. At her suggestion, we stripped off Elizabeth’s sheets, remade her bed and left, dumping the soiled linen on the way to the pool. In the years to come, I often thought about Elizabeth, especially after giving birth to Kristen. In 1974, I met up with another former school friend who told me Elizabeth and she reconnected in the labour ward of the Royal Women's Hospital in 1971.

Thirty years later, I took a call from a woman named Lisa who was searching for someone  who attended the same school as me. One of her searches took her to a "St Columba's" Facebook page on which I had posted a link to the first blog I set up to originally 'publish' chapters of this book. The person Lisa was seeking was named Elizabeth and I just knew it was the same Elizabeth. I soon learned she was the child born in 1971. It was as if Spirit wanted me to know that Elizabeth's child was alright, even if Elizabeth had given her up for adoption. Elizabeth herself had been a foster child who suffered in ways I found difficult to imagine. All I could think of as I hung up the phone was that I was glad I had 'ran into her' on the steps of the Treasury building, if only for Lisa's sake.

Mrs O'Connor (centre) and hostel girls' night out. I'm in check suit 1967.

1968, like 1963, was a significant year for me. For one thing, I met Darrin, an exceptionally good-looking young man with great taste in clothes. We met at O’Connor Boathouse, a dance club on the river at North Quay. On that particular night a Schweppes Miss Personality Quest was taking place. One of the contestants seemed strangely familiar and I was trying to place her when he came up to me and said: “A penny for your thoughts, pretty lady.” In the very same instant I remembered her name and blurted out: “Gail!” (Gail was Leigh’s sister). I had been oblivious to Darrin’s presence and only realised he was talking to me when he laughed and said: “Nice to meet you, Gail.”

I was so embarrassed, but I needn’t have been. Darrin politely listened to my explanation before saying it must be a good omen for Gail. He was right. She won! We laughed and danced the night away and agreed to meet there the following week. Thus began the first truly serious relationship of my life. Glady did her usual worst, but Darrin remained calm in the face of the tempest, quietly telling her to go away and leave me alone. I was impressed and just like the bully confronted, she backed down – for a while.

Darrin, who shared my love of folk and protest music, introduced me to Foco on Sunday nights. This amazing club opened in March 1968 and was located in the old Trades Hall building on the corner of Turbot Street and Upper Edward Street, Brisbane. Foco offered something for everyone. It had music (folk, rock and blues), poetry, and book readings while old movies were projected onto the walls. Its primary function, though, was a meeting place for left-wing student activists and dissidents. Foco didn’t spark my interest in public affairs, that was already apparent, but it did encourage me to become more politically responsible. On many occasions I found myself wondering what my father would have thought about my going to a club run by ultra left wingers aligned with the Communist Party.

The Society for Democratic Action (SDA) was formed by a handful of activists at the Brisbane campus. Their aim was to launch campaigns against the State Traffic Act that prevented them from demonstrating against the Vietnam War. This campaign involved not only students but workers as well. The SDA established Foco with the co-operation of the Trades and Labour Council and the Young Socialist League, the Communist Party’s youth organization. According to former student activist, Brian Laver, the word ‘Foco’ was taken from Che Guevara's writings and means guerrilla encampment. At the time, I didn’t know that, nor did I care. As far as I was concerned, Che Guevara was just the good-looking face on posters plastered all over the walls of the club and inner city. His name, however, reminded me of the wonderful Faye Guivarra and her exotic alter ego, "Candy Devine". Warm memories of piano lessons flooded back, taking me to the house in Kedron Brook Road and Mum sitting at her prized piano.

Che Guevara

One night at Foco Darrin introduced me to folk singing friends of his. Folk music stirred my soul and artists like Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Buffy St Marie and Bob Dylan were my favourites although I loved any song that railed against the war in Vietnam or pleaded for peace. I’d watch the draft riots on the nightly news and feel sorry for those unlucky enough to be sent overseas, often to their deaths. The protest movement mobilised people from all walks of life and brought them out into the streets. It also brought some brilliant songs to the fore like The Uglys’ Wake Up My Mind and Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction. Forty years on, both remain disturbingly relevant.

I knew from those long ago dinner table discussions that my father supported the DLP. I also knew I was living the result of the Labor Party split. If he had been trying to mould our future political beliefs when he made us sit in front of the television set watching B. A. Santamaria [1] go on and on about this and that, he didn’t succeed. As an eighteen year old, I sided with activists and dissidents sympathetic to the Communist Party of Australia. I was just itching for my chance to march with them through the streets of Brisbane to condemn conscription and the slaughter of our youth. As it was, I had to be content with Centenary Place. This quiet city park transformed into a rowdy public forum on Sunday afternoons when anyone could get on his or her soapbox to say whatever was on his or her mind. People may not always agree with what was said, but they’d defend a person’s right to say it. The Vietnam War divided the nation as nothing else had before. Queenslanders were hamstrung by their government’s position on the issue of march permits, but in the southern states, people were taking to the streets in their thousands. 

The federal government had not anticipated the reaction of ordinary people to the conflict or to the human lottery that decided which of our lads were to fight in an unjust war. Being broadcast directly into people’s living rooms in all its uncensored horror, this was a war unlike any other. Robert Menzies may have introduced conscription, but it was his successor, the ill-fated Harold Holt, who took it to new levels with his “All the way with LBJ” philosophy.

Fortunately, John missed out in the ballot of ‘68, but Glady’s son, Michael, wasn’t so lucky. Posted overseas with minimal training Michael stood on a land mine early in his tour of duty but thankfully, he kept his leg. As the war dragged on the protesters became more demanding. Eventually, the massive Moratorium marches had their desired effect. In 1968, Joh Bjelke-Petersen became Premier and stayed for nineteen turbulent years – years that were to see me become as politically vociferous as my father. Unlike Dad, though, I was never ousted from Parliament. I found other outlets for my rage.

Back in the 1960s, my workmates tried to dissuade me from going to Centenary Place or participating in anything radical. They said ratbag uni students were never going to make any difference and that I was more likely to get hurt than change the world. It caused a lot of tension in the hostel, too, and my relationship with Darrin was becoming strained, but for far different reasons. He was fascinated with the supernatural and when I began to dread my Sunday nights at Foco I knew I had to end it. Something inside me was waking up and it terrified me.

For as long as I could remember I had been frightened of death and frightened of being seen to be meddling with the supernatural, but never knew why. All I knew was his talk opened a door I thought was locked so tight it could never to be opened. One Sunday afternoon in June, I was overcome by a need to interrupt what I was doing to draw a portrait of Robert Kennedy.  At the time I couldn’t understand why but a few days later, one of the girls screamed: “He’s dead!”

“Who’s dead?” I asked.

“Robert Kennedy! They shot him, just like his brother. Haven’t you heard?”

I felt sick inside and a short time later, while Darrin was prattling on about his latest astral travelling adventure I made him promise to keep quiet about all that stuff or it was over. He kept his promise, but it was really over anyhow.

Until I met Darrin I had never heard of astral travel. When he told me his soul could leave his body while he slept and go wherever it wanted to, I didn’t believe him. He told me it was a universal experience, one I would have had myself. The very idea terrified me, but he assured me it was perfectly safe because of the silver cord. This, he explained, linked the soul to the body. He asked me if I had ever woken up with a thud and a racing heart, and of course I had. This, he claimed, was due to a sudden re-entry and was nothing to fear. When I asked what would happen to him if the cord broke he said he would die, but quickly added that that would only happen if it was his time to go.

Too many stories of Hellfire and Damnation had been rammed down my throat for me to appreciate what he was saying. He said he understood where I was coming from, but he also said he felt it was “his duty” to enlighten me. He went on to tell me about reincarnation and how the early Catholic Church had deliberately removed references to it from the Bible. The Church, he said, had continually twisted the story of Jesus into something the real Jesus would have scorned and I couldn’t disagree with that. It was all about money, power and control, he said, and he asked me to think about something else. If people were allowed to believe in the concept of reincarnation, that afterlife reward or punishment was entirely due to their own behaviour, would they have need for priests to grant them absolution? If there were no priests there could be no bishops, archbishops, cardinals or popes. No more power. No more money. No more controlling the masses. And what about war, he said. How many wars can be laid squarely at the feet of the Church?

He knew he had hit a nerve and went on, pushing harder and further, taking the conversation from general philosophy to personal experience. He asked if I had been drawn to a particular culture or period in history above and beyond a normal interest or curiosity. I had to admit I had. He laughed when I said Egypt and declared I may have been a pharaoh or perhaps a high priestess, or maybe I was just a slave. I told him he was nuts and shrugged it off, but the truth was Darrin’s interest in the supernatural forced me to walk down a corridor in my mind I did not want to walk. Years earlier, just as I was on the verge of sleep, something terrifying used to happen to me. It started with a dizzy feeling in my head. Then my bed would seem to spin. Then the room would start to spin, faster and faster, until I found myself travelling down a tunnel-like vortex. At the bottom I would always be confronted with the same vision – a tall, thin man, his face gaunt, his  sunken eyes deadened by despair. Gradually, my view would widen to show hundreds more just like him. Accompanying this horrific vision was a stench so sickeningly overpowering I felt physically nauseous. 

In years to come I would understand why Darrin came into my life and asked so much of me. His job was to prepare the field for when the seeds were ready to be sown.

[1] Bartholomew Augustine (Bob) Santamaria (1915-1998) was the driving force behind The Movement, the controversial secret organization set up in the 1940s to counter communist influences in trade unions. A devout Catholic, political intellectual and lay teacher, Santamaria made economic rationalism the object of his last crusade.

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