“I was born on the 10th December, 1957 in West Belfast in a place called the Falls Road. I was the youngest of nine children and we lived in a three bedroom house. There were six girls in the front bedroom in two big double beds and the three boys in the back bedroom. My mother and father were in the third bedroom.
We were all born at home with a Midwife. My mother said as soon as labour started she would clean the house because she knew she wouldn’t be able to clean it for the next week with the new baby. As soon as labour started she would walk down the street to get the midwife, Nurse Malloy. She’d sit in the Midwife’s house until the Midwife said, Right, it’s time to go home. She’d walk up the street and have the baby. When I was born, my Mum said, I’m going to hospital with this one so I can have a wee holiday so I was born in the hospital.
When I was 11 years old the trouble started in Belfast. People were getting burnt out of their homes. The Police force were coming up our road and setting people’s homes on fire. The reason was, we were protesting for ‘One man, one vote’ for our civil rights. In Northern Ireland at that time you had to be a house owner to have a vote. If you didn’t own a house you couldn’t vote. If you owned a factory you got heaps of votes. It was very unfair. We had to put barricades up around our home to keep them out.
For me being a kid, I thought it was quite exciting. I thought nothing was going to ever happen in Belfast and suddenly it was crazy. There were riots and for an 11 year old boy that was exciting because I never felt afraid and I always felt protected by the family.
The British Army then arrived and by the time I was 15 the army were chasing us around the schoolyard shooting rubber bullets at us. We were jumping around like complete maniacs throwing bricks and bottles and going totally berserk. At the age of 15 I decided I couldn’t stay there. I either wanted to go to Canada, America or Australia which is what the Irish have always done.
I had a plan and I also knew that I was Gay but nobody could find out because it was impossible to be Gay in Northern Ireland when I was 15. I had to hide that so I always had to have a girlfriend to prove I wasn’t Gay.
When I was 16 my father worked for the equivalent of Telstra. It was called Post Office telephones. He worked for them from when he was 17 until he retired. At 16 I got really good grades in my O levels and my father wanted me to work as a telephone engineer. I told my Mum I wanted to stay on at school. My mother said ‘ Oh dear God, you best talk to your Daddy about that.’ It was unheard of staying on doing your ‘A’ levels. My father said, and who do think is going to feed you? I said…You! He thought I’d be studying Economics at Queens University in Belfast but I really wanted to go to Art College in England and that was my first step out of the troubles in Belfast.
At 18 I applied to get into Art college in England and I was successful on the strength of my portfolio and my O levels. I told my father what I was going to do and that I wanted to study Fine Arts. My father said we were all hippies and fruit merchants and I was like Hello! look at me! (laughs). but actually it was terrible. So I said I will do Graphic Design. He said…What is that? I showed him a cigarette packet, that’s designed by a graphic designer. Every label on everything is designed by a Graphic Designer.
I went to England and studied Graphic Design
One of my brothers was already in Australia and I had two sisters in the US, the rest were in Ireland. Some of us are close and some of us drifted apart, especially since both my parents died. Everything changed after that. When my parents were alive it really held the family together.
I did my degree in Graphic Design and it wasn’t a good time for an Irish person in England. The IRA were blowing up pubs in London. I wanted to get out and my plan was to go to Australia. My brother came home for a holiday from Australia and he was travelling back to Australia through India so I said, I’ll go with you.
We spent six months in India and we ran out of money. He left me in India. I couldn’t leave because my visa hadn’t been processed, my passport was in New Delhi and I was waiting for a visa for Australia. I stayed in Agra and I literally lived in this tiny room which was a hole in the wall. You went up the stairs and there were these little, wee doors and I crawled into my room. You couldn’t stand up in it. During the day I would go to a really posh hotel in Agra, sit by the swimming pool and drink filtered water because I had no money. I would talk to tourists and then they’d all be going for lunch and I’d say, I don’t have any money for lunch, just waiting on my visa and then they’d buy me lunch.
My visa finally came through and I’d kept enough money aside to get the train in Bombay to fly to Melbourne. I had the ticket and on the train to Bombay I met a bunch of Hare Krishnas and they took me to Hare Krishna land which is on Juhu Beach in Bombay. It’s a big temple complex. It’s the centre of the whole Hare Krishna movement so I stayed there and it was free food. They thought I was going to become a Hare Krishna. Juhu beach was famous, there were camel rides and belly dancers and fire eaters. I sold my very last pair of jeans on that beach and the next morning I went to the airport in my orange cotton things I’d bought with enough money to have a snack at the airport.
I arrived in Melbourne in my orange pants, I was 23 and they wouldn’t let me through customs. The reason was I didn’t have 10c to make a phone call. I had an orange backpack with Indian cottons in it. I was on a 6 month tourist visa with a ticket to NZ. I kept saying, if you let me through my brother will be meeting me, I’ve just finished college and my parents are financing this trip. I just kept repeating that story and eventually they let me through and there was nobody there to meet me. I had sent my brother a telegram to the address where he had been living but he didn’t turn up to meet me. I didn’t know what to do.
I went to the bar at Tullamarine airport and this old sleaze bag tried to crack on to me. I decided to go to the address where my brother lived. I got a cab, it was 1am and I knocked on the door. This girl opened the door and peered through the safety chain. What do you want? I said, my brother lives here, do you know him? She said, Yes but he’s not here anymore, I said could you please pay the taxi driver and I will pay you back when I get the money from by brother so she emptied her piggy bank and paid the taxi. She let me in she let me stay. She was only 23 as well. She went to work the next morning and left me a list of phone numbers of people who knew my brother. Eventually I tracked him down. He came around that night with his friends and he said, ‘Gerard, you can’t stay with me, I’m only staying with these people until I find somewhere to live. I said, you are supposed to help me. I grabbed him by the arm and said, I’m staying with you whether you like it or not, I’ve got nowhere to go.’
I borrowed $500 from the people he was staying with. I needed to buy clothes as I only had these Indian cottons and I looked like a hippy. I went and got a haircut and they told me to go to Chapel Street and I bought these groovy clothes. I got a job in a Jamaican restaurant called Jamaica House on Lygon St and I started my life in Australia.
Shortly after I arrived I looked up the Celtic Club and there was the Australian Irish Welfare Bureau and I went to a meeting there. We were all sitting around the table and there were two 6 foot tall statues. One was the sacred heart of Jesus and one of the blessed virgin Mary and they were talking about where they were going to donate these statues. In between they were giving me advice on immigration. This one woman said to me, Son you have no chance, all the boys are being sent home and once again I said, You’re supposed to help me. She said, Well what can you do? I said, I can work, I have a degree in Graphic Design, I can’t go back, I’m from the Falls Rd in Belfast. She said, Meet me outside the Commonwealth Bank at 10am Monday morning. This was before we had bank cards. It was a bank book. She gave me thousands of dollars to open an account in my name with a bank book. We left the bank and I had to give her back the bank book. She said, Go see Philomena at Philomena’s Travel Service in Collins St. I made an appointment, Philomena gave me a glass of Whisky and wrote me out plane tickets for all over the world. She said, You’re not to be using these son and then I had to make an appointment at the Immigration Department. The woman with the bank book met me there. I went in with my bankbook, my tickets and I said I really want to stay and work in Australia for a year. I showed them all my tickets and all this money I had in the bank and they stamped my one year work permit immediately. I came out, gave back the bankbook, withdrew all the money and gave her back the cash. She said…You’re on your own now son.
I found an ad for a room in a house in North Carlton with two students. I moved in to a tiny little room with stinking orange carpet. I had my orange backpack and an orange sleeping bag. I rolled out my orange sleeping bag on the orange carpet and put my orange backpack against the wall and I thought OMG I’ve just started life in Australia.
Jamaica House was fabulous. It was all theatre people, actors and artists who worked there and then I became involved in the band scene in Melbourne. I was going to all the clubs and I got mixed up in the whole band scene and the heroin scene. I realised that I was going down the wrong track. It was 1981 and there were a lot of people into the heroin scene. I got into it for a while and luckily I got out of it. I had a million jobs because I wasn’t legal and was on the tourist visa.
I then had to find a de-facto wife. I found a pretend de-facto wife and I got a job as a designer with the Goanna band, remember Solid rock, sacred ground…well I got a job with them. I was their Graphic Designer. It was a great job and I had to show the Immigration Dept I was working and had a de-facto wife. My de-facto wife was called Wendy and she was a true blue Aussie, blonde hair and freckles. We had to go for an interview together, me and Wendy. She was really cute. It took me three years to get residency and my whole application was lies. I had to do what I had to do.
After I finally got residency I went into a massive depression. I couldn’t do anything, I wasn’t doing any drugs, I think it was just the battle to get residency. I had a complete breakdown and attempted suicide twice. I ended up in hospital and I had to make a decision whether I was going to live or die. If anyone came to talk to me I would sweat profusely so much so that they would need to change the sheets. My anxiety was out of control so they kept me in hospital for two weeks. I decided I am going to live, even if it means I end up in the gutter in Grey St, St Kilda, I’m going to live. That was the best thing that ever happened to me. Once I made that decision I never looked back. I wanted to stay in the hospital because people were feeding me and I felt safe. I wanted to live there forever. (laughs).
I met this guy who was a gardener for really rich people. He had a full time job working for one family in Toorak. I said, I’m going to do that. He said, Don’t be stupid, you can’t just do it. I said Yes I can, I can study Horticulture and I can combine it with Graphic Design. He said No, you need qualifications in Horticulture, then you became a Journey man working in different places for years before you can get a full time job for rich people.
I left the Goanna Band, started studying Horticulture and worked as a Waiter. I met this guy in a bar who sold Pornography for a living so I asked if he had any jobs going. I went in on theTuesday night. It was called the Love Cave in Collins St. It was a part of the Dendy Cinema. The guy said, Ok you write down what you’ve sold in this exercise book, the price and at the end of the night you add it up. See ya later! So now I’m working in a sex shop selling pornography. I used to bring all my Horticulture homework to work and I would study in the Love Cave. They had the most stupid system. I was selling everything and not writing it down. I’m really sorry to say I stole a lot of money from the Love Cave. I was young and I was trying to survive. I actually resigned and I said to the Robert the Manager, do you realise how much money I have stolen from you? I don’t know what else was going on there but it was so loosely run. I then made the decision, I’m never stealing anything again in my life and I never have.
I completed my course in Horticulture and I met Eben. By this stage I was really getting my shit together. I had just turned 29, I had my gorgeous little apartment in St Kilda, I was working, I was studying and I was on top of things. I was still partying hard though but keeping it together to the point where it was a Saturday night and I decided not to go out. 1am in the morning friends rang and said where are you? I said, I’m in bed. They were all at Mandate which was this legendary gay bar in St Kilda and it’s so and so’s birthday. I got up, dressed, walked down the road, walked in and saw Eben. It was his first time in Melbourne. He’d only been in Australia from South Africa for two months. We couldn’t stop looking at each other. We were on the dance floor and he lent over and said, My name is Eben. I said, What is it? Eben! I said, Yeben? No Eben. I said say it again….Eben. Anyway this went on for quite a while.
The next morning he had to go back to Sydney on the Firefly bus. This was the mid 80s. People didn’t fly in those days but before that we ended up in the Botanical Garden on sunrise. Eben said, do you think we’ll see each other again? We exchanged addresses and phone numbers. We wrote each other letters and we wanted to be together but I couldn’t move to Sydney because I was about to finish my course.
Eben was/is a Writer and at that time he was working in his brothers restaurant. He then opened up his own restaurant called Wild Rice in St Kilda which was a Macrobiotic restaurant.
There was a job advertised in the paper and in those days you wrote a letter of application. It was for beautiful gardens in Toorak with excellent wages and conditions so I applied for the job and told them I had qualifications in Horticulture. I remember I said, I also have a BA Honours Degree in Graphic Design which is particularly relevant to colour and texture in the garden. I got an interview with Barbara Walker, strolling around her garden with her little Bichon Frise. Then I had an interview with Ron Walker, ex Lord Mayor of Melbourne and they gave me the job. I had never even mowed a lawn in my life. Next thing I’m looking after their five properties. They gave me a ute, I wore a pager and was in charge of security. I remember in the interview Ron said, We are only interested in self starters so what would you do if that door was coming off the hinges? I said, You know what, I wouldn’t be able to fix it but I could make a phone call. That was the right answer.
They gave me a whole lot of responsibility and sometimes I had to employ people to do the garden (laughs). I’d given my self five years and after the five years I resigned. I was contacted by his secretary and she said, Gerard, Mr Walker doesn’t accept resignations but I thought, tough titties, I’m going anyway, so then he came to see me and he offered me four days a week with the same pay and conditions gave me two weeks to think about it. Two weeks later I was in his Bentley with him and he said, So Gerard, what have you decided to do? All my friends were saying take it, take it! So I said, I’ve decided to take you up on your offer. He said, What offer? Refresh my memory Gerard. I told him what he’d said and he said, What!! You mean I offered to pay you for a day you’re not working? and then he grinned at me, it was an evil grin
In that time Eben and I had bought a house in St Kilda. I was depressed because I’d decided to resign and we had a mortgage. I got a phone call from friends of ours in Antwerp, Belgium. I told her what had happened and she said, I have a job for you in Antwerp. It was gardening for rich people. I said, is it for real? I could start the following Monday. I went back to pack up my stuff at the Walkers and Ron said to me, So Gerard, what are you going to do now? I said, I start work next week. He said, doing what and where? I said, doing what I do here and in Antwerp.
I flew to Antwerp and worked in that job for four months and then I came back and set up my own business called Gerard Dunlop Gardens in Melbourne which I did for another ten years. I had a great business but then I got really sick of it.
Eben and I bought a property on the Mornington Peninsula in Red Hill because he was earning a fortune at Wild Rice. Eben said I have an idea, I think we should open up a bar and restaurant and follow the slow food movement. So we did and we called it The Long Table. It was in Red Hill on the Mornington Peninsula. It nearly killed us. We couldn’t really afford the property which used to be an old rose nursery. It was drop dead gorgeous, King Parrots, Koalas, beautiful gardens and this incredible collection of really old roses like Bourbon Roses. The house was on eight acres,1970s with big cathedral ceilings and a glass wall overlooking the bush. This Dutch guy set us up to grow Marijuana which we did and we only sold it to professionals who came into our restaurant. We paid off our mortgage.
After four and a half years we were buggered so we put the business on the market and we sold it. We sold the property as well and decided we would go and Live in South Africa. Before we left, we wanted a property in Australia and we always loved the Northern Rivers so we bought a 70 acre property in Cawongla with two houses on it. We never lived there, we rented it out and we went to this beautiful little town called Prince Albert in South Africa. After a year we were contacted and told that our property in Cawongla was covered in Lantana and over grazed by cattle. I phoned Sharon Dowling at the Professionals and told her to sell it. We sold it and I came back and we bought a house in Girards Hill, Lismore. I went back to South Africa where we stayed for over four years and then we returned. I’d never lived in Lismore nor intended to live in Lismore in my life. I renovated the Lismore house and realised I had to get a job.
I was about turn 50, in a town I’d never lived but I had nowhere else to go. I looked at all the jobs that were advertised and it was all community services. So I started doing a Cert 4 in Community Services at Tafe. I applied for a job at a Disability Employment Service and I had never worked in an office in my life and I got an interview. They said have you any qualifications for this job. I said Yes I have a Cert 4 in Community Services, but I didn’t, I’d just started the course. I got the job. I was also doing voluntary work for Sanctuary Northern Rivers receiving refugees from Kenya.
I also did the Lifeline Counselling course. So I got the job and within 18 months I was now Co-ordinator. I eventually left there.
Eben was still living in South Africa so I decided to go back and look for another job in Australia. It was cheaper for me to live there. I locked up our Lismore home and went back. I looked for jobs and there was a job in Alstonville for an advocate for people with a disability. I thought, I can do that. I applied for the job from SA, flew back for the interview and I got the job. I worked there for six years but I got the sack for using the bitch word. I won’t go into the detail but it was unfair. Once you’ve been sacked you can’t get a reference. I was devastated because I really loved the job.
I got a call from Tafe offering me a whole project which was Australian Unity. Before NDIS came in it was called Aged, Disability and Homecare (ADAC). The homeware part of ADAC was bought up by Australian Unity and in remote locations of NSW there were all these Aboriginal people who worked for the Homecare part of ADAC. They were looking after elderly Aboriginal people but being paid by ADAC so when they started working for Australian Unity none of them had any qualifications. Tafe wanted me to take all of them through a Cert 4 in Age and Disability and get them a qualification. They wanted me to fly to all these remote locations and they were all flying in from remote locations. They contacted me to do that because they knew my work with Ability Incorporated and also I used to teach Advocacy at Tafe. They said, there’s a few formalities, can you fill this out, put your qualifications in. I said, I don’t have any qualifications. They were like, WHAT!! How have you been doing this for six years without qualifications? I said, I lied! They said, so for 8 years without a qualification? well you must have a Cert 4? I said, No, I have no qualifications in Community Services at all.
They were totally devastated because they wanted me to do this job. I said, What is the minimum qualification to teach at Tafe. They said because of your experience you need to do a Diploma. I said, How long is that going to take me? they said, a year, so I did a Diploma in six weeks. It was nightmare! Everyone morning I’d sit at my computer, I can’t do this, I can’t do this, but I had to. I did it, so now I’m flying off to Dubbo and all over the place. We’re all staying in the same hotel in the Liverpool Club west of Sydney with all these Aboriginal women. It was brilliant. I remember one day this big Aboriginal woman sitting with her arms folded. Here’s me teaching them Aged and Disability and she said, You f*#%ing try to teach me how to look after our elders when we’ve been doing it for 60,000 years. I said, No I’m not, I’m trying to teach you how to get a Cert 4 in Age and Disability so then your world can open up and you can work in any organisation. I did this work for quite a long time and then I got a job teaching at Tafe and I saw a job advertised for Seniors Rights Service and I got that job. I worked for them for six years until we lost everything in the 2022 flood and then I resigned.
I put all my energy into getting a buyback. It was such a mission. That whole process nearly killed me. We finally got it. I feel so sad for my neighbours who weren’t successful. I just don’t understand.
I just remembered a wee bit of my childhood. I was 14 years old and after school every Friday I’d have to do all the shopping and walk about a mile down the road to the co-op. I wasn’t told what to buy. My mother would give me the money and I knew what we needed. I’d drag these two heavy bags home. I’d then have to go to other shops and get coal bricks for the fire. After I’d done all these chores my mother would give me bus fare to get two buses to the other side of Belfast to my sister Kay’s house who had two kids. I’d arrive on a Friday evening and Kay would be sitting beside the fire on the settee with her legs up, smoking a cigarette with rollers in her hair. She’d be yelling…See him, he’s a big pig, just a big pig, talking about her husband Eddie.
I would start cleaning, I’d clean the kitchen, clean the living room, make everything sparkle. Meanwhile she’s teasing up her hair cos she’s going out. She works in a bar in town and I’m babysitting her kids. She’d say. Don’t tell Mammy and she’d pay me. So I’d babysit and I’d say to the kids, If you don’t stop crying I’m closing the bedroom door. It was a good technique. Then at 3am I’d hear all the cars pulling up, all the laughing and bottles chinking. I’d be in bed and I’d come down. They’d be eating their Chinese take away with country and western music and I’d get spun around the living room and then go back to bed. In the morning I’d feel a little ice cold hand on my cheek, Gerard!. I’d take the kids down and make them boiled eggs, toast and tea but they weren’t allowed to talk. I was very strict. Then I’d start cleaning up the ashtrays and bottles and make the people sleeping on the lounge toast and tea. They’d all give me money and Kay would say, don’t tell Mammy.
When I was in my 20s and 30s I really felt there was something wrong with me and I became a therapy junkie to try and sort myself out. What I discovered after all the therapy was I was just deeply flawed like everybody else and there was actually nothing wrong with me. The thing that helped me the most was when I did Buddha studies at Tara House in Melbourne and those studies continue to help me to this day.
I‘ve now reached retirement age but I do work two days a week for St. Vincent de Paul on a migrant settlement program. Eben has just won a major prize for Literature in South Africa, The Hertzog Prize for his latest novel Decima. He’s done really well as a Writer over the years and now we’re old aged pensioners. Lismore has worked out for us. I’ll be here forever. The house we are in now is our forever house.”