“I lived with the Dutch family for a short time, they fostered me. If it wasn’t for them I would have gone into state care so this family embraced me. I remember them saying.… We don’t know whether your mother will be well enough one day to come out. Three weeks later she was released and we moved into this awful, tiny hovel. I’ve actually gone back and photographed it. When I got the PTSD I went back to Sydney and found as many houses as I could that I had lived in and photographed them. It helped me heal. I had been having really bad flashbacks of horrors that I had endured in graphic detail. I flew to Sydney, hired a car and drove around to the places. I took my son Tom with me. After I got home I stopped having the flashbacks because I realised I don’t live there anymore and whatever happened there isn’t happening there now. There’s different people living there now.
When I was in high school I had this very powerful urge to have a happy life, a different life. The time I was with those people I knew it wasn’t the way my life was meant to be. I knew I could have a different life and I was on a mission to make this happen. I had a friend in Year 7 who also had a single mother and her father had been an alcoholic.
In the school holidays there was a Christian camp and we went on a bus to a fabulous place where they had Canoeing and Archery and we made little pendants with crosses on them. They had guitars and we sang songs about Jesus. I thought these are nice people, how amazing is this! When we got home my friend Cheryl said ‘Now that we’re converted we have to go to church.’ She lived in Waverley and I lived in Surry Hills. We went to the church near her home and it said ‘Closed’ but the Minister lived at 12 Leichhardt St so we walked down and knocked on his door. We were all dressed up for church. We knocked on the door and the Ministers wife answered. I thought she was the Ministers house keeper. I didn’t know Ministers could marry. Anyway, she was my husbands mother. I married her son. She said my boys go to church in the market place at Bondi Junction on a Sunday night. We turned up the following Sunday and we saw 4 boys arrive. He was the 3rd son. I looked across at him and I thought Oh, he is so lovely. I went to the youth group and got to know Russell. I was so quiet and shy that I developed this habit of not speaking or sharing about myself. One day he worked out I liked him. We were on a train and I kind of fell on him a bit. We started holding hands during a movie where we accidentally on purpose sat beside each other. Afterwards I kissed him and I was so excited. The electricity zinged through my body and I ran all the way home. It was the happiest I had been because someone loved me and I loved him.
We decided to get married after a few months but we kept it secret for 2 years. I married him as soon as I finished my HSC when I was 18. The urge to have a family that I could love and treasure was so strong. To do school lunches, have picnics and go to the beach, all the things that I never had. We are still together to this day and we have 3 children.
I went to Art School at Sydney College of the Arts for 3 years. While I was doing that Russell was doing Medicine. He became a Doctor at the same time I finished my art degree and had our first baby. I had Millie in November and took her to my end of year exhibition. She had colic which shocked me. We had no support. My mother was in Maleny by then. Russell found it stressful working in the big hospitals in Sydney and I found it stressful being a young mum in Glebe. None of my friends had babies.
Russell decided to apply for a job in Lismore. He flew in for the interview and the guy who interviewed him had his feet up on the desk with cowboy boots and said ‘When can you start Mate?’ He’s been at Lismore Base for 35 years.
We moved to Lismore in 1985 when Millie was 6 weeks old. As soon as we arrived here I got this sense of home. I felt at home. I loved everything about Lismore except that the Art Gallery wasn’t great at that time and also the food wasn’t amazing at that time. There wasn’t even pizza. I loved the people, the climate, I loved the houses, loved the frangipanis and all the beautiful trees. I loved driving around the area and through the hills to Byron. We sunk in our roots and I’ve always felt at home here. He had moved around a lot because his dad was a Minister and I had moved way too much. We decided that we would live in the one place and raise our family. We bought a house in Lismore Heights where we stayed for 7 years then we bought in Clunes where we’ve lived for 25 years. We had our son Tom and daughter Sophie.
The art has kept me sane. I think everybody needs a creative outlet. It can be writing, photography, it can be gardening or cooking and it can be music or drawing. My husband is a Photographer and I kind of stopped taking photos because he takes such good ones. I’ve always needed the drawing because it’s very mindful and I’ve done it throughout my entire life, from early childhood. I remember being in those childhood centres and drawing houses that were a home. I used to draw a yellow house with a red roof and a garden. Now I have a house with a garden. I think I always craved a home so when I actually created a home I felt so blessed, completely fulfilled by having a family. I live a very healthy life and I have always been firm with my kids .… ..Please don’t take pills at a party because I’ve seen my mother take a pill and be completely psychotic, not just overnight but for months so I’m scared of drugs.
I tend to work now in series. Something will come up for me and I will usually do about 12 drawings on that topic. It’s like writing a book with chapters. Last year I did my story called ‘Finding Home’ which was about my own migration story. After that exhibition so many people came up to me and said you have expressed exactly how I feel about coming from another country but living in this area. It’s a belonging but sort of a longing as well. Even though you know this is where you want to live, it’s a better life, part of you kind of feels like you’re missing something. It’s the smell of the Chamomile, the butter’s different, the milk’s different, the trees, the grass, everything is different.
My Grandmothers dead, my father’s dead, my mother’s dead and I carried a lot of the pain from my grandmother and my mother’s lives and the burden of their sadness and trauma. I was aware of some of the horrors of the things that happened to them and I carried that knowledge inside me so I have to be very much in the present. The drawing keeps me in the present. I’ve left out a lot of the horrible stuff which I haven’t told you and I know that isn’t helpful.
Once I found Russell and went to Art school I have found friends and I treasure them and cherish them so greatly. I still have friends I met in Lismore 35 years ago.
I started to realise that I am interested in other migrants. It’s so unusual for a country town in Australia to have such an incredible diversity of people from amazing places and they choose to live here. We have that here in Lismore. I decided to do an exhibition for Refugee Week at The Lismore Regional Gallery where I will focus on some of the people who have extraordinary stories, a couple of which I found through HOL. I want to show the community that migrants are interesting and valuable and how lucky we are to have them in our lives. The people I am choosing contribute in amazing ways to the community. It could be food with the beautiful cafes we have. It could be art. The exhibition is on the 16th June for 6 weeks.”