The Peculiar Incident of My Sister and Her Daughter the Day My Father Died

My relationship with my sister Mary could be called ‘non-existant’ by the time my father sickened and died. Afterwards, it was even worse.

In the 5 weeks following the diagnosis of cancer, until his death, I updated those members of my family for whom I did not have phone number regarding his progress by posting updates on Facebook. 

At this point I had contact with my brothers  Robert  and Ron.  Of my sister Mary and my brother Gunther I had no contact details, as they had made it obvious they did not want to remain in contact.  My brother Angelo remained aloof and incommunicado in Taree, having intimated that he did not believe his family added to his consequence in his adopted home town of Taree.  I knew that my brothers Robert and Ron kept in contact with my other siblings from time to time, but as I had no real interest in them, I never enquired  further.   My brother Barney had left Sydney about three years previously when his wife had received a legacy on her father’s death, and he had left without a word of his forwarding address for Nowra.  Since then we had not heard from him.

Of course, I could have contacted all bar Gunther, including several of my nephews and nieces, via Facebook.  In fact, I was listed as a ‘friend’ on most of their pages, and followed their posts with some interest.  I was able to keep track of all of them, as they were all friends of my daughter. 

When my father was diagnosed with cancer, I posted the information on Facebook, and asked anyone who knew my brothers to let them know what had happened.  No-one rang us to commiserate or talk to Karl, but I did get an acknowledgement from one of my nephews that he would tell his father, and a note of sympathy from a cousin.  Apart from that, silence.  Either my siblings presumed I would do all the worrying for them, or they didn’t care.  As they all knew our phone number, I assume they did not need to talk to any of us about it.

In this period my brother Ron was very attentive, and my brother Robert was in contact often.  My father had requested to see him, and Robert had said he would come and see him on his way home from holidaying in Queensland. 

On the day Karl died, I posted to Facebook within an hour of hearing of the news from Robert.  He had gone to the hospital to see Karl, but had found him comatose, and Karl had died soon afterwards.  He brought my mother home, and stayed for a while.  I posted again to Facebook, but did not look to see if I had any personal messages.  We told Ron, and he told me he would let his brothers know.  Both brothers agreed Facebook was a good medium for getting the message of Karl's death out to everyone.  Barney had learned from Facebook, he said, so at least the medium worked.  That afternoon Gerard and Linda had come to visit Karl and had arrived within half an hour of his death, so they came to the house to give their sympathies. 

At that point Gerard, Ron, Rob, William and I worked out the time and logistics of the Farewell.  I had just that morning completed the arrangements with the funeral parlour which would have allowed me to just make one phone call once Karl had died in order to start the cremation process. 

The next day I checked my Facebook account to see if anyone had responded to my post.  A nephew and a cousin had posted sympathies.  My brother Angelo rang and said he would come to the Farewell (he didn’t, but that may have been due to the bad floods in the Taree area that week , but he should have sent his apologies) and apparently my brother Barney rang Ron and said he would come to the Farewell.

I found I had two messages from my sister and her daughter.  Recall I had not been in contact with my sister since she had written that nasty letter in 2008.  Here they are, in total:

Mary Mckinnon

To bad if we had been upset about our father dying your message posted on your page for "anyone who is in contact with these people please tell them.....' how selfish and insensitive can you be. It might supprise you to know the rest of us are in contact with each othe!

and

Good Job

Thanks for the lovely phone call you selfish bitch about our grandfather passing. Because of you and the rest of the families crap I have never had the chance to know my grand parents. I hope this sits well in your karma to know of the destruction and hurt your selfish being has brought. Some people never change no matter how much time has passed. I hope your life continues on its missrable way and you receive only what you have put out and all the hurt comes back ten fold. Screw you, you are not part of my family. Janice Simpson (Nee-Redward)

This upset my mother and me more than my father dying.  It took several weeks for us both to talk ourselves into a state of equanimity regarding these messages, and finally came to the conclusion that she was jealous of me, but why we could not fathom.  Obviously my niece, who appears to be a piece of work, has been influenced by her mother.  My brothers dismissed them as the rantings of a slightly deranged person whose meanings could not be understood.    

I did not reply to these messages but prevented any follow up by closing down my Facebook account for six months.  I did not want to get involved in a slanging match or to leave myself open to any more of the same.  That would be to stoop to her level, and I believe myself above that. Of course, anyone with any computer knowledge at all would have found me easily, but I don’t think my sister has that knowledge.   

The schism that existed between my sister and my mother and me is now complete, all the antipathy being on my sister’s side.  We have reacted to her rantings by closing her out and not replying, not speaking of it at all.  Despite her claim she is in contact with her brothers (of which I would not care one way or another whether she is or not) she must be lonely over there in Perth with only a drunkard brother and a daughter for family.  She appears to have quarrelled with her son, as he is not included under family on her Facebook page.  Her daughter curses me – alluding to my lupus, I think) but I believe they curse the circumstances that I am here with my mother and they are not.  Why she would believe I have influence over my mother I don’t know, as my mother is an extremely strong willed person, and I don’t know how I could influence her over anything.  It is I who is persuadable, not she.   

All I can say is that my sister and her daughter are very nasty pieces of work!

The Children Kidnapped

Those early years of married life to Gerard were not all plain sailing.

My health was not good all the time: only two years after we married I had a hysterectomy, due to massive fibroids. I had been bleeding heavily at each period until I found I couldn’t go to work for the first two days of my period due to the heavy bleeding - I was forced to wear a baby nappy and stay at home and bleed. When I saw the gynaecologist he said to come back when I was using 4 packets of maternity Modess a period – I said I had gone far beyond that. The diagnosis was massive fibroids, and there was a massive area of menstrual tissue, there fore the heavy bleeding. The surgery preserved the ovaries, however shortly afterwards I began to experience the symptoms of menopause. I kept going to the family doctor with complaints and he suggested I have a holiday, or was my marriage okay? In other words it was psychological. I was devastated by this attitude, but one day I was standing in front of a full length mirror and remarked that I was starting to look like my mother: no pubic hair. It struck me that this was a menopausal symptom and then it clicked. I requested a referral tot the gynaecologist, who, on listening to my string of minor complaints, stopped me and said it was easy – I had gone into menopause. It was an uncommon but known side effect of the hysterectomy that the ovaries just stop working. I do know that my maternal grandmother went into menopause early so it may be a family thing. I started hormone replacement therapy and things went back to normal.

My general health was variable. The periods of mystery illness came and went at irregular intervals and there were times when I was free of the mystery illness for months at a time, then it would come back. I can remember periods were I merely existed, going from one day to the next hoping I would eventually feel better. I spent days with a migraine, only finding relief with an injection of pethidine, a derivative of morphine. This was difficult to get as it was addictive, and I was reluctant to ask for it. Consequently I would not ask for it unless the migraine would not resolve itself. I usually needed an injection about once every two months. I took lots of aspirin and paracetamol. I also suffered constantly from swollen glands. In the early nineties I found that this was due to mononucleosis (glandular fever) which I had contracted whilst I was pregnant with my son in Lebanon. I carried a positive antibody reaction to this disease for at least 15 years that I know of.


The relationship with Michel was not all good in this period either. At one point, I objected to the sleeping arrangements he had for Elizabeth – she did not have a separate bed at all and I felt she was too old to be sleeping with brother and father. Also in this period I suggested that the one day visit should be done with only one of the children – and Michel agreed, and on alternate weekends he took one child for the day, and on the other weekend he had both children for the weekend. I wanted to spend time with the children and as their principal carer I spent most of my time on domestic issues and didn’t get a chance to just be with them. I never understood why Michel gave in so easily over this, and I still don’t. He usually never gave ground on anything. Perhaps he had a guilty conscience from what he was contemplating.

During this period Michel asked me to attend a tribunal to allow him to get a Catholic divorce. I agreed to this and had a long interview with a nun at the Cathedral and he got his divorce.

Both Gerard and I had resigned from the Army Reserve when we married: we had found there was a conflict of interest in both of us attending, and we had children at home, so we decided to give it up.

For Christmas 1984 we decided to take the children to Hill End in the week prior to their scheduled visit to their father. Their behaviour was decidedly unusual, restless and fidgety. The trip was not entirely successful despite the lovely surroundings of Hill End. It rained a lot, and the children’s behaviour made the camping trip difficult to maintain. We came home early because of the rain.

Unusually, when he collected the children, Michel asked for details about their allergies. I was surprised and wondered if this meant a new parent was emerging I was very right and very wrong.

Michel took the children to Lebanon the next day, away from my reach.

He took them to a motel overnight, and the next day he flew out to Lebanon. At the end of the week the children were due to return however they did not, and alarm bells began to ring in my mind. After a few more days, I went around to where Michel lived to find a stonewalling landlady who gave nothing away. I also tried to get information out of his closest friends, to no avail. I am sure they knew where he had gone, but they had been told to tell me nothing I am sure.

After a week I went to the police and was told I could do nothing. It was suggested I see my Member of Parliament, which I did. He was able to pull stings to get the Dept of Foreign Affairs to access the passport computers which told us that they had left the country on Lebanese passports. Using the Lebanese passports was obviously to circumvent the passport watch system under which the children’s names had been placed all those years ago when he first threatened to take them away from me. He had obviously had passports made up in their names when he had travelled to Lebanon six months prior to this incident. I recalled that he had mentioned he was getting photos made up of the children prior to that visit to Lebanon, so he must have had the passports made up then.

I felt much better knowing that the children were safe and that they were with their father. At least nothing really bad had happened to them. I did not feel happy about them being in Lebanon. There was a war in progress and even though Aamchite was in a safe enough area, they could get hurt. I had little chance of getting them back legally, I knew -I knew that the laws of custody in Lebanon gave automatic custody to the father once the child was 6 years old. The only way I could get them back was to either kidnap them back, or persuade Michel to give them up. Regardless of what I was able to do, I wanted to see the children, talk to them and find out what had happened, why, how the children themselves felt about it and what I could do, given the circumstances.

As Michel did not have custody of the children in Australia, he had committed the crime of kidnapping them. I had a warrant for his arrest made out, which did me no good as he was not there to answer it. I then set out to go to Lebanon which was harder than it sounded. I tried several times to see someone at the Lebanese Embassy, to no avail. Finally I turned on the waterworks and cried which got me visas for myself and Gerard.

Lebanon was still in the grip of a civil war in June 1985 and we had to get there via Cyprus, the same way we had come out of there as refugees in 1976. I cashed in the $10,000 I had in an investment bond to finance the trip.

We went to Lebanon without telling anyone apart from family that we were going. We arrived in Jounieh to find the place swarming with soldiers. It was obvious that any attempt to rekidnap the children might fail, and a more direct approach would be needed. We found a hotel in Jbail, and took a taxi to Aamchite, where we had lived and where Michel had built several flats over the original cottage.

I found my ex brother in law at home. The children were playing with their cousins in the back of the ground floor. When my son saw me he started to cry. It had been six months since they had seen me and I wondered what Michel had been telling them. I knew he was a master of the brainwash, so it obviously was not good, judging from my son’s reaction to me. I asked him where his father was but he didn’t know. I went upstairs and spoke to Farouk.

Michel had brought the children to him without warning. The children were staying with Farouk’s family. Michel did not even live with them! I felt outraged. He kidnapped his children only to dump them on his sister in law! Someone must have rang Michel because he came in after a while, roaring to me that I must go. An argument ensued, this in the company a several of the locals, including Michel’s uncle and aunt, who had heard I was there. His behaviour was brutish and cruel, shouting at me to leave. He was finally encouraged calm down and his relatives finally got him to agree that since I was there, I could see the children. It was the intervention of the Zogaibs, Michel’s mother’s relatives, that enabled me to see and keep contact with the children in that time.

I was allowed to take the children out of school a few times in the ten days I was there. I tried very hard to work on the children to try and get them to come back with me, but the resistance was high, and Michel was implacable. I was not in the position to kidnap them back, with the soldiers swarming everywhere. I was also the topic of much conversation as everyone knew who I was and why I was there. I was also accompanied by a large red haired man who stood out.

Those ten days were bitter sweet. Elizabeth was conscious of the gravity of the situation. It was suggested by Michel, and others, that I stay in Lebanon, to be with the children. To do that would be condoning the kidnapping and my position would always be a subservient one, as a supplicant to Michel, like being married to him. It would not have been good for the children to see their mother in such a situation. I decided to return to Australia. I recalled a Jesuit saying: "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man," which is based on a quotation by Francis Xavier. Through this I hoped that the children would seek me out, if I had been a good enough mother. I was able to get the promise from Michel that he would allow letters. This I got through the intercession of the Zogaibs, who had always been on my side.

It must have been difficult for Michel to have the Zogaibs in my corner. They talked of me as if I was a saint, and recalled my exploits often, my daughter told me later. I think also that I had my revenge on Michel every day: he only had to look at my children to see me in their faces.

I went home to Australia with the hope that the children would grow up and seek me out. In the meantime I would have to survive without them. I was devastated. It was worse than death in a way. I had lost my children to a Lebanese and they were being reared in Lebanon by a person unrelated to them, an aunt by marriage. Would I even like them in ten years time?

In the years following, if I was asked if I had children, I would answer “no”. It was easier than explaining what had happened. I was raw with grief for a long time. I did not think that telling the whole world was going to make it any easier for me, so I did not broadcast the event. At around the same time another mother suffered the same fate - it was broadcast on the news, and the toing and froing that occurred was also broadcast. I don't believe the mother fared any better by having the world know what was happening to her and her children. It must have been hard for her to meet people and have them commiserate about the children. I don't think I could have coped with that reminder all the time.

Letters from the children were rare, and came via friends who had travelled to Lebanon. I would get a phone call and would then have to visit someone I didn’t know, sit and visit in Arabic and be polite, in order to get a letter, usually written by Elizabeth. Sometimes the letter was accompanied by photos. Getting a letter meant they were okay, but opened up the wound for me. My life had seemly filled the hole left by the children, but I knew that all I had done was to cover it up. It was always there. I knew I would never recover from this.

Indeed the kidnapping affected the whole family. My parents had looked after the children before and after school, and had taken Elizabeth to dancing and were very involved in their lives. My brother Barney was a regular weekend babysitter. Gerard was their stepfather and a mutual respect and fondness had grown up between him and the children. My brother threatened to kneecap Michel if he could. It was a nice thought.

Even writing this was upsetting, despite the face that the children have been back with me for more than fifteen years. I still cannot face the thought of meeting Michel again. I have come to terms with the kidnapping but have never got over the loss of my children during those ten years. it was worse then death. I think any mother would agree with me.

The first photo is one of the children sent to me from Lebanon. The portraits were given me by Michel, I think they were taken at the time he had passport photos taken. The photo of me with the children was taken at the hotel in Jbail, when I was in Lebanon visiting the children.

Early Married Life with Gerard

I started my life after my marriage broke up with the resolve I would not marry again without marrying a rich man or at least to my advantage. Very cynical of me.

At first my time was taken up with getting well from the surgery. I was very unwell after it, and it took me some time to get well. Elizabeth was at school and Pierre was nearly 5, so I had to think of the future. I had the help of my parents who supported me through the first few months. I filed for divorce with a local solicitor. I applied for and got the single mother’s benefit. I had just enough money to live on if I had no extra costs. Most of my funds went to rent and board to my father. It was just as well I knew how to sew.

One day I decided to get my rings valued. Michel had said they were valuable and to my shock I found they were just paste and were worth about $5. I did not know if he was duped or he had duped me. It was a great shock as I was relying on them to raise funds. I had considered the rings a nest egg in bad times and I found they were worth nothing.

To fill in my time and to get some interest, I decided to join the Army Reserve, if they would have me. I hid the fact that I was sometimes not well. I was still able to do so, and as it was a part time job I presume that they did not care that much anyway. They didn't and I went on an initial training course for a fortnight before settling in at the office of the local Reserve unit at Sutherland. The money I got did not affect my single mother’s pension and was not taxable. It was interesting and I was meeting some nice people, mostly men.

In the meantime my relationship with Michel went from bad to worse. After the initial shock of me leaving had worn off, he had contacted a solicitor and had demanded custody of the children. I had already had sole custody of the children from the episode a few years back when he had threatened to take them away to Lebanon, and this was obviously a vexatious attempt to upset me. He accused me and my parents of being unfit to look after the children. This came to a head about six to nine months after we had separated. The court ordered the children be examined by a psychologist – without me – and I and my parents were interviewed at our home. It was a very intrusive time for all of us, as I was being accused of being an unfit mother, after being a wife and mother for seven years. The accusation also targeted my parents –as Michel had disliked them from the very beginning I was not surprised at this gambit, however it did cause an extra level of stress for all of us. I wondered if my methods of rearing children, copied from my parents, were that bad – the accusation had me worried. However it turned out to be the equivalent of a vexatious mother’s accusation of child abuse against a father in order to prevent access or custody – quite a few of these accusations are without foundation and this was the same. The report tendered to the court, finally, told the court that the children were being looked after very well, that there was nothing wrong with the care I or their grandparents were giving them, and that they were the most brain washed children he had come across for a long time. Michel had been brainwashing them whenever he had them, every weekend – every second week for the whole weekend and every other week on the Sunday. The custody battle ended with that – I was awarded sole custody, with him having access.

The access visits were not always smooth and a few times the Police were called to settle arguments that started between us. The children acted up when they came back from these weekends and it always took a few days for them to settle down again. It can’t have been easy for them: caught between the two of us. I was as scrupulous as possible about not disparaging him in front of them; I felt it better that they make up their own mind about him when they were old enough; and in the meantime it would not help if I said bad things about him to their faces. They had a right to love their father. Life was hard enough for them without a tug of war with mother against father. I know their father was always putting me down; this was part of the reason why they acted up on Sunday nights when they got home – their love for both their parents was being tugged, pushed and pulled by their father in particular. He was making them doubt me, and I think that must have been very hard for them.

In the meantime, I was attending the Army Reserve and had started to go out with a few of the men there. I had a few one night stands with a few men that I went out with – I kept it quiet and did not make a display of my activities, so I did not get a reputation (or at least I don’t think I did). One of the men I remember in particular as a very nice Indian man called Michael (not the best name for a man wanting to go out with me to have) and he pursued me until it became very obvious that I was going out with Gerard. He sent me flowers again and again, and rang me continuously. I had sex with him once, and while he was a nice man, I did not feel any connection with him. Another, called Ian, was a nice guy who was very laid back – so laid back, in the end that I could not really like him much. He came to the house and my parents took to him; however when it came to sex he was very much the male chauvinist – it was wham bam thank you ma’am and never a thought for me – he just rolled over and went to sleep, to my great surprise. I never went out with him again. I was heavily into activities at the Army Reserve, working there occasionally during the week, when pays had to be made up, and going on a course firstly as a recruit and secondly to do the Company Clerk Course.

In the September after I had left Michel, I had surgery to fix haemorrhoids, which had been bothering me since I had had the children. It was after this, while I was still convalescing that I was walking home from voting one Saturday that I met Gerard, a fellow soldier from the local Reserve Depot. I hardly knew him, knowing only that he was one of two brothers with the same initials, so they had to be referred to with their full names. I had to ask him if he was Gerald or Gerard. He offered to take me home and then asked me out on the following day. I had to refuse as I was still suffering from the surgery, so I deferred for a week.

We went out for the first time the following week and by the end of the following weekend - the October long weekend – he had asked me what I was doing with the rest of my life. We were inseparable from then on; apart from my duties to my children. Gerard and I had begun to plan a life together; I told him I could not have any more children, I had had my tubes burned and I did not want more children anyway. Gerard replied he did not care for children anyway; having grown up with his nieces and nephews under foot he had had his fill of children. There were plenty of children in his family anyway.

Gerard came from a large family living in Heathcote – the youngest son of a family of 10 children, the eldest being a full generation older than he. His mother was bigoted Catholic matriarch who expected to have her wishes obeyed, including the fact that she did not like me: I was already married, had children – in fact I had a scarlet “A” attached to my back. She never took to me in all the time I knew her. Gerard’s father was a little Irishman who was vehemently catholic and was willing to force his children – especially Gerard - to attend church and live as a Catholic. Gerard had at that point moved home in a hiatus between living with several of his siblings and moving into a place of his own in preparation to marrying me. It was a strained time as he had continuous disagreements with his parents. It solidified with a partial truce about me once we had married.

Once Pierre had gone to school in the February of 1981, I went to Tech, learning secretarial skills: typing, shorthand, accounting skills etc. It was not easy to be back at school and it was made all the harder when I broke my arm ice skating after a few months.

The local doctor did not believe my appeals that the arm needed an x-ray, and I persevered with the course with the bad arm. Years later I found that the arm was very broken and it healed badly, leaving me with an occasional problem if I lifted heavy things with it: the tendon would lock around the healed break and I need to unlock it by twisting the arm slightly. I was unlucky in my response to broken bones – I did not faint if one touched my broken bone – this was not to help me in the future. Another nasty accident ice skating was when I dislocated my right knee, falling on it on the ice. I immediately knocked it back into place, but the damage was done. I told the GP, the same one as for the arm, but he didn’t believe me and nothing was done. When I went to the Army barracks for initial and clerks’ training, I was unable complete the drill exercises as my knee swelled up. The army doctors told me that the damage was done when I dislocated it and it should have been immobilised for a period afterwards. I spent a lot of the second week of the initial training fortnight on crutches – which was in itself excruciatingly painful – because my knee had swollen to twice its size due to overuse in the drill exercises. Interestingly I have dyslexia of left/right, but managed to win a drill competition (probably because I knew I had to concentrate to even do it, so I was not complacent)

In July 1981 I was divorced and the property settlement gave me $10,000 which I invested in a mortgage with my solicitor. The next month I moved in with Gerard, two weeks after I got the job that I said I would get prior to moving in with him. I wanted to start on an equal footing with him.

Interestingly, Elizabeth had brought Herpes Varicella (chickenpox) home from school and we all caught it, myself, the two children, my brother Barney, who had just come home from prison, and my mother, who had it very severely. Her dose was so severe she ended up with scars from it, just like smallpox. I had it enough that it was obvious, but I was not really that sick with it. It came to a head the week I had to attend court for the divorce. I recall Barney and I travelling into the city together and trying not to get too close to anyone because of it. I asked my solicitor if he had had chickenpox and he looked at me, and moved to another seat. I looked on the surface as if I had a bad case of acne, however if you knew, it was obvious.

In the August I felt sufficiently skilled to try for work. I got a job at first try; a job as an accounts clerk at a loan company subsidiary of a bank, CAGA. I was hired by a woman who believed women who were re-entering the workforce made better workers – they were more disciplined, having managed a household etc. She gave me my break into the world of business and I never looked back – I enjoyed the work and I learned quickly.

All through this time Gerard and I had attended the Army reserve unit at Sutherland and after a time it had become general knowledge that we were an item, despite our efforts in keeping it quiet. It was some time before his friends found out, and they were surprised. Gerard did not appear to be the ideal companion for me. It was almost a year before anyone found out, but the reaction when we announced we were getting married interested me. The news was met mostly with disbelief from everyone. The Commanding Officer had a word with me, and told me that I would be marrying beneath me, that Gerard was not suitable for me. I did not initially tell Gerard anything about this, and dismissed it. It appears that Gerard also got a talking-to, and was told I was too good for him and that we would never be happy. We told each other about these incidences about ten years later. It was not nice – it appears people misjudged Gerard; however he came over as a drunk “yobbo’, only interested in the next beer.

Gerard was a drinker and I didn’t realise until later how much he drank. He later told me that I saved him from the life of a drunkard. He did indeed drink a lot, and I tried to join him. However I was a very cheap drunk and the first time I got drunk – on a few glasses of bubbly – I was so sick I thought I was getting the liver complaint back again. I went to the doctor and was told I had a hangover. All I can say is that if people really got a hangover like I did that day they would not drink to excess ever. I never drank much after that but tried to keep Gerard company. That lasted for a few years but I always found that after a few glasses of whatever I would invariably fall asleep so it was counter productive – so I kept my drinking to a minimum. I rarely had a hangover. I found in later years I had an allergy to the preservatives added to wine and that I could drink a little of cider or mead with no trouble as preservatives are not added to these drinks.

I had decided that I would not leave the security of my parents’ home without a job first. It was a good idea, and I entered the “marriage” on equal terms. I was determined to begin as I wanted it to end – with equality in the marriage. Gerard had no quarrel with that. He had 5 sisters and was used to the idea of women being equal although he told me that his father beat his mother, which he could not understand, as she was bigger. I knew I would never experience being beaten, as he was evidently traumatised from it. It caused a lot of problems later that he was guilt-ridden and affected by these ructions in his parents’ marriage and their treatment of him.

Gerard and I came to our marriage with nothing between us. He had a misspent youth and had nothing except his car, which was paid off. I had nothing apart from the $10,000 which I did not touch. We found a place for rent in Jannali close to my parents so they could look after the children while I was at work. We set up house as if we were married – in fact we did not formally marry for a year. It was my caution that stopped us. I wanted to be very sure that it was the right thing to do. I had been burnt once before and I did not want to be burnt again.

Soon after we were settled, Gerard expressed a wish to get a motor cycle. He had not ridden since he had had an accident when he was 19 and had endured a court case over it, and was put on a good behaviour bond. I said why not, as several of my brothers were riders. He got a bike, and took me for a ride. I had never been on a motor bike before this, and I found it terrifying. He took me around Bate’s Drive, and up and over Sylvania, and it was the most terrifying moments of my life. I was so scared. He had no compassion for my fear and turned through the corners, scraping my boot as he went. I decided then and there that if I were to ride a bike I would ride my self, never on the back of anyone else.

That decision started a more than ten year relationship with bikes and biking. Within a few weeks, Gerard had bought me a 150cc Honda to learn to ride on. I had to have drink, the first time I got on it, however I learned to ride in about a week, and before I took my licence test, I had progressed to a 500cc Honda which I named Vladimir. I did the Stay-Upright course twice, before it was compulsory (at that point it was a new concept to have school for defensive riding). Since I had not the time to develop bad habits, I did well. Gerard did the courses with me to keep me company but found to his surprise that he was being criticised more than I was – he had developed bad habits, so the course had value for us both, so we repeated it two years later to confirm that there were no new bad habits. We joined a bikers’ club and started to go to rallies, riding up to 1,000 - 1,500 km a weekend – riding to a campsite, collecting a badge to say we had attended, and staying the night, mixing with the other tourers, and riding home the next day. My first rally was on the January long weekend of 1982, to Albury. It was a trial by fire for me. I had never gone so far in the car, let alone on a bike. It was hard work, but fun. We had found our joint hobby.

In the meantime the children had started to settle down and we commenced married life with the children attending access with their father on the weekends. He had the better deal of course. The visiting parent always does. He didn’t have to do anything but criticise my parenting and take them out and spoil them. Which he did, and Mondays were always difficult for us. The children always acted up after a visit with their father, and my resolve to not disparage him in front of them was sorely tested at times.

Pierre wet the bed. He was obviously anxious and disturbed and in the end I moved him to Sutherland North School, in an effort for him to shine by himself, in case he was inhibited by his sister’s scholarship. And he did begin to shine a little there. I know he particularly enjoyed being taken to school or being picked up by Gerard on his bike, as he was envied by his class mates, and he at last had something that made him liked at school.

I now know that the weekend access was used by Michel to brainwash the children. It is amazing to think that they lived a double life, with their father disparaging me at every opportunity. It cannot have been easy for them. I was a strict mother and demanded obedience and respect from my children. If they did not obey me, I had not hesitation in smacking them. Perhaps if I had my time over again, I would not be so strict, however that is the way I was reared and it is very hard to get away from that. I think it can be done, but it has to be a conscious and deliberate decision. In my case, I had my parents looking after the children after school, so it made sense to be consistent in our child rearing practices.

Gerard’s relationship with my children started coolly. He saw the children, he told me later, as little wogs, and didn’t like them much. He accepted them as part of the package: to get me he needed to accept the children, which he did. I asked the children to respect him as my husband, and to obey him as they would me. I told them they were not expected to love him or even like him, just to treat him with respect. Gerard took an active role in the children, as he had years of experience with nephews and nieces. In time the children became fond of him and he of them. Since I had no expectation of this occurring it came as a surprise to me. Once Gerard saw the children separate from their Lebanese-ness he began to like them.

We started to take the children with us on the bikes when we could, when they were free from access visits. They appeared to like it. I am not sure of this, as I am not sure they merely acted as if they liked it, for the sake of peace. I know their father would have liked to say something about the things they were doing however for some reason he did not. I wonder sometimes if he got advice on the subject and was told that there was nothing he could do, given he had tried and failed to get me disqualified in the past as a fit mother.

Elizabeth was lucky that her grandmother was willing to take her to dancing lessons after school twice a week. This started while I was living with Michel, and the connection continued after I left Bexley with my father taking Elizabeth in his car after work and Gerard and I took her to the Saturday lesson after we became a couple. She was very good at the dancing and performed in the end of year concerts and did her exams – doing well, especially once she had conquered her initial confidence problems. Larne become a lynchpin in the teacher’s operations by making a lot of the costumes for the end of year concerts and became very friendly with some of the other mothers.

For a while, my mother and I attended a private class with this teacher, after I had finished work, and did tap and ballet. We had both always wanted to do it, and it was lovely to be able to learn properly. We did this for about a year.

We bought Elizabeth a piano when she expressed a wish to learn, and found a teacher for her locally. She attended lessons for about a year and the teacher was very impressed with her progress. She was able to compose very early after starting to learn. She appeared to have an aptitude for musical things. Her school work was also very good and she was doing well in everything she did. She at least appeared to have adjusted to the divorce and my remarriage.

Gerard and I married a year to the day after we moved in together, solemnising the relationship with a marriage ceremony in front of a celebrant in our living room with Gerard’s sister Veronica and my brother Barney as witnesses. We did not tell the children, leaving the announcement of a year earlier to suffice. We told very few people, as we had announced our marriage when we moved in together. We went to dinner after the ceremony with the witnesses. We wore ordinary clothes and did not have a honeymoon. It was in some ways the perfect wedding – simple, easy and no fuss.

Our life was complicated by the access visits; however this was in our favour when we wanted to travel to rallies. We did most of our rally riding while the children were on access visits. However we did take the children with us at times, and sometimes we went out of our way to arrange with their father for them to be available for some of the trips we made, especially when we thought they might enjoy it. The children did appear to enjoy the rallies they attending especially as they were petted by the men, mostly unmarried, who attended the rallies. The environment sounded as if it would not be safe, however there were very few moments that I feared for my safety. Bikers on a whole whilst dangerous to others at times are nice to old ladies, look after children and rescue little kittens, even while drunk. The children became quite adept at riding with us.

They were very good passengers and once they learned why they had to sit a certain way, they were good pillions. I generally took Pierre with me, as he was smaller. We once had an accident together. We were riding through the National Park towards Stanwell Tops when I took a corner too fast and slid into the gravel on the side of the road. I had told the children to stay still if anything happened, reasoning that this would be the safer option than trying to get free, as it would only be counter productive. It worked in this instance as Pierre stayed still, most probably because there was no time to react. We slid, still on the bike, for a few feet, and then it stopped and we climbed out from under it. As he scrambled he grazed his knee. We got back on the bike, which was okay, and continued, on our way, none the worse for wear. The graze was the only injury.

One August we took the children out of school for a week and took a trip on the bikes around NSW looping around to Griffiths to see my half brother by the way. The trip was very good for us all – spending a whole week together and travelling. The trip was educational for the children. When we reached Hill End, we camped for the night and I sent the children up to the shop to buy supplies. I told them to buy certain things, but not if they were too expensive. They come back without onions, which rightly enough were too expensive. They were at that age, 5 and 7, old enough to judge these things for themselves.

I tried in this period to make the children as independent as possible.

One time just after we married, I enrolled Elizabeth in a school holiday acting school that she said she was interested in. However I could not take her as I was due to start work at the same time. So I had to rely on instructing her how to get there from my work [lace and meet the convenor at the bus stop. She apparently had no trouble getting to where she needed to go, but had trouble finding the bus stop to come back to my work in the afternoon. I got a phone call from her some time after I had expected her to arrive at my work, in a panic, trying to find the way back. I calmed her down and after another phone call and a long anxious wait from me she arrived, pleased that she managed it. I was so relieved, as I envisage her lost in the Central area of the city and not knowing how to get to me or to get home. I dared not leave work to go and look for her in case she managed to get to me and if I was not there she might have panicked more. I was proud of her and the incident, while at the time distressing, gave her a lot of confidence. She was able to attend the school for the rest of the week without my help.

Another time we left the children at Sutherland station and told them to catch a train to Jannali, where we were living, ring us from Jannali station to let us know they had arrived , and then to walk home. This was an exercise in ensuring they knew how to get home, and to ensure also that they knew how to use a public phone by themselves. They did it beautifully and we were very pleased with their independence.

Gerard and I had a very good marriage: we were sexually very compatible, we worked well together and we were very much in love, and very happy. We had left the Army Reserve after we married and we devoted ourselves to family live with the children (when they were with us) and to our hobby of biking when we were on our own. Our lives seemed to be taking a course for a happy future when several thing happened.

The House at Bexley and the end of the marriage

In 1979, we bought a house. I say “we” – but it was Michel who chose the house in the end. I did not like his choice, but I had not say in the matter. I found out later that the house had belonged to Lebanese people and that was the main criteria for buying it. It was a Federation house mostly in original condition, but with a sun room out the back. The kitchen had also been renovated. Apart from that the house was mostly in the original condition. The dining room was a funny room to the side of the kitchen, and I had plans of turning it into a bedroom. I liked the sunroom out the back: it was cool and it was a great room for my sewing machine – up until then I had to put the machine on the kitchen table or in the spare room which also double as Pierre’s bedroom most of the time. Now I had a room of my own; I was very pleased with it. I furnished it with a wall hanging of an Arabic scene and I had my sewing machine set up permanently and a sofa and some chairs. It was the only thing that pleased me about the house.

The house was situated on the east side of Bexley shopping centre off Forest Road, and was a little out of the way. There was a long walk down to Rockdale or a walk from Bexley after catching the bus. The only good thing was that the school was now very close. Elizabeth had started school the previous year and had to take the bus to get to school; now she walked a few blocks.

There was very large backyard, just grass, and a garage. The garage was mostly empty, although at one point I did use it to make some drawers for a bed I had managed it acquire. This surprised Michel that I went out and bought some wood and made up some drawers from scratch to fit the sedan bed – all dovetail joints, too. It should not have surprised him: I was, after all, the daughter of a carpenter and I had learnt how to do this at a very early age.

Michel continued to work long hours – he now had the excuse that he had to pay the mortgage. The situation of our married life went up and down: at one point I remember we appeared to be making headway and had in a way reconciled. However it did not last and I recall most of the time I lived in the house that I barely tolerated Michel when he was home. He had given up on the “no talkies” some time ago; I had told him that he was hurting no-one but himself when he did it, and that I positively enjoyed the period when he was not talking to me. So he stopped doing it.

Most week nights Michel went to bed fairly early. On Weekend days he spent the time with us, his family, but went out of a night to visit his friends. I was very happy to see him go and I let him go happily and had the house to myself. I preferred it that way.

In the past six months of my time in the house out sex life was mostly non- existent, I could not bare the sight of him and I had no feelings for him at all. I had gone off him completely.

After about 6 months at the new house, I decided to get a job. I had been thinking about getting a job to get some independence from Michel. I had no money of my own and I found it irksome. The idea was not popular. I got a job as a cleaner “assistant” in a kindergarten, which allowed me to take Pierre with me. It was a very difficult time for me. Pierre did not like the pre-school, and acted up, and I found the work very tiring and hard. At one point I was asked to do the personal ironing of the owner. She thought I was obstreperous when I told her I did not know how to undo an ironing board – but I had never seen one opened and genuinely did not know to unlock one. I had to iron the husband’s underpants! It was an education. Mostly I spent the day cleaning – little toilets, the floor over and over etc. After two weeks the owner told me I was not suitable. I was relieved and left gladly. I was exhausted and ill by the end of the second week. The chronic fatigue I was suffering from at times was exacerbated by all the physical work. Michel’s attitude to me working did not help – he made no effort to help me – in fact he sabotaged me as often as he could. He did not like me working because it meant I was not available to look after him – ie be a housewife.

The gall bladder problem continued to dog me and got worse in the second year at the new house. I became quite ill and spent a lot of time at the hospital. I was booked to have my gall bladder removed in the March of 1980. I was losing weight because I was not eating – I found it painful to eat any fat and eventually I stopped eating almost everything – the gall bladder was upset when ever I ate.

In February 1980 I took an unusual step of sending Elizabeth to my mother’s and to school at Jannali near her place, as I was sick enough not to be able to cope with her and Pierre. I hoped that by the time I had the operation I would be able to have her back with me. Michel was making it difficult for me to schedule the operation and was balking at looking after the children while I would have been in hospital. We had several arguments about it. He was not amenable to helping me with my health problems at all.

I prepared myself for the surgery by making a will – not that I expected to die, but I decided to get my affairs in order anyway. All I had to leave was a few paltry possessions like a sewing machine. This act was to cause trouble later on.

Late in February I became very ill and took myself to hospital where I was admitted with a bladder infections and malnutrition. I was so malnourished the doctors said that they could not perform the cholecystectomy until I had improved. I had spent too much time without eating anything nutritious that I was lacking the fat-soluble vitamins that enable the blood to clot. I spent 2 weeks in hospital on a drip before I had the gall bladder removed.

It was while I was waiting to have surgery that the will issue came up. Pierre had been sent to join his sister at Sutherland with my parents, and I was happy to stay in hospital where I could get treatment at last. Michel had come to visit me. I mentioned in passing that I had made a will, leaving my possessions to my children. He was furious and ranted and raved at me in the ward asking how I could do such a thing – if I made a will my possessions should go to him not to the children – the whole ward heard him. I was flabbergasted and astonished. After he left I walked up and down the ward, trailing my drip stand, in a fury. This was it – I was not going to put up with this any more – I was not going to return to Bexley after I got out of hospital. I had decided. This was the last straw in a series of humiliations and mortifications.

After the surgery I went home to my parents’ place to recuperate. I asked my parents if I could stay. They said yes, and thank God, we had been waiting for you to say this – I knew my parents had a policy of not interfering in the marriages of their children. I was a little surprised that they were waiting for me to come home. I had been unhappy for so long, it felt strange to be home.

My father and I went to the house at Bexley about two weeks after I left hospital with the trailer and I loaded up the minimum furniture I needed for myself and the children, and took all our clothes. I left a note for Michel saying I was leaving and would not be coming back.

That evening, of course, I had a visit from Michel. He was distraught. How he couldn’t have seen this coming I don’t know. Like a lot of men whose marriages fail, he did not think his marriage was in trouble. He commented that the fact I had left him to go home to my parents was more mortifying than if I had left to run away with another man; it appears that the fact that I just no longer wanted to stay married to him was worse that me as an adulteress. He got down on his knees and begged. I was adamant. He should have known that once I had decided to go there would be no going back.

A few months later his brother came from Lebanon to see me in an effort to get me to return to Michel. Naturally I did not – I did not even want to speak to him – it served no purpose at all. He left disappointed.

The Bexley Years

The Bexley years were marked, for me, with memories of being sick. As well, Elizabeth was sick for two of those years, with what looked like the same problem.

When we first moved to Bexley near the park, I was in my early twenties, with two pre-school children. My health was “okay”, but I was having periods of acute illness –swollen glands, low-grade fever, aches and pains in the joints, excessive and debilitating fatigue, diarrhoea and stomach cramps, and nausea. In the early years my complaints were mostly ignored by the doctors I saw. At one point one doctor diagnosed me with “soft-tissue arthritis” which is a peculiar definition to give for my symptoms. My only solution to the problem was to spend my time laying on the sofa and taking aspirin – I did not have access to any other drugs, and aspirin relieved the symptoms for the 3-4 hours at a time. The illness came in episodes, lasting up to three months at a time, and during this time I would be mostly unable to do anything apart from the most necessary of duties. I would do the housework and set the cooking up for the day, and spend the rest of the day on the sofa, dozing and napping. I would close the house up, if it was the winter, or lock the back gate if in the summer, and let the children play. In the winter, I would allow the children to move the furniture and play houses – I would give them sheets to make tents etc. I would keep one ear on the children’s noise, and as long as the noise was the usual children’s noise, I would stay on the sofa. In the afternoon I would put the children down for a nap and sleep myself. At around 4pm I would jump up, tidy the house and the children, giving them a milkshake to tide them over until tea-time, bathe them and generally make the place look as if I had not spent all day on the sofa. My son has a memory of me in one of these episodes, combing my hair for me.

The intermittent diarrhoea I suffered from for years meant that I had a weight problem – I never weighed more than about 57 kgs in the whole time I was married to Michel.

I had surgery to correct the retroverted uterus just before we moved to Bexley and unfortunately for me I had continuing pain from the surgery. The GP I was seeing in Rockdale, a Dr Kolos, diagnosed stretched tendons –the tendons had been pulled too tight during the surgery and were painful. She performed corrective surgery to loosen the tendons and gave me a course of injections to deal with the pain. She also referred me to a physio therapist where I was to undergo a course of ultrasound treatment to aid healing. Getting the children dressed, getting down to Rockdale, worrying about what the children were doing while I was undergoing treatment was counterproductive to the any benefit the treatment may have given me. Eventually it was the effluxion of time that cured the problem. It was several years before I was free of pain, but it eventually disappeared.

When Elizabeth was three, the occasional intermittent fevers that marked her early life became much more frequent, and I was referred to a paediatrician. He was unable to come to a definite diagnosis. He admitted her to hospital each time she ran a fever in an effort to get to the bottom of the issue, but came up with nothing other than he suspected a virus infection, as her blood tests showed elevated white blood cell activity. It appeared that the fevers were not life threatening, so eventually I relaxed about them, and they disappeared once she went to school. Later we found that they were caused by the Epstein-Barr virus that we had caught in Lebanon.

Dr Kolos was, as a GP, very good for me. One occasion I was seeing her about my own problems, and Pierre shat in his pants. I had been able to toilet train him for wees, but not for bowel movements. At this point he was just two years old. The ka-ka was foul smelling and loose, and Dr Kolos, on smelling it – it was unavoidable – declared that the smell was “off “ and promptly swooped on Pierre and took a sample to be tested. The results surprised me. He had a fungi infection – monilia albicans – and milk intolerance. No wonder I had not been able to toilet train him! Once I took him off milk and he had a course of medication, he stopped shitting his pants and became a happier boy as a result.

During this period I spoke to Dr Kolos and her partner several times about my own problems. One time, the other doctor in the practice prescribed medication – Serepax and a diazepam, to be taken together. I was a little dubious but at that stage still doing what my doctors told me to do without question. This episode changed that view. I took the medication once I had got back home, after lunch, and promptly became very drowsy, dizzy and disorientated. I could barely keep my eyes open. I struggled through the afternoon, becoming more and more angry that the doctor had prescribed powerful sedatives to a mother with young children. How I was supposed to function, I don’t know. As well, the implications of the prescription – treating it as a nervous complaint – meant that the doctor did not see my complaints as having any basis in fact. I threw the rest of the medication out and changed doctors.

I had a bit of a crush on my next doctor. He was a handsome young man and I was a lonely very frustrated housewife and I must admit to visiting him more than was absolutely necessary. I would see him whenever the children were sick etc. Perhaps 4 to 5 of my visits were spurious however it never went further than these few extra visits.

I was experiencing a lot of lower back pain of unknown origin and this pain over time was driving me made with frustration. There did not appear to be a problem with the back – my back was fine, and examination of my back yielded nothing. The pains got worse over time, and eventually I realised a nexus between the pain and eating. One evening the pain was very bad and I was writhing on the bed, enable to find a comfortable position, and I asked Michel to call the doctor (the one I had a crush on) as I was in terrible pain. He came, and when I told him I thought there was a connection between this pain in the side back on the right hand side, he performed what he called a “Murphy’s test”: he asked me to breathe in deeply and he pushed his hand into the space under the ribs on the right hand side. Silly man, he did not warn me it might hurt – it hurt like crazy and I instinctively lashed out, hitting him in the face (a nice backhander) in pain and surprise. Well, he said, that’s a positive Murphy’s test, if ever there was. It appeared I had cholecystitis, inflammation of the gall bladder, probably due to gall stones. He gave me an antispasmodic to take, which worked, and told me not to eat fatty food and to arrange for a test.

Unfortunately the test did not show gall stones. The bile duct was inflamed, that was all. The pain continued and I was put on the list for surgery as a public patient for a gall bladder removal. I continued to get the pain and over time ceased to eat any fat whatsoever in an effort to reduce the pain. I started to lose weight and became quite sick. But at least I knew what the problem was. This explained the back ache I had all the way through the second pregnancy – gall bladder problems are common with pregnancy and the cholecystectomy is common in women who have had children.

During the years we lived at Bexley Michel worked sometimes 7 days a week, 16 -18 hours a day. The reason was to send money to Lebanon and to save for a house for us. If it were only to save for a house for use, I would have been sanguine about it, however a lot of what he earned he sent to Lebanon to continue the building project. At least twice he borrowed on personal loans to send the whole money to Lebanon. These remittances also supported Farouk and his family – most of the time I was married Farouk did not work and Michel supported him and his family.

Michel also took a job as an office cleaner, working at night after his other job. This meant he arrived home, tired, at about 9 pm during the week. Was he a workaholic? Yes and no. Yes he seemed to driven to keep working, but he did not work just for the sake of it, his goal being to make as much money as he could. Unfortunately his children did not know him very well, as they only saw him on Saturday and Sunday evenings. They were asleep when he arrive d home during the week. Eventually I put my foot down: I told Michel that for the children’s sake he needed to stop working such long hours, as they had begun to show a lack of interest in him. He acquiesced, reluctantly, however this move did result in a better relationship with his children.

These long hours working did not improve our relationship which had begun to sour visibly during this period. We started fighting, which is something that I hated as I am not good at fighting. I get physically sick from nerves and cannot think of anything to say, often bursting into tears before I can say anything. A few times I started the fight, and one time I threw things at him in an effort to get him to give me an answer to a question (I can’t remember what the question was). It was in this period that I found out why he married me – I had asked him why had he married me if he found me so imperfect and unsuitable – why did he criticise me continuously? He answered that he thought that marrying a young good looking girl of 18 would be a good way of getting the wife he wanted – he could change me to what he wanted me to be. You’ve changed, he said. No, I said, I’ve just grown up more. You can’t change people, I said. He reluctantly agreed with this statement. At this point our marriage was at a nadir of disappointment on both sides as we were starting to say what we really thought of each other.

During one of these arguments he threatened to take the children from me and take them to Lebanon. I took this threat very seriously and immediately instituted proceeding in court to give me sole custody of the children, to prevent him form taking them out of the country. It was surprisingly easy, given I was still living with him, and was funded by Legal Aid, and I had my mother serve the papers on him when it was finalised. He was very taken aback and I think it gave him pause to consider the situation because he became a little more attentive and the situation improved somewhat once he got over the shock of it.

Another time, I cut my hand leaving a nasty little scar because I knew I would not get help from him. I had locked myself out of the house when the backdoor blew closed on me. It had happened once previously and I had rung from a neighbours and made Michel come home to unlock the door for me. He was not happy to do so, however as he lived only 5 minutes from his workplace I thought it reasonable to ask him, especially as I had several children with me. The second time, I broke a pane of glass to open the door, cutting myself. I have the scar to this day to remind me of his mealy-mindedness.

I was beginning to discuss and complain to people regarding my unhappy marriage. I considered it unhappy; apparently Michel did not (as he said when I later left him). I was upset at his lack of consideration for me and the children, the time he spent working and the balance of the time he spent mostly with his Lebanese friends. Despite the fact I didn’t like his company I resented the fact that I was alone most of the time and I had not support from him whatsoever. I had to do everything myself and he just worked and visited. I had gone the extra mile in Lebanon by living the Lebanese life as much as possible but he would not accommodate in any way any element of the Australian way of life or even its attitudes.

At one point I even caused him to lose face in front of the Lebanese. Up to this point his marriage problems had not been broadcast to anyone and the only people who knew were my family. An incident illustrates this: the olives. Somewhere Michel had got hold of a box of olives straight off the tree. These need to be scored and soaked in brine before they can be eaten, and this is a laborious job. I had no desire to do it and as I did not eat olives (I hated the taste of them) I flatly refused to sit and score the olives for him. I told him to do it himself. Instead he brought up the Lebanese grandmother of the family with whom we had lodged when we first came back from Lebanon. She sat in the hallway and scored the olives for Michel, leaving me fuming at his insolence at bringing someone into the house to do the job for him. He got his olives – which would have been cheaper and easier to buy prepared – but he lost face, as the Lebanese community knew his wife would not do this for him. I drew the line in the sand.

Our sex life faltered and ground to a halt. I asked for and got a bed of my own. I could not stand to be in the same bed as he. We reached a state of neutral animosity – carefully polite to each other, not really communicating on any other than a superficial level but only when it concerned the children or a family matter. My unhappiness over my marriage only added to my woes and my health deteriorated.

All during this period – these three odd years - I managed to pick up work as a day-care mother and making clothes for the children of my friends. Most of any money I managed to keep went on buying material for clothes for the children, some on dental and physiotherapy bills for myself. Most of the time any money I earned was carefully docked from the housekeeping money by Michel and I was not better off. However it always made me feel good to know I could earn money for myself if I needed it.

I continued to visit my parents and my mother continued to visit me. I was not able to keep girlfriends as Michel’s behaviour when it came to meeting them scared them off – he made it obvious he did not trust any of them. A few of them were very nice women, and I would have liked to have a girlfriend, but I could never keep one. Also I think in retrospect I came across as needy – I was desperately lonely living on the hill in Bexley, with no transport, no money to speak of and a not so nice husband and I believe that scared women off becoming friendly with me.

I had started to consider how I could leave him.

The first photo is a rare photo of Michel at work, making the fittings for fire engines at Alexander Perry & Sons. The second photo is of Elizabeth and Pierre, Christmas 1978, in matching sailors outfits, just before setting out for my parents place for Christmas celebrations. Soon after this photo was taken Elizabeth was stung by a bee and her hand swelled up badly.

Coming back to Australia

Rumours starting coming in the month following Pierre’s birth that there were boats taking the trip from Jounieh to Cyprus – a hazardous trip given that the other side in the war had bombed the coast near us in the past. The rumours strengthened over time and we heard that a boat had been successful and there would be a regular service to those who had somewhere to go and the money to do so.

Pierre was doing well, I had no trouble with the children and my own health appeared okay. Spring had come and we were looking at another long hot summer.

We baptised Pierre at the local Maronite church, with Michel’s brother as godfather and his cousin Fadwa as godmother. The ceremony was in Aramaic, a dead language which the Lebanese themselves do not understand very well (although if spoken slowly and using simple words, I can understand). The ceremony was the full “Greek orthodox” style ceremony with incense, and the group walking around the church several times. The choice of godparents was political, and I had no say in the matter. Funnily I don’t remember Elizabeth’s godparents’ names; I remember the ceremony itself, but cannot remember who her god parents were – they must have been fair weather friends indeed if I cannot remember that.

It was with great excitement but some reservations (given Michel’s trick of the previous year) that Michel told me that we would be going back to Australia, by boat to Cyprus. This time we did actually go.

The trip was in the second boat making the trip to Cyprus from Jounieh, and was a tiny fishing boast with a small bedroom with two bunks – which were allocated to me and my children. I was the only female on board. We travelled at night and it took all night to get there. I was sea sick all the way there – the crossing was rough and the boat too small. Elizabeth was sick as well for a while and then mercifully slept the rest of the way. Pierre was not affected as I was still breastfeeding him. We landed at Nicosia in the early morning and then had to find our way to a hotel, so we could get Pierre registered on my passport and to buy tickets to get back to Australia. We stayed at a hotel which was not nice, as Michel was trying very hard to save as much money as possible to send back to his brother in Lebanon. We lived on hamburgers as they were the cheapest thing on the hotel menu. It took a week to get everything in order, and Elizabeth turned 2 while we were in transit from Lebanon; which, as I had pointed out to Michel that she would need a child passage, infuriated him that I was right, and he had to upgrade her ticket at the last minute.

The trip home was as one would expect with two small children and stressed parents. We had to travel to Athens and then to Sydney, over 24 hours travelling. I managed to get a message to my parents to say I was coming – just as well, as they met us at the airport. We needed it.

Looking back, it is obvious to me that we were very stressed and disturbed. I was close to a nervous breakdown, and in fact would say I was so badly disturbed that I should have had psychiatric help. My health was also very poor, without me being able to say what the problem was. The children were also stressed. Elizabeth acted out, throwing tantrums at the drop of a hat. Pierre changed from a docile three month old baby to a screaming demon. We spent two weeks with my parents while Michel looked for somewhere for us to stay. Luckily he had managed to get his old job back – it was now simply a matter of finding a place of our own. We had arrived in Sydney with $US40 to our name – Michel had sent back all his money to his brother in Lebanon. I later found the money went to continuing the building project he had started whilst I was pregnant with Pierre.

It was not fun living with my parents. There was not enough room and we felt very crowded. With the children acting up, I felt very stressed and desperately wanted to be by myself as I had become used to in Lebanon.

Michel found us somewhere to live – but it was not the solution I thought it would be. For me it was going from the fat to the fire. He found us two rooms with some friends of his – living with a large Lebanese family, sharing facilities with them, really just lodgers in an already crowded household. These people had four children of their own and a mother in law living with them, in a four bedroom house in Rockdale. Then we came and took two bedrooms. The children in the family were in primary school. I felt crowded. I could not do anything without an audience, and as Pierre crawled at 4 months and was walking around the furniture at 7 months I had the devil’s own time trying to keep my parenting together whilst I was trying to live with these people I disliked intensely. Michel responded to my protestations by ignoring me. I barely saw him in the three months we lived there. I told him we had to get out of there as soon as we could. He agreed, reluctantly, he could see I was not happy and that the arrangement (whilst good on paper) did not work as it should have. I was sleeping with the children in one room and Michel was sleeping in another, sharing with the boys of the family. So not a good time for me.

I was finding that Michel’s attachment to his Lebanese friends was greater than his loyalty to his wife and family. He would go out and leave me with the children, to visit his friends, or, on the weekends, make visits with me and the children to the homes of his friends. Thus most of my time was spent with the Lebanese people. As well. I was acting as an interpreter to the old lady living in the Rockdale home. She was a type 2 diabetic with little understanding of her condition. I would accompany her to the hospital diabetic clinic and interpret for her. I fear that my efforts went nowhere, as she completely ignored anything the doctor told her to do. However I did learn a little about diabetes.

The next accommodation move was a little better. Michel found us a granny flat in Carlton which was three rooms on the side of a house. There was a grotty little kitchen, a living room and a bedroom. One entered through the bedroom to the living room and then the kitchen and a small laundry shower room off the kitchen area. I did not have a washing machine, and did all my washing by hand. The clothes line was in the back yard and I was limited to the days I could use it – the landlady washed on set days. I tried to wash whenever I could. The backyard was the run of the chooks and if I dropped anything it had to be rewashed. It was better then staying with the family, but only marginally.

I felt better having a place of my own. However it did not help my relationship with Michel. Whilst we were in Lebanon, he was a more considerate husband. He knew that if I said that he was not being nice to me to any of his relatives or friends, it would be a “loss of face” to him, about which he set high regard; so he was careful not to put himself in the situation of me talking badly about him to others. In other words, whilst I was in Lebanon our marriage, whilst not fantastic, managed to be reasonably okay. He neglected me shockingly, and relied on the Zogaibs to entertain me, however he was not mean to me in private, nor did he nag me excessively. And since my parents were not there, in sight or in mind, there was no conflict on that subject. So we cohabited in a wary peace.

However that changed as soon as we returned. Firstly, we were all very stressed by the journey and the change in circumstances, and then Michel became paranoid – the only way to describe it - over the influence my parents may have had over me. As he put it, they were whispering in my ear to influence me; on what I do not know, as I never got to the bottom of what he suspected them of influencing me on. He began to nag me, pre-empting what he considered to be the whispering in my ear from my parents by doing the same thing he was accusing them of doing – and it amounted to mental cruelty.

Nothing I did was good enough. From the time we returned my expenditure was questioned – every cent I spent had to be accounted for, and even a bus fare would be queried as excessive. I found this very hard to cope with, and I remember in particular the time spent living in Carlton as difficult from the money position as there was no really satisfactory transport and Michel kept me very short of money.

He also began a campaign of “no-talkies” – where he would not talk to me – ignore me (whilst still availing himself of my services by eating the food I prepared, accepting the clothes I had washed etc), but for weeks at a time not uttering a word to me. On the rare occasion he needed to communicate, while he was in “no-talkies” mode, he would use the “tell your mother” route by talking to Elizabeth. In the beginning I found this very distressing. I was essentially alone with no friends and for him to stop talking to me distressed me – for most of these instances I had no idea what I had done to merit this “punishment” – as that is what it was meant to be. As he was not talking to me, he could not tell me what I was being punished for. So I would get very upset and cry and beg forgiveness for what ever it was that I done to upset him – and most of the time it was something so insignificant, so minor that it seems remarkable to me now that I put up with it. After a year or so of this treatment where he spent nearly half his time not speaking to me (and consequently not being able to have normal marital relations with me, under his “rules” – biting off his nose to spite his face) I began to see these periods of him not talking as an advantage and began to enjoy them. I saw them for what they were – the weapon of a selfish martinet. It was in Carlton that my marriage began to fall apart. Until then I would have considered that whilst I was not happy in my marriage I did not consider myself so unhappily married that I would look for a way out of it. Sexual relations were mostly on a stop start basis – if he was not talking to me there was no sex. It had been a long time since I had initiated sex, ie actually wanted to have sex with Michel, and by this time I lay back and thought of England – I went through the motions in order to keep the peace.

As well as being unhappy, the Carlton period marked the beginning of my health issues. Very soon after we returned it became obvious to me that something was wrong with my reproductive area, and on consulting the gynaecologist who birthed Elizabeth, was told my uterus had inverted – tipped over backwards due to weak ligaments- and the only solution was surgery. Since Pierre was at this stage a crawler and I knew I would get no help from Michel, I deferred the surgery until I knew Pierre was walking and I would not have to lift him. This he did at eight and half months, right on schedule. At this point I scheduled the surgery which was done in mid January of 1977, coincidentally on the day of the Granville train disaster.

I was also suffering from swollen glands, fatigue, pain in the joints – like having a perpetual flu – which no-one seemed to be able to fix. I had bouts of this flu-like illness off and on. It sapped my strength and energy, leaving me unable and unwilling to do anything I did not have to do. There were many days in this period which mimicked the time I was sick in Lebanon – I looked after the children and spent the day on the sofa.

I did try to make friends and started to go to playgroups in the Rockdale area. My attempts to form friendships however most did not last long. Michel was very suspicious on any friend I made and would be not very civil to them if they were there when he came home. He was not comfortable of anyone who might have influenced me – I see now he was insecure about me, but he had a funny way of showing it. I also found it difficult to attend functions or visit as a couple – his idea of visiting was so different from my own, so in the end I gave up trying to get him involved with any friends I made on a couple level. I kept the friends I made (which weren’t many) to myself.

The photo is a rare photo of Michel and Elizabeth taken in August of the year we returned to Sydney, at the house of a close friend of Michel's - Alexi. Alexi was a Russian - Lebanese mix with a french-Lebanese wife who was the most ditsy hopeless person I have ever met. I did not like this couple but found them fascinating in their horribleness. They had one child, Lara, who managed to survive despite the inept ministrations of her parents. Michel's fondness for Alexi meant that he spent a lot of time with him - with and without me in attendance. I was not there when this photo was taken.

My second pregnancy

My second pregnancy was a very good one. The conditions were awful, I was alone in a strange place, and I was afraid for the labour to come, but the pregnancy itself was very good.

After I had got over the shock of being pregnant, and of being sick with glandular fever, and then of nearly loosing the baby by falling, I settled into a wonderful period of glowing pregnancy that I had only heard about. I had minimal morning sickness, and at about five months started to glow; my health was fantastic and I even had a heightened sex drive.

At around the time I surfaced from the illness Michel had been making noises about going back to Australia, and reports had been coming through that the airport was passable again. By this time we had settled into the upstairs area, and I was excited about the idea of going home. We had already gathered together quite a lot of furniture for the new place, but were mostly living in a very empty place, compared to others; the furniture just wasn’t available and we were doing without what we could, as we considered it all temporary (or at least I did). Finally after what seemed like weeks of waiting for some news, Michel said we were going, and named a date a few weeks ahead. It was now late summer, and I was very ready to go home. We had packed, given away the furniture and were ready to go, when Michel said we were not going after all. We had already packed our bags and were to leave the next day. I had even emptied the fridge and given away all the food in the house.

To this day I do not know if this was a giant ruse on his part or it was a genuine inability to get us out. I know at the time I believed that Michel’s protestations were false; and that the whole exercise was deployed to get me to believe he was trying to get us out – although why he couldn’t just say so I don’t know. I know this sounds a funny idea on my part; however Michel’s machinations never made sense to me even though I was married to him all those long years. He would do things for the most fantastic reasons, all to do with appearing to be the best or to save face. This, I believe was one of those exercises.

It nearly blew me into depression again. It was a terrible blow to me – to have the chance to go back home snatched way like that. It was Michel’s lack of reaction to this news that made me believe he had orchestrated it somehow. Shades of my “honeymoon” again.

Soon after this incident, when I was at around 4 months pregnant, in September of that year, 1975, Michel decided to go to Syria to look for work. Going to Syria would have been too dangerous for us as a family; however as a single man Michel could get to Damascus to find work with little problems. Or so he said. We had explored the idea of getting out via Damascus when the war first started but Michel dismissed it as too dangerous for women and children. We had no money, he said, and he needed to find some way of keeping us. As I had no idea of whether we had any money or not, as he never told me his financial position, I had to believe him, and accept it. He was leaving me in the care of his family: his brother and his uncle and aunt.

Michel stayed away four months, the middle of my pregnancy, coming home for under a week about once a month. Those times when he came back were good for me, I was pleased to see him and as I was feeling very good, sexually, I was surprisingly good to him.

The time while he was away was spent mostly with the Zogaibs, from whom I took a lot of comfort. I spent a large part of each day with them, going there to learn how to cook various dishes, and often just to spend the time. Elizabeth played with the Zogaib grandchildren (the few that there were at that time) and I sat with the girls and Tante Marie and chatted in the way housewives do in the village.

It was during this period I learned from listening to the BBC that the government of Australia had been dismissed by the Governor-General and there was to be a general election. It all seemed so far away and as I couldn’t do anything about it, of no consequence to me. Looking back, it was a very momentous occasion to most Australians, but I have no feeling of it as I was not there.

For a large part of the time I was alone, and my father-in-law, Boutros, was living with me. He had been working in Batroun, north of the village we were in, but with the war, he returned home. He came to live with us, arriving in the second half of my pregnancy. He was a strange silent man and I never felt I could get through to him. He would spend the whole day just sitting, doing nothing, and saying nothing. He lived on boiled eggs and boiled potatoes, boiled up together in an old olive oil drum. He was a diabetic, so perhaps that explained his diet, which was weird, even according to the Lebanese. He was like a pet incubus in the spare room, always worrying me that I could not give him the hospitality that was expected of me. At one point he must have realised I had no money to buy (or make) clothes, (as I became more pregnant it was obvious I had no clothes to fit) because he gave me the equivalent of about $30 to buy some material. I was ecstatic about this. I took two trips into Jbeil to buy material, each time with just Elizabeth and myself, catching the taxi. I felt very pleased with myself being able to negotiate the taxi, find the material shop and buy the material all by myself. I used an old hand cranked Singer sewing machine Michel had managed to get for me – such an archaic idea, to hand crank a sewing machine – but it sewed a straight line, so I didn’t mind.

I had decided to toilet train Elizabeth so that she would be independent of me by the time the baby arrived. This was an immediate success and she turned it to good account by the end of the summer: she would say she wanted to do a wee when she wanted me to get up for something else and she knew I would not get up except to help her to do a wee. A very cunning little girl.

Interestingly the Lebanese had some weird ideas about food combinations. I had a craving for tuna and yoghurt and ate it constantly while I was pregnant and the Lebanese considered the combination of fish and milk to be lethal and would not eat it. I tried explaining that the English always ate fish with milk, but they superstitiously believed I would do some unspecified damage to the baby by eating milk with yoghurt. I just thought it was funny. It was not funny for my brother –in-law as he had to buy it for me. Tinned tuna was expensive, but one never denied a pregnant woman's wishes. They also had a tradition that a pregnant woman must be given a little of anything she expresses a liking for so if I said that’s a nice smell etc I would immediately be given a plate of whatever it was. A disconcerting tradition as I often was not hungry enough to do it justice whatever it was.

Michel came home from Syria before Christmas. I was glad he was back, as I was lonely and he was the only link I had with the outside world. He immediately began to build a three storey block out the back in the garden – three houses one on the other. This was obviously the reason he went to Syria – to raise fund sot build. I was furious as it became obvious that he had more money than I had originally thought; he had enough to build a block of flats for God’s sake! This from a man who said we had no money at all – not even enough money to buy us clothes to wear – I had to rely on the kindness of his relatives!!

He continued to build all through the winter and was building even after the baby was born. I remember standing at the window of the kitchen just after the baby was born, and it was snowing, and he was walking across the freshly laid concrete inspecting it for damage from the snow. He was like a man obsessed. He pushed the building crew to get the shell up as quickly as he could. Once it was up, he stopped: he said he had run out of money and was talking of going back to Syria.

I was resentful of all this building: he was keeping me on short rations while he built, and he was out all day every day doing it, so I never saw him.

The baby was born a few days short of the due date: I had a flurry of cleaning activity so common to the days before a delivery, and on the day I delivered I had cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen with great enthusiasm.

I woke in the early hours of the morning, about 4 am, with a back ache and got up to go and do a wee. On the toilet, my waters broke, and recalling the nurses telling me to get to the hospital as soon as possible, I woke Michel to take me. He said lets go back to bed, and go in the morning. I said no, now. He said let’s have breakfast, and I, remembering how nauseated I was with Elizabeth, said no, now. He said let’s make the bed. Did I sense a delaying tactic? I was nearly shouting at him by then, despite the presence of my father-in-law in the house. We got up, woke and dressed Elizabeth and went first to pick up Tante Marie and drop off Elizabeth, and then to pick up the mid-wife and then to the local community hospital. I got up on the delivery table, changed my mind, said I wanted to do a wee, was told no, the baby was coming and to push. I did and it did. It took about an hour from the time I woke to the time it arrived and I hardly registered it as any worse then being constipated. No pain, no problems. It was over before I realised it.

A healthy 4 kg boy, lusty and big and strong. I had a tear to the top of my clitoral fold in the labia, which was in the same place I tore with Elizabeth, however this time I was not stitched so I have scar to this day in the fold.

I spent about four hours in the bed in a side ward of the cottage hospital and then I went home when it was obvious everything was okay. I was glad to be home so I could have a shower and wash myself. I had some visitors that day and the next and they were shocked I was up and had had a bath – the Lebanese believe a post partum woman should not bath or wash her hair. What nonsense I said.

I had very little help after Pierre was born. My husband was frequently absent and surprisingly the Zogaibs stayed away. I can only assume that they approached Michel with offers of hep and were rebuffed, because given their track record of helping me in the previous nine months, I would have assumed their help be taken for granted. Unfortunately I had no help at all, and was obliged to get up from my bed the day I had the baby – in fact I had no rest at all, and continued with the household chores, looking after Elizabeth and Pierre as if I had not just had a baby. I know woman do this all over the world. Unfortunately for me, I am not suited to this and it was the beginning of many years of prolapse problems all stemming from this inability to rest after the birth, which was a precipitous one – the baby being almost “ripped” from me – nowadays it is known this is a problem and the physiotherapists give special consideration to a mother who gives birth very quickly. Back in 1976, I was just considered lucky.

In a way, I have no experience of a normal birth. I gave birth, naturally and without pain killers, twice, but have no experience of labour pain at all. My periods were hell on earth so perhaps that is what labour pain is like.

A few days after Pierre was born the radio station down on the beach was bombed. This was only about two hundred metres from our house, and we had to get out in case a bomb misfired and hit us. We got up – it was the middle of the night- and rushed around, packing to go to the mountains, to Mish-Mish where the family had a summer cottage. All I remember of this night was wondering what to pack at such short notice – nappies? clothes for Elizabeth? It was snowing and very cold. In the end, the bombing stopped and we didn’t leave – but it was a close call. Very frightening.

I had no trouble with Pierre as a new baby. He was a lovely baby, quiet and easy to care for. My milk came in with no problems and I breastfed him and Elizabeth as well. Elizabeth, like a lot of first children, was taken aback when her little brother arrived and launched into a frenzy of attention seeking behaviour. In particular she would misbehave when I was breastfeeding; obviously realising I could not get up to chastise her. In the end, I started to breastfeed her, when she asked to have some of what the baby was having. She would stand next to me while I was feeding Pierre, and say “more, more”. At least it kept her by my side.

This was a particularly lonely time for me: I was far from family and I had just given birth. I wanted my mother. I remember standing at the window on my 22nd birthday, looking out at the dreary winter landscape, made even worse by Michel’s building. I felt trapped and did not feel I was ever going to get out.