Chapter 5 — Robert

My older brother, years of bullying, the shooting, and the complicated history that shaped what happened before and long after it.

Six or Seven Years Older

Robert was about six or seven years older than me.

For much of my childhood our relationship was dominated by bullying.

There were occasional periods when something resembling peace existed between us, sometimes for a few months.

They rarely lasted.

Most of the time I experienced myself as somebody Robert believed he could exploit, intimidate or punish.

That description is easy to write now.

Understanding why the relationship developed that way is much harder.

The shooting, which became one of the defining events between us, did not come from nowhere.

There was a history before it.

What Had Happened to Robert

One of my earliest memories involving Robert goes back to when I was about three and a half.

I was playing in the dry dirt beneath our house with a little girl from the refugee family living next door.

My father came to the gate leading underneath the house and asked where Robert was.

I pointed towards a cubby built beneath the bathroom area.

My father went there and opened it.

What I remember seeing and subsequently understanding was that Robert was there without his trousers and the adult woman from next door had some of her clothing removed.

I was a very young child.

I did not then possess an adult understanding of what I was seeing.

What followed was unmistakable.

My father punished Robert violently.

My recollection is that there was a severe beating, possibly involving a stock whip as well as his fists.

He also shot Robert's dog.

The explanation I later associated with this was that my father was trying to punish Robert or make him “stronger.”

Whatever reasoning surrounded it, Robert was himself a child in a situation involving an adult woman and then experienced extreme violence from his father.

I did not understand that complexity at the time.

I was simply the younger brother who would later receive a great deal of Robert's violence.

Peace Never Lasted

Physical beatings became a regular feature of school periods.

My mother went to considerable lengths to try to give me a safe route home.

Arrangements were made for Robert to be held back for perhaps ten minutes after my class was released, including at lunchtime when we went home to eat.

It was supposed to give me enough time to get away.

It did not always work.

He could simply appear behind me.

Sometimes the first indication I had that he had caught me was being punched in the head.

Other places had been arranged as refuges.

Herbie's house was one, Doug and Shirly McLean was another.

At one stage I had access to a key so that I could get inside.

Robert took the key.

That protection disappeared too.

There were beatings.

There were occasions when my bicycle was deliberately damaged.

There were times when he would tell his friends that I was unsafe to be with.

He repeated descriptions of me that had already been used by clergy, including the claim that I was sexually dangerous.

I had first been described publicly in sexualised and condemning terms when I was still a very small child.

Robert learned to use those descriptions too.

The Roof

Sometimes I tried to hide from him.

The roof of our house became one of those places.

There had been more than one occasion on which Robert pushed me from the roof.

One episode remains particularly vivid.

I had climbed up and was trying to stay out of sight.

At one point I was clinging to the ridge capping with my fingers.

Robert found me.

He stood on my fingers.

I lost my grip.

As I slid down the roof I was torn badly by roofing nails.

Then I came off the roof and landed face-first on a pile of gravel.

I sustained significant injuries to my right shoulder and rib region as well as injury in the abdominal area.

My memory places that episode only days before the shooting.

Sister Vincent

Around the same period I had a badly broken elbow and a heavy plaster cast on my left arm.

Another long-running source of fear involved the nun I knew as Vincent.

I do not generally use religious honorifics such as “Sister” when speaking privately about people whom I remember as having abused me.

But I use the name here because it identifies the role in which she was known to the community.

My recollection is that Vincent repeatedly subjected me to sexualised physical abuse.

One recurring act involved grabbing me by the hair and pulling my head and face into her crotch.

Afterwards she could push me away and loudly accuse me of being the sexual wrongdoer.

For a long time those few safe adults around me had encouraged me to resist.

Herbie had done so.

My mother had done so.

Mrs Tosh had done so.

Mostly I did not.

On this occasion I did.

Vincent grabbed me as I passed her on the path between the school and the convent.

I had the heavy cast on my left arm.

I struck her hard with it.

Then I ran home.

You Have Gone Too Far

My mother put me to work repairing bicycles on the front verandah.

It was around lunchtime when Robert arrived.

He came rushing towards the house, shouting.

The message I remember was that I had gone too far.

I had hit a nun.

He ran inside.

Moments later he came back carrying my father's long-barrelled .22 Savage target rifle.

He was still shouting that I had gone too far.

I remember the rifle being pointed towards me.

My recollection is that at one stage it was directed towards my face.

I tried to get up and move away.

Then he fired.

The Shot

The bullet struck me in the side.

I remember jumping or being thrown backwards and crashing into one of the verandah posts.

Then I fell.

There was pain.

There was probably shock, although that is the older man's language for what the child experienced.

At the time I simply knew that I had been shot.

Much later I came to wonder whether the injury contributed to physical problems that remained with me, including later questions involving the phrenic nerve, a hiatial hernia and a collapsed diaphragm. This incident was also very difficult to work through taking many months to resolve as best I could.

That is a later medical hypothesis.

It is not something the child on the verandah could possibly have known.

Why?

The explanation for why Robert shot me has never remained simple.

At different times different accounts have existed.

Robert later denied that the nuns had anything to do with the shooting.

Yet I also remember him saying things that connected what he was doing with religious ideas that had been directed at me.

I remember the idea that the nuns had set him a task involving someone already destined for hell.

I remember the proposition that no punishment was too great.

Those recollections sit beside his later denial.

I cannot make the contradiction disappear merely because a cleaner account would be easier to write.

Both belong in the history of how the event has been understood.

My Grandmother

The shooting brought my grandmother back into the effort to have something done.

She became involved again and contacted the local policeman, Pat Harrison.

My recollection is that Harrison told her and my mother that he had been trying to obtain assistance or a response from elsewhere and had been unable to get it.

My grandmother was outraged.

There was eventually a journey to Wangaratta.

As had happened years earlier when I had been taken to Shepparton as a small child, I found myself speaking with police and giving statements.

I had again become a child trying to tell adults what had happened.

There were people outside Yea who were supposedly going to examine the situation.

Yet the outcome I experienced was not one in which I became recognised simply as the child who had been shot.

Robert Went to Melbourne

Robert was sent to Melbourne.

He went to work in connection with an apprenticeship with my father's brother, my Uncle Stan.

Stan owned J.C. Henry's Fine Furniture on Burwood Road in Hawthorn.

That location had already entered my childhood memories through medical treatment in Melbourne.

Now it became part of Robert's story as well.

Robert left Yea.

I remained.

Bill Allison

Another figure entered the story more forcefully after the shooting.

Bill Allison was a policeman.

I remember him as associated with the Knights of the Southern Cross.

He was, as I later understood it, brought into Yea in connection with investigating or resolving what had happened. My father was focused on that as a result of the pressure on his marriage and from the pressure from my grandmother.

What followed from my perspective was extraordinary.

I became the problem.

I remember Allison physically assaulting me on repeated occasions.

My nose and teeth were injured more times than I can now count with confidence.

I remember my bicycle being deliberately damaged on a number of occasions.

I remember being pulled into the police station and questioned when something had happened in town, as though I were a natural first person to investigate.

The child who had been shot became a child treated as inherently suspect.

Frank Scully

Another adult who complicated the picture was Frank Scully.

Frank owned the local newsagency. I did a paper round for him and also helped with the evening Herald. I remember him as having previously been involved in Labor politics in Richmond.

Frank was also associated with the Knights of the Southern Cross, but my recollection is that he belonged to a different grouping from Tom Dignam, the editor of The Yea Chronicle. Jim Desmond at the Post Office was closely associated with Dignam. Frank appeared to stand somewhat apart from that group.

I remember frequent tension between Frank and Bill Allison, and Frank was also distant from Tom Dignam. At the time I understood some of this as involving both politics and divisions within the Catholic community. I did not understand those relationships clearly as a child, but I was aware that these men were not all on the same side.

I believe that Frank tried to get attention from Victoria Police to no avail.

Herbie also had reservations about the group with which Frank was associated. Again, I think politics and different alignments within the Knights were involved, although my understanding of that came largely from observing the adults around me rather than from anyone sitting down and explaining it.

After the events surrounding Herbie, I remember members of Frank's family who were involved in politics visiting. I was present for a meal and spoke with them about Herbie's death and other things that had happened.

Frank lived directly across the road from the convent. I remember him telling my mother that he was worried about having children while living there. My recollection is that he regarded that concern as one of the reasons for selling up and moving to Frankston.

Frank's place in my memory is important because it reminds me that the Catholic community in Yea was not a single organised block. There were divisions, rivalries, political differences and people who did not fit comfortably with the dominant local relationships.

The Story About Me

There was already a story available to explain why I should not be believed.

I was a sinner.

I was sexually dangerous.

I was a compulsive liar.

I was destined for hell.

I was, on repeated occasions, described in church in terms that made me an example of evil who was destined for hell rather than a child needing protection.

Eventually I refused to attend church.

I also refused to continue as an altar boy.

By then my experiences with clergy had given me many reasons of my own for wanting to stay away.

The important thing is not simply that insulting things were said about me.

Those descriptions had consequences.

If a child is already categorised as sexually dangerous and dishonest, an allegation made by that child arrives damaged before anyone examines its content.

That became a pattern with a very long life.

Robert's Version

There were later claims that I had been the aggressor.

One was that I had tried to shoot Robert.

That is not how I remember the event.

My memory is of Robert coming from inside the house with the rifle, pointing it towards me while shouting, and firing as I tried to get away.

Again, the existence of a competing version matters.

One of the problems throughout my life has been that another person's account could be recorded, repeated and eventually acquire the appearance of settled history.

The disagreement itself therefore belongs in this book.

Robert Did Not Remain in Childhood

The relationship did not end when Robert went to Melbourne.

There were later attempts at something resembling reconciliation.

At times we could have a relationship that lasted for months without open conflict.

But the old description of me had a way of returning.

I would again become the liar.

I would again be portrayed as sexually inappropriate or dangerous.

The childhood roles had survived into adult life.

The Phillip Island Coach

One incident many years later showed how powerful that pattern could still be.

I had begun working with Australian Pacific Coaches.

One of the tours I drove went to Phillip Island for the nightly return of the fairy penguins.

On one such trip I was still travelling towards Phillip Island, on what I remember as possibly the Mulgrave Freeway, when a car began behaving dangerously around the coach.

The driver attempted to pass on the right.

Then on the left.

Then back towards the right.

Finally the car veered across in front of the coach while I was travelling at highway speed.

It struck the right front corner of the coach.

The car went broadside across the front.

Under heavy braking it bounced away and struck the front of the coach again several times as both vehicles slowed.

I brought the coach to a stop.

Passengers got out.

Several told me that the other driver appeared drunk.

The police were called.

I made an initial report.

The coach was dented but remained sufficiently roadworthy for me to complete the tour.

I still had passengers whose day I was responsible for.

So we continued to Phillip Island.

The Telephone at One in the Morning

I arrived home at about one o'clock in the morning.

The telephone was ringing.

It was Robert.

He was furious.

The driver of the other car was, apparently, one of his top salesmen.

Robert accused me of deliberately crashing into him.

He threatened legal action.

He contacted Australian Pacific and told them what a terrible person I was.

I then had to respond not only to a road accident but to allegations about my character.

I was suspended while the matter was investigated.

For a period Robert's version again had consequences before the evidence was assembled.

This Time There Were Passengers

The difference was that this incident had happened in front of a coach full of independent witnesses.

Police took statements.

Passengers described what they had seen.

Some had already been shouting warnings because of how dangerously close the car was being driven before the collision.

As the investigation developed, Robert became silent.

His salesman was charged with drink-driving.

Australian Pacific pursued recovery for the damage to the coach.

For once, there were enough independent observers to prevent a story about my character from becoming the explanation for what had happened.

That difference stayed with me.

Decades Later

The pattern continued in other forms.

During the period leading up to, or around, the Royal Commission, Robert found my writing online.

He contacted clergy.

In one communication I became aware of, he claimed that I had never been abused and that I was interested only in obtaining money.

He also offered what he described as evidence.

Some of what he relied upon involved statements or family material that I understood very differently.

Once again, the question was not merely what had happened decades earlier.

It was who would be believed when competing versions travelled to new people.

Two Children

It would be easy to write Robert simply as the villain of this chapter.

That would not be enough.

He bullied me.

He hurt me.

I remember him shooting me.

I also remember a child who had himself been involved in an encounter with an adult woman and then violently punished by his father.

I remember his dog being shot.

I remember a household and community in which violence could be described as discipline and religious condemnation could be presented as moral instruction.

None of that excuses what Robert did to me.

Explanation and excuse are not the same thing.

But if this book is really going to live between the layers, then Robert's history cannot be removed simply because it makes my own story less straightforward.

What I Understand Now

As a child I understood Robert mainly as the person who hurt me.

Later I began to see the adults and institutions around both of us.

There were parents.

There were nuns.

There were priests.

There were police.

There were organisations and loyalties I knew little or nothing about as a child.

There were descriptions of me that travelled between people and survived for decades.

There were also things done to Robert before I was old enough to understand them.

The reality does not sit comfortably in a story where one child was bad and the other good.

Nor does it sit comfortably in a story where everybody was simply a victim and therefore nobody was responsible for what they did.

Robert was responsible for things he did to me.

He also had a history.

Both can be true.

The Question That Remains

For years the shooting stood in my memory as an event.

Robert shot me.

Now I see a much longer line running towards it and another running away from it.

There was what happened to Robert.

There was what happened to me.

There were the messages children received about sin, punishment, obedience and who deserved protection.

There was the violence before the gun was fired.

There were the explanations afterwards.

And there was the remarkable durability of a story in which I could be injured and still become the problem.

That may be the question this chapter leaves open.

Not simply:

Why did Robert shoot me?

But:

What had happened around two children that allowed us to arrive at that verandah at all?