Chapter 24 — What Happened to Herbie's Story

The conflicting memories, accounts and later explanations surrounding Herbert Kemp's final days and death.

Less Than an Hour

On 21 March 1962 I saw Herbie alive at Yea Hospital.

He was sitting in a chair while a nurse shaved him.

He laughed at the expression on my face and told me that the hair would grow back.

Less than an hour later I went backwards through the glass doors of the hospital.

Within hours, Herbie was dead.

Exactly when he died during those hours is one of the questions which becomes difficult when I put together the different accounts I was given.

For me, this is where two different stories begin.

There is what I remember experiencing.

Then there is what I was told during the day or two which followed.

The second story arrived in pieces.

Those pieces did not all come from the same person.

Nobody sat me down and gave me one continuous account from Yea Hospital to Herbie's burial.

One person supplied one part.

Somebody else supplied another.

Something else was said later.

Only much later could I put those fragments beside one another and notice that the times did not fit particularly well.

What I Saw

There are some things I can distinguish from everything I was subsequently told.

I saw Herbie after the confrontation at the presbytery.

I saw him lying awkwardly there after the violence.

Several days later I saw him alive in Yea Hospital.

I saw him sitting in a chair.

I saw the nurse shaving him.

I heard him laugh.

Later, when Bill Allison was present, I heard Herbie's voice from his room.

I remember him saying:

“No. No, that's not right.”

Then, less than an hour after I had been joking with Herbie, I went backwards through the hospital glass.

Those things belong to my own experience.

What happened to Herbie after I left reaches me mainly through other people.

What I Was Told

I was thirteen.

Adults did not provide me with medical records, transport records, certificates or explanations of legal procedure.

Information arrived through conversation.

Some came from Mum.

Some came from things other adults said.

Some was apparently information which had already passed through several people before it reached me.

And it arrived over a period of perhaps one or two days while I was trying to understand that Herbie, the safest adult in my life, was suddenly dead.

That matters when I try to reconstruct the sequence now.

These were not entries in a contemporaneous timeline.

They were fragments received by a thirteen-year-old child.

He Was Supposed to Come Home

My understanding while Herbie was in Yea Hospital was that he was recovering.

That was why Mum prepared the clean clothes I carried to him.

We expected him to come home.

When I saw him on 21 March he was sitting in a chair, talking and joking with me.

I understand now that a person sitting in a chair and talking does not establish their medical condition.

I do not use that memory as a medical diagnosis.

It explains my experience.

I had gone to the hospital expecting Herbie to return home.

Less than an hour after seeing him, I had gone through the glass.

Then, within hours, the account around Herbie had changed from recovery and coming home to death.

Eleven O'Clock

One of the pieces I was given was that Herbie left Yea for Melbourne at around eleven o'clock that night.

The person said to have driven him was Des Cameron.

That immediately raises a timing question when I look at it now.

The journey from Yea to Melbourne in those days, as I understood it, should ordinarily have taken somewhere around an hour and a half.

If they left at approximately 11 p.m., an ordinary journey would have put them at a Melbourne hospital before one o'clock in the morning.

Yet another part of the story I was given was that Herbie was dead on arrival.

Then there was another time.

A death certificate was said to have been written and signed at around 7.30 in the morning.

A certificate can of course be completed some time after a death.

The 7.30 time does not therefore establish the time of death by itself.

But it leaves an obvious question in the chronology I was given.

If Herbie left Yea at about 11 p.m. and could have arrived before 1 a.m., what happened during the intervening hours?

I do not presently know.

Dead on Arrival

The expression “dead on arrival” is another part of the account which needs to remain exactly where it belongs: something I was told.

I did not see Herbie arrive at the Melbourne hospital.

I did not see a doctor examine him there.

I do not know who first used those words.

Nor can I presently establish whether “dead on arrival” was an actual medical description, somebody's later summary, or a phrase which changed as the story travelled back to Yea.

What makes it important is its relationship to the other times.

Around 11 p.m.: Herbie reportedly leaves Yea with Des Cameron.

Before about 1 a.m.: an ordinary journey could have reached Melbourne.

At some point: Herbie is said to have been dead on arrival.

Around 7.30 a.m.: a death certificate is said to have been written and signed.

Those are not yet a history.

They are pieces requiring records.

The Death Certificate

There is another part of the account which came through my mother.

Mum said that Dr Patterson refused to sign Herbie's death certificate.

She also said that Dr Patterson would not agree to her husband, Dr Charles Hosking, signing it.

I was not present for either conversation.

I did not see Dr Patterson refuse.

I did not see Dr Hosking attempt to sign anything.

I therefore preserve this as something my mother told me.

It also creates another question when placed beside the account that a death certificate was written and signed at approximately 7.30 a.m.

Who signed it?

Where was it signed?

What time of death did it record?

What cause of death was entered?

Were earlier doctors asked to certify the death and did they decline?

Those questions are capable, at least in principle, of documentary answers.

I should not invent those answers from memory.

The Journey Back

The return journey creates another timing problem.

I was told that Herbie's body was brought back from Melbourne to Yea in a car.

The account I remember was extraordinary: Herbie's body was said to have been placed in the front passenger seat and driven back to Yea.

Again, I did not see the departure from Melbourne.

I was not in the car.

This is part of what was subsequently told to me.

But the timing attached to this account was also difficult.

The journey which ordinarily took something around an hour and a half was said to have begun in Melbourne in the morning, yet the car did not arrive back in Yea until after lunchtime.

In the way the times were related to me, the return appeared to have taken something like five or six hours.

Again the obvious question is:

What happened during those hours?

I do not know.

Two Journeys With Missing Hours

It was only much later that I recognised the same problem on both journeys.

The journey from Yea to Melbourne seems to contain hours which are not explained by the normal travelling time.

The journey back to Yea seems to contain another substantial period which is equally unexplained.

That observation does not tell me what happened during either interval.

I do not want to convert missing time into evidence for a particular event.

It tells me something narrower and more useful.

The accounts I received do not presently form a complete chronology.

There are gaps.

The gaps are large enough to be visible when the journey times are put beside the times I was told.

Not One Storyteller

It would be misleading to describe these contradictions as though one person had sat down and told me an impossible story.

That is not how I remember it happening.

The information came in pieces.

Different people supplied different parts.

It arrived during the first day or two after Herbie died.

One person might know when somebody was said to have left.

Another might repeat where Herbie was taken.

Somebody else might know when the body returned.

Mum had information about doctors and the death certificate.

I was left with fragments.

Only years later could I ask whether all of those fragments could belong to the same continuous sequence.

The Explanation for His Death

There was also an explanation concerning Herbie's bowel.

I have long carried the expression “twisted bowel” in connection with what we were told.

Other language surrounding the story referred to horrific internal injury or disembowelment.

I have to be careful with those expressions.

I was a child hearing adults describe a sudden death.

Medical language can be simplified, misunderstood or transformed as it is passed from one person to another.

I therefore do not present “twisted bowel” as a diagnosis established by records I have examined.

It is part of the explanation which entered my childhood understanding of Herbie's death.

The Funeral and the Church

Herbie had spent years as part of the Catholic community.

He and Maurie were both Knights of the Southern Cross.

Herbie had also challenged people inside that community over what had been happening to me.

My recollection is that he wrote to the bishop in Melbourne and refused to back away when that produced considerable reaction locally.

By the time he died, relationships had divided.

Some people supported him.

Others rejected what he had been saying.

As a child I could see those divisions without understanding their full structure.

His death did not make those divisions disappear.

The Vigils

I remember religious activity and vigils associated with support for Des Cameron.

That was extraordinarily difficult for me to understand.

Janette had run home distressed.

Herbie had intervened.

Herbie was now dead.

I had gone through a hospital glass door.

Yet sympathy could still be organised around the priest.

I was thirteen.

I did not possess the language of institutional reputation, narrative control or victim blaming.

I simply knew that the world around me seemed to be putting the sympathy in the wrong place.

The Child as the Problem

The existing description of me as sexually dangerous or a liar was useful to people who rejected what Herbie had raised.

If I could be made the sexual problem, then allegations concerning the sexual behaviour of adults could be redirected towards me.

If I was unreliable, then Herbie could be presented as an old man who had been misled.

If Herbie created conflict by defending me, then even that conflict could become another thing for which I was blamed.

I did not analyse any of that in 1962.

I experienced the consequences of it.

The Safe Adult Was Gone

The immediate reality was much simpler.

Herbie was gone.

The man who had given me a room was gone.

The man who had hidden a key beneath the back steps for me was gone.

The man who had given me books and played chess with me was gone.

The man who had written to the bishop was gone.

The adult most likely to challenge what was happening around me was no longer there.

His death did not simply remove someone I loved.

It changed the balance of power around me.

The Will Herbie Spoke About

Before Herbie died, both he and Maurie had spoken about arrangements for the future.

Herbie later spoke with Mum and me about a will and arrangements which I understood were intended to provide assistance, including education and opportunities later in my life.

There were also provisions involving other children.

I remember being present for part of the conversation between Herbie and Mum and then being sent to bed while they continued talking.

At thirteen I knew that a will meant something important.

I did not understand probate law.

I did not know how to obtain a will, challenge one, compare versions or ask whether an earlier document had been revoked.

More importantly, I had just lost my friend and protector.

Trying to understand legal documents was hardly the first problem I was equipped to solve.

The Will That Was Enacted

What I learned later added another unresolved layer.

My later understanding was that the will Herbie had spoken about with my mother was not the will which was enacted.

The will which was acted upon appeared to me to be different from the arrangements both Maurie and Herbie had previously spoken about.

That is an important distinction in the way I state this now.

I am not claiming, merely from childhood memory, to have established that a will was unlawfully substituted.

I am saying that the arrangement I later learned had been enacted did not appear to correspond with the arrangements which I remembered Herbie and Maurie discussing before their deaths.

That difference deserves documentary examination.

Thirteen Years Old

It is easy, decades later, to imagine all the questions I should have asked.

Where is the will?

Who witnessed it?

Was there an earlier will?

When was the enacted will made?

Who was executor?

What happened to the arrangements for my education?

What happened to Herbie's property?

What happened to anything intended for the other children?

Why was the arrangement different from what I remembered being discussed?

Those are sensible adult questions.

I was thirteen.

Within a matter of days I had seen my protector injured, seen him alive in hospital, been pushed through hospital glass, learned that he was dead, and tried to understand a series of conflicting stories about where he had gone and how he had died.

A will was not an easy thing for that child to investigate.

What the Documents Could Answer

There are now questions which memory should not be required to answer.

What time did Herbie leave Yea Hospital?

Who authorised his transfer?

Was Des Cameron the person who drove him?

Where exactly was he taken?

What time did he arrive?

Was he alive on arrival?

What time was death formally pronounced?

What medical condition was recorded?

Who prepared the death certificate?

Who signed it?

Was Dr Patterson asked to sign it?

Was Dr Charles Hosking involved?

Was the death referred to a coroner?

What time did Herbie's body leave Melbourne?

Who transported it?

When did it arrive back in Yea?

What wills existed?

When were they made?

Which will was admitted to probate?

What provisions did it contain?

Did correspondence between Herbie and the bishop survive?

Those are questions for records.

What the Records Cannot Replace

There are other things for which I do not require a probate file or a hospital chart.

Herbie gave me somewhere safe to live.

He gave me a key.

He gave me books.

He taught me chess without letting me win.

He let me change gears while he operated the clutch.

He showed me a world beyond Yea.

He listened to me.

He acted.

Those things belong to my relationship with him.

The uncertainties surrounding his death do not make the man himself uncertain.

The Word “Murder”

I have often used the word “murder” when speaking about Herbie.

I know that it is a serious word.

It reflects the conclusion I came to from my experiences, the stories I was subsequently given, and the way I later understood the events.

It is not the same thing as saying that a court established that Herbie was murdered.

I do not need to convert unanswered questions into established facts in order to show that those questions exist.

The missing hours remain missing hours.

They do not, by themselves, tell me what happened during them.

A Story Made From Pieces

For many years I probably carried the different accounts as though they were parts of a single story.

That is understandable.

A child assumes that adults know what happened.

If one adult supplies one piece and another supplies the next, the child can join them together without asking whether the joins actually work.

Now I can place a clock beside them.

Around 11 p.m., Herbie supposedly leaves Yea.

A normal journey could place him in Melbourne before 1 a.m.

He is said to have been dead on arrival.

A death certificate is associated with approximately 7.30 a.m.

Later his body supposedly leaves Melbourne in the front seat of a car.

The normal return journey should again have been relatively short.

Yet the account has the car reaching Yea only after lunchtime.

There are hours on both journeys which the story I inherited does not explain.

What Happened to Herbie's Story?

That remains a better question than pretending I already possess the answer.

I know what I saw.

I know what I heard.

I know what Mum told me.

I know fragments which came from other people during the day or two after Herbie died.

I know what I subsequently learned about the will which was enacted.

Those are different layers of evidence.

The next task is not to force them into agreement.

It is to preserve where they disagree.

The journey out contains unexplained hours.

The journey back contains unexplained hours.

The death certificate raises questions.

The will I later learned had been enacted appeared different from what I remembered Herbie and Maurie discussing.

Perhaps records can eventually explain some of that.

Perhaps some questions will remain.

But I no longer need to make an untidy story tidy simply because sixty years have passed.

Herbie's story can contain the gaps.

In some places, the gaps are part of the evidence.