Chapter 25 — The Adults Around Yea

The adults whose loyalties, conflicts, protection, prejudice and ordinary trust helped shape my life in and around Yea.

Not One Community

For a long time it would have been easy to describe the world around my childhood simply as “the Catholic community”.

That would be too simple.

The adults around Yea were connected by church, family, politics, business, the Knights of the Southern Cross, the police, the school and the ordinary relationships of a small town.

But they were not all on the same side.

There were divisions.

There were rivalries.

There were people who protected me and people who treated me as the problem.

There were Catholics who challenged other Catholics.

There were people who appeared to support the nuns and priests almost automatically, and others who seemed prepared to ask questions.

As a child I could see those alignments long before I understood what they meant.

Herbie and Maurie

Herbie and Maurie Kemp were themselves members of the Knights of the Southern Cross.

That is important because Herbie's willingness to challenge what was happening to me did not come from somebody standing outside Catholic life.

He was inside it.

He attended the meetings.

He knew the people involved.

He nevertheless wrote to the bishop about what was happening and refused, as I remember it, to withdraw when that caused trouble.

My recollection is that this contributed to both brothers becoming increasingly isolated from some sections of the local church community.

That alone tells me there was no single Catholic position.

Tom Dignam

Tom Dignam was the editor of The Yea Chronicle.

By the time I worked for him as a teenager I knew him both as an employer and as a man with strong connections inside the local Catholic community.

My recollection is that he held a significant position within the Knights of the Southern Cross in Yea.

Outwardly Tom could be jovial.

He could joke with people and appear easy-going while customers or visitors were present.

I also remember how quickly his manner could change after people left.

That difference between the public man and the private reaction became important to me.

One incident involved the old Chandler & Price printing press at the Chronicle.

A cast-iron cam or roller had worn badly through lack of lubrication.

I took it to Castle's Garage, where Tony Hutton repaired it by building it up with bronze or brazing and machining it round again.

The repair cost very little.

I thought I had solved a mechanical problem.

Tom was furious.

The issue, as I understood it, was not the quality of the repair.

It was who had done it.

The garage was associated with people outside Tom's preferred Catholic circle and, in my recollection, with Masonic connections.

Tom wanted the repair removed.

Laurence Castle's response was much simpler:

“Don't be a bloody fool.”

That exchange told me something about the adult divisions around the town that had little to do with the condition of a printing press.

Jim Desmond

Jim Desmond worked at the post office.

I remember him as closely connected with Tom Dignam and as another Knight.

One of the incidents which stayed with me involved Bill Purcell.

I remember Purcell as a senior figure in the local Masonic lodge.

The Chronicle printed private invitations or notices for the lodge.

After Purcell left, I remember Tom contacting Jim Desmond and passing on the names of new members.

At the time I did not have a sophisticated understanding of confidentiality or sectarian politics.

I understood that information which had been supplied for one purpose was being passed into another network.

That was enough for me to notice it.

George Tull

Another important adult in my life was George Tull.

My mother had taken up housekeeping work with the Tull family. Their property was at the end of the gravel on the Limestone Road — the same road along which, years earlier, I had directed the Canadian geologist when he came looking for the fossil country around Yea.

By the time I was about fifteen or sixteen I had begun doing odd jobs around George's property.

I suspect my mother had spoken to him about some of what had happened to me, although I do not remember being present for such a conversation. Whatever he knew, he never treated me as though I were damaged, strange, or somebody who needed to be handled differently.

That was noticeable.

George spoke to me in much the same way he spoke to other people.

It sounds like a very small thing, but by then I had experienced enough adults speaking about me, speaking down to me, accusing me, correcting me or deciding what I was supposed to be that simply being spoken with was something I noticed.

George became an excellent substitute father.

He taught me a great deal, much of it through working alongside him rather than through formal instruction.

I accompanied George, and sometimes his son, when sheep or cattle were being transported to the Melbourne markets.

That was where I began learning to drive heavy vehicles.

There was practical work to be done and George expected me to learn how to do it properly.

He trusted me.

That trust carried responsibility with it, and I took that responsibility seriously. If George gave me something to do, I wanted it completed properly. I returned the trust he placed in me by doing what I had agreed to do.

There was something restorative in that relationship which I probably could not have described at the time.

George did not appear to require a theory about me.

He did not need to decide whether I was a sinner, a problem, a liar, a victim or a psychiatric category.

There was work.

There were animals to be moved, vehicles to be handled, jobs to be finished and responsibilities to be met.

If I showed that I could do something, George trusted me to do it.

In return I learned something about myself which other parts of my childhood had repeatedly tried to take away:

I could be trusted.

Frank Scully

Frank Scully complicates the picture further.

Frank owned the local newsagency.

I did a paper round for him and also helped with the evening Herald.

He allowed me to stay around after school and read magazines, books and science material.

That made the newsagency another place where the world became larger than Yea.

I remember Frank as having previously been involved in Labor politics in Richmond, although that is something I would like eventually to confirm from the record.

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

But Frank did not seem to belong comfortably with Tom Dignam's grouping.

My childhood impression was that there were different alignments inside the Knights themselves.

Politics may have been part of that.

Personality certainly seemed to be.

Whatever the exact structure, Frank appeared to stand apart from Tom Dignam, Jim Desmond and some of the people around them.

Frank and Bill Allison

I remember tension between Frank Scully and Bill Allison.

They seemed to clash often.

As a child I did not know the full reasons.

I understood that there were political and religious divisions and that the men did not simply accept one another because they were Catholic.

That is useful to remember now.

It would be easy, looking backwards, to turn everybody associated with the church into a single organised group.

That is not how the town felt from inside it.

There were people competing for influence.

There were people who distrusted one another.

There were Catholics who resisted other Catholics.

Across From the Convent

Frank Scully lived directly opposite the convent.

I remember him speaking with Mum about being concerned about having children while living there.

My recollection is that this concern became one of the reasons connected with his decision to sell up and move to Frankston.

Again, I preserve that as a recollection rather than pretending I possess his private reasoning in documentary form.

But the memory matters because it places another adult close to the convent who was not simply accepting that everything there was beyond question.

After Herbie

After the events surrounding Herbie, I remember members of Frank's family who were involved in politics visiting.

I was present for a meal with them.

I spoke about Herbie's death and about other things which had happened.

I did not understand all of the political relationships surrounding that visit.

What I remember is that the events were being discussed beyond our own house.

The story had not remained entirely contained within the church, the police station or the family.

Bill Allison

Bill Allison occupied a very different place in my childhood.

He was a policeman.

That should have meant protection.

For me it did not.

I remember being treated as a suspect, a liar and a sexual danger.

I remember being pulled into the police station and assaulted.

I remember damage to my nose and teeth.

I remember my bicycle being damaged.

And I remember the hospital glass.

Allison also appears in my memories as connected with the Knights of the Southern Cross.

By the time I was working at The Yea Chronicle as a teenager, that connection became visible to me in a way I could understand more clearly.

“My Lord”

I was under the Linotype machine at the Chronicle working on a mechanical problem when Bill Allison came into the office.

I remember him removing his hat.

Then I remember him kneeling before Tom Dignam.

The words I carry are something like “my lord” or “my liege”.

I cannot now swear to the exact form of address.

What stayed with me was the gesture and the relationship it appeared to display.

The policeman was not behaving towards the newspaper editor as one independent public official casually greeting another local man.

To me, watching from under the machine, it looked like another hierarchy.

The Complaints

I then heard Allison discussing complaints which people had made about a priest sexually abusing them.

My recollection is that there had been several complaints already.

I have sometimes remembered this as being around the fourth complaint, but I do not want to turn that number into certainty.

What mattered to me was hearing that other people had complained.

Until then so much of what surrounded my own childhood had been organised around the idea that I was the liar.

Hearing an adult policeman speak about other complaints changed something.

I stood up.

I asked whether my sister was included.

That question changed the rest of my life at the Chronicle.

The Cost of Speaking

My memory is that Allison reacted violently.

I remember being grabbed, choked or restrained against the wall and injured.

I remember damage to my nose and teeth.

I left the Chronicle.

I never returned to finish what I had been doing.

That detail is important to me.

I did not leave because I could not work.

I had been underneath the Linotype making it work.

I left because a conversation about sexual abuse and authority suddenly made the workplace unsafe.

Pat Harrison

Not every policeman occupies the same place in my memory.

Pat Harrison is an example.

After the shooting by Robert, I remember Harrison trying to respond and to provide some support.

My grandmother became involved and was furious about what had happened.

There were police statements and adult discussions which I understood only partly.

Harrison later moved to Ballarat.

After that Bill Allison became the policeman whose presence dominated my experience.

That contrast matters.

It prevents me from turning “the police” into one undifferentiated group in the same way that I do not want to turn “the Catholics” into one.

Doug and Shirley McClean

Doug and Shirley McClean belong to the protective side of the town in my memory.

Before Herbie's house became my main refuge, their place was somewhere I could go to get away from Robert.

For a time it worked.

Then Robert found me there and that refuge was no longer secure.

What matters to me now is that there were adults who understood enough to allow a child somewhere else to be.

That kind of protection did exist.

It simply did not always have the institutional power to prevail.

My Mother

Mum's position in all of this was different again.

She was not religious.

Mum was an atheist, as were her mother and father.

She was formally Catholic because, as she understood and experienced the requirements surrounding her marriage to my Catholic father, she was required to become Catholic and the children of the marriage were to be raised as Catholics.

That distinction matters.

The Catholic identity attached to our family did not mean that Mum personally accepted Catholic belief.

She lived inside a Catholic family and community structure without sharing the faith which that structure assumed.

She was raising a large family in a small town where the church, school, police, employment and social relationships were closely intertwined.

At times she depended upon institutions she did not necessarily believe in.

At other times she challenged them.

She spoke to Herbie about what was happening to me.

She tried to find places where I could be safe.

She confronted adults when she believed something was wrong.

She also sometimes accepted explanations which I later came to question.

Like everyone else in this story, she should not be reduced to a single role.

In her case, even the word “Catholic” can conceal more than it explains.

The Coonans

Members of the Coonan family also appear in my memory of the local alignments.

I remember them as among those who sided with the nuns and rejected what was being said about abuse.

I do not yet have enough material assembled to describe the role of each individual confidently.

For that reason I do not want to turn a family name into a detailed accusation without documents or more specific recollection.

What I can preserve is my childhood understanding that they belonged to the group which opposed Herbie's position and treated the allegations about the nuns as impossible or false.

The Child Everyone Discussed

One of the strangest things about looking back is recognising how many adults could discuss a child without that child understanding the networks around him.

Priests spoke to police.

Knights spoke to one another.

A newspaper editor spoke to a postmaster.

Families spoke to families.

My mother spoke to Herbie.

Herbie wrote to the bishop.

Adults decided whether I was credible.

Adults decided whether what the nuns were accused of was possible.

Adults described me as sexually dangerous.

Adults discussed what should be done about me.

I was the subject of many of those conversations without having any meaningful power over them.

The Label That Travelled

The description of me as a sexual problem became particularly damaging.

Once established, it could be used in many different situations.

If I accused an adult of sexual behaviour, the accusation could be turned back onto me.

If somebody like Herbie defended me, he could be portrayed as having been misled by a troubled child.

If I became angry or resisted, the resistance could be treated as further evidence that there was something wrong with me.

That kind of label did not require everybody in town to conspire.

It required only enough people to accept it, repeat it and allow it to shape how later events were interpreted.

Different Adults, Different Worlds

The adults around Yea therefore did not form one story.

Herbie wrote to the bishop.

Maurie gave up his own room so I could have one.

Frank Scully allowed me to read and seemed to stand apart from the dominant local grouping.

Doug and Shirley McClean gave me refuge.

Pat Harrison tried to respond after the shooting.

Tom Dignam appears in my memory as part of a very different network.

Jim Desmond was closely connected with him.

Bill Allison came to represent danger rather than protection.

Others sided with the nuns or rejected what I was saying.

All of them lived in the same small town.

What a Child Could See

I did not understand factions.

I did not understand institutional loyalty.

I did not understand the internal politics of the Knights of the Southern Cross.

I did not understand the old divisions between Catholicism and Freemasonry or the ways those divisions could enter local business and social life.

I did not understand how a bishop, a parish priest, a policeman, a newspaper editor and local families might be connected.

But children do not need to understand a structure in order to observe its effects.

I knew which houses felt safe.

I knew which adults listened.

I knew which adults became angry when certain names were mentioned.

I knew that some people stopped speaking to other people.

I knew that Herbie had created trouble by refusing to let the matter go.

I knew that Bill Allison frightened me.

And I knew that saying the wrong thing in front of the wrong adult could change what happened next.

Looking Back

The temptation now is to impose an organisation on all of this.

To draw a chart.

To put one group on one side and another group on the other.

Reality was probably messier.

People could agree on one issue and oppose one another on another.

Religion overlapped with politics.

Politics overlapped with business.

Family relationships overlapped with church relationships.

Personal loyalties mattered.

Old grievances mattered.

So did courage.

The most useful thing I can do now is not simplify those relationships beyond what I actually know.

The Town Between the Lines

Yea was a small place.

That could make people visible.

It could also make relationships powerful.

The priest knew the policeman.

The policeman knew the newspaper editor.

The editor knew the postmaster.

The Knights met across the road.

The newsagent knew the politicians.

Families knew who attended which church, which lodge, which hotel and which meeting.

A child moved through that web without a map.

I am only drawing parts of that map now.

And one of the clearest things it shows is that the adults around me were never one thing.

Some protected.

Some punished.

Some believed.

Some dismissed.

Some looked away.

Some spoke.

The differences between them mattered enormously to the child moving among them.