What we’ve got here …

Cool Hand Luke is one of my Dad’s favourite movies. My Mum may have taught me how to read when I was a toddler, but I loved watching Saturday matinee movies with my Dad when I was a kid. That and being allowed to stay up for the Hawaii Five-O credits, and putting David Carradine Kung Fu-style moves on my Dad & brother while my Mum was studying at night. My Dad didn’t have many opportunities as a child, & while we were far from spoilt, if there was a way for our lives to be better – whether it was as exchange students, going to university, beach holidays – my Dad worked hard, bloody hard, to ensure his four children had every door opened to them. All we had to do was walk through & succeed.

I just found out my Dad is in hospital again. I’m scared, but not surprised. On a recent visit home. I found my 65 year-old Dad – for so long a larger than life character, 6’2″ tall, athletic, teller-of-tall-tales & tamer of tigers, diminished by the heart operation he had in February; his spirit as wasted as his body. He shuffles around the house in slippers & forgets to take his medication unless my Mum reminds him. It’s as though something from above swooped down on him after the angiogram revealed a heart valve leaking in several places & took 20 years from his life. The worst part of watching this unfold is that he knows it’s happening. My memory is shot, he told me, flatly, as he set off for his hour-long walk on Wednesday morning. I told him he was pushing himself too hard; he’s not putting on any weight by exercising so much. It seemed to be his way of fighting back, & I couldn’t bring myself to argue with him.

My Dad and I have never had the easiest relationship; from the baby he nicknamed the ‘Pride of the Pacific’, time & trauma have seen years pass with a fierce love that neither of us seems able to put into words or express physically. My brother can at least shake his hand. I think the last time my father & I hugged was a decade ago. ‘Thanks, Kimberley’, he said, eyes looking down when I gave him his Father’s Day present. When he set it aside on the kitchen dresser. I walked away, gutted. He couldn’t even open a card from me; a card where the words flowed so easily, the card which told this man who gave me life how much I loved him, how lucky I am that he is my Dad.

How similar we are, Dad. My memories of you standing in the doorway of your parents’ home, unable to talk to your own father’; forever the little boy who followed him everywhere until, when you were five, he stopped being your best mate and started belting you instead. You, the one who stayed with him as death refused to take him quickly or mercifully. I want to be with you, Pete, I want to be by your side & tell you it’s going to be all right. I want to hold your hand & question your doctors & fight this infection for you.  I know you won’t die, Dad; I just want you to look at me again & see a woman with a heart as big & brave as yours – not a damaged, fearful child.

Back to Cool Hand Luke and the two variations of its most famous line. I saw it again a few months ago, and the delivery of those lines sits sharp in my mind this evening. Firstly, The Captain, who utters a warning to the entire chain gang after striking Luke, Paul Newman’s defiant inmate:

What we’ve got here is … failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach.

Finally, Luke takes the words and owns them. Sheltering and shouting, making his final stand but not before railing at whatever it was that made him what he is:

What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.

Tonight, I feel part the character of the Captain, partly Luke. I want to scream at my Dad, I don’t want him to be someone who stays out of reach; & like Luke, I want to rant at the ghosts of our past for making us the people we are. Two mighty hearts, unable and unwilling to yield.

Nearly lost you

Don’t call me daughter, not fit to be

The picture kept will remind me

“Daughter” – Pearl Jam (Vedder / Gossard)

I’ve been throwing up in the middle of the night again. Since Saturday. Since the nightmare started again. That you went to work & you didn’t come back. I wake up screaming & I sob & I can’t stop until I vomit. Just like I did when I was a little girl. And it was always you who came to stop it; not Mum. You would run to me when the screaming started. I don’t know what it was like for you to see me in the grip of this terror … it must have been unbelievable. Unbearable, even; to not understand – but how could you when I couldn’t tell you what was going on in my head, Dad? That I was scared when you weren’t there? That it played in my mind like a movie. That it wasn’t someone else’s father, but you; gone to work in the dark, dying in the dark. So I scream again in the night for a loss I am yet to experience. For the call which didn’t come. Not to our house. The only difference is you’re not here to shake me until I stop and prove to me that you’re alive. And so I scream & sob until I vomit, & I call home every day since Saturday.

Mum says I’m having flashbacks, but I can’t say, ‘I love you, Dad, please don’t leave me’.

I’m the hard one. ‘I think they’re dead, Dad’. I tell my brother as well. His answer is the same as yours.

“Probably. But they chose to do the job and knew the risks associated, as I do.”

My brother is the one in the rescue chopper. He is the man ready to walk up the barrel of a gun, just as the man from the mine said today. He’s right. There are 29 men missing; I don’t know them, I don’t have any connection to them & I am screaming in the middle of the night for them to come home.

Please let them be safe, please let them go home, please give strength & some small comfort to their families & community. Please grant the people at the pit top the wisdom to make the right choices, however desperate that choice may be. I’m agnostic; I’m not going to feign religion, it’s an insult to the faithful. Let them come home; but don’t let others go in to face the bullet in the chamber of that gun. One of those men in the dark could have been my Dad. And the man at the surface, planning the rescue, doing the risk assessment, could be my brother. 

Dear Nellie …

Nellie of Penrith Posted at 5:54 PM October 17, 2010:

… as for Kristina Keneally allowing her husband and sons appear in a family photo and allowing the stillbirth of her daughter to be used as brownee points for politics. She should be ashamed, I know any respect I had for her has gone, gone, gone.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/spin-out-of-control/story-e6freuy9-1225939672167

Dear Nellie,

My name is Kimberley. I have one brother, and three sisters. I was born a huge (9lb, 11 ounces, 23 inches long!), healthy baby girl at 1.18am on 6 December 1971. I am my parents’ second child; their oldest surviving one. I am the younger sister of Kelly Margaret, who was born, and died, in 1969. In all of our birth notices, my parents celebrated their healthy babies’ arrival with the words, ‘sister / brother of Kelly, in heaven’. I cannot begin to tell you how much I respect my Mother, who quietly, but factually explained to us as children that she went into labour with her daughter’s heart beating; a heart which stopped beating before Kelly was born.

As the member of a family with first-hand experience of stillbirth, I find your comments, which I believe relate to this story (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw-act/kristina-keneallys-sad-memories-of-a-stillbirth-10-years-ago/story-e6freuzi-1225939374867), abhorrent. If you click on this link, (http://www.stillbirthfoundation.org.au/node/125), you’ll see that the story relates to the Premier’s decision to become patron of Stillbirth Foundation Australia.

As an adult, I look at my parents in awe to think that they could even attempt to turn what must be unspeakable pain into a part of our lives; just as Ben & Kristina Keneally have done for their sons. I am proud that the Premier has shared her love for her daughter, and her very real place in her family’s heart, since she entered public life. You may not know, but Caroline Keneally’s name is in the NSW Parliament Hansard, in her mother’s maiden speech, along with the rest of her family. Like the Keneallys – and too many families – mine has an angel in heaven as well.

Yours sincerely

Kimberley Ramplin

PS: You can help make a difference to this parent-run charity by visiting http://www.stillbirthfoundation.org.au/node/95. The five-year Little Feet lunch raised more than $50,000 for research into why so many stillborn babies’ babies’ deaths remain unexplained.

DISCLAIMER: I work in NSW politics, as a ministerial adviser. I disclose this on my Twitter account and in the ‘about’ section of this blog. While this post isn’t about politics per se, it was sparked by the ‘anonymous, vicious, troll’ debate. I actually agree with the, ‘yes to anonymous, vicious, trolls’ argument, but I have been obsessing over it today because it instantly brought to mind this pseudonymous online comment – almost one month later. If you think I didn’t cry when I read it, or cried again when I started typing tonight, think again.

Too bloody dangerous

I keep straining my ears to hear a sound.
Maybe someone is digging underground,
or have they given up and all gone home to bed,
thinking those who once existed must be dead.

“New York Mining Disaster 1941″ (Barry Gibb / Robin Gibb)

I look in awe as a combined marvel of engineering, solidarity and hope saved the lives of 33 miners in Chile in the last 24 hours; in awe of the strength and determination of the men, their families and those who worked to free them – whether they were in hard hats, NASA or in government. Like the rest of the world, I was gripped by this story; but as I watched Fenix II being tested, I was gripped with fear. Not hope. Not anticipation. So when I saw the son of the first miner to surface, as I watched his face, I saw anxiety, not excitement, and when he sobbed uncontrollably as his father emerged from the capsule, so did I. In that moment I was connected with a small child I will never know and more in touch with my own frailties than I have been in a long time. I have travelled half the world. I have stood on ground where crimes against humanity have been committed; but if grief and suffering has a place and a name, it  is a small town in Wales: Aberfan.

I grew up in a mining village near Newcastle; up until the 1980s when the coal companies decided the land was worth more than the coal, a string of them dotting the coast south of the Hunter River; communities which sprung up around the pits since John Shortland discovered a rich seam of the black stuff in the late 18th century. All of my adult male relatives worked in coal mines, including my father. As a child, I heard the pit whistle signal the change of shift, and if my dad was on days he would knock off at 2pm and be in the bowlo by 3. If he worked a ‘doubler’ he was gone for 16 hours. He used to do a double shift at least once a week until he retired, buggered from 35 years of slaving his guts out. I also knew the story of Aberfan.

When you mine coal, you take out the black stuff, but also tonnes of useless stuff – ‘slag’. At the Merthyr Vale colliery, the slag heaps or ‘tips’ were monstrous. Fifty years of crud dumped on the side of a mountain. The mountain came with mountain springs. Some of the tips were laid directly over the springs. Aberfan’s primary school lay directly below the mountain – and the slag heaps. At 9.15am on Friday, 21 October 1966, one of the slag heaps gave way. It had been raining for days. Combined with the underground springs, the rain turned 150,000 cubic metres of slag and rock into a torrent of mud. Most of it stopped at the foot of the mountain, but as the little children of Aberfan returned to class that Friday morning, the last day of term, 40,000 cubic metres of this filth smashed its way into town, 12 metres deep. After destroying terraced houses on the way, it hit the school, destroying buildings and filling the classrooms with thick mud and rubble up to 10 metres deep. There was an almighty roar, then silence. 144 people choked, had their skulls caved in or were crushed by the impact. 116 of the victims were aged between 7 and 10 years old. 104 (or almost half of the students) died at the school. The mothers and fathers of Aberfan clawed at the mud with their bare hands, searching for the teachers and children who were dying metres below their despair. Hundreds of people drove to the village to help the rescue; as did police and trained rescue teams. No survivors were found after 11am. It took another week for 2,000 emergency services workers and volunteers, some working for more than 24 hours straight, to recover all of the bodies from their earth. Most of the victims were buried at a joint funeral at the local cemetery.

I went to Aberfan in 1996 – 30 years later. I was living in Cardiff, and I wanted to see for myself the town I had only seen on a documentary in primary school – which scared the living daylights out of me as there was a (small) slag heap across the road from my grandparents’ house. The only way I can describe walking the streets to pay my respects at the cemetery is to imagine getting an inside look at the mind of a person living with post-traumatic stress disorder. A town that can’t rest while the memory of that day remains fresh; streets and shops and pubs populated by old people and people in their 20s (the birthrate went up after the disaster) and a generation missing, 35-45 year old adults, either lying in the graveyard or broken by the horror of that day. A town split between families whose children survived (145) and those whose lives were taken in 1966, people who could not bear to see the living children play; and so guilt beset grief. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has found that more than 50 per cent of survivors suffered PTSD, and as of 2000, 82 per cent of those had not recovered; they were more than three times as likely to develop lifetime PTSD than a comparative cohort of life-threatening trauma victims.

So, on such an uplifting day, I am writing in honour of the thousands who risk their lives everyday by going underground. I have seen widows; known fatherless children; watched as my Dad’s mates went from pulling ‘doublers’ to being pushed in a wheelchair, their backs broken in roof falls. When John Lennon’s 70th birthday was remembered around the world, all I could think of was the morning after my 8th birthday party – the day of Lennon’s assassination and the day they came to tell my Dad that his mate Ray Jones was dead. When we grew up, my brother did his mine entrance exam. Our Dad let him do it but flatly refused to allow him to go underground. ‘Too bloody dangerous’ were his first, and only words on the subject, even though my brother could have worked at his pit. Instead, my brother became the rescuer of men; as a senior crewman on Westpac Rescue Helicopter he saved the lives of the sailors on the Pasha Bulker and took a boy I had gone to school with to Royal North Shore spinal unit after he was injured in a mining accident.

Safety standards worldwide have improved, but approximately 6,000 miners die in China each year (it’s a guesstimate; most of the accidents occur at small, pretty much illegal mines, I don’t think the government actually knows the true figure). As press secretary to a former Minister for Mineral Resources, I have been underground – he insisted that all of us know what it felt like for the people who worked the black seam (including the receptionist, who fell on her arse trying to cross a longwall excavation). There’s a hum, dim light, water, and kilometres of roads. I’ve also been woken up in the early hours of the morning to be notified of accidents; on one day, Friday 28 May three separate and tragic incidents resulted in the deaths of two young miners and serious injury to another. James Adams Jnr of Muswellbrook died in an incident at Dartbrook colliery, north of Muswellbrook. Paul Strong of Pelaw Main died in an incident at Mount Thorley open-cut mine, near Singleton. The Government was in the midst of overhauling mine safety legislation and conducted a review, but they were two new names to add to the the Jim Comerford Memorial Wall in Aberdare, which commemorates each of the 1,795 miners killed on the northern coalfields since the first lease was granted in 1801. To put the Hunter region’s loss in perspective, that is three times the number of soldiers Australia lost in the Vietnam War. I celebrate the success of the Chile mine rescue, but I honour the names on The Jim Comerford Memorial Wall. It was paid for by my Dad’s old union, the Northern District Branch of the United Mineworkers and named after the Rothbury Riot survivor and union stalwart. The records show that the youngest was 11-year-old Robert Irving, who was killed at the Co-operative Colliery at Plattsburgh on February 16, 1883, when he was “run over by loaded skips”. The oldest fatality on record was 73-year-old Frederick Charles Roose, who was killed at Waratah Colliery by a “fall of stone”. I am relieved beyond measure that 33 lives have been saved as the world watched on, but I am mindful of those who are subject to these dangers every moment of their working lives, and the graves of Aberfan. 

Notes:

“New York Mining Disaster, 1941″ was inspired by the Aberfan disaster.

Prof Iain McLain (2007): Aberfan: no end of a lesson http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-52.html

Royal College of Psychiatrists (2000) Over 30 years on – Aberfan survivors still suffering post-traumatic stress disorder http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/press/pressreleasearchive/pr160.aspx

NSW Parliament Hansard: http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20040601005

From the archives: My Brother, the Hero

Tuesday, June 12, 2007  My brother, the hero

Haven’t posted in aeons, so I’ll start with tonight & work backwards. Almost all of my family lives in Newcastle; luckily they weren’t flooded out during the storm. The events of the past few days will leave an indelible mark on my brother, Glen. You can find a pic of us on my site.

Glen is a senior crewman with the Westpac Rescue Helicopter service. Tonight, he featured in an ‘A Current Affair’ yarn about the crew they rescued from the bulk carrier stranded off Nobby’s Beach, the Pasha Bulker. It was the kind of story ACA should go with more often – the colour and movement beyond the headlines and clichés – instead of neighbours at war (or margarines vs butter).

I digress. The most eye-opening part of this story was that it made me think, quite deeply, about the man my brother is. Courage and heroism are more often used to describe footballers than frontline emergency service workers. Watching 9′s vision of my brother tonight, as he winched down a thin metal cable to the ship’s crew and lifted each man to safety, I thought about the qualities that made my brother so determined to make this his life’s work.

I thought of the sensitive, giving boy; the picture of us dressed in matching red jumpsuits (my mother’s fault … but that’s the subject of another 1,874 blogs); the fights – physical in primary school, juvenile insults in high school, then the worst – the vile, silent war of our 20s, both of us trapped by hurts and rejections, real and perceived. Our interest in, and understanding of each other was superficial at best. Then came the big bang; the beginning of a whole new universe for my family. Somewhere in the chaos and order, the Revelation and Redemption, my brother and I are slowly finding each other again.

For the first time in our adult life, I can tell him how proud I am of him, not just of his heroic actions, but for the man he has become. Because he didn’t lose the sensitive, giving boy who, like his older sister, lived in fear of disappointing others; the boy who tried – & surpassed – the impossible expectations he believed he had to live up to as the only male, the only one to carry on the family name; my brother didn’t shake loose the sensitive, giving boy.

My brother grew, tall, handsome and strong; but he allowed the boy to grow with him, into a man who can risk his life at the end of a steel rope, who can assess a dangerous situation and make decisions that you or I cannot comprehend, a man who saved 18 other men on Friday, a man who simply said, ‘it was quite a day’.

Quite a man, my brother Glen. My brother Glen, the hero. My hero.

PS: Westpac Rescue Helicopter relies on the generosity of its sponsors & business partners, & donations from the public. Find out more by visiting http://www.rescuehelicopter.com.au You can make a donation online, over the counter at a Westpac Branch, or send a cheque.