My father was a demi-god
June 7, 2011
I loved my Dad. I think I got frozen in the stage where small children think their father is a demi-god. Certainly, I always felt that the sun rose and set at my father’s command. Even when I was grown up, and had long since realised, of course, that this was simply not true, a central part of me continued to feel that way anyhow.
However, my relationship with my father was extremely problematic. I was born on the other side of the Great Divide, in a small town called Gulgong, where Henry Lawson lived for a while. My father was a lay preacher at the time.
When I was one year old, my parents moved to Dunbible, a small community a few miles south of Murwillumbah, on the northern coast of New South Wales. We lived on a banana plantation. My mother says she had no idea what to do with small children, so she left me to run around on my own for most of the day, with just the chickens for company.
But sometimes my dad would let me tag along with him in the plantation, and sometimes his mates from neighbouring plantations would come over to help out; I have always preferred the company of men – after all, my earliest friendly companions were men.
When I was 4 years old, my mother suddenly left my father, taking us kids with her. My father had gone into town for supplies, and my mother spent some time watching out the window; perhaps she was waiting to see if he was coming back for anything he had forgotten. Then she suddenly started rushing around packing a suitcase.
I can’t remember how much I said out loud, or whether it was just thoughts in my head, but I do clearly remember wondering why my Dad wasn’t coming with us. Why weren’t we packing his clothes? he was wearing his everyday clothes; he wasn’t dressed for plane travel. I could imagine how he would feel when he got home and found us gone; he’d be devastated.
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