18

JOY

George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four portrays a world in which happiness has died. Looking back, the events of 1984 changed our world forever. It wasn’t a good year.

Less than a month after Stuart killed his family, Mum suffered a debilitating stroke from which she never fully recovered. She was only sixty and at the height of her career as Australia’s most successful and popular Lord Mayor. She lost the use of the right side of her body and, more tragically, she lost her speech. In the early weeks after her stroke, we were hopeful that she could be fully rehabilitated, but it wasn’t to be.

Mum loved and lived life more fully than anyone I have ever known. She was gentle but strong, clever but feminine, wise but never judgmental; she was a fine politician with a genuine love of her city and its people.

Though her full name was Joyce, everyone knew her as Joy. Her love affair with Newcastle began about 1940, when her father, Dallas Plumbe, transferred from Ramsgate to the Newcastle East fire station in Scott Street. The fire station at the top of town was a stone’s throw from Newcastle and Nobby’s beach. Mum and her little brother Bill played, surfed and fished through their teenage years, until they both found life partners. She married Dad in 1946 in the cathedral on the hill above the city.

When we were children, we always knew that Mum and Dad were different from other people’s parents. As well as being best friends, they had similar interests and beliefs. No-one else we knew had the Guardian home-delivered, three months out of date. And who else had a parent who was a member of the United Nations Association?

When we were little, our lullabies were the great arias of La Bohème or Madame Butterfly. We’d come home to a house full of happy song as Mum prepared the evening meal. Despite her Celtic heritage, her songs, like her life, were rarely in a minor key. She was always happy, the eternal optimist. The neighbourhood kids would congregate at our place, and Mum welcomed them all.

She loved literature and music. Many of her favourite books had come to her from her grandmother and great-aunts. Writers of philosophy and poetry – St Thomas More, Virgil, Keats and Shelley – were later joined by Ruth Park, Dylan Thomas, Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Judith Wright. These books were treasures that nourished her soul in the shadow of BHP.

It’s thanks to Mum that the Australian national anthem begins with the words ‘Australians all let us rejoice’ instead of ‘Australia’s sons let us rejoice’. She suggested the change to Gough Whitlam when he was Prime Minister. Mum received the Order of Australia in 1978, and was honoured with a Master of Arts from the University of Newcastle in 1985 with these words: ‘Lady, you excel a wise man in your enlightened policies’.

Mum dreamed of Newcastle as a working harbour and a beautiful city combined. Today that dream is a reality. A few months before her stroke in 1984, with Prime Minister Bob Hawke, she turned the first sod marking the beginning of the harbour foreshore park that she had successfully fought to retain as public land. Mum also steered the floating dock Muloobinba through Nobby’s Head for its final mooring in the harbour. In 1988, Queen Elizabeth singled her out for praise. ‘Yes, I know Joy,’ she said, needing no introduction; she went on to acknowledge Mum’s contribution to Newcastle.

With all the other things going on in their lives, Mum and Dad had been a lifeline for Sarah, Brendan and me through those terrible years when we were living with Stuart and then separating from him. Their gentleness and strength were crucial to our survival. It was their love that fed me the oxygen I needed to keep functioning. Mum comforted me and was there for me during the twelve years I lived as a single mother, a couple of streets away from her and Dad.

Even after the killings, my parents never condemned their former son-in-law or showed hatred toward him. They never spoke negatively about him to their grandchildren. They simply showered us with love and support. This was a big lesson for me about what matters in life, and one I will never forget.

When you have children, you imagine you’ll always be there for them. Then, in the blink of an eye, they must be there for you. So it was for Mum, struck down in her prime so soon after the events in Heathcote. But her loss of speech didn’t stop her from getting on with the life she loved. She lived in her home in Cooks Hill for another twenty years. Her love of life never ceased to amaze us all. She immersed herself in the growing family, which eventually included nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. The simple things in life sustained her, like reading and listening to books and music, watching the rosellas, the parrots and a tawny frogmouth feeding in her native garden from the sunroom in her home.

Not long before she died, we took her in a wheelchair for a long walk around the foreshore, along the promenade that now bears her name. It was a typical sunny winter day in Newcastle, and the harbour sparkled. Mum was wearing a hat against the cold and sunglasses against the glare, and wasn’t easily recognised. We wheeled her from Nobby’s through the foreshore park, past the Customs House and Scratchley’s restaurant and back to the car. Throughout the walk she smiled at everyone who passed by.

‘It is lovely,’ she said. These were three words she used often. Three simple words. Since her stroke, Mum didn’t have a large vocabulary and couldn’t verbalise her thoughts, but she somehow managed to get these three words out often. They meant much more than the walk – the place itself was lovely, the day was lovely, the weather was lovely, we were lovely for making it happen and spending time with her. Life was lovely. These three words conveyed so much.

After Mum’s death, the Lord Mayor of Newcastle, John Tate, and all the counsellors unanimously supported the naming of the foreshore walk ‘Joy Cummings Promenade’. It was a generous mark of respect that displayed a goodwill and bipartisanship not often seen in the hurly-burly of politics. It was a fine tribute to our mother.

Across the harbour, Mum rests beside Dad in Stockton cemetery. She saw through the grime of a wartime industrial city to glimpse a vision splendid. Like ships that return to safe moorings, Mum came home once again in a beautiful gesture from the city. She did indeed love Newcastle with all her heart.