Chapter 30

Lesley

It’s not surprising what you miss when you are away from home: my boys. It didn’t matter that they had long moved out of home – Rodney was studying at university in Brisbane and Dan had left university and started working for the Australian Government in Canberra. They were still ‘my boys’ and, as far as I was concerned, a hell of a long way away to take care of if something went wrong. The instant our plane lifted off from Sydney International Airport, I’d worried about them as only a mother could.

But while I was in America I drew comfort whenever I saw the sun set. I’d look westward and know that somewhere, over there, my boys would soon see the same sunlight, except it’d be rising up from the east. And for them, in their southern-hemisphere time zone, it’d already be tomorrow, as Tammy and I remained a day behind.

While away on our overseas jaunt, I also missed Gem-Gem, my temperamental car. It wasn’t so much her petrol fumes, inconvenient bouts of breaking down and reluctance to start on wintry mornings that I’d longed for. Rather, it was having the steering wheel on the right side, which was to me and everyone else back home in Australia, the correct side.

After a few weeks of ordering room service from our hotel and eating out at restaurants and fast-food joints, I started to crave good old plain, home-cooked food – and just a small serving, instead of being confronted by supersized ones, often with a serving of fries on the side. I was sick of gorging myself, so as to not waste any food. Oh, for a piece of Vegemite toast, or a stew, like the ones Granny used to make – that’s what I really missed most about home.

In spite of my homesickness, I wasn’t ready to leave and return to the discomforts of my old life. Tammy teased that I loved the high-life, and being fussed over and pampered by Michael Jackson’s doting staff. Even if I was only Tammy’s ‘bag carrier’, the perks of being a chaperone weren’t bad.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to return home: I just didn’t want to return to the way I’d lived and once thought about life. When leaving Australia my sister-in-law, Lyn, predicted that our lives would never be the same. I didn’t understand what she meant. Sure, heading off to Michael Jackson’s place wasn’t your run-of-the-mill Contiki Tour booked with the assistance of a travel guide – but we weren’t going away for long and, once the excitement died down, I assumed we’d slip back into our familiar way of life.

With the benefit of time I’ve come to understand what Lyn meant and the truth of her prediction. It wasn’t that we’d return home with a head-swell, thinking that a trip overseas somehow made us better. Rather, this opportunity was so extraordinary, so different from anything we’d previously experienced, it couldn’t possibly not change the way we viewed life and how we wanted to live it.

For me, this amazing opportunity wasn’t in meeting a celebrity or staying in a fancy five-star Beverly Hills hotel – although that sure was nice. It was a dream come true to actually be in Hollywood, the iconic location for many of the films shown to us at the welfare hall at Cherbourg, which we’d later fantasise about. Our daydreaming of movie stars and their glamorous lifestyles had once helped us to escape the drudgery of our own lives under the Protection Act.

What I appreciated most about this trip was being able to get away from the safe and predictable routine of home life, so I could have a chance to simply ‘sit and think’ – philosophically that is – without worrying about bloody bills. I guess not many people get that. After all, who has the luxury, for several days on end, to unplug out of their life and all the responsibilities that go with it? Even on vacation, you’ve got to make sure that your holiday is within budget.

At ‘Neverland’, my mind was free of clutter caused by the usual money worries. I was also free of the stress generated by my ongoing battle with the Queensland Government. For once I had time and space for quiet contemplation. Until then, I hadn’t really given it much thought, as to how much my childhood experiences had shaped the adult I had become. I guess we’re all products of our childhoods, aren’t we?

Growing up in Cherbourg, children didn’t ask questions. We simply did what we were told by the white officials, regardless of how wrong or humiliating the task was. To ask ‘why’ and ‘how come’ was beyond rude; it was considered disobedient, and to disobey an order of the white officials was a punishable offence. So we learned pretty quickly not to question and, ultimately, not to think too much about our situation.

This made me ignorant. I didn’t mean to be, but at the end of the day I had grown up with a closed mind, trained to think of not much else beyond the boundaries of Cherbourg. That was the extent of my world – where children, especially black ones, should be seen working and behaving, not heard complaining. Our parents had this thumped into their ears by the white officials, and in turn they drummed such mantras into us. Survival as a child, back then, was to accept life as it was, with all that was unfair about it. We just had to ‘get on with it’ and we didn’t ask any questions – our opinions and feelings didn’t matter. But this approach couldn’t have been more different from the way Michael Jackson’s Heal the World Congress was run. Here, children, including my own daughter, Tammy, were seen and heard. Their thoughts and opinions mattered.

Although I was the adult in the room, my job as a chaperone was to supervise: to sit in the background, to watch and listen to the children – not the other way around. Global poverty, conflict in the Middle East, international trading of child slave labour: I’d never given much thought to these issues before hearing the young people speak. As sad and upsetting as they were, I often considered that those problems were ‘over there’ in some far-flung country, and I already had enough on my plate, fighting our mob’s own battles on our side of the world.

When the young people spoke, I was blown away hearing just how much they knew. They were only children, for goodness sake – so young and new to the world. Yet they knew so much more than me. Where did they learn all of this?

In Tammy’s case, she hadn’t learned it from me. For seventeen years I might’ve raised her, lived in the same house and shared experiences, but my daughter’s view of our world was so different from how I saw it. Her world included those from outside our hometown and continent, whereas my world, until recently, didn’t extend far beyond the safe and familiar fibro walls of our little Housing Commission home. Until our trip, my only real taste of the broader world came from reading books in the school library and viewing the international exhibits at Expo ’88. But as remarkable as this experience had been, a lot had since changed in the world.

Sure, I’d watch the nightly news and read the papers, skimming through the international news section on my way to the all-important local weather. Occasionally there’d be an article so addictively horrific that I’d have to stop and read – in much the same way as we drive past an accident and are compelled to gawk at someone else’s suffering. Then the instant I’d turn the television off or put the newspaper down, the misery of others was pushed to the back of my mind.

I couldn’t do this at ‘Neverland’. The people from ‘over there’ were now ‘here with me’, along with their different points of view, and sometimes, tragic experiences.

A couple of days into the congress one of the delegates, an Indigenous youth from Central America, approached me. He’d just heard Tammy speak of my life at Cherbourg under the control of the government. He reached out and clasped my hands in his.

‘No tenía idea de que nuestros hermanos y hermanas indígenas de Australia se vieron obligados a vivir asi,’ he spoke in Spanish. I looked over to his translator, Helen, to help me understand.

‘He said: “I had no idea that our Indigenous Australian brothers and sisters were forced to live like that”.’

‘Well, um …’ I tried to respond, confused by whether to look at the young man or the translator. ‘Well, that’s why being here at this conference is so important.’ My words were translated: ‘Bueno, esa es la razón por la cual estar acqui en esta conferencia es tan importante.’

‘So we can all learn about each other’s stories,’ I added. ‘Para que todos podamos aprender de las historias de cada uno.’

‘Sí,’ the young man replied, enthusiastically nodding his head so that no translation was needed.

It was then I realised that others in the world were perhaps as ignorant as me. They knew as little about my culture and history as I knew about theirs – and they probably even justified their ignorance with the same excuses. Unless I started to speak out and share my story, people elsewhere in the world may never know what happened to the Aboriginal people who live ‘over there’ in Australia, their history, and how many had worked for wages yet to be paid.

Meeting so many diverse people, being exposed to different ideas and new ways of looking at problems, started to change the way I thought. My mind was maturing and evolving, much like my teenage daughter’s. The world suddenly looked different from how it looked just a week or so before. I needed more time away from home, to change and grow some more.

Tammy

I threw myself into the remaining days of the conference with gusto, trying to absorb and appreciate the rarity of the moment, of conversing with young people from so many walks of life, whom ordinarily I wouldn’t meet. From the outset I didn’t have a grand plan – or any idea – where this opportunity would lead. I acted on blind faith – that I’d be no worse for immersing myself in the experience than to let the opportunity pass by.

The warm and inclusive tone of the conference provided Mum and me with the chance to be lifted out of the box in which life had placed us. It allowed us to escape the stereotypes, and the problems and fears that contained us back home. Behind the gates of ‘Neverland’ I wasn’t an ‘Abo’ or a ‘nigger’ – as I’d once been labelled – and there wasn’t a ‘boss’ or someone in authority to whom Mum felt subordinate or inferior. Here, we were all equals, with the same rights and means to be heard; parents and children, alike.

At last I felt understood and that I had a place among peers. I was one of forty young people who thought in much the same way and it gave me a sense of relief that, after all, there was nothing strange or abnormal about me and how I thought. I was one of them. I belonged.

There were, however, two delegates whom I was in awe of: Anneliese from Namibia and Taffy from Zimbabwe. They were walking encyclopaedias of information about their homelands in Africa. Taffy and Anneliese epitomised everything I wanted to become: smart, confident and unapologetically focused. Despite coming from humble origins, their positive outlook on life was uncomplicated and infectious. In their presence, I too felt a sense of optimism – that I could achieve a lot in my life. It was a matter of being focused, having self-belief, then just knuckling down and ‘doing it’ through dogged hard work.

As the conference closed at the end of each day, many of the delegates, including Taffy and Anneliese, would stay up until the early hours of the morning, discussing international politics and debating current issues. We reasoned that our time together would soon be coming to an end and sleep was a low-priority event that only got in the way. In the freshness of a north-American spring evening, stories were shared of children orphaned in the cross-fire of war, young people involved in the illegal trade of human organs, and students being taught beneath trees with outdated books and materials. There were heart-wrenching anecdotes of child slavery, prostitution and abuse, along with accounts of homelessness and poverty so extreme that the next meal for many children was somewhere among the scraps of the local rubbish tip. Afterwards, I’d retire to the spacious hotel suite I shared with my mother, with a new perspective on my sheltered and often self-centred world as a teenager living in rural Australia.

During the day, tours were arranged to visit the Holocaust museum and a viewing of the famed Getty art collection. The art museum’s provocative exhibits and installations prompted feverish discussion among the young delegates, our opinions and perspectives as varied as those of qualified art critics. We also attended workshops about the United Nations, where we learned something of the basic tenants of international law. It was during these sessions that the conference facilitators informed us that Michael Jackson’s Heal the World Congress had been planned as a preparatory gathering for a World Summit of Children to be held later that year in San Francisco. With full sponsorship from the foundation, a couple of young people would be chosen to present our conference’s deliberations to over a hundred delegates.

Whispered excitement filled the room as if it were Christmas Eve, with clusters of young people speculating who would be chosen. Everyone wanted to be selected and I was no different. Perhaps, in part, it was a way to keep clinging to the magic of ‘Neverland’ just that bit longer, with another whirlwind adventure underwritten by Michael Jackson’s foundation. For me, being selected had an added purpose. It would be a chance for Mum and me to build on the momentum – sparked by our experiences at ‘Neverland’ – to permanently alter the course of our lives.

With a bit more time away from the expectations of normality, I hoped it would lessen the risk of me winding up as the ‘troublemaker’ I once feared becoming, or condemned to a life as a statistic. As for Mum, I wanted to share the adventure with her – hoping it could make up for all the opportunities she had not had. I wanted more, for the both of us. I wanted so desperately to be chosen. And I was.

With the opportunity, though, came the great responsibility to make the most of it.