When Tracey picked me up from Sydney airport, she took one look at me and shook her head in disbelief. She said she hadn’t seen me so thin and gaunt since I rolled the army Land Rover way back when she was pregnant with Cory and had spent the night in a roadside ditch before getting to hospital. I’d dropped probably twelve kilos and looked pretty shabby. I just explained to her that eating dhal and rice for a long time and working in such hot and humid conditions would do that to anyone. But while I looked very average on the outside, I felt pretty good on the inside – utterly exhausted but like I had proved something to myself and achieved something I hadn’t thought I was capable of. But it didn’t last long. I was home but didn’t feel at home, if you know what I mean.
It wasn’t until I was halfway into the two-hour car trip to Newcastle that I confessed to Tracey that I’d been in hospital and had a bit of a breakdown in Sri Lanka. She was pretty pissed off, to say the least. After all we had been through – make that all I had put her through – over all these years she didn’t appreciate that I had kept such a serious thing from her. But later she understood where I was coming from. I could see no use in her worrying about me when I was so far away and there was nothing she could have done to help. That would only have made me worry more and I had enough worries of my own. But I did deceive her and that hurt Tracey, although I did it with the best of intentions.
I was still exhausted and lethargic but overjoyed at seeing Tracey and the kids. It’s funny but the first impressions of being home involved the ‘absolute luxuries’ I’d forgotten existed – like sitting in your own air-conditioned car and a comfortable house, going to our own fridge, sleeping in our bed, hopping on the internet whenever I wanted, reading the newspaper, watching television.
I slept a lot of the first few days back. I was still pretty shattered physically but it was great to share my experiences with Tracey and the kids; the kids were fairly nonchalant, especially Cory, but they asked questions about what I did, what it was like, what kept me busy, what I ate, where I lived and all that. I felt I was taking in more about their characteristics and was more responsive to what they were doing in their lives than I had been before. I just sat and observed them some days and had this feeling right through me of how lucky I was and appreciative that I had such a great family. I felt reborn to a degree.
Cory’s football had come on in leaps and bounds, which was fantastic. The rugby league season (and his final year at high school) had begun while I was in Sri Lanka and he was playing SG Ball (under 18s) for the Newcastle Knights for a second season. His team had hardly lost a game and he was really starting to prove to Knights officials that bringing him the whole width of the continent from Perth was looking like being a good investment in their, and his, future. And Tracey, Karah and Krystal enjoyed going to watch him play as a family. Both the girls had settled well into school in the new term, which was a relief as it was naturally hard for them to move and have to make friends before Christmas. Everything in their lives seemed to be on track. The girls also had their own interests and were enjoying living in Newcastle. They were in Little Athletics and Krystal was showing keenness to go into modelling and acting; she’d done a few advertising catalogues when she was in Perth and had been picked up by an agency. Karah played netball and had been a pretty good rugby league player, too, and both the girls played ‘flag belt’ footy with Tracey, as well as touch football. So sport was pretty universal through our family, which was great.
I hadn’t really met anyone in the few months since we’d rented a house in New Lambton, other than to say hello to the neighbours – except, that is, for David Beljaars, who I struck up a conversation with at Newcastle RSL on Anzac Day when I’d come across the year before during a visit to see Cory. Dave was the only one outside of the family who knew why I went to Sri Lanka, so he came around and we had a good chat; he was very interested in how things went and how I was. It was hard to explain what we did, what my role was and how it touched me. That’s where The Third Wave ended up being so good when it was released; it explains our experience better than my words could and that’s why I tend to loan my copy to people and say, ‘Watch that and you’ll understand.’
I spoke for hours and hours with Tracey, telling her of my experiences. She could see I was thinking a lot more clearly about my life, that I’d got a lot of satisfaction out of my positive role in Peraliya, and that I had finally used all the expertise I’d picked up in the army. I felt satisfied that I’d had a virtual operational deployment during which I could use some of those skills I’d trained so hard to possess, all without having to throw my ugly melon into the firing line during a war. The only overseas deployment of troops during my thirteen years in the army were to Rwanda and Namibia. Timor came just a little later – it was the first real major deployment of Australian soldiers since the Vietnam War – I mean going somewhere in large numbers where there was real ammunition and a real enemy.
The longer I stayed home during those few days, though, the more restless and uneasy I became. I’d always intended to be home only for a few weeks, to recharge my batteries so I could go back to Peraliya as soon as I was in the right physical condition. But what hit me was that it wasn’t just a case of going home for some R&R, seeing my family and all would be okay. It became evident what a massive clash of worlds and cultures I had just experienced – and that I fitted into the foreign, unknown Third World better than the ‘real’ world I’d come from.
It didn’t take long for the great pride and satisfaction I’d derived from the adventure of Peraliya to turn to a feeling of ‘I’m back to my mundane life; here we go again; what is my purpose here?’. I was still in a new town where I didn’t know many people and the people who did know me probably thought I was crazy to have headed off overseas by myself to help people after a tsunami. What was happening in Peraliya still played on my mind so much: what were Bruce, Oscar and Alison up to? Were this project and that project being done? Was the unrest they were so worried about getting any worse?
I look back at it now and realise that it was natural to feel down and unsettled. I had found a place in a new, very different world, and felt I’d exercised some of the skills I’d been trained for in the army – it was tough, but it was exciting; it gave me a constant adrenalin flow to feel needed and appreciated and busy. In Peraliya I’d walk around the village and everyone would say hello and show their appreciation. Suddenly, I’d walk around the streets at home and no one knew who or what I was and couldn’t have cared less anyway. They were in their own relatively smug, unthreatening world, with no concept of how lucky they were. I was back to being a father and husband and I was dearly glad to see Tracey, Cory, Karah and Krystal, but I quickly started to feel inadequate again: unchallenged, unfulfilled, frustrated, anxious. And the scenes I’d witnessed in Sri Lanka started to haunt me, putting me on edge psychologically again. I started to struggle big time, knowing there was so much for me still to do back there. Being so preoccupied by that at the time, I just didn’t have it in me to go out and look for some role in life back home.
I explained how I felt to Tracey and it must have been hard for her to hear her husband saying he wanted to leave her and our kids so quickly again and get back to some calamity-hit part of the world that she’d never seen and could never picture no matter how much I talked about the people and events. But she understood I had to go back there – and try to finish the job.
That was easier said than done, though, as we didn’t have the $2500 airfare. So Tracey put out a group email to everyone whose address we had, asking if anyone could help to get me back to Sri Lanka. That’s where an old army friend, ex-Sergeant Major Craig ‘Shorty’ Coleman from Brisbane, came to the rescue. He worked in a personnel management agency that sent skilled workers to Afghanistan and Iraq for close body security work and also ex-army engineers for on-the-ground infrastructure work. He responded and said he wanted to help get me back to Peraliya and his company paid for my airfare, which I was grateful for. Shorty had been a real mentor to me when I was in the army, coaching me in touch footy, of which he was quite a player himself. I owe him a lot. We were all pretty sharp touch players in those days; I remember fondly the good times playing competitive sport and the camaraderie that would build up between people. We were all so fit, too, and we played the game hard; I loved it.
So my visit to Australia lasted less than two weeks. It was hard to say goodbye to Tracey and the kids again, even though they’d become used to it over the years with my army exercises and stints in hospital trying to sort myself out. But I just knew I had to get back to Sri Lanka and finish what I’d set out to do.
I was back in Peraliya by mid-April. Kumara and Dinesh came to Colombo airport to meet me and it was great to see their faces. I was almost shaking with excitement as we drove down the main Galle Road. There had been a lot of mopping up and a lot of construction in the towns and villages along the way, but there was still a lot to do. It’s funny – we had driven that way out to the airport when I went home but I hadn’t noticed the progress, which shows I was either asleep or so ‘spaced out’ with exhaustion I just didn’t see it or certainly didn’t take it in. This time I felt energised, upbeat and keen to see everyone, and I was much more aware of what was around me.
When I arrived in Peraliya, I felt like the Pied Piper; all the kids gathered around yelling, ‘Donny’s back, Donny’s back.’ I will never forget that welcome; so many people milling around, fifty to sixty people with beaming smiles, patting me on the back, wanting to hug me. I learned some of them had been crying for me that I wasn’t there; that blew me away.
In the eighteen or so hours between leaving Newcastle and arriving at Peraliya, it was like I was transformed from one identity to another – Donny, the face in the crowd who kept to himself, to Donny with a slouch hat, walking stick and orange vest – the inspiring hero of the people. That was the role that made me feel worthwhile and fulfilled even though I had just left all the comforts of home and an affluent society to come to a tsunami-devastated Third World environment. But that had become ‘me’.