The girl said she could not remember a time when domestic violence was not a part of her life. Some of her earliest memories are of her siblings trying to protect her Mother. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

“We had a shotgun and a rifle, and my brother would regularly hide the bolts and ammunition, lest the old man act out his threat to shoot us all.”

Living remotely, the drinking was usually relegated to Friday or Saturday night. Once the old man had initially unleashed his fury, triggered by God knows what, there was a period of terror and torment, when he would appear to calm down, then intermittently roam the house hurling verbal abuse, flicking lit matches in the darkness as we huddled together.

“A punch, or a slap, a glass of cold water being thrown over us, or a hand reaching out and dragging her out of bed by the hair.”

It was a waiting game. Waiting for the rage to subside and him to tire himself out and eventually go to sleep. He would wake bright and early the next day, never suffered a hang over, claiming no knowledge of what had happened the night before.

Occasionally, if pushed, he would say “I didn’t want to do it, your mother made me do it”.

Sometime in 1974, Some bright spark told the old man a great cure for asthma, which he had suffered from since childhood, was a clove of garlic and a teaspoonful of rum. The old man drank all the beer and all the rum and raged for the best part of 48 hours. The girl’s brother escaped to a neighbour who eventually came and got us.

“We went to my grandparents for a week, when her father virtually said “You’ve made your bed, you lie in it” and took us back…..”

 By late 1974 the last of her siblings was leaving home,  they fled to family in Portland.  Early 1975, she started High School and her mother got a job as a housekeeper. There were not a lot of job choices for a woman of her age with a young daughter. He turned out to be a lecherous old sod. The next position was care/companion to an elderly woman in a wheelchair. She was a kind soul, but by then the old man had found where they were and was making threatening late-night calls. She was frightened and asked them to leave.

“We believe he was using a private detective to find us, so about 3 months after we left, we were forced to return. I started high school number 2. There were tears and apologies and promises never kept. “

Mid 1975, they fled again, this time aided by the local Anglican priest. Again, they found themselves in Melbourne, again in a position of housekeeper, and she started High school number 3. Soon the phone calls started, and we moved to another location, as housekeeper to a man, his girlfriend his two children.  She remembers him as being thoroughly unpleasant and verbally abusive.

 And so, it was by late 1975, they found themselves placed in a women’s refuge. The Women’s liberation Halfway House was first funded in Melbourne in 1974. It was our saving grace at the time, standing between us and homelessness.

The girl remembers the secrecy surrounding the refuge, but little else.  We never knew where it was. We were collected by someone and taken there. It was only for very short- term stay. She remembers very few details of the space. A kind and compassionate woman greeted them. I am sure we shared a room, but I do not recall it. She remembers two other women there, one with a daughter about her age, and a common loungeroom where they watched television, but nothing else including how long they were there.

“I remember a sense of isolation and despair. Fatigue and exhaustion morphing into a numbness and acceptance that this was the end of the road. We were out of funds and options. There was nowhere else to go but back.”

Her mother was hopeful things might change. The girl was awash with anger, apathy, frustration, and indifference. It was calm for about a week before it all began again. The cycle was endless and exhausting, the severity of the violence was escalating. Two years later, they would finally get away for good after he had tried to choke her.

“I look back now as an observer rather than a participant. I recall people who wanted to help but were helpless and people who did not want to help because they were frightened. Refuge can be sought for the body, but it is harder to find refuge from your mind. The memories, the sensations, the anxieties, the loop of vision you do not want to see but is on repeat in your brain. And every time you hear the news and another victim of domestic violence you think how lucky we were to escape.”

The nightmares now are far less frequent, when she wakes sweating, heart pounding and then she reassures herself that it is okay, that she is safe. Age does not protect you. Visions of the night still haunt us all.

Memories burn deep when the background track to your life was domestic violence. This is for all the women, who survived their lives and their marriages of violence and abuse; for those women who spent nights huddled with the children in the dark while violence stalked the hallways; for the children who saw the tufts of hair on the floor, bruises, dark glasses, broken bones in those sad, lonely, houses.  I salute those women who escaped to too few shelters, with too little support and skills, and too much social disdain. I salute every child who lies awake at night now waiting, dreading the inevitable abuse, and crashing violence and who dreams, of happy families.  Nothing has changed but everything changed. I am not my parents. I am not a hostage to the cycle. I can make my own choices.