Australians at War Film Archive Veronica Barry (Yvonne) - Transcript of interview Date of interview: 12th March 2004 http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/1367 Tape 1 00:36 Thanks for talking to us today, Mrs Barry. Could I ask you to summarise what the main points are in your life? I grew up in Rose Bay and I found out a truism: if you’re going to be poor, it’s much better to be poor where everybody around you is poor because you don’t notice it. 01:00 I grew up in Rose Bay and most people were much better off than we were. Your poverty is very obvious. My mother was absolutely determined that we would have an education and she actually went out, scrubbed floors of wealthy people so that we, my brother and I, there were only two of us, could have an education, so I can thank here. Looking back I realise that it must have been very hard. My father 01:30 was in the First World War. He had been married before. We found out after Mum died, big shock and had a daughter, big shock again. She was in her thirties and he was nearly 40 when they were married, so they were older parents. He was not a good husband, 02:00 not a good father. She really had a pretty hard time. Because it was so difficult at home I really found great – my source of joy was being at school, especially in the choir. I won a scholarship to a very snobbish 02:30 private school where the first day, I had an unusual name, Gaysley, which most people found difficult. People remembered it and the first day I was at this high school, I was 13 in hand me down uniform, which was very discreetly arranged, very well, and discreetly arranged for me, and the 03:00 first person I met recognised the name, and told me in a group of girls that “Your mother scrubs our toilet.” It didn’t go down well for a 13 year old. I had a couple of friends there but I could never invite anyone home because my father was at home all the time and he would make it very embarrassing if anybody came to the house. 03:30 I was very protective towards my brother, who was a year and 11 months younger. I think he suffered more from it than I have. People say, “I had a terrible childhood,” but I think in many ways it’s a good experience. It made me quite mature for my age but I think boys, and I’ve been a teacher 04:00 in special ed [special education: special assistance for slow learners], and I found that boys are much more vulnerable. I think men are much more vulnerable. I think women are pretty tough. We’re born to be survivors and we have to get by without strength, you two are a good example, and muscle power, so we have to our brain, and reasoning. I think women are much stronger, mentally 04:30 and physically, not lifting and carrying, but physically women will put up with pain, and carry on for other people. What was your father’s wartime experience? Well that’s a great story. All the time growing up my mother would say and I think she believed it. She was very naïve my mother. 05:00 The story was that he had been on – there’s a famous battle hill, 22 or 23, I can’t remember, that is in history books and people were gassed. The story was that he had suffered TB [tuberculosis] from being gassed in the First World War. He was being paid – the pension goes from TPI, which is totally and permanently incapacitated, which is the 05:30 amputations and really badly affected, and he was the next to that. I don’t know what they called that but it would be part of the family folklore that he was almost TPI. My mother would talk about the diggers [Australian soldiers] and how they suffered during the war, and he had been gassed, and that’s why his lungs were affected. He had one functioning lung and had developed TB as a result of the gassing. 06:00 All our cups were separate and my mother would never kiss us on the mouth. She would – cheeks because of this TB and it might be conveyed. We had a memory of that’s why he was the way he was. She would excuse his behaviour. He never struck 06:30 her and she once told us that she had said to him, “If ever you raise a hand to me – ” I can’t imagine her saying it but this was her story, “ – that will be it.” And he never did but what he did to her children! It took me many, many years. I had my mother on a pedestal and he was down there but it wasn’t until I had children myself that I thought, “Now 07:00 hang on!” He never struck her ever. I would leave if a man abused my children like that, didn’t abuse me but abused my children, so I sort of grew into a pattern of thinking, “She wasn’t such a saint after all.” He had enough nous not to strike but she allowed – 07:30 I was one of those people who was always asking questions and I couldn’t work this out, why she would allow this. One time I challenged him about something he was doing that was quite awful and there was a row, and he struck me, and belted me. I staggered into the bedroom 08:00 where she was lying on the bed with a very bad headache and that’s what started it all off. She then said to me and here I am, been belted and clothes ripped off, and she said, “Why do you always cause all this trouble?” Now I had been defending her, so it took me a while to realise that she really needed to 08:30 have somebody like that. It was a sort of sacrificial thing if you understand. The only time we ever talked about this she said she would have loved to have been a nun and she would have made a very good nun. It suddenly hit me years and years later that she was really in the position, being a sort of – not a slave exactly 09:00 but whatever he did was OK because of his war experiences. After she died very sadly and he lived on – when she married him he was supposed to have had six months to live because of this TB. She died at age 74. He lived on to 88 and died seven years after her, 09:30 and boasted about the doctors who told him he had six months to live way back. They had all died according to him. He made life very, very difficult. He invited a woman who was – great suspicions about her. She called herself a nurse, going in and looking after elderly people, mainly widowers, and the house, and everything was left to this woman. My mother couldn’t 10:00 stand her. She really felt she was preying on old people, so that was a very sad outcome. It wasn’t until she died and he was still going, which was very hard to take, that we found out that he had been married before. There was a daughter. I have tried to get in touch with this daughter but haven’t been able to. They were divorced and strangely enough 10:30 my mother’s name was, and she was called Annie, and the first wife was also called Anne or Anna. My brother was looking up his records. He was in the air force during the war. He found the name Anna, thought it was my mother, got confused with the dates and there was a letter from her asking – he wasn’t 11:00 married to her, they were divorced. He wasn’t married to my mother and he put his mother down in England as his next of kin. My brother found a letter from Anna, the first wife, asking that she be sent some money because she was destitute with her child. My brother became incensed. He didn’t work it out, 11:30 thought it was our mother that my father had left destitute. I mean they didn’t marry until after the war. He got his facts all mixed up and he didn’t tell me anything about it. He said, “I know something about the old bastard that you don’t know.” Try as I might, but that was what he believed. He was quite wrong because it wasn’t – I don’t think there was any thought of him leaving her destitute but it was a big shock after 12:00 Mum died to find out that he had been married and pennies started to drop. There was always something odd about my whole bringing up. I was always questioning, “Why that and why this?” One day one of the neighbour’s daughters was getting married and we all went out to see the bride come out. We didn’t talk very much. I mean children don’t ask their parents things. 12:30 I wish I had now. My children have got too much information I think but it is so awful not to know.