60 in 60 #31 Busselton
I am reflecting on the last 60 years, and writing 60 blog posts. 30 about people and 30 about events, places, experiences and entities. NB. I did not want to leave such a long gap between posts but starting a new job has taken up most of my time and energy so far this year. I will keep writing until I reach the goal but some chapters may end up under the title "60 in 61"!
As a family we were part of the Augusta Beach Mission/Family Festival for 12 years, spending two weeks each January with a large team of volunteers running programs for children, teenagers and adults at Turner Caravan Park in the south-west of WA. I have fantastic memories of many many great experiences during our time at Augusta but the prompt for this chapter is something that happened on our way home from Beach Mission in January 2004.
We stopped in Busselton to get some lunch, possibly fish and chips, to eat by the foreshore.
Busselton was a quiet little town on Geographe Bay, the quiet cousin of the more popular and more up-market Margaret River just down the road. It boasts the longest jetty in the southern hemisphere but for several years the last section was inaccessible following damage caused by cyclone Alby.
After a peaceful lunch we bundled the kids back in the car for the trip back to Perth.
Carolyn remarked “I love Busselton”.
I replied casually, “The chaplaincy position at the high school is open”.
Without drawing breath she said “Do you want to apply for it?”
I was surprised by the enthusiasm and excitement in her tone, I had only mentioned it in passing, not with any intent, but it became clear as we talked that Carolyn was VERY keen on the idea. She has always loved being near the ocean and prefers small towns to big cities so I could see the attraction.
I should point out at this point that I was extremely happy and settled in my role as chaplain at Carine. I had built the role up from inception to become an established and respected part of the school, I loved the staff and students, I was running successful programs and was highly involved in the life and culture of the school. I wasn’t looking for a change, in fact, I could have very happily still been at Carine now, but my casual comment was the catalyst for a dramatic change in our lives.
We talked about the pros and cons of the job at Busselton most of the way home and by the time we got back to Perth it was settled, I would apply for the job. But, I then discovered that applications closed the following day!!!!! Eeek! Panic stations! I got straight to work pulling together a resume and application, identifying referees and responding to the selection criteria. It was a rushed job but I got it in before the deadline.
I said to Carolyn, “This is a big decision and we need to be sure it’s right or that we are confident it’s where God is leading us.” I told her that given the fact I had 11 years experience as a chaplain there was a strong likelihood I would get the job, so just getting the job was not enough of a confirmation. We set about testing the water by talking to several people whose views and wisdom we respected to see what they thought.
I rang Dad to talk it over. He was not a believer but he was very positive about moving to a small country town and said the job sounded like a good move to him. I rang Paul in the States to discuss it and he was similarly positive. NB. Paul and I had ridden our bikes around Busselton a few years earlier when he came to Beach Mission with us so he knew the town, and the jetty because we’d been told off for trying to ride our bikes out onto it!
We invited a group of friends to come for a BBQ and asked them their thoughts about the move. My mate Birchy told me that for him, the most important factor in a big decision is how did the family feel about it? As the father of 8 kids he obviously has a greater accountability to family than most people! I told him that Carolyn and the kids were 100% on board and at that stage I was the only one still uncertain. He responded that the other guide for him was prayer and a sense of God’s leading. At that point in the discussion I mentioned that I remembered something I’d written in the margin of my Bible years earlier while listening to a sermon. The preacher had said “A ship is safe in a harbour, but ships aren’t built for harbours”. I admitted that I was in a safe harbour at Carine but maybe God was saying it was time to sail off to a new place and a new challenge.
I was offered an interview and duly headed down south a couple of days later. Old friends Laurie and Sonia Haynes and Noel and Steph Kara were living in Busselton by then so I had somewhere to stay the night before meeting the District Council. The interview went very well and the next day they rang to offer me the job. After all the time, thought and prayer we had invested and all the green lights we’d received I was sure it was the right move, with one stipulation. They wanted me to start straight away but I said I needed a term to tie up loose ends, finish my time at Carine and prepare for the big move. They granted my request and I was duly appointed as chaplain at Busselton SHS, to commence in Term 2 2004.
There was a lot to do! After some intense tidying and sprucing we put the house on the market. Zachariah had just started Year 12 at Carine and we were loath to disrupt his final year so I set about finding a family at Carine he could board with. We needed plenty of time to deal with all the usual preparing and packing that goes with a move, bearing in mind that we still had four kids at home, with Paulie the youngest just starting primary school.
After many previous moves which we had always done ourselves, this time we did the smart thing and hired a removal company! (Not so smart when they turned up without our bed the day we moved in!!)
I was blessed with a great goodbye from Carine and many expressions of thanks and appreciation for my work at the school. They held a farewell evening attended by many past and current students and staff members. It reinforced how special my time at Carine had been and how much I was going to miss the people, many of whom had become friends and mates as well as colleagues. Even now, nearly 20 years later I’m still in touch with several Carine friends and on rare visits back there I am always warmly welcomed. The Principal during most of my time there, Cesare DiGuilio enthusiastically supported me as a referee when I started applying for teacher positions in 2019.
In late April 2004 Zach was settled in with his host family and Carolyn, Sophie, Jordan, Paul and I set off for our new life down south.
We rented a house in Harvest Road for the first several months while we looked at houses for sale. We considered building on a block of land we had put a deposit on but the estate rules wouldn’t let us build with the design and materials we wanted so we kept looking and eventually found a fantastic house in College Ave, less than a kilometre from the school.
It was perfect.
On my first day at the school I had an appointment with Raelene, the Principal and she gave me copies of a couple of previous Yearbooks so I could get a feel for the school. I opened one up to a page with an article by one of the Deputy Principals. At the top of the page she quoted: “A ship is safe in a harbour, but ships aren’t built for harbours”. I knew then that our move by faith was right and God had put his final stamp on our decision.
When I started at Busselton High the chaplain’s office was in the old caretaker’s house at the far end of the school and not very accessible. Despite this I had a steady stream of visits from kids wanting to talk about stuff and I felt part of the school from the outset. Visibility and connection increased significantly when the new student services suite was completed and I moved into my new office in the admin wing. As I had at Carine, I recreated the décor, a mix of pictures, planes and ephemera all over the walls and ceiling, and I looked for things I could get involved in, and any areas I could introduce new programs.
I quickly made contact with two local church youthworkers, Stu Robinson and Rod Muir and we ran the Big Breakfast once a week, providing BBQ’d snags, toast and fruit for kids arriving at school. This evolved into Synoptic Youth, a partnership that saw us running a weekly lunchtime program called Phat Phriday. Crazy games and competitions were the order of the day, with the most memorable being “Frozen Chicken Ten Pin Bowling” on a strip of black plastic lubricated with water and detergent. The kids loved it but I got complaints about wasting food from an unnamed teacher. The next time we did it I took the chicken home, cleaned it up, cooked it and ate it!
There were some great people on staff at Busso and I quickly aligned myself with David Gault -Gaultie- in Phys Ed and later Student Services coordinator, John Duthie head of PE and Nick Fucile in the Maths dept. I took on coaching the junior footy team in the Channel 7 Cup. In 2005 I entered Busselton in the Chaplains Cup, a competition I had started at Carine for Yr 10 kids because they were too old for the Channel 7 Cup and too young for the Smarter than Smoking Cup.
It was while coaching Busso that I met Brendan Fitzgerald- Fitzy, a curly-headed bright-eyed kid playing in the back pocket. We went up to Perth for the comp, with the final being played under lights, and stayed the night in Perth. It was the week before the AFL Grand Final between Sydney and the Eagles and while we were having breakfast at McDonalds I heard on the radio that there had been extra GF tickets made available for West Coast members. I was already booked to fly to Melbourne to attend a week-long training course for a program called Rock and Water in the first week of the September holidays so I called a mate who was an Eagles member and using his barcode, spent half an hour on the phone and managed to get a Grand Final ticket.
The game was a classic (albeit low-scoring) contest, one of several between Sydney and West Coast in that era. It came down to a heroic mark by Leo Barry in the final seconds to stop West Coast kicking the winning goal and Sydney held on to win by a point. Being an avowed West Coast hater I was ecstatic when Sydney broke their 72 year premiership drought, even though two weeks earlier Nick Davis and the Swans had broken my heart by snatching an incredible come from behind victory over Geelong in the dying seconds of the semi-final. To this day my mates know that the name Nick Davis raises my hackles!
The Rock and Water course was great, some of the best professional development I’ve ever experienced. On the Sunday morning I had a kick of the footy with a few mates at a local park. When we got home for lunch the news was breaking of the second Bali Bombing.
I was stunned to see a familiar face on the news broadcast: Brendan Fitzgerald was one of the Australians killed in the terrorist attack, his sister was badly injured and his Dad was left a paraplegic. I felt numb. Just a week before I’d taken him and the footy team to Perth and now he was dead! About an hour later I received a phone call from a parent at the school asking if I could come and support the kids who were shocked and grieving. I explained I was still in Melbourne. He told me there had been a hasty plan made to get the boys from the school and the footy club together the next night to try and manage their grief, and anger. I said I would try and be there. I was not due to fly home until midweek but I rang Qantas at Tullamarine and explained the circumstances and asked if I could get an emergency change of flights on compassionate grounds. They were understanding and supportive and booked me on a flight for the next day. I arrived in Perth, picked up my car and immediately headed back down to Busselton in a race against time to make it to the gathering. I got there about 20 minutes after the start time and walked in to find a room packed with teenagers and parents all sharing a common sense of shock, disbelief, sadness and grief at the death of Brendan. I didn’t do much talking, I just listened and encouraged the kids to talk about their feelings and share their reactions. It was a terrible thing for them to deal with but the connection and support they felt by being together was helpful. I told them that while I understood they may feel angry, that they should not use Brendan’s death as an excuse to express hatred or racism or to take it out on others, that Fitzy would not have wanted acts of violence or hate committed in his name.
When school went back there was a deep sense of grief, compounded by the fact that a teacher from Busselton had been killed in the first Bali bombing and another teacher badly burnt. Lightning had struck the school twice.
As part of the Student Services team I suggested we hold a memorial service for Brendan. The task fell to me to organise the event, to be held later in the week. I got his closest mates together and worked with them so that it truly reflected him. When I asked who his favourite teacher was they said Mr Pates. I knew he was the right person to speak at the service but he was away on an outdoor ed camp at Margaret River and unable to be contacted. I drove down to the campsite and asked him if he’d speak about Fitzy at the memorial. He didn’t want to do it but I persisted because I knew he was Brendan’s favourite teacher, he knew him best and he was the right man for the job. In the end he reluctantly agreed. Two of Brendan’s mates also agreed to speak. We chose music he loved and put together a slideshow on powerpoint and lots of people contributed pictures.
I then got a phone call from Brendan’s Mum Lisa asking if it would be OK if she came to the memorial. I hadn’t deliberately excluded her but because it was a school-based event, to be held in the gym after school one afternoon, all of our planning and thinking was along those lines. I said of course she could come, it would be an honour to have her there.
As expected, the gym was totally packed for the memorial and the kids handled it with great reverence and respect. The mates who spoke did a wonderful job and despite his reluctance, Graham Pates did a brilliant job. By that stage I had done a lot of funerals and memorials and knew what worked and how best to create a fitting tribute and an atmosphere where friends family and staff could express their grief freely and openly. I was really pleased with how it went but was still surprised when Lisa called me the following day and asked if I would conduct Brendan’s funeral? I humbly accepted the task, knowing that it would be a high profile event and that getting it right was extremely important to his family. Fitzy’s parents were divorced so there were some delicate negotiations regarding who wanted what. I spent a lot of time with Lisa and his sister, who was now out of hospital but had burns and perforated eardrums, talking about Brendan, their memories, their sadness, their happy times and laughter, about his character and personality, how he used to come bouncing down the stairs in his socks and slide across the floor each morning, announcing his presence in style.
I drove up to Perth to meet his Dad who was still in hospital but was determined to be at the funeral. He had taken the kids to Bali for the holiday so there was a measure of regret and feelings of guilt that he struggled with, but at the same time, he told me how happy Brendan had been, how he had tried surfing for the first time the day of the bombing and had stood up on his first attempt. They had gone out to dinner to celebrate and enjoy being on holiday as a family and then tragedy struck in the form of terrorism, evil perpetrated against innocent people, killing men, women and children and shattering the lives of those remaining. His Dad, Terry wanted Brendan to be buried rather than cremated, telling me with tears in his eyes, “He’s been burnt enough!”
His Dad wrote a book about Brendan and the impact of the bombing on the family. Some of the eulogies and reflections I gave at the funeral are included in the book.
I called upon the same mates and Graham to speak at the funeral, along with family members. It was a massive event, drawing media attention from across Australia and I found myself in a media spokesman role, speaking on behalf of the family to protect their privacy and guard them from the spotlight as they mourned their son. The service went well but by the end I was spent, I had spent many hours and late nights in preparation, and prayer, and been heavily involved in supporting the family as well as students and staff at the school. It is a special privilege to serve families in their time of greatest need and deepest sadness, one I always approached with total commitment and seriousness, knowing that it would form final memories of a family’s loved one. After it was over I was mentally and emotionally exhausted.
I remained in contact with Lisa for several years after Brendan died and occasionally called in to see how she was going and I know from her response and the feedback of others that she appreciated my ongoing support and care.
Dealing with Fitzy’s death, happening as it did, a little over a year after starting at the school, went a long way towards establishing my role and ministry within the school. I received a lot of thanks and positive feedback and won a measure of respect amongst the staff, students and school community as a result.
There is a plaque for Fitzy at this Peace Park memorial site on the Busselton foreshore.
I have more stories and recollections of my time at Busselton but considering how far apart each chapter of 60 in 60 is now getting written, I will post this section now and pick up the story again next time.
