Christmas 1977 - Mum and me.

I recently put my mother’s old suitcases out for hard rubbish, I’d been holding onto them for far too long. The last time they were used was to store my brother’s belongings after he died, the belongings I couldn’t bare see go to his ex-wife. My brother used those maroon suitcases to leave his wife, shortly after which his life spiraled out of control.

My brother - 1973

The zippers on both suitcases were broken, the handles were just hanging on and the corners were split, they were held together by the strap, but only just.

From memory my mother used those suitcases only once, to leave my father. She left a man, probably in a similar condition to what my brother was in before he died.

My mother, older brother and sister and I left Perth on the train to Melbourne in the mid-seventies. I’m only now beginning to appreciate how long and painful that trip must have been for my mother.

Mum and her three children, all born out of wedlock returning to the place she had grown up twenty years earlier, a remote wheat farm in rural N.S.W., returning to the bedroom that she slept in as a child. She didn’t get along with her parents, especially her mother, she must have had nowhere else to go.

Christmas 1975

Mum started her life again in her mid-forties with nothing more than what was in those old vinyl suitcases. She was unemployed and alone for a long time when I was young. During those early years we had very little and we lived on tinned tomato soup most days. She relied reluctantly on the kindest of others and on occasion we were given food parcels from local charities. She hated that the most and would have preferred going hungry. She was fiercely independent, but she knew her limits.

My mother began working and eventually re-built her life. She bought a house and made a beautiful home in which we were very happy. She had a close network of good friends and she began for the first time in my life, living a good life. She was very proud of me and I really enjoyed making her proud. We were happy together.

It was those few dark years in my mother’s life that good people helped without having to be asked, that made the world of difference. Those small and simple gestures from complete strangers that kept us afloat until we could look after ourselves. I’ll never be able to repay their kindness directly, so all I can do, is try to do, exactly what they did and that is why I'm starting Foodshare.

Those old vinyl maroon suitcases never made it to the rubbish tip and are still where they belong and my mothers name was Pauline.

The old maroon vinyl suitcases, what they would have been like new.