I met Lucy while I was staying at a friends place for a long weekend. She was in her late 40s, early 50s and had a confident, accepting feel to her. She shared with me a rare Australian story.
Lucy told me a story about finding herself desperately, hopelessly broke and homeless in the Northern Territory in Darwin. It was the early 1980s. One little one already in tow and expecting another, Lucy and her husband attended a wedding one weekend in the rural outskirts, hours from Darwin.
They walked up the beach from the wedding, wondering by themselves, and came across a flat sandy area that appeared to have had some kind of dwelling on it in the past. It was higher than sea level to escape the rising tide, hidden from view, deserted. They could drive a 4WD up to the dwelling.
They decided this would be their new home. Starting with two poles and a tarp, they set up a home for themselves, and over time build a small shack.
At high tide, the water would rise and they could see the salt water crocs nearby swimming. Every second Thursday they would go into town for supplies.
Lucy recalls blocking out the bad times … remembering her young ones on the ground and sand flies being a problem. She also recalls the good times.
Lucy was pregnant. Her first baby she had had in a Darwin hospital and her experience so unliked that she decided all births after woods would be home births. She had gone to the hospital, tried to have the baby, and the hospital refused to deliver the baby until the doctor arrived. Lucy recalls that the doctor was away playing golf.
Lucy recalls her birth as uncomfortable, painful and that she tore. Later, he husband told her the nurses had infact held the babies head inside her after breaching as they could not deliver the baby until the doctor arrived. The doctor took hours to arrive. They also kept Lucy in hospital for 5 days afterwoods, doing training causes during the day between feeds and waking Lucy through the night for feeds. Lucy felt her experience was unnatural and inadequate and she was unable to rest or recover. this is early 80s.
So, her second and third births were to be home births, at her dwelling in the NT. It was just Lucy and her husband. She described them as being something that her and her husband did together, and felt an enormous sense of satisfaction and accomplishment and achievement in their births.
They had boiling water and their dwelling. Just themselves. Lucy did not tear and recovered from the births well. the labours were short, and she describes them as very “natural”.
Lucy and I looked for the dwelling on Google Earth and found it, exactly as she described, close to a high tide line in a hidden beautiful spot on the vast Australian coastline.
The family lived in the dwelling for over four years.
