Lena - The Only Answer To Everything

Lena grew up in Gippsland and trained to be a nurse. When her husband bought their new family home in Echuca, she started a new life there. Lena soon found herself with five daughters under the age of five, but when she approached her Catholic Priest for dispensation to use a contraceptive, he said no. This led Lena to walk into the local Anglican church to see if perhaps she could find the support she needed there. 

Her whole life Lena has heeded the call to show compassion and care to those in need. Her lifelong devotion to visiting and caring for those in hospitals and residential aged care saw her awarded an Order of Australia. She continues this ministry to this day, sustained by the belief that God is with her in every moment, no matter where she is. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Ah, g'day there and welcome to The Spirit, where we share stories of faith from the heart of the country. Brendan's just gone up to the top paddock because a fence needs fixing, but uh settle in, pull up a chair, join us for a chat. I'm Darcy and I'm here on the lands of the Yordi Yorda, who I acknowledge and offer my respect. I'm in a little place called Achuka, and I'm speaking to Lena. G'day, Lena.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

G'day, Darcy.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Now, Lena, did you start your life near Achuka or did you grow up somewhere else?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

I grew up in Kuirup, which is ink down in Gippsland.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Oh yeah. Gippsland's nice and green.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Yes, it was very green, and the and the soil was was black.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

And um I I just couldn't believe when I came up here and it was all so different.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Yeah, oh incredible, isn't it? So were you on a farm or what was home?

SPEAKER_01 0:57

I lived on a farm. It wasn't my father was a farm labourer, and he was on this um my father was Italian, and um the farm was actually owned by an Italian man, but he owned a lot of area there, and he just had all these workmen and their families in their houses on that land he owned. So um we worked for him.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

And so without give giving away your age necessarily, what what year would that have been?

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Um I was born a model case.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

It's up to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Yes. I was born in 1938.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

38, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Yes, and they grew a lot of potatoes being Cooey Rup, it's a potato country, but they also in the summer time they grew um spring onions, beetroots, peas, beans, and things like that as well. Um we lived in in um about three and a half miles out, nearly four miles out from Kooey Rupp, and um on a road called Manx Road, which I believe now is Bitumin, but it wasn't in those days. Right. And sometimes it'd be great big stones, and sometimes it was little stones, and sometimes it was sand. It was awfully hard to ride bikes on.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

And what was life like in those days? I imagine it was a bit simpler than life today.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

It's because it was sort of um post-war.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Life was fairly simple. Yeah. Yeah. And and the part of Kuri Ruck that we lived in was just before the end of Kuri Ruck and and across these canals, there were I think five canals, and um, and there's you know, we used to paddle in them and things like that because we couldn't swim or anything. So most of the families were Italian, most of them owned their farms, but some were just like my father was only a farm labourer for Mr. Caserta, and he had several other people that were just on his farm.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

So lots of Italian food?

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Uh well we we we ate a lot of spaghetti.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

You would have been pretty early on the spaghetti then for us in Australia.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Well, yes, I think so. Yeah. Um Mum often had to make her own. Um Mum learned to do that.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

And Lena, how did your mum and dad meet?

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Um well they meant at a park called Listerfield Park, which was a great big station in Ferntree Gally.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Must have been a bit of an adventure for your mum to be marrying an Italian.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Uh it was, I think. Yes, it wasn't all that well but well see, a lot of um a lot of Italian men had come out and a lot of them had left wives in Italy. Oh, of course. But my father was the only boy, and he had three sisters that lived. His mother had a lot of children, but they they died.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

And the name Vicary, is that a um like a religious no name?

SPEAKER_01 3:42

No, no, that was my husband's family were vicaries. Um my my maiden name was Consolino.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Oh, Consolino, of course, yeah, I see. Yeah, well that now that sounds like an Italian name.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Well, one day when I was talking to Phil because he said, What what made you sort of get into so much, you know, caring for other people? And I said, Well, my name was Consolino, which is consoling, yeah, with a G instead of an O.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Interesting, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

So I still think I was meant to do that.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yeah, it's in your blood. Yeah, yeah. So Lena, we skipped an important thing part, which is you meeting your husband.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Ah, well, you see, I really w wanted to do nursing. And mum hadn't really encouraged that. She thought no, she thought office work is better than you know cleaning up after other people being sick. So she encouraged me to do the the um exam put to get into the public service. So I did that for four years, so that was enough. And Mrs. Scott Mackenzie had encouraged me to try a country hospital, which I choka was, and that's how I came up here. Oh, okay. So came up with um then one weekend and visited, like I'd made an appointment to visit matron, and she thought I would look like likely work for a nurse, and um, yeah, so that's how I got into nursing up here.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Well, there you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

And then and then I did the first year and passed that, and then they in the second year they wanted me to go to Bendigo and I was going with Bob, and Bob wasn't very happy about that. So he said, I think give it up and we'll get married.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

So I thought, well, eventually I want to get married. Yeah. So I left the nursing, I didn't continue on.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

That's a tough decision though.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

It was really, but yeah, um, you know, Bob was all for it because he was saying, Well, your mother and father in Melbourne, and I'm here, and that and you're going to be up there. When you get days off on a weekend, you're going to whiz down to Melbourne. That's not going to be any good.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

He didn't like that. No.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

So he said, No, he said, eventually we plan to get married, we'll just put the date forward. So and Bob was five years older than me, so so he was ready for marriage.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then you found yourself settled in a chewka?

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Yeah, so we he he was born and bred here.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

He came up here one weekend, saw this house and bought it.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Oh, there you go. That's how they used to do it, I've heard. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yeah, so it wasn't like this. Oh gosh, it was dreadful. It was awfully. It had only been a rental.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

And it'd been very badly abused. Um, instead of having like boards and and um tiles and things in the kitchen, it had corrugated iron on the inside, and that had a fuel stove, and then the people had had a like a little griller or something that they had, and all the fat had gone down through these corrugations into the cupboards below. Oh, it took us all day to clean that kitchen.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

That's how bad it was. Oh, it was dreadful.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

So were you happy with Bob's choice?

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Well, I accepted it.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

That's the way it used to work, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Yes, I just accepted it.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Um He could have picked someone with a better kitchen, I think, Lena. Oh he didn't think about that, so did you continue with church through those years, Lena? Yes, always.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Yes, I I was still with the Catholic Church. I was with the Catholic Church until I had five children under five.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

My goodness.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

And I went to the priest for some dispensation because I found that I had no safe days.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

And um and we weren't, you know, you weren't allowed to use any contraceptives, you see. Yeah. And to use the safe days, and it didn't work. So um when I was coming home, because I went to the priest to ask for dispensation so that I could take the pill, because the pill had just come in, yeah, and I thought, well, that might keep me safe. And I already had, you know, five under five, and uh, but the priest said no.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

So as I was coming home.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

He wasn't the one with five little kids at home.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

And I thought, oh, I don't know why I went to a priest that he had two little dogs, one two little foxy dogs, one was fish and one was chips. I thought, well I don't know why I would have thought to get some advice from someone like that anyway. But anyway, um I thought about it a lot and I thought, well, if I can talk to God in my house and in my bath or in my bed or anything, does it matter what church I'm in?

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

So the first time I went along, I thought, oh, I've come to the wrong church. You know, I came outside, no, definitely was Church of England.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

And um, but the service was exactly the same.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Same God, even perhaps. Who would have thought?

SPEAKER_01 9:01

That's right. So that's when from then on I didn't sort of worry about it anymore. Yeah. And then I was able to go to work, and I went to work for a while, and that made a big difference as it shouldn't so um, and then I I ended up working back at the hospital again, so yeah, and then um uh I was working sort of as um an aide, and then they brought in this new scheme. I became an allied health assistant. Oh yeah. The very first school I was in, I went into the physiotherapy.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

And um, but we were classified as allied health assistants.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

And if need be, the dental person wasn't working, I would sometimes have to step into their shoes and you know, you become a bit of a utility.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

And I enjoyed that.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Yeah, it was good. I like the change. Doesn't sound like you'd have a dull moment.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

No, yeah, no.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

What was life like with all those little kids, Lena?

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Busy.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Um, it was good really. Because you ended up with one at a time.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Yeah, well, yeah, I suppose so. So you had five, but then you ended up with six.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Yeah, I wouldn't give any of them back.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

No, exactly. That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

But um, and because Bob had always looked joked when everyone was when they were all young, Bob used to say, Yeah, I'm gonna stand at the gate with a shotgun and only the rich ones get past.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Of course, I mean all those daughters, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yes, but he didn't he didn't stick by his words.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Oh dear.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

They've all done fairly well for themselves anyway, so that's the main thing. We're all quite happy.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah, and now you've got grandkids and great-grandkids. Yes, and great great, because I'm do you? Yes, a lot of names to remember.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Yes, but I don't remember their birthdays anymore. Okay, yeah, I think that's fair. Yes, and it keeps me up, and they think I'm clever because I think I've remembered.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

That's perfect.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Yes, I don't have to tell them how I cheat.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Plenty of opportunity to pray though, I imagine, with all the kids and lots to worry about.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Yes, yeah, and you know, you know, as soon as I put my head down on my pillow, I know I I can start. And I can hear it God up there saying, Oh, here she comes again.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

I see, so that's that's when you check in for some conversation.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

That's when I talk to him.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Good.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

There's no time in the mornings.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

No, there never ever was time in the mornings. What about your sleep leaner? That happens later.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Oh, well, in between.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

In between. That sounds like a good system. So in 2020, you were awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for your extensive community work with Meals on Wheels, Achuka Hospital, Southern Crossed Age Care Home, and Glanville. What was that like?

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Well, there's seven days in a week.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Yeah, we hadn't got time to get bored.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

No, so what how did you start? Did you just kind of once you'd retired keep up visiting or retired?

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Um I I knew that there was meals on wheels that I could help with, and and and then there was always church hospital visiting.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

And it I don't know, it just snowballs and as it as it rolls along.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

And if if you lose one thing, it comes something else comes up. So that's that's all right.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yeah. What was it like being awarded a Order of Australia?

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Oh, I I thought I was very embarrassed about it all actually. I don't know. I had to make a speech.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

And I I remember thinking, what the heck do you say?

SPEAKER_00 12:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Oh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

And a lot of people fear going into aged care. What do you think about the prospect of going?

SPEAKER_01 12:55

No, I'm never really worried about it.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

No.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Um I don't know w with if that'll happen.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

No.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Um I you know, because I do live here with Paul Lake as well. When I look at some of the people there, some are quite happy and they've moved in and you know, just accept that you know what they've got. And I think that's what they've got to do. Yeah, embrace it. That's what you've got to do, you've just got to you know, jump with it and jump on the cope with it. So just yeah, we'll just sort of take one day at a time.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Yeah, yeah. Um, I suppose as you reflect back on your life and all the wonderful things about it, what do you feel your faith has given you? What's the thing that it's it's kind of added to your life, maybe for people who might not have a a faith but are listening to this?

SPEAKER_01 13:47

I don't know how anyone survives without having faith. Because you've just got to have that faith there. That's just helps you through, but you know, the leaping over that big crevice that's crevice that's there. Yeah, yeah. And you've got to have the faith to jump that hurdle.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

And just leave it in God's hands.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

He's the only answer to everything. Really, isn't he? That's how I feel anyway, and I I think that's what children and people must remember that when they're saying a prayer, that they're really talking to someone. Don't don't let it just be a lot of words that are prattled one after another. You know, just realize that there's a person, a heavenly person, but it's still a person behind there that you've got a that you're talking to and that listens to you.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Even if you're in the bath or in bed.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Thank you so much, Lena. You're welcome.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Would you like a cup of tea or something? It won't take a minute to boil the tea.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

I love one. The Spirit is brought to you by the Anglican Diocese of Bendigo. To hear more stories like this, please subscribe to this podcast. You can help us share these stories by leaving a review. And you can find photos, videos, and more storytelling from the heart of the country at thespiritstories.com.au or on Facebook and Instagram at thespirit.stories.