Astrid Judge

Reflections, Memories and Sources

Growing Up at Kew Cottages

The author spent her childhood and youth living in one of the houses built to accommodate staff and their families on the grounds of Kew Cottages, a large residential facility for intellectually disabled individuals, situated in a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria. Her father, Dr. Cliff Judge, was employed at Kew Cottages as a psychiatrist. The author details the daily life of the institution as seen from the perspective of a child. She reflects upon significant events which occurred at the institution, such as the yearly fete. She describes the interactions which she, her sisters, and friends who were also children of staff, had with the residents. On the basis of these experiences she concludes with some critical ideas about deinstitutionalisation.

A heavy, grey-haired woman, perhaps in her sixties, sits with her legs folded beneath the kind shade of a big gum tree. It's a hot day but she looks at ease. Her son lies on the ground in front of her: a severely intellectually disabled man. He is on his back with knees bent. She has just finished changing his nappy and is tugging his cotton trousers up to his waist. The palm of her hand brushes lightly across his belly and hovers for an extra beat, in a gesture common to mothers with babies. It looks as though this routine is very familiar to her.

As the pair come into my line of sight I'm aware of an instinct to avert my eyes. Perhaps I am shocked, outraged, or embarrassed? Or just at a loss. But then I remember where I am—at Kew Cottages, on the annual fete day, 2001. Here we all are: residents, family, staff, ex-staff, family of staff, local residents of Kew and assorted others. Including me. I focus on the task of carrying trestle table legs back to a storage shed, happy in my small role, helping to run the white elephant stall.

These days, other than the fete, I don't have much to do with the reality of day-to-day life for the intellectually disabled. I've gotten out of practice of being with profoundly intellectually disabled people. I inhabit the ordinary workaday world of the vast majority, and concentrate on meeting the needs of my own family. And from where I stand in the social milieu the plight of the intellectually disabled and their families is virtually invisible.

But I come to the fete each year because I grew up at the Cottages. My father was a doctor—a psychiatrist specialised in the field of intellectual disability. When I was very young we lived on the grounds of the Janefield Training Centre in Bundoora, a large institution for the intellectually disabled now known as Plenty Residential Services. But in 1970, when I was seven, Dad took up a position at the Cottages, and we moved into a staff house there. I lived in that house until I left home as a young adult.

By my calculation this is about my thirtieth fete. I'm forty, and reckon I've come every year since the age of seven, bar a couple of years in my twenties when I was travelling overseas. Since the 1980s I've observed with sadness how the fete is reflecting the gradual running down of the Cottages. Every year it contracts as the stalls move closer together. The parents are older. There is less musical entertainment. And fewer intellectually disabled people attend. It is just less fun. But my own children still enjoy themselves. Behind the fairy floss machine is the familiar face of the man who spun the pink sugar when I was young. And there are plenty of junk stalls to occupy them, even if I know much of the stuff has been churned out from last year's leftovers.

Ah, the good old days! These days the bipartisan expression to describe the Cottages is 'an outdated Dickensian institution.' The government forges ahead with its dismantling of the place. The rhetoric coming from the establishment in the Department of Human Services (DHS) should make me comfortable. Why can't I just accept what they say: The Cottages has had a shameful history. Living conditions are unacceptable. Congregate living is outdated. Closing the Cottages is a step in the progress towards a more humane and enlightened society. Why can't I be happy with these arguments and rejoice as the bulldozers move in and nice, modern houses obliterate all remnant of the old?

The spin bothers me—the easy, tarred view of the Cottages. Because I had a fun and happy childhood and youth at the Cottages. I learnt a lot here, and have many precious memories. Especially when I think about my own children growing up today in the Melbourne suburbs, I realise how fortunate I was to be part of the Cottages.

When first established in 1887 the Cottages were probably the best facility in the world for the care of the intellectually disabled. Since then the institution has had its ups and downs. There have been bleak periods when it has been under-resourced and overcrowded. But I think the 1970s, when I was part of the institution, represented a hopeful phase in the Cottages history. Many people rallied around the facility then. There was a lot going on, with over eight hundred residents and half this many staff. The Minus Plus Appeal led by the Age focused the attention of the wider community on the Cottages, and prominent Victorians lobbied for improvements. Money was raised to construct new buildings, and many new programs were introduced for residents. It was a happening place, I think.

The fete was a grand event back then, looked forward to by all. The Parents Association was young and energetic, and made a superb effort to create a day of tremendous fun. There were lots of stalls, fire truck rides around the grounds, and plenty of entertainment. The Kew Symphonic Band would appear and fill the air with its loud brassy sound. As well as the Cottages residents, intellectually disabled people from other institutions attended, and the day belonged to them. It was wonderful to watch them laugh as they danced on the grass and took turns conducting the band. 'Elvis Presley' would make an appearance and be mobbed by enthusiastic fans. The local trader Bob Stewart set up his huge stall, with a makeshift canvas dressing room, where you tried on your bargain jeans for the year. Myers donated boxes of stuff as did many other organisations. A troop of mothers in aprons invaded the gymnasium and processed an army's worth of home-baked scones and lamingtons. And people came from all around. There were faces you would see at the fete every year—people with no direct connections to the Cottages, only a wish to support and acknowledge them.

Fete day was the highlight of my year as a child. For weeks beforehand we kids found excuses to visit staff in the administration buildings who worked surrounded by marvelous growing peaks of boxes containing donated goods, which we were sometimes allowed to help sort through and price. Then on fete morning we woke at the crack of dawn, scoffed breakfast and ran down the hill to where parents and male residents were setting up marquees. We stayed at the fete all day long, only dashing home to gulp down the lunch mum insisted we eat, and returning exhausted late in the afternoon when only a few remaining souls were left picking up litter.

How privileged I was to have access to such a wide open space when I was child. Like the local Kew residents who today enjoy walking through the Cottages' grounds over to Yarra Bend Park, I mourn the loss of the land. Amid the traffic and noise of the city, the site seems as tranquil and lovely as ever, with its stately old trees and sweeping views of the ranges. As children, my two sisters and I spent most of our time after school, and on weekends, roaming around freely, most usually in company of the three McBrearty girls, daughters of the Medical Superintendent, who lived several doors up from us.

Our houses were situated in Wills Street, along the southern boundary of the Cottages. All the brick veneers on our north side of Wills Street had been built in the 1950s as staff houses; on the south of Wills Street the houses were private residences. Consequently, the front garden of our house opened onto a normal suburban street; while our back gate opened onto a splendid double avenue of Algerian oaks and English elms, probably designed by Hugh Linaker, the well-known Victorian landscape designer of the early twentieth century.

What first drew me out the back gate was, I think, a curiosity about the strange people who lived in the Cottages. Initially we approached the wards in Dad's company, and with trepidation. I suspect Dad actively encouraged us to be involved with the Cottages from the beginning because not all the staff children would get to know things the way we did. After our first forays, we were lured back on our own—by the trampolines. Some bright spark must have had the idea to install above-ground trampolines outside most of the wards, in the sixties or early seventies. They were much enjoyed by residents, and of course soon became central to our experiences. The 'tramps' were the key by which we developed an intimate understanding of the layout of the Cottages: we got to know where the bounciest trampolines were, and where we were likely to find a vacant one. And it was around the tramps we encountered the residents. Eventually some more articulate individuals would grow so familiar with the sight of us as to refer to us knowingly as 'Doctor Judge's girls' and 'Doctor McBrearty's girls.'

It was a unique and profound experience of diversity. One young woman stood with her head thrust back laughing at the sky. Another had a face that crumpled into tears whenever she spoke. Of course, it was easiest to form relationships with residents who had good communication skills. Chris, for instance, who still lives on-site today, was a happy guy and very friendly. He joined us regularly at the tramps, where we would chat about his favourite topic: the fortunes of the Collingwood football club, and their position on the ladder. There was Richie too, with thick dark hair and a limp, who wore heavy gold rings on his fingers and was an ardent Sammy Davis Junior fan. He always told us how he had met Sammy after a concert, and never failed to show us Sammy's autograph which he carried in his wallet. There was Bill, who carried a small red address book in his shirt pocket. In it he had collected the names of various girls he had met. Whenever he came across us he would recite the names from the book, and then proceed to get out his pencil and ask 'What's your name?'We would laugh, spell out our names, and on his insistence make up a phone number. Bill had a one-track mind: his subject was girls. Another woman seemed to have a year-round obsession with the scheduling of the fete, for she always asked the same question—'Fete in 'tember?'—whenever we met. Even the year we emphatically told her 'No, fete in November' she stuck with her enquiry 'Fete in 'tember?'

I'm not sure it's true to say the residents became our friends, but we were certainly fond of some people. Dolly, for instance, was something of a maternal figure to me when I was a young child. She was a large mildly disabled woman with an ample bosom and solid blocks of legs, warm-hearted and interested in others. We would most often find her searching under the units for one of the several cats she had befriended. She liked our family, I think, and often came through the back gate to give my mother a message, or have a talk. We were also on friendly terms with Eddie, a kind and gentle man of few words, who fed our chooks when we went on holiday, and sometimes had morning tea with us, eating mum's freshly baked cakes with relish.

In our teenage years we girls loved to help out in Ward 31, which housed the youngest residents of the Cottages. Many of these children had been admitted to the nursery at the Cottages when they were babies. There they had been looked after by wonderful Sister Nacha who remained with them when they were transferred out of the nursery to the ward. Over the years she had become a second mother to the children; and along with ward assistant Boya Goluza they were a strong, close-knit group. Years later in the 1980s, Nacha remained with the then young adults when they moved out of the Cottages. To this day, though Nacha has retired, several of the adults live together in a hostel in Hawthorn.

After school we would hurry down to Ward 31. We liked to help at tea time, feeding children unable to get a spoon to their mouths. It was a messy business. One child had his hands tied back to prevent him from knocking his bowl to the floor. I observed the skill of the nurses using the spoon to collect food from around the mouth and scoop it back in. Long years later, when feeding my own toddlers, I finally perfected the technique. Back then it took all my concentration to cram the spoon into the wide open drooling mouth. Occasionally we were allowed to bath the children, which was a great thrill. We were also permitted to take them for walks— up to the kiosk, or the playground equipment, and sometimes home for a milkshake.

We had our favourites, generally the less dribbly, less snotty children. I was besotted with Scotty, a little boy about four with a round overhanging stomach, like that of a heavily pregnant woman. I loved to take Scotty by the hand, sit him on my lap, or sprinkle talc on his small naked body after a bath. I believed he sensed my feelings for him. But this was by no means clear as he was completely nonverbal. Would he ever speak? What would he want to say? Other children had parents—some we knew well—but Scotty had no family contact. Did he remember his mother? Did he miss her? Such puzzles. When I grew up I would adopt him.

My sister's favourite was pretty little Theresa. She was so sweet it was hard not to treat her as the darling of the group. But I vividly remember Dominique, a severely spastic child, who could not talk; he had a constantly runny nose. I sat in the TV room with him; he would get out of his beanbag and come up to me with bright, glistening tearful eyes and wobbly limbs thrust forwards, hoping for my embrace. He was a gentle boy. But I didn't like him to touch me with his wet face. I knew I was prejudiced so I tried extra hard to be good. I put my arms around him—awkwardly, not in the same con.dent way Nacha would cuddle him. We took him for walks, one girl on either side so he could lean on us and hobble along. With Nacha as our guide we practised kindness and learnt to accept our responsibilities.

Sometimes we accompanied Dad into wards that accommodated residents whose disabilities left them bedridden and completely reliant on others for basic needs. I observed with horror and fascination gross physical disabilities such as people without limbs or with overinflated heads. But with time the realities of profound disability became less confronting. I could observe a person banging his head repeatedly against the wall with less of a sense of alarm, and I came to understand this behavior was sometimes natural.

I grappled with certain philosophical questions, asking my father repeatedly to distinguish the physical and intellectual aspects of a particular resident's disability, and whether a resident was conscious of being retarded or aware of living in an institution. As part of his research, Dad was involved in identifying the various categories of disabilities of the residents. He spoke of degrees and types of intellectual disability, and could assist in qualifying a person's physical handicap. I learnt to distinguish between certain syndromes. Residents with Down Syndrome clearly often had an awareness of their disability, and could sometimes speak of it; but the nature of other disabilities remained elusive. It was hard to de.ne the essence of intellectual disability. It seemed to me it was different to being stupid. But as a child I clearly understood that though some few residents might have survived living by themselves outside the Cottages, most were in the institution because they needed its support and care. And I knew that every single resident would at least have been ostracised if left to fend entirely for themselves in mainstream society.

My sisters and I were wary of some male residents, and afraid of a few. My father had enjoyed acting as a young man, and at Christmas time he would dress up as Father Christmas and do the rounds of the wards. We three girls would accompany him, helping distribute small presents and lollies. But we didn't like to enter some of the men's wards. Occasionally a young man would grab one of us, and it would seem we might be crushed by his sheer physical strength. We would shelter close behind Dad, not making eye contact with the men. Dad would reassure us there was nothing to fear.

We were young, blooming girls, and instinctively felt some male residents had vigorous sexual urges directed our way. If one young man chanced to come across us on the trampolines he was prone to chase us, and had once caught my terrified little sister in a headlock. We dubbed him 'Come back after lunch' because this is what he would demand of us as we tried to get out of his way. We also kept clear of a boy who would sit on a trampoline screaming for long periods. And we didn't like the young silent nonverbal man who would open the back gate of our house and walk straight into our kitchen, where mum would be preparing dinner and have to use some force and determination to get him away from us. Sometimes he would push past and start opening cupboards in the hall, or stride down to our bedrooms. Occasionally, his head appeared at our bedroom window while we were dressing, which terrified us the most because this window was on the side of our house accessible from the street outside the Cottages, and this man was certainly not supposed to have been moving around outside the grounds of the institution.

Occasionally in my teenage years, during periods when we were receiving visits from an unwelcome male visitor, and when I was home alone, I would lock the back door and pile furniture against it. Sometimes we padlocked the back gate, or snibbed the flywire on the back door. But generally we were con. dent the few aggressive young males were not supposed to transgress the boundary that marked the private space of our home. And most of the time we knew the hand reaching through the back gate to open the latch would be the hand of a friendly resident or staff member.

As the years passed I became more con.dent and relaxed in my relations with the intellectually disabled. I would laugh to see how afraid other people could be of the residents. Often we took friends or cousins for a jump on the trampolines, or to buy lollies at the kiosk. On one occasion we dragged two girlfriends into a noisy ward to say hello to a staff member. The girls stood close, but then suddenly ran out the door and back home screaming. Their responses left us bemused, and slightly smug. Just as when my friends at Kew Primary School teased me for living at the 'funny farm.' Their taunts never bothered me because I knew the Cottages had a stigma for them I was free of. I was proud of my unusual home.

There were perks in Dad's job. Many of the families that lived on-site were accorded benefits which seem quaint from today's perspective. For many years we received a weekly crate of gratis vegetables—I suppose originating from the Cottages' kitchen. We also had our manchester washed courtesy of the institution's laundry. Sheets and pillowcases in our linen cupboard had tags sewn on by my mother saying 'Dr. Judge.'

And living in the institution made many things available to us children. I learnt to play tennis by hitting balls with my sisters and the McBreartys on the outdoor tennis courts, located near the beautiful bluestone walls of the neighboring Willsmere Mental Asylum, where we sometimes ventured in search of feathers left behind by the resident peacocks. We also enjoyed the outdoors play equipment at the Cottages, spending long hours on the roundabout, and even on a beautifully painted carousel that miraculously appeared for a while, and could be made to go around by hand. Sometimes we attended musical afternoons organised for residents in the newly built Geiger hall. And the building of the state-of-the-art hydrotherapy pool was a cause of great excitement. We had a three-foot Clarke's pool in our own back yard, but this was nothing like an in-ground pool with heated water! We would have happily commandeered the pool for ourselves, but of course the residents had priority, and after a while the change room started getting too smelly. We moved on to new adventures, leaving the residents to regain their exclusive use of the wonderful facility.

Once I remember my father scolding us, for 'walking around as though we owned the place.' This was around the time of one of the most exciting events of my childhood when a bright yellow pedal car was donated by some imaginative person to the residents at the Cottages. There must have been a sense that the speed which could be achieved in the vehicle, solely by vigorous use of the lower limbs, posed a bit of a threat and didn't make the toy appropriate for the residents. So we staff children were permitted to use the car, which of course delighted us. We roared around as fast as we could, until Karen McBrearty broke her arm, and the car was confiscated from us.

But I like to think we doctor's daughters also contributed to the Cottages in our own way. As teenagers we enjoyed helping out in the kiosk, which had been established by the Parents Association, and was run by volunteers. We even graduated to running the little shop on our own. I recall we were given a small payment for afternoons spent there, which we usually spent immediately on a bag of mixed lollies. We often had to take money from residents who had no idea how much they were handing over. It would have been easy to cheat the buyer who didn't understand that a can of Coke wasn't worth a whole handful of coins. But we didn't abuse our positions. Though I do recall occasionally, when the temptation was just too great, that I would pinch a lolly and feel terribly guilty.

Following in my father's footsteps, I was a budding thespian, and at one time railroaded the five other girls into putting on a play for the residents called 'The Jester, the Queen, and the Hen.' We performed it to the children in Ward 31 and it was a great laugh, especially as several of the audience members had obviously not heard of the theatrical convention of the 'third wall' and saw no obstacle to their joining in with the action. For some of the children the memory of the performance lived on for many months. Long after, Adrian would always greet me with my trademark jester's pose, fist on forehead, and quote back one of my lines, with the greatest sense of mirth. He was a lovely boy with a great sense of humour; his mimicking gave us both a good laugh.

When I moved out of home at eighteen I moved away from the Cottages' world. But I still looked forward to the fete. By this stage my father and some other staff were running what had become known as the 'Indian Stall' because the proceeds were divided between the Cottages Parents Association and various centers for the intellectually disabled in India. My sisters and I had graduated to positions as vendors. I enjoyed catching up on the residents from Ward 31. Scotty had grown into a silent brooding heavy man.

My father continued to work at the Cottages until 1986. After this we kept our ties with the institution through friends who were still on staff. I was aware of how the 'normalisation' movement was having an impact. Moving intellectually disabled people out of institutions was seen as a key component in the process of 'normalisation.'

Dad had been deeply sceptical about deinstitutionalisation from the beginning when the ideology first emerged in the 1970s. I think many other staff at the Cottages during his era shared the same concerns. Perhaps it was Dad's practical bent, or the fact he was an independent thinker with a somewhat anti-authoritarian streak, but during his time at the Cottages he observed a transition which I think he felt entailed a move away from the hands-on approach to caring for the intellectually disabled towards a more bureaucratic style of management. The principles of normalisation were somehow linked in with this trend towards a top-down model of care.

Also I think there was a gut reaction against wholesale deinstitutionalisation because my father and many other staff enjoyed being part of the Cottages and believed in the place. They were striving to create a better institution, reforming what they saw as outdated, and introducing new, more enlightened ways of doing things. As well as dealing with the medical and psychological needs of residents my father had conducted research into the causes of intellectual disability. His interests had led him to forge links with people in India who were involved in the establishment of centers for intellectually disabled children. Dad traveled to India to visit these fiedgling centers, and he observed first hand the poor conditions under which his fellow doctors worked. His experiences gave him a wider perspective on the deinstitutionalisation movement occurring in the West. He once told me his Indian colleagues envied us our institutions, because they saw them as a symbol of a progressive and flourishing society.

In 1986 the Cottages were closed to new admissions. It seemed the promise and optimism of the 1970s had passed. In 1987 the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Cottages passed without official ceremony, apparently because the government refused to allow the administration to celebrate the occasion. Instead during this period it was rumoured one CEO was rewarded with salary bonuses dependent on the level of cuts made to the Cottages budget. I'm sure many positive things continued to occur, but the stories brought to the attention of the public predominantly provoked outrage over substandard conditions. In 1996 nine residents died tragically in a fire. The coronial inquest concluded the State of Victoria had contributed in part by not ensuring a proper fire safety system was in place.

Many residents moved out of the Cottages. My parents also moved to a small home nearby. Our house and the other staff houses in Wills Street were converted into 'community' houses for more independent residents. But it wasn't long before the intellectually disabled residents were moved out of these houses, and over one weekend the whole row of houses was bulldozed. The blocks of land were put on the market—each fetched an exorbitant amount, being prime Kew real estate—and eventually a row of two-storey mansions appeared. The wooden fences with back gates opening onto the Cottages were torn down, and replaced with one long continuous structure separating the institution from its new neighbours.

In 2002, not longer after my father died, the Bracks government announced its plan to sell the 27 hectares of Cottages' land and redevelop it as a new 'suburb,' with 100 of the 450 Cottages' residents living in this suburb, and the rest relocated off-site. Intellectually disabled people, we are reminded, have a human right to live in the 'community.' And because of this every Cottages resident must be rehoused in a CRU (Community Residential Unit)—a house for five or six people in a suburban location. The CRU's cannot be located next to each other—only this model will ensure that intellectually disabled people are truly 'integrated.' It doesn't matter that this option of housing is the most costly. Other accommodation models such as cluster housing, or village communities, are condemned as segregation—no better than the old evil institutions.

Who could possibly argue against the vision of the bureaucrats in their offices? But we currently have over three thousand intellectually disabled people in Victoria on the waiting list for full-time residential care: a stark reminder that we are failing to meet basic support needs of a great number of intellectually disabled people and their families. It doesn't seem farfetched to wonder what the closure of the Cottages might achieve in real terms, and whether the loss of the institution is one more step in a gradual process of the state's devolution of responsibilities for the care of the intellectually disabled.

Image 1: Protest against the closure of Kew Cottages and sale of public land, 10 August 2003; the speaker is Bob Riddiford, long-time advocate for the intellectually disabled and their families. (Photograph reproduced with oermission of the author.)

I like to tell people, somewhat irreverently, that living at the Cottages made me truly 'integrated' with the intellectually disabled. It was a topsy turvy experience of integration. Rather than an intellectually disabled person being integrated into so-called 'normal' society, I was integrated into the world of the intellectually disabled. I acknowledged the Cottages as a special realm where intellectual disability with all its unusual and challenging manifestations was accorded respect. The concept of normality was rede. ned and you couldn't set foot on the Cottages land without accepting this inverted reality.

I'm not an expert and my understanding of theories about intellectual disability is that of a lay person. But in my own mind I have invented a new philosophy of 'differentisation' rather than 'normalisation.' Instead of seeking to attain a state whereby intellectually disabled people are normalised into our society, perhaps we should aim to acknowledge and accept intellectually disabled people on their terms, not ours, and accommodate their differences, rather than try to make them live in some so-called normal way.

And as to that word 'community' which governments these days bandy around gaily, it leaves me perplexed. Perhaps the power of the word lies in the fact that so many of us are searching for a sense of kinship with others; and that a sense of community remains elusive. My impression is that we live in close proximity to one another in big cities but many of us have a fragmented, isolated experience of urban life, characterised by increasing mistrust of others. The sense of belonging to a community is often tenuous and easily undermined.

What is a community anyway? I think it is a group of people whose sum is greater than its parts. Individual members are able to receive according to their need, and give according to their strengths. In this way a community supports all those who are a part of it, has resources and power not available to the individual. The deinstitutionalisation movement has opened our eyes to some of the pitfalls of large institutions, but the theory has left us blind to the fact that institutions are in fact communities, founded on the idea of the strong supporting those in need. To deny that the Cottages is a community seems to negate my own history. If I was ever part of a community it was the Kew Cottages community, and I still feel strong ties with it—an allegiance and sense of ownership.

These days I live in East Kew, near Mum. I still see some of the residents I knew in my childhood down at the shops in Kew Junction. When I meet Chris outside the autobank he asks me straight out 'What's your team?' and tells me he barracks for Collingwood (as if that's news). Recently, in the fish and chip shop, I stepped in to rescue a terrified young girl accosted by Bill, now grey-haired. He had nuzzled up to her with his red address book and was leeringly asking for her name. 'C'mon Bill, you've got enough names in there, haven't you?,' I enquired. 'What are you having for lunch, then?'

The fete I attended in 2001 was very likely the last of all. In 2003 senior staff claimed that insurance costs had made the event unfeasible. I hope there will be another fete one day—perhaps the remaining residents in their separated CRU's will maintain their links and sense of community; perhaps the fete will be resurrected somehow.

Whatever happens, for me the 2001 fete marked the end of an era. My dad died the next year. At the time of the fete he was already suffering from motor neurone disease. He had told us that setting up the stall would be too much of an effort, so my sisters and I had persuaded him we would run the show. On the day there are fewer familiar faces than ever. The ex-Ward 31 residents don't come. For a moment things liven up when a group of three young musicians makes an appearance, walking around in colorful commedia hats—one's playing a snare drum, and one's on trumpet. Everyone from the old days has aged, plenty are gone, and the new young staff look at me curiously, as a stranger, wondering what my role is. But despite all this there is the sense of camaraderie I have always loved. Dad is greeted with great warmth by many parents; and ex-staff try to engage him in a laugh. This year he doesn't respond with his usual high spirits because his disease has made it difficult to speak. He stays in the background, avoiding the action, letting others do the work of the stall, and talk. One old couple tells me my father was a wonderful man and they would never forget how he helped them. I sense the deep gratitude of these parents, and their loyalty to the institution.

At the end of the fete, as I pack the last of the boxes for the op shop into the boot of my car, I'm filled with regret at not having brought along a camera for the day. I wish I had taken a photo of the mother changing her son's nappy under the gum tree. Such a simple image, but it says so much. First, there is the reality of the man's needs—the extraordinary nature of these needs and the problem of finding a space for them. But you can't separate the man from his mother. There she is, with her awesome faithfulness, an example to me of the incredible burden of love that comes with being a parent. And finally, perhaps most importantly, it's what you wouldn't see in the photo. It's what's going on around these two. It's the structure to support them that has been created by a large group of people over a long period of time. And it's the celebration of the achievements of this community.

Notes

* The writer's father was Cliff Judge (1928–2002), a child psychiatrist who worked mainly for the Victorian Health Department in its intellectual disability services. Cliff was employed at Kew Cottages, in Victoria, for three periods totalling fourteen years between 1962 and 1986.

Cliff's medical career was dedicated to providing care and training for intellectually disabled people, and support for their families. He was also involved in research efforts to unravel the genetic causes of intellectual disability, and he was interested in the history of intellectual disability. He made an important contribution to the rediscovery of fragile-X syndrome.

Cliff was the author of the books Retarded Australians (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1975), and Civilisation and Mental Retardation: A History of the Care and Treatment of Intellectually Disabled People (Melbourne: Chase Just Publishing, 1987). He was also the co-author with Fran van Brummelen of Kew Cottages: The World of Dolly Stainer (Melbourne: Spectrum Publications, 2002). Cliff had several articles published during his career, mainly concerning genetic conditions and fragile-X syndrome but also on the history of children and the art of the intellectually disabled. He was editor of the Australian Journal of Mental Retardation (later the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Developmental Disabilities) and president of the Australian Group for the Scientific Study of Mental Deficiency (later the Australian Society for the Study of Intellectual Disability).

In 1974 Cliff was one of the founders of Arts Project Australia, an organisation dedicated to the development of artistic expression in people with an intellectual disability. Cliff himself was an accomplished painter. This lifelong interest also led him to become a foundation member in 1965 of the Australian Medical Association Art Group.

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