When I was a young minister freshly graduated and ordained, my first ministry in the mid 1960’s, after seven years of the slums of Newmarket, was in a small country church, in the small country town of Ararat, gateway to the Wimmera in Western Victoria. There I learnt the difficult art faced by all city bred ministers, of becoming a country parson.

Winter in Ararat was dreadful. For us, our first winter was one of the most dreadful experiences of our lives. The snows covered Mount Langey Gerand and Mount Ararat. The animals were sluggish, the sheep and cattle standing huddled together under bare trees. The pastures were lush and wet, the roadsides were muddy and the creeks were flooded.

Our old country manse had no heating whatever and was made of fibro sheeting and weatherboard. It was the coldest house I have ever lived in my life. Thin lino covered the floors, and high ceilings seemed to make it impossible to heat any room.

In the kitchen the one fire wood stove was burnt out and useless as an oven, but at least the fire could keep the kitchen warm. We used to have every door in the house shut with draft stoppers underneath each door. I stuck masking tape around the edges of the rattling windows and every night spent about an hour at the wood heap chopping up old railways sleepers which I picked up from along the sides of the railway lines where they were in those days just left to rot after having been replaced.

I carted the sleepers back on my shoulders and then worked hard with axe to reduce the weathered red gum into large chips for the small fire grate. Those red gum sleeper chips burnt well giving off good heat. We literally lived in the kitchen as the only warm room in the house. Any venture out of doors meant rugging up with two or three jumpers, an overcoat, scarf and gloves. I wore two pairs of socks and photographs from the time show ruddy cheeks.

Many mornings I would leave early to take the first period of religious instruction at the little one teacher schools lying half an hour away in each direction. Jacksons Creek was often flooded and before I could get the car through it would be shoes and socks off, and trousers rolled up to wade through the freezing water to check the condition of the bridge with my feet.

It was hard to get doctors to call and no matter how sick a person was the doctor was available only in his surgery.

Ararat lacked most of the professional services that are available in the city and in spite of the town being the site of a large government psychiatric hospital, the psychiatrists were there for the sake of the inmates only. If the townspeople wanted a psychiatrist there was one in Ballarat or else they had to travel to Melbourne.

As a consequence desperate people turned to other people in the community and usually the only people in the community that had had any education at university level were the school teachers, the clergy and the solicitors. Consequently these people were called upon to counsel all kinds of people suffering from psychological and psychiatric illnesses beyond their competence.

The first of many desperate people who came knocking at my study door seeking counselling was Mrs. Crane and she was desperately seeking help for her 24 year old daughter, Suzanne Crane.

Mrs. Crane told me that her husband had died when Sue was still a young girl. Sue hated her father and refused to talk about him. She had one sister who was a quiet girl married to a local farmer. Three or four years earlier when a boyfriend had left her Suzanne had slashed her wrists in a suicide attempt.

Mrs. Crane wanted me to come and see Sue because Sue stayed in the house, in her room, in herself. Her mother said that a doctor said she suffered from claustrophobia and another doctor had said she was just depressed.

Sue was terrified of getting into a lift and so would not visit the psychiatrist in Ballarat who was on the fifth floor.

So I called round to see Sue Crane. Her mother led me into her bedroom and left me there. Sue was tall and thin and to my surprise talked easily. In fact she talked too easily and very soon in a polished performance was telling me the story of her life.

She had been engaged to Fred who had left to go droving and like Clancy, “had gone to Queensland droving and we don’t know where he are”. Then she had been engaged to Eric who had left her to join the army. It sounded like he was heading for the French Foreign Legion.

Then to my surprise she started recounting in detail the number of sexual affairs she had had with married men in Ararat. She quickly enumerated them telling me their names. I tried not to let her see that I was shocked. She had had a delightful affair with a school teacher, one of the shire councillors, the station master from the railways and had even tried to have an affair with her brother in law. She quite easily tossed off details about these men and their wives. It suddenly occurred to me that she seemed to have moved from single men who were not able to sustain the relationship, to affairs with married men.

It suddenly occurred to me that here was I, sitting in her bedroom, and she was wearing the most flimsy, revealing lace nightgown on a cold winter’s day, demonstrating maximum exposure and perfect make up. I felt like a fly approaching a spider’s web.

Sue kept telling me that she rang other men at their work. There was Eddy Cassidy who was the proprietor of a shoe shop in Main Street, and Charles the barman at the RSL, and Alphonse who ran Ararat’s “Gateway to the Grampians” motel. I stopped her at that point because I knew that Alphonse’s wife was always at the front desk and always answered the telephone. I asked her did it worry her that Alphonse’s wife would take the call. “Oh no,” she said, “I just ask for Alphonse and he says he cannot talk I ask him to ring me back.”

I was beginning to get the picture of a young woman who would do anything to get attention from men.

I wondered if, instead of hating her father as Mrs. Crane had said, she was rather desperately seeking to replace her father. It occurred to me that most of the men she had mentioned were old enough to be her father. And why married men? And why flirting with them so outrageously and obviously? Surely she knew that her affairs and flirting would lead her to being caught. “That would not matter” she said. “I don’t care if their wives come round here and scream at me and call me a slut and a bitch I don’t care what they do to me.”

I then started to consider that she wanted to be caught. She was in point of fact setting herself up for further rejection from women in the town and I would not be surprised if her mother was not on her unconscious list. She was punishing herself with self rejection and self hatred. What she could not do by slashing her wrists she was now trying to do by having other people destroy her reputation. Even withdrawing into the room could be a sign that she was locking herself away as a self punishment.

Two hours had gone by and that was enough for the day.

That night I thought I should get help so I rang a local doctor with whom I had become friendly. I told him the story and how I was feeling about the conversation and asked his advice. His reply was to the point, “Don’t ask me. I don’t know. You studied psychology at university for years, you should be telling me. I did one lecture on psychiatry in my medical school.”

I replied to him, “Yes, but psychology and psychiatry are two different disciplines. This girl needs a psychiatrist and there are no services available and she will not travel to go to them.”

My doctor friend said “Well you lead on. If she came to me all I would give her would be some sedatives and a good talking to. You seem to be on the right track.”

I had promised to go back to see Sue Crane in two days time. In the meantime I took down the copy of Freud’s book “Lectures on Psychoanalysis”. I had read that book twice and had been absolutely fascinated by his careful step by step analysis of situations.

Freud had taught that inside each person there is another self, an unconscious self which is often responsible for our behaviour and attitudes. Psychoanalysis was one method of penetrating the unconscious self to understand it, and to clear out the damaging causes of behaviour.
I had been impressed with Freud’s meticulous patience and care for those that came to him.

I had also read his book “On the Interpretation of Dreams” and several other books and had written a university assignment on dream therapy.

So on my next visit, in the most amateurish way, I decided to ask about her inner life entering it by means of her dreams. I took notes which I have kept and which are before me now.

Sue quickly recalled two dreams, portion of which frequently recurred. “I often dream of my father standing on a balcony calling to me. But the balcony is surrounded by water. The water is only shallow so I wade out to him on the balcony, but as I wade out the water gets deeper and the balcony seems to float further and further away.” She then said to me “Oh, that is a funny thing, I dreamt that only last night and I suddenly remember that yesterday that I was looking at a photograph album and we had a picture of our family at the seaside and my father was standing in the shallow water.” I explained to her gently how dreams are often triggered by sights and experiences during the daytime and that they often reveal unpleasant memories from deep within us.

I asked her if there were any nightmares she had suffered and she recalled one most vividly. “I was walking down a long passage until I came to a door. I opened the door and the passage continued to another door. I opened the door and went in. It led into other passages with
other doors. I could hear my father calling me, but every time I opened the door I went into another passage with more doors. The last door shut behind me and I realised I was in a lift which went down, down, down.”

The impact of the nightmare was so vivid that she started to shake uncontrollably and cry. I waited in silence for a considerable time and then said “Is there anything about the inside of the lift that you remember?” She looked up immediately and pointed to the wall “That picture was on the inside of the lift.”

I left it there but that night pondered on the notes that I had taken about her dreams. They were beginning to find into some kind of a picture.

Over the next weeks we explored a number of possibilities and it soon became clear that Sue’s hatred of her father was a strange mixture, of rejection and bitterness toward him for leaving her by dying, and highly developed sense of love for him because he treated her with warmth as his favourite little girl. She was hating herself for causing his death. He had died at night in his bed but one of the last things he had done was to give her a cuddle when she went to her bed.

It was possible that in using her sexuality to attract married men was to fill the warmth and love that she missed from her father and that by only chasing married men she was wanting other women to punish her as part of her self rejection and hatred.

It is one thing to perhaps help a person to understand why their behaviour follows a certain pattern. It is entirely another thing to help them overcome it. After many more visits I sketched out a programme to help Sue get out of herself, out of her room and out of her house.

I talked through the situations with her over many visits. I got her to talk more about her father and to write down for me her feelings about her father. Page after page followed as she expressed some of the feelings about her father which she had never mentioned to anyone else. I then encouraged her to show interest in other things and asked her to cut from our local paper the three stories of people who needed concern and help most. I got her doing this over a period of weeks and then led her to writing letters to some of the people who needed help whose stories appeared in the local newspaper. I then started her joining with me in praying for other people. I was working on the assumption that I had to get her mind out of the house before we got her body out of the house.

All the time we encouraged her to make some decisions about herself and her future, to take some initiatives, and then to come down and see me at my study. By the time I had her visiting my study for counselling I was explaining to her the influence of the unconscious and explaining how the trauma of her father’s death were affecting her life all these years later. There were several places that struck fear into her heart including the cemetery and a lift. I took her with me as we visited both and felt triumphant the day we went to Ballarat and rode the lift to the fifth floor.

We brought her into our local congregation. My wife became the first woman to show acceptance and warmth to her and I guess we became the first married couple where the husband did not fall for her sexual advances and where the wife showed her warmth and love. In our local congregation she became more relaxed as weeks went by. She became a believer in Jesus Christ who could bring her new life and hope for the future. I baptised her and she became a member of the church.

This whole process had taken two years and we then left Ararat for a new ministry. Only occasionally did I have further contact with Sue Crane. She married and had children. I was invited to attend an infant dedication service for her first child but we were unable to go. The last contact I had with her was that she was leading a fulfilled and happy married family life.

The cold winters of Ararat had a depressing effect on many people. In the small country town they had few people who could provide them with the support and help that they needed. The new minister who had come to town held some promise for many people, and the arrival of Mrs. Crane to talk about her daughter was to give me a constant counselling job for the next two years. But the miracle of the change in the life of Sue Crane was to bring more people with more complex problems seeking counselling and help. That in itself was going to become an increasing burden of ministry in the small country town.

And after that first visit to Sue Crane I headed back to the country manse at 90 High Street, opposite the Railway Station, having learnt another lesson in the difficult art of becoming a country parson.

GORDON MOYES

Friday, 10th February, 2006, 1:40 pm | A Country Parson, Australian Short Stories